FIRST WORLD WAR

                                FIRST WORLD WAR                                                                       

                                        Causes:

·         Militant Nationalism:

In the latter half of the 19^th century, militant nationalism emerged in        Europe. It meant outright wars by the European nations to achieve their goals. This included two parts- (1) First was the dangerous and burdensome mechanism of maintaining huge standing armies and navies coupled with the evils of espionage, suspicion, fear and hatred and (2) Secondly, the existence of a powerful class of military and naval officers who tend to dominate, especially during the time of crisis over civilian authorities. Militant nationalism included aggressive nationalism, economic competition and international tension.

·         Race for Armaments:

The mad race for armaments which began soon after the Franco-Prussian War was one of the reasons which led to the First World War. Every major power began stockpiling armaments in the name of self-defence and preservation of peace. As a result if one country began stockpiling armaments, other countries were compelled to do so. It filled the atmosphere with fear, apprehensions and mutual hatred.

In order to protect her colonies Germany began to build a powerful navy in order to achieve parity with Britain and France. By 1914, she had left Britain and other European Countries far behind in in iron and steel production and in many other manufactures. Britain and France were concerned of Germany’s growing military strength. This led to the race for armaments.

·         Division of Europe into Hostile Groups:

  Germany entered into an Alliance with Austro-Hungary. In 1882, Italy joined the alliance and it came to be known as the Triple Alliance.

After the death of Bismarck, the German chancellor, France was able to establish friendly relations with Russia and Britain. The three nations entered into the Triple Entente to counter the Triple Alliance in 1907. Later Japan joined the Triple Entente. Hence Europe was divided into two hostile camps.

·         Sarajevo Crisis(Immediate cause): 

Archduke Francis Ferdinand was assassinated at Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia on June 28, 1914. It was organized by a secret society called ‘Black Hand’ whose motive was to unite all Serbians into a single Serbian state. Austria served its eleven demands ultimatum on June 23. Serbia accepted most of the demands except those that would have led to its loss of sovereignty.

Unsatisfied, Austria declared war on Serbia. Russia started preparation to support Serbia. But he was caught off guard and shocked when Germany declared war on Russia on August 1. It also declared war on France on August 3.

The WAR (main events only)

 War on the Western Front:

On the western the war began when the German armies swept across Belgium and entered northern France. The French army along with the British Expeditionary force met the German armies in the Battle of Marne some 15 miles from Paris. There the German armies forced had to retreat. For about four years neither side could dislodge the other. Thus, the Battle of Marne was the turning point of the Western Front as it foiled all German plans of ensuring quick victory in France.

·         Trench Warfare:

The combination of machine Guns and heavy artillery made life above ground too dangerous. The opposing armies dug a series of Trenches to defend themselves and to launch attacks. Living conditions in these trenches were pathetic.

Soldiers endured food shortages, lice, rats, poison gas, cold and stench of dead soldiers who couldn’t be moved out quickly. Rain and snow turned the trenches into thick mud caves.

·         War on the Eastern Front:

In August 1914 fighting began on the eastern front with the invasion of Russia by Austro-Hungary. Germany and Austria repulsed the Russian attack. In fact the German army succeeded in encircling and capturing a large part of the Russian army in the Battle of Tannenberg. They were also successful against Romania, Serbia and Italy. Large parts of the Russian Empire were captured after the Tannenberg Battle. Outside Europe there were campaigns against the Ottoman Empire. Japan occupied German possessions in the East Pacific while Britain and France seized most of the German colonies in Africa.

·         Policy of Blockade:

The war involved total mobilisation of all resources of the warring states with all economic activities subordinated to the needs of War. It also required that no food, raw materials must enter enemy territory from anywhere. In 1916, Germany started the submarine warfare and sunk many British warships but the French defeated her in the Battle of Verdun. The English tightened the Blockade on the German coast to meet the German submarine warfare. Germany was defeated in the Battle of Dogger’s Bank.

·         War against Turkey:

Towards the end of the year 1914, Turkey joined the war on the side of Germany. The German fleet held the Baltic Sea, Turkey held Dardanelles which lead to the Black Sea. Thus, Russia was cut off as it could not get any help from the Entente powers. An attempt to force an opening into Russia through the Black Sea ended with the disastrous defeat of the Allies in the Battle of Gallipoli. However in 1918 the British Army attacked Turkey and the Turks had to surrender in October 30^th.

