Introduction to World War I

« The Great War of 1914 - 1918 lies like a band of scorched earth dividing that time from ours»

-- American historian Barbara Tuchman, author of The Guns of August (Pulitzer Prize, 1962)

« The Biggest Collective Blunder of Mankind »

-- Britain historian Niall Ferguson

Map of Europe, 1914

Map of WWI participants

Origins of World War I

1. Growing tensions among colonial powers

2. Naval ‘arms race’ between Britain, Germany

3. Imperial Germany sparks crises in Morocco

4. Web of alliances create two competing camps

5. Rise of internationally-oriented socialism

6. Flare-up of nationalism in Balkans amidst weakening multiethnic empires

7. 100 years since last major European conflict

British Dreadnought Battleship

July 28, 1914: 19-year-old Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princips shoots dead Austro-Hungarian heir to the throne, Archduke

Franz Ferdinand, and his pregnant wife Sophie, in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo. (dies in prison 4 years later)

The Outbreak of War

1. Germany supports Austria’s hard-line approach to Serbia in wake of assassination.

2. Russia steps up to defend Slavic ally Serbia

3. France stand by its ally, Russia

4. Germany executes Schlieffen Plan, an invasion through Belgium to rapidly defeat France and avoid a war on two fronts

5. Violation of Belgian neutrality (and reports of German atrocities) pushes Britain to join war

The Schlieffen Plan

Germans en route to Paris

Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany: Why Germany Wanted a War

1. Promote pro-military groups and stifle socialists, by 1912 largest party in Reichstag

2. Defeat naval rival Britain

3. Defeat Russia before it finishes modernizing its army, railroads, industry

4. Army chief of staff Germal von Moltke felt war inevitable ‘the sooner the better’ (1912)

5. Navy urged delay to … 1914

WWI Technology: Submarine

Why Everyone Else Wanted a War

1. England wanted to defeat rival Germany

2. France wanted to recover Alsace, Lorraine

3. Conservatives’ desire to beat back socialists such as Jean Jaures, who opposed ‘imperialist’ war

4. British unsettled by labor union unrest and violence of suffragette movement for women’s votes

5. No one foresaw the slaughter when the Maxim guns that mowed down the Mahdi fighter at Omdurman, Sudan, in 1898, would turn on fellow Europeans.

6. Everyone thought they would ‘be home by Christmas’

Wellington at Waterloo

British poet/soldier Rupert Brooke

1914 I: Peace

Now, God be thanked Who has watched us with His hour, And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping, With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power, To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping, Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary, Leave the sick hearts that honour could not move, And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary, And all the little emptiness of love! 

1914 V: The Soldier

If I should die, think only this of me:That there's some corner of a foreign fieldThat is for ever England. There shall beIn that rich earth a richer dust concealed;A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,A body of England's, breathing English air,Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,A pulse in the eternal mind, no lessGives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,In hearts at peace, under an English heaven. 

Map of Western Front

Just the Facts ...

War lasts: 4 years, 4 months ( 1914 - 1918)

10 million die and a further 20 million wounded. 70 million fought, including many from British and French Empires.

Serbia loses up to ¼ population, Oxford 1/3 of 1913 class, France 50% men aged 20 – 32, Germany 35% of 19-22 years olds

Central Powers: Germany, Austro-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire

Allies: France, Russia, Serbia, Italy (1915), the U.S. (1917)

Russia pulls out in 1917; US joins Allies in same year.

Famous for stagnation and senseless brutality of trench warfare, war stripped of any lingering sense of glamour or glory.

Beginning of Europe's decline and rise of U.S. and U.S.S.R

Austro-Hungarian Empire, Ottoman Empire break apart, monarchies in Germany, Russia disappear

Nicholas II of Russia and Georges Clemenceau of France

President Woodrow Wilson British PM David Lloyd George

Timeline of World War I: 1914

June 28: Archduke assassinated in Sarajevo, Bosnia by Serbian nationalist

July 28: Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia. Russia mobilizes

August 1: Germany declares war on Russia

August 3: German declares war on France and invades Belgium

August 4: Britain declares war on Germany

August 22: Battle of the Frontiers—French repulsed in assault on Germany; lose 27,000 soldiers in a single day.

August 26 – 30: Germany destroys Russian at Tennenberg; 250,000 killed

Sept: 5-10: Desperate French and British assault (including Paris taxis) forces Germans back at the Battle of the Marne. First trenches dug.

Dec. 25: Christmas truce. Troops allegedly fraternize, play football on battlefield.

Battle of the Marne, 1914

Taxi to the Marne, 1914

German calvary

French infantry charge

German infantry

WWI Technology: Italian Blimp

Timeline of World War I: 1915

Jan: Russians defeat Ottoman Empire troops in month-long winter battle in Caucasus mountains at Sarikamish; thousands freeze to death

Jan-Feb: Germans launch Zeppelin raid on England; begin submarine blockade

April: Start of Armenian massacres in Turkey that will murder a million or more

April 22: Germans use poison gas (chlorine) for first time at Ypres

April 25: Start of futile, 9-month Allied attempt to seize Turkish peninsula of Gallipoli and thus control access to Dardanelles to re-supply Russia.

May 7: German sub sinks Lusitania, killing 1200 civilian passengers including 140 Americans. US outrage prompts Germany to temporarily halt such attacks

May 23: Though previously allied with Germany and Austria, Italy joins Allies in hopes of gaining land in northeast (Trieste, Tirol, Dalmatia). Hugely unpopular with public.

Dec 28: Allies begin withdrawal from Gallipoli after losing 200,000 men, most of them Australian/ New Zealand. Turkish general Mustafa Kemal will become ‘Ataturk’

Strategic Location of Gallipoli

Map of Gallipoli Battles

Periscope Rifle at Gallipoli (1915)

Ottoman Battery at Gallipoli

Armenian Deportees

Armenian dead

Starving Armenian boy

WWI Technology: Rifle Grenades

Timeline of World War I: 1916

Jan. : Military conscription begins in Britain

Feb: Germans begin ten-month assault on unprepared French forces at forts of Verdun to ‘bleed French white’. A million casualties combined before they give up. General Petain (‘ils ne passeront pas!’) becomes war hero.

July: In part to relieve pressure on French at Verdun, British begin 5-month offensive at the Somme. Incredible 57,000 casualties in the first day alone. A million casualties combined, again, for 10 km of land gained.

August: Romania joins Allies to gain Transylvania from Hungary

Nov: US President Woodrow Wilson re-elected: ‘he kept us out of the war’.

Dec.: Bellicose Welshman David Lloyd George replaces vacillating PM ‘Squiffy’ Asquith, who lost eldest son Raymond at Battle of the Somme.

Dec. 31: Tsarina’s ‘mystic’ Rasputin poisoned, stabbed, and drowned by relatives of the Tsar (he dies).

British Trench at the Somme, 1916

King George V Visits Arms Factory

WWI Technology: The Tank

Not quite a Panzer division yet…

World War I Timeline: 1917

Jan. 19: Discovery of German foreign secretary Zimmerman's telegram urging Mexico to declare war on US to reclaim Texas, Southwest. Provokes outcry in United States

Feb. 1: Germany resumes unrestricted submarine warfare, hoping to force war’s end before this move causes US to intervene

March: Tsar Nicolas II of Russia abdicates.

April: Wilson asks Congress to declare war on Germany

April: Half-million French troops mutiny after failed offensive at Chemin des Dames.

July: First US troops arrive in France. Start of gruesome, rain-soaked 4-month battle of Passchendaele, with 700,000 casualties

Oct.: Italians, long ineffective, utterly routed by Austrians, Germans at month-long Battle of Caporetto in Slovenia. 13,000 Italians killed, 260,000 captured, 350,000 desert.

Nov 7: Bolsheviks led by Lenin come to power in Russia.

Dec. 3: Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky signs peace with Germany

Dec.9: British forces capture Jerusalem from Turks, having taken Bagdad in spring.

Austrians executing Serbs, 1917. Serbia, finally at Austria’s mercy, loses 16% of population in war. Romania loses 9%

WWI Technology: German Airplane

Machine gun on airplane

US Seaplane construction

World War I Timeline: 1918

Jan. 8: Wilson publishes his 14 Points, a pathway for world peace

March: Germany, its society on brink of collapse due to blockade, launches first of five spring offensives that will bring them close enough to Paris to shell the city.

April – May: Americans help halt German advances, begin to push Germans back.

July: German troops shipped from East to Western front desert in large numbers

July 16- 17: Tsar Nicholas and his family murdered

August 8: Allies begin 100 Days' Offensive; 100,000+ German soldiers taken prisoner.

Sept: Allies break through German fortifications.

Oct. 28: German navy mutinies at Kiel when ordered out for suicidal final attack

Oct. 30: Ottomans sign armistice

Nov. 9-10: A German republic is founded, Kaiser flees to Holland

Nov. 11, 11 a.m.: Guns cease on the Western Front as armistice goes into effect

Dec. 3: President Wilson departs for Paris Peace Conference

WWI Destruction: Arras

WWI Destruction: Chateau Thierry

Destruction in Belgium

The Result

1. 10 million dead, 20 million injured, many mutilated for life (plus est. 7 million civilians due to malnutrition, disease, Armenian genocide).

2. Russian losses are heaviest at 1.8 million. French: 1.4 million (5% of population), Germany 2 million (4% of population), Ottomans 800,000, or 13% of population. British 900,000, Austria 1.1 million,

3. Americans sacrifice 116,000 but many more to Spanish flu epidemic that follows.

4. Creation of multiethnic states: Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, rump states of Austria and Hungary, Romania with large Hungarian minority and Poland with large German minority

5. East Prussia from rest of Germany.

6. Imperial governments abolished in Turkey, Germany, and Austria.

Aftermath of the War

1. Women gain limited suffrage in Britain in 1918, full in 1928. America in 1920. Revolutionary Russia, Germany let women vote in 1918; French not until after WWII

2. Ottoman Empire deprived of its lands in the Middle East, which become ‘protectorates’. Britain has mandates for Palestine, Iraq, France for Syria, Lebanon.

3. Turkey becomes secular modernizing republic; forced expulsions of 1 million Christians to Greece in exchange for 500,000 Muslims

4. In Europe, new countries created (Baltic Republics), old ones’ borders modified (Serbia and Romanie double in size), others revived (Poland).

5. All riven by inter-ethnic rivalry.OnlyCzechoslovakia still a democracy by 1930

6. 4 million Germans left in Czechoslovakia (Sudetenland) and Poland (West Prussia). Austria left most of its industry in Poland, Czechoslovakia

7. German colonies of modern-day Tanzania, Namibia given to English. Cameroon split French-English, and Togoland given to French

8. Alsace-Lorraine restored to France; Saar’s coal mine output also given to France

9. Germany’s huge reparations, decided at Treaty of Versailles, weaken new goverment.

10.League of Nations, precursor to United Nations, created, but US refuses to join.

11.League’s visionary, Wilson, suffers incapacitating stroke in 1919. He dies in 1921.

Opposition to Women’s Suffrage

1920 Treaty of Sevres’ Turkey

Smyrna ablaze, 1922

Map of Europe, 1923

The World After the War: Africa

After the Treaty of Versailles

1. Criticized as too harsh, huge reparations unpayable, many Germans under foreign rule. Clemenceau wanted it harsher, to eliminate German threat forever

2. US fails to ratify it, doesn’t join League of Nations; France loses guarantee of Anglo-American support

3. Germany plunges into political upheaval and runaway inflation. German coal workers go on strike in 1923.

4. French troops occupy Rhineland in 1923 when Germany suspends payment. Inflation skyrockets until marks nearly worthless but troops soon forced to withdraw. Inflation brought under control in 1924.

5. Often blamed for contributing to Hitler’s rise to power

German ‘hyperinflation’