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My name is Indy Neidell, and welcome
to our new channel "The Great War".
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This show follows World War I, from July 28th 1914
to November 11, 1918, week by week exactly
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100 years later, but in order for the initial
weeks of the war to make more sense we’re doing
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these prelude to war episodes to
give you a little background...
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All here on our new channel "The Great War"!
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Do you know what happened 100 years
ago last month? On June 28th, 1914,
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Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated.
This was the little match that ignited the
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bonfire of the First World War.
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Now, it took a full month after the assassination
for war to be declared and on July 28, 2014,
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it is exactly 100 years since the beginning of
World War I, or the Great War, as it was called,
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or even The War to End All Wars.
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And unlike pretty much every other
World War I show ever, we’re going to
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ignore Franz Ferdinand for the moment,
and talk about some other stuff.
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The consequences of the Great War were
massive, and affected pretty much every person
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in every country on earth. Four great empires ceased
to exist, a bunch of new nations saw the light of day,
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and the explosive growth of an extraordinary
number of social movements,
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such as internationalism or facism, changed
the world’s political landscape forever.
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Just in terms of technology, the Great War
moved the world ahead by leaps and bounds.
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Cars and planes had existed prior to the war,
but by 1918 we had tanks and diesel fuel,
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bombers and fighters, and large planes ready
to be converted into the first airliners.
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And the tragedies were enormous. Although
completely accurate records are impossible,
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the war caused close to 40 million casualties –
killed or wounded –
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including nearly 10 million dead soldiers in a world whose population was only a quarter of what it is now.
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But why the Great War? Why start it?
Why go through with it?
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There had certainly been enough talk about
a European war during the early parts of the
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20th century, sometimes romantically, such as when
military leaders who had never actually seen combat
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thought about coming home covered in glory,
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but most often it was talked about as a necessity,
and this was driven by waves of revolutionary
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sentiment, strikes and violent labor unrest,
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and above all feverish nationalism, which
together came to steer the course of Europe
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in the early 20th century. Now we'll
go into that in detail week by week.
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Think about a German Europe.
Not today, but 100 years ago.
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It's a theme that was certainly tossed around back then,
most spectacularly in the bestseller “Mitteleuropa”.
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And I don't mean the Nazi kind of German Europe,
but a true German influenced and culturally
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and politically dominated Europe.
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You see, Prussia, and then a unified Germany, had
emerged as the leading power in Europe after
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beating France under Bismarck in 1871,
and things had just rolled on since then.
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By 1914, Berlin was the cultural capital of
Europe – where you went if you wanted to
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study anything “serious”.
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Words like Hertz, Röntgen, Mach, and Diesel
all come from this period. And British cabinet
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ministers, Russian Bolsheviks – they’d all
studied in Germany, which had even replaced
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England as the industrial giant of Europe.
Many people, not just German, dreamed of a
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German Europe or at least a multi-national German
commonwealth. Now, this commonwealth could
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protect itself from England or the US, could bring
in raw materials from France and Scandinavia,
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would have its own coal and steel production,
and hopefully even colonies in North Africa
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or in the Middle East, where there was oil.
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It was an impressive dream, and it wasn’t that
far-fetched, especially when you think about
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what was going on outside of Europe at the
time. See, Africa and India were basically being
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run from Europe, China was ready to collapse,
the Ottoman Empire looked ready to collapse.
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What Germany really needed to do to succeed was to
work with its German speaking neighbor to the south.
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Germany had been allied with Austria since
1879. There was, though, a big problem with
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the Austro-Hungarian empire because it was really
shaky. Now there are several reasons for this,
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but one big one that I’m gonna mention right here –
Austria had a serious mismanagement problem.
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Actually, when you look at the world
around it, Austria was an anachronism.
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The rest of Europe was going through a huge
age of nationalism, but in Austria there were
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15 different versions of the national anthem. Franz
Josef, the emperor, had been on the throne since 1848
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and he was 84 years old, and he too was
very out of place in modern Europe.
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And he made very questionable decisions.
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In 1908, for example, he made the decision
to annex Bosnia and Herzegovina,
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which were nominally part of the Ottoman Empire.
Now, this basically pissed everyone off,
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especially the Ottoman Empire. There were protests
from all of the great empires but especially
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noisy protests from Bosnia’s neighbor
Serbia, and I don’t know if it’s quite possible
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for me to express just how much anti-Austrian
sentiment there was among the Slavic nations
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and peoples of the Balkans.
