World War 1 With Jesse Alexander Of The Great War

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We're back and this time... we've brought an expert! Join us as we interview and discuss World War 1 with Jesse Alexander of The Great War and Real Time History YouTube channels! He brings the much needed expertise that we simply don't have!

Episode Transcript

(00:04):
Looking back on World War One andeverything that came after, who would you
say is the real winner of thatwar? Well? I think there's a
couple ways of looking at that,but one is war is a contest of
force, and the Allies win thatcontest, so they win the war.

(00:26):
But the more complicated question is whothen wins the piece? And there it
gets messier. That is one absolutelyI love that answer. Listener. We
have a very extra special episode today. If you couldn't already guess that is
a guest that we have here whoWe're going to get to you in just
a moment. But this is theGeography Is Everything podcast, the podcast where

(00:49):
we try to explain kind of welleverything, just using the lens of geography.
Right now, on this episode wehave Jesse Alexander, a public historian
and the of the Great War andReal Time History YouTube channels where he'd makes
some truly incredible documentary style videos thatyou can go and watch over on either

(01:10):
of those channels. Truly, theyare really amazing. Jesse, how are
you. I'm good, Thanks somuch for having me. I'm just spending
a day in the office here inVienna and looking forward to chatting exactly so
you're over in Vienna, Austria.We're over here in Portland, Oregon.
There's quite a time difference, soit's right now, it's about eight am

(01:32):
our time. It's about five pmyour time. Listeners, if you're a
longtime listener, you might remember thatwe did a whole episode on time zones.
This is kind of that in actionright now, which I thought,
I think is really fun. Hunter, what do you think about that?
Huh? I think that's perfect.I'm glad that you've started to plug previous
episodes immediately, even though we havea guest. That's all right, I
know, right, it's all partof the podcasting game. Huh. Now,

(01:55):
now Jesse is here with Hunter andI because well, World War One
is a quite frankly, it's ahuge topic. There's so much nuance that
goes into this one sort of globalevent that it kind of felt that if
we were ever going to have aguest, that this could this could and
should be sort of the one.And so this is our very first guest.

(02:16):
Jesse, congratulations on being our veryfirst guest. Again, we're happy
to have you here. Today's episodewill be part interview and part discussion.
Listener all of which builds off ofTuesday's episode where Hunter and I just sort
of go through the geography of WorldWar One, and in that episode we
sort of talk about sort of thewho's and sort of the what's of what
was sort of happening globally. Jesseis here to provide all that additional context

(02:39):
of, you know, why allof this matters and all of the actual
history and everything that sort of getspiled on top that. Frankly, I
don't have the expertise for I don'tknow about you, Hunter, No,
not at all. This is thisis a great, great moment in our
podcast history, I think exactly.So if you haven't listened to that one
yet on Tuesday, go back checkit out. Otherwise, let's go ahead

(03:01):
and dive into our conversation today withJesse. First question, right off the
bat, Jesse, I have readthat the Franco Prussian War of eighteen seventy
was perhaps the first look at whatwould become World War One and then of
course World War Two after that.Can you briefly explain sort of what that

(03:23):
war was about? Or yeah,and really how did it lead up to
World War One? If that isin fact true? Well as most historians
will tell you about most topics,it's a little more complicated, but very
often when we discussed this topic ofthe origins of the First World War,

(03:44):
this is like one of the mostcontroversial topics in modern history. Very often
the books or the articles or thediscussions start in eighteen seventy. And there's
a reason for that. As youpointed out, it's the Franco Prussian War.
It makes a difference. Franco PrussianWar is a war in eighteen seventy
and eighteen seventy one between France anda German alliance that's led by Prussia.

(04:08):
So not only Prussia, but Prussiaplus the other independent countries that speak German
like Bavaria or Baden Wurtenberg or others. They're in this alliance. Prussia is
the leader, and war breaks outin July eighteen seventy. Most observers expect
that France is going to win.France is a great power, has a

(04:30):
big army, it has an overseasempire, and Prussia is a lot smaller,
is a bit of an unknown quantitymilitarily at this point in eighteen seven.
But Prussia and its alliance win,and they win fairly convincingly. It's
not as quick as most of usthink. It takes about six months to

(04:51):
grind the French down and so forthafter the initial victories. But Prussia and
the other German states win. Theyhave better or organized army. They have
better army staff and planning, theyhave better logistics, their artillery is better,
and at first, at least especially, their army is bigger. Because

(05:13):
France has a professional army, it'sa little bit smaller, and Prussia mostly
has an army of reservists, andall these factors that I just mentioned,
planning, staff, logistics, artillery, reservists are factors in the First World
War as well. So that's oneof the points where we look back.
If we're looking at the First WorldWar and we look to eighteen seventy and

(05:33):
we say, well, militarily,you can start to see some of the
aspects of warfare that define World WarOne happening in the Franco Prussian War as
well. But I think politically that'syou know, where the rubber meets the
road, where the relationship between thiswar and the First World War is because
Otto von Bismarck, right, theleader of Prussia, he takes this opportunity

(06:00):
victory over France to create a singleGerman state, the Germany that we kind
of all have known since then,more or less as one country. And
he also annexes previously French territory ofAlzas and part of Lorentz, which had
been a part of the French Kingdomand various French states since the seventeenth century.

