Prof. Robert Weiner: The Nature & Impact of WWI

why the first world war why why the first world war um George just said GE was how many people died on the first day now I knew I knew the answer but so many people died on the first day or were injured on the first day of the battle of in 1916, as in the Vietnam War, 60,000 people were killed or wounded on the first day of the PS battle if we look at our century, the century that has just passed and if we look, even in our own time period, almost everything It still filters through the

impact

of the First World War on European society in Eastern European society in the Americas in Asia in Africa in the Middle East Latin America is probably the continent least affected by it;

In other words, there is almost no one on this planet who has not been affected in some way by the First World War and in each and every one of the Dimensions what the war implied was a radicalization, a polarization and an acceleration of history , in other words, it is not that it started each of the Trends but all the trends that existed at the end of the The 19th century passed through the prism of the First World War and changed in some way usually for the worse normally for the worse now there are many women here I can't say if you came out better or worse what I can say that there were many fewer men sitting after the war, but women in the workplace in certain fields increased by 20% 40% 60% several hundred % sent, for so the women came out of the barn and gained a lot of freedom.

And what did the boys do when they returned from the war? They locked them in the barn as tightly as they could, tried to suppress them for fear of all this radical change, everything that these men had to deal with on the battlefield and then return home. to turn up the women, I mean there were Mel Gibsons everywhere, they were like sissies compared to the guys that came back after the war and I'm not kidding because part of fascism as a movement is anti-woman, okay fascism It's misogynistic. fascism wants women instead fascism is militaristic hypermilitarist could never have had a musolini coming to power in italy when does anyone know when mus came to power in italy 202 ok so hitler gets all the attention he comes to power in 33 and yes, musolini pales in comparison to Hitler, but a mus, son of a blacksmith, could never have come to power in what was still predominantly an aristocratic society, a hierarchical society, a clerical society without the First World War, so that there is no musolini, there is no possibility of musolini without the world.

The First War it is not possible that Adolf Hitler without the First World War a corporal told the generals what they should do. It's not possible, it's not possible, it's not that there wouldn't have been Molinis in society or Hitlers in society, it's just that they would have stayed where they belonged. power is fine as the minority gets economies going, radical dislocation of economies, runaway inflation, now we know what it means, you know, I stupidly went back into the market about three months ago, everyone was pressuring me to come back and Mar I returned. on vacation and I took a look oh that's great, I lost more than I gained this year no, fortunately not, but it's okay, when you've experienced something like that, you can start to perceive what other people felt when they went through it, like this What do we know about German inflation?

Everyone had inflation. The French franc was stabilized in 1928. The person who stabilized Panare was called the savior of the francs. He devalued it by 80% and was called the savior of the francs. 80% devaluation of the German currency. In the 1920s it literally lost its value. The Italian currency was on that path when Musolini came to power. Russian prices rose at least four times in cities during the war. Well, people were starving at the beginning of the war. What do you think happened to them during the war? They starved more, there was no First World War, there was no Russian Revolution, oh, maybe there would have been a Revolution in Russia later, but who came out on top?

During the Revolution, the most radical faction, why did they reach the top? Because the other socialists who were predominantly in power. They continued the war and by continuing the war they made it impossible to continue their revolution. Lenin said that we can make war or make revolution. I am totally in favor of the revolution, to hell with the war and they asked for peace and in peace they finally got Germany they lost 30% of their industrial capacity 35% of their workforce war or revolution not both at the same time like this that first the revolution is a product of war it could have happened otherwise later but it would never have happened if Lenin had come to power in Zaris, Russia, it was virtually impossible, no, Lenin, nor the Russian Revolution, fascism would not have seemed so lovely for everyone.

The people who finally allowed Hitler to come to power in 1933 were afraid of a Lenin or a Stalin for Italy or Germany, among other things, modernist culture, the radicalization of political ideology everywhere, both on the right As on the left, the entire

nature

of the Middle East today is largely a product of the settlements after World War I that began to radicalize the Middle East. The United States became the center of the world economy. great in 1914 the United States who built the West the Europeans who financed the United States the Europeans financed the United States, which was the largest creditor in 1918.

The United States, so the entire balance of the economic structure in the world changed between 1914 and 1918. France was a creditor nation. Britain was the largest creditor nation. Germany was a creditor nation. They were all radically dead. The four dead nations. years later and I could go on and on about these particular areas of change there is no first world war there is no appeasement have you ever heard of English society practicing appeasement for the first world war never there is no first world war what was the

nature

of French defensive history in the 1930s What was that chain of fortresses called the magal line to do what to hide behind no First World War without mash or line?

What did the French army do at the beginning of World War I? Does anyone remember after, immediately after? They did, but at first they advanced just as the Germans did well and what happened when they advanced. Does anyone know what kind of hats they were wearing. They were red. That's smart. And you know, machine guns like red. They like red. and running forward with a cloth towards machine guns with a red hand is an act of manliness it is a sign that you have the will to power that you are not afraid the war killed a lot of people, most of them were the strongest people instead of the weakest people if this had been a classroom in France in 1914, almost all the men in this classroom would have gone to battle if they had me, you wouldn't want to hear the things the woman would have said to them and to me like A faculty member would have told you to go to battle and the sooner the better for the honor of friend of all men aged 20 to 32 in France in 1914, half were dead in 1918, half of you would have been dead to be a healthy man. in France in 1914 to have been mobilized to go to war and not even have died or been seriously wounded would be statistically improbable. pure statistics.

