Administrerende direktør Catalina har en ledende leder av økonomiske, aktuarmessige, juridiske og påstandseksperter som arbeider tett med de beste eksterne fagfolkene i markedet. Catalina kombinerer økonomisk styrke og fokuserte interne ressurser. Dette gir den beste plattformen for driftsvirksomheten og for vurdering og investering. Chris Fagan Chief Executive Chris er en kvalifisert revisor med stor erfaring innen forsikrings - og finanssektoren. Chris etablerte, bygget og vellykket solgt BCF Holdings Limited, en privat finansiell tjenesteyting, mellom 1985 og 1992. Han tilbrakte fem år mellom 1993 og 1998 med Sedgwick Group PLC, først som finansdirektør for sin ikke-marine maktoperasjon i London og senere som Administrerende direktør i Sedgwick Europe og administrerende direktør for Latin-Amerika. Han ble med i Murray Lawrence Partners (på den tiden, det største Lloyds administrerende byrået) i 1998 som Chief Operating Officer. Mens han var hos Murray Lawrence, var Chris med til å reversere virksomheten til Angerstein PLC for å danne Amlin PLC, et FTSE 250-selskap. Chris kom til Goshawk Insurance Holdings PLC som finansdirektør i 1999 da han, som et børsnotert Lloyds-forvaltningsorgan, hadde en markedsverdi på 35 millioner. Deretter ble han administrerende direktør i juni 2002 etter at han hadde gått fra Goshawks aktive underwriter på Lloyds. Han bygde Goshawk inn i en virksomhet med en markedsverdi på over 200 millioner, inkludert etablering av Goshawk Re som en klasse 4-reassurandør i Bermuda etter 911-angrepene i USA. Chris brukte to år på å forske i skadeforsikrings - og gjenforsikringsbransjen og gjennomgikk en rekke transaksjoner før han ble etablert og ble styreformann og administrerende direktør i Catalina Holdings Ltd med egenkapitalavkastning fra Royal Bank Investments og Nikko Principal Investments. Catalina Holdings Ltd kjøpte reassurandør Overseas Partners Re Ltd fra sin overordnede Overseas Partners Ltd for 170,5 millioner i september 2005, og reassuranseført virksomheten ble omdøpt Catalina Reinsurance Ltd. Catalina Re var den umiddelbare forgjengeren av Catalina Holdings (Bermuda) Ltd. Dean Dwonczyk Chief Actuary Dean begynte sin karriere som aktuar i Australia innen skadeforsikring og reassurans aktuarmessig rådgivning og strukturert økonomi. Han tilbrakte flere år som hovedleder for W M Mercer, og ga krav om å reservere og gi premierådgivning til mange av Australias største forsikringsselskaper. Dekan flyttet til London i 1994 og tilbrakte flere år i den strukturerte finansieringsvirksomheten til en rekke investeringsbanker, inkludert Hambros og Societe Generale, med fokus på strukturerte skattebaserte risikotransaksjonstransaksjoner. Dette arbeidet omfattet utviklingen og ordningen av leverede leieavtaler, grenseoverskridende leieavtaler, strukturerte preferanseaksjer og betingede gjeld. Han har jobbet som konsulent aktuar som tilbyr reassurans strukturering, modellering og ordne tjenester til forsikringsselskaper og reassurandører. Dette arbeidet fokuserte på analysen av bøker av langhalsvirksomhet og utvikling av gjenforsikringsstrategier for å overføre risiko og å fungere som et alternativ til egenkapital. Dekan er spesielt kjent med ulykkes - og helserisiko, arbeidsgiveransvar og arbeidstakers kompensasjonsvirksomhet, faglig ansvarlig virksomhet, restverdivaranti risiko og handelskreditt og politiske risikoklasser. Dean har jobbet med Chris Fagan siden 2004 og er Chief Actuary of Catalina. Han har en grad i aktuarstudier fra Australias Macquarie University og er en stipendiat fra Actuary Institute og en General Representative for UK Financial Services Authority. Peter Johnson Chief Operating Officer Utdannet i 1970 fra Hobart College (Geneva, NY) med en BA i økonomi. Han begynte sin karriere med Reliance Insurance Company (Philadelphia, PA) i krav. I 1978 kom han til den skotske York International Insurance Group (Princeton, NJ) som National Manager, Transportation Claims, og ble senere Vice President og Chief Claims Officer. Peter begynte i Berkshire Hathaway Group of Insurance Companies i 1986 som visepresident i sin gjenforsikringsdivisjon (PhiladelphiaNYC), og senere med tilleggsansvar som krav til visepresident for den nylig etablerte kommersielle ulykkesavdelingen (NYC). Fra 1988 til 2004 jobbet han med en rekke tilknyttede selskaper i Zürich Insurance Group, hvorav to var eid av Aon i fellesskap, som: Vice President og Chief Claim Officer i Center Re (1988). Grunnlegger, administrerende direktør, direktør og leder av IRISC Inc. NJ, (1989 - 1998), et selskap som spesialiserer seg på styring av avganger og aktive kontoer Grunnlegger og leder av Claims Management Group Ltd, London (1993-2003), et selskap som spesialiserer seg på Forvaltningen av Londons marked og Lloyds syndikatavfall Stifter, styreformann og administrerende direktør i Risk Enterprise Management Ltd, NY, (1995 - 2004), et selskap grunnlagt for å styre avløpet av Home Insurance Company og andre avganger og aktive kontoer. Han fungerte også som konsernsjef for Home Insurance Company og USI Re etter at de ble plassert i avrenning (1995 - 2003). Peter kom til Quanta Capital Holdings Ltd. (Bermuda) som konsernsjef i 2006 etter at han hadde plassert sine to amerikanske forsikringsselskaper, to Bermuda-reassuranselskaper og europeisk selskap i avrenning. Han ble med i Catalina i 2008 etter kjøpet av Quanta Capital Holdings, med ansvar for styringen av avløpet av selskaper kjøpt av Catalina. Chris Fleming finansdirektør Keith uteksaminert i lov fra Cambridge University i 1988 før han deltar i Law College i Guildford. Han ble med i Herbert Smith i 1990 som kvalifisert som advokat i Høyesterett i England og Wales i 1992. Han har 18 års erfaring med juridiske tjenester til forsikrings - og gjenforsikringsbransjen i Storbritannia, Europa og Bermuda, og sistnevnte fokuserer på eldre forretninger og avløpsinnkjøpsbransjen. Keith tilbrakte ni år som partner i forsikrings - og gjenforsikringsbransjen i Mayer, Brown, Rowe Maw LLP. Han handlet for Catalina Holdings Ltd i forbindelse med oppkjøpet av Overseas Partners Re Ltd fra Overseas Partners Ltd i 2005. Han handlet for Bear Stearns International i forbindelse med oppkjøpet av Minster-konsernet av selskaper fra fransk forsikringsselskap Groupama SA i 20062007. Han ble med i Catalina Holdings (Bermuda) Ltd som General Counsel i oktober 2007. Peter Harnik Chief Investment Officer Peter er en utdannet kandidat fra Williams College i amerikanske studier i 1973 og tjente en Master of International Affairs og Finans fra Columbia University i 1975. Han ble med i Irving Trust Selskapet hvor han tilbrakte 11 år i New York, Tokyo og Miami som administrerer valutamarkedet og pengemarkedsvirksomheten, før han returnerte til New York for å sette opp Irvings rentederivatoperasjoner. Han flyttet til Union Bank of Switzerland i 1986 for å styre deres derivatprodukter virksomhet i Asia, basert i Tokyo. I 1993 flyttet han til London for å bli med i Global Structured Products-konsernet. Frem til 1997 var han involvert i strukturert og skattearbitrage for bankkontoen, arrangert flere landemerketransaksjoner, blant annet en, som involverte italienske postobligasjoner, som ble listet av Economist-magasinet som en av de økonomiske tilbudene fra tid til annen. I 1998, etter fusjonen med Swiss Bank Corporation, ble han valgt for å sette opp London-kontoret for hovedkontor for finans og kredittarbitrage. I 2003 kom han tilbake til USA for UBS etter totalt 17 år i utlandet for å bistå med å håndtere de globale referansebrevne notatprogrammene som på den tiden utgjorde 27 milliarder kroner. Etter å ha tatt førtidspensjon fra UBS-gruppen tidlig i 2007, utførte han en rekke konsulentoppgaver knyttet til strukturering og kapitalforvaltning, hvorav sistnevnte var for Catalina Holdings (Bermuda) Ltd, som begynte i begynnelsen av januar 2009. Peter ble med i Catalina Holdings ( Bermuda) Ltd som Chief Investment Officer i april 2009. Mayur Patel Leder av MampA Mayur uteksaminert fra Wharton School ved University of Pennsylvania i 1997 med konsentrasjoner i Aktuarial Science og Corporate Finance. Mellom 1997 og 1999 jobbet han som analytiker i Financial Institutions MA-gruppen hos Solomon Smith Barney, involvert i ulike forsikringstransaksjoner knyttet til private equity og strategiske overtakere. Han ble med i Greenwich Street Capital Partners (GSC) i New York i 1999 som en Associate som jobber for sin Private EquityDistressed Debt Fund. I 2001 flyttet han til London for å opprette GSCs European Mezzanine-operasjoner. Han flyttet tilbake til New York i 2006 som administrerende direktør i Structured Finance Group på GSC. Mellom 1999 og 2006 var Mayur aktivt involvert i styringen av Dukes Place Holdings Ltd, et kjøretøy som ble etablert av GSC i 1998 for å skaffe skadeforsikringsselskaper til skadeforsikringsselskaper i avgang. Han var involvert i oppkjøpet av Dukes Place of Stonewall Insurance Company fra Great American Insurance Company i 2000, og ledet oppkjøp av Norwich Winterthur Reinsurance Company (omdøpt Cavell Insurance) fra Norwich Union Holdings Ltd i 2003 og Cirrus Reinsurance Company Ltd. fra Oslo Re i 2004. Han ble med i JC Flowers Co. i London i 2007 som visepresident innenfor sine finansielle tjenester private equity fond. Han ble med i Catalina i april 2009 for å lede sine oppkjøp i skadeforsikringsselskapet for skadeforsikringsselskaper globalt. Mayur var ikke-administrerende direktør i Stonewall Insurance Company og Cavell Insurance, og styreleder i Cirrus Reinsurance Company Ltd. Han var ikke-administrerende direktør i to andre Dukes Place-oppkjøp - Unione Italiana Reinsurance Company (UK) Ltd og Seaton Insurance Company. De samlede eiendelene til Dukes Place overstiger 1,2 milliarder kroner på topp. I 2006 ledet han salg av alle Dukes Place-investeringer til Enstar Group Limited. Charles Kasmer SVP og Chief Reserving Actuary Gradert i 1989 fra University of Maine ved Orono med BA i matematikk. En stipendiat av Casualty Actuarial Society og medlem av American Academy of Actuaries. Charles har over 22 års erfaring innen gjenforsikrings - og forsikringsbransjen. Han har lang erfaring i analyse og strukturering av avtaler som involverer lange hale forretningslinjer, prising og ROC modellbygging, og reservering. Tidligere stillinger inkluderer: Viseadministrerende direktør i Zürich Reinsurance Center 8211 Skadepremie aktuar Senioradministrerende direktør Senior Aktuar i Risikapapirforsikringsselskap Hovedansvarlig for DFA-praksis hos Aon Corporation Chief Actuary of Global Casualty hos Global PC Reinsurance (Employer Reinsurance Corporation) I 2004 begynte i Quanta Capital Holdings Ltd. som Senior Vice President og Chief Actuary. Ble med i Catalina i 2008 etter kjøpet av Quanta Capital Holdings Ltd. Hans ansvar for Catalina inkluderer reservering av analyser for de overtagne selskapene, oppkjøp av due diligence, kommutasjonsforhandlinger og krav om revisjon. Campbell McBeath Group TreasurerNyttige notater Første verdenskrig 8212 Kaiser Wilhelm II. ser tyske tropper marsjerer i krig sommeren 1914. (Som vanlig, ikke helt nøyaktig.) En gang i 1918, en krig mellom to allianser med den fransk-ledede Entente Cordiale og den tysk ledede sentralmaktene noterte vilkårene mye akademiske artikler og bøker har brukt det siste, og som vi ber deg om å bruke når du redigerer denne siden (og når du går ut med andre historiebuffere), siden det hjelper å unngå forvirring med andre verdenskrig. I tillegg er navnene ganske kule. - og de rikeste og mektigste imperier og nasjonene på jorden avsluttet. Det var den største, blodigste, dyreste, mest forstyrrende, mest skadelige og mest traumatiserende krigen verden noensinne har sett. Det forlot millioner døde, kvalt, sjokkchokket, bortkastet, fattig, sultende og bitter. Victory bragte lettelse mer enn det gjorde elation eller sorg, og i etterkant løste de seirende kreftene seg for å danne en bedre verden fra asken til oldmdashalbeit i mer eller mindre nøyaktig samme bilde som den gamle, lagre tillegg av flere og verre økonomiske og etniske problemer. Dette var en krig som knuste holdninger, ødela utallige liv, brakte ned fire store imperier og i sin konklusjon sådde frøene av videre konflikt og lidelse. I hvilken grad det gjorde alle disse tingene, gjorde Første Verdenskrig en krig som som verden aldri hadde sett. men verden var ennå ikke å se den siste av denne størrelsen av konflikt. Tidligere kjent som Den store krigen, eller som krigen for å avslutte alle kriger eller til og med verdenskriget til oppfølgeren brøt ut. Ironisk nok hadde de Napoleoniske krigene tidligere vært kjent som Den store krigen til denne brøt ut. Dette var muligens den mest upopulære utbredt konflikten i sivilisasjonens historie i ettertid, men for mange i Øst-Europa var denne krigen (som endte i deres lands uavhengighet) mer populær enn andre verdenskrig (som endte med sovjeterne som okkuperte landene sine i 40 år). og til og med på den tiden stod det for alvorlige støtteproblemer. Det kommer kanskje et nært sekund i Anglosphere for Vietnam-krigen. og ved noen tiltak klarer man å slå Algeria i frankosfæren (når taleren vet, og kan bære, for å bringe sistnevnte opp). Etterpå har krigens endelige oppløsning blitt kalt fred for å avslutte alle peaces. openclose all folders 1914 mdashOn den 28 juni, er iskebarn Franz Ferdinand, arving til den keiserlige tronen i Østerrike-Ungarn, drept i Sarajevo av serbiske terrorister. 28. juli, 28. mars, australia-Ungarn, erklærer krig mot Serbia notat som middel for å avslutte serbisk statssponsor for terroristgrupper i Østerrike-Ungarn. Russland erklærer krig mot Østerrike-Ungarn notat for å sjekke østro-ungarsk innflytelse på Balkan (og forhåpentligvis gir gevinster der for seg selv). Russland begynner hemmelig mobilisering av reserven-troppene mobilisering (av reserve-tropper) er viktig, og i utgangspunktet det samme som å erklære krig fordi reserve-tropper utgjør så mye av troppens totaler (mellom en tredjedel og en halv) av hver av de store makter som er involvert. Selv om russisk mobilisering er tett modellert på og akkurat som om det ikke er mer effektivt enn fransk mobilisering (13 dager, gi eller ta en dag), er Russland et mye større land enn Frankrike, og det tar også noen dager på toppen av det å flytte Siste av de skinnende nye enhetene til hvor du vil ha dem. Tysk mobilisering er markant tregere, trenger 17 dager, og til og med med alle sine reserver er den tyske hæren bare halvparten av den russiske masken uten forbehold, den tyske hæren er bare 13 størrelsen. Det begynner ikke engang å dekke at Frankrike har en hær bare litt mindre enn Germanys (45 størrelsen inkludert reserver), mobiliserer raskere enn Tysklands kan, og vil støtte Russland (ved å angripe Tyskland) i enhver krig mellom de to. Italia nekter å komme til Østerrike-Ungarns hjelpemeddelelse offisielt fordi Østerrike-Ungarn ikke hadde konsultert dem før de erklærte krig, men faktisk fordi de er sikre på at Storbritannia vil støtte Frankrike i en fransk-tysk krig, og en britisk blokkade vil ødelegge (hav-) handelsavhengig italiensk økonomi. Italia ønsker også østro-ungarske territorier som inneholder italienske minoriteter, men sistnevnte vil ikke gi dem opp selv for å bevare deres allianse. Tyskland erklærer krig mot Russland til støtte for Østerrike-Ungarn, da Kaiser Wilhelm hadde lovet å støtte Østerrike-Ungarn, uansett hva. Den 1. august mobiliserer Frankrike og Tyskland sine reserver samtidig, Germanys mobilisering kommer med en formell krigserklæring (i Frankrike, Belgia og Luxembourg). Storbritannia erklærer krig mot Tyskland notat fordi kabinettet hadde blitt enige om at de ville gå i krig dersom Tyskland erklærte krig mot Belgia. Det var en gruppe hardlinere som ønsket krig med Tyskland, uansett hva, men regjeringen som helhet følte seg som en krig og formelt å bli med i Entente Cordiale ville være dypt upopulær, med mindre det var gjort som svar på en invasjon av Belgia. Utentalte var måten krigen var en fantastisk mulighet til å undergrave intern dissens (hovedsakelig irsk devolusjon, trygge arbeidsforhold og lønnsom lønn og kvinners rettigheter) og kreve den tyske økonomien. og medlemmer av British Commonwealth - India, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, blant annet - følger med. Russland lanserer østprussian offensiv med 400k, Frankrike utfører Plan XVII med c.600kmdashFrench offensiv i Tyskland, Luxembourg og Sør-Belgia for å pre-empt Germanys Aufmarsch Jeg notiserer Deployment Plan I, krever distribusjon av c. 80 av tysk hær mot Frankrike og c.15 (c.200k) mot Russland. Planen er fleksibel, så distribuert tropper kan brukes til støtende eller offensiv handling. Under Chief of Staff Schlieffen (pensjonert 1905) var motoffensiv foretrukket da den kombinerte de beste funksjonene i forsvaret (større taktisk effektivitet på grunn av overlegen intelligens, deksel og maskingevær) og fornærmelse (evne til å overlegne overlegne styrker mot inferior fiende de og dermed beseire dem med minimal tap). Men hans etterfølger Stabschef Moltke foreslo offensiv i stedet på grunnlag av at den taktiske effektiviteten til forsvaret kun var marginell og (dermed) alltid var angriperen, var avgjørende for seier i en kamp (som påvist omvendt komma, i russisk-japansk krig) . Uansett kunne det kun være avgjørende kamp i Westmdashmaximum 40 of Army, som ble distribuert og holdt forsynt i øst, så seier ville det heller ikke være taktisk eller strategisk avgjørende (tysk styrke ville være for liten og russisk evne til å erstatte tapene veldig bra). Men et avgjørende slag mot fransk kunne selv gjøre påfølgende invasjon av Frankrike possiblemdashdefeat av Frankrike ville ende fransk raiding av tysk frakt og forlate Tyskland for å møte to pluss årskrig med Russland, eller kanskje hvit fred. Aufmarsch Jeg innebærer invasjon av (nord) Belgia og Luxembourg med c.700k-tropper for å søke avgjørende kamp med den franske hæren. Franske arméer, russiske hærer, BEF av 50k beseiret notat tysk kraft på 200k beveger seg nord-vest gjennom Sør-Belgia møter fransk kraft på 200k angriper nord-øst. Franske kraftangrep under tunge nedturer uten å utspekke de tyske stillingene eller vente på artilleriet for å få tak i store tap. Tysk styrke motsetter seg ordrer for å fortsette å bevege seg nordvest og i stedet forfølger å flykte franske styrker sørvest. I Prussia bruker en dedikert tysk forsvarsstyrke på 200k jernbaner (etter nøye planlegging og trening) før massen mot russiske hæren på 200k fremover nord fra Russland, Polen og angriper den ved TannenburgmdashRussian force tar store tap. Den tyske styrken bruker deretter jernbanenettet til å re-gruppere og møte opp med 20k-tropper som er overført fra Frankrike, masse og lansere motoffensiv mot andre russiske styrker på 200k fremover vest fra Litauen ved Masurian LakesmdashGerman, for kraftig og utmattet for å forfølge dem til Litauen skikkelig, der den ny mobiliserte russiske reservehæren på c.200k er på defensiv. Merk at under Schlieffen hadde planen vært å overføre 100k-tropper fra Frankrike for å muliggjøre en riktig forfølgelse og dermed større ødeleggelse av andre russiske forcemdashbut Moltke prioriterte andre, fortsettende offensiv i Frankrike i stedet. Den tyske hæren opportunistisk hunder sørvendt tilbaketrekning av franske styrker, etterfølger grinds å stoppe øst for Paris på elven Marne notat Denne andre offensiv mest definitivt for tidlige, unwisemdashBelgian jernbanelinjer fortsatt ikke reparert til tiden, noe som betyr at de tyske høyre hærene er over 120km og sentrum - armier mer enn 200 km fra nærmeste arbeidsskinnehode (som betyr mer enn ukelange rundturer for forsyninger). Logistikk-hestene for disse hærene har heller ingen mat (på kort sikt betyr svakhet og utmattelse, noe som bidrar til å forringe sykdomsgraden blant de fattige skapningene, og på lang sikt betyr døden). Tyske logistikk-hester generelt utmattet og overarbeidet og trenger restreasing for å sjekke eksponentielt økende dødsrate. Tysk armé ikke så godt utstyrt med ikke-jernbanetransport som fransk hær, antatt at førkrigsplanlegging var at Tyskland ville være på defensiv i minst den første fasen av en krig med Frankrike og Russland. Omvendt fransk hær godt utstyrt med ikke-jernbane transport på grunn av bestemmelse av førkrigsplanlegging (Plan XVII) for invasjon av belgisk og tysk territorium til støtte for Russland. Austro-ungarske mobilisering botchedmdashfewer enn 100k tildelt serbisk offensiv (serbisk hær 60k) og 800k-mann offensiv mot Russland forsinket så mye at Russland klarer å invadere Tyskland og utføre vellykket forsvar med kraft av c. 1.5 millioner. Det osmanske imperiet er brakt inn i krigen ved opportunistisk falsk flaggoperasjon orkestrert av Tyskland Merknad To tyske handels-raider-krigsskip i Middelhavet gjør en pause for The Dardanelles, etterfulgt av britisk eskadreng, be om tilflugtssted i osmanniske farvann og nektesmask, men ottomans er enige å kjøpe begge krigsskip. Derimot . Ottomaner mangler spesialisert mannskap for dem, slik at eksisterende mannskap får lov til å forbli på dem mens de trener osmanniske marinpersonell i bruk av skipene. Deretter, når begge skip er tillatt inn i Svartehavet og er offisielt under det osmanske flagget, besetter mannskapene seg og seiler av for å dekke russiske havner. Russland vil ha større innflytelse over Balkan som vil komme med ødeleggelsen av det osmanniske imperiet og bemerker at Storbritannia vil kunne hjelpe ut ved å angripe Ottomans direkte (og de kan til og med ende opp med å gjøre det meste av arbeidet), så dette betyr krig. Royal Navy pålegger fjern blokkering av tysk sjøhandel mellom Skottland og Norge, men tysk-skandinavisk handel fortsetter notat Cadbury-selskapets inntekter øker faktisk takket være salget til Tyskland via Norge. Chaos på aksjemarkedet og generelt europeisk økonomi som halvkontinent slutter å handle med seg selv. Tyske overflatestyrkermdashmany disguised som raske handelsskips notater Merchant ships er (mye) raskere enn (tungt pansrede, tungt bevæpnet og sakte) slagskip og har mye større rekkevidde enn torpedo-båter (små båter som alle bruker til elv og kystforsvar) og torpedo-båt-destroyers (små skip med lett, rask brannvern som er utformet for å ødelegge de uarmerte torpedobåtene til forsvar for slagskip). Tømmer av et handelsskip og gir det noen våpen, er barnas lek, og noe stort sett alle hadde tenkt på. Storbritannia bygde en veldig stor cruiser (lettpansrede, raske og moderat velbevarte krigsskip) for å jakte på andre kryssere og disse væpnede handelsskipene. Storbritannia bygde også en håndfull kampkryssere (skip med bevegelseskampen og rustningene på cruiserne) for å tjene som flaggskip for jagerkvadroner av britiske kryssere (når de jakter på andre kryssere). Denne to-tiår gamle, meget store cruiser-battlecruiser-kraften ble skreddersydd for å motvirke den franske marinen (som angrep en uhyre stor kraft av ekstra raske handelsfartøy-jaktkryssere). Mdashwreak mindre ødeleggelse blant Entente-frakt. 1915 mdashneed for større mobilisering av økonomiske ressurser er anerkjent av alle stridsmenn som krefter er hamstrung av ekstremt svak logistikk, kritisk mangel på artilleri ammunisjon og granater, og mangel på tung artilleri å bruke mot den kortere rekkevidde lys og medium artilleri er det også en manglende oppmerksomhet på hvordan artillerispistoler og infanterivåpen slites ut etter kontinuerlig bruk, og skaper mangel på mangel. Alle forsøk på offensive operasjoner på fransk-tysk front, hovedsakelig utført av franske styrker, mislykkes på grunn av dårlig artilleri-infanteri-koordinering og effekten av fiendens artilleri. Tyskland og Østerrike-Ungarn gjør en innsats for å slå Serbien og Russland ut av krigen i løpet av året, men til slutt mislykkes det til tross for begrenset suksess med å ta Serbia og Polen mdash fattigere infrastruktur i Russland (inkludert alvorlige mangler på kuler, våpen og støvler for sine tropper) og ulempe i hester betyr logistisk fordel som ligger hos den russiske hæren, dette kompenserer tyskerne for større kampeffektivitet og dårlig tilstand av russisk planlegging og kommunikasjon. Til tross for store tap faller russiske styrker tilbake i god stand fra Polen til å passere langs Dvina-elven og Pripyet-myrene, og dermed forkorte fronten og også å miste den døde vekten av etnisk-polske styrker motvillige til å kjempe og ivrige etter å overgi seg. Tap av artilleri eiendeler, spesielt av russiske styrker, får russiske myndigheter til å vedta farlig over-omfattende mobiliseringsprogrammer som forverres av den totale økonomiske isolasjonen som følge av tap av nesten all internasjonal handel. Russisk motoffensiv avviser Osmans georgiske offensiv med så store tap at baksiden av den osmanske hæren trodde at brokenmdashFranco-Commonwealth-styrken organisert av leder av Britains Royal Navy (Winston Churchill) lanserer amfibisk offensiv for å tvinge Dardanelles og gjenåpne sjøhandel i april. Denne amfibiske offensiv mislykkes, og fransk, britisk og commonwealth-styrker (australsk, nyzealandsk og indisk) lanserer en land offensiv som resulterer i en sideshow-stalemate som ekko vestfronten i mindre skala, uten gevinster. Dardanelles-kampanjen avsluttes med en evakuering av Entente-styrker i slutten av 1916 og tidlig 1917. Tyskerne bistår osmannisk forsvar. Fremtidig leder av den tyrkiske republikken Mustafa Kemal (Atatuumlrk) gjør navnet sitt delvis under denne kampanjen. Siste av tyske overflatestyrker ødela, men sporadiske ubåt (u-båt) angrep fortsetter. Tyske kolonier okkupert, men isolert motstand fortsetter. Conscription brukes til å bygge britiske og noen Commonwealth-styrker opp til nivåer der de kan lette presset på fransk-russiske mannskapsreserver. Britisk blokkering nå 100mdashScandinavian ports mined og alle skandinaviske forsendelser fanget. Diplomatisk kupp for Entente som Italia er overbevist om å bli med dem med løfter om store striper av østro-ungarsk og osmannisk territorium Italia erklærer krig mot Østerrike-Ungarn på 2451915, men alpint terreng av grensen er så dårlig og så smal at italienske offensive operasjoner umulig. 