| The war that many thought would be over in a few weeks
lasted far longer, resulting in many casualties for both sides. The war
widened, and the United States entered the fray in 1917. As World War I
escalated, governments took control of their economies, rationing food
and supplies and calling on civilians to work and make sacrifices for the
war effort.
1914 to 1915: Illusions and Stalemate
-
Trench warfare brought the war on the Western Front to a
stalemate while Germany and Austria-Hungary defeated Russia on the Eastern
Front.
Before 1914, many political leaders believed war to be impractical
because it involved so many political and economic risks. Others believed
that diplomats could easily prevent war. At the beginning of August 1914,
both ideas were shattered. However, the new illusions that replaced them
soon proved to be equally foolish.
Government propaganda—ideas spread to influence
public opinion for or against a cause—had stirred national hatreds before
the war. Now, in August 1914, the urgent pleas of European governments
for defense against aggressors fell on receptive ears in every nation at
war. 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. After all, almost all European wars since 1815 had, in fact,
ended in a matter of weeks. Both the soldiers who boarded the trains for
the war front in August 1914 and the jubilant citizens who saw them off
believed that the warriors would be home by Christmas.
The Western Front
German hopes for a quick end to the war rested on a military
gamble. The Schlieffen Plan had called for the German army to make a vast
encircling movement through Belgium into northern France. According to
the plan, the German forces would sweep around Paris. This would enable
them to surround most of the French army.
The German advance was halted a short distance from Paris
at the First Battle of the Marne (September 6–10). To stop
the Germans, French military leaders loaded 2,000 Parisian taxicabs with
fresh troops and sent them to the front line.
The war quickly turned into a stalemate as neither the
Germans nor the French could dislodge each other from the trenches they
had dug for shelter. These trenches were ditches protected by barbed wire.
Two lines of trenches soon reached from the English Channel
to the frontiers of Switzerland. The Western Front had become bogged down
in trench warfare. Both sides were kept in virtually the
same positions for four years.
The Eastern Front
Unlike the Western Front, the war on the Eastern Front
was marked by mobility. The cost in lives, however, was equally enormous.
At the beginning of the war, the Russian army moved into eastern Germany
but was decisively defeated at the Battle of Tannenberg on August 30 and
the Battle of Masurian Lakes on September 15. After these defeats, the
Russians were no longer a threat to Germany.
Austria-Hungary, Germany’s ally, fared less well at first.
The Austrians had been defeated by the Russians in Galicia and thrown out
of Serbia as well. To make matters worse, the Italians betrayed their German
and Austrian allies in the Triple Alliance by attacking Austria in May
1915. Italy thus joined France, Great Britain, and Russia, who had
previously been known as the Triple Entente, but now were called the Allied
Powers, or Allies.
By this time, the Germans had come to the aid of the Austrians.
A German-Austrian army defeated the Russian army in Galicia and pushed
the Russians far back 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.
Encouraged by their success against Russia, Germany and
Austria-Hungary, joined by Bulgaria in September 1915, attacked and eliminated
Serbia from the war. Their successes in the east would enable the German
troops to move back to the offensive in the west.
How did the war on the Eastern
Front differ from the war on the Western Front?
REVIEW & DO
NOW
Answer the following questions in your spiral notebooks: |
| 1. What is propaganda?
2. What type of warfare was fought on the Western
Front?
Was it successful?
3. Which country betrayed their allies by attacking
them and joining the other side? When did this happen?
Who did they joint, and what was this new alliance called
|
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The Great Slaughter
-
New weapons and trench warfare made World War I far more
devastating than any previous wars.
On the Western Front, the trenches dug in 1914 had by 1916
become elaborate systems of defense. The Germans and the French each had
hundreds of miles of trenches, which were protected by barbedwire entangle
ments up to 5 feet (about 1.5 m) high and 30 yards (about 27 m) wide. Concrete
machine-gun nests and other gun batteries, supported further back by heavy
artillery, protected the trenches.
Troops lived in holes in the ground, separated from each
other by a strip of territory known as no-man’s-land.
The New Technology of World War
I
Warfare in the trenches produced unimaginable horrors.
Battlefields were hellish landscapes of barbed wire, shell holes, mud,
and injured and dying men.
