WORLD WAR 1

On June 28, 1914, the heir to the Austrian throne, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand,
was assassinated in the Bosnian city of Sarajevo (sar-uh-YAY-voh). Although this
event precipitated the confrontation between Austria and Serbia that led to World
War I, underlying forces had been propelling Europeans toward armed conflict for a
long time.

Nationalism and internal Dissent

The system of nation-states that had emerged in Europe in the second half of the
nineteenth century (see Map 23.1) had led to severe competition. A frenzied
imperialist expansion led to rivalries over colonies and trade. This competition for
lands abroad, especially in Africa, led to conflict and heightened the existing
antagonism among European states (see Chapter 19). Moreover, the division of
Europe’s great powers into two loose alliances (the Triple Alliance of Germany,
Austria, and Italy, formed in 1882; the Triple Entente of France, Great Britain, and
Russia, created in 1907) only added to the tensions. The series of crises that tested
these alliances in the 1900s and early 1910s had not led directly to war at the time
but had left European states embittered, eager for revenge, and willing to revert to
war as an acceptable way to preserve the power of their national states. The growth
of nationalism in the nineteenth century had yet another serious consequence. Not
all ethnic groups had achieved the goal of nationhood. Slavic minorities in the
Balkans and the multiethnic Habsburg Empire, for example, still dreamed of creating
their own national states. So did the Irish in the British Empire and the Poles in the
Russian empire. National aspirations, however, were not the only source of internal
strife at the beginning of the twentieth century. Socialist labor movements had
grown more powerful and were increasingly inclined to use strikes, even violent
ones, to achieve their goals. Some conservative leaders, alarmed at the increase in
labor strife and class division, even feared that European nations were on the verge
of revolution. Did these statesmen opt for war in 1914 because they believed that
“prosecuting an active foreign policy,” as some Austrian leaders expressed it, would
smother “internal troubles”? Some historians have argued that the desire to
suppress internal disorder may have encouraged some leaders to take the plunge
into war in 1914.

Militarism
The growth of large mass armies after 1900 not only heightened the existing
tensions in Europe but also made it inevitable that if war did come, it would be
extremely destructive. Conscription—obligatory military service (or draft)—had been
established as a regular practice in most Western countries before 1914 (the United
States and Britain were major exceptions). European military machines had doubled
in size between 1890 and 1914. With its 1.3 million men, the Russian army had
grown to be the largest, but the French and Germans were not far behind, with
900,000 each. The British, Italian, and Austrian armies numbered between 250,000
and 500,000 soldiers. Militarism, however, involved more than just large armies. As
armies grew, so did the influence of military leaders, who drew up vast and complex
plans for quickly mobilizing millions of men and enormous quantities of supplies in
the event of war. Fearful that changing these plans would cause chaos in the armed
forces, military leaders insisted that the plans could not be altered. In the crises
during the summer of 1914, the generals’ lack of flexibility forced European political
leaders to make decisions for military instead of political reasons.
The Outbreak of war: summer 1914 Militarism
nationalism, and the desire to stifle internal dissent may all have played a role in
the coming of World War I, but the decisions made by European leaders in the
summer of 1914 directly precipitated the conflict. It was another crisis in the
Balkans that forced this predicament on Europe’s statesmen. As we have seen,
states in southeastern Europe had struggled to free themselves from Ottoman rule
in the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But the rivalry
between Austria-Hungary and Russia for domination of these new states created
serious tensions in the region. By 1914, Serbia, supported by Russia, was
determined to create a large, independent Slavic state in the Balkans, while Austria,
which had its own Slavic minorities to contend with, was equally set on preventing
that possibility. Many Europeans perceived the inherent dangers in this combination
of Serbian ambition bolstered by Russian hatred of Austria and the Austrian
conviction that Serbia’s success would mean the end of its empire. The British
ambassador to Vienna wrote in 1913:
Serbia will some day set Europe by the ears, and bring about a universal war on the
Continent. I cannot tell you how exasperated people are getting here at the
continual worry which that little country causes to Austria under encouragement
from Russia It will be lucky if Europe succeeds in avoiding war as a result of the
present crisis. The next time a Serbian crisis arises I feel sure that Austria-Hungary
will refuse to admit of any Russian interference in the dispute and that she will
proceed to settle her differences with her little neighbor by herself.
It was against this backdrop of mutual distrust and hatred that the events of the
summer of 1914 were played out.

