by Stewart Ross
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ross, Stewart.
World War I / by Stewart Ross.
p. cm. — (Atlas of conflicts)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-61535-603-4 (e-book)
1. World War, 1914-1918—Juvenile literature. 2. World War, 1914-1918—Maps for children. I. Title: World War One. II. Title: World War 1. III. Title. IV. Series.
D521.R625 2004
940.3—dc22
2004045158
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Series concept: Alex Woolf
Editor: Philip de Ste. Croix
Designer: Simon Burrough
Cartography: The Map Studio
Consultant: Paul Cornish, Imperial War Museum, London
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CONTENTS
1. THE EUROPEAN WAR
2. THE FIGHTING SPREADS
3. DEADLOCK, 1915–17
4. VICTORY AND DEFEAT
5. THE END OF THE WAR
PROFILES OF MILITARY AND POLITICAL LEADERS
STATISTICS CONCERNING COMBATANT NATIONS
TIME LINE
GLOSSARY
FURTHER INFORMATION
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
INDEX
CHAPTER 1
THE EUROPEAN WAR
Wilhelm II, emperor of Germany, 1888–1918, proved unequal to the task of governing his inherited empire.
World War I, fought between 1914 and 1918, was a huge conflict that involved most of the world’s major powers. Two grand alliances confronted one another: Britain, France, Russia, Italy, the United States, and others on one side (the Allies), and Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, and Bulgaria (the Central Powers) on the other. The war was fought on land, at sea, and, for the first time, in the air. Advances in technology had produced powerful and deadly new weapons that changed the nature of warfare forever.
The war began in Europe. In 1871, the large, industrially developed German Empire had replaced France as the continent’s major power. Needing support, France had reached an agreement (“entente”) in 1904 with its old enemy Britain, which was also anxious about German ambitions. For many years, Britain had enjoyed good relations with most of the states that made up Germany. The British royal family was of German descent and was related to Germany’s Emperor. By the 1900s, however, this traditional Anglo-German friendship was breaking down. Britain feared that its enormous colonial empire, covering one-quarter of the world’s surface, was threatened by German ambitions in Africa and elsewhere. Secondly, there was serious industrial and commercial competition between the two empires. Thirdly, Britain saw the construction of a large German Navy as a direct threat to Britain’s worldwide naval supremacy. By 1910, Britain and Germany were in an arms race as they tried to outdo one another in building warships.
Irregular Macedonian fighters guard a highway leading to Salonika during the First Balkan War, 1912.
THE BALKAN QUESTION For centuries, the Balkan peninsula in southeast Europe had been part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. In the nineteenth century, Turkish power declined and the Balkans broke into small, independent countries. The most politically influential were Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Bosnia, and, especially, Serbia. In 1912–13, the intense rivalry between the Balkan countries flared into two wars.
The neighboring Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires competed with each other for influence among the Balkan states. In 1908, for example, the Russians were furious when the Austro-Hungarians annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina. Their chief bone of contention was Serbia, which was allied with Russia and distrusted by Austria-Hungary. By 1914, these dangerous international rivalries of Europe were backed up by a series of military alliances and agreements. On the Allies’ side were the countries of the Triple Entente (France, Britain, and Russia). Ranged against them were the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary, linked by a Dual Alliance and cautiously supported by Italy (which made it the Triple Alliance). Although these alliances were in theory defensive, the colonial factor meant that a small conflict might well spread over the entire continent—and beyond.
A continent divided—how the states of Europe lined up to fight during World War I. Many had aligned with one side or another long before the fighting broke out in August 1914.
The German Schlieffen Plan envisaged a swift knockout blow in the west by driving through neutral Belgium and then surrounding Paris.
WAR PLANS The outbreak of war in 1914 was not unexpected, and each side had made careful plans in advance. France, for instance, had long planned to attack east into Alsace and Lorraine, provinces Germany had seized in 1870–71. Predicting such a move, in 1905 German Chief of Staff General Count Alfred von Schlieffen had planned a swift attack on northern France through neutral Holland and Belgium. He believed this would quickly knock France out of the war and enable Germany to turn on Russia.
The Schlieffen Plan was altered, and weakened, by his successor, General Helmuth von Moltke. Von Moltke reduced the force attacking from the north and bypassed Holland. Nevertheless, Germany’s assault on Belgium brought Britain into the war because Britain had guaranteed Belgium’s neutrality.
In this tense atmosphere of the early twentieth century, the European powers were terrified of being caught unawares. If one country increased the size of its armed forces, as Germany did in 1912, its rivals immediately did the same: Russia responded to Germany’s 170,000 increase by swelling its army by half a million. This in turn frightened Germany into further increases, so quickening the arms race. To meet these military requirements, all the major countries except Britain required young men to participate in military service.
