Why did tension increase in Europe between 1900 and 1914?

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CONFLICT IN THE MODERN WORLD: INTERNATIONAL HISTORY 1900-1939

Why did tension increase in Europe between 1900 and 1914?

Germany

  • Germany was the leading industrial and military power on the continent. In 1871 it had taken Alsace-Lorraine from France after the Franco-Prussian War.

  • Since 1887 the ruler of Germany had been Kaiser Wilhelm II. He had begun to pursue adventurous policies after the resignation of his chancellor Bismarck in 1890.

  • In 1898 and 1900 the German Navy Laws were passed. This threatened Britain's control of the seas. The two laws laid out plans for the construction of a large navy designed to rival Britain’s by 1917. This was an example of the Kaiser’s determination to make Germany a world power.

Britain

  • In Britain the Laws were viewed with alarm since there was no apparent reason why Germany needed a navy, except to attack Britain. Britain depended on control of the seas in order to protect her vast empire.

  • The British government replied by beginning a programme of warship construction intended to maintain the ‘two-power standard’, which had been the basis of naval policy in the late nineteenth century. It simply stated that the British navy should be as big as the next two largest navies in the world.

  • The Kaiser also encouraged the creation of a German Empire. This also challenged Britain's dominant position. However, by 1914 there were only 5,000 German colonists, mostly in the least attractive parts of Africa, the Cameroons, South West Africa and Togoland.

  • In 1903 the Kaiser talked of a Berlin to Baghdad railway, which threatened Britain's position in the Middle East. Much of this was bravado, but it created tension between Britain and Germany.

France

  • France was determined to recapture Alsace-Lorraine, which remained in German hands.

  • The French Army eventually created Plan 17, which involved a frontal attack on Germany from Champagne, in order to reoccupy the lost provinces.

Austria-Hungary

  • This was the dominant force in central Europe, but the empire was in danger of disintegrating. There were many different nationalities inside the empire and more and more were demanding independence.

  • The biggest problem was the Serbs, the 'South Slavs', the Austrians called them. Serbia was rapidly becoming the dominant force in the Balkans as the old Turkish Empire collapsed. But Serbian expansion brought the risk of conflict with Austria-Hungary over Bosnia, which was been occupied by Austria, but had a largely Serbian population.

Russia

  • Russia was the most feared of all the continental powers. Its army was believed to be almost unbeatable because of its sheer size. In fact, the Russian army was backward and inefficient and was defeated by Japan in 1904-6.

  • The Russians, like the Serbs, were Slavs. They did not want Austrian influence to extend into the Balkans and were prepared to protect the Serbs from Austrian advances

Italy

Italy was a new country that had yet to find its feet amongst the great powers. Italian governments were looking for ways to increase Italian influence and territory.

The Alliance System

Under Bismarck, German policy had been to isolate France and keep as many countries allied to Germany as possible, particularly Russia. But after Bismarck's resignation, his policy was dropped.

  • 1894: France and Russia signed the Dual Entente, which was intended to be a counterweight to the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy.

  • 1904: Britain and France signed The Entente Cordiale, the friendly agreement. It was not a treaty as such, but a settling of long-standing sources of friction. Britain recognised French influence in Morocco and the French recognised British influence in Egypt.

The two navies agreed to divide responsibility for European waters. In 1912 the British navy withdrew its forces from the Mediterranean and the French navy withdrew its forces from the Channel.

  • 1907: Britain signed an Entente with Russia. Britain was now clearly aligned with France and Russia against the powers of the Triple Alliance, Germany, Austria and Italy.

  • This effectively meant that Europe was now divided into two armed camps, each made up of three powers and each with a series of built in clauses, which involved automatic and immediate military action. The stage was now set for a showdown, should the situation arise.

The Moroccan Crises of 1905 and 1911

What were the effects of the Morocco Crises?

  • In March 1905 Kaiser Wilhelm visited Morocco, which had been under French influence. The visit was arranged by the German government and Wilhelm went against his own better judgement.

  • At Tangier the Kaiser made a speech in which he spoke in favour of an ‘open door’ policy in Africa. This alarmed the French as it seemed to suggest that Germany was trying to force its way into Morocco.

  • In fact the visit was an attempt by the German government to see how strong the Entente Cordiale between Britain and France really was.

  • The following month the German government accepted an invitation from the Sultan of Morocco to an international conference. This seemed to make the crisis even worse.

  • The matter was not finally settled until January 1906. The great powers of Europe met at the Algeciras Conference and decided that France would have control of Morocco. Germany and Austria opposed this, but had to accept it.

