World War I

• 1. Introduction

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  World War I began with two pistol shots fired in a Sarajevo street on the 28th of June 1914. Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb, had taken his position after the Archduke's car made a wrong turn. Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife Sophie were both fatally wounded. In Vienna, according to historian Zbyněk Zeman, the event almost failed to make any impression. On the 28th and the 29th of June, crowds listened to music and drank wine, as if nothing had happened.

  Within six weeks, that indifference had curdled into a global conflict spanning Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia-Pacific. The fighting ran from the 28th of July 1914 to the 11th of November 1918, and left an estimated 15 to 22 million dead. How did one assassination pull two coalitions, the Allies and the Central Powers, into the deadliest war the world had yet seen? Why did the men who built the alliances believe they were keeping the peace? And how did a war meant to last six weeks grind on for four years in trenches stretching from the English Channel to Switzerland?

• 2. The Architecture Of Alliances

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  Otto von Bismarck spent the years after 1871 trying to keep France friendless. Victory in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871 had let him consolidate a German Empire, and he expected France to seek revenge. In 1873 he negotiated the League of the Three Emperors, binding Austria-Hungary, Russia, and Germany. When that dissolved over rivalry in the Balkans, Germany and Austria-Hungary formed the Dual Alliance of 1879. Italy joined in 1882 to make it the Triple Alliance.

  The Reinsurance Treaty of 1887 was Bismarck's most delicate stitch, a secret pledge between Germany and Russia to stay neutral if either was attacked. For Bismarck, peace with Russia was the foundation of German foreign policy. In 1890, Wilhelm II forced him to retire. His new Chancellor, Leo von Caprivi, was persuaded not to renew the treaty with Russia.

  France seized the opening. The Franco-Russian Alliance of 1894 ended the isolation Bismarck had so carefully maintained. The Entente Cordiale with Britain followed in 1904, and the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907 completed the Triple Entente. These were not formal alliances. By settling old colonial disputes in Asia and Africa, they made British support for France or Russia a real possibility, a shift visible when Britain and Russia backed France during the Agadir Crisis of 1911.

• 3. Ships, Railways, And A Naval Bluff

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  Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz wanted a German fleet that could rival Britain's Royal Navy. Backed by Wilhelm II, he drew on the writing of US naval author Alfred Thayer Mahan, who argued a blue-water navy was vital for global power. Tirpitz had Mahan's books translated into German, and Wilhelm made them required reading for his senior military staff. Bismarck had opposed any such challenge, believing Britain would stay out of Europe so long as its sea power was secure.

  The launch of a new class of battleship in 1906 made every existing warship obsolete and handed Britain a technological lead it never gave up. Germany had spent enormous sums to build a navy large enough to antagonise Britain but not to defeat it. In 1911, Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg conceded the contest, shifting money from the navy to the army in what was called the armaments turning point.

  The real fear was Russia. After its defeat by Japan and the Revolution of 1905, Russia was recovering fast, expanding railways near Germany's western border after 1908. Germany and Austria-Hungary depended on faster mobilisation to offset Russia's greater numbers, so the closing gap mattered more than warships. After Germany added 170,000 troops in 1913, France extended military service from two years to three, and the Balkan powers, Italy, and others followed. From 1908 to 1913, military spending by the six major European powers rose by over 50 percent in real terms.

• 4. The Powder Keg

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  The years before 1914 brought crisis after crisis to the Balkans as outside powers circled the declining Ottoman Empire. Russia saw itself as protector of Serbia and other Slav states, yet preferred a weak Ottoman government over the strategic straits to an ambitious Slav power like Bulgaria. Austrian statesmen viewed the Balkans as essential to their Empire's survival and saw Serbian expansion as a direct threat.

  The Bosnian Crisis of 1908-1909 began when Austria annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, territory it had occupied since 1878. The European powers denounced the move but accepted it. Some historians see it as ending any chance of Austria cooperating with Russia in the Balkans. Ottoman weakness, exposed by the Italo-Turkish War of 1911-1912, then prompted the Balkan League of Serbia, Bulgaria, Montenegro, and Greece.

  The First Balkan War of 1912-1913 saw the League overrun most Ottoman territory in the region, surprising outside observers. Serbian capture of Adriatic ports triggered partial Austrian mobilisation on the 21st of November 1912. Disputes among the victors then sparked the 33-day Second Balkan War, when Bulgaria attacked Serbia and Greece on the 16th of June 1913. Bulgaria was defeated, losing most of Macedonia to Serbia and Greece, and Southern Dobruja to Romania. Even the winners felt cheated of their rightful gains, a mix of resentment and insecurity that earned the region its name as the powder keg of Europe.

• 5. The July Crisis

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  On the 23rd of July 1914, Austria delivered an ultimatum to Serbia with ten demands, drawn up to be unacceptable so they could provide an excuse for war. Austrian officials believed Serbian intelligence had helped organise the murder, though the Foreign Ministry had no solid proof. Serbia ordered general mobilisation on the 25th of July yet accepted nearly every term, refusing only those letting Austrian representatives operate inside Serbia. Austria called this a rejection, broke off relations, and on the 28th of July declared war and began shelling Belgrade.

  Russia ordered general mobilisation in Serbia's defence on the 30th of July. German Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg, anxious to present Russia as the aggressor and win over the SPD opposition, delayed war preparations until the 31st. That afternoon Russia received a German note demanding it cease all war measures within 12 hours. France, asked for neutrality, instead ordered mobilisation but held back its declaration.

