In the years leading up to the war, the European powers-- namely Great Britain, Germany, and Russia-- believed two things: 1) the concept of "perpetual peace"; the idea that progress had allowed societies of the world so enlightened that they had reached an end to wars, and 2) industrialization and modernization endeavors would extend to protecting and growing their interests, hopefully done by rational means, but backed up with the creation of new technologies in warfare and the mobilization of massive armies. This was the zeitgeist-- the "spirit of the age"-- that defined the views of their world. As we study history we can't do so through the lens in how we perceive the world. However horrified or boggled by how they viewed the world, we cannot apply our understanding of it to how they understood it to work.
This pseudo-peace they believed possible cannot have realistically lasted long. Their rational minds deemed it so, but it doesn't take much for one country to look next door, see the military advancements and growing armies, and maintain that belief in the idea that war was going by the wayside. There was a greater tendency to be suspicious of neighboring countries, and often these suspicions were exploited by the respective governments to gain approval and support in their national endeavors, namely the mobilization of armies via conscription (compulsory military service). After the German army defeated the French in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, the rest of Europe realized Germany was successful in large part to their conscripted army, and jumped on board, beginning with the French who had no interest in sharing a border with Germany they couldn't protect. Great Britain did not change their stance on conscription and did not utilize it, mainly because Great Britain is an island and has no need for a large land army. The British navy was more than enough.
Add to this zeitgeist of progress and enlightenment the theory of evolution from Charles Darwin and his On the Origin of the Species of 1859. This seems like it wouldn't have much to do with the evolving (couldn't resist that) ideas of what industrialization and modernization had achieved for the world. Moving along the timeline a few years, Herbert Spencer, a British philosopher and biologist, wrote Principles of Biology in 1864 and coined the phrase "survival of the fittest" as he expounded on Darwin's theory of evolution and applied it to society. Spencer thought this Social Darwinism could categorize humans in much the same way as every other organism in the world and assign it value.
As each country of the late 1800s pressed forward with these new theories, their suspicions were given credence. It seemed reasonable to vilify the 'others' in society. In Great Britain in 1887, it was easy to encourage people to by British products simply by putting a "Made in Germany" label on imported items. As the years passed and tensions grew ever more taut, the theme stayed the same: British, good, and German, bad; going so far as to renaming dog breeds (German Shepherds to Alsatians) and even some Britains killing their pets because they were called Dachshunds, reflecting a deepening angst against Germany (Great Britain's greatest threat). On the flip side, as World War I: A Very Peculiar History puts it "All bars, shops, and hotels with English or French names were renamed," and even the French tried to "rename the perfume eau de Cologne (named after a German town) to eau de Provence (after a French region)." On the same token, the United States didn't kill their Dachshunds, they just renamed them 'liberty dogs'. Many libraries in the US also held public book burnings of German material.
The question of how did European countries get involved in the First World War was covered briefly last week and was largely explained by the ideals of nationalism and the alliance systems in place. June 1914 was reported to be the loveliest of summers, most countries reveling in their modernity and what progress had done for them. This feeling was short lived. Europe was a Tinderbox waiting for a spark to justify war. Then, on June 28, 1914, the spark-- the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife-- burned, igniting the countries of Europe into war in just a few weeks. John Green and Crash Course History delve into who actually started the war (which will be important to the end of this semester and the Treaty of Versailles). For more information on the How Europe Spiraled into War, check out this video.
Great Britain, France, Russia, and Germany all believed their nations to be unstoppable, at the top of their game. The expectation for this war was "It will be over by Christmas!" If war was conducted as it had been in previous generations, then, yes, this war of only a few months would be plausible, but the generals and armies were grossly unprepared to deal with the old style of warfare juxtaposed with the new technology. As the first few months dragged on, the hope of making it back home in time for Christmas dwindled. In a moment of good will on the battlefield, the guns went silent and an unofficial "Christmas Truce" was declared in No Man's Land, the stretch of land between the trenches.
