Chapter 28: The Beginning of the 20th century Crisis: War and
Revolution
 World War I was defining event of 20th c.
 “Great War”
The Road to World War I
 June 28, 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in
Sarajevo, Bosnia
Nationalism and Internal Dissent
 Nationalism: System of nation-states led to competition instead
of cooperation
o Not all ethnic groups had achieved the goal of
nationhood, causing increased tensions
 Alliances: Triple Alliance and Triple Entente
 Militarism: growth of large mass armies, increase in military
leaders as well as contingency plans for potential conflicts
 Expansion: (imperialism) rivalries over colonial and commercial
interests
 Diplomacy based on Brinkmanship
 Increased popularity of Socialism especially among the working
classes
Outbreak of War: Summer of 1914
 Rivalry between Austria-Hungary and Russia to dominate
states in southeastern Europe freeing themselves from
Ottoman Empire
 Serbia, supported by Russia, wanted to create a large,
independent Slavic state in the Balkans, Austria wanted to
prevent that.
 Archduke Franz Ferdinand and wife Sophie were assassinated
by 19 year old Gavrillo Princip, a member of the Serbian
nationalist group, The Black Hand.
 Austria was outraged and wanted to punish Serbia, Germany
backed its ally Austria and said they had full support (blank
check)
 Austria declared war on Serbia on July 28, and Russia said it
would support Serbia
o Russia mobilized against Austria and didn’t want to alter
original plans, so also mobilized against Germany, then
Germany declared war on Russia
 Germany instituted its Schlieffen Plan (for two front war against
Russia and France through Belgium. Germany declared war
on France (b/c they didn’t want to only mobilize against Russia)
 Great Britain then declared war on Germany
The War 1914-1915: Illusions and Stalemate
 Believed war would be over in a few weeks
 German advance halted at the First Battle of the Marne
o Trenches were dug, stalemate resulted
 Eastern Front, Russians were beat in Germany
 Italy switched alliances and joined the allies by attacking
Austria
 Russian casualties: 2.5 million killed, captured or wounded
 Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, attacked and eliminated Serbia
from the war
The War 1916-1917: The Great Slaughter
 Trench warfare, baffled military strategists
 Ineffectively sent masses of soldiers across “no man’s land”
against barbed wire and machine guns
 Introduction of poison gas
The Widening of the War
 New allies
 Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria joined the Central Powers
 Balkan Front, Allies’ Gallipoli Plan failed
 Italy joined the allies in exchange for the promise of Austrian
land
 Middle East: British officer, Lawrence of Arabia, encouraged
Arab princes to revolt against Ottoman Empire
 Japan seized a number German-held islands in the Pacific,
Australia took over German New Guinea
 United States joined: Sinking of Lusitania by German U-Boats,
US joined after Germany went back to unrestricted submarine
warfare
The Home Front: The Impact of Total War
 Use of conscription
 Police force to stifle internal dissent
o Ex: British Parliament passed Defense of the Realm Act
(DORA)-dissenters can be arrested as traitors
 Use of propaganda
 End of unemployment
 New roles for Women
o Equal pay measures
o Expected that Women would turn back over jobs when
men returned “till the khaki soldier boys come marching
back.”
o Women’s Suffrage in Germany, Austria, Britain
The Russian Revolution
 Russia was unprepared for total war of WWI
 Led by Tsar Nicholas II of the Romanov Family
 Tsar took personal charge of army
 Soldiers were ill-equipped for war
 Wife was Alexandra- born in Germany, raised in Great Britain,
seen as an outsider: their only son, Alexei was a hemophiliac,
influenced from Rasputin
 Rasputin: a self-proclaimed holy man, said you had to sin as
much as possible in order to reach salvation
o Rasputin was assassinated by members of Tsar’s family,
made a prophesy that Tsar’s entire family would die
 March 1917- strike led by working-class women over scarcity of
bread
o March8 10,000 Petrograd women demanded “Bread and
Peace” and “Down with Autocracy”
o March 12 Duma met and urged tsar to abdicate on March
15 (ides of March)
 Provisional Government- led by Alexander Kerensky:
continued Russian participation in WWI
 Soviets: workers organization and socialists
 Bolsheviks: small faction of Marxist Social Democrats led by
V.I. Lenin
o Exiled to Switzerland, helped by Germans in sealed
boxcar back into Russia
o Sought mass support
o Redistribution of land, end to war, “Peace, Land, Bread”,
“Worker Control of Production,” “All Power to the Soviets.”
 Leon Trotsky: revolutionary w/ Bolsheviks
 Coup D’Etat November 6-7 of Bolsheviks over the Provisional
Government
 March 3, 1918 Lenin signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk w/
Germany and gave up eastern Poland, Ukraine, Finland, and
the Baltic provinces
 Civil War
o Many people opposed the communists, including
thousands of Allied troops sent to different parts of Russia
o Red Army (Bolsheviks) vs. White armies (anti-communist)
End of War
 German leader Wilhelm II abdicated, Weimer Republic
established and Nov. 11, 1918 at 11 AM an armistice went into
effect.
