DePue Origins of WWI

Thank You Eileen that's pretty good for having notes in front of you I'm envious as I thumb through my notes during the evening the First World War has long been a fascination of mine and let me start off with this because many of you have attended the Civil War presentations and I always appreciate that as well there are some similarities between those two one of the things that's always fascinated me about the First World War I can't quite comprehend is how the soldiers did what they did of rising out of those trenches and attacking across no-man's land and in many cases almost certain death or injury just as I've always been amazed by the soldiers of the civil warrior and what they did and the bravery that that represented the other thing that's always fascinated me about the First World War is this particular subject tonight you know as a historian I'm always looking to try to understand why things happen and this is not the easiest thing to understand why it happened it's I think it's easier to understand how the war progressed once you get into it but that's a different subject than tonight and it ranks right up there with an important historical question with the American Civil War and as far as world history is concerned I have long advocated that this the first world war is the most important historical event of the last 200 years because it had an impact for the entire 20th century and still lingers on today all we have to do is pick up the paper and read about things that are going on in the Middle East and in places like Afghanistan you know the imperialism lives on in some respects but what I wanted to start with is a quote from John Keegan the first world war was a tragic and unnecessary conflict unnecessary because of the Train of events that led to its outbreak might have been broken at any point during the five weeks of crisis that preceded the first clash of arms at prudent or common goodwill found a voice tragic because the consequences of the first class ended with the lives of 10 million human beings so let's see if this this works tonight for me very good Europe in 1900 and maps as always when you're hearing my presentations are important to understand how things are really happening Europe with 1900 Germany right in the centre of things if you will 1866 marked its reunification 1870 they had a a war a short war with France as you know it's a country that's going through rapid growth and industrialization almost hyper growth - you could say in certain respects and it has the beginnings of a democracy but it's still very much an aristocracy at the time France a proud country with a very proud tradition a very proud martial tradition as well as the tradition of its own government but it's always been kind of a messy place politically lots of turmoil in that respect it's smaller than Germany and a lot of ways primarily in its population and at this time its population growth which was much smaller than Germany's a little bit more about that later and a republic but as I mentioned lots of instability and the instability in that respect austria-hungary a mammoth Empire at the time and Will's gonna talk much more about austria-hungary but let's suffice it to say right now a dual monarchy something almost unique in world history Austria - hungry and one emperor with one set of foreign diplomacy one army but once you get beyond that there are really two separate entities Austria dominated by the Germans hungry dominated by the Hungarians but by no means all and as we as I mentioned before we'll get into the the ethnic complexities of that country as we go farther Russia we're only seeing a small portion of Russia in this particular map it's an emerging power it was weak but has immense natural resources and a growing population it has a relatively harsh autocracy it had a war in 1904-1905 with Japan so if we're to look at the map Japan would be way over here someplace way off the map that's one of the challenges that Russia has always had trying to figure out how it can control this immense country how do you have a war when all of your population is here and yet you want to expand in the eastern portions of your country primarily because you need a warm water port Russian history is always about seeking a warm water port there is a war with Japan that initiates with kind of a surprise attack in 1904 the message just hadn't gone through diplomatic circles that Japan had declared war on Russia at the time but they attack Port Arthur and to making long story short in this respect the war went very badly for Russia both on the land but especially their Navy in fact after their Navy in the Pacific had been totally destroyed they sent their Baltic Fleet over couldn't go through the Straits here at Suez because they've gotten a little tiff with the Brits so they had to go all the way around the Horn of Africa took several months to get there and then they're decisively defeated their fleet is once they get there so that ends badly and for the next few years in 1905 when they're defeated for the next few years they're busy trying to rebuild their military and to restore their reputation England a tiny country with a huge presence in the world it's the preeminent Imperial power we'll get to that a little bit later vast empire a very powerful Navy and a relatively small army it was the first nation of all of these to industrialize as we know and has a large presence in the world but traditionally had tried to remain neutral it had Wars with almost everybody France Russia not too far back just a few decades before but they are trying to remain neutral in that respect then you have the Ottoman Empire SiC child of Europe if you will turkey or Ottoman Empire always wanted to see itself as a major power as a European power but there are serious problems with that and then Italy Italy just like Germany had just emerged as a united country so they're still feeling their ways as well so not spending too much time on this one this is essentially the approach we're going to take through this presentation and most of the things that I talk about there's a very strong chronological approach to how I go through a particular event in this case it's much more thematic and I that's the only way it makes sense to me and only towards we get to the actual trigger the actual events of 1914 that led to the war itself where we get into something of a chronology the Industrial Revolution the first thing I want to talk about here as I mentioned English the first to industrialize in late 18th century and especially through the 19th century but the Industrial Revolution hits the rest of Europe Western Europe in particular and North America very hard by the time you get to the late 19th century Germany and France are already a well developed industrial power with everything that that entails like a growing labor movement like a strong socialist movement within the country but other countries lost you're hungry it lags a little bit behind Russia lags quite a bit behind that and then you got the Ottoman Empire but imagine the change and we're going to talk a little bit more about that the change that this brings about in any kind of a culture in society steel production is often the main thing that you can look at her in the early days of industrialization and I'm going to throw a couple charts up here to emphasize the United States position even though it's not going to be until 1917 that the u.s. is dragged into it but to give you some sense of perspective here and how industrialized the United States already was so 1880 Great Britain very much in the lead of the European powers and pretty close to where the United States was at the time of the the u.s. already had edged it out but look at what had happened by 1914 an incredible explosion in productivity at by that time look where the United States is but more important look how quickly Germany wasn't just realizing and France and Great Britain and Russia are