World War I Origins and Events PDF

International History (Prof. Gianluca Pastori) Script 08 – World War I: origins and events International History (Prof. Gianluca Pastori) Script 08 – World War I: origins and events 1. On the eve of World War I, Europe was at the height of its power: it controlled 60% of the world’s territories, 65...

International History (Prof. Gianluca Pastori) Script 08 – World War I: origins and events International History (Prof. Gianluca Pastori) Script 08 – World War I: origins and events 1. On the eve of World War I, Europe was at the height of its power: it controlled 60% of the world’s territories, 65% of the inhabitants, 57% of steel production, and 57% of world trade. Colonial rivalries had been settled in the first decade of the century. However, tension remained: (1) between France and Germany over Alsace and Lorraine, which Germany had annexed at France’s expense after the Franco-Prussian war; (2) between Russia and Austria-Hungary in the Balkans; (3) between Britain and Germany due to their naval and commercial rivalry. The international crises of the first decade of the century (the two Moroccan crises in 1905 and 1911, respectively; Austrian annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908; the Italo-Turkish war for Libya in 1911-12, and the Balkan Wars of 1912-13) had widened the gap between the two blocs: the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente. However, while the Triple Entente seemed strong enough after the British rapprochement to Russia (Treaty of St. Petersburg, 1907), the Triple Alliance was far weaker. The bond between Germany and Austria was firm, but Italy was increasingly dissatisfied. Rome’s claim over the Italian-speaking territories of the Habsburg Empire had grown, like those in the Adriatic and the Balkans. Anti-Austrian sentiments were on the rise in many sectors of public opinion, and Austria reciprocated. For instance, in Dec. 1908, when an earthquake destroyed Messina, the Austrian Chief of the General Staff, General Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf (1852-1925), demanded a pre-emptive strike against Italy while it was engaged in rescue operations. Against this backdrop, international tensions were fuelling widespread land and naval rearmament. 2. The trigger for the crisis was the killing of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Habsburg (1863-1914), heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne (Sarajevo, 28 June 1914). A little less than a month later, the government in Vienna sent Serbia (rightly suspected of being involved in the plot) an ultimatum, starting a diplomatic and military mechanism that plunged much of Europe in just over ten days into the war. Each country considered its vital national interest at stake. (1) Austria-Hungary could not miss the opportunity to settle accounts with Serbia, which stood as a reference point for the South Slavs’ nationalistic claims against the Empire. (2) Russia, the protector of Serbia, could not leave the field free in the Balkans to its rival Austria-Hungary. (3) France could not abandon its ally Russia, losing the opportunity to reconquer Alsace and Lorraine. (4) Germany had to support Austria-Hungary, hoping that declaring its support could de-escalate the conflict. (5). Britain intervened because it believed that the German Empire’s weltpolitik was altering the European balance. The German violation of Belgium’s neutrality, envisaged in its military planning, made the British decision easier. All countries expected a short war and no political or social upheavals. Moreover, in 1914, the war was not yet the object of moral condemnation. At the outbreak of hostilities, Italy, although a member of the Triple Alliance, decided to stay out of the conflict, proclaimed its neutrality and began to consider what attitude it should take. After probing both sides, with the Pact of London (24 April 1915), Italy decided to enter the war on the side of the Triple Entente. It declared war on Austria on 24 May 1915 and on Germany in June 1916. 3. World War I broke out for power politics considerations. The agreements signed during the conflict to divide the Middle East into spheres of influence clearly show the great powers’ imperialistic ambitions. The most important of these agreements were the 1 International History (Prof. Gianluca Pastori) Script 08 – World War I: origins and events Sykes-Picot agreement between Britain and France (3 January 1916), dividing the Ottoman provinces outside the Arabian Peninsula into areas of British and French control and influence, and the agreement of Saint-Jean de Maurienne between France, Italy, and Britain (19 April 1917), recognising Italy’s rights in the post-war partition of the Ottoman territories. Other essential documents regarding the Middle East were the McMahonHussein correspondence (July 1915 to March 