aftermath of World War I

Blockade of Germany

Through the period from the Armistice of 11 November 1918 until the signing of the Treaty of Versailles with the Weimar Republic on 28 June 1919, the Allies maintained the naval blockade of Germany that had begun during the war. As the German economy was dependent on imports, it is estimated that around half a million civilians had died. N. P. Howard of the University of Sheffield estimated that a quarter of a million excess deaths occurred in the eight-month period following the conflict's conclusion, 40% of which took place in November 1918, making for 474,085 excess deaths for the entire 1914–1919 period. The continuation of the blockade after the fighting ended, as author Robert Leckie wrote in Delivered from Evil, did much to "torment the Germans ... driving them with the fury of despair into the arms of the devil." The terms of the Armistice did allow food to be shipped into Germany, but the Allies required that Germany provide the means (the shipping) to do so. The German government was required to use its gold reserves, being unable to secure a loan from the United States.

Historian Sally Marks said that while "[a]llied warships remained in place against a possible resumption of hostilities, the Allies offered food and medicine after the armistice, but Germany refused to allow its ships to carry supplies". Further, Marks stated that despite the problems facing the Allies, from the German government, "Allied food shipments arrived in Allied ships before the charge made at Versailles". This position is also supported by Elisabeth Gläser who notes that an Allied task force, to help feed the German population, was established in early 1919 and that by May 1919 Germany "became the chief recipient of American and Allied food shipments". Gläser further claims that during the early months of 1919, while the main relief effort was being planned, France provided food shipments to Bavaria and the Rhineland. She further claims that the German government delayed the relief effort by refusing to surrender their merchant fleet to the Allies. Finally, she concludes that "the very success of the relief effort had in effect deprived the [Allies] of a credible threat to induce Germany to sign the Treaty of Versailles. However, it is also the case that for eight months following the end of hostilities, some form of blockade was continually in place, with some contemporary estimates that a further 100,000 casualties among German civilians due to starvation were caused, on top of the hundreds of thousands which already had occurred. Food shipments, furthermore, had been entirely dependent on Allied goodwill, causing at least in part the post-hostilities irregularity.

Paris Peace Conference

After the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on 28 June 1919, between Germany on the one side and France, Italy, Britain and other minor allied powers on the other, officially ended war between those countries. Other treaties ended the relationships of the United States and the other Central Powers. Included in the 440 articles of the Treaty of Versailles were the demands that Germany officially accept responsibility "for causing all the loss and damage" of the war and pay economic reparations. The treaty drastically limited the German military machine: German troops were reduced to 100,000 and the country was prevented from possessing major military armaments such as tanks, warships, warplanes, armored vehicles and submarines.

Influenza epidemic

Historians continue to argue about the impact the 1918 flu pandemic had on the outcome of the war. It has been posited that the Central Powers may have been exposed to the viral wave before the Allies. The resulting casualties having greater effect, having been incurred during the war, as opposed to the allies who suffered the brunt of the pandemic after the Armistice. When the extent of the epidemic was realized, the respective censorship programs of the Allies and Central Powers limited the public's knowledge regarding the true extent of the disease. Because Spain was neutral, their media was free to report on the flu, giving the impression that it began there. This misunderstanding led to contemporary reports naming it the "Spanish flu". Investigative work by a British team led by virologist John Oxford of St Bartholomew's Hospital and the Royal London Hospital, identified a major troop staging and hospital camp in Étaples, France as almost certainly being the center of the 1918 flu pandemic. A significant precursor virus was harbored in birds, and mutated to pigs that were kept near the front. The exact number of deaths is unknown but about 50 million people are estimated to have died from the influenza outbreak worldwide. In 2005, a study found that the 1918 virus strain developed in birds and was similar to 21st century 'bird flu'.

Formation of national identities

After 123 years, Poland re-emerged as an independent country. The Kingdom of Serbia and its dynasty, as a "minor Entente nation" and the country with the most casualties per capita, became the backbone of a new multinational state, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, later renamed Yugoslavia. The Kingdom of Bohemia and parts of the Kingdom of Hungary combined to create Czechoslovakia. Romania united all Romanian-speaking people under a single state leading to Greater Romania. Russia became the Soviet Union and lost Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia, which became independent countries. The Ottoman Empire was soon replaced by Turkey and many of its territories became mandates under British or French rule.

In the British Empire, the war unleashed new forms of nationalism. In the Dominions of Australia and New Zealand, the Battle of Gallipoli became known as those nations' "Baptism of Fire". It was the first major war in which the newly established countries fought, and it was one of the first times that Australian troops fought as Australians, not just subjects of the British Crown, and independent national identities for these nations took hold. Anzac Day, commemorating the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC), celebrates this defining moment.

After the Battle of Vimy Ridge, where the Canadian divisions fought together for the first time as a single corps, Canadians began to refer to their country as a nation "forged from fire". Having succeeded on the same battleground where the "mother countries" had previously faltered, they were for the first time respected internationally for their own accomplishments. Like Australia and New Zealand, Canada entered the war as a Dominion of the British Empire and remained so, although it emerged with a greater measure of independence. When Britain declared war in 1914, the dominions were automatically at war; at the conclusion, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa were individual signatories of the Treaty of Versailles.

Lobbying by Chaim Weizmann and fear that American Jews would encourage the United States to support Germany culminated in the British government's Balfour Declaration of 1917, endorsing creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. A total of more than 1,172,000 Jewish soldiers served in the Allied and Central Power forces in World War I, including 275,000 in Austria-Hungary and 450,000 in Tsarist Russia.

Political upheavals

Revolutions

A far-left and often explicitly communist revolutionary wave occurred in several European countries in 1917–1920, notably in Germany and Hungary. The single most important event precipitated by the privations of World War I was the Russian Revolution of 1917.

With the war having turned decisively against the Central Powers, the people of Austria-Hungary lost faith in their allied countries, and before the armistice in November, nationalism had already led to several declarations of independence in south-central Europe after November 1918. As the central government had ceased to operate in vast areas, these regions found themselves without a government and many new groups attempted to fill the void. During this same period, the population was facing food shortages and was, for the most part, demoralized by the losses incurred during the war. Various political parties, ranging from nationalists, social democrats, and communists attempted to set up governments in the names of the different nationalities. In other areas, existing nation states such as Romania engaged regions that they considered to be theirs. These moves created de facto governments that complicated life for diplomats, idealists, and the Western allies.

The Western forces were officially supposed to occupy the old Empire, but rarely had enough troops to do so effectively. They had to deal with local authorities who had their own agenda to fulfill. At the peace conference in Paris the diplomats had to reconcile these authorities with the competing demands of the nationalists who had turned to them for help during the war, the strategic or political desires of the Western allies themselves, and other agendas such as a desire to implement the spirit of the Fourteen Points.

For example, in order to live up to the ideal of self-determination laid out in the Fourteen Points, Germans, whether Austrian or German, should be able to decide their own future and government. However, the French especially were concerned that an expanded Germany would be a huge security risk. Further complicating the situation, delegations such as the Czechs and Slovenians made strong claims on some German-speaking territories.

The result was treaties that compromised many ideals, offended many allies, and set up an entirely new order in the area. Many people hoped that the new nation states would allow for a new era of prosperity and peace in the region, free from the bitter quarrelling between nationalities that had marked the preceding fifty years. This hope proved far too optimistic. Changes in territorial configuration after World War I included:

France

Alsace–Lorraine returned to France, the region which had been ceded to the Kingdom of Prussia in 1871 after the Franco-Prussian War. At the 1919 Peace Conference, Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau's aim was to ensure that Germany would not seek revenge in the following years. To this purpose, the chief commander of the Allied forces, Marshal Ferdinand Foch, had demanded that for the future protection of France the Rhine river should now form the border between France and Germany. Based on history, he was convinced that Germany would again become a threat, and, on hearing the terms of the Treaty of Versailles that had left Germany substantially intact, he observed that "This is not Peace. It is an Armistice for twenty years."

The destruction brought upon French territory was to be indemnified by the reparations negotiated at Versailles. This financial imperative dominated France's foreign policy throughout the 1920s, leading to the 1923 Occupation of the Ruhr in order to force Germany to pay. However, Germany was unable to pay, and obtained support from the United States. Thus, the Dawes Plan was negotiated after Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré's occupation of the Ruhr, and then the Young Plan in 1929.

Also extremely important in the War was the participation of French colonial troops (who amounted for around 10% of the total number of troops deployed by France across the war), including the Senegalese tirailleurs, and troops from Indochina, North Africa, and Madagascar. When these soldiers returned to their homelands and continued to be treated as second class citizens, many became the nuclei of pro-independence groups.

Furthermore, under the state of war declared during the hostilities, the French economy had been somewhat centralized in order to be able to shift into a "war economy", leading to a first breach with classical liberalism.

