Total War “the killing machine”
Unrestrained war, massive mobilization of the population.
Draft of huge numbers of citizens, with the rest
put on a war footing working to support the war.
Blurring of distinctions between the battlefront and the
homefront.
Science dedicated to development of more deadly
weapons to break the stalemate.
Restrictions on democracy through censorship,
curtailment of civil liberties.
Sacrifice on the homefront through rationing, war
bonds, volunteer services, civilian defense.
Espionage to demoralize the enemy
Propaganda to keep up morale
Economic Regimentation through price controls,
rationing, mobilizing all for the war effort.
BIG GOVERNMENT
1917 – Turning Point in World War I
Russian Revolutions – Russia withdraws
from the Entente Powers.
America enter the war - $, morale, men
During the war…
The Russian Revolution of 1917

Russia’s deep-seated problems
aggravated by Great War

February 1917: Tsar Nicholas
abdicated

October 1917: Bolsheviks, led
by Vladimir Lenin, took over

March 1918: Russia withdrew
from war

Birth of the Soviet Union
Vladimir Lenin
1870-1924
Josef Stalin
1879-1953
The Socialist Experiment

“Soviet” = workers’
collective

Efforts to build a noncapitalist society

Creation of agricultural
collectives

Command economy
The United States in WWI

Before 1917 provided
loans and war materiel to
the Allies

April 1917: U.S. declared
war against Germany

November 11, 1918:
Germany surrendered
German sinking of the Lusitania, with 128
Americans aboard, in May 1915, galvanized
U.S. public opinion in support of entering
the war.
And in Asia…

Japan entered the Great War as one of the Allies

During the war, it occupied German territories in China
and the Pacific

It also issued “Twenty-one Demands” to China in 1915
“The war to end all wars…”

9 million military deaths

20 million wounded

Millions more died of
starvation and the
influenza epidemic of
1918
Otto Dix “Storm Troopers During Gas Attack”
1923
The Paris Peace Conference, 1919

Woodrow Wilson’s
postwar vision:




14 Points
“Self-Determination”
League of Nations
“Punitive peace” for
Germany
The “punitive peace”

Germany not allowed to participate in the peace
process

Germany was not allowed a navy or air force and
its army was limited to 100,000

It had to pay reparations for the war in money or
kind

The Treaty of Versailles included a “war
responsibility” clause
Article 231
“The Allied and Associated Governments
affirm and Germany accepts the
responsibility of Germany and her allies for
causing all the loss and damage to which the
Allied and Associated Governments and
their nationals have been subjected as a
consequence of the war imposed upon them
by the aggression of Germany and her
allies.”
The former Ottoman empire

Mustafa Kemal (“Atatürk”)
established Republic of
Turkey

Modernization and
secularization of Turkey

Other regions became
European “mandates
Dissolution of the
Ottoman Empire
the beginning of
the “mandate
system” in the
Middle East
French mandates:
Syria, Lebanon
British mandates:
Iraq, Palestine,
Transjordan
[Japanese mandates:
Marianna & Marshall
Islands]
The Balfour Declaration,
1917
Expressing support for
“the establishment in
Palestine of a national
home for the Jewish
people…it being clearly
understood that nothing
shall be done which may
prejudice the civil and
religious rights of
existing non-Jewish
communities in Palestine…”
Global consequences of a
global war
Social consequences of
WWI
Women’s
movements
Artistic
movements
WWI:
Social
consequences
Pessimism
about the
“Enlightenment
project”
Anti-colonial
movements
Consequences of World War I







Map of Europe and Middle East redrawn
European civilization “tarnished”-growth of anticolonial, nationalist movements
Beginning of the “American Century”
World’s first experiment with Communism-birth of
the Soviet Union (USSR)
Japan strengthened in Asia (See RGH #45)
Germany alienated
Cultural Crisis-idols of 19th—reason, technology,
democracy, capitalism, progress, science attacked
“In a world where nothing is true,
anything goes”
Manet's Déjeuner sur l'herbe, masterpiece
of the 1863 Salon des Refusés.
Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,
1907
Western Civilization Is Decadent
“Disintegration characterizes
this time, and thus,
uncertainty. Nothing stands
firmly on its feet or on a hard
faith in itself, one lives for
tomorrow as the day after
tomorrow is dubious.
Everything on our way is
slippery and dangerous, and
the ice that still supports us
has become thin: all of us feel
the warm, uncanny breath of
the thawing wind: where we
still walk, soon no one will be
able to walk.”
The Will to Power
Friedrich Nietzsche
Sigmund Freud
“Men are not gentle
friendly creatures, but are
naturally aggressive; no
man can trust another
man. Man to man is a
wolf.”
Civilization and Its Discontents
Uncertainty
Despair
Alienation
Depersonalization
Fear
Angst
The Scream, Munch
“The Lost Generation”
Never such innocence
Never before or since,
As changed itself to past
Without a word—the men
Leaving the gardens tidy,
The thousands of marriages
Lasting a little while longer;
Never such innocence again.
Philip Larkin, 1915
Geneology, 1929 Van denberg
“When people change
the world around them,
sometimes the world
bites back.”
The Age of Technology, 1925
It is an illusion to think that,
because we have broken
through the probihitions,
taboos and rites that bound
primitive civilizations, we have
become free. We are
conditioned by something new,
technological civilization”
Jacques Ellul
Modern Art
Reality is personal
The world is shaped by the irrational
“Don’t proceed according to rules and principles but paint
what you observe and feel”
Dare to be different
Duchamp’s Mona Lisa
Dali’s Mona Lisa
Oppenheimer’s Object, 1936
Ernst’s “The gramineous bicycle, garnished with bells, the
dappled fire damps and the echinoderms bending the
spine to look for caresses,” 1920-21
Dali’s The Persistence of Memory, 1931
Surrealism
DADA
No more painters, no more writers, no more
musicians, no more sculptors, no more religions,
no more republicans, no more royalists, no more
imperialists, no more anarchists, no more
socialists, no more Bolsheviks, no more
politicians, no more proletarians, no more
democrats, no more armies, no more police, no
more nations, no more of these idiocies, no more
no more, NOTHING, NOTHING, NOTHING.
CUBISM
Braque’s Violin and Palette, 1909
Picasso’s Guernica, 1937
RELIGION – CONCEPT OF ORIGINAL SIN REEMERGES
“Civilization is a disease which is almost invariably
fatal, unless its course is checked in time. . .If so-called
civilized nations show any protracted vitality, it is
because they are only civilized at the top. Ancient
civilizations were destroyed by imported barbarians.
We breed our own.”
Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, “The Idea of
Progress”
SCIENCE
There Are No Absolute Truths
Heisenberg - The Uncertainty Theory
Einstein - The Theory of Relativity
Curie - The Sub-Atomic (Nuclear) World
Eugenics – The science of race
Existentialism
Sartre, Camus
“Existence precedes essence”
“Man is condemned to be free”
March of the Noughts, 1935
POLITICAL IDEOLOGY Totalitarianism
Lenin - Communism
Mussolini, Hitler - Fascism