1916 mdashGermany anerkjenner behovet for å bryte Frankrike før Russland og Commonwealth kan mobilisere sine ressurser fullt ut, da Tyskland har nådd grenser for egen arbeidskraft mobilisering og østerriksk-ungarsk samfunnsstyrke regjeringen synlig desintegrerer under krigstreng. Under stabschef Falkenhayn, strategi for å ganske enkelt utmattende Frances mannskapsreserve ved å bruke Germanys artilleri overlegenhet for å avklare dem med minimal tysk tap (artilleri ødeleggelse taktikk) besluttet, ansatt i kamp ved Verdun starter 2121916mdashsector foran hvor fransk jernbane forsyning fattig, og Tysk god Ikke like effektiv som hopedmdash Tyske femte hæren under kronprins Wilhelm bestemmer seg for eget initiativ for å forsøke å fange Verdun uavhengig av tap og så slår kampen til et slitte slagsmål, et ubesluttsomt tilbaketrukket slug-festnote Wilhelm hadde eksperimentert med ny liten enhet taktikk inkludert samordnede angrep mot svake punkter i fiendens linje i stedet for angrep over hele bredden av det (infiltrasjon taktikk) og bruk av flamme-kaster-væske-projektor enheter. Noe ironisk, var denne enheten først ansatt av Frivillige brannvesenets medlemmer. Disse ga ham falsk tillit om at det var mulig å fange bakken, selv om de faktiske fordelene ved å gjøre det (ære for seg selv og hans menn, uten å hjelpe Germanys bredere krigsinnsats) var så konkurs som de dukket opp. Den franske hæren har også verdens største biltransportbasseng, ikke som avhengig av jernbaneforsyning som forventet. Entente hadde allerede avtalt samtidige sommeren offensives sommeren 1916 for å dekke innføringen av Rumania og Italia til krig på Ententes side, men fransk insisterer på at disse blir lansert så snart som mulig for å ta press på Verdun. Russiske nordfronter Lake Naroch offensiv (1831916-3031916) forsøker å kopiere tysk artilleri ødeleggelse taktikk for å ødelegge fiendtlige taktiske forsvar, men mislykkes fryktelig, tegner ingen tyske styrker fra Verdun. Russlands sørlige front under Brusilov (461916-2091916) gjør effektiv konsentrasjon og bruk av krefter og lette undertrykkende artilleribombardementer for å bryte gjennom østro-ungarske linjer og effektivt avgjøre australske ungarske reserver for mindre relativ pris til russisk hær, men russisk hærlogistikk ( til tross for større ressurser) dårlig styrt og støtende kan ikke opprettholdes med suksess i de tyske reserver som trengs for å stabilisere fronten. Franco-Commonwealth offensiv på Somme (171916-18111916) forsøker også å bruke tysk ødeleggelsestaktikk, men dårlig koordinering av infanteri-artilleri av uerfarne Commonwealth-styrker og dårlig infanteritaktikk, trening, erfaring og bevegelse, samt overlegne tyske forsvarsnota Forutsatt var at artilleri helt ville ødelegge alle fiendtlige maskinpistoler og artilleri, noe som gjorde treningen og utstyret til infanteriet for å håndtere disse tingene helt unødvendig. Overlevelsen av bare en håndfull begge resulterte i store innledende tap, og den totale ødeleggelsen av bakken som de angrep over drastisk reduserte den etterfølgende strømmen av ammunisjon og forsterkninger. Verre, det gjorde det umulig å bevege artilleriet fremover inn i den nyfangne bakken før tyskerne kunne bygge en ny forsvarslinje bak rester av den gamle, mest innfangede. Dette skjedde seks ganger i løpet av det somme offensive resultatet i store tap blant ikke-franske tropper. notat tanker, en britisk oppfinnelse, gjør også deres første utseende til liten anerkjennelse som taktikk og maskiner er feil, feil og grunnleggende. Tyske tropper er imidlertid ganske redd for krigsmaskiner. Offensiv lykkes fortsatt i å omdirigere tyske reserver, og bidrar til suksess for små franske motoffensive på Verdun som gjør en vellykket bruk av ødeleggelsestaktikk. Tysk motoffensiv stabiliserer fronten motsatt Brusilov, og Tyskland påtar seg kommandoen over alle østro-ungarske styrker i øst. Tyske flåte notat Den korte førkrigs-anglo-tyske armeringen (endte 1913) var bekymret for et abortivt tysk forsøk på å bygge opp et slagskipflåte som kunne utfordre Britains egen, som endte da Kaiser Wilhelm skjønte at Storbritannia ville gjøre alt som trengte for å stoppe det fra happeningmdashin 1914 hadde briterne fortsatt mer enn dobbelt så mange slagskip og bygget også dobbelt så mange som Tyskland var. forsøk på å bryte blokkering og ødelegge britisk flåte i avgjørende kamp failsmdash315 til 161916 Battle of Jutland indecisive, fortsetter blokkaden. Russiske krigsproduksjonstoppe, men resulterer i urbane hungersnød i Moskva og St. Petersburg som mangel på forbruksvarer i økonomi. Bønder selger ikke lenger kornmdashAustria-Ungarn begynner å lide samme problem. 1917 mdashIn March, Urban famine in St Petersburg and Moscow causes coup against Tsar, self-governing communes rise up in Russian urban centres and middle classelite establish unelected Provisional Governmentmdashuneasy alliance between two, but both agree to mutually piss off when they elect a government by universal vote at a later date. Germany decides to use submarine fleet against all shipping, USA uses this as casus belli and joins the Entente, but needs almost a year to build up and train an Expeditionary Force. German forces adopt defence in depth tactics first experimented with during Somme offensive, abandoning trench lines in favour of scattered strong points and outposts throughout a much deeper (6km vs 3km) defence zone and using reverse slopes to reduce vulnerability to artillery fire mdash also moving artillery back and concealing it to protect it from enemy artillery fire. Commonwealth forces use their improved artillery-infantry cooperation, and improved artillery ranging tactics, to pioneer a new successive breakthrough operationalcampaign strategy which is fundamentally flawed from its inception due to its continued use of artillery destruction tactics note Multiple tactical breakthroughsvictorious battles achieved by means of the total destruction of the enemy defenses and a subsequent advance in the same sector, each less than a week apart, along a line of advance completely covered by artillery. Despite effective co-ordination of infantry and artillery, fails due to the utter destruction of the ground occupied as a result. Massive repair works required to render infrastructure of the captured territory useful. and just-captured territory has to be used to capture more territory, not to mention the ammunition and food and reinforcement requirements of the infantry and artillery moving up into it. They do learn from this, however, and listen to the engineers and logisticians demands that they effectively double the number of engineers allocated to future offensive operationscampaigns. which critically overworks the engineeringlogistics services. French Army and society also tire of demoralising attrition warfare strategy and insists upon alternativemdashexperimental breakthrough strategy also promising operationcampaign breakthrough after successive tactical victories produced by artillery destruction tactics championed by junior commander Nivelle, which they are promised will end war quickly. Its dismal failure with even worse losses to no effect note It didnt help that the new strategy was basically an attempt to apply successful battlefield tactics to the operationalcampaign level by a commander with little grasp of the differences between the twomdashparticularly in the way artillery, engineering, and logistics work rather differently is deeply demoralising, causes c.45 of French Army to mutinymdashunits collectively refuse to do anything but hold their current positions and defend themselves until a system of leave is organized, they are given safe and decent rations, and Army Command gets its poundamp36amppound act together. Italian Army of 400k suffers devastating tactical defeat by Central Powers army of 350k at CaporettomdashCommonwealth offensives aborted as forces rushed to help stabilise Italian front, defeat triggers re-structuring of Italian Army at tacticalbattlefield level. Rumania brought into war on Entente sidemdashbut army easily defeated and country quickly occupied, its petroleum and grain resources aid the Central Powers war effort. After failure of offensive against German-led forces by unreformed Russian Army, Russian Army also mutiniesmdashnot 100 clear what troops want, but general consensus is they want the elections now . not later. In November elections held and won by rural-based Social-Democratic Party with 60 of vote, but urban Russian Communist Party arrests all delegates when they attempt to meet and declares that The Russian Empire has been dissolved, orders all Russian troops to disperse and return home. The German-Habsburg armies take virtually no losses when they sweep them aside and occupy The Baltic States, Belorussia, and Ukrainemdashthereby securing enough grain to avert famine for another year. 1918mdashRussian Communist Party scrambles to form the Red Armymdashregular military force with ultra-modern structure built using core of old General Staff and cream of officer corps. But Red Army too small and too weak to prevent Central Powers from advancing further, Communist Party negotiates with Germany and cedes all occupied territory to Germany in 531918 Treaty Of Brest Litovsk the Russian front of WWI segues seamlessly into the Russian Civil War. 200k German and Habsburg troops remain to occupy territory, remaining 500k transferred to Western Front. c. 1.5 million German troops used in series of attacks on Entente lines starting 2131918. It was key for this transfer and attack to happen before the United States managed to bring its army across to bolster the Entente. German artillery has achieved tactical perfection under Colonel Bruchmuumlller, setting a new standard (used to this day) for the concentration and co-ordination of artillery assets and tactics to aid new infantry infiltration tactics (also used to this day). German operational understanding, on the other hand, extraordinarily poor not least due to lack of focus on higher-level logistics and personal prejudices of offensives architect, General Ludendorff note Any real intentions for the offensive have only been discerned after the factmdashthere was a nominal plan, but none of the details were fleshed out. Commonwealth performance relatively poor due to focus on defending logistically-critical coastal sector (instead of British southern sector, where British and French forces overlap), utter inexperience in defensive operations (have not conducted a single defensive campaign in the entire war), and incomplete copying of German defence in depth tactics (defensive works only half-built and most units do not understand how to use them). German offensives a total failure by 541918 though sporadic attacks continue for further two months, French 5th Army also successfully countering German attacks through adoption of defence in depth and resulting in said tactics adoption by all French forces by October. Urban famine in Austria-Hungary and Germany as energy value of official daily ration drops below 1600 calories (versus 800 for occupied Russia inc. Poland)mdashanti-war demonstrations appear, increase despite repression. Entente takes time for serious soul-searching and examination of German artillery, infantry, and artillery-infantry tactics very closely. Assessment is (quite rightly) that there is not much to be learned from Germans - German Operational method woeful, tactical methods only successful due to Entente disorganisation. Entente has no intention of repeating German mistakes - unlike Germans, will only attempt what is physically possible (as defined by logistical considerations). Though the Learning Curve theory is often touted here as why the Entente arrived at the understanding of combined-arms tactics and operational methods which they will display in the summer, the process of working it out was very complicated and came in many stops and starts. Its less of a Learning Curve and more of a Learning Fumble-And-Stumble-Up-A-Foggy-Incline. In August, Entente launches Hundred Days Offensive. Series of virtually non-stop attacks using combined arms - reconnaissance aeroplanes, heavy artillery, medium artillery, light artillery, tractors, combat tanks, supply tanks, light railway engines, heavy trucks, light trucks, mortars, heavy machine guns, light machine guns, rifles, grenades used by men actively trying to cooperate and work together. Increasing strain upon supply services, particularly trucks, but Entente forces never let themselves outrun their supply - willing to stop combat and give supply services attention, care, resources they need to recover. Death of a Thousand Cuts as German forces constantly eroded by Entente tacticalbattlefield superiority, cumulative effect devastating. Still no strategic breakthroughs, no operational encirclementsmdash but Entente winning anyway. German strength failing as reinforcements are of progressively worse quality - prime manpower long since expended. German defenses weakening as German support services begin to fail under strain of ceaseless construction of new defences. Larger and larger tactical encirclements (pockets less than 1km across) being made and more and more German troops surrendering. Black Day of the German Army (Ludendorffs words) on 8th of August as tactical encirclements result in surrender of c.50,000 German troops to American-Australian-British-Canadian Army under British command - irrecoverable loss of a twentieth of German frontline strength in just three days, at minimal cost to Entente. Writing is very much on the wall. Bulgaria sues for peace with Entente in late September Ottoman Empire surrenders on 30 October when Commonwealth forces reach modern-day Turkey, having routed last remaining Ottoman resistance. Austro-Hungarian offensive at Venice thrown into disarray by counterattack, army then broken by Italian offensive including 24101918-3111918 battle of Vittorio Venetomdashonly 40k Habsburg dead, but 400k troops flee and later surrender to Italian forces (of similar size). Austria-Hungary declares cease-fire on 4111918. On 11111918, after months of civil and military unrest, Germany does samemdasheffective at 11:00 Central European Time (CET). Fighting on Western Front ceases. Entente victorious, but have only a few thousand troops in Central and Eastern Europemdashnot one single functional government between Rhine and Don rivers. Shape of the peacemdashand Europe itselfmdashto come unclear, but will formally be decided in conference at Versailles next year. The Western Front The war in Anglophone popular culture consists of precisely two settings: British Tommies live in the hellish trenches, where its always raining and the muddy ground is covered in craters. Theres always an artillery bombardment going on. Mud, barbed wire, and rotting human flesh is everywhere. Periodically, the out-of-touch, over-optimistic upper-class twit generals decide to mount another attack and the poor Tommies go over the top into a hail of enemy machine-gun fire and everyone gets killed (often staged similarly to a Bolivian Army Ending except theres no doubt about the tragic outcome really). Usually, one of the working-class Tommies will admit not to know why the war even started, to incredulity on the part of the officersmdashuntil they try and explain, when it all sounds simply too lame to be true. The Tommies are a mixture of salt-of-the-earth working-class rankers (enlisted men) and NCOs and upper-class officers. Officers are either absurdly naive types, straight from the playing-fields of Eton, looking forward to Giving the Hun a Damn Good Licking, or decent, intellectual types who write poetry and ruminate on the meaning of sacrifice and duty, but provide a brave face for the men. Only the darkest of comedies are set here, although theres plenty of scope for tragedy. A very few films substitute American Doughboys for the Tommies, though actually the Americans avoided trench warfare as a matter of policy (they already saw how bloody it was during their own Civil War ), and were fortunate to arrive en masse just as things had started moving again. The war on the ground is a depressing morass of mud, barbed wire and certain deathmdashbut chivalry and bravery still count for something in the air. Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines take to the skies in flimsy biplanes to duel with the Germans. Most of these pilots are chivalrous, except for that one evil bastard in the black plane and that Britisher who repeatedly guns down his already-defeated enemy on the ground. Their German counterpart is Bruno Stachel, a ruthless functioning alcoholic with equally little patience for chivalrous dueling, who takes to the skies in The Blue Max . The British fliers are all officers, and usually fit into one of the two Trench Warfare officer types above, though theres more room for a Biggles-style dashing hero here. Indeed, Biggles first appeared as a Royal Flying Corps pilot in France. While both of these settings have a lot of truth behind them, they dont tell the whole story. In particular, watching any of the small number of American and British World War One movies out there could convince you that it was a solely Anglo-German affair, with the Americans turning up to lend a hand later on. In particular, many writers (and viewersreaders) in Anglospheric world confuse 1914 with 1940 and forget that the French kept fighting throughout, because the Western Front was situated in the northernmost regions of France from the North Sea to the Swiss frontier. French soldiers outnumbered the British substantially on the Western Front (70,000 British soldiers were initially mobilized in 1914, they were 800,000 in France) and even taught inexperienced American soldiers how to fight in the trenches and equipped them. By the end of the war and despite the heaviest death toll on the Western Front, the French army had become the most powerful army in the world, but it didnt last a decade as soon as pacifism became a major value in French society. In fact, more French people died during this war than during its sequel (three times more), and the vast majority of them were soldiers. Many works glamorize the first fighter pilots as the Knights of the Sky, and there is some truth to this, but they also had such a high casualty rate that their airplanes were commonly nicknamed flying coffinsmdashthe average life expectancy of new pilots was about one week . They had none of the safety systems or redundancies of later warplanes, and were very fragile. A handful of veteran pilots on each side gained enough experience to score dozens of kills, but these were exceptional. Ironically, many infantrymen stuck in the trenches still envied the pilots, because even though they had a high casualty rate, they at least got to sleep in a clean bed at night in their hangar, not stuck in the hellish mud of the trenches. Even after the smarter generalsmdashand there were severalmdashrealized they didnt have the technology to break through the other sides defences, the politicians insisted on more futile charges. Eventually, the tank was invented, and new strategies devized. The Entente battle plans for 1919 were apparently very close to blitzkrieg, but the war ended first. The Entente General Staffs then were wracked by infighting over claiming credit for which service arm actually won the warmdashlargely ignoring the fact that all of them working together is what in fact decided the conflictmdashand as a result dropped much of what theyd learned about combined arms warfare, aircraft, and tanks down the back of the filing cabinet. not their best moment. As the name suggests, it was a World Warmdashfighting on the Eastern Front between GermanyAustria and RussiaSerbia was far more fluid than in the west, with great swathes of land gained and lost with every offensive and cavalry galloping freely around. The Austro-Hungarians and Italiansmdashwith some (respectively) German and Entente supportmdashslugged it out over the Alpine passes in some of the worst fighting in the history of warfare, and fought no fewer than eleven battles over the same river (the So269aIsonzo) before the Austro-Hungarians finally broke through only to be stopped on the Piave river and forced back to the old battlelines on one MORE battle until the Austro-Hungarian lines were finally broken and Vienna was forced to come to terms. When certain mountain fortresses were recognized as invincible (a realization that usually took the lives of thousands), whole mountains were mined from the inside and blown skywards together with their strongholds and garrisons. With fighting in Africa, naval engagements off the Falklands and Chile, commerce raiding in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, an Anglo-Japanese (under Japanese command) siege and seizure of Germanys concessions in China and the Pacific, an Australian attack on Germanys colonies in New Guinea, a battle on the Mexico-Arizona border as well as sabotage in North America, the war took place on all continents except Antarctica and Australiamdashand the ANZACs (Aussies and Kiwis) showed up with the Canadians as part of The British Empire. The short version of just what started the war is this: a centuries-long buildup of interlocking treaties (many of which required that Nation A automatically join in defense of Nation B, which required that Nation C join in, etc), betrayals, and long-simmering ethnic and national feuds (Germans and French hated one another, Austrians and Serbs hated one another, and on and on) put Europe in a position where the slightest spark would set off a global conflict that had become more or less inevitable.