World War 1 Aftermath PDF

## Chapter 2: The First World War and its Aftermath ### Summary of Events The two opposing sides in the war were: - **The Allies or Entente Powers:** - Britain and her empire (including troops from Australia, Canada, India and New Zealand) - France - Russia (left December 1917) -...

## Chapter 2: The First World War and its Aftermath ### Summary of Events The two opposing sides in the war were: - **The Allies or Entente Powers:** - Britain and her empire (including troops from Australia, Canada, India and New Zealand) - France - Russia (left December 1917) - Italy (entered May 1915) - Serbia - Belgium - Romania (entered August 1916) - USA (entered April 1917) - Japan - **The Central Powers:** - Germany - Austria-Hungary - Turkey (entered November 1914) - Bulgaria (entered October 1915) The war turned out to be quite different from what most people had anticipated. It was widely expected to be a short, decisive affair, like other recent European wars - all over by Christmas 1914. This is why Moltke was so worried about being left at the post when it came to mobilization. However, the Germans failed to achieve the rapid defeat of France: although they penetrated deeply, Paris did not fall, and stalemate quickly developed on the western front, with all hope of a short war gone. Both sides dug themselves in and spent the next four years attacking and defending lines of trenches. In eastern Europe there was more movement, with early Russian successes against the Austrians, who constantly had to be helped out by the Germans. This caused friction between Austrians and Germans. But by December 1917 the Germans had captured Poland (Russian territory) and forced the Russians out of the war. Britain, suffering heavy losses of merchant ships through submarine attacks, and France, whose armies were paralysed by mutiny, seemed on the verge of defeat. Gradually, however, the tide turned; the Allies, helped by the entry of the USA in April 1917, wore down the Germans, whose last despairing attempt at a decisive breakthrough in France failed in the spring of 1918. The success of the British navy in blockading German ports and defeating the submarine threat by defending convoys of merchant ships was also telling on the Germans. By late summer 1918 they were nearing exhaustion. An armistice (ceasefire) was signed on 11 November 1918, though Germany itself had hardly been invaded. A controversial peace settlement was signed at Versailles the following year. ### 2.1 1914 #### (a) The western front On the western front the German advance was held up by unexpectedly strong Belgian resistance; it took the Germans over two weeks to capture Brussels, the Belgian capital. This was an important delay because it gave the British time to organize themselves, and left the Channel ports free, enabling the British Expeditionary Force to land. Instead of sweeping round in a wide arc, capturing the Channel ports and approaching Paris from the west (as the Schlieffen Plan intended, if indeed the Germans were attempting to carry out the plan - see Section 1.4(g)), the Germans found themselves just east of Paris, making straight for the city. They penetrated to within twenty miles of Paris, and the French government withdrew to Bordeaux; but the nearer they got to Paris, the more the German impetus slowed up. There were problems in keeping the armies supplied with food and ammunition, and the troops became exhausted by the long marches in the August heat. In September the faltering Germans were attacked by the French under Joffre in the Battle of the Marne (see Map 2.1); they were driven back to the River Aisne, where they were able to dig trenches. This battle was vitally important; some historians regard it as one of the most decisive battles in modern history: - It ruined the Schlieffen Plan once and for all: France would not be knocked out in six weeks, and all hopes of a short war were dashed. #### (b) The eastern front On the eastern front the Russians mobilized more quickly than the Germans expected, but then made the mistake of invading both Austria and Germany at the same time. Though they were successful against Austria, occupying the province of Galicia, the Germans brought Hindenburg out of retirement and defeated the Russians twice, at Tannenburg (August) and the Masurian Lakes (September), driving them out of Germany. These battles were important: the Russians lost vast amounts of equipment and ammunition, which had taken them years to build up. Although they had six and a quarter million men mobilized by the end of 1914, a third of them were without rifles. The Russians never recovered from this setback, whereas German self-confidence was boosted. When Turkey entered the war, the outlook for Russia was bleak, since Turkey could cut her main supply and trade route from the Black Sea into