Summary for mid-term test:

i) The origins of the First World War, ii) The First World War iii) The Russian Revolution.

i)

The origins of the First World War Many both long- and short term causes resulted in the Great War the First World War. After the war, many blamed Germany, but Germany was not involved in all longterm causes, tough. Was Germany really to blame? One long-term cause was nationalism. Germany became united in 1871 as Prussia set up the German Empire comprising all small, previous states. Other world powers started to fear the new powerful empire additionally, due to the fact that the Germans had already beaten the French in an earlier war, and because its wealth and economy increased. However, the friendly foreign policy of Germanys chancellor, Bismarck, prevented Germany from getting involved in any more wars. A new long-term cause emerged when Germany got a new ruler: Kaiser Wilhelm II. He had a more aggressive approach to the rest of the world and wanted Germany to become a world power, too, just like Britain and France, with huge colonies. Therefore, Germany became a threat for those world powers, since Germany probably would make an end to the existence of the British phrase Britain rules the waves and would most likely disturb the force majeure of Britain and France in Africa and Asia. A word to summarize this cause is imperialism. Moreover, there was militarism. All countries wanted to show off their military power, so they built enormous armies and navies. Each world power, such as Britain, France and Russia, as well as Germany, responded to the others in the building of new battleships or new increases in forces and troops. The arms race that Germany had started eventually led to huge armies among all world powers. The system of alliances was a fatal factor of the war. Austria-Hungary, for example, had an alliance with mighty Germany, so when either country would be attacked, the other would give military support, in other words; join the war. Initially, only France seemed to be a potential enemy. This changed, however, when Wilhelm II ended the good relationship with Russia. In the end, Britain joined Russia and France by an unofficial alliance. Later, the three countries together were called the TRIPLE ENTENTE and Austria-Hungary with Germany formed the CENTRAL POWERS, the TRIPLE ALLIANCE when Italy is also included. Short-term causes eventually caused the start of the First World War in the summer of 1914 when the tensions in Europe were already high. The most famous and important one took place in Sarajevo, Bosnia; the tense situation exploded. Bosnia was part of Austria-Hungary, but many Serbs lived there, who rather had Bosnia joined with the country Serbia. Nationalism, as in this case, was an immense problem or threat for Austria-Hungary, because it existed out of lots of different nationalities. On 28 June 1914, Serbs tried to kill Austria-Hungarys archduke, Franz Ferdinand, when he and his wife visited Bosnia. The first attempt with a bomb failed, but later, Gavrillo Princip member of the Serb nationalist, radical group called the Black Hand succeeded in shooting Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie. The killing in Sarajevo started the domino effect causing the world war. AustriaHungary blamed Serbia for the murder and now believed it had an excuse to start war with the country it had had many conflicts and disputes with in history. Austria-Hungarys ally was Germany and that was why that country became involved in the war. In earlier disputes between Austria-Hungary and Serbia about how conquered from Turkey should be divided, Germany refused to support Austria-Hungary and thus prevented a possible war from happening. After the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, however, Germany urged Austria-Hungary to start war with Serbia. The opposite of the actual intention of the alliance happened: Germany did not help Austria-Hungary when it would be attacked, but Germany gave full support when Austria-Hungary started the war. Because Russia was bound to Serbia by a treaty, Russias vast army supported Serbia. On 3 August,

France joined the war on Russias side because they had an alliance. Britains position was unclear when both Russia and France had already stepped into war. The British Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, wanted to prevent a general world war by negotiations. Many hoped that Great Britain threatening war would frighten Germany. Maybe Germany would indeed have thought again about supporting Austria-Hungary. Yet Grey wanted to negotiate and therefore a lot of people at the time blamed Grey for hesitating. Britain at last entered the war on 4 August 1914 when Germany used the Von Schlieffen Plan to attack France. Britain had a sort of loose agreement with France; a moral obligation for defending France. This was, however, not the reason of Britain joining Russia and France. The Germans invaded Belgium and tried to attack France via that country from the north, because the direct border of Germany and France was wellprotected. Belgium asked for Britains assistance, pointing at a 75-year old treaty that had been made to support Belgiums independence from the Netherlands. Therefore, Britain was pulled into war, because it had promised to guard the neutrality and independence of the Belgians. Apart from the crisis in Bosnia, there had also been another conflict, by the way. Although Moroccans wanted to have an independent state, it remained a colony for a long time. Until 1904, Morocco was British, but in 1904 it was given to the French. France retained the colony, but a war nearly broke out when Germany in 1905 announced that it supported the Moroccans fighting for their independence. In 1911, the conflict flared up again when Germany protested against the French possession of Morocco. Still, Britain supported France and Germany was persuaded to back down for part of French Congo. ii) The First World War The First World War lasted from 28 July 1914 till 11 November 1918 and was really a global war, mostly because European empires had large colonies that therefore were involved in the war too. One thing that made negotiations for preventing the catastrophic war almost impossible, was that the countries were desperate to mobilise their troops; get them moving towards the frontier with the enemy. In first instance, each side expected the war to be a short one. However, Germanys attempt to attack France quickly from the north, win, and then move to the frontier with Russia did not succeed. The French stopped the Germans at the battle of the River Marne and a front-line was established. Thereafter, both the Germans and the French tried to break the stalemate and this led to enormous numbers of casualties on both sides. Most outcomes of the breakthroughs were indecisive, for instance the Battle of Verdun, the Battle of the Somme and the Battle of Passchendaele. Once enormous losses and sufferings occurred, both sides looked for new allies. Italy, that first had fought on the side of the Central Powers for a short while, and Romania joined the Triple Entente and Bulgaria joined the other side. This, though, made ending the war even more difficult: the new countries did not want to lose anything in the war and wanted to fight until it had gained the profits of the war that were worth the efforts. Although most powerful states had set up vast navies for potential conflicts, and for impressing other states, there was only one single naval battle in the Great War the Battle of Jutland. The battle was fought in 1916, in the North Sea near Denmark, between Germany and Great Britain, but neither of them had extreme losses. Since the Germans could not even truly harm, let alone destroy, the British navy, they started using U-boats; submarines. These U-boats were particularly used to cut off vital supplies for Britain by attacking ships that supplied those goods. Among these ships were some American ships, and that is the reason why the United States of America became involved in the war in April 1917, America declared war on Germany. While Germany had almost defeated France, the Allied position was greatly strengthened when America joined with its huge army. In the meanwhile, Russia was being defeated in the east by Germany. In 1917, there was the Russian Revolution and therefore, mainly because of the internal instability of