(Though at least one person has noted that the war might not have been as inevitable had everyone not thought it was inevitablemdashin other words, that The War Is Coming anyway, so we might as well get The First Blow in.) The long story involves a lot more Realpolitik. incompetence and the efforts of the powers own military forces to steer their countries into a war. For a long time, we didnt have a proper picture of all the factors that led to the war as we know itmdashthere was an awful lot of data to be collated and analysis to be translated, and some (classified) sources werent made available until many decades afterwardsmdashby which time many histories of the War had already been written. In particular, an overreliance on diplomatic service communiqueacutes and recordsmdashwhich were readily available and easy to accessmdashand the need to keep it simple for schoolchildrens sake led to an overemphasis on the importance of the treaty system. In any case, it was expected that there would be a European war at some point in the next decade or so. Just who it would involve and how big it would be was largely a matter of conjecture, but it would almost certainly be a civilized affairmdashas one would expect of the most civilized nation-states on earth. To extrapolate, the war was a culmination of centuries of unchecked imperialism with causes dating back as far as the Thirty Years War. The Congress of Vienna at the end of The Napoleonic Wars was one of the more direct consequences. Not only did the division of Europe have a lot of problems (such as uprooting former power structures like the Holy Roman Empire and haphazardly reorganizing them into barely functional confederacies), but the wars also brought a new wave of nationalism rippling across Europe. In many ways, the ideas of The French Revolution carried to neighboring countries, despite the attempts of their despotic rulers to resist them. Many Europeans began to have new ideas of the role of the nation state in their lives. In particular, the idea of the government being a force that reflected the will of the people rather than the will of a ruling oligarchy inspired many populist-driven revolutions and also helped people to identify with broader values besides simple things like culture and religion. You were no longer a Gascon or an Aquitainian, but a Frenchman. Hanoverians, Pomeranians, and Prussians began to see themselves as Germans. Even Italy, which had remained politically fractured since the fall of The Roman Empire began to come together under a common identity. This caused the rise of several new nation states throughout the 19th century. Not only that, but it often caused resentment among people who did not identify with their government, but identify as smaller national units. Croats, Czechs, Hungarians, Ukrainians, Poles, Lithuanians, Serbians, and many others began to push for independence, especially as conditions in their parent countries grew worse. Every single nation in the war had selfish reasons for its involvement (besides maybe the ones that were helplessly invaded, such as Belgium). On the Central Powers, Imperial Germany. or rather Kaiser Wilhelm II, had ambitions to expand its empire to be mightier than that of Great Britain. Having come late to the colonial race (only being formed in 1871) Germany didnt have as much time or as many resources to spare in colonizing the rest of the world, only gaining a few scraps in Africa and East Asia. However, since unification they had come to dominate the European continent in terms of economics and science, supplanting the French. Otto von Bismarck believed that Germanys position was best maintained as a continental empire, while Kaiser Wilhelm II wanted to grow the empire abroad. This disagreement led to Bismarcks sacking from the position of Chancellor. Germany then instigated a naval arms race with Britain and continued to aggravate Frances position abroad such as in the Moroccan Crisis. Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire really just desired survival. Both had nationalist groups within their borders who were ready to overthrow their outdated monarchies. In either case, both had immediate territorial desires as well. The Austrians wanted to bring the Serbs and the rest of the Balkans under their sphere of influence. The Ottomans wanted to restore their lost prestige after being defeated countless times by European powers in the 19th century, as well as conquer the Caucuses from Russia and remove the growing British influence in the Middle East. In long-term goals, though, both were motivated in finding a common enemy for the people to rally against, as well as to display their military power to deter the nationalist groups in their borders. The Entente was not exempt from this selfishness though. The British were worried about German expansionism abroad. Germany was the first power in decades that actually had a chance of beating the British. Prior to the war, both sides had a naval arms race of sorts, but it petered out by 1912. Britain also wanted to support its ally, France. The two had definitely hated each other throughout the 18th century and some of the 19th century, and even at the start of the war it was entirely possible for the British to have sided with Germany . However, the various wars and crises of the late 19th century had bonded the two nations closer together, and Britain didnt want to see the balance of power in Continental Europe fall to the Germans, mostly because they viewed the Germans as far more threatening than the French. The French, for their part, had a bitter nationalist rivalry with the Germans. The Germans had made a mockery of them during the Franco-Prussian War and had also annexed Alasce-Lorraine on the border, territory which they considered rightfully French. France had to recoup its lost prestige, and was also facing a wave of nationalism following the Franco-Prussian War. The Russian Empire was also buckling under internal pressure. Some of this was nationalistethnic motivations, as with the Poles and Ukrainians, but most of it stemmed from Russias haphazard integration into the new world. Its modernization left something to be desired, and the working classes felt exploited. The change of course from a very agrarian, feudal state to a modern industrial one angered a lot of people, ranging from nobility who lost privileges to small farmers who found their farms being gobbled up by mechanized agriculture. Czar Nicholas II hoped to direct some of this anger towards the Germans and also unite the Slavic peoples of the Balkans behind his cause. His ambitions in the Balkans become pretty evident because at one point, Russia was promised the city of Istanbul. Czar Nicholas II, like many Czars before him, considered himself the inheritor of the Byzantine Empire. so his desire for influence in the Balkans Makessense In Context. With the sides set, it seemed that any small spark could ignite a war. In fact, the war was only narrowly avoided several times. Notably, the Moroccan Crises almost set the war in motion. France was trying to set up a puppet protectorate in Morocco. Kaiser Wilhelm II went to Morocco to offer his support to the Sultan, pledging to guarantee their independence. The first time, he ultimately stepped down under the threat of war. The second time, a rebellion threatened to remove the Sultan from power, and the French responded by deploying troops to the capital, Fez, to support their puppet ruler. Germany then sent its own ships to protect trade interests in the region. Britain, despite having warned the French against intervention in Morocco, sent their own ships in support of their ally. War seemed destined to occur, but ultimately a treaty was drawn up. The French were allowed to create their protectorate in exchange for concessions to Germany in the Congo. War was averted, albeit having come very close. However, June of 1914 saw an international crisis instigated by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand (yes, he later had a band named after him ), heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. The assassins were Serbian nationalists who had received backing from the Serbian Yugoslavist terror group Unification Or Death, better known as the Black Hand, which was sponsored by Serbias military intelligence directorate. You see, Franz Ferdinand had big plans to make Austria-Hungary into a far less centralized state than it was before, based off a federation of all the different ethnic groups of the Empire, rather than a hegemony of Germans and Hungarians. He was even planning to give political power to Serbian leaders. The ascendency of Franz Ferdinand to the throne might have placated the Serbian population of his country. A placated Serbian population and a stable Austria-Hungary would have been detrimental to the Serbian unification movement therefore, Franz Ferdinand had to be eliminated. While we just dont know if this particular attack was actually ordered by the Serbian military Junta itself, it was very much in their interests. Austria-Hungarys leadership hashed out a plan of action a short while later. Almost everyone wanted to figure out if the Serbian Junta had actually ordered Franz Ferdinands death, which would require Serbian permission to conduct an investigation in their country. Many also wanted the Serbian military to stop sponsoring terrorist groups within Austria-Hungary. So their plan of action was actually quite cunning: they would demand that Serbia allow Austro-Hungarian detectives into their country to conduct an investigation into the Black Hand organisation so that they could determine who was ultimately responsible for Franz Ferdinands assassination. If Serbia agreed, they would probably be able to implicate the Serbian Junta in Franz Ferdinands death (and they might then be able to use that as a pretext for war, or to bully the Junta into cutting its links with terrorist groups). If Serbia refused, Austria-Hungary could invade and install a friendly regime which would not sponsor terrorists and allow them to conduct the investigation. Once Austria-Hungary issued its demand, Russia declared that it would not tolerate any violations of Serbias national sovereignty. Kaiser Wilhelm seems to have seriously underestimated the gravity of the situation, promising unconditional German support for Austria before going for a holiday on his personal yacht (upon which he could not be contacted). So, Imperial Germany supported Austria-Hungary. note Austria made roughly a dozen separate post-assassination demands of Serbia as a precondition to avoiding war, any one of which it would be humiliating for Serbia to concede to. Serbia conceded all but the one allowing the Austro-Hungarian investigation. Gavrilo Princip (the man who assassinated the Archduke and Archduchess) was too young for the death penalty. He was given a sentence of 20 years and died in prison of tuberculosis in 1918. For the reasons outlined earlier, there exists a great misconception that after these events, the system of military alliances set WWI off immediately. This is silly treaties are just ink on paper, all the powers had ignored such agreements when it suited themmdashalbeit with lesser powers. The way the war actually started was rather messy and involved an awful lot of errors and misunderstandings, some of which had persisted for decades and only then came to bite the continent in its collective backside. Austria-Hungary by all means at this point wanted to go to war, but feared retaliation by Serbias Russian ally. They believed, however, that they could be secure against Russian attack if Germany had their back. Germany was and had been for some time the greatest military power on earth. It had the best discipline, the best weapons, the best officers, the second best fleet in the world, and the most powerful enemies (Russia and France). All they lacked were powerful or committed allies. Thus, the Austrians sent word asking if the German Kaiser would back their plan of invading Serbia. The Kaiser, in a moment of monumental oversight that was dismally typical of him, did not take the letter seriouslymdashbelieving the Austrians would never be stupid enough to provoke the Russians. He promized his full support for whatever the Austrians saw fit to do. Unfortunately, thanks to an incredibly botched opening move by Chief of Staff Conrad von Houmltzendorff, the initial period of war was an unmitigated disaster for Austria-Hungary. As a paranoid second-rate power which saw itself as being surrounded by enemies, Austria-Hungary had the most mobilization-plans of any European power. Germany had four (later three) Russia and France had two Britain and Italy had one apiece. Austria-Hungary had seven . including one for a war with Italy (yes, this was when Italy was still their ally). However, Austria-Hungary had three deployment plans suited to this exact situation (war with Serbia and maybe Russia as well). The first deployed as many troops as possible in forward positions for an offensive against Serbia, deploying troops far behind the border with Russia for a defensive operation there. The second deployed forces in defensive positions well-behind the borders with both Serbia and Russia, keeping the bulk of Austro-Hungarian troops in the center of the country to be deployed against either power as necessary. The third deployed the bulk of the troops in forward positions for an offensive against Russia, and a small defensive force against Serbia. Germany wanted the third plan. Houmltzendorff implemented the first. When the Emperor noticed the illogic of doing this in a war which was certain to involve Russia as well and asked him to change it, it was too late and it did far more harm than good. The Austro-Hungarian forces deployed against Serbia were already deployed too far forward and basically had to go on the offensive, and the forces deployed against Russia had already been deployed too far back and would have to march the remaining 100km on foot. Meanwhile neither operation would start on-time or have the strength to succeed note The empire had one million regular and one million reserve troops. If the third plan was delivered on-time, the Russians would only be able to defend Poland with about a million troops at the most (with another half-million arriving later). Serbia had fewer than 300k troops. So together, 1.8 million troops attacking 1 million and 200k defending against 300k should both have had reasonable chances of success. They actually ended up sending 1.3 million against 1 million and 400k to attack 300k, with the remainder arriving later as reinforcements against the Russians. The Austrians invasion of Russia was a total non-starter, with their forces actually being driven back by Russian counterattacks. And their botched invasion of tiny, highly-militarizedmdashfrom its recent experiences fighting the Ottomans, Albanians, and Bulgariansmdashhilly-to-mountainous Serbia saw their only-slightly-more-numerous force devastated by the Balkan states artillery and routed. War between Austria and Serbia, however, did not immediately equal World War One. What it did do was convince Russia that Germany had something planned. They figured rightly that Austria would not act without Germanys backing, but they mistook this as the possible first step in a larger plan for initiating a war of conquest. Just to be safe, Russia began to mobilize its reserves. It would be three weeks before they would be ready for war. This is the point at which the Great War becomes inevitable. Germany has long anticipated a war against Russia and France. It had feared and readied itself for this moment. They could mobilize their reserves in just two weeks. As stated, they had the best army in the world, but they could not defend against two invasions by superior forces at once. If it came to that, economically-vital industrial areas in the Rhineland or Silesia would be occupied and Germanys chances of turning the war around after total economic mobilization would be nil. Their only chance of holding onto these territories was to concentrate on one offensive and then the other, and for that to work, Germany had to act at the first sign of trouble. If the French or the Russians mobilized their reserves, Germany couldnt afford to wait and see. The French and Germans, acting independently and without knowledge of each others intentions or actions, mobilized on the first of August note The Kaiser actually tried to abort the invasion of France, but due to the above-mentioned military plans on auto-pilot, his minister of war told him that he couldnt simply reverse all the trains. If he did (he could have - indeed, the man in charge of organizing the trains published a book after the war showing precisely how it could have been done), the war might have stayed as a local GermanyAustria-Hungary vs. SerbiaRussia war. assuming the French would be in the mood to not attack Germany of course. Which, to the Germans at least, didnt look very likely. Indeed, Germans did actually make a diplomatic gesture before starting the war against the French demanding that, as a guarantee that the French would not try to take advantage of a war between Germany and Russia (which the French were legally obliged to enter, as a military ally of Russia), they should disarm and abandon their fortifications along the border. Needless to say that the French refused this demand. Both France and Germany had, for nearly two decades, made various plans to invade each other through Belgium due to the countrys weak military forces (she basically didnt have any outside of three ginormous fortresses along her chief railway lines) and good infrastructure as a result of her abundant mineral (ironcoal) wealth and early industrialisation and relative prosperity. German deployment plans called for, in the event of a Franco-German war, all available forces to be deployed against France. However, as a Franco-German-Russian war (and thus simultaneous Franco-Russian offensive into Germany) began to look more likely after 1905 and Germanys failure to re-establish her alliance with Russia, most deployment plans after 1904 called for at least 15 of Germanys troops to be deployed in Prussia to counter Russia. While Germany wanted to deploy more, the railway network would only allow up to 40mdashand this would only be enough to achieve 1:1 parity of troop-numbers with Russia (rather than the 2:1 against a French offensive). Thus, even though a couple of Generalstaffreise wargames did experiment with focusing on defeating Russias offensive, all the actual Deployment Plans called for deploying c.85-90 of troops in the west to defeat the French offensive. What would be done with the troops after they were deployed was left open-ended, as Germanys military doctrine called for the lower-level commanders to make their own decisions about what to do with their forcesmdashthough it was generally understood that the anti-France force would keep its rightwestern wing strong so it could launch a strong counter-offensive against the sides of a French offensive directly into Germany andor defend against a French offensive coming through Belgium and the Ardennes forest. As it happened, the Western wing in 1914 decided to go on the offensive instead on the grounds that the coming war would be a long and damaging one to the very ground on which it was fought, thus making it imperative that it should not be fought on German soil (despite the many advantages that would confer). Therefore, Germany invaded Belgium with the forces of her right flank to make the war happen in not-Germany and preclude the French from occupying it first under their Plan XVII . which (unknown to the Germans) only called for the French to march into southern Belgium if Germany made moves to do so first. The invasion (followed by frequently exaggerated but sometimes dismally true tales of atrocities) was an excellent pretext for Britain to go to war against Germany. note The German Navy absolutely refused to contemplate a war with Britain and could not voice its disapproval loud enough when the Army brought it up with them. They did, however, manage to get the Army to divert a militia (Landwehr) division and some hobbyists (local militia, gun-clubs, etc. etc.) to help defend the North German coast as per the navys request, this being not even 20,000 men. The small size of the BEF (50,000 men) and its assumed ineffectiveness given its lack of artillery meant that it was regarded in the same manner as the French militia forces in German war-planning once it became clear that Britain might intervene on Frances side in the event of a Franco-German war (i. e. from about 1904-5 and the Russo-Japanese War, Anglo-Russian Rapproachment, and Moroccan Crisis onwards). When the two invasion forces tripped over one another in the Ardennes, the French forces made the mistake of attacking without scouting out the German forces or waiting for their artillery to catch up. They take heavy losses and inflict few in return, and the Germans follow-up offensive to catch the damaged forces while theyre still understrength and demoralized inflicts still-heavier losses. Ultimately, however, pursuing these forces draws the Germans too far forward and southmdashtheir lefteastern flank still needs to be covered and cant be linked-up with Alsace-Lorraine as the fortress-district of Verdun cant be taken, their rightwestern flank is completely open and vulnerable to any and all attack (particularly from Paris), and their individual forces are way too spread-out. This leaves them susceptible to even a half-arsed Entente counter-offensive. The Ottoman Empire entered the alliance with the Central Powers (what Germany and Austria-Hungary came to be known as) through some trickery by the German Admiralty. note At the end of Summer in 1914, as war was rapidly approaching for Europe, France had troops stationed in its colonies in North Africa and naturally wanted to bring these troops back to French soil to defend itself from the German invasion that was sure to come. Britain and France were trying to coordinate naval efforts in an attempt to work together, so Britains Mediterranean fleet was tasked with defending the French transports that were to ferry the men back to France. Unfortunately, Germany had two very powerful ships in the Mediterranean: the Battlecruiser Goeben and Light Cruiser Breslau commanded by Wilhelm Souchon. And wouldnt you know it: they were out looking to cause trouble. With orders to bomb French Philippeville in Africa, Souchon does so and promptly flees East. This attack gives the British Admiral Sir Archibald Berkeley Milne, commander of the Mediterranean Fleet, quite a fright at the thought of losing the transports. Milne eventually gets his act together and trails Souchon all the way to Sicily where Souchon was getting coal from then-neutral Italy (even with superior numbers Milnes ships were older and had much smaller guns and a majority of his fleet was kept back West guarding the transports and hedging against an about-face he felt was coming from the Germans at any moment). Thanks to the British being argent about Italys neutrality, Milne could not attack as Souchon took on coal. Souchon then goes on to continue his escape, with his destination now evident to be the Dardanelles. During this last leg of the Goebens flight, Milnes subordinate Ernest Troubridge briefly engaged with the Goeben and Breslau . doing damage to neither with his severely underpowered and antiquated Armored Cruisers (Troubridge was severely punished for not pressing the attack more but similar engagements in the following years have proven his decision to be prudent and he probably saved his four ships by retreating). Souchon leads his ships into the Dardanelles controlled by the Ottoman Empire, and thanks to hasty communications between embassies he is allowed passage. To keep the Ottoman Empire neutral (which was Germanys plan at the time), Germany sells Goeben and Breslau to the Ottoman Empire. The best sailors the Ottomans have are currently in Britain, stranded because Britain requisitioned two battleships they were meant to pick up when construction had finished. So Souchon offers to command and crew the Goeben and Breslau (now renamed Yavuz Sultan Selim and Midilli respectively), justifying this by saying that his crew was now Ottoman because they wore fezzes. However, Souchon isnt happy with neutrality and feels it is his duty to lead the Ottomans into the war. So in October, Souchon, now commander in chief of the Ottoman Navy, led the Ottomans past the point of no return and sailed Goeben, Breslau and a handful of Ottoman warships into the Black sea and attacked three Russian ports. Because the commander, the ships, and the men are all officially Ottoman, the Ottoman Empire joins the war on the side of the Central Powers. By joining the war, the Ottoman Empire severely hampered Russias ability to receive foreign military aid (see the paragraph on Russia below) and forced Britain to divert troops from the continent to fighting in the Middle East. Several decades earlier Victorian Britain had decided to get closer tomdashi. e. back on speaking terms with mdashFrance in order to iron their many thousands of miles of shared Colonial borders and thereby cut down on the defense budget. In the process they aligned themselves against their old allies, the Prussians, who soon trounced France and became the center of the unified Germany in the Franco-Prussian War. After several decades of colonial rivalry with the Germans, the British had become fearful of German power and saw the War as an opportunity to check what they saw as German expansionism. The invasion of Belgiummdasha country created after the Napoleonic Wars for the express purpose of being neutral and independent, and whose neutrality and independence was guaranteed by allmdashwas the perfect reason to get involved. Indeed, France had their own plans to invade Belgium itself if German forces were allowed transit through it. Alberts refusal of access to the Germans shelved that plan. note While Britain had guaranteed Belgian neutrality and independence, this in no way meant it actually would follow through. However, Britains relations with Germany were also at an all-time low following a decades-long naval arms race (largely Kaiser Wilhelms doing). This and their fear of a German-dominated Europe combined to make entering the war on the side of France and Russia look like a good idea. The Japanese came in on the Ententes side because of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance and promises of German territory in 1914, and made a good showing in every theater in which they were