films, lectures and college classrooms and museums and historic places. all weekend, every weekend on c-span3. announcer: the co-editor of th environmental history of world war i talks about the diverse ecological impacts the first world war had across the globe, and explains how these went far beyond physical changes to battlefields and included shifts in agricultural reduction and displacement of wildlife and humans. the national world war i museum and memorial hosted the event and provided the video. >> now it is my pleasure to er, anuce dr. tell associate professor of history at rhodes college in memphis, tennessee whose research focuses on individuals, states and the

environment in times of crisis and conflict. he has received fellowships from the american council of learned societies, the ministry of science and research and the national endowment for the humanities to only name a few and has given lectures in africa, india, turkey, europe and salem, kansas city. not a bad lineup. he is the author and most co-editedinished his histories of the first world war which is available for purchase after our program. as a first for a museum and anorial speaker, he is alliance national certified instructors. takeyou ask questions, sure they have a? at the end and now without further ado. please join me in welcoming dr. keller. [applause]

dr. keller: good evening, everyone. i'm thrilled to be here and happy you could join me. i am going to talk about my current research which is looking at a global environmental history of the first world war. i am interested in energy geopolitics that link the battle lines on the home fronts with agricultural and industry in ways that fundamentally shaped the 20th century. so i will talk about the main battlefield many of us are familiar with, then hop, skip, and jump around the globe to point out other areas where we might not think of the war that has an incredibly profound environmental impact. now, few human endeavors have altered the natural world as much as agriculture industry and warfare. in 1914, these came together in ways that were incredibly

destructive. we might first think of battlefields when someone mentions war, they think battlefields, and soldiers did change environment on every battlefront. military planners took the environment into account, mostly when they were considering climate and terrain. often soldiers were talking about battling against the elements. on the western front, we see see british soldiers dealing with the mud. if you have ever read "all quiet on the western front," you know the battle against rats, disease. here is a group of soldiers dealing with the mesopotamian sun. in the heat, men often suffered heat strokes. that furnace-like setting made for diseases, you name it,

tuberculosis, the plague. there was something the english soldiers called the baghdad boyles. butn't know what those are, it sounds awful. here again, we see english soldiers. they are in africa. mostly confronting disease, the jungle setting, but also contending with wild animal attacks, lions and elephants mainly. there was fighting happening in the alps, frostbite, avalanches, hypothermia, isolation, and not surprising, depression, something most soldiers had to contend with. armies altered ecosystems on every front. i found in many ways that warfare accelerated environmental changes that had begun in the previous century.

let me give you a few examples. we find ourselves again in mesopotamia. the most pressing problem was water. given the environment, that probably seems obvious. what might surprise us is that troops complained not about the lack of water, but an overabundance. the marshlands and ponds would flood during the spring snow melt, water from the highlands and asia minor would swell the rivers and lakes which would turn mesopotamia into a morass. to prevent inundation, local civilians had traditionally piled loose dirt on the banks, but in a bad flood, those were not effective, so soldiers alter the land with trenches, protective dams, change water

flows, and redirected the course of rivers. the mobilization of armies in the alps intensified industrialization, with a massive expansion of roads, railways, and electricity, like here. guerrilla warfare in africa expanded infrastructure with roads and railways, but nowhere was the concentration of forces so great as on the western front, where the stalemate ensured ecological upheaval. here are french soldiers struggling across no man's land. scenes like this letter devastation ruined landscapes pitted and cracked with craters and trenches and quickly became

a metaphor for the great war's waste. opposing forces fired over one billion shells, and now it formed a substratum of soil, slowly making their way back to surface. it is typical for farmers to unearth these relics, many of which are still dangerous, still explosive. they will collect them, set them by the side of the road, and then government agencies pick him up. i had a chance to meet with some over the summer who took me to the collection depot. here is some of the stuff they recover over the course of a year. it is incredible. they first have to identify what sort of shell, chemical, gas. is it still alive? we will come back to that. don't look.

these still haunt the land, maim and murder. occasionally bombs caught in tractor plows will explode, claiming more victims of the war. they saturate the ground in some regions and authorities have designated these lands red zones, too dangerous for cultivation, tourism, or human habitation. today they look benign. we can see traces of this war when we examined the aerial photographs and the way in which crops grow. the different soils as they are recovered, led to these growing patterns you can trace out where trenches were.

