Download Chapter 23 War and Revolution, 1914-1919

Chapter 23 War and Revolution, 1914-1919
Section 1
Nationalism and the System of Alliances
• Two main alliances divided Europe: The Triple Alliance (1882) was made up of
Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy; and the Triple Entente (1907) was made up of
France, Great Britain, and Russia.
• During the early 1900s, several crises erupted, particularly in the Balkans, which
created a great deal of anger and tension between the nations of the two alliances.
• Each nation was willing to go to war to preserve its power.
Militarism
• After 1900 there was a huge increase in the size of European armies, which
increased tensions among nations.
• Conscription–compulsory service in the military–was common in Europe before
1914.
• Between 1890 and 1914 European armies doubled in size.
• The numbers of soldiers in European armies were: Russia, 1.3 million; France and
Germany, 900,000 each; Britain, Italy, and Austria-Hungary, 250,000 to 500,000
each.
The Outbreak of War: Summer 1914
• While militarism, nationalism, and the desire to control internal dissent all had
a part in starting World War I, the outbreak of fighting stemmed directly from events
in the Balkans in 1914.
• States in southeastern Europe had long struggled for independence from the
Ottoman Empire.
• Russia and Austria-Hungary competed for control of these new states.
• In 1914, Serbia wanted to form a large Slavic state in the Balkans.
• Serbia was supported by Russia and opposed by Austria-Hungary.
• Many Europeans were afraid that this conflict in the Balkans would lead to war.
• In June 1914, Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary and his wife
were killed by the Serbian terrorist Gavrilo Princip in the city of Sarajevo.
• The Serbian terrorists, called the Black Hand, wanted Bosnia to become
independent from Austria-Hungary.
• The Austro-Hungarian government wanted to declare war on Serbia but was
worried that Russian would come to Serbia’s aid.
• Austrian leaders asked for help from their German allies.
• Emperor William II agreed to give Germany’s full support.
• In July 1914, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia.
• Russia responded by supporting Serbia.
• Czar Nicholas II ordered partial and then full mobilization of the Russian army.
• Austria-Hungary and Germany considered the mobilizations acts of war.
• The Germans warned the Russians to halt mobilization, and the Russians refused.
• Germany then declared war on Russia on August 1.
• Because Russia and France were allies, Germany had planned to defeat France
first and then attack Russia with full force.
• This plan, designed by General Alfred von Schlieffen, was called the Schlieffen
Plan.
• Germany declared war on France on August 3.
• The Germans demanded that Belgium–a neutral country–allow German armies to
pass through it on the way to France.
• This action led Britain, who was allied with France and Russia, to declare war on
Germany.
• By August 4, World War I had begun.
Section 2
1914 to 1915: Illusions and Stalemate
• The events of August 1914 shattered two previously held ideas: that war was not
worth fighting and that diplomats could prevent war.
• Government propaganda–ideas spread to influence public opinion–had stirred up
national hatreds before the war.
• When the war began, propaganda was used to urge people to defend their own
country.
• The majority of people thought their country’s cause was just.
• All European wars since 1815 had only lasted a few weeks.
• In August 1914, most people thought the war would be over by Christmas.
• On the Western Front, Germany swept through Belgium into northern France and
was stopped a short distance from Paris at the First Battle of the Marne.
• The Western Front turned into a stalemate, with neither side able to push the other
out of the system of trench warfare they had begun.
• The trenches stretched from the English Channel nearly to the Swiss border.
• For four years both sides remained in almost the same positions.
• On the Eastern Front, the war was far more mobile.
• The Russian army moved into eastern Germany but was defeated at the Battle of
Tannenberg and the Battle of Masurian Lakes, making Russia no longer a threat to
invade Germany.
• The Russians defeated Austria-Hungary and dislodged them from Serbia.
• The Italians, who had been allied with Germany and Austria-Hungary, broke their
alliance in 1915 and attacked Austria-Hungary.
• The Germans came to the aid of the Austrians and together they defeated the
Russians in several battles and drove them back.
• About 2.5 million Russians had been killed, captured, or wounded.
1916 to 1917: The Great Slaughter
• The trenches on the Western Front included massive tangles of barbed wire,
machine-gun nests, gun batteries, and heavy artillery.
• The soldiers lived in holes in the ground.
• The territory between the two sides was called no-man’s-land.
• Military leaders did not know how to fight trench warfare.
• They were used to mobile battles.
• The only plan they could devise was to order masses of soldiers to attack the other
side and try to break through.
• Each side tried this tactic.
• They would begin with heavy artillery and then send in thousands of troops.
• The men who attacked were completely exposed to machine-gun fire.
