🏛️ Year 9 History

Causes of World War One

MAIN Causes

• Militarism: European powers were building up massive armies and navies. Germany's army was the largest in Europe; Britain and Germany were in a naval arms race (Dreadnought battleships). Military culture glorified war.
• Alliances: Europe was divided into two armed camps. Triple Alliance: Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy. Triple Entente: France, Russia, Britain. These alliances meant a local conflict could drag in the whole continent.
• Imperialism: European powers competed for colonies and global influence. Rivalries over Morocco (Moroccan Crises 1905, 1911) caused international tension between France and Germany.
• Nationalism: pride in one's nation and desire for self-determination. Pan-Slavism in the Balkans (Serbian nationalism) threatened the multi-ethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire. German and French nationalism created mutual hostility.

The Trigger: Assassination of Franz Ferdinand

• 28 June 1914: Archduke Franz Ferdinand (heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne) was assassinated in Sarajevo, Bosnia, by Gavrilo Princip — a Bosnian Serb nationalist with links to the Black Hand secret society
• Austria-Hungary blamed Serbia and issued an ultimatum with humiliating demands
• Serbia accepted most demands but not all → Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia (28 July)
• The alliance system activated: Russia mobilised to support Serbia → Germany declared war on Russia → Germany declared war on France → Germany invaded Belgium (Schlieffen Plan) → Britain declared war on Germany (4 August 1914)

Long-term vs Short-term Causes

• Long-term (underlying): MAIN factors building over decades
• Short-term (trigger): the assassination, the July Crisis, mobilisation decisions
• Debate: who was most to blame? Germany (Fischer Thesis — deliberately sought war for expansionism); Austria-Hungary (willing to risk war over Serbia); the alliance system and mobilisation timetables removed the ability to step back

Trench Warfare

The Western Front

• Germany's Schlieffen Plan (knock out France quickly via Belgium, then turn east to Russia) failed — German advance halted at the Marne (September 1914)
• Both sides "raced to the sea" trying to outflank each other — resulting in a continuous line of trenches from the English Channel to Switzerland
• Stalemate: neither side could advance. The trenches stretched 700 km.

Life in the Trenches

• Front-line trenches: zigzag pattern (to limit blast and enfilading fire), fire step, sandbags, duckboards, dugouts
• Conditions: waterlogged (trench foot — fungal infection from standing in water), rats (fed on corpses), lice, disease (dysentery), extreme cold in winter, constant noise
• Daily routine: "stand to" at dawn (most likely attack time), work at night (repairing wire, digging), inspections, boredom between attacks
• No Man's Land: the ground between opposing trenches — strewn with barbed wire, shell craters, and unburied bodies. Could be just 30m to hundreds of metres wide.

Major Battles

• Battle of the Somme (1916): British commander Haig ordered a massive offensive to relieve pressure on France at Verdun. 1 July 1916 — the worst day in British military history: 57,470 British casualties (19,240 dead) in one day. Total casualties over the campaign: 1 million+. Tanks were used for the first time.
• Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele, 1917): fought in thick mud; objective: the Belgian port of Ostend. 300,000+ British casualties; gained just 8km of ground.
• Battle of Verdun (1916): Germany intended to "bleed France white." 700,000 casualties over 10 months. France held.

New Technology

• Machine guns: made frontal assaults across No Man's Land suicidal
• Artillery (heavy guns): caused 60% of casualties; also destroyed the landscape (shell shock/PTSD)
• Poison gas: first used by Germany at Second Ypres (1915). Chlorine, phosgene, mustard gas. Led to gas masks.
• Tanks: introduced by Britain at the Somme (1916); by 1918, used in mass — helped break the stalemate
• Aircraft: reconnaissance, then fighter "dogfights", then strategic bombing

The Russian Revolution

Background: Why Russia Was Unstable

• Tsar Nicholas II: autocratic ruler who refused meaningful political reform. Dominated by his wife Alexandra and the mystic Rasputin.
• Russia was largely agricultural, industrialising late, with a vast peasant population in poverty
• 1905 Revolution: "Bloody Sunday" — troops fired on peaceful protesters outside the Winter Palace. 200+ killed. Led to limited reforms (the October Manifesto, the Duma).
• WWI was catastrophic for Russia: 1.8 million soldiers killed, military failures, food shortages, the Tsar personally taking command and being blamed for defeats

The February Revolution (1917)

• Spontaneous revolution in Petrograd (St Petersburg) — bread riots, strikes, soldiers refusing to fire on crowds
• Nicholas II abdicated (March 1917). A Provisional Government was formed.
• The Provisional Government made a fatal mistake: continued the war. Food and fuel shortages continued.
• Soviets (councils of workers, soldiers, and sailors) shared power — Dual Power. The Petrograd Soviet issued Order Number 1, giving soldiers the right to disobey officers.