Russia, it had to withdraw. Faced with total defeat, the new communist rulers, the Bolsheviks, signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918, agreeing to all German demands, including German possession of large areas of Russian territory. After the German victory in the east, they started to focus on the Western Front. They tried to smash through to Paris before the American reinforcements arrived. The Germans initially seemed to succeed in their plan, but after some successes, the Americans started to beat the German army. By August 1918, the American troops were completely mobilised and the Allied powers were ready for a huge counter-attack. After a decisive break-through with the help of tanks, German generals understood and realised that they were about to be defeated. Hence they asked for peace that came on 11 November 1918 with the Armistice. Many historians say that World War I, as we call the Great War now, was a terrible war and often rather useless. This all has to do with the fact that all side expected the war to be short lived, but there are also other reasons why there were so many casualties. One is that many soldiers were killed because of the new weapons that revolutionised warfare; for example, machine guns, poison gas and much more effective artillery. Also, World War I was fought using old tactics during a time of modernised warfare, so leaders in the army tried to win a battle with massed infantry advances, into strongly defended enemy positions, not realising the consequences considering new artillery etc. Moreover, there were trenches at the frontiers, which were very dangerous. Simple things like barbed wire, collapsing trenches and holes with rainwater in which soldiers drowned, as well as improved artillery and eventually airplanes that were used as bombers led to enormous numbers of casualties. Furthermore, there was often not enough food at the battlefield, in the trenches, and the trenches frequently flooded. Battlefields became treeless after bombings and therefore it became very muddy and messy. Many diseases spread and there were sicknesses caused by rats in the trenches. In fact, disease was one of, if not the, highest cause of casualties during the war. There was even trench foot, caused by the soldiers constantly being in trenches filled with water, and not being able to dry their boots and socks, and if soldiers survived their wounds, infections occurred. iii) The Russian Revolution The Russian Revolution was caused by the fact that the difference between poor and rich in Russia became extreme. Many Russian were poor peasants while Tsar Nicholas II lived his luxury live in his palaces. After a lost war with Japan, there was an attempted revolution prevented by promising reforms. The Tsar set up a parliament the duma that in reality had little to no power. After the First World War that the Russians lost too, the Russians wanted real reforms in 1917. In March 1917, the revolution started in Petrograd, nowadays known as St Petersburg. On March 15, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated because of extreme unrest, including strikes and riots, and a lack of support from his army. Afterwards, there was confusion in Russia about who ruled the country. The duma set up a provisional government, but workers and soldiers in Petrograd established a governing committee called soviet, which were set up in other large towns shortly thereafter. A group of communists called the Bolsheviks wanted to overthrow the provisional government and take power and their leader was Lenin. The Bolshevik, also known as the Red Guards, wanted to take full power in Russia. In 1918, before World War I had ended, Russia made peace with Germany; the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Withdrawing from war, Russia was confronted with harsh consequences; Russia lost huge areas of its territory. Nevertheless, Lenin signed the treaty because he believed Russia would regain its territory when a communist world revolution would succeed. Many Russians opposed the Bolshevik take-over, though, and hence a civil war broke out. The opponents of the Red Guards were knows as the Whites and they set up independent governments in for instance Ukraine, Georgia and Siberia. France, Japan, America and Britain, too, somehow feared the communists and sent armies to fight them and support the Whites. Yet the Whites could not take over power, because they were

divided among themselves. In 1919 the foreign forces started to withdraw and by 1920, the Bolsheviks had won the civil war. Lenins primary goal was to spread communism throughout the world and therefore he set up Comintern the Communist International. Otherwise, he thought, the Russian Revolution would fail and revolutionary Russia would be destroyed. Initially he plan seemed to work out when communism began to have many followers in Hungary and Germany. In Hungary, communists briefly took power, but were overthrown again in July 1919. Stalin, Lenins successor after the latters death in 1924, however, ruled the Soviet Union in a different way; he started industrialising the country, instead of paying attention to a desired global take-over of communism. Still, the fear of communism among foreign world powers, excluding Russia of course, persisted.