lagging behind but they all recognize this is something you've got to do if you want to be a world power you want to move forward like that let's look at some other indicators as well to see how well these countries are doing based on each other and in this case you go right across the line wheat production and again this chart is interesting because it uses the United States as kind of the standard so we're the blue all the way across this and then the red column is the other country that is closest to us and in productivity in that respect so we production by far the most and especially important to England because they couldn't feed themselves that was gonna be a huge problem during the war itself cotton production India is the closest competitor to that goal you've got to fund the wars and by the end of World War one that column is even that it'd be more severe because Great Britain had basically gotten close to bankrupting itself but going across some of the other things that you see here coal steel the essential elements to run any kind of a military operation and rail miles which we're going to talk quite a bit about later on shipping Great Britain with its incredible empire it really relies in its ability of the control the Seas and its merchant ship merchant fleet as well so quick picture in that respect Science and Technology and again just imagine how different those societies were we think we live in a period where change is happening quickly and for most of us here most of us remember the pre-computer age I certainly do I think that I was in graduate school when I've got my first computer can start writing papers on a computer instead but the changes that this generation went through is incredible steve is steam-engine ray roles and i wanted to focus on a couple three right up front to talk about the implications you've heard me say this before about the Civil War but the implications this have on the nature of combat between steam engines and railroads you now can move armies much more quickly instead of 15 miles a day on the March you probably can move that army 30 or 40 miles and not totally win them and tire them in the process of moving it required a robust railroad system and you can see Germany had the most robust but that was very important to them not only did it move troops quickly but once you got them to the battlefield you could sustain those troops much better than you could ever do with wagons or mules or anything like that if you had the right kind of river system or you're close to the coastline that would be the best way to supply and maintain a force in the field but the implications of having railroads is that instead of being able to supply an army of maybe ten or fifteen thousand in the first world war you can be able to supply and keep supplied armies of millions in the battlefield and unfortunately the consequences of that are the casualties that they're gonna sustain Telegraph equally important once you get into the battlefield communications it's the same old semi for and runners and things like that even with the early age of the radio it just wasn't effective Telegraph was almost instantaneous and you can certainly at the theater level you can communicate almost instantaneously and let your commanders know what's going on also obviously very important to the diplomatic circles electricity is certainly going to play a role automobile increasingly during the war that's going to play a role especially with the tank that we see at the end of the war and of course the airplane those are all revolutionary changes in the way combat is going to evolve over time and down here at the bottom I threw in Darwin and Freud and we'll get to that here a little bit later especially in Darwin's case urbanization and population growth again Russia's population is huge but it's almost so it's becoming an urbanized but it's overwhelmingly rural especially in the early days there are certainly pockets in the western part of the empire but it's huge it's lower population growth is lower in England and it's especially low in France and this is a point of great concern for the French because they look across the border to Germany which in 1870 had just occupied and annexed Alsace and Lorraine and they see this burgeoning population that was larger to begin with with a very rapid growth and it makes the French nervous it makes them very nervous higher immigration rates during this time as well just a couple figures in the United States is one of several countries the main country that's a beneficiary of all of this immigration but from 1880 to 1940 26 million Europeans immigrated to the United States excuse me 18 million to the United States during roughly that same time period 26 million immigrated emigrated from Europe to various places Australia New Zealand South Africa other parts of South America and especially United States and Canada so that's what's going on population wise and the charts sometimes speaks more loudly than anything else so the red countries obviously are going to be the central powers of the war you can see the significant change the difference between Germany and France Germany was 64 and a half million France with thirty nine point six million but look at Russia look at Germany Russia at the time hundred and seventy five million the United States we're nosing in on a hundred million ourselves with where is it 92 million so that's the kind of math that you really have to consider if you're if you're a person who makes war plans nationalism not only these concepts that I think you just can't begin to comprehend why would war one happened the way it did unless you kind of grapple with what that means and we all have this sense of what that actually means it's pride in your country in this case in the case of the emerging European powers or the established European powers it wasn't just their country it was their ethnicity it was pride in their religion it was pride in their language in their culture and it was an intense pride that that grew over time this is really the legacy of the French Revolution which is the other event that I would say it certainly is just important is and its impact on world history and it's because of this spread of this notion of nationalism that countries started to pay attention to those kinds of things I mentioned social Darwinism before social Darwinism is prevalent during this period leading up to the first world war this notion that your particular culture your particular ethnic group is superior you know survival of the fittest that you deserve to have this place in world in world society as a world power and that had strong implications especially for Germany but the other countries certainly as well there is the reason I'm looking at austria-hungary look at the hotspots of nationalities we have there I already mention that Austria is the largest population is as German which is shaded right here there's a sedate and land that will become very important during the Second World War but in Austria part of the austro-hungarian Empire the Germans don't outnumber everybody else they're about 40% in fact both Austria and Hungarians are in the same condition they don't Ottoman their portions of the Empire but you've got various other nationalities breath around here and now connect that with this concept of nationalism and it's it's really amazing that that austria-hungary has held together as well as it did leading up to 1914 where the nationalism the feeling of nationally was the strongest was among the Serbs and here you've got another very large population of serbo-croatians right there the rest of the countries seem to be relatively resigned or accepting of their fate of being part of the austro-hungarian Empire many of them would look at with pride about that but that's going to be a simmering problem for the for the Europeans at the time your peon imperialism okay I've already suggested this look at Africa in 1878 here's Great Britain's already