The History Book

274

a small professional troop led by Sir

Douglas Haig, had arrived in France

by August 22. It was deployed near

the Franco-Belgian border, in line

with pre-war military plans agreed

with the French government.

Germany had to fight a war on

two fronts. On the Western Front,

in the first weeks of the conflict,

the Germans invaded Belgium

and France, but their advance

was halted by the French and

British at the Battle of the Marne.

By the end of autumn, the two

sides had reached a stalemate.

Meanwhile, on the Eastern Front,

the fighting remained fluid.

Germany dominated, scoring a

great victory against the Russians

at Tannenberg, but its Austrian

allies suffered several defeats.

On the Western Front, however,

a 400-mile (645km) trench line

stretched from the Belgian coast

in the north, down through eastern

France to the Swiss border. The two

sides faced each other across the

open space between their front

lines. This area—no-man’s-land—

had barbed wire fronting the

trenches to slow the opposition.

Continuous fighting from the

trenches, punctuated by appallingly

bloody battles, failed to break the

deadlock. More than 600,000 Allied

troops were killed or wounded in the

Battle of the Somme alone.

Total war

At the start of the conflict, both

sides had been convinced it would

be a short, decisive battle. No one

THE BATTLE OF PASSCHENDAELE

Huge artillery guns such as the

Howitzer cannon were transported by

horses and tractors. High-explosive

shells fired in massive quantities were

key to the war’s high casualty rates.

had anticipated a war of attrition.

New mechanized weapons added to

the high casualty rates. Tanks were

used for the first time, and machine

guns such as the German MG 08

Maxim could fire up to 600 bullets

a minute. Aircrafts, first employed

for reconnaissance, were later used

for bombing. Both sides used poison

gas. Horses were the backbone

of logistical operations, but as

the war progressed, railways and

motor trucks were used to transport

goods to the front.

Civilians were brought into

the front line by the bombing of

London and Paris by airships and

bomber aircraft. By 1917, German

submarines were sinking one in

four merchant ships headed for

Britain to try to starve the British

into submission. Britain’s naval

blockade of Germany also led to

World War I is also known as the Great War, due

to the unprecedented number of participants. An

enormous 65 million soldiers saw combat, almost a

third of whom were wounded and half as many again

were killed. In addition, 8 million civilians lost their

lives. These high figures are a direct consequence of

the array of devastating new weapons that were in

use by all of the armies involved.

6 5 4 3 2 1 0

MILITARY CASUALTIES (MILLIONS)

Artillery

fire

Rifle

fire

Machine-

gun fire

Poison

gas

Other combat

deaths

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275

One of the social changes brought

on by World War I concerned the role

of women. The female population

joined the war effort by working in

places like munitions factories.

acute food shortages. This was the

first “total war,” meaning not just

soldiers but also civilian populations

were involved.

Britain was forced to introduce

conscription for the first time in

its history. From January 1916, all

single men aged 18 to 41 could be

called up. Britain and France

also assembled armies from their

overseas colonies, such as India

and Africa, and from the British

dominions of Australia New

Zealand and Canada. War brought

many social changes, notably for

women, who filled positions in

factories and offices. Women were

also increasingly employed in the

munitions industry as governments

switched to large-scale production.

Global conflict

The key belligerent states brought

their vast empires into war with

them, and the conflict soon became

a world war. German colonies in

China and the Pacific were invaded

by Japan, which entered the war on

the side of the Allies. Germany’s

colonies in Africa were overrun by

British, French, and South African

troops. In May 1915, Italy joined the

Allies, fighting Austria-Hungary

and Germany in the Alps.

In early November 1914, the

Ottoman Empire, an Islamic power,

abandoned its neutrality and

declared a military jihad (holy war)

against France, Russia, and Britain.

The US was drawn into the war by

German submarine attacks on

commercial ships at sea, such as

the one on British liner Lusitania in

1915, with 128 Americans on board.

After a German plot to persuade

Mexico into an anti-US alliance

was discovered, Congress declared

war in April 1917.

When the Bolsheviks in

Russia negotiated a peace treaty

with Germany at Brest-Litovsk

on December 22, 1917, it seemed

Germany had won a significant

victory. They also made gains on

the Western Front in 1918, but

then, in July and August, the

Allies counterattacked, beginning

an advance that would continue

until November. Four million fresh

THE MODERN WORLD

US troops helped defeat the

Central Powers and bring the

Germans to the peace table.

When the conflict ended, at

11am on November 11, 1918, the

alliance led by France and Britain

emerged victorious. More than

65 million troops had been involved

in the war, of which at least half

were killed or injured. The Russian,

Austrian, and German empires had

collapsed. After the war, the Treaty

of Versailles redrew the map of

Europe, leaving nations, particularly

Germany, embittered. A public

assembly of countries, the League

of Nations, was founded to help

maintain peace. However, the

League proved toothless in the face

of countries that chose to ignore

it. When fascist Benito Mussolini

came to power in Italy in 1922, he

denounced the Treaty. In Germany,

where the response to the Treaty

was one of deep resentment,

the Nazi Party began to gain

momentum. Far from being “the

war to end all wars,” World War I

had instead sown the seeds of

future conflict. ■

There was not a sign of life

of any sort... Not a bird, not

even a rat or a blade of grass.

Private R. A. Colwell

Passchendaele (1919)

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