Download Homework: Find the main dates of WW1, WW2, the date

Homework: Find the main dates of WW1, WW2, the date of the creation of the LON (League
of Nations) and the UNO (United Nations Organisation), the main date of the Cold War and
of the New World Order after 1991.
Introduction from the theme:
Source to use: Paul Nash, English painter, We are making a New World, Oil on Canvas, 1918, The
destruction of the Arizona during the attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7th 1941. © US Navy, Paweł
Sawicki, Unloading ramp and the "Gate of Death", © Auschwitz Memorial, First assembly of the
League of Nations in Geneva, 1920 © LON archives, Herald Tribune Front page, June 27th 1945,
Leslie Illingsworth, welsh cartoonist, Now, Let’s talk Mr. President, in the Daily Mail, October 29th
1962, Slideshow made by an American student for a history project concerning the 9/11/2001 attacks
of NYC, made on March 2011.
Paul Nash, English painter, We are making
a New World, Oil on Canvas, 1918
First assembly of the League of Nations in
Geneva, 1920 © LON archives
The destruction of the Arizona during the attack on
Pearl Harbor, December 7th 1941. © US Navy
Paweł Sawicki, Unloading ramp and the
"Gate of Death", © Auschwitz Memorial
Herald Tribune Front page, June 27th 1945.
Leslie Illingsworth, welsh cartoonist, Now, Let’s talk Mr. President, in the Daily Mail, October
29th 1962.
Slideshow made by an American student for a history project concerning the 9/11/2001 attacks
of NYC, made on March 2011
Question: Find the main characteristic that would define best the 20th century? Identify three
main phases in this 20th century.
The characteristic that would define best the 20th century is war. The 20th century was the
century of war and fights that touched civilians as well as soldiers. Three main periods can be
identified:
- The two World Wars which formed a whole. They were interspersed by attempts to settle
peace with the creation of both the LON and the UNO. The first attempted, in a period of
increase of pacifism in Europe, to reduce nationalist claims born with WW1. The End of
WW2 saw the creation of the 2nd in an attempt to bring and build peace after the horrors of
WW2.
- The Cold War (1947-1991) which caused the division of the world into two blocks, based
on two different ideologies. It’s a conflict which was for the two Superpowers, the USA
and the USSR (Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics), to ensure their domination and/or
their security without direct and total war.
- The New Conflicts, born with the Cold War, summed up by George Bush Sr. by the
expression New World Order. That period is composed of former types of conflicts, like
civil wars or wars between states, but it also appeared new forms of conflicts such as
terrorism, economic war and preventive wars.
Introduction from chapter 2:
Source to use: A new kind of war (bbc.co.uk/history)
Source 1: A new kind of war:
World War One was like no other war before in history. The main theatre of war, the Western
Front, was deadlocked1 from a few months after the war's start in 1914 until a few months
before its end in 1918, stretching in a continuous line of trenches from the English Channel to
the Swiss frontier. By 1916 the forces of Germany, France and the British Empire, armies
millions of men strong, measured advances in terms of a few miles (or kilometres) gained
over several months. Casualties for each big attack or 'push' ran into hundreds of thousands on
both sides, with calculations for victory based on national birth-rates to replace the losses.
This was not the kind of war that anyone, including the politicians and generals who directed
it, wanted to fight. […]
What made World War One so different was the long-term impact of the Industrial
Revolution, with its accompanying political and social changes. This was the first mass global
war of the industrialised age, a demonstration of the prodigious strength, resilience and killing
power of modern states. The war was also fought at a high point of patriotism and belief in the
existing social hierarchy; beliefs that the war itself helped destroy, and that the modern world
finds very hard to understand.
[…] In the ideology of revolutionary France, young men were conscripted into the armed
forces as part of their duty as citizens, but the remaining population was also expected to
make personal sacrifices for the war, blurring the distinction between civilian and soldier.
Known at first as 'People's War', this idea developed in the 19th century as part of a growing
sense of national identity. By the middle of World War One it was known as 'Total War' - the
organisation of entire societies for war in a social, economic, and even spiritual sense. There
were, of course, protests and debates, but the vast majority of people fought in World War
One, or supported it with the 'Home Front' because they believed that victory for their own
country was worth the cost.
Source: bbc.co.uk, 2013.
Question: Using the previous texts and the images from the introduction of the theme (those
which concerned the two world wars and the interwar), write an introduction using the
following key words: total war, WW1, WW2, soldiers, civilians, genocide, peace, LON and
UNO.