controlling this the critical Suez Canal absolutely important for Great Britain to control that because of its holdings in India excuse me Ottoman Empire at that time it says so that was shortly after that but now you look at the map and you see this huge swath through Africa for Great Britain all the way down through here only German East Africa snuck in there and rather late in the whole equation obviously the julna ground is India but look at the French Holdings French West Africa huge and it's the prestige with this now there's been an ongoing debate ever since this era about whether or not these colonies were productive and valuable to them if they weren't more of a drain on the national economies than they were a plus to the national economies but as far as pride was concerned that was always an element and great excuse me Germany as this new emerging power felt in this a special drive to become an imperial power as well because that's how you exemplify that you're the strong powerful emerging world power at the time so I wanted to play this particular quote because I think it does well Germany's concept and this is chancellor bethmann-hollweg who is talking to a french diplomat in 1914 I believe just a few months before the the dawn of the First World War they get a sense of how they viewed their place in the world for 40 years France has pursued a grandiose policy it has secured an immense Empire for itself in the world it is everywhere during this time and in active Germany did not follow this example and today it needs its place in the Sun every day Germany sees its population growing by leaps and bounds its Navy its Trade and Industry are making unparalleled developments it is forced to expand somehow or other it has not yet found that place in the Sun which it is due its place in the Sun I love this particular picture this is a gathering in 1896 the occasion when Queen Victoria is right here in the centre if you don't recognize her there she is it's the occasion of Nicholas and Alexander his engagement hey listen Alexander there's a name a couple's name that lives rings through history right here so it's Queen Victoria right there kaiser wilhelm ii of germany he's Victoria's grandson he is the son of Empress Frederick who is the daughter of Queen Victoria so he's got plenty of English blood in this this is a family that had a lot of occasions to have events and activities reunions gatherings and imagine your family reunions in this case we're talking about most of the heads of Europe at the time who are getting together for various occasions so okay there Wilhelm you know where you talk about Nicholas and Alexandra so Nicholas is by this time the Tsar of Russia and what's the connection there Alexandra is the granddaughter of Victoria the daughter of Alice and Louise Grand Duke of Hesse yes being from part of the new German Empire if you will so Nicholas becomes the Tsar in 1894 after the death of his father the assassination of his father I should mention Alexander the third and moving on right there is Albert Edward son of Queen Victoria who is going to be when his mother dies and a couple years after this picture was taken is going to be the King of England so it's all right there and there's one other thing I want you to take note of this look how many of these people these men are wearing uniforms they're all over the place it was something to be proud of you wanted to have that connection now nobody was prouder of wearing a uniform than then Wilhelm problem was that he was born with a shriveled I think his left arm so he really would never be able to see main line combat but he loved the military he was fascinated with the military and that was a sign of great respect and honour for this entire generation political stagnation the Ottoman Empire the sick man of Europe there is going to be this is a period of revolution and great strife and conflict for the Ottoman Empire and over time for the last 100 or more years they have been in this declining position and slowly they've been losing some of the territories in the Balkans region now one of the reasons why the Balkans is such a hodgepodge of nationalities is because it's this great crossroads of civilizations moving back and forth across Europe and Eurasia that's where they all came so that's why it's the hot spots and now you have a weakened Ottoman Empire and similar in state as though not nearly as week was austria-hungary but we're going to talk more about their particular problems after after a bit here so here are the European empires Russia is certainly an empire you know we don't necessarily think of it that way until you think about what's going on there now Ukraine the Ukrainians don't want to be part of the Russian Empire they certainly were then as were the poles as where the Belarus as there are lots of other nationalities that that are no longer part of the Russian country today emerging democracies well you've got England that's the strongest the most stable the longest tradition who happened to pass most of those traditions over to the United States probably at that particular point in time the one that you could say was very much a democracy the French Republic but in 1894 an incident occurred in the French Republic called the Dreyfus Affair that really undermined French society for the next 15 years the Dreyfus Affair started as allegations fears if you will that someone within the French High Command was passing secrets to the Germans their dreaded enemy and it had to do with their artillery piece and there was a quick investigation that was determined that that Dreyfus was the one who was passing this along Dreyfus was a French officer in the in the French General Staff he was he was Jewish and quickly they last on that and then wanted to move on they being the the French army but as people started to really investigate this they found out that the Dreyfus Alfred Dreyfus was just the straw man that he really wasn't the one that was passing on these these secrets this went on for years and years in ways that it's hard for us to comprehend today it's not the kind of thing that would have happened in England near the United States where we have a different military tradition but the French were so focused on the importance of the military that anything that would weaken the French army was seen as a bad thing so there is this whole segment of society that argued that what Dreyfus is guilty and he's guilty because we don't want to weaken the French Army that would be a terrible thing to do now they have other ways of expressing it but that's basically glia how it boiled down that traversée went on for years and that weakened the high command of the french army until just a few years before the first world war began very much a political issue more than a military one now we get down to the bottom part of this we already talked about nationalism there are several radical alternatives that are being hotly debated at this particular time and most of it is tied directly to the tremendous industrialization that you see going on in Europe that's where the Socialists and the Marxists come into the equation this springing up of a desire to look beyond borders to identify themselves as brothers in labor as workers to join together in that way and not worry about these national boundaries because that's an artificial convention and there was lots of movement the second Internationale which went was going on for much of this time period where socialist parties throughout Europe would come together and talk about their their common goals that they had and one of their common goals was to recognize that war would be a bad thing wars between all these various countries would only result in workers being slaughtered in the fields and so we want as socialists or as a radical element the Marxist would argue that that's the last thing they want to happen that they want to fight against those kinds of TENS copying in the first place the last