Finally, the socialists' support of the National Union government (including Alexandre Millerand's nomination as Minister of War) marked a shift towards the French Section of the Workers' International's (SFIO) turn towards social democracy and participation in "bourgeois governments", although Léon Blum maintained a socialist rhetoric.

"But with its faceless state machinery and unremitting mechanized slaughter, the war instead collapsed these old ideals" (Roberts 2). When the war was over and the men returned home, the world was a vastly different place than it had been before the war. Many ideals and beliefs were shattered with the war. Those returning from the front lines, and even those who were on the Homefront, were left to pick up the pieces of what was left of those ideals and beliefs, and try to rebuild them. Before the Great War, many thought this war would be a quick war, like many before had been. With new technology and weapons though, the war was at a stalemate for a large part of it, dragging what many thought would be a quick war out into a long, grueling war. With so much death and destruction done to France, it is not surprising when looking back that the way of life for French citizens was forever changed.

Italy

Even after 1870, after the unification of Italy, many ethnic Italian-speakers (Italians in Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol, Savoyard Italians, Corfiot Italians, Niçard Italians, Swiss Italians, Corsican Italians, Maltese Italians, Istrian Italians, and Dalmatian Italians) remained outside the borders of the Kingdom of Italy, planting the seeds of Italian irredentism.

Italy entered into World War I on May 23, 1915, with the aim of completing national unity: for this reason, the Italian intervention in World War I is also considered the Fourth Italian War of Independence, in a historiographical perspective that identifies in the latter the conclusion of the unification of Italy, whose military actions began during the revolutions of 1848 with the First Italian War of Independence.

In 1882, Italy joined with the German Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire to form the Triple Alliance. However, even if relations with Berlin became very friendly, the alliance with Vienna remained purely formal, as the Italians were keen to acquire Trentino and Trieste, parts of the Austro-Hungarian empire populated by Italians.

During World War I Italy aligned with the Allies, instead of joining Germany and Austria. This could happen since the alliance formally had merely defensive prerogatives, while the Central Empires were the ones who started the offensive. With the Treaty of London, Britain secretly offered Italy Trentino and Tyrol as far as Brenner, Trieste and Istria, all the Dalmatian coast except Fiume, full ownership of Albanian Valona and a protectorate over Albania, Antalya in Turkey and a share of the Turkish and German colonial empire, in exchange for Italy siding against the Central Empires.

On the Dalmatian coast, Italy established the Governorate of Dalmatia, which had the provisional aim of ferrying the territory towards full integration into the Kingdom of Italy, progressively importing national legislation in place of the previous one. The administrative capital was Zara. The Governorate of Dalmatia was evacuated following the Italo-Yugoslav agreements which resulted in the Treaty of Rapallo (1920).

After the victory, Vittorio Orlando, Italy's President of the Council of Ministers, and Sidney Sonnino, its Foreign Minister, were sent as the Italian representatives to Paris with the aim of gaining the promised territories and as much other land as possible. In particular, there was an especially strong opinion about the status of Fiume, which they believed was rightly Italian due to Italian population, in agreement with Wilson's Fourteen Points, the 9th of which read:

Japan

Because of the Anglo-Japanese Allience that Japan had signed with Great Britain in 1902, Japan was one of the Allies during the war. With British assistance, Japanese forces attacked Germany's territories in Shandong, China, including the East Asian coaling base of the Imperial German Navy. The German forces were defeated and surrendered to Japan in November 1914. The Japanese navy also succeeded in seizing several of Germany's island possessions in the western Pacific: the Carolines, the Mariana Islands, and the Marshall Islands.

At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, Japan was granted all of Germany's pre-war rights in Shandong Province in China (despite China also being one of the Allies during the war): outright possession of the territory of Jiaozhou Bay, and favorable commercial rights throughout the rest of the province, as well as the South Seas Mandate over the German Pacific island possessions that the Imperial Japanese Navy had taken. Also, Japan was granted a permanent seat on the Council of the League of Nations. Nevertheless, the Western powers refused Japan's request for the inclusion of a "racial equality" clause as part of the Treaty of Versailles. Shandong reverted to Chinese control in 1922 after mediation by the United States during the Washington Naval Conference. Weihai followed in 1930.

