World War I (1914-1918) — The War That Ended the Long 19th Century

1. Europe in 1900 — The Long Peace Ends

The hundred years between Waterloo (18 June 1815) and Sarajevo (28 June 1914) were, for the European great powers, the longest period without continent-wide war in the modern age. The Concert of Europe — improvised at the Congress of Vienna and tested in 1830, 1848 and 1854 — restrained but did not abolish conflict; the Crimean War (1853-56), the Wars of Italian and German Unification (1859-71) and the Russo-Turkish War (1877-78) were all limited. By 1900 the Concert was already brittle.

1.1 The European state system on the eve of war

1.2 Structural shifts since 1871

• German unification (18 January 1871) created a continental superpower at Europe's centre, upsetting the Vienna balance.
• Industrial leapfrog — by 1900 Germany overtook Britain in steel; the USA had overtaken both by 1913.
• Imperial rivalry — the Scramble for Africa (1881-1914) and the partition of China (1895-99) hardened great-power animosities (see Topic 06).
• Mass politics — universal manhood suffrage, a literate citizenry served by a mass press, made foreign policy a public spectacle and limited the freedom of cabinets to compromise.
• Nationalist intelligentsias — Pan-Slavism in Russia/Serbia, Pan-Germanism in Germany/Austria, Italian irredentism, Polish/Czech/Croat awakening — turned every dynastic dispute into a nationalist mobilisation.

2. Causes — The MAIN Framework

The standard exam mnemonic M-A-I-N — Militarism, Alliances, Imperialism, Nationalism — captures the four long-term causes; a fifth, the July Crisis, supplies the immediate cause. UPSC-level answers should treat MAIN as a framework, not a checklist, and acknowledge the long historiographical debate from Fritz Fischer's Germany's Aims in the First World War (1961) — placing primary blame on Berlin — to Christopher Clark's The Sleepwalkers (2012) — distributing responsibility across all the powers.

2.1 Militarism

• Glorification of military power, large standing armies, the dominance of general staffs in policy-making.
• Conscription was universal on the continent: France 1872, Germany inherited 1814 system, Russia 1874, Austria-Hungary 1868. Britain alone resisted conscription until January 1916.
• European military spending more than doubled between 1900 and 1914 (£94 million → £398 million in Russia alone).
• Cult of the offensive — military doctrines (German Schlieffen Plan, French Plan XVII, Russian Plan 19) all assumed quick decisive offensives; defensive options were politically and culturally despised.

2.2 Alliances — see Section 3

2.3 Imperialism

• Colonial frictions had repeatedly brought the great powers close to war:
  • Fashoda Incident (18 September 1898) — Britain vs France in the Sudan; resolved peacefully but humiliated Paris.
  • First Moroccan Crisis (1905-06) — Kaiser's Tangier visit (31 March 1905), Algeciras Conference (Jan-Apr 1906).
  • Second Moroccan / Agadir Crisis (Jul-Nov 1911) — gunboat Panther.
• Each crisis was settled by diplomacy, but each tightened the alliance blocs and embedded the assumption that the next collision could be war.

2.4 Nationalism

• State nationalism — popular jingoism whipped up by the mass press, school textbooks, and patriotic societies (German Navy League 1898, French Ligue des Patriotes 1882, British Tariff Reform League 1903).
• Sub-national / pan-national — Pan-Slavism (Serbia + Russia), Pan-Germanism (Germany + Austria-Germans), Italian irredentism, Polish revival; the most explosive was the Yugoslav idea threatening the Habsburg monarchy.
• Revanchism — France's loss of Alsace-Lorraine (1871) bred half a century of educated yearning; statues in French squares were draped in black.

3. Alliance Systems — Triple Alliance vs Triple Entente

3.1 Bismarck's system (1871-90)

• Three Emperors' League / Dreikaiserbund (22 October 1873) — Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia; isolated France.
• Dual Alliance (7 October 1879) — Germany + Austria-Hungary; defensive against Russia. The diplomatic core of the future Central Powers.
• Triple Alliance (20 May 1882) — added Italy; renewed every five years till 1912.
• Reinsurance Treaty (18 June 1887) — Germany + Russia, secret; lapsed 1890 when Wilhelm II refused renewal — Bismarck's diplomatic edifice began to crack.