involved, especially in the Far Eastern and Mediterranean theaters. The Germans took the offensive on the 4th of August and began pushing through Belgium, regardless of the hostilities. The tiny Belgian army was no match for the juggernaut of the German war machine, but they fought bravely still and delayed the Germans, especially by holding them up with crucial forts along the border, such as in Liegravege. The Germans still managed to push through their territory, but there were many hang-ups. It was a particularly hot summer in Western Europe, so their own share of men and horses collapsed from heat stroke, and there were issues with the troops outpacing their logistical supplies. Despite some of these setbacks, the Belgian capital of Brussels fell into German hands. The French made grabs at Alasce, but their success was limited and the German advance would drain any offensive mobility they had. The Germans pushed through Northern France, winning some victories in the Battle of the Frontiers but being ultimately delayed by the British Expeditionary Force and French rearguards. This allowed the main French and British forces to redeploy outside of Paris, completely voiding the German plan of encircling these troops. This culminated in arguably the most crucial battle of the Western front, the First Battle of the Marne . French and British troops stopped the German offensive with a counterattack on the river Marne. The Germans were simply outmatched by the Ententes resistance. Although roughly equal in numbers and equipment, the Germans had just trudged through nearly month of battles in Belgium and lacked artillery support. In addition to those Entente forces that had trudged against them, the back of the offensive was held up by the French garrison of Paris, who were an army in their own right and were both fresh and ready. The hasty transfer of some divisions to the Eastern Front also didnt help German odds, and a few bad tactical maneuvers only added to the problems. Plus, German logistics had slowed to the point of barely being able to sustain the offensive, as the retreating Belgians and French tore up railroad tracks, and attempts to move supplies by horse proved futile in a modern army. Heatstroke had also killed many horses, resulting in a shortage. Even with all of these problems, the battle was certainly close and hard fought, and defeat meant the Entente could lose Paris just a few months into the war. The Ententemdashthanks to determined Belgian resistance, the fighting retreat of the British Expeditionary Force from Mons, and Fochs counterattack at the Marnemdashstopped the German advance before they could reach Paris. The result was a race to the sea (or rather, mutual attempts at outflanking which ended there) and entrenchment of lines. The subsequent trench warfare became the most iconic image of the war, as both sides began to hunker down. It doesnt take a stunning tactician to know that pointing two fortifications at each other wont result in much offensive mobility, and thus the Western Front, despiteand because ofbeing one of the most hotly contested and most (in)famous parts of the war, began to slow to a standstill as neither side could break the stalemate. Germanys plan for a quick end to the war by seizing Paris was most certainly shattered. There was a minor bright spot in the war during the Christmas Truce, one of the most famous events of the war. German and British troops had an impromptu meeting in No Mans Land where they exchanged gifts, told stories, and even played football. However, by the end of the day the officers had broken up the fraternization, seeing it as bad for morale. By the next day, most of the line was back to shooting at each other. 1915 became a stalemate. Germany tried for the offensive, directed at the British, but were pushed back due to logistical problems and an unwillingness of either side to budge. This is when the futility of Trench warfare started to become ever more apparent. While the German Generals Staff were no slouches strategically, they, like all the European powers, were fighting with fairly outdated concepts of warfare. Their quick and overwhelming victory against the French in the Franco-Prussian war communicated ideas of massed infantry assaults supplemented by large artillery bombardments. However, the earthen trenches were built to withstand shrapnel just as much as bullets, meaning artillery had less and less effect. Machine guns had also become a major game changer. One machine gun crew could mow down hundreds of men in a matter of minutes, while still preventing vulnerability by hiding in the trenches. It seemed like trenches would be an insurmountable force, but that doesnt mean either side stopped trying. The British and Canadians then led an offensive at Vimy Ridge with some success. The Entente would stay on the offensive for the majority of the war, slowly but surely pushing back the Germans. Another offensive began in Champagne later that year, with both sides heavy losses, but the Entente taking the worse of it while failing to make the Germans budge in a truly sizable way. Further offensives at Loos fared similarly. All in all the whole year on the Western front was marked by failed offensives and a growing sense of futility, probably even more than in 1916. Meanwhile, the war in the sky was on. Planes, up to this point, had only been equipped as scouts. However, a French pilot named Roland Garros equipped his plane with machine guns and became the first pilot to shoot down an enemy craft as such. The Germans reverse engineered his plane and started producing fighter pilots. They had mad a marginally better airforce, and their heavy deployments of fighters meant the Entente were blind, having all their scouts shot down. This became one of the first examples of the arms race that both sides engaged in to break the stalemate. Initially, the forward-facing guns on planes had to shoot through the propellers, meaning that a pilot could easily shoot himself down. The guns were simply to unreliable to mount of the wings they had to be in a reachable position. Garros had been the one to pioneer the successful application of a machine gun to a plane. He asked an engineer to install a synchronization mechanism on the motor to line it up with the guns. The Vickers still had a habit of hitting the propellers, so the propellers had to be armored to protect the pilot. By 1915 this started to become standard after Garros had successfully managed to shoot down several enemy planes before the Germans brought him down. They took his synchronization gear, reverse-engineered it, and then perfected it. Fokker was granted the first production contracts, and their planes, particularly their stark-red Triplane, have since become iconic in the war. The arms race between the two sides also developed on the ground, as each developed more and more weapons to break the stalemate, with varying success. The Germans made use of chemical weapons, the Brits topped them with tanks, and so on so forth. Several iconic images of the war began to appear in 1915 and early 1916. The German Flammenwerfer was devised as a way of quickly clearing trenches with fire, but it proved to be lackluster compared to conventional arms due to its cumbersome weight and limited range. Chemical warfare was first used in 1914, but they didnt come into wide use until 1915 when chlorine gas was deployed at Ypres. While this was initially effective, the wind had a habit of blowing the deadly gas back into German lines . and gas masks later in the war nullified a lot of the capabilities. What absolutely nobody in any position of responsibility seemed to realize, however, was that reality was the greatest constraining factor upon either sides ability to sustain an offensive. That is to say, that shortages of food and ammo made it impossible to fight. This sounds obvious, but the complete lack of focus on the logistics of road - and railway-warfare eludes most accounts of the war. However, some logistical technologies did start to see wider use in the war to great effect. Radio was particularly helpful for scouts and ships, while telegram wires became an important feature, criss-crossing trench lines. The Somme offensive was one of the most infamous battles of the entire war, especially the much-mythologized First Day. Although the first day of the offensive got off to a good start on the French half of the battlefield, the horrendous inadequacy of communications between the Commonwealth artillery and infantry coupled with the troops inadequate training and experience resulted in the near-total loss of the participant Commonwealth units (mostly to wounds, which put the men out of action for weeks or months, but many were also crippled or died). The German defenders sat out a massive bombardment that was meant to destroy them and then popped out to pepper the British forces advancing under the assumption they would occupy the vacant positions. While artillery is crucial it does not win battles by itself, as was thought at the time, but what is typically ignored is that even on the first day the French and the British forces did do quite well, and over the next several months the Entente artillery and infantry managed to advance solidly in spite of numerous German counterattacks (which soon dropped off when Hindenburg and Ludendorff took control in favour of defense-in-depth). In the end the Entente liberated the Somme River basin at appalling cost in time and lives while the Germans failed to prevent them from doing it at similar cost. The latter beat a scorched earth fallback that ceded even more land than they lost in combat after thoroughly burning, poisoning, and destroying everything they could in the ceded area. Perhaps the most-neglected question about Somme is why on earth it happened in the first place The long-term answer is that in late 1915 the British and Russians had been brow-beaten by the French Defence MinistermdashGeneral Joffremdashinto launching offensives that summer. These were timed to coincide with Italy and Rumanias entry into the war and (separately-planned) subsequent invasions of Croatia and Bulgaria respectively. Tanks made their first appearance in the Somme offensive and helped rip a (relatively) large gash in a German defensive line during one of the later battles, but they were too few and too easily knocked-out to have a decisive effect. They were part of the growing arms race trend and the brainchild of the Landships Committee, spearheaded by Winston Churchill. Initial models were basically just big box-like tractors with enough armor to make it across No Mans Land. They were initially devised as an APC of sorts, but eventually the Committee found that slapping a bunch of guns on them was more effective. The Somme, despite its cost, was not a failure, as many important lessons were learned that would help the Entente break the stalemate in 1917. In particular, they gleaned how to properly use artillery. Rather than bombarding their enemies for days or weeks at a time then advancing, they would instead fire a creeping barrage that landed ahead of the men. This tactic was not used initially because military experience was based on older artillery models that were too inaccurate, but the field guns used in the war were a greater improvement over their predecessors than first realized. Originally it was expected that experienced French forces would do the bulk of the effort in the Somme offensive, contributing as much as 60 of the manpower and artillery for the offensive. However, the actual French contribution to the offensive as it was ultimately launched was less than 40mdashand only 30 of the casualties. The reason for this is that by mid-1916 those forces were needed elsewhere, and the French had also needed their allies offensives to take pressure off their own Army. This brings us to Verdun . The Verdun offensive was launched by Germany as part of her new Western Front Commander - von Falkenhayns - strategy of bleeding France dry. There were two elements to this. The first and most important element was avoiding German losses. The second was to inflict as many losses upon the French as possible at the lowest possible cost in German lives. The area he chose was the Verdun Salient, a small ring of French forts centered on the town of Verdun jutting into German territory, supplied only by one road and a light single-tracked railway while the German side facing it had three double-tracked railway lines and even more roads. The idea was to make some small, short-range attacks of a couple of kilometres (i. e. well within friendly light - and medium - artillery range) and take the strategic ridges in the area from which to command a superior artillery position. The French would then almost certainly try to counter-attack and take it back, whereupon the Germans could use their massive superiority in artillery to massacre their forces. Once the French had completely destroyed themselves trying to attack, the Germans might move their artillery up and advance a little further - tempting the French into counterattacking again. Von Falkenhayns strategy and operational methodology were brilliant. German forces had all the logistical support and battlefield efficiency they needed to see this thing through. However, the overall commander of the German forces deployed to Verdun - Crown Prince Wilhelm - decided that he would use that massive artillery park to break straight through the French lines and seize the fortress-city of Verdun. Instead of a slow, boring series of battles which von Falkenhayn would get all the credit for Wilhelm thought that he could make a name for himself by striking a major or even war-winning blow against the French by acting on his own. The result was predictable. Wilhelms forces outran their artillery and were utterly mulched by the French artillery. Because Wilhelm took too much territory, he then had to move his artillery several kilometres into the captured territory. This meant that instead of supplying his artillery and his men directly from the railways, he had to bridge the gap with trucks and horses. Of course, Wilhelm had not actually been given enough trucks and horses to do this. Wilhelms attempts to keep attacking foundred given his insufficient supply of ammunition and his mens horrible losses and exhaustion. Verdun was a meatgrinder - for the Germans as well. The reverses at the Somme and Verdun led to von Falkenhayn being sacked. Wilhelms political clout, however, prevented them from doing likewise to him. It served as another prominent example of how politics continually interfered with the war. Prussian Militarism ensured that the Army and Generals Staff was not a meritocracy where members were recruited for their battlefield prowess, but instead positions were awarded based on your standing in the aristocracy. This was not endemic to Prussian Militarism though almost every European army has this system to a varying degree. The Germans, Austrians, Russians, and British were the most egregious about it though. Most notably, Winston Churchill got his start in this war, doubling as both a politician and a military commander. The USA was still out of it for the same old reasonsmdashstrong isolationist fervor among the American populace note in particular, a fair number of those of Irish descent saw the war as an opportunity for the British to get their collective ass kicked, something they were greatly in favor of due to resentment over how the British had treated their ancestors, families, and in some cases themselves. a worry over a possible repeat of the numbers of dead and crippled from their Civil War. doubts over the loyalty of the German immigrants who comprized a considerable amount of the countrys ethnic makeup, and a perceived lack of relevance (i. e, What does it matter to us if Europe shoots itself up). That said, the USA continued trade with the Entente(and the Central Powers on the rare occasions they could slip ships in) and letting them place massive orders for war-materiel with US firms. This didnt slip past Germany, which largely started unrestricted submarine warfare because of this 8212the Lusitania . a British ship whose sinking by a German Unterseeboot caused popular outrage in the USA note The Lusitanias passenger list included 139 US citizens, of which just eleven survived. was an unarmed passenger ship secretly (and illegally) being used to carry munitions. Germany also began trying to rile the Latin American states (Mexico in particular) against the US in order to keep it distracted. As for Italy, PM Francesco Giolitti had made it back in 1882 one of the signatories of the Triple Alliance (that is, a defensive agreement signed by Austria-Hungary, the German Empire and the Kingdom of Italy itself) this however proved extremely unpopular with most Italians, who not only saw the Austrians as their long-time enemy but spent most of the mid-1800s fighting them during the Wars of Italian Independence. Moreover, Italy claimed some territoriesmdashnamely Trentino, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Istria and Dalmatiamdashwhich not only had been part of some of the previous Italian states but were also inhabited by an ethnic Italian majority (the former two) or significant minority (the latter two). These were still under Austrian control, and the Austrians werent willing to cede them. By 1915 most intellectualsmdashlike Gabriele dAnnunziomdashbegan pushing to enter the war on the Franco-British side and the rest of the public opinion followed quickly: on May 24, 1915, a formal declaration of war was sent and the Italian troops began crossing the Piave river. The first weeks of fighting along the Alpine arch shattered any illusion of an easy victory as both armies soon became involved in a sluggish, deadly stalemate Italy had joined a war of attrition in which whomever managed to hold the highest peak could easily shower the enemy with bombsmdashand the Austrians were the ones holding most of the high terrain at the start of the conflict. The Italians had to fight hard in order to even get near one such peaks, storm it (or blow it up, if necessary) and then hold it waiting for the inevitable counterattack as if ordinary trench warfare wasnt pleasant enough such a mountainous, frozen hellhole claimed the lives of many. The Isonzo river also proved to be a mighty obstacle and both armies fought no less than elevenmdashand equally indecisive battlesmdashin order to cross it hoping to break the enemy lines. A senile, grade-A idiot by the name of Luigi Cadornamdashwhose fondness of frontal assaults nearly cost Italy the warmdashwas in charge of the Royal Italian Army the Austrian High Command, headed by the aforementioned Conrad von Hoetzendorf, was only slightly better. The course of the war wouldnt turn in favour of the Italians until 1917 when, after the near-total defeat at Caporetto, the Parliament realized the utter incompetency of the butcher they had appointed as Commander-in-Chief. General Armando Diaz replaced him, and the soldiers morale soon improved (to give you an idea, soldiers under Cadornas command not only werent given leaves but were also held personally responsible whenever the generals plans were met by failure those who refused to fight were summarily executed via decimationmdashmeaning that one in ten soldiers would be chosen randomly amongst the troops and then beaten by his comrades in order to set an examplemdashall while the Carabinieri were acting as barrier troops, always ready to machine-gun deserters and whomever they thought wasnt at his place. ). As 1916 drew to a close, the war had, to the common observer, changed very little. Small scraps of land had been exchanged on the Western front, the Austrian-Italian border has barely moved, and despite changing technology and an ever growing body count, the war seemed to continue as though it would last forever. Part of this was due to the We Have Reserves attitude of the various armies, and part of it was due to the new challenges faced by trench warfare. The nations involved had a near limitless resource of manpower to draw from and inexhaustible industries as their disposal, and the fronts were often close enough to the home countries that logistics could be easily sustained with modern technology. However, 1916 was, under the surface, a year of great change in the war. While the actually battles carried few territorial gains, the lessons learned from them helped to develop better tactics that would finally make the fronts a little mobile again the following year. The naval supremacy of the Entente also became apparent as German logistics began to break down primarily because of a lack of resources. However, the Germans would gain major boosts in the coming year, as troops returned from the Eastern Front and smaller, squad-based tactics from the Stosstrupp would prove pretty effective against the Entente forces. Meanwhile, by the end of 1916 public opinion began to shift away from the war. While 1915 acted as a bit of a wake up call, there was still hope that the war could be over by the years end if they could just get that one breakthrough that either side so desired. However, 1916 really hammered home just how futile the conflict was, as hundreds of thousands of men were sacrificed just for a few kilometers of land. As casualties started to return home and refugees from Belgium and France were dispersed from the front, the human cost of the war was no longer avoidable. Writings from the front trickled home as newspapers gave daily reports of battles occurring mere kilometers away. Zeppelins had raided as far as Great Britain, instilling the knowledge that nowhere was safe from a modern war. The Eastern Front The Russians started the Eastern Front according to their pre-war agreement with France, invading Germany to try to draw German forces from the push on Paris. It was something the Tsar would live to regret, the force of c.300,000 men sent there lost nearly 200,000 men killed or (overwhelmingly) captured at the hands of the 120,000 German troops that caught them by surprise with a well-executed counter-offensive (at Tannenburg and The Masurian Lakes). As if to add insult to injury, the troops the Germans did redeploy didnt arrive until after the two Russian armies were all but destroyed. However, the main effort on the Eastern Front was supposed to have been the Austro-Hungarian offensive against Russia (done to cover Germanys back so she could march on Paris with her full strength, as per pre-war agreement), but this failed spectacularly with the Austro-Hungarian army actually being pushed back by the Russian counter-offensive. The Russians under performed on nearly all accounts, not due to the quality of their troops but due to the sheer incompetence of their leadership. The Officer Corps as a whole was largely composed of men from the lower - and middle-classes note Which was an unusual thing for that day and age. The Germans Officer Corps was dominated at every level by the Prussian Nobility and was something of a refuge from social mobility, whereas Russias was a means thereof. However, appointment to the post of Division-Commander and above (corps, more so army, and especially Front) had a lot to do with your political connections to the Grand Dukes, the Ministry, and to a lesser extent the General Staff. There was a lot of talent in the lower ranks and truly brilliant commanders could be found as high as at Corps-level (which is where the General Staff discovered Alexei Brusilov). But even their abilities were more than negated by those of their superiors. The entire year of 1914 was marred by setbacks for Austria-Hungary. The Serbian front opened with a similar plan to the Schlieffen Plan in which Austria-Hungary would smash through Serbia before Russia could mobilize against them. The Austro-Hungarians had hoped by that point that the Balkan Front wouldnt expand any more than it did. Unfortunately for the Central Powers, Serbia did well in the opening hostilities. Despite still being in a state of recovery from the Balkan Wars and lacking the equipment to even field a full army (some of its troops still wore civilian garb), the Serbians were able to win, mostly by massive tactical oversights by the Austrian command. The Austro-Hungarian general on the field was Oskar Potiorek. Potiorek wanted to win the campaign before Franz Josephs birthday and, like many generals of the early war, he was both overly ambitious and over-confident. This led him to the Battle of Cer, in which he made the tactical mishaps of attacking the fortified Serbs in hilly terrain and with only half his strength. The Serbian command thought the notion of it being an actual attack was simply too stupid, but when it became clear that this was indeed the real offensive and not a feint to draw away attention, the Serbs brought in reinforcements and won. Although the share of bad tactical decisions did not belong only to Potiorek. The Serbs were pressured by the Entente (Russia, in particular) to launch an offensive into Austria-Hungary. This idea was very bad, as the under-supplied and under-equipped Serbs could barely manage a defensive war, let alone an offensive one. Potiorek decided to take the chance to attack the less defended Serbian homeland, and he crossed the Drina River with his troops. The Serbs were indeed caught off guard, but the river crossing was perilous enough that the Austro-Hungarian armies lost the initial engagements. But before long, the Serbs were beaten back and withdrew into the hills, and the Austro-Hungarians gained a toe-hold across the river. The Serbians set up for trench warfare, but they were outmatched in this regard because the artillery advantage of the Austro-Hungarians. The Austro-Hungarians finally forced them back and took Belgrade on December 2nd of 1914, but the Serbs wouldnt give up so easily. Before the Austro-Hungarians could recoup, the entire Serbian army came down and them and sent them into a massive retreat on December 3rd. The Austro-Hungarians fled back across the Drina as 1914 came to an end, and as they had been on the Marne, the hopes of a quick victory were shattered on the Drina. Meanwhile, just to the East, the Austro-Hungarians had botched what should have been a rather easy front. The Austrians, at the start of the war, held the Carpathian Mountains. Like most mountain ranges, this gave them an extremely disproportionate advantage and would be a nearly insurmountable natural obstacle for the Russians. Well, would be . The reality was that the incompetent Austrian Generals Staff refused to give an inch of ground to the advancing Russians. Instead of withdrawing to the natural barriers in the mountains and letting the Russians fling themselves in a hopeless war of attrition, they decided instead to engage in a hopeless defense of Galicia. This left four armies routing after decisive defeats by the Russians. The turmoil caused by this enabled the Russians to surround a massive Austrian force at the mountain town of Przemy347l. For the bulk of 1914 and 1915, nearly 100,000 men were besieged in the mountains. This was the front where the Russians actually saw some success, under the clever leadership of figures like Brusilov. The Austrians tried three time to relieve Przemy347l, launching offensives into the mountains, sometimes in the middle of winter. Thousands of men froze to death in these incompetently arranged battles, and by 1915 the Galician Front was pretty much a lost cause. The Germans eventually took over full control of the Austrian army on this front and began to reverse some of these defeats, but it was a huge blow to the Central Powers for Austria-Hungary to lose so many men so early into the war, especially because it didnt have nearly as vast a reserve of manpower as Germany or Russia. Most importantly, that winter the Ottomans tried to invade Georgia. The Russians fared a little better against the Ottomans, who were somehow in an even more hopeless position. They began the Bergman Offensive in 1914, pushing against Ottoman forces in the Caucasus. The Russians would start using Armenian volunteer regiments. This betrayel against the Ottomans would be cited as one of the reasons for the Armenian genocide later into the war. The Russians saw success at both the Battle of Ardahan and the Battle of Sarikamish . Sarikamish was a complete and utter defeat for the Ottomans. As with Galicia, the Ottomans had a natural defensive barrier in the Caucuses, but instead they chose to advance onward under the guidance of Enver Pasha. Enver Pasha was inexperienced with commanding a large volume of troops. He had originally been a Major in the Ottoman army, but he suddenly found himself promoted due to his political contacts that he gained during the Young Turks revolution. He was put in command of the entire Caucuses Theater, and he proved to be miserable with it. His offensives were some of the most tactically incompetent of the whole war, advancing up mountains towards strategically unimportant villages with strained supply lines and an overwhelming Russian force confronting him. He lost a staggering 90,000 men . The whole army turned in full flight after Hafiz Hakka Pasha ordered them to. Enver, fearing a loss of political clout, blamed the failure of the offensive on the Christian Armenians. While it is true that many Armenians served in the Russian army or as partisans fighting against the Ottomans, the source of the failure of the offensive was almost squarely on Enver. However, he was in too great a position to be fully threatened, and thus he continued to command from Istanbul. His accusations against the Armenians would later factor in to their deportation and genocide. Millions of Armenians were rounded up. First, they were removed from all positions in the army, moved to reserves and logistics. Then, massacres were committed in many Armenian villages. Enver Pasha then gave the order to deport Armenians away from the front. They were subsequently sent to Syria. Many died on the long marches where they were marched to exhaustion and given no food or provisions. Those who didnt perish during the death marches were left in the desert without facilities or provisions, where they promptly starved. The survivors were rounded up and placed in concentration camps. The death toll was an unprecedented 1.5 million people. The whole genocide was very deliberate and calculated, giving a glimpse of what the disturbing future would bring. Despite the failure of the Ottomans, the Central Powers continued to push onward clear into 1915, winning a victory at the Second Battle of Masurian Lakes . They also launched a successful offensive in Galicia after the Germans took command of that front, and began to expel the Russians from their far western territory. By the end of 1915, the Russians would be fully driven out of Poland. Russia did very badly for a reason their soldiers fought as bravely as any others, but the army was still set-up like an eighteenth-century fighting force there was a General Staff but it was seriously underfunded and actually had to wrestle with the Ministry of Defence and the Grand Dukes of the Infantry, Cavalry, and Artillery in each and every single matter from funding allocations to strategic priorities. In practice the Ministry ended up appointing both Front commanders for the Northern and Southern Fronts, but the General Staff ended up appointing the Front commanders assistants, and both parties wrangled to appoint the Army commanders (100-200k combat troops), Corps commanders (20-50k troops), and Division commanders (10-20k) who served under them. This contributed to the critical dysfunction of the Russian army as both Front Commanders and several of the Army Commanders under them did not work towards the strategic needs of the Russian War Effort as a whole or their front in particular, respectively: they largely did their own thing and had to be bought or bullied into acting in accordance with any plans. Though the Russian and German-Austro-Hungarian forces were relatively evenly matched at first, given that the Austro-Hungarian Army was even more dysfunctional than the Russian Army, this changed after the Austro-Hungarians repeated humiliations in 1914-15 led them in 1915 to defer the running of the entire war-effort on the Eastern Front to the German General Staff. The Russians dysfunctional system remained largely intact despite their own setbacks in 1914-15, the Grand Dukes and Ministry openly conspiring with the Generals to blame General Headquarters and The Tsar for their own blundersmdashthey accused them both of providing the troops with insufficient equipment and particularly ammunition. Shell Shortage became an almost farcical excuse for incompetence of every kind, mostly notably the tendency of many Russian Generals to obsess over fortresses and fortress artillery. in a War (on the Eastern Front at least) of highly mobile warfare and in an age wherein the fortresses they practically worshiped could be leveled in a mere day of bombardment note Or, as happened much more often, simply surrounded and starved out having contributed nothing to the campaign. Though there were material shortages in the first year of war, they were entirely solved by mid-1916 and the Shell Shortage was actually the product of an attempt by Generals to mimic the warfare of the Western Front: they would horde massive stores of shells while firing virtually none for weeks if not months at a time, then use them all in massive day - and week-long bombardments before making massive frontal attacks. which made zero head-way because the bombardment would always tell their enemies exactly were the Russian assault was going to take place, allowing them to shift their reserves there ready to meet the Russians frontal assaults when the bombardment stopped. By the end of 1914 the situation on the Eastern Front had settled into an odd equilibrium. The Eastern Entente had been totally beaten by the Germans, but had beaten the Austrians and Ottomans, meaning that no one really held the advantage as they geared up for 1915. Unfortunately for the Entente, the situation wouldnt persist for long: with the Western Front stalemated, Germany was sending ever-greater forces to the Eastern Front, while Serbia remained isolated from her allies. Worse, the war was beginning to expose Russias relative economic weakness compared to her foes: Russia had been left behind by the Industrial Revolution (serfdom had only been abolished in 1861), and couldnt keep up with the logistical demands of a war on three fronts. Essentially, Russia had plenty of manpower, but not the means to keep them adequately armed and fed, and the closure of the Turkish straits meant that Russia was cut off from trade and resupply by its more industrially-advanced allies. If this situation were allowed to persist, the Entente recognized that Russias war effort would enter a death spiral until defeat or revolution knocked them out of the war (in the event, this is exactly what happened). The British and French wracked their brains over what they could do to help. This led to what is widely considered one of the greatest military blunders of the warmdashthe Gallipoli Campaign. Orchestrated primarily by Winston Churchill. the idea was that before the Ottoman Army could be reconstituted a small but elite Entente force would open the Dardanelles. At one swoop this would allow Russia to sell her raw materials and particularly food to the wider world again (pre-war shed been heavily dependent on exporting goods through the straits), allow the giant back-log of munitions the Russians had bought from her allies and the USA to be delivered at a higher rate, and probably take the Ottomans out of the war. It all seemed to be such a good idea. Except the Ottoman Army wasnt quite gone, and the people the Entente assigned to command the operation proved to be extremely uninspired choices. The all-naval attempt faltered on against the straits coastal fortifications and initial landing attempts blundered about until the Turks figured out what was happening and counter-attacked, establishing a solid front. Increasing the size of the Entente force to take the strait didnt help, because supply constraints (they lacked a proper port, railways, and proper roads) meant they werent able to field a force large enough to overcome that of the Ottomans. The Russians werent able to help either, because Austria-Hungary and Germany went on the offensive against Russia that summer (starting by hammering away at the Southern Polish Front again). Australian and New Zealander national consciousness were given a certain kick-start as a result of the whole debacle, what with their ANZAC troops facing their first major campaign in it. By then the war looked bleak for Russia. With the failure of Gallipoli, they had little hope to get relief from the Ottomans or to get supplies through the Black Sea. The Russians resumed the Offensive at the Battle of Malazgirt, trying to break the Ottomans, who were the weakest link in the Central Powers. The conditions in the hills were rough, and in the end neither side was ready. The Russians may have won, but in the end the line changed very little and both sides sustained casualties. Furthermore, the Ottomans regrouped and reorganized efficiently following the battle. Needless to say the front was going poorly, and by 1916 things were slowing down. The Russians may have been advancing, albeit slowly, but both sides were taking huge losses and the Russians were facing strategic troubles from the north. They had managed to drive them out with key battles at Erzican and Van, which was a siege by the Ottomans not against the Russians, but against the Armenian resistance. It was by now that the Serbs had finally been conquered. The combined forces were able to conquer their country, but only after two years of brutal resistance. Greece would been coerced into the war after heated negotiation. The idea of who to side with, if anyone at all, drove Greece into basically a mini-Civil War. Before things got out of hand, King Constantine I resigned and his son, Alexander, put Greece firmly in with the Entente. However, later that year the Central powers also got a boost when Bulgaria entered their side of the war. Bulgaria was eager to take territory from Serbia and the other Balkan states, and their decision was motivated by Russian losses in 1914-1915 and the failure of the Entente at Gallipoli. With these ill tidings, the Serbs were finally defeated after the Germans, the Austro-Hungarians, and the Bulgarians all ganged up on them. Although some French and British forces had arrived to help, the bulk of the action still fell on the Serbs. The Serbian army was forced into a full retreat. They fled their country into neutral Albania and from there they would go on to help the Entente and reclaim their country late into the war. Still, for now, things looked bleak for the Entente on the Eastern front. Russia was being defeated time and time again, offensives into Ottoman lands had failed and supply shipments through the Black Sea were still to perilous. Serbia had been defeated. Montenegro fell in 1916. Romania entered the war on the Entente side in 1916 hoping to gain the largely ethnic Romanian territory of Transylvania note The Entente are now believed to have just promised this to get Romania into the war without intending to fulfill it after a couple of years of stalling, Romania was only able to take it by invading Hungary and toppling their Socialist Republic under Bela Kun, seizing Transylvania on the way out. Even then, it took lot of activism by Queen Marie and the Romanian delegation for Romanias control of the region to be legitimized under the Treaty of Trianon (signed in the Trianon Room of the Versailles-palace). and promptly got defeated thanks to poor training, horrible planning and (historically completely understandable) distrust of Russia. Its worth noting that the only Russian offensive that actually succeeded, the Brusilov Offensive of 1916 under Corps-Commander Brusilov of the Southern Front, succeeded even though he used barely any shells he was the head of a small faction who realized that Mobile Warfare was actually possible on The Eastern Front because of the massive distances involvedmdashthough the forces on The Western Front were nearly as big as those on the East, the front was only a fifth as long (though much, much better-supplied given the far-better rail infrastructure) His offensive was considered a mere experiment, however, and he was only allowed to try it out on the condition that he wouldnt be given any more men or ammunition than normalmdashthere was a serious offensive planned by the Northern Front which was meant to do the real work of distracting Germany from Verdun. The fact that his rapid-movement-and-encirclement approach succeeded when the massive-prolonged-bombardment-and-frontal-attack precedents of 1914-15 and counterpart of 1916 failed was regarded as a kind of fluke and completely ignored. Worse still, the offensive by the Northern Front consumed the manpower and munitions which (technically) Brusilov could have used to mop up the routing Austro-Hungarian forces and break the back of their army for good. As it was, the Northern Offensive consumed vast numbers of men and went nowhere, and the Austro-Hungarian Army was allowed to regroup and was put under the Germans direct command note Brusilovs techniques ultimately made a great contribution to Entente victory, however, as the Germans had a look at them and said Wow, look at that He also had lesser resources than his enemies, but still won some tactical victories If we form specialized assault-units like his we can win battles against the Entente instead of thinking Eurgh, were just like him. His campaign failed even though he won so many battles That just shows how important campaign-planning and logistics aremdashwe should reform our forces so we can win campaigns and thus the war despite our lesser resources This guaranteed Germanys defeat as it basically handed their best troops over to The Entente (the death-rate for stormtroops was appalling) and meant that the German army didnt focus on anything that might have actually helped them win the war (i. e. operationalcampaign planning, efficient management of engineering and logistics). By 1917 the Russian Army had been pushed back hundreds of miles and had lost all of Poland and Lithuania to the Germans (though in fairness they had some competent chaps like Brusilov, who in 1916 had gone back on the offensive and broken the back of the Austro-Hungarian army). Worse, Urban Russia suffered an economic crisis as inflation and the shortage of consumer-goods in the economy led to Russias huge peasant-farmer sector being reluctant to sell their grain. The result was urban famine in a country that had been food-exporting (exporting 14 of annual grain output) before the war cut off the German and other overseas markets (thanks to the closing of the Dardanelles) and continued to produce a healthy grain-surplus. The eventual result, at the end of the winter of 1916-17, was a near-total breakdown of civil order in St Petersburg as the city ran out of food entirely. Though no-one knew what to make of the situation, the one thing most of the countrys political elite could agree on was that Tsar Nicholas II should resign note Even though, doing so was legally impossible under Russian Imperial Law. The result was a Provisional Government and a system of Urban Communes established by the countrys industrial workers and soldiers. The uneasy alliance between the two broke down after the elections of 1917 when the radical Bolshevik faction of the Communist Party arrested the Provisional Government note Claiming that it had tried to destroy the Urban Communes aka Soviets. What happened was the de facto dissolution of the entire Russian State as the Ministries stood idle and the soldiers of the former-Army were told to go home. and did so. Shortly thereafter, when The Central Powers kept advancing on Leningrad and Moscow despite the laughably ineffectual attempts of the Soviets tiny forces of Revolutionary Militia to stop them, the Bolsheviks signed the treaty of Brest-Litovsk in which they ceded Poland, The Baltic Territories, Belorussia, and The Ukraine to Germany and Austria-Hungary. By the end of 1918, Russia had descended into Civil War with the BolsheviksCommunistsSovietsThe Reds using a new Red Army they had originally created (recruiting from the ranks of the old Imperial army, including virtually the entire former-General Staff) to defend Russia from the Central Powers, having recognized as they did that they needed a proper army in case the Germans went on the offensive again and tried to destroy their regime because they were Dirty Communists. The former-Grand Dukes and nobility, the remnants of the Ministry, and the commanders associated with them rose up against them to lead a faction of ex-servicemen known as The Whites, and virtually the entire Russian Imperial countryside refused to have anything to do with either faction and actively fought them both as The Greens. The new Bolshevik government signed a hasty peace with Germany that was quite excessive. It granted freedom to the Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Latvians, Belorussians, and also ceded Poland to Germany. All of these states were put under German control and assigned to German nobles as a way of implementing the German Mitteleuropa plan, which was basically a plan drawn up in the 19th century in which the Germans would dominate Continental Europe through a massive power bloc of loyal Eastern European states. Many of these states would be left to their own devices after the war. Poland and the Baltic States would survive the ensuing chaos but Ukraine was conquered again during the Russian Civil War. The treaty also granted territory to the Ottomans, although unlike the Germans they could not enforce it as it was in the hands of partisans. By 1917, things were also going poorly for the Ottoman Empire (well, truthfully the whole war had gone poorly for them since day one). Germany, as they did with Austria-Hungary, had sent troops to support the crumbling Ottoman armies. They were struggling under nationalist revolt in Armenia and being pushed steadily backwards by the Anglo-Egyptian forces creeping up through Palestine. The British had forced an offensive into Iraq and the Ottomans failed to dislodge them, and the Ottoman army had been browbeaten by supply shortages and near constant fighting. Desertion rates skyrocketed and the under-supplied, under-manned army began to crumble. The Arabs revolted with British support and thoroughly whooped the little remaining Ottoman resistance. Despite a favorable armistice with Russia, Armenia had revolted and successfully repulsed the Ottoman attacks. While the Ottomans scored minor victories against Anglo-Egyptian forces, it was plain for all too see that they had lost. In October of 1918, the Ottomans finally conceded their defeat and signed the Armistice of Mudros. They awaited the inevitable partitioning of their empire. The War at Sea is probably the front of World War One that has received the least focus. Unlike World War II. which featured massive naval battles in the Pacific that capture the idealized view of the war, World War Is naval combat was not as glamorous nor as interesting. Pitched battles were uncommon and those that did happen were often smaller than those of World War II. Still, it was crucial to the Entente success of the late war and indeed the War at Sea may have been the only thing that stopped the Central Powers from winning. Prior to the war, there was a huge naval arms race between the two world naval powers Britain and Germany. For almost all of its history Germany had been a land-based military power. Bismarck and his contemporaries believed maintaining a continental power in Europe on land was the key to Germanys success, but Kaiser Wilhelm II saw things differently. He believed Germany should achieve international glory by gaining overseas colonies. Thus he began the construction of a new navy as a prestige project and a source of national pridemdashsetting the target-size at 23rds the size of Great Britains. Britain was concerned, because a slow-moving fleet of battleships would be useless for fending off Frances fleet of fast-moving commerce-raiding cruiser ships, but it would be able to counter Britains own (somewhat aged) fleet of battleships. What sparked the arms-race in earnest was the development of a new type of Capital (super-big) Ship that was half again more powerful and faster than its predecessors. The HMS Dreadnought was a battleship equipped with ultra-modern mechanical computing machines, steam turbines, and target-range finding equipment that made use of some of the very latest advances in mathematics and engineering. This meant that her ten big guns note which werent superimposed six of them were mounted on the centerline, and eight could be used in any broadside. could accurately hit a target several kilometres away rather than just a few hundred metres away. Pre - Dreadnought Battleships were equipped with dozens of smaller, but less powerful, guns that could fire several kilometres and were expected to do most of the work in destroying enemy shipsmdashby getting a lucky shot on a ships bridge note the command booth from which the Captain commanded the ship or simply hitting it with so many