World War I

### Next

Russian Civil War, November Revolution, Turkish War of Independence, Interwar period

### Place

Europe, Africa, East Asia, Middle East, and Pacific islands

## Combatants

### Side 1

 France
 United Kingdom
 Russian Empire
 Serbia
 United States
 Belgium
 Italy
 Australia
 New Zealand
 Canada
 Japan
 Montenegro
 Portugal
 Romania
 Hejaz
 Greece

### Side 2

 German Empire
 Austria-Hungary
 Ottoman Empire
 Bulgaria

### commanders1

 Georges Clemenceau
 Raymond Poincare
 Joseph Joffre
 Ferdinand Foch
 Robert Nivelle
 Philippe Petain
 H.H. Asquith
 David Lloyd George
 Douglas Haig
 Edmund Allenby
 John French
 Nicholas II of Russia
 Alexei Brusilov
 Peter I of Serbia
 Woodrow Wilson
 John J. Pershing
 Victor Emmanuel III of Italy
 Vittorio Orlando
 Yoshihito
 Ferdinand I of Romania

### commanders2

 Wilhelm II of Germany
 Paul von Hindenburg
 Erich Ludendorff
 Erich von Falkenhayn
 Helmuth von Moltke the Younger
 Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck
 Rupprecht of Bavaria
 Alexander von Kluck
 August von Mackensen
 Leopold of Bavaria
 Franz Joseph I of Austria
 Charles I of Austria
 Conrad von Hotzendorf
 Arthur Arz von Straussenberg
 Mehmet V of Turkey
 Mustafa Kemal Ataturk
 Liman von Sanders
 Ferdinand I of Bulgaria
 Nikola Zhekov

**World War I** was a global war fought from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918, during which 70,000,000 troops fought on the sides of the Triple Entente (United Kingdom, France, and Russia) and the Central Powers (German Empire, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire). The war was fought across the world: France and Belgium in Western Europe; Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine in Eastern Europe; the Levant, Sinai Peninsula, Mesopotamia, and the Arabian Peninsula; the Pacific islands and the German port of Tsingtao (Qingdao) in China; the German colonies in Africa; and on the high seas. The war would end with an armistice and the punitive 1919 Treaty of Versailles, a peace agreement that divided the former territories of Germany, Turkey, and Austria into new countries and League of Nations mandates, and the former Central Powers nations were cut down to size and made to pay reparations. However, the war led to widespread changes across the world apart from weakening a few empires. The empires of Russia, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey all fell, nationalist sentiment increased across Europe'e new nations, Britain's domains sought greater self-rule, the United States became a great power, and the League of Nations was established. World War I was ironically called "the war to end all wars", as it had cost the Allies 22,477,500 men and the Central Powers 16,403,000 men. However, many wars would result from the chaos created by World War I, including the Russian Revolution, November Revolution, the Polish-Soviet War, and, just twenty years after Versailles, World War II.

## History

### Outbreak of World War I

The war had long been coming. For 20 years European powers had divided into hostile alliances. Engaged in an arms race, the two blocs drew up plans for fighting one another.

France and Russia had allied with each other in 1894. Germany was allied to Austria-Hungary and Italy. Britain formed a Triple Entente with France and Russia in 1907, and developed military cooperation with France.

On 28 June 1941, Bosnian Serbs opposed to Austro-Hungarian rule assassinated the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, Arhcduke Franz Ferdinand, in the Bosnian capital city, Sarajevo. Eager to strike the rising force of Slav nationalism, the Austro-Hungarian government blamed Serbia for the archduke's assassination and declared war on 28 July. This triggered the wider conflict.

Within just one week, Austria-Hungary's attack on Serbia became a general European conflict. All the continental powers were caught up in an arms race with elaborate hopes to expand their armies whenever war threatened. Hundreds of thousands of reservists (men who had previously been given military training) were called up from civilian life. This process of mobilization took time and was complicated; but no nation wanted to be left behind when its enemies sent their troops into the field.

On 30 July Russia announced plans to mobilize its army in support of Serbia. Interpreting this mobilization as a threat, the German military leadership set in motion their long-established Schlieffen Plan for winning a war against Russia and France. The Germans anticipated that Russia would be the slowest nation to mobilize its massive armies. Faced with a war on two fronts, Germany planned to overpower France in a lightning offensive mounted through neutral Belgium, while fighting a holding action in the east. It would then turn its forces to Russia.

