October 17th 2024,
My early Europe class covered quite a lot: Charles I, Treaty of Susa, Internal Affairs, the Moderate revolution, Civil War 1642-1647, the Radical Revolution 1647-1649, the Puritan Revolution, and the Restoration in England. Again, it’s a lot of religious stuff.
My modern Europe class was finally about the Great War, and because of this my normal professor told us that my historiography professor was going to do this lecture, so I was going to have this man three days in a row. Nothing wrong with that, of course, I just find it funny. My modern Europe professor is teaching his other class as she is an expert on France and I guess that class reached its France unit. My historiography prof. Specializes in late 19th and early 20th century Europe (he describes himself as a historian of the British empire) so that’s why he taught us today. Yes, he did acknowledge my existence before class started. Also sorry if that was confusing: Historiography Professor (a man) was swapping lectures with my Modern Europe Professor (a woman).
The Great War takes us into the 20th century, and it happened over 100 years ago. Charles Choule was the last combat veteran and Florence Green was the last veteran. WWI was what is called “total war” which is when the entirety of society is mobilized for the war effort. This war left a great impact on the world, we live in a time with less and less people alive to remind us of that.
It was called the Great War due to scale. 10 million soldiers died, which is more than any other war (WWII had the largest civilian casualties, I believe). He showed us soldier death counts from other wars and the most recent was of Ukraine-Russia, which he called the largest war in Europe since WWII. When we were shown the casualties, he specified that the 120,000 number for Russian casualties was from Russian stats, Western intelligence suggests it is much higher. Animals from WWI are now being commemorated alongside the soldiers as many died for the war effort. Sir Douglas Haig was stupid as he pushed for traditional methods of fighting (horses over tanks). Aristocrats were known for making the most idiotic decisions, which made them seem untrustworthy.
He then showed us a map of everyone who was involved in the war, and it was everyone. The whole globe was involved. He did this because how WWI has been taught in our schools has always been centred on Europe, with little to no mention of soldiers from other countries. Maybe it’s better now but when I was a kid I remember asking “why was it called a world war if it was only Europe?” The Middle East was also a major arena for the war what with the Ottoman Empire and Sultan Mehmed V. He mentioned Lawrence of Arabia and how Britain helped rebellion against the OE. This Lawrence guy also wrote a book called Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and it was the only piece to come out of WWI labeled a “romance.” Lawrence also said something about bring Jerusalem into the British Empire, my professor asked if that was a success and I guess the consensus was “no,” although I thought maybe it would be a “yes” since Palestine was colonized by Britain and then “given” to Israel. Am I making sense? Anyway WWI occurred during a time of mass literacy so many letters and poetry were written, so much so you could fill an entire library with just poetry from WWI. My professor then took a light hearted jab at our school’s library.
What do you know about Archduke Franz Ferdinand? Well I learned that he was quite unpopular! So much so that no one was really sad that he died. Austria-Hungary was a multi-ethnic/national empire that was incompatible with the idea of national-state. With New Key politics on the rise, compromise was not a priority, society was degrading and becoming more violent. Serbian nationalists want to divide the Austro-Hungarian Empire and to have their own Serbian nation-state. Internal politics helped in triggering the war, much more was going on than an assassination attempt nobody cared about.
With that we went into the causes of the war. The contingent event was the assassination, the structural causes were national, geopolitical, and commercial rivalry. Could the war have been predicted? What if the assassination attempt was botched? Well, it actually was! The guy who killed Ferdinand, Gavrilo Princip, wasn’t actually the person who was supposed to kill him, Princip was a lower member of the Black Hand and was not in on the main plan. The original plan was to throw a bomb into the Archduke’s car, but the Black Hand ended up throwing it into the wrong vehicle and the Archduke’s car made a wrong turn somewhere. When the car tried to turn around it stalled. Princip saw this (he as standing in line for lunch) and decided to shoot his shot (no pun intended). Ferdinand died and the rest is history. But what if the car hadn’t stalled? Well, it probably would’ve happened anyway as history is poised at the hands of fate (quote from my professor, I thought it was neat).
