The Beginning of World War I

Frantic competition among European powers marked the late 1800s and early 1900s.
The strength of a nation was measured by the scope of its wealth and resources, the
amount of land it held, and the size of its army and navy. The leaders of many
countries believed that a nation could only achieve its political and economic goals if it
had a strong military, a belief known as militarism. Conscript armies grew in most
countries, in which young men were required to undergo a year or two of military
training and were then sent home as reserves to be mobilized or called to action when
needed for fighting. Naval budgets increased every year, especially in Great Britain and
Germany. No country wanted to be without allies if war broke out, so two major military
alliances took hold. Germany, fearful of being hemmed in by enemies on its east and
west, signed an agreement with Austria-Hungary to support each other in a European
war. Russia and France reached a similar agreement.

Militarists increasingly viewed their nations’ armed forces as above criticism. And many
greatly admired such military values as self-sacrifice, discipline, and obedience. War
was increasingly seen as an adventure, an opportunity to fight and even die for one’s
country. Karl Pearson, a British writer at the time, claimed that wars are necessary. He
maintained that nations could establish their rightful position in the world “by contest,
chiefly by way of war with inferior races, and with equal races by the struggle for trade
routes and for the sources of raw materials and food supply.”

Others held similar views. Count Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, the chancellor of
Germany at the turn of the twentieth century, claimed that “the old saying still holds
good that the weak will be the prey of the strong. When a people will not or cannot
continue to spend enough on armaments to be able to make its way in the world, then
it falls back into the second rank.”

For Pearson, Hollweg, and other Europeans, a nation was more than a country. To
them, the members of a nation not only shared a common history, culture, and
language but also common ancestors, character traits, and physical characteristics.
Many believed, therefore, that a nation was a biological community and that
membership in it was passed on from one generation to the next. In other words, belief
in a nation was similar to what many believed about race.

Some historians refer to Europe in the early 1910s as a powderkeg (a barrel of

gunpowder). European nations were eager for war to prove their superiority over other
nations. They had growing militaries. And they had joined together to form opposing
military alliances, pledging to support their partner nations in case of war. Like a barrel
of gunpowder, the smallest spark could make everything explode.

The spark that set off World War I came on June 28, 1914, when a young Serbian
patriot shot and killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian
Empire (Austria), in the city of Sarajevo. The assassin was a supporter of the Kingdom
of Serbia, and within a month the Austrian army invaded Serbia. As a result of the
military alliances that had formed throughout Europe, the entire continent was soon
engulfed in war. Because European nations had numerous colonies around the world,
the war soon became a global conflict.

Source: https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/beginning-world-war-i

In August 1914, both sides expected a quick victory. Neither leaders nor civilians from
warring nations were prepared for the length and brutality of the war, which took the
lives of millions by its end in 1918. The loss of life was greater than in any previous war
in history, in part because militaries were using new technologies, including tanks,
airplanes, submarines, machine guns, modern artillery, flamethrowers, and poison gas.

The map below shows the farthest advances of Central and Allied forces on the fronts
to the west, east, and south of Germany and Austria-Hungary. Most of the war's major
battles took place between those lines of farthest advance on each front. Germany’s
initial goal was to knock the French out of the war by occupying Belgium and then
quickly march into France and capture Paris, its capital. German troops could then
concentrate on the war in the east. That plan failed, and by the end of 1914, the two
sides were at a stalemate. Before long, they faced each other across a 175-mile-long
line of trenches that ran from the English Channel to the Swiss border. These trenches
came to symbolize a new kind of warfare. A young officer named Harold Macmillan
(who later became prime minister of Britain) explained in a letter home:

Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about the modern battlefield is the desolation and
emptiness of it all. . . . Nothing is to be seen of war or soldiers—only the split and
shattered trees and the burst of an occasional shell reveal anything of the truth. One
can look for miles and see no human being. But in those miles of country lurk (like
moles or rats, it seems) thousands, even hundreds of thousands of men, planning
against each other perpetually some new device of death. Never showing themselves,
they launch at each other bullet, bomb, aerial torpedo, and shell. And somewhere
too . . . are the little cylinders of gas, waiting only for the moment to spit forth their
nauseous and destroying fumes. And yet the landscape shows nothing of all this—
nothing but a few shattered trees and 3 or 4 thin lines of earth and sandbags; these
and the ruins of towns and villages are the only signs of war anywhere.

The area between the opposing armies’ trenches was known as “No Man's Land” for
good reason. Fifty years after the war, Richard Tobin, who served with Britain’s Royal
Naval Division, recalled how he and his fellow soldiers entered No Man’s Land as they
tried to break through the enemy’s line.

As soon as you got over the top,” he told an interviewer, “fear has left you and it is
terror. You don’t look, you see. You don’t hear, you listen. Your nose is filled with
fumes and death. You taste the top of your mouth. . . . You’re hunted back to the
jungle. The veneer of civilization has dropped away.

Unlike the war on Germany’s western front, the war on the eastern front was a war of
rapid movement. Armies repeatedly crisscrossed the same territories. Civilians were
frequently caught in the crossfire, and millions were evacuated from their homes and
expelled from territories as armies approached. On both sides of the conflict, many
came to believe that what they were experiencing was not war but “mass slaughter.” A
private in the British army explained, “If you go forward, you’ll likely be shot, if you go
back you’ll be court-martialed and shot, so what the hell do you do? What can you do?
You just go forward.”

