History 455--Great War l9l4-1920—WSUTC Summer ’16—B. Farley. My contact info: brigitf2001@yahoo.com, bfarley@tricity.wsu.edu. EMAIL ME AT BOTH ADDRESSES. You’re required to by university edict, but the fact is, my wsu email doesn’t always deliver the goods, so make sure you include the yahoo address too. I will always try to get back to you ASAP, not to worry.

About me: I just finished my 20th year teaching at WSU and love this job more than ever. I did most of my work in Russian and East European history at Indiana University(Go Hoosiers!), but recently I’ve been working exclusively on World War I—I’ve got projects going on World War I as it played out in my hometown of Pendleton, Oregon, the Russian Expeditionary Force and its fate in France, 1916-19, and issues related to Great War memory in Ireland. Yes, kind of busy on this war.

LOWDOWN: Welcome to an abbreviated version of History 455! We are now in the THIRD centennial year of the “Great War,” and we will be commemorating its most crucial milestones for the next four years, through the signature of the Versailles Peace Treaty in 20l9(and beyond, for students of the Middle East). In the quest to make this course available to anyone who wants to take it during these centennial years, I have designed a hybrid class, in which we will meet each Monday and some Wednesdays for a couple of hours for a quiz, q and a and clarification and you will spend the rest of the week learning the material for the next session. In other words, you will be doing much of the heavy lifting, in effect teaching yourselves, with guidance from me during class. I’ll be covering in class things that you can’t get from the readings.

We will devote special attention to the year l9l6, since 2016 is the centennial of these events. The “highlights,” if you can call them that, are the titanic attritional battles of Verdun and the Somme, in which hundreds of thousands of men were killed without achieving any immediate results, and the Easter Monday rebellion in British Ireland, smack dab in the middle of the war, which led eventually to an independent Irish Republic.

Class Procedures: We will meet each Monday and SOME Wednesdays—I will remind you-- 4-7 pm, though most sessions will not last that long. During the first sessions, I will fill you in on the background to, and the first months of, this war, because that’s very tough to put together by yourself. Then, the routine starts. As noted, YOU are going to use the readings and vids to teach yourself the basics of each topic, and then I’ll talk and show things in class that you won’t get from those traditional sources. During the sessions that follow this first one on June 20, we will have Q and A, followed by a 45-minute or so quiz during the first hour. During the second, I will hand back the previous week’s quiz and offer some commentary or clarification on the material for the week ahead, with slides, video or music. We might occasionally bleed into hour 3, but we’ll try to keep the sessions as brief as possible. HERE’S HOW TO TACKLE THIS MATERIAL: Before you read or watch anything, REVIEW THE QUESTIONS, so that you will know what you are looking for. Read the readings, watch the vids, THEN gather your thoughts and compose answers. You will only do one(or perhaps two) of these questions in the weekly

quiz, but you won’t know WHICH ones you will be asked. Also, reach out to your instructor…we aren’t in class as much in summer, but I’m available to help. Not going anywhere big until after the class is over.

I will post the next week’s assignments each Tuesday, hopefully by noon, on Blackboard. Even though I hate Blackboard.

Required Readings: Martin Gilbert, The First World War; The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry, and Ambassador Morgenthau’s Diary, online(http://net.lib.byu.edu/estu/wwi/comment/morgenthau/MorgenTC.htm). This site will help, too, with difficult aspects of this war—International Encyclopedia of the First World War: http://www.1914-1918-online.net/

Evaluation: Since there’s no downtime in this course, you will take a weekly quiz, consisting of short essay and(in the first and last quiz) a map of Europe in l9l4 and l9l9. Each will count for the same percentage of your grade. No midterm, no final, just the relentless grind of weekly quizzes! I WILL drop your worst one. Also, this is a tier 3 course, so you will have to do a writing assignment as well. Because time is too short for a research assignment, and this war produced more famous poetry than any other conflict in modern history, I will ask you to read at least 15-20 poems by at least four different poets(use the Penguin Book of First World War Poetry)and write a 4-5 page review essay. Identify the general themes of each poet, comment on how he/she integrates them into the poems and give your general assessment on this poet’s work. Conclude by indicating why you believe the First World War brought forth so much poetry. No other war even came close.

So, the breakdown of assignments is: four of five quizzes(20% each), plus tier III poetry review essay(20%).