one you see here is anarchism I think most of us have a basic concept of anarchism it was very prevalent during these years for whatever reason however you want to explain it there were people who are looking for alternative ways to organize society in this case to get away from just destroy the old society and start anew if you will but in this case it resulted in a lawful lot of assassinations so our Alexander of Russia was assassinated in 1881 the French premier I believe sadi carnot in 1894 President McKinley in 1901 king alfonso xiii of spain was assassinated in 1906 the Prime Minister of Russia in night 11 the king of Greece in 1913 now these are only the ones where they were successful there was plenty of other assassination attempts for a variety of other officials throughout Europe so it's kind of always kind of bubbling underneath the surface these kinds of tensions that are going on by the time you get to the early 1900s you see Europe starting to a lioness of just the thing that the Socialists don't want to see happening they're forming up in various alliances and the ones we want to focus on here are to Germany Oh eyes itself with austria-hungary there's a variety of reasons there but let's start with Germany before Wilhelm came to power Otto von Bismarck was the was the premier diplomat in Europe at the time and his main concern was to prevent France and Russia and Great Britain from making any kind of alliances so he would do whatever he could to have some kind of an agreements provisions alliances with any of these countries after we'll hum comes into the picture that's soon begins to unravel and Germany finds itself sandwiched between France and Russia who are now allies and it realizes the implications of that so it naturally looks to another Germanic state austria-hungary at least there and also has interests in the Ottoman Empire primarily economic interest that's this notion that you can build a railroad from Berlin all the way to Baghdad and tying those two empires together so what you've got increasingly then is some tension now let's turn to the untaught or the the Allies if you will France and Russia found themselves natural allies because of Germany's existence that was the main focus now if you think back a hundred years before these alliances in Europe would have been entirely different you know France and England fought Russia during the Crimean War but those are long gone now those days are long gone so they are allies the big question mark is Great Britain that wants to keep at arm's length from this mess in Europe and has the Navy and the channel to allow it to do that do not get sucked into it that's their preference that was what they would prefer to do Italy now this is a bit incorrect here but this is only because this is the way the allowances the Alliance's worked out during the war itself before the war Italy had a loose alliance with Germany and austria-hungary but there was always tension there especially right in this tarou region of Italy or of austria-hungary at that particular time where there was lots of Italians one of the ethnic groups living in austria-hungary at the time were Italians so there was a problem as far as the Italian was concerned so now that you've got these alliances and you've got this incredible industrialization and amazing growth in the populations that translates into an arms race and thoughts about what to do with your army as you grow Germany actually Prussia had always been it's its history its heritage its culture it always been closely tied with the success of its army that's just that's how they managed to emerge and they are intensely proud of it at the time but you have Universal conscription so now that Germany has a large army what does France do it has no choice but to have a very large army itself Russia's the same thing the problem with Russia during these years it's it's on a fast track to try to get itself reorganized after getting severely defeated by the Japanese in the Russell Japanese war so they basically are going to have that 10-year window there and the longer the desert the Russians have to rebuild as far as the Germans are concerned the more time you give to Russia to rebuild the more we're going to be at a disadvantage there becomes this notion that it's there is if war is inevitable let's let's hope it's not but if it's an another if it's inevitable then you want to do it before Russia becomes much more powerful and much more organized and able to mobilize its army much more quickly mobilization here is the key Germany as I mentioned before it always been a strong military power and from the days in the Napoleonic war they were the first to have this notion of a German General Staff where general or German officers would deliberately come together and very systematically scientifically plan for military operations and go through training you know like our military academies go through training and teach their officers not just field commanders but more important even than staff officers who had to do all these plants and almost all of the countries in Europe now are going to be doing the same kind of thing realizing they need to get ready for the war if it does happen that's what staffs do you've got officers the United States Army and the Pentagon right now they're planning for all kinds of contingencies that would curl your toes and why are we planning for that well that's what they're charged to do there need to be ready in the event that some horrific things happens in this case they took their jobs very seriously especially the Germans but the French are right in there as well and the key to success as far as their concern is how quickly they could mobilize these massive armies that they are building because if you could mobilize more quickly and get your force to the border more quickly and launch your offense leave more quickly before the enemy was ready you could win the war and that's what military is all about that's what they're trying to do is win the war quickly Germany and its plans could mobilize in 12 days austria-hungary took 16 days about the same time for the French I believe Russia took 26 days just because of the mammoth size of the country and the dilapidated nature of much of the rail system but as I mentioned before the rail system is the key to mobilization very detailed intricate plans and those railroads and everybody knowing exactly what they had to do now I should throw in here this the plans were generally secret but once they are dusted off and implemented then it would hopefully go like clockwork so I got ahead of myself a little bit here's the military strength in 1911 another one of these charts I think that speaks loudly to this Germany you'll notice if you look at there's two columns for each one of these here are the regulars here are the reserves now if you look at this Germany Austria Hungary France there's not that much difference between Germany's army and Frances army until you get to the reservist what Germany did was be much more deliberate and incorporate their reservists into the war plans and actually get them into the fight much more quickly where most of the other countries were reluctant to throw them into combat within a few days they would want to take more time to get their reserve troops ready for combat Germany didn't think they gave the fort to do that they had the military traditions they didn't think they had to do that and they were very good in terms of training not just the regulars but the reservists as well and I thought I had something here in terms of how quickly they can do that but that was the case now the other interesting thing here look at Russia again Germany has always got to look both directions west and east start worrying about the Russians if they mobilize and then look at the United States and even look at Great Britain regulars and reserves Great Britain just didn't have much of army at the time that wasn't what their concern was their