The 1st World War, also known as The Great War, took place between 1914 and 1918, leaving millions dead and shaping the modern world.
The Allied Powers, led by France, the Russian Empire, the United Kingdom, and the Kingdom of Italy, and later also the United States defeated the Central Powers, led by Austria-Hungary, the German Empire, and the Ottoman Empire.
Much of the fighting in World War I took place along the Western Front, within a the trenches which ran from the North Sea to the border of Switzerland. On the Eastern Front, the vast eastern plains and limited rail network prevented a trench warfare stalemate from developing, although the scale of the conflict was just as large. Hostilities also occurred on and under the sea and — for the first time — from the air. More than nine million soldiers died on the various battlefields, and millions more civilians suffered; more people died of the worldwide "spannish" influenza outbreak at the end of the war and shortly after than died in the hostilities.
The war caused the disintegration of four empires: the Austro-Hungarian, German, Ottoman, and Russian. Germany lost its overseas empire, and states such as Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were created, or recreated, as was the case with Poland.
Ultimately, World War 1 created a decisive break with the old world order that had emerged after the Napoleonic Wars. The consequences of the outcome of the 1st World War were important factors contributing to the 2nd World War, 21 years later.
On June 28, 1914, Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austrian throne, in Sarajevo. Princip was a member of Young Bosnia, a group whose aims included the unification of the South Slavs and independence from Austria-Hungary (see also: the Black Hand). The assassination in Sarajevo set into motion a series of fast-moving events that escalated into a full-scale war. However, the distal causes of the conflict are multiple and complex. Historians and political scientists have grappled with them for nearly a century without reaching a consensus on what definitively could be said to have caused the war.
Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles, often referred to as the War Guilt Clause, indicts Germany and Austria-Hungary as the sole instigators of the Great War. Austria attacked Serbia on July 29, 1914 and Germany invaded Belgium on August 3. Germany and Austria-Hungary are cited as responsible for the war by this document. German academics such as Fritz Fischer, Imanuel Geiss, Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Wolfgang Mommsen and V.R. Berghahn have all promoted this thesis in the post-World War II period. Fischer contended that Germany wanted to control most of Europe or, at the very least, unite it economically through Germany. However, as he points out, diplomatic efforts to do so had often centered around Anglo-Germanic cooperation, not war.
The naval arms race that developed between Britain and Germany was intensified by the 1906 launch of HMS Dreadnought, a revolutionary warship that rendered all previous battleships obsolete. (Britain maintained a large lead over Germany in all categories of warship.) Paul Kennedy has pointed out that both nations believed in Alfred Thayer Mahan's thesis that command of the sea was vital to a great nation.
David Stevenson described the armaments race as "a self-reinforcing cycle of heightened military preparedness", while David Herrman viewed the shipbuilding rivalry as part of a general movement towards war. However, Niall Ferguson argues that Britain’s ability to maintain an overall advantage signifies that change within this realm was insignificant and therefore not a factor in the movement towards war.
Closely related is the thesis adopted by many political scientists that the war plans of Germany, France and Russia automatically escalated the conflict. Fritz Fischer and his followers have emphasized the inherently aggressive nature of Germany’s Schlieffen Plan, which outlined German strategy if at war with both France and Russia. Conflict on two fronts meant that Germany had to eliminate one opponent quickly before taking on the other, relying on a strict timetable. Germany’s strategy called for a strong right flank on the attack on Belgium, and to conquer and crush French mobilizations to cripple the French army.
After the attack, the German army would then be rushed to the eastern front through railroads and quickly destroy the slowly-mobilizing military of Russia.
However, things did not end up as planned and early mistakes would cost Germany the war. France’s well defended border with Germany meant that an attack through Belgian (and possibly Dutch) territory was a necessity, creating a number of unexpected problems.
In a greater context, France’s own Plan XVII called for an offensive thrust into Germany’s industrial Ruhr Valley, crippling Germany’s ability to wage war.
Russia’s revised Plan XIX implied a mobilization of its armies against both Austria-Hungary and Germany.
All three created an atmosphere where generals and planning staffs were anxious to take the initiative and seize decisive victories. Elaborate mobilization plans with precise timetables had been prepared. Once the mobilization orders were issued, it was understood by both generals and statesmen alike that there was little or no possibility of turning back or a key advantage would be sacrificed. Furthermore, the problem of communications in 1914 should not be underestimated; all nations still used telegraphy and ambassadors as the main form of communication, which resulted in delays from hours to even days.
President of the United States Woodrow Wilson and other observers blamed the war on militarism.[3] The idea was that aristocrats and military elites had too much control over Germany, Russia and Austria, and the war was a consequence of their desire for military power and disdain for democracy. This was a theme that figured prominently in anti-German propaganda, which cast Kaiser Wilhelm II and Prussian military tradition in a negative light. Consequently, supporters of this theory called for the abdication of such rulers, the end of the aristocratic system and the end of militarism—all of which justified American entry into the war once Czarist Russia dropped out of the Allied camp.
Wilson hoped the League of Nations and universal disarmament would secure a lasting peace. He also acknowledged variations of militarism that, in his opinion, existed within the British and French political systems.
