Opposition to World War I

Opposition to World War I was widespread during the conflict and included socialists, anarchists, syndicalists and Marxists as well as Christian pacifists, anti-colonial nationalists, feminists, intellectuals, and the working class. The socialist movements had declared before the war their opposition to a war which they said could only mean workers killing each other in the interests of their bosses. Once the war was declared, most socialist and most of the trade union decided to back the government of their country and support the war. For example, on July 25, 1914 the executive of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) issued an appeal to its membership to demonstrate against the coming war, only to vote on August 4 for the war credits the German government wanted. Likewise the French Socialist Party and its union, the CGT, especially after the assassination of the pacificist Jean Jaurès, organized mass rallies and protests until the outbreak of war, but once the war began they argued that in wartime socialists should support their nations against the aggression of other nations and also voted for war credits. Groups opposed to the war included the Russian Bolsheviks, the Socialist Party of America, the Italian Socialist Party, and the socialist faction led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg in Germany (later to become the Communist Party of Germany). In Sweden, the socialist youth leader Zeth Höglund was jailed for his anti-war propaganda, even though Sweden did not participate in the war. Women across the spectrum were much less supportive of the war than men. Women in church groups were especially anti-war. However, women in the suffrage movement in different countries wanted to support the war effort, asking for the vote as a reward for that support. In France, women activists from both the working-class socialist women's and the middle-class suffrage movements formed their own groups to oppose the war. However, they were unable to coordinate their efforts because of mutual suspicion due to class and political differences.

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Related concepts (4)

Vladimir Lenin

'Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin', was a Russian lawyer, revolutionary, politician and political theorist who served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1924 and of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1924. Under his administration, Russia, and later the Soviet Union, became a one-party socialist state governed by the Communist Party over the course of the Russian Civil War. Ideologically a Marxist, his development of the ideology is known as Leninism.

Opposition to World War I

Syndicalism

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