I. The Causes of the Conflict
A. “Entangling Alliances”--the customary reason for the outbreak of hostilities was that the European powers (Great Britain and France on one side, Germany on the other) had made alliances with weaker powers (mainly Russia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, respectively) that necessitated them going to war against each other because their allies went to war.
1. Austro-Hungarian Empire/Germany--the Austro-Hungarian Empire was teetering on the edge of its demise, and had turned to Germany as an ally should the burgeoning nationalist movements within its borders (Serbs and Croats, in particular).
2. Russian/Great Britain/France--Russian, despite its internal political difficulties (see 1905 Revolution), was looking to expand its influence in southern Europe, largely at the expense of the two teetering empires, the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires. Great Britain and France had already pushed into some of those areas, particularly in Lebanon (France), Egypt (Great Britain, which with assistance from France had constructed the Suez Canal), and Palestine.
B. Rise of Nationalism
1. Resistance to Colonialism--being treated as second-class people in their own countries led many victims of colonialism to develop a sense of national identity where none had existed before.
2. Ethnic nationalism--as the old empires began to fall apart, ethnic enclaves within these empires began to think of themselves as nations, as well. In some cases, these ethnic groups were aided and encouraged by other nation-states hoping to benefit from the downfall of weakened empires--like Russia, which hoped to benefit from both the downfall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire, and began to encourage their “brother Serbs” to resist both imperial governments.
3. Wars of reconquest--the so-called “long peace” after the end of the Napoleonic Wars (lasting until the Franco-Prussian War of 1870) removed much of the conflict between the European powers from Europe--and made the drive for colonial conquest more fierce. Colonialism was largely driven by the capitalist thirst for raw materials and new markets for goods, but national pride was also in part responsible for this development.
a) The development of the “yellow” press, which provided its audience with sensationalist news and chauvanistic nationalism in a newspaper that only cost the reader a penny, also contributed to the tacit support colonialism enjoyed among the laboring classes.
4. The Non-Colonial World Power--Germany, alone among the European powers, had no overseas colonies in 1880. This colonial activity by Germany injected that country into increasingly tense relationships with other European colonial powers, which contributed to the formation of the alliance system.
a) Treaty port in China
b) Tanganika, Rwanda-Burundi, and South West Africa on the continent of Africa.
c) Maghreb (northwestern Africa), where Germany began challenging French and Spanish control of Morocco and Algiers, creating tensions with those two countries.
d) Middle East--via the Berlin-Baghdad Railway
II. The Socialist Alternative--socialism developed in response to the multiple difficulties that capitalism created for a number of people. Because socialism emphasized class alliance across national and ethnic boundaries. This ideology failed to halt the combined power of capitalism and nationalism, however.
A. Capitalism Economic Depressions--since capitalism emerged as the dominant economic system in 1800, it has been portrayed as creating wealth for everyone (although that wealth has been unequally distributed). This panglossian outlook overlooks some of the significant economic downturns that occurred, however.
1. The Long Depression--a world-wide period of price deflation, which began around 1873 and lasted until about 1888. While economists emphasize the good effect this trend had on prices of goods, for many workers it meant that they struggled to buy goods because they were unemployed, since capitalists would cut production in the hope that scarcity would inflate prices.
2. The “Business Cycle”--this term had largely disappeared from the economist’s vocabularly, although the current economic crisis has reintroduced it. Also known as the “boom and bust” cycle, which is perhaps a bit more descriptive. The “Long Depression” had various antecedents and successors: 1837-1840, 1858-1861, 1893, 1907-1915, 1921-1922, 1929-1941.
