Central Powers of World War I

[dramatic music] Soon, the dividing lines were clear.

The Allied Powers, Britain, France, and Russia, battled the Central Powers, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire.

President Wilson, following President Washington's advice regarding foreign entanglements, issued a declaration of neutrality.

Here's how the very short declaration began.

England, the mainstay in the great struggle, was in deadly peril, for just about this time the ruthless submarine campaign was at its height, and our shipping losses were appalling.

The Central Powers, with startling rapidity, had crushed and overrun Belgium, Serbia, and Romania, and a large slice of France was in the grip of the invader.

It was a case of stalemate with Italy, while Russia, the colossus with the feet of clay, was in the throes of a revolution and lost to the Allies.

Turkey, the so-called sick man of Europe, was found not only able to sit up and take nourishment, but strong enough to administer some nasty knocks to the surgeon as we discovered to our cost at Gallipoli and other places in the Near East.

So the ghosts of Caporetto are still there, and it's one of those battles which is absolutely destructive.

And so at this point, November 1917, there's a real window of opportunity for the central powers, perhaps the last time they really get one, where they are able to... decide the war in their favor.

It's truly decisive.

Yes, but it occurs to me, Professor, the irony of this is if there's an author somewhere, that success at Caporetto and the stories of the Winter Palace storming and the Bolsheviks who went out of the war, and we immediately enter into Brest-Litovsk negotiations of the Russian ceasefire, That gives confidence to Hindenburg and Ludendorff that one throw of the dice will win it all.

And ultimately, Karl is correct in this.

Karl's an interesting figure because he's always written off as this sort of naive young boy, this man, this sort of rather pathetic figure.

But he sees very, very clearly the dilemma that the central powers face.

But also that this is a new world now with the Bolshevik revolution, and they have to be very, very careful.

On the other hand, territories were assigned to the new states, which by nationality were connected with other political organisms.

Furthermore, taking into consideration that it was not full independence that was granted to the Balkan states at the Berlin Conference, but that they got into a great dependency on the neighboring states it is obvious how the balkan peninsula came to be the hotbed of incessant combat among the nations and that the neighboring great powers made the balkan peninsula the theater of their wrestling for hegemony nor could the bucharest treaty bring an adjustment of the national conflict since it disregarded the ethnographical boundaries of the national territories thus a gulf not to be bridged over, open between the Bulgarians and the Serbians, and that is why in the Great War we see Bulgaria on the side of the central powers.

That the Balkan question gave the first impulse to the Great War is a fact universally known.

Surveying the development of the national problem in the other states of Europe, we come in short to the following results.

another way was chosen by austria here the principle of equality of rights was expressly established by the constitution but was turned into the reverse on being carried out the empire was not divided according to national territories but according to provinces and in the provinces the nations who were in the minority were delivered up to other nations who often had only a chance majority So an antagonism arose on the one hand between the imperial government and the province governments, the majority nations trying to shake off the remaining part of their dependency on the supreme power of the state, and on the other hand an antagonism between the nations, the minorities endeavoring to free themselves from the rule of the majority nations.

In consequence, whereof a conflict was kindled among the nations of Austria, which affected the whole state machinery.

when the great war broke out indeed all nations of austria were forced to fight on the side of the central powers but it was obvious a priori that each nation was aiming at her own deliverance and that the nations had gone to the war for their own right of self-determination so there can be no doubt that the main fact that called forth the great war was that the problem of nationality had to choose this way of being brought to a definite solution The re-annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, the independence of the small nations, the restitution of Poland, these are the forms in which the problem of the deliverance of nations made its first appearance in the war.

Soon other national questions followed, such as the Czechoslovak, the Yugoslav, the Ukrainian questions, etc.

"Maybe, if you're a good little girl, I might take a notion to try you out as understudy." So Lolita Murphy, the pride of Cedar Rapids, became a small and almost infinitesimal part of the great outdoor spectacle entitled Secret Service Sally, which was the big sensation of the Jolly Land season.

In the role of an agent of the United States Secret Service, the charming and fascinating June Delight was swept through a series of thrilling adventures set against spectacular backgrounds depicting scenes in Berlin, Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro, and other world capitals, and as a culminating feature, she was pursued to the roof of a building in London by a howling mob which suspected her of being a spy in the employ of the Central Powers.

She was saved from its hands in the proverbial nick of time by her fiancé, dashing Lieutenant Thurston Turner, commander of the US dirigible N-24, who happened to be cruising about the neighborhood at the moment, and who effected a rescue by circling his ship around the roof and deftly lifting the young woman into the shelter of the gondola, which hung from the great gas balloon just as she was about to be beaten to death by the infuriated crowd.

In as much as the spectacle was given in the open air, it was possible to use for the purposes of this scene a real dirigible, which was manned by a crew commanded by one Bobby Wilkins, a personable young gentleman from Chicago who had come back from France with a major's commission, a reputation for daredevilry as an aviator surpassed by no other ace in the American service, and a collection of a half dozen assorted war medals bestowed by three grateful nations.

Casement, who was a fiery patriot and cherished a deadly hatred for England, believed that the World War had at length brought the opportunity to deliver his country from the age-long oppression of the English.

The favorable military situation of the Central Powers at that time justified the hope that they would be victorious.

If, then, the Irish people made up its mind to rise against England, and had sufficient tenacity and a sufficient supply of arms and ammunition to maintain the struggle, the existing situation was undoubtedly the most favorable for the realization of Ireland's hopes that Ireland had ever had, or ever will have.

Roger Casement, as appears from his earlier writings, had years before foreseen this World War and the opportunity for Ireland that it would bring in its train.