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Housekeeping:
- Grading Exam II (2 wks)
- Cupcakes & Short Stories
- Warning: some of today's images are very graphic.
Agenda:
Although we now refer to this as World War One, when the Great War was being fought, no one called it the First World War (because no one imagined that there would be a second).
Conglomeration of Causes:
Gavrillo Princip – Serbian Nationalist who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie.
This event has historically been identified as the event that triggered the Great War.
The Great War was instigated by a conglomeration of different factors (sometimes the volatile conditions are referred to as a powder keg). However, the soldiers in the trenches and their families back at home were rarely aware of what they were fighting for; an entire generation of European men died and no one could say why. Both sides (or all the different sides) generated a wealth of propaganda to fuel the war.
RMS Lusitania – British ship that was sunk on May 7, 1915 by a German sub. This was not a war ship so there were civilians on board including women and children. There were 1198 killed, including 128 Americans.
Lusitania Propaganda – This helped to swing public opinion in America toward entering the war. WWI lasted from 1914 -1918, but America did not enter the war until April 6, 1917.
Rock Stars of War
Triple Alliance
Baron Manfred Von Richthofen also known as the Red Baron.
Top German Flying Ace.
Mata Hari – Dutch exotic dancer.
Spy for both Germans and French. Executed by French for being a double agent.
Wilheim II – Last German Emperor (Kaiser) and King of Prussia
Triple Entente
Alvin York – WWI Hero. He killed 32 men and captured 132.
Woodrow Wilson – President of the United States during WWI
Eddie Rickenbacker – Top American Flying Ace
Killing Machines
The Great War was the last European war with horse charges and the first war to use tanks and airplanes - it was a war without precedent.
New weapons of mass-destruction and new tools were devised to weather the "first man-made catastrophe."
Horses – WWI was the last war horses were used by modern armies.
Sargent Stubby – Pit Bull that won awards for his bravery in defending the soldiers in the trenches.
Gas masks were a necessary defense against mustard gas.
Listening device used in WWI.
Grenade
Trench Warfare
Trench Foot – caused when the soldiers stood for long periods in the filthy water that filled the trenches in wet weather
Lice – Due to the close contact in the trenches, lice spread among the troops causing trench fever. The other varmint the soldiers encountered was rats. The rats were known to feed on corpses that were in the trenches.
Flu Epidemic – 1918 Flu Pandemic that killed up to 100 million people
Facial Reconstruction
Facial Reconstruction
While Great War propaganda typically relied upon traditional Victorian gender expectations to goad Europe into mobilizing, the war itself challenged gender rolls, particularly for women.
Women sewing surgical bandages.
Women were needed to fill the jobs vacated by the men.
Women joining the Red Cross.
Yamen Kim – Experimented on using tofu to increase the food value of meat dishes for the American Armed Forces.
Race and War
The Great War forced Americans to recognize the localized social construction of race.
Eugene Jacques Bullard - denied entry in US Army Air Corps because of his race so he joined the French Flying Corps. He stayed in Paris as a Jazz Musician and nightclub owner.
Ahmet Celikten – one of only two black military pilots in WWI.
Harlem Hell Fighters – 369th Infantry Regiment. These men were in the first regiment of African-Americans and African-Puerto Ricans to join the American Expeditionary Force. Until this group, African-Americans could only join the Canadian or French Forces to see action in Europe. The Germans actually gave they their nickname for their toughness. They never lost a man to capture, nor did they lose a trench, nor give any ground to the enemy.
Henry Johnson and Needham Roberts – two members of the Harlem Hellfighters who won the Croix de Guerre for their heroism.
Great War Humor and Popular Culture
Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron
Amy Lowell's Men, Women, and Ghosts (1916)
Patterns (1916)
BY AMY LOWELL
I walk down the garden paths,
And all the daffodils
Are blowing, and the bright blue squills.
I walk down the patterned garden paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
With my powdered hair and jewelled fan,
I too am a rare
Pattern. As I wander down
The garden paths.
