2013
2014
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EDITION
SOC SCI
History of
World War I
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SOC SCI
RESOURCE
EDITOR
ALPACA-IN-CHIEF
Tania Asnes
Daniel Berdichevsky
®
the World
Scholar’s Cup®
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SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 1
Table of Contents
Table of Contents ...................................................................................................................................1
I. How to Start a War .............................................................................................................................6
II. The Great War in Context .................................................................................................................7
What Started the War? ....................................................................................................................... 7
First Things First: Immediate Causes .............................................................................................. 7
The Players ...................................................................................................................................... 10
The Entente .................................................................................................................................. 10
The Central Powers....................................................................................................................... 11
Backstory: The Factors that Led to the War ..................................................................................... 11
Changes in Society, Politics, and Culture ...................................................................................... 12
Democracy in France and England................................................................................................ 13
Democracy vs. Monarchs .............................................................................................................. 14
Power to the Paper ........................................................................................................................ 14
My Empire is Better than Your Empire ......................................................................................... 15
Russian to Judgment ..................................................................................................................... 16
Sitting on the Ottomans................................................................................................................ 16
Meanwhile, In Germany… ........................................................................................................... 17
The Alliance System and Military Strategy .................................................................................... 17
Of Empires and Nation-States (Or “Out With the Old, In With the New”).................................... 20
The Late Great Polish Empire ....................................................................................................... 20
The Former Ottoman Empire ....................................................................................................... 20
The Schlieffen Plan, or “The 42-Day Maneuver” ............................................................................. 21
Planning for the Plan .................................................................................................................... 22
Where Did All These British Soldiers Come From? ...................................................................... 22
The Watershed ................................................................................................................................. 22
Hunger, Disease, and Revolution .................................................................................................. 23
Far-Reaching Effects: Communism and Fascism .............................................................................. 25
II. The Nuts and Bolts of the War ........................................................................................................26
Starting Off Lopsided....................................................................................................................... 26
Relative Equality in the Short Term .............................................................................................. 26
Central Advantages ....................................................................................................................... 27
Early Battles ..................................................................................................................................... 27
The Western Front........................................................................................................................ 27
Strategy ......................................................................................................................................... 27
Meanwhile, In Belgium ................................................................................................................. 28
The Germans Are Coming! The Germans Are Coming!................................................................ 28
The Battle of the Frontiers ............................................................................................................ 29
The Battle of Mulhouse ................................................................................................................ 30
The Invasion of Lorraine ............................................................................................................... 30
The Battles of Ardennes and Charleroi .......................................................................................... 31
The Battle of Mons ....................................................................................................................... 31
Von Moltke’s Decisions ................................................................................................................ 31
The Miracle of the Marne ............................................................................................................. 32
The “War of Movement” .............................................................................................................. 32
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The Eastern Front ............................................................................................................................ 33
No Partying, Guys ........................................................................................................................ 34
The Russian Agenda...................................................................................................................... 34
There Should Have Been a Code .................................................................................................. 35
Austria-Hungary .............................................................................................................................. 36
Hötzendorf’s Secret Plan ............................................................................................................... 36
Don’t Mess with Serbia ................................................................................................................. 37
Russian Multitudes ....................................................................................................................... 37
Brother, Is That You? .................................................................................................................... 38
The Siege of Przemysl ................................................................................................................... 38
No Man’s Land: Trench Warfare on the Western Front .................................................................. 39
Machine Guns .............................................................................................................................. 39
Artillery ......................................................................................................................................... 40
Digging in the Dirt: Extensive Trench Systems ............................................................................. 40
Defenders 1, Attackers 0 ............................................................................................................... 41
The Ottoman Empire Goes to War.................................................................................................. 41
The Sound of Inevitability ............................................................................................................ 42
According To Plan ........................................................................................................................ 43
Ottoman Battlegrounds: the Caucasus, Gallipoli, and the Middle East ......................................... 43
The Battle of Sarikamish ............................................................................................................... 43
The Battle for Gallipoli ................................................................................................................. 44
The Suez Canal ............................................................................................................................. 45
Grim News for the Turks .............................................................................................................. 46
The Earth at War ............................................................................................................................. 46
The Ill-Fated German Colonies: Pacific Edition............................................................................ 46
The Ill-Fated German Colonies: Africa ......................................................................................... 47
The British Colonies: Australia...................................................................................................... 48
The British Colonies: Canada ....................................................................................................... 48
The British Colonies: India ........................................................................................................... 48
Long-Term Effects on the Colonies............................................................................................... 49
Bad Colonial News ....................................................................................................................... 49
The Eastern Front ............................................................................................................................ 49
A Lack of Understanding .............................................................................................................. 50
The Gorlice-Tarnów Offensive ..................................................................................................... 50
The Russian Retreat ...................................................................................................................... 51
Big Changes for Russia ..................................................................................................................... 51
Evacuations Meets Persecution ...................................................................................................... 52
It’s Hard to be Tsar ....................................................................................................................... 52
No Peace ....................................................................................................................................... 53
Meanwhile, In Italy... .................................................................................................................... 53
A (Doomed) British Breakthrough ................................................................................................ 54
A Message to Bulgaria ................................................................................................................... 54
The Onset of Russian Winter........................................................................................................ 55
Total War, 1915 - 1917 ................................................................................................................... 55
Strategy ......................................................................................................................................... 55
Trench Warfare ............................................................................................................................. 55
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Personnel ...................................................................................................................................... 55
How to Make Ireland Really Angry ............................................................................................... 56
Arming the Colonies and Dispensing with Exemptions................................................................. 56
The Battle of Verdun ....................................................................................................................... 56
Alternate Transportation ............................................................................................................... 57
Hazardous Landscape .................................................................................................................... 58
A Sharp Learning Curve ................................................................................................................ 58
The Brusilov Offensive..................................................................................................................... 59
The Incredible Shrinking Troop Commitment ............................................................................. 59
The Lake Narocz Disaster ............................................................................................................. 60
Brusilov Steps Up.......................................................................................................................... 60
Taking the Bad with the Good ...................................................................................................... 61
The Somme Offensive...................................................................................................................... 61
Haig’s Refusal ............................................................................................................................... 62
Tanks, Planes, Rain and Mud ....................................................................................................... 62
Results of the Somme Offensive .................................................................................................... 63
A Bad Time to be Romanian......................................................................................................... 63
A Pyrrhic Victory .......................................................................................................................... 63
Blockades and Naval Combat........................................................................................................... 64
Russian Ports and Harsh Adjustments ........................................................................................... 64
Blockading the Central Powers...................................................................................................... 65
None Shall Pass ............................................................................................................................. 65
The German Navy in the Pacific ................................................................................................... 65
War under the Seas .......................................................................................................................... 66
What Just Hit Us? ......................................................................................................................... 67
The Lusitania ................................................................................................................................ 67
The Ethics of Submarine Warfare ................................................................................................. 68
The Battle of Jutland, May 31-June 1, 1916 .................................................................................... 68
The Underwater Alternative .......................................................................................................... 69
The United States Steps In ............................................................................................................... 69
Money Makes the War Go ‘Round ............................................................................................... 69
The Clock Starts Ticking .............................................................................................................. 70
American Protection on the High Seas .......................................................................................... 70
Russia Leaves the War ...................................................................................................................... 70
A Mad Monk and Massive Mismanagement ................................................................................. 70
The Mad Monk Meets His Match ................................................................................................ 71
Less Money, More Problems ......................................................................................................... 71
One More Unwise Decision .......................................................................................................... 72
Backfire ......................................................................................................................................... 73
The Bolsheviks Take Over ............................................................................................................ 73
Renewed Allied Offensives - 1917 .................................................................................................... 74
German Preparations .................................................................................................................... 74
What Were the Allies Thinking? ................................................................................................... 75
The Battle of Arras ........................................................................................................................ 75
The Second Battle of the Aisne ..................................................................................................... 75
Pétain Restores Order ................................................................................................................... 76
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The Third Battle of Ypres ............................................................................................................. 76
Italian Difficulties ......................................................................................................................... 77
1917: The Year in Review ............................................................................................................. 77
The Final Battles: 1918 .................................................................................................................... 77
The New Russia ............................................................................................................................ 78
Germany (Mostly) Leaves the Eastern Front ................................................................................. 78
Germany Attacks: March 1918 ..................................................................................................... 78
Other Assaults ............................................................................................................................... 79
Supply Lines Falter........................................................................................................................ 79
The Flu Strikes .............................................................................................................................. 79
Germany’s Final Offensive ............................................................................................................ 80
Allied Counteroffensives and Breakthroughs .................................................................................... 80
The Amiens Offensive ................................................................................................................... 80
The Salonika Offensive ................................................................................................................. 81
The Megiddo Offensive ................................................................................................................ 81
The Central Powers Fall ................................................................................................................... 82
Riots Begin.................................................................................................................................... 82
Von Hötzendorff Strikes Again ..................................................................................................... 83
End of the Empire......................................................................................................................... 83
The Great Morale Drop ................................................................................................................ 83
Germany Accepts Defeat ............................................................................................................... 84
A Loss of Confidence .................................................................................................................... 84
German Revolutions ..................................................................................................................... 85
III. The New Shape of the World .........................................................................................................86
The Peace Treaties ........................................................................................................................... 86
German/Russian Relations ............................................................................................................ 86
Germany Faces the Rest of the Entente ......................................................................................... 87
A Difference of Opinion ............................................................................................................... 88
Red Army vs. White Army ............................................................................................................ 89
The Big Three in Paris .................................................................................................................. 89
The League of Nations Arises ........................................................................................................ 90
Germany’s Bitter Pill ..................................................................................................................... 90
Blocked on the Home Front ......................................................................................................... 91
The Versailles Compromise........................................................................................................... 91
Wilson’s Inconsistencies ................................................................................................................ 92
A Partial French Victory................................................................................................................ 92
The Strategy behind the Terms ..................................................................................................... 93
Poland Rises .................................................................................................................................. 93
Concerning Czechoslovakia........................................................................................................... 93
The Late, Great Habsburg Empire ................................................................................................ 94
A Deeply Flawed Solution ............................................................................................................. 94
Ottoman Issues ............................................................................................................................. 95
Turkish Revival ............................................................................................................................. 95
Democratic Collapse (With One Holdout) ................................................................................... 96
Civilian and Domestic Impact of the War ........................................................................................ 96
Show Me the Money ..................................................................................................................... 96
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The Shortcomings of Direct Taxation ........................................................................................... 97
A Permanent Change .................................................................................................................... 97
Who’s In Charge Now? ................................................................................................................. 98
Battlefield Damage ........................................................................................................................ 98
Entente Spending vs. Central Powers Spending ............................................................................ 99
Gender Roles in Wartime................................................................................................................. 99
Male Roles .................................................................................................................................... 99
Women on the Home Front ....................................................................................................... 100
Women in the War ..................................................................................................................... 100
Protests, Strikes, and More Protests ............................................................................................. 100
Suffering for Suffrage .................................................................................................................. 101
Civilians as Targets......................................................................................................................... 101
Enemy Aliens .............................................................................................................................. 101
Civilians at the Front .................................................................................................................. 101
The Russian Retreat .................................................................................................................... 102
The Armenian Genocide ............................................................................................................. 102
New Technological Fuel for the Fire ........................................................................................... 102
War Makes You Sick ................................................................................................................... 103
In Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 103
Works Consulted ................................................................................................................................104
About the Author ................................................................................................................................106
About the Editor .................................................................................................................................106
About the Alpaca-in-Chief ..................................................................................................................106
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I. How to Start a War
Imagine a reality show in which all the contestants live in a house
together1 and each stakes out his or her own turf. The way you
eliminate your rivals is by challenging them and defeating them in
face-to-face contests. And there’s a wrinkle: players can gang up on
one another. If it’s three to one, the outnumbered player is almost
certain to lose a contest.
It doesn’t take long for alliances to form. Nigel and Pierre are right next to each other—Nigel’s got the
kitchen and Pierre’s got the parlor—and they’re both big, strong guys, and they’re popular with other
contestants around the house, so they work together as a pair for a while, and nobody challenges them.
But Wolfgang’s got the living room, and he’s been pumping iron and getting stronger and making some
friends of his own. Nigel and Pierre start thinking Wolfgang might be a serious threat, so they talk to
Natasha, who controls the backyard, and strike a deal: if Wolfgang gets any big ideas, Nigel and Pierre
and Natasha will gang up on him, beat him in a challenge, and take over the living room.
Except Wolfgang’s been formalizing an alliance of his own2, and all of a sudden he’s got new partners in
Johann in the dining room and Luigi in the foyer, and they’re looking a lot harder to beat than just
Wolfgang on his own.
All six of them settle down to a long, tense staring match. No one makes a move, because the thought of
three tough competitors versus three other tough competitors makes everyone worried enough not to try
anything: no one knows who might end up on the losing side.
It might go on like this indefinitely3—except that Luka in the mudroom has been getting along really
well with Natasha. And Johann cannot stand Luka. So when Johann starts picking on Luka, Natasha
gets all upset and climbs out of her hammock in the backyard and puts on her sandals, as if she’s about
to come into the house and give Johann a piece of her mind.
Johann isn’t concerned with Natasha putting on her sandals, though. He challenges Luka anyway.
Wolfgang decides to go for broke, and challenges Natasha, Pierre, and Jean-Claude (who was sitting in
the game room, minding his own business). Nigel doesn’t like any of this, but is particularly mad that
Wolfgang challenged Jean-Claude, so he challenges Wolfgang.
In a remarkably short amount of time, the entire house is caught up in a long series of challenges—but
there’s no quick winner. The contestants stumble their way into two almost evenly-matched groups, and
as they struggle to defeat each other, they all realize they’re in for a long, grueling test of endurance.
Replace the contestants with nations and empires, the mansion with Europe, and the feud between
Johann and Luka with the hostilities between Austria and Serbia, and you have the beginnings of the
First World War.
1
Yes, the Big Brother producers will probably sue your imagination.
A gang of wolves, one might say.
3
The television network might have something to say about that, however.
2
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II. The Great War in Context
The First World War took the planet by surprise. No one expected so
many empires and nations to be swept into conflict all at once, but the
global impact could not be ignored. Only a few months after the war
broke out in 1914, people had already begun referring to it as "the First
World War," and "the Great War." Considering its massive scale, as it
engulfed one empire after another, the adjective “great” was probably
not emphatic enough.
The stability all those empires had enjoyed before the outbreak of the (Incredibly) Great War
proved a house of cards. Political alliances across Europe had been made, broken, and remade
for centuries, until the continent had become a patchwork of precariously balanced threats and
promises. These threats and promises now collided—and ignited—all at once.
Empires were about to fall.
What Started the War?
Officially—at least according to the Treaty of
Versailles—the responsibility for starting the war
belonged to Germany and its allies4. The deeper causes
of the war were, however, likely as complex as the war
itself. Instead of trying to pin blame on any one
country—or assassin—what we will do in this chapter
is trace what happened in the days, years, and centuries
leading up to the war, to help us understand what
events triggered it, and what circumstances made it
possible for it to be triggered at all.
First Things First: Immediate Causes
The Great War began in the Balkans.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the small
Balkan kingdom of Serbia was making some ambitious
plans. Serbia was a political entity, but the Serbs were
also an ethnic group—a people related by common
ancestry. Many of those living within Serbia’s borders
were ethnic Serbs. Serbia wanted all these Serbs and other South Slavs to unite in a new Serbian kingdom.
Part of this ambition hinged on ethnic Serbs who lived in countries other than Serbia. There were large
ethnic Serb populations in nearby Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia (regions then within the AustroHungarian Empire), and Serbia urged those foreign-dwelling Serbs to rise up in separatist movements.
4
To the victor goes the finger-pointing.
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Separatist movements were similar to nationalist movements, but whereas nationalist movements
involved the people of one nation wanting independence from a larger one, separatist movements
involved people who belonged to a certain group (often an ethnic group) wanting to create a new nation,
or to seize territory from their nation and join it to another one more suited to their cause.
In the case of Serbia’s ambitions, both Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia were parts of the Habsburg
Empire, and the Habsburg Empire took an extremely dim5 view of separatist movements.
Up until the separatist movements started, Bosnia had been
autonomous; it was a subject of the Habsburgs, but had its own
self-governed political system and made its own laws. In
response to Serb-backed uprisings, in 1908 the AustroHungarian army moved in and annexed Bosnia, bringing it
under full Habsburg control.
This development did not deter Serbia. Serbia began talks with
Montenegro, Greece, and Bulgaria in 1911, and in 1912 they
formed the Balkan Alliance. Serbia then declared war on the
Ottoman Empire6. Considering the magnitude of this
undertaking, the first Balkan War went well for the Serbs, who
won a series of victories against the Ottomans.
The conflict ended with the Treaty of London in May 1913. It
declared Albania independent, and handed over Ottoman-held
Balkan lands to the Balkan Alliance. It did not, however,
address the division of those lands among the Balkan nations.
Bulgaria was so deeply dissatisfied with the terms of the
treaty—and with Serbia’s refusal to honor an earlier treaty
involving control of land in Macedonia—that it immediately turned on its former allies, launching an
attack on Serbia and Greece on June 16, 1913.
The so-called Second Balkan War went poorly for Bulgaria. It had hoped to take on just Serbia and
Greece, but the war shifted dramatically when Romania officially allied with the Ottoman Empire and
invaded Bulgaria. Bulgaria’s defeat at that point was assured, swift, and thorough 7.
The First and Second Balkan Wars benefited Serbia immensely. Serbia’s territory expanded significantly,
and its population doubled to roughly 4.5 million. Serbian leaders were still not satisfied 8. Many ethnic
Serbs still lived outside Serbia’s borders, in Habsburg-controlled Bosnia and Croatia.
Serbia, led by King Peter I, decided to continue with its ambition, which had now taken on two parts:
5

To bring all Serbs together in one unified state

To create and lead a new multi-ethnic state that would encompass all South Slavs (or “Yugoslavs”)
Like single-birthday-candle dim.
Begun, the first Balkan War has.
7
Much like a Taylor Swift breakup.
8
Unlimited wants and all.
6
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The leaders at the seat of the Habsburg Empire, in Vienna, Austria, had more than just Serbia to worry
about. There were rumblings of separatist rebellion among the Polish, Czech, and Hungarian provinces,
and the leaders feared Serbia’s successes could spur other nationalist movements to action.
The ruler of the Habsburg Empire at this point was Emperor Franz Josef, eighty-three years old and in
his sixty-sixth year on the throne. No one expected him to live much longer. His direct heir was his
nephew, Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
On June 28, 1914, Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie paid a visit to Habsburg-controlled Bosnia.
Knowing that assassinating the heir to the empire would spark upheaval, a secret Bosnian Serb
organization called “Union or Death” (a.k.a. “the Black Hand”) planned to do just that. The
assassination almost failed; the Black Hand sent three young men to execute it 9, and when one threw a
grenade at the Archduke’s car, the driver sped up and got Ferdinand and his wife out of the way. One of
the other assassins, a nineteen-year-old Serbian student named Gavrilo Princip, stepped in to
compensate. He used a handgun to shoot the Archduke and Sophie, still in their car. Neither survived.
Years after the Great War, investigators at last found proof that the Black Hand’s plot involved highlevel Serbian officials, both in the military and in the civilian government. At the time, the leaders in
Vienna did not wait for proof; assuming the Serbians were responsible, they took swift action.
That action was not to declare war—not yet. The Habsburg Empire had little interest in conquering and
absorbing Serbia, because that would be, as the saying goes, “borrowing trouble”. All of Serbia’s
separatist ambitions would officially become the Habsburg Empire’s problem. Vienna did not want that.
What the empire needed instead was a strong show of force, something to let Serbia know who was in
charge. To that end, Vienna issued Serbia an ultimatum with three central points:
1. Serbia must cease all anti-Austrian propaganda
2. Serbia must allow Habsburg investigators to investigate the assassination on Serbian soil
3. Any Serbian officials the investigators found complicit in the assassination must be dismissed
The ultimatum required an answer by July 25, but Vienna delayed its delivery so that German and
Austrian farmers could wrap up their harvests ahead of any conflict. Meanwhile, Vienna reached out to
confirm German support in the event of a war.10 It also waited until French president Raymond
Poincare had returned from a trip to Russia. Only then, on July 23, did it deliver the ultimatum.
Nine days had passed since it was drafted. The Serbs were left with only 48 hours to make a decision: to
accept these terms or to face war with the Habsburg Empire.
In the days before the ultimatum’s delivery, Serbia had preemptively solidified its relationship with Russia.
Russia indicated it would side with Serbia if hostilities broke out. The Serbs probably could have avoided
war if they had given in to the whole ultimatum, but with Russia at their backs they saw no need to do so.
Instead, the Serbian government officially rejected two of the terms: the one allowing Austro-Hungarian
investigators into Serbia, and the one concerning the dismissal of any officials found guilty.
Upon receiving the Serbs’ reply, Vienna severed political ties with Serbia and began mobilizing its
military. On July 28, 1914, Austria declared war on Serbia and launched artillery bombardments.
9
Gruesome pun intended.
This open-ended support came to be called a “blank cheque” from Germany to Austria-Hungary.
10
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If Britain, France, and Russia had tried, they might have contained this new war to Austria and Serbia;
Britain and France could have exerted their diplomatic influence on Russia to try to back it away from
open hostility, and Russia could have tried to help the Serbs in some way other than agreeing to fight
alongside them. Instead, the Russians threw more fuel on the fire, and the British and French watched
and waited. Russia (still led by Tsar Nicholas II11) mobilized its army on July 30 and joined Serbia
against the Austrians, responding to a strong sentiment among the Russian people that Russia should
help Serbia however it could. At that point, neither Britain nor France wanted to disrupt its own alliance
with Russia by trying to dictate Russia’s actions.
The dominos began to fall:
August 1: Because Russia has joined Serbia in attacking Austria, Austria’s ally Germany declares
war on Russia.
August 3: Germany also declares war on France, Russia’s ally, hoping to defeat the French
quickly so as not to fight a war on two fronts should France come to Russia’s assistance.
August 4: Germany marches through the neutral country of Belgium as part of its plan to invade
France; an indignant Britain12 declares war on Germany.
The First World War had begun.
The Players
World War I owed its global reach to the fact that the combatants had already risen to positions of wideranging, international power. These nations and empires had also already taken sides with each other, in
case a dispute arose. The major powers of Europe fell into two large groups.13
The Entente
The full name of this alliance was the Entente Cordiale—French for a “cordial understanding.” Also
known as the Allies, or Allied Powers, when the war started the Entente included:







The Russian (Romanov) Empire
The French Empire
The British Empire
Serbia
Belgium
Japan
Greece
Italy waffled at the start of the war; it had been allied with Germany and Austria-Hungary, declared its
neutrality when the fighting started, and ultimately joined the Entente on May 23, 1915. 14 More
countries followed in 1916. These late arrivals included:
11
A guy who, at that point, seemed determined to win the “Mr. Unpopularity” title
Britain and Belgium had long enjoyed strong diplomatic relations; they were not formally allied, but Britain had declared it
would maintain Belgium’s neutrality in the face of foreign hostility.
13
A bit like the Horde and the Alliance. Not that I’m taking sides. (For the Horde!)
14
Italy felt much more vulnerable to Britain and France than to the Central Powers and wanted to make nice.
12
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



Italy (after May 1915)
Portugal
Brazil
Romania
The United States would eventually join the Entente, but not until close to the end of the war.
The Central Powers
The political entities opposing the Entente consisted of:




The German Empire (a.k.a. the Hohenzollern Empire)
Austria-Hungary (a.k.a. the Habsburg Empire)
Turkey (a.k.a. the Ottoman Empire)
Bulgaria15 (officially siding with the Central Powers in October 1915)
Backstory: The Factors that Led to the War
Playing with matches in your father’s tool shed is never a good idea. At best, it fosters a bad habit; at
worst, you damage your father’s tools or burn down the shed. Still, the destruction is relatively limited.
If, however, you decide to play with matches in a fireworks factory, located adjacent to a munitions
plant, which happens to sit on a junction of natural gas pipelines, your combustible hobby may draw
consequences and repercussions ranging far beyond a week’s grounding and loss of your allowance.
15
Bulgaria tried selling “Bulgarian Empire” bumper stickers, but no one bought any.
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On its own, Gavrilo Princip’s assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was a single violent, criminal
act. But because it took place in the middle of a highly-charged political landscape, it acted as a catalyst
for literally incalculable destruction.16
Changes in Society, Politics, and Culture
European societies started changing very rapidly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries—laying the
foundation for the above-mentioned, highly volatile munitions plant.
The engine behind these changes was industrialization. Britain led the way with its embrace of the
Industrial Revolution in the late 1700s. By the mid-1800s, it had spread to France, Germany, Austria,
and the Czech provinces of the Habsburg Empire. Italy and the Russian Empire lagged behind them,
not beginning their own industrialization until the end of the 19th century.
With industry booming in the cities, people left the countryside and moved into urban areas in massive
numbers, seeking the increased earning potential of factory and other industrial jobs.
The urbanization of Europe’s populace led to an increase
in literacy among the working class. This raised the
question—particularly in multi-ethnic, multi-language
areas—of what language would be used on the factory
16
Debate it!
Resolved: That multi-ethnic communities should settle on
one dominant language.
Though a ton of academic types have worked really hard to come up with accurate guesses.
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 13
floor. The question extended to government offices and schools; with workers and their children
speaking everything from Turkish to Greek to French, it was a difficult question to answer.
The increased proximity among workers, along with the increases in education that literacy brought, led
to their forming political parties, demanding rights, and17 challenging the existing political systems.
Another source of this never-before-seen political fire was the spread of certain ideas across the European
continent: ideas about democracy and electoral politics. European monarchs were unmoved.
Democracy in France and England
France was the first European nation to embrace
democracy. The 1789 French Revolution marked the first
time Europeans challenged the accepted practice of
government by autocratic monarchy—a system in which
a single person inherits the right to govern a nation.
Constitutional Monarchy
A system of government in which a monarch shares
power with a constitutionally organized government.
The monarch may be the de facto head of state or a
purely ceremonial leader. - Encyclopedia Britannica
It took two more revolutions in France in the 19th century to completely divorce from autocratic
monarchy. After that, became the permanent system of French government. By the turn of the 20 th
century, socialist worker parties—political parties created by, and designed to benefit, working-class
people—had been fully integrated into the French political scene, and were very influential.
Britain made slower but steadier progress toward democracy. In the century leading up to World War I,
despite legal restrictions that prevented many members of society from voting, the citizenry became
increasingly involved in the process of government.
Political changes occurred in many European countries.
1848: Revolutions in Austria change the nation from a monarchy to a constitutional monarchy
1867: Austria returns political autonomy to Hungary in nearly all respects except foreign affairs
1871: Germany unites multiple princedoms and monarchies into a constitutional monarchy,
guided by an elected parliament called the Reichstag
1905: A revolution in Russia forces the tsar to accept an elected national parliament, the Duma
1908: The sultan of the Ottoman Empire is forced to cede power to a group of military
reformers known as the “Young Turks”
These changes in the political systems of European countries drastically altered international politics.
In the first half of the 19th century, European monarchs had operated according to a principle known as
realpolitik—in English, “realist foreign policy.” They handled international relations much as many
CEOs handle business deals: with practical and material considerations outweighing any ethical or
theoretical concerns. Kings and emperors made, broke, and renewed alliances regularly, all at their own
discretion and that of their advisors.
The point of these deals and alliances was to prevent destructive, large-scale disputes, and for about a
hundred years—between 1815 and 1914—realpolitik largely worked. During that time, there was only
17
(in a trend political leaders could not have helped but finding terrifying)
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 14
one war involving more than two of the Great Powers: the Crimean War (1854 to 1855), in which
Britain and France allied against Russia.
Democracy vs. Monarchs
The rise of democracy meant, among many other things, that monarchs could no longer decide the fates
of their nations all on their own. Now the opinions and influences of their citizens18 had a very real
effect on governmental decisions.
This led heads of state to court public opinion. For the first time, they wanted and needed the masses to
support their policy decisions.
Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II, who came to power in Germany in 1888, particularly sought to appease
the influential working-class Social Democratic Party in the Reichstag. Wilhelm believed the German
public wanted Germany to be more aggressive in its foreign policy; therefore, Wilhelm became more
aggressive in his foreign policy, particularly in seizing African territory.
In a more extreme case, Russia’s Tsar Nicholas II wanted to
counter the tide of revolution in the Russian Empire. He
thought a war—one Russia could easily, quickly, and decisively
win—would reunite his fractured populace. To that end, he
started the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, believing his vastly
larger country would overwhelm the island nation of Japan.
These outsized expectations made it doubly disastrous for the
tsar’s reputation when Japan’s military trounced the Russians.
Whether to successful or disastrous effect, democracy had
begun to change not only the mindsets of European leaders but
their political futures—and the destinies of their peoples.
Power to the Paper
Another important new factor in determining foreign policy was the rise of the mass circulation, or
popular, press. More people could read and more people could afford newspapers: suddenly, the people
who controlled the media had immense influence over their readers’ opinions.
In the scramble to sell papers, not all newspapers were
Debate it!
chiefly concerned with facts.19 In the late 19th century, a
Resolved: That newspapers and other news sources
new brand of “journalism”—we use the term loosely
should be required to publish only objective facts.
here—appeared. It became known as yellow
journalism. The name stemmed from the cheap, yellowish paper on which newspapers of the era were
printed. Yellow journalism thrived by reporting the most outrageous, sensationalistic stories possible.
This sometimes went beyond a simple lack of fact-checking into the territory of total fabrication 20.
18
Or as many monarchs still preferred to think of them, “subjects”.
Or, in some cases, concerned with facts at all.
20
A predecessor to those gossip magazines at the market, in the vein of “Kim Kardashian gives birth to Loch Ness Monster”.
19
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 15
Two publishers embraced this tactic: William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer. They determined
the more sensational their stories were, the more newspapers they sold and the more money they made.
Soon, each publisher was trying to out-sensationalize the other.
Hearst and Pulitzer were largely responsible for whipping the American populace into a frenzy that led
directly into a war with Spain in 1898, one which ended (triumphantly) with American control of Cuba,
the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam.
America was not alone; every European country developed its own yellow journalism publications, and it
became a trend for these papers to publish stories urging their nation’s leaders to be more aggressive on
the world stage. The popular press was also an effective way for governments to distribute propaganda.
The media helped inspire Tsar Nicholas’s decision to
Watch it on YouTube
mobilize Russian troops at the beginning of World War
Learn more about the Ju l y C ri sis at
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Russian press inspired enormous sympathy for Serbia.
It also championed the notion that the Russian Empire could seize territory from the Ottomans. Swayed
by the resulting uproar, the tsar’s advisors practically demanded that he commit Russia to the war
against the Habsburgs.
Newspapers in Britain stoked the public’s fear that Germany would take over more and more of the
European continent; when Germany invaded neutral Belgium, it appeared to the British that all of their
newspaper-fueled fears were justified, inspiring a wave of outrage that contributed to Britain’s declaration
of war on Germany.
In Italy, the popular press overemphasized the danger faced by Italian-speakers living in Austria, and
painted Austria as a much greater threat than France. Up to the start of the war, Italy had been officially
allied with the Central Powers, but when hostilities began, the public sentiment against Austria led Italy
to break ties with the Central Powers and join the Entente.
My Empire is Better than Your Empire
Earlier we used a somewhat hyperbolic example of the
European political scene as analogous to a fireworks
factory next to a munitions plant on top of a junction
of natural gas pipelines. The imperial rivalries that had
been festering for years were those gas pipelines—
deeply embedded for many years, but ready to burst
into flame if damaged badly enough.
In the 1880s and 1890s, Britain and France had been
engaged in a “race for colonies,” each trying to claim
and settle as many as they could. Both nations
concentrated on Africa and Asia. Between them, they
claimed virtually every piece of land on both continents
that held valuable resources and could be readily
accessed. Britain’s imperial might, and the need to
expand it, became ingrained in British culture. The British Empire spanned the globe.
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 16
When hostilities broke out between Austria and Serbia, Britain did not have a direct reason to enter the
war. It was part of the Entente, but its ties to the conflict were not as immediate as France and Russia’s;
many members of its government were against getting drawn into the fray.
When Germany invaded Belgium, however, Britain’s political advisors and populace agreed the time had
come for Britain to demonstrate that, German militarization notwithstanding, it was still the most
powerful nation in the world. Germany had forced its hand.
Russian to Judgment
Not one to be left out of the colonizing party, Russia had plans for expanding its own empire.
In the 1860s, Russia pushed its boundaries into central Asia, and, perhaps bolstered by this success, set
its sights on southeastern Europe21, then split between the Habsburgs and Ottomans. Its grand plan was
to establish a new empire that included some or all of the Christian Slavs of the Ottoman Empire.
Russia also aimed to control two strategic straits: the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, connecting the
Black and the Mediterranean Seas. Whoever presided over them controlled a large fraction of European
commerce. Because Istanbul controlled both, taking them meant challenging the Ottoman Empire.
There was competition for the Bosporus and the Dardanelles. Shortly before the Great War began in
1913, the Germans sent a military mission to Istanbul, headed by Colonel Liman von Sanders, 22
officially to offer advice and assistance to the Turks in reorganizing their army. Russia interpreted this
mission as evidence of German interest in the straits, and the imperial aspirations it implied went a long
way toward shaping the Russian attitude leading into the war.
Sitting on the Ottomans
For a good four centuries, the Ottoman Empire was a powerful force. Up until the 18 th century, the
Ottomans were on roughly equal footing with other empires such as the Russian, the British, and the
French. Their critical mistake was in failing to embrace industrialization quickly enough.
Industrialization translated into stronger economies and modernized militaries. Because it was slow to
industrialize, the Ottoman Empire fell behind in relative military power. As soon as the other European
powers realized they could get away with it, they essentially began pushing the Ottoman Empire around.
In 1783, Russia gave the Ottomans no choice but to accept Russian interference in their domestic
affairs.23 This showed most prominently in the Ottoman treatment of Christians living in Ottoman
lands; Christians were a minority in the predominantly Islamic Ottoman Empire, but Russia was
Christian, and forced the Ottoman countries to give special treatment and protection to Christians
living there (especially Armenians, Greeks, and Serbs) .
France and Britain also began making similar demands of the Ottomans. France had a long-standing
tradition of protecting Christians living in foreign lands, just as Russia did, and demanded that
Christians residing in Ottoman-controlled lands be protected with special laws, called capitulations,
granting them rights and privileges. Britain and France also both forced Turkey to extend protection to
foreigners in Ottoman lands who were there conducting business.
21
Russia had ambitions in the Far East, but the Russo-Japanese war debacle led it to refocus on southeastern Europe.
Yes. Colonel Sanders. I kid you not.
23
Russia had not yet embraced industrialization either, but still vastly outmatched the Ottomans in military strength.
22
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 17
All of this coercion led to Turkey’s great resentment toward Russia, Britain, and France, which
contributed to the Ottoman Empire’s decision to side with the Central Powers in the Great War.
Meanwhile, In Germany…
In 1871, many German-speaking princedoms and states agreed to unite into a single German nation,
one they hoped could to be as powerful as Britain, France, or Russia. When it came to colonization,
however, the new Germany was far behind the curve. Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, and the
Netherlands had been so successful in settling colonies and establishing overseas empires that the best
Germany could do was claim a few relatively small holdings in Africa and the Pacific.
Colonies or no, the German economy in the late 19th century exploded into one of the strongest in
Europe. Some vocal political groups within Germany began complaining it was not just for such a
powerful country to be so far behind everyone else when it came to overseas empires.
With an eye on conquest, some, including the German Naval League and outspoken members of the
Reichstag, pushed for Germany to build a navy to rival Britain’s.24 Germany tried, but the British fleet
was so vast that the Germans never truly had a chance to overtake it. What this naval push did achieve
was some serious tension with Britain. Britain took the German naval buildup as an indication that
Germany was becoming, or at least trying to become, the gravest threat to the British Empire.
Over time, recognizing the futility of trying to out-navy the British, Germany shifted to a land-based goal.
Much like any other country, Germany housed left-leaning liberal thinkers, right-leaning conservative
thinkers, and moderates. Some of the more extreme right-leaning Germans formed the “Pan-German
League”—a 40,000-strong political interest group that, while small, grew very influential. They
published pamphlets and articles which made their plan for German expansion clear: they believed that,
since there were already many German-speaking people living in Poland, Ukraine, and Russia, all
Germany needed to do was clear out all the millions of Slavs who also lived in those countries and enjoy
their leftover German-ness.
The Pan-German League hardly spoke for all of Germany. There were plenty of Germans who flatly
opposed a war of conquest. Some of the most popular newspapers in Germany supported the idea,
however, and the rise of expansionist thought—especially at the expense of Slavs—began influencing
many of Germany’s strategic thinkers.
The Alliance System and Military Strategy
Other European countries knew of Germany’s political ambitions. France tried to short-circuit the
German imperial process as early as 1870, when Germany first began unifying. France’s military
interference was unwelcome; the German states banded together under Prussia’s leadership and soundly
defeated the French in the space of seven weeks.25
In the resulting peace treaty, Germany gained new territory at France’s expense. The French regions of
Alsace and Lorraine were home to both French- and German-speaking people, and Germany now
annexed them both.
24
25
Imagine that—the Naval League lobbying to increase the Navy.
Or as my father would say, “Beat ‘em like a rented mule.”
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 18
The French desperately wanted to reclaim Alsace-Lorraine, but by the 1880s, realized how formidable
Germany had become. The German economy was booming and its military was large and state-of-theart. France knew that if it picked another fight with Germany, it stood little chance of victory.
Russia had come to a similar conclusion: Germany’s intent to conquer lands inside the Russian Empire
had become public knowledge, and Russia knew it had little chance of winning a direct confrontation
with the superior German military.
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To protect its growing power base, in early 1882 Germany formed the Triple Alliance with AustriaHungary and Italy, pledging mutual support in case of an attack. The Triple Alliance was meant to be a
secret, but word leaked out. In 1892, France and Russia responded with the Franco-Russian Alliance.
France was Europe’s original democratic republic, Russia one of its most absolute monarchies—but, as
they say, politics makes strange bedfellows. They hoped their alliance would serve notice to Germany
that it should leave them both alone—or face serious repercussions. If Germany attacked either France
to the west or Russia to the east, the other would mobilize its military to attack Germany from the other
side. This would force Germany to fight a war on two fronts—a challenge for any military.
The measure worked. No one attacked anyone else. Though tensions ran high, the German-ItalianAustro-Hungarian and Franco-Russian camps did little more than eyeball each other 26. Everything
seemed set for the duration—except one of the European Great Powers had not allied with anyone, and
could tip the scales dramatically either way27: Britain.
Germany hoped Britain would join the Triple
Triple Alliance
Alliance28; it was a plausible outcome, as Britain
Learn more details on the historic pact at htt p:/ /bi t.ly /IBL3 yX
had long-standing disagreements with France and
Russia. Failing that, Germany would have settled for
Britain staying neutral—but it was not to be. Britain
soon resolved its major differences with France, and they
signed the Entente Cordiale in 1904. Though an
informal pact, not an official alliance, it led to better
relations between France and England; their leaders
began to draft plans for future military cooperation.
The British were suspicious of France’s political ally, the
Russian Empire, until the 1905 Revolution took place.
At that point, an elected parliament (the Duma)
replaced Russia’s autocratic monarchy, leading to talks
between the new government and Britain. Britain held
territories that bordered on Russian lands, and border
disputes were chief among the disagreements between
the two empires, particularly in Afghanistan, Persia, and
Tibet. In 1907, the British and the new Russian leaders
met and resolved many of those issues.
While Britain was busy cozying up to France and Russia,
its relationship with Germany deteriorated. Germany also openly antagonized France over its power in
Morocco, first in 1905 and again in 1911, in what became known as the Moroccan Crises.
Germany’s industrialization was advancing rapidly; its technology and precision machine construction
were unrivaled. It was clear the Central Powers would soon control Europe unless England, France, and
Russia found a way to stand together.
26
In that snarky way.
Much like an elephant sitting on one end of a see-saw.
28
Making the Quadruple Alliance, I guess.
27
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 20
Of Empires and Nation-States (Or “Out With the Old, In With the New’’)
An empire unites multiple nations, territories, ethnic groups, and languages under one government. This
allows for great power—and great problems, as not all subjugated peoples are comfortable with such an
arrangement. All of the empires specified in this guide—Habsburg, Russian, German, Ottoman, British,
and French—had defeated independence-minded liberal nationalist movements over the course of their
histories. That run of success was about to come to an end.
The Late Great Polish Empire
For five solid centuries, the Polish Empire ruled vast areas of East-Central Europe—but that era came to
a crashing halt in 1772. Its neighbors, Russia, Austria, and Prussia 29, deployed their militaries,
overpowered what was by then known as the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and divided it in three.
The Poles were not about to let their ancestral lands go. Inspired by the American and French
revolutions, they rose up in 1795 to reestablish their nation. Though they failed, the Poles would try
again, in 1831, in 1863, and in a sustained effort from 1904 to 1906. Each uprising fell short.
The Poles were far from the only subjugated people who attempted to assert independence from empires
by making common ethnic cause; others included the Serbs (several times between 1804 and 1835), the
Greeks (from 1821 to 1832), and the Arabs (in 1834). 1848 was an especially fruitful year for such
rebellions, which broke out in Hungary and several Italian and German states. (Both Italy and Germany
were then groups of states with similar languages, but no overarching governments30.) These nationalist
movements turned out to be the appetizers before the main course. After World War I, brand-new
countries such as Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Yugoslavia 31 sprang
to life from the corpses of the continent’s fallen empires. The Polish refused to be left out. They took
land back from the Austrian, German, and Russian empires and established a new independent Poland.
After World War I, the allure of independence would reach as far as China, Korea, and India. The world
had witnessed independence, and the subjugated peoples of the world liked what they had seen.
The Former Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire had once held a diverse portfolio
of colonies and territories. By the early 18th century, the
Ottoman Turks ruled over Albania, Iraq, Palestine,
Syria, Bulgaria, Lebanon, Romania, Thrace, Egypt,
Libya, Serbia, Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, Sudan, and
Yemen.
Unfortunately for the Ottomans32, even prior to 1914,
their empire had been in a 150-year-long decline.
Liberal nationalist movements had sprang up time and
again across their domain. Whenever such a movement
sparked a rebellion, one or more of the Great Powers
29
Or “RAP,” as I like to call them, because I’m a dork.
1860 saw Italy unite, and Germany followed suit in 1871.
31
“Yugoslavia” was an artificially constructed nation, a “place of Southern Slavs.” It included many Slavic nationalities.
32
See how successfully we’re resisting making a furniture joke?
30
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 21
would offer the rebels political, financial, and/or military support. These interventions helped ensure
that, in the 19th century, the Ottoman Empire lost control of Egypt, Sudan, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania,
and Serbia. In 1912, the frustrated Ottomans went to war with Italy, and, as a result, were forced to
surrender Libya as well.
The year 1912 was particularly difficult for the Ottomans, as they were also involved in and lost two
Balkan wars, the First Balkan War and Second Balkan War33. At roughly the same time Libya was
slipping from its grasp, the Ottoman Empire also had to give up Albania, Macedonia, and Thrace. After
World War I, the Ottoman Empire was forced to hand most of its remaining land in the Middle East,
including Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and Palestine, to France and Britain. The war had reduced a
once-great empire to a mostly Turkish rump state on the Anatolian Peninsula.
The Schlieffen Plan, or “The 42-Day Maneuver”
France and Russia signed the 1892 Franco-Russian Convention in large part to intimidate Germany. No
one wants to fight a war on two fronts, with an enemy always at your back 34. Consequently, after the
Convention was signed, German military strategists began drafting a contingency plan against a FrenchRussian attack. The man Kaiser Wilhelm II put in charge of the plan was his top military strategist:
Alfred von Schlieffen, Chief of the German General Staff.
Schlieffen considered the following major factors:
1. Russia was being thrashed in the Russo-Japanese War.
2. Russia’s railway system was rudimentary and inefficient.
3. The German railway was one of the finest in Europe.
Noting Russia’s loss to the Japanese, Schlieffen concluded the
Russian army had serious problems—ones he could exploit. He
concluded he would be able to turn a single two-front war into
two single-front wars.
If Russia decided to attack Germany, he reasoned, it would take
weeks for the Russians to transport an effective portion of their
military to the German border. Therefore, he intended to
launch a swift, massive, and brutal attack on France—so
devastating that France would have no choice but to surrender
before Russia could come to the rescue. Then, Schlieffen could
use the unrivaled German railway system to transport millions
of German soldiers east to defeat the Russians.
Schlieffen’s plan hinged on being able to force the French to surrender in the first 42 days of a
hypothetical war. If France held on longer, Germany would be forced into the dreaded two-front war.
As a strategist, Schlieffen was almost untouchable. His plan, though, was not. For it to succeed, the
German army had to move the moment that either France or Russia declared war. To delay would mean
losing one or more of those crucial 42 days. The need for haste influenced German leaders to see any
33
34
The Balkan War and the New Balkan War, if you will.
Don’t even get me started on a four-dimensional war, which requires bending space-time.
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 22
mobilization by another country as equivalent to a declaration of war. When Austria declared war on
Serbia, and Serbia’s ally Russia started mobilizing, Germany declared war on Russia almost immediately.
Planning for the Plan
France and Russia were both aware of the Schlieffen Plan35, and took every action they could to
undermine it. France greatly built up its military defenses along the German border, and loaned Russia
funds to improve and expand the Russian railway system for mobilization and to modernize its army.
The French loan coincided, in 1908, with the implementation of Russia’s “Great Program”, an initiative
to strengthen and modernize the Russian military.
The Germans kept a close eye on all of these French and Russian military developments. The Russian
railway improvements were significant—German military analysts predicted that, by 1916, the entire
Russian army would be able to mobilize in thirty days. That was twelve fewer days than the Germans
had previously estimated they would need to conquer France, and would render the Schlieffen Plan
obsolete. Suddenly, it seemed to be in Germany’s best interests to start the war as soon as possible.
German war planners believed they could count on support from another Central Power, Italy. The
Italians, as it turned out, had other concerns. With their long coastline, they felt vulnerable to the British
and French navies. Italy had also been in recent territorial disputes with Austria-Hungary. When the
First World War broke out, a hesitant Italy surprised Germany by declaring itself neutral—and then, on
May 23, 1915, it joined the Entente, siding with England, France, and Russia. Adding insult to injury,
another ostensible member of the Central Powers, Romania, declared its neutrality as well.
Where Did All These British Soldiers Come From?
The Schlieffen Plan neglected the presence of a large British military force in France. After declaring war,
the German army tried to conquer France within the 42 days allotted by Herr von Schlieffen, but the
British Expeditionary Force had landed on French soil and helped forestall a French surrender.
Historian Niall Ferguson has observed that Germany’s war plans should have included some preemptive
diplomatic activity designed to win over Britain—or at least to ensure British neutrality when hostilities
broke out. As it was, Britain’s industrial capabilities were roughly equivalent to Germany’s, and the
British presence in the war knocked Germany’s plans on their ear.
One advantage Britain still lacked in 1914 was any ability to compel its citizenry to serve in the military.
A policy of conscription could have strengthened the British forces even more quickly. As it was, Britain
did not have a large standing army, and therefore could not quickly send many troops to the front.
The Watershed
Many historians refer to the World War I as the watershed of the 20th century—a vast historical turning
point. The war caused massive property damage and loss of life. It shattered the empires that had shaped
Europe’s political landscape for centuries, and altered the balance of power on the continent ever after.
It was also the first total war—requiring the involved nations to devote the entirety of their economies
to mobilization. Manufacturing in these countries had to be converted from peacetime to wartime, so
that millions of soldiers (and, for the last time, horses) had food, equipment, shelter, and weaponry.
35
The military intelligence of both nations had learned of the plan years before it was put into use.
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 23
At first, both the Entente and the Central Powers thought the war would end swiftly—by Christmas,
even. Few expected it to drag on for four years. It became a war of attrition, in which each side suffered
massive losses, and victory depended more on outlasting the other side than on defeating it in battle.
Americans often think of World War I as much less devastating than World War II. Our perspective is
skewed, however: we came to the war late and escaped the worst of it. Only 117,000 Americans lost
their lives in battle, a fraction of the nine million lost in battle by other combatants—or the six million
more lost to starvation and disease. For many nations, the destruction of World War I was every bit as
severe as that of World War II.
France and Germany both saw losses equal to 3% of their population. At that rate, the United States
would have lost 4 million lives and sustained 10 million war-related injuries. Other European nations
suffered even greater losses:

The Ottoman Empire saw its population decrease by 3.8%.

Serbia alone lost 5.6% of its people.
As high as those figures are, some specific groups suffered truly massive losses. Scotland sent 558,000
troops to fight in the war. 145,000 never came home.
All told, roughly 15 million soldiers were seriously injured in the
Great War, with approximately 7 million more taken as
prisoners. Military casualties therefore total an estimated 30
million, and this number does not account for civilian
casualties. Civilians caught up in the conflict were frequently
hurt or killed—often by the military, but also by other civilian
groups set against each other by the war.
Hunger, Disease, and Revolution
When food gets scarce and people go hungry, the human
immune system weakens, allowing disease to take hold. Since a
common tactic in World War I was to stop food from reaching
enemy populations, hunger grew rampant, and disease followed.
In Ottoman Empire, a hunger-weakened population proved
easy fodder for a massive new flu epidemic. That flu ravaged the
globe, killing an estimated 50 million people—and it can be
traced back to the Great War.
The suffering and loss of life caused by World War I snowballed
into a revolution in Russia, mutating into a massive civil war
that claimed 8 million more lives. Smaller wars of succession
also broke out in the remnants of the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires, and killed millions more.
Even though the total number of people killed and injured was greater in World War II than in World
War I, many historians view the First World War as having greater historical significance, primarily
because the first conflict so firmly laid the groundwork for the second.
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 24
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 25
Far-Reaching Effects: Communism and Fascism
In February and March of 1917, Russian revolutionaries conspired with the highest-ranking officers in
the military to force a war-weakened Tsar Nicholas II to abdicate the throne. These conspirators
established the Provisional Government, a ruling body linked to the Russian middle class. In an
unpopular decision, it attempted to continue Russia’s involvement with the global conflict. It proved an
unmitigated disaster. The Provisional Government swiftly lost control of the people—and of the
military. Violence and chaos erupted throughout Russia.
In the midst of these riots, a faction of the Social-Democratic Party known as the Bolsheviks (led by
Vladimir Lenin) staged a violent overthrow of the government, or coup. Whereas the Provisional
Government reflected the interests of the middle class, the Bolsheviks were solid supporters of the
proletariat, or working-class people. The Bolsheviks came to power in November 1917, and almost
immediately initiated Russia’s withdrawal from the First World War.
The political and economic system the Bolsheviks put in place was known as communism. This
approach—involving central planning of the economy to ensure the fair distribution of resources—was
radically different from capitalism, the system favored by the Provisional Government and that still
characterizes the United States today.
Lenin and his followers claimed the Bolsheviks’ actions were only the first step in a global communist
revolution36. Communist parties in other countries across the globe took great encouragement from
seeing their system come to power in a major European country. Communists in Hungary seized power
for nine months in 1919, while communists in the German state of Bavaria. Neither of these attempts
were nearly as successful as the Russian Revolution (in large part because they lacked sufficient military
manpower to hold their positions), but communists everywhere took them as signs of future success.
Communists gained political power across Europe, and became serious rivals to other parties.
Lenin was a dictator, but his government was
Fascism vs. Communism
ostensibly meant to represent the interests of
One is driven by nationalism and militarism, the other by
working-class citizens. Fascist dictators have little
economic
ideology, but both systems trend toward dictatorship
use for communism. In the simplest terms, they
and the absolute control of society by a central government.
believe they know what is best for their country,
Communism, at least on paper, is meant to render all citizens
and they enforce their orders by any means
equal. Fascism makes no such pretense, and elevates the head
of government to a position of unquestioned control.
necessary. One might wonder how such an extreme
political philosophy could take over a healthy
society—but the societies that embraced it were not healthy.
After the war, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Germany endured severe unemployment, hyperinflation 37, and
other hardships—even starvation and disease. Their surviving populations were ready to blame the
governments that had led them into this situation and to follow new leaders who promised them a way
out of it. When men such as Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini told the public that they had a solution
to every problem—provided people obey their every order—millions were ready to listen.
Historian Niall Ferguson has suggested that if World War I had never happened, or even if it had
resulted in a swift German victory, dictators such as Hitler and Lenin would never have come to power.
Capitalism—and a steady march toward democracy—might have continued as the European norm.
36
37
The USSR state motto was “Workers of the world, unite!”
Also a leading cause of balloon death.
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 26
II. The Nuts and Bolts of
the War
In The Terminator, the United States government builds the
Skynet artificial intelligence to strengthen national security.
Skynet is so effective that the government decides to hand all national
security decisions over to the machine—which decides the Earth
would be much better off without humans running around, and sets out to eradicate the species.
All the plans and alliances established by European empires prior to World War I added up to
an early-20th-century Skynet: they seemed like good ideas, designed to keep the peace, but when
Austria declared war on Serbia the vast machine suddenly came alive and started a conflict that
reached farther and caused far more destruction than anyone anticipated.
Starting Off Lopsided
Germany, the core of the Central Powers, had a strong economy, some of the best technology in Europe,
and a fearsome army. The Central Powers as a whole had a combined population of approximately 144
million in 1914, including the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria. By comparison, if we include all of
England and France’s far-flung colonies, the Entente Cordiale had a population of roughly 656 million.
The disproportionate advantage extended beyond head counts and weapons stockpiles. Once Britain
joined the Entente, it tipped the economic scale, too. The Entente’s gross domestic product (GDP) was
60 percent greater than that of the Central Powers, meaning the Entente’s nations could better afford to
fight a prolonged war. The GDP of all the Central Powers combined amounted to about that of France
and Russia on their own—a clear mismatch.
The Central Powers were outnumbered, outgunned, and in real danger of being forced to fight a war on
two fronts. It was clearly in their best interest to win the Great War swiftly, because they stood little
chance of prevailing in a long war of attrition.
Relative Equality in the Short Term
Early in the war, before both sides had mobilized their entire populations, they were more evenly
matched on the battlefield.
Central Powers:
25 million
Entente:
32 million
The Entente still had more troops in the field, but, at first, Britain did not have as solid a commitment
to the war as France or Russia—many members of its Parliament openly objected to England’s
participation—and, without conscription, it had a much smaller army. As a result, at first not that many
professionally-trained British troops (known as the British Expeditionary Force) could be sent to the
continent: only about 100,000 men arrived in France in August 1914. It would take years and hundreds
of thousands of casualties for the Entente’s greater resources to take on a more decisive role in the war.
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 27
Central Advantages
The Central Powers had three advantages that
reinforced one another.
1. The German army was well-equipped, welltrained, and well-staffed, with a higher ratio of
officers to its troops than the Entente’s forces. It
functioned rapidly and efficiently.
2. The Central Powers occupied one contiguous
bloc of European land, unlike the more spreadout Entente.38
3. The German railway system was unparalleled in
in density and advanced technology. Its trains
traveled connected virtually all of its towns and
cities—and operated as efficiently as the army.
These factors produced an army that could travel
quickly, with a minimum of waste, wherever they were
needed. Germany could put two million men and
600,000 horses at any location within its borders just thirteen days. Its efficiency was unparalleled
Early Battles
The Western Front
In the last three decades of the 19th century, France grew acutely aware of the German threat, and
heavily invested in defensive steps to prevent it. The French military built a series of well-defended
fortresses39 along the eastern border of France, and established defensive lines between them.
Strategy
The Germans, operating according to the Schlieffen Plan, kept a close eye on those western French
defenses. The Plan required German forces to invade France, overwhelm the French military within
forty-two days, and then transport the bulk of the German army back across Germany to engage the
slower-deploying Russian military in the east.
The heavily-fortified French border presented an obstacle to the Schlieffen Plan, so Germany decided to
launch its invasion by traveling through neutral Belgium and into France from the northeast. France
learned of this tactic, so it constructed additional defensive measures along its border with Belgium—but
two factors intruded.
First, France badly underestimated the number of troops Germany planned to send through Belgium.
Second, after more than thirty years of focusing on defense, rising leaders within the French military
began to favor a more aggressive approach. In 1911, France’s new Chief of the General Staff, General
Joseph-Jacques-Césaire Joffre, introduced a new strategy: he deployed large numbers of French troops
38
39
Of course, this also presented the issue of being effectively surrounded by the enemy.
From which they did this: http://ow.ly/lar94
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 28
to the Alsace-Lorraine region (which directly bordered Germany), and prepared them to launch an
assault as soon as the German army began hostilities. He called this Plan 1740.
France’s shift to offensive tactics might have worked, had it not been so direly misdirected. Given that
the French military had good reason to believe Germany would be invading through Belgium, Joffre was
taking a great risk by massing troops so far south of Belgium.
Germany was also taking significant strategic risks. The Schlieffen Plan led German military leaders to
put three quarters of the entire German army into the France-via-Belgium invasion force. That left only
fifteen percent of Germany’s troops stationed on the border with France, and an even smaller number
along the Russian border.
Both sides took enormous gambles on a strong offense:

For the Schlieffen Plan to work, Germany had to swarm into France and take Paris; this was
essentially an invasion with a 42-day time limit.

French military leaders believed that a strong, swift offense straight into Germany would allow
them to take Berlin, forcing the Germans to surrender.
Meanwhile, In Belgium
During all of this military buildup, Belgium had maintained its neutrality. This was not to say that the
country was defenseless; its technology was among the most
modern of the European nations.
Howitzer
Among its most impressive accomplishments, between
1888 and 1892, Belgium had constructed two state-of-theart fortress complexes: one at Liège and one at Namur.
A short cannon used to fire projectiles at medium muzzle
velocities and with relatively high trajectories.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Each of these installations featured:

A twenty-five-mile circle of forts (twelve forts around Liège, nine around Namur)

Hundreds of heavy artillery guns

Armor plate capable of withstanding fire from 210mm howitzers (the most powerful artillery in
the world when the fortresses were built)
Unlike its fortresses, Belgium’s army in 1914 was ill-equipped and poorly organized. Belgium deployed
roughly 117,000 troops to meet the invading Germans, who outnumbered them five to one.
The Germans Are Coming! The Germans Are Coming!
German troops entered Belgium early on August 4, 1914 with the goal of conquering the city of Liège.
Three days later, after German troops sustained heavy losses, the city of Liège fell.
The mission was not yet fully accomplished, however; several of the forts surrounding the city still stood.
Belgium felt confident that the forts would endure, based on their heavy armor. But the designers of the
forts had not foreseen the progress of German and Austrian military technology. On August 12, the
Germans brought in two new weapons:
40
Also known as “the best defense is a good military offensive.”
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 29

The 305mm howitzer, manufactured by the Austrian Skoda company

The 420mm “monster gun,” manufactured by the German Krupp company
Each of these weapons significantly overpowered the
Belgian forts’ armor, but it was the Krupps 420—
eventually nicknamed “Big Bertha”—that had the most
dramatic effect. The 420 fired 16.8-inch shells equipped
with time delay fuses; rather than exploding upon impact,
these shells could penetrate a target and detonate their
warheads once inside, causing much greater damage.
Liège’s fortresses never had a chance against these deadly
new German cannons, which destroyed them one by one,
the last one falling on August 16. It then took five days
for the Germans to transport the weapons to their next
target: Namur. Three days of German artillery
bombardment neutralized all of Namur’s forts.
The taking of Liège and Namur displayed both positive
and negative aspects of the German war effort. The good:
the two sieges demonstrated the crucial role artillery would play in the war, and exemplified the
achievements of German engineering. The bad: sacking the two Belgian cities took much more time and
resources than the Schlieffen Plan dictated.41
After the first two land battles of the war, the Plan had already gone off the rails. According to Von
Schlieffen, destroying the Belgian forts and taking the two cities should have required one army division;
in reality, it took eight divisions and several days (greatly spent transporting the weapons).
France’s General Joffre knew about the defeat of Liège and Namur, but he maintained his focus on the
planned offensive push to the west, and did not send any French troops to aid the Belgian defense. 42
The Battle of the Frontiers
August 1914: The invading German army had engaged the smaller, poorly-equipped Belgian forces and
begun pushing them back through the city of Brussels and on toward the border of France. At this
point, five separate battles took place at different locations, all launching within a span of two weeks:
41
42

The Battle of Mulhouse – began August 7

The Invasion of Lorraine – began August 14

The Battle of the Ardennes – began August 21

The Battle of Charleroi – began August 21

The Battle of Mons – began August 23
This invasion also prompted Britain to enter the war—definitely a negative for Germany.
At that point Joffre should probably have refrained from entering any popularity contests in Belgium.
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Collectively, these battles became known as The Battle of the Frontiers,43 and they came to an end on
September 6, with the beginning of the Battle of the Marne. They involved more than two million
soldiers, making the Battle of the Frontiers the largest battle in human history to that date. To recap:

Germany had sunk the majority of its army into the French invasion, which pushed through
Belgium and into France from the northeast. Only 15% of the German army remained along the
French/German border.