strength was in their Navy and much of the army that they had were in places like India and South Africa and Egypt and other places spread around the Empire that's what they needed an army for was to preserve the Empire as far as they were concerned now a couple of the equations are going to change now got a little bit um had myself dread-nots England as I mentioned before had naval superiority that was key to their future that was part of their identity it's part of their sense of comfort and confidence that they had but in 1900 for a variety of reasons Kaiser Wilhelm decided he was a world power Germany was a world power it needs its place in the Sun not just an empire but if you have an empire you need to have AG large Navy that's part of the extension and they start reading things like Alfred Therma Hans influence the sea power in world history and alpha therma Hans an American but he's writing about how important having a strong Navy is if you want to be a strong world power and part of the argument was that you want to have this strong Navy to predict the sea lanes because it's going to be based not on military power as much as it is on your merchant fleet and your ability to trade and make money and be good successful capitalists and if you're gonna have a large merchant fleet and if you're gonna have a large Navy the things you need to have is cooling stations all these little islands or places you could go with your Navy to resupply your ship with cold because it was powered by steam and compared by run by coal so this is very much what he was reading what Kaiser Wilhelm and a lot of other folks in Europe are reading about the influence of sea power and Kaiser Wilhelm latches on to that and says we want to have a large Navy just like we have this most powerful army in the world and they start a very deliberate campaign to build up their naval fleet the Brits get nervous right away and they have this notion well we want to have at least twice as much as any other Navy out there to be able to overwhelm any other possible threat that we might have and in 1906 and because of all this new technology the new growth that they've had in industry they built a completely different class of submarines called the dreadnought class that named after the first of the or the dreadnaught classes the HMS dreadnought it was so big so powerful so fast that any other battleship in encounter was at a great risk and overnight now you've changed the equation so instead of having this huge lead and the number of battleships compared to what Germany's going to be able to produce over a period of years now you realize well gosh if Germany can build just one or two of these they're gonna catch up pretty quickly so this only accelerates the race between Germany and Great Britain in terms of building mainline battleships obviously aircraft carriers at the time is not something that's part of the equation at all it's all about battleships and the Brits get very nervous about it and the Germans are proudly moving forward with their you know forcing these things through the the very mark to get them past so they can continue to very quickly build their naval force as well as maintain this incredibly strong military army force that they've got this more than anything else is going to kind of force Great Britain to look more kindly towards alliances with France and even Russia I say even Russia because it's kind of reluctant although they're not totally committed to this they're very loosely aligned with those two countries and their druthers would be otherwise rather than get caught up in this now I threw this in as well because I think it's important to remember what many Europeans were thinking about whether or not war was coming whether or not it was inevitable most of them thought well if it's going to be a war it's probably going to be like the franco-prussian war which lasted only a couple months and sure it was devastating the the results were awful for France at lost Alsace and Lorraine but just a few months it's going to be a short war and one of the reasons they thought it was going to be just a short war was because they figured they'd run out of money to fight the war if it lasted too long and they figured they'd run out of munitions if they did as well that these countries couldn't possibly sustain any kind of intense combat for a long period of time and the other thing of course if you're a bank of you're a merchant you like commerce across country lines that's the nature of your your livelihood you want to encourage that and the more you have of trade going across all these national boundaries the stronger that ties the whole together and the less likely you will hope there is for future conflicts so let's go back to Germany's two front dilemma here and I chose this map in part because you can see the rail lines now I think this represents the main rail lines for these countries and you can see in many cases how they are hugging the borders by this time by the time you get to the early 1900's and into the tens many of the railroads that are being constructed by these countries are deliberately constructed not because they make good economic sense but because they're necessary to mobilize and quickly deploy your armies to the frontlines wherever that might be and you can see right here even all the way through Berlin heading down to Baghdad I don't know what they did right here it Constantinople that might be a bit of a problem so the question now for these planners is how to guarantee how you plan in Germans case especially how you plan to defeat both France and Russia if God forbid that you're in a land war with both of them at the same time and that's where Alfred von Schlieffen comes in he's the chief of the General Staff from 1891 to 1904 and it's his duty his responsibility to oversee the development of these war plans I was talking about before and here's his concept that he basically came up with and got the rest of the general staff to agree with that you do that based on a couple assumptions one it will take much longer for Russia to mobilize and Russia is not the imminent threat that the French army is so you can do a couple things you can go in the defense in the West and take rush out because they're weaker but it's so huge it can just get sucked up like Napoleon did in the Russian Empire or you can try to knock out your main fold the French early on and that's the plan that was developed the Schlieffen Plan and what you're looking at here very simply each one of these big red arrows here represents one of the German armies and being good Germans like they are the first the second the third the fourth the fifth and the sixth the 7th and 8th German armies were to hold the line down here but otherwise what you're talking about is a huge left sweep into the interior of France the reason because most of the fortifications in France are going to be right here and the border the problem to be able to do that to avoid the strong French fortifications oops you've got to go through Belgium Belgium neutrality had been promised by all of the European powers since 1839 and that was something that they all had in the back of their minds sleep and certainly knew that but he figured it was worth the cost and now what's the danger if you do that well maybe maybe that would bring Great Britain into the war that they otherwise would be willing to sit on the sidelines but it's going to take a while for Great Britain to get its army across the the channel in the first place maybe you can have France defeated before that even happens I think the timeline here is that you get to the Belgium French border within 22 days and this is all clockwork the clockwork from the time that mobilization is announced that's when the clock is pressed and then it's it's a race to get mobilized first and then it's a race to attack and deploy your forces so from the day the attack begins 22 days to reach the border and 42 days to envelop Paris and