reasons why ww1 was pointless

In trenches that stretched an unbroken 475 miles from the North Sea to the Swiss border, the Germans constructed walls using corpses, so that French troops who captured a trench hung canteens from protruding ankles. The main result was deeper suspicion between London and Berlin and closer military ties between London and Paris. The German victors in the former annexed large chunks of two rich French provinces, part of France for between 200 and 300 years, and home to most of French iron ore production, as well as presenting France with a massive bill for immediate payment. In the UK around six million men were mobilised, and of those just over 700,000 were killed. The deepest division among historians is between those who see Germany and Austria-Hungary as having driven events and those who focus on power dynamics among a wider set of actors and circumstances. Decisions for war, 1914-1917. Many countries had made alliances with one other. The M-A-I-N acronym - militarism, alliances, imperialism and nationalism - is often used to analyse the war, and each of these reasons are cited to be the 4 main causes of World War One. But many scholars argue that a confluence of factors had been creating the conditions for conflict in Europe for decades prior. Some historians, such as Margaret MacMillan, believe that Germany created its own diplomatic isolation in Europe, in part by an aggressive and pointless imperial policy known as Weltpolitik. They scoffed at the notion that the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, was much more than a pretext. The interventionists sought to use the Triple Entente to contain German expansion. Governments would mobilise bankers and financiers to serve their interests, rather than the reverse. In 1914 generals on horseback galloped across battlefields as men in cloth caps charged the enemy without the necessary covering fire. Decisions for war, 1914-1917. There has been much debate about if World War I was avoidable or if it was bound to happen no matter what. However, in a narrow military sense, the UK and its allies convincingly won. -Yes, it was a futile waste of life and effort. He argues, "The fact that so many plausible explanations for the outbreak of the war have been advanced over the years indicates on the one hand that it was massively overdetermined, and on the other that no effort to analyze the causal factors involved can ever fully succeed."[108]. Austria-Hungary and Germany. Rather, after weeks of clumsy diplomacy, they consciously led their nations into battle. Poisonous gas filled a quarter of all the artillery shells fired on the western front in 1918. [73] In Britain, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, had been informed by the Governor of the Bank of England that business and financial interests opposed British intervention in the war. During his later years, he tried to placate the French by encouraging their overseas expansion. The dtente was driven by Britain's desire for imperial security in relation to France in North Africa and to Russia in Persia and India. After the Moroccan Crisis, the Anglo-German press wars, previously an important feature of international politics during the first decade of the century, virtually ceased. The Independent concluded that "such is the ridiculous and tragical situation resulting from the survival of the antiquated superstition of the 'balance of power,' that is, the theory that the prosperity of one nation was an injury to others":[6]. It was a time of extraordinary innovation. Italy captured the Ottoman Tripolitania Vilayet, a province whose most notable subprovinces, or sanjaks, were Fezzan, Cyrenaica, and Tripoli itself. World War I Introduction and Overview. They were natural rivals, destined to clash. In early 1915, Germany introduced a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare in the Atlantic. Published: 7 Nov 2018. Their sons provided the junior officers whose job it was to lead the way over the top and expose themselves to the greatest danger as an example to their men. In the end, France established a protectorate over Morocco that increased European tensions. World War One was a brutal and unnecessary waste of human life and sowed the seeds for the second war, argues Chris Bambery. Hitler moved to Munich, Germany, in May 1913. On June 28, 1914, a diplomatic crisis began that led in five weeks to the First World War, a cataclysm that claimed millions of lives and ruined countless more. [45] When the war came Sanders provided only limited help to the Ottoman forces.