Historiography of World War I

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The first tentative efforts to comprehend the meaning and consequences of

George Kennan referred to the war as the "seminal catastrophe of the 20th century".[2]

Historian Heather Jones argues that the

medical science, gender and mental health. Among the major subjects that historians have long debated regarding the war include: Why the war began; why the Allies won; whether generals were responsible for high casualty rates; how soldiers endured the poor conditions of trench warfare; and to what extent the civilian home front accepted and endorsed the war effort.[3][4]

Causes of the war

Main article: Historiography of the causes of World War I
This section is an excerpt from Causes of World War I.[edit]
European diplomatic alignments shortly before the war. The Ottomans joined the Central Powers shortly after the war started, with Bulgaria joining the following year. Italy remained neutral in 1914 and joined the Allies in 1915.
Map of the world with the participants in World War I c. 1917. Allied Powers in blue, Central Powers in orange, and the neutral countries are in grey.

The identification of the causes of World War I remains a debated issue. World War I began in the Balkans on July 28, 1914, and hostilities ended on November 11, 1918, leaving 17 million dead and 25 million wounded. Moreover, the Russian Civil War can in many ways be considered a continuation of World War I, as can various other conflicts in the direct aftermath of 1918.

Scholars looking at the long term seek to explain why two rival sets of powers (the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire against the Russian Empire, France, and the British Empire) came into conflict by the start of 1914. They look at such factors as political, territorial and economic competition;

military planning.[10]

Scholars seeking short-term analysis focus on the summer of 1914 and ask whether the conflict could have been stopped, or instead whether deeper causes made it inevitable. Among the immediate causes were the decisions made by statesmen and generals during the

Bosnian Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip, who had been supported by a nationalist organization in Serbia.[11] The crisis escalated as the conflict between Austria-Hungary and Serbia was joined by their allies Russia, Germany, France, and ultimately Belgium
and the United Kingdom. Other factors that came into play during the diplomatic crisis leading up to the war included misperceptions of intent (such as the German belief that Britain would remain neutral), the fatalistic belief that war was inevitable, and the speed with which the crisis escalated, partly due to delays and misunderstandings in diplomatic communications.

The crisis followed a series of diplomatic clashes among the

Great Powers (Italy, France, Germany, United Kingdom, Austria-Hungary and Russia) over European and colonial issues in the decades before 1914 that had left tensions high. And the cause of the public clashes can be traced to changes in the balance of power in Europe that had been taking place since 1867.[12]

Consensus on the origins of the war remains elusive, since historians disagree on key factors and place differing emphasis on a variety of factors. That is compounded by historical arguments changing over time, particularly as classified historical archives become available, and as perspectives and ideologies of historians have changed. 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. Secondary fault lines exist between those who believe that Germany deliberately planned a European war, those who believe that the war was largely unplanned but was still caused principally by Germany and Austria-Hungary taking risks, and those who believe that some or all of the other powers (Russia, France, Serbia, United Kingdom) played a more significant role in causing the war than has been traditionally suggested.

"Web of alliances" narratives

Further information:
Interlocking alliances of World War I
"A Threatening Situation", an American editorial cartoon depicting the supposed web of alliances. The caption reads, "If Austria attacks Serbia, Russia will fall upon Austria, Germany upon Russia, and France and England upon Germany." That dimension developed into the concept of chain ganging
.

Although general narratives of the war tend to emphasize the importance of

alliances in binding the major powers to act in the event of a crisis such as the July Crisis, historians such as Margaret MacMillan warn against the argument that alliances forced the Great Powers to act as they did: "What we tend to think of as fixed alliances before the First World War were nothing of the sort. They were much more loose, much more porous, much more capable of change."[13]

The most important alliances in Europe required participants to agree to collective defence if they were attacked. Some represented formal alliances, but the Triple Entente represented only a frame of mind:

There are three notable exceptions that demonstrate that alliances did not in themselves force the great powers to act:

Cultural memory in the United Kingdom

Left: John McCrae, author of In Flanders Fields
Right: Siegfried Sassoon

World War I had a lasting impact on collective memory of the United Kingdom. It was seen by many in Britain as signalling the end of an era of stability stretching back to the Victorian period, and across Europe many regarded it as a watershed.[15] Historian Samuel Hynes explained:

A generation of innocent young men, their heads full of high abstractions like Honour, Glory and England, went off to war to make the world safe for democracy. They were slaughtered in stupid battles planned by stupid generals. Those who survived were shocked, disillusioned and embittered by their war experiences, and saw that their real enemies were not the Germans, but the old men at home who had lied to them. They rejected the values of the society that had sent them to war, and in doing so separated their own generation from the past and from their cultural inheritance.[16]

