Transcript Causes of World War 1

Mr. Giesler
Global Studies
Causes of World War 1
 War
Guilt Question
 Rise in Nationalism
 Imperialism and International Rivalry
 Internal Stability
 Complex Alliance System
 Assassination of Franz Ferdinand
 German Blank Check and Quick Mobilization
War Guilt Question
 Few issues in modern history have received as much attention as assigning
responsibility for the outbreak of the World War in 1914.
 Leaders reacted to events instead of proactively managing the crisis
 Austrians, Hungarians and Serbs made important decisions early in the
crisis, they consistently avoided compromise and risked war
 There was plenty of time for calculation, caution and decision.
 Who chose to risk war, and why?
 Let the dominos fall
Rise in Nationalism
TTYN:
Describe nationalism
How nationalism was a long-term cause of WWI
 Germany was extremely proud of the military power that they had become after
the Franco-Prussian War.
 As a new unified nation after January of 1871, the Germans felt nearly unstoppable
as a world power.
 The French on the other hand had been embarrassed by the Germans and found it
necessary to regain their pride.
Rise in Nationalism
How nationalism was a long-term cause of WWI
 Feelings of resentment led to the massive militarism between Germany and
France
 Growth of Pan-Slavism and the unification of all Slavic peoples
 Protected by Russia, the areas around Serbia became very unstable.
 The Serbians were prepared to create their own independent Slavic state
supported by the Russians.
This will lead to what we call the “Balkan Powder Keg” or an area in the
Balkans that would only take a minor issue to explode into full on war
Assassination of Franz Ferdinand
The Trigger: Serbian Nationalism
The Archduke Franz Ferdinand and
his wife, Sophie, assassinated in
Sarajevo on June 28th, 1914 by
young Bosnian terrorist Gabrillo
Princip.
Rise in Nationalism
 Why the “European or Balkan Powder Keg” exploded
 Principal Players: Austria-Hungary and Serbia
 The Black Hand - an anti-Austrian secret society…A nationalist Serbia
group
 Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the Hapsburg heir to the Austro-Hungarian
throne
 The decline of the Ottoman Empire and rise of nationalism in the Balkans
threatened the stability of Austria-Hungary, which did not want to be the next
“Sick Man of Europe”
Rise in Nationalism
 Why the “European or Balkan Powder Keg” exploded
 Large Slavic population with Russia acting as their mother
 Austria-Hungary issued Serbia with various ultimatums
 No more anti-monarchist propaganda
 Purge the Serbian military
 Quick sentencing for the guilty
 Germany promises to support Austria’s decisions
 July 28, 1914, Austria declares war on Serbia
Rise in Nationalism
 Why the “European or Balkan Powder Keg” exploded
TTYN:
 What was
the purpose of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo
 Who was responsible for the killing, besides the assassins themselves?
Complex Alliance System
TTYN:
What is an alliance?
 Two major alliances that developed prior to WWI
 Triple Entente (Allies)
 Triple Alliance (Central Powers).
The Triple Entente consisted of Great Britain, France and Russia.
 Created in an effort to counter the Triple Alliance
 Triple Alliance consisted of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy.
 Italy finds that it is in their best interest to wait and see what unfolds during
the war; thus, allowing them to further their growth as a nation.
Complex Alliance System
The Central Powers will eventually consist of Austro-Hungary (1914), the
German Empire (1914), the Ottoman Empire (1914), and the Kingdom of
Bulgaria (1915).
 The Triple Entente would become known as the Allied Powers and grow
considerably, consisting of the Kingdom of Belgium, Kingdom of Serbia, the
French Third Republic, the Russian Empire, the British Empire, the Kingdom
of Italy, the Empire of Japan, the United States, the Portuguese Republic, the
Kingdom of Romania, the Kingdom of Greece and many others who lent
military and financial aid.
TTYN:
What event can we conclude was the start of WWI
July 28, 1914, Austria declares war on Serbia
Small Group Activity
Refer to Notes Packet
Identify country and allegiance (Alliance or Entente)
Identify other countries missing from map and their respective allegiance
1879
The Dual Alliance
Germany and Austria-Hungary
made an alliance to protect
themselves from Russia
1914
Triple Entente (no separate peace)
Britain, Russia and France agreed
not to sign for peace separately.
1907
Triple Entente
This was made between Russia,
France and Britain to counter the
increasing threat from Germany.