THE ARMS RACE
Sir Edward Grey, Britain’s foreign secretary at the outbreak of war, outlined the process of the arms race:
“One nation increases its army and makes strategic railways towards the frontiers of neighboring countries. The second nation makes counter-strategic railways and increases its army in reply. The first nation says this is very unreasonable, because its own military preparations were only precautions, and points out … that the first
nation began the competition; and so it goes on, till the whole Continent is an armed camp covered by strategic railways.”
—From Twenty-five Years, 1892–1916, Viscount E. Grey
Britain’s iron shield: headed by the battleship HMS Neptune, the Royal Navy displays its power at the 1911 Spithead Fleet Review.
Helmuth von Moltke, the German commander whose failure to execute the Schlieffen Plan led to his dismissal in 1914.
The gigantic Russian army had the reputation of being a “steamroller”—slow to get going but unstoppable once on the move. Furthermore, it was growing larger by the day, and Russia itself was developing mass-produced weapons. The German command feared that the longer war was delayed, the less chance they had of winning. Consequently, when German ally Austria-Hungary threatened war with Serbia in July 1914, the German Emperor Wilhelm II gave his full backing: If war was to come, his generals argued, then the sooner the better.
INTO BATTLE The outbreak of war was sparked by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, on June 28, 1914. The Austro-Hungarians blamed Serbian terrorists for the outrage and declared war on Serbia on July 28, 1914. This started a domino effect. When Russia prepared to help Serbia, Germany declared war on it (August 1). France, Russia’s ally, mobilized its troops, so Germany declared war on it, too. This launched the Schlieffen Plan, which brought Britain into the spreading conflict (August 4, 1914). The Schlieffen Plan very nearly succeeded. The Germans drove back the French in the east and moved through Belgium to within 30 miles (50 km) of Paris by late August. France, with British help, halted the offensive on the River Marne, ending German hopes of a swift victory.
The Battle of the Marne, officially September 5–9, 1914, was the first in which aircraft played a vital role. The Schlieffen Plan had called for the German armies to encircle Paris from the west. However, finding his enemy in disarray, the commander of the German First Army, General Alexander von Kluck, advanced across the Marne to the east of the capital. This move was spotted by Allied aircraft. The French commander, Marshal Joseph Joffre, responded with an attack on Kluck’s unguarded right flank—and the Germans were forced to withdraw.
Two deaths that led to millions more. The bodies of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie lie in state.
The Battle of the Marne, September 1914. By halting the German advance, the Allies ensured a long and bitter conflict.
The battle was one of the most decisive of modern history. The failure of the Schlieffen Plan forced Germany to fight on two fronts, in the west against Britain and France, and in the east against Russia. In the end, this proved more than Germany could stand. Moreover, the battle virtually ended the war of movement in Western Europe. Unable to out-maneuver each other, the two sides swiftly burrowed in for years of drawn-out, costly trench warfare (see pages 10-11) in which neither side gained much ground.
TIMETABLE OF THE BATTLE OF THE MARNE, 1914
Aug. 14–25
Germans advance on all fronts towards Paris.
Aug. 31
Germans within 30 miles (50 km) of Paris.
Sept. 4
General Kluck moves southeast of Paris, crossing River Marne, and his forces are seen by Allied spotter planes.
Sept. 5
French forces meet advancing German 1st Army. British join the counter offensive.
Sept. 6
French and British counterattack on Kluck’s right flank.
Sept. 6–8
Fierce fighting all along the line.
Sept. 9
Kluck orders his army to withdraw. German commander in chief General von Moltke orders withdrawal to the River Aisne, north of Paris.
French soldiers in action during the Battle of the Marne, September 1914. At this early stage of the war, soldiers were not equipped with either camouflaged uniforms or steel helmets.
TRENCH WARFARE The classic strategy of armies facing one another is to seek to outflank (get around behind) their enemy. This is precisely what the Allies (French and British) and the Germans tried to do after the Battle of the Marne. As one side moved, however, so the other side moved with them. This stretched the front line so that it eventually ran from the Belgian coast to the Swiss border.
Temporary shelters that became home—German soldiers in hastily constructed trenches, 1914.
TROUBLE WITH WATER
One of the great problems of trench warfare, as Captain J. I. Cohen wrote from Ypres in 1915, was drainage:
“This horrible country is made of mud, water and dead Germans. Whenever water is left in a trench it drags the earth down on either side and forms a fearfully sticky viscous matter that lets you sink gently down and grips you like a vice when you’re there. … Cover is got by building… dug-outs, behind the trench. Two walls of sandbags with a sheet of corrugated iron on top and an oil-sheet under it to make the whole waterproof.”
