Word Count: ca. 1500 words. Times New Roman, double-spaced, size 12. Citations : Chicago Manual Style Description : In this assignment, you are asked to analyze a selection of primary sources (historical documents) pertaining to the events of the First World War. In these sources, different authors with different backgrounds (nationality, class, gender, profession, and age) speak to you about their experiences and perceptions during World War I (1914-1918). Objective : Compare and contrast these primary sources, bringing them into a larger meaningful context. When comparing and contrasting, you could focus on these questions: How do the experiences that soldiers and civilians made during WWI differ from one another; how are they similar? How do you explain discernable differences or similarities ? Your job is to analytically compare and contrast the sources , not to summarize them. Make sure you structure your essay coherently. Clearly outline in your introduction             the argument you intend to pursue in your paper. In your main body, use single paragraphs for single points (i.e. don’t discuss multiple ideas in one paragraph). In your conclusion, finally, sum up your main argument. You do not have to use any sources other than the ones provided. You are welcome to refer to others, such as from the textbook or any other source that you find appropriate. This is not a research paper, however, and you will not get a higher mark simply for using additional sources. For direct quotations, use quotation marks. For direct quotations and paraphrases, you must use a citation (footnote). For this assignment, we can use simplified footnotes, i.e. simply state the name of the author and title of the document. For page numbers just use the page number of THIS document (I realize this is somewhat arbitrary…). Example: Nicholas II, Imperial Manifesto, p. 2. Put the simplified bibliography at the end of your essay. Use the same format as in your footnotes (name of author, source). For questions, send me an email or visit the WLC. Primary Source 1: A monarch’s perspective Russian IMPERIAL MANIFESTO, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia August 2, 1914. We NICHOLAS II, by the Grace of God, Emperor and Autocrat of all the Russias, Czar of Poland, Grand Duke of Finland, etc., etc., etc. Proclaim to all OUR loyal subjects: Following her historical traditions, Russia, united in faith and blood with the Slav nations, has never regarded their fate with indifference. The unanimous fraternal sentiments of the Russian people for the Slavs have been aroused to special intensity in the past few days, when Austria-Hungary presented to Serbia demands which she foresaw would be unacceptable to a Sovereign State. Having disregarded the conciliatory and peaceable reply of the Serbian Government, and having declined Russia's well-intentioned mediation, Austria hastened to launch an armed attack in a bombardment of unprotected Belgrad. Compelled, b.

1. Word Count:
ca. 1500 words. Times New Roman, double-spaced, size 12.
Citations
: Chicago Manual Style
Description
: In this assignment, you are asked to analyze a selection of
primary sources (historical documents) pertaining to the events
of the First World War. In these sources, different authors with
different backgrounds (nationality, class, gender, profession,
and age) speak to you about their experiences and perceptions
during World War I (1914-1918).
Objective
: Compare and contrast these primary sources, bringing them
into a larger meaningful context. When comparing and
contrasting, you could focus on these questions:
How do the experiences that soldiers and civilians made during
WWI differ from one another; how are they similar?
How do you explain discernable
differences or similarities
?
Your job is to
analytically

2. compare and contrast the sources
, not to summarize them.
Make sure you structure your essay coherently. Clearly outline
in your introduction the
argument you intend to pursue in your paper. In your main
body, use single paragraphs for single points (i.e. don’t discuss
multiple ideas in one paragraph). In your conclusion, finally,
sum up your main argument.
You do not have to use any sources other than the ones
provided. You are welcome to refer to others, such as from the
textbook or any other source that you find appropriate. This is
not a research paper, however, and you will not get a higher
mark simply for using additional sources.
For direct quotations, use quotation marks. For direct quotations
and
paraphrases, you must use a citation (footnote). For this
assignment, we can use simplified footnotes, i.e. simply state
the name of the author and title of the document. For page
numbers just use the page number of THIS document (I realize
this is somewhat arbitrary…).
Example:
Nicholas II, Imperial Manifesto, p. 2.
Put the simplified bibliography at the end of your essay. Use the
same format as in your footnotes (name of author, source). For
questions, send me an email or visit the WLC.
Primary Source 1: A monarch’s perspective

3. Russian IMPERIAL MANIFESTO, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia
August 2, 1914.
We NICHOLAS II, by the Grace of God, Emperor and Autocrat
of all the Russias, Czar of Poland, Grand Duke of Finland, etc.,
etc., etc.
Proclaim to all OUR loyal subjects:
Following her historical traditions, Russia, united in faith and
blood with the Slav nations, has never regarded their fate with
indifference. The unanimous fraternal sentiments of the Russian
people for the Slavs have been aroused to special intensity in
the past few days, when Austria-Hungary presented to Serbia
demands which she foresaw would be unacceptable to a
Sovereign State.
Having disregarded the conciliatory and peaceable reply of the
Serbian Government, and having declined Russia's well-
intentioned mediation, Austria hastened to launch an armed
attack in a bombardment of unprotected Belgrad.
Compelled, by the force of circumstances thus created, to adopt
the necessary measures of precaution, WE c o m m a n d e d
that the army and the navy be put on a war footing, but, at the
same time, holding the blood and the treasure of Our subjects
dear, We made every effort to obtain a peaceable issue of the
negotiations that had been started.
In the midst of friendly communications, Austria's Ally,
Germany, contrary to our trust in century-old relations of
neighborliness, and paying no heed to OUR assurances that the
measures We had adopted implied no hostile aims whatever,
insisted upon their immediate abandonment, and, meeting with a

