Prof. Robert Weiner: The Nature & Impact of WWI

mmm why World War one why why World War one um George just said gee whiz how many people died on the first day now he knew he knew the answer but as many people died on the first day or were injured on the first day of the Battle of the Somme in 1916 as in the Vietnam War 60,000 people were either killed or injured on the first day of the Battle of the Somme if we look at our sensory the sensory that's just passed and if we look even at our own time period almost everything still filters through the impact of World War one on European society on Eastern European society on America on Asia on Africa Middle East Latin America probably being the continent the least affected by it in other words there is hardly anyone on this planet who was not in some way affected by World War one and in every single dimension what the war involved was radicalization polarization and an acceleration of history in other words it's not that it started each of the tendencies but all of the tendencies that existed at the end of the 19th century passed through the prism of World War one and were changed in some way usually for the worst usually for the worse now there are a lot of women here I can't say whether you got the better of it or the worse of it what I can say is there were a lot of fewer men sitting around after the war but women in the workplace in certain fields went up 20% 40% 60% multiple hundreds of percent so women got out of the barn and gained a lot of Liberty and what did the guys do when they came back from the war stock them back in the barn as hard as they could tried to repress them for fear of all of this radical change everything these men had to deal with on the battlefield and then come home to uppity women I mean there were Mel Gibson's all over the place they were they were like sissies compared to the guys who came back after the war and I'm not kidding because part of fascism as a movement is anti-woman okay fascism is misogynist fascism wants women in their place fascism is militarist hyper militarist you could never have had a Mussolini coming to power he comes into power in 33 and yes Mussolini is pale compared to Hitler but you could never have had a Mussolini the child of a blacksmith come into power in what was still predominantly an aristocratic society a hierarchical Society a clerical society without World War one so no Mussolini no possibility of Mussolini without World War one no possibility of Adolf Hitler without World War one a corporal telling generals what to do not possible not possible it's not that there wouldn't have been Mussolini's in society or Hitler's in society it's just that they would have remained where they belong out of power okay as minority cranks the economy's radical dislocation of the economy's runaway inflation now we we know what it means you know I stupidly went back in the market a little bit about three months ago everyone was pushing me to go back and forth I came back from vacation and I took a look oh that's great I lost more than I made this year or not fortunately not but okay when you live through something like that you can begin to perceive what it felt like to others to go through that so we know about the German inflation everybody had inflation the French franc was stabilized in 1928 the person who stabilized at kuang cafe was called the savior of the franc he devalued it by 80 percent and he was called the savior of the franc 80 percent devaluation the German currency in the 1920s became literally valueless the Italian currency was on that track when Mussolini came into power Russian prices went up at least four times in the cities during the war while people were starving at the beginning of the war what do you think happened to them during the war they starved more no World War one no Russian Revolution oh maybe there would have been a revolution in Russia later but who came up on top during the revolution the most radical faction why did they come up on top because the other socialists who were predominantly in power continued the war and in continuing the war they made it impossible to continue their revolution Lenin said we can either make war or we can make revolution I'm all for revolution to hell with the war and they sued for peace and in the peace they finally got from Germany they lost 40% of their industrial capacity 35% of their manpower war or revolution not both at the same time so first the revolution is a product of the war it might have happened in a different way later but you would never have had a Lenin coming to power in Czarist Russia virtually impossible no Lenin no russian revolution fascism wouldn't have looked that lovely to everyone no Lenin no Stalin probably also no Hitler coming into power because what the people who put most Cellini into power in 22 and the people who finally allowed Hitler into power and 33 were afraid of is a Lenin or Stalin for Italy or for Germany other things modernist culture the radicalization of political ideology everywhere both on the right and on the left the whole nature of the Middle East today is a product to a great extent of the settlements after World War one which begin to radicalize the Middle East America becoming the center of the world economy who was the greatest debtor nation in 1914 the united states who built the West the Europeans who financed America the Europeans financed America who was the greatest creditor in 1918 United States so the whole balance of economic structure in the world shifted between 1914 to 1918 France was a creditor nation Britain was the greatest creditor nation Germany was a creditor nation they all were radically dead of debtor nations four years later and I could go on and on and on with these particular areas of change no World War one no appeasement where did you ever hear of English society practicing appeasement before World War one no World War one what was the nature of French defensive history in the 1930s what was that string of fortresses called a national line to do what to hide behind no World War one no Maginot Line what did the French army do in the beginning of World War one does anyone remember afterwards right afterwards they did but in the beginning they went forward just like the Germans did right and what happened when they went forward anyone know what kind of caps they were wearing they were red that's that smart right and and you know machine guns like red they like red and running forward with a bayonet in two machine guns with a red hat on act of manhood it's a sign that you have the will to power the word killed lots of people more than one of the stronger people rather than the weaker this had been a classroom Rams and 1914 almost all of you wouldn't want to hear the things the woman would have said and I all men ages 20 to 32 in France in 1914 to be a healthy male in France in 1914 to have been mobilized to have gone to war and to not have even died or been badly wounded would be statistically improbable purely statistics machine stolen guns don't care about thought they do machine guns like bigger size it's a bigger target right in the beginning of the war I don't know of any of you who got a chance I understand this was hard to get um some things I didn't know one of the things I did is I prepared for this well I get called upon to do something like this I don't sit on my hands these these are two of my new toys okay and one of the things that I'm going to be doing is probably changing the books in my course and using this for my 20th century history barbarism and civilization Ferguson the war of the world 20th century conflict and the descent of the West and not just the West but the rest also Eastern European civilization as well as a result of the war in the beginning