WWI - acc. PHILLIPS

World War I destroyed the balance of power, and the Treaty of Versailles, which ended the war, created unstable conditions in which extremist ideologies emerged that challenged liberal democracy and the postwar settlement.

The First World War,

c. 1914-1928 CE

European politics and diplomacy in the 20th century were defined by total war and its consequences. World War I destroyed the balance of power, and the Treaty of Versailles, which ended the war, created unstable conditions in which extremist ideologies emerged that challenged liberal democracy and the postwar settlement. In Russia, hardships during World War I gave rise to a revolution in 1917.

During World War I, states increased the degree and scope of their authority over their economies, societies, and cultures. The demands of total war required the centralization of power and the regimentation of the lives of citizens. During the war, governments sought to control information and used propaganda to create stronger emotional ties to the nation and its war effort. Ironically, these measures also produced distrust of traditional authorities. At the end of the war, four empires dissolved—the German, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and Russian empires—but the democratic nations that arose in their place lacked a tradition of democratic politics and suffered from weak economies and ethnic tensions. Even before the end of the war, Russia experienced a revolution and civil war that created not only a new state, the USSR, but also a new conception of government and socioeconomic order based on communist ideals.

Source: https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/pdf/ap-european-history-course-and-exam-description.pdf

The Great War

Objectives:

Explain the causes and effects of World War I.
Explain how new technology altered the conduct of World War I.
Explain the causes and effects of the Russian Revolution.

World War I, caused by a complex interaction of long- and short-term factors, resulted in immense losses and disruptions for both victors and vanquished.
A variety of factors—including nationalism, military plans, the alliance system, and imperial competition—turned a regional dispute in the Balkans into World War I.
New technologies confounded traditional military strategies and led to trench warfare and massive troop losses.
The effects of military stalemate, national mobilization, and total war led to protest and insurrection in the belligerent nations and eventually to revolutions that changed the international balance of power.
The war in Europe quickly spread to non-European theaters, transforming the war into a global conflict.
During the world wars, women became increasingly involved in military and political mobilization, as well as in economic production.

Causes

German Kaiser Wilhelm II's aggressive Weltpolitik foreign policy unnerved other Great Powers causing Britain and France to draw closer together after the Moroccan Crises.

1914

The Schlieffen Plan called for Germany to violate Belgium's neutrality and sweep through its coastal plains into northern France. This drew Britain into the Great War while atrocities reported during the Rape of Belgium further vilified Germany in the court of international opinion.

British machine gunners

The heroic French defense at the First Battle of the Marne halted the German advance.

Fighting along the Western Front quickly bogged down in horrific trench warfare as Germany was forced to divide its forces in a protracted two-front war.

German Field Marshal August von Mackensen in 1914

Lord Kitchener, the popular Secretary of State for War, encourages British men to enlist in this well-known propaganda poster.

British ship-based air-raid on German naval forces, Christmas Day, 1914

Empires called upon their colonies for manpower. Britain, represented by an old lion, is supported by the young lions - Canada, India, Australia, and South Africa.

1915-1916

British Mark I tank during the battle of the Somme, September 1916

In an effort to break the stalemate, British First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill designed the Gallipoli Campaign to capture Constantinople and open a supply line to reinforce Russia through the Black Sea. The campaign was a disastrous failure noted for the significant contributions of British colonial troops from Australia and New Zealand.

New technologies played a significant role in the war. German U-boats waged unrestricted submarine warfare off the British coast. Britain developed tanks to cross the deadly No Man’s Land.

The Ottoman Empire conducted the Armenian Genocide against its Christian minority population near the Russian border. British officer T.E. Lawrence helped incite the Arab Revolt against the Turks, a story depicted in Lawrence of Arabia, winner of the 1962 Academy Award for Best Picture.

Vietnamese workers from French Indochina at a train station in Saint-Raphaël, France, in 1916

German East African soldiers

The Great War. 1914-1916

1917

Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen, the Red Baron, and members of his Flying Circus

Indian troops from Punjab in France, 1917

Australian soldiers at Ypres, France during the battle of Passchendaele.

Austro-Hungarian troops on the mountainous Italian Front

slogging through mud during the battle of Passchendaele

Russian soldiers during the Kerensky Offensive

Joseph Stalin (left), Vladimir Lenin (center), and Leon Trotsky (right) led the Bolshevik Revolution and founded the Soviet Union.

