The Great Break: War and Revolution
1. The First World War
1. The Bismarckian System of Alliances
1. After the Franco-Prussian war and the founding of the German Empire in
1871, France was forced to pay a large war indemnity and give up AlsaceLorraine and from 1862 to 1871, Bismarck had made Prussia-Germany the
most powerful nation
2. Bismarck’s first concern was to keep an embittered France diplomatically
isolated and without military allies; his second concern was the threat to
peace posed by the east, by Austria-Hungary and from Russia (systems of
alliances)
3. Bismarck’s solution was a system of alliances to restrain Russia and
Austria-Hungary
1. The first step was the creation in 1873 of the conservative Three
Emperors’ League, which linked the monarchs of AustriaHungary, Germany, and Russia in an alliance against radical
movements
2. At the Congress of Berlin in 1878, he saw that Austria obtained the
right to “occupy and administer” the Ottoman provinces of Bosnia
and Herzegovina to counterbalance Russia and Balkan states were
carved from the Ottoman Empire
3. Bismarck’s balancing efforts at the congress infuriated Russian
nationalists and led Bismarck to conclude a defensive military
alliance with Austria against Russia in 1879; Italy joined Germany
and Austria in 1882 (forming the Triple Alliance)
4. In 1881, Bismarck cajoled Austria-Hungary and Russia into a secret
alliance with Germany (Alliance of Three Emperors lasted until 1887) and
established the principle of cooperation among all three powers in any
further division of the Ottoman Empire
5. In 1887 Russia declined to renew the Alliance of the Three Emperors
because of the new tensions in the Balkans and Bismarck substituted the
Russian-German Reinsurance Treaty which promised neutrality if the
other was attacked
2. The Rival Blocs
1. In 1890, the emperor William II dismissed Bismarck and then refused to
renew the Russian0German Reinsurance Treaty and this departure in
foreign affairs prompted long-isolated republican France to court
absolutist Russia, offering loans, and arms
2. In 1894, France and Russia became military allies after earlier agreements
in 1891
1. This alliance was to remain in effect as long as the Triple Alliance
existed
2. As a result, continental Europe was dangerously divided into two
rival blocs
3. Great Britain’s foreign policy became increasingly crucial as the British
held no permanent alliances, Britain after 189a was the uncommitted
Great Power
1. Britain, with a cast and expanding empire, Britain was often in
serious conflict with the countries such as France and Russia
around the world
2. Britain found German Emperor William II’s pursuit of greater
world power after 1987 disquieting, but people believed that their
leaders would form an alliance
3. Relations turned to a bitter Anglo-German rivalry soon after the
19th century
4. Several reasons for this development was commercial rivalry in world
markets increasing sharply in the 1890s and Germany’s decision in 1900
to expand greatly its battle fleet posed a challenge to Britain’s longstanding naval supremacy
1. This coincided with the Boer War between the British and the tiny
Dutch republics of South Africa (political leaders saw Britain was
overextended)
2. Many nations denounced this latest manifestation of British
imperialism
3. British leaders set about supporting their positions with alliances
and agreements
5. Britain improved its relations with the United States and in 1902
concluded a formal alliance with Japan, responded favorably to the
advances of France’s skillful foreign minister, Theophile Delcasse, who
wanted better relations with Britain and was willing to accept British rule
in Egypt in return for helping the French in Morocco
6. The resulting Anglo-French Entente of 1904 settled all outstanding
colonial disputes
7. Frustrated by Britain’s turn toward France in 1904 and wanting a
diplomatic victory to gain popularity, Germany’s leaders decided to test
the strength of the entente
1. Germany first threatened and bullied France into dismissing
Delcasse and rather then accept the territorial payoff of imperial
competition in return for French primacy in Morocco, the Germans
insisted on a international conference in 1905
2. Germany’s crude bullying forced France and Britain closer
together and Germany left the resulting Algecrias Conference of
1906 (about Morocco) empty-handed
3. Britain France, Russia, and even the United States began to see
Germany as a potential threat, a would-be intimidator that might
seek to dominate all Europe
4. German leaders began to see sinister plots to “encircle” Germany
and block its development as a world power and in 1907 Russia
agreed to settle its quarrels with Great Britain in central Asia with
a special Anglo-Russian Agreement
8. Germany’s decision to add an expensive fleet of big-gun battleships to its
expanding navy heightened tensions after 1907 and German nationalists,
led by Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, saw a large navy as a mark of great
world power and a source of unity
9. But British leaders such as Lloyd George saw it as a detestable military