3.2 Wilhelmine pivot & the Triple Entente

• Franco-Russian Alliance (signed 17 August 1892; ratified 4 January 1894) — France's bankers funded Russian railways; Bismarck's nightmare of two-front war was activated.
• Entente Cordiale (8 April 1904) — Britain + France; resolved colonial disputes (Egypt to Britain, Morocco to France).
• Anglo-Russian Convention (31 August 1907) — partitioned Persia, settled Afghan and Tibetan questions; completed the Triple Entente.
• Italy remained nominally in the Triple Alliance but had secretly signed the Prinetti-Barrère Accord (10-11 November 1902) with France, promising neutrality — a hint of the 1915 defection.

3.3 Tightening of the blocs

• By 1907 Europe was divided into two armed camps with rigid mutual obligations; a Balkan quarrel could now drag all of Europe in.
• The Bosnian Annexation Crisis (6 October 1908) tested the system: Austria annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina (occupied since 1878); Serbia and Russia were humiliated; Germany backed Vienna in a "blank cheque" rehearsal.
• "Each alliance was meant to deter; together they guaranteed that the next crisis would not stay local." — typical exam framing.

4. Militarism & the Anglo-German Naval Race

4.1 Armies on the eve of war (1914, peacetime + reserves)

4.2 War plans — "by the timetable"

• Schlieffen Plan (drafted 1905 by Count Alfred von Schlieffen, modified by Moltke the Younger) — wheel through neutral Belgium and northern France to envelop Paris in six weeks, then redeploy east against the slow-mobilising Russians.
• French Plan XVII (approved May 1913) — head-down offensive into Lorraine to recover the lost provinces. Disastrous in August 1914 (~210,000 French casualties in two weeks).
• Russian Plans 19A and 19G — simultaneous attack on East Prussia (Plan 19A) and Austrian Galicia (Plan 19G); produced Tannenberg disaster of late August 1914.
• Austrian Plans B and R — toggled between Balkan-only and Russian fronts; the choice once made was hard to reverse.

4.3 The Anglo-German Naval Race

• German Naval Laws — 1898 (Tirpitz), 1900, 1906, 1908, 1912 — built a battle-fleet that Britain saw as a direct existential threat.
• Britain replied with the HMS Dreadnought (launched 10 February 1906) — an all-big-gun, steam-turbine battleship that made all earlier battleships obsolete; "Race for Dreadnoughts" 1906-14.
• By August 1914: Britain had 29 dreadnoughts, Germany 17. Britain retained naval supremacy but at the cost of permanent strategic enmity.
• Haldane Mission (Feb 1912) — last attempt to negotiate a naval holiday; failed because Germany demanded British neutrality in any continental war.

5. Balkans — the "Powder Keg of Europe"

The Balkans were the meeting-ground of three decaying empires — Ottoman, Habsburg, Romanov — and of the new states (Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Montenegro, Albania) that succeeded them. The combination of nationalist aspiration and great-power rivalry made the peninsula uniquely combustible.

5.1 The Eastern Question, in stages

• Greek Independence (1821-32) — first major Ottoman territorial loss in Europe.
• Russo-Turkish War (1877-78), Treaty of San Stefano (3 March 1878), Congress of Berlin (13 July 1878) — created Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, Romania as independent or autonomous; Austria occupied Bosnia-Herzegovina.
• Bosnian Annexation (6 October 1908) — humiliated Russia and Serbia.
• First Balkan War (8 October 1912 – 30 May 1913) — Balkan League (Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro) expelled the Ottomans from almost all of European Turkey. Treaty of London 30 May 1913.
• Second Balkan War (29 June – 10 August 1913) — Bulgaria, dissatisfied with its share, attacked Serbia and Greece; was crushed by all its neighbours including Romania and Turkey. Treaty of Bucharest, 10 August 1913.

5.2 Consequences for 1914

• Serbia doubled in size and population — to Vienna it now looked an intolerable Yugoslav magnet for Habsburg South Slavs.
• Bulgaria, embittered, drifted toward Berlin and Vienna — would join the Central Powers in October 1915.
• Ottoman Turkey, humiliated and modernising under the Young Turks (1908 Revolution; Enver Pasha's Three Pashas regime from 1913), gravitated to Germany — Goeben/Breslau affair 10 Aug 1914, Ottoman entry 29 Oct 1914.
• Austria, frightened by Serbian aggrandisement, was now looking for an excuse to crush its small neighbour. Sarajevo would supply one.

