World War I and Visions of the Modern (1910-1939)

Focus Questions

  • How did World War I disrupt societies around the world?
  • How did the war usher in the age of "mass society"?
  • How did authoritarian, liberal, and anticolonial visions propose to reorder their societies during the 1920s and 1930s?

Introduction

  • World War I (1914-1918) shook the foundations of the European-centered world.
  • The war involved soldiers from America, Africa, and Asia, with campaigns in Europe, Turkey, Egypt, Syria, and sub-Saharan Africa.
  • It was the first modern war involving whole societies, with a global impact.
  • The war fostered notions of freedom and self-determination, leading to disillusionment with European rule in colonies.
  • Nations grappled with competing visions for building a viable, modern society.

The Great War and Its Global Impact

  • The war required resources on a worldwide scale, prompting mass production and consumption, defining features of economic modernity.
  • New media (radio, film) promoted national loyalties and discredited enemies, spreading a mass culture.
  • The harsh terms of the peace settlement unbalanced the global economy and led to the Great Depression.
  • Political turmoil surrounding the war inflamed disputes over how to manage mass societies and build a better world.
  • Three visions arose: liberal democratic, authoritarian, and anticolonial.
    • Liberal Democratic: Confronted economic failings without sacrificing market economies or parliamentary democracy through widened governance participation and greater power to state regulatory bureaucracies.
    • Authoritarian: Rejected parliamentary rule, subordinated the individual to the state, managed/owned production, used censorship/terror, and exalted an all-powerful leader. Evident in right-wing dictatorships (Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Spain, Portugal, Japan) and left-wing dictatorship (Soviet Union).
    • Anticolonial: Questioned the liberal democratic order because of its connection to colonialism but generally favored mixing western ideas with indigenous traditions.

The Quest for the Modern

  • In the 1920s and 1930s, "being modern" meant mass production and consumption (e.g., automobiles, gramophones, cinema, radio).
  • Politically, it meant the involvement of the masses and strong leadership.
  • The Great Depression led to intense debates on how to build modern societies.
  • After the Great Depression spread hard times and unemployment, the American and western European model linking capitalism and democracy no longer seemed so promising.

The Great War

  • The war drew men and women worldwide into national and international politics.
  • Millions of soldiers from Europe, its dominions, and colonies were killed/mutilated, damaging European claims to civilized superiority and encouraging colonial subjects to break from imperial masters.
  • The war shook the hierarchies of prewar society and made clear how much the power of the state depended on the support of the people.
  • The bedrock cause was the rivalry between Great Britain and Germany.
    • Britain had been the preeminent power through most of the nineteenth century.
    • By the century's end, German industrial output had surpassed Britain's, and Germany had begun building a navy.
    • This Anglo-German antagonism drew in the other powers in rival alliances.
      • Germany joined Austria-Hungary to form the Central Powers.
      • Britain affiliated itself with France and Russia in the Triple Entente (called the Allied Powers later, after Italy joined).
  • The assassination of the heir to the Habsburg throne in Sarajevo in August 1914 ignited open hostilities.
    • The assassin hoped to trigger an independence movement that would detach South-Slav territories from the Austro-Hungarian Empire and unite them with independent Serbia.
    • Russia backed the Serbs against Austria-Hungary, drawing in the British, French, and Germans.
    • The world war that followed dragged in Europe's colonies, too.

The Fighting

  • Declarations of war drew jubilation from those anticipating a short, triumphal conflict.
  • Dreams of glory inspired tens of thousands of men to enlist.
  • The fighting did not go as expected.
  • The war became infamous for its duration and horrors.