here are a few images of this, taken from the flanders field museum. that is pretty incredible. destruction on the western front dominates scholars of the war and has shaped our view of the ecological impact. beyond the front lines, major damage to nature on the battlefield was short-lived. here is a picture of a famous path from france into belgium. memorialized that. today, this is what we would see. greater environmental change

occurred behind the lines, away from the killing fields. the lands that suffer the most stood pretty far from the fighting. we can think of armies as biological entities which depended on a military ecology of energy. energy extraction, production and supply. to maintain the biological welfare of soldiers, states commandeered natural resources, expanding the footprint. i will give some examples of this. coal was a principal source of industrial energy in 1914. the great fear was there would be coal shortages. to offset potential shortages,

coal ornts rationed encouraged citizens to conserve it. this is a british pamphlet instructing citizens. many places don't burn coal, burn wood instead. there is a massive expansion of timbre extraction. ede need for timbre tax round the world. the deforestation accelerated in an uneven fashion. great britain cut down nearly half of its forests. the opening of the panama canal lowered the cost of imports in british columbia and the u.s. became leading timber exporters. this is from british columbia.

french and german timber fared well. both countries had long institutionalized for street practices, and most of the manpower had been diverted to the army. the germans took trees from other countries. we see how similar it looks to these war-torn regions all kinds of propaganda encouraging extraction. since manpower had been diverted, an archetypal male profession, the lumberjack, now had a gender identity switch. this is an image from the woman's land army in great britain, where women were sent out to chop down trees.

the u.s. established the forestry corps. it did most of the heavy cutting in france. timber was crucial. you needed it for everything. billions of top grade were needed. this is accelerating the deforestation. generals when they return from the western front to the southeastern united states or the northwest and saw these clear-cut patches, it reminded them of the western front. there was a discussion after the war about the need for some sort of forestry policy.

1919 there is a creation of forestry policy to create sustainable forestry practices in the name of national security. the progression of the war accentuated the importance of petroleum. the u.s.ime, it was and mexico that supplied more than 80% of the world's petroleum, most out of california. but a fair amount along the veracruz coast in mexico. that is the spot i will focus on. to drill there, companies had to move mangroves, flatten sand dunes, and drain swamps along the coast. they would dig these deep pits to hold the petroleum once it was pumped out, and it disturb

the soil that mimics the way it was on the western front. the petroleum was contained at high levels with hydrogen sulfide at high temperatures. it was common for these blazes and explosions to happen that would devastate land, some of which have not recovered. in great britain, there is concern on foreign oil, u.s. oil, and it was driving british ambitions in mesopotamia. one of the reasons we saw british troops in the deserts, in provinces of the ottoman empire, and sound familiar today, was because the prudish -- british wanted to control the newly discovered oil fields in that region. coal, oil, but the crucial

energy resource was food. food scarcity was a defining feature of the war. countries blockaded by the british and french navies, germany, austria, hungary, faced alarming energy deficits that required authoritarian regulations. from an environmental standpoint, is not at all surprising that germany lost, what is shocking is it 1.7 million soldiers on multiple fronts for over four years as long as it did. germany's defeat revealed the ecological constraints of waging war. germans imported 25% of food, that included eggs, dairy, meat, much of the fodder came from russia, argentina, the u.s. and high agriculture yields relied on chilean nitrates for fertilizer.

with that british blockade and the poor domestic harvest, german agricultural production plummeted. there is this massive attempt to mobilize food. this is a german placard. it says, "hold out." it is a potato with a strangely human face. it says, "though we are surrounded and threatened with hunger, we will hold out, we ."ll mobilize the last potato desperate to increase agricultural production, germans plowed church yards, school grounds, forest glades, even the soccer fields, which was telling. german soccer clubs went crazy. oh no, not the soccer fields. think of the children. it didn't work.

