Chapter 4
War and Revolution
 Four Major trends of the 19th century that greatly
affected the early 20th century:
 Nationalism - a group of people of the same ethnic
background, same history, and/or same culture should
have their own nation-state
 Imperialism - taking over land that is already inhabited
and organized
 Militarism - the build-up of new weapons in Europe;
new weapons from the Industrial Revolution
 Alliances - joining in a pact with other nations, not
because you are friends, but because you all have similar
fears; alliances are ever-changing; By the early 20th
century there were 2 major alliances
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Triple Entente: Great Britain, France, & Russia
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Triple Alliance: Italy, Germany, & Austria-Hungary
 These 4 major trends of the 19th century would become
the 4 major causes of the First World War, the War to
End All Wars
Crisis in the Balkans
1908-1913
 Austria-Hungary, a large empire on the European
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mainland, annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908;
A-H had been protecting them since 1878
This action angered Serbia because it, too, had wanted
to annex Bosnia and Herzegovina
Russia gave its support to Serbia
Tensions were growing
Russia finally backed down because their recent defeat
by the Japanese in the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-1905,
had left them weakened and feeling humiliated
 One crisis averted
 A second crisis occurred
 1912 - Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece formed the
Balkan League and defeated the Turks in the First
Balkan War
 A Second Balkan War broke out when the alliance
couldn’t decide how to divide the spoils of war
 1913 - Greece, Serbia, Romania, and the Ottoman
Empire defeated Bulgaria
 The two Balkan Wars increased the tensions in the
area and in other areas of Europe; Ex.: Austria was
suspicious of Serbia
 Alliances reaffirmed their promise to help one another
in a crisis
 These tensions would finally explode during the
summer of 1914
Events leading to World War I
 28 June 1914 -- Assassination of Austria-Hungary’s
Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophia while
visiting Sarajevo, Bosnia. They were killed by a member of
the Black Hand, Gavrilo Princip
 23 July -- Ultimatum sent from Austria-Hungary to Serbia
only because A-H had backing from Germany;
unreasonable demands with a time limit attached; Serbian
response was late
 28 July -- Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia ( only
with German backing)
Assassination of Franz Ferdinand
and His Wife, Sophia
Gavrilo Princip
 30 July – Russia declared war on Austria-Hungary and
Germany
 By 4 August
 Germany declared war on Russia and France and walked
through neutral Belgium
 France declared war on Germany
 Britain declared war on Germany because it entered
neutral Belgium
Attack on Liege, Belgium by
Germans
 Schlieffen Plan
 German plan in case of a 2-front war
 While one front is mobilizing, quickly take over the
second front and concentrate on the first
It didn’t work out this way for the Germans. Germany had
a 2-front war on its hands. The war quickly became a
stalemate.
 Germans were stopped 20 miles from Paris
 Both sides dug in; there were 2 lines of trenches from
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the English Channel to the border of Switzerland
This Western Front would remain virtually the same
for 4 years
Italy changed sides in 1915
The Ottoman Empire joined with Germany in 1914
In the east, Russia had many defeats
The cost in lives for Russia: 2.5 million killed,
captured, or wounded
 Serbia was defeated by Germany and Austria-Hungary
in September 1915
 The Great Slaughter
 Brutal battles were fought to take a foot or two of land
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In 10 months at Verdun (1916) 700,000 men lost their lives;1/3
of a million men were killed on each side
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At the Battle of the Somme River (1916) ½ million were lost
on each side; French won just a few feet
Verdun, 1916
Somme
New Weapons /Casualties
 New weapons caused these casualties
 Airplane: initially used to count troops of the enemy;
later used in some fighting but not very effectively
 Poisonous Mustard Gas: devastating; wind shifts
could blow the gas back on those who released it, so it
wasn’t as effective as they thought it would be
 Machine Gun: could mow down advancing troops who
walked in the old infantry style; very effective
 Tanks: developed by the British; armored vehicles that
could drive through an enemy camp; at first not used
effectively; that was corrected
 Submarines: Unterseeboots or U-boats; modern one
designed by 2 Americans, John Holland and Simon
Lake; offered design to U.S. Navy but were turned down;
offered design to highest bidder: the Germans
 Each u-boat was equipped with 19 torpedoes; made
waters around Britain very dangerous
 U-boats didn’t fight by the old rules of the sea; they were
thought to be an immoral weapon because they used the
element of surprise
 On 7 May 1915, Americans were affected by the
German U-boat with the sinking of the Lusitania
 139 Americans died and a total of 1198 of 1959 passengers
died
 President Woodrow Wilson of the U.S. was quite upset
because of the loss of innocent people and because the
freedom of the seas had been violated
 Americans were neutral
 After a series of messages between Germany and the
U.S., the Germans agreed to not attack passenger vessels
U.S. Enters the War
 The United States entered the war in 1917 because
 freedom of the seas had been violated
 innocent lives had been lost
 commerce had been interrupted
 shift in American sentiments
 We were better prepared in 1917 to go to war
 Zimmerman Telegram
 Zimmerman Telegram
 said that Germany would finance a Mexican attack on
the U.S. to keep the U.S. from entering the war in Europe
on the French/British side
 when Germany won, it would give back to Mexico all the
territory the U.S. had taken from them
 this was the last straw for the U.S.
