The Technology of Death

I mostly agree with Sam's post about total war, but I don't think the fact that the conditions of World War One caused considerable mental-warping for the soldiers involved fully explains why the war was so atrocity-ridden. I believe (and this may be getting all philosophical and stuff) that soldiers in war were always mentally and emotionally capable of committing these atrocities and were limited only by the technological advancements (or lack thereof) of their time. Machine guns, poison gas, shells, even tanks and planes near the end of the war - all these things enabled soldiers to kill, wound, traumatize, and destroy on a scale previously unimaginable. On a lighter note, I enjoyed the link to the TV tropes page on World War One. Besides being quite funny, they also show the impact that World War One has had over the past 95 years. But I feel I have written perhaps a few too many posts on this subject, and so let this be the last World War One post on my blog.

Unless there's something else cool to write about.

In which case I will, once again, write about World War One.

And, if such a case should occur, I will acknowledge the fact that I claimed I would cease from World War One posts.

Cause you got to stay true to what you say.

Weekly Summary Six

So...WWI. Kinda awkward. As Cas has put it, the beginning of the period where Europe "lost its marbles." Jonathan's post about the "ingrained conservatism of the military leaders of the time" and Declan's post about the war's surreality complement each other nicely and are two different ways of exploring the war's effect on the European psyche. Europe basically could not cope with something so strange, new, and horrible, thus hindering the attempts of both sides to achieve victory and permanently changing the face of European politics as old monarchies fell and new totalitarian regimes rose. A former teacher of mine described the war as a pyrrhic victory for the British because it ruined their economy and hastened the demise of their empire. World War One defeated not just the Germans and Austro-Hungarians, but all of Europe.

Versailles Treaty Excercise: An Excercise in the Versailles Treaty

I enjoyed the peace conference exercise we did on Friday. The inclusion of Germany and Japan would have made it more interesting, and probably much more complicated, but the situation and the goals of each country (or potential country) were still fairly accurate. The one aspect of the conference that wasn't covered was colonialism and imperialism. Although the territories involved fall outside of the boundaries of Europe, the existence of colonies or desire to establish colonies in those areas played their part in the relations between the countries. In Africa, Britain and France kept their colonial empires and split up the German colonies between themselves. There had already been tension between Britain and France (and Russia before the Revolution) over the fate of the Ottoman Empire during World War One, and once the war was over these problems became apparent during the peace conference, resulting in the division of the Middle East into British and French mandates and the disastrous consequences of such actions. In addition, the imperialist tendencies of the British and French undermined the peace process and made the League of Nations more than a bit hypocritical, contributing to its lack of power in the following decades. After World War One, imperialism was still a potent force.

David Fromkin's "A Peace to End All Peace" is an excellent book on the subject.

Factors...factors...factors of World War One...

In "The Armaggeddon Waltz," an op-ed in the New York Times yesterday, Frederic Morton describes a financially strapped and politically volatile world of 1913 Vienna. He makes the point that this was a place where Stalin and Trotsky (separately) planned for a communist revolution, where Hitler attended art school, and the archduke Franz Ferdinand met with the Austro-Hungarian emperor, his uncle, in an attempt to convince him to cease the military activities in Albania that were only further provoking the already angry Serbians; the seeds of World War I, the Russian Revolution, and even World War II could be traced back to this city. I found this quite interesting (although not Morton's final analysis that America could somehow be similar). There were so many infinitesimally minuscule factors that shaped the course of history leading up to the first World War that I think the conclusion that the war was an inevitable occurrence is an enormous oversimplification. For instance, there had already been numerous instance of imperial sabre-rattling, even when the alliance that existed in WWI were already in place, such as during the Second Moroccan Crisis. With WWI, it was just that no country backed down. What would have happened if Franz Ferdinand had convinced his uncle to pursue a less belligerent policy in the Balkans. Maybe a conflict similar to WWI would have occurred at a later date, maybe it would have never occurred, but there is no certainty about either option.

This is all very Freudian...

Regardless of the veracity of Sigmund Freud's opinions (perhaps more on that in another post), the excerpt we read from Civilization and Its Discontents, written in 1929, is a good example of one the ways World War I affected European thought. Freud's basic spiel is that there is a "powerful share of aggressiveness," inherent in humanity that is both violent and sexual (it just wouldn't be Freud without some reference to sex), and in respect to the former type of aggressiveness, it's hard to imagine someone emerging from the "horrors of the recent World War," as a participant or just an observer, and still believing that deep down humans are actually just kind, caring creatures. Thus, I think it makes sense that Freud in his attempts to analyze the mind and human behavior would come to the conclusions that he does.

The Impact of the Crimean War (Coffin 776-777)

Though the Crimean War was short and not a true victory for any of the countries involved, it had far-reaching effects, and, though I am going beyond the time period we are currently studying, I think many of the root causes of World War One lie in the circumstances surrounding the Crimean War. First and foremost are the alliances. After having been involved in over a century of intermittent warfare, culminating in the 25 years from the French Revolution to Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo, Britain and France allied in response to the mutual threat of Russian expansion in Eastern Europe. Regardless of whether this alliance held for every year between 1854 and 1914 (I’ll admit I do not know the complete history of the alliance), the two former enemies had set a precedent for themselves of joining forces. On the other hand, when Austria chose not to support Russia, that alliance dissolved. Those two countries would be antagonists in World War One, and Russia, now with no strong allies, would eventually form an alliance with its former enemies, Britain and France. The other major impact of the Crimean War, according to page 777 of the textbook, was the weakening of Russia and Austria. The reduction of those two countries’ power and influence proved very beneficial to Prussia’s ambitions and the eventual unification of Germany, whose very existence upset the balance of power in Europe. The impact of the Crimean War was terribly large not in the short-run, but in the long-run.