food shortages exacerbated class tensions in cities where workers councils complained that the parks and so-called luxury gardens in the more affluent neighborhoods were not being used for cultivation. the response was those were two shady to grow anything. the german government attempted to arbitrate inequalities with ration cards and price controls. didn't work. just created a vibrant black market. regulations did control every phase of agricultural production, but often bureaucratic clumsiness or shortsighted policies resulted in food shortages. here is an example. state officials determined gluttonous pigs were competing with humans for grain. the government decreed the great pig massacre, claiming over 9

million victims. what they did was produce a momentary glut of pork. sausage every night, but did nothing to alleviate the grain shortage. more detrimental what the death of those pigs, the balance of the world, pigs were not only consumers of fodder, the great producers of fertilizer. their departure had dire long-term consequences. regulations proved ineffective in the face of disaster. in 1915, a locust plague of biblical proportions exacerbated a famine in greater syria. here we see a picture. all those dots are locusts. the insects stripped the vineyards, croplands, and orchards. food markets were bare. we know how dire the situation

was because jerusalem lacked the olive oil to light the temples. here is a before and after picture. a nice tree, and the next day. people resorted to eating roasted locusts, then burning the husks to heat their home ovens. rather than enforce food rationing, the u.s. food administrator, herbert hoover, encouraged citizens to eat less, with the slogan, food will win the war. we see one of many propaganda posters catering towards recent immigrants. "food will win the war. waste nothing." it actually worked. there was a 15% reduction in domestic food consumption. the government would issue all kinds of pamphlets encouraging people to save food. one encourage them to dry food.

there would be pamphlets sent to free tosin for homeowners, here is how you can drive vegetables, recipes for turning something delightful, like dried carrots, into something delicious. the brochures conceded that some flavor might be lost, but so much remains. the constant bombardment of literature suggests most people were not being fooled by this. they were not keen on dried dishes, but did practice other forms of self-restraint. hoover called on patriotic americans to participate in meatless mondays or wheatless wednesdays, and it worked. all kinds of pamphlets like this, a way to save, so this is patriots fruit trees with

reserves. there is wasted fruit, rotted fruit, not patriotic. a lot of this is directed towards housewives, towards producers, saving that food. or how to prepare your meals. for fighters. there was the creation of a number of agencies during this war to regulate or somehow direct these resources. one was the national war garden commission. we see these sorts of commissions in most belligerent countries, the cultivation of home gardens anywhere you can , backyards, vacant lots, school grounds. by 1917, the cultivation of nearly 3 million gardens, these numbers may be inflated, but was

still telling. war, nearlyf the 25% of american households had what were popularly called war gardens. we see schoolchildren during recess, put those kids to work, planting peas. you can grow food. just as the germans were plowing fields, you know that the war has come home when they start plowing up little league field. the propaganda is fantastic. pumpkins, potatoes, onions, tomatoes, carrots charging over the top. the farmer has become a soldier. not a rifle, but a tool. will you have a part in victory? i point this out because even as

the war massively expanded patterns of exploitation, it also set standards for conservation. incentives for mass production were large. you had to feed these massive industrialized armies. to do that, the government guaranteed wheat prices of over two dollars a bushel for wheat for the duration of the war. that was high. adequate rainfall, soaring prices, created bonanza farms on the american and canadian prairies. optimistic farmers borrowed heavily, by taking out second mortgages on their farm to break sod on marginal lands to reap those profits. most of this is done across well-suitedich were for gas-driven tractors, plows, and combines. industrialized farming taking

hold. wheat farming was so lucrative that financial profits outweighed the environmental costs, but what we find is the environmental and economic consequences that distorted agricultural production were severe. those fields we saw devastated on the western front, predominantly farming lands, we know they recovered productivity -- relatively quickly. it was within a few years after the armistice those yields approached prewar levels. that meant european demand for american produce evaporated. on top of the drought in the 1920's, grain prices plummeted by over 50% between 1920 and 1921, creating serious liquidity problems for those indebted farmers. it left hundreds of thousands destitute, and foreclosure rates hit record numbers. the like of which we have not seen since.

ok. i will take you somewhere else now. the situation was even worse in africa. we find that energy deficits and massive population displacement created famine conditions. most of the fighting in africa took place in germany. predominantly tanzania, a little bit in british east africa and in portuguese east africa and mozambique. there was fighting elsewhere, but those were pretty much done by 1915. here it lasted the entire time and was mostly guerrilla fighting. now, since pack animals in that region fell prey by the thousands from a fly that transferred the parasite that

causes sleeping sickness, it meant european forces relied on energy bodies as energy reserves. both sides carried out their campaigns on the backs of africans. millions were mobilized for this. the british recruited one million porters for the campaign from populations across sub-saharan africa. pursuing the germans required two or three african carriers for british soldiers. they often view their african recruits or conscripts as a tactical advantage. what we find with a closer look is there was a high death rate among african recruits, much higher than for british or german soldiers. food shortages is one explanation for this disparity. by 1917, most african laborers received less than 1000 calories per day.

