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The Asian Age, India
Aug 4 2014
Great War incubated Russian Revolution, Mideast conflict
"It will have blood; they say, blood will have blood."The line from
Shakespeare's Macbeth might easily have been written about the legacy
of World War I. As the guns fell silent in 1918, the victors all
agreed on one thing: Germany must pay.
How much was a matter of debate but there was never any doubt that the
post-war settlement enshrined in the Treaty of Versailles was going to
be punitive.Germany did pay, but it was not alone. A century on, the
world lives with the consequences of a peace accord that, even at the
time, was criticised as making another war in Europe inevitable.
The economist J.M. Keynes, then a British treasury official, resigned
rather than be associated with a Treaty he denounced as "Carthaginian"
in its harshness. France's Marshal Ferdinand Foch judged it "not so
much a peace as a 20-year armistice."
The "war to end all wars" turned out to be the exact opposite. By
ensuring Germany's economic ruin and political humiliation, the
post-war settlement laid the foundations -- or at least provided
fertile ground -- for the rise of Nazism and the horrors that
ensued.Just as important, the war served as the incubator for the 1917
Russian Revolution.
Against a backdrop of desperate food shortages, military failure left
the Tsarist state crippled and vulnerable to an assault by Lenin's
Bolsheviks.A civil war ensued in which the Western powers offered
backing for counter-revolutionary forces. But war-fatigue restricted
the scale of intervention and ultimately Lenin and co. won and
established the Soviet Union as an authoritarian Communist state.
Disastrous agricultural policies resulted in more than three million
people dying in the famine of the early 1930s, millions more under the
Great Terror unleashed by Lenin's successor, Joseph Stalin.
By the mid-1930s, all the conditions were in place for the post-World
War II division of Europe.
That in turn produced the Cold War and its associated carve-up of the
rest of the planet into Western or Soviet spheres of influence and an
unstable global equilibrium that helped to fuel countless conflicts
across the developing world.
The first World War also left a lasting mark on the Middle East. By
encouraging an Arab revolt, Britain helped precipitate the collapse of
the Germany-allied Ottoman Empire.A secular Turkey emerged and Britain
and France assumed post-war control of much of the Arab world.
By then, Britain had also declared, through the 1917 Balfour
declaration, its support for the principle of a Jewish state on land
it had pledged to the Arabs.The creation of Israel might still have
never happened but, by the end of WWI, it was a much more realistic
prospect than it had been at the start.
The collapse of the Ottoman Empire also resulted in the killing of up
to 1.5 million Armenians in what they see as a genocide. The world's
muted response to the massacres is credited by some historians with
inspiring Hitler to think he could get away with annihilating the
Jews.
Events in Russia cast a long shadow over the rest of Europe,
generating a fear of upheaval that helped accelerate reforms while
also inspiring other revolutionaries, including the nascent fascist
movement that was soon to seize power in Italy.
Worker uprisings in Germany and Hungary in the immediate aftermath of
WWI were crushed or collapsed internally. But waves of militancy in
other countries -- in the Fiat factories of Turin, Italy or the
shipyards of Scotland's Red Clydeside -- delivered major advances in
terms of working conditions and the rights of trade unions to
represent their members.
More broadly, the aftermath of World War I was a period of rapid
social progress in much of the industrialised world. This was most
notable in terms of women's right to vote, which, in the popular
memory, is often seen as having been "earned" through female
participation in war-related activities.
http://www.asianage.com/year-will-change-india/great-war-incubated-russian-revolution-mideast-conflict-422
Aug 4 2014
Great War incubated Russian Revolution, Mideast conflict
"It will have blood; they say, blood will have blood."The line from
Shakespeare's Macbeth might easily have been written about the legacy
of World War I. As the guns fell silent in 1918, the victors all
agreed on one thing: Germany must pay.
How much was a matter of debate but there was never any doubt that the
post-war settlement enshrined in the Treaty of Versailles was going to
be punitive.Germany did pay, but it was not alone. A century on, the
world lives with the consequences of a peace accord that, even at the
time, was criticised as making another war in Europe inevitable.
The economist J.M. Keynes, then a British treasury official, resigned
rather than be associated with a Treaty he denounced as "Carthaginian"
in its harshness. France's Marshal Ferdinand Foch judged it "not so
much a peace as a 20-year armistice."
The "war to end all wars" turned out to be the exact opposite. By
ensuring Germany's economic ruin and political humiliation, the
post-war settlement laid the foundations -- or at least provided
fertile ground -- for the rise of Nazism and the horrors that
ensued.Just as important, the war served as the incubator for the 1917
Russian Revolution.
Against a backdrop of desperate food shortages, military failure left
the Tsarist state crippled and vulnerable to an assault by Lenin's
Bolsheviks.A civil war ensued in which the Western powers offered
backing for counter-revolutionary forces. But war-fatigue restricted
the scale of intervention and ultimately Lenin and co. won and
established the Soviet Union as an authoritarian Communist state.
Disastrous agricultural policies resulted in more than three million
people dying in the famine of the early 1930s, millions more under the
Great Terror unleashed by Lenin's successor, Joseph Stalin.
By the mid-1930s, all the conditions were in place for the post-World
War II division of Europe.
That in turn produced the Cold War and its associated carve-up of the
rest of the planet into Western or Soviet spheres of influence and an
unstable global equilibrium that helped to fuel countless conflicts
across the developing world.
The first World War also left a lasting mark on the Middle East. By
encouraging an Arab revolt, Britain helped precipitate the collapse of
the Germany-allied Ottoman Empire.A secular Turkey emerged and Britain
and France assumed post-war control of much of the Arab world.
By then, Britain had also declared, through the 1917 Balfour
declaration, its support for the principle of a Jewish state on land
it had pledged to the Arabs.The creation of Israel might still have
never happened but, by the end of WWI, it was a much more realistic
prospect than it had been at the start.
The collapse of the Ottoman Empire also resulted in the killing of up
to 1.5 million Armenians in what they see as a genocide. The world's
muted response to the massacres is credited by some historians with
inspiring Hitler to think he could get away with annihilating the
Jews.
Events in Russia cast a long shadow over the rest of Europe,
generating a fear of upheaval that helped accelerate reforms while
also inspiring other revolutionaries, including the nascent fascist
movement that was soon to seize power in Italy.
Worker uprisings in Germany and Hungary in the immediate aftermath of
WWI were crushed or collapsed internally. But waves of militancy in
other countries -- in the Fiat factories of Turin, Italy or the
shipyards of Scotland's Red Clydeside -- delivered major advances in
terms of working conditions and the rights of trade unions to
represent their members.
More broadly, the aftermath of World War I was a period of rapid
social progress in much of the industrialised world. This was most
notable in terms of women's right to vote, which, in the popular
memory, is often seen as having been "earned" through female
participation in war-related activities.
http://www.asianage.com/year-will-change-india/great-war-incubated-russian-revolution-mideast-conflict-422