In 1870 Italy was united by Victor Emmanuel II. Shortly thereafter, following the Franco-Prussian War, William I and his Prime Minister Otto von Bismarck united the northern German states under Prussia, one of the states of the former Holy Roman Empire; and William declared his nation the German Empire. Before defeating France in 1870 Bismarck had already led Prussia to defeat Austria in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 to establish Prussia as the leading power among the German states. Austria’s loss of territory to Prussia and Italy left the rule of the Habsburgs weakened in a kingdom comprised of many competing ethnic groups. Soon Magyar nationalism in Hungary caused the kingdom to be split into two distinct states, Austria and Hungary, each with their own governments but both still ruled by Francis Joseph, Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary. While Hungary was in turmoil, industrialization proliferated in Germany under William and toward the end of the nineteenth century Germany even overtook Britain as Europe’s foremost industrial power.
Meanwhile, being intimidated by what came to be known as gunboat diplomacy by the U.S. in the 1850s and thus spurred by outside forces, Japan also embraced a course of aggressive development in the latter stages of the nineteenth century. Under the rule of Mutsuhito, also known as Emperor Meiji, Shinto was declared the official religion and as emperor Meiji was revered as semi-divine, and he also took direct control of the Imperial Army and Navy. The Japanese modeled their modernized navy after, and received training assistance from the British Royal Navy; with the majority of their primary warships built in Britain and France. And the Imperial Japanese Army was modeled after the French and then the Prussian, or German Army, receiving military advisors from both countries.
The work produced remarkable results, and by the 1890s Japan had a modern army and navy and decided to seize the opportunity to rest control of Korea from China, beginning the First Sino-Japanese war in 1894. And the Europeans certainly weren’t above playing one side against the other in such regional conflicts. Though Britain had assisted the modernization of Japan’s navy, at the outbreak of the war a British merchant ship was in the employ of China, transporting troops, and it was the forcible interception of that ship by the Japanese that almost set off hostilities between Britain and Japan. In addition, China was also receiving military advice from Germany, much as Japan had previously. Nonetheless, after a series of Japanese victories the war ended quickly and China was forced to make concessions to Japan including handing over possession of the island of Formosa (Taiwan).
Originally China ceded the Liaodong Peninsula, situated between mainland China and the Korean Peninsula, to Japan as well, but that conflicted with Russia’s interests in Manchuria. Russia desperately wanted a year round port on the Pacific that the shelter of the Yellow Sea could provide. So Russia persuaded Germany and France to apply pressure, convincing Japan to release the land in exchange for a greater indemnity payment. Japan conceded, but was concerned with expanding Russian presence in the area, and after another decade of strengthening its military, Japan was ready to confront Russia, who in the meantime had heavily fortified Port Arthur on the Liaodong Peninsula. The resulting Russo-Japanese war of 1904-05 ended in a humiliating defeat for Russia, and a stark notice to the West that Japan had come of age.
But Japan’s victory had significant impact in Europe as well. Britain, for one, also long concerned by Russian expansion, was not upset to see that expansion halted. And perhaps more importantly, Germany was emboldened by the weakness of France’s ally Russia, making Germany a little less reserved about engaging in regional hostilities of its own. And in Japan, after centuries of isolation, military success was accompanied by emphatic loyalty. When Emperor Meiji died in 1912, his valued general, Maresuke Nogi, along with the general’s wife, followed their leader in death by committing suicide.
The political scene in Europe was tense as usual, but Europe was also still experiencing rapid technological advancement, driven by creative freedom and can-do attitudes. In the 1890s Germany’s educational system was setting an example that many would be better to follow today. German technical high schools were awarding doctorate degrees and some large companies opened their own schools for internal training. By the 1880s men like Karl Benz were producing practical automobiles, although less practical self-propelled vehicles had been around a long while, including the awkward steam powered fardiers built by Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot more than a century before, and the early 19th century vehicles of François Isaac de Rivaz, the Swiss inventor of the internal combustion engine. Also in Germany, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin had built on the work of David Schwarz and produced a number of rigid, flying airships near the beginning of the twentieth century. And after the Wright Brothers’ successful flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina in 1903 those floaters were joined in the skies by airplanes.
