25 February 2008
The Great War
Käthe Kollwitz, “The Grieving Parents”
Vladslo, West Flanders, Belgium (1925-1932).
Military Dead and Wounded in the War, 1914-1918
Germany
1,900,000
4,200,000
Russia
1,700,000
4,950,000
France
1,400,000
4,200,000
Austria-Hungary
1,200,000
3,620,000
Great Britain
900,000
1,600,000
Ottoman Empire
700,000
400,000
Italy
600,000
950,000
United States
100,000
205,000
British Military Cemetery
Ypres, Belgium
Military dead and wounded compared to total population in 1914
Germany
6,100,000
64,900,000
Russia
6,650,000
158,000,000
France
5,600,000
39,600,000
Austria-Hungary
4,820,000
51,400,000
Great Britain
2,500,000
45,400,000
Ottoman Empire
1,100,000
21,300,000
Italy
1,500,000
35,600.000
305,000
92,000,000
United States
German troops departing for the front, 1914;
on the side of the train, someone has written “Munich to Paris, via Metz”
Mobilizing the Colonies
Indian military deaths in First World War: 74,187
African Army and
Colonial Troops Day
poster
India Gate Memorial
New Delhi, India (Edwin Lutyens,
1921-1931)-names of dead and
missing inscribed on the walls
“Some Indian gentlemen coming to defeat the German barbarians”
Lusitania
(sunk by German
submarine, 1915)
Western
front, 19141918
Eastern Front
farthest German
advances, 1919
Italian
front,
1917-18
German
advances, Dec. 1917
fro
n
a
lk
Ba 5-18
191
nt,
Gallipoli
1915-16
The Western Front: 1914-1918
Paris
The Western Front: Devestation
Ypres, Belgium, 1919
Battles of Ypres
31 Oct.-22 Nov. 1914 Allied victory
22 Apr. 25 May 1915 German conquests
(first use of poison gas on western front)
21 July-6 Nov. 1917 (Battle of Passchndaele)
500,000 dead and wounded
I stood up and looked over the front of my hole. There was just a dreary
waste of mud and water, no relic of civilization, only shell holes…
And everywhere were bodies, English and German, in all stages
of decomposition. E.C. Vaughan, Some Desperate Glory, Officer’s Diary 1917
Western Front: Common Memories
We gingerly crossed the valley …
through a hail of bullets, hiding behind
the foliage of trees felled in the bombing,
and using their trunks as bridges. From
time to time one of us disappeared up to
his waist in the mud, and if our comrades
had not come to the rescue, by holding
out their rifle butts, we would certainly
have gone under. We ran along the rims
of the shell-holes as if we were on the
thin edge of a honeycomb. Traces of blood
on the surface of some heavy shell-holes
told us that several men had already been
swallowed up.
Ernst Jünger, Storms of Steel.
Paul Nash, The Void (1918)
The ground was not mud, not sloppy mud, but an octopus of sucking clay;
clay, 3, 4, 5 feet deep, relieved only by craters full of water. Men have
been known to drown in them. Many stuck in the mud and only got out
by leaving their waders, equipment, and in some cases their clothes…
Wilfred Owen, letter to his mother, 16 January 1917
The Home Front: Great War and Mass Culture
British recruiting poster
“Christmas in the Field! Give for
care packages for our warriors”
German poster (1914)
Bovril beef extract ad (1915)
The Home Front: Demonization and Domesticity
Death to the Monster!!
“I am a good war hen. I eat little
and produce a lot”
Paris Peace Conference, 1919 and Treaty of Versailles
Key terms of Treaty of Versailles (between Allied Powers and Germany)
Germany lost approx. 13% of European territory and all overseas colonies
Rhineland to be demilitarized; Saar coalfields yielded to France; AlsaceLorraine returned to France
German military limited to 100,000; no draft allowed
no submarines or weapon manufacture
Germany solely responsible for the war
Germany to pay reparations of
132 billion gold marks—equal to two
year’s of Gross National Product
before the war
Lloyd
Orlando Clemenceau Wilson
George
(Italy) (France)
(USA)
(UK)
Factors Contributing to the Outbreak of WWI: The Alliance System
1904 Entente Cordiale
between France and Great Britain
1892 Alliance of France
and Russia
Factors Contributing to the Outbreak of WWI :
The Second Industrial Revolution and the Arms Race
British military spending
1887 32,000,000 British pounds
1898 44,000,000
1913 77,000,000
German military spending
1890 31,000,000 British pounds
1900 40,000,000
1914 110,000,000
HMS Dreadnought (1906)
Krupps’ Steel and Ironworks, Essen, Germany
Factors Contributing to the Outbreak of WWI :
Romanticization of Violence and Crisis of Masculinity
We went up to the three snorting machines to caress their breasts.
I lay along mine like a corpse on its bier, but I suddenly revived
again beneath the steering wheel - a guillotine knife - which
threatened my stomach. A great sweep of madness brought us
sharply back to ourselves and drove us through the streets,
steep and deep, like dried up torrents. Here and there unhappy
lamps in the windows taught us to despise our mathematical eyes.
‘Smell,' I exclaimed, ‘smell is good enough for wild beasts!'
And we hunted like young lions…
Marinetti, The Futurist Manifesto (1909)
-he’s describing driving
Factors Contributing to the Outbreak of WWI :
A Teenager with a Gun
arrest of Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo