Bronx Community College
of the
City University of New
York
Department of History
History 10--History of the Modern World
Topic VII--World War I and its Consequences
Despite what the calendar might say, many historians believe that the twentieth century really began not in 1900 but in 1914 with the start of the Great War. The outbreak of hostilities in August of that year shattered the calm certainties of nineteenth-century European civilization forever. When men in the great capitals of Europe--Berlin, Vienna, Paris, London--flocked to recruiting offices to sign up, they had no idea what they were about to experience. In 1914, there had been no war among the major powers since 1871. Very few in the prime of life had any idea what war was like. Everyone imagined the war would be quick and glorious, an adventurous way to learn about the world. It would all be over by Christmas, they were told. In fact, it took over four years. And before it ended in November 1918, the world had been transformed in fundamental ways. The war itself was fought with a level of destructiveness never seen before. The loss of life, with single battles taking hundreds of thousands of lives, was staggering and shocking. When it was over, a new kind of cynicism and disillusionment (see Wilfred Owen's 1917 poem Dulce et decorum est [Documenting the Modern World, p. 126]) replaced the naïve enthusiasm of 1914. Soon new forms of modern mass politics--communism and fascism--would be unleashed. Older convictions about liberal politics, societies, and economies would be gravely challenged by these new developments. The great empires of central and eastern Europe and western Asia--the German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and Ottoman Empires--all collapsed by 1918. Nationalism, both in Europe and in colonized Asia and Africa, continued to gain in strength and appeal to vast new numbers of people. A new international organization, the League of Nations, was founded in an attempt to insure that no repetition of the Great War ever came about. No part of modern life was unaffected by the Great War, and very little was the same as it had been in 1914. |
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What made the first world war different than any previous war? Part of the answer lies in the second industrial revolution. Between 1871 (the end of the Franco-Prussian War, the last major conflict in western Europe) and 1914 industrialization in the European world accelerated far beyond the cotton factories and railroad construction of the early nineteenth century. All across the continent modern industry and technologies grew exponentially. Steel was the industrial product most closely identified with modern industry in the late nineteenth century. The following table shows the production of crude steel in selected countries between 1870 and 1910: Steel Production in Selected Countries, 1870-1910
Source: B.R. Mitchell, European Historical Statistics, 1750-1970
By illustrating the enormously increased industrial capacity which developed during the "Second Industrial Revolution" during the decades before 1914, the table shows how the major powers went into World War I with the technological ability to produce greater quantities of more destructive weapons than had ever been seen before. Though few recognized it at the time, when hostilities commenced in August 1914 the first industrialized war had begun.
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Trench Warfare Very soon the conflict assumed the form it would keep for nearly four years. Each side on the Western Front (the territory in Belgium and northern France where Germans fought the French and British) established lines of fortified, well-defended trenches, usually separated by a "no man's land" of several hundred yards or less. Most battles were fought by one side throwing masses of men into the line of fire coming from the trenches on the other side. The result was mass slaughter on both sides. This description of Trench Warfare in France (Document 7-1) comes from a British officer writing in September 1914, shortly after the start of the conflict. Compare his description with another from exactly one year later. These Letters from the Front (Document 7-2) were written by an American volunteer ambulance driver who arrived in France in September 1915. Describe the differences between these two accounts of the war. What seems to have changed within a year's time? What kind of psychological difference--in the way the sources were written and the feelings they express--can you find when you compare these two primary sources?
The psychology of soldiers in the Great War was deeply affected by new "industrial" weapons. Beginning in 1915, for example, various forms of poison gas were widely used on both sides. These chemical weapons destroyed the lungs and seared the skin. Read this account, published in the New York Tribune newspaper, of the first German use of Chlorine Gas (Document 7-3). Gas masks were standard issue equipment, though they provided only imperfect protection against injury or death. Even if they survived the gas attacks, many veterans became sick and died within several years after the war ended in 1918. Gas attacks, powerful, sustained artillery bombardments that caused "shell shock," and other modern war methods did terrible damage, as this short account by Bernd Hupp, a World War I Historian (Document 7-4), makes very clear. The photograph of a gassed soldier is shocking evidence that these damaged survivors were living reminders of the war's destructive power, reminders that many people in the 1920s did not want to see.
After the War--Versailles and the New Map The postwar settlement, written into the Treaty of Versailles (1919), was strongly influenced by the American President Woodrow Wilson's "Fourteen Points" (Documenting the Modern World, pp. 127-129), which asserted that all nations, large and small, should be free to pursue their "self-determination" without fear of conquest or war, and that a new international organization--the League of Nations--should insure the sovereignty and freedom of all states. Since the defeated powers (Austria, Germany, and Ottoman Turkey) had all been multi-national empires, the Treaty of Versailles shifted populations and borders and created entirely new states out of the wreckage of these conquered empires. The two maps below show Europe and western Asia in 1914, before the war, and in 1924, after territorial changes were codified in the Treaty of Versailles of 1919.
Compare the map above with the one that follows, which shows international borders following the postwar settlement at Versailles: What differences can you see in these two maps? Identify the new states that have appeared by 1924. Read your textbook assignment (The Modern World, pp. 183-199) for the narrative that will explain the changes on these maps.
The Treaty of Versailles authorized the League of Nations to supervise a system of "mandates," in which former colonies of the defeated powers should be administered by more advanced states until they were ready for full independence. See the text of Article 22 of the League's Charter in Documenting the Modern World, pp. 132-133. Unfortunately, the idealistic principles of the Treaty conflicted with the actual policies pursued by the victorious powers. For example, one region subject to the Mandate System was the Arab lands formerly under Ottoman Turkish rule. In 1915, the British had secretly agreed to aid an Arab revolt against the Turks and promised to respect Arab independence. See the McMahon Letter (Document 7-6), part of the secret negotiation between British and Arab leaders. But in 1916 the British and French governments, each with an eye on these lands, negotiated another secret agreement--the Sykes-Picot Agreement (Document 7-7)-- in which they arranged to divide the territories after the Turks were defeated. In 1917, moreover, the British issued the Balfour Declaration (Document 7-8), which promised support for the Zionist goal of a Jewish national home in Palestine, a goal that most Arabs bitterly opposed. Publicly, the powers claimed to respect the right of self-determination. Privately, their diplomacy pursued state interests which were often contradictory. The Mandate System reflected the tension between the idealism of the Treaty and the League of Nations, and the realism of great power politics. As the map below shows, part of the Arab lands were placed under British and French mandate, and part became independent. Nationalism, meanwhile, the desire for full independence, became stronger and stronger, and one result of this secret diplomacy was a growing sense of betrayal among Arabs. See, for example, the 1919 Resolutions of the General Syrian Congress in Documenting the Modern World, pp. 136-137.
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