the Mediterranean (Map 2.3). One bright spot for the Allies was that the Serbs drove out an Austrian invasion in fine style at the end of 1914, and Austrian morale was at rock bottom. ### 2.2 1915 #### (a) Stalemate in the west In the west the stalemate continued, though several attempts were made to break the trench line. The British tried at Neuve Chapelle and Loos, the French tried in Champagne; the Germans attacked again at Ypres. But, like all the attacks on the western front until 1918, these attempts failed to make a decisive breakthrough. The difficulties of trench warfare were always the same: - There was barbed wire in no-man's land between the two lines of opposing trenches (Figure 2.1), which the attacking side tried to clear away by a massive artillery bombardment; but this removed any chance of a quick surprise attack since the enemy always had plenty of warning. - Reconnaissance aircraft and observation balloons could spot concentrations of troops on the roads leading up to the trenches. - Trenches were difficult to capture because the increased firepower provided by magazine rifles and machine-guns made frontal attacks suicidal and meant that cavalry were useless. #### (b) The east In the east, Russia's fortunes were mixed: they had further successes against Austria, but they met defeat whenever they clashed with the Germans, who captured Warsaw and the whole of Poland. The Turkish blockade of the Dardanelles was beginning to hamper the Russians, who were already running short of arms and ammunition. It was partly to clear the Dardanelles and open up the vital supply line to Russia via the Black Sea that the Gallipoli Campaign was launched. This was an idea strongly pressed by Winston Churchill (Britain's First Lord of the Admiralty) to escape from the deadlock in the west by eliminating the Turks. They were thought to be the weakest of the Central Powers because of their unstable government. Success against Turkey would enable help to be sent to Russia and might also bring Bulgaria, Greece and Romania into the war on the Allied side. It would then be possible to attack Austria from the south. The campaign was a total failure; the first attempt, in March, an Anglo-French naval attack through the Dardanelles to capture Constantinople, failed when the ships ran into a series of mines. This ruined the surprise element, so that when the British attempted landings at the tip of the Gallipoli peninsula, the Turks had strengthened their defences and no advance could be made (April). Further landings by Australian and New Zealand troops (Anzacs) in April and by British troops in August were equally useless, and positions could only be held with great difficulty. In December the entire force was withdrawn. The consequences were serious: besides being a blow to Allied morale, it turned out to be the last chance of helping Russia via the Black Sea. It probably made Bulgaria decide to join the Central Powers. A Franco-British force landed at Salonika in neutral Greece to try and relieve Serbia, but it was too late. When Bulgaria entered the war in October, Serbia was quickly overrun by Bulgarians and Germans (see Map 2.4). The year 1915 was therefore not a good one for the Allies; even a British army sent to protect Anglo-Persian oil interests against a possible Turkish attack became bogged down in Mesopotamia as it approached Baghdad; it was besieged by Turks at Kut-el-Amara from December 1915 until March 1916, when it was forced to surrender. #### (c) Italy declares war on Austria-Hungary (May 1915) The Italians were hoping to seize Austria-Hungary's Italian-speaking provinces as well as territory along the eastern shore of the Adriatic Sea. A secret treaty was signed in London in which the Allies promised Italy Trentino, the south Tyrol, Istria, Trieste, part of Dalmatia, Adalia, some islands in the Aegean Sea and a protectorate over Albania. The Allies hoped that by keeping thousands of Austrian troops occupied, the Italians would relieve pressure on the Russians. But the Italians made little headway and their efforts were to no avail: the Russians were unable to stave off defeat. ### 2.3 1916 #### (a) The western front On the western front, 1916 is remembered for two terrible battles, Verdun and the Somme. 1. Verdun was an important French fortress town against which the Germans under Falkenhayn launched a massive attack (February). They hoped to draw all the best French troops to its defence, destroy them and then carry out a final offensive to win the war. But the French under Pétain defended stubbornly, and in June the Germans had to abandon the attack. The French lost heavily (about 315 000 men), as the Germans intended, but so did the Germans themselves, with over 280 000 men killed and no territorial gains to show for it. 2. The Battle of the Somme was a series of attacks, mainly by the British, beginning on 1 July and lasting through to November. The aim was to relieve pressure on the French at Verdun, take over more of the trench line as the French army weakened, and keep the Germans fully committed, so that they would be unable to risk sending reinforcements to the eastern front against Russia. The attack began disastrously: British troops found themselves walking into deadly machine-gun fire; on the very first day 20 000 were killed and 60 000 injured. Yet Haig, the British Commander-in-Chief, did not call off the attack it continued at intervals for over four months. At the end of it all, the Allies had made only limited advances varying between a few hundred yards and seven miles, along a 30-mile front. The real importance of the battle was the blow to German morale, as they realized that Britain (where conscription was introduced for the first time in May) was a military power to be reckoned with. Losses on both sides, killed or wounded, were appalling (Germans 650 000; British 418 000; French 194 000). The Allied generals, especially Haig, came under severe criticism for persisting with suicidal frontal attacks. In spite of the failures and the appalling casualties, both British and French generals remained convinced that mass infantry charges the 'big push' were the only way to make a breakthrough. None of them showed any sign of producing alternative tactics, and tens of thousands of lives were sacrificed for no apparent gain. It was after one of the disastrous attacks in 1915 that a German officer remarked that the British army were 'lions led by donkeys'. Haig came in for the most serious criticism for the majority of historians, he became the epitome of Allied incompetence and lack of imagination. One historian, W. J. Laffin, went so far as to call his book about the war British Butchers and Bunglers of World War 1 (1988), and for him the chief 'donkey' was Haig. J. P. Harris, in Douglas Haig and the First World War (2008), is rather more balanced. He argues that Haig certainly found it difficult to cope with the unprecedented situation that he found himself in on the western front and he misjudged the strength of the German forces. He was slow to see beyond the tactic of the 'big push' and must therefore bear much of the responsibility for the massive casualties. However, he did eventually show himself to be receptive to new techniques and strategies and played a vital role in the 1918 campaign which brought the final collapse of German forces. The horrors of the Somme also contributed to the fall of the British prime minister, Asquith, who resigned in 1916 after criticism of British tactics mounted. And yet the events of 1916 did contribute towards the eventual Allied victory; Hindenburg himself admitted in his memoirs that the Germans could not have survived many more campaigns with heavy losses like those at Verdun and the Somme. #### (b) David Lloyd George becomes British prime minister (December 1916) Taking over from Asquith as prime minister, Lloyd George's contribution to the Allied war effort and the defeat of the Central Powers was invaluable. His methods were dynamic and decisive; already as Minister of Munitions since May 1915, he had improved the supply of shells and machine-guns, encouraged the development of new weapons (the Stokes light mortar and the tank), which Kitchener (Minister of War) had turned down, and taken control of mines, factories and railways so that the war effort could be properly centralized. As prime minister during 1917, he set up a small war cabinet, so that quick decisions could be taken. He brought shipping and agriculture under government control and introduced the Ministry of National Service to organize the mobilization of men into the army. He also played an important part in the adoption of the convoy system (see Section 2.4(e)). #### (c) In the east In June 1916 the Russians under Brusilov attacked the Austrians, in response to a plea from Britain and France for some action to divert German attention away from Verdun. They managed to break the front and advanced 100 miles, taking 400 000 prisoners and large amounts of equipment. The Austrians were demoralized, but the strain was exhausting the Russians as well. The Romanians invaded Austria (August), but the Germans swiftly came to the Austrians' rescue, occupied the whole of Romania and seized her wheat and oil supplies - not a happy end to 1916 for the Allies. ### 2.4 THE WAR AT SEA The general public in Germany and Britain expected a series of naval battles between the rival Dreadnought fleets, something like the Battle of Trafalgar (1805), in which Nelson's British fleet had defeated the combined French and Spanish fleets. But both sides were cautious and dared not risk any action which might result in the loss of their main fleets. The British Admiral Jellicoe was particularly cautious; Churchill said he 'was the only man on either side who could have lost the war in an afternoon'. Nor were the Germans anxious for a confrontation, because they had only 16 of the latest Dreadnoughts against 27 British. #### (a) The Allies aimed to use their navies in three ways - to blockade the Central Powers, preventing goods from entering or leaving, slowly starving them out; - to keep trade routes open between Britain, her empire and the rest of the world, so that the Allies themselves would not starve; - to transport British troops to the continent and keep them supplied via the Channel ports. The British were successful in carrying out these aims; they went into action against German units stationed abroad, and at the Battle of the Falkland Islands, destroyed one of the main German squadrons. By the end of 1914 nearly all German armed surface ships had been destroyed, apart from their main fleet (which did not venture out of the Heligoland Bight) and the squadron blockading the Baltic to cut off supplies to Russia. In 1915 the British navy was involved in the Gallipoli Campaign (see Section 2.2(b)). #### (b) The Allied blockade caused problems Britain was trying to prevent the Germans from using the neutral Scandinavian and Dutch ports to break the blockade; this involved stopping and searching all neutral ships and confiscating any goods suspected of being intended for enemy hands. The USA objected strongly to this, since they were anxious to continue trading with both sides. #### (c) The Germans retaliated with mines and submarine attacks These tactics seemed to be the only alternative left to the Germans, since their surface vessels had either been destroyed or were blockaded in port. At first they respected neutral shipping and passenger liners, but it was soon clear that the German submarine (U-boat) blockade was not effective. This was partly because they had insufficient U-boats and partly because there were problems of identification: the British tried to fool the Germans by flying neutral flags and by using passenger liners to transport arms and ammunition. In April 1915 the British liner Lusitania was sunk by a torpedo attack. In fact the Lusitania was armed and carrying vast quantities of weapons and ammunition, as the Germans knew; hence their claim that the sinking was not just an act of barbarism against defenceless civilians. This had important consequences: out of almost two thousand dead, 128 were Americans. President Wilson therefore found that the USA would have to take sides to protect her trade. Whereas the British blockade did not interfere with the safety of passengers and crews, German tactics certainly did. For the time being, however, American protests caused Bethmann to tone down the submarine campaign, making it even less effective. #### (d) The Battle of Jutland (31 May 1916) This was the main event at sea during 1916; it was the only time in the entire war that the main battle-fleets emerged and engaged each other; the result was indecisive. The German Admiral von Scheer tried to lure part of the British fleet out from its base so that that section could be destroyed by the numerically superior Germans. However, more British ships came out than he had anticipated, and after the two fleets had shelled each other on and off for several hours, the Germans decided to retire to base, firing torpedoes as they went. On balance, the Germans could claim that they had won the battle since they lost only 11 ships to Britain's 14. The real importance of the battle lay in the fact that the Germans had failed to destroy British sea power: the German High Seas Fleet stayed in Kiel for the rest of the war, leaving Britain's control of the surface complete. In desperation at the food shortages caused by the British blockade, the Germans embarked on 'unrestricted' submarine warfare, and this was to have fatal results for them. #### (e) 'Unrestricted' submarine warfare (began January 1917) As the Germans had been concentrating on the production of U-boats since the Battle of Jutland, this campaign was extremely effective. They attempted to sink all enemy and neutral merchant ships in the Atlantic; although they knew that this was likely to bring the USA into the war, they hoped that Britain and France would be starved into surrender before the Americans could make any vital contribution. They almost did it: the peak of German success came in April 1917, when 430 ships were lost; Britain was down to about six weeks' corn supply, and although the USA came into the war in April, it was bound to be several months before their help became effective. However, the situation was saved by Lloyd George, who insisted that the Admiralty adopt a convoy system. A convoy was a large number of merchant ships sailing together, so that they could be protected by