·         Entry of USA:

In 1915, the German U boats sunk a British ship Lusitania. Among the 1153 passengers aboard that ship 128 were Americans. America was generally sympathetic towards Britain, and this incident roused anti-German feelings in the USA.

The Allied Powers had raised a vast amount of loans in the USA to pay for the arms and the other goods bought by them. Therefore the USA feared that if Germany won the war, she would become too powerful to be defeated and a serious rival to the US. On 6^th April 1917, the United Stated declared war on Germany.

·         Exit of Russia:

Another major development that took place in 1917 was the withdrawal of Russia from the War after the Bolshevik Revolution. Russia had suffered serious repulses during the War. Over 600,000 Russian soldiers were killed. The day when the Bolshevik came to power under Lenin, it issued a decree of Peace. By the treaty of Brest Litowsk on March 1918 Russia surrendered and accepted all harsh terms imposed by Germany.

·         End of the War:

Britain, France and USA launched a military offensive in July 1918 and Germany and her Allies began to collapse. Political discontentment started rising in Germany and Austro-Hungary. Bulgaria withdrew from the War in September and Turkey surrendered in October. Austro-Hungary surrendered on November the 3^rd. in Germany a revolution broke out. Germany became a republic and the German Emperor Kaiser Wilhelm II fled to Holland. The new German government signed an armistice on November 11,1918.

Effect of the WAR

The number of persons involved in war vary between 53 million to 70 million people. The total number of those killed are estimated to be 9 million, i.e. about 1/7^th of those participated in it. Several millions became invalids. The air raids epidemic and famines killed many more among the civilian population. Besides these terrible human losses, the economy of many countries was shattered. The global economic depression of 1929-1930 is attributed to the War. It gave rise to serious social problems. According to some estimates the expenditure on the Allied side was forty one thousand million pounds while on the German side it was fifteen thousand million pounds.

Results

TREATY OF VERSAILLES
 
Viewing Germany as the chief instigator of the conflict, the European Allied Powers decided to impose particularly stringent treaty obligations upon the defeated Germany. The Treaty of Versailles, presented for German leaders to sign on May 7, 1919, forced Germany to concede territories to Belgium (Eupen-Malmédy), Czechoslovakia (the Hultschin district), and Poland (Poznan [German: Posen], West Prussia and Upper Silesia). The Germans returned Alsace and Lorraine, annexed in 1871 after the Franco-Prussian War, to France. All German overseas colonies became League of Nation Mandates, and the city of Danzig (today: Gdansk), with its large ethnically German population, became a Free City. The treaty demanded demilitarization and occupation of the Rhineland, and special status for the Saarland under French control. Plebiscites were to determine the future of areas in northern Schleswig on the Danish-German frontier and parts of Upper Silesia on the border with Poland.

Perhaps the most humiliating portion of the treaty for defeated Germany was Article 231, commonly known as the "War Guilt Clause," which forced the German nation to accept complete responsibility for initiating World War I. As such Germany was liable for all material damages, and France's premier Georges Clemenceau particularly insisted on imposing enormous reparation payments. Aware that Germany would probably not be able to pay such a towering debt, Clemenceau and the French nevertheless greatly feared rapid German recovery and the initiation of a new war against France. Hence, the French sought in the postwar treaty to limit Germany's potential to regain its economic superiority and to rearm. The German army was to be limited to 100,000 men, and conscription proscribed; the treaty restricted the Navy to vessels under 100,000 tons, with a ban on the acquisition or maintenance of a submarine fleet.

Moreover, Germany was forbidden to maintain an air force. Finally, Germany was required to conduct war crimes proceedings against the Kaiser and other leaders for waging aggressive war. The subsequent Leipzig Trials, without the Kaiser or other significant national leaders in the dock, resulted largely in acquittals and were widely perceived as a sham, even in Germany.

The newly formed German democratic government saw the Versailles Treaty as a “dictated peace” (Diktat). Although France, which had suffered more materially than the other parties in the “Big Four,” had insisted upon harsh terms, the peace treaty did not ultimately help to settle the international disputes which had initiated World War I. On the contrary, it tended to hinder inter-European cooperation and make more fractious the underlying issues which had caused the war in the first place. The dreadful sacrifices of war and tremendous loss of life, suffered on all sides, weighed heavily not only upon the losers of the conflict, but also upon those combatants on the winning side, like Italy, whose postwar spoils seemed incommensurate with the terrible price each nation had paid in blood and material goods.