food shortages plagued most of the african continent during the war. thousands of hungry soldiers outstripped local supply. soaring food prices compounded struggles to obtain limited provisions. guerrilla warfare also created negative feedback loops, troops that would seize cattle, and that allowed for tsetse fly expansion, pushing the flies into the bush, lowered the incidences of sleeping sickness, then the bush expanded and it had the opposite effect. the reduction of livestock correlated to an increase in animal attacks on humans. cows were easy prey for old, lazy lions. we find that the lions were looking for people instead. people would desert villages for safer places, allowing the bush

to recover and those tsetse fly numbers to swell. blight ruinednd harvesting. there were laws that restricted the sale of firearms and ammunition meaning there are a few around to prevent animals from ravishing plantations with impunity. that population displacement in africa meant ecological dislocation. here we find another image, further into the belgian congo with african porters. i will skip across the atlantic to latin america. hardly anyone thinks about latin america during this war, but it played a pivotal role. south american neutrals often neglected in first world war

scholarship nourished and fueled european armies throughout the war, like mexico or argentina or chile. for chile, that role was in sodium nitrate. they had a near monopoly over nitrate soda trade. it was essential for fertilizer and a major constituent of explosives. it thus served two vital needs of any belligerent country. what we found is it accelerated the processes that would exhaust their nitrate deposits. it also revealed the systemic fiscal weaknesses in relations between labor and capital. chile's main trading partner was germany, so losing germany plummeted chile into severe depression. the nitrate districts were the hardest hit. there was little other than mining nitrate in the desert.

unemployed workers were sent south to the agricultural lands, but their arrival exacerbated already dire conditions. only with economic recovery in 1915 and the continued reliance on chilean nitrates prevented total mayhem. at the same time, scientists in germany had developed a process of nitrogen fixation which doomed chile's nitrate industry. there we go. some nitrate mining. across the way, this was argentina's food company. in this area, it was one of the 10 wealthiest countries. it reinforces changes happening

on that land. take great britain, for example, early 20th century, imports were 40% of domestic consumption, 80% out of argentina. south america's relationship with great britain was viewed in a negative light, they were labeled as part of great britain's so-called informal empire. the south american economies were wholly dependent on european whims. we switch that a little bit in view argentina in this larger transatlantic energy exchange. it is a different view. meat and wheat gave argentina a strategic advantage. even though they needed people imported coal, they found they can get it elsewhere. even though great britain had to rely on argentina during the

war, argentina decided to get coal from the u.s. instead of great britain. from an energy perspective. , great britainh was as dependent on argentina as argentina was reliant on great britain for coal, so these exchanges created mutually dependent networks the war directed, enforced, or at times balanced. the last place i will take you is cuba. cuba was part of the war effort. it was an importer of food stocks. even though it was fertile, it grew cash crops, mostly sugar and tobacco, the mainstays of the cuban economy. as part of the war effort, the government sought to enlist the help of the sugar plantations, who then could use some of their

land to allow tenant farmers to plant food crops. the european sugar beat production raised sugar prices, which drove plantation expansion, often at the expense of food crops. the cuban government is issuing all these proclamations to people, try to eat beans and bananas, not so much wheat, but sugarcane plantations meant wealth. for many cubans, they also signified foreign control over sugar production. so we see here, this is hershey's. of the 130 sugar plantations, americans owned well over half of those. impoverished peasants in 1917 began to express their resentments of the rich by attacking these large sugar

centrals. in response, the united states deployed the marines to calm the cuban countryside. it was to say, these two peasants, -- cuban maybe it is german infiltrators and spies, but really they were sent there to protect the plantations in the sugar intervention. all this looking at different places, latin america, the north american plains, africa, made me think all these close comparisons to what was happening on the western front. the question is, what exactly then is a war landscape? i will introduce you to kurt. he was a german psychologist, an artillery officer during the war. while he was recuperating from combat, he wrote this pamphlet

called "war landscapes" and talked about the perception of battlefields. after talking with a number of soldiers he came to the conclusion there are more landscapes than peace landscapes. and peace landscapes appeared boundless, extending as far out as the eye can see. war landscapes were contained, bordered by violence and destruction. and from what we know today as shellshocked, ptsd, kurt lewin's psychological analysis probably makes sense. we find the border between a war landscape and a peace landscape overlaps or vanishes entirely. so here is our war landscape, a german soldier looking out over the western front. how different is that from a young boy looking out over the eroded lands on the american prairies.