encircle the French army a massive encirclement and again you can only do this if you're using both your regular in your reserve forces that's the German plan so there is inherent risk once you get past 42 days you're victorious and you can move major portions of your army to the Eastern Front and then take on the Russians after that now the French have their own plan it's not quite as ambitious it doesn't violate Belgium neutrality and it's based on the notion that French elon the spirit the natural spirit of the French soldier they'll go on the offensive will carry the day that just like in the Pollyanna era that their soldiers are inherently braver and more committed to the cause and more courageous than the enemy and that they can win that way and so you're seeing what what here is the French plan in blue basically attack straight into the teeth of the German forces and primarily in these areas where the Germans have decided to remain on the defensive and it almost would play directly into the Germans hands because that would make it a little bit easier to encircle them but it's all about timing it's all about how quick these German armies can march and you know they were they knew from the beginning on these plans that they would push the German infantrymen who basically had to be walking across this to the absolute limit of their endurance as they were marching through this area fighting as they went and marching as quickly as they could to do this so that's the plans what I wanted to play here very quickly this is a short excerpt but this is right from the German armed excuse me French army doctrine of 1913 it gives you a sense the way the French were thinking about combat only the offensive yields positive results success will come not to the one who has suffered the least losses but to the one whose will is the steadiest and whose morale is the most highly tempered kind of a tacit understanding that yeah we're gonna suffer a lot of casualties but we the overwhelming the enemy in our offensive almost all militaries that time believed in the offensive that's the great irony of the early stages of the war because there is no war that's more defined by the defense than the First World War but they started with the exact opposite notion on things Europe on the eve of the war then there is an air of optimism even though all of this that I've just been talking about is swirling underneath the surface even though the Germans think well you know this if we do it we might want to do it soon even the French were thinking that they would be more advantageous for them to do it earlier rather than later there was the sense of optimism these are the heirs of the great Enlightenment there are many things that Europeans share together almost all of them are Christian sure there's you know differences between Catholics and Protestants but even in that respect there's much more commonality between those two than there are differences they have a belief in the perfectibility of man we've given up on that concept I think by now but they didn't this is they're still when the we're all the possibility they believed in the advances that they were seeing in democracy in freedom as other countries were seeing more and more of that happening and accepting that they believed in the rule of law there were things like you know of the educated class almost everyone read Russian literature almost everybody appreciated French art and Italian opera they appreciated the German classic composers they shared all this in common they had the common identity you know the the greco-roman kind of an education that they all got as well so there was so much that we're pulling him together and there was lots of people who thought it's just inconceivable that that Europe would allow itself to be sucked into a major war here's a couple quotes just to kind of illustrate it an austrian middle class youth by name of stefan Vig probably really butchering the pronunciation of his name people no more believed in the pasta the possibility of barbaric relapses such as wars between the nations of Europe then they believe in ghosts and witches our fathers were dogged ly convinced of the infallibility binding power of tolerance and conciliation here's another quote by another Austrian author at the time peace is a condition that the progress of civilization will bring about by necessity it is a mathematical certainty that in the course of centuries the warlike spirit will witness a progressive decline I think we've given up on that notion as well unfortunately but they believed that many Europeans believed it at the time and they look back in their own history 1870 that's that's 40 plus years that Europe has been peaceful and that last war was relatively short I would certainly wouldn't say it was painless but you know they pay us in comparison to what they're going to get themselves into a couple years so they're learning the lessons of the last war we always looked at the last war to try to figure out what the next one's going to be and we almost always get it wrong but they did it's gonna be a short war if there is a war but I think we probably grown beyond that we've become much more civilized it's just not as likely and yet there is a whole series of incidents that are occurring there are flash points there are points of tension between the major powers at the time everybody to talk about the Russell Japanese war the first Moroccan crisis in 1905 and it's mainly Germany you know flexing its muscles suggesting that it has it wants to have more influence in Morocco which at one time was much more of a Spanish colony now the French have designs on it so it's friction between France and Germany with all the other players trying to you know played negotiators in their process as well the second moroccan crisis in 1911 along the same lines and then the first and the second balkans war and we'll get into that in just a bit so it's all a question of timing in that respect the Balkan wars and I've already talked about the Ottoman Empire this is kind of a hazy map here but you bear with me obviously the Ottoman Empire at this time in the late 1890s nineteen hundred includes a main part major part of the Balkans look at Greece at the time if you know what the map of Greece looks like today look how different it is look at Bulgaria Serbia in here and then the huge Ottoman excusing the austro-hungarian Empire and of course Russia over here these countries right here Romania Bulgaria Serbia are relatively young they've emerged from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire a few decades before and especially Serbia has much more of a national nationalist feeling going on in the country so the first Balkan war is 1912 Ottoman Empire is increasingly weak for Balkan states band together to take on the Ottoman Empire they include Bulgaria Greece Montenegro and Serbia the Greek Navy plays a key role here in bottling up the the Turkish Navy in the turkeys reinforcements in the Aegean Sea and because of that as much as anything and the antiquated nature of the Ottoman army those four countries are victorious now the second Balkans war is in 1913 and that includes Bulgaria now what a surprise now Bulgaria is in this leadership position that benefited better than the other countries did in the first Balkans war so there's some tension and jealousies there so Bulgaria now is going to be fighting Serbia and Greece over the issue of lands and Macedonia in this region right here and that ends so what we end up here just to make a long story short a much more convoluted map if you will but at least it's clear for you you see how much larger Greece is now you see how much larger Serbia is it was basically up in this region now they've taken this huge swath of what was formerly the Ottoman Empire what has emerged is Albania and in this region you've got I think this next map will show it but a huge population of Bosnians herds Galena's and they all see themselves as Serbs