Europe's Decline and Triumph: 1914-

World War I: Beginning of Decline

Origins of World War I-World War I undermined
Europe's domination of the globe. The war began
in 1914 when a Serbian patriot,Gavrilo Princip,
assassinated the Austrian archduke, Francis
Ferdinand.But this was not the only reason for the
outbreak of the war. The assassination was merely
the immediate cause; in the back-ground were
other causes that were more important.
war, particularly between Britain and Ger-many.
American manufactured goods were sold largely in
the great domestic market within the United States,
but Germany com-peted with Britain in most of the
markets of the world, and this rivalry poisoned the
rela-tions between the two countries and helped to
bring on the war.
Per Cent of Total World Economic Production
nomcroucon

One of these background causes was the 1870 1913

economic rivalry among the Great Britain. 31.8 14.0
Powers,especially Britain and Germany. We have U.S.A. 23.3 35.8
Germany 13.2 14.3
noted that Britain was the pioneer and leader in
industrialization in the late eighteenth and early Another background cause for World War I was
nineteenth centuries. After 1870,how-ever, other the race for colonies. We have seen that,for
countries began to catch up to and surpass Britain. various reasons, the European powers in the late
This produced a trade nineteenth century competed with each other all
over the globe in a scramble for
 empire. This led to many disputes and crises:
EXAMPLE-Britain vs.France over the Nile Valley and
Siam
EXAMPLE-Germany vs. France over Mo-rocco and
the Congo
EXAMPLE-Britain vs. Germany over East and West
Africa
EXAMPLE-Russia vs. Britain over Persia and
Afghanistan
A third background cause was the division of the
European powers into hostile alliance systems, the Triple
Alliance and the Triple Entente. The first to be formed was
the Triple Alliance, which originated in the Dual Alliance
of 1879 between Germany and Aus-tria. Twelve years
later, this agreement was transformed into the Triple
Alliance when Italy also signed. These three powers did
not
band together in order to start a war; their alliance
agreement was a defensive pact to prevent war. They
agreed to fight beside each other only in the event
that one of them was attacked by an outside power.
The other great European powers doubted the
sincerity of the Triple Alliance. They feared the great
strength of this bloc and reacted by forming a
counterbloc.First France and Russia signed an alliance
in 1894; then Britain and France signed an entente
(agreement) in 1904 which settled their colonial
disputes but did not require them to aid each other in
case of war;Britain and Russia made a similar entente
in 1907.
In this way the chief European powers were
organized into two rival alliance sys-tems by 1907.
However,they proved to be a menace to peace
rather than a preserver of peace. If power A and
power B had a dis-
pute, then at once the allies of the two powers also were
involved. This meant that every little quarrel became a
great crisis and in-volved all the powers of Europe. In
fact,when World War I broke out, a German official said,
“It all came from this d-d system of alliances, which were
the curse of modern times.”7
The fourth and final background cause for World War I
was nationalism. We saw ear-lier that nationalism began
in Western Eu-rope and then spread to Eastern Europe
and to other parts of the world. When it reached Eastern
Europe, it caused serious political trouble because it
challenged the old multi-national empires of Austria-
Hungary,Ger-many, and Russia. In Germany, for
example,there were not only Germans but also
Poles,French, and Danes. On the western fron-tiers of
Russia there were not only Russians but also Finns,
Latvians, Estonians, Lithu-anians, Poles, and Romanians.
The most diverse patchwork of nationalities could be
found in Austria-Hungary. In addition to
Originally designed to prevent
the outbreak of war, the
alliances signed before 1914
actually led directly to the
opposite result.Thus the murder
of the Austrian archduke in a
tiny Serbian town began a chain
reaction which was to plunge
the entire world into a war
unprecedented in
destructiveness and scope.
the ruling Austrians and Hungarians,there were
Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Ruthenians,Romanians,
Italians, and South Slavs (or Serbs, Croats, and
Slovenes). It is obvious that as soon as the spirit of
nationalism in-fected these peoples, there was bound
to be an explosion in Central and Eastern Europe.
The explosion came in 1914 when the Serbian
nationalist, Gavrilo Princip, made a desperate attempt
to end Austro-Hungarian rule. He assassinated the
Archduke Francis Ferdinand in the Bosnian town of
Sarajevo.*The Austrians were determined to smash
Serbian nationalism, and, after an evasive reply to
their ultimatum was received, at-tacked Serbia in late
July. At once the alli-ance system began to operate.
The Russians supported their fellow-Slav Serbs, while
the Germans supported their Austrian ally. Then the
French and British came to the aid of their Russian
ally, but the Italians refused to
*See "Serbian Nationalism Triggers World War I,”p.183.
Alliance,1879Anglo-French Entente,1904
Austro-German-Italian atente 1907
 tant powers on the Allied side were Britain,France, Russia, Italy,
Serbia, Romania,Greece, Japan, and the United States. The
Central Powers included Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria,
and Turkey.
Course of World War I-In the first two years of the war,
the Central Powers had the advantage. Because they were
better pre-pared, they conquered large areas of Allied
territory. In 1914 the Germans overran most of Belgium
and a part of northern France,and almost captured Paris.
The French, with British help, were able to stabilize the
battle lines, and the western front became the scene of
continuous trench warfare from Switzer-land to the North
Sea. In the following years the Central Powers
concentrated on their

