World War I

World War I (1914–18) Essentially a civil war in Europe with global implications, World War I resulted in a shift of economic and cultural influences away from Europe, ultimately enabling new nations to emerge and encouraged others (notably the United States) to challenge Europe's international leadership. The fighting pitted Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire (together styled the Central Powers) against an alliance of Britain, France, Russia, Italy and, eventually, the United States. With the mobilization of 65 million troops, World War I was ultimately the most destructive military conflict in world history to that point.Triggered by the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne in Bosnia-Herzegovina's capital, Sarajevo (allegedly by Serbian nationalists), open warfare grew from a series of strategic alliances that drew in powers that seemingly had little interest in this immediate cause. The Austrians, given unequivocal support by their ally, Germany, decided to crush Serbia's perceived challenge. Russia, fearing domestic uprisings in support of Orthodox Serbia, gave notice that it would support its coreligionists against Catholic Austria-Hungary. German military leaders, particularly Gen. Alfred von Schlieffen, sought to advance their own goals by using the crisis as a justification for attacking Russia's ally, France. That all these nations had been steadily arming over the previous years only further exacerbated the crisis, pushing them toward war. By August 12, all major powers had declared war, and Germany, challenging Belgium's declarations of neutrality, began hostilities by marching through the smaller nation in order to launch an attack on France. France and Britain responded by meeting the German attack. Acting on its own declaration of war, Russia launched an attack on Germany's eastern front.Within three weeks the engaged armies had fought to a virtual standstill. German troops destroyed an entire Russian army at Tannenberg (August 26–30). A week later, British and French stopped Germany's own flanking maneuver through Belgium in the First Battle of the Marne (September 5–9). Soon the western armies had constructed an almost continuous parallel line of defensive systems stretching from Switzerland to the North Sea. Trench warfare, most prominent in France and Flanders, but existing in some areas of Russia, Italy, the Balkans, and Palestine as well, flouted attempts by Europe's military leaders to return to a war of maneuver by rupturing the enemy's front. To restore the offensive, both sides eventually introduced new weapons such as tanks and chemical warfare. High-explosive shells, recoilless carriages, optical sights, improved communications, and cannon ranges of 20 or more miles made indirect artillery bombardment the dominant force of the battlefield. The application of massive and increasingly sophisticated artillery fire proved to be the most effective means of reducing fortifications. But western defenses were so strong and thickly defended that, although it was possible to break into them, there remained severe limitations to any advance.In 1915, the Central Powers concentrated their resources on the eastern front. The vastness of that front, and the clear superiority of German artillery and leadership, made possible an advance of some 300 miles. Although Italy left its pre-war pact with Germany and Austro-Hungary to join the Allies in 1915, by the end of the year, Berlin dominated Central and southeastern Europe. British efforts to find a “way around” the western front ended in dismal failure in the Dardanelles and Gallipoli campaigns. In 1916, Germany sought to break the stalemate in the west in the ten-month Battle of Verdun, deliberately seeking a decisive battle of attrition and will. To relieve Verdun, a massive Anglo-French offensive was launched on the Somme in July. Nevertheless, when winter ended the fighting, the western front had changed little. 1917 marked two important changes in the war. In October, Russian revolutionaries bolstered by public discontent over the country's dismal fortunes in the war overthrew the Tsar, and the new Soviet Union removed itself from the fighting. A perhaps more important shift occurred when the previously neutral United States joined the Allies against Germany. President Woodrow Wilson had attempted to keep the United States in a mediating position. Germany's attempt to quickly end the war by stopping U.S. shipments to the Allies through unlimited submarine warfare and secretly propositioning Mexico to attack (discovered when British code-breakers intercepted the Zimmerman Telegram) backfired and drew the United States into the conflict. Wilson's goals, however, differed from his allies' in that he advocated a plan for “peace without victory” he announced in January 1917 and further codified a year later in his Fourteen Points. United States troops, called the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF), did relatively little to alleviate the military stalemate when they arrived on European soil. AEF commander-in-chief John J. Pershing planned to launch a win-the-war campaign in 1919. Early AEF actions were less than successful, however. Logistical chaos, flawed tactics, and inexperienced men and officers contributed to a disastrous start to the Meuse-Argonne offensive (September 26– November 11, 1918) and by the armistice Pershing's troops had moved just thirty-four miles. Nevertheless, although only involved in heavy fighting for 110 days, the AEF made vital contributions to Germany's defeat. With tens of thousands of “doughboys” crossing the Atlantic to reinforce the Allies, and with the AEF emerging as a superior fighting force, the exhausted and depleted German army appealed for peace based on Wilson's Fourteen Points in early October.

As the Great War concluded with the armistice on November 11, 1918, the Allies were divided on how to construct the peace. American policy was directed toward the repudiation of power politics and the erection of a “permanent” peace. Wilsonianism promised an end to war primarily through democratic institutions, the end of secret diplomacy, self-determination for ethnic minorities, and most especially through a League of Nations. The war had destroyed the old balance of power in Europe, and the peace settlement made revisionist nations out of the two states that would soon dominate the continent, Germany and the Soviet Union. Yet, the peace settlement did not prove satisfactory. British and French insistence on reparations created lingering animosity within Germany. Likewise, the division of colonies and former Central Powers territories aggravated tensions in areas such as North Africa, the Balkans, Palestine and the Arabian Peninsula. The United States, the greatest economic beneficiary of the war, helped make the peace, but with its rejection of the Treaty of Versailles refused responsibility for maintaining it. The war ended in a twenty-year truce instead of a “permanent peace.” The failure to achieve Wilson's unrealistic though desirable goal was hardly surprising, but another general war was not inevitable. World War II was caused by many factors, including the flawed peace settlement of 1919, the great Depression of the 1930s, and the psychological scars of World War I, which enfeebled the democracies. But the inability of the victorious powers, especially Great Britain and the United States, to work together to prevent the resurgence of German military power, was certainly one of the most important reasons for the resumption of war in 1939.