6. Crises Before the Storm (1905-1913)

7. Sarajevo & the July Crisis 1914

7.1 The assassination — 28 June 1914

• Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Habsburg throne, and his morganatic wife Duchess Sophie of Hohenberg, visit Sarajevo on the Serbian national day of Vidovdan.
• Gavrilo Princip, a 19-year-old Bosnian Serb student, member of Mlada Bosna (Young Bosnia), trained and armed by the Serbian secret society Crna Ruka (Black Hand, founded 1911 by Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijević "Apis"), fires two pistol shots at 10:55 am.
• Both Franz Ferdinand and Sophie die within an hour.
• Six conspirators were on the route; an earlier grenade attack had missed. Princip succeeded by accident — the Archduke's driver took a wrong turn.

7.2 The July Crisis — day-by-day

8. Outbreak — the Schlieffen Plan & the Western Front

8.1 1914 — the war of movement

• Invasion of Belgium (4 August 1914) — Liège forts fall (6-16 August); Brussels occupied 20 August; "Rape of Belgium" (mass executions at Dinant, Aerschot, Louvain — library burned 25 August) — a propaganda gift to the Allies.
• Battle of the Frontiers (14-25 August 1914) — French Plan XVII offensive into Lorraine slaughtered (~27,000 French dead on 22 August alone — the bloodiest day in French military history).
• British Expeditionary Force (BEF) — 100,000 regulars — engaged at Mons (23 August) and Le Cateau (26 August); orderly retreat to the Marne.
• Battle of Tannenberg (26-30 August 1914) — German Eighth Army (Hindenburg, Ludendorff) annihilates Russian Second Army (Samsonov, who shoots himself); ~50,000 Russian dead, ~92,000 prisoners.
• First Battle of the Marne (5-12 September 1914) — Joffre and Gallieni rally; "Taxis of the Marne" rush troops from Paris; the Schlieffen Plan fails. Germany cannot win a quick war.
• "Race to the Sea" (Sep-Nov 1914) — armies extend trenches north to the Channel; First Battle of Ypres (19 October – 22 November 1914) — Indian Corps in action from late October; BEF reduced to skeleton.

8.2 1915-17 — the stalemate of the trenches

9. Eastern Front & the Other Theatres

9.1 Eastern Front

• Tannenberg (26-30 August 1914) and the Masurian Lakes (7-14 September 1914) — twin German victories destroyed Russian capacity for offensive war in East Prussia.
• Galicia (Aug-Sep 1914) — Russia overran the Austrian province; took Lemberg/Lviv 3 September; ~324,000 Austrian casualties.
• Gorlice-Tarnów Offensive (2 May – 22 June 1915) — Mackensen's breakthrough; Russia driven back ~480 km — "Great Retreat" of 1915; Warsaw fell 5 August 1915.
• Brusilov Offensive (4 June – 20 September 1916) — General Aleksei Brusilov's brilliant attack on Austro-Hungary inflicted ~1.5 million Austrian casualties; brought Romania into the war (27 Aug 1916); but also exhausted Russia's last reserves — a key driver of the 1917 Revolution.
• February & October Revolutions 1917 — Tsar abdicates 15 March 1917; Bolsheviks seize power 7 November 1917 — see Section 13.

9.2 Italian Front

• Italy entered the war on the Entente side by the Treaty of London (26 April 1915), lured by promises of South Tyrol, Trieste, Istria and Dalmatia.
• Eleven inconclusive Battles of the Isonzo (June 1915 – September 1917).
• Caporetto / Twelfth Isonzo (24 Oct – 19 Nov 1917) — Austro-German breakthrough; ~300,000 Italian prisoners; Italians retreat to the Piave.
• Vittorio Veneto (24 Oct – 3 Nov 1918) — final Italian victory; Austria-Hungary signs Armistice of Villa Giusti 3 November 1918.

9.3 Middle East & the Ottoman Front

• Gallipoli Campaign (25 April 1915 – 9 January 1916) — Churchill's plan to force the Dardanelles; failed; ~46,000 Allied dead (including Anzacs, immortalised in Australian/New Zealand national mythology); Mustafa Kemal (later Atatürk) made his name as Ottoman commander at Chunuk Bair.
• Mesopotamian Campaign — British (largely Indian Army) advance from Basra; Siege of Kut-al-Amara (7 Dec 1915 – 29 Apr 1916) — surrender of 13,000 troops under Major-General Townshend; recovered later, Baghdad fell 11 March 1917.
• Palestine Campaign — General Allenby; Jerusalem taken 9 December 1917; Megiddo 19 Sep – 25 Oct 1918; Damascus 1 October 1918.
• Arab Revolt (10 June 1916 – 25 October 1918) — Sharif Hussein of Mecca, supported by T.E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia"); promised an Arab kingdom (McMahon-Hussein Correspondence Jul 1915 – Mar 1916); double-crossed by Sykes-Picot Agreement (16 May 1916) and Balfour Declaration (2 November 1917).
• Armenian Genocide (Apr 1915 – 1923) — ~1-1.5 million Armenians killed under the cover of war; the model that Hitler would later cite.