United States

While disillusioned by the war, not having achieved the high ideals promised by President Woodrow Wilson, American commercial interests did finance Europe's rebuilding and reparation efforts in Germany, at least until the onset of the Great Depression. American opinion on the propriety of providing aid to Germans and Austrians was split, as evidenced by an exchange of correspondence between Edgar Gott, an executive with The Boeing Company and Charles Osner, chairman of the Committee for the Relief of Destitute Women and Children in Germany and Austria. Gott argued that relief should first go to citizens of countries that had suffered at the hands of the Central Powers, while Osner made an appeal for a more universal application of humanitarian ideals. It is also important to note that some Americans also felt that the Treaty of Versailles was too harsh towards Germany and that many were upset with France due to it defaulting on its war debts.

Shortly before this default was the Crash of 1929 which led to the Great Depression and a strengthening of Isolationism as economic issues came to the forefront. The American economic influence allowed the Great Depression to start a domino effect, pulling Europe in as well.

Following the war the United States also returned once more to a strong influence of isolationism or non interventionalism. This also effected their engagement with the League of Nations and willingness to enter the Second World War such as passing the Neutrality acts.

After the war the trend of increasing United States influence in Latin America continued. Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru accepted this influence and Argentina and Chile opposed it at least until 1945.

Territorial gains and losses

Countries that gained or regained territory or independence after World War I

Armenia: independence from Russian Empire and the Ottoman Empire

Australia: gained control of German New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago and Nauru

Austria: gained territories (Őrvidék) from Hungary

Azerbaijan: independence from Russian Empire

Belgium: gained control of Eupen-Malmedy and the African territories of Ruanda-Urundi from the German Empire

Belarusian People's Republic: gained control of several cities from the Russian Empire

Czechoslovakia: gained independence and territories from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, from the northern and western part gained Bohemia, Moravia, and part of Silesia and from the southern and eastern part gained mostly Upper Hungary and Carpathian Ruthenia

Danzig: semi-autonomous free city with independence from the German Empire

Denmark: gained Nordschleswig after the 1920 Schleswig plebiscites from the German Empire

Estonia: independence from the Russian Empire

Finland: independence from the Russian Empire

France: gained Alsace-Lorraine as well as various African colonies from the German Empire, and Middle East territories from the Ottoman Empire. The African and Middle East gains were officially League of Nations Mandates.

Nations that lost territory or independence after World War I

Austria: as the successor state of Cisleithania in the Austro-Hungarian Empire

Bulgaria: lost Western Thrace to Greece, also lost a part of Pirin Macedonia and Western Outlands to Serbia (Yugoslavia)

China: temporarily lost Jiaozhou Bay and most of Shandong to the Empire of Japan

Germany: as the successor state of the German Empire

Hungary: as the successor state of Transleithania in the Austro-Hungarian Empire

Montenegro: declared union with Serbia and subsequently became incorporated into Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes

Russian SFSR, as the successor state of the Russian Empire

Turkey: as the successor state of the Ottoman Empire (although it did simultaneously gain some territory from the Russian Empire in the Treaty of Kars and reverse some territorial losses in Anatolia during the Turkish War of Independence and in the South Caucasus during the invasion of Armenia)

United Kingdom: lost most of Ireland as the Irish Free State, Egypt in 1922 and Afghanistan in 1919

Social trauma

The experiences of the war in the west are commonly assumed to have led to a sort of collective national trauma afterward for all of the participating countries. The optimism of 1900 was entirely gone and those who fought became what is known as "the Lost Generation" because they never fully recovered from their suffering. For the next few years, much of Europe mourned privately and publicly; memorials were erected in thousands of villages and towns.

So many British men of marriageable age died or were injured that the students of one girls' school were warned that only 10% would marry. The 1921 United Kingdom census found 19,803,022 women and 18,082,220 men in England and Wales, a difference of 1.72 million which newspapers called the "Surplus Two Million". In the 1921 census there were 1,209 single women aged 25 to 29 for every 1,000 men. In 1931 50% were still single, and 35% of them did not marry while still able to bear children.

As early as 1923, Stanley Baldwin recognized a new strategic reality that faced Britain in a disarmament speech. Poison gas and the aerial bombing of civilians were new developments of the First World War. The British civilian population, for many centuries, had not had any serious reason to fear invasion. So the new threat of poison gas dropped from enemy bomber aircraft excited a grossly exaggerated view of the civilian deaths that would occur on the outbreak of any future war. Baldwin expressed this in his statement that "The bomber will always get through." The traditional British policy of a balance of power in Europe no longer safeguarded the British home population.

