[Extensively edited and revised, November
11 2025]
WW I
With each century we've talked about in this course, I've had a
general theme. The 16th and 17th centuries: a time of
particularly rapid change. The 18th century: the age of
reason. The 19th century: the age of progress. For the
20th century, there are lots of possible themes, but perhaps the
single most striking characteristic of the 20th century was that
it was an age of violence--much of it senseless violence. A
good example of this, World War I.
World War I, as the name implies, was a war that involved much of
the world. It was, however, primarily a European war, and it
was the Europeans who started it. How did this happen?
How did the best educated, most civilized people in the history of
mankind start one of the most terrible, most senseless wars in
history?
Now, often enough, people want to blame Germany for both World War
I and World War II. It's wrong, though, to view the Germans
as the sole people responsible for these disasters.
Nevertheless, it is easiest to understand World War I and its
causes as a result of a series of German mistakes.
Germany did not become a nation until after the France Prussian
war of 1870. Once Germany did unify, however, it was time
for the rest of the world to look out. Germany was soon a
leader in vaccines, in chemistry, and in all sorts of other
areas. It was rapidly catching Britain as a leading
industrial power. However, because Germany unified so late,
it missed out on much of the European scramble for colonies around
the world. Having colonies seemed critical to an
industrialized society. Such colonies guaranteed access to
key industrial materials, and guaranteed markets for manufactured
goods. France, Britain, and even little European countries
like Belgium and Portugal had colonies throughout the world.
The German attitude was that, if there was any part of the world
*not* already claimed by another European country, that should be
theirs: they didn't yet have their fair share of colonies.
German belligerence ended up alienating many other countries, and,
by 1914, Germany had only one reliable ally left in Europe:
Austria.
German aggression, then, did in part creating the tensions that
led to World War I. But playing an even bigger role, German
fear of aggression.
Germany, for instance, was afraid that Britain might decide to
side with Germany's enemies. Was this likely? Well,
not really. The English speaking peoples and the German
speaking peoples were natural allies, sharing a common historic
enemy in France. But Germany wanted to make sure Britain
never attacked them, and so they created a strategy based on the
"Risk Theory." The Risk Theory was the idea that, if Germany
built a big battle fleet, Britain couldn't afford to ever attack
them. The British might wind, but they would lose so many
ships that their world-wide empire would be endangered. So
Germany builds its battle fleet. But when Britain learns of
this, it makes the British mad--and makes them more likely to
attack Germany! What could be more senseless than to adopt
an idea to *prevent* war with another nation that actually makes
war with that nation more likely?
While the Germans worried somewhat about Britain, they were far
more concerned about two other potential enemies, France and
Russia. The Germans were certain that they could lick France
alone, and they were pretty sure they could defeat the
Russians. The nightmare, however, was the two-front war,
having to deal with the French in the West and the Russians in the
East at the same time.
The Germans came up with a plan for the two-front war: the
Schlieffen Plan. Basically, this plan said that, in the
event of war, Germany would begin by attacking France with all its
might, trying to knock France out of the war quickly. Then
the Germans would shift all their men and material to the eastern
front to deal with the more serious threat posed by Russia.
The Germans thought they'd do OK with this plan. Russia, while
formidible, was a vast country, slow to mobilize. While the
Russians were getting their act together, the Germans were sure
they'd have time to put France out of business.
Two problems, though. First of all, the Schlieffen Plan
depended on speed, and the German/French border is not built for
speed: mountain country. So--an easier route: right through
Belgium. The Germans don't seem to have thought this a
problem. Why would the Belgians not let the Germans march
right through the country? Also, the Schlieffen plan was the
only plan the Germans made. They adopted the plan in 1905,
never revised it, and never made any other plan. All of this
meant that Europe was a powder keg waiting to explode.
The spark came in a region of Europe known as the Balkans.
For a long time, the Balkans had been part of the Ottoman Turkish
Empire. The "Sick Man of Europe" was still around at this
point, but nearing death, and the great question, as always: what
would become of the territories of the empire once collapse was
complete?
Some would have thought it made no difference. Otto von
Bismarck has said that the whole of the Balkans wasn't worth the
bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier. But others felt
differently. Various national groups in the Balkans wanted
independence. Austria wanted parts of the Balkans for their
own empire. The Turks likewise wanted to hold on to as much
territory as they could.