Battle fronts, Stalemate, and Carnage

  • The initial German offensive stalled thirty miles outside Paris at the battle of the Marne in September 1914.
  • Vast land armies dug trenches along the Western Front, installing barbed wire and setting up machine-gun posts.
  • Life in the trenches mixed boredom, dampness, dirt, vermin, and disease, punctuated by the terror of attacking the enemy's entrenched position.
  • Russian troops advanced into East Prussia and Austria-Hungary along the Eastern Front.
    • Although the Russians defeated Austro-Hungarian troops in Galicia and scored initial victories in eastern Germany, they suffered devastating reversals in East Prussia.
  • By 1915, the war had ground to a gruesome standstill.
  • At Ypres in 1915, the Germans introduced poison gas, but gas masks nullified that advantage.
  • In July 1916, the British launched an offensive along the Somme River in northeastern France.
    • Approximately 600,000 British and French and 500,000 Germans perished.
    • The battle lines had hardly budged.
  • Attempts to win by opening other fronts (Turkey, the Middle East, and Africa) failed and added to the war's carnage.
  • The death toll forced governments to call up more men than ever before.
    • More than 70 million men worldwide fought in the war, including almost all of Europe's young adult males.
    • From 1914 to 1918, 13 million served in the German army.
    • In Russia, more than 15 million men took up arms.
    • The British Empire mobilized nearly 9 million soldiers, and the British nation's 5.25 million troops constituted almost half the prewar population of men age fifteen to forty-nine.
    • In France, around 8 million served, nearly 80 percent of the same prewar age-group population.
    • Over half of the men who were mobilized died, were wounded or taken prisoner, or were reported missing in action.
  • Mass mobilization also undermined traditional gender boundaries.
    • Tens of thousands of women served at or near the front as doctors, nurses, and technicians.
    • Even more women mobilized on the "home front," taking on previously male occupations-especially in munitions plants.
  • Women demanded that states compensate for their sacrifices after the war, in the form of welfare provisions, expanded suffrage, and pensions for widows and the wounded.
  • In the four years of war, military deaths exceeded 9 million.
  • Another 21 million soldiers were wounded.
  • Influenza claimed 50 million people worldwide.

Empire and War

  • The Ottoman Empire sided with the Central Powers, battling British- and Russian-led forces in Egypt, Iraq, Anatolia, and the Caucasus.
  • In 1915-1916, Ottoman forces massacred or deported 1.3 million Armenians (genocide).
  • The British and the French conscripted colonial subjects.
    • India provided 1 million soldiers.
    • Over 1 million Africans fought in Africa and Europe for their colonial masters, and another 3 million transported war supplies.
    • Even the sparsely populated British dominions dispatched over a million loyal young men to fight for the empire.
  • In British-ruled Nyasaland, John Chilembwe directed his compatriots to refuse British military demands and to stand up for "Africa for the Africans."

Civilian Unrest

  • In 1916, antiwar demonstrations broke out.
  • The next year, strikes roiled Germany, France, Britain, Italy, and Russia.
  • Allied commanders introduced devastating new weapons such as the tank.

The Russian Revolution

  • In February 1917, Tsar Nicholas II stepped down under pressure from his generals.
    • Some members of the Russian parliament formed a provisional government.
    • Grassroots councils (soviets) sprang up in factories, garrisons, and towns.
  • Millions of peasants seized land, soldiers and sailors abandoned the front, and borderland nationalities declared autonomy from the crumbling Russian Empire.
  • In October 1917, left-wing socialists calling themselves Bolsheviks seized power, led by Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky.
  • Soviet Russia signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, acknowledging German victory on the Eastern Front.
  • The Bolshevik leadership relocated the capital to Moscow and set up a so-called dictatorship of the proletariat.

The Fall of the Central Powers

  • On April 2, 1917, the United States declared war on Germany after German submarines sank several American merchant ships and after a secret telegram came to light in which German officials sought Mexican support.
  • The Allies turned the tide at the Second Battle of the Marne in July 1918 and forced the Germans to retreat into Belgium.
  • German troops then began to surrender en masse.
  • Faced with defeat and civil strife, the Central Powers fell in succession.
  • German generals agreed to an armistice in November 1918.
  • Kaiser Wilhelm II slipped into exile, and the German empire became a republic.
  • The last Habsburg emperor also abdicated, and Austria-Hungary dissolved into several new states.
  • With the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the war claimed a fourth dynasty among its casualties.

The Peace Settlement and the Impact of the War

  • The victors convened five peace conferences to decide the fate of vanquished empires and the future of the modern world.
  • The most important was the conference to negotiate peace with Germany, held at Versailles, France, in January 1919.
  • Delegates drew many of their ideas from American President Woodrow Wilson's "Fourteen Points."
    • Wilson especially insisted that postwar borders be redrawn by following the principle of "self-determination of nations" and that an international League of Nations be set up to negotiate further quarrels.
  • The French insisted on a punitive treaty that assigned Germany sole blame for the war and forced it to pay reparations.
  • Applying the principle of self-determination was much more difficult in practice than Wilson had understood.