World War I

B Y H I S T O RY. C O M E D I T O R S

CONTENTS

1. Archduke Franz Ferdinand

2. Kaiser Wilhelm II

3. World War I Begins

4. The Western Front

5. First Battle of the Marne

6. World War I Books and Art

7. The Eastern Front

8. Russian Revolution

9. America Enters World War I

10. Gallipoli Campaign

11. Battle of the Isonzo

12. World War I at Sea

13. World War I Planes

14. Second Battle of the Marne

15. Role of the 92nd and 93rd

Divisions

16. Toward Armistice

17. Treaty of Versailles

18. World War I Casualties

19. Legacy of World War I

20. Photo Galleries

World War I, also known as the Great War,

began in 1914 after the assassination of
Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. His
murder catapulted into a war across
Europe that lasted until 1918. During the
conflict, Germany, Austria-Hungary,
Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire (the
Central Powers) fought against Great
Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Romania,
Japan and the United States (the Allied
Powers). Thanks to new military
technologies and the horrors of trench
warfare, World War I saw unprecedented
levels of carnage and destruction. By the
time the war was over and the Allied
Powers claimed victory, more than 16
million people—soldiers and civilians alike
—were dead.

Archduke Franz
Ferdinand
Tensions had been brewing throughout
Europe—especially in the troubled Balkan
region of southeast Europe—for years
before World War I actually broke out.

A number of alliances involving European

powers, the Ottoman Empire, Russia and
other parties had existed for years, but
political instability in the Balkans
(particularly Bosnia, Serbia and
Herzegovina) threatened to destroy these
agreements.

The spark that ignited World War I was

struck in Sarajevo, Bosnia, where
Archduke Franz Ferdinand—heir to the
Austro-Hungarian Empire—was shot to
death along with his wife, Sophie, by the
Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip on June
28, 1914. Princip and other nationalists
were struggling to end Austro-Hungarian
rule over Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The assassination of Franz Ferdinand set

off a rapidly escalating chain of events:
Austria-Hungary, like many countries
around the world, blamed the Serbian
government for the attack and hoped to
use the incident as justification for settling
the question of Serbian nationalism once
and for all.

READ MORE: 8 Events Leading to the

Outbreak of World War I

Kaiser Wilhelm II
Because mighty Russia supported Serbia,
Austria-Hungary waited to declare war
until its leaders received assurance from
German leader Kaiser Wilhelm II that
Germany would support their cause.
Austro-Hungarian leaders feared that a
Russian intervention would involve
Russia’s ally, France, and possibly Great
Britain as well.

On July 5, Kaiser Wilhelm secretly

pledged his support, giving Austria-
Hungary a so-called carte blanche, or
“blank check” assurance of Germany’s
backing in the case of war. The Dual
Monarchy of Austria-Hungary then sent an
ultimatum to Serbia, with such harsh terms
as to make it almost impossible to accept.

World War I Begins

Convinced that Austria-Hungary was
readying for war, the Serbian government
ordered the Serbian army to mobilize and
appealed to Russia for assistance. On
July 28, Austria-Hungary declared war on
Serbia, and the tenuous peace between
Europe’s great powers quickly collapsed.

Within a week, Russia, Belgium, France,

Great Britain and Serbia had lined up
against Austria-Hungary and Germany,
and World War I had begun.

READ MORE: World War I Battles:

Timeline

The Western Front

According to an aggressive military
strategy known as the Schlieffen Plan
(named for its mastermind, German Field
Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen), Germany
began fighting World War I on two fronts,
invading France through neutral Belgium
in the west and confronting Russia in the
east.

On August 4, 1914, German troops

crossed the border into Belgium. In the
first battle of World War I, the Germans
assaulted the heavily fortified city of
Liege, using the most powerful weapons in
their arsenal—enormous siege cannons—
to capture the city by August 15. The
Germans left death and destruction in
their wake as they advanced through
Belgium toward France, shooting civilians
and executing a Belgian priest they had
accused of inciting civilian resistance.