Objective right at the beginning of the war. I don't know if any of you had the opportunity. I understand this was difficult to achieve. Some things I didn't know. One of the things I did was I prepared for this when they called me. about doing something like this I'm not just sitting on my hands these are two of my new toys okay and one of the things I'm going to do is probably change my course books and use this for my History of the 20th Century Barbarism and civilization the history of the 20th century Ferguson The war of the world The conflict of the 20th century and The decline of the West and not only of the West but of the rest also of the civilization of Eastern Europe, as well as as a result of the war at the beginning of the war you had to be about 5ft 8 to get into the British Army, a year and a half later you could be fiveft 5ft1, the 5ft acers disappeared well and you can see how HonorBound Patriot was attached to a society because there wasn't even conscription until 1916, it was a volunteer army, a whole football team volunteered and they were called Pals and they were put together on the front line, so the whole football team disappeared.

The French military class of Saint Seir in 1914, the best. the country has to offer 63% died now normally was too disabled for one who died or even three disabled for one who died 63% of the best so who was left to confront Hitler later or stop later where were all those leaders who died and whose blood soaked the landscape of Europe in 1918, why did this happen? I mean, they weren't completely stupid, they thought it was going to be a short war, everyone thought it was going to be a short war, the Germans were hoping to spend Christmas. The war started in August, the Germans were hoping to spend Christmas in Paris, well that's a good place to spend Christmas.

I've spent Christmas and New Year's or not Christmas, but New Year's in Berlin, that's a good place now too. Then it was not so good, the French expected to be in Berlin and return to Paris to also spend Christmas in Paris. Well, there were several people around who thought it would be longer. Most thought it would be a short war. One of the causes of war is what is called war. Illusion of short war The idea that the war would be short is one of the reasons they entered it that way. The Germans had a particular plan.

It was very similar to the French plan, only it was German, so it was more daring. The Germans were going. go through Belgium and cross and go around Paris in 6 weeks leaving their eastern border a little open uh and um and I'm on the wrong map because I changed the maps before uh so this is 1914 so they might have even allowed some of these primitive Russian barbarians in East Germany and that was called the Schen plan and tragically it became the only plan of operation in 1911. They had many plans before one of the lessons for anyone.

I mean, there aren't that many lessons that really apply and even if the lessons are about how to use them, one of the lessons that might apply is that you always have to have more than one military option, you always have to have more than one military option By 1911 the Germans ruled out all other military options and everything was based on train tables, how fast can you mobilize? So this is what they had left. This plan called for a war on two fronts. Defeat the French. Quickly use the upper railways. Go back and slowly defeat the Russians.

Stroke. The French were going to do the same. attack from the south but with red hats on um and uh this almost worked well this almost worked they passed through Belgium they pushed aside the British and the French they crashed into France they reached the river mour they left their flanks open to the French counterattack and the battle of the duel failed Barbara Tuchman another book, in fact, these people who were the best talk about the weapons of August by Barara Tuchman, which I read three times when I was 20, is still a valuable study on the Battle of the Sea was one of the decisive battles of the World War, not because it determined that Germany would ultimately lose or that the Allies would ultimately win the war, but because it determined that the war would continue.

The Battle of Mar determined that the war would continue. the schen plan and they failed so the war wasn't going to end in six weeks in three months it wasn't going to end so what did they do? They ran towards the sea along the coast trying to outflank each other and they got there. at about the same time and they were looking at each other now this is the western front so what did they do next? They dug trenches and then they dug deeper trenches and a second line of trenches and a third line of trenches and they looked at each other and at that moment hundreds of thousands of people were dead and wounded now in the war on the Eastern Front it was totally different there the The Germans eventually clearly outmaneuvered them.

In fact very early in the war and at the Battle of Tannenburg and Missouri and Lakes they destroyed and captured very large parts of the Russian army, the ability of the Russians to resist was remarkable considering the type of weapons they They had at their disposal and, in many cases, only one rifle for three soldiers, sometimes, so you would wait until a comrade fell and pick up. There was another one and the Second World War was not much different at the beginning, it was a war of movement where people froze to death, as many froze to death and died from wounds directly from the battle and, by the way, about 70% of all people. those who died were killed by bombing 60 to 70% not eye to eye not melee bombing okay, so what the battle of the MN meant is one more warlong, then how will we win?