(06:26):
And he demands a bunch of reparations, a bunch of money from France
to make up for the German costsof the war. Now, this sets
part of the political stage for theeventual clash in the First World War,
because you now have a sort ofpermanent negative relationship between France and the new

(06:48):
Germany because Germany took territory from them, And it creates a new factor and
a problematic factor in the whole balanceof power in Europe and also globally,
because there's a new great power statethat didn't exist before, Germany, much
much more powerful than Prussia used tobe on its own, with the most

(07:12):
economic potential and the most military potentialof any state in Europe. And that
completely redes the potential balance of powerin Europe. And we see the consequences
of that in nineteen fourteen. Thisis I think what everything you've sort of
described, Jesse is, I thinkgeographically fascinating. I think it's something that

(07:33):
perhaps a lot of listeners maybe insidethe US, even though you know,
you know, people are definitely lovegeography and history over here, maybe they
don't quite realize that how messy Europewas only about one hundred and sort of
you know, I guess forty yearsago where there wasn't you know, the
established states of Germany or even reallythe established state of France that we know

(07:57):
today, right, it was theFrench Empire, and it was sort of
more expansive, and it was tryingto do different things, and same with
you could say the same almost withItaly and even you know, the United
Kingdom to a degree, right thateverything was just a lot messier and Prussia
and Germany, I think is afantastic example of sort of that it was
a lot of little states that sortof coalesced into a single unified power at

(08:18):
one point, and that left athat brought out a new competitor on the
global realm that I maybe perhaps alot of other players that were that were
actively playing the game at that pointRussia, for example, France, the
UK didn't really expect well, andthat power had just learned an important lesson

(08:41):
that violence pace. Right, Soit was born and achieved its goal,
its national goal, let's say,through war, and that is something that
will influence Germany in the following decadesas well. Justin I'm interested a little
bit in this the unification of Germanyand comparing it to maybe France or Spain.

(09:03):
So France had a very successful timeunifying, basing everything on a particular
Parisian language. Spain struggled that alittle bit more. Was it the war
itself that really allowed Germany to gelor what were the other factors? Well,
there's different factors in how you gela modern nation state, right,

(09:24):
So language is one of them.There are there still are different German regional
dialects, but of course there wasa standard German that developed well before,
let's say, but geling politically wasthe key thing that happened in eighteen seventy
one. So there remained certain regionalcultural differences, but the political geling of

(09:50):
essentially saying that look, we're allgoing to accept one common state and despite
our regional differences, we have thesame national identity. We all consider ourselves
Germans, and that's not something thatcame in eighteen seventy one. The political
unification came in eighteen seventy one.But one of the things that made that
possible was the national identity growing fromthe time of essentially the early nineteenth century,

(10:18):
right, So there were already ideasabout common German national identity. When,
for example, Prussia was fighting againstNapoleon and trying to convince the other
German states to leave their alliance withNapoleon, and so on and so forth,
there were nationalistic societies that were created. They tried to They tried to
unite Germany democratically by a revolution ineighteen forty eight, which then failed,

(10:41):
and so forth. So the politicalunification is the big step, but it
comes on a foundation that had beengrowing for some time in terms of the
identity. Great, thank you.So let's go ahead and jump Jesse over
to you know, actually World WarOne, and really what we're going to

(11:01):
talk about is the start of it, right, So it has a very
famous start, I would say,more famous than perhaps most other global conflicts.
The assassination of arc Duke Franz Ferdinandis often considered to be the match
that sort of set off the explosionthat is World War One, But obviously
a lot actually came before this moment, So was what was some of the

(11:22):
other contexts that was happening. Obviouslythat's again that's sort of the thing that
most gets attributed to it. Butit can't just be the only thing,
right, No, And I meanwhen the assassination happened on the twenty eighth
of June, the war begins onthe twenty eighth of July, and then
the Great Power War starts at thebeginning of August a couple of days after

(11:43):
that, so you have this gap. I mean, why, right,
the assassination is such a huge explosion, why does the war break out the
next day? It's because it didn'timmediately lead to the war. It didn't
the European powers didn't say, oh, there's an assassination, we're all going
to go to war immediately. Nobodyexpected that the war break out because of

(12:05):
this assassination immediately. It takes decisions, and this is of course the cause
of a lot of debate. Whomakes what decisions when and to what extent
did those influence the war? Butthere's there's another. There are kind of
two types of causes that we talkabout, longer term ones and shorter term

(12:26):
ones, and the assassination sets offa kind of string of events in a
crisis that are the shorter term causes, if you will. The longer ones,
though, I'll say a word aboutthem. First. You have a
situation in Europe where you have,for decades leading up to the war,
imperial and great power competition, somethingactually you hear about in the news again

(12:46):
these days for the first time.To say exactly, we'll we could say
that several times during the rest ofthis podcast, but I'll leave the listeners
to make some of their own connections. Anyway, you have these great powers.
They are concerned with prestige. They'reconcerned with building up their militaries in

(13:07):
case of war, which is nota dirty word at the time. It's
considered a normal and honorable thing todo. And they're concerned with expanding their
power empires, right, some ofthem globally. Then in the decade,
I guess you could say decade plusleading up to the war, you have
a series of crises where people think, oh, maybe a war will break
out. Now we don't remember thosenow, but they were there. There

(13:31):
was a crisis in Africa between Britainand France. There were a couple of
crises in Morocco between France and Germanyand the other powers, and there were
several crises in the Balkans. Andthe Balkans is where Archduke Franz Ferdinand was
assassinated in Sarajevo. But that wasnot the first thing to start going sideways

(13:54):
in the Balkans, right, Sotraditionally you have the Ottoman Empire dominated the
Balkan region for a long time,centered on today's modern Turkish Turkish territory,
and it becomes weaker over the courseof the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries, and
this creates a power vacuum. Soall these big empires that want prestige,

(14:16):
they're jockeying for influence in the Balkansbecause the old power structure is kind of
eroding. So Russia and Austria Hungaryare the ones who are kind of arguing
over who's going to have the mostprestige and the most influence in the Balkans.
There are several wars that occur thereas well. A couple of wars
of the smaller Balkan states, eitherthey win their independence or they expand their

(14:39):
territory after winning independence a bit earlieragainst the Ottomans in nineteen twelve and nineteen
thirteen. Now this destabilizes the region, of course, right because, for
example, you have these new ideasof local nationalisms, be they Bulgarian or
Serbian or whatever. And you alsohave the idea of South slav nationalism that