The 20th century was a century of murderous wars. WW1, from 1914 to 1918, then, WW2,
from 1939 to 1945, let Europe and the world astonished and stunned. These two total wars,
which caused the mobilisation of the whole resources from all the states involved in these
wars for a long period and at a level never reached before, and that caused the extension of
warfare in large part of the globe in order to annihilate the enemy, were at the origin of
millions of casualties among soldiers and among civilians as well. If WW1 seemed to have
more touched the soldiers, it was the civilians which paid the debt to WW2. Those wars also
saw the birth of genocides (Armenians, Gypsies, and Jews).
However, at the end each of them, Men tried, on the ruins, to rebuild peace and safety, first
with the League Of Nations in 1918 and second, with the United Nations Organisation in
1945.
Key question: In what ways the World Wars were the expression of a total war and of the
“brutalisation” of societies, even the existence of hopes of peace?
I.
WW1, the soldiers’ experience of fight in the heart of a total war:
A. A total war:
1
a type of lock on a door that needs a key to open or close it.
1) A conflict spread in time and space:
Sources to use: The war in brief (bbc.co.uk/history), WW1, a world warfare (European warfare based
on a British book published in 1915).
Source 1: The war in brief
1914
• Germany invaded Belgium.
• Britain declared war on Germany.
• Japan joined the Allied forces: Ottoman Empire soon joined the Central Powers.
• War spread to the seas.
1915
• Women took up men's jobs.
• Stalemate continued on the Western Front.
• The Lusitania passenger liner was sunk, with 1,200 lives lost.
• London attacked from the air by German Zeppelins.
1916
• Conscription for men aged between 18 and 41.
• A million casualties in ten months: Germany aimed to 'bleed France white'.
• At sea the Battle of Jutland took place.
• Armed uprisings in Dublin: the Irish Republic was proclaimed.
1917
• German Army retreated to the Hindenburg Line.
• The United States joined the war and assisted the Allies.
• Tank, submarine and gas warfare intensified.
• Royal family changed their surname to Windsor to appear more British.
1918
• Germany launched major offensive on the Western Front.
• Allies launched successful counter-offensives at the Marne and Amiens.
• Armistice signed on November 11, ending the fights at 11am.
• In Britain, a coalition government was elected and women over 30 succeeded in
gaining the vote.
Source: bbc.co.uk/history
Source 2: WW1, a world warfare:
Source: European warfare based on a British book published in 1915.
WW1 was a long war. Indeed, it lasted 4 years and a half (August 3rd 1914 to November 11th
1918). The war should be short. All the soldiers should be backing home from Christmas after
their victory on Germany. However, the idea of flower in the barrel of the gun was a myth.
More or less, people conscripted were resigned. Then, in the UK, first, volunteers were
needed, then they were conscripted. The length of the war exhausted materials and men
(soldiers and prisoners) which hoped years by years, the return of peace.
Source 2 shows that the Great War, another name given to WW1, was also remarkable by its
spatial spreading. Indeed, it touched Europe in the whole and, by the fact European countries
had colonial Empires, nearly the entire world.
Moreover, because of the colonial Empires, the zones of influences (such as the Middle East
for example) controlled by the Europeans and the means used to win against the enemy, such
as blockade2, subversions3, pressures exerted on neutral powers – the Germans harassed the
American ships with their U-Boats all over the Atlantic –, the war by proxy, the conflict
became a world war.
WW1 opposed the Triple Alliance, or Central powers, or Triplice, composed of the German
Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire, to the Triple Entente,
composed of France, the United Kingdom, Russia (until 1917), Italy (from 1915), Japan,
Portugal, and the United States (from 1917)
2
the action of surrounding or closing a place, especially a port, in order to stop people or goods from coming in
or out.
3
to try to destroy the authority of a political, religious, etc. system by attacking it secretly or indirectly.
2) A mass global war:
WW1, as WW2, was a mass global war by the number of soldiers enlisted and the number of
casualties. In 1914, 12 million of men were mobilised. 8 millions of French and 5.7 million of
British wore the uniform from 1914 to 1918. All the men are mobilised, even the men from
the colonies, the natives: 1.5 million for the British, 600,000 for the French.
The fight were harsh and furious and casualties were enormous with a total of 10 million of
deaths and 20 million of people wounded, 5 million of war widows and 9 million of war
orphans:
Country
Men
mobilised
Wounded
POW’s + Total
missing
casualties
casualties in % of
men mobilised
Russia
12 million 1.7mill
4.9mill
2.5mill
9.15mill
76.3
France
8.4 mill
1.3mill
4.2mill
537,000
6.1mill
73.3
GB
+
8.9mill
Empire
908,000
2mill
191,000
3.1mill
35.8
Italy
5.5mill
650,000
947,000
600,000
2.1mill
39
USA
4.3mill
126,000
234,000
4,500
350,000
8
Japan
800,000
300
900
3
1210
0.2
Romania
750,000
335,000
120,000
80,000
535,000
71
Serbia
700,000
45,000
133,000
153,000
331,000
47
Killed
Belgium
267,000
13,800
45,000
34,500
93,000
35
Greece
230,000
5000
21,000
1000
27,000
12
Portugal
100,000
7222
13,700
12,000
33,000
33
Total
Allies
42million
5 million
13million
4 million
22million
52%
Germany 11million
1.7million 4.2million 1.1million 7.1million 65
Austria
7.8million 1.2million 3.6million 2.2million 7 million
90
Turkey
2.8million 325,000
400,000
250,000
975,000
34
Bulgaria
1.2million 87,000
152,000
27,000
266,000
22
Total
Central
Powers
22.8mill
Grand
Total
65 million 8.5mill
3.3million 8.3million 3.6million 15 million 67
21million
7.7mill
37million
57%
3) The weapons rush
The two world wars allowed the development of progress on the domain of weapons and to a
rush and a competition to scientific invention. During WW1, soldiers could use old kinds of
weapons which were developed and new weapons:
- Mortars (mortiers), hand grenades, rifles, torpedoes (torpilles)
- Trenches which became the symbol of WW1
- Asphyxiating gases and flamethrowers, however forbidden by the Convention from Der
Haagen in 1899 are often used and feared
Source: Testimony of soldiers about gas attack, 1916: Our eyes now began to feel irritated.
All and sundry commenced to vomit. I heard several men complain about the pain in their
eyes, some even complained of going blind; one by one these fellows made their way to the
First Aid Dressing Station. The stream of men increased, those who could see led the way
while the others formed a queue behind, each one placing his hands on the shoulders of his
predecessor for guidance...
The symptoms were as follows: blindness, deafness, loss of voice, inability to swallow,
weakness, high fever, burns on exposed and delicate parts of the anatomy, choking cough,
difficult breathing.
Source: bbc.co.uk, audio archives on WW1 experiencing war, 2013.
-
Captive balloons, Zeppelins, then planes and tanks became fearsome and very efficient
weapons, even if planes and tanks created defiance from the general staff at first.
German Zeppelin L22, responsible for the bombing of Sheffield in 1916 (©Imperial War
Museum, Manchester, online collection).
4) A politic will to annihilate the enemy:
From 1914, the logic of a total war caused a control of civil populations and soldiers:
censorships of newspaper and letters, court martial, propaganda – brainwashing as the Hairy
called it. It was also the birth of Sacred Union, an alliance of every political and social
movement behind their government whatever the disputes and oppositions could be before the
war, in order to support war effort: extremes from the right and the left, socialist, Whigs,
Tories, labour party, …
War also developed interventionist economy which transformed production systems in the
direction of the war effort: uniforms, ammunitions, …
B. Fighting under the “storm of steel” Ernst Jünger4
Sources to use: Otto Dix, The War (1929-1932, oil on wood, central panel 204x204 cm, lateral panels
204x102 cm, Berlin museum), Paul Nash, The Menin Road (Paul Nash, The Menin Road, 1919, oil on
canvas, 216x351 cm, conserved at the Imperial War Museum Manchester), The Attack of the Ant Hill
(Stanley Kubrick’s film, The Path of Glory, 1956), Aftermath, Siegfried Sasson (Siegfried Sassoon,
poem Aftermath, 1919.), Wilfred Owen, British poet, letter to his mother (Wilfred Owen, letter 480 to
his mother, January 1917).
4
Ernst Jünger volunteered at 19 years old. He participated to the battle of the Somme, Verdun and Flandres. He
was a member of commandoes and talked about his actions in war in a book entitled “storms of steel” publised
in 1920.
Source 1: Otto Dix, The War
Source: Otto Dix, The War, 1929-1932, oil on wood, central panel 204x204 cm, lateral panels 204x102 cm,
Berlin museum.
Source 2: Paul Nash, The Menin Road:
Source: Paul Nash, The Menin Road, 1919, oil on canvas, 216x351 cm, conserved at the Imperial War Museum
Manchester.
Source 3: Sequence from Stanley Kubrick’s film, The Path of Glory, 1956.
Source 4: Aftermath, Siegfried Sasson:
Have you forgotten yet?...
For the world's events have rumbled on since those gagged days,
Like traffic checked while at the crossing of city-ways:
And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow
Like clouds in the lit heaven of life; and you're a man reprieved to go,
Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.
But the past is just the same--and War's a bloody game...
Have you forgotten yet?...
Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you'll never forget.
Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz-The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?
Do you remember the rats; and the stench
Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench-And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?
Do you ever stop and ask, 'Is it all going to happen again?'
Do you remember that hour of din before the attack-And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then
As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?
Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back
With dying eyes and lolling heads--those ashen-grey
Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?
Have you forgotten yet?...
Look up, and swear by the green of the spring that you'll never forget.
