Unit 8: WWI and its Aftermath Flashcards
Three Emperor’s League
- Bismarck made an alliance in 1873 and 1881 with the traditionally conservative powers in Austria Hungary and Russia
- failed to work very well (Russian-Austrian rivalry in Balkans
Treaty of San Stefano
-1878; large Bulgarian state created; extended from Danube in N to Aegean Sea in S
-Bulgaria= Russian satellite→ other European powers discuss revision of treaty→
Congress of Berlin
Congress of Berlin
- 1878; dominated by Bismarck
- demolished the Treaty of San Stefano (Russian humiliation)
- new Bulgarian state was reduced and rest of territory returned to Ottoman control
- Serbia, Montenegro, and Romania= independent
- Austria gets Bosnia and Herzegovina
Triple Alliance
Reinsurance Treaty
- Germany (Bismarck) and Russia
- 1887; hope to prevent a French-Russian alliance that would threaten Germany with the possibility of a two-front war
Bosnia and Herzegovina
- under protection of Austria ; 1908= Austria annex them→Serbia MAD (it crushed hopes of creating a Serbian kingdom that includes most of Southern Slavs)
- Austrian thought this would be a threat to the unity of the Austro-Hungarian Empire
- Russians supported Serbs; opposed Austria
- Serbs= war against Austria; Austria threatened to go to war with Russia if they didn’t recognize the annexation→ Russia weakened by the Russo-Japanese War= back down
Balkan Wars
- First Balkan War= 1912= serbia, bulgaria, montenegro, and greece→ Balkan League; defeated ottomans
- Second Balkan War= they were unable to agree on how to divide conquered Ottoman provinces of Macedonia and Albania
London Conference
- arranged by Austria at the end of the 2 Balkan Wars
- Austria blocked serbia’s wishes by making Albania dependent (germans supported)
- serbians viewed them as monsters→ Russians upset too; they didn’t want to back down again
- Austria still convinced that Serbia wa a mortal threat to its empire and must be crushed
- french and russian gov renewed alliance; promised not to back down; britain= closer to france
- 2 camps viewed each other with suspicion
conscription
- regular practice; military draft
Archduke Franz Ferdinand
- Austria
- him and wife Sophia were assassinated on June 28 1914 by Bosnian activist who worked for the Black Hand (Serbian terrorist organization dedicated to creation of pan slavic kingdom)
- Austria didn’t know if Serbian gov was directly involved but they saw it as an opportunity to show Serbia who’s boss
**Schlieffen Plan
- called for minimal troop deployment against Russia while most of the German army would make rapid invasion of western France by way of neutral Belgium
mobilization
-the organization of troops and supplies for service in time for war
**First Battle of the Marne
- after Germans invade Belgium; British and french counterattack led by George Joseph Joffre
trench warfare
-warfare in which the opposing forces attack and counterattack from a relatively permanent system of trenches protected by barbed wire
Battle of Tannenberg/Battle of Masurian Lakes
- Russian defeated by Germany; these established the military reputation of the commanding general, Paul von Hindenburg, and chief of staff, General Erich Ludendorff
- Russians no longer a threat to German territory
Battle at Verdun
-1916; German offensive
Battle of the Somme
-1916; British campaigns
Battle of Champaign
-1917; french attack; all showed senselessness of trench warfare
**Gallipoli
- SW of Constantinople= British forces attempted to open Balkan front by landing forces there
T.E. L
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T.E. Lawrence
- Lawrence of Arabia; inspired Arab princes to revolt against ottoman overlords (1916)
unrestricted submarine warfare
- type of naval warfare in which submarines sink vessels such as freighters and tankers without warning
- ex: Germans threatened to torpedo any ship caught in British isles, which they declared a war zone
Lusitania
-passenger liners were sunk → British ship May 7, 1915
total war
- affected lives of all citizens even if it is remote; warfare in which all of a nation’s resources, including civilians and soldiers, are mobilized for war efforts
nationalization
-he process of converting business or industry from private ownership to gov control/ownership
Easter Rebellion
- Ireland; Easter Sunday; members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood and Citizens Army occupied gov buildings in Dublin
- crushed by British forces and leaders to condemned to death
Rasputin
- Serbian peasant; Nicholas’s wife, Alexandra, thought he was a holy man bc he seemed able to stop the bleeding of her hemophiliac son
- had power behind the throne; interfered in gov affairs
- assassinated December 1916
soviets
-councils of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies; represented more radical interests of the lower classes and largely composed of socialists of various kinds
Mensheviks
- part of Marxist Social Democratic Party; wanted Social Democrats to be a mass electoral socialist party based on a Western model
- willing to cooperate temporarily in the parliamentary democracy while working towards socialist state
Bolsheviks
-part of Marxist Social Democratic Party; under the leadership of V. I. Lenin (Vladimir Ulianov)
V. I. Lenin (Vladimir Ulianov)
- enemy of tsarist Russia; Marxist; helped organized a illegal group known as the Union for the Liberation of the Working Class
- made the Bolsheviks a violent revolution that would destroy the capitalist system
- outbreak of war gave him hope all of Europe was ripe for revolution
April Theses
- issued on April 20; Lenin presented a blueprint for revolutionary action based on his own version of the Marxist theory
- Russia moves to socialism, not bourgeois revolution
- soviets of soldiers, workers, and peasants are ready-made instruments of power; use them to overthrow the provisional gov; “peace, land, and bread”
Army Order No. 1
- issued by Petrograd soviets in March; to all Russian military forces; encourage them to remove their officers and replace them with committees composed of “the elected reps of the lower ranks” of the army
- led to the collapse of all discipline and created military chaos
- when the provisional gov attempted to initiate military offensive in July→ army dissolved; peasant soldiers back out and return home
Alexander Kerensky
- moderate socialist; prime minister in the provisional gov
- released the Bolsheviks from prison to help Petrograd when Kornilov attempted to march on Petrograd and seize power in Sept
Leon Trotsky
- revolutionary; chairman of Petrograd soviet; got Bolsheviks to overthrow gov when Lenin couldn’t
- Bolshevik Revolution
Bolshevik Revolution
- Nov 6= soviets and Bolsheviks took control of Petrograd
- transfer of power to them; new soviet gov→ Council of People’s Commissars; Lenin = head
Alexandra Kollontai
lead in pushing Bolshevik program for women’s rights and social welfare reforms (health care for women and children)
-Zhenotdel
Zhenotdel
- women’s bureau
- within Communist Party;sent men and women to all parts of the Russian Empire to explain the new social order
- help women with divorce and women’s rights
- members were murdered by males who didn’t like this liberation
- reforms were undone
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
- Russia and Germany; gave up eastern Poland, Ukraine, Finland, and Baltic Provinces
- not real peace
Russian Civil War
- 1918-1921
- Red Army defends the Bolsheviks gov against the Whites (anti-Bolsheviks) armies
war communism
- Lenin’s policy of nationalizing industrial and other facilities and requisitioning the peasants’ produce during the Russian civil war
Red Terror
- instituted by the Cheka; aimed at the destruction of all opponents of the new regime
- the element of fear in the Bolshevik regime