(15:03):
all the Slavic peoples of the WesternBalkans should be in one state. Serbs,
Croats and so on, Bosniaks andso on. They're not in one
state, right. Most Croats livein the Hungarian part of Austria Hungary.
A lot of Serbs live there aswell, and most Bosniaks live in the

(15:26):
Austro Hungarian Empire as well. Butof course there's an independent Serbia. And
so when the assassination happens, thereis a connection between the assassin he's a
South slav nationalist, there's a connectionbetween him and some Serbian secret service operatives
and so on. So Austria Hungarytakes that opportunity to settle the score and

(15:48):
say, now we're going to solvethis Balkan problem we have. You know,
something's been done to us. Wehave the sort of moral upper hand.
We've been vexed by this Balkan problemand now we're going to solve it.
They want a local war, theydon't want to start World War One.
Nobody in Vienna is thinking about that. But one of the other factors

(16:14):
is that Europe has developed into asystem of alliances, and part of that
goes back to this Franco Prussian warproblem. Right, France is desperate for
allies to avoid being defeated by Germany, which is now much much more powerful
than them. So you have theseblocks basically France, Russia and Britain,

(16:34):
even though it's not officially obligated togo to war with them. And then
on the other camp you have Germany, Austria, Hungary and at first Italy
that will switch once the war begins, in Italy doesn't join the Central Powers
and the Ottomans do. But thismakes any crisis more dangerous because trying to

(16:57):
start a local war is a lotharder without it, you know, snowballing
into a great power war. That'swhat happens during the July crisis. Once
that the assassination sets off, Right, Russia wants to support Serbia, it's
kind of friend in the Balkans,let's say, so it mobilizes part of

(17:19):
its army. This freaks out Germany, who then declares war. But Germany
knows France is going to join Russia, so they also then declare war in
France, and this whole domino effectbegins. Right, So you have these
long term causes that sort of setthe stage. Then you have this spark
and it creates a crisis. Butthat crisis becomes a war because Austria Hungary

(17:44):
decides on it and Germany decides toback them up and say, yeah,
if you want to start a regionwar, go ahead, and then things
get out of control. That's theshort version anyway. I mean, it's
such an incredibly elaborate system that wasin place that it's kind of it's easy
to try and bring parallels from todayback then, but I don't even think

(18:06):
that what's happening, like the alliancesthat are in place today would even come
close to sort of the domino effectthat occurred back then in the same way.
I mean, you just sort ofoutlined the idea that you know,
the very mobilization caused Germany to thenthe media declare war on basically two of
the other powers, which then obviouslywould snowball to have something even bigger.

(18:29):
And it's just kind of incredible tothink about this all spunning out of a
relatively small area tucked away into southernEurope, right, But I guess that's
World War One, right, that'ssort of the story behind it. So,
speaking of all these powers that youjust sort of ran through Jesse at

(18:51):
the beginning of World War One sortof nineteen fourteen, there was the Central
Powers, as you already allude to, the German Empire, the Ottoman Empire,
and Austria, Hungary, and thenalso Bulgaria, which I don't know
if we talked about versus the whatwas called the Triple on Tante on Tante,
which was the French, Third Republic, Russian Empire in the United Kingdom
of Great Britain and Ireland. Atthis point sort of at the beginning of

(19:12):
this war, who had the perceivedupper hand in this military conflict. Obviously
the Allies, which would include ultimatelymore more countries, would eventually win,
but was that will always be thecase? Spoiler alert, spoiler We're going

(19:33):
to reveal somebody here in case youdidn't know that the Allies. Right,
one small detail. You're right thatBulgaria does join the Central Powers, but
they joined in nineteen fifteen, notactually in nineteen fourteen, just like Italy
joins the Allies then in nineteen fifteen, but in nineteen fourteen when the war

(19:55):
starts, nobody knows who's going towin, right, Each power thinks that
they have a plan that will allowthem to succeed. There were some different
ideas about what might happen if therewere a Great power war, and there
were all sorts of interesting predictions.Very few of them predicted that it would
turn into sort of trench stalemate,at least on the Western front. One

(20:15):
did, which is now a famoustext, I think, was a Polish
Russian writer who predicted that things wouldbreak down into a long stalemate. But
very often, for example, peoplepredicted, well, for economic reasons,
we can't the war's going to bequick, or for technological reasons, these

(20:37):
new artillery guns, these new machineguns, they're so destructive, no one
will be able to fight for verylong, so the war will be fast.
Right, So there's all this uncertaintyat the very start. Though,
I think it's fair to say thatthe central powers have the military advantage in
the opening phase of the war fora couple of different reasons. One is

(20:57):
they're on the attack, so youcan initiate right, you can try to
impose your will on the other sideif you're the attacking side. But mostly
they have the advantage because of Germanmilitary power. Germany is the single strongest
military power. Their army is morepowerful than any other single army in Europe,

(21:18):
and part of that power is basedon the heavy artillery that they have.
Right, the other powers underestimate howcentral heavy artillery will be to the
conduct of modern war. Germany doesn't. They get that right, and that
gives them a huge advantage. Andof course, on the other side,

(21:41):
one of the main allies, theUnited Kingdom, doesn't really have a big
army. They have a big navy, but their army quite small. It's
only a couple hundred thousand men.It's meant to sort of keep their empire
and check. But now they havea situation where they need to scale up
and they're not there yet. Soyou essentially have France and Russia mostly on

(22:02):
their own, with a small Britishcontribution in nineteen fourteen, and that's a
problem. Of course, the CentralPowers do have a weaker member as well,
which is Austria Hungary. They failin Serbia and on the Eastern Front
in nineteen fourteen, but the Germansalso eventually fail in the West, so

