The First World War and Its Settlement

This is Unit Fourteen of Western Civilization Two, part two of two: the settlement, five procedures, and why nineteen fourteen happened and nineteen nineteen failed. Part one ended with four dynasties gone and twenty million dead by the anchor's count. This part is what the victors made of it, and it pays off the unit's governing idea: the powers had built everything that made the war unstoppable, and then the peace worsened its causes rather than resolving them, in the anchor's attributed verdict. Wilson's points promised open covenants and impartial colonial adjustment; the Big Four met in private and handed the Ottoman lands to Britain and France. Germany was assigned guilt and a bill it could not pay, and left intact. The League was born without its founder. Then the methods: the war by year, the fronts by signature, a cause by kind, the points against the treaty, and a table read for what each word counts. By the end you will be able to describe the settlement. To sequence and map the war. To classify a cause. To read Wilson against Versailles and a casualty table. And to state the capstone.

Five entries on the settlement: the Fourteen Points, Versailles and the new map, the mandates and Atatürk, a League without America, and a peace that settled nothing.

Self-determination beneath the list.

WC2 1326 Wilson's Fourteen Points

In January nineteen eighteen Wilson published fourteen points: open diplomacy, freedom of the seas, free trade, arms reduction, colonial claims weighed with their peoples' interests, Belgium restored, Alsace-Lorraine returned, Italy's frontiers by nationality, autonomy for Austria-Hungary's and the Ottomans' peoples, an independent Poland, and a general association of nations. Self-determination is the principle beneath. Witness-built, and read later in this lecture.

Guilt, a bill, and a new map.

WC2 1327 Versailles and the Successor States: Alsace-Lorraine, Reparations, War Guilt, the New Map

The Big Four decided: Wilson, Lloyd George, Clemenceau, Orlando. Germany lost Alsace-Lorraine, Danzig and the Corridor, the Saar and its colonies; the army fell to a hundred thousand; Article two thirty-one assigned war guilt; reparations were set at one hundred thirty-two billion marks, unconverted. Saint-Germain, Trianon and Neuilly made the successor states. Witness-built beyond the anchor's terms.

No inhabitants consulted; a republic forced.

WC2 1328 The Mandates, and Atatürk's Turkey

The Ottoman lands became League mandates: Syria and Lebanon to France, Iraq, Palestine and Transjordan to Britain, no inhabitants consulted. Iraq became independent in nineteen thirty-two; the anchor's thirty-nine is corrected. Sèvres in twenty partitioned Anatolia; Mustafa Kemal's armies forced Lausanne in twenty-three and a Turkish republic, its minorities expelled or destroyed. Atatürk, father of the Turks.

Its architect stayed out.

WC2 1329 The League of Nations: Weak, and Without America

Wilson's League was to prevent aggression and honor self-determination. It had no army, handed territories to the imperial powers, and did nothing when Japan took Manchuria in nineteen thirty-one. The American Senate, fearing it would lose the power to declare war, refused to join, Lodge leading the refusal. Its architect stayed out. Pitiful is the anchor's verdict, attributed.

Punished without disabling.

WC2 1330 A Peace That Settled Nothing

The treaty punished Germany without disabling it, and Germans felt wronged twice, by the stab in the back and by the indemnity. Keynes called it a Carthaginian peace; historians dispute its harshness, and the verdict is contested and attributed. The anchor's judgment: the causes of nineteen fourteen were worsened, not resolved. A second Great War within twenty years was unimaginable then.

Five procedures: the war by year, the fronts by their signatures, a cause sorted into the anchor's five kinds, Wilson's points set beside the treaty, and a casualty table read by three questions.

Plans fail, attrition, exits and entries, collapse, treaty.

WC2 1331 Sequencing the War, 1914 to 1919

Put the war on one line by year. Nineteen fourteen: Sarajevo on the twenty-eighth of June, Austria's declaration on the twenty-eighth of July, Britain in on the fourth of August, the Marne and Tannenberg in September, trenches by winter. Fifteen: gas, Gallipoli, the Lusitania in May, Italy's entry. Sixteen: Verdun from February, Jutland, the Somme from July, the Arab Revolt. Seventeen: unrestricted submarine warfare in February, Zimmermann in March, America in April, Russia's revolutions. Eighteen: the Fourteen Points in January, Brest-Litovsk, the Spring Offensive in March, Kiel and the abdication in November, the armistice on the eleventh. Nineteen: Versailles in June. The shape: two years of failed plans and invented trench war, one year of attrition, one year of exits and entries, one year of collapse. Name the year of each before checking the month. The anchor's late-September Marne is corrected.

West a line, East a zone, Ottoman three fronts.

WC2 1332 Reading a Map of the Fronts

Each front has a signature. The Western Front is a line, not an area: from the Belgian coast through northern France to the Swiss border, barely moving from late fourteen to March eighteen. If the line bulges toward Paris, the map is fourteen or spring eighteen. The Eastern Front is a zone that swings hundreds of miles: Russia into East Prussia and Galicia in fourteen, Germany deep into Russian Poland by fifteen, Russia back into Austria in sixteen, and after Brest-Litovsk in March eighteen Germany holding Ukraine and the Baltic. The Ottoman fronts are three: Gallipoli at the straits, Mesopotamia up the Tigris toward Baghdad, and the Arab Revolt along the Hejaz railway toward Damascus. Italy's front runs in the Alps against Austria from fifteen. Two cautions: the Balkans have their own front, Serbia overrun in fifteen; and Africa and the Pacific saw fighting for Germany's colonies. Date a map from the Western line's shape alone. The map is the anchor's, read with the witness's names.