hundreds of shells over the course of several hours that it would either surrender or catch fire and blow up. note Both of these results were seen in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905. The new Dreadnought - type Battleships, however, could sink another Battleship in just a couple of dozen shots and within just a few tens of minutes. This started a race to equip the battleships of the world with these new computing machines and rangefinders, and all new-build battleships were designed with the innovations of the Dreadnought in mind. In the post - Dreadnought period British ships specialized in an absurd output of fire, with massive guns and quicker fire rates. German ships were designed more on superior targeting optics and maneuverability. Other ship types such as battlecruisers, destroyers, and submarines (such as the German U-Boat) would be integral to the war, but the battleship was dominant. Some new forces like radio became important to naval combat as well. Naval combat during the war occurred all across the Earth, from Jutland to the Pacific. Entente shipping sent troops from India, weapons and supplies from America, and food from abroad to places like Great Britain and France. The German fleet was largely scattered around the globe, hunting this shipping. German U-Boats harassed Entente shipping well into the war. The Entente retaliated with their own ships, hunting the scattered raiders and submarines all across the globe. Because of the nature of this search and destroy style of warfare, there were few large naval engagements. Still, there were some massive battles of note: The first of the major battles was fought on the 28th of August, 1914, off the Helgioland Bight (the German Coast). It was a trend setter for the rest of the war. The British ambushed the unsuspecting Germans and did heavy damage, sinking several German ships. The outcome of the battle was hardly surprising, as the Germans were badly outmatched strength-wise. The Brits returned home victorious, only losing one cruiser. The German Fleet was once again restricted to port as the British gained control of the North Sea with little opposition. That dominance would not ever be shaken through the course of the war, although the Germans would challenge it at the Battle of Jutland. The Battle of Dogger Bank on the 24th of January, 1915, was far less conclusive. The British intercepted orders about a raiding squadron and went to engage them. They caught the Germans unaware and right where expected, but the German ships turned tail and ran. The British managed to catch up far enough to get in range, and sunk the SMS Bluumlcher at the cost of one of their own flagships being disabled and having to leave the battle line. Due to a communications mix up, the British disengaged and the rest of the German squadron made it home in one piece. Across the globe in Asia, the German East Asian Squadron had been commerce raiding in the Pacific. Comprised of various cruisers, it was originally based in the German port of Tsingtao in China, before the Japanese entered the war and seized it from them. The Squadron had been hunting for a while, but a lack of safe harbors in the Pacific meant that they were running low on crucial supplies. Maximilian Von Spee made the decision to withdraw from the Pacific and beeline it for safe ports in South America. Once they restocked, they would set out to Europe. The Squadron couldve made a significant change in future battles. The British were wary about giving Germanys Kreigsmarine any more ships or support, so they dispatched their own squadron to intercept the ships. The finally met off the Falklands as the Germans just crossed into Atlantic waters. In the end, the East Asia Squadron was caught completely off guard and was completely destroyed. The British suffered few casualties and no ships. Had Von Spee made it to Europe, his ships couldve been a decisive addition to Germanys fleet. As it stands, this relatively minor battle proved to be fairly important in the grand scheme of the war. The largest engagement of the war fittingly happened very close to one of the largest land battles of the war, the Battle of the Somme. The Battle of Jutland . also known as the Battle of Skaggerak happened on the 31st of May in 1916. It was the first and only clash of battleships in the war, and one of the largest naval battles in all of history. Jutland proved inconclusive. Although the Germans scored a tactical victory by outmaneuvering their foes in the course of a panicked retreat from what otherwise would have been annihilation, the British still drove their fleet to harbor, where they remained for the rest of the war. German historians claimed that it was a Pyrrhic Victory for Germany, as Britain suffered heavier losses in terms of ships and men, including three of their fragile Battlecruisers. However, British scholarship has argued that Britains only objective was simply to keep the German fleet out of their North Sea, which they didmdashthe Kaisers fleet was badly damaged note Several of their battleships were effectively knocked out of the war and spent the rest of the war in home waters, whilst the British quickly replenished their own losses. The issue ultimately became moot when the United States entered the war, which added its considerable fleet of dreadnoughts (the third largest in the world) to the Grand Fleet, tipping the naval balance of power prohibitively in the favor of the Entente. Why were these battles important Well, maintaining dominance of the North Sea and other waters around the globe was integral to the British war effort. Their plan called for a blockade of German ports so nothing could get in or out. This ruined the German economy and led to massive raw-material note Heavy metals used to make stronger steel alloys, gold, aluminium, oil, rubber, coffee, tea, wheat, even Sichuanese pig-intestine used for sausages and food shortages in 1917-18, eventually culminating in full-on food riots as the economy teetered on the brink of total collapse. The battles werent just restricted to the North Sea. Skirmishes were fought across the globe. In the Atlantic, shipping from the (then neutral) USA was threatened by the U-boats. The Germans, already under blockade, were trying to cut-off the British Isles from their overseas supplies. Although numerous merchant vessels were sunk, the sheer amount of allies or neutral powers lending arms, ammo, food, and supplies to Britain offset this cost. The U-boat blockade never neared the effectiveness of the British blockade of the German ports. Food supplies and other goods did dwindle in Britain, but there was a heavy price to pay, as the US would intervene in the war after the sinking of the Lusitania . The Mediterranean didnt see any real battles besides the attack on Gallipoli, but the Adriatic sea saw the birth of asymmetric naval warfare. The Italians, realising the inferiority of their fleet, began using small motorboats which had been modified to hold and launch torpedoes two such vessels managed to sink the Austrian warships Szent Istvan and Viribus Unitis while they were moored in the harbour at Pola. The Italian Regia Marina (Royal Navy) was also the first to employ frogmen. The neighboring Black Sea, however, saw more action. The Ottoman fleet was vastly outmatched by the Russians, but the Germans lent them two of their ships from their own Mediterranean fleet. This caused the action to sway back and forth before Russia finally gained control over the Black Sea. just before their revolution forced them out of the war in 1917. In the rest of the world, the German East Asia Squadron scored a number of early victories before being mopped up by the Entente. At Coronel off Chile Germanys only powerful global flotilla under Maximillian von Spee inflicted severe casualties on a British squadron, before being wiped out themselves off the Falkland Islands. The light cruiser SMS Emden bombarded Chennai and destroyed a Russo-French squadron in the Straits of Malacca before it was caught and destroyed by the HMAS Syndey off Cocos. The SMS Konigsberg menaced the British in Africa before being wrecked in the Rufiji Delta. A combined BritishJapanese operation (under Japanese command) took the German-held port of Qingdao in China. This action is notable for highlighting The Empire of Japans new place in world affairs and featuring the first naval air raid, launched from the Japanese seaplane tender Wakamiya mdashthe shape of things to come. The last German warship outside the North Sea, the SMS Dresden . was ambushed whilst coaling at Cumberland Bay in Chile and destroyed by the cruisers HMS Glasgow and HMS Kent in 1915. The War at Sea had a huge impact on the Central Powers logistical network. They could not produce enough horses, fuel, ammo, medicine, staple food, and luxuries (coffee, tea, chocolate, tobacco, and liquor were huge boons to morale when widely available and drains on it when not) to maintain their forces fighting efficiency and morale. The handful of Commerce Submarines like the famed SMS Deutschland could only supply German industry with the very rarest elements it needed to maintain production, and in general supplying the army with the essentials could only be achieved by taking things from the civilian populationmdashpissing them off royally . The Germans may not have started The Great War, but they sure as hell ended it. The German people basically had a revolution because of the ruinous effect the war had on the German people and economy. The Kaiser would flee to the Netherlands. The victory was essentially owed to the navies of the Entente, especially because the Kaiserliche Marine would end up mutinying near the end of the war. Had the Kaisers fleet succeeded in fighting off the British, Germany may have had more luck importing and exporting critical goods. With that influx of goods, things such as the Spring Offensive may have gone much better and maybe even succeeded, and the Central Powers could have stretched the war out for months or even years longer (and maybe even reached a negotiated peace). In the end the Kaisers fleet, his pride and joy that he had spent years buildingmdashraising like a childmdashfailed him. A War of the World The British had a mini-conflict all of their own in Ireland. where the Easter Rising took place. Ironically, the war had seemed to Britain like a golden opportunity to submerge Irish tensions (which were getting close to bursting over the issue of Home Rule). but, like just about every other war aim, things went badly wrong. It is important to note that this war has almost always been called some form of The World War for a reason. Participants from all 6 inhabited continents of the globe would fight in the war, directly or indirectly. The ANZAC (Australia and New Zealand Army Corps) fought in Gallipoli, Europe, and would also occupy German Samoa and New Guinea. Japan and Britain worked to take Germanys Micronesian colonies, as well as fight at the important battle of Tsingtao, seizing the German colonies in China along with British support. Japan had operated under the idea that they would be rewarded for their efforts by basically being given these territories. In fact, the Japanese had grand plans of Empire-building in the Pacific and uniting the Asian peoples under one flag pretty much since the Boshin War and their start as Imperial Japan. However, Japan was given very little compensation in the end and, much like Italy, they switched to the opposing side in World War II. By 1914, all German colonies in the Pacific were seized. India was at the heart of Britains war effort, though this fact is often overlooked. Over one million Indians served in World War One, fielding numerous cavalry units (alongside the Australians) and support units. British-Indian martial race theory and the Caste System limited the number of Indian ethnicities and the people within those ethnicities who could serve as soldiers until 1917, when The Raj reclassified 75 races as martial races. This was done at the same time as conscription was instituted in Britain (1916) and Canada (1917) to plug the massive and growing gaps in the manpower pool created by the 1916 and 1917 offensives. Indias industrial contribution was also critical, with her putting forth more war material than any other Commonwealth country save Britain herself. The African front was one of the longest campaigns of the war. German colonies in Togo and Cameroon were seized (once again by the end of 1914) but not for lack of trying the Germans did score some victories at the Battle of Nsanakong and the Battle of Garua . The African theatre was where India made its most critical contributions: there the need for good-quality forces was lower, Britain herself could field very few cavalry units, and ethnic-European doctors were forbidden to treat African soldiers in hospitals for African troops (European and non-European troops had separate hospitals due to Racial SeparationApartnessApart-heid considerations). While the British had no particular qualms about using a non-Europeans of any non-European ethnicity in a non-European theatre, including Africans, the overwhelming majority of Medical and Engineer units in Africa were Indian because they had so many qualified doctors and engineers. Germanys Cameroonian colony would hold out until 1916. The only front where Germany clearly won was in German East Africa. German commander Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck managed to tie down 300,000 Entente troops (mostly Indians and Africans) with a far smaller force of 14,000 mostly-African soldiers. He was said to be a Father to His Men and, in stark contrast to other German colonial commanders and his opponents in the African Theatre, he actually treated the native troops as equals He fought through the whole war and only surrendered in late November 1918, after being informed by the British (while he was making plans for another offensive) that Germany herself had already surrendered. Fighting also occurred in the Middle East by a mix of British-Indian-Australian forces, the revolting Arabs, and the crumbling Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire, being the sick man of Europe that is was, failed to put up a lot of meaningful resistance in these campaigns, as the British trained and supplied Arabs were able to harass them with guerrilla tactics while the British and Egyptians did the bulk of the actual fighting. Although German forces would be sent to bolster Ottoman ranks, it was clearly not enough, and the Kaiser knew that full well. The Ottomans had made many enemies and were already struggling internally before the war. After the Entente victory the Ottoman Empire disintegrated entirely, losing its territory to the Entente, then being overthrown by Mustafa Kemals nationalists. Besides the aforementioned Caucasus and Gallipoli Campaigns, the main Middle Eastern theaters were in Palestine and Mesopotamia. The former began with a failed Turkish attack on the Suez Canal in February 1915, easily repulsed by the British. After two years of inconclusive fighting in the Sinai Peninsula, General Archibald Murray was ordered to push into Palestine and capture Jerusalem. In spring 1917, Murray launched two disastrous attacks on Turkish troops at Gaza. He was soon replaced by General Edmund Allenby, who overcame the Turks through a surprise attack on Beersheba (the Turkish armys main water supply) and captured Jerusalem in December 1917. With assistance from Arab rebels, Allenby smashed the remaining Turks in the Battle of Megiddo the following September, capturing Damascus and Aleppo before Turkey sued for peace. In conjunction with the Palestinian campaign, Arab forces led by Sherif Hussein of Mecca were encouraged to rise against the Turks. Hussein was promised an independent Arab kingdom spreading north from the Hejaz to Palestine and Syria, ignorant of conflicting British promises to Zionists (the Balfour Declaration) and France (the Sykes-Picot Agreement). The Arab irregulars mostly harassed Turkish lines of supply and communication, but they did seize the Red Sea ports of Aqaba and Wejh and played a major role in Allenbys final campaign. Though Husseins son Feisal installed himself as King of Syria, the Arabs soon found the British giving precedence to French ambitions. British intervention in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) began in November 1914 with a limited landing to secure the oil fields at Basra. Eventually British troops began pushing northwards towards Baghdad, initially meeting little resistance. Major General Charles Townshend led a corps-sized unit to attack Baghdad in late 1915 his force was defeated, besieged at Kut el-Amara and forced to surrender in February 1916, a humiliating blow to British prestige. A reinforced British army under Stanley Maude arrived the following year, capturing Baghdad in March 1917 and declaring a British protectorate. However, Turkish troops held northern Iraq until the end of the war. Besides these major theaters, there were also several minor campaigns by the British and Russians in ostensibly-neutral Persia, and the Turks launched several failed attacks on the British colony in Yemen between 1914 and 1915. In Italian-held Libya, German agents inspired an uprising by the Senussi tribe, which attacked both British and Italian forces from 1914-1916. Senussi resistance to Italian rule continued sporadically for decades. Brazil would join the Entente for a similar reason to the USA Germanys unrestricted submarine warfare had killed Brazilians and destroyed Brazilian ships. Their navy teamed up with the British to hunt down the remnants of Germanys naval forces. Siam, despite having little stake in the conflict, contributed a small expeditionary force which served on the Western Front. Still, the war saw the inevitable end of Germanys colonial enterprises, but it put a surprising strain on the Ententes colonies as well. The massive loss of life on Indias part had caused a massive divide between them and the British. Before, many Indians believed that Western civilization was a good force, but after seeing the devastation wrought by the First World War, there was a much larger outcry for independence. Other Commonwealth states felt similarly about their loyalty to Britain. It is also worth noting that there was a multitude of rebellions in Africa and elsewhere during the war. The Spring Offensive Two events in 1917 transformed the stalemate into a fight to the finish: the collapse of Tsarist Russia, and the entry of the United States. The Russian Civil War knocked Russia out of the war permanently, freeing up some 500,000 experienced German troops for the Western Front. For the first time since 1914, the two sides would have near-numerical parity in the French theater. But not for long. Continued unrestricted submarine warfare and meddling in the American hemisphere like the Zimmermann Telegram note A telegram sent by the German foreign minister to try and sway Mexico into attacking the United States. History students may redeem this factoid for two (2) points extra credit on any WWI exam. Extra Special Bonus points for the Cuba Memorandum (German decision to attack American power in the Americas, signed in 1898) Manufacturers coupon no expiration date. by the Germans had finally goaded the U. S. into joining the war on the side of the Entente. The reasoning was simple the US would gain prestige and would honor their alliances while avoiding the bloodiest parts of the war, and could gain huge influence by being present in the peace negotiations (not to mention this would ensure that the Entente would still be around to pay off the considerable tab they had run up with American banks). Americas entry had huge ramifications for the war: the United States was now the worlds biggest industrial and economic power, backed up by a formidable navy and a population (and thus available manpower) as large as the rest of the principal Entente powers put together. American troops made haste to the front, despite frantic German efforts to step up their unrestricted submarine warfare. Despite their lack of experience, tactics, and training, the sheer number of American troops arriving in Europe threatened to turn the tide irrevocably towards the Entente. Meanwhile, subsequent victories against the Ottomans resulted in the occupation of most of their territory, coupled with the Arab Revolt, and the freeing up of several new independent states. The Ottomans were all but defeated, and with the arrival of the Americans 1917 seemed like the beginning of the end for the Central Powers. However, the Germans were hardly ready to throw in the towel. With the arrival of the forces they gained from the Russian Civil War, the Germans had the time and resources for one last, big gamble. The Germans launched an ambitious but poorly-organized series of attacks under the name Operation Michaelmdashbetter known as The Spring Offensivemdashin a final winner-take-all gambit to. something . though the general impression is that it was an attempt to weaken The Entente before the US could begin to deploy forces rivaling the French and Commonwealth for size. The offensive was aimed at the British, considered the softer nut of Germanys two principal enemies, with the nominal objective of separating them from the French and throwing them into the sea. Nominal, because in practice this aim was a bit vague and wasnt planned-out or pursued with any real dedication or persistence. The Germans seem to have assumed that the use of some new battlefield tactics would be enough to win the war for them. These built on those used at Verdun and Somme and by Brusilov, and made use of small infiltration-and-assault units (later called Storm-troopers) to make tactical breakthroughsmdashthe idea being that the minimal use of artillery would minimize the need to repair roads and railway-lines, theoretically making an operational breakthrough (after enough tactical breakthroughs) possible. However, German engineering and logistics hadnt been reformed since 1914 (and so were still relatively inefficient) and their capabilities had diminished due to the wartime loss of horses. While Entente logistics, on the other hand, were only marginally more efficient than they had been when the war started (thanks to some cosmetic reforms) their absolute capabilities had dramatically improved thanks to the continual war-time purchase of horses and even motor-vehicles from the outside world (and particularly the USA, which during the war had indisputably become the worlds largest single economy). The initial successes of the new tactics (in making tactical breakthroughs) are at least partly due to the fact that the British forces were experiencing an organisational crisis at the time, with as few as half the troops in any given front-line unit being available being for actual fighting note the rest being needed for full-time engineeringlogistics duties. Engineers were nominally just 120th of the front-line combat troops, but in practice 13 of them had to perform engineering duties if the other 23 were to remain fed and protected by adequate field-fortifications. Then in 1917 the civilian government had the bright idea to solve Britains manpower crisis by decreasing the numbers of men in front-line combat units while increasing their armament (and thus ammunition-expenditure). But then the usual problems (and worse) manifestedmdashweak logistics meant that the storm-troops werent getting food or ammo or rest, whereas their more-numerous enemies had plenty of all three. The result was that the storm troopers quickly ran out of steam and began suffering staggering casualties that were completely irreplaceable. Likewise, the French were also suffering morale problems and even faced a mutiny in 1917. This was not helped by the way that the Germans commanders did their usual thing and abandoned the nominal aim of the offensive when their progress started to slow, moving instead to attack the French and try to advance on Paris. This was due in part to a hesitancy to take more casualties, as Germany was on the verge of falling apart from the sustained attrition of four years of two-fronted war. Unfortunately, this resulted, if anything, in more casualties later on when the Germans failed to make any kind of substantial headway. By striking out where opportunity offered, the Germans did gain territory, but territory that was mostly useless and exposed their troops to Entente counterattacks. This culminated in the Second Battle of the Marne. The initial part of the battle was, as the previous parts of the offensive had been, a limited success for the Germans, who managed to cross the river itself and set up positions. However, they