Set alight by retreating Iraqi forces in 1991 A scorched-earth policy is a that aims to destroy anything that might be useful to the enemy while it is advancing through or withdrawing from a location. Any assets that could be used by the enemy may be targeted, for example food sources, water supplies, transportation, communications, industrial resources, and even the locale's people themselves. The practice can be carried out by the in enemy territory, or in its own home territory. It may overlap with, but it is not the same as, punitive destruction of the enemy's resources, which is done for purely strategic/political reasons rather than strategic/operational reasons. Notable historic examples of scorched-earth tactics include the Russian army's strategy during the failed, the failed, in the, colonel 's subjugation of the American Navajo Indians, advance against the, the initial Soviet retreat commanded by during the German Army's of the in the, and the subsequent retreat on the. The strategy of destroying the food and water supply of the civilian population in an area of conflict has been banned under Article 54 of of the 1977. The relevant passage says: It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove, or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as foodstuffs, agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies, and irrigation works, for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance value to the civilian population or to the adverse Party, whatever the motive, whether in order to starve out civilians, to cause them to move away, or for any other motive.
The concept of scorched earth is sometimes applied figuratively to the business world, where a firm facing a takeover attempt will make itself a lesser prize by selling off its assets. Contents.
Ancient times The used scorched-earth methods against King of, during. The Scythians, who were nomadic herders, retreated into the depths of the Steppes, destroying food supplies and poisoning wells. Many of Darius' troops died from starvation and dehydration.
The Greek general records in his that the burned their crops and food supplies as they withdrew before the advance of the. The Greek mercenary general suggested to the Persian the use of the scorched-earth policy against Alexander as he moved into Asia Minor. He was refused. Roman era The system of punitive destruction of property and subjugation of people when accompanying a military campaign was known as vastatio. Two of the first uses of scorched earth recorded both happened in the.
The first was used when the were forced to evacuate their homes in Southern Germany and Switzerland due to incursions of unfriendly Germanic tribes: to add incentive to the march, the Helvetii destroyed everything they could not bring. After the Helvetii were defeated by a combined Roman-Gallic force, the Helvetii were forced to rebuild themselves on the shattered German and Swiss plains they themselves had destroyed. The second case shows actual military value: during the the under planned to lure the Roman armies into Gaul and then trap and obliterate them. To this end, they ravaged the countryside of what are now the countries and France.
This did cause immense problems for the Romans, but Roman military triumphs over the Gallic alliance showed that this alone was not enough to save Gaul from subjugation by Rome. During the in 218–202 BC, the Carthaginians used this method selectively while storming through.
After the end of the in 146 BC, the Roman Senate also elected to use this method to permanently destroy the Carthaginian capital city, (near modern-day ). The buildings were torn down, their stones scattered so not even rubble remained, and the fields were burned.
However, the story that they is. In the year AD 363, the Emperor 's invasion of was turned back by a scorched-earth policy: The extensive region that lies between the River Tigris and the mountains of Media.was in a very improved state of cultivation. Julian might expect, that a conqueror, who possessed the two forcible instruments of persuasion, steel and gold, would easily procure a plentiful subsistence from the fears or avarice of the natives. But, on the approach of the Romans, the rich and smiling prospect was instantly blasted. Wherever they moved.the cattle was driven away; the grass and ripe corn were consumed with fire; and, as soon as the flames had subsided which interrupted the march of Julian, he beheld the melancholy face of a smoking and naked desert.
This desperate but effectual method of defence can only be executed by the enthusiasm of a people who prefer their independence to their property; or by the rigor of an arbitrary government, which consults the public safety without submitting to their inclinations the liberty of choice. Middle Ages Early Middle Ages British monk, whose sixth-century treatise 'On the Ruin of Britain' wrote about an earlier invasion 'For the fire of vengeance spread from sea to sea and did not cease, until, destroying the neighbouring towns and lands, it reached the other side of the island.' During the great Viking invasion of England opposed by and various other Saxon and Welsh rulers, the Viking chieftain in late summer 893 marched his men to to occupy the ruined Roman fortress there. Driver download free. The refortified fortress should have made an excellent base for raiding northern, but the Mercians are recorded as having taken the drastic measure of destroying all crops and livestock in the surrounding countryside in order to starve the Danes out. The Danes left Chester next year and marched into Wales.
