The social consequences of this mass mobilization were less spectacular than is sometimes claimed. There were advances for the organized working class, especially its trade unions, especially in Britain, and arguably for women, but the working class of Europe paid a high price on the battlefield for social advances at home. And in the defeated states there was very little social advance anyway. The British fared little better. Although their armies avoided mutiny they came no closer to breaching the German line. During the battles of the Somme (1 July19 November 1916) and the Third Battle of Ypres (31 July-12 November 1917) they inflicted great losses on the German army at great cost to themselves, but the German line held and no end to the war appeared in sight. All governments feared their peoples. Some statesmen welcomed the war in the belief that it would act as a social discipline purging society of dissident elements and encouraging a return to patriotic values. Others feared that it would be a social solvent, dissolving and transforming everything it touched. The war began in the Balkan cockpit of competing nationalisms and ancient ethnic rivalries. Hopes that it could be contained there proved vain. Expansion of the war was swift. Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on 28 July 1914; Germany declared war on Russia on 1 August. Germany declared war on France on 3 August and invaded Belgium. France was invaded on 4 August. German violation of Belgian neutrality provided the British with a convenient excuse to enter the war on the side of France and Russia the same evening. Austria-Hungary declared war on Russia on 6 August. France and Great Britain declared war on Austria-Hungary six days later. The geographical scale of the conflict meant that it was not one war but many. On the Western Front in France and Belgium the French and their British allies, reinforced from 1917 onwards by the Americans, were locked in a savage battle of attrition against the German army. Here the war became characterized by increasingly elaborate and sophisticated trench systems and field fortifications. Dense belts of barbed wire, concrete pillboxes, intersecting arcs of machine-gun fire, and accumulating masses of quick-firing field and heavy artillery rendered manuvre virtually impossible. Casualties were enormous. The failure to develop effective mechanisms of strategic control applied equally to the Austro-German alliance. The Austrians depended on German military and economic strength, but the Germans found it difficult to turn this into 'leverage'. Austria was willing to take German help but not German advice. Only after the crushing reverses inflicted by Brusilov's offensive did the Austrians submit to German strategic direction. By then it was almost certainly too late. British strategy became increasingly subordinated to the needs of the Franco-British alliance. The British fought the war as they had to english thesis statement examples, not as they wanted to. The British way in warfare envisaged a largely naval war. A naval blockade would weaken Germany economically. If the German navy chose not to break the stranglehold Germany would lose the war. If it did choose to fight it would be annihilated. British maritime superiority would be confirmed. Neutral opinion would be cowed. Fresh allies would be encouraged into the fight. The blockade would be waged with greater ruthlessness. Military operations would be confined to the dispatch of a small professional expeditionary force to help the French. Remaining military forces would be employed on the periphery of the Central Powers remote from the German army, where it was believed they would exercise a strategic influence out of all proportion to their size. The process of expansion did not end in August 1914. Other major belligerents took their time and waited upon events. Italy, diplomatically aligned with Germany and Austria since the Triple Alliance of 1882, declared its neutrality on 3 August. In the following months it was ardently courted by France and Britain. On 23 May 1915 the Italian government succumbed to Allied temptations and declared war on Austria-Hungary in pursuit of territorial aggrandizement in the Trentino. Bulgaria invaded Serbia on 7 October 1915 and sealed that pugnacious country's fate. Serbia was overrun. The road to Constantinople was opened to the Central Powers. Romania prevaricated about which side to join, but finally chose the Allies in August 1916 example dissertation topics in social work, encouraged by the success of the Russian 'Brusilov Offensive'. It was a fatal miscalculation. The German response was swift and decisive. Romania was rapidly overwhelmed by two invading German armies and its rich supplies of wheat and oil did much to keep Germany in the war for another two years. Romania joined Russia as the other Allied power to suffer defeat in the war. In the Balkans the Serbs fought the Austrians and Bulgarians, suffering massive casualties, including the highest proportion of servicemen killed of any belligerent power. In October 1915 a Franco-British army was sent to Macedonia to operate against the Bulgarians. It