History 1810 Notes - Week 1 (September 12, 2022): - What is war good for? - 1. The Just War - Connected to Judaio Christianity, but can be found globally - Taking a human life is wrong - But, states have a right to defend their citizens and have the right to defend their justices - Sometimes requires killing - Created to prevent war, very few situations where war is good - War is evil, but is occasionally permissible if it can prevent or end a greater evil - Having a just cause - It depends on your perspective - For some sides it is good for others it is bad - The U.S. Civil War - - The War for Southern Independence - The war of Northern Aggression The war of Independence - British: The American Revolution - What you call it implies a judgment of what is right and what is wrong - The Thirteen Colonies 1776: - The founding moment for the United States - - Seen as good for the USA The Philippines - 1899 - An insurrection according to the US - Seen as bad for the USA - Being the last resort - Being declared by proper authority - Possessing right intention - Having a reasonable chance of success - The end being proportional to the means - Example: World War II was caused to stop some maniacal dictators - 2. Politics - History is written by the winners - “War is the continuation of politics by other means” - “War is the continuation of political intercourse with the intermixing of other means” - Carl Van Clausewitz - War is a tool, political tool - Many types of war: - Wars of Conquest - - Roman invasion of Britain in 43 AD Dynastic War - Alexander the Great’s ancestors fought for 5 decades to decide who would rule - Civil War: - English Civil War - 1642 - 1651 - Two factions within a state duking it out amongst each other - War of National Liberation: - One group tries to get rid of a group that has colonized it - War of powers (Who’s going to run things? Queens, Sultans, Kings, etc.) - 3. Economics - A dirt farmer may benefit from war (because of the bodies) - People who want political power want economic power - - War of Conquest: - Hoping to gain land, which leads to resources - Hoping to gain trade - Hoping to gain new technologies Example: The scramble for Africa Example: Dutch-Portuguese War (Spice Wars) - Who controls trade? - - The Opium War - Trade - The invasion of Kuwait - Oil resources 4. Demographics - War simply happens to wipe out a certain race of people (Wars of Genocide) - Maori Wars - Indian Wars - Rwandan War (the 1990s) - Genghis Khan and Julius Caesar - - Khan waged wars intended to destroy entire populations - Caesar waged wars to destroy populations that opposed him Wars to secure Slaves - The Vikings: Prodigious Slavers - Many wars were fought against people to get slaves and make a huge profit - Eating the country, sweep up those that oppose you, and sell them to the Europeans as Slaves - Slavery gives Economic Power - - All about money 5. Ideology - Many wars have been about religion which = Politics - Religious power = Political Power - The Pope - Head of the Roman Catholic Church but also a very powerful Political Figure - The Crusades - Fought against the occupancy of the middle-east (control the holy land) - Taking it back from the infidels and heretics - - Sounds good to say it is about religious reasons but just political reasons - 20th Century: All about politics and economic success - - Wars of Ideas - Not clothed in religion - Russian Revolution (Created the Soviet Union) - Spanish Civil War (Communism vs Fascism) - Korean War (Communism vs Democracy) - Vietnam War (Communism vs Democracy) - The War on Terror (War of Ideas) Not really which idealogy is best, just shows which will dominate Control, Money, and Power (Complicated to separate) War in Gaming: - Chess and Checkers: Examples of War Games - The Earliest War Games: - Chess and Checkers are the very first war games - Checkers: AKA Petteia, became Latrunculi (Latin for Mercenary) after the Romans adopted it - - A game of conquest Chess: Chaturanga (First identified in Northern India in the 6th century, refers to the Indian military) - - Appeared in Europe around the 1400s Both are based on conquest War Game as Training: - Konigs Spiel: King’s Game - Emerged in the 1660s - Strategy game, a combo of military and political principles - Allowed generals and leaders to enact strategies - A more complicated version of Chess - Generals wanted to make it more like an actual war, thus they created an improved, bigger version - Kriegsspiel: War Game - Presented to the king of Prussia in 1824 - A refined version of 150 years in Gaming - More realistic - You would sometimes hire an umpire - Prussians destroyed France on the battlefield - Many believe that the Prussians had simulated enough war games to prepare for war - First American war game - 1887 - After WWI, war gaming became more popular - - Armies and governments wanted to figure out what went wrong The government of Japan also played war games - In 1927, the Japanese launched their first war game practice on the bombing of Pearl Harbour - Refined year after year - Eventually got it right, and so they attacked Pearl Harbour with the things they learned in 14 years of war gaming - Nato had exercises to see how different armies could cooperate - Navy Electronic Warfare Simulator - 1958 - - The first computer-powered war game - Took up three floors at the Naval War College 1964 - US Government put together a computer exercise with some troops in Vietnam - Played simulations to see what happened to the US in Vietnam - In both simulations, they lost and got thrown out of Vietnam - - Happened in real life throughout the 60s and 70s Summer 2002: - Before the invasion of Iraq - The US put together a game to test how ready the Americans were for a conflict in the Middle East - Operation Millenium - 12000 live personnel, 250 million spent - Paul Van Riper played the enemy - Launched a pre-emptive strike on the Americans using old shit - Destroyed entire US carrier fleet in 10 minutes Restarted by the Pentagon - New rules that limited Van Riper's power - Became a PR exercise, not a strategic exercise - Gave the outcome that the US wanted, but did not accurately show what would occur in the Middle East - From Board to Computer - Eventually domesticated - Happened pretty early in the history of consumer toys - The 1950s gave the population simulations that the Military used (Stratego and Risk) - You could also get Blietzkreig and Luftwaffe (Enhanced versions of what the Germans developed in the 17th and 18th centuries) - First shooting-orientated computer game - Spacewar! (1962) - - The 1980s, Battlezone (1980): - - Created by students at MIT More realistic war simulator FPS games - Castle Wolfenstein (1981) - The player is an American soldier attempting to escape from the castle teeming with Germans - The second version was 3d with 2d sprites (Wolfenstein 3D) - The final version became a full 3D game now defended by zombie Nazis - Small Soldiers: - 1913, H.G. Wells wrote Little Wars - A combat game to play with toy soldiers - Wells detested war - Many collected small toy soldiers as a hobby - Churchill had 1500 toy soldiers - In the 1950s and 1960s, plastic toy soldiers appealed to the masses - The 60s and 70s became unfashionable - - Became popular again in the 80s because of the baby boomers The Future of War Games: - Modern war games - VR - PC Gaming - The only limit to the future of war gaming is technology War in Music: - 1. Official Music - National Anthems - - Most come from war and are based on certain wars and battles Classical music - Classical composers relied on sponsorships with the rich and famous - Often wrote music to honor certain military achievements - Example: Fireworks by Handel, Music for the Royal Fireworks Celebration - Example: Tchaikovsky, 1812 Overture - The conclusion was supposed to have live cannon fire - Example: Dmitri Shostakovich (Composer) - A frail man with a weak heart and bad eyesight - During the second world war, he tried to enlist but was rejected - His greatest service to Russia would be to continue writing music - Began composing the 7th symphony during the battle of Leningrad - October of 1941 - Flown out of Leningrad for his safety - Dedicated the 7th symphony for the city of Leningrad - Almost always pro-war 2. Popular Music - Began in the early 19th century during the Napoleonic Era - The emergence of hand-written music that would be printed and distributed as broadsheets - The music popular made fun of the enemy (in this case Britain and France) - - The 1860s, the beginnings of a modern commodity to the economy - Songs that are still known today - Sold in the 100000s - War is hell but it sells music (learned by American producers) 3. The World Wars - 1914, war takes over the music - In 1915, only 5 percent of music was about war produced in the USA - 1916, 25 percent of music was about the war in the USA - 1918, 70 percent of music was about the war in the USA - 65 percent were written by women composers - Paupers wrote most songs - Their job was to take your lyrics and turn them into music - The leading pauper made 3000 songs a year, or 8 a day - Many songs were shit - Record players existed but were very expensive - Records were fragile - Most people experienced music live at the music hall - Popular music was what everyone over the age of 7 listened to (no distinguishment between adults and children) - The wording had to be simple as there was no amplification By the second world war, technology had improved to allow people to bring gramophones (still fragile) - Most music was from films and radio - Radio became the most critical device in the second world war - People would gather to listen to the radio - Music was not dramatically different from the first world war - Some music took itself much more seriously - The nazis understood how important music could be for propaganda - Chose particular pieces that were good and unacceptable - Composers of Jewish background were banned instantly - More than 100 composers were banned by the Nazis because their work was racially motivated - Including Jazz - That music became the soundtrack of the war - Germans invented magnetic tape recordings - They would play music 24/7 to inspire the people and forces - Ironically, the biggest musical coup was by a German composer - The allies chose to adopt Beethoven's Fifth Symphony - The BBC became a propaganda arm of the British Government - They would alternate broadcasts between French and Flemish - A Belgian said that they should use V as a sign of Victory (French) or Freedom (Flemish) - The Belgians were encouraged to draw V everywhere and anywhere - Music makes war more bearable - Music had the power to influence people to fight the enemy - A Nazi soldier wrote in his diary that the ninth symphony encouraged him to fight - 4. Great Song/Nasty Message - Hey Joe - Jimi Hendrix - - - A song about domestic violence The war in Vietnam, by consensus, was bad - Songs that promote war = bad - Songs that antagonize war = Good Die Kaplyn - Bok Van Blerk - The song is about a long war waged between 1966 - 1989 between South Africa and Namibia - Known as the Border War - Referred to as South Africa’s Vietnam - Represents the South African government's racism (Apartheid) - On the other hand, South Africa was fighting a proxy war against communism - The song is about White soldiers of the State protecting a racist government - Tutorial 9/22/2022: - October 20th: Joan of Arc assignment due! - - Also about soldiers fighting to save their villages and farms 500 Word Reflection 9/26/2022 - The Hundred Years War for Dummies Part 1 - The Background (1337 1453) - - A series of wars - The frequent conflicts that raged across the European continent - Three generations of war 1. The People - Two main adversaries, England Versus France - England has a 5 million population, France has 16 million - Paris was the largest city in the two populations (100000) - London had 40000 people - Paris had no sewer system and 3 wells - The French drank literal shit - Paris was 1/10th the size of what it is now - - Walls existed to keep the barbarians out Beyond the French walls was desolation and where the unwanted people were sent - The Gibbet: - Where you display executed criminals - Showed outsiders that they would be executed if they committed any crimes - Most in Paris were peasants (90%) - Villeins/serfs - Not quite slaves but also not free (bound to landlords) - Not the free or unfree, just who survives Life expectancy was about 30 years - 50 percent of all babies born died in infancy - Reasonable chance of living to your 50s/60s if you were lucky - Extremely unpleasant living conditions - No personal hygiene - Peasants lived in small huts with their livestock - Huts had no windows - You could use a cow placenta to cover up a hole and get some light into your hut - Wash your hands and face maybe once a week - You would never wash your full body other than twice in your life (when you were born and when you died) - The diet was monotonous (Fruits and Veggies were rare) - Anything you have you cook until it tasted awful - 14th century, black bread and ale for breakfast, lunch, and dinner - The very lucky might have a little bit of cheese or a small amount of meat - Everything was washed down with beer - 20 - 25 percent of your caloric intake came from beer - You do not drink water because it was filthy, thus you drank ale - 90 percent of the population lived just away from oblivion - In the 1300s, France goes into a decline that almost lead to catastrophe - A town with 3000 people needed 1000 tonnes of grain just to provide basic requirements - You need 8000 acres - - No town could fit that Thus you had to import - Roads were non-existent - Horse and rider might be able to travel 30 miles a day - The wagon might travel 8 miles a day - All it takes is one storm to knock down a bridge and thus food didn’t come in - Then the people starve and die - England - Things are quite a bit better - Fewer people to feed - A better climate for agriculture - Better at farming and land management - More food out of less land - Fewer incidences of mass starvation - Still, all it takes is one bad season for the food to be wiped out - 2. The Politics - France (again) - Some lords became more powerful than the king, thus they did whatever they wanted - The farther you got from the center, the smaller the king's influence was - The king's influence only covered Paris - - Thus his subjects don’t listen to the king Meanwhile in England: - The king has a much greater influence - They don’t like foreigners - No substantial differences from region to region - The English developed a uniform government far earlier than the French - Kings of England: - Edward III - 1327 - 1377 - Richard II - 1377 - 1399 - Henry IV - 1399 - 1413 - 17th great grandfather of Queen Elizabeth the Second - - - Henry V - 1413 - 1422 - Henry VI - 1422 - 1461 Kings of France: - Philip VI - 1328 - 1350 - John II - 1350 - 1364 - Charles V - 1364 - 1380 - Charles VI - 1380 - 1422 - Charles VII - 1422 - 1461 Marriage occurs for power, not because of actual love - You marry who they tell you to marry - Age was just a number - A girl could marry and have sex at the age of 12 according to the catholic church - Boys had no limits Family allegiance comes second to more power - Thus you would kill your mother or brother or father to gain more power - Kings had relatively little power - Kings and Queens only have power wherever they are at each time - Constantly moved around to demonstrate their power The ruling was primarily about money - England: - The king goes to the parliament and asks for cash to fight a war - If that fails, he goes to the international banking market to grab a loan and wage war - France: - The French king has to go around the country asking for money from his subjects to wage war - Looks bad - Some are minor nobles in reality without much power - The Norman Invasion of England, 1066: - William, Duke of Normandy Becomes King William I of England - William is technically a subject of the French king but is also equal to the French king because he is the English king - - If there is a war, he has to fight against himself The Angevin Empire of King Henry II of England - More powerful in France than the French king - - The French attempted to push the English out - - Makes the French king look like a poor cousin They succeed and push much of England out 1328: The French King dies - Philip of Valois - Most powerful of the French lords who wanted to be king - Isabella of France - Widow of Edward II of England - Mother of Edward III of England - - Edward II was a crappy king Roger Mortimer - Together, along with Isabella, pushed Edward II from power - Eventually disposed Edward as king - Edward was eventually murked by Isabella’s agents - Denny Hamlin takes on the number 3 UC Fresno prof! - Eventually, Isabella’s claim to the throne was undermined by Roger - Nobody in the French court supported Isabella - In the end, Philip of Valois became the king of France - - Edward III is much more capable of ruling - - King Philip of France Becomes a direct ancestor of Meghan Markle - Edward III decides to take back the territory lost to the French - Philip takes on Edward III 9/28/2022 - The Hundred Years War for Dummies Part 2 - Chronology - 1. Where? - Kingdom of France (which is made up of many smaller states such as Britanny and Normandy aka Power Bases) - - Spain - Flanders - England - - France is the main battleground And Scotland (Fighting) 2. Dramatis Personae - French and English are pushing each other around France - All were attempts by each ruler to show who was the rightful ruler (England or France) - Isabella still claims that her lineage rightfully is king - King Philip VI of France vs King Edward III of England - The biggest French army at the beginning of the war was 50000 - The English have a hard time getting over 10000 soldiers - The French can raise 25000 cavalrymen - The English can only manage with 5000 cavalrymen - - Soldiers came from landowners Soldiers expected to serve for around 40 days - The Navies were almost non-existent - The Hundred years war featured cargo ships and fishing ships fighting each other in war - 3. What? - Fighting is not constant, instead being quite occasional - Several breaks for a couple of years with no fighting - Kings have to constantly go back to their people and garner resources to continue fighting (Soldiers and Money) - - Time taken by kings to do stuff - 12% of the time, Nobles argued with each other - 42%, kings trying to garner allies - 44%, kings try to raise money - 2%, Actually fighting Phase 1: 1337 - 1360 - The Battle of Sluys: 1340 - - The Battle of Crecy: 1346 - - Remained English territory for 200 years The Battle of Poitiers: 1356 - - Massive French defeat The Siege of Calais: 1347 - - English destroy French naval fleet Again, another massive French defeat King Philip VI takes back Aquitaine, an English state - Claims that Edward III was sheltering enemies of the French state - Edward III claims that he is not only the owner of Aquitaine, he then also challenges Philip VI to the throne of France - The English allies were not wholly reliable - The Treaty of Bretigny 1360: - The French declared a treaty with the English - The French were forced to give up a big part of Southern France to England - Bubonic Plague - The Black Death - The culprit: Bacteria from Fleas - Violent Chest Pains - Throat Swells up - Foul body odor - Fingers and Toes die and fall off - Bloody, hacking cough - Killed enormous numbers of people - Likely came from Central Asia - Possibly coaxed out by Climate Change - Possibly arrived in Europe through traveling carriages from the Mongol empire - Entered Europe through Scilly through a trading vessel - - Killed 30 percent of the population of Scilly Death Toll was around 50 million in Europe and 100 million in Asia - Pushed the greatest powers of the world back centuries - Governments ran out of money because of a lack of taxes - France and England struggle to find soldiers Thus the treaty is signed Phase 2: 1369 - 1396 - The French decide to dispute the treaty and once again lay claim to Aquitaine - Once again, the English king lays claim to the French throne - Two sides are back at war against each other - The French cannot afford the war either financially or reputationally - The English can’t afford soldiers - The English commit some casual war crimes against the French civilians - Both sides ended up just wearing each other out - Another treaty shows up - Just a treaty to temporarily stop the fighting - This resulted in diplomatic marriage (King Richard II of England and Isabella of Valois) - Richard was 30, Isabella was 7… - Richard was forced to abstain from the throne when Isabella was 10 - Isabella ended up remarrying an 11-year-old boy when she was 16 - Ended up dying at 19 in childbirth Phase 3: 1415 - 1453 - The Battle of Agincourt - 1415 - Yet again, the French are embarrassed and humiliated - The English force the French to sign a punishing treaty - The Treaty of Troyes - This gives England large amounts of land and the land surrounding Paris - Once the French king died, the English king would also become king of France - The French ran out of power and money to deny the English - 1422 - Both kings die in the same year - The English claimed the French throne - The nephew of the French king claimed that the throne was his - Henry V was succeeded by monarchs who were far inferior to him - The French found it easy to retake parts of France from the English - The English cannot afford to defend the French territory - - 1450 - Normandy goes back to the French - Once again, the French invade Aquitane 1453 - The French captured the city of Bordeaux - - Known as The Fall of Bordeaux The French were able to regain everything that they had lost - Never again would the English attempt to claim the French throne - The English win all the major battles but ends up losing the actual war - 9/29/2022 Tutorial Reading Notes - Chronicles of Enguerrand de Monstrelet, Battle of Agincourt, 1415 - When the French king heard that Harfleur had surrendered to the English, he expected great consequences - Thus he arranged to get the greatest possible number of men-at-arms - The king even offered his daughter to be married to King Henry - All of this failed and the English soon invaded, taking the town of Harfleur - The lords of Picardy delayed obeying, as they had been told to support the duke of Burgundy only, regardless of the rank of the lord asking them for assistance (In this case being the King…) - King Charles sent letters stating that the Lords must assist him to delay the invasion of the English - If the lord's subjects chose not to join he would take away their lands and threaten to expel them from their ranks - He would also place foragers within their homes - Allowed for creative punishment (Possibly execution?) - Those who were too old or ill had to be replaced by the able-bodied - He then requested that all engines of warfare (i.e cannons) be contributed to the war cause - If any weapon was damaged, the lord who provided it would be punished in such a way that would serve as an example to the other Frenchies - Eventually, both the duke of Orleans and the duke of Burgundy sent their forces to help the king defend against England - The town of Harfleur surrendered to the King of England on the appointed day - The first thing the English King did was pray to God and give thanks for his great victory - He then had all the nobles and men-at-arms march to Calais to surrender to the British forces and turn themselves in at a prison - He finally drove away many women and children, giving them five sous - The Priests and Clergymen were dismissed - Two towers managed to hold out for ten days after the initial surrender but eventually were forced to surrender as well - After fifteen days of staying in Harfleur, the king of England left to march on Calais - He stopped at Fauville and made for the county of Eu - Several French soldiers attempted to fight against the English forces, including French war hero Lancelot Pierres - - Lancelot was struck by a lance that mortally wounded him - The English then finished the poor sod off The king was notified that a great force was attempting to ambush him at the river Somme at Blanchetaqne - Thus, he changed his route and decided to march on Arraines, taking a scorched Earth policy before the Soviets made it popular! - The lord de Valcourt was able to defend against the English and forced Henry to slow his march - Many French lords went to defend against the English at the Somme - The King of France held a council discussing what their next steps would be - Five dukes gave substantial reasons against fighting the English army - However, the majority prevailed and the French prepared to battle against the English - Some nobles were so patriotic that they cried when they were not permitted to join the battle (lord d’Antoing) - The English prepared for certain death by praying to God and playing music throughout the night - The French ate shit the next day even though they heavily outnumbered the English (6 times more) yet still lost at Agincourt - 13000 English archers fired at the French - The French were astonished that the English would attempt to march on them - - Many French men were skewered by the English archers The archers caused serious damage to the French cavalry, resulting in riders being thrown from their dying horses - The English then took advantage of the French troubles by laying down their bows and engaging in brutal hand-to-hand combat with their swords and other weapons slaying the remaining Frenchies - The remaining French men attacked the English from the rear, causing king Henry great distress and he thus ordered that the English execute all French POWs lest they rejoin the battle against the English - The French herald Montjoye claimed that God lead the English to victory to punish the sins of France - He also declared that King Henry had won the battle of Agincourt over his bitter French rival - The English forces retreated to Maisoncelles later that day, returning the next day to commit some more warcrimes by putting the rest of the remaining French men to death or by keeping them as POWs - Those that escaped crawled to nearby villages and ended up dying the next day - In summary, the French ate shit and the English became internationally known war criminals - Reappraising Late Medieval Strategy: The Example of the 1415 Agincourt Campaign - Written by Jan Willem Honig - Abstract: - - Modern military historians struggle to explain medieval strategies Tactics were virtually non-existent on the battlefield during medieval times - Had modern military tactics been incorporated, the battles would have been much more one-sided and ended much more quickly - The Modern Historiography of Medieval Strategy - Some historians believe that the medieval leaders followed strategies in an attempt to destroy other armies - Verbruggen believed that commanders desired decisive victory - According to Georges Duby, a battle was considered separate from normal warfare - “The difference between a battle and the cautious skirmishing of war is characterized by a search for the absolute which makes it enter into another sphere: that of utter seriousness, and of a liturgy of destiny. This is a province where no one ventures without trembling” - Battles were rare Many disagreed with this take and pointed out that people had been taught differently since the 19th century - Clifford Rogers argues that King Edward III and Henry V achieved success through a combination of stellar leadership, battlefield organization, and technology (i.e the longbow) - In short, good medieval commanders sought battle and succeeded - Chivalry was seen to be pragmatic or common-sense - The English and French normally agreed to fight at set