Kitsune
06-25-2004, 03:37 PM
World War I
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
World War I (also known as the First World War and the Great War) was a conflict that lasted from 1914 to 1918. Chemical weapons were used for the first time, the first mass bombardment of civilians from the sky was executed, and some of the century's first genocides took place during the war. No previous conflict had mobilised so many soldiers, or involved so many in the field of battle. Never before had casualties been so high. The First World War was the first total war. World War I was also a war of change, a last blow to the old order in Europe to pave way for the new. Dynasties such as the Habsburgs, Romanovs, and Hohenzollerns, who had dominated the European political landscape and had roots of power back to the days of the Crusades, all fell after the 4 year war. Many of the events and phenomena that would dominate the world of the 20th century can trace their origins to this war--including Communism, World War II and even the Cold War.
World War I proved to be the decisive break with the old world order, marking the final demise of absolutist monarchy in Europe. It would prove the catalyst for the Russian Revolution, which would inspire later revolutions in countries as diverse as China and Cuba, and would lay the basis for the Cold War confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States. The defeat of Germany in the war and failure to resolve the unsettled issues that had caused the Great War would lay the basis for the rise of Nazism, and thus the outbreak of World War II in 1939. Most significantly, it laid the basis for a more modern form of warfare that relied heavily on technology, and would involve non-combatants in the horrors of war as never before. From this point on, all people of all classes would have to see the true color of war. War was no longer a "polite" battle where men lined up and showed their strength on some distant battlefield. World War I showed the new direction war was headed where each side would begin to use desperate and sometimes horrific strategies to gain any advantage, even at the expense of the innocent.
It was commonly called "The Great War" or sometimes "the war to end all wars" until World War II started, although the name "First World War" was coined as early as 1920 by Lt-Col à Court Repington in The First World War 1914-18. Some scholars write of the First World War as merely the first phase of a 30-year-long war spanning the period 1914 - 1945.
Over 9 million men would die on the battlefield, and nearly that many more persons would die on the homefront from food shortages, starvation, genocide, and simply being the unfortunate family living right on the battlefront. Of all the questions regarding the war, these come first: How did it happen? And why?
Diplomatic origins
On June 28, 1914, Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria and heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, was assassinated in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb student. Though triggered by this assassination, the war's origins lie in the complex relations and turn of events that can be traced over a century earlier during the French Revolution.
By the late 1700s in France, society was on the verge of revolution. The old monarchy was ruling France by birthright and absolute authority. The fabric of France's society was clear: King on the top, the people on the bottom, with Church and Nobles somewhere at the upper-end. This was a problem because economic changes were creating a new social class, the Bourgeoisie. This new middle class often were the reformers of French society who demanded to be treated as well as the Aristocracy. Along with this, France was in trouble economically. Since Louis XIV, France had been engaged in a series of wars which drained financial reserves. Many of the middle class were outraged when taxes were on the rise for everyone except the Aristocracy. What began as a movement to fix France's broken economy and society became a continental war. The French Revolution resulted in chaos and the ascent of Napoleon to power. Napoleon's armies marched all over Europe, bringing not only French control, but French ideas. The rise of ideas of Nationalism, devotion and love for one's common people and ethnicity, had begun in the Napoleonic Wars. Napoleon tapped into this new idea of Nationalism, which he saw in his troops, to better the French war machine. The French people began to feel pride in their culture and ethnicity. The world watched Nationalism for the first time and saw the power the French gained from it. Following the Napoleonic Wars, all of Europe was sharing these ideas.
The Congress of Vienna in 1815 followed. The congress was organized by the main victors of the Napoleonic Wars: Britain, Prussia, Russia, Austria. The key figure of the congress was Austria's representative, Klemens von Metternich. Metternich advocated restoring Europe to the way it was before the French Revolution. He urged Europe to create a Balance of Power, where no European nation was stronger than another. He also created the concert of Europe, a system where nations would help each other to keep the old aristocracy in power. By preventing the single monarchy in a country from falling to nationalism, it would prevent the entire continent from going up in flames under social revolution. If that were to ever happen, according to Metternich, Europe would be thrown into another Continental war as Napoleon and French Nationalism had shown. Metternich feared Nationalism as a force that could tear apart multi-ethnic nations like Russia and the Austrian Empire.