Little by little, some of the nationalist groups got their
way. Slavs, for instance, managed to create the nation of
Serbia, while the Bulgars created Bulgaria. But Austria too
took some of what it wanted: Bosnia and Herzegovina, for
instance. This was territory with a large Slavic population,
the Serbs thought it ought to be theirs instead of
Austria's. But Serbia was no match militarily for Austria,
so the Serbs resorted to terrorism. Groups like the Black
Hand used bombing and assassination to destabilize the region and
drive Austria out. The terror campaign reached its height
when a Serbian-backed terrorist assassinated Franz Ferdinand, the
heir to the Austrian throne, and his wife.
The Austrians were furious, and it's not too surprising that such
an event would lead to war between Austria and Serbia. But
what happens next? Austria would have won easily against
Serbia alone. But the Russians, big brothers to all
other Slavs, would certainly come to Serbia's aid. And then
the shoe would be on the other foot: Austria would get
crushed. But Germany could not stand by and see their only
ally defeated, so the Germans stepped in to help the
Austrians. However, the Germans had only one plan for war:
the Schlieffen plan. Attack France first! And, to get
there in a hurry, go through Belgium. German invasion of
Belgium brought Britain into the war as well. In 1915,
Bulgaria joined the war on the side of the "Central Powers"
(Germany, Austria, Turkey), while Italy joined on the side of the
allied powers (Britain, France, Russia, Serbia). Because
these nations had colonies all over the world, they drew on the
resources of those colonies, and we ended up with a conflict that
affected and involved much of the world--all stemming from one
assassination in the Balkans!
As it turned out, the Schlieffen Plan didn't quite work. The
Belgian King said, "Belgium is a country, not a highway," and the
Belgians, while they couldn't stop Germany, slowed the German
forces down just long enough that France and Britain could stop
the German invasion. The Germans got to within 50 miles of
Paris, but there the attack stopped. What now?
Well, the Germans improvised, digging themselves into trenches,
putting up barbed wire, and trying to hold on to what they had
already taken. The British and French on the other side did
the same thing, digging trenches and putting up defenses designed
to stop any potential German advance.
This led to four bloody years of trench warfare, with neither side
able to make progress, and both sides losing thousands of
men. The twin battles of Verdun and the Somme, for instance,
cost the lives of 1,000,000 men--and all that happened was the
exchange of a few miles of territory. Nothing--not poison
gas, not airplanes--could break the stalemate of the
trenches. And yet instead of making peace, the diplomats
back home just let the war drag on and on while a whole generation
of young men was lost.
Here's a graphic showing the "progress" made during four years of
Trench Warfare:
Trench
changes during WW I
Even more senseless than the fighting in the trenches, what
happened in Armenia.
Armenia is an area along the northeast side of the Turkish empire
on the border with Russia. It had long been part of the
Turkish empire, but, while the Turks were Muslims, the Armenians
were Christians. The Turks worried that the Armenians might
side with the Russians, and they asked the Armenian community
leaders for a sign of their loyalty. The asked the Armenians
to surrender their weapons to show they didn't intend to fight
alongside the Russians. For the most part, the Armenians
complied.
They couldn't have made a more foolish or more horrible mistake,
because, once the Armenians had given up their weapons, the Turks
set about the first (but unfortunately not the last) attempt at
genocide in the 20th century.
Here's a summary from one writer:
It is difficult to convey the horror of the events
of 1915, as the Ottoman government set into action its design
for genocide. In April 1915, The Armenian intellectual and
community leaders in Istanbul were rounded up and transported in
ships to their doom: among the victims were a number of priests,
poets, doctors, and the great composer Komitas.
Able-bodied Armenian males through out the Ottoman empire had
already been rounded up into labor battalions, though not issued
with arms. They did sterling work for the Ottoman army and
built many roads and railways. They were now set upon by
the Turkish units and shot down or bludgeoned to death almost to
the last man.
With their young men, their leaders, and most of
their weapons gone, the Armenians were mostly defenseless.