Some of the underlying causes for the war was nationalism and the weakness of empires (Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire).
Next we covered the great powers of the war. First was Germany: its rise threw off the geopolitical balance (weltpolitick), industrialized rapidly wanting to be a global power, had an arms are with Britain, and wanted oil in the Middle East. Britain was the global hegemon, it wanted control over German Tanganyika for the Cape to Cairo Railway (Rhodes talked about annexing the planets, which is wild), it also wanted oil in the ME, and the Berlin-Baghdad railway was considered a threat. France was all about revanchism, which is the politics of revenge, mainly for the Franco-Prussian war but they lost had issues with the Agadir crisis. Russia was considered a sleeping giant, it had an interest in the Balkans (wanting warm-water ports) and its own industrialization was throwing off the balance of power. So who started the war? When the allies win they claim Germany started, and that was the narrative I grew up with although even then I never understood why. But it was more than just Germany. That is my main issue with people reminiscing about WWI (mainly Canadians as it was a genuine policy to glorify WWI as the “birth of Canada”), they gloat about war crime being committed and defeating the enemy, but the enemy wasn’t bad? They weren’t the Nazis and I think people forget that.
The alliances explain the course of events a bit. The Triple alliance was Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy (although Italy pulled out fairly early). Germany had a previous pact with Austria-Hungary s thats why they got involved in the fighting. The Triple Entente was Britain, France, and Russia. British royals had very strong German connections, Kitchener Ontario actually used to be called “New Berlin” but that was changed, I guess they preferred naming the city after a war criminal. After the assassination of Ferdinand Austria-Hungary invades Serbia, then Russia swoops in to defend the Serbs, Germany attacks due to the pact, France also fights (I don’t remember why, it must have been said in the lecture but I can’t find it), when Germany invades neutral Belgium to get to Paris faster Britain invades as they had a protection pact with Belgium. If Belgium wasn’t invaded then the war could have probably been contained to just Central Europe. But people in 1914 just really wanted war, and I know this because Canadians were super enthusiastic about the war effort in the beginning (they have a chip on their shoulder with regard to not fighting for their independence like the Americans). The war was facilitated by naive sentiment, the memory of wars back then were smaller, shorter colonial conquests. The last war in memory was France v. Prussia and that was won quite swiftly. People were certain the war would be just as short, pessimists thought it would last 6 months. Soldiers thought they would be heroes (“may the best soldier win” type fighting was expected, not being mowed down by Maxim guns). We ended the lecture with a poem by Rupert Brooke, who was wistful about dying in the war, in the end he died by a mosquito bite.
If you find WWI boring like I used to, try watching videos of The Entente Gold. I know that that sounds ridiculous, but they are what inspired me to write a post explaining how WWI created fascism. Alternatively, you could watch videos of WWI first-person shooters.
If video games aren’t your cup of tea, you could try reading about the Armenian massacres, or specifically through Stefan Ihrig’s Justifying Genocide: Germany and the Armenians from Bismarck to Hitler. Learning about the Holocaust of WWI and how it (very probably) influenced the Shoah made me take WWI much more seriously. The Central Powers committed similar atrocities in Serbia, too.
I still remember the day when, several minutes after I wrote this reply, I broke down crying. I’m not even Armenian; I just suddenly imagined the brutalities that Armenian families must have suffered like the Libyans in The Lion of the Desert, and I wept quietly.
I should mention that I only recently learned about a concurrent extermination called the Sayfo, which some of the Central Powers and their collaborators committed against dozens of thousands of Assyrians. It reminds me of the Samudaripen in that it “stands in the shadow” of a larger atrocity.
Thank you for all of this, I will have to read that “justifying genocide” book as soon as I have time off from school. I don’t know if I found WWI boring as a kid, but it was definitely confusing and I am 100% certain it is because the Canadian government actually has a weird policy that enforces WWI as the founding of Canada. I remember being told about how awesome Vimy Ridge was even though it was a nothing endeavour. The government did this because I think Canadians were bitter about not having a revolutionary history like Americans, so they wanted their own war story.