In the years that followed the Congress of Vienna, conflicts began springing up all over Europe between those who cried out for change, and those who resisted it. By the mid-1800s, Nationalism had become an evident force. 1848 saw a wave of unrest across the continent in the Revolution of 1848. The 1860s and early 1870s saw two great changes to the map: the unification of Italy and the unification of Germany. These two nations were formed off the backs of Nationalism. German Unification was brought about by Prussia's iron chancellor Otto von Bismarck through a series of wars from 1864-1871. Bismarck's famous speech in 1862 as minister of Prussia was:
"Germany is not looking to Prussia's liberalism, but to her power. The great questions of the day will not be decided by speeches and majority decisions, this was the mistake of 1848, but by iron and blood."
The Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 had brought not only the establishment of a powerful and dynamic German Empire, but also a legacy of animosity between France and Germany following the German annexation of the formerly French territory of Alsace-Lorraine. Under the political direction of her first Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, Germany secured her new position in Europe by an alliance with Austria-Hungary and a diplomatic understanding with Russia. Bismarck began pursuing alliances and peace treaties. He made peace with almost every nation in Europe except France. He feared greatly that a war might destroy the newborn nation he had created in the 1860s. By the time of Wilhelm I's death, a system of alliances kept a tight peace in Europe.
The accession (1888) of Kaiser Wilhelm II brought to the German throne a young ruler determined to direct policy himself, despite his rash diplomatic judgment. After the 1890 elections, in which the centre and left parties made major gains, and due in part to his disaffection at inheriting the Chancellor who had guided his grandfather for most of his career, Wilhelm engineered Bismarck's resignation.
Much of the fallen Chancellor's work was undone in the following decades, as Wilhelm failed to renew the arrangement with Russia, presenting republican France with the opportunity to conclude (1891-94) a full alliance with the Russian Empire. Worse was to follow, as Wilhelm undertook (1897-1900) the creation of a German navy capable of threatening Britain's century-old naval mastery, prompting the Anglo-French Entente Cordiale of 1904 and its expansion (1907) to include Russia.
Rivalry among the powers was exacerbated from the 1880s by the scramble for colonies which brought much of Africa and Asia under European rule in the following quarter-century. Even the once hesitantly imperialistic Bismarck became an advocate of overseas Empire, adding to Anglo-German tension as German acquisitions in Africa and the Pacific threatened to impinge upon British strategic and commercial interests. Wilhelm's support for Moroccan independence from France, Britain's new strategic partner, provoked the Tangier Crisis of 1905. During the Second Moroccan or Agadir Crisis (1911), a German naval presence in Morocco tested the Anglo-French coalition once again.
A key ingredient in the emerging diplomatic powder-keg was the growth of powerful nationalist aspirations among the Balkan states, which each looked to Germany, Austria-Hungary or Russia for support. The rise of anti-Austrian circles in Serbia following a 1903 palace coup contributed to a further crisis in 1908 over Austria's unilateral annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, German pressure forcing a humiliating climbdown on the part of a Russia weakened (1905) by defeat at the hands of Japan and subsequent revolutionary disorder.
Alarm at Russia's unexpectedly rapid recovery after 1909 fueled sentiment among German ruling circles in favour of a pre-emptive war to break alleged Entente "encirclement" before Russian rearmament could tip the strategic balance decisively against Germany and Austria-Hungary. By 1913 both France and Germany were planning to extend military service, while Britain had entered into a naval convention and military discussions with France during the previous year.
The outbreak
Austrian regional security concerns grew with the near-doubling of neighbouring Serbia's territory as a result of the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913. Many in the Austrian leadership, not least Emperor Franz Joseph, and Conrad von Hötzendorf, worried about Serbian nationalist agitation in the southern provinces of the Empire; they were still haunted by the memories of the Piedmontese inspired campaigns against the Austrian Italian provinces in 1859. Just as France had backed Piedmont in the campaign culminating in the Battle of Solferino, they worried that Russia would back Serbia to annex Slavic areas of Austria. The feeling was that it was better to destroy Serbia before they were given the opportunity to launch a campaign.
Some members of the Austrian government also felt that a campaign in Serbia would be the perfect remedy to the internal political problems of the Empire. Many of them were frustrated by the power of the Hungarian government in the Empire. In 1914 the government of the Austro-Hungarian Empire had a "dualistic" structure. Austria and Hungary had essentially separate governments under one monarch. The Austrian government retained control over foreign policy, but was still dependent on the Hungarians for such things as budgetary approval. Often the Hungarian leadership, under István Tisza refused Austrian requests for things such as increased military spending. In hopes of ending the political gridlock that this caused, many hoped to form a federation, or at least trialistic monarchy. The solution was seen in increasing the numbers of Slavs in the Empire to balance the Magyar population.
