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World War I: Mobilized forces per total population (in %)
World War I (often abbreviated as WWI or WW1), also known as the First World War or the Great War, was a global war that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. Contemporaneously described as "the war to end all wars", it led to the mobilisation of more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, making it one of the largest wars in history. It is also one of the deadliest conflicts in history, with an estimated nine million combatant deaths and 13 million civilian deaths as a direct result of the war, while resulting genocides and the related 1918 influenza pandemic caused another 17–100 million deaths worldwide.
On 28 June 1914, Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb Yugoslav nationalist, assassinated the Austro-Hungarian heir Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, leading to the July Crisis. In response, Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum to Serbia on 23 July. Serbia's reply failed to satisfy the Austrians, and the two moved to a war footing.
A network of interlocking alliances enlarged the crisis from a bilateral issue in the Balkans to one involving most of Europe. By July 1914, the great powers of Europe were divided into two coalitions: the Triple Entente, consisting of France, Russia, and Britain; and the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy. The Triple Alliance was only defensive in nature, allowing Italy to stay out of the war until April 1915, when it joined the Allied Powers after its relations with Austria-Hungary deteriorated.
Russia felt it necessary to back Serbia, and approved partial
mobilisation after Austria-Hungary shelled the Serbian capital of Belgrade on 28 July. Full Russian mobilisation was announced on the evening of 30 July; the following day, Austria-Hungary and Germany did the same, while Germany demanded Russia demobilise within twelve hours. When Russia failed to comply, Germany declared war on Russia on 1 August in support of Austria-Hungary, the latter following suit on 6 August; France ordered full mobilisation in support of Russia on 2 August.
Germany's strategy for a war on two fronts against France and
Russia was to rapidly concentrate the bulk of its army in the West to
defeat France within six weeks, then shift forces to the East before
Russia could fully mobilise; this was later known as the Schlieffen Plan. On 2 August, Germany demanded free passage through Belgium, an essential element in achieving a quick victory over France. When this was refused, German forces invaded Belgium on 3 August and declared war on France the same day; the Belgian government invoked the 1839 Treaty of London and, in compliance with its obligations under this treaty, Britain declared war on Germany on 4 August. On 12 August, Britain and France also declared war on Austria-Hungary; on 23 August, Japan sided with Britain, seizing German possessions in China and the Pacific. In November 1914, the Ottoman Empire entered the war on the side of the Central Powers, opening fronts in the Caucasus, Mesopotamia, and the Sinai Peninsula. The war was fought in (and drew upon) each power's colonial empire also, spreading the conflict to Africa
and across the globe. The Entente and its allies eventually became
known as the Allied Powers, while the grouping of Austria-Hungary,
Germany and their allies became known as the Central Powers.
The German advance into France was halted at the Battle of the Marne and by the end of 1914, the Western Front settled into a battle of attrition, marked by a long series of trench lines that changed little until 1917 (the Eastern Front, by contrast, was marked by much greater exchanges of territory). In 1915, Italy joined the Allied Powers and opened a front in the Alps. Bulgaria joined the Central Powers in 1915 and Greece joined the Allies in 1917, expanding the war in the Balkans. The United States initially remained neutral, though even while neutral it became an important supplier of war materiel
to the Allies. Eventually, after the sinking of American merchant ships
by German submarines, the declaration by Germany that its navy would
resume unrestricted attacks on neutral shipping, and the revelation that Germany was trying to incite Mexico to initiate war against the United States, the U.S. declared war on Germany on 6 April 1917. Trained American forces did not begin arriving at the front in large numbers until mid-1918, but the American Expeditionary Force ultimately reached some two million troops.
Though Serbia was defeated in 1915, and Romania joined the Allied Powers in 1916 only to be defeated in 1917, none of the great powers were knocked out of the war until 1918. The 1917 February Revolution in Russia replaced the Tsarist autocracy with the Provisional Government, but continuing discontent with the cost of the war led to the October Revolution, the creation of the Soviet Socialist Republic, and the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
by the new government in March 1918, ending Russia's involvement in the
war. This allowed the transfer of large numbers of German troops from
the Eastern to the Western Front, resulting in the German March 1918 Offensive,
which was initially successful but failed to score a decisive victory
and exhausted the last of the German reserves. The Allies rallied and
drove the Germans back in their Hundred Days Offensive, a continual series of attacks to which the Germans had no reply. Bulgaria was the first Central Power to sign an armistice—the Armistice of Salonica on 29 September 1918. On 30 October, the Ottoman Empire capitulated, signing the Armistice of Mudros. On 4 November, the Austro-Hungarian empire agreed to the Armistice of Villa Giusti. With its allies defeated, revolution at home, and the military no longer willing to fight, Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated on 9 November and Germany signed an armistice on 11 November 1918, effectively ending the war.
World War I was a significant turning point in the political, cultural, economic, and social climate of the world. The war and its immediate aftermath sparked numerous revolutions and uprisings. The Big Four
(Britain, France, the United States, and Italy) imposed their terms on
the defeated powers in a series of treaties agreed at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, the most well known being the German peace treaty: the Treaty of Versailles.[27]
Ultimately, as a result of the war the Austro-Hungarian, German,
Ottoman, and Russian Empires ceased to exist, with numerous new states
created from their remains. However, despite the conclusive Allied
victory (and the creation of the League of Nations during the Peace Conference, intended to prevent future wars), a second world war followed just over twenty years later.
Names
The term "world war" was first used in September 1914 by German biologist and philosopher Ernst Haeckel,
who claimed that "there is no doubt that the course and character of
the feared 'European War' ... will become the first world war in the
full sense of the word," citing a wire service report in The Indianapolis Star on 20 September 1914.
Prior to World War II, the events of 1914–1918 were generally known as the Great War or simply the World War. In October 1914, the Canadian magazine Maclean's wrote, "Some wars name themselves. This is the Great War." Contemporary Europeans also referred to it as "the war to end war" or "the war to end all wars" due to their perception of its then-unparalleled scale and devastation. After World War II
began in 1939, the terms became more standard, with British Empire
historians, including Canadians, favouring "The First World War" and
Americans "World War I".
Background
Political and military alliances
Rival military coalitions in 1914: Triple Entente in green; Triple Alliance in brown. Only the Triple Alliance was a formal "alliance"; the others listed were informal patterns of support.
For much of the 19th century, the major European powers had tried to maintain a tenuous balance of power among themselves, resulting in a complex network of political and military alliances. The biggest challenges to this were Britain's withdrawal into so-called splendid isolation, the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the post-1848 rise of Prussia under Otto von Bismarck. Victory in the 1866 Austro-Prussian War established Prussian hegemony in Germany, while victory over France in the 1870–1871 Franco-Prussian War unified the German states into a German Reich under Prussian leadership.
In 1873, to isolate France and avoid a war on two fronts, Bismarck negotiated the League of the Three Emperors (German: Dreikaiserbund) between Austria-Hungary, Russia and Germany. Concerned by Russia's victory in the 1877–1878 Russo-Turkish War and their influence in the Balkans, the League was dissolved in 1878, with Germany and Austria-Hungary subsequently forming the 1879 Dual Alliance; this became the Triple Alliance when Italy joined in 1882.
The practical details of these alliances were limited, since
their primary purpose was to ensure cooperation between the three
Imperial Powers and isolate France. Attempts by Britain in 1880 to
resolve colonial tensions with Russia and diplomatic moves by France led
to Bismarck reforming the League in 1881. When the League finally lapsed in 1887, it was replaced by the Reinsurance Treaty, a secret agreement between Germany and Russia to remain neutral if either were attacked by France or Austria-Hungary.
In 1890, the new German Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, forced Bismarck to retire and was persuaded not to renew the Reinsurance Treaty by the new Chancellor, Leo von Caprivi. This allowed France to counteract the Triple Alliance with the Franco-Russian Alliance of 1894 and the 1904 Entente Cordiale with Britain, while in 1907 Britain and Russia signed the Anglo-Russian Convention.
The agreements did not constitute formal alliances, but by settling
long-standing colonial disputes, they made British entry into any future
conflict involving France or Russia a possibility; these interlocking
bilateral agreements became known as the Triple Entente.
Arms race
SMS Rheinland, a Nassau-class battleship, Germany's first response to the British Dreadnought
The creation of the German Reich following victory in the 1871 Franco-Prussian War led to a massive increase in Germany's economic and industrial strength. Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz and Wilhelm II, who became Emperor in 1890, sought to use that to create a Kaiserliche Marine or Imperial German Navy to compete with Britain's Royal Navy for world naval supremacy. In doing so, they were influenced by US naval strategist Alfred Mahan, who argued possession of a blue-water navy was vital for global power projection; Tirpitz translated his books into German and Wilhelm made them required reading. However, it was also driven by Wilhelm's admiration of the Royal Navy and desire to outdo it.
This resulted in the Anglo-German naval arms race but the launch of HMS Dreadnought in 1906 gave the Royal Navy a technological advantage over its German rival, which they never lost.
Ultimately, the race diverted huge resources to creating a German navy
large enough to antagonise Britain, but not defeat it. In 1911,
Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg acknowledged defeat, leading to the Rüstungswende or ‘armaments turning point', when Germany switched expenditure from the navy to the army.
This was driven by Russia's recovery from the 1905 Revolution,
specifically increased investment post 1908 in railways and
infrastructure in its western border regions. Germany and
Austria-Hungary relied on faster mobilisation to compensate for fewer
numbers; it was concern at the closing of this gap that led to the end
of the naval race, rather than a reduction in tension elsewhere. When
Germany expanded its standing army by 170,000 men in 1913, France
extended compulsory military service from two to three years; similar
measures taken by the Balkan powers and Italy led to increased expenditure by the Ottomans
and Austria-Hungary. Absolute figures are hard to calculate, due to
differences in categorising expenditure, while they often omit civilian
infrastructure projects with a military use, such as railways. However,
from 1908 to 1913, defence spending by the six major European powers
increased by over 50% in real terms.
Conflicts in the Balkans
Sarajevo citizens reading a poster with the proclamation of the Austrian annexation in 1908
In October 1908, Austria-Hungary precipitated the Bosnian crisis of 1908–1909 by officially annexing the former Ottoman territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which it had occupied since 1878. This angered the Kingdom of Serbia and its patron, the Pan-Slavic and Orthodox Russian Empire.
Russian political manoeuvring in the region destabilised peace accords
that were already fracturing in the Balkans, which came to be known as
the "powder keg of Europe".
In 1912 and 1913, the First Balkan War was fought between the Balkan League and the fracturing Ottoman Empire. The resulting Treaty of London further shrank the Ottoman Empire, creating an independent Albanian state while enlarging the territorial holdings of Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece. When Bulgaria attacked Serbia and Greece on 16 June 1913, it sparked the 33-day Second Balkan War, by the end of which it lost most of Macedonia to Serbia and Greece, and Southern Dobruja to Romania, further destabilising the region. The Great Powers were able to keep these Balkan conflicts contained, but the next one would spread throughout Europe and beyond.
Prelude
Sarajevo assassination
This picture is usually associated with the arrest of Gavrilo Princip, although some believe it depicts Ferdinand Behr, a bystander.
On 28 June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, visited the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo. A group of six assassins (Cvjetko Popović, Gavrilo Princip, Muhamed Mehmedbašić, Nedeljko Čabrinović, Trifko Grabež, and Vaso Čubrilović) from the Yugoslavist group Mlada Bosna, supplied with arms by the Serbian Black Hand,
gathered on the street where the Archduke's motorcade was to pass, with
the intention of assassinating him. The political objective of the
assassination was to break off Austria-Hungary's South Slav provinces,
which Austria-Hungary had annexed from the Ottoman Empire, so they could
be combined into a Yugoslavia.
Čabrinović threw a grenade
at the car, but missed. Some nearby were injured by the blast, but
Ferdinand's convoy carried on. The other assassins failed to act as the
cars drove past them.
About an hour later, when Ferdinand was returning from a visit at
the Sarajevo Hospital with those wounded in the assassination attempt,
the convoy took a wrong turn into a street where, by coincidence,
Princip stood. With a pistol, Princip shot and killed Ferdinand and his
wife Sophie. Although they were reportedly not personally close, the Emperor Franz Joseph
was profoundly shocked and upset. The reaction among the people in
Austria, however, was mild, almost indifferent. As historian Zbyněk Zeman later wrote, "the event almost failed to make any impression whatsoever. On Sunday and Monday (28 and 29 June), the crowds in Vienna listened to music and drank wine, as if nothing had happened." Nevertheless, the political effect of the murder of the heir to the throne was significant, and was described by historian Christopher Clark on the BBC Radio 4 series Month of Madness as a "9/11 effect, a terrorist event charged with historic meaning, transforming the political chemistry in Vienna."
Expansion of violence in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Crowds on the streets in the aftermath of the anti-Serb riots in Sarajevo, 29 June 1914
The Austro-Hungarian authorities encouraged the subsequent anti-Serb riots in Sarajevo, in which Bosnian Croats and Bosniaks killed two Bosnian Serbs and damaged numerous Serb-owned buildings.
Violent actions against ethnic Serbs were also organised outside
Sarajevo, in other cities in Austro-Hungarian-controlled Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia. Austro-Hungarian authorities in
Bosnia and Herzegovina imprisoned and extradited approximately 5,500
prominent Serbs, 700 to 2,200 of whom died in prison. A further 460
Serbs were sentenced to death. A predominantly Bosniak special militia
known as the Schutzkorps was established and carried out the persecution of Serbs.
July Crisis
The assassination led to a month of diplomatic manoeuvring between
Austria-Hungary, Germany, Russia, France and Britain, called the July Crisis.
Austria-Hungary correctly believed that Serbian officials (especially
the officers of the Black Hand) were involved in the plot to murder the
Archduke, and wanted to finally end Serbian interference in Bosnia. On 23 July, Austria-Hungary delivered to Serbia the July Ultimatum, a series of ten demands that were made intentionally unacceptable, in an effort to provoke a war with Serbia. Serbia decreed general mobilisation on 25 July.
Serbia accepted all the terms of the ultimatum except for article six,
which demanded that Austrian delegates be allowed in Serbia for the
purpose of participation in the investigation into the assassination.
Following this, Austria broke off diplomatic relations with Serbia and,
the next day, ordered a partial mobilisation. Finally, on 28 July 1914,
a month after the assassination, Austria-Hungary declared war on
Serbia.
Ethno-linguistic map of Austria-Hungary, 1910. Bosnia-Herzegovina was annexed in 1908.
On 25 July, Russia, in support of Serbia, declared partial mobilisation against Austria-Hungary. On 30 July,
Russia ordered general mobilisation. German Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg
waited until the 31st for an appropriate response, when Germany
declared Erklärung des Kriegszustandes, or "Statement on the war status". Kaiser Wilhelm II asked his cousin, Tsar Nicolas II,
to suspend the Russian general mobilisation. When he refused, Germany
issued an ultimatum demanding its mobilisation be stopped, and a
commitment not to support Serbia. Another was sent to France, asking her
not to support Russia if it were to come to the defence of Serbia. On 1 August,
after the Russian response, Germany mobilised and declared war on
Russia. This also led to the general mobilisation in Austria-Hungary on 4 August.
The German government issued demands to France that it remain
neutral as they had to decide which deployment plan to implement, it
being extremely difficult to change the deployment whilst it was
underway. The modified German Schlieffen Plan, Aufmarsch II West, would deploy 80% of the army in the west, while Aufmarsch I Ost and Aufmarsch II Ost
would deploy 60% in the west and 40% in the east. The French did not
respond, but sent a mixed message by ordering their troops to withdraw
10 km (6 mi) from the border to avoid any incidents, and at the same
time ordered the mobilisation of their reserves. Germany responded by
mobilising its own reserves and implementing Aufmarsch II West.
On 1 August, Wilhelm ordered General Helmuth von Moltke the Younger to "march the whole of the ...
army to the East" after being informed that Britain would remain
neutral if France was not attacked (and, possibly, that her hands might,
in any case, be stayed by crisis in Ireland).