9.4 African and Asian theatres

• German Togoland surrendered 26 August 1914; Kamerun resisted until February 1916; German South-West Africa surrendered 9 July 1915 to South Africa under Botha and Smuts; German East Africa held out under General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck until 25 November 1918 — fourteen days after the European armistice.
• Japan seized Tsingtao (7 Nov 1914) and German Pacific islands (Marshalls, Carolines, Marianas).
• ~2.5 million African porters and soldiers served the Allies in East Africa; mortality from disease and overwork was catastrophic (perhaps 1 in 8).

9.5 War at sea

• Coronel (1 Nov 1914) — German victory off Chile; Falkland Islands (8 Dec 1914) — British revenge.
• Battle of Jutland (31 May – 1 Jun 1916) — only fleet engagement of dreadnoughts; tactically a German draw (Britain lost 14 ships, Germany 11) but the German High Seas Fleet never sailed again — strategic British victory.
• U-boat campaign — Germany declared unrestricted submarine warfare 4 February 1915 (sinking Lusitania 7 May 1915, ~1,200 dead including 128 Americans); suspended after US protest; resumed 1 February 1917 — which finally brought America in.

10. War Technology — Machine-gun, Gas, Tanks, U-boats, Aircraft

• Machine-guns — Maxim, Vickers, Lewis (Allies); MG-08 (Germany). 4 men firing 500 rpm could halt an infantry battalion. The defining weapon of trench warfare.
• Artillery — accounted for ~60-70% of all casualties. By 1918 a single offensive could fire millions of shells in a week (Third Ypres opened with 4.5 million shells in 19 days).
• Poison gas — first major use at Second Ypres, 22 April 1915 (German chlorine); phosgene (Dec 1915); mustard gas (Jul 1917 at Third Ypres) — Fritz Haber's "father of chemical warfare"; ~1.3 million gas casualties; banned in war by the Geneva Protocol of 17 June 1925.
• Tanks — first British use at Flers-Courcelette, 15 September 1916 (Mark I); mass tank breakthrough at Cambrai 20 November 1917; decisive at Amiens 8 August 1918 ("Black Day of the German Army" — Ludendorff).
• Submarines (U-boats) — Germany commissioned ~360 U-boats; sank ~13 million tons of Allied shipping. Britain's convoy system from May 1917 turned the tide.
• Aircraft — from reconnaissance to dogfighting and strategic bombing. Manfred von Richthofen ("Red Baron"), René Fonck. London bombed by Zeppelins (1915) and Gotha bombers (1917-18).
• Radio & telegraph — first wireless-controlled war; British cut the German transatlantic cables on 5 August 1914.

11. Total War — Home Front, Women, Propaganda

The First World War was the first total war in the modern sense — the entire population, economy and culture of belligerent states were mobilised for the front. The line between "soldier" and "civilian" blurred.

11.1 War economy

• State direction — Britain's Defence of the Realm Act (DORA, 8 August 1914), Germany's Hindenburg Programme (Aug 1916), French Ministère de l'Armement under Albert Thomas (1916). Markets gave way to planning.
• Munitions output — by 1918 Britain alone was producing ~250,000 shells per day; France increased shell output ~290-fold between 1914 and 1917.
• Rationing & controls — bread rationed in Germany from Jan 1915; meat from Jun 1916; the "Turnip Winter" of 1916-17 — Britain rationed sugar from Dec 1917, meat from Apr 1918.
• War finance — taxation, war bonds and inflation; the gold standard suspended; Britain's national debt rose from £650 million (1914) to £7.4 billion (1919).

11.2 Women at war

• ~1.6 million British women entered war work — munitions ("Canary Girls"), nursing (VAD, FANY), the Women's Land Army (1917), the WAAC/WRNS/WRAF auxiliaries.
• Germany's Auxiliary Service Law (5 December 1916) drafted civilian labour, women included.
• Suffrage breakthrough — Representation of the People Act 1918 in Britain (women over 30 with property), Weimar Constitution 1919 (universal suffrage), USA's 19th Amendment 1920. The war did not "give" women the vote — but it broke the last political defences against it.