Embracing a relatively new offensive strategy, France positioned large numbers of its troops
along the French/German border, ready to invade Germany.
One might think these strategies would result in a capital-swap of sorts, with Germany taking Paris and
France taking Berlin. This was not to be the case. 44/45
The Battle of Mulhouse
On August 7, French troops marched into Mulhouse, a
town in the German-held, formerly-French territory of
Alsace. France intended to begin reclaiming Alsace and
Lorraine, and to provide the French army with a base
for stage further operations.
The French army found that the German population
had already evacuated Mulhouse, and that German
army troops had begun surrounding the town. On
August 9 the Germans launched a counter-attack that
drove the French army back into their homeland.
The Invasion of Lorraine
In response to Germany’s invasion of Belgium, Joffre
sent a relatively small portion of his troops north to face
that threat. He still believed that German forces would
be weak along the French/German border, and wanted
to capitalize on the weakness with an offensive push,
ultimately taking the German capital, Berlin.
On August 14, a large number of French troops crossed the border into Lorraine. They advanced with
very little resistance for four days, and on August 18 captured the town of Sarrebourg. They did not
realize that the German army had been purposefully retreating—luring them further from the invasion
coming through Belgium. On August 20, the Germans began a devastating counterattack that forced the
French army to retreat.
43
Some sources do not consider the Aug. 7 Battle of Mulhouse part of the Battle of the Frontiers.
See the Colin Powell quote at the beginning of this section.
45
Also, the best-laid plans of mice, Germans, and Frenchmen oft go awry.
44
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 31
The Battles of Ardennes and Charleroi
On August 21, farther north and closer to the Belgian
border, another section of the French army moved into
the forests of Ardennes. They were surprised there by
large number of German troops.
What happened next is another example of Germany’s
advanced weapons and the transition from outdated to
modern fighting techniques. The French troops charged
the Germans with bayonets—a technique effective in
past battles. The Germans opened fire with their new
machine guns and mowed down the French by the
hundreds. Combat was occurring on a new mass scale.
On the same day, northwest of the conflict at Ardennes,
French troops faced the Germany army in a mid-sized
industrial town called Charleroi. The French were
expecting the arrival of 100,000 members of the British Expeditionary Force, but due to breakdowns in
communication, the British never arrived, and the Germans forced the French troops out of the town.
The Battle of Mons
On August 23, never having connected with the French troops at Charleroi, a small contingent of the
British Expeditionary Force faced German troops led by General Alexander von Kluck 46/47, fighting
across the 60-foot-wide Mons Canal. Roughly 35,000 British soldiers were involved in the battle, and
though the Germans outnumbered them two to one, the British held their position until late in the day,
suffering around 1,600 casualties. When they received word that the French had retreated from
Charleroi, the BEF realized they could be surrounded if they maintained their position, so they signaled
a retreat. This was the first battle the British fought in World War I, and it ended in a bitter defeat.
Von Moltke’s Decisions
At this point, the German Chief of Staff was General
Helmuth von Moltke the Younger48. The German
victories in late August convinced him Germany would
soon be victorious, and led him to make two decisions
that proved to have fateful, long-term effects.
Pincer Attack
A military attack by two coordinated forces that advance
on an enemy position from different directions.
1. Von Moltke split part of the German army from the massive invasion coming through Belgium,
routing some soldiers south to Lorraine; his plan was to circle the French army in a large-scale
pincer attack, defeating the French troops and conquering Paris. This renewed attack resulted in
numerous German casualties and was also nowhere near as successful as von Moltke hoped.
2. In direct violation of orders, on August 17, the German Eighth Army—stationed on the Russian
front—launched a hasty, ill-conceived attack on the Russians. Russia quickly responded,
46
Sounds like a video game villain.
Or a very dangerous chicken.
48
One of the weirder yet cooler names I’ve ever heard.
47
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 32
defeating the German troops in this conflict, called the Battle of Gumbinnen. Von Moltke sent
90,000 German soldiers to the Eastern Front in an effort to prevent a Russian march on Berlin.
In response to the German victories on and around August 23, France’s General Joffre at last changed
his mind about his strictly offense-centered policy. Joffre ordered, and executed, a skillful retreat.
The Miracle of the Marne
On September 5, at the Marne River roughly 30 miles northeast of Paris, the French army and the
British Expeditionary Force regrouped. Now, General Joffre decided to go back on the offensive. He
planned a major push against the Germans, and used every means at his disposal to bring fresh troops to
the front. Soldiers arrived in railroad cars, as well as in an estimated 600 Parisian taxicabs 49.
The First Battle of the Marne, which began on September 6, saw intense use of artillery as the Germans
and French each deployed approximately 3,000 heavy guns. Both sides suffered massive losses.
The German army began to feel the effects of fighting on someone else’s turf. In their retreat, the French
and the Belgians had destroyed as many railways and bridges as they could, forcing the invaders to travel
largely on foot; by the time the First Battle of the Marne got underway, the Germans were exhausted.
The disruption of transportation also affected the German supply lines, so that after a week of intense
fighting, the Germans—running low on food and ammunition—had no choice but to retreat. The
German army stopped when it reached the Aisne River, about 50 miles back along its invasion route.
This combined British and French victory came to be known as “The Miracle of the Marne.” As a result
of it, von Moltke, von Kluck, and thirty-two other German generals resigned their positions, and
Germany had no choice but to declare the Schlieffen Plan dead. Acknowledging that a swift victory in
France was now impossible, Germany faced the grim prospect of fighting a war on two fronts.
The “War of Movement”
Up to the “Miracle of the Marne”, the First World War could be characterized as a conflict centered on
massive offensive actions, which quickly swept through vast swaths of territory. This type of war came to
be called a war of movement. It slowed, but did not quite stop, with the First Battle of the Marne.
Von Moltke’s replacement as the Chief of the General Staff, Erich von Falkenhayn, wanted to salvage
something from the Schlieffen Plan by attempting to flank the French army on the western edge of the
conflict. This maneuver involved sending German troops to curl around the massed French forces and
attack them from the side. The flanking maneuver was unsuccessful, but had two effects:
1. It caused heavy casualties on both sides, both deaths and injuries.
2. It prompted General Joffre to try to turn the maneuver back on the Germans; he ordered French
troops to flank the German army.
Joffre’s countermeasure was also unsuccessful, but still, the opposing sides kept trying to outmaneuver
each other. The prolonged effort to do so caused the Germans and the combined French and BEF forces
to keep moving north in a slow, ragged, and deadly game of leapfrog 50.
49
50
Most expensive taxi ride ever.
Very much like leapfrog meets The Hunger Games.
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 33
This northern advance came to be known as The Race to the Sea—the sea, in this instance, being the
English Channel. Along the way, both forces set up formidable lines of defense aimed at stymieing the
other side’s progress. Techniques included digging trenches, laying barbed wire, and establishing
machine gun nests, in a technique known as trench warfare.
With neither side managing to outflank and defeat the other,
both the German and French armies arrived at the English
Channel at a point just inside Belgium. They launched a fullscale frontal assault on each other near the Belgian town of
Ypres51, starting on October 8, 1914.
The German army almost broke through the French/BEF forces
and attempted to advance along the coast, but turned back when
the Belgians opened the sluice gates on the Yser River and
flooded the coastal area.
The culmination of the Race to the Sea was the definitive end of
the war of movement and the start of the trench warfare
stalemate. At the end of 1914, the war had been raging for a full
five months, and 400,000 French soldiers had died. 600,000
more had sustained injuries that took them off the battlefield.
The Germans had lost only slightly fewer men, but had
managed to take some of France’s most heavily industrialized
regions. With both sides closely matched, and all the trenches and barbed wire still in place along the
front, the invaders and defenders settled into a stalemate that would last four years 52.
The Eastern Front
When many people in the United States think of World War I, we picture the battles that took place in
Western Europe (mainly in France), featuring trenches and barbed wire 53. Yet casualties and destruction
on Germany’s eastern front were roughly equal to those in France and Belgium—and more real estate
changed hands (and often changed back) in those eastern battles between Germany and Russia.
The Schlieffen Plan had hinged on Russia’s anticipated slow mobilization pace—yet the Russians had
prepared for a German offensive, in part by using loans from France. They had spent years improving
Russia’s railway system, and, leading up to July 1914, had begun massing an estimated 40 percent of the
Russian armed forces on the border with Germany.
In mobilizing much faster than Germany anticipated, the Russian military leaders had two goals:
1. To divert German troops from their political ally of France
2. To break through the relatively light German defenses and march on Berlin
Taking Berlin seemed reasonable; Germany had left only about one eighth of its army in East Prussia.
51
Some British soldiers pronounced “Ypres” to sound like “Wipers.”
Basically, a ton of soldiers received an unwanted bachelor’s degree in hellacious conflict.
53
And a lonely war horse.
52
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 34
No Partying, Guys
An old tradition in Russia called for village-wide parties to see soldiers off to war. Alcohol flowed freely
at these gatherings—and the men needed time to recover before deploying. To avoid this inefficiency,
Russia decreed alcohol strictly off-limits—for soldiers and civilians alike—throughout the country as
soon as it became clear that troops would have to be mobilized.54 Russia’s preparations came to fruition.
In two weeks, Russia had mobilized a sober army that outnumbered Germany and Austria’s combined.
The Russian Agenda
Russia had pledged to help France by attacking
Germany, and it also planned to address a few other
political concerns at the same time.


Russia entered the conflict to help Serbia, and
the most direct threat to Serbia was Austria.
The majority of the Russian people and several
high-ranking Russian military leaders strongly
favored knocking Austria completely out of the
war as soon as possible.
Debate it!
Resolved: That governmental suppression of social
customs in times of war is justifiable.
“History will condemn me…but I have
given the order to march.”
General Iakov Zhilinskii, on ordering an
attack on the German army in East Prussia

Despite Ukraine’s separate language and culture, Russians thought of Ukrainians as Russian,
calling them “Malorusskie” (“little Russians”) and assumed they would be happy to be
“liberated” from Austria and become Russian subjects55.

Defeating Austria would facilitate Russia’s plan to claim more land in the Balkans and to
challenge weakening Ottoman Empire.

A Ukrainian region called Galicia had fallen under control of Austria-Hungary. If Austria were
defeated, the Russians could claim Galicia
In light of these goals, the Russian military deployed thirty divisions against Germany and forty-six
against Austria. Those thirty Russian divisions outnumbered Germany’s troops by three to two. Still, the
Russian general in charge of the offensive, Iakov Zhilinskii, knew that his troops were in for a serious
challenge, given Germany’s advanced military technology and excellent supply system via its state-of-theart railway system.
The Russians split their forces into two armies:
1. The First Army: led by General Pavel von Rennenkampf56
2. The Second Army: led by General Aleksandr Samsonov
East Prussia protruded eastward into Russian lands like a peninsula. Rennenkampf’s First Army attacked
at the easternmost edge, while Samsonov’s Second Army traveled south to Warsaw and launched an
attack directly northward from the city.
54
Known unofficially as the “buzzkill decree.”
More than once, Russian leadership had instated periods of “Russification” in regions such as Ukraine and Poland,
suppressing native linguistic, religious, and cultural traditions in favor of Russian ones.
56
Yes, that’s a German name. German and French aristocrats were firmly established in Russia in the 18 th and 19th centuries,
thanks to Western-leaning emperors and empresses.
55
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 35
The Russian First and Second Armies greatly
outnumbered the German Eighth Army, the only division
of German forces present. Unfortunately for the Russians,
their generals squandered this advantage by choosing poor
attack points. The Russian armies found themselves
separated by a region of lakes and dense forests, a terrainbased obstacle that prevented them from joining or even
communicating efficiently.
The Germans, conversely, made full use of their railway
system, to transport troops back and forth between the
two Russian attack points as needed.
Despite these issues, the first week of fighting went well
for Russia. Recall that a German general had defied orders
and attacked Rennenkampf’s First Army, leading to the Battle of Gumbinnen. The Germans lost 8,000
of 30,000 men, and Russia declared a victory.
Germany responded by replacing the trigger-happy officer who had ordered the attack with General
Paul von Hindenburg and Hindenburg’s chief of staff, Erich Ludendorff—but they decided to take
their predecessor’s idea and run with it by going on the offensive 57.
There Should Have Been a Code
Sending encrypted messages was a common practice on the battlefield, and one the Germans used
without fail, distributing codebooks58 to its field commanders.
In a testament to how outdated many of their standard military practices were, the Russians failed to do
this. Lacking a secret code, Russian field commanders simply did not communicate with each other
much of the time. This prevented the enemy from knowing their plans, but at the cost of coordination
between divisions. When the Russians did send messages, they used open channels—which the enemy
consistently intercepted.
Hindenburg and Ludendorff made use of this strategic advantage over Rennenkampf and Samsonov.
On August 24, thanks to non-encrypted Russian communication, von Hindenburg knew that
Rennenkampf’s First Army was occupied in an attack on the far northern fortress of Königsberg. In
response, von Hindenburg transferred almost all of the German Eighth Army south, and launched an
assault on Samsonov’s troops. It was a risky maneuver on von Hindenburg’s part; if Rennenkampf had
abandoned the attack on Königsberg and moved farther into East Prussia, he would have encountered
virtually no resistance. Rennenkampf continued the attack, thus allowing the Eighth Army to focus all
its efforts on Samsonov.
The tactic worked. Von Hindenburg’s troops drew Samsonov’s forces forward and then attacked both
flanks, surrounding them on three sides at the Battle of Tannenberg. Von Hindenburg’s troops killed
50,000 Russians, took 100,000 more as prisoners, all but obliterating the Russian Second Army.
57
Perhaps there was some kind of death-wish-inducing chemical in Germany’s water supply.
In World War II, the U.S. military employed several hundred Native American “code talkers” to transmit coded messages.
Because their languages were so different from European and Asian ones, their codes were harder for the enemy to break.
58
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 36
The first half of their goal accomplished, von Hindenburg and Ludendorff ordered the Eighth Army
north, and bolstered their ranks with fresh troops. The Germans engaged the Russian First Army at the
Battle of Masurian Lakes. This proved to be another victory for the Germans, though a less resounding
one; Rennenkampf executed a retreat and moved the remainder of the First Army back to Russia.
Back-and-forth assaults on the East Prussian front ground to a halt at that point, due to three factors:
1. Russian reinforcements arrived, bolstering the First Army and preventing von Hindenburg from
effectively pursuing Rennenkampf’s troops.
2. Rennenkampf launched a counteroffensive in late September, but lost a disproportionately large
number of Russian lives considering the small amount of land Russia regained. Rennenkampf
felt that further offensives would be futile.
3. German Chief of Staff von Moltke had sent 90,000 men to the German/Russian border after the
surprise Russian victory at the battle of Gumbinnen. Historians believe those German soldiers
may have been the only reason the Russians failed to launch their full invasion of Germany.
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary did not have universal conscription, so
it could not assemble as large an army as nations that did.
When mobilized, Austria had forty-eight army divisions.
The number of troops presented a potentially dire
problem, since Russia deployed more of its forces to face
Austria than it did to face Germany; all told, Austria had
to deal with a further-strengthened fifty Russian divisions
approaching from the east and eleven Serbian divisions
approaching from the south.
Given the larger number of Russian troops, Austria
planned to concentrate most of its forces on the
Austrian/Russian border and send a much smaller portion
of the army south to face the Serbians.
Hötzendorf’s Secret Plan
Austrian General Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf had
other ideas. The people of Austria enthusiastically backed
going to war with Serbia, and Hötzendorf decided to try
to give them what they wanted: a quick victory. The problem was that a massive assault on Serbia flew in
the face of the Schlieffen Plan, and Hötzendorf knew the Germans would be furious if he attempted it.
Consequently, he gave the order to attack Serbia without telling the Germans about it 59.
Hötzendorf sent twenty of his forty-eight army divisions south, intending to launch a full-scale invasion
of Serbia. Quickly, the Germans objected. Once they found out about Hötzendorf’s Serbian ambitions,
59
Because surely they wouldn’t notice.
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 37
they demanded that he reverse his order and also bring ten divisions back to the north to face the
Russians. Hötzendorf complied, but ran into two complications:

The railways in Austria were single-track.

The mobilization schedules were complex, interrelated, and difficult to change.
Reversing the order became a chaotic problem60; for the first few weeks of the war, ten divisions of
Austrian soldiers rode around on trains and waited in stations instead of fighting.
Not only did the Austrian offensive into Serbia fail, but it quickly turned very ugly: both sides sustained
heavy losses and engaged in brutality and atrocities against civilians.
Don’t Mess with Serbia
Hötzendorf’s army was better equipped than the Serbian forces as far as weapons and artillery, but the
Serbians had several advantages as the war with Austria continued:

Serbia’s conscription system put a higher percentage of the male populace on the battlefield than
any other European nation’s.

Unlike the Austrian army, the Serbian army was battle-tested, thanks to the recent Balkan wars.

Serbia’s knowledge of its mountainous terrain was helpful in both attacks and retreats. 61

Serbia’s weapons and artillery improved as new weapons and gear arrived from France and Britain.
In November 1914, Austria again tried to defeat Serbia, at first seeming to succeed by capturing and
occupying the Serbian capital of Belgrade. The occupation lasted all of two weeks before Serbia counterattacked and drove the Austrian troops out of the country.
The Serbian counter-attack set up an Austrian/Serbian front that lasted, with few changes, through the
rest of the war. The vast majority of Serbia remained unconquered.
Russian Multitudes
The Russian army greatly outnumbered the Austrian forces, by roughly 750,000 to 500,000, and had a
greater abundance of machine guns and artillery—but Conrad Hötzendorf 62 still believed it would be in
Austria’s best interests to attack. He knew Russia wanted to claim the province of Galicia, and the best
way to reach Galicia was through a few mountain passes. Hötzendorf sent troops to protect the passes.
The Austrian attempt to protect Galicia proved a miserable failure; Austria suffered heavy losses at the
hands of the advancing Russians, who took control of the Galician capital, Lwów.63 This conflict, The
Battle of Lwów, was the first major Entente victory of the war.
60
See also “hot steaming mess.”
Not unlike the contemporary warfare taking place in the mountains of Afghanistan.
62
Who had somehow miraculously kept his job after the Serbian invasion fiasco.
63
Today it’s spelled “Lviv,” to prevent confusing it with JWoww. [citation needed]
61
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 38
Brother, Is That You?
The Austrian army included many soldiers of Czech, Slovak, Slovenian, and other Slavic ethnicities.
Since the Russian army was predominantly Slavic, sending these men to fight against the Russian forces,
in many cases, meant pitting them against people with whom they strongly sympathized.
Reports from the battle began to suggest that Austrian soldiers were deliberately firing over the heads of
the Russian troops, deserting, or surrendering before it became absolutely necessary. The problem grew
serious enough that Hötzendorf ordered a general retreat. The Austrian army fell back and regrouped
outside Cracow (in modern-day southern Poland).
Russian leaders considered the occupation of Galicia and unqualified success, as all the region’s
inhabitants became Russian subjects. This brought nearly all Ukrainians under Russian control, and
further diminished the already dwindling population of the Habsburg Empire. The large number of
Poles and Jews in Galicia also joined the Russian Empire.
The Russian Empire lost 250,000 men in the occupation—yet Russia’s immense population allowed the
country to replace them relatively quickly. Austria, on the other hand, was catastrophically hurt by its
loss of 400,000 troops.
The Siege of Przemysl
In 1914, the town of Przemysl was centered on a
solidly-armored fortress housing roughly 117,000
heavily armed Austro-Hungarian soldiers.64 On
September 24, 1914, Russian forces began surrounding
Przemysl; soon, they had encircled the fortress with
barriers and gun emplacements, making it impossible
for the soldiers inside to escape.
The Russian troops besieged Przemysl for a full 200
hundred days. The Austro-Hungarians held out inside
the well-stocked fortress from late September 1914
until March 1915, and might have outlasted the
Russian army if not for the arrival of Russian artillery
capable of breaching their walls.
Once the heavy Russian guns began
Hear It Pronounced
shattering the fortress’s armor, the
Having trouble with how to pronounce “Lwów” and “Przemysl”?? Hear a
defending soldiers realized the siege was
Polish speaker say them at: htt p:/ / www.fo rv o .com / wo rd/ l w%C 3%B3w /
lost. They surrendered on March 22,
a n d ht tp :/ / w w w. fo rv o. c o m/ w ord /p rz emy %C 5 %9 B l / .
1915. This defeat was one of the final nails
in the coffin for the Austro-Hungarian war effort, and spurred Germany to shift its focus from the west
to the east.
64
These days, it’s a mid-sized city of around 66,000 people.
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 39
No Man’s Land: Trench Warfare on the Western Front
When Germany invaded France in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871), it defeated the French army
swiftly and decisively; Germany took Paris and declared victory in a mere nine months. At first,
Germany’s military leaders expected the Great War to end just as quickly. Instead, the German invasion
fell short, losing its final bit of momentum in the “Race to the Sea.” Rather than an open path to the
French capital, Germany found itself facing a 750-kilometer (466-mile) front stretching north from
Switzerland to the English Channel.
The front line stayed put for years, despite massive artillery bombardments and millions of casualties on
both sides. The culprit for this deadlock was a system consisting of barbed wire, deeply-dug trenches and
bunkers, artillery, and machine guns: trench warfare.
Machine Guns
First developed in the 1880s, machine guns started out as
logistically awkward weapons. Their size and weight made
them hard to transport, and many required water-based
cooling systems that made them even more unwieldy. One, the
Hotchkiss revolving cannon, fired a blistering 43 rounds per
minute—but it had to be in the right place first. For a long
time, military strategists did not see them as significant threats.
In the decade leading up to the Great War, however, machine
gun technology improved greatly. The water-cooled systems
gave way to air-cooled barrels, reducing weight and the risk of
breakdown. The rate of fire greatly increased. When the war
started, machine guns could fire 600 rounds per minute at
targets up to a kilometer away.
Suddenly time-honored military tactics no longer worked, made
obsolete by the “storm of steel”65 a machine gun could unleash
onto the field. Machine guns made such a difference in how
soldiers fought because they critically limited soldiers’
mobility—including that of the horse-mounted cavalry.
Horses had always been vulnerable to artillery attacks, which
could target enemies from a distance of three miles, but horses
presented large, easy targets for machine gunners. Combined
with how much fodder horses required (about 22 pounds per
day) and the effort it took to transport them, the presence of
machine guns rendered cavalry units non-viable.66
Meanwhile, internal combustion engines were not suited to the battlefield, as they could not withstand
even small-arms fire and broke down too often.
65
This description comes to us via the German soldier and author Ernst Jünger, who titled his graphic, non-fiction account of
the trenches Storm of Steel. Jünger was wounded 14 times during battle, but survived to nearly age 103.
66
WWI basically saw the end of horse-mounted combat, to the intense relief of a lot of horses.
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 40
Both the Entente and Central Powers forces on the French/German border were left with little choice
but to send advancing divisions on foot. A soldier could move quickly enough, and presented a small
enough target, to escape machine gun fire at least some of the time.
The combatants also impeded each other’s progress on foot using barbed wire, which was cheap and
plentiful. It took time for a soldier to stop and cut a section of barbed wire on the battlefield, and this
allowed enemy machine gunners to spot and open fire on him. The combined development of machine
guns and use of barbed wire brought the advances of both armies to a grinding halt.
Artillery
As evidenced by the conquests of Liège and Namur, by 1914, artillery had become destructive to an
unprecedented extent. The German Krupp company and the Austrian Skoda company had both
developed guns of such enormous size and shells of such immense explosive capability that no
contemporary armor could withstand them.
Perhaps the most significant advance in the technology
Watch It On YouTube
of artillery, however, was the addition of brakes. Prior to
See footage of World War I artillery in action at:
the Great War, whenever a heavy gun fired, the
h t t p : / / w w w . y o u t u b e . c o m / w a t c h ? v = O 8 5 X W j LV x R A
powerful recoil knocked it backward, so it had to be
reset and the target reacquired after every shot. Brakes anchored
each gun to the ground and absorbed the recoil, allowing shot
after increasingly-accurate shot to be fired rapidly.
In the waging of trench warfare, the design of artillery guns lent
itself to defense more than to attack. Artillery could destroy
concrete walls, such as those of a fortress, but had little effect on
earthen defenses such as deeply-dug trenches or earthen berms;
therefore, stationary defenders could dig in and fire repeated
barrages from a relatively secure position. Attackers frequently
used artillery to try to damage trenches and remove obstacles
such as barbed wire, but doing this took a long time, and could
not be accomplished without giving away the artillery’s position
and losing the element of surprise.
Digging in the Dirt: Extensive Trench Systems
In October 1914, German troops under the command of General Erich von Falkenhayn launched attack
after attack on the combined French and British forces in Ypres, Belgium. Every single one failed; the
offensive side never had the upper hand on the Western Front. At that point, the general had a change
of heart. Von Falkenhayn contacted the German Chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg 67, and
told him that he considered the war unwinnable. Von Falkenhayn strongly suggested that Germany
withdraw its troops from the French border and try to negotiate a peace with Russia.
Von Bethmann-Hollweg flatly refused. Convinced it was impractical to move forward into France, he
decided to make it so that the German army could hold the front line against the French for as long as
possible, and with as few men as possible. The Germans had already dug an extensive system of trenches
along the north bank of the Aisne River during the First Battle of the Marne. It consisted of several
67
Imagine trying to fill that name in on a standardized test form.
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 41
trenches that ran parallel to the river, connected by perpendicular ones used for communication. Using
this setup, a relatively small number of troops could use machine guns to hold off frontal assaults on the
first trench and easily fall back to the next trench if necessary.
Following this model, in January 1915, von Falkenhayn ordered the construction of a massive, elaborate
network of defenses all along the front line. Reinforced with wood and steel frames, these installations
went beyond simple trenches and became concrete bunkers, strengthened by the addition of machine
gun turrets and concrete shelters, or pill boxes, protecting the guns. Just like the system on the Aisne,
this one was built several lines deep, so that if the first line fell, soldiers could fall back to the next and
continue defending the front.
The bunkers were built to withstand the most damaging artillery the Entente forces possessed, and could
be manned with very few troops. Thus, von Falkenhayn ensured the German line could hold against
nearly any attack while freeing up thousands of troops to be transported west to face the Russians.
Defenders 1, Attackers 0
Thanks to trench warfare, much of the remainder of the war
focused on penetrating enemy defenses using ever-advancing
military technology. With the Entente forces dug in deep, and
the Germans dug in even deeper and encased in concrete, the
western front became a violent, deadly warfare lab. The
stalemate led to the use of poison gas, tanks, and airplanes; the
Great War saw the first-ever usage of airplanes in combat. Both
sides attempted to build enough artillery shells to target every
single square inch of the opposing defenses—a tactic called
saturation bombing. But, try as they might, neither side could
destroy the other. The stalemate continued.
The Ottoman Empire Goes to War
In 1908, the Ottoman Empire underwent a revolution, fueled
and won by a group of Turkish army officers who referred to
themselves as the Young Turks. Both nationalists and
reformists, they championed Turkish beliefs and values, but
wanted to change the way the Ottoman Empire as a whole was
governed, by abolishing the autocratic monarchy and
establishing a constitutional form of government.
The newly-formed government encountered catastrophic
difficulties in the First and Second Balkan Wars. The
Ottomans68 had long vied with Austria-Hungary in southeastern
Europe, and the Balkan wars ended with the Ottoman Empire
losing four-fifths of its lands there.
When the Great War started, the unstable, diminished Ottoman Empire was unready to take on the vast
Russian army on land or the British and French navies at sea. Nevertheless, Turkish nationalism spurred
68
Can I call them the Ottomen and Ottowomen?
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 42
the Ottomans into the conflict. The countries of the Entente had long histories of interfering with
Ottoman affairs, demanding special treatment (“capitulations”) for people of their nationalities living
and working in Islamic Ottoman lands.69
Turkish nationalism was already on the rise, and a flood of infuriated Muslim refugees from the Balkan
Wars (mostly Turks and Albanians) bolstered the sentiment. Turkish leaders also knew of the Russian
aspiration to conquer Istanbul and take control of the strategically and commercially critical Bosporus
and Dardanelles Straits.
While the Entente angered the Ottoman people in general, and the Young Turks in particular, Germany
seemed to be a rising star. The Ottomans saw Germany as industrious and on the cutting edge of
technology. Perhaps most importantly, Germany was uninterested in expanding its territories at the
Ottoman Empire’s expense.
The Ottoman minister of war, Enver Pasha70, was so taken with Germany that when German Colonel
Liman von Sanders offered to visit Turkey in 1913 and advise the Young Turks on modernizing the
Ottoman military, Enver welcomed him, despite knowing the Entente countries—particularly Russia—
were likely to interpret the visit as evidence of an alliance between Germany and the Ottoman Empire.
In September 1914, with the Great War already well underway, the Ottoman Empire had remained
neutral—yet nationalism began to intensify. The Young Turks officially rejected all the capitulations
they had indulged up to that point, prompting a massive wave of anti-Western sentiment. They broadly
and popularly supported entering the war as a way to protect Turkish sovereignty. Although technically
neutral, the Young Turks displayed their preference for the Central Powers in August 1914 after they
learned that two German warships, the Goeben and the Breslau, were trapped in the Mediterranean. The
Ottoman leaders offered to protect the two ships—drawing the ire of the Entente.
The Sound of Inevitability
Despite protecting German ships, the Ottoman Empire
The Goeben & the Breslau
had not yet officially allied with any of the Great War’s
The Ottoman Empire first offered asylum to the two
combatants; a chance still remained for the Ottomans
German warships, then later bought the vessels and
to side with the Entente. The Ottomans just had one
retained both crews.
iron-clad condition: if they joined the Entente, they
wanted a guarantee that Russia would not take any Ottoman territories.
If the decision had been solely up to Britain and France, the Young Turks might have joined the Entente
without further ado. Neither Britain nor France, however, was in a position to convince Russia to follow
this request; furthermore, neither of them wanted to dictate Russia’s foreign policies, as to do so might
have jeopardized their alliance. The Entente’s refusal to meet this condition pushed the Ottomans
further toward the Central Powers.
The Young Turks still did not openly declare the Ottoman Empire a part of the Central Powers; they
were not even unified in the decision to oppose the Entente. However, after much discussion, the leaders
came to the conclusion that, if they remained neutral, the winning alliance would annex the remaining
Ottoman lands and divide them up among themselves.
69
70
Greeks and Armenians especially benefited from these special treatments.
The term “Pasha” indicated a high rank within the empire.
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 43
In an effort to prevent that, Minister of War Enver approached Germany in secret. Enver offered the
German government control of the Ottoman fleet in the Black Sea under the command of German
Admiral Wilhelm Souchon. In consideration of this, Germany loaned the Ottomans a large sum of
money. Both actions took place covertly.
There was nothing furtive about the events of October
29, 1914, when several Ottoman ships, as well as the
Goeben and the Breslau, began bombarding Russian
ports on the Black Sea and sank a Russian ship.
Debate it!
Resolved: That it would have been worth losing Russia as
an ally for the Entente to gain the Ottoman Empire as one.
The Entente promptly declared war on the Ottoman Empire.
According To Plan
Winning over the Ottoman Empire represented a potentially tremendous strategic victory for the
Germans. In 1914, there were roughly 270 million Muslims in the world, yet only 30 million of them
lived in Islamic-ruled lands—mostly in the Ottoman Empire. Of the remaining 240 million, fully 140
million resided in territories controlled by the British, French, or Russians. Germany hoped that, by
allying with the Ottomans, it could help motivate those140 million foreign-dwelling Muslims in rising
up and overthrowing their Entente rulers. Germany had no vested interest in furthering Islam, but every
interest in doing all it could to hurt the Entente.
Germany was about to be severely disappointed.
Ottoman Battlegrounds: the Caucasus, Gallipoli, and the Middle East
The section of land lying between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea is known as the Caucasus71. In the
latter half of 1914, Russia deployed roughly 170,000 troops to the Caucasus in anticipation of the
Ottoman Empire’s entry into the Great War, which at that point seemed inevitable. When the Entente
declared war on the Ottomans, the Russian troops swiftly entered and claimed the Aras Valley east of
the city of Erzurum (in what is now Turkey).
The Battle of Sarikamish
At this point, weakened and destabilized by a revolution
Turkic People
and the Balkan Wars, the Ottoman Empire only had
Any of various people whose members speak languages
approximately one million troops in total. Its army
belonging to the Turkic subfamily (Turkic, Mongolian, and
lacked sufficient weapons, and horses had become
Manchu-Tungus). - Encyclopedia Britannica
scarce. Nevertheless, Turkish Minister of War Enver
planned a risky, ambitious attack on the Russians in the Aras Valley for December 22, 1914.
Enver’s goal—similar to the German-envisioned global Islamic uprising, though on a smaller scale—was
to inspire Muslims and other Turkic people in the region into a revolution. Enver thought a successful
attack on the Russians could accomplish this and, in an effort to take the enemy by surprise, orchestrated
a difficult approach to the Aras Valley by sending his troops into the snow-covered mountains
surrounding it.
Enver’s plan failed spectacularly.
71
From whence we derive the term Caucasian.
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 44
The Ottoman forces had supply line problems; transporting gear and food to the already undersupplied
soldiers became a critical roadblock. The Caucasus Mountains were deadly cold in December; Ottoman
soldiers were unprepared for temperatures that plummeted to negative 30° Fahrenheit 72, and thousands
developed severe frostbite. Despite the crippling climate, Enver’s troops faced the Russian Army of the
Caucasus for ten days near the city of Sarikamish in the Aras Valley. After suffering 80,000 casualties out
of 120,000 total soldiers, the Ottomans retreated, making the Battle of Sarikamish a resounding
Russian victory. Russian forces remained in Turkish territory until 1917.
Luckily for the Ottomans, the disastrous outcome at Sarikamish was not the rule for their efforts in the
Great War. The first great Ottoman victory came after a torturous, protracted standoff that lasted for
eleven months, between February and December 1915.
The Battle for Gallipoli
Entente leaders, frustrated by the deadlock on the
French/German border, decided to strike at the Central
Powers from a new angle. They set their sights on the
strategically valuable Dardanelles Strait. A successful
attack on the Dardanelles could:

Force it and the Bosporus open for Entente use

Open a supply route for the Russian army

Convince Romania, Bulgaria, and/or Greece to
join the Entente, since all of them depended on
the straits for their seagoing commerce
The First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill,
advocated the British Navy’s involvement. In February
1915, a combined French and British navy force, the
single largest naval force ever seen in the Mediterranean
Sea--, approached the Dardanelles. (Roughly 120
Entente ships fought in the battle over the course of the
year.) Delayed by bad weather, on April 25, Entente forces landed on the Gallipoli Peninsula and moved
to attack. The Ottomans repelled them, forcefully and repeatedly, in a series of brutal skirmishes.
The Ottoman army defending Gallipoli, supplied by Germany, employed effective defensive tactics and
fought with a ferocity that the Entente forces did not expect.73 For eight months, the invaders could
move no farther inland than the shoreline. Matters became worse for the Entente leadership in
September 1915 when Bulgaria joined the Central Powers. The entry of Bulgaria’s large, experienced
army freed Ottoman troops stationed elsewhere to come to the defense of Gallipoli, and Entente forces
withdrew from the Dardanelles in December.
Casualties from the Battle for Gallipoli exceeded half a million. The Entente lost 230,000 troops, and
the Central Powers even more: 300,000. The defeat at Gallipoli was a serious setback for the Entente.
72
73
Yes, that’s freezing degrees below freezing.
There was none of this “firing over the enemy’s heads” business this time.
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 45
The Suez Canal
The Suez Canal, located in northeastern Egypt, is an
artificial waterway connecting the Mediterranean Sea to
the Red Sea. The Red Sea, in turn, opens onto the
Indian Ocean, meaning use of the Suez Canal allowed
Britain relatively direct access to its most important
colony, India; without it, British ships would have had
to74 travel all the way around the African continent to
reach India, a journey almost twice as long as the direct
path through the canal. It also gave the British a route
to Persia (modern-day Iran) and other Asian75 parts of
the British Empire, as well as Australia. These features
made the Suez crucial to Britain for trade and
communication
The Ottoman Empire decided to take the Suez Canal
out of British hands. They also wanted to take control
of Egypt, which was British-occupied despite the fact
that the Ottoman Sultan was the country’s religious
ruler. The Ottomans launched two attacks on the Suez
Canal In 1915 and 1916. Both were unsuccessful, due
to Britain’s defensive fortifications and the canal and
deployment of two Indian divisions. The Suez Canal
and Egypt remained firmly under British rule.
Following their defense of the canal, Britain decided to
go on the offensive, and assembled a combined force of
British and Indian troops under the command of Sir
Charles Townshend. They attempted to take Baghdad in spring 1916. It was, to use current terms, an
epic fail.
Forcefully repelled from Baghdad, Townshend’s troops fell back to the city of Kut-al-Amara, where
combined German and Turkish forces laid siege to them for five months. When Townshend’s 13,000
remaining soldiers finally gave up on April 29, 1916, it marked, in the words of British historian James
Morris, “the most abject capitulation in Britain’s military history.”
One could argue that the Ottoman Empire’s primary accomplishment in Mesopotamia, the Sinai
Desert, and parts of the Middle East—intended or not—was stalling Entente forces, diverting them and
preventing them from engaging the Central Powers elsewhere. In this way, Ottoman involvement
contributed to the long, dragged-out nature of the war. They did not achieve large-scale victories, but
74
75
And did, before the canal was finished in 1869.
Iran is in Western Asia.
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 46
caused the British, French, and Russians to spend great amounts of time, effort, and resources—not just
in the areas of conflict, but also in their own lands.
Entente knowledge of Germany’s intention to foment a
global Muslim uprising caused some serious paranoia
concerning Muslims living in Entente territories.
Fearing that German/Ottoman efforts might turn those
foreign-dwelling Muslims into a revolutionary force,
the Entente felt they had no choice but to divert
significant numbers of troops to their own lands, to act
as peacekeepers. (This kind of paranoid thinking would
lead to the forced internment of Japanese-Americans
during World War II.)
Grim News for the Turks
West of Sarikamish, in Galicia, stood a fortress complex
called Erzurum. The fortress contained the majority of the Turkish artillery in the Caucasus, and
Minister Enver believed it impregnable. That belief shattered when the Russian Caucasus Army executed
a swift maneuver, surrounding Erzurum, attacking it relentlessly from all sides, and taking the fortress in
five days. Suddenly, that mass of heavy guns became Russian artillery.
Losing this arms store was just the beginning of the Ottomans’ troubles. Though they had hoped for an
Islamic revolution, what they instead found was fracturing within the Islamic world. On the Arabian
Peninsula, since 1908, discontent had been brewing toward the “Young Turks” who controlled the
Ottoman government. The leaders’ perceived anti-Arab bias sparked an Arab nationalist movement.
The movement intensified when Abdullah ibn-Hussein, the emir, or governor, of Transjordan, raised a
volunteer army of 50,000 and took Mecca, Islam’s holiest city, in modern Saudi Arabia. His army then
occupied a port on the Red Sea, and entered Damascus, capital of modern Syria 76, in October 1918.
Operating on the principle that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” other Arab forces combined
with troops from Britain and Australia, and by December 1917, held Jerusalem and much of Palestine.
This unlikely alliance benefited both the Arabs and the Entente forces; the Arabs wanted to topple the
Ottomans, and the British and Australians wanted to occupy all the Central Power land they could.
The Earth at War
Once the Ottomans entered the Great War, the conflict
spread far beyond Europe. As the widespread colonies
of each country joined the fight, it became global.
German East Africa
This German colony occupied land that today includes
Rwanda, Burundi77, and Tanzania.
The Ill-Fated German Colonies: Pacific Edition
While Germany possessed fewer and less remote colonies than Britain or France, it still had a significant
number. They comprised the Chinese port city of Tsingtao; several Pacific islands, including the
Marshall Islands, Palau, German Samoa, the Solomon Islands, and German New Guinea; and the
76
77
Now the site of a raging, ongoing civil war between government and rebel forces.
“Je suis le president de Burundi.” – Eddie Izzard
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 47
African colonies of Togoland, Cameroon, German Southwest Africa, and the vast German East Africa.
Almost as soon as the Great War began, Germany started losing those colonies.
In August 1914, 3,000 German marines were guarding Tsingtao. Once Japan declared war on Germany,
it took Tsingtao with an overwhelming 50,000 troops. Britain made no claims to Germany’s Pacific
holdings north of the equator. It sent word to Japan that the German colonies were Japan’s for the
taking; the Japanese conquered and claimed them, ticking the Marshall Islands and Palau off the
German colonial list. The only Asian colonies Germany had left were German Samoa, the Solomon
Islands, and German New Guinea (all south of the equator). Australia and New Zealand promptly
invaded and took them, definitively ending Germany’s influence in Asia.
The Ill-Fated German Colonies: Africa
Germany’s four colonies in Africa (Togoland,
Cameroon, German Southwest Africa, and German
East Africa), all relied on ship supply lines. Since the
British and French navies dominated the oceans,
Germany quickly lost these colonies during the war.
Askari
Term for a soldier or police officer in East Africa. Derives
from an Arabic word for “soldier.” - he Oxford Dictionary
Using mostly African troops—thereby diverting very
few of their own soldiers from the war in Europe—the
British took over Togoland, Cameroon, and German
Southwest Africa without much resistance. German East
Africa was a different story. The governors in German
East Africa did not wish to fight with the British or any
other European power. The colony was profitable, and
giving weapons and military training to the African
natives seemed unwise. The governors preferred a
peaceful approach to the Entente, but the German
military leaders in the colony felt differently.
Debate it!
The German Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck had a
Resolved: That it is in the interest of colonies to support
solid working relationship with the local soldiers and
their imperial governments in a war between empires.
police officers, known as askari. Defying orders from
the governors, Lettow-Vorbeck assembled a force of
Watch it on YouTube
roughly 14,000 fighters: 3,000 German nationals, and
Learn more about the Canadian conscription crisis:
11,000 askari. Taking advantage of the colony’s colossal
h t t p : / / w w w . y o u t u b e . c o m / w a t c h ? v = u g e q 0 P I ju S Q
size, roughly 400,000 square miles, Lettow-Vorbeck’s
small army moved constantly, using their knowledge of the terrain to avoid and fight back against an
arriving wave of British and Indian soldiers. It engaged, evaded, and re-engaged the Entente forces—
whose numbers there eventually swelled to 130,000—right up until the war’s end. The combined
German and askari force surrendered only when Lettow-Vorbeck heard about the truce on the Western
Front on November 25, 1918, and ordered his troops to turn themselves in. 78
Unlike Germany, the Entente powers held onto their colonies and greatly benefitted from their
contributions to the war effort. Britain commanded the largest empire on the planet—allowing it to
contribute more troops to the war than any other empire. Conscription was sometimes necessary, but
78
Followed by Lettow-Vorbeck receiving a “World’s Best Boss” coffee mug.
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 48
volunteers were plentiful in Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, and Newfoundland, where
the citizenry enthusiastically supported the war effort.
The British Colonies: Australia
An estimated 380,000 Australians volunteered for service during the war, 50,000 of them during the
war’s first year. Australian ground troops fought on the Western Front and played key roles in Egypt and
Gallipoli. Though the assault on Gallipoli failed, the ANZAC troops gained ground during the
protracted fight. Australia also created the Royal Australian Flying Corps in 1914, contributing combat
pilots who were crucial to Entente successes on the Western Front and in the Middle East.
The British Colonies: Canada
Canada sent 550,000 volunteer soldiers overseas. This
Canadian Expeditionary Force fought with distinction in many
battles in France and on the Western Front.
Despite Canada’s support of the war effort, trouble arose in
1917 when, to reinforce its volunteer soldiers, the government
introduced conscription. The draft inflamed tensions that were
already running high between the British and the Frenchspeaking province of Quebec. A recently-passed law had
banned French as a language of instruction in Quebecois
schools; deeply offended, and feeling robbed of their language,
the citizens of Quebec were in no hurry to fight for the British.
Matters grew worse following an election and a new law
requiring military service for single men ages 20 to 45
throughout the country—the first such law in Canada. Anticonscription riots exploded in Quebec, political turmoil
Watch It On YouTube!
rocked the country, and of the 120,000 Quebecois men
drafted, only 50,000 actually made it overseas. (93% of
Volunteers from ANZAC—the Australian and New Zealand
Army Corps—played a significant role in the Battle for
those who registered applied for exemptions; that,
Gallipoli.
A young, pre-scandal Mel Gibson starred in a
along with the draft’s massive unpopularity, led to
movie about the ANZAC soldiers, called Gallipoli. You can
extremely slow processing of draftees.) As a result, the
watch the trailer for it here:
Canadian Expeditionary Force remained mainly made
ht tp :/ / w w w. y o ut ub e .c om /w a tch? v= i8 e7 EC dG 6 9U
up of volunteers.
The British Colonies: India
There was no conscription in India, but thanks to a spectacularly successful recruiting effort, the British
acquired 1.3 million volunteers, and sent a full million of them into combat. Indian soldiers were a
ubiquitous presence in the Great War, serving British interests. They provided security for British oil
installations, guarded the Suez Canal, and fought the Ottoman Empire in multiple battles. Indian
soldiers also made up a significant part of the 130,000-troop presence in German East Africa. 79/80
79
80
Where they tried and repeatedly failed to catch General Lettow-Vorbeck.
This type of cat-and-mouse chase is much more amusing in cartoons than in wartime.
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 49
Long-Term Effects on the Colonies
Canada, Australia, and New Zealand all supported the war effort, and sent hundreds of thousands of
eager volunteers to fight on Britain’s behalf. These soldiers’ experiences, however, played out in a way
Britain did not expect. After their battlefield victories, the colonial troops developed national pride—not
for Britain, but for their homelands. This coincided with a pervasive sense of disillusionment in Britain,
as the colonial soldiers witnessed the massive carnage Britain’s policies had helped produce.
Ultimately, the war contributed to these colonies’ postwar independence movements. This effect was
especially apparent in India. After over a million Indian soldiers volunteered for the Great War, and
Indian leaders were given the power to organize and command those troops, the Indian perspective on
government changed. Increasingly, the Indian populace desired greater involvement and autonomy. The
British acquiesced, and in August 1917 issued the Montagu Declaration, promising India increased selfgovernment within the Commonwealth.
Bad Colonial News
Nearly two million colonial troops entered the fight in
the Great War (most of them British), providing a
distinct advantage for the Entente. Raw materials and
tax revenues from the colonies also went a long way
toward supporting the war effort.
The Kirgiz People
Learn more about this ethnic group at
www.china.org.cn/e-groups/shaoshu/shao-2-kirgiz.htm
The French received a less positive response from their colonies. The French government’s recruitment
drives triggered widespread anger: Algeria, Morocco, New Caledonia, and Indochina, among others,
staged revolutions against their French governors. The most serious of these revolts took place over nine
grueling months between 1915 and 1916 in French West Africa. Called the Grande Rivière Uprising, it
involved 160,000 insurgents, and French soldiers quelled it only with great difficulty.
The revolutions in the French colonies coincided with a massive 1916 rebellion in Russian Central Asia.
Several ethnic groups in the region, among them the Kirgiz, had been exempt from conscription, as
Tsarist Russia had effectively followed different rules for different ethnic groups. The Russian
government reversed its position, making every man eligible for the draft, regardless of ethnicity.
It took just two days for that decision to blow up in Russia’s face 81. Citizens rebelled across a wide swath
of Russian Central Asia, eventually requiring fourteen battalions of Russian soldiers and numerous
Cossacks to suppress them—to an extent. The rebellion transformed into a war between nomadic
Turkic-speaking natives of Russian Central Asia and Slavic farmers and city-dwellers. Tens of thousands
of these nomads and an estimated 3,600 Slavic settlers lost their lives.
Overall, World War I weakened the world’s empires. Colonial residents were armed and empowered to
an unprecedented degree, and Germany also found it in its own best interests to support (both with
weapons and money) colonial uprisings against Britain and France during the war.
The Eastern Front
In May 1915, German forces found themselves locked in a stalemate with the Entente on the border of
France—the Western Front. The German Chief of the General Staff, Helmuth von Moltke, decided to
81
And unfortunately, because Wile E. Coyote did not yet exist, they did not have a giant umbrella to block the explosion.
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 50
concentrate Germany’s military presence on the Eastern Front, against Russia. Unfortunately, the aid
Germany could count on from Austria, its closest ally, had begun to falter, and Austrian contributions to
the effort on the Eastern Front suffered.
Austro-Hungarian troops had sustained catastrophic losses in battle between January and April of 1915,
but the country experienced problems on the home front as well. The Austro-Hungarian army’s food
supply depended on buying enough grain from the agricultural sector of Hungary. As war-driven
shortages developed, the price of grain soared, and the Hungarians refused to give the army a discount.
A Lack of Understanding
Further tensions arose due to the makeup of the AustroHungarian army. Composed of troops from across the
empire, the army was multi-ethnic and multi-lingual. In
order to communicate effectively, military leaders had
instated a highly-trained officer corps that included
speakers of every language in the empire—but in 1914, a
large percentage of those officers died in battle.
The military replaced those officers with less-well-trained
men who spoke only German; this created
communication issues for many of the troops, including
Czechs, Poles, Ukrainians, and Slovenes. The gaps in
communication contributed to breakdowns in discipline
and a drop in troop morale. Slavic soldiers began
surrendering to Entente forces in large numbers, and
Ukrainians and Poles deliberately missed their targets on
the battlefield when faced with fellow members of their
own ethnicities in the Russian army.
The Austro-Hungarian army could not afford these
losses. By August 1914, the Habsburg Empire had called up 3.5 million men, including nearly all its
reservists. By March 1915, the empire’s casualties numbered almost 2 million, and it began conscripting
new soldiers and sending them into battle with little training.
The Gorlice-Tarnów Offensive
Thanks to the German General von Falkenhayn’s
“By spring of 1915, the Austrian Army
orders to establish defense-centric positions in the West
seemed to be on the verge of
and to divert as many troops to the East as possible, by
disintegration, and the process could
May 1915, the Central Powers finally outnumbered the
seemingly only be halted if the Germans
Russians. The advantage was limited—109 divisions to
intervened.”- Historian Norman Stone
100—but it gave them the confidence to launch an
offensive. On May 2, 1915, a German and Austrian force unleashed a devastating artillery attack on the
Russian-occupied region of Galicia, followed by a charge that broke through the Russian lines near the
Galician cities of Gorlice and Tarnów. The offensive was even more effective than the Germans and
Austrians had hoped. In the first two days, they captured roughly 140,000 Russian prisoners.
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 51
The Russian Retreat
General von Falkenhayn had expressed interest in withdrawing from France in the West and negotiating
a peace with Russia. Following the staggeringly successful Gorlice-Tarnów Offensive, von Falkenhayn
still wanted peace with Russia—but now believed he could force the Russians to surrender.
In the West, artillery barrages had been largely ineffective against the French and British troops’ deep
network of trenches and earthen barriers82. On Russian soil, by contrast, artillery barrages did great
damage to the much shallower trenches. Launching barrage after barrage, the Central Powers troops
broke through the defenders and pushed into Russian territory.
In addition to shallow trenches, the Russian method of using reserve troops hurt them in the long run.
The Russian army deployed nearly all of its reserves directly on the front line. This meant that when
German and Austrian forces pushed into Russian territory, there were no reserve troops there to repel
them. Russia’s lack of defense against invasion led to a “war of movement 83” in which German and
Austrian troops repeatedly flanked, encircled, and captured Russian soldiers. The number of Russian
POWs skyrocketed into the hundreds of thousands as the offensive continued.
Unlike the extensive, efficient railway systems in the west, and despite improvements made using French
loans, Russian railroads were still sparsely-placed, inefficient, and overburdened. Without a reliable way
to shuttle troops to breakthrough points (places on the front line being targeted by a concentrated
attack) as needed, the front lines were rendered especially vulnerable.
By September, the German and Austrian armies occupied large parts of the territories that made up
modern-day Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine. Knowing it could not stop the advance, Russia
began preparing to evacuate the historic city of Kiev 84, which the German army would eventually occupy
from March to November 1918.
The offensive that began in Gorlice and Tarnów would eventually cause 1.4 million Russian casualties,
roughly half of them prisoners of war.
Big Changes for Russia
The German offensive that began in Gorlice and Tarnów gained momentum and kept rolling through
western Russia. The Russian people began calling this continued assault and its effects “the Great Retreat.”
The Russian military failed in many respects during this assault. The German forces overwhelmed and
occupied enormous expanses of Russian land, confiscating every bit of military hardware they found
along the way; this included all the weapons held in fortresses that had not been evacuated in time.
In the Lithuanian region of Kovno, in a single hastily-evacuated fortress the Germans took, they found:
82

1,300 artillery guns

53,000 rounds of heavy artillery shells

800,000 rounds of field (lighter) artillery shells85
Earthworms in Europe must have considered World War I either the best or worst thing ever.
I prefer fast-forward motion wars, because the soldiers sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks.
84
At its medieval inception, the Russian nation was centered in Kiev and called “Kievan Rus’.”
85
In military terms, this is called a jackpot.
83
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 52
The Russians left many more such fortresses for the taking, with comparable stores of weaponry and
ammunition, as they fled.
By autumn 1915, the Germans had inflicted devastation on the
Russian people. Fully thirteen percent of the Russian
population (23 million individuals) now lived in Germanoccupied territory, which included some of the more
industrialized regions and cities in what would become Poland.
The Germans transported more than a million captured
Russian soldiers back to Germany, putting them to work in
fields and factories. The number of soldiers on the Russian
front line fell to a third of those deployed in 1914; 60,000 of
the casualties were officers who were replaced by less
experienced men.
Evacuations Meets Persecution
The invasion triggered aggressive xenophobia86 in the Russian
army, which turned on its own populace in an effort to leave the evacuated land as useless to Germany as
possible
Russian soldiers targeted Germans living on Russian
territory as well as Jews. Russian soldiers drove a full
million Germans and Jews out of their homes and
herded them into the country’s central region. The
Russian military justified this by leveling fabricated, often
ludicrous charges of treason against them.
Pogrom
An organized massacre of helpless people; specifically,
such a massacre of Jews. - Merriam-Webster
Cossack units on the front line were given free rein to treat
Jews in whatever manner they chose; this resulted in thousands
of Jews being brutalized, robbed, and killed87 in the path of the
Great Retreat. This violence against Jews was known as a
pogrom. It had happened before in Russia, but it was the first
time the military had participated so actively in the violence.
It’s Hard to be Tsar
Tsar Nicholas II had allowed the establishment of the Duma,
or parliament, yet wanted to continue governing Russia as
closely as possible to tradition—that is without the input of the
general populace. To reinforce his power, he appointed
ministers in the government who shared his views, one of
which was keeping Russian society out of the war effort.
In May 1915—shortly after the German army broke through
the Russian front line and began storming across the country—
xenophobia melded with anger at Tsar Nicholas and led to a
86
87
Fear of people or things that seem strange or foreign.
It makes you wonder about the Russian soldiers who themselves were of German of Jewish heritage.
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 53
violent three-day riot in Moscow. The Russian populace felt the Tsar was ignoring the German threat to
the country, and, if left to his own devices, would passively watch as the country fell.
The members of the Duma, excluding only the most radical fringe parties, united in support of the
people. Calling themselves the “Progressive Bloc,” they presented a list of demands to Tsar Nicholas,
insisting he allow the country to support the Russian military. Nicholas reluctantly agreed.
The country immediately mobilized, bringing Russia to a “total war” status. The rest of 1915 saw
widespread cooperation between factory owners and political figures as they organized aid for refugees
and wounded soldiers and massively increased production of weaponry.
Seeing the success of this cooperative effort, Nicholas overcame his fear that the people’s involvement
would threaten his political position. He gave his blessing to the mobilization of Russia and replaced the
reactionary ministers he had chosen with moderate politicians who were popular with the citizenry.
The new Minister of War, Aleksei Polivanov, had a reputation as a modernizer. Under his leadership,
military output more than doubled, and production of shells quadrupled from May to November 1916.
Despite the atrocities of the retreating troops in the west, the Russian people rallied behind the war
effort, converting much of its economy to military production.
No Peace
On September 5, 1914, Russia pledged to the other members of the Entente that it would not negotiate
a peace with the Central Powers separate from them. Following that, in March 1915, the other Entente
powers signed a secret pact with Russia stating that, upon winning the war, Russia would be granted
control of the Dardanelles and Bosporus Straits as well as the Turkish capital, Istanbul 88.
With those political incentives in place, and its economy shifting into dedicated war production, Russia
rebounded and halted the German invasion. Germany had advanced considerably into Russian territory,
but the Russian Empire was so vast that it was able to weather its losses—almost literally. As the brutally
cold Russian winter approached, Germany was forced to admit it had fallen short. German military
leaders sent messages to the Tsar proposing peace—but they went unanswered 89.
Meanwhile, In Italy...
Before the war, Italy had been a member of the Central Powers—at least on paper. Germany assumed it
could count on help from Italy once the conflict began. A couple of crucial events rendered that
assumption null and void:

A right-wing government seized power in Italy, cancelling many of the political agreements the
former government had made.