3. The Socialist Project
a) With the spread of the capitalist economic system to industries beyond textiles, more workers were drawn to the theories of Marx and Engels and other socialist thinkers; socialist thought ranged from the gradualism of Prudohn to the direct action anarchism of Mikail Bakhunin, among others.
b) The establishment of radical labor unions dedicated to overthrowing the capitalist system emerged by 1905
(1) Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)
(2) Confederation General du Travail (CGT) followed similar syndicalist, direct action tactics of direct control by workers of the shop floor
(3) 1905 Russian Revolution--the Russian defeat in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905 opened an opportunity for revolutionaries because of a crisis in confidence in the Tsar. Although still largely an agricultural society, Russia did have a thin layer of industrial workers in urban centers like Moscow and St. Petersburg. In the latter city, under the leadership of Lev Davidovitch Bronstein (or, as he is better know, Leon Trotsky) worker soviets (Russian for council) were formed to from factories in the city to do the work of government. After the Revolution was defeated, leaders like Trotsky and Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin) were exiled from the country.
4. Socialists and the Drums of War—whether to support the calls for war or not split many socialist parties on the national level. Socialists had long maintained that wars were fought in order to advance the capitalist enterprise at the expense of the working-class. Gradualists, who worked inside the national political structure, argued that the war effort needed to be supported, or the socialist political movement would be rendered irrelevant and marginalized politically; socialist further to the left argued that this presented an opportunity to overthrow capitalism, because support for the war among workers was “soft” and could be overcome.
a) Germany—the German Social Democratic party voted to support the war effort, while individual socialists—among them Karl Kautsky, Karl Liebnecht, and Rosa Luxemberg, went underground to work against the war, although all three and many of their compatriots ended up in jail, anyway.
b) France—the socialist Guesde and the syndicalist Jouhaux both supported the war …
c) …as did the Marxist Plekhanov and the anarchist Kropotkin in Russia
d) United States—Woodrow Wilson ran for his second term in 1916 promising to keep the United States out of the conflict in Europe, but by late summer of 1917 the United States had declared war on Germany, and the first troops began arriving shortly after that. Socialists who spoke out against the war quickly found themselves in jail; Eugene V. Debs, the 5-time Socialist Party candidate for president, was arrested in Canton, Ohio, in October 1917, tried, convicted of sedition, and remained in prison until 1922; IWW members were also rounded up and put on trial in 1917-18.
III. Total War and Total Carnage
A. Total War—most government officials, military leaders, and participants believed that the war would be over in a matter of months, if not weeks—and that their side would prevail, of course. By 1916, it became obvious to many that all sides would need to devote all possible resources to fighting the war, even though this meant limiting the amount of food available for civilians, while still requiring a full-day’s work to produce war material.
B. Casualties—37 million dead or wounded, including both military and civilians
1. France—1.4 million military deaths, 300,000 civilians. 1 in 5 men of military service age killed; 4,266,000 military wounded.
2. Great Britain and Ireland—885,000 military dead, 109,000 civilian, 1.66 million military wounded
3. United States—116,708 military dead, 757 civilians, 205,690 wounded
4. Germany—2 million+ military dead, 426,000 civilians, 4.2 million wounded
5. Russia—1.8 million military dead, 1.5 million civilian, nearly 5 million wounded.
C. Treaty of Versailles—in the 11th hour, on the 11th day, of the 11th month, germany agreed to surrender. Forced to abandon Alsace-Lorraine (gained in the Franco-Prussian War 1870), demilitarize the Ruhr Valley, give up overseas colonies (which were quickly snapped up by the victors), and pay huge indemnitities to the allies (except the new Soviet Union, which had quit the war in 1917) to allied powers.
1. League of Nations—Woodrow Wilson’s vision of an international body meant to adjudicate international disputes, and thereby end the necessity for war
2. Recognition of national aspirations for some European ethnic groups.
a) Poland
b) Czecholslavakia
c) Yugoslavia
d) Hungary
3. Denied national aspirations
a) Ireland (temporarily—until settlement of the Anglo-Irish War in 1921)
b) India
c) Vietnam
4. Protectorates—a special status given to some groups who aspired to nationhood, but were deemed “not quite ready” for that step (included many groups in the Levant or Middle East)
a) Palestine and Zionism
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