The Origins and Consequences of World War I: A Clash of Empires, Schemi e mappe concettuali di Inglese

Scarica The Origins and Consequences of World War I: A Clash of Empires e più Schemi e mappe concettuali in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! THE WORLD WARS WWI • In 1890 the new Emperor, Wilhelm II, began an international policy that sought to turn his country into a world power • The Weltpolitik («world politics») Germany was seen as a threat by the other powers and destabilized the international situation • In addition to the new German policy, there were other changes that radically altered the world as it journeyed from the nineteenth to the twentieth century: 1. The second industrial revolution, begun in 1870, shifted the balance of economic might among the powers. The increasingly powerful Germany challenged British hegemony. This challenge was particularly seen in two areas: increasing competition of the German economy and the acceleration of the German naval rearmament; 2. The extension of the colonial empires exacerbated the struggle for territory, markets, prestige and power among countries. • Two serious clashes took place: 1. The Franco-German rivalry, unavoidable since the annexion of Alsace-Lorraine by Germany in 1870 2. The rivalry between Russia and Austria-Hungary for hegemony in the Balkans increased by the weakness of Turkey and Slavic nationalism encouraged by Russia and directed against the Habsburgs in Vienna - Psychological rivalry among peoples, encouraged by nationalist propaganda campaigns. Hatred of the neighbour was more the norm than the exception -Finally two non-European powers , the US and Japan, joined the group in the world hegemonic powers -In the years before the war, the powers were forming military alliances to defend their objectives: 1. The Triple Alliance linking Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy. It was signed in 1882, in the days of Chancellor Bismarck; 2. The Triple Entente, which was made up of Britain, France and Russia, concluded by 1907. The increasing German aggression led to Britain and France ending their colonial differences. The rivalry between Austria-Hungary and Russia in the Balkans pushed Russia into the alliance. • During the decade before the war, four international crises marked the evolution towards a widespread conflict. • Two of them occured in Morocco where Germany and France clashed • The other two took place in the Balkans: Russia and Austria-Hungary fought to replace Turkey as the hegemonic power • The final crisis took place on June 28th 1914 when the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austria-Hungarian throne, was assassinated in Sarajevo by an activist Bosnian Serb, Gavrilo Princip, a member of the Serbian nationalist organization «Black Hand» The start • 28th June – Sarajevo terrorist attack • 23rd July – after ensuring Germany support, Austria-Hungary gave an ultimatum to Serbia • 28th July – Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia • 30th July – Russia started a general military mobilization • 1st August – Germany declared war on Russia. France began the general military mobilization • 3rd August – Germany declared war on France • 4th August – Germany invaded Belgium, which caused the British declaration of war against Germany • Throughout the war several states joined the two blocs in the conflict. New accessions had a key role in defining the victor of the war DATE CENTRAL POWERS TRIPLE ENTENTE August 1914 Austria- Hungary Germany Russia France Britain Belgium Serbia 1914 Turkish Ottoman Empire Japan 1915 Italy 1916 Romania 1917 USA Greece 1918 Russia left the war and signed a peace treaty with Germany • The conflict developed on several fronts in Europe, Africa and Asia • The two main scenarios were the Western Front, where Germany confronted Britain, France and the USA, and the Eastern Front, in which Russia fought against Germany and Austria-Hungary The War of Movement • At the beginning of the conflict, no one expected a war that would stretch for more than four years. Naive soldiers even smiled on their way to the front lines and military headquarters made plans expecting a quick and easy defeat of the enemy • Initially Germany implemented the Schlieffen Plan: they attacked France through neutral Belgium to get a quick defeat of the French army. This would allow German troops to turn against Russia before it could mobilize its massive army • The French, however, managed to stop the German attack in the Battle of the Marne, in the fall of 1914, and Russia also halted the German advance in the east • The Western Front was stabilized along thousands of kilometres and soldiers dug trenches preparing for a long war. The War of Attribution •The confrontation between major industrial countries led to a war whose level of violence and horror had never been contemplated before •The invention of new weapons such as grenades, flame-throwers, tanks, toxic gas, and the use of machine gun led to systematic and great massacres which didn’t break the tactical tie on the Western Front •There Germany fought against France and Britain in a long series of terrible battles • The most obvious were the terrible loss of life: eight million dead, millions wounded people,maimed, widows and orphans, and the material destruction suffered especially by Europe. • However, the war also brought other important social and ideological changes. • The U.S., which had won the war but had not experienced the conflict on its territory, became a first world power. • The mass mobilization of men led to the incorporation of women into the