struggled to have any influence on the war. The Germans mocked it and declared Salonika to be the biggest internment camp in Europe, but the French and British eventually broke out of the malarial plains into the mountainous valleys of the Vardar and Struma rivers before inflicting defeat on Bulgaria in the autumn of 1918. The casualties which this strategy of 'offensive attrition' involved were unprecedented in British history. They were also unacceptable to some British political leaders. Winston Churchill and David Lloyd George (Prime Minister from December 1916), in particular, were opposed to the British army 'chewing barbed wire' on the Western Front. They looked to use it elsewhere, against Germany's allies in the eastern Mediterranean good psychology lab report example, the Middle East, and the Balkans. Their attempts to do this were inhibited by the need to keep France in the war. This could only be done in France and by fighting the German army. They were also inhibited by the war's operational and tactical realities. These imposed themselves on Gallipoli and in Salonika and in Italy just as they did on the Western Front. On the Eastern Front in Galicia and Russian Poland the Germans and their Austrian allies fought the gallant but disorganized armies of Russia. Here the distances involved were very great. Artillery densities were correspondingly less. Manuvre was always possible and cavalry could operate effectively. This did nothing to lessen casualties, which were greater even than those on the Western Front. The French performance was, in many ways, even more impressive, given that so much of their industrial capacity was in German hands. Not only did the French economy supply the French army with increasing amounts of old and new weaponry, but it also supplied most of the American Expeditionary Force's artillery and aeroplanes. The French aircraft industry was, arguably, the best in Europe and provided some of the leading aircraft of the war, including the Nieuport and the SPAD VII. The First World War redrew the map of Europe and the Middle East. Four great empires, the Romanov, the Hohenzollern, the Habsburg, and the Ottoman, were defeated and collapsed. They were replaced by a number of weak and sometimes avaricious successor states. Russia underwent a bloody civil war before the establishment of a Communist Soviet Union which put it beyond the pale of European diplomacy for a generation. Germany became a republic branded at its birth with the stigma of defeat, increasingly weakened by the burden of Allied reparations and by inflation. France recovered the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, but continued to be haunted by fear and loathing of Germany. Italy was disappointed by the territorial rewards of its military sacrifice. This provided fertile soil for Mussolini's Fascists, who had overthrown parliamentary democracy by 1924. The British maintained the integrity and independence of Belgium. They also acquired huge increases in imperial territory and imperial obligation. But they did not achieve the security for the Empire which they sought. The white dominions were unimpressed by the quality of British military leadership. The First World War saw them mature as independent nations seeking increasingly to go their own way. The stirrings of revolt in India were apparent as soon as the war ended. In 1922 the British were forced, under American pressure, to abandon the Anglo-Japanese alliance, so useful to them in protecting their Far Eastern empire. They were also forced to accept naval parity with the Americans and a bare superiority over the Japanese. 'This is not a peace,' Marshal Foch declared in 1919 cars causing air pollution, 'but an armistice for twenty-five years.' These defeats proved costly to Russia. They also proved costly to Austria. Austria had a disastrous war. Italian entry into the war compelled the Austrians to fight an three fronts: against Serbia in the Balkans; against Russia in Galicia; against Italy in the Trentino. This proved too much for Austrian strength. Their war effort was characterized by dependency on Germany. Germans complained that they were shackled to the 'Austrian corpse'. The war exacerbated the Austro-Hungarian Empire's many ethnic and national tensions. By 1918 Austria was weary of the war and desperate for peace. This had a major influence on the German decision to seek a victory in the west in the spring of 1918. Europe's political and military leaders have been subjected to much retrospective criticism for their belief that the war would be over by Christmas'. This belief was not based on complacency. Even those who predicted with chilling accuracy the murderous nature of First World War battlefields, such as the Polish banker Jan Bloch, expected the war to be short. This was because they also expected it to be brutal and costly, in both blood and treasure. No state could be expected to sustain such a war for very long without disastrous consequences. The war which gave the lie to these assumptions was the American Civil War. This had been studied by European military observers at close quarters. Most, however, dismissed it. This was