This has become the most common perception of World War I, perpetuated by the art, cinema, poems, and stories published subsequently. Films such as

veterans after the war, such as the short story Soldier's Home, about young veteran Harold Krebs trying to integrate back into society.[19]

Discontent in Germany and Austria

The rise of Nazism and fascism included a revival of the nationalist spirit and a rejection of many post-war changes. Similarly, the popularity of the stab-in-the-back legend (German: Dolchstoßlegende) was a testament to the psychological state of defeated Germany, and was a rejection of responsibility for the conflict. This conspiracy theory of the betrayal of the German war effort by Jews became common, and the German populace came to see themselves as victims. The widespread acceptance of the "stab-in-the-back" myth delegitimised the Weimar government and destabilised the system, opening it to extremes of right and left. The same occurred in Austria, which did not consider itself responsible for the outbreak of the war, and claimed not to have suffered a military defeat.[20]

Enabling the rise of totalitarianism

Adolf Hitler
Joseph Stalin

Armenian Genocide of 1915. All these slaughters, it is argued here, had a common origin, the collapse of the elite structure and normal modes of government of much of central, eastern and southern Europe as a result of World War I, without which surely neither Communism nor Fascism would have existed except in the minds of unknown agitators and crackpots.[25]

Social trauma

A 1919 book for veterans, from the US War Department

The social trauma caused by unprecedented rates of casualties manifested itself in different ways, which have been the subject of subsequent historical debate.[26] Over 8 million Europeans died in the war. Millions suffered permanent disabilities. The war gave birth to fascism and Bolshevism and destroyed the centuries-old dynasties that had ruled the Ottoman, Habsburg, Russian and German Empires.[1]

The optimism of la belle époque was destroyed, and those who had fought in the war were referred to as the Lost Generation.[27] For years afterward, people mourned the dead, the missing, and the many disabled.[28] Many soldiers returned with severe trauma, suffering from shell shock (also called neurasthenia, a condition related to post-traumatic stress disorder).[29] Many more returned home with few after-effects; however, their silence about the war contributed to the conflict's growing mythological status. Though many participants did not share in the experiences of combat or spend any significant time at the front, or had positive memories of their service, the images of suffering and trauma became the widely shared perception. Such historians as Dan Todman, Paul Fussell, and Samuel Heyns have all published works since the 1990s arguing that these common perceptions of the war are factually incorrect.[26]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Neiberg, Michael (2007). The World War I Reader. p. 1.
  2. ^ "The intro the outbreak of the First World War". Cambridge Blog. 2014. Retrieved 17 November 2022.
  3. doi:10.1017/S0018246X13000216
    .
  4. ^ see Christoph Cornelissen, and Arndt Weinrich, eds. Writing the Great War – The Historiography of World War I from 1918 to the Present (2020) free download Archived 29 November 2020 at the Wayback Machine; full coverage for major countries.
  5. ^
    JSTOR 2538636
    .
  6. ISBN 978-0-3930-5480-4
    .
  7. S2CID 154759602
    .
  8. ^
    S2CID 154923423
    .
  9. S2CID 55976453
    .
  10. S2CID 153783717
    .
  11. ISBN 978-1-134-85200-0
    .
  12. ISBN 978-0-312-69611-5
    .
  13. ^ Explaining the Outbreak of the First World War – Closing Conference Genève Histoire et Cité 2015; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWDJfraJWf0 See13:50
  14. ^ Ponting (2002), p. 122.
  15. ISBN 978-1-84511-883-9
    .
  16. ^
    ISBN 978-0-689-12128-9
    .
  17. ^ a b c Todman 2005, pp. 153–221.
  18. ISBN 978-0-19-513332-5
    . Retrieved 18 May 2010.
  19. ^ "In Our Time Soldier's Home Summary & Analysis". SparkNotes. Retrieved 2023-06-24.
  20. OCLC 913003568
    .
  21. ^ Kitchen, Martin. "The Ending of World War One, and the Legacy of Peace". BBC. Archived from the original on 18 July 2008. Retrieved 11 March 2008.
  22. ^ Baker 2006.
  23. ^ Chickering 2004.
  24. ^ "World War II". Encyclopædia Britannica. Archived from the original on 4 July 2008. Retrieved 12 November 2009.
  25. ISBN 978-0-582-50601-5
    .
  26. ^ a b Todman 2005, pp. xi–xv.
  27. ^ Roden.
  28. ^ Wohl 1979.
  29. ^ Tucker & Roberts 2005, pp. 108–1086.

Bibliography

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