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WORLD WAR I (1914–1919)
1
...
Although the conflict began in Europe, it
ultimately involved countries as far away as the United States and Japan
...

Historians still actively disagree over the fundamental causes of the war
...
However, historians agree nearly unanimously about the
war’s consequences: World War I led almost directly to World War II and set the stage for many
other important events in the twentieth century
...
Civilian loss of life totaled an additional 13 million
...
In total, counting battle casualties, civilian deaths, and victims of disease, the loss of life
worldwide surpassed 40 million
...
Abroad, Europe’s great powers were
increasingly coming to impasses over the acquisition of new colonies
...
At the same time, the Turkishruled Ottoman Empire, which had existed for hundreds of years, was slowly decaying
...
The many ethnic groups of AustriaHungary, inspired by these new southern European nations, began to agitate for their own
independence
...

At the same time, technological and industrial developments in Europe were advancing with
unprecedented speed
...
Indeed, World War I turned out to
be a showcase of new technologies that would change the nature, speed, and efficiency of warfare
in the century to come
...
Other
types of motorized vehicles, such as trucks, cars, and especially trains, vastly improved the speed
with which troops and supplies could be deployed and increased the distance over which they could
be transported
...
The machine gun made it possible for a single
soldier to effectively take on multiple opponents at once
...

By war’s end, the map of Europe began to resemble the one we know today
...
Much of eastern Europe, in particular, was redivided
along ethno-linguistic lines, and Hungary, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland all
became independent countries
...
A major reorganization of the Near and Middle East also took
place following the war, establishing the forerunners of the countries we know today as Armenia,
Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq
...
Most European nations began to rely
increasingly upon parliamentary systems of government, and socialism gained increasing
popularity
...
This resolve
directly inspired the birth of the League of Nations
...
Summary of Events:
The Start of the War

World War I began on July 28, 1914, when Austria-Hungary declared war onSerbia
...
Western and eastern fronts quickly opened along the borders
of Germany and Austria-Hungary
...
In
the west, Germany attacked first Belgium and then France
...
In the south, Austria-Hungary attacked Serbia
...
The fronts in the east also gradually locked into place
...
As a result, much of 1915was dominated by Allied actions
against the Ottomans in the Mediterranean
...
This campaign was followed by the British invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula
...
Although the British
had some successes in Mesopotamia, the Gallipoli campaign and the attacks on the Dardanelles
resulted in British defeats
...
Soldiers fought from dug-in positions, striking at each other with machine
guns, heavy artillery, and chemical weapons
...

The United States’ Entrance and Russia’s Exit

Despite the stalemate on both fronts in Europe, two important developments in the war occurred
in 1917
...
Then, in November, theBolshevik Revolution prompted Russia to pull out of the
war
...
The fighting between exhausted, demoralized troops continued to plod along
until the Germans lost a number of individual battles and very gradually began to fall back
...
Eventually, the
governments of both Germany and Austria-Hungary began to lose control as both countries
experienced multiple mutinies from within their military structures
...
Germany was the last, signing its armistice on
November 11, 1918
...
Germany, under theTreaty of Versailles, was severely punished with hefty
economic reparations, territorial losses, and strict limits on its rights to develop militarily
...
The treaty’s declaration that Germany was entirely to blame for the war was a
blatant untruth that humiliated the German people
...
Although Germany ended up paying only a small percentage of the reparations it was supposed
to make, it was already stretched financially thin by the war, and the additional economic burden
caused enormous resentment
...


3
...
As Kaiser Wilhelm II lost control of
the country, Prince Max temporarily assumed leadership and played a major role in arranging the
armistice
...
Although Churchill is better known for his role as Britain’s
prime minister during World War II, he played a significant role in World War I as well, serving as
the head of Britain’s navy until he was demoted in1915 following the British failure at
the Dardanelles
...

Constantine I

The king of Greece for much of the war
...
He abdicated on June 12, 1917, under pressure of a threatened Allied invasion
...

Sir Christopher Cradock

A British admiral in command of the Fourth Squadron
...


Franz Ferdinand

The archduke of Austria, nephew of Emperor Franz Joseph, and heir to the Habsburg throne
...

Franz Joseph I

The emperor of Austria-Hungary until his death in late 1916
...
One month later, Hindenburg was promoted to commander in chief of the German
land armies, the position in which he served until the end of the war
...
Throughout the rest of the war, Ludendorff
continued to serve Hindenburg, first as chief of staff and later as quartermaster general
...
Nicholas II committed to this course only with hesitation and under great pressure from his
military advisers
...

John J
...
S
...
To the Allies’
consternation, Pershing strongly opposed the idea of sending American forces to fight on the front
alongside regiments from Britain and France
...
S
...

Gavrilo Princip

A teenage Serbian militant who assassinated Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914
...
His
assassination of Ferdinand is widely considered to be the opening shot of World War I
...

Maximilian von Prittwitz

The German general in command of the Eighth Army at the opening of the war
...
He was promptly replaced by Generals Hindenburg and Ludendorff
...
In August 1914, Putnik’s forces ambushed the Austro-Hungarian
army in the Jadar Valley and pushed them out of Serbia
...
Following his defeat in theBattle of the
Masurian Lakes in September 1914, Rennenkampf was dismissed from the army on grounds of
incompetence
...
Samsonov committed suicide that same day
...
Souchon led the
attack on Russia’s Black Sea ports in October 1914, which brought the Ottoman Empire into the
war
...
Spee is famous for his victory
in the Battle of Coronel against the British admiral Sir Christopher Cradock on November 1, 1914
...

Alfred von Tirpitz

An admiral and first secretary of the German navy
...

Although the policy was highly effective, it damaged Germany’s international reputation, leading to
Tirpitz’s resignation in1916
...
Townshend is known for leading the
British campaign in Mesopotamia from 1915 to 1916
...

Wilhelm II

The German kaiser (emperor) during the war
...

Woodrow Wilson

The president of the United States for the entire period of the war
...
American neutrality remained a major theme during
his 1916 reelection campaign
...

Arthur Zimmermann

The German foreign minister responsible for the 1917 Zimmermann telegram, which attempted to
coerce Mexico into attacking the United States in exchange for financial incentives and a military
alliance between Mexico and Germany
...