The Peace Settlement
 27 victorious Allied nations met
 wanted “eternal peace”
 American President Woodrow Wilson outlined his “Fourteen
Points”- no secret diplomacy, reduction of armaments, selfdetermination, beginning of a League of Nations
 Other countries wanted revenge and to make Germany pay for
war
o Great Britain led by David Lloyd George wanted Germany
to pay
o Clemenceau from France wanted demilitarized Germany,
German reparations, and separate Rhineland
The Treaty of Versailles
 five separate peace treaties w/ defeated nations: Germany,
Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, Turkey
 Treaty w/ Germany very important
o War Guilt Clause (Article 231)
o Reparations to Allied govts.
o Reduce army and navy and eliminate air force
o Alsace and Lorraine back to France, parts of Prussia to
Poland, demilitarized zone
 New countries emerged from German/ Russian Empires and
Austro-Hungarian Empire and Ottoman Empire
o Finland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland,
Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary
o Problems of minorities in each of the eastern European
countries led to future problems
o Mandates after WWI in former Ottoman Empire
o France: Lebanon and Syria, Britain: Iraq and Palestine
(ignored self-determination)
o Issue of lack of enforcement of the peace agreement
 US Senate did not ratify the Treaty of Versailles
An Uncertain Peace: The Search for Security
 Conflicts over border regions
 France isolated after US and Britain withdrew their military
alliances
 $33 Billion in German reparations
o Germany refused first payment
o France occupied Ruhr valley and confiscated mines and
factories
o Germany printed more paper money
 August 1924: Dawes Plan- new international commission w/
new plan for reparations
o Reduced reparations
o $200 million loan for German recovery- new American
investment in Europe
 Kellogg-Briand Pact- signed by 63 nations, “renounced war as
an instrument of national policy”
The Great Depression
 Downturn in domestic economies
 International financial crisis created by the collapse of the
American stock market in 1929
 October 29,1929 crash of American Stock Market: American
investors pulled money out of Germany
 Reversal of traditional Gender roles, low-paying jobs for
women, while men remained unemployed
 Unemployed young men: some formed gangs
 Renewed interest in Marxism
 Also interest in communism and fascism
The Democratic States
 Wilson, WWI was fought to “make the world safe for
democracy”
 Increase in women’s suffrage
 John Maynard Keynes wrote General Theory of Employment,
Interest, and Money in which he said that unemployment
stemmed from a decline in demand and demand could be
increased by public works, financed if necessary, through
defecit spending to stimulate production.
 France- Popular Front was a coalition of leftist partiesCommunists, Socialists, and Radicals
 Weimer Republic in Germany: struggled to gain popular support
and faced serious economic problems, runaway inflation
 United States: election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: New
Deal: National Recovery Administration (NRA): required govt.,
labor, and industrial leaders to work out regulations for each
industry: Second New Deal- Works Progress Administration
(WPA)- 1935- employed 2-3 million people who built bridges,
roads, post offices, and airports, Social Security Act, and Labor
Unions: World War II ultimately ended massive unemployment
for US
Socialism in USSR
 Lenin introduced the New Economic Policy (NEP) which was a
modified version of the old capitalist system “Two steps
backward to go one step forward”
 Alexandra Kollontai led a Bolshevik program for women’s rights
 Lenin’s death in 1924 set off a struggle amongst the seven
members of the Politburo
o The Left headed by Leon Trotsky wanted to end the NEP
and launch Russia on the path of rapid industrialization
(even at expense of the peasantry), carry on the
revolution and spread communism abroad
o The Right rejected the cause of world revolution and
wanted to concentrate on constructing a social state in
Russia. Continue the NEP
o Personal rivalry between Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalineventually Stalin rose from party secretary to take power.
Trotsky was expelled, fled to Mexico, was executed five
years later by someone secretly working for Stalin w/ an
ice-pick
Search for a new Reality
 WWI brought mass disillusionment/ despair
 New image for women
Nightmares and New Visions: Art
 Dadaism: show the purposelessness of life
o Tristan Tzara
o Create anti-Art
o Hannah Hoch: women’s roles in new mass culture
 Surrealism: sought a reality beyond the material, sensible world
and found it in the world of the unconscious
o Employ logic to portray the illogical
o Salvadore Dali: the Persistence of Memory
 Functionalism in modern architecture; Bauhaus school of art
Search for Unconscious
 “stream of consciousness” technique
 James Joyce: Ulysses
 Hermann Hesse: Steppenworlf, Demian, Siddhartha