From August 1914 to November 1918, an unprecedented catastrophe gripped the world that continues to reverberate into our own time. World War I was touched off by a terrorist act in Bosnia and all too quickly expanded far beyond the expectations of those involved to become the first "total war." It was the first conflict in which entire societies mobilized to wage unrestrained war, investing all their wealth, industries, institutions, and the lives of their citizens to win victory at any price.
Overview
Syllabus
- By This Professor
- 01: The Century's Initial Catastrophe
- 02: Europe in 1914
- 03: Towards Crisis in Politics and Culture
- 04: Causes of the War and the July Crisis, 1914
- 05: The August Madness
- 06: The Failed Gambles - War Plans Break Down
- 07: The Western Front Experience
- 08: Life and Death in the Trenches
- 09: The Great Battles of Attrition
- 10: The Eastern Front Experience
- 11: The Southern Fronts
- 12: War Aims and Occupations
- 13: Soldiers as Victims
- 14: Storm Troopers and Future Dictators
- 15: The Total War of Technology
- 16: Air War
- 17: War at Sea
- 18: The Global Reach of the War
- 19: The War State
- 20: Propaganda War
- 21: Endurance and Stress on the Home Front
- 22: Dissent and Its Limits
- 23: Remobilization in 1916 - 1917
- 24: Armenian Massacres - Tipping into Genocide
- 25: Strains of War - Socialists and Nationalists
- 26: Russian Revolutions
- 27: America’s Entry into the War
- 28: America at War - Over There and Over Here
- 29: 1918 - The German Empire’s Last Gamble
- 30: The War's End - Emotions of the Armistice
- 31: Toppled Thrones - The Collapse of Empires
- 32: The Versailles Treaty and Paris Settlement
- 33: Aftershocks - Reds, Whites, and Nationalists
- 34: Monuments, Memory, and Myths
- 35: The Rise of the Mass Dictatorships
- 36: Legacies of the Great War
Taught by
Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius
