Download Chapter 24: The Beginning of the 20th century Crisis: War and

Chapter 23: The Beginning of the 20th
century Crisis: War and Revolution
 World War I was defining event of 20th c.
 “Great War”
The Road to World War I
 June 28, 1914 assassination of
Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo,
Bosnia
Nationalism and Internal Dissent
 Nationalism: System of nation-states led
to competition instead of cooperation
o Not all ethnic groups had achieved
the goal of nationhood, causing
increased tensions
 Alliances: Triple Alliance and Triple
Entente
 Militarism: growth of large mass armies,
increase in military leaders as well as
contingency plans for potential conflicts
 Expansion: (imperialism) rivalries over
colonial and commercial interests
 Diplomacy based on Brinkmanship
 Increased popularity of Socialism
especially among the working classes
Outbreak of War: Summer of 1914
 Rivalry between Austria-Hungary and
Russia to dominate states in
southeastern Europe freeing themselves
from Ottoman Empire
 Serbia, supported by Russia, wanted to
create a large, independent Slavic state
in the Balkans, Austria wanted to
prevent that.
 Archduke Franz Ferdinand and wife
Sophie were assassinated by 19 year
old Gavrillo Princip, a member of the
Serbian nationalist group, The Black
Hand.
 Austria was outraged and wanted to
punish Serbia, Germany backed its ally
Austria and said they had full support
(blank check)
 Austria declared war on Serbia on July
28, and Russia said it would support
Serbia
o Russia mobilized against Austria
and didn’t want to alter original
plans, so also mobilized against
Germany, then Germany declared
war on Russia
 Germany instituted its Schlieffen Plan
(for two front war against Russia and
France through Belgium. Germany
declared war on France (b/c they didn’t
want to only mobilize against Russia)
 Great Britain then declared war on
Germany
The War 1914-1915: Illusions and
Stalemate
 Believed war would be over in a few
weeks
 German advance halted at the First
Battle of the Marne
o Trenches were dug, stalemate
resulted
 Eastern Front, Russians were beat in
Germany
 Italy switched alliances and joined the
allies by attacking Austria
 Russian casualties: 2.5 million killed,
captured or wounded
 Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, attacked
and eliminated Serbia from the war
The War 1916-1917: The Great Slaughter
 Trench warfare, baffled military
strategists
 Ineffectively sent masses of soldiers
across “no man’s land” against barbed
wire and machine guns
 Introduction of poison gas
The Widening of the War
 New allies
 Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria joined the
Central Powers
 Balkan Front, Allies’ Gallipoli Plan failed
 Italy joined the allies in exchange for the
promise of Austrian land
 Middle East: British officer, Lawrence of
Arabia, encouraged Arab princes to
revolt against Ottoman Empire
 Japan seized a number German-held
islands in the Pacific, Australia took over
German New Guinea
 United States joined: Sinking of
Lusitania by German U-Boats, US
joined after Germany went back to
unrestricted submarine warfare
The Home Front: The Impact of Total War
 Use of conscription
 Police force to stifle internal dissent
o Ex: British Parliament passed
Defense of the Realm Act (DORA)dissenters can be arrested as
traitors
 Use of propaganda
 End of unemployment
 New roles for Women
o Equal pay measures
o Expected that Women would turn
back over jobs when men returned
“till the khaki soldier boys come
marching back.”
o Women’s Suffrage in Germany,
Austria, Britain
The Russian Revolution
 Russia was unprepared for total war of
WWI
 Led by Tsar Nicholas II of the Romanov
Family
 Tsar took personal charge of army
 Soldiers were ill-equipped for war
 Wife was Alexandra- born in Germany,
raised in Great Britain, seen as an