Course goals: This is a very fast run through a complicated set of circumstances. It’s actually akin to drinking from a fire hose. So I will be happy if you can discuss in a general way how the war started, why and how it came to involve most of the world, how individuals and nations tried to end it and some of the consequences for the 20th century and today. I also hope that the course will inspire you to delve deeper into some aspect of this conflict.

Followup/enrichment opportunity: If you are on Facebook and enjoy reading and learning about the Great War, please consider joining the WSU Great War Centennial Working Group. This is a group of WSU students, alumni, professors and friends who try to keep each other abreast of all interesting articles and developments related to the First World War. Please ask to join and we will add you.

Students with disabilities. Reasonable accommodations are available for students with a documented disability. All accommodations must be approved through your WSU Disability Services office. If you have a disability and need

accommodations, we recommend you begin the process as soon as possible. For more information on our campus, contact Cherish Tijerina Pearson, West Building 269, 372-7352. In Pullman, you will want to contact the Access Center, which is linked here: https://accesscenter.wsu.edu/

Plagiarism and academic dishonesty: Faculty are required to report any instance of plagiarism, copying other people’s work without attribution, or other forms of cheating on assignments. It’s not worth the risk, so DON’T DO IT. If you run into time or other trouble, talk to me and we’ll work something out. DON’T CHEAT.

On with the schedule:

June 20: A century ago, l9l4: before, during and after the outbreak of war. I will be doing the heavy lifting this week, but if you want to follow up, here are some readings and video I recommend. Trying to pinpoint and explain exactly what caused this war is probably one of the toughest tasks around.

Read: Martin Gilbert, The First World War: A Complete History, chapters 1-6. Just skim this on an FYI basis.

View: “On the Idle Hill of Summer” BBC Great War series, episode 1, l964(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxK-qR14pVg)

BBC War Walks, “Mons (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lahW_etCwuw) BBC Great War, episode 2, “For such a stupid reason, too(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYo25fEFlVc)”

BBC Great War, episode 3, “We must hack our way through,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWfUBwyfCx4

Also, “Our hats we doff to General Joffre,” about the battle of the Marne and the defeat of the Schleiffen plan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySqr8b7_XN4

Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century, episode 2, “Stalemate” and “Christmas l9l4” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gflb_jSYTV0

Maps Click on the link and look at the BBC animation of the western front in l9l4: (http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/interactive/animations/western_front/index_embed.shtml)

Here is the most stripped-down version that I could manage of how the war came. I wrote this for our local newspaper in 2014. It might help you explain how it all happened if someone asks you.

A century ago this week in Sarajevo, Bosnia, a teenaged Serbian nationalist assassinated Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary,

the empire then dominating central Europe. Though brazen and premeditated, the murder attracted scant international attention: it made no front page and elicited only token condemnation from European governments. Yet it took just over a month for this crime to start a war that would spread to six of seven continents. This is a murky conflict that defies bumper sticker shorthand, but its immediate cause is simple: a dispute over territory.

The murder of Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, capped a ten-year conflict between the Austro-Hungarian empire and its small neighbor, Serbia. Serbia had once been a powerful empire, encompassing present-day Serbia plus Kosovo, Macedonia and parts of Bosnia. But it could not withstand the invasion of the Ottoman Turks, the greatest military machine of their day, who conquered the Serbs in the battle of Kosovo on June 28, 1389. The Ottomans mostly let subject peoples alone, so the Serbs kept alive the memory of their glorious past in church services and epic poetry passed down through the generations. By tradition, the community celebrated the birth of every male child as an “avenger of Kosovo.” Finally, in the early 1800s, a weakened Ottoman empire in combat with Napoleon gave Serbs a chance to break away. A pig farmer named Karageorge led a ragtag band of fighters in an uprising, setting off a decade of attacks and reprisals that ended in the formation of a small Serbian state. Almost immediately, Serbs declared in a remarkable foreign policy blueprint, the “Memorandum,” their intention to reconstitute fully the empire they had lost in l389. They had an acute sense of nationhood and destiny.

By contrast, Austria-Hungary was in decline by the mid-19th century. Once the grandest, most powerful force in Europe, its leaders now faced the task of managing a dozen national groups in a nationalist age, when every nation wanted special privileges if not outright independence. It had lost its Italian territories, its privileged position among the German states and primacy in its own backyard by l867. The future looked uncertain.