Harrying of the North In the, 's solution to stop a rebellion in 1069 was the brutal conquest and subjugation of the North of England. William's men burnt whole villages from the to, and slaughtered the inhabitants. Food stores and livestock were destroyed so that anyone surviving the initial massacre would soon succumb to starvation over the winter. The destruction is depicted in the. The survivors were reduced to, with one report stating that the of the dead were cracked open so that the brains could be eaten. Between 100,000 and 150,000 perished and the area took centuries to recover from the damage.
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High and Late Middle Ages. In strait places gar keep all store, And byrnen ye plainland them before, That they shall pass away in haist What that they find na thing but waist.This is the counsel and intent Of gud King Robert's testiment. In 1336, the defenders of in set their castle on fire and committed mass suicide in order to make the attacking 's.
The strategy was widely used in the Romanian principalities of and. Prince used it against the Ottomans in 1395 and Prince scorched the earth in his country as the Ottoman army advanced in 1475 and 1476. Was slighted during the so that its defences could not be reused.
A is the deliberate destruction, partial or complete, of a without opposition. Sometimes, such as during the and the, the intention was to render the structure unusable as a fortress. In England, during the Middle Ages if captured by the king would usually be slighted. During the, Robert the Bruce adopted a strategy of slighting Scottish castles to prevent them being occupied by the invading English.
A strategy of slighting castles in Palestine was also adopted by the in their wars with the Crusaders. Early Modern era Further British use of scorched-earth policies in a war was seen during the 16th century in, where it was used by English commanders such as and. The are a famous case in Ireland. Much of the province of was laid waste.
The poet left an account of it: In those late wars in Munster; for notwithstanding that the same was a most rich and plentiful country, full of corn and cattle, that you would have thought they could have been able to stand long, yet ere one year and a half they were brought to such wretchedness, as that any stony heart would have rued the same. Retreat from Moscow In 1812 Czar was able to render useless by utilizing a scorched-earth retreat method, similar to that made by the Portuguese. As Russian forces withdrew from the advancing French army, they burned the countryside ( ) over which they passed, leaving nothing of value for the pursuing French army. Encountering only desolate and useless land 's was prevented from using its accustomed doctrine of living off the lands it conquered. Pushing relentlessly on despite dwindling numbers, the Grand Army met with disaster as the invasion progressed. Napoleon's army arrived in a virtually abandoned Moscow, which was a tattered starving shell of its former self that was largely due to the use of scorched-earth tactics by retreating Russians. Having essentially conquered nothing, Napoleon's troops retreated, and again the scorched-earth policy came into effect because even though some large supply dumps had been established on the advance, the route between these had both been scorched and marched over once already, so the French Army starved as it marched along the resource-depleted invasion route.
South American War of Independence In August 1812, General led the, a massive forced displacement of people from the present-day and provinces to the south. The Jujuy Exodus was conducted by the patriot forces of the that were battling a army. Belgrano, faced with the prospect of total defeat and territorial loss, ordered all people to pack their necessities, including food and furniture, and follow him, in carriages or on foot, together with whatever cattle and beasts of burden could endure the journey. The rest (houses, crops, food stocks, and also any objects made of iron) was to be burned, so as to deprive the loyalists of resources, following a strict scorched-earth policy. On 29 July 1812, Belgrano asked the people of Jujuy to 'show their ' and join the march of the army under his command 'if, as you assure, you want to be free'. The punishment for ignoring the order was execution and the destruction of the defector's properties. Belgrano labored to win the support of the populace and later reported that most of the people had willingly followed him without the need of force.
The exodus started on 23 August and gathered people from and; people travelled south about 250 km, finally arriving at the banks of the Pasaje River, in the province of, on the early hours of 29 August. The Patriots applied a scorched-earth policy so the Spaniards advanced into a wasteland. Belgrano’s army destroyed everything that could provide shelter or be useful to the Royalists. Philippine-American War often included scorched-earth campaigns where entire villages were burned and destroyed, torture ( ) and the concentration of civilians into 'protected zones'. Many of the civilian casualties resulted from disease and famine. In the hunt for the Guerrilla General American troops also poisoned water wells to try to force out the Filipino rebels. American Civil War.
Troops destroy a railroad near In the, Union forces under Sheridan and Sherman used the policy widely. Utilized this policy during his. Another event, in response to, and the many civilian casualties including killing 180 men, Brigadier General, Sherman's brother-in-law, issued U.S. Army to order the near-total evacuation of three and a half counties in western, south of Kansas City, which were subsequently looted and burned by troops. Under Sherman's overall direction, followed this policy in the of Virginia and subsequently in the Indian Wars of the Great Plains.
When 's forces broke through 's defenses, ordered the destruction of Richmond's militarily significant supplies; the resulting conflagration destroyed many – mainly commercial – buildings and some Southern warships docked on the James River. Civilians in panic were forced to escape the fires started by the Confederates. Native American wars. On the ' During the wars with tribes of the, under direction, instituted a scorched-earth policy, burning fields and homes, and stealing or killing their livestock. He was aided by other Indian tribes with long-standing enmity toward the Navajos, chiefly the. The Navajo were forced to surrender due to the destruction of their livestock and food supplies. In the spring of 1864, 8,000 Navajo men, women and children were forced to march 300 miles to, New Mexico.
Navajos call this '.' Many died along the way or during the next four years of their internment. A military expedition led by was sent to the Texas Panhandle and Oklahoma Territory Panhandle area in 1874 to remove the Indians to reservations in. The Mackenzie expedition captured about 1,200 of the Indians' horses, drove them into Tule Canyon, and shot them all. Denied their main source of livelihood and demoralized, the Comanche and Kiowa abandoned the area (see ). Boer War. Civilians watching soldiers blow up their house with dynamite: Boers were given 10 minutes to gather belongings applied scorched-earth policy during the latter part of the (1899–1902).
The, refusing to accept military defeat, adopted the first modern form of what we know today as guerrilla warfare, despite the capture of their two capital cities. As a result, the British ordered destruction of the farms and the homes of civilians in order to prevent the still-fighting from obtaining food and supplies. An eloquent description of this comes from an Army officer at the time. This destruction left women and children without means to survive since crops and livestock were also destroyed. The existence of the concentration camps was exposed by, who toured the camps and began petitioning the British government to change its policy. In an attempt to counter Hobhouse's activism, the British commissioned the Fawcett Commission, that confirmed Hobhouse's findings.
The British later perceived the as a humanitarian measure, to care for displaced persons until the war was ended, in response to the Hobhouse and Fawcett reports. Negligence by the British, lack of planning and supplies and overcrowding led to much loss of life. A decade after the war P.L.A.
Goldman officially determined that an astonishing number of 27,927 Boers died in the concentration camps: 26,251 women and children (of whom more than 22,000 were under the age of 16), and 1,676 men over the age of 16, of whom 1,421 were aged persons. Other In 1868, sheltered the leader, and for this were subjected to a scorched-earth policy, in which their crops and buildings were destroyed and their people of fighting age were captured. Twentieth century World War I. This section needs expansion.
You can help. (December 2010) In, army forces created a zone of destruction by using a large-scale scorched-earth strategy during their retreat from the German army in the summer/autumn of 1915. The Russian troops, retreating along a front of more than 600 miles, destroyed anything that might be of use to their enemy, including crops, houses, railways and entire cities. They also forcibly removed huge numbers of people. In pushing the Russians back to their homeland, the German army gained a large area of territory from the Russian Empire (in an area that is today, and ). On 24 February 1917, the German army made a strategic scorched-earth withdrawal from the battlefield to the prepared fortifications of the, thereby shortening the front line they had to occupy. Since a scorched-earth campaign requires that there be a war of movement, World War I provided little opportunity in general for this policy as it was a stalemated war fought mostly in the same concentrated area for its entire duration.