of the war you had to be about five foot eight to get in the British Army by a year and a half later you could be five foot one the five foot dangers were gone okay and you can see how honorbound patriot bound of societies was because they didn't even have military conscription until 1916 it was a volunteer army an entire football team would volunteer and they were called pals and they put them together on the front line so entire football teams disappeared the French military class of st. cyr in 1914 the best the country has to for 63% died now normally it was too disabled for one who died or even three disabled for one who died 63% of the best so who was left to stand up to Hitler later or Stalin later where were all of those leaders I mean they weren't totally stupid they thought it was going to be a short war everybody thought it was going to be a short war the Germans expected to spend Christmas the war began in August the Germans expected to spend Christmas in Paris well that's a good place to spend Christmas IIIi have spent Christmas and New Year's or not Christmas but New Year's in Berlin that's a good place now too then it wasn't quite as good the French expected to be to Berlin and back to Paris to also spend Christmas in Paris okay there were several people around who thought it would be longer most thought this would be a short war one of the causes of the war is what is called the short war illusion the idea that the war would be short is one of the reasons that they went into it that way the Germans had a particular plan it was pretty much like the French plan only it was German so it was more daring the Germans were going to go through Belgium and come across and encircle Paris within six weeks leaving their eastern frontier a little bit open and and I want the wrong map because I changed the maps before so this is 1914 so they might even have allowed some of these primitive barbaric Russians into East Germany and that was called the Schlieffen plan and tragically it became the only plan for operation by 1911 they had many plans before one of the lessons for any I mean there aren't that many lessons that really pertain and even of the lessons pertain how do you use them one of the lessons that might pertain is you always have to have more than one military option you always have to have more than one military option by 1911 the Germans threw away all the other military options and everything was based on train tables how fast can you mobilize so this is what they had left this plan required a two-front war beat the french quickly used superior railroads get back and slowly defeat the Russians attack the French were going to do the same thing attack from the south but with red hats on and this thing almost worked ok this thing almost worked they smashed through Belgium they pushed aside the British and the French they smashed into France they got to the Marne River they left their flanks open the French counter attacked and the Battle of the Marne failed barbara tuchman another book in fact these folks who were the best talk about barber toughen guns of August which I read three times when I was in my 20s is still being a valuable study the Battle of the Marne was one of the decisive battles of war of the world not because it determined the Germany would ultimately lose or the Allies ultimately win the war but because it determined that the war would go on the Battle of the Marne determined that the war would go on the Schlieffen Plan so the war wasn't going to be over in six weeks in three months it wasn't going to be over so what did they do they raced to the sea up the coast trying to outflank each other they got there at about the same time and they were looking at each other now this is the Western Front so what did they do next they dug trenches and after that they dug deeper trenches and a second line of trenches by that time hundreds of thousands of people were dead and wounded now on the war in the Eastern Front was totally different there the Germans over time clearly outmaneuvered in fact very early in the war and at the Battle of Tannenberg and Masurian Lakes destroyed and captured very very large parts of the Russian army the Russian capacity to endure was remarkable considering the kind of weapons that they had at their disposal and in many cases only one rifle for three soldiers sometimes so you waited till one fellow fell and you picked up another one and World War two wasn't too different in the beginning that was a war of movement where people froze to death as many froze to death and died from injury as directly from the battle and by the way about 70% of all people who were killed were killed from bombardment 60 to 70% not I - I not hand-to-hand bombardment okay so what the Battle of the Marne meant is a longer war well then how will we win we will mobilize so we mobilize and we come up to this and they come up to this we go there they go there we go there they go there total mobilization of society the first war of routinized mechanised industrial for years no complete breakthrough until the American troops really arrived the Germans are as close to winning four years later as they were four years earlier but the two civilizations are roughly equal in the capacity to produce the necessities of war fuel munitions food technology the Germans passed the law in 1916 requiring men up to 865 to work the French it was up to age 60 men up to 46 in the army by the end Germany men in their 50s on the front kids 15 men 50 on the front all the capacity of modern industrial society straining at the bit for destruction straining at the bit for destruction one of the French soldiers called it extermination I call it routinized mechanized genocide the genocide of people on their own citizens because once it got out of control they had no way of stopping it oh let's negotiate what do we say to the 500,000 parents who've lost children when we negotiate and haven't gained anything they never stopped to negotiate because they were afraid they couldn't get the troops to move again okay this is a barrier that 20 years later 25 years later permits the Holocaust to happen this is extermination of your own citizens your best citizens ten thousand twenty thousand coin daily daily one of the German attempts in 1915 1916 is known as the Battle of Verdun okay the purpose of the Battle of Verdun was not necessarily to take Verdun but to force the French to defend Verdun and to exchange blood the purpose was to bleed France white but in the process of bleeding France white Germany was bled white and to take pressure off Verdun the British took upon themselves the Battle of the Somme to take the pressure off Verdun it just got worse and worse some statistics 65 to 70 million men were mobilized more men were mobilized than the entire population of England or France or Italy or Spain Germany had about 65 million people in 1914 of every seven mobilised one was killed about nine or ten million people of every 3-1 was disabled one-third permanently so now what the disabled mean in World War one people walked around with iron masks the medicine wasn't the same as out mangled faces faces without chins without noses without skulls I remember going to France late nineteen the late 60s and still seeing mutilated people from world they didn't call it post-traumatic stress syndrome but tens and tens and tens hundreds of thousands of people had shell-shocked post-traumatic stress syndrome and all kinds of other ailments that they didn't have mange for so the war never ended the war produced its own progeny between August 1914 and the end of 1917 one Frenchman was killed every minute and again it's Darwin to the reverse it's not the survival of the fittest the fittest s-- go first it's not even a war like Vietnam