I | INTRODUCTION |
World War
I, military conflict, from August 1914 to November 1918, that involved
many of the countries of Europe as well as the United States and other nations
throughout the world. World War I was one of the most violent and destructive
wars in European history. Of the 65 million men who were mobilized, more than 10
million were killed and more than 20 million wounded. The term World War
I did not come into general use until a second worldwide conflict broke out
in 1939 (see World War II). Before that year, the war was known as the
Great War or the World War.
World War I was the first total war. Once the
war began, the countries involved mobilized their entire populations and
economic resources to achieve victory on the battlefield. The term home
front, which was widely employed for the first time during World War I,
perfectly symbolized this new concept of a war in which the civilian population
behind the lines was directly and critically involved in the war effort.
The war began as a clash between two coalitions
of European countries. The first coalition, known as the Allied Powers, included
the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Serbia, Montenegro, and the Russian Empire
(see Russia). The Central Powers, which opposed them, consisted of the
empires of Germany and Austria-Hungary. Japan joined the Allied Powers in 1914.
The Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers in 1914, as did Bulgaria in 1915.
The same year, Italy entered the war on the Allied side. Although the United
States initially remained neutral, it joined the Allies in 1917. The conflict
eventually involved 32 countries, 28 of which supported the Allies. Some of
these nations, however, did not participate in the actual fighting.
The immediate cause of the war was the
assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand, the heir to the throne of
Austria-Hungary, by a Serbian nationalist. The fundamental causes of the
conflict, however, were rooted deeply in the European history of the previous
century, particularly in the political and economic policies that prevailed in
Europe after 1871, the year that Germany emerged as a major European power.
By the end of 1914 the war entered a
stalemate. Both sides became mired in two main, stationary fronts—the western
front, primarily in northeastern France, and the eastern front, mainly in
western Russia. At the fronts, the troops fought each other from numerous
parallel lines of interconnected trenches. Each side laid siege to the other’s
system of trenches and endeavored to break through their lines.
When the war finally came to an end on November
11, 1918, and the Central Powers were defeated, the political order of Europe
had been transformed beyond recognition. The German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian,
and Ottoman empires had collapsed. New areas were carved out of their former
lands, and the boundaries of many other countries were redrawn. The war also
helped precipitate the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia (see Russian
Revolutions of 1917), which ushered in the ideology of Communism there.
The war also had important long-term
consequences. The enormous cost of the war undermined the financial stability of
all of the countries involved, and they had to bear an onerous burden of debt
for many years to come. These financial losses, combined with the battlefield
deaths and physical destruction, severely weakened the European powers.
II | THEATERS OF WAR |
Most of the fighting during World War I was
carried out by land armies in Europe. Naval forces were used primarily to
prevent food and supplies from reaching their destinations. Airplanes were also
used in a major military campaign for the first time during World War I,
although they played a small role in the war’s outcome.
A | Land Warfare |
Most of the decisive land campaigns of
World War I occurred on the continent of Europe. The two chief centers of
operations were the western front and the eastern front. On the western front,
German armies confronted those of the British Empire, France, Belgium, and,
later, the United States. Most of the fighting on this front took place in
northeastern France. The trenches of the western front ran from the North Sea to
the border of Switzerland. On the eastern front, where German and
Austro-Hungarian armies faced the Russians, the fighting began in the frontier
regions between Germany and Poland (then divided among the Austro-Hungarian,
Russian, and German Empires) and between Austria-Hungary and Russia. Gradually
the battle lines moved eastward and northeastward, deep into Russian territory.
A subsidiary theater of war in Europe was
the alpine frontier between Italy and Austria-Hungary, where the two countries
fought each other after Italy joined the Allies in the spring of 1915. Another
subsidiary theater was the Balkan Peninsula, where Serbia, Romania, and the
Greek-held area of Salonika (see Thessaloníki) were successively the
scenes of local campaigns.
Since the major participants in the war
had colonial empires in Africa, Asia, and what is now called the Middle East,
the war quickly spread to those parts of the world. Although Germany was a late
entry in the race for overseas colonies, it had obtained the rudiments of a
colonial empire in Africa, including Togo, Cameroon, German South-West Africa,
and German East Africa. It also had an assortment of islands in the Pacific
Ocean, including the Marshall, Mariana, and Caroline islands; German New Guinea;
the Bismarck Archipelago; the Solomon Islands; and Samoa. Germany also possessed
a land grant with special economic and residence rights at Kiaochow (Jiaozhou)
on China's Shantung (Shandong) Peninsula.
At the outbreak of war in Europe,
British, French, Belgian, and South African military forces invaded German
possessions in Africa. Japan seized Germany's island possessions north of the
equator while Australia and New Zealand took control of the German islands to
the south. The remnants of the Ottoman Empire, located in the area later known
as the Middle East, came under military attack from British forces based in
Egypt.
World War I saw advances in the area of
battlefield weapons. At the start of the war, the principal infantry weapon was
the bolt-action magazine rifle, which was capable of firing 6 to 10 aimed shots
per minute. The machine gun, which had been developed in the 1880s, was just
gaining acceptance by the major European armies as the war began. It could fire
rifle ammunition automatically at a rate of 200 to 250 shots per minute. It was
an excellent defensive weapon, capable of devastating waves of cavalry and
infantry. Other important weapons developed during the war were the
flamethrower, the hand grenade, poison gas, and the tank. All these weapons were
designed to restore mobility to the troops huddled in the trenches avoiding
machine gun and heavy artillery fire.
B | Naval Warfare |
Naval operations were carried out
primarily in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the North Sea. At the start of the
war, Britain had decisive superiority in heavy battleships, which were the
cornerstone of sea power at that time. But Germany eventually challenged British
dominance of the seas with its submarine, or U-Boat, campaign.
The war at sea was mainly important
economically. The Allies were concerned with keeping open the vital sea lanes by
which ships transported supplies, war materials, and troops to Europe from the
United States and other overseas sources. In 1914 Britain implemented a sea
blockade of Germany to prevent the delivery of imports such as food and war
materials. The same year, Germany began using submarines to disrupt Allied
seaborne traffic and prevent supplies from reaching Britain. In 1915 Germany
instituted a submarine blockade around Britain. From February 1915 to September
1915 and again in 1917, Germany used unrestricted submarine warfare, sinking
ships without any warning. Germany’s use of unrestricted submarine warfare
angered the Allies and resulted in the United States entering the war.
C | Aerial Warfare |
Airplanes were first used in large
numbers for military purposes during World War I. At the start of the war,
airplanes and other aircraft were generally used for reconnaissance and for
observing and adjusting artillery fire. Both the Allies and the Central Powers
made extensive use of small tethered balloons for observing stationary
battlefronts, of dirigible balloons for scouting at sea, and of airplanes for
scouting coastal waters. Later, airplanes specially equipped for combat came
into wide use on the western front. Both sides also employed airplanes carrying
machine guns and light bombs to attack enemy ground forces. Shore-based naval
aircraft capable of landing on water proved useful in antisubmarine
warfare.
The Germans launched the first air raids
in 1914. During 1915 and 1916 a German dirigible known as the Zeppelin raided
eastern England and London more than 50 times. With the raids, Germany hoped to
force British planes to withdraw from the western front, to handicap British
industry, and to destroy the morale of the civilian population. The raids caused
much loss of life and damage to property but accomplished little of military
value.
From mid-1915 aerial combat between
planes or groups of planes was common. The Germans initially had superiority in
the air on the western front, but the British gained the advantage in mid-1916.
The Allied advantage in the air gradually increased thereafter and became
overwhelming when the United States entered the war in 1917.
III | ECONOMIC AND INDUSTRIAL RESOURCES |
Industrial and economic resources played
an important role in World War I. Military success was critically dependent on a
country’s ability to produce a continuous supply of goods for their armies.
German industrial resources were so great that Germany was able to survive the
British naval blockade and meet the demands of four years of war, while giving
some help to Austria-Hungary. British industry, although capable and versatile,
had begun to lag in output and in modernization. Britain came to depend heavily
on U.S. production. Throughout the war, Germany occupied French territory that
contained important industrial and mineral resources, so France also depended on
U.S. supplies. Russian industry was incapable of dealing with the needs of the
Russian armies. In addition, since the Ottoman Empire controlled the Dardanelles
Strait, Russia was cut off from Allied supplies via the Mediterranean Sea and
could not easily be supplied from its Arctic or Pacific ports.
During the war, Britain and France were
able to harness the economic resources not only of their own vast colonial
empires, such as India and Indochina, but also of the United States. This
ability gave them a great advantage. The Central Powers were cut off from their
prewar markets and sources of food and raw materials. Although Germany gained
access to the vast economic resources of the western part of the former Russian
Empire in the spring of 1918, it was too late in the war to affect the
outcome.
The Allies also enjoyed a critical
advantage in being able to obtain loans from American investment banks. The
Allies used the loans to purchase oil, wheat, steel, and other critical
products. When the United States entered the war, the U.S. Treasury Department
took over the financing of loans to the Allied Powers to cover their supply
purchases in the United States. The combined economic resources of the United
States and the British Empire played a significant role in the Allied
victory.
IV | BACKGROUND |
A | German Unification |
When World War I broke out in 1914, it
ended almost 100 years of relative peace in Europe. In 1815 a coalition defeated
France in the Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815), a series of wars caused by Napoleon
I’s attempt to dominate Europe. The coalition included Britain, Austria,
Prussia, and Russia. These countries held a peace conference, known as the
Congress of Vienna, which was designed to prevent at all costs another
Europe-wide war.
The principal architect of the peace
settlement devised at the conference, Austrian foreign minister Prince Klemens
von Metternich, believed that the key to making peace durable was the balance of
power. According to this diplomatic principle, the major nations of Europe
should distribute power relatively evenly among themselves to deter any one of
them from seeking dominance over the continent. If any country were to attempt
to disturb the balance of power, the others would oppose it as an alliance.
Metternich also thought that in order for
Europe to be stable, a monarch should continue to rule each major European
country. The French Revolution (1789-1799) had given rise to democratic
principles, such as representative government. If these democratic principles
were revived, Metternich believed, they would undermine the authority of the
hereditary rulers of Europe and lead to other revolutionary uprisings throughout
the continent.
Finally, Metternich was intent on
suppressing the forces of nationalism that had also been unleashed by the French
Revolution. Nationalism was the idea that people of the same ethnic origin and
language deserved the right to liberty and self-government. Nationalism
threatened the existence of multinational empires such as Austria, which was
composed of many peoples, including Czechs, Slovaks, and Poles. Metternich
believed nationalism was a prescription for conflict and war.
In the course of the 19th century the
Vienna system survived a number of wars that were directly related to the spread
of nationalism throughout the continent. Two new nation-states were forged as
the result of such wars: Italy in 1861 after the defeat of Austria (Italian
Unification) and Germany in 1871 after the German states defeated France in the
Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871) (German Unification (1871)). But neither of
these wars had escalated into the Europe-wide conflict that Metternich had so
feared. Each of these conflicts was restricted to a limited geographical area
and ended before it could spread.
When a unified, militarily triumphant,
economically powerful Germany emerged after 1871, it challenged the balance of
power on which the peace of Europe had long depended. But the architect of
German unity, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, was not interested in further
expanding German power at the risk of a Europe-wide war. Rather, he strove to
preserve Germany's newly acquired position as the dominant power in Europe.
To achieve this goal he set out to isolate
France, which nurtured a smoldering grievance against Germany. After the
Franco-Prussian War, France was forced to cede its eastern province of Alsace
and part of the adjoining province of Lorraine to Germany under the Treaty of
Frankfurt. During Bismarck’s 19-year tenure as chancellor from 1871 to 1890,
Germany was the undisputed master of Europe while the new French Republic that
had been established after the Franco-Prussian War remained militarily weak and
diplomatically isolated. France never gave up hope of recovering “the lost
provinces,” whose population was split between French- and German-speakers. This
goal became the country's most important war aim after the beginning of World
War I.
Bismarck was at pains to reassure the other
European powers that Germany posed no threat to their interests. He shrewdly
crafted a network of alliances and agreements with all of the other European
powers except France. In 1873 Bismarck negotiated the Three Emperors’ League
with Austria-Hungary and Russia. Bismarck contracted the Triple Alliance of 1882
with Austria-Hungary and Italy to strengthen German power against France and to
help balance power in the Balkans between Austria-Hungary and Russia. In 1887 he
signed a Reinsurance Treaty with Russia. This treaty pledged Russia to
neutrality in the event of a war between France and Germany and promised German
neutrality in case of war between Austria-Hungary and Russia. He also
facilitated an Anglo-German friendship by not competing with Britain for
colonial territory in Africa and Asia. Germany also did not construct a large
navy that would threaten British dominance on the high seas.
B | German Ambitions |
When Bismarck retired in 1890, however, his
carefully crafted policy of isolating France began to unravel. The impetuous new
German emperor, William II, abandoned Bismarck’s cautious foreign policy. When
William refused to renew Germany's treaty with Russia, the French approached
Russian tsar Alexander III. By 1894 France and Russia had concluded a treaty of
alliance, in which each country pledged to come to the assistance of the other
in case of war with Germany. The Franco-Russian alliance obliged Germany to face
the prospect of having to fight a war on two fronts, which would prevent Germany
from concentrating all its military might against a single foe.
William also began to assert Germany's
ambitions abroad. He loudly complained that Germany had fallen behind in the
global competition for colonial territories and insisted that Germany make up
for lost time. As the 20th century began, Germany aggressively acquired overseas
territories. German industrial firms and financial institutions also began to
compete fiercely with their long-entrenched British counterparts in distant
lands.
William also decided that Germany must
become a great naval power. The British were at first scornful, then irritated,
and finally alarmed as Germany embarked on major battleship-building programs.
The country, which under Bismarck had been content with its role as the most
powerful nation on the European continent, now aspired to become a global
power.
Concern about William’s new global
ambitions and naval policy prompted Britain to resolve its disputes with France
over colonial territories in the common interest of restraining Germany. In 1904
Britain and France established a friendly diplomatic relationship called the
Entente Cordiale (French for “cordial understanding”). Thereafter these
two powers developed closer political ties and began to discuss possible forms
of military and naval cooperation in the event of war in Europe. In 1907 Britain
settled its outstanding conflicts with France's ally Russia, and the same year,
these three powers began to cooperate in a loose diplomatic association that was
known as the Triple Entente.
In the decade before World War I, Britain,
France, and Russia began to compete with Germany and Austria-Hungary in a costly
arms race. Anglo-German naval rivalry was accompanied by a competitive military
buildup between France and Russia on the one hand and Germany and
Austria-Hungary on the other. All of the powers except Britain had adopted the
policy of conscription (drafting men to serve in the armed forces). These
conscription policies left the European continent bristling with large,
well-trained, fully armed, land forces. Britain alone was content with a small
volunteer army because of its overwhelming naval superiority, which it deemed
sufficient to shield the British Isles from invasion.
From 1904 to 1914 Germany's military,
industrial, and commercial power grew steadily, while the country’s political
leaders increasingly pursued an aggressive foreign policy. During the decade,
Germany made two outright threats of war against France and one against Russia,
and the German naval program was openly directed against Britain. By 1911 only
Austria-Hungary continued to give diplomatic support to German policy. But the
multinational empire, ruled by the Habsburg royal family, was hardly a reliable
military ally. It faced mounting discontent from the many nationalities that
made up its empire. Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, and the Slavic inhabitants of the
southern portion of the empire in the Balkan Peninsula wanted autonomy within
the empire. They were inspired by the principles of nationalism that had brought
about the political unification of Italy in 1861 and Germany in 1871.
It was also openly known in Europe that if
war should come, Germany could not depend on Italy, the third member of the
Triple Alliance. Italy was bound only to fight a defensive war, and in any event
it was more of a rival than an ally of Austria-Hungary.
V | MILITARY STRATEGIES |
All the European countries developed plans in
the event of war. They knew the number of men they could call up, the length of
time it would take to get their armies ready, and their strategies for battle.
Each country had a different plan although general similarities existed.
A | Conscription |
Among the major European powers only Britain
had no peacetime conscription. It relied on command of the sea by its powerful
navy for defense against sudden attack. The British army was a small, highly
trained force recruited by voluntary enlistment. About half of it was normally
stationed in India and other overseas colonies, and the other half was stationed
in the British Isles. There also was a citizen-soldier territorial army, which
was composed entirely of volunteers.
On the other hand, the armies of France,
Italy, Germany, Russia, and Austria-Hungary conscripted every able-bodied young
man at a given age, usually 19 or 20. When he had completed his term—two to
three years of active service in the army—the young man went back to his home
and civilian job. However, he remained a member of the reserve forces; for a
prescribed period of years, he was liable to immediate call-up in case of war or
national emergency. During this period he was normally called back several times
for short periods of refresher training. Since reserve liability sometimes
lasted until ages over 40, large numbers of fully trained reserves were
available under this system.
The peacetime strength of military units was
about 50 percent of their war strength. When mobilization occurred, the strength
of each unit would be doubled by the reservists assigned to it, and a
full-strength sister unit would usually be formed, composed entirely of
reservists. Thus the mobilized fighting strength of a European army could become
four times its peacetime strength within a few days.
B | Mobilization |
Each country needed a certain amount of time
to mobilize, or activate its armies for battle. It would be disastrous for a
European country to be attacked by the fully mobilized forces of a neighboring
country while it was still mobilizing. In designing their war plans, the
European countries factored in the time it would take for other countries to
mobilize, whether the country was friendly or hostile. For example, France was
aware that it would take Russia longer to mobilize and had to plan
accordingly.
Each country’s ability to mobilize was
affected by an important instrument of technology, the railroad. The railroad
was capable of transporting troops along with their weapons and supplies to the
front in the opening phase of the war. Many observers regarded the railroad as
the key to victory or defeat. Since the two sides were of roughly equal
numerical strength, the speed of mobilization and the efficiency of troop
deployment were expected to affect the war’s outcome.
Germany and France could complete the first
stage of mobilization in 48 hours, with all units at regimental concentration
points and ready to move. Russia, Italy, and Austria-Hungary required four or
five days because their organizations were more cumbersome. France and Germany
would again run nearly even in the second stage, that of concentrating forces in
a given frontier area. At the other extreme, Russia, with its vast distances and
inferior network of railways, would need 15 days to concentrate one-third of its
first-line units on its western frontier.
Each country had a separate war plan for
every potential enemy. The war plans were prepared by the general staff, a body
of specially trained professional officers. The general staff was responsible
for organizing and training the army. It also collected and evaluated military
intelligence, the information that had been obtained about foreign armed forces.
Each general staff was headed by a chief of staff, who was the principal
military adviser to the government.
In every case, the head of the national
government ordered mobilization: in France and Italy, a prime minister
responsible to an elected parliament, and in Germany, Russia, and
Austria-Hungary, a hereditary sovereign. In France and Italy, the minister of
war, who was responsible to the parliament, reviewed the war plans of the
general staff to at least some degree. In the other three countries, the general
staff kept the details of their war plans secret.
To order the mobilization of a European army
was an act almost as grave as a declaration of war, because it was very
difficult to halt the mobilization and deployment of troops once it had started.
In a period of crisis, the head of each government was under increasing pressure
to mobilize from the chief of staff, who was aware of the danger of waiting too
long. Even the all-powerful Russian tsar Nicholas II, who was plagued by
last-minute doubts about the wisdom of attacking Germany, was unable to
interrupt the train of events on the eve of the war. When he sent a message
canceling his approval of general mobilization, his chief of staff persuaded him
that it was too late.
C | The Schlieffen Plan |
For its war plan, the German general staff
relied on the Schlieffen Plan. Alfred von Schlieffen, chief of the German
general staff from 1891 to 1905, formulated the original plan. In 1906 General
Helmuth von Moltke succeeded von Schlieffen as chief of staff. Under Moltke,
details of the plan had been changed but its main feature remained. This feature
called for Germany to concentrate about 90 percent of its forces against France
at the beginning of a European war. Thus, only a defensive screen would remain
to contain the Russians, who, because it took them longer to mobilize, could be
dealt with once Germany achieved a quick victory in the west.
The Schlieffen Plan called for the strong
right wing of the German forces to swing through Belgium, move southward to
engulf Paris, the French capital, and force the French to surrender within six
weeks. This plan involved violating Belgian neutrality, which all the European
powers had pledged to honor in an 1839 treaty. If Germany violated Belgian
neutrality, Britain was virtually certain to enter the war because it was
unwilling to tolerate Belgium falling under the control of Germany. But the
German general staff deemed it militarily necessary to attack France through
Belgium. If they undertook a direct offensive across the Franco-German frontier,
they would encounter heavily fortified French positions, causing a fatal delay
in the German plan for a rapid victory in the west.
The German general staff made another
dangerous concession to what they considered a military necessity. The
Schlieffen Plan would be triggered not when countries formally declared war but
simply when they ordered mobilization. In addition, the plan would go into
action regardless of whether mobilization was ordered against both France and
Russia or against Russia alone. In either case, once Germany mobilized, its
armies would immediately be hurled upon France by way of Belgium, in order to
gain the maximum advantages of timing and surprise. In spite of the implications
of the Schlieffen Plan, its details remained virtually unknown outside the
cloisters of the German general staff. In fact, William II and his ministers had
never officially approved the war plan.
D | Toward War |
Germany did not consciously plan or
provoke the outbreak of war in August 1914, in spite of its threatening attitude
toward France, Russia, and Britain. However, there were certain factors that
made the summer of 1914 Germany’s best chance to begin and win a war. First, a
new French military law required three years of service instead of two. In each
year after 1914, every French regiment was to increase its soldiers on active
duty by 50 percent. Moreover, Russia was using French loans to finance the
expansion of its strategic railway network, which would greatly improve the
Russian army’s ability to speed its troops to the German frontier.
Nevertheless there is no evidence that
Germany planned to begin a war in 1914. The diplomatic crisis that started the
war was in fact the only major European crisis since 1900 that Germany had not
helped engineer. But once the crisis degenerated into a Europe-wide conflict,
many German political, military, and economic leaders welcomed the war as a
means of expanding German power within and beyond Europe.
E | Assassination |
The diplomatic crisis was triggered on
June 28, 1914, when the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, Archduke Francis
Ferdinand, and his wife were assassinated in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and
Herzegovina. The archduke had traveled to Sarajevo to direct the maneuvers of
the two army corps stationed there. Austria-Hungary had annexed Bosnia and
Herzegovina in 1908, and the archduke’s presence in Sarajevo enraged Serbs
living in Bosnia who resented Austria-Hungary’s rule and regarded the military
presence as an affront to their nationalist aspirations. The assassin, a
19-year-old Serb named Gavrilo Princip, belonged to a terrorist group devoted to
Serbian nationalism, wanting to unite all Southern Slavs in a single state
dominated by Serbia.
The Austro-Hungarian foreign office under
Foreign Minister Graf Leopold von Berchtold regarded the assassination as a
golden opportunity to crush Serbia. Although the role of the Serbian government
in the assassination has never been fully determined, Austria-Hungary viewed
Serbia as a threat to the empire’s security. However, Russia was the traditional
protector of the South Slavs (including Serbs), and Austria-Hungary by itself
was no match for Russia. It therefore appealed to Germany for help. William II
promised unlimited support to Austria-Hungary and went off for a cruise on his
yacht to attend the annual regatta in the Kiel Canal, obviously not expecting
war to break out.
F | Mobilization Orders |
After the assassination, Austria-Hungary
sent an ultimatum to Serbia on July 23, making demands calculated to humiliate
the Serbs so they would reject the ultimatum. The demands included creating a
joint Austro-Serbian commission to investigate the murder and ordering the
Serbian government to condemn any propaganda against Austria-Hungary. Urged by
both Britain and Russia, Serbia accepted most of the demands with a few minor
reservations. Austria-Hungary declared the Serbian reply to be unsatisfactory.
On July 26, the British foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, proposed a
conference to address the dispute between Austria-Hungary and Serbia. However,
Austria-Hungary refused to allow foreign powers to decide a matter of national
honor, and Germany supported its ally. On July 28 Austria-Hungary declared war
on Serbia, after ordering a partial mobilization of its armed forces.
A chain reaction followed. The military
machinery took charge in the empires of Austria-Hungary, Russia, and Germany.
Although all three rulers hesitated at the brink of the abyss, they all yielded
at last to the stern demands of so-called military necessity. The tsar ordered
partial mobilization on July 29. Then, faced with a German ultimatum and the
known Russian time lag, Russia went on to full mobilization on July 31.
Austria-Hungary took the same action on July 31, before news of the Russian
order had reached Vienna. On August 1, Germany declared war on Russia, and
William II set in motion the Schlieffen Plan.
Acting in accord with the Schlieffen Plan,
ten German divisions were sent east to maintain a defensive posture against the
Russian army. Meanwhile most of the remaining divisions were concentrated into
the right wing of the German army in the west. This wing was to march through
Belgium and envelop the French army, and in a vast wheeling movement, sweep into
Paris from the north. The Germans expected to profit from the element of
surprise and from what they believed to be the superior firepower of their own
forces.
France, faced with immediate danger from
Germany, had no choice except to resist or surrender. It indignantly rejected
Germany's demand for ironclad assurances that France would remain neutral in the
forthcoming conflict between Germany and France's ally Russia. Germany declared
war on France on August 3. King Albert I of Belgium defied a German ultimatum
demanding free passage through his country for the German army. However, he was
faithful to the obligations of Belgium's pledged neutrality. Only when German
troops actually invaded Belgium, early on August 4, did Albert send an appeal
for help to the guarantor powers, including Britain.
His action imposed a moral burden upon
Britain to honor its pledge. Although the British Cabinet and House of Commons
had hesitated to become involved in a war on the continent, they now warned
Germany that Britain would defend Belgian neutrality, by force of arms if
necessary, if Germany did not withdraw. At midnight on August 4, the British
ultimatum expired, and Britain was at war with Germany. By that time the “rape
of Belgium” was not the only, or even the main, reason Britain was determined to
intervene. The British government opted for war because it feared that Germany
would decimate France and dominate the rest of Europe.
VI | PHASE ONE: BID FOR QUICK VICTORY |
A | Western Front, 1914 |
In 1914 the northern and eastern frontier
of France was about 600 km (400 mi) long. It ran from northwest to southeast,
with roughly 300 km (200 mi) facing Belgium and 300 km (200 mi) facing Germany.