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Now, looking back, you might have thought Vienna
would have said, “okay, you guys can have
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a sort of pan-Slavic nation under Vienna”,
which might have cooled things off a bit,
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but they didn’t do that. What they
did instead was nothing at all.
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You see, for years, Vienna had been trying to
control its minority nations by basically
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paying them off, to the extent that they
had no money left for things like the army.
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Austria spent less money on its army than England did,
even though the Austrian army was ten times the size.
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So they couldn’t afford to keep trying to
buy them off, which didn’t work out anyway,
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so Vienna basically did nothing and hoped
there would be no catastrophic events.
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That didn’t work out so good.
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Now, does this sound really complicated?
Well, it is. There hadn’t been a real European war
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in over 40 years, war being kept at bay by a
complicated and constantly shifting system
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of alliances. Now, you should look it up yourself
because it’s really interesting, but here’s the basics:
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Germany and Austria-Hungary were two thirds of
the Triple Alliance, right? Italy being the third
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part at the time, but nobody really counted
on them to help out in case of a war. Germany
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and France had historically been at odds with
each other, but even more so after Prussia
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walked all over France in the Franco-Prussian
War. France and England were allies, but it
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turned out that in the early 20th century
there were French contingency plans afoot
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to invade England, and vice versa, so go figure.
When Bismarck had run Germany, he had cultivated
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Russian friendship, but that was long gone. Much of the
German elite now openly looked down on Russia,
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who allied herself with France when German
industrial and military power really got going,
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and The Triple Entente between England,
France, and Russia became official in 1907.
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The German Empire was friendly with the Ottoman
Empire and a true Russian nightmare would be the
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Germans in charge of the Dardanelles – through which
Russia send up to 90 percent of her wheat exports.
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Russia supported Serbia and all of the slavic peoples,
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which meant that they were banging heads with
both Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire,
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and everybody – EVERYBODY – was worried
about another Balkan explosion. Whew.
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That’s almost it, but not quite. Before I go, I’d like to
mention the unique case of Germany and Great Britain.
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Now, the Germans and the English admired
each other culturally, industrially, and militarily.
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Germany especially admired
England’s vast overseas empire
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and her navy, the greatest the world had ever
seen, and many Germans were convinced that
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the British navy was the key to her
success, her power, and her empire.
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Now, I'm going to quote historian Norman Stone:
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“the last thing Germany needed was a problem
with Great Britain, and the greatest mistake
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of the 20th century was made when Germany
built a navy designed to attack her”.
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Pretty heavy words, but think about it: the Kaiser,
who occasionally ruled Germany by decree,
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totally ignoring the fact that the German people
did not want war with anybody and admired and
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respected the British, built a navy. A navy built
for only one purpose – to challenge Britain.
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Winston Churchill, at the time Britain’s
First Lord of the Admiralty, suggested a mutual
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pause in naval building, reasoning that for the
British Empire a powerful navy was a necessity,
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but for the German Empire a luxury. But Kaiser Wilhelm
would not have it, and he built up the German navy.
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That navy took a third of the German defense
budget, which meant that Germany could not
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afford a two front war against France and Russia
if such a thing were to happen. And it also meant
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that there were a bunch of giant battleships, sitting
in harbors, thumbing their noses at England.
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Now, there was substantial naval warfare, especially
submarine warfare, between England and Germany
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during the war, but these battleships didn’t
do anything – they just sat there taking up
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space the entire war until their crews finally
mutinied. They had much more armor than British
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ships, and they were really impressive,
but they just sat there mocking England,
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whose response was to out-build the German
navy two to one and make further defensive
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arrangements with France and Russia.
That was interesting, right?
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Ok, I’m gonna wrap it up here, but come back
next time to see what was going on in
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Serbia, Italy, and other sunny places
with long cultural histories.
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Don’t forget to subscribe to get each new episode and
also, this show is available in German and Polish,
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so if you or your friends want to watch
it but English isn’t your first language,
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links to those channels are below.
One important thing before I go:
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You may have some questions at this point.
You may be wondering for example:
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What about the economic situations in these countries
or What about the possible threat of civil war in Ireland
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or even Can you tell us about Conrad von Hötzendorf?
Well there is one thing you need to keep in mind:
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this show will run weekly for four and a half years and
including special features will be around three hundred
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episodes so all of your questions, hopefully, will be
answered and explained, but it takes time with
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such a huge project. We do welcome your comments
and your questions, though, so bring em on!