work force, which was a major step forward for women's rights. • The triumph of the Soviet Revolution and the social crisis that followed the war encouraged workers in many countries to protests, creating a pre-revolutionary climate. • The extreme nationalism experienced during the war, coupled with fear of a Communist revolution, encouraged the middle-class populations of some countries to move to the extreme right. This created a hotbed of fascist movements. Interwar • WWI shook the Western society to the core. It represented a social, political, economical earthquake • Peoples became disillusioned and fearful of the future. Art, literature, science and philosophy began to reflect the new mood 1. Existentialism: new philosophy based on the assumption that no real meaning could be attributed to life and actions, even though human actions determined a sequence of events 2. Surrealism: conceived as a new artistic course which was centred on the rejection of conventional art. It proposed the struggle against any form of oppression, both physical and psychical, to reach a new social life. Thus, all irrational aspects excluded from the representation of reality and from all forms of communication became essential 3. Uebermensch: German term used by Friedrich Nietzsche in his Also sprach Zarathustra, to refer to a new concept of man, entirely immersed into his present and deeply engaged in the successful claim of his intellectual faculties. Nietzsche’s new man was expected to aspire to an independent life and to refuse any sort of limitations and constraints. His set of values was centred on pride, assertiveness, strength • Some important changes were caused by WWI, especially in the US during the 1920s - Jazz and popular entertainment reflected the American enthusiasm after the war - A strong feminist wave broke on the American society - Consimerist culture emerged (automobiles, electronic devices, products etc.) - Air travel became very popular to enhance the idea of progress and efficiency • While every European country had to face bankrupt and attempt to rebuild war-torn economy, the US could benefit from a favourable financial situation • Even Germany, comdemned to pay reparations for every State involved into WWI, received the American economic aid (through the Dawes Plan, American banks granted $200 million loan to help Germany with its currecy and economy stabilization). Such an intervention slowed German inflation and allowed factories to re-start their production • A few signs of optimism caused great rejoicing: 1. 1925 → The Locarno Pact was signed by Britain, France, Belgium, Italy and Germany. It secured European borders after WWI (Germany accepted the border with France and France agreed that they would be in a state of peace with Germany), ensured the permanent demilitarisation of the Rhineland and began negatiations to allow the German entrance to the League of Nations (international body created in 1920 after the Paris Peace Conference and intended to arbitrate on differences among States. Its aim was to maintain peace and the balance of power amoung countries. Its headquarters were established in Geneva, since Switzerland was considered as a neutral country) 2. 1928 → The Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact constituted a very great measure of progress in international peace relations. It was signed by the USA, Germany, Belgium, France, Britain, Italy, Japan, Poland, Czechoslovakia and represented the official renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy. The countries concerned agreed to promote the creation of peaceful and friendly relations among peoples • Nevertheless, the US boom came to an end with the Great Depression • It began with a catastrophic collapse of stock market prices on the N.Y. Stock Exchange in October 1929 • Many factors caused the Great Depression: 1. The 1920s marked the period of over-dependence on production. As a result more than 60% of the population was living below the poverty level, while a mere 5% of the wealthiest people accounted for 33% of the income, and the richest 1% owned 40% of the nation’s wealth 2. After WWI the USA had become the world’s barker, but Europe started defaulting on loans (European countries didn’t repay the loans granted by the US to reconstruct the States after the war) and the economic depression began to spread 3. The Stock market regulations were loose and investors could speculate wildly buying stocks on margin, needing only 10% of the price of a stock to get the purchase. Speculation led to false high stock prices, but when the market began to tumble investors weren’t able to honour their margin requests and they began to sell off • On 29th October 1929 (Black Tuesday) the stock marked crashed • The effects of the Great Depression were devastating: - businesses/banks failed; - unemployment increased dramatically; - American bankers claimed repayment of overseas loans (i.e. European loans) and investors withdrew money from Europe; - Dawes Plan ceased in Germany (the American support to German economy stopped); - the US Congress put tariffs on imported goods. • Europe tried to respond to the crisis: - Britain put high protective tariffs on foreign trade; - Sweden, Norway and Denmark increased taxes, put people to work in public works projects, increased benefits to citizens; - Germany and Italy supported radical groups who promised to revive the economy • The US implemented the New Deal, namely a plan to engineer a rapid economic recovery, to bring about a revival in farm income and to assist those people whose whose lives had been destroyed by