Franz Ferdinand's assassination in June 1914 provided the opportunity sought by some Austrian leaders for a reckoning with the smaller Slav kingdom. The Sarajevo conspirators were alleged by the Austro-Hungarian authorities to have been armed by the shadowy Black Hand, a pan-Serb nationalist grouping with links to Serbian ruling circles. These links have proven to be somewhat dubious since then. In fact, Serbian government officials were eager not to antagonize their stronger northern neighbour and had ordered border officials to ensure Serbian radicals could not enter Bosnia or other portions of Austria-Hungary. However, since they were looking for an excuse, these considerations mattered little to Austro-Hungarian politicians.
With German backing, Austria-Hungary, acting primarily under the influence of Foreign Affairs Minister Leopold von Berchtold, sent an effectively unfulfillable 10-point ultimatum to Serbia (July 23, 1914), to be accepted within 48 hours. The Serbian government agreed to all but one of the demands. Austria-Hungary nonetheless broke off diplomatic relations (July 25) and declared war (July 28) through a telegram sent to the Serbian government.
The Russian government, which had pledged in 1909 to uphold Serbian independence in return for Serbia's acceptance of the Bosnia annexation, mobilized its military reserves on July 30 following a breakdown in crucial telegram communications between Wilhelm and Tsar Nicholas II, who was under pressure by his military staff to prepare for war. Germany demanded (July 31) that Russia stand down her forces, but the Russian government persisted, as demobilization would have made it impossible to re-activate its military schedule in the short term. Germany declared war against Russia on (August 1) and, two days later, against the latter's ally France.
The outbreak of the conflict is often attributed to the alliances established over the previous decades - Germany-Austria-Italy vs. France-Russia; Britain and Serbia being aligned with the latter. In fact none of the alliances was activated in the initial outbreak, though Russian general mobilization and Germany's declaration of war against France were motivated by fear of the opposing alliance being brought into play.
Britain's declaration of war against Germany (August 4) was officially the result not of her understandings with France and Russia (Britain was technically allied to neither power), but of Germany's invasion of Belgium, whose independence Britain had guaranteed to uphold in the Treaty of London of 1839, and which stood astride the planned German route for invasion of Russia's ally France.
[...]
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
World War I (also known as the First World War and the Great War) was a conflict that lasted from 1914 to 1918. Chemical weapons were used for the first time, the first mass bombardment of civilians from the sky was executed, and some of the century's first genocides took place during the war. No previous conflict had mobilised so many soldiers, or involved so many in the field of battle. Never before had casualties been so high. The First World War was the first total war. World War I was also a war of change, a last blow to the old order in Europe to pave way for the new. Dynasties such as the Habsburgs, Romanovs, and Hohenzollerns, who had dominated the European political landscape and had roots of power back to the days of the Crusades, all fell after the 4 year war. Many of the events and phenomena that would dominate the world of the 20th century can trace their origins to this war--including Communism, World War II and even the Cold War.
World War I proved to be the decisive break with the old world order, marking the final demise of absolutist monarchy in Europe. It would prove the catalyst for the Russian Revolution, which would inspire later revolutions in countries as diverse as China and Cuba, and would lay the basis for the Cold War confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States. The defeat of Germany in the war and failure to resolve the unsettled issues that had caused the Great War would lay the basis for the rise of Nazism, and thus the outbreak of World War II in 1939. Most significantly, it laid the basis for a more modern form of warfare that relied heavily on technology, and would involve non-combatants in the horrors of war as never before. From this point on, all people of all classes would have to see the true color of war. War was no longer a "polite" battle where men lined up and showed their strength on some distant battlefield. World War I showed the new direction war was headed where each side would begin to use desperate and sometimes horrific strategies to gain any advantage, even at the expense of the innocent.
It was commonly called "The Great War" or sometimes "the war to end all wars" until World War II started, although the name "First World War" was coined as early as 1920 by Lt-Col à Court Repington in The First World War 1914-18. Some scholars write of the First World War as merely the first phase of a 30-year-long war spanning the period 1914 - 1945.
Over 9 million men would die on the battlefield, and nearly that many more persons would die on the homefront from food shortages, starvation, genocide, and simply being the unfortunate family living right on the battlefront. Of all the questions regarding the war, these come first: How did it happen? And why?
Diplomatic origins
On June 28, 1914, Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria and heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, was assassinated in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb student. Though triggered by this assassination, the war's origins lie in the complex relations and turn of events that can be traced over a century earlier during the French Revolution.