upon times, but in 1424, the French decided to break this agreement and attack the English first - This enraged the English, resulting in brutal fighting and a win by the English because this chivalry had been unbroken by the French - Another reason why some believed strategy was non-existent was that the English exposed themselves to great risk by attacking the French with their smaller army - War is considered an instrument for defending rights and obtaining justice - “A continuation of litigation by other means” - Shown by Henry and how he believed he deserved rightful inheritance of the French throne - Battle is presented as an appeal to divine judgment - Provides the central strategic organizing principle in the most important source for the campaign - Legal and religious underpinning provides the basis for a normative strategic framework - The ritual relies on mutual acceptance between warring parties (in this case the French and the English) - The basis of a consideration of the management of risk exhibited in the campaign - The wager of battle was considered highly risky since God often dispensed justice in mysterious ways (something the people thought at the time) - The Agincourt campaign serves as an example of how strategy was conceived in the later Middle Ages and what conventions underpinned general practice - The Agincourt Campaign - King Henry V and his army appeared off the French coast in the late afternoon of Tuesday, August 13, 1415, as told by a chaplain - The total number of combatants likely exceeded 12,000 and was boosted by non-military groups such as the miners and carpenters - The English converged on the port of Harfleur - Today, amphibious landings are considered to be the most difficult of military operations, yet the English were keen to land on the beaches of Harfluer - Henry believed that Harfleur would be an extremely useful place to rally his men - Thus he decided to enact an extremely risky strategy that required French failure to succeed - Thus many historians believe that the concept of strategy didn’t yet exist - However, some argued that Henry chose this risky strategy because he had tactical superiority (eg. the longbow) - This can be rebutted by the fact that the French had so many men that they would be fully capable of fighting back against the English no matter what tactics they employed - Another argument that could be made was that Henry understood how messed up French politics at the time were and thus understood that the French king and his son would not be able to adequately stand up to him and his invading armies - This showed that Henry was either an extraordinary genius or a complete madman for attacking the French like this - Henry laid siege of great strength and was able to train his men to be efficient and protect each other throughout the day and night - Once he had surrounded the town, he allowed them to surrender under the laws of Deuteronomy 20:10-17 which stated that should the city fall, all people would be summarily executed - The people of Harfluer chose to attempt to renegotiate at first against the king, which Henry did not like - Thus he told them to prepare to be slaughtered tomorrow and did not allow them to get any sleep by battering the town walls throughout the night - In the end, the town of Harfluer reconsidered and surrendered to Henry’s terms giving up everything to the king - Henry won and handed the keys of the town to his uncle Thomas Beaufort and declared him the new “warden and captain of the town” - The French standards that flew over the gate were replaced by Henry’s royal standards - 66 new hostages were given a meal and entertained In the past, the victors would on occasion display vulnerability and concede opportunities for the initiative to their enemy - No modern commanded would open the gates of his main defensive bastion and allow all his main commanders to enter the enemy’s camp - The French struggled with mobilization and would often be slower than the English - The French, as is the case in modern war, were a bunch of incompetents that failed to comprehend how dangerous Henry was - The warring states did not ever use surprise attacks against each other, instead choosing to fight more straightforward battles - Challenges to personal combat were a means for seizing and keeping the initiative in the struggle for relative advantage in the drawn-out process of armed litigation - Henry attempted to avoid excessive pillaging 10/03/2022, Revolutions in Military Affairs - War and Feudalism - If you owned land you were provided it by the monarch - In return, you provided soldiers to the monarch - They believed that you could only fight one on one man to man - It meant fighting on horseback face to face - By owning a big horse and decking it out with armor you would flex on others with the way you looked - They were important Foot soldiers were not important - Scum of the Earth - Necessary evil - Peasants - You do not want to arm the peasants and train them to attack each other - Distrust changed through the crusades - Involved large armies to attack the holy land - Have to bring along large groups of peasant soldiers to guard their stuff while the knights on horseback fought - Lords and Monarchs realized that you could not have large battles without the peasants - Horseback was the way to fight - You never ran away, you always fought no matter how hopeless things would seem (What the Europeans thought) - If things went bad, the Muslim armies would pull out and regroup Chivalry - Most western Knights and Lords embraced - Sociological code on what is proper conduct - Fight your enemy face to face - Don’t run away from your enemy - Your value is assessed by how much gear/kit you have - - The more stuff you have the more impressive you are - It doesn’t matter whether you’re a moron The foot soldier fighting with a spear or agricultural instrument is less important and pointless - The higher you are in society, the better the soldier you must be The Opposing Armies - A - Retinues - Small armies of soldiers brought along when summoned by the king - Typically the workers of his agricultural estate - Anywhere from half a dozen people to thousands of soldiers - B - Mercenaries - You hire an officer to recruit men to provide you with an army for hire - The officer may hire people from other countries to become a mercenary - He may also hire people within the territory C - Conscripts - Commisions of Array/Arriere-Ban - An ancient obligation of any free man to support the country under attack (England) - In France, it would be anyone from 18 - 60 could get conscripted - You could pay someone else to fight for you - The French relied on heavy caliber (heavily armored horses with heavily armored knights on top) - The English preferred light cavalry (Just horses and usually used for scouting) - The English did not fight on horseback while the French did - The highest ranked foot soldier was the Man-At-Arms - Then Spearmen - Then Peasant soldiers (Infantry Grunts) - The French used crossbowmen - Short range and very slow - Took a while to reload and refire - Two bolts a minute - Most crossbowmen were from Genoa in Italy - They would hire them instead of training their own - - The British used longbows - Much higher range - Great killing power - Fast - A good archer can shoot 10 arrows a minute - Something the English were trained to use - Expert with the longbow - The French had a bigger army - The English had a smaller but better army Crecy, 1346 - Came at a time after which the French had suffered a number of embarassments - The English Campaign (1346) - - Went through all of Northern France King Edward doesn’t particularly want to fight the French army - Instead he committed a bunch of warcrimes by scorching, pillaging, and thieving from the French people - King Philip watches the English lay waste to the country-side - His plan: Wait until the English run out of money and leave France - Unfortunately, the French countryside is very wealthy and it keeps going on - Eventually, Philip’s lords make him fight the English - Philip’s army is three times the size of the English army - 30000 French soldiers take on the 12000 English Soldiers - Philip chose not to wait and instead decided to attack the English - Soon after this decision was made, it started to rain - Thus the field became a trudge in the mud while trying to climb up the hill in steel shoes - The crossbow men are getting soaked - When a crossbow string gets wet, it gets compromised and wrecked - It takes five minutes to change a crossbow string - A longbow string is changed in 20 seconds - The crossbow men fire and don’t hit the English because they’re too far away - The English fire back with their long bows and murk the Crossbow men - The French soldiers think that the Italians are dropping because they’re too scared - Thus they charge up the slope towards the English - The French stop and reform two or three times against the English and fail each time - 50 English people die, 1500 French nobles, and roughly 5000 peasants are killed on the first day - Poitieres, 1356 - This time King Edward enters the southern countryside and does the same thing as before - King John watched this happen again - If he doesn’t act quickly, he will likely be deposed - Thus John must fight - Same tactics again, the French are forced to attack up a hill in a narrow corridor while the English hang around with the high ground - 20000 - 25000 French soldiers versus 5000 English Soldiers - - 5:1 The French believe that the horses needed even heavier army, so now the soldiers are armoured on the top, heads, and front - At the beginning of the battle, the French look great and the arrows bounce off the horses - The English bowmen reposition and then fire from the sides in around three minutes, one again wrecking the French - No organization for their attack - Same situation as last time without the rain - England wins again - 5000+ French deaths and thousands of captures (including the French king and his son, as well as bishops, dukes, lords, and knights) - - The French state was lost as well - They lose their administrators Agincourt, 1415 - King Henry spends time looking for a field he can use to attack the French again - - Same tactic as usual The French have learned that they should be patient and to wait until the advantage is theres - Henry had to make the French believe that he was making the first move - He committed some longbow men to fire at the French to incite them into battle - The English can fire 50000 arrows a minute - Catostrophic day for the French - English lose 400 - 500 men, French lose ten times over the course of the afternoon - - The French lose some of the highest ranking people in the state Lessons Learned … Or not - A. Group discipline beats individual bravery - B. There is no connection between social status and military ability (gens de nulle value) - C. The days of heavy mounted knights were over - D. Fight from a distance when you can - The greatest damage was done by the soldiers that were the farthest away - - E. Leadership = Control - F. Professional in, Amateur Out War on Civilians - Robin Hood and the Peasant’s revenge - Soldiers and civilians do not have much separation - Interconnected, male civilians and soldiers had little difference - Women and Children would be less connected than the average adult male in war - - Sowing terror was a legitimate means of war - Civilians had a lot of enemies and no real friends - Scorched Earth - the Destruction of Resources 1. The Chevauchee - Scorched Earth - You start in one safe place, you loot and burn the countryside, and you end in another safe place - Enemy soldiers kill all live stock, sweep all crops, slaughter the population, and then escape - They would keep doing this until getting to a safe zone - They chose normally to ignore large towns - - Ocassionaly would besiege large towns Looked like wanton destruction Not just about simply murdering people, it was about coping with major warfare at the time - Armies typically wouldn’t travel with food and water to exist - - They would take it from the villages and towns they looted An army with 20000 soldiers need 600000 pounds of food every ten days - Need about 500000 pounds of forage for horses - It would take 11000 pack animals to carry that much food - Every army went into the field knowing that they would have to steal their means - Good way to raise money (steal anything you find) - You could kidnap them and hold them for ransom (leaders, nobles, and civilians) - Takes away money from the other side (reduces tax revenue for the lord of that land) - It is a psychological weapon to show how weak and terrible your lord is - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-tNQVwvuW0&ab_c hannel=Brictator - - The Black Prince, 1355 - Wanted to show statiscally how much money he got - Edward the Black Prince John of Gaunt - He took what he wanted and knew that no one could do anything - “We’re in control here, we run the rush” - Either join us or die horribly - Waverers did not know who to support and would join whoever would give more at the end - We can profit with this side more than the other side 2. Sieges - Bring in your big siege weapons to attempt to batter down the walls - Surround the city and cut off any and all supplies from going in - The attackers are sometimes in as much danger as the people in the city - - Sickness and disease Most effective way to deal with an enemy city - Anything you do to support the city makes you an enemy soldier - When the city falls, you as a civilian can expect harsh treatment - If the ruler wants to make a point, he murks them all - Siege of Rouen (1418 - 1419) - King Henry waits outside the walls for the people to starve to death - The government of Rouen decides to release people who were at particular risk - - Including the elderly Henry refuses to provide the sickly with food and allows them to die in the ditches dug during winter - The final straw was that the king of France was not coming to help them, thus Rouen surrendered - Once no help is coming from outside, they give up - There was violence against the civilians involved in the siege - Siege of Limoges (1370) - 300 slaughetered (Mostly Soldiers) - The soldiers killing women and children probably didn’t happen (propganda made up by the French) - 3. Routiers and Free Companies - 1360 - Treaty of - Soldiers could not do anything after the war ended so they instead chose to organize as free companies - Groups of people organized themselves into marauding gangs - They would do like they did before (looting and stealing) - Effectively gangs of thugs for some - Some were highly organized armies similar to what governments created - Bertrand Du Guesclin - So ugly as a baby that his mother claimed that she did not birth him - - If you’re ugly, your soul was ugly and vice versa Turned him into a violent child and would organize gangs at school to fight against each other - Lead a free company that would fight for the highest building - Had 12000 soldiers under him - Rose to one of the highest positions in office in France - Was buried next to the French king - Loyal to no one but money and their leader - Organized crime groups in the 20th century - - Kidnap, ransom, extortion, blockades, theft, loot, arson, etc. Occasionally came together as Grand Armies to take on a rich part of the country - - The King of France could do nothing but pay them off Force them to go fight in the middle east (The Crusades) 4. The Peasants’ Revenge - Referred to as Peasant Revolts - Most were likely free farmers, government officials, small farmers, etc - Not actually people who have nothing to lose, most had something to lose - There are Peasant Revolts all over the place - The Jacquerie 1358 - The uprising of the common people - Flairs up in the context of disappointment and failure - People were tired that the King could not protect them from the English and free companies - Faced taxation for the wars - Murked by the English in battle - A band of peasants killed the local lord, put him on a spit in his home, roasted him on fire, gang-raped the wife, then forced the children and wife to eat his flesh before killing them all - Wat Tyler’s Revolt, 1381 - Comes down to money - Introduced taxes after the black death - Thousands of peasants marched on London - Lynched a duke - Danced around on the Kings mothers bed - Wanted church property handed to the people - Wanted all aristocrats to be stripped of position except for the king - Jack Cade’s Rebellion, 1450 - Had something to do with an uprising - Equally violent, but rebels made it clear that they were loyal to the king - They did not trust the kings advisors - Blamed the advisors for making the war cost too much - Found the treasurer and his son, killed them, put them on stakes, and forced the heads to kiss each other every few minutes - Did not achieve anything, each rebellion lead to nothing as their demands were ignored - - All they did was murk people brutally - Short-lived ugliness that achieved nothing 5. Robin Hood - Not much we know about him - Did actually exist in reality - 1337, the first story of Robin Hood appears - How we interpret him today culturally - Steals from the rich and gives to the poor - Stole only from the corrupt - Had marrymen who assisted him - Skilled archer - Everything that characterized Robin Hood is developed over the hundred years war - Robin Hood has an equivalent in France - - Joan of Arc Jeanne d’Arc/Joan of Arc, AKA The Maid of Orleans, AKA The Witch of Orleans 10/12/2022 - Jeanne d’Arc - Born in Domremy Eastern France 1412 - Surrounded by her enemies from a small age (English Loyalist Burgendeans) - Was more French - The family was part of the government structure - Lived on a big farm - The family was prosperous and influential - Had some education - Began to experience holy visions at the age of 12 (Hearing voices from God and other saints) - Known for being extremely devout - She believed the voices in her head were giving her instructions (expel the English from France) - - Many did not believe her - The more they talked to her, the more convinced they became Joan meets the Dauphin (Son of the King) - The Dauphin was impressed - She was then questioned by the clergy who subjected her to searches and biblical findings - She was whisked away to Orleans - Wrote a letter claiming that the English invasion was unjust and against the bible - Clad in armour and took part in the fighting at Orleans (1429) - She suffered an arrow wound while leading the troops into battle - After 9 days following her arrival, the English left and the siege broke - Many saw her arrival as magical - She was also involved in tactical decisions - Reims 1429 - Joan changes many thoughts on the French - The Burgandeans change sides from the English to the French after witnessing Joan - In 1430 she was captured by an enemy army - She was then sold off to the English - The English then put her on trial using a French court - She was charged with all sorts of crimes and charged as a heretic - The penalty of being a heretic was to be burnt at the stake - If the court could prove that she was a heretic, the English could prove the king of France was a heretic - She agreed to disavow the voices in her head and to stop wearing mens clothing - On the 30th of May 1431, Joan was burnt at the stake Joan of Arc - She did not identify as a French person - Had more affinity with the Holy Roman Empire (Germans) then the French - Father was a tax collector - - As a result, the family was likely unpopular Lived on a big farm with a nice stone house - Made the family even more unpopular - Joan had no friends in Domnremy - Had some education, but not much beyond the standard religious education for girls at the time - Heard voices from various saints and from God at the age of 12 - Puberty can cause hallucinations - - Joan possibly had epilepsy - Likely the chemicals in her body = the voices of God She became convinced that she had the power to expel the English from France and saw herself as a messenger - At 16, she arranged a meeting with a French army garrison - Realized that he had nothing to lose so he brought Joan to the king of France - - Joan meets the Dauphin - But the Dauphin is a teenager with a simple mind - He elects to turn her over to senior church officials - Subject to 11 days of biblical scripture - Subject to body searches confirming she was a virgin This was one way for Joan to escape from her small town and command the interest of many high ranking people - - Wanted to be the center of attention Her letter was far too sophisticated to be written by a 17 year old - Letter was almost certainly written by a clerk in the household - Entirely impossible for her to have written it herself - The English commander who received the letter likely didn’t read it - By now she had arrived in Orleans - Fights as a soldier and is wounded in action - 9 days later the English evacuate and the siege is broken - The English decided to leave even before Joan arrived - They had run out food, money, and other important supplies - The siege must end as it was no longer useful - The English exited with no help from Joan - Joan was extremely charismatic, but likely unable to move the army around - Realistically its the English that decide to end the siege and not Joan - She goes to the Coronation of Charles the Seventh in 1429 - - This convinces the Burgendeans to break their truce with the English Joan and the King start to disagree with each other - Charles decides to stand the army down during the winter so he preserve some resources - Joan wants the armies to go on forever, and thus continues to fight against the English - Very convenient for the king when Joan was captured by an enemy army who sold her to the English - The English need to prove that she is a danger to France, thus she is tried by a French court - The French court gets her to sign a disavowal of the voices she heard and to stop wearing mens clothes - Joan a few days later goes back to being her old self and renegades from what she said - - On May 30th, 1431, she was burnt at the stake for being a heretic - Joan was either an inspired patriot or a deluded teenager - History is about interpretation (all sorts of possible answers) Legacies of the Hundred Years War - Fall of Calais, 1558 - The French capture Calais, the last bastion of English power on the continent - The English lose the city of Bordeaux in 1443 - The English make a few attempts at regaining what they lost in France, but they all failed - The Channel Islands are still English today - Survived the French attempts to retake them - The French victory was decisive - England fell into a civil war (wars of the roses) after the French won - England goes from massive amounts of land to nothing 130 years later - 1. A new way of War - Group discipline beats individual bravery - There is no connection between social status and military ability - Forget being a powerful lord, everyone is capable of being a good soldier - Military ability is separated from class The days of heavy mounted knights were over - Ends the rule of the horse as the major weapon and begins the rule of the infantry - Fight from a distance when you can - The French go straight from the crossbow to the gun - The modern era of sniping and bombing came from the French developing gun powder based artillery - Drives technological innovation - As armies become more professional, they become smaller and technology becomes a force multiplier - England invests heavily in military research - For 300 years, the English develop the most advanced military technologies as a way to deal with their smaller army - Leadership - Control - Professional in, amateur out - The French were just better by the end of the war - The French had a much bigger population and bigger economy, thus allowing it to move ahead much more quickly - France wins in the final consideration because it is now wealthier and stronger than England could ever be - England struggled to put together even smaller armies while France can put together the same armies as before with better technology - 2. New National Visions - When the war started, neither side had a sense of nationality - The English were primarily French in the 1300s - When the war started, the English thought of themselves as European, not English - The events of the war change that for both sides - The English realize that if France is the mortal enemy in this war, they should learn to speak their own language instead of acting French - - All of the French is replaced by English - 1348 - Language of Education becomes English - 1362 - Language of the courts becomes English - 1423 - Language of Parliament becomes English Edward I grew up speaking French and only started speaking English at the age of 5 - Henry V was the first king to speak and write English as a first language - At the end of the war, the English no longer see themselves as Europeans - Healthy suspicion of the French and anyone who followed the Catholic religion - For the French, at the beginning of the war no one identified themselves as French - Throughout the war, the French became an identity upon its own - Mother France becomes a term used by the French during the war - People will now choose to die for their country - By the end of the war, plenty of people would die for England or France instead of dying for their lord - 3. A new Balance of Power - The outcome of the war confirmed British isolation from the continent - Because of the war, the English see themselves as a different kind of people - The English kings find it is hard to raise funding to invade France as the English people believe they have nothing to do with the continent anymore - England goes to fight Napolean to teach a lesson (they don’t aspire to invade and take any of France) - Became known as Splendid Isolation - England gains control of the largest empire in history - - Caused by the loss to France The British Royal Navy becomes the single most powerful organization ever - - The defeat by France sets England up to become a superpower The win by France made them the most powerful nation on the European continent until the 20th century - The Franco-Prussian war - - France was embarrassed by Prussia France was dethroned in 1914 as the most powerful nation on the continent - - England dominates the world, France dominates the continent - The French and English still have a heavy dislike of each other 4. Popstars - The Black Prince - Robin Hood - Joan of Arc - The most famous French woman in history - Probably the most famous French person in history - Many French companies use her name - Like Joan of Arc, a canned food company - Inspired many paintings, films, and other works of media - From the 16th century to 18th century, Joan was almost completely forgotten - Opinion about her was mixed (she was by no means a hero) - Some records were fans of her, while others thought that everything about her was dubious - Everything was a bit questionable - Voltaire, La Pucelle (1752) - Refers to Joan as an unfortunate idiot - Voltaire has no beef with Joan, but he dislikes the church - Anyone who claims to hear voices is deluded - Voltaire believes that Joan was used badly for Church purposes - Reignited interest in Joan and is rediscovered as a national figure - By 1810, Joan has become a bonafide hero of the French nation - Her home becomes a pilgrimage for many hoping to hear voices from God - Eventually Joan is canonized and made a saint in 1920 (Catholic Joan) - The characteristics that are important for her saint-hood where her purity and virtue - The French Joan was adapted as a hero in secular terms - She became a French hero - These people were anti-church, and they argued that it was the church that burned her at the stake anyways - This view becomes even more extreme later on - Becomes a symbol