how different is it from what these lumberjacks are seeing? here we find french soldiers under fire on the western front, and mexican oil workers there. crossing these landscapes created unease in some less obvious ways. the war simultaneously opened and closed frontiers. some efforts were linked to empire building agendas, other s were part of capitalistic schemes, all extended state or corporate control over the natural world in some way. heavily dependent on dominions for energy, europe met its increasing war demands through the settler societies in colonial landscapes. these societies used imperial energy needs to extend systems of colonial control over

frontier lands and indigenous populations. what the war is doing is reinforcing state building projects that began in the 19th century through dispossession, subjugation, and segregation. these imperial energy flows, intensified by the war, brought their own violence that turned peace lands into war lands. the legacy of that violence has continued long after the fighting ended. the first world war is indeed still contemporary. we live the consequences even now. thank you all so very much. thank you very much. [applause] i ended with plenty of time to take questions that you might have. >> as a reminder, there are

mics on either side of the stage. if you are unable, i will come to you. >> it is a lot to take in. >> i was interested in the fact that a lot of the trench warfare was in an area in france that was heavily vineyards, the champagne area, and i was wondering how quickly, first of all, how much was destroyed during the battles and how quickly could that recover. vineyards depend on old vines that have been around for decades to actually make a good mature wine. i was wondering if that was a

big industry for france. dr. keller: even before the fighting ended, the french government came up with plans for recuperation of those lands. there were deliberate efforts to preserve some of those old vines as much as they could, so we find that happening. there was a dip in that production, but it ended up being able to recover. by the late 1920's, most of those vineyards are back up and running. there are complaints by veterans organizations, former soldiers who go back and visit their old places of combat, and they were inaccessible because they had grown up so much. there were these wonderful letters saying we need to trim to get to where the trenches used to be. there is a fairly quick recovery

to it. thank you. >> i have a question for you. how did you come to this topic? you said there are misconceptions about the environmental impacts on the landscape and beyond the western front. expound upon that. dr. keller: my first book was about mountaineering in the alps. the pivotal chapter was about the first world war in the alps, of which i had known very little. it was very stark in how the soldiers were seeing the war. the alps, imagine this pristine, pure place where you can find nature intact. and then the war comes there and destroys this perceived pristine landscape.

i thought, this is really interesting. i should look to see what is happening elsewhere with this conflict. that is when i saw that there is not that much written. there is a little on the western front, but not much elsewhere. that is what led me to it. in one of these moments you sometimes get as a researcher, i had no idea i was going to do it . i first did research in the archives which still have intact military records from the war. i met this wonderful archivist who was as excited as i was. i was explaining it to him. he said it was so exciting. he said, how are you going to do this? the environment could be anything. where do you draw the line? are you looking at the leather for soldiers and their uniforms, where you draw the line? i don't know.

and then as we talked about it, we decided to narrow it down a little bit, and that is when looking at agricultural and industry as energy to keep people fighting. i thought this will be one way to approach it. that is how i came to it. >> with all of this new stuff happening in areas that are being torn up, where there different crops and things in that area that weren't normal for that area? dr. keller: there are ecological changes taking place, so the western front, and soldiers are noting this. there noting that beautiful pasture land and forest is now torn up and being taken over by

weeds. what is interesting is that if you were a french agricultural economist, you saw what was happening there as a godsend. it was destroying these old property lines, obliterating ownership records, and finally france can get out of its medieval farming and into the modern age. so now that was the hope, but in fact, there was this massive push, of course there was, on the part of local towns, state governments, to return things as fast as they could to how they were before the war, which is another story about french agriculture. what was planted before the war will be planted after the war. thanks. >> i have a couple of questions

