Chapter
Investigate how World War I heightened divisions between “we” and “they” among people and nations and left behind fertile ground for Nazi Germany in the following decades.
Get everything you need including content from this page.
Get everything you need including content from this page.
In this Chapter
The ways societies define “we” and “they” can help to precipitate war. In turn, the violence and chaos of war can sharpen the differences people perceive between their nation and others, as well as between different groups within their own nation. This chapter focuses on how World War I shaped and was shaped …
Chapter
Investigate how World War I heightened divisions between “we” and “they” among people and nations and left behind fertile ground for Nazi Germany in the following decades.
Get everything you need including content from this page.
Get everything you need including content from this page.
In this Chapter
The ways societies define “we” and “they” can help to precipitate war. In turn, the violence and chaos of war can sharpen the differences people perceive between their nation and others, as well as between different groups within their own nation. This chapter focuses on how World War I shaped and was shaped by ideas of “we” and “they,” and it highlights aspects of the war that influenced the history of Nazi Germany in the following decades.
Essential Questions
- How did World War I change the balance of power in Europe? How did it affect people’s attitudes toward other nations as well as their own? How did it affect people’s attitudes toward war?
- How did World War I affect the way that people perceived the value of human life?
- What happens to the way a society defines “we” and “they” in the midst of the chaos and violence caused by war?
The world war that began in 1914 in Europe would eventually involve 30 nations and 65 million soldiers. It was a war with incredible loss of human life on every battlefront and huge damage to the land wherever fighting occurred; it was marked by genocide, civil wars, famines, and revolutions. World War I was a total war, affecting thousands of civilians even in countries where no actual fighting took place. By its end, more than 9 million soldiers and more than 5 million civilians were killed. As a result of the war, three European empires fell. But the war had encouraged strong nationalist feelings in the countries that had made up those fallen empires, creating lingering post-war tensions, not only in Europe but also in the colonies in Asia and Africa, where pre-war racism continued to endure.
World War I, which many had hoped would be the “war to end all wars,” was an explosion of violence on a scale never before seen in modern history. That explosion, wrote philosopher Hannah Arendt in 1951, “seems to have touched off a chain reaction in which we have been caught ever since and which nobody seems to be able to stop.” 1 And yet neither the First World War nor the Second, which began 25 years later, was inevitable. Each was the result of decisions made by individuals and groups.
Chapter 3 focuses on the explosion of violence Arendt describes and the chain reaction it set off. This chapter begins the case study of the years leading to the Holocaust, which is the centerpiece of the Facing History & Ourselves journey. But instead of tracing the course of the war itself, the chapter highlights the aspects of World War I that had an important effect on the history of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. Historian Doris Bergen writes that while World War I did not cause Nazism or the Holocaust, its aftermath left in place fertile ground for the history that followed in at least three ways. First, the destruction and brutality of World War I “seemed to many Europeans to prove that human life was cheap and expendable.” Second, the trauma of World War I created in Europeans and their leaders a “deep fear of ever risking another war.” Third, the war’s resolution left in place across Europe lingering resentments about the war and the terms of the peace. These resentments would later prove useful to leaders such as Adolf Hitler who sought to create “a politics of resentment that promoted a bitter sense of humiliation.” 2 As teachers and their students explore the history of World War I, they should select the readings from this chapter that are most appropriate for their curriculum and classrooms.
- 1Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 1968), 267.
- 2Doris L. Bergen, War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust, 3rd ed. (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), 42–43. Reproduced by permission from Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group.
Explore the Readings
The readings below make up the chapter World War: Choices and Consequences.
Consider how nationalism and militarism in Europe in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries contributed to the outbreak of World War I.
Austrian writer Stefan Zweig describes an encounter with hate propaganda at a French movie theatre months before the start of World War I.
Read a telegram exchange between Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany and Tsar Nicholas of Russia in which the leaders attempt to prevent World War I.
Explore this firsthand description of Austria’s atmosphere of excitement and fraternity at the outbreak of World War I.
Consider why some Europeans changed their anti-war stance when World War I officially began, and why others like conscientious objectors continued to oppose the war.
Gain insight into the death and destruction of World War I with firsthand accounts from former soldiers.
Explore the role of propaganda in World War I, and take a closer look at one of the most successful British propaganda campaigns featuring nurse Edith Cavell.
Consider how British leaders used the war film Battle of the Somme to sway the public’s opinion about World War I.