While technology was making possible dramatic lifestyle changes, it was also increasing the possible devastation of war. Despite efforts by some of the most powerful military empires of history including the Romans, Huns and Mongols, Europe has never been unified under a single authority. But, while Europe has remained too much for one man or government to conquer, many, like Napoleon, have tried, and the assorted tribes and kingdoms have a strong history of fighting amongst themselves. Of course, in that respect they’re in accord with historical humanity.
To attempt to trace back through reprisals and conquests to the original offense between grievous or warring nations is merely an exercise in futility. And that’s true with World War One as well. Each cause of the war seems to have a previous cause, and one before that, and so on. Though it’s been said that Europe was a powder-keg just waiting to be set off prior to World War One; the prevailing ethnic tensions, international distrust and territorial ambitions were far from new to the political scene. What was new however, was the speed of communication around the world, the speed with which nations could mobilize and join in distant hostilities, and the destructive force capable of being brought to bear on enemy combatants and bystanders alike.
Whatever the political environment, the immediate cause of the war was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, by a Bosnian Serb student named Gavrilo Princip on June 28, 1914. Bosnia was one of many territories that had been alternately occupied by the Austrians and Ottomans over the centuries in their competing struggles for empire, so there was an inherent danger of people accustomed to war and hostility. But during the first part of the 20th century, there was also a strong liberation movement amongst southern Slavic people seeking independence. Princip was influenced by that independence sentiment and conspired with a like-minded group to assassinate Ferdinand during a visit to Sarajevo.
The attempt to assassinate the Archduke didn’t go as planned however, the initial grenade attack on Ferdinand’s motorcade missed his car but injured a number of onlookers. It was only through the compassion of the Archduke’s wife Sophie, that Ferdinand would be exposed to a follow-up attempt on his life after Sophie suggested they go to the hospital to visit with those injured in the grenade attack. It was in that effort that Princip unexpectedly met up with Ferdinand’s car and shot Ferdinand and his wife, killing them both. While tragic in the eyes of many, it was a fitting end for a man that had earned a reputation as an avid hunter. But, of course, to his family it was the highest of crimes.
At that time Austria-Hungary and the Balkan states were a mixing bowl of ethnic groups where tensions and nationalist feelings ran high. The ethnic discord also influenced other young people besides Gavrilo Princip, like an Austrian-born German named Adolf Hitler who was repelled by the conglomeration of races in Vienna, the Austrian capital. In his later political thesis Mein Kampf Hitler wrote “The longer I lived in this city, the more my hatred grew for the foreign mixture of peoples which had begun to corrode this old site of German culture.” As Gavrilo Princip had been influenced by outspoken Slavic nationalists, so too Hitler was influenced by extremist German culture in his youth, as many in Austria were. The long standing tensions of competing factions left many Austrians frustrated and eager to settle matters.
It was in that context that Austria-Hungary placed unreasonable demands on Serbia over the killing of the Archduke: an incident that Serbia also declared to be criminal and unfortunate. When Austria-Hungary failed to receive the kind of concessions demanded of Serbia they declared war. But things were more complicated than that, in the complex web of nationalities and allegiances many secret and not-so-secret alliances had been forged. Russia came to the aid of Serbia, motivated by a Slavic bond, competition with Austria and a continuing desire for territory bordering the Black Sea that would give Russia convenient year-round access to the Mediterranean and Atlantic. Germany was strongly allied with Austria, France was allied with Russia to oppose its traditional enemy Germany, and the Ottomans, eager to expand in the Balkans, had a secret alliance with Germany.