the slump • Rather than a unique plan, the introduction of ever new initiatives into the initial program led scholars to talk about three new Deals: 1. The first took place between 1933 and 1935, when the economy was centred on the benefits of planned scarcity for both farms and factories 2. The second sprang up in 1935, when the American welfare system underwent a radical change, legislation was introduced to assist the growth of organized and the industrial policy began to stress the benefits of competition rather than monopolistic cooperation. The most influential of the New Deal programs, e.g. the Works Progress Administration (WPA), was developed as a part of the second New Deal to reverse unemployed people to work force. The American President Flanklin Delano Roosevelt was persuaded that spending was the way needed to recover economy, rather than a strict adherence to balancing the federal budget 3. J.M.Keynes inspired the approach which we could consider as the third New Deal. The banking system and Stock Exchange were reformed • In Europe the people destroyed by the Depression lost faith in democratic government • The rise of Fascism in Italy was determined by the affirmation of certain values: - Powerful nationalism - Military supremacy - National security - Authoritarianism • Soon it experienced disdain for human rights, sexism, obsession with crime and punishment, total control, dictatorship • The rise of Nazism in Germany occured since a national feeling of discontent with the humiliation imposed by the Treaty of Versailles and the misery brought by the Great Depression • The Nazis believed that the Treaty of Versailles should be overturned • While in jail, Hitler wrote Mein Kampf, in which he defined the Treaty as an outrage and vowed to reclaim lost German land • His success as an organizer and orator led him to be chosen as the leader of the Nazi party • Once in power, he transformed Germany into a totalitarian country WWII • WWI didn’t solve the problem of dominance (both political and economic) within Europe. The conflict set the stage for a second German attempt at conquest. • The Great Depression destroyed the fragile democratic regime in Germany and in 1933 Adolf Hitler led to power the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazi Party), i.e. a mass movement which was virulently nationalistic, antidemocratic, and anti-Semitic. The Party ended parliamentary government, assumed dictatorial powers and proclaimed the Third Reich • The Nazi government increased the strength of the German armed forces and sought to overturn the Treaty of Versailles. Germany aimed at recovering territories lost at the peace settlement and at returning at the so-called Fatherland German-speaking minorities within the borders of the surrounding countries • The main goal of Hitler’s policy was to secure the German «master race» in Eastern Europe • He acted skillfully on the divisions among the European Powers to achieve many of his targets without war • With the Italian Fascist dictator, Mussolini, he announced a Rome- Berlin alliance in 1935 (the Axis) • Meanwhile, in the Far East, Japan, the only Asian industrial power, coveted the natural resources of China and Southern Asia, but it had to confront both European colonial powers and the USA: 1 – between 1870 and 1914, in Asia France acquired territory in South- western China (the country also possessed Indo-China), Germany gained the Shandong Peninsula in Northern China, Russia obtained control of Manchuria and a leasehold over Port Arthur, and the British took control of the Yangzi Valley (apart from the Indian Empire, Burma, Siam, Malaysia, Singapore, which were possessions of the British Empire); • Although Britain and France had gone to war on Polish behalf, they did nothing to help Poland • Britain’s old «dominions», such as Australia and Canada declared war on Germany, but without success • The US proclaimed its neutrality and the subsequent period of deceptive inactivity (lasted until spring 1940) became known as the «Phoney War» • in October 1939, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were forced to conclude agreements with Russia, giving the Soviets the right to station troops in these countries • On 30th November Stalin sent the Red Army to attack Finland. On 13th March an armistice came into effect: the Finns conceded the requested territories • On 9th April 1940 German forces struck against Norway and Denmark, in May they invaded the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg. In the same month they broke through a northern district in France. On 14th June the Germans entered Paris. Headed by Marshal Phillipe Pétain, France surrendered on 22nd June • On the other hand, in the spring of 1939 Italy had annexed Albania. Then, in the summer 1940 Mussolini picked a quarrel with Greece, which had been trying desperately to stay out of the war. • On 28th October Italian troops crossed the border from Albania, but their advance into Greece was soon halted. By March 1941 half of Albania was under Greek control • In August 1940 troops from Abyssinia, invaded by Italy in 1935 (an event which proved the weakness of the League of Nations, as well as France and Britain’s reluctance to intervene and to sanction the aggressors), occupied British and French Somaliland. When in September the Italian Tenth Army crossed from Lybia into Egypt, it was halted. The weakness of the Italian forces was apparent. The troops were generally ill-trained and badly led. The most spectacular Italian defeat was in the North African desert. By December 1940 the British force in Egypt was ready