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What were the long-term consequences of World War 1 for Europe?

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What were the long-term consequences of World War 1 for Europe?

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Europe ceased to be the 'leading continent' in the world, despite the enlargement of the British and French empires. The U.S. wasn't willing to take over as the world's leading power. There was a vacuum at the top during the interwar period.The peace treaties after WW1 failed to produce a sound settlement. War continued in Europe (at the edges, anyway) till into the early 1920s (Russia, Poland, Greece, Ireland). Worse still, Europe merrily started sprouting dictatorships - the Soviet Union, Italy, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslvia, Bulgaria ... While Europe was quite prosperous in 1920s, some of these dictatorships managed to avoid being unduly oppressive, but in the harsh economic climate of the 1930s things changed. Austria, Germany, the Baltic Republics and Spain joined the dictatorships. Moreover, many of them were exceptionally vicious and violent ...In the period c. 1790-1914 the use of torture was considered utterly beyond the pale; but suddenly, in many European dictatorships it again became common. It seemed that the clock was being turned back ...

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The armistice of 31 October 1918 ended the fighting between the Ottoman Empire and the Allies but did not bring stability or peace to the region...

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The armistice of 31 October 1918 ended the fighting between the Ottoman Empire and the Allies but did not bring stability or peace to the region. The British were in control of Syria, Palestine and Mesopotamia (Iraq), and British, French and Greek forces stood ready to march across the Bulgarian border and occupy Ottoman Thrace and Constantinople. The Sultan, Mehmed VI, feared he would be deposed. The Allies, however, knew he was a figurehead and hoped that his retention would help ensure post-war stability.

Stability was badly needed. The Young Turk government led by Enver Pasha had collapsed in the days leading up to the armistice. Enver, Cemal Pasha and Talât Pasha had all fled the country to seek sanctuary in Germany. Across what was left of the empire civil infrastructure, already badly strained by years of war, began to disintegrate. Law and order broke down completely in many places. Simmering ethnic and religious tensions erupted into violence and large numbers of deserters turned to banditry and roamed the countryside. The Allies marched into Constantinople with the intention of taking control of large areas of Anatolia. Their pretext was the restoration of order, but this plan also reflected the terms of the peace settlement they were drafting. It was clear that the post-war Ottoman state would not even cover all of Anatolia. This prospect horrified most Turks, for whom Anatolia was their heartland.

In November 1919, there seemed to be little the interim Ottoman government could do to stop the Allies. The remnants of the two Ottoman armies destroyed by the final British offensive in Palestine and Syria were slowly reassembling under Mustafa Kemal's command in Cilicia, north of Aleppo. In Mesopotamia the battered but still intact Ottoman Sixth Army regrouped north of Mosul and awaited orders. Far away to the south in Arabia, General Fakhri Pasha and his besieged garrison at Medina continued to hold out, having grimly defied Arab attacks for more than two years. Fakhri would not finally surrender until February 1919. The only Ottoman armies worthy of the name were those that Enver had sent to attack the Caucasus and northern Persia. They would take at least six months to march back to Anatolia and disband.

It was at this point that Mustafa Kemal - better known as Kemal Atatürk - emerged as a leading figure. His brand of Turkish nationalism was very different from the pan-Turkic ideals of Enver Pasha. Kemal believed that the once-great Ottoman Empire had become a dead weight on the Turkish people, who now needed a homeland of their own. He and his supporters sought to establish a new Turkish state based on Anatolia, where most of the empire's Turkish population had traditionally lived. To prepare for the struggle ahead, Kemal and other nationalists began hiding weapons from Allied disarmament teams and encouraged the formation of local Turkish civilian militias and political alliances between nationalist groups. They also attempted to divide the Allies through political intrigues.

The greatest military threat to the Turkish nationalists came from the Greeks, whose claims to western Anatolia, eastern Thrace and Constantinople were reinforced by the large ethnic Greek populations in those areas. On 15 May 1919 Greek troops occupied the ancient port city of Smyrna (modern-day Izmir). More Greek forces arrived in the following months, gradually extending their control deep into the west Anatolian countryside. Clashes with Turkish civilians dogged their movements and greatly increased nationalist sentiment. Meanwhile, the Italians landed troops in south-western Anatolia to reinforce their claim on the area. This also played into the hands of the Turkish nationalists.