Serbia and Austria-Hungary came into conflict after l875, when the people of Bosnia, a rocky, inhospitable region neighboring both states, rose up against their overlords. As Bosnia was once part of the Serbian empire, Serbia sent its army to claim it. In the ensuing peace conference, however, the European great powers decided that Austria-Hungary should get Bosnia. Austria-Hungary needed territory to offset its recent losses and the powers preferred keeping upstarts like Serbia small. For a time, disappointed Serb leaders deferred their dreams of empire and reconciled to Austria-Hungary’s occupation of Bosnia. But some Serbian army officers vehemently disagreed, manifesting their displeasure by murdering their king and throwing his corpse out the window in June l903. The new sovereign, Peter Karageorge, promptly reoriented Serbian policy towards the conquest of Bosnia and other territories of the medieval Serbian empire.

Serb nationalists quickly went on the offensive in Bosnia. They founded a cultural organization, “National Defense,” that distributed propaganda asserting that Bosnia belonged to Serbia. One of the conspirators in the l903 murder, Col. Dragutin Dmitrijevich, gathered the more violent-minded in an underground society known as the Black Hand, whose members swore to die to unite Serbia with its lost territories. They began derailing trains, setting off bombs and trying to kill Austro-Hungarian officials. Austria-Hungary fought these people as best it could, policing the border, jailing suspects and beefing up security. In l9l4,

Emperor Franz Joseph decided to send his heir, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, to the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, to observe army maneuvers and “show the flag” in the region. Aides decided the visit would take place June 25-29, l9l4. They apparently failed to note that June 28 was the anniversary of Serbia’s loss of empire in 1389, a day when all Serbs vowed to smite their oppressors.

Having learned of the upcoming visit from the newspapers, Black Hand operatives plotted to kill the archduke. Dmitrijevich recruited several teenagers for the job, slipping them over the border and arming them with revolvers and explosives from the Serbian state arsenal. Positioned along Franz Ferdinand’s route on June 28, one threw a bomb that bounced off the archduke’s car and injured members of his entourage. Afterward, the archduke refused to cancel his afternoon schedule, opting to visit the wounded in the hospital. A wrong turn by his driver brought him alongside conspirator Gavrilo Princip, who was wandering around dejectedly after the failed attempt. Princip stepped quickly towards the car and fired his revolver, killing the archduke and his wife.

Ironically, few in Austria-Hungary mourned Franz Ferdinand. He was a disagreeable person and had insisted on marrying a commoner, scandalizing his family. But this was a regicide, an outrage that seemingly made Austria-Hungary Goliath to Serbia’s David. Thus Emperor Franz Joseph and his advisers decided to punish Serbia, though the Serbian government denied involvement with the Black Hand. They believed other powers would support them. Unfortunately, Tsarist Russia, Serbia’s longtime protector, warned against retaliation and mobilized its army. That forced Austria-Hungary’s ally, Germany, to set in motion its war plan, which called for a quick strike against France, Russia’s ally, before turning eastward against Russia. En route to France, German forces crossed into Belgium, bringing in Great Britain, since 1839 the guarantor of Belgian neutrality. All these belligerents had colonies, too, so the conflict absorbed soldiers from Australia, America, Africa and Asia. Suddenly the world was in a war that would destroy four empires and kill nine million people in four years.

My late, great graduate advisor, Barbara Jelavich, who wrote extensively about east central Europe, always said that “a gang of teenagers with bombs and guns who wanted to change the world” brought on World War I. Those teenagers certainly got more than they bargained for—they really just wanted Bosnia in Serbian hands—but they succeeded in changing the world. That they surely did.

June 27 1915: Gallipoli, Gas, Genocide(quiz on readings and videos below today in class, AND the map of Europe in l9l4).

This year of the war marks the debut of what would become a common theme: the search for a breakthrough, especially among the powers deadlocked on the western front. The Gallipoli landings represented an attempt to inflict a serious defeat on the Central Powers by knocking Turkey (also called the Ottoman empire) out of the war, and a growing preoccupation with keeping Russia adequately supplied, as Turkey controlled access to the Black sea—which had the only port open and accessible l2 months of the year. Meanwhile, one of the first instances, if not THE first instance, of chemical warfare occurred on the

Ypres battlefield in April l9l5. Neither the Gallipoli landings nor gas had the intended effect—they did not knock anyone out of the war--though they did inflict a lot of misery and death on soldiers from both sides. And the use of gas was the debut of chemical weaponry in the 20th century.