Read about the violent response in one British neighborhood to Germany’s sinking of the Lusitania during World War I.
Consider how the Armenian Genocide was made possible by the staggering brutality of World War I.
Learn about the relationship between World War I and Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution.
Get insight into the experiences of soldiers in World War I through poetry and literature excerpts.
View and analyze John Singer Sargent’s memorial to World War I, the painting Gassed.
Learn about the concessions that the Treaty of Versailles required from Germany after its defeat in World War I.
Explore the concept of self-determination after World War I through excerpts from Wilson’s Fourteen Points.
Analyze the goals and responsibilities of the League of Nations written into the Treaty of Versailles after World War I.
Learn about the refugee crisis that developed in the immediate aftermath of World War I.
Analysis & Reflection
Enhance your students’ understanding of our readings on World War I with these follow-up questions and prompts.
- War takes place between armies, but it also changes what happens within a nation. What do the readings in this chapter suggest about how war can reshape the identities of people and nations, build upon and expand ideas of “we” and “they,” and affect an individual’s or a nation’s universe of obligation?
- Several historians, in describing the immense destruction to both military and civilian populations, have pointed to the after-effects of violence and the “cheapening of human life” as one of the most significant legacies of World War I. How might such a legacy have impacted the post-war world?
- Historians often debate whether ideas or actions are more important in bringing about change. What do you think are the key ideas in this chapter that had the greatest impact? What events occurred that either challenged those ideas or made them more acceptable?
- While in a German prison camp in October 1918, Captain Charles de Gaulle, who later became president of France, wrote:
Will France be quick to forget, if she ever can forget, her 1,500,000 dead, her 1,000,000 mutilated, Lille, Dunkerque, Cambrai, Douai, Arras, Saint-Quentin, Laon, Soissons, Rheims, Verdun—destroyed from top to bottom? Will the weeping mothers suddenly dry their tears? Will the orphans stop being orphans, widows being widows? For generations to come, surely every family will inherit intense memories of the greatest of wars, sowing in the hearts of children those indestructible seeds of hatred? . . . Everyone knows, everyone feels that this peace is only a poor covering thrown over ambitions unsatisfied, hatreds more vigorous than ever, national anger still smouldering. 1
What does de Gaulle’s view suggest about the aftermath of World War I in Europe and throughout the world? Is it possible for people to put the hatred, violence, and loss caused by war behind them?
- 1Quoted in Leonard V. Smith, Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau, and Annette Becker, France and the Great War, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 181.
Get this chapter in Google Drive!
Log in to your Facing History account to access all chapter content & materials. If you don’t have an account, Sign up today (it’s fast, easy, and free!).
A Free Account allows you to:
- Access and save all content, such as lesson plans and activities, within Google Drive.
- Create custom, personalized collections to share with teachers and students.
- Instant access to over 200+ on-demand and in-person professional development events and workshops
Students consider the choices and reasoning of individual Germans who stayed quiet or spoke up during the first few years of Nazi rule.
Students analyze images and film that convey the richness of Jewish life across Europe at the time of the Nazis’ ascension to power.
Explore the efforts to build a democracy in Germany in the 1920s, and examine the misunderstandings, myths, and fears that often undercut those efforts.
Students are introduced to the enormity of the crimes committed during the Holocaust and look closely at stories of a few individuals who were targeted by Nazi brutality.
Students both respond to and design Holocaust memorials as they consider the impact that memorials and monuments have on the way we think about history.
Students deepen their examination of human behavior during the Holocaust by analyzing and discussing the range of choices available to individuals, groups, and nations.
Consider the factors that made it possible for the Nazis to transform Germany into a dictatorship during their first year in power.
Students learn about the violent pogroms of Kristallnacht by watching a short documentary and then reflecting on eyewitness testimonies.
Investigate factors that influenced Germans in the 1930s to conform, if not consent, to the Nazi vision for society, and learn about the consequences for those excluded from that vision.
Consider the dilemmas faced by world leaders as Nazi Germany began taking aggressive action against neighboring countries and individuals in the late 1930s.
Students are introduced to the Nazis’ idea of a “national community” and examine how the Nazis used the Nuremberg Laws to define who belonged.
Explore Germany’s efforts to impose a new order on Europe based on Nazi racial ideology during the first two years of World War II.
The resources I’m getting from my colleagues through Facing History have been just invaluable.
— Claudia Bautista, Santa Monica, Calif