WWI

Materiel, Propaganda, & Poetry

WWI

June 28, 1914 – November 11, 1918 (Armstice); Treaty of Versailles June 28, 1919

Great Adventure: “The war to end all wars” – “over by Christmas” Huge disillusionment

C20 Weapons with C19 Tactics

First Fully Mechanized War: Machine guns Tanks Airplanes Chemical Weapons Flame Throwers

Irrational Causes and Fighting Techniques Beg. With Assassination of Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, June 28,

1914

WWI At A Glance

Allied Powers Dead: 5,525,000 Wounded: 12,831,500 Missing: 4,121,000 Total: 22,477,500

France: Dead / Wounded: 1,397,800 / 4,266,000

Great Britain Dead / Wounded: 886,939 / 1,663,435 Incl. Imperial Forces (Australia, Canada, India, etc.):

1,115,597 / 2,090,212

~1,500/day for 4.3 years United States

Dead / Wounded: 116,708 / 205,690

Russian Empire Dead / Wounded: 1,811,000 – 2,254,369 / 3,749,000 – 4,950,000

WWI: The Toll

Central PowersDead: 4,386,000Wounded: 8,388,000Missing: 3,629,000Total: 16,403,000

Austria-HungaryDead: 1,100,000Wounded: 3,620,000

German EmpireDead: 2,050,897Wounded: 4,247,143

WWI: The Toll

The Lost Generation

Public disillusionment in idealism, progress, technology, government, institutions, conventional morality

Sense that humanity is unknown to itself Freudian Psychoanalysis (Death Wish) The greater part of our nature is the subconscious We desire and seek conflict automatically

Levels of “Shell Shock” (PTSD) and other disorders never seen before

Pervasive traumatic effect in the general culture, which is represented in literature and art of the 1920s-1930s.

WWI: The Aftermath

Recruitment Poster & Avant-Garde Parody (BLAST no. 2 July 1915)

Suggested Further Reading Vera Brittain

Testament of Youth (1933)

Ernest Hemingway The Sun Also Rises (1926) A Farewell to Arms (1929)

Erich Maria Remarque All Quiet on the Western Front (1929)

T.S. Eliot The Waste Land (1922)

Virginia Woolf Mrs. Dalloway (1925) To the Lighthouse (1927)