encountered heavy resistance, particularly from American units like the 3rd US Infantry Division, nicknamed forever after The Rock of the Marne for their steadfast resistance. More reinforcements, mostly American but some British, stalled the German advance before they could consolidate their gains on the other side of the river. Casualty-wise, the Entente suffered a few more but the Germans were weakening from attrition, and the Entente could now call on virtually limitless American troops. The end was near. Yet despite the setbacks and general failure of Operation Michael . it was still the closest the Germans would ever come since 1914 to ending the war on favorable terms. The Entente, sensing the Germans had exhausted their offensive capabilities, began what is called The Hundred Days Offensive, a continent-wide series of offensives by the Entente intended to push the Germans out of France and finally end the war. The Germans were pushed back after Entente intelligence found weaknesses in their positions, and the Germans were routed back across the Marne. Every loss counted against the Germans: the Hundred Days offensive alone cost each side a million men, but while the Entente could call on American reserves to replace their non-combat troops and free up their own more experienced soldiers for fighting units, Germanys manpower was utterly exhausted. Furthermore, many German troops, demoralized by four years of war, the Spanish Flu and millions of Americans arriving at the front, surrendered outright. This was truly the beginning of the end of the war, and from here on out the Germans would never really have a chance at defeating the Entente forces and getting anything close to favorable peace terms. Much of this was due to the German home front. The British had succeeded in winning the crucialmdashbut often neglected in textbooksmdashWar at Sea and were able to turn back the German navy and blockade the country. German agriculture was highly inefficient, with many small farms being relied upon to churn out food. Thus, much of Germanys food supply was imported, and the blockade effectively ruined that. Furthermore, it limited Germanys logistical ability, such as the lack of horses mentioned above. They couldnt bring in any supplies, and in some ways the even worse effect was the fact that they couldnt export any supplies. Without being able to sell products abroad, the German economy tanked under the strain of war. The German economy was on the brink of collapse, with the Mark constantly changing in value often by the hour (resulting in workers going in to work and being paid less than what they should, as the currency value had changed so much during the day that their eventual pay was worth even less). This inflation made the Mark useful only as fuel for furnaces. Industrial output had dropped sharply, morale had collapsed, medical supplies were low and there were few new recruits to replace the staggering losses. Anti-War protests became frequent and many people were discontented with the Kaisers rule due to the war. The Hundred Days Offensive marked the final nail in the coffin. The Entente were able to push the demoralized German troops back to Amiens, but as resistance grew they diverted attention elsewhere. The Germans withdrew to the Hindenburg Line. The German High Command realized the war was lost and even the Kaiser saw that it must come to an end. Moreover, Austria-Hungarys army had been defeated in Italy and the Balkans and effectively collapsed, and Bulgaria and the Ottomans had for all intents and purposes withdrawn from the war. All peace offers sent, however, were rejected. Further battles like Champagne and Cambrai pierced the Hindenburg Line. Bulgaria left the Central Powers and now the list of Germanys allies had basically shortened to Austria-Hungary. The German Navy mutinied when it caught wind of an offensive being ordered that would almost certainly end in disaster. With the collapse of the Balkan front, Germanys last supplies of food and oil dried up. The war came to an end and a revolution ousted the Kaiser and replaced him with a new government: the Weimar Republic. And at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, in 1918, a ceasefire was called and the war was over. Four long, brutal, bloody years of a worldwide struggle came to an end, and the greatest war man had seen by that point was finally over. Pushing 1918 into the winners circle for the title of Worst Year Ever was an influenza pandemic. The Spanish Flu (which actually originated in Fort Riley, Kansas, USA) struck that fall, killing between fifty and a hundred million people (2.5-5 of the then global population) compared to the wars ten or fifteen million, but has largely been forgotten by history and fiction. The war actually helped its spread (troop transportation), and four years of malnutrition and stress probably hadnt strengthened anyones immune system, but today its thought that that flu strain killed by inciting a cytokine storm (basically, your immune system goes berserk and, if its strong enough, accidentally kills you). Certainly the 1918 flu was unusual in that it mostly killed healthy adults, as opposed to the more usual flu victims: the sick, the very young, and the very old. Also very unusual in that almost none of the stories or films set in the period even mention it8212even contemporary fiction. Rilla of Ingleside . by L. M. Montgomery. chronicles the entire war without touching on it at all. Four empires were toppled (Russian, German, Austrian-Hungarian and Ottoman indeed, it could be argued that in November 1918, there was not a single functional government between the Rhine and the Dnieper rivers) and the winners took the opportunity in the Treaty of Versailles to redraw the map of Europe along what were supposed to be ethnic lines but in fact just stored up more problems for the future (Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Danzig, to name the biggest). The treaty terms were really harsh on the Germans (including the Austrians, who voted to join Germany and were told to stuff it. until 1938, anyway) and the Hungarians (who lost two thirds of their country) storing up lots of resentment that would come back to haunt the Entente latermdashthough some modern historians now believe they were actually not hard enough and served the worst of both worlds in angering Germany but not substantially weakening her. Additionally, its been argued thatmdashif the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk negotiated by the Germans and the new Bolshevik government in Russia was any indicatormdashwhatever treaty the victorious Germans might have come up with could have been even harsher. Russia became the first Communist country late in this war, although that was only because of the wartime starvation itself. Similarly, the Treaty of Versailles completely ignored the pleas from imperial colonies like French Indochina or disadvantaged countries like China to reform the European policies in said countries this lead to anger and mistrust throughout the 20s and 30s that contributed to said countries later becoming Communist. Two of the most iconic German symbols of the warmdashthe spiked Pickelhaube helmet and the bright red Fokker Triplanemdashwere relatively short-lived. The Pickelhaube looked cool (sort of) but was useless for keeping the wearers head safe so was quickly replaced by the end of 1915 by the Stahlhelm, coal-scuttle helmet, whose improved version became the symbol of the German forces in World War II. The Triplane was never that successful and quickly withdrawn after April 1917. The only red ones were flown by the Red Baron. Manfred von Richthofen, and his younger brother Lotharmdashthe iconic image simply stuck. The war also ushered in modern espionage, to say nothing of modern spy fiction (although it had already had a leg up from Erskine Childers The Riddle of the Sands . which was actually semi-predicting the war at the beginning of the 20th century). Interestingly, the Young Turk government organised a series of deportations and massacres against Anatolian Armenians, Pontic Greeks and Assyrians, killing at least a million people. The logic behind this was that Serbia, Rumania, Bulgaria, and Greece had greatly improved their own claims to certain territories and removed many potential spies by executing pogroms against their Muslim populations (of up to 10 of the total) and driving them into Austro-Hungarian Bosnia, Italian Albania, and the Ottoman Empire. Interestingly this genocide was extremely hands-off, with the Ottoman government maintaining a high degree of Plausible Deniability through careful control of the paper trail and employing mercenaries and militias to take away the food and valuables of the deported people at the arrival points (to ensure that they would die of starvation and exposure in the Syrian desert). To this very day the Turkish government can rightfully claim that official government documentation of the time portrays a programme of civilised and genteel deportation. This evidence is at the heart of their claim that the Armenian Genocide didnt happen. More interestingly still, the very best evidence which proves that the Armenian Genocide did happen (including the only photographs) actually comes from the German advisors to the Ottoman government and military. who were, to a man, utterly horrified and disgusted by it. German perception of the Armenian Genocide and the much smaller 1907 German colonial genocide against the Namaqua and Herero people in German South-West Africa (which killed less than 100,000) changed during the 1920s and 30s. While leftists remained disgusted with them, rightists came to appreciate the logic of preventative security behind eliminating troublesome demographics even if they didnt necessarily approve of the uncivilised and barbaric nature of the elimination itself. The success of these genocides in addressing national security issues was later cited (to good effect) in various discussions about doing likewise immediately before and during World War II There were many future writers in the trenches: notably, J. R. R. Tolkien and A. A. Milne served in the British infantry, while Ernest Hemingway and Walt Disney volunteered to serve as Red Cross ambulance drivers on the other side, philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein served in the Austrian artillery. One who did not survive his service was William Hope Hodgson. author of The Night Land . who was killed by a shell in 1918 the accomplished Black Comedy writer Saki was also killed, shot by a German sniper after yelling at another soldier to put out his cigarette (he was discovered because of his yell). The famous German painter and founding member of The Blue Rider . Franz Marc. was killed by a grenade at Verdun. And sadly, there was at least one young, promising scientist in the trenches: the physicist Henry Moseley, who discovered the principle underlying atomic number, establishing the periodic law, was killed at Gallipoli, just as his career was getting off the ground. The French lost Andreacute Durkheim, a promising young linguist and the son and proteacutegeacute of the notable sociologist Emile Durkheim. Sent to the Belgian front in late 1915, Andreacute Durkheim was declared missing in January, and declared dead in April of 1916. The elder Durkheim never quite recovered from the loss of his son, dying himself in 1917. The loss of many of his other proteacutegeacutes and friends in the trenches didnt exactly help. Fighting on the German side was another physicist, Karl Schwarzschild, who was the first to use Albert Einstein s new General Theory of Relativity to predict black holes. He died on the Russian front. Other highlights include: World War One saw the most diverse uses of airships in combat. They were used as heavy bombers, reconnaissance craft, airborne aircraft carriers, convoy escorts, anti-submarine aircraft, and as experimental platforms. Gallipoli had brought about Aussies with Artillery. Brits with Battleships Canucks with Chinooks Gauls With Grenades Katanas of the Rising Sun. Imperial Japan sent warships to support the Entente forces in the Mediterranean as an ally of Great Britain, while seizing German colonies in the Pacific which became its bases for World War 2. League of Nations. Was created at the end of the war as a global body meant to prevent the bloodshed from happening again. The United States (with President Wilson as one of the backers of the LoN) refused to join. note Wilson obviously wanted the US to join, but was blocked by congress who didnt like the idea of an international body having influence over American policy making. Wilsons own health was also deteriorating after suffering a stroke and was unable to fight back against congress. New Roman Legions The Poppy. A Commonwealth remembrance symbol instituted in 1920, first used as such in 1918 and inspired by the 1915 war poem In Flanders Field. Russians with Rifles. As the largest force in the war, and the one with the most and best artillery in 1914 (though this came to nothing because of just how awful their infantry-artillery coordination was). But in 1915, during the height of the Central Powers campaign to defeat Russia, many of the replacement-troops pressed into service (given the million captured or dead Russian troops) lacked heavy weapons and in some instance even rifles (though this was chiefly among the supply-troops and Opolchenie militia who were unexpectedly pressed into action due to the encirclements). This was fixed by 1917. whereupon a lack of food became evident (as a direct consequence of fixing the materialweaponry shortage, no less) Turks with Troops Some historians credit the Seven Years War from 1756 to 1763 as the real first World War, because of its global nature. World War I may then just be the Trope Codifier. Yanks with Tanks A thing about the representation of WWI in games is that there arent many WWI titles in general and as compared with the more numerous representations in other media. Some gamers and game critics blame this on the somewhat more static nature of the war or the ignorance of developers and most gamers, who often assume that WWI muddy and unmoving western front. This situation is slowly changing, with a whole slew of strategy games being released on the centennial anniversary of the wars outbreak in 2014 and the extraordinarily unforgiving (in the ARMA - mold) online multiplayer shooter game Verdun having been released in April 2015. The Battlefield franchise also entered this era with the October 2016 release of Battlefield 1 . WWI also sees some renewed interest in mainstream Hollywood, with 2017s Wonder Woman being probably one of the more prominent examples. Its not easy to pinpoint the exact reason why people should focus on that particular conflict all of a sudden aside from the 2014-2018 period marking its 100th anniversary. The current political, social and economical instability in Europe might have contributed to it and the lack of an easily distinguishable villain surely makes it an interesting setting in an era when successful TV shows increasingly explore Grey and Gray Morality. Media set in this time period: Anime amp Manga The backstory of Porco Rosso . Also mentioned in Chrono Crusade . the main bulk of which is set in The Roaring 20s. Several episodes of Axis Powers Hetalia . specifically detailing Germanys and Italys first meeting. Austria is described as reduced to a wheelchair-bound cripple after the War. In Code Geass . a picture of C. C. can be seen running around a WWI battlefield. The shoujo Candy Candy is set before and during this time period. It becomes pretty important towards the last part of the series: Candys fellow nurse Frannie Hamilton decides to enroll as a war nurse to leave her Dark and Troubled Past behind (prompting Candy to investigate her origins) and Candys close friend Alistair Stear Cornwall joins the American Air Forces despite the clans objections. and later dies when his plane is shot down. In Fullmetal Alchemist s finale Ed finds himself in real-life London in 1916. And yes, zeppelins really were used in bombing raids during that time. Big Finish Doctor Who . In the first Dark Eyes series (2012), Eighth Doctor companion Molly OSullivan is a nursing assistant during the war, with her first story, The Great War, being set here. The most famous comic book example is probably DCs Enemy Ace . about the trials of elite German flying ace Hans Von Hammer, who is profoundly haunted by the constant death around him of which he is a master dealer in the unforgiving sky. DC also had Steve Savage, Balloon Buster . inspired by real-life ace Frank Luke. Charleys War is a classic British comic with socialist overtones that does not flinch from the horrors of battle. One of the past incarnations of the goddess Promethea was an angelic figure helping the soldiers fighting in the trenches of World War I. Golden Eyes And Her Hero Bill Jacques Tardi is renowned for depicting War Is Hell in several graphic novels, the most famous being It was the War in the Trenches . His tendencies link the war to Strawman Political and Corrupt Corporate Executive. The usual French point of view about the conflict. Marvel had quite a few heroes in a WWI setting: The Phantom Eagle was an American pilot who fought against the Germans. He had to disguise his identity in order to protect his German-born parents (they had returned to Germany at the beginning of the War) from reprisals. Union Jack fought on the Western front against the Germans. John Steele (Americas first super-soldier, complete with steel-hard skin and super-strength)also fought on the Western front. Freedoms Five was a team of heroes who fought for the Entente: Union Jack (U. K.), Phantom Eagle (America), Sir Steel and the Silver Squire (U. K.), and the Crimson Cavalier (France). Villain Baron Blood was an English traitor who fought for the Kaiser. Nick Fury s father, Jack Fury, served as a pilot in the war. Snoopys World War I Flying Ace fantasies from the Peanuts cartoons. Films 8212 Live-Action The Lost Patrol is about a single British cavalry patrol that gets lost in the Mesopotamian desert and endures a harrowing siege while being picked off by unseen Arab enemies. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse . in which a callow Idle Rich boy goes off to fight in the trenches. The two film adaptations of All Quiet on the Western Front . The Academy Award - winning 1930s version directed by Lewis Milestone is more famous than the 1970s TV movie. Later became known for its mentioning in a Monty Python skit. The older version is considered one of the greatest and most important movies on WWI created, as per the Library of Congress. Also listed as the 7th Most Epic Film (well, 7th in the Epic genre of films, whatever that means) in the American Film Institutes list of the Top Ten of the 10 Classic American Film Genres. Its also probably the Trope Maker Trope Codifier of the modern war movie. Hells Angels . a 1930 film about fighter pilots in the RAF. The Dawn Patrol is also a 1930 film about fighter pilots in the RAF. Westfront 1918 . a German film. It bears resemblance to All Quiet on the Western Front and was released the same year (1930), although it has a bleaker tone. Paths of Glory with Kirk Douglas. Directed in the late 50s by a then young Stanley Kubrick. An example of Shot at Dawn. And possibly one of the best filmed but least accurate war dramas ever made. The Big Parade . 1925 silent wonderful story about a callow rich boy who joins the Army, falls in love with a French girl, then sees the hell of combat. The Red Baron (known as Von Richthofen and Brown outside the US) The 1959 Italian comedydrama La Grande Guerra (The Great War), the story of an Anti-Hero and a Lovable Coward who become Vitriolic Best Buds and try not to get caught in the slaughter of the trenches. Black and White in Color is a French movie set somewhere in West Africa, on the border between a French colony and a German colony. When the French get news that theyre at war with Germany, then they (well, the Africans under their control) go to war. It ends with the English arriving to announce that the Germans superiors have already surrendered. The AampE cable network made a movie called and about The Lost Battalion . a US Army unit that during an attack was cut-off behind German lines. Fighting off attack after attack and in spite of mounting casualties and dwindling supplies they rejected every surrender demand that was made. They were rescued and returned back to US lines. The African Queen . And the book its based on Mimi and Toutous Big Adventure . The Tangiyaka campaign was just messed up. Mimi and Toutou came well after that film, which was based on CS Foresters novel of the same name. The true story has been told in many places. Darling Lili , a 1970 musical set in the waning days of the war, starring Julie Andrews as a Glamorous Wartime Singer Femme Fatale Spy who romances an American Ace Pilot. Has some spectacular aerial dogfight scenes using replica aircraft originally built for the film The Blue Max (see below). Dawn Patrol mdashBasil Rathborne has to keep sending out pilots with single digit flying hours, Errol Flynn has to lead them. Rather accurate about the particulars of air strategy. But the planes are 1918 types, and the situation is more 1916-17 (bloody April especially). The Australian film Gallipoli And an Australian mini-series, ANZACs And another Australian film, The Water Diviner . set in the aftermath of Gallipoli, that looks at both the Turkish and Australian sides of the battle. The Lighthorsemen is an Australian film about a stunningly effective (and Truth in Television ) mounted charge by Australian horsemen against entrenched Turkish infantry supported by artillery and machine guns, in Palestine. Explained in-film as a result of the Turkish expectation that the Australians (who were mounted infantry, NOT cavalry) would dismount and advance on foot since they lacked sabres, and had set the sights on their rifles and MGs to the range corresponding to the dismount point. When they charge in on horseback instead, the Turks are so surprized and frightened that they simply blaze away and forget to re-set their sights to account for the decreasing range. Much of the footage from the movie was used again by the director Simon Wincer in an episode of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles he directed about the same historical incident but with young Indy inserted in as an Entente spy. The episode also featured then-unknown actors Daniel Craig and Catherine Zeta-Jones. The 2002 Deathwatch is a British Surreal Horror film, starring Andy Serkis and Jamie Bell. features a squad of Tommies getting lost in a German entrenchment. They are tormented by uncertainty of their whereabouts, mounting distrust of their lone German prisoner and each other, and increasingly supernatural phenomena. They are slowly picked off one by one. And the ending features a What Do You Mean, Its Not Symbolic Mind Screw. Flyboys is a 2006 film about the Lafayette Escadrille. a French fighter squadron composed entirely of American volunteers. Lawrence of Arabia dealt with the Arab Revolt and Middle Eastern theatre. A very touching 2005 French movie, Joyeux Nol (Merry Christmas), is about French and British soldiers briefly fraternizing with German soldiers on Christmas of 1914. The 1941 Gary Cooper film Sergeant York was based on the true story of Sgt Alvin York, a pacifist farmhand who became an American hero and earned its highest military honor, the Medal Of Honor, for an incident in 1918 where he single-handedly killed and captured over a hundred German soldiers. Shout at the Devil . A 1968 novel and 1976 film about a private war between English poachers and a German colonial official in East Africa. Waterloo Bridge is a 1931 film set in 1917 London. The French film A Very Long Engagement is about Audrey Tatous characters search for her fianceacute who was lost and presumed dead in no mans land during the Battle of the Somme. We see WW1 told through some pretty graphic flashbacks of the other men he was stationed with. Zeppelin . 