for racial purity and anti-semites - She was Ayran in the racists views - They aren’t interested in her French roots, their interested in her whiteness - Joan is used as propaganda for all sorts of things - Even to this day - Joan becomes a feminist icon - At a certain point, their name and idea of them belongs to anyone - She has been mobilized in ways that are often contradictory to what she was like in reality - Most of all, she has been commodized - See Joan of Arc in the Fate series - Henry V - Becomes a popstar - For centuries, he becomes the standard for what an English king should be like - - Everyone would be measured against Henry V Did the hundred years war change the world? - We have Joan of Arc kidney beans - So? Wars in Asia - Chinoiserie - European enthusiasm for Chinese design - Lots the British wanted, but not much the Chinese wanted as the Chinese already had what they needed (fundamentally conservative) - Led to a trade imbalance which became a big problem for the British - Lord Macartney’s Mission - 1793 - - Lord Macartney is sent by the British to China to: - Secure trade ports outside Guangzhou - Negotiate commercial treaty - Create a desire for British products - Arrange diplomatic representation in Beijing Complete failure, China sent back a letter that was snarky and sarcastic - Chinese emperor sees these gifts as birthday presents, and do not need any of the given products - The United States still has a massive trade deficit with China - The British government did not trade directly with China, instead given a monopoly of trade to the British East Indian Company - Everybody in China wanted Opium, thus resulting in Britain gaining a monopoly in China - Opium was available to be purchased in Calcutta, India - Opium was used as a medicine in China - In the 17th century, Opium was mixed with Tabacco for recreational use (but was still illegal) - Due to population growth, Opium was used - As the population grew, China’s standard of living decreased - Younger sons had no land and were forced to move to cities to find jobs - Increasingly large number of unemployed males seeking relief from their complex lives, thus turning to Opium - Population grew, while government income decreases - Punishment for Opium Smokers 1813 - - For Palace Guards: - Firing from their job posts - 1 month of the cangue and 100 lashes Soldiers and Civilians - 1 Month of the Cangue (board put around your head) and 100 lashes - Decree forbidding the domestic cultivation and extraction of opium juice - 1818 - Edict stressing severe punishment for purchasing and smoking opium - Severe punishmenets for officials who did not control the sale of opium - All fail Commissioner Lin Zexu - Complete removal of opium - Cut off Canton - Arrested thousands of Opium dealers, then had the addicts thrown in rehab centres - Wrote a letter begging Queen Victoria to stop forcing opium on its people - No reply - Wrote a second letter to Queen Victoria - No reply - China stops all trade with Britain - Palmerston supports war, Gladstone does not - British declare war on China to protect their trade (January 31, 1840) - - Protect their trade - Correct injustice inflicted on British officials in China (house arrest) - Protect their honour Force the Chinese to capitulate - The British navy (#1) pummeled the Chinese - The Chinese still believed they were best even though they weren’t - Treaty of Nanking (The unfair treaty), August 29, 1842 - The British got exactly what they wanted - British ambassadors allowed in Beijing - British fix low tariffs at 5% - Indemnity: The Chinese have to pay for the war - Cedes Hong Kong to Britain - Extraterritoriality - Most favoured clause - Allows for any gain another country gets with China to have the same effect with Britain - Wednesday, 11/09/2022, Opium War - The Signing and Sealing of the Treaty of Nanking in the State Cabin of HMS Cornwallis, 29th August, 1842 - Second Opium War/Arrow War (1856 - 1860) - Chinese authorities arrested some Chinese pirates and took down the British flag - Resulted in backlash from the British - Also French, as China had executed a French Christian Missionary in 1856 (Father Chapdelain) - The French and British attack Kanton and once again defeat the Chinese - Resulted in another unequal treaty (The Treaty of Tientsin, 1858) - Chinese have to pay for both opium wars - Opium was now made legal in China - Foreigners could travel freely throughout China - China executes some British diplomats for various crimes - The French and British ransack the Summer Palace after the Chinese executed certain diplomats (1860) - 1.5 million priceless treasures were stolen, after which the troops burnt it to the ground - The summer palace was a European style palace - In 1988, sections of the Summer Palace were opened to the Chinese public - Most photographed section is the arched gate that stood behind the Great Fountain (Dashuifa) - In 2009, CCTV created a documentary about the Summer Palace 150 years after the fire - China was being divided up by the imperial powers of England, France, Russia, Germany, and Japan - Western Imperliasts took over Asia - Americans wanted to trade in China, thus John Hay proposed the open door policy (allowing America to trade without influence) - Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626) - Attributed Western Europes modern take off to - Printing - The Compass - Gunpowder - All three came from China - China was stuck in the past (confuscinism) - What is “modern”? - The legacy of the Opium Wars - Still influencing current things said by Chinese leaders and western nations - Xi Jing Ping still uses the Opium wars as an example of Western Barbarity Nationalism, Imperialism, and Jingoism (11/14/2022) - First World War - A struggle with modernity - The advent of modern projectiles started with arrows - Modernism: - - Human power to machine power - Shift from living in rural to urban areas - Mass Production - Etc. By the First World War, many had access to technology that we would consider modern - - By the 19th century: - Telephone 1876 - Aspirin 1877 - Moving Pictures 1877 - Recorded Sound 1877 - Electric Light Bulb 1879 - Automobile 1885 - Motorcycle 1885 - Electric Transformer 1885 - Camera 1888 - Radio 1895 - X-Rays 1895 - Diesel Engine 1897 - Airplane 1903 - Plastic 1905 - Fridge 1911 - Stainless Steel 1913 First World War occured during a period of rapid progression - First World War also became a subject for popular culture - 1917, All Quiet on the Western Front, etc. - Puts the war into cliches - Recycled by many genres since the 1920s - - For example, acres of mud surrounding people - Yes, there was mud - Knee High Boots were essential The same soldier living in one trench for 4 years - The average soldier spent more time out of the trenches than in the frenchs - In July 1918, only about â…“ of all soldiers were infrantry - A stupid general sends his men into a death trap - General Sir Herbert Plumer - One of the most capable and effective generals on the British side - Willing to adopt new tactics - Enourmous affection for his soldiers, and stayed near the front lines to share the burden with his men - A Charge across No-Mans Land - It happened, but in a different manner - Can be broken into two different times - Period of open warfare on plains at the beginning (1914) and the end (1918) - Period of stale-mate (1915 - early 1918) Statistically, the higher chance of surviving trench warfare compared to open field warfare - Who had a higher chance of surviving the war? Fishermen or Infrantry? - Infantry - The loss rate of fishermen was higher than the loss rate of infantry in Britain - Although there were machines, the First World War was still a war of horses - The most significant single commodity shipped across from Britain to France was horse feed (foder) - Nationalism - People see themselves as better than other people who may live hundreds of miles away - To feel a sense of nationalism, you must be exposed to the rest of the nation - Three factors that emerged in France that made nationalism possible - National education system - Schools become agents of nationalism - Began teaching kids how to be French - Brings consistency - The French Ministers of Education were very proud of the fact that anyone who looked at their watch at any time would be learning the same thing - National infrastructure - Roads and Railroads - Before the 19th century, small communities tended to be isolated - With proper roads and railways, you can allow movement and connect people with individual parts of the country - When they feel comfortable with others, they feel a sense of community - Communication Developments - Postal services - - Allowed people to remain in contact with each other Intially, Nationalism was seen as profoundly beneficial - Imperialism - Not an invention of European nations in the 17th to 18th century - - Picks up steam in the 19th century amongst the European powers - The Scramble for Africa - - Early in the 19th century, much of Africa was still unknown - Any gray area on the map was fair game for the Europeans You want to get a nation before someone else gets it - - The ancient Egyptians were imperialists You want to wake up and see your flag waving all over the world Africa is now dominated by the Europeans (Early 20th century) Jingoism - Comes from a mild swear (By Jingo, By Jesus) - Born out of a musical song that suggested that Britain needed to take an aggressive stance against the Russians in the far east - To be a Jingo is to be spoiling for a fight - You won’t start the war, but you would be more than happy to fight - Emerges as an extreme and destructive form of nationalism - Jingoism becomes a kind of racism - Produces ideologies of the redraw of the map - Pan-German League - Where the Nazi belief came from - Talks about not only Germany, but also Northern France, the British Isles, and some Scandanivian nations - People who are racially similar should be combined together Pan-Slavism - The Russian race of people existed in certain parts of Russia (Whiteness is a key factor) - This race extended into the Balkans and other Eastern European nations - Britain united by race - Part of the community of the British empire is based on this identity - Race determines nationality - France needed to unite the French wherever into one society - Assimilation - If you were am minority in one of these countries, you could either leave or assimilate - Russoficiation - Ethnic minorities in Russia would be forced to adopt the Russian culture and language - Practices of ethnic origin would be outlawed and stamped out The same combination would be used by many different European nations (Nationalism, Imperialism, Jingoism) - It was believed that Jingoism was quite wide-spread, bu - t more recent research has demonstrated that that was not the case - John Bull - - Many jingos would reach the people with aggressive propaganda - Designed to foster a sense of unease in the general people Jingos in government - - Many Jingos that were industrialists - War was being projected as a positive experience - - Opportunity to put their ideas into operation Best way to realize what the jingos were talking about - Want to save your jobs? Fight the enemy - Save your language? Fight the enemy Arms Races and Alliances (11/16/2022) - Arms Races: - First five columns (Russia, Germany, France, Austria-Hungary, and Italy) show moderate increases in army size - The British army actually decreased - Only around 150000 troops available in Europe - Spending increased dramatically during the period before the war - Except for Britain, which was decreasing it’s budget on its army - - They were spending money on their navy Britain wants its navy to be more powerful than the next two nations combined - Germany wants to have a navy that is â…” the size of the British Royal Navy - When Britain increases its navy fleet size, it makes sense - Why does Germany need a huge navy? - Britain and France believe that Germany is planning on invading England with their larger navy - Britain creates the HMS Dreadnought in 1906 - 14 months from design to completion - Revolution in naval weaponry - Biggest, most powerful warship anywhere, in any country, in any part of the world - Based on the newest technology - Steam Turbines - Not seen in battleships at this time - - 50% more speed than most ships Changed the idea of how you arm a ship - All weapons were the same size (12-inch guns that could tear through 2 or 3 older battleships) - Dreadnought becomes the new gold standard of naval warfare - Only one left today, the USS Texas - Every other country builds the same kind of ships in the years before the war - Britain built 29 dreadnoughts - - Germany builds 17 dreadnoughts Industrial Competition - The great powers seem to have infinite resources to throw into naval building - In all of these countries, they have created industrial heartlands - Industrial centres whose output is light years ahead of what it had been earlier - The lead is being taken by Germany - All the other powers have some concerns - France’s birthrate was falling - Britain was number 1 in everything, but by the late 19th century, it started falling behind - Passed by the US in 1900 and Germany in 1913 - Britain had old infrastructure while the other countries have new infrastructure - - Britain is losing trade - In 1880, 25% of all trade was British - By 1913, that number was halved (12.5%) - The British see a decline For the older powers (Britain and France), they look at the older competition and see themselves falling behind while their rivals pull ahead - Britain and France think about how a short-term, sharp, decisive war would be - - Put the Germans in their place - War is a good way to change the game The Alliance System - Make sure everyone is at around the same level - No one country can get too rich or too influential - The Concert of Europe - Napoleon embarks on a campaign to dominate Europe - Only brought down by a large number of powerful European nations - Brings all of the diplomats of the European powers together to ensure that something like this could never happen again - - Belgium was created by the great powers as a bufferstate - Neutral - No one was allowed to invade Belgium Treaty of London (1839) - Guaranteed Belgium neutrality - Prussia, Britain, and France would never invade Belgium, according to the treaty - Germany does not exist in 1814 - - Modern Germany comes into existence in 1871 No Italy in 1814 - - Worked well for the 19th century Modern Italy comes into existence in 1871 1871 - France and Prussia go to war - Germany wins Alsace-Lorraine against the French in direct warfare - Demonstrates the power of Germany (Don’t mess with them) - Causes the French to bitterly hate the Germans The one structure that used to run Europe is now replaced by a multitude of alliances - 1871 League of Three Empires - Germany, Russia, Austro-Hungary - - 1879 Dual Alliance - Germany and Austro Hungary - Etc. Eventually broke down into the Triple Entente and the Quadrauple Alliance (Central Powers) - Triple Entente - Britain - France - - Russia Quadrauple Alliance (Central Powers) - Italy - Germany - Austro-Hungary - The Ottoman Empire - Bulgaria-Serbia (Technically) Balkan “Brush Fires” - Focus the attention of the great powers onto the Balkans - - An area of problem to the Europeans The Balkan Powder Keg - Prone to going off at any time and destroying a lot more than bartered for - Austria-Hungary - Cast together by a series of accidents in history - Most nations inside the empire did not want to be there - They wanted to leave the empire - Either create an independent state or join a country that was ethically similar - Thus they developed seperatist groups - In June 1914, one radical seperatist group assassinates Franz Ferdinand - The Drift to War - June 28 1914 - Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo - July 28 1914 - Austro-Hungary Declared war on Serbia - 30 July 1914 - Austria-Hungary and Russia both ordered general mobilization - 1 August 1915 - Germany declared war on Russia - 3 August 1914 - Germany declared war on France - These nations believed that war was the solution to their economic problems - “It’ll be over before Christmas!” - Germany chooses to stand by Austria - Russia stands with Serbia and will protect them if attacked - France is allied with Russia, and will support Russia in the event of a war - The British are least interested in war - - Not Anti-War, but reluctant to go to war - Propose an international conference to negotiate for peace Austro-Hungary chooses not to partake and instead gives Serbia an ultimatum that Serbia cannot say yes to - Each nation has a plan to win the war - Germany has the Schlieffen Plan - Germany wants to deal with France first, then deal with the Russians - Sweep through northern France, surround Paris, and capture the capital - Their plan relies on invading Belgium to surround the French - If this is enacted, Britain is brought into the war and will defend Belgian sovereignty - Germany was betting that Britain was going to stand-aside - Germany publicly believes that Britain would not go to war to defend the Belgians - Britain realizes that they cannot allow Germany to gain control of the continent - The British government tells Germany to withdraw all German soldiers by 11:00 PM - After 11:00 PM, the British send out 250 telegrams to officers around the world - “SEE PREFACE DEFENCE SCHEME, WAR HAS BROKEN OUT WITH GERMANY” - What was written on the Telegrams The Old World (11/21/2022) - The Generation of 1914 (Robert Wohl) - Young adults in the First World War (just old enough to participate in the fighting) - Age of fighters were from 18 to 45 - Wohl was looking for people in their mid 20’s - The average age of a soldier was about 25-26 years old in the first world war - - In the 1880s, the federal government was far away and didn’t affect you - - Born in the 1880s Except for maybe post cards In the 1880s, the provincial government was only responsible for roads, education, and various other small infrastructure things - It was hard for people to fight with no sense of government - No ID was needed in the 1880s - It was not unusual for people to not know how old one was - The ability to do things in society was not governed by age - In the late 19th century, no one, par the rich, had clocks - - It doesn’t matter what time it is In the 1800s, there is no standard time, instead it is based off the sun - Noon is when the sun is directly over head - Standard time is only brought in for the railways - In 1881, Canada had a population of 4.3 million people - About 75% lived in rural areas - More like 90% of Canadians lived in rural areas - Most people in Belgium, Britain, France, etc. are urban populations - However, most countries around the world are rural countries - Waterdown, East Flamborough Township - In 1914, highway 5 was a dirt road with no cars or town on it - The town was governed by agricultural work loads - Entirely self-sufficient - No need to import any food stuff, it was all local - Things are built around water sources - Mills were constructed - They built every imaginable product (from birth carriages to coffins - Birth to Death) - Everything was produced locally - including manufactured goods - Communities are used to being self-sufficient - These mills are relatively small, and make a lot of smoke, but don’t employ a lot of people - By 1914, most of the mills had disappeared - Not cost-effective, makes more sense to produce stuff in a big factory - Robson’s Hollow - 1910 - The Torrid Zone Mill, 1910 - Burnt down and people realized that it makes more sense to focus on agriculture - - In 1867, the first MP from Waterdown is elected - Never spoke in parliament - Most didn’t care about politics These societies did not have much leisure time, but what leisure time they had they used intensively - - Baseball and rugby were hugely popular in the summer - Roller Skating was most popular in the winter Everyone who comes to a party in the 1900s has to participate in entertainment - These societies, in theory, were well educated - In practice, it was not quite so important to people - Elementry school was required, but on a given day maybe only half of the children attended school - Highschool was not mandatory, so a tiny fraction would go to that Always a big gap with the rich and the poor - In a small village, it was not quite like that - The richest and poorest had little difference in stature - The economic gap between the rich and the poor was quite small - People in rural communities tend to not be impressed with what the rich and wealthy had - They value the good in people, not artificial class distinctions - Will Reid - - Perfectly average man in a rural community Any money he has, he uses to buy film and supplies for his camera People don’t want to buy stuff, but they also can buy stuff In a city, you would never see a middle class person associating with a poor person - - Most of the crime that existed in a small town was petty theft - - In a rural community, no one cares Only one murder in the 1900s There was a bank in Waterdown - The bank’s anti-crime measure was to have someone living above the bank and a hole in the ground for someone to fire at someone - First telephone was installed in 1882 - - It became the only phone for 20 years People got around either on foot or with horse and buggy - You walk - Horse and buggy was saved for Church or work - The only form of mass transit was the stage coach - People didn’t use the stage coach much - No railway until 1912 (Just before the war) - What we have is a community that is isolated - Generally a much safer society than today - If you limit cars, you limit the amount of danger - Low violent crime - You would still die because of disease and a lack of medical care - In many cases, you cared for yourself - - There were doctors, but you paid for healthcare Multi-tasking was a big thing - You walk into a funeral home to bury grandma while also picking up your groceries - Typical of how most people lived before the first world war - If you lived in Waterdown or any one of these small communities, you heard nothing when you went outside mid-day - - No cars, no trucks, no buses, etc. - Silence is connected with a simple lifestyle - They still aren’t fighting for their ideals, their fighting for their world Varieties of Historical Analysis (11/23/2022) - 1. Tactical/Operational History - Example of Tactical History: - Winterfell Castle - The defenders left the killing zones wide-open - What could have been a series of layered kill zones quickly became a free for all - The allied commanders failed to use their calvary properly - The main reason for a cavalry charge is to strike fear into the enemy - - The Battle of the Golden Spurs (1302) - The Charge of the Light Brigade (1854) The commanders failed to use their air support dragon - - Multi-Role Platforms The failure to identify dragons nearly caused a green on green dragon incident - Perhaps painting the dragons with distinct markings would have stopped the near accident - It took too long to light the fire in the anti-personnel ditch - Finally, the witch lady of Alesandra lights the fire - Neither the archers or dragons thought to kill the undead - The undead attacked similarly to the Soviets or North Vietnamese - The undead breach the walls and it is only a short amount of time before Winterfell falls - A lone soldier was able to kill a high-value target - YOU MUST NOT RELY ON A SINGLE INTERVENTION TO WIN A BATTLE - 2. Marxist History - Came to form in the 1950’s - Argues that class is the central feature to the historical context - All human society is moving towards a class-less society - Practiced by people who are normally in the working class - Believe that those in control have no right to be in control - Example of Marxist History - The death eaters vs Dumbledores Army - Voldemort has no legitimate basis for ruling - Rules by violence/terror, not right - Voldemort is a fascist dictator - The death eaters are Voldemorts most loyal subject - - The Ministry of Magic - - Any legitimacy that they had was corrupted The deatheaters have an airforce - - Under them are the snatchers (traitors to their class) Though it is rather useless A one way army - led by a dictator who rules over nothing more than foot soldiers - - Similar to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi’s Dumbledores Army: - People’s liberation army - Army that emerges from necessity - The fact that it is named after its spiritual leader affirms that it is a popular army - The House Elves - - The Malfoy’s - - - Undeclass and Underrepresented Right wing reactionary fascists obsessed with racial purity The Weasley’s - Although racially pure, they don’t care - Material possessions don’t really matter The attack begins with a seige of Hogwarts - Dumbledore’s Army puts up a charm shield to prevent the attackers from getting in temporarily - Professor McGonogall uses her powers to reanimate the stone army - The fighting is similar to the battle of Stalingrad - - One on one small pockets of fighting in rooms Voldermort and his fascist army lose to the righteous 3. Psycho-History - Mid 20th century - Heavily influenced by Sigmund Freud - For Example: - A well known psycho biography of Napoleon - His entire life was essentially a way to please his mother and to make up for his physical inadequacies (Height) - Had to be the best because of what his child-hood was like Historians of Nazi Germany argue that the German people need to be controlled by a strong leader - - Something in the German DNA causes this belief Example of Psycho-History - End of days scenario for the Urukai - The defenders need to protect Helmsdeep - Any male that can hold a sword is pulled aside to defend the town - The warrior class - how much their psychology depends on being in a group - A small man who kills because of his Napoleon complex - A way to compensate because he is physically not a large person - The people would rather die fighting than die with nothing - Gandalf suddenly appears and uses a cavalry charge successfully - Social History: - - Looks at the general population and how historical events impact them Great Man History: - When history focuses on how one man changes history or causes events to happen - The War at the Front (11/28/2022) - 7 o’clock Thursday Lawson Hall 1227 - What’s in a name? - Der Weltkrieg/The World War - Le Grande Guerre/The Great War for Civilization - The First World War (1918) - Dubbed by a British columnist for the Times - The European War - The Great War - People at the time were interested in the global reach of the war - Fourth of August, 1914 - A German fleet based in China left its base to hunt for allied shipping - On the Sixth of August, a small French troop seized a German town in West Africa - Etc. - The war had dramatic consequences for the people living all around the world - How did the world affect the war? None of the listed campaigns had a big effect on the outcomes to the war - The war boiled down to the two great powers of Britain and Germany - It was still mostly seen as the European War (until 1916) - 1. The Opening Battles - Under the Schlieffen Plan, Germany had to conquer France until Russia could mobilize - Germany had to conquer France in 42 days - If Germany missed that 42-day deadline, everything else fell apart and the Russians could mobilize - Little delays here and there - Takes a while to clear Belgium - The British Expedentionary Force meets the Germans in Southern Belgium and manage to hold the Germans up for a few days - Within a few weeks, the German plan is delayed significantly - Moltke orders the transfer of German troops from France to Eastern Germany to defend against Russia - Many believe Moltke is unfit to be a military commander - At this point in the war, Moltke lost his nerve - The