4. rejection of this demand, suddenly declared war on Russia.
WE have now to intercede not only for a related country,
unjustly attacked, but also to safeguard the honor, dignity, and
integrity of Russia, and her position among the Great Powers.
WE firmly believe that all Our loyal subjects will rally self-
sacrificingly and with one accord to the defense of the Russian
soil.
At this hour of threatening danger, let domestic strife be
forgotten. Let the union between the TSAR and HIS people be
stronger than ever, and let Russia, rising like one man, repel the
insolent assault of the enemy.
With a profound faith in the justice of OUR cause, and trusting
humbly in Almighty Providence, We invoke prayerfully the
Divine blessing for Holy Russia and our valiant troops.
Given at Saint Petersburg, on the second day of August, in the
year of Our Lord one thousand nine hundred and fourteen, and
the twentieth year of OUR reign.
In the original the IMPERIAL MAJESTY has signed with his
Own hand
"NICHOLAS".
Primary Source 2: A soldier’s perspective
Ernst Jünger,
Storm of Steel,
1914, German.
We had come from lecture halls, school desks and factory

5. workbenches, and over the brief weeks of training, we had
bonded together into one large and enthusiastic group. Grown
up in an age of security, we shared a yearning for danger, for
the experience of the extraordinary. We were enraptured by war.
We had set out in a rain of flowers, in a drunken atmosphere of
blood and roses. Surely the war had to supply us with what we
wanted; the great, the overwhelming, the hallowed experience.
Primary Source 3: A writer’s perspective (from your textbook,
p. 49)
Roland Deregeles, “That Fabulous Day, 1914”
In "After Fifty Years," Roland Doregeles (1886-1973), a
distinguished French writer, recalled the mood in Paris at the
outbreak of the war.
"It’s come! It’s posted at the district mayor’s office," a passerby
shouted to me as he ran.
I reached the Rue Drouot in one leap and shouldered through
the mob that had already filled the courtyard to approach the
fascinating white sheet pasted to the door. I read the message at
a glance, then reread it slowly, word for word, to convince
myself that it was true:
THE FIRST DAY OF MOBILIZATION WILL BE SUNDAY,
AUGUST 2
Only three lines, written hastily by a hand that trembled. It was
an announcement to a million and a half Frenchmen.
The people who had read it moved away, stunned, while others
crowded in, but this silent numbness did not last. Suddenly a
heroic wind lifted their heads. What? War, was it? Well, then,
let’s go! Without any signal, the "Marseillaise" poured from

6. thousands of throats, sheafs of flags appeared at windows, and
howling processions rolled out on the boulevards. Each column
brandished a placard: ALSACE VOLUNTEERS, JEWISH
VOLUNTEERS, POLISH VOLUNTEERS. They hailed one
another above the bravos of the crowd, and this human torrent,
swelling at every corner, moved on to circle around the Place de
la Concorde, before the statue of Strasbourg banked with
flowers, then flowed toward the Place de la Republique, where
mobs from Belleville and the Faubourg St. Antoine yelled
themselves hoarse on the refrain from the great days, "Aux
armes, citoyens!" (To arms, citizens!) But this time it was better
than a song.
To gather the news for my paper, I ran around the city in every
direction. At the Cours la Reine I saw the fabled cuirassiers
[cavalry] in their horsetail plumes march by, and at the Rue La
Fayette footsoldiers in battle garb with women throwing flowers
and kisses to them. In a marshaling yard I saw guns being
loaded, their long, thin barrels twined around with branches and
laurel leaves, while troops in red breeches piled gaily into
delivery vans they were scrawling with challenges and
caricatures. Young and old, civilians and military men burned
with the same excitement. It was like Brotherhood Day.
Dead tired but still exhilarated, I got back to L’Homme libre
and burst into the office of Georges Clemenceau, our chief.ª
"What is Paris saying?" he asked me.
"It’s singing, sir!"
"Then everything will be all right. . . ."
His old patriot’s heart was not wrong; no cloud marred that
fabulous day. . . .

7. Less than twenty-four hours later, seeing their old dreams of
peace crumble [socialist workers] would stream out into the
boulevards . . . [but] they would break into the "Marseillaise,"
not the "Internationale"; they would cry, "To Berlin!," not
"Down with war!"
What did they have to defend, these black nailed patriots? Not
even a shack, an acre to till, indeed hardly a patch of ground
reserved at the Pantin Cemetery; yet they would depart, like
their rivals of yesterday, a heroic song on their lips and a flower
in their guns. No more poor or rich, proletariats or bourgeois,
right-wingers or militant leftists; there were only Frenchmen.
Beginning the next day, thousands of men eager to fight would
jostle one another outside recruiting offices, waiting to join up.
Men who could have stayed home, with their wives and children
or an imploring mama. But no. The word "duty" had meaning
for them, and the word "country" had regained its splendor.
I close my eyes, and they appear to me, those volunteers on the
great day; then I see them again in the old kepi [military cap] or
blue helmet, shouting, "Here!" when somebody called for men
for a raid, or hurling themselves into an attack with fixed
bayonets, and I wonder, and I question their bloody [ghosts].
Primary Source 4: A child’s perspective
Ernst Glaeser,
The Class of 1902
, German. (note the term gendarme = German policeman)
A new front was created. It was held by the women, against a
field of gendarmes and controllers. Every smuggled pound of
butter, every sack of potatoes successfully spirited in the night
was celebrated in their homes with the same enthusiasm as the

8. victories of the armies two years before.
Two gendarmes were posted besides the threshing machine at
the institute to check the quantities. They confiscated all the
harvest. The farmer hated them as much as they had hated the
French in 1914; even more, for they weren’t able to shoot them.
The word enemy now meant the gendarmes… We hardly
mentioned the war, all out talks was a lack of food. Out mothers
were neared to us than our fathers.
Primary Source 5: Another soldier’s perspective
Erich Maria Remarque, German. All Quiet on the Western
Front, 1917
[During my home visit]. Formerly I lived in just the same way
myself, but now I feel no contact here. They talk too much for
me. They have worries, aims, desires that I cannot
comprehend… they are different men here…
Had we returned in 1916, out of the suffering and the strength
of our experience we might have unleashed a storm. Now f we
go back we will be weary, broke, burnt out, rootless and without
hope. And men will not understand us - for the generation that
grew up before us, though it has passed these years with us
already had a home a calling; now it will return to its old
occupations, and the we will be forgotten – and the generation
that has grown up after us will be strange to us and push us
aside. We will be superfluous even to ourselves, we will grow
older, a few will adapt themselves, some others will merely
submit, and most will be bewildered; the year will pass by and
in the end, we shall fall into ruin.
Source 6: A politician’s anti-war perspective
Rosa Luxemburg, German politician, 1916

9. This war's most important lesson for the policy of the
proletariat is the unassailable fact that it cannot parrot the
slogan Victory or Defeat, not in Germany or in France, not in
England or in Russia. Only from the standpoint of imperialism
does this slogan have any real content. For every Great Power it
is identical to the question of gain or loss of political standing,
of annexations, colonies, and military predominance. From the
standpoint of class for the European proletariat as a whole the
victory and defeat of any of the warring camps is equally
disastrous.
It is war as such, no matter how it ends militarily, that signifies
the greatest defeat for Europe's proletariat. It is only the
overcoming of war and the speediest possible enforcement of
peace by the international militancy of the proletariat that can
bring victory to the workers' cause. And in reality this victory
alone can simultaneously rescue Belgium as well as democracy
in Europe.
The class-conscious proletariat cannot identify with any of the
military camps in this war. Does it follow that proletarian
policy ought to demand maintenance of the status quo, that we
have no other action program beyond the wish that everything
should be as it was before the war? But existing conditions have
never been our ideal; they have never expressed the self-
determination of peoples. Furthermore, the earlier conditions
are no longer to be saved; they no longer exist, even if historic
state borders continue to exist. Even before its results have been
formally established, the war has already brought about
immense confusion in power relationships, the reciprocal
estimate of forces, of alliances, and conflicts. It has sharply
revised the relations between states and of classes within
society. So many old illusions and potencies have been
destroyed, so many new forces and problems have been created
that a return to the old Europe as it existed before August 4,

10. 1914 is out of the question. [It is] as out of the question as a
return to pre-revolutionary conditions even after a defeated
revolution.
Proletarian policy knows no retreat; it can only struggle
forward. It must always go beyond the existing and the newly
created. In this sense alone, it is legitimate for the proletariat to
confront both camps of imperialists in the world war with a
policy of its own…
The world war today is demonstrably not only murder on a
grand scale; it is also suicide of the working classes of Europe.
The soldiers of socialism, the proletarians of England, France,
Germany, Russia, and Belgium have for months been killing one
another at the behest of capital. They are driving the cold steel
of murder into each other's hearts. Locked in the embrace of
death, they tumble into a common grave…
The madness will cease and the bloody demons of hell will
vanish only when workers in Germany and France, England and
Russia finally awake from their stupor, extend to each other a
brotherly hand, and drown out the bestial chorus of imperialist
war-mongers and the shrill cry of capitalist hyenas with labor's
old and mighty battle cry: Proletarians of all lands, unite!