1970 Michael York film about a German plot to steal the British crown jewels using the eponymous zeppelin and featuring flying sequences using accurate reproductions of actual WWI aircraft. Legends of the Fall had Brad Pitt, Aidan Quinn and ETs best friend go off to Europe to fight on the Western Front. March on the Drina (Serbian: Mar na Drinu ): 1964 movie about the Serbian victory against Austro-Hungarian invasion force in the Battle of Cer (fought in August 1914). I defended the Young Bosnia (Serbian: Branio sam Mladu Bosnu ): 2014 Serbian movie about the Austrian lawyer Rudolf Zistler who did his professional best to defend Gavrilo Princip and other members of the Unification of the entire Balkans under Serbian Rule or Death terrorist group. The story pointedly uses the larger social movement which Unification or Death was a part of, the Young Bosnia Movement, and is centered around the Kangaroo Court trial set by the Austrians while the war itself is looming in the background. The Eagle and the Hawk mdashdepressingly realistic BampW movie in which the hero becomes increasingly and profoundly disillusioned by the number of young pilots dying under his command, finally snapping when the enemy ace he kills turns out to be no more than a fuzzy-cheeked youth. Driven beyond the brink, he kills himself. His best friend takes his body up in a two-seater and, using the rear gun, peppers the wings and the heros head with bullets to make it appear as though he died in combat and thereby save his reputation. The 1965 film The Blue Max is the story of a German infantryman, Lt. Bruno Stachel, who transfers to the German Air Service towards the end of the war. His ruthless kill-or-be-killed attitude clashes with the squadrons old fashioned notions of chivalry. Most well known for its excellent aerial stunts and flying scenes. 1970s British drama Aces High . a very down-to-earth and touching portrayal of the lives (and deaths) of a regular squadron of fighter pilots. The plot of Terry Gilliams 12 Monkeys features Time Travel and has several short scenes set on the Western front, and the war is also referenced by the Present Day Past characters in the movie because one of the time travelers apparently got stuck there and was acting suspiciously for that era. Theres a little known 2004 independent film about American soldiers on the western front in 1918, called Company K . Its based on a semi-autobiographic novel by William March, one of the American veterans of the war. A Bear Named Winnie . chronicling the life of the original WinnipegWinnie the black bear, the bear that eventually inspired A. A. Milne to create Winnie-the-Pooh. Passchendaele . written, directed, and starring Canadian Paul Gross, based on his grandfathers war diary. Goodbye, Mr. Chips It starts when Mr. Chipping (Chips) is a young teacher in 1870 and goes through his fifty year career. During WWI he reads aloud a Roll of Honour, the names of those killed in battle which include many of Chips former students and fellow teachers. One of them is an old friend of Chips, a German who fought on his countrys side. The Officers Ward in 2001, about the gueules casseacutees (broken faces in French: war invalids and horribly disfigured men). Capitaine Conan by Bertrand Tavernier, about the French corps in the Balkans. The Grand Illusion (1937), was directed by Jean Renoir. Wings . the only silent movie to win the Oscar for Best Picture, was centered on World War I flyboys. War Horse (2001), adapted from the book by Steven Spielberg. La France (2007), a somewhat surreal French film in which a woman disguises herself as a teenage soldier to find her husband at the front, ironically joining a squad of deserters en route. And its (sort of) a musical. Kaumlsky . or Tears of April . a 2008 Finnish novel adaptation about a Red POW in the Finnish Civil War of 1918, the White soldier responsible for her, and the corrupt military judge in charge of her trial. The first section of The Great Dictator is set in this war, setting up the fascist dictators analogy in the rest of the film. Wilson is a 1944 biopic about Woodrow Wilson, with much of the film focusing on his actions during World War I and his efforts to get the U. S. into the League of Nations. As you might have guessed from the release date, the movie was created largely as propaganda for the then-ongoing sequel. Shoulder Arms (1918) was the product of Charlie Chaplin s rather daring decision to make a comedy out of the horrors of trench warfare while the war was still going on. It proved to be one of his most popular films. Doughboys . the best of a generally uninspiring collection of talking films made by Buster Keaton at MGM, features Buster enlisting by accident, going through boot camp, and then fighting in the trenches in France. Beneath Hill 60 tells the story of the 1st Australian Tunnelling Companys effort to mine a tunnel beneath Western European trenches and detonate an explosive charge below a German bunker to aid the advance of British troops. Wonder Woman has the titular heroine exploring the world of Man during the time period of WWI. Hearts of the World (1918) is a propaganda film encouraging the American war effort, made while the war was still raging. All Quiet on the Western Front (1929) by German writer Erich Maria Remarque, another WWI staple of the western literary canon. The story follows a young German soldier from his idealistic enlistment through the horrors of war as his compatriots die one by one. Ironically, the story was written in German, by a German war veteran, depicting the German side of the war, but it has become the most popular depiction of the war for English speaking audiences. The poem My Boy Jack (1915), about the death of Rudyard Kipling s only son in the war. John Buchans Richard Hannay stories, seminal spy thrillers that were both written and set in WWI. The 39 Steps (1915) has been adapted multiple times, although the Hitchcock version is a very loose adaptation, set in the 1930s. Buchan portrays Wilhelm II fairly sympathetically. The Sherlock Holmes story, His Last Bow (1917), takes place in England during the run up to the war, with Holmes attempting to deal with a German spy network in England. He succeeds. My Reminiscences of East Africa (1920) is General Paul Von Lettow-Vorbeks diary from his service in East Africa at this time. The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920) was actually written in 1916 and set during the war. Lieutenant Arthur Hastings returns from the War due to an injury, while Hercule Poirot is a war refugee. The short story The Kidnapped Prime Minister also takes place in WWI. The Secret Adversary has a prologue on the sinking Lusitania (1915). As mentioned in the above, the L. M. Montgomery book Rilla of Ingleside (1921) chronicles the eponymous characters experiences throughout the entire war, in quite a bit of detail that could only come from first-hand experience. Given that level of detail, its supremely odd she made no mention at all of the 1918 influenza pandemic, not even in passing. It devastated Canada as thoroughly as it did the rest of the world, having a profound effect on many of the events she relates, yet the word flu or influenza is never once mentioned. Quite a lot of H. P. Lovecraft stories feature WWI in the background somewhere (e. g. Herbert West, Reanimator-1922)mdashnot surprising given that he did a lot of his writing in the 1920s. He specifically mentions in The Silver Key that his dreamer-hero Randolph Carter saw action with the French Foreign Legion and suffered near-fatal injuries in the Battle of the Somme, near Belloy-en-Santerre. He apparently still had PTSD from this in The Statement of Randolph Carter where his friend Warren describes him as a nervous wreck. The Good Soldier vejk (1923), a classic (and hilarious ) satirical novel by Czech writer Jaroslav Haek. Some say vejk is an Author Avatar version of him, but with some cunning Obfuscating Stupidity (possibly) added to the mix. This has some truth in it, only the Author Avatar was a different character entirely. Haek never tried to hide the fact that the novel was largely autobiographical. His avatar, however, was not vejk, but his friend, a bumbling former journalist, volunteer Marek. A Time of Death (Serbian: Vreme Smrti ) by Dobrica 262osi263 is a four-volume novel detailing the Serbian struggle during World War One, as seen from the perspective of one family. Considered among classics of Serbian literature. In The Master Mind of Mars (1928) by Edgar Rice Burroughs s, Ulysses Paxton starts out fighting in this War. The early (and best) Biggles stories are set in the War, though the character debuted in 1932. The first part of the novel Journey to the End of the Night (1932), by the famous French author Ceacuteline, takes place during World War One. The main character, who sees the war as a lot of frightening and senseless violence, does his best to avoid risking his life. After being wounded, he manages not to be sent back to the western front until the war is over. The novelmdashand later filmmdash Johnny Got His Gun (1938) by Dalton Trumbo: A horrifying story of a young American soldier, who has his arms, legs and face blown off, leaving him blind, deaf, dumb and immobile, a living torso in a hospital bed, with no way of communicating until he figures out how to tap the Morse code with the back of his head. Related, Metallica s song One retells the same story. The band bought the rights for the movie to use it in the video for that song. Pale Horse, Pale Rider (1939), a collection of three short stories by Katherine Anne Potter, is apparently the only major work on the Spanish flu epidemic. The Razors Edge (1944) by William Somerset Maugham features Larry Darrell, a World War I pilot who is wounded and traumatized in the War. He spends the rest of the novel searching for ways to adjust to the post-war life. A Killing For The Hawks by Frederick E. Smith. A 1966 novel about a RFC squadron that flew Royal Aircraft Factory S. E.5as. Charlotte Sometimes (1969), second in Penelope Farmers Aviary Hall series, features a young girl who switches between living in Britain at the end of the war, and in boarding school in 1963. The book does, in fact, mention the flumdash it is revealed to have killed an unseen but nonetheless crucial character. The novel Goshawk Squadron (1971) by Derek Robinson deconstructs the popular view of World War One air combat which, rather than dueling Knights of the Air, actually involved undertrained pilots diving out of the sun and machine-gunning their opponent in the back before he had a chance to defend himself. War Story (1987) and Hornets Sting (1999) by the same author have a similar setting. The novel Strange Meeting (1971) by Susan Hill, title taken from a Wilfred Owen poem, is about the friendship between two British officers on the front line. The short story Schwarzchild Radius (1987) by Connie Willis features an extended metaphor of WWI as a black hole. British author Pat Barker has written three award-winning novels that form her World War I trilogy, The Regeneration Trilogy (1991-1995): Regeneration, The Eye in the Door, and The Ghost Road. The novels are chock full of history and real-life characters, including the poets Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, and Robert Graves. The first novel was turned into a movie, released in 1997 and known as Regeneration in the UK and Behind the Lines in the US. Birdsong (1993) by Sebastian Faulks, widely considered one of the great WWI novels. It describes the horrors of trench warfare, through the eyes of troubled young officer Stephen Wraysford and of his men. The Bloody Red Baron (1995), part of the Anno Dracula series by Kim Newman. takes this war and introduces vampires. Specifically, Dracula leading the German war effort. Harry Turtledove s Great War Alternate History trilogy (1998-2000, part of his larger Timeline-191 series) pits the United States of America, Germany and Austria-Hungary against Britain, France, and the Confederate States of America. Among other differences, the October Revolution fails, and Russia is still a monarchy after the war. For that matter, so are Germany, Austria, and Mexico. In recent years, Turtledove has also penned a Young Adult Alternate History series called Crosstime Traffic . Its second novel, Curious Notions (2004), is set in the late 21st century of a world where the Central Powers managed to successfully pull off the Schlieffen Plan and eventually won World War I. Though it doesnt take place during the war, in The Dresden Files (2000-) it turns out that World War One was actually arranged by a very, very powerful necromancer by the name of Kemmler who apparently spent two centuries quietly setting everything up. Kemmler was implied to be a very Big Bad. who took several attempts to kill before it finally stuck mdashand that took the combined forces of the White Council to pull off. The Eighth Doctor Adventures novel Casualties of War (2000) is set in England during the closing months of the war. Phoenix and Ashes (2004), one of the Elemental Masters books by Mercedes Lackey (this one a Cinderella retelling ), centers on the stepdaughter of a war profiteer and a Shell-Shocked pilot sent home to recover. Unnatural Issue . also in the same series (based on the story Donkeyskin ), has the main character sent to France to escape her necromancer father shortly before World War One starts. Kate Carys unofficial sequel to Dracula . Bloodline (2006), starts off in Northern France during the war. The main characters, John Shaw, Quincey Harker, and Mary Seward, are a lieutenant, captain, and nurse, respectively, for the British. The Blindness of the Heart (Die Mittagsfrau, 2007) by Julia Franck spans both world wars Martha and Helenes father loses his leg and eventually dies from the complications in the war, and it affects their lives in all manner of other ways. The French half of Divisadero (2007), a novel by Michael Ondaatje. Leviathan (2009) by Scott Westerfeld is a Young Adult Alternate History adventure novel set in WW1. where the armies of the Entente Powers are aided by their Biopunk creations (like flying sky whales ) and where the Central Powers fight with Steampunk Humongous Mecha. And its awesome. Ken Folletts Fall of Giants (2010), a Door Stopper novel, tells the story of the war (and other important events, like the Russian Revolution) through the eyes of several different individuals: British, Russians, Germans, Americans, some being aristocrats, others being working class people. Lord Dunsany wrote Tales of War based on his experiences in the trenches, focusing on the desolation of the Western Front mixed with a stiff measure of anti-Kaiser propagandizing. Hemingways A Farewell to Arms is a classic fictional depiction of the war. Robert E. Howard s Francis X. Gordon (aka El Borak ), an American gunslinger in the Middle East, saw action against the Turks during the War. In Tarzan the Terrible . Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan went up against the Germans in Africa. Although set after the war, F. Scott Fitzgerald s Tender Is The Night features a memorable scene where the characters visit a cemetery on the Somme and discuss the meaning of the war. William Faulkner wrote stories depicting American pilots fighting on the Western Front. Adolf Hitler s Mein Kampf ( My Fight ). The book clearly shows that this war and the German defeat shaped this man and his ideas more than anything else. The middle two novels of Parades End are set during the war. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf revolves around the Ramsay family and their friends just before and after the war. Erwin Rommel s Infanterie Grieft an ( Infantry Attacks ) recounts his experiences over the course of the war, from mobilization and the early fighting in France to the Carpathians and the Italian front. These experiences would shape his tactics in the next war. A major section of Jan Guillous The Bridge Builders takes place during WWI, mostly following German soldiers in the East African Campaign, but also showing how civilians in Norway are affected by the war. Johnny and the Dead . the second book in the Johnny Maxwell Trilogy by Terry Pratchett. features an elderly British soldier who was actually named Tommy Atkins, who on his death joins the rest of the Blackbury Pals Battalion. The Authors Note at the back says there really were Pals Battalions, and they really were a horribly innocent way of ensuring all the young men from a given area would be killed at once. Fall On Your Knees . James Piper is a WWI veteran. Robert Graves autobiographical novel Goodbye To All That details his experiences as a British army officer on the Western Front. Dorothy L. Sayers fictional detective Lord Peter Wimsey was an officer in WWI, and still has occasional shell-shock. The Swarm on the Somme series. A World War I equivalent of The War Against the Chtorr . And quite awesome. Created by members of AlternateHistory. Shadow of Fashoda features an alternate timeline of the pre-war years. Created by members of AlternateHistory Arthur Machen was the unwitting originator of the legend of the Angels of Mons, based on his 1914 story The Bowmen. Other than The Angels of Mons (1915), he also published The Terror (1917), a novella, and the stories Munitions of War, The Happy Children (in Holy Terrors ), and Out of the Earth . Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall co-wrote the History of the Lafayette Flying Corps and Falcons of France (1929)- semi-autobiographical account of their service in the Lafayette Escadrille during World War I. Hall also wrote (solo) Kitcheners Mob: The Adventures of an American in the British Army (1916) about his service in the British infantry, and High Adventure: A Narrative of Air Fighting in France (1918). Droumlmmar av glas by Solveig Olsson-Hultgren takes place in 1917. Sweden is mostly spared from the horrors of the war, but food is very scarce in the cities and the towns, and Rebeckas only uncle has been conscripted into the army. Odinochka. Armenian Tales from the Gulag (2016) has its main character reflect on his childhood where he participated in the defense of Van in the Ottoman Empire in 1915 as the Armenian genocide was underway, eventually being sent to get aid from the invading Russian army. Ernst Jngers autobiographical memoir Storm of Steel . Fighting in the Great War made Young Indiana Jones the jaded and cynical man that he came to be by the 1930s. A series of arcs in the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles TV series is set during The Great War and Indy even attends the signing of the Treaty Of Versailles with appearances by T. E. Lawrence, Adolf Hitler and the future Chairman Mao Blackadder Goes Forth . A rare comedy set here, although it was far darker than earlier series. Well-known for an extremely touching and sad finale. Season four of Upstairs Downstairs . If Blackadders Lt. George is the comedy version of what happens when an Upper-Class Twit turns Tommie, James Bellamy is the drama version. It is not easy for him. An episode of Fantasy Island featured Don Adams (in complete Maxwell Smart mode) as a bumbling school teacher who wants to visit WWI and ends up fighting the Red Baron. Carnivle has a large portion of its immediate Back Story set in the trenches, and its heavily implied that the machinations of the two Avatara were major factors in causing this and other conflicts. While most of the episode is set a year before, the Doctor Who episode The Family of Blood (based on the Doctor Who New Adventures novel Human Nature ) features two of the students from the episodes school fighting and surviving in the trenches of the war. The Torchwood episode To the Last Man has a World War I veteran snatched away by Torchwood in order to fix two timelines colliding with one another. At the end of the episode after returning to the war, he gets shot for cowardice and shell-shock in the war. Colonel Potter in MASH fought in World War One after lying about his age at 16 in order to get in the Army. Note that if this is the case, Potter could be no older than 52 at the end of the Korean War a far cry from actor Harry Morgans 68 years. On Boardwalk Empire . both Jimmy Darmody and Richard Harrow fought in the war, and are both not coping well. which leads to their involvement in organized crime. Harrow in particular suffered horrific injuries. Series 2 of Downton Abbey is set during the war and immediately after. The ways people responded to the war are explored in detail: Thomas tries to get a cushy assignment by joining the medical corps voluntarily before the war he ends up getting assigned to France anyway and engineers to have his hand shot to get reassigned back to England. Matthew serves as an officer in France, with William eventually (eagerly) joining up as well and serving as his batman . Matthew also does recruitment across Northern England. Both are injured at Amiens William succumbs to his injuries weeks later. Lord Grantham, a veteran of the The Second Boer War. is frustrated his military position in the War is purely ceremonial. The Crawley ladies turn Downton into a convalescent home for officers in the meantime, Isobel busies herself with refugee work in France as well as administering the hospital and home. Mrs Byrd, Isobels cook, creates a soup kitchen for the enlisted war wounded. Birdsong . an adaptation of the book by Sebastian Faulks. The BBCs series Wings was about the lives of pilots and observers in the Royal Flying corps. Beginning in 1915, it focuses on the development of air combat tactics, the poor performance of British fighters in comparison to their German counterparts, and the changes in social norms that the war brought about. The BBCs 37 Days is a depiction of the July crisis resulting from the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. Peaky Blinders kicks off around six months after WWI has ended, in 1919. All three eldest Shelby brothers, as well as most of the young men of Birmingham, served in France (Tommy, specifically, was a tunneler) and are regarded as war heroes. The show deconstructs this idealization of soldiers, and various characters have shell-shock, PTSD, and the Flanders Blues, self-medicating with alcohol, opium, and cocaine. Our World War is a dramatization of key moments in the war experienced by British forces. ANZAC Girls is a Based on a True Story miniseries detailing the wartime lives of five members of the Australian Army Nursing Service, first in Egypt and then in France. MusicSwedish band Sabaton has several songs that deal with the horrors of the Great War, some of the best known being The Price Of A Mile and Cliffs of Gallipoli . 1916 by Motrhead is a ballad from the perspective of a soldier fighting in it. The Zombies song Butchers Tale (Western Front, 1914) gives gruesome detail to the trench warfare, commenting on both shell shock and the strange dichotomy between God and Country. And the preacher in his pulpit Sermons Go and fight, do what is right But he dont have to hear these guns And I bet he sleeps at night. The War by Running Wild is based on World War One. Metallicas song One . as already mentioned in the Film section. Paschendale . a song about the horrors of the Third Battle of Ypres by Iron Maiden. This video to A Small Victory by Faith No More. And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda by Eric Bogle is about a young Australian soldier who is maimed at the Battle of Gallipoli. In another song by Bogle, No Mans Land (also called The Green Fields of France and what the Dropkick Murphys made famous ) the narrator is reflecting on the grave of a young man who died in France during World War I. Snoopy vs. The Red Baron and the sequel Snoopys Christmas The Soldiers Sweetheart by Jimmie Rodgers Christmas In The Trenches . a song by John McCutcheon, based on the true stories of truces between different groups of opposing entrenched forces on the Western Front on Christmas Day 1914, with the soldiers singing carols, exchanging gifts, and playing soccer in No Mans Land. (This would also inspire the film Joyeux Noel . above.) (Though later years would see similar truces, due to high command on both sides being upset when they heard it, they were not nearly so widespread as before.) Along with their invoked usage of Music to Invade Poland To that centers on World War II. the Industrial Metal band Hanzel und Gretyl has done World War I - themed German songs as well such as KaiserReich. 1917 by Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt is about a Hooker with a Heart of Gold trying to comfort soldiers about to head back into the war. PJ Harvey s 2011 album Let England Shake deals with WW1 in an impressive way. Remember by Renaissance, a song about finding a (deceased) old womans letters from her soldier boyfriendhusband. Its implied. of course, that he never came home. Common Ground by neo-Progressive Rock band IQ. The Rose of No-Mans Land , about the Red Cross nurses who served on the front lines. This song dates from the war itself. Many characters, including Doc Savage . The Shadow . Secret Agent X . The Spider and many more from Pulp Magazines. had WWI as part of their Back Story. Aviation pulps, such as G-8 and His Battle Aces . tended to be set in this time period.
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