The Great Class War 1914-1918

Historian Jacques Pauwels applies a critical, revisionist lens to the First World War, offering readers a fresh interpretation that challenges mainstream thinking. As Pauwels sees it, war offered benefits to everyone, across class and national borders.

For European statesmen, a large-scale war could give their countries new colonial territories, important to growing capitalist economies. For the wealthy and ruling classes, war served as an antidote to social revolution, encouraging workers to exchange socialism's focus on international solidarity for nationalism's intense militarism. And for the working classes themselves, war provided an outlet for years of systemic militarization -- quite simply, they were hardwired to pick up arms, and to do so eagerly.

To Pauwels, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June 1914 -- traditionally upheld by historians as the spark that lit the powder keg -- was not a sufficient cause for war but rather a pretext seized upon by European powers to unleash the kind of war they had desired. But what Europe's elite did not expect or predict was some of the war's outcomes: social revolution and Communist Party rule in Russia, plus a wave of political and social democratic reforms in Western Europe that would have far-reaching consequences.

Reflecting his broad research in the voluminous recent literature about the First World War by historians in the leading countries involved in the conflict, Jacques Pauwels has produced an account that challenges readers to rethink their understanding of this key event of twentieth century world history.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS

Foreword: The Great War in Dali-Vision

PART ONE: THE LONG NINETEENTH CENTURY, “MOTHER” OF THE GREAT WAR

Chapter 1. The Revolutions of 1789, 1830, and 1848: First Steps toward Democracy

Chapter 2. The Nobility and the Bourgeoisie: A Counterrevolutionary Symbiosis

Chapter 3. Socialism and Democratization

Chapter 4. Nationalism and “Social Imperialism”

Chapter 5. Nietzsche and Social Darwinism: Ode to War

Chapter 6. Imperialist Friends and Foes on the Road to a Great War

Chapter 7. Bourgeoisie, Aristocracy, Church, and Socialists Confront War and Revolution

Chapter 8. Fear and Tensions in the Belle Époque

Chapter 9. Reactionary and Bellicose Policies

PART TWO: THE GREAT CLASS WAR, 1914–1918

Chapter 10. August 1914: Enthusiasm and Resignation (1)

Chapter 11. August 1914: Enthusiasm and Resignation (2)

Chapter 12. The End of Politics

Chapter 13. Gentlemen and Plebeians on the War Path

Chapter 14. Fall 1914: Disillusion

Chapter 15. Friends and Enemies

Chapter 16. Militaria 1914: Aborted Plans

Chapter 17. Human Moles in the “Lovely Land of War”

Chapter 18. Militaria 1915: The Great Offensives

Chapter 19. From the Dolomites to the Dardanelles

Chapter 20. Tired of War

Chapter 21. Militaria 1916: Materiel and Human Material

Chapter 22. Disgruntled Soldiers and Civilians

Chapter 23. Militaria 1917: Catastrophes at Caporetto and Elsewhere

Chapter 24. 1917: The Year of Troubles

Chapter 25. The Yanks Are Coming!

Chapter 26. Revolution in Russia, on the Way to Revolutions in Asia

Chapter 27. Militaria 1918: German Spring Offensive, Allied Final Offensive

Chapter 28. Revolution, Counterrevolution, and Reforms

Chapter 29. Versailles: Peace or Armistice?

PART THREE: THE LONG SHADOW OF THE GREAT WAR

Chapter 30. Via Fascism to a Second World War, 1918–1945

Chapter 31. Class Wars from 1945 to the Present

Acknowledgements

Endnotes

Bibliography

Index

About the author