War Affected All People
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An increase in government powers
An increase in the size of government
The use of propaganda to manipulate public opinion
Women took over men’s jobs when men went off to
war
Military draft imposed
Factories produced war products
Food rationing in some countries
Civil liberties were removed or threatened
Unemployment ended
 The influx of American troops in 1917 & in 1918 helped
bring an end to the war
 The Germans signed the Armistice on 11 November
1918, and the war was over
 January, 1919 delegations from the 27 victorious allied
nations gathered in Paris to write up the peace
agreement of the war
 The peace conference was dominated by 3 leaders:
 France -- Georges Clemenceau – wanted revenge
 Britain – David Lloyd George – more or less agreed
with France
 United States -- Woodrow Wilson – wanted a just
peace; 14 Points
 Italy played a less important role at the peace
conference than it thought it should have
 Germany wasn’t invited
 The Treaty of Versailles, the peace agreement, was a
compromise; Wilson sacrificed most of his 14 Points
but got the League of Nations and self-determination
of nations
 Vengeful peace that would be a major cause for World
War II
Treaty of Versailles
 Signed on the 28 June 1919 by the new Weimar
government in Germany because it felt it had no
choice; Germans were starving
 Terms:
 German army limited to 100,000 men and they would
have long enlistments
 Could not have submarines or an air force (Luftwaffe)
 Austria could not merge with Germany
 Alsace-Lorraine went back to France and sections of
Poland to a new Polish state
 New nations were formed from the former Austria
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Hungary and the Ottoman Empire
Germany had to pay for the entire cost of the war:
reparations totaled 132 billion gold marks ($33 billion)
Rhineland was demilitarized
Germany was blamed entirely for the war and was left
humiliated
All nations but the United States approved the treaty
Results of the War
 A weakened League of Nations because U.S. would not
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join
A communist Russia
Shaky S.E. Asia and Europe; there were new unstable
nations
U.S. isolationism
Britain refused to help France in future conflicts
 France was alone with Germany on the continent
 Germany was humiliated and resentful. They had
trouble paying the reparations. They had a shaky
economy with high inflation. This caused France to
occupy the Ruhr Valley for 15 years to make sure
Germany paid its debt
The Russian Revolution
 Russia finally joined the Industrial Revolution in the
early 20th century and the working conditions were
bad
 Russian worker:
 worked an 11 ½ hour day
 lived in a shared hovel with 10 others
 strikes were illegal
 unions were illegal
 had no contact with employer
 Marxism first appeared and began to take hold in
Russia in the late 1880s
 Vladimir Ulyanov Lenin
 became a Marxist leader in Russia in 1890s
 believed in revolution as a way to bring about change
 wanted to inspire peasants to revolt
At a party conference in Brussels and in London in 1903, the
majority of the delegates supported Lenin’s plan for a
revolution, hence they were called Bolsheviks or
majorityites. They were a majority only because those who
disagreed chose not to attend.
 Tsar Nicholas II sent Lenin into exile for his ideas
 As a result, the revolutionary movement in Russia was led
by the Mensheviks or the minority
 Conditions in Russia in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries:
 very poor for the peasants who were 90% of the population
 Russia lost their war with Japan 1904-1905
 starving Russians approached the Tsar’s palace asking for
bread and an 8-hour day; military fired on them
 The result was Bloody Sunday or the First Russian
Revolution, 1905
 the country went on strike
 Tsar had to promise them a Duma, a parliamentary
body, to get things back under his control
 Duma really had little or no power
 nothing had changed
Russia entered World War I hoping to unite its people; it
did not.