crux of the German warplan was to be patient - You had to be confident in your plans and allow the Russians to become stronger so you can defeat France first - Moltke broke and ended up costing the Germans Kluck: - Best known for showing up in a popular British song at the time (was made fun of) “We don’t give a fuck about the armies of Von Kluck” - Decides to turn to Northern Paris and attack the British and French from behind, changing the Schlieffen Plan - Von Kluck opens up a gap in the lines and makes it impossible to capture Paris by attacking north instead of south - These two decisions kill the German offensive - The Germans get tantilizingly close to the Paris - Everything comes together in the Battle of the Marne - Not really a single battle, instead being a series of accidental battles - None of the armies know where the others are - First decisive battle of the war (Stopped the German advance in France towards Paris) - The French commanders and generals come out better at this battle than the German generals - In popular culture, the German commanders are always better than the French, though in 1914 this was untrue - Joffre: - French general who would go into his units to check them out and fire people on the spot - This period is filled with all sorts of what-ifs - There were certainly opportunities that were missed - The German advance is stopped and the German staff advise the government to stop the war and seek terms knowing that they cannot win anymore - The German government insists on continuing - - Resulting in another 4 years of bloodshed 2. The Front Forms - On the 22nd of August 1914, we had the deadliest single day in the war when 26000 French troops were killed - Total casualties on the Western Front in the first 6 months were 3.5 million - There was a clear dividing line between the allies on the left and the central powers on the right - There were a lot of people in 1914 who were happy to see the war, but they were looking for a war that would end by Christmas 1914 - However, they had seen that there was no end in sight - Some (Not Many) predicted that the war would continue on and what we see was the worlds greatest economies facing off in battle - Although they were known as fringe lunatics before, they were in fact correct - The Western Front was about 600 miles long 3. The Eastern Front (Around 1000 miles long) - The Germans were shocked that the Russians would come to the defense of the French so quickly - The Russians invaded German territory - However, the Russian army was not fully mobilized and had lots of weaknesses - The Russians attacked east Prussia (Two Armies went in) - The two commanders disliked each other and the chiefs of staff disliked the commanders and each other - - It quickly became a comedy of errors - It staggered on with no clear advantage on either side Moltke thought that East Prussia was about to fall because the Russians were invading - His second decision nearly redeemed him - He fired the commander of Eastern Prussia and replaced them with Ludendorff and Hindenburg - - They were enormously successful - The Battle of Tannenburg (1914) - The Battle of the Maurisian Lakes (1914) The Russians fought the Austrians, and once again both were poorly organized and run badly - Tens of thousands of lives lost for no apparent advantage for either side - Further south, a Serbian army of around 200000 faced an invading Austrian army (50% larger) - The difference in size was made up by the Serbians through a field commander who was tough and capable - The Austrian commander was not - In the south, the Austrians and the Serbians are hammering each other for months until they both give up - Each side had lost about half of its manpower 3 million casualties in the East - Around 6.5 million casualties in total in the first 6 months of the war - In the west, Germany could have ended the war - Meanwhile, in the East, there could not be a decisive result - The generals are too bad to achieve anything in the east - Not much happens in the winter of 1914 - In the Spring of 1915, their is a chance to end the war in the west again - 4. The Battle of Ypres (1915) - Ypres Salient 1915 - Surrounded on all sides by the enemy - The enemy can fire on you from all three sides and it takes much more manpower for you to straighten the line out - It makes more sense to pull your men out, but Ypres is extremely significant - Played a major role in economic development in Belgium - The last major city in Belgium that had not fallen to the Germans - Although defending it was not a good military decision, it had to be defended for symbolic purposes - On the 22nd of April, the troops inside the Salient see a nasty looking green yellow cloud drifting over the lines - Soon, soldiers from the French African divisions start to stream south in terror clawing at their throats - The two French divisions essentially cease to exist and the Germans push far south into allied lines - This was the first use of chlorine gas in the war The Germans were only 2 miles away from Ypres and in theory may win the war - All that stands in their way is a Canadian division and some stragglers from the French and British side - It became the most confusing battle of the early part of the war - Every hour, the city gets closer to the advancing German troops - Finally, the line holds about 1.5 miles from the city - The German armies had finally been worn out - They thought that releasing the gas would destroy all opposition, but it didn’t - They slowed down and stalled and eventually stopped - As far as the Germans were concerned, it was another missed opportunity - For the Canadian division, it was there first time in battle and saved the sector - - However, they suffered massive casualties (6000) Private William Howe wrote to his family before his death in 1915 on the 22nd of April - Howe was killed in action on the 24th of April - 8 months later, his oldest son John follows him into the army and dies in August 1917 - The central of the war in the West is largely unsolved - How do you achieve a result when you have solidly built trenches and defences on both sides? - The armies keep trying the same thing over and over again - Signs of insanity (doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result) - Ypres became a center of fighting in the war from the beginning to nearly the end - Defending Ypres resulted in the destruction of the beautiful gothic architecture - It was said that in 1918, you could sit on horseback and see from one end of the city to the other because there was a lack of any buildings above a few feet in height - - Guillemont, France 1918 - Reduced to rubble and piles of reddish mud (filled with blood) - In 1914, it was a prosperous village, yet by 1918 it was obliterated Filling The Ranks (11/30/2022) - Every casualty that is generated has to be replaced by someone at the front - Most armies at the time had two basic forces at their disposal - The regular army - professional soldiers, backbone of any army - The reserve army - Part time soldiers that trained on their own time (typically evening or during summer) - - Would be called upon in the need of defense - The US had the same thing (National Guard and Reserve) - Britain had the territorial force and reserve Those two armies would not be enough in 1914 (not enough people in uniform for the war) - They would have to put a much bigger population into uniform - Typically two ways to do this, either through the draft or compulsory military service - The French came up with the process of the levee en masse - Conscription/draft of all men of military age to come to the defense of the French nation - Since 1800, most of the males in France have served in the army - - This was the system that was in place in most of Europe in 1914 - - 3 million men Just apart of life The war was a national effort - You had to get everybody - In the US, it was pitched as your civic duty - It was tricky in the British empire in terms of what kind of system they would use - It’s easy to say you must fill the armies, but actually doing it is difficult - Russia had the most inefficient bureaucracy - Although they had a huge population, it was much harder for them to get men to fight in the war - Britain lost about 60% of its first world war documents in the second world war during the blitz - The Americans lost about 80% of their first world war documents in a fire in St. Louis - German records were destroyed in the Battle of Berlin - Most Canadian records continue to survive - About ¼ of all Canadians claimed that they had military experience (complete bullshit) - Religious denomination was not very reliable - People in the army could be numeralized (become a number) - As the pool of volunteers dries up, they found people who were too old for service, too young for service, too short for service, and women for service - The loser of the war is the country that gets to the bottom of the barrel first Westerners - - Two sides - Easterners and Westerners - Easterners believe the war can be won off the western front - Westerners believe that the war must be won on the western front 1. Grand Strategy - Douglas Haig - Commander in Chief, British Expeditionary Force - He’s a westerner because he controls the west - He figures that as long as Germany occupies some of France and Belgium, you cannot have won the war - He figured the most important job was to find a way to kick the Germans out of France and Belgium - William Robertson - Chief of the Imperial General Staff - Robertson agrees with Haig - First person in history in the British army to rise from the lowest rank (private) to the highest rank - Both are not known as being creative - They did not think outside the box - For them, the western front was the box - They had trouble visualizing anything outside the western front - The French are only interested in liberating their own country - The French and British don’t work with each other very often in the early stages of the war - They will exchange notes and chat, but they won’t really work together - Chantilly Conferences - 1915 - Joseph Joffre - Sir John French - A man with courage but limited management - Constantly in debt (spent a lot on hotels and meals and wine) - Always had to ask his fellow officers for loans - In charge of the British forces during 1915 - Notorious womanizer - - Never changed his conduct Had 6 sisters - Catherine (one of his sisters) served in Greece as a nurse and ended up being killed in action - Charlotte Despard (another sister) was an anti-war protestor - Communist, socialist, sympathized with the Irish - Although they hated each others political ideals, they got along on good terms - They agree that they haven’t done well and the level of cooperation has been poor at best - Sir Douglas Haig - The three major players at the Chantilly Conferences - Their are three main places the war should focus on - Eastern Front, Western Front, Italian Front - The allies decided that they had to keep attacking all three fronts at the same time - The entente needed to take their numbers to their advantage - Western Front: 150 divisions (entente) vs 125 divisions (central) - The French have about 100 divisions while the British have 50 (thus the French get to call the shots) - Eastern Front: 141 divisions (entente) vs 90 divisions (central) - Italian Front 53 divisions (entente) vs 35 divisions (central) The idea at Chantilly is to grind down the central power divisions and keep killing enemies before winning the war - 2. Verdun - The Germans moved first before the allies moved - The Germans attacked at Verdun - No particular enemy, kill them all - The Germans want to bleed France white (kill enough soldiers so that they surrender) - Shorten the line to be a more manageable line - Verdun was massively fortified with trenches and forts around the city - - Sufficiently powerful enough to stop Verdun from being conquered - Big expensive installations The Germans realize that the French love Verdun and thus go in to capture some small things and draw out the French - Principal rule of attritaional warfare - If you forget about humanity and sympathy, it’s a good idea - However, the Germans became just as invested holding the captured territory as the French came to recapturing their lost territory - - Becomes the longest battle in the First World War - One of the most significant in the war and one of the most deadly - By the end of it (1916), the causulties were roughly the same on both sides - Verdun achieved nothing at a cost of millions - Verdun takes basically all of 1916 3. The Somme (1916) - The British wanted to attack in August and farther north on the line - When Haig tells that to Joffre, Joffre goes apeshit and tells Haig that the French cannot last that long - Against better wisdom, Haig agrees and decides to attack early with a different location - Each offensive began the same, a long period of artillery barrage, then send the guys over the top - Haig does not believe his ideas are wrong, he believes that his scale is off - The New Army - Lord Kitchener - British Minister of the War - You’re going to need more than just professional soldiers, you also need civilian soldiers - Before the 18th century, regiments surrounded people (Colonel Piss), General Shit etc. - In the 1860s, regiments became geographically based, London Regiment, Scum of the Earth regiment - Kitcherner takes it one step further and creates the Pals system (people from a neighbourhood instead of from a city) - Created from bonds of friendship in British cities - Also based upon occupation (fight with people who work in the post office, fight with the rugby union, etc.) - - Worked brilliantly, well trained, well formed, and inspired - Starts on the 1st of July 1916 and goes badly wrong The first day at the Somme kills 20000 people (60000 total casulties) and becomes the worst day in the war - The gains in the first day were miniscule at best - In most of the Front, their was no success whatsoever - Because Haig is a twat and thinks the process is based on scale, he brings in more soldiers - The Canadians are sent in to defend Courcelette and finish off the offensive successfully after 25000 casualties - In November, Haig shuts down the offensive - It takes the allies 5 months to get to the line they were supposed to get to on the first day - - Half a million casualties for the allies over 5 months - 750000 for the Germans over 5 months Acrington Pals - 720 of them went over the top - About thirty minutes later, 600 of them were killed, missing, or wounded - Essentially, you killed all of the males in a towns public population in 60 minutes or less - At the end, Haig exercised his commanders right and claimed that the result was something different from what was predicted in the beginning - At the start of the campaign, he believed that the forces would be 30 miles into enemy territory by sundown - At the end, he claimed that it was just meant to wear down the enemy - 4. The Nivelle Offensive - In 1917, it’s the French’s term to give it a shot - They are led by Robert Nivelle - His mother was English, so he spoke English fluently - Also protestant - The allies hoped for better relations between France and England - Haig doesn’t trust him - He puts together 7000 artillery pieces - The British will launch a series of small local offensives to confuse the Germans - One of those small local offensives is Vimy Ridge - - The Canadians are successful (only 10000 casualties) However, the capture of Vimy Ridge was the only bright spot in the Nivelle Offensive - - Pretty much all else failed Nivelle lost 40000 troops in the first day and 200000 in the three weeks before he calls off the offensive - Nivelle essentially pledged that they would be victorious - - - French morale was gutted when it failed Nivelle was fired immediately and French resolve devolved into mutiny - 68 of the 100 regiments experienced mutiny - Soldiers were deserting at an alarming rate - They demonstrated that they were ready for a revolution The French armies couldn’t figure out who was leading the mutinies - They try everything from negotiation to compromise to execution - An entire regiment deserted and hid in the caves instead of going over the top - The commander went into the cave and told them that they needed to return in the morning or he would collapse the mouth of the cave and kill them all - The solution for the French was to pick 20 guys, court-martial them, then execute them - They shot the 20 soldiers and told others not to do the same - 3000 soldiers were found guilty of mutiny - - The French army is essentially out of action - - However, only about 10% were actually shot and killed They will defend France, but will not move forward The British realize that they are in it on their own without the French For the British army and the British empire, the responsibility falls on them to keep the offensive going - Now the British were holding the can for everybody - The line is virtually unchanged from 1914 to 1917 - Millions of casualties, entire parts of Northern France and Belgium destroyed and never to be rebuilt again - The two best armies put their minds and hearts together and nothing was changed What if the Westerners were wrong? What if the Eastern front is truly what can win the war? - Easterners (12/07/2022) - David Lloyd George - - - - Disliked Douglas Haig Winston Churchill - First lord of the admiralty (in charge of the navy) - Was captured by the Boers during the Boers war - Wrote a book and became famous - Was a journalist before he became an admiral The thinking of the easterners was that Germany required their allies - Instead of attacking Germany, we should attack their allies - You don’t attack the main opponent, you attack those that support them - In theory, if you take down it’s allies you take down Germany They first come up with an idea to fight in Greece - Greece was with the Entente, Bulgaria was with the powers - The entente believed that if they could defeat the Bulgarians, they could take down the Germans - Became a stalemate - Serbia was all but knocked out of the war - Degenerated into trench warfare like the western front - Eventually takes down the Bulgarian army in September 1918, far too late to make a difference - What if we attack Germany 1 on 1? - Put together a large assortment of ships and troops and land them on the baltic coast - The Dardanelles - The Europeans chose to fire upon the Ottomans with ships - The Turks had mined the strait, and within the first hour 3 French and 3 English ships were sunk or beached - - The navy pulled out and let the army move in The Amry assumes that it won’t be difficult because they’re turks with no real training - There is a series of landings on the Gallipoli Peninsula - Success was almost complete - Anzac Cove, Dardanelles (Gallipoli) - The landings at Y beach were supposed to be a diversionary tactic - They end up at Krithia and choose to not contact the other troops - The next day, they allowed the Turkish troops to push them away from the beach - None of the commanders thought about the future - - With a little aggressive defense victory could have been taken Instead, their were four major Battles of Krithia with 20000 casualties They then launch an operation at Suvla Bay - The nearest Ottoman reinforcements were 36 hours away - It would have been an easy victory, but the British commander chose to hesitate - In the end, the Ottoman reinforcements managed to beat back the British relatively easily - The only success was the evacuation of the entente forces - It achieved nothing - Had just one person acted decisively, it could have led to the victory of the campaign - The failure at Galipolli was responsible for the firing of Winston Churchill - As long as the king supported Haig, he would keep his job - The war against the Ottomans continued - The entente enjoyed some success - In march 1917, they managed to capture Baghdad - They cleared Ottoman forces from the Sinai - They are poised to attack Jerusalem - They then run into a problem - Edmund Allenby - Regarded as lazy, scatter-brained, and failed the entrance exam to the British Civil Service - Failed the staff army officer application - Showed no sign of being a good leader or soldier as a young man - Yet when he lead the middle Eastern campaign, he became a vigorous and fantastic commander - The campaign against Jerusalem was a complete success - The Jaffa Gate, Jerusalem - Allenby did not want to be called a Christian conquerer of Jerusalem - He does not want to use words like Crusade or Crusader because it has a negative historic connotation - Allenby walks into the city because he does not want people to think that he is better than Jerusalem - He was able to keep his lines together and continue his assault into the Ottoman Empire - In November 1918, the last major city falls in the Ottoman Empire - - The Ottoman’s then ask for an armistice In the end, the fall of Germany’s allies likely would not have made a great difference in the outcome of the war - In the end, you still had to deal with the Western front - No indication that the German government was anxious to leave France or Belgium - Mobilizing Consent - The Strong Arm of the State - Always people who will decline to support the war (you must restrict them) - Encourage those that want to support the war in any way you can - Defence of the Realm Act (DORA) - Piece of legislation that allowed the British government to pretty much do whatever they wanted to defend themselves in war - The War Measures Act of 1914 (Canada) - “Real or apprehend war, invasion or insurrection” - “For the security, defence, peace, order, and welfare of Canada” - Allowed the government to control everything, including currency, property, and media - Governments could take desperate measures in desperate times - Most countries had a system of censorship (dealt with morality) - Tweak the regulations a bit so that they apply to the war method - In Germany, under censorship regulations, you had to submit the play to the government and they would give it back in a few weeks with changes or with a hard no to make sure it didn’t fall foul of these regulations - These included sending a police officer to the first night to make sure the play followed the script the government made - In the United States, you were not allowed to criticize the government, Army, or war bonds without getting in major trouble (which included a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison) - In Britain, if you publish a book the censors don’t like, someone will issue you a notice of infringement and someone would seize all your books and charge you in front of a military court - Effectively, the government controls all newspapers (cuts off at source) - Most big newspapers exercised self censorship - Generally, most newspapers supported the war - Most also chose to not be penalized for criticizing the government for decisions made in the war - - Income Tax - Australia brings in income tax in 1916 to pay for the war - Canada brings in income tax in 1918 to pay for the war During the First World War, you were required to carry around an ID - A way to determine whether you were actually doing what you were assigned to do - Many found it bizarre Daylight Savings Time - Made to reduce energy consumption by reducing the need for artificial lighting - Made to also allow an extra hour of work for most industries - First accepted by Germany and Austro-Hungary, then by almost all other nations in the war - Alcohol creates problems (Temperance movement) - Alcohol is bad for you - Either a full or partial ban on the production/sale of alcohol in some places - Britain reduced pub times, though this was lifted recently - - Dealt with criticism from the temperance movement Votes for Women - The Entente are fighting for democracy yet won’t let women vote? - You allow a foreign-born man to vote but not a white woman? - Gains traction to the women's movement in 1914, becomes federal in 1918 - Women were also allowed to vote in the United States to win the war - Britain writes legislation that allows 8 million women to vote that had never voted before (1918) - Most of these changes were pitched as a short term solution Why can’t a girl be a soldier? - A few women served as soldiers in the war - Flora Sandes was an English woman who joined the Serbian army as an ambulance driver but wanted to be a soldier - Wounded in 1916 - However, was commissioned and became the first commissioned woman soldier - Milunka Savic - Ecaterina Teodoriou - Jo Whitehide - Maria Bochkareva “Yashka” - Got into the army with permission from Tsar Nicholas - Given permission to create her own unit - - 1st Russian Women’s Battalion of Death Raised about 2000 volunteers - Most of them left fairly quickly because she was exceptionally harsh - Disbanded during the Russian revolution - Remarkable because of rarity - Women were welcome to join rifle clubs and partake in shooting and military drills - Some women would dress up in their husbands/brothers uniforms - Women became a fundraiser - The amount of money raised from countries was astonishing - In Canada, charities raised nearly 100 million dollars (now around 1.2 billion dollars) - Women fought the war through rationing - Eating what needed to be eat without going over what the government said - Raise her children in such a way that allowed them to be aware of the war - Making sure they read war themed books - Even ensure they had tiny uniforms - Most people accepted this as good parenting at the time - Preparing children so that one day, they will actually be wearing the uniform for real - Women could become military nurses - The First World War occurred at a time in the history of medicine where there was lots of change - The beginning of the trained nurse - At the best of time in the early 19th century, the nurse tried her best to be caring and kind for a few extra coins - At the worst, she was a drunkard that was a danger to herself and her patients - This all changed in the Crimean war - Florence Nightingale (Crimean War 1853 - 1856) - Appalled by the conditions patients lived in - Created the first real nursing school in the army - Great believer in statisticians - Interested in the professionalization of the medical field - Believed that nurses should receive a proper training regime - In the last 20 years of the 19th century, dozens of nursing schools are created in Canada and around the world - While you were training as a nurse, you had to work 6 days a week and had no sick days - Required to live in hospital residence - One night a week, you could stay out until 11:30 - - One night a month, you could stay out past 12:00 To break any of these rules brought a stiff punishment - In the worst case, you were expelled - In most cases, you lost your cap, which meant that people knew you had broken the rules - For all of that, you were paid 12 dollars a month as a senior nurse - Once completing the program, you become a graduate nurse that makes 75 - 80 dollars a month - In Canada, 46 nurses died in uniform during the war - In Canada, nurses held officers ranks (part of the army) - For all other nations, nurses were part of auxiliary units - Total War? - A term that is overused and usually used incorrectly - Refers to the entire production capacity of the state is dedicated to the war - Not a total war in many allied nations - - - Was a total war for Germany in 1917 - 1918 and 1944 - 1945 Lucy Maud Montgomery - One of the most successful novelists ever - Left a very detailed diary - The war takes over her mind - The war is inescapable Technology (1/11/2023) - Chemical Warfare (Gas) - John Singer Sargent - “Gassed” - Chlorine gas was used at Ypres - Affected the lungs - - - Reacts with water in your lungs to create hydrochloric acid - Worst case, suffocates you to death - Causes your skin to form painful blisters filled with