My dress is richly figured,
And the train
Makes a pink and silver stain
On the gravel, and the thrift
Of the borders.
Just a plate of current fashion,
Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes.
Not a softness anywhere about me,
Only whale-bone and brocade.
And I sink on a seat in the shade
Of a lime tree. For my passion
Wars against the stiff brocade.
The daffodils and squills
Flutter in the breeze
As they please.
And I weep;
For the lime tree is in blossom
And one small flower has dropped upon my bosom.
And the splashing of waterdrops
In the marble fountain
Comes down the garden paths.
The dripping never stops.
Underneath my stiffened gown
Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin,
A basin in the midst of hedges grown
So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding,
But she guesses he is near,
And the sliding of the water
Seems the stroking of a dear
Hand upon her.
What is Summer in a fine brocaded gown!
I should like to see it lying in a heap upon the ground.
All the pink and silver crumpled up on the ground.
I would be the pink and silver as I ran along the paths,
And he would stumble after,
Bewildered by my laughter.
I should see the sun flashing from his sword-hilt and the buckles on his shoes.
I would choose
To lead him in a maze along the patterned paths,
A bright and laughing maze for my heavy-booted lover,
Till he caught me in the shade,
And the buttons of his waistcoat bruised my body as he clasped me,
Aching, melting, unafraid.
With the shadows of the leaves and the sundrops,
And the plopping of the waterdrops,
All about us in the open afternoon
I am very like to swoon
With the weight of this brocade,
For the sun sifts through the shade.
Underneath the fallen blossom
In my bosom,
Is a letter I have hid.
It was brought to me this morning by a rider from the Duke.
“Madam, we regret to inform you that Lord Hartwell
Died in action Thursday sen’night.”
As I read it in the white, morning sunlight,
The letters squirmed like snakes.
“Any answer, Madam,” said my footman.
“No,” l told him.
“See that the messenger takes some refreshment.
No, no answer.”
And I walked into the garden,
Up and down the patterned paths,
In my stiff, correct brocade.
The blue and yellow flowers stood up proudly in the sun,
Each one.
I stood upright too,
Held rigid to the pattern
By the stiffness of my gown.
Up and down I walked,
Up and down.
In a month he would have been my husband.
In a month, here, underneath this lime,
We would have broke the pattern;
He for me, and I for him,
He as Colonel, I as Lady,
On this shady seat.
He had a whim
That sunlight carried blessing.
And I answered, “It shall be as you have said.”
Now he is dead.
In Summer and in Winter I shall walk
Up and down
The patterned garden paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
The squills and daffodils
Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters, and to snow.
I shall go
Up and down,
In my gown.
Gorgeously arrayed,
Boned and stayed.
And the softness of my body will be guarded from embrace
By each button, hook, and lace.
For the man who should loose me is dead,
Fighting with the Duke in Flanders,
In a pattern called a war.
Christ! What are patterns for?
Amy Lowell, “Patterns” from The Complete Poetical Works of Amy Lowell. Copyright © 1955 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Copyright © renewed 1983 by Houghton Mifflin Company, Brinton P. Roberts, and G. D'Andelot, Esquire. Reprinted with the permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Source: Selected Poems of Amy Lowell (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002)
These poems were written by or about the Great War. What did you think about them? How do these poems map the transition from the Victorian era to Modernism in British literature? Stylistically? Ideologically?
More Resources for the Great War
The Great War (PBS) - this is an excellent source for timelines and secondary material about the Great War.
A Multimedia History of World War One - this is a good source for primary material about the Great War.
Women and the Great War - BBC summary of the changes in women's lives during (and after) WWI.
Moving to Modernism
The ideological break (from Victorian culture) caused by WWI is also reflected in art. Specifically, Modernism emerges in the 1910s and 1920s.
Let's look at the Modern Art Timeline (created by the Art Factory). Take a few minutes to scroll through it on your own and then we're going to discuss it together.
Discussion Questions:
- What characteristics distinguish something as "Modernism" to you?
- How were these trends beginning long before the Great War?
- What changes after the Great War?
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