Committed to this plan, German leaders brushed aside last-minute peace moves that might have interfered with their military deployment. The country declared war on Russia on 1 August and on France on 3 August. The next day Germany invaded Belgium. Despite having a secret agreement to aid France in a war with Germany, Britain's Liberal government would have had difficulty leading the country into the war had it not been for the German invasion of Belgium. It was as a treaty guarantor of Belgian neutrality that Britain declared war on Germany on 4 August.

Flag-waving crowds greeted the declarations of war in all the combatant capital cities. Although many people did not share this enthusiasm, few opposed the war at its outset. Political divisions were set aside for the moment - in Germany, for example, the Russian threat drove most opposition Social Democrats to support the war effort. On the whole, the rapid mobilization of mass armies was achieved with great efficiency. Civilian reservists eveywhere reported for duty when called up. In Britain 750,000 men volunteered for military service within two months of the outbreak of war.

Thousands of trains - 11,000 in Germany alone by mid-August - working to precise timetables, carried about six million men to railheads near the frontiers. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) - a small professional force in contrast to the mass conscript armies on the Continent - shifted 100,000 men across the Channel and deployed them near the Franco-Belgian border.

At first the German offensive in the west, based as it was on optimistic assumptions, came surprisingly close to success. Implementing their Schlieffen Plan, German forces advanced swiftly over Belgium, overcoming the resistance of forts at Liege and Namur with heavy Krupp guns. The BEF, finding itself in the line of the German advance at Mons, was forced to retreat alongside its French allies. Meanwhile, large-scale French offensives in Alsace and Lorraine were hugely costly failures, the supposed *elan* ("fighting spirit") of France's soldiers proving no match for heavy machine-gun and artillery fire.

#### Failure of the Schlieffen Plan

Germany's chief of general staff, now began to advance his forces south from Belgium, intending to surround the French armies engaged in eastern France. Days of marching exhausted his footsore infantry, and his supply lines, dependent upon horse-drawn transport, became overextended. The line of advance also exposed his right flank to the Paris garrison. French chief-of-staff, General Joseph Joffre, pulled forces back from the eastern frontier to confront the invading soldiers, while General Joseph Gallieni, in charge of the defense of Paris, sent an army to attack the German flank. The combined counter-offensive, known as the First Battle of the Marne, drove the Germans back to the Aisne River in northeastern France. Here, they entrenched in a strong defensive position. Believing that the collapse of the Schlieffen Plan meant that the war was lost, von Moltke suffered a nervous breakdown and was replaced as Germany's principal commander by Erich von Falkenhayn.

Meanwhile, on the Eastern Front, German calculations had been upset by the unexpected speed of Russian mobilization. Faced with the Russian forces advancing into its province of East Prussia, Germany hastily transferred two army corps from the Western Front - a contributory factor in the failure of the Schlieffen Plan.

General Paul von Hindenburg and his chief-of-staff, General Erich Ludendorff, achieved an overwhelming victory at Tannenberg in East Prussia at the end of August. They killed or injured some 40,000 Russian troops, and took some 100,000 prisoner. The Russian commander, General Alexander Samsonov, killed himself. Meanwhile, Germany's Austro-Hungarian allies suffered reverses against the Russians in the Austrian province of Galicia, and also failed to overcome the Serbs.

#### Race to the Sea

On the Western Front in September 1914, there was still clear space for maneuver between the Aisne and the northern coast of France. The opposing armies now engaged in a "Race to the Sea". This involved a series of attempted outflanking movements, each of which was blocked in turn as infantry on both sides clashed and then dug themselves into defensive positions to protect themselves from each other.

#### Stalemate

The Germans fought successfully to overcome remaining Belgian resistance around Antwerp, but ran into French and British forces in Flanders in October. There followed a series of vicious battles, known collectively as the First Battle of Ypres, which lasted into mid-November. The sheer desperation and savagery of the fighting was typified by the deaths of 25,000 German student volunteers. Having received hasty training, the men had been thrown into the fighting, only to be mown down at Langemarck in what Germans call the *Kindermord*, or "Slaughter of the Innocents". The outcome of the battle was stalemate.

The onset of winter toward the end of 1914 brought a lull in the fighting on all fronts, with hopes of a rapid end to the war utterly dashed. However, both sides still intended to fight until victory was won; few considered trying to make a compromise peace.

#### Aftermath

The fighting left German troops in control of almost all of Belgium and a swathe of northern France. The Allies' offensive strategy sought to regain this territory.