By the late 1700s in France, society was on the verge of revolution. The old monarchy was ruling France by birthright and absolute authority. The fabric of France's society was clear: King on the top, the people on the bottom, with Church and Nobles somewhere at the upper-end. This was a problem because economic changes were creating a new social class, the Bourgeoisie. This new middle class often were the reformers of French society who demanded to be treated as well as the Aristocracy. Along with this, France was in trouble economically. Since Louis XIV, France had been engaged in a series of wars which drained financial reserves. Many of the middle class were outraged when taxes were on the rise for everyone except the Aristocracy. What began as a movement to fix France's broken economy and society became a continental war. The French Revolution resulted in chaos and the ascent of Napoleon to power. Napoleon's armies marched all over Europe, bringing not only French control, but French ideas. The rise of ideas of Nationalism, devotion and love for one's common people and ethnicity, had begun in the Napoleonic Wars. Napoleon tapped into this new idea of Nationalism, which he saw in his troops, to better the French war machine. The French people began to feel pride in their culture and ethnicity. The world watched Nationalism for the first time and saw the power the French gained from it. Following the Napoleonic Wars, all of Europe was sharing these ideas.
The Congress of Vienna in 1815 followed. The congress was organized by the main victors of the Napoleonic Wars: Britain, Prussia, Russia, Austria. The key figure of the congress was Austria's representative, Klemens von Metternich. Metternich advocated restoring Europe to the way it was before the French Revolution. He urged Europe to create a Balance of Power, where no European nation was stronger than another. He also created the concert of Europe, a system where nations would help each other to keep the old aristocracy in power. By preventing the single monarchy in a country from falling to nationalism, it would prevent the entire continent from going up in flames under social revolution. If that were to ever happen, according to Metternich, Europe would be thrown into another Continental war as Napoleon and French Nationalism had shown. Metternich feared Nationalism as a force that could tear apart multi-ethnic nations like Russia and the Austrian Empire.
In the years that followed the Congress of Vienna, conflicts began springing up all over Europe between those who cried out for change, and those who resisted it. By the mid-1800s, Nationalism had become an evident force. 1848 saw a wave of unrest across the continent in the Revolution of 1848. The 1860s and early 1870s saw two great changes to the map: the unification of Italy and the unification of Germany. These two nations were formed off the backs of Nationalism. German Unification was brought about by Prussia's iron chancellor Otto von Bismarck through a series of wars from 1864-1871. Bismarck's famous speech in 1862 as minister of Prussia was:
"Germany is not looking to Prussia's liberalism, but to her power. The great questions of the day will not be decided by speeches and majority decisions, this was the mistake of 1848, but by iron and blood."
The Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 had brought not only the establishment of a powerful and dynamic German Empire, but also a legacy of animosity between France and Germany following the German annexation of the formerly French territory of Alsace-Lorraine. Under the political direction of her first Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, Germany secured her new position in Europe by an alliance with Austria-Hungary and a diplomatic understanding with Russia. Bismarck began pursuing alliances and peace treaties. He made peace with almost every nation in Europe except France. He feared greatly that a war might destroy the newborn nation he had created in the 1860s. By the time of Wilhelm I's death, a system of alliances kept a tight peace in Europe.
The accession (1888) of Kaiser Wilhelm II brought to the German throne a young ruler determined to direct policy himself, despite his rash diplomatic judgment. After the 1890 elections, in which the centre and left parties made major gains, and due in part to his disaffection at inheriting the Chancellor who had guided his grandfather for most of his career, Wilhelm engineered Bismarck's resignation.
Much of the fallen Chancellor's work was undone in the following decades, as Wilhelm failed to renew the arrangement with Russia, presenting republican France with the opportunity to conclude (1891-94) a full alliance with the Russian Empire. Worse was to follow, as Wilhelm undertook (1897-1900) the creation of a German navy capable of threatening Britain's century-old naval mastery, prompting the Anglo-French Entente Cordiale of 1904 and its expansion (1907) to include Russia.
Rivalry among the powers was exacerbated from the 1880s by the scramble for colonies which brought much of Africa and Asia under European rule in the following quarter-century. Even the once hesitantly imperialistic Bismarck became an advocate of overseas Empire, adding to Anglo-German tension as German acquisitions in Africa and the Pacific threatened to impinge upon British strategic and commercial interests. Wilhelm's support for Moroccan independence from France, Britain's new strategic partner, provoked the Tangier Crisis of 1905. During the Second Moroccan or Agadir Crisis (1911), a German naval presence in Morocco tested the Anglo-French coalition once again.
