QUESTIONS: WAR WITHOUT END

People had a variety of feelings, thoughts and attitudes in response to the Great War, and they had different ways of coping with the war and its aftermath after the cease-fire. Even after the war, people continued to be haunted by it and had to adjust to its impact on their lives. This video weaves together two major themes: The Great War did not end with the cease-fire and peace treaty, and survivors and historians of this war continue to try understand all the killing, violence, destruction and horror.

These questions will help focus your attention during the video. Answering them will help you understand this era and what the people thought, felt and did.

1. Why was the Great War fought? Give at least five reasons, and identify the individuals and groups that proposed or accepted each of these reasons.

2. What steps did President Woodrow Wilson take to persuade the U.S. Senate to ratify the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations? Why did he think this was so important?

3. Why do some historians claim that President Wilson was himself a "victim of the Great War"? Give at least two reasons.

4. What are some of the memories that the men who fought in the front lines of this war might have had about their experiences? about those who fought alongside them? about those who were far removed from the battlefield?

5. How did people seek to remember the Great War and those who were casualties of the war? Give at least five activities.

6. Why did people visit the grave sites and cemeteries after the war? Give at least three reasons.

7. Who were the "men with broken faces"? Why were they often referred to as "gargoyles"?

8. What meanings have different people given to the killing, horror and destruction of the Great War?

9. How and why did many people carry their Great War experiences to the grave?

10. What characteristics of the art that followed the war reflected the artists' war experiences?

11. Reflecting on what you know about the experiences of the men on the battlefield and of the civilians who became military targets, how do you feel about the Great War?

12. How did the poetry and writings of such people as Siegfried Sassoon reflect the thoughts, feelings and attitudes of many of the men who fought on the front lines of the Great War?

13. Why do people today know and care so little about the Great War and its impact on postwar life?

14. Given what you know about the Great War and its effects, why should people today know and care more about the war?

Context and Overview of the Great War: WAR WITHOUT END

A war rarely ends with the official cease-fire and peace treaty. While these events may end the actual fighting, the feelings, thoughts and attitudes of participants in the war generally remain. Participation in a war alters a person's perspective and involves experiences and feelings that cannot easily be forgotten with a truce. Tens of millions of people--both civilians and military personnel--in dozens of nations and colonies around the world carried their personal war experiences and losses to their graves.

The experiences and losses on the battlefields of the Great War were unlike those encountered in any previous war. No previous war came close to the totality of this war, affecting so many nations and people. No previous war involved so many casualties among both military personnel and civilians.

The memories and experiences of the war did not go away; the feelings and attitudes associated with the war did not go away. For example, the anti-Semitic attitudes that arose in the last days of the war among many Germans intensified after the armistice, leading to the horrors of World War II, just 15 years later.

The Great War changed the face of the world, shaping many of the characteristics of the 20th century. More than any other single event, the war ensured that machines would dominate human activity and that people would design, build and use machines to accomplish their goals. During this war, people realized that the technology required to build and use machines that improved human living conditions could quickly and purposefully be diverted to build machines of unparalleled brutality and destruction. People now had machines capable of causing massive destruction, terror and death.

People in the combatant nations realized that the world of 1918 was very different from the world before 1914. New leaders, new ideas, new nations, new alliances and new social movements had emerged, as had new movements in art and literature. Historian Jay Winter claims that the Great War was "the most important and far-reaching political and military event of the century ... [and] the most important imaginative event." But the people also knew that "something terrible, something overwhelming, something irreversible had happened."

After the Great War, violence, terror and brutality by one group against another were accepted, and even expected, in time of war. The attitudes that permitted these acts during the war were kept alive. Similar acts are now commonly practiced, even outside the confines of war, and many groups justify such means to attain their goals.

After the war, tens of millions of people--both in and out of the military--in every combatant nation sought to cope with the war and its aftermath. Millions tried to forget the war, while millions of others were determined to remember the war and built monuments, cemeteries, and other memorials to those who fought and died. Remembrance of individuals was often difficult, because over half of the nine million soldiers who died did not have an identifiable grave site. In some nations, spiritualism became a popular way to communicate with the dead and to complete the ritual of final separation, a function that funerals serve in peacetime.

People remembered the war in different ways, and what they remembered also varied. While some remembered their loved ones, others--such as Adolf Hitler--remembered that the German nation had been betrayed. Hitler and other Germans could not rest until the betrayers were punished. In one sense, the Great War would not end until this punishment had been delivered. Thus, the seeds of World War II were sown in the latter part of the Great War and in the peace treaty that followed.

Not all the physical reminders of the Great War were of marble, granite and wood. There were physical deformities caused by the weapons of the battlefields. Among the worst cases were the "men with broken faces," men so badly disfigured that they were referred to as "gargoyles." Poems, stories and paintings were other means of remembrance. Writers and artists who had fought in the trenches used their creative talents to remind the world of what it was like and to encourage people not to forget the horrors of the war.

Long after the war, people continued seeking acceptable reasons or justifications for the war and its devastation. Millions of people went to the grave burdened by the unanswered question, "What did it all mean?" Even today, historians, descendants of those who lived during the Great War and the few remaining survivors disagree about what and who caused the war and why it was fought.

Many survivors of the Great War feared that it was being forgotten too quickly. They feared that no one who had not experienced it firsthand would remember the war, its horrors and those who suffered and died during it.

QUESTIONS

1. What do historians mean when they say that the Great War "normalized collective violence"?

2. What impact did the Great War have on life in the rest of the 20th century?

3. How is it true that a war does not end with a cease-fire and treaty? Give at least three reasons.

4. How do a cease-fire and treaty end a war?

5. Why do people build and visit memorials and cemeteries after a war?

6. Poems and stories can help keep people's memories of certain events alive. Which would make the greater impression on people's memories, poems or stories? Explain your answer.