The Armenian genocide became the culmination of half a century’s worth of conflict between the Ottoman empire and its Christian Armenian subjects. It is considered the first genocide of the 20th century, another unprecedented event in this war.

Read: Gilbert, chapters 7-9; “Ambassador Morgenthau’s Diary(http://net.lib.byu.edu/~rdh7/wwi/comment/morgenthau/MorgenTC.htm)”

(Optional)View: “Gallipoli,” Peter Weir’s l981 story of two young Australian track stars determined to “get into the war,” and their first(and last) action, which comes (naturally)at Gallipoli. In my opinion, one of the best, most affecting films ever, on any subject. Then… BBC Great War, episode 5, “Please God, send us a victory!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_0U3m_IVRo .

MAPS: Defense of the Dardanelles(Gallipoli peninsula) http://www.usma.edu/history/SiteAssets/SitePages/World%20War%20I/WWOne44.jpg

AND, very important if you are feeling confused and overwhelmed, this retrospective BBC site on the 80th anniversary of the Great War. Most of the major events are covered well and with good maps and documentation. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/special_report/1998/10/98/world_war_i/197437.stm

Quiz questions for June 27.

Part I: The Armenian massacres, or genocide as some people characterize them, are one of the most notorious and controversial episodes of the Great War. Explain why the Ottoman leadership so disliked its Armenian citizens and how it could justify killing them in large numbers. Use Ambassador Morgenthau’s observations in composing your answer—his memoirs of Constantinople in war are better than any book on the Armenian massacres. How would you characterize the objectives of the Gallipoli campaign? How might the failure of this operation, for which Winston Churchill had a lot of responsibility, have affected him as British Prime Minister as he contemplated the cross-channel invasion of the Continent in l944—another dicey amphibious landing.

With reference to events on the western front, write a brief essay on why Allied planners thought knocking the Ottoman empire out of the war was such a big priority.

(Part II): MAP COMPONENT: Memorize the 1914 map of Europe provided you on blackboard. It’s lots easier than memorizing the 1990 variant. You will be asked to identify a number of countries, maybe all since there aren’t that many. Find a Europe 1914 map here: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/firstworldwar/maps/europe1914.htmAnd hooray! You can do a practice quiz here: https://www.quia.com/quiz/731910.html.

July 6(WEDNESDAY, NO CLASS on 4 July) l9l6-2016 Year of Slaughter: Verdun and the Somme(quiz on readings and video in class today).

The events of l9l6, whose centennial we are observing now, represent the climax of the search for a decisive breakthrough on the western front that generals on both sides believed would be the only way to end the war. The battle of Verdun, which lasted from February through December, was a premeditated attempt by the Germans to bleed the French army white by laying siege to its most important military outpost in the east. A French soldier aptly captured the nature of the titanic struggle that followed when he wrote of the Verdun battle, “Hell cannot be so terrible.” The British and French had planned to launch a massive joint offensive along the river Somme in the late summer or fall, but their staffs moved more quickly after it became apparent that the French were in deep trouble in Verdun. A big offensive on the Somme would, it was reasoned, take some of the pressure off the besieged defenders of Verdun and pave the way for a breakthrough. The Somme became yet another horror when a 7-day artillery barrage and a massive buildup of game but untested British troops failed to bring about a collapse of German defenses and German troops mowed down thousands of British and colonial soldiers advancing across No Man’s Land on July 1, l9l6. The ensuing months of the Somme campaign added some 600,000 casualties to the nearly 800,000 of Verdun, with virtually no change in the position of either side in either battle. Little wonder l9l6 has become synonymous with slaughter.

Readings: Gilbert, chapters 12-15. Get started tackling that poetry, too.

MAPS: Verdun 21 February 1916 http://www.usma.edu/history/SiteAssets/SitePages/World%20War%20I/WWOne12.gif; Somme 1 July l9l6 http://www.usma.edu/history/SiteAssets/SitePages/World%20War%20I/WWOne13.gif

Watch: BBC Great War, episode 11, “Hell cannot be so terrible a place(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxbz_OAQU3Y) and Warwalks: Somme(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72wUyowkfQA).