A formidable system of permanent fortifications defended the eastern, or German,
half of the frontier. The French war plan in 1914, known as Plan XVII, called
for a headlong French offensive into Alsace and Lorraine, in which it was
imagined that French élan (fighting spirit) would carry the
offensive.
However, the frontier facing Belgium was
virtually unfortified. French planners did not believe that the Germans could
bring enough troops into action to make a strong attack through Belgium and
simultaneously attack the French fortress system. The fortresses of 1914 in both
France and Belgium consisted of a circle of detached masonry forts built around
a city or town. The intervals between the forts could be protected by crossfire
from soldiers in the forts and could also be covered by fieldworks occupied by
infantry. The forts themselves had been built mainly underground except for the
turrets, or cupolas, in which guns of 3-inch to 8-inch bore were positioned on
revolving mounts.
Belgium had two strong fortresses of this
type in Liège and Namur. These fortresses covered the roads and railways that a
German army attacking France through Belgium would need to use. As a result, the
first German move had to be a quick knockout of Liège, in eastern Belgium. Liège
guarded a narrow gap between the thickly wooded Ardennes region and was the
junction from which four main highways led westward.
When the Germans began their assault on
Belgium and France, they used some 1.5 million men, or about 20 to 25 percent
more men than the highest French estimate. Of these men, almost 1,160,000 were
assigned to the five field armies of the enormously strong German right wing,
which was destined to drive into France by way of Belgium. The remaining 345,000
troops in the German Sixth and Seventh armies were to advance toward the French
fortress system in the east.
A1 | Commanders |
The commander of the German forces was
Colonel General Helmuth von Moltke, who as the chief of the general staff
automatically became commander in chief in wartime. Moltke had been an ardent
proponent of war during the assassination crisis. However, his leadership on the
battlefield in the opening stage of the conflict left much to be desired.
The French commander was General Joseph
Jacques Césaire Joffre, who had served a considerable amount of time in France's
colonies. Joffre was France's foremost champion of the offensive, believing that
the speed and morale of an advancing infantry was the key to victory. However,
he ignored the effects of firepower from modern weapons and sent his troops in
their traditional uniforms of blue coats and red trousers to face German machine
guns and rapid-firing artillery. The results were devastating.
A2 | Invasion of Belgium |
On August 4, 1914, the Germans invaded
Belgium. They encountered spirited Belgian resistance at and near Liège and
suffered heavy losses in repeated attempts to storm the forts. However, the
Germans had secretly built a number of heavy cannons that fired 931-kg
(2,052-lb) shells and were the most powerful siege artillery to appear in Europe
at the time. Forged in the Krupp munitions factories, the terrifying new weapon
was dubbed “Big Bertha” after Gustav Krupp's wife. After the Germans dragged the
huge guns into position, they knocked out the forts by August 16. The
gray-uniformed tide of German troops swept on past Liège and fanned out into the
wide plains to the west.
King Albert I of Belgium had wanted all
six divisions of the Belgian field army concentrated to defend Liège to the
last. If this had happened, the Germans would have had to overcome this
resistance before they could have brought their big guns within range of the
forts, and a serious delay might have resulted. However, Albert did not have
time to enforce his commands on a reluctant staff, and as a result, the
resistance of Liège served to delay the Germans only slightly. The Belgian field
army withdrew into the fortified camp of Antwerp, where two German corps
besieged it while the main German advance flowed past toward the open French
frontier.
A3 | Battle of the Frontiers |
The first bloody encounters between
Germany and France occurred in the last two weeks of August 1914, in a series of
engagements known as the Battle of the Frontiers. On August 14 the French
launched an offensive on its eastern border into Lorraine. The French First and
Second armies had some initial success but a counterattack by the German Sixth
and Seventh armies threw them back across the frontier on August 20. Losing
140,000 men in six days, the French army fell back toward Paris in disarray,
with the Germans in hot pursuit.
Meanwhile, to the northwest the German
Fourth and Fifth armies were moving slowly forward into the Ardennes forest. To
the west of them the right wing, made up of the German First, Second, and Third
armies, was still wheeling around to deliver the decisive blow. The French
launched a series of desperate counterattacks against the advancing German
forces as they crossed the Belgian frontier into France. These counterattacks
cost the French enormous losses, and still the Germans forged on.
On the French line, the French Fifth
Army held the extreme west, extending to the Sambre River. To the west of the
French Fifth was the newly arrived British Expeditionary Force (BEF). Both the
French and British forces began to feel the pressure of the advancing German
right wing. The outer element of the advancing force was the German First Army,
and next in line was the German Second Army. The German Third Army linked these
two wheeling armies with the rest of the German troops. From August 20 through
23, there was bloody and rather confused fighting along the frontiers, notably
at Charleroi and Mons and in the Ardennes. The Allied armies then retreated
toward the Marne River northeast of Paris.
The Battle of the Frontiers ended the
French hope of driving deep into Alsace and Lorraine in order to advance into
the center of Germany. Moltke's headquarters considered the battle a decisive
German victory. Joffre, on the other hand, knew that his armies had been badly
mauled but were still full of fight. He energetically set to work to collect
troops from his right and center in order to gather a new army, the Sixth, for a
counterattack against the German right wing. Joffre planned to fight in the
shelter of the fortifications of Paris. The French government had fled Paris,
which was preparing to defend itself against the Germans.
Meanwhile, the German Second Army was
checked for 36 hours by a violent French counterattack in the Battle of Guise,
while the German First Army pressed forward eagerly. This opened a gap between
the German First and Second armies, eventually exposing part of the First Army
to attack by the French Sixth Army in the Paris area.
A4 | First Battle of the Marne |
With the gap opening between the two
German armies, Joffre seized his opportunity. On September 6, he ordered all of
the French armies and the BEF to launch a general counterattack. This action led
to what became known as the First Battle of the Marne. The French Sixth Army
moved out from Paris eastward against the German First Army's flank and rear,
while the other armies advanced directly against the enemy’s front. Troops were
rushed to the fronts from Paris by all available means, including taxicabs.
Most of the German First Army had
crossed the Marne River. It then began hastily moving back north of the Marne
River to face the French threat. The French Fifth Army threw back Germany’s
Second Army. The gap between the two German armies widened. The BEF was opposite
this gap, and if it had moved forward into it with speed and determination, the
German First Army would probably have been destroyed. However, the BEF
leadership was overcautious, and the opportunity was lost. Fierce fighting took
place along most of the front during the next few days.
Moltke was alarmed by the First Army's
situation, and because of faulty communications he was unable to find out
exactly what was happening. So he sent a staff officer to visit the three
right-wing armies (First, Second, and Third), with absolute power to give orders
in his name. Although the Germans were making gains against the French on the
Ourcq River, a tributary of the Marne, the British were threatening the German
First Army's left flank. The Second Army was unable to advance. Moltke's
representative ordered a withdrawal, which began on September 9. Moltke followed
up the order by directing a general retreat for the whole German line behind the
Aisne River.
The First Battle of the Marne, which the
French called the Miracle of the Marne, was one of the pivotal battles in
history. The battle destroyed the German war plan for a quick and decisive
victory over France.
The Allies defeated Germany at the First
Battle of Marne for two tactical reasons. The first was the fact that the German
First Army drove north and east of Paris instead of following Schlieffen's
original plan for a wide sweep to envelop the capital city from the south and
west. The second was the opening of a 50-km (30-mi) gap between the German First
and Second armies—a gap that the BEF and the French Fifth Army were able to
exploit.
The more fundamental causes of Germany’s
debacle were problems with logistics and communications, which paradoxically
were the result of its stunning success on the battlefield at the beginning of
the war. The exhausted German First Army under General Alexander von Kluck had
swept 350 km (220 mi) from the German-Belgian frontier to the Marne River with
such extraordinary speed that it outran its supply lines and communications
network. Even if it had thrown the French army back at the Marne, it is unlikely
that it would have been able to resume its offensive.
Some of Moltke’s decisions also weakened
Germany’s position. When Russia invaded the German province of East Prussia in
August, Moltke rushed several divisions to the eastern front; those divisions
would have been of value to him on the Marne. In addition, he had allowed Crown
Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, who commanded the German left flank, to continue
offensive operations against the French armies in Alsace and Lorraine, instead
of shifting Rupprecht's troops to the decisive First Battle of the Marne. On
September 14, after Joffre's armies had crossed the Aisne River and were
attacking the new German positions, Moltke was relieved of his command and
replaced by General Erich von Falkenhayn.
A5 | Race to the Sea |
The fighting on the Aisne continued
inconclusively until September 18, 1914. During September and October, a
succession of clashes, known as the Race to the Sea, took place as each side
began shifting troops from east to west in an attempt to overwhelm the other’s
western flank. Each attempt was outflanked when opposing reinforcements arrived
in the nick of time. The process stopped when the western flanks of the two
armies reached the North Sea. The BEF took up positions near Ypres (see
Ieper), Belgium. The Belgian army, having escaped from Antwerp, which
surrendered to the Germans on October 10, occupied a short front on the Yser
River. Both sides made further violent, costly, and unsuccessful attempts to
break through enemy lines. The final two-week series of German assaults, known
as the First Battle of Ypres, was ended in mid-November by rain and snow. The
opposing armies literally sank into the ground, facing each other in a line of
trenches. Thus began the deadly stalemate on the western front, which endured
for three bloody years.
B | Events Outside the West |
B1 | Battles of Tannenberg and Masurian Lakes |
The German war plan for a rapid victory
over France was based on the gamble that Germany could temporarily protect its
eastern frontier against the much larger Russian forces until it could transfer
its armies in the west. That assumption was almost shattered from August 17 to
August 22 when two Russian armies advanced into the German province of East
Prussia.
The German general staff had taken a
calculated risk in leaving the defense of East Prussia to an army of about
200,000 men. Although the two Russian armies that penetrated East Prussia in the
second half of August numbered about 350,000 men, the total Russian soldiers
under arms at the beginning of the war was 1.5 million. At the end of
mobilization that number was swollen to 4.5 million, with another 2 million in
reserve. It was evident that if the battle in the west was prolonged, the German
forces in the east would be dangerously outnumbered.
The Russian war plan called for a
two-pronged attack into East Prussia as soon as Russia could mobilize. The
Russian commander in chief was Grand Duke Nicholas, a cousin of the tsar. One
object of the Russian attack on East Prussia was to fulfill Russian promises to
relieve the French by engaging the Germans in the east. Another object was to
clear East Prussia of German forces, so as to straighten and shorten the Russian
front by bringing it forward to the Vistula (Wisła) River. Such an offensive
would ensure that the decisive battles in the war would be fought on German
rather than Russian territory. Once ensconced on the Vistula, the Russian army
would be well positioned to drive deep into the heart of Germany and force an
early end to the war in the east.
The grand duke assigned two armies to
this task. They were commanded by General Pavel Rennenkampf and General
Alexander Samsonov. Rennenkampf was to attack straight to the west while
Samsonov moved north from Poland around the water barrier of the Masurian Lakes.
Each of these armies was marginally superior in strength to that of the German
army in East Prussia, although it had the advantage of a central position.
Rennenkampf crossed the frontier on
August 17, and on August 20 he gained a partial success at Gumbinnen.
Rennenkampf’s troops inflicted heavy casualties on the German Eighth Army. This
setback, plus the news on the same day that Samsonov was over the border and
advancing, unnerved the German commander General Max von Prittwitz. Against the
vigorous protests of his staff, he decided to withdraw to the Vistula River,
thus abandoning all of East Prussia to the enemy. Moltke, informed by telephone
of this decision, immediately ordered Prittwitz relieved of his command. Moltke
sent two military leaders who would play a central role in directing Germany's
military forces for the rest of the war: General Paul von Hindenburg and his
chief of staff, Erich Ludendorff.
Hindenburg and Ludendorff endorsed a
daring plan by a senior staff officer, Lieutenant Colonel Max Hoffmann. Because
Rennenkampf, who thought that victory was already his, had halted to regroup,
Hoffmann suggested diverting German troops to the south by train to destroy the
Russian Second Army and then redeploying them to the north against the Russian
First Army before Rennenkampf could react. From August 26 to August 30 the
German Eighth Army, which had been sped southward by railway, overwhelmed and
virtually destroyed the Russian Second Army at the Battle of Tannenberg. The
Germans took over 100,000 prisoners, and most of the rest of the troops were
killed. Samsonov, the Russian commander, committed suicide during what was to
become one of the most decisive battles of the war. After defeating the Russian
Second Army, the German army moved back to the north to smash Rennenkampf’s
First Army. The Russians met the main force of the German Eighth Army on
September 9 and quickly began to withdraw from East Prussia. The Russian First
Army was back across the Russian border by September 15, but they had suffered
heavy losses in what became known as the First Battle of the Masurian
Lakes.
Although the Russian forces greatly
outnumbered their German counterparts, they were inadequately trained, poorly
led, and lacking in adequate weapons and supplies. The Russian armies' brief
offensive into East Prussia helped the Allies in the west because Germany had to
divert troops to the east. But the Battles of Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes
dashed the Russian plan of driving deep into German territory. The ultimate
consequence was the establishment of a stationary front on the Russian side of
the frontier that would hold for the next three years. The brief campaign on the
eastern front also established the reputations of Hindenburg and Ludendorff, who
acquired increasing authority in the German war effort.
