At a time when the artistic community was going through significant changes was the First World War. Various artistic forms were introduced during this time. The invention of photography in the 19th century drove realism out of art. (Winter 12). Expressionism was made possible by photography. The goal of the expressionist was to show a drastically altered and emotionally stirring view of the world. Paul Klee, Dix Otto, Edvard Munch, and Wassily Kandinsky. George Grosz, Rudolf Schleicher, and Kirchner Ernest Ludwig were three other outstanding expressionist artists. Ten years after the outbreak of the war, German artists reflected back on it in 1924. The warring countries did not understand the causes of the conflict as well as the potential destruction posed by the modern industrial war. The artists in Germany shook of the nostalgia of the sometimes heroic war and view the World War I from a different perspective and eyes-German eyes (Dagen 123). The German artists witnessed the dreadful war. The British soldiers, on the other hand, portrayed the generals as heroes but the Germans saw skulls and the dead in the battle field.
Otto Dix, a war veteran printed and published the Der Krieg, a series of paintings describing the First World War. In one of the prints, a dead soldier lay in a trench for days since dying from a bullet. The helmet was still on the head and no one bothers to bury the dead soldier. Another print showed a rotten skull on the ground; grass growing on its crown, mustache just below the nose. The warm continues to crew sickeningly out of the eyes a gaping mouth (Dagen 111). Dix presented the things witnessed as the frontline soldier. One of the famous paintings, The Trench’ was the horrific masterpiece that portrayed the western front as a grisly carnival of death. The Nazi German in 1937 exhibitions vilified and castigated German artists. The Nazi regime confiscated many of the paintings which disappeared during the Dresden bombing.
Ernest Ludwig Kirchner was a brilliant expressionist who teams up with Otto Dix to cover the war. Ludwig as soldier painted a self-portrait to express shock. The soldier in uniform had a yellow face and dazed eyes and had a missing wrist. Hugo Ball just like Ludwig and Dix wanted to fight but he failed medical test several times and could not join the army. After visiting Belgium, Hugo saw the atrocities against human beings and great destruction that he started opposing the war. Hugo ball field to Switzerland and began the Dada movement to stop the mass murder in Europe. Marx Beckmann’s paintings portrayed a world gone mad.
Many artists such as Heartfield, George Grosz, and Rudolf Schleicher presented the paintings in one of the exhibitions as means to protest the war in 1924. The paintings included crippled men, destroyed cities and men breathing through tubes. The Dada paintings was a new art movement that did justice to the war. Photomontage mirrored the violence during the World War I. The German artist indicated the violence and effects of war with utter clarity when others stayed away.
All Quiet on the Western Front and Storm of Steel
Enrich Maria Remarque wrote the ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ that creates incredible World War I images in the popular mind. Ernst Junger wrote ‘Storm of Steel’ is a memoir that changes nothing to the tortured landscape. Ernst accounts more harrowing experiences of the war. Yet there are differences in the novels. Ernst Junger explains the experiences from a personal journal written during the war. German authors responded to the World War I. Junger does not have the freedom to convey a different story but tell exactly what happened. He needed to depict the war and be identical to the story narration. The Storm of steel is the brutal and emotionless description of the war and almost completely opposite of All Quiet on the Western Front as written by Remarque.
Remarque states that a soldier engaged in the war witnessed many battles and many deaths (Remarque 6). This was pessimistic approach about the war and offered criticism due to the losses of cohesion in the German military, deaths, and destruction of property. The battles were gut wrenching and casualty or injure happened daily. The novel simplified the war and elicits no emotions. The different views of the war led to different interpretations of causes of World War I. In steel of War, the author indicated that war was part of the job but tries not to die. Remarque used the story to entrap audiences why it was pointless to lose men in the battlefield fighting for their country. Junger uses horrors of the war to glorify the truth.
The Rise of Adolf Hitler
Adolf hitter was one of the most powerful and infamous dictators during the twentieth century. Born in 1889, Hitler lived in Vienna before moving to Munich in 1913 but was forced to return to Vienna after failing the medical and physical test to join the army. During the World War I, hitter volunteered to work for the Bavarian army in the Western Front. The experiences during the different battles affected Hitler’s thinking after the end of World War I. Hitler believed that German y was a powerful nation and was not supposed to lose the war by their own devices. He believed that some people betrayed Germany and suffered the loss. Several countries especially the victorious allies made Germany compensate huge sum of money for the losses caused by the war. Hitler and other German leaders felt unfair treatment from the allies. The government of the day (the Weimar) experienced the huge problem and needed a leader who could make Germany stronger again and Hitler believed he was the most appropriate leader.
After the WWI was over, Hitler took control of the National Socialist German Worker Party and hoped to secure power from the then government in power. In 1923, hitter led a coup but failed and was arrested, charged and jailed. After release from prison, Hitler built up the party that would seize power. The leader wanted to construct a Germany based on race so that it could be easy to win series of battles and expand German occupation of the nearby countries and other parts of the globe. Hitler believed in fighting and the occupied land would belong to the Germans. The settling Germans would raise large families to provide soldiers and replace casualties during the next war on expansion. Hitler attack on Czechoslovakia was easy but failed to defeat France and Britain on the several attempts. Hitler attacked the Russians territories to acquire raw materials such as oil to assist in fighting the United States.
Hitler assumed power in 1933 and the following 12 years of his reign experienced many deaths and destruction of property. The Nazi leader established concentration camps to cage the Jews and other communities perceived as threats to Aryan Supremacy. Consequently, six million people died in the holocaust. Hitler led to the German occupation of North Africa and much of Europe by the year 1941. Hitler committed suicide after the tide of the war turned against Germany after invading Russia and United States entry into the war.
T.E Lawrence, Picot Agreement and Armenian Genocide
The peace conference held in Versailles meant to change or redraw the map of the world. After the end of WWI, many delegations among the TE Lawrence arrived in Versailles to push forward the campaign to recognize the Hashemite Kingdoms. The T.E. Lawrence’s political goal was to overturn the Sykes-Picot Agreement signed in 1916 where France and Britain team up in curve up the near East after the war. The French would occupy Lebanon and Syria while Britain would occupy Palestine and Mesopotamia (Gingeras 166). The Russians were to get control of Turkey and Armenia Lawrence engagement in the war won him a hearing in Britain and wanted to fight for Arabs Sovereignty.
During the World War I, the Ottoman Empire exterminated over 1.5 million Armenian (Sicker 26). The massacre involved the killing of the able-bodied male population and some subjected to forced labor. Women and children were deported to the Syrian Desert without food and water. The Ottoman soldiers raped, robbed and mascaraed the Armenian Christians and ottoman Greeks. The Western world decided to assist the near east community. The Ottoman Empire was defeated in 1918. The partitioning of the Ottoman Empire in 1918 led to the occupation of France and Britain in the Arab peninsula.
Works Cited
Dagen, Philippe. 1918-1998: Art of the First World War: 100 Paintings from International Collections to Commemorate the 80th Anniversary of the End of the First World War. Caen: Mémorial de Caen, 1998. Internet resource.
Gingeras, Ryan Fall of the Sultanate: The Great War and the End of the Ottoman Empire 1908–1922. 2016. Print
Junger, Ernst. Storm of Steel. NY: Penguin, 1961. Print.
Martin Sicker. The Middle East in the Twentieth Century. Greenwood Publishing Group. 2001. Print
Remarque, Erich M. A. R. I. A. All Quiet On The Western Front. S.L.: Classic Comic Store Ltd, 2017. Print.
Winter, J M. The Cambridge History of the First World War. , 2014. Print.