Moltke told the Kaiser that attempting to redeploy a million men was
unthinkable, and that making it possible for the French to attack the
Germans "in the rear" would prove disastrous. Yet Wilhelm insisted that
the German army should not march into Luxembourg until he received a telegram sent by his cousin George V, who made it clear that there had been a misunderstanding. Eventually the Kaiser told Moltke, "Now you can do what you want."
Cheering crowds in London and Paris on the day war was declared.
On 2 August, Germany occupied Luxembourg, and on 3 August
declared war on France; on the same day, they sent the Belgian
government an ultimatum demanding unimpeded right of way through any
part of Belgium, which was refused. Early on the morning of 4 August, the Germans invaded; King Albert ordered his military to resist and called for assistance under the 1839 Treaty of London. Britain demanded Germany comply with the Treaty and respect Belgian neutrality; it declared war on Germany at 19:00 UTC on 4 August 1914 (effective from 23:00), following an "unsatisfactory reply".
Progress of the war
Opening hostilities
Confusion among the Central Powers
The strategy of the Central Powers suffered from miscommunication.
Germany had promised to support Austria-Hungary's invasion of Serbia,
but interpretations of what this meant differed. Previously tested
deployment plans had been replaced early in 1914, but those had never
been tested in exercises. Austro-Hungarian leaders believed Germany
would cover its northern flank against Russia.
Germany, however, envisioned Austria-Hungary directing most of its
troops against Russia, while Germany dealt with France. This confusion
forced the Austro-Hungarian Army to divide its forces between the Russian and Serbian fronts.
Serbian campaign
Serbian Army Blériot XI "Oluj", 1915
Austria invaded and fought the Serbian army at the Battle of Cer and Battle of Kolubara
beginning on 12 August. Over the next two weeks, Austrian attacks were
thrown back with heavy losses, which marked the first major Allied
victories of the war and dashed Austro-Hungarian hopes of a swift
victory. As a result, Austria had to keep sizeable forces on the Serbian
front, weakening its efforts against Russia.
Serbia's defeat of the Austro-Hungarian invasion of 1914 has been
called one of the major upset victories of the twentieth century. The campaign saw the very first use of medical evacuation by the Serbian army in autumn of 1915 and anti-aircraft warfare in the spring of 1915 after an Austrian plane was shot down with ground-to-air fire.
German Offensive in Belgium and France
German soldiers in a railway goods wagon on the way to the front in 1914. Early in the war, all sides expected the conflict to be a short one.
A French bayonet charge at the Battle of the Frontiers; by the end of August, French casualties exceeded 260,000, including 75,000 dead.
When the war began, the German Order of Battle
placed 80% of the army in the West, with the remainder acting as a
screening force in the East. The plan was to quickly knock France out of
the war, then redeploy to the East and do the same to Russia.
The German offensive in the West was officially titled Aufmarsch II West, but is better known as the Schlieffen Plan, after its original creator. Schlieffen deliberately kept the German left (i.e. its positions in Alsace-Lorraine)
weak to lure the French into attacking there, while the majority were
allocated to the German right, so as to sweep through Belgium, encircle
Paris and trap the French armies against the Swiss border (the French
charged into Alsace-Lorraine on the outbreak of war as envisaged by
their Plan XVII, thus actually aiding this strategy).
However, Schlieffen's successor Moltke grew concerned that the French
might push too hard on his left flank. As such, as the German Army
increased in size in the years leading up to the war, he changed the
allocation of forces between the German right and left wings from 85:15
to 70:30. Ultimately, Moltke's changes meant insufficient forces to
achieve decisive success and thus unrealistic goals and timings.
The initial German advance in the West was very successful: by the end of August the Allied left, which included the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), was in full retreat; French casualties in the first month exceeded 260,000, including 27,000 killed on 22 August during the Battle of the Frontiers.
German planning provided broad strategic instructions, while allowing
army commanders considerable freedom in carrying them out at the front;
this worked well in 1866 and 1870 but in 1914, von Kluck used this freedom to disobey orders, opening a gap between the German armies as they closed on Paris. The French and British exploited this gap to halt the German advance east of Paris at the First Battle of the Marne from 5 to 12 September and push the German forces back some 50 km (31 mi).
In 1911, the Russian Stavka
had agreed with the French to attack Germany within 15 days of
mobilisation; this was unrealistic and the two Russian armies that
entered East Prussia on 17 August did so without many of their support elements. The Russian Second Army was effectively destroyed at the Battle of Tannenberg on 26–30 August but the Russian advance caused the Germans to re-route their 8th Field Army from France to East Prussia, a factor in Allied victory on the Marne.
By the end of 1914, German troops held strong defensive positions
inside France, controlled the bulk of France's domestic coalfields and
had inflicted 230,000 more casualties than it lost itself. However,
communications problems and questionable command decisions cost Germany
the chance of a decisive outcome while it had failed to achieve the
primary objective of avoiding a long, two-front war. This amounted to a strategic defeat; shortly after the Marne, Crown Prince Wilhelm told an American reporter; "We have lost the war. It will go on for a long time but lost it is already."
Asia and the Pacific
New Zealand occupied German Samoa (later Western Samoa) on 30 August 1914. On 11 September, the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force landed on the island of Neu Pommern (later New Britain), which formed part of German New Guinea. On 28 October, the German cruiser SMS Emden sank the Russian cruiser Zhemchug in the Battle of Penang. Japan seized Germany's Micronesian colonies and, after the Siege of Tsingtao, the German coaling port of Qingdao on the Chinese Shandong peninsula. As Vienna refused to withdraw the Austro-Hungarian cruiser SMS Kaiserin Elisabeth
from Tsingtao, Japan declared war not only on Germany, but also on
Austria-Hungary; the ship participated in the defence of Tsingtao where
it was sunk in November 1914.
Within a few months, the Allied forces had seized all the German
territories in the Pacific; only isolated commerce raiders and a few
holdouts in New Guinea remained.
World empires and colonies around 1914
African campaigns
Some of the first clashes of the war involved British, French, and
German colonial forces in Africa. On 6–7 August, French and British
troops invaded the German protectorate of Togoland and Kamerun. On 10 August, German forces in South-West Africa attacked South Africa; sporadic and fierce fighting continued for the rest of the war. The German colonial forces in German East Africa, led by Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, fought a guerrilla warfare campaign during World War I and only surrendered two weeks after the armistice took effect in Europe.
Indian support for the Allies
The British Indian infantry divisions were withdrawn from France in December 1915, and sent to Mesopotamia.
Germany attempted to use Indian nationalism and pan-Islamism to its advantage, instigating uprisings in India, and sending a mission
that urged Afghanistan to join the war on the side of Central Powers.
However, contrary to British fears of a revolt in India, the outbreak of
the war saw an unprecedented outpouring of loyalty and goodwill towards
Britain. Indian political leaders from the Indian National Congress
and other groups were eager to support the British war effort, since
they believed that strong support for the war effort would further the
cause of Indian Home Rule. The Indian Army
in fact outnumbered the British Army at the beginning of the war; about
1.3 million Indian soldiers and labourers served in Europe, Africa, and
the Middle East, while the central government and the princely states
sent large supplies of food, money, and ammunition. In all, 140,000 men
served on the Western Front and nearly 700,000 in the Middle East.
Casualties of Indian soldiers totalled 47,746 killed and 65,126 wounded
during World War I.
The suffering engendered by the war, as well as the failure of the
British government to grant self-government to India after the end of
hostilities, bred disillusionment and fueled the campaign for full independence that would be led by Mohandas K. Gandhi and others.
Western Front
Trench warfare begins
Trenches of the 11th Cheshire Regiment at Ovillers-la-Boisselle, on the Somme, July 1916
Military tactics developed before World War I failed to keep pace
with advances in technology and had become obsolete. These advances had
allowed the creation of strong defensive systems, which out-of-date
military tactics could not break through for most of the war. Barbed wire was a significant hindrance to massed infantry advances, while artillery, vastly more lethal than in the 1870s, coupled with machine guns, made crossing open ground extremely difficult. Commanders on both sides failed to develop tactics for breaching entrenched positions without heavy casualties. In time, however, technology began to produce new offensive weapons, such as gas warfare and the tank.
After the First Battle of the Marne
(5–12 September 1914), Allied and German forces unsuccessfully tried to
outflank each other, a series of manoeuvres later known as the "Race to the Sea".
By the end of 1914, the opposing forces were left confronting each
other along an uninterrupted line of entrenched positions from Alsace to Belgium's North Sea coast.
Since the Germans were able to choose where to stand, they normally had
the advantage of the high ground; in addition, their trenches tended to
be better built, since Anglo-French trenches were initially intended as
"temporary," preparatory to breaking the German defences.
Both sides tried to break the stalemate using scientific and technological advances. On 22 April 1915, at the Second Battle of Ypres, the Germans (violating the Hague Convention) used chlorine
gas for the first time on the Western Front. Several types of gas soon
became widely used by both sides, and though it never proved a decisive,
battle-winning weapon, poison gas became one of the most-feared and
best-remembered horrors of the war. Tanks were developed by Britain and France and were first used in combat by the British during the Battle of Flers–Courcelette
(part of the Battle of the Somme) on 15 September 1916, with only
partial success. However, their effectiveness would grow as the war
progressed; the Allies built tanks in large numbers, whilst the Germans
employed only a few of their own design, supplemented by captured Allied
tanks.
Continuation of trench warfare
French 87th regiment near Verdun, 1916
Neither side proved able to deliver a decisive blow for the next two
years. Throughout 1915–17, the British Empire and France suffered more
casualties than Germany, because of both the strategic and tactical
stances chosen by the sides. Strategically, while the Germans mounted
only one major offensive, the Allies made several attempts to break
through the German lines.
In February 1916 the Germans attacked French defensive positions at the Battle of Verdun,
lasting until December 1916. The Germans made initial gains, before
French counter-attacks returned matters to near their starting point.
Casualties were greater for the French, but the Germans bled heavily as
well, with anywhere from 700,000 to 975,000 casualties suffered between the two combatants. Verdun became a symbol of French determination and self-sacrifice.
Royal Irish Rifles in a communications trench, first day on the Somme, 1916
The Battle of the Somme was an Anglo-French offensive of July to November 1916. The opening day of the offensive (1 July 1916) was the bloodiest day in the history of the British Army,
suffering 57,470 casualties, including 19,240 dead. The entire Somme
offensive cost the British Army some 420,000 casualties. The French
suffered another estimated 200,000 casualties and the Germans an
estimated 500,000.
Gun fire was not the only factor taking lives; the diseases that
emerged in the trenches were a major killer on both sides. The living
conditions made it so that countless diseases and infections occurred,
such as trench foot, shell shock, blindness/burns from mustard gas, lice, trench fever, "cooties" (body lice) and the 'Spanish flu'.
To maintain morale, wartime censors minimised early reports of widespread influenza illness and mortality in Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and the United States. Papers were free to report the epidemic's effects in neutral Spain (such as the grave illness of King Alfonso XIII). This created a false impression of Spain as especially hard hit, thereby giving rise to the pandemic's nickname, "Spanish flu".
Canadian troops advancing with a British Mark II tank at the Battle of Vimy Ridge, 1917
Protracted action at Verdun throughout 1916, combined with the bloodletting at the Somme, brought the exhausted French army to the brink of collapse. Futile attempts using frontal assault came at a high price for both the British and the French and led to the widespread French Army Mutinies, after the failure of the costly Nivelle Offensive of April–May 1917. The concurrent British Battle of Arras was more limited in scope, and more successful, although ultimately of little strategic value. A smaller part of the Arras offensive, the capture of Vimy Ridge by the Canadian Corps,
became highly significant to that country: the idea that Canada's
national identity was born out of the battle is an opinion widely held
in military and general histories of Canada.
The last large-scale offensive of this period was a British attack (with French support) at Passchendaele
(July–November 1917). This offensive opened with great promise for the
Allies, before bogging down in the October mud. Casualties, though
disputed, were roughly equal, at some 200,000–400,000 per side.
The years of trench warfare on the Western front achieved no
major exchanges of territory and, as a result, are often thought of as
static and unchanging. However, throughout this period, British, French,
and German tactics constantly evolved to meet new battlefield challenges.
King George V (front left) and a group of officials inspect a British munitions factory in 1917.
At the start of the war, the German Empire had cruisers scattered across the globe, some of which were subsequently used to attack Allied merchant shipping.
The British Royal Navy systematically hunted them down, though not
without some embarrassment from its inability to protect Allied
shipping. Before the beginning of the war, it was widely understood that
Britain held the position of strongest, most influential navy in the
world. The publishing of the book The Influence of Sea Power upon History
by Alfred Thayer Mahan in 1890 was intended to encourage the United
States to increase their naval power. Instead, this book made it to
Germany and inspired its readers to try to over-power the British Royal
Navy. For example, the German detached light cruiser SMS Emden, part of the East Asia Squadron
stationed at Qingdao, seized or destroyed 15 merchantmen, as well as
sinking a Russian cruiser and a French destroyer. However, most of the German East-Asia squadron—consisting of the armoured cruisers SMS Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, light cruisers Nürnberg and Leipzig
and two transport ships—did not have orders to raid shipping and was
instead underway to Germany when it met British warships. The German
flotilla and Dresden sank two armoured cruisers at the Battle of Coronel, but was virtually destroyed at the Battle of the Falkland Islands in December 1914, with only Dresden and a few auxiliaries escaping, but after the Battle of Más a Tierra these too had been destroyed or interned.
Battleships of the Hochseeflotte, 1917
U-155 exhibited near Tower Bridge in London, after the 1918 Armistice
Soon after the outbreak of hostilities, Britain began a naval blockade of Germany.
The strategy proved effective, cutting off vital military and civilian
supplies, although this blockade violated accepted international law
codified by several international agreements of the past two centuries.
Britain mined international waters to prevent any ships from entering
entire sections of ocean, causing danger to even neutral ships.
Since there was limited response to this tactic of the British, Germany
expected a similar response to its unrestricted submarine warfare.
The Battle of Jutland (German: Skagerrakschlacht, or "Battle of the Skagerrak")
in May/June 1916 developed into the largest naval battle of the war. It
was the only full-scale clash of battleships during the war, and one of
the largest in history. The Kaiserliche Marine's High Seas Fleet, commanded by Vice Admiral Reinhard Scheer, fought the Royal Navy's Grand Fleet, led by Admiral Sir John Jellicoe.
The engagement was a stand off, as the Germans were outmanoeuvred by
the larger British fleet, but managed to escape and inflicted more
damage to the British fleet than they received. Strategically, however,
the British asserted their control of the sea, and the bulk of the
German surface fleet remained confined to port for the duration of the
war.
German U-boats attempted to cut the supply lines between North America and Britain. The nature of submarine warfare meant that attacks often came without warning, giving the crews of the merchant ships little hope of survival. The United States launched a protest, and Germany changed its rules of engagement. After the sinking of the passenger ship RMS Lusitania
in 1915, Germany promised not to target passenger liners, while Britain
armed its merchant ships, placing them beyond the protection of the "cruiser rules", which demanded warning and movement of crews to "a place of safety" (a standard that lifeboats did not meet). Finally, in early 1917, Germany adopted a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare, realising the Americans would eventually enter the war. Germany sought to strangle Allied sea lanes before the United States could transport a large army overseas, but after initial successes eventually failed to do so.
The U-boat threat lessened in 1917, when merchant ships began travelling in convoys, escorted by destroyers. This tactic made it difficult for U-boats to find targets, which significantly lessened losses; after the hydrophone and depth charges
were introduced, accompanying destroyers could attack a submerged
submarine with some hope of success. Convoys slowed the flow of
supplies, since ships had to wait as convoys were assembled. The
solution to the delays was an extensive program of building new
freighters. Troopships were too fast for the submarines and did not
travel the North Atlantic in convoys. The U-boats had sunk more than 5,000 Allied ships, at a cost of 199 submarines.