B2 | Operations in Galicia |
Meanwhile, in Galicia, a region of
Austria-Hungary, Russian armies led by General Nikolai Ivanov, clashed with the
advancing Austro-Hungarian forces of General Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, who
was chief of the general staff of the Austro-Hungarian Imperial Armies. Conrad
wanted to use military action to restore the fortunes of Austria-Hungary. He
hoped to demonstrate in a dramatic way the vigor and vitality of the
Austro-Hungarian army, whose effectiveness as a fighting force had long been
considered doubtful. However, his goal was beyond the capabilities of his
multinational armies: Over half of the army comprised soldiers who spoke a
different language from their German-speaking commanders, and their loyalty to
the Habsburg state was questionable.
In pursuit of his objective, Conrad
assigned almost half of his forces to invade and destroy Serbia and deployed the
rest against the Russians in Galicia. Austro-Hungarian forces, however, suffered
a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Serbs, while Conrad found himself with
insufficient troops to deal with Ivanov. By September 11, the Russians had
driven the Austro-Hungarians back to the Carpathian Mountains. The
Austro-Hungarians suffered heavy losses, particularly among the officer cadre,
and thereafter the Austro-Hungarian army was less effective.
The Russians now prepared to invade the
German province of Silesia. Hindenburg and Ludendorff reacted to this threat by
using the excellent German railroad system to shift troops from East Prussia to
southern Poland to counter the Russians. The troops formed a new army, the
Ninth, which launched a drive toward Warsaw, then a Russian city. The Russians
halted the German effort, but their counterattack failed. A renewed German
attack in mid-November began the Battle of Łódz, which ended with a Russian
withdrawal and a temporary lull on the eastern front.
The Austro-Hungarians launched a new
invasion of Serbia in the first week of November. They again encountered stiff
resistance from the Serbs, who counterattacked on December 3. By December 15 the
Serbs had driven the Austro-Hungarians out of Serbia.
The Hindenburg-Ludendorff team had used
the prestige of their victory at Tannenberg to bring strong pressure on William
II and General Falkenhayn for more troops in the east. This pressure evolved
into a struggle for power between Falkenhayn on one hand and Hindenburg and
Ludendorff on the other. This power struggle was to dominate and frustrate the
German military effort throughout 1915 and much of 1916.
B3 | War at Sea |
In the war at sea, the British and
German battle fleets confronted each other across the North Sea, as they would
continue to do throughout the war. The British fleet operated from its bases in
the islands and harbors at the northern end of Britain, and the German fleet was
based on Germany's North Sea coast. On August 28, 1914, in the first major naval
battle, the British sank or damaged several German cruisers and destroyers in
the Heligoland (Helgoland) Bight (see Helgoland Bight, Battle of).
Britain implemented a sea blockade of
Germany at the beginning of the war. Originally intended to deny the Central
Powers access to munitions and other war-related material, the sea blockade was
eventually extended to include most foodstuffs in an effort to starve the
Germans into submission. Germany also began to use submarines called
Unterseeboot (undersea boats, or U-boats) to try to prevent supplies from
reaching the British Isles. At this time, Germany was conducting its submarine
warfare by international rules, which included stopping and boarding merchant
ships to check the cargo, then removing the crew before sinking the ship.
On November 1, 1914, a German cruiser
squadron under Admiral Graf Maximilian von Spee destroyed a British squadron off
Coronel, Chile (see Battle of Coronel). On December 8, however, British
battle cruisers destroyed a German squadron in the Battle of Falkland Islands.
In 1914 Allied command of the sea remained relatively undisputed.
A naval operation in the Mediterranean
Sea, however, turned out decidedly in Germany's favor. Two German warships, the
Goeben and the Breslau, succeeded in evading British pursuers at
the outset of the war and took refuge in the waters at Constantinople (now
İstanbul). When the warships arrived, Ottoman leaders, anxious to recover lands
they had lost in the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913, were encouraged by German
promises to restore their lost territory. In October 1914 the Ottoman Empire
entered the war on the side of the Central Powers. The two German ships, flying
the Ottoman flag, bombarded ports along the Russian Black Sea coast on October
30. Russia, Britain, and France declared war on the Ottoman Empire. In November
British troops from India encountered minimal resistance when they landed in
Ottoman-controlled Mesopotamia (later Iraq and Syria). In December 1914 the
Russians defeated the Ottomans in an action at Sarikamis, near the Caucasus
Mountains.
B4 | The Entry of the Ottoman Empire |
When the Ottoman Empire joined the war
on the side of the Central Powers in October 1914, it dealt the Allies a harsh
blow. Through its control of the Dardanelles, a strait that connects the Aegean
Sea with the Sea of Marmara, the Ottoman Empire was able to cut off Russia from
the Mediterranean Sea and make it much more difficult for Russia’s British and
French allies to send supplies and munitions. It also forced Britain to divert
troops that might otherwise have been used on the western front to Egypt and
Mesopotamia for use against the Ottoman Empire.
Officials in London and Paris were also
concerned that when the Ottoman Empire, an Islamic state, intervened on the side
of Germany, it would inspire the Muslim populations of the British and French
empires to rise up against their colonial masters. The sultan of the Ottoman
Empire also held the Islamic title of caliph, the supreme leader of the Muslim
community (see Caliphate). After the Ottomans entered the war, the sultan
proclaimed a jihad (holy war) against those countries at war with the
Ottoman Empire.
The Ottoman Empire’s entry into the
war, however, did not dramatically tip the balance in favor of the Central
Powers. While Britain diverted troops to the Ottoman front, it still honored its
commitment to the French in the west. The sultan's call for an Islamic jihad
against the Allies fell on deaf ears among the Muslims in French North Africa
and British India. Many North Africans and Indians fought valiantly in the
French and British armies on the western front. At the same time, some leaders
of the Arabic-speaking Muslims in the southern portion of the Ottoman Empire
began to view the war as an opportunity to gain independence from the
empire.
B5 | War in Asia and the Pacific |
Japan declared war on Germany on August
23, 1914. It joined the Allied coalition in the hope of obtaining the scattered
German possessions in East Asia and the Pacific. Japanese forces promptly
attacked the German-controlled islands in the Pacific north of the equator—the
Marshalls, the Marianas, and the Carolines—as well as the German economic
concession of Kiaochow on China's Shantung Peninsula. Since Germany was fighting
for its very existence in a two-front war in Europe, it could not spare
resources and manpower to defend its far-flung holdings in Asia. Japan was
therefore ideally situated to expand the frontiers of its colonial empire.
VII | PHASE TWO: DEADLOCK |
By the end of 1914, the two sides settled
into trenches and faced each other across no man’s land, the area between the
trenches on the western and eastern fronts. A war of attrition was underway,
with each side trying to wear down the other. This harsh reality had a
devastating effect on the morale of the soldiers on both sides. At the
beginning, most people expected that the war would be over by Christmas 1914.
This expectation prompted an outburst of patriotic enthusiasm on the part of the
soldiers headed to the front as well as on the part of the civilians left
behind. Young men eagerly signed up to achieve the type of glory that was
associated with fighting for one's country.
However, when the early offensives failed
and the casualties mounted, a widespread sense of despair developed in the
trenches. The public did not know the extent of the despair because governments
concealed it from them by imposing rigid censorship. Governments prevented news
reporting of the slaughter at the front and intercepted mail from soldiers that
contained messages of gloom and doom.
The Prussian military theorist Karl von
Clausewitz once defined war as an extension of politics. But the political
purposes of World War I had been lost amid the enormous death and destruction.
The assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand and the rivalry between
Austria-Hungary and Serbia in the Balkans were but distant memories with no
relevance to the traumatic experience of soldiers on the battlefield. As the two
sides confronted each other in trenches and periodically engaged in suicidal
attempts to break the deadlock, the soldiers lost their original enthusiasm for
the war effort. By 1917 the growing sense of despair and lack of purpose
resulted in widespread discontent in the French and Russian armies.
A | Causes of the Deadlock |
For three years of continuous warfare,
neither side succeeded in gaining a decisive success on either of the main
European fronts, in spite of the millions of lives sacrificed. By the end of
1914, the western front had solidified into two deeply entrenched systems of
fortifications running west to east from the English Channel to the border of
Switzerland. The fortifications consisted of numerous parallel lines of
interconnected trenches protected by lines of barbed wire. The leaders on both
sides thought that the way to achieve a breakthrough was to penetrate enemy
lines and gain access to open country. In the open country, they believed that
they could regain the ability to maneuver. They also thought that the only way
to penetrate enemy lines was to start a massive artillery bombardment of a
chosen sector and to follow it up with a massive infantry assault.
However, both sides had equal forces, so
they could repel enemy attempts to overwhelm entrenched defensive positions. The
tragic equilibrium, as it has been called, caused continued assaults. With each
assault, both sides attempted to improve upon the preceding one, chiefly by
adding more artillery shells to the bombardment and more men to the attack. As
more soldiers were killed in futile efforts to overrun enemy positions, leaders
continued the same pattern because they felt that they had to prove that it
would succeed, thus justifying the slaughter of their troops.
The reason that the leaders continued
using this suicidal strategy for the remainder of the war was that no
alternative appeared to exist. Maintaining fixed positions in the trenches was
no solution, since it produced only boredom and eventually despair. In addition,
as each army appointed new leaders, they resumed the deadly offensives to try to
earn a place in history by masterminding a breakthrough that would end the
war.
Another factor in the deadlock on the
western front was that Germany had occupied almost all of Belgium and parts of
northern France since the beginning of the war. The French people and their
government did not want to entertain any war aim other than recovering the
occupied territory and its inhabitants. France's preoccupation with this goal
hampered British-French strategy.
The French commander in chief on the
northeastern front in France considered that area the only front worthy of
French resources, and he also felt that the British should loyally accept the
same viewpoint. The British, however, had developed other war aims to break the
stalemate that did not always coincide with those of their French allies. For
example, officials in London wanted to concentrate on the British war effort
against the Ottoman Empire. To the French, the war in the Middle East was much
less important than the struggle to liberate the occupied portions of
northeastern France. As a result, the two allies continually disputed military
priorities.
On the eastern front, there was also
stalemate, although geographically the armies had plenty of room to maneuver.
The Russians followed a strategy that had brought them success against previous
invasions from the west in other wars. Russian armies would withdraw eastward
deep into Russia's interior, fighting bloody defensive battles as opportunity
offered. Then, as the invading armies wasted away, Russia's vast reservoirs of
manpower would refill the Russian ranks.
In World War I, however, the strategy
did not work. Russian industry could not furnish enough weapons or ammunition to
supply the reserve of manpower. On the other hand, the periodic British and
French offensives in the west prevented Germany from transferring sufficient
forces to the eastern front. Without these troops, the Germans could not shatter
the Russian armies and achieve victory. Thus, the exchange of fighting
continued, and neither side gained a decisive edge on the eastern front until
the Russian Revolutions of 1917.
B | Eastern Front, 1915 |
German general Falkenhayn's original
purpose for 1915 was to renew the offensive in the west before Britain put new
wartime volunteers, who had finished their training, into active service. In the
east, however, Hindenburg and Ludendorff urged a full-scale offensive to
eliminate the Russians as a serious threat. To ensure success, every available
German division not needed for a secure defensive on the western front was
required. Germany decided to focus its attention on the east.
Germany and Austria-Hungary launched a
massive offensive on May 2, 1915, in the area of the cities of Gorlice (see
Görlitz) and Tarnów, south of Warsaw. The Russians were taken by
surprise, and the German and Austro-Hungarian armies forced the Russians to
retreat. During the following four months, the Russians were driven back more
than 300 km (200 mi). Their casualties were estimated to be about 2 million. The
Russians lost even more weapons and war material, which were less easily
replaced than their manpower losses. When the Germans stopped advancing in
September, Russia had lost control of Poland. In response to this military
disaster, the tsar relieved Grand Duke Nicholas of the supreme command and
ordered him to assume command against the Ottomans on the front at the Caucasus
Mountains.
C | Western Front, 1915 |
Germany faced a great disadvantage
because it had to fight a war on two fronts. At the beginning of the war, the
German command moved German units from the western offensive to the east,
weakening the already exhausted German army in the west. Germany was continually
stretched by having to divide its military strength against two adversaries. As
long as Germany faced enemies on both sides, it was never able to concentrate
sufficient forces either against the British and French in the west or against
the Russians in the east to achieve military objectives.
The Germans were confined to using
defensive measures in the west during 1915, except for occasional local attacks
to keep the Allies off balance. The Allies, however, made several determined
attempts to penetrate the German front. All of these followed much the same
futile pattern. First came the bombardment and infantry assault, with moderate
initial progress that soon bogged down in the shell-torn ground along the front.
Then, German reserves would counterattack, causing the Allies to lose most of
the ground gained. Finally, there was once again deadlock, with little to show
for the lives lost except minor scattered changes in the original front. One
reason for these successive and invariably costly failures was the effectiveness
of the machine gun as a defensive weapon. One gunner could mow down a hundred
attacking soldiers in a minute. Furthermore, the preliminary artillery
bombardment by the Allies warned the Germans where the attack was about to occur
and enabled them to assemble their reserves in readiness.