Greco-Turkish War (1919–22). Main article: During the, the retreating Greek army carried out a scorched-earth policy while fleeing from Anatolia during the final phase of the war. Historian of the Middle East, wrote that: 'The Greek army in retreat pursued a burned-earth policy and committed every known outrage against defenceless Turkish villagers in its path.' Noted that 'the Greek retreat was even more devastating for the local population than the occupation'. Second Sino-Japanese War During the, the had a scorched-earth policy, known as '. Due to the Japanese scorched-earth policy, immense environmental and infrastructure damage have been recorded.
Additionally, it contributed to the complete destruction of entire villages and partial destruction of entire cities like. The Chinese destroyed dams and levees in an attempt to flood the land to slow down the advancement of Japanese soldiers, further adding to the environmental impact. This policy resulted in the. World War II.
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Grant,: 'supplies within the reach of Confederate armies I regarded as much contraband as arms or ordnance stores. Their destruction was accomplished without bloodshed and tended to the same result as the destruction of armies. I continued this policy to the close of the war. Promiscuous pillaging, however, was discouraged and punished. Instructions were always given to take provisions and forage under the direction of commissioned officers who should give receipts to owners, if at home, and turn the property over to officers of the quartermaster or commissary departments to be issued as if furnished from our Northern depots.
But much was destroyed without receipts to owners, when it could not be brought within our lines and would otherwise have gone to the support of secession and rebellion. This policy I believe exercised a material influence in hastening the end.' . Pringle, Heather (April 2010). 'DIGGING THE SCORCHED EARTH'.
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— Sir Edward Grey, British Foreign Secretary, on the eve of the war. Towards the end of, between 1914-1918, a war broke out between two alliances: the French-led 'Entente Cordiale' and the German-led 'Central Powers' note Terms a lot of academic articles and books have been using lately, and which we kindly ask you to use when editing this page since it helps avoid confusion with World War Two. These two power blocs comprised the richest and most powerful empires and nation-states on earth, commanding empires in Europe and abroad, leading to the biggest, bloodiest, most expensive, most disruptive, most damaging and most traumatizing war the world had ever seen. It left millions dead, maimed, shell-shocked, dispossessed, impoverished, starving and bitter. It forever shattered among a good contingent of individuals across multiple political spectrums the notion that and through mechanized warfare unleashed violence on the human body and mind, on such a scale, that it could no longer be hidden, romanticized, or slid under the carpet from public eyes, the way violence in earlier wars was managed by nation states and. The nature of the war is such that its end is usually celebrated in multiple countries as Armistice Day, or ceasefire, rather than victory. Most were grateful the war finally ended and that the ones who survived could go home, with the really lucky ones going back uninjured.
The war is considered, severing continuity with the conformity, stability, and in retrospect, the comforting illusions of progress and decency that people ascribed to European civilization. Four of Europe's great empires (, ) cracked apart, resulting in the liberation and formation of new nations, of a size and scale. The empires and nations that did come out status quo ante bellum, such as and found their power and uncontested influence weakened and challenged, both at home, and in their colonies, marking the beginning of the end of the age of empires that had defined the 19th Century, with the United States of America taking the role of a global leader for the first time, under President. Formerly known as 'The Great War' or 'The World War,' and poetically as, 'The War to End All Wars.' Perhaps surprisingly, even the term, 'The First World War' was applied quite early, not in the sense of anticipation of a second, but rather as a descriptor of it being the first time something like this had happened. After broke out, the term 'The First World War' naturally became standard, this time with full reference to the second.
The title, 'the Great War' had previously been applied to. The end of that conflict, followed by the Concert at Vienna in 1814—1815 created a that lasted for almost exactly a hundred years. The hope of the Concert was to contain the specter of revolution that they saw as a threat to national and domestic stability.
The gradual fracturing of that alliance towards the end of the century ultimately led to the return of revolution and domestic and national instability that in Europe would not heal until. In the case of other parts of the world affected by the war, chiefly the Middle East, that had once formed part of the Ottoman Empire, that instability still remains and persists well into the 21st Century, with no sign of ebbing for several decades past the approaching centennial of armistice. This was quite possibly the most unpopular widespread conflict in the history of civilization in hindsight note though for some in Eastern Europe, this war (which ended in some of their countries' independence) is more popular than World War II (which saw the Soviets occupying their countries for 40 years).