  The German General Staff had long planned for a two-front war. The Schlieffen Plan called for using 80 percent of the army to defeat France first, then turning east, which demanded speed. When Germany's ultimatum to Russia expired on the morning of the 1st of August, the two were at war. Britain's cabinet had narrowly decided on the 29th of July that its 1839 Treaty of London obligations to Belgium did not require military force. After Germany occupied Luxembourg, declared war on France on the 3rd of August, and invaded Belgium early on the 4th, Britain sent an ultimatum. When it expired at midnight without reply, Britain and Germany were at war.

• 6. The Trench Stalemate

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  Pre-war tactics that emphasised open warfare and individual riflemen proved obsolete in the conditions of 1914. Barbed wire, machine guns, and artillery let defenders build systems that made massed infantry advances nearly suicidal. The Schlieffen Plan had assigned 85 percent of German forces in the west to the right wing under its creator, Alfred von Schlieffen, head of the General Staff from 1891 to 1906. His successor, Helmuth von Moltke the Younger, shifted the balance to 70:30 and cancelled the planned incursion into the Netherlands. Historian Richard Holmes argues these changes left the right wing too weak for decisive success.

  The German advance still came close. By late August the Allied left was in full retreat, and France's offensive in Alsace-Lorraine failed with casualties exceeding 260,000. Then Alexander von Kluck disobeyed orders, opening a gap between the German armies near Paris. The French and British counter-attacked at the Marne and pushed the Germans back 40 to 80 kilometres. Shortly after, Crown Prince Wilhelm told an American reporter, "We have lost the war. It will go on for a long time but lost it is already."

  Both sides then dug in. After the Race to the Sea, an unbroken line of trenches ran from the Channel to the Swiss border by the end of 1914. On the 22nd of April 1915, at the Second Battle of Ypres, the Germans used chlorine gas for the first time on the Western Front, violating the Hague Convention. The great battles that followed only deepened the deadlock. Verdun, from February to December 1916, produced between 700,000 and 975,000 casualties and became a symbol of French determination. The opening day of the Somme, the 1st of July 1916, was the bloodiest in the history of the British Army, with 57,500 casualties including 19,200 dead.

• 7. A War Across The World

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  On the 30th of August 1914, New Zealand occupied German Samoa, and within months Allied forces had seized nearly all German territory in the Pacific. Japan declared war on Germany, took the South Seas Mandate, and seized the German treaty port at Tsingtao on the Chinese Shandong peninsula. In Africa, French and British troops invaded Togoland and Kamerun in early August. Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck led a guerrilla campaign in German East Africa and only surrendered two weeks after the armistice took effect in Europe.

  The Ottoman Empire opened fronts that stretched from the Caucasus to Arabia. Enver Pasha, the supreme commander, launched a winter offensive against Russian positions in December 1914 with 100,000 troops and lost 86 percent of his force at Sarikamish. At Gallipoli in 1915, the Ottomans repelled the British, French, and the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. In Mesopotamia, British forces captured Baghdad in March 1917. The Empire also carried out large-scale ethnic cleansing of Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian Christians, the genocides that bear those names. The Arab Revolt, led by Sharif Hussein, began in June 1916 and ended with the Ottoman surrender of Damascus.

  India's contribution was vast. In 1914, the British Indian Army was larger than the British Army itself. Between 1914 and 1918 an estimated 1.3 million Indian soldiers and labourers served abroad, with 47,746 killed and 65,126 wounded. Leaders of the Indian National Congress believed backing the war would hasten Home Rule. When self-government did not follow, disillusionment fed the campaign for full independence led by Mahatma Gandhi.

• 8. Collapse And Reckoning

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  By the end of 1916, Russian casualties neared five million killed, wounded, or captured, with food shortages gripping the cities. In March 1917, troops refused to fire on crowds in Petrograd, and the Duma forced Tsar Nicholas II to abdicate. Vladimir Lenin, with German help, was ushered from Switzerland into Russia on the 16th of April 1917. After the Bolsheviks seized power, Soviet Russia signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on the 3rd of March 1918, ceding Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and parts of Poland and Ukraine.

  The United States entered the war on the 6th of April 1917, after Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare. In April 1917 the US Army had fewer than 300,000 men, against British and French armies of 4.1 and 8.3 million. By the end of November 1918, two million members of the American Expeditionary Forces had reached France. Germany gambled on a final blow. Operation Michael, launched on the 21st of March 1918, achieved an advance of 60 kilometres, but the exhausted German army could not consolidate. The Allied Hundred Days Offensive began on the 8th of August and broke German morale.

  The end came fast. Bulgaria signed the Armistice of Salonica on the 29th of September 1918, prompting Wilhelm II to telegram, "Disgraceful! 62,000 Serbs decided the war!". The Ottomans capitulated on the 30th of October, Austria-Hungary on the 3rd of November. Facing revolution at home, Wilhelm II abdicated on the 9th of November, and the Armistice of the 11th of November 1918 ended the fighting. The Treaty of Versailles, signed on the 28th of June 1919, stripped Germany of territory and demanded reparations. Its Article 231, the War Guilt Clause, left most Germans humiliated and resentful. That resentment, carried through the 1920s and 1930s, would help the League of Nations fail and the next war begin in 1939.