At the Battle of Neuve Chapelle in
France, in March 1915, the British did achieve surprise simply by limiting the
opening artillery to a short intense bombardment. As a result, the leading
British infantry units broke through the German front, one of the few times when
this was accomplished during more than three years of deadlock. By the end of
the battle the British had taken a small salient (an area that projects
outward into enemy territory) 1,800 m (2,000 yards) wide and 1,100 m (1,200
yards) deep and captured 1,200 German soldiers. But the costs of this small
advance through the German trenches were 7,000 British and 4,200 Indian
casualties, again because of the overwhelming firepower of German units in fixed
positions.
In 1915 only one attempt at military
innovation provided any change in the pattern of stalemate. In April, during the
Second Battle of Ypres, the Germans used cylinders of poison chlorine gas
against their enemy, introducing the concept of chemical warfare. The gas attack
fell on Algerian units of the French army, which dissolved in panic and opened a
wide gap in the Allied front. The German general staff, however, had put little
faith in its new weapon and therefore was unprepared to exploit the success.
Canadian units of the British Second Army acted quickly and closed the gap,
eliminating the enemy's advantage before the Germans seized the
opportunity.
Thereafter, both sides used gas
throughout the war. The Allies first used it extensively under British command
at the Battle of Loos in France in September 1915. Gas masks soon became a
standard part of every soldier's gear. At first the gas attacks caused
widespread panic among troops in the trenches, but the masks did provide some
protection. Planning a gas attack was exceedingly difficult because the wind
often blew the gas the wrong way. The physical effects of gas attacks included
temporary and even permanent blindness, and severe damage to the lungs that
required a long and painful recovery. Mustard gas, first used in 1917, caused
blistering of the skin and prompt asphyxiation for those who inhaled it.
During 1915 the French constantly
pressed for additional British troops on the western front. Under this pressure,
British strength on the battle line rose from 10 divisions at the beginning of
the year to about 36 at its end. Britain drew additional troops from overseas
sources, such as Canada and India. The Territorial Army in the British Isles
also supplied more troops as its divisions completed the required additional
training. In addition, in August 1914, the secretary of state for war, Field
Marshal Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchener, called for men to enlist in the army.
These troops became known as the New Army, or Kitchener’s armies, and the first
became available for service in 1915.
Despite the increased assistance, the
French called 1915 “the futile year” because military results were small
compared to the expenditure of lives and material. During that year, governments
learned that they needed to organize the production of war materials. In order
to supply the huge amounts of weapons and ammunition needed by both sides,
governments implemented strict control of every means of production and
rationing of civilian requirements. They rationed food, which led to so-called
wheatless and meatless days. In addition, they severely restricted the use of
gasoline for non-essential purposes.
D | Other Developments, 1915 |
During 1915, new campaigns began, new
fronts opened, and new countries joined the war. In February Germany began using
unrestricted submarine warfare—they sank British and sometimes neutral ships
without removing the crew first. In March and April, Britain opened a new front
when it attempted to invade the Gallipoli Peninsula of the Ottoman Empire. In
May 1915 Italy entered the war on the Allied side, which forced Austria-Hungary
to divert troops to a new front in the mountains along their common border.
However, the advantage that the Allies gained from Italy was balanced when
Bulgaria joined the war on the side of the Central Powers in October. When
Bulgaria declared war against Serbia, it opened another front in the
Balkans.
D1 | Submarine Warfare |
By 1915 Germany was feeling the
effects of the Allied blockade. Since Germany lacked the conventional naval
power necessary to challenge the British fleet, they turned to the submarine as
their chosen sea-weapon. Germany relied on submarines to sink Allied ships
carrying food and necessary supplies to Britain and France. Their goal was to
interrupt Allied trade by targeting merchant ships. In February 1915 Germany
proclaimed that the waters around the islands of Britain would be considered a
war zone. Every Allied merchant ship in the zone was subject to being torpedoed
without warning, and neutral ships operated at their own risk. Germany then
began sinking ships without regard to the safety of crew or passengers. They
also ignored the protests of neutral countries, which claimed that unrestricted
submarine warfare violated international law.
The submarine proved a capable
destroyer of merchant ships. To protect against submarine warfare, Britain
labored to provide mines and detection devices to aircraft and antisubmarine
ships. The toll of destruction mounted steadily throughout 1915, while German
shipyards strained to add to the submarine fleet.
From February 1915 through September
1915, German submarines sunk more than 350 ships of Allied and neutral
countries. Included among the victims was the British passenger liner
Lusitania, sunk in the Irish Sea on May 7, 1915. The loss of 1,198 men,
women, and children, including 128 American citizens, produced vigorous protests
from the U.S. government. Late in September 1915 the German government finally
agreed to end the policy of unrestricted submarine warfare. However, these
orders were not always obeyed, and tension between Germany and the United States
increased.
D2 | Gallipoli Campaign |
At the beginning of 1915 three members
of the British Cabinet had already glimpsed, if not yet fully accepted, the grim
possibilities of the trench deadlock. These men were the war secretary, Lord
Kitchener; the secretary of the war cabinet, Sir Maurice Hankey; and the first
lord of the admiralty, Winston Churchill. They knew that a successful move
against the Ottoman Empire at the Dardanelles Strait, which links the
Mediterranean and Black seas, could give the Allies a direct route to Russia.
Allied and American industrial sources then could supply the Russian armies
through the Black Sea. The three men hoped that gaining access to Russia would
convince the Balkan countries that were still neutral in the spring of 1915,
such as Bulgaria and Romania, to join the Allies. Austria-Hungary, the weak
partner of the Central Powers, then would be vulnerable to attack from the
south, and Germany would be confronted with yet another front if it tried to
support its failing ally.
The Dardanelles Strait was defended by
a series of forts equipped with heavy guns. The forts, although old, had been
improved under the direction of a German military and naval mission. The Ottoman
army was composed of tough, dependable fighting men. Part of the army, however,
was engaged against the Russians on the Caucasian frontier and another part
against the British in Mesopotamia. In addition, the British forces would have
the advantage of surprise because they were striking from the sea against the
land. Although the operation should have succeeded, problems with the British
decision-making process denied the enterprise both careful planning and the
element of surprise.
First, general officers serving in
France violently opposed the plan because they wanted British troops to be sent
only to the western front. Kitchener was at first unwilling to override them,
denying British troops to the operation. As a result, the operation started out
as a purely naval enterprise under Churchill. After a series of preliminary
bombardments, which served little purpose except to alert the enemy, a strong
British-French battle fleet, consisting of 16 battleships, entered the
Dardanelles on March 18. It had virtually silenced the forts when some of the
ships blundered into a minefield and three ships sank. Admiral Sir John De
Robeck, the fleet commander, drew back.
Historians debate what would have
happened if the admiral had attacked instead of withdrawing. Some argue that the
Ottoman Empire would have been out of the war. The forts had nearly exhausted
their ammunition, and there was panic in Constantinople. Kitchener, however, had
belatedly changed his mind about sending troops, and so Robeck decided to wait
until they arrived.
When the British force under General
Sir Ian Hamilton finally landed on April 25, the Ottoman troops had had more
than a month to prepare under the leadership of German general Liman von Sanders
and the commander of the 19th division, Mustafa Kemal (later Mustafa Kemal
Atatürk). British, French, Australian, and New Zealand troops went ashore at
various landings along the western side of the Gallipoli Peninsula, including
Anzac Cove and Cape Helles. The Allied force, however, was small, hampered by
steep cliffs and deep ravines, and pinned down after fierce fighting. Batches of
Allied reinforcements arrived, but they were never on time or in large enough
numbers to take the advantage. In August another landing at Suvla Bay, farther
up the peninsula, failed. Hamilton was replaced with Sir Charles Monro, who
recommended evacuating Gallipoli. The Allies withdrew from the peninsula during
December 1915 and early January 1916, and the Gallipoli Campaign ended. The
British Empire had 205,000 casualties, including troops from New Zealand,
Australia, and India. The French suffered 47,000 casualties, including troops
from French colonial holdings. The official government casualty figure for the
Ottoman Empire was more than 250,000 casualties.
D3 | Italy and Bulgaria |
In May 1915 Italy entered the war on
the Allied side. Italy had been a member of the German alliance system from 1882
to 1914 but had opted for neutrality when the war began. Britain and France
induced Italy to enter the war on their side by secretly offering territory in
the Alps and along the Adriatic coast they hoped to capture from
Austria-Hungary. They also offered Italy territory in the Ottoman Empire if it
was partitioned.
Italy’s only available operational
theater was its alpine front with Austria-Hungary. The mountainous terrain
limited fighting between Italian and Austro-Hungarian forces to the Isonzo River
front near the Austrian town of Gorizia. The armies fought a total of 11 battles
of the Isonzo, four of them during 1915. There were heavy losses on both sides,
and no significant gains for the Italians, who were consistently on the
offensive. However, since Austria-Hungary had to defend this front, they had
less men and manpower to use against Russia.
Meanwhile, in October 1915 Bulgaria
joined German and Austro-Hungarian troops in a renewed attack on Serbia.
Bulgaria became part of the Central Powers because Germany offered it territory
held by Greece and Serbia if they won the war. Bulgaria was also impressed with
the recent Central Powers’ successes in Gallipoli and Italy. With Bulgaria’s
help, Serbia was at last overrun. British and French troops landed at the Greek
port of Salonika the same month to try to help Serbia, but they were too late.
The Central Powers gained control of territory extending from the Baltic Sea to
the Persian Gulf, and Russia was cut off from the other Allied countries.
E | Western Front, 1916 |
At the beginning of 1916, more soldiers
of the British New Army became available as they finished their training. The
British decided to focus on a new and mighty effort to drive through the western
front. French forces were to join in the offensive, which was originally set for
mid-August to give time for thorough preparation. Sir Douglas Haig replaced Sir
John French as commander of British troops in France. Sir John French had been
discredited by the failures of 1915.
However, Germany acted first under the
direction of General Falkenhayn. Falkenhayn felt that the time had come to mount
an offensive against France before more British soldiers could tip the scales of
battle. Falkenhayn considered that although the Russian armies had not been
beaten, Russia's power to take the offensive had been broken, and it had
effectively lost its strength. For 1916 he proposed a German attack on the
French fortress of Verdun, one of the historic guardian fortresses of France.
Falkenhayn believed the French general staff, for moral and patriotic reasons,
would “have to throw in every man they have” to retain Verdun.
He was correct in that prediction. The
defense of Verdun, whose strategic significance was minimal, became a powerful
symbol of the national will of the French people. The French prime minister,
Aristide Briand, warned Joffre that if he surrendered Verdun, he would be
dismissed immediately as French commander. Falkenhayn did not plan a headlong
assault but instead planned that his troops would exert a steady pressure
supported by massive artillery fire. Falkenhayn proposed to draw wave after wave
of France's limited manpower into his operation over a period of weeks and
months. He predicted that “the forces of France will be bled to death” in his
Verdun offensive without a corresponding loss of German lives.
E1 | Battle of Verdun |
The first German attack on Verdun
began on February 21, 1916. The Germans advanced several miles and captured Fort
Douaumont on February 25. On that day, General Henri Philippe Pétain arrived
with Joffre's order to take command of the disheartened garrison of Verdun.
Under Pétain’s leadership, the French defenders recovered confidence. The
Germans found that for further gains, they would have to pay the price of rising
casualties.
In April Pétain was promoted, and he
handed over command of the Verdun defense to General Robert Nivelle in the
beginning of May. Falkenhayn planned a new attack for early June. However, on
June 4 Falkenhayn’s belief that Russia was immobilized collapsed under the
impact of a sudden overwhelming Russian offensive in Galicia, a region of
Austria-Hungary. More than 40 Russian divisions under General Aleksey Brusilov
broke through at a weak point from which Austro-Hungarian troops had earlier
been withdrawn to fight on the Italian front.
The Brusilov offensive answered the
urgent pleas of French president Raymond Poincaré, who had asked the tsar for
help in relieving the situation at Verdun. Brusilov gained complete surprise
after a short but intense artillery bombardment. He succeeded in pushing back
the Austro-Hungarian army almost 100 km (60 mi)—the most successful Russian
offensive of the war. The Germans suspended their attacks at Verdun and
dispatched divisions to the eastern front. Brusilov's offensive suffered by the
end of September 1916 because the Russian railways were insufficient to
transport enough troops and supplies in time.
On June 22 the Germans renewed the
offensive at Verdun, but they made no progress. In August William II dismissed
General Falkenhayn as chief of the general staff and replaced him with
Hindenburg. Ludendorff became Hindenburg’s first quartermaster general. Two
powerful French counterattacks in October and December recovered almost all the
ground lost to the Germans and reestablished the lines of deadlock virtually
where they had been in February. The total casualties of the Verdun fighting on
both sides are estimated at more than 700,000 men, of which approximately
377,000 were French soldiers and an estimated 337,000 were German soldiers.
E2 | First Battle of the Somme |
The main scene of action on the
western front shifted from Verdun north to the valley of the Somme River. The
British had moved the date for their offensive forward to help take the pressure
off the French army at Verdun. The offensive began on the morning of July 1,
1916, following seven days of massive artillery bombardment.