It perhaps comes a close second in the Anglosphere for, and by some measures manages to beat in the Francosphere (when the speaker knows, and can bear, to bring the latter up). The final resolution of the war has come to be dubbed 'the peace to end all peaces.' The origins of the first world war involve so many nations in so many languages, that historians are still trying to piece it together.
The conflict was so horrific and destructive in scale that it ended up destroying the foundations of many of the leading states of the conflict. At the beginning of the war, Kaiser Wilhelm II was among the most famous figures in the world, by the end, he became, overnight, as a result of a revolution which broke out in and the start of.
The dramatic collapse, the sudden revolution, and rapid changes in governments, states, borders that followed the peace further overshadowed and buried the circumstances that led to this conflict. Likewise the new states that emerged had various political agendas. The Soviet Union for instance argued that the war was caused by and Imperialism, and of course it suited their agendas to blame everyone including Tsarist Russia, obviously, and join the international brotherhood of Communism, and welcome Communist cadres and parties in all nations. On the other side, politicians in Imperial Germany actually doctored their archives and destroyed some evidence and forged other documents. During, the Weimar Republic directly promoted either the 'collective guilt' idea or that 'Germany was a victim of the Entente' and was fighting defensively and that the other nations were jealous of Germany's rise and progress.
Historians with similar views (even, or especially from, America) were encouraged and directly funded in some cases, while those who questioned it were stifled and ignored, to the way the Confederate States manufactured and promulgated the 'Lost Cause' thesis. The debate about the war was politicized in the years leading to, and while it isn't as politicized and deadly today, and mercifully a more academic issue than it used to be, it's still something that sparks a lively debate. The irony in academic history is that, these days, among German academic historians, the consensus is that Imperial Germany knowingly launched into a war of aggression in 1914 while non-German historians believe that the war was a case of, bad diplomacy, or collective guilt. In the hundred years between 1815, the end of the Napoleonic Wars after Waterloo, and the start of World War I, there had been many wars in Europe, many, and many revolutions. An objective record of the 19th Century and even, belies the claim that this was truly ' after World War I.
That the great crises of this era, whether its the, the, the, the did not start an all out continental war with the corresponding scale of violence can be ascribed and credited to the limited destructive capacity of the weapons despite its steady advancement, the solidity of the diplomatic norms established after Waterloo that allowed it to withstand multiple cracks, or sheer dumb luck. None of this is to state that World War I was inevitable or inherent to the foundations of Europe, merely that the history of Europe was so constantly violent and had been so for centuries, that a periodic occurrence and recurrence of 'small wars' was seen as tolerable and preferable so long as it didn't affect the social foundations and regional boundaries the way the wars of the 18th Century did (the and the French Revolutionary-Napoleonic Wars). This explains why at the outset of, some of its leading participants expected a 'short war' or a limited war. There was little reason to think at the outset that this wouldn't be something similar to one of those 'small wars', a few of which had been forgotten even at the time.
The true origins of the war, at least in terms of outlining the scale, length and nature of impact, lies in the lopsided nature of social development across Western and Eastern Europe, and the means by which order in these states was maintained. Until the middle of the 19th Century, England was the unquestioned commercial and military superpower of Europe, the cradle of and the, and the home of 'free trade' and the possessor of most of the world's colonies., formerly the most powerful continental power and an ex-rival of England, and likewise joined the colonial game with gusto, out of both economic competition, and as a means to combat and multiple changes in its form of government, and likewise became the second major nation in the continent to industrialize and transform itself. In Central and Eastern Europe however there was a different story. You see the governments of these states generally wanted modernization and advancement, but on its own terms. They wanted development and progress while still maintaining aristocratic privileges, a strong autocratic state, wealth in the hands of a few elites and little of the social instability they feared such changes would bring. It was only defeat in the, that led Tsar Alexander II to abolish serfdom across the Russian Empire, and even then the reforms were done in such a way that newly freed serfs could not benefit meaningfully from their liberation.
