6.1, 6.2, and 6.4 - The Great War (WWI)

Major powers in Europe pre-WWI

England, France, Russia, Germany, Italy, and Austria-Hungary

Austria-Hungary

• Encompassed a multitude of different ethnic and language groups

  • encompassed ethnic/language groups such as Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians, Romanians, Bulgarians, & Slavs

  • state that contains many nations

• Ruled by Franz Joseph, with his nephew, Archduke Franz Ferdinand as the heir to the throne

• Run by the Hapsburg family

  • perhaps the most powerful family in the world at the time.

Ottoman Empire

• The Ottomans were slowly declining

• They had already lost all of their territory in Africa, and were losing most of their land in Eastern Europe (the Balkans)

• The Balkan states fought 2 separate wars in 1912 and 1913

Balkan Wars

• First war = Balkan states came together to form the Balkan League to defeat the Ottoman Empire (basically a war for independence)

• Second war = Balkan states begin to fight each other for the spoils of war

• In the end, these wars expanded Serbia and created an independent Albania

MAIN Causes of WWI

Militarism

Alliances

Imperialism

Nationalism

Militarism

• Glorifying military power and keeping a strong army

  • Having a large and strong standing army made citizens feel patriotic

    • but it also concerned peace advocates, who worried that it would turn any small conflict into war

• Always being ready to use the army aggressively to protect or advance the nation’s interest

  • When you have a huge military, there’s pressure to use it. Generals in each country developed highly detailed plans of mobilization. This made diplomacy harder.

Militarism in Europe pre-WWI

• For over a century, Britain had the largest navy, but Germany decided to challenge that and began building a massive fleet of warships → Britain responds by building MORE ships → Germany does the same → so on and so forth

• It wasn’t just navies, every major power was expanding their armies

  • Russia had 6 million soldiers

  • Germany had 4 million soldiers

  • France increased length of military service

Growth of German Empire

• Otto von Bismarck - Prime Minister of Prussia / Iron Chancellor

  • The guy who organized the Berlin Conference

  • Goal - make Germany the strongest industrial and military power

    • unified the German states in the 1860s and 70s

  • Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871) & Alsace-Lorraine

  • After unification of Germany, Bismarck turns back to peacemaking

    • believed the biggest threat to peace was France. So, he made alliances with Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Russia

• 1890 - Kaiser Wilhelm II got rid of Bismarck and further militarized Germany

  • let the agreement with Russia lapse. This pushed Russia to ally with a longtime rival, France

Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871)

a united Germany emerged victorious & powerful, and they seized the economically and culturally valuable Alsace-Lorraine from France

Prussia

German State

Alliance

Agreement between nations to aid and/or protect one another

Defensive alliance

Agreement to come to aid if other country is attacked

Non-aggression pact

Agreement not to attack one another

Entente

Informal alliance

Neutral

Staying out of it; only obligation is to not get involved (unless attacked)

Intricate and sometimes secret alliances

• Austria-Hungary had an agreement with Germany who had an agreement with Italy. Meanwhile, the Ottoman Empire was allied with Germany against Russia

• Serbia had an agreement with Russia who had and agreement with France who had an agreement with Great Britain who had an agreement to protect Belgium’s neutrality

Triple Alliance

Germany forms Dual Alliance in 1879 with Austria-Hungary (“blank check”) - then Italy joined a little more informally

Triple Entente

• Due to Germany’s shipbuilding campaign, Great Britain forms entente with France and Russia

• Russia has agreements to protect Slavic allies (Serbia and Montenegro)

• Belgium is neutral, and Britain has agreed to protect their neutrality

Imperialist Rivalries

• Industrial growth → COMPETITION!

• Competition over colonial markets and resources

• Imperialism meant that European powers were already suspicious of one another.

