The period that covers World War I, World War II, through the end of the Cold War, is sometimes called the “Long War.” Philip Bobbitt refers to it as such in The Shield of Achilles, which I reviewed here. The Long War is characterized as a battle of the nation-states that originated near the end of the 19th century. It was a battle over three constitutional orders: liberal democracy, communism and fascism. It was a period of time in which weapons technology advanced faster than any other period in history. These wars also took on a new level of nihilism via “total warfare,” where war became more than just a contest between professional armies. While greater weapons lead to greater potential destruction, there are also cultural issues at play. You have to go back further than World War I to find the origins of total war. You can look back at the French Revolution, and the Battle of Valmy.
The French Revolution of the 1790’s was largely influenced by the 1776 American Revolution. The difference being, the French actually did have a “revolution.” A revolution is a forcible overthrow of a government or social order in favor of a new system. This may seem like a nitpick, but it is a very important distinction.
The Americans did not revolt. They did not overthrow the British monarchy. The Declaration of Independence was indicting King George III for abuse of his existing codified powers. The Americans were not looking to completely overhaul the constitutional order, and they kept elements of British common law and post-Enlightenment ideals. The French were not looking to conserve, their revolution was a ground-zero approach, right down to the replacement of the Gregorian calendar. The Bolsheviks, the Maoists and the Khmer Rouge all had the same “start from scratch” plan and were influenced by the Jacobins of revolutionary France.
The French Revolution, for various social, political and economic reasons, overthrew the French monarchy, and also stripped the Catholic Church of its property and political power. Competing revolutionary factions wanted to establish either a constitutional monarchy or a republic. All traditions were uprooted and discarded, violently. This is not an in-depth review of the French Revolution, but a look at how the revolution affected geopolitics and warfare.
France’s King Louis XVI was kept as head of state for a time, however he largely acted at the whim of the revolutionaries. He still had value as a figurehead diplomat. Neighboring Austria and Prussia made it known that an unstable France was not in their interest, and wished the monarchy restored. War paranoia was now running rampant. The constitutional monarchy factions wanted war because they believed that winning a war would prove that the constitutional monarchy was needed to protect France. The pro-republic factions wanted war because they believed France would lose, discrediting Louis XVI, and prove that the king must go. Like all wars, a series of diplomatic blunders and political power grabs led to conflict.
One problem – the revolution reduced the French military to shambles. It is important to understand that prior to this time in history, wars were waged by a professional class. The players on the European stage were also post-Enlightenment Christians. There were rules to war. War was waged on the battlefield; you did not attack civilians. Standing armies and conscription were not the norm. So, it was now up to the people of the French “republic” to fill out the ranks.
As an important side note, at roughly the same time, Alexander Hamilton was trying to establish a permanent standing army in America, which he argued was needed to protect the nation from enemies. This was a shocking development to those founders who feared centralized power. America had just escaped the grasp of a tyrannical government. The states had their own defenses, and they feared that a centralized army would be used against them. Why would they trade one tyrannical power (Britain) for another (Federal Government)?
In Europe, at the Battle of Valmy, Austria and Prussia were now waging war with France and its civilian army. This should have been a one-sided battle, as Austria and Prussia had some of the best-trained soldiers in the world. But a curious event changed the course of history – Prussia lost interest in the war. Austria, Prussia and also Russia, were partitioning Poland at the time. Prussia felt that Austria was using them in the French war to distract from the Poland issue, and Prussia retreated.
This is also where history gets murky based on your political beliefs. The Prussians were outnumbered by the French, but the French were woefully inexperienced. The French had more guns, but the Prussians knew how to use them. The Prussians did suffer from dysentery from apples they ate, but this could have been at most a one-day setback as they were able to make the walk back. Regardless, Prussia’s retreat was a huge political win for revolutionary France. The underdog revolutionaries defeated the greatest army in the world!
This was a huge confidence boost for France, and their “success” at Valmy motivated them to better organize their military. Shortly thereafter, Louis XVI was executed by guillotine. France now had its republic and would soon be at war with nearly all of Europe. These wars represented a monumental shift in warfare. War was now waged by the state, funded by all members of the state, for the good of the state. The citizenry became property of the state, and they could be mobilized as needed.
A united nation-state France now pressured all other European powers to unify and build their own standing armies. Once one nation adopts total war as the rule, the rule applies to everyone else. Austria/Hungary, Germany and Italy all merged into their own nation-states from smaller principalities and kingdoms. America also goes through its own total war phase in the 1860’s. The rising tensions and “entangling alliances” that resulted from a century of this led to World War I. Which caused World War II, hundreds of millions of dead, and the rest is history.
The nihilism of the post-modern world, the destabilizing political effects of total war, and the discarding of the old Christian “rules” has spawned some of the most barbaric despotisms in human history. I don’t think anyone would argue that Stalin was an improvement over Tsar Nicholas, or that Hitler was an improvement over Kaiser Wilhelm. When France rejected their traditional values, this permanently changed the rules of war for everyone.
If one Prussian general changed his mind in 1792, and placed Louis XVI back on the throne, how different would things be today?