The Austro-Hungarian Empire likewise maintained a multi-cultural empire of Hungarians, Czechs, Slavs, Italians, Poles, and Jews among others, and even benefited a few of them, but this was accompanied by the maintenance of a and a repressive bureaucracy that only fed the desires for nationalism among many of its 'subjects'. The was the 'sick man of Europe' yet maintaining large territory across Europe and Asia, and whose dismemberment was seen by rival powers as a, delayed solely to ensure that one nation got a bigger piece of the pie than others, which periodically led Britain and France to intervene on their behalf (as in the case of the Crimean War) even as the latter wanted its territories in the Levant. The Wars of Unification in Italy and Germany weakened some of these empires and in the process created the newest, and most powerful, and dynamic of these powers:. Under, Imperial Germany formed itself via what the historian Hans-Ulrich Wehler called Sammlungspolitik. A complex word that defines the idea of solving domestic problems by exporting them outside, eliminating disputes by getting everyone to 'rally 'round the flag'. The ideology of nationalism, once opposed by many of these conservative forces came to be seen as a means of creating a unifying and majoritarian ideology that manufactured unity and control in society from the top-down. Now of course none of this was exceptional to Germany or exceptional to the 19th Century or to Europe (cf, ) but the persistence of this archaic approach to statecraft alongside industrial and social development and advancement was unique.
Formed itself via wars against local German holdouts, than against Austria, and finally and most importantly, France in the Franco-Prussian War. The latter conflict shifted the overnight. Germany was now the most powerful state in Continental Europe, it dictated a punitive peace on France, extorting damaging reparations that continued to hamper its economy for decades as well as grabbing the regions of Alsace-Lorraine on the Franco-German borders against the wishes of the people who were living there. This was a that toppled the Second French Empire, started a revolution, led to the formation of a Republic, and fanned a desire among Frenchmen to avenge this defeat (from which we get the term revanchism).
The British meanwhile took note of a new threat across the channel, one which showed the same industrial and technological elan that they had prided themselves in, and which through rapid government-directed and supported industrialization was closing the gap between itself, England and France. Bismarck, after succeeding in his plans and gambits to unite Germany, and establish itself as a major power saw little need to alter the means of Sammlungspolitik now that its end had been achieved. As such he became heavily involved in foreign policy across Europe and used his mastery of the same to better maintain and enlarge German influence both locally and internationally, periodically playing England, France and Russia against each other to prevent an alliance forming against it on both sides. His dismissal in 1890 by Kaiser Wilhelm II is seen as a turning point in ensuring the war broke out, but critics argue that Bismarck's brinkmanship, his political adventurism, and the nurturing of what can be seen as the world's first state-supported military-industrial complex, played a determining, if not causative factor in the lead-up to the war. The major problem for Germany in the coming decades was, where industrialization had arrived later then Europe. The social upheaval that followed industrialization, namely the development of a skilled urban working class, and the growth of a middle-class was feared by the autocratic nature of the Tsarist state, which tried to divert problems by entering into a war with Japan, only to lose. Yet a stable Russia that achieved industrialization would be unbeatable for Germany, threatening its military hegemony in Eastern Europe, where it nurtured plans for settlement and expansionism in the borderland states.
Vulnerability to any nation on its East or its West, left them open to invasion and partition. To this end, a few German planners such as the Chief of the General Staff, Moltke the Younger, proposed plans to start a war and cripple and weaken Russia, and destabilize its Empire before it completes and achieves industrialization. This crisis of encroaching modernization and the threat it could pose to preexisting hegemony, operated behind the scenes over a series of diplomatic struggles between European powers in the decades leading up to war. These diplomatic struggles was accompanied by secret treaties and other deals, leading to the formation of an alliance between England-France and Russia on one hand, and an alliance between the Germans, the Ottomans, the Austrians, and briefly, the Italians on the other hand. Accompanying this diplomacy was a massive scheme of industrialization and armament, an arms race, between the great powers as each sought to match and/or check the advantage of the other. Emerging nationalism was a cynical tool that both sides took advantage of, even if either Power Bloc was comprised of massive empires that denied the rights of basic sovereignty to many of its subjects.
