October 22, 2024

Early Europe class covered James II, the Glorious Revolution, and William III and Mary. I find it funny that they call it the Glorious Revolution but it really wasn’t all that “glorious,” although it did establish the constitutional monarchy so I guess there’s that.

Modern Europe began with the quiz, I was woefully unprepared as I was unable to study everything on the guide (it was MUCH longer than the previous guide), the quiz was the exact same length as the last one. I was stressed as hell but when I did I realized that I remembered a lot more than I thought, but I also did fumble a bit too. This quiz will not be my best and will most likely be the one that gets thrown out, but at the end of the day I am pretty sure my grade was just fine.

Anyway, after the quiz we continued the lecture on WWI. This was all to get us ready for our discussion class about All Quiet on the Western Front. We started off on going over what total war was and mobilization on the home front. WWI was the origin of modern state propaganda and all belligerent nations invested in propaganda for the war effort. Propaganda was key to totalizing the war. Belgium was invoked in British posters which was interesting, poor little Belgium (it was treated like a damsel in distress). The Germans were framed in a very particular way, sometimes they were portrayed as literal monsters. But as the war would go on, all sides would essentially turn into monsters, everything was on the table. Liberty bonds/victory bonds/etc. were used and encouraged to fund the war. Women were expected to hold down the home front like with the White Feather Campaign.

That campaign was weird as hell: women would go around town with white feathers, and would forcefully pin said feathers onto seemingly civilian men to shame them for not fighting in the war. White was chosen because of its association with peace, it was a shaming tactic. This campaign would backfire as they would unintentionally target minors, soldiers who were honourably discharged, legitimately exempt men, injured people, etc. all of which felt pressured to go to the front, so many people who should not have been there died. Because of this special badges were created by governments to protect their service members from getting pinned with feathers. My professor told us one story of a woman on a bus who sees a man sitting, looking out the window. She marches up to him demanding to know why he wasn’t fighting, because her bother was. He then shows that he is missing an arm and everyone cheers. Such a strange thing.

Income tax was also introduced as a temporary measure to fund the war, but we all know that it never went away.

At the front lines soldier morale tanked in 1917 due to the Russians pulling out, the war became a lot more uncertain as to who would’ve won. In the home front many countries were on the brink of revolution; at the front lines mutinies were happening, mostly in retaliation to secret court martials on troops, this made them lose faith, they would even shoot their own soldiers we were then shown a photo of this happening, soldiers made to shoot one of their own who is bound and blind folded. It was incredibly bleak.

There were technological breakthroughs during the war like basic tanks (before the “standardized” ones from WWII onwards), advances in aviation (propeller planes gaining firing capabilities, reconnaissance and bombing to actual air combat), and u-boa/submarines. That last one led us to learning about why the Americans joined the war: the Lusitania incident. So what happened there was Germany was enforcing ship blockades via their u-boats, and the Lusitania had enemy nation passengers on it and a bunch of Americans too. Germany basically threatened the USA saying the if they allowed that ship to leave their shores and come to Europe then they would sink it. America didn’t believe they would sink a civilian vessel and sent it off anyway. The Germans made a gamble, dunk the ship, and thus provoked the US into the war. The Germans tried to claim that the ship had a lower compartment full of weapons and therefore what they did was legitimate, but the Americans say this is a lie. We were not told who was correct in this instance, maybe nobody was. Even if there were weapons I don’t think sinking a ship with civilians on it was a good thing.

So the Americans enter the war spring 1917, they were very isolationist before but the u-boat tactics outweighed that policy. Their entering the battle gave a boost to morale.

When I was a kid I was always confused as to how the war ended on the eleventh day of the eleventh month at the eleventh hour at the eleventh minute. Because how did they time it so perfectly? What a crazy coincidence! Well, turns out it was not an accident. When the war ended an armistice was signed at 5:10 AM on November 11, but politicians wanted a symbolic end so i was put into effect at 11:11. Eleven thousand solider died within those six hours. During this time some generals pushed their troops to keep fighting until the bitter end while other generals told them to relax. The last soldier to die was apparently running towards a group of Germans who were trying to wave him off since the fighting would be over very soon, he did not stop so they shot him. I forgot his name, but it’s such a tragic thing… all because of symbolism.

For the winner, this was a hollow victory. Unlike WWII, the Great War did not have any clear bad guys which left people uneasy as to what would come next, what was this all for? There was a radical shift in tone from the start of the war to the end. People were incredibly enthusiastic, at the end they were anything but. To illustrate this we were shown a poem by Wilfred Owen, who was very jaded compared to Rupert Brooke. For the losers news of an armistice was unbelievable. The Treaty of Versailles was signed and the Weimar Republic was established. Because of just how humiliating the treaty was this term called “November Criminals” popped up which created scapegoats to blame for Germany’s defeat in the war (mainly Jewish people and socialists, although a quick google search also brought up Catholics), that alongside the “stabbed in the back” conspiracy. There were a lot of mixed feelings, some came out of the war like Erich Maria Remarque and others were Adolf Hitler, they could not accept the loss and would be obsessed with a rematch.

We ended the lecture by going over some facts about All Quiet on the Western Front and how it was despised by Hitler and the Nazis. The 1930s adaptation was even accused of being Judenfilm.