1881
Austro-Serbian Alliance
1882
The Triple Alliance
Austria-Hungary made an alliance Germany and Austria- Hungary
with Serbia to stop Russia gaining made an alliance with Italy to stop
control of Serbia
Italy from taking sides with Russia
A Path towards
Friendship or War
1907
Anglo-Russian Entente
This was an agreement between
Britain and Russia
1894
Franco-Russian Alliance
Russia formed an alliance with
France to protect herself against
Germany and Austria-Hungary
1904
Entente Cordiale
This was an agreement, but not a
formal alliance, between France
and Britain.
Complex Alliance System
Why can we consider Austria declaring war on Serbia as the
start of WWI?
 Chain Reaction
Russia Mobilized Along Austria-Hungarian Border
Germany Declared War on Russia and France….Why France?
 UK and France Declared War on Germany and Austria-Hungary
TTYN:
Was a war inevitable after the murder, or did policy-makers let the crisis escape
their control?
 Why did a Balkan crisis lead to a world war in 1914, when other crises had not?
Imperialism and International Rivalry
TTYN:
Describe Imperialism
 Nations from around the globe were competing for control of colonies in order to
gain….to gain what? Land, Resources, and Influence
 Germany attempts to control lands in Africa, a place that Britain and France were
already established.
 In 1905 and 1911 Germany was attempting to keep France from imposing a
protectorate on Morocco.
 Resulting in Britain and France became closer allies in the conflict against
Germany.
Britain and France believed that keeping Germany out of Africa, the Germans
would not be able to build themselves into a threatening power.
International Rivalry
The race to imperialize came with consequences
The race to militarize.
TTYN:
What does it mean to militarize?
The glorification of one’s military. Also the belief of a
nation or its people to build and maintain a strong military,
with the intention to use it whenever it is felt necessary.
 Remember Bismarck? Bismarck made it his goal to keep the unified German State
prepared to defend itself against France.
 He felt that it was necessary to keep France isolated and weak at all cost.
 France---Understanding that Germany was building a large military, saw it as a
necessity to in turn build a large military to protect themselves against the Germans.
 In other words, two nations doing their very best to prepare to annihilate the other.
International Rivalry
The Germans were also threatening the British by building a large Navy, making
the British feel insecure about their place amongst the world’s elite navies for the first
time in nearly a hundred years.
 British reaction - building a larger navy.
 Not in a vacuum - Prior to the outbreak of WWI. It does not take long for these
countries to find a reason to use their militaries against each other in an attempt to
prove who is superior.
Recapping the Causes of World War 1
 War Guilt Question
 Rise in Nationalism
 Imperialism and International Rivalry
 Internal Stability
 Complex Alliance System
 Assassination of Franz Ferdinand
 German Blank Check and Quick Mobilization
Each of the above underlying causes can be neatly packed into the following
acronym: M.A.I.N.
 TTYN:
Thinking about what we have learned so far about WW1
and the potential causes: breakdown the acronym M.A.I.N. What does each
letter represent and how does each reflect a potential cause of WW1?
Total War
 Schlieffen Plan
 Trench Warfare
 Battle of Verdun
 Turning Points
 Technology
Total War
TTYN:
What is Total War?
The First World War was truly ‘the Great War’
 A Global Conflict.
 Thirty-two nations would eventually be involved
 28 nations constituted the Allied Powers
 Geography – meant that the scale of the conflict meant that it was not
one war but many
 Geography - made it very difficult for political and military leaders to
control events.
Total War
Criticism - Europe's political and military leaders believed that the ‘war
would be over by Christmas'. Why???
This belief was not based on complacency. The war was expected it to
be brutal and costly, in both blood and treasure. Many believed that no
state could be expected to sustain such a war for very long without
disastrous consequences.
 Nations mobilize
 People uprooted
 Human Targets – factories, nobody was immune
 All resources were mobilized
 All available resources used in order to destroy another nation's ability to
engage in war.
Schlieffen Plan
 Germany feared a war on two fronts
 Diplomatic solutions not viewed as options by the German government.
 A military solution was sought instead.
 The German high command decided that the best form of defense was attack.
 The Plan – Germany would avoid a war on two fronts by knocking out one of
their enemies before the other could take the field. The enemy with the slowest
military mobilization was Russia. The French army would be in the field first.
