World War I was a total war for several reasons, but perhaps mostly because it involved whole populations and exposed them to dangers formerly restricted to the military combatants. Air raids and gas attacks made no distinction between military and civilian victims. The entire nation participated in the struggle. Rationing of food, clothing, and other necessities became commonplace. All able-bodied men were recruited or conscripted for combat or for indispensable war work. Women and children were encouraged to work in factories and elsewhere to aid the national exertion.
It was a war that required in unprecedented quantity the skills of the scientist, inventor, technician, and propagandist. New machines and weapons were employed, among them, submarines, radios, sound-detection equipment, tanks, dirigibles, airplanes, trucks, automobiles, machine guns, and poison gas.
The Background. The end of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 and the emergence of the new nations of Germany and Italy heralded an uneasy peace that was threatened from time to time by major diplomatic crises and by what are termed minor wars. This was a period of ambitious nationalism. Rivalry over the possession of colonies, raw materials, additional markets, coaling stations, and strategic bases led to friction as the great nations became more highly industrialized and unoccupied overseas territories became fewer.
Germany's desire for commercial outlets grew into a vision of world power, but Germany found its imperial ambitions blocked by Great Britain. Austria-Hungary, an awkward complex of national problems and tensions that placed it on the verge of internal dissolution, found its desired expansion into Eastern Europe blocked by Serbia and Russian Pan-Slavism. Russia, defeated by Japan in 1905, torn by revolutionary currents, and eroded by corruption and inefficiency, was both ambitious and peculiarly idealistic. France thirsted for revenge against Germany and for the return of Alsace-Lorraine, while at the same time fearing German aggression. Britain moved from insular isolation and Commonwealth commitment into membership in the European system as it realized the extent of German ambitions and in particular the German challenge to British naval supremacy.
Two rival alliances had come into being: the secret Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy, formed by German Chancellor Otto von Bismark in 1882; and the similarly secret Triple Entente of Russia, France, and Britain, completed in 1907. Thus each member of each coalition would come to the aid of any ally menaced by war. These two mutually hostile and suspicious groups endangered the peace of Europe and the world because of the Continental system of universal military service, the large sums devoted to increasingly powerful armies and navies, and the psychological fears promoted by a press featuring sensational news.
The Outbreak of War. The scene was set for conflagration, and the murder of the Austrian Archduke in an obscure provincial capital provided the spark. Claiming with some justification that the Serbian government was responsible for the crime and hoping to extinguish Serbian expansionist agitation, Austria-Hungary planned a local war. First, however, it secured backing from Germany. Germany supported its ally by what British statesman Winston Churchill called a "blank check, valid against the whole resources of the German Empire." The Austrian government then sent a stiff ultimatum to Serbia on July 23, demanding acceptance within 48 hours. Replying promptly, the Serbians accepted some of the demands, gave conciliatory answers to others, and rejected only one outright, namely, that Austrian troops be permitted to enter Serbia to put down the anti-Austro-Hungarian conspiratorial movement. Since this was incompatible with Serbian sovereignty, the government refused. As a consequence, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on July 28 and attacked the next day.
Though the diplomatic services in Europe frantically attempted to localize the conflict and avert its spread, Russia came to the aid of Serbia. Despite the understanding that mobilization meant war, Russia ordered a general mobilization on July 30. Two days later, France and Germany came to the aid of their respective allies and ordered their own general mobilizations. On the same day, Aug. 1, Germany declared war on Russia, and two days later on France. Italy deserted her allies and declared her neutrality. Britain declared war on Germany on Aug. 4, when Germany invaded Belgium. Seven nations therefore found themselves at war. The two Central Powers, Germany and Austria-Hungary, were arrayed against three Entente Powers, France, Russia, and Britain (who became known as the Allies), and two small nations, Serbia and Belgium. They were soon to be joined by others.