in which the poor were more likely to fight because the whole moderate middle officer corps was made up of the children of aristocrats and wealthy middle class people so what was decimated is the middle class this is a bourgeois war everybody takes part but it's a middle class war there was no aristocrat who didn't lose a child a cousin a brother a parent a husband no aristocrat who said I'm not going to fight okay they may have been officers but even if they were made teachers they were still gonna be close to the front captains they'd get up over the power pit lead the charge blow the whistle any of you see pads of glory right and then a great movie with Kirk Douglas in it exquisite right Colonel Dax the finest lawyer in France what does he do when the battle begins he stands up and blows the whistle he leads the charge and he's the finest lawyer in France oh yeah there are some fat generals in the back and there are some other generals not shown in that film on the front okay generals who went to the front we're really respected by their men but this is a counter Darwinian war fifty-five hundred and nine people on the average killed every day for over 15 5505 years of warfare well with all of that it requires us to study other elements of the war not just the homefront or not just rather the war front not just the trenches not just the war of movement but the homefront as well because the homefront may even say it as anyone denied themselves something because we're fighting in Iraq as your life changed it's your life changed because of Afghanistan no political no political intention whatsoever but has your life changed everyone's life is that a Weissman good I like the Weissman part I'll accept the other part total mobilization of society affected everyone and in all the combatant countries the war behind the war was as important as the war in the trenches because if he couldn't produce the weapons if you couldn't produce the fuel if he couldn't produce the food you couldn't stay in the war okay this is high stakes you just keep putting more in the table so in each of the countries you had a series of processes that Gordon crane calls political mobile itical centralization economic regimentation and thought control now let's just think about those for a minute political centralization the end of democratic politics really the end of real politics for a while central government's taking more and more and more authority in 1916 in England and England had together with France the greatest tradition of civil rights anywhere they passed an act called the defence of the realm act and according to that act if I gave the kind of speech I'm giving today I could have been put in prison for defeatism okay although I don't know that I would have been against the continuation of the war at that point whatsoever so much had already been cost how can you stop without winning how can you possibly cut it off again all men between ages 15 and 65 in Germany having to serve the country the government taking more and more and more power economic regimentation one of the reasons the Russian Revolution occurred is because it was one of the countries that did the least well in political centralization and economic regimentation munitions czars came into being Valter rationale in Germany Albert Thomas and France one industrialist the other a socialist both doing the same thing David Lloyd George a radical politician in England getting the sinews of all domestic power for economic productivity as they possibly could in their hands and telling you what to produce and where to get it and for how much end of the liberal economy thought-control massive massive massive propaganda truth became lies massive massive the enemy is no longer another European who may have visited Paris the enemy is a hung the enemy is a kraut the enemy is an animal the men in the trenches knew better but enforced enthusiasm to get people to pay for all the pain that they were experiencing the end of truth truth and lie lost their valence people lost the capacity to tell one from the other political centralization economic regimentation thought control put them together and what do we have we have the capacity for the development of the totalitarian state these are models of government and we all know that models that are tried do not disappear once they're tried they become more reasonable thereafter when they already been tried before especially if they have been successful before liberal democratic debate constitutional rule normal processes largely put aside and of course the more dictatorial the regime was in the beginning the more those processes were put aside so this whole business of the war behind the war itself has a meaning of its own and it is the further demise of 19th century liberalism the further demise of the individual the further demise a free society on one level or the other during these kind of times of crisis which never fully goes away well let's stop and look at some of the other changes that occurred as a result of the war and as a result of the war behind the war and let's start with some of the structural changes and territorial changes that took place and ask ourselves what do they mean and I almost shouldn't do this too much because some of you many of you may be attending the lecture I give tomorrow and the two are going to flow one into the other and I don't want too much of it to be repetitive because when you tell the story of the origins of World War two you're telling the story they've effects of World War one they flow into each other the easiest changes to see other than just death doubled by the flu epidemic by the way of 1918 1919 killed as many people as during the war okay are the demise of Empires and that's why we've got these two maps together what's differ about these maps where okay alright so Russia is larger here right here it's one seven one six two the globe here it's maybe one seventh of the globe Russia's larger the Russian Empire collapses it's the first to go that's the Russian Revolution the first revolution in March of 1918 or rather 1917 the second revolution in November of 1917 the Russian Empire collapses okay what else is different yeah Austria the austro-hungarian Empire where is it I don't see it I'm harder you know I I don't see well at all but is this Austin is this the austro-hungarian Empire oh I'm sorry other map all right the austro-hungarian Empire in 1914 fifty three million people more people than France more people than Britain more people than Italy gone it explodes at the end of the war and what you have is 9 million Austrians nine million or so Hungarians a new Czech state a new Polish state changed a new Yugoslavia changed territorial structures everywhere in central Eastern Europe so the Second Empire the austro-hungarian Empire collapses the German Empire collapses as a result of the Treaty of Versailles where is it let's call the Ottoman Empire over here it includes all this stuff down here right and over here it's called perky what's a turkey okay what happened to the Empire four empires are destroyed four Empire's collapse in a two-year period and instead you have what is sometimes called the balkanization of Eastern Europe right here you have five great powers one two three four five one two three four five okay six Italy was the sixth by by by mutual lying it was not really Italy was not really a great power but it had a great history so they allowed it to be a great power which made the Italians misbehave very very badly and their desire to be a great power made them enter the war in 1915 and that cost them three-quarters of a million dead and the million and a half wounded and that gave them Mussolini Italy was quite fine in 1914 the last thing Italy needed is world war Wang