Terms
Allied Powers

An alliance during World War I that originally consisted of Russia, France, and Britain
...
Although the United States never joined the Allied Powers—preferring on principle to fight
the Central Powers independently—it cooperated closely with the Allied Powers once it joined the
war in 1917
...
The ultimatum demanded that Serbia crack down on anti-Austrian propaganda in the
Serbian press and that Serbia allow Austria to participate directly in judicial proceedings to
prosecute the parties guilty of assassinating Archduke Franz Ferdinand
...

Battle of Coronel

A November 1, 1914, engagement in which the German East Asia Squadron defeated a weaker
British squadron off the coast of Argentina
...

Battle of Gallipoli

A lengthy campaign, lasting from April 25, 1915, to January 6, 1916, in which Britain invaded
Turkey’s Gallipoli Peninsula as part of its effort to force open theDardanelles, the strait between
Europe and Asia
...

Battle of the Marne

A battle on September 5–9, 1914, in which Allied forces, following their retreat from Mons, stopped
German forces on the banks of the Marne River and forced them back forty-five miles to the river
Aisne
...

Russia suffered 125,000 casualties
...
The British

began preparations six months in advance, digging nineteen tunnels under a ridge where the
Germans were entrenched and then filling the tunnels with explosives
...

Battle of Mons

A battle on August 23, 1914, that was one of the earliest battles on the western front
...

Battle of Passchendaele

An engagement lasting from September 20 to October 12, 1917, in which British forces in Belgium
continued to push the Germans back
...

Battle of the Somme

One of the largest battles of the war, fought in northern France from July 1 to November 18, 1916,
simultaneously with the Battle of Verdun
...
Although it ended up as a small victory for the Allied
Powers, it cost them 146,000lives in order to advance less than six miles
...
It was a catastrophic defeat for Russia, which suffered
over 120,000 casualties
...
Germany, hoping to wear France down and inflict large numbers of casualties, assaulted the
fortified town of Verdun, which blocked the German forces’ path to Paris
...

Black Hand

A terrorist Serbian nationalist group that was responsible for training and armingGavrilo
Princip and others who participated in the assassination of ArchdukeFranz Ferdinand
...
The guarantee was made on July 5, 1914, a week
after Archduke Ferdinand’s assassination
...

Use of this word varies, but historians generally follow this convention
...
Other

nations, including Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire, joined later
...
In short, the plan stipulated that if war were
expected, Germany should first attack France before embarking upon military actions against
Russia
...
Under the plan, Germany hoped to
overrun France in only six weeks by attacking across France’s borders with Belgium and Holland,
which were less fortified than the border with Germany
...
At the start of
World War I, Italy dropped out of this alliance, initially maintaining a neutral position in regard to
the war
...
The Triple
Entente was not a formal treaty and had little real substance
...

Zimmermann Telegram

A January 1917 telegram sent by German foreign minister Alfred Zimmermann to the German
ambassador to Mexico, discussing a secret plan to bait Mexico into attacking the United States
...
British intelligence intercepted the telegram, which was eventually published in the
American press, sparking an uproar that shifted American public opinion in favor of entering the
war
...
The Road to War:
Events

June 28, 1914 Archduke Franz Ferdinand assassinated in Sarajevo
July 5 Austria requests and receives Germany’s “blank check,” pledging unconditional support if
Russia enters the war

July 23 Austria issues ultimatum to Serbia
July 25 Serbia responds to ultimatum; Austrian ambassador to Serbia immediately leaves Belgrade
France promises support to Russia in the event of war
July 28 Austria declares war on Serbia
July 30 Russia orders general mobilization of troops
August 1 Germany declares war on Russia France and Germany order general mobilization
August 3 Germany declares war on France
August 4 Britain declares war on Germany
The Archduke’s Assassination
On June 28, 1914, the archduke of Austria, Franz Ferdinand, and his wife were on an official visit to
the city of Sarajevo in Bosnia-Herzegovina, a Serb-dominated province of Austria-Hungary
...
In the first attempt, they threw a bomb at his car shortly after he arrived in town,
but the bomb bounced off the car and failed to kill or injure the intended victim
...

Seizing the opportunity, Princip stepped up to the car’s window and shot both the archduke and his
wife at point-blank range
...
Tensions between
Austria-Hungary and Serbia, which had already been rising for several years over territorial
disputes, escalated further
...
Furthermore, it blamed Serbia for seeding unrest among ethnic
Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina, a province of Austria-Hungary that shared a border with Serbia
...
However, there was a major obstacle to this plan: Russia, which had close ethnic,
religious, and political ties to Serbia, was likely to come to its defense during an invasion
...

Germany’s “Blank Check”
Aware of the threat from Russia, Austria-Hungary held off on its attack plans and turned to its wellarmed ally to the north, Germany
...

The kaiser felt that Russia was unlikely to respond militarily, as its forces were utterly unprepared
for war
...
Nevertheless, the kaiser pledged that if Russian
troops did in fact advance on Austria-Hungary, Germany would help fight off the attackers
...
”

Austria’s Ultimatum
On July 23, 1914, the Austro-Hungarian government issued an ultimatum to Serbia containing ten
demands
...
The demands also required Serbia to stamp out all forms of
anti-Austrian activism and propaganda emanating from the country
...

On July 25, however, Serbia accepted Austria-Hungary’s demands almost entirely—aside from just
a few conditions regarding Austria’s participation in the judicial process against the criminals
...
On July 29, the
first Austrian artillery shells fell on Serbia’s capital, Belgrade
...
With news of
Austria’s attack on Belgrade, Russia ordered a general mobilization of its troops on July 30, 1914
...
Although the Russian tsar and German kaiser were communicating feverishly by
telegraph throughout this time, they failed to convince each other that they were only taking
precautionary measures
...
On
August 1, the German ambassador to Russia handed the Russian foreign minister a declaration of
war
...
11 ), declared war
on France as well
...

Therefore, Britain, which had a defense agreement with Belgium, declared war on Germany the
next day, August 4, bringing the number of countries involved up to six
...