11.3 Propaganda

• Britain's Wellington House (Aug 1914) and Lord Beaverbrook's Ministry of Information (1918); Germany's Vaterländischer Unterricht; US Committee on Public Information under George Creel (Apr 1917).
• Atrocity propaganda — the "Rape of Belgium", Edith Cavell's execution (12 Oct 1915), Lusitania (7 May 1915), Bryce Report (May 1915).
• Cinema, posters ("Your Country Needs You" — Alfred Leete, 1914; "I Want You" — James Montgomery Flagg, 1917), recruitment songs.
• Censorship of letters from the front; war poetry of Owen, Sassoon, Brooke, Rosenberg, Graves became the dissenting counter-current.

11.4 Civilian casualties & aftershocks

• ~6-13 million civilian deaths (war-related famine and disease).
• Allied blockade of Germany (Nov 1914 – Jul 1919) — estimated 750,000 German civilian deaths from malnutrition.
• Spanish Flu pandemic (1918-20) — accelerated by troop movements; ~50 million dead worldwide, including ~12-17 million in India alone.

12. India's Contribution to WWI

12.1 Scale

• ~1.5 million Indian volunteers recruited (no conscription) — ~1.3 million served overseas. Largest contribution of any colony.
• ~74,000 dead, ~67,000 wounded; ~9,200 decorated for bravery, including 11 Victoria Crosses.
• First Indian VC of the war: Sepoy Khudadad Khan (129th Baluchis) at Hollebeke, Belgium, 31 October 1914 — the first Indian-born VC of WWI.

12.2 Theatres

12.3 India's financial & material contribution

• India contributed ~£146 million outright "gift" to British war effort; further ~£100 million in loans.
• Vast supplies — 173,000 horses and mules, 370,000 tons of food grain, jute for sandbags, cotton for uniforms.
• The financial drain triggered war-time inflation (~30%), shortages, recruitment-area distress — and hardened nationalist resentment.

12.4 Political consequences in India

• Defence of India Act (Mar 1915) — emergency powers; precedent for the postwar Rowlatt Act.
• Komagata Maru incident (May-Sep 1914) and Ghadar Conspiracy (planned mutiny Feb 1915) — diasporic and revolutionary nationalism.
• Home Rule Leagues — Tilak (Apr 1916, Pune) and Annie Besant (Sep 1916, Madras).
• Lucknow Pact (Dec 1916) — Congress-League rapprochement (Tilak, Jinnah).
• Montagu Declaration (20 August 1917) — promise of "responsible government" — won by Indian war service.
• Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms / Government of India Act 1919 — dyarchy; expansion of franchise.
• Rowlatt Act (10 March 1919) — extended wartime repression; sparked Gandhi's first all-India satyagraha (Apr 1919).
• Jallianwala Bagh massacre (13 April 1919) — turning point that radicalised Indian nationalism.
• Khilafat (Oct 1919 onwards) and Non-Cooperation (Aug 1920 – Feb 1922) — Hindu-Muslim mass mobilisation against the very empire Indian sepoys had fought to defend.

13. Russian Revolution & Russia's Exit

Russia's collapse is examined in detail in Topic 08; here only its impact on the war.

• ~5.5 million Russian casualties by end of 1916; Petrograd bread riots Feb-Mar 1917.
• February Revolution (8-15 March 1917, NS) — Tsar Nicholas II abdicates 15 March 1917; Provisional Government under Prince Lvov, then Kerensky.
• Kerensky Offensive (1-19 July 1917) — last Russian attack; collapses in mutiny.
• October / Bolshevik Revolution (7 November 1917, NS) — Lenin's "Peace, Land, Bread."
• Decree on Peace (8 November 1917) — Soviet Russia repudiates Tsarist treaties; offers immediate peace.
• Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918) — Russia cedes Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Ukraine, parts of the Caucasus to Germany; ~1/3 of population, ~50% of industry, ~90% of coal. A draconian treaty — yet annulled in November 1918 by the German collapse.
• Strategic effect: Germany freed ~50 divisions for the Western Front in early 1918 — the gamble behind the Ludendorff Spring Offensive.
• Allied intervention in Russia (1918-22) — British, French, American, Japanese, Czech forces aiding the Whites in the Russian Civil War; ultimately defeated by the Reds. Lasting Soviet distrust of the West dates from here.