challenge and economic rivalry also contributed to distrust and hostility
between the two nations
10. Proud nationalists in both countries admired and feared the power and
accomplishments of their nearly equal rival and the leading nations of
Europe were divided into two hostile blocs, both ill-prepared to deal with
upheaval in southeast
3. The Outbreak of War
1. War in the Balkans was inevitable as nationalism was destroying the
Ottoman Empire and threatening to break up the Austro-Hungarian
Empire (Greece began nationalism)
2. In 1875 widespread nationalist rebellion in the Ottoman Empire had
resulted in Turkish repression, Russian intervention, and Great Power
tensions and Bismarck had helped resolved this crisis at the 1878
Congress of Berlin (division of Turkish land)
3. After 1878 imperialism diverted attention away from the southeastern
Europe but by 1903, Balkan nationalism was on the rise again while
Serbia led the way, becoming openly hostile toward both Austria-Hungary
and the Ottoman Empire
1. The Serbs, a Slavic people, looked to Slavic Russia for support of
their national aspirations and to block Serbian expansion and to
take advantage of Russia’s weakness after the revolution of 1905,
Austria in 1908 annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, along with their
large Serbian, Croatian, and Muslim populations
2. In 1912, in the First Balkan war, Serbia turned southward and with
Greece and Bulgaria took Macedonia and then quarreled with
Bulgaria over the spoils of victory—a dispute that led in 1913 to
the Second Balkan War
3. Austria intervened in 1913 and forced Serbia to give up Albania
and nationalism had finally destroyed the Ottoman Empire (elated
the Balkan nationalists)
4. Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian and Hungarian
thrones, and his wife, Sophie, were assassinated by Bosnian
revolutionaries on June 28, 1914
5. This was during a visit to the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo and the
assassins were closely connected to the ultranationalists Serbian
society The Black Hand
4. The leaders of Austria-Hungary concluded that Serbia had to be severely
punished and on July 23, Austria-Hungary presented Serbia with an
unconditional ultimatum
5. The Serbian government had just two days to agree to cease all subversion
in Austria and all anti-Austrian propaganda in Serbia and an investigation
of all aspects of the assassination was to be undertaken in Serbia
(amounted to control of Serbian state)
6. When Serbia replied moderately but evasively, Austria began to mobilize
and then declared war on Serbia on July 28 (chose war to stop the spread
of nationalism)
7. Germany’s unconditional support was important as Emperor William II
and his chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg urged aggressive
measures in early July
8. Germany realized that war between Austria and Russia was the most
probable result as Russia as itself as the protector and as eventual liberator
of southern Slavs
9. The diplomatic situation was already out of control (military plans dictated
policy)
1. Russia would require much longer to mobilize its armies than
Germany and Austria-Hungary and on July 28 as Austrian armies
bombarded Belgrade, tsar Nicholas II ordered a partial
mobilization against Austria-Hungary
2. Russian general staff had assumed a war with both Austria and
Germany and on July 29, Russia ordered full mobilization and in
effect declared general war
10. The German staff’s plan for war—the Schlieffen plan, the work of Count
Alfred von Schlieffen, chief of the German general staff, called for
knocking out France with a lightning attack through neutral Belgium
before turning to Russia
11. On August 2, 1914, General Helmuth con Moltke, demanded that Belgium
permit German armies to pass through its territory but Belgium whose
neutrality had been guaranteed in 1839, refused and Germany attacked on
August 3; Great Britain joined France and declared war on Germany the
following day; World War I had begun
4. Reflections on the Origins of the War
1. Austria-Hungary deliberately started the Third Balkan war and a war for
the right to survive was Austria-Hungary’s desperate response to
aggressive revolutionary drive of Serbian nationalists to unify their people
in a single state
2. Germany not only pushed and goaded Austria-Hungary but was also
responsible for turning a little war into the Great War by means of attack
on Belgium and France
3. German leaders lost control of the international system after Bismarck’s
resignation and felt that Germany status as a world power was declining
unlike the rest of Europe
4. The Triple Entente—Great Britain, France, and Russia—were checking
Germany’s aspirations to strange Austria-Hungary, Germany’s only real
ally (failure of leaders)
5. Other historians say domestic conflicts and social tensions lay at the root
of Germany increasingly belligerent foreign policy from the late 1890s
onward; the German classes were willing to gamble on diplomatic victory
and even on war as the means of rallying its masses to its side and
preserving its privileged position