7. Why would those who fought in this war want to forget their experiences and losses? Why would they want to remember their experiences and losses?

8. Imagine that you had fought in the battlefields of this war. Would you want to remember or forget your battlefield experiences? Explain your answer.

9. The survivors of the Great War were concerned that people would forget the war and those who died during it. Were their concerns justified?

10. Imagine that you have decided that the Great War and the experiences of those who lived during it are not important to study or remember. How do you justify your decision to forget these things?

STUDENT RESOURCE 8-D

Results of the Great War and the Treaty of Versailles

The Great War had many consequences. Those that follow should be considered among the most important. Supplement this list with other results, effects or consequences found in other resources.

• The U.S. became one of the economic leaders of the world and for the first time challenged Europe as a major force in international trade and finances.

• People in colonies of European countries had a strong taste of nationalism and began to desire independence.

• Four great empires of Europe and the Middle East perished forever.

• One empire, Russia, replaced an autocracy with a totalitarian leadership that committed acts of terror, suppression and violence over the next 70 years.

• The European balance of power collapsed such that forces outside the European nations were needed to help one set of nations defeat the other.

• The first Marxist seizure of power took place (in Russia), creating circumstances that allowed the Bolsheviks to solidify their power in spite of widespread opposition in Russia itself.

• Numerous ethnic groups in Eastern Europe and the Middle East that had demanded--and had more or less been promised--the right of nationalistic self-determination were prevented from determining their own government and territories.

• New nations were established within which particular ethnic groups had the authority to oppress other groups.

• New nations were established with national boundaries and national groupings of peoples that ran counter to historical patterns, contributing to political, social and economic instability within and among those nations.

• Conditions were established that, within a few short years, enabled Germany to achieve an economic and military position stronger than its neighbors.

• The League of Nations was established with very little support from the major European powers and none from the U.S.; thus, no organization had the power and authority to resolve international disputes and issues.

• The U.S. became a world power even if it did not want to be involved in world politics.

• The U.S. became the leading naval power in the world, even though it immediately withdrew most of its military vessels from the world seas.

• Throughout Europe--except in Great Britain--the roles, power and public respect for the aristocracy diminished significantly, as the people rejected the notion that a natural, inherited ruling class, should run the government.

 

QUESTIONS

1. What is "self-determination"? What does the right of self-determination allow a group to do?

2. How did the Great War encourage the desire for independence among the people in the European colonies in Africa, the Middle East and the Far East?

3. Of the results listed above, which ones have contributed to a long-lasting peace among the nations of Europe? Which ones have worked against a long-lasting peace?

4. A result not listed above is that the world lost the contributions of all those who died during the war. How significant is this result?

5. Which of the above results do historians consider to be the most important? Why?

6. One significant result of every war is that it creates emotional problems for those who live through it. Describe the emotional consequences of the Great War for the men who fought on the battlefields, for the civilians who were direct victims of the war, and for those who lost a loved one in the war.

Noteworthy Quotes: WAR WITHOUT END

War involves people, not just nations. These quotes will help you understand the thoughts and feelings of some of the people involved in the Great War. After watching the video, you should be able to interpret each quotation in the context of the person speaking and the situation in which the statement was made. (Quotes marked with an asterisk are from the video.)

"Boys, I told you before you went across the seas that this was a war against wars. But I am obligated to come to you in mortification and shame and say: 'You are betrayed. You fought for something that you did not get.'"
President Woodrow Wilson, 1919*
Statement in reaction to the U.S. Senate's impending defeat of the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations

"His mouth is completely distorted by an ugly scar which descends below his chin. All that is left of his nose are two enormous nostrils, two black holes which trap our gaze, and make us wonder for what this man has suffered?... All that is left of his face are his eyes, covered by a veil."
Henriette Remi, 1918
French nurse describing a man with no face

"Hideous is the only word for these smashed faces...To talk to a lad who, six months ago, was probably a wholesome and pleasing specimen of English youth, and is now a gargoyle ...it is ... an ordeal."
Ward Muir*
A British orderly

"You are being laughed at; the British have let you down."
French diplomat's comment to T.E. Lawrence during the Paris Peace Conference, 1919

"And then there was the jump from this calm, innocent, measured way of living to blood and tears, to mass insanity and to the savagery of daily, hourly, legalized, rewarded slaughter."
Lara, speaking of the hardships of living during the Bolshevik Revolution
and the Russian Civil War in Dr. Zhivago
by Boris Pasternak, 1957

"The Great War of 1914 - 1918 lies like a band of scorched earth dividing that time from ours. In wiping out so many lives which would have been operative in the years that followed, in destroying beliefs, changing ideas, and leaving incurable wounds of disillusion, it created a physical as well as a psychological gulf between two epochs."
American historian Barbara Tuchman

"The man who endured the war at its worst was everlastingly differentiated from everyone, except his fellow soldiers."
Siegfried Sassoon, in Memoirs of an Infantry Soldier*

"People told us the war was over. That was a laugh. We ourselves are the war: Its flame burns strongly in us. It envelops our whole being and fascinates us with the enticing urge to destroy. We obeyed ... and marched onto the battlefields of the postwar world just as we had gone into battle on the western front."
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinz, 1919

"The people were already beginning to forget what unspeakable suffering the war had brought with it."
Otto Dix*
German artist

"And so it had all been in vain...In vain, all the sacrifices and privations; in vain, the hunger and thirst of months which were often endless; in vain, the deaths of two millions [of Germans] who died."
Adolf Hitler, November 1918*
Shortly after hearing the news of the armistice