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World War I & Interwar Period
The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in June 1914 drew Europe's alliances into a war that killed some 9 to 10 million soldiers and brought down four empires. The peace that followed proved fragile: revolution in Russia, inflation, the Great Depression of 1929 and the rise of fascism and Nazism led, barely twenty years later, to a new and even greater war.
The trenches
THEME ONE
Both sides expected a short war. Instead, by the end of 1914 a line of trenches ran from the North Sea to Switzerland. Machine guns and artillery made attacks across open ground murderous: at Verdun in 1916 France and Germany lost several hundred thousand men in ten months, and on the first day of the Somme the British army suffered some 57 000 casualties. Poison gas, tanks and aircraft entered warfare.
Revolution and the end of empires
THEME TWO
In 1917 two revolutions overthrew the Russian monarchy, and in November the Bolsheviks under Lenin took power and made peace with Germany. In April the United States entered the war. In autumn 1918 the Central Powers collapsed, and the German, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman and Russian empires were gone. New states appeared on the map: Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Finland and the Baltic republics.
Versailles and the League of Nations
THEME THREE
The Treaty of Versailles, signed on 28 June 1919, took territory and colonies from Germany, limited its army, made it accept responsibility for the war and demanded reparations. The League of Nations was founded in 1920 to keep the peace, but the United States never joined. Women won the vote in many countries, among them Britain, Germany, Poland and the United States.
Depression and dictatorships
THEME FOUR
Mussolini took power in Italy in 1922, and in the Soviet Union Stalin built a one-party state through forced collectivisation and terror. The Wall Street crash of October 1929 began the Great Depression: by 1932 millions were unemployed in the United States and Germany. In January 1933 Hitler became German chancellor. Japan invaded Manchuria, Italy Ethiopia, and in 1938 Germany annexed Austria and, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland.
Periods
The Great War
1914 – 1918
The war of movement fails, the fronts freeze, the war spreads to the Middle East, Africa and the seas, and Russia leaves it after its revolution.
The uneasy peace
1919 – 1929
Peace treaties, civil war in Russia, hyperinflation in Germany in 1923, the "Roaring Twenties" with jazz, radio and cinema, and the first fascist regime in Italy.
Depression and the road to war
1929 – 1939
The world economic crisis, the Nazi dictatorship in Germany, the Spanish Civil War (1936 – 1939), the appeasement of Hitler and the pact between Hitler and Stalin in August 1939.
Key dates
- 1914The shots in Sarajevo, and the war begins.
- 1916The battles of Verdun and the Somme.
- 1917The United States enters the war, and the Bolsheviks take power in Russia.
- 1918The armistice of 11 November ends the fighting.
- 1929The Wall Street crash begins the Great Depression.
- 1933Hitler becomes chancellor of Germany.
Questions and answers
How many people died in the First World War?
Roughly 9 to 10 million soldiers and several million civilians died, from fighting, hunger and disease. The influenza pandemic of 1918 – 1920, spread in part by troop movements, killed tens of millions more around the world.
Did the Treaty of Versailles cause the Second World War?
Not on its own. Many Germans saw the treaty as a humiliation, and Nazi propaganda exploited that feeling. But the Great Depression, the weakness of the League of Nations, the policy of appeasement and above all Hitler's own aims of conquest were decisive.