The War Begins

At the time it was fought, and this is a war in which my mother’s father fought in, there was no history that could be compared to the amount of men and technology amassed for the conflict that was to occur. It was the early years of the twentieth century,

Scholars today are still debating the underlying causes of the Great War and the many factors that contributed to the mobilization of the belligerents.

Surely the desires for greater empire, wealth and territories which resulted in a massive arms race, and a series of treaties that ensured that once one of the European powers went to war, all of Europe would quickly follow, played a significant role. And perhaps, it was all a simply a miscalculation by rulers and generals in power. Or perhaps, it was an attempt by aggressive, militarist powers to establish hegemony over Europe, in hopes of extinguishing democracy in order to subjugate its populace.

In August of 1914, millions of Europeans -- especially the military and diplomatic leaders of Austria-Hungary, Germany and Russia -- saw war as the way to solve the internal and international problems that needed to be resolved. Colonial empires were becoming overstretched and harder to defend, and the people in them began to act on the desire to self-rule.

Germany felt especially disenfranchised. As a national entity it hadn’t been united until 1871, and was therefore a latecomer to the world stage. Feeling displaced in an Imperialistic world in terms of colonies, and power politics that had already been finalized, many in Germany felt they deserved a position within Europe’s old colonial empire more in accordance with their self-esteem, size, and grandiose history leading back into the Middle Ages.

Everywhere, social turmoil had inevitably been brought about by the Industrial Revolution. There was a Socialist movement in Europe; people called for reforms and uniting laborers to demand that the wealth and power of a nation be used to benefit the majority.

Jean Jaurès, a French socialist, did his best in 1914 to rally international socialism against going to war - but to no avail. He was fervently anti-war, and was the one man in the powerful socialist movement who could speak for European workers whatever their nationality. His oratorical power was legendary. In the summer of 1914, Jaurès tried to rally the forces of international socialism against going to war. He was assassinated in a Paris café days before war broke out by a crazed nationalist fearful of the orator’s power to prevent France from going to war.

Elsewhere, in Russia, Tsar Nicholas II held fast to an autocratic old-world view.

The era itself was creating a potentially combustible concoction of events, and once the provocational effect of an act of terrorism was thrown in to the fray, War was ignited by the assassination of the heir to the Austria-Hungarian throne by a Serbian radical. Although there was but one smoking gun, War traveled menacingly quickly throughout Europe through a series of alliances between the great powers.
These historic alliances created a much more tragic scenario of possibilities than what could have occurred over a skirmish between Austria and Serbia. Much like what would happen twenty-nine years later when the United States would go to war against Germany because of another’s attack, the death of this Austrian heir apparent, was more of the excuse for creating the war, than the actual reasoning which laid behind the vale.

Alliances were set so that if war was declared between Austria and Serbia, Russia would enter the war on the side of their long-standing friends the Serbs. And if Russia sided against Austria, Germany pledged to ally itself with her. And as a deterrent to stop anything from happening in the first place, if Russia were be at war with Germany, then France and Britain bound themselves by alliance with Russia to also be considered to be at war with Germany.

During those early years of the 1900’s there had been much discussion of the inevitability of war. After all, war had been used throughout history to decide things of consequence and there was much of consequence occurring during this period. Besides, once diplomacy fails war, whether civil or international is viewed as being more or less a predictability in settling seemingly irreconcilable differences that inevitably arise during disputes created when the disparate desires of differing types of governments collide.

Britain has always viewed any German victory as a threat to its security. For centuries, Britain had fought to maintain the balance of power in Europe, to ensure that no state became overly mighty. The Kaiser's Germany followed Napoleon's France and was viewed in 1914 as a threat to stability. In particular, Britain was highly sensitive about Belgium. In the hands of an enemy, Belgian ports offered a major threat to the British naval supremacy and hence the security of the British Isles. Had France been defeated as Germany intended, then Britain would have been faced with the very nightmare it has dreaded since the days of Elizabeth I and had fought to avoid: the continent dominated by a single, aggressive state. Britain had no real option but to go to war in 1914.

Everyone understood what could happen should Austria to go to war against Serbia,
and when the news that it had done so reached France it was greeted as if a specter had appeared to everyone all at once. Speechless astonishment that Austria had set the dominos of destruction in motion turned to stone cold resolution as reality set in quickly.
Posters announcing the mobilization went up all over France on the 1st of August.
Tens of thousands of men were ordered to immediately report to their regiment.
Every railway line in Paris became jammed with people on the move. Social and political differences were put aside -- every able man joined his unit. Opposition to the war was non-existent. Everyone felt anger against Germany, believing her to be the conniving influence upon Austria’s decision to declare war.

France had previously lost its beloved providences of Alsace and Lorraine in the 1800’s to Germany, and many in France had dreamt of reversing that result. And now, on that August day in 1914, the men of France, with a history of ill will already in place, boarded the trains with a deeply felt determination to avoid the humiliation of military defeat. Many were confident that the war would be over by Christmas.

Instead, it was to be a particularly gruesome collision of will, men and armor. The war itself would last for 1,500 days, would bring an early death to over 9 million people.
And for all those that survived, were to then care for those forced to live the rest of their days with missing limbs, blindness, horrible burns and deep psychological problems. Many watched as friends and family became daily, terrible reminders of the events that occurred as a result of Austria‘s decision.

Instead of a growing comprehension of the consequences of militaristic government,
what grew from the carnage were cancerous resentments and hatreds containing such deep animosity it spawned yet another global war to be fought by the children of those who might have been the last victims of war- for when it’s seeds were planted upon
the horizon of days that began the twentieth century, many thought that if war was to come, that it would be the war to end all wars.

Our world today was created not from the glory, but from the ashes of the last century.
It is a world that remains at war with itself even as it continually spins through time into what yet may be another century. A history that is being created here and now, but on the other side of the millennia from which this war had it’s time, and yet one that remains still plagued by our own worst creation; War.

"What will the future be like, when the billions now thrown away in preparation for war are spent on useful things to increase the well being of people, on the construction of decent houses for workers, on improving transportation, on reclaiming the land? The fever of imperialism has become a sickness. It is the disease of a badly run society which does not know how to use its energies at home."
-- Jean Jaurès

http://www.awm.gov.au/captured/french/trench.asp