• Millions of young men died in these attacks, and no breakthrough came.
• At Verdun, France, in 1916, 700,000 men were killed in 10 months.
• World War I had become a war of attrition, where each side tried to wear the
other down.
Widening of the War
• Because the war in the trenches was bogged down, both sides tried to get new
allies and to widen the war.
• In November 1914, Russia, Great Britain, and France (the Allies) declared war on
the Ottoman Empire.
• Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire became known as the
Central Powers.
• In 1915, they tried to open a Balkan front by attacking Gallipoli, near
Constantinople.
Entry of the United States
• The United States tried to stay neutral in the first years of World War I.
• This became more difficult as the war dragged on.
• The naval war between Britain and Germany became the reason why the United
States joined the war.
• In order to keep supplies from reaching their enemies, each country enforced a
naval blockade of the other.
• German submarines sank both military and civilian ships, including passenger
ships.
• This practice was called unrestricted submarine warfare.
• In 1915, the Germans sank the British ship Lusitania, killing 1,100 civilians and
causing strong protests from the American government.
• The Germans stopped unrestricted submarine warfare for some time until German
naval officers such as Admiral Holtzendorff convinced the emperor to resume the
practice.
• The Germans did not think that the United States would enter the war before the
British were starved.
• However, in April 1917, the United States responded to unrestricted submarine
warfare by declaring war on Germany.
• Though large numbers of American troops did not arrive until 1918, the Allies
were given a powerful psychological boost as well as money and supplies.
The Home Front: The Impact of Total War
• World War I became a total war that required a complete mobilization of people
and resources.
• It demanded the total commitment of the countries involved, soldiers and civilians
alike.
• The war had an enormous impact on everyone’s life.
• Governments and leaders such as U.S. president Woodrow Wilson saw all
citizens as part of the war effort.
• As the casualties mounted in the war, public support for the war waned.
• Authoritarian governments used force to keep people working.
• Other governments passed new laws to severely restrict dissent, exercised
increased control of news sources, and tried to keep morale up with new propaganda
techniques.
Section 3
Background to Revolution
• Due to a lack of experienced military leaders and technology, Russia was
unprepared for World War I.
• The Russian army was poorly trained and equipped and suffered terrible losses.
• By 1917, the Russian will to continue fighting in the war had disappeared.
• Czar Nicholas II relied on his army and government to keep him in power.
• His wife Alexandra cut him off from events.
• She was strongly influenced by Grigori Rasputin, who claimed to be a holy man.
• Though he had no military experience, Czar Nicholas II insisted on commanding
the army in the field and was away from the capital.
• In his absence, Alexandra made important decisions with the help of Rasputin.
• The Russian people became increasingly upset with the czar and his wife due to
military and economic disasters.
• Conservatives wanted to save the deteriorating situation and assassinated
Rasputin late in 1916.
• However, this did not save the monarchy.
• Alexandra reported the situation to Nicholas, describing crowds of anti-war
demonstrators as hooligans.
• Nicholas responded by ordering troops to break up the crowds with force.
• However, many soldiers refused to shoot and joined the demonstrators.
• On March 12, the Duma, or legislature, met and established a provisional
government.
• The government then urged the czar to step down, which he did.
• The provisional government was headed by Alexander Kerensky and decided to
continue fighting the war.
• This was a grave mistake, as it upset workers and peasants who wanted to end the
years of fighting.
• The government was also challenged by the soviets–councils representing
workers and soldiers–who came to play an important role in Russian politics.
• Soviets sprang up around the country, and were mostly made up of socialists.
The Rise of Lenin
• The Bolsheviks were a small faction of a Marxist party.
• They were led by V. I. Lenin and were dedicated to a violent revolution to
overthrow the capitalist system.
• Lenin lived abroad between 1900 and 1917.
• When the provisional government was formed, he went to Russia hoping that the
Bolsheviks could seize power.
• German military leaders helped him travel to Russia in an attempt to create
disorder.
The Bolsheviks Seize Power
• By the end of October 1917, the Bolsheviks had 240,000 members and held
majorities in the Petrograd and Moscow soviets.
• On November 6, the Bolsheviks seized the Winter Palace, and the provisional
government collapsed.
• The Bolsheviks renamed themselves the Communists.
• In March 1918, Lenin ended the war with Germany by signing the Treaty of
Brest-Litovsk, giving up territory in eastern Poland, Ukraine, Finland, and the Baltic
provinces.
• He believed that these territories would eventually return to Russia as the socialist
revolution spread through Europe.
Civil War in Russia
• Soon after the Communists took power, civil war broke out in Russia.