Russia had some early victories, followed by many losses
Soldiers were poorly trained, poorly led, and poorly fed;
many deserted or mutinied
 Peasants at home were starving
 There were angry marches in the capital
 Nicholas II refused to share his power
 His troops joined the marchers
 Nicholas knew it was over for him
 He abdicated his throne in late February 1917
 The Duma took charge under Alexander Kerensky
 He and the Duma couldn’t stop the chaos
 Lenin believed it was time for his revolution and
returned from exile in April 1917 with the help of
Germany
 Leon Trotsky and Lenin’s followers finally seized
control in October 1917
 Bolsheviks were then in power
 Civil war immediately broke out -- the White Army
(Tsar’s backers) vs. the Red Army (Lenin’s backers now
called communists)
 Red Army ultimately won out and the communists
established a proletariat dictatorship
 The first thing Lenin did was to fulfill his agreement
with Germany; he pulled Russia out of World War I
and signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918
 This gave away nearly ¼ of Russia’s territory and 1/3 of
the population, minerals, and factories to Germany
 Lenin could then concentrate on Russia
 He established War Communism and then the NEP or
New Economic Policy
 In it he nationalized the banks and industry
 He established universal education
 He gave rights to women
 He allowed some free enterprise
Russia was then renamed the USSR in 1922
By the time of Lenin’s death in 1924, the Communist Party
was privileged, conformist, and bureaucratic.
 Lenin was succeeded by Joseph Stalin, a brutal
leader
 Communism is no longer in power, as of 1991
1920s
 World War I had been so brutal that many Europeans
and Americans worked to find a way to true peace
 They thought they had found it with the KellogBriand Pact of 1928
 The League of Nations also worked on disarmament
The Great Depression
 In the 1920s the economy in many countries appeared
to be strong
 Food and goods were being produced at a high rate
 In World War I the United States produced enough
food and materiel to supply the U.S. and European
allies
 In the 1920s we were producing at the same rate as in
World War I even though Europe was producing its
own goods again
 So we ended up with overproduction and
underconsumption
 This led to a glut, lay-offs, closed factories, and
loans being called in
 This shaky economy led to the crash of the stock
market in October 1929 in New York
 This crash affected other countries and colonies all
over the world through loans, investments, and trade
 1932 was the worst year of the Depression
 In Britain – 1 worker in 4 was unemployed
 In Germany – 6 million workers or 40% were
unemployed
 Between 1929 and 1932 industrial production dropped
50% in the United States and 40% in Germany
 Governments were at a loss for what to do
 Some countries turned to Marxism & Communism
 Some tried to have a more active democracy, like in the
United States with Franklin D. Roosevelt elected in 1932
 Some turned to dictatorship
 Some had mixed economies
 In the United States:
 economist John Maynard Keynes recommended
deficit spending to jump-start the economy
 there were many government programs
The only thing that truly got the United States out of the
Depression was the start of World War II
 In Germany:
 the Weimar Republic was their new government
 it had little support from the people
 there was a shaky economy
 in 1925 they got a new president who was a monarchist, a
military man, and not in favor of a republic
 There was some prosperity from 1924 to 1929; then came
the crash
 Depression, discontent, and fear allowed extremists like
Adolf Hitler to rise to power by 1932
Art
 Disillusionment of the 1920s and 1930s led to an
avant-garde movement in art
 It was seen as a new way to view reality and deal with
all the anxiety of the time
 Dadaists:
 wanted absolute freedom of expression
 revolted against the past
 showed the darker side of life
 Surrealists wanted to shock with dreamlike and
violent pictures; ex: Salvadore Dali
 Abstract artists showed a new view of reality
 Bauhaus school of architecture produced high-rise
towers of steel and glass
Writers
 James Joyce wrote streams of consciousness, inner
monologues
 Ernest Hemingway, Theodore Dreiser, and Sinclair
Lewis told it like it was
 Hollywood films and radio shows were very popular --
escapist entertainment during a rough time
 World War I, the 1920s, and the 1930s truly shattered
the old and sent people searching for the new
 During this period we also see the United States rise in
importance in world affairs