This was the baptism of fire for
Britain's New Army, the young volunteers who were to become known to their
country as the lost generation. On the first day of battle, the British suffered
60,000 casualties (including 20,000 deaths) for a gain of no more than a few
yards of ground scattered along the front. The First Battle of the Somme was a
repetition on a broader scale of the local offensives of 1915. It continued
intermittently until mid-November. When it lapsed into resumed deadlock, the
British casualties were estimated at almost 420,000 men. The much smaller French
force operating on the British right flank had almost 195,000 casualties.
Estimates suggest that the German casualty figures were about the same as the
Allies.
On September 15, 1916, during the
First Battle of the Somme, the British gave the tank its first trial in combat.
Although the German soldiers fled in panic at the sight of the strange-looking
new machines, most of the tanks bogged down or came to a stop because of
mechanical defects and inexperienced crews. For the next year, tanks represented
a great disappointment because of their unwieldy operation. The Germans
originally dismissed them as signs of weakness on the part of infantry but
eventually developed their own model, which was put into operation in the spring
of 1918. By that time, however, the British had worked the defects out of their
machines, and the tank was to become the weapon that helped to end the trench
deadlock in the last year of the war.
The enormous losses sustained at
Verdun and at the Somme prompted the French command to move Joffre offstage by
making him a marshal of France, the country’s highest-ranking army officer. The
French command then turned to General Robert Nivelle, who had replaced Pétain as
commander of the French forces at Verdun. At Verdun, Nivelle immediately
launched a series of vigorous counterattacks, which eventually forced the
Germans to adopt defensive tactics. Nivelle’s success at Verdun convinced him of
the wisdom of massive offensives as a strategy for victory. Under Nivelle's
command, Fort Douaumont and the rest of the German gains at Verdun were
triumphantly recovered.
The Germans did not break through the
fortress of Verdun but the cost to the defending French army was terrible.
Ninety thousand men a week were sent to Verdun along the road that became known
as La Voie Sacrée (the Sacred Way) because it was the only road that
remained open. One of the thousands of French prisoners of war taken at Verdun
was Captain Charles de Gaulle, later president of France.
F | Other Events, 1916 |
In 1916 the war raged in areas beyond
the major theaters of combat in France and Russia. A bloody series of battles
were fought between Ottoman and Russian forces in Armenia, while the British
also clashed with Ottoman forces in Mesopotamia. In August 1916 Romania
intervened in the war on the Allied side and invaded the Austro-Hungarian region
of Transylvania. Romania entered the war in hopes of gaining several provinces
of Austria-Hungary that had large Romanian populations. After a vigorous
counterattack by Austria-Hungary and Germany, the Central Powers controlled most
of the valuable wheat- and oil-producing parts of Romania.
F1 | Ottoman Action Against the Armenians |
Once World War I developed into a
“total war” that involved the mobilization of each country’s entire population
and economic resources, the distinction between soldiers at the front and
civilians behind the lines was erased. As terrible as the carnage on the
battlefield was, noncombatants also suffered as the brutality practiced against
the enemy on the battlefield was also practiced against perceived enemies at
home. The most egregious example of this phenomenon was the policy of genocide
that the Ottoman Empire conducted against its Armenian citizens (see
Armenian Massacre).
Conflict between the Christian
Armenian minority and the Muslim Turkish majority had occurred before World War
I. Many Armenians looked forward to independence from the Ottoman Empire so that
they could control their own government and practice their own religion without
restrictions. When the war began, some Armenians supported Russia against the
Ottoman Empire and clashed with Ottoman military units. The Ottoman government
regarded the Armenians as a dangerous subversive force within the country that
endangered the war effort. The Ottomans also felt threatened by the possibility
of an Allied invasion after the Allied landing at Gallipoli and the Russian
military pressure in the Caucasus Mountains. In May 1915 the Ottoman government
ordered the deportation of the entire Armenian population of the Ottoman
Empire.
Over the next two years, the
government of the Ottoman Empire deported two-thirds or more of its Armenian
citizens in eastern Anatolia (present-day Asian Turkey) to the deserts of
Mesopotamia. Many Armenians died of exposure, disease, and starvation; others
were killed by Ottoman soldiers and civilians. By the time World War I ended, an
estimated 1 million or more Armenians had died. After receiving harrowing
reports from its diplomatic representatives, the United States government issued
a formal protest at this policy of genocide. But as a neutral party in the war
the United States had no influence over the Ottoman government.
F2 | Conflict at Sea |
The most spectacular naval event of
1916 was the first venture of the German High Seas Fleet into open water to
challenge the British Grand Fleet. The Battle of Jutland, on May 31, was the
only time in World War I that the main battleship forces of the two navies
engaged in direct combat. After inflicting heavier losses on the British than
his units sustained, German admiral Reinhard Scheer returned to his base under
cover of darkness, convinced that he would risk total defeat if he tried to gain
a clear victory. The British admiral Sir John Jellicoe was afterward accused of
missing a golden opportunity to destroy the retreating German fleet. From a
strategic viewpoint, Jutland was a British victory, because the German fleet had
not ended Allied domination of the world's sea-lanes.
However, German submarine attacks
challenged Allied maritime supremacy and began to play a large role in the war.
In June a German mine in the icy waters northwest of Scotland sank the cruiser
Hampshire, killing British war secretary Lord Kitchener, who was on his
way to Russia at the personal request of the tsar.
VIII | PHASE THREE: THE TIDE TURNS |
In the last two years of the war, the
stalemate that had existed since the end of 1914 was broken by a number of
actions taken by both sides. At the beginning of 1917, Germany made a desperate
bid to starve Britain into submission by reverting to the policy of unrestricted
submarine warfare that it had used until September 1915. In response, the United
States entered the war on the Allied side in the spring of 1917, a move that
threatened to tip the balance against the Central Powers. Then the Bolshevik
Revolution in Russia in October 1917 effectively ended Russia’s role as a
fighting force. When Russia formally withdrew from the war in March 1918,
Germany gained access to the vast economic resources of the western part of the
Russian Empire and was able to concentrate its military forces in the west
against the Allies.
A | German Submarine Campaign |
In 1917 German submarine operations
reached their climax, leading to serious consequences that affected the course
of the war. On January 31 Germany announced that it would resume unrestricted
submarine warfare the next day. United States president Woodrow Wilson
immediately broke off diplomatic relations with Germany and warned of the
consequences if more American ships were sunk. Despite this warning, Allied
shipping losses, including American ships, rose steeply, exceeding 500,000 tons
in March and 850,000 gross tons in April.
If such a rate of loss continued for
long, Britain would face defeat because it depended on the food, supplies, and
war materials that the ships brought. The crisis caused the British Admiralty to
reconsider using the convoy system. This system, in which merchant ships sailed
together escorted by warships, compelled enemy raiders to expose themselves to
counterattack. Despite urges since 1915 to adopt the convoy system, the British
Admiralty had resisted for a variety of reasons. It feared the convoy system
could cause delays in shipping and congestion in ports. Also some in the
Admiralty believed that a group of ships was easier to find than just one and
that the system would create bigger targets.
By the spring of 1917 the convoy system
was already in use for Scandinavian trade to British east coast ports and for
coal shipments across the English Channel to France. In both cases, losses of
ships were far lower than average.
In May the British tried the convoy
system in the Atlantic Ocean with a large convoy from Gibraltar. The convoy
reached its destination without losing a single ship. Tonnage losses in May
dropped to about 550,000 tons. American destroyers began to arrive in British
waters to help provide additional escorts, and the convoy system became
established practice. In the last six months of 1917, shipping losses showed an
irregular but steady monthly decline. In addition, the Allies destroyed more and
more submarines. The Germans were no longer able to build submarines faster than
they lost them, and they were no longer able to sink merchant ships faster than
the Allies and the United States could build new ones. Although the submarine
campaign continued at a diminishing rate during 1918, it was no longer a deadly
threat.
B | United States Enters the War |
Prior to 1917, the United States had
stayed out of the war because many Americans felt that the war was too remote
from U.S. affairs to affect the United States (see isolationism). In
addition, the people of the United States were divided in their loyalties—many
Americans were of British ancestry but many were of German origin, while many
Irish Americans were opposed to U.S. support for Britain because of it refused
to grant home rule to Ireland. However, when Germany insisted upon using
unrestricted submarine warfare, it brought its relations with the United States
to a breaking point. On April 2, 1917, President Wilson read his war message to
the Congress of the United States. Congress voted on April 6 for the United
States to go to war against the Central Powers.
When the United States entered the war,
President Wilson insisted that it be referred to as an Associated Power rather
than an Allied Power. Wilson stressed that the United States had entered the war
for its own reasons and entertained war aims that did not necessarily coincide
with those of its Europeans Allies. The United States was the only Associated
Power during the war.
Beginning in June, the first troops of
the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), under General John J. Pershing, arrived
in France. However, U.S. intervention in World War I did not have an immediate
impact on the fighting in Europe. When Congress declared war, the United States
had a small volunteer army that had no experience in the kind of warfare that
was being waged on the western front. In May 1917 Congress enacted conscription
through the Selective Service Act to draft men into the armed forces. Within a
few months over 10 million American men had registered for military duty.
But the United States had to mobilize,
train, and transport this new collection of conscripts before they could
contribute to the Allied war effort in France. That process took over a year,
during which Russia withdrew from the war. Only four American divisions reached
France in 1917, and none saw any serious action in that year. It was not until
the summer of 1918 that the AEF began to play a significant role in the Allied
war effort.
In the meantime, however, the United
States contributed to its European allies in the form of massive economic
assistance. After Congress declared war, the U.S. Treasury began selling
so-called liberty bonds to its citizens in order to finance Allied government
purchases in the United States. The British, French, and Italian governments
used the proceeds from these bond sales to pay for products and raw materials
that they desperately needed to conduct the war. The federal government also
generated revenue for the war by increasing income and excise taxes.
C | Western Front, 1917 |
On April 16, 1917, General Nivelle of
France began an offensive on the Aisne River. The Allies had to change the area
of the offensive because the Germans had pulled back along a section of the
western front to a new defensive line to shorten and strengthen their front
line. The Hindenburg Line, as the German position was called, stretched from
Arras south to near Soissons.
When the offensive ended in early May
in bloody disaster, it caused the ranks of the French army to mutiny. Whole
regiments refused orders to advance or to head for the front. On May 15 the
French government dismissed Nivelle and replaced him with Pétain, who set about
to restore discipline. France suppressed details about the mutiny at the time,
but later estimates suggest that 49 soldiers convicted of mutiny were executed.
In personal visits to more than 100 French divisions, Pétain calmly assured the
troops that there would be no more offensives like the one Nivelle had launched.
Although the incident could have been disastrous for the French, the German
intelligence service gained no reliable information about the mutinies until
after Pétain had restored order.
In April the British troops had local
successes at Arras in France, and in June they captured Messines Ridge near
Ypres in Belgium. However, the Third Battle of Ypres, which opened on July 31
and continued intermittently until the capture of Passchendaele (Passendale)
Ridge in November, degenerated into a disheartening struggle in the mud of
Belgium. The Allies achieved a brief advance at the Battle of Cambrai in France
on November 20. General Julian Byng's Third Army, having been allotted more than
300 tanks of an improved design, launched a dawn surprise attack with no advance
bombing. The large initial British gains were so unexpected that Allied reserves
were not available for the follow-through, and German counterattacks recovered
most of the lost ground.
D | The Russian Revolutions of 1917 |
In 1917 an event of far-reaching
consequences took place in Russia. Although by this time some Allied supplies
were arriving in Russia through the ports of Archangel (Arkhangel’sk) and
Vladivostok, there were not enough of them. Russian administrative chaos
prevented the supplies from being distributed in an orderly manner. The troops
at the front were starving. Many were weaponless, shoeless, and in rags.
From February 23 to 27, 1917, disorder
broke out in Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg) in which civilians and soldiers
cried for peace and bread. In less than a week, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated and a
Provisional Government was created that soon came under the leadership of
Aleksandr Kerensky. (Dates for the February Revolution are given according to
the Julian, or Old Style, calendar then in use in Russia. On January 31, 1918,
the Soviet government adopted the Gregorian, or New Style, calendar, which moved
dates by 13 days; therefore, in the New Style calendar the dates for the first
revolution would be March 8 to 12.)
By the beginning of 1917 the Russian
army was falling apart because of the inadequacy of its weapons and supplies and
a succession of losses at the front. Many soldiers had lost confidence not only
in the ruling Romanov dynasty but also in the cause of the war itself. But
replacing the tsar with the Provisional Government headed by Kerensky did not
remedy the situation once Kerensky pledged to keep Russia in the war. When he
ordered another offensive in the summer of 1917, Russian soldiers streamed home
from the front and joined antiwar demonstrations that were skillfully exploited
by the Bolshevik Party, which ousted Kerensky in October (November, New Style),
in a second revolution.
Once in power, the Bolshevik leader,
Vladimir Ilich Lenin, sent delegates to the Polish city of Brest-Litovsk to
negotiate an armistice with the Germans, which was signed on December 2
(December 15, New Style). The armistice’s terms included a 30-day peace, no
troop movements that were not already ordered, and immediate peace negotiations.
