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World War I

World War I began in 1914, after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and lasted

until 1918. During the conflict, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire

(the Central Powers) fought against Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Romania, Japan and the

United States (the Allied Powers). Thanks to new military technologies and the horrors of

trench warfare, World War I saw unprecedented levels of carnage and destruction. By the time

the war was over and the Allied Powers claimed victory, more than 16 million people—soldiers

and civilians alike—were dead.

ARCHDUKE FRANZ FERDINAND

Tensions had been brewing throughout Europe—especially in the troubled Balkan region of

southeast Europe—for years before World War I actually broke out.

A number of alliances involving European powers, the Ottoman Empire , Russia and other

parties had existed for years, but political instability in the Balkans (particularly Bosnia, Serbia

and Herzegovina) threatened to destroy these agreements.

The spark that ignited World War I was struck in Sarajevo, Bosnia, where Archduke Franz

Ferdinand —heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire—was shot to death along with his wife

Sophie by the Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip on June 28, 1914. Princip and other

nationalists were struggling to end Austro-Hungarian rule over Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The assassination of Franz Ferdinand set off a rapidly escalating chain of events: Austria-

Hungary , like many in countries around the world, blamed the Serbian government for the

attack and hoped to use the incident as justification for settling the question of Serbian

nationalism once and for all.

KAISER WILHELM II

Because mighty Russia supported Serbia, Austria-Hungary waited to declare war until its

leaders received assurance from German leader Kaiser Wilhelm II that Germany would support

their cause. Austro-Hungarian leaders feared that a Russian intervention would involve Russia’s

ally, France, and possibly Great Britain as well.

On July 5, Kaiser Wilhelm secretly pledged his support, giving Austria-Hungary a so-called

carte blanche or “blank check” assurance of Germany’s backing in the case of war. The Dual

Monarchy of Austria-Hungary then sent an ultimatum to Serbia, with such harsh terms as to

make it almost impossible to accept.

WORLD WAR I BEGINS

Convinced that Austria-Hungary was readying for war, the Serbian government ordered the

Serbian army to mobilize, and appealed to Russia for assistance. On July 28, Austria-Hungary

declared war on Serbia, and the tenuous peace between Europe’s great powers quickly

collapsed.

Within a week, Russia, Belgium, France, Great Britain and Serbia had lined up against Austria-

Hungary and Germany, and World War I had begun.

THE WESTERN FRONT

According to an aggressive military strategy known as the Schlieffen Plan (named for its

mastermind, German Field Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen ), Germany began fighting World War

I on two fronts, invading France through neutral Belgium in the west and confronting Russia in

the east.

On August 4, 1914, German troops crossed the border into Belgium. In the first battle of World

War I, the Germans assaulted the heavily fortified city of Liege , using the most powerful

weapons in their arsenal—enormous siege cannons—to capture the city by August 15. Leaving

death and destruction in their wake, including the shooting of civilians and the execution of a

Belgian priest, whom they accused of inciting civilian resistance, the Germans advanced

through Belgium towards France.

FIRST BATTLE OF THE MARNE

In the First Battle of the Marne , fought from September 6-9, 1914, French and British forces

confronted the invading Germany army, which had by then penetrated deep into northeastern

France, within 30 miles of Paris. The Allied troops checked the German advance and mounted a

successful counterattack, driving the Germans back to north of the Aisne River.

The defeat meant the end of German plans for a quick victory in France. Both sides dug into

trenches, and the Western Front was the setting for a hellish war of attrition that would last

more than three years.

Particularly long and costly battles in this campaign were fought at Verdun (February-December

1916) and the Battle of the Somme (July-November 1916). German and French troops suffered

close to a million casualties in the Battle of Verdun alone.

The bloodshed on the battlefields of the Western Front, and the difficulties its soldiers had for

years after the fighting had ended, inspired such works as All Quiet on the Western Front by

Erich Maria Remarque and the poem In Flanders Fields by Canadian doctor Lieutenant-Colonel

John McCrae.