The carnage was incomprehensible to everyone, as millions of soldiers and civilians

alike died. Historian Martin Gilbert details the loss of life:

More than nine million soldiers, sailors and airmen were killed in the First World War. A
further five million civilians are estimated to have perished under occupation,
 bombardment, hunger and disease. The mass murder of Armenians in 1915 [see
reading, Genocide Under the Cover of War, and the Spanish influenza epidemic that
began while the war was still being fought, were two of its destructive by-products. The
flight of Serbs from Serbia at the end of 1915 was another cruel episode in which
civilians perished in large numbers; so too was the Allied naval blockade of Germany,
as a result of which more than three-quarters of a million German civilians died.

https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/beginning-world-war-i
https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/brutal-realities-world-war-i

World War 1 Timeline – 1917 by Ben Johnson

https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/World-War-1-Timeline-1917/

Important events of 1917 during the fourth and penultimate year of the First World War,
including the surprise tank attack by the British (pictured above) at the Battle of
Cambrai.

The British intercept and decode a telegram from the German Foreign Secretary Arthur

Zimmermann to Mexico urging her entry into war against the United States. The American
19 Jan
states of Texas, Arizona and New Mexico would be offered to the Mexican government in

return for such assistance.

1 Feb Germany resumes unrestricted U-boat warfare. All allied and neutral ships are to be sunk on
 sight. Over the next month close to a million tons of shipping would be lost. Lloyd George

orders Royal Navy convoys to protect merchant ships destined for Britain.

3 Feb The United States of America severs diplomatic ties with Germany.

The Cunard passenger liner S.S. Laconia, sailing from New York to Liverpool, is sunk off the

Irish coast
24 Feb
The Zimmermann Telegram is passed to the United States government by the British. It

contains details of the German proposal of an alliance with Mexico against America.

11 March British troops capture Baghdad.

15 March As a consequence of the Russian Revolution, Tsar Nicholas II abdicates.

U.S. President Woodrow Wilson addresses Congress and asks the House of Representatives
2 April
to declare war on Germany.

16 April Lenin arrives in Russia.

The Nivelle and Chemin des Dames Offensives end in disastrous failures for the French.

End April The high levels of casualties cause unrest throughout the French army with a month-long

series of mutinies breaking out. General Nivelle is sacked, ending his career.
7 Nov The Bolsheviks overthrow the Russian government and install a Communist one under Lenin.

The British capture Jerusalem from the Turks. Edmund Allenby enters the city on foot in

9 Dec respect for the Holy City and quickly posts guards to protect all the sites held sacred by the

Christian, Muslim and Jewish religions.

Edmund Allenby entering the city of Jerusalem

Bolshevik Russia opens peace negotiations with Germany at Brest-Litovsk (now Brest,
22 Dec
Belarus).
https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/World-War-1-Timeline-1917/

Propaganda
Negotiating Peace

Learn about the concessions that the Treaty of Versailles required from Germany after
its defeat in World War I

https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/negotiating-peace

After the United States entered the war in 1917, the tide turned decisively in favor of
the Allies. In September 1918, Germany’s generals informed Kaiser Wilhelm and his
chancellor, Prince Max von Baden, that the war was lost. Two months later, the British
and French governments demanded that the Germans sign a cease-fire or face an
Allied invasion. At 5:10 a.m. on November 11, the Germans signed the document, and
at 11:00 a.m. the guns fell silent on the western front. The kaiser had already
abdicated, or given up his power, and a new German government awaited a peace
treaty that would formally end the war.

The Germans had hoped to negotiate a cease-fire based on principles set forth in a
speech given by US president Woodrow Wilson in January 1918. They also hoped
those principles would be incorporated into the peace treaty. In his speech, Wilson had
identified “fourteen points” he considered essential to a just and lasting peace. They
included the removal of the German army from territories it had conquered during the
war, an end to secret agreements between countries, open seas, no more barriers to
international trade, disarmament, national self-determination for groups that were once
a part of the old empires and the establishment of a League of Nations to prevent
future wars

However, neither Britain nor France had agreed to Wilson’s Fourteen Points. During
the war, the two nations had made secret plans to divide up the colonies Germany had
held before the war. They had also made deals with various nationalist groups eager
for the independence of those colonies. In addition, much of the war on the western
front had been fought in Belgium and France, and both expected Germany to pay for
the devastation.

The Allied countries—including the United States, Britain, France, Italy, and Japan—
negotiated the peace treaty at the Palace of Versailles in France from January 1919 to
January 1920. The final Treaty of Versailles contained 440 articles.

Article 231 of the treaty explained who would pay for the enormous cost of the war and
the damage in the war-torn Allied countries:

Article 231

The Allied and Associated Governments affirm and Germany accepts the responsibility
of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allied and
Associated Governments and their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of
the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies.

Other portions of the treaty outlined how Germany would pay reparations to other
countries. In addition, the treaty stated that Germany would limit the size of its military
and hand in its battleships (which Germany sank). It also specified new borders for
Germany, with the result, as historian David Stevenson notes, that “Germany lost about
13 per cent of its area and 10 per cent of its population in Europe (though most of
those transferred were not ethnically German), in addition to all its overseas
possessions.”

Germans had no choice but to accept the Treaty of Versailles. The treaty required
more concessions from Germany than Wilson’s Fourteen Points had suggested.
However, historian Doris Bergen argues that the terms of the Treaty of Versailles were
not as harsh on Germany as the terms that Germany had imposed on Russia in the
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918 Regardless, many Germans were outraged and
believed that the treaty had humiliated their nation.