|
|
General Survey:
The World Prior to World War
One
At the time World War 1 broke out, no general war had
been fought in Europe since 1815.
There had been many revolts as well as a number of short wars, the latter
being fought mostly with small professional armies, which did not seriously
affect the life of the countries involved; the casualties were not excessive.
Among these were the three wars that occurred between Russia and Turkey
(1828-1829; 1853-1856: the Crimean War; 1877-1878); and three wars among
the Balkan states (Serbia and Bulgaria, 1885-1886; Greece and Turkey,
1897; Balkan states and Turkey, 1912-1913). Three wars with Austria
were required for the unification of Italy (1848-1849; 1859; 1866);
and three wars were also needed for the unification of Germany (1864;
1866; 1870-1871). The Russo-Japanese War lasted somewhat longer than
most of these conflicts, from February 1904 to September 1905; it came
to an end because Japan had run out of money, and Russia was faced with
revolution. There had also been such international conflicts as the
Spanish-American War of 1898 and the South African (Boer) War of 1899
- 1902.
The most destructive war of the 19th century was the
American Civil War of 1861-1865, which cost the lives of considerably
more than half a million soldiers (out of a population of less than
32 million) and stopped only when the South was completely exhausted.
From a military point of view, it was the first modern war. Railways
were used extensively for the transport of troops and supplies, and
communications were maintained by military telegraphs. Rifled cannon
replaced the conventional smoothbore guns; breech-loading repeating
rifles firing metallic cartridges took the place of muzzle-loading muskets.
Machine guns, wire entanglements, hand grenades, land mines, and trenches
proved themselves formidable in defense, as was shown by the Confederate
Army in front of Richmond. Observation of the battlefield was undertaken
by balloons, and signaling by flags and lamps was highly developed.
At sea the first duels were fought between ironclads. But European observers
were not impressed by the volunteer, essentially civilian armies which
fought the war; the chief of the Prussian General Staff, Field Marshal
Count Helmuth von Moltke, referred to them as "armed mobs chasing
each other around the country, from whom nothing could be learned."
As Lynn Montross points out in War Through the Ages (3d ed., pp. 590-592,
New York 1960), while the generalship of Thomas J. (Stonewall) Jackson
may have been much admired, European students of war did not deduce
from the American experience that modem weapons gave the defensive a
strong advantage over the offensive, and that a war fought with all
the resources of modem industry would be a longdrawn-out affair.
In the century after Waterloo, Europe had been transformed
politically by the universal adoption of constitutional governments
(even Russia and Turkey had parliaments) and by the widespread, though
not universal, provision for manhood suffrage. In greater or less degree
all governments were responsive to public opinion, and they could hope
to wage war successfully - only if they enjoyed popular support.
During this same period the economy of Europe was transformed
even more by the Industrial Revolution-that is, by the use of iron and
steel in the manufacture of machines and the use of the steam engine
(and later electricity) to provide power for operating the machines.
By 1914 the machine age had spread to Russia, though not on so extensive
a scale as in western Europe. An important accompaniment of this economic
revolution was the enormous increase in population: that of the British
Isles, for example, rose from 15 million in 1815 to 45 million in 1914;
that of Germany, from 25 million to 65 million; and that of Russia (including
Russian Poland and Finland), from 45 million to 178 million. These millions
could be fed only by vastly improving the methods of agriculture or
by importing food. From the military point of view, much larger armies
could be raised than in previous ages and, after the Franco-Prussian
War of 1870-1871, which seemed to demonstrate the superiority of the
German armies raised by conscription, the principle of universal military
service was adopted by all the Continental great powers. Every ablebodied
man was required to serve a period of years with the colors; after this
active service he passed into the reserves, but he could be recalled
to arms in the event of war. In 1914 the standing armies of France and
Germany totaled about 800,000 men each. Including trained reserves,
France had 4,017,000 men and was able during the war to mobilize another
4,393,000; the corresponding figures for Germany were 4,500,000 and
6,500,000, respectively. The numbers in proportion to total population
were lower in Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Russia, while Great Britain,
which had not yet adopted conscription, maintained a small volunteer
army and had no system of reserves except for retired soldiers.
When war came in 1914, mobilization was ordered instantly.
The war was fought by the entire manhood of the belligerent countries.
Although the levy en masse had been employed to a considerable extent
during the wars of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic period,
the effect on national life was nothing like what took place from 1914
to 1918. In the earlier conflicts industry in the modem sense hardly
existed, and the peasants were able to supply enough food for both armies
and civil populations. In World War I the withdrawal of millions of
men from agriculture and industry greatly reduced production. At all
costs the soldiers had to be fed, clothed, and armed. As the war progressed,
the state was forced increasingly to take over the management of the
national economy. After the armies had been supplied with what they
needed, what was left of both food and manufactured goods was rationed
to the civilian population, which, as time went on, suffered privations
of all kinds. The war, in short, became an all-out effort not only on
the part of the military forces, but on that of the civilian front as
well.
