History
5: Lecture 22
World War I
Introduction
First fully industrialized, total conflict in modern history forges
the twentieth century. Total=full mobilization of all resources human
and material of modern state
Explanations
i) Marxist:
• War of rival imperialisms (Lenin)
• Ruling classes pursue war as diversion (domestic causes)
Verdict: non-starters: no hard evidence.
ii) Non-Marxist classic foreign policy explanation:
great powers respond to perceived threats to national interests and
aspirations.
Verdict: most plausible interpretation- great powers all share responsibility;
Germany however has special responsibility because it takes a calculated
risk that European general conflict might result from its support
for Austria’s preventive strike against Serbia in July 1914.
Conclusion: immediate war origins no mystery (compare outbreak US
war against Iraq 2003-small elites take decisive decisions for war-
1914 similar, no popular demands for war in any of the capitals.
Causes
Immediate:
Assassination by Serbian terrorist (Black Hand) of Habsburg heir to
the throne, Archduke Francis Ferdinand in Sarajevo, 28 June 1914 triggers
July diplomatic crisis ending in outbreak of general war by 4 August.
Austria, with German guarantee, responds to assassination by preventive
strike against independent Serbia, allied to Russia and France.
Long-range:
i) Decline of the Ottoman Empire
Attracts predatory powers: Italy attacks Libya (Ottoman) in 1912;
Balkan wars, 1912-1913: Greece, Serbia, and Bulgaria vs. Turkey.
ii) Alliances
From 1890s rival alliance blocs form: Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria,
Italy vs. Triple Entente (France, Great Britain, Russia). Alliances
are defensive - not direct cause of war ; two consequences: arms race
creates expectations of general conflict; Schlieffen Plan - requires
Germany in event of war to take offensive by striking first at France
and neutral Belgium while staying on defensive on eastern Russian
front.
iii) Nationalism
Intense national hatreds: Germany vs. France; Great Britain vs. Germany
(great naval race); Russia vs. Germany; South Slaves led by Serbia
vs. multi-national dynastic Austro-Hungarian empire. Hatreds cause
major diplomatic crises-Morocco, 1905,1911;
iv) Glorification of war: “Now, God be thanked
Who has matched us with His hour” British poet Rupert Brooke,
1914
War not only necessary last resort but also positive and desirable:
Social Darwinism; popular image of war as heroic adventure (gung ho
Imperialist ethos), as spiritual renewal (Nietzsche, Italian Futurists
led by Marinetti), as healer of social divisions. Short- war illusion-war
over by Christmas 1914; only war memories = short colonial conflicts
and Franco-Prussian war of 1870.
v) German problem
Germany strongest great power -dominates Europe economically. Britain,
France and Russia do not want a German controlled Europe.
vi) Failure of international diplomacy
Repeated threats to international peace (Moroccan crises, 1905,1911,
Bosnian crisis 1908, Balkan wars 1912-13) overwhelm the international
system.
Course of the conflict
Failure of the Schlieffen Plan; attrition, industrialized slaughter
on Western Front: poison gas, heavy artillery, machine gun, tanks,
airplanes; trenches, biggest battles: Verdun (1916), Somme (1916);
Eastern front: war of movement; Germany overruns much of European
Russia. Other war theaters: Gallipoli 1915; Syria-Iraq; Africa
Home Front:
• Censorship and propaganda
• State control of economy and citizen (DORA: Defense of the
Realm Act)
• New roles for women
• voices of dissent and protest
United States entry (April 1917); end of war (Armistice, 11am, 11/11/18)
Why so long?
• Defensive armaments have advantage> military stalemate
• Separation of fronts-censorship; few pictures
• Troop morale maintained overall ( mutinies in French army
1917)
• War of peoples and opposing cultures: each power believes
its freedom and interests at stake so fight to finish.
Peacemaking
Treaty of Versailles June 1919 (peace with Germany); uneasy mixture
of power politics and Wilsonian idealism (Fourteen Points January
1918) but on whole a reasonable settlement. (League of Nations created)
Versailles, together with clutch of other peace treaties, represents
biggest redrawing of European political map since 1815: new states:
Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Finland, Baltic States.
Conclusion
• Immense loss of life and property (10 million deaths) but
compare 1918-19 flu’ pandemic –20 million at least
• Beginning of end of four centuries of European political and
economic primacy
• War spawns revolutions and dictatorships of extreme right
and left.
• State control of economy and society ends free trade liberalism
and sets precedent for 1930s and World War II.
• Female suffrage (in some countries)
• Crisis of identity in European and Western consciousness:
Toynbee, Freud; decline and fall of bourgeois civilization.