The Entente promised Italy that, if it joined their side, it would receive territory from Austria.
On May 23, 1915, Italy officially joined the Entente and declared war on Austria. At first, Italy looked
as if it could provide the Entente a great deal of much-needed help; it boasted an army of 1.2 million
men and several industrialized cities, each of which could supply weaponry and ammunition—in theory.
88
89
Not Constantinople, because we can’t go back to Constantinople.
This turned out to be a literally fatal mistake for the Tsar.
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 54
In reality, Italy’s military was underequipped. The Italian army faced another real problem: nearly the
entire border between Italy and Austria—all 600 kilometers of it—was made up of mountains 90. This
natural barrier91 favored the defenders; Austrian troops set up strong positions, waited for the Italian
army make the arduous journey over the mountain range, and then opened fire. In four battles along the
Isonzo River in 1915 alone, Austria inflicted 235,000 casualties.
Despite Italy’s failure to gain new land, it did keep the Austrian army occupied and prevented military
and economic aid from reaching Austria through its territory.
A (Doomed) British Breakthrough
In an attempt to counteract the German invasion of Russia by luring German troops back to the
Western Front, Britain sent large numbers of troops into the region around Loos, France. These soldiers
joined the French army in a number of offensives, most significantly the Third Battle of Artois.
This battle is very historically noteworthy for two reasons:
1. The British used weaponized chlorine gas in battle for the first time, though largely unsuccessfully.
2. The British also employed combat aircraft to spot artillery targets and delivered the first effective
tactical aerial bombing run in history.
The French and British troops broke through the first line of the German defense—the elaborate,
reinforced, and deeply-embedded trench system put in place by Erich von Falkenhayn. Following von
Falkenhayn’s design, the German troops fell back to their secondary defensive line and opened machine
gun fire on the Entente forces. Germany had left only the bare minimum number of soldiers to defend
the Western Front, per von Falkenhayn’s design, and those troops felt the pressure of the poison gas and
unprecedented aerial attacks. Nevertheless, the German lines held, and German troops quickly dug
another defensive position three kilometers (less than two miles) back from the original.
The British and French gained very little ground from this offensive and suffered immense losses: in
three weeks of fighting, between September 25 and October 14, 1915, France sustained 200,000
casualties, and Britain 50,000. Germany lost only 60,000 out of 300,000 soldiers in the battle. The
French had suffered 2,700 casualties per square kilometer gained.
A Message to Bulgaria92
One of the Entente’s hopes in taking the Bosporus and Dardanelles was to entice Bulgaria to join them.
During that catastrophically unsuccessful attempt, the Central Powers approached Bulgaria with another
persuasive argument. Serbia was a massive rival of Bulgaria’s, and the Central Powers promised Bulgaria
two things if it joined them:
1. The Central Powers would attack Serbia.
2. The Serbian territory known as Macedonia would be granted to Bulgaria after the war ended.
Bulgaria agreed to join the Central Powers. The attack on Serbia took place as promised, with Germany
contributing some of its own troops. It succeeded: the Serbian army took the heaviest losses of any
90
Those pesky Alps.
The town of Bolzano in that region is home to one of the world’s most famous mummies: http://ow.ly/lHV9m
92
Are you there, Bulgaria? It’s me, Entente.
91
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 55
country in the war and was forced into a mass retreat—first to a Greek island in the Ionian Sea called
Corfu and then to Salonika on the Greek mainland.
The Onset of Russian Winter
Part of what stopped the German/Austrian invasion of Russia
was the Russian people’s unity and support for the war effort.
The other part was the arrival of the harsh Russian winter—
which was more than most of its invaders could endure93. Due to
the cold, between late fall1915 and early 1916, the focus of the
Central Powers steadily shifted back to the West,
Total War, 1915 - 1917
Strategy
When the war began, France had embraced a new strategy that
emphasized offense over defense. In 1915, with the German
defensive lines on the Western Front firmly established, French
and British forces launched a series of attacks against those lines
that gained virtually no ground and cost the Entente tens of
thousands of casualties.
Both British and French generals felt it necessary to keep up
these assaults, in part because of Germany’s ability to route
troops quickly and efficiently from one battleground to another
via its dense, advanced railway system. Historians’ opinions differ
on whether these attacks were intended to draw troops from the
Eastern Front and take pressure off the Russian army, but they did achieve that effect to some degree.
Likewise, the Russian offensives into East Prussia relieved some of the German military pressure on
France.
Trench Warfare
The harsh nature of trench warfare convinced both the Entente and the Central Powers that machine
guns and artillery were the keys to victory. While machine gun fire wreaked havoc on the soldiers trying
to advance from trench to trench, artillery—if concentrated enough—could wipe out barbed wire,
mines, and the trenches themselves. Consequently, both sides vastly increased production of explosive
shells94, but in the long run, the Entente out-produced the Central Powers.
Personnel
The Entente and Central Powers both suffered enormous numbers of casualties, especially on the two
main battle lines of the war: the Western Front, between France and Germany, and the Eastern Front,
between Germany and Russia. Losses aside, the Entente and the Central Powers remained convinced
93
94
Western Russia isn’t the coldest Russian region, but its winter temperatures can still be -4F° to -22F°.
This is also the chosen weaponry of mermaids.
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 56
that numerical superiority would win the war; because of this, even as the number of soldiers killed or
wounded soared, more and more troops entered the conflict.
Britain had historically relied on professional volunteer armies, but in 1916 it decided to start using
conscription. The ranks of the British army quickly swelled.
Countries already employing conscription had traditionally provided exemptions for certain categories of
people, such as primary breadwinners95, workers in strategic professions, skilled laborers, members of
certain ethnic and religious groups, and natives of certain regions. Those exemptions steadily dwindled
as countries needed more troops. Like Britain, Austria-Hungary, Russia, France, Germany, and Turkey
were able to replace many of their casualties with new conscripts.
The United States did not enter the war until 1917, but by May 1918 had brought more than a million
troops into the conflict.
How to Make Ireland Really Angry96
The increasingly liberal use of conscription worked better in some locations than others. When Britain
extended the practice to Ireland, it fueled an already-growing sense of nationalism, which then exploded
in the Easter 1916 uprising.97 Along with other conflicts, the uprising eventually led to the Irish
declaration of independence in January 1919. Britain officially recognized this independence with the
Anglo-Irish Treaty of December1921.
Arming the Colonies and Dispensing with Exemptions
British colonial administrators initially hesitated to provide their subjects with weapons and military
training, fearing doing so would fuel rebellions. As the war progressed and more troops were needed,
arming the colonials and bringing them into the war gained plenty of support.
In Russia, exemptions from conscription for primary breadwinners and several ethnic minorities were
summarily jettisoned. Additionally, a new set of rules for the Russian military, enacted during the height
of the German invasion, placed a large number of behind-the-front soldiers right up at the front lines.
The lack of exemptions, along with the new military rules, led to a wave of strikes, protests, and riots. In
the vast steppe region of Russian Central Asia, the Kirgiz ethnic group (along with some other nomadic
and Muslim natives) rebelled against conscription in a series of bloody skirmishes that ended only after
tens of thousands of Kirgiz were killed.
Every military force involved in the war needed troops and was determined to take any necessary actions
to bring them into the fight. In Russia, extending the draft ultimately led to a mutiny that would topple
Tsar Nicholas II and the tradition of Russian monarchy.
The Battle of Verdun
The rapidly increasing influxes of artillery shells, ammunition, and inexperienced troops combined to
produce a series of battles with incredibly high casualty rates on the Western Front. This destructive
trend continued with the Battle of Verdun.
95
Or, for the gluten-free, primary potato-winners.
If you want to, for some death-wish-type reason.
97
To learn more about the uprising, take a look here: http://bbc.in/9BBMIu
96
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 57
At a meeting in December 1915, Entente commanders agreed to launch coordinated offensives at the
Somme River. While they were planning them, German General Erich von Falkenhayn came to a
different conclusion: he would fight in a way that, while gaining no ground for the Germans, would
defeat the French by forcing heavy losses that would obliterate their resources.
This approach to war—defeating one’s enemy by wearing them
down—is called a war of attrition.
Von Falkenhayn chose the French city of Verdun to enact his
plan. Verdun was a historic city and a place of pride for the
French people, and von Falkenhayn correctly assumed that if
his troops threatened the city, France would send as many
soldiers as it took to protect it. On top of that, Verdun was
situated in a bulge in the front line—a salient—and threatened
German communications.
Von Falkenhayn sent a group of soldiers in to attack the city in
order to lure as many French troops into Verdun as possible. In
preparation for their arrival, he massed artillery to the city’s north and east.
The French General Joffre did not want to commit large numbers of troops to the defense of Verdun,
because he considered it strategically unimportant. The French Premier, Aristide Briand, disagreed
sharply, maintaining that Verdun was critical to keeping up France’s morale. Accordingly, French troops
entered the city and manned its outlying forts to bolster its defense.
On February 21, 1916, von Falkenhayn determined that enough of France’s soldiers had arrived, and
gave the order for an unprecedented barrage of artillery. 1,200 heavy guns pummeled Verdun and its
defenses. In a single day, von Falkenhayn’s gunners dropped seventeen and a half rail cars full of artillery
on the French city.
Von Falkenhayn was denied a swift victory, however, thanks to the efficiency of the French army, and
the Battle of Verdun dragged from February to December 1916. During that time, the two sides
launched ten million artillery shells at each other, totaling 1.35 million tons of steel 98. The Germans also
introduced two new weapons: the flamethrower, which emitted a devastating column of fire99, and an
asphyxiating gas called phosgene. Both did horrific damage, but neither turned the tide of the battle.
Alternate Transportation
The Germans had destroyed the main rail line leading into Verdun in an attempt to cut the French
forces off from their supply line. In a burst of ingenuity and hard work, France deployed 9,000 men to
build and maintain roads to the city and organized a fleet of 3,500 trucks to haul in food, shells, and
new soldiers. At its peak, the system saw 1,700 trucks making a daily round trip. Because of this reengineered yet highly successful supply line, the French artillery ultimately launched more shells at the
Germans than the Germans had fired at Verdun. According to historian Holger Helwig 100, about 58%
of all German deaths at the battle resulted from artillery damage.
98
Imagine how many paper clips you could make out of that.
Suitable for clearing out pillboxes or trenches, provided it didn’t explode on its own (which some did)
100
And the Angry Inch.
99
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 58
Hazardous Landscape
Much of Verdun and its
Watch it on YouTube
surroundings were reduced to a
A WWI veteran and nurse talk about shell shock at: http :// ow .l y/ lIA8i
field of rubble so barren it
resembled the lunar landscape.
Deep shell craters pocked the ground, each presenting its own biohazard: water, decaying bodies, even
heavier-than-air poison gases. Attracted to the corpses, rats and lice spread disease and infection.
Aside from the tangible damages caused by this battle and others like it, soldiers also frequently suffered
from debilitating psychological traumas such as shell shock. Well aware of the horrors of the battlefield
and their effect on the human psyche, the French developed a system of duty rotation: soldiers
alternated serving at the front with performing duties behind the lines. General Philippe Pétain, in
charge of the French forces at Verdun, believed that a typical soldier could endure only eight to ten days
in the trenches before losing most of his effectiveness.
In late June—the middle of the long, grinding battle—the Germans began to gain an advantage, so
General Pétain made preparations to evacuate the east bank of the Meuse River—a location which, if
Germany had claimed it, would have given the German troops a solid foothold.
The evacuation never happened. A surprisingly effective Russian assault on the Galician front had taken
place only weeks before, on June 4, and in July, the Entente launched its offensive at the Somme River.
These offensives gave Germany no choice but to divert troops. They also meant Germany could no
longer replace its casualties at Verdun, so they signaled the beginning of the end of the battle.
The French troops at Verdun began making gains in October, slowly reclaiming all of Verdun’s forts
over the next several weeks. In December, General von Falkenhayn had no option but to admit that his
war of attrition had failed: the French army had not been bled dry. Germany called off the attack.
Von Falkenhayn lost his position as Chief of the General Staff101, and was replaced by Paul von
Hindenburg, the general responsible for obliterating the Russian Second Army at the Battle of
Tannenburg in East Prussia.102 Philippe Pétain, on the other hand, became a hero of the French people.
All told, the Battle of Verdun claimed an estimated 362,000 French casualties and 336,000 German
casualties. More than forty percent of those soldiers died—yet hardly any territory changed hands. 103
A Sharp Learning Curve
As mind-boggling as the destruction at Verdun was, the Western Front battles of 1914 and 1915 cost
even more lives.
Trench warfare had never been used on such a large scale, and soldiers at first tried traditional tactics
such as charging on foot across the “no-man’s land” between enemy lines. The presence of machine guns
quickly convinced both sides that this strategy was futile; even if troops could break through one
defensive line, which was next to impossible, the next line inevitably opened fire, mowing the attackers
down by the hundreds.
101
He was given another post in the German army. Von Falkenhayn retired in 1919 and died in 1922.
Von Hindenburg received extensive authority over not just military, but also domestic matters.
103
As Edwin Starr would sing in the 1960s, “War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothin’!”
102
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 59
The trenches were so improved that even immense barrages of
artillery could not destroy them. Because both sides began using
elaborate, multi-line trench construction, by 1916 only the most
intensive shelling could prompt either side to charge.
Germany had tried to circumvent the Entente’s robust trench
defenses by using poison gases, but soon even that proved
ineffective; Entente suppliers gave troops new, more effective gas
masks, which nullified the threat of poison.
Both the Entente and the Central Powers came to the same
conclusion: the war on the Western Front would have to be a
war of attrition.
The Brusilov Offensive
The Incredible Shrinking Troop Commitment
To backtrack slightly: in December 1915, Entente leaders agreed
to coordinate a series of massive, combined-forces frontal assaults
on German lines at some point in 1916. France’s General Joffre
had pushed for these offensives. On May 26, 1916, he attended
another meeting of the Entente leadership, where he pointed out
the carnage underway at Verdun. Joffre also reminded his fellow leaders how much of France’s army was
tied up because of the Verdun battle: he had deployed fifty-two divisions there, and two-thirds of the
French army reserves had also been committed to the necessary troop rotations. The battle had already
cost France 150,000 casualties104.
According to Joffre, the Entente had to launch new offensives as soon as possible to relieve pressure on
the overburdened French military at Verdun. The Entente leadership consented, and in May and June
1916 began staging the offensives. Because they were already spread so thin, the number of troops
France could commit to the offensives would have to be limited.
In January 1916, Joffre had agreed to commit forty-two French divisions. In February, that number
dropped to thirty-nine. In April, it fell to thirty, and in May to twenty-two. In June, shortly before the
assaults launched, the number of French divisions committed to them came down to eleven.
French troops may have played a shrinking role in the planned offensive due to General Pétain’s rapid
rotation system. If he had not required so many reserves to make the system work, those men could have
been committed to the upcoming attack. If he had not used this system, however, his troops at Verdun
may well have lost their combat effectiveness and therefore lost the battle, and the city, to Germany.
With France underrepresented, the frontal assaults had to rely more on British troops than the Entente
leaders had planned, and the offensive force was smaller than initially envisioned. At France’s urging, the
offensive also involved Italy and Russia.
104
That’s a little under three full Yankee Stadiums’ worth of soldiers.
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 60
The Lake Narocz Disaster
Russia led the way on March 18, 1916. The Russian plan involved a diversionary tactic on the Austrian
front, followed by a concentrated attack on German lines from the north at Lake Narocz (in modernday Belarus). In the planning stages, the assault seemed optimistic for Russia. Russian troops
outnumbered the Germans 350,000 to 75,000, and had three times as many guns and enough artillery
shells for a relentless two-day barrage.
Once launched, the assault became a catastrophe, hampered by the same lack of communication that
had devastated the First and Second Russian Armies in East Prussia. The Russian artillery troops, though
plentiful in number, did not have access to accurate targeting information and failed to coordinate their
shell barrages with infantry assaults. The artillery often missed their targets and failed to provide cover
for charging infantry, who ran straight into waiting German machine gun fire.
The Russians suffered 100,000 casualties to the Germans’ 20,000. Russia called off the attack and
retreated. The defeat was so profound that most of Russia’s generals decided never to launch any more
offensives.
Brusilov Steps Up
In mid-May, when everything was going wrong for the Russians at Lake Narocz, Austria launched an
unexpected and quite successful offensive into Italy. Sending troops through mountain valleys, Austria
took 40,000 Italian prisoners and began maneuvering to cut off the main Italian army. Panicked, Italy
begged Russia for help. Tsar Nicholas wanted to help Italy and asked his generals to suggest plans for an
offensive against Austria—but fresh from the Lake Narocz pummeling, the tsar’s generals responded
with a near-unanimous and heartfelt refusal.
The dissenting opinion came from General Alexei Brusilov, stationed on the Galician front with
Austria. He had long been making plans for just such an offensive, and detailed them for the other
generals. The Brusilov plan involved:
1. Digging narrow, covered trenches (called sapper trenches) very close to enemy lines, so that
when the order to charge came, soldiers would have much less exposed distance to run 105
2. Using aerial photography from the Russian Air Force to map out artillery targets
3. Hiding reserves in deep dugouts, ready to move when needed
4. Taking advantage of the non-encrypted Russian military communications to feed the enemy
large amounts of misinformation regarding troop placement and movement
Brusilov also planned a key tactical innovation: launch multiple attacks along a thirty-kilometer front.
This multi-point attack would prevent the enemy from concentrating troops and artillery fire on a single
point—a problem that had fueled the devastation at Lake Narocz.
The Russian and Austrian armies on the Galician front were closely matched; Russia had a slight
advantage in guns and troops (600,000 to 500,000). Austria’s forces had been diminished when most of
the twenty German divisions on the Austrian front were reassigned to the assault at Verdun.
105
One thing is for certain: you don’t saunter across the no man’s land between trenches.
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Fearing that the Austrian units assaulting Italy would return to
the Austrian/Russian front if Italy dropped out of the war,
Russian Commander in Chief Mikhail V. Alekseev championed
Brusilov’s plan. Furthermore, he insisted that it be launched
earlier than Brusilov intended.
General Brusilov agreed to the stepped-up timetable and ordered
his troops to attack on June 4, a month ahead of schedule—yet
the offensive still worked exactly as intended.

Multiple artillery bombardments along the thirtykilometer front left the Austrians confused as to where
they should concentrate troops; large portions of
Austrian soldiers were shuttled back and forth, reducing
their contributions to the fight.

Brusilov’s accurate bombardments neutralized Austrian
artillery emplacements, cleared the barbed wire from
much of the no-man’s land, and obliterated the first
Austrian trench.

Russian soldiers charged from the hidden sapper
trenches and advanced so quickly they caught many Austrian soldiers still in their own dugouts.
Within a week, Brusilov’s forces took 200,000 Austrian prisoners; the Austrian casualty rate was a
staggering 50%. Brusilov occupied a new swath of land in Galicia and Bukovina, a region in present-day
Romania and Ukraine.
Taking the Bad with the Good
As impressive as Brusilov’s assault was, it was not a major turning point. A month after the offensive
launched, Russian forces began another to the north at Baranovichi, in present-day Belarus. Like the
attack at Lake Narocz, it was a disaster; over six days—July 2 to July 8—the Russian army suffered
80,000 casualties (compared to German losses of 16,000) and gained no ground at all.
Still, the Brusilov Offensive accomplished a great deal; Austria canceled its incursion into Italy, pulling
its forces back to the Galician front, and Germany diverted troops from Verdun, relieving the French
army. The offensive, according to historian Holger Herwig, was “a blow from which the Habsburg
Army never recovered.” By the time it ended, Austro-Hungarian casualties numbered as high as
750,000, including 380,000 prisoners of war. In the wake of these losses, Germany fully took command
of the remains of the Austrian army and assumed control over all military actions on the Eastern Front.
The Somme Offensive
During the week leading up to July 1, 1916, thirteen British and eleven French army divisions
bombarded the German front around the Somme River with a massive artillery barrage.
The British had many more heavy guns than the Germans had used at Verdun—1,437 to be exact,
which meant one gun for every seventeen yards of front. The artillery barrage rained down 1.5 million
shells on the German front–yet accomplished almost nothing. There were several reasons for this failure:
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 62
1. The British artillery branch had been cobbled together from conscripts with very little training,
and its gunners could not hit targets accurately. They were so ill-trained they could not
effectively target the German first trench in many sectors, because it lay too close to the British
trenches; their margins for error in calculating where the shells would land was so great that they
might have brought the barrage down on British troops.
2. The guns were not heavy enough (they could not fire large enough shells) to penetrate and
destroy the deeply-dug German trenches and bunkers; the German telephone lines were also
deeply buried, so the barrage could not disrupt communications either.
3. Since the French/German front had not seen much action since 1914, the Germans had had
time to place extensive amounts of barbed wire in no-man’s land—too much for the light
artillery to destroy.
4. Limits of artillery shell technology in 1916 meant that shells exploded only when they hit the
ground (as opposed to later “graze fuse” shells, which could detonate upon touching a single
wire). Consequently, during the Somme Offensive, the exploding shells only tangled the wire
rather than destroying it.
All that the week-long barrage managed to accomplish was thoroughly ruining any sense of surprise 106.
Consequently, and because many of the German first-line trenches had not been damaged at all, when
British forces charged on July 1, German machine gunners emerged from the trenches and slaughtered
them. The casualties the British suffered on that single day count among the worst in the history of
warfare. Almost one fifth of the troops died. Out of 57,470 casualties, 19,240 were fatalities.
Haig’s Refusal
Over the following days, General Joffre repeatedly demanded the British combine their forces with the
French and launch another large-scale, concentrated assault. Sir Douglas Haig, leader of the British
forces, flatly refused. Instead of risking another massacre, Haig favored smaller-scale assaults, each
involving a handful of divisions. Between July 2 and July 12, Haig launched forty-six such attacks.
The attacks were poorly coordinated, leading to another 25,000 casualties. One of Haig’s main problems
was the system, defense in depth107, which the Germans used on the Western Front: they manned their
front lines with as few troops as possible but held large reserves in the rear. Whenever a small number of
British troops broke through a German line, the reserves could deploy from the rear and flank the
invaders. These counterattacks established a pattern: small British offensives found initial success, but
were soon reversed.
Tanks, Planes, Rain and Mud
On September 15, 1916, tanks were used for the first time in a military offensive—for all the good it
did. They were somewhat effective initially, protecting infantry as they advanced 3.5 kilometers (slightly
more than two miles). After that, the tanks’ problems rapidly began to outweigh their benefits, since
they broke down frequently, could not withstand artillery, and lacked sufficient armor.
106
107
Fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.
As opposed to, perhaps, defense in snippets.
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 63
After a few days, it began to rain, and the tanks became
hopelessly mired in the mud.108 Air support was also
insufficient. On paper, Britain had a real advantage over the
Central Powers in the air—but in actual battles, overcast skies
and rain limited what the planes could accomplish or even kept
them grounded. In modern combat, planes can be used for
aerial photography, reconnaissance, and the transmission of
data to artillery, in 1916, none of those technologies were
usable yet. British versus German casualty figures at the
Somme clearly favor the German defenders.
Results of the Somme Offensive
The Somme Offensive was a defeat for the French, who
suffered nearly 200,000 casualties, but, for the British, it was
even worse: according to historian John Keegan, it was the
greatest military tragedy in all of British history. Britain
sustained 423,000 casualties; 150,000 died, and another
100,000 were wounded too badly ever to return to combat.
Germany took only 230,000 casualties. The Somme
Offensive’s utter failure demonstrated the futility of frontal
assaults in the face of German defensive techniques and
strategies.
A Bad Time to be Romanian
The success of the Brusilov Offensive prompted Romania to enter the war on the side of the Entente. As
soon as the Romanians did so, a combined force of Austrian, German, Bulgarian, and Turkish forces
utterly demolished their 620,000-man army and conquered and occupied Romania. The Central Powers
began stripping the country of its resources, extracting more than a million gallons of oil, two million
tons of grain, and large quantities of meat and timber per year.
British historian Norman Stone has argued that Romania’s joining the Entente helped the Central
Powers more than it hurt them; it gave the Central Powers a rich base of resources to exploit and forced
Russia to deploy twenty-seven divisions along the new, 270-kilometer long Romanian front.
A Pyrrhic Victory
Though the Brusilov Offensive appeared to succeed, it hurt Russia at least as much as it helped. In
summer 1916, the Russian army lost 2 million casualties, half of whom died. By late 1916, total Russian
losses numbered almost 2 million dead, 8 million wounded, and roughly 2 million prisoners of war.
Having so many soldiers out of commission was a chief driving force behind increased conscription.
Older men, other previously exempted categories, and ethnic minorities were suddenly called to serve.
The makeup of Russia’s armed forces was changing as a result. Military service, particularly the officers’
corps, had long been reserved for men of noble birth—but, in late 1916, most of the noble-born officers
had been killed or otherwise knocked out of action. Increasingly, members of the middle and lower class
became soldiers and officers. While this unexpected compulsory service infuriated many men, it also
108
Changing their limited effectiveness to complete ineffectiveness.
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gave them opportunities previously been reserved for the aristocracy, and thus afforded them a new sense
of empowerment. In this way, the massive casualties of the Great War helped cultivate the leaders and
the spirited ambitions of the massive Russian revolutions and mutinies of 1917.
Blockades and Naval Combat
Sending millions of men to fight put an immense strain on the domestic economies of every
participating country.

Productivity suffered on factories and farms.

Soldiers left their jobs, and with them the tax revenues they would have paid.

The government had to pay for the transport, feeding, clothing, and medical care of soldiers.
Even before the Great War began, the Central Powers and Russia both heavily relied on naval commerce
to bring in much-needed supplies, and when naval blockades went up, they dealt a near-crippling blow.
Russian Ports and Harsh Adjustments
Just about every year-round accessible Russian port was
located on the Black Sea. When the Ottoman Empire
entered the war, it cut off access to all the Black Sea
ports, severing Russia’s best connection to international
trade. There were other ports, but winter iced them in.
The German navy had already blockaded the Baltic
ports to the north, and the far northern ports of
Murmansk and Archangel lacked railroads to connect
them to the rest of the country.
Of all Russia’s ports, exactly one stayed ice-free all year
long and was somewhere other than the Black Sea. This
was Vladivostok, eleven time zones east109 of the
Eastern Front. When trying to send supplies and
weapons to Russia, the Entente had no choice other
than to use the single-track Trans-Siberian Railway,
which connected Europe to Vladivostok. This created a massive bottleneck, since the railway could not
handle that much cargo; supplies piled up in Vladivostok, unable to be distributed.
At the beginning of the war, Russia was in dire need of artillery shells and firearms, and the naval
blockade made it extremely difficult to obtain either. Only after the Great Retreat, when Tsar Nicholas
II at last approved full-scale Russian mobilization, was the country able to produce enough weaponry on
its own.
This economic mobilization exacted a steep price. Before the war, Russia devoted about five percent of
its economy to military production. In 1915, that figure abruptly increased to about thirty-three
percent, as Russian manufacturers ramped up production to meet the needs of the army facing the
109
“Vostok” means “east.”
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German invasion. This sudden shift dealt a blow to the other sixty-six percent of the country’s economy.
Consumers faced steep price increases and shortages, especially in cities.
Blockading the Central Powers
Spearheaded by Britain, the Entente attempted to cut the Central Powers off from international trade. If
it worked, this would damage their economy and make it difficult or impossible to maintain their armed
forces—exactly what the Ottomans did to the Russians by controlling the Black Sea.
To accomplish the task, the Entente relied on Britain’s
Debate it!
fleet, the largest, most powerful naval force on the planet.
Resolved: That the civilian suffering and death caused by
It boasted twenty-nine battleships and cruisers compared
naval
blockades was justifiable as a means to end the war.
to Germany’s eighteen, and could fuel its ships efficiently
through the British Empire’s vast network of coaling stations.
Germany thought it had an advantage in its system of encrypted wireless messages—but the British
cracked the German code three months into the war, allowing them to respond quickly and effectively
to German naval movements.
None Shall Pass
Neither Britain nor Germany wanted a head-to-head battle
between their most valuable ships110. Instead, Germany
sought to overcome the British naval superiority bit by bit.
Its military leaders believed that, by orchestrating raids and
submarine attacks, laying mines, and using coastal artillery
batteries, they could erode the British fleet until Germany
and Britain were more evenly balanced.
In essence, Britain beat Germany to the punch by
blockading the entrance to the North Sea with ships and
underwater mines. This confined the western German
navy to the waters near Germany’s coast for the rest of the
war. Germany responded by seizing control of the Baltic
Sea, trapping the Russian fleet in its ports with extensive
underwater minefields.
The German merchant marine, second in size only to the British, was also largely hemmed in and
neutralized, its ships captured and confined to ports in neutral countries or in Germany. In the Baltic
Sea, which had quickly fallen under German control, trade carried on as usual.
The German Navy in the Pacific
Aside from the Black Sea, the only place the German navy still enjoyed freedom was the Pacific Ocean.
The most powerful German naval group in the Pacific was the East Asiatic Squadron, a group of fast
cruisers commanded by Rear Admiral Maximilian von Spee.
110
This is the key difference between actual warfare and movie warfare.
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In 1914, one of von Spee’s cruisers, the Emden, left on
a mission to attack British merchant vessels in the
Indian Ocean. The Emden sank fifteen ships, but its
mission ended abruptly when the Australian cruiser
Sydney captured it on November 9, 1914.
The rest of the East Asiatic Squadron went on to attack
the British at the Battle of Coronel off the coast of
Chile, where they won an easy victory and sank two
powerful British cruisers. His confidence renewed, von
Spee ordered his eight ships to round the horn of Africa
and attack the British in the Falkland Islands.
The Falkland attack proved costly. Von Spee was
unaware that the British had just sent eight powerful
cruisers to the area, two of them battle cruisers carrying
guns with a longer range than any of the East Asiatic Squadron’s. Of the eight ships in the German
squadron, six were sunk. After that resounding defeat, German surface ships ceased attacks for the
remainder of the war.
The German fleet in the North Sea, trapped in its ports close to the coast, literally tested the waters in
December 1914 by sending out one squadron on a raiding mission to the British east coast. Led by
Admiral Franz Hipper, the squadron tried to raid suspected British reconnaissance vessels among a
fishing fleet at Dogger Bank.
Because the British could decipher German secret code, they knew Hipper was coming and laid a trap.
When his squadron arrived at Dogger Bank, it was forced to retreat in the face of an overwhelming
number of British warships. The squadron lost only one ship as it fled to the safety of a German harbor,
but the incident led German commanders to call off any further non-Baltic naval ventures until
December 1915.
War under the Seas111
Locked into port everywhere except the Baltic Sea, the German navy switched its focus from surface
ships to submarines. Germany was late to start on the development of its underwater craft; in 1914 it
had only twenty-eight as opposed to fifty-five in the British navy and seventy-seven in the French. This
late start turned out to be an advantage: Germany was able to make use of the latest, most cutting-edge
technology when building most of its submarines. The superiority of the German U-boats to their
outdated British and French counterparts quickly became apparent when they sank four British cruisers
in September 1914. Three fell in a row to a single submarine, U-9, off the coast of Holland.
This success encouraged the U-boat program, which already had great appeal because U-boats could be
built faster and more cheaply than surface vessels. They also gave Germany a way to strike at the
Entente’s fearsome navy while minimizing their exposure.
111
Try this for a prom theme.
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 67
What Just Hit Us?
U-boats were almost invisible, and German military leaders saw them as ideal tools to wage a war of
attrition on the British navy. The U-boats had trouble bringing down warships, however; for one thing,
warships were much faster than submarines, and by moving full-speed and in zig-zag patterns, could
evade U-boats with ease. For another, warships were soon equipped with submarine countermeasures
such as sonar and depth charges112. Where U-boats succeeded best was in taking down merchant ships.
By focusing on commercial vessels, they prevented critical supplies and weaponry from reaching Entente
forces, dealing economic blows.
To do this, however, U-boat captains had to break a boatload 113 of accepted international laws and
practices. For one, it was standard practice to take prisoners when attacking a merchant vessel, but there
was no room on a U-boat for extra passengers. U-boat captains had no choice but to let defeated
combatants drown.
Just to find out whether a ship was a merchant or military vessel, a U-boat had to surface, which
destroyed the element of surprise. But, complicating matters, the British often disguised armed ships as
merchant vessels and sailed them under neutral flags; they also armed actual merchant vessels. These
armed merchant vessels were called Q ships.114/115 As a result of these British disguises, U-boats
frequently sank ships without determining the nature of the vessel, and the ships they sank frequently
carried civilian merchants and passengers. This practice defied international law and angered the Entente
and many neutral parties. One such neutral party, which had enjoyed robust trade with Britain, grew
increasingly outraged as more of its civilians died in U-boat attacks: the United States of America.
The Lusitania
On February 4, 1915, Germany devised a way around the
international naval law violations its U-boat fleet had
committed: it announced that all ships found within a broad
“war zone” encircling the British Isles would be subject to
attack, no matter what kind of ships they were. The Germans
designated this new policy as a response to the “hunger
blockade” the British navy had imposed on Germany.
Three months later, on May 7, 1915, the German submarine
designated U-20 fired on and sank a British ocean liner off the
southern coast of Ireland. The Lusitania was one of the largest
vessels on the Atlantic. Of the nearly 2,000 passengers, 1,198
drowned. 128 of them were American.
Under Germany’s policy, the Lusitania qualified as a legitimate
target, in that its cargo included munitions bound for Britain,
but its sinking sparked violent protests across the globe. Anti-German riots sprang up and lasted for
three days in London, British Columbia, Johannesburg, and Moscow.
112
No sharks with laser beams attached to their heads? How disappointing.
Sorry.
114
The Q referred to their home port: Queenstown, Ireland. It had nothing to do with James Bond, sadly, or with Star Trek.
115
It would be a sizeable misunderstanding to ask for a q-tip and be misheard as asking for a Q Ship.
113
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 68
The Lusitania’s sinking became a rallying point for Americans who wanted their country to enter the war.
President Woodrow Wilson insisted on remaining neutral, but this proved harder as the Lusitania became
a rallying point for a vocal pro-mobilization contingency led by ex-president Theodore Roosevelt.
Just about the last thing Germany wanted116 was for the United States to enter the war as part of the
Entente. If that happened it would surely tip the balance of the war strongly in the Entente’s favor. To
help prevent that, in August 1915, German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg publicly
reversed the military decision to target any and all ships around Britain.
The reversal stood until February 1916 when, in an attempt to renew its offensive on the Western Front,
Germany reinstated the blockade of the British Isles. This time, it included rules and practices meant to
prevent targeting passenger ships and other unarmed vessels—but they proved difficult to implement. As
the U-boat blockade began anew, collateral damage increased. When a U-boat sank a French steamship
carrying several Americans, people in the United States renewed their protests, and Bethmann-Hollweg
once again called off the blockade in March.117
The Ethics of Submarine Warfare
From the perspective of the United States, two things made it abhorrent for German U-boats to target
neutral, unarmed vessels:
1. It violated the international prohibition against restricting neutral trade.
2. Taking the lives of neutral, defenseless civilians in a military attack was unacceptable.
Those reasons rang hollow for Germany, which believed the following:
1. The bulk of American trade was with the Entente, so the United States was not truly neutral.
2. The American attitude toward civilian deaths seemed hypocritical, as the United States had not
opposed Britain’s blockade of Germany, which cost an estimated 773,000 German civilian lives
through the resulting hunger and disease.
The Battle of Jutland, May 31-June 1, 1916
In spring 1916, the commander of the German naval fleet, Admiral Reinhard Scheer, grew tired of the
political pressure and outrage against U-boat combat outside German waters. He came up with a plan
that would use the German North Sea surface fleet, at the time confined in its ports, to draw the British
surface fleet into a massive trap lined with minefields and waiting U-boats.
Scheer convinced Kaiser Wilhelm to approve this plan, and the German fleet sailed out to lure in the
British. The plan might have worked118 if Britain had not deciphered Germany’s codes, allowing it to
intercept and eavesdrop all of Germany’s wireless communications119.
The two fleets met off the coast of Jutland, Denmark on May 31 in the only full-scale clash of
battleships during the war. The battle stretched out for seventy-two hours, involving 100,000 men and
250 ships. It became a contest between Germany’s hidden U-boats and mines versus Britain’s knowledge
116
Right up there with having to fight a war on two fronts.
This seems to be some strange wartime version of crying wolf—perhaps “crying peaceful”?
118
If not for you meddling kids! …Wait, that’s Scooby-Doo. Sorry, never mind.
119
isThay isay ikelay enwhay ouryay ittlelay iblingssay ecipherday igPay atinLay.
117
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 69
of the Germans’ battle orders. Britain lost fourteen ships and 6,800 men, while Germany lost eleven
ships and 3,100 men—yet the battle ultimately had little to no strategic impact.
It did lead to a harsh reality for Admiral Scheer: the German surface navy had become ineffective. On
July 4, 1916, he declared that fleet combat was no longer a viable option for Germany.
The Underwater Alternative
As the British blockade grew more effective, Germany had begun to starve. The Kaiser, his staff, and the
German public all longed for a way to break the stalemate on the Western Front, the British blockade,
or both. Since the German surface fleet had been rendered ineffective, Germans began to regard the Uboats as the key to victory. The submarine vessels were elevated in the public consciousness to nearlegendary status. Breaking the blockade would seem to require unrestricted U-boat combat.
One person who vehemently did not want to return to unrestricted U-boat combat was German
Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg. He feared doing so would draw the United States into the war—but the
Kaiser and his generals overrode him. Unrestricted U-boat warfare resumed on February 1, 1917.
The United States Steps In
President Wilson had been a staunch proponent of
Debate it!
American neutrality. He won re-election with the
Resolved: That the Zimmerman Telegram should not have
slogan “He Kept Us Out Of War.” Changing his
been published.
position would require extraordinary circumstances. In
the late winter and spring of 1917, circumstances became extraordinary.

British intelligence intercepted the Zimmerman Telegram, a note from German Foreign
Minister Arthur Zimmerman to Mexico that encouraged Mexico to declare war on the United
States. It declared Germany would ally with Mexico, and promised the return of Texas, New
Mexico, and Arizona to Mexico. The publication of the telegram caused a national furor.

Germany’s declaration of unrestricted U-boat warfare caused more American outrage, especially
when a U-boat sank three U.S. merchant ships on March 15.

The Russian Revolution ousted Tsar Nicholas II and rejected government by monarchy. The
new Provisional Government promised to establish a liberal democracy. An inspired President
Wilson began to see the war as one of democracy versus monarchy. He also envisioned the
United States playing the role of arbiter when the war ended, reordering the planet’s political
structure to, in his words, “make the world safe for democracy.” Wilson wanted to replace
dynastic empires with democratic nation-states, and to further that cause, proposed the creation
of a League of Nations to help prevent future wars. For leverage, he knew the United States
would need to enter the war and be at the negotiating table—as a victor—when it ended.
Money Makes the War Go ‘Round
Britain and France had been buying more and more weapons, ammunition, and supplies from the
United States, much of this on credit. By April 1, 1917, Britain alone owed the United States $358
million dollars and continued to rack up debt at a rate of $75 million per week120. If the Entente lost the
120
Even the Kardashians can’t spend like that.
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war, all that debt would go unpaid, causing the American economy to suffer. For that reason alone, the
United States needed to make sure the Entente won the war.
On April 6, 1917, the United States declared war on Germany, but not the other Central Powers.
President Wilson insisted the United States be termed an “associated power” rather than a full member
of the Entente; he saw American war aims as different from the Entente’s. The United States, he said,
was interested only in combating Germany, not in becoming involved in “foreign entanglements.” 121
The Clock Starts Ticking
The United States’ presence on the ground in Europe started out quite small. When President Wilson
declared war, the American army numbered only 108,000; selective conscription was quickly instituted,
but nearly a year would pass before significant numbers of American soldiers were ready to fight.
That interim year had a strong psychological impact. Everyone knew that the American forces were
building, that they would enter the war on the side of the Entente, and that it was only a matter of time
before the scales tipped. Chancellor Bethman-Hollweg’s longtime fear was about to be realized.
American Protection on the High Seas
It took time to build up the armed forces, but the United States deployed its navy immediately. By May
1917, American shipments to Britain had gained the protection of its naval convoys—a measure that
proved very effective in blocking attacks by German U-boats. Also, prior to U.S. involvement in the war,
Germany had still been allowed to conduct some commerce with neutral countries such as Denmark and
Sweden. With the United States joining the already-effective British blockade, trade between Germany
and neutral countries slowed to a crawl.
Russia Leaves the War
Total war places an enormous strain on every nation involved, both economically and socially. Russia’s
downfall did not stem from its economy; after it rallied following the German invasion, Russia vastly
increased production of artillery shells. Its military victories against Austria and Turkey demonstrated
that Russia had found this to be the key to economic strength.
The social consequences were another story.
A Mad Monk and Massive Mismanagement
After Russia repelled the German invasion in fall 1915, Tsar Nicholas II had the chance to ride a wave of
national solidarity and to secure his legacy. Instead, he made two somewhat baffling decisions.
1. Rather than embrace Russia’s new spirit of cooperation, Nicholas replaced his popular, moderate
ministers with reactionaries who favored a return to autocratic monarchy.
2. He decided to leave Petrograd (the Russian capital, today known as St. Petersburg) and travel to
the front to personally lead the army. This step linked the success of the army to the health of
the monarchy in a very literal sense, and left his throne vacant in the capital.
121
Combating Germany sounds pretty entangled and foreign to me.
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 71
Nicholas’s wife, Empress Alexandra, had already become the object of public suspicion because she was
German-born. She made matters worse by appointing as her advisor the mystic Grigori Rasputin,
sometimes known as “the mad monk.”
Rasputin became the butt of jokes and rumors for his eccentric
beliefs, but his influence over Alexandra was unquestionable. The
public found it worrisome enough when she assumed the throne
in her husband’s absence—and then she and Rasputin conspired
to appoint the most reactionary political figures they could find
to important positions in the government, in an attempt to
strengthen the monarchy as much as possible.
Perhaps the most obvious of these choices was Aleksei Khostov,
leader of the fascistic Right faction in the Russian congress, the
Duma. The empress and Rasputin attempted to have Khostov
appointed to the government’s most powerful position, Minister
of Interior122.
The Duma’s most prominent members supported a massive
opposition movement among liberals and moderates, who had
fully supported both the war effort and the tsar himself three
years earlier. Calling themselves “the Progressive Bloc123,” this
group worked closely with industrial leaders in an effort to keep
the production of artillery shells and other war supplies on track
in spite of Empress Alexandra and Rasputin’s designs. The
Progressive Bloc also allied themselves with key generals in the
army.
The Mad Monk Meets His Match
In December 1916, a cousin of the tsar’s—Grand Duke Dimitrii Pavlovich—conspired with the wealthy
industrial heir Felix Yusupov and three other men to eliminate Rasputin. They lured Rasputin into a
trap and managed to kill him—though he survived being poisoned, shot, and stabbed before drowning.
News of Rasputin’s death, proclaimed in theaters, led to cheers from the Russian populace. The
reputation of the tsar and tsarina had fallen to an all-time low, and many—including influential
members of the Duma and military—had come to see the monarchy as an obstacle to Russia’s proper
involvement in the Great War.
Less Money, More Problems
In early March 1917, urban Russians rioted, protesting shortages of both food and fuel. Some of the
issues behind these shortages were unpreventable—but others had been preventable.
Recall that Tsar Nicholas had prohibited alcohol throughout Russia to prevent excessive alcohol
consumption before troop deployment. The intention was to cut down on the time it took for troops to
mobilize. If the war had been shorter, alcohol prohibition might have caused only minimal problems. As
122
123
Before I’d accept this position, I’d make sure I knew the interior of what.
They should have gone with a sphere. To get a block to progress, you must additionally attach wheels.
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 72
it was, a fiscal issue arose: the government had long held a monopoly on alcohol, and a full 25% of its
annual revenue came from alcohol sales. By maintaining prohibition throughout the long war, Nicholas
had chopped Russia’s profits by a quarter.
Another domestic product, grain, was causing a problem. Russia had been making a profit by exporting
grain its farmers produced—but the Ottoman and German blockade of Russia’s ports stopped
exportation. The grain could still be redirected to the soldiers and horses at the front—but no profit was
being made from it.
Russia’s middle class was very limited at the time; the populace consisted mostly of peasants, who were
in no position to buy instruments such as “Liberty Bonds,” which had succeeded so well in other
Entente nations. With massive cash flows cut off and few options open for paying its bills, the Russian
government turned to a technique that the United States had used: it started printing more money 124.
This artificial influx of cash into the economy created inflation and raised prices. Consequently, many
peasants began withholding the grain they would have sold to the government, waiting for prices to rise
even higher. The resulting blockage of the grain trade contributed to the widespread urban food
shortages. Flour and bread were hard to find.
To make matters worse, heavy snows in February 1917disrupted the distribution of food and fuel to
Petrograd. On March 2, the government announced that bread rationing would commence on March
14. This led to enormous lines as people tried to buy and hoard all the bread and flour they could. 125
The fuel shortage affected the city’s industrial sector, forcing many factories to shutter. Thousands of
unemployed factory workers suddenly became available to take part in protests against the shortages.
One More Unwise Decision
Tsar Nicholas fanned the flames of revolution when he ordered the Petrograd army garrison to quell the
relatively non-violent protest. 160,000 troops, many of them recent but older recruits, received orders to
end the protest by any means necessary, up to and including firing directly into largely unarmed crowds.
Some soldiers obeyed. Others flatly refused, and their refusal blossomed into an all-out mutiny.
Nicholas126 planned to transport battle-tested troops from the front and to overwhelm the mutineers.
Before this plan could be enacted, however, army Chief of Staff Mikhail Alekseev contacted all the
leading army commanders and asked them to send telegrams to Nicholas asking he abdicate the throne.
This maneuver, similar to a coup d’état, worked brilliantly. Under pressure from his military, Tsar
Nicholas realized how hopeless his position was and stepped down on March 15, 1917. The leaders of
the Progressive Bloc established a Provisional Government—meant to last until the war’s end—and
appointed a Constituent Assembly to draft a new Russian constitution.
The Provisional Government granted the people of Russia many new freedoms, chief among them
freedom of the press and equality before the law for all citizens. The provisional leaders believed this new
level of freedom would inspire the masses in the war effort and strengthen the mobilization of the army.
124
Forgetting, perhaps, that though they held monopolies, they were not actually in a game of Monopoly.
Something similar happened in the U.S. in 2012 when Hostess went bankrupt.
126
Not one to miss a chance to make an already bad problem much worse.
125
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The head of the Provisional Government, Alexander Kerensky,
continued recruiting soldiers, and by June 1917, the Russian army
was larger than at any previous point in the war.
Britain and France began urging Russia to launch another
offensive. The time seemed right with such an enlarged army and
reinvigorated populace. The brilliant military strategist Brusilov
was chosen to lead it, and, on June 29, Russia launched an
offensive on enemy forces in Galicia.
Backfire
To understand what happened next, we must go back a few
months to the February Revolution that put the Provisional
Government in place. Kerensky gave soldiers the power to create
their own elected councils (known as “soviets”) within their army
units. Kerensky believed this self-determination would give the
soldiers a sense of pride and prompt them to fight harder for their
newly-bestowed freedoms.
The Russian offensive into Galicia worked in theory. Russian
troops outnumbered the enemy’s three to one, and Russia had a
five-to-one advantage in artillery. Massive bombardments allowed
Russian troops to advance thirty kilometers—almost nineteen
miles—into enemy territory.
On July 6, the Germans counterattacked. Thousands upon thousands of Russian soldiers either refused
to fight or deserted. Kerensky had given them power to make some decisions for themselves, and their
first major decision was to bow out of combat. Officers who attempted to stop soldiers from deserting
were shot by their own men. By August, 250,000 soldiers had deserted.
Kerensky’s leadership methods had led to one of the greatest strategic catastrophes of the Great War. To
regain control of his troops, Kerensky reached out to a popular general with a reputation for strict
discipline: Lavr Kornilov. Kerensky hoped Kornilov could turn the army around—but he never had the
opportunity. Due to a perfect storm of miscommunications, Kerensky became convinced that Kornilov
was planning to overthrow him. Kerensky armed a group of workers and used them to arrest General
Kornilov—thereby losing the respect of the army command as well as his last real chance to take control
of his country’s army.
The Bolsheviks Take Over
On September 3, 1917, German forces occupied Riga (capitol of present-day Latvia) and took control of
three Baltic islands, which were strategically important because they heavily affected the approach by sea
to Petrograd. In the face of this impending threat, Kerensky and the rest of the Provisional Government
prepared to relocate Russia’s capital from Petrograd to Moscow 127. The civilian leaders of the
Communist party volunteered to assemble a “military-revolutionary committee” whose stated
responsibility was to use armed workers to defend Petrograd.
127
This game of pass-the-capital has happened more than once in Russian history.
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Another political party, the Bolsheviks, headed by Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky, wrested control of
this committee from the Communist leaders. Using the workers the Communists had already armed, the
Bolsheviks staged a coup d’état on November 7, 1917 and overthrew the Provisional Government.
On November 8, the Bolsheviks issued two decrees.

The Decree on Land nationalized all land owned by landlords, clergy, and the crown, and
transferred ownership of it to the peasants.

The Decree on Peace stated that Russia had no intention to continue fighting.
Upon hearing of these decrees, the Russian army
disintegrated. Soldiers, with no war left to fight, rushed
back to their homes to stake their property claims.
Debate it!
Resolved: That the Bolsheviks were right to remove Russia
from combat in the Great War.
In February 1918, after peace negotiations between
Germany and Russia faltered at Brest-Litovsk in modern-day Belarus, Germany again went on the
offensive again—meeting very little resistance in the absence of Russian soldiers. Germany occupied all
of Ukraine, Estonia, and most of Belarus within a month.
Russia had no choice but to sign a peace treaty with the Central Powers on March 3, 1918, making it
the first of the major powers to leave the war. The treaty helped to replenish Germany’s dwindling food
supply by giving the Germans control over the grain-producing Ukrainian lands; it also allowed the
Central Powers to withdraw almost all their troops from the deactivated Eastern Front and redirect them
to other areas of conflict.
Renewed Allied Offensives - 1917
The Western Front had been in a stalemate for years.
Bulges and Salients
Both sides had dug in very deeply, making use of
In the advancing line of a military front, a bulge is a part of
extensive trench systems and earthen defenses so that
the line that extends backward while a salient is a part of
even the most aggressive and thorough artillery barrages
the line extending forward into enemy territory.
had little effect. The Entente and Central Powers were
each defended by three “belts,” or lines of trenches, ever-increasing numbers of dug-in guard posts called
pillboxes, machine guns, and artillery. These defenses made offensive attacks extremely impractical on
either side. Despite this scenario, in February and March, German intelligence received word that the
British and French forces had begun planning offensive actions.
German Preparations
The German strategy on the Western Front had been focused on manning the trenches with the fewest
troops possible, so that if the Allies did break through one line, troops could fall back to the next and
open up concentrated machine gun fire on the attackers.
In preparation for the Entente’s offensives, German forces executed a skillful, strategic retreat to a welldefended three-trench system that became known as the Hindenburg Line128. Built along a strategically
optimal path, the Hindenburg Line eliminated bulges and salients on the front and allowed German
128
If the original German trench systems were the equivalent of a Star Destroyer, the Hindenburg Line was the Death Star.
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forces to defend their positions more efficiently, with fewer troops. The retreating Germans also planted
mines and explosive booby traps and poisoned wells in the evacuated territory to deter Entente advances.
What Were the Allies Thinking?
In December 1916, General Joffre129 was replaced by Robert G. Nivelle, a commander committed to the
idea of forcing a rupture in the German defenses. In the same month, Allied leaders met in the northern
French town of Chantilly and resolved to organize and execute more coordinated offensives. Nivelle
heartily supported the decision.
The leaders believed this tactic could work because both the British and French armies had drastically
expanded their forces on the ground. France had called in large numbers of colonial troops to buttress its
efforts. Altogether, Allied troops in France outnumbered the Germans 4 million to 2.5 million.
The Allies had also improved their military hardware and tactics.

“Graze fuse” shells, which detonated upon touching even a single strand of barbed wire, had
arrived in mass quantities. These shells were much better at clearing no-man’s land than shells
that exploded only upon touching the ground.

Aerial photography techniques had advanced, allowing pilots to identify targets and artillery
gunners to dramatically increase their accuracy.

France had acquired 132 tanks130 to use in the new coordinated offensive.
Neither Italy nor Russia was available to participate, but Britain and France nonetheless moved ahead.
The Battle of Arras
British and Canadian forces executed a carefully-planned attack on April 9. With infantry following
behind a wide, sweeping, massive artillery barrage, they captured Vimy Ridge in northern France, near
the Belgian border in the Battle of Arras.
After the ridge’s capture, the Allies’ forward momentum ground to a halt. Germany rushed reserves to
the battle site and prevented a full-scale front line breakthrough. After that, no further territory changed
hands, yet each side sustained an estimated 150,000 casualties.
The Second Battle of the Aisne
On April 16, 1917, using mostly French forces, Robert Nivelle ordered an attack on a ridge northeast of
Paris called the Chemin des Dames (“Ladies’ Path”). Because the ridge ran along the Aisne River, this
offensive became known as the Second Battle of the Aisne.
It was an unmitigated disaster. Fighting from the intensely-defended, strategically-placed Hindenburg
Line, the Germans brought Nivelle’s forces to a halt after the first few thousand yards of their offensive.
Nivelle ordered France’s tanks to advance in hopes of breaking through the German defenses, but half
the tanks were destroyed and the other half stopped working. None reached the German front line.
129
130
Whose political position had entered a steady decline following the massive French losses at Verdun.
War would be a much friendlier and amusing endeavor if “tanks” referred to dunk tanks.
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Ultimately, France took several kilometers and about
20,000 prisoners of war, but at a staggeringly high cost:
130,000 casualties within the first five days. By May 20, a
full twenty percent of the attacking force had been
eliminated from the battle. Worse still, from late April
into June, French soldiers began refusing to fight on the
grounds that the offensives were too poorly-planned.
Sixty-eight divisions were affected, with roughly 40,000
troops going on strike. These coincided with civilian
demonstrations and workers’ strikes in France against
war-inflated prices and the length of the war.
The collapse in the French command led to Nivelle’s
replacement by General Philippe Pétain, who had
masterminded131 the “rapid rotation” of troops in and out
of combat at the Battle of Verdun.
Pétain Restores Order
Pétain aimed for efficiency in his disciplinary actions. Of the
40,000 troops who had gone on strike after the Second Battle of
the Aisne, Pétain had 3,500 court-martialed. Although many
soldiers’ actions amounted to desertion or mutiny, and a
common penalty for these actions was execution, only forty-nine
men were shot. Many more were sentenced to prison camps.
At the same time, Pétain enacted concessions in the troops’ favor:
he at least doubled the amount of leave time allowed each soldier,
and he abandoned further offensive attempts for over a year,
between June 1917 and July 1918. Instead, Pétain focused on a
defensive strategy similar to the Germans’ and on the
development of more tanks and war planes for future offensives.
France expected to have help in those offensives. The United
States was gathering its forces, and the French intended to wait
for the Americans’ arrival.
The Third Battle of Ypres
Though the French were taking a break from offensives, the British attempted another in July 1917 in
the Ypres region of Belgium. General Haig began the attack with an artillery barrage of 4 million
shells—four times the number used at the beginning of the Somme offensive.
The massive barrage made little difference; the German lines held, and after three months of fighting
and little territorial progress, Britain’s troops had sustained 240,000 casualties—170,000 wounded and
70,000 killed. Germany sustained comparable casualties, but there was a crucial difference: Germany
still had forces stationed on the Eastern Front, and could replenish its losses, but Britain had already
called up all the troops it could. It could not replace any losses it suffered from that point onward. After
131
My brain thinks the past tense of mastermind should be “mastermound.”
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the Ypres offensive failed, Britain, like France, decided against further offensives until circumstances
changed.
Italian Difficulties
By September 1917, Italy had launched eleven
Infiltration Tactics
offensives, about one every three months, in an effort
Instead of following preliminary bombardment with a
to break through Austrian defenses at the Isonzo River,
massed infantry attack, the Austrian-German forces sent
on the Italian border with present-day Slovenia. They
small forces of experienced troops to slip between enemy
cost over half a million Italian soldiers’ lives—to no
strongpoints on the front line. Once these soldiers were in a
position to surprise the defenders, the infantry was ordered
avail. The last was the Eleventh Battle of Isonzo in
forward in a mass attack across no-man’s land.
August and September, ending in 100,000 Italian
casualties. The stunned Italian army decided to end their offensives on the Isonzo.
Italy’s troubles soon worsened. In October, Austrian troops received help in the form of six experienced
German divisions. The combined force launched an offensive against the unprepared Italians at the
Battle of Caporetto, with special soldiers known as stormtroopers132 employing poison gas and
infiltration tactics133. In just eleven days, the German-Austrian forces advanced eighty kilometers (close
to fifty miles) and captured 275,000 prisoners of war—almost half of the Italian army.
The Italian-Austrian front re-stabilized at the Piaze River and managed to hold there only because
Britain and France rushed in reinforcements to halt the German-Austrian advance. Italy could not
launch any more offensives until October 1918. By then, the war was almost over.
1917: The Year in Review
The Central Powers triumphed in virtually every instance during 1917. The Allies were hurting: Russia
exited the war; France and Italy lost the ability to attack and were forced to focus on defense; and Britain
was severely weakened. But the bloody tide would soon turn. British and American production of war
materiel, such as artillery shells, tanks, and war planes, continued unabated, and it was common
knowledge that the United States military would soon arrive.
As it had been in the Schlieffen Plan, time was Germany’s enemy toward the war’s end. The BritishAmerican blockade was causing slow starvation in Germany, and the Germans needed to win the war
soon before they ran out of resources. As a result, Germany reinstituted unrestricted U-boat warfare on
February 1, 1917—but that decision proved to be the proverbial final straw for the United States, as the
outrage it caused prompted the Americans to enter combat on the side of the Entente.
The Final Battles: 1918
The Allies were in bad shape134 in early 1918. Britain had exhausted its troops and France’s colonial
problems had made it extremely difficult to bring in new conscripts. Thankfully for them, Germany
proved to be in a similarly weak position.
132
If the term “Sith Lord” just popped into your mind, you are in good company.
Some stormtroopers served in flamethrower platoons. Enough said.
134
Roughly a crumpled dodecahedron.
133
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The New Russia
In signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which established a peace with the Central Powers, Russia gave
up enormous amounts of land to Germany.135 The newly-defined borders reduced Russia’s dimensions
to the size of the 17th-century Russian Empire and placed Finland, Poland, Ukraine, Moldova, and the
whole of the Caucasus under German control.
Germany, hit hard by the joint British-American blockade, desperately needed food. To that end, it
established a puppet government in Ukraine, and started channeling the vast Ukrainian grain supply to
Germany. German soldiers on the front received food before any civilians did. At this point, Germany
could have marched on and overthrown Russia with little resistance, since the country was already in a
state of political chaos and the Russian army had all but completely disbanded. Germany chose not to
pursue this conquest because, from its point of view, Russia had just become its own worst enemy.
The Bolsheviks had taken control of Russia’s government and signed the peace treaty with the Central
Powers, but they were by no means the voice of a united country. In 1918, the opponents of Bolshevism
organized, starting the devastating Russian Civil War. The Bolshevik Red Army was pitted against the
anti-Bolshevik White Army.136
Witnessing this internal conflict in Russia, Germany realized that, if the White Army won, it would
revive Russia’s opposition to Germany. As long as the Bolsheviks remained in power, however, they
would continue a domestic focus, namely their efforts to nationalize and redistribute industry and land.
Germany (Mostly) Leaves the Eastern Front
With the new government and the civil war keeping Russia occupied,
Germany saw no need to maintain a heavy troop presence at the
Eastern Front. It transferred sixty divisions to the Western Front,
including some of Germany’s best-trained soldiers.
Weapons Comparison, August 1918
Entente Germany
Airplanes 4,500
3,670
Artillery pieces 18,500 14,000
800
10
Tanks
In February 1918, German troops outnumbered the Entente’s for the
first time since August 1914, with 192 German divisions versus the Entente’s 178. The Allies needed
substantial American forces to arrive137—and in March, they finally did. In March, 300,000 American
troops reached France; a million more arrived in August.
Germany had no way to match this massive influx of troops; like Britain, it had already called up every
conscript it could. Any casualties it suffered from that point forward would be irreplaceable. This meant
the Germans had a small window of time in which to launch strategic, highly damaging assaults before
the American forces grew overwhelming. Once again, they were racing against the clock.
Germany Attacks: March 1918
On March 21, 1918, Germany launched Operation Michael—its first assault on the Western Front in
almost two years. The German strategy relied heavily on stormtroopers and their infiltration tactics
against small, specific targets. German artillery preceded these advances with an effective two-step gas
attack. First, tear gas canisters peppered the British targets, leading many troops to remove their gas
135
Since Germany lost the war, little of this land remained in German hands.
If you competed in Acadec last year, you may remember some of this. Long live Zhivago.
137
Help me, Obi-Wilson.
136
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masks to address the resulting eye irritation. The Germans then released the asphyxiant (suffocating)
poison gas phosgene, which swiftly brought down the newly-unprotected troops.
Short, extremely heavy artillery barrages served as decoys to draw Allied responses. While one Allied
target defended against an attack, the stormtroopers would strike at another. The weather was also on
the Germans’ side as a low-lying fog cloaked138 the stormtroopers’ advance.
The infiltration tactics allowed the most significant territorial gains the Germans had made since 1914,
before the stalemate; in some places, German-occupied territory stretched as far as 40 miles west from
the front lines. Britain suffered about 40,000 casualties on the first day alone. As Operation Michael
continued, however, it became more and more costly for Germany. Its weakened supply lines could not
adequately support the soldiers, and Allied counterattacks became both more frequent and effective. The
Germans lost more troops in March 1918 than in any single prior month of the war.
Other Assaults
General Erich von Ludendorff—former right-hand man of General Paul von Hindenburg—staged four
new assaults in the spring and summer of 1918. They met with some success, bringing German forces to
within fifty-six miles of Paris—close enough for the German “Big Bertha” cannons to begin artillery
assaults on the city.
At this point, the German Empire had reached its largest-ever size, controlling Ukraine and the Baltic
states; Russia’s internal conflicts had removed Russia as a threat; and German artillery was damaging
Paris. If Germany’s military had been able to replenish its ranks, it might have won the war.
Despite their success in the short term, the assaults of 1918 cost Germany an estimated 800,000
casualties and, as historian Michael Neiberg observed, hastened Germany’s defeat. The Hindenburg Line
fell in the autumn, and the German front was forced to fall back to a much longer, less defensible front
line, giving the Allies opportunities to counterattack.
Supply Lines Falter
One of the greatest strengths of the German army had been its supply lines; the railway system had kept
soldiers well-stocked with food and materiel. In 1918, those supply lines were still operational—only
there wasn’t enough food to transport, even with the Ukrainian grain influx. The British-American
blockade had never lost its effectiveness, and the German food shortage was reaching a crisis point. To
add to the shortages, the German soldiers who had occupied land in France were now out of reach of the
supply lines; even when food became available, they were beyond its reach.
The Flu Strikes
The summer of 1918 saw a devastating flu outbreak among German troops on the Western Front. By
June, numerous German divisions had each lost as many as 2,000 men to the flu. Hospitals filled with
sick soldiers. Meanwhile, as the German ranks dwindled, France at last overcame its colonial trouble,
allowing it to conscript new troops, and fresh French soldiers began arriving at the Western Front. These
joined the increasing numbers of American soldiers. There were already twenty-five American divisions
in France, with fifty-five more on the way; altogether, 250,000 U.S. troops per month reached the front
line in 1918.
138
Sure, they had an invisibility cloak, but did they have a Marauder’s Map?
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Germany’s Final Offensive
German soldiers attacked Entente troops on July 15, 1918 at
the Second Battle of the Marne. The tide turned for the
Allied forces when they captured a German officer on a
scouting mission. In a profoundly poor strategic choice, that
officer had in his possession a complete set of orders as to how
the July 15 attack was to proceed139. The Allies distributed
this information and planned for the German assault
accordingly.
Germany’s plans were not the only thing the Allies turned
against them. France also used the battle-tested German tactic
of defense in depth. The French forces rapidly fell back from
the front lines, drawing the Germans forward, and then
counterattacked with an overwhelming force, including
intense artillery barrages and assaults from airplanes, tanks,
and several divisions of American foot soldiers.
Germany lost the battle quickly and decisively, reducing its army from 5.1 million able-bodied soldiers
to 4.2 million. Germany would launch no further attacks for the remainder of the war.
Allied Counteroffensives and Breakthroughs
After the failed Somme Offensive, when the Entente forces fell back to defensive positions, they focused
on developing technologies they would need when the conflict resumed—mainly tanks and airplanes.
When the Allies went on the offensive on August 8, 1918, they had 8,000 brand new, improved tanks,
the Germans just 20 comparatively outdated tanks.140 The Allies’ airplane advantage was also great: they
produced 11,000 per month in 1918 to Germany’s 2,000. In early 1918, Germany had held the upper
hand in artillery, but even that advantage dissolved: German artillery shell production fell over the
course of 1918, and by July had regressed to mid-1917 levels. Germany’s artillery units were hampered
by a shortage of the horses and soldiers needed to transport and operate most of the heavy guns 141.
Germany was about to be overrun.
The Amiens Offensive
In August 1918, the Allies began a massive artillery barrage, the first stage of an offensive designed to
drive the Germans out of France. Following the assault, 600 new Allied tanks—530 British and 70
French—carried on the offensive and began forcing back the Germans.
In concert with the French and British, on September 12, American troops launched their first major
solo operation at St. Mihiel in northeastern France. They used 2,900 artillery pieces and 500,000
soldiers to overwhelm the Germans and drive them back toward the Hindenburg Line.
139
Like having the other team’s playbook.
Being outnumbered 400 to 1 is a conundrum it would almost take magic to overcome.
141
Horses weren’t needed for the heaviest artillery, which was designed to be transported by railroad.
140
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Two weeks later, on September 26, a combined force of
British, French, American, and Belgian troops engaged
the retreating German army with tanks, planes, and one
hundred twenty-three divisions in active combat with
fifty-seven more divisions held in reserve. General von
Ludendorff observed just one day of this engagement
before contacting the Kaiser and suggesting Germany
request an armistice. The Kaiser agreed, but, even as
peace negotiations began, the German army kept
fighting, using defensive maneuvers to slow the Allies’
progress into Germany.
The Salonika Offensive
At the same time as the Amiens Offensive, the Allies
achieved a breakthrough in the Balkans. The Allies had
sent troops to the Greek port of Salonika in 1915. In
1918, using Salonika as a base of operations, they
amassed 700,000 troops. Germany had moved almost all its forces from the region to the Western
Front, so, when the Allies began a northern push on September 14, they faced mainly Bulgarian troops.
Very quickly, the Bulgarians realized their odds were poor. Two days into combat in Macedonia,
Bulgarian troops mutinied, and five days later—following a series of losses on Macedonian territory—
riots broke out in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia. The riots soon escalated into a revolution; councils
made up of workers and peasants declared the government must fall. Loyalist soldiers and police stopped
the revolution within three days, but the damage was done: Allied troops had entered Bulgaria, and the
Bulgarian government surrendered, calling for an armistice.
On September 29, 1918, Bulgaria became the first of
the Central Powers to leave the war. This was a key
victory for the Entente. The loss of Bulgaria cut off the
Ottoman Empire from its main allies, and allowed the
Entente to attack Austria-Hungary from the south.
The Megiddo Offensive
The rapidly crumbling Ottoman Empire was already
under attack in the Middle East by combined Indian,
British, Australian, and New Zealander forces, and had
begun to retreat from these threats. The governor of
Transjordan, Emir Abdullah ibn-Hussein, led an
uprising that splintered the Turkish troops, preventing
them from fighting effectively on any of the main
Ottoman battle fronts.
In the third week of September, British forces launched an attack near Megiddo, in modern-day Israel.
The Allied victory proved the final straw for the Ottoman Empire. The Turkish government asked for
an armistice and, after negotiating terms, signed one on October 30, 1918.
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The Central Powers Fall
In the defeat of the Central Powers, indirect effects such as food shortages and social upheaval proved
just as important as battlefield losses. The war had severely damaged the Austro-Hungarian economy,
and a sequence of events piled on one difficulty after another:

Women and children in the work force could not replace all the men called into combat; this
meant an overall drop in the available labor force of about twenty percent compared with 1913.

Losses of territory added to the labor shortage. When Austria-Hungary lost Galicia, it lost a
third of its grain supply, causing instant food shortages. With too few workers, and with too few
livestock and too little fertilizer, yields of crops, milk, and meat collapsed.

The diminished work force and the lost territory combined with supply problems—both from
transportation disruption and the Entente’s naval blockade. Hungary’s Gross Domestic Product
fell rapidly throughout 1917, and in 1918 it reached a low of sixty-six percent of its 1913 level.
These conditions caused a rift between Austria and Hungary. Hungary was a much more agrarian
country than Austria, and supplied Austria with most of its grain. Suffering from shortages of its own,
Hungary began refusing to ship grain to Austrian civilians. Before the war, Hungary had routinely sent
1.4 million tons of grain to Austria per year; during the war, this fell to a mere 28,000 tons.
In response, the Austrian government requisitioned Hungarian grain—only inspiring Hungarian farmers
to hold onto their crops more tightly. When severe inflation struck Hungary in 1918, many farmers
refused to sell their crops at all, in anticipation of higher prices, or sold it in local black markets 142.
Riots Begin
Civilians in Austria-Hungary had already been put on food rations during the war. By early 1918, those
rations allowed each person to consume only half the daily amount consumed on average before the war.
Military rations were cut as well, falling to half what each soldier had been allowed just a year earlier 143.
As hunger grew more widespread and severe, riots, strikes, and mutinies increased in frequency. At first
these protests focused on the food shortages, but by 1918, they incorporated demands to end the war.
In January 1918, the Austrian government announced the daily ration of flour would be reduced from
200 grams to 165144 per person. This latest decree sparked mass outrage and a series of riots that would
involve 600,000 urban workers across Austria. The riots forced the government to rescind the flour
ration, guarantee social reforms aimed at improving the citizens’ lives and—most vitally—promise to
achieve peace on the Eastern Front. The riots calmed down, but the situation in Austria remained dire:
142

The food shortage continued, reaching appalling depths during the brutal winter of 1918.

4,000 Austrian sailors at the Cattaro naval base on the Adriatic Sea rebelled, demanding bread.

In the Austrian Tenth Army, stationed in Italy, soldiers began killing and eating their horses.

The average weight of Austrian soldiers dropped to 120 pounds (down from around 175).
The real, World War I-era version of the hob.
Try fighting a war on 1,200 calories a day.
144
That’s about ¾ of a cup of flour per day.
143
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The Central Powers had placed a high value on acquiring Ukraine; that was one of the reasons the
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk demanded Russia concede so much territory. The Ukrainian farmlands were
supposed to alleviate the cataclysmic food shortages, particularly in Austria and Germany—but they did
not. Between the existing social unrest in Ukraine and transportation disruptions that the war caused,
very little Ukrainian grain ever made it to Germany or Austria.
Von Hötzendorff Strikes Again
The Austrian military had replaced the Chief of Staff, Conrad von Hötzendorff, with Arthur Arz von
Straussenburg, who demoted von Hötzendorff to an army group commander. 145 In June 1918, the
newly humbled von Hötzendorff launched an offensive against Italy at the Battle of the Piave River.
The goal—never realized—was to seize enough food to feed the soldiers involved in the invasion. The
Austrian army failed to gain any ground, lost 140,000 men, and depleted what remained of its supplies.
The loss triggered a massive wave of desertions from the Austrian army. Historian Holger Herwig
estimates that 200,000 Austrian soldiers deserted between June and August, and 200,000 in September.
End of the Empire
Austria’s food shortage was at its worst in October 1918. Some provinces had completely run out of
food146, and entire regions such as Galicia and Bohemia refused to export any food for fear their own
people would starve. The Habsburg Empire had simply lost the capacity to wage war, and, beset by
hunger and military defeat, it would soon splinter into multiple states among national and ethnic lines.
The domestic situation in Germany was not as dire as in Austria, but German civilians still suffered:

Almost all cotton and wool had been imported before the war; the blockade made clothing scarce.

A fungus infected the potato crop of 1916, destroying half and necessitating food rationing

Food rationing remained in place even though the next potato harvest was normal. By 1918,
workers had begun to strike, demanding an end to the rationing and to the war in the East.
Germany’s attitude improved with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk; the conflict in the East had ended and
there were promises of grain shipments from Ukraine to fill empty stomachs.
The Great Morale Drop
Unlike the Russian and Austrian armies, the German army saw almost no surrender or desertion over
most of the war. Germany’s military was structured to promote unit cohesion, and soldiers rarely lacked
food or drink. The Ludendorff Offensive of 1918 changed that. By advancing into France, German
soldiers cut themselves off from their own supply lines. Many began to experience hunger for the first
time. Worse, their immune systems, weakened by hunger, could not resist a virulent new strain of
Spanish flu sweeping. It infected one of every six soldiers.147 When the offensive’s failure required them
to retreat, the demoralized troops began deserting, feigning injuries, and mass surrendering.
145
A job that still allowed him to make terrible, terrible decisions, as we’re about to see.
And you thought going to bed without dinner was bad.
147
I know it’s not that time of year yet, but this statistic makes me want to get my flu shot immediately.
146
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 84
Germany Accepts Defeat
On September 29, in the wake of the flu epidemic, von
Ludendorff announced to both the Kaiser and the German public
that the war was lost. Up until then, the German press had
censored news from the front. The public had believed the war
was going well. Von Ludendorff’s announcement stunned them,
and popular opinion—which had favored the war—reversed. If
the war was lost, people wanted it to end as soon as possible.
Knowing he was about to surrender, and how influential and prodemocracy the American president was, Kaiser Wilhelm II took
steps to make Germany look more sympathetic. He hoped this
would prompt the Entente leadership to be more lenient in their
demands. Among his actions were:

Making democratic changes to the German government

Appointing Prince Max von Baden, a liberal, as the new
German Chancellor148

Granting major concessions to the labor force, including
an eight-hour work day

Promising to extend suffrage to women

Placing the military firmly under control of civilian authorities
The attempts to curry favor149 with President Wilson did not end there. On October 28, Chancellor von
Baden introduced the first major revision of the German constitution since 1871. It included:

Making the Chancellor and the Minister of War responsible to the Reichstag (the parliament)

Requiring the consent of the Reichstag for treaties, the declaration of war, the conclusion of
peace, and the dismissal and appointment of officers

Ending the broadly-defined powers of the Kaiser
The revision placed German military and all foreign affairs under the control of the Reichstag, effectively
terminating the power of the German monarchy.
A Loss of Confidence
Even though his power as monarch had just been drastically reduced, Kaiser Wilhelm II refused to
abdicate the throne. The new Chief of Staff, General Wilhelm Groener, gathered a group of thirty-nine
of the army’s most senior generals and asked them for their honest opinions concerning the Kaiser.
Their answers reflected the ravaged state of the country and the military in particular. A majority said
they would not follow the Kaiser if he tried to command the army in an effort to restore domestic order.
Half the generals felt their soldiers were so exhausted and demoralized that they would not even raise a
hand to stop a communist uprising. (Strongly associated with Russia, a communist uprising would have
148
149
Apparently, a great way to implement democracy is to appoint a royal prince to a position of power.
I like to picture the German leadership pouring curry powder at Wilson’s feet.
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 85
been considered, if not an absolute worst-case scenario, at least an extremely bad scenario—one that
could topple the German government as a whole.) Groener himself agreed that the army was in ruins.
When General Groener told the Kaiser that the army would no longer follow him, the Kaiser changed
his position and agreed to abdicate. By November 10, he had entered voluntary exile in the Netherlands.
In doing so, he ended the 504-year reign of his dynasty, the House of Hohenzollern.
German Revolutions
On October 22, 1918, the German admiralty’s Chief of Staff, Reinhardt Scheer, decided to launch a
suicide mission of the German fleet against the superior forces of the British navy and five massive
American super-dreadnoughts150. Scheer wanted to do this to “save the honor of the German navy,” and
to demonstrate the navy’s effectiveness in order to ensure its future funding.
“An honorable battle by the fleet—even if it
One thousand of the sailors he dispatched on this
mission thought it a terrible idea. They openly
should be a fight to the death—will sow the
rebelled, immobilizing the German fleet. Scheer
seed of a new German fleet of the future.”
sent all these mutinous sailors to the northern
German Admiral Reinhardt Scheer
German port at Kiel, where the situation
escalated. The sailors joined forces with Kiel’s workers and started a full-scale revolution, which spread
to Hamburg, Bremen, and Lubeck. The sailors and workers elected representative councils, and on
November 7151 in Bavaria, declared themselves an independent socialist republic.
This spirit of radical change was contagious: on November 9, a member of the Social Democratic Party,
Philip Scheidemann, went out on the balcony of the Reichstag and similarly declared to the German
people that Germany would now be a socialist republic. Scheidemann’s proclamation carried
considerable weight—but on the same day, the leader of the Communist Spartacus League, Karl
Liebknecht, proclaimed Germany would be a proletarian republic.152
Rather than endure a chaotic overthrow, as had occurred during the Russian Revolution, German
military and civilian leaders came to a peaceful understanding with the Social Democratic Party leader,
Friedrich Ebert. Ebert became the new Chancellor on November 10, 1918, serving as head of a
provisional government tasked with establishing a new democratic republic. In return for this peaceful
transition to power, Ebert agreed to several conditions:

He would not fire the old elites in the officer corps, civil service, or judiciary

He would restore domestic order

He would oppose the revolutionary movement, with force if necessary
Ebert’s first order of business was to accept the terms of the armistice as dictated by the Entente. He did
so the day after his appointment, on November 11, 1918. The Armistice took effect that day at 11 AM
sharp. The Great War, which could have been limited to a month or two, had lasted 226 weeks 153.
Though it had now officially ended, its devastation would reverberate far, wide, and long.
150
Meaning “fearing nothing.” If you are in a rowboat facing a dreadnought, you are, then, a chockfullofdread.
The one-year anniversary of the Bolshevik seizure of power in Petrograd
152
Liebknecht subsequently participated in a Spartacist revolution, during which he was captured, tortured, and shot.
153
Longer than your entire high-school education or, by another measurement, 1/5 the life expectancy of an alpaca.
151
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 86
III. The New Shape of the
World
When the video game developers at Blizzard Entertainment were
coming up with the Cataclysm WOW expansion, there is a good
chance that, early in the process, someone said words to the effect of
“What if there’s this incredibly huge dragon that no one knew was
still alive, and he’s been imprisoned underground for a really long
time, and he breaks free?” What started out as one cool idea grew to transform the entire setting
of the game. Landmasses cracked, bodies of water shifted, and societies were forced to change to
accommodate the new shape of the world. 154 World War I was no World of Warcraft—but it
unfolded in a similar pattern. What started as one small conflict between Serbia and Austria in
1914 exploded across the planet, and the geopolitical landscape was forever transformed.
The Peace Treaties
Six separate treaties had to be signed to officially end
the Great War155. The earliest one, in March 1918, had
been the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which established a
peace between Bolshevik Russia and Germany.
German/Russian Relations
It is perhaps misleading to call the Treaty of BrestLitovsk a peace treaty. It was intended to punish Russia
for opposing Germany, and therefore qualifies as a
punitive peace. Russia surrendered control of Poland,
the Baltic region, the Caucasus, Ukraine, and Finland.
The new government in Moscow had no choice but to
recognize each of those countries as a sovereign state, all
governed by the Central Powers.
On a map, the scale of this loss may not seem all that
significant, since the rest of Russia was still vast, but the regions demanded in the Brest-Litovsk treaty
spanned 750,000 square kilometers (roughly 466,000 square miles)156 and held enormous value. They:
154

Held about 25% of Russia’s population

Accounted for three-quarters of its iron and coal resources

Housed 28% of its industry

Generated 37% of its agricultural output
Mixing a dragon with a domino effect is dangerous business.
Apparently, a Great War requires a Great End.
156
For reference, Texas is about 269,000 square miles.
155
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 87
The Brest-Litovsk Treaty also required Russia to make enormous payments to Germany. These
payments included reparations for damages done to German-owned properties during the war;
repayment of loans made before the war; and the value of German-owned businesses that Russia
nationalized after the revolution.
The treaty’s terms went on to grant Germany extensive rights in Russia; foremost among them was the
freedom to export goods and profits to Russia without paying customs duties 157. The terms of the BrestLitovsk Treaty were so severe that they came close to making Russia a German colony. Following the
treaty, in an effort to procure as much grain as possible for its food-deficient populace and military,
Germany established a puppet regime in Ukraine and demanded enormous shipments of crops at belowmarket value. At that point, Ukraine was a German colony in all but name.
As soon as the German war effort collapsed in 1918, the new Russian government denounced the BrestLitovsk Treaty.
Germany Faces the Rest of the Entente
Armistice negotiations between Germany, Britain,
Debate it!
France, and the United States began in October 1918.
Resolved: That forcing a punitive peace on a losing
The public faces of these talks were, on the German
combatant in a war is justified.
side, the German leaders, and on the Entente side, one
man, President Woodrow Wilson, widely known for his pro-democracy ideals and love of peace.
Wilson had proposed the outline of a moderate plan he called the Fourteen Points. Germany was
unaware that, behind the scenes, Britain and France had begun insisting on crucial modifications to
Wilson’s plan. Among other terms and propositions, the outlined Fourteen Points called for:

The end of secret alliances

Freedom of the seas

Reduction of trade barriers

Unilateral disarmament of Germany

A settlement of colonial disputes throughout Europe that favored the colonies’ inhabitants

German evacuation of all occupied territories and Alsace-Lorraine

Autonomy or independence for the many nationalities in the defunct Austro-Hungarian Empire

Restoration of the Balkan nations

Protection and free passage through the Straits of Dardanelles for minorities in Turkey

The creation of an independent Poland with access to the sea

A League of Nations to guarantee political independence and territorial integrity for all nations
Britain immediately and flatly rejected the “freedom of the seas” point. It wanted to continue its
effective naval blockade until the Central Powers signed a definitive, permanent peace agreement.
157
That’s right—Germany was making Russia into its own personal duty-free shop.
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 88
Britain, France, and the other European Allies also
wanted to claim reparations for damage that German
forces had done to their civilians and civilian properties.
Learn More
Read President Wilson’s original Fourteen Points speech
at: http:/ /bi t.l y/ oH zs 8y
Wilson and the other Allied leaders arrived at a
compromise,158 and Germany and the Entente accepted the revised Fourteen Points.
A Difference of Opinion
When it came to enacting the peace, President Wilson’s interpretation closely adhered to the Fourteen
Points as written and presented Germany with relatively lenient terms. However, the French, led by
Georges Clemenceau, favored permanently demilitarizing, weakening, and containing Germany so that
it could never again pose a military threat.
These differences should have been settled at the Paris Peace Conference, in which permanent terms
were to be reached for all of the Central Powers countries—but, as we shall see, some historians are
unsure they ever were.
The five remaining peace treaties were named for the locations in or near Paris where they were signed:

The Treaty of Versailles with Germany (June 28, 1919)

The Treaty of Saint-Germain with Austria (September 10, 1919)

The Treaty of Neuilly with Bulgaria (November 27, 1919)

The Treaty of Trianon with Hungary (June 4, 1920)

The Treaty of Sèvres with Ottoman Turkey (August 10, 1920)
The most prominent of these was the Treaty of Versailles, which imposed harsh territorial losses,
reparation payments to the Allies, and other conditions on Germany. The famous economist John
Maynard Keynes159 was on the team of British negotiators, but when he saw how the Allied leaders were
proceeding, he quit the team. Keynes contended that the terms being imposed on Germany were
outrageously excessive, and that there was simply no realistic way for Germany to make the demanded
payments. Nevertheless, Germany signed the treaty.
A mere two months later, Keynes published a book entitled The Economic Consequences of the Peace,
which condemned the Treaty of Versailles and warned of massive problems it would cause in the future.
Many historians agreed (and still agree today) with Keynes. It is a popular opinion that the Treaty of
Versailles caused unnecessary economic ruin in post-war Germany, and that the resulting hardships and
suffering paved the way for the rise of Hitler and the Nazi Party.
Other historians take a differing view. According to them, the conditions placed on Germany at the end
of the war were much less draconian than the terms of the German-imposed Treaty of Brest-Litovsk; the
real problem was that the Allies never really settled on a compromise between the lenient American
approach and the highly punitive French approach to dealing with Germany.
158
159
To see the exact terms of the Treaty, take a look here: http://bbc.in/aUPJyz
A man whose moustache alone could beat you up.
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 89
Red Army vs. White Army
One sure problem with the peace negotiations was that they did
not address the divisions that the civil war had created in Russia.
The Bolshevik “Reds” were still pitted in deadly battles against
the anti-Bolshevik “Whites.”
While the civil war raged, the Entente sent British, French,
Japanese, and American troops to Russia, ostensibly to guard
the valuable supplies that had accumulated in the gigantic
railway stations in Vladivostok and Murmansk. Those supplies
could be readily looted, and the Allies did not want to lose
them. The longer these troops stayed in Russia, the more they
began to be drawn into the civil war on the White Russians’
side.
None of the Entente countries or their allies supported the
Bolsheviks, who had expropriated large amounts of foreign
property, refused to oppose the Central Powers, and signed their
own treaty with Germany. Consequently, none of the Allies
wanted Bolshevik Russia involved in the formal peace talks. In
May 1918, the Allies went so far as to extend conditional
recognition to the White Russian government, based in
Siberia160 and led by Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak.
The Big Three in Paris
Though thirty-seven countries sent representatives to
Expropriation
the Paris Peace Conference, three world leaders
The action of the state in taking or modifying the property
dominated the discussion: United States President
rights of an individual in the exercise of its sovereignty.
Woodrow Wilson, British Prime Minister David Lloyd
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary
George, and French Prime Minister Georges
Clemenceau. These three men’s distinct agendas were heard above those of other Allied leaders. France,
as the country hit the hardest by far Western Europe 161, wanted to limit Germany’s power in a clear-cut
and extensive way. Clemenceau did his best to set international policies such that Germany could
present no military threat in the present or future.
Britain had the largest global empire when the war began, and wanted to take steps to ensure its
strength; Lloyd George also wanted the European pre-war balance of power to be restored (putting
England and France back into positions of economic and political dominance), thinking that would
bolster a stable and peaceful Europe.
Woodrow Wilson campaigned for the formation of a League of Nations, whose cooperating members
could then create a new international order. Wilson envisioned, quoting his words, “a stable world of
democratic governments, limited armaments, and open markets”—a universal democracy. In his eyes, a
160
161
You know things aren’t going well when you’ve moved your government to Siberia.
And the country most likely to get attacked first if the Germans got war-like again
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 90
natural extension of this universal democracy would be to establish new territorial borders based on the
nationalities of the regions’ populations162.
The League of Nations Arises
In addition to the Big Three of Clemenceau, Lloyd George, and Wilson, one other leader influenced the
Paris Peace Conference—Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando of Italy. Together, these leaders became
known as the Council of Four.163 Wilson held a great deal of sway, and the first priority on his agenda
was to create a League of Nations. Consequently, the first two months of the conference revolved around
a painstakingly constructed founding document: the Covenant of the League of Nations. Its drafting of
the document was fraught with problems from the beginning:

Russia and the Central Powers were not allowed to join, which gave the League the appearance
of a continuation of the Entente rather than an all-encompassing entity.164

France strongly lobbied for the creation of a League of Nations military force, which could be
used to enforce edicts of the League. Lloyd George and Wilson both vetoed that proposal.

With the rejection of their military proposal, France stopped supporting the League, becoming a
member in little more than name.
Germany’s Bitter Pill
Clemenceau, Lloyd George, and Wilson presented the terms of the Treaty of Versailles to Germany on
May 7, 1919 in private meetings. The terms were harsh and highly punitive, and the German leadership
deeply resented them. Under the terms of the Treaty, Germany would:

Recognize the loss of all its colonies

Completely disarm

Cede Alsace-Lorraine and other substantial territories to the newly-forming Polish state
In a move that contradicted Wilson’s proposal that national borders should be drawn according the
nationalities of the residents, a German region where very few Poles lived was turned over to Poland.
The reason for this transfer was to give Poland access to the sea. For the same purpose, the German port
of Danzig (later renamed Gdansk) became a “free city”—making it a semi-autonomous city-state under
the protection of the League of Nations, and with a permanent customs union with Poland. This free
city included Danzig and a large area around it; the area was large enough to cut East Prussia off
completely from the rest of Germany.
Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles punished Germany even more harshly than the land transfers or
disarmament: it gave the Germans no choice but to admit full responsibility for the outbreak of the war.
Admitting this also meant agreeing to enormous reparation payments to the Entente—which Germany
finished paying as recently as the year 2010.
162
For example, Polish people might get to have a Poland—which had not happened in a long time.
Though Orlando was far less influential than the other Council leaders, and had little effect on long-term policies.
164
The remainder of the Entente took a dim view of the new Bolshevik government in Russia.
163
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 91
Blocked on the Home Front
One of President Wilson’s long-time domestic political opponents
was Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, a Republican from
Massachusetts165. Lodge held isolationist views, and had long
criticized Wilson’s international policies. In the November 1918
mid-term elections, the Republicans won the Senate, and Lodge
became chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Of Wilson’s ideas, Lodge criticized the League of Nations in
particular. Like large portions of the American public, Lodge did
not want the United States to be obligated to take part in foreign
affairs if another international war erupted.
Wilson believed he could overcome Lodge’s opposition by
insisting the Covenant of the League of Nations be embedded into
the Treaty of Versailles. The Senate had never refused to ratify a
peace treaty, and Wilson reasoned that if the Covenant were
included in the treaty, it would be protected. He was in for an
unpleasant surprise: due to the inclusion of the Covenant, as well
the objections of large ethnic groups in the United States, the
Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles.

German-Americans opposed the treaty’s harsh terms.

Irish-Americans opposed it because it granted
independence to many nations—but not Ireland.