World War I also saw the first use of aircraft carriers in combat, with HMS Furious launching Sopwith Camels in a successful raid against the Zeppelin hangars at Tondern in July 1918, as well as blimps for antisubmarine patrol.
Southern theatres
War in the Balkans
Bulgarian soldiers in a trench, preparing to fire against an incoming aeroplane
Austro-Hungarian troops executing captured Serbians, 1917. Serbia lost about 850,000 people during the war, a quarter of its pre-war population.
Faced with Russia in the east, Austria-Hungary could spare only
one-third of its army to attack Serbia. After suffering heavy losses,
the Austrians briefly occupied the Serbian capital, Belgrade.
A Serbian counter-attack in the Battle of Kolubara succeeded in driving
them from the country by the end of 1914. For the first ten months of
1915, Austria-Hungary used most of its military reserves to fight Italy.
German and Austro-Hungarian diplomats, however, scored a coup by
persuading Bulgaria to join the attack on Serbia. The Austro-Hungarian provinces of Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia provided troops for Austria-Hungary in the fight with Serbia, Russia and Italy. Montenegro allied itself with Serbia.
Bulgaria declared war on Serbia on 12 October 1915 and joined in
the attack by the Austro-Hungarian army under Mackensen's army of
250,000 that was already underway. Serbia was conquered in a little more
than a month, as the Central Powers, now including Bulgaria, sent in
600,000 troops total. The Serbian army, fighting on two fronts and
facing certain defeat, retreated into northern Albania. The Serbs suffered defeat in the Battle of Kosovo. Montenegro covered the Serbian retreat towards the Adriatic coast in the Battle of Mojkovac
in 6–7 January 1916, but ultimately the Austrians also conquered
Montenegro. The surviving Serbian soldiers were evacuated by ship to
Greece. After conquest, Serbia was divided between Austro-Hungary and Bulgaria.
In late 1915, a Franco-British force landed at Salonica
in Greece to offer assistance and to pressure its government to declare
war against the Central Powers. However, the pro-German King Constantine I dismissed the pro-Allied government of Eleftherios Venizelos before the Allied expeditionary force arrived. The friction between the King of Greece and the Allies continued to accumulate with the National Schism,
which effectively divided Greece between regions still loyal to the
king and the new provisional government of Venizelos in Salonica. After
intense negotiations and an armed confrontation in Athens between Allied and royalist forces (an incident known as Noemvriana), the King of Greece resigned and his second son Alexander took his place; Greece officially joined the war on the side of the Allies in June 1917.
The Macedonian front was initially mostly static. French and Serbian forces retook limited areas of Macedonia by recapturing Bitola on 19 November 1916 following the costly Monastir Offensive, which brought stabilisation of the front.
Serbian and French troops finally made a breakthrough in September 1918 in the Vardar Offensive, after most of the German and Austro-Hungarian troops had been withdrawn. The Bulgarians were defeated at the Battle of Dobro Pole,
and by 25 September British and French troops had crossed the border
into Bulgaria proper as the Bulgarian army collapsed. Bulgaria
capitulated four days later, on 29 September 1918.
The German high command responded by despatching troops to hold the
line, but these forces were far too weak to reestablish a front.
The disappearance of the Macedonian front meant that the road to Budapest
and Vienna was now opened to Allied forces. Hindenburg and Ludendorff
concluded that the strategic and operational balance had now shifted
decidedly against the Central Powers and, a day after the Bulgarian collapse, insisted on an immediate peace settlement.
Ottoman Empire
Australian troops charging near a Turkish trench during the Gallipoli Campaign
The Ottomans threatened Russia's Caucasian territories and Britain's communications with India via the Suez Canal.
As the conflict progressed, the Ottoman Empire took advantage of the
European powers' preoccupation with the war and conducted large-scale
ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian Christian populations, known as the Armenian Genocide, Greek Genocide, and Assyrian Genocide.
The British and French opened overseas fronts with the Gallipoli (1915) and Mesopotamian campaigns (1914). In Gallipoli, the Ottoman Empire successfully repelled the British, French, and Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZACs). In Mesopotamia, by contrast, after the defeat of the British defenders in the Siege of Kut by the Ottomans (1915–16), British Imperial forces reorganised and captured Baghdad
in March 1917. The British were aided in Mesopotamia by local Arab and
Assyrian tribesmen, while the Ottomans employed local Kurdish and
Turcoman tribes.
Further to the west, the Suez Canal was defended from Ottoman attacks
in 1915 and 1916; in August, a German and Ottoman force was defeated at
the Battle of Romani by the ANZAC Mounted Division and the 52nd (Lowland) Infantry Division. Following this victory, an Egyptian Expeditionary Force advanced across the Sinai Peninsula, pushing Ottoman forces back in the Battle of Magdhaba in December and the Battle of Rafa on the border between the Egyptian Sinai and Ottoman Palestine in January 1917.
Russian armies generally had success in the Caucasus. Enver Pasha,
supreme commander of the Ottoman armed forces, was ambitious and
dreamed of re-conquering central Asia and areas that had been lost to
Russia previously. He was, however, a poor commander.
He launched an offensive against the Russians in the Caucasus in
December 1914 with 100,000 troops, insisting on a frontal attack against
mountainous Russian positions in winter. He lost 86% of his force at
the Battle of Sarikamish.
Kaiser
Wilhelm II inspecting Turkish troops of the 15th Corps in East Galicia,
Austria-Hungary (now Poland). Prince Leopold of Bavaria, the Supreme
Commander of the German Army on the Eastern Front, is second from the
left.
The Ottoman Empire, with German support, invaded Persia (modern Iran) in December 1914 in an effort to cut off British and Russian access to petroleum reservoirs around Baku near the Caspian Sea.
Persia, ostensibly neutral, had long been under the spheres of British
and Russian influence. The Ottomans and Germans were aided by Kurdish and Azeri forces, together with a large number of major Iranian tribes, such as the Qashqai, Tangistanis, Luristanis, and Khamseh, while the Russians and British had the support of Armenian and Assyrian forces. The Persian Campaign
was to last until 1918 and end in failure for the Ottomans and their
allies. However, the Russian withdrawal from the war in 1917 led to
Armenian and Assyrian forces, who had hitherto inflicted a series of
defeats upon the forces of the Ottomans and their allies, being cut off
from supply lines, outnumbered, outgunned and isolated, forcing them to
fight and flee towards British lines in northern Mesopotamia.
Russian forest trench at the Battle of Sarikamish, 1914–1915
General Yudenich, the Russian commander from 1915 to 1916, drove the Turks out of most of the southern Caucasus with a string of victories. In 1917, Russian Grand Duke Nicholas assumed command of the Caucasus front. Nicholas planned a railway from Russian Georgia
to the conquered territories, so that fresh supplies could be brought
up for a new offensive in 1917. However, in March 1917 (February in the
pre-revolutionary Russian calendar), the Tsar abdicated in the course of
the February Revolution, and the Russian Caucasus Army began to fall apart.
The Arab Revolt, instigated by the Arab bureau of the British Foreign Office, started June 1916 with the Battle of Mecca, led by Sherif Hussein of Mecca, and ended with the Ottoman surrender of Damascus. Fakhri Pasha, the Ottoman commander of Medina, resisted for more than two and half years during the Siege of Medina before surrendering in January 1919.
The Senussi
tribe, along the border of Italian Libya and British Egypt, incited and
armed by the Turks, waged a small-scale guerrilla war against Allied
troops. The British were forced to dispatch 12,000 troops to oppose them
in the Senussi Campaign. Their rebellion was finally crushed in mid-1916.
Total Allied casualties on the Ottoman fronts amounted 650,000
men. Total Ottoman casualties were 725,000 (325,000 dead and 400,000
wounded).
Italian participation
A pro-war demonstration in Bologna, Italy, 1914
Italy had been allied with the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires
since 1882 as part of the Triple Alliance. However, the nation had its
own designs on Austrian territory in Trentino, the Austrian Littoral, Fiume (Rijeka) and Dalmatia. Rome had a secret 1902 pact with France, effectively nullifying its part in the Triple Alliance; Italy secretly agreed with France to remain neutral if the latter was attacked by Germany.
At the start of hostilities, Italy refused to commit troops, arguing
that the Triple Alliance was defensive and that Austria-Hungary was an
aggressor. The Austro-Hungarian government began negotiations to secure
Italian neutrality, offering the French colony of Tunisia in return. The
Allies made a counter-offer in which Italy would receive the Southern Tyrol, Austrian Littoral and territory on the Dalmatian coast after the defeat of Austria-Hungary. This was formalised by the Treaty of London.
Further encouraged by the Allied invasion of Turkey in April 1915,
Italy joined the Triple Entente and declared war on Austria-Hungary on
23 May. Fifteen months later, Italy declared war on Germany.
Austro-Hungarian troops, Tyrol
The Italians had numerical superiority, but this advantage was lost,
not only because of the difficult terrain in which the fighting took
place, but also because of the strategies and tactics employed. Field Marshal Luigi Cadorna, a staunch proponent of the frontal assault, had dreams of breaking into the Slovenian plateau, taking Ljubljana and threatening Vienna.
On the Trentino front, the Austro-Hungarians took advantage of
the mountainous terrain, which favoured the defender. After an initial
strategic retreat, the front remained largely unchanged, while Austrian Kaiserschützen and Standschützen engaged Italian Alpini in bitter hand-to-hand combat throughout the summer. The Austro-Hungarians counterattacked in the Altopiano of Asiago, towards Verona and Padua, in the spring of 1916 (Strafexpedition), but made little progress and were defeated by the Italians.
Beginning in 1915, the Italians under Cadorna mounted eleven offensives on the Isonzo front along the Isonzo (Soča) River, northeast of Trieste.
Of these eleven offensives, five were won by Italy, three remained
inconclusive, and the other three were repelled by the
Austro-Hungarians, who held the higher ground. In the summer of 1916,
after the Battle of Doberdò, the Italians captured the town of Gorizia. After this victory, the front remained static for over a year, despite several Italian offensives, centred on the Banjšice and Karst Plateau east of Gorizia.
Depiction of the Battle of Doberdò, fought in August 1916 between the Italian and the Austro-Hungarian armies
The Central Powers launched a crushing offensive on 26 October 1917, spearheaded by the Germans, and achieved a victory at Caporetto (Kobarid). The Italian Army was routed and retreated more than 100 kilometres (62 mi) to reorganise. The new Italian chief of staff, Armando Diaz, ordered the Army to stop their retreat and defend the Monte Grappa
summit, where fortified defenses were constructed; the Italians
repelled the Austro-Hungarian and German Army, and stabilised the front
at the Piave River.
Since the Italian Army had suffered heavy losses in the Battle of
Caporetto, the Italian Government ordered conscription of the so-called '99 Boys (Ragazzi del '99):
all males born in 1899 and prior, who were 18 years old or older. In
1918, the Austro-Hungarians failed to break through in a series of
battles on the Piave and were finally decisively defeated in the Battle of Vittorio Veneto in October. On 1 November, the Italian Navy destroyed much of the Austro-Hungarian fleet stationed in Pula, preventing it from being handed over to the new State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs. On 3 November, the Italians invaded Trieste from the sea. On the same day, the Armistice of Villa Giusti
was signed. By mid-November 1918, the Italian military occupied the
entire former Austrian Littoral and had seized control of the portion of
Dalmatia that had been guaranteed to Italy by the London Pact. By the end of hostilities in November 1918, Admiral Enrico Millo declared himself Italy's Governor of Dalmatia. Austria-Hungary surrendered on 11 November 1918.
Romanian participation
Marshal Joffre inspecting Romanian troops, 1916
Romania had been allied with the Central Powers since 1882. When the
war began, however, it declared its neutrality, arguing that because
Austria-Hungary had itself declared war on Serbia, Romania was under no
obligation to join the war. On 4 August
1916, Romania and the Entente signed the Political Treaty and Military
Convention, that established the coordinates of Romania's participation
in the war. In return, it received the Allies' formal sanction for Transylvania, Banat and other territories of Austria-Hungary to be annexed to Romania. The action had large popular support. On 27 August 1916, the Romanian Army launched an attack
against Austria-Hungary, with limited Russian support. The Romanian
offensive was initially successful in Transylvania, but a Central Powers
counterattack by the drove them back. As a result of the Battle of Bucharest, the Central Powers occupied Bucharest on 6 December 1916. Fighting in Moldova continued in 1917, but Russian withdrawal from the war in late 1917 as a result of the October Revolution meant that Romania was forced to sign an armistice with the Central Powers on 9 December 1917.
Romanian troops during the Battle of Mărăşeşti, 1917
In January 1918, Romanian forces established control over Bessarabia as the Russian Army abandoned the province. Although a treaty was signed by the Romanian and Bolshevik Russian governments following talks between 5 and 9 March
1918 on the withdrawal of Romanian forces from Bessarabia within two
months, on 27 March 1918 Romania formally attached Bessarabia, inhabited
by a Romanian majority, to its territory, based on a resolution passed
by the local assembly of that territory on its unification with Romania.
Romania officially made peace with the Central Powers by signing the Treaty of Bucharest on 7 May
1918. Under the treaty, Romania was obliged to end the war with the
Central Powers and make small territorial concessions to
Austria-Hungary, ceding control of some passes in the Carpathian Mountains,
and to grant oil concessions to Germany. In exchange, the Central
Powers recognised the sovereignty of Romania over Bessarabia. The treaty
was renounced in October 1918 by the Alexandru Marghiloman
government, and Romania nominally re-entered the war on 10 November
1918 against the Central Powers. The next day, the Treaty of Bucharest
was nullified by the terms of the Armistice of Compiègne. Total Romanian deaths from 1914 to 1918, military and civilian, within contemporary borders, were estimated at 748,000.
Eastern Front
Initial actions
Heir presumptive Karl visiting the fortress of Przemyśl after the first siege. The Russian Siege of Przemyśl was the longest siege of the war.
Russian plans for the start of the war called for simultaneous invasions of Austrian Galicia
and East Prussia. Although Russia's initial advance into Galicia was
largely successful, it was driven back from East Prussia by Hindenburg
and Ludendorff at the battles of Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes in August and September 1914.
Russia's less developed industrial base and ineffective military
leadership were instrumental in the events that unfolded. By the spring
of 1915, the Russians had retreated from Galicia, and, in May, the
Central Powers achieved a remarkable breakthrough on Poland's southern
frontiers with their Gorlice–Tarnów Offensive. On 5 August, they captured Warsaw and forced the Russians to withdraw from Poland.
Russian Revolution
Allied troops parade through Vladivostok in armed support of the anti-communist White Army, September 1918
Despite Russia's success in the June 1916 Brusilov Offensive against the Austrians in eastern Galicia,
the offensive was undermined by the reluctance of other Russian
generals to commit their forces to support the victory. Allied and
Russian forces were revived only briefly by Romania's entry into the war on 27 August, as Romania was rapidly defeated by a Central Powers offensive. Meanwhile, unrest grew in Russia as the Tsar remained at the front. The increasingly incompetent rule of Empress Alexandra drew protests and resulted in the murder of her favourite, Rasputin, at the end of 1916.
Territory lost under the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
In March 1917, demonstrations in Petrograd culminated in the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II and the appointment of a weak Provisional Government, which shared power with the Petrograd Soviet
socialists. This arrangement led to confusion and chaos both at the
front and at home. The army became increasingly ineffective.
Following the Tsar's abdication, Vladimir Lenin—with the help of the German government—was ushered by train from Switzerland into Russia 16 April 1917.
Discontent and the weaknesses of the Provisional Government led to a
rise in the popularity of the Bolshevik Party, led by Lenin, which
demanded an immediate end to the war. The Revolution of November was
followed in December by an armistice and negotiations with Germany. At
first, the Bolsheviks refused the German terms, but when German troops
began marching across Ukraine unopposed, the new government acceded to
the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on 3 March 1918. The treaty ceded vast territories, including Finland, the Baltic provinces, parts of Poland and Ukraine to the Central Powers.