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

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outsider: their only son, Alexei was a
hemophiliac, influenced from Rasputin
Rasputin: a self-proclaimed holy man,
said you had to sin as much as possible
in order to reach salvation
o Rasputin was assassinated by
members of Tsar’s family, made a
prophesy that Tsar’s entire family
would die
March 1917- strike led by working-class
women over scarcity of bread
o March8 10,000 Petrograd women
demanded “Bread and Peace” and
“Down with Autocracy”
o March 12 Duma met and urged tsar
to abdicate on March 15 (ides of
March)
Provisional Government- led by
Alexander Kerensky: continued
Russian participation in WWI
Soviets: workers organization and
socialists
Bolsheviks: small faction of Marxist
Social Democrats led by V.I. Lenin
o Exiled to Switzerland, helped by
Germans in sealed boxcar back into
Russia
o Sought mass support
o Redistribution of land, end to war,
“Peace, Land, Bread”, “Worker
Control of Production,” “All Power to
the Soviets.”
 Leon Trotsky: revolutionary w/
Bolsheviks
 Coup D’Etat November 6-7 of
Bolsheviks over the Provisional
Government
 March 3, 1918 Lenin signed the Treaty
of Brest-Litovsk w/ Germany and gave
up eastern Poland, Ukraine, Finland,
and the Baltic provinces
 Civil War
o Many people opposed the
communists, including thousands of
Allied troops sent to different parts of
Russia
o Red Army (Bolsheviks) vs. White
armies (anti-communist)
End of War
 German leader Wilhelm II abdicated,
Weimer Republic established and Nov.
11, 1918 at 11 AM an armistice went
into effect.
The Peace Settlement
 27 victorious Allied nations met
 wanted “eternal peace”
 American President Woodrow Wilson
outlined his “Fourteen Points”- no secret
diplomacy, reduction of armaments,
self-determination, beginning of a
League of Nations
 Other countries wanted revenge and to
make Germany pay for war
o Great Britain led by David Lloyd
George wanted Germany to pay
o Clemenceau from France wanted
demilitarized Germany, German
reparations, and separate Rhineland
The Treaty of Versailles
 five separate peace treaties w/ defeated
nations: Germany, Austria, Hungary,
Bulgaria, Turkey
 Treaty w/ Germany very important
o War Guilt Clause (Article 231)
o Reparations to Allied govts.
o Reduce army and navy and
eliminate air force
o Alsace and Lorraine back to France,
parts of Prussia to Poland,
demilitarized zone
 New countries emerged from German/
Russian Empires and Austro-Hungarian
Empire and Ottoman Empire
o Finland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania,
Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria,
Hungary
o Problems of minorities in each of the
eastern European countries led to
future problems
o Mandates after WWI in former
Ottoman Empire
o France: Lebanon and Syria, Britain:
Iraq and Palestine (ignored selfdetermination)
o Issue of lack of enforcement of the
peace agreement
 US Senate did not ratify the
Treaty of Versailles
An Uncertain Peace: The Search for
Security
 Conflicts over border regions
 France isolated after US and Britain
withdrew their military alliances
 $33 Billion in German reparations
o Germany refused first payment
o France occupied Ruhr valley and
confiscated mines and factories
o Germany printed more paper money
 August 1924: Dawes Plan- new
international commission w/ new plan
for reparations
o Reduced reparations
o $200 million loan for German
recovery- new American investment
in Europe
 Kellogg-Briand Pact- signed by 63
nations, “renounced war as an
instrument of national policy”
The Great Depression
 Downturn in domestic economies
 International financial crisis created by
the collapse of the American stock
market in 1929
 October 29,1929 crash of American
Stock Market: American investors pulled
money out of Germany
 Reversal of traditional Gender roles,
low-paying jobs for women, while men
remained unemployed
 Unemployed young men: some formed
gangs
 Renewed interest in Marxism
 Also interest in communism and fascism
The Democratic States
 Wilson, WWI was fought to “make the
world safe for democracy”
 Increase in women’s suffrage
 John Maynard Keynes wrote General
Theory of Employment, Interest, and
Money in which he said that
unemployment stemmed from a decline
in demand and demand could be
increased by public works, financed if
necessary, through defecit spending to
stimulate production.
 France- Popular Front was a coalition of
leftist parties- Communists, Socialists,
and Radicals
 Weimer Republic in Germany: struggled
to gain popular support and faced
serious economic problems, runaway
inflation
 United States: election of Franklin
Delano Roosevelt: New Deal: National
Recovery Administration (NRA):
required govt., labor, and industrial
leaders to work out regulations for each
industry: Second New Deal- Works
Progress Administration (WPA)- 1935employed 2-3 million people who built
bridges, roads, post offices, and
airports, Social Security Act, and Labor
Unions: World War II ultimately ended
massive unemployment for US
Socialism in USSR
 Lenin introduced the New Economic
Policy (NEP) which was a modified
version of the old capitalist system “Two
steps backward to go one step forward”
 Alexandra Kollontai led a Bolshevik
program for women’s rights
 Lenin’s death in 1924 set off a struggle
amongst the seven members of the
Politburo
o The Left headed by Leon Trotsky
wanted to end the NEP and launch
Russia on the path of rapid
industrialization (even at expense of
the peasantry), carry on the
revolution and spread communism
abroad
o The Right rejected the cause of
world revolution and wanted to
concentrate on constructing a social
state in Russia. Continue the NEP
o Personal rivalry between Leon
Trotsky and Joseph Stalineventually Stalin rose from party
secretary to take power. Trotsky
was expelled, fled to Mexico, was
executed five years later by
someone secretly working for Stalin
w/ an ice-pick
Search for a new Reality
 WWI brought mass disillusionment/
despair
 New image for women
Nightmares and New Visions: Art
 Dadaism: show the purposelessness of
life
o Tristan Tzara
o Create anti-Art
o Hannah Hoch: women’s roles in new
mass culture
 Surrealism: sought a reality beyond the
material, sensible world and found it in
the world of the unconscious
o Employ logic to portray the illogical
o Salvadore Dali: the Persistence of
Memory
 Functionalism in modern architecture;
Bauhaus school of art
Search for Unconscious
 “stream of consciousness” technique
 James Joyce: Ulysses
 Hermann Hesse: Steppenworlf, Demian,
Siddhartha