APEH new ch 17.notebook

APEH new ch 17.notebook

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February 02, 2015

Chapter 17 part IIWorld War I

• The declarations of war were initially met with much popular enthusiasm which was fueled by nationalism. Most believed their side would win and that the war would be over by Christmas. Most, including leaders, did not understand how destructive modern warfare could be.• On the stalemated Western front there was a continuous line of trenches from the North Sea to the Swiss border. Armies in the trenches were subjected to continuous machine gun and artillery fire. Generals periodically ordered offensives, but armies suffered unimaginable and catastrophic casualty levels just to advance a few miles. On the Eastern front Germany was more successful against Russia, but the Germans were unable to concentrate their forces there because of the fighting in the West.• Because of the stalemate the belligerents tried to seek advantages over each other. Each side tried to convince Italy to join it. Italy had initially remained neutral, despite the Triple Alliance. The Allies were able to convince Italy to join their side in 1915 in return for Italia Irredenta and other Austrian and Ottoman territories. The front between Italy and Austria also turned into a bloody stalemate, and the Italian contribution to victory was negligible.


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• Germany used Uboats (submarines) to evade the Allied blockade and to sink Allied ships, hoping to cripple the Allied war effort. The British were especially dependent on supplies from its empire and from the United States. The United States was neutral, but Germany could not trade with it because of the blockade. The Allies grew increasingly dependent on U.S. goods and loans.• By targeting Allied or neutral ships in the Atlantic, Germany risked provoking the United States. For example, the Lusitania, a passenger liner, was sunk in 1915 by a German torpedo with a great loss of civilian lives. President Woodrow Wilson warned the Germans not to target Americans again.• By 1917, however, the Germans, in their desperation to break the stalemate, resumed unrestricted submarine warfare on all ships headed to Allied ports. Wilson responded in April 1917 by requesting that Congress declare war on Germany.• In 1915 the Allies hoped to break the stalemate by landing in the Balkans, capturing Constantinople, and then moving up into Austria. The landing was attempted at Gallipoli, near Constantinople. It failed despite enormous casualties, and was the worst Allied defeat of the war.


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• World War I was a total war, one where all human and economic resources were mobilized in the cause of national survival. Trade, industry, and railroads were placed under direct government management. Even food and civilians were targets of military action. Governments employed propaganda in order to boost morale and industrial and agricultural production and to encourage the sale of bonds. Nationalism was powerful enough that most of Europe's governments were able to retain the loyalty of their populations despite their intense suffering. Governments had to borrow astronomical sums of money and liquidated their foreign investments in order to pay for the war. Allied states mostly borrowed from the United States.• With Russia's revolution and surrender Germany could now concentrate its forces on the Western Front, and prepared its final offensive in the summer of 1918. Millions of fresh U.S. troops, however, tipped the balance in favor of the Allies.• Germany was exhausted, and had no more reserves. Austria's fronts in Italy and the Balkans were also collapsing. The German military had a democratic government formed and the Kaiser abdicated on November 9. Germany became a republic under a government led by the SPD (which feared a communist revolution). The Habsburg emperor was also overthrown in AustriaHungary.


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• Germany surrendered on November 11, 1918. There were no Allied soldiers on German territory, but its army could no longer fight. The military, however, avoided blame in the eyes of many because the new republic had been the one to surrender. Germans assumed that the peace would be mild and based on Wilson's peace terms, the Fourteen Points. Wilson's plan aimed to prevent future wars and a "peace without victors." The Fourteen Points included freedom of navigation, disarmament, open diplomacy, selfdetermination (nations should be independent states), and a collective security organization, the League of Nations, which would replace the alliances.

Paris Peace Conference (19181919)• The Central Powers were not invited. The Allied leaders negotiated the peace treaties among themselves. The Big Four (President Wilson, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau,Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando) made all the critical decisions. • Bolshevik Russia was also excluded because its government remained unrecognized. In fact the Allies were helping the Whites against the Reds in the Russian Civil War. Allied troops from Britain, France, the United States, and Japan occupied various Russian ports to deliver aid.