14. American Entry & Wilson's Fourteen Points

14.1 Road to American entry

• USA initially neutral (President Wilson re-elected November 1916 on slogan "He kept us out of war").
• Triggers:
  • Sinking of Lusitania, 7 May 1915 — 128 Americans among ~1,200 dead.
  • Germany's resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare, 1 February 1917.
  • Zimmermann Telegram (intercepted 16 January, published 1 March 1917) — German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmermann offers Mexico recovery of Texas/New Mexico/Arizona for joining the Central Powers.
• 2 April 1917 — Wilson asks Congress for war declaration: "the world must be made safe for democracy."
• 6 April 1917 — USA declares war on Germany.
• American Expeditionary Force under General John J. Pershing — ~2 million doughboys in France by November 1918; decisive in stopping the Ludendorff Offensives.

14.2 Wilson's Fourteen Points (8 January 1918) — speech to Congress

1. Open diplomacy; abolition of secret treaties
2. Freedom of the seas
3. Removal of economic barriers; free trade
4. Reduction of national armaments
5. Impartial adjustment of colonial claims taking account of native populations
6. Evacuation of Russian territory; Russia's free political development
7. Evacuation and restoration of Belgium
8. Evacuation of France; return of Alsace-Lorraine
9. Italian frontiers re-drawn along lines of nationality
10. Autonomy for the peoples of Austria-Hungary
11. Evacuation of Romania, Serbia, Montenegro; Serbian access to the sea
12. Autonomous development for the non-Turkish peoples of the Ottoman Empire; Dardanelles opened
13. Independent Poland with sea access
14. A general association of nations — the League of Nations

15. End of the War — 1918

15.1 The Ludendorff Spring Offensives (21 March – 18 July 1918)

• Five great German attacks (codenames Michael, Georgette, Blücher-Yorck, Gneisenau, Marne-Reims) — using stormtrooper tactics; advanced ~60 km — the deepest gains since 1914.
• Paris shelled by long-range "Paris Gun" from 23 March 1918.
• But — German casualties unsustainable (~1 million in four months); supply lines stretched; American troops arriving at 250,000 per month.
• Second Battle of the Marne (15 July – 6 August 1918) — Foch's counter-attack ends the German offensive.

15.2 The Hundred Days Offensive (8 August – 11 November 1918)

• Amiens (8 August 1918) — combined British, French, Australian, Canadian attack with ~600 tanks; broke the German front. Ludendorff: "the Black Day of the German Army."
• Successive Allied victories breached the Hindenburg Line (29 Sep – 5 Oct 1918).
• Bulgaria signs armistice 29 September 1918; Ottoman Empire signs Armistice of Mudros 30 October 1918; Austria-Hungary signs Armistice of Villa Giusti 3 November 1918.
• German Revolution begins with Kiel naval mutiny 29 October – 3 November 1918; spreads through German cities.
• Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicates 9 November 1918; flees to Holland 10 November; Weimar Republic proclaimed.
• Armistice of Compiègne, signed in Marshal Foch's railway carriage at 5:00 am, effective 11:00 am, 11 November 1918.

15.3 The cost

• ~10 million military dead; ~21 million wounded; ~7 million missing.
• ~13 million civilian deaths (war-related famine, disease, blockade, genocide).
• ~~50 million additional dead from Spanish Flu (1918-20).
• Four empires destroyed: Romanov, Hohenzollern, Habsburg, Ottoman.
• ~$337 billion (1914 prices) in direct war costs; reparations and debt to dominate inter-war economies.

16. Paris Peace Conference & the Treaty of Versailles

16.1 Paris Peace Conference (18 January 1919 – 21 January 1920)

• 32 nations represented; Germany and Bolshevik Russia excluded.
• Dominated by the "Big Four": Wilson (USA), Lloyd George (Britain), Clemenceau (France), Orlando (Italy).
• India represented by a delegation including S.P. Sinha and the Maharaja of Bikaner — the first time a non-self-governing colony sat at an international peace conference (a foothold that became India's separate League of Nations membership).
• Three competing visions: Wilson's liberal internationalism (self-determination, open diplomacy, League); Clemenceau's security agenda (cripple Germany permanently); Lloyd George's pragmatism (chastise but not destroy Germany; avoid Bolshevik vacuum).

16.2 Treaty of Versailles (signed 28 June 1919, Hall of Mirrors — exactly five years after Sarajevo)

Territorial terms

• Alsace-Lorraine returned to France.
• Saar Basin placed under League administration for 15 years; coal to France.
• Rhineland demilitarised (~50 km zone east of the Rhine); occupied by Allies for 15 years.
• Eupen-Malmédy to Belgium; Northern Schleswig to Denmark (plebiscite).
• Polish Corridor giving Poland access to the sea — separating East Prussia from the rest of Germany.
• Danzig (Gdańsk) — Free City under League of Nations.
• Memel to Allies (later Lithuania, 1923).
• Forbidden union (Anschluss) with Austria.
• All German overseas colonies confiscated and distributed as League mandates (Tanganyika to Britain, Togo & Cameroon split France/Britain, South-West Africa to South Africa, Pacific to Japan/Australia/NZ).
• Germany lost ~13% of its territory, ~10% of population, ~75% of iron ore, ~26% of coal.