By 1903 Germany planned a rail link to the Persian Gulf through Ottoman territories that would have expanded German trade with the Middle East. The railroad reflected the peaceful economic rivalries of the era, and was not intended as a prelude to war. However Lenin asserted that the worldwide system of imperialism was responsible for the war. In this he drew upon the economic theories of Karl Marx and English economist John A. Hobson, who had earlier predicted the outcome of economic imperialism, or unlimited competition for expanding markets, would lead to a global military conflict. [4] This argument proved persuasive in the immediate wake of the war and assisted in the rise of Marxism and Communism. Lenin argued that large banking interests in the various capitalist-imperialist powers had pulled the strings in the various governments and led them into the war. [5]
The civilian leaders of the European powers found themselves facing a wave of nationalist zeal that had been building across Europe for years, as memories of war faded or were convoluted into a romantic fantasy that resonated in the public conscience. Frantic diplomatic efforts to mediate the Austrian-Serbian quarrel simply became irrelevant, as public and elite opinion commonly demanded war to uphold national honor. The patriotic enthusiasm, unity and ultimate euphoria that took hold during the Spirit of 1914 was full of that very optimism regarding the postwar future. Also, the Socialist-Democratic movement had begun to exert pressure on aristocrats throughout Europe, who optimistically hoped that victory would reunite their countries via the consolidation of their domestic hegemony. However, Lord Kitchener and Erich Ludendorff were among those who predicted that modern, industrialized warfare would be a lengthy excursion. Others, such as Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, were concerned by the potential social consequences of a war.
International bond and financial markets entered severe crises in late July and early August; this reflected worry about the financial consequences of war. Nevertheless, spurred on by propaganda and nationalist fervor, many eagerly joined the ranks in search of adventure.
A localized war between Austria-Hungary and Serbia was considered inevitable due to Austria-Hungary’s deteriorating world position and the Pan-Slavic separatist movement in the Balkans. The expansion of such ethnic sentiments coincided with the growth of Serbia and the decline of the Ottoman Empire, as the latter had formerly held sway over much of the region. Imperial Russia also supported the Pan-Slavic movement, motivated by ethnic loyalties, dissatisfaction with Austria (dating back to the Crimean War) and a century-old dream of a warm water port.[6] For Germany, their location in the center of Europe led to the decision for an active defense, culminating in the Schlieffen Plan.[7]
July crisis and declarations of war
After the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914, Austria-Hungary
waited for 3 weeks before deciding on a course of action, because most soldiers
were on leave to help gather the harvest.[citation needed]
On July 23, assured by unconditional support of the Germans should war break out, the empire sent the July Ultimatum to Serbia, which demanded, among other things, that Austrian agents would be allowed to take part in the investigation of the murder, and that Serbia would take responsibility for it.
Emboldened by the promise of Russian support, the Serbian government accepted all the terms, except those relating to the participation of the Austrian agents in the inquiry, which it saw as a violation of its sovereignty. Breaking diplomatic relations, the Austro-Hungarian Empire declared war on Serbia on July 28 and proceeded to bombard Belgrade on July 29. On July 30, Austria-Hungary and Russia both ordered general mobilization of their armies.
The Germans, having pledged their support to Austria-Hungary, sent Russia an ultimatum on July 31 to stop mobilization within 12 hours. On August 1, with the ultimatum expired, the German ambassador to Russia formally declared war.
On August 2, Germany occupied Luxembourg, as a preliminary step to the invasion of Belgium and the Schlieffen Plan (which was rapidly going awry, as the Germans had not intended to be at war with a mobilized Russia this quickly).
The same day, yet another ultimatum was delivered to Belgium, requesting free passage for the German army on the way to France. The Belgians refused. At the very last moment, the Kaiser Wilhelm II asked Moltke, the German Chief of General Staff, to cancel the invasion of France in the hope this would keep Britain out of the war. Moltke, horrified by the prospect of the utter ruin of the Schlieffen Plan, refused on the grounds that it would be impossible to change the rail schedule—“once settled, it cannot be altered” [8]. The question of whether such a radical change in Germany’s plans would have indeed been possible was the subject of much dispute. When Moltke’s reply was revealed after the war to General von Staab, Germany’s Chief of the Railway Division, he saw it as an affront to the capabilities of his unit, and proceeded to write a book proving such a change was indeed possible[9].
On August 3, Germany declared war on France and invaded Belgium on August 4. This act violated Belgian neutrality, to which Germany; France; and Britain were all committed. The guarantee prompted Britain, which had been neutral, to declare war on Germany on August 4.
Matthias Erzberger, the Reichstag deputy, later testified that six months after the outbreak of war, Moltke admitted that attacking France first was a mistake and that “the larger part of our army ought first to have been sent to the East to smash the Russian steamroller” [10].
Opening hostilities
European military alliances in 1915. The Central Powers are depicted in puce,
the Entente Powers in grey and neutral countries in yellow[edit]
Europe
In Europe, the Central Powers—the German Empire and the Austro-Hungarian
Empire—suffered from mutual miscommunication and lack of intelligence
regarding the intentions of each other’s army. Germany had originally
guaranteed to support Austria-Hungary’s invasion of Serbia but practical
interpretation of this idea differed. Austro-Hungarian leaders believed Germany
would cover the northern flank against Russia. Germany, however, had planned
for Austria-Hungary to focus the majority of its troops on Russia while Germany
dealt with France on the Western Front. This confusion forced the Austro-Hungarian
army to split its troop concentrations. Somewhat more than half of the army
went to fight the Russians on their border, and the remainder was allocated
to invade and conquer Serbia.
Serbian Campaign
Main article: Serbian Campaign (WWI)
The Serbian army fought a defensive battle against the invading Austrian army
(called the Battle of Cer) starting on August 12. The Serbians occupied defensive
positions on the south side of the Drina and Sava rivers. Over the next two
weeks Austrian attacks were thrown back with heavy losses. This marked the first
major Allied victory of the war. Austrian expectations of a swift victory over
Serbia were not realized and as a result, Austria had to keep a very sizable
force on the Serbian front, which weakened their armies facing Russia.
Germany in Belgium and France
Invading Belgium had been a violation of an earlier treaty between
Germany and Britain. The German Foreign Minister of the day discounted the betrayal
by calling the treaty "a scrap of paper."
After entering Belgian territory, the German army soon encountered resistance at a fortified Liège. Although the army as a whole continued to make rapid progress into France, the German invasion forced Britain’s decision to intervene on the side of the Allies. As a signatory of the 1839 Treaty of London, Great Britain was committed to the preservation of a neutral and independent Belgium. In British eyes, the ports of Antwerp and Ostend were deemed too important to be possessed by a hostile continental power. [11] Britain sent an army to France (the British Expeditionary Force, or BEF) which advanced into Belgium and slowed the Germans.
Initially, the Germans had great successes in the Battle of the Frontiers (August 14–August 24). However, Russia attacked in East Prussia and diverted German forces intended for the Western Front. Germany defeated Russia in a series of battles collectively known as the Second Battle of Tannenberg (August 17–September 2). This diversion exacerbated problems of insufficient speed of advance from railheads not allowed for by the German General Staff. Originally, the Schlieffen Plan called for the right flank of the German advance to pass to the west of Paris. However, the capacity of rail and surface roads hampered the German supply train, allowing French and British forces to finally halt the German advance east of Paris at the First Battle of the Marne (September 5–12), thereby denying the Central Powers a quick victory over France and forcing them to fight a war on two fronts. The German army had fought its way into a good defensive position inside France and had permanently incapacitated 230,000 more French and British troops than it had lost itself in the months of August and September. Yet communications problems and questionable command decisions (such as Moltke transferring troops from the right to protect Sedan) cost Germany the chance for an early victory over France with its very ambitious war plan.
Africa and Pacific
In August 1914, French and British Empire forces invaded the German protectorate
of Togoland in West Africa. Shortly thereafter, on August 10, German forces
based in South-West Africa attacked South Africa. An Anglo-Indian army was raised,
which landed in Basra in November 1914. New Zealand occupied German Samoa (later
Western Samoa) on August 30. On September 11, the Australian Naval and Military
Expeditionary Force landed on the island of Neu Pommern (later New Britain),
which formed part of German New Guinea. Japan seized Germany’s Micronesian
colonies and the German coaling port of Qingdao, in the Chinese Shandong peninsula.
Within a few months, the Allied forces had seized all the German territories
in the Pacific. However, sporadic and fierce fighting continued in East Africa
for the remainder of the war, as German forces recruited native soldiers and
evaded capture.
Western Front (World War I)
Advances in military technology meant that defensive firepower outweighed offensive
capabilities, making the war particularly murderous, as tactics had failed to
keep up. Barbed wire was a significant hindrance to massed infantry advances;
artillery, now vastly more lethal than in the 1870s, coupled with machine guns,
made crossing open ground a nightmarish prospect. Germans began using poison
gas in 1915, and soon, both sides were using gas. Neither side ever won a battle
with gas, but it made life even more miserable in the trenches and became one
of the most feared and longest remembered horrors of the war. Unfortunately,
few drastic changes in tactics could have been made even if the military leaders
of the time were open to them. The war saw the invention of tanks as another
attempt to break the trench warfare stalemate. They were primarily used by the
British and French, though the Germans used captured Allied tanks and a small
number of their own design.
After the First Battle of the Marne, both Entente and German forces began a series of outflanking maneuvers to try to force the other to retreat, in the so-called Race to the Sea. Britain and France soon found themselves facing entrenched German positions from Lorraine to Belgium’s Flemish coast. Britain and France sought to take the offensive, while Germany defended occupied territories. One consequence was that German trenches were much better constructed than those of their enemy: Anglo-French trenches were only intended to be “temporary” before their forces broke through German defenses. Some hoped to break the stalemate by utilizing science and technology. In April 1915, the Germans used chlorine gas, for the first time, which opened a 6 kilometer (4 mi) wide hole in the Allied lines when French colonial troops retreated before it. This breach was closed by allied soldiers at the Second Battle of Ypres (where over 5,000 mainly Canadian soldiers were gassed to death) and Third Battle of Ypres, where Canadian forces took the village of Passchendale with the help of allied powers.
