AFTERMATH AND FINAL THOUGHTS As the centenary commemorations of the First World War draw to an end, we inevitably begin to consider its impact and longer-term legacy. Historians have pondered over that impact, the historian David Reynolds describing it as ‘The Long Shadow’ while the title of Robert Gerwarth’s recent book is Why the First World War failed to end. If the Armistice of 11 November 1918 brought an end to conflict in those parts of the world where the Allied and Associated Powers had engaged with Germany and her allies, wars continued to rage across much of the world, notably in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Russia, and millions continued to die from conflict, dislocation, genocide and sheer starvation. Twenty years later, another world war broke out which begs the question why was the First World War not ‘the war to end all wars’ which had been the passionate hope of so many people, especially the bereaved and the suffering? In part, the answer lies in the impact of the war on the old structures of Europe which, for better or worse and with few exceptions, had ensured general stability over the previous century. Four major Empires, Hohenzollern, Habsburg, Romanov and Ottoman, all collapsed and led to ferocious struggles as minority nations and groups within these territories sought self-determination, encouraged by world leaders such as US President Woodrow Wilson. In the process and in the absence of overarching authority, old scores were settled, Christian against Muslim, Turk against Greek, gentile against Jew. Elsewhere, radical movements took their cue from the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917 and sought to overturn established authority and systems which, in turn, prompted anti-communist violence.
New states emerged and others were revitalised but while the new structures were often ostensibly democratic, they were composed of competing ethnic interests and their inherent fragility was exposed when authoritarian challenges arose in the 1930s both through the revival of Germany and the emergence of a new Russian empire, the Soviet Union. The deliberations at Versailles throughout the first half of 1919 did not, in the end, create the basis for an enduring peace because the terms of the treaty signed on June 28 satisfied no one in the longer term, least of all Germany, which felt humiliated both by their exclusion from the deliberations and the developing myth that they had never been defeated but betrayed from within. Resentment undermined the new democracy in Germany and laid the foundations for the rise of the Nazis. Meanwhile, the failure of the US Senate to ratify the Versailles Treaty, despite the prominent role of their own President, or to join the new League of Nations meant that the new ‘world order’ was doomed to failure. Within Britain, and not least in Wales, the war also caused significant economic dislocation which had consequences long after the war ended. There had been a boom in wages and living standards during the war, but this ended soon after and the story of the 1920s was one of economic decline, wage reductions and serious industrial unrest. At the same time, the decision in Britain to fund the war through borrowing rather than taxation had major consequences on the balance of economic power which shifted to the wartime banker of Europe, the United States. However, the fever of speculation within the US evaporated in the dramatic Wall Street crash in 1929 and this had reverberations across the world, notably in Europe, leading to the Great Depression.
Left: Salle de la Reformation, the official opening of the League of Nations in Geneve. Public domain. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:No-nb_bldsa_5c006.jpg
CYMRU’N COFIO WALES REMEMBERS 1914−1918 |
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