A People's History Of World War One

In Search Of Heroes

When I taught history, students often asked me why it seemed there were no "good guys" in World War I. Now I was clear part of the reason is because in real life there are no discreet "good guys and bad guys." People are complicated, acting in self-interest. Sometimes incredible acts of altruism and courage, or breathtakingly selfishness and cruelty.

This is of course not a satisfactory answer, especially to kids. The truth is, we like histories told as a sort of epic; there's a crisis that springs people into action, there's an arc, and a conclusion where the "good guys" win. It's in contrast to the First World War, the Second captures our imagination so much. This is not without reason. These are the kinds of stories that have inspired us from time immemorial.

Intra-Class War

To those who study it, World War I appears as nothing more than a war between the ruling classes of the world (and I mean the world, not just Europe). In the early 20th century, industrial capital had accumulated to such an extent, that finance capital was being exported at a dizzying rate. This created ever faster competition between major powers for raw materials to feed the furnace of industry and its growing appetite. When the borders of industrial capital became solidified by acts like the Monroe doctrine, Berlin conference, and Opium wars, by 1914 there was nowhere else for it to go but into hostile territory.

The war would kill 30 million people, but it also destroyed about a quarter of the world's industrial capital. This gave powerful finance capitalists more "room" to reinvest and start the process all over again. It also destroyed the remnants of the aristocracy, giving the bourgeois a monopoly on political and economic power. This is, in part, why profits skyrocketed in the 1920s. Like vultures, the bourgeois, devoured the carcass of the world they destroyed and got fat.

"People's War?"

Howard Zinn wrote a great essay called "World War II: A People's War?" In it he questions the popular narrative that World War II was all that unique from a typical imperialist war. How the governments and ruling classes of the Allies weren't particularly concerned with the incredible brutality of tye Axis powers. Himself a veteran, he writes;

Zinn

It was not Hitler's attacks on the Jews that brought the United States into World War II, any more
than the enslavement of 4 million blacks brought Civil War in 1861.

He goes onto say point out all the times the U.S. and other Allied governments failed to intervene to stop fascism. All the hypocrisy and contradictions as well. Britain fought to end Germany's brutal conquest of other countries while having a massive empire it kept through bloodshed. The United States fought the racist Nazi regime, while Jim Crow was at its height back home. The list goes on.

Despite this, there are features that do set it apart. For one, fascism was a unique threat. Early on, labor organizations, leftwing political parties, and antifascist activists fought to resist fascism. We can't forget about the courageous sacrifices in places like Ethiopia, China, Spain, and Eastern Europe before the Allied governments were forced to get involved. Fascists eventually showed themselves to be worse than the capitalist ruling class that often enabled them and proved too much even for the bourgeois.

In that sense, World War II was a "people's war" or a "good fight" as leftists had often called the struggle against fascism in Spain and later World War II. And in a lot of ways, the people who fought it also fought for justice back home (many became civil rights organizers, anti-colonial activists, and revolutionaries). It was a war of mass politics, with competing, but convergent class interests between the working class and ruling elite. It's why, for better or worse, it's hard to shake the way it remains so compelling almost a century later.

Inter-Class War

Even after we demystify World War II, we can acknowledge that there were indeed, "good guys" for what it's worth. But where are the "good guys" in the First World War? Are there any inspirations we can get out of that horrendous tragedy, or is it just a cautionary tail of capitalism and empire?

In 1916 and 17, mutinies in ten French Army were so widespread that the British began mass conscription. There were fears that the French line would break or that the crisis was so dire the French government would be forced into a separate peace. By July of 1917, the Russian Army was at a breaking point as well. They began setting up soviets in the trenches and refusing to follow orders without a vote. The Kerensky government tried dearly to enforce an iron discipline, but to no avail. Entire regiments would retreat enmasse and often join revolutionaries in the real. By November, the Bolsheviks had come to power, in part because of their promise to sign a separate peace with the Central Powers. In October 1918, with the German Army in tatters, the Navy had issued its infamous general order. The next day, on October 29th, sailors at the Kiel naval base mutinied. The mutiny spread so rapidly, that by the 1st of November, the entire country was in open revolt. By the 11th, the armistice had been signed ending hostilities.

In the aftermath, revolution broke out all over the world, in both Allied and Central Power countries. This owed primarily to the fact that the working classes had revolted, whether due to food shortages, foreign occupation, or just because they were tired of fighting for people who treated them as expendable. Both soldiers and civilians, peasants and factory workers, people of many nationalities all fought against their own governments to end the war.

Even in the United States, there was pressure to keep the war short. In August of 1917, a coalition of White, Black, Muskogee, and Seminole people rose up in Oklahoma to resist the draft. This became known as the Green Corn Rebellion. In 1918, 1919, and 1920 when the U.S. sent troops to Russia to fight the Bolsheviks, the government withdrew the troops under pressure of petitions from families and troops to end hostilities.

It can be said that these actions created a spark that would take a couple of generations to dim. The actions taken by the working classes to end World War I continued domestically in the labor movement. We often credit the Great War for creating the political atmosphere that would lead to the rise of fascism. We also acknowledge that the fascism arises as a reaction to radicalism in the working class. The become a convenient weapon to quell labor unrest and maintain bourgeois class rule. But we also forget that it was that same political atmosphere that made the labor victories and revolutions that lifted the working class out of extreme misery. These were the "good guys" of the First World War. Fascism had to fight all of that, and it ultimately lost.

Conclusion

What does this mean to us? Well, the early 21st century is proving to have similarities to the early 20th century. Racked with one crisis after another and the fears of a new global conflict we can take inspiration from our forebears. There is some hope amidst the tragedy, that we may yet be able to challenge those who'd throw away our lives so callously and demand a better future.