Outside of politics, did European society engage in civil wars? With the exceptions of Ireland and Finland, I would have to say that, for the period between the end ofthe Russian Civil War and the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, European society did not engage in civilwars. Given the presence of Ireland and Finland …
Tag Archives: World War I
Forging a New World? Peacemaking at Paris
Was peace doomed from the beginning? Or did the ‘economic consequences’ of the peace undermine the achievements of the peacemakers? How valid are the criticisms of Keynes? After reading the materials for this week, I remain convinced that the key failure of the Paris Peace Conference and Treaty of Versailles was economic, i.e., that the …
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Contra Lewy: The Armenian Genocide
In 1996, Gregory H. Stanton, a law professor, former Fulbright scholar, and employee of the United States Department of State, presented a briefing paper in which he promulgated his theory of genocide, which encompassed eight stages. Regarding the eighth stage, Stanton wrote that “every genocide is followed by denial,” and its characteristics range from getting …
Did Germany Actually Win the War?
My post for this week is inspired by the following quotation, which I read only two days ago for the first time. It surprised me at first and then struck me as somewhat perceptive. Now, however, I see the authors as having emphasized Germany’s “victory” too much: In strategic terms Germany had won the Great …
Political Destabilization in WWI Germany
It is axiomatic that World War I had tremendous impacts on Germany, and these effects were political, economic, and social. These effects were, to a very large extent, interrelated, since economic causes often underpin political and social changes. However, in terms of the long-term effects of the changes wrought by Germany’s involved in WWI, I …
Armistice: Wilson vs Pershing
In a country like the United States, where the Constitution states that the President is the commander in chief of the armed forces but that person is by definition a civilian, conflicts can arise between members of the military and the President. The disagreement between President Harry S. Truman and General Douglas Macarthur during the …
The Sixtus Affair
Several political, social, and economic realities impacted the home fronts in the nations engaged in World War I. For Austria-Hungary, perhaps the most substantive political event was the death of Emperor Franz Josef on November 21, 1916, after a reign of almost 68 years. The Emperor was quite old by the time the world broke …
Hasty Mobilization in World War I
For Germany, a hard-learned lesson of the first year of the war was that how it interpreted the act of military mobilization was not the same as other nations’ interpretations. As a result of this assumption, Germany declared war on Russia although it is not clear that Russia undertook mobilization for reasons other than preparedness …
Ottoman Entry Into WWI
I’ve begun my next course, this one on World War I. Only five discussion posts in this class, but a longer research agenda is coming soon. ==== Of the countries participating in World War I, perhaps no country was undergoing quite as extensive a shift in national identity at the time as the Ottoman Empire. …
Isaac Rosenberg on Trench Warfare
Trench warfare was comparatively horrific when contrasted with earlier forms of warfare, primarily because of the very instruments listed by the textbook authors in discussing combat during World War I: “the hand grenade, the spade, and the machine gun.”[1] In their own ways, each tool is emblematic of how warfare had changes from earlier generations. …
Inevitable Historicity 