• Many people were opposed to the Communists, including groups loyal
to the czar, liberals, and anti-Leninist socialists.
• They were aided by the Allies, who gave them troops and supplies, hoping Russia
would rejoin the war.
• The royal family was captured by the Communists and moved to a mining town in
the Urals, where they were eventually killed.
Triumph of the Communists
• The opposition to the Communists was not unified and was torn by political
differences and mistrust.
• They lacked a common goal.
• Some wanted to restore the czar.
• Others wanted a more democratic government.
• The Communists won the civil war in part because they had an excellent army.
• As commissar of war, Leon Trotsky had brilliantly organized the army and
instituted rigid discipline.
• The Communists also used revolutionary terror to further their goals.
• The Cheka, or secret police, sought out anyone who opposed the Communists and
created an atmosphere of fear among the people.
• By 1921, the Communists had complete control of Russia.
• The country had become a centralized state dominated by a single party.
• Because of the role of the Allies in the civil war, the Communists mistrusted them
and remained hostile.
Section 4
The Last Year of the War
• During 1917, the Allies had been defeated in their offensives on the Western
Front, and the Russians had withdrawn from the war.
• The Central Powers appeared to have the advantage.
• The German military official Erich von Ludendorff decided to take a military
gamble.
• In March 1918, the Germans launched a large offensive on the Western Front and
came to within 50 miles of Paris.
• The Germans were stopped at the Second Battle of the Marne by French,
Moroccan, and American troops and hundreds of tanks.
• In 1918, the addition of more than one million American troops helped the Allies
begin to advance toward Germany.
• By the end of September, General Ludendorff told German leaders that the war
was lost.
• The German Social Democratic party, led by Friedrich Ebert, declared that
Germany would become a democratic republic.
• On November 11, the new German government signed an armistice with the
Allies that ended the war.
The Peace Settlements
• In January 1919, representatives of the Allied nations met in Paris to make a final
settlement of the war.
• President Woodrow Wilson outlined his “Fourteen Points,” with which he
intended to create a lasting peace.
• The points included proposals for open treaty negotiations, reducing military
strength, and ensuring self-determination, or the right of each people to have its own
nation.
• Wilson proposed a new world order based on democracy and cooperation among
nations. He suggested creating an association of nations to guarantee political
independence for all countries.
• The United States, Britain, and France, known as the Big Three, made most of the
important decisions at the Paris Peace Conference.
• Germany was not included. Russia was in a civil war and could not attend, and
Italy was not given a large role.
• The Big Three argued about many points.
• Wilson wanted to create a League of Nations to be an international peacekeeping
organization.
• The conference accepted his proposal.
• In return he agreed to territorial settlements that were not consistent with his idea
of self-determination.
• The Treaty of Versailles was the final peace settlement of World War I.
• It was actually five separate treaties with the defeated nations: Germany, Austria,
Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey.
• The treaty declared that the Germans were guilty of starting the war.
• It ordered Germany to pay reparations for all damages suffered by the Allies.
• The treaty required Germany to greatly reduce its military forces and return the
territories of Alsace and Lorraine to France.
• Sections of eastern Germany became part of a new Polish state.
• German land on both sides of the Rhine was turned into a demilitarized zone to
prevent future aggression toward France.
• The German government accepted the peace terms because it had no choice.
• To refuse would mean to go back to war.
• However, the treaty outraged and angered the German people, who felt the Treaty
of Versailles was a harsh and unfair peace.
• Though the Paris Peace Conference was supposedly guided by the principle of
self-determination, the mix of peoples in eastern Europe made this very difficult, and
many compromises were made.
• As a result, almost every eastern European state included ethnic minorities.
• For example, there were Germans in Poland and Hungarians in Romania.
• These ethnic mixes would lead to conflicts in later years.
• At the end of the war, ethnic groups in Austria-Hungary sought independence.
• The Austro-Hungarian Empire disintegrated into the independent republics of
Austria, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia and the monarchial state of Yugoslavia.
• National rivalries in the region would weaken eastern Europe for years to come.
• The peace treaty also broke up the Ottoman Empire.
• In return for Arab support, the Allies had promised Arab states within the
Ottoman Empire that they would be independent after the war.
• France and Britain changed their minds and took over control of Lebanon, Syria,
Iraq, and Palestine.
• Because Wilson opposed new colonial acquisitions, these acquisitions were called
mandates.
• Under the mandate system, a country controlled another as a mandate on behalf of
the League of Nations, but it did not officially own the territory.
• World War I undermined the previously held idea of human progress.
• Entire populations had slaughtered each other in unprecedented ways.
• The devastation of the war also opened the door to revolutions and further
instability.