See also: Chronology of the First World War
War year 1914
Failure of war plans and transition to positional warfare on the Western Front
While the assembly of the German army on the western border was still in progress, the German X. Army Corps carried out a hand-strike raid on the citadel of the Belgian fortress of Liège, already planned in the Schlieffen Plan. The city quickly fell into the hands of the attackers (August 5-7), while the belt of twelve forts could not be captured at first. Only after bringing in the heaviest artillery (Krupp's Dicke Bertha and Škoda's lesser-known, more mobile Schlank Emma) was it possible to occupy the forts and completely take Liège by August 16. The climax of the fighting is considered to be the destruction of Fort Loncin on August 15 by a direct hit in the ammunition room. The rapid elimination of the forts, which were considered impregnable, led to strategic changes in further French war planning.
On August 4, the first violent attacks on civilians occurred in the Belgian villages of Visé, Berneau, and Battice near Liège. In the coming weeks, German troops committed multiple atrocities against the civilian population in Belgium and France, justifying them as attacks by franc-tireurs. The first mass shootings of Belgian civilians took place on August 5, and German troops committed particularly serious war crimes in Dinant, Tamines, Andenne, and Aarschot. Between August and October 1914, about 6,500 civilians fell victim to reprisals, and the firebombings in Louvain received particular worldwide attention and condemnation. The reception of actual and invented assaults went into the English propaganda term Rape of Belgium, still in use today.
While the German troops unfolded their bow movement over Belgium within the framework of the Schlieffen Plan, Plan XVII was prepared on the French side, which, in contrast to the German encirclement strategy, relied on the strategy of penetration in the center (Lorraine). Before the actual large-scale attack under this strategy, an advance attack was made on Mulhouse/Mulhouse. In this way, French commander Joffre aimed to tie up German troops in the south and boost the enthusiasm of the French population by advancing into Alsace, which had fallen to Germany after the defeat of 1871, and he certainly succeeded during the short-term capture of the second largest city and the most important industrial center in the region. Mulhouse was taken on August 7, with part of the population there cheering the French soldiers. As early as August 9, the German troops were back in action. After another conquest, the city and all Alsatian territories, with the exception of the Doller valley and some of the Vosges heights, fell again to the Germans on August 24 for the rest of the war. General Louis Bonneau, who commanded the French attack, was dismissed by Joffre.
Joffre initially had no intention of being influenced by the German attack on Belgium in his deployment under Plan XVII and concentrated 1.7 million French troops in five armies for the attack. However, he could not completely ignore the movement of German troops and moved the 5th Army under Charles Lanrezac accordingly farther northwest. The British Expeditionary Corps under General John French, which had just landed in France, joined north at Maubeuge. The French offensive initially began on August 14, with the 1st Army under General Auguste Dubail and the 2nd Army under General Noël de Castelnau crossing the border and advancing on Saarburg (Lorraine) and elsewhere. The German 6th and 7th Armies - both commanded at the time by Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria - initially fell back fighting.
On August 18, after the defeat of the Liège fortress (final fall of Liège on August 16), the real major offensive of the German right wing to surround the Allied armies began. In the process, it advanced very quickly to Brussels and Namur. The main part of the Belgian army retreated to the fortress of Antwerp, whereupon the two-month siege of Antwerp began. On August 20, the French offensive proper began in the direction of German Lorraine and the Saar-Ruhr area, and at the same time the German counterattack began. From this and from a series of further battles near Saarburg, near Longwy, in the Ardennes, on the Meuse, between the Sambre and the Meuse and near Mons, battles between the Vosges and the Scheldt developed with heavy losses for both sides, the so-called border battles. The French troops suffered exceptionally heavy losses; between August 20 and 23, 40,000 soldiers fell, 27,000 on August 22 alone. The losses were caused mainly by machine guns. The French 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Armies were severely beaten head-on by the German 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th Armies, as were the 5th Army and the British Expeditionary Corps on the left wing. The French troops, however, succeeded in a sufficiently orderly retreat behind the Meurthe and the ring of fortifications around Nancy, on the one hand, and behind the Meuse, on the other, while preserving the fortress of Verdun, without the German troops succeeding in encircling and completely destroying large detachments. Disregarding the Schlieffen plan, Crown Prince Rupprecht asked Chief of Staff General Moltke to take advantage of the success and go on the offensive himself, which the latter approved. However, this German offensive between August 25 and September 7 brought no breakthrough.
The French and British armies on the left wing began a general but orderly retreat through northern France, punctuated by isolated battles such as the Battle of Le Cateau (26 August) and the Battle of St. Quentin (29 August), bringing the pursuing German right wing ever closer to Paris. The French government left the capital on September 2 and moved to Bordeaux, and the defense of Paris was entrusted to the reactivated General Joseph Gallieni. The French high command, meanwhile, drew together troops from the right wing as well as reserves to raise a new (6th) army under Joseph Maunoury near Paris to threaten the German advance on the flank. Another (9th) army under Ferdinand Foch was inserted in the center. Joffre planned to use the Marne as a fallback position from which to halt the German advance with an offensive along the entire front.
The German swing wing-the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th German Armies-had already made its turn toward the southwest and south at still high speed; the 1st Army deviated southward from its planned direction of advance as early as after the capture of Brussels (August 20), as commander Alexander von Kluck pursued French troops and the British Expeditionary Corps. As the front expanded, the surprise effect of the German offensive diminished, and the numerical superiority of the German right wing was lost as it stretched; the German lines of communication became longer and longer, those of the French shorter and shorter. The dispersed German front threatened to break up by the end of August, the right wing was forced to change its line of thrust further and swing south and southeast due to counterattacks, and the encirclement of Paris was abandoned on August 30, of which Joffre was informed on September 3.
In the meantime, the Supreme Army Command stationed in Luxembourg lost track of the operational situation; above all, it lacked any telephone communication with the threatened right wing. The technically inadequate radio communications could not make up for this, and the airborne messages often went unused. The 1st Army (320,000 troops) attempted to encircle the British Expeditionary Force with forced marches, neglecting western flank protection. The surrender of two corps to the Eastern Front, siege troops left behind (Antwerp, Maubeuge), march and combat losses, and supply difficulties caused stalemates; the exhausted 1st Army had covered over 500 kilometers in heavy fighting.
On September 6, the French offensive against the open flank of the German army ("Battle of the Marne") began. The German 1st Army, which despite instructions to the contrary had still advanced south of the Marne on September 5, 1914, reaching as its westernmost points the communes of Le Plessis-Belleville, Mortefontaine and Meaux around Paris (furthest advance: 
48,9732,905), was forced to retreat in a two-day forced march. By its sudden about-face, it caused a gap some 40 kilometers wide between the German 1st and 2nd Armies, into which strong French and British forces crashed about noon on September 8, 1914. The cohesion of the German front was torn, the danger of an operational breakthrough and an encirclement of the German armies grew hour by hour, there was a threat of strangulation and destruction of individual German army units, a hasty retreat, and at worst a rearward encirclement of the entire German Western Army. The German armies were at the end of their tether after their non-stop advance. Lieutenant Colonel Richard Hentsch, sent by the Oberster Heeresleitung (OHL) to the supreme command of the 1st and 2nd Armies, recommended withdrawal, which was ordered by the commanders-in-chief of the two armies on September 9, without further contact with neighboring armies or the OHL.
The necessity of the retreat - especially that of the 1st Army - was later disputed, but most people today hold the opinion formulated by Holger Afflerbach, for example: "Operationally, the order to retreat was correct and absolutely necessary, but its psychological effects were fatal. The Schlieffen Plan had failed, the constriction of the French army on the eastern border (Lorraine and Alsace) had failed. On September 9, Chief of Staff General Moltke saw the envelope; he wrote that day:
"Things are going badly ... The beginning of the war, which began so hopefully, will turn into the opposite [...] how different it was when we opened the campaign so gloriously a few weeks ago [...] I fear that our people in their frenzy of victory will hardly be able to bear the misfortune."
Chief of Staff General Moltke suffered a nervous breakdown and was replaced by Erich von Falkenhayn. The 1st and 2nd German Armies were forced to abandon the battle and withdraw, with the remaining assault armies following. The subsequent retreat of the German attack wing behind the Aisne resulted in the First Battle of the Aisne, which initiated the transition to positional warfare. However, the German forces were able to dig in after their retreat along the Aisne and re-establish a cohesive, resilient front. On September 17, the French counterattack came to a halt. In France, this German retreat was later dubbed the "Miracle on the Marne"; in Germany, the order drew the harshest criticism. Falkenhayn urged Reich Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg to inform the German public about the critical military situation after the failure of the attack plan, but the latter refused.