okay at least the Spanish had the capacity to stay out of the war right but everybody was offering Italy more territory so Italy came in and lost 40 years of her history as a result of doing so uh here you've got a vacuum of power in the East how would you like to be polish about 30 million 33 million people stuck between Bolshevik Russia and Germany and both of them want part of your territory okay this is the balkanization of Eastern Europe inherently unstable regardless of how it was going to happen Germany was going to take back some of that territory that lost and regardless of how it was going to happen Russia was going to take back some of that territory it had lost the only thing that could real they have helped to stabilize this in some serious way would have been what how could this have been stabilized who had the capacity to perhaps stabilize it pardon us us us us we weren't ready that's the marshal we weren't ready we believed even later that our entrance in the war oh we could have this that is counterfactual history it is fun and he has written a book on that also this guy you know every time I go to sleep he writes a book this is Niall Ferguson fer G Uson and he has actually written a book on counterfactual history and he actually argues well there is a debate between these two monsters as to what would have been better and and Ferguson has this debate within himself I don't want to get into it now but maybe later we can of what would it have been better except that the Germany of of Kaiser Wilhelm by 1918 already had enlarged appetite one of the developments during the war that occurred because of the intensity of it is that instead of having small war goals they all got fat fat stomachs and they all raised their goals Germany's goal then became virtually all of middle Europe the annexation of Belgium the annexation of the whole French coast England would have become an appendage of Germany with that kind of economic might the Germans could have taken apart the British Empire they could have out built them in navies they would have caught them and they would have paid so it might have been better than World War - okay you will you wouldn't have had a Hitler wouldn't have had a Hitler but but it would have been a draconian piece how do we know that we know that because of the peace they imposed on the Russians and at brest-litovsk in which they took virtually half of all that was there today good wonderful because it was a different Germany and there was a Bismarck okay and this mark had limited goals and limited aims because Bismarck understood that if Germany got too strong and threatened all of the others sooner or later what would happen is all of the others would come together and destroy Germany and make her pay and that's what they finally did when Germany went over the line far far far over the line so that was one one of the reasons and secondly Germany wasn't even thinking that way they had they had limited aims at that point very very limited aims different concept the last third of the 19th century changed a great deal of perception and culture psychology and and it just wasn't in the cards at that point and Bismarck himself was the first one to say we can go just so far another question you had a Kaiser in Germany you have a czar in Russia you have an emperor in austria-hungary and you had a sultan in the Ottoman Empire and they're all gone right so the monarchical governments lifted them yes does that is that part of what creates the instability in me I it is part of what creates the instability but the monarchical governments do not perform well during the war they end up losing the war and therefore they end up collapsing they wouldn't have collapsed that they hadn't lost okay and monarchy is is can be as it marks the end of monarchy and it marks the end of aristocracy as as really the the the peak of what it meant to be civil war was caused by some of the conflicting interests of the monarch it was but it was also caused by the conflicting interests of democratic states France and England so I wouldn't call it a monarchy at that point not you know but but they all could be equally dangerous it's just that if you get a bad monarch it's more dangerous much more dangerous because the most important thing about democracy is is the balance of power is so very very very important the balance of power is just radically important and having three branches of government and a free press and all of those other things helps make us free or somewhat free no one has ever free we're all limited by what we have but yes Larry this is a dear dear dear friend of al genndy who was my mentor at Lafayette and my second father and and one of his dearest friends is Larry Houston from Philadelphia how many of you knew al Genda mean okay you're fortunate you said earlier that that was the collapse of the but the Russian Empire and I don't know whether were dead power really has any it's not their being your value for that matter but okay to me that was the collapse of the European segment correct other Russia rank are correct when when the Soviet Union collapsed more of the the Empire correct with it and a lot of the employees still there those all those ego states that yes yes yes emperors right decided they wanted to attach are still where the still attacks yes absolutely and the end and the Soviets rebuild the ramp higher after World War two and they expand that after World War two and they maintain it for 4050 years yes absolutely absolutely any uh this this might be a good time to stop for any more comments or questions that you have i yes go ahead yes what somebody made over dukedoms and it's a small key they were defeated in war Bismarck defeated them in 1866 in a war against the austro-hungarian or what was then the Austrian Empire became the austro-hungarian Empire and then in defeating France German nationalism came together they all continued to exist they all still had some power but in World War one they lost their power the central government took all power and these these separate places you know the Bavarian army still existed but the German army told the Bavarian army what to do and then afterwards that changes when the German Republic it's no longer that same kind of federal system so those things all collapse yes yes I there's another rap here we just don't see it oh no we're not going to put that up okay that's big yeah Italy was about 15 different colors and that's the work of cavour between 1855 and 1861 and then when in Cobourg a volley Mancini but then when the austro-prussian war takes place Lombardy and Benicia go to italy and when the franco-prussian war takes place rome goes to Italy so that so Italy becomes a unified country that way there are all under monarchies and dukedoms don't don't ever forget those Duke times they're adorable okay all right that's a catalyst not a cause okay key causes of World War one gonna take me way off target but that's okay militarism extreme militarism meaning that war becomes war vitalism become very very much a part of modernist culture by the 1890s they haven't had a real good war in a while they kind of forgot what it was like and the power of the military and in each of the countries but especially in Germany and in Austria and Russia also in England and France but less so so militarism is one extreme cause of a naval race nationalism is one as one extreme cause okay imperialism works both ways it led to much increased tensions but it was also a safety valve and since you were taking away territory that didn't belong to anyone anyway except that people who happen to live there and you took that from them so that was a that was a football game that was a soccer match elsewhere it could be a safety valve but it also caused much much