6. Stimulating debate over social tensions and domestic political factors
suggests the triumph of nationalism was a crucial underlying precondition
of the Great War
7. The international bankers and socialists were frightened by the prospect of
war
8. In each country the great majority of the population enthusiastically
embraced the outbreak of war in August 1914 (patriotic nationalism
brought unity in the short run)
5. The First Battle of the Marne
1. When Germans invaded Belgium in 1914, everyone believed the war
would be short and the Belgian army defended its homeland and feel back
in good order to join a rapidly landed British army corps near the FrancoBelgian border (complicated plan)
2. Under leadership of General Joseph Joffre, the French attacked a gap in
the German line at the Battle of the Marne on September 6 and for three
days, France threw everything into the attack and finally the Germans fell
back and France was saved
6. Stalemate and Slaughter
1. The attempts of the French and British armies to turn the German retreat
into a rout were unsuccessful and both sides began to dig trenches to
protect themselves from machine gun fire; by November, trenches
extended from Belgian to the Swiss frontier
2. In the face of this unexpected stalemate, slaughter on the western front
began in earnest and defended on both sides dug in behind rows of
trenches and barbed wire
3. The massive French and British offensives during 1915 never gained more
than 3 miles of blood-soaked earth from the enemy (Battle of the Somme,
German campaign against Verdun, French attack at Champagne, British
attack at Passchendaele)
4. War of the trenches shattered an entire generation of young men and while
young soldier went to war believing in the world of their leaders and
elders, the pre-1914 world of order, progress, and patriotism, millions of
men died on the western front
5. Gap formed between veterans and civilians making postwar reconstruction
difficult
7. The Widening War
1. Badly damaged by the Germans under Generals Paul von Hindenburg and
Erich Ludendorff at the Battles of Tanenberg and the Masurian Lakes in
1914, Russia never threatened Germany again and on the Austrian front,
armies suffered enormous losses
1. Serbian peasant armies held off the Austro-Hungarian armies twice
but with help of German forces, they reversed Russian advances
and forced the Russians to retreat into their territory in the eastern
campaign of 1915 (2.5 million lost)
2. Changing tides of victory and defeat brought neutral countries into
the war
3. Italy, a member of the Triple Alliance had declared its neutrality in
1914 on the grounds that Austria had launched a war of aggression
and then in May 1915, Italy joined the Triple Entente in return for
promises of Austrian territory; Bulgaria allied with Austria and
Germany (Central Powers) to battle Serbia
2. The entry of Italy and Bulgaria in 1915 was part of the general widening
of the war
1. The Balkans came to be occupied by the Central Powers and the
British forces were badly defeated in 1915 trying to take the
Dardanelles from Turkey, ally of Germany (more successful in
inciting Arab nationalists against Turkish lords)
2. Lawrence of Arabia aroused the Arab princes to revolt in early
1917 and in 1918 British armies from Egypt smashed the Ottoman
Empire once and for all; British had drawn forces from Australia,
New Zealand, and India
3. War extended around the globe as Great Britain, France, and Japan
seized Germany’s colonies (United States declared war on
Germany in April 1917)
3. American intervention grew out of war at sea, sympathy for the Triple
Entente, and increasing desperation of total war; Britain and France had
established a total naval blockade to strangle the Central Powers and
although the blockade annoyed Americans, profits from selling war
supplies to countries blunted indignation
4. In early 1915 Germany launched a counter-blockade using the
murderously effective submarine, a new weapon that violated traditional
niceties of fair warning under international law (German submarines
began sinking British ships in war zone)
5. In 1917, Germany after being forced to relax submarine warfare to prevent
the United States from entering, resumed unrestricted submarine warfare
6. British shipping losses reached staggering proportions and by late 1917,
naval strategists had come up with an effective response: the convoy
system for safe transatlantic shipping; United States entered the war
almost three years after its start
2. The Home Front
1. Mobilizing for Total War
1. In every country the masses believed that their nation was in the right and
defending itself from aggression; even socialists supported the war; in
Germany the trade unions voted not to strike and socialist in Reichstag
voted money for war (counter Russia)
2. By mid-October generals and politicians had begun to realize that more
than patriotism would be needed to win the war, whose end was not in
sight
3. Every country experience a relentless, desperate demand for men and
weapons; countries faced countless shortages, for prewar Europe had
depended on foreign trade and a great international division of labor