The idea was to promote and nurture nationalism in a way that would destabilize and distract the other side. To that end, Imperial Germany supported and nurtured the nationalistic aspirations in multiple nations, from Poland to Finland to Ireland, while the other sides did the same, including supporting their very own partition of Poland against others, while the British and French encouraged Arab Nationalism as a means to break the.
This climate of micro-nationalism had deadly consequences in the Ottoman Empire, where the emerging modernizing state-builders, the Three Pashas, created and promoted Turkish hegemony by directing and mobilizing hatred and violence to the Greek, Kurdish, Assyrian and Armenian minorities. The height of this cynicism would be the famous gesture made by Imperial German officials, to allow to pass from Switzerland to Russia in a sealed train, in the hopes that it would add to the destabilization of Tsarist-Russia towards the end of the war.
The war finally broke out over the issue of the Balkans. Tsarist Russian support of the Orthodox-worshipping nations of Greece, Yugoslavia, Serbia, Montenegro against the Ottomans and the Austro-Hungarian empires. Russia's sense of itself as the defender of the Orthodox faith sparked the Crimean War, and this recurred again in a series of conflicts in the Balkan region. The first of this destabilized the Ottoman Empire's European hegemony, which in turn enlarged Russian hegemony and which in turn panicked Germans, who leaned on the weak Austro-Hungarian Empire to pick up the slack in the regional, which in turn made the Austro-Hungarians the enemies of Serbia, which now saw itself as the new emerging great nation in Europe. This informed the background of the Assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which was carried out by agents supported by the Serbian government, and the diplomatic tussle that followed led Russia to support the Serbians, and the Germans to support the Austro-Hungarians. On 8th December 1912, Kaiser Wilhelm II summoned where they noted that the present situation could not be allowed to continue, since accompanied by Russian industrialization, it would in time erode their advantages and gains.
The Kaiser's generals agreed that if a war was inevitable, then it was best it broke out sooner rather than later. If it happened soon, then Imperial Germany could press and defend its position and advantage. These were the only options available to Imperial Germany for it to persist and remain in the same form and the same system of government. These were also the options for Tsarist Russia which was destabilizing at home, weakened by military defeats, and facing many problems that the autocratic state either didn't want to deal with, or were incapable of dealing with: chiefly the tensions of class leveling and the specter of revolution and the greater gains of the worker's movement and their desire to convert it into political gains. It was common practice for everyone at that time to deal with these problems by Sammlungspolitik. World War I was a war of empires, and a war to defend the concept of empire and imperialism, in a world that was already becoming so interconnected by transport and communication, that it has come to be defined as 'the first globalization'.
Economic theorists of the time harbored under what Norman Angell called 'The Great Illusion' (which inspired the title of ). The idea that a world of economic competition ended the need of war automatically cancelled the possibility of war. Angell, contrary to general opinions, argued that a political order needed to be established to prevent war, and that war could be practiced, and continued to be practiced for political expediency. That Great Illusion would be replaced by the illusion of 'the war to end all wars'. The war in Anglophone popular culture consists of precisely two settings: British Tommies live in the hellish trenches, where it's always raining and the muddy ground is covered in craters. There's always an artillery bombardment going on.
Mud, barbed wire, and rotting human flesh is everywhere. Periodically, the out-of-touch, over-optimistic upper-class twit generals decide to mount another attack and the poor Tommies go 'over the top' into a hail of enemy machine-gun fire and everyone gets killed (often staged similarly to a except there's no doubt about the tragic outcome really). Usually, one of the working-class Tommies will admit not to know why the war even started, to incredulity on the part of the officers—until they try and explain, when it all sounds simply too lame to be true. The Tommies are a mixture of salt-of-the-earth working-class rankers (enlisted men) and NCOs and upper-class officers. Officers are either absurdly naive types, straight from the playing-fields of Eton, looking forward to Giving the Hun a Damn Good Licking, or decent, intellectual types who write poetry and ruminate on the meaning of sacrifice and duty, but provide a brave face for the men. Only the are set here, although there's plenty of scope for tragedy.
A very few films substitute American 'Doughboys' for the Tommies, though actually the Americans avoided trench warfare as a matter of policy (they already saw how bloody it was during ), and were fortunate to arrive en masse just as things had started moving again. Knights of the Sky: The war on the ground is a depressing morass of mud, barbed wire and certain death—but chivalry and bravery still count for something in the air.