more tension the Alliance system which tightened things up really really badly the whole nature of European culture which was almost schizophrenic by World War one and got and was uglier after the war than haven't been before the war we have in documents in these books now that we didn't have when you went to to school but I used three different documents one is French kids another was Italian artists the thirds of German general they're all saying the same thing you're not a man if you haven't go on the war and war is inherently good and war creates civilization so the real civilized person is the one of those and all these guys are agreeing wanted okay whereas the pacifist movements are weak and disorganized etc etc and then a very very importantly very importantly the short war illusion the idea that the war was going to be short and cost-effective so if it was a mistake could be a small mistake okay so instead of looking at the American Civil War which is what this was a European civil war okay instead of looking at the American Civil War they looked at the austro-prussian war six weeks the franco-prussian war six months each country was certain it would win each military was certain it would win and then there were also the timetables Russia was rearming from the defeat on the hands of the Japanese in 1905 the German military was afraid of Russia's rearming and most importantly in the Balkans Serbia was threatening the structural legitimacy of the austro-hungarian Empire and trying to destabilize the austro-hungarian Empire it would be equivalent of Mexico trying to destabilize okay 50 years from now Mexico says wait a minute Arizona and Nevada and New Mexico in California that's 80% ours they want to come home oh well that's what that's what this was this is all Slovak in here and they want to build a large Slovak state which is what happens over here okay and then they love each other that when the Empire collapses the Russian Empire collapses they kill each other again okay yeah there's an excuse that the killing avoid ferdinand was like a terroristic exactly that's the what was invested yes yes yes yeah so I have so much like today mm-hmm you know why that's why you just were terrorists because we haven't changed much and that's where this guy starts his book and that's where Freud writing about World War one starts his book and what Freud says he wrote a book he wrote an essay in 1915 Lord an essay in 1915 talking about the way in which this would destabilize and destroy European civilization by taking away ripping off all the sublimation of our instinct that we allow and produce in order to survive as a species showing how the war ripped all that away and then he concludes in reality our fellow citizens have not sunk so low as we feared because they had never risen so high as we believe okay and we are I like my loss option sometimes more than some of the folks I mean I'm enough of an optimist to believe that we can try to be better okay but will we be better it's our duty I'll say it but then again I'm just traditional bourgeois guy these guys are all saying no your duty is to shoot for the stars if you have to trample over people good the answer could be no one or the answer could be in some sense the United States did and all of that would be based on your projection as to whether or not there had to be a World War two after World War one and they're there I don't know of any of you got the pmh bell book the 30 Years War the one thing I disagree with it with two things actually without an Adolf Hitler there probably would not have been a world war two at least not when in Halla took place sometimes a particular leader is simply there who has enough will and enough sickness and enough vision and enough capability to make things happen and becomes one of those world to star Arkel figures lenin was also a world historical figure the Bolsheviks might not have come into power without lemon because unlike Hitler he knew when to stop okay he said you can make revolution their peace or or rather war revolution or war you can't have both so if we don't take the peace Germany's going to give to us we'll lose our revolution and he was the minority but he stuck with it and forced them to go along with it and later when the whole revolution was coming apart at the seams he steps back and he says we had a loosen up on the people a little bit okay not that he wasn't cruel and perverse in many many ways but he at least knew there were certain limits so no Hitler no world war two no depression no world war two no depression no Hitler and everybody is still conflicted about why the depression happened and was it a result of World War one or was it just one of those cyclical things like what we are still at the end right now so that's where that 31 30 years thing falls down but let me give you a to of my last favorite quotes though one is by Barbara Tuchman and one is by Raymond they're wrong Raymond are all says the principal causes of the Second World War resulted from the prolongation of the first war and above all of the Russian Revolution the fascist reaction in Italy in Germany okay Tuchman the deadlock of the war fixed by the Marne determined the future course of the war the terms of the peace and the shape of the interwar period and the conditions of the second round they're both kind of saying to you that this having happened that was likely that the next and the whole series of things would have happened except adolf hitler really really should have been dead okay may he he was a warrior he was a runner he took risks statistically the fact he survived is incredible was part of all the way through he was all the way through from 1915 on the guy enlisted he volunteered yeah the worst Flanders Flanders and he loved it right yeah he loved it he loved that he got gassed he loved it okay yes he didn't like too much that really threw him off when he got gas because he was temporarily blinded also so this was really really a disaster huh not a disaster the disaster wasn't even get gassed more the gas didn't work and the depression so the two missing links are Hitler in the depression without those two missing links World War two becomes very unlikely at different United States World War two becomes very unlikely but we weren't the different United States at that time and we were the only ones who could have stabilized this thing more instead what we did is not under the League of Nations and not ratify the guarantee treaty we had promised to France which allowed France to force Germany to continue to pay reparations but don't feel so badly because the Germans the French paid reparations and out of the war of 1870 also the German reparations were a pittance compared to what they took from Russia and they only paid about ten percent of it at most okay what they did is they set their printing presses loose to pay the reparations they inflated their own currency and destroyed their an own middle class in order to pay the French off also the war was financed by loans which causes inflation products were reduced which causes inflation so the the economic rubble of Germany after the war was horrendous especially for the middle class doesn't Churchill say that Britain could stop World War two by standing up - well first you read that book we're gonna discuss that tomorrow okay he says it he says it yes spirit do I believe it yes yeah with the Weimar Republic and the German inflation was that deliberate was that a deliberate attempt to devalue the currency so they could just pay them with a lot of the currency had already been to valued okay but during the war the currency was devalued like the Italian currency by the war itself then they further devalue that yes separations were in German marks yes yeah that's right