The German War Plan. The focal point of the war, which had opened in the Balkans, shifted at once to Western Europe. Here the Germany army astounded the world by its demonstration of thorough preparedness and organization for war, an efficiency developed by its general staff, which was unmatched in professional knowledge and skill. The German war plan was based not only on the probability that the combined German and Austrian resources were inferior to those of France and Russia, but also on the expectation that Russian mobilization would be too slow to affect the opening weeks of what would, for Germany, be a two-front war.
The Germans decided to strike first against France, while holding the Russians. After eliminating France, Germany would turn its power to the eastern foe. The difficulties of this course of action stemmed from the relatively small French border and the almost continuous French fortress system based on Epinal, Toul, and Verdun, as well as from the rugged Ardennes region along the borders of Luxembourg and Belgium. Alfred von Schlieffen, chief of the German general staff, consequently developed in the early years of the 20th century a plan projecting a wide sweep through Belgium. The forces on the extreme right flank would then wheel across northern France, cross the Seine River near Rouen, encircle Paris on the west, and push the French armies against the Moselle River. The German forces on the left would remain on the defensive, holding the French army at the frontier. If the French pressed toward the Rhine, the Schlieffen wheeling maneuver would strike the French in the rear. Helmuth von Moltke, known as the younger Moltke, who replaced Schlieffen in 1906, modified the essential idea, which was one of great boldness, by weakening the right wing in order to place more strength on the left and to permit sending more troops to the Russian front.
The French army, expecting the Germans to attack across the French frontier on the east, had in the early years of the century planned an initial defensive followed by a decisive counterattack. But those on the French general staff who most ardently advocated the offensive gained prominence, and the French war plan reflected these ideas. Joseph Joffre's Plan XVII projected an attack through Alsace-Lorraine. During informal staff negotiations beginning in 1905, French and British officers worked out arrangements for the small British Expeditionary Force to come in on the French left.
The German Invasion. Early in August, France moved 200,000 men toward its eastern frontier, while German troops advanced toward Belgium. On Aug. 2, Germany sent an ultimatum to Belgium demanding unopposed passage, promising payment after the war for any damage done to Belgian property. King Albert I of the Belgians refused, and on Aug. 4, German troops crossed the Belgian border. Despite opposition, the Germans took the great fortress of Liege on Aug. 15, entered Brussels on Aug. 20, and seemed about to wheel triumphantly through northern France.
Meanwhile the French had launched offensives into Alsace and Lorraine. Both were checked almost immediately. Yet the French attacks caused Moltke to divert German strength from his right flank to the left. With additional forces at their disposal, the German commanders in Lorraine began to dream of ending the war there. Instead of falling back to draw the French forces into the trap posited by the Schlieffen plan, they persuaded Moltke to sanction attack. The German offensive threw the French back to the protection of their fortified border barrier. Needing fewer troops to hold these strong defenses, Joffre was able to switch troops westward to meet the wheeling maneuver of the German right wing.
Taking Namur on Aug.23, sacking and partially destroying the Belgian cathedral city of Louvain on Aug. 25 (an action that prompted world indignation), the German right wing marched toward Paris. A French thrust into the Forest of Ardennes failed, and the French began to withdraw. The British Expeditionary Force of about 125,000 men, having landed on the Continent and having moved to Mons on Aug. 22, ready to advance farther into Belgium, had to fall back as the French retired.
The Battle of the Marne. Believing on Aug. 25 that Germany had already won the war against France, Moltke decided to withhold four divisions from the right wing in favor of sending them to Russia. The loss of this strength from the right wing, the inability to keep supplies moving with the advance, and the stubborn French defensive action during their withdrawal forced the Germans to contract their wheeling maneuver. The army on the extreme right flank turned inward to pass east of Paris and to drive toward Sedan. The troops that Joffre had been transferring westward to the Marne River and to Paris counterattacked with the British, and the battle of the Marne took place from Sept. 6 to 9. The battle halted the German advance and compelled the Germans to fall back to the Aisne River, where they stabilized a defensive line by Sept. 17.
