Nationalism and the First World War

Résumé du document

By the end of the 19th century, Europe divided into two alliances, because the probability of a war had increased. On one hand, the Triple Entente was settled in 1907 and constituted of Great-Britain, France and Russia. On the other hand, the Triple Alliance was implemented in 1891, composed of Germany, Italy and the Empire of Austria-Hungary. Some confrontations between these two rival entities occurred. Thus, Europe totally bipolarized before the Great War, which allowed the governments of these countries to prepare their population for the conflict.

Extraits

[...] In general, the political regimes of the “winners” of World War One shifted to the right, such as in France, with the election of Georges Clemenceau, named the Tiger in 1919 or the election of Andrew Bonar Law, a conservative, in Great - Britain, in 1923 To conclude, we can say that after the French defeat of 1871, governments prepared the war by using propaganda to emancipate nationalist virtues of their citizens, what led to World War One, which is probably the most violent war, at a physical level. The beginning of the twentieth century looked like a cycle of violence: first, the governments incited to hate the enemy, who, a few years later, killed one another during the front. Finally, all these violence directly quicken the rising of authoritarian and fascist or communist regimes, what led to World War Two. [...]

[...] The post war trauma not only affected veterans but also the rest of the society. Indeed, the veterans were totally mentally destroyed, because of the atrocities of the war. They have difficulties to reintegrate society, since they were unemployed because of the delay to transform a war economy into a peacetime one. Moreover, society visually saw the consequences of the war: orphans and widows are numerous, injured and disabled people are within the margin of the society. All these people constitute a kind of concretization of the war. [...]

[...] Thus, the immediate cause of World War One was nationalism. The conflict is of a new type because of its impact on society but also because of the military innovations it provoked. Indeed, for the first time, all the population is mobilized for the war. Not just the front like traditionally, but also the back: the rest of society such as women who start working to replace men in fields, but also in factories, producing weapons and ammunitions. Children take care of small scale agriculture. [...]

[...] The assassination of the French pacifist, Jean Jaurès in July 1914 shows how the people were determined to go to war, to defend their country. Because of the total mobilization of the nations, at every level, World War One created a new kind of conflict, extremely violent. First, we have to remind that the fact which triggered World War One is the assassination of Franz Ferdinand from Austria, who was to be the future King of the empire, before he was killed by a Serbian nationalist. [...]

[...] In France, the concepts of revenge, patriotism and humiliation after the loss of the region Alsace Lorraine are emphasized. Here is the translation of an excerpt of a French textbook, written by the historian Ernest Lavisse. We can clearly notice the de-humanization of the German enemy and the incentives to let appear war as a revenge for all French. “School children of France, listen to me: your elders have had day of glory”; you will have the day of work! [...]