The Second Moroccan Crisis

  • On 1 July 1911 a German gunboat, the ‘Panther’, arrived at Agadir. The German government claimed that it had been sent to protect Germans and their property, but in fact it was there to frighten the French.

  • At first this appeared to be a serious incident, but it was made worse by a speech by the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, at the Mansion House on 21 July. He accused the Germans of stirring up trouble and threatened retaliation. In the next few months Britain began to prepare for war with Germany.

  • In the end, however, the Second Morocco Crisis came to nothing. After several months of negotiation, the French and German governments reached agreement in November 1911.

  • Germany agreed to allow France a free hand in Morocco and the French handed over some land in Central Africa. Germany was given the Cameroons as compensation.

  • After the Second Crisis, relations between Germany and Britain and France began to improve and the threat of war died down.

  • In early 1914 Britain and Germany were probably on better terms that they hid been since Bismarck’s time. But that was soon to change.

The Balkans

  • The collapse of Turkey created a power vacuum, of which both Russia and the Austrian Empire tried to take advantage.

  • Austria wanted to extend its influence to the south and, if possible, gain an outlet to the Mediterranean.

  • Russia wanted to gain control of the Straits, the entrance to the Black Sea, which would enable its navy to sail into the Mediterranean.

  • The situation was complicated by the emergence of nation states, of which the most powerful, by the early twentieth century, was Serbia

  • The focus of Serbian and Austrian attention was the provinces of Bosnia-Herzegovina, where the great majority of the population was Serbian

Why did Bosnia and Herzegovina become a flash-point in the Balkans?

  • Both Austria and Serbia wanted to absorb Bosnia. Serbia wanted to enlarge its territory. Austria wanted to expand south.

  • So in October 1908 Bosnia and Herzegovina were annexed and became part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

  • The Austrian action infuriated the Serbs. The population of the area was two-thirds Serb, but there was little that the Serb government could do about it.

What happened in Serbia after the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina?

  • Inside Serbia there was a very strong reaction against the Austrian action. A secret society ‘Narodna Obrana’ was set up, which included generals and politicians among its members.

  • This organisation was a front for the Black Hand, a terrorist group, which began to assassinate Austrian officials.

  • Austrian hostility to Serbia grew when the Serbs almost doubled the size of their country after the two Balkan wars from 1912 to 1914.

  • This made it clear that Serbia was the most powerful of the Balkan states. But the Austrians were also well aware that any attack on Serbia would lead to war with Russia; a prospect that Austria could not face.

  • The Austrian High Command was determined to deal with Serbia once and for all and looked for an excuse to crush it by military action.

  • The opportunity came in 1914, when the Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austrian throne was due to visit the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo to inspect units of the Austrian army.

The Naval Arms Race

  • In 1898 and 1900 the German government had passed the Navy Laws.

The German Navy Laws

  • These laid out plans to build a navy to challenge the Royal Navy over a period of twenty years.

  • The First Navy Law announced that Germany would build a fleet strong enough to combat the strongest navy in the world. As the strongest navy in the world war Britain’s, this was taken as a direct challenge by the British government.

  • In 1900 the Second Navy Law provided for a fleet of thirty-eight battleships to be built in the next twenty years.

Why did the British government object to the German Navy Laws?

  • As the strongest navy in the world war Britain’s, they were a direct challenge by the British government.

  • At the beginning of the twentieth century naval power was reckoned on the basis of the number of battleships that a navy possessed, so the German actions were seen as a real threat by Britain.

  • In 1906 the British government responded by launching HMS Dreadnought, a battleship which made all existing battleships obsolete. It carried ten twelve-inch guns and had a top speed of twenty-one knots. The German navy replied by building ‘Dreadnoughts’ of its own and a Naval Arms Race began.

  • From 1906 to 1914 the British built twenty-nine Dreadnoughts and the Germans built seventeen. By 1914 the ships carried fifteen-inch guns and their oil-fired turbine engines could reach a top speed of twenty-five knots.

  • The British public became very much involved in the race. In 1909 the popular cry was, ‘We want eight, we won’t wait’, and a Navy League was formed to campaign for more and more ships. In the 1909 Budget, the British government provided for the building of the eight ships that the public demanded, but by then the Naval Arms Race had in fact been won.

Why did the assassination at Sarajevo lead to the outbreak of war in 1914?

On 28 June 1914, the heir to the Austrian throne, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, were shot dead in Sarajevo by a Serbian terrorist Gavrilo Princip. Franz Ferdinand was a popular figure in Austria, but he had incurred the dislike of the Austrian court and royal family by marrying a woman who was regarded as unsuitable. He was not allowed to attend official functions with his wife, unless he was in military uniform.