From a technical point of view, World War I was the war of the internal
combustion engine, which was used in the trucks that conveyed troops
and supplies from railheads to the front; and in airplanes, tanks, and
submarines, all of which were employed on a practical basis for the
first time. Another technical innovation was wireless telegraphy, which
was used at sea to communicate with ships and on land to transmit orders.
In Russia morale collapsed in 1917, and revolution resulted.
In Germany and AustriaHungary morale did not break until the armies
were defeated in the field, but the fighting qualities of the armies
deteriorated in 1918, as supplies at the front ran short and the soldiers
learned of the ever-growing distress at home. If Britain, France, and
Italy were able to hold out until victory had been won, it was because
they received help on an enormous scale from the United States for both
military and civilian needs. ( This help was made possible through the
defeat of the German submarine campaign by the adoption of the convoy
system.) Thus the war was not a mere contest of governments, but a struggle
of peoples.
Each people entered the conflict with a deep conviction
that it had been attacked by its enemies, and this conviction helped
to keep up the courage necessary to see the war through. Not only must
the enemy be thoroughly beaten, but guarantees must be obtained that
he could never repeat his aggression. Furthermore, instead of the short
war that was generally expected, the struggle lengthened into years
and the casualties became almost unbearable, so that both governments
and peoples came to feel that the terms of peace to be imposed on the
defeated enemy must be extremely harsh. In December 1916, during a lull
in military operations, Germany and its allies proposed peace discussions;
Britain, France, and their allies not only refused any discussion, but
in January 1917 announced terms of peace that could be realized only
if the other side were completely defeated. Germany's terms, which were
not made public but were communicated to the president of the United
States, were equally severe. The few voices that were raised then and
later in favor of a compromise peace got no hearing. The war had to
continue until victory was won. Early in 1917 the fabric of European
society had not been severely shaken; the emperors of Germany, Austria-Hungary,
and Russia and the sultan of Turkey still sat on their thrones. The
world would probably have been spared much agony if peace could have
been made at that time, but psychologically this was impossible.
So the war continued until the end of 1918, bringing
in its train the Communist revolution in Russia and the overthrow of
monarchy in Austria-Hungary and Germany. Not only did the house of Habsburg
lose its throne, but the territory of Austria-Hungary was divided among
six states consisting of the principal peoples that had been held together
in the monarchy for several centuries: German, Magyar, Polish, Czechoslovak,
Yugoslav, and Rumanian. When peace was made after the war, the new states
were recognized by the victorious Allies. This doctrine of self-determination
was also applied in the areas in western Russia that split off after
the Communist revolution. The most important single consequence of the
war was probably the recognition of the principle of nationality on
the broadest possible scale. For the first time in European history,
almost every people in Europe was able to establish an independent government
and a unified state. In most cases, it was not possible to draw frontiers
without leaving minorities on the wrong side of the line, but the number
of such minorities after the war was much smaller than it had been before
1914. The establishment of the succession states of Austria-Hungary
has often been criticized on the ground that they replaced the much
larger economic unit of the former state, but except in minor details
the arrangements made in 1919 survived World War II and, historically
speaking, appear to have justified themselves.
Since the democratic parties had won the war; the world
had supposedly been "made safe for democracy," as President
Woodrow Wilson put it, and after the war a democratic form of government
was adopted in Germany and in most of the countries of central and eastern
Europe. By the 1930's, however, this experiment had failed, and the
new democracies, with the exception of Czechoslovakia, had gone over
to fascism, nazism, or some other form of autocracy or totalitarianism.
This came about because Europe had never recovered from the terrible
losses of the war. Before 1914 the European economy was based on the
gold standard and on an almost complete freedom to export and import
goods except as limited by tariffs. The war almost completely destroyed
this system, which was replaced by managed currencies and by all kinds
of governmental regulations. While a superficial recovery took place
in the 1920's, it depended on American loans, by means of which such
reparations as were paid were financed; when these loans dried up as
a result of the great depression in the United States, European prosperity
also collapsed.
Apart from the material destruction caused by the war
in many parts of Europe, the human losses-at least 10 million men were
killed or missing, and many millions more were wounded -could never
be made good. Not since the Thirty Years' War in the 17th century had
Europe passed through such suffering and horror as in the years 1914-1918.
So it was hoped that World War One had taught mankind a lesson; those
who suffered through it little dreamed that two decades later a second
and even more terrible world war would take place.
|
|