liquid “Mustard Gas” - Causes blisters to form in your lungs and respiratory system - Those who were only affected by the skin were seen as lucky - Could cause blindness - By 1915, the push is on to create gasses that are ever more lethal - Gas creates a modernist nightmare - Governments create gas masks Air Power - First created in 1903 - Airplanes are still very rare in 1914 (most have heard of them but some had yet to see them) - - Even less have flown on them Most armies had airplanes, but early air planes were absolute death traps - Created of wood, canvas, and wire - Engines that are not much bigger than a modern motorcycle engine - When they were first used in the war, they don’t achieve much at all - Armies soon realize that planes are not good at everything, but are good at some things - Reconnisance - - Airplanes gave an enormous advantage during the war Strategic bombing - Forget spotting enemy armies in the field, bomb the enemy cities full of factories and military hubs - If you destroy the enemy from the air, you won’t have to worry about fighting them on the front - January 1915, the Kaiser allows the German Army to bomb Britain - They used airships such as the Zeppelin L3 to bomb capitals - Once bombs started dropping on the British, many stopped coming to work - Government created air-raid shelters - - Many trampled to death during panics - Poplar School Bombing, 1916, 18 students dead - Odham’s printing Press, 1918, all died - Canadian hospital bombed The allies created ideas for 50000 bombers Unrestricted Submarine Warfare - First submarine, CSS H.L Hunley - Responsible for 4 sinkings - Three amongst itself - They had to be pumped out, bodies taken out, and then sent back out - Submarines at first were equipped with 4 torpedoes to attack one or four ships - They also had a deck gun that was used when the submarine surfaced - In 1914, German submarines took down 4 British cruisers in hours - - Many lives lost Many were shocked at how these tiny tin cans could sink massive ships - The German Navy would sink every ship around the British isles - The Germans sank the RMS Lusitania in May 1915 - It was a civilian passenger line - Killed hundreds of passengers, including 120 Americans - Caused international outrage - Used by the allies as propaganda and became a popular theme around posters - The Germans changed their sinking policy - They would no longer sink passenger ships and would give warning to the merchant ships before they were sunk - The British developed Q ships - Ships that looked like normal merchant ships that were actually navy ships with hidden guns - In 1917, the Germans go back to unrestricted Submarine Warfare - 25% of all shipping that leaves the British isles is sunk by German U-Boats - British command and the government thinks that they are close to starvation - June 1918, the German Navy sunk a hospital ship (Llandovery Cast) - - Again used by propogandists - Many nurses perished To win a war, cut off the population and starve the out Did any of these methods actually win the war? - NO! - Gas was not very effective, although it was at the start of the war - Once the army researches gas masks, they became obsolete - If you were gassed, it probably meant that you weren’t using your gas mask properly - 6000 British soldiers died of gas - 2200 German soldiers died of gas - - A tiny amount compared to the millions killed Becomes useful in a very limited sense on the battlefield Strategic bombing was no more effective - One lesson of the bombing of England is that the technology is not good enough - You couldn’t pick what you wanted to bomb, it was by sheer luck that they hit something - - Air to Air combat is not efficient - Its purpose is to allow you to enjoy air superiority - Crucial to see what happens on the battlefield However, Airplanes are useful for scouting - Aerial photography can be used to show what’s happening below - Ironically, the airplane with the most technologically superior things at the time was used to support infantry - Submarines were not efficient - Once the British switched to the convoy system where merchant ships were protected by Naval ships made the submarine pointless - Tanks - Some argue that you could have won the war with the tank - The first tank was the Mark I tank, available in Male and Female variants That weighs about 18 tonnes - Tears along the battlefield at 3.7 MPH - Sealed environment, so temperatures inside the tank regularly reach 50 degrees celsius - Crews were often rendered unconscious simply by going into action - You used carrier pigeons to communicate - You could not see anything except for something directly in front of you - The problem with the tank was bad at doing everything it was designed for - The idea of winning the war with hundreds of tanks is not true - The machine gun has more impact on battles than any number of tanks could have done - - - 1914 - 1 gun per 500 men - 1918 - 1 gun per 30 men The truck also won the war - 1914 - French had 164 - 1918 - French had 98,000 - The truck had more impact on the war then Submarines, Airplanes, Gas, and tanks Proven technologies won the war - The war itself was fought as an old fashioned sort of conflict, while it did provide some very neat technologies - Intervention and Revolution (1/16/2023) - The Riddle of the Trenches - The average attack in WWI looked the same as if it happened 500 years earlier - Maybe the problem with the war was that they were trying to fight using flawed tactics from years ago - A handful of individuals did know what they were doing - - - For decades, armies kept themselves together and attacked slowly - Attack in an orderly fashion - Attacks normally took place in the morning Maybe we should give them less things to carry into battle - - Replace the firing lines with spread out troops Maybe we should listen to what Goeth said Conscription - People have been put off by the casualty figures - - People tend to enlist in safer parts of the army - - “This battle killed 100000 people in this month” However, Infantry needs men The number of young men physically fit enough to serve is a smaller number than people thought - Many work place accidents - Indication of epidemic disease - Diet - If you were small, you would be put in the Banton company - The army started to take people with physical deformities - In 1916, they would take pretty much everyone and anyone - 1914, are you of good character? - - 1916, they were taking people out of prisons Later in the war, if you could walk, they would take you - The oldest soldier killed in action in the CAF was 62, the oldest recorded soldier was 80 - Samnel Harry - Recorded as 18, was only 14 - - Killed in action at the age of 15 At least three boys that enlisted at age 10, many at 12, and hundreds at 13/14 - Almost all of the countries opt for compulsory conscription - - Only Australia, South Africa, and India choose not to From Neutrality to Engagement - The US embraced compulsory service for moral purposes - They believed that the entire nation needed to take part - Woodrow Wilson - Wilson was at the head of a population that was deeply divided - Generally speaking, Americans were vaguely in favor of the allied forces (entente) - The British worked hard to encourage that thinking - - Many people were isolationist - - They spent millions on propaganda campaigns in the states “I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier” There is also a fairly large population of Austrians and Germans who supported the Triple Alliance - Wilson doesn’t believe the war concerns America in 1914 - Wilson was a bit of an idealist - - Wilson worked hard for a negotiated peace - - “Too proud to fight” Completely unsuccesful Americans believed that they should have been allowed to trade with whoever they wanted - At the start of the war, Britain puts an economic blockade on Germany - “We will stop and seize any vessel that heads towards a German port” - Maybe the British are the good guys - The Germans threaten to kill you, the British threaten to seize your ships - The Zimmerman Telegram - The German government told the ambassador to Mexico to propose an alliance with Mexico - Mexico would gain lost land that was taken from them by the Americans - When this telegram went public, isolationist Americans became interventionists - Wilson asked congress to declare war in 1917 - - - Legislation went through and America went to war America did not come in as an allied power, it came as an associate power - A non-issue - The economic power of the US was now a part of the Entente Critical because Russia was about the lave the Entente Revolution - Russia was falling apart three years into the war - Fewer people to bring in crops, and problems with food supply occurred - If you can’t feed your families, their was nothing the Russian government could do for you - Tsar Nicholas II took over the armed forces - He should be running the country, not the army and navy - Ties his fortune to the results of battles - - Prisoner of what happens elsewhere Russians mount a major offensive - The Brusilov Offensive (1916) - Could not hold it - Push back to where they started at the cost of hundreds of thousands of casualties - Motive behind the first significant riots in St. Petersburg (February 1917) - The army took the side of the public - The government was forced to capitulate - The provisional government had the opportunity to pull Russia out of the war, but were pressured by Britain and France to stay in - The second revolution brought the Bolsheviks to power - - They would get Russia out of the war no matter what Passchendaele - Arthur Currie - He’s a manager - Modern war is run by managers - The Winter of our Discontent Tutorial 1/19/2023 - Start with a war that interests you - Start a subtopic relating to the war - One maybe two broad, but not too broad questions to look into - Cause and effect, not just the what - Avoid Yes or No Questions! - Be more specific (regiment, timeframe, etc.) - NO LEADING QUESTIONS - Ask the question, answer it with evidence - 500 word proposal - Thesis statement: You are allowed to use “I” - Thesis can be multiple sentences (2 - 3 lines) - Include research question, supporting arguments, how you will argue it - Five minimum sources - - DO NOT CITE WEBSITES Use footnotes if you wish to quote from specific sources - Hardcopy submission of the paper! - - Also submit one online Woodrow Wilson (1/23/2023) - He believed that Europe should write a treaty that would not humiliate any country - However, no politicians agreed with him - The French, British, Belgian, and Italians did not want peace without victory - - They want victory George Clemenceau - Made clear that his last wish when he died was to be buried standing up towards Germany - David Lloyd George - “Squeeze Germany until pip squeaked!” - Both George and Clemenceau wanted a treaty that punished Germany - The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk - - Russia was forced to give up millions of its land - Lost much of its industrial capacity (coals) - Lenin called it disgusting Many saw this and claimed the Germans were the textbook writers of punitive treaties - Most thought it was relatively fair for the Germans to pay back what was stolen from the entente forces - The treaty was very fair, what was taken during the occupation should be replaced - Removed the means for Germany to generate money - However, it still left Germany as the strongest state on the continent - It’s industrial capacity was left relatively unharmed - It’s economic reform was completed by the 1930s under a certain Austrian dictator - The Balance Sheet - Sir William Orpen (The Hall of Mirrors) - Art as a means of recording history - Harshly depicts the world leaders - Orpen is bothered by the fate of the future hanging on the shoulders of these small men - - Four Empires Fell: - German - Austro-Hungarian - Russian - Ottoman One Empire Fatally Weakened: - - 1914, Britain started the war with 600 million pounds in debt - - British Four years later, it was 7.1 billion pounds The war really ended in 2015, when Britian was finally able to pay back it’s war debts - - War Contributions - British Expeditionary Force - 49% - French Army - 36% - American Expeditionary Force - 11% - Belgian Army - 4% Map of Europe was redrawn - Broken up into new states - Poland - Czechoslovakia - Austria - Hungary - Yugoslavia - Palestine - Jordan - Iran - Syria - Latvia - - Lithuania - Estonia - USSR The First World War normalized violence in a way that it had never been normalized before - In Germany, normalized violence leads to ultra facism and the Nazis - In Russia, violence leads to the USSR and the rise of communism - In the Middle East, violence continues on a daily - Total Casulties: - 37 Million - 8.5 million dead - 7.7 million prisoners and missing - 21 million wounded - 50 - 100 million dead in influenza panic - For the first time in modern history, life expectancy went down - - In Britian, life expectancy in 1914 was 55 for women, 52 for men - By 1918, life expectancy was 50 for women, 44 for men There is a certain amount of celebration, but more than anything there is exhaustion and relief - People were emotionally wrecked by the war Grief - Brings mass grief to the people - 20+ years after the war, people are still dying - Anna Durie and Arthur Durie - Arthur died in 1917 - Anna became unhinged and wanted to bring his body back to Canada - However, two policies existed - - The dead would be buried in identical headstones - Bodies could not be moved from nation to nation Anna dug up her sons body and wanted to bring it back to Toronto - She managed to smuggle his body in a suitcase to Toronto where he is buried today - Charlotte Wood - Silver Cross Mother - Richard - Died of disease in 1900 (during the South African War) - By January 1916, all had enlisted (11 remaining songs) - - One by one, they were killed off - Louis - Killed in action Sept 1914 - Harry - KIA June 1915 - Fred - KIA July 1916 - Percy - KIA May 1917 - Joseph - KIA October 1917 Arthur Conan Doyle - Interested in spirtualism since the 1880s - However, in WW1 his son Kingsley died, his brother died, and half a dozen of his relatives died - He changed dramitically and stopped writing about Sherlock Holmes, instead writing about spirtualism - He defended the Cottingley Fairies - People wanted to believe they were true - If fairies existed in this garden in Yorkshire, can we communicate with my dead husbands, sons, and relatives? - Offered hope to the average person Oliver Lodge - Pretty much invented the speaker - Did all sorts of research on lightning and other things - His son was KIA in WWI - With that, he gave up on serious science and switched into spirtualism like Doyle - Many got into spirit photography - Many claimed that they could take a photo and develop images of the dead - Spiritualism offered direct contact with their dead loved ones 1. The Spanish Flu - Millions died, thus we need to create societies worth that sacrifice - In the first instance, the nation is effectively still at war - It is at war with influenza (1917 - 1919) - Referred to as the Spanish flu - - Not totally obvious - May not have originated in Spain - However, Spanish media first reported on it - Disease may have actually started in Kansas near an army camp Without the war, you probably wouldn’t have a pandemic - You have large numbers of youngmen kept together in close camps - Perfect incubator for disease - The more people you move the more disease you move - Go on to become the greatest pandemic to ever infect the human race - More than 1/3rd of the entire human race was affected - Particularly lethal among young adults - - 20 - 40 age group Governments kept the same regulations to prevent people from spreading the disease - Closing of public places - Schools were closed, church services shut, public entertainment shuttered - - Reduce the spread of disease - Many places enacted policies, such as no spitting Open spaces like gyms, churches, convention centres, etc, were turned into hospital wards - - Any open area large enough for beds - Nothing beyond ventilation to provide comfort to the ill By 1918, scientists were already researching vaccines - They would immediately rush out to the patients and inject them with various things - Many wore masks - If you chose not to wear a mask, you became a mask slacker - - Social pariah The first years of the peace did not go well 2. The Years of Labour Turmoil - War is good for workers, wages, and employment - - War has made jobs Before the war, unemployment is relatively high in all countries - By 1916, virtually no unemployment - Union membership increases dramatically - Wages went up 44% from 1914 to 1918 - - Cost of living went up 50% Labourers get tired when they see some corporations are making massive profits out of the war - Management seems to have a short memory and revert back to prewar measures - - Lower wages - Shitty working conditions Once people realize that management won’t help, the workers start to riot and strike - Governments around the world start to push back against the people - - In Italy, the 2 lost years left factories ran by the workers - In Canada, the Winnipeg General Strike hits hard Because people were not given what they were told to get, they chose to take it themselves - - Most of these are not successful - The government crushes many strikes with violence The blame was typically placed on immigrants - The first Red Scare - The new enemy is bolshevism - Many people who led Blosehvik groups were actually immigrants - All the problems after the war were caused by the aliens Immigrants had been told that they would be helped after the war if they supported them during the war - Emanual Hahn - Sculptor that was most known for his work on the Canadian coin - Became well liked until the war started - Then got black balled because they were German - Cut off by all friends and businesses they frequented - Designed many war memorials but used a different name as he was German - Used his wifes name but Winnipeg still chose someone else Equality based on sacrifice during the war didn’t pan out 3. Dashed Hopes - People had sacrificed so much, thus initially, people found it inconceivable that everything could go wrong - Reconcile the losses of the war with what has actually been achieved - People take comfort in the belief that their loved ones went to war for a good cause - Henry Albert Harper - Great friend of McKenzie King - In December 1901, he went on a skating party with some very important people - - One young couple fell into the ice - Harper dived into the freezing river and tried to save her - However, he could not and they both ended up dead The first World War made the world a more complicated place - - A world of optimism gave way to a world of cynicism Tutorial 1/26/2023 - Come with two website sources next week - https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/mao-zedong - https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mao-Zedong Random Wars (2/01/2023) - 1. The War of the Sicilian Vespers - Whole bunch of artistic portrayals about what happened - The French have conquered Sicily - The French would search the women for any stolen contraband - Eventually the people rebelled against the French - The Sicillians were outraged at 16 years of French occupation - The locals turned on the French occupational army and killed 4000 of them - The locals went on a rampage and killed anyone they could find that were French - Sicily at this time, because of its location, was very multicultural - The Sicilian people divised a plan to kill all of the French - - Use a word that only Italians can say However, the Sicilians knew not to kill all of the French - They allowed French officials that treated them well in the 16 years to go free - Sicily was called Chernakia - The French king lost Sicily because one soldier decided to be aggresive with the local population which ended 20 years later with the French being losers - Revolution before the ages of the revolutions - Most peasants would never rebel because they believed that the elites would crush them - - However, this was disproven by Sicily 2. The Horse Peoples - Not a war, rather a way of fighting war - Two particularly feared - The Huns - Probably originated from Kazahkstan - From 300 to 400 AD, the Huns terrorized Western Europe and fatally damaged the Roman empire - The Mongols - Between 1190 and 1258, the Mongols took control of most of central Asia - Came as far west as modern day Poland and Austro-Hungary - The Huns and the Mongols were basically illiterate - Because the Romans were terrified of the Huns, anything they wrote was not to be treated as objective - The only real information relating to the Huns comes from an archological record - From analysis of their bones, they discovered that the Huns would bound their children’s skulls to force the skull to grow in an egg shape - We know that they did not rely on technology - They didn’t know anything about modern siege weapons - Their horses were not beautifully groomed creatures - They rode Ponies that were small and scraggly but had enormous stamina - Hence why they were able to generate so much terror - They would pillage the people, slaughter the people, and then disappear - They would appear in an instant - They fundamentally changed how humans deal with war - They didn’t want to increase their population - They weren’t interested in farming - They weren’t interested in spreading culture - They seemed to have gone to war because they liked war - Defeating an enemy could net you whatever you wanted from them - They lived to kill and conquer other peoples - They appeared to be a people without pity - They were untroubled by any moral qualms about killing or fighting - Genghis Khan - Basically, when asked what the most important thing in life was, is that we should fight because it’s fun - When you’re faced with an enemy this ferocious, your only hope is to become ferocious yourself - The Horse People forced their enemies to enact in similar ways with no pity - Europeans have to learn their lesson 3. Megiddo - 1400 BCE - Thutmose III - One of the great warrior leaders of Egypt - He led 17 major campaigns, all of which were successful - When he was a child, Egypt was ruled by his stepmother, Hatshepsut - Very strategic, very intelligent, and very powerful - She built an army and city that was a good place to rule - Thutmose III very much followed her example - Early on in his rein, some of his princes thought that he was a bad leader - They rebelled in 1457 BCE and staged a battle at Megiddo - The rebels were terrified by Thutmose III and were besieged - Thutmose III could have killed them all in Megiddo - However, instead, he showed mercy and chose to spare everyone - Although he took the rebel’s children, he made sure they were well treated and returned quickly - Thutmose III made sure to clear up the riches quickly - Megiddo was the first recorded use of the composite bow - Far superior weapon - First battle in human history that was ever properly recorded - Thutmose was smart to run a state as well - He brought along accountants to record every minute detail of this campaign - 4. Site 117 - Jebel Sahaba - Broken weapons scattered around - Obviously, this had been the site of conflict - Likely that they were Nomads driven to confrontation due to climate change - Those who lived in Europe were forced to migrate to the south during the ice age - First act of warfare that we have evidence of The War in the Pacific (2/13/2023) - The Meiji Period - “When other use violence, we must be violent to” - Sino-Japanese War, 1894, 1895 - Russia, France, and Germany advise Japan to return the Liaodong Peninsula - - Dominated the rest of many Japanese lives - Japan was not strong enough - Not powerful enough to stand up to Western powers July 1894: Anglo-Japanese Commercial Treaty - Abolition of Extraterritoriality - 1897: tariff autonomy recognized by other Western powers - January 30 1902: The anglo-Japanese Alliance - - Each nation recognizes each other’s privileges in China - Britain recognizes Japan’s special interest in Korea - Agree to support each other in case of Russian attack Russo-Japanese War 1904 - 1905 - Japan crippled the Russian fleet with a surprise attack - Two days later, Japan declared war - Russia thought they would crush Japan - Yet, in the end, Japan fucked Russia - Sheer manpower against Russian machine guns - Despite horrific casualties, Japan won the war - 1 million Japan soldiers went to war - Fight for themselves and Japan - Japan was victorious - Japan is now an imperialist - The Treaty of Portsmouth (New Hamshire) - September 5, 1905 - Japan takes over Russia's lease over Liaodong - Japan gains sovereignty over half of Sakhalin - Russia recognizes Japan’s interest in Korea - Queen Min “Myongsong Hwanghu” - 1851 - 1895 - Wife of King Kojong: - - Assisnated by Japanese agents in Korea - Japanese force Korea to sign the Korean-Japanese protectorate - Korea was now pretty much a Japanese colony Versailles and the Nazis - The hundred years war had long periods without fighting but seen as one war - Same as the second world war, seen as one stretched out European civil war - The causes of the second world war can be found in the peace between 1919 and 1929 - - The bad peace The Treaty - The treaty of Versailles (AKA the Paris peace treaty) - The treaty was a bad piece of work that achieved none of the good that it intended to achieve - Needlessly punitive to the Germans - The democratic republic of Germany eventually fell into ruin - Opened the door into national socialism - The treaty of Versailles was so bad that the nazi’s were able to take over - Nothing wrong with the treaty itself - The great powers misused it - The Europeans wanted the Germans to pay for everything - The Americans did not want to participate at all - The Germans were in a difficult situation - France wanted to squeeze every last penny out of Germany - - No cutting a deal - Everything that Germany owed had to be paid Finally, the US was forced to give its opinion - If they had to choose, they liked the more lenient policy - Cut Germany a deal - The British and French wanted the US to cut them a deal as well - The Wehermarct introduced inflation - The problem was that the people who ran the Government were more idealistic than realistic - The inflation ran away - Currency became valueless - The destruction of the currency opens the doors to the Nazis - Article 231 - Germany was forced to accept more responsibility for the war - The great crime as far as the Nazis were concerned was that Germany was blamed for the war - The addition of causing changed the entire draft - Adding causing casted blame - Germany was now on the hook for paying everything that the allies had built leading up to the war - The addition of responsiblity - Financial responsibility - However, the Germans mistranslated and thus casted blame on the Germans - - “Guilty” The stab in the back theory - Germany did not suffer military defeat in the first world war - Instead, it had been betrayed by the German population (Socialists and Jews) - Collective Security - The enlightened part of the Treaty of Versailles was the creation of the League of Nations - Keep the world at peace - The great powers would act as a global police - - Restrain smaller powers - Restrain each other Inspired idea - Ahead of the game in 1919 - The Covernant of the League of Nations - Valued effort to ensure what had happened would never happen again - Emperor Hirohito - Benito Mussolini - Limited opportunities for his skillset before the first world war - Became a socialist because of this - At first he was against the Italians fighting the First World War - Then turned 180 degrees and thought it would be good for nationalism - He then started the Fascist party of Italy - Based around unemployed war veterans - They were told they would receive benefits from the government only to return and be degraded - Organized black shirts to beat the shit out of political opponents - He was led into the coalition because he would force himself in anyways - In 1922, the blackshirts marched on Rome in 1922 - He told the king that he was the only Italian strong enough to bring Italy out of chaos - - He immediately took apart the constitution - Il Duce - Supreme Leader - The king invited him to form a government - Democracy became irrelevant - Mussolini held power almost in an unlimited sense - MIGA (Make Italy Great Again) Revolutionary Nationalism Adolf Hitler - William Patrick Hitler fought in the second world war for the US Navy - Hitler disliked the Austro-Hungarian empire - Had a strong sense of German nationalism - Enlisted as soon as the first world war began - Served with great distinction - Preferred war to peace - His experience as a front solider was behind his belief that war was an overwhelmingly positive force - Always a good thing - Got into politics after the war - Joined the German Workers Party (Nazis) - Hitler admired Mussolini greatly - Copied Il Duce’s goon squads - - Terrorized his opponents Munich Beer Hall Putsch, November 1923 - Failed takeover of the Bavarian government - He was put in prison and wrote Mein Kampf - The only way he could seize power was through legality - By the early 30s, the NSADP was the second largest party in Germany - In the 1932 presidential elections, Hitler came second - - He was then offered the role of chancellor He followed Mussolinis’ path and turned Germany into a dictatorship - - - MGGA (Make Germany Great Again) - Germans are superior! DAS VOLK - The Folk (The People) - The state serves the people Der Fuhrer - - Held ultimate power Appeasement - Opposite of collective security - Instead of standing together to resist the dictators, world leaders chose to stand aside - The great powers gave away territory belonging to other people - Preserving the peace by making someone else suffer - Britain became the central diplomatic power - Most of the time appeasment made sense - However, in this case, appeasement made no sense - Mussolini wanted to rebuild the Roman empire - He wanted Abyssinia - Italy had attacked Abyssinia (Both league members) - No one stepped in to stop it - No one would do anything militarily to stop the invasion of Abyssinia - Soon the dictators realized they could expand unchallenged Lebensraum - The stronger will always expand at the expense of the weaker - The Nazis wanted to expand east - They viewed all of the territory of the Soviet Union as essentially Germany’s - The Germans regarded the people in the east as sub-human - Germanize as much as we can, and anyone we can’t, we liqudidate (MURDER) - Remilitarization of the Rhineland, March 1936 - Germany could not have military forces on the west bank of the line - - The European powers opted not to step in his way - France and Britain stepped outside Anschluss - Annexation of Austria - In March 1938, he took over Austria and added onto the Greater German Reich - The Sudetendland 1938 - In the summer of 1938, the Germans demanded the Czech government to give up the Sudetenland - The Czechs started to mobilize Munich 1938 - Neville Chamberlain - “Peace in our time” - Go ahead and take the Sudetenland, but don’t take anymore! - Hitler realized that if the allies weren’t going to stop them from taking the Sudetenland, he could probably take all of Czechslovakia - Prague 1939 - Britain made it clear that the Czech republic was the last straw - Any expansion into Poland, Greece, or Romania would result in the British army stepping in - Blitzkreig (Lightning War) - You put tanks and motorized infantry at the front - They rely on speed and ability to cover great distances at short times to catch the enemy off guard - Make it difficult for your enemies to track you - They based their doctrine on flexibility, not on the blitzkreig - Tanks were never designed to operate independently - Artillery and airpower mostly damaged Poland - The Polish Air Force put up a very stiff resistance, but flew worse planes and could not outmatch the Germans - - Mid-September, Russia invades Poland in the east - By the end of Septemeber, Hitler and Stalin had captured Poland Phony War / Sitzkreig - Nothing really happened - Hitler stopped invading nations until the spring of 1940 - 9th of April 1940 - Germany attacks Denmark - The Danish king knew his armies could not stop the Germans - Thus, he surrendered within 6 hours - Denmark was not hugely important to the Germans - What it was important to was Norway - Norway is critical to Germany because it gives naval bases that can be used to destroy British shipping - Norway also has iron ore - Norway refused to surrender, and it turned into a very difficult campaign for the German army - In June 1940, Norway surrendered - By then, the Germany navy lost so many ships that they chose to ignore the bases they had captured and turned to U-Boats - Having captured Norway, the Germans were forced to garrison it and secure it from attacks - Troops were forced to guard it and could have been use elsewhere - Neville Chamberlain - Did not do well as a war leader - His own party lost faith in his ability - Enter Winston Churchill - The one person who could combine allegiance from all parties of British parliament - An easterner in the Darnels campaign - A deeply flawed person - Egotisical, abrasive, nourished by scotch whiskey and cigars - Required no sleep - Seemed to be able to work 24 hours a day without losing effectiveness - A month after Norway, Hitler decided to move west - The French believed that Germany would invade - In the south, they built the maginot line - Hugely expensive, involved massive engineering projects and became a massive exercises - The bigger it got, the less they considered other possibilities - Waiting was not a good idea - Germany attacked the Netherland and Belgium, and they promptly surrendered - The plan for the Germans was to forget about Paris - Aim for the English channel - Within the 20th of May, Germany had gotten to the French coast - Push the defenders into a smaller pocket towards the channel - Force them to surrender or push them off the beaches - The French believed that they would lose, thus they chose not to fight rashly - Dunkirk - The 23rd of May - Hundreds of thousands of French, British, Belgian, and Dutch troops were forced into this pocket - German tanks could not drive into Dunkirk - It gave the allies time to arrange an evacuation from the ports on the Northern coast - From Dunkirk, 340000 soldiers were rescued - Around 500000 total rescued - Fully trained soldiers that could not be replaced - - Left behind many of their weapons On the 22nd of June, 1940, the French government surrenders - Hitler insists the documents be signed in Compiegne, as the armistice was signed there in 1919 - They must be signed in the same carriage - Hitler must sit where the French marshall sat - He then just left and got his staff to do the rest for him - Essentially saying that it wasn’t worth his time invading France - The Balkan Powder Keg - The Balkans could explode at any time - The Versailles treaty took apart the Austro-Hungarian empire - Did nothing to deal with the chronic political chaos of the region - Rules by corruption, incompetence, and idiocy - Greece had a king who was despised because he wasn’t actually Greek - - Bro was Danish Albania - Had five different governments - A strange hill tribe chiefton known as King Zog managed to achieve power in Albania - Very keen to spend the peoples money on himself and his family - Widely disliked because he had no interest in the Albanian people - Targeted by 55 assassination attempts - Was reported to be the heaviest smoker in the world (200 smokes a day) - A hive of corruption and stupdity Yugoslavia - Three kings from WWI to WWII - Had the same problem as the Austro-Hungarian empire - Whole bunch of ethnicities that did not want to be together - Didn’t get along before 1914 and didn’t get along in the 20s and 30s - Mussolini decides the Balkans are for him - He invades and captures Albania - Mussolini asks Hitler to invade Yugoslavia, but Hitler says no - Hitler is Malfoy, Mussolini is Goyle - HARRY POTTER - Mussolini then decides to invade Greece - He wants to build a new Roman empire - He decides not to tell Hitler and invades Greece on his own - Immediatly clear on the first day or two that his military gifts basically did not exist - He did not have enough troops to capture Greece - Badly underestimated Greek ability to defend itself - Greece came together and faced the Italians and Nazis with strength and dedication - They then threw the Italians out of the country and pushed into Albania - Mussolini has to go to Hitler and tell him that he fucked up again - Hitler now has to force the Germans armies to invade Yugoslavia and Greece to pull the Italians out - The German attack on Yugoslavia was remarkbly easy - The Yugoslavians could not come together and spent more time arguing than defending Germany - Germany took Yugoslavia in 12 days and lost 151 troops - Germany invading Greece was much harder - He had to take on Britain, India, the ANZACs, and the Greeks - The Germans were forced onto the island of Crete - Crete was defended under a mixed force led by a Kiwi named Bernard Freyberg - Wounded in battle on 21 separate occasions - Sought psychiatric help because he literally never experienced fear - They made the German armies pay dearly with their attempted takeover of Greece - Germany tried to attack Crete with paratroops - The Germans never launched another airborne operation after the Crete disaster - Eventaully the allies left Crete, but Germany was pulled into a massive battle for the Balkans that Hitler never wanted to involve himself in the first place - North Africa - Like the Balkans, Nazi Germany does not care about Africa - The Italians do have an interest in Africa - Mussolini’s first goal before Greece was to takeover the parts of Africa that the British and French had been controlling - North Africa was unusual because the big problems were logistical - How do you supply forces over great distance? - Not unlike an ocean - Difficult to navigate at the best of times - Became an old-fashioned war - The Long Range Desert Group - Mostly Kiwis - Do reconnisance missions deep behind enemy lines - They first used Canadian built Chevy trucks before switching to Willies Jeeps - They were like modern pirates - Their vehicles would be loaded with supplies, but the navigators could also find things along the way - They would return weeks later with intelligence and maybe a prisoner or two - Became the SAS/SBS The Italians want to takeover the British and French - British Somaliland - - Egypt - Libya - Continues for almost a year before the British decided to strike back - Push the Italians and keep pushing them - Kept attacking the Italians until they were forced to Cyrenaica Erwin Rommel was able to push into Africa to save the Italians - If the Germans don’t step in, the Italians lose - The Germans once again are forced into a campaign they have no interest in - - Soon, Rommel pushes the British back - Armies move back and fourth across the desert season after season - In most of North Africa, there was almost no civillian presence - As close as they get to empty space Occupation - Ayran - Misunderstanding - - - The best for the Nazis Slavs - We don’t like you - Lowest of the low according to the Nazis September 1st 1939, the Germans advance from the West into Poland - Russia invades a few months later and invades from the East - The territory that used to be Poland is going to be divided up by the victors - The Western part of Poland becomes a state of Germany (Wartherland) - The Eastern part of Poland simply become the Soviet Union (USSR) - The rest of Poland, including Warsaw and Krakow, becomes a non-state - Administered by the Nazis in Berline - No civil service - Poles have no role in running the government - Exists as a labour pool - The general governor was appointed by Berlin - His job was the eliminate Polish identity - Once the state was abolished, Polish citizenship disappeared - Poles were prevented from going to museums and art galleries - Prevent the locals from going to cultural institutions, thus you destroy their culture - The living conditions are exceptionally low, as the only reason the Poles still exist is at slave labour - The Nazis keep the transportation infrastructure around to move people around and provide labour to the reich - If you cannot provide aid to the reich, you are exterminated Once France fell, there essentially became two governments - Petain, who led the Vichy French - - De Gaulle, who led the Free French Government located in the UK - - - Puppet of the Nazis Leader of the real French people The south of France was unoccupied, but sympathetic to the Nazis - Vichy France - Only free according to what the Nazis wanted Vichy became a political football - A consequence of the shock of France losing the second world war - The shock of being defeated so easily by the Germans led to a psychic morale defeat - The Vichy French state that France had been betrayed by an alliance of Socialists, Communists, and Jews - - They become the scapegoats of the Vichy Regime The Vichy French are allowed to exist because they give the Nazis a seperate country - A police state - Collaboration State - Collaborators - People who supported the enemy - Collaboration was not as simple as it sounded - In every place the Nazis invaded they had to rely on some of the administration in the original regime - The occupiers always have to work with the functioning state that existed beforehand - - Either do what the Nazis wanted or face brutal punishment Make sure they do the minimum of what the Nazis wanted - But also make sure you please them enough to not murder you and your family - Lowest level comes down from sleeping with the enemy to running the trains - However, collaboration at the highest level was far worse - Some collaborators chose to support the Nazis as a way to profit themselves - - Became the pawns of the Nazis in many of these territories - Many are fascists or Nazi sympthasizers Vidkun Quisling - Traitor - Was a popular politician in Norway, but by the end of the 30s his popularity had plummeted - His overriding philosophies were racial purity - Wholeheartedly believed that they were at the top like where the Nazis put them - Staunch anti-communist - He offered his support for the Nazis in case of an invasion - Became president of Norway in 1942 - He did everything the Nazis wanted - He sent Jews to the concentration camps - He found men who would work as Nazis - He supported the Nazi police - Was executed by firing squad in October 1945 Anton Mussert - Netherlands - Hated communists - Racial purity - Interested in his own success/power - Became the public face of collaboration in the Netherlands - Was also executed after the war - The more they tried to engritiate themselves with the Nazis, the more the Nazis detested them - They did not trust them - Had the war gone on any longer, they would have likely been executed by the Nazis - Underground Armies (The Resistors) - Full on armies with uniforms and commanders and dedicated responsibilities - Exist often in the wilds of the occupied territories - In Yugoslavia, there were two separate underground armies - The Partisans - Led by Tito - Go on to rule postwar Yugoslavia - Around 800 000 by the end of the war - Mostly well trained and heavily armed - Dominated by Serbs - Believed in a Pluralistic Yugoslavia where different ethnicities were treated the same - Believed in communism Chetniks - Led by Mikailvitch - Loyalists - Wanted to return the Serbian king to power - Also Nationalists - - No multi-racial country - Serbians only - Tito would be one of their targets Both armies viewed women differently - The Partisans were open for women to join the army as a soldier - They should have the same role in serving a country as a man - Gender is irrelevant The Chetniks happily saw women in the places where women should be serving - For example, in hospitals - They had old fashioned views - Women don’t belong on the front lines - They often attacked partisan propaganda that valorized women - So opposed to each other that they spent as much time fighting each other as fighting the Nazis - - They all fight against each other Ultimately, Tito triumphed and ruled Yugoslavia until the 70s Polish home Army - May have had 500 000 members - For much of the war they engaged in sabatoge, intelligence gathering, assassinations, etc. - - Liberate Poland from the Nazis - The Warsaw uprising in 1944 Maquis - France - Less well organized or militarized - More controversial - They had become more powerful than the occupiers in some parts of France - Most people just wanted to survive - - Neither collaborators or resisters Labour - Slave labour - For the Nazis, reshaped occupied Europe meant utlity - Economic utlity - Everything benefited the German state - Local currencies were allowed to exist, but were meddled with so much that they became worthless - Hungary was one of the main suppliers of wheat in the 1930s - All the wheat that Hungary made was sent to the Nazis in the 30s - Whatever was left went back to the population - Manufactured goods are done the same way - People where first encouraged to volunteer in factories - Eventually, the Nazis rounded them up on the streets and sent them into factories - - Ballsen Cookies - Oops, we fucked up by telling everyone our forced labour wasn’t that bad - Went from forced labour to wanting to buy a sailboat Many German companies used slave labour - Audi, Siemens, VW, BMW, Bosch, etc. - Part of their success was illegitimate as it was based on the backs of the slaves - Lilka - Helena Chisisnka - Lived with her family in Warsaw - Father was a building engineer - Mother was a housewife - 14 when the Nazis invaded Poland - She was staying with her friends in the east part of Poland during the summer and returned on the last train - The German troops arrived and figured out what needed to be fixed to make the occupation run - Lilka and her friends were forced to fend for themselves - The Grey Ranks - Youth wing of the Polish Home Army - He brother became a gunrunner - She and her sisters became nurses - They would graffiti around - Her family was arrested - She was sent to Auschwitz, then on to several other camps where she worked as an architect - The emotion that laid with her for the rest of her life was thankfulness - - She was thankful for surviving the war Operation Barbarossa (3/06/2023) - Largest battle ever, largest casualties, largest campaign in human history, incredibly bitter and vicious - Generally some level of civility - Entirely absent from the eastern front - Race war - Usually applied to the pacific war (west against Japan) - Term applied equally well to the Eastern front between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Russians - Natural enemies for historical and ideological reasons - One ideology lives off the other - For national socialism to exist, communism must be destroyed and vice versa - Hitler and Stalin engineered a non-aggression pact - Stalin had some sort of brain disorder that caused him to be unusually cruel and evil - The non-aggression pact was announced in August 1939 - They agreed not to fight each other for ten years - Hitler told Stalin that they would be invading Poland and invited the Russians to join - Stalin began to think about his own defenses - Can we sustain an attack from the Nazis? - The Eastern part of Poland would work as a buffer zone against the Germans - Looked North to Finland - Use Finland as a defensive zone - Rather than take the country, Stalin only wants a few bases - In 1939, Stalin invades Finland - The Russians got fucked by the Winter War - Russian advance often turned into a series of long columns of vehicles - These advancing units were completely at the mercy of the Finnish soldiers - The Russians tried attacking across frozen lakes - The Fins then struck the frozen lakes and got the Russian vehicles stuck in the lakes - The Russians did not have adequate winter clothing - - - Many died from cold Fighting in the winter is different from fighting in the summer - Finland and Russia are winter countries - Russia was not prepared to fight in cold weather - The Russians became good at cold weather fighting - Stalin and his army took the right lesson from the Winter War The Germans took the wrong lesson from the Russians (thinking they were weak) - 1. Enemies - - 2. The Plan - Neither are committed to it - Which side would lose interest first - Both had intentions of ignoring it - By 1940, Hitler had already thought about breaking it to give its people more living space - Hitler does not want to invade the Balkans because of Russia, but Mussolini is a comedian - Named after Frederick Barbarossa - Two stage operation - In the first stage, the attacking troops would encircle and eliminate the Russians from the front - The Russians kept most of their troops on the front lines - The second stage saw the Germans invade as far as Moscow and the Casspian sea - The Germans thought it would take 8 - 12 weeks to capture the Russian territory - - Axis 3.5 million soldiers against 2.9 million Russians - 188 divisions against 166 divisions - 3350 tanks against 24 000 tanks - 720 artillery pieces - 600 000 vehicles - 625 000 horses - 2500 aircraft vs 12 000 aircraft Stalin had undertaken a purge of generals in the 30s - He replaced them with inexperienced or incompetent generals to replace those he had killed - The Russian railway was antiquated - The Soviet Union has a massive population, but has a military that is stuck in 1914 - 3. The Campaign - June 22, 1941 - At 3:00 AM, the Nazis invaded Russia - Pretty much everyone told Stalin that an invasion was coming (right down to the date and hour) - Stalin believed none of it - He thought he was safe (he wasn’t) - He moved most of his units to the front lines - Russian troops were not issued shovels to dig defensive lines - Russians had a significant number or artillery but not enough trucks to move them - In the first few hours, the German armoured divisions rolled through and hundreds of thousands were captured or killed in the first few weeks - In late 1941, the Germans pushed the Russians back into Moscow - However, as winter set in, the Russians realized they had learnt from the winter war and the Germans had not - Units from Eastern Siberia found it relatively warm and fought valiantly against the Germans - More able officers were being promoted - The Soviets were finally getting the numbers they needed on the battlefields - Women aren’t rare at all in the Soviet army (800 000 women) - Half the doctors and surgeons are also women - Thousands of women served in combat roles - Roza Shanina - Sniper - 59 confirmed kills - Mariya Dolina - Dive bomber pilot - Lydia Litvyak - - First woman fighter ace - MIA in 1943 Aleksandra Samusenko - Leading tank commander - Killed in Action in March 1945 - When the Bolsheviks came in, women were much closer to men in power - The Soviets would not turn women away from volunteering on the front lines - 4. The Blunders - The original plan was to throw everything towards Moscow - This would give the German army a chance to destroy them in the field - Best possible plan - Hitler disagrees, and decides they should venture across the whole front - Armoured divisions shall be taken away from the north and south - Ideological blunder - This was a war of annihilation - - The Russians must be exterminated The Germans found populations that were very sympathetic - Ukrainian Civilians welcomed the German invaders - The citizens had long struggled for independence - They were also victims of the Holodomor - To the Nazis, these people were worse than human - In the wake of the advancing armies came the killing squads - The Geneva Conventions of 1929 - Level of protection for civilians and POWs - Germany signed the convention, but Russia did not - Thus, the German army was told to ignore the laws in the east - Kill the Russian civilians - Their possessions were entirely unprotected and produced slaughter of unnecessary proportions - This would continue as long as the area was occupied by the Nazis Stalin made a bright decision by taking advantage of the political ideology of the Nazis - After the assault on the civilians by the Nazis, the people were taught about nationalism - For the Motherland! - FIGHT FOR MOTHER RUSSIA BLYAT!!! - Forget communism, forget our political ideology, fight for your country! - Now, ever single Russian would fight for farms, fields, and villages - They would fight as if Russia’s life depended on it - Even after the Russian armies fell on the front, they would continue to fight underground - 18 months in, 500 000 partisans operated under German lines - War without mercy - - Underground soldiers gave no mercy to the Nazis - - War in the Pacific Many were hung The Road to the Pacific (3/08/2023) - Japan slowly starts to embrace fascism - What is Fascism? - All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state - Everything is for the benefit of the state (fuck internationalism) - Said by Benito Mussolini - Why the State? - After the Bolshevik revolution, Petrograd had lost 72% of its population - Absolute power of the state - - Socialism and communism would not help Italy Violence and military for these ends November 14, 1930 - Assassination attempt of Japanese Prime Minister Hamaguchi Osachi - A coup by Japanese army generals - Response to the Washington and London conferences - The Japanese military and public condemed the conferences - Terrorism in Japan - May 15th incident (1932) - Attempted coup by young naval officers - Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi assassinated - February 26 Incident (1936) 1 - - Bring down the civil government and bring martial law December 1937 - Nanjing Massacre - 7 weeks of murder at the hands of the Japanese - The military is promoting this idea of pride and nationalism - Rejection of internationalism - Violence and military to make the state strong - The Marco Polo Bridge Incident (July 7, 1937) - Pretext of finding someone (but actually just wanted to invade China) - Increase influence around Beijing - The Japanese thought that they would capitulate - If we allow one more inch of our territory to be lost, we shall be guilty of an unpardonable crime against our race - The “China Incident” - Japan expects an easy victory - Expect a 3 month campaign using 3 divisions at a cost of 100 million yen which will have the Chinese asking for peace - Within 6 months, they sent 20 divisons at a cost of 2.5 billion yen - AKA Second Sino-Japanese War - - War of Resistance against Japan Japanese troops make their way to Shanghai and started killing indiscriminately - China garners support globally, and the Soviets send money and pilots - Japan argues that they are trying to create a new order in east Asia - Permanent stability for East Asia - Neigbourly amity and international justice - Joint defense against communism - Economic cooperation - Creation of a new culture - World Peace By 1940 - - - Japan needed living space We are like a great crowd of people packed into a small and narrow room, and there are only three doors through which we might escape, namely, emigration, advance into world markets, etc. - At the Paris Peace COnference, Japan proposes a racial equality clause for the charter of the League of Nations - No western nation would endorse the proposal - The second door of increasing our markets is being shut down by tariff barriers and the abrogation of commercial treaties - - Anti-Comintern Pact with Germany in 1936 - Joined with Italy in 1937 - Anti-Communist International - The