Despite this enormous German success, the manpower required by the
Germans to occupy the captured territory may have contributed to the
failure of their Spring Offensive, and secured relatively little food or other materiel for the Central Powers war effort.
With the adoption of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the Entente no longer existed. The Allied powers led a small-scale invasion of Russia, partly to stop Germany from exploiting Russian resources, and to a lesser extent, to support the "Whites" (as opposed to the "Reds") in the Russian Civil War. Allied troops landed in Arkhangelsk and in Vladivostok as part of the North Russia Intervention.
Czechoslovak Legion
Czechoslovak Legion, Vladivostok, 1918
The Czechoslovak Legion fought on the side of the Entente. Its goal was to win support for the independence of Czechoslovakia. The Legion in Russia was established in September 1914, in December 1917 in France (including volunteers from America) and in April 1918 in Italy. Czechoslovak Legion troops defeated the Austro-Hungarian army at the Ukrainian village of Zborov,
in July 1917. After this success, the number of Czechoslovak
legionaries increased, as well as Czechoslovak military power. In the Battle of Bakhmach, the Legion defeated the Germans and forced them to make a truce.
In Russia, they were heavily involved in the Russian Civil War, siding with the Whites against the Bolsheviks, at times controlling most of the Trans-Siberian railway and conquering all the major cities of Siberia. The presence of the Czechoslovak Legion near Yekaterinburg appears to have been one of the motivations for the Bolshevik execution of the Tsar and his family
in July 1918. Legionaries arrived less than a week afterwards and
captured the city. Because Russia's European ports were not safe, the
corps was evacuated by a long detour via the port of Vladivostok. The
last transport was the American ship Heffron in September 1920.
Central Powers peace overtures
"They shall not pass", a phrase typically associated with the defence of Verdun
On 12 December 1916, after ten brutal months of the Battle of Verdun and a successful offensive against Romania, Germany attempted to negotiate a peace with the Allies. However, this attempt was rejected out of hand as a "duplicitous war ruse".
Soon after, the US president, Woodrow Wilson, attempted to
intervene as a peacemaker, asking in a note for both sides to state
their demands. Lloyd George's
War Cabinet considered the German offer to be a ploy to create
divisions amongst the Allies. After initial outrage and much
deliberation, they took Wilson's note as a separate effort, signalling
that the United States was on the verge of entering the war against
Germany following the "submarine outrages". While the Allies debated a
response to Wilson's offer, the Germans chose to rebuff it in favour of
"a direct exchange of views". Learning of the German response, the
Allied governments were free to make clear demands in their response of
14 January. They sought restoration of damages, the evacuation of
occupied territories, reparations for France, Russia and Romania, and a
recognition of the principle of nationalities. This included the liberation of Italians, Slavs, Romanians, Czecho-Slovaks, and the creation of a "free and united Poland".
On the question of security, the Allies sought guarantees that would
prevent or limit future wars, complete with sanctions, as a condition of
any peace settlement.
The negotiations failed and the Entente powers rejected the German
offer on the grounds that Germany had not put forward any specific
proposals.
1917–1918
Events of 1917 proved decisive in ending the war, although their effects were not fully felt until 1918.
Developments in 1917
French Army lookout at his observation post, Haut-Rhin, France, 1917
The British naval blockade began to have a serious impact on Germany. In response, in February 1917, the German General Staff convinced Chancellor
Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg to declare unrestricted submarine
warfare, with the goal of starving Britain out of the war. German
planners estimated that unrestricted submarine warfare would cost
Britain a monthly shipping loss of 600,000 tons. The General Staff
acknowledged that the policy would almost certainly bring the United
States into the conflict, but calculated that British shipping losses
would be so high that they would be forced to sue for peace after five
to six months, before American intervention could have an effect.
Tonnage sunk rose above 500,000 tons per month from February to July. It
peaked at 860,000 tons in April. After July, the newly re-introduced convoy
system became effective in reducing the U-boat threat. Britain was safe
from starvation, while German industrial output fell, and the United
States joined the war far earlier than Germany had anticipated.
On 3 May 1917, during the Nivelle Offensive, the French 2nd
Colonial Division, veterans of the Battle of Verdun, refused orders,
arriving drunk and without their weapons. Their officers lacked the
means to punish an entire division, and harsh measures were not
immediately implemented. The French Army Mutinies eventually spread to a
further 54 French divisions, and 20,000 men deserted. However, appeals
to patriotism and duty, as well as mass arrests and trials, encouraged
the soldiers to return to defend their trenches, although the French
soldiers refused to participate in further offensive action. Robert Nivelle was removed from command by 15 May, replaced by General Philippe Pétain, who suspended bloody large-scale attacks.
German film crew recording the action
The victory of the Central Powers at the Battle of Caporetto led the Allies to convene the Rapallo Conference at which they formed the Supreme War Council to co-ordinate planning. Previously, British and French armies had operated under separate commands.
In December, the Central Powers signed an armistice with Russia,
thus freeing large numbers of German troops for use in the west. With
German reinforcements and new American troops pouring in, the outcome
was to be decided on the Western Front. The Central Powers knew that
they could not win a protracted war, but they held high hopes for
success based on a final quick offensive. Furthermore, both sides became
increasingly fearful of social unrest and revolution in Europe. Thus,
both sides urgently sought a decisive victory.
In 1917, Emperor Charles I of Austria secretly attempted separate peace negotiations with Clemenceau, through his wife's brother Sixtus
in Belgium as an intermediary, without the knowledge of Germany. Italy
opposed the proposals. When the negotiations failed, his attempt was
revealed to Germany, resulting in a diplomatic catastrophe.
Ottoman Empire conflict, 1917–1918
10.5 cm Feldhaubitze 98/09 and Ottoman artillerymen at Hareira in 1917 before the Southern Palestine offensive
British artillery battery on Mount Scopus in the Battle of Jerusalem, 1917. Foreground, a battery of 16 heavy guns. Background, conical tents and support vehicles.
In March and April 1917, at the First and Second Battles of Gaza,
German and Ottoman forces stopped the advance of the Egyptian
Expeditionary Force, which had begun in August 1916 at the Battle of
Romani.
At the end of October, the Sinai and Palestine Campaign resumed, when General Edmund Allenby's XXth Corps, XXI Corps and Desert Mounted Corps won the Battle of Beersheba. Two Ottoman armies were defeated a few weeks later at the Battle of Mughar Ridge and, early in December, Jerusalem was captured following another Ottoman defeat at the Battle of Jerusalem. About this time, Friedrich Freiherr Kress von Kressenstein was relieved of his duties as the Eighth Army's commander, replaced by Djevad Pasha, and a few months later the commander of the Ottoman Army in Palestine, Erich von Falkenhayn, was replaced by Otto Liman von Sanders.
Ottoman troops during the Mesopotamian campaign
British troops on the march during the Mesopotamian campaign, 1917
In early 1918, the front line was extended and the Jordan Valley was occupied, following the First Transjordan and the Second Transjordan attacks by British Empire forces in March and April 1918. In March, most of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force's British infantry and Yeomanry
cavalry were sent to the Western Front as a consequence of the Spring
Offensive. They were replaced by Indian Army units. During several
months of reorganisation and training of the summer, a number of attacks
were carried out on sections of the Ottoman front line. These pushed
the front line north to more advantageous positions for the Entente in
preparation for an attack and to acclimatise the newly arrived Indian
Army infantry. It was not until the middle of September that the
integrated force was ready for large-scale operations.
The reorganised Egyptian Expeditionary Force, with an additional mounted division, broke Ottoman forces at the Battle of Megiddo
in September 1918. In two days the British and Indian infantry,
supported by a creeping barrage, broke the Ottoman front line and
captured the headquarters of the Eighth Army (Ottoman Empire) at Tulkarm, the continuous trench lines at Tabsor, Arara, and the Seventh Army (Ottoman Empire) headquarters at Nablus.
The Desert Mounted Corps rode through the break in the front line
created by the infantry. During virtually continuous operations by Australian Light Horse, British mounted Yeomanry, Indian Lancers, and New Zealand Mounted Rifle brigades in the Jezreel Valley, they captured Nazareth, Afulah and Beisan, Jenin, along with Haifa on the Mediterranean coast and Daraa east of the Jordan River on the Hejaz railway. Samakh and Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee were captured on the way northwards to Damascus. Meanwhile, Chaytor's Force
of Australian light horse, New Zealand mounted rifles, Indian, British
West Indies and Jewish infantry captured the crossings of the Jordan River, Es Salt, Amman and at Ziza most of the Fourth Army (Ottoman Empire). The Armistice of Mudros, signed at the end of October, ended hostilities with the Ottoman Empire when fighting was continuing north of Aleppo.
15 August 1917: Peace offer by the Pope
On or shortly before 15 August 1917 Pope Benedict XV made a peace proposal suggesting:
- No annexations
- No indemnities, except to compensate for severe war damage in Belgium and parts of France and of Serbia
- A solution to the problems of Alsace-Lorraine, Trentino and Trieste
- Restoration of the Kingdom of Poland
- Germany to pull out of Belgium and France
- Germany's overseas colonies to be returned to Germany
- General disarmament
- A Supreme Court of arbitration to settle future disputes between nations
- The freedom of the seas
- Abolish all retaliatory economic conflicts
- No point in ordering reparations, because so much damage had been caused to all belligerents
Entry of the United States
At the outbreak of the war, the United States pursued a policy of non-intervention, avoiding conflict while trying to broker a peace. When the German U-boat U-20 sank the British liner RMS Lusitania on 7 May 1915 with 128 Americans among the dead, President Woodrow Wilson
insisted that America is "too proud to fight" but demanded an end to
attacks on passenger ships. Germany complied. Wilson unsuccessfully
tried to mediate a settlement. However, he also repeatedly warned that
the United States would not tolerate unrestricted submarine warfare, in
violation of international law. Former president Theodore Roosevelt denounced German acts as "piracy". Wilson was narrowly re-elected in 1916 after campaigning with the slogan "he kept us out of war".
President Wilson before Congress, announcing the break in official relations with Germany on 3 February 1917
In January 1917, Germany decided to resume unrestricted submarine
warfare, in the hopes of starving Britain into surrender. Germany did
this realising it would mean American entry. The German Foreign
Minister, in the Zimmermann Telegram,
invited Mexico to join the war as Germany's ally against the United
States. In return, the Germans would finance Mexico's war and help it
recover the territories of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.
The United Kingdom intercepted the message and presented it to the US
embassy in the UK. From there it made its way to President Wilson who
released the Zimmermann note to the public, and Americans saw it as casus belli.
Wilson called on anti-war elements to end all wars, by winning this one
and eliminating militarism from the globe. He argued that the war was
so important that the US had to have a voice in the peace conference.
After the sinking of seven US merchant ships by submarines and the
publication of the Zimmermann telegram, Wilson called for war on Germany
on 2 April 1917, which the US Congress declared 4 days later.
The United States was never formally a member of the Allies but
became a self-styled "Associated Power". The United States had a small
army, but, after the passage of the Selective Service Act, it drafted 2.8 million men,
and, by summer 1918, was sending 10,000 fresh soldiers to France every
day. In 1917, the US Congress granted US citizenship to Puerto Ricans to
allow them to be drafted to participate in World War I, as part of the Jones–Shafroth Act.
German General Staff assumptions that it would be able to defeat the
British and French forces before American troops reinforced them were
proven incorrect.
The United States Navy sent a battleship group to Scapa Flow to join with the British Grand Fleet, destroyers to Queenstown, Ireland, and submarines to help guard convoys. Several regiments of US Marines
were also dispatched to France. The British and French wanted American
units used to reinforce their troops already on the battle lines and not
waste scarce shipping on bringing over supplies. General John J. Pershing, American Expeditionary Forces
(AEF) commander, refused to break up American units to be used as
filler material. As an exception, he did allow African-American combat
regiments to be used in French divisions. The Harlem Hellfighters fought as part of the French 16th Division, and earned a unit Croix de Guerre for their actions at Château-Thierry, Belleau Wood, and Sechault.
AEF doctrine called for the use of frontal assaults, which had long
since been discarded by British Empire and French commanders due to the
large loss of life that resulted.
A Supreme War Council of Allied forces was created at the
Doullens Conference on 5 November 1917. General Foch was appointed as
supreme commander of the Allied forces. Haig, Petain, and Pershing
retained tactical control of their respective armies; Foch assumed a
co-ordinating rather than a directing role, and the British, French, and
US commands operated largely independently. General Foch pressed to use
the arriving American troops as individual replacements, whereas
Pershing still sought to field American units as an independent force.
These units were assigned to the depleted French and British Empire
commands on 28 March 1918.
German Spring Offensive of 1918
French soldiers under General Gouraud, with machine guns amongst the ruins of a cathedral near the Marne, 1918
Ludendorff drew up plans (codenamed Operation Michael)
for the 1918 offensive on the Western Front. The Spring Offensive
sought to divide the British and French forces with a series of feints
and advances. The German leadership hoped to end the war before
significant US forces arrived. The operation commenced on 21 March 1918
with an attack on British forces near Saint-Quentin. German forces achieved an unprecedented advance of 60 kilometres (37 mi).
British and French trenches were penetrated using novel infiltration tactics, also named Hutier tactics after General Oskar von Hutier, by specially trained units called stormtroopers.
Previously, attacks had been characterised by long artillery
bombardments and massed assaults. In the Spring Offensive of 1918,
however, Ludendorff used artillery only briefly and infiltrated small
groups of infantry at weak points. They attacked command and logistics
areas and bypassed points of serious resistance. More heavily armed
infantry then destroyed these isolated positions. This German success
relied greatly on the element of surprise.
British 55th Division soldiers blinded by tear gas during the Battle of Estaires, 10 April 1918
The front moved to within 120 kilometres (75 mi) of Paris. Three heavy Krupp railway guns
fired 183 shells on the capital, causing many Parisians to flee. The
initial offensive was so successful that Kaiser Wilhelm II declared 24
March a national holiday. Many Germans thought victory was near. After heavy fighting, however, the offensive was halted. Lacking tanks or motorised artillery,
the Germans were unable to consolidate their gains. The problems of
re-supply were also exacerbated by increasing distances that now
stretched over terrain that was shell-torn and often impassable to
traffic.
Following Operation Michael, Germany launched Operation Georgette against the northern English Channel ports. The Allies halted the drive after limited territorial gains by Germany. The German Army to the south then conducted Operations Blücher and Yorck, pushing broadly towards Paris. Germany launched Operation Marne (Second Battle of the Marne) on 15 July, in an attempt to encircle Reims. The resulting counter-attack, which started the Hundred Days Offensive,
marked the first successful Allied offensive of the war. By 20 July,
the Germans had retreated across the Marne to their starting lines,
having achieved little, and the German Army never regained the
initiative. German casualties between March and April 1918 were 270,000,
including many highly trained stormtroopers.
Meanwhile, Germany was falling apart at home. Anti-war marches became frequent and morale in the army fell. Industrial output was half the 1913 levels.
New states enter the war
In the late spring of 1918, three new states were formed in the South Caucasus: the First Republic of Armenia, the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, and the Democratic Republic of Georgia, which declared their independence from the Russian Empire. Two other minor entities were established, the Centrocaspian Dictatorship and South West Caucasian Republic
(the former was liquidated by Azerbaijan in the autumn of 1918 and the
latter by a joint Armenian-British task force in early 1919). With the
withdrawal of the Russian armies from the Caucasus front in the winter
of 1917–18, the three major republics braced for an imminent Ottoman
advance, which commenced in the early months of 1918. Solidarity was
briefly maintained when the Transcaucasian Federative Republic was created in the spring of 1918, but this collapsed in May, when the Georgians asked for and received protection
from Germany and the Azerbaijanis concluded a treaty with the Ottoman
Empire that was more akin to a military alliance. Armenia was left to
fend for itself and struggled for five months against the threat of a
full-fledged occupation by the Ottoman Turks before defeating them at
the Battle of Sardarabad.