As Turkish attitudes began to harden, the interim Ottoman government came under increasing pressure from the Allies to suppress the nationalist groups. In the end they were reluctantly forced to act. In the face of this crackdown, on 23 April 1920 the nationalists convened a Grand National Assembly in Ankara, deep in central Anatolia. They elected Mustafa Kemal as its first president, effectively establishing an alternative government. This triggered a short but brutal civil war, which ended only when the details of the Treaty of Sèvres were publicised in August. The harshness of its terms destroyed what little credibility the interim Ottoman government had left. Turks of all political persuasions began to unite behind the Grand National Assembly, which completely rejected the treaty. A showdown with the Allies seemed unavoidable.

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Collapse of the Ottoman Empire, 1918-1920

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The armistice of 31 October 1918 ended the fighting between the Ottoman Empire and the Allies but did not bring stability or peace to the region. The British were in control of Syria, Palestine and Mesopotamia (Iraq), and British, French and Greek forces stood ready to march across the Bulgarian border and occupy Ottoman Thrace and Constantinople.

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The aftermath of World War I saw drastic political, cultural, economic, and social change across Eurasia (Europe and Asia), Africa, and even in areas outside those that were directly involved. Four empires collapsed due to the war, old countries were abolished, new ones were formed, boundaries were redrawn, international organizations were established, and many new and old ideologies took a firm hold in people's minds.

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3 empires were tottering in the first place and had significant problems with minorities in the age of nationalism (every nationality wanted their own state when empires are explicitly based on imposing one state over multiple nationalities). The war was largely the thing which pushed them over the edge. I would go as far as to say the future of at least 2 of those empires (Austria-Hungary and Ottoman) were pretty bleak and likely to be in the danger of collapse even without a war.

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The four empires that collapsed after WW1 Ottoman Empire, Australia-Hungary, German, and Russian.

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During World War I, the German Empire was one of the Central Powers that lost the war. It began participation in the conflict after the declaration of war against Serbia by its ally, Austria-Hungary. German forces fought the Allies on both the eastern and western fronts, although German territory itself remained relatively safe from widespread invasion for most of the war, except for a brief period in 1914 when East Prussia was invaded. A tight blockade imposed by the Royal Navy caused severe food shortages in the cities, especially in the winter of 1916–17, known as the Turnip Winter. At the end of the war, Germany's defeat and widespread popular discontent triggered the German Revolution of 1918–19 which overthrew the monarchy and established the Weimar Republic.

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Germany lost World War I. In the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, the victorious powers (the United States, Great Britain, France, and other allied states) punished Germany territorial, militarily, and economically on defeated Germany. In the west, Germany returned Alsace-Lorraine to France. It had been seized by Germany more than 40 years earlier. Further, Belgium received Eupen and Malmedy. The industrial Saar region was placed under the control of the League of Nations for 15 years, and Denmark received Northern Schleswig. Finally, the Rhineland was demilitarized, that is, no German military forces were allowed there. In the east, Poland received parts of West Prussia and Silesia from Germany. In addition, Czechoslovakia received the Hultschin district from Germany; the largely German city of Danzig became a free city under the protection of the League of Nations, and Memel, a small strip of territory in East Prussia along the Baltic Sea, was placed under Lithuanian control. Outside Europe, Germany lost all its colonies. Overall, Germany lost 13 percent of its European territory, around  27,000 square miles,  and one-tenth of its population, which was approximately between 6.5 and 7 million people. All this led to the collapse of the German Empire

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The decline of another imperial power, the Ottoman Empire, attracted the attention of European powers, who sought territory, influence or access in the Balkans and eastern Europe.

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Events on the home fronts were just as bad as on the battle fronts, as the participants tried to mobilize their manpower and economic resources to fight a total war. By the end of the war, four major imperial powers—the German, Russian, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires—ceased to exist. The successor states of the former two lost a great amount of territory, while the latter two were dismantled entirely. The map of central Europe was made into several smaller nations/ countries/ parts. To read more... http://www.kingdomsfallnovel.com/the-great-war/

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Russia turned Communist under Vladamir Lenin after the first ever Communist nation ever. Leads into the Cold War which is one of the most significant events of the 20th Century.