brother Serbs always most of these countries here see themselves as sloths the point that I kind of overlooked before Russia is the father of the Slavic nations and it saw itself in this relationship it's its interest in this region is it's the main Slavic country in the world and just like the Germans they're intensely proud of being Slavs as we're the poles as where the Czechs is where the Slovaks as worthy Serbs and the Krotz not so much the Romanians the Romanians thought they were the descendants of roman legionnaires so they're hearty in a different way I guess but it makes for a nice interesting reading and I'm s trying to sort it all out I have to tell you so that's what you've got by 1914 and as I just mentioned this region right here here's Serbia this region right here our fellow Slavs all of these are you go slaws our South Slavs if you will and Serbia has this strong movement within the country of some looking for the right title radicals hotheads especially in the military especially young men who are looking to expand the natural boundaries of Serbia and incorporate all these other Serbians that need to be part of this greater Serbia and that's where the continuing tension is going to be now between austria-hungary and Serbia itself so by early 1900 Serbia's including the Bazan's as well did ahead of myself a little bit now we can get to the trigger gov real Princip I'm hoping pronounce that name right is one of these Serbian hotheads he is a Serbian citizen he is not alone by any means there's lots of people who are wanting this urge to combine Bosnia and Herzegovina in with the rest of Serbia do we unite that whole area Austria Hungary of course is deathly afraid of that you know what happens if served if Bosnia goes and ends up being part of Serbia well then if you can start to think down the road as well gosh what are the italians gonna want to do in that portion of ram pyre what are the Czechs gonna want to do in that portion Empire or the poles at that time you notice Poland didn't exist divided between Germany Russia and austria-hungary what of all these other nationalities want to break away there wasn't much of a sense that that was going to happen but you can start to see how this could develop so if you're Austria hungry you're very concerned about that and Archduke Franz Ferdinand is the heir apparent of the the Austrian throne of the austrian-hungarian empire his father is actually Franz Joseph I think since 1848 has been the Emperor of Austria Hungary now you think about that 1848 that's 15 years before the beginning of the American Civil War he'd been there forever so he's a very elderly man you have a sense that there eventually he's going to be he's going to die in fact the heir apparent was was supposed to take over had been assassinated a few years before but Franz Ferdinand if there's anybody you'd like to see take over as the Emperor of this in this massive Empire it would be Franz Ferdinand because he was a calmer head he didn't want to push force any kind of war situation he was more willing in the so she ate with some of these these minority groups within the Empire itself but grab the old Princip and a group of people decided that they would take history into their own hands and when they heard that Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophia we're gonna go to Sarajevo to observe some military maneuvers in that country serioga being part of Bosnia they set up an assassination attempt kind of a botched attempt if you think about it but history turns on these peculiarities sometimes the cavalcade the series of automobiles were driving through Sarajevo and one of the colleagues in in the the an assassination plot threw a bomb that was unsuccessful but one of the guards was injured well the procession continues on and then Franz Ferdinand decides he wants to visit this officer who had been injured so they start to go towards the area where that gentleman was being taken care of and his driver took a wrong turn and where he backs up now he starts to backup so the car is practically at a stop that just happens to be where the leader of this group Gavrilo Princip is standing who takes his pistol runs up and fires a few rounds and I think Franz Ferdinand and Sophia they both died eventually I can't recall which one lingers for just a couple hours before they die so a successful assassination of the heir of the austro-hungarian Empire and the Austrians Hungarians know darn well that there's all these Serbs that would want nothing more than to do this and immediately start to think it's the Serbian government that was behind all of this the reality isn't too far off it's the Serbian military who were providing arms and weapons to some extent not necessarily deliberate attempt but there's enough people within the Serbian military that we're willing to support these these radicals to do this so now you've got the the spark if you oh the trigger what happens next and at this point in time it's going to move rather quickly I could spend a few hours talking this but I don't think it's really necessary to me it was much more important to lay the larger framework what European society was about June 28th Ferdinand Sophia are assassinated July 6th austria-hungary gets assurances from Germany that they will go to war with Serbia essentially this is one of the key moments this is this a couple weeks after the event that Germany what historians called give austria-hungary a blank check well back yet now we're your ally now by this time austria-hungary keeps looking at Russia Germany's looking at Russia Russia is the it's the largest biggest most important supporter of the Slavs in this region so that's your concern what's going happen there but it's the summer in Europe and for many of the diplomats and the the leaders of Europe at the time they're taking vacations Wilhelm's takes his yacht out he's on vacation in that respect and so this kind of simmers for a few weeks July 23rd though here's the next key event that happens you know July 6th they get the blank check now July 20 through two or three weeks later the austro-hungarians give the ultimatum to the Serbians here's what you have to do for assassinating our heir of our throne and basically they had developed a list of provisions that they thought would guarantee the Serbia could not accept because they wanted to punish Serbia and the only way you could really do that is to go to war to teach them a lesson I wanted to read just a couple of the provisions in this ultimatum to Serbia number two the you will dissolve the Serbian nationalist organization the people's defense this is that shadowy group that was involved with the assassination and all other such societies in Serbia number three you will eliminate without delay from schoolbooks and public documents all propaganda against austria-hungary no interesting number five except in Serbia representatives of the Austrian garyun government for the suppression of subversive movements in other words they're police officers they're law enforcement officers would help with the prosecution of these these dastardly people that had done this and number six the hardest one for the Serbs to follow swallow bring to trial all accessories to the Archduke's assassination and allow austro-hungarian delegates law enforcement officers to take part in the investigations now think about how this would go into the United States something like this essentially austria-hungary was demanding that Serbia surrender much of its sovereignty and it just was too much the Serbs accepted almost everything unconditionally there are three or four provisions they accepted with qualifications but it was the last one number six they just could not accept so that happens July 25th they give their answer and that was only after they've gotten assurances from Russia that Russia would come to their support so austria-hungary has already heard from Germany now Serbia is hearing from Russia and now things move much