The First World War and Its Settlement

This is Unit Fourteen of Western Civilization Two, part one of two: the First World War, the exam's eleventh band. Unit thirteen ended with the violence exported for a generation coming home. This unit is its homecoming, and its governing idea, which part two pays off, is the anchor's one answer to two questions: the great powers had lived forty years without a European war and had built, in that time, everything that made the next one unstoppable. Alliances, million-man armies with timetables, imperial rivalry, a naval race, and electorates taught by newspapers that patriotism meant killing. Nobody wanted the war; everybody risked it; nobody knew the Maxim gun and the trench had made attack impossible. Part one runs from the fragile balance through Sarajevo, the failed plans, the holes and attrition, the other fronts and America, to November nineteen eighteen and three empires fallen. Part two is the peace that settled nothing, and the methods. By the end you will be able to describe the powers before the war. To describe the fuse. To describe the Western Front. To describe the other fronts and America's entry. And to describe the home fronts and the end.

Three entries on the powers before the war: a balance that was fragile, the rivalries that fed resentment, and the alliances, armies and staffs that made a crisis a timetable.

No one sought it; all risked it.

WC2 1301 The Great Powers: A Fragile Balance and Forty Years Without a War

A great power had a mass army, an industrial base and an empire, and each feared one power dominating. The balance was fragile, not a guarantee. No power sought war in nineteen fourteen; all risked it. None had fought a European war in over forty years, and the Crimean and unification wars were the only models. The anchor's framing: rivalry the chief cause.

Patriotism as willingness to kill.

WC2 1302 Imperial Rivalry, the Naval Race, and Nationalism Turned Hostile

Empires abutted in Africa and Asia, and Germany's fleet-building under Tirpitz from the late eighteen nineties challenged Britain at sea; the Dreadnought of nineteen-oh-six outclassed every rival. Nationalism became resentment: Englishmen fearing Germany, Germans despising Slavs, Italy resenting its rank. Newspapers taught electorates that patriotism meant willingness to kill. The anchor says the eighties; the Fleet Acts began in ninety-eight.

Mobilize fully now, or lose.

WC2 1303 The Alliance Blocs, Million-Man Armies, and the General Staffs' Ultimatums

Germany and Austria were allied from eighteen seventy-nine, France and Russia from ninety-four; Britain protected Belgium; Russia patronized Serbia. Armies numbered a million or more, and general staffs held pre-packaged plans. In a crisis generals gave their own governments ultimatums: mobilize fully now, or lose. Generals fight the last war, the anchor says. Its ninety-three is the convention ratified in ninety-four.

Five entries on the fuse: Serbia's ambition and Bosnia, the Black Hand at Sarajevo, the July Crisis, the two camps and the socialists' vote, and the Schlieffen Plan.

The Balkans' Piedmont.

WC2 1304 Serbia's Piedmont Ambition and the Bosnian Problem

Serbia, independent since eighteen seventy-eight, wanted to be the Balkans' Piedmont and gather the South Slavs into a Greater Serbia. Austria stood in the way through Bosnia, annexed in nineteen-oh-eight. A coup of nineteen-oh-three had put officers at Serbia's center; Russia's patronage made them bet Austria would not risk war. The coup is anchor-only.

A bomb missed; a wrong turn did not.

WC2 1305 The Black Hand and Sarajevo, June 1914

The Black Hand, officers of the coup, trained Bosnian Serb students. On the twenty-eighth of June nineteen fourteen they waited for Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. A bomb missed. That afternoon his driver took a wrong turn, and Gavrilo Princip, nineteen years old, the witness says, shot the archduke and his wife. The archduke had favored peace, the anchor notes.

A blank check, and the alliances activate.

WC2 1306 The July Crisis: Ultimatum, Blank Check, and the Alliances Activate

Austria demanded that its own agents investigate inside Serbia; Serbia refused. Germany gave Austria a blank check, with Wilhelm the Second on vacation, the anchor says. Austria declared war on Serbia on the twenty-eighth of July; Russia mobilized on the thirtieth; Germany declared war on Russia on the first of August, then on France. Britain came in over Belgium, later in this lecture.

Home by Christmas, the crowds expected.

WC2 1307 Central Powers Against the Entente; "Over by Christmas" and the Socialists' Vote

Germany, Austria and then the Ottomans were the Central Powers; Britain, France and Russia the Entente, joined by Italy in nineteen fifteen. Crowds expected the troops home by Christmas, thirty thousand marching in Berlin, the anchor says. The socialist parties voted for war credits; the radicals who refused split off as communists. The anchor's hundred percent of socialists is its figure.

Six weeks through Belgium.

WC2 1308 The Schlieffen Plan

Facing France and Russia at once, Germany planned to knock France out in six weeks by wheeling through Belgium, then rail its army east before Russia's slow mobilization finished. France's own plan aimed at Alsace-Lorraine; Russia's at East Prussia; Plan Seventeen and Plan Nineteen, the witness names them. Every staff had a plan; none had a plan for failure.

Six entries on the Western Front: Belgium's civilians and Britain's entry, the plan failing on both fronts, trenches and a truce, why attacks failed, Verdun and the Somme, and attrition.

Louvain's library burned.

WC2 1309 Belgium: Neutrality Violated, Civilians Massacred, Britain In

Belgium was neutral and resisted. German troops, believing civilians fired on them, executed men in the towns they took, hundreds of civilians with women and children among them, and burned over a thousand buildings, the witness says, including Louvain's library. Refugees reached Britain. On the fourth of August Britain, Belgium's protector, declared war on Germany. Both sources carry the atrocities.

A gap near Paris, an encirclement in the east.

WC2 1310 The Marne and Tannenberg: The Plan Fails on Both Fronts

In early September nineteen fourteen the French found a gap between German armies near Paris and stopped them at the Marne. In the east Russia attacked sooner than expected and was crushed at Tannenberg, ninety thousand prisoners taken. The six-week plan was dead, and both armies raced to the sea and dug in. The anchor says late September; the witness names both battles.

Cigarettes in no man's land, once.

WC2 1311 Trench Warfare Invented, and the Christmas Truce

Machine guns and shell craters drove both sides underground; trenches ran from the Channel to the Swiss Alps, artillery behind them and command posts behind that. At Christmas nineteen fourteen soldiers met in no man's land, traded cigarettes, and a German barber gave shaves. Headquarters made sure it never happened again. Four more years. The truce is on both sources.

A thousand yards for thirteen thousand lives.

WC2 1312 Going Over the Top: Defense Beats Offense, Mud, Gas

Trenches, machine guns, mines and rifles made defense stronger than attack. No offensive gained significant ground from nineteen fifteen to early seventeen; one British attack of fifteen bought a thousand yards for thirteen thousand lives, the anchor says. Poison gas came in fifteen from both sides. Competence and heroism irrelevant; death arbitrary. The yards-for-lives figure is the anchor's.

The war had won.

WC2 1313 Verdun and the Somme, 1916

At Verdun from February nineteen sixteen Germany attacked to bleed France; the anchor counts five hundred forty thousand French and four hundred thirty thousand German casualties. On the Somme from the first of July Britain lost tens of thousands the first day, four hundred twenty thousand by November. The war had won, the anchor says. Figures are the anchor's; the Lumen witness agrees.

Casualties as the measure of progress.

WC2 1314 Attrition: Casualties as Progress

From nineteen sixteen the strategy was attrition: outspend, outdraft, outsacrifice the enemy until he ran out first. Casualties became the measure of progress. The generals' training in swift decisive blows had nothing to say to a war of holes, so they counted the dead instead: won by the side with more men to lose. The anchor's view of the generals, attributed.

Five entries on the other fronts and America: the mobile east and Gallipoli, Mesopotamia and the Arab Revolt with its three promises, Jutland and the blockade, the submarine and the telegram, and why America mattered.

Gunned down on the beaches.

WC2 1315 The Mobile East, and Gallipoli, 1915

The eastern war moved. Russia beat Austria consistently but lacked industry and rail, and German encirclements told; a Russian general's offensive of sixteen crippled Austria, unnamed by the anchor and disclosed. In nineteen fifteen Britain landed at Gallipoli near Constantinople to knock the Ottomans out, Churchill's plan, the witness says; the ANZACs and others were gunned down on the beaches and withdrawn.

Three promises for one land.

WC2 1316 Mesopotamia and the Arab Revolt

In nineteen sixteen Britain turned to Mesopotamia, and the sharif of Mecca's Arab Revolt, aided by T. E. Lawrence, cut Ottoman railways. Britain promised an independent Arab state and secretly, in the Sykes-Picot agreement, divided the region with France; the Balfour Declaration of seventeen was a third promise. By seventeen Ottoman collapse looked certain. Witness-named; the anchor has an Arab insurgency.

The turnip winter.

WC2 1317 Jutland and the Blockade

Britain's navy blockaded German ports from nineteen fourteen, and by the last year every German family felt the shortages, the turnip winter of sixteen to seventeen among them. The fleets met once, at Jutland in sixteen; both claimed victory, and the German fleet never came out again. Germany answered with mines and submarines. Witness-built; the anchor names neither.