Allied victory: summer 1918 onwards
Hundred Days Offensive
Between April and November 1918, the Allies increased their front-line rifle strength while German strength fell by half.
Aerial view of ruins of Vaux-devant-Damloup, France, 1918
The Allied counteroffensive, known as the Hundred Days Offensive, began on 8 August 1918, with the Battle of Amiens. The battle involved over 400 tanks and 120,000 British, Dominion,
and French troops, and by the end of its first day a gap 24 kilometres
(15 mi) long had been created in the German lines. The defenders
displayed a marked collapse in morale, causing Ludendorff to refer to
this day as the "Black Day of the German army". After an advance as far as 23 kilometres (14 mi), German resistance stiffened, and the battle was concluded on 12 August.
Rather than continuing the Amiens battle past the point of
initial success, as had been done so many times in the past, the Allies
shifted attention elsewhere. Allied leaders had now realised that to
continue an attack after resistance had hardened was a waste of lives,
and it was better to turn a line than to try to roll over it. They began
to undertake attacks in quick order to take advantage of successful
advances on the flanks, then broke them off when each attack lost its
initial impetus.
The day after the Offensive began, Ludendorff said: "We cannot
win the war any more, but we must not lose it either." On 11 August he
offered his resignation to the Kaiser, who refused it, replying, "I see
that we must strike a balance. We have nearly reached the limit of our
powers of resistance. The war must be ended." On 13 August, at Spa,
Hindenburg, Ludendorff, the Chancellor, and Foreign Minister Hintz
agreed that the war could not be ended militarily and, on the following
day, the German Crown Council decided that victory in the field was now
most improbable. Austria and Hungary warned that they could continue the
war only until December, and Ludendorff recommended immediate peace
negotiations. Prince Rupprecht warned Prince Max of Baden: "Our military
situation has deteriorated so rapidly that I no longer believe we can
hold out over the winter; it is even possible that a catastrophe will
come earlier."
Battle of Albert
Canadian Scottish, advancing during the Battle of the Canal du Nord, 1918
British and Dominion forces launched the next phase of the campaign with the Battle of Albert on 21 August. The assault was widened by French
and then further British forces in the following days. During the last
week of August the Allied pressure along a 110-kilometre (68 mi) front
against the enemy was heavy and unrelenting. From German accounts, "Each
day was spent in bloody fighting against an ever and again on-storming
enemy, and nights passed without sleep in retirements to new lines."
Faced with these advances, on 2 September the German Supreme Army Command issued orders to withdraw in the south to the Hindenburg Line. This ceded without a fight the salient seized the previous April. According to Ludendorff, "We had to admit the necessity ... to withdraw the entire front from the Scarpe to the Vesle." In nearly four weeks of fighting beginning on 8 August,
over 100,000 German prisoners were taken. The German High Command
realised that the war was lost and made attempts to reach a satisfactory
end. On 10 September Hindenburg urged peace moves to Emperor Charles of
Austria, and Germany appealed to the Netherlands for mediation. On 14
September Austria sent a note to all belligerents and neutrals
suggesting a meeting for peace talks on neutral soil, and on 15
September Germany made a peace offer to Belgium. Both peace offers were
rejected.
Allied advance to the Hindenburg Line
An American major, piloting an observation balloon near the front, 1918
In September the Allies advanced to the Hindenburg Line
in the north and centre. The Germans continued to fight strong
rear-guard actions and launched numerous counterattacks, but positions
and outposts of the Line continued to fall, with the BEF alone taking
30,441 prisoners in the last week of September. On 24 September an
assault by both the British and French came within 3 kilometres (2 mi)
of St. Quentin. The Germans had now retreated to positions along or
behind the Hindenburg Line. That same day, Supreme Army Command informed
the leaders in Berlin that armistice talks were inevitable.
The final assault on the Hindenburg Line began with the Meuse-Argonne Offensive,
launched by French and American troops on 26 September. The following
week, co-operating French and American units broke through in Champagne at the Battle of Blanc Mont Ridge, forcing the Germans off the commanding heights, and closing towards the Belgian frontier. On 8 October the line was pierced again by British and Dominion troops at the Battle of Cambrai.
The German army had to shorten its front and use the Dutch frontier as
an anchor to fight rear-guard actions as it fell back towards Germany.
When Bulgaria signed a separate armistice on 29 September,
Ludendorff, having been under great stress for months, suffered
something similar to a breakdown. It was evident that Germany could no
longer mount a successful defence. The collapse of the Balkans meant
that Germany was about to lose its main supplies of oil and food. Its
reserves had been used up, even as US troops kept arriving at the rate
of 10,000 per day. The Americans supplied more than 80% of Allied oil during the war, and there was no shortage.
German Revolution 1918–1919
German Revolution, Kiel, 1918
News of Germany's impending military defeat spread throughout the
German armed forces. The threat of mutiny was rife. Admiral Reinhard
Scheer and Ludendorff decided to launch a last attempt to restore the
"valour" of the German Navy.
In northern Germany, the German Revolution of 1918–1919
began at the end of October 1918. Units of the German Navy refused to
set sail for a last, large-scale operation in a war they believed to be
as good as lost, initiating the uprising. The sailors' revolt, which then ensued in the naval ports of Wilhelmshaven and Kiel, spread across the whole country within days and led to the proclamation of a republic on 9 November 1918, shortly thereafter to the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II, and to German surrender.
New German government surrenders
With the military faltering and with widespread loss of confidence in
the Kaiser leading to his abdication and fleeing of the country,
Germany moved towards surrender. Prince Maximilian of Baden took charge
of a new government on 3 October as
Chancellor of Germany to negotiate with the Allies. Negotiations with
President Wilson began immediately, in the hope that he would offer
better terms than the British and French. Wilson demanded a
constitutional monarchy and parliamentary control over the German
military. There was no resistance when the Social Democrat Philipp Scheidemann on 9 November
declared Germany to be a republic. The Kaiser, kings and other
hereditary rulers all were removed from power and Wilhelm fled to exile
in the Netherlands. It was the end of Imperial Germany, a new Germany had been born as the Weimar Republic.
Armistices and capitulations
Italian troops reach Trento during the Battle of Vittorio Veneto,
1918. Italy's victory marked the end of the war on the Italian Front
and secured the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
The collapse of the Central Powers came swiftly. Bulgaria was the first to sign an armistice, the Armistice of Salonica on 29 September 1918. German Emperor Wilhelm II in his telegram to Bulgarian Tsar Ferdinand I described situation: "Disgraceful! 62,000 Serbs decided the war!". On the same day, the German Supreme Army Command informed Kaiser Wilhelm II and the Imperial Chancellor Count Georg von Hertling, that the military situation facing Germany was hopeless.
On 30 October, the Ottoman Empire capitulated, signing the Armistice of Mudros.
Men of US 64th Regiment, 7th Infantry Division, celebrate the news of the Armistice, 11 November 1918
On 24 October, the Italians began a push that rapidly recovered
territory lost after the Battle of Caporetto. This culminated in the
Battle of Vittorio Veneto, which marked the end of the Austro-Hungarian
Army as an effective fighting force. The offensive also triggered the
disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. During the last week of
October, declarations of independence were made in Budapest, Prague, and
Zagreb. On 29 October, the imperial authorities asked Italy for an
armistice, but the Italians continued advancing, reaching Trento, Udine,
and Trieste. On 3 November, Austria-Hungary sent a flag of truce to ask for an armistice
(Armistice of Villa Giusti). The terms, arranged by telegraph with the
Allied Authorities in Paris, were communicated to the Austrian commander
and accepted. The Armistice with Austria was signed in the Villa
Giusti, near Padua, on 3 November. Austria and Hungary signed separate armistices following the overthrow of the Habsburg Monarchy. In the following days the Italian Army occupied Innsbruck and all Tyrol with over 20,000 soldiers.
On 11 November, at 5:00 am, an armistice with Germany
was signed in a railroad carriage at Compiègne. At 11 am on 11 November
1918—"the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month"—a
ceasefire came into effect. During the six hours between the signing of
the armistice and its taking effect, opposing armies on the Western
Front began to withdraw from their positions, but fighting continued
along many areas of the front, as commanders wanted to capture territory
before the war ended. The occupation of the Rhineland took place following the Armistice. The occupying armies consisted of American, Belgian, British and French forces.
Ferdinand Foch, second from right, pictured outside the carriage in Compiègne after agreeing to the armistice that ended the war there. The carriage was later chosen by Nazi Germany as the symbolic setting of Pétain's June 1940 armistice.
In November 1918, the Allies had ample supplies of men and materiel
to invade Germany. Yet at the time of the armistice, no Allied force had
crossed the German frontier, the Western Front was still some 720
kilometres (450 mi) from Berlin, and the Kaiser's armies had retreated
from the battlefield in good order. These factors enabled Hindenburg and
other senior German leaders to spread the story that their armies had
not really been defeated. This resulted in the stab-in-the-back legend,
which attributed Germany's defeat not to its inability to continue
fighting (even though up to a million soldiers were suffering from the 1918 flu pandemic
and unfit to fight), but to the public's failure to respond to its
"patriotic calling" and the supposed intentional sabotage of the war
effort, particularly by Jews, Socialists, and Bolsheviks.
The Allies had much more potential wealth they could spend on the
war. One estimate (using 1913 US dollars) is that the Allies spent
$58 billion on the war and the Central Powers only $25 billion. Among
the Allies, the UK spent $21 billion and the US$17 billion; among the
Central Powers Germany spent $20 billion.
Aftermath
In the aftermath of the war, four empires disappeared: the German,
Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and Russian. Numerous nations regained their
former independence, and new ones were created. Four dynasties, together
with their ancillary aristocracies, fell as a result of the war: the Romanovs, the Hohenzollerns, the Habsburgs, and the Ottomans. Belgium and Serbia were badly damaged, as was France, with 1.4 million soldiers dead, not counting other casualties. Germany and Russia were similarly affected.
Formal end of the war
The Italian Redipuglia War Memorial, which contains the remains of 100,187 soldiers
The French military cemetery at the Douaumont ossuary, which contains the remains of more than 130,000 unknown soldiers
A formal state of war between the two sides persisted for another seven months, until the signing of the Treaty of Versailles with Germany on 28 June 1919. The United States Senate did not ratify the treaty despite public support for it, and did not formally end its involvement in the war until the Knox–Porter Resolution was signed on 2 July 1921 by President Warren G. Harding. For the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the state of war ceased under the provisions of the Termination of the Present War (Definition) Act 1918 with respect to:
- Germany on 10 January 1920.
- Austria on 16 July 1920.
- Bulgaria on 9 August 1920.
- Hungary on 26 July 1921.
- Turkey on 6 August 1924.
After the Treaty of Versailles, treaties with Austria, Hungary,
Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire were signed. However, the negotiation
of the treaty with the Ottoman Empire was followed by strife, and a
final peace treaty between the Allied Powers and the country that would
shortly become the Republic of Turkey was not signed until 24 July 1923, at Lausanne.
Some war memorials
date the end of the war as being when the Versailles Treaty was signed
in 1919, which was when many of the troops serving abroad finally
returned home; by contrast, most commemorations of the war's end
concentrate on the armistice of 11 November 1918. Legally, the formal
peace treaties were not complete until the last, the Treaty of Lausanne,
was signed. Under its terms, the Allied forces left Constantinople on 23 August 1923.
Peace treaties and national boundaries
Greek prime minister Eleftherios Venizelos signing the Treaty of Sèvres
After the war, the Paris Peace Conference imposed a series of peace treaties on the Central Powers officially ending the war. The 1919 Treaty of Versailles dealt with Germany and, building on Wilson's 14th point, brought into being the League of Nations on 28 June 1919.
The Central Powers had to acknowledge responsibility for "all the
loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and
their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed
upon them by" their aggression. In the Treaty of Versailles, this
statement was Article 231. This article became known as the War Guilt clause as the majority of Germans felt humiliated and resentful. Overall the Germans felt they had been unjustly dealt with by what they called the "diktat
of Versailles". German historian Hagen Schulze said the Treaty placed
Germany "under legal sanctions, deprived of military power, economically
ruined, and politically humiliated."
Belgian historian Laurence Van Ypersele emphasises the central role
played by memory of the war and the Versailles Treaty in German politics
in the 1920s and 1930s:
Active denial of war guilt in Germany and German resentment at both reparations and continued Allied occupation of the Rhineland made widespread revision of the meaning and memory of the war problematic. The legend of the "stab in the back" and the wish to revise the "Versailles diktat", and the belief in an international threat aimed at the elimination of the German nation persisted at the heart of German politics. Even a man of peace such as [Gustav] Stresemann publicly rejected German guilt. As for the Nazis, they waved the banners of domestic treason and international conspiracy in an attempt to galvanise the German nation into a spirit of revenge. Like a Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany sought to redirect the memory of the war to the benefit of its own policies.
The signing of the Treaty of Versailles in the Hall of Mirrors, Versailles, 28 June 1919, by Sir William Orpen
Meanwhile, new nations liberated from German rule viewed the treaty
as recognition of wrongs committed against small nations by much larger
aggressive neighbours. The Peace Conference required all the defeated powers to pay reparations
for all the damage done to civilians. However, owing to economic
difficulties and Germany being the only defeated power with an intact
economy, the burden fell largely on Germany.
Austria-Hungary was partitioned into several successor states, including Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, largely but not entirely along ethnic lines. Transylvania was shifted from Hungary to Greater Romania. The details were contained in the Treaty of Saint-Germain and the Treaty of Trianon. As a result of the Treaty of Trianon,
3.3 million Hungarians came under foreign rule. Although the Hungarians
made up approximately 54% of the population of the pre-war Kingdom of Hungary (according to the 1910 census),
only 32% of its territory was left to Hungary. Between 1920 and 1924,
354,000 Hungarians fled former Hungarian territories attached to
Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia.
The Russian Empire, which had withdrawn from the war in 1917
after the October Revolution, lost much of its western frontier as the
newly independent nations of Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland were carved from it. Romania took control of Bessarabia in April 1918.
The Ottoman Empire disintegrated, with much of its Levant territory awarded to various Allied powers as protectorates. The Turkish core in Anatolia was reorganised as the Republic of Turkey. The Ottoman Empire was to be partitioned by the Treaty of Sèvres of 1920. This treaty was never ratified by the Sultan and was rejected by the Turkish National Movement, leading to the victorious Turkish War of Independence and the much less stringent 1923 Treaty of Lausanne.
Though by 1923 most countries had made peace treaties, Andorra
was an exception. Andorra declared war on Germany in August 1914. At
that time, it had an army of 600 part-time military men, commanded by
two officials. Andorra had a very small population, so it never sent
soldiers to the battlefield. Andorra was therefore not allowed to attend
the Treaty of Versailles. The country finally concluded a peace treaty
with Germany in 1958.
National identities
Map of territorial changes in Europe after World War I (as of 1923)
After 123 years, Poland re-emerged as an independent country. The
Kingdom of Serbia and its dynasty, as a "minor Entente nation" and the
country with the most casualties per capita, became the backbone of a new multinational state, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, later renamed Yugoslavia. Czechoslovakia, combining the Kingdom of Bohemia with parts of the Kingdom of Hungary, became a new nation. Russia became the Soviet Union and lost Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia, which became independent countries. The Ottoman Empire was soon replaced by Turkey and several other countries in the Middle East.
In the British Empire, the war unleashed new forms of
nationalism. In Australia and New Zealand the Battle of Gallipoli became
known as those nations' "Baptism of Fire". It was the first major war
in which the newly established countries fought, and it was one of the
first times that Australian troops fought as Australians, not just
subjects of the British Crown. Anzac Day, commemorating the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC), celebrates this defining moment.
After the Battle of Vimy Ridge, where the Canadian divisions
fought together for the first time as a single corps, Canadians began to
refer to their country as a nation "forged from fire".