But when the Bolshevik government resisted the harsh conditions that the Germans
demanded in the peace treaty, the German army marched eastward into Russia.
Finally, the Central Powers and Russia concluded the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on
March 3, 1918, which ended Russia’s participation in the war. The price that the
Bolshevik government had to pay for peace was a heavy one: Russia was forced to
cede to Germany the Baltic States, Russian Poland, and Ukraine, which briefly
became part of a vast satellite empire of Germany. After Russia withdrew from
the war, German military planners were able to transfer forces to France to
prepare for a massive offensive against the British, French, and new American
troops there.
E | The British Fight Against the Ottomans |
British forces continued fighting
against the Ottomans, gradually taking over territory. In Mesopotamia a British
army under Sir Frederick Maude recaptured the city of Kut-al-Imara (Al Kūt)
early in 1917, pushed on to Baghdād in March, and inflicted a heavy defeat on
the Ottomans at the city of Ramadi in September. In the region of Palestine,
which the Ottoman Empire ruled, the British made two unsuccessful attacks in the
spring of 1917 on the coastal fortress of Gaza. In November, British general
Edmund Allenby outflanked and overwhelmed Gaza, and after hard fighting,
captured Jerusalem in December 1917. German troops under General Falkenhayn
reinforced the Ottomans, who tried to recover Jerusalem during the last week of
December. However, Allenby and his troops defeated them.
During this campaign the Arabs of the
Hejaz (Al Ḩijāz) region of Arabia revolted against the Ottomans in an attempt to
gain their independence. They were aided by Englishman T. E. Lawrence, who
became known as Lawrence of Arabia.
The British military campaign against
the Ottoman Empire did not have a major impact on the outcome of the war, which
would be determined on the fields of Belgium and France. But it had important
consequences for the part of the world that would later be referred to as the
Middle East. In order to obtain the support of the inhabitants of the Hejaz
region in the war against the Ottomans, Britain had to pledge support for the
creation of an independent state in the Arabic-speaking portions of the Ottoman
Empire after the war. Although the Arabs did not get independence when World War
I ended, the cause of national self-determination became a potent force in the
Arab world.
F | Other Events, 1917 |
With the Russian collapse, strong
German reinforcements went to Italy to help the Austro-Hungarians. On October
24, 1917, covered by a heavy mist and a relatively short bombardment,
Austro-Hungarian and Germans attacked in overwhelming force on both sides of the
Austrian town of Caporetto (now Kobarid, Slovenia). They shattered the whole
front of the Italian Second Army on the Isonzo River. It was more than two weeks
before the Italians were finally able to make a stand on the Piave River, 200 km
(100 mi) behind their original front. In the Battle of Caporetto, Italian
casualties, including prisoners, were about 300,000 men. French and British
troops arrived in early November to help stabilize the front.
In the Balkans, intermittent operations
had continued on the Salonika front during 1916. During this time pro-German
King Constantine I of Greece refused to allow the British and French to use
Athens to supply their military forces fighting in Salonika. In June 1917, with
vigorous intervention by the Allies, King Constantine abdicated. The same month,
a pro-Allied government took over in Athens under Prime Minister Eleutherios
Venizelos, and Greece declared war on Germany and Bulgaria. Henceforth Greece,
which had stubbornly refused to assist the Allies in the Balkans, actively
participated in the war against German and Bulgarian forces on the
peninsula.
IX | PHASE FOUR: PERIOD OF DECISION |
In 1918 two critical events brought an end
to the long period of stalemate: the withdrawal of Russia and the intervention
of the United States. When Germany forced Russia out of the war in March 1918
and transferred some of its military forces from east to west, the American
Expeditionary Force had yet to participate actively in the Allied war effort in
France. Germany promptly mounted a major western offensive in an effort to break
through the Anglo-French defenses before American military power arrived on the
western front. The German offensive failed, and the Allies followed it with a
counteroffensive, in which U.S. forces actively participated for the first time.
This counteroffensive brought an end to the war in the autumn of 1918.
A | Western Front, 1918 |
A1 | Germany's Gamble |
At the beginning of 1918, German
leaders were considering a plan to gain decisive victory on the western front.
The plan was to take advantage of a temporary superiority in numbers of troops,
which occurred because Germany was able to shift troops from the eastern front
to the western front after Russia withdrew from the war. Germany wanted to mount
a surprise offensive before the full force of the U.S. armies could be ready for
action. The plan was a gamble—if the Germans failed, it would mean final defeat
because Germany was running out of men and war materials.
Some German military leaders, notably
General Max Hoffmann, the new commander in chief on the eastern front, felt that
Germany should avoid the gamble, consolidate its gains in the east, and stand
strictly on the defensive in the west. Under the terms of Russia’s withdrawal
from the war, Germany gained predominant influence in a number of non-Russian
states that were formed all along the Russian frontiers in the west and south,
such as Ukraine, the Baltic States, Georgia, and Armenia. These areas had food
and raw materials that could meet the needs of the German people and of German
industry. Hoffmann believed that a reinforced German army in the west could hold
the western front strongly enough to induce the Allies to grant tolerable peace
terms if Germany offered to evacuate French and Belgian territory. Hoffmann and
the other supporters of this strategy felt that if Germany obtained vast
territorial gains in the east, it would soon regain a dominant position in
Europe.
However, General Ludendorff refused to
compromise, and his desire for victory on the battlefield won over Hindenburg.
Hindenburg had grown to trust Ludendorff's judgment, and he felt that he owed
Ludendorff loyal support against Hoffmann.
The new German plan was largely
invented by General Oskar von Hutier and had been tested in battle on the
Russian and Italian fronts, where it had been overwhelmingly successful. The
plan of attack began with a relatively brief artillery bombardment in which
chemicals launched in so-called gas shells were used to avoid breaking up the
ground over which the infantry would have to advance. (Conventional shells broke
up the ground, making it difficult for the infantry to cross.)
The Germans were not going to initiate
the infantry assault by solid lines and masses of men but would begin it with a
wave of troops. Their objective for the first day was not to capture the enemy's
first line or intermediate line. They were to push straight ahead, bypassing
strong points of resistance or working around them, and press on toward the
hostile artillery positions. Reserves were to be put in wherever the first
troops were making progress, not where they were held up. No attempt was to be
made to preserve a continuous line, and no commander was to worry about his
flanks.
A2 | Failed German Offensive |
On March 21, 1918, Ludendorff launched
his great attack. The objective was to capture the French city of Amiens before
proceeding to Paris. He had amassed 190 German divisions in France and Belgium,
against 60 British and 99 French divisions. However, on the front where the
first blow fell, opposite the British Third and Fifth armies in the Somme
region, the German manpower superiority was even higher and was backed by an
artillery ratio of nearly three to one (see Somme, Battles of the).
The Fifth Army held the right flank of
the British front, where the British and French forces joined. Ludendorff
intended to break through at this junction, to separate the British from the
French, and to roll up the whole British army north to the sea. Under the shock
of the new tactics, the British Fifth Army virtually dissolved. Hutier's 18th
Army, making the best progress, broke clear through into open country. If
Ludendorff had concentrated all his reserves to exploit the gap Hutier had
opened, the plan might have succeeded. Instead, he launched three separate new
attacks.
The Allied high command was in near
panic. Pétain told Haig that if the German attacks continued, he would have to
abandon contact with the British and fall back to cover Paris. Ludendorff,
however, had already missed his moment of opportunity. His troops were reaching
the end of their endurance, and fresh British and French reserves were arriving.
Slowly the German momentum died. As a decisive effort, the offensive failed. It
had merely gained ground. On April 4 and 5, Hutier launched one final thrust
toward Amiens, creating a salient (outwardly projecting battle line).
Australian troops east of Villers-Bretonneux stopped them.
A3 | Allied War Council |
An Allied conference on March 26th at
Doullens, France, had established French general Ferdinand Foch as commander in
chief of all Allied forces on the western front. Soon afterwards, General
Pershing finally agreed to allow American troops to join British and French
forces in small formations. Pershing had originally insisted on keeping American
troops together rather than dividing them amongst the British and French armies.
His decision was a great boost to Allied morale.
The Allies also created a supreme war
council to coordinate their strategy on all fronts. The council consisted of the
prime ministers of Britain (David Lloyd George), of France (Georges Clemenceau),
and of Italy (Vittorio Orlando). A high-ranking military adviser assisted each
leader. President Wilson of the United States sent a representative, but not as
a formal member of the council, because the official U.S. view was that the
United States was an Associated rather than an Allied Power. The Supreme War
Council permitted a much greater degree of policy coordination than had existed
before, although the Allied Powers continually had sharp differences of opinion
over the proper conduct of the war.
A4 | Germany's Final Offensives |
Ludendorff continued his attempts on
the western front, although his resources were diminishing. During the spring,
he had lost almost 350,000 men and had inflicted roughly equal damage. In that
same period of time, almost 180,000 U.S. troops arrived in France.
Nevertheless, when Ludendorff launched
another offensive in May, it was a shock to the Allies. The Germans moved along
the Aisne River between the cities of Reims and Soissons. Heading directly for
Paris, they broke through the front of the French Sixth Army and rolled forward
all the way to the Marne River, only 130 km (80 mi) from the French
capital.
To widen the Marne salient created by
the Amiens offensive, Ludendorff began an offensive on July 15 on both sides of
Reims, known as the Second Battle of the Marne. It met a new French defensive
tactic: The French had set up a line of lightly manned trenches that gave the
false impression of real obstacles. The Germans wasted most of their artillery
fire on these so-called fake trenches and then advanced in an uncoordinated
fashion against the fully manned trenches that had been untouched by the
shelling. They came under heavy French and American fire and were thrown back
with heavy casualties. Two U.S. divisions, which were numerically stronger units
than British, French, or German divisions, helped halt the offensive in the
vicinity of Château-Thierry.
A5 | Allied Counteroffensives |
On July 18 the Allies launched a
powerful counteroffensive, which included U.S. divisions, against the western
flank of the Marne salient. Successive assaults eliminated the German protrusion
at the Marne by early August. The next Allied counterstroke involved eliminating
the salient at Amiens, where the first German attack had driven so deeply into
the Allied front. On August 8 the British Fourth Army delivered the main blow of
the counteroffensive on both sides of the Somme River. More than 500 Mark IV
tanks, which had a much more powerful engine and much greater maneuverability
than the earlier models, led the attack. The infantry jumped off behind a brief
artillery barrage, which gave it the element of surprise that had been lacking
in earlier offensives. Under the impact of the attack, the German army fell
back.
That day, German morale and discipline
dissolved. Ludendorff wrote that it “was the black day of the German army.” The
German army, like the French in 1917, contained men who argued that the war had
nothing to do with the real interests of the rank and file. German troops were
becoming depressed and insubordinate.
During the rest of August, a series of
Allied attacks continued to reduce the Amiens salient. By the first week of
September, the Germans were back on the line from which they had launched their
great offensive in March. In order to launch a general counteroffensive, the
Allies needed to remove the Germans from their salients. Those areas interfered
with the Allies' use of railway lines running parallel to the front. The railway
lines had to be reopened to traffic so that the Allied forces could move from
one part of the line to another as circumstances required.
September 12, 1918, was the beginning
of the end for the German armies in the west. The recently created U.S. First
Army assaulted a small salient in the area of Saint-Mihiel, southeast of Verdun.
The Battle of Saint-Mihiel was the first appearance of a U.S. force large enough
to be called an army. General Pershing had insisted that a separate U.S. army be
created and put under his own command. Pershing had overridden Foch, who wanted
to keep feeding U.S. divisions into French or British armies. At Saint-Mihiel,
the U.S. generals and staffs proved their ability to handle an army-sized
operation successfully.
A6 | Victorious Allied Offensive |
The Allied general offensive started on
September 26. Its strategic objectives were the two key railroad junctions of
Aulnoye and Mézières. At these points, the trunk lines from Germany joined the
main lateral rail line behind the German front. If Aulnoye and Mézières were
taken, the Germans could neither supply their forces nor withdraw in good order.
Foch’s plan was for a pincer movement with an American offensive in the east
through the rugged Meuse-Argonne sector (in what became known as the Battle of
the Argonne) and a British advance north toward the city of Lille. After October
10, two U.S. armies were in action: the first under Lieutenant General Hunter
Liggett and the second under Lieutenant General Robert L. Bullard.
Although both the American and British
advance were much slower than expected, the two armies did regain territory that
had long been held by the German army. This development, coupled with the news
that Bulgaria had surrendered, prompted General Ludendorff, in a fit of panic,
to demand on September 29 that the German government initiate armistice
negotiations before Allied forces broke through the German lines.
B | Collapse of the Central Powers |
B1 | Bulgaria |
While the British, American, and French
armies were driving the German armies back on the western front, the military
forces of Germany’s allies were collapsing everywhere. The Bulgarian front was
the first to break. In September 1918 British, French, Italian, Serbian, and
Greek forces cooperated in an offensive from Albania that resulted in the
Bulgarian army retreating along a broad front. On September 29 Bulgaria sued for
peace at Salonika after pledging to evacuate all Greek and Serbian territory and
to turn over its own territory for Allied military operations.