At first, Falkenhayn stuck to the previous concept, according to which the decision should first be sought in the west. In the race to the sea (September 13 to October 19, 1914), both sides tried to outflank each other, and the fronts were extended from the Aisne to Nieuwpoort on the North Sea. In northern France, the opponents tried to resume the war of movement in the first weeks of October 1914, with the German troops achieving some successes with heavy losses (capture of Lille, Ghent, Bruges and Ostend), but without achieving a breakthrough. Thereafter, the focus of the fighting shifted further north to Flanders, and the English supply via Dunkirk and Calais was to be interrupted.
On October 16, 1914, the Declaration of the University Teachers of the German Reich was published. It was signed by over 3,000 German university professors, almost the entire faculty of Germany's 53 universities and technical colleges, and justified World War I as a "defensive struggle of German culture." Foreign scholars responded a few days later in the New York Times and The Times.
Fierce fighting developed at Ypres (First Battle of Flanders from October 20 to November 18, 1914). Hastily formed German reserve corps suffered devastating losses at Langemarck and Ypres. Inadequately trained young soldiers led by reserve officers with no front-line experience - occasionally 15-year-olds - went to their deaths here by the tens of thousands without achieving any significant objective. Nevertheless, the myth of Langemarck was constructed from this - the first significant example in this war of reinterpreting military defeats or failures into moral victories. In the process, the Allies succeeded in removing the Channel ports of Boulogne and Calais, important for British supplies, and the rail junction of Amiens from German grasp.
The war of movement ended with the fighting at Ypres. An extensive system of trenches (trench warfare) emerged on the German western front. All attempts by both sides to break through failed in 1914, and a front more than 700 kilometers long from the North Sea to the Swiss border (→ Switzerland in the First World War) froze in positional warfare; at the front sections, the frontmost trenches were often barely 50 meters from the enemy positions.
On November 18, 1914, Falkenhayn opened Reich Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg that the war against the Triple Entente could no longer be won. He pleaded for a diplomatic liquidation of the war on the continent, for a negotiated and separate peace with one or more adversaries, but not with Great Britain, with which he did not consider a political settlement possible. Reich Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg rejected this. The Reich Chancellor's reasons for this were primarily domestic; in view of the great sacrifices of the attack, he did not want to forego annexations and a "victory prize" for the people. Hindenburg and Ludendorff assumed that the enemy had an unconditional will to annihilate them and also still considered a victorious peace possible. The Reich Chancellor and the General Staff concealed from the nation the significance of the defeats on the Marne and at Ypres. In this way, they kept the nation's will to fight and persevere high. The discrepancy between the political-military situation and the war aims of the economic and political elites thus widened increasingly as the war progressed, contributing to the social front during the war and beyond.
In November 1914, the British navy declared the entire North Sea a war zone and imposed a distance blockade. Ships flying the flag of neutral states could become the target of British attacks in the North Sea without warning. This action by the British government violated applicable international law, including the 1856 Declaration of Paris, to which Great Britain was a signatory.
On December 24 and the following two days, the so-called Christmas truce, an unauthorized ceasefire among soldiers, took place on some sections of the Western Front. This Christmas truce, combined with fraternization gestures, probably involved over 100,000 mainly German and British soldiers.
Fighting in the East and the Balkans
→ Main articles: East Prussian Operation (1914), Battle of Galicia and Serbian Campaign 1914.
Since, contrary to the assumptions of the Schlieffen Plan, two Russian armies entered East Prussia two weeks after the outbreak of war and thus unexpectedly early, the situation on the eastern front was initially extremely tense for the German Reich. As a result of the Schlieffen Plan, the Germans were rather defensive on their eastern front; only a few Russian-Polish border towns had been occupied, with the destruction of Kalisz. After the Battle of Gumbinnen (August 19-20), the 8th Army defending East Prussia was forced to surrender large parts of the country. As a result, troops were reinforced and the previous commanders were replaced by Major General Erich Ludendorff and Colonel General Paul von Hindenburg, who initiated the securing of East Prussia with victory at the Battle of Tannenberg from August 26-31. In the process, German troops succeeded in encircling and largely destroying the Russian 2nd Army (Narew Army) under General Alexander Samsonov. The Battle of the Masurian Lakes followed from September 6 to 15, ending with the defeat of the Russian 1st Army (Nyemen Army) under General Paul von Rennenkampff. The Russian troops then evacuated most of East Prussia.
Russian troops occupied Galicia, which belonged to Austria-Hungary, after the Battle of Galicia from August 24 to September 11. The Austro-Hungarian army had to retreat to the Carpathians in September after an advance on the Galician capital of Lviv due to overwhelming Russian superiority (Battle of Lviv 26 August to 1 September). The first siege of Przemyśl from September 24 to October 11 was repulsed. A military operation organized to relieve the k. u. k. troops by the newly formed German 9th Army launched offensive in southern Poland (from September 29 to October 31) with the aim of reaching the Vistula failed. On November 1, Colonel General von Hindenburg was appointed Commander-in-Chief East of the German Army. On November 9, the second siege of Przemyśl began, which ended fatally for Austria on March 22, 1915, and on November 11, the German counteroffensive in the Łódź area, which lasted until December 5, after which the tsarist troops switched to the defensive. From December 5 to 17, Austro-Hungarian troops succeeded in halting a Russian advance on Kraków, after which the enemy initially remained in positional warfare in wide areas of the front. In the Winter Battle of the Carpathians (December 1914 to April 1915), the Central Powers were able to hold their own against Russia.
The starting point of the war, the conflict between Austria-Hungary and Serbia, was marginalized in view of the large-scale escalation from August onward. The three offensives of the Austro-Hungarian army between August and December 1914 mostly failed or brought only partial successes; in December, Belgrade could be taken only briefly. The k. u. k. Army suffered a devastating failure in this theater of war as well. Especially the first imperial and royal offensives were accompanied by heavy attacks against the Serbian civilian population. Several thousand civilians were killed, villages plundered and burned. The Austrian army leadership partially admitted the assaults and spoke of "unorganized requisitions" and "senseless reprisals." The Serbian army was at the end of its tether after the show of force - against an opponent several times superior in resources - in December. In addition, epidemics had broken out in the country.
Entry of the Ottoman Empire into the war
German military missions to the Ottoman Empire and the construction of the Baghdad Railway had already intensified relations between the German and Ottoman Empires before the war. On August 1, there was the snubbing seizure of two battleships ordered in Britain, some of which had already been paid for. The government of the Ottoman Empire initially tried to stay out of the fighting in an "armed neutrality." The ruling Young Turks realized that they would have to lean on a major power in order to hold their own militarily. At Enver Pasha's instigation, a wartime alliance was finally formed with Germany and Austria-Hungary, which was controversial in the cabinet.
On September 27, the Dardanelles were officially closed to international shipping. After the two ships of the German Mediterranean Division under Rear Admiral Wilhelm Souchon, Goeben and Breslau, escaped the British Mediterranean Fleet and entered Constantinople, the two warships handed over to the Ottoman Fleet, still commanded by Souchon and manned by German sailors, fired on Russian coastal towns in the Black Sea on October 29. As a result, France, Britain, and Russia declared war on the Ottoman Empire in early November. On the morning of November 14, the Sheikhül Islam of the Ottoman Empire Ürgüplü Mustafa Hayri Efendi proclaimed jihad against enemy states in front of the Fatih Mosque in Constantinople, following an edict by Sultan Mehmed V. During the war, this call resonated only with individual Muslim units in British service, such as Indian Muslims from Punjab who mutinied in Singapore on February 15, 1915. The call had a reinforcing effect on anti-British sentiment in Afghanistan, which erupted after the end of the war in the Third Anglo-Afghan War.
Shortly after the declaration of war, ready British-Indian troops landed at Fao in the Persian Gulf on November 6 to protect the British oil concessions of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, thus opening the Mesopotamian front. After several encounters with weaker Ottoman forces, they succeeded in capturing Basra as early as November 23.
Russian troops also opened the offensive on the Caucasus front in early November (Bergmann Offensive). There, an attempt to counterattack the Ottoman 3rd Army in winter resulted in its first heavy defeat at the Battle of Sarıkamış. On the Russian side, Armenian volunteer battalions took part in the fighting, which intensified sentiment against the Armenians among the Young Turk leadership, even though the majority of the ethnic group was loyal to the Ottoman Empire. Russian troops attacked from northeastern Persia, which they had occupied for some time (→ World War I in Persia). For the time being, there was no major fighting on the Palestine front.
War in the colonies
As early as August 5, 1914, the London Committee of Imperial Defence had decided to extend the war by unilaterally interpreting the treaties of the Berlin Africa Conference of 1884/85 ("Congo Conference") and to attack all German colonies or have them attacked by French, Indian, South African, Australian, New Zealand or Japanese troops. This resulted in some heavy fighting, especially in Africa. The colony of Togo, surrounded on all sides, was immediately taken. Cameroon was also difficult to hold: By the end of 1914, German troops had retreated into the hinterland. There, a grueling small-scale war developed that dragged on until 1916. The South African Union attacked German Southwest Africa, which initially held its ground at the Battle of Sandfontein from September 24 to 26. Delaying the South African Union attacks was the anti-British uprising by part of the Burian population, which was not finally put down until February 1915. German East Africa defended itself doggedly under Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck and initially forced the British troops to retreat at the Battle of Tanga (November 2-4, 1914). Thanks to the German strategy of retreats and guerrilla tactics, the Schutztruppe für Deutsch-Ostafrika was able to hold out until the end of the war. The German colonies in the Pacific, where no Schutztruppen were stationed, were handed over to Japan, Australia and New Zealand almost without a fight. The German colony of Kiautschou was fiercely defended during the siege of Tsingtau until material and ammunition were exhausted (surrender November 7, 1914).