In rapid succession, almost without realizing the consequences, the countries of Europe declared war and advanced on each other. Germany’s advance through Belgium toward Paris drew the United Kingdom into the war, including British Commonwealths such as Canada and Australia. Italy decided against honoring its alliance with the Central powers of Austria and Germany and sided with the Entente allies instead. And, buoyed by initial military success, Austria and Germany convinced Bulgaria to join in the attack of Serbia. But, Austria’s August invasion was thrown back by Serbia, though Germany’s simultaneous advance against Belgium and France was much more successful.
Russia’s defense of Slavdom, and quest for German-controlled territory, came in the form of offensives against the Austrians in Galicia and the Germans in East Prussia. Like Serbia, Russia was successful in its war with Austria, but the northern campaign against Germany was another matter as the Germans rebuffed the Russian advance. The war on the Western Front between Germany, France and the United Kingdom quickly degenerated into trench warfare and bloody stalemate, with nobody having a good offensive strategy for overcoming the firepower of entrenched artillery and machine guns. Even European colonies were heavily involved in the fighting, and German territories in the Pacific were seized by the Entente powers within the first year.
While America maintained formal neutrality, British and French control of the oceans, along with a growing disdain of Germany, helped ensure the Allies, as the nations of the Entente alliance were known, benefit of American supplies. Still, with no overwhelming advantage, the war settled into a war of attrition. In 1915 the Germans transferred some of their emphasis from the stagnant Western Front to renewed offensive against Russia in the east. The Germans pushed the Russians back, but eventually stalled and found themselves spread out over a long distance fighting a war with two main fronts when Romania joined the Allies in 1916. However, the German offensive against Russia did produce a favorable result for Germany, as destruction and hardship caused by the fierce fighting on Russian land demoralized the citizens of Russia and lead to an overthrow of Tsarist rule in 1917. Within months the ruthless and opportunistic radical Bolsheviks gained power in Russia and signed a peace treaty with the central powers, ceding much territory to Germany and leaving Germany secure on its eastern flank.
The Russian armistice freed many German troops on the Eastern Front to transfer to the West, but Germany did leave the Eighth Army in Russia to prevent Russian military resurgence. That German victory was countered, however, by political bungling when Germans attacked America’s east coast and maritime shipping, and a German telegraph called for Mexico and Japan to declare war on America. Together, those provocations combined to convince America to declare war against Germany in 1917 and helped seal Germany’s demise. But before the Americans could make a decisive impact Germany did meet with additional success. In 1918 the Central Powers refined their strategy and concentrated efforts on selected targets to break communications and resistance before attacking the bulk of the Allied forces. With renewed vigor German forces pushed the Allies back to within striking distance of Paris with their big railroad canons, and the Germans were feeling confident of impending victory.
On that occasion, when Paris was threatened with occupation, Australian reinforcements were instrumental in stopping the German advance and the Western Front was once again locked in stalemate, until the Allies made their first significant progress of the war on the Western Front. Led by recently designed tanks and backed by an influx of up to ten thousand U.S. soldiers each day, the allies began a strategy of driving wedges through enemy lines and outflanking their opponents. And as the strength disparity continued to grow the Allies finally slammed headlong into the enemy line and pushed the Germans back.
Although supply line deficiencies halted the progress on many of the Allied offensives; still, the Germans were unable to recover because the Allied naval blockade had limited their production capacity and Allied reinforcements continued to pour in. Leg by leg, the Central Powers collapsed. Bulgaria, the Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary and finally Germany surrendered; signing an armistice on November 11, 1918. But, failure in war spurred internal strife in Germany and the German surrender came on the heels of an internal revolution that created the Weimar Republic when Kaiser Wilhelm II fled to the Netherlands.
German land, however, hadn’t suffered the brunt of the fighting as France and Belgium had suffered. And surrender came before the destruction of Germany, without the despair, regret and humiliation of utter defeat. The German fighting spirit had been subdued, but it hadn’t been crushed. The result of the war was a terrific loss of life, devisive treaties and little more.
Nobody emerged better from the fighting, many of those that returned were crippled from injury, and many didn’t return at all. Approximately ten million soldiers were killed; twice as many wounded; and millions more missing. Famine and destruction were widespread with cities destroyed and hundreds of miles of fine land along battle fronts blasted into wasteland. Adding to people’s woes was a bout of influenza called the Spanish Flu that spread around the world following the war; estimated to have killed fifty million people, it was more deadly for humans than the Great War itself, although the impact on other life was fortunately less horrific than modern warfare.
The political landscape following the war was significantly altered by the fall of some national identities, the general loss of territory by the Central Powers and the rise of newly independent states, especially in the area of the Balkans. The monarchies of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia and the Ottomans were all toppled and lands were repartitioned. Britain’s colossal empire was theoretically added to by the League of Nations mandate that assigned control of Palestine and Iraq to the United Kingdom. But by that point the British Empire was not an empire in the sense of the Roman or Mongol Empires, as many British territories such as Canada and Australia were already self-governing dominions.
American president Woodrow Wilson championed the creation of nations comprised of people of similar culture and aspirations, maintaining small armies, and protected by the League of Nations. He thought no people should be forced to live under a sovereignty not of their choosing. But despite Wilson’s call for conciliation and friendship, the victorious Allies, appalled by their terrible war losses demanded compensation from the defeated Central Powers, and the Central Powers were still too proud to follow through with concessions granted in the peace treaties.
The war devastated European economies and France insisted that Germany make reparations. But when the weakened German economy failed to meet those obligations France committed its army to occupy German industrial territory, serving only to cost France more money and fuel German resentment. While the Germans were indignant, America was still trying to sow harmony through financial aid. In unproductive circular fashion Britain paid back some of the massive debt in wartime loans it received from America with damage reparations from Germany which was receiving financial aid from the United States. The damage was so great and the debt so staggering that many of the loans and reparations were never repaid. For its part, Germany didn’t see itself as having been unduly aggressive and would come to vehemently resent sanctions imposed as a result of the war. And topping things off, when the speculative bubble of the New York Stock Exchange burst in 1929, economies around the world went from bad to worse.
Russia descended into civil war following the Bolshevik power grab and agreement with Germany. While the Bolshevik communists publicly stated that they stood for equality and democratic value, in reality they were ruthless, greedy and suspicious of nearly everyone. In the late teens and early twenties the communists fought private wars of terror against influential people and dissidents with secret police, and they fought a full-scale war against the White Armies and others that rose up against their radical policies.
Despite the professed democracy of their socialist party, the Bolsheviks under Vladimir Ulianov, or V.I. Lenin, ruled with totalitarian repression from the beginning. They were too power hungry to compromise with even other socialist parties. Under Lenin and Leon Trotsky the Bolsheviks came out victorious in the war for control. But their massive seizures of private property led to economic disaster and widespread hunger, prompting the Red Communists to allow peasants to keep a small parcel of property to grow their own food. The turmoil and restructuring caused living standards to fall well below those of pre-war levels under the Tsar. But when the Russian people thought matters couldn’t get much worse, Lenin died in 1924 and the former bank robber Joseph Stalin murdered his way to control of the party.
Stalin assumed dictatorial powers on a scale rivaling the biggest tyrants of history. His reign of terror lasting approximately thirty years was summarized by his successor Nikita Khrushchev who ended the forced-labor camps and reversed Stalinist censorship. Kruschev, who was intimidating in his own right, said that Stalin practiced brutal violence toward everything that opposed him or was contrary to his concepts. Stalin abused his power with mass repressions, terror, annihilation and executions without trial. And to make matters worse, his gross mismanagement of the economy resulted in the death of up to five million people from starvation in the 1930’s.