France was therefore chosen to receive the first blow. Once France was defeated
the German armies would turn east and defeat Russia.
 Two Assumptions: that it would take the Russians six weeks to put an army into
the field; and that six weeks was long enough to defeat France.
 Wake-up Call - Russia put an army into the field in fifteen days.
Trench Warfare
 Failure
of the Schlieffen Plan
 Brits and French uncertain about how to stop the German advance
decided to ‘dig in’ and ordered the construction of Trenches to act as a
barrier against the attack.
Trench Warfare
 Offensive
 Shell
attacks into No Mans Land
fire
 Going over the top
 Retreat
 The enemy goes forth
 Rats
 Lice
 Latrine marks the spot – Germans often shelled the latrines
 Trench Foot
 Gas
Battle of Verdun
“The Greatest Battle Ever”
The Battle of Verdun was the longest and most costly battle of the war.
 It would dominate much of the fighting of 1916, forcing France’s allies to fight
battles that might otherwise not have been fought, or to alter the timing of their
offensives to provide indirect aid to the French.
 By the end of the battle the French and Germans between them had lost close to
one million men.
 By the winter of 1915-16, German General Erich von Falkenhayn was convinced
that the war could only be won in the west
Battle of Verdun
“The Greatest Battle Ever”
 The Germans massed artillery to the north and east of Verdun to pre-empt the
infantry advance with intensive artillery bombardment.
 Although French intelligence had warned of his plans, these warnings were ignored
by the French Command.
Consequently, Verdun was utterly unprepared for the initial bombardment on the
morning of 21 February 1916.
German infantry attacks followed that afternoon and met little resistance for the first
four days.
Battle of Verdun
“The Greatest Battle Ever”
 French reinforcements managed to slow the German advancement
 By July, the Germans could no longer afford to commit new troops to Verdun and, at
a cost of some 400,000 French casualties and a similar number of Germans
 Germany had failed to bleed France to death and from October to the end of the year
 French offensives regained the forts and territory they had lost earlier.
 French losses were 61,000 dead, 101,000 missing and 216,000 wounded, a total of
378,000 while German losses were 142,000 killed or missing and 187,000 wounded,
for a total of 329,000. Other sources give higher figures – French losses of 543,000 and
German losses of 434,000.
 Battle lasted almost an entire year
Turning Points
Two crucial events which made 1917 a turning point in world history were the US
entry into the war and the Russian withdrawal from the war
 Ludendorff's Spring Offensive and the Allied Response
Mobilized
Killed
Wounded
British Empire
8 900 000
1 000 000
2 000 000
France
8 400 000
1 360 000
4 000 000
Russia
12 000 000
1 700 000
5 000 000
USA
1 750 000
80 000
180 000
Italy
5 600 000
460 000
900 000
Germany
11 000 000
1 800 000
4 200 000
Austria-Hungary
7 800 000
1 200 000
3 000 000
Turkey
2 850 000
650 000
950 000
Technology
World War I is significant because it marked the debut of
many new types of weapons and was the first major war to
“benefit” from technological advances in radio, electrical
power, and other technologies
Women of War
 Women in factories
 Police Forces
 Nurses
 Suffrage in 1919-1920
Poets of the Lost Generation
 Siegfried Sassoon
 Wilfred Owen
 Robert Graves
Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)
"Dulce et Decorum Est "
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed
through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all
blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped
behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! -- An ecstasy of
fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green
light,
As under I green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking,
drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too
could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his
face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted
lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent
tongues, -My friend, you would not tell with such
high zest
To children ardent for some desperate
glory,
The old lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Dreamers
BY SIEGFRIED SASSOON
Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land,
Drawing no dividend from time's to-morrows.
In the great hour of destiny they stand,
Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.
Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win
Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.
Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin
They think of firelit homes, clean beds and wives.
I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats,
And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain,
Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats,
And mocked by hopeless longing to regain
Bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats,
And going to the office in the train.
SUICIDE IN THE TRENCHES
By Siegfried Sassoon
I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark. In winter trenches, cowed and
glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.
You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.
Cultural Disillusionment
 Otto Dix
 Focus on Disfigurement and Trauma
 Hatred for Authorities
The War to End All Wars
 Fourteen Points
 Reduce Armaments
The Paris Peace Settlement
 Association of Nations
 Popular Determination
 Versailles Treaty
 War Guilt Clause
 Reparations
 Weak League of Nations