Questions for quiz:

What was(were) the rationale(s) for the Germans to attack the sleepy garrison town of Verdun and the British and French to attack on the Somme?

How did the French manage to counter the savage and unexpected attack on Verdun? Consider the role of Marshall Petain and General Nivelle, the road from Bar-le-Duc, and the reality of what the French side was fighting for: their lives and the independence of their country.

What accounts for the disastrous and costly failure of the British to achieve their objectives on July 1, l9l6? How could an unprecedented 7-day artillery barrage, plus the detonation of an epic mine, fail to kill every German along that section of line?

How did the “pals” groupings, a recruiting come-on by the British government, fare in the first days of the battle of the Somme? Here is a commemorative site for the “pals” of Accrington, UK…of 720 recruits from that town, almost 600 were killed, mostly at the Somme July 1, 1916(http://www.pals.org.uk/pals_e.htm) After the disaster of l9l4 on the western front, the general staffs were all about trying to get over on the enemy for a decisive victory. Discuss two or three of the innovations they devised to try to achieve a breakthrough in this war(for example, Zeppelins). What do you see towards the end of the 1916 battle of the Somme, circa November l9l6, that will play a huge role in future wars(Watch for this in WarWalks—Somme)?

July 11-13: Mutinies: individuals, armies, nations(quiz on readings and video below in class on July 11). 1916 and l9l7 have entered the history of this conflict as years of mutiny. After a savage two years of fighting, climaxed by the slaughterhouses of Verdun and the Somme, individual soldiers, national groups, armies and one whole nation staged mutinies large and small against it. The trend got its start on Easter Monday, l9l6, when Irish Republicans took advantage of Great Britain’s preoccupation with the European conflict to stage a rebellion against British rule in Ireland. This became known to history as the Easter Uprising, and while it did not succeed, the aftermath became the prelude to Irish independence and the divided Ireland we know today. Protestants in six northern counties threatened armed uprising if they were consigned to Irish Catholic rule, so the UK retained them to itself.

After the Somme and Verdun, armies of all the belligerent nations began to see soldiers crack under the pressure, exhibiting debilitating physical symptoms indicative of “shell shock,” or battle stress. Part of the French army was to mutiny in l9l7, after an ill-conceived attack on a high ridge at the Chemin des Dames cost the lives of 200,000 French soldiers just six months after the conclusion of the battle of Verdun.

And then the vast kingdom of Tsarist Russia mutinied—against their hapless Tsar, against poor planning, against sharpening food shortages, against all the ordeals the war had inflicted upon them. The world would live with the results—a Communist government come to power in 1/6 of the world’s surface—for the next 75 years.

Readings: Gilbert, chapters 15-19; the “shot at dawn” phenomenon(http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/world_war_one_executions.htm); Irish soldiers “shot at dawn(http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/life/books/part-one-the-truth-behind-the-irish-soldiers-shot-at-dawn-28489320.html)

View: BBC War Walks: Somme(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72wUyowkfQA)Great War and the 20th Century, and, if you want to watch it again, “Mutiny(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6haP4AQfhQ).” Finally,“War Neuroses,” videos of shell shock and trauma victims(if you can stand it): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AL5noVCpVKw

Questions

What drove the Russians, characterized by one historian of Russia as the “slowest people on earth,” to do one of the “fastest things” ever, force the abdication of their 300+ year old Romanov dynasty and then usher in the world’s first Communist revolution. What common denominator(s)do you see in the swirls and storms between March and October, l9l7 that was most responsible for driving the Russians to a second revolution?

It is well known that many, many individuals suffered psychological as well as physical wounds in this war. Describe some of the conditions that might have pushed people over the brink into shell shock, then discuss some of the ways in which physicians at home tried to help them.

Some individuals pleaded shell shock when they deserted their posts or disobeyed orders, but got a firing squad instead of rehabilitation. These are the so-called “shot at dawn” casualties. As best you can tell, who got rehabilitation and who got firing squads? What accounted for the difference in treatment?

The collapse of Russia ushered in what Allied leaders called their worst nightmare. Why was it such a disaster for the British and French(hint: look at the map)?

