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Archdukes, Cynicism, and World War I: Crash Course World History #36
Archdukes, Cynicism, and World War I: Crash Course World History #36
Historians should always use multiple sources to investigate topics. John Green provides you with another take on the causes of World War I.
As this video progresses, key ideas will be introduced to invoke discussion.
Think about the following questions as you watch the video
How did World War I start?
What were some of the possible ways this war could have been avoided and who is to blame?
World War I features combatants from around the world. What were some of these countries?
How destructive was WW I and what were the causes of this destruction?
What were the conditions like for the soldiers in World War I?
What was the Treaty of Versailles and what were some of its impacts?
What were the two phases of the Russian Revolution and what happened in each phase?
What did John Greene say was lost as part of this war?
: Hi. I'm John Green. This is Crash Course: World History.
: And today we're gonna talk about World War I,
: the so-called "Great War"?
: World War I wasn't the most destructive war
: or the first total war, and it certainly wasn't,
: despite its billing, "The War to End All Wars,"
: but it was the war to changeall wars.
: World War I changed our outlook.
: It normalized cynicism and irony,
: which I think you'll agree are the dominant lenses
: for describing our world today.
: Basically, I'd argue that World War I
: helped make possible everything fromThe Simpsons
: to intentionally unattractive mustaches.
: Mr. Green! Mr. Green! Are you referring to me?
: Oh, me from the past, you're an embarrassment to our family.
: Also to all our other selves.
: Most people think of World War I as a tragedy,
: because it didn't need to happen and it didn't accomplish much,
: except for creating social and economic conditions
: that made World War II possible.
: So when we're talking about causes of the war,
: inevitably we're also assigning blame.
: The immediate cause was of course the assassination
: in Sarajevo of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand
: on June 28, 1914, by a Bosnian-Serb nationalist
: named Gavrilo Princip. Quick aside:
: it's worth noting that the first big war or the 20th century
: began with an act of terrorism.
: So Franz Ferdinand wasn't particularly well liked
: by his uncle, the Emperor Franz Joseph.
: Now thatis a mustache.
: But even so, the assassination led Austria
: to issue an ultimatum to Serbia, whereupon Serbia accepted
: some but not all of Austria's demands,
: leading Austria to declare war against Serbia.
: And then Russia, due to its alliance with the Serbs,
: mobilized its army.
: Germany, because it had an alliance with Austria,
: told Russia to stop mobilizing, which Russia failed to do.
: So then Germany mobilized its own army,
: declared war on Russia, cemented an alliance with the Ottomans,
: and then declared war on France because, you know, France.
: Germany's war plan, the Schlieffen Plan,
: required that it invade France
: in the most expedient way possible,
: which, as you can see, is via Belgium.
: And Great Britain was a friend of Belgium--
: I mean, as much as anyone can be a friend of Belgium--
: and so they declared war on Germany.
: So by August 4, all the major powers of Europe
: were at war with each other.
: By the end of the month, Japan,
: honoring its alliance with Britain,
: would be at war with Germany and Austria as well.
: When all was said and done,
: counting colonies and spheres of influence,
: the world map would eventually look like this.
: You'll never guess who wins.
: So there were many opportunities not to mobilize and declare war,
: none of which were taken.
: Some blamed the web of alliances itself,
: which is what Woodrow Wilson wanted to fix
: with the League of Nations; some blamed Russia,
: the first big country to mobilize;
: some blamed Germany for the inflexibility
: of the Schlieffen Plan;
: Leninists claimed the war grew out of imperialism
: and was fueled by capitalist rivalries;
: and others claimed it was a war between Germany's
: radical modernism and Britain's traditional conservatism.
: But if I had to assign blame, I'd go with the alliance system
: and the cultural belief
: that war was, in general, good for nations.
: War helped define who was them and who was us,
: and doing that strengthened the idea of us.
: And before World War I, war was perceived to be necessary,
: and often even glorious.
: The trench warfare on the Western Front
: is most famous for its brutal futility--
: Great Britain and France on one side,
: Germany on the other, with no man's land in between.
: World War I was a writers' war,
: and there's a lot of metaphorical resonance
: in living men digging holes where they would in time die.
: The lines of trenches on the Western Front
: covered only about 400 miles as the crow flies,
: but because of the endless zigzagging,
: the trenches themselves may have run
: as much as 25,000 miles.
: But the stalemate of trench warfare wasn't seen
: on every front, especially at the beginning of the war.
: There was a lot of offensive movement,
: especially in the initial German strikes,
: especially on the Eastern Front, where the Germans
: were very successful against the Russians,
: who had a large but pretty hapless army.
: Also, for the blessed few of you who sat through
: all ofLawrence of Arabia, you'll remember that
: T.E. Lawrence's exploits took place in the context
: of World War I with the British battling the Ottomans.
: This brings up an important point.
: World War I featured combatants from around the world.
: Britain's army, especially, included soldiers from India,
: Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Canada--
: who was just happy to be invited.
: Africans also served with the French,
: and for a lot of these people, their experiences
: helped build nationalist movements
: when the survivors returned home after the war.
: That's about as close as we get to a silver lining.
: The war itself was incredibly destructive.
: Over 15 million people were killed
: and over 20 million wounded.
: In France, 13.3% of the male population
: between the age of 15 and 49 died in the war.
: The war also saw a lot of civilians die,
: especially in the Ottoman Empire,
: where more than two million of the three million people killed
: were noncombatants.
: But like so many other wars, World War I's
: most efficient killer was disease.
: Stupid disease, always hijacking history.
: Dysentery, typhus and cholera were rampant,
: and otherwise minor injuries would prove fatal
: when gangrene set in.
: I mean, 25% of arm wounds
: among German soldiers were fatal.
: And that's not even to mention the famous influenza epidemic
: that broke out toward the end of the war,
: which killed more than three times as many people
: as the war itself.
: The main reason the war was so deadly was the combination
: of new technology and outdated tactics.
: While we may think about tanks, airplanes and poison gas,
: all of which made their debut in the first World War,
: the two most devastating technologies were American:
: machine guns and barbed wire.
: Attempting to march in lines toward an enemy's trench,
: soldiers of both sides were mowed down by machine gun fire.
: According to one German machine gunner
: at the Battle of Somme in 1916...
: At the Somme, the British lost 60,000 men
: in the first day of fighting.
: Remember the old colonialist verse:
: "Whatever happens, we have got
: "the maxim gun, and they have not"?
: Yeah, well, now everybody had machine guns.
: One of the things we try to remember here atCrash Course
: is that people both make history and are made by it.
: World War I brings this back into stark relief,
: because we know so much about the soldiers who fought in it.
: And how they wrote about the war
: really changed our relationship with systemic violence.
: For most soldiers, there was nothing glamorous
: or heroic about this war.
: For the British, for example,
: the trenches were two things above all:
: wet and smelly. The dampness came from the fact
: that the British trenches were in the wettest part of Flanders.
: The smell was mainly decomposing flesh.
: Nothing glorious about that.
: On the upside, soldiers were at least rarely hungry,
: and there was a lot of food from home,
: which is worth underscoring, because it reminds us
: that home wasn't very far away.
: Even for the British, at their closest,
: the front was only 70 miles from England.
: They could read newspapers from London
: one day later than Londoners could.
: While going over the top...
: Stan, no puns in this episode.
: Right. While going over the top of the trench
: to cross no man's land and attack the enemy trench
: is what lights our romantic imagination,
: most soldiers' lives were dominated
: by the fear of shelling. According to a journal
: published by French soldiers...
: Although soldiers then, as now, lived under conditions
: it's difficult to imagine, there was more
: than the threat of death to distress them.
: According to German officer Ernst Jünger,
: "It was not danger, however extreme,
: "that depresses the spirit of men
: so much as overfatigue and wretched conditions."
: And for most soldiers,
: especially the British and French,
: the pay for their efforts was pitiful.
: So why did they even keep fighting?
: Duty, nationalism, loyalty to comrades
: and fear of being of shot for desertion
: all played a role, but so did alcohol.
: As one British medical officer said,
: "Had it not been for the rum ration,
: I do not think we should have won the war."
: Ernst Jünger also remarked on the propensity of soldiers
: to drink their troubles away.
: "Though ten out of 12 had fallen still,
: "the last two, as sure as death, were to be found
: "on the first evening of rest over the bottle
: drinking a silent health to their dead companions."