(organization and economic life changed)
4. In each country a government of national unity began to plan and control
economic and social life in order to wage “total war” (free-market
capitalism was abandoned)
1. Government planning boards established priorities and decided
what was to be produced and consumed; rationing, price, and wage
controls, and even restrictions on workers’ freedom of movement
were imposed by the government
2. The planned economy of total war released the tremendous
energies but total war was based on productive industrial
economies not confined to a single nation
3. The war was a war of whole peoples and entire populations
4. The ability of governments to manage and control highly
complicated economies strengthened the cause of socialism
(became a realistic economic blueprint)
5. Germany went the furthest in developing a planned economy to wage total
war
1. Walter Rathenau, the Jewish industrialist convinced the
government to set up the War Raw Materials Board to ration and
distribute raw materials
2. The board launched successful attempts to produce substitutes,
such as synthetic nitrates which was used to make explosives
(highly important and useful)
3. Food was rationed in accordance with physical need and men and
women doing hard manual work were given extra rations while
only few received milk rations
6. Following the battles of Verdun and Somme in 1916, Chancellor
Bethmann-Hollweg was driven from office in 1917 by military leaders
Hindenburg and Ludendorff, who became the real rulers of Germany;
decreed the ultimate mobilization for total war
7. In December 1916, military leaders rammed through the Reichstag the
Auxiliary Service Law, which required all males between seventeen and
sixty to work only at jobs considered critical to the war effort (many
women were working in factories already and children were organized by
their teachers into garbage brigades)
8. In Germany, total war led to the establishment of history’s first
“totalitarian” society and war production increase while some people
starved to death
9. In Great Britain, a shortage of shells led to the establishment of the
Ministry of Munitions under David Lloyd George which organized private
industry to produce for the war, controlled profits, allocated labor, fixed
wages, and settled labor disputes
10. More than 90 percent of all imports were bought and allocated directly by
the state
2. The Social Impact
1. Millions of men at the front and the insatiable needs of the military created
a tremendous demand for works and demand for labor brought about
changes
1. Having proved their loyalty in August 1914, labor unions became a
partner of government and private industry in the planned war
economy; unions cooperated with war governments on work rules,
wages, and production schedules in return for real participation and
important decisions (paralleled entry of socialist leaders)
2. In every country, large numbers of women left home and domestic
service to work in industry, transportation and offices and women
became highly visible
3. Government pressure and the principle of equal pay for equal work
overcame objections as the war expanded the range of a woman
and as a result of the women’s war effort, Britain, Germany, and
Austria granted suffrage after the war
2. War also promoted greater social equality, blurring class distinctions and
lessening the gap between the rich and the poor (Great Britain was the
prime example as bottom third of population lived better than they had
ever had; labor shortage)
3. Death had no respect for traditional social distinctions and it decimated the
young aristocratic officers who led the charge and feel heavily on the mass
of drafted peasants and unskilled workers who followed but death often
spared the aristocrats of labor, the skilled works and the foremen (need to
train the unskilled workers)
3. Growing Political Tensions
1. During the first two years of war, most soldiers and civilians supported
governments; belief in just cause, patriotic nationalism, the planned
economy, and a shared burdens united peoples behind their various
national leaders (newspapers were censored)
2. Governments used both crude and subtle propaganda to maintain popular
support; patriotic posters, slanted news, and biased editorials inflamed
hatreds and helped sustain efforts but people were beginning to crack
under the strain of war in 1916
3. In April 1916 Irish nationalists in Dublin tried to take advantage of this
situation and rose up against British rule in their great Easter Rebellion;
strikes over inadequate food began to flare up and soldiers’ morale began
to decline
4. A rising tide of war-weariness and defeatism also swept France’s civilian
population before Georges Clemencause emerged as wartime leader in
November 1917
5. After the death of Francis Joseph, a symbol of unity disappeared and in
April 1917, the minister feared another winter of war would bring
revolution and disintegration
6. The strain of total war and of the Auxiliary Service Law was evident in
Germany; national political unity was collapsing and a growing minority
of socialists in the Reichstag began to vote against war credits calling for a
compromise
7. In July 1917 a coalition of socialists and Catholics passed a resolution in
the Reichstag to that effect and when the bread ration was reduced, more
than 200,000 workers struck and demonstrated for a week in Berlin
returning to work only under the threat of prison and military discipline
(countries were beginning to crack)
3. The Russian Revolution
1. The Fall of Imperial Russia
1. Tsar Nicholas II vowed never to make peace as long as the enemy stood
on Russian soil and Russia’s lower house, the Duma, voted war credits;
conservatives anticipated expansion in the Balkans, while liberals and
most socialists believed alliance with Britain and France would bring
democratic reform (for a moment, Russia was united)
2. Despite declining morale among soldiers and civilians and heavy losses in
1915, Russia’s battered peasant army did not collapse but continued to
fight until early 1917
3. Russia moved toward full mobilization on the home front and the Duma
took the lead, setting up special committees to coordinated defense,
industry, transportation and agriculture; Russia mobilized less effectively
for total war than any other country
4. The great problem of Russia was leadership (under a constitution from
1905)
1. The tsar had retained complete control over the bureaucracy and
the army
2. Legislation proposed by the Duma (wealthy and conservative
classes) was subject to the tsar’s veto and Nicholas II wished to
maintain the sacred inheritance of supreme royal power, with the
Orthodox church, was, for him, the key to Russia
3. Nicholas failed to form a close partnership with his citizens and
rely on the bureaucratic apparatus, distrusting the moderate Duma,
rejecting popular involvement, and resisting calls to share power
(could have been more effective)
5. The Duma, the educated middle classes, and the masses became
increasingly critical of the tsar’s leadership and following Nicholas’s
dismissal of the minister of war, demands for more democratic and
responsive government exploded in Summer 1915
6. In September 1915, various parties formed the Progressive Bloc, which
called for a completely new government responsible to the Duma instead
of the tsar; in answer, Nicholas temporarily adjourned the Duma and
announced that he was traveling to the front in order to lead and rally
Russia’s armies; his departure was a fatal turning point
1. Control of the government was taken over by the hysterical
empress, Tsarina Alexandra and the monk Rasputin (her most
trusted adviser)
2. Rasputin’s influence rested on mysterious healing powers and only
Rasputin could stop the bleeding of Alexis, the heir, who suffered
from hemophilia
3. In an attempt to right the situation and end rumors that Rasputin
was the empress’s lover, three members of the high aristocracy
murdered Rasputin in December 1916 and the empress went into
shock because of his prophecy: “If I die or you desert me, in six
months you will lose your son and throne”
4. On March 8 women calling for bread in Petrograd started riots;
soldiers joined the revolutionary crowd and the Duma responded
by declaring a provisional government on March 12, 1917 and
Nicholas II abdicated three days later
2. The Provisional Government
1. The patriotic upper and middle classes rejoiced at the prospect of a more
determined and effective war effort, while workers happily anticipated
better wages and food; all classes and political parties called for liberty
and democracy (were not disappointed)
2. The provisional government established equality before the law; freedom
of religion, speech, and assembly; the right to unions to organize and
strike; and the rest of the classic liberal program (but socialists leaders
rejected social revolution)
3. The reorganized government formed in May 1917, which included
agrarian socialist Alexander Kerensky, refused to confiscate large
landholdings and to give them to peasants, fearing that such action would
only disintegrate Russia’s peasant army
4. The provisional government had to share power with a formidable rival—
the Petrograd Society of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, a huge
fluctuating mass meeting of two to three thousand workers, soldiers, and
socialist intellectuals
5. The Society undermined the work of the provisional government even
issuing the Army Order No. 1 which issued to all Russian military forces
formed by the provisional government (stripped officers of their authority
and placed power in the hands of elected committees of common soldiers - protect revolution)
6. The Army Order No. 1 led to total collapse of army discipline and many
peasant soldiers began returning to their villages to help their families get
a share of land, which peasants were simply seizing as they settled old
scores in upheaval
7. Liberty was turning into anarchy in the summer of 1917 and it was an
opportunity for the most radical and most talented of Russia’s socialists
leaders, Vladimir Lenin
3. Lenin and the Bolshevik Revolution
1. Lenin found revolutionary faith in Marxian socialism; three ideas were
