Introduction to World War I
« The Great War of 1914 - 1918 lies like a band of
scorched earth dividing that time from ours»
-- American historian Barbara Tuchman, author of
The Guns of August (Pulitzer Prize, 1962)
« The Biggest Collective Blunder of Mankind »
-- Britain historian Niall Ferguson
Map of Europe, 1914
Map of WWI participants
Origins of World War I
1. Growing tensions among colonial powers
2. Naval ‘arms race’ between Britain, Germany
3. Imperial Germany sparks crises in Morocco
4. Web of alliances create two competing camps
5. Rise of internationally-oriented socialism
6. Flare-up of nationalism in Balkans amidst
weakening multiethnic empires
7. 100 years since last major European conflict
British Dreadnought Battleship
July 28, 1914: 19-year-old Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princips
shoots dead Austro-Hungarian heir to the throne, Archduke
Franz Ferdinand, and his pregnant wife Sophie, in the Bosnian
capital of Sarajevo. (dies in prison 4 years later)
The Outbreak of War
1. Germany supports Austria’s hard-line approach
to Serbia in wake of assassination.
2. Russia steps up to defend Slavic ally Serbia
3. France stand by its ally, Russia
4. Germany executes Schlieffen Plan, an invasion
through Belgium to rapidly defeat France and
avoid a war on two fronts
5. Violation of Belgian neutrality (and reports of
German atrocities) pushes Britain to join war
The Schlieffen Plan
Germans en route to Paris
Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany: Why
Germany Wanted a War
1. Promote pro-military groups
and stifle socialists, by 1912
largest party in Reichstag
2. Defeat naval rival Britain
3. Defeat Russia before it
finishes modernizing its
army, railroads, industry
4. Army chief of staff Germal
von Moltke felt war inevitable
‘the sooner the better’ (1912)
5. Navy urged delay to … 1914
WWI Technology: Submarine
Why Everyone Else Wanted a War
1. England wanted to defeat rival Germany
2. France wanted to recover Alsace, Lorraine
3. Conservatives’ desire to beat back socialists such as
Jean Jaures, who opposed ‘imperialist’ war
4. British unsettled by labor union unrest and violence of
suffragette movement for women’s votes
5. No one foresaw the slaughter when the Maxim guns
that mowed down the Mahdi fighter at Omdurman,
Sudan, in 1898, would turn on fellow Europeans.
6. Everyone thought they would ‘be home by Christmas’
Wellington at Waterloo
British poet/soldier Rupert Brooke
1914 I: Peace
1914 V: The Soldier
If I should die, think only this of me:
Now, God be thanked Who has watched us That there's some corner of a foreign field
with His hour,
That is for ever England. There shall be
And caught our youth, and wakened us from In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
sleeping,
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
With hand made sure, clear eye, and
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
sharpened power,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
Glad from a world grown old and cold and
weary,
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
Leave the sick hearts that honour could not A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
move,
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England
And half-men, and their dirty songs and
given;
dreary,
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And all the little emptiness of love!
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
Map of Western Front
Just the Facts ...
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War lasts: 4 years, 4 months ( 1914 - 1918)
10 million die and a further 20 million wounded. 70 million fought,
including many from British and French Empires.
Serbia loses up to ¼ population, Oxford 1/3 of 1913 class, France
50% men aged 20 – 32, Germany 35% of 19-22 years olds
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Central Powers: Germany, Austro-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire
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Allies: France, Russia, Serbia, Italy (1915), the U.S. (1917)
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Russia pulls out in 1917; US joins Allies in same year.
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Famous for stagnation and senseless brutality of trench warfare,
war stripped of any lingering sense of glamour or glory.
Beginning of Europe's decline and rise of U.S. and U.S.S.R
Austro-Hungarian Empire, Ottoman Empire break apart,
monarchies in Germany, Russia disappear
Nicholas II of Russia and
Georges Clemenceau of France
President Woodrow Wilson
British PM David Lloyd George
Timeline of World War I: 1914
June 28: Archduke assassinated in Sarajevo, Bosnia by Serbian nationalist
July 28: Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia. Russia mobilizes
August 1: Germany declares war on Russia
August 3: German declares war on France and invades Belgium
August 4: Britain declares war on Germany
August 22: Battle of the Frontiers—French repulsed in assault on Germany; lose
27,000 soldiers in a single day.