July 18: The US entry into the Great War and the “Michael” offensive, the great German bid for ultimate victory

In l9l8, things were looking grim for the Allies. The Russian front had collapsed, the Bolsheviks had finally signed a (very punitive) peace with the Germans and the Germans now were transporting troops back from the collapsed eastern front to the west, where their generals were planning an all-out assault on the British and French lines. German forces launched “Operation Michael” in mid-March, l9l8, against a relatively quiet sector near the l9l6 Somme battlefields, between the channel ports and the Chemin des Dames ridge. They achieved surprise and punched a huge hole in the British lines, sending British and French troops and leaders into a panic. However, increasing tension and difficulties on

the German home front, the slow motion crackup of Germany’s allies Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman empire, plus the long-anticipated arrival of the Americans boded ill for continued German success.

Reading: Gilbert, chapters 20-23; Woodrow Wilson’s speech to Congress announcing the US entry into the war (http://www.heritage.org/initiatives/first-principles/primary-sources/woodrow-wilsons-war-message-to-congress). Then read the Atlantic Charter from l942(http://avalon.law.yale.edu/wwii/atlantic.asp), John F. Kennedy inaugural address(http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres56.html), and George W. Bush’s announcement of war with Iraq (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/mar/20/iraq.georgebush),

View: BBC Great War, episode 22, “Damn them are they ever coming in(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8Zul1AzlYo)

LISTEN to IWM Podcast #41, Voices of the First World War, German and British old soldiers recall the Michael offensive. Some excellent and vivid reminiscences here(http://www.1914.org/podcasts/podcast-41-the-german-spring-offensive/)

Questions:

(EVERYONE will do this one, guaranteed)How did it happen that US President Wilson decided to take the country into the European war? Briefly outline his reasoning, based on your reading of his address to Congress of April l9l7. Then write an essay in which you compare the general objectives set forth in that April speech with those of the Atlantic Charter, the JFK inaugural address and George W. Bush’s speech on war with Iraq. Conclude by making some generalizations about American foreign policy since April l9l7, the US’s “debut” onto the world stage.

Why was it imperative, from a military point of view, for Germany to score a quick, big victory in the west in l9l8? What new weaponry/techniques did they employ to try to achieve this great victory?

How would you describe the first efforts of the American army in support of the Allies? What advantages did they bring to this long fight, and what lessons were waiting for them once they reached the battlefield?

July 25-27: The end of the war and preparations for peace(quiz on readings and videos below on July 25).

As one might expect, the Great War did not end quietly. Between September and November, three empires collapsed: Austria-Hungary, which had ruled Central Europe since about the l5th century, Germany, a relative newcomer founded in l870, and the Ottomans, who had come ashore in

southeast Europe in the middle of the l4th century and saw their influence peak in Africa, the Middle East and Europe in the l6th century. They joined the Russian empire, which had cracked and broken in mid-l9l7. These collapses left between 20 and 30 million people with no government or organizing principle.

The end of the war in Germany proved particularly controversial. Although there was palpable discontent on the home front and widespread food shortages, not to mention a growing flu epidemic, Germans seemed unprepared for the sudden end of the war, which came as a result of the German generals’ request for an armistice. They did not surrender, they wanted to negotiate a cessation of hostilities, hoping that Woodrow Wilson’s generous peace terms would be the foundation for the Versailles conference and the settlements that were to come. At home, there was relief, but also consternation: up to that time, German forces had occupied half of France, a huge swath of territory, and now suddenly, the German army came back across the Rhine, heads held high. General John “Black Jack” Pershing, commander of US forces, memorably registered his opposition to the armistice. He declared that the Allies needed to defeat Germany militarily, make it understand it was beaten, otherwise the Allies would have to come back and fight the Germans again in 20 years. How prescient he was.

Despite controversy over the armistice, the Allies convened at Paris in January l9l9 to hammer out settlements that reflected the huge changes that came with the end of the war. They faced the task of helping to create new states from the ruins of the Habsburg, German and Russian empires in Europe, draw new borders in the post-Ottoman Middle East and find ways to prevent future conflicts. This war became known as “the war to end all wars,” owing to the catastrophic disaster it had brought everywhere it had spread. Woodrow Wilson believed he had a good formula for the peace conference in his l4 points, outlined in his speech to Congress in January l9l8—he hoped, he said, for a peace “without annexations or indemnities,” a generous and just settlement, one that might create a better world or otherwise make good on the enormous sacrifices of the Great War.

