World War I: The “Great War”

Discover how World War I all too quickly expanded far beyond the expectations of those involved to become the first “total war.”

Overview

Course No. 8210

Touched off by a terrorist act in Bosnia and spreading quickly beyond expectations, World War I was an unprecedented catastrophe with a ghastly cost. This first “total war” – involving entire societies mobilized for unrestrained conflict – changed the world forever.

These 36 riveting half-hour lectures examine the war’s complex patterns across multiple fronts: the Western Front’s trench warfare, Eastern Front clashes, Southern Fronts, War at Sea, Arab Revolt, Communist Revolution, Armenian Massacre, and Spanish Influenza pandemic.

Professor Liulevicius combines chronological and thematic approaches to explore themes like:

• The surprising eagerness to plunge into mutual slaughter
• Society’s endurance under total war
• Radically different hopes/hatreds between Western and Eastern Europe
• The role of ideologies in the war’s conduct

Video Lectures

1. The Century’s Initial Catastrophe (33 min)
2. Europe in 1914 (32 min)
3. Towards Crisis in Politics and Culture (34 min)
4. Causes of the War and the July Crisis, 1914 (29 min)
5. The August Madness (30 min)
6. The Failed Gambles – War Plans Break Down (31 min)
7. The Western Front Experience (29 min)
8. Life and Death in the Trenches (31 min)
9. The Great Battles of Attrition (31 min)
10. The Eastern Front Experience (32 min)
11. The Southern Fronts (31 min)
12. War Aims and Occupations (31 min)
13. Soldiers as Victims (31 min)
14. Storm Troopers and Future Dictators (30 min)
15. The Total War of Technology (31 min)
16. Air War (30 min)
17. War at Sea (31 min)
18. The Global Reach of the War (31 min)
19. The War State (31 min)
20. Propaganda War (32 min)
21. Endurance and Stress on the Home Front (31 min)
22. Dissent and Its Limits (31 min)
23. Remobilization in 1916-1917 (29 min)
24. Armenian Massacres – Tipping into Genocide (33 min)
25. Strains of War – Socialists and Nationalists (31 min)
26. Russian Revolutions (32 min)
27. America’s Entry into the War (31 min)
28. America at War – Over There and Over Here (30 min)
29. 1918 – The German Empire’s Last Gamble (30 min)
30. The War’s End – Emotions of the Armistice (31 min)
31. Toppled Thrones – The Collapse of Empires (30 min)
32. The Versailles Treaty and Paris Settlement (32 min)
33. Aftershocks – Reds, Whites, and Nationalists (32 min)
34. Monuments, Memory, and Myths (32 min)
35. The Rise of the Mass Dictatorships (31 min)
36. Legacies of the Great War (31 min)