Here's what happens next:
Even more tragic and horrible was the fate reserved for the
Armenian civil population. Infants were forcibly removed
from their families to “orphanages“ which turned out to be pits
dug in the ground, into which the children were hurled alive, to
be covered up with piles of stones. Women and old people
were formed up into caravans and forced to march on foot for
hundreds of miles towards Aleppo and other concentration points
in Syria. On the way, they were waylaid by bands of
ruffians, who were given carte blanche by the government to kill
deportees and steal their possessions. Neither food nor
water was provided to the deportees. Who soon went mad and died
of thirst. In the night-time, the gendarme escorts would
amuse themselves by stripping any good-looking girls who took
their fancy and forcing them to indulge in various forms of
sexual perversion. These usually ended with the victims
being disemboweled, and their breasts sliced off. Many
such corpses were thrown into the Tigris and Euphrates and
washed up in town farther downstream.
A different source describes in detail what happened
in individual cities and towns. Here's an example:
For a few weeks, there was peace, and an
end to oppression throughout the district. But at the end
of June, a determined assault was made against the whole
region… In Moush itself, in early July, the mood changed to one
of the most dire oppression: further exactions were made, and
demands for arms; moreover leading Armenians of the towns and
villages were subjected to frightful tortures—fingernails pulled
out, limbs twisted, teeth knocked out, noses beaten-down; and
wives and daughters were raped in public before their broken
menfolk. In Moush itself the men resisted for four days from
the stone-built houses and churches, before going down
fighting. For the women and children, a grimmer death
followed: they were driven out of the city into specially
prepared large wooden sheds in the nearby Armenian villages;
these were then set on fire, and amid scenes of horror, and the
vilest, most sadistic brutality from the Turkish guards, the
defenseless woman and children were all burnt to death.
Ultimately, the Turks wiped out about 1 1/2 million
Armenians, about half the population of the region. What
makes this all the more senseless is the fact that the Turks had
to divert manpower to carry out the genocide. They should
have been focusing (say) on stopping the British forces under
Allenby from marching into Turkey. Instead, they were using
their men to wipe out their own people.
Some years later, when Adolf Hitler was about to invade Poland, he
apparently was convinced that any atrocities his men committed
would be soon forgotten. Here's how Wikipedia quotes his
speech:
Our strength lies in our quickness and
in our brutality; Genghis Khan has sent millions of
women and children into death knowingly and with a light heart.
History sees in him only the great founder of States. As to what the weak Western European civilisation
asserts about me, that is of no account. I have given the
command and I shall shoot everyone who utters one word of
criticism, for the goal to be obtained in the war is not that of
reaching certain lines but of physically demolishing the
opponent. And so for the present only in the East I have put my
death-head formations' in place with the command relentlessly
and without compassion to send into death many women and
children of Polish origin and language. Only thus we can gain
the living space (lebensraum) that we need. Who after all
is today speaking about the destruction of the Armenians?
We generally summarize this to, "Who remembers the
Armenians?" It's a short-hand way of noting that, often, the
great atrocities of history are forgotten, and the perpetrators
never held to account. A terrible precedent.
[For detailed information,
please
read this Armenia
Case
Study on the Gendercide Web site. If the link is
broken,
try the Wayback
Machine
Link.]
While we generally seem to focus on the Western
Front in World War I, fighting along the Eastern Front was, if
anything, worse. The Russians alone lost eight million men
killed, captured, or wounded. Finally, torn apart by
Revolution at home, the Russians gave up. Lenin, the Communist
dictator who in November seized control of Russia, basically
surrendered unconditionally, signing the treaty of
Brest-Litovsk. This treaty let the Germans annex territory
that included prime agricultural land and many of Russia's most
important industrial resources.
This was a huge shot-in-the arm for Germany. All sorts
of extra food to feed their soldiers and civilians. All
sorts of iron and coal, raw materials badly needed for the war
effort. And, in addition, Germany no longer had to worry
about the two-front war. The Schlieffen Plan had almost
worked in reverse: Russia was out of the war, and now Germany
could concentrate all its efforts on the Western front.
Essentially, Germany had won the war: the Germans could have
arranged peace terms favorable to Germany. But instead
of negotiating, the Germans fought on. Why?
Because they had been fighting the war with no military or
political objectives. The difficulty of fighting without
objectives is that you don't know what you are fighting for,
and so there is really no way to tell when you have won!
And Germany continues to fight a "won" war until, eventually,
the war is no longer won.
Ultimately, 1918 was a disaster for the Germans, largely
because of American entry into the war.
Now for quite a long time, America avoided entry
into the war. George Washington had warned the US against
becoming entangled in European wars, and for 150 years the US had
followed Washington’s advice. Woodrow Wilson (first elected
in 1912) and his Secretary of State Bryan were committed to this
“non-entanglement” tradition, trying to keep us from getting
involved.
