Figure 1.--We do not know where this image was taken in Eastern Europe, we believe probably in what would now be Poland or Hungary. This rural scene is undated, but we suspect it was taken about 1910 before World War. The children here helping to take in the harvest are barefoot and wear ragged clothing, but they look well fed. Note that all the boys have long pants. Image courtesy of the MD collection. Click on the image for an elarged view of some of the boys.

Americans generally focus on Western Europe. It was, however, in Eastern Europe that the WAr was to be generated and it was Eastern Europe that was most affected by the War. The map of Europe before World War I looked very different than Europe today. Much of Europe was part of three large empires (German, Russian, and Austro-Hungarian). This included the modern states of the Belarus, Bosnia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Poland, and Ukraine. Several new mostly weak and unstable countries or dependencies (Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, Serbia, and Romania) had been created from the earlier breakup of the Ottoman Empire. In recent years even more new states have appaered from the former Ottoman territories (Macedonia and Moldavia). Most of these countries, including areas of the German Empire, were still largely agricultural, in some cases almost feudal. Large areas had still been vurtually untouched by the Industrial Revolution. The rural peasantry and relatively small urban working class was often very poor with families eckeing out a very meager existence. Urban workers in many cases lived in almost Dickesian squalor. Natioanlist sentiment was strictly suppressed in these empires. World War I which destroted all four of these great empires was to unleash long-supressed nationalist sentiment throughout Eastern Europe. Winston Churchill saw the destruction and the introduction of dangerous American principles in the Versailles Treaty such as national self determination as one of the causes of the rise of brutish Coomunis, Fascist, and NAZI totalitarianism after the War. Adding the volitile mix was the rise of Soviet Communism in Russia after the War and its appeal to many agricultural and industrial workers.

Created: January 31, 2003
Last updated: January 31, 2003