  • They were looking for ways to gain advantage over their rivals. Any opportunity to weaken their competitors, they would take

• Germany’s aggressive pursuit of colonies disturbed England and France

Nationalism

• State borders = Nation borders

• Intense pride in nation

  • The Black Hand

• People wanted to expand to show that their country was the best

  • The Balkans = “Powder Keg of Europe”

The Balkans

• Nationalism

  • Ethnic rivalries among the Balkan peoples

  • Serbia wanted the region to unite all Serbs under one nation (Pan-Slavism)

• Both Russia & Austria-Hungary wanted to control the Balkans

  • Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia & Herzegovina in 1908

The Black Hand

The Black Hand was a secret Serbian nationalist organization founded in 1911

Goals:

• Unite all Slavs (Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, etc.) into one large Serbian state

• Drive Austria-Hungary out of the Balkans completely

• Use violence and terrorism to achieve these goals (believed diplomacy would fail)

Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

• Archduke Franz Ferdinand (heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary) visits Sarajevo (capital of Bosnia & Herzegovina) with his wife in June 1914

  • Threw a parade

• Black Hand believes assassinating the Archduke will lead to Bosnia’s independence and a Slavic state, but this ends up being the event that starts WWI.

  • Teenaged Bosnian Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip, member of Young Bosnia & the Black Hand, assassinated the Archduke and his wife on June 28, 1914

    • “The Shot Heard Around the World”

July Crisis

Following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Austria-Hungary blamed Serbia for the assassination, and issues them an impossible ultimatum.

Everyone begins gearing up for a possible war.

Guns of August

• Serbia is unable to fulfil ultimatum, so AH declares war.

• Mobilizations at the beginning of August → Domino effect from Alliance system

  • chain reaction of war declarations

Mobilization

Young men were eager to go to battle to prove their courage. No one had experience a major European war in 50 years and clearly had forgotten how terrible war could be. They had no idea what they were in for.

Schlieffen Plan

• Germany’s plan to avoid a two-front war was to quickly defeat France in the West and then head East to fight Russia

  • Relied on German speed and slow Russian mobilization

• couldn’t go through the Germany/France border because of heavy fortifications after the Franco-Prussian war

• Decided to go through the North (through Belgium) to surprise the French

• Belgium takes this as a declaration of war (and a threat to their neutrality), so they enter the war, and so does Great Britain

  • Due to Britain's agreement to protect Belgium’s neutrality

The Allied powers in 1918

Great Britain, France, Russia, Japan, and Italy (who believed their former alliance (Germany) unjustly started a war)

The Central powers in 1918

Germany & Austria-Hungary, then joined by Bulgaria & the Ottomans (who hoped to regain lost territories)

First Battle of the Marne

• Early September of 1914, Allies regrouped and attacked the Germans in the valley of the Marne river

• First major clash on the Western Front

• Germans were forced to retreat

Western Front

• German border with France

  • front extending from the Belgian coast through northern France to the Swiss border

• Quickly turned to stalemate

  • no one winning or losing

  • Eussa was ready faster than expected so the Germans had to split their forces

Trench Warfare

• Soldiers fought each other from trenches

• Primarily on the Western front

• Huge losses of human life for small gains in territory

• Life in the trenches was pure misery: mud, rats, no fresh food, impossible to sleep

• Many were dug by Chinese laborers

No Man’s Land

• area between the opposing trenches

• Miles in width and an average of about 250 yards across

• Littered with barbed wire, corpses, and landmines

Battle of the Somme

• July-November 1916

• Near Verdun the Germans were pressuring French forces

• Western front

  • British and French against the Germans

• Most deadly battle

  • On the 1st day over 20,000 British soldiers were killed

  • each side had over half a million casualties

• the British gained only 5 miles

Eastern Front

• Along the borders of Germany/Austria-Hungary and Russia

  • Russia and Serbia vs Austria-Hungary and Germany

• Much more mobile war than on the Western Front

  • little to no trench warfare

• Russia’s involvement in the war was critical to the Allies

  • made the war a 2-front war for Germany

Russia in WWI

• Even though they had the largest army they were behind with technology, lacked supplies

• Lacked strong leadership so tactics weren’t good

• The Ottomans still controlled the Black Sea to it was hard for the Allies to get supplies to Russia

• Russians had some initial success pushing into German territory

• The Germans crushed the Russians in the Battle of Tannenberg

  • the Russians had to fully retreat from the area and lost 30,000 soldiers over four days.

