WAR AND PEACE
Posted by anthonynorth on January 10, 2008
On 28 June 1914 a Serbian student named Gavrilo Princip assassinated the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria at Sarajevo in Bosnia. It was the last straw for a Europe in political turmoil.
Feeling protective of the Balkans, on 30 July Russia mobilised against Austria. On 1 August Germany – ally to Austria – declared war on Russia and France 2 days later. And on 4 August the Great War was on as Germany invaded Belgium as a prelude to the invasion of France.
WORLD WAR ONE
Britain joined in on the same day, soon to be followed by Turkey on the other side. The First World War had several fronts. In the east, the Russian advance into East Prussia came to an end at the battle of Tannenburg, the Germans going on to threaten Russia, resulting in Russia leaving the war in December 1917.
The predominantly Australian Gallipoli Campaign beginning in 1915 against the Turks proved a disaster. The Mesopotamian Campaign failed to hold back the Turks in the Middle East, their only real problem being an Arab revolt, led by a junior British officer who became known as Lawrence of Arabia.
In the Atlantic, Germany took a great toll on British merchant shipping, and the Battle of Rutland of May 1916 ended indecisively, but proved Britain to no longer rule the waves. But the major war was fought on the Western Front.
THE WESTERN FRONT
When Germany attacked Belgium on 4 August 1914 the idea was to outflank the French and attack Paris. However, the British Expeditionary Force brought them to a halt at Marne. Joined by the French, a further assault was halted at the first Battle of Ypres, resulting in stalemate and the picture of the war to come with barbed wire, trenches, machine guns and mud.
The next four years would become a battle of attrition. The following year saw 3 major battles – Neuve-Chapelle, the second Battle of Ypres and the Battle of Loos – but the stalemate continued into the 1916 Battle at Verdun and the Somme, which saw over a million casualties.
By 1917 the Germans were pushed back to the Hindenburg Line, a series of prepared defensive positions. Soon the Americans were to enter the war and at the Third Battle of Ypres (Flanders), Passchendale was taken.
The spring of 1918 saw another German assault, brought to a halt at the Second Battle of Marne, the British commander, Haig, breaching the Hindenburg Line in September. Germany began talking of peace, hostilities ceasing on 11 November 1918. At the resulting Treaty of Versailles the Germans lost Alsace Lorraine and were made to pay a heavy financial price.
INDUSTRIALISATION
The First World War was fought chiefly because of the failure of bluff by leaders who wanted power, not realising the abomination they were about to unleash. Industry had produced the ability to make more and more weaponry, thus requiring a more bloody effort to beat an enemy, the war of attrition attempting to weaken the very industrial base.
And industrialisation was to have a greater political and social effect as the war ended, the middleclass already empowered, and the working classes about to seek their own emancipation. Indeed, the combinations unleashed by industrialisation were to make the Great War the first stage of a European civil war.
COMMUNISM
With industry highlighting the problem, and philosophy directing the mind, troubles in Russia had propelled the country to revolution before the war was over, instituting communism.
A socio-economic system, communism is designed to abolish private productive property, thereby preventing the individual from profiting by capitalist means, and eradicating the class system by doing away with oppressive class domination. With the classless society introduced, all become equal in economic terms, the wealth of society shared by all.
In theory communism is the perfect state, free from inequality and oppression. But of course, the Soviet Union HAD oppressive domination. Why is this? Because the leadership forgot the means by which Marx saw communism attained. Begun by violent revolution, he envisaged a dictatorship would rise. But after a time the dictatorship should disappear as equality emerged. This is the theory. In reality, when men get power, they will keep it.
THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
A revolution also needs a reason to fuel anger and frustration. Russia gave reasons in abundance. By the 19th century Alexander II reversed the westernising process begun by Peter the Great, returning Russia to the old ways in the ‘Great Reform’.
By the early 20th century, Nicholas II found himself at the helm of an old-style monarchial order. In January 1905 a protest was held in St Petersburg. Nicholas had soldiers turn their rifles on the crowd. It was remembered as Bloody Sunday.
Strikes and revolts broke out, aided by activist Leon Trotsky from the Social Democratic Party, and Lenin, a member of the Bolshevik faction.
By October Nicholas allowed the formation of a middleclass elected Duma, or Parliament, while the workers began organising regional Soviets, or worker’s councils.
An unsteady peace emerged, but by March 1917 war and hunger saw more disturbances in St Petersburg; the garrison mutinied and strikers stopped Nicholas from going to sort it out.
In April, Lenin arrived in St Petersburg, declaring revolution throughout Europe. Peasants seized the land and the Bolsheviks gained control of key Soviets. Then, on 7 November 1917 the Bolsheviks struck, arresting the government and taking power.
Nicholas had abdicated in March, and soon he and his family were to be killed.
The Bolsheviks took Russia out of the war and then fought a 3 three year civil war against White Russians loyal to the Czar.
In March 1921 Lenin announced his New Economic Plan for a communist industrial state, but with his death in 1924, Josef Stalin became leader. The newly created Soviet Union became a massive work camp, Stalin’s hold secured by his Great Purge of 1937, with thousands disappearing without trace.
LEAGUE OF NATIONS
The Great War left Europe broke, the Treaty of Versailles leaving Germany hurt and ridiculed. However, initially the world turned to peace, the Treaty setting up the League of Nations.
Rising to 60 members, the League was formed on l January 1920, fuelled by the fear of industrialisation again causing a war of attrition. Open to any self-governing state which honoured international obligations and the league’s ruling on military affairs, it did, however, prove impotent.
FASCISM
Industrialisation and war had taken its toll, particularly on Italy, with left-wing groups rising and about to take power. To counter them, 1919 saw the creation of the Fasci di Combattimenti under Benito Mussolini.
In October 1922 he marched on Rome in a great bluff, stopping the communists with a coup d’etat. Consolidating his position, he became dictator of Italy, invading Ethiopia in 1936 and Albania 3 years later.
This was the first major success of Fascism, the political fall-out of Hegel’s ‘divine’ state, demanding the individual be subjugated to the needs of the state defined by the general will of the people through an absolute leader.
Totalitarian in nature, fascism allowed private production but only under the overall control of the state, overall good of the state coming before individual liberty. Fascist movements became militaristic and nationalistic, often anti-Semitic, and arose in Portugul, Austria, the Balkans, France, South America and in Britain, characterised by the black shirt.
SPANISH CIVIL WAR
In most of these countries the movement was not large enough to do lasting harm, but Spain was a different matter. In 1923 a right wing coup had taken power. Corrupt, it fell in 1930, leaving Spain split between the Monarchists/Falangists on the right, and Republicans on the left.
In February 1936 a left wing Popular Front was elected, leading General Franco to attempt a right wing coup in July, Unsuccessful, Spain descended into civil war, the soul of Europe being fought out between the opposing systems of left and right.
The right won, the fascist Franco becoming dictator in 1939, the damage done to Spain guaranteeing their neutrality during the Second World War.
However, by this time another form of fascism had arisen in Germany. In the Nazi, Europe was to reel, their seizing of power aided by the economic climate of the 1930s – a climate to be found, as we shall see in the next post, in the history of the United States of America.
© Anthony North, January 2008
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