The assassination of Francis Ferdinand: what was the “Blank

Check”?
The assassination of the Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife, Sophia,
on June 28, 1914, was carried out by a Bosnian activist who worked for the Black
Hand, a Serbian terrorist organization dedicated to the creation of a pan-Slavic
kingdom. Although the Austrian government did not know whether the Serbian
government had been directly involved in the archduke’s assassination, it saw an
opportunity to “render Serbia innocuous once and for all by a display of force,” as
the Austrian foreign minister put it. Fearful of Russian intervention on Serbia’s
behalf, Austrian leaders sought the backing of their German allies. Emperor William
II and his chancellor responded with the infamous “blank check,” their assurance
that Austria-Hungary could rely on Germany’s “full support,” even if “matters went
to the length of a war between Austria-Hungary and Russia.” Much historical debate
has focused on this “blank check” extended to the Austrians. Did the Germans
realize that an Austrian-Serbian war could lead to a wider war? If so, did they
actually want one? Historians are still divided on the answers to these questions.
Strengthened by German support, Austrian leaders issued an ultimatum to Serbia
on July 23 in which they made such extreme demands that Serbia had little choice
but to reject some of them in order to preserve its sovereignty. Austria then
declared war on Serbia on July 28. Although Austria had hoped to keep the war
limited to Serbia and Austria in order to ensure its success in the Balkans, these
hopes soon vanished.

Declarations of war
Still smarting from its humiliation in the Bosnian crisis of 1908, Russia was
determined to support Serbia’s cause. On July 28, Tsar Nicholas II ordered partial
mobilization of the Russian army against Austria. The Russian General Staff
informed the tsar that their mobilization plans were based on a war against both
Germany and Austria simultaneously. They could not execute partial mobilization
without creating chaos in the army. Consequently, the Russian government ordered
full mobilization invading France by advancing through neutral Belgium, with its
level coastal plain on which the army could move faster than on the rougher terrain
to the southeast. After the planned quick defeat of the French, the German army
expected to redeploy to the east against Russia. Under the Schlieffen Plan, Germany
could not mobilize its troops solely against Russia and therefore declared war on
France on August 3 after it had issued an ultimatum to Belgium on August 2,
demanding the right of German troops to pass through Belgian territory. On
August 4, Great Britain declared war on Germany, officially over this violation of
Belgian neutrality but in fact over the British desire to maintain world power. As one
British diplomat argued, if Germany and Austria were to win the war, “what would
be the position of a friendless England?” By August 4, all the great powers of Europe
were at war.

Before 1914, many political leaders had become convinced that war involved so
many political and economic risks that it was not worth fighting. Others had
believed that “rational” diplomats could control any situation and prevent the
outbreak of war. At the beginning of August 1914, both of these prewar illusions
were shattered, but the new illusions that replaced them soon proved to be equally
foolish.
23–2a 1914–1915: illusions and stalemate Many Europeans went to war with
remarkable enthusiasm (see “The Excitement of War”). Government propaganda
had been successful in stirring up national antagonisms before the war. Now, in
August 1914, the urgent pleas of governments for defense against aggressors found
many receptive ears in every belligerent nation. Middle-class crowds, often
composed of young students, were especially enthusiastic, though workers in the
cities and peasants in the countryside were considerably less eager for war. Once
the war began, however, most people seemed genuinely convinced that their
nation’s cause was just. A new set of illusions also fed the enthusiasm for war. In
August 1914, almost everyone believed that the war would be over in a few weeks.
People were reminded that the major battles in European wars since 1815 had
ended in a matter of weeks, while conveniently overlooking the American Civil War
(1861–1865), which was a better prototype for World War I. Both the soldiers who
exuberantly boarded the trains for the war front in August 1914 and the jubilant
citizens who bombarded them with flowers as they departed believed that the
warriors would be home by Christmas. German hopes for a quick end to the war
rested on a military gamble. The Schlieffen Plan had called for the German army to
proceed through Belgium into northern France with a vast encircling movement that
would sweep around Paris and surround most of the French army. But the plan
suffered a major defect from the beginning: it called for a strong right flank for the
encircling of Paris, but German military leaders, concerned about a Russian invasion
in the east, had moved forces from the right flank to strengthen the German army in
the east. As a result, the German advance was halted only 20 miles from Paris at
the First Battle of the Marne (September 6–10). The war quickly turned into a
stalemate as neither the Germans nor the French could dislodge the other from the
trenches they had begun to dig for shelter. Two lines of trenches soon extended
from the English Channel to the frontiers of Switzerland (see Map 23.2). The western
front had become bogged down in trench warfare, which kept both sides
immobilized in virtually the same positions for four years. In contrast to the western
front, the war in the east was marked by much more mobility, although the cost in
lives was equally enormous. At the beginning of the war, the Russian army moved
into eastern Germany but was decisively defeated at the Battles of Tannenberg on
August 30 and the Masurian Lakes on September 15. The Russians were no longer a
threat to German territory. The Austrians, Germany’s allies, fared less well initially.
They had been defeated by the Russians in Galicia (guh-LISH-ee-uh) and thrown out
of Serbia as well. To make matters worse, the Italians betrayed the Germans and
Austrians and entered the war on the Allied side by attacking Austria in May 1915.
By this time, the Germans had come to the aid of the Austrians. A German-Austrian
army defeated and routed the Russian army in Galicia and pushed the Russians
back 300 miles into their own territory. Russian casualties stood at 2.5 million killed,
captured, or wounded; the Russians had almost been knocked out of the war.
Buoyed by their success, the Germans and Austrians, joined by the Bulgarians in
September 1915, attacked and eliminated Serbia from the war.