Source: Siegfried Sassoon, poem Aftermath, 1919.
Source 5: Wilfred Owen, British poet, letter to his mother.
I have not been at the front.
I have been in front of it.
I held an advanced post, that is, a ‘dug-out’ in the middle of No Man’s Land.
We had a march of 3 miles over shelled road then nearly 3 along a flooded trench. After that
we came to where the trenches had been blown flat out and had to go over the top. It was of
course dark, too dark, and the ground was not mud, not sloppy mud, but an octopus of sucking
clay, 3, 4, and 5 feet deep, relieved only by craters full of water. Men have been known to
drown in them. Many stuck in the mud & only got on by leaving their waders, equipment and
in some cases their clothes.
Source: Wilfred Owen, letter 480 to his mother, January 1917.
Method exercise: Comparing the paintings from WW1
1. Present sources 1 and 2 together.
Both sources are paintings created by painters who were involved in WW1 as soldiers and
who faced the horrors of the war in the trench warfare all along WW1 but, those two painters
were on both sides of the battle field as far as Otto Dix was a German soldier and Paul Nash a
British soldier. Nash painted his oil on canvas a year after the end of the war, in 1919, at the
time of the signature of peace treaty such as the Treaty of Versailles, at a time when peoples
from Europe only wanted to forget the war and its horrors. On the contrary, Otto Dix, who
painted several paintings and drawings about WW1 made his triptych from 1928 to 1932,
during a period of trouble, when fascism and, especially Nazism, was rising in Europe and
Germany, remembering him the trauma of WW1. Both paintings are addressed to people from
the painters’ countries but more largely to the rest of Europe.
2. Describe sources 1 and 2.
Source 1:
The War triptych actually consists of 4 distinct parts: the apprehension before the battle, the
battle itself, which overhangs a buried soldier, and finally the aftermath. With his
expressionist background, Dix turned to a violent form of Realism. The center piece of the
triptych, which is the main focal point, is filled with corpses and dark apocalyptic ruins. All
the faces are expressionally dimmed down. No visible emotions are perceptible. The central
panel used again the composition of a former painting entitled the trench made in 1923.
Otto Dix, The trench, 1923
This central panel represents a vision of horror of the trench warfare where a soldier, the face
covered by a gas mask, remains the only living human being in a collapsed trench, next to a
blown shelter. Corpses finished their putrefaction whereas a skeleton remained on a tree.
The lateral panels show the departure to the front and the return of two soldiers with injuries.
One of the soldiers is facing the spectator. The alterpiece seems to be a vault or a commune
coffin. Soldiers lied on the ground remembering the Christ in his vault on the triptych painted
during the Renaissance and Baroque periods.
The brown and red colors are omnipresent in the painting. Brown is representing mud
whereas red is representing the horror of fires, the famous storm of steel from Ernst Jünger.
Source 2:
A devastated battlefield pocked with rain-filled shell-holes, flooded trenches and shattered
trees lit by unearthly beams of light from an apocalyptic sky. Two figures pick their way
along a tree-lined road, the road punctuated by shell-holes and lined by tree stumps. The
foreground is filled with concrete blocks, barbed wire and corrugated iron, while columns of
mud from artillery fire rise up in the background.
3. Explain the vision of war developed by the German painter Otto Dix. Explain how the
context could have influenced Otto Dix.
Dix was drafted in 1914 and volunteered for the front in 1915 as a machinegun man. Surely
he didn’t know that he would stay on the front for the entire war, being only relieved when
wounded in 1918. But this war left more than a physical trauma, the deepest scar was most
certainly psychological. Dix’s way to promote his anti-war message, to sensitize people that
didn’t lived war first hand like he did to the inhuman conditions that suffered World War I
veterans. His art refined during the 1920’s and culminated in 1929 with the presentation of the
War Triptych. His gruesome and unindividualized reproduction of the Great War in this
painting proposes social and political criticism. He does his critique not only through the
content of his painting and the way he presents his subjects, but also in the form, through the
use of the sublime.
