World Civilizations Two

Great War Images and Legacies

Because no significant part of the German nation was lost (or indeed even invaded) and no shot was fired in anger on German soil, many Germans felt that there was still a great deal of "fight" left in the German military and German people. Many (Adolf Hitler included) felt like the military had been "stabbed in the back" by a civilian government (the Weimar Republic that replaced the imperial regime of Kaiser Wilhelm II) that was secretly controlled by a Jewish cabal of profiteers.

Because of the remarkable levels of destruction--and the senselessness, the uselessness of that destruction, that loss--many lost faith in progress, democracy, and traditional sources of authority.

Because such large numbers of men went off to serve in the period's "Citizen" armies, there was a huge demand for new sources of labor as the industrial West geared up for "total war." One such source was middle-class women, many of whom were married. The photograph above is from France, but women flocked to factories in all the industrialized countries, including the Untied States.

Because of the advances of the Industrial Age, World War I was the first widespread governmental use of "scientific" (and racialized) propaganda.

The Treaty of Versailles, much of which was based on the ideas of retribution and revenge, provided a focal point around which Germans of all political stripes could unite. Wilson is the central figure below. The other two are Georges Clemenceau of France and David Lloyd George of Great Britain.

>As we will see in the next section, the Russian Revolution(s) of 1917 were one of the most important and long lasting of the legacies of the First World War.

America's Entry in the War

After maintaining two and a half years of neutrality, events forced the leadership in the US to enter the war on the side of the allies. With large Irish- and German-American communities in the voting population, it made sense for Woodrow Wilson and others to steer the course of neutrality. But events made this difficult. The sinking of the RMS Lusitania in May of 1915 was one such event. Of the 1195 lives lost, 128 were Americans.
Later, so-called "unrestricted" submarine warfare would cost lives and millions of dollars worth of cargo as it made its way to Britain. Even though he had been elected on the slogan "he kept us out of war," Wilson would go to Congress on 2 April, 1917 and ask for a declaration of war against the Empire of Germany.
The two graphs indicate that the economy of the United States made the nation that much more formidable an enemy. Although the Iron and Steel graph predates the years of the war, it indicates that the US was on a path to industrial dominance.

World War I and Alliances

In the one hundred years since the Congress of Vienna, there had been no Europe-wide conflict among the industrialized neations of the continent. Indeed, a complex system of defensive alliances (see map) created two opposing camps--the Central powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire; and the Allied powers of Britain, France, and Russia.

There were plenty of opportunities for competition and tension, however. The "Scramble for Africa," expanding industiral competition, and the emergence of an expansionistic and militaristic Germany under the leadership of the bellicose Wilhelm II (pictured), all led to the creation of a tinerbox that needed only the spark of assassination to detonate a World War.

Part of the problem in 1914 was the development of complex and intricate war/mobilization plans that called for high levels of speed and planning. Germany's famous "Schlieffen Plan" was one such mobilization scheme. Because of the realities of geography (see map), Germany would be forced to fight a two-front war: Russia on one side and Britian and France on the other.

The Shlieffen Plan assumed a slow and disorganized Russian mobilization and focused Imperial Germany's resources on France and Britain with a lightning drive through Belgium (see map).

After securing victory there, Germany would then shift its resources to the Russians in the east. But when Russia mobilized following the crisis of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, Germany was boxed (as they saw it) to an even greater comitment to the speed and mobilzation of the Shlieffen Plan. Below is a link to a BBC documentary on the Battle of the Somme.

"Dutch Learning" and the Meiji Restoration

A fairly objective documentary featuring the important period at the end of the Shogunate and what would lead eventually to the Meiji "Restoration."

A bit longer series of clips with fairly high production values (though unfortunately the audio is out of synch):

Imperialism and Rebellion in China

A fairly basic but informative lecture (with images) by a high school history instructor: Clips from a (cheesey?) Hollywood film titled "55 Days in Peking." It is set in the events of the Boxer Rebellion and features an always masculine Charleton Heston.