(22:22):
that initial advantage doesn't last long forthe Central Powers. In terms of potentially
winning the war, they still havea lot of advantages for the on the
ground fighting right, but in termsof long term possibly the possibility to win
the war once they fail in nineteenfourteen. It doesn't mean the outcomes guaranteed,

(22:44):
but it means that the chances ofan Allied victory long term go up
substantially because of the difference in resourcespotential resources in the future. You are
already hitting on sort of the nextquestion I have here, so let's just

(23:08):
kind of roll right into it,because you're alluding to what I think,
you know, if if somewhere wereto look at a map of World War
One today sort of at the beginning, right, what they're going to see
is they're going to see the Allies, which is France, Russia, and
the UK, and then they're goingto see Germany, Austria and the Ottoman
Empire and the perception is that alreadyimmediately the Central Powers are surrounded, right,

(23:33):
they are pincered in between Russia andFrance and the UK respectively, And
that's going to provide a certain geographicadvantage, because now, all of a
sudden, as you already alluded to, Germany and Austria Hungary are going to
have to fight two different fronts atthe same time, right, the Western
and the Eastern Front. The Iguess, I guess. The question here

(23:59):
is, in terms of this geographicperceived advantage that the Allies had, did
anyone within the Central Powers kind ofthink that this was going to be an
issue for them? They did?Anybody was like, whoa, whoa,
whoa whoa, And Jeremy, whowhoa? Let's Russia and France at the
same time? Are you kidding?Like? Can we just do me one?

(24:21):
They wouldn't have worded it that wayat the time, but yet they
wouldn't have moved my vernacular. Therewould have been some omen outs in there
somewhere, probably, but yes,many many A German and Austro Hungarian staff
officer lost sleep in the years leadingup to the war trying to think of

(24:44):
how they could get themselves out ofthis gem if it ever came to a
two front war. The important thingto keep in mind here is they didn't
want that, so that's not whatthey initially signed up for. In the
July crisis, when Austria hung Hesays okay, we're going to go to
war against Serbia, and Germany sayswill support you if Russia gets involved,

(25:07):
they make assumptions that that's not goingto happen, that that worst case scenario
is not going to happen, thateither France won't get involved potentially, but
especially that Britain won't get involved.And so they're not as crazy as they
may seem. Right, they're awareof that danger. The Austra Hungarians have
a war plan for different scenarios,So what if there's war only with Serbia,

(25:32):
but then what if there's war withSerbia and Russia. They screw up
that plan, don't get me wrong. They send divisions all over the place
and then call them back and sendthem somewhere else, which contributes to their
failure in nineteen fourteen to achieve whatthey want to achieve. Achieve, but
they are thinking about this. Theyeven thought about what if Italy abandons our

(25:53):
alliance? And joins the Allies,which of course they eventually do, and
they concluded that they could not resiston all three fronts, which turned out
to be false because they did inthe end. When that happened. The
German planners this is their big nightmare, right, France and Russia at the
same time. So that is thebasis of their potential war plan, often

(26:15):
called the Schleifen Plan, but maybemore accurate to call the Schleifen molti k
Plan. Their plan is we're goingto do it so fast that a two
front war won't last very long.We're gonna knock France out because France is
smaller geographically, we can achieve somethingdecisive in the space of the French battlefields.

(26:37):
We're gonna knock them out in maybesix weeks, and then we're going
to train everybody to the east anddeal with the Russians because Russia is vast
right, we assume that it's goingto take we being the Germans in this
case, if you let me causeplay here for a second, I don't
have my pickle, Helbert, butwe assume we're if we're the Germans,

(26:57):
that the Russians are going to beslow. Oh Russia's vast Russia is not
as developed. They don't have anyas many railways. This is going to
take them a lot of time toorganize their armies, bring them up to
the border, start attech. Sothe Germans figure, we're going to make
use of this spatial difference, knockthe French out with a decisive blow,

(27:18):
and then go and take care ofthe Russians afterwards, assuming of course,
that Britain won't come in, oreven if they do, their small army
won't be of consequence at the beginning. The bad thing from the German point
of view is that France had investeda bajillion francs in the Russian railway system
before the war, which helped theRussians mobilize a lot faster, and they

(27:42):
start invading East Prussia while the firstbattles are happening in France, which freaks
the Germans out, causes them totransfer some troops east earlier than planned,
which they could have really used inFrance. Jesse, your your, your
skill at answering these questions is perfect, because you're just leading us right into

(28:06):
each question that's supposed to be comingafter. Because you're well, you're already
talking. You're so in answering thatquestion, which was phenomenal by you're already
sorry, talking about sort of thelandscapes of Europe. Now, listener,
if you're not at all aware ofEurope, it's a geographically, physically geographically
complex continent, right, There's mountains, there's plains, there's rivers, there's

(28:29):
forests, there's a lot going on. Obviously, you have the wide expanse
of Russia that you already alluded to, you have the Alps, everything that
goes involved. So speaking of allof this landscape, how did the physical
geography of Europe influence sort of thestrategies and and outcomes of some of the
key battles inside the inside World WarOne? And I think I think that

(28:52):
most people will probably know a bitmore about this within the context of World
War Two, because that is definitelya war that's talked about more. But
this was also World War Two asa time of age when there's much more
airfare or air warfare going on,and that's not quite the same luxury that
they had in World War One.Yeah, that's true. I mean,

(29:15):
obviously, you know in war,war is about projecting force through space,
right, also known as like firepowerand mobility as the two keys to what's
happening in combats. It's this kineticthing, so any characteristics of that space,
like terrain, are extremely important.And in the First World War,
one of the main problems given thestate of technology. So, as you