Mechanism, motive, resentment, timetable, pressure.

WC2 1333 Classifying a Cause: Alliance, Imperialism, Nationalism, Plans, Opinion

The anchor's five kinds sort cleanly. Alliance: Germany's blank check, Russia's patronage of Serbia, France bound to Russia, Britain bound to Belgium; the mechanism that turned a Balkan murder into a general war. Imperialism: colonies abutting in Africa and Asia, the naval race, the habit of settling quarrels with force against people who could not fire back. Nationalism: Serbia's Piedmont ambition, revanche for Alsace-Lorraine, German contempt for Slavs, Italy's resentment; the resentment that made war feel deserved. Plans: Schlieffen's six weeks, million-man armies, general staffs whose timetables forced their governments to mobilize first or lose; the reason the crisis could not pause. Opinion: electorates, newspapers and jingoism, so that no government could back down and survive. The anchor ranks great-power rivalry first and treats the rest as its instruments; historians still dispute the weights. Practice on six cases: the Dreadnought, the ultimatum to Serbia, Russia's July thirtieth mobilization, the Berlin crowds, Bosnia's annexation, the Franco-Russian convention.

The map points kept; the binding points dropped.

WC2 1334 Reading the Fourteen Points Against Versailles

Read Wilson's address at the Avalon Project. Point one asks for open covenants of peace, openly arrived at; point five for a free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, weighing the interests of the populations concerned; point fourteen for a general association of nations to guarantee political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike. Now set the treaty beside them. The Big Four decided in private, against point one. The colonies became mandates for Britain and France, with no inhabitants consulted, against point five. Alsace-Lorraine returned and Poland was created, points eight and thirteen honored. Austria-Hungary's peoples got states, point ten, but drawn by diplomats who put Czechs with Slovaks and Serbs with Croats. The League was founded, point fourteen, without the United States. The pattern: the points that redrew the enemy's map were kept; the points that bound the victors were not. Quoted within two sentences from Avalon; the anchor never names the Points.

Casualties or dead; share of what; who is counted.

WC2 1335 Reading a Casualty Table

A casualty table can mislead three ways, and the anchor's figures show each. First, casualties means killed, wounded, missing and captured together, so Russia's more than nine million casualties, the witness says, are not nine million dead. Second, percentages hide bases: the anchor's seventy-six percent casualty rate for Russia and France is a share of those mobilized, and its thirty-nine percent for Britain rests on a smaller army. Third, totals differ by who counts: the anchor's twenty million dead includes civilians and disease, the witness's eight and a half million counts soldiers. So read a table by three questions in order: casualties or dead, share of what, and who is included. Then compare like with like: the Somme's four hundred twenty thousand British casualties against Verdun's five hundred forty thousand French, both casualties, both the anchor's, both for one battle. Practice on the Tannenberg line, ninety thousand prisoners and fifty thousand casualties, and say what each word counts. All figures attributed; none is reconciled by the course.

One capstone entry: two questions with one answer, forty years of building the unstoppable and a peace that punished without disabling.

Two questions, one answer.

WC2 1336 Why 1914 Happened and Why 1919 Failed

This unit asked two questions, and the anchor's answers are one answer. Why nineteen fourteen: 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 turned a Bosnian assassination into a continental mobilization within five weeks. Million-man armies and general staffs turned mobilization into a timetable no government could pause. Imperial rivalry and a naval race had taught the powers to distrust each other; nationalism, taught by newspapers to electorates, made backing down political death. Nobody wanted the war; everybody risked it; nobody knew that the Maxim gun and the trench had made attack impossible. So the plans failed at the Marne, the war became holes and attrition, and it was decided by exits and entries: Russia out in seventeen, America in the same year, Germany's last offensive spent by July eighteen and its home front broken by blockade and turnips. Why nineteen nineteen failed: the victors met in private, kept the points that redrew Germany's map and dropped the points that bound themselves, gave the Ottoman lands to Britain and France as mandates, and assigned Germany guilt and a bill it could not pay while leaving it intact. Germany's generals had already written the myth that explained defeat as betrayal. Three empires fell and their peoples got states drawn by diplomats. The League was born without its founder. The anchor's verdict, attributed: the causes were worsened, not resolved. Forty years of building the unstoppable; a peace that punished without disabling. The settlement is witness-built. Unit fifteen begins with the exit that changed the century, Russia's.

Look at what you can now do. You can describe the Fourteen Points, Versailles with its guilt and its bill, the mandates with no inhabitants consulted and Atatürk's republic, a League without its architect, and a peace that worsened its causes. You can sequence the war as plans failing, attrition, exits and entries, collapse and treaty, and read the fronts by line, zone and three. You can classify a cause as mechanism, motive, resentment, timetable or pressure, with rivalry ranked first by the anchor. You can read Wilson against Versailles, map points kept and binding points dropped, and a casualty table by casualties or dead, share of what, and who is counted. And you can state the capstone: forty years of building the unstoppable, then a peace that punished without disabling, which is this unit's one idea. Unit fifteen begins with Russia's exit.