Military terms

• Army limited to 100,000 men, no conscription, no tanks, no heavy artillery, no military aircraft.
• Navy limited to 15,000 men, six battleships, no submarines.
• General Staff disbanded.

Financial & legal

• Article 231 — the "War Guilt Clause" — Germany accepts "responsibility for causing all the loss and damage" of the war.
• Reparations — fixed at 132 billion gold marks (~£6.6 billion) by the Reparation Commission on 1 May 1921.
• Trial of war criminals (Kaiser, never extradited; minor trials at Leipzig 1921-22).
• Part I of the Treaty was the Covenant of the League of Nations — embedded in every peace treaty.

17. Other Peace Treaties — Saint-Germain to Lausanne

17.1 Mandate System under League of Nations (Article 22)

• Class A (closest to independence) — former Ottoman territories: Britain — Iraq, Palestine, Transjordan; France — Syria, Lebanon.
• Class B — former German African colonies: Britain — Tanganyika, parts of Togo and Cameroon; France — bulk of Togo and Cameroon; Belgium — Ruanda-Urundi.
• Class C (administered as integral parts of mandate power) — German South-West Africa to South Africa; Pacific islands to Japan, Australia, New Zealand.
• Mandates were imperialism with a fig-leaf; only Iraq (1932) became formally independent before WWII.

17.2 New states of post-1919 Europe

• Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania (from Russia), Poland (resurrected from Russia/Germany/Austria), Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia (Kingdom of Serbs/Croats/Slovenes), Romania (enlarged), Bulgaria (reduced), Greece (enlarged), Republic of Turkey.
• "Self-determination" applied unevenly: Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia, ethnic Hungarians in Romania, ethnic Germans in the Polish Corridor, Macedonians in Yugoslavia — every new state was a multinational mini-empire with its own grievances.

18. League of Nations — Promise & Failure

18.1 Structure

• Established under the Covenant of the League of Nations (Part I of every peace treaty); inaugurated 10 January 1920; headquartered in Geneva.
• Original members: 42 (including India as a founding member — distinct from Britain, an early diplomatic gain).
• Organs:
  • Assembly — all member states, one vote each, met annually.
  • Council — 4 permanent (Britain, France, Italy, Japan; later Germany 1926, USSR 1934) + non-permanent.
  • Secretariat — Geneva; Sir Eric Drummond (1920-33) first Secretary-General.
  • Permanent Court of International Justice — The Hague.
  • International Labour Organization — founded under the Treaty of Versailles; survives in the UN system.

18.2 Early successes (1920-29)

• Settlement of Aaland Islands dispute (Finland-Sweden, 1921).
• Resolution of Upper Silesia partition (Germany-Poland, 1921).
• Greco-Bulgarian border crisis (1925).
• Refugee work under Nansen (Nansen Passport for stateless persons, 1922).
• Health, anti-slavery, anti-trafficking conventions.

18.3 Failures (1931-39)

18.4 Why the League failed

• Absence of USA — Senate rejected the Versailles Treaty (19 March 1920, by 49-35); America never joined. The greatest economy and rising military stood outside the system it had invented.
• Exclusion of major powers — Germany (1920-26), USSR (1920-34) initially excluded; later left or expelled.
• No army of its own; collective security depended on members' willingness to act — which Britain and France increasingly lacked.
• Unanimity rule in the Council allowed any veto.
• Tied to Versailles — seen as the gendarme of an unjust peace; nationalist revisionism therefore meant defying the League.
• Great Depression (from Oct 1929) — destroyed the economic conditions for international cooperation.

19. Long-Term Consequences

19.1 Political

• Collapse of four empires — Romanov, Hohenzollern, Habsburg, Ottoman — and emergence of a new map of Central and Eastern Europe.
• Rise of communism — Bolshevik Russia (1917), Comintern (Mar 1919), short-lived Soviet republics in Hungary (Béla Kun, Mar-Aug 1919) and Bavaria (Apr-May 1919); CPI founded 17 Oct 1920 (Tashkent), formally 26 Dec 1925 (Kanpur).
• Rise of fascism — Mussolini's Fasci di Combattimento (23 Mar 1919); March on Rome (28 Oct 1922); Hitler's NSDAP from 24 Feb 1920; Beer Hall Putsch 8-9 Nov 1923.
• Universal suffrage for men (and partial for women) in most European states.
• Stronger executives and big states — the war state did not retreat.