Stalin’s dictatorial style was similar to that of one Benito Mussolini of Italy, though Mussolini waffled wildly in his ideology. He went from being a pacifist socialist opposing war to a violent attacker of socialists and communists that fervently promoted war when he thought he might stand to benefit. In 1922, under threat of force, King Victor Emmanuel III made Mussolini prime minister of Italy. It was hoped by some that Mussolini could counter the growing power of radical communism. But when the fascists of Mussolini gained power people soon learned that fascists could be just as ruthless as radical communists as they maintained control through the terrorism of their “Blackshirt” squadristi and censorship of the press.
As prime minister, Mussolini revised the laws to give himself authoritarian powers. In time he took more and more control of the government and citizens of Italy, putting private business under state control and taking personal direction of the underperforming economy, while overseeing a massive propaganda campaign to mold public opinion. He even made his bias towards women felt publicly by discouraging their employment, describing working women as forming an independence and physical and moral habits contrary to child bearing. Instead, he recommended they stay home and raise large families. When his control was secure he set upon a campaign of conquest in his ambition to return the Mediterranean to the sea of Italy as it was under the Roman Empire. As part of that territorial quest the Italians under Mussolini slaughtered and impaled inhabitants of Ethiopia while attempting to take over Africa.
But a dark star was rising in Germany that would overshadow Mussolini and even steal the spotlight from Stalin. Adolf Hitler wrote Mein Kampf while in prison after a failed attempt to overthrow the German government in 1923. Before he ever grasped significant political power his racial hatred and inflated sense of self worth was published for all the world to see, yet nobody stopped him. In one of Mussolini’s common about-faces he referred to Hitler as a buffoon before Hitler’s growing power convinced Mussolini to seek alliance with him. And eventually, due to his own ineptitude, Mussolini became Hitler’s junior sidekick and southern puppet.
As a simple-minded youth Hitler had become convinced that those people not acting or looking as he did were inferior, and he committed the rest of his life toward furthering his race war. Though of average intelligence, Hitler was remarkably successful in his singular pursuit of racial warfare, and wrote in Mein Kampf, “…the political opinion of the masses represents nothing but the final result of an incredibly tenacious and thorough manipulation of their mind and soul.”
As a staunch proponent of the power of speech, he enjoyed brilliant success in perturbing huge mobs into frenzied action with effluent theatrical speech. But as a youth he didn’t stand out as a future leader. He moved a number of times as a child, failed the sixth grade, dropped out of high school and then failed to gain admittance to art school on two separate occasions. Lacking direction, Hitler lived on a meager welfare subsidy as an adolescent, due to the death of his father, but after his mother died his portion of the government pension went to his sister. At about the age of twenty he even spent some time in a homeless shelter, yet he never seemed thankful for the generosity of others.
After moving to Vienna as a teenager, he noticed people of peculiar attire and appearance. With nationalist propaganda fouling his mind he questioned whether the Jews that looked so peculiar to him were even Germans. To further research the subject he purchased anti-Semitic pamphlets and set about contemplating the presence of those foreigners among the Germans. Hitler came to hate what he considered foreigners of all shapes and sizes: Slavs, Magyars, Mongols, Negroids and the rest were enemies of the German state. Hitler felt compelled to free German people from the internal Slav enemy. But he held a special hatred for Jews; in them he found a scapegoat for all of Germany’s problems. He began to see Jews everywhere, like the religious see demons, he saw them behind every bad action, and particularly behind every failing of the motherland, from economic depression to defeat in the Great War.
To Hitler, Aryans were the only representative of the founders of culture. They were the creators and custodians of civilization and they had the pure blood with the likeness of the lord, while others were a mixture of man and ape. Strangely, Hitler’s arrogance and bitter hatred for the Jewish people was reminiscent of the Jewish claim of being god’s chosen people. And it was quite paradoxical that Hitler was raised a Catholic Christian, and even though Jews are blamed for killing Jesus, Hitler seemed to completely lose sight of the fact that Jesus was Jewish. Hitler worshipped the Jew named Jesus as God incarnate, and yet maintained the astounding stance that Jews were part beast and only within Aryans flowed the pure blood of God. Like white supremacists today, many of which have no idea the term Aryan is the name of dark haired people in the area of Iran to India, Hitler and other Jew-haters had no hereditary claim to Christianity.