First Battle of the Marne

In the First Battle of the Marne, fought
from September 6-9, 1914, French and
British forces confronted the invading
Germany army, which had by then
penetrated deep into northeastern France,
within 30 miles of Paris. The Allied troops
checked the German advance and
mounted a successful counterattack,
driving the Germans back to north of the
Aisne River.

The defeat meant the end of German

plans for a quick victory in France. Both
sides dug into trenches, and the Western
Front was the setting for a hellish war of
attrition that would last more than three
years.

Particularly long and costly battles in this

campaign were fought at Verdun
(February-December 1916) and the Battle
of the Somme (July-November 1916).
German and French troops suffered close
to a million casualties in the Battle of
Verdun alone.

READ MORE: 10 Things You May Not

Know About the Battle of Verdun

World War I Books and

Art
The bloodshed on the battlefields of the
Western Front, and the difficulties its
soldiers had for years after the fighting
had ended, inspired such works of art as
“All Quiet on the Western Front” by Erich
Maria Remarque and “In Flanders Fields”
by Canadian doctor Lieutenant-Colonel
John McCrae. In the latter poem, McCrae
writes from the perspective of the fallen
soldiers:

To you from failing hands we

throw
The torch; be yours to hold it
high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though
poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Published in 1915, the poem inspired the

use of the poppy as a symbol of
remembrance.

Visual artists like Otto Dix of Germany and

British painters Wyndham Lewis, Paul
Nash and David Bomberg used their
firsthand experience as soldiers in World
War I to create their art, capturing the
anguish of trench warfare and exploring
the themes of technology, violence and
landscapes decimated by war.

READ MORE: How World War I Changed

Literature

The Eastern Front

On the Eastern Front of World War I,
Russian forces invaded the German-held
regions of East Prussia and Poland, but
were stopped short by German and
Austrian forces at the Battle of
Tannenberg in late August 1914.

Despite that victory, Russia’s assault had

forced Germany to move two corps from
the Western Front to the Eastern,
contributing to the German loss in the
Battle of the Marne.

Combined with the fierce Allied resistance

in France, the ability of Russia’s huge war
machine to mobilize relatively quickly in
the east ensured a longer, more grueling
conflict instead of the quick victory
Germany had hoped to win under the
Schlieffen Plan.

READ MORE: Was Germany Doomed by

the Schlieffen Plan?

Russian Revolution
From 1914 to 1916, Russia’s army
mounted several offensives on World War
I’s Eastern Front, but was unable to break
through German lines.

Defeat on the battlefield, combined with

economic instability and the scarcity of
food and other essentials, led to mounting
discontent among the bulk of Russia’s
population, especially the poverty-stricken
workers and peasants. This increased
hostility was directed toward the imperial
regime of Czar Nicholas II and his
unpopular German-born wife, Alexandra.

Russia’s simmering instability exploded in

the Russian Revolution of 1917,
spearheaded by Vladimir Lenin and the
Bolsheviks, which ended czarist rule and
brought a halt to Russian participation in
World War I.

Russia reached an armistice with the

Central Powers in early December 1917,
freeing German troops to face the
remaining Allies on the Western Front.

America Enters World

War I
At the outbreak of fighting in 1914, the
United States remained on the sidelines of
World War I, adopting the policy of
neutrality favored by President Woodrow
Wilson while continuing to engage in
commerce and shipping with European
countries on both sides of the conflict.

Neutrality, however, was increasing

difficult to maintain in the face of
Germany’s unchecked submarine
aggression against neutral ships, including
those carrying passengers. In 1915,
Germany declared the waters surrounding
the British Isles to be a war zone, and
German U-boats sunk several commercial
and passenger vessels, including some
U.S. ships.

Widespread protest over the sinking by U-

boat of the British ocean liner Lusitania—
traveling from New York to Liverpool,
England with hundreds of American
passengers onboard—in May 1915 helped
turn the tide of American public opinion
against Germany. In February 1917,
Congress passed a $250 million arms
appropriations bill intended to make the
United States ready for war.

