WWI "The Great War"

1914-1914: “The War to End All Wars”

• Shift in global balance of power economically and politically

Critical development in global history as a result of WWI

• First large-scale industrial war and first “total war”

  • total war: all nations involved and mobilization of nation’s citizens

• Enormous costs (financial and human resources) = 20+ million deaths

  • Spanish Influenza Pandemic 1918-1919 (50-100 million deaths)

• Colonies dragged into conflict

  • Colonies saw European weaknesses

  • Strengthened nationalist movements in colonies > want self-determination

    • self-determination: idea that a group of shared people/culture/ethnicity should be independent

• Old empires collapse (Ottoman Empire, Czarist Imperial Russian Empire)

  • Zionist Jews are promised land in Middle East (Palestine)

  • Arabs are promised a Middle Eastern nation state

  • Most of Middle East in hands of Europeans (mandates)

    • mandates: unofficial colonizing attempt

• Sparked revolutions in Russia 1917 > Soviet Union (communism)

• USA: respected as a major world power & retreat to isolationism

  • not economically but remains to itself else wise

• Japan: even greater imperialist power in Asia & Pacific (unstoppable)

• Groundwork for further turmoil in Europe

  • Paris Peace Conference 1919 *Treaty of Versailles

  • League of Nations 1920-45

  • Totalitarian regimes in Germany & Italy

    • Want revenge > WWII