Otto Dix presents a critique of the poor strategic decisions made by both parties during
the Great War. He sensitizes the viewer with his mastered use of the sublime, which consists
of using dark, macabre themes in his painting in order to inspire fear and terror. By painting
his triptych, that contains many emotionally filled moments of a battle, he also suggests an
anti-war narrative. Each part embodies the spirit of the unorganized Wehrmacht movement,
an artistic movement that had great members such as Kathe Kollwitz, Georg Grosz and of
course, Otto Dix. Their objective was to perpetuate, through various forms of art, an anti-war
movement and a critique of the lack of responsibility took by the governments of their
inhuman actions during the war. With his expressionist background, Dix turned to a violent
form of Realism. The center piece of the triptych, which is the main focal point, is filled with
corpses and dark apocalyptic ruins. Through the form he conveys a strong meaningful
message, the sadistic character of this war. His striking way of painting faces is a great
example. All the faces are expressionally dimmed down. No visible emotions are perceptible,
which expresses the desensitization of the soldier to extreme situations in order to be able to
perform his task. This led to the almost irreparable psychological damage known as shell
shock. He also paints a soldier with his gas mask which presents one of the main recurring
theme of World War I narratives, the fear of the vicious gas attacks. Two major elements are
also missing in this painting: a time frame and a hint of specific location. This generic
rendition of war is used to make the viewer realise how common were these scenarios. In the
context of World War I, these horrific situations were sadly common. Dix’s technique of
sublime was used to critic actions taken during the war and to sensitize the population to the
reality of the war and not the sometimes falsified official reports.
The trench system failed tremendously, causing millions of death and still, the official reports,
through officer’s memoirs and histories “sought to justify the war strategically so as to
absolve the leadership from responsibility”5. They turned human beings into cannon fodder
and this is precisely what Dix is criticizing: the political interference and misinformation. He
wanted to transform the personal soldier narrative into public awareness of the numerous
consequences of war. Dix wanted to make public the highly questionable use of gas on the
5
Cobley, Evelyn. Representing War: Form & Ideology in First World War Narratives. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993, p.6.
battlefield. And finally, and this is of most utter importance, he wanted to show that war is not
merely battles. This is why he used the unpopular triptycal form. This painting focusses on the
battle, but depicts the war as a whole. The fear and the apprehension of battle, the sadism
employed by both sides and finally the inescapable outcomes: psychologically altered life or
death. He does that without artifice and with strong realism. This sensibility and realism is
what constitute the genius of Otto Dix’s art. People were consciously scandalized and
unconsciously sensitized.
Retrospectively, Otto Dix’s War Triptych was a realist critique of the inhuman conditions in
which World War I soldiers lived. His unique position as both an artist and a decorated
veteran prove a valuable asset to sensitize the viewers to the gruesome nature of this conflict.
The triptychal form demonstrates every aspect of the war such as the fear and apprehension,
the battle and the aftermath. He used the sublime in order to capture the viewer’s attention and
provoke a reflection on the questionable moral of the Great War. He wanted to tell the truth as
it happened, to set the record straight as opposed to subjective reports from officers that
removed all moral responsibility in the name of strategic leadership. This painting represents
perfectly Dix’s oeuvre and, despite being ninety years old, still achieve to provoke a deep
reflection on this apocalyptic war and on our view as a modern society.
The climax of Otto Dix’s work is considered to be the triptych he painted in 1928-1932 at a
moment the pacifist and anti-war movement in Germany is facing the attack from Nazism and
the difficulties to continue to talk freely.
4. Explain the vision of war developed by the British painter Paul Nash.
Nash received the commission for this work, which was orginally to have been called 'A
Flanders Battlefield', from the Ministry of Information in April 1918. It was to feature in a
Hall of Remembrance devoted to ‘fighting subjects, home subjects and the war at sea and in
the air’. The centre of the scheme was to be a coherent series of paintings based on the
dimensions of Uccello’s ‘Battle of San Romano’ in the National Gallery (72 x 125 inches),
this size being considered suitable for a commemorative battle painting. While the
commissions included some of the most avant-garde British artists of the time, the British
War Memorials Committee advisors saw the scheme as firmly within the tradition of
European art commissioning, looking to models from the Renaissance. It was intended that
both the art and the setting would celebrate national ideals of heroism and sacrifice. However,
the Hall of Remembrance was never built and the work was given to the Imperial War
Museum. Nash worked on the painting from June 1918 to February 1919. Nash suggested the
following inscription for the painting. 'The picture shows a tract of country near Gheluvelt
village in the sinister district of 'Tower Hamlets', perhaps the most dreaded and disastrous
locality of any area in any of the theatres of War.'
Two soldiers try to follow the line of a road that has been mutilated, almost beyond
recognition. In fact, the whole landscape has been re-arranged, with the giant concrete blocks
epitomising this harsh new order: the bursts of sunlight have become gun barrels; the
reflections of trees, steel structures. This was Nash's painting for the proposed Hall of
Remembrance: 'The picture shows a tract of country near Gheluvelt village in the sinister
district of 'Tower Hamlets', perhaps the most dreaded and disastrous locality of any area in
any of the theatres of War.'
Nash was commissioned to show soldiers’ heroism in the battlefield of the most murderous
battles of WW1 but he also showed desolation, destruction and hard conditions of living,
fighting and the disappearance of soldiers in a battlefield that looks like more than a moon
landscape, destroyed and devastated in which human beings tried to survive.
5. Compare the vision of war developed by the two painters who were enemies during the
war.