Germany sunk four more U.S. merchant

ships the following month, and on April 2
Woodrow Wilson appeared before
Congress and called for a declaration of
war against Germany.

READ MORE: Should the US Have

Entered World War I?

Gallipoli Campaign
With World War I having effectively settled
into a stalemate in Europe, the Allies
attempted to score a victory against the
Ottoman Empire, which entered the
conflict on the side of the Central Powers
in late 1914.

After a failed attack on the Dardanelles

(the strait linking the Sea of Marmara with
the Aegean Sea), Allied forces led by
Britain launched a large-scale land
invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula in April
1915. The invasion also proved a dismal
failure, and in January 1916 Allied forces
staged a full retreat from the shores of the
peninsula after suffering 250,000
casualties.

Did you know? The young

Winston Churchill, then first lord
of the British Admiralty, resigned
his command after the failed
Gallipoli campaign in 1916,
accepting a commission with an
infantry battalion in France.

British-led forces also combated the

Ottoman Turks in Egypt and Mesopotamia,
while in northern Italy, Austrian and Italian
troops faced off in a series of 12 battles
along the Isonzo River, located at the
border between the two nations.

Battle of the Isonzo

The First Battle of the Isonzo took place in
the late spring of 1915, soon after Italy’s
entrance into the war on the Allied side. In
the Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo, also
known as the Battle of Caporetto (October
1917), German reinforcements helped
Austria-Hungary win a decisive victory.

After Caporetto, Italy’s allies jumped in to

offer increased assistance. British and
French—and later, American—troops
arrived in the region, and the Allies began
to take back the Italian Front.

World War I at Sea

In the years before World War I, the
superiority of Britain’s Royal Navy was
unchallenged by any other nation’s fleet,
but the Imperial German Navy had made
substantial strides in closing the gap
between the two naval powers. Germany’s
strength on the high seas was also aided
by its lethal fleet of U-boat submarines.

After the Battle of Dogger Bank in January

1915, in which the British mounted a
surprise attack on German ships in the
North Sea, the German navy chose not to
confront Britain’s mighty Royal Navy in a
major battle for more than a year,
preferring to rest the bulk of its naval
strategy on its U-boats.

The biggest naval engagement of World

War I, the Battle of Jutland (May 1916) left
British naval superiority on the North Sea
intact, and Germany would make no
further attempts to break an Allied naval
blockade for the remainder of the war.

World War I Planes

World War I was the first major conflict to
harness the power of planes. Though not
as impactful as the British Royal Navy or
Germany’s U-boats, the use of planes in
World War I presaged their later, pivotal
role in military conflicts around the globe.

At the dawn of World War I, aviation was a

relatively new field; the Wright brothers
took their first sustained flight just eleven
years before, in 1903. Aircraft were
initially used primarily for reconnaissance
missions. During the First Battle of the
Marne, information passed from pilots
allowed the allies to exploit weak spots in
the German lines, helping the Allies to
push Germany out of France.

The first machine guns were successfully

mounted on planes in June of 1912 in the
United States, but were imperfect; if timed
incorrectly, a bullet could easily destroy
the propeller of the plane it came from.
The Morane-Saulnier L, a French plane,
provided a solution: The propeller was
armored with deflector wedges that
prevented bullets from hitting it. The
Morane-Saulnier Type L was used by the
French, the British Royal Flying Corps
(part of the Army), the British Royal Navy
Air Service and the Imperial Russian Air
Service. The British Bristol Type 22 was
another popular model used for both
reconnaissance work and as a fighter
plane.

Dutch inventor Anthony Fokker improved

upon the French deflector system in 1915.
His “interrupter” synchronized the firing of
the guns with the plane’s propeller to
avoid collisions. Though his most popular
plane during WWI was the single-seat
Fokker Eindecker, Fokker created over 40
kinds of airplanes for the Germans.

The Allies debuted the Handley-Page HP

O/400, the first two-engine bomber, in
1915. As aerial technology progressed,
long-range heavy bombers like Germany’s
Gotha G.V. (first introduced in 1917) were