Casualties by the end of 1914 were tragically high. France had lost some 300,000 dead and Germany 240,000. Around one-third of the British soldiers sent to France had been killed. Russia and Austria-Hungary each counted more than a million dead, wounded, or taken as prisoners of war.

A contributory factor to the very high casualties in 1914 was the lack of adequate head protection for soldiers. None of the combatants wore metal helmets. In 1915-1916 steel helmets such as the British Brodie and the German Stahlhelm were universally adopted.

Ideas about civilized behavior in war had been disregarded. The actions of German forces in Belgium outraged world opinion, and influenced the future policy of the United States. Although atrocities were exaggerated by Allied propaganda, the Germans did pursue a policy of *Shrecklichkeit* ("fearfulness") to cow popular resistance. Massacres included the execution of more than 600 civilians in the Belgian town of Dinant.

### Stalemate on the Western Front

The failure of either side to achieve a decisive advantage by the end of 1914 left opposing forces dug into trenches on the Western Front. By 1915, the British and French empires were becoming an important source of manpower on the Western Front - now virtually a continuous line from the north coast of France to neutral Switzerland - and elsewhere. British Indian and French North African troops fought in the key battles of 1914. A Canadian Expeditionary Force was sent to the front in February 1915. Troops from Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa were initially used in Africa and the Middle East, but from 1916 became a highly respected presence on the Western Front.

Although the land battles were dominated by the ever-increasing artillery forces on both sides, new weapons were also coming into use. Chemical warfare began on a small scale in 1914, when France experimented with tear gas and Germany fired shells containing a chemical irritant. The first lethal gas used was chlorine, released by the Germans at the Second Battle of Ypres in April 1915. Other gasses, including phosgene and mustard gas, followed and were eventually employed on a wide scale by both sides, causing large numbers of casualties.

At the start of 1915, the opposing armies recognized the urgent need to mobilize maximum military and industrial resources for a long conflict. Already France was struggling to find sufficient manpower for both factories and the front. Britain created mass armies out of volunteers before resorting to conscription in the spring of 1916. It also vastly expanded its war production - British output of shells, for instance, rose from 6 million in 1915 to 76 million in 1917. German manpower had to be split between the Eastern and Western fronts.

Despite their new resources, the generals puzzled over how to win a war in which both sides were entrenched and maneuver had become impossible. Through 1915 the French launched offensives in Artois and Champagne, the British at Neuve Chapelle and Loos, and the Germans at Ypres, to little effect.

#### A war of attrition

In 1916, more troops, guns, and shells only served to increase the slaughter. The year began with a German attack at Verdun. In the summer Britain's volunteer New Armies were blooded in a vast Allied offensive on the Somme. The fighting here continued into November; at Verdun the battle lasted from February to December. The Germans probably lost at least 800,000 dead and wounded, but British and French casualties in the two battles totalled over a million. There were mistakes of generalship on all sides but the immensity of the losses was directly related to the size of the armies engaged, the duration of the battles, and the quantity of munitions.

Ddespite the evolution of the war into brute attrition, a decisive breakthrough was still the ultimate goal. General Robert Nivelle was given command of the French Army in December 1916, promising an offensive that would win the war. But when he launched his attack the following April it failed completely. Elements of the war-weary French infantry mutinied. Nivelle was succeeded by Philippe Petain, the hero of Verdun, who focused on rebuilding morale. Meanwhile, German forces, now under Hindenburg and his deputy Ludendorff, settled for the defensive, even sacrificing territory in withdrawing to the Hindenburg Line. Only Field Marshal Douglas Haig, the commander of the BEF, remained committed to a breakthrough, launching the Third Battle of Ypres in June 1917. His forces made some progress but became bogged down in the Flanders mud, finally taking Passchendaele in November at immense cost and to no decisive effect.

#### A test of endurance

Despite the repeated failure of offensives, warfare on the Western Front was not simply futile mass slaughter. Armies strove to improve theri fighting methods in search of a decisive advantage and experimented with new techniques and tactics. The use of artillery in support of infantry improved, as did cooperation between air and land forces. The infantry grew in fighting skill and tactical flexibility. But the chief quality required of a soldier was endurance under near-intolerable conditions. Remarkably, although the French did waver, none of the armies broke.

#### Aftermath

The stalemate on the Western Front led to a search both for new tactics that might deliver the elusive breakthrough and for alternative strategies for winning the war.

Tanks were first fielded by Britain at the Somme, but they were too slow and vulnerable to be effective. At Cambrai in November 1917, the British launched the first offensive led by a mass formation of tanks - 476 in total. More than one-third were lost in the first day's fighting and it proved impossible to exploit the initial breakthrough. Nevertheless, Cambrai did point to the effective use of tanks by the Allies in 1918.

The Allies sought alternatives to the Western Front stalemate in fighting elsewhere, but only reporduced static trench warfare in new locations. Neither the Allied strategy of naval blockade nor the U-boat attacks of the Germans proved decisive. In 1918, the outcome of the war would be decided - as generals like Haig had always said - by great land battles in France.

### The Wider War

When war broke out in Europe in 1914, it also ignited conflicts in the Pacific, Africa, and the Middle East, although much of the fighting was on a relatively small scale.

Britain's ally since 1902, Japan declared war on Germany on 23 August 1914. It occupied German-ruled Pacific islands and fought a brief campaign to seize the German stronghold of Tsingtao (Qingdao) on the Chinese coast. China declared war on Germany in August 1917.

Germany had four colonies in Africa. Togo fell to the Allies at the start of the war and German South-West Africa (Namibia) was invaded and occupied by South African forces by mid-1915. Any German resistance in Kamerun ended in 1916, but in German East Africa (present-day Tanzania) General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck fought an inspired guerrilla campaign and remained undefeated at the end of the war.

The Ottoman Empire, including modern Turkey and the whole Middle East as far as Arabia and Iraq, entered the war on 28 October 1914 by attacking Russian ports. The Turkish military government of Enver Pasha had aligned itself with Germany before the war.

Britain had military control of Egypt, nominally part of the Ottoman Empire, and deposed its pro-Turkish khedive, Abbas Hilmi, in December 1914. Egypt served as a base for Allied operations in the eastern Mediterranean and its Suez Canal was a vital imperial lifeline.

The entry of the Ottoman Empire into the war as an ally of Germany opened up new arenas for British, French, and Russian forces, in which political and military gains might offset lack of success in Europe. But the Turks ta first proved anything but easy opponents. A seemingly simple plan was conceived for British and French warships to force a passage through the Dardanelles and bombard the capital, Constantinople (Istanbul), to bring about an Ottoman surrender. But the warships came to grief on a combination of Turkish mines and land guns, forcing the Allies to change their plans.

#### Attacking the Ottoman Empire

on 25 April 1915. The landings were almost a success, but confusion and hesitation allowed the Turkish defenders to corner the Allied troops in narrow beachheads. Fresh landings at Suvla Bay in August momentarily revived the campaign, but Turkish commander, Mustafa Kemal (who would later rule Turkey as Kemal Ataturk), determinedly resisted all Allied efforts. The stalemated Allied force was evacuated in January 1916.

A seaborne invasion of Ottoman-ruled Iraq by British and Indian troops in 1915 almost led to initial disaster when the force was besieged at Kut and obliged to surrender in April 1916. But in the Caucasus, Turkish forces were defeated by the Russians, who then invaded Anatolia. A number of Armenians joined the Russians in fighting the Ottomans. The Turkish response was to launch a massacre of Armenians under the cloak of brutal deportations, costing more than one million men, women, and children their lives.

The Ottomans' Arab subjects revolted in 1916, aiding a British advance from Egypt into Palestine the following year. The Turks suffered severe setbacks in 1917, Baghdad falling to the British in March and Jerusalem in December. Ottoman forces were weakened by disease and desertion. Defeated again by the British at the Battle of Megiddo in September 1918, the Turks sought an armistice.

#### New theaters

The Serbians had held out in 1914, but in the fall of 1915 they faced a joint offensive by German and Austro-Hungarian forces, while also being invaded by Bulgaria; Serbia was inevitably overrun.

Italy entered the war in 1915 on the Allied side and fought a border war against Austria-Hungary at the foot of the Alps. A series of failed offensives produced nothing but casualties until six divisions of experienced German troops effected a breakthrough at Caporetto in October 1917. Italy had to be rescued by British and French forces.

#### The Eastern Front

Although Russia's opening attack on Germany was defeated at Tannenberg in September 1914, initial advances fought south against the Austrians were more successful. Both sides were badly trained, ill-equipped, and often incometently commanded, yet the Russians captured much of Austria's province of Galicia later in 1914.

The Eastern Front was never as static as the Western Front, because the armies were spread out over a much larger area. The Russians suffered heavy casualties in a series of battles against the Germans in 1915, losing large areas of territory in what are now Poland, Belarus, and Lithuania. However, the Russian armies still fought on and achieved by far their greatest success of the entire war with an offensive mounted by General Aleksei Brusilov against the Austro-Hungarians in Galicia in the summer of 1916. Brusilov's forces advanced some 60 miles before German troops arrived to halt their progress. Romania, tempted to enter the war on the Allied side by the prospect of imminent victory, was also crushed by German forces in late 1916.

#### Revolution in Russia

Brusilov's offensive had entailed huge casualties - probably half a million men killed or wounded. The strain of war was now too much for the Russian state. A revolution in Petrograd (present-day St. Petersburg) in February 1917 resulted in the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II. The new Provisional Government tried to keep fighting, but in July the disastrous failure of the Kerensky Offensive left the army in disarray. Mutiny and desertion were rife as revolutionary soldiers' committees challenged the authority of officers.

In October 1917 the Bolshevik party seized power under the leadership of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. The Bolsheviks signed an armistice with germany at Brest-Litovsk in December and the following March reluctantly agreed to a punitive peace treaty giving up large areas of the former Russian Empire.

#### Aftermath

The war resulted in the collapse of the Russian, Ottoman, and Austro-Hungarian empires and the creation of new states in Europe and the Middle East.

Most of the territory of the former Russian Empire was reassebled as the communist-ruled Soviet Union after Lenin's Bolsheviks won a bitter civil war. The last Ottoman sultan was deposed in 1922 and Turkey became a republic. Britain and France took control of the former Ottoman territories of Palestine and Syria.

### Air and Sea Battles

In the years before World War I, a naval race between Britain and Germany rasied international tension. All states explored the potential of newly invented aircraft.

Germany's drive to challenge British dominance at sea began under Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz in 1898. This provoked Britain to build ever bigger and more powerful battleships, beginning with HMS *Dreadnought*, launched in 1906. The ship so outclassed all earlier battleships that these were dismissively referred to as pre-dreadnoughts. The naval arms race now became so intense that by the outbreak of war in 1914, Germany had 24 modern dreadnoughts and battlecruisers to Britain's 34.

The first ever air attack was carried out in 1911 by an Italian plane in Libya. In August 1914, the flimsy flying machines of all the combatants totalled just 500.

In 1914 the world's greaterst naval power, Britain, entered a war that it had to win on land. The Royal Navy was able to maintain a trade blockade of Germany, but although this severely weakened the Germans in the long run, it could not be decisive. Alternatively, a naval catastrophe could have driven Britain out of the war. Germany knew that if it could win command of the sea through the defeat of the British fleet, Britain would be unable to supply its army in France and might even be open to invasion by German land forces. The Kriegsmarine sought opportunities to wear down the British fleet, in the hope of one day meeting it on equal terms and contesting maritime superiority. The stance of the Royal Navy was essentially defensive. It had to maintain its superiority over the Kriegsmarine, while also keeping vital British trade routes open. If it failedto do this, Britain's war industries would soon collapse and its people starve.

Although the Royal Navy easily stopped merchant shipping from reaching German ports, it could not maintain a close blockade to prevent German warships making sorties into the North Sea. The east coast of Britain was bombarded by German surface raiders in December 1914. However, the Royal Navy had excellent signals of intelligence, which gave warning of later German sorties.

As a result, the main British force, Admiral John Jellicoe's Grand Fleet, was able to surprise its considerably smaller German equivalent, the High Seas Fleet, when it made a rare venture out to sea at the end of May 1916. The resulting encounter, now known as the Battle of Jutland, revealed deficiencies in the Royal Navy - for example, in ship and shell design, fire control, and night fighting. Yet although British losses of men and ships were heavier than their opponents' at Jutland, the battle was to confirm the Royal Navy's command of the sea, for the Germans could only fight a holding action, fleeing once in contact with the Grand Fleet's battleships.

The most serious problem for the Royal Navy was the existence of new weapons that undermined the value of its large surface warships. From early in the war, German submarines (U-boats) were impressively effective. British naval losses to German torpedoes and mines were high. Fear of these hidden hazards severely limited Jellicoe's ability to maneuver. U-boats also proved a menace to British merchant shipping.

#### The submarine menace

Britain soon disposed of any German surface warships that threatened its ocean trade, but when U-boats began unrestricted attacks on merchant ships in February 1915, their success was alarming. Fear of bringing the United Statets into the war, as a result of American civilian deaths on passenger ships, led to the reining in of U-boat attacks in 1916, but Germany resumed full-scale submarine warfare in February 1917. Over the next six months hundreds of Allied merchant ships were sunk, before the belated adoption of a convoy system decisively turned the tide.

#### War in the air

Aircraft were primarily an adjunct to armies on the ground. They quickly proved their worth for reconnaissance in the mobile fighting of 1914 and became even more vital in that role once the trenches were dug. Flying over enemy lines, the airmen photographed trench systems, "spotted" for artillery - observing where their shells fell - and reported on troop movements. They also dropped small bombs on targets such as stations and railyards. A number of aircraft were fitted with guns so that they could shoot down enemy reconnaissance aircraft and bombers, and before long these aircraft were fighting one another.

Civilians desperate for an alternative to the grim industrial warfare of the trenches were gripped by the idea of war in the air. The most successful fighter pilots, such as the German Baron Manfred von Richthofen or France's Georges Guynemer, were hailed as "aces" and celebrated as "knights of the air." In reality, the air war was mass slaughter just like the ground war. Hastily trained airmen had, at times, a life expectancy measured in weeks rather than months. Tens of thousands of aircraft were rapidly put into service; the construction of aircraft moved from craft workshops to mass production in factories.

#### Targeting cities from above

In addition to ongoing land campaigns, aircraft were used for strategic bombing. German Zeppelin airships bombed the city of London for the first time in May 1915. These huge machines inspired terror in the civilain population, but soon proved hopelessly vulnerable to British aurplanes using incendiary ammunition. Forced to fly at high altitudes to escape interception, the airships had lost their effectiveness by the end of 1916. The development of ever larger multi-engined airplanes allowed the German strategic bombing campaign to continue. From June 1917 both London and Paris were raided by German Gothas and R-planes. British, French, and Italian airplanes also launched raids against enemy cities late in the war. Although small-scale by later standards, these air attacks ewre by no means entirley ineffectual - in Britain more than 5,000 people were casualties of air raids in World War I.

#### Aftermath

Lessons learned from the course of the air and sea wars between 1914 and 1918 led to important strategic and technological developments in the postwar period. Seaplanes operated from warships throughout World War I, and the first true aircraft carriers, with a flat deck for take-off and landing, emerged in 1918. The first purpose-built aircraft carriers, Britain's *Hermes* and Japan's *Hosho*, were built in the early 1920s. Such vessels were to play a pivotal role in the Atlantic and in the Pacific during World War II.

In April 1918 Britain created the Royal Air Force. Part of the RAF's rationale was to conduct strategic bombing campaigns against Germany. After the war, Italian general Giulio Douhet argued that air power could win a future war on its own. Relegating armies and navies to a minor defensive function, fleets of heavy bombers would destroy cities and industries until the enemy surrendered. This view was adopted in the 1920s by air commanders such as the American General Billy Mitchell and Britain's Sir Hugh Trenchard.

### The Defeat of Germany

Events in 1917 radically altered the shape of the war, bringing both the entry of the United States into the Euroepan conflict and the exit of Russia.

The Bolsheviks came to power in October 1917 and withdrew Russia from the war. The peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk was imposed on Russia by the Germans in March 1918. The treaty confirmed German control of vast swathes of Central and Eastern Europe formerly part of the Russian Empire. The Russian defeat released large numbers of German soldiers for transfer to the Western Front, but also undercut popular support for the war in Germany, which had been motivated largely by fear of Russia. Many German workers were also attracted by the ideals of the Russian Revolution.

President Woodrow Wilson won re-election in 1916 with the slogan "He kept us out of war." But neutral America was already a major source of supplies and finance for Britain and France. In February 1917, Germany resumed its unrestricted submarine warfare and British intelligence revealed the Zimmerman Telegram, in which Germany secretly encouraged Mexico to attack the US. On 6 April Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Germany, which it quickly did. In January 1918 Wilson issued his Fourteen Points, war aims based on freeing territories won by Germany and establishing self-determination for subject nationalities of European empires.

During 1917 Germany's chief of general staff, Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, and his deputy, General Erich Ludendorff - in practice the dominant figure - took control of their country, subordinating Germany's economy and society to the needs of war production. But their gamble on unrestricted U-boat attacks only resulted in the United States now joining the war. Despite the collapse of Russia, Germany was bound to lose the war once US resources of manpower and industrial production were brought to bear on the Western Front. It was, however, a slow process. The US had to recruit, train, and equip a mass conscript army virtually from scratch. The commander of the American Expeditionary Forces, General John Pershing, refused to allow troops arriving in Europe to join the British and French armies at the front, instead methodically building up an independent army. In spring 1918 Hindenburg and Ludendorff staked everything upon a last titanic offensive that might win the war before General Pershing's men were ready to join the battle.

#### Germany's spring offensive

Germany's *Kaiserschlacht*, or Michael Offensive, was launched on the Somme on 21 March 1918. As always in World War I, sheer numbers were absolutely vital. Germany had increased its troop strength on the Western Front by 30 percent before the offensive, mostly through territories from the now quiet Eastern Front. But the Germans had also developed new tactics to achieve a breakthrough in depth. The army's best infantry were grouped into units of "stormtroopers" or entire "storm battalions". Their role was to punch holes in the enemy lines and infiltrate in depth, bypassing strongpoints to maintain momentum and wreak havoc in the enemy's rear.

The initial German offensive was an overwhelming success. British defenses were shattered by a hurricane artillery barrage as the stormtroopers attacked. The Germans advanced 40 miles within the first week. When a follow-up offensive in Flanders opened up in early April, there were fears the Allied armies might crack. For the first time the British and French forces were brought under a single Supreme Commander, France's Marshal Ferdinand Foch. By early June the German advance was within 60 miles of Paris. But this progress was costly. As German casualties in successive offensives rose toward a million, the fresh American troops began to arrive, first blooded in June at the battle of Belleau Wood. As in 1914, the German advance came to an end at the Marne. On 15 July a German offesnive was held and then thrown back in the Second Battle of the Marne. Then, on 8 August, Canadian and Australian infantry spearheaded a large-scale Allied offensive at Amiens.

Supported by 350 tanks and some 2,000 aircraft, they broke through the German lines. Ludendorff called it "the black day of the German army" and declared that there was no further hope of Germany winning the war.

#### Germany accepts defeat

the Allies attacked and advanced steadily, taking back all the lost ground and breaking through Germany's Hindenburg Line (a defense system the country had held since 1914). In September Pershing led half a million US troops in the Battle of Saint-Mihiel and even more in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in the last weeks of the war. Many German soldiers resisted, but there were signs of war-weariness and low morale - many surrendered.

Meanwhile, Austria-Hungary was on its knees, its army retreating in Italy and threatened from the Balkans by Allied forces advancing north from Greece through Bulgaria. Both Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria would soon seek an armistice, as would Ottoman Turkey after heavy defeats inflicted by British Empire forces in Iraq and Palestine.

On 4 October, Germany's leaders appealed directly to President Wilson. They declared their acceptance of his Fourteen Points as a basis for peace. Britain and France insisted that any armistice must be based on tough terms; Pershing argued against negotiating an armistice at all, believing that the war should continue until the Germans were totally defeated.

In the event, Germany was told that it had to cede much of its military arsenal and allow Allied occupation of the Rhineland in return for an end to the war. General Ludendorff wanted the terms rejected, but he was sacked. Germany was in no position to continue the war. Sailors of the High Seas Fleet mutinied, triggering revolutionary outbreaks in German cities. A nation reduced to starvation by the Allied blockade had lost faith in its leaders. The country was declared a republic on 9 November; Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated and fled the country. An armistice was signed on 11 November.

## Aftermath

The war destroyed the German, Russian, Ottoman, and Austro-Hungarian empires. Europe's borders were redrawn, resulting in the creation of a number of new states.

The Treaty of Versailles, imposed on Germany after its signing in France on 28 June 1919, forced the country to disarm and was harsh in territorial terms. France took back Alsace-Lorraine, lost in the Franco-Prussian War, and other German land was taken to form part of Poland. But Germans resented the "war guilt" clause declaring them responsible for the war and the victors' demand for the payment of huge financial reparations as well as coal, agricultural products, and even horses and cows to replace those people killed.

Some 9 million troops had died, including 2 million Germans, 1.8 million Russians, 1.4 million French, and some 900,000 from Britain and its empire. Of 116,000 US troops who lost their lives, thousands died in the "Spanish flu" epidemic at the war's end. Civilian losses are impossible to estimate, but a figure of 6 million is credible.