Wish Clinic Parkland, Where Do I Mail My Menards Credit Card Payment, Standish Chaos Report 2020 Pdf, Standardized Mean Difference Stata Propensity Score, Is The Miami Airport Area Safe, Articles R

Look at the posters. The Balkan Wars strained the German alliance with Austria-Hungary. The testing of the Entente, 1904-6 -- v.4. In a matter of days, Europe's great powers went to war. Economic rivalries existed but were framed largely by political concerns. Evans, R. J. W. "The Greatest Catastrophe the World Has Seen", Lieber, Keir A. Its aim was ostensibly to transform Germany into a global power through assertive diplomacy, the acquisition of overseas colonies, and the development of a large navy. The frock-coated statesmen, bred to service in a world of Victorian certainties, lacked the flexibility and foresight to avoid disaster. Then, Europe imploded. By late September 1918 the German emperor and his military mastermind Erich Ludendorff admitted that there was no hope and Germany must beg for peace. The poetry of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon; the image of troops as lions led by donkeys; and the poisonous consequences of the peace have all made the struggle seem to many a colossal waste. The most important alliances in Europe required participants to agree to collective defence if they were attacked. No. They are apes or wolves, the snarl, they destroy, they rape, they murder. Germany had won decisively and established a powerful empire, but France fell into chaos and experienced a years-long decline in its military power. British commanders had been trained to fight small colonial wars; now they were thrust into a massive industrial struggle unlike anything the British army had ever seen. World War I began in the Balkans on July 28, 1914, and hostilities ended on November 11, 1918, leaving 17 million dead and 25 million wounded. This might call for a tight focus on the summer of 1914, but Clarks narrative ranges back over decades. The alliances and enmities that were to sustain four years of warfare were hardly set in stone; in the decades preceding 1914, Russia and Germany were bound by treaty, and Britain and Russia were bitter rivals. The approach highlighted racist views of mankind. Some 12% of the British army's ordinary soldiers were killed during the war, compared with 17% of its officers.