The relationship of Europe to the world shifted significantly with the globalization of the conflict, the emergence of the United States as a world power, and the overthrow of European empires.
The Russian Revolution created a regime based on Marxist–Leninist theory.
In Russia, World War I exacerbated long-term problems of political stagnation, social inequality, incomplete industrialization, and food and land distribution, all while creating support for revolutionary change.
Military and worker insurrections, aided by the revived Soviets, undermined the Provisional Government and set the stage for Lenin’s long-planned Bolshevik Revolution and establishment of a communist state.
The Bolshevik takeover prompted a protracted civil war between communist forces and their opponents, who were aided by foreign powers.

White coalition propaganda depicted the horrors of the Red Terror.

1918

German Zeppelin-Staaken R.VI giant bomber

prisoners of war from various Allied nations

Soldiers suffering during the 1918 "Spanish" flu pandemic that killed up to 100 million people worldwide, or approximately 5% of the global population.

fitting for a prosthetic face covering

Russia surrendered in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk following the November 1917 Bolshevik Revolution allowing Germany to turn its full might against the Western Front during the 1918 Spring Offensive.

Despite immense fire power from weapons like the Paris Gun and the A7V tank, the Germans failed to breakthrough Allied defenses. In summer 1918, they fell back to the defensive Hindenburg Line as the Allies, fresh with American reinforcements, went on the Hundred Days Offensive. By November, the Germans were exhausted and asked for an Armistice after the German Revolution overthrew the Kaiser.

German General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, the Lion of Africa, harassed 300,000 Allied troops in East Africa with just 14,000 guerrilla fighters. He surrendered two weeks after the war ended in Europe.

French national cemetery in Ypres, Belgium

The Great War, 1917-1918

Peace

Objectives:

Explain how the developments of World War I changed political and diplomatic interactions between and among nations.
Explain how and why the settlement of World War I failed to effectively resolve the political, economic, and diplomatic challenges of the early 20th century.

In January 1919, communists tried to seize power in Germany during the failed Spartacist Uprising.

When the fighting ended, the stab-in-the-back myth emerged among German right-wing militants, a dangerous narrative that the German armed forces were not defeated in the field but were betrayed by communists, socialists, and Jews at home - the so-called "November criminals."

"The Big Four" - David Lloyd George of Britain, Vittorio Orlando of Italy, Georges Clemenceau of France, and Woodrow Wilson of the U.S. - made all the major decisions at the Paris Peace Conference.

The German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and Ottoman Empires collapsed. Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary emerged as new nation-states. Serbia was awarded control of Bosnia, Montenegro, Croatia, and Slovenia to become the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Romania invaded newly-independent Hungary and seized much of its territory. In the Middle East, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine, and Transjordan became League of Nations mandates. Britain, France, and Belgium took control of Germany's African colonies while Japan took control of Germany's Pacific islands.

Fighting during the Irish Civil War. In 1922, majority-Catholic southern Ireland won independence as the Irish Free State. Majority-Protestant Northern Ireland remained part of the United Kingdom.

The conflicting goals of the peace negotiators in Paris pitted diplomatic idealism against the desire to punish Germany, producing a settlement that satisfied few.
Wilsonian idealism clashed with postwar realities in both the victorious and the defeated states. Democratic successor states emerged from former empires and eventually succumbed to significant political, economic, and diplomatic crises.
The League of Nations, created to prevent future wars, was weakened from the outset by the nonparticipation of major powers, including the U.S., Germany, and the Soviet Union.
The Versailles settlement, particularly its provisions on the assignment of guilt and reparations for the war, hindered the German Weimar Republic’s ability to establish a stable and legitimate political and economic system.
The League of Nations distributed former German and Ottoman possessions to France and Great Britain through the mandate system, thereby altering the imperial balance of power and creating a strategic interest in the Middle East and its oil

The Allies carved Turkey up in the Treaty of Sèvres. Allied occupation forces were defeated during the Turkish War of Independence.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder and first president of the Republic of Turkey (1923-1938) transformed Turkey into a progressive, secular, industrial nation.

Though greatly weakened by the First World War, the British Empire reached its greatest territorial size afterward.

Peace

The Lost Generation

Objective: Explain how the events of the first half of the 20th century challenged existing social, cultural, and intellectual understandings.

The widely held belief in progress characteristic of much of 19th-century thought began to break down before World War I.
When World War I began, Europeans were generally confident in the ability of science and technology to address human needs and problems despite the uncertainty created by the new scientific theories and psychology.
The challenge to the certainties of the Newtonian universe in physics opened the door to uncertainty in other fields by undermining faith in objective knowledge while also providing the knowledge necessary for the development of nuclear weapons and power.
World War I created a “lost generation” and fostered disillusionment and cynicism, while it transformed the lives of women, and democratized societies