Both painters show the horror of war and the difficult conditions of living and fights for the
soldiers. However Otto Dix was more anti-war whereas Nash wanted to emphasize the
heroism of soldiers in a desolated land. The horror in Dix’s paintings is more important and
the horror in his paintings represented a most important trauma from a soldier who fought all
war long.
Questions:
1. Explain what the soldiers’ situation was in the battlefield during WW1.
During WW1, soldiers from every nation involved in the war, after several weeks of war of
movement from August to December 1914, had to live and fight in the trench warfare. Here,
the battles were of an exceptional violence. Soldiers lived in trenches which were located on
the west front but also on the east front. Those trenches are mentioned by Otto Dix, Paul Nash
and Siegfried Sassoon, all of them witnesses of that human folly. They had to face death,
gases, harshness of the fights, horrors as Otto Dix showed it in its triptych, lack of hygiene,
lack of food. They could face deaths and injuries every time of every day.
2. Explain which the characteristics of the trench warfare were.
Trench warfare was a war of attrition (=guerre d’usure), i.e. a strategy which consisted in
exhausting the enemy’s human forces by recurring offensives by intensive and continual
bombings as the destructions in Otto Dix’s and Paul Nash’s paintings show it. The objective
was to get down the enemy (=demoralise), whatever the cost in human life, whatever the cost
in material in its own camp as the sequence from Stanley Kubrick films shows it.
The attacks were very violent, under the shots from the mortars, the canons, the rifle fires.
The men felt down in number as Otto Dix’s painting shows with only one survivor in the
middle of ruins or Stanley Kubrick’s reconstitution.
These attacks seemed to be worthless compared to the prices in human life as Stanley Kubrick
shows or the letter from Wilfried Owen to his mother. Otto Dix also showed the price of the
war by the alterpiece and the central panel of his painting.
C. WW1: desensitization, trauma and revolt:
Sources to use: Otto Dix’s Triptych, The Assault (Ernst Jünger, Storm of steel, 1919), Mutinies in the
trench warfare, 1917 (http://www.pbs.org/greatwar/chapters/ch3_mutiny.html), Stanley Kubrick, Paths
of Glory (1956), Shell Shock.
Source 1: Otto Dix, The war:
See source 1 in the previous paragraph
Source 2: The Assault:
At ten, a messenger arrived with instructions to go to the front line. A wild animal dragged
from its lair, or a sailor feeling the deck sinking under his feet, must have felt like us as we
took our leave of the warm, secure dugout and headed out into the inhospitable darkness.
[…] The watch-hands moved round; we counted off the last few minutes. At last, it was five
past five. The tempest was unleashed.
[…] It had become light. At our rear, the massive roaring and surging was still waxing, even
though any intensification of the noise had seemed impossible. In front of us an impenetrable
wall of smoke, dust and gas had formed. Men ran past, shouting cheerily in our ears.
Infantrymen and artillerymen, pioneers and telephonists, Prussians and Bavarians, officers
and men, all were overwhelmed by the elemental force of the fire-storm, and all were
impatient to go over the top at nine-forty. […] I was standing with Sprenger, watch in hand, in
front of my foxhole, waiting for the great moment to come. […] A few minutes later, then,
Sprenger and I climbed up on to the top, followed by the rest of the company.
‘Now let’s show them what the 7th are made of!’ ‘I’m past caring what happens to me!’
‘Revenge for the 7th Company!’ ‘Revenge for Captain von Brixen!’ We drew our pistols and
climbed over the wires, through which the first of the wounded were already dragging
themselves back.
[…] Our rage broke like a storm. Thousands must have fallen already. That was clear; and
even though the shelling continued it felt quiet, as though it had lost its imperative thrust.
No man’s land was packed tight with attackers, advancing singly, in little groups or great
masses towards the curtain of fire. They didn’t run or even take cover if the vast plume of an
explosion rose between them. Ponderous, but unstoppable, they advanced on the enemy lines.
It was as though nothing could hurt them anymore.
In the midst of these masses that had risen up, one was still alone; the units were all mixed up.
[…] As we advanced, we were in the grip of a berserk rage. The overwhelming desire to kill
lent wings to my stride. Rage squeezed bitter tears from my eyes.
The immense desire to destroy that overhung the battlefield precipitated a red mist in our
brains. We called out sobbing and stammering fragments of sentences to one another, and an
impartial observer might have concluded that we were all ecstatically happy. […]
Source: Ernst Jünger, Storm of steel, 1919.
Source 3: Mutinies in the trench warfare, 1917:
After three years of war, men, armies and nations were nearing a breaking point. For
individual soldiers, it emerged as "shell shock," a personal withdrawal from an intolerable
reality of trench warfare. For armies, it was outright rebellion; half the French army mutinied
in 1917, refusing to undertake senseless attacks. Most of their demands were met, and only a
small number of the mutineers were punished severely.