Explaining the Start of the War
Some early accounts of World War I treat its start as a chain of almost coincidental events: a mix of
unfortunate lapses in judgment on the part of political and military leaders, combined with a tangled
web of alliances and defense treaties that triggered declarations of war between countries that really
had little reason to be at war with each other
...

After all, most of the countries that came to be involved in World War I had enjoyed relatively
friendly interrelations right up to the start of the war
...

Moreover, though several treaties in force at the time did compel certain countries to join the war, it
is a mistake to assume that any of them joined the war “automatically
...
Many of these countries had hidden motives and, at the same time,
mistakenly assumed that some of the others would stay out of the conflict
...
In recent years, Russia had become increasingly involved in European

affairs, while simultaneously modernizing and expanding its military
...
Therefore, they argued, it would be far better to
fight Russia now, while its army was still poorly armed and untrained, rather than to wait until it
could pose a greater threat
...

Furthermore, German military leaders believed there was a good chance that Britain would remain
neutral and that France also might stay at arm’s length, despite its treaty with Russia
...

British Motives
For centuries, Britain had been the greatest naval power in the world and also had the largest
collection of colonies
...
Germany also had recently shown a stronger interest than before in
acquiring new colonies
...
Germany ignored Britain’s rebuffs and continued as
before
...

French Motives
In 1871, France had lost the territories of Alsace and Lorraine to Germany in a war—a bitterly
humiliating blow that left France desperate to regain these lands
...

Russian Motives
Russia’s motives for entering the war are less clear-cut
...
On the other hand, there was support in Russia for the Serbian cause, and a military
victory would likely help the tsar politically
...
Tsar Nicholas II, who was personally hesitant about
joining the war, briefly flip-flopped over ordering mobilization
...


5
...
Germany’s troops were the first to move, and their initial target was Belgium
...

The Germans found more resistance than anticipated, however, especially among civilian
snipers who fired on them from hidden positions
...
The heaviest fighting was around the fortress at Liege; the capital, Brussels, did not fall
until August 20
...

Russia’s Attack on Germany
Undermining Germany’s Schlieffen Plan, Russian troops attacked Germany much sooner than
expected
...
With the brunt of German forces focused
on France, the Russians advanced quickly at first and soon threatened the regional capital
ofKönigsberg (present-day Kaliningrad)
...

To deal with the emergency, German military leaders quickly replaced Prittwitz with a more
experienced leader, General Paul von Hindenburg, and recalled some of the troops from the western
front to help in the east
...
Because the armies of Samsonov and Rennenkampf were operating
separately, without mutual coordination, the Germans were able to deal with them one at a time
...
Eventually,
weakened by constant pounding from German artillery, Samsonov’s troops were forced to retreat
...
A slaughter
ensued in which over 30,000 Russian soldiers were killed and an additional 92,000 taken prisoner
...

The Battle of the Masurian Lakes
On September 9, Hindenburg’s troops took on Rennenkampf’s army at the nearbyMasurian Lakes,
for a near repeat performance of Tannenberg
...
Between Tannenberg and the
Masurian Lakes, Russia lost approximately 300,000 soldiers in less than a month of fighting
...
On August 18, a third Russian army entered Galicia, a region along Austria-Hungary’s
eastern border
...
As
a result, the Russian army was able to push deep into enemy territory and force the AustroHungarian forces to retreat one hundred miles with massive casualties
...
On August 12,
Austria launched a ground invasion into Serbia at the town of Sabac
...
After a battle of
several days, the Serbian armies forced the Austrians to retreat all the way back to the border
...
One reason for this
action was Japan’s intent to retake some islands in the Pacific Ocean that Germany had seized as
colonies in recent decades
...
Even in the first days of the war, Germany’s much-touted Schlieffen Plan
began to unravel, as Russian troops arrived at the German borders faster than anticipated
...
Meanwhile, the stiff resistance from Belgium during that western advance indicated that the
conquest of France might likewise be more difficult than expected
...


6
...
Although fighting between French and German forces had taken
place in the region of Alsace-Lorraine in southeastern France, the first joint French-British
encounters with Germany occurred near the town of Mons along the Franco-Belgian border on
August 23, 1914
...
With the German troops still well outside the range of
their own guns, the Allied Powers were quickly forced to retreat
...
For the Germans, the advance was not an easy one
...

The Battle of the Marne
On September 4, the Allied retreat was halted
...
On September 5, a
decisive battle began that lasted five days
...

As the Germans drove at Paris from the southeast, a gap emerged between the German First and
Second armies, and British and French commanders seized the opportunity to split the German
forces apart by moving into the gap
...
The Germans were never able to regroup
...
British and French forces pursued the

Germans doggedly and were able to drive them back forty-five miles, all the way back to the
river Aisne
...
A deadlock ensued, with neither side able to budge the
other
...

Failure of the Schlieffen Plan
The aborted German invasion of France, though just a month into the war, marked a major turning
point
...
Unable to conquer France
outright, Germany became mired in a war on multiple fronts
...
German military leaders, failing to adapt their strategy to cope with the
new situation, suddenly faced a long, drawn-out war on an entrenched front
...
First, theunexpectedly early Russian attack in the east forced Germany to
divert some of its troops from the west in order to help fight the Russians
...
The British Expeditionary Force in France reinforced the French armies and gave
them an edge, especially since Germany was fighting with fewer troops than originally planned
...
The farther into France the Germans pushed, the longer their supply line became
...

Finally, the diversion of the German First Army to the southeast split Germany’s forces in two, thus
increasing their vulnerability to attack
...


7
...
The bight, a partly
enclosed patch of water on the north coast of Germany, sheltered several German naval bases and
offered a good position from which Germany could strike out at Britain
...

Eager for a fight, two British commodores, Reginald Tyrwhitt and Roger Keyes, conceived a plan to
bait the Germans into the open sea, where they would be vulnerable
...