We will mobilize, so we will mobilize and we will get to this and they get to this we go there they go there we go there they go they go there total mobilization of society the first war of routine industrial meiz Massacre four years there is no complete advance until Before American troops actually arrive the Germans are closer to winning four years later than they were four years earlier, but the two civilizations are roughly equal in the ability to produce the mineral fuel Munitions food technology needs the Germans passed a law on 1916 which required men up to 65 years old to work friendship was about 60 men up to 46 years old in the army in the end Germany men 50 years old at the front children 15 men 50 at the front all the capacity of modern industrial society striving for destruction striving for destruction one of the French soldiers called it extermination.

I call it routine meog genocide, the genocide of people against their own citizens because once it got out of control they had no way to stop it. Oh, let's negotiate, what do we say to the 500,000 parents who have lost their children when we? negotiate and they didn't win anything they never stopped to negotiate because they were afraid they couldn't get the troops to move again okay this is a barrier that 20 years later 25 years later allows the Holocaust to happen this is the extermination of their own citizens their best citizens 10,000 20,000 at an hour daily one of the German attempts in 195 1916 is known as the Battle of Ron.

Well, the purpose of the Battle of Verdon was not necessarily to take Verdon but to force the French to defend Verdon and exchange blood. The purpose was to bleed France, but in the process of bleeding France, Germany was bled and, to take the pressure off Verdon, the British took over the Battle of the P to take the pressure off Veron, everything got worse, worse, and worse. some statistics worsened 65 to 70 Millions of men were mobilized, more men were mobilized than the entire population of England, France, Italy or Spain. Germany had about 65 million people in 1914, out of every seven mobilized, one died, about nine or 10 million people out of three, one became disabled, a third permanently.

Now, what did disabled mean in World War I? People walked with iron masks. The medicine was not the same as ours. Shattered faces. Faces without chins. Without nose. No skull. I remember going to France in the late '19s, late '60s, and I still saw people mutilated from World War I and there were signs and French trains and buses like that to get up and make way for people who had been mutilated. because of the World War, mutilated people, faceless people, shock, they didn't call it post-traumatic stress syndrome, but tens and tens and tens of hundreds of thousands of people suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome and all kinds of other ailments for the which had no name at the time, so the war never ended.

The war produced its own progeny between August 1914 and the end. of 1917 a Frenchman was killed every minute and again it is Darwin backwards it is not the survival of the fittest the parties come first it is not even a war like Vietnam in which the poor were more likely to fight than the middle class because all moderates The core of middle officers was made up of children of aristocrats and rich middle class people, so what was decimated is the middle class. This is a bourgeois war. Everyone participates, but it is a middle class war. There was no aristocrat who did not lose a child. a cousin a brother a father a husband not an aristocrat who said: I'm not going to fight, okay, they may have been officers, but even if they were older, they would still be close to the captains of the front, they would rise above power.

Pit leads the charge, blows the whistle, any of you watch Paths of Glory, right? Isn't it a great movie with Kirk Douglas? Is it exquisite? TRUE? Colonel Dax, the best lawyer in France, what does he do when the battle begins? He gets up and blows the Whistle, he leads the charge and is the best lawyer in France. Oh yeah, there are some fat generals in the back and there are other generals that don't appear in that movie in the front. Well, the generals who went to the front were very respected by their men, but this is a counter-Darwinian war 559 people on average killed every day for more than 1500 days 5509 on average five years of war Well, with all that, it requires us to study others elements of war, not just the home front or not just the war front, not just the trenches, not just the war of movement, but also the home front, because the home front, I hate to even say it, does anyone know?

Has he denied anything because we are fighting in Iraq? Has your life changed? Has your life changed? There is no politics in Afghanistan, no political intention, but your life has changed everyone's life. Yes, well, I like Weissman's part. I will accept the other part. The total mobilization of society affected everyone and in all the combatant countries. war behind The war was as important as the war in the trenches because if you couldn't produce the weapons, if you couldn't produce the fuel, if you couldn't produce the food, you couldn't endure the war. Okay, the stakes are high.

Keep putting more on the table so that in each of the countries there are a series of processes that Gordon Craig calls Mo political political centralization economic regimentation and thought control now let's think about that for a minute political centralization the end of democratic politics really the end of royal politics for a while Central governments took more and more authority in 1916 in England and England had, along with France, the greatest tradition of civil rights anywhere, passed a law called the Defense of the Kingdom and According to that law, if I gave the kind of speech I give today I could have been imprisoned for deism, that's fine, although I don't know if I would have been against the continuation of the war at that time, no matter how much it would have already cost so much. , how can you? stop without winning, how is it possible to cut it again?

