WW1 (28 jul 1914 ano – 11 nov 1918 ano)

Descrição:

Many expected the war to be quick and painless, but it turned into “total war”. Soldiers and civilians had new roles. Lengthy, deadly battles were fought with destructive weapons. National economies geared toward the war effort. Governments revoked civil liberties. Many civilians lost their lives or livelihoods as armies marched through.

When Germany invaded, Belgians defended and joined the British on the Franco-Prussian border. Germany also had to send troops to deal with invasion from Russia. The German army was weak and exhausted. Paranoid Germans harshly dealt with suspected Belgian partisans, francs-tireurs, by executing civilians and burning the city of Louvain. At the Battle of the Marne, France used everything it had to attack a gap in the German line and successfully drew them back.

The war saw the beginning of trench warfare; armies on both sides dug hundreds of miles of trenches to shelter from gunfire. The conditions in the trenches were appalling. Over 28 billion pieces of mail were sent between home and the front. Weapons like machine guns, grenades, poison gas, flamethrowers, long-range artillery, airplanes, and tanks resulted in deadly and traumatic battles. Military units were often destroyed in poorly planned frontal assaults, and the wounded and dead could rarely be retrieved. Leading generals struggled to understand the new battlefield. Frontal assaults would often result in no real territorial gain but cause mass casualties. Germany’s attack against Verdun left over 700,000 death or wounded with no gains.

In the Battle of the Somme, British artillery fired at the German lines for seven days straight. Germans suffered in their dugouts-underground shelters-while the British moved towards them. They set up their defenses and mowed down the British. About 20,000 were killed and 40,000 wounded on the first day, which diminished troop morale and public opinion. In the end, 420,000 British, 200,000 French, and 600,000 Germans were killed only for the Germans to be pushed back seven miles.

Germany dominated the eastern front, but Russians continued to fight and did indeed put pressure on them. However, by 1915, the eastern front was in Germany’s favor. 2.5 million Russians had died. The Germans occupied Russian land in central Europe, but Russia continued. Germany instituted military bureaucracy to govern the territories. Anti-Slavic prejudice ran rampant. Military administrators used forced labor and stole food. About a third of the civilian population died or became refugees.

Italy, which had been a part of the Triple Alliance, declared its neutrality in 1914, claiming that Austria had violated the pact by launching a war of aggression. The next year, they joined the Triple Entente in return for promises of Austrian territory. The war along the Italian-Austrian front killed about 600,000 Italians. In late 1914, the Ottoman Empire joined Austria and Germany, then known as the Central Powers. Bulgaria followed suit in order to settle old scores with Serbia. Austria-Hungary, along with the Bulgarians, led a deadly attack against Serbia.

Armenians were heavily oppressed by the Ottomans. About 1 million died from murder, starvation, and disease. When some welcomed Russian armies as liberators in 1915, the Ottoman government ordered a mass deportation.

At the ten-month Battle of Gallipoli, the British tried and failed to take the Dardanelles and Constantinople from the Ottomans. 300,000 Ottomans and 265,000 British were killed after the invading force was pinned on the beaches. Britain was more successful in inciting Arab revolt. Arab leader Hussein ibn-Ali ruled for the Ottomans and won vague British commitments for an independent postwar Arab kingdom. He then rebelled against the Turks and proclaimed himself king of the Arabs. He was aided by British liaison officer T. E. Lawrence, who in 1917 helped lead Arab soldiers in a guerrilla war against the Turks on the Arabian peninsula. The British also occupied the Iraqi city of Basra and secured access to its oil fields. They eventually captured Baghdad before entering Syria. Arab patriots in Iraq and Syria expected a unified Arab nation-state.

Japan declared war on Germany in 1914, seized Germany’s Pacific and East Asian colonies, and used the opportunity to expand its influence in China. In Africa, colonial subjects of the British and French supported the Allied powers and helped them take over German colonies. Over a million Africans and Asians served in the various armies, and more than double that served as porters to carry equipment and build defenses. France made use of colonial troops from North Africa while the British enlisted the help of Indian soldiers as well as Canadians, Australians, and New Zealanders.

