World War I
Causes, Course, and
Consequences
The Wars Catalyst
• Assassination of
Archduke Franz
Ferdinand in Sarajevo
6/28/1914.
The Wars Causes: Nationalism
• Serbian Nationalism
• Gvrillo Princip and the
Black Hand
Nationalism
• Self Determination:
France set off a century of
revolution and reform that
saw the ideas of the
enlightenment impact
Europe.
• Revolutions occurred in
the Netherlands, Prussia,
Austria.
• Unification of nationalist
countries in Germany and
Italy.
• Franco-Prussian War
The Ottoman Empire:
• “Sick man of Europe”
• Ottoman had seen an
erosion of their state
• Eastern Question
• Multi-national empire
like that of the AustroHungarians.
• Loss of Balkans and
Greeks.
Greece as a model
• Ottoman lands begin
to fall as the Greek
state had.
• Slavic nationalism on
the rise “PanSlavism”.
• Austria-Hungary
Cause II: Militarism
• Buildup of armaments for the national
defense.
• Coincided with the rapid development of
new technology.
• Tanks, chemical weapons, flamethrowers,
machine guns, U-Boats, and Dreadnoughts
Cause III: Colonial Disputes
• As chp. 34 illustrated the late 19th early 20th
century saw countries tripping over
themselves to gain land.
• Conflicts were bound to emerge.
• Germany and Britain, Germany and France
the most heated
Algericas Conference
• “Temporarily” solved tensions between
Germany and France.
• The unsolved tension would be a key cause
of WWI.
Balkan Wars
• Balkan countries
sought to pick apart
Ottoman Empire.
• Setting Euoprean
countries against each
other.
• Building up the
agitation leading to
WWI.
Alliances
• The system of
interlocking
relationships under
which one country
would go to war in
defense of another.
Causes IV: Alliance System (from
McKay text)
Triple Alliance (1882)
Germany
Austria-Hungary
Italy
Alliance of Three Emperors
(1881)
Germany
Austria-Hungary
Russia
Triple Alliance and Triple Entente
•
•
•
•
•
Central Powers (TA)
Germany
Austria-Hungary
Italy
Motivations of each?
•
•
•
•
Triple Entente
Great Britain
Russia
France
Global War
•
Schlieffen
Plan
“This war is just fine and great”
• Howard Zinn on enlistments…
Mutual Butchery
• “The War will be over by Christmas”
• Slogans and optimism abound.
• Battle on the Western Front
Poison Gas Deaths: 1914-1918
Country
Non-Fatal
Deaths
Total
British Empire
180,597
8,109
188,706
France
182,000
8,000
190,000
United States
71,345
1,462
72,807
Italy
55,373
4,627
60,000
Russia
419,340
56,000
475,340
Germany
191,000
9,000
200,000
Austria-Hungary
97,000
3,000
100,000
Others
9,000
1,000
10.000
1,205,655
91,198
1,296,853
Total
British Gas Casualties: 1914-18
Deaths
Non-Fatal
Chlorine
1,976
164,457
Mustard Gas
4,086
16,526
America Debates Neutrality
• Isolationism the theme of the day—nation
focused on its progressive
reforms…European affairs gained little
attention.
• Until…
Unrestricted Submarine Warfare
Lusitania
“Freedom of the Seas”
• American commerce deeply impacted by
the submarine warfare on the high seas and
the devastating British naval blockade of
Germany.
Interactions with Germany
• Lusitania (Howard Zinn version)
• Impact on relationships—promises to end
submarine warfare.
• Continued unprovoked assaults—
• Arabic
• Sussex
An election year: 1916
Pushed over the edge
• January 1917: Kaiser declares any US ship
will be sunk if in the Atlantic.
• Zimmerman Note: an official German
correspondence to Mexico promising return
of lost lands (from Mexican American War)
if they supported the German war cause.
• America is forced to respond.
Hypernationalism?
The Draft: 5/18/17
• Different from previous conscriptions
• Armed forces went from a tiny 80,000 to
4,800,000
• 2,000,000 volunteered
• 30% of draftees were rejected due to
physical failures!
• Fell right into Progressive hands about the
shortcomings of our current way of doing
things.
Total War: The Homefront
•
•
•
•
War of attrition
Planned economies required
Mobilization of resources and psyche
Propaganda a common tool
Hoover: the Great Engineer
• Wheat: 637,000,000 bushels in 1917 to
931,000,000 by 1918. Through
conservation and conservation measures.
• Altered bicycle designs: saved 2,000 tons of
steel!
Science and innovation
•
•
•
•
Use of IQ’s to test draftees and “sort”.
Chemical weapon service
Submarine detectors-physicists
New tanks, machine guns
Finance: the great challenge
• Total cost to US: 24 Billion
• More than 2x the total it had spent on
EVERYTHING since 1901!
• Raising revenue: 1/3 from taxes (some as
high as 63%) 2/3 sale of “Liberty Loans”War Bonds.
Advertising the War
• “It is not an army we must shape and train
for the war it is a nation.” Woodrow
Wilson
• Promote due to cost: including loans to
allies: the war cost 35.5 Billion—all the
money spent by the country in its first 100
years of existence!
• Liberty Loans raised 60% of that figure, 21
Billion. Debt however rose from 1 Billion
George Creel: Committee on Public
Information.
• Propaganda Agency
• Sponsored movies such as
“The Kaiser: The Beast of
Berlin”.
• Four minute men: game
speeches to 314 million
people during WWI!
• This type of propaganda
led to hamburgers being
renamed Liberty
Sandwich and Sauerkraut
as Liberty cabbage!
Hypernationalism
• Robert Prager lynching: a
German student who was
lynched in Illinois by a
mob of 500.