Gallipoli

• Turkey cut off the Allies’ supply route through the Dardanelles

• By securing the Dardanelles, the Allies believed that they could take Constantinople, defeat the Turks, and establish a supply line to Russia.

  • The effort to take the Dardanelles strait began in February 1915. It was known as the Gallipoli campaign. By May, Gallipoli had turned into another bloody stalemate.

  • British, Australian, New Zealand, & French troops against Turkish troops led by German officers

  • Both sides dug trenches, from which they battled for the rest of the year. In December, the Allies gave up the campaign and began to evacuate. They had suffered about 200,000-250,000 casualties.

• Result:

  • 200,000 Allied casualties after a failed land assault

  • Bloody stalemate/trench warfare → Allies give up

U.S. Entry into WWI

• Unrestricted submarine warfare = German policy saying that their submarines would sink without warning any ship in the waters around Britain

• Germans sunk a British passenger ship with 128 Americans on it

• President Woodrow Wilson said if Germans don’t stop unrestricted submarine warfare, America will enter WWI

  • Stopped until 2 years later

• In February 1917, British officials intercepted a telegram written by Germany's foreign secretary, stating that Germany would help Mexico "reconquer" the land it had lost to the United States if Mexico would ally itself with Germany.

• On April 2, 1917, President Wilson asked Congress to declare war

Total War

Whole society contributes to the war effort

Home Front

people at home are a part of the war effort

• converting factories

• rationing

• women working

Propaganda

Publicized information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, designed to influence our opinions and behaviors to support a cause or point of view

Russo-Japanese War

• Meiji restoration allows Japan to beat Russia easily

• News of repeated Russian losses sparked unrest at home

“No War, No Peace” (1918)

• Leon Trotsky

• stop fighting the Germans, but don’t accept peace terms

• The Germans invade Russia which is all but defenseless as virtually the entire army has deserted

• The Bolsheviks accept the dictated peace of Brest-Litovsk and exit WWI (Treaty of Brest-Litovsk)

Second Battle of the Marne (July 1918)

• Germans now able to send all of their troops to the Western Front

• Initially pushed the front back to the Marne

• However, German men and supplies have been exhausted

• Allies launch a counterattack

  • Addition of American troops and 350 tanks

• Advanced towards Germany

• Allies win

• Final Battle of WWI

The Big Four

• Woodrow Wilson (United States)

• Georges Clemenceau (France)

• David Lloyd George (Great Britain)

• Vittorio Orlando (Italy)

Meet at 1919 Paris Peace Conference and shaped the Treaty of Versailles

Treaty of Versailles

Signed on June 28th, 1919 (5 years to the day of the assassination).

Even though Wilson signed the treaty, the U.S. congress refused to ratify it, and thus they didn’t join the League of Nations.

War Guilt:

• Sole responsibility for the war placed on Germany’s shoulders

Reparations:

• Germany forced to pay the Allies $33 billion in reparations over 30 years

Military Power:

• Limit set on the size of the German army

• Germany prohibited from importing or manufacturing weapons or war materials

• Germany forbidden to buy submarines or have air force

Colonies:

• Germany returns Alsace-Lorraine to France → French border extended to west bank of Rhine River

• Germany surrenders all of its overseas colonies in Africa and the Pacific

League of Nations:

• International peace organization; Germany and Russia initially excluded

League of Nations mandates

• The Allies didn’t think relinquished colonies were ready to rule themselves

• Mandate = administrative oversight to “prepare” them for self-rule

• Divided based on location and level of political/economic development

  • Class A: Former Ottoman territories

  • Class B: Former German colonies in Africa

  • Class C: Former German colonies in the Pacific