The Newfoundland Memorial at Beaumont Hamel. On July 1, 1916, the first day
of the Battle of the Somme, the British Army saw the bloodiest day in its history,
suffering 57,470 casualties and 19,240 dead.
Neither side proved able to deliver a decisive blow for the next two years, though protracted German action at Verdun throughout 1916, and the Entente’s failure at the Somme, in the summer of 1916, brought the exhausted French army to the brink of collapse. Futile attempts at frontal assault—with a rigid adherence to unimaginative maneuver—came at a high price for both the British and the French poilu (infantry) and led to widespread mutinies especially during the time of the Nivelle Offensive in the spring of 1917. News of the Russian Revolution gave a new incentive to socialist sentiments among the troops, with its seemingly inherent promise of peace. Red flags were hoisted, and the Internationale was sung on several occasions. At the height of the mutiny, 30,000 to 40,000 French soldiers participated.
Throughout 1915–17, the British Empire and France suffered far more casualties than Germany. However, while the Germans only mounted a single main offensive at Verdun, each failed attempt by the Entente to break through German lines was met with an equally fierce German counteroffensive to recapture lost positions. Around 800,000 soldiers from the British Empire were on the Western Front at any one time. 1,000 battalions, each occupying a sector of the line from the North Sea to the Orne River, operated on a month-long four-stage rotation system, unless an offensive was underway. The front contained over 9,600 kilometers (6,000 mi) of trenches. Each battalion held its sector for about a week before moving back to support lines and then further back to the reserve lines before a week out-of-line, often in the Poperinge or Amiens areas.
In the British-led Battle of Arras during the 1917 campaign, the only military success was the capture of Vimy Ridge by the Canadian forces under Sir Arthur Currie and Julian Byng. It provided the British allies with great military advantage that had a lasting impact on the war and is considered by many historians as the founding myth of Canada.
Naval War
At the beginning of the war the Germans had scattered cruisers which they used
to attack allied merchant shipping. The British Royal Navy systematically hunted
them down, as at the Battle of the Falkland Islands in December 1914 when Germany
lost a fleet of 2 armoured cruisers, 2 light cruisers, and 2 transports.
In 1916 the Battle of Jutland (German: Skagerrakschlacht (Battle of the Skagerrak)) became by far the largest naval battle of the war, and the only full-scale clash of battleships. It was fought on May 31–June 1, 1916, in the North Sea near Jutland, the mainland of Denmark. The combatants were the Kaiserliche Marine's High Seas Fleet commanded by Vice Admiral Reinhard Scheer and the Royal Navy's Grand Fleet commanded by Admiral Sir John Jellicoe. The battle was a standoff as the Germans, outmaneuvered by the larger British fleet, managed to escape to base. Strategically the British demonstrated their control of the seas and the German navy largely remained in port, where disgruntled sailors mutinied in October 1918.
The submarine warfare employed by Germany using its U-boats threatened to cut the essential supply line between North America and Britain. The Germans, however, sank freighters without allowing the crew to escape. The United States protested and Germany modified its rules of engagement and after the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915 it promised not to sink passenger liners. Britain armed its merchant ships. Finally in early 1917 Germany decided on unrestricted submarine warfare, realizing the U.S. would enter the war. Germany thought it could strangle the Allied supplies before the Americans could train a large army.
The U-boat threat was solved in 1917 by herding merchants ships into convoys escorted by destroyers. The clustering made it much harder for U-boats to find their targets, and the destroyers made it likely that the slow submarines would be sunk by a highly effective new weapon, the depth charge. The losses to submarine attacks became quite small, but the convoy system slowed the flow of supplies, because the convoy traveled at the speed of the slowest ship, and ships had to wait to be assembled and wait again to be unloaded. The solution to the delays was a massive program of building new freighters. Troop ships were too fast for the submarines and did not travel the North Atlantic in convoys.
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers in October and November 1914, because
of the secret Ottoman-German Alliance, by three Pashas, which was signed in
August 1914. It threatened Russia’s Caucasian territories and Britain’s
communications with India and the East via the Suez canal. The British and French
opened another front in the South with the Gallipoli (1915) and Mesopotamian
campaigns. In Gallipoli, the Turks were successful in repelling the British,
French, and Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZACs) and forced their
eventual withdrawal and evacuation. In Mesopotamia, by contrast, after the disastrous
Siege of Kut (1915–16), British Empire forces reorganized and captured
Baghdad in March 1917. Further to the west in the Sinai and Palestine Campaign,
initial British failures were overcome when Jerusalem was captured in December
1917, and the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, under Field Marshall Edmund Allenby,
broke the Ottoman forces at the Battle of Megiddo in September 1918.
Russian armies generally had the best of it in the Caucasus. Vice-Generalissimo Enver Pasha, supreme commander of the Turkish armed forces, was a very ambitious man with a dream to conquer central Asia. He was not, however, a practical soldier. He launched an offensive with 100,000 troops against the Russians in the Caucasus in December of 1914. Insisting on a frontal attack against Russian positions in the mountains in the heart of winter, Enver lost 86% of his force at the Battle of Sarikamis.