Having succeeded on the same battleground where the "mother countries"
had previously faltered, they were for the first time respected
internationally for their own accomplishments. Canada entered the war as
a Dominion of the British Empire and remained so, although it emerged
with a greater measure of independence.
When Britain declared war in 1914, the dominions were automatically at
war; at the conclusion, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa
were individual signatories of the Treaty of Versailles.
Lobbying by Chaim Weizmann and fear that American Jews would encourage the United States to support Germany culminated in the British government's Balfour Declaration of 1917, endorsing creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. A total of more than 1,172,000 Jewish soldiers served in the Allied and Central Power forces in World War I, including 275,000 in Austria-Hungary and 450,000 in Tsarist Russia.
The establishment of the modern state of Israel and the roots of the continuing Israeli–Palestinian conflict are partially found in the unstable power dynamics of the Middle East that resulted from World War I. Before the end of the war, the Ottoman Empire had maintained a modest level of peace and stability throughout the Middle East. With the fall of the Ottoman government, power vacuums developed and conflicting claims to land and nationhood began to emerge. The political boundaries drawn by the victors of World War I
were quickly imposed, sometimes after only cursory consultation with
the local population. These continue to be problematic in the
21st-century struggles for national identity. While the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I was pivotal in contributing to the modern political situation of the Middle East, including the Arab-Israeli conflict, the end of Ottoman rule also spawned lesser known disputes over water and other natural resources.
The prestige of Germany and German things in Latin America remained high after the war but did not recover to its pre-war levels. Indeed, in Chile the war bought an end to a period of intense scientific and cultural influence writer Eduardo de la Barra scorningly called "the German bewichment" (Spanish: el embrujamiento alemán).
Health effects
Transporting Ottoman wounded at Sirkeci
Of the 60 million European military personnel who were mobilised from 1914 to 1918, 8 million were killed,
7 million were permanently disabled, and 15 million were seriously
injured. Germany lost 15.1% of its active male population,
Austria-Hungary lost 17.1%, and France lost 10.5%.
In Germany, civilian deaths were 474,000 higher than in peacetime, due
in large part to food shortages and malnutrition that weakened
resistance to disease. By the end of the war, starvation caused by famine had killed approximately 100,000 people in Lebanon. Between 5 and 10 million people died in the Russian famine of 1921. By 1922, there were between 4.5 million and 7 million homeless children in Russia as a result of nearly a decade of devastation from World War I, the Russian Civil War, and the subsequent famine of 1920–1922. Numerous anti-Soviet Russians fled the country after the Revolution; by the 1930s, the northern Chinese city of Harbin had 100,000 Russians. Thousands more emigrated to France, England, and the United States.
Emergency military hospital during the Spanish flu pandemic, which killed about 675,000 people in the United States alone, Camp Funston, Kansas, 1918
The Australian prime minister, Billy Hughes, wrote to the British prime minister, Lloyd George,
"You have assured us that you cannot get better terms. I much regret
it, and hope even now that some way may be found of securing agreement
for demanding reparation commensurate with the tremendous sacrifices
made by the British Empire and her Allies." Australia received
£5,571,720 war reparations, but the direct cost of the war to Australia
had been £376,993,052, and, by the mid-1930s, repatriation pensions, war
gratuities, interest and sinking fund charges were £831,280,947. Of about 416,000 Australians who served, about 60,000 were killed and another 152,000 were wounded.
Diseases flourished in the chaotic wartime conditions. In 1914 alone, louse-borne epidemic typhus killed 200,000 in Serbia. From 1918 to 1922, Russia had about 25 million infections and 3 million deaths from epidemic typhus. In 1923, 13 million Russians contracted malaria, a sharp increase from the pre-war years. In addition, a major influenza epidemic spread around the world. Overall, the 1918 flu pandemic killed at least 17 million to 50 million people. Moreover, between 1915 and 1926, an epidemic of encephalitis lethargica spread around the world affecting nearly five million people.
The social disruption and widespread violence of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the ensuing Russian Civil War sparked more than 2,000 pogroms in the former Russian Empire, mostly in Ukraine. An estimated 60,000–200,000 civilian Jews were killed in the atrocities.
In the aftermath of World War I, Greece fought against Turkish nationalists led by Mustafa Kemal, a war that eventually resulted in a massive population exchange between the two countries under the Treaty of Lausanne. According to various sources, several hundred thousand Greeks died during this period, which was tied in with the Greek Genocide.
Technology
Ground warfare
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Tanks on parade in London at the end of World War I
World War I began as a clash of 20th-century technology and 19th-century tactics,
with the inevitably large ensuing casualties. By the end of 1917,
however, the major armies, now numbering millions of men, had modernised
and were making use of telephone, wireless communication, armoured cars, tanks,
and aircraft. Infantry formations were reorganised, so that 100-man
companies were no longer the main unit of manoeuvre; instead, squads of
10 or so men, under the command of a junior NCO, were favoured.
Artillery also underwent a revolution. In 1914, cannons were
positioned in the front line and fired directly at their targets. By
1917, indirect fire
with guns (as well as mortars and even machine guns) was commonplace,
using new techniques for spotting and ranging, notably aircraft and the
often overlooked field telephone. Counter-battery missions became commonplace, also, and sound detection was used to locate enemy batteries.
A Russian armoured car, 1919
Germany was far ahead of the Allies in using heavy indirect fire. The German Army employed 150 mm (6 in) and 210 mm (8 in) howitzers
in 1914, when typical French and British guns were only 75 mm (3 in)
and 105 mm (4 in). The British had a 6-inch (152 mm) howitzer, but it
was so heavy it had to be hauled to the field in pieces and assembled.
The Germans also fielded Austrian 305 mm (12 in) and 420 mm (17 in) guns
and, even at the beginning of the war, had inventories of various
calibres of Minenwerfer, which were ideally suited for trench warfare.
On 27 June 1917 the Germans used the biggest gun in the world, Batterie Pommern, nicknamed "Lange Max". This gun from Krupp was able to shoot 750 kg shells from Koekelare to Dunkirk, a distance of about 50 km (31 mi).
Much of the combat involved trench warfare, in which hundreds
often died for each metre gained. Many of the deadliest battles in
history occurred during World War I. Such battles include Ypres, the Marne, Cambrai, the Somme, Verdun, and Gallipoli. The Germans employed the Haber process of nitrogen fixation to provide their forces with a constant supply of gunpowder despite the British naval blockade. Artillery was responsible for the largest number of casualties and consumed vast quantities of explosives. The large number of head wounds caused by exploding shells and fragmentation forced the combatant nations to develop the modern steel helmet, led by the French, who introduced the Adrian helmet in 1915. It was quickly followed by the Brodie helmet, worn by British Imperial and US troops, and in 1916 by the distinctive German Stahlhelm, a design, with improvements, still in use today.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime ...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
— Wilfred Owen, Dulce et Decorum est, 1917
A Canadian soldier with mustard gas burns, c. 1917–1918
The widespread use of chemical warfare was a distinguishing feature of the conflict. Gases used included chlorine, mustard gas and phosgene. Relatively few war casualties were caused by gas, as effective countermeasures to gas attacks were quickly created, such as gas masks. The use of chemical warfare and small-scale strategic bombing (as opposed to tactical bombing) were both outlawed by the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, and both proved to be of limited effectiveness, though they captured the public imagination.
The most powerful land-based weapons were railway guns, weighing dozens of tons apiece. The German version were nicknamed Big Berthas, even though the namesake was not a railway gun. Germany developed the Paris Gun, able to bombard Paris from over 100 kilometres (62 mi), though shells were relatively light at 94 kilograms (210 lb).
British Vickers machine gun, 1917
Trenches, machine guns, air reconnaissance, barbed wire, and modern artillery with fragmentation shells helped bring the battle lines of World War I to a stalemate. The British and the French sought a solution with the creation of the tank and mechanised warfare. The British first tanks
were used during the Battle of the Somme on 15 September 1916.
Mechanical reliability was an issue, but the experiment proved its
worth. Within a year, the British were fielding tanks by the hundreds,
and they showed their potential during the Battle of Cambrai in November
1917, by breaking the Hindenburg Line, while combined arms teams captured 8,000 enemy soldiers and 100 guns. Meanwhile, the French introduced the first tanks with a rotating turret, the Renault FT, which became a decisive tool of the victory. The conflict also saw the introduction of light automatic weapons and submachine guns, such as the Lewis Gun, the Browning Automatic Rifle, and the Bergmann MP18.
Another new weapon, the flamethrower,
was first used by the German army and later adopted by other forces.
Although not of high tactical value, the flamethrower was a powerful,
demoralising weapon that caused terror on the battlefield.
Trench railways
evolved to supply the enormous quantities of food, water, and
ammunition required to support large numbers of soldiers in areas where
conventional transportation systems had been destroyed. Internal
combustion engines and improved traction systems for automobiles and
trucks/lorries eventually rendered trench railways obsolete.
Areas taken in major attacks
On
the Western Front neither side made impressive gains in the first three
years of the war with attacks at Verdun, the Somme, Passchendaele, and
Cambrai — the exception was Nivelle's Offensive in which the German
defence gave ground while mauling the attackers so badly that there were
mutinies in the French Army. In 1918 the Germans smashed through the
defence lines in three great attacks: Michael, on the Lys, and on the
Aisne, which displayed the power of their new tactics. The Allies struck
back at Soissons,
which showed the Germans that they must return to the defensive, and at
Amiens; tanks played a prominent role in both these assaults, as they
had the year before at Cambrai.
The areas in the East were larger. The Germans did well at the
First Masurian Lakes driving the invaders from East Prussia, and at Riga,
which led the Russians to sue for peace. The Austro-Hungarians and
Germans joined for a great success at Gorlice–Tarnów, which drove the
Russians out of Poland. In a series of attacks along with the Bulgarians
they occupied Serbia, Albania, Montenegro and most of Romania. The
Allies successes came later in Palestine,
the beginning of the end for the Ottomans, in Macedonia, which drove
the Bulgarians out of the war, and at Vittorio Veneto, the final blow
for the Austro-Hungarians. The area occupied in East by the Central
powers on 11 November 1918 was 1,042,600 km2 (402,600 sq mi).
Germany deployed U-boats (submarines) after the war began.
Alternating between restricted and unrestricted submarine warfare in the
Atlantic, the Kaiserliche Marine
employed them to deprive the British Isles of vital supplies. The
deaths of British merchant sailors and the seeming invulnerability of
U-boats led to the development of depth charges (1916), hydrophones
(passive sonar, 1917), blimps, hunter-killer submarines (HMS R-1, 1917), forward-throwing anti-submarine weapons, and dipping hydrophones (the latter two both abandoned in 1918). To extend their operations, the Germans proposed supply submarines (1916). Most of these would be forgotten in the interwar period until World War II revived the need.
Aviation
RAF Sopwith Camel. In April 1917, the average life expectancy of a British pilot on the Western Front was 93 flying hours.
Fixed-wing aircraft were first used militarily by the Italians in Libya on 23 October 1911 during the Italo-Turkish War for reconnaissance, soon followed by the dropping of grenades and aerial photography the next year. By 1914, their military utility was obvious. They were initially used for reconnaissance and ground attack. To shoot down enemy planes, anti-aircraft guns and fighter aircraft were developed. Strategic bombers were created, principally by the Germans and British, though the former used Zeppelins as well. Towards the end of the conflict, aircraft carriers were used for the first time, with HMS Furious launching Sopwith Camels in a raid to destroy the Zeppelin hangars at Tondern in 1918.
Luftstreitkräfte Fokker Dr.I being inspected by Manfred von Richthofen, also known as the Red Baron, one of most famous pilots in the war.
Manned observation balloons,
floating high above the trenches, were used as stationary
reconnaissance platforms, reporting enemy movements and directing
artillery. Balloons commonly had a crew of two, equipped with parachutes,
so that if there was an enemy air attack the crew could parachute to
safety. At the time, parachutes were too heavy to be used by pilots of
aircraft (with their marginal power output), and smaller versions were
not developed until the end of the war; they were also opposed by the
British leadership, who feared they might promote cowardice.
Recognised for their value as observation platforms, balloons
were important targets for enemy aircraft. To defend them against air
attack, they were heavily protected by antiaircraft guns and patrolled
by friendly aircraft; to attack them, unusual weapons such as air-to-air
rockets were tried. Thus, the reconnaissance value of blimps and
balloons contributed to the development of air-to-air combat between all
types of aircraft, and to the trench stalemate, because it was
impossible to move large numbers of troops undetected. The Germans
conducted air raids on England during 1915 and 1916 with airships,
hoping to damage British morale and cause aircraft to be diverted from
the front lines, and indeed the resulting panic led to the diversion of
several squadrons of fighters from France.
War crimes
Baralong incidents
HMS Baralong
On 19 August 1915, the German submarine U-27 was sunk by the British Q-ship HMS Baralong. All German survivors were summarily executed by Baralong's crew on the orders of Lieutenant Godfrey Herbert, the captain of the ship. The shooting was reported to the media by American citizens who were on board the Nicosia, a British freighter loaded with war supplies, which was stopped by U-27 just minutes before the incident.
On 24 September, Baralong destroyed U-41, which was in the process of sinking the cargo ship Urbino. According to Karl Goetz, the submarine's commander, Baralong continued to fly the US flag after firing on U-41 and then rammed the lifeboat—carrying the German survivors—sinking it.
Torpedoing of HMHS Llandovery Castle
The Canadian hospital ship HMHS Llandovery Castle was torpedoed by the German submarine SM U-86
on 27 June 1918 in violation of international law. Only 24 of the 258
medical personnel, patients, and crew survived. Survivors reported that
the U-boat surfaced and ran down the lifeboats, machine-gunning
survivors in the water. The U-boat captain, Helmut Patzig, was charged with war crimes in Germany following the war, but escaped prosecution by going to the Free City of Danzig, beyond the jurisdiction of German courts.
Blockade of Germany
After the war, the German government claimed that approximately 763,000 German civilians died from starvation and disease during the war because of the Allied blockade. An academic study done in 1928 put the death toll at 424,000. Germany protested that the Allies had used starvation as a weapon of war.
Sally Marks argued that the German accounts of a hunger blockade are a
"myth," as Germany did not face the starvation level of Belgium and the
regions of Poland and northern France that it occupied. According to the British judge and legal philosopher Patrick Devlin,
"The War Orders given by the Admiralty on 26 August [1914] were clear
enough. All food consigned to Germany through neutral ports was to be
captured and all food consigned to Rotterdam was to be presumed
consigned to Germany." According to Devlin, this was a serious breach of
International Law, equivalent to German minelaying.
Chemical weapons in warfare
French soldiers making a gas and flame attack on German trenches in Flanders
The German army was the first to successfully deploy chemical weapons
during the Second Battle of Ypres (22 April – 25 May 1915), after
German scientists working under the direction of Fritz Haber at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute developed a method to weaponize chlorine.
The use of chemical weapons was sanctioned by the German High Command
in an effort to force Allied soldiers out of their entrenched positions,
complementing rather than supplanting more lethal conventional weapons.
In time, chemical weapons were deployed by all major belligerents
throughout the war, inflicting approximately 1.3 million casualties, but
relatively few fatalities: About 90,000 in total.
For example, there were an estimated 186,000 British chemical weapons
casualties during the war (80% of which were the result of exposure to
the vesicant sulfur mustard,
introduced to the battlefield by the Germans in July 1917, which burns
the skin at any point of contact and inflicts more severe lung damage
than chlorine or phosgene),
and up to one-third of American casualties were caused by them. The
Russian Army reportedly suffered roughly 500,000 chemical weapon
casualties in World War I. The use of chemical weapons in warfare was in direct violation of the 1899 Hague Declaration Concerning Asphyxiating Gases and the 1907 Hague Convention on Land Warfare, which prohibited their use.
