Name: The Roads to World War I: Crash Course European History #32
Uploaded: 2020-01-20T06:16:15.000Z
Duration: 15 min 1 s
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i I'm John Green and this is Crash Course European History, and things are indeed on

course to crash, because World War I is coming.

Decades ago, when I studied European history in high school, I learned there were precise

causes of the war: the alliance system, arms build-up, secret treaties, nationalism, and

That set of causes, launched from above by political leaders, eventually led to war.

But more recently, historians have started to lay out a more complex road to war: namely,

a road that passed through social and cultural change at the turn of the century.

And those changes, which were experienced by tens of thousands if not millions of people,

caused tensions across a broad swath of Europe.

People's lives were affected by changing family structures, by paradigm shifts in science,

disruption of traditional gender roles, achievement of the vote by working men, and ongoing economic

advances, and the result was disorientation, dislocation, deep resentments, and widespread

fear--which, of course, is not too dissimilar from how an array of changes are affecting

[Intro] Some might even say that pre-war Europe a

Strikes, which at times grew violent, abounded across Europe—whether at the oil fields

of Baku, the farms of Hungary, or the factories of Italy.

Assassinations were common--as was everyday violence against Jewish people and other oppressed

In 1894, Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French army, was tried for espionage,

convicted and imprisoned on Devil's Island.

The evidence against Dreyfus turned out to be fabricated, complete with forged signatures.

Further evidence of his innocence was that the espionage continued, even after his exile.

Passions exploded over the case, and anti-Semitism flourished, families quarreled, and assaults

took place around questions of whether Dreyfus had committed these crimes.

Newspapers took both sides as violence grew.

Then in 1898 famed novelist Emile Zola's article “J'accuse,” exposed trumped

up evidence against Dreyfus and helped build support for him.

Dreyfus was eventually pardoned in 1899, but facts were not enough to stop the growing

Intense divisions within and between communities were growing elsewhere, too.

Ireland, for one, was on the brink of civil war, with both those opposing British rule

and those favoring it establishing independent armies.

The distant colonial world was increasingly tense too.

Between 1904 and 1908 the German army massacred between 24,000 and 100,000 Herero people,

who refused to surrender their lands in southwest Africa.

Those who weren't massacred were driven into distant territory to starve.

Some say that slaughter was a training ground for European soldiers who would soon engage

Around the same time, the French closed the University of Hanoi and arrested or killed

prominent teachers and intellectuals. and open rebellion escalated.

As one opponent said of the French: “Look at those men with blue eyes and yellow beards.

They are not our fathers, nor are they our brothers.

How can they squat here, defecating on our heads?”

and the Boers--that is, farmers with Dutch heritage-- of South Africa likewise rebelled

against the British as the 20th century opened.

They were only defeated after many civilians, confined to concentration camps, died of disease

They became more militantly anti-British and launched boycotts of British goods.

In 1900, a conglomerate of colonial nations massacred Chinese civilians involved in the

Boxer activists had themselves assassinated European and Chinese Christians in an attempt

to take back their empire from white invaders.

All these events suggest that the world was already at war before 1914, although if you've

been following this series, or our other series in history, you'll know that war was often

happening-- if anything, peace, to whatever extent humans have experienced it, is very

And that's important to remember when thinking about the ultimately disastrous system of

That system was created by politicians to try to prevent wars, or at least to manage

Foremost among these politicians was our old friend Otto von Bismarck, who'd had no qualms

about starting wars to help Germany build its empire but then declared Germany a “satisfied”

Bismarck wanted peace in Europe and so organized an alliance system to that end, binding Germany

and Austria in the Dual Alliance of 1879, then adding Italy to a Triple Alliance in

He also allied Germany with Russia in the Reinsurance Treaty, another attempt to build

coalitions so formidable that large wars would become impossible.

But all of this was about to change when William II, aka Kaiser Wilhelm, came to power in Germany

He rattled the sword, and called Bismarck's alliances the work of an outmoded old man.

Under William II, the treaty with Russia was canceled, which drove Russia to sign an alliance

William also called for Germany to gain power around the world, expanding into tropical

colonies to create a German “place in the sun.”

Which if you wanna do, you could just try to take Southern France.

Meanwhile, the French and British secretly built another alliance--the “entente cordiale”

And I'll remind you, I've had three years of high school French.

It was based on military cooperation and even shared military plans.

The entente became a triple entente when Russia and Britain settled their colonial differences

in 1907, uniting three very different powers.

But as they were entente-ing, Europe's powers were also growing their militaries.

Standing armies grew to hundreds of thousands of troops.

General staffs demanded larger stockpiles of weapons and got what they wanted.

Most costly were the “Dreadnoughts” or massive battleships with unprecedented firepower.

Britain launched the first of these in 1905; others followed.

The construction of battleships in these years employed tens of thousands of workers.

So through their staffs of public relations experts, military hawks threatened that cutting

the production of Dreadnoughts would lead to mass unemployment and revolution.

“We want eight and we won't wait” was a popular British chant for more ships.

So, yeah, America didn't invent the military-industrial complex.

So, William II also wanted Dreadnoughts, because he hoped to win the British over to an alliance

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The Roads to World War I: Crash Course European History #32

ultimately

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inevitable

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