so they wanted to pay him off in cheap marks but if you believe the Germany couldn't pay it off that reparations they could have paid that reparations it wasn't a good thing to do it was stupid it was never gonna be applied because they were still been paying until 1988 okay psychologically it was impossible for that to have been applied but Versailles again the effect of the war the impact of the war the Treaty of Versailles is the result of the nature of the war Germany already showed what kind of treaty was going to be imposed if Clemenceau didn't impose the severe treaty on germany he would have been hung by his own people marshal folks thought he had caused another war by by backing down from Wilson no no no no and in well they did him yeah they think they cut him back what he really wanted was a separate Rhineland territory in between France and Germany you have Belgium so he wanted Belgium and another Rhineland territory instead this became a demilitarized zone but they actually wanted a separate Rhineland state and that's where we'll go back once on tomorrow into this little discussion here so they one of the separate Rhineland state and they wanted they wanted to keep Germany down they wanted two things the French they wanted security and they wanted reparations one of the major reasons they didn't feel secure is we didn't rat by our security treaty to which the Britons said if the Americans don't ratify the security treaty we don't ratify the security treaty sorry to which the French say then we got to keep the Germans down which they do for five years so I don't really think World War one ended with the Treaty of Versailles I think World War one ended with the Locarno treaty in 1925 and the juror and the and the German entry into the League of Nations in 1926 and and by ended I mean ended in a serious sense except that these books and this is what's changed the most in the last 20 years these books and a book by ex teens the rites of spring tell us that the war didn't end because the war ended entered into modern memory in a total way and by the end of the 1920s every single village in France had a War Memorial and I don't know how many of you have been to France how many of you have gone into the countryside and you know you what do you see when you go to the central central of a central part of any little town see world war memorials you see a city hall to see a church and in France by far okay that sure yeah that's what you see yeah they gave up and they still lost a couple hundred thousand trips so they really did you know and they but they I agree they gave up they shouldn't be mentioned in the same name as England in World War two these books emphasize the long term psycho cultural impact of World War one okay these books emphasize the psycho cultural impact and the socio-cultural impact of World War one and they're the single most important word is dislocation destabilization of cultures of psyches of values of the meaning of the word truth of minds of beings so that something like what Adolf Hitler stood for could make sense to a lot of people or something like what Mussolini stood for could make sense to a lot of people now remember Hitler how to wait till 1933 in Mussolini's case it was 1922 so the Italians fell much much much more easily by the time of the Treaty of Versailles virtually every one of these countries had a democratic constitution not the Soviet Union by 1938 democracy was clearly the minority form of government every where in Europe except in Scandinavia in Britain the Irish didn't think it was but in Britain in France okay in Switzerland and in Czechoslovakia every single one of these other countries had one form of dictatorship or another so powerful was the political destabilization from World War one yes one orange spot on a map that was not part of one of the defeated powers is the Republic of Ireland do you see that as that fact this being in any way directly or indirectly related to World War one or independent of England almost had a civil war in 1914 they had passed the Irish autonomy Act a third time it was going to be law the Protestants were armed to the teeth in Ireland there was probably going to be a civil Edward Carson there was probably going to be a civil war the single most important thing that David Lloyd George did and he was a great war leader equal to Churchill in World War two but the single greatest thing he did after the war was over singing Irish independence so one of the other aspects of this and I have a goose gander a thing in my in the talk when I finish it in a regular way is that you know heads or tails which are you heads or tails one of the things that this war did also is radically accelerate the process of decolonization worldwide okay here was the superior great white race committing suicide and what Europeans lost is both the power and even more importantly the will to power to control the rest of the world and so you have revolutionaries occurring everywhere getting worse during the 1920s and 1930s finally within 20 years after World War Two all coming into fruition and that was the acceleration of history that might have taken another century or more to take place for those people they would never agree to this but it might even better because in some cases a slight ler a slightly longer European stay might have left slightly more stability afterwards I remember when my mentor and graduate school said that and I yelled at him it's a terrible thing to say and it might have been true it's a terrible thing to say because how do you how do you decide where other people's what what that's going to mean but the radical weakening of Europe made it possible for the whole third world to develop and emancipate itself so one's loss was another's gain in in that particular way yes judge Kelleher class of 73 no but you can ask me I used to teach the Christ to teach a seminar in the Middle East and I got so sick of it because I got so sick and depressed from it that I actually gave it up even though I wasn't really an expert in it but I became an expert in it we needed it I taught it and then I taught something light for the last 10 15 years the Holocaust so I exchanged teaching the Middle East which is live people and began to teach the Holocaust about 10 12 years ago which has given me I must tell you incredible joy because the kind of students would take that course are just absolutely outstanding and it's totally multicultural and it is absolutely magnificent as painful as it is but the Middle East is more painful to me okay because it's here and now and it doesn't it doesn't move much but if you have questions please ask I know the book but I haven't read it the winters starts with before Balfour and then just breaks down how they the Allies planted the three funds of the one Saudi Arabian guy is the three new kings of the Middle East yeah it's been downhill ever since yeah yeah and it was almost bound to be because there was no political stabilization there at all anyway and what do you have here you have essentially 16th century cultures entering the twentieth century with no time at all how long does it take to go from the pre French Revolution the medieval world to the post trench revolution you got the Renaissance you got the Reformation you have the Scientific Revolution in the 17th century you have the Enlightenment in the 18th century none of those processes took place in the Middle East none okay and they barely took place in Russia until the Enlightenment there's no scientific revolution there's just Peter the Great okay so you're you're hoping to catapult a 15th century civilization into the 20th century when you've already inflamed it by conquering it and until World War one it's still virtually all nominally at least in the hands of the Ottoman Empire which at least is Islamic okay but anymore go ask yes no okay I want to I want to read something and then just give you time to ask more questions how many of you have read all Quiet on the Western Front okay wonderful if you haven't please do please please do now if you really want to test yourself read souls in it'sin August 1914 it's torturous it's 800 pages but it reads like All Quiet on the Western Front okay and typically a Russian book would take on 800 pages to tell what remark but it's it's magnificent it's magnificent so this as Paul Baumer in the end of all Quiet on the Western Front the main character he says had we returned home in 1916 out of the suffering and the strength of our experiences we might have been least a storm now if we go back we will be weary broken burnout rootless and without hope we will not be able to find our way anymore and Men will not understand us for the generation that grew up before us though it has passed these years with us here already had a home in a calling now it will return to its old occupations the war will be forgotten not really but and the generation that has grown up after us will be strange to us push us aside we will be superfluous even to ourselves we will grow older a few will adapt themselves some others will merely submit and most will be bewildered the years will pass by and in the end we shall fall into ruin that's the lost generation he wrote another book called the road back the result of which was there was no road back but here's another voice and this is the work of moses x times the rites of spring you really want to suffer that's difficult jana read it the kids love it now many of them think it's the best book in the course is that possible yeah no they my essay question requires it now though it says comment on Eckstein's the rites of spring it's about the whole nature of the impact of the war on culture especially German culture so somebody else is writing and he says I had the good fortune to fight in the first two offensives and the last these became the most tremendous impressions of my life tremendous because now for the last time as in 1914 the fight lost the character of Defense and assumed that of attack the sigh of relief passed through the trenches and the dugouts of the German army when at length and after more than three years endurance in the enemy hell the dead day of retribution cane once again the victorious battalions cheered and hung the last reads of immortal laurel on their banners rent by the storm of victory once again the songs of the fatherland roar to the heavens along the endless marching columns and for the last time the Lord's grace smiled on his ungrateful children so the majority of people felt like but a large minority of people this is mail bomb can scarcely was a good word for malevolence now what happens in their twenties thanks is that the people who believe the way were marked believes are pitted against the people who believe the way Hitler movies a couple of questions couple more questions yes and then we'll go back over the liar yeah yeah yeah was his influence so naive and idealistic that it corrupted the peace process and the United States not really I think his his his politics at home was worse he should have brought lodge and the others in with him he should have done a better job of politicking at home the Treaty of Versailles is a product of the war itself there couldn't have been a much different treaty that new macmillan book this thick peacemaking 1919 even she says it wasn't so bad of a treaty considering the nature of the war the Germans had won the treaty have would have been much much much more severe Americans had not balanced out the French the treaty would have been much much more severe one of the problems was and this is the genius the malevolent genius of the German generals Ludendorff and Hindenburg as they sued for peace before the armies were on German territory so the Germans never believed they had lost it had been stolen from them by communists socialists and Jews well Wilson wasn't a stroke I think we're after yeah back from the tree again so mrs. Wilson became right so I mean like that there was no chance for Wilson to to sell the well he was a casualty of the war because he tried to sell the treaty with that trip across the country and he killed himself basically he gave it every last ounce of strength that he had and so you know canes calling him blind and dumb Don Quixote playing games you know it's that's means is correct is there was no economic planning for the rehabilitation of Europe until 1924 who's involved in it America 1928 whose involvement in America the doors and the young plan American involvement 1924 1928 we were the only ones capable of providing some economic stability when we go down they all go down Larry yeah Irene yes yeah turnips if they could get Turner's home front was starving that's bizarre because the Russians took them so that could be a mistake 1924 I would say the Ukraine should be yellow okay the Ukraine the Ukraine and the poles had a war the Russians and the poles had a war the Russians finally took the Ukraine and I think by 1924 that was already the end of 1924 that would have shifted over and the 24 would have shifted yes you mentioned that forget foreign Germany listen mind camp based on the idea that Germany was was piece that that is that's correct that is that those are his assumptions okay his assumption is that Germany is blamed for the war but what Germans really really were saddened by is that they lost because they didn't know they were losing as late as 1918 even politicians were being lied to so badly that they thought they were still winning the war and they almost were the German offensive of March of 1918 almost was successful then you get the Second Battle of the Marne and there they're stopped but the German people was totally unprepared for the loss psychologically the truth and falsehood were just upside down so um since they were not occupied directly by the Allies Jews they didn't realize how badly they had lost with every month that followed another two hundred thousand American troops were landing and the Allies were eating hot meals and the German soldiers themselves like the people on the homefront we're virtually starving by that time okay and they they had run out of everything they had run out of everything so Hitler one of hundreds of thousands of people who felt the same way hundreds of thousands just as Mussolini in Italy except he was more extreme yes and not just the Nazi Party there were tens and tens and tens of parties like the Nazi Party in Germany after the war groupings all over the place these freak or rogue groupings you know people still kept their weapons in many cases the army withdrew intact they didn't surrender yes oh I'm going to have this young youngster mr. Weissman well not so you Jenny more it it had shrunken during the 19th century it found its hero Camelot a Turk and he beat them and he saved the Empire or he saved Turkey and then he tried to secularize it and as we speak it is becoming less secular well they got monarchies because they were given territory by the British the British or the French or they were already there in clans so they already existed okay and they were already under the power of the Ottoman Empire as was all of North Africa they all had fiefdom they were Bay's and days and Sultan's these are names of that's like saying monarch okay in in in in these civilizations and what happens is that this whole area is taken by the British and the French and the Italians from the 1880s up to 1914 then they take the Middle East afterwards as the Turkish Empire collapses there yeah yeah part of that very very slightly part of it yes yeah much