The Bolshevik Revolution (October 1917)

• Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov): Bolshevik leader; returned from exile in the "sealed train" provided by Germany (who wanted Russia out of the war)
• Lenin's April Theses: "Peace, Land, Bread" and "All Power to the Soviets" — directly targeting mass discontent
• October (November in new calendar) 1917: the Red Guards (Bolshevik military force led by Trotsky) seized key locations in Petrograd and stormed the Winter Palace. The Provisional Government fell overnight with almost no resistance.
• Brest-Litovsk (1918): Bolsheviks signed a humiliating peace treaty with Germany, giving up huge territories — but ending Russia's involvement in WWI

The Russian Civil War (1918–1921)

• Reds (Bolsheviks) vs Whites (anti-Bolshevik forces — monarchists, liberals, foreign interventionists)
• Reds won because: disciplined Red Army under Trotsky, Whites lacked a unified leadership and goal, foreign intervention (British, French, American) was limited and unpopular, the Reds controlled the main population centres
• The Tsar and his family were executed in July 1918 to prevent them becoming a rallying point for the Whites

The Rise of Dictators

Why Democracy Failed in Europe

• The aftermath of WWI: economic devastation, humiliation of defeat (Germany — the "stab in the back" myth), and the punitive Treaty of Versailles (1919) created instability and resentment
• The Great Depression (1929): global economic collapse led to mass unemployment — people turned to radical solutions
• Weak democratic institutions in many countries had no tradition of compromise

Mussolini and Italian Fascism

• Italy felt "cheated" at Versailles despite being on the winning side. Economic crisis, strikes, and fear of communism.
• Benito Mussolini founded the Fascist Party (1919). "Blackshirts" used violence against socialist opponents.
• March on Rome (1922): Mussolini demanded power; King Victor Emmanuel III appointed him Prime Minister to avoid civil war
• Became Il Duce ("the leader"): banned other parties, controlled the press, used secret police (OVRA). Italy became a totalitarian state by 1926.

Hitler and Nazi Germany

• Germany's Weimar Republic was blamed for the Treaty of Versailles ("November criminals"), and was destabilised by hyperinflation (1923) and then the Great Depression
• Adolf Hitler: leader of the Nazi Party (NSDAP). Imprisoned after the failed Munich Beer Hall Putsch (1923); wrote Mein Kampf in prison, setting out his ideology: extreme nationalism, antisemitism, Lebensraum (living space in the east).
• Nazis exploited the Depression: share of the vote rose from 2.6% (1928) to 37.4% (July 1932)
• Hitler appointed Chancellor (30 January 1933). Then: Reichstag Fire (27 February) used to justify emergency powers, Enabling Act (March 1933) gave Hitler power to rule by decree — democracy legally abolished.
• Became Führer ("leader") in 1934 after President Hindenburg died

World War Two

Road to War

• Hitler's foreign policy aimed to reverse Versailles and gain Lebensraum. Steps: remilitarisation of the Rhineland (1936), union with Austria (Anschluss, 1938), Sudeten crisis → Munich Agreement (September 1938: Britain and France gave Hitler the Sudetenland — appeasement)
• Appeasement: Chamberlain's policy of giving Hitler concessions to avoid war. Defended as buying time to rearm; criticised for emboldening Hitler.
• Invasion of Czechoslovakia (March 1939) broke the Munich Agreement. Britain and France guaranteed Polish independence.
• Germany invaded Poland (1 September 1939). Britain and France declared war on Germany (3 September 1939).

Key Events

• Fall of France (June 1940): Germany swept through France in 6 weeks. Dunkirk: 338,000 Allied troops evacuated across the Channel by a flotilla of naval and civilian vessels.
• Battle of Britain (summer 1940): Germany attempted to destroy the RAF before invasion. RAF Fighter Command (Spitfires and Hurricanes) defeated the Luftwaffe. Churchill: "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."
• Operation Barbarossa (June 1941): Germany invaded the Soviet Union — the largest military operation in history. Initially spectacular German advances; eventually bogged down, especially at Stalingrad (1942–43), which became the turning point on the Eastern Front.
• Pearl Harbor (December 1941): Japan attacked the US Pacific Fleet → USA entered the war
• D-Day (6 June 1944): Allied landings in Normandy, France — the largest seaborne invasion in history. Liberation of Western Europe followed.
• VE Day (8 May 1945): Germany surrendered. VJ Day (15 August 1945): Japan surrendered after atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The Holocaust

Persecution Escalates

• 1933–1938: legal discrimination. Nuremberg Laws (1935): Jews stripped of German citizenship; marriage between Jews and non-Jews banned. Businesses boycotted. Jews forced out of professions.
• Kristallnacht ("Night of Broken Glass", November 1938): coordinated pogrom — Jewish synagogues, businesses, and homes attacked throughout Germany. 91 Jews killed; 30,000 arrested and sent to concentration camps.
• 1939–1941: after the invasion of Poland, Jews were forced into overcrowded ghettos (Warsaw Ghetto held 400,000 people) under appalling conditions. Mass shootings by Einsatzgruppen mobile killing units.

The "Final Solution"

• Wannsee Conference (January 1942): senior Nazi officials coordinated the systematic murder of all European Jews — the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question"
• Extermination camps: built in occupied Poland — Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek. Jews transported by train from across occupied Europe.
• Auschwitz-Birkenau: the largest; approximately 1.1 million people murdered there, the majority Jews. Gas chambers and crematoria used for industrial-scale mass murder.
• Approximately 6 million Jews murdered — two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. Also targeted: Roma, disabled people, Soviet POWs, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, political opponents.

Why Does It Matter?

• The Holocaust was the product of ideological racism, state bureaucracy, modern technology, and ordinary people's willingness to participate
• Hannah Arendt's "banality of evil": many perpetrators were not sadists but bureaucrats following orders
• Nuremberg Trials (1945–46): Nazi leaders tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity — establishing international law and precedent
• The Holocaust underpins: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the Genocide Convention, the creation of Israel, Holocaust Memorial Day (27 January — liberation of Auschwitz)