Italian-Americans opposed it because Wilson opposed Italy’s claims to Fiume, a region largely
occupied by Croats and Slovenes.
The Versailles Compromise
The version of the Treaty of Versailles ultimately signed was a compromise.
It levied harsh terms against Germany, including
Rump State
enormous reparation payments and the loss of many
The remnant of a once-larger country, left limited after a
territories with German-speaking majorities; some of
disaster, invasion, occupation, secession, or overthrow.
those territories went toward the formation of Poland
and Czechoslovakia, while others included regions on the borders of France and Denmark. To curb
Germany’s ability to gain power in the future, the treaty also prevented the union, or anschluss, of
Germany and Austria, which would have benefited both countries but especially Austria. With the
Habsburg collapse, Austria’s standing was so diminished it was widely seen as a German rump state166.
Since the United States refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles, and the treaty (including the Covenant
of the League of Nations) did not allow the League of Nations a military force, the League lacked the
ability to enforce its decisions167.
165
And one of the few men alive whose moustache could overcome John Maynard Keynes’.
During barbecues, it turned into a rump roast state.
167
Perhaps they should have trained a force of unarmed but still effective Knights who say Ni!
166
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 92
If President Wilson had been able to dictate terms, he would have enacted his global democratic moral
order—but domestic and international forces blocked him. On his own, he might have supported Japan’s
proposed addition, condemning all racial discrimination. However, Australia, New Zealand, South
Africa, and the United States all opposed the idea. In the United States, it faced opposition from senators
in the Pacific states, where Japanese immigrants were numerous, and the South, where racial
discrimination had an especially strong legacy.
Wilson’s Inconsistencies
The fifth of Wilson’s own Fourteen Points read:
A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance
of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned
must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined.
However, when the question of international relations involving Central and South America arose,
Wilson insisted on reasserting the Monroe Doctrine, which stated the only global power to make any
decisions regarding Central or South America would be the United States. Wilson also agreed to a new
status for the colonies formerly held by the Ottoman Empire and Germany: they were to be classified as
“mandates” of the League of Nations. In practice, this amounted to handing those territories over to
Britain, France, Belgium, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Japan—not truly taking into the
promised consideration the interests of the native populations.
Wilson’s words and actions were also inconsistent with his “global moral order” when it came to war
debts. Britain and France hoped to prevail upon President Wilson to forgive the massive debts that both
countries owed to the United States but he refused, offering them the opportunity to reschedule their
repayments as a compromise.
A Partial French Victory
In general, the Treaty of Versailles favored France in forcing harsh penalties on Germany. Arguably the
most damaging penalty was the reparation debts, which would cripple the German economy, causing
long and widespread hardship. Military consequences were also harsh. The German military was not
abolished, but it was greatly limited:

Its U-boat fleet was confiscated

It was banned from building submarines or tanks and from having an air force or a General Staff

Its navy was limited to six battleships

Its army could have no more than 200,000 conscripts and 100,000 volunteers
In the Rhineland, one of Germany’s most important
Debate it!
industrial regions, the Germans were forbidden from
fortifying the region, using it to produce armaments, or
Resolved: That citizens of the losing side in a war should
accept the terms imposed by the winners.
conscripting any soldiers who lived there. This was
known as demilitarization. Allied troops were assigned
to occupy the Rhineland until 1935, though they reached an agreement with Germany to leave in 1930.
The coal-rich Saar region of Germany was ceded to France until 1935. Once the agreement ended, its
population voted overwhelmingly to rejoin Germany.
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 93
The Strategy behind the Terms
Preventing the German-Austrian union was a fairly
straightforward decision; if the anschluss took place,
Germany would have too much power in any future
conflict. If Germany and Austria remained separate,
Austria might even be persuaded to oppose Germany.
The areas of Germany ceded to Poland and
Czechoslovakia also held strategic value, as France and
Britain wanted to build strong allies in Eastern Europe.
Building these relationships would help the French and
British should Germany or Russia start a conflict.
Learn More
F i nd o ut m or e a b ou t th e G er man -s peak i n g re gi o n
k n own a s t he S ud et en la nd a t h ttp :/ /b i t.l y / J u W T HU
“Germany was not dismembered nor
was its capacity for revival destroyed.
The country remained basically intact
and potentially…the most powerful
state on the continent.”
Historian Zara Steiner
Poland’s new territory gave it access to the Baltic Sea, and Czechoslovakia gained the industrial region
known as the Sudetenland. Annexing their new territories also gave both countries large populations of
German speakers who, in many cases, still considered themselves German—not necessarily a boon for
Poland or Czechoslovakia, but reducing the populace, and therefore some of the power, of Germany.
The Treaty of Versailles managed to give Germany an abundance of reasons to harbor deep, lasting
resentments while allowing it enough freedom to work toward a return to its pre-war status. Germany’s
activities in the 1930s would demonstrate what a dangerous combination that was.
Poland Rises
In 1916, at the height of the war, Germany and Austria had sought Polish support in the war effort
against Russia. To that end, both countries declared a new Kingdom of Poland, complete with a Polishrun government and leaders. This kingdom was far from an independent state, as it still owed allegiance
to Germany and Austria, but the move established the framework for a new Polish government.
In 1918, as the final days of the war chipped away at the Austro-Hungarian forces, national committees
sprang up in the Habsburg Empire, championing independence for the Czechs, Yugoslavs, and Poles.
An independent Poland would need a leader—who, at the time, was sitting in prison. Joseph Pilsudski
had led a Polish legion of about 25,000 men within the Austrian army, but was arrested and incarcerated
when he withdrew his legion’s support from the Central Powers.
When Germany finally fell, on November 8, Pilsudski was released from prison to find the leadership of
the Kingdom of Poland waiting for him to assume control. Just like that, Pilsudski became the leader of
the Polish armed forces and a newly-independent Poland. Under his leadership, the Poles fought a small
war against Ukrainians in Galicia over ownership of Galician land; the Polish army emerged victorious
and took control of Eastern Galicia. The formal borders of Poland were then established in the course of
negotiating both the Treaty of Versailles and the Treaty of St. Germain.
Concerning Czechoslovakia
Two prominent Czech leaders—Tomas Masaryk and Eduard Benes—had strongly influenced Entente
policies during the war, despite spending the war years in self-imposed exile from Czechoslovakia. (They
felt they could most effectively lobby for Czechoslovak independence from outside the country.) Over 1.4
million Czechs and Slovaks fought in the war, many of them initially on the side of the Central Powers;
this allegiance was largely by default, as many Czechs and Slovaks lived in Habsburg-controlled areas and
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESOURCE | 94
were conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian army. Once the war got underway, Czech and Slovak
soldiers began deserting the Habsburg army, to which they felt
no real loyalty; tens of thousands surrendered to Allied forces
and were placed in POW camps.
From exile, Masaryk and Benes convinced the Allies to begin
recruiting volunteer armed divisions of Czech and Slovak
soldiers from the POW camps. Allied divisions consisting
mainly of Czechs, with a small percentage of Slovaks, mustered
90,000 men. These Czech divisions fought on the French,
Russian, and Italian fronts, and served three purposes:
1. First and foremost, they assisted the Allied war effort.
2. They generated Allied diplomatic support for the idea
of an independent Czech state.
3. They became a ready-made military force that could be used to defend the new Czech state.
Concerning the third point, their services were required starting on October 28, 1918 when a newlyformed Czechoslovakia declared its independence. That independence gained formal, international
recognition with the signing of the Treaty of St. Germain in September, 1919.
The Late, Great Habsburg Empire
The punishment for the Central Powers was mildest in Germany, harsher in Austria, and harshest in
Hungary.
Germany was furious about the limitations on its military, but Austria fared much worse: it was allowed
only 30,000 soldiers. The Austrian government also had to make heavy reparation payments to the Allies
according to the Treaty of Saint-Germain (signed on September 10, 1919).
Austria was granted the territory known as Burgenland, not as an action of goodwill, but as a deliberate
burden; the new Austrian land had previously been a part of Hungary, was home to mostly Germanspeaking people, and had been intermittently occupied by South Slavs as far back as the 7 th century. In
the long run, granting this land to Austria would cause political and diplomatic problems168.
The Treaty of Trianon, signed on June 4, 1920, reduced Hungary to one-third of its pre-1914 size. It
lost Ukrainian territories to Czechoslovakia; areas occupied by Hungarian South Slavs to the new
Kingdom of Yugoslavia; and Transylvania169 became to a greatly-expanded Romania. After all the forced
transfers of land, 3.3 million ethnic Hungarians no longer lived in Hungary.
A Deeply Flawed Solution
When the Paris Peace Conference concluded, the political map of Europe was vastly transformed 170. The
changes were a compromise between Woodrow Wilson’s stated goal of creating new political boundaries
based on people’s nationalities and France’s goal of rendering Germany unable to start another war.
168
This is what we ironically call a gift that keeps on giving.
Yes, that Transylvania
170
The geographical version of a whole lot of plastic surgery.
169
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The Allies ultimately accomplished neither of those goals. Instead, they created deep, long-lasting
resentment in Germany without fully disarming it or preventing it from returning to full strength.
The French wanted allies in eastern and southern Europe, ready to come to France’s aid if Germany or
the new Russian government decided to wage war. However, the new nations and newly-distributed
territories were not strong enough, numerous enough, or strategically well-placed enough to provide the
protection France wanted. In some ways, they made Europe politically more complex than ever.
After Poland fought the small territorial war against Ukrainians in Galicia, it entered a major war with
Soviet Russia in 1920 over contested Ukrainian territory.
Germany harbored deep-seated resentment over the lands it was forced to cede to Poland (Danzig) and
Czechoslovakia (the Sudetenland). Hungary became a rump state, reduced to a third of its former size.
By their very nature, having altered the geographical makeup of the countries affected, these changes
could not be ignored or forgotten, and remained unresolved for the next two decades.
The Great War had ended, but the terms of the peace supplied Russia, Germany, Austria, and Hungary
with revanchist claims—claims based on revering lost land or status—which would ultimately, if
unintentionally, set the stage for World War II171.
Ottoman Issues
It was not France or the United States, but the third of the Big Three that ended up controlling the fate
of the former Ottoman Empire. The United States had never declared war on the Ottomans, but Britain
had more than a million soldiers on the ground in the Middle East when the war ended. The terms of
the August 1920 Treaty of Sèvres effectively transformed Turkey into a British colony. They also
granted Britain massive influence over the rest of the Ottoman holdings, as Turkey lost every last one of
the Empire’s Arab territories.

Britain gained control of Palestine, Transjordan, and Iraq

France gained control of Syria and Lebanon

Greece and Armenia both gained land that was stripped from the Ottomans

Large portions of the Anatolian Peninsula were handed to Italy, Greece, France, and Armenia.
Turkish Revival
The Anatolian regions did not remain in non-Turkish
Father of the Turks
hands for very long. A Turkish statesman named
Kemal went on to become the first President of the
Mustafa Kemal led a nationalist uprising that quickly
new Republic of Turkey and was granted the
became the Turkish War of Independence. The
exclusive surname Atatürk, meaning “Father of the
uprising began in May 1919—more than a year before
Turks,” by the Turkish Parliament.
the Treaty of Sèvres was signed—and lasted until July
1923, when all foreign forces were expelled from the Anatolian Peninsula.
On July 24, 1923, the Treaty of Lausanne replaced the abruptly defunct Treaty of Sèvres, guaranteeing
Turkey’s independence and recognition as a sovereign state. Turkey’s new sovereignty led to population
redistribution on a massive scale: Greece and Turkey swapped significant portions of their respective
171
SMH.
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populaces. More than a million Greeks living in Turkey and roughly 380,000 Turks living in Greece
were suddenly uprooted from their homes and transported to the country of their ethnic background.
All those Greeks now lived in Greece, and all those Turks now lived in Turkey, but beyond that, they
were essentially refugees, and were given little help. This led to long-term political unrest and upheaval.
Democratic Collapse (With One Holdout)
In the wake of the Great War, democracy failed in each newly-created sovereign state. The Serbs in
Yugoslavia soon dominated its government, which became a military dictatorship in 1928. In Poland,
Joseph Pilsudski came out of retirement and led a military coup in 1926, overthrowing the democratic
government. Other countries followed suit. The only new European state that did not fall to some form
of right-wing military rule was Czechoslovakia. Wilson had named his goal to “make the world safe for
democracy”—but democracies had to survive for that to matter.
Civilian and Domestic Impact of the War
As we have seen, the Great War became a “total war”—a conflict involving not just military forces but
also the majority of the civilians and economies of the participating countries. We will now examine, in
turn, the war’s impact on economics, gender roles, and civilians in general.
Show Me the Money
Banks and other institutions were profoundly unprepared for—and flatly incapable of handling—the
demands of the war. Consequently, banking and financial practices underwent a global revolution.
First came the income taxes. Before 1914, the majority of taxes collected around the globe were taken
from sales and real estate. Due to the war, countries that had never had income taxes imposed them for
the first time, and countries that had income taxes raised them significantly. Income tax promised a high
return for the governments that levied them, so almost every government joined the income tax trend.
Countries with populations that could afford war bonds began selling them. The United States and
Britain used this method with fair success. France and Germany both tried it, but with less success, and
neither Austria-Hungary nor Russia tried it on any kind of large scale. Countries that did not sell war
bonds often ended up taking international loans with very high interest rates to fund their war efforts.
The war caused a drastic increase in government spending as a percentage of combatant countries’ Gross
Domestic Products, and not just because the governments had to buy enormous amounts of weaponry
and other war materiel. The combatant nations had to manage and coordinate national economic
activities on an unprecedented scale; examples include the establishment of the United States’ War
Industries Board (which set market prices), Railroad Administration (which nationalized the country’s
railways), Fuel Administration (which controlled the price of coal), and Food Administration (which
urged the public to cooperate with the government in the conservation of food).

Government spending in Britain rose from 15% of the GDP in 1914 to roughly 60% in 1916.

Government spending in the United States rose from 8% of the GDP in 1913 to 29% in 1919.
Many historians have noted that the greatly expanded role of governments in the 20 th century was as
much a product of the two World Wars as it was the result of new liberal or humanitarian ideologies.
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The Shortcomings of Direct Taxation
Directly taxing the citizenry did not produce enough money for
the war effort in any country. Even the richest nations fighting in
the Great War needed more capital.
The most common solution was to take massive loans from other
countries. The United States became the largest lender, loaning
to Britain, France, and, to a lesser degree, Russia. The United
States’ role as a lender, combined with its late entrance into the
war, meant it emerged from the Great War in an economically
better position than the other Allies. The Central Powers did not
have the option of borrowing from the United States, and there
were very few nations willing lend them cash at all. That placed
the burden of raising capital much more squarely on the citizenry
in Central Powers countries.
The best way to raise war capital—if a country’s populace could
support it—was for governments to borrow from their own
citizens by selling war bonds. The least desirable method was to
print more money; it works in the short-run, but leads to massive
inflation. Inflation hit every combatant country in the Great War
and, often, the worst of its effects were felt after the war. Extreme
inflation had a number of detrimental effects172, including:

Savings accounts denominated in the local currency sharply declined in value.

Wages did not keep up with inflation, so purchasing power dropped.
Inflation tends to affect the middle class more than the lower or upper classes. It was no coincidence that
the most vocal supporters of Hitler’s rise to power in the 1930s were members of the middle class. After
all, Hitler promised to overhaul Germany’s finances and restore security and prosperity to the people.
On an international scale, inflation could be (and was) used to reduce the value of loans and reparation
payments. This meant that countries that did not experience high inflation rates found themselves facing
substantially greater burdens of loan repayment than those that did.
A Permanent Change
The Great War ended up permanently altering the functioning of the international financial system.
When the Bolsheviks took power in Russia, they defaulted on every international loan they owed. They
also seized and nationalized every foreign-owned business on Bolshevik soil. Both of these moves created
chaos in the massive, international financial network of which the Russian Empire had been a part.
During the war, the world gradually abandoned the gold standard—in which each piece of currency
corresponds to a sum of gold held in a bank. The need for capital to finance the war and the practice of
printing new money were more than the gold standard could sustain. Economist Barry Eichengreen
claims attempts to return to the gold standard contributed to the Great Depression’s onset in 1929.
172
Inflation can be fun—but only when applied to balloons.
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The basic reality of war—countries pitted against each other—dealt another shock to the global
economy. Before 1914, countries had begun to trade freely with one another; the world had been
embracing what is often called the “first globalization.” Capital, investments, and loans, as well as goods
and services, flowed across borders, strengthening the economies of all the nations involved.
The outbreak of the Great War put an end to much of that international flow. Entente nations could no
longer trade with Central Powers nations, and, on top of that, the German and Russian blockades
further separated the European nations’ economies. Because they were most affected by the naval
blockades, Germany and Russia began to favor economic development based on their own resources—
an approach known as economic autarchy. This national economic focus, a core feature of both fascism
and communism, traces back directly to World War I.
Who’s In Charge Now?
Before the war, the nations and empires of Europe were, unquestionably, the most powerful and wealthy
on the planet. During the war, that power began a dramatic shift toward the United States. Prior to
1914, the United States owed more money to international debtors than other nations owed to it—but
as soon as the Great War began, Britain, France, and Russia began borrowing heavily from the United
States, so that by the time the war finally ended, those three nations owed the United States a total of
$9.6 billion. That amount would translate to roughly $148 billion in 2013 money.
By 1919, the United States had become the world’s largest and most influential lender and financial
center, holding roughly $11 billion in foreign assets. Before the war, Britain had been Earth’s largest
lender, but by the end of 1919 it had become one of the world’s most indebted countries 173.
Britain’s indebtedness did not stop Britain’s Gross Domestic Product from increasing over the course of
the war. Only the United States joined Britain in having its GDP rise during wartime. Every single other
country that fought in the war suffered declines in GDP.
Battlefield Damage
Material and economic losses hit especially hard in the countries where the majority of the fighting took
place. France, Italy, and Serbia experienced tremendous losses in both real estate and in property such as
vehicles and civilian possessions. France and Russia in particular sustained severe damage to their
agricultural, mining, and industrial regions. The areas of France occupied during the war included
farming areas that in 1913 had produced:

20% of the country’s wheat

25% of the country’s oats

50% of the country’s sugar beets
The occupied regions also included mining operations that had produced:
173

80% of the country’s steel

55% of the country’s coal

90% of the country’s iron ore
And it didn’t even have any fun in the process.
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Any damage to these regions would have caused the GDP to drop, but the occupied areas suffered
catastrophic destruction. By 1918, the French GDP had dropped to only 64% of its 1913 level.
Entente Spending vs. Central Powers Spending
The United States played a crucial economic role in the Great War, both before its military involvement
and after, but American spending skyrocketed once it had mobilized. In two years of combat, the United
States spent more than either France or Russia had over four years of fighting (if we include these
countries’ transfers and payments to the United States and other Allied nations).
The Entente as a whole also spent more than twice as much money on the war effort as the Central
Powers. This was not because the Central Powers chose not to spend that much; it was because they
could not. The nations of the Entente had larger, more powerful economies than the Central Powers, so
they could afford to fight the war for a longer period of time, using more resources.
Gender Roles in Wartime
Male Roles
The war effort needed hundreds of thousands of men to voluntarily leave their homes, families,
communities, and jobs and place themselves in mortal danger. Recruiting organizations accomplished
this task in a variety of ways.
Many involved appealing to young men’s virility. Recruiting posters, newsreels, and advertisements
reinforced the best way to prove one’s masculinity was to sign up for active duty. The dual implications
were that volunteering would raise young men’s status among men and make them more attractive to
women. In Britain, recruiters hired young women to shame men who had not volunteered; these women
would seek them out and present them with white feathers for their cowardice. 174
News reporting sensationalized enough to verge on propaganda also played a part in getting men to
volunteer. German newspapers widely publicized stories of atrocities committed by the Russian
Cossacks, while French and British papers relentlessly emphasized the “rape of Belgium,” a series of
violent incidents involving the rape and execution of civilians during Germany’s initial Belgian invasion.
All of these persuasive recruiting tactics worked to some degree, and hundreds of thousands of young
men did volunteer, expecting to make their way to the front lines, attack the enemy directly, and prove
once and for all how virile and attractive they were. Once they arrived at their posts, however, it quickly
became clear that the opportunity for direct, face-to-face attack would be rare. Most of the time, during
the stalemate, the young soldiers had little to do but wait and try to endure terrifying artillery attacks.
Constant stress and a feeling of powerlessness took a severe psychological toll on the soldiers—yet their
traumatization was often dismissed—for instance, compared with the pseudo-scientific diagnosis of
“hysteria”175 in women. Men suffering from shell shock and other manifestations of distress felt that they
could not live up to the hyper-masculine image they had sought to prove by enlisting, and historians
have observed that this mental conflict caused a widespread “crisis of masculinity.”
174
175
I totally saw a scene about that in Downton Abbey.
A now-debunked psychological condition with a variety of symptoms, exclusive to women. Also a Def Leppard album.
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Women on the Home Front
With millions of men gone to fight in the war, the demand for
laborers went through the proverbial roof. The logical solution
was to bring in women to fill the jobs vacated by men—but this
solution faced strong opposition from the populace (mostly from
the men) and particularly from labor unions.
Circumstances flatly overrode the opposition, and women
flocked to factory jobs and other recently vacated occupations. In
Russia, the number of jobs filled by women in the industrial
work increased from 27% in 1914 to roughly 43% in 1917.
France and Germany both saw the percentage of women in
industrial positions jump to an estimated 33% during the war.
Women proved to be excellent workers, leaders, and
coordinators, and many received promotions to positions such as
foreman176 or lower-level management. The convention of paying
women less than men for the same job was not overturned, but
the women’s wages did increase from their pre-war levels.
Women in the War
Many women filled non-combat positions in the military. Most
of them worked as nurses either in medical stations near the front or in hospitals at home. All of these
women were volunteers, but that almost changed in 1916 when manpower shortages at the front became
increasingly severe; military leaders in both Britain and Germany seriously discussed instituting female
drafts. Women thus conscripted would, in theory, be able to replace men in non-combat positions,
freeing the men to fight.
These drafts never took place, but their serious consideration marked a change in attitude towards
gender roles. Prior to 1914, the idea of conscripting women would have been rejected out of hand. The
one country to thoroughly defy existing gender biases in this area of military service was Russia. After the
Provisional Government took power in the 1917 February Revolution, it created a volunteer women’s
battalion for combat. About 6,000 women volunteered and fought. 177
Protests, Strikes, and More Protests
In every country involved in the war, women played prominent roles in strikes and protests. Women
who had not entered the labor force could easily participate in protests; likewise, many of the women
who had begun working could strike with much less chance of being prosecuted than men, as they were
fulfilling such crucial roles. When French soldiers at the front protested their generals’ strategy of
sending soldiers into pointless assaults, women protested at home; this “united front” eventually did
convince French military leaders to change strategies. In Russia, women played vital parts in the massive
urban protests in Petrograd and other Russian cities that led to the overthrow of Tsar Nicholas II.
176
177
Or “forewoman” or “foreperson,” depending on one’s preference.
And if there’s not an epic Ron Howard-directed movie in there somewhere, I’m a monkey’s uncle.
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Suffering for Suffrage
The shift in women’s roles during the war made women’s social inequality more obvious, and was a key
contributor to their earning the right to vote in most European countries and the United States. Prior to
1914, among nations that fought in the Great War, the only ones in which women could vote were
Finland, New Zealand, Australia, and Norway. The war changed that:

1917: Russia’s new Provisional Government granted women the vote

1918: Britain allowed women over the age of 30 to vote

1919: Germany granted women voting rights

1920: The United States removed voting restrictions “on account of sex” in the 19 th
Amendment to the Constitution
France and Switzerland were reluctant. French women gained
the right to vote after World War II, while legislation granting
Swiss women the right to vote was accepted only in 1971.
Once the war ended and millions of men returned to their
homelands, societies tried their best to return to the way things
were before 1914. While gender roles did revert to a degree in
each country, they did not fully return to their prewar norms.
A similar, even more pronounced shift in gender roles would
occur during World War II. Both conflicts ended up helping to
define the modern roles and rights of women.
Civilians as Targets
Before the Great War began, it was generally considered
undesirable to target civilians; there was even discussion among
the European nations of creating an international “code of
warfare” that would expressly prohibit attacking civilians. Such
ideas were swiftly discarded once the war got underway.
Enemy Aliens
One of the first measures taken against civilians in the war was
not directly violent. Many countries identified, arrested, and detained residents who were citizens of an
enemy nation or descended from citizens of an enemy nation. These residents were identified as enemy
aliens. The fear was that they might be called up to serve the enemy—and that foreign-born or foreigndescended residents, even if they were citizens of the country in which they were living, might serve as
spies for the enemy. Germany arrested and detained an estimated 100,000 people of French and Belgian
origin, and Russia did the same to roughly 100,000 Germans and Austrians on Russian soil.
Civilians at the Front
Soldiers were not the only ones occupying front-line combat zones. Many areas included homes with
civilians still living in them. When an army established a front line, it would turn to the local populace
for supplies—requisitioning them for much less than market value. This practice, bordering on larceny,
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was not the worst of the offenses committed against civilians near the front. Typically, an army left
broad swaths of destruction in its wake, including civilian mistreatment and deaths. Russian Cossacks on
the Eastern Front were notorious for brutalizing, raping, and pillaging civilians, especially Jews.
Likewise, the German army committed rape, looted villages and homes, and arbitrarily executed civilians
accused of sabotage during its invasion of Belgium. Two of the most brutal examples of armed forces’
mistreatment of civilians occurred at roughly the same time, both during massive military retreats.
The Russian Retreat
When Germany staged a massive offensive in Russian-held Poland and Ukraine, the Russian army had
no choice but to stage a full-scale retreat. Knowing it was giving up territory to Germany, the Russian
military ordered its troops to leave that territory a burned-out wasteland—a tactic known as slash and
burn. Troops drove out all the people living on the land and destroyed enormous amounts of property.
This slash and burn policy displaced thousands of civilians, driving them as refugees into the Russian
interior. It also spurred such widespread and highly-publicized domestic protests that the military
leadership revised its criteria.
Russian officers received orders to limit their forced relocations of civilians to residents of German or
Jewish descent—the two least popular ethnic groups in Russia—expelling them from areas before
German troops could occupy them. As a result, more than 250,000 German nationals and people of
German descent living in Russia became refugees, and the army marked their property for
nationalization. An estimated 500,000 Jews became targets of the military’s pogrom, and those who
survived fled to the Russian interior. In all, approximately one million Russian citizens became victims
of the army’s slash and burn policy before the government put an end to it under intense political
pressure, mainly from the United States.
The Armenian Genocide
When the Russian armed forces invaded Turkey, it forced the Turkish military into a large-scale retreat.
During this maneuver, Turkish military leaders accused the Armenian population in eastern Turkey of
sympathizing with the Russians, based on their common religion of Christianity.
As a result of this accusation, many Armenians were ordered to be deported—not just from areas under
threat of Russian invasion, but from many other Armenian-occupied regions as well. Large numbers of
Armenian men were executed on the spot, leaving women and children to endure forced marches into
the Syrian Desert. The survival rate on these death marches was very low. Authenticated totals of
Armenian fatalities do not exist, but estimates range from 500,000 to 1.5 million.
New Technological Fuel for the Fire
As you know, the Great War made use of submarine warfare on an unprecedented scale, and due to
submarines’ inherent difficulty in distinguishing military ships from non-military, the number of
maritime civilian casualties increased sharply when Germany engaged in unrestricted U-boat warfare.
The British complicated the situation by blurring the line between military and commercial ships; it was
standard practice to use commercial vessels to carry military supplies as well as to arm what seemed to be
commercial ships with military weapons.
Aircraft also entered the battlefield for the first time in the Great War. By the end of the war, the British,
French, and German armies had all developed airplanes capable of bombing runs, which targeted civilian
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population centers as well as munitions plants and military
targets. German planes and zeppelins dropped bombs on London,
and by 1918 Allied bombers began targeting cities in Germany.
The targeting of civilians, which began in the Great War, would
be carried much farther and cause much greater destruction in
World War II.
War Makes You Sick
More than any conventional weapon of warfare, contagious
disease carries a potential for devastation. Naval blockades and the
strain on totally-mobilized countries led to critical food shortages
in Europe by 1918. Once the war had ended, chaos, inflation,
and economic collapse worsened the shortages—and people’s
susceptibility to disease. When the Spanish flu hit the trenches in
summer 1918, it might have affected a few hundred people and
died off if the soldiers had been healthier. As it was, the flu spread
like wildfire and very quickly reached epidemic levels—which
meant that even healthy, well-nourished people succumbed.
At the end of the war, Europe teemed with refugees; they joined
with the millions of soldiers crossing the continent to return
home. This mass movement of people, without proper facilities for cleaning their clothes or even their
bodies, provided an unparalleled breeding ground for lice.178 Lice are carriers for the disease typhus.
More specifically, louse excrement is the vector by which typhus spreads, and these millions of
exhausted, hungry, unwashed travelers spread lice droppings far and wide. It did not take long for the
outbreak to reach epidemic levels, right alongside the Spanish flu.179
Together, the Spanish flu and typhus caused far more death and suffering than all of the bullets, shells,
and poison gas of the Great War combined. Estimates of their death toll come in at 50 million 180.
In Conclusion
It is hard to classify the people, nations, and empires that fought the Great War as “winners” or “losers.”
After the early storm of combat, the war largely ground to a halt, and became a war of attrition in which
two opposing sides simply tried to outlast each other. In the end, the people of the Central Powers grew
too weak, sick, hungry, and devoid of resources to keep fighting. Many people in every country suffered
greatly, even in nations that benefited economically or gained independence as a result of the war.
Victories and losses in war become etched on the public psyche. In many countries, we celebrate
independence days and memorialize losses and massacres. On the other hand, as time passes and the
global balance of power shifts, former enemies become allies while former allies become enemies. As
much as warfare unquestionably divides the world, it is also a universal historical experience for all
regions of the world. Perhaps, for any war, it is better to think not of “winners” and “losers” but of
victims, survivors, and heroes—all huddled together in the trenches of history.
178
If you can read this part without stopping to scratch your scalp, you’re stronger-willed than I am.
There was a specific strain of typhus known as “trench fever” that struck the Western Front.
180
Excuse me while I build a sterile plastic bubble around my desk.
179
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About the Author
Dan Jolley has been a freelance writer longer than most of the people
reading this guide have been alive—a fact that does not make him feel
older than dirt. Like, at all. Really.181 Anyone wanting to know more
about the various novels, comic books, children’s books, and video games
Dan has written can learn more at his website, www.danjolley.com.
About the Editor
Tania Asnes is a writer and editor specializing in literary analysis. A native
of Watertown, MA, she graduated from Barnard College with a major in
English (Creative Writing), a minor in Russian, a membership in Phi Beta
Kappa, and—thanks to acting in a student-written slapstick stage play—
excellent technique in pieing herself in the face. Tania has been a member
of the DemiDec team since 2007. She lives in Brooklyn amid a sea of
bicycles and ironic moustaches.
About the Alpaca-in-Chief
Daniel Berdichevsky is the founder of DemiDec and of the World
Scholar’s Cup—which recently held its first-ever Ottoman Empire
Round in Izmir, Turkey—and a strategic consultant for the United
States Academic Decathlon. His portfolio includes school outreach and
hand-to-hand combat at the national competition. Between
globetrotting episodes, Daniel hurries home to DemiHeadquarters to
be fed empanadas and appease the sulking DemiPuppy. Whether at
home or abroad, Daniel drinks enough tea that an unobservant vampire
might mistake him for a bipedal pot of Earl Gray.
You can reach Daniel at dan@demidec.com or follow him on Facebook
at www.facebook.com/dan.berd.
181
Dirt is, after all, very old.