In spite of some minor mishaps, the plan succeeded
...
In time, however, the Germans
were lured into open water
...
This early defeat
intimidated KaiserWilhelm II, who insisted that the German navy, of which he was very proud, be
kept off the open seas and used primarily as a defensive weapon
...
Submarines armed
with torpedoes were a new type of weapon at the time, and while many military leaders viewed
them with skepticism and even disdain, they proved quite effective
...
It was almost by accident that they realized the edge that their experimental fleet of
submarines gave them
...
British naval commanders quickly became wary of this
threat and therefore kept their fleet well clear of the waters of the North Sea
...

Mining the North Sea
Another “cowardly weapon” played a major role in the war at sea—mines
...
However, both Britain and Germany quickly came to ignore this
agreement, and the North Sea became a place of great danger to all ships that dared enter it
...

Turkey and the War at Sea
The war at sea soon brought the Ottoman Empire, previously an officially neutral power, into the
fray
...

Germany was anxious for more allies, especially in the Mediterranean, and high-placed Ottoman
officials—such as Minister of War Enver Pasha—believed that an alliance with Germany could help
bolster the faltering empire, then known as the “sick man of Europe
...

Later that month, two German warships, the Goeben and the Breslau , docked in Constantinople,
avoiding pursuit by the British navy
...
The sale was primarily technical, as German crews
would be allowed to remain on board and in control of both vessels
...
On October 29, under the command of German
Admiral Wilhelm Souchon (who may have been working in collaboration with Turkish Minister of
War, Pasha), the two ships appeared unexpectedly off the Russian coast, fired on several Russian
seaports, sank a Russian gunboat and six merchant ships, and set fire to a Russian oil depot
...
Britain and France also responded by attacking Turkish forts along the Dardanelles
...
In a single stroke, Admiral Souchon had helped
manipulate the Turks into entering the war on the German side
...
The
German East Asia Squadron, a small defensive fleet under Vice Admiral Maximilian von Spee, had
been based on the Caroline Islands in the western Pacific, near China, when the war broke out in
August 1914
...

Therefore, the East Asia Squadron fled the area and set forth on a two-month journey across the
Pacific Ocean to Chile, which had a large German population and would offer a safer base of
operations from which Spee could prey upon British shipping routes
...
The British squadron, led by
Rear Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock, consisted of obsolete cruisers ill-matched for a fight with
Spee’s faster and better-armed ships
...
Cradock himself perished, along with1,600 British sailors—the
Royal Navy’s first defeat in a hundred years
...
Spee’s task was merely to disrupt British trade and supply routes as much as
possible, but he also made a fateful decision to attack the British colony on the Falkland Islands off
of Argentina, which he believed would be undefended and an easy victory
...
The mission was a fatal mistake
...
The
squadron was far better equipped than Cradock’s had been, with two modern battle cruisers that
were faster and better armed than Spee’s ships
...


Importance of the War at Sea
The range and power of the warring nations’ naval fleets, along with their ambition to control the
world’s waterways, were major reasons that World War I spread so quickly
...
Mines, torpedoes, and submarines introduced new threats that made even the
greatest warships vulnerable
...
Mines were cheaper still and, once laid, required no crew at all
...
The Battle of Coronel, the Battle of
the Falkland Islands, and other early sea battles quickly made it clear how naval warfare could be
used to project power over long distances
...
As it turned out, great sea battles
between large surface fleets were rare in the war; instead, the submarine came to own the seas, and
Germany became the undisputed master at employing this new technology
...
The War in the Air:
Birth of a New Weapon
In the summer of 1914, the airplane was less than eleven years old
...
Most airplanes of the time were slow, flimsy contraptions with barely enough power to
lift a single pilot and perhaps one passenger
...
All that
changed during the course of World War I
...
Thus, the reconnaissance plane was born—a tool that all sides in the war used to
varying degrees
...
The use of aircraft for reconnaissance grew rapidly
during the first few months of the war and played an increasingly crucial role in achieving victories
...

Fighter Planes
As aerial reconnaissance became more common, so did the need for ways tostop enemy observation
planes
...
The other way was to develop a means for one aircraft to attack
another
...
Some pilots tried throwing hand grenades, bricks, or even long ropes with
grappling hooks at planes below them
...

Machine guns tended to be large and heavy, however, and only a few were small and light enough
to be practicable for use on an airplane
...

The problem was not solved until mid-1915, when a Dutch aircraft designer named Anton

Fokker developed the “interrupter gear,” a timing mechanism that synchronized the machine gun
with the moving propeller blades
...
This development gave the Germans a
strong advantage for several months until French and British designers succeeded in adapting the
device for their own use about one year later
...
Russia was the first to develop an airplane specifically for this
purpose: the Murometz, a large four-engine airplane that Igor Sikorsky had developed in 1913 as a
passenger plane, was adapted for use as a bomber in 1914 and was used successfully throughout the
war
...
The slow-moving zeppelins, which had a
long range and could carry a relatively large cargo of explosives, reached the peak of their success
early in the war, during 1915
...
As a
result, Germany turned more and more to using airplanes as bombers
...
These men came to be seen by the
public as modern-day knights, fighting a more exotic and elegant war than the grotesque nightmare
happening on the ground below
...
Newly recruited pilots were often sent into the skies with only a crude
understanding of how to fly (typically less than five hours training)
...
Due to this lack
of experience, pilots not only fell victim to enemy aces but also succumbed regularly to bad
weather, mechanical problems, or loss of control due to pilot error
...
Most of those who were shot down
lost their lives not in spectacular dogfights but after being shot from behind without ever having
even been aware of their attackers
...

Overall Importance of the Air War
On the whole, aerial warfare cannot be said to have played a fundamental role in World War I, as it
did in World War II
...