central to him
1. Lenin stressed that capitalism could be destroyed only by violent
revolution and denounced all revisionists theories of a peaceful
evolution to socialism
2. Under certain conditions a socialist revolution was possible even in
a relatively backward country like Russia (peasants were poor and
potential revolutionaries)
3. Lenin believed that at a given moment revolution was determined
more by human leadership than by vast historical laws and leading
to his third idea: the necessity of a highly disciplined workers’
party (controlled by intellectuals)
2. At meetings of the Russian Social Democratic Labor party in 1903, Lenin
demanded a small, disciplined, elitist party, while his opponents wanted a
more democratic party and the party split into Bolsheviks (supported
Lenin, majority) and Mensheviks
3. Lenin saw the war as a product of imperialistic rivalries and as a
marvelous opportunity for class war and socialist upheaval (observed
events from Switzerland)
4. Since propaganda and internal subversion were accepted weapons for total
war, the German government provided Lenin and colleagues with safe
passage across Germany and back into Russia in April 1917 (hoped Lenin
would undermine Russia)
5. Arriving on April 3, Lenin attacked at once and rejected all cooperation
with the “bourgeois” provisional government of the liberals and moderate
socialists
6. An attempt by the Bolsheviks to seize power in July collapsed and
although he was charged with being a German agent, conspiracy between
Kerensky and his commander in chief, General Lavr Kornilov resulted in
Kornilov’s leading an attack against eh provisional government
(counterrevolutionary threat)
7. Kerensky had lost all credit with the army, the only force that might have
saved him and the democratic government in Russia
4. Trotsky and the Seizure of Power
1. Throughout the summer of 1917, the Bolsheviks appealed effectively to
the workers and soldiers of Petrograd, increasing their popular support and
in October, the Bolsheviks gained a majority in the Petrograd Soviet and
Lenin had found a strong right arm in Leon Trotsky, the second most
important person in Russian Revolution
1. Trotsky first convinced the Petrograd Soviet to form a special
military-revolutionary committee in October and make him its
leader (military power)
2. Trotsky’s second master stroke was to insist that the Bolsheviks
reduce opposition to their coup by taking power in the name of the
more popular, democratic soviets
3. On the night of November 6, militants from Trotsky’s committee
joined Bolshevik soldiers to seize government buildings and went
on to the congress of soviets where a Bolshevik majority declared
that all power had passed to the soviets and named Lenin head of
the new government
2. The Bolsheviks came to power for three key reasons in late 1917
1. Democracy had given way to anarchy: power was there to be taken
for
2. In Lenin and Trotsky the Bolsheviks had an utterly determined and
truly superior leadership, which both the tsarist and provisional
government lacked
3. In 1917, the Bolsheviks succeeded in appealing to many soldiers
and urban workers, people who were exhausted by war and eager
for socialism
5. Dictatorship and Civil War
1. Since summer, a peasant revolution had been sweeping across Russia as
the peasants invaded and divided among themselves the estates of the
landlords and the church and thus Lenin’s first law supposedly gave land
to the peasants (already happened)
2. Lenin also granted urban workers direct control of factories by workers’
committees
3. Lenin acknowledged that Russia had lost the war with Germany (peace at
any price)
1. Germany demanded in December 1917 that the Soviet government
give up all its western territories (Poles, Finns, Lithuanians, and
other non-Russians)
2. In February 1918, Lenin had his way in a close vote in the Central
Committee
3. Russia lost a third of its population in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
in March 1918
4. In November 1917 the Bolsheviks proclaimed their regime only a
“provisional workers’ and peasants’ government promising that a freely
elected Constituent Assembly would draw up a new constitution (free
elections produced setback)
5. The Socialist Revolutionaries (peasants’ party) had a clear majority and
the Constituent Assembly met for only one day, on January 18, 1918, was
permanently disbanded by Bolshevik soldiers, and Lenin formed a oneparty government
6. The officers of the old army took the lead in organizing the White
opposition to the Bolsheviks in southern Russia, Ukraine, Siberia, and
west of Petrograd and the Whites came from many social groups united by
their hatred of the Reds
1. By summer of 1918 eighteen self-proclaimed regional
governments were competing with Lenin’s Bolsheviks in Moscow
and the Whites began to attack in October 1919 as they closed in
on Lenin’s government from three sides
2. By the spring of 1920, the White armies had been almost
completely defeated and the Bolshevik Red Army had retaken
Belorussia and Ukraine
3. The Communists also reconquered the independent nationalists