: Oh, it's time for the open letter?
: Whew! An open letter to alcohol.
: I wonder what's in today's secret compartment.
: Oh, shocking.
: It's a golf club.
: And an actually disco golf ball made by aCrash Coursefan.
: Dear alcohol...
: -Ah, that's... -(clattering)
: Like disease, you've been a key figure in human history,
: despite not actually being a person.
: And for millennia, you've played an important role in war,
: often helping soldiers do their duty,
: often distracting them from it.
: But here's the thing, alcohol, in my experience--
: which is extensive--
: if you need to be drunk to do something,
: you should maybe not do the thing.
: Unless, of course, the thing is golf.
: Best wishes, John Green.
: So, what did we take away from the so-called Great War?
: Well, not much.
: Let's go to the Thought Bubble.
: The Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I,
: fixed the blame for the war on Germany,
: which proved ruinous to the German economy
: and destructive to its political institutions,
: and unless you're really nostalgic
: for totalitarian communism, you've got to say
: that World War I was also a disaster for Russia,
: because it facilitated the rise of the Bolsheviks.
: The Russian Revolution had two phases.
: In the first phase, called the February Revolution--
: because, get this, it occurred in February--
: army mutinies and civil unrest forced the overthrow
: of the Romanov Dynasty, which had been in power
: in Russia since, like, forever, to use a proper historian term.
: The monarchy was replaced by a provisional government
: led, eventually, by Alexander Kerensky,
: who made the terrible decision to keep Russia
: in the war, which led to the October Revolution--
: so-called because it happened in October--
: in which Vladimir Lenin and his Bolsheviks took over,
: famously promising the Russian people
: peace, bread and land.
: To which the Russian people responded,
: "Hey, you just named three of our favorite things."
: Lenin's first big achievement was signing a separate peace
: with Germany and getting Russia out of the war,
: which was helpful to him, since he needed to fight
: a civil war that wouldn't end until 1922.
: This might have helped Germany, too,
: except the U.S. entered the war on the side
: of the British and the French,
: which led to another outcome of the war,
: increased geopolitical influence for the U.S.
: The U.S. was already becoming a major economic power,
: and being able to avoid the destruction
: and loss of manpower associated with World War I
: certainly didn't hurt.
: The war helped catapult the U.S. from being a debtor nation
: to a creditor one, and Wilson's leading role
: in negotiations at Versailles,
: even though he didn't actually get what he wanted,
: made America a big player on the world stage for the first time.
: Thanks, Thought Bubble.
: So, just so we don't get completely Euro-centric,
: another major outcome of the war
: was the end of the Ottoman Empire
: and the emergence of the nation-state of Turkey.
: The rest of the world saw some change, too,
: but not much for the better.
: In Africa, Britain took Germany's colonies,
: and even though Indians fought and died
: in a higher percentage than Americans in World War I,
: India didn't gain any real autonomy.
: All these terrible outcomes led to a general sense
: of disappointment in literary circles,
: and this feeling of pointlessness and cynicism
: was expressed by the writers of the Lost Generation.
: It was a war full of loss.
: Millions of people were lost.
: Traditional ideas of war's nobility and heroism
: were lost as well.
: I mean, what is heroism when you're just sitting
: in a trench, waiting to be blown up?
: And after World War I, war might be necessary,
: but it would never again be glorious.
: We see this shift in the writing and art that emerged
: from the Great War, as artists transitioned from Romanticism
: to Modernism.
: Think of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises,
: which is about a man rendered not noble, but impotent by war.
: The dark, cruel irony there that you go to war to become a man
: and then war takes away the organ
: often called "your manhood,"
: that defined Hemingway's worldview,
: and it also defines ours.
: Thanks for watching. I'll see you next week.
: Crash Courseis produced and directed by Stan Miller.
: Our script supervisor is Meredith Danko.
: Our associate producer is Danica Johnson.
: The show is written by my high school history teacher,
: Raoul Meyer, and myself,
: and our graphics team is Thought Bubble.
: Last week's phrase of the week was
: "unless you are the Mongols." We brought it back for you.
: If you'd like to suggest future phrases of the week
: or guess at this week's, you can do so in comments
: where you can also ask questions about today's video
: that will be answered by our team of historians.
: Thanks for watching Crash Course,