On the other hand, World War I itself encouraged the rapid improvement of the airplane, both in
general and specifically as a weapon
...
Moreover, the war fostered the general public’s respect for aviation and spawned a new
generation of pilots and aircraft designers, who would go on to take human flight to the next level
after the war
...
The War in the Near East:
Events

November 5, 1914 British forces launch attack on Basra, Mesopotamia
March 18, 1915 Britain and France attack the Dardanelles
May–June British forces in Mesopotamia advance up the Tigris
June 27 British forces begin attack on Nasariya
April 25 Invasion of Gallipoli begins
September 28 British forces occupy Kut
November 22 British forces attack Ctesiphon
November 25 British forces retreat after major defeat at Ctesiphon
December 10 British begin evacuation of Gallipoli
January 9, 1916 Last British troops leave Gallipoli
April 29 British forces surrender to Turks after being driven back to Kut
Key People

Winston Churchill - First lord of the British Admiralty; demoted and eventually resigned after
British invasion of Turkey became a quagmire
Charles Townshend - Military commander who led British forces in Mesopotamia; forced to
surrender at Kut in April 1916
The Importance of the Dardanelles
If any single piece of real estate was believed to hold the key to winning the war, it was the lands
surrounding the Dardanelles, the narrow strait separating Europe from Asia in northwestern Turkey
...
Turkey’s entrance into the war in November 1914 placed the
Dardanelles squarely in German hands, physically separating the Russian and Allied naval forces
and effectively preventing them from cooperating
...

Britain’s Plans for the Dardanelles
From the time that Turkey entered the war in November 1914, Winston Churchill, first lord of the
British Admiralty, began working on a plan to reopen the Dardanelles
...
Given the significant losses the British army suffered defending France against the Germans,
this idea of a navy-only campaign for the Dardanelles was politically important
...


Britain and France’s Failed Assault
After months of planning, but with significant disagreement remaining about objectives, Britain and
France launched a naval attack on the Dardanelles on March 18, 1915
...
Although minesweeping ships had
been sent ahead to clear a path, five battleships were either sunk or disabled by mines
...
Allied military commanders changed their objectives and
decided instead to send ground forces to take over the Gallipoli Peninsula bordering the northern
side of the strait
...
The invasion began on April 25, 1915, and the landing proceeded with relative
ease
...

As it turned out, the invasion was far from easy
...
They remained entrenched on the beaches until January of the next year, when Britain finally
pulled out in defeat
...

Mesopotamia
Meanwhile, a second struggle between the British and the Turks ensued at the opposite end of the
Ottoman Empire, this time for control of the oil fields ofMesopotamia
...
They
quickly secured not only the port but also the oil fields and pipeline at Abadan, which had been one
of the key objectives of the invasion
...
On June 3, 1915, they
captured the Turkish garrison ofAmara with unexpected ease—the entire garrison surrendered
without a fight
...

Continuing north in the unbearable heat, the Allied forces marched onward toKut, which they
reached and occupied on September 28
...
At this point, however, the Turks put up a vigorous fight, and the Allied troops
were forced to retreat all the way back to Kut, where they dug in
...
On April 29, 1916, Townshend surrendered
all 10,000 of his surviving men—the largest surrender of British troops in history up to that time
...
As a result, Britain expected quick
victories in both the Dardanelles and in Mesopotamia—victories that Britain needed badly in light
of the gridlocked trench wars on the western front
...
Though British military

leaders did have the advantage of being able to recruit forces from the many nations in its empire,
the situation in Turkey and Mesopotamia left Britain facing a war on multiple fronts
...
The War of Attrition in Europe:
Events

April 26, 1915 Italy signs secret “London Pact”
May 23 Italy declares war on Austria-Hungary
February 21, 1916 Battle of Verdun begins
July 1 Battle of the Somme begins
August 18 Romania signs treaty with Allied Powers
August 27 Romania declares war on Austria-Hungary, invades Transylvania
September 1 Bulgaria declares war on Romania
September 5 Bulgarian invasion of Romania reaches Danube just south of Bucharest
November 18 Battles of Verdun, the Somme end
June 7, 1917 Battle of Messines Ridge
July 2 Greece declares war on Central Powers
July 31 Battle of Passchendaele begins
November 6 Canadian forces capture Passchendaele
Italian Neutrality
Prior to the summer of 1914, Italy had been an ally of Germany and Austria-Hungary, as a member
of the so-called Triple Alliance since 1882
...
All this time, Italy watched the war
develop and calculated how to reap the greatest benefit from the situation
...
When Austria refused a few
days later, Italy turned to the Allied Powerswith an even longer list of demands
...
The pact granted Italy claims to territories in Austria-Hungary, as well
as in Albania, Turkey, and North Africa
...

South Tyrol and the Battle of Caporetto
Italian forces promptly advanced into the mountainous border regions of South Tyrol and to
the Isonzo River
...
As a
result, one more entrenched front line was added to the war
...
The situation continued largely unchanged until the
Italians were defeated in the disastrousBattle of Caporetto in October 1917 and forced to retreat

from the area
...

The Battle of Verdun
During the stalemate between Italy and Austria-Hungary, one of the longest and most catastrophic
battles of the war was fought several hundred miles away, in France
...
The Germans intended to make a sustained attack that would drain the enemy of
soldiers and force a break in the stalemate
...
France temporarily lost Verdun and its two forts but regained the forts by battle’s end
and recaptured the town in a renewed attack that ended the battle on December 18
...
The Battle of Verdun was the longest single battle of the war, and
among the deadliest
...
The
opening artillery barrage was so heavy that it could be heard in southern England
...
The German death toll was 164,000
...
All the while, soldiers were dying in
massive numbers, simply for the sake of maintaining the status quo
...
It
was made all the more horrible by the fact that Britain, France, and Germany relied heavily upon
their colonies to bolster their supplies of fighting men
...

Modern Weapons and the War of Attrition
The primary reason that World War I became a war of attrition was the use ofmodern weapons
...
Once opposing armies became entrenched, long-range artillery, aerial bombs, and
poison gas were used to try to force the other side to abandon its shelters and retreat
...
First was Romania, which had remained neutral for the
first two years of the war but on August 18, 1916, signed a secret pact with the Allied
Powers granting it the right to seize the territories of Transylvania, Bukovina, and Banat in
exchange for entering the war on the Allied side
...

The situation soon became more complicated when Bulgaria declared war on Romania on
September 1
...
The struggle continued for several months, but on
December 6, 1916, German troops captured Bucharest
...
Though Greece had been
neutral through most of the war, it was surrounded by conflicts on all sides
...

The Battle of Messines Ridge
Finally, in the summer of 1917, the British made the first small steps toward breaking the stalemate
on the western front
...
M
...
More than 10,000 German soldiers died
instantly; those who survived were severely stunned and had no idea what had happened
...
Before the Germans could regain their senses,
the British army was upon them
...

For eighteen months prior, British soldiers had been digging a series of twenty-two tunnels below
the German position
...
Once complete, the
tunnels were filled with 1 million pounds of high explosive and plugged with sandbags
...

Slow British Progress in France
Although the Battle of Messines Ridge was a relatively small battle, it had considerable
psychological impact for both sides
...
After the battle, British forces continued to push the Germans back a few
hundred yards at a time toward the high ridge at Passchendaele
...

The Battle of Passchendaele
By mid-September 1917, the British, close to their goal, began a new offensive movement
...
The British reached Passchendaele on October 12 during a driving rain that turned the
landscape to impenetrable mud
...
The battle proved the last
great battle of attrition on the western front and again saw the use of mustard gas and other deadly
chemical weapons
...
The United States Enters the War:
Events

October 21, 1916 French renew attack on Verdun
November 7 Wilson reelected on antiwar platform; begins diplomatic initiatives
February 1, 1917 Germany begins unrestricted submarine warfare
February 3 German U-boat sinks U
...
cargo ship Housatonic United States breaks off diplomatic
relations with Germany
February 24 United States learns of Zimmermann telegram
March 1 Zimmermann telegram published in American press
April 2 Wilson asks Congress to declare war
April 6 United States declares war on Germany
May 24 First U
...
convoy to protect shipping to Europe departs
July 4 U
...
troops march through central Paris to Lafayette’s tomb
September 4 First U
...
war fatalities
November 2–3 First U
...
combat mission
January 8, 1918 Wilson gives “Fourteen Points” speech before U
...
Congress
Key People

David Lloyd George - British prime minister during the war; rejected Wilson’s peace initiatives
in 1916
John J
...
S
...
S
...
Even in
May 1915, when a German submarine sank the British ocean liner Lusitania , killing 128 U
...

citizens out of a total 1,200 dead, the United States, though in uproar, remained neutral
...

American Diplomacy
By the time of Wilson’s reelection victory, the war had left millions dead, cities and economies in
ruins, and no decisive victory in sight for any side
...
In November and December 1916, Wilson began a series of initiatives to broker a resolution,
sending out diplomatic notes to the governments of every nation involved
...
France,
however, responded by launching a renewed attack against the Germans in Verdun
...


Unrestricted Submarine Warfare
In January 1917, Germany announced that it would lift all restrictions onsubmarine warfare starting
on February 1
...
Because the primary
goal was to starve Britain into surrendering, the German effort would focus largely on ships
crossing the Atlantic from the United States and Canada
...
In response, President Wilson broke off diplomatic relations with
Germany the same day
...

The Zimmermann Telegram
In the meantime, other German mischief paved the road to war with the United States even more
smoothly
...
In the telegram, sent by German foreign minister Alfred Zimmermann to his
ambassador in Mexico on January 16, Zimmermann instructed the ambassador to offer Mexico
generous financial aid if it would ally itself with Germany against the United States
...

On March 1, 1917, the text of the Zimmermann telegram appeared on the front pages of American
newspapers, and in a heartbeat, American public opinion shifted in favor of entering the war
...
S
...
Germany’s unrestricted
submarine warfare was taking its toll, as American ships, both cargo and passenger, were sunk one
after another
...
Finally, on April2,
Wilson appeared before Congress and requested a declaration of war
...

The Convoy System
By the time the United States entered the war, German submarines were causing catastrophic
damage to the supply of food and other resources coming into Britain from abroad
...
Under the
plan, British warships would provide heavily armed escorts for all ships coming to Britain from the
United States, Canada, and other countries
...
S
...

More than half a dozen convoy gathering points were soon established along the North American
coast
...
The number of ships, supplies, and men lost to
German submarines plummeted, virtually nullifying Germany’s effort to force Britain’s surrender
...


Arrival of U
...
Troops in Europe
All through the summer of 1917, U
...
troops were ferried across the Atlantic, first to Britain and
then on to France, where they came under the leadership of GeneralJohn J
...
The first
public display of the troops came on July 4, when a large U
...
detachment held a symbolic march
through Paris to the grave of the Marquis de Lafayette, the French aristocrat who had fought
alongside the United States during the American Revolution
...
S
...
S
...
The first American fatalities on the ground in Europe
occurred on September 4, when four soldiers were killed during a German air raid
...
S
...

Wilson’s Fourteen Points
On January 8, 1918, President Wilson gave a speech before the U
...
Congress in which he defined a
total of fourteen distinct requirements that he saw as necessary in order to restore and maintain
peace in Europe and the rest of the world
...
”
Some of these points—such as the evacuation of German troops from Russia, France, and Belgium
—were basic steps necessary for ending hostilities; other points were part of a long-range vision for
preventing future conflicts
...
Wilson further suggested that all
economic barriers be eliminated and that all nations adopt an “equality of trading conditions
...
Although the details of Wilson’s plan
would be adjusted considerably over time, his proposals laid the foundation for the armistice
negotiations that would take place ten months later
...
S
...
S
...
Although the United States had long maintained a much warmer relationship
with Great Britain and France than with Germany or Austria-Hungary, Wilson’s administration kept
a strictly neutral stance
...

This evenhanded diplomacy evaporated quickly, however, when Germany lifted its restrictions on
submarine warfare in January 1917
...
The threat from German submarines, on the other hand, was a direct threat to American
lives, commerce, and property and had to be countered
...

At it turned out, there was a large time gap between the U
...
declaration of war and the actual
entrance of U
...
troops in combat on the front
...
S
...
S
...
Even after troops were finally in combat, the United States never
formally joined the Allied forces but technically remained an independent participant, at war only
with Germany and not with Austria-Hungary
...
Russia Exits the War:
Events

March 8, 1917 Riots in Petrograd develop into the beginning of the February Revolution
March 15 Tsar Nicholas II abdicates
April 16 Lenin arrives in Petrograd from Germany
July 1 New Russian offensive opens on eastern front Antiwar riot in Petrograd
November 6–7 Bolshevik (October) Revolution
November 8 Lenin declares peace, though sporadic fighting continues
November 26 Bolsheviks call for end to hostilities on all fronts
December 15 Russian cease-fire declared
Note: All dates are according to the modern, Gregorian calendar instead of the Julian calendar that
was used in Russia at the time
...
In any case,
however, the war had become hugely unpopular at home
...
Although there was a certain level of popular sympathy for Serbia, most Russians felt that
the country had little to gain in the war and much to lose
...
Not only was the tsar out of
touch with the people, but many felt he had become a puppet, either of his German-born wife or of
various special-interest groups
...
Numerous underground organizations had sprung up over the previous few decades
to oppose the tsar and his policies
...

The February Revolution
In early March 1917 (late February by the Julian calendar in use in Russia at the time), the tsar’s
entire regime unexpectedly collapsed after a series of large demonstrations in the Russian capital
of Petrograd
...
The event became known as the February Revolution
...
Germany quickly
recognized an opportunity and made arrangements to help Russian revolutionaries in Europe,
including Vladimir Lenin, to get back to Russia in order to fuel the ensuing chaos there
...


The Last Russian Offensive
After the developments of March 1917, participants on all sides watched Russia closely to see what
it would do without a tsar
...
On July 1, Russian forces
opened several new offensives along the eastern front—an action that Russian minister of
warAlexander Kerensky ordered as part of an effort to boost morale in the army
...

Although the Russian advances initially showed promise against Austrian forces in Galicia, the
Russian troops fled quickly when German reinforcements arrived
...

The Bolshevik Revolution
Russia’s position in the war remained in question throughout the summer and fall of 1917
...
However, there was intense
disagreement in the country over whether or not Russia should remain at war, and if not, under what
conditions it should leave the conflict
...
The more radical Petrograd Soviet, a loose
conglomeration of labor unions with a largely Socialist/Communist leadership, felt that Russia
should get out of the war as soon as possible but also recognized that pulling out immediately
would likely mean a loss of territory and heavy reparations
...

The debate continued throughout the summer and fall until November 6, 1917(October 24 by the
Russian calendar)
...
The next day, Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin issued his first decree, declaring Russia
to be at peace
...

Russia’s Cease-Fire
On November 26, 1917, the Bolsheviks issued a call for a halt to hostilities on all fronts and
requested that all sides immediately make arrangements to sign an armistice
...
When
Russia received no response, it made another call, warning that if no one responded, Russia would
make a separate peace
...

After several days of negotiations, a cease-fire was declared on December 15, 1917
...
It took months of negotiations, and Russia lost an
enormous amount of territory
...

The Fallout from Russia’s Exit
Russia’s departure from the war posed a serious danger to the Allied forces, for it effectively closed
the eastern front and thus meant that the Allies would soon face some 900,000 additional German
troops on the western front
...
The United States provided the only possible hope

to counter this sudden turning of the tables, but U
...
forces were not expected to begin major
combat operations until the summer of 1918
...

For Russia itself, the exit from the war cost most of the territorial gains the country had made since
the reign of Peter the Great in the early 1700s
...
The war
had drained Russia: 1
...
Moreover, the country was left in chaos, as there were still large groups of people
remaining in Russia who opposed the Bolsheviks’ rule
...
In the end, though Russia got out of World War I, the civil war that
soon started within the country turned out to be even more costly for its people than World War I
had been
...
Endgame:
Events

March 21, 1918 Germany launches spring offensive
March 23 German long-range guns begin shelling Paris
March 24 German forces cross the Somme
March 25 Allied front line is broken
March 30 Germans are stopped at Moreuil Wood
April 9–29 Battle of Lys
May 2 General Pershing compromises on sending U
...
troops to the front
May 7 Romania signs peace treaty with Central Powers
May 12 Germany and Austria sign pact to exploit the Ukraine
May 21 Mutinies begin in Austrian army
May 28 U
...
victory at Cantigny
July 18 Allies begin major counteroffensive
July 26 Allies foil German attack at Château-Thierry
September 19 Turkey defeated at Megiddo
Germany’s Push for Paris
With its newly arrived forces from the eastern front, Germany enjoyed superiority in numbers on
the western front for the first time since the earliest days of the war
...
Their strength was limited, and fresh troops from the United
States would soon be ready to join the fight on the Allied side
...

Germany therefore poured all of its remaining resources into a massive offensive that began in the
early morning hours of March 21, 1918
...
Like most land battles in World War I, the offensive began with a prolonged artillery
barrage
...
When the German troops moved forward through a
combination of heavy fog and poison gas clouds, visibility was near zero, and soldiers on both sides
were largely unable to distinguish friendly from enemy forces
...

As the Germans surged forward, they brought with them the newest long-rangeartillery
cannons developed by Krupp, which enabled them to fire accurately upon Paris from the astounding
range of seventy-four miles
...
The longdistance German shells killed hundreds more in the following days
...
On
March 25, the Allied front broke at precisely the point where the French and British troop lines met
...
The Allies pushed the Germans back for several days more, until the
initiative was turned around once more at theBattle of Lys, which began on April 9, 1918
...

By the end of the Battle of Lys on April 29, the German army, despite its run of recent success, saw
morale at an all-time low
...
During this period
of the war, whenever either side launched an offensive, it would only last a few days before the
troops ran out of energy and began to fall back
...

Delays in the U
...
Deployment
Only the United States, it seemed, held the power to shift the balance, but more than a year had
passed since the U
...
declaration of war, with little tangible result
...

Britain and France wanted the U
...
troops to be integrated into their own armies and sent to the
front to fight, but the U
...
government insisted that its troops would fight only as an independent
army under U
...
commanders
...
The official U
...
entrance into the war in 1917 had given the Allies hope in the
face of Russia’s exit
...
S
...

At a meeting of the Supreme War Council of Allied Leaders on May 2, 1918, there was a small shift
in the U
...
stance
...
Pershing, the commander of American forces in Europe, agreed
to a compromise, pledging to send 130,000troops that month and several hundred thousand more in
the coming months to fight on the front with the French and British forces
...
U
...

leaders estimated that the rest, however, would not be organized, trained, and ready to fight until the
late spring of 1919
...
On May 7, 1918, Romania signed a peace treaty with the Central

Powers, giving up control of the mouth of the Danube River along the Black Sea coast
...
The Bolsheviks still did not have an effective hold on this region, so the Germans
were able to proceed largely unchallenged
...
Barely a week later, however, Austria-Hungary experienced the first in a
series of mutinies in its army, carried out by nationalist groups
...