A liner, a declaration, a telegram.

WC2 1318 U-Boats, the Lusitania, Zimmermann: The United States Enters, April 1917

In May nineteen fifteen a U-boat sank the liner Lusitania, over twelve hundred dead. In February seventeen Germany declared unrestricted submarine warfare. On the first of March the Zimmermann Telegram, offering Mexico an alliance, was published. In April the United States declared war. The anchor folds the Lusitania into seventeen; the witness separates fifteen from the two blows of seventeen.

Industry that dwarfed Europe's, and fresh men.

WC2 1319 Why America Mattered: Industry and Fresh Men

America had been Britain's supplier and creditor, about two billion dollars in loans by spring nineteen seventeen, the witness says, against twenty-seven million to the Central Powers, its contrast. Its importance now was not troops or weapons but industrial capacity that dwarfed Europe's combined, and millions of fresh men against a Germany three years thin on supplies. Period sums, not converted.

Six entries on the home fronts and the end: women's war work and the vote, rationing and munitions, Germany's last throw, November nineteen eighteen, the count, and the empires that vanished.

The vote that followed the work.

WC2 1320 Women's War Work and the Vote That Followed

Women filled vacated jobs, from factories to streetcars; suffrage movements suspended agitation for war work; nurses served near the trenches. Dress shortened and hair was bobbed. After the war most countries gave women the vote: Britain's property-owning women over thirty in nineteen eighteen, Germany the same year, Belgium's widows first, the anchor says, France not until forty-four.

The factory as a front.

WC2 1321 The Home Fronts: Rationing, Munitions, Total Commitment

Whole nations fought. Germany rationed bread from nineteen fifteen and rioted for food; Britain rationed in eighteen and sent a hundred thousand women to farms. Governments ran munitions and labor. Influenza in the last year killed alongside the guns. Total war: the factory as a front. Witness-named; the anchor gives the shape, not the dates.

Forty miles from Paris, then spent.

WC2 1322 The Spring Offensive of 1918 and the Collapse

Peace with the Bolsheviks freed German divisions, and on the twenty-first of March nineteen eighteen the Spring Offensive drove within forty miles of Paris, outrunning supply. It failed by July. In late September Ludendorff, Hindenburg's operational chief, advised suing for peace: we cannot win the war any more, he said. The anchor calls him chief of staff; Hindenburg held that post.

Mutiny, abdication, armistice, and a myth.

WC2 1323 November 1918: Armistice, Abdication, the Stab-in-the-Back Myth

Sailors mutinied at Kiel, and on the ninth of November the Kaiser's abdication was announced; he crossed into the Netherlands. The Social Democrats' civilian government sent the delegation that signed the armistice on the eleventh; the alternative was invasion. Hindenburg and Ludendorff authored the stab-in-the-back myth. The delegation's leader is disclosed, not named.

Twenty million, or eight and a half.

WC2 1324 Twenty Million Dead, and Shell Shock

The anchor counts over twenty million dead; the witness has more than eight and a half million soldiers dead and twenty-one million wounded. Germany lost one point eight million, the anchor says. Shell shock, diagnosed early and dismissed as hysteria, brought no disability pension. Northeastern France and Belgium were reduced to mud. Figures differ by source and definition; both are attributed.

Four dynasties gone.

WC2 1325 Three Empires Fall

The war ended the Russian, Habsburg and Ottoman empires, and the Hohenzollerns went with them. Austria became a rump state; Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia declared themselves before the armistice. Russia went to civil war and the Soviet Union. The Ottomans lost everything but Anatolia, and Germany lost its overseas colonies. Russia's revolution is unit fifteen.

Look at what you can now do. You can describe a balance that was fragile, rivalry and the naval race, and the blocs, armies and staffs. You can describe Serbia's ambition, Sarajevo, the July Crisis, the camps, and the plan with no plan for failure. You can describe Belgium, the Marne and Tannenberg, trenches and a truce, a thousand yards for thirteen thousand lives, Verdun and the Somme, and attrition. You can describe Gallipoli, three promises in the Arab desert, Jutland and the blockade, the Lusitania and Zimmermann, and why America mattered. And you can describe women's work and the vote, the factory as a front, the Spring Offensive, Kiel and the armistice, the count, and four dynasties gone. Part two is the settlement: the Fourteen Points, Versailles, the mandates, the League, a peace that settled nothing, five procedures, and the capstone.