Hitler stated the paramount purpose of the state was to preserve and improve the race. The stronger must dominate and not bleed with weaker, thus sacrificing his own greatness, he concluded. Every mingling of Aryan blood with that of lower peoples resulted in physical and intellectual regression and progressing sickness that was a sin against the will of the eternal creator. To him, the most humane act of mankind was to prevent defective people from propagating equally defective offspring. Not wanting to limit himself, Hitler labeled communists as Jews which gave him all the more reason to fulfill his long-held ambition of annexing Russian lands and enslaving the inhabitants to serve their German overlords.
Only war and violence seemed to give much meaning to Hitler’s tumultuous life. He condemned peaceful coexistence as a mockery of nature and praised armed conflict as the catalyst to strengthen men, though he never distinguished himself as a physically strong person, preferring others do his fighting for him. “Those who don’t want to fight in this world of eternal struggles don’t deserve to live,” he wrote. In Mein Kampf he proclaimed that when World War One was apparent he fell down on his knees and thanked heaven from an overflowing heart for granting him the good fortune to live at that time. As a warmonger, he believed right lies in strength alone and he obsessed with schemes of killing others en masse so that his kind could rule supreme for a thousand years.
Many Americans today wonder how such an egotistical, contemptuous individual could lead an industrialized country with millions of educated people? The reaction of German citizens to the passion of his conviction is informative of the dynamics of social interaction. The human mind possesses surprisingly little creativity, as it consists of neurons that store memories as series of electrical impulses from the senses. We have an inherent difficulty envisioning things we haven’t seen before. Even though people may piece together many familiar objects to compose a new scene in their minds, they have difficulty creating something new. For example, it’s hard to imagine a new color: one not seen before. And man’s behavior is learned through imitation; as brain function is largely reactionary, being easily directed by current events and influences. Hitler’s determination kept the focus of those around him on matters of evil, and masses flocked to his intense message like sheep to a shepherd. Like a modern day propaganda news host, he constantly preached hate and discord.
And that was the simple genius of the noble wolf, a historical meaning of Adolf in German, as he used the post-war melancholy, political turmoil and economic depression to stir people’s fear and incite action spurred by anger. By introducing scapegoats for fear and failure he directed the pent-up anxiety of the country, which he sought to keep in a continual state of agitation, against his imagined enemies. Hitler knew how to appeal to people’s most base emotions and promised them a grand liberation from all of their fears, pains and hardships, just as any good preacher or politician would do.
Though his promises were little more than a series of lies to anyone who would listen, his ambition knew no bounds. He got himself assigned to headquarters in World War I, and after the war he served as a police spy and infiltrated the German Workers’ Party. But he was so impressed with the group’s hate mongering that he ended up joining them and later tried to take credit for forming the group. Once in the Party, Hitler’s unbridled enthusiasm and terroristic use of force allowed him to seize power. In control of the Party; which he renamed the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazi) to broaden appeal; he set about perfecting his already formidable oratory skills. As someone unhindered by truth, or caution, and absolutely certain of his own infallibility the man called Fuhrer, or leader, stirred great emotion in the masses with his tirades and propaganda, and his deadly doctrine spread like a virus through the society weakened by poverty, rivalry and suspicion.
German acceptance of the Nazis was aided by the variety of factions competing for power in Germany; as the Nazis capitalized by being equal opportunity haters, blaming everybody but themselves for the poor state of the country. Around Munich, Hitler’s Nazis gained support, and inspired by Mussolini’s March on Rome, he decided to march on Berlin to seize power. However, he vastly overestimated the power and influence of his party at the time, and Hitler’s attempt at seizing power ended where it began, at the Bavarian War Ministry in Munich. After a small battle in which some of the Nazis were killed, Hitler was arrested and convicted of