governments of the Caucasus the following year; the civil war was
over and Lenin had won
7. Lenin and the Bolsheviks had won the civil war for several reasons
1. Strategically, they controlled the center, while the Whites were
always on the fringes and disunited; it did not unite all the foes of
the Bolsheviks under one
2. General Anton Denikin refused to call for a democratic republic
and a federation of nationalities although he knew that doing so
would help his cause
3. The Communists had developed a better army; in March 1918,
Trotsky as war commissar reestablished the draft and the most
drastic discipline for the newly formed Red Army (soldiers
disobeying an order were summarily shot)
4. Establishing “war communism” the application of total war
concept to a civil conflict, they seized grain from peasants,
introduced rationing, nationalized all banks and industry, and
required everyone to work (labor discipline)
8. Revolutionary terror also contributed to the Communist victory
1. The old tsarist secret police was re-established as the Cheka, which
hunted down and executed thousands of real or supposed foes,
such as the tsar and his family
2. The terror caused by the secret police became a tool of the
government (fear)
9. Foreign military intervention in the civil war ended up helping the
Communists
1. After Lenin made peace with Germany, the Allies (Americans,
British, and Japanese) sent troops to prevent war material they had
sent to the provisional government from being captured by the
Germans; Western governments, particularly France, began to
support White armies after nationalization
2. Allied intervention permitted the Communists to appeal to patriotic
nationalism
10. A radically new government, based on socialism and one-party
dictatorship, came to power in a European state, maintained power, and
encouraged worldwide revolution
4. The Peace Settlement
1. The End of War
1. After the Russian Revolution in March 1917, there were major strikes in
Germany
1. In July a coalition of moderates passed a “peace resolution” in the
Reichstag, calling for peace without territorial annexations; in
response to this moderation born of war-weariness, the German
military established a virtual dictatorship
2. The military exploited the collapse of Russian armies after the
Bolshevik Revolution and won concessions from Lenin in the
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
2. General Ludendorff and company fell on France once more in the spring
of 1918
1. German armies pushed forward but his overextended forces never
broke through
2. The German army was stopped in July at the second Battle of the
Marne, where fresh American soldiers saw action; the addition of 2
million men in arms to the war effort by August by America tipped
the scales in favor of Allied victory
3. By September, British, French, and American armies were
advancing steadily on all fronts and General Ludendorff realized
that Germany had lost the war
3. General Ludendorff insisted that moderate politicians shoulder the shame
of defeat and on October 4, the emperor formed a new, more liberal
German government to sue for peace; negotiations over an armistice
dragged and German people finally rose up
4. On November 3 sailors in Kiel mutinied and throughout northern
Germany soldiers and workers began to establish revolutionary councils
on the Russian soviet model; also on that day, Austria-Hungary
surrendered to the Allies and began to break apart
5. Revolution broke out in Germany and with army discipline collapsing, the
emperor abdicated and fled to Holland; socialist leaders in Berlin
proclaimed a German republic on November 9 and agreed to tough Allied
terms of surrender
6. The armistice went into effect on November 11, 1918 and the war was
over
2. Revolution in Germany
1. Military defeat brought political revolution to Germany and AustriaHungary
1. In Austria-Hungary the revolution was nationalistic and republican
in nature even though they started the war to preserve an
antinationalistic dynastic state
2. In its place, independent Austrian, Hungarian, and Czechoslovak
republics were proclaimed, while the expanded Serbian monarchy
united under Yugoslavia
2. German Revolution of November 1918 resembled the Russian Revolution
of 1917
1. In both cases, a genuine popular uprising toppled an authoritarian
monarchy and established a liberal provisional republic (liberal and
moderate socialists took control, while workers’ and soldiers’
councils formed a counter-government)
2. In Germany, however, moderate socialists won while the Leninlike radical didn’t
3. In communist terms, Germany was a bourgeois political revolution
3. There were several reasons for the outcome of German’s new government
1. The great majority of Marxian socialists leaders in the Social
Democratic part wanted to establish real political democracy and
civil liberties, and they favored the gradual elimination of
capitalism (less support for extreme radicals)
2. The German peasantry, which already had most of the land, did not
provide the elemental force that had driven all great modern
revolutions
3. The moderate German Social Democrats accepted defeat and
