Atestat First World War

8/6/2019 Atestat First World War

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Liceul Teoretic ,,Mihai Eminescu , Petrosani

Coordinators teachers: Student:

Papuc Daniela Radulescu Sergiu-MihaiSclifos Dorin

Work certificate at English

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Content

*Acknowledgements

I.Causes of First World War

II.How it began?

III.The War III.1.Opening hostilities

III.2.Major battles of WW1III.3.Naval WarIII.4.War in the BalkansIII.5.Ottoman EmpireIII.6.Italian participationIII.7.Romanian participationIII.8.Russian RevolutionIII.9.1917-1918

IV.After the War IV.1. Health effects

IV.2. Peace treaties and nationalboundariesIV.3. Economic effects

*Conclusions*Biography

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Acknowledgements

Why is important first world war?

This is almost too big of a question to answer. The Great War was incredibilysignificant in terms of men and materials lost, in the downfall of empires, and

most importantly in the setting up of World War II. With over 10 million deadafter the war, England and France, in particular, lost an entire generation of menwho would fill leadership positions. Back then, the sons of the rich and powerfulwent to war and with so many dead, there was no one to fill leadership rolesthroughout the 1920s and 30s. The same "old mentality" that started WWI wasstill around, and helped cause WWII. Empires, such as the Ottoman Empire,ended leaving a huge vacuum of power in the Middle East which the Britishfilled. The problems they stirred up in Palestine and other areas are still with useven today! Most significantly, though, was the terrible Treaty of Versailles that

ended the war. Germany was forced to make war payments, reparations, thatthey never could make. The awful conditions in that country after the war led tothe rise of the National Socialist party under Hitler. We tend to forget that WWIeven happened yet it was a major cause of WWII and the setting up of the worldas we know it today. WW1 was the very first total war, meaning that everyonewas involved. At the home front civilians were being attacked for the first timein any war. WWI also led to the ratification of the 19th amendment which gavewomen the right to vote. The war also led to women having a more importantrole in society and gave women jobs they normally wouldn't have.

The first 'modern' war. It begun trench warfare, mechanized warfare, chemicalwarfare, multi-theater warfare, air warfare, and submarine warfare. It also endedthe US isolationist policy & it's harsh axis surrender terms and it laid thegroundwork for WWII.

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I.Causes of First World War

World War 1 is actually much more complicated than a simple list of causes. While there wasa chain of events that directly led to the fighting, the actual root causes are much deeper and

part of continued debate and discussion. This list is an overview of the most popular reasonsthat are cited as the root causes of World War 1.

1. Mutual Defense Alliances

Over time, countries throughout Europe made mutual defense agreements that would pullthem into battle. Thus, if one country was attacked, allied countries were bound to defendthem. Before World War 1, the following alliances existed:

Russia and Serbia Germany and Austria-Hungary France and Russia Britain and France and Belgium Japan and Britain

Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, Russia got involved to defend Serbia. Germany

seeing Russia mobilizing, declared war on Russia. France was then drawn in against Germanyand Austria-Hungary. Germany attacked France through Belgium pulling Britain into war.Then Japan entered the war. Later, Italy and the United States would enter on the side of theallies.

2. Imperialism

Imperialism is when a country increases their power and wealth by bringing additionalterritories under their control. Before World War 1, Africa and parts of Asia were points ofcontention amongst the European countries. This was especially true because of the rawmaterials these areas could provide. The increasing competition and desire for greater empiresled to an increase in confrontation that helped push the world into World War I.

3. Militarism

As the world entered the 20th century, an arms race had begun. By 1914, Germany had thegreatest increase in military buildup. Great Britain and Germany both greatly increased theirnavies in this time period. Further, in Germany and Russia particularly, the militaryestablishment began to have a greater influence on public policy. This increase in militarismhelped push the countries involved to war.

4. Nationalism

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Much of the origin of the war was based on the desire of the Slavic peoples in Bosnia andHerzegovina to no longer be part of Austria Hungary but instead be part of Serbia. In thisway, nationalism led directly to the War. But in a more general way, the nationalism of thevarious countries throughout Europe contributed not only to the beginning but the extensionof the war in Europe. Each country tried to prove their dominance and power.

5. Immediate Cause: Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

The immediate cause of World War I that made all the aforementioned items come into play(alliances, imperialism, militarism, nationalism) was the assassination of Archduke FranzFerdinand of Austria-Hungary. In June 1914, a Serbian nationalist assassinated him and hiswife while they were in Sarajevo, Bosnia which was part of Austria-Hungary. This was in

protest to Austria-Hungary having control of this region. Serbia wanted to take over Bosniaand Herzegovina. This assassination led to Austria-Hungary declaring war on Serbia. WhenRussia began to mobilize due to its alliance with Serbia, Germany declared war on Russia.Thus began the expansion of the war to include all those involved in the mutual defense

alliances.

The Dual Alliance , 1879

Germany and Austria-Hungary made an alliance to protect themselves from Russia

Austro-Serbian Alliance , 1881

Austria-Hungary made an alliance with Serbia to stop Russia gaining control of Serbia

The Triple Alliance , 1882

Germany and Austria- Hungary made an alliance with Italy to stop Italy from taking sideswith Russia

Franco-Russian Alliance , 1894

Russia formed an alliance with France to protect herself against Germany and Austria-Hungary

Entente Cordiale , 1904

This was an agreement, but not a formal alliance, between France and Britain.

Anglo-Russian Entente , 1907

This was an agreement between Britain and Russia

Triple Entente , 1907

This was made between Russia, France and Britain to counter the increasing threat fromGermany.

Triple Entente (no separate peace) , 1914

Britain, Russia and France agreed not to sign for peace separately.

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II.How It Began?In the 19th century, the major European powers had gone to great lengths to maintain a

balance of power throughout Europe, resulting by 1900 in a complex network of political andmilitary alliances throughout the continent.These had started in 1815, with the Holy Alliance

between Prussia, Russia, and Austria. Then, in October 1873, German Chancellor Bismarcknegotiated the League of the Three Emperors (German:Dreikaiserbund) between themonarchs of AustriaHungary, Russia and Germany. This agreement failed because AustriaHungary and Russia could not agree over Balkan policy, leaving Germany and AustriaHungary in an alliance formed in 1879, called the Dual Alliance. This was seen as a methodof countering Russian influence in the Balkans as the Ottoman Empire continued toweaken.In 1882, this alliance was expanded to include Italy in what became the TripleAlliance

After 1870, European conflict was averted largely through a carefully planned network oftreaties between the German Empire and the remainder of Europe orchestrated by ChancellorBismarck. He especially worked to hold Russia at Germany's side to avoid a two-front warwith France and Russia. With the ascension of Wilhelm II as German Emperor (Kaiser),Bismarck's system of alliances was gradually de-emphasised. For example, the Kaiser refusedto renew the Reinsurance Treaty with Russia in 1890. Two years later, the Franco-RussianAlliance was signed to counteract the force of the Triple Alliance. In 1904, the United

Kingdom sealed an alliance with France, the Entente cordiale and in 1907, the UnitedKingdom and Russia signed the Anglo-Russian Convention. This system of interlocking

bilateral agreements formed the Triple Entente.