All men between 15 and 65 years old in Germany have to serve the country. The government takes more and more power. Economic regulation. One of the reasons why the Russian Revolution occurred is because it was one of the countries that fared worst in political centralization and economic regulation Munitions Tsars arose vter mouse in Germany Albert Thomas in France one industrialist the other a socialist both doing same David Lloyd George a radical politician in England getting the Senus of all internal power for economic productivity that they could possibly get their hands on and telling them what to produce and where to get it and for how much and for liberal economics thought control massive mass propaganda the truths became lies massive massive propaganda the enemy is no longer another European who could have visited Paris the enemy is hanging the enemy is a German the enemy is an animal the men in the trenches knew better but they forced enthusiasm to make the people will pay for all the pain they were experiencing the end of truth truth and They lost their balance people lost the ability to distinguish one from another political centralization economic regimentation thought control united them and what do we have we have the capacity for the development of the totalitarian state these They are models of government and we all know that the models that The normal processes are largely left aside and, of course, the more dictatorial the regime was in the beginning, the more those processes were left aside, all this business of the war behind the war itself has a meaning of its own and is the greatest disappearance of 19th century liberalism, the greatest disappearance of the individual, the greatest disappearance of free society rolled into one. level or another during these kinds of times of crisis that never completely go away, well, let's stop and look at some of the other changes that occurred as a result of the war and as a result of the war behind the war and let's start with some of the changes structural and territorial changes that took place and we're wondering what they mean and um I almost shouldn't do this too much because some of you may be attending the lecture I give tomorrow and the two are going to flow into each other and I don't want it to be too repetitive. because when you tell the story of the origins of World War II you are telling the story of the effects of World War I, they flow into each other in the easiest way. changes to see besides the death doubled by the flu epidemic btw in 19181 1919 killed as many people as during the war okay they are the demise of empires and that's why we have these two maps together what do they have differently these maps where okay, so Russia is bigger here here it is 17th a sixth of the world here it is maybe 17th in the world Russia is bigger the Russian Empire collapses it is the first to disappear that is the Russian Revolution the first revolution in March 1918 or rather 1917 second revolution uh, in November 1917 the Russian Empire collapses, okay, what else is different?

Yes, Austria, Austria, the Austr-Hungarian Empire, where is it? I don't see it, I'm difficult, you know, I don't see anything well, but is this a Is this the Austra-Hungarian Empire? Oh, sorry, another map, thanks, another map. Okay, the Austra-Hungarian Empire in 1914, 53 million people, more than France, more people than Britain, more people than Italy, left, explodes at the end of the war and what we have is 9 million Austrians, approximately 9 million Hungarians, a new Czech State, a new Polish State changed, a new Yugoslavia changed territorial structures everywhere in Central and Eastern Europe, so the Second Empire, the Hungarian Empire, collapse, the German Empire collapses as a result of the Treaty of Versailles and where is it?

Here it is called the Ottoman Empire. Include all these things down here and here it's called Türkiye. What is a turkey? Okay, where did it happen to the Empire? Four Empires are destroyed. Four Empires collapse in two years. period and in its place we have what is sometimes called the balkanization of Eastern Europe, right here we have five great powers one 2 three four five one two three four five five well six Italy was sixth by mutual lie uh Italy was not really Italy was It wasn't really a great power but it had a great history so they allowed it to be a great power which made the Italians behave very badly and their desire to be a great power made them enter the war in 1915 and that made them It cost three queries of a million dead and a million and a half wounded and that gave them musolini.

Italy was doing pretty well in 1914. The last thing Italy needed was World War I. Well, at least the Spanish had the ability to stay out of the war, but everyone was offering. Italy has more territory, so Italy went in and lost 40 years of its history as a result of doing so. Here you have a power vacuum in the east. How would you like to be Polish? Approximately 30 million 33 million people trapped between Bevic Russia. and Germany and they both want some of their territory, okay, this is the Balkanization of Eastern Europe inherently unstable, regardless of how it was going to happen.

Germany was going to regain some of that territory that she had lost and no matter how it was going to happen. Russia was going to get some of that territory back, she had lost the only thing that could have really helped stabilize this in any serious way would have been how could it have been stabilized? Who had the ability to stabilize it? Forgive us, we, us. We were ready, sorry, it took us another 25 years, we weren't ready until World War II, after World War II, that's the Marshall Plan, that's the truth and God, we weren't ready, we believed even later that our entry into the war was a mistake. culturally psychologically economically we could have been ready politically we could have been ready mentally we weren't ready to have children yet we could have handled their role in the world war very differently oh I could have I could have done it um and then I might not have been In what Regarding a World War, this F says that Britain should not have entered.

You could argue that she shouldn't have gone in at all and played that card dramatically before August 1914 in a much better way than she did, or you can also argue. who should have fought a traditional British war, Allah, the Napoleonic Wars, been the finance man for the allies and used the Great British Army, tell me what would have happened if they had done number two, her plan would have worked. correct they were defeated they were defeated 30 years earlier it was not the end of the world true and you could argue You could argue that they entered through France and much less through the rest of Europe uh that's a counterfactual story, it's funny and he has written a book about that also this guy, you know, every time I go to sleep, he writes a book, uh, he's Nile Ferguson F RG s o n and he's actually written a bookon counterfactual history and, in fact, argues that there is a debate between these two.

Monsters uh uh as to what would have been better and Ferguson has this debate within himself. I don't want to go into that now, but maybe later we can um what would have been better except that Germany from um from from from Kaiser Wilhelm in 1918 already had a bigger appetite. One of the developments during the war that occurred because of its intensity is that instead of having small war goals, everyone had fat stomachs and everyone raised their goals. Germany's goal at that time. became practically all of central Europe the annexation of Belgium the annexation of the entire French coast England would have become an element of Germany with that kind of economic power the Germans could have dismantled the British Empire they could have built them into navies uh they They would have caught and would have paid, so it might have been better than World War II.