THE EASTERN FRONT

On the Eastern Front of World War I, Russian forces invaded the German-held regions of East

Prussia and Poland, but were stopped short by German and Austrian forces at the Battle of

Tannenberg in late August 1914.

Despite that victory, Russia’s assault had forced Germany to move two corps from the Western

Front to the Eastern, contributing to the German loss in the Battle of the Marne.

Combined with the fierce Allied resistance in France, the ability of Russia’s huge war machine

to mobilize relatively quickly in the east ensured a longer, more grueling conflict instead of the

quick victory Germany had hoped to win under the Schlieffen Plan.

RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

From 1914 to 1916, Russia’s army mounted several offensives on World War I’s Eastern Front,

but the Red Army was unable to break through German lines.

Defeat on the battlefield, combined with economic instability and the scarcity of food and other

essentials, led to mounting discontent among the bulk of Russia’s population, especially the

poverty-stricken workers and peasants. This increased hostility was directed toward the imperial

regime of Czar Nicholas II and his unpopular German-born wife, Alexandra.

Russia’s simmering instability exploded in the Russian Revolution of 1917, spearheaded

by Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks , which ended czarist rule and brought a halt to Russian

participation in World War I.

Russia reached an armistice with the Central Powers in early December 1917, freeing German

troops to face the remaining Allies on the Western Front.

AMERICA ENTERS WORLD WAR I

At the outbreak of fighting in 1914, the United States remained on the sidelines of World War I,

adopting the policy of neutrality favored by President Woodrow Wilson while continuing to

engage in commerce and shipping with European countries on both sides of the conflict.

Neutrality, however, was increasing difficult to maintain in the face of Germany’s unchecked

submarine aggression against neutral ships, including those carrying passengers. In 1915,

Germany declared the waters surrounding the British Isles to be a war zone, and German U-

boats sunk several commercial and passenger vessels, including some U.S. ships.

Widespread protest over the sinking by U-boat of the British ocean liner Lusitania —traveling

from New York to Liverpool, England with hundreds of American passengers onboard—in May

1915 helped turn the tide of American public opinion against Germany. In February 1917,

Congress passed a $250 million arms appropriations bill intended to make the United States

ready for war.

Germany sunk four more U.S. merchant ships the following month, and on April 2 Woodrow

Wilson appeared before Congress and called for a declaration of war against Germany.

GALLIPOLI CAMPAIGN

With World War I having effectively settled into a stalemate in Europe, the Allies attempted to

score a victory against the Ottoman Empire, which entered the conflict on the side of the

Central Powers in late 1914.

After a failed attack on the Dardanelles (the strait linking the Sea of Marmara with the Aegean

Sea), Allied forces led by Britain launched a large-scale land invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula

in April 1915. The invasion also proved a dismal failure, and in January 1916 Allied forces

were staged a full retreat from the shores of the peninsula, after suffering 250,000 casualties.

Did You Know?

The young Winston Churchill, then first lord of the British

Admiralty, resigned his command after the failed Gallipoli

campaign in 1916, accepting a commission with an infantry

battalion in France.

British-led forces also combated the Ottoman Turks in Egypt and Mesopotamia , while in

northern Italy, Austrian and Italian troops faced off in a series of 12 battles along the Isonzo

River, located at the border between the two nations.

BATTLE OF THE ISONZO

The First Battle of the Isonzo took place in the late spring of 1915, soon after Italy’s entrance

into the war on the Allied side. In the Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo, also known as the Battle of

Caporetto (October 1917), German reinforcements helped Austria-Hungary win a decisive

victory.

After Caporetto, Italy’s allies jumped in to offer increased assistance. British and French—and

later, American—troops arrived in the region, and the Allies began to take back the Italian

Front.

