Chapter 25

The twentieth century began not in 1900 but with the outbreak of World War I in 1914. The Great War (as it was called until World War II came in 1939) ended the military alliances and social patterns of the old century and ushered in the new one.

In the summer of 1914, Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary died at the hands of an assassin in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo. Within six weeks the major nations of Europe were at war with each other in accordance with their myriad treaties, many of them until that time kept secret. For over a quarter of a century nationalistic competition had combined with an equally dangerous growth in military weaponry all across the continent to make Europe a shed packed with kegs of powder, waiting to burst into flame. The assassination was the spark needed for ignition.

Since Germany had no trouble defeating Russian armies, it became evident early in the conflict that the war would be won or lost on the Western front, between Germany and the Allies, Britain and France. Yet the war dragged on for four long years, much of it fought from trenches, as morale on both sides dropped lower and lower. Unrest spread through both camps and at home, where the belligerents had to keep their civilian populations in line with unusually harsh measures. In Russia the government actually lost control. Out of the chaos that followed the March Revolution against the tsarist regime, Lenin’s Bolshevik Party emerged triumphant. Russia was to be a Communist state for the next seventy years.

When the war eventually ended, the two losers succumbed to the revolutions that had threatened them during the war; and both Germany and Austria shed their monarchies to become republics. The victors met in Paris to make the peace but themselves could not agree on whether to establish a new and just world order or punish the Germans. Eventually they settled for a compromise that virtually assured there would be another world war in the near future.