Okay, you wouldn't have had a Hitler, you wouldn't have had a Hitler, uh, but, uh, it would have been a draconian piece. Do we know that we know this because of the peace they forced on the Russians in the chest, in which they took practically half of everything there was to take, if that is true? Why didn't Franco's war lead to Germany overwhelming Britain? Good Wonderful because it was a different Germany and there was a bismar, well, and bismar had limited goals and objectives because bis Mark understood that if Germany became too strong and threatened everyone else, sooner or later what would happen is that everyone others would join. and Destroy Germany and make her pay and that's what they finally did when Germany crossed the line, way, way, Way Over the Line, so that was one of the reasons and secondly, Germany wasn't even thinking that way. way, they had limited objectives. that point very very limited objectives different concept uh the last third of the 19th century changed a lot of psychology of perception and culture and it just wasn't in the cards at the time um and bismar himself was the first to say that we can get there to some extent, another question back there, yes, I didn't want to downplay that discussion, if you would like to continue, the other question I had related to the collapse of monarchical governments and yes, okay, because at the beginning of the First World War you had a Kaiser in Germany, you had a tsar in Russia, you had an emperor in Austria, Hungary and a sultan in the Ottoman Empire and at the end of the world war, when they were all gone, they were all gone, so the question of monarchical governments was whether that is part of what creates instability in the country. uh, it's part of what creates instability, but monarchical governments don't perform well during war, they end up losing the war and therefore end up collapsing, they wouldn't have collapsed if they hadn't lost, okay, uh, and uh , the monarchy is It's uh can be as it is, it marks the end of the monarchy and it marks the end of the aristocracy as really the peak of what it meant to be uh civil uh um because in some ways my understanding of the reading was that that the war was caused by some of the conflicting interests of the monarchy, but it was also caused by the conflicting interests of the democratic states of France and England, so I wouldn't call England a monarchy at that time, you know, but they all They could be equally dangerous, it's just that if you have a bad Monarch it is more dangerous, much more dangerous because the most important thing about democracy is that the balance of power is very, very, very important, the balance of power is radically important and having three branches of government and a free press and all those other things helps us be free or somewhat free.

Nobody is free. We are all limited by what we have. But, yes, Larry, this is a dear, dear, dear. Friend of Al Jend Deine, who was my mentor at Lafayette and my second father, and one of his dearest friends was Larry Houston of Philadelphia. How many of you knew Al Al? Okay, they're lucky, they're all L, yeah, U. I'm feeling lucky today. In U you said before that that was the collapse of the Russian Empire and I don't know if the word empire really has any particular meaning or value, but okay to me, that was the collapse of the right European segment of the Russian Empire, right, right, when the Soviet Union collapsed, more of the Empire with it and much of the Empire is still there, all those Eastern states that yes, yes, the emperors rightly decided they wanted to annex are still there and are still united, yes, absolutely and the and the Soviets rebuild their empire after World War II and expand it after World War II and maintain it for 40 50 years yeah absolutely absolutely um anyone, this might be a good time to stop by for more comments or questions on that. .

You have, uh, yeah, go ahead with the unification of Germany in the 1860s, 1870s, yeah, um, what someone made all the DS, the prince and the little king join together and how they were defeated in the war. Bismar defeated them in 1866 in a The war against the Austrian Empire or what was then the Austrian Empire became the Austrian Empire and then by defeating France, German nationalism united, they all continued to exist, they all still had some power, but in the First World War they lost their power, the central government. took all the power and these separate places, you know, the Bavarian army still existed, but the German army told the Bavarian army what to do, and then, that changes when the German Republic is no longer the same kind of federal system, so that those things Everything collapsed after the First World War and it was the same way as in Italy when they had, you know, all the yeah, yeah, me, me, there's another map here, we just don't see it, oh no, no let's put that in, okay, that's big. uh yeah, Italy had about 15 different colors and that's cavor's work between 1855 and 18 61 uh and then uh when uh cavor galdi minini but then when um uh the Austr-Prussian war takes place uh Lombardi and Venice go to Italy and when Franco The Prussian war takes place Rome goes to Italy, that's how Italy becomes a unified country that way they were under monarchy, everyone is under monarchies and duam, never forget those dukum, they are adorable, yeah, right? what do you think they were? the key causes of World War I, other than the assassination of, okay, that's a catalyst, not a cause.

