The First World War

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Confidence to Stalemate: Trench War

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Trench Warfare on the Western Front.

• After their initial success, the Germans

had a hard time advancing in France.• For the next three years, the lines were

almost totally fixed near Paris.• Each side dug trenches and fortifications,

leading to the so-called Trench Warfare.

Modern Weapons: War and the Industrial Revolution

• New weapons, like the machine-gun, were especially suited to defensive trench fighting.

• Both sides developed new offensive weapons to try and counter the defensive advantage, such as heavier artillery and poison gas.

Planes and Tanks…

And Zeppelins

Naval Combat

• Willy’s navy finally fought the British Home Fleet at the battle of Jutland, May 1916.

• The Germans actually inflicted great damage on the British Navy, but were out-numbered, and forced to retreat to their ports, where the British blockaded them.

Lusitania, May 1915

British passenger liner sunk off Ireland, 1198 casualties, including 128 Americans

More New Technology: U-Boats

• Germany built many submarines to counter the British surface fleet.

• After 1916, the German fleet began unrestricted submarine warfare, attacking any ship which approached Britain. This led to the sinking of US ships and American involvement in the war.

Ireland, 1916

• Easter Uprising, mostly in Dublin• Declaration of an Irish

Republic• Violent British

response• Execution

(without trial)

of the leaders• Strong

negative

world reaction.

The West, 1916-1917

• Stalemate, horrific casualties.• Verdun, winter 1916: 250k dead, 1 million wounded• The River Somme, summer 1916: 1.5 million casualties• By 1917,

neither side

could

advance

against the

other.• Conscription

and

resistance

The Eastern Front: The Russian Revolution

• The Russian Army, though very large, was not as technologically capable as the German forces, and faired badly.

• Shortages and hunger in the Russian cities led to widespread discontent.

• In March, 1917, Nicholas II abdicated. The government was soon taken over by Vladmir Lenin and his Bolshevik party.

• They quickly made peace with • Germany and left the war in early

1918.

Japan

• Japan also got involved, allying with Britain and France, and seizing many of Germany’s Pacific possessions.

US Arrives

•The US Congress declared war on Germany in March of 1917, and instituted a draft.

•By early 1918, thousands of US soldiers began arriving in France.

•For the first time, the

Germans were at a real

disadvantage

numerically.

1918

• The Germans launched a new offensive in early 1918, and nearly took Paris.

• The Allies, now with thousands of US troops, counter-attacked and captured hundreds of thousands of German troops.

• Allied advances continued, and by October, the German Army was in full retreat.

• The Austrians were badly beaten in Serbia and Italy, and were about to surrender as well.

• An armistice was declared in November, 1918.

Results

• 20 million military and civilian casualties. 11 million dead.

• Collapse of the Russian Empire, and the emergence of the Soviet Union.

• The collapse of the Austrian Empire.• The collapse of the Ottoman Empire.• Defeat of Germany, ruin of France• Destruction of the European economy• Spanish Flu, 1919 (20 million more dead)• British victory• American victory, emergence as a world power

Treaty of Versailles, 1919

• Germany

Return Alsace-Lorraine to France (1871)

Give up overseas empire (mostly to Britain and Japan)

Reparations!• Austria gave up all imperial possessions, including Hungary and

Czechoslovakia, Bosnia, Italian Territories.

• Ottoman Empire– Newly organized as Turkey– Middle Eastern territories divided up by Britain and France– Arab (and Kurdish and Egyptian) national ambitions?

• Poland rebuilt from land given up by Germany and Austria• Woodrow Wilson and the League of Nations (an antecedent to the

United Nations)

Sykes-Picot Agreement

End of the Nineteenth Century

• Nationalism largely repudiated as the cause of the “Great War” as it was called.

• Competition for Imperial possessions was essentially over, also seen as a cause of the war.

• Classic Liberalism was essentially over as well, as the European economy was in complete shambles after the war.

• Many observers saw WWI as a total failure of the politics and policies of the Nineteenth Century, a sentiment which led to the creation of several reactionary political philosophies.