A group of men examine a section of the Hindenburg line, a series of trenches in northern France, in this photo from September 1919. Topical Press Agency/Getty Images When Americans think of visiting battlefields in France they usually head to Normandy and the cemeteries and sites of the 1944 D-Day invasion.
Some of the most horrific battles involving American forces, however, actually took place in World War I. This summer and fall marks the 90th anniversary of the great American offensives that helped end the First World War. Dangerous Reminders Of War In the Meuse region of France, about an hour east of Paris by high-speed train, visitors can plunge into the history and atmosphere of World War I trench warfare. Through a leafy forest along what was once the infamous western front, a soft drizzle helps to imagine the miserable conditions suffered by soldiers bogged down in the muddy wartime trenches.
Though birds sing and wheat fields shimmer, there are still dangerous reminders of battles fought nearly a century ago. A deep hole where soldiers took cover and coils of rusted barbed wire litter the forest floor. Remnants of a tar-covered ammunition case are lodged in the wall of an 8-foot-deep German trench. Twenty yards away, across what was once a no-man's land, are the French front lines. The trenches were restored as a tourist attraction only about 20 years ago. While the French trenches had to be re-dug, the German ones had only to be cleaned out.
They remained largely intact because the Germans, unlike the French, fortified their trenches with concrete, says guide Florence Lamousse. 'The Germans wanted to build strong trenches,' Lamousse says. 'They wanted to stay in France. And the French — they wanted the soldiers to be offensive and not stay in the trenches. They had a role to do — they had to go out of trenches and push the enemy out of the French territory.'
For nearly four years in St. Mihiel, just north of the epic French-German battlefields at Verdun, the French and German armies were mired down in the trenches, fighting it out over gains of just a few feet. That changed with the arrival of the American forces, led by Gen. In their first offensive in late summer 1918, the Americans joined the French to finally rout the Kaiser's army from St. 'A Very Young Army' A few miles away is the largest American military cemetery abroad.
Its 14,000 graves make it bigger than those in Normandy. 'The battles here were unbelievable for several reasons,' says Scott Desjardins, the cemetery caretaker and historian. 'We weren't very well trained, we weren't very well equipped, we weren't very well led. We were a very young army; we were quite naive actually, which worked out to our benefit.
Because had we listened to the British and French, we'd still be stuck in the trenches.' Just two weeks after their victory at St Mihiel, Pershing's American Expeditionary Forces set out to capture the railroad hub at Sedan and break the rail network supporting the German army in France and Flanders. Known as the Meuse-Argonne offensive, or the Battle of the Argonne Forest, it was one of the bloodiest battle in U.S. Pershing moved 600,000 soldiers and artillery at night from St. Mihiel to the Argonne to mount a surprise attack on the Germans. After 47 days, Pershing's forces prevailed. The victory at Meuse-Argonne was key to convincing the Germans to sign the armistice to end the war in November.
Many of the Americans who died in that offensive are buried at the Meuse-Argonne cemetery. Bringing Optimism To The War The French inhabitants of the Meuse region have clearly not forgotten the Americans. Towns and villages are peppered with monuments and memorials to 'Les Sammys,' the nickname for Uncle Sam's troops. And this summer a series of concerts, films, exhibits and special battlefield tours will mark the 90th anniversary of the American battles that helped win the war.
Local historian Jean Luc Demandre says the arrival of the Americans in 1917 made a lasting impression on the population. 'The Americans brought an incredible optimism into the war,' Demandre says. 'They were big and athletic. They chewed chewing gum and smoked blond cigarettes. And they were convinced the Allies would win. For people here, it was the discovery of baseball and jazz, and really a whole new civilization.' In an abandoned quarry near the town of Verdun, a giant sound and light show reenacts the bloody French-German battle.
In one scene, a French and a German soldier each write a letter home from the trenches. Both evoke the same feelings of despair and futility. 'Are we still human beings?' This year, a new, more upbeat scene has been added to the production — it depicts the arrival of the Americans and how they helped end the war to end all wars, 90 years ago.