Entire populations were becoming restless and resentful with the conflict. In Russia, both the
army and civilian population refused to fight anymore for the Tsar, who abdicated on March
15, 1917. Alexander Kerensky led the fragile democracy that emerged to govern Russia, but
made the catastrophic mistake of continuing the war. Recognizing the weakness for the army
and the refusal of the men to fight, he authorized women to be trained and sent to the front.
As Kerensky's offensive failed and army desertions increased, his popularity decreased.
Mobilizing anti-war sentiment, Lenin and his Bolsheviks quickly took over, and signed an
armistice with Germany.
Source: http://www.pbs.org/greatwar/chapters/ch3_mutiny.html
Source 4: Stanley Kubrick, Paths of Glory, Shell Shock:
Questions:
1. Show that WW1 was marked by the “desensitization” of the soldiers.
WW1 was marked by the “desensitization” of soldiers – this term coming from French
historical studies and from studies made by Georges Mosse isn’t accepted by the entire
community of historians, or, the historians don’t put the same sense on this word. Indeed, men
were dehumanised as Jünger’s description of the soldiers’ attitude shows it. He compared
himself to a wild animal, submerged by rage, revenge and anger. In the text, we can see that
violence wasn’t a reason for fear when he said:
- “Our rage broke like a storm”
- “They didn’t run or even take cover if the vast plume of an explosion rose between them.
Ponderous, but unstoppable, they advanced on the enemy lines. It was as though nothing
could hurt them anymore.”
- “As we advanced, we were in the grip of a berserk rage. The overwhelming desire to kill
lent wings to my stride. Rage squeezed bitter tears from my eyes.”
-
“The immense desire to destroy that overhung the battlefield precipitated a red mist in our
brains.”
Soldiers, in a context of extreme violence and of the disappearance of the interdiction to kill,
had pleasure do kill and made him an act of revenge and made fight a heroic act. That
situation made them forget the reality of death as Jünger said: “They didn’t run or even take
cover if the vast plume of an explosion rose between them. Ponderous, but unstoppable, they
advanced on the enemy lines. It was as though nothing could hurt them anymore.” In order to
survive, soldiers couldn’t afford to face the reality of death.
2. Show that soldiers were not ready to accept everything. Explain if the situation was the
same in a matter of mutiny in each army.
Soldiers weren’t ready to accept everything. As Otto Dix’s paintings and Siegfried Sassoon’s
poems show, the war deeply traumatised soldiers, the longest the war lasted. They had more
and more difficulties to accept the thousands of death caused by useless battles as the central
panels from Otto Dix’s painting shows. As source 3 shows, soldiers from the French army and
Russian army committed mutinies in 1917. However, it seems like the British army wasn’t
concerned a lot by mutinies, except one in Etaples. Mutineers, except for Russians maybe,
were nor revolutionaries, nor pacifists but men who revolted against useless and devastating
battles.
3. Show, using Otto Dix’s painting, Jünger’s diary, Sassoon’s poem, Wilfred’s letter and
Kubrick’s film that WW1 deeply traumatised the soldiers.
Spirits were deeply touched by the violence of war which appeared in war diaries such as
Jünger, or in the testimonies from Hairy, such as Wilfred or Sassoon, or anonymous Hairies.
Men got rid of death, of horrors which stayed present in the mind, as Otto Dix’s triptych
shows it because he continued to paint traumas from the war, more than 15 years after the end
of WW1 with a precision and real importance of its refusal of mechanic way of killing men.
However, trauma, moral or physical, were numerous during WW1 as Otto Dix’s paintings
show it. Shell shock weren’t recognised as real and most of the time soldiers were considered
as cowards, as Stanley Kubrick’s film shows. Nowadays, such traumas are now called PTSD
(Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome) but they weren’t recognised as real at the time. These
soldiers were sent away from the Front or were considered as coward in front of the enemy
and executed.
Those traumas also explained the difficulties for those men to go back to civil life with the
rejection of the gueules cassées or “broken faces”, impossibility to wipe out the trauma as
Otto Dix shows it. It’s question of the exit of war. Indeed, a war is considered as completely
ended when peace is signed, when the economy of war is turned back to a normal economic
system and when the soldiers are inserted again in the social fabric, most of the time, the most
difficult.
D. Civilians were not spared
1) Mobilising the “Back front”:
Sources to use: French women at the “back front” (The French women in wartime, section
cinématographique de l’armée française, Lithograph, color (120 x 80.5 cm), 1917), Mobilisation of the
“Back front” (Lt. General, Sir S.S. Robert Baden Powel, Are you in this?, 1917, lithograph,
conservation at the library of Congress, Washington DC).