One gruesome reminder of the sacrifices of the generation was the fact that this was one of the first times in international conflict whereby more men died in battle than from disease, which was the main cause of deaths in most previous wars.

This social trauma made itself manifest in many different ways. Some people were revolted by nationalism and what they believed it had caused, so they began to work toward a more internationalist world through organizations such as the League of Nations. Pacifism became increasingly popular. Others had the opposite reaction, feeling that only military strength could be relied upon for protection in a chaotic and inhumane world that did not respect hypothetical notions of civilization. Certainly a sense of disillusionment and cynicism became pronounced. Nihilism grew in popularity. Many people believed that the war heralded the end of the world as they had known it, including the collapse of capitalism and imperialism. Communist and socialist movements around the world drew strength from this theory, enjoying a level of popularity they had never known before. These feelings were most pronounced in areas directly or particularly harshly affected by the war, such as central Europe, Russia and France.

Economic consequences

The war left allied countries overburdened with debt to the United States, and the wrecked German economy was not able to pay reparations except when loaned by American banks. Many wished to restore the gold standard despite opinions that would hurt their economies. There was an overall shift in economic power from Europe to the United States because it supplied major defense infrastructure and food to the rest of the world.

After the war, governments did not return to the policies of the First globalization, instead erecting capital controls and trade barriers, and new borders did not help. Introduced as a temporary war measure, passport control hindered economic migration and prevented equalizing labor costs in poor and developed countries, with the latter declaring their wish to abolish any restrictions but not actually wanting their workers to compete with immigrants.

The end of the first total, global war, met world industry with a massive overcapacity for military and military-related production (as well as military surpluses), such as aviation engines and stimulated research in how to adapt it to the peaceful life. For example, nitrocellulose lacquers were commercialized after it was invented how to decrease velocity of the substance formerly produced for gunpowder. Many companies specializing in the affected industries went out of business. Some industries, such as shipbuilding, were initially flooded with reconstruction orders, e.g., to replace lost shipping, but faltered as soon as the demand returned to normal levels.

Remains of ammunition

Unexploded ordnance from the First World War remains a persistent hazard in parts of the former Western Front, especially in northern France and Belgium. Shells, grenades and other munitions are still brought to the surface by farming, construction work and erosion, a recurring phenomenon known as the iron harvest. In Belgium, the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Service (DOVO) reports an average of ten calls a day, usually concerning historical ammunition from the two world wars, and defuses more than 200 tons of ammunition each year.

The problem is also significant in France. The French civil-security demining service collects and destroys more than 450 tons of explosive devices annually across the country, and since 1945 has neutralized or destroyed 35 million shells and other explosive devices. Some munitions contain chemical agents, including mustard gas, and corroded shells may remain dangerous long after burial. A 2024 French Senate report stated that the collection and neutralization of munitions from the two world wars would require several centuries at current conditions.

Memorials

War memorials

Many towns in the participating countries have war memorials dedicated to local residents who died. Examples include:

Australian War Memorial, Canberra, Australia

Liberty Memorial, Kansas City, Missouri, United States

Jutland Memorial Park, Thyborøn, Jutland, Denmark

District of Columbia War Memorial, Washington, D.C., United States

Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial

The Cenotaph, London, United Kingdom

Menin Gate Memorial, Ypres, Belgium

Thiepval Memorial

Tyne Cot Memorial to the Missing at Passchendaele

Verdun Memorial Museum

Vimy Ridge Memorial, Vimy, France

Gallipoli Memorial, Turkey

Shrine of Remembrance, Melbourne, Australia

Irish National War Memorial Gardens, Dublin, Ireland

Island of Ireland Peace Park, Messines, Belgium

National War Memorial, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

National War Memorial, St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada

Kriegerdenkmal auf dem Neroberg, Wiesbaden, Hessen, Germany

Tombs of unknown soldiers

Monument to the Unknown Hero, Belgrade, Serbia

Amar Jawan Jyoti, New Delhi, India

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Arc de Triomphe, Paris, France

The Tomb of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey, London, United Kingdom

Tomb of the Unknowns, Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia, United States

Tomba del milite ignoto, Rome, Italy

Australian War Memorial, Canberra, Australia

New Zealand Tomb of the Unknown Warrior, Wellington, New Zealand

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Syntagma Square, Athens, Greece

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Bucharest, Romania

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Batalha Monastery, Batalha, Portugal

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Warsaw, Poland