• The leaders were released
as the jury announced
“you can’t say we didn’t
do our part”.
African Americans in the AEF
•
•
•
•
260K in war
50K sent to France
Most in demeaning roles.
Story of Charles Young
African-Americans in the AEF
• 24th infantry in response to violence raided
the armory and murdered 17 white
soldiers—13 were hanged and 40 were
given life imprisonment
• Germans used propaganda against the 92nd
division—they saw front line action.
African Americans at home
• In response to farming crises in the South
(Boll weevil Virus), Jim Crow laws, the
rigors of sharecropping, and the lure of
Northern jobs—1/2 million poor southern
blacks moved to the North during the war.
• It seemed to many that opportunities were
boundless.
• “nothing here but money and its not hard to
get”.
One set of problems for another
• East St. Louis violence: 39 were killed and
homes were burned during the riots.
• Whites in the area claimed that lynchings
were deserved.
Regulating Dissent
• Espionage Act (and Sedition Amendment)
1917
• Provided strict punishments for anti-loyal
activities, anti-war activities and the
sedition amendment gave prison sentences
for “disloyal, profane or abusive language.”
• Examples: A New Jersey socialist was
given a ten year prison sentence for: “I am
for the people and the government is for
profit”.
Eugene V. Debs
• Jailed for saying:
• “They tell us we live in a great free
republic, that our institutions are
democratic. That is too much even for a
joke.” For this he is jailed…?
• “The master class has always declared the
wars and the subject class has always fought
the battles”.
• Jailed for “obstructing the recruiting of
enlistment service.”
At the sentencing:
• Your Honor, years ago I recognized my
kinship with all living beings, and I made
up my mind that I was not one bit better
than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I
say now, that while there is a lower class, I
am in it, and while there is a criminal
element I am of it, and while there is a soul
in prison, I am not free.
Schenck v. US
• Free speech limited when it presents…
• “Clear and present danger”.
• Oliver Wendell Holmes “Fire” example.
WWI: The closing
stanza
The fight for
democracy at home
and abroad.
Wilson’s 14 points…
•
•
•
•
•
•
1/8/18
Specific aims?
First five
2nd Eight
Last one
Public opinion?
Versailles 1919
• Wilson goes in
person?
• Public perception of
Wilson…
• European perception
of Wilson…
• Article 231
“Self Determination”
• “Self Determination will
raise hopes which can
never be realized. It
will, I fear, cost
thousands of lives. In
the end it is bound to be
discredited to be called
the dram of an iealist
who failed to realize the
danger of it until it was
too late”.
Article 231
• "The Allied and Associated Governments
affirm and Germany accepts the
responsibility of Germany and her allies for
causing all the loss and damage to which
the Allied and Associated Governments and
their nationals have been subjected as a
consequence of the war imposed upon them
by the aggression of Germany and her
allies. "
Map after Versailles
Problems caused by WWI
•
•
•
•
•
German crisis of the 20’s
Mid east tensions
WWII
Crisis in the Balkans
Japanese Empire of the 30’s.
Mandate system:
• “Neo Imperialism”
• Problems profound
• Ottoman state
dismembered
Racial Equality
• Japanese amendment: calls for equality, the
contingent of Versailles rejects it and gives
them…a piece of China.
• Also given is ammunition for the
development of anti-Americanism in the
Pacific rim and the creation of a Japanese
Empire.
A League of Nations
• International peacekeeping body designed
to bring about peace through collectivism.
Ratification
• Lodge and the
Irreconcilables
• Nature of the
Republican dissent
• Lodge on Wilson “I
never imagined I
could a man as much
as I hate Wilson”
• Lodge reservations
Lodge on the World
• “The United States is the world's best hope, but if
you fetter her in the interests and quarrels of other
nations, if you tangle her in the intrigues of
Europe, you will destroy her powerful good, and
endanger her very existence. Leave her to march
freely through the centuries to come, as in the
years that have gone. Strong, generous, and
confident, she has nobly served mankind. Beware
how you trifle with your marvelous inheritance —
this great land of ordered liberty. For if we
stumble and fall, freedom and civilization
everywhere will go down in ruin “
Post War Economic Issues
• Patriotism and Economic controls of the
WWI period are gone…
• Return to free enterprise
• Post War Woes?
• Inflation (28% the low!)
• Workers gains (wages decrease after war)
• Unions (unionismm slowly crushed.)
Post War Chaos: Unionism
• Seattle 1919, the city is paralyzed by a
strike of shipyard workers.
• Boston 1919: police strike
Red Scare
• A reaction to the
subversive sentiments in
America with
heightened labor issues.
• Bombings…
A. Mitchell Palmer takes charge
• Launched a series of
raids and deportations
designed to assault the
communist party.
J. Edgar Hoover leads radicals
• Emma Goldmandeported in 1921.
The Great Migration
• 1900: 90% of African
Americans living in
the South…that
number will decrease
substantially by 1930.
• Causes:
• Draft
• Halting European
Immigration
• Conditions in the
South
Life in the Army?
• Segregation
• Dangerous Working/Living Conditions
• Brutality
• Dangerous assignments
Conclusions?
• Trip in the 40’s.
• Study in 1991
Map after Versailles
Problems caused by WWI
•
•
•
•
•
German crisis of the 20’s
Mid east tensions
WWII
Crisis in the Balkans
Japanese Empire of the 30’s.
Mandate system:
• “Neo
Imperialism”
• Problems
profound
• Ottoman state
dismembered
Racial Equality
• Japanese amendment: calls for equality, the
contingent of Versailles rejects it and gives
them…a piece of China.
• Also given is ammunition for the
development of anti-Americanism in the
Pacific rim and the creation of a Japanese
Empire.
A League of Nations
• International peacekeeping body designed
to bring about peace through collectivism.