more quickly July 28th austria-hungary declares war on Serbia July 28th Russia declares a partial mobilization there was a while there they went they weren't sure they could even do just a partial mobilization wouldn't you have to mobilize everything did can you just mobilize against the border of austria-hungary and not mobilize against the border of Germany well it didn't take too much long after that that they went from partial mobilization to full mobilization and now what's Germany to do the Russians are mobilizing so July 31st Germany Kaiser Wilhelm sends a message to his cousin Nicholas enjoining them to stop mobilization but of course the answer is no we're not going to stop August first Germany declares war and and now the race is on the race to mobilize most quickly is on and that means that the Germans now it's not just mobilizing against Russia that means they're tied to the Schlieffen Plan and that means that war with France is inevitable as well and there's this great spirit as all of the countries declare a war Germany declares war on France France declares war on Germany etc and Europe now is mobilizing and in many of the places I think this might be overblown to a certain respect and the amount of enthusiasm that the young men went off to war but here's one example of it most of the young men so this is the great adventure and many of them just like in any war at the beginning stages think boy I don't want to be left out in this it'll be over by the time I get there I gotta get there right away and of course the massive mobilization of reservists as well in it sucked up most of the personnel a quick quote here to get a sense of what mobilization meant in Germany at least whereas the most thoroughly plan I was ordered to report to the nearest regiment of artillery on the second day of mobilization when I reached Bremen on 3 August my family was frantic they thought the Belgians had arrested and shot me on 4 August I presented myself to the army as a reservist and was told I now belonged to reserve Field Artillery Regiment number 18 which was forming in barren felled near Hamburg about 75 miles away relatives were not allowed near the building where we had to assemble as soon as I could I gave a message to a little boy so my family new relatives were not allowed on the railway platform either only Red Cross people who gave us free cigars cigarettes and candy on the troop train I was glad to see friends I knew well from my rowing and tennis clubs on 6 August I was issued my field grey uniform which I had never worn before the color was gray green with dull buttons the helmet was covered with a grey cloth so that the ornaments would not glitter in the Sun and the high riding boots were brown and very heavy all soldiers and most of the officers were reservists but the commanding officer was a regular most of the NCOs were regulars their horses were reservists - owners of the horses sportsmen businessmen and farmers had to register them regularly and the army knew at all times where the horses were the thing I like most about that quote is the horses - and it gives you a sense of just how detailed these plans were I'm sure they left nothing to chance in these things but so how does the war go in the first couple months does it go the way Germany had intended does it go the way France had intended well quickly it went badly for the French but the Germans initially had quite a bit of success as they plowed through the some of the fortresses in Belgium it's slowing it down a little bit but they had already developed very heavy artillery to take most of those fortresses out the problem was they had invaded Belgium the other problem was that there were excesses because there always are in combat but right at the very early stages when the German troops they were inexperienced in war they start taking sniper shots from people in the villages where they civilians were they military there were atrocities very early in the war that happened in Belgium and that's where you get the name of the Hun afterwards and the propaganda mills were very efficient even in the early stages of the war and this stuff did not play well in countries like Great Britain and the United States let alone France and the the public sentiment starts to turn almost immediately against the Germans by that time if it hadn't already been that way in the first place but let's kind of move on here quickly you can see that the way the the German army moved they got to the Belgian border about on time but things start to slow down the plan never goes the way you intend and you'll also notice that the sweep that they went did not include Paris part of the reason for that is they got closer and closer to the war and that the events of the war itself the German High Command Salif and is out of the picture now the German High Command starts to have to steal away units from the strong right flank of the German army and that right flank was the critical flank you needed to have the bulk of your forces there well you need to send some more troops over to the Eastern Front you need to bolster the German forces here on the border and things like that so you cut weakening that right flank now don't not to mention the incredibly ambitious timeline they run so the sweep continues like this and then the next map does a better job of this so let's go to the next map as the Germans had made this incredible sweep there was a gap between see if I can find it here here's the German 1st army and here's the German 2nd army I don't think the 7th was part of the equation at that time there was a significant gap of something like 30 or 40 miles between those two armies which in the critical moments of this major campaign the British Expeditionary Force was able to move in and exploit right between those flanks and then the the French were able to mobilize a force from Paris they were Mabel to move some of their forces from their right flank the quieter flanks and you get into the Battle of the Marne this incredible stories of French troops the French Poli being driven to the battlefields and in Parisian cab taxicabs and things like that rally the French people they stopped the German offensive after that you get to the series of campaigns basically now here's the battle line at one point in time about 18 September right here now what you see is each army successively tries to outflank because you realize early on the it's started to dig in right away and then the Britain then the Germans and then the French as well if you're attacking somebody who's entrenched it's much more difficult what you want to find is that soft flank where there's nobody there you can get around the flank and then get behind the enemy lines and so that's what you've got a series of campaigns here where the French try to get across the the flank of the Germans the German stopped and the Germans tried to get across the flank and then gradually the line moves all the way to the Straits of Dover to the English Channel and once you get there you get towards the end of the major campaign season and the armies and start to dig in now this is a picture obviously from a couple years later down the road but it doesn't take long for the devastation of that terrain along the front lines to be horrific and the experiences of those soldiers who have to live in those trenches day in and day out becomes horrific as well so that's basically where we end up for this evening and I was asked to put a couple pieces of information about upcoming events my presentation back to the Civil War in 2015 with the Petersburg and then Appomattox on April 9th but I was asked also to let you know about this event here at the Illinois Military Museum at Camp Lincoln so with that I'll take any questions you might have

Channel: Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum

Views: 52,442

Keywords: World War One

Id: FDPUJhHU3Ds

Length: 74min 51sec (4491 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 27 2016