The effect of poison gas was not limited to combatants. Civilians
were at risk from the gases as winds blew the poison gases through
their towns, and they rarely received warnings or alerts of potential
danger. In addition to absent warning systems, civilians often did not
have access to effective gas masks. An estimated 100,000–260,000
civilian casualties were caused by chemical weapons during the conflict
and tens of thousands more (along with military personnel) died from
scarring of the lungs, skin damage, and cerebral damage in the years
after the conflict ended. Many commanders on both sides knew such
weapons would cause major harm to civilians but nonetheless continued to
use them. British Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig
wrote in his diary, "My officers and I were aware that such weapons
would cause harm to women and children living in nearby towns, as strong
winds were common in the battlefront. However, because the weapon was
to be directed against the enemy, none of us were overly concerned at
all."
The war damaged chemistry's prestige in European societies, in particular the German variety.
Genocide and ethnic cleansing
Ottoman Empire
Armenians killed during the Armenian Genocide. Image taken from Ambassador Morgenthau's Story, written by Henry Morgenthau, Sr. and published in 1918.
Austro-Hungarian soldiers executing men and women in Serbia, 1916
The ethnic cleansing
of the Ottoman Empire's Armenian population, including mass
deportations and executions, during the final years of the Ottoman
Empire is considered genocide.
The Ottomans carried out organised and systematic massacres of the
Armenian population at the beginning of the war and portrayed
deliberately provoked acts of Armenian resistance as rebellions to
justify further extermination.
In early 1915, a number of Armenians volunteered to join the Russian
forces and the Ottoman government used this as a pretext to issue the Tehcir Law
(Law on Deportation), which authorised the deportation of Armenians
from the Empire's eastern provinces to Syria between 1915 and 1918. The
Armenians were intentionally marched to death and a number were attacked by Ottoman brigands. While an exact number of deaths is unknown, the International Association of Genocide Scholars estimates 1.5 million. The government of Turkey has consistently denied the genocide, arguing that those who died were victims of inter-ethnic fighting, famine, or disease during World War I; these claims are rejected by most historians.
Other ethnic groups were similarly attacked by the Ottoman Empire during this period, including Assyrians and Greeks, and some scholars consider those events to be part of the same policy of extermination. At least 250,000 Assyrian Christians, about half of the population, and 350,000–750,000 Anatolian and Pontic Greeks were killed between 1915 and 1922.
Russian Empire
Many pogroms accompanied the Russian Revolution
of 1917 and the ensuing Russian Civil War. 60,000–200,000 civilian Jews
were killed in the atrocities throughout the former Russian Empire
(mostly within the Pale of Settlement in present-day Ukraine). There were an estimated 7–12 million casualties during the Russian Civil War, mostly civilians.
Rape of Belgium
The German invaders treated any resistance—such as sabotaging rail
lines—as illegal and immoral, and shot the offenders and burned
buildings in retaliation. In addition, they tended to suspect that most
civilians were potential francs-tireurs (guerrillas)
and, accordingly, took and sometimes killed hostages from among the
civilian population. The German army executed over 6,500 French and
Belgian civilians between August and November 1914, usually in
near-random large-scale shootings of civilians ordered by junior German
officers. The German Army destroyed 15,000–20,000 buildings—most
famously the university library at Louvain—and
generated a wave of refugees of over a million people. Over half the
German regiments in Belgium were involved in major incidents. Thousands of workers were shipped to Germany to work in factories. British propaganda dramatising the Rape of Belgium
attracted much attention in the United States, while Berlin said it was
both lawful and necessary because of the threat of franc-tireurs like
those in France in 1870.
The British and French magnified the reports and disseminated them at
home and in the United States, where they played a major role in
dissolving support for Germany.
Soldiers' experiences
Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps First Contingent in Bermuda, winter 1914–1915, before joining 1 Lincolnshire Regiment in France in June, 1916. The dozen remaining after Guedecourt on 25 September 1916, merged with a Second Contingent. The two contingents suffered 75% casualties.
The Bermuda Contingent of the Royal Garrison Artillery (Bermuda Militia Artillery)
The British soldiers of the war were initially volunteers but increasingly were conscripted
into service. Surviving veterans, returning home, often found they
could discuss their experiences only amongst themselves. Grouping
together, they formed "veterans' associations" or "Legions". A small
number of personal accounts of American veterans have been collected by
the Library of Congress Veterans History Project.
Prisoners of war
German prisoners in a French prison camp during the later part of the war
About eight million men surrendered and were held in POW camps during the war. All nations pledged to follow the Hague Conventions on fair treatment of prisoners of war, and the survival rate for POWs was generally much higher than that of combatants at the front. Individual surrenders were uncommon; large units usually surrendered en masse. At the siege of Maubeuge about 40,000 French soldiers surrendered, at the battle of Galicia
Russians took about 100,000 to 120,000 Austrian captives, at the
Brusilov Offensive about 325,000 to 417,000 Germans and Austrians
surrendered to Russians, and at the Battle of Tannenberg 92,000 Russians
surrendered. When the besieged garrison of Kaunas surrendered in 1915, some 20,000 Russians became prisoners, at the battle near Przasnysz
(February–March 1915) 14,000 Germans surrendered to Russians, and at
the First Battle of the Marne about 12,000 Germans surrendered to the
Allies. 25–31% of Russian losses (as a proportion of those captured,
wounded, or killed) were to prisoner status; for Austria-Hungary 32%,
for Italy 26%, for France 12%, for Germany 9%; for Britain 7%. Prisoners
from the Allied armies totalled about 1.4 million (not including
Russia, which lost 2.5–3.5 million men as prisoners). From the Central
Powers about 3.3 million men became prisoners; most of them surrendered
to Russians.
Germany held 2.5 million prisoners; Russia held 2.2–2.9 million; while
Britain and France held about 720,000. Most were captured just before
the Armistice. The United States held 48,000. The most dangerous moment
was the act of surrender, when helpless soldiers were sometimes gunned
down. Once prisoners reached a camp, conditions were, in general, satisfactory (and much better than in World War II), thanks in part to the efforts of the International Red Cross
and inspections by neutral nations. However, conditions were terrible
in Russia: starvation was common for prisoners and civilians alike;
about 15–20% of the prisoners in Russia died, and in Central Powers
imprisonment 8% of Russians. In Germany, food was scarce, but only 5% died.
British prisoners guarded by Ottoman forces after the First Battle of Gaza in 1917
The Ottoman Empire often treated POWs poorly.
Some 11,800 British Empire soldiers, most of them Indians, became
prisoners after the Siege of Kut in Mesopotamia in April 1916; 4,250
died in captivity.
Although many were in a poor condition when captured, Ottoman officers
forced them to march 1,100 kilometres (684 mi) to Anatolia. A survivor
said: "We were driven along like beasts; to drop out was to die." The survivors were then forced to build a railway through the Taurus Mountains.
In Russia, when the prisoners from the Czech Legion
of the Austro-Hungarian army were released in 1917, they re-armed
themselves and briefly became a military and diplomatic force during the
Russian Civil War.
While the Allied prisoners of the Central Powers were quickly
sent home at the end of active hostilities, the same treatment was not
granted to Central Power prisoners of the Allies and Russia, many of
whom served as forced labour, e.g., in France until 1920. They were released only after many approaches by the Red Cross to the Allied Supreme Council. German prisoners were still being held in Russia as late as 1924.
Military attachés and war correspondents
Military and civilian observers from every major power closely
followed the course of the war. Many were able to report on events from a
perspective somewhat akin to modern "embedded" positions within the opposing land and naval forces.
Support for the war
Poster urging women to join the British war effort, published by the Young Women's Christian Association
In the Balkans, Yugoslav nationalists such as the leader, Ante Trumbić, strongly supported the war, desiring the freedom of Yugoslavs from Austria-Hungary and other foreign powers and the creation of an independent Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav Committee, led by Trumbić, was formed in Paris on 30 April 1915 but shortly moved its office to London. In April 1918, the Rome Congress of Oppressed Nationalities met, including Czechoslovak, Italian, Polish, Transylvanian, and Yugoslav representatives who urged the Allies to support national self-determination for the peoples residing within Austria-Hungary.
In the Middle East, Arab nationalism
soared in Ottoman territories in response to the rise of Turkish
nationalism during the war, with Arab nationalist leaders advocating the
creation of a pan-Arab
state. In 1916, the Arab Revolt began in Ottoman-controlled territories
of the Middle East in an effort to achieve independence.
In East Africa, Iyasu V of Ethiopia was supporting the Dervish state who were at war with the British in the Somaliland Campaign. Von Syburg, the German envoy in Addis Ababa,
said, "now the time has come for Ethiopia to regain the coast of the
Red Sea driving the Italians home, to restore the Empire to its ancient
size." The Ethiopian Empire was on the verge of entering World War I on the side of the Central Powers before Iyasu's overthrow due to Allied pressure on the Ethiopian aristocracy. Iyasu was accused of converting to Islam. According to Ethiopian historian Bahru Zewde, the evidence used to prove Iyasu's conversion was a doctored photo of Iyasu wearing a turban provided by the Allies. Some historians claim the British spy T. E. Lawrence forged the Iyasu photo.
A number of socialist parties initially supported the war when it began in August 1914. But European socialists split on national lines, with the concept of class conflict held by radical socialists such as Marxists and syndicalists being overborne by their patriotic support for the war.
Once the war began, Austrian, British, French, German, and Russian
socialists followed the rising nationalist current by supporting their
countries' intervention in the war.
Italian nationalism
was stirred by the outbreak of the war and was initially strongly
supported by a variety of political factions. One of the most prominent
and popular Italian nationalist supporters of the war was Gabriele d'Annunzio, who promoted Italian irredentism and helped sway the Italian public to support intervention in the war. The Italian Liberal Party, under the leadership of Paolo Boselli,
promoted intervention in the war on the side of the Allies and used the
Dante Alighieri Society to promote Italian nationalism.
Italian socialists were divided on whether to support the war or oppose
it; some were militant supporters of the war, including Benito Mussolini and Leonida Bissolati. However, the Italian Socialist Party decided to oppose the war after anti-militarist protestors were killed, resulting in a general strike called Red Week. The Italian Socialist Party purged itself of pro-war nationalist members, including Mussolini.
Mussolini, a syndicalist who supported the war on grounds of
irredentist claims on Italian-populated regions of Austria-Hungary,
formed the pro-interventionist Il Popolo d'Italia and the Fasci Rivoluzionario d'Azione Internazionalista ("Revolutionary Fasci for International Action") in October 1914 that later developed into the Fasci di Combattimento in 1919, the origin of fascism. Mussolini's nationalism enabled him to raise funds from Ansaldo (an armaments firm) and other companies to create Il Popolo d'Italia to convince socialists and revolutionaries to support the war.
Opposition to the war
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Once war was declared, many socialists and trade unions backed their governments. Among the exceptions were the Bolsheviks, the Socialist Party of America, the Italian Socialist Party, and people like Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, and their followers in Germany.
Benedict XV, elected to the papacy less than three months into World War I, made the war and its consequences the main focus of his early pontificate. In stark contrast to his predecessor, five days after his election he spoke of his determination to do what he could to bring peace. His first encyclical, Ad beatissimi Apostolorum, given 1 November
1914, was concerned with this subject. Benedict XV found his abilities
and unique position as a religious emissary of peace ignored by the
belligerent powers. The 1915 Treaty of London between Italy and the
Triple Entente included secret provisions whereby the Allies agreed with
Italy to ignore papal peace moves towards the Central Powers.
Consequently, the publication of Benedict's proposed seven-point Peace Note of August 1917 was roundly ignored by all parties except Austria-Hungary.
The Deserter, 1916: Anti-war cartoon depicting Jesus facing a firing squad with soldiers from five European countries
In Britain in 1914, the Public Schools Officers' Training Corps annual camp was held at Tidworth Pennings, near Salisbury Plain. Head of the British Army, Lord Kitchener, was to review the cadets, but the imminence of the war prevented him. General Horace Smith-Dorrien was sent instead. He surprised the two-or-three thousand cadets by declaring (in the words of Donald Christopher Smith, a Bermudian cadet who was present),
that war should be avoided at almost any cost, that war would solve nothing, that the whole of Europe and more besides would be reduced to ruin, and that the loss of life would be so large that whole populations would be decimated. In our ignorance I, and many of us, felt almost ashamed of a British General who uttered such depressing and unpatriotic sentiments, but during the next four years, those of us who survived the holocaust—probably not more than one-quarter of us—learned how right the General's prognosis was and how courageous he had been to utter it.
Voicing these sentiments did not hinder Smith-Dorrien's career, or prevent him from doing his duty in World War I to the best of his abilities.
Possible execution at Verdun
at the time of the mutinies in 1917. The original French text
accompanying this photograph notes, however, that the uniforms are those
of 1914/15 and that the execution may be that of a spy at the beginning
of the war.
Many countries jailed those who spoke out against the conflict. These included Eugene Debs in the United States and Bertrand Russell in Britain. In the US, the Espionage Act of 1917 and Sedition Act of 1918
made it a federal crime to oppose military recruitment or make any
statements deemed "disloyal". Publications at all critical of the
government were removed from circulation by postal censors, and many served long prison sentences for statements of fact deemed unpatriotic.
A number of nationalists opposed intervention, particularly
within states that the nationalists were hostile to. Although the vast
majority of Irish people consented to participate in the war in 1914 and
1915, a minority of advanced Irish nationalists staunchly opposed taking part.
The war began amid the Home Rule crisis in Ireland that had resurfaced
in 1912, and by July 1914 there was a serious possibility of an outbreak
of civil war in Ireland. Irish nationalists and Marxists attempted to
pursue Irish independence, culminating in the Easter Rising of 1916, with Germany sending 20,000 rifles to Ireland to stir unrest in Britain. The UK government placed Ireland under martial law
in response to the Easter Rising, though once the immediate threat of
revolution had dissipated, the authorities did try to make concessions
to nationalist feeling. However, opposition to involvement in the war increased in Ireland, resulting in the Conscription Crisis of 1918.
Other opposition came from conscientious objectors—some socialist, some religious—who refused to fight. In Britain, 16,000 people asked for conscientious objector status. Some of them, most notably prominent peace activist Stephen Henry Hobhouse, refused both military and alternative service. Many suffered years of prison, including solitary confinement
and bread and water diets. Even after the war, in Britain many job
advertisements were marked "No conscientious objectors need apply".
The Central Asian Revolt started in the summer of 1916, when the Russian Empire government ended its exemption of Muslims from military service.
In 1917, a series of French Army Mutinies led to dozens of soldiers being executed and many more imprisoned.
On 1–4 May 1917, about 100,000 workers and soldiers of Petrograd,
and after them, the workers and soldiers of other Russian cities, led
by the Bolsheviks, demonstrated under banners reading "Down with the
war!" and "all power to the soviets!" The mass demonstrations resulted
in a crisis for the Russian Provisional Government. In Milan,
in May 1917, Bolshevik revolutionaries organised and engaged in rioting
calling for an end to the war, and managed to close down factories and
stop public transportation. The Italian army was forced to enter Milan with tanks and machine guns to face Bolsheviks and anarchists,
who fought violently until 23 May when the army gained control of the
city. Almost 50 people (including three Italian soldiers) were killed
and over 800 people arrested.
In September 1917, Russian soldiers in France began questioning why they were fighting for the French at all and mutinied. In Russia, opposition to the war led to soldiers also establishing their own revolutionary committees, which helped foment the October Revolution of 1917, with the call going up for "bread, land, and peace". The Decree on Peace, written by Vladimir Lenin, was passed on 8 November 1917, following the success of the October Revolution. The Bolsheviks agreed to a peace treaty with Germany, the peace of Brest-Litovsk, despite its harsh conditions. The German Revolution of 1918-1919 led to the abdication of the Kaiser and German surrender.
Conscription
Young men registering for conscription, New York City, 5 June 1917
Conscription was common in most European countries. However, it was
controversial in English-speaking countries. It was especially unpopular
among minority ethnic groups—especially the Irish Catholics in Ireland
and Australia, and the French Catholics in Canada.