Japanese worried the Soviets wanted territory back September 27, 1940: Tripartite Pact between Germany, Italy, and Japan - - Each of these countries acted in self interest - August 23, 1939: Germany and Russia nonaggression pact - 1941, Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact Japan cannot withdraw from China - Starve them into submission - French Indochina was still supplying China with supplies - Japan keeps up with this rhetoric to justify what they are doing - With the help of Japan, China, Manchuko, we can create world peace - We can help you Indonesians get rid of the Dutch! - The embargo fucks the Japanese - The Japanese claim they tried to appease the Americans but the Americans are unreasonable! - - Pearl Harbour Strategy: - Quick strike to cripple US navy fleet - Negotitate an armistice with the USA After WWI, Americans wanted to return to normal life and keep out of global wars - America First rally, early 1940s - US Keep out of Europe! - Attack on Pearl Harbour - The Japanese thought the bombing would discourage America, but instead, brought the US and its full industrial might into the war - Mobilizing Consent 3/13/2023 - In the second world war, governments are massively larger - Much more involved in peoples lives - They need to grow - More employees to work on campaigns of mobilizing consent - At the beginning of the war, 170 000 people were apart of the civil service - In 1945, 2.2 million people were part of the civil service (not including soldiers) - In the second world war, they have the staff, human resources, executive power, and unlimited financial resources to do this stuff - - PR campaigns of unprecedented size - Posters and propaganda - To embark on propaganda simply meant to spread an idea 1. Do your Bit - Do your bit and join the ATS (Auxiliary Territorial Service) - Army reserve for women - Little under 200 000 women by the end of the war - Queen Elizabeth the Second was a truck driver with the ATS - Volunteer for military service - Work on emotions - What are you fighting for - What are you fighting to protect? - Don’t tell them, show them! - Don’t tell them that we are fighting to protect our religion, show them how we are doing it - Don’t just tell them your protecting America, show them burning the constitution - You want to keep on having seaside picnics with your family, that’s why you’re joining the RAF - Sometimes you’re fighting for the homeland - “Let’s defend Moscow!” - Ultimately fighting for self defense - - Don’t let the Japanese come to Australia - Let them fight in the jungles of Borneo Another tactic is to focus on history - Put the war in the context of previous conflicts - You want to establish some sense of continuity - It creates comfort - This is nothing new, we survived and we will continue to survive - Americans versus those that defended the constitution in 1778 - Canada’s new army needs men like you! (On motorbikes comparing to horses) - Russian army has outlines of historical figures behind them on modern military vehicles - South African poster has 1841, 1899, and 1941 on it, comparing the second World War to the Boers war - The Nazis wanted to recruit people from occupied territory by showing that they were fighting for historical figures from the local area - Dutch Trader and Spice Wars against Nazi soldiers (Waffen SS) - Join the Waffen SS and you become a Nord Warrior in the modern century (Vikings) - The individuals held up in example are almost always physically attractive - Male or Female - Either we take the most attractive people, or a uniform turns you beautiful - Not just joining the army, joining a mens club - Masculine activity - When you were in school, it was a football or basketball team - - Now it’s a flight squadron You enlist and women will want you - If you enlist, you can create your own harem - Play on vanity Play on guilt - Admiral Doorman gave up so much and its your turn to follow - Less of a person if you don’t enlist Show them people who have enlisted and done great things in spite of their skin color - The uniform is a way to overcome racial disadvantage - Dorie Miller - If you’re a hispanic American, we will love you if you fight for us - All these nations come together to fight towards an ideal end - It was all a fiction - This ideal world is non existent - - Aruguably everyone knows this is fake Fighting the war on two fronts - On the battlefield and in the factory - Both targeted men and women - Less about her, replace what he did Buy War Bonds! - You buy them for a face value and then you turn them in for face value + accumulated interest - Fabulously successful - Much more successful then governments thought - Even if you can’t fight, you can pay - Donate to the red cross - Anything that could be saved should be recycled and used in weapons - Another way to get people to feel they had a role by donating rubber, paper, rags, old metal, etc. - - Grow your own food, forget about imports! - Eat better - All contributions to the war effort are equal - Unity and cooperation and pulling together 2. Loose Lips Might Sink Ships - Restricting behaviour - Don’t talk too much - Countries were full of spies, and anything you said could be passed on to the enemy - Careless talk costs lives - Don’t waste food! - - Food wasted is food that helps the enemy Don’t support the black market! - Don’t buy things illegally - Ensure equality - Rationing exists so that everyone has stuff to eat - Don’t drive alone, carpool - Do not engage in careless sexual conduct (STDs) - You will regret getting an STD because you did not exercise self control - - - Democracies produce people that are weak 3. Why we Fight - A series of seven information films - Making people understand why we fight was critical for understanding - What the enemy was really like - Fight for this non-specific image of living in Britain - This image is going to provoke an emotional response in people - Fighting against animals - The threat is that the women will be ravaged by an Asian or a Black - Nazi propaganda blamed everything against the Jews - Connecting the Jews with disease and factory owners Did all of this work? - Depend on how you define success - Most scholars will argue that propaganda magnifies that way of thinking - It does not plant ideas into your head - A poster will encourage you to continue your way of thinking Strategic Bombing (3/20/2023) - In the First World War, civilian deaths were about equal to military deaths - Bombing caused deep psychological effects, but not much physical damage - - Streets and offices would close early - Factories would shut - And people would either abstain from going to work or go home early By the 20s, the belief grew that the bomber would always get through - So potent that it would end the war as people knew it - Bombers are the new way of fighting - People believed that fleets would be useless and that airpower was far superior - Billy Mitchell - Naval officer that believed that bombers were far superior to the fleet - The Navy allowed him to bomb the Ostfriesland, curious as to what would happen - On the Fourth of July 1921, they began the demonstration - At 12:40 PM, the Ostfriesland sank - - 23 minutes after initial sinking The pilots never aimed at the ship, they aimed next to it to destroy its hull - Ariel bombardment would force any enemy to surrender - All through the 20s, these ideas keep on building - In the 1930s - Civil war broke out in Spain (1936) - Right versus Left - For Germany, Italy, and Russia, it was a way to test out weapons - - Especially airpower In April 1937, German units were sent to Guernica to bomb the city - - Caused massive destruction Shanghai 1937 In the second World War, civilian deaths were about twice as much as military deaths - Sea power in the pacific is only valuable for creating air power in the pacific (first carrier based ships) - Warsaw, 1939 - Rotterdam, 1940 - Baedeker Raids - The Blitz - Not economic nor military industry - Instead, we hit targets that are emotional (attacking a nation’s will to exist) - A series of raids on British cathedral cities (Coventry, 1940) The allies decide to retaliate - The Germans started it so why can’t we finish it? - In the first 18 months of the war, the British targeted military targets - Only one in ten bombers was able to come within 5 miles of their target - All they can do is fly over enemy territory at night and pray they hit something - The British decided that if that is all we can do, then that will be what we do! - Bombing Germany becomes a way to take some pressure off the Soviets - The Strategic Bombing Offensive - Starts in 1942 - Arthur Harris, head of the RAF Bomber Command - Believed that the bomber could win the war - Destroy military support, and more importantly, destroy civilian moral - Had research done at the beginning of the war - Interviewed survivors of the bombings in England - The single most damaging piece of moral is losing the place they live - Burning down your home was a morale killer - Area bombing was fine-tuned - The aim of area bombing was turned into “de-housing” - He was so single-minded that he only wanted his bombers to bomb cities and houses (people) - You need force (keep hitting the enemy night after night after night) - Make it extra big - Avro Lancaster, 1942 (22,000-pound bomb load) - - - The thousand plane bombing (Operation Millennium) - 1040 panes were sent over Koln in 1942 - Completely flattened the city - 45000 civilians rendered homeless The press nicknamed him Bomber Harris - - From shitty small planes like the Mosquito His own crew called him Butcher Harris Senior officers were allowed to speed around everywhere - Harris was pulled over by a constable and told to slow down before he killed someone - - “I kill thousands each night” Bomber command was soon able to scrap together 800 - 900 planes a night for any given operation - Consistency - You need to keep bombing - Night after night after night - Force + Consistency = Victory - Bombing becomes a science - Operation Gomorrah, Hamburg, July 1943 - Indicated how sophisticated this process had become - Send your pathfinders first - - Find the targets and mark them with flares - No bombs - The best pilots and bombers Once the pathfinders are done, you send in the high explosive bombers - Three jobs - Drop rubble on the street so that emergency services cannot get through - - Destroy exterior of building to reveal wood - Hit the water mains and gas liens Finally, you send in the incendiary bombers - They drop bombs to cause small fires across the city and eventually merge into bigger fires - So hot that the asphalt in streets would burn - Those taking shelter in bomb shelters died because all the oxygen was sucked out and burnt - Soon, the bombings are going day and night - Harris has a partner in the 8th American Air Force - Let’s bomb the Fritz together! - The British and Americans disagree on what to destroy - The Americans believe that the German war effort relies on ball bearings, oil, and gas reserves - The Americans embrace precision bombing - We can hit individual factories - We thus need to hit them during the day (caused massive casualties) - The Americans used the B-17 and B-24 - At the beginning of the war, they painted them olive drab but it simply did nothing but add weight - So they decided not to paint them and left them in “factory finish” - The Americans have much more crew members on board compared to the Lancasters used at night - American bombers carry 8000 pounds of bombs on a short range mission and 5000 pounds of bombs on a long range mission - With the arrival of the Americans, the allies can create the Force + Consistency = Victory formula - Once a day and once a night bombers were sent to bomb the shit out of Germany - They did indeed reshape Germany, just not in the way Hitler wanted - Was it Right? - Some believe the war could have ended early if they bombed factories instead of cities - What was morally right was not discussed during the war - We’re ok with seeing Nazi Germany bombed into the stone age - Did bombing work? - - If it did, it’s ok! - The allies really did not know how to support the Soviet Union Some of the key sectors in German industry expanded production - - Thus, bombing must have failed But how much German production would have occurred had the bombings been stopped? - In the moral argument, it is hard to separate any discussion from hindsight - There are all sorts of arguments as to why the allies won in 1945 - In the campaign in Northern Europe, the Germans had better generals and soldiers - However, the allies had endless industrial might - - Material advantages that could be used for their advantage Four of the five best tanks were German - Fifth was Russian (T-34) - But German tanks are hard to build - Meanwhile, Shermans were stupid easy to build and you could have 100 more waiting on the beach for you - Genocides (3/22/2023) - Genocide - The deliberate and systematic discrimination of an ethnic-national group - Coined by R. Lemkin (A Polish man) in 1944 - Derived from Greek and Latin - Geno, Greek, means - Cide, Latin, means killing - Can take place in either an international or civil war - Can also occur in peacetime - Cultural destruction does not count - Trying to eliminate a communities culture through arts and destruction of language is not genocide - Moving and spreading people around also does not count - Must be part of the four groups listed - Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group - Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part - - Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group - Forcibly transferring children to group of another Holocaust - The origin of the word is Greek (A Sacrifice by Fire) - The Nazis built extermination camps for Jews - Many Jewish communities prefer the word Shoah - - In Hebrew, means calamity - The entire destruction of a community - Shoah usually applies only to the Jewish population The Holocaust takes in all sorts of targets of the Nazis - - Magnified the controversy Is the Shoah a word that stands on its own, or is it just a part of the Holocaust? - The War on Jews - Rooted in the Nazi's understanding of race - SS Ahnenerbe - An organization of historians, archaeologists, cranks, and weirdos that were dedicated to finding the prehistory of the Germanic people - The premise is that the Ayran race managed to begin life on an arctic ice cap and eventually migrated south - They believed that Germanic tribes managed to start many advanced civilizations - Completely and totally fucked up - They believed they could find blond hair blue eyed people in Central Asia, the Middle East, and in other parts of Europe - An idea from Heinrich Himmler - Known for being dull and having no sense of humour - Took delight as a child to get other kids punished - Not exactly bright - However, he had a phenomenal memory and a great eye for detail - An embodiment of the banality of evil Arendt claimed that Eichmann was like Himmler, completely unimaginative and boring - However, he committed many atrocities - Arendt claimed that he was incapable of understanding emotion and being truly evil - Arendt was trying to argue that the Nazi regime as a whole was full of ordinary people - - Unremarkable - Not huge monsters - Not people burning with hate - Tend to be much more people who are small of mind Functionalists vs Intentionalists - Functionalist - Once you set the machine in operation, it essentially goes itself - Eichmann made sure the machine kept running Intentionalists - Argue that from the very beginning, the destruction of Jews was part of National Socialism - Do what Hitler wanted to do, not what he asked - If anyone can produce the piece of paper that ordered the death of Jews, he would pay a million dollars (Famous Historian) - Eichmann understood who Hitler was and needed to be acted upon - The Process - Not done by private thugs or street gangs, Hitler by 1939 had long since purged his movement of freelancers - Everything had to have the appearance of legality - The Nazis wanted to make sure that everything was done legally - April 1933, Nazi’s barred the use of Jewish businesses - It encouraged them to go farther after no one stood up for them - After this, the Nazis introduced more regulation on Jewish people - Eventually it was made illegal for Jews to work in businesses - In 1936, they lost the right to war - In 1938, Jewish men were required to add Israel to their middle names by law - Jewish women were required to change their first name to Sarah - Jewish assets were given away for extremely low prices to locals - If a Jewish family leaves, they are forfeiting all rights - Kristallnacht, 9 - 10 November 1938 - 8000 Jewish businesses destroyed - All synagogues wrecked - 30 000 people rounded up and sent to concentration camps - After all that, the Nazis felt regret as Kristallnacht made them look bad on the international stage - Also concerned about the amount of damage done - We should have taken the properties and sold them - Ah, easy answer, let’s force the Jews to pay it back - The Nazis fined the Jews 1 billion marks - Also, clean it up - The stripping of Jewish assets becomes compulsory - Introduction of the Ghetto - Controlled by the Nazis but interior leaders were Jewish - The Nazis began expelling Jews to Poland as a slave labour force - Ghettoization was only a phase - Wannsee Conference, January 1942 - The Final Solution - The Nazis admitted that their attempts to resettle jews had not worked out - Liquidate the Jews - Kill them all - Gas chambers or death squads or mobile killing vans or medical experimentation, whatever - Just kill them - Simply a tool to be used - The whole campaign of the Nazis were to turn people into things - Things could be eliminated Other Victims - Jehovah’s Witnesses were executed - - Don’t accept the authority of the state? Not needed, death Poles - Let’s kill the Polish and anyone that rebels against the working conditions die - - Roma - Gypsies - Enemy of the state, just like the Hews - First classed as habitual criminals - Threat to Ayran racial purity, so lets kill them The mentally and physically disabled - Aktion T4 - 60 000 marks over their life time if they are disabled - Is it worth it keeping them alive? - Just kill them - 5 000 disabled children were murdered - Extended to adults suffereing from Dementia, Schizophernia, and other psychological effects - - People who were not useful for the disabled - Eventually suspended after 80 - 90 000 killed - Started up again in 1942 (in secret) - Continued until the end of the war - Kill off the elderly - Kill bombing victims - 250 - 300 000 people killed under the T4 program - Not victims of Genocide Political Prisoners - The first inmates of concentration camps - Not victims of genocide - - Does not allow for people targeted for their political view Gays and Lesbians - Deviants - Assumed to be too weak to serve in the army - No children? No use to the Nazi republic - Not Genocide - Is the idea of a genocide useful or helpful, or whether it sets you up with a hierarchy? - Whether you’re up there or down there - Mass murder is bad - If you accept genocide as the UN accepts it, killing 100 000 socialists is not as bad as killing 100 000 Roma - Every individual is a victim in the same way Takagaki Lecture (Final) 3/23/2023 - Canadian troops defended Hong Kong from Japanese troops - Many Japanese soldiers prepared for their own deaths - Britain expected Japan to cross from the water and believed that the Japanese would not enter at night due to worse eye sight at night - At 3:00 PM Christmas day, the British surrendered to the Japanese (Indian, Canadian, and British forces) - They were not treated civilly - February 15, 1942: The British colony of Singapore falls to the Japanese - Churchill did not expect Japan to invade Singapore - It was believed to be impenetrable - However, the Japanese attacked overland and the British could not effectively defend as their guns pointed towards the sea - Malaya was badly defended - Inferior allied equipment and untrained pilots could not defend against Japanese equipment, such as the Mitsubishi Zero - - Reasons for early victories - Japan was able to neutralize or destroy US and British fleets - Coordination of Japanese forces - Allied defenders spread thin - Allies have no prospects of reinforcements - Allies unsupported by their colonial subjects These victories come to an end at the Battle of Midway, June 4, 1942 (6 months after Pearl Harbor) - Objectives of the Japanese: - Seize the midway atoll as a base for attack in Hawaii - Crush the United States as a strategic power in the Pacific - The Americans had broken the Japanese code (JN - 25) and knew about their intentions to invade Midway - Since early 1942, the Americans had decoded a code that claimed that the Japanese would be invading midway around the date listed - They Lost - Japanese were unable to seize midway - Ends Japanese supremacy at the sea - The Battle of Midway reverses all the advances the Japanese had been making in South East Asia and the Pacific - The Americans took back the lost islands using island hopping - Leapfrog across Central and South West Pacific, bypassing well defended islands - Allied forces land in the Phillipines by October 1944, taking it back - General Douglas MacArthur and Sergio Osmena are pictured wading onto the shore of the Phillipines on October 20, 1944 - Returning in triumph - MacArthur promised to return the Phillipines to power - This photo does not portray the Fillipino soldiers that died defending against the Japanese - Iwo Jima - Important as it could accommodate a runway, enabling American bombing raids in Japan - U.S Marines of the 28th Regiment of the Fifth Division raising the flag at Iwo Jima - Very iconic - The Iwo Jima photo helped fund war bonds and appeared on stamps and other trinkets - Kamikaze Pilots - Japanese pilots who carried out suicide missions at the end of the Pacific War - By 1943, Japanese Students are being called up to action - 1944, Japan lost its supremacy at sea - - Mostly a failure - By 1945, only 144 000 tons of iron ore reached Japan - Nearly no oil - Severe malnutrition - America starts bombing Japanese cities - Regular, conventional bombing - Incendiary bombs - Firebombing and firestorms - 8 million people lost their homes - Mass casualties Japan surrenders on September 2, 1945 (Unconditional Surrender) - The war with China - Japans economy could not compete with the United States - Atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Life behind the front line - 1. Life Goes On - You could buy a brand new house at Yonge and Eglinton for 3600 dollars - A new Oldsmobile sedan was 900 dollars - 33 cents would buy you a dozen eggs, a pound of beef, 6 pounds of onions or 8 pounds of flour - Currency Rules - Ritual to visit Florida in the winter (since 1920s) - However, during the war if you wanted to visit Florida you were limited to how much currency you could bring into the country - In 1942, luxury vehicle production stopped - Rationing also comes in in 1942 - Sugar, coffee, tea, and other things - Buy only the amount that was permitted - You got a number of rations and that was all - You could not trade or give away ration books - The government tried to keep all CAD was kept within the country - Even though fruit was plentiful in the United States, you could not get fruit from there - What ever resources are available aren’t wasted Fashion elements are outlawed - Can’t have cuffs on your pants - No flaps - No pleats - Wasted fabric - Can’t make suits with vests or double breasted pockets - Woman’s dresses could not have more than 9 buttons - Supplies of silk and nylon were virtually impossible to get during the war - Stockings were unobtainable - To fill the gap, one enterprising company sold stockings in a bottle - A colored chemical that you could rub on your legs that made it look like you had stockings on - Taxes come in - Before the war, one income two child family paid 80 dollars in tax - By the end of the war, you paid 800 dollars in tax - Spring Forward fall Back Shit (Daylights Saving) - Tickets for gasoline - For the average driver, you get 120 gallons of gas a year - 2000 mile limit Prohibition of people moving around - Accomodation limit - Illegal to move into cities like Toronto, Hamilton, Vancouver, and Ottawa - Kids were dragged into the war - Scrap metal drives and other materials that could be turned into military vehicles - Collecting pennies and nickels for other causes Key player was the federal government 2. Interventionist Government - Interference or intervention (depending on your opinion) - Mackenzie King calls a snap election in 1940 and is voted with a massive majority - Uses all of his legislation to contribute to the war effort - Brings back the war measures act from 1914 - You can come up with any policy or create any counsel without ever reaching the democratic people - 6500 orders of counsel - - Orders of law but not the same cheques moderating them One of the first orders was wage and price control - Inflation was a big problem in the First World War - At the start of the Second World War, cost of living rose 8% (massive) - So, King decided to act swiftly and introduced the Wartime Prices and Trade Board - A government body that policied all prices and wages across the country - Everything sold was subject to evaluation by the government - From boots to beer to baked beans to bakers, everything had a value put on it - The price you were charged could not go above the level - Everything had a price ceiling (you can go down but can’t go up) - An army of Canadian woman become inspectors - Write down how much the price ceilings are, and report the merchant breaking the price ceiling to the government - Over four and a half years, cost of living did not change in Canada - Being able to control inflation that easily is nearly impossible - This proves the value of Canadian intervention This is a good thing! - Worthwhile example of Government power! - More examples - Labour policy - We become an industrial power house because of our resources and manufacturing prowess - 40% of all aluminum come from Canadian smelters - 794 000 military vehicles - 605 000 tanks - 900 000 rifles - A shit ton of ships - 100 000 000 artillery shells - 16 000 aircraft - The countries GNP doubled in Canada over six years - By the end of the First World War, Canada was worse off - Voters are not going to accept being worse off after a six year war - The population is bigger, economy is bigger, and thus the problem is bigger - With the experience of the First World War in mind, Canada can get it right - Full employment (everyone has a job) - Because there is rationing and price controls, people tend to be saving more money (no luxury goods) - Not many people need social assistance or welfare - The government can start thinking about a comprehensive welfare program in the future - Economic prosperity - What’s going to happen to those making good money building aircraft and tanks? - What about the armed forces? - The federal government spends 70% on defense in 1944 - People are looking forward to a massive depression after the war - Everything is going to collapse We need to do something to cushion the blow! - Carefully introduce social welfare programs - Unemployment Insurance Act 1940 - Pay in a portion and get paid a portion when you lose your job - General Advisory Committee on Demobilization and Rehabilitation 1940 - - What we will do for those in uniform Committee on Reconstruction 1941 - Everything Canada needs to do to transition back to peace - The Marsh Report - April 1943 - Echoes what other countries are doing (holding up social security) as a symbol of what the allies are fighting for - A humane, progressive society takes care of it’s weakest citizens - If it does not, then it is not better than the fascist states in the