—Quoted in The Imperial War Museum Book of the First World War, edited by Malcolm Brown
Improved military technology—in particular, machine guns, barbed wire, and heavy artillery—made a frontal attack almost impossible. To protect themselves, troops on either side dug lines of trenches, usually three deep. These filthy, dangerous holes became the hallmark of the war, both on the Western Front and elsewhere.
World War I was the first to be fought between large industrialized nations. Power depended as much upon industrial output—ships, artillery, rifles, and so forth—as on human muscle. Pinned down by barbed wire, and at the mercy of streams of quick-fire bullets and bombardment by high-explosive shells, the individual soldier became just a statistic: categorized as able-bodied, wounded, or dead. The war they fought had little to do with glory or valor; it was about “attrition,” grinding the enemy down until they (or you) could take no more.
The trench line from Switzerland to the English Channel was complete by the beginning of winter. At the time, it was not seen as permanent. On October 30, 1914, for example, the Germans began a series of attacks on a salient (bulge) in the Allied line around the town of Ypres in Belgium. The fighting lasted until November 24. Although very little ground was gained, the casualties were shocking: 58,200 British, some 50,000 French, and 134,300 Germans. The full horror of mechanized (trench) warfare began to show its face.
The Western Front, 1914–18. The dominance of defensive technology meant that the line moved little in over four years of fighting.
French soldiers operate a captured German machine gun. Weapons like this took a terrible toll of human life in the war of attrition on the Western Front.
THE EASTERN FRONT, 1914–15
The Russian Empire entered the war with enthusiasm. Loyalty to the all-powerful Russian emperor, Nicholas II, swelled, and his massive armies assembled faster than anticipated. By mid-August 1914, two Russian armies, commanded by Generals Pavel Rennenkampf and Alexander Samsonov, were advancing into Prussia, northeastern Germany. However, although moving less slowly than expected, they also proved easier to halt.
Splendid-looking but ineffective—as with all cavalry, these Russian Cossacks were easy targets for machine gun and artillery fire.
The Eastern Front along which the mighty Russian Empire battled against the empires of Germany and Austria-Hungary.
The Russian commanders did not get along, which made communication between their two armies poor at best. Furthermore, the German commanders, Generals Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff, managed to pick up uncoded Russian radio signals. These gave invaluable information about Russian troop numbers and movements to Germany.
In late August, the Germans split the Russian armies and crushed Samsonov’s isolated force around the town of Tannnenberg in East Prussia. After the battle (August 26–30) the disgraced Russian commander committed suicide. The Germans then turned on Rennenkampf, outmaneuvered him, and defeated him at the Battle of Masurian Lakes (September 9–14). By autumn of 1914, the Russians were once more back behind their own frontiers
.
CASUALTIES ON THE EASTERN FRONT, 1914
These appalling statistics reveal that in just five months of fighting well over a million soldiers had been lost and over one-quarter of a million taken prisoner. The Russians alone had lost almost 800,000 (including those killed, wounded, and captured).
Further south, in Galicia, the Russians faced the armies of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Ruled since the thirteenth century by the Hapsburg family, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was one of the oldest in Europe. Its territory stretched from Bohemia (modernday Czech Republic) to Bosnia in the Balkans.
The idea behind this European empire of many peoples and cultures was somewhat out of date. Held together by a vast bureaucracy and loyalty to Emperor Franz Joseph I, its multicultual force was less well-suited to industrial war than Germany’s. In Galicia, after initial setbacks, the Russians pushed the multi-national Austro-Hungarian forces back and advanced along a wide front until halted by the rugged Carpathian Mountains.
By Christmas 1914, the situation on much of the Eastern Front was similar to the trench warfare in the West, although less rigid. Millions of men, sheltered within frozen trenches, faced each other across barely 109 yards (100 meters) of barren “no-man’s-land.”
Too young to die? Russian prisoners of war after the decisive Battle of the Masurian Lakes, September 1914, included this very young soldier.
THE BALKANS Given the region’s troubled history (the mixture of peoples of different ethnic backgrounds and religious beliefs had led to many conflicts in the past), it is little surprise that the fighting in the Balkans was as ferocious and costly as anywhere. It began in 1914 with a massive Austro-Hungarian attack on Serbia. Fighting to defend their native land, the Serbs proved fierce fighters. Out of a population of some five million, they raised an army of half a million and even drew on the services of women. The invaders were repeatedly driven back with heavy losses.