Trench warfare left World War I in stalemate, with neither
side able to gain more than a few miles of ground. Both the Allied Powers
and the Central Powers attempted to gain an advantage with new weapons
and war machines. Machine guns, poison gas, fighter airplanes, and tanks
were all introduced or vastly improved during World War I.
In the end, new technology did not break the stalemate.
It did, however, cause the deadliest war the world had yet seen. Nearly
10 million people perished during World War I, which became known as “the
war to end all wars.”
Writer H. G. Wells described the impact of the
new war technology:
“Now, there does not appear
the slightest hope of any invention that will make war more conclusive
or less destructive; there is, however, the clearest prospect in many directions
that it may be more destructive and less conclusive. It will be dreadfuller
and bitterer: its horrors will be less and less forgivable.”
— H. G. Wells,
“Civilization at the Breaking Point,”
New York Times, May 27, 1915
Tactics of Trench Warfare
Trench warfare baffled military leaders who had been
trained to fight wars of movement and maneuver. At times, 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 because men advancing unprotected
across open fields could be fired at by the enemy’s machine guns. In 1916
and 1917, millions of young men died in the search for the elusive breakthrough.
In just ten months at Verdun, France, 700,000 men lost
their lives over a few miles of land in 1916. World War I had turned into
a war of attrition, a war based on wearing the other side
down by constant attacks and heavy losses.
War in the Air
By the end of 1915, airplanes had appeared on the battlefront
for the first time in history. Planes were first used to spot the enemy’s
position. Soon, planes also began to attack ground targets, especially
enemy communications.
Fights for control of the air occurred and increased over
time. At first, pilots fired at each other with handheld pistols. Later,
machine guns were mounted on the noses of planes, which made the skies
considerably more dangerous.
The Germans also used their giant airships—the zeppelins—to
bomb London and eastern England. This caused little damage but frightened
many people. Germany’s enemies, however, soon found that zeppelins, which
were filled with hydrogen gas, quickly became raging infernos when hit
by antiaircraft guns.
Why were military leaders baffled
by trench warfare?
REVIEW & DO
NOW
Answer the following questions in your spiral notebooks: |
| What is a war of attrition? |
What new type of warfare appeared for the first time
in history in 1915? |
|
|
A World War
-
With the war at a stalemate, both the Allied Powers and the
Central Powers looked for new allies to gain an advantage.
Because of the stalemate on the Western Front, both sides
sought to gain new allies. Each side hoped new allies would provide a winning
advantage, as well as a new source of money and war goods.
Widening of the War
Bulgaria entered the war on the side of the Central Powers,
as Germany, AustriaHungary, and the Ottoman Empire were called. Russia,
Great Britain, and France—the Allied Powers—declared war on the Ottoman
Empire.
The Allies tried to open a Balkan front by landing forces
at Gallipoli (guh•LIH•puh•lee), southwest of Constantinople,
in April 1915. However, the campaign proved disastrous, forcing the Allies
to withdraw.
In return for Italy entering the war on the Allied side,
France and Great Britain promised to let Italy have some Austrian territory.
Italy on the side of the Allies opened up a front against Austria-Hungary.
By 1917, the war had truly become a world conflict. That
year, while stationed in the Middle East, a British officer known as Lawrence
of Arabia urged Arab princes to revolt against their Ottoman overlords.
In 1918 British forces from Egypt mobilized troops from
India, Australia, and New Zealand and destroyed the Ottoman Empire in the
Middle East.
The Allies also took advantage of Germany’s preoccupations
in Europe and lack of naval strength to seize German colonies in the rest
of the world. Japan, a British ally beginning in 1902, seized a number
of German-held islands in the Pacific. Australia seized German New Guinea.
Entry of the United States
At first, the United States tried to remain neutral.
As World War I dragged on, however, it became more difficult to do so.
The immediate cause of the United States’s involvement grew out of the
naval war between Germany and Great Britain.
Britain had used its superior naval power to set up a
blockade of Germany. The blockade kept war materials and other goods from
reaching Germany by sea. Germany had retaliated by setting up a blockade
of Britain. Germany enforced its blockade with the use of unrestricted
submarine warfare, which included the sinking of passenger liners.
On May 7, 1915, German forces sank the British ship Lusitania.
About 1,100 civilians, including over 100 Americans, died. After strong
protests from the United States, the German government suspended unrestricted
submarine warfare in September 1915 to avoid antagonizing the United States
further.
| The Sinking of the
Lusitania |
| An early book by French historian and novelist Georges
Toudouze calls the sinking of the Lusitania a “crime.”