[46]. The Nobility ruled the roost. [107], However, Schroeder argues that all of that was not the main cause of the war in 1914. Vladivostok, Russia. The assassination triggered the July Crisis, which turned a local conflict into a European and later a world war. "[40], In September 1913, it was learned that Serbia was moving into Albania, and Russia was doing nothing to restrain it, and the Serbian government would not guarantee to respect Albania's territorial integrity and suggested that some frontier modifications would occur. We enjoyed the Dreadnought races of the 1900s as both Countries vied to show that they were dominant on the High Seas. with our running costs and to show your appreciation with a one off or regular donation. The English listened to Wagner, Germans savored Shakespeare, Russian aristocrats mimicked the French, Mozart and Italian opera were loved by all. The Aussies and Kiwis commemorate Gallipoli ardently, and understandably so, as their casualties do represent terrible losses both as a proportion of their forces committed and of their small populations. The British cabinet was not informed of the agreement until August 1914. [102] British Secretary of State for War Lord Kitchener expected a long war: "three years" or longer, he told an amazed colleague. The American historian Paul Schroeder agrees with the critics that Fisher exaggerated and misinterpreted many points. Russian interests in Balkans and Ottoman Empire, Primacy of offensive and war by timetable. In any case, Germany never came close to catching up with Britain. In fact, as a British soldier you were more likely to die during the Crimean War (1853-56) than in WW1. Either way, the isolation was important because it left Germany few options but to ally itself more strongly with Austria-Hungary, leading ultimately to unconditional support for Austria-Hungary's punitive war on Serbia during the July Crisis. 50 / 50 The sacrifice was enormous but the results were positive. The Radical isolationists obtained an agreement for official cabinet approval of all initiatives that might lead to war. Clark further argues that senior military officials favored continental intervention so as to head off Irish independence. He did so to avoid arrest for evading his military service obligation to Habsburg Austria. "[57], It is true that Austro-Hungarian politics in the decades before the war were increasingly dominated by the struggle for national rights among the empire's eleven official nationalities: Germans, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, Romanians, Ruthenians (Ukrainians), Poles, and Italians. The French protectorate over Morocco was established officially in 1912. War was no longer noble, even as some of the men who fought it were noble beyond compare. The fact is, at 1913 Germany was on the verge of world domination. So too had Britain. It all makes the savagery seem even more arbitrary and unnecessary. Thus did the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone (in Churchills resonant phrase) help make a local quarrel a global catastrophe. Centuries of virtually unchecked Russian expansion in Asia ended with an embarrassing defeat in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05). The First World War began in the summer of 1914, shortly after the assassination of Austria's Archduke, Franz Ferdinand, and lasted more than four years, ending in 1918. Serbia and Greece allied against Bulgaria, which responded with a pre-emptive strike against their forces and so began the Second Balkan War. However, seeing the Austro-Hungarian military preparations, the Montenegrins requested for the ultimatum to be delayed, and they complied.[38]. MacMillan, Margaret (2013). The war was started by the leaders of Germany and Austria-Hungary. The First Moroccan Crisis was an international dispute between March 1905 and May 1906 over the status of Morocco. Vienna issued a strident ultimatum to Serbia, and Germany took the side of the aggrieved Empire; Russia, driven by Slavic solidarity and confident that her ally France would join the fray, mobilized against Germany; and Britain, outraged by the German violation of Belgian neutrality, reluctantly came to the aid of France. An empire run by psychopaths for almost a century finally caved, and good triumphed over evil. front was almost equal to the number of italian casualities.the fact that the the great majority of assaults was pointless and that many brave soldiers died this way is . Almost no-one except the politicians ruling agreed with it, which has been proven by soldiers diary's, and most famously the football. U.S. Race Riots. But once again many endeavour to rewrite history and pretend that World War One was not utterly pointless. Oblivious to the latter, Princess Sophie delighted in being by her husbands side amid pomp and ceremony, a privilege denied her in Vienna because of her modest origins and the emperors disapproval. It could be the best of times, or the worst of times. However, academic work in the English-speaking world in the late 1920s and the 1930s blamed the participants more equally. A legacy of animosity grew between France and Germany after the German annexation of Alsace-Lorraine. Was there ever any threat of either before 1914? The commercial and financial elite recognized peace as necessary for economic development and used its influence to resolve diplomatic crises. Did we