Canada
In Canada the issue produced a major political crisis that permanently alienated the Francophones. It opened a political gap between French Canadians,
who believed their true loyalty was to Canada and not to the British
Empire, and members of the Anglophone majority, who saw the war as a
duty to their British heritage.
Australia
Australia had a form of conscription at the outbreak of the war, as
compulsory military training had been introduced in 1911. However, the Defence Act 1903
provided that unexempted males could be called upon only for home
defence during times of war, not overseas service. Prime Minister Billy
Hughes wished to amend the legislation to require conscripts to serve
overseas, and held two non-binding referendums – one in 1916 and one in 1917 – in order to secure public support. Both were defeated by narrow margins, with farmers, the labour movement, the Catholic Church, and Irish-Australians combining to campaign for the "No" vote. The issue of conscription caused the 1916 Australian Labor Party split. Hughes and his supporters were expelled from the party, forming the National Labor Party and then the Nationalist Party. Despite the referendum results, the Nationalists won a landslide victory at the 1917 federal election.
Britain
British volunteer recruits in London, August 1914
In Britain, conscription resulted in the calling up of nearly every
physically fit man in Britain—six of ten million eligible. Of these,
about 750,000 lost their lives. Most deaths were those of young
unmarried men; however, 160,000 wives lost husbands and 300,000 children
lost fathers. Conscription during the First World War began when the British government passed the Military Service Act
in 1916. The act specified that single men aged 18 to 40 years old were
liable to be called up for military service unless they were widowed
with children or ministers of a religion. There was a system of Military Service Tribunals
to adjudicate upon claims for exemption upon the grounds of performing
civilian work of national importance, domestic hardship, health, and
conscientious objection. The law went through several changes before the
war ended. Married men were exempt in the original Act, although this
was changed in June 1916. The age limit was also eventually raised to 51
years old. Recognition of work of national importance also diminished,
and in the last year of the war there was some support for the
conscription of clergy. Conscription lasted until mid-1919. Due to the political situation in Ireland, conscription was never applied there; only in England, Scotland and Wales.
United States
In the United States, conscription began in 1917 and was generally
well received, with a few pockets of opposition in isolated rural areas.
The administration decided to rely primarily on conscription, rather
than voluntary enlistment, to raise military manpower for when only
73,000 volunteers enlisted out of the initial 1 million target in the first six weeks of the war.
In 1917 10 million men were registered. This was deemed to be
inadequate, so age ranges were increased and exemptions reduced, and so
by the end of 1918 this increased to 24 million men that were registered
with nearly 3 million inducted into the
military services. The draft was universal and included blacks on the
same terms as whites, although they served in different units. In all
367,710 black Americans were drafted (13% of the total), compared to
2,442,586 white (87%).
Forms of resistance ranged from peaceful protest to violent
demonstrations and from humble letter-writing campaigns asking for mercy
to radical newspapers demanding reform. The most common tactics were
dodging and desertion, and many communities sheltered and defended their
draft dodgers as political heroes. Many socialists were jailed for
"obstructing the recruitment or enlistment service". The most famous was
Eugene Debs, head of the Socialist Party of America, who ran for
president in 1920 from his prison cell. In 1917 a number of radicals and
anarchists challenged the new draft law in federal court, arguing that
it was a direct violation of the Thirteenth Amendment's prohibition
against slavery and involuntary servitude. The Supreme Court unanimously
upheld the constitutionality of the draft act in the Selective Draft Law Cases on 7 January 1918.
Austria-Hungary
Like all the armies of mainland Europe, Austria-Hungary relied on
conscription to fill its ranks. Officer recruitment, however, was
voluntary. The effect of this at the start of the war was that well over
a quarter of the rank and file were Slavs, while more than 75% of the
officers were ethnic Germans. This was much resented. The army has been
described as being "run on colonial lines" and the Slav soldiers as
"disaffected". Thus conscription contributed greatly to Austria's
disastrous performance on the battlefield.
Diplomacy
The non-military diplomatic and propaganda interactions among the
nations were designed to build support for the cause, or to undermine
support for the enemy. For the most part, wartime diplomacy focused on
five issues: propaganda campaigns;
defining and redefining the war goals, which became harsher as the war
went on; luring neutral nations (Italy, Ottoman Empire, Bulgaria,
Romania) into the coalition by offering slices of enemy territory; and
encouragement by the Allies of nationalistic minority movements inside
the Central Powers, especially among Czechs, Poles, and Arabs. In
addition, there were multiple peace proposals coming from neutrals, or
one side or the other; none of them progressed very far.
Legacy and memory
... "Strange, friend," I said, "Here is no cause to mourn."
"None," said the other, "Save the undone years"...
— Wilfred Owen, Strange Meeting, 1918
The War was an unprecedented triumph for natural science. [Francis] Bacon had promised that knowledge would be power, and power it was: power to destroy the bodies and souls of men more rapidly than had ever been done by human agency before. This triumph paved the way to other triumphs: improvements in transport, in sanitation, in surgery, medicine, and psychiatry, in commerce and industry, and, above all, in preparations for the next war.
— R.G. Collingwood, writing in 1939
The first tentative efforts to comprehend the meaning and
consequences of modern warfare began during the initial phases of the
war, and this process continued throughout and after the end of
hostilities, and is still underway, more than a century later.
Historiography
Historian Heather Jones argues that the historiography
has been reinvigorated by the cultural turn in recent years. Scholars
have raised entirely new questions regarding military occupation,
radicalisation of politics, race, and the male body. Furthermore, new
research has revised our understanding of five major topics that
historians have long debated: Why the war began, why the Allies won,
whether generals were responsible for high casualty rates, how the
soldiers endured the horrors of trench warfare, and to what extent the
civilian homefront accepted and endorsed the war effort.
Memorials
A typical village war memorial to soldiers killed in World War I
Memorials were erected in thousands of villages and towns. Close to
battlefields, those buried in improvised burial grounds were gradually
moved to formal graveyards under the care of organisations such as the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, the American Battle Monuments Commission, the German War Graves Commission, and Le Souvenir français. Many of these graveyards also have central monuments to the missing or unidentified dead, such as the Menin Gate memorial and the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme.
In 1915 John McCrae, a Canadian army doctor, wrote the poem In Flanders Fields as a salute to those who perished in the Great War. Published in Punch on 8 December 1915, it is still recited today, especially on Remembrance Day and Memorial Day.
National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri, is a memorial dedicated to all Americans who served in World War I. The Liberty Memorial was dedicated on 1 November 1921, when the supreme Allied commanders spoke to a crowd of more than 100,000 people.
The UK Government has budgeted substantial resources to the commemoration of the war during the period 2014 to 2018. The lead body is the Imperial War Museum. On 3 August 2014, French President Francois Hollande and German President Joachim Gauck together marked the centenary of Germany's declaration of war on France by laying the first stone of a memorial in Vieil Armand, known in German as Hartmannswillerkopf, for French and German soldiers killed in the war.
Cultural memory
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World War I had a lasting impact on social memory. It was seen by many in Britain as signalling the end of an era of stability stretching back to the Victorian period, and across Europe many regarded it as a watershed. Historian Samuel Hynes explained:
A generation of innocent young men, their heads full of high abstractions like Honour, Glory and England, went off to war to make the world safe for democracy. They were slaughtered in stupid battles planned by stupid generals. Those who survived were shocked, disillusioned and embittered by their war experiences, and saw that their real enemies were not the Germans, but the old men at home who had lied to them. They rejected the values of the society that had sent them to war, and in doing so separated their own generation from the past and from their cultural inheritance.
This has become the most common perception of World War I,
perpetuated by the art, cinema, poems, and stories published
subsequently. Films such as All Quiet on the Western Front, Paths of Glory and King & Country have perpetuated the idea, while war-time films including Camrades, Poppies of Flanders, and Shoulder Arms indicate that the most contemporary views of the war were overall far more positive. Likewise, the art of Paul Nash, John Nash, Christopher Nevinson, and Henry Tonks
in Britain painted a negative view of the conflict in keeping with the
growing perception, while popular war-time artists such as Muirhead Bone painted more serene and pleasant interpretations subsequently rejected as inaccurate. Several historians like John Terraine, Niall Ferguson and Gary Sheffield have challenged these interpretations as partial and polemical views:
These beliefs did not become widely shared because they offered the only accurate interpretation of wartime events. In every respect, the war was much more complicated than they suggest. In recent years, historians have argued persuasively against almost every popular cliché of World War I. It has been pointed out that, although the losses were devastating, their greatest impact was socially and geographically limited. The many emotions other than horror experienced by soldiers in and out of the front line, including comradeship, boredom, and even enjoyment, have been recognised. The war is not now seen as a 'fight about nothing', but as a war of ideals, a struggle between aggressive militarism and more or less liberal democracy. It has been acknowledged that British generals were often capable men facing difficult challenges, and that it was under their command that the British army played a major part in the defeat of the Germans in 1918: a great forgotten victory.
Though these views have been discounted as "myths",
they are common. They have dynamically changed according to
contemporary influences, reflecting in the 1950s perceptions of the war
as "aimless" following the contrasting Second World War and emphasising
conflict within the ranks during times of class conflict in the 1960s.
The majority of additions to the contrary are often rejected.
Social trauma
A 1919 book for veterans, from the US War Department
The social trauma caused by unprecedented rates of casualties
manifested itself in different ways, which have been the subject of
subsequent historical debate.
The optimism of la belle époque was destroyed, and those who had fought in the war were referred to as the Lost Generation. For years afterwards, people mourned the dead, the missing, and the many disabled. Many soldiers returned with severe trauma, suffering from shell shock (also called neurasthenia, a condition related to posttraumatic stress disorder).
Many more returned home with few after-effects; however, their silence
about the war contributed to the conflict's growing mythological status.
Though many participants did not share in the experiences of combat or
spend any significant time at the front, or had positive memories of
their service, the images of suffering and trauma became the widely
shared perception. Such historians as Dan Todman, Paul Fussell,
and Samuel Heyns have all published works since the 1990s arguing that
these common perceptions of the war are factually incorrect.
Discontent in Germany
The rise of Nazism and fascism included a revival of the nationalist spirit and a rejection of many post-war changes. Similarly, the popularity of the stab-in-the-back legend (German: Dolchstoßlegende)
was a testament to the psychological state of defeated Germany and was a
rejection of responsibility for the conflict. This conspiracy theory of
betrayal became common, and the German populace came to see themselves
as victims. The widespread acceptance of the "stab-in-the-back" theory
delegitimised the Weimar government and destabilised the system, opening
it to extremes of right and left.
Communist and fascist movements around Europe drew strength from
this theory and enjoyed a new level of popularity. These feelings were
most pronounced in areas directly or harshly affected by the war. Adolf Hitler was able to gain popularity by using German discontent with the still controversial Treaty of Versailles. World War II was in part a continuation of the power struggle never fully resolved by World War I.
Furthermore, it was common for Germans in the 1930s to justify acts of
aggression due to perceived injustices imposed by the victors of World
War I. American historian William Rubinstein wrote that:
The 'Age of Totalitarianism' included nearly all the infamous examples of genocide in modern history, headed by the Jewish Holocaust, but also comprising the mass murders and purges of the Communist world, other mass killings carried out by Nazi Germany and its allies, and also the Armenian Genocide of 1915. All these slaughters, it is argued here, had a common origin, the collapse of the elite structure and normal modes of government of much of central, eastern and southern Europe as a result of World War I, without which surely neither Communism nor Fascism would have existed except in the minds of unknown agitators and crackpots.
Economic effects
Poster showing women workers, 1915
One of the most dramatic effects of the war was the expansion of
governmental powers and responsibilities in Britain, France, the United
States, and the Dominions of the British Empire. To harness all the
power of their societies, governments created new ministries and powers.
New taxes were levied and laws enacted, all designed to bolster the war effort;
many have lasted to this day. Similarly, the war strained the abilities
of some formerly large and bureaucratised governments, such as in
Austria-Hungary and Germany.
Gross domestic product
(GDP) increased for three Allies (Britain, Italy, and the United
States), but decreased in France and Russia, in neutral Netherlands, and
in the three main Central Powers. The shrinkage in GDP in Austria,
Russia, France, and the Ottoman Empire ranged between 30% and 40%. In
Austria, for example, most pigs were slaughtered, so at war's end there
was no meat.
In all nations, the government's share of GDP increased,
surpassing 50% in both Germany and France and nearly reaching that level
in Britain. To pay for purchases in the United States, Britain cashed
in its extensive investments in American railroads and then began
borrowing heavily from Wall Street. President Wilson was on the verge of cutting off the loans in late 1916, but allowed a great increase in US government
lending to the Allies. After 1919, the US demanded repayment of these
loans. The repayments were, in part, funded by German reparations that,
in turn, were supported by American loans to Germany. This circular
system collapsed in 1931 and some loans were never repaid. Britain still
owed the United States $4.4 billion of World War I debt in 1934, the last instalment was finally paid in 2015.
Macro- and micro-economic consequences devolved from the war.
Families were altered by the departure of many men. With the death or
absence of the primary wage earner, women were forced into the workforce
in unprecedented numbers. At the same time, industry needed to replace
the lost labourers sent to war. This aided the struggle for voting rights for women.
World War I further compounded the gender imbalance, adding to the phenomenon of surplus women.
The deaths of nearly one million men during the war in Britain
increased the gender gap by almost a million: from 670,000 to 1,700,000.
The number of unmarried women seeking economic means grew dramatically.
In addition, demobilisation and economic decline following the war
caused high unemployment. The war increased female employment; however,
the return of demobilised men displaced many from the workforce, as did
the closure of many of the wartime factories.
In Britain, rationing was finally imposed in early 1918, limited
to meat, sugar, and fats (butter and margarine), but not bread. The new
system worked smoothly. From 1914 to 1918, trade union membership
doubled, from a little over four million to a little over eight million.
Britain turned to her colonies for help in obtaining essential
war materials whose supply from traditional sources had become
difficult. Geologists such as Albert Ernest Kitson were called on to find new resources of precious minerals in the African colonies. Kitson discovered important new deposits of manganese, used in munitions production, in the Gold Coast.
Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles (the so-called "war
guilt" clause) stated Germany accepted responsibility for "all the loss
and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and their
nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon
them by the aggression of Germany and her allies."
It was worded as such to lay a legal basis for reparations, and a
similar clause was inserted in the treaties with Austria and Hungary.
However neither of them interpreted it as an admission of war guilt."
In 1921, the total reparation sum was placed at 132 billion gold marks.
However, "Allied experts knew that Germany could not pay" this sum. The
total sum was divided into three categories, with the third being
"deliberately designed to be chimerical" and its "primary function was
to mislead public opinion ... into believing the "total sum was being
maintained."
Thus, 50 billion gold marks (12.5 billion dollars) "represented the
actual Allied assessment of German capacity to pay" and "therefore ...
represented the total German reparations" figure that had to be paid.
This figure could be paid in cash or in kind (coal, timber,
chemical dyes, etc.). In addition, some of the territory lost—via the
treaty of Versailles—was credited towards the reparation figure as were
other acts such as helping to restore the Library of Louvain. By 1929, the Great Depression arrived, causing political chaos throughout the world.
In 1932 the payment of reparations was suspended by the international
community, by which point Germany had paid only the equivalent of
20.598 billion gold marks in reparations.
With the rise of Adolf Hitler, all bonds and loans that had been issued
and taken out during the 1920s and early 1930s were cancelled. David Andelman
notes "refusing to pay doesn't make an agreement null and void. The
bonds, the agreement, still exist." Thus, following the Second World
War, at the London Conference in 1953, Germany agreed to resume payment on the money borrowed. On 3 October 2010, Germany made the final payment on these bonds.
The war contributed to the evolution of the wristwatch from women's jewellery to a practical everyday item, replacing the pocketwatch, which requires a free hand to operate. Military funding of advancements in radio contributed to the postwar popularity of the medium.