See also: World War I outside Europe
War year 1915
Submarine warfare
On February 4, the German Reich made the official announcement of submarine warfare against merchant ships on February 18. The waters around Great Britain and Ireland were declared a war zone against the protest of neutral states, although there were not enough submarines available to effectively blockade Great Britain. By using U-boats against merchant ships, Germany broke new ground both militarily and under international law. U-boats could only imperfectly comply with the rules of the Prisenrecht, especially since the increasing armament of British merchant ships endangered the safety of the boats. In addition, submarine commanders were not given clear instructions for execution. The naval leadership evidently assumed that most sinkings would be made without warning and that a deterrent would thereby be achieved vis-à-vis neutral shipping. However, due to protests from neutral countries following the German announcement, U-boat warfare was formally restricted in that no neutral ships were to be attacked.
On May 7, the German submarine U 20 sank the British passenger ship Lusitania, which triggered a wave of protest, especially in the United States. This was because over 200 U.S. citizens were on board the Lusitania when it left the port of New York on May 1, 1915, even though the German embassy in Washington had issued advertisements warning against using British ships to cross to the United Kingdom. For Americans, the sinking of the Lusitania and the deaths of the many Americans came as a shock that made you realize how difficult it was to stay out of the world war. When the passenger liner was sunk on May 7, 1198 passengers and crew members died, including nearly 100 children and 127 U.S. citizens. There was outrage in America, and an exchange of notes between the American and German governments followed. On June 1 and 6, the Kaiser agreed to the Reich Chancellor's request (at the time still supported by the OHL on this issue) that German submarines should not sink neutral ships and, in general, large passenger steamers. Grand Admiral Tirpitz and Admiral Gustav Bachmann immediately submitted resignation petitions for this reason, which the Kaiser rejected in curt terms. After the sinking of the steamer Arabic on August 19, 1915, by U 24, in which Americans were again killed, Ambassador Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff made clear the restrictions now imposed by the American government (Arabic pledge). The German press was informed at the end of August and its chief editors - explicitly Ernst Graf zu Reventlow, but also Georg Bernhard - were instructed by the General Staff to immediately cease the campaigns conducted by some newspapers for unlimited submarine warfare and against the U.S. (based on their notes).
Germany seeks war decision on the Eastern Front
On the Eastern Front, the German army, with the help of the newly arrived 10th Army, defeated the Russians in the Winter Battle of Masuria from February 2 to 27. The Russian troops then withdrew from East Prussia for good.
In November 1914, Paul von Hindenburg and Erich von Ludendorff, as his Chief of Staff, had been given supreme command of all German forces on the Eastern Front and since then had successfully worked to try to win the war in the East in 1915. The goal of the German leadership was to prepare to blow up the opposing coalition by weakening Russia. Since the general situation in the east - almost all of Galicia was Russian-occupied - made a separate peace move on the part of the Central Powers seem unpromising for the time being, military means were to be used to increase pressure on Russia and also to make a favorable impression on the neutral states, especially in the Balkans. Above all, the expected entry of Italy into the war threatened a dangerous strategic situation for Austria-Hungary: the Russians had been able to hold their own in the Carpathian Mountains during the Winter Battle, but if Italy had entered the war, a large-scale pincer movement (between the Isonzo and the Carpathians) could have meant the military end of the Danube monarchy. A breakthrough in western Galicia up to the San was to force the Russian formations to retreat from the mountains, otherwise they would have to fear encirclement on their part. For this purpose, parts of the Western Army (the 11th Army under August von Mackensen) were transferred to the Eastern Front in the spring of 1915. From May 1 to 10, the Battle of Gorlice-Tarnów took place east of Kraków, in the course of which the German and Austro-Hungarian troops (4th Army) succeeded in making an unexpectedly deep penetration of the Russian positions, reaching the San by mid-May. The battle marked a turning point on the Eastern Front. The success could not hide the fact that Austria-Hungary had to bear losses of nearly 2 million men from the beginning of the war until March 1915 and was increasingly dependent on massive German aid.
In late June, the Central Powers continued their attack with the Bug Offensive. After the recapture of Przemyśl on June 4 and Lemberg on June 22, the strangulation of the front arc in Russian Poland seemed within reach; with coordinated attacks from the north and south, the Russian formations were to be encircled there, and the Supreme Army Command - with such success in mind - postponed attacks on other fronts. However, this planning by Ludendorff seemed too ambitious to Falkenhayn and Mackensen - in view of the experience in the Battle of Marne - and was scaled down accordingly. The Bug Offensive (June 29-September 30) and the Narew Offensive (July 13-August 24) did not result in the encirclement of large bodies of troops, but the Russian army was forced into a "Great Retreat." Evacuation of Poland, Lithuania, and large parts of Courland and shortening of the Russian front from 1600 to 1000 kilometers. By September, the Central Powers succeeded in capturing important cities such as Warsaw (August 4), Brest-Litovsk and Vilnius. In Russian Poland, the occupying powers created two general governorates: an Austrian one in Lublin and a German one based in Warsaw. In "Upper East," de facto a military state in the territories under German supreme command other than Russian Poland, an occupation policy was subsequently pursued for the intensive economic exploitation of the country and its human resources. Toward the end of September, further offensives by the 10th Army under Ludendorff against Minsk and by Austrian troops against Rovno failed. Despite the Russian army's higher overall losses, it continued to outnumber the Germans after the conclusion of the Great Retreat (September 1915), and the planned redeployment of large parts of the German forces to the Western Front could not take place to the extent hoped for.
The Western Front 1915
On the Western Front, the Allies initially pursued the classic strategy of cutting off the great German frontal arc between Lille in the north and Verdun in the south by pressing both flanks and, if possible, interrupting the rail lines that were important for supplies. This strategy initially led to the Winter Battle in Champagne (until the end of March), which had already been prepared at the end of 1914 and in which the type of material battle emerged: days of artillery fire escalating to a barrage intended to massively demoralize and wear out the enemy, followed by the massive infantry assault. However, this tactic did not succeed, as the Germans were prepared for the attack by the shelling and were able to repel it with barrage and machine gun fire due to structural advantages of the defender in trench warfare from the well-developed dugouts. Allied attacks on the small, strategically threatening frontal arc of Saint-Mihiel (Easter Battle or First Woëvre Battle between Meuse and Moselle) also failed.
The use of poison gas on the first day of the Second Battle of Flanders, April 22, is considered a "new chapter in the history of warfare" and the "birth of modern weapons of mass destruction." Although irritants had also been used by the Allies before in the gas warfare during World War I, since lethal chlorine gas was used on April 22, the attack was internationally considered a clear violation of the Hague Land Warfare Regulations and was exploited accordingly for propaganda purposes. The gas attack was carried out using Haber's blowing method, which depended on the wind direction. As early as March, sappers installed concealed gas cylinders in the front trenches near Ypres, from which the gas was to be blown off. Since easterly winds are relatively rare in West Flanders, the attack had to be postponed several times. On April 22, a steady north wind blew, and accordingly the gas was blown off the northern part of the Allied front arc around Ypres. The effect was much more serious than expected: The French 87th as well as the 45th (Algerian) Division fled in panic, opening a six-kilometer-wide gap in the Allied front. The death toll from this gas attack was contemporarily put at up to 5000; today's estimates are around 1200 dead and 3000 wounded. The German leadership had not expected such an effect and probably for that reason did not provide sufficient reserves for a further advance, apart from that the gas impaired the attackers. The frontal arc of Ypres was merely reduced in size during the Second Battle of Flanders and could be held by the British troops and the newly arrived Canadian division at the front. Due to the use of gas, casualties among the defenders were significantly higher than among the attackers (about 70,000 to 35,000), which was unusual for trench warfare in the First World War.
On May 9, the British and French attempted a breakthrough in Artois in the Battle of Loretto. Despite enormous losses (111,000 Allied and 75,000 German soldiers), this produced only partial successes and was broken off in mid-June. On the German side, tactical changes increasingly succeeded in further expanding the defender's structural advantages in trench warfare: While traditionally the defense had been concentrated on a first line in a forward slope position (best overview and wide field of fire), the German troops increasingly switched to shifting the focus of the defense to the second line in a rear slope position due to the Allies' material superiority. On the one hand, this gave the Allies enough time to bring up reserves during the breakthrough; on the other hand, the superior Allied artillery was no longer accurate enough to eliminate the German positions due to the lack of a direct line of sight.
The last major combat operations on the Western Front of the 1915 war year were Allied offensives between September 22 and October 14, again in Artois and Champagne. The Autumn Battle of Champagne and the Autumn Battle of La Bassée and Arras produced hardly any results, with heavy losses and successively increasing use of materiel: "The Entente troops had to pay for minimal gains in terrain with losses of up to a quarter of a million men."
The Gallipoli Operation of the Allies
On February 19, the Allied Dardanelles Operation began with the shelling of Turkish coastal forts along the Dardanelles by British and French warships. Initially, minesweepers attempted to clear Turkish mine barriers in the strait in order to reach the objective of Constantinople directly. The Allies' intention was to push the Ottoman Empire out of the war by threatening its capital and to open the supply route to Russia through the Dardanelles. On March 18, a breakthrough attempt was made by naval forces under Admiral John de Robeck, sinking three Allied battleships and damaging others. As a result, the Allied governments decided to force the opening of the Dardanelles by landing ground troops. Previously, British military forces had considered troop landings at Alexandretta to separate the southern areas of the Ottoman Empire from the Anatolian heartland.
On April 25, the Allied landings began on the Gallipoli Peninsula and on the opposite Asian coast at Kum Kale. Allied troops had previously occupied the island of Limnos, among others, in defiance of Greek neutrality, in order to use it as a base for attacks against the Ottoman Empire. 200 merchant ships-covered by 11 warships-deployed 78,000 British troops of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force and 17,000 French troops of the Corps expéditionnaire d'Orient, including the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) in its first wartime deployment. The attack failed due to unexpectedly fierce Turkish resistance, with Mustafa Kemal in particular standing out as commander of the 19th Division in the 5th Ottoman Army under the overall command of Otto Liman von Sanders, laying the foundation for his reputation as a popular hero. The operation, in which a total of over 500,000 Allied soldiers were engaged, had to be called off by January 9, 1916, with a full-scale amphibious evacuation. In the battle, 110,000 soldiers from both sides lost their lives.
Italy's entry into the war
On May 23, Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary. Since January, Germany had been pressuring Austria to cede Trentino and other territories to Italy in order to at least guarantee its neutrality. Even after the denunciation of the Triple Alliance on May 4, more and more extensive offers were made to Italy, including on May 10 the cession of Trentino and the Isonzo region, a largely free hand in Albania, and more. On the other hand, Italy had negotiated with the Allies and, in the London Treaty of April 26, had obtained more far-reaching promises in the event of the Allies entering the war. Prime Minister Antonio Salandra and Foreign Minister Sidney Sonnino had decided, after months of tactics, to declare war on Austria with the express approval of King Victor Emmanuel III. In doing so, they followed the pressure of public opinion, although there was no majority in favor of war among the population or in Parliament at the time of the declaration. The supporters of the war against Austria were far more active and were able to unite the most important Italian opinion leaders from all political directions. Political irredentism, for example, was able to draw on Cesare Battisti. Gabriele D'Annunzio - writer and later pioneer of European fascism - organized public events and mass demonstrations for the war in Rome, while the socialist publicist Benito Mussolini had been advocating the war since October 1914, which led to his expulsion from the Partito Socialista Italiano. Mussolini then founded his own newspaper, Il Popolo d'Italia, presumably financed by France, with which he continued to call for Italy to enter the war on the side of the Entente. The war supporters received further public support from the Futurists around Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. Although the parliament supported the neutrality course of majority leader and previous prime minister Giovanni Giolitti shortly before the declaration of war, which earned him calls for assassination from D'Annunzio, the parliament was not the real locus of political decision-making. When it was convened on May 20 on the occasion of the approval of the war credits, only the Socialists voted against the credits, while the former opponents of the war, such as the Giolitti supporters and the Catholics, sought to prove their patriotic attitude by accepting the war credits.
The Italian front ran from the Stelvio Pass on the Swiss border through Tyrol along the Dolomites, the Carnic Alps and the Isonzo to the coast of the Adriatic Sea. As a result, Austria-Hungary was immediately in a three-front war, which complicated the situation for the Central Powers. In addition, the Austrians were not able to secure parts of the Italian front sufficiently at the beginning of the fighting; in many cases only local militias, Landwehr and Landsturm were used, including 30,000 Standschützen. The fighting on the Isonzo began immediately after the declaration of war, the actual start of the First Battle of the Isonzo being set for June 23. Despite great superiority and territorial gains, the Italians failed to make a decisive breakthrough either in this battle (until July 7) or in the Second Isonzo Battle that immediately followed (July 17-August 3). This was also true of the Third and Fourth Isonzo Battles; high losses in men and materiel were accompanied by no changes in the overall strategic picture. The First Dolomite Offensive (July 5-August 4), which marked the beginning of the Alpine War, also fit into this picture and constituted another novelty in military history: Never before had there been prolonged combat operations in the high mountains, which took place up to a sea level of 3900 meters (Ortlerstellung).
Armenian Genocide
Since the Battle of Sarıkamış, the Young Turk leadership increasingly suspected Armenians of sabotage. When the Russians approached Lake Van in mid-April, five local Armenian leaders were executed in this region. This and other incidents led to unrest in Van. On April 24, a wave of arrests of Armenian intellectuals began in Constantinople (now a national day of remembrance in Armenia). On May 24, Russian Foreign Minister Sasonov issued an international protest note (prepared as early as April 27) claiming that the population of more than 100 Armenian villages had been massacred, and that representatives of the Turkish government had coordinated the killings. The following day (May 25), Ottoman Interior Minister Talât Pasha announced that Armenians would be deported from the war zone to Syria and Mosul. On May 27 and on May 30, the government of the Ottoman Empire issued a deportation law, beginning the systematic phase of the Armenian genocide and the Assyrian genocide. German Ambassador Hans von Wangenheim reported to Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg as early as June of Talât Pasha's view that "the Porte wanted to use the world war to thoroughly clean up its internal enemies - the local Christians - without being disturbed by the diplomatic intervention of foreign countries." Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter, German vice-consul in Erzerum, also reported in late July "that the ultimate goal [of the] action against the Armenians was the complete extermination of them in Turkey." In December 1915, the German ambassador and Wangenheim's successor, Paul Metternich, tried to intervene with the Turkish government in favor of the Armenians and suggested that the German government make the deportations and outrages public. However, this was not approved by Reich Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg, who noted instead: "The proposed public coramation of a confederate during the ongoing war would be a measure unprecedented in history. Our only aim is to keep Turkey at our side until the end of the war, whether Armenians perish over it or not." Even an intervention by Pope Benedict XV, who wrote directly to Mohammed V, the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, came too late. The genocide claimed an estimated one million lives by the end of the war and was contemporarily referred to as the "Holocaust" even in its precursors (the massacres and pogroms of 1895/96 and the massacre of Adana in 1909).
Bulgaria's entry into the war and the Central Powers' campaign in Serbia
The Central Powers were reinforced by Bulgaria's entry into the war on October 14, 1915. In the Balkan Wars, Bulgaria had not been able to assert its territorial claims for the creation of an "ethnic Bulgaria"; practically all conquests made in the First Balkan War had to be surrendered again in the Peace of Bucharest in 1913, and the country was also considerably weakened by the wars. Thus, on August 1, 1914, the government of Vasil Radoslavov initially declared Bulgaria's strict neutrality. The Central Powers and the Allies subsequently made efforts to persuade Bulgaria, which in turn could make its participation in the war dependent on the respective offer. In this respect, the Central Powers were in the better starting position; they could more easily accommodate territorial interests at the expense of Serbia and, if necessary, Romania and Greece (whose entry into the war was expected on the Allied side) than the Allies; thus, the Bulgarians were promised Macedonia, Dobruja and Eastern Thrace. Accordingly, and due to the relatively favorable course of the war in the fall of 1915, Bulgaria gave the go-ahead to the Central Powers. As early as September 6, Bulgaria had agreed to cooperate with the Central Powers, who wanted to establish a land link with the Ottoman Empire by attacking Serbia. Participation in the war was extremely controversial in Bulgaria; after the government's decision to enter the war, the opposition parties - with the exception of parts of the Social Democrats - went along with the war course. On October 6, under the command of Mackensen, the Central Powers began their offensive against Serbia, and on October 14 Bulgaria declared war on Serbia. Thus the Serbs faced a considerable superiority, which the Allies could not counterbalance with a landing of troops north of Thessaloniki. Greece refused to enter the war on the side of Serbia, citing insufficient Allied support, although it had pledged to support Serbia in a bilateral treaty on June 1, 1913. After the fall of Belgrade (October 9) and Niš (November 5), the remnants of the Serbian army (about 150,000 men; at the start of the war, 360,000 men) led by Radomir Putnik withdrew to the Albanian and Montenegrin mountains with about 20,000 prisoners of war; it later returned to action on the Saloniki front after being regrouped on Corfu. Occupied Serbia was divided between Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria.
Other secondary fronts in 1915
The Battle of Sarıkamış on the Caucasus Front ended in a heavy defeat for the Ottoman Empire on January 5, 1915. On the Palestine Front, Ottoman troops under Friedrich Freiherr Kreß von Kressenstein undertook an unsuccessful offensive against the Suez Canal starting in late January.
The surrender of the German Schutztruppe in July 1915 ended the fighting in southwest Africa.
At the end of November, the British advance on the Mesopotamian front (now Iraqi territory) was halted by the Ottoman army under the de facto command of Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz at the Battle of Ctesiphon (November 22-25), and the expeditionary corps of the British Indian Army was trapped in Kut on December 7 (→ Siege of Kut).
Political and social developments
Joseph Joffre, commander-in-chief of all French troops since early December, convened a conference of the Allies from December 6 to 8 in Chantilly, where the Grand Quartier Général had been based since October 1914. To deprive the Central Powers of the advantages of the "Inner Line," coordinated attacks on all fronts were arranged for mid-1916. The British government under Herbert Henry Asquith had to be reshuffled in May of that year to include the hitherto opposition Conservatives because of the unfavorable war situation, especially at the Dardanelles. The coalition government under Asquith included a Ministry of Munitions in response to the munitions crisis of the spring of 1915.
In October and November, in view of the tightened food restrictions, there were initially riots in front of grocery stores, distribution points and free benches in Germany, but increasingly also protest gatherings of very predominantly female demonstrators. On November 30, 58 women were arrested at a protest meeting on Unter den Linden in Berlin; the press was not allowed to report on it. Prices for grain, bread, butter and potatoes had already risen sharply in November 1914, and at this point farmers were reluctant to supply the city markets, if at all. The reasons for the supply problems lay in the organizational inability of the authorities - no one had expected and prepared for a long war - as well as in the loss of food and saltpeter imports (the latter for fertilizer production); in addition, the war deprived agriculture of horses and labor. The Federal Council set maximum prices for bread, potatoes and sugar at the end of 1914, followed by other staple foods in January 1915, so that farmers increasingly tried to market their goods in "surreptitious trade." At the end of 1915, one observer noted: "The inflation has taken on a threatening character [...] The change of mood in the last few weeks, since the beginning of the stricter food restrictions, is very strong. Especially the women are becoming rabid [...] the women are shouting 'give us food!' and 'we want our men'". With the black market flourishing, the population believed less and less the official propaganda that the English naval blockade alone was responsible for the poor food supply. The consequence of the state's inability to deal with the food question was a gradual "alienation of the citizens from the state, indeed an actual 'delegitimization' of the state," beginning at the end of 1915 at the latest.
On November 27, the Reichstag parliamentary group and the party executive of the SPD decided to submit a "peace interpellation" to the Reichstag asking when and under what conditions Reich Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg intended to initiate peace negotiations. Bethmann Hollweg unsuccessfully sought to have the interpellation withdrawn, and on December 9 it was considered in the Reichstag. The Reich Chancellor answered Philipp Scheidemann's question insofar as "safeguards" (annexations) in East and West were indispensable for peace; abroad, this was interpreted as "hegemony talk". As a result, 20 Social Democratic deputies in the Reichstag session of December 21 rejected the renewed approval of war credits and issued a statement according to which Bethmann Hollweg favored "annexationists.
War year 1916
Occupation of Montenegro and Albania
Austrian troops attacked the Kingdom of Montenegro on January 4, and King Nikola surrendered on January 23 and went into exile in France (→ Campaign in Montenegro and Austro-Hungarian Occupation of Montenegro 1916-1918). The principality of Albania was also about two-thirds occupied by the Austro-Hungarian army (→ Austro-Hungarian Occupation of Albania 1916-1918). The Serbian troops that had fled to Montenegro and Albania largely retreated to Durrës, where an Italian expeditionary corps had landed in December 1915. In March 1916, the Italians evacuated 260,000 people from this port. Among them were 140,000 Serbian soldiers, who were embarked on the island of Corfu, which had been annexed by the French earlier, and reorganized militarily there (in June, they were transferred to the Orient Army in Thessaloniki); the Serbian government-in-exile, headed by Nikola Pašić, set up its headquarters on Corfu. Among those evacuated from Durrës were 24,000 Austrian prisoners of war, who were taken to the Sardinian island of Asinara, where about 5,000 died. In Albania, the Italians were able to hold the port city of Vlora, thus expanding their area of power in southern Albania. In Montenegro, Viktor Weber Edler von Webenau was military governor-general from February 26, 1916, to July 10, 1917. In Albania, which was not an active participant in the war, a civilian administrative council was established under the chairmanship of Consul General August Ritter von Kral. Through the participation of Albanian leaders and the development of schools and infrastructure, the occupying power attempted to win over the Albanians.
Battle of Verdun
On February 21, the Battle of Verdun began. Contrary to later accounts by Erich von Falkenhayn, adopted by many authors, the original intention of the attack was not to let the French army "bleed itself dry" without spatial objectives. Falkenhayn, with this assertion made in 1920, attempted to retroactively give ostensible meaning to the failed attack and the negative German myth of the "blood mill." Originally, the idea of the attack at Verdun came from Crown Prince Wilhelm, Commander-in-Chief of the 5th Army, with Konstantin Schmidt von Knobelsdorf, Chief of Staff of the 5th Army, leading the charge. The German army command decided to attack the fortress of France, which had been partially disarmed since 1915 and was originally the strongest, in order to, in turn, get the war on the Western Front moving again. Around Verdun, moreover, there was an indentation in the front between the frontal arc of St. Mihiel in the east and Varennes in the west, threatening the German front there in its flanks. Capture of the town itself was not the primary objective of the operation, but rather the heights of the east bank of the Meuse River, so as to put his own artillery in a commanding position, analogous to the siege of Port Arthur, and thus make Verdun untenable. Falkenhayn believed that France could be induced, for reasons of national prestige, to accept unjustifiable losses in defense of Verdun. In order to hold Verdun, if the plan had succeeded, it would have been necessary to recapture the heights occupied by German artillery, which was considered almost impossible in view of the experience gained in the battles of 1915.
In the first phase, after eight hours of barrage from 1500 gun barrels, eight German divisions of the 5th Army attacked over a width of 13 kilometers at Ornes (now a deserted village) to the north of Verdun. Contrary to German expectations, the French put up fierce resistance, and terrain gains were initially almost nonexistent. On February 25, Fort Douaumont was captured by German troops, which had little tactical significance due to the eastern orientation of this fortress. On the occasion of the loss of the fort, the French decided that the fortress of Verdun should be held at all costs. General Pétain was charged with the defense of the city. The only road connecting Bar-le-Duc to Verdun (stylized as the "Voie Sacrée") was used to build up the so-called Noria - supplies were brought in via this road at great expense. The battle proceeded in four phases: The first ended on March 4, as French artillery fire from the heights west of the Meuse stalled the German advance.
In the second phase, Falkenhayn gave in to the urging of the 5th Army and ordered attacks on these heights. The height "Le Mort Homme" ("Dead Man") was taken several times, but not held for very long. Le Mort Homme and Hill 304 are considered symbols of the "Hell of Verdun" because of the brutally fought battles; Le Mort Homme lost six meters in height due to the shelling.
In a third phase, the attackers again focused on capturing Verdun itself. Early in the morning of June 7, Fort Vaux surrendered for lack of water; on June 23, 78,000 men began an attack on the Vaux-Fleury line that also stalled. Briefly, German troops managed to push beyond it in a fourth phase by July 11; fierce fighting broke out around the Ouvrage de Thiaumont (immediately southwest of Douaumont). At Fort de Souville (about five kilometers northeast of Verdun) and in front of the Ouvrage de Froideterre, the German attack finally stalled; Falkenhayn, in view of this and mindful of the Allied attack on the Somme that had begun on July 1, ordered a halt to the offensive on the afternoon of July 12.
Resignation of Tirpitz and Skagerrak Battle
At the beginning of 1916, the German leadership again discussed the question of intensified submarine warfare against Great Britain. After the elimination of Serbia, Falkenhayn thought the moment had come to take more active action against Great Britain, flanking the Verdun offensive and accepting a break with the United States. He was encouraged in this by assurances from Henning von Holtzendorff, the Admiral's Chief of Staff, that Great Britain could be brought to its knees within a year. In negotiations, the Reich Chancellor obtained a postponement of the decision by the Kaiser and a provisional compromise: intensification of submarine warfare (including the sinking of armed merchant ships without warning), but no return to unrestricted submarine warfare.
In early March, a campaign initiated by the Reichsmarineamt and carried out by sections of the press in favor of unrestricted submarine warfare ("Better war with America than starvation") began, but it seriously angered the Kaiser ("His Majesty sees in this an unheard-of procedure which in the last place exposes the person of the Kaiser as the supreme head of Reich policy and warfare before the whole people"), so that Alfred von Tirpitz had to resign from his post on March 15. The intensification of submarine warfare was reversed as early as April after the Sussex incident.
On May 31 and June 1, the Battle of Jutland (Skagerrakschlacht) took place rather unintentionally, resulting in the "largest naval battle in world history" in terms of the tonnage of the ships involved (about 1.8 million tons displacement). More than 8600 sailors died, including the writer Gorch Fock. The German High Seas Fleet escaped annihilation by the British superiority with luck and tactical skill and was able to inflict significantly higher losses on the British than vice versa. However, this did not change the strategic situation and only confirmed British naval supremacy.
Brussilov Offensive and Battle of the Somme
In accordance with the agreement at the Chantilly Conference, three major Allied offensives were planned for mid-1916: The Somme attack, the Brussilov offensive, and another Isonzo battle. The attack on the Somme on July 1 was originally planned to be French-led, but because of the Battle of Verdun, it was largely taken over by the British. On the Italian front, the 6th Isonzo Battle did not begin until August 4, because, due to the German attack on Verdun, an attack (5th Isonzo Battle) had already taken place on March 11 at the request of the Allies, and the Austrians had opened the South Tyrol Offensive (until June 18) on May 15, because of which the Brussilov Offensive was brought forward and began as early as June 4.
The Brussilov Offensive, the most successful Allied large-scale attack to date, began on June 4. Alexei Brussilov, the new commander-in-chief of the Russian Southern Army since March, had drawn tactical conclusions from previous failures: the attack was launched on a broad front (400 kilometers as the crow flies), in contrast to the previous approach, so that the enemy could not concentrate troops at a predictable decisive point; the attacking infantry was protected by deep dugouts driven up to 50 meters to the enemy lines (previously, attacks over up to 1600 meters of no-man's land had been common, resulting in considerable losses). Although Brussilov's numerical superiority was not great (too small for an attack), by June 8 east of Kowel the 8th Russian Army had almost completely crushed the 4th Imperial and Royal Army. Army almost completely, the 9th Russian Army routed the 7th Imperial and Royal Army in the south between the Dniester and the Carpathians. Army and captured important cities such as Czernowitz and Kolomea. The losses for Austria-Hungary amounted to 624,000 men. Brussilov was able to advance far (up to 120 kilometers), especially near the Romanian border, which tipped the scales in Romania to enter the war on the Allied side. Logistical problems, however, prevented an even further advance; moreover, supporting attacks on the old pattern (on a narrow section of the front) in the area of the Pripyets Marshes and at Baranavichy failed, as did the attempt to capture the Kovel transport hub. "Nevertheless, the Brussilov offensive - by the standards of World War I, in which every meter of ground was fought for - was the greatest victory won by the Allies on any front since the war of position had begun on the Aisne."
The BEF, under the command of Douglas Haig, took the lead in the attack on the Somme, since the Battle of Verdun had reduced the French contingent from 40 to 11 divisions. After eight days of uninterrupted artillery preparation by over 1500 guns, during which about one and a half million shells were fired, the attack on the German positions on the Somme began on July 1, 1916. Despite the heavy gunfire, many German dugouts had remained intact, allowing German soldiers to counter the British attack with machine gun fire. On the first day of the Battle of the Somme alone, 19,240 British soldiers died, 8,000 of them in the first half hour. Despite the enormous losses, Haig allowed the offensive to continue. On September 15, the British used tanks for the first time in the history of the war. The fighting continued until November 25, and the Allies were able to push in the German front by 8 to 10 kilometers at the focal point of the attack front, which was about 30 kilometers wide (as the crow flies). British and French casualties for this modest terrain gain were 624,000 men; on the German side, losses were 420,000 men. The figures for German casualties are disputed; British authors extrapolate the number of lightly wounded - allegedly not recorded equally by the German medical report (loss figure there: 335,688) as in the corresponding Allied reports - and arrive at German losses of up to 650,000 men. In any case, the Battle of the Somme was the single most costly battle of the First World War. July 1, as the start of the battle, still has some significance in Britain today as a day of remembrance. The British historian John Keegan still summed up in 1998: "For the British, the Battle of the Somme meant their greatest military tragedy in the 20th century, indeed in their history at all [...]. For Britain, the Somme marked the end of an era of life-giving optimism to which it has never returned." The revelation of the extent of the Somme losses in late 1916 was instrumental in the change in British government leadership in December from Herbert Henry Asquith to David Lloyd George.
South Tyrol Offensive and Isonzo Battles
From May to June, the Austro-Hungarian Army conducted an offensive in South Tyrol against the Italian positions, which, after minor initial successes, had to be broken off due to the situation on the Eastern Front (Brussilov Offensive). The Italian army undertook several major attacks on the Isonzo River from March to November (5th, 6th, 7th 8th and 9th Isonzo Battles). In the process, the Italians captured the town of Gorizia and the plateau of Doberdò, but further successes of the Italian army failed to materialize. On August 28, 1916, Italy also declared war on the German Empire. Already from May to November 1915, a reinforced German division (Alpine Corps) had been moved to the front in South Tyrol to support the Austro-Hungarian ally, as the OHL considered South Germany endangered. During the mountain warfare in the Southern Alps, dozens of avalanches killed a total of several thousand Italian and Austro-Hungarian soldiers on December 13, 1916. The avalanche disaster of December 13, 1916 is considered one of the worst weather-related disasters in Europe.
Romania's entry into the war
On August 27, 1916, Romania declared war on Austria-Hungary and had in fact opened the Romanian theater of war a few days earlier. Romania had joined the Triple Alliance in 1883, but at the beginning of the war, Romania remained neutral in a literal interpretation of the treaty of alliance. Domestically, Romania was initially divided; the liberals under Prime Minister Ion Brătianu favored rapprochement with the Entente, while the majority of conservatives favored neutrality. Among the few politicians who advocated entering the war on the side of the Central Powers was King Charles I. Russia had already assured Romania of support for its territorial claims in Transylvania in an agreement of October 1, 1914. Since Romania had received southern Dobruja, inhabited by a majority of Bulgarians and Turks, in the Peace of Bucharest after the Second Balkan War, Bulgarian entry into the war on the side of the Central Powers was another factor moving Romania toward the Entente. Moreover, the "Great Romanian Unification" in the form of the inclusion of the territories of Transylvania, Banat and Bukovina, which belonged to Austria, could only be achieved in the case of a wartime alliance against Vienna. The Entente also made corresponding territorial advances (without wanting to fulfill them completely), so that Romania joined the Entente by treaty on August 17, 1916, also in view of the successes of the Brussilov offensive (see also War aims). Initially, the numerically vastly superior but poorly equipped Romanian army was able to make an extensive incursion into Hungary in Transylvania. The 9th German Army, under the command of former OHL chief Falkenhayn, defeated the Romanians at the Battle of Sibiu (September 26-29). In a large-scale house-to-house battle - rather uncharacteristic of World War I - Kronstadt was recaptured by October 8. The Central Powers set up a classic pincer movement: On November 23, Bulgarian, Turkish and German troops ("Danube Army") crossed the Danube from the southwest. Bucharest, bombed several times by airships and battle planes, was captured on December 6. Romania's entry into the war brought advantages to the Central Powers, as they were able to take over the Ploiești oil fields and large agricultural capacities during 1916, which at first noticeably alleviated supply shortages in Germany. With Russian help, the Romanians were able to hold only the northeast of their country, and King Ferdinand moved the government to Iași.
Dismissal of Falkenhayn and 3rd OHL
During the severe crisis into which German warfare was plunged by the Entente's all-front war in the summer of 1916, Kaiser Wilhelm was increasingly pressed to finally part company with Chief of Staff General Erich von Falkenhayn. Romania's entry into the war on August 27 provided the occasion. The new leadership (as of 29 August) with Paul von Hindenburg and his chief of staff Erich Ludendorff, also known as the 3rd OHL, called off offensive actions against Verdun and immediately initiated measures to increase economic mobilization; thus, on 31 August, corresponding demands, later known as the Hindenburg Program, were presented to the Prussian War Ministry. The appointment of the 3rd OHL, however, also meant a political turning point that led to a de facto military dictatorship: "With the appointment of the military duo Hindenburg/Ludendorff, whose nimbus made them virtually irremovable, the monarch not only moved further into the background than before in the war, but also fell into the political maelstrom of the OHL. [...] The indispensable general duo [...] was [...] ready to intervene in politics far beyond military competencies, to put the emperor under pressure and even to exert decisive influence on the selection of personnel - the center of imperial power."
French counterattack at Verdun and replacement of Joffre
In the fall, the French army went on a counteroffensive at Verdun. On October 24, French troops captured Forts Douaumont and Thiaumont. Further French offensives forced the Germans to evacuate Fort Vaux on December 2. The fort was blown up by German sappers after it was cleared. By December 16, the French had recaptured almost all the territory the Germans had taken in their spring offensive.
The battle of Verdun resulted in 337,000 German casualties (including 143,000 dead) and 377,000 French casualties (162,000 dead). At least 36 million shells had fallen on the battlefield, which was about 30 kilometers wide and 10 kilometers deep.
As the French commander-in-chief Joseph Joffre was blamed for misjudging the German intention to attack at Verdun as well as for the equally bloody and useless offensives in Champagne and on the Somme, he came under increasing criticism. On December 3, he was replaced by General Robert Nivelle (1856-1924), who had led the successful counteroffensive at Verdun and thus recommended himself for leadership of the Allied spring offensive planned for the following year. Nivelle was thus initially preferred to Philippe Pétain, the successful defender and "hero of Verdun," who was considered too defensive.
Regency Kingdom of Poland and Peace Initiative of the Central Powers
On November 5, the part of Poland that had been Russian until 1915 was proclaimed an independent kingdom by the Central Powers. However, expectations of significant military support from Poland were not fulfilled; only a small national Polish volunteer contingent - led by JózefPiłsudski until July - fought on the side of the Central Powers. This contingent was declared the Polish Wehrmacht. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers of Polish nationality also served as respective "subjects" in the German, Austro-Hungarian and in the Russian armed forces, without forming separate national units.
After the capture of Bucharest, the Central Powers made a peace offer to the Allies on December 12, which the latter rejected on December 30.
War year 1917
Intensification of submarine warfare and entry of the United States into the war.
On January 8 and 9, 1917, after much urging (since January 1916, ultimately since December 1916), the Supreme Army Command obtained the Kaiser's consent to resume unrestricted submarine warfare on February 1. The preceding peace offer by the Central Powers (see above) and its expected rejection also served to prepare this step in terms of domestic and foreign policy. But it was the Allies' reply note to Woodrow Wilson's unexpected offer of mediation (dated December 18, 1916), which became known on January 12, that brought about a far-reaching domestic political closing of ranks. In it, Wilson had requested, among other things, disclosure of the respective war aims. The editor-in-chief of the Berliner Tageblatt, Theodor Wolff, who was otherwise quite critical of the government, noted on January 12 and 13: "The Entente's reply note to Wilson has been published. It announces the Entente's war aims. Separation of the formerly conquered provinces and territories from Germany, complete dissolution of Austria-Hungary according to the principle of nationality, expulsion of Turkey from Europe, etc. enormous effect. Deep rapture among the All-Germans and similar elements. No one can still claim that the Entente does not want a war of annihilation and is prepared to negotiate. As a result of the Entente response, the Kaiser appealed to the people. Everything is now in preparation for unrestricted submarine warfare." The Central Powers rejected Wilson's mediation proposal and at the same time notified the United States on January 31 of the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare. On February 3, the U.S. responded by breaking off diplomatic relations with Germany.
On April 6, 1917, the U.S. declared war on the German Empire, after President Wilson had urged the U.S. Congress four days earlier to join the crusade of "peace-loving" democracies against the "militarily aggressive" autocracies of the world. Both houses of Congress overwhelmingly agreed. The deeper causes for this development lay initially in the view that the respective conceptions of a postwar global order were mutually exclusive and that German continental European hegemonic intentions and world political ambitions could not be reconciled with American interests. Even before the war, the United States had increasingly come to believe that the political strategy associated with the Tirpitz Plan was contrary to American interests in the long run-among them, the Monroe Doctrine. Further, the attitudes of leading American scholars and politicians in the early 20th century were characterized by deep distrust of German cultural superiority and the German idea of the state. Increasing economic ties with the Entente since the beginning of the war, reports of actual and alleged German wartime atrocities such as the Bryce Report, and ship sinkings with American casualties - notably those of the RMSLusitania - reinforced anti-German sentiment. Initially, however, the increasing armament efforts since the beginning of the war were not directed at entering the war, but at the potential war after it. As late as the November 7, 1916, presidential election campaign, Wilson placed an emphasis on maintaining American neutrality, which, after Wilson's election victory, was conducive to the German imperial leadership's decision to further escalate the conduct of the war. Crucial to the move toward war entry was the German response to Wilson's peace initiative of December 18, 1916 (see above). The confidential and immediately qualified transmission of Germany's peace terms - a de facto rejection of the mediation offer - occurred simultaneously with the announcement of the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare by the Reich. In doing so, Germany declared that ships of neutral states, including the United States, would also be sunk in a war zone defined by Germany. Wilson received this first with disbelief and then with deep disappointment. Although the majority of Wilson's advisers - especially Robert Lansing and Edward Mandell House - were now definitely pushing for war, Wilson merely broke off diplomatic relations with the empire on February 3 and wanted to wait first to see whether the imperial leadership carried out its threat. On February 24, the American government became aware of an intercepted telegram from the Secretary of State in the Foreign Office, the Zimmermann dispatch, which was published in The New York Times on March 1. In it, Germany made an offer of alliance to the government of Mexico in the event of war, signaling "ample financial support and agreement" if Mexico "recaptures territory formerly lost in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona." After this news, there could be no doubt about the American people's readiness for war; moreover, in March, German submarine attacks had once again resulted in the deaths of American citizens. After the declaration of war on Germany, the declaration of war on Austria-Hungary followed in December 1917.
Hunger winter in Germany
→ Main article: Turnip winter
In the winter of 1916/17, several developments came together to produce the so-called turnip winter, including a particularly poor harvest due to the weather. The distorted price structure (see above) meant that it was more profitable for producers to use potatoes and bread grain as animal feed or to sell them to distilleries. In February, the average daily ration dropped to 1,000 kilocalories per day (average requirement: 2,410 kilocalories), and food supply difficulties escalated. At the same time, the turnip winter caused a deep cut in the collective perception of social solidarity (producers versus consumers) and the state's capabilities regarding food supply.
Revolution in Russia
The demands of the first "industrial" war increasingly exceeded the forces of the Russian Empire, which was largely dominated by an agricultural economy, and led to an escalation of the already serious social problems. In addition, the naval blockade of the Baltic Sea and the Dardanelles played a significant role in Russia's exhaustion in the course of the war: Before the war, 70 percent of imports to the tsarist empire went through the Baltic Sea, while the remaining 30 percent went predominantly through the Black Sea. Against the backdrop of the war burdens, increasing inflation and, above all, due to the severe food shortage, primarily workers' and soldiers' wives and, for the first time, peasants' wives, organized a women's protest on 23 Februaryjul./8 Marchgreg. (hence the later date of International Women's Day) in Petrograd, which spread to the Petrograd garrison troops as early as Feb. 26-March 11 and became the February Revolution. As in 1905, workers' committees formed councils (soviets) that represented the demonstrators' demands and tried to enforce them politically. The councils were headed by an executive committee, initially composed of a majority of Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries. On March 1/Jul 14, the Petrograd Soviet issued Order No. 1, according to which only orders of the government that did not contradict those of the Soviet were to be obeyed - which the Soviet was able to enforce. In parallel, the bourgeois parties represented in the Duma formed a provisional government under Prime Minister Georgy Lvov and were able to persuade the tsar to abdicate (March 3-Jul. / March 16-Greg. ). This led to a state of limbo, known as "dual rule," between the provisional government and the Soviets. To the disappointment of large sections of the Russian population, the provisional government decided to continue the war, and the Soviets as then constituted followed the government's course on this point. The Allies viewed the events in Russia in a predominantly positive light, for Russia, as an anti-democratic state, posed a problem for Allied propaganda, which always emphasized the struggle of democracy against arbitrary rule. The German leadership made it possible that on 21 Marchjul./3 Aprilgreg. Lenin and 30 other leading Bolsheviks - in stretches on a German train - to return to Russia from Swiss exile via Finland. The "Bolshevik" (majority) wing of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party, whose leaders had mostly lived in exile since the 1905 revolution, had tried to mobilize against its own government's war policy from the beginning of the war and had propagated the "transformation of the present imperialist war into civil war," but initially without much success. The imperial government, which had established contact with Lenin, who was living in Switzerland, through the intermediary Alexander Parvus, subsequently supported the revolutionaries with large amounts of money (probably several million marks) in order to destabilize the Russian state. Immediately after his return, Lenin published his April Theses on April 7-Jul. 20-aggreg. in which he stated his views on the further development of the revolution and called for an immediate end to the war, which met with great approval among the war-weary population. The publication of the Milyukov Note (continuation of the war, no special peace) on, of all days, the "workers' movement's day of struggle" (April 18-July 1) further inflamed the already heated mood of the demonstrating masses and triggered the "April Crisis," which led to a government reshuffle with the participation of the moderate left-wing parties represented in the soviets.
Alexander Kerensky - Minister of War in the first coalition government formed on May 6/July 19 and at the same time Deputy Chairman of the Workers' and Soldiers' Soviet - in accordance with his concept of "peace without defeat" pushed through the implementation of a Kerensky offensive, later named after him, with the objectives of Brzezany, Lviv and Vilnius. The attack began on June 29 with artillery fire of unprecedented intensity on the Eastern Front, its main focus was in the Stanislau area, beyond which the Russian army advanced to Kalusz (July 11), only to become bogged down. The attack also failed on the other sections of the front. As a result, there were mass desertions and disintegrations of the Russian army, and Kerensky stopped the offensive on July 25. In the counterattack, the Central Powers advanced as far as Tarnopol and Chernivtsi (August 3), which was accompanied by the recapture of eastern Galicia and Bukovina. In Russia itself, there was an attempted coup by the Bolsheviks in early July, which was put down by the military. Lenin then fled to Finland. In September, German troops captured the city of Riga and in October, in the Albion enterprise, the Baltic islands of Ösel, Dagö and Moon, whereupon the military resistance of the Russian army almost collapsed.
When General Kornilov attempted a coup at the end of September, Kerensky had to resort to the Bolsheviks to defend the revolution, which was accompanied by de facto and legal rehabilitation. In early November, the situation in Russia escalated. The October Revolution of 24 Oct. Jul. / 6 Nov. aggreg. to 25 Oct. Jul. / 7 Nov. aggreg. led by Lenin, who had returned from Finland in the meantime, overthrew the provisional government and the Bolsheviks took power. As early as 26 Oct. Jul. / 8 Nov. aggreg., the decree on peace was issued by the new Russian rulers, which brought about a strong military relief for the Central Powers on their Eastern front.
On December 5, a ten-day armistice, later extended several times, was agreed between the Central Powers and Russia, and on December 22, the initially inconclusive peace negotiations opened in Brest-Litovsk, ending on March 3, 1918, with the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty (see below).
Germany on the defensive on the Western Front
In March, German troops standing in the central section of the Western Front on the Somme withdrew to the heavily expanded Siegfried position in Unternehmen Alberich. The actual movement was carried out within three days, from March 16 to 19. This retreat and the intensification of the naval war were consequences of the major battles of 1916 at Verdun and on the Somme; German troops were battered. The initiative came from the army group "Kronprinz Rupprecht", which prevailed against Ludendorff's resistance. The construction of the Siegfriedstellung was probably the largest building project of the First World War; the work was mainly done by prisoners of war and forced laborers. As instructed, German troops systematically devastated the area to be released ("scorched earth") before the tactical retreat, partially mined it (also with booby traps) and deported its inhabitants. Villages such as Bapaume were blown up, and a total of 150,000 people were deported, including all 40,000 inhabitants of Saint-Quentin. Militarily, the operation was a success, improving the situation of the German troops by shortening the front and retreating to the well-established Siegfried position; the attack plans of the surprised Allies for the spring of 1917 initially came to nothing. The effect on public opinion abroad, on the other hand, was similarly devastating as the operation "completely shattered civilian life in the affected area and turned a historic landscape into a desert."
In the second conference in Chantilly (location of the French headquarters), the Allies had again agreed on a combined offensive in November 1916. Robert Nivelle, designated joint commander-in-chief for this offensive, chose the northern French town of Arras as the starting point for an attack (Battle of Arras) by the British Army (including Canadian and New Zealand units) that began on April 9. The main attack by the French army followed a little later on the Aisne (Battle of the Aisne) and in Champagne. After the failure at the Somme, the Allies returned to the tactical concept of 1915: the still large German frontal arc between Lille in the north and Verdun in the south was to be cut off by pressing both flanks. The main French objective was the capture of the Chemin des Dames. The attack at Arras surprised the German troops under General Ludwig von Falkenhausen, who was subsequently relieved. The extent of the impending attack had remained hidden from German reconnaissance, not least because of 24,000 soldiers hidden in the "tunnel city" of Arras. Apart from that, the material input was much higher than at the Somme the previous year. The Canadians succeeded in capturing a strategically important ridge near Vimy, but the advance stalled thereafter. The French attack 130 kilometers further south was a failure despite gains in terrain; the Chemin des Dames as an operational objective could not be taken. Both offensives had to be abandoned as early as May after heavy losses. Following a flexible defense strategy developed by Fritz von Lossberg ("defense in depth"), the German army had switched to staggering its defenses deeper and more complex. The tanks deployed by the British and the French (170 in all) were not yet able to ignite a major impact due to technical problems and insufficient numbers. Poison gas was used by both sides, with the gas grenade increasingly replacing the blast method with these two battles.
The failed offensive at the Chemin des Dames (Battle of the Aisne) was the cause of mutinies in 68 divisions of the French Army, totaling about 40,000 men (out of 2 million). Five divisions were seriously affected; these were located directly to the south of the attack zone of the Chemin des Dames offensive, between Soissons and Reims. The Russian Expeditionary Corps, also deployed there, experienced similar problems. In view of the initial British successes at Arras, the high expectations there had been particularly disappointed. As a rule, the mutinies did not begin with the troops in the front line, but with those in the lull in fighting on the occasion of the order to return to the front. The specific demands were for more furlough, better food, improved conditions for soldiers' families, an end to "slaughter" (protest against the methods of warfare), and, in isolated cases, "peace" in general and an end to "injustice" (meant primarily in the sense of military justice). "Quite overwhelmingly, the mutinous soldiers had not questioned the war itself, but only protested against being uselessly slaughtered." On April 29, French Commander-in-Chief Nivelle was replaced by General Pétain, who had organized the defense of Verdun. By switching to a defensive posture, Pétain was able to contain the unrest in the French army; Pétain introduced a new method of fighting that resembled the German "defense in depth." Apart from two limited, successful operations at Verdun in August and on the Aisne in October (where the Germans were pushed back behind the Ailette), the French army undertook no more offensives between June 1917 and July 1918. In addition, Pétain provided improvements in terms of rations and rest periods for the troops. About 10 percent of the mutineers were tried, 3427 soldiers were sentenced, and the courts-martial handed down 554 death sentences, 49 of which were carried out. During the peak of the mutiny between May and June, the German troops were content to accept the passivity of the enemy, since they did not see through its causes and were tied up on other fronts.
In the Battle of Messines (May 21-June 7), the British succeeded in capturing a strategically important ridge south of Ypres. Miners from Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand had spent a year and a half of work placing 21 large mines under the German positions, the detonation of which initiated the "most effective" non-nuclear explosion in the history of the war (10,000 dead, 6,400 stunned). The capture of the ridge secured the right flank and enabled a major Allied offensive under British leadership, the Third Battle of Flanders (July 31-November 6). Targets of a hoped-for breakthrough included the German submarine bases at Ostend and Zeebrugge. The attack stalled after some success at Langemark-Poelkapelle on October 9; moreover, the main thrust against the strategically important Geluveld plateau failed, leaving Allied troops exposed to constant flanking fire. After the capture of the ruins of Passchendaele by Canadian troops on November 6, the fighting subsided - the Allies were able to push the German front back only 8 kilometers even here, and thus on the most successful section. Casualties on both sides amounted to about 585,000 soldiers.
The Battle of Cambrai (Nov. 20-Dec. 6) saw the first operational use of closed tank formations, a "landmark in the history of warfare." Some 320 operational tanks of the Royal Tank Regiment - supported by 400 aircraft and six infantry and three cavalry divisions - penetrated the Siegfried position on a 15-kilometer-wide front in the Havrincourt area after brief artillery preparation and advanced about seven kilometers. The new attack procedure was surprising, since the usual days of artillery preparation were expected in case of attack intentions due to the deeply divided positions. However, the breakthrough to the Cambrai rail junction was unsuccessful, and a good third of the attacking tanks were destroyed; in a counteroffensive launched on November 30, German troops managed to recapture most of the lost ground. This defensive success reinforced the German army command's misjudgment that the buildup of its own tank force was not a priority.
The secondary fronts
The British renewed their offensive toward Baghdad on the Mesopotamian front at the beginning of the year, reaching Kut al-Amara on February 24 and surprisingly taking Baghdad before the rainy season began on March 11, the Turks were forced to retreat to Mosul. The fall of Baghdad was a serious blow for Turkey and the Central Powers, as it called into question all plans in the Orient - including those connected with the Baghdad Railway. Therefore, the former Chief of General Staff Falkenhayn was assigned to prepare the reconquest of Baghdad together with Enver Pasha under the code name "Jilderim" (Lightning).
On June 29, 1917, the Kingdom of Greece entered the war on the side of the Allies, after Greek volunteer units had already fought on their side on the Saloniki front. Since the landing of Allied troops in Greece at the end of 1915, a "national schism" had developed, in which the provisional counter-government of Eleftherios Venizelos, turned toward the Entente, finally prevailed against the ruling "Germanophile camp" around Constantine I thanks to increasing British-French interventions. After the occupation of almost all strategically important parts of the country, including Athens, by the Allies and an ultimatum from the French commissar