The Great War
Presented by Dr. Victoria Belco, Portland State University
Handouts
• The Road to WWI
• WWI lecture outline
• Aftermath of WWI
Three men in 1914
• Vladimir Lenin
• Benito Mussolini
• Adolf Hitler
The Great Powers, 1914
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Britain
Germany
France
Russia
Austro-Hungarian Empire
Italy
The Road to WWI
• Moroccan crises
• Balkan crises and wars
• The assassination of Archduke Franz
Ferdinand
Not that Franz Ferdinand
Archduke Franz Ferdinand
FF and wife
Sophie
With family
With elephant in Ceylon
In Sarajevo, June 28, 1914
Gavrilo Princip
The shot
Arrest of Princip
Going to court
trial
Funeral of FF
The Assassination
• What did the Serbian government know?
• What did Germany know? What did
Germany want?
• What would France do?
• What should Britain have done
differently?
The July Crisis
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The “German memo” (“blank check”)
Austrian demands (‘the ultimatum”)
The Russian assurance
Threats of mobilization and secret
mobilization
Causes: External factors
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Alliance system
Arms race
War plans
Great Power competition
Causes: Internal factors
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Nationalism
Austria-Hungary: nationalities “problem”
Russia
France
England
Germany
What did “war” mean in 1914?
• “This is the hour we have yearned for” –
“to Paris!”
• “A jolly little war”
• “To Berlin!”
• “We’ll be home by Christmas!”
What does “total war” mean?
Everyone does his/her “bit”
The Homefront
Women did their “bit” in
traditional and non-traditional
ways
Women ship builders 1918
London 1918
Women’s
forestry
corps,
Britain
1918
Crane
operators,
Britain 1918
Coal
heavers
1917
Brick-making factory
Munitions workers 1917
Encouraging Enlistment in
Britain
Hating the Enemy
The Battlefront
John Singer Sargent: Gassed,
painted 1919
The
Zimmerma
n telegram
– January
1917
US Declared War on Germany
April 6, 1917
Signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk: “no war, no peace”
Italian front
Wilfred Owen, Dulce et Decorum Est, (written c. October
1917-March 1918)
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.
GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.-Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,-My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
London, November 11, 1918
NYC victory parade
Aftermath of WWI
(“a jolly little war” / “we’ll be home by Christmas” /
“to Paris!” / “to Berlin!” / “victory must be ours”)
- US Civil War: 620,000 dead
Battle of Gettysburg: over 51,000 casualties
- Vietnam War: 50,000 US dead
- World War I: @ 74 million men mobilized
Allied armies: 48,000,000 mobilized; 18,000,000 casualties
Central Powers: 25,500,000 mobilized; 12,400,000 casualties
8,500,000 men killed: about 6,000 per day for the 51 months, or the more than 1500 days,
of the war (August 5, 1914 – November 11, 1918)
22,000,000 wounded (@ 7,000,000 permanently disabled)
12,600,000 dead from war-related causes
- Battle of Verdun (February 1916-June 1916: “Bleed the French white”):
France – more that 540,000 casualties (dead and wounded)
90,000 dead
Germany – 430,000 casualties
- Passchendaele (July 31-1917-November 1917): 245,000 British dead
- Battle of the Somme (the Somme Offensive): 1,200,000 casualties
Britain – 420,000 killed or wounded (60,000 the first day)
19,000 dead
France – 200,000 killed or wounded
Germany – 650,000 killed or wounded
- Gallipoli: more than ½ of British Commonwealth forces (of 400,000) killed or wounded
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the
Night (1934)
“See that little stream,” he said. “We could
walk to it in two minutes. It took the
British a whole month to walk to it – a
whole empire walking very slowly, dying in
front and pushing forward behind. And
another empire walked very slowly
backward a few inches a day, leaving the
dead like a million bloody rugs.”
Aftermath continued
• Paris Peace Conference 1919
• Treaty of Versailles (signed June 28, 1919)
– Polish Corridor
– Limits to German military
– Article 231: German war guilt clause
– German reparations
• Creation of European “successor states” (esp. Poland,
CZ, and Yugoslavia)
• League of Nations
• National debts in Europe
• Political, economic, and social instability in Europe
• Lenin, Mussolini, Hitler