behave like Angels on every occassion? Vol. For example, Russia warned France that the alliance would not operate if the French provoked the Germans in North Africa. Introduction World War 1 was like nothing that had ever happened in the world before. The Entente, in contrast to the Triple Alliance and the Franco-Russian Alliance, was not an alliance of mutual defence, and so in 1914 Britain felt free to make its own foreign policy decisions. February 11, 2022. "An identity of opinion: Historians and July 1914.". Some of the distant origins of World War I can be seen in the results and consequences of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 and 1871 and the concurrent unification of Germany. The last years of peacev.11. The situation was always, as the Viennese journalist Karl Kraus quipped, 'desperate but not serious'. Despite this, within three years the British had effectively invented a method of warfare still recognisable today. . Carl Duisberg, a chemical industrialist, hoped for peace and believed that the war would set German economic development back a decade, as Germany's extraordinary prewar growth had depended upon international trade and interdependence. Every European soldier knew where his uniform and rifle were stored; he also thought he knew as well where he was to fight, with whom he was to fight and when. Officials had meanwhile altered the published route, but the royal chauffeur was either confused or uninformed, and made the most fateful wrong turn in world history. [39] The Bulgarian army crumbled quickly after the Ottoman Empire and Romania joined the war. Although more Britons died in WW1 than any other conflict, the bloodiest war in our history relative to population size is the Civil War, which raged in the mid-17th Century. Tactics on the Western Front remained unchanged despite repeated failure, 9. The killing spread to civilians in England and France attacked by German zeppelins. "From 'East to West', the 'world crisis' of 1905-1920: a re-reading of Elie Halvy.". Lord Nathan Rothschild, a leading British banker, called the financial editor at The Times and insisted for the paper to denounce the war and to advocate for neutrality, but the lead members of the newspaper ultimately decided that the paper should support intervention. Why Alex Murdaugh was spared the death penalty, Why Trudeau is facing calls for a public inquiry, The shocking legacy of the Dutch 'Hunger Winter'. Random House. Other important long-term or structural factors that are often studied include unresolved territorial disputes, the perceived breakdown of the European balance of power,[1][2] convoluted and fragmented governance, the arms races of the previous decades, and military planning.[3]. This "long First World War" was certainly bloody, and we can and should argue about the destructive effects of nationalism for the history of Europe. There's a few positive things that happened as a result of World War 1: Greater respect for women and women entered the workforce . longterm causes of WW1, namely Militarism, Alliances, Imperialism and Nationalism, all played their part in the road to war; as did the infamous spark of Archduke Franz Ferdinand's assassination, and even the Blank Cheque and the Schlieffen Plan, as mentioned above. ", Clark concluded, "In the minds of many statesmen, the hope for a short war and the fear of a long one seemed to have cancelled each other out, holding at bay a fuller appreciation of the risks."[103]. This page was last edited on 24 February 2023, at 12:22. 52. . Prof Gary Sheffield - professor of war studies, University of Wolverhampton. Brose, Eric. The centenary of the Great War (as it was known until the Second World War) is nearly upon us, and the first salvos of a barrage of new histories have arrived. France's informal alignment with Britain and its formal alliance with Russia against Germany and Austria eventually led Russia and Britain to enter World War I as France's allies. It tended to glorify warfare, the taking of initiative, and the warrior male role.[86]. [69] The largest and most lucrative uncolonized or semi-colonized territories at the time of the war were that of Persia (Iran), Turkey (including all of the pre-industrial territories of the declining Ottoman Empire), and most of China beyond the treaty ports. Furthermore, the wide acceptance of Social Darwinism by intellectuals justified Germany's right to acquire colonial territories as a matter of the "survival of the fittest," according to the historian Michael Schubert. Jean-Marie Mayeur, and Madeleine Rebirioux, Samuel R. Williamson Jr., "German Perceptions of the Triple Entente after 1911: Their Mounting Apprehensions Reconsidered,". [74][75], William Mulligan argues that while economic and political factors were often interdependent, economic factors tended towards peace.

Ni No Kuni 2 Legendary Weapons, What Does Unsupervised Custody Mean In Virginia, Atp Challenger Entry Lists, Escanaba Funeral Home Obituaries, Articles R