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• Italy wanted all the territory it had been promised, but its aspirations conflicted with selfdetermination. Britain and France did not accept applying to the principle of selfdetermination to their colonies. Since the Ottoman Empire had been defeated, they in fact planned to enlarge their empires by carving it up among themselves, along with Greece and Italy. Armenians, Kurds, and Jews were also promised their own states in former Ottoman territories.• The most sensitive issue was Germany. France was always going to feel threatened by German power. France, and to a lesser extent, Britain, wanted to punish Germany, render it incapable of fighting another war, and make it pay for the war.• The French were not going to trust in the League's promises of collective security. Wilson refused to leave U.S. troops in Europe. In the end, Wilson got the others to accept the League, but he allowed Germany to be crippled and humiliated.• In Eastern Europe, small, weak states were created based on selfdetermination, but they could not balance the power of Germany and Russia.


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Treaty of Versailles• The peace treaty with Germany was signed in the Hall of Mirrors, where the German Empire had been proclaimed in 1871, in Versailles on June 28, 1919. German diplomats were summoned to sign it, but they could not negotiate any of its provisions.• Germany lost all of its colonies in Africa and the Pacific.• Germany lost territory in Europe. France recovered Alsace and Lorraine, and other territories were ceded to Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Lithuania, and Poland.• Poland received an outlet to the sea, known as the Polish Corridor, which left East Prussia severed from the rest of Germany. Danzig became a free city under the League so it could serve as a port for Poland.• The Saar was detached from Germany and placed under the League. Its mines and factories were placed under French control.• Disarmament. Germany could have no air force or navy. The army's size was limited, and there could be no conscription. The Rhineland along the border with France and Belgium was to be demilitarized.• War guilt. Germany took the blame for starting the war, which meant it had to pay reparations for the damages caused by the war.• The Treaty of Versailles also included the Covenant of the League of Nations. The U.S. Senate never ratified the treaty because it did not want the United States to join the League of Nations.


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• After the collapse of the Russian Empire, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland were able to become independent states.• Separate treaties were signed with Austria (Treaty of SaintGermain, 1919) and Hungary (Treaty of Trianon, 1920). Austria was left as a small, Germanspeaking republic which was not allowed to join Germany. With the new borders millions of German and Hungarian speakers were left outside of Austria and Hungary. Multiethnic Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were created out of the old Hapsburg empire. Yugoslavia also included what had been Serbia and Montenegro. • Romania became much larger, acquiring Austrian, Hungarian and Russian territory. Defeated Bulgaria was forced to cede territory to Greece and Yugoslavia.• Italy did not obtain the Ottoman and Balkan territories it had wanted, but it did obtain Italia Irredenta from Austria. Fiume, inhabited by Italians, was supposed to be a free city under the League as a port for Yugoslavia, but it was seized by force by Italian nationalists and annexed by Italy in 1924.• All of these territorial changes were supposed to reflect selfdetermination, but they created new problems almost everywhere because minorities were left in nationstates with which they could not identify.


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• The Allies signed the Treaty of Sevres (1920) with the Ottoman Empire, which lost most of its territory to the Allies. Arab territories (Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria) became mandates under British or French rule. A mandate was a former Ottoman or German territory ruled by an Allied power under the supervision of the League of Nations. An independent Armenia and an autonomous Kurdistan were supposed to be created. The Allies carved out spheres of influence for themselves in what was left of the Ottoman Empire, and the Straits were supposed to be under international control. • Nationalistic Turks rebelled against the sultan's government and Allied occupation. The rebels under Mustafa Kemal succeeded in forcing the Allies to withdraw and ethnic Greeks to flee. The sultan was overthrown in 1923 and the Republic of Turkey was proclaimed. Kemal was a secular modernizer and his new state would be based on national identity rather than Islam. Sevres was never implemented and a new treaty was signed. Under the new Treaty of Lausanne there would be no foreign presence in Turkey.


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APEH new ch 17.notebook