August 26 – 30: Germany destroys Russian at Tennenberg; 250,000 killed
Sept: 5-10: Desperate French and British assault (including Paris taxis) forces
Germans back at the Battle of the Marne. First trenches dug.
Dec. 25: Christmas truce. Troops allegedly fraternize, play football on battlefield.
Battle of the Marne, 1914
Taxi to the Marne, 1914
German calvary
French infantry charge
German infantry
WWI Technology: Italian Blimp
Timeline of World War I: 1915
Jan: Russians defeat Ottoman Empire troops in month-long winter battle in Caucasus
mountains at Sarikamish; thousands freeze to death
Jan-Feb: Germans launch Zeppelin raid on England; begin submarine blockade
April: Start of Armenian massacres in Turkey that will murder a million or more
April 22: Germans use poison gas (chlorine) for first time at Ypres
April 25: Start of futile, 9-month Allied attempt to seize Turkish peninsula of Gallipoli and
thus control access to Dardanelles to re-supply Russia.
May 7: German sub sinks Lusitania, killing 1200 civilian passengers including 140
Americans. US outrage prompts Germany to temporarily halt such attacks
May 23: Though previously allied with Germany and Austria, Italy joins Allies in hopes of
gaining land in northeast (Trieste, Tirol, Dalmatia). Hugely unpopular with public.
Dec 28: Allies begin withdrawal from Gallipoli after losing 200,000 men, most of them
Australian/ New Zealand. Turkish general Mustafa Kemal will become ‘Ataturk’
Strategic Location of Gallipoli
Map of Gallipoli Battles
Periscope Rifle at Gallipoli (1915)
Ottoman Battery at Gallipoli
Armenian Deportees
Armenian dead
Starving Armenian boy
WWI Technology: Rifle Grenades
Timeline of World War I: 1916
Jan. : Military conscription begins in Britain
Feb: Germans begin ten-month assault on unprepared French forces at forts of
Verdun to ‘bleed French white’. A million casualties combined before they
give up. General Petain (‘ils ne passeront pas!’) becomes war hero.
July: In part to relieve pressure on French at Verdun, British begin 5-month
offensive at the Somme. Incredible 57,000 casualties in the first day alone. A
million casualties combined, again, for 10 km of land gained.
August: Romania joins Allies to gain Transylvania from Hungary
Nov: US President Woodrow Wilson re-elected: ‘he kept us out of the war’.
Dec.: Bellicose Welshman David Lloyd George replaces vacillating PM ‘Squiffy’
Asquith, who lost eldest son Raymond at Battle of the Somme.
Dec. 31: Tsarina’s ‘mystic’ Rasputin poisoned, stabbed, and drowned by
relatives of the Tsar (he dies).
British Trench at the Somme, 1916
King George V Visits Arms Factory
WWI Technology: The Tank
Not quite a Panzer division yet…
World War I Timeline: 1917
Jan. 19: Discovery of German foreign secretary Zimmerman's telegram urging Mexico to
declare war on US to reclaim Texas, Southwest. Provokes outcry in United States
Feb. 1: Germany resumes unrestricted submarine warfare, hoping to force war’s end
before this move causes US to intervene
March: Tsar Nicolas II of Russia abdicates.
April: Wilson asks Congress to declare war on Germany
April: Half-million French troops mutiny after failed offensive at Chemin des Dames.
July: First US troops arrive in France. Start of gruesome, rain-soaked 4-month battle of
Passchendaele, with 700,000 casualties
Oct.: Italians, long ineffective, utterly routed by Austrians, Germans at month-long Battle
of Caporetto in Slovenia. 13,000 Italians killed, 260,000 captured, 350,000 desert.
Nov 7: Bolsheviks led by Lenin come to power in Russia.
Dec. 3: Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky signs peace with Germany
Dec.9: British forces capture Jerusalem from Turks, having taken Bagdad in spring.