German industrial and economic power had grown greatly after unification and the foundationof the empire in 1870. From the mid-1890s on, the government of Wilhelm II used this baseto devote significant economic resources to building up theKaiserliche Marine (ImperialGerman Navy), established by Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, in rivalry with the British Royal

Navy for world naval supremacy. As a result, both nations strove to out-build each other interms of capital ships. With the launch of HMSDreadnoughtin 1906, the British Empireexpanded on its significant advantage over its German rivals. The arms race between Britain

and Germany eventually extended to the rest of Europe, with all the major powers devotingtheir industrial base to the production of the equipment and weapons necessary for a pan-European conflict.Between 1908 and 1913, the military spending of the European powersincreased by 50 percent.

Austria-Hungary precipitated the Bosnian crisis of 19081909 by officially annexing theformer Ottoman territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which it had occupied since 1878. Thisgreatly angered the Kingdom of Serbia and its patron, the Pan-Slavic and Orthodox RussianEmpire. Russian political manoeuvring in the region destabilised peace accords that werealready fracturing in what was known as "the Powder keg of Europe"

In 1912 and 1913, the First Balkan War was fought between the Balkan League and thefracturing Ottoman Empire. The resulting Treaty of London further shrank the Ottoman

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Empire, creating an independent Albanian State while enlarging the territorial holdings ofBulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro and Greece. When Bulgaria attacked both Serbia and Greece on

16 June 1913, it lost most of Macedonia to Serbia and Greece and Southern Dobruja toRomania in the 33-day Second Balkan War, further destabilising the region.

On 28 June 1914, Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian-Serb student and member of Young Bosnia,assassinated the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria inSarajevo, Bosnia. This began a period of diplomatic manoeuvring between Austria-Hungary,Germany, Russia, France and Britain called the July Crisis. Wanting to end Serbianinterference in Bosnia conclusively, Austria-Hungary delivered the July Ultimatum to Serbia,a series of ten demands which were intentionally unacceptable, made with the intention ofdeliberately initiating a war with Serbia. When Serbia acceded to only eight of the ten

demands levied against it in the

ultimatum, Austria-Hungarydeclared war on Serbia on 28July 1914. Strachan argues"Whether an equivocal andearly response by Serbia wouldhave made any difference toAustria-Hungary's behaviourmust be doubtful. FranzFerdinand was not the sort of

personality who commandedpopularity, and his demise didnot cast the empire into deepestmourning"

The Russian Empire, unwillingto allow AustriaHungary toeliminate its influence in theBalkans, and in support of its

longtime Serb protgs, ordered a partial mobilisation one day later. When the GermanEmpire began to mobilise on 30 July 1914, France, sporting significant animosity over theGerman conquest of Alsace-Lorraine during the Franco-Prussian War, ordered French

mobilisation on 1 August. Germany declared war on Russia on the same day. The UnitedKingdom declared war on Germany, on 4 August 1914, following an "unsatisfactory reply" tothe British ultimatum that Belgium must be kept neutral.

III.THE WAR

III.1.Opening hostilities

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Confusion among the Central Powers

The strategy of the Central Powers suffered from miscommunication. Germany had promisedto support Austria-Hungary's invasion of Serbia, but interpretations of what this meantdiffered. Previously tested deployment plans had been replaced early in 1914, but never tested

in exercises. Austro-Hungarian leaders believed Germany would cover its northern flankagainst Russia.Germany, however, envisioned Austria-Hungary directing the majority of itstroops against Russia, while Germany dealt with France. This confusion forced the Austro-Hungarian Army to divide its forces between the Russian and Serbian fronts.

On 9 September 1914, the Septemberprogramm, a possible plan which detailed Germany'sspecific war aims and the conditions that Germany sought to force upon the Allied Powers,was outlined by German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg. It was never officiallyadopted.

African campaigns

Some of the first clashes of the war involved British, French and German colonial forces inAfrica. On 7 August, French and British troops invaded the German protectorate of Togoland.On 10 August, German forces in South-West Africa attacked South Africa; sporadic andfierce fighting continued for the remainder of the war. The German colonial forces in GermanEast Africa, led by Colonel Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck, fought a guerrilla warfarecampaign for the duration of World War I, only surrendering two weeks after the armisticetook effect in Europe.

Serbian campaign

The Serbian army fought the Battle of Cer against the invading Austro-Hungarians, beginningon 12 August, occupying 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, which markedthe first major Allied victory of the war and dashed Austro-Hungarian hopes of a swiftvictory. As a result, Austria had to keep sizeable forces on the Serbian front, weakening itsefforts against Russia.

German forces in Belgium and France

At the outbreak of the First World War, the German army (consisting in the West of sevenfield armies) executed a modified version of the Schlieffen Plan, designed to quickly attackFrance through neutral Belgium before turning southwards to encircle the French army on theGerman border. The plan called for the right flank of the German advance to converge onParis and initially, the Germans were very successful, particularly in the Battle of theFrontiers (1424 August). By 12 September, the French with assistance from the Britishforces halted the German advance east of Paris at the First Battle of the Marne (512September). The last days of this battle signified the end of mobile warfare in the west.TheFrench offensive into Germany launched on 7 August with the Battle of Mulhouse had limitedsuccess.

In the east, only one Field Army defended East Prussia and when Russia attacked in thisregion it diverted German forces intended for the Western Front. Germany defeated Russia in

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a series of battles collectively known as the First Battle of Tannenberg (17 August 2September), but this diversion exacerbated problems of insufficient speed of advance fromrail-heads not foreseen by the German General Staff. The Central Powers were thereby denieda quick victory and forced to fight a war on two fronts. The German army had fought its wayinto a good defensive position inside France and had permanently incapacitated 230,000 more

French and British troops than it had lost itself. Despite this, communications problems andquestionable command decisions cost Germany the chance of obtaining an early victory.

Asia and the Pacific

New Zealand occupied German Samoa (later Western Samoa) on 30 August. On 11September, 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 seizedGermany's Micronesian colonies and, after the Siege of Tsingtao, the German coaling port ofQingdao in the Chinese Shandong peninsula. Within a few months, the Allied forces hadseized all the German territories in the Pacific; only isolated commerce raiders and a fewholdouts in New Guinea remained.

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III.2 Major Battles of WWI

The casualties suffered in the First World War were of a scale never before experienced.Great Britain and her Empire lost over 1,000,000 combatants; France, 1,300,000; Russia,1,700,000; Germany and its allies, 3,500,000. Losses in life per day of the war exceeded

5,500.

Although each soldier would have been involved in some form of continual conflict whilstserving on the front-line (e.g. trench raids, snipers, shelling), it is possible to distinguish major

battles (or pushes) whose names have gone down in history as some of the bloodiest conflictsever waged. Below are details on five of the main battles involving British troops and theirallies.

The Battle of Verdun, 1916

A major military engagement of World War I, the Battle of Verdun was a ten month longordeal between the French and German armies. The battle was part of an unsuccessfulGerman campaign to take the offensive on the western front. Both the French and Germanarmies suffered incredibly with an estimated 540,000 French and 430,000 German casualtiesand no strategic advantages were gained for either side. The Battle of Verdun is considered to

be one of the most brutal events of World War I, and the site itself is remembered as the"battlefield with the highest density of dead per square yard." (Horne, 1)

In the yearspreceding WorldWar I, Germany

became Europe'sleading industrial

power. Francefelt increasinglythreatened byGermanindustrialization;and althoughFrance ruled thesecond largestcolonial empire

in the world(Britain was thelargest), Frenchleaders realizedthat France could

not protect itself on its own from the burgeoning power of Germany.

As a response to the German threat of invasion, France built a continuous line of sunken fortsin the hopes that an invading army would not be able to manoeuvre through it. The line offortifications extended from the Swiss frontier to the French city of Verdun, thus makingVerdun a vital strong point for the French war effort.

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The German attack began on February 21, 1916 with an intense artillery bombardment of theforts surrounding Verdun. The French army retreated to predetermined positions while theGerman army pounded through the French lines. On February 25 1916, Fort Douaumont, nearVerdun, surrendered to German forces. On that same day, General Joseph Joffre, the FrenchCommander and Chief, dedicated to ceasing further French retreat, assigned General Henri

Philippe Petain to command the French army at Verdun. Petain fought with the motto " Ils nepasseront pas," which means, "They shall not pass!" While the exhausted German army waslingering at Fort Douaumont, Petain restructured his troops and transported reserves to theregion continuously.

On March 6 1916, the German commanders ordered an attack, and on March 22, 1916,another French fort near Verdun, Harcourt, surrendered to the German army. A week later, onMarch 22 1916, Malancourt, a French fort near Verdun, had fallen to the Germans. Althoughthree French forts near Verdun had capitulated to German forces, Verdun itself remainedundefeated.

German attacks ensued, but by April, the French Air Force had secured the sky over Verdun,which would help the French to successfully defend the area. However, the French forts ofThiaumont and Vaux had fallen to the German army in June, although the pressure on Francehad diminished due to the British attack on German forces near the Somme River. ThisBritish attack and a Russian offensive in the east forced the German army to transfer troopsaway from Verdun. These events put Germany in a defensive mode, and the French quicklytook the offensive.

By November of 1916, Fort Vaux, Fort Thiaumont, and Fort Douaumont had been reclaimedfor France. By December, the French had advanced to their February 1916 lines, their original

position. No new advantage had been gained for either side.

The Battles of the Marne, 1914, 1918

On September 4, 1914, the rapid advances of the German army through Belgium and northernFrance caused panic in the French army and troops were rushed from Paris in taxis to halt theadvance. Combined with the BEF (British Expeditionary Force) the Germans were eventually

halted and the Warsettled into the familiardefensive series ofentrenchment's.

Ironically, by the end ofMay, 1918, the Germanshad again reached theMarne after theenormous successes ofLudendorff's offensivesof that year. Theintervening four yearshad cost hundreds ofthousands of lives and

the armies were still,literally, exactly where they had started.

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The Battles of Ypres, 1914, 1915, 1917

There were in fact three battlesfought around the Ypres salientduring the War. The first, in 1914

was an attempt by the BEF to haltthe rapid advances made by theGermans. The second, in 1915,was notable for the first use of

poison gas by the Germans.However, it is the long-plannedoffensive of July 31, 1917, thatholds the most significance. Here,a combination of over-ambitiousaims, appalling weatherconditions, and misguided

persistence by Haig led to horrificlosses. By the time the offensivewas called off total casualties for

both sides had beenapproximately 250,000. Thehorrors of the battle, in whichmen drowned in liquid mud has

become synonymous with theimages of the War. One of thecentral objectives, the village of Passchendale (eventually taken on November 6 by the

Canadians), lent its name to the whole conflict.

The Battle of the Somme, 1916

At 07:30 hours on the 1st July,1916, after a weeklong artillery

bombardment launched thenow infamous "Big Push"attack across the river Somme.With the French Army beinghard-pressed to the south at

Verdun the British intended tobreakthrough the Germandefences in a matter of hours.

The mistrust that HighCommand had of the so-called"New Armies" manifesteditself in the orders to the troops

to keep uniformed lines and to march towards the enemy across no-man's land. This, coupledwith the failure of the artillery bombardment to dislodge much of the German wire, or todestroy their machine-gun posts, led to one of the biggest slaughters in military history.

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When the attack began the Germans dragged themselves out of their dugouts, manned theirposts and destroyed the oncoming waves of British infantry.

After the first day, with a gain of only 1.5km, the British had suffered 57,470 casualties.Despite this, Haig pressed on with the attack until November 19th of the same year. For the

meagre achievements, total losses on the British and Imperial side numbered 419,654 withGerman casualties between 450,000 and 680,000. When the offensive was eventually calledoff the British were still 3 miles short of Bapaume and Serre, part of their first-day objectives.

The Battle of Cambrai, 1917

On November 20, 1917, the British launched the first full-scale offensive that was designedexclusively to accommodate the British secret weapon, the tank (so-called because when the

first shipment came fromEngland they were described aswater tanks to maintain secrecy).A surprise artillery barragestarted the offensive and 476tanks, packed tightly for a massattack moved against the Germanlines. Supported by infantry thegains were dramatic, breachingthe almost impregnableHindenberg line to depths of 4-5

miles in some places. However,these gains seemed to surpriseBritish High Command equallyas much as the Germans, and thefollowing cavalry failed to take

advantage. Nevertheless, Cambrai demonstrated how a well-thought out attack, combiningtanks en masse with surprise, could be used to break the trench deadlock.

III.3 Naval war

At the start of the war, theGerman Empire had cruisersscattered across the globe,some of which weresubsequently used to attackAllied merchant shipping. TheBritish Royal Navysystematically hunted themdown, though not without someembarrassment from its

inability to protect Alliedshipping. For example, the German detached light cruiser SMSEmden, part of the East-Asia

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squadron stationed at Tsingtao, seized or destroyed 15 merchantmen, as well as sinking aRussian cruiser and a French destroyer. However, the bulk of the German East-Asia squadron

consisting of the armoured cruisers Scharnhorstand Gneisenau, light cruisersNrnbergandLeipzigand two transport shipsdid not have orders to raid shipping and was insteadunderway to Germany when it encountered elements of the British fleet. The German flotilla,

along withDresden, sank two armoured cruisers at the Battle of Coronel, but was almostdestroyed at the Battle of the Falkland Islands in December 1914, with onlyDresden and afew auxiliaries escaping, but at the Battle of Ms a Tierra these too were destroyed orinterned.

Soon after the outbreak of hostilities, Britain initiated a naval blockade of Germany. Thestrategy proved effective, cutting off vital military and civilian supplies, although this

blockade violated generally accepted international law codified by several internationalagreements of the past two centuries. Britain mined international waters to prevent any shipsfrom entering entire sections of ocean, causing danger to even neutral ships.Since there waslimited response to this tactic, Germany expected a similar response to its unrestricted

submarine warfare.

The 1916 Battle of Jutland (German: Skagerrakschlacht, or "Battle of the Skagerrak")developed into the largest naval battle of the war, the only full-scale clash of battleshipsduring the war, and one of the largest in history. It took place on 31 May 1 June 1916, in the

North Sea off Jutland. The Kaiserliche Marine's High Seas Fleet, commanded by ViceAdmiral Reinhard Scheer, squared off against the Royal Navy's Grand Fleet, led by AdmiralSir John Jellicoe. The engagement was a stand off, as the Germans, outmanoeuvred by thelarger British fleet, managed to escape and inflicted more damage to the British fleet than theyreceived. Strategically, however, the British asserted their control of the sea, and the bulk ofthe German surface fleet remained confined to port for the duration of the war.

German U-boats attempted to cut the supply lines between North America and Britain.Thenature of submarine warfare meant that attacks often came without warning, giving the crews

of the merchant ships little hope ofsurvival. The United States launched a

protest, and Germany modified its rulesof engagement. After the notorioussinking of the passenger ship RMS

Lusitania in 1915, Germany promised notto target passenger liners, while Britain

armed its merchant ships, placing thembeyond the protection of the "cruiserrules" which demanded warning and

placing crews in "a place of safety" (astandard which lifeboats did not meet).Finally, in early 1917 Germany adopted a

policy of unrestricted submarine warfare,realising the Americans would eventually enter the war.Germany sought to strangle Allied sealanes before the U.S. could transport a large army overseas, but were only able to maintainfive long range U-boats on station, to limited effect.

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The U-boat threat lessened in 1917, when merchant ships began travelling in convoysescorted by destroyers. This tactic made it difficult for U-boats to find targets, whichsignificantly lessened losses; after the introduction of hydrophone and depth charges,accompanying destroyers might attack a submerged submarine with some hope of success.The convoy system slowed the flow of supplies, since ships had to wait as convoys were

assembled. The solution to the delays was an extensive program to build new freighters.Troop ships were too fast for the submarines and did not travel the North Atlantic in convoys.The U-boats had sunk almost 5,000 Allied ships, at a cost of 178 submarines.

World War I also saw the first use of aircraft carriers in combat, with HMS Furious launchingSopwith Camels in a successful raid against the Zeppelin hangars at Tondern in July 1918, aswell as blimps for antisubmarine patrol.

III.IV War in the Balkans

Faced with Russia, Austria-Hungary could spare only one-third of its army to attack Serbia.After suffering heavy losses, the Austrians briefly occupied the Serbian capital, Belgrade. ASerbian counter attack in the battle of Kolubara, however, succeeded in driving them from thecountry by the end of 1914. For the first ten months of 1915, Austria-Hungary used most ofits military reserves to fight Italy. German and Austro-Hungarian diplomats, however, scoreda coup by persuading Bulgaria to join in attacking Serbia. The Austro-Hungarian provinces ofSlovenia, Croatia and Bosnia provided troops for Austria-Hungary, invading Serbia as well asfighting Russia and Italy. Montenegro allied itself with Serbia.

Serbia was conquered in a little more than a month. The attack began in October, when theCentral Powers launched an offensive from the north; four days later the Bulgarians joined the

attack from the east. The Serbian army, fighting on two fronts and facing certain defeat,retreated into Albania, halting only once to make a stand against the Bulgarians. The Serbssuffered defeat near modern day Gnjilane in the Battle of Kosovo. Montenegro covered theSerbian retreat towards the Adriatic coast in the Battle of Mojkovac in 67 January 1916, butultimately the Austrians conquered Montenegro, too. Serbian forces were evacuated by shipto Greece.

In late 1915, a Franco-British force landed at Salonica in Greece, to offer assistance and topressure the government to declare war against the Central Powers. Unfortunately for theAllies, the pro-German King Constantine I dismissed the pro-Allied government ofEleftherios Venizelos, before the Allied expeditionary force could arrive. The friction

between the king of Greece and the Allies continued to accumulate with the National Schism,which effectively divided Greece between regions still loyal to the king and the new

provisional government of Venizelos located in Salonica. After intense diplomaticnegotiations and an armed confrontation in Athens between Allied and royalist forces (anincident known as Noemvriana) the king of Greece resigned, and his second son Alexandertook his place. Venizelos returned to Athens on 29 May 1917 and Greece, now unified,officially joined the war on the side of the Allies. The entire Greek army was mobilized and

began to participate in military operations against the Central Powers on the Macedonianfront.

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After conquest, Serbia was divided between Austro-Hungary and Bulgaria. Bulgarianscommenced Bulgarization of the Serbian population in their occupation zone, banishing

Serbian Cyrillic and the SerbianOrthodox Church.After forcedconscription of the Serbian

population into the Bulgarian army in1917, the Toplica Uprising began.Serbian rebels liberated for a shorttime the area between the Kopaonikmountains and the South Moravariver. The uprising was crushed by

joint efforts of Bulgarian andAustrian forces at the end of March

1917.

The Macedonian Front proved static for the most part. Serbian forces retook part of

Macedonia by recapturing Bitola on 19 November 1916. Only at the end of the conflict werethe Entente powers able to break through, after most of the German and Austro-Hungariantroops had withdrawn. The Bulgarians suffered their only defeat of the war at the Battle ofDobro Pole but days later, they decisively defeated British and Greek forces at the Battle ofDoiran, avoiding occupation. Bulgaria signed an armistice on 29 September 1918.Hindenburgand Ludendorff concluded that the strategic and operational balance had now shifteddecidedly against the Central Powers and a day after the Bulgarian collapse, during a meetingwith government officials, insisted on an immediate peace settlement.

The disappearance of the Macedonian front meant that the road to Budapest and Vienna wasnow opened for the 670,000-strong army of general Franchet d'Esperey as the Bulgariancapitulation deprived the Central Powers of the 278 infantry battalions and 1,500 guns (theequivalent of some 25 to 30 German divisions) that were previously holding the line. TheGerman high command was able to respond by sending in only seven infantry and one cavalrydivision but these forces were far from sufficient for a front to be reestablished.

III.V. Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers in the war, the secret Ottoman-GermanAlliance having been signed in August 1914.It threatened Russia's Caucasian territories andBritain's communications with India via the Suez Canal. The British and French opened

overseas fronts with the Gallipoli (1915) and Mesopotamian campaigns. In Gallipoli, theOttoman Empire successfully repelled the British, French and Australian and New ZealandArmy Corps (ANZACs). In Mesopotamia, by contrast, after the disastrous Siege of Kut(191516), British Imperial forces reorganised and captured Baghdad in March 1917. Furtherto the west, in the Sinai and Palestine Campaign, initial British setbacks were overcome whenthey captured Jerusalem in December 1917. The Egyptian Expeditionary Force, under FieldMarshal Edmund Allenby, broke the Ottoman forces at the Battle of Megiddo in September1918.

Russian armies generally had the best of it in the Caucasus. Enver Pasha, supremecommander of the Ottoman armed forces, was ambitious and dreamed of re-conquering

central Asia, and areas that had been lost to Russia previously. He was, however, a poorcommander.He launched an offensive against the Russians in the Caucasus in December 1914

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with 100,000 troops; insisting on a frontal attack against mountainous Russian positions inwinter, he lost 86% of his force at the Battle of Sarikamish.

General Yudenich, the Russian commander from 1915 to 1916, drove the Turks out of mostof the southern Caucasus with a string of victories.In 1917, Russian Grand Duke Nicholas

assumed command of the Caucasus front. Nicholas planned a railway from Russian Georgiato the conquered territories, so that fresh supplies could be brought up for a new offensive in1917. However, in March 1917, (February in the pre-revolutionary Russian calendar), theCzar was overthrown in the February Revolution and the Russian Caucasus Army began tofall apart.

The army corps of Armenian volunteer units realigned under the command of GeneralTovmas Nazarbekian, with Dro as a civilian commissioner of the Administration for WesternArmenia. The front line had three main divisions commanded by Movses Silikyan, Andranik,and Mikhail Areshian. Another regular unit was under Colonel Korganian. More than 40,000men in Armenian partisan guerrilla detachments accompanied the main units.

Instigated by the Arab bureau of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the ArabRevolt started with the help of Britain in June 1916 at the Battle of Mecca, led by SherifHussein of Mecca, and ended with the Ottoman surrender of Damascus. Fakhri Pasha, theOttoman commander of Medina, resisted for more than two and half years during the Siege ofMedina.

Along the border of Italian Libya and British Egypt, the Senussi tribe, incited and armed bythe Turks, waged a small-scale guerrilla war against Allied troops. The British were forced todispatch 12,000 troops to oppose them in the Senussi Campaign. Their rebellion was finallycrushed in mid-1916.

III.VI Italian participation

Italy had been allied with the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires since 1882 as part ofthe Triple Alliance. However, the nation had its own designs on Austrian territory in Trentino,Istria and Dalmatia. Rome had a secret 1902 pact with France, effectively nullifying itsalliance. At the start of hostilities, Italy refused to commit troops, arguing that the TripleAlliance was defensive in nature, and that AustriaHungary was an aggressor. The Austro-Hungarian government began negotiations to secure Italian neutrality, offering the Frenchcolony of Tunisia in return. The Allies made a counter-offer in which Italy would receive the

Southern Tyrol, Julian March and territory on the Dalmatian coast after the defeat of Austria-Hungary. This was formalised by the Treaty of London. Further encouraged by the Alliedinvasion of Turkey in April 1915, Italy joined the Triple Entente and declared war on Austria-Hungary on 23 May. Fifteen months later Italy declared war on Germany.

Militarily, the Italians had numerical superiority. This advantage, however, was lost, not onlybecause of the difficult terrain in which fighting took place, but also because of the strategiesand tactics employed. Field Marshal Luigi Cadorna, a staunch proponent of the frontalassault, had dreams of breaking into the Slovenian plateau, taking Ljubljana and threateningVienna. It was a Napoleonic plan, which had no realistic chance of success in an age of

barbed wire, machine guns, and indirect artillery fire, combined with hilly and mountainous

terrain.

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On the Trentino front, the Austro-Hungarians took advantage of the mountainous terrain,which favoured the defender. After an initial strategic retreat, the front remained largelyunchanged, while Austrian Kaiserschtzen and Standschtzen engaged Italian Alpini in bitterhand-to-hand combat throughout the summer. The Austro-Hungarians counter attacked in theAltopiano of Asiago, towards Verona and Padua, in the spring of 1916, (Strafexpedition), but

made little progress.

Beginning in 1915, the Italians under Cadorna mounted eleven offensives on the Isonzo frontalong the Isonzo River, north east of Trieste. All eleven offensives were repelled by theAustro-Hungarians, who held the higher ground. In the summer of 1916, the Italians capturedthe town of Gorizia. After this minor victory, the front remained static for over a year, despiteseveral Italian offensives. In the autumn of 1917, thanks to the improving situation on theEastern front, the Austro-Hungarian troops received large numbers of reinforcements,including German Stormtroopers and the elite Alpenkorps. The Central Powers launched acrushing offensive on 26 October 1917, spearheaded by the Germans. They achieved a victoryat Caporetto. The Italian army was routed and retreated more than 100 kilometres (60 mi.) to

reorganise, stabilising the front at the Piave River. Since in the Battle of Caporetto the ItalianArmy had heavy losses, the Italian Government called to arms the so-called '99 Boys (Ragazzidel '99), that is, all males who were 18 years old. In 1918, the Austro-Hungarians failed to

break through, in a series of battles on the Piave River and, finally being decisively defeatedin the Battle of Vittorio Veneto in October of that year. Austria-Hungary surrendered in early

November 1918.

III.VII Romanian participation

Romania had been allied with the Central Powers since 1882. When the war began, however,

it declared its neutrality, arguing that because Austria-Hungary had itself declared war onSerbia, Romania was under no obligation to join the war. When the Entente Powers promisedRomania large territories of eastern Hungary (Transylvania and Banat), that had a largeRomanian population, in exchange for Romanias declaring war on the Central Powers, theRomanian governmentrenounced its neutrality, and on 27August 1916 the RomanianArmy launched an attackagainst Austria-Hungary, withlimited Russian support. TheRomanian offensive was

initially successful, pushingback the Austro-Hungariantroops in Transylvania, but acounter attack by the forces of the Central Powers drove back the Russo-Romanian forces andas a result of the Battle of Bucharest the Central Powers occupied Bucharest on 6 December1916. Fighting in Moldova continued in 1917, resulting in a costly stalemate for the CentralPowers. As Russia withdrew from the war in late 1917 as a result of the October Revolution,Romania was forced to sign an armistice with the Central Powers on 9 December 1917.

In January 1918, Romanian forces established control over Bessarabia as the Russian Armyabandoned the province. Although a treaty was signed by the Romanian and the Bolshevik

Russian government following talks between 59 March 1918 on the withdrawal ofRomanian forces from Bessarabia within two months, on 27 March 1918 Romania attached

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Bessarabia to its territory, formally based on a resolution passed by the local assembly of theterritory on the unification with Romania.Romania officially made peace with the Central Powers by signing the Treaty of Bucharest on7 May 1918. Under that treaty Romania was obliged to cease war with the Central Powers andmake small territorial concessions for Austria-Hungary, ceding control of some passes in the

Carpathian Mountains and grant oil concessions for Germany. In exchange, the CentralPowers recognised the sovereignty of Romania over Bessarabia. The treaty was renounced inOctober 1918 by the Alexandru Marghiloman government and Romania nominally re-enteredthe war on 10 November 1918. The next day, the Treaty of Bucharest was nullified by theterms of the Armistice of Compigne.Total Romanian deaths from 1914 to 1918, military andcivilian, within contemporary borders, were estimated at 748,000.

III.VIII Russian Revolution

Despite the success of the June 1916 Brusilov Offensive in eastern Galicia, dissatisfactionwith the Russian government's conduct of the war grew. The success was undermined by the

reluctance of other generals to commit their forces to support the victory. Allied and Russianforces were revived only temporarily with Romania`s entry into the war on 27 August.German forces came to the aid of embattled Austro-Hungarian units in Transylvania andBucharest fell to the Central Powers on 6 December. Meanwhile, unrest grew in Russia, as the

Tsar remained at the front. Empress Alexandra'sincreasingly incompetent rule drew protests andresulted in the murder of her favourite, Rasputin,at the end of 1916.

In March 1917, demonstrations in Petrogradculminated in the abdication of Tsar Nicholas IIand the appointment of a weak ProvisionalGovernment which shared power with thePetrograd Soviet socialists. This arrangement ledto confusion and chaos both at the front and at

home. The army became increasingly ineffective.

The war and the government became increasingly unpopular. Discontent led to a rise inpopularity of the Bolshevik party, led by Vladimir Lenin. He promised to pull Russia out ofthe war and was able to gain power. The triumph of the Bolsheviks in November wasfollowed in December by an armistice and negotiations with Germany. At first the Bolsheviks

refused the German terms, but when Germany resumed the war and marched across Ukrainewith impunity, the new government acceded to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on 3 March 1918.It took Russia out of the war and ceded vast territories, including Finland, the Baltic

provinces, parts of Poland and Ukraine to the Central Powers.The manpower required forGerman occupation of former Russian territory may have contributed to the failure of theSpring Offensive, however, and secured relatively little food or other materiel.

With the adoption of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the Entente no longer existed. The Alliedpowers led a small-scale invasion of Russia, partly to stop Germany from exploiting Russianresources and, to a lesser extent, to support the "Whites" (as opposed to "Reds") in theRussian Civil War. Allied troops landed in Archangel and in Vladivostok.

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III.IX 19171918

*Entry of the United States

The United States originally pursued a policy of non-intervention, avoiding conflict while

trying to broker a peace. When a German U-boat sank the British linerLusitania in 1915, with128 Americans aboard, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson vowed, "America is too proud tofight" and demanded an end to attacks on passenger ships. Germany complied. Wilsonunsuccessfully tried to mediate a settlement. He repeatedly warned the U.S. would not tolerateunrestricted submarine warfare, in violation of international law and U.S. ideas of humanrights. Wilson was under pressure from former president Theodore Roosevelt, who denouncedGerman acts as "piracy". Wilson's desire to have a seat at negotiations at war's end to advancethe League of Nations also played a role.Wilson's Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan,whose opinions had been ignored, resigned as he could no longer support the president's

policy. Public opinion was angered at suspected German sabotage of Black Tom in JerseyCity, New Jersey, and the Kingsland Explosion.

In January 1917, Germany resumed unrestrictedsubmarine warfare. The German Foreign minister, in theZimmermann Telegram, told Mexico that U.S. entry waslikely once unrestricted submarine warfare began, andinvited Mexico to join the war as Germany's ally againstthe United States. In return, the Germans would sendMexico money and help it recover the territories ofTexas, New Mexico, and Arizona that Mexico lost duringthe Mexican-American War 70 years earlier. Wilson

released the Zimmerman note to the public andAmericans saw it as a casus bellia cause for war.

U.S. declaration of war on Germany

After the sinking of seven U.S. merchant ships by submarines and the publication of theZimmerman telegram, Wilson called for war on Germany, which the U.S. Congress declaredon 6 April 1917.

First active U.S. participation

The United States was never formally a member of the Allies but became a self-styled"Associated Power". The United States had a small army, but, after the passage of theSelective Service Act, it drafted 2.8 million men and by summer 1918 was sending 10,000fresh soldiers to France every day. In 1917, the U.S. Congress gave U.S. citizenship to PuertoRicans when they were drafted to participate in World War I, as part of the Jones Act.Germany had miscalculated, believing it would be many more months before they wouldarrive and that the arrival could be stopped by U-boats.

The United States Navy sent a battleship group to Scapa Flow to join with the British GrandFleet, destroyers to Queenstown, Ireland and submarines to help guard convoys. Severalregiments of U.S. Marines were also dispatched to France. The British and French wanted

U.S. units used to reinforce their troops already on the battle lines and not waste scarceshipping on bringing over supplies. The U.S. rejected the first proposition and accepted the

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second. General John J. Pershing, American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) commander, refusedto break up U.S. units to be used as reinforcements for British Empire and French units. As anexception, he did allow African-American combat regiments to be used in French divisions.The Harlem Hellfighters fought as part of the French 16th Division, earning a unit Croix deguerre for their actions at Chateau-Thierry, Belleau Wood and Sechault.AEF doctrine called

for the use of frontal assaults, which had long since been discarded by British Empire andFrench commanders because of the large loss of life.

*German Spring Offensive of 1918

German General Erich Ludendorff drew up plans (codenamed Operation Michael) for the1918 offensive on the Western Front. The Spring Offensive sought to divide the British andFrench forces with a series of feints and advances. The German leadership hoped to strike adecisive blow before significant U.S. forces arrived. The operation commenced on 21 March1918 with an attack on British forces near Amiens. German forces achieved an unprecedentedadvance of 60 kilometres (40 miles).

British and French trenches were penetrated using novel infiltration tactics, also namedHutiertactics, after General Oskar von Hutier. Previously, attacks had been characterised bylong artillery bombardments and massed assaults. However, in the Spring Offensive of 1918,Ludendorff used artillery only briefly and infiltrated small groups of infantry at weak points.They attacked command and logistics areas and bypassed points of serious resistance. Moreheavily armed infantry then destroyed these isolated positions. German success relied greatlyon the element of surprise.

The front moved to within 120 kilometres (75 mi) of Paris. Three heavy Krupp railway guns

fired 183 shells on the capital, causing many Parisians to flee. The initial offensive was sosuccessful that Kaiser Wilhelm II declared 24 March a national holiday. Many Germansthought victory was near. After heavy fighting, however, the offensive was halted. Lackingtanks or motorised artillery, the Germans were unable to consolidate their gains. This situationwas not helped by the supply lines now being stretched as a result of their advance.Thesudden stop was also a result of the four Australian Imperial Force (AIF) divisions that were"rushed" down, thus doing what no other army had done and stopping the German advance inits tracks. During that time the first Australian division was hurriedly sent north again to stopthe second German breakthrough.

General Foch pressed to use the arriving American troops as individual replacements.

Pershing sought instead to field American units as an independent force. These units wereassigned to the depleted French and British Empire commands on 28 March. A Supreme WarCouncil of Allied forces was created at the Doullens Conference on 5 November 1917.General Foch was appointed as supreme commander of the allied forces. Haig, Petain andPershing retained tactical control of their respective armies; Foch assumed a coordinatingrole, rather than a directing role and the British, French and U.S. commands operated largelyindependently.

Following Operation Michael, Germany launched Operation Georgette against the northernEnglish Channel ports. The Allies halted the drive with limited territorial gains for Germany.The German Army to the south then conducted Operations Blcher and Yorck, broadly

towards Paris. Operation Marne was launched on 15 July, attempting to encircle Reims and

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beginning the Second Battle of the Marne. The resulting counterattack, starting the HundredDays Offensive, marked their first successful Allied offensive of the war.

By 20 July the Germans were back across the Marne at their Kaiserschlacht starting lines,[112]

having achieved nothing. Following this last phase of the war in the West, the German Army

never again regained the initiative. German casualties between March and April 1918 were270,000, including many highly trained stormtroopers.

Meanwhile, Germany was falling apart at home. Anti-war marches became frequent andmorale in the army fell. Industrial output was 53 percent of 1913 levels.

*Allied victory: summer and autumn 1918

The Allied counteroffensive, known as the Hundred Days Offensive, began on 8 August1918. The Battle of Amiens developed with III Corps British Fourth Army on the left, theFrench First Army on the right, and the Australian and Canadian Corps spearheading theoffensive in the centre through Harbonnires. It involved 414 tanks of the Mark IV and MarkV type, and 120,000 men. They advanced 12 kilometres (7 miles) into German-held territoryin just seven hours. Erich Ludendorff referred to this day as the "Black Day of the Germanarmy".

The Australian-Canadian spearhead at Amiens, a battle that was the beginning of Germanysdownfall, helped pull the British armies to the north and the French armies to the southforward. While German resistance on the British Fourth Army front at Amiens stiffened, afteran advance as far as 14 miles (23 km) and concluded the battle there, the French Third Armylengthened the Amiens front on 10 August, when it was thrown in on the right of the French

First Army, and advanced 4 miles (6 km) liberating Lassigny in fighting which lasted until16 August. South of the French Third Army, General Charles Mangin (The Butcher) drove hisFrench Tenth Army forward at Soissons on 20 August to capture eight thousand prisoners,two hundred guns and the Aisne heights overlooking and menacing the German position northof the Vesle. Another "Black day" as described by Erich Ludendorff.

Meanwhile General Byng of the Third British Army, reporting that the enemy on his frontwas thinning in a limited withdrawal, was ordered to attack with 200 tanks towards Bapaume,opening the Battle of Albert, with the specific orders of "To break the enemy's front, in orderto outflank the enemies present battle front" (opposite the British Fourth Army atAmiens).Allied leaders had now realised that to continue an attack after resistance had

hardened was a waste of lives and it was better to turn a line than to try to roll over it. Attackswere being undertaken in quick order to take advantage of the successful advances on theflanks and then broken off when that attack lost its initial impetus.

The British Third Army's 15-mile (24 km) front north of Albert progressed after stalling for aday against the main resistance line to which the enemy had withdrawn.Rawlinsons FourthBritish Army was able to battle its left flank forward between Albert and the Sommestraightening the line between the advanced positions of the Third Army and the Amiens frontwhich resulted in recapturing Albert at the same time. On 26 August the British First Army onthe left of the Third Army was drawn into the battle extending it northward to beyond Arras.The Canadian Corps already being back in the vanguard of the First Army fought their way

from Arras eastward 5 miles (8 km) astride the heavily defended Arras-Cambrai beforereaching the outer defences of the Hindenburg Line, breaching them on the 28 and 29 August.

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Bapaume fell on the 29 August to the New Zealand Division of the Third Army and theAustralians, still leading the advance of the Fourth Army, were again able to push forward atAmiens to take Peronne and Mont Saint-Quentin on 31 August. Further south the French Firstand Third Armies had slowly fought forward while the Tenth Army, who had by now crossedthe Ailette and was east of the Chemin des Dames, was now near to the Alberich position of

the Hindenburg Line. During the last week of August the pressure along a 70-mile (113 km)front against the enemy was heavy and unrelenting. From German accounts, "Each day wasspent in bloody fighting against an ever and again on-storming enemy, and nights passedwithout sleep in retirements to new lines." Even to the north in Flanders the British Secondand Fifth Armies during August and September were able to make progress taking prisonersand positions that were previously denied them.

On 2 September the Canadian Corps outflanking of theHindenburg line, with the breaching of the Wotan Position,made it possible for the Third Army to advance and sentrepercussions all along the Western Front. That same day

Oberste Heeresleitung (OHL) had no choice but to issueorders to six armies for withdrawal back into the HindenburgLine in the south, behind the Canal du Nord on the Canadian-First Army's front and back to a line east of the Lys in thenorth, giving up without a fight the salient seized in the

previous April.According to Ludendorff We had to admitthe necessity ... to withdraw the entire front from the Scarpeto the Vesle.

In nearly four weeks of fighting since 8 August, over 100,000German prisoners were taken, 75,000 by the BEF and the rest

by the French. Since "The Black Day of the German Army" the German High Commandrealised the war was lost and made attempts for a satisfactory end. The day after the battleLudenforff told Colonel Mertz "We cannot win the war any more, but we must not lose iteither." On 11 August he offered his resignation to the Kaiser, who refused it and replied, "Isee that we must strike a balance. We have nearly reached the limit of our powers ofresistance. The war must be ended." On 13 August at Spa, Hindenburg, Ludendorff,Chancellor and Foreign Minister Hintz agreed that the war could not be ended militarily andon the following day the German Crown Council decided victory in the field was now mostimprobable. Austria and Hungary warned that they could only continue the war untilDecember and Ludendorff recommended immediate peace negotiations, to which the Kaiser

responded by instructing Hintz to seek the mediation of the Queen of the Netherlands. PrinceRupprecht warned Prince Max of Baden "Our military situation has deteriorated so rapidlythat I no longer believe we can hold out over the winter; it is even possible that a catastrophewill come earlier." On 10 September Hindenburg urged peace moves to Emperor Charles ofAustria and Germany appealed to the Netherlands for mediation. On the 14 SeptemberAustria sent a note to all belligerents and neutrals suggesting a meeting for peace talks onneutral soil and on 15 September Germany made a peace offer to Belgium. Both peace offerswere rejected and on 24 September OHL informed the leaders in Berlin that armistice talkswere inevitable.

September saw the Germans continuing to fight strong rear guard actions and launching

numerous counter attacks on lost positions, with only a few succeeding and then onlytemporarily. Contested towns, villages, heights and trenches in the screening positions and

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outposts of the Hindenburg Line continued to fall to the Allies, with the BEF alone taking30,441 prisoners in the last week of September. Further small advances eastward wouldfollow the Third Army victory at Ivincourt on 12 September, the Fourth Armies at Epheny on18 September and the French gain of Essigny-le-Grand a day later. On 24 September a finalassault by both the British and French on a 4 mile (6 km) front would come within 2 miles

(3 km) of St. Quentin.With the outposts and preliminary defensive lines of the Siegfried andAlberich Positions eliminated the Germans were now completely back in the HindenburgLine. With the Wotan position of that line already breached and the Siegfried position indanger of being turned from the north the time had now come for an assault on the wholelength of the line.

The Allied attack on the Hindenburg Line began on 26 September including U.S. soldiers.The still-green American troops suffered problems coping with supply trains for large unitson a difficult landscape.The following week cooperating French and American units brokethrough in Champagne at the Battle of Blanc Mont Ridge, forcing the Germans off thecommanding heights, and closing towards the Belgian frontier.The last Belgian town to be

liberated before the armistice was Ghent, which the Germans held as a pivot until Alliedartillery was brought up.The German army had to shorten its front and use the Dutch frontieras an anchor to fight rear-guard actions.

When Bulgaria signed a separate armistice on 29 September, the Allies gained control ofSerbia and Greece. Ludendorff, having been under great stress for months, suffered somethingsimilar to a breakdown. It was evident that Germany could no longer mount a successfuldefence.

Meanwhile, news of Germany's impending military defeat spread throughout the Germanarmed forces. The threat of mutiny was rife. Admiral Reinhard Scheer and Ludendorffdecided to launch a last attempt to restore the "valour" of the German Navy. Knowing thegovernment of Prince Maximilian of Baden would veto any such action, Ludendorff decidednot to inform him. Nonetheless, word of the impending assault reached sailors at Kiel. Manyrebelled and were arrested, refusing to be part of a naval offensive which they believed to besuicidal. Ludendorff took the blamethe Kaiser dismissed him on 26 October. The collapseof the Balkans meant that Germany was about to lose its main supplies of oil and food. Thereserves had been used up, but U.S. troops kept arriving at the rate of 10,000 per day.

Having suffered over 6 million casualties, Germany moved towards peace. Prince Maximilianof Baden took charge of a new government as Chancellor of Germany to negotiate with the

Allies. Telegraphic negotiations with President Wilson began immediately, in the vain hopethat better terms would be offered than by the British and French. Instead Wilson demandedthe abdication of the Kaiser. There was no resistance when the social democrat PhilippScheidemann on 9 November declared Germany to be a republic. Imperial Germany wasdead; a new Germany had been born: the Weimar Republic.

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IV.After THE WAR

IV.I Health effects

No other war had changed the map of Europe so dramatically four empires disappeared:the German, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman and the Russian. Four dynasties: the Hohenzollerns,the Habsburg, Romanovs and the Ottomans, together with their ancillary aristocracies, all fellafter the war. Belgium and Serbia were badly damaged, as was France with 1.4 millionsoldiers dead, not counting other casualties. Germany and Russia were similarly affected.

The war had profound economic consequences. Of the 60 million European soldiers whowere mobilised from 19141918, 8 million were killed, 7 million were permanently disabled,and 15 million were seriously injured. Germany lost 15.1% of its active male population,AustriaHungary lost 17.1%, and France lost 10.5%. About 750,000 German civilians diedfrom starvation caused by the British blockade during the war. By the end of the war, faminehad killed approximately 100,000 people in Lebanon. The best estimates of the death tollfrom the Russian famine of 1921 run from 5 million to 10 million people. By 1922, therewere between 4.5 million and 7 million homeless children in Russia as a result of nearly adecade of devastation from World War I, the Russian Civil War, and the subsequent famine of19201922. Numerous anti-Soviet Russians fled the country after the Revolution; by the1930s the northern Chinese city of Harbin had 100,000 Russians. Thousands more emigratedto France, England and the United States.

Diseases flourished in the chaotic wartimeconditions. In 1914 alone, louse-borne

epidemic typhus killed 200,000 inSerbia.From 1918 to 1922, Russia had about25 million infections and 3 million deathsfrom epidemic typhus. Whereas beforeWorld War I, Russia had about 3.5 millioncases of malaria, its people suffered morethan 13 million cases in 1923.In addition, amajor influenza epidemic spread around theworld. Overall, the 1918 flu pandemic killed

at least 50 million people.Lobbying by Chaim Weizmann and fear that American Jews wouldencourage the USA to support Germany culminated in the British government's Balfour

Declaration of 1917, endorsing creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. A total of morethan 1,172,000 Jewish soldiers served in the Allied and Central Power forces in World War I,including 450,000 in Czarist Russia and 275,000 in Austria-Hungary.

The social disruption and widespread violence of the Revolution of 1917 and the ensuingRussian Civil War sparked more than 2,000 pogroms in the former Russian Empire, mostly inthe Ukraine. An estimated 60,000200,000 civilian Jews were killed in the atrocities.

In the aftermath of World War I, Greece fought against Turkish nationalists led by MustafaKemal, a war which resulted in a massive population exchange between the two countriesunder the Treaty of Lausanne.According to various sources,several hundred thousand Pontic

Greeks died during this period.

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IV.II Peace treaties and national boundaries

After the war, the Paris Peace Conference imposed a series of peace treaties on the CentralPowers. The 1919 Treaty of Versailles officially ended the war. Building on Wilson's 14th

point, the Treaty of Versailles also brought into being the League of Nations on 28 June 1919.

In signing the treaty, Germany acknowledged responsibility for the war, agreeing to payenormous war reparations and award territory to the victors. The "Guilt Thesis" became acontroversial explanation of later events among analysts in Britain and the United States. TheTreaty of Versailles caused enormous bitterness in Germany, which nationalist movements,especially the Nazis, exploited with a conspiracy theory they called theDolchstosslegende(Stab-in-the-back legend). The Weimar Republic lost the former colonial possessions and wassaddled with accepting blame for the war, as well as paying punitive reparations for it. Unableto pay them with exports (a result of territorial losses and postwar recession), Germany did so

by borrowing from the United States. Runaway inflation in the 1920s contributed to theeconomic collapse of the Weimar Republic and the reparations were suspended in 1931

following the Stock Market Crash in 1929 and the beginnings of the Great Depressionworldwide.

AustriaHungary was partitioned into several successor states, including Austria, Hungary,Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, largely but not entirely along ethnic lines. Transylvania wasshifted from Hungary to Greater Romania. The details were contained in the Treaty of Saint-Germain and the Treaty of Trianon. As a result of the Treaty of Triano, 3.3 millionHungarians came under foreign rule. Although the Hungarians made up 54% of the

population of the pre-war Kingdom of Hungary, only 32% of its territory was left to Hungary.Between 1920 and 1924, 354,000 Hungarians fled former Hungarian territories attached to

Romania, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.

The Russian Empire, which had withdrawn from the war in 1917 after the OctoberRevolution, lost much of its western frontier as the newly independent nations of Estonia,Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland were carved from it. Bessarabia was re-attached to theGreater Romania, as it had been a Romanian territory for more than a thousand years.

The Ottoman Empire disintegrated, and much of its non-Anatolian territory was awarded asprotectorates of various Allied powers. The Turkish core was reorganised as the Republic ofTurkey. The Ottoman Empire was to be partitioned by the Treaty of Svres in 1920. Thistreaty was never ratified by the Sultan and was rejected by the Turkish republican movement,

leading to the Turkish Independence War and, ultimately, to the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne.

IV.III Economic effects

One of the most dramatic effects of the war was the expansion of governmental powers andresponsibilities in Britain, France, the United States, and the Dominions of the British Empire.In order to harness all the power of their societies, new government ministries and powerswere created. New taxes were levied and laws enacted, all designed to bolster the war effort;many of which have lasted to this day. Similarly, the war strained the abilities of the formerlylarge and bureaucratised governments such as in AustriaHungary and Germany; however,any analysis of the long-term effects were clouded by the defeat of these governments.

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Gross domestic product (GDP) increased for three Allies (Britain, Italy, and U.S.), butdecreased in France and Russia, in neutral Netherlands, and in the main three Central Powers.The shrinkage in GDP in Austria, Russia, France, and the Ottoman Empire reached 30 to40%. In Austria, for example, most of the pigs were slaughtered and, at war's end, there wasno meat.

All nations had increases in the government's share of GDP, surpassing fifty percent in bothGermany and France and nearly reaching fifty percent in Britain. To pay for purchases in theUnited States, Britain cashed in its extensive investments in American railroads and then

began borrowing heavily on Wall Street. President Wilson was on the verge of cutting off theloans in late 1916, but allowed a great increase in U.S. government lending to the Allies.After 1919, the U.S. demanded repayment of these loans, which, in part, were funded byGerman reparations, which, in turn, were supported by American loans to Germany. Thiscircular system collapsed in 1931 and the loans were never repaid. In 1934, Britain owed theUS $4.4 billion of World War I debt.

Macro- and micro-economic consequences devolved from the war. Families were altered bythe departure of many men. With the death or absence of the primary wage earner, womenwere forced into the workforce in unprecedented numbers. At the same time, industry neededto replace the lost labourers sent to war. This aided the struggle for voting rights for women.

In Britain, rationing was finally imposed in early 1918, limited to meat, sugar, and fats (butterand oleo), but not bread. The new system worked smoothly. From 1914 to 1918 trade unionmembership doubled, from a little over four million to a little over eight million. Workstoppages and strikes became frequent in 19171918 as the unions expressed grievancesregarding prices, alcohol control, pay disputes, fatigue from overtime and working onSundays and inadequate housing.

Britain turned to her colonies for help in obtaining essential war materials whose supply hadbecome difficult from traditional sources. Geologists such as Albert Ernest Kitson were calledupon to find new resources of precious minerals in the African colonies. Kitson discoveredimportant new deposits of manganese, used in munitions production, in the Gold Coast.

Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles (the so-called "war guilt" clause) declared Germanyand its allies responsible for all "loss and damage" suffered by the Allies during the war and

provided the basis for reparations. The total reparations demanded was 132 billion gold markswhich was far more than the total German gold or foreign exchange. The economic problems

that the payments brought, and German resentment at their imposition, are usually cited asone of the more significant factors that led to the end of the Weimar Republic and thebeginning of the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler. After Germanys defeat in World War II,payment of the reparations was not resumed. There was, however, outstanding German debtthat the Weimar Republic had used to pay the reparations. Germany finished paying off thereparations in October 2010.

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CONCLUSIONS

To conclude First World War was:

The Most Important Event in the 20th Century

Modern historians consider World War 1 to be defining event of modern history,with virtually all significant events afterwards being directly or indirectly caused

by the War. World War 1 radically changed Western society on a huge number

of levels, and the political fallout from the end of the war can be immediatelytraced to practically any major issue we face today. While World War 2 wasmore materially destructive, World War 1 changed the basic assumptions ofvirtually the entire global society. It ended the age of Empires, created themovements of ethnic national self-determination that plague us today, turnedCommunism from a pipe dream of academics to an actual "viable" governmentform, and radically changed governments from modest in scale to hugecentralized ones, and put the USA on the road to superpower status, amongst ahost of other consequences.

Biography

1.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I2.http://www.worldwar1.com/3.http://www.firstworldwar.com/4.http://www.worldwar-1.net/

5.http://www.threeworldwars.com/

Documents

Atestat First World War