(29:40):
correctly pointed out, you don't havea lot of air power, especially to
be at the first half of thewar, so you can't be running all
sorts of tactical air support and bombingall sorts of stuff. They do some
of that, but it's minimal,right. You also don't have vehicles that
can do the things that World WarII vehicles can do. You don't have

(30:00):
tanks at the beginning of the war, when you get them there extremely slow.
So what this means is that thetechnology means that the defensive has the
advantage. You can sit there inyour trench with your machine gun and you
have the advantage over the guys whoare trying to run at you with their
rifles or with their light machine guns. In the second half of the war,

(30:22):
you can also know when the attackis coming because the enemy has to
build up so many supplies that it'sunmistakable, right, and your artillery knows
where to fire. They know he'sgot to cross no man's land, and
so this means that, Oh andof course there's barbed wire, so he's
going to be held up. Theenemy is crossing no man's land when you

(30:45):
can then direct fire on him,and he can't bring his firepower with him
to attack you. The defender,he can't bring his artillery with him as
easily. Right, he's outside ofthe protection of his trench to attack you.
So this is a kind of definingelement, right, because then it
matters even more than usual if it'smuddy, or who has the high ground

(31:08):
on that hill, even if it'sa hill that's thirty meters high. Northern
France, for example, has thissort of rolling farmland where you know there
are some hills, some meandering riverslike the River's Somme, famous battle named
after that river. These things areinsurmountable obstacles in the context of the war

(31:30):
fighting in fourteen eighteen. Right,So tactically it makes a huge difference,
But strategically it also makes a difference. Right. I just sort of mentioned
the German decision making based on thesize of France versus the size of Germany.
But the Allies have control of thesea, so they can try to
use that, for example, tocut off sources to go into the Central

(31:55):
Powers and improve their own situation bystill being able to have access to the
rest of the world, to theneutral United States to buy weapons, for
example, or to neutral Argentina tobuy food for example, or to their
empires, which we're going to talkabout a little bit later. So this

(32:15):
maritime proximity of Britain and France givesthem an advantage. Right On the other
hand, Russia is cut off fromthe other. As big as Russia is,
it is cut off from Britain andFrance, and it needs weapons.
Especially the first half of the war. They have trouble producing enough weapons and

(32:37):
it's very hard to get them there. You have to go around through the
Arctic Ocean, which is extremely difficult, or you can go across the Pacific,
which takes forever then by train aswell, or you can try to
get some access through the Black Sea, but then you have the Ottomans cutting
that off. And so this partiallyexplains one of the Allied strategic moves.

(33:00):
Based on the geography of the OttomanEmpire and the Black Sea. They try
to attack at the Gallipoli Campaign aswe call it, which is basically the
Dardanelles and the boss Porus. Sothese narrow Turkish straits that give access from
the Mediterranean to the Black Sea.That's a choke point, and so the
Allies try to attack there, getright to the Ottoman capital today it's Istanbul.

(33:22):
At the time it was also calledConstantinople, and we can knock the
Ottomans out of the war and wecan re establish that geographic connection to Russia.
That campaign fails, but that's anexample of it influencing. Mountains influence
a lot of stuff. Right,the Germans decide we're going to invade France
through Belgium, which is neutral becausethe border between France and Germany you have

(33:47):
the Voges Mountains, which mountains arenot easy to go through, and the
French have fortified those mountains on theirside. Now that has a big consequence
because it brings Britain into the waron the old light side. So geography
is really doing a lot of workhere in this particular case. Right on
the other hand, the Central Powershave interior lines, so they can switch

(34:10):
their forces between east and West andput pressure or fight fires solve emergencies a
little bit more easily. If Russia'sstruggling, the French and British can't do
anything directly to help them, theycan attack several hundred kilometers away in the

(34:31):
hopes of putting pressure, which ofcourse both sides do this, but it's
not as easy as getting a bunchof guys into a train and sending them
in the other direction, which theGermans and Austro Hungarians can do. Coastal
control of the coast is extremely important. Germany wants to get control of more
of the Belgian and French coast duringthe war because they can use it for

(34:54):
U boat bases where they can sendout submarines to then try to blockade Written,
which is an island, so ithas a geographical vulnerability there. This
leads to a major campaign in nineteenseventeen on the British part to try to
recapture Belgian coast to prevent the Germansfrom using it for submarine operations and so

(35:16):
on. I could go on,but I suppose you're getting the idea by
now. One thing you kept hittingat, which I think is fascinating because
it plays a really big role inWorld War two as well as Belgium.
They seem to find themselves in thisI would argue unenviable position within both of

(35:37):
these wars, where they are seenas the pathway towards establishing dominance over well,
kind of over over almost all ofWestern Europe. It seems right because
that allows access into France and thenalso allows you to establish sort of the
beachhead for Germany and both situations.I don't really have a follow up question

(35:58):
of that, Jesse, It's justsomething I noticed as you were talking about
it. Absolutely, yeah, yeah, uh so, let's let's go ahead.
Let's let's broaden our horizons a littlebit. Let's let's look global because
at this time, and Hunter,you're gonna love this question because it brings
us kind of to our geographic rootshere where we always seem to talk about

(36:19):
colonization and the colonies of these variousempires. At this time, a lot
of these countries had vast colonial empires, right, I mean Britain alone,
I mean this was probably peak.This is almost probably peak British empire,
right, sort of within the dynamicsof World War One, both in terms
of of sort of resource mobilization andsort of global conflict spread. Right now,

(36:45):
we've been entirely focused in Europe.Right now, what role did the
colonies actually play and sort of wherewe're where were some of the battles fought
that weren't on Europe directly? Yeah, I mean, the the global empires
play a very significant role. Nowusually we think of the Allied side when

(37:06):
we think of large empires, rightFrench, British, and the Russian empires
have these vast networks of control overdifferent peoples on different continents, and they
draw on that in different ways.So they draw on it for manpower,
for people to fight and people towork, and they draw on it for

(37:30):
raw materials, but they also drawon it for industrial production depending on what
kind of colony or in the BritishEmpire case, dominion which they also have
sort of a self governing colony likeCanada or Australia for example, And so
those are kind of the ways thatthe Allies can draw on their empires.

