13. "THE GREAT WAR" (WORLD WAR ONE)

1914 - 1918

A dangerous game The royalty and aristocracy (and their upper middle class associates) have long treated wars and diplomacy as a private or personal game of the members of their class (a good number of them direct descendants of Queen Victoria of England and thus even first cousins, as were English King Edward, German Emperor Wilhelm, and Russian Tsar Nicholas!).  Wars and diplomacy are the business of their class alone.  Involving the masses of peasants, townsmen and industrial workers in this game is considered inappropriate – even highly dangerous (as the Napoleonic Wars clearly demonstrated).  Armies and envoys are considered the tools of the ruling classes – to be used to promote the interests of the reigning kings and emperors.  But the rising spirit of nationalism is drawing the masses into this game – clearly enhancing the powers of the ruling class players, but also drawing them forward toward a conflict that they will soon discover is beyond their ability to manage or control. Germany’s Emperor Wilhelm is becoming an increasing source of concern to the other players.  Germany has come late to the game, the German state being assembled only in 1870, when much of the overseas imperial territory had already been claimed by the other European players, most notably Britain and France.  Wilhelm demands a greater share in the imperialist game than has thus been afforded Germany.  This ambition is what nearly brought matters to blows in Morocco. With the Turkish or Ottoman Empire crumbling piece by piece in Southeastern Europe during the 1800s, the Balkan peninsula has long been offering its own opportunities for trouble.  Austria-Hungary has been looking for expansion into that area – as has been its chief competitor in that region, Russia.  This potential for conflict draws the other European players into the Balkan game – and soon formal alliances are forged to buttress the interests of one side or the other.  On the one side are the powers of the Triple Entente:  Britain, France and Russia.  This alliance is formed to check the growth of the ‘Central Powers’:  the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires.  [The Turkish Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Bulgaria will eventually join this latter group. Italy, on the other hand, once a member of this alliance, will leave it to join Britain, France and Russia against its former allies – because of secret treaties promising Italy certain territorial gains if/when war should break out between these two alliances.] The "Great War" The assassination in June 1914 of the Austrian Archduke by a Serbian nationalist sets off events which finally draw (by August) all of Europe into the long-simmering contest:  the ‘Great War’ (World War I).   European nations qiuckly mobilize in order not to miss out on the fun. But tragically there will be no fun, no honor, no glory in this war.  It quickly turns into a suicidal event that destroys or undermines severely the political strengths of each of the contenders – and brings down many of the traditional ruling classes that had for so long directed the destiny of the West. On the Eastern Front (Germany and Austria against Russia) the better-equipped Germans and Austrians manage to push the Russians into a slow and deeply humiliating Russian retreat.   On the Western Front a deadly stalemate sets in rather immediately along a deeply entrenched line of battle reaching across Northern France and Western Belgium.  Murderous artillery barrages and poison gasses slaughter the combatants of both sides – but fail to shift the line of battle.  Soldiers quickly learn that the order to move forward into the trenches is essentially a death warrant.  The war drags on for months, then years, with no change in store for the combatants, only continuing death on the front lines and deep hunger, sickness and mourning on the home front. Two long and bloody battles on the Western Front – at Verdun and the Somme River (1916) –  fail to break the deadlock.  The French army begins to mutiny.  But swift action by France’s military leadership holds things together. The "February Revolution" in Russia (1917) On the Eastern Front the Russian army – hungry and weaponless –  begins to collapse in early 1917.  Faced with a military and political situation he does not understand nor know how to respond to, the not terribly talented Russian Tsar Nicholas abdicates – unwittingly bringing imperial government to an end in Russia.  Russian government is immediately taken over by a new Provisional Government headed by Kerensky and his party of Constitutional Democrats.   Kerensky, understanding the dynamic no more than had the Tsar, makes the fateful decision to keep Russia in the war, putting forth the idea that now that Russia has become a "democracy" (actually what it has become is hardly decided at that point), the war has become a great moral matter of ‘democracy’ (Britain, France, Russia and Italy) against ‘autocracy’ (the empires of Germany, Austro-Hungary and Turkey). Wilson's "Democratic" Idealism While the idea of the war now being a crusade for democracy does little to inspire the Russians, it immediately touches the crusader’s heart of the American President Wilson.  Having kept America out of the war because up to that point it was clearly simply a contest of European egos, Wilson now (April 1917) too sees this war as a grand historical opportunity to step human history into a grand new era. With the Russian Revolution, the character of the war (or so Wilson believed) has definitely changed.  Now Wilson sees the war as an opportunity for America to help bring the world to a final stage of democratic perfection.  It offers him and his countrymen the possibility of fulfilling a utopian dream he holds of a world perpetually at peace because ‘democracy’ has finally been established as a universal political norm.  He convinces America that this is its great national mission: to promote "democratic" transformation of the world order – through war if necessary.  But such a war will be the war to end all wars!  Under universal democracy, the world will henceforth live rationally, peacefully.  America is seduced by Wilson’s utopian dream and enters belatedly into the European war. The "October Revolution" in Russia (1917) But the war quickly reveals itself to be bringing forth only more chaos – not democracy.  Kerensky proves no more able to keep Russia together than the Tsar, and the Russian soldiers now begin to protest against the new government – giving the Communist leader Lenin the opportunity to come to power on the promise of taking Russia out of the War (late 1917).  This he accomplishes with a Russian-German armistice in December. The end of the war In early 1918 the deadlock on the Western front begins to break under the impact of tanks and airplanes – and both Germans (shifted from the Eastern Front) and Americans arriving in large numbers.   But the Germans are themselves hungry and exhausted and begin to buckle under the load.  The war finally ends in November of 1918 with an Armistice.

Go on to the next section:  War Clouds

  Miles H. Hodges