** REMINDER: SECOND PAPER ASSIGNMENT DUE MONDAY APRIL 21ST,
BY 4PM, IN SECTION LEADER’S BOX, HISTORY OFFICE 3229 DWINELLE
History 5 Lecture 23:
Communism, Nazism and Fascism
Introduction
World War I and the Great Depression of 1929 create conditions for
the rise of dictatorships of the extreme left and extreme right. By
1930s liberal democracy in retreat ; all major states have fascist
and communist parties . By 1941 Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy controlled
nearly the whole of Europe .
I Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917
• weaknesses of Russian state ; autocracy, no constitution,
opposition driven underground; land hunger of peasantry, beginnings
of industrialization.
• Russian left: Bolsheviks and Mensheviks; Vladimir Illyich
Lenin (1870-1924) says Bolsheviks must be a vanguard party.
• Russo-Japanese war ,1904 –5 > revolution of 1905>creation
of Duma (parliament) and constitution; lack of significant economic
and political reform.
• The Great War: colossal but backward army>defeat at Tannnenberg
(1914); 1800 mile front; Russia steadily loses ground; inept conduct
of war and intrigues of Empress/ and Rasputin discredit monarchy;
urban crisis
• February (March) revolution of 1917; Tsar abdicates; ;liberals
led by Kerensky prioritize war , neglect basic reforms; peasant uprisings;
October (November) Bolshevik Revolution.
II The Making of the Soviet Union (1917-1940)
“Terror was planned, like the economy, and the quotas for life
and death were manipulated at will” (Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope
Against Hope, 1971, p.340)
* Foundations of the Soviet system under Lenin, 1917-1924: dictatorship
of the party; creation of a Soviet culture; Red army wins civil war
(1918-1921); goal of world revolution (Comintern); The New Economic
policy (NEP) privatization.
• Joseph Stalin (1879-1953) : industrialization through collectivization:
“building socialism in one country”; 5 year Plan (1928)
• One party police state - command economy; purges of Trotsky
and Bukarin (1927-29); cult of personality; waging of internal war
by use of systematic terror: purges and show trials 1935-38: 100,000s
killed, millions sent to Gulag (forced labor camps ) Solzhenitsyn’s
Gulag Archipelago (1973-5).
• Stalin’s educational and welfare policies> new managerial
and technocratic elite committed to the regime.
• Rapid state directed industrialization enables Russia survive
German invasion of 1941
III Fascism ,1922-43
• Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) “the Italian Lenin”
: origins of fascism; unfinished risorgimento; disappointed nationalism
(Versailles treaty); parliamentary system unsuited to new age of mass
politics (Giolitti, transformismo); postwar economic discontent (inflation,
strikes, land and factory seizures 1919-1920); war veterans ; political
violence
• Road to power: the march on Rome, Oct.1922. Acerbo Law (1923)
• One party police state from 1926-27 but never total control:
major compromises with powerful institutions: Catholic Church, Monarchy,
Army,
• No take over of land and economy; corporate state; prosperous
economy, prestigious public works programs; repression mild compared
to Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia; no anti-Semitism until 1938
• Expansionist foreign policy, alliance with Hitler from 1937.
IV Nazism
• Weimar Republic (1919-1933); Revolution of 1918>Kaiser
abdicates 9 nov 1918>Republic>Spartacist uprising (Jan.1919);
Weimar Constitution: universal suffrage (male/female), secret ballot,
elected president, seven year term, proportional representation
• Regime weaknesses: no strong support for Republicanism because
half-way revolution, Republic blamed for defeat of 1918 ; military
and industrial elites in place; stigma of Versailles peace; politics
increasingly polarized between extreme left (Communists) and extreme
right (Nationalists and Nazis);
• Great Depression of 1929-32 >mass unemployment (6 million)
; strengthens Communists and Nazis .
• Adolf Hitler and NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers
Party); 1st bid for power Munich putsch of 1923; great depression
turns party into mass political force; breakdown of political system
(1930 Bruning Cabinet); governments forced to rely on emergency powers
(article 48 of Constitution)
• President Hindenburg and Conservatives invite Hitler to form
a coalition government: 30 Jan 1933 ; February-March “legal
revolution” –use of art 48 to arrest and terrorize opponents;
Reichstag fire, Enabling Act (March 1933); concentration camps; taming
of Nazi movement and political opponents –“night of the
long knives” (30 June 1934); death of Hindenburg (Aug 1934)
Hitler “Fuhrer and Chancellor”.
• One party , police state ; much greater power than Mussolini’s
regime.
• Economic recovery: rearmament and public works, deficit financing,
economic autarky; traditional elites retain land and economy; no trade
unions ; social welfare policy.
• Anti-Semitism; Nuremberg Laws 1935.
• Expansionist foreign policy
Conclusion
• Comparison of Stalinism, Nazism and Fascism
• Reactionary or modern?