This photograph of the Austrian archduke

Francis Ferdinand was taken shortly before
he and his wife were assassinated in Sara-
jevo. Well aware that nationalistic feelings
ran high throughout Serbia, Francis com-
mitted a foolhardy act in going through the
town. His personal folly and tragedy were
compounded a million times over during
the ensuing war.
United Press International, Inc.

do the same for their German and Austrian allies,

preferring to remain on the sidelines until it became
clear which side would win.Finally Italy crossed over
and joined the Entente powers in 1915. Other
nations en-tered the conflict during the following
years until most of Europe and much of the rest of
the world were involved. The most impor-

193
193
 The War and Territorial Restoration Museum, Gorizia, Italy
After initial German gains in territory, both sides entrenched themselves to fight out the san-artillery.
Advances and retreats were measured in feet in some parts of the lengthy battle lines.Here we see Italians
dug in against the Austrians on the southern front.

northern and eastern fronts. They won a part of

northern Italy, occupied all of Serbia and Romania,
and a part of Greece, and drove the Russians back
hundreds of miles.By 1917 Germany and her allies
dominated a large part of the continent of Europe,
yet they could not win a decisive victory. The war
dragged on in bloody stalemate.
The main campaigns were fought in north-ern
France, where hundreds of thousands of men were
repeatedly sacrificed for the sake of a few square
miles. The combination of machine-gun nests,
barbed-wire entangle-ments, and elaborate
trenches made it impos-sible to carry on the open
maneuvering and fighting of past wars. The defense
proved stronger than the offense; year after year
the bloodletting continued. In 1916, for example,
the Germans made a desperate attempt to capture the
stronghold of Verdun in north-eastern France. For ten
months they bat-tered the French defenders and finally
had to admit failure. The Germans lost almost as many
men as the French-330,000 to 350,000.*
In an effort to break this terrible deadlock,the
Germans in February 1917 began un-restricted
submarine warfare, using their U-boat fleet to sink
ships carrying food to Britain. In this way they hoped to
starve the British and force them to drop out of the
war. The Germans expected that they could then easily
defeat a France deprived of British support. But in
carrying out a campaign of
*See“Trench Warfare: Exercise in Futility,”p.184.

193
 pletely ignored in the world outside of Eu-rope. For
example, the Allies kept all their colonies scattered
around the globe. No one extended the principle of
self-determination to these colonies by asking the
Indians or the Burmese whether they wanted to
remain under British rule or by asking the Indo-
chinese whether they wished to continue under
French rule. Furthermore the Allies divided
Germany's overseas colonies and Turkey's Arab
provinces south of Asia Mi-nor. Again no one asked
the people of Ger-man East Africa or South-West
Africa or the Cameroons or Togoland whether they
wanted to exchange German rule for British rule or
no foreign rule at all. As for the Arab prov-inces, they
were divided and parcelled out as League of Nations
mandates to Britain and France. Britain took Iraq,
Palestine, and Transjordan, while France received
Syria and Lebanon.
It is true that all these colonies and prov-inces
were given to the victorious Allies as
League mandates rather than as outright pos-
sessions. This meant that the mandatory power
(the country that received the man-date)
promised to look after the welfare of the
mandate's population and to report annually to
the League of Nations. But the League did not
have the authority or means to take action
against a mandatory power which failed to live up
to its obligations. As a re-sult, the mandatory
powers did pretty much what they wished with
their mandates. Self-determination was largely a
forgotten prin-ciple outside the borders of the
continent of Europe.
Eurone's economic sunremacy ends-