east - You win peace with social welfare - Minimum standard of living - Insurance concept - Connection with charity - We don’t accept charity (sign of weakness and failure) - If you accept unemployment insurance though, then this isn’t charity! - National employment program - Everyone that needs a job has a job! - Identify social utilities (what communities need, schoolsm libraries, parks, etc.) - Increase the wealth of communities that the government funds anyways - Health Insurance - When a population is healthy, it benefits the entire country - A matter of public concern (everyone’s concern) - Reconstruction - Health and Welfare - Veterans Affairs - Federal Civil Service 46 000 (1939) > 116 000 (1945) - Before 1914, most people had nothing to do with government - Canada inherits big government - It’s good to be more involved in the lives of the people - Special war time conditions - - Most people are also quite happy for this to continue into the peace - Should be the norm 4. Planning the War - Wasn’t until 1918 that the allies achieved central planning - Entirely different in the second World War - Not on the axis side (do as the Nazis tell you to do) - One of the reasons why Japan lost the war in the Pacific was because they did not have very much meaningful partnership with the Nazis - Two weeks after the start of the war - Arcadia, Washington, DC, December 1941 - Roosevelt and Churchill meet - Combined chiefs of staff (single commander that is a British or American) - Deal with Germany than Japan - Each theatre is going to be the same - - - - - One person in charge - Strategic bombing offensive - Invade continental Europe in initially 1943 They meet again in Casablanca, Morocco, January 1943 - They agree to unconditional surrender - They surrender or we blow them back to stonehenge Trident, Washington, DC, May 1943 - The British and Americans want to invade Italy and France - Invade Italy first than France Quadrant, Quebec, August 1943 - King, Roosevelt, Churchill - Continue to build resources for the invasion of France Eureka, Tehran, Iran, November 1943 - Roosevelt, Stalin, Churchill - Squeeze Germany from both sides - - Russia is involved to rape the Germans - Strategic planning is arguably the most important element - Wars are won during planning, not on the battlefield 5. Fighting the War - They bicker over things although they are all committed to defeating the Nazis - Churchill gets tired of an offensive and brings in Harold Alexander and Bernard Montgomery in North Africa - They have broken the Nazi code in Northern Africa - They start the last push across the desert - Ronald, the German commander in the theatre, is pushed into the last few inches - He wishes to retreat, and asks Hitler to retreat, but is denied - - You fight until you die Operation Torch, November 1942 - Squeezing Nazi armies from both sides - Morroco, Algeria, and other African nations are controlled by the Vichy French - However, they know the war won’t go well for them so they don’t fight against the British - The German forces are eventually cornered in Tunisia and forced to surrender in May, 1943 - Tens of thousands could have made a difference in Europe but fell into allied hands - The British want to invade Sicily - The Americans agree, but think France is more important - The British see Sicily as a way to attack the Germans from another direction - The Americans finally agree only on the ground that they have limited objectives - Canadian/British soldiers arrive on the coast of Sicily - Lasted a little over a month - Much lower casualties than projected - The Sicilians and Italian troops defending the island had surrendered and were not willing to die for Hitler and El Duce - They don’t like Northerners like El Duce - The impact of the capture of Sicily was profound - Mussolini was forced from power and replaced by a military government that wanted to seek peace - The Nazis step in to fight the Allies - Italian topography is particicularly suited for defense - On the Fourth of June 1944, the city of Rome falls - This should have been an immense propaganda win - However, this was overshadowed by the 6th of June when the Allies invaded France (D-Day) - VE and VJ Day (4/03/2023) - The Atlantic Wall - Allies breached it on the Sixth of June 1944 - Long and extensive series of fortifications that the Nazis had constructed to maintain their possessions from attack - Everyone knew that Northwest Europe would be the scene of the invasion - Italy was never more than a sideshow - The Americans and most of the general public knew that Italy wasn’t as decisive as a campaign - The allied commanders had decided roughly where the invasion was going to occur - The timing was decided on a very specific requirement, and needed to wait for the manufacturing of specialized vehicles - LCVP (Landing Craft, Vehicles and Personnel) Higgins Boat - - 20 000 over the course of the war LST (Landing Ship Tank) - Bigger versions of the Higgins boat that could fit heavy vehicle (think tanks) - Everything depended on that manufacturing process - By late 1942, the target for May 1943 was too optimistic - May 1944 became the first point that these vehicles became sufficient enough for an invasion - The invasion required allied air support - - Anywhere they landed had to be within those circles of support Calais would be the closest, but also the heaviest fortified and was too obvious to attack - Normandy emerges as the most reasonable choice (beaches here are suitable for a landing) - Five beach operation, 8 infantry divisions total - Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, Sword - Amphibious landings are really difficult because the navy transports and the army attacks - They decided on unified command - Not one person that can decide between - In December 1943, Dwight Eisenhower becomes the commander of Northwest Europe - - He commands all allied troops until the end of the war - You have to have that unity of command Bernard Montgomery, George S. Patton - Brilliant, but egotistical - Also, potentially, mentally affected - Allow them to work together and be the superior generals they were - The Allies have overwhelming material superiority - No shortage of arms or ammunition whatsoever - Why the allies were better - 1. The allies and Nazi Germany have a different approach to technological innovation - They direct their brilliance to different things - The Germans devote their technological innovation to strategic weaponary - The V weapons (V1 and V2) - Two rockets meant to be used against Britian that used massive resources - V - Vergeltungswaffe - Not a great way to use your resources - It does punish the British population, but does not do anything for winning the war - The Allies innovate towards the battlefield - How do we do better on the battlefield? - Enormously successful - Mulberry - Artificial harbours that allow them to build ships - Far enough out for transport ships to transfer materials - You’ve essentially created a harbour - The supplies are taken across a long ramp way to the beach - This is what wins a campaign - Each of these harbours brings ashore 25 000 tons of vehicles every day - Also lot’s of supplies - Works remarkably well - Simple innovation that is created not to solve some strategic idea like punishing the population, but to address a simple problem (how do we supply the beaches) - 1942, the Canadian troops landed at Dieppe - Regarded as a training exercise to test some things out - Dieppe showed that allies were not using their technology for the best things - Between Dieppe and Normandy, the Allies started designing the Funnies (specialized tanks for certain scenarios) - Duplex Drive - - A tank that is also a boat Flail - You could clear your mines in the old way or you design a tank which has long steel balls around the end and you can clear a minefield in 5 minutes - Flying Dustbin - The Nazis loved concrete - Let’s build a tank with a massive gun that can blow up anything - For the purpose of destroying big heavy concrete emplacements, it works like a dream - Bobbin - If you’re facing difficult terrain to pass through, the last thing you want is to send out people in knee deep mud - The Bobbin lays out heavy canvas to allow infantry to walk up 500 yards or so - Flamethrower Tanks - Murder everything and everyone - Use your tanks to reduce the amount of work for infantry - Bridge Building Tanks - A tank hull that does not have a turret on it and has bridge sectors that can fold out - Drive your tank into the river and become the bridge - 30 minutes and you have a bridge Operation Fortitude - Keep the enemies guessing as to where it was going to happen - Force them to defend the entire coastline of France - Spread their resources thinly - 170 000 troops, 27 000 vehicles - The allies make dummy everything - Tanks, artillery, planes, kitchens, hospitals, etc. - Field after field were made with plywood and some where even balloons - If you fly over, they look real - Fortitude is very successful - The Germans were never really sure where the landings would occur - This forces the Germans to spread out their efforts - Largest amphibious invasion force in history - Involved 5 000 ships on the day Normandy, 6th June 1944 - This is a force you’ll see coming - The most successful was Juno from the Canadians (deepest penetration and light casualties) - The British were similar - The Americans were not so lucky - Overall first day success - It’s going to be very difficult for the Nazi’s to push them off the beach - Only forward to go a day after the campaign ended - Breaks down into a few basic stages - The Canadians and British held the beach - Eventually they link up with another landing in Southern France - The Battle of the Bulge - December 1944 - Last chance to achieve a decisive result for the Germans - Ultimately fails - The race for the Rhine Bridges - The Allies need to race towards the Rhine bridges lest the Germans destroy them all - The Allies luckily manage to secure the bridge at Remagen and arrive in Germany - The Allied forces are advancing from the West while the Russians invaded from the east - The campaign in the East was bitter hard slog of killing - Through a multitude of Eastern European nations - It took them a while to arrive in Germany - Warsaw Uprising, August - October 1944 - The people of Warsaw tried to liberate themselves from their occupiers - Largest military operation organized by an underground army - 50 000 Polish soldiers who were not very well armed against 25 000 German soldiers who were armed very well - The Polish Home Army and Polish government in exile did not want the same thing - Amongst the Poles, there were pro communist and anti communists - The defense of Poland was defended by many anti-communists - Russia comes five miles within Warsaw and waits - The Germans defeat the Polish Home Army and made them suffer - They executed civilians or sent them to Germany for death or captivity - The Warsaw Uprising was a great example of political ideology overtaking the needs on the ground - Another major issue was that the Nazis held millions of POWs - In March 1944, 76 airmen escaped from this concentration camp through an underground tunnel - At this time, millions of soldiers, airmen, and sailors made 76 airment irrelevant - Or did it? - The Nazis became infuriated - They believed that they were trying to start a revolution in the third Reich - Hitler overreacted and ordered that all recaptured escapees would be executed - Eventually persuaded that only 50 would be executed - What is the importance of these 50 guys? - This bothered the Nazis more than the holocaust - Splits the Nazi command between the military and home office and Hitler and the Police - Hermann Goering has the blood of virtually everybody on his hands - Responsible for millions of deaths in the most appalling fashion - He knew that killing 50 airmen bothered him the most - Of all of the crimes many Nazis perpetrated, the execution of 50 airmen would haunt them the most - Many on the opposition would drift to the dissonent camp and involved themselves in Operation Valkyrie, July 1944 - - Oppose Hitler The two sides meet at Torgau, 25 April, 1945 - The allies had decided to only accept unconditional surrender - On the 30th of April, 1945, Hitler shot himself in his bunker - Russian troops were within 1 kilometer of the bunker - By the end of the war, Berlin has fallen and history has been changed by doctoring photos - The last pocket of Nazi resistance gives up on the 11th of May - VE day was the 8th of May 1945 - Half of the industrial capacity of Japan was in small residential areas - If you wanted to attack industry, you had to attack cities as a whole - Percision bombing does not work, area bombing does - - Unimiganiable suffering on civilians - Movement of poplations trying to avoid the war The Nazis are moving tens of thousands of POWs to be used as bargaining chips - In the spring of 1945, the roads and railways of central Europe are clogged with people moving one way or another simply looking for safety - - They want to survive For displaced civilians, the suffereing they endure continues for months and years - 4/05/2023 - The Last Lecture - Germany and Japan were losers but within 20 years were able to become much stronger than the winners - As far as Germany was concerned, much of the reconstruction was provided by the victors - European recovery program - Marshall Plan - About 100 billion dollars in aid - Characterised by a certain amount of self-interest - - - Make Western Europe a better place to live than the communist bloc - Dreamt up by the United States of America - Promote world peace, general welfare, and national interest from the US - Really for the good of the US Japan had a similar program - Occupied after the war - Occupiers assisted with the reconstruction of the Japanese economy - Right down to the political structure in Japan - Everything was rebuilt in a better way following the war The people in Japan and Germany were due lots of credit as well - - Long term gain for a better nation down the line Winners: US, Soviet Union, UK, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, India - - The Soviets called it the Great Patriotic War - Many losses - Untold destruction of property - Deaths of 20 - 40 million Russians - Russia is a winner, but pays more in blood than other countries In the decades after the Second World War, considerable smugness about the peace - Truman was swept out of office - Even though they won the war, Americans didn’t care about the Democrats - - Winston Churchill - Pollers went to vote - He is beaten badly in 1945 - Sure you won the war for us, but we aren’t going to vote for you - We want something new Canada - Elections in June 1945 - The Liberals who ran the country since 1935 and particularly through the war won by nearly double - Again in ‘49 - Again in ‘53 - To win the war and to win the peace is a very hard achievement - Canadians felt that the right people were in the right place following the war - The Age of Consumerism - Have more - Have different stuff - Lots of pent up demand (depression and the war years) - We can spend our money on things we need and what we want to have - Shopping - Looking for things like convenience - Has to be new, no one cares about the environment - No one cares about the shortage of resources or the cost of the environment - Transistor radios, cellophane, aerosol cans, automatic washers and dryers, TV dinners, lawn mowers, portable BBQ, colored kleenex, electric can openers, portable electric typewriters, colored telephones, hairspray, remote controls, we want things to make life more easy and nicer - They see these things as improving the quality of life - Literally one of the victories of the war (one of our rewards) - Kleenex in 8 different colors! Yay! - Transforms the way we buy and transforms our expectations - We’re all used to all of the expedients that companies use to sell us things - A car dealer will throw in a free surplus war airplane - Couches are cents on the dime - Stripmalls emerge from the 1950s - - Before shopping was diffuse - Six different stores to get six different things - Now you buy everything from one place - If you get a stripmall, your community has arrived! - Park Royal Shopping Centre, Vancouver, 1950 Car ownership became a right for everyone, not a privilege for a few - Skyrocketed in the late 40s and early 50s - As many cars in houses as there were indoor plumbing - People in Toronto bought more Cadillacs than almost anywhere else in the world - 1 car to every 4.83 Canadians - Long before automobile safety was even active - The deathrate on highways was astonishing - Nearly twice as many Canadians were injured or killed in car accidents than it was in the war - Riskier to drive on the highway than to fight the Nazis - 75% of all roads were still dirt in Canada during the 50s - Yet we remained a culture that was obsessively connected to our cars - Not even the TTC could pry us out of our cars - I can drive from here to the corner store 400 meters down the road - The Suburb starts to come into space - Levittown, New York - Every house has a front lawn back lawn - Creates new industry - Ornamental shrubs (not a huge industry before ‘45) - Most people didn’t have a garden pre WWII - Shrub sales multiplied by 3 - Sales of outdoor BBQs increase by a factor of 100 - Agincourt, Ontario went from being a small farming community to a bustling town - - Explosion of development Milton Keynes, UK (a New Town) - A destination for people in Britain after the World War that offered everything cities couldn’t - The reward - Centrally planned towns - New towns were the future - For the first time people could aspire to own a new home as opposed to renting - - - This lifestyle becomes idealized and idolized - Embraced eagerly by millions of people around the world - Fosters conformity - Normalizes gender roles - Not particularly inclusive - That doesn’t stop people from aspiring this life style We won the war and look what it gave us! - 1945, Canada has the beginnings of the social welfare state - - In 1945, owning a home was regarded as success Best benefits for veterans in the world - The economy is booming - Job for anyone that wants to work - Immigrants are pouring into the country - This is a population that is satisfied with the way the war turned out Other parts of the world have less reason to feel quite so lucky - In Britain, the new towns are a bright spot that are overshadowed by much worse things - Much of the British innercity cannot be rebuilt - Even 15 years after the war ended, people are still living in house trailers after their homes were destroyed - Daily life in Britain is not quite what it was in other countries - The British Empire falls and becomes the British Commonwealth - The pressure for decolonization after the wars becomes intense - Britain fights and tries to hold on to it’s imperial possessions in places like Malaya - - It fails In France, something similar occurs - France fights against Aden and Algeria attempting to quell support and save their empire - It fails Both nations are slowly losing their grasp on Europe and the rest of the world - France and Britain become old-man European nations The Cold War - The Russians from the East and the rest of the nations from the West all meet in the middle - They decide how Europe is to be divided amongst the occupation zone - Europe becomes a divided continent - Really two ones, the communists and the western sphere of influence - Winston Churchill at Westminster College, Fulton, MO, March 1946 - - Gave the speech that many agree started the cold war - Comes up with the Iron Curtain - Police governments are prevailing and their is no democracy - The world divides into two counts Fairly clear examples of how the west and the communist block were going to arrange their standard of living - As liberal democracies experienced a higher standard of living, those in the Soviet bloc experienced a lower standard of living - In the west, rebuilding homes were done locally and cooperatively - It took time to rebuild your house, but it was rebuilt much better - - As a result, we value our homes more - It means more to us In the Soviet Union, we rebuilt home for you! - Everything looks the same - Commie Blocks babyyyyy - Massive blocks of badly built apartments sprawling across Eastern Europe - - Badly made and falling apart - People didn’t care about the properties they lived in - No real way to do things better Dresden, Germany - Many architectural gems were badly damaged or completely destroyed - The Soviet Union did not want to rebuild baroque master pieces, they wanted to build new ghastly cement blocks - They wanted the old buildings to be left in ruins - See what happens with fascism? - Dresden in 1988 still had many ruins - Didn’t fit with the politics of the government, so don’t rebuild anything - Abba - No easy ride in Norway as everyone knew she was the bastard child of a Norwegian soldier - Anything that you try to do normally has to climb over the collaborators - Made more difficult by the Nazi guilt in Germany - Is there something wrong with us Germans that we were taken in so easily by the Nazis? - Can we atone for our crimes? - The leading Nazis go on trial at Nuremberg - The Yasukuni Shrine - Japan denies much of what it did - Since 1945, Japan has dodged questions about the war crimes it commited - Germany and Japan are very different when it comes to war guilt - We cannot deal with our guilt versus IT NEVER HAPPENED WE WERE A VICTIM!!! - The war killed millions of people Exam Review 4/10/2023 - Do not make a vague answer - Avoid narrowness - think comparatively and draw connections between the various ats that have been covered in the course - Don’t worry about memorization - Take a broad look at things - Strong memory is not that impressive - Sample Question: “How has imperialism been shaped by war since the medieval era?” - Questions are all like this - Relatively short and straight-forward - We aren’t looking for a specific answer - We are looking for evidence to respond to one specific question - How should we do that? Think! - First five to ten minutes of the exam period, everyone should be thinking - Forget about writing - Run through stuff in your head before constructing an answer to a question - Jot down some ideas - Change the order - Once you have the structure set, start writing - First: Write down ideas - Anything that relates to answering this question - Even if it is stupid - Don’t need to write much, just a keyword or two - Don’t put them in any specific order, write them down as they occur to you - Put them under the four headings, 100 years war, Asian Wars, WWI, WWII - Think about any tutorial readings you can recall - Don’t necessarily need to use all the readings, but think about whether you can fit them in - What answer can I give to this question? - You probably don’t want to say it hasn’t, but if you can, good for you - Pick a number of different ways imperialism has shaped war - The great powers were forced to join wars and leave wars over time - War has forced the great powers to build empires but also taken down great empires - Look over your list of ideas and remove each one that does not fit - If you can’t remember which were the last British settlements after the Hundred Years War, you probably should not mention it - Cut back on ideas and readings you don’t need - You’ve created obvious sections from one to another - Given us reasons - You now have an answer instead of a collection of details - It is apparent when someone has been writing and thinking at the same time - Get all your information in the right order and then start to write Great powers become imperialists because they have to and stop becoming imperialists because they have to - Historically, Britain and France were closely connected - After 1066, England expanded its role in the continent - The rulers of England were very French in terms of ruling - Little distinction from England and France - The hundred years war changed that and made the English very different from the French - Being English significantly differed from being French Now you have enough context for how the hundred years war started the change of England - After the war, England loses its status as a continental power What now? - Splendid Isolation - - Separation from the continent - England has very different ideas and needs from the continent - It has to look somewhere else for its outlets of wealth and energy In the 19th century, as Britain is nearing its height, China is the dominant imperial power - The Europeans did whatever the Chinese wanted - China rejected English advances to the empire because there was nothing to offer - England does not take this rejection lying down - We need to get into this place even though we don’t like them - Let's use opium to build imperial trade - Great idea in principle - The Chinese resist and the English send in their navy to force their way into Asia - The English win the opium wars and the treaty that ends them gives imperial powers access to the Chinese markets - Linked it directly to the hundred years section, now link it to the FWW - By the beginning of the 20th century, the scramble for the world is occurring - Scramble of Africa - Primarily so other people can’t get them - Empires were important for generating status - Nobody wants to have the smallest empire - Once you have something you need to defend it - It’s embarrassing if you lose it - This takes us from imperialism to jingoism - You attack the British empire in the Pacific? You will be punished by the British empire as if you bombed London - By 1914, most great empires were so concerned with losing powers that they decided to go to war - War of empires but not really a war in empires - Only to defend status - None of these possessions are really important in a broad sense - Important because no one else enjoys them - The cost is massive debt - British empire still looks massive but the empire no longer provides the strength it used to provide for Britain - The German empire falls, the Ottoman Empire Falls, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire falls - Their possessions either fall into the hands of other imperial powers or become independent nations - The Russian empire collapses as well Set up a transition to WWII - The road to the second World War was punctuated by these imperial adventures - Abyssinia, Manchuria - In Japan, the idea emerged that if the west is building these empires, we can too! - Japanese empire building takes place at the end of WWI - We took some German empires, please give us our dues - The Japanese are not given the German colonies and playing along is not going to do it for them - We need to build it on our own way - Let’s turn on Manchuria and create Manchuko - Let’s turn on China and South Korea - Attempt conquest on all the big powers - Forced to be imperialists - No other choice but to take this route - Mussolini wants to rebuild the Roman Empire in the mediterranean - The Roman Empire goes North into Europe, but Hitler is there - He concedes and goes south in Africa (Abyssinia) - Take what he can get knowing that the League of Nations won’t react - The British empire saves Britain in 1940 - 1941 - The US comes in and demands decolonization as price of aid - The US needs the British to collapse their empires - Britain agrees to decolonize after the War - Affirmed after the war - Britain is on the winning side alongside France and Belgium - - They used to be imperial powers but they aren’t anymore - We can’t afford to keep our empires - Each of these sections has places where you can add detail - Most importantly, construct big arguments with good evidence - Squeeze in a few readings - Write it up nicely and that’s a good A+ Answer - The process of organizing it beforehand allows you to be concise