ended the war the day they took power; act ended decline in
morale among soldiers and held army
4. When radicals headed by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg tried to
seize control of the government in Berlin in January, the moderate
socialists called on the army to crush the uprising and the followers were
brutally murdered by army leaders
5. The act caused the radicals in the Social Democratic party to break way
and form a pro-Lenin German Communist party (moderates could not
have ruled Germany)
3. The Treaty of Versailles
1. The peace conference opened in Paris in January 1919 with seventy
delegates representing twenty-seven victorious nations and expectations
were high; general optimism and idealism had been strengthened by
President Wilson’s 1918 peace proposal, the Fourteen Points, which
stressed national self-determination and rights
2. The real powers at the conference were United States, Great Britain, and
France, for Germany was not allowed to participate and Russia was locked
in civil war
1. President Wilson became almost obsessed with creating the
League of Nations; he believed that only an international
organization could prevent future wars
2. Lloyd George of Great Britain and Clemenceau of France were
concerned with punishing Germany; Lloyd George had won
electoral victory with this belief
3. France’s Georges Clemenceau, the “Tiger” who had broken
wartime defeatism and led his country to victory, like most
Frenchmen, wanted revenge and security
4. Clemenceau believed this required the creation of a buffer state
between France and Germany, the permanent demilitarization of
Germany, and vast German reparations (Wilson and George did
not like this and Wilson left in April)
3. Clemenceau’s obsession with security reflected his anxiety about France’s
weakness and he gave up a Rhineland buffer state in return for a formal
defensive alliance with the United States and Great Britain (promised to
come to aid in German attack)
4. The Treaty of Versailles between the Allies and Germany was the key to
the settlement; Germany’s colonies were give to France, Britain, and
Japan as League of Nations mandates and parts of Germany were ceded to
the new Polish state; Germany had to limit its army to 100,000 men and
agree to build no forts in the Rhineland
5. The Allies declared that Germany with Austria was responsible for the
war and had therefore to pay reparations equal to all civilian damages
caused by the war
6. When presented with the treaty, the German government protested
vigorously but there was no alternative and on June 28, 1919, German
representatives of the ruling moderate Social Democrats and the Catholic
party signed the treaty at Versailles
7. Separate peace treaties were concluded with other defeated powers—
Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey (ratified existing situation in eastcentral Europe)
1. Hungary was ceded to Rumania, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and
Yugoslavia
2. Italy got some Austrian territory and the Turkish empire was
broken up
3. France received Lebanon and Syria, while Britain took Iraq and
Palestine
4. Germany’s holdings in China was mandated to Japan
5. Officially League of Nations mandates were one of the more
imperialistic elements of the peace settlement (age of Western
imperialism lived on)
4. American Rejection of the Versailles Treaty
1. The principle of national self-determination was accepted and a new world
organization complemented a traditional defensive alliance of satisfied
powers
2. Two great interrelated obstacles to peace were Germany and the United
States
1. Germany was plagued by communist uprisings, reactionary plots,
and popular disillusionment with losing the war at the last minute;
German socialists and their liberal and Catholic supporters need
time to established a democratic republic
2. The U.S. Senate and the American people rejected Wilson’s
handiwork; Republican senators led by Henry Cabot Lodge refused
to ratify the Treaty of Versailles without changes in the articles
creating the League of Nations
3. The key issue was the League’s power to require member states to
take collective action against aggression and Lodge believed this
gave away Congress’s constitutional right to declare war; Wilson
ordered Democratic senators to support
4. In doing so, Wilson assured that the treaty would never be ratified
by the United States in any form and that United States would
never join the League of Nations
3. The Senate refused to ratify Wilson’s defensive alliance with France and
Great Britain and effectively, America had turned its back on Europe
4. Using America’s action as an excuse, Great Britain too, refused to ratify
its defensive alliance with France and France, bitterly betrayed by its
allies, stood alone
5. France would later take actions against Germany that would feed the fires
of German resentment and seriously undermine democratic forces in the
new republic
6. The Western alliance had collapsed, and a grandiose plan for permanent
peace had given way to a fragile truce (the United States must share the
guilt for their actions)