Austrians executing Serbs, 1917. Serbia, finally at Austria’s
mercy, loses 16% of population in war. Romania loses 9%
WWI Technology: German Airplane
Machine gun on airplane
US Seaplane construction
World War I Timeline: 1918
Jan. 8: Wilson publishes his 14 Points, a pathway for world peace
March: Germany, its society on brink of collapse due to blockade, launches first of five
spring offensives that will bring them close enough to Paris to shell the city.
April – May: Americans help halt German advances, begin to push Germans back.
July: German troops shipped from East to Western front desert in large numbers
July 16- 17: Tsar Nicholas and his family murdered
August 8: Allies begin 100 Days' Offensive; 100,000+ German soldiers taken prisoner.
Sept: Allies break through German fortifications.
Oct. 28: German navy mutinies at Kiel when ordered out for suicidal final attack
Oct. 30: Ottomans sign armistice
Nov. 9-10: A German republic is founded, Kaiser flees to Holland
Nov. 11, 11 a.m.: Guns cease on the Western Front as armistice goes into effect
Dec. 3: President Wilson departs for Paris Peace Conference
WWI Destruction: Arras
WWI Destruction: Chateau Thierry
Destruction in Belgium
The Result
1. 10 million dead, 20 million injured, many mutilated for life (plus est. 7
million civilians due to malnutrition, disease, Armenian genocide).
2. Russian losses are heaviest at 1.8 million. French: 1.4 million (5% of
population), Germany 2 million (4% of population), Ottomans
800,000, or 13% of population. British 900,000, Austria 1.1 million,
3. Americans sacrifice 116,000 but many more to Spanish flu epidemic
that follows.
4. Creation of multiethnic states: Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, rump
states of Austria and Hungary, Romania with large Hungarian
minority and Poland with large German minority
5. East Prussia from rest of Germany.
6. Imperial governments abolished in Turkey, Germany, and Austria.
Aftermath of the War
1. Women gain limited suffrage in Britain in 1918, full in 1928. America in 1920.
Revolutionary Russia, Germany let women vote in 1918; French not until after WWII
2. Ottoman Empire deprived of its lands in the Middle East, which become
‘protectorates’. Britain has mandates for Palestine, Iraq, France for Syria, Lebanon.
3. Turkey becomes secular modernizing republic; forced expulsions of 1 million
Christians to Greece in exchange for 500,000 Muslims
4. In Europe, new countries created (Baltic Republics), old ones’ borders modified
(Serbia and Romanie double in size), others revived (Poland).
5. All riven by inter-ethnic rivalry.OnlyCzechoslovakia still a democracy by 1930
6. 4 million Germans left in Czechoslovakia (Sudetenland) and Poland (West Prussia).
Austria left most of its industry in Poland, Czechoslovakia
7. German colonies of modern-day Tanzania, Namibia given to English. Cameroon split
French-English, and Togoland given to French
8. Alsace-Lorraine restored to France; Saar’s coal mine output also given to France
9. Germany’s huge reparations, decided at Treaty of Versailles, weaken new goverment.
10. League of Nations, precursor to United Nations, created, but US refuses to join.
11. League’s visionary, Wilson, suffers incapacitating stroke in 1919. He dies in 1921.
Opposition to Women’s Suffrage
1920 Treaty of Sevres’ Turkey
Smyrna ablaze, 1922
Map of Europe, 1923
The World After the War: Africa
After the Treaty of Versailles
1. Criticized as too harsh, huge reparations unpayable,
many Germans under foreign rule. Clemenceau
wanted it harsher, to eliminate German threat forever
2. US fails to ratify it, doesn’t join League of Nations;
France loses guarantee of Anglo-American support
3. Germany plunges into political upheaval and runaway
inflation. German coal workers go on strike in 1923.
4. French troops occupy Rhineland in 1923 when
Germany suspends payment. Inflation skyrockets until
marks nearly worthless but troops soon forced to
withdraw. Inflation brought under control in 1924.
5. Often blamed for contributing to Hitler’s rise to power
German ‘hyperinflation’