In the classic formulation of nineteenth-century Prussian general and
military theorist Karl von Clausewitz, war is an instrument of national
policy by which states pursue their interests using force and violence. This
picture presumes that the governmental system wielding such an instrument
will be able to control it and, more important, will survive to see the armed
conflict brought to a conclusion.
For some countries. World War I developed into a test their systems of
government could not endure. An essential feature of the conflict—and a
measure of its intensity—was the way in which World War I overturned
venerable monarchies, and how prominent and long-estabHshed mukinational
states dissolved.
World War I helped to bring on upheavals in Russia and a number of other
major European countries. Political and social tensions existed everywhere
in the Europe of 1914, and in the following wartime years all of the great
European belligerents experienced events that shook the old order. But
neither the war alone nor prewar tensions alone brought on revolution. Irish
nationalism, for example, as demonstrated in the uprising of Easter 1916,
could not yet dissolve the unity of Great Britain. Nor did the army mutinies
in France in 1917 undermine domestic stability.
In imperial Russia in 1917 and in Austria-Hungary in 1918, where the
strains and traumas of the war combined with existing problems, dramatic
breaks with the old order occurred. Russia's debased, unpopular monarchy
and inept bureaucracy, its impoverished rural population, and its alienated
urban working class had already shown how they could threaten national
stability. In addition, talented and determined revolutionary leaders were
either on the scene or only a short distance away in foreign exile. Finally,
an imperial population in which only half the tsar's subjects were ethnic
Russians added an explosive nationalities problem. In Austria-Hungary, the
most volatile internal conflict also turned on the question of nationalities,
and led finally to the collapse of the old order.
Drastic and dramatic change came to the two great powers at different
points in the war, and came about in different ways. The two countries'
peacetime circumstances varied, and so too did their wartime experiences.
In each country, the role of the monarch, the radicalism practiced by leaders
of the domestic opposition, and the success of the armed forces and their
state of discipline all played a role. There were also important differences
concerning the presence or absence of enemy armed forces on the country's
soil and the relationship each country had with its wartime allies. Most
important in the short run—when the discontented had to decide whether
or not to take to the streets—was how well the government functioned in
maintaining public order and in guaranteeing an adequate food supply.
World History