19.2 Economic

• Britain transformed from world's largest creditor to a debtor of the USA; the USA emerged as the world's banker.
• Gold standard suspended 1914; restored only briefly (Britain 1925-31).
• Reparations and inter-Allied war debts created a fragile international financial system that collapsed in 1929-31 (Dawes Plan 1924, Young Plan 1929, Hoover Moratorium 1931).
• German hyperinflation (1923) — 1 US dollar = 4.2 trillion marks at peak; wiped out middle-class savings, set political stage for Hitler.

19.3 Social & cultural

• "Lost generation" — psychological aftermath of trench warfare; literary expression in Remarque (All Quiet on the Western Front, 1929), Hemingway, Sassoon, Owen, Graves.
• Permanent shift in women's social roles.
• End of the long European 19th century — Hobsbawm dates the "Short 20th Century" 1914-1991.
• Birth of modernism in the arts — Eliot's The Waste Land (1922), Joyce's Ulysses (1922), Dada, surrealism.

19.4 Geopolitical seeds of WWII

• Versailles grievances — German revisionism, Italian "mutilated victory" (D'Annunzio), Japanese frustration with naval limits (Washington Treaty 1922, London 1930).
• Mandate borders — Iraq, Syria, Palestine — produced the modern Middle East and its conflicts.
• Sykes-Picot, Balfour, McMahon-Hussein and Faisal's expulsion from Syria (1920) seeded a century of Arab-Israeli and pan-Arab conflict.
• Disunity of the victors — USA isolationist, Britain conciliatory, France desperate — left the inter-war order without a guarantor.

20. Significance & Indian Connections

20.1 Why WWI was a turning point

• First truly global war — fought on every inhabited continent, with soldiers from every settled landmass.
• First industrial total war — civilians as targets, economies as weapons.
• End of European primacy — the Old World had to be saved by the New (USA) and by its colonies (India, ANZACs, Africa, Caribbean).
• Birth of the modern international order — League of Nations, mandates, self-determination as global rhetoric.
• Direct cause of the Russian Revolution and indirect cause of fascism — and so of WWII.

20.2 Indian connections — a chain reaction

• Khudadad Khan VC (31 Oct 1914) and ~1.5 million Indian volunteers — the largest colonial contribution.
• Ghadar Conspiracy Feb 1915, Komagata Maru (May-Sep 1914) — diasporic revolutionary nationalism.
• Defence of India Act 1915, Home Rule Leagues 1916, Lucknow Pact Dec 1916.
• Montagu Declaration 20 Aug 1917 — promise of responsible government extracted by war service.
• Government of India Act 1919 — dyarchy (10 Dec 1919).
• Rowlatt Act 10 Mar 1919 & Jallianwala Bagh 13 Apr 1919 — radicalisation.
• Khilafat (1919-22) & Non-Cooperation (Aug 1920 – Feb 1922) — Hindu-Muslim mass nationalism.
• India at Versailles, Paris 1919, and as founding member of the League of Nations, 1920 — international personality before independence.
• Sykes-Picot & Balfour — origins of the Palestine question that would later draw in Indian solidarity (Gandhi 1938, Nehru's UN positions).
• Communist Party of India — Tashkent 17 Oct 1920, Kanpur 26 Dec 1925 — direct Comintern echo of the Russian Revolution.
• Tagore's renunciation of knighthood, 31 May 1919 — first global Indian gesture against the empire.

20.3 Quotable lines for essays

• Sir Edward Grey (3 Aug 1914): "The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime."
• Lloyd George (1934): "The nations slithered over the brink into the boiling cauldron of war."
• Wilson (2 Apr 1917): "The world must be made safe for democracy."
• Pétain at Verdun (Feb 1916): "Ils ne passeront pas" (They shall not pass).
• Keynes (1919): "The Carthaginian peace is not practically right or possible."
• Foch on Versailles (1919): "This is not peace. It is an armistice for twenty years."
• Tagore (1916, lectures on Nationalism): "The political civilisation which has sprung up from the soil of Europe… has been the chief cause of the modern wars."
• Gandhi (Young India, 13 Oct 1921): "I discovered that the British Empire had certain ideals with which I had fallen in love… I have lost that faith."