More advanced tactics and strategies weren’t possible with the technology; the technology caught up in the interwar years in large part in the form of the radio - its military value expressed best in the British word for it, the wireless. Wires couldn’t be strung across no-man’s land and not be cut by the shelling. Once the troops ‘went over the top’ they may as well have disappeared to the dark side of the moon; there was little higher command could do to receive information or send new orders in anything like a timely or safe manner. The opening weeks of WWI were in fact very fast moving and mobile and later wars have very much displayed the stagnant, trench-bound butchery that was so famously a part of WWI. It’s easy to remember the race across France in WWII, but after D-Day the Allied armies spend almost two months in a grinding slogging match making progress of a few hundred yards a day, and once the steam of the race across France ran out you wound up with bloody messes like Hürtgen Forest. Fighting in Italy spent months with the front not moving a mile, see Monte Cassino and Anzio.
The body count in WWII was much steeper than in WWI, there was far, far greater wreckage to cities and the Marshall Plan was the only reason the cities were rebuilt so quickly. There are no “vast swaths” of France and Belgium that WWI rendered unsafe and unusable today.
India, Kenya, Algiers, and Vietnam all had independence movements that either started or became much more active during and after WWI. Those are just the ones I can think of off hand. I’m sure there were more
With the Levant, I’ll grant that being an Ottoman possession was very different from being a European colony, but it was still more a matter of territory changing hands from one imperial power to another than previously independent states being colonized.
[tangent]
Sulfanilamide had been prepared and patented in 1909, but the first inkling of antibiotic potency was when the new Bayer drug called Prontosil was found to be effective against certain bacteria in mice in 1932.
In 1935, Dr. Ernest Forneau’s team at the Pasteur Institute discovered that Prontosil is metabolized into Sulfanilamide. That’s really the start of the sulfa drug heyday.
Before the 1930s, sulfanilamide was just another industrial compound.
[/tangent]
Huh? Colonialism in Africa predates WW1. The “scramble for Africa” was an artifact of an earlier generation - by WW1, colonialism was well in place.
In the ME, what one had with WW1 was a change of colonial masters - from Turks to Europeans. The issues of nationalism vs. colonialism pre-date that switch-over (the Arab Revolt was against Turkish colonialism). Iraq was a Turkish imperial possession, pre-WW1.
Arguably, what WW1 did was militarily and economically exhaust the imperial powers, winners and losers alike - leading to a weakening grip on their respective empires (a grip finally broken after the second trauma of WW2).
Do note I said Middle East and the Levent.
The “Arab Revolt” is mostly a figment of Hollywood. And it existed for the most part only in Najd and Hejaz. The British kicked the Turks out of Sinai-Palestine and the Levant by using conventional troops. Nor could the Turks be called colonial masters in any sense of the term.
WW1 led to some of the absolute worst repression in India, with the Defence of India Act and later after the war the Rowlett Act, culminating in the Amritsar massecre. In Iraq, the RAF and “Bomber” Harris routinely bombed villages for no reason or because the were late in paying Taxes.
The creation of “mandates” (i.e colonies) also gave the Imperial powers greater control then they had ever enjoyed. The occasional rebellion aside, they were not seriously threatened until the WW2. Post war they held on to their colonies chiefly through US aid. It was not until the mid 1950’s with active Soviet support that the various struggles managed to bear fruit.
In what way is this not a mention of colonialism in Africa?
Really? The Ottomans were as much an “empire” as any other colonial power, only in this period, more decrepit than any save the Austo-Hungarian. In what significant way did they differ?
Certainly, they acted just like any other “colonial masters”; locals were ruled by Turkish officials, incipient nationalists were violently suppressed, etc.
In fact, Ottoman Turkish brutality towards the nationalities they colonized (if they were disobedient) was a by-word - fully the equal of the worst any European masters imposed. This lead to a lot of (no doubt quite hypocritical) finger-waving at the ‘terrible Turks’.
I think you are succumbing to the notion that only European colonialism was ‘really bad’. Non-Europeans are fully as capable of being nasty colonialists as any European - just ask the Japanese … and the Turks.
The World Wars led to the weakening of the colonialist’s grip, mostly through mutual exhaustion, and the simultaneous rise of ethno-nationalism everywhere. These two factors were far, far more significant in the eventual shaking off of colonial rule than Soviet aid.
It is true that most anti-colonialist ethno-nationalist movements were simply too weak to take on the colonialists after WW1 - but it is rather too much to expect these things to happen instantly. Rather, WW1 was the start of a process of grip-loosening that was completed after WW2.
Yeah, but the British takeover of chunks of the Ottoman Empire also resulted in T. E. Lawrence’s Arab-bromances, which established the various Arab monarchies (and their non-royal successors) which have proven so troublesome to Israel’s security since. The biggie here being the handing of Transjordan to the Hashemites and leaving the Palestinians - who comprise most of the population of said territory - with no self-government, which has now become Israel’s perpetual security and PR problem. Might the Zionist movement have been able to eventually achieve their goals under the Ottomans without the British-esque mucking up of the Arab end of the Middle East in the process? I don’t know the answer - in alt-history, you never really can - but at the very least, I’d say that that part of the historical record makes WWI at best a wash.
Italy expanded its colonial interests in Africa considerably after WW1, consolidating control over Libya and Somalia.
Japan got a few ex-German possessions after WW1 and then started wars of colonial expansion annexing large parts of China.
Colonial empires were very much alive and after WW1, possessions were simply transferred from the losers to the victors such as Britain and France.
I don’t see that WW1 had much affect on the victors colonial possession. If anything, it added to them. The Fascist Nationalist regimes that took hold after WW1 wanted empires of their own and set about acquiring them one way or another.
The tide of Nationalism that swept across Europe after WW1 eventually took hold in the colonies and that really got going after WW2, when most of the colonial powers were bankrupt and weakened and (after a few wars) eventually changed to a policy of decolonisation.
WW1 saw off the last of the absolute monarchies such as Czarist Russia and the Kaisers Germany and led to the breakup of the Austria-Hungarian Empire.
Whether that was a good thing, judging by the disaster that befell Europe afterwards, I very much doubt.
Really WW1 did not have a positive affect on international politics, you have to look elsewhere to perceive any positive developments. There were some improvements in internal politics. States became much more centralised and large parts of economy were retained under public ownership.
There were a lot of advances in technology and medicine.