that are related. the first is you talked about the british blockade of germany and the problems that caused. on the flipside, you had german submarine warfare in the atlantic. you talked about these different resource sites. i was curious your researched articulated a perception of what that cost was in merchant marine destructions and what losses came of those resources, say food. some photos going down to the ocean floor. so that is one question. the other question is you mentioned in the western front, even today they are called red zones where they are not cultivated or used for productive purposes. i curious about the scale of

where those areas might be. dr. keller: i will take the red zones first. they are located with 10 miles or so within that strip of the former western front. there has been a great deal of work to clear those lands. i would not call them extensive, but they are noticeable. the irony is, what makes a great nature reserve? you fence off the territory and keep people out of it, prevent agriculture, habitation, so these weapons are now protecting it from human intervention. there are these nature reserves in spots that are highly developed places with massive farming and aquacultural inputs, so that is the interesting thing about red zones. i would not call them extensive,

but they are still there and will be there in our lifetime for sure. there were these plans to say if we don't get enough wheat, then maybe we need to increase fishing stock, but most ships had been conscripted, so if you were a merchant marine, you were usually operating at a loss, which allowed some fish stocks to recover. when those navies had taken ships, they retrofitted them, improved them so when the merchant marines got back, they were much better high powered to do their fishing, so prices skyrocketed afterwards we find, so that is an interesting point is well. thank you. >> our next question is from the

guardian. -- from the audience. >> you mentioned just briefly real estate, i suppose no taxes were paid on that during the war and when the war was over they got all this land they , can't do anything with. how did they restore the title to that? was there a government program? dr. keller: there was. there were a couple of government programs to help do that. part was clearing ordinance, part subsidizing farmers to help recover property and purchase product, and in part it was a host of researchers, both on the local level to investigate old property claims, some by word-of-mouth in a matter of honor that these were the property lines we have had , that sort of thing.

it became the touchy subject. there were a number of lawsuits about who's land is whose and where those property lines are, especially when you put some of those economists in the mix who thought we should get rid of the lines entirely and consolidate these family farms. that is what we find happening with real estate. it was touch and go, but a lot of it is taking place on the local level with deliberate efforts supported by federal state. >> we will take our next question from the right. >> in terms of energy flow, have you seen differences or similarities between world war i and world war ii? dr. keller: ok. yep. world war ii is a whole different level of magnitude. that is the reason why i am not doing it.

once at a british war college and they were like, you could do a whole series. i'm like, no, no, massive orders of magnitude greater. the first world war, for some states, it is the first time they are inserting themselves in the market place to control prices, create hybrid organizations that are part government, part private, and they fumbled, bumbled, and stumbled their way through it to get it to work. the first war was this learning curve but it provided him information and knowledge so when the second world war came around, that ability to extract and exploit was done with greater precision and effort. it is a whole different ballgame.

the first world war in some ways was that first performance where you get all your jitters out, then the second world war, they kind of figured it out. >> and our last question. >> i was thinking about the aerial photos with the outlines of the trenches. those appear more green than the rest of the area, assuming the nitrates from explosives, what else would cause those areas to be green? a very little degree from explosives. what it is also doing is those explosives, here is the difference between the first world war and the second world war. world war i explosives exploded on impact, world war ii exploded over. before, it isode

taking out the troops that you want it to take out. these explosives are penetrating bedrock getting into stratum , that had not been touched, so upsetting bedrock and changing water levels. even though the soil is somewhat reconstituted, it has changed bedrock levels into water levels such that those plants that are growing in those areas are able to get to that water source easier even though they are next , to each other. it makes enough of the difference that we can visually see it. thank you. >> thank you everyone for your questions and joining us here this evening. on behalf of the national world war i newseum memorial, we hope you come back soon and another thank you. dr. keller: >> thank you all very much. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2020]

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>> next on "the presidency," hobart hoover presidential library director thomas schwartz talks about the life of the 31st chief executive. he explains the facility takes a broad look at hoover's career before, during, and after his time in the white house. the national archives foundation hosted this event and provided the video. patrick: let's get to it. today i am going to talk with thomas schwartz, the director of the herbert hoover presidential library. he has been with the hoover library since 2011 and before that, he served as the illinois state historian and went on to direct the lincoln collection at the abraham lincoln presidential library as an author and editor, his work recognized with a number of professional awards.