particularly true of the Prussians. Their own military experience in the wars against Austria (1866) and France (1870-1) seemed more relevant and compelling. These wars were both short. They were also instrumental. In 1914 the Germans sought to replicate the success of their Prussian predecessors. They aimed to fight a 'cabinet war' on the Bismarckian model. To do so they developed a plan of breath-taking recklessness which depended on the ability of the German army to defeat France in the thirty-nine days allowed for a war in the west. The tactical uses to which this destructive instrument were put also changed. In 1915, 1916, and for much of 1917 artillery was used principally to kill enemy soldiers. It always did so, sometimes in large numbers. But it always spared some, even in front-line trenches. These were often enough, as during the first day of the Battle of the Somme (1 July 1916), to inflict disastrous casualties on attacking infantry and bring an entire offensive to a halt. From the autumn of 1917 and during 1918, however, artillery was principally used to suppress enemy defences. Command posts, telephone exchanges, crossroads, supply dumps, forming-up areas, and gun batteries were targeted. Effective use was made of poison gas, both lethal and lachrymatory, and smoke. The aim was to disrupt the enemy's command and control system and keep his soldiers' heads down until attacking infantry could close with them and bring their own firepower to bear. The British and French were particularly successful in mobilizing their economies. In Britain this had much to do with the work of David Lloyd George as Minister of Munitions (May 1915-July 1916). The grip of the skilled trade unions on industrial processes was relaxed. Ancient lines of demarcation were blurred. Women replaced men in the factories. Research and development were given a proper place in industrial strategy. Prodigies of production were achieved. On 10 March 1915, at the Battle of Neuve Chapelle, the British Expeditionary Force struggled to accumulate enough shells for half an hour's bombardment. In the autumn of 1918 its 18-pounder field guns were firing a minimum of 100 a life experience essay,000 rounds a day. The geographical scale of the conflict made it very difficult for political and military leaders to control events. The obligations of coalition inhibited strategic independence. Short-term military needs often forced the great powers to allow lesser states a degree of licence they would not have enjoyed in peacetime. Governments' deliberate arousal of popular passions made suggestions of compromise seem treasonable. The ever-rising cost of the military means inflated the political ends. Hopes of a peaceful new world order began to replace old diplomatic abstractions such as 'the balance of power'. Rationality went out of season. War aims were obscured. Strategies were distorted. Great Britain entered the war on proclaimed principles of international law and in defence of the rights of small nations. By 1918 the British government was pursuing a Middle Eastern policy of naked imperialism (in collaboration with the French), while simultaneously encouraging the aspirations of Arab nationalism and promising support for the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine. It was truly a war of illusions. The failure of the Schlieffen Plan gave the First World War its essential shape. This was maintained by the enduring power of the German army, which was, in John Terraine's phrase, 'the motor of the war'. The German army was a potent instrument. It had played a historic role in the emergence of the German state. It enjoyed enormous prestige. It was able to recruit men of talent and dedication as officers and NCOs. As a result it was well trained and well led. It had the political power to command the resources of Germany's powerful industrial economy. Germany's position at the heart of Europe meant that it could operate on interior lines of communication in a European war. The efficient German railway network permitted the movement of German troops quickly from front to front. The superior speed of the locomotive over the ship frustrated Allied attempts to use their command of the sea to operate effectively against the periphery of the Central Powers. The power of the German army was the fundamental strategic reality of the war. 'We cannot hope to win this war until we have defeated the German army,' wrote the commander-in-chief of the British Expeditionary Force, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig. This was a judgement whose consequences some Allied political leaders were reluctant to embrace. These changes did much to make the First World War the first 'modern war'. But it did not begin as one. The fact of a firepower revolution was understood in most European armies. The consequences of it were not. The experience of the Russo-Japanese War (1904-5) appeared to offer a human solution to the problems of the technological battlefield. Victory would go to the side with the best-trained, most disciplined army, commanded by generals of iron resolution, prepared to maintain the offensive in the face of huge losses. As