to respond to the initial Italian advance. Within two months the Italian Tenth Army was soundly defeated • Embarrassed by Italian failures, Hitler sent a young general, Erwin Rommel, to Lybia in February 1941, aiming at blocking any further British advance • With France beaten, Hitler expected Britain to surrender. However, inspired by Churchill, Britain seemed ready to fight on • On 16th July Hitler ordered his troops to start preparing for an invasion of England. Germany had begun attacks on British shipping in the Channel to draw the Royal Air Force (RAF) into war. • Since the British Navy was still more powerful than the German one, air superiority was an essential aim to achieve to enter the war. Britain had made effective preparations. The defensive organization was excellent, with information from the radar system being fed to a network of control stations and then used to direct the fighters into combat. No other nation had a comparable integrated organization • The Germans did not realize how well this system worked and and would not make enough effort to disrupt it • Attacks against Britain began in August 1940. After changing its tactics several times, Germany began a series of mass day and night attacks on London, which were heavily defeated on 15th August. On 17th August Hitler postponed his invasion plans • From November to May 1941, German troops attacked Britain unsuccessfully • Although Britain was a democratic state, it devoted its national resources to fighting the war more than any other country • While attacked at home, the British had to face Rommel’s campaign in Egypt. The British offensives against the Germans failed and Hitler’s troops gave several demonstrations of superior fighting skills • Aided by Indian and African troops based in Sudan and Kenya, the British attacked the Italians in Abyssinia and although most of the troops had been defeated by May 1940, their final surrender didn’t come until November • British forces based on Malta were able to step up their attacks on the routes between Italy and North Africa, contributing greatly to the British success in the desert. German and Italian forces had to retreat • Hitler’s main plan for 1941 was to attack the USSR, but he first wanted to secure German control over south-eastern Europe. During the winter 1940-41, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria allied with Germany. In March 1941, after much pressure, Yugoslavia government seemed to be going to join Germany as well. Differently Greece was winning its war against Italy and receiving increasing help from Britain • From late 1940, Germany prepared an attack on Greece, but when a military coup reversed the situation in Yugoslavia, Hitler ordered an immediate attack on the whole area. • Air raids on Belgrade started on 6th April. There was little resistance and Yugoslavia agreed an armistice on 17th April 1941 • Although British supporting forces had been sent to Greece, there was little chance resisting the Germans for long. By the end of April the country had been overrun • The last act of the campaign was the conquest of Crete, which occurred in May 1941 • The Nazis intended to occupy the European USSR, exterminating all Jews and communists, and enslaving any surviving «sub-human» Slavs. Although Germany deployed a truly massive force, the task facing them was huge. They underestimated Soviet weapons and efficiency. The German attack (Operation Barbarossa) began on 22nd July 1941. By mid-September over half a million Red Army soldiers were captured east of Kiev. Russian military forces withdrew into the country, so Nazi expectations of a quick victory evaporated and the winter caught the Germans unprepared. They reached Moscow’s outer suburbs in early December, but they could go no further. Thirty miles from Moscow, German advance was halted: the troops were suffering horribly from the freezing weather • A quick victory had once seemed so certain that no supplies of winter clothing had been prepared. Instead a long, horrible struggle on the eastern Front was now inevitable. On 6th December the Soviet forces began a successful counterattack on the Moscow front, using fresh reserve forces assembled from the Far East. Unlike the Germans, the Soviet troops had good winter clothing to withstand the country’s extreme cold. Hitler’s response was to order «fanatical resistance» and no retreat. Huge losses were inflicted to Germany and all operations were halted by the spring 1942 • In the summer of 1940 Hitler’s victories left the French and Dutch colonies in Asia virtually defenceless and British power weakened while the USA’s rearmament had a long way to go. In July 1940 the Japanese decided on a twin policy: to win their existing war to China and to gain access to the desired raw materials from Malaysia and the East Indies, if necessary by a new war • In September Japan moved troops into northern Indo-China by agreement with the Vichy French. In return the US imposed an embargo on some iron and steel exports to Japan • In September 1940 Japan signed the Tripartite Pact with Italy and Germany in order to limit the American responses in the Pacific • In April 1941 Japan negotiated a Neutrality Agreement with the USSR and in July the Japanese decided to enter southern Indo-China • The US concluded that Japan had passed the point of no return and decided to step up their economic pressure, cutting off almost all of Japan’s oil supplies. The new Japanese Prime Minister, General Tojo Hideki, and his government were convinced that there was no serious possibility of agreement with the Americans. On 29th November