This vision proved difficult to implement in view of the agendas of Wilson’s partners, David Lloyd-George of Great Britain and Georges Clemenceau of France. They hoped to preserve an empire and punish Germany, respectively, and they doggedly advanced their views. They could and did outvote Wilson, or threaten to withhold support for his League of Nations, an organization which Wilson believed could stop disputes between states from morphing into armed conflicts. In addition, the idea of justice for all the peoples of Europe, who did not after all live in homogenized groups, often did not survive competing claims on historic or ethnic grounds. Wilson’s concepts were both unpopular and to some extent unworkable.

Readings: Gilbert, chapters 24-27; US President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points(his personal blueprint for European peace): http://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/President_Wilson%27s_Fourteen_Points; Others TBA.

Maps: The disintegration of the Central Powers June-October l9l8; The Collapse of Austria-Hungary, l9l7-18; Allied Advance to the Rhine l9l8; The Allied Victory

on the Western Front l9l8; the German Revolution November l9l8; “Germany in defeat,” “German losses overseas,” “The fragmentation of Austria-Hungary after l9l8;” “New States of Central Europe 1920.”

View: BBC Great War, episode 24, “When Must the End Be(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oea7YY6HEK0)” and 25, “The Iron Thrones are Falling(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHXRHNM2nH0)” Questions for quiz(on this one, you can prepare either of these, because time is short):

The Versailles Peace settlements are among the most widely criticized events in European history. My own graduate adviser called them the worst peace treaty in human history. Discuss some of the difficulties with them, and then account, as best you can, for why the peacemakers acted as they did. What were their motives?

There is a monument in Washington, DC, near the memorials to the Korean, Vietnam and Second World wars, that honors “the soldiers, sailors and airmen of the World War.” This implies there would only be one. If you know something about World War II, see if you can determine some lines of continuity, some unresolved issues, that helped turn the Great War into just a 20-year pause between World Wars I and II.

In addition to preparing ONE of these two questions, YOUR CHOICE, you will complete a quiz on the map of l922. Again, you will have a choice…we won’t ask you to identify every single country, but maybe five of ten, or seven of l2, something like that.

Tier III writing assignment due by midnight, July 29. Details TBA.

OPTIONAL(we don’t have time for this in the six-week session, but you can look at it on your own) War in the Middle East, l9l5-l8

The Great War was truly a world war, with participants from nearly every continent and fighting in Africa, Eurasia, Asia and Europe. Few battlefields proved as consequential as the Middle East, where valuable territories and resources were up for grabs, with both the Central Powers and the Allies desperate to control them. Britain in particular was willing to do anything to help its cause. Its representatives made two of the most fateful calls of the war as part of the campaign in the Middle East: one, promising the Arab subjects of the Ottoman empire self-determination, mainly through the intervention of T. E. Lawrence, “Lawrence of Arabia,” and coming out in favor of a “Jewish homeland” in Palestine in the Balfour Declaration of November l9l7.

Readings: The Balfour Declaration(http://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/The_Balfour_Declaration); Sykes-

Picot agreement, l9l6(http://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Sykes-Picot_Agreement); others TBA.

Maps: Wikipedia commons showing French and British spheres of influence in postwar Middle East(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sykes-Picot.svg); Gilbert, “The defeat of Turkey(Ottoman empire), l9l7-l8; Mesopotamia(Iraq), l9l4-l8, p. 43; Britain and the Arabs 1914-l916, p. 42.

View: BBC Great War, episode 24, "Allah made Mesopotamia - and added flies(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuXtfLfPCVI)."

What made the Middle East such an attractive theater of war for both the Allies and the Central Powers? The Ottoman empire’s forces fought the British well in Mesopotamia(modern-day Iraq). Why were they a spent force by the time the British were fighting for the Holy Land(hint: look at Ottoman leaders’ quixotic quest for a Turkish empire in Tsarist Russia, which had fallen to Communist revolution).

Why were Jerusalem and the Holy Land so important for the British to capture?

What outcome do you believe the British government expected when it promised independence and self-determination to Arab peoples, including Palestinian Arabs, while pledging its support to a “Jewish homeland” in Palestinian Arab lands?

What difficulties do you anticipate for the makers of the Middle East peace settlements after hostilities cease in November l9l8?