WORLD WAR I AT SEA

In the years before World War I, the superiority of Britain’s Royal Navy was unchallenged by

any other nation’s fleet, but the Imperial German Navy had made substantial strides in closing

the gap between the two naval powers. Germany’s strength on the high seas was also aided by

its lethal fleet of U-boat submarines.

After the Battle of Dogger Bank in January 1915, in which the British mounted a surprise attack

on German ships in the North Sea, the German navy chose not to confront Britain’s mighty

Royal Navy in a major battle for more than a year, preferring to rest the bulk of its naval

strategy on its U-boats.

The biggest naval engagement of World War I, the Battle of Jutland (May 1916) left British

naval superiority on the North Sea intact, and Germany would make no further attempts to

break an Allied naval blockade for the remainder of the war.

SECOND BATTLE OF THE MARNE

With Germany able to build up its strength on the Western Front after the armistice with Russia,

Allied troops struggled to hold off another German offensive until promised reinforcements

from the United States were able to arrive.

On July 15, 1918, German troops launched what would become the last German offensive of

the war, attacking French forces (joined by 85,000 American troops as well as some of the

British Expeditionary Force) in the Second Battle of the Marne . The Allies successfully pushed

back the German offensive, and launched their own counteroffensive just three days later.

After suffering massive casualties, Germany was forced to call off a planned offensive further

north, in the Flanders region stretching between France and Belgium, which was envisioned as

Germany’s best hope of victory.

The Second Battle of the Marne turned the tide of war decisively towards the Allies, who were

able to regain much of France and Belgium in the months that followed.

TOWARD ARMISTICE

By the fall of 1918, the Central Powers were unraveling on all fronts.

Despite the Turkish victory at Gallipoli, later defeats by invading forces and an Arab revolt had

combined to destroy the Ottoman economy and devastate its land, and the Turks signed a treaty

with the Allies in late October 1918.

Austria-Hungary, dissolving from within due to growing nationalist movements among its

diverse population, reached an armistice on November 4. Facing dwindling resources on the

battlefield, discontent on the homefront and the surrender of its allies, Germany was finally

forced to seek an armistice on November 11, 1918, ending World War I.

TREATY OF VERSAILLES

At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, Allied leaders would state their desire to build a post-

war world that would safeguard itself against future conflicts of such devastating scale.

Some hopeful participants had even begun calling World War I “the War to End All Wars.” But

the Treaty of Versailles , signed on June 28, 1919, would not achieve that lofty goal.

Saddled with war guilt, heavy reparations and denied entrance into the League of Nations ,

Germany felt tricked into signing the treaty, having believed any peace would be a “peace

without victory,” as put forward by Wilson in his famous Fourteen Points speech of January

1918.

As the years passed, hatred of the Versailles treaty and its authors settled into a smoldering

resentment in Germany that would, two decades later, be counted among the causes of World

War II .

LEGACY OF WORLD WAR I

World War I took the lives of more than 9 million soldiers; 21 million more were wounded.

Civilian casualties caused indirectly by the war numbered close to 10 million. The two nations

most affected were Germany and France, each of which sent some 80 percent of their male

populations between the ages of 15 and 49 into battle.

The political disruption surrounding World War I also contributed to the fall of four venerable

imperial dynasties—Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia and Turkey.

World War I brought about massive social upheaval, as millions of women entered the

workforce to support men who went to war, and to replace those who never came back. The

first global war also helped to spread one of the world’s deadliest global pandemics, the Spanish

flu epidemic of 1918, which killed an estimated 20 to 50 million people.

World War I has also been referred to as “the first modern war.” Many of the technologies we

now associate with military conflict—machine guns, tanks , aerial combat and radio

communications—were introduced on a massive scale during World War I.

The severe effects that chemical weapons such as mustard gas and phosgene had on soldiers and

civilians during World War I galvanized public and military attitudes against their continued

use. The Geneva Convention agreements, signed in 1925, restricted the use of chemical and

biological agents in warfare, and remains in effect today.