Okay, the key causes of the First World War, the GNA take me away from the goal, but okay, um militarism, extreme militarism, which means that, uh, uh, war turns into war vitalism. They became a very important part of modernist culture. By the 1890s they had not had a good war in a long time. They forgot what it was like and the power of the military in each of the countries, but especially. in Germany, Austria and Russia, also in England and France, but not as much, militarism is an extreme cause in Germany with naval rivalry, racial racial nationalism is an extreme cause, okay, imperialism works both ways, it led to much higher tensions, but it was also a safety valve and since you were taking away territory that didn't belong to anyone anyway except the people who live there, and you were taking it away from them, um uh, so that was a football game, ​​​​a soccer game. coincides with other places, it could be a safety valve, but it also caused a lot more tension, the Allied system that tightened things really, really bad, the whole nature of European culture, which was almost schizophrenic in the First World War and became It became uglier after the war than it had been before the war, uh, now we have documents in these books that we didn't have when you went to school, but I use three different documents, one is French children, another is Italian artists, the third He is a German general. they all say the same thing: you're not a man if you haven't been to war and war is inherently good and war creates civilization, so the real civilized person is the one who knows war and all these guys agree on that, okay? the peace movements are weak and disorganized, etc., etc., and then, very, very important, very important, the illusion of the short war, the idea that the war was going to be short and

prof

itable, so if it was a mistake, it will be a small mistake, okay, so instead of looking. in the American Civil War, which is what a European Civil War was, the War is fine, instead of looking at the American Civil War, they looked at the Austrian Prussian War 6 weeks the Franor Prussian War six months each country was sure they would win each army was sure to win and there were also the timetables in which Russia was rearming after the defeat at the hands of the Japanese in 1905, the German army was afraid of Russian rearmament and, most importantly, in the Balkans Serbia was threatening the structural legitimacy of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire and trying to destabilize the Austrian-Hungarian Empire would be equivalent to Mexico trying to destabilize, okay, in 50 years Mexico says wait a minute Arizona and Nevada and New Mexico and California that's 80% of the hours they want to go home oh well that's what that's what it was, this is all Slavic here and they want to build a great Slavic state, which is what happens here, okay, and then they love each other and when the Empire collapses , the Russian Empire collapses, they kill each other again, okay, yes there is an excuse that the assassination of the ARF name was like a terrorist attack exactly that's what was used that's the excuse yes yes yes yes sorry sounds a lot like today mhm you know why that's why you use the word terrorist because we haven't changed much and that's where this guy starts his book and that's where Freud starts his book writing about the First World War and what it says Freud wrote a book wrote an essay in 1915 wrote an essay in 1915 talking about how this would destabilize and destroy Europe Civilization by taking away all the sublimation of our Instinct that we allow and produce to survive as a species, shows how the war started all that and then concludes that in reality our fellow citizens have not fallen as low as we feared because they have never risen as high as we believe, that's fine and we are what we are.

Sometimes I like my L opsa more than some of the people I know. I mean, I'm optimistic enough. I'm optimistic enough to believe. that we can try to be better, okay, but we will be better, we can try, it's our duty, I'll say it, but then again, I'm just a traditional bourgeois guy, all these guys say no, your duty is to shoot for the stars and maybe you have to trample on such good people, the answer could be no one or the answer could be, in some sense, that America did well and all of that would be based on your projection of whether there had to be a world or not.

World War II after World War I and I don't know if any of you received Bell's pmh book on the 30 Years War. The only thing I don't agree with are two things, in reality without an Adolf Hitler there probably wouldn't have been a world. The Second War, at least not when and how it took place, sometimes there's just a particular leader there who has enough will, enough illness, enough vision and enough ability to make things happen and he becomes one of those historical figures. global. Lenin was also a world historical figure. The Bolsheviks may not have come to power without Lenin because, unlike Hitler, he knew when to stop.

Well, he said that you can make peace or peace or, rather, war. Revolution or war, you can't have both, so if we don't accept peace, Germany is going to go. to give us, we will lose our Revolution and he was the minority, but he stood firm and forced them to accept it and then, when the entire Revolution was falling apart because of the scams, he steps back and says we have to relax. criticize people a little, okay, not that it wasn't cruel and evil in many ways, but at least I knew there were certain limits, so no Hitler, no World War II, no depression, no Second War World, there is no depression, there is no Hitler and we all are.

I'm still conflicted about why the depression happened and whether it was a result of World War I or it was just one of those cyclical things like we're still at the end of, hopefully, the end of now, so that's where that 30 30 year old thing. falls apart, but let me give you two of my favorite recent quotes, although one is from Barbara Tuchman and the other is from Raymond Aron Raymond Daron says that the main causes of World War II were the result of the prolongation of the First War and, above all, everything, from the Russian Revolution the fascist reaction in Italy and Germany vale tuckman the stalemate of the war set by the M determined the future course of the war the terms of the peace and the form of the period of the Internal War and the conditions of the second real now They are both telling you that, with this having happened, it was likely that the following and a whole series of things would have happened, except that Adolf Hitler really should have been dead.

Well, I mean, he was a warrior, he was a runner. he took a riskstatistically the fact that he survived it's amazing where he was all the way from 1915 in the enlisted guy volunteered yeah the worst Flanders Flanders and he loved it yeah he loved it he loved it he got I watched it he loved it , OK? You didn't like it too much. That really threw him off when he gassed himself because he was also temporarily blinded, so, um, this was really a disaster, not a disaster, the disaster was that he didn't understand it. gassed more um the gas didn't work uh and the depression then the two missing links are Hitler and the depression without those two missing links World War II becomes very unlikely in different United States World War II becomes very unlikely but we were not a different United States at that time and we were the only ones who could have stabilized this more, instead what we did was not enter the League of Nations and did not ratify the guarantee treaty that we had promised to France that allowed France force Germany to continue paying reparations, but don't feel too bad because the Germans and French paid reparations outside of the war of 1870.