a result the opening battles of the war were closer in conception and execution to those of the Napoleonic era than to the battles of 1916 onwards. The internment of 112,000 mainland Japanese Americans, one of the most shameful chapters in American history, is examined in Peter Irons, Justice at War: The Story of the Japanese Internment Cases (1983). A 1942 government report on the Pearl Harbor attack, written by Supreme Court Justice Owen J. Roberts, which claimed without supporting evidence that the Japanese had received support from some Japanese Americans, helped to create a climate of opinion that led to internment. World War II transformed the American homefront. It jump-started the economy; ended Depression-era unemployment, relocated Americans in unprecedented numbers, and permanently altered the status of women, adolescents, and racial minorities in American life. The war's impact on the homefront is analyzed in William L. O'Neill writing an essay outline format, A Democracy at War: America's Fight at Home and Abroad in World War II (1993). Oral histories from the war years can be found in Studs Terkel, The Good War (1984). World War II affected children and adolescents no less than women. In fact, the word "teenager" first appeared during the war. William M. Tuttle, Jr. Daddy's Gone to War: The Second World War in the Lives of America's Children (1993) traces the changes in young peoples' lives. The end of the war did not mean that the System was automatically freed from Treasury influence. Six years would go by before monetary policy was revived as a major instrument to influence aggregate spending and prices. In March 1951, the System’s policy independence from the Treasury was accomplished with the formal agreement between the Treasury and the System known as the Treasury-Federal Reserve Accord.
In many respects, the United States was the big winner in World War II. Relative to Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union, its battle deaths were relatively few in number. Its great cities, like New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, were never occupied by enemy armies or laid waste by falling bombs. Its factories and steel mills, farms and subdivisions, and stores and schools were unscathed by the conflict. Alone among major world capitals, Washington emerged from the war more confident than ever, and its airplanes, fleets, and armies, not to mention its atomic weapons, gave it military superiority over any potential opponent. By every measure, the United States led the world in 1945, and it was about to begin two generations of prosperity unmatched in history. The United States might never have entered World War II if Germany, Japan, and Italy had stopped after their initial conquests. But the three Axis powers made astonishing gains in the years before the Pearl Harbor attack. After taking over Norway and neutralizing Sweden, the Nazis turned their attention to the big prize. Early in the morning of May 10 examples of integrated essays toefl, 1940, Hitler launched a blitzkrieg or lightning war against France, whose army had previously been considered the finest in the world. The revolutionary nature of the German offensive, generally credited to the brilliant strategist, Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, was to concentrate all available tanks into a few specialized and highly mobile armored divisions rather than to spread them out evenly among infantry units. These panzer formations were to smash holes in the enemy line and then break out into the rear, creating havoc on the roads and, supported by Luftwaffe dive bombers, preventing the Allies from plugging the gaps. They did this by attacking through the dense Ardennes forests in Luxembourg and southern Belgium, crossing the Meuse River long before the Allied high command had thought possible. The British and French armies actually had more and better tanks than the attackers, but new strategic and tactical concepts carried the contest. The German tank columns swept everything before them, and the French defenses soon collapsed. In fact, the almost total collapse of the proud French army in May 1940 remains one of the most incredible events in all of military history. France sued for peace in June, and Hitler’s victorious troops marched past the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Why should the proud Japanese, with their centuries of tradition, their modern navy, and their ambitions for future glory, give up their dreams because those dreams did not fit with the wishes of white Westerners. They wanted their own empire and their own seat at the table among the great nations of the world. The United States had great military potential, but in December of 1941 it was still more potential than reality. Immediately, the nation launched the greatest industrial expansion in human history. Within months, new orders for munitions, uniforms, and combat vehicles absorbed the remaining unemployed workers from the Great Depression. Old factories were expanded and modernized, and giant new ones sprang up as if by magic, especially in the South and West. Outside Detroit, the Chrysler Tank