(37:51):
I mean, Canada, for example, produced a very significant proportion of British
artillery shells during the war because ithad a developed industrial base, mostly in
Montreal, but also in Toronto.India provide the jewel of the British Empire
provided one and a half million menfor the British Indian Army. Now most

(38:15):
of those were not fighting in WesternEurope, but they were fighting in the
Middle East and in Africa, whichwe'll get to in a moment. Of
course, the French have extensive coloniesin north and western and central Africa,
so they recruit hundreds of thousands ofmen to fight, and they do use
them in Europe quite extensively. Andthen the Russians, they for example,

(38:37):
have their Central Asian colonial province,if you will, of Turkestan as it
was called at the time, andthey recruit over one hundred thousand workers there
to do work for the army behindthe front. That region was exempt from
military service, mostly or at leastthe natives Slavic settlers had to serve in

(38:59):
the army, but they recruit laborersfrom there, for example, And of
course they recruit soldiers from many othergroups, the Cossacks or all sorts of
different groups from the Caucasus region whoprovided irregular soldiers or irregular cavalry. So
it's a huge factor for the Allies. What I think is a bit less

(39:20):
talked about sometimes is that the centralpowers also use their empires for this purpose.
They don't quite have as much towork with as the Allies do,
but the Germans use African troops inAfrica, the Austro Hungarians use Bosnian troops.
Bosnia considered the closest thing to asort of colonial relationship that Austria Hungary

(39:40):
had since they didn't have overseas colonies, but they had specialized, almost elite
military units made up of Bosniaks.And of course the Ottomans recruited Arabs,
for example, to fight in theirmilitary right, and they conquered those areas
and exploit them as a as animperial periphery as well in terms of expanding

(40:05):
the war. This is I thinkthis is a kind of interesting little aspect
of the war. It's the centralpowers who try to expand the war mostly
across the globe. That sounds abit counterintuitive in a way, but they
want to undermine French and British especiallycontrol of their overseas empires. So for

(40:27):
example, the Ottoman Sultan at thetime was also the Caliph of Islam,
so he's the head of this imperialstate, which is also the head of
the religion for all those who followthe caliph. I mean, there are
different splinter groups, but for themajority of Muslims in the world, he's
the head of the religion on paper. So he declares jihad against the Allies,

(40:51):
and the hope is that a lotof the Muslims who live in British
and French colonies will sort of followthis and rebel. Well, it doesn't
really work particularly well. The Germansalso try to get in touch with Hindu
nationalists in India who are wanting independence. They send an expedition to Afghanistan to

(41:12):
try to stir up Afghanistan, getthem to declare war on British India to
divert British troops. So the extensionof the war to primarily Africa is more
or less an attempt by the centralpowers to spread Allied resources. I think
that's I think that's a fair summary. There is some fighting in Asia as

(41:36):
well. I shouldn't leave out.Japan joins the Allies mostly because they want
to expand their empire in Asia,and so they attack a couple of small
German colonies there, one on mainlandChina called the Sinh Tao, which is
still the name of a Chinese beerbecause Germany it is actually and so the

(41:58):
Japanese capture that and annex it thecells and so on and so forth.
But mostly it's the central power istrying to extend this conflict and spread out
the allies even further. Sort ofan an off the cuff question here,

(42:21):
because we've talked a lot about differentcolonial empires and countries within in Europe in
general. Where's Spain at this momentin time? What are they doing?
Spain staate's neutral during the war.They have got all sorts of domestic problems.
I mean, the country is fairlyimpoverished by Western European standards, so

(42:45):
they're struggling. They're not a militarypower. They've lost most of the last
remnants of their formerly massive empire inthe late nineteenth century to the US right
the Spanish American War in eighteen ninetyeight, I believe, where they lost

(43:06):
sort of the Philippines and Cuba andPuerto Rico, so they're in no position
to really get involved. There's,as I say, there are generally a
weak power suffering from instability and havejust suffered fifteen years before a crushing defeat
to their prestige, so they're notreally into it. They're just they're just

(43:28):
they're taking a buy, which makessense. It makes sense. Yes,
so let's go. Let's go aheadand start moving towards the end of this
war. Obviously a certain point theUS gets involved, we're not really going
to talk a little bit about We'renot really going to talk about that with
U. Jesse. I think tome, the US is sort of they
come sort of come in nearer tothe end and sort of almost like just

(43:51):
help sort of wrap things up.But let's get to the Treaty of Versailles
and sort of the other post wartreaties that sort of aim to as the
sort of what happened in World WarOne? What were the shortcomings in your
opinion or I guess the historical opinionof those treaties well as you may be

(44:15):
able to guess. There's not onlyone historical opinion about it. It's a
very widely written about topic. Whatare the peace treaties? Like? Why
did they come to be that way? Could they have been different? What
was the consequence? How to interpretthat? How much do you weigh the
impact twenty years later in terms oftrying to explain World War II, et

(44:36):
cetera et cetera. And I knowwe'll get to that in a moment.
I'm very glad though, that youpointed out that there's more than one treaty.
I think we hear World War Onetreaty and people who know a little
bit about it think of Versailles.But there are actually five treaties between the
Allies and the Central Powers former Centralpowers. Right, there's Versailles with Germany,

(44:58):
but they also have them with US, one with Hungary because they split,
of course after the war, onewith Bulgaria. And then they have
two, one with the Ottoman Empirebefore it disappears, and then one with
the Republic of Turkey that kind ofreplaces in a way the Ottoman Empire or
part of it. So these fivetreaties together are basically trying to do the

(45:24):
impossible. They're trying to create anew and stable European and international sort of
global order, but especially European order. And at the same time they're trying
to satisfy the old school power politicsdesires of the victors. Right, So

(45:47):
you have these two almost incompatible.Well, I mean, the first one
of creating a stable and durable Europeanand international order, one might argue that's
just a utopia, no matter whatthe other factors. But at the very
least you're trying to do that andsatisfy the victors at the same time,
who have suffered and now want somethingin exchange for that suffering. Right.