Also, German reparations were a pittance compared to what they took from Russia and they only paid about 10% maximum. What they did was release their printing presses to pay for reparations, they inflated their own currency and destroyed their own middle class to pay the French. Furthermore, the war was financed by loans, which caused inflation. Products were reduced, causing inflation, so Germany's economic wreckage after the war was horrendous, especially for the middle class. Yes, doesn't Churchill say that Britain could have stopped World War II if it had stood up? First, read that book, we will discuss it tomorrow. okay, he says it, he says it yes, I believe it, I believe it, yes, yes, with the Wart Republic and the German inflation it was so deliberate, it was a deliberate attempt to devalue the currency so that we could pay them with a large amount of currency.

It was already devalued, okay, but during the war the currency was devalued like the Italian currency due to the war itself and then they devalued it even more. Yes, the repairs were in German marks. Yes, yes, it's true, they wanted to pay for them in cheap marks, but if you believe that. Germany could not have paid those reparations, they could have paid those reparations, it was not good to do it, it was stupid, it was never going to be applied because they would still have been paying until 1988, well, psychologically, it was impossible for that to have been applied but Versa again the effect of the war the

impact

of the war the Treaty of Versa is the result of the nature of the war Germany already showed what kind of treaty was going to be imposed if Clemen did not impose a severe treaty on Germany he would have been hanged by his own peopleMarshall Fos thought he had caused another war by walking away from Wilson, yes, but who else was there?

Were there other influences or power on Clemenson not to impose them? No, no, no, no, no, and well, they did it, yes, they cut it. He responded that what he really wanted is a separate Rhine land territory between France and Germany, you have Belgium, so he wanted Belgium and another Rhine land territory. Instead this became a demilitarized zone, but they actually wanted a separate Rhine territorial state and that's what we did. We'll come back to this little discussion here tomorrow, so they wanted an independent state and they wanted to keep Germany down. They wanted two things, the French wanted security and they wanted reparations, one of the main reasons they didn't do it. feel safe is that we don't ratify our security treaty, to which Britain said that if the Americans don't ratify the security treaty, we don't ratify the security treaty, sorry for what the French say, so we have to keep the the Germans, which they did for five years, so I really don't believe that World War I ended with the Treaty of Rai.

I think the First World War ended with the treaty of Locarno in 1925 and Germany's entry into the League of Nations in 1926 and the ger and the um. and by ended I mean ended in a serious sense except that these books and this is what has changed the most in the last 20 years these books and an X Teenss book the spring rights tell us that the war didn't end because the war ended It totally entered modern memory and in the late 1920s every town in France had a war memorial and I don't know how many of you have been to France, how many of you have gone to the countryside and you know what you see when you go to the central part of any small town, you see World War memorials, you see a town hall, you see a church and you see World War memorials, World War II memorials in England. they are always much smaller than the WWI memorial and in France, by far, okay, sure, yeah, that's what you see, yeah, they gave up and still lost a couple of hundred thousand troops, so they really knew, uh, and they, but I agree that they gave. above, they should not be mentioned by the same name as England in the First World War. um, these books emphasize the long-term psychocultural impact of World War I.

Well, these books emphasize the psychocultural impact and the sociocultural impact of the First World War and there the most important word is dislocation, destabilization of cultures, psyches, values, the meaning of the word, truth of the minds of beings, of So something like what Adolf Hitler advocated might make sense to many people or something like what Musolini advocated might now make sense to many people to remember that Hitler had to wait until 1933, in Melini's case, he was fine in 1922, so In the Soviet Union in 1938, democracy was clearly the minority form of government everywhere in Europe, except in Scandinavia, in Britain, the Irish didn't think it was, but in Britain, in France, in Switzerland, and in Czechoslovakia, every single one of these other countries had one. form of dictatorship or another as powerful was the political destabilization of the First World War.

Yes, you mentioned Ireland. I was going to point out that the only armed point on the map that was not part of one of the defeated powers is the Republic of Ireland. See, since that fact is somehow directly or indirectly related to or independent of World War I, England almost had a civil war in 1914, they had passed the Irish Home Rule Act for the third time, it was going to be law for the Protestants. they were armed to the teeth in Ireland there was probably going to be a Civilization Edward Carson there was probably going to be a civil war um the most important thing that David Lloyd George did and he was a great war leader equal to Churchill in World War II, but the most important thing he did after the war was oversee the independence of Ireland, so one of the other aspects of this and I have a goose scanner thing in my talk when I finish it on a regular basis is that um uh you know heads or such Is it your heads or such uh one of the things that this war also did is radically accelerate the process of decolonization around the world.