But it wasn’t easy. As the war raged in Europe, tremendous
trade opportunities were available to American businesses, and
American businessmen took advantage of this.
Germany had resorted to U-boat warfare to try to block supplies
from getting to Britain. They warned us that anyone sailing
on a British ship was subject to attack, but Americans continued
to travel on British ships anyway.
In 1915, the Germans sunk the Lusitania, killing 1,198 people
including 128 Americans. This didn’t play well with the
American public. On top of that, the British-controlled
transatlantic cable was transmitting information designed to make
us sympathize with their side and be outraged by German
atrocities.
Still, Wilson held the line, and, when he ran for reelection in
1916, he made that a key point in his campaign. His
Republican opponent Charles Evans Hughes (called Charles Evasive
Hughes by his detractors) didn’t make clear where he stood on US
entry into the war. The Wilson campaign, however, made much
of Wilson’s success in avoiding American involvement. “He
kept us out of war” was a featured slogan. One campaign ad:
“You are working, not fighting; alive and happy, not cannon
fodder; Wilson and peace with honor, or Hughes with Roosevelt and
war?”
Well, Wilson won reelection, but in a close vote: 277 to 254 in
the electoral college. The American people had chosen
Wilson, at least partly on the implied promise we were *not* going
to enter the war.
But there were soon problems with this policy. The papers
played up the Zimmerman Note, an intercepted German message to
Mexico that said that, in the event of American entry into the
war, Mexico should attack the United States. At the end of
the war, the Germans would repay them by getting back for them
Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.
On top of that, the Germans were sinking American ships taking
supplies to Britain. Anti-German sentiment increased, and
Wilson decided we had to go to war.
But if he was going to break his implied campaign promise, Wilson
better give the American people good reasons for doing so.
He did.
1. This would be a “war to end all wars.”
2. This would be a war to “make the world safe for
democracy.”
Good goals—but more than goals. Wilson was determined that
the war would be a “progressive” war, one that did in fact lead to
a more peaceful world and that did in fact lead to free and
democratic societies.
Wilson suggested a way of settling the war that might have done
just that, his “Fourteen Points,” Wilson’s plan for resolving
European (and world-wide) problems after the fighting was done.
Wilson’s points included:
1. Open covenants (no secret diplomacy)
2. Freedom of the seas
3. The removal of economic barriers
4. The reduction of national armaments “to the lowest point
consistent with safety”
5. The impartial adjustment of colonial claims
6. The evacuation of Russia by foreign armies
7. Belgian independence
8. The Alsace-Lorraine area restored to France
9. Adjustment of the Italian frontier
10. Autonomy for the peoples of Austria-Hungary
11. The restoration of Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro
12. Autonomy for Turkey
13. An independent Poland
14. The creation of a League of Nations
Now these ideas reflect a pretty solid understanding of the causes
of WWI and a pretty sound recipe for an amicable peace.
American entry into the war *did* turn the tables in Europe
leading to the defeat of Germany, and our contributions *should*
have meant that we would have an important voice in how the war
was actually settled, *especially* since the Germans surrendered
under the belief they would be treated in accord with the generous
terms promised by Wilson.
But what actually happened is that, after the war was over, the
British, and even more the French, insisted on much harsher terms
for Germany—and Wilson gave in. Why? He sacrificed
most of his goals to achieve the one goal he thought most
important, the creation of the League of Nations. The Versailles
Treaty that actually ended the war (June 28, 1919) stripped
Germany of the Saar Basin and the Danzig region, reduced the
German army to 100,000 men, forbid German fortifications on their
border with France—and imposed on German an indemnity of more than
$30 billion to pay for the war. But Wilson had got his
League of Nations—sort of. And World War I was a victory
overall for the good guys—sort of.
But it did not do what Wilson promised. Instead, World
War I led directly and indirectly into the creation of some of
the most tyrannical regimes the world has ever seen, and--just
20 years later--to another world war--this time, on an even
larger scale.
[Note:
if you get the World War I essay, it would be good to note, at
least briefly, how WW I contributes to the rise of Communism,
Fascism, National Socialism, and, eventually, leads to WW
II. Also note there were five different treaties that
ended World War I, all of them bad. We are still living
with the consequences of the failure of the Sevres Treaty, the
treaty that dismantled the Turkish empire, for instance.]