The Influenza Outbreak
During the summer of 1918, an unusually severe strain of influenza spread rapidly around the
world
...

The cause of the outbreak is unknown, but the war was most certainly a contributing factor
...
Second, it is thought that the numerous war-ravaged regions of
the world experienced poorer nutrition and less sanitary conditions, leaving their populations
especially susceptible
...
All sides lost soldiers to
the flu outbreak, but Germany and Austria-Hungary were hit especially hard, with the armies of
both countries becoming severely weakened just as the Allies were beginning to take the offensive
...

Cantigny: The First American Victory
By the end of May 1918, several thousand American troops had appeared on the front ready to
fight, arriving just in time to meet the latest German offensive
...
S
...
Here, 4,000 American soldiers attacked
German forces on May 28, while the French provided cover with tanks, airplanes, and artillery
...
U
...
forces suffered over 1,000 casualties during the engagement
...
The lines held, however, in part due to
the newly provided American reinforcements
...
Knowing of the German plans in advance, the French created a false
front line, complete with trenches
...
Nonetheless, the Germans continued the attack over the next two days, once
again threatening Paris
...
The attack was devastating, killing
over 30,000 German soldiers in twenty days
...

German troops were losing ground every day, and the Allies intensified their attacks with every

opportunity
...

Turkey in Retreat
In the Near East, meanwhile, the tide had turned in the war with the Ottoman Empire since the
devastating British defeats in Gallipoli and Mesopotamia back in 1916
...
Farther south, on the Arabian Peninsula, revolts
by desert tribesmen had broken Turkey’s long-lasting grip on the region
...
Finally, on September 19, 1918, the British launched a direct
attack on the Turkish front at Megiddo and won a major victory that forced the Turks into a fullscale retreat
...

The Final Phase of Combat
Although this final period of major combat saw two major developments—the Russian exit and the
U
...
entrance—the degree to which these events impacted the war is debatable
...
While there were some hints of peace discussions late in the summer, the
political and military leaders of all the remaining warring countries were actively planning combat
operations intended to last well into 1919
...
Rather, they effectively balanced each other out, while
the catastrophic influenza outbreak placed a heavy burden on both sides
...


14
...
At the same time, Allied forces
were steadily advancing northward from the south, liberating much of Serbia and putting pressure
upon Austria-Hungary
...

Revolution in Germany
Germany’s first revolution was a quiet one that happened in two stages
...

On October 2, the kaiser relinquished all of his authority regarding military decisions to the
new Parliament—an act that, for all practical purposes, reduced the kaiser to a figurehead
...
Although Prince Max immediately began to make inquiries to the Allies about an armistice,
he was not ready to surrender unconditionally, as he believed that he could negotiate favorable
terms for Germany, despite continuing losses on the battlefield
...

Independence in Eastern Europe
Bulgaria was the first of the Central Powers to surrender, signing an armistice in Salonica on
September 29, 1918
...
On October 14, the provisional government of Czechoslovakia came into existence
...

The Elusive Peace
As the war petered out, President Woodrow Wilson of the United States became the primary Allied
representative for handling the peace negotiations
...
By 1918, however, Wilson’s
position had changed considerably
...

Wilson was now determined that neither country would gain peace cheaply
...

Wilson rejected the note on October 8, stating that he would not even discuss the idea of an
armistice until France, Belgium, and Serbia were completely free of German and Austrian forces
...
Despite the announcement, however,
the fighting on the western front continued without letup
...
On October 25, Allied military commanders met at Senlis,
France, to discuss formal terms for an armistice
...

The Dissolution of Austria-Hungary
By the end of October, Germany was still actively trying to broker a favorable way out of the war,
but Austria could no longer afford to wait, because the country was already falling apart
...
On October 29, Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes proclaimed the
establishment of a southern Slavic state to be called Yugoslavia
...
That same
day, Hungary formally declared its independence
...

The Collapse of the Ottoman Empire
On October 14, 1918, Sultan Mehmed VI of the Ottoman Empire, having suffered heavy territorial
losses over the past year and facing a British invasion of Turkey proper, requested peace terms
...
One of its terms was that the Dardanelles be opened
immediately to Allied ships
...

The Collapse of Germany
In the early days of November 1918, the situation in Germany deteriorated from unstable to outright
chaotic
...
KaiserWilhelm II, who by this point was in hiding in the Belgian resort town
of Spa, found himself under rapidly increasing pressure to abdicate, which he stubbornly refused to
do
...
The delegation arrived on the morning of
November 9, and negotiation promptly began
...
Prince Max himself then resigned, and separate left-wing political groups respectively
proclaimed the establishment of a German Soviet Republicand a German Socialist Republic, though
neither would actually come to be
...
M
...
Hostilities
officially ended at 11:00 A
...
that day
...
It would be more than
seven months, however, before formal peace treaties would finalize the arrangements among all the
various warring nations
...
It took many
months, but the treaty defining Germany’s present and future existence was signed at Versailles on
June 28, 1919
...
The country was required to accept losses of
territory, including Alsace-Lorraine and much of present-day Poland
...
Germany
also had to agree to pay massive war reparations that would require half a century to fulfill
...
This
stipulation was a hard pill for many Germans to swallow, and indeed it was a blatant untruth
...
Contemporary accounts report that there was even a sense of
excitement and adventure in the air, as some seemed to envision the war more as a chance to try out
the newest technological innovations than anything else
...
Millions of soldiers had been drawn into the war, many from faraway colonies and many
with little more than an inkling of what it was they were fighting for
...

In the peace treaties ending most previous European wars, each side had accepted its losses,
claimed its spoils, shaken hands, and then moved on
...

Internally, Germany became a tumultuous place, teetering on the brink of violent revolutions from
both the right and the left and vulnerable to takeover from extremist elements like the Nazi Party
...




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