SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR

Inflation: the cost of living doubled in France and Great Britain, and tripled in Germany.Food shortages (especially in Germany, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire).Influx of women into jobs formerly dominated by men.Increased government intervention in the economy.Labor unrest as the war continued (unravelling the German Burgfrieden and French Union sacrée).

The Oratory of Jean Jaurès, 1910:The socialist leader was assassinated by an ill

informed French nationalist on July 31, 1914, just before his party agreed to join the “Sacred Union” for

the war’s duration

The Army Command wanted to arrest all SPD leaders, but Bethmann Hollweg persuaded the Kaiser to promote national reconciliation: “I no longer see parties, I only see Germans!”

The SPD Reichstag delegation voted

unanimously to approve war credits, endorsing the Burgfrieden (truce of the

castle).Here the dead August

Bebel says:“Well done! Defend our

Reich. If I were still alive, I would be among you”

(German postcard, 1914)

Edouard Vuillard, “A Munitions Factory in Lyons: The Forge” (1917):

All countries scrambled to convert factoriesto munitions production.

In France the Socialist Albert Thomas led this effort

When did women gain the right to vote?

1893: New Zealand

1906: Finland

1913: Norway, Denmark

1918: Great Britain, Germany, Austria, USSR, Sweden

1920: USA

1931: Spain

1944/45: France, Italy

1971: Switzerland

1984: Liechtenstein

Rally of the Women’s Social and Political Union, ca. 1908

Emmeline Pankhurst arrested outside Buckingham Palace

Picture of her prison cell, 1911

J. Barnard Davis, “The Workroom of the Gerrard’s Cross War Hospital Supply Depot” (1918)

“Preserve Perishable Produce”

(Food Production

Department, London, 1917/18)

H.G. Gawthorn, “National Service Women’s Land

Army,” Great Britain,

1917

“On Her their Lives Depend”

(recruitment poster for the British

munitions industry, ca. 1916):Economic

mobilization required the

recruitment of women and government

intervention to prevent strikes.

Workers in a British shell factory, 1918

Women miners haul clay to be fired into bricks in Wales

A Frenchwoman operates a lathe

in a metalworking factory

German women at work in a munitions factory,

1916

Albert Sterner, “We need you,”

USA, 1918

“We give our work, our men, our lives if need be. Will you give us the Vote?”

USA, 1917

The Ottoman Empire still included 20 million people in 1914

THE BRITISH MADE MANY PROMISES IN THEIR CAMPAIGN TO DESTROY THE

OTTOMAN EMPIRE

• December 1914: Lord Kitchener in Cairo suggests to the Emir of Mecca that he should inherit the Khalifate

• November 1914: The British seize Basra, but their advance suffers defeat at Kut in 1916

• March-December 1915: Failed invasion at Gallipoli

• April 1915: Beginning of the Armenian Massacres

• January 1916: The Sykes-Picot Agreement partitions Arab lands between the French & British empires

• June 1916: Opening of the “Arab Revolt,” advised by Col. T.E. Lawrence

• November 1917: The Balfour Declaration promises to create a Jewish homeland in Palestine

LORD KITCHENER SEEKS A NEW “KHALIF” AMONG THE HASHEMITES OF MECCA

Hussein bin Ali, Emir of Mecca since 1908, self-proclaimed King of the Hejaz, 1917-24

Faisal bin al Hussein, elected King of Syria in 1920; appointed King of Iraq, 1921-33

Abdullah bin al-Hussein, Emir of Transjordania, 1921-46, then King of Jordan, 1946-49

Sir Winston Churchill and the assault on

Gallipoli, March/April

1915(see Strachan,

pp. 115-23)

British troops land at Suvla Bay, August 7, 1915

Australian & New Zealander troops at ANZAC Cove, April 25, 1915

Australian troops

pinned down at ANZAC

Cove, May 3, 1915

A battery of British 60-

pounders shells Turkish positions

A well camouflaged

Turkish 77-mm Krupp cannon

returns fire

General Mustapha Kemal (1881-

1939), commander of the 19th Division

at Gallipoli:“Kemal Ataturk”

The Sykes-Picot

Agreement of 1916:

The British Foreign

Office paid little

attention to the promises

to the Hashemites

Lt. Col. T.E. Lawrence (1888-1935) and “Emir Faisal’s camel-mounted irregulars” (photos in the British

press, 1917)

Theodor Herzl at the Sixth Zionist Congress in 1903 and his famous book published in 1896, The Jewish

State

Jewish farmers at the new settlement of Metulla, 1896/97

ZIONISTS IN THE BRITISH CABINET?

Arthur James Balfour: PM 1902-

05; Foreign Secretary 1916-19

Balfour’s advisor, Leopold Amery, became Colonial Secretary, 1924-

29: “I was keen on an advance into Palestine on military grounds, and

the idea of establishing in Palestine a prosperous community bound to

Britain by ties of gratitude and interest naturally appealed to me. I

already had doubts as to the permanence of our protectorate in

Egypt.”

THE BALFOUR DECLARATION(from a letter of November 2, 1917, by Foreign

Secretary Balfour to Lord Rothschild and the Zionist Federation)

“His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

The British military commander of Jerusalem, Borton Pasha, on December 11, 1917

The Ottoman Empire conscripted 3 million men but could not keep more than 500,000 supplied in

the field

THE PEACE SETTLEMENT IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Emir Faisal’s delegation at Versailles, with T.E. Lawrence.

The French expelled his supporters from Damascus in 1921