more independent of clans large extended clans yes yes I once read that the politicians in Germany were considering negotiating for peace but Krups was making so much money by supplying the artillery that they persuaded them to continue the war is that true uh you would have to look to a book called the guns of crop by Fritz Stern for that answer now Krupp was certainly making lots of money and there were politicians in germany who were interested in and trying to sue for peace just as there were by 1917 in France and in England the problem was much much worse than crop or any other single entity like that the problem was on what terms the war was still being fought on Belgian and French soil how could they have created a peace after by that point you have millions and millions of dead and disabled people okay and by that point the the political leaders were terrified that if they began to negotiate they could never get the troops to fire a shot again so the crops may have had some input into that but ultimately the generals were more powerful than the crops during the war but I may be wrong and you would find that from fritzsche turn in the guns of Krupp great yes many many they're out there even mutinies in Germany call it the silent mutiny people started going home in 1918 you got to read things like this and the Eckstein's they go into great great great detail and no one still has the answer those are the kinds of questions that people ask today and a lot of it is in this book also one of the things they say is that the immediate trench and platoon became such a surrogate family that as you can see in remark the soldiers are more at home with their brothers in the trenches than with their sisters in the homefront and by the that did that it they it's not that they they're they're buying out of the war as war but into their need to do their duty to help the brother so a lot of it is honor a lot of it is patriotism a lot of it is what if I don't then I get shot maybe but a lot of it is I have to do my bit because my brethren are doing their bit and what this guy shows which is incredible Wilfred Owen one of the greatest dies last days of the war one of the greatest British poets of the 20th century he fights to get back on the homefront not because he wants to fight he wants to be with his boys wants to be with you Band of Brothers it's it's it's a real question you know it's nationalism does not have the same exact intensity that it had at this time the belief in anything does not have the exact same intensity that it had at that time the information a lot of the information is is there and and the state doesn't have the same level of control over our minds as it had at that time but my guess is that given the species that we are boy it seems like those Islamic terrorists are hanging in pardon the towel heads there that they're hanging in and then we got to hang in for the long run also and it's a different kind of war and that duration is going to be a long long long time and we have different kinds of wars at this point but would our would our what if we got into a situation like that as Americans we've never had to do that since the Civil War we did it during the Civil War more than any other time but it's not been on our turf it's not been on our territory so we don't know we don't know if we have the capability of doing what the Russians have done so many times but they've done it because there were howitzers pointed at the back of their head I mean you know Stalin killed anyone who just wouldn't go forward with yes i-i-i think that that is true and one of the greatest tributes ever paid to me was by a Vietnam vet taking my course on World War one who said to me that I got it right okay and that at that moment in that class for weather reason that answer was you know once you're there everything else changes and and the the beforehand yes Larry I'm sorry I've tried to reading all this stuff I was trying to figure out doesn't have any lessons for today yeah it seems to me that they're only bad lessons you said earlier well that they couldn't get out because they can't stop because they have no choices yeah and if any of what we've got right now right I don't know what is we can't stop because it's politically impossible and stuff and we have no choices I used to think that I knew the answers to most historical questions and I will tell you with great sadness and much humility that I no longer believe I have those answers right in in the world that we're in right now I am at a loss and I have great difficulty determining what I really think is correct or incorrect in the kind of situations who are now in and I'm not usually someone who has problems making choices so I will I will tell you that this this this world that we live in and really missing I think in terms of tomorrow's comments one lesson to be learned is always always consider the worst case scenario always be aware of a worst case scenario it doesn't mean you can avoid it but you must think about it these people should have thought about their worst case scenarios more carefully war was likely in 1914 and 1915 and 1916 war was like did they figure out what these losses were you know the very first battery losing 60,000 people I know it's not you know I mean after the war they didn't know that was all censored it was censored they really didn't know they just knew there were less young men around oh no oh no oh no they were censored technology then the combatants it's to a war of attrition yes it was right and Western whoa okay yes I'm speaking of the Western fight with the the advent of the machine gun and rifle artillery barbed wire barbed wire gasps all right that's enough the lacked the these are essentially weapons which pay defensive geller and a war of attrition and that the role of armor and airpower was just in its infancy during World War one essentially invented the world war one right was this foreseeable in any way by the by the generals or the military people at that time were they still they were so full of themselves those crackers were so bullish and they all had the same feeling forward anyone who talked like that would have been considered of I can't say it literally literally they wouldn't they wouldn't listen to anyone who would who would attack those beliefs will power the greatest French philosopher at that time was named avi Berg Sol how did France win at the Battle of the Marne Joan of Arc won the Battle of the Marne now Bergson was Jewish so what's he got to do with Joan of Arc he's French okay so they heard from him Joan of Arc so what does that mean the will of Joan of Arc impregnated in the soul of these French youth allowed us to stop the hon when people are thinking like that now that this guy is a very civilized and brilliant human being I mean this is good enough yeah what kind of putting together of that I thought in the previous point where we answer that question that here can answer whether Palestine is real problem will ever be solved yeah and how then one of my professors when I was in college once in off Malden at his house once said that something completely different was he paused and he said man is not a completely rational animal that's right that's exactly right and World War one radicalized the irrationality by stripping away the sublimated portions of our character and they were all up top okay ready to explode with unemployment with inflation with fear with polarization okay let's stop

Channel: Lafayette College

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Keywords: World, War, WWI, warfare, soldiers, civilians, Army, Marines, Air, Force, Robert, Weiner, Alumni, Summer, College

Id: 7CwA_3Oo7qc

Length: 96min 0sec (5760 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 30 2010