B2 | Ottoman Empire |
In September 1918 the British forces
that had entered Palestine launched a major offensive that broke the Ottoman
lines. Fortified with Arab armies accompanied by T. E. Lawrence, they drove into
present-day Syria and Lebanon in early October. Meanwhile, the Ottomans suffered
heavy defeat in both Palestine and Mesopotamia and were isolated when Bulgaria
withdrew from the war. On October 30 the Ottoman Empire concluded an armistice,
pledging to open the Dardanelles Strait, demobilize its armies, and permit
Allied military forces to use its territory.
B3 | Austria-Hungary |
Throughout the fall of 1918 the
Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed as its armies retreated before the Italian
forces. On October 24 the Italians, who had suffered so many setbacks earlier in
the war, launched a powerful offensive known as the Battle of Vittorio Veneto.
They moved along the Piave River toward the town of Vittorio Veneto and sent the
Austro-Hungarian army into full retreat.
Even before the Battle of Vittorio
Veneto, though, the Austro-Hungarian government was desperately seeking a
suspension of hostilities through neutral contacts. Austria-Hungary was willing
to accept any terms under which its different nationalities would remain part of
the empire. The Vienna government eagerly associated itself with Germany when it
appealed to President Wilson for an armistice on October 4.
But during the exchange of notes with
Washington, representatives of the different nationalities of Austria-Hungary
declared their independence. On October 28 the Czechs and Slovaks declared the
independence of the new state of Czechoslovakia. On October 29 the Yugoslav
National Council announced the independence of what would later be called
Yugoslavia. On October 30, the German-speaking citizens of the dissolving empire
created a German-Austrian republic in Vienna, later known as Austria. On October
31, the Magyars had a revolution that initiated the creation of an independent
Hungarian republic. The Austro-Hungarian empire had begun to disintegrate into
its separate ethnic parts before the conclusion of the armistice between
Austria-Hungary and the Allied Powers on November 3.
B4 | Germany |
German morale, both on the home front
and in the ranks of the army, was sinking fast, even though the government tried
to suppress the worst of the war news. The German people had suffered terrible
deprivation because of the British blockade throughout the war. Food riots had
erupted in several major cities in response to severe shortages. In April 1917
hundreds of thousands of workers in Berlin had walked off their jobs in protest
against the high cost of living.
The Russian Revolutions had inspired
some members of the German Social Democratic Party to make plans to overthrow
the empire and replace it with a socialist regime. In the latter stages of the
war, revolutionary sentiments such as these had spread to the German army and
navy as well. In the end of October, sailors of the High Seas Fleet mutinied and
refused to put to sea. By early November soldiers were joining with
revolutionaries among the civilian population to create disorder in several
German cities. During the armistice negotiations, both Allied and German
officials expressed the fear that if the war continued much longer, Germany
might be submerged by the revolutionary wave that had swept the Bolsheviks into
power in Russia a year earlier.
The German high command, not government
politicians, decided to abandon the hope of victory on the battlefield in favor
of a negotiated end to the war. They feared that if the war continued, the
Allies would drive into German territory.
After the high command demanded that
the government initiate armistice negotiations, the ministry loyal to William II
resigned. A government under the Chancellor Prince Max of Baden replaced it on
October 4. In one of its first acts, the new government appealed directly to
U.S. president Woodrow Wilson for an armistice based on the principles he had
enunciated in a speech to Congress on January 8, 1918. In the speech, Wilson had
specified American peace conditions known as the Fourteen Points, which
constituted a relatively moderate basis for an end to the war. He had outlined
his peace program as an alternative to the proposals of the new Bolshevik regime
in Russia for a peace “without annexations or indemnities” and to the harsh war
aims of America’s European allies.
After Germany approached Wilson, he
replied a few days later stating that Germany must accept the Fourteen Points
and must evacuate all occupied territory. As a later stipulation, Wilson
demanded that Germany completely abandon submarine warfare. The Allied military
authorities would later determine the actual terms of the armistice.
On October 24th Ludendorff published a
statement calling Wilson's terms unacceptable. Prince Max, angered at
Ludendorff’s outspokenness, informed Emperor William that Ludendorff had to go.
On October 26 Ludendorff learned that he no longer held the emperor’s
confidence, and he resigned. Hindenburg also tried to resign, but the emperor
refused his resignation.
In the meantime, the Allied leaders
were also unhappy with Wilson’s peace program because they thought it too
lenient. However, they were dependent on American economic and military aid, and
so accepted the Fourteen Points with certain specified reservations. On November
8th Marshal Foch received a German armistice commission near the town of
Compiègne, France, to negotiate an end to the war.
As unrest spread throughout Germany,
political leaders and the press publicly demanded that the emperor abdicate his
throne. Although he initially protested and resisted, William II abdicated on
November 9 and fled into exile in The Netherlands on the next day. In Berlin,
meanwhile, Prince Max had handed over the reins of government to socialist
leader Friedrich Ebert, and a German republic was proclaimed.
The new German government agreed to the
armistice terms that the Allied generals demanded. Germany had to evacuate all
occupied territories. The terms also provided for Allied and U.S. troops to
occupy all German territory west of the Rhine River (known as the Rhineland),
along with bridgeheads east of the Rhine at Cologne, Mainz, and Coblenz. The
occupation troops moved into these areas during the first two weeks in December
and remained until peace was concluded.
C | End of Hostilities |
On November 11, 1918, at 5:00 am the Allied and German delegates
signed an armistice on terms established by the Allies; at 11:00 the same
morning hostilities on the western front came to an end. The end of the war on
the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 prompted relief and
jubilation in all of the belligerent countries. The murderous struggle that had
dragged on for over four years had finally ended. Political leaders then took up
the task of trying to transform the military armistice into a durable
peace.
X | AFTERMATH OF WORLD WAR I |
In the aftermath of World War I, the
political order of Europe came crashing to the ground. The German,
Austro-Hungarian, and Russian empires ceased to exist, and the Ottoman Empire
soon followed them into oblivion. New nations emerged, borders were radically
shifted, and ethnic conflicts erupted. Victors and vanquished alike faced an
enormous recovery challenge after four years of financial loss, economic
deprivation, and material destruction. Amid this chaotic situation, the leaders
of the victorious coalition assembled in Paris to forge a new international
system that would replace the old order. The decisions they made would determine
the future of Europe, and much of the rest of the world, for decades to
come.
A | Treaty of Versailles |
Delegates from all of the Allied countries
met in Paris, France, in January 1919 to draft the peace treaties. But it soon
became evident that real decision-making authority rested in the hands of the
leaders of the four states whose economic and military might had defeated the
Central Powers: Prime Minister David Lloyd George of Britain, Prime Minister
Vittorio Orlando of Italy, Premier Georges Clemenceau of France, and President
Woodrow Wilson of the United States. The Japanese delegation was on the same
level as the four European powers, but it participated in the conference debates
only when matters pertaining to East Asia were discussed.
Britain's principal goal at the peace
conference was to remove the threat of German naval power and to end Germany's
overseas empire. Once Lloyd George had achieved these two objectives, he pursued
a moderate territorial settlement out of concern that a harsh peace would prompt
a defeated Germany to try to destroy the new international order. Orlando wanted
the territory that the Allies had promised Italy when it entered the war as well
as additional territory on the Adriatic Coast inhabited by Italians. Clemenceau
had two principal goals: to establish a set of ironclad guarantees against a
future German military threat to France and to require Germany to pay to repair
the extensive damage that it had caused to northeastern France during the war.
The United States had no financial or territorial claims against Germany, but
Wilson fought for what he regarded as a peace of justice. He wanted a new
international organization known as the League of Nations to be created to help
prevent future armed conflicts.
The Treaty of Versailles that the
representatives of the new German Republic were compelled to sign on June 28,
1919, was a compromise. On the one hand, Germany was deprived of portions of its
prewar territory, such as Alsace and Lorraine, the city of Danzig (Gdańsk), and
the Polish corridor. Also Germany was unilaterally disarmed and forced to accept
an Allied military occupation of the Rhineland and to give up its colonial
empire. Germany was forced to accept responsibility for the outbreak of the war
and was required to pay the cost of repairing the wartime damage, known as
reparations. On the other hand, Germany emerged from the peace conference as a
potentially powerful country because its industrial areas were left intact and
it did not lose any vital territory.
The U.S. Senate refused to approve the
treaty in part because of internal U.S. politics, and the United States
concluded a separate peace treaty with Germany in 1921. Without U.S. support,
the economically weakened, war-weary countries of France and Britain were left
with the difficult task of enforcing the provisions of the Versailles
peace.
B | Legacy of the War |
When Marshal Foch of France learned of the
Versailles Treaty's contents, he reportedly complained, “This is not peace. It
is an armistice for twenty years.” As it turned out, he was uncannily accurate
in his prediction of when humanity would be plunged into a second world war.
World War II was a conflict that would surpass its predecessor in the number of
deaths and injuries, the extent of physical destruction, and the geographical
area affected. The terrible experiences of World War II have tended to
overshadow the memory of the war that broke out in the summer of 1914. But World
War I unquestionably represented a major turning point in history, and its
consequences are still felt throughout the world.
The major fighting in World War I was
confined to a relatively limited area: northeastern France, western Russia, the
Balkan Peninsula, the Alpine frontier between Austria-Hungary and Italy, and the
deserts of what would later be called the Middle East. But millions of people
far from the battlefields felt the effects of the war, people who lived not only
at the home front in Europe but also in towns and villages throughout the world.
Men from as far away as Australia and India died on the fields of northern
France and the beaches of Gallipoli. Africans from Senegal and Morocco fought in
the trenches on the western front while Bedouin tribesmen from the deserts of
the Arabian Peninsula rode camels against the Ottomans.
The death of over 10 million men in combat
left a gaping chasm in the social and economic life of the postwar world. Many
of those who survived the war returned home with physical disabilities that
prevented them from rejoining the work force. Others suffered the lasting
effects of what in those days was called shell shock and what is today labeled
post-traumatic stress disorder, a psychological affliction that prevents a
successful adaptation to civilian life. Many of the dead left widows and orphans
who had to cope with severe economic hardship and emotional loss.
The war had a profound effect on the
relations between men and women in the major belligerent states. As the men
rushed to the battlefield, women moved into many traditionally male occupations
in industry. They then began to achieve a degree of independence and
self-reliance that had been unavailable before the war. Many of the countries
involved in the war (including Britain, the United States, and Germany) granted
women the right to vote for the first time shortly after the war ended.
The war also profoundly disrupted the
revered cultural tradition of the Western world. Optimism about human nature and
about the glorious future of civilization was discredited as soldiers from what
had been hailed as the most highly civilized societies on earth slaughtered each
other without mercy. Artists began to produce works that mocked the
self-confident assertions of humanism and portrayed the sordid realities of
modern life. Social scientists and psychologists probed the sources of human
aggression in an effort to explain the orgy of violence that had ended.
Philosophers bemoaned the decadence of civilization and the decline of the
west.
The economic consequences of the war were
felt throughout the world. All of the countries involved had to borrow heavily
to pay for the costs of the war, either from their own citizens or from foreign
lenders. Such deficit-financing generated inflation, which impoverished many
citizens living on fixed incomes. Some governments, such as the Soviet regime in
Russia, repudiated their foreign debts, wiping out the savings of frugal
investors in many countries. The war also wrought political changes that had
serious economic consequences. For example, the new states in Eastern Europe
that were formed out of the defunct Austro-Hungarian Empire found it nearly
impossible to achieve economic viability. When the empire was divided into
separate countries, the new countries were cut off from their prewar markets and
sources of food and raw materials.
The postwar international order that was
forged at the Paris Peace Conference proved to be unstable and short-lived. What
Woodrow Wilson called “the war to end all wars” led to, within a generation, a
second, even more destructive conflict. The early evaluations of the Versailles
settlement were largely critical. People blamed the leaders of the victorious
European powers for having betrayed President Wilson's principle of national
self-determination by forcing Germany to cede territories with large German
populations. They also criticized the imposition of crushing reparations on
Germany. Some believed that the reparations would destroy Germany economically
and guarantee the country’s resentment.
More recent scholarship has challenged
this evaluation of the Versailles settlement as a harsh, vindictive, peace
settlement. Germany's territorial losses were much less harsh than those imposed
on its allies Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. In addition, some scholars
have argued that Germany could have paid the reparations, if the country’s
standard of living had been reduced. The reparation settlement failed not simply
because Germany was not able to pay but because many German people did not
accept that Germany was more responsible for the war than any other country. In
addition, the wartime coalition of Britain, France, and the United States, which
might have been powerful enough to enforce the treaty, dissolved shortly after
the war as each country concentrated on its own domestic issues.
When Nazi leader Adolf Hitler came to
power in Germany in 1933, he was able to destroy much of the Versailles treaty
by exploiting two pervasive sentiments of the 1930s. The first was the lingering
suspicion, particularly widespread in Britain, that Germany had been treated
unfairly at the peace conference and that its demands for territorial changes
should be considered. The second was the universal belief that any political
compromise with Nazi Germany was preferable to another European war. The
diplomacy of appeasement, which enabled Hitler to remilitarize Germany and take
over territory during the 1930s, was therefore a direct outgrowth of the
memories that millions of survivors retained of the traumatic experience of the
World War I. They were intent on not repeating the experience at all costs.
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