A key ingredient in the emerging diplomatic powder-keg was the growth of powerful nationalist aspirations among the Balkan states, which each looked to Germany, Austria-Hungary or Russia for support. The rise of anti-Austrian circles in Serbia following a 1903 palace coup contributed to a further crisis in 1908 over Austria's unilateral annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, German pressure forcing a humiliating climbdown on the part of a Russia weakened (1905) by defeat at the hands of Japan and subsequent revolutionary disorder.
Alarm at Russia's unexpectedly rapid recovery after 1909 fueled sentiment among German ruling circles in favour of a pre-emptive war to break alleged Entente "encirclement" before Russian rearmament could tip the strategic balance decisively against Germany and Austria-Hungary. By 1913 both France and Germany were planning to extend military service, while Britain had entered into a naval convention and military discussions with France during the previous year.
The outbreak
Austrian regional security concerns grew with the near-doubling of neighbouring Serbia's territory as a result of the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913. Many in the Austrian leadership, not least Emperor Franz Joseph, and Conrad von Hötzendorf, worried about Serbian nationalist agitation in the southern provinces of the Empire; they were still haunted by the memories of the Piedmontese inspired campaigns against the Austrian Italian provinces in 1859. Just as France had backed Piedmont in the campaign culminating in the Battle of Solferino, they worried that Russia would back Serbia to annex Slavic areas of Austria. The feeling was that it was better to destroy Serbia before they were given the opportunity to launch a campaign.
Some members of the Austrian government also felt that a campaign in Serbia would be the perfect remedy to the internal political problems of the Empire. Many of them were frustrated by the power of the Hungarian government in the Empire. In 1914 the government of the Austro-Hungarian Empire had a "dualistic" structure. Austria and Hungary had essentially separate governments under one monarch. The Austrian government retained control over foreign policy, but was still dependent on the Hungarians for such things as budgetary approval. Often the Hungarian leadership, under István Tisza refused Austrian requests for things such as increased military spending. In hopes of ending the political gridlock that this caused, many hoped to form a federation, or at least trialistic monarchy. The solution was seen in increasing the numbers of Slavs in the Empire to balance the Magyar population.
Franz Ferdinand's assassination in June 1914 provided the opportunity sought by some Austrian leaders for a reckoning with the smaller Slav kingdom. The Sarajevo conspirators were alleged by the Austro-Hungarian authorities to have been armed by the shadowy Black Hand, a pan-Serb nationalist grouping with links to Serbian ruling circles. These links have proven to be somewhat dubious since then. In fact, Serbian government officials were eager not to antagonize their stronger northern neighbour and had ordered border officials to ensure Serbian radicals could not enter Bosnia or other portions of Austria-Hungary. However, since they were looking for an excuse, these considerations mattered little to Austro-Hungarian politicians.
With German backing, Austria-Hungary, acting primarily under the influence of Foreign Affairs Minister Leopold von Berchtold, sent an effectively unfulfillable 10-point ultimatum to Serbia (July 23, 1914), to be accepted within 48 hours. The Serbian government agreed to all but one of the demands. Austria-Hungary nonetheless broke off diplomatic relations (July 25) and declared war (July 28) through a telegram sent to the Serbian government.
The Russian government, which had pledged in 1909 to uphold Serbian independence in return for Serbia's acceptance of the Bosnia annexation, mobilized its military reserves on July 30 following a breakdown in crucial telegram communications between Wilhelm and Tsar Nicholas II, who was under pressure by his military staff to prepare for war. Germany demanded (July 31) that Russia stand down her forces, but the Russian government persisted, as demobilization would have made it impossible to re-activate its military schedule in the short term. Germany declared war against Russia on (August 1) and, two days later, against the latter's ally France.
The outbreak of the conflict is often attributed to the alliances established over the previous decades - Germany-Austria-Italy vs. France-Russia; Britain and Serbia being aligned with the latter. In fact none of the alliances was activated in the initial outbreak, though Russian general mobilization and Germany's declaration of war against France were motivated by fear of the opposing alliance being brought into play.
Britain's declaration of war against Germany (August 4) was officially the result not of her understandings with France and Russia (Britain was technically allied to neither power), but of Germany's invasion of Belgium, whose independence Britain had guaranteed to uphold in the Treaty of London of 1839, and which stood astride the planned German route for invasion of Russia's ally France.
[...]