(46:13):
Of course, the loser suffer aswell, but they're not in a position
to demand something for that, andthe victors are, And how can they
go and tell their population, no, we're not going to demand what we
told you we were going to becauseit might be less stable later. That's
a tough sell. So you havea very very very difficult circle to square,
and obviously they can't do it right. An example of this is the

(46:38):
League of Nations, Right, Thisis President Wilson's big idea, and the
US is almost perhaps the primary contributionof the US to the treaty and the
postwar attempt at order. So youcreate this League of Nations. It's kind
of the forerunner to the UN.The idea is that it will help resolve

(46:59):
problems and avoid wars. It hassome other ancilliary objectives as well, improving
worker conditions around the world and soon and so forth. But conflict resolution
is a big part of it,but it doesn't include Germany because they're the
ones in the eyes of the Allieswho create the League of Nations, who

(47:22):
started the war. It doesn't includeBolshevik Russia because of course, by the
end of the war, Russia's hada revolution. They're they're not a typical
state anymore. They don't fit inthe international system. They're a revolutionary communist
state, so they're not included inthe League of Nations. The US refuses
to join the League of Nations afterthey're the ones who kind of brought up

(47:45):
the idea and made it be putinto the treaties. Well, then they
change their minds and they don't join. That sounds right, And the League
of Nations makes a concession to Franceand Britain and they basically say, well,
we're not going to push on thiswhole. You know, everyone should
be independent thing, because you haveyour empires and you want to control parts

(48:10):
of the former Ottoman Empire in theMiddle East, right, mostly the Arab
speaking Arabic speaking countries what we knowtoday as Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and
so on. So your main instrumentfor this international order is sort of hamstrung

(48:30):
and incomplete from the beginning. Becauseof this inherent contradiction, right, there
are other unsolvable problems, like whatdo you do with Bolshevik Russia? Right,
they reject any sense of international orderbecause they reject the very essence of
all the other states that are notrevolutionary communist states and vice versa, so

(48:53):
the monarchical powers or the democratic republicanpowers. They also don't accept the basis
of the communist Russian Soviet Russian state. So how do you do that?
It's not possible, right, Andanother sort of poisoned pill is that the
Allies are so traumatized by the lossesin the war and therefore so politically hemmed

(49:24):
in by what they can do,and also bitter and resentful at Germany that
they don't even negotiate. Right.This is a break with a tradition of
international relations and balance of power andstuff is negotiating after even one side wins.

(49:45):
But they basically just present the termsto the Germans, Austrians, Hungarians
and Ottomans. They're forced to negotiatewith the Turks afterwards, but initially,
essentially they just present them with terms. And the Germans did the same with
Russia when they defeated them in thathe said, team and impose an incredibly
harsh piece. So there again arethe seeds of some of the shortcomings.

(50:07):
So how are you supposed to havea world order when you've imposed it and
there are a bunch of countries thatare not happy with it? Right?
Important countries? Right. So yeah, that's the shortest that could make them.
Well, it's funny because I think, you know, you look back
at World War One in hindsight,especially knowing what comes relatively soon after,

(50:30):
which is World War Two, andyou can sort of see I mean,
just as a non historian, youcan you can draw lines that almost directly
connect to basically Nazi Germany back tosort of the sort of the position that
they were left in at the endof World War One. Right, you
can sort of make that connection withoutwithout very much help. I think you

(50:52):
can. But I think what's important, like one of the big challenges of
historians and thinking historically is to bea bit cautious. I mean, you're
right, there's definitely a connection.Some people even consider them one war with
two phases, but you know,it's always possible that things developed in a

(51:14):
different way, and being reminding ourselvesof that is important to try and understand
why things developed the way they did. So, just to give you one
very you know, one example isthat by the mid nineteen twenties, you
know, some people were thinking,well, maybe things are looking up a
little bit here. You know,German economy is starting to recover a bit.

(51:37):
Yes, they lost ten percent oftheir their pre war territory that they
had to give up to France andto the new state of Poland. But
at the same time, the economyis starting to get a bit better.
Maybe there's hope. But then youhave the great depression that starts, and

(52:00):
this really puts wind in the salesof those who are trying to exploit the
memory of Versailles. So, ifyou know, there's a reasonable argument that
if certain conditions have been different,Germany might have kind of gotten over Vessaill,
at least to the point where theywouldn't have been looking to start another
war. But you know, thingshappened that made the line of exploiting Besai

(52:24):
as a justification in addition to theyou know, Nazis racial ideology and so
on and so forth, but exploitingBessai as a justification for war would not
have been as appealing. So yeah, that's I'll just add that bit of
mud to the water there. Sowe're we're gonna have to conclude this pretty

(52:47):
soon here, Jesse, because wecould we could go on and on and
on, I think about this war. In fact, we've kind of done
this for almost an hour now.I do have one final question, which
I think is is is kind ofa fun one and it takes us back
to the war itself. So we'regoing to go back into the war a
little bit. But I think broadly, if you know a lot about World

(53:07):
War One, you're going to knowabout some of the really big key battles.
Verre Doing, for example, Ithink, is a very well established
battle in World War One. Butwhat I want to know is what are
some of the more what are someof the lesser known battles that actually played
sort of a key role in sortof shifting the tide and maybe maybe in
just one arena or the other thatultimately led to sort of the conclusion as

