FYI - retired UNCC administrator and history professor emeritus Ed Perzel passed away on June 16th. He was co-author of the book “The Echo of the Bugle Call: Charlotte’s Role in World War One, a history of Camp Greene” (1979).
I knew Ed as one of his students, occasional running partner, and a friend. Great guy!
We did get on a British tangent. Out of curiosity, how long do you spend on the July Crisis in your course? It’s so complex.
Those are both great viewing recommendations.
I’m sorry to hear of his passing. He was another one of those leaders that helped shape the University early on. RIP.
When I teach the course, I usually break it down to roughly 40% origins of the war (to include the July Crisis), 40% the war, 20% legacy (typically just tracing its consequences during the 1920s and 1930s). The July Crisis can’t be understood, in my opinion, without the context of the accumulated fears and grievances (1908 Bosnian Crisis, for example), but also the international rivalries, nationalism, eastern question, German unification, Anglo-Russian hostility, etc. Students typically don’t have much foundation to understand these themes and concepts…it’s not their fault, in high school history courses the war gets so little attention (WW2 sucks up all the oxygen so to speak).
I could argue that WWI was started by Frederick the Great. Frederick was screwed over by the British and left nearly bankrupt after helping them win the 7 Years War. As part of Frederick’s secret revenge, he helped the Americans win the Revolutionary Wary, quietly. By the end of that war, Frederick had rebuilt his military significantly. Soon after the end of the Revolutionary War, not long before Frederick died, the Great hosted most of the leading Generals of the world’s militaries, to show them his new army during a few weeks of active military demonstrations. Basically, they convinced these foreign military leaders that their forces were all now obsolete, but that they could not only refit them, but they could help them to finance the modernization of their militaries. This also corresponded with many of the nobility being allowed to sell their family lands for profit, to anyone, which created inflated wealth from land speculation. By the time of WWI, many of these countries had invested heavily in their militaries, but were economically in seriously bad shape, so the times were set to put these militaries into action…just my take
MJG, this piece argues that the unexpected death of Frederick III in 1888 just months into his reign had profound affect on the events leading to World War I:
http://www.jlgh.org/Past-Issues/Volume-8---Issue-3/How-Cancer-Caused-WWI.aspx
I like that. Keep in mind that I’m teaching survey courses so I don’t have the luxury of going that far. I usually find a way to spend 2 weeks on the conflict. You’re right about the high school preparation. We have a significant early college population and fortunately their 10th grade history teacher is phenomenal (also a fellow Niner). They tend to come in with a better overall understanding than the general population.
Next time you teach it, I’d love to sit in on a class and observe.
MJG’s take is an interesting one that will require some more thought…
That’s an interesting article, Run. William II’s dismissal of Bismarck was a huge blunder. He loses me with his last throw-away line though. Nothing that happened at Versailles or in the years after had to happen the way it did. A lot of individual actors had a hand in the process. A bridge too far, IMO.
One issue I have with your interesting theory is that the Prussian military was rather mediocre by 1800, didn’t perform particularly well against the French and often changed coalition partners or pursued peace. Still, it’s an interesting concept, but I’ve also read works that suggest we could trace the origins back to the Treaty of Westphalia…and fun to speculate!
Military technology and tactics changed and evolved so much between even the American Civil War and WW1 that , it seems to me, that German unification had more to do with the contemporary rearmament programs and the arms race (as well as the rise of Japan as a potential rival in the Far East) .
For anyone interested, an excellent book is Hamilton and Herwig’s “Decisions for War,” which examines the decision-making structures and processes in each belligerent country. I’ve read this theory before, in other works, but to me it absolves the French, Russians, Serbians, and British far too much and targets merely the Kaiser (clearly an unlikable and undisciplined monarch) with ultimate responsibility for the actions of the other states. British and Russian relations throughout the 19th century were hostile (The Great Game), Russia was actively antagonizing Japan in the Far East, France and Britain continually wrangled in Africa…so while cancer placed an ill-equipped fellow on the German throne, and his actions and decisions increased tensions, hard for me to accept this theory that the war “would likely never have happened.” But, it’s always fun to speculate the “what ifs” in history.
Dismissing Bismarck is often regarded as a mistake, but let me propose that the failure to renew the Reinsurance Treaty with Russia was far more serious. Bismarck was quite old by 1890, but had accumulated so much power that his continued leadership of German foreign policy also hindered “new” thinking. Wilhelm’s problem was that he failed to select others willing to challenge him (too many “yes” men), which is somewhat understandable…do any of us want to be told we’re wrong? German foreign policy post-Bismarck was chaotic and ad hoc, which is why so many look at Bismarck’s era as one of stability and coherent, but because his “mistakes” didn’t result in war it’s easy to neglect the tensions that existed between 1870-1890 as well. Russo-Turkish war is one example that could have led to a broader war, but didn’t.