After three years of neutrality, the U.S. was drawn into the war because of maritime conflicts and general sympathy for the Triple Entente. Britain and France established a naval blockade to weaken the Central Powers, and Germany retaliated with attacks on supply ships using the submarine. In May 1915, the Germans sank the British passenger liner Lusitania, killing 1,198, including 128 American citizens. Public opinion turned against the Germans, who then stopped their unrestricted submarine campaign for almost two years. They resumed it in 1917, hoping that they would weaken Britain, but it only prompted the U.S. to declare war on Germany.

Total war encouraged the growth of state bureaucracies, transformed the lives of ordinary people, and inspired mass antiwar protest movements. People were initially pro war, but soon saw the reality of total war. National leaders aggressively intervened in society and the economy. Governments intruded in peoples’ lives even more than they had before. They mobilized soldiers and armaments, established rationing programs, and provided care for war widows and wounded veterans. Censorship offices controlled news about the war. Free-market capitalism was temporarily abandoned for mandatory production goals and limits on wages and prices, which worked. Germany took this the furthest. Industrialist Walter Rathenau led the rationing of every useful material. Germany still failed to tax the war profits of private firms heavily enough, which contributed to deficit financing, inflation, the growth of the black market, and the eventual re-emergence of class conflict. German women and some men worked at dangerous and laborious jobs.

Hero generals Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff drove Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg from office, established a military dictatorship, and mobilized for total war. Leaders in all nations often took power from parliaments, suspended civil liberties, and ignored democratic procedures. They built the bureaucratic nation-state to mobilize for war.

The social impacts were equally as important. National conscription exposed young men to military life and foreign lands. Military needs created a huge demand for workers.

The growth of labor unions and entry of socialist leaders into war governments reflected a new openness to the needs of the lower-class. Women moved into new jobs due to the mass amount of laborers needed. They became prominent as munitions workers, bank tellers, mail carriers, even police officers, firefighters, and farm laborers, as well as nurses. This helped change attitudes but had mixed reactions. Many were forced out of the workplace after the war. Several countries granted them suffrage afterwards, but the feminist movement found it hard to gain traction after war. The era loosened sexual morality.

To an extent, the war promoted greater social equality. Despite war profiteering, European society became more uniform and egalitarian. Yet death still decimated everyone, although less so on highly skilled workers and foremen. The impact on drafted peasants and unskilled workers sparked conversation of “lost generation”.

At first, patriotic nationalism and belief in a just cause united people behind their national leaders and governments. Governments used censorship and crude propaganda to garner support. However, social and political tensions re-emerged.

Strikes and protest marches increased. Germany’s Karl Liebknecht was jailed for attacking the war effort. France’s Georges Clemenceau responded to dissent with harsh reciprocation. Soldiers’ morale decline everywhere. French uprisings were crushed by the new general-in-chief Henri-Philippe Petain. The Allies’ armies were crippled, and only the U.S. gave them hope. This was only worse for the central powers. The chief minister of Austria-Hungary was assassinated, Franz Joseph died, and Czech and Balkan leaders demanded independence. The British naval blockade caused around 750,000 Germans to starve to death while the rest endured heavy rationing. A growing minority called for a compromise “peace without annexations or reparations.” Germany faced growing unrest. Nations on all sides were exhausted, and it was Russia that collapsed first.

Irish rebellion stepped up. During the Easter Rising, armed republican militias took over parts of Dublin and proclaimed an independent Irish Republic. After a week of fighting, British troops crushed the rebellion and executed the leaders. The Rising fueled anti-British sentiment and set the stage for the success of the Sinn Fein Party and eventual independence.

Even as the Russians were at war, which engulfed much of Europe, the war ended in November 1918.

The Germans attempted a last-ditch all-out attack on France. Ludendorff launched an extensive attack on the French lines in the Spring Offensive of 1918. They came close to Paris but the exhausted troops never made it and were stopped by American troops in the second Battle of the Marne.

As the Allies advanced, Germany realized defeat. Germans rose up in revolt in Kiel and soldiers and workers throughout the nation established revolutionary councils modeled on soviets. The same day, Austria-Hungary surrendered and began to break apart. As revolution erupted, Wilhelm II abdicated. Socialist leaders proclaimed a German republic and agreed to tough Allied terms of surrender. The armistice went into effect on November 11, 1918.

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