(53:30):
we as we found it today.Yeah, that's a great question. I'm
glad you asked that question, becauseyou know, the war is more than
the sum of its four or fivebiggest battles. There's a lot of other
interesting and influential things that were goingon, and a couple of the ones
that I think about often is,especially in the English speaking world, we

(53:53):
think about the battles where the Britishfought a lot, right, but in
nineteen fourteen and fifty, mean,the British army is still very, very
small. Almost all of the fighting, or the vast majority of the fighting
on the Western Front, is doneby the French, and they take the
heaviest losses of any major power inthose two years. And they're holding off

(54:15):
the Germans mostly on their own inthe West, and I think that we
don't appreciate the gravity of that.I mean, they're the ones who stop
the Germans on the Marn primarily,they're the ones who tie the Germans down
in nineteen fifteen with massive offensives.Those don't go well, But the situation

(54:37):
in Russia, which is bad forthe Allies in nineteen fifteen, would have
been way worse if the French hadnot been pressuring the Germans. I think
the French role in the first twoyears is underappreciated. Another one is another
couple of them actually are in theBalkans, so we don't talk about it

(54:58):
that much. But on the SaltLona Front, so it's in Greece,
there's a campaign there. The Alliesland troops French and British and Serbian and
they fight the Bulgarians and the Germansprimarily the Ottomans had a few people there
too. It's kind of a sideshow in a way until it breaks down.
And in September nineteen eighteen, theAllies break through. They break the

(55:20):
Bulgarians, and this is one ofthe big dominoes that convinces the German Army
high command that they're done, Likewe've lost militarily. The war doesn't end
that day in September, but theone of the German commanders, Ludendorff Red,
he kind of has a breakdown overthis because he understands that our southern

(55:42):
flank is gone, We're going tobe cut off from the Ottomans. The
Allies are going to be able toinvade Austria Hungary if this continues, and
we can't do much about it.So I think that that Balkan break through
in September nineteen eighteen is also quiteimportant. And the last one I would
say is a bit of a whatif that I often wonder about when the

(56:06):
Central Powers defeated Russia. Russia hasthe revolution right and then they can't slash
then don't want to fight on,so they signed this peace treaty where they
give up a third of the Europeanpart of the Russian Empire and the Germans
and Austrians set up an independent that'snot quite the right way to phrase it,

(56:28):
a semi independent Ukraine. So Ukrainethat's kind of under control, the
other under the influence of the CentralPowers. It doesn't last that long.
But they call this peace agreement withUkraine the Bread Peace because the idea was
the Germans and Austrian said, youcan have a state Ukraine. You can
be a state. We're going tohave troops there and so on. You're

(56:50):
gonna have to kind of you cooperatewith us. But the main thing is
you're going to give us food becausethey're shorter food. And that didn't work
right. Essentially, the Central Powerscollapsed before that agreement can really have an
impact, and Ukraine was totally devastatedand so it didn't have much bread,
much grain to give. But it'svery interesting to think about what could have

(57:12):
happened, not that I'd be cheeringfor a Central Powers victory, but if
that had sort of developed a littlebit differently, and I think you find
that in almost any The reason whyI wanted to ask you this question is
because I've not covered a lot ofsort of wars within sort of our geographic
specialty. Although if there's one thingyou've convinced me of in this episode,
Jesse, is that we probably needto do one on the Franco Prussian War

(57:35):
and then one on World War Two, and maybe we'll have you on for
both of those as well. Butthe reason why I wanted to ask that
question was because in any war,there's always those big battles, right,
but there's also these battles that Ithink happen where had there been a different
outcome, that everything could have changed, right, There's always those possibilities,
there's those things. As you alludedto you as being English speakers, we

(57:59):
probably mostly you know, from theUS side, we hear a lot about
sort of the US involvement in bothWorld War Two and World War One,
respectively. English speaker is probably hearinga lot about generally the anglosphere involvement,
but obviously there's a lot more thatgoes on, and we don't quite hear
a bit about We don't quite hearas much about that as maybe we should,

(58:21):
and I think that's always very importantcontext to have. So this has
been a very great conversation. Jesse. Please tell our listeners where they can
find you online or wherever you want. It has been a great conversation,
so thanks again for the invitation.If anybody wants to find me online or

(58:44):
is now interested in war history orWorld War One, you can go to
YouTube and look for the Great Warchannel or the Real Time History channel.
I'm involved with both of those,or you can follow me on Twitter or
x if you search me there aswell. Great. Yeah, listener,
you're probably coming away from this withprobably more questions that we weren't able to

(59:07):
be able to get to. Asit turns out, World War One and
everything else we talked about was it'sa very deep, very very incredibly deep
topic and there's just not every Wejust can't cover everything in this one single
podcast, or even in the podcastthat you listened to a few days ago,
if you listened to that one,So please talk. There's a YouTube

(59:27):
channel that addresses all this stuff andgreat listener. You'd be doing yourself a
great favor if you check out thosechannels that we're just mentioned, because the
kind of fantastically well explained responses thatwe've got today are part for the course
on those YouTube channels, so I'vedefinitely check those out. Absolutely well.

(59:50):
This has been a delight. Thisis the Geography Is Everything Podcast. My
name is Jeff. I'm here withmy co host Hunter Jesse. Thanks again
for joining us today. Next weekcome back, you're going to listen to
an episode all about well, it'sgonna be a very different topic, but
it's gonna be all about your summervacation. So Jesse, you might be
on the verge of experiencing a bitof that wave that's crushing towards Europe now

(01:00:14):
as people around the world sort ofget out for summers, particularly here in
the United States and Canada, alot of people head over to Europe.
So we're going to talk all aboutthat, where people are going, what
are the biggest hotspots. It shouldbe a really fun and engaging conversation.
So come back next week and listento hero us. Listen to us gab
all about that, and I guessuntil then we will see you next time.