The general concept was that Frederick the Great had went from nearly bankrupt and losing his country after the seven years war, to having the most advanced/modern military in Europe, without firing a shot. In other words, I believe Frederick had profited from the secret help and the purpose of those military exercises noted were to entice the modernization of the other European militaries to be FINANCED. This lead to larger standing armies that were financed by debt.
Another interesting offshoot is the story of the Duke of Hesse sending off his treasure with the Rothschilds in order to avoid its confiscation by Napoleon. The story goes that the Rothschilds reinvested that treasure into banks, which were financing some of both sides of the Napoleonic conflicts. The story continued that the Rothchilds returned the treasure to the Duke with profits, and became the world’s richest family. When you bet on both sides of a conflict, you are essentially guaranteeing victory.
The land speculations, as always, led to bubble bursting recessions. The military powers of Europe had invested heavily to build large standing armies with debts, which were rapidly becoming obsolete without many being used…combined with the other craziness you all have already noted…led to the convergence of WWI, and all of its increased killing efficiencies.
The point of the take is that the financing…I appreciate the comments.
Which parts will be on final exam?
The parts in Bold Type.
You’re always welcome. Heather Perry also teaches it and I’m not sure if she’s “next” or it will be me in Fall 2021/Spring 2022. I also spend more time on the Russian Revolutions and the war in the US (which I refer to as America’s “Uncivil War”). I also teach it as a LBST 2102, Global Connections (The First World War as Global War), which I’m doing this Fall semester…which will be interesting because it can enroll up to 110 students but with social distancing I’m not sure yet how we’ll make it work. I’m developing three different syllabi to deal with various scenarios…Fall semester is going to be unusual.
Speaking of the Russian Revolutions, it wasn’t until college that I learned about the direct US involvement in supporting the anti-communist White Movement during the ensuing Russian Civil War.
The American Expeditionary Force in North Russia headquartered in Arkhangelsk (700 miles north of Moscow), while the AEF in Siberia was based in Vladivostok. The former was active 1918-19, while the latter remained into 1920. All total, US forces in Russia numbered 11,000, with the AEF in North Russia contingent aptly nicknamed the Polar Bears.
Japan, France, and Britain also intervened, though of all four powers dispatched to Russia, the British were by far the most active. There’s an interesting video, still available on archive.org (AEF IN SIBERIA : Department of Defense : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive ) that documents the AEF in Russia, made in the 1950s or 1960s. The Americans really didn’t do much, at all. Our most active involvement came with the Hoover Aid Mission to Russia to fight the horrific famine in Ukraine and parts of western Russia. It’s a fun story to discover and there’s some decent scholarship about it, but the “capitalist intervention” only provided the Bolsheviks a small propaganda tool, not much else.
I would argue that the Czechs and Slovaks were the most active in Russia. Of course, initially they were nationalists looking to liberate their homelands from the Austro- Hungarian Empire. The Czechoslovak Legion at times controlled the entirety of the Trans-Siberian Railway and suffered the largest share of Allied losses with over 4,000 killed. US forces had the next highest number of Allied deaths at over 400 lost.
Czech Legion were POWs liberated after Brest-Litovsk, so rather different than the Allied intervention. The nationalism was, according to many scholars, secondary to them than the desire to return home, a path denied to them by the Civil War. Lots of great scholarship about the Czech Legion and its control of the Trans-Siberian, but the British Intervention into the Caucasus and TransCaspia alarmed the Bolsheviks more than Siberia, until Kolchak’s forces started to crumble as it alienated so many groups that initially sought to ally with his forces and the White resistance. The Czech legion didn’t really ally with anyone. Consequently, British efforts to connect with White forces operating in the Caucasus and TransCaspia had (the oil and cotton reserves were much desired by all belligerents) huge, immediate implications whereas Bolshevik influence in Siberia was minimal at best in 1918-1919.
From what I’ve read, the Czechoslovak Legion began in 1914 when Czechs and Slovaks residing in Russia volunteered to fight with the understanding that they would receive Russian support for the creation of a Czechoslovakian state following the war. They initially received permission to “recruit” fellow Czechs of the Austro-Hungarian Empire being held as POWs but the Russians rescinded that approval early on. When the Czechs distinguished themselves during the Kerensky Offensive of 1917, the Russians again allowed for Czech POWs to join the ranks. In fact, the Legion’s success at the Battle of Zhorbiv was the only successful action during what was the final offensive by Russian forces in WWI.
