The End of the War to End Wars
Prologue: 1914- 1918
The battlefield of Passchendaele, a moonscape iconic of the devastation of the Great War.
In order to understand the Second World War it is requisite to look back to the First. This mammoth conflict raged across Europe from July of 1914 to November of 1918 and resulted in a radical change in the nature of warfare, as well as the end of millennia of aristocratic governance. Thus it led to the rise of the age of political ideology that would spark the next war, and continues to this day. The Russian Tsar would be overthrown, leading to the world’s first socialist power as the Soviet Union appeared from the ashes of civil war, the German Kaiser would be replaced by an unstable new republic, and a new ideology: fascism, would appear and usurp the authority of the Italian King, among others.
The Great War is a contender for the most important event in world history, as many events, from the rise of Hitler to the modern problems in the Middle East, can be traced to this conflict and the treaties that ended it. It served as the apocalyptic event in which the old world died, and in this crucible a new one was formed to take its place.
Citizens of Sarajevo read an announcement of the Austro-Hungarian annexation in 1908
The world of 1914 was perched on the razor’s edge, with a complicated network of alliances positioned to allow a smaller event to grow into a larger conflict as the great powers all mobilized. There were several possible flashpoints; the Balkans, where the Imperial ambitions of the Austrians, Italians and Ottomans clashed with the nationalistic goals of the local states, Africa, which was contested between the colonial powers of Britain, Germany and France, or even East Asia, where the Japanese were building their new empire, and the Russians had already fought and lost a war with them. As the Chinese Empire collapsed the possibility was opened for further conflict if the major powers attempted to carve up its carcass.
The Austro-Hungarian annexed Bosnia in 1908, undertaking this during the tumult that was the breakdown of Ottoman power in the Balkans. This caused a major disruption of the balance of power in the region and served also to alienate Serbia, Italy and Russia from the Austrians. Determined not to lose face again, after also being humiliated by the Japanese in the 1905 Russo-Japanese War, the Russians resolved to never give an inch in the Balkans again, and Serbia, who nurtured an ambition to unite the Slavic states of the Balkans in a single state, Yugoslavia, considered this a blatant attack on her interests.
Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian Throne, walks with his wife Sophie in Sarajevo, about to enter the car in which they will be assassinated
All that was needed to set off what was aptly referred to as a powder keg was a single spark, and that came in the form of an assassin’s bullet in Sarajevo. The heir to the Austrian throne, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, traveled to the annexed capitol of Bosnia for a review of the Imperial Army maneuvers, and in the course of the attendant ceremonies visited the city proper with his wife.
As their motorcade passed several assassination attempts were committed, but did not succeed, and it seemed as though the attempt by the Serbian nationalist group The Black Hand had failed as the Archduke reached the city hall. One of the assassins, Gavrilo Princip, had been moving to alternate position when the motorcade came down the street he was on, and was ordered to stop because they had made a wrong turn. The assassin seized his moment, jumping onto the running boards of the open topped car of the Archduke and fired two rounds, striking both the Archduke and his wife, killing both.
This set in motion a series of events the caused the Austrians to issue an ultimatum to Serbia, which was intended to be rejected and thus provide an excuse for war. This caused the series of alliances in Europe to be activated, with the Russians coming to the aid of Serbia, Germany to Austria and France to Russia. When the armies began to move in August of 1914 the Germans attempted to invade France via Belgium in accordance with the Schlieffen Plan, a pre-ordained strategy that was focused on eliminating the threat of France before the Russians could fully mobilize.
The Belgians fought back with more success than the Germans anticipated, and to make matters worse the violation of Belgian neutrality caused the British to declare war on Germany as well. Despite this, and a dangerous Russian incursion into East Prussia, the Germans were able to stop the Russian advance and made it to the gates of Paris before being stopped. After this the war in the West became a stalemate as the belligerents settled into trench warfare.
British soldiers in a trench on the Western Front
The year 1915 would see the war expand yet further, with fighting in the Middle East as the Ottoman Empire entered the conflict. The British led an attempt to take the Dardanelles via the Gallipoli Peninsula, aimed to open the Black Sea to British shipping to Russia as well as to capture Constantinople and topple the Ottomans. This would drag on for almost the entire year before ending with British defeat. They would also land in Arabia and begin advancing in Mesopotamia and the Sinai, and repel an Ottoman attack on the Suez Canal.
A Southern Front opened in the spring, as Italy joined the Entente and attempted to invade Austria. Their progress is stopped at the Isonzo River with heavy casualties, and soon these new front stalemates like in the West.
On the Eastern Front the Germans continued to push the Russians eastward, as the Austrians launched a large scale offensive into the Carpathians, which met with disaster. The Russians, meanwhile threatened to break into the Hungarian heartland, requiring German reinforcement. A German counteroffensive the forces the Russians back to their pre-war borders with Austria-Hungary, and soon further enemy drives push them from Poland.
On the Western Front French and British offensives end with little gain and massive casualties, and German offensives would meet with similar results. This year also marks the first use of poison gas, as the Germans deploy it first in the East and then against the British at Ypres.
At sea the Germans commenced unrestricted submarine warfare, sinking many ships including the liner RMS Lusitania, which served to further alienate the neutral US from Germany. Small confrontations take place between the British and German fleets with limited results as well.
Lastly, the Germans and Austrians launched another invasion of Serbia, as the Austrians had been repelled in 1914 as the war began. This campaign was successful, and Serbia fell, with the remnants of her army retreating to Albania.
It was by now becoming clear to all involved that this was to be a long war, and in 1915 it had truly escalated into a World War.
An Ottoman howitzer position in the Sinai Campaign
1916 would be marked with massive battles that would define the collective memory of the Great War. In the West the Germans launched a massive assault on the French fortress city of Verdun, engaging in viscous fighting in and around the underground fortresses from February to December, and was intended to “bleed the French white” with massive casualties. The British launched their own offensive, resulting in the Battle of the Somme, which again produced little results in exchange for horrific casualties. During this battle, the British introduced the tank in combat for the first time.
In the East the Russians launched a major counteroffensive under General Alexei Brusilov, pushing back the Central Powers forces, and incentivizing Romania to enter the war on their side. Despite this, the offensive stalled, and Romania found herself surrounded by hostile powers, and after a hopeless but valiant stand was overrun and occupied by the Central Powers.
Fighting continued in the Sinai and Mesopotamia, with the Ottomans scoring a major victory at Kut al Amar in Iraq but otherwise being pushed back on most fronts. The British had begun working with Arab tribes who were now in open revolt behind the Ottoman lines, causing serious damage to the already weak Ottoman logistic system.
Fighting on the Southern Front was still in a stalemate, with an Austrian offensive blunted by the Italian defenders, but further Italian attacks at the Isonzo producing the same result as in 1915.
At sea the dreadnoughts of the German and British finally met for a large battle at Jutland, which ended in a draw, although the British were in a better position to replace their losses than the Germans. The German High Seas Fleet would not perform operations again for the duration of the war. The U-boats, however, continued to operate, although fears of bringing the US into the war had caused the Germans to operate with much more restraint.
The British cruiser HMS Indefatigable sinking during the Battle of Jutland
In 1917 the war would finally include all of the great powers, as the United States entered the war following the revelation of a German attempt to convince Mexico to invade the southwestern US, and the Germans resumed unrestricted submarine warfare.
On the Western Front French General Robert Nivelle commences the Nivelle Offensive, which as before end with no real gains aside from massive casualties. This finally results in mutinies throughout the French ranks, which threaten to destabilize the entire front. The French were able to calm their men, promising an end to fruitless, near suicidal attacks. Meanwhile, the first US forces began to arrive in Europe, as the British launched another attack at Ypres. This would become known as the Battle of Passchendaele, and images of the blasted landscape would become iconic of the Great War. For a gain of about five miles, the British lost half a million men. Another British attack at Cambrai would for the first time see British tanks met by German counterparts, resulting in both sides gaining ground in different sectors to continue a stalemate.
On the Eastern Front the situation changed dramatically in the spring as the Tsar was overthrown in the February Revolution. The new Provisional Russian Republic intended to continue the vastly unpopular war, and launched an offensive in July, meeting with positive results until mutinies began to sweep through the Russian Army, and soon the Germans counterattacked, pushing the Russian lines back with little resistance. In light of this collapse, another revolution took place in October, and Lenin and his Bolsheviks seized control of the government, plunging the country into civil war, and the new Soviet government signed an armistice with the Germans.
On the Italian front a twelfth battle is fought on the Isonzo, resulting this time in a Austrian breakthrough at Caporetto, pushing the Italians back into their own territory before they are able to regroup and establish a new line. In Mesopotamia the British continued their advance, capturing Baghdad and pushing onward into Israel, capturing Jerusalem later in the year.
Canadian troops advance behind a tank on the Western Front
1918 would prove to be the crucial year, as the Western Entente reeled from the Russian collapse and awaited the arrival of US troops in force.
On the Eastern Front the fighting had all but stopped, and in March the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk formally ended the fighting between German and Russian forces. Most of European Russia is divided into smaller states under German control, and the Germans begin transferring troops to the west in earnest.
In the Middle East the British continued their offensives into Ottoman territory, with a final drive in Palestine commencing in September. The Ottomans asked for an armistice in October, being the second domino to fall, as Bulgaria had been invaded by a Franco-British force from Greece and had capitulated in late September. The forces advancing in the Balkans now threatened to enter the Austrian heartland. The fighting in Italy also continued, with the Italians launching an offensive as the Austrians desperately redeployed forces to defend the newly reopened Balkan front, penetrating the lines and scoring a decisive victory at Vittorio Veneto, as the Austro-Hungarian Empire ceased to exist.
In the West the Germans launched a massive offensive in the spring aimed to break the British and French before the Americans arrived, driving deep into the Entente lines, bolstered by the troops from the Eastern Front. This offensive stalled in early July, however, as the Germans were exhausted by years of fighting, and supplies were short due to the ongoing enemy blockade. The Entente, now being backed by enormous amounts of fresh US troops, counterattacked along the entire front in August, driving the Germans back into Belgium and toward their own borders. In early October the Germans asked for an armistice, but were reject mainly due to US President Woodrow Wilson’s insistence that the German monarchy must fall before negotiations could commence.
When the German Navy was ordered to make a last attempt to break the blockade, they mutinied; spreading a tide of communist revolution throughout Germany, and soon Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicates and flees to neutral Dutch territory. The Germans meet for an armistice in the forest of Compiegne, which goes into effect at 1100 of November 11, 1918. The Great War was over.
British soldiers blinded by gas form a ghastly human chain to reach an aid station
The Great War had lasted four years, and consumed the lives of an estimated twenty million people. The world of 1919 would look vastly different to that of 1914, irrevocably changed by the destruction wrought upon it.
The German, Austrian, Turkish and Russian monarchies did not survive the war, the Imperial authority of the British King was eroded as the Commonwealth blossomed, and the Italian monarchy would be usurped by political forces soon after. The world now was less concerned with King and Country than it was with politician ideologies as the conflict between socialism, fascism, and capitalism took center stage. In some ways, the murder of the Russian Imperial Family, the Romanovs, was emblematic of how the war destroyed the ancient aristocratic order that had ruled most of the world since the dawn of civilization, as republics became the dominant form of governance and most of the remaining monarchies bowed to the pressure of a new political age.
The room where the Romanovs, the Imperial Family of Russia, were executed by Bolshevik Revolutionaries
Sources
Gilbert, Martin - The First World War: A Complete History, Henry Holt, 1994
Clark, Christohper - The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, Harper Collins, 2013
Marshall, SLA - World War I, Houghton Mifflin, 1964/2001
The Great War - Real Time History GmbH, Youtube (various videos)