Based on the following slides, identify the impact (consequences) of World War I on the disillusioned population that emerged after the war.

World War I

Causes

imperialism

nationalism

arms race

alliance system

Consequences

Technology / Warfare

Colonies

Germany and the Stab in the Back Legend [Dolchstosslegend]

A popular, right-wing political legend of post–First World War Germany, which remained current until the eve of the Second World War.

In attributing Imperial German loss of the war to the public’s failure in answering their “patriotic calling”, and to war effort-sabotage of the socialists, the Bolsheviks, and the Jews, it exonerated the military of their defeat.

Historically, the legend proved important to the political ascension of Adolf Hitler; as the Nazi Party grew, it maintained an original, true-believer base, embittered Great War veterans who believed the patriotic legend and its mythic interpretation of Germany’s recent military history.

The legend ideologically encapsulates the justifications of Nazi Germany’s persecution and murder of Jews, communists, socialists and intellectuals, bringing into line every dissident.

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According to Professor Robert Wohl of UC Berkely, "As horrible as the war was, it was an experience that many people found positive, productive and worthwhile… that's something that's generally not understood about the WW1.”

What about the soldiers?

"A lot of the men who fought in that war came out of it very attached to their experience of the war, thinking that this was the best time of their lives. They had experienced comradeship with other men that they had never even thought possible before, and wondering then what the post-war world was going to be like. And for many of these men, the road back was just very difficult. There was no road back for some of them. Many of them never succeeded in reintegrating themselves into civilian life.”

"They expected political change. They expected greater equality to come out of the war experience because of the importance of comradeship that people experienced at the Front.”

Otto Dix, Schädel (Skull), 1924, etching

When the First World War erupted, Dix enthusiastically volunteered for the German Army. He served in the field artillery and in an machine-gun unit on both the Western and Eastern fronts.

He earned the Iron Cross (second class) and In August of that year he was wounded in the neck. He was discharged of service in December 1918.

Otto Dix, Sturmtruppe geht unter Gas [Stormtroops advancing under gas], 1924, etching

Dix was profoundly affected by the sights of the war, and would later describe a recurring nightmare in which he crawled through destroyed houses.

He represented his traumatic experiences in many subsequent works, including a portfolio of fifty etchings called Der Krieg, published in 1924.

Those Who Have Lost Their Names

Genocide:the systematic murder of an entire national, ethnic, or religious group.

The Armenian Genocide of 1915-1916 was the first genocide of the 20th century and one of the largest in world history.

The genocide resulted in the deaths of an estimated 600,000 to 1.5 million Armenians and the deportation of the remainder of the estimated 1.75 million to 2 million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire.

Why?The leaders of the Young Turk government were xenophobic nationalists who believed that multinationalism had exploited and weakened the Ottoman Empire. 

The Young Turk leadership believed in the superiority of German militarism, prompting them to ally with Germany against France and Russia during World War I.

The Ottomans allied in exchange for help in the creation of their proposed Turkish homeland that would unite the Turkish Ottomans with the Turkic-speaking people of Russia and central Asia.

Why?In response to the Armenian pleas for neutrality in World War I, Turkish officials arrested Armenian social and political leaders on April 24, 1915, deporting them to Anatolia and murdering them. 

In early May, the Young Turk leaders decided to remove Armenians living on the eastern frontier of Anatolia (present-day Turkey), fearing that they would help the Russians in the event of an invasion. Armenian men were drafted into the military, then murdered or assigned to a labor battalion and worked to death.

Women, children, and the elderly were removed from their homes and assigned to relocation camps in the deserts of Syria and Mesopotamia. The Armenians were cooperative in the removal, believing that it was for their protection from the imminent war with Russia in eastern Anatolia. Only after the deportation had begun was its true intention evident. 

A Lasting Impact!The failure of the Allies to intervene in the Ottoman Empire during or after the Armenian Genocide led Adolf Hitler to believe that the West would tolerate a holocaust of the Jews, as he reportedly stated, "Who, after all, remembers the annihilation of the Armenians?"

The post-Ottoman Turkish government has never punished the perpetrators or acknowledged the genocidal intention of the Armenian massacres of 1915-1916, and only recently has the international community formally acknowledged the genocide. The "forgotten genocide" of 1915-1916 proved to be the first in a series of 20th -century genocides that included Jews, Cambodians, Africans, Bosnians, and most recently Albanians.

Pandemic!

The violence of World War I caused young people to challenge Victorian ideas and traditional values.

The influenza epidemic of 1918-1919 which started among soldiers heading for the front caused the largest number of deaths in so short of time in the history of the world. Some twenty million people died.

F. Scott-Fitzgerald portrays the 1920’s as an era of decayed social and moral values, evidenced in its overarching cynicism, greed, and empty pursuit of pleasure.

The reckless jubilance that led to decadent parties and wild jazz music—epitomized in The Great Gatsby by the opulent parties that Gatsby throws every Saturday night—resulted ultimately in the corruption of the American dream, as the unrestrained desire for money and pleasure surpassed more noble goals.

When World War I ended in 1918, the generation of young Americans who had fought the war became intensely disillusioned, as the brutal carnage that they had just faced made the Victorian social morality of early-twentieth-century America seem like stuffy, empty hypocrisy.