they made the decision to go to war • On 7th December 1941 some Japanese planes made a surprise attack on the main base of the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbour in Hawaii. Japan had not delivered a declaration of war when the attack began; the USA declared war on Japan the next day • Japan’s decision to attack Pearl Harbor was casual. What they wanted was to control the natural resources of both the British and the Dutch colonies in Malaysia and the East Indies. The Philippines, which belonged to America, were near and would be attacked too • Since Britain and the rest of Europe was under German attack, the major threat to Japan would come from the US Pacific fleet, so a war against America would be anticipated (a strike on Pearl Harbor would gain time for Japan to grab the territory it sought and to fortify a perimeter round its new empire) • In the weeks before the Japanese attack, the US government knew that a military aggression was imminent, but thought that the target would be the Philippines and President Roosevelt did not take proper precautions • From about 7:45 that Sunday morning (7th December 1941), two waves of Japanese aircraft struck tha naval anchorage and various airfields on Oahu. By the end of the attack, 2,403 Americans were dead, 6 of the 8 US battleships in port had been sunk and 188 American aircraft were destroyed • Various errors made Japan’s attack easier: radar warnings had been ignored, aircraft had been parked together with the aim to easily guard them against sabotage and anti-aircraft ammunition boxes were locked • Outraged by what President Roosevelt called «a day of infamy», the USA would fight against Japan; on 11 December 1941 Hitler declared war on the Americans, so the USA would now fight against Germany too • Simultaneously with the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan began operations against the Philippines and Malaysia. The Japanese landings on Malaysia began on 8th December 1941. The Japanese also began a rapid campaign to conquer Hong Kong, while they quickly took control of Guam, Wake and other US-held islands. They landed on the South China Sea coast of northern Malaysia and southern Siam (now Thailand). They were opposed by almost 90,000 British, Indian, and Australian troops, but unsuccessfully • By the end of January 1942 the Allied forces withdrew to Singapore, the Bataan Peninsula and the Philippines. Japanese troops had already moved into Burma on 14th December 1941 and now two divisions were lauched across the border with Thailand and in Malaysia. Japan pushed the remaining British forces nothward towards India • The Dutch East Indies represented the greatest prize for Japan, because of their substantial oilfields (mainly on Sumatra) and the significant production of metal ores and other important commodities. In early January Japan struck towards Borneo and the Celebes and by late February/early March troops were in Sumatra and western Java. Local Dutch surrendered on 8th March • In April-May 1944 American and Australian forces landed on western New Guinea and nearby islands to establish bases to support the Marianas and Philippines operations, which were to follow • Despite American successes, Japan’s leaders still dreamed of setting all right by victory in a decisive naval battle. Their plan, code-named A-Go, was to mount a series of attacks to defeat the main American forces. This plan was discovered by the USA and established a great advantage for the American troops • On 15th June US Marine divisions landed on Saipan and the Japanese resistance was destroyed; further landings took place on 21st July on Guam and on 24th July on Tinian and both the operations were victorious for the USA. At the same time American air attacks destroyed most of the Japanese aircraft force on the Mariana Islands. Japanese losses were huge, since about two-thirds of their planes were shot down • Japanese aircraft could no longer compete with the American pilots who called the day’s events as the «Great Marianas Turkey Shoot» • The Battle of Cape Engaῆo turned into another catastrophe for Japan’s fleet • At the same time a combination of Chinese, American, Indian and British troops fought to impede Japan to seize Burma and China. In the fighting of that campaign Japan was strongly defeated • American planners were clear that winning the war depended on the invasion of Japan Home Islands. The landings on two islands, Iwo Jima and Okinawa, were the last major operations planned before the invasion of the main parts of the Japanese homeland. After ferocious battles, the American forces gained control and prepared for the last fightings The End • By 1945 Japan had already suffered tremendous losses, but then came a succession of crucial events: the atomic attacks on Hiroshima (6th August) and Nagasaki (9th August) and the Soviet declaration of war on Japan (8th August) • The bomb on Hiroshima instantly killed about 80,000 people; an estimated 50,000 more died from its short and long-term radiation effects. Nagasaki suffered a similar fate, even if with fewer casualties • The Soviet forces crashed into Japanese-held Manchuria and easily gained control. Manchuria and northern Korea were overrun within days. Japanese Emperor Hirohito now intervened to stop the war. The 15th August was celebrated as V-J Day (Victory in Japan Day) and Japan’s formal surrender was signed on 2nd September. WWII had finally ended • Unlike in WWI, in 1945 both Germany and Japan were occupied and administered by the Allied powers. International tribunals tried and punished war criminals in both countries