The German embassy ran a notice in the New York Times
on April 22, 1915 reminding them that Germany and Great Britain were in
a state of war and that any ship bearing the British flag was "liable to
destruction" and that passengers on ships of Britain or her allies did
so "at their own risk." |
The sinking of the Lusitania, a British passenger
ship, by a German submarine outraged people on both sides of the Atlantic.
Anti-German riots broke out, and both Americans and Europeans called on
President Woodrow Wilson to declare war against Germany. Germany, however,
claimed that the Lusitania was a fair target because it was carrying
a cargo of 173 tons of ammunition along with the civilian passengers.
On May 13, 1915, Wilson sent the first of four notes to
Germany to protest the German violation of American neutrality. Two years
later Wilson would list German submarine warfare as a reason for the U.S.
entry into World War I. |
Only once did the Germans and British engage in direct
naval battle—at the Battle of Jutland on May 31, 1916, when neither side
won a conclusive victory. By January 1917, however, the Germans were eager
to break the deadlock in the war. German naval officers convinced Emperor
William II that resuming the use of unrestricted submarine warfare could
starve the British into submission within six months. When the emperor
expressed concern about the United States, Admiral Holtzendorf
assured him, “I give your Majesty my word as an officer that not one American
will land on the continent.”
The German naval officers were quite wrong. The British
were not forced to surrender, and the return to unrestricted submarine
warfare brought the United States into the war in April 1917. U.S. troops
did not arrive in large numbers in Europe until 1918. However, the entry
of the United States into the war gave the Allied Powers a psychological
boost and a major new source of money and war goods.
Why did the Germans resort to
unrestricted submarine warfare?
REVIEW & DO
NOW
Answer the following questions in your spiral notebooks: |
| Who was Lawrence of Arabia.
On which side of the war did the Ottoman Empire fight? |
When (month and year) did the United States enter the
war?
Why did the US enter the war? |
|
|
The Impact of Total War
-
World War I became a total war, with governments taking control
of their economies andrationing civilian goods.
As World War I dragged on, it became a total war
involving a complete mobilization of resources and people. It affected
the lives of all citizens in the warring countries, however remote they
might be from the battlefields.
Masses of men had to be organized, and supplies were manufactured
and purchased for years of combat. (Germany alone had 5.5 million men in
uniform in 1916.) This led to an increase in government powers and the
manipulation of public opinion to keep the war effort going. The home front
was rapidly becoming a cause for as much effort as the war front.
Increased Government Powers
Most people had expected the war to be short. Little
thought had been given to long-term wartime needs. Governments had to respond
quickly, however, when the new war machines failed to achieve their goals.
Many more men and supplies ere needed to continue the war effort. To meet
these needs, governments expanded their powers. Countries drafted tens
of millions of young men, hoping for that elusive breakthrough to victory.
Wartime governments throughout Europe also expanded their
power over their economies. Free-market capitalistic systems were temporarily
put aside. Governments set up price, wage, and rent controls.
They also rationed food supplies and materials; regulated
imports and exports; and took over transportation systems and industries.
In effect, in order to mobilize all the resources of their nations for
the war effort, European nations set up planned economies—
systems directed by government agencies.
Under conditions of total war mobilization, the differences
between soldiers at war and civilians at home were narrowed. In the view
of political leaders, all citizens were part of a national army dedicated
to victory. Woodrow Wilson, president of the United States, said
that the men and women “who remain to till the soil and man the factories
are no less a part of the army than the men beneath the battle flags.”
Manipulation of Public Opinion
As the war continued and casualties grew worse, the patriotic
enthusiasm that had marked the early stages of World War I waned. By 1916,
there were signs that civilian morale was beginning to crack. War governments,
however, fought back against growing opposition to the war.
Authoritarian regimes, such as those of Germany, Russia,
and Austria-Hungary, relied on force to subdue their populations. Under
the pressures of the war, however, even democratic states expanded their
police powers to stop internal dissent. The British Parliament, for example,
passed the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA). It allowed the government to
arrest protesters as traitors. Newspapers were censored, and sometimes
publication was suspended.
Wartime governments made active use of propaganda to increase
enthusiasm for the war. At the beginning, public officials needed to do
little to achieve this goal. The British and French, for example, exaggerated
German atrocities in Belgium and found that their citizens were only too
willing to believe these accounts.
As the war progressed and morale sagged, governments were
forced to devise new techniques for motivating the people. In one British
recruiting poster, for example, a small daughter asked her father, “Daddy,
what did YOU do in the Great War?” while her younger brother played with
toy soldiers.
| Technology and Trench
Life Define Total War |
| The politicians and generals who led their nations into
World War I anticipated an old fashioned conflict. But once the Allies
and Germans reached a stalemate, the armies, for the first time, dug miles
of trenches opposite one another as protection against exploding shells
and machine-gun fire. Infantry soldiers rotated into and out of the trenches
five days at a time. It was a world of mud and blood, poison gas and high-explosive
shells overhead. The tedium of trench life was broken most often by one
army or the other charging out of its trenches and into the enemy’s barbed
wire and machine guns.
COLD COMFORT IN THE TRENCHES
Trenches provided infantry soldiers with their only protection
against enemy fire. They were a necessary innovation for armies fighting
in close contact with powerful and accurate weapons. Hot food was brought
forward in containers to discourage cooking fires. In some places, soldiers
fired at the enemy trenches at every opportunity. In others, enemies took
a “live and let live” approach. These attitudes often depended upon the
level of exhaustion the soldiers were feeling.
Steel helmets protected infantrymen against shrapnel,
high-speed splinters of metal from exploding shells. |
Earthtones replaced vibrant blues and reds in infantry
uniforms.
Machine guns shot down soldiers charging across
the no-man’sland between opposing trenches in great numbers.
The area between opposing trenches was called no-man’s-land.
Soldiers fixed bayonets, long knives, on front
of their rifles to charge the enemy.
When possible, mud floors were covered with wooden planks.
Barbed wire in front of a trench slowed or stopped
an enemy attack.
Gas masks provided the only hope of protection
from the chlorine gas clouds that came before enemy charges.
TECHNOLOGY AND THE HORROR OF
WAR
Tanks made their first appearance in battle during
World War I. Though slow and cumbersome, they foreshadowed the destruction
mechanized warfare would bring. Airplanes fought one another for
the first time as well, and both sides experimented with bombs and machine
guns in aerial attacks on ground positions. These applications of technology
left a deep, terrifying impression on soldiers showing the dark side of
industrialization. |
Total War and Women
World War I created new roles for women. Because so many
men left to fight at the front, women were asked to take over jobs that
had not been available to them before. Women were employed in jobs that
had once been considered beyond their capacity. These jobs included civilian
occupations such as chimney sweeps, truck drivers, farm laborers, and factory
workers in heavy industry. For example, 38 percent of the workers in the
Krupp Armaments works in Germany in 1918 were women. Also, between 1914
and 1918 in Britain, the number of women working in public transport rose
14 times, doubled in commerce, and rose by nearly a third in industry.
The place of women in the workforce was far from secure,
however. Both men and women seemed to expect that many of the new jobs
for women were only temporary.
This was evident in the British poem “War Girls,” written
in 1916:
“There’s the girl who clips
your ticket for the train,
And the girl who speeds the lift
from floor to floor,
There’s the girl who does a milk-round
in the rain,
And the girl who calls for orders
at your door.
Strong, sensible, and fit,
They’re out to show their grit,
And tackle jobs with energy and
knack.
No longer caged and penned up,
They’re going to keep their end
up
Till the khaki soldier boys come
marching back.”
At the end of the war, governments would quickly remove
women from the jobs they had encouraged them to take earlier. The work
benefits for women from World War I were short-lived as men returned to
the job market. By 1919, there would be 650,000 unemployed women in Great
Britain. Wages for the women who were still employed would be lowered.
Nevertheless, in some countries the role women played
in wartime economies had a positive impact on the women’s movement for
social and political emancipation. The most obvious gain was the right
to vote, which was given to women in Germany, Austria, and the United States
immediately after the war. British women over 30 gained the vote, together
with the right to stand for Parliament, in 1918.
Many upper- and middle-class women had also gained new
freedoms. In ever-increasing numbers, young women from these groups took
jobs, had their own apartments, and showed their new independence.
What was the effect of total
war on ordinary citizens?
REVIEW & DO
NOW
Answer the following questions in your spiral notebooks: |
| What is total war? |
How were ordinary citizens affected by governments planned
economies? |
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