Source 1: Mobilisation of the “Back front”
Source: Lt. General, Sir S.S. Robert Baden Powel6, Are you in this?, 1917, lithograph, conservation at the
library of Congress, Washington DC.
6
Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell, OM, GCMG, GCVO, KCB (/ˈbeɪdən
ˈpoʊ.əl/; 22 February 1857 – 8 January 1941), also known as B-P or Lord Baden-Powell, was a lieutenantgeneral in the British Army, writer, founder of the Scout Movement and first Chief Scout of The Boy Scouts
Association. Baden-Powell served in the British Army from 1876 until 1910 in India and Africa. Several of his
military books, written for military reconnaissance and scout training in his African years, were also read by
boys. In 1907, he held the first Brownsea Island Scout camp, which is now seen as the beginning of Scouting.
Baden-Powell lived his last years in Nyeri, Kenya, where he died and was buried in 1941.
Source 2: French women at the “back front”:
Source: The French women in wartime, section cinématographique de l’armée française, Lithograph, color (120
x 80.5 cm), 1917.
Questions:
1. Present source 1.
This lithograph was made by a former Lieutenant General from the British colonial army. He
was also the founder of the first scout movement and, as it, very famous all over the British
Empire. As the British army didn’t use conscription, the need of volunteer is very important
all over the British Empire, among civilians as well as among soldiers. In this lithograph, he
shows the many ways a man or a woman could help the British army to win the war by
representing characters with different actions on the Front and the Back front. He addressed
this poster to British people all over the Empire and the metropolis in 1917 at the time of the
end of the war still remained uncertain after the withdrawal of Russia and even the entry of
the USA in the war process.
2. Explain, using the poster and your knowledge, how the civilians and people in the Back
front could help.
The poster shows that civilians were mobilised on several ways:
- Women could work:
o in the factories, replacing men to produce ammunitions. They were called
“munitionnettes” (the french term was also used in GB). Some people from the
colonies could also help in this case.
o in the fields, for the harvest because many of the men were at the Front and
harvests were essential for the civilians and the soldiers in order to help them
surviving.
o as mother and moral support for their husband by their letters but also as war
godmothers.
o in the war hospitals as nurses to help to heal the injured soldiers.
- Men with specific abilities as smith were called back from the front in order to use their
skills in the factory. (man with a hammer in the foreground)
- Money can also be used in order to provide uniforms, ammunitions and to continue the
war effort (that what is suggested to the man with his hand in his pocket on the right hand
corner in the foreground).
Contrary to the French and the German populations, the British population didn’t have to face
the destructions on its territory. Rationing was introduced into Britain at the tail end of World
War One - in February 1918. Rationing was introduced in response to an effective U-boat
campaign and during World War One, the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA) was used to
ensure that food shortages never occurred.
2) War violence touched the civilians
These war violence touched more the people living on the continent such as the French or the
Germans. War violence concern soldiers and civilians in wartime. They don’t exist in
peacetime and can’t exist without a war. In a war situation, soldiers and population cross,
face, cause, or suffer from extreme violence.
There are different forms of violence as French historians such as Annette Becker defined it:
- Anticipated violence which concerned the construction of an image of the enemy during
peacetime. It consisted in the broadcast of propaganda poster to demonize the enemy.
Source: David Wilson (probable author), Remember, 1919 or 1920, conservation at the library of Congress (DC).
- Lived or suffered violence
- Inflicted violence
- Observed violence
Actors of this violence can be separated into two types of actors:
- Soldiers – mobilised, non mobilised armed soldiers, prisoners
- Civilians as victims, executioners or witnesses of these violence
3) The Armenian genocide, first genocide of the 20th century:
Genocide is an extermination of a national, ethnic, racial and/or religious group, thought and
planed by a State.
The Armenian genocide began on March 1915 in the Ottoman Empire, which was a member
of the Triple Alliance. The Turkish, facing defeats towards the French, the British and the
Russians, were lead by the very nationalist government of the Young Turkish. They
considered as traitors. On June 1915, the home secretary (= ministre de l’intérieur) Talaat
Pacha decided the deportation of the Armenians. Those were deported in the South, in the
desert, and a lot died from hunger and exhaustion. Others were massacred by Turkish soldiers.
The casualties of that genocide rose to 1.5 million of death among the 2 million of the
Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire at that time (75 %).
Until now, Turkey has still refused to recognise the existence of that genocide. But, the
Turkish actions followed a particular and specific process that matches the definition of a
genocide:
- Elimination of the elite at first
- Creation of a law to begin the deportation of an entire people then
- Planification of deportation and massacres finally.
If WW1 was a total war marked by the fight experience and the harshness of the front, WW2
could be considered as a war of annihilation.