For the populations of the defeated powers—Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Bulgaria—the respective peace treaties appeared an unfair punishment, and their governments, whether democratic as in Germany or Austria, or authoritarian, in the case of Hungary and Bulgaria, quickly resorted to violating the military and financial terms of the accords. Efforts to revise and defy the more burdensome provisions of the peace became a key element in their respective foreign policies and proved a destabilizing factor in international politics.

League of Nations

Background

The League of Nations came into being after the end of World War One. The League of Nation's task was simple - to ensure that war never broke out again. After the turmoil caused by the Versailles Treaty, many looked to the League to bring stability to the world.

America entered World War One in 1917. The country as a whole and the president - Woodrow Wilson in particular - was horrified by the slaughter that had taken place in what was meant to be a civilised part of the world. The only way to avoid a repetition of such a disaster, was to create an international body whose sole purpose was to maintain world peace and which would sort out international disputes as and when they occurred. This would be the task of the League of Nations.

After the devastation of the war, support for such a good idea was great (except in America where isolationism was taking root).

The organisation of the League of Nations

The League of Nations was to be based in Geneva, Switzerland. This choice was natural as Switzerland was a neutral country and had not fought in World War One. No one could dispute this choice especially as an international organisation such as the Red Cross was already based in Switzerland.

If a dispute did occur, the League, under its Covenant, could do three things - these were known as its sanctions:

It could call on the states in dispute to sit down and discuss the problem in an orderly and peaceful manner. This would be done in the League’s Assembly - which was essentially the League’s parliament which would listen to disputes and come to a decision on how to proceed. If one nation was seen to be the offender, the League could introduce verbal sanctions - warning an aggressor nation that she would need to leave another nation's territory or face the consequences.
If the states in dispute failed to listen to the Assembly’s decision, the League could introduce economic sanctions. This would be arranged by the League’s Council. The purpose of this sanction was to financially hit the aggressor nation so that she would have to do as the League required. The logic behind it was to push an aggressor nation towards bankruptcy, so that the people in that state would take out their anger on their government forcing them to accept the League’s decision. The League could order League members not to do any trade with an aggressor nation in an effort to bring that aggressor nation to heel.
if this failed, the League could introduce physical sanctions. This meant that military force would be used to put into place the League’s decision. However, the League did not have a military force at its disposal and no member of the League had to provide one under the terms of joining - unlike the current United Nations. Therefore, it could not carry out any threats and any country defying its authority would have been very aware of this weakness. The only two countries in the League that could have provided any military might were Britain and France and both had been severely depleted strength-wise in World War One and could not provide the League with the backing it needed. Also both Britain and France were not in a position to use their FINANCES to pay for an expanded army as both were financially hit very hard by World War One.

The League also had other weaknesses:

The country, whose president, Woodrow Wilson, had dreamt up the idea of the League - America - refused to join it. As America was the world’s most powerful nation, this was a serious blow to the prestige of the League. However, America’s refusal to join the League, fitted in with her desire to have an isolationist policy throughout the world.

Germany was not allowed to join the League in 1919. As Germany had started the war, according to the Treaty of Versailles, one of her punishments was that she was not considered to be a member of the international community and, therefore, she was not invited to join. This was a great blow to Germany but it also meant that the League could not use whatever strength Germany had to support its campaign against aggressor nations.

Russia was also not allowed to join as in 1917, she had a communist government that generated fear in Western Europe, and in 1918, the Russian royal family - the Romanovs - was murdered. Such a country could not be allowed to take its place in the League.

Therefore, three of the world’s most powerful nations (potentially for Russia and Germany) played no part in supporting the League. The two most powerful members were Britain and France - both had suffered financially and militarily during the war - and neither was enthusiastic to get involved in disputes that did not affect Western Europe.

Therefore, the League had a fine ideal - to end war for good. However, if an aggressor nation was determined enough to ignore the League’s verbal warnings, all the League could do was enforce economic sanctions and hope that these worked as it had no chance or enforcing its decisions using military might.