1916–1917: The great slaughter

The successes in the east enabled the Germans to move back to the offensive in the
west. The early trenches dug in 1914, stretching from the English Channel to the
frontiers of Switzerland, had by now become elaborate systems of defense. Both
lines of trenches were protected by barbed-wire entanglements 3 to 5 feet high and
90 feet wide, concrete machine-gun nests, and mortar batteries, supported farther
back by heavy artillery. Troops lived in holes in the ground, separated from each
other by a “no-man’s land.”
The unexpected development of trench warfare on the western front baffled military
leaders, who had been trained to fight wars of movement and maneuver.
Periodically, the high command on either side would order an offensive that would
begin with an artillery barrage to flatten the enemy’s barbed wire and leave the
enemy in a state of shock. After “softening up” the enemy in this fashion, a mass of
soldiers would climb out of their trenches with fixed bayonets and hope to work
their way toward the enemy trenches. The attacks rarely worked, as the machine
gun put hordes of men advancing unprotected across open fields at a severe
disadvantage. In 1916 and 1917, millions of young men were sacrificed in the
search for the elusive breakthrough. In ten months at Verdun (ver-DUHN) in 1916,
700,000 men lost their lives over a few miles of terrain.
Warfare in the trenches of the western front produced unimaginable horrors (see
“The Reality of War: The Views of British Poets,” p. 672 and Film & History).
Battlefields were hellish landscapes of barbed wire, shell holes, mud, and injured
and dying men. The introduction of poison gas in 1915 produced new forms of
injuries, as one British writer described them: I wish those people who write so glibly
about this being a holy war could see a case of mustard gas could see the poor
things burnt and blistered all over with great mustardcoloured suppurating blisters
with blind eyes all sticky . . . and stuck together, and always fighting for breath, with
voices a mere whisper, saying that their throats are closing and they know they will
choke.
Soldiers in the trenches also lived with the persistent presence of death. Since
combat went on for months, soldiers had to carry on in the midst of countless
bodies of dead men or the remains of men dismembered by artillery barrages. Many
soldiers remembered the stench of decomposing bodies and the swarms of rats
that grew fat in the trenches. Soldiers on the western front did not spend all of their
time on the frontline or in combat when they were on the frontline. An infantryman
spent one week out of every month in the frontline trenches, one week in the
reserve lines, and the remaining two weeks somewhere behind the lines in rest
camps where they might at least have a roof over their heads in wooden huts. But
there was not much rest; drills in the morning and games in the afternoon were
aimed at keeping soldiers fit. There was at least light entertainment in the evening:
concerts, popular songs, and comedic sketches.

The widening of the war

As another response to the stalemate on the western front, both sides looked for
new allies who might provide a winning advantage. The Ottoman Empire had
already come into the war on Germany’s side in August 1914. Russia, Great Britain,
and France declared war on the Ottoman Empire in November. Although the Allies
attempted to open a Balkan front by landing forces at Gallipoli (gah-LIP-poh-lee),
southwest of Constantinople, in April 1915, the entry of Bulgaria into the war on the
side of the Central Powers (as Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire
were called) and a disastrous campaign at Gallipoli caused them to withdraw. The
Italians, as we have seen, also entered the war on the Allied side after France and
Britain promised to further their acquisition of Austrian territory. In the long run,
however, Italian military incompetence forced the Allies to come to the assistance of
Italy.