World War One influenced World War Two, and also influenced the Cold War
In 1914, Europe was set ablaze by the outbreak of the Great War. A series of military alliances had been designed to keep the peace, but instead pushed Europe closer to war. Various minor wars and crises had each poured more gunpowder into the magazine. Then, suddenly, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand lit the fuse … and Europe exploded. The war eventually killed some 15 million people. The war included some of the bitterest fighting in history, and left behind the simple term “shell shock.” We still grapple with the war’s legacy today. In Europe, its outbreak might (possibly) have been preventable. And its conclusion rendered the Allied victory incomplete, and even a little unsatisfying. The bloodbath of a generation later was made almost (but not completely) unavoidable. Nonetheless, the war may have actually accomplished a few things despite this, even if it was incomplete. Therefore, what is the legacy of the war today? How, in both good and bad ways, did it set the course for the twentieth century? These are the questions that this post will try to answer. Whatever one’s opinion of the war, it clearly had a lasting impact upon many different parts of the world. It was fought from Europe, Africa, and the Middle East … to East Asia and the Pacific islands. It was fought in the world’s oceans and seas, from the Atlantic and the Mediterranean to the Pacific and the Indian Ocean. And, in many ways, it explains the Second World War and the twentieth-century Cold War. I should clarify that this post will have a special focus on Germany. This is because I have instead covered some other important parts of the story elsewhere, as I will describe later on in this post. However, I would also like to make some occasional comments about various other nations (including France), wherever this seems appropriate.
Raising the German flag at Mulinuʻu – German Samoa, 1900
Germany and Austria-Hungary lose all of their overseas colonies in the First World War
First, let me talk about some related details from Germany. That is, why was Nazi Germany sometimes called the “Third Reich”? The so-called “First Reich” was the “Holy Roman Empire,” which was dissolved back in 1806. (Not to be confused with the Roman Empire.) The so-called “Second Reich” was the “German Empire,” sometimes called Imperial Germany – or even Bismarck’s Germany. It was actually a comparatively recent development during the First World War. But, as you may know, Hitler was actually born in Austria. And Austria was then a part of the “Austro-Hungarian Empire.” As it turns out, this “Austro-Hungarian Empire” was only born in 1867. Soon afterwards, the German states were actually unified into a single nation (namely, Germany) by 1871. In the 1880s, Imperial Germany acquired four colonies in Africa. These were German Kamerun (which overlaps with modern-day Cameroon), German Togoland, German South West Africa, and German East Africa. In 1884, Germany acquired distant New Guinea as well. In 1898, Germany acquired the “Kiautschou Bay Leased Territory.” This was a German territory in what is now China, with its headquarters at Qingdao. In 1899, the Germans also colonized the island of Samoa. Thus, they were now getting even further into the Pacific. Spain had recently suffered a serious defeat at the hands of the United States, in the Spanish-American War of 1898. Because of this, the Spaniards had lost Guam and the Philippines to the United States. Thus, in 1899, Spain sold two of its remaining Pacific islands (Saipan and Tinian) to Germany. This meant even more Pacific possessions for the Germans. In 1902, the Austro-Hungarian Empire acquired a Chinese city called Tianjin. This is one of the few overseas territories that the Austro-Hungarians would ever possess. In 1904, there was a rebellion in German South West Africa. The Germans (sadly) responded with the Herero and Nama genocide. This continued until 1908. From 1905 to 1907, there was also the Maji Maji Rebellion in German East Africa. This, too, was suppressed. But Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire eventually lost all of these possessions during the First World War. All of these colonies; in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific; were now lost. This was a bitter memory for the German-speaking peoples of that generation.
Chained Herero and Nama prisoners during the genocide – German South West Africa, 1904
Austria-Hungary is dissolved, and Germany’s “Weimar Republic” soon collapses
Shortly after the war ended, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was actually dissolved completely. It was mainly divided into two states, which were Austria and Hungary. Germany was soon forced to pay some “reparations” for the damages that they had caused to the Western Allies. These reparations caused significant inflation in Germany, making the Treaty of Versailles somewhat unpopular there. This, along with the Great Depression, created some (truly unfortunate) opportunities for an Austrian-born corporal who had served in the war. His name was Adolf Hitler, and he would eventually rule both his native Austria and the nearby nation of Germany (among many other places). Ironically, Hitler’s Austria would eventually be annexed by Germany (at least temporarily), in the now-infamous Anschluss. But I’m getting ahead of myself here. For now, suffice it to say only that there was plenty of anger in the between-the-wars Germany – and it would eventually be expressed in violence. More about that in another post. The Germans may also have been angry at the loss of their overseas colonies in the Great War, as described above. Other territorial changes, such as those in Danzig and Alsace-Lorraine, were much closer to home. Thus, for various reasons, Germany’s “Weimar Republic” was soon dissolved, and succumbed to the rule of the Nazis. There was further German expansionism in Europe, as I describe elsewhere. The Nazis actually banned the 1929 German novel “All Quiet on the Western Front,” which dramatized the infamous trench warfare in Western Europe. The warfare was now a bitter memory, in the minds of both sides of that particular generation. Thus, it might help us to look somewhat at this infamous “Western Front.” It may help us (at least somewhat) to explain the various Allied mindsets of the Second World War. It explains, for example, why they were so reluctant to get involved in yet another European war.