  • Waiting for Franz Ferdinand were seven members of the Black Hand Gang, Serbian students who were determined to kill him.

  • The eldest was Nedjelko Cabrinovic, who was carrying a bomb was carrying a bomb. He intended to throw it at the Archduke's car as he drove past. Further down the road was Gavrilo Princip, who was carrying a revolver. He was going to shoot the Archduke if the bomb did not kill him.

  • As the Archduke's car came down Appel Quay toward the Town Hall, Cabrinovic stepped forward and threw his bomb. He missed, and it exploded behind the Archduke's car. Princip watched the Archduke's car speed past him believing all was lost. He stood rooted to the spot and then crossed over the road to a cake shop in a side street.

  • At the Town Hall, the Archduke's party decided to change the route and go straight back along Appel Quay. But as everyone got back into their cars, no one remembered to tell the driver of the change of plan. As he drove back along Appel Quay, the driver turned right according to the original plan. Someone told him to stop. He did, right outside the cakeshop.

  • Princip was standing there. He pulled the gun from his pocket and fired two shots, without even taking aim. One hit the Archduke and the other hit his wife, they both died.

The consequences of the assassination

  • The murder of the Archduke started a chain of events that led to war. One after another, most of the major countries of Europe declared war. They all believed that they were in the right and that the war was going to be over quickly. They were all wrong. The war was going to drag on for more than four years and cost nearly 10,000,000 lives.

  • Under normal circumstances the murder of the Arch Duke would have passed without major repercussions, but the build-up of alliances and the consequent heightening of tensions turned what was a political matter into an international tragedy.

  • The Austrian government had been looking for an excuse to crush Serbia, which stood in their way in the Balkans.

What happened after the assassination?

July 5 -The Austrian government asked the German government if it would support

        Austria against in a war if Russia supported Serbia. Kaiser Wilhelm replied by         issuing a ‘blank cheque’. He said that Germany would support whatever the         Austrian government decided to do.

July 23         - The Austrian government sent the Serbian government an ultimatum. The Serbs accepted all the condition except one, that Austrian police should be allowed into Serbia to help stop any further unrest. The Austrian government expected the Serbs to reject this.

July 28 - Austria-Hungary declared war upon Serbia.

July 29 - The Russian army was mobilised.

Aug 1 -   Germany declared war on Russia.

Aug 3 - Germany declared war on France.

Aug 4 - Germany declared war on Belgium

Aug 4 - Britain declared war on Germany

Why did Britain declare war on Germany?

  • Belgium became an independent country for the first time in 1839, after a nine year war of independence with the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Belgian independence and neutrality was guaranteed at the Treaty of Westminster in 1839.

  • The two guarantors were Britain and Prussia. Both agreed to come to Belgium's aid if her neutrality was broken by another country.

  • In August 1914, Germany asked to be allowed to send its armies through Belgium in order to put the Schlieffen Plan into operation.

  • The Belgian Government refused and, when the Germans invaded, called on the British government to honour its promise in the Treaty of Westminster. This led to the British Expeditionary Force being sent to Belgium.

Why was the war not over by Christmas?

The failure of the Schlieffen Plan

From 28 July to 12 August 1914, the countries of Europe declared war upon each other with great enthusiasm. In every country there was a strong belief that war was justified and that it could and would be won quickly and easily.

  • In Germany, the 'Schlieffen Plan', drawn up by the German Chief of Staff, Count Alfred von Schlieffen, in 1905, was set in motion. It was intended to win the war in the west in six weeks.

How did the Schlieffen Plan work?

  • The Schlieffen Plan had been drawn up to deal with a situation in which Germany had to fight a war on two fronts, against both Russia and France.

  • The Germans assumed that the more dangerous opponent would be Russia, so the Plan was intended to knock out France before the Russian army mobilised.

  • The Plan was based on the belief that the Russian army would take six weeks to mobilise. In these six weeks France would be defeated.

  • An army of 1,500,000 men would advance through Belgium, swing around the French army, encircle Paris and then attack the French forces on the German border from the rear.

  • The Germans assumed that the French armies in Champagne would advance into Germany in an effort to recapture Alsace-Lorraine, this would only increase the distance between them and Paris.

  • The French would not be able to move their armies back to defend Paris from the advance of the German right wing.

  • Von Schlieffen had ordered that the German left wing should be kept as weak as possible. He wanted the German forces there to drop back to entice the French across the Rhine.

  • Once Paris was captured the Germans believed that France would collapse.

Why did the Schlieffen Plan fail?

  • The Plan looked good on paper, but Schlieffen had not taken account of the distances that the German armies had to cover in the strict timetable he laid down. The German First Army on the extreme right was exhausted after several weeks of marching and fighting and was unable to keep up the pace.

  • The Plan was changed by von Moltke, the new Chief of Staff, who withdrew forces from the right wing of the German army, to strengthen the left. He was afraid that the French army would be able to advance into Germany too easily.

  • Even so, the main aim of the Plan stayed the same and the German forces on the right wing heavily outnumbered their opponents.

What part was played by Britain in the defeat of Germany in the First World War?

The BEF: what happened in Belgium?

  • When Germany declared war on Belgium on 3 August 1914 the Belgian government appealed to Great Britain for help.

  • The German army also met much stronger opposition in Belgium than had been expected. The Belgian forts at Liege held out for twelve days and Brussels was not occupied until 20 August.

  • The British Expeditionary Force met the Germans at Mons on 23 August and again at Le Cateau on 26 August. The British were professional soldiers. They were heavily outnumbered, but they were trained to fire thirty rounds a minute from their new Lee Enfield Mark III rifles.

Why did the German right wing not carry out its orders?

  • The Russian army had taken the Germans by surprise and had attacked after two weeks before it was fully mobilised. Reinforcements were taken from the armies in Belgium and France and sent to the east. This overstretched the right flank of the German advance.

  • Von Kluck, the commander of the German First Army, on the extreme right, gave up the attempt to encircle Paris and turned south.

The battle of the Marne and the race to the sea

  • The Germans then met French forces along the river Marne. In a battle lasting eight days, the Germans were forced to fall back to the river Aisne. The Schlieffen Plan had failed.

  • In September 1914 the Allied armies tried to force the Germans back at the battle of the Aisne, but in heavy rain they failed. Both sides began to 'race to the sea'. This was an attempt to gain control of the Channel ports.

  • The race to the sea created a front line of trenches that stretched from the Channel to Switzerland and it soon became clear that defence was much easier than attack.

What was trench warfare like?

  • The popular image of the trenches is mud and death, and for many soldiers this was their abiding memory. Strongest memory of all was the smell of decaying bodies, made worse by the fact that battle after battle was fought over the same stretch of ground. The bodies from the previous battles were uncovered in later fighting.

  • In places the two frontlines could be as little as fifteen metres apart, as at Hooge, near Ypres, in 1915. Even the slightest movement above the parapet resulted in instant death from a sniper's bullet.

  • Elsewhere, the two frontlines could be as much as 1,000 metres apart. Here there was relative safety, even boredom. Opposing units sometimes agreed truces, until their officers found out about.

  • Worst of all was the front line at the beginning of a major battle. On the Somme on 1 July 1916, 70% of the troops who went over the top in the first wave were either killed or wounded.

  • Many of the troops in the first wave at the Somme were members of 'Pals' Battalions'. They had been recruited from the same areas in big cities or towns and put into the same units to increase morale. But this meant that they were all cut down at the same time, with devastating effects on their locality.

  • The following year, 1917, the horrors of the big push were repeated at Passchendaele. With as little success. All the ground won was lost in 1918 during the German offensive Operation Michael.

Artillery

The First World War was an artillery war. Bombardment was the principal method used to try to destroy the enemy's positions before an attack. Guns and bombardments grew in size from 1915 to 1917. At the battle of the Somme, 4,000 guns fired non-stop for seven days in an attempt to destroy the German lines.

Did bombardment work?

  • At the Somme it failed. The German positions were built on chalk downland, which allowed deep dugouts to be constructed.

  • At Passchendaele in 1917, the bombardment destroyed what was left of the drainage system around Ypres and the attacking troops were forced to cross 'No Man's Land' on duck-boards, so boggy was the ground. 90,000 soldiers disappeared without trace in the mud around Ypres during the war.
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  • Eventually the army began to use rolling barrages, which advanced ahead of the attacking troops, and kept the enemy occupied.

Gas

  • Gas was first used at Ypres in April 1915 and proved a deadly weapon. 9,000 Allied soldiers were killed. Early respirators were clumsy and only fitted into the shirt collar. Later designs proved very effective.

  • Gas was terrifying, but did not prove to be a decisive weapon. It could blow the wrong way and attackers had to wear respirators, which hindered visibility and movement.

Tanks

  • The first tanks appeared in action during the ...

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