World War I

By the end of this lesson, students will be able to:

• Account for the causes and effects of the First World War (Skill 4.B; LO B).
• Account for how new technology altered the conduct of the war (LO C).
• Account for how the developments of the war changed political and diplomatic interactions among nations (LO D).
• Account for KC-4.1.I.A: the long- and short-term factors (nationalism, military planning, the alliance system, imperial competition, the Balkan flashpoint) that produced the war.
• Account for KC-4.1.I.B through KC-4.1.I.E: the technological transformation of combat, the political and diplomatic consequences for the belligerents, the spread of the war to non-European theaters, and the shift in the relationship of Europe to the world.

Topic 8.2 covers the First World War in three parts: causes, conduct, and consequences. KC-4.1.I captures the central frame: the war was caused by a complex interaction of long- and short-term factors and produced immense losses for victors and vanquished alike. The topic carries three thematic threads (SOP for state-power consequences, TSI for the technological transformation, INT for the global dimension) and three corresponding learning objectives (LO B for causes and effects, LO C for technology, LO D for political and diplomatic consequences).

Causes (KC-4.1.I.A). The war was caused by a combination of long-term structural factors and a short-term Balkan trigger. The principal long-term factors included the post-1871 European alliance system that bound the great powers to defensive treaty obligations: the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy (1882) and the Triple Entente of France, Russia, and Britain (built up between 1894 and 1907). The Anglo-German naval arms race that began with the German Naval Law of 1898 and continued through Tirpitz's expansion of the High Seas Fleet had produced a deep-seated British strategic concern about German naval ambition. The imperial competition tensions of the late 1890s and 1900s (covered in Topic 7.7) had brought repeated diplomatic crises among the great powers (the 1898 Fashoda Incident; the 1905 and 1911 Moroccan Crises; the Anglo-Russian and Anglo-French rapprochements that resolved them). The principal short-term factor was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary at Sarajevo on 28 June 1914 by Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb nationalist linked to the Black Hand secret society. The July Crisis that followed (the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia of 23 July; the Russian general mobilization of 30 July; the German declaration of war on Russia on 1 August and on France on 3 August; the German invasion of Belgium and the British declaration of war on 4 August) produced the war that the alliance system and the political-strategic culture of the period had made possible once the great-power crisis-management mechanisms broke down.

Technology and the conduct of the war (KC-4.1.I.B; LO C). New technologies confounded traditional military strategies and produced trench warfare and massive troop losses. The principal defensive technologies of the period favored the entrenched defender: the machine gun (the British Vickers, the German Maxim MG 08, the French Hotchkiss); barbed wire as a tactical-defensive obstacle; modern artillery firing high-explosive and shrapnel shells; and the rifle-and-bayonet weight of the late-nineteenth-century infantry tradition. The early German Schlieffen Plan (modified by Moltke the Younger and put into operation in August 1914) had counted on rapid envelopment of France through Belgium before turning east against Russia; the Plan failed at the First Battle of the Marne (5-12 September 1914) and produced the rapid stalemate that became the Western Front. By late 1914, continuous trench lines extended from the Channel coast through Flanders and northern France to the Swiss border; a similar pattern of attritional combat developed on the Italian, Eastern, and Mesopotamian fronts.

The principal new offensive technologies were attempts to break the defensive deadlock. Poison gas was first deployed by German forces at the Second Battle of Ypres in April 1915; the British and French rapidly developed countermeasures and offensive gas capabilities; the cumulative effect was a shift in defensive equipment (the gas mask) rather than restored mobility. The tank was first deployed by British forces at the Battle of the Somme in September 1916; later tank designs (the Mark IV, V, and the French Renault FT-17) became important by 1918 but did not by themselves restore mobility. The airplane developed across the war from reconnaissance into combat and ground-attack roles (the German Fokker fighter monoplanes from 1915; the British Royal Flying Corps and the eventual 1918 Royal Air Force; the French Spad and Nieuport fighters); strategic bombing (the German Zeppelin raids on London from 1915 and the later Gotha and Staaken bomber raids) anticipated the more developed strategic bombing of the Second World War. The submarine (the German U-boat) opened a new dimension of naval combat; the German unrestricted submarine warfare campaign of 1917 against Allied merchant shipping eventually produced the United States entry into the war. The late-1918 combined-arms breakthroughs (the British Hundred Days offensive from August 1918) finally restored mobility and produced the Allied victory.