1916), in which the British authorities agreed to recognise Arab independence after the war in exchange for the Sharif of Mecca launching a revolt against the Ottoman Empire, and the declaration of the British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour in favour of a "national home" for the Jewish people in Palestine (‘Balfour declaration’, 2 November 1917). The war was not a clash between authoritarianism and democracy since autocratic Tsarist Russia was a pillar of the Triple Entente. However, the ideological dimension gained greater importance with the conflict’s progress. The need to justify the sacrifices the war required, to motivate the belligerents’ ‘war aims’ (as the US requested before entering the conflict) and the fall of Tsarism meant that, in the end, the Entente’s propaganda increasingly presented World War I as a struggle between democracies and authoritarian Germany and between the "oppressed" European nationalities and the multinational Habsburg Empire. 4. The possibility of a negotiated peace was repeatedly explored during the conflict. But Germany never agreed to restore Alsace and Lorraine to France and the reintegration of Belgium into its full sovereignty. A personal initiative of the Habsburg Emperor Charles I was the mission entrusted to his brother-in-law, Sixtus of Bourbon-Parma, for a compromise peace that failed to materialise. Pope Benedict XV also actively operated to end the conflict, proposing a seven-point peace plan on 1 August 1917, which the US (which had entered the war in April) rejected and Germany received ambiguously. The US, which embraced neutrality at the outbreak of the conflict, later turned to the idea of a "peace without victory"; finally, in April 1917, it entered the wars alongside the Triple Entente but keeping its hands free. Styling itself as an "associated", not an "allied" Power, it considered the post-war agreements made by the European Powers non-binding, and President Thomas Woodrow Wilson actively operated to impose its new foreign policy vision on the peace table. Wilson expressed his visions in two key speeches: the speech in which he asked Congress to declare war on Germany (2 April 1917) and the ‘Fourteen points’ speech in January 1918. The core of this vision was establishing a new intergovernmental organisation tasked, among others, with maintaining world peace, preventing wars through collective security, promoting disarmament and settling international disputes through negotiation and arbitration. This new body (the League of Nations) was founded in January 1920 and ceased its activity in April 1946, although many of its components were transferred to the United Nations. 5. The US effort to rebuild the basis of the international system was not the only one. During World War I, three "new diplomacies" emerged: contemporary pontifical diplomacy, committed to the promotion of peace; Wilson’s ‘New diplomacy’ with its emphasis on the League of Nations and collective security; and Soviet diplomacy. The birth of the Soviet Union (which would have had long-lasting effects on the international system) was a direct consequence of World War I. In early 1917, the defeats that the Tsarist Empire had suffered triggered popular demonstrations demanding peace and bread and culminating in the February revolution and the toppling of Nicholas II. The tsarist autocracy was replaced by a provisional government, intending to conduct elections to a Russian constituent assembly and continue fighting on the side of the Entente. At the same time, 2 International History (Prof. Gianluca Pastori) Script 08 – World War I: origins and events workers’ councils (‘Soviets’) sprang up across the country. The most influential of them (the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies) shared power with the provisional government. By the end of the year, the situation had worsened in every field. The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924), pushed for a socialist revolution in the Soviets and on the streets, urging the overthrow of the Provisional government. On 7 November 1917, the Bolshevik militia (‘Red Guards’) took power (‘October revolution’) and arrested the provisional government, while Lenin proclaimed that all power had been transferred to the Soviets. In December, the Bolsheviks signed an armistice with Germany, Austria-Hungary and their allies, and in March 1918, they ended Russia’s involvement in World War I with the peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk. 6. Brest-Litovsk imposed a heavy toll on Russia. With the treaty, the country lost 34 per cent of its population, 54 per cent of its industrial land, 89 per cent of its coalfields, and 26 per cent of its railways. Russia was also fined 300 million gold marks. Finally, Russia renounced all territorial claims in Finland (whose independence it had already recognised), Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, most of Belarus, and Ukraine. Moreover, at the insistence of the Ottoman government, the treaty declared that the territory Russia took from the Ottoman Empire after the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78 (i.e., the Caucasian district of Ardahan, Kars, and Batumi) had to be returned. From a military point of view, the treaty freed up a million German soldiers for the Western Front and relinquished much of Russia's food supply, industrial base, fuel supplies, and communications with Western Europe. The troops that the treaty freed up played a relevant role in the 1918 Spring offensive, the last German effort to break the stalemate and retake the strategic initiative. However, from a broader perspective, the US entry into the war more than compensated for Russia’s withdrawal. The US offered the Entente powers its industrial and financial bases and a large manpower basin when European countries had largely depleted their human and material reserves. The strain that World War I placed on European shoulders largely accounts for the continent’s following decline, although in the inter-war period, few European leaders realised it. Instead, the war paved the way for the US and Soviet Russia’s (since 1922 Soviet Union) rise to global preeminence, although it took the end of World War II to finally assert their new role. 7. On the other fronts, the war ended between late October (30 October, Mudros armistice with the Ottoman empire) and early November 1918 (3 November, Villa Giusti armistice with Austria-Hungary; 11 November, Compiegne armistice with Germany). In Germany, a sailors’ revolt, started in the naval ports of Wilhelmshaven and Kiel, had already spread across the country, and led to the proclamation of a republic (Weimar Republic, 9 November 1918), the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II and German surrender. On the same days, on the Italian Front, the successful Italian offensive of Vittorio Veneto (started on 24 October) triggered the disintegration of the Habsburg Empire. During the last week of October, declarations of independence were made in Budapest, Prague, and Zagreb, while the Italian army occupied Trento, Trieste, Innsbruck, and all of Tyrol with over 20,000 soldiers. Finally, in the Balkans, a successful allied offensive in the Salonika sector had made the Bulgarian and Ottoman positions untenable. On 30 September, the Arab forces led by Sharif Hussein’s son Faisal reached Damascus; the British troops in Mesopotamia had already entered Baghdad on 11 March 1917, and those in Palestine Jerusalem on 11 December. In 1918, the only front where Ottoman troops advanced was the Caucasus due to the collapse of the Russian resistance. After Mudros, the Empire’s territories were occupied by the Entente powers plus Greece, which was allotted Izmir 3 International History (Prof. Gianluca Pastori) Script 08 – World War I: origins and events and the surrounding area, inhabited by a sizeable Greek community. The Straits were demilitarised and put under international control against the agreements reached during the war, which envisaged their transfer to Tsarist Russia. 8. It is worth noting that the armistices did not end violence. After the end of World War I, several other conflicts plagued Europe: among others, the war of independence in Estonia and Latvia, the Russian civil war with its many theatres; the Polish-Soviet War; the Silesia tensions between Poland and Germany; the Romanian occupation of Hungary, Gabriele D'Annunzio's seizure of Fiume; the Turkish war of independence, and the promiscuous fighting going on in Albania. The Paris Peace treaties were negotiated against this background. Moreover, widespread instability affected the Middle East (where the Arab sharifian army was constantly at odds with the European presence) and Eastern Asia, where Japan exploited the weakness of post-Manchu China to extend its presence on the continent and was engaged in supporting the anti-Bolshevik forces in Russian Far East. The Entente powers were widely involved in these events. British, French, Italian and Greek troops, as well as troops from the British Commonwealth countries, participated in the Turkish War of Independence. In post-World War I, British, American, and Japanese forces (among others) were deployed in different theatres of the Russian civil war. At the same time, western countries offered political and financial support to the anti-Bolshevik front. The civilian populations were massively involved in violence. For instance, the Russian civil war led to large-scale pogroms, which spurred Jewish emigration to former Ottoman Palestine. Refugees emerged as an international problem for the first time, prompting the Red Cross to envisage the first mechanism (‘Nansen passport’, 1922) to provide them with some form of legal protection. 4