Well, here was the great white superior race committing suicide and what the Europeans lost is so much power. and even more importantly, the will to power to control the rest of the world, so there were revolutionaries that occurred everywhere and got worse during the 1920s and 1930s, finally, within 20 years after World War II, they all came to fruition, uh, and that was the acceleration of history that might have taken another century or more to happen for those people, they would never agree with this, but it might have been better because in some cases a European sojourn a a little longer could have left a little more stability afterwards.

I remember when my mentor in grad school said that and I yelled at him it's a terrible thing to say and it might have been true it's a terrible thing to say anyway because how do you decide for other people what that's going to mean, but um, the radical weakening of Europe? made it possible for the entire third world to develop and emancipate, so one's loss was another's gain, in that particular way, yes, judge ker Class of 73, are you going to address the consequences of war that affect or believe? Not the modern Middle East in this, but you can ask me.

I used to teach a seminar in the Middle East and I got so tired because I got so sick and the DEP pressured me that I actually gave it. up uh, although I wasn't really an expert in it, but I became an expert in it, we needed it, I taught it and then I taught something light for the last 101 15 years, the Holocaust, so I exchanged teaching about the Middle East, which it's live. People and um started teaching the Holocaust about 10 or 12 years ago, which has given me, I must tell you, incredible joy because the type of students who take that course are absolutely outstanding and it's totally multicultural and it's absolutely magnificent, so painful. as it is, but the Middle East is more painful for me, it's okay because it's here and now and it doesn't move much, but if you have questions, please ask.

I know the book, but I haven't read it. Order the author. starts with the bow above and then just discusses how the Allies placed the three sons of a man from Saudi Arabia as the three new Kings of the Middle East and yes, it's been downhill since then, yes, yes, and it was almost destined to it must be because there was no political stabilization there anyway and what do we have here? Basically, we have cultures from the 16th century entering the 20th century without time. How long does it take to go from the pre-French Revolution era, the medieval world to the post-French Revolution, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Scientific Revolution in the 17th century, the Enlightenment in the 18th century, none of those processes? took place in the Middle East, none of them are fine and they barely took place in Russia until the Enlightenment, there is no Scientific Revolution, there is only Peter the Great, okay, so you hope to catapult a civilization from the 15th century to the 20th century when you have already inflamed it by conquering it correctly and until the World War.

It's still pretty much everything nominally at least in the hands of the Ottoman Empire, which is at least Islamic, okay, but and more, ask, ask, no, okay, I want, I want to read something, and then just give you time to ask more. questions um, how many of you have read All Quiet on the Western Front? Okay, wonderful if you haven't, please do it now, if you really want to test yourself, read Souls and Niton, August 1914, it's torture, it's 800 pages, but it reads like Everything. Quiet on the Western Front Okay, and normally a Russian book would take 800 pages to say what comment you know, but it's magnificent, it's magnificent, so this is Paul Balmer at the end of All Quiet on the Western Front, the main character, says.

If we had returned home in 1916 through the suffering and force of our experiences we could have unleashed a storm now, if we return we will be tired, broken, exhausted, ruthless and hopeless, we will no longer be able to find our way and men will not They understand us because of the generation that grew up before us although they have spent these years with us here they already had a home and a vocation now they will return to their old occupations the war will be forgotten not really but and the generation that has grown up after us will seem strange to us we will be pushed aside we will be superfluous even to ourselves we will grow older some will adapt others will simply submit and most will be bewildered the years will pass and in the end we will fall into ruin That is The Lost Generation, he wrote another book called The Way Back , the result of which was that there was no way back, but here is another voice and this is the work of Modis exin the right F of the spring, if you really want to suffer, that is difficult, Jenna, read it. the kids love it now many of them think it's the best book of the course, it's possible yes, no, but my essay question requires it now, although it says to comment on XS um, the rights of spring, it's all about the nature of the impact of the war on culture, especially German culture, then someone else is writing and says: "I had the good fortune to fight in the first two offensives and the last one, these became the most tremendous impressions of my life, tremendous, because now, for the last time, as in 1914, The fight lost the character of defense and assumed that of attack.

A sigh of relief ran through the trenches and shelters of the German army when finally, after more than three years of resistance in the enemy hell, the day of Retribution arrived once again as the victorious battalions cheered and hung the last readings of the mortal Laurel on their banners torn by the storm of Victory once again the songs of the Homeland roared to them. the heavens along the endless marching columns and for the last time the Grace of the Lord smiled on his ungrateful children so that thewhen people think like that. Now this guy is a very civilized and human being.

I mean, this is left without feeling good at all, like putting that together. I thought about the previous point where you answer the question that you can't answer whether the problem of Palestine, Israel will ever be solved or Afghanistan, uh, the Taliban. One of my

prof

essors when he was in college, once in a moment of disconnection at his house, once said about something. completely different was that he paused and said that man is not completely rational, that's right, that's exactly right, and the First World War radicalized irrationality by stripping us of the sublimated parts of our character and everyone was up there, ready to explode with unemployment, inflation, fear with polarization with hate okay, let's stop um you are for not having