Political and diplomatic consequences (KC-4.1.I.C; LO D). The effects of military stalemate, national mobilization, and total war produced protest and insurrection in the belligerent nations and eventually revolutions that shifted the international balance of power. The principal cases included the Russian Revolution of 1917 (covered in Topic 8.3); the German revolutions of October-November 1918 (the Kiel naval mutiny of 29 October; the Munich and Berlin uprisings; the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II on 9 November and the proclamation of the Weimar Republic); the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in October-November 1918 with the proclamation of independent Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Hungary; and the Easter Rising of April 1916 in Dublin (the principal Irish nationalist insurrection of the wartime period; suppressed by British forces but a precursor of the 1919-1921 Irish War of Independence). On the political side, the wartime governments adopted unprecedented economic-management roles: the British Ministry of Munitions under Lloyd George from 1915; the German War Materials Department under Walther Rathenau; the French Comite de la Guerre under Clemenceau from late 1917; the Russian War Industries Committees. Wartime censorship, propaganda, and the suspension of normal parliamentary politics across the belligerents anticipated the interwar authoritarian regimes that Topic 8.6 covers.

The global dimension (KC-4.1.I.D and KC-4.1.I.E). The war in Europe quickly spread to non-European theaters, transforming the conflict into a global one. The principal non-European theaters included the Ottoman fronts in the Caucasus, Mesopotamia, Palestine, and Gallipoli (the Gallipoli campaign of 1915-1916 was the principal British-French-ANZAC-Indian effort against the Ottomans; failed but became foundational to Australian and New Zealand national identity); the German colonial campaigns in East Africa (the prolonged campaign under Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck against British, Belgian, and Portuguese colonial forces, lasting until November 1918); and the Japanese seizure of German Pacific possessions and the Shandong concession in China. The Armenian Genocide of 1915-1923 was the principal humanitarian catastrophe of the wartime non-European theater. The Arab Revolt of 1916-1918 against the Ottoman Empire (organized by T. E. Lawrence and supporting Hashemite forces under Faisal ibn Hussein) and the corresponding 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement and 1917 Balfour Declaration shaped the post-war Middle Eastern settlement.

The shifted relationship of Europe to the world (KC-4.1.I.E). The relationship of Europe to the world shifted significantly with the globalization of the conflict, the emergence of the United States as a world power, and the overthrow of European empires. The United States entered the war in April 1917 (in response to German unrestricted submarine warfare and the Zimmermann Telegram); the American Expeditionary Force under General John J. Pershing eventually fielded roughly two million troops in France by November 1918. President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points speech of January 1918 articulated the principal American war aims. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk of March 1918 ended Russian participation in the war on terms favorable to Germany; the German spring 1918 offensives nearly broke the Allied lines; the eventual Allied victory in November 1918 left the United States as the principal European creditor and the principal arbiter of the postwar settlement that Topic 8.4 covers. The Russian, German, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman empires all collapsed in 1917-1918, producing the political map of post-1918 central and eastern Europe and the post-Ottoman Middle East.

The Skill 4.B argument. Topic 8.2's suggested skill is 4.B (Contextualization: explain how a specific historical development or process is situated within a broader historical context). The skill applies in two principal ways. First, students should locate the war within the broader long-arc of late-nineteenth-century European developments: the alliance system of Topic 7.3, the imperial competition tensions of Topic 7.7, and the late-Victorian European confidence framework that the war substantially disrupted. Second, students should locate the war's consequences within the broader twentieth-century framework: the post-1919 Versailles settlement (Topic 8.4), the interwar economic and political instability (Topics 8.5-8.7), and the eventual Second World War (Topic 8.8) all built on the political-economic-cultural transformations of 1914-1918.

Three sources framing the war: a wartime poem, a soldier's memoir, and the abdication of the German Kaiser.

1. (Causation, Skill 4.B) Account for the long- and short-term factors that produced the First World War (KC-4.1.I.A). How did the post-1871 European alliance system, imperial competition, and the Balkan flashpoint combine to produce the war?
2. (Causation) Account for KC-4.1.I.B: how did new technologies confound traditional military strategies and produce trench warfare? Cite specific defensive and offensive technologies and at least one Western Front battle.
3. (Causation) Account for KC-4.1.I.C: how did the wartime experience produce protest, insurrection, and revolution in the belligerent nations? Cite the Russian Revolution, the German revolutions of 1918, and at least one other case.
4. (Causation) Account for KC-4.1.I.D and KC-4.1.I.E: how did the war spread to non-European theaters and reshape the relationship of Europe to the world? Cite the Ottoman fronts, the colonial campaigns, and the United States entry.
5. (Causation) Account for the long-term consequences of the war for early-twentieth-century European civilization. Connect Owen's wartime poem and Remarque's interwar novel to the cultural disillusionment that KC-4.4.I.A identifies.

Draft alignment — pending educator review. AP European History codes correspond to the official College Board Course and Exam Description (Effective Fall 2023, V.1). Statements below are paraphrased in the CountryReports voice; refer to the College Board's published CED for verbatim wording.