Chandler Hood
Period 1, 3
12-16-07
WWI, an Unjust War
On June 18, 1914 the Austria-Hungary Archduke, Franz Ferdinand was assassinated by the secret Serbian organization called the Black Hand. Soon after the assassination of Franz Ferdinand Austria Hungary declared war on Serbia which lead to the Central Powers, Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey) and the Entente Powers (also known as the Allied Powers), France, Britain, Russia (as well as Italy and the U.S. in the later years of the war) to declare war on each other. This massive war would be called World War One, and the morality of this war, whether it was just or not, would be and still are highly debated today. Although all the countries fighting during WWI were all legitimate figures of authority, there were numerous criteria that WWI did not meet in order to be a just war.
During WWI all the countries that fought had some state of government; therefore they could all be called legitimate authorities. Despite the fact that only legitimate authority figures fought in the war there were many other criteria’s WWI did not meet so that it could be called a just war. During the course of WWI many innocent civilians perished due to unethical war practices. What caused WWI could have been avoided had there been more attempts to discuss peace. The Central powers intentions did not remain the same throughout WWI. This war had multiple errors that changed and negatively impacted the view people saw this war with.
Even though there were more military causalities than civilian causalities in WWI, the total number of civilian causalities contributed to almost half of the total number of causalities experienced during WWI. One of the criteria for a just war is that noncombatants, such as civilians, are left out of the conflict. WWI claimed the lives of an estimated 19.7 million people, and 8.8 million of those deaths were civilians.[1] Famine and disease did contribute to a large portion of these deaths, but the Armenian genocide was responsible for 4.2 million of those civilian deaths. The Armenian genocide was the slaughter and deportation of around 1 million Armenian civilians living in the Ottoman Empire that were killed by their own government, who claimed that it was necessary to do so to keep order within the empire. In 1915, Germany put into effect an unrestricted submarine warfare policy, stating that they would attack any vessel that traveled near Britain, regardless of whether it was armed or not. On May 7, 1915, one of Germany’s submarines sunk a British passenger ship, killing 1,198 of the people on board. Acts of violence against civilians such as these show the disregard of morality that existed in WWI.
Although what started WWI was Austria-Hungary reacting to Serbia mobilizing its soldiers, this was not just cause for Austria-Hungary to declare war on Serbia. After Austria-Hungary had sent a list of demands that it wanted from Serbia, the response according to Wikipedia’s article on the July Ultimatum was “The Serbian government ordered General Mobilization on July 25th.”[2] This mobilization meant that Serbia did not accept the terms of the demands and was preparing for the actions that Austria-Hungary would probably take. Intern, Austria-Hungary saw this as a threat; they thought that Serbia was preparing to invade Austria-Hungary. This misinterpretation could have been avoided had each countries both made a conscience effort to readdress the demands. One of the most costly wars’ cause was due to the fear that one nation did not want to be surprised if they were to be attacked.
Even though the original intentions of the Central Powers may have been to defend their land against the Serbians and their allies, as the war progressed the Central Powers intentions switched to trying to gain more land. In Modern World History Patterns of Interaction the text says that “In March 1918, Germany and Russia signed the Treaty of the Brest-Litovsk, which ended the war between them. The treaty was extremely hard on Russia. It required the Russian government to surrender lands to Germany that now include Finland, Poland, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.”[3] This excerpt shows that Germany was no longer just defending itself against the allies of Serbia, but now wanted to claim more land and increase the country’s size. It is clear that at some point during the war Germany’s main focus and motivation was to seize as much land as they could, no longer to just defend themselves.
Even though all of the forces that participated in the fighting during WWI were all officially recognized as countries, the presence of this one criterion does not excuse the absence of the several other criteria that are required to label WWI a just war. In WWI the world bared witness to the deaths of millions of innocent civilians due to the indirect effects of war and the atrocities of the war. The cause of WWI was due to the misinterpretation of foreign nation’s actions and little effort for making peaceful negotiations. However just a nation’s intentions may be at the start of a war, in time power lust and greed can easily change those intentions. This war taught us that we as civil human beings have the power to avoid conflict if we exhaust enough effort. Conflict due to justification of what is deemed right and wrong will always occur, but how sensibly we respond is the decider to how we wish to be viewed.
[1] Wikipedia.org, World War I causalities, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties, 12-18-07
[2] Wikipedia.org, July Ultimatum, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_Ultimatum, 12-18-07
[3] McDougal Littell and Roger Beck et. al., World History Patterns of Interaction, Chicago 2004, pg 36