Readings for this first period are from World War I: A Very Peculiar History, pages 6-10, 33-37, 38-45, and 48-51
Second Period:
We started the conversation about Darwin and Social Darwinism in the last class. Of all the theories and philosophies of the time, these two would have unfathomable consequences for humanity. When talking about genocide of the atrocities that took place in the first half of the last century, it is often most laid neatly at the doorstep of Germany. This is a white washing of history-- a sloppy paint job to quickly hide the unsavory details of eugenics. Last week we saw a video about Cecil Rhodes, his attitudes toward 'lower societies,' and his own scramble for Africa in the creation of his own African country, aptly named Rhodesia. Racism in Victorian England is a fantastic lecture (and unfortunately not viewed in today's class) given by Richard J. Evans, a learned historian in the field of 19th and 20th century history, with an interest in Germany. You simply cannot study this field and not run into his name whether in lectures or his many books on the subjects. This specific lecture details British attitudes toward race.
The ideology of eugenics was perpetuated throughout Great Britain and the United States. The Unites States had the first eugenics laws on the books; the forced sterilization of what they determined to be 'imbeciles.'
This was not just a few people pushing an agenda, it was widely supported and accepted by the wealthy, the intellectuals, and men with governmental power: the likes of W.E.B DuBois, Alexander Graham Bell, Henry Ford, David Starr Jordan (president of Stanford), Margaret Sanger, Upton Sinclair, President Calvin Coolidge, members of the Kellogg family, and the foundations of Carnegie and Rockefeller (who specifically aided German eugenics programs under the Nazis, including the sadistic interests of Josef Mengele at Auschwitz).
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Supreme Court Justice, wrote the decision for Buck vs. Bell, a case concerning the compulsory sterilization of Carrie Buck, a woman deemed an 'imbecile' in Virginia. His words are as follows: It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind... Three generations of imbeciles are enough."
In the Joseph Loconte book, A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War, page 20-21, the statements are made: "It's important to remember that eugenicists thought themselves as reformers, committed to improving the human condition. They endorsed the idea of state action to achieve their goals... they emphasized the collective destiny of the human race, at the expense of the individual. The conceit of the intellectual elites of the day was that science, and the technology it underwrites, could solve the most intractable of human problems." Sounds a bit Karl Marx to me, also another German philosopher throwing a wrench into the world's zeitgeist at the time. Tolkien and Lewis both were horrified at this view of humanity, and again on the same pages of Loconte's book, the two men wrote their works with "a vital theme throughout is the sacred worth of the individual soul; in Middle Earth and in Narnia, every life is of immense consequence."
Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Nietzche ('God is dead' dude) developed theories to explain away the dignity of human beings as just beings that exist like any other organism and can be put into a category to do with them whatever was necessary to the benefit of all. In this clip, we see the consequences fo out of control industrialization, the destruction of nature, and the genetic engineering of a master race from the viewpoint of Tolkien.
This was 'progress' and the intellectuals believed that human society had categories, based on a myriad of things, but the lofty top was conveniently populated by the same intellectual elite that theorized this all.
Their zeitgeist was knowing they had reached the pinnacle of rational thought and in terms of war, there was what Immanuel Kant (German philosopher, 1724-1804) described as "perpetual peace." This idea that the masters of Europe were rational and enlightened enough, to eschew war. Loconte quotes H.G. Wells on page 4, "I think that in decades before 1914 not only I but most of my generation-- in the British Empire, America, France, and indeed throughout most of the civilized world-- thought that war was dying out. So it seemed to us." War was no longer en vogue, no matter what technological advancements had made or the growing number of mobilized troops.
All these theories came together in a gloppy soup of Darwinism, Social Darwinism, Industrialization, Technology and Modernization, Marxism, and Nationalism (a "political, social, and economic system characterized by the promotion of the interests of a particular nation, especially with the aim of gaining and maintaining sovereignty (self-governance) over the homeland," Wikipedia). But how does this affect every one else not in the upper echelons of society or the intellectuals? How do you convince someone how to think a certain way on a subject? Propaganda. The easiest way to convince the masses that there are divisions between nations, that one nation is better, that their nation is better, and if/when war breaks out, it will be up to the people to maintain their beliefs and fight for the nation.
For the first time, movies could bring war zones to life. Film, in its youngest days, could be use to influence and describe the war.
Readings for the second period were from A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War, Introduction and Chapter One.
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