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“The Great War” redirects here. For other uses, see The Great War (disambiguation).
The Allied Powers, led by France, Russia, Great Britain, and later, Italy and the United States, defeated the Central Powers, led by Austria-Hungary, Germany, and the Ottoman Empire. Much of the fighting in World War I took place along the Western Front, within a system of opposing manned trenches and fortifications (separated by an unoccupied space between the trenches called "no man's land") running 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 of civilians perished. The war caused the disintegration of four empires: the Austro-Hungarian, German, Ottoman, and Russian. Germany lost its overseas empire, and new states such as Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Finland, Latvia and Yugoslavia were created, and in the cases of Lithuania and Poland, recreated.
CausesOn 28 June 1914, Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb student, shot and killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife, Sophie Chotek, in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, which had been annexed by Austria-Hungary in 1908. 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. Austria-Hungary demanded certain actions by Serbia to punish those responsible for the assassination. Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia when it was deemed that Serbia had failed to fully comply. Many major European powers came to be at war with each other within a matter of weeks. This was due to overlapping agreements for collective defense and the complex nature of international alliances at that time. However, the conflict also had deeper causes which were multiple and complex. Arms racesThe naval race that developed between Britain and Germany was intensified by Britain's 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.
Plans, distrust and mobilizationClosely 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 emphasised the inherently aggressive nature of the Schlieffen Plan, which outlined German strategy if at war with both France and Russia. Conflict on two fronts meant Germany had to eliminate one opponent quickly before taking on the other, relying on a strict timetable. It called for a strong right flank attack, to seize Belgium and cripple the French army by pre-empting its mobilisation. After the attack, the German army would then rush to the eastern front by railroad and quickly destroy the more slowly mobilizing military of Russia. In a greater context, France's own Plan XVII called for an offensive thrust into Germany’s industrial Ruhr Valley which would cripple Germany’s ability to wage war. Russia’s revised Plan XIX implied a mobilisation of its armies against both Austria-Hungary and Germany. All three created an atmosphere where generals and planning staffs were anxious to seize the initiative and achieve decisive victories. Elaborate mobilisation plans with precise timetables were prepared. Once the mobilisation orders were issued, both generals and statesmen alike understood 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 of hours or even days. Militarism and autocracyPresident Woodrow Wilson of the United States and other observers blamed the war on militarism.[2] 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. There was some validity to this view of the war, as the Allies consisted of Great Britain and France, both democracies, fighting the Central Powers, which included Germany, an autocracy, and the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires, both of them autocratic empires which had subjugated various nationalities and peoples. Russia, one of the Allied Powers, was an empire until 1917, but it was opposing the subjugation of Slavic peoples by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Thus, this view of the war as democracy versus dictatorship had some validity, although it lost credibility as the war lengthened and grew more costly. Economic imperialismVladimir 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.[3] This argument proved popular 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.[4] Trade barriersCordell Hull believed that trade barriers were the root cause of both World War I and World War II, and designed the Bretton Woods Agreements to reduce trade barriers, and thus eliminate what he saw as the root cause of the two world wars. Ethnic and political rivalries, both old and newA localised 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, where anti-Austrian sentiment was perhaps at its most fervent; Austria-Hungary had occupied the former Ottoman province of Bosnia-Herzegovina which had a large Serb population since 1878 and formally annexed it in 1908. The nationalistic sentiments also coincided with the decline of the Ottoman Empire, which formerly held sway over much of the region. Imperial Russia supported the Pan-Slavic movement, motivated by ethnic and religious loyalties, dissatisfaction with Austria (dating back to the Crimean War, but most recently concerning a failed Russian-Austrian treaty) and a century-old dream of a warm water port.[5] As for Germany, its location in the center of Europe led to the decision for an active defense, culminating in the Schlieffen Plan. At the same time, the transfer of the contested Alsace and Lorraine territories and defeat in the Franco-Prussian War influenced France’s policy, characterised by revanchism. The French formed an alliance with Russia, and a two-front war became a distinct possibility for Germany.
Contemporary justifications, politico-moralCommentators immediately before and during the war offered various justifications for the conflict. An introduction to contemporary views may be found in Henri Bergson's The Meaning of the War, Life & Matter in Conflict (London, 1915, also available at Project Gutenberg). July crisis and declarations of warAfter the assassination of June 28, Austria-Hungary waited for 3 weeks before deciding on a course of action, obtaining first a "blank cheque" from Germany that promised support for whatever it decided. The Austro-Hungarian government, once assured of support, moved to crush Serbia. On July 23 Austro-Hungary issued the July Ultimatum to Serbia, demanding among other things that Austrian agents be allowed to take part in the investigation of the assassination, and that Serbia should take responsibility for it.[6] The Serbian government accepted all the terms of the ultimatum, with the exception of those relating to the participation of the Austrian agents in the inquiry, which Serbia regarded as a violation of its sovereignty. Breaking diplomatic relations, Austria Hungary declared war on Serbia on July 28 and proceeded to bombard Belgrade with artillery on July 29. On July 30, Austria-Hungary mobilised its army when its July Ultimatum to Serbia expired. Russia then mobilised its own army, due to its standing military guarantees to Serbia for Collective defense. Having pledged its support to Austria-Hungary, Germany issued Russia an ultimatum on July 31, demanding a halt to mobilisation 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 implementation of the Schlieffen Plan (which was rapidly going awry, as the Germans had not intended to be at war with a mobilised Russia this quickly). Yet another ultimatum was delivered to Belgium on August 2, 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 refused on the grounds that it would be impossible to change the rail schedule—“once settled, it cannot be altered”.[7] On August 3, Germany declared war on France and invaded Belgium on August 4. This act violated Belgian neutrality, the status to which Germany, France, and Britain were all committed by treaty. It was inconceivable that Great Britain would remain neutral if Germany declared war on France; German violation of Belgian neutrality provided the casus belli that the British government sought. German Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg told the Reichstag that the German invasions of Belgium and Luxemburg were in violation of international law, but argued that Germany was "in a state of necessity, and necessity knows no law." Later that same day, in a conversation with the British ambassador Sir Edward Goschen, Bethmann Hollweg expressed astonishment that the British would go to war with Germany over the 1839 treaty guaranteeing the neutrality of Belgium, referring to the treaty dismissively as a "scrap of paper," a statement that outraged public opinion in Britain and the United States.[8] Britain's guarantee to Belgium prompted Britain, which had been neutral, to declare war on Germany on August 4. The British government expected a limited war, in which it would primarily use its great naval strength.[9] ChronologyOpening hostilitiesImage:Europe 1914.png European military alliances in 1914. The Central Powers are depicted in purplish-red, the Entente Powers in grey, and neutral countries in yellow Confusion among the Central PowersIn Europe, the Central Powers 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 interpretations of this policy 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 were allocated to invade and conquer Serbia. African campaignsSome of the first actions of the war involved British Empire, French and German colonial forces in Africa. On August 7, French and British forces invaded the German protectorate of Togoland in West Africa. On August 10, German forces based in South-West Africa attacked South Africa. However, sporadic and fierce fighting continued in East Africa for the remainder of the war, as German forces recruited native soldiers and evaded capture. Image:Guetteur au poste de l'écluse 26.jpg Haut-Rhin, France, 1917. Serbian campaignThe 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 realised and as a result, Austria had to keep a very sizable force on the Serbian front, which weakened their armies facing Russia. German forces in Belgium and FranceImage:SikhsInFrancePostcard.jpg French postcard depicting the arrival of 15th Sikh Regiment in France during World War I. The post card reads, "Gentlemen of India marching to chasten German hooligans". 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 and low speed of horse-drawn transport 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. Asia and the PacificNew 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 after Battle of Tsingtao, 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. Early stagesTrench warfare beginsMilitary tactics in the early part of World War I failed to keep pace with advances in military technology. This newly advanced technology allowed the building of impressive military protection, which out of date offensive tactics could not break through. 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 introduced poison gas in 1915, at the first battle of Ypres, which soon became a weapon used by both sides. Poisonous gas never won a battle; however, its effects were brutally horrific, causing slow and painfully gruesome deaths which made life even more miserable in the trenches. It became one of the most feared and longest remembered horrors of the war. Tacticians on both sides failed to develop tactics capable of breaking through entrenched positions without massive casualties until technology began to yield new offensive weapons. The tank was another war-time invention designed to break trench warfare stalemates. Both Britain and France were primary tank users while the Germans used captured Allied tanks as well as a few 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. Allied soldiers closed this breach at the Second Battle of Ypres (where over 5,000 soldiers, mainly Canadian, were gassed to death) and Third Battle of Ypres, where Canadian forces took the village of Passchendaele. 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. 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, occupying sectors 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 WarAt the start of the war, the German Empire had cruisers scattered across the globe that they were subsequently used to attack Allied merchant shipping. The British Royal Navy thereafter systematically hunted them down: at the Battle of the Falkland Islands in December 1914, for example, Germany lost a fleet of 2 armoured cruisers, 2 light cruisers, and 2 transports. Soon after the war began, Britain initiated a Naval Blockade of Germany, preventing supply ships from reaching German ports. This strategy proved extremely effective, cutting off vital supplies from the German army and devastating Germany's economy in the homefront, leading to mass famine and starvation across the country. Furthermore, due to Britain's control of the sea, they were able to carry out their blockade often without firing a shot by simply boarding the ships, confiscating their cargo, and then letting the ship go afterwards. This strategy minimised casualties from ships belonging to nations not involved in the war. As a result, none of the neutral nations ever made a serious demand to end the blockade. The 1916 Battle of Jutland (German: Skagerrakschlacht, or "Battle of the Skagerrak") developed into the largest naval battle of the war, and - remarkably - the only full-scale clash of battleships between the two sides. The Battle of Jutland was fought on May 31–June 1, 1916, in the North Sea off 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 thereafter remained largely confined to port, where disgruntled sailors eventually mutinied in October 1918. German U-boats threatened to cut the supply lines between North America and Britain. Due to the need to maintain positional secrecy, attacks came without warning, giving the crews of the targeted ships little chance to escape. The United States protested, and Germany modified its rules of engagement and - after the infamous sinking of the passenger ship RMS Lusitania in 1915 - it promised not to sink passenger liners. Britain armed its merchant ships. Finally, in early 1917 Germany decided on a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare, realising the Americans would enter the war. Germany gambled that it would be able to strangle the Allied supply line before the Americans could train and transport a large army. The U-boat threat was solved in 1917 by herding merchant ships into convoys escorted by destroyers. This tactic made it much harder for U-boats to find targets, and the destroyers made it likely that a highly effective new weapon, the depth charge, would sink the slower submarines. 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. The First World War also saw the first use of aircraft carriers in combat, with HMS Furious launching Sopwith Camels in a successful raid against the Zeppelin hangars at Tondern in July 1918. Southern theatresOttoman EmpireThe 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 reorganised 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 Marshal 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 the southern Caucasus. 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 participationItaly 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 this advantage was squandered (along with the later increase in the size and quality of artillery which by 1917 rivalled the British and French gun parks) by the obstinacy with which Italian Generalissimo Luigi Cadorna insisted on attacking the Isonzo front. Cadorna, a staunch proponent of the frontal assault, had dreams of breaking into the Slovenian plateau, taking Ljubljana and then threatening Vienna itself; it was a Napoleonic plan which had no realistic chance in the age of barbed wire and machine guns. Cadorna unleashed 11 offensives (Battles of the Isonzo) with total disregard for his men's lives. 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-Hungarian 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 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
