World War Civ 30: Allied Disasters 1915

Germans use poison gas on the battlefield at Ypres, British lose 60,000 and Germans 40,000. French attack at Artois with casualties of 100,000 and German 75,000. Russians lose 2 million casualties fighting Germany on the Eastern front. British defeated at Loos, lose 50,000 and Germany 20,000. French offensive in Champagne results in 190,000 casualties and the German line unbroken. Britain makes a move against the Turks in Gallipoli / Dardanelles, and another disastrous move at Kut al-Amara in Iraq. A year of immense disasters with lasting consequences. 

World War Civ 27: Western front 1914 from Belgium to the Marne

Germany brings the big guns to Belgium, sacks Louvain and follows the doctrine of terrorizing civilians. The British Expeditionary Force whose commander’s name is French, joins France for some battles. A war of maneuver ends with a non-breakthrough on the Marne and the race to the coast. 1914 ends with no winner, and no one’s home by Christmas after all.

WWCiv 26: How World War One Started

A horrible event shocks the world. The affected power, enraged, threatens war and gives an ultimatum. Looking around for allies, it’s given a “blank cheque” by its powerful patron – one of the great powers of the world. With that patron’s guarantee, the march to war starts. But the smaller power, about to be invaded, also has powerful allies, who mobilize their forces in turn. Once the mobilization and counter-mobilization begins, the march to war seems irreversible. Then, the power who wrote the blank cheque decides to strike first – pre-emptively, to try to take out one of its enemies before facing the others. We’re talking about 1914, and how WW1 started.

World War Civ 24: Why socialists failed to stop the war

Leading up to 1914 socialist movements all over Europe, notably in France and Germany, had become so strong that they were in the very halls of power. But when faced with the onset of the Great War, the established socialists blinked, unwilling to risk their heard-earned position and possibly be arrested and have their parties driven underground again. This is precisely what they should have done, argued Lenin in 1915. We discuss this possible missed opportunity – why the socialists failed to stop the war before it started.

World War Civ 23: The Rise and Fall of the Gold Standard, 1873-1914

Was the collapse of the international gold standard – established in 1873 – in 1914, a sure sign that war was coming? Was gold a “peaceful metal”, as Michael Hudson has argued? Does the history of finance and money, tied up with states and war, provide a theory of everything? We go way back to Greek and Roman times and forward all the way to 1914, drawing insights from modern monetary theory (MMT), Indian Political Economy (IPE), advocates of debt-free money creation (notably Stephen Zarlenga), to follow the rise and fall of the gold standard and of bimetallism. It’s a weird world mostly ignored by mainstream economics. But not by Civilizations!

World War Civ 22: Irish Home Rule and Britain’s near-civil war before 1914

How close did Britain come to a civil war over the issue of Irish Home Rule? We talk about the long parliamentary road led by Parnell, the settler trick culminating in the seditious maneuvers in Ulster, and the final passage of the Home Rule Bill, rendered inoperative by World War I. This issue will be back before WWI is over, though – but the Easter Rising and 1916 is for a future episode.

World War Civ 21: Balkan Wars 1912-1913

In the First Balkan War, Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, and Montenegro attacked the moribund Turkey to take its remaining territories and get Turkey out of Europe. In the Second Balkan War, they fought one another over those same territories. The Balkan Republics model themselves after Italy and Germany and hope to unify their nations at the expense first of Turkey, then of one another. The Scramble for the Ottoman Empire cannot but bring colonial-style wars into Europe. The shocking atrocities, the Carnegie Commission, the proliferation of “National Questions”. One of our main guides to all this? A Russian journalist writing for a Ukrainian newspaper who believes only a Federation of the Balkans can resolve these problems. His name is Leon Trotsky…