The Race to the Sea. The result, during the following weeks, of each side's attempting to turn its opponent's flank has come to be known as the race to the sea. Joffre appointed Ferdinand Foch his deputy in the north to coordinate the French, British, and Belgian armies during this operation. Erich von Falkenhayn, who had succeeded Moltke, wished to conquer all of Belgium and gain possession of the Channel ports of Ostend, Dunkerque, Boulogne-sur-Mer, and Calais, which would give German submarines direct access to the Atlantic and also impede British contact with the Continent. He therefore pushed German forces toward Antwerp. The British landed a division in a desperate attempt to support the Belgians, but Antwerp fell on Oct. 9, forcing some British and Belgian troops into interment across the border in neutral Holland. The rest of the Belgian army retreated to the Ypres area, where the Allies resisted extreme German pressure during October and November.
The Trenches. By November the front had been stabilized in France, and a double line of parallel trenches, Allied and German, with no man's land between, extended 450 mi. from the English Channel to Switzerland. These lines became fairly fixed for more than three years. The deep trenches, protected by mines and barbed-wire entanglements, were frequently half full of water, but they sheltered the opposing armies against the barrages of bullet and shell that characterized the war of static position. Extensive patrolling and numerous attacks changed the lines little, primarily because of the efficacy of the machine gun and the artillery piece. The stalemate was obvious. The war would be a long one. For the moment at least, Germany was committed to defense in France.
The Eastern Front. Because Russian Poland was flanked on the north by German East Prussia and the Baltic Sea, on the south by Austrian Galicia and the Carpathians, and on the west by German Silesia, Germany, which planned to make its main effort in France, hoped to lure the Russians into an offensive that would be destroyed by a counterblow. But Austria, believing that it would soon conquer Serbia with a small part of its forces, wanted to launch an immediate offensive against Russia while France was preoccupied. Moltke acceded to the strategy enunciated by the Austrian military chief, Franz Conrad von Hotzendorf.
Russia, with immense manpower resources but small industrial capacity, planned to strike Austria while the Germans were busy in France. But because France asked Russia to attack Germany also and thereby offset German pressure on the French, Grand Duke Nikolai, the Russian commander, decided to attack East Prussia as well as Galicia.
Austria dispatched part of its forces against Serbia at the outset of the war. Though Austrian troops crossed the Danube and captured Belgrade on Dec. 2, Serbia counterattacked and recaptured its capital two weeks later. The Austrians could do little because the Russians had driven them out of Lemberg (Lvov) in early September, and were forcing them to give up most of Galicia.
While the Russians were meeting with success against Austria, they were meeting with disaster against Germany. Mobilizing much more quickly than expected, Russia sent two armies toward East Prussia, one under Pavel Rennenkampf crossing the eastern border, the other under Aleksandr Samsonov, the southern. When the German commander panicked, Moltke replaced him with Paul von Hindenburg, recalled from retirement, and made Erich Ludendorff, who had gained distinction during the capture of Liege, Hindenburg's chief of staff. Arriving in East Prussia on Aug. 23, Hindenburg and Ludendorff found that a staff officer named Max Hoffmann had already devised a bold plan for meeting the double danger from the encircling Russian armies. Using Hoffmann's plan, the Germans destroyed Samsonov's army in the battle of Tannenberg between Aug. 26 and 30, and in the battle of the Masurian Lakes forced Rennenkampf to quit German soil. Hindenburg, made supreme commander in the east, tried without success to exploit his victory by capturing Warsaw during the autumn. By December, it was apparent that a stalemate had been reached on the eastern front.
War Fronts Elsewhere. To cut off each other's supplies, Britain and Germany established naval blockades. Proclaiming war zones forbidden to neutral and enemy merchant ships, both belligerents tried to enforce their blockades with warships, submarines, and extensive mine fields. Contrary to international law, Germany laid unanchored floating mines without warning in international waters.
In the North Sea, the British Grand Fleet and the German High Seas Fleet avoided direct contact, each staying close to home base except for occasional sweeps. Britain thus maintained its blockade of Germany, while Germany sought above all to preserve its fleet. The first serious contact between the two fleets occurred on Aug. 28, when the British won the battle of Helgoland Bight by destroying three German light cruisers and a destroyer and damaging several other ships against light losses of their own. On Dec. 16, German ships bombarded the coastal villages of Scarborough and Hartlepool, killing 120 and wounding more than 400 British civilians.
In the Pacific, New Zealand and Australian forces took possession of the German holdings in Samoa and New Guinea. In Asia, Japan declared war on Germany on Aug. 23 and moved to seize the German fortress at Tsingtao, China. Japanese troops invested the stronghold by land and sea, and, joined by British forces, attacked later, in September. Tsingtao surrendered on Nov. 7.
Several German cruisers had, meanwhile, put to sea to escape Japanese capture. One of them, the Emden, raided Allied maritime shipping off the coasts of China and India, destroying much property before being tracked down and sunk west of Australia in November. Five other German cruisers under Maximilian von Spee steamed across the Pacific and won a victory over a British force off the coast of Chile. Near the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic, a British squadron surprised and destroyed Spee's fleet on Dec. 8. One ship, the Dresden, escaped but was hunted down and sunk by scuttling on Mar. 14, 1915.
In Africa, British and French forces took the German colonies of Togoland and the Cameroons very early in the war, though sporadic fighting continued in the back country for two years. Troops from South Africa attacked German South West Africa, but the campaign was delayed by a Boer revolt until early in 1915. In July of that year the German colony surrendered. British forces tried in Nov., 1914, to take German East Africa but were repulsed. Military operations undertaken again in 1915 succeeded in capturing the colony, though guerrilla resistance continued until the end of the war.
In the Mediterranean two German cruisers, the Goeben and the Breslau, sought safety from the British fleet in Aug., 1914, by entering the Dardanelles and putting into Constantinople. Neutral Turkey should have interned the crews. However, because Turkey had been under German influence, it permitted these ships and some of its own to bombard the Russian Black Sea ports of Odessa and Sevastopol. Russia promptly declared war on Turkey on Nov. 2, and France and Britain followed three days later. A Turkish expedition against Russia in the Caucasus in December ended in failure. At the same time, a Turkish venture against the British was meeting disaster. When Britain, in December, proclaimed a protectorate over Egypt, which British troops had occupied since 1882 despite the suzerainty of the Turkish Sultan, Turkey sent a force across the Sinai desert to attack the Suez Canal in retaliation. The British drove the Turkish troops off.
In Mesopotamia, British forces from India occupied Basra near the head of the Persian Gulf in November, in order to protect the oil pipelines. A force under Charles Townshend, supported by a flotilla, then pushed up the Tigris River and captured Kut (Kut al-Amarah). Later beseiged there, the British surrendered on Apr. 29, 1916. A new British expedition recaptured Kut on Feb. 23, 1917, then advanced and occupied Baghdad on Mar. 11.
1915: The Western Front. On the western front in 1915, Germans and Allies massed great numbers of troops and tried without success to break the trench system. Ground gained was trifling, while casualties were heavy. As the war continued, ammunition supplies, which like economic and financial resources in general had been prepared for a short war, began to run out. The manufacture of armaments became increasingly important.
The first troops of the Canadian Expeditionary Force appeared on the western front in 1915. Two years later 500,000 Canadians were formed into four divisions under Sir Arthur Currie. Outstanding Canadian actions were performed at the second battle of Ypres (1915), the Somme (1916), Vimy Ridge (1917), and the Hindenburg Line (1918).
In Jan., 1915, German Zeppelins began to raid Britain. The dirigible attacks were succeeded by airplane raids. By the end of the war, air attacks killed 524 and injured 1,264 British civilians. The distinction between military and civilian objectives vanished with prevalence of the idea that, in a war for existence, legitimate targets were not only the military forces but also the will of the enemy nation. Warfare in the air was an entirely new dimension. Airplane pilots fulfilled reconnaissance, artillery spotting, bombardment, and strafing missions and also engaged in air battles. Submarine warfare in British waters sank 259 British ships in 1915, among them the Lusitania, torpedoed without warning on May 7, with a loss of 1,198 lives, including 128 Americans.
Gallipoli. Because the trench warfare in France seemed to offer no hope for decisive victory, solutions of one sort or another were proposed to get troops across or around the trench barrier. Among them were suggestions to transport forces to other areas and open new theaters of operations. An early recommendation was made in Oct., 1914, by Britain's first sea lord, who favored landing troops on the German coast. Others who proposed a somewhat different solution became known as "easterners." Among them was David Lloyd George who advocated shifting the bulk of the British forces to the Balkans to aid Serbia and to attack the rear of the hostile alliance. Some French officials shared this view, particularly Joseph Gallieni, who favored a landing at Salonika and a march on Constantinople. This, he thought, would have the additional advantage of persuading Greece and Bulgaria to join the Entente. Opposed to these schemes were the "westerners," who believed that France was the decisive theater of war and there the major effort had to be made and the preponderance of strength employed. Among these were Joffre and Sir John French, commander of the British Expeditionary Force.
Early in Jan., 1915, Horatio Kitchener, the British Secretary of State for War, received an appeal from Grand Duke Nikolai for a diversion to relieve Turkish pressure in the Caucasus. Unable to provide troops from Britain's slender resources, Kitchener suggested a naval demonstration against the Dardanelles, which Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty, converted into a large idea. If naval vessels could force a passage through the Dardanelles to Constantinople and the Black Sea, Britain and France would be able to send war material more easily to Russia, to cut the Berlin-Baghdad railway, and probably to eliminate Turkey from the war.
The decision made, Britain and France dispatched 18 naval vessels to the area. These ships bombarded the forts and entered the straits on Mar. 18, in an attempt to force their way through the swift current of the Narrows to Constantinople. Mines and Turkish gunfire from the adjacent shores balked the effort. A land campaign was by then being prepared under Sir Ian Hamilton, and on Apr. 25, British, French, and Anzac (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) troops numbering 75,000 men went ashore on the Gallipoli Peninsula. The Turkish army, trained by the German general Otto Liman von Sanders, repulsed the Allied efforts to advance. In B. H. Liddell Hart's words, after a "chain of errors in execution almost unrivaled," and, as Sidney B. Fay wrote, after "eight months of heroic but useless expenditure of life," the troops were withdrawn from Gallipoli and on Jan. 9, 1916, the campaign was abandoned. The Dardanelles remained closed throughout the war.
Italy. During the first nine months of the war, Italy was wooed for its assistance by both sides. Because the Allies were more generous in their offers than the Central Powers and because the Allies, in Italy's judgment, seemed more likely to win the war, Italy signed a secret treaty with Britain, France, and Russia in London on Apr. 26, 1915. In return for the promise of securing upon the conclusion of the conflict the southern Tyrol, Istria, part of Dalmatia, and territories in Turkey and in Africa, Italy became a belligerent on May 24 by declaring war on Austria. Italy established a front of about 320 mi. Its attacks in 1915 made little headway.
Eastern Europe, 1915. On the eastern front Hindenburg came to Austria's rescue by opening an offensive in May, 1915. Recapturing Lemberg on June 22, German troops under August von Mackensen drove the Russians completely out of Galicia. Hindenburg's forces captured Warsaw on Aug. 7 and Brest-Litovsk on Aug. 25. In September the Tsar himself assumed command, replacing Grand Duke Nikolai, and Mikhail Alekseyev became chief of the general staff. This command change availed nothing, however, for by the end of the year the Germans had occupied all of Poland and were at a line running southward generally for more than 1,100 mi. from Riga and east of Brest-Litovsk, where the front became stable.
Bulgaria had meanwhile entered the war on the side of the Central Powers in June, 1915, though formal declarations were not made until October. Bulgarian troops moved against Serbia from the east, and Austro-Hungarian troops under Mackensen attacked and overran Serbia from the north. By December all of Serbia except the southern border and a narrow strip in the west was in the hands of the Central Powers. To assist Serbia, Britain and France sent troops in October from Gallipoli to Salonika. Though the Salonika force eventually numbered 500,000 men, there was little it could do for two years to help the Serbians, primarily because of the failure of the Gallipoli campaign and its political and military repercussions. The defeat of Serbia and the opening of the Salonika front in turn had hastened the decision to withdraw from Gallipoli.
The year 1915 saw the first use of poison gas in battle. On Jan. 31, the Germans employed gas shells in Poland, but the experiment was a failure because of the intense cold. On Apr. 22, the Germans used gas on the western front at Ypres. The new weapon, a surprise, tore a breach in British lines, but the Germans were also surprised by the effect and were unready to exploit the opening in the trench system. Defense against gas attack was soon devised, the primary instrument being the gas mask.
In 1915, too--in December--the Central Powers made a bid for peace based on a revised map of Europe as then occupied by the combatant powers. The Allies rejected the offer, In Asia in 1915 Japan presented the twenty-one demands in an effort to gain political and economic domination over China.
Verdun, 1916. For his strategy in 1916, Falkenhayn, the German military chief, decided to bleed France to death. This he hoped to accomplish by a great battle of attrition concentrated against the French fortress of Verdun. The attack opened on Feb. 21 and continued for several months. The Germans gained 4 mi. but not the main fortress. Henri Petain came to prominence as his "mobile defense" succeeded and his slogan, "They shall not pass," caught the public imagination. The casualties in this battle were over 1,000,000 men.
To relieve pressure on Verdun, the Allies opened an offensive along the Somme River on July 1, and in return for overwhelming casualties gained about 7 mi. On Sept. 15, the British first used a new weapon, the tank. But the vehicles were so clumsy and inefficient and their employment was so mishandled that their appearance, though causing surprise and consternation among the Germans, had little effect on the battle.
The War Fronts Elsewhere, 1916. An anti-British uprising during the last week of April in Ireland led to the capture and execution of Sir Roger Casement and six others who were trying to smuggle German arms into the country. The Italian army made important advances along the Isonzo River in August and captured Gorizia. In Poland, Russia launched what became known as the (Aleksei) Brusilov offensive in June and drove the Austrian forces into the Carpathians and threatened Lemberg. The Austrian military chief, Conrad von Hotzendorf, was deposed and soon afterward Falkenhayn was replaced by Hindenburg, who directed the Austrian as well as the German military effort.
Rumania declared war on the Central Powers on Aug. 27 and invaded Transylvania. German and Bulgarian armies under Mackensen and Falkenhayn, however, overran most of Rumania, reaching the Black Sea, capturing Bucharest, and forcing Rumania to sign a peace treaty on May 7, 1918. In Armenia in 1916, Grand Duke Nikolai was successful against Turkish forces. In Greece an internal struggle took place between those who favored the Central Powers and those who inclined toward the Allies and actually fought against Bulgaria. The Allies blockaded the Greek coast until June 12, 1917, when the King was forced to abdicate. Eleutherios Venizelos became Premier later in that same month, and Greece declared war on Germany on July 2. Turkey tried in vain once again to take the Suez Canal.
The German submarine campaign was so effective that it brought a virtual ultimatum from President Woodrow Wilson in Apr., 1916. Germany consequently abandoned its unlimited underwater warfare and decided to try to overturn the strategic balance on the sea by seeking battle with its surface fleet. In the following month the battle of Jutland occurred when the German High Seas Fleet tried to intercept and destroy a portion of the British Grand Fleet. Interested not so much in battle as in maintaining unimpaired the strategic supremacy of the British navy, which he saw as the cornerstone of Allied economic, moral, and military action, Adm. John Jellicoe refused to be lured into mine-infested waters. The naval battle, fought May 31, was a tactical success for the Germans, but the British strategic position remained unbroken.
1917. Its fleet bottled up again, Germany turned once more to underwater operations, and on Jan. 31, 1917, Germany announced its return to "unrestricted submarine warfare." The depredations of the U-boats almost brought Britain to starvation. But more important, the submarine warfare against neutral merchant ships made the United States increasingly hostile to Germany. Wilson hoped to remain neutral in order to bring about a medicated peace, but proposals he made in Dec., 1916, were unsuccessful. Pushed by American public opinion, by what he considered to be the immoral submarine warfare, and by a German attempt to instigate Mexico into war against the United States, Wilson recommended that Congress declare war on Germany. On Apr. 6, 1917, the United States entered the war.
The American entry encouraged many other neutral states to follow its example. It also bolstered morale in France and Britain. It strengthened a growing peace party in Germany. It made possible direct loans by the United States to Allied nations in an amount eventually exceeding $9,000,000,000. It added American naval ships to the protection of convoys. Partly at American suggestion, more effective antisubmarine measures such as depth charges, antisubmarine nets, armed decoy ships, and the arming and camouflage painting of merchantmen went into effect. By the autumn of 1917, the submarine menace had been largely overcome.
Most people in the war-torn world expected the United States to send an immediate stream of troops to the theaters of operation. But the United States was unprepared for a conflict of global proportions. Congress passed the Selective Service Act in May, 1917, and eventually about 4,000,000 Americans entered the armed services, half of them being sent overseas. The first small contingents of the American Expeditionary Force, commanded by Gen. John Pershing, began to arrive in France at the end of June, 1917.
On the western front in 1917, Robert Nivelle, who had replaced Joffre and who promised quick victory, launched a massive offensive in the Soissons-Reims area on Apr. 16. The attack turned into a fiasco with great loss of life and resulted later that year in mutinies in the French army, suppressed by Petain who replaced Nivelle. British attacks that year in the Ypres area were also characterized by huge casualties, particularly at Passchendale in the autumn. Canadians, Australians, and New Zealanders also sustained heavy losses. A surprise British attack at Cambrai employed more than 400 tanks and tore a breach in the German lines, but the British were unable to exploit their local success.
In June, Edmund Allenby was appointed to command the British and Commonwealth forces in Egypt and Palestine. He restored morale and after thorough preparation defeated the Turkish forces under Falkenhayn, in the third battle of Gaza (Oct. 31-Nov. 7, 1917), and entered Jerusalem on Dec. 9.
On Aug. 1, 1917, Pope Benedict XV sent a note to each warring nation suggesting the basis for a compromise peace. Speaking for the Allies, Wilson said it was unthinkable to make peace with the untrustworthy government of Germany.
On Oct. 24, the Central Powers launched an attack against Italy at Caporetto and almost knocked Italy out of the war. Luigi Cadorna, the Italian military chief, had to withdraw his forces precipitously. The retirement turned into a rout that came to a stop only at the Piave River. Britain and France sent aid, Cadorna was superseded by Armando Diaz, and the Italian army, having lost 800,000 men, had also lost most of what it had gained in the previous years of fighting. As a result of the Caporetto disaster, Allied political and military chiefs held a conference at Rapallo. Out of this sprang the decision to form a Supreme Allied Council, which, sitting at Versailles, would provide a common direction and a somewhat unified control over the Allied war effort.
The Russian Revolution. Though the Allies gained a new member in the United States in 1917, they lost Russia that year. In March revolutionists overthrew the Russian government and forced the Tsar to abdicate. Russian armies, now under Aleksei Brusilov, had some success against the Austrians in Galicia and Poland. The Russian nation was exhausted, however, and the army began to collapse. In a disintegrating social and political order, the Bolsheviks executed their revolution in November and entered into peace negotiations with Germany. They arranged on Dec. 7 for an armistice. Peace negotiations then broke down because of German demands to retain the territory occupied by German troops, but the Russians finally signed a peace treaty at Brest-Litovsk on Mar. 3, 1918.
It was during these negotiations that Wilson on Jan. 8, 1918, presented his Fourteen Points (q.v.), in the hope of persuading Russia to continue in the war. The Fourteen Points failed to influence the Russians, but they clarified Allied war aims and laid the foundations for the peace. During the confused period of revolution and counter-revolution in Russia, the Allies sent small contingents of troops to Archangel, Murmansk, and Vladivostok.
1918. With Russia out of the war, Ludendorff, who had assumed practical military and political leadership in Germany, began to shift troops from the eastern to the western front, hoping to win victory in France before large numbers of American troops could arrive. On mar. 21, 1918, Ludendorff attacked at St.-Quentin, made a 35-mi. breakthrough, and almost reached Amiens. The German danger led to an appeal from Douglas Haig, the British commander who had replaced John French late in 1915, for a supreme Allied commander to be appointed. On Mar. 26, the Allies named Foch to co-ordinate the operations of the Allied armies. More German pressure developed on Apr. 9, as Ludendorff attacked at the Lys River. This caused the Allies finally to make Foch commander in chief.
Ludendorff continued his attacks, shifting on May 27 to the Soissons-Reims area, where his forces reached the Marne River and were within grasp of Paris until blocked at Belleau Wood and later at Chateau-Thierry by American troops. On June 9, Ludendorff attacked in the Compiegne sector, and again on July 15 in the area east of Reims. Though Ludendorff won a series of tactical victories, he was unable to attain a strategic triumph. The Central Powers were exhausted. When the Allies opened a counteroffensive on Aug. 8, Ludendorff informed the Kaiser that the war was lost.
American troops had by this time reached France in large numbers, and on Sept.12, acting for the first time as an independent army on the western front, the Americans opened operations that erased the St.-Mihiel salient. By the end of the war, U.S. troops occupied one-quarter of the battle line. They had participated in 13 battles in France and had contributed a regiment to the Italian front and two divisions to the Belgian front.
Among the American servicemen were more than 400,000 Negro troops, including almost 1,500 officers and nurses. They served for the most part in the Services of Supply, in quartermaster, port, and engineer organizations. Two infantry divisions composed of Negro soldiers and junior officers, commanded by white officers, fought in France. The 92d Division, subjected to prejudice and discrimination, responded poorly; the 93d Division, assigned to serve with French army units, performed with distinction and was awarded the Croix de Guerre for exceptional bravery in battle.
Meanwhile, the Allied armies at Salonika had attacked Bulgaria on Sept. 15. Bulgarian forces crumbled, and on Sept. 29 Bulgaria signed an armistice with the Allies. The next day Turkey capitulated as the result of Allenby's continued successful advance from Jerusalem through Megiddo and Damascus to Aleppo. An Italian offensive that began on Oct. 24 defeated the Austrian forces by Oct. 30, and Austria-Hungary asked for an armistice, which was signed Nov. 3.
The Armistice. On the western front, instead of postponing a final offensive until 1919, Foch ordered a vast simultaneous advance. Between Sept. 26 and 28, Foch's grand assault cracked the German defensive lines. On Sept. 29, Ludendorff declared further resistance impossible and recommended that Germany request peace on the basis of Wilson's Fourteen Points. The Kaiser appointed Prince Maximilian of Baden the Chancellor on Oct. 3, and instructed him to seek an armistice. To Germany's appeal, Wilson spoke for the Allies and demanded unconditional surrender. During October Ludendorff resigned, mutiny broke out in the German fleet, and general revolution spread through Germany. The Kaiser abdicated on Nov. 9, and a republican government headed by Prince Maximilian signed an armistice at Compiegne on Nov. 11, bringing the war to an end at 11 o'clock in the morning of that day.
The armistice provided for gradual German evacuation of conquered territory, handing over of the German fleet and much war material and railway stock, and Allied military occupation of German territory west of the Rhine as well as of three bridgeheads over the river. Other provisions were designed to render Germany incapable of renewing the war. The occupation forces of the British established their headquarters at Cologne, while those of the Americans settled at Coblenz and the French occupied Mainz. The formal peace treaty was signed at Versailles on June 28, 1919. The Treaty of Versailles and the minor treaties resulting from the Paris Peace Conference (q.v.) had a significant bearing on subsequent events in Germany and in Europe as a whole.
MARTIN BLUMENSON, Department of the Army
The Collegiate Encyclopedia
Grolier Incorporated New York
Copyright 1963 - 1970
Scribed & Posted/Published by Albert LeRoy Jones (Scribe)
March 12th & 13th, 2022
Copyright 2022
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