Sailors during the mutiny in Kiel, during Germany’s “November Revolution” (1918)
Backtracking to the Western Front, and technologies pioneered in the First World War
The “Western Front” has been dramatized in numerous books and films. It was basically a network of trenches and fortifications. It stretched through France and Belgium. The fighting there involved long periods of stalemate, with scarcely any movement anywhere along the front. It also involved long periods of sitting in the trenches, and hoping that one might be spared from an artillery shell blast. These trenches involved mud, rats, and a number of trench-related diseases. These long periods of helpless waiting were punctuated by moments of intense combat at close quarters. In this combat, the two sides crossed the no-man’s land and their opponents’ barbed wire into the enemy trenches at times. Many of those technologies that we associate with the Second World War … were actually pioneered (to some degree, at least) in the first one. These included tanks, machine-guns, submarines (such as U-boats), aircraft, and even aircraft carriers. The aircraft and the aircraft carriers had only a small impact in the First World War, although I should acknowledge that this impact was still significant. But the other technologies, including the machine-guns, achieved deadly accuracy in the First World War. Only near the beginning and ending periods of the war … was there any significant movement across the Western Front. About 4% of the French population actually died during the war. And about 8% of the French population lived under a German occupation during the First World War. This gives some insight into the French mindset of the Second World War. This sort of thing also explains why the British and the Commonwealth nations (not to mention the Americans) were reluctant to get involved in yet another war.
Ruins of Carency after it was recaptured by France – Western Front, 1915
France builds the Maginot Line, only to be overrun by the Nazis (and later liberated)
But the effects of this mindset are most notable in France. Specifically, the French would later create a massive system of fortifications along their eastern border with Germany. It was called the “Maginot Line.” Ironically, it may have protected Germany a little better than it protected France. When the Second World War began, the Germans simply went around it. That is, in the Second World War, the Germans would instead attack through Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands – thus attacking France along its weaker northern flank. In less than two months, the Germans had completely swept through France. The tanks of the Second World War … were a little more effective than those in the first one. They moved with great speed, as summed up in the German word “blitzkrieg” (meaning “lightning war”). France had hoped to indefinitely keep the Germans at bay along the Maginot Line. Still in this trench-warfare mindset, the French had planned to keep the Germans pinned down along a static front. But, obviously, this didn’t happen. Small wonder, then, that a wave of defeatism so quickly spread through the French ranks and government. By June 1940, France had surrendered to the Nazis, an early victim of “blitzkrieg.” They would spend most of the war being ruled by fascists, from the Nazis’ puppet government in Vichy. France (and some other occupied nations) would also suffer some bombing at Allied hands. This was because its Nazi-controlled targets were somewhat easier for the Allies to bomb, than those in Germany itself. The Free French (including the French resistance) would now fight on, as the various Allies fought against the Germans in North Africa, the Middle East, and the Italian Peninsula. Thus, the Allies (wisely) made the decision to postpone returning to France for the time being. This meant that the Allies only returned there in 1944, when they invaded Normandy on D-Day. They had been kept a little busy by these other endeavors. However, the Allies managed to bomb the Germans, and various targets in Nazi-occupied countries, for most of the war. These many years of Allied bombing would eventually take their toll on the German Nazis. The Allies eventually liberated France (and some other countries in Western Europe), and even made their way into Germany itself. They soon discovered evidence of the extent of the Holocaust, both inside and outside Germany. And these Western Allies would soon be meeting the Russian troops, along what later became known as the “Iron Curtain.”
Portion of the Maginot Line at Alsace, France
The Russian Revolution of 1917 spreads communism to Eastern Europe in World War II
This brings me to yet another influential aspect of the First World War. Specifically, there is the lesser-known “Eastern Front,” which involved plenty of movement. As with the Eastern Front of the Second World War, the First World War’s “Eastern Front” included some of the greatest losses of the war, as a percentage of the population. Its raw casualty numbers were also rather bad. Even more importantly for our story, a communist revolution hit Russia in 1917. Dissatisfaction with the Romanov regime was now exploding into a revolution. As one audiobook puts it, the Russian Revolution would actually rival the Great War itself in its importance. I recognize that the Russian Civil War continued for a few years after the 1918 Armistice in the West. Specifically, the fighting in Russia would continue until 1922. It was soon followed by Russia’s likewise-infamous “Great Purges,” in the 1920s and 1930s. But the Russian Revolution is rightly considered a part, or at least a ripple effect, of the Great War. It would soon involve a few “ripple effects” of its own. Communist ideology would soon spread into Eastern Europe, and the Chinese Civil War already had its own communist faction. It would eventually be led by Mao Zedong, who would take over China after the war. Specifically, Mao took over in 1949. From there, the virus soon spread to other parts of the world, in the infamous Cold War.
Czechoslovak legionaries killed by Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution, 1918
Germany had encouraged the Russian Revolution, which later backfires on East Germany
In Europe, the battle lines of the Cold War were already being drawn in Germany, among other parts of Europe. Winston Churchill would later call this boundary the “Iron Curtain,” and the name soon stuck. Ironically, back in the First World War, the Germans had actually encouraged the 1917 communist revolution in Russia. This was because they wanted to knock Russia out of the war, and actually succeeded in doing so. But, in 1945, this decision eventually came back to haunt them. That is, the Russian communist ideology was now being implemented with a vengeance in East Germany. As you may know, the fighting in Europe ended shortly after Adolf Hitler’s suicide in 1945. The late 1940s soon saw the Nuremberg trials, the Marshall Plan, and the infamous Berlin Blockade. Many families were now being separated by the new border, and a Berlin Wall was eventually constructed in 1961. The Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall would stand there unopposed until 1989, with occasional border crossings despite the Soviet efforts to keep their people locked in. Germany was eventually reunified by 1990, and the Soviet yoke was eventually gone by 1991. But Russia continues to be causing some problems in Eastern Europe, at the time that I write this. At least some of history’s problems can be traced back to the Russian Revolution – and, thus, to the First World War. For more about the problems with the communist system, see this blog post.
German refugees from East Prussia, February 1945
Other effects upon World War II, and how communism would soon spread in the Cold War
In this post, I have been focusing primarily on the connections between the respective “Western Fronts” of the two World Wars, and between the respective “Eastern Fronts” of the two World Wars. These both pertain to Germany. Thus, I should acknowledge that I have mostly been ignoring the other connections between the two World Wars, in various other parts of the world. This is because I have instead explored some of these connections in other blog posts, as described in the following. For example, I have covered the “connections between the World Wars” in Asia and the Pacific (including Japan) here. I have covered the “connections between the World Wars” in Africa and the Middle East here, and those in Fascist (and pre-Fascist) Italy here. I have even covered the “connections between the World Wars” in distant Latin America here, although these would have less effect upon these two conflicts. And I have done multiple posts about how the Russian Revolution (eventually) spread Marxism-Leninism during the Cold War – including in Vietnam, North Korea, Cuba, Angola (for a time, at least), and China (as mentioned earlier). Suffice it to say here that there are also a few important connections to be made regarding the fighting in the Atlantic. The U-boat campaigns in the First World War, which included the infamous sinking of the Lusitania, also affected the Atlantic fighting in the Second World War. For example, this affected the degree of early American involvement in the “Battle of the Atlantic,” and how the Allies were now to be facing the German U-boats once again.
Bombing of Dresden (1945), which would later be part of East Germany
Conclusion: In both good and bad ways, the Great War influenced the twentieth century
Thus, in many different parts of the world, there were some sweeping ripple effects from the First World War. In this post, I have particularly focused on the legacy of these two conflicts in Germany. I have tried to do this primarily by connecting the wars’ respective “Western Fronts,” and connecting their respective “Eastern Fronts.” However, I have occasionally undertaken to mention their effects upon certain other nations as well, whenever this seemed appropriate. Thus, in many ways, the Great War affected World War Two, the Cold War, and even our contemporary state of affairs. Obviously, the victories of World War One were a bit incomplete, and sowed the seeds of some further fighting. But the war may have still stopped some of the German (and even Ottoman) aggressions, including much of the Armenian genocide of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. It’s true that some of the Armenian genocide persisted after the Great War had ended, but the Armenian genocide was finally over with by 1923 – shortly after the war had ended in the Middle East. (More about the war’s effects in the Middle East here.) In a similar way, the Second World War was able to stop the infamous Holocaust in Europe. In both good and bad ways, the First World War was thus setting the course for the twentieth century. I hope that we will never see a repetition of these horrors, and may instead be able to sort out these ongoing issues in more peaceful ways. But, in trying to explain the twentieth century, we keep coming back often to the Great War – and it seems likely that we will continue to do so for years to come.
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