Civilians in a World at War, 1914-1918

8. Civil War and Revolution

[ 239 ] [ 8 ] Civil War and Revolution Rumour has it that the strikers wanted to blow up the Renault munitions factory last night. We are living on a volcano and everyone is complaining. The example of the Russians bodes no good. —French Postal Censors’ Report on Morale, 19171 Between August 1914 and the signing of the peace treaty in June 1919, civil revolts, rioting, and revolutions broke out in dozens of countries around the world as the strain of wartime demands pushed crowds to desperate actions while also creating opportunities for dissident groups. Because many of these disturbances were civilian in nature, they have often been treated as separate from the war, but in fact, most of them were shaped fundamentally by the events of 1914–1918. Historians have categorized revolutions and revolts as “civilian” and as separate from the First World War for a century. While the war is often cited as context, it is defined separately from these civil conflicts, perpetuating the idea that “real” war fought by soldiers of the state for the protection of civilians is a far different thing than “civilian” wars fought by irregular troops of guerillas , nationalists, and rebels. This chapter tries to integrate civil conflict into the larger narrative of the civilian experience of the war, suggesting that these violent confrontations were born of wartime militarization of whole populations. Civilians, adjusted to lives of violence, perpetuated the violence in attempting to reconstruct their societies in the midst of and in the aftermath of war. Civil War and Revolution [ 240 ] War weariness and economic distress helped create an environment in which violence appeared to be the answer to a whole host of woes, while militarization of society and prevalent war rhetoric engendered violence as a means to solve all sorts of problems. The revolts, disturbances, and revolutions of the war period and its immediate aftermath varied widely in intensity, violence, and impact, but all pointed to the destabilizing forces unleashed in societies around the world by the years of industrialized warfare. The conflicts can be grouped mainly around three large themes: (1) identity politics (race, ethnicity, nationalism); (2) social and political revolution; and (3) anticolonial revolts, which include conscription and antiwar concerns. In all cases, men and women, civilians and soldiers were drawn into the fray, and many conflicts were either complicated or prolonged by the needs of the wartime situation. This chapter will briefly examine some of these wars within the war, demonstrating that violence was never limited to the formal battle fronts nor to regular soldiers. Identity Politics World War I called into question expressions of identity on a number of levels around the world. National or colonial allegiance, racial and sexual identity, age, ethnicity, personal loyalty—all these concepts were tested as millions of civilians were mobilized to serve the needs of states at war. Some of the first tensions regarding identity emerged at the personal level as families and individuals sought to cope with the demands of the state for their sacrifices. These personal identity struggles played out in a variety of private and public situations, in the form of pension applications , conscientious objectors’ entreaties, and drawing-room battles. For families with divided loyalties regarding the war, assertion of a united identity was often impossible, and this led to cleavages. Even in families or communities with the same surface loyalty, different interpretations of war, sacrifice, and patriotism could spark tensions or even violence. War meant choosing sides and taking stands, and for individuals, the expression of individual loyalties was often the first hard task. As for larger-scale identity politics, communities at war fragmented along a number of lines; most commonly, the fractures appeared over Civil War and Revolution [ 241 ] questions of class, race, ethnicity, language, nation, gender, and religion. As war made demands on society, the fragile bonds connecting people together often were severed, and differences became a focal point for the violence and bitterness of war. In France, for example, the importation of colonial and foreign workers led to workplace violence, escalating personal attacks in the streets, and, in some cases, collective violence or rioting. As historian Tyler Stovall has written about these attacks, the patterns of racial violence suggest a close correspondence with “the crisis of morale and the rise of war weariness in France” but also with a wave of strikes and working-class agitation after 1917.2 In this case, race might have...