Arsenal produced the tanks and armored vehicles that would become the spearheads of General George S. Patton’s Third Army. The story of D-Day ideas for essays compare and contrast, June 6, 1944, has been told many times. Suffice it to say here that General Eisenhower did four things that will distinguish him forever. First, he made a decision on June 5 that only he could make—to go forward with the invasion despite a terrible weather forecast. By contrast, Field Marshal Rommel, the commander of the Atlantic Wall, who no doubt saw the same predictions, decided that the weather would be so awful that he could safely go back to Germany to visit his wife and son. Eisenhower took a chance that the weather would break and allow the landings to go forward. Fortunately, his hunch proved to be correct. The D-Day landings were successful, and despite bitter fighting over the coming months, the Allies used their heavy artillery, their enormous air armada, and their dozens of well-equipped infantry divisions to pulverize the once invincible German war machine. With the Red Army smashing into East Prussia from the east, the British and American heavy bombers raining destruction from the skies on German cities, and Allied armored columns crossing the Rhine River and encircling trapped Wehrmacht divisions, Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker on April 30, 1945. All resistance ceased within the week. Upon accepting the surrender of Nazi officials, General Eisenhower sent to his superiors what is surely the most succinct message ever sent by a victorious commander: “The mission of this Allied force was accomplished at 0241hours, May 7th, 1945.” In general, the American people did not want to have any part in a European war. They felt protected by great oceans on both sides of the North American continent. And they felt that, in World War I, American boys had fought and bled in France mostly to make fortunes for munitions makers and arms merchants. Moreover, the United States had allowed its armed forces to wither in the 1920s and 1930, so that when World War II broke out in Europe, its army of 190,000 men ranked about eighteenth in the global rankings, about on a par with Rumania and Bulgaria. That last period in the United States often offered the opportunity for a few days of liberty. Because trains across the country were jammed and overloaded, there was no chance for a trip home. But the port of embarkation, especially Manhattan, was another story. There, among the bright lights, nightclubs, and stage-door canteens of the largest city in the world, they drank and laughed and at least pretended to be confident and happy. The next step was to board a troopship. Whether they sailed on converted transatlantic liners like the Queen Elizabeth or the Queen Mary or ordinary transports, quarters were tight, pleasures were few, and danger was constant. Especially in the Atlantic Ocean, where German U-boats lurked beneath the surface, the most common way to get to Europe was in a convoy of about fifty or sixty similar ships, all protected by a screen of destroyers and maybe one cruiser. Mercifully, the Allied navies gained superiority over the Nazi submarines before most American soldiers crossed the ocean, and only 8,000 men were lost out of four million who made the journey aboard the defenseless cargo vessels. In the skies American dominance was clear. In Washington State and in Kansas, Boeing built the great four-engine, strategic bomber fleets that destroyed entire cities. As early as 1942, American factories were already churning out 48,000 airplanes, more than Germany and Japan combined. By 1944, assembly lines in southern California, Seattle, and Long Island were producing almost 100,000 aircraft, a total greater than the combined output of Germany, Japan, and the British Empire. Statistics for trucks, jeeps, landing ships, artillery pieces, and self-propelled guns were almost as dramatic. You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world. There is no one date that can be said to mark the beginning of the greatest of global conflicts. In 1931, the Japanese army invaded Manchuria, a northern province of China. In July 1937, the Japanese moved again, this time directly against the Nationalist regime of Chiang Kai-shek. The atrocities that followed shocked the world. Meanwhile, in 1936, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler moved aggressively into the Rhineland, previously a demilitarized zone, and in 1938 essay on books for class, he incorporated Czechoslovakia and Austria into the Third Reich. By this time, the Western world was fully alert to the menace of the fanatically ambitious and confident Fuhrer. Then, in the early morning hours of September 1, 1939, Hitler sent his armies into Poland. Two days later, France and Great Britain declared war on Germany. Within a matter of weeks the Soviet Union, which had recently signed a non-aggression treaty with Hitler, attacked Poland from the east. Within a month, Polish resistance collapsed, and Warsaw fell. World War II had begun. Although the warlords in Tokyo could boast of brave and devoted soldiers, of airplanes (like the vaunted ”Zero”) that were as fine as any anywhere wealth and health essay, and of ships and sailors that were world class, Japan never had a chance against the United States. It did not have enough of anything, except courage and fanaticism, to compete with a continental nation with almost infinite resources. At Tarawa, at Iwo Jima, and at Okinawa, the Japanese fought almost to the last man. It was no use. In desperation, they created an elite force of suicide pilots, called kamakazees, who took off with only enough fuel for a one-way trip. Their mission was to crash their aircraft into the ships of the United States Navy. They died in glory, but they were too few and too late. And after President Harry S. Truman (FDR had died in April 1945) ordered atomic bombs to be dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even the most fanatical Japanese militarist had to realize that further resistance was madness. On August 14, 1945, Truman announced over the radio that the war was over. On September 2, 1945, on the deck of the great battleship, the USS Missouri. representatives of the Japanese government signed the formal instrument of surrender. World War II had ended. As the war continued into 1942, 1943, and 1944, and as millions of newly minted soldiers and sailors joined the armed forces, separation and longing became the most common emotional experiences of the time. As long as the men were stateside, there was at least a chance of seeing a wife or a sweetheart for a stolen weekend somewhere far from home. The songs of the time—“Till We Meet Again” and “I’ll Be Seeing You, in All the Old Familiar Places,” among others—reflected the feelings of loneliness that were felt in every town and by almost every family. 3. Explain why trench warfare became the dominant form of warfare on the Western Front. 4. Referring to either Britain, France or Germany, discussВ how one national government managed and coordinated the war effort. 5. To what extent was the United States able to honour its pledge of neutrality in 1914-16? 4. Explain how the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s ethnic, cultural and language diversity created problems for the ruling Hapsburg dynasty. 8. What impact did the Allied naval blockade have on German society and the German war effort? The road to war 8. It is often said that the alliance system made a major war inevitable. Did alliances alone compel European nations to war after June 1914 – or were other factors involved? 7. What were the main objectives of the war in the Middle East? Discuss at least three significant locations or battles in your answer. 6. Was the entry of the United States into World War I inevitable? Or was it a consequence of unforeseen factors? 7. What happened in the German Reichstag in July 1917? What did this reveal about German attitudes to the war? 1.В “World War I generals used 19th century battlefield strategies against 20th century equipment.” Discuss and evaluate this claim. 3. What were the outcomes of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71? How did these outcomes shape late 19th and early 20th century European relations? 7. Using evidence and referring to specific battles or events, explain which three weapons had the greatest impact on the battlefields of the Western Front. 2. Describe how the map of Europe was changed as a consequence of World War I and post-war treaties. What grievances might have arisen from these changes? 1. Why did the Schlieffen Plan fail inВ its objectives? Could Schlieffen’s strategy have been made to work? 2. What were the outcomes of the Battles of Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes in 1914? What did these battles reveal about the Russian military? 5. A French general said of the Treaty of Versailles that was not a peace but a “20 year armistice”. Was he correct and, if so, why? 9. Many historians suggest that the ‘failure of diplomacy’ led to war in 1914. What attempts did European diplomats make to negotiate and avoid war, and why did these attempts fail? 5. Evaluate the use and impact of chemical weapons in World War I. Were they an important weapon of war – or were they used for terror and shock value? Methods of warfare 2. How did the leadership of Otto von Bismarck shape the future of Germany to 1914? 10. What was the ‘Silent Dictatorship’ in wartime Germany? How effective was this regime in managing both the war effort and the domestic situation? 7. Discuss what happened to European colonial possessions after World War I. Were colonies retained websites that check for plagiarism, seized by other nations or liberated? 1. Compare and contrast the objectives and approaches of the ‘Big Three’ (Wilson, Lloyd George and Clemenceau) at the Paris peace talks. 2. It is often said that British soldiers were “lions led by donkeys”. To what extent was this really true? 15. Why did the Ottoman Empire enter World War I? What were its objectives and how prepared was it for a major war? 6. Investigate the relationship between Serbia and Austria-Hungary in the years prior to 1914. Why was Serbian nationalism worrying for Austro-Hungarian leaders?
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