You Smug-Faced Crowds

In 1914, nationalist passions were growing. World empires were growing. So was their greed. Relations between countries had grown complicated. All these problems sparked the flames of the First World War. Some people feared war. But in general, much of Europe felt confident. They believed it would be short and easily won. Of course, that’s what the other side thought too. Crowds gathered in London, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna. They cheered for war. The picture below is from August 6, 1914. It was in the British newspaper, the Daily Mirror. War had just been declared on Germany. The newspaper reported that afterward, crowds gathered in the streets. The British royal family were met with “wild” cheers. In every European capital, governments and newspapers tried to rally the public. They called on their loyalty to king and queen, to the nation, to their tsar, or emperor. On August 5, The Birmingham Daily Mail advertised on its front page: “Your King & Country need you. In this crisis your Country calls on all her young unmarried men to rally round the Flag,” it said. “Enlist in the ranks of her Army.” If all men joined, “England and her Empire will emerge stronger and more united than ever.”

Hope united people some Europeans. Those feelings soon mixed with the realities of industrial war. Disillusionment set in. It’s that feeling of disappointment when something turns out to be not nearly as good as you thought it was. Soldiers saw the horrors of trench warfare every day. They saw people poisoned with gas. Soldiers were especially disillusioned. Look again at the hopeful picture and quotes above. Then read these two poems. Each are written by young men. Both fought in France:

Siegfried Sassoon survived the war. He spoke out against it. Soon he was checked into a war hospital. He got treated for “shell shock.” It’s form of what is now called post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a mental condition where someone has trouble feeling normal after a terrifying event. While in the hospital Sassoon befriended Wilfred Owen, another injured soldier. Owen also had shell shock. Eventually, both men were sent back to the war. Sassoon was accidentally wounded by one of his own men. Owen was killed in France at age 25. One week later, the war ended. The world would never get another poem from him.

You Are a Lost Generation

Sassoon and Owen were far from alone. Forty million people were killed or injured during this conflict. All over Europe, young men trudged home when the armistice, or declaration of peace, was finally signed. All hope had disappeared.

Soldiers weren’t the only ones disturbed. Nearly half of the 40 million wounded or killed were civilians—people that were not soldiers. That’s why they called it “total war.” It was unseen in its size and destruction. Civilians and soldiers looked around. They saw the destruction of their countries. Places where they once met friends and family killed in the fighting were gone.

One group of authors began voicing their experience. They spoke of disillusionment of those who grew up during the First World War. Several were American authors living in Paris. The writer Gertrude Stein is credited with giving them their name: The Lost Generation. In The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway quotes Stein. She said, “All of you young people who served in the war. You are a lost generation… You have no respect for anything. You drink yourselves to death.”

“Lost Generation” has a double meaning. It refers to the new generation of artists. They had become disillusioned after the war. However, it can also refer to the post-war generation more generally. That generation questioned the cultural lessons they had learned as kids. Such “wisdom” did not make sense anymore. They were “lost” in the modern world. But the term also refers to how many had died in the violent war. J.R.R. Tolkien also fought in the war. He wrote The Lord of the Rings. War greatly disturbed Tolkien. Echoes of trauma and horror appear in his writing. By the end of the war, he said, “all but one of my close friends were dead.” Experiences like his were common. Britain and Russia lost around 2 percent of their total population in the war. Germany, France, and Austria lost about four percent. Some nations lost 9 to 15 percent of their prewar populations. The Ottoman Empire, Serbia, and Romania are examples.

The costs of the war changed many minds. Before the war, European culture welcomed Enlightenment ideas. Reason, scientific thinking and progress were celebrated. After the war, writers and artists turned to new forms of expression. They questioned a world that had allowed such a conflict. Oswald Spengler was a German historian. He wrote The Decline of the West. Sigmund Freud was a psychologist, studying the mind. He wrote about the struggle within human minds between ego and id. In other words, he saw a battle between the rational and irrational mind. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby. In it he criticized the wastefulness of the rich.

Meanwhile, new styles of art and architecture came. They dismissed the idea of reason and wholesomeness. Instead they used irony. They focused on how the world made no sense. These artistic movements were often called “modernist.” They were a reaction to the horrors of the conflict.

Alien Graves

Not just Europeans were disillusioned. Many people had been colonized by the British, French, and Germans. Hundreds of thousands of colonial troops served in the war. The colonized people died for a war between their colonizers. Battles took place thousands of miles away from home. Sarojini Naidu was an Indian independence activist and poet. In 1915 she reflected on the price India had to pay its colonizer:

Lo! I have flung to the East and West Priceless treasures torn from my breast, And yielded the sons of my stricken womb To the drum-beats of duty, the sabres of doom.

Gathered like pearls in their alien graves Silent they sleep by the Persian waves, Scattered like shells on Egyptian sands, They lie with pale brows and brave, broken hands, They are strewn like blossoms mown down by chance On the blood-brown meadows of Flanders and France.

—Sarojini Naidu, 1915

New nationalist feelings grew after World War I. Colonized people had had enough. You’ve read about how imperialists believed in taking over people in Africa and Asia. They spoke about the “white man’s burden.” The colonizers argued that they were bringing “civilization” to the rest of the world. They brought new technology to these lands, they said. But during World War I, European “civilization” tore itself to shreds. Asian and African soldiers died next to British and Germans. Many colonized people wondered. Why they were fighting a European war? Soon, people in Asia and Africa took European ideas about nationalism. They began marching toward independence. The march would not end until after another world war happened. It would be even deadlier.

Rejecting the Past

All over the world, people challenged old beliefs. Enlightenment, imperialism, and capitalism were questioned. Such ideas had sent the world into a horrific war. And for what? The Great War had been called “the war to end all wars.” But people looked around in 1918. The war hadn’t ended their problems. But it had ended many lives.

Artists and writers tried new art forms. The modern, industrial world felt absurd. They showed why. Meanwhile many politicians looked to rebuild the world. Internationalism became popular in the 1920s. The League of Nations aimed to keep peace. International agreements came about. The Kellogg-Briand Pact was one. It spoke against “war as an instrument of national policy.” But these attempts failed. Conflict continued.

Others also aimed to overturn the world order. In Russia, an imperialist tsar leader once ruled. The Bolshevik Revolution overthrew the tsar and dismissed the global capitalist economy. In Italy, many people grew disillusioned with the Versailles Peace Treaty. They had fought with the Allies. However, the peace treaty failed to reward Italy with new land. Japan had also fought with the Allied powers. They too felt betrayed. The Europeans did not treat them as equals. Germany was defeated. Many Germans saw the peace terms as overly harsh. They became bitter at the winners. Soon, tyrant leaders swooped in. They used feelings of disillusionment to take power. This happened in Italy, Japan, and Germany.

The First World War was a history-defining moment. It killed millions. Global power was rebuilt. But for the people alive, it was hard to see past what was lost. Many were dead. A sense of progress was gone. Maybe worst of all, hope was lost. Disappointed people rejected parts of modern society. Artists rejected old stories and styles. They created new ones. Anti-colonial movements rejected foreign control. Revolutionaries rejected the capitalist global economy. And authoritarians began to reject the global order. It was a way to increase their own power. The disillusionment that came after the war did as much to shape the world as the fighting had.