The Russian commander from 1915 to 1916, General Yudenich, with a string of victories over the Ottoman forces, drove the Turks out of much of present-day Armenia.
In 1917, Russian Grand Duke Nicholas assumed senior control over the Caucasus front. Nicholas tried to have a railway built from Russian Georgia to the conquered territories with a view to bringing up more supplies for a new offensive in 1917. But, in March of 1917 (February in the pre-revolutionary Russian calendar), the Czar was overthrown in the February Revolution and the Russian army began to slowly fall apart.
Italian participation
Italy had been allied to the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires since 1882.
However, Italy had its own designs against Austrian territory in the Trentino,
Istria and Dalmatia, and maintained a secret 1902 understanding with France,
which effectively nullified its alliance commitments. Italy refused to join
Germany and Austria-Hungary at the beginning of the war because their alliance
(the "Triple Alliance") was defensive, while Austria-Hungary was the
attacker. The Austrian government started negotiations to obtain Italian neutrality
in exchange for French territories (Tunisia), but Italy joined the Entente by
signing the London Pact in April and declaring war on Austria-Hungary in May
1915; it declared war against Germany fifteen months later.
In general, the Italians had numerical superiority but were poorly equipped. The Italians went on the offensive to relieve pressure on the other Allied fronts and achieve their territorial goals. In the Trentino front, the Austro-Hungarian defense took advantage of the elevation of their bases in the mostly mountainous terrain, which was not suitable for military offensives. After an initial Austro-Hungaric strategic retreat to better positions, the front remained mostly unchanged, while Austrian Kaiserschützen and Standschützen and Italian Alpini fought bitter close combat battles during summer and tried to survive during winter in the high mountains. The Austro-Hungarians counterattacked in the Altopiano of Asiago towards Verona and Padua in the spring of 1916 (Strafexpedition), but they also made little progress.
Beginning in 1915, the Italians mounted 11 major offensives along the Isonzo River north of Trieste, known collectively as the Battle of the Isonzo. These eleven battles were repelled by the Austro-Hungarians who had the higher ground. In the summer of 1916, the Italians captured the town of Gorizia. After this minor victory, the front remained practically stable for over a year, despite several Italian offensives. In the fall of 1917, thanks to the improving situation on the Eastern front, the Austrians received large reinforcements, including German assault troops. The Central Powers launched a crushing offensive on October 26 that was spearheaded by German troops and supported by the Austrians and Hungarians. The attack resulted in the victory of Caporetto: the Italian army was routed, but after retreating more than 100 km, it was able to reorganise and hold at the Piave River. In 1918, the Austrians repeatedly failed to break the Italian line in battles such as the battle on the Asiago Plateau and, decisively defeated in the Battle of Vittorio Veneto, surrendered to the Entente powers in November.
War in the Balkans
Faced with the Russian threat, Austria-Hungary could spare only one
third of its army for Serbia. After suffering tremendous losses, the Austrians
briefly captured the Serbian capital, but Serb counterattacks succeeded in expelling
the invaders from the country by the end of 1914. For the first 10 months of
1915, Austria used most of its spare armies to fight Italy. However, German
and Austrian diplomats scored a great coup by convincing Bulgaria to join in
a new attack on Serbia.
The conquest of Serbia was finally accomplished in a little more than a month, starting on October 7, when the Austrians and Germans attacked from the north. Four days later the Bulgarians attacked from the east. The Serbian army, attacked from two directions and facing certain defeat, retreated east and south into Albania, stopping only once to make a stand against the Bulgarians, near modern day Gjilan, Kosovo, where they again suffered defeat. From Albania they went by ship to Greece. In late 1915, a Franco-British force landed at Salonica in Greece to offer assistance and to pressure the Greek government into war against the Central Powers. Unfortunately for the Allies, the pro-Allied Greek government of Eleftherios Venizelos was dismissed, by the pro-German King Constantine I, before the allied expeditionary force had even arrived.
The Salonica Front proved entirely immobile, so much so that it was joked that Salonica was the largest German prisoner of war camp. Only at the very end of the war were the Entente powers able to make a breakthrough, which was after most of the German and Austro-Hungarian troops had been removed, leaving the Front held by the Bulgarians alone. This led to Bulgaria’s signing an armistice on September 29, 1918.
While the Western Front had reached stalemate in the trenches, the war continued in the east. The Russian initial plans for war had called for simultaneous invasions of Austrian Galicia and German East Prussia. Although Russia’s initial advance into Galicia was largely successful, they were driven back from East Prussia by the victories of the German generals Hindenburg and Ludendorff at Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes in August and September 1914. Russia’s less developed industrial base and ineffective military leadership was instrumental in the events that unfolded. By the spring of 1915, the Russians were driven back in Galicia, and in May, the Central Powers achieved a remarkable breakthrough on Poland’s southern fringes, capturing Warsaw on August 5 and forcing the Russians to withdraw from all of Poland. This became known as the “Great Retreat” by the Russian Empire and the “Great Advance” by Germany.
Russian Revolution
Dissatisfaction with the Russian government’s conduct of the
war grew despite the success of the June 1916 Brusilov offensive in eastern
Galicia against the Austrians. The Russian success was undermined by the reluctance
of other generals to commit their forces in support of the victorious sector
commander. Allied and Russian forces revived only temporarily with Romania’s
entry into the war on August 27: German forces came to the aid of embattled
Austrian units in Transylvania, and Bucharest fell to the Central Powers on
December 6. Meanwhile, internal unrest grew in Russia as the Tsar remained out
of touch at the front. Empress Alexandra’s increasingly incompetent rule
drew protests from all segments of Russian political life and resulted in the
murder of Alexandra’s favorite Rasputin by conservative noblemen at the
end of 1916.
Vladimir LeninIn March 1917, demonstrations in St. Petersburg culminated in
the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II and the appointment of a weak Provisional
Government, which shared power with the socialists of the Petrograd Soviet.
This division of power led to confusion and chaos both on the front and at home,
and the army became increasingly ineffective.
The war, and the government, became more and more unpopular, and the discontent led to a rise in popularity of the Bolshevik party, led by Vladimir Lenin, who promised pulling Russia out of the war and were able to gain power. The triumph of the Bolsheviks in November was followed in December by an armistice and negotiations with Germany. At first, the Bolsheviks refused to agree to the harsh German terms, but when Germany resumed the war and marched with impunity across Ukraine, the new government acceded to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on March 3, 1918, which took Russia out of the war and ceded vast territories, including Finland, the Baltic provinces, parts of Poland and Ukraine to the Central Powers.
After the Russians dropped out of the war, the Entente no longer existed. The Allied powers led a small-scale invasion of Russia. The invasion was made with intent primarily to stop Germany from exploiting Russian resources and, to a lesser extent, to support the Whites in the Russian Revolution. Troops landed in Archangel (see North Russia Campaign) and in Vladivostok.
1917–18
In the trenches: A carrying party of the Royal Irish Rifles in a communications
trench on the first day on the Somme, 1916-07-01Events of 1917 would prove decisive
in ending the war, although their effects would not be fully felt until 1918.
The British naval blockade of Germany began to have a serious impact on morale
and productivity on the German home front. In response, in February 1917, the
German General Staff (OHL) was able to convince Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg
to declare unrestricted submarine warfare, with the goal of starving Britain
out of the war. Tonnage sunk rose above 500,000 tons per month from February
until July, peaking at 860,000 tons in April. After July, the reintroduced convoy
system was extremely effective in neutralizing the U-boat threat, thanks to
American experimentation. Britain was safe from the threat of starvation, and
the German war industry remained deprived materially.
The decisive victory of Austria-Hungary and Germany at the Battle of Caporetto led to the Allied decision at the Rapallo Conference to form the Supreme Allied Council at Versailles to coordinate plans and action. Previously British and French armies had operated under separate command systems.
In December, the Central Powers signed an armistice with Russia, thereby releasing troops from the eastern front for use in the west. Ironically, German troop transfers could have been greater if their territorial acquisitions had not been so dramatic. With both German reinforcements and new American troops pouring into the Western Front, the final outcome of the war was to be decided in that front. The Central Powers knew that they could not win a protracted war now that American forces were certain to be arriving in increasing numbers, but they held high hopes for a rapid offensive in the West using their reinforced troops and new infantry tactics. Furthermore, the rulers of both the Central Powers and the Allies became more fearful of the threat first raised by Ivan Bloch in 1899, that protracted industrialized war threatened social collapse and revolution throughout Europe. Both sides urgently sought a decisive, rapid victory on the Western Front because they were both fearful of collapse or stalemate.
Entry of the United States
President Wilson before Congress, announcing the break in official relations
with Germany on February 3, 1917.America’s policy of insisting on neutral
rights while also trying to broker a peace resulted in tensions with both Berlin
and London. When a German U-boat sank the Lusitania in 1915, a large passenger
line with 128 Americans aboard, Wilson vowed "America was too proud to
fight," and demanded an end to attacks on passenger ships. Germany complied.
Wilson tried to mediate a compromise settlement; yet no compromise was discovered.
Wilson also repeatedly warned that America would not tolerate unrestricted submarine
warfare because it violated America's rights. However, in January 1917 the Germans
announced they would resume unrestricted submarine warfare. Berlin's proposal
to Mexico to join the war as Germany's ally against the U.S. was exposed in
February, angering American opinion. (see Zimmermann Telegram). After German
submarines attacked several American merchant ships, sinking three, Wilson requested
that Congress declare war on Germany, which it did on April 6, 1917.[12] The
U.S. House of Representatives approved the war resolution 373-50, the U.S. Senate
82-6, with opposition coming especially from German American districts such
as Wisconsin. The U.S. declared war on Austria-Hungary in December 1917.
The United States was never formally a member of the Allies but an “Associated Power”. Significant numbers of fresh American troops arrived in Europe in the summer of 1918, and they started arriving at 10,000 per day. Germany miscalculated that it would be many more months before large numbers of American troops could be sent to Europe, and that, in any event, the U-boat offensive would prevent their arrival. In fact, not a single American infantryman lost his life due to German U-boat activity.
The United States Navy sent a battleship group to Scapa Flow to join with the British Grand Fleet, several destroyers to Queenstown, Ireland and several submarines to the Azores and to Bantry Bay, Ireland to help guard convoys. Several regiments of U.S. Marines were also dispatched to France. However, it would be some time before the United States would be able to contribute significant personnel to the Western and Italian fronts.
The British and French wanted the United States to send its infantry to reinforce their troops already on the battlelines, and not use scarce shipping to bring over supplies. Thus the Americans primarily used British and French artillery, aircraft and tanks. However, General John J. Pershing, American Expeditionary Force (AEF) commander, refused to break up American units to be used as reinforcements for British Empire and French units (though he did allow African American combat units to be used by the French). Pershing ordered the use of frontal assaults, which had been discarded by that time by British Empire and French commanders because of the large loss of life sustained throughout the war.
German Spring Offensive of 1918
For most of World War I, Allied forces were stalled at trenches on the Western
FrontMain article: Spring Offensive
German General Erich Ludendorff drew up plans (codenamed Operation Michael)
for a 1918 general offensive along the Western Front. This Spring Offensive
sought to divide the British and French armies in a series of feints and advances.
The German leadership hoped to strike a decisive blow against the enemy before
significant United States forces could be deployed. Before the offensive even
began, Ludendorff made what may have been a fatal mistake by leaving the elite
Eighth Army in Russia and sending over only a small portion of the German forces
from the east to aid the offensive in the west.[citation needed]
Operation Michael opened on March 21, 1918, with an attack against British forces near the rail junction at Amiens. Ludendorff’s intention was to split the British and French armies at this point. German forces achieved an unprecedented advance of 60 kilometers (40 mi). For the first time since 1914, maneuvering was achieved on the battlefield.
British and French trenches were defeated using novel infiltration tactics, also called Hutier tactics after General Oskar von Hutier. Up to this time, attacks had been characterized by long artillery bombardments and continuous-front mass assaults. However, in the Spring Offensive, the German Army used artillery briefly and infiltrated small groups of infantry at weak points, attacking command and logistics areas and surrounding points of serious resistance. These isolated positions were then destroyed by more heavily armed infantry. German success relied greatly on this tactic.
The front line had now moved to within 120 kilometers (75 mi) of Paris. Three super-heavy Krupp railway guns advanced and fired 183 shells on Paris, which caused many Parisians to flee the city. The initial stages of the offensive were so successful that German Kaiser Wilhelm II declared March 24 a national holiday. Many Germans thought victory was close; however, after heavy fighting, the German offensive was halted. Infiltration tactics had worked very well, but the Germans, lacking tanks or motorized artillery, were unable to consolidate their positions. The British and French learned that if they fell back a few miles, the Germans would be disorganized and vulnerable to counterattack.
American divisions, which Pershing had sought to field as an independent force, were assigned to the depleted French and British Empire commands on March 28. A supreme command of Allied forces was created at the Doullens Conference, in which British Field Marshal Douglas Haig handed control of his forces over to Ferdinand Foch.
Following Operation Michael, Germany launched Operation Georgette to the north against the Channel ports. This was halted by the Allies with less significant territorial gains to Germany. Operations Blücher and Yorck were then conducted by the German Army to the south, broadly towards Paris. Next, Operation Marne was launched on July 15 as an attempt to encircle Reims, beginning the Second Battle of the Marne. The resulting Allied counterattack marked their first successful offensive of the war. By July 20, the Germans were back at their Kaiserschlacht starting lines, having achieved nothing. Following this last phase of the ground war in the West, the German Army never again held the initiative. German casualties between March and April 1918 were 270,000, including many of the highly trained stormtroopers. Their best soldiers were gone just as the Americans started arriving.
Meanwhile, Germany was crumbling internally as well. Anti-war marches were a frequent occurrence and morale within the army was at low levels. Industrial output had fallen 53% from 1913.
Allied victory: summer and autumn 1918
American engineers returning from the front during the Battle of Saint-Mihiel
in September 1918Main articles: Hundred Days Offensive and Weimar Republic
The Allied counteroffensive, known as the Hundred Days Offensive began on August
8, 1918. The Battle of Amiens developed with III Corps Fourth British Army on
the left, the First French Army on the right, and the Canadian and Australian
Corps spearheading the offensive in the centre. It involved 414 tanks of the
Mark IV and Mark V type, and 120,000 men. They advanced as far as 12 kilometers
(7 mi) into German-held territory in just seven hours. Erich Ludendorff referred
to this day as “the Black Day of the German army”.
The offensive slowed and lost momentum due to supply problems. British units had encountered problems with all but seven tanks and trucks ran out of fuel. On August 15, General Haig called a halt and began planning a new offensive in Albert. This Second Battle of the Somme began on August 21. Some 130,000 United States troops were involved, along with soldiers from Third and Fourth British Armies. It was an overwhelming success for the Allies. The Second German Army was pushed back over a 55 kilometer (34 mi) front. The town of Bapaume was captured on August 29 and by September 2, the Germans were on the Hindenburg Line, which was the starting point of the war.
The Allied attempt to take the Hindenburg Line (the Meuse-Argonne Offensive) began September 26, as 260,000 American soldiers went “over the top”. All divisions were successful in capturing their initial objectives, except the U.S. 79th Infantry Division, which met stiff resistance at Montfaucon and took an extra day to capture the objective. Then the US Army stalled because of supply problems as its inexperienced headquarters had to cope with large units and the difficult landscape (hilly and forested, with few roads).
At the same time, French units broke through Champagne and closed on the Belgian frontier. The most significant advance came from Commonwealth units as they entered Belgium (liberation of Ghent). The German army had to shorten its front so used the Dutch frontier as an anchor and chose to fight rear-guard actions. This probably saved the army from disintegration but was devastating for morale.
By the start of October, it was evident that Germany could no longer mount a successful defense, let alone a counterattack. Numerically on the frontline they were increasingly outnumbered, with the few new recruits too young or too old to be of much help. Rations were cut for men and horses because the food supply was critical. Ludendorff had decided, by October 1, that Germany had two ways out of the War—total annihilation or an armistice. He recommended the latter to senior German officials at a summit on that very same day. During October, the Allied pressure did not let up until the end of the war.
Meanwhile, news of Germany’s impending military defeat had spread throughout the German Armed forces. The threat of general mutiny was rife. Naval commander Admiral Reinhard Scheer and Ludendorff decided to launch a last ditch attempt to restore the “valor” of the German Navy. Knowing any such action would be vetoed by the government of Max von Baden, Ludendorff decided not to inform him. Nonetheless, word of the impending assault reached sailors at Kiel. Many rebelled and were arrested, refusing to be part of a naval offensive which they believed to be nothing more than a suicide bid. It was Ludendorff who took the blame for this—the Kaiser dismissed him on October 26.
With power coming into the hands of new men in Berlin, further fighting became impossible. With 6 million German casualties, Germany moved toward peace. Prince Max von Baden took charge of the new German government. Negotiations for peace began immediately upon his appointment. In the matter of the German monarchy, he was torn between the idea of a constitutional monarchy—in which he himself was in line for the crown—or a republic. President Wilson demanded the abdication of the Kaiser and there was no resistance when the social democrat Philipp Scheidemann on November 9 declared Germany to be a republic. Von Baden then announced that the Kaiser was to abdicate, along with all other princes in the Reich. Imperial Germany was dead; a new Germany had been born: the Weimar Republic.
End of war
Front page of the New York Times on Armistice Day, November 11, 1918.The collapse
of the Central Powers came swiftly. Bulgaria was the first to sign an armistice
on September 29, 1918. On October 30, the Ottoman Empire capitulated.
On October 24 the Italians began a push which rapidly recovered their territory a year after they lost it during the Battle of Caporetto. This push culminated in the Battle of Vittorio Veneto, which heralded the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Army as an effective fighting force. The push also triggered the disintegration of Austria-Hungary: during the last week of October declarations were made in Budapest, Prague and Zagreb, proclaiming the independence of their respective parts of the old empire. On October 29 the imperial authorities asked Italy for an armistice, but the Italians continued advancing reaching Trento, Udine and Trieste. On November 3 Austria-Hungary sent a flag of truce to the Italian Commander to ask again for an Armistice and terms of peace. The terms were arranged by telegraph with the Allied Authorities in Paris, were communicated to the Austrian Commander, and were accepted. The Armistice with Austria was signed in the Villa Giusti, near Padua, on November 3, and it was granted to take effect on November 4, at three o’clock in the afternoon. Austria and Hungary signed separate armistices following the overthrow of the Habsburg monarchy and the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Following the outbreak of the German Revolution, a republic was proclaimed on November 9, marking the end of the monarchy. The Kaiser fled the next day to the neutral Netherlands, which granted him political asylum (see Weimar Republic for details). On November 11, an armistice with Germany was signed in a railroad carriage at Compiègne in France where Germans had previously dictated terms to France, ending the Franco-Prussian War in 1871. At 11:00 on November 11, 1918 — the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month — a ceasefire came into effect and the opposing armies on the Western Front began to withdraw from their positions. Canadian George Lawrence Price is traditionally regarded as the last soldier killed in the Great War: he was shot by a German sniper and died at 10:58.
A formal state of war between the two sides persisted for another seven months until it was finally ended by the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on June 28, 1919 with Germany, and the following treaties with Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria and The Ottoman Empire signed at St. Germain, Trianon, Neuilly and Sèvres. However, the latter treaty with the Ottoman Empire was followed by strife (the Turkish Independence War) and a final peace treaty was signed between the Allied Powers and the country that would shortly become the Republic of Turkey, at Lausanne on July 24, 1923.
Some war memorials date the end of the war as being when the Versailles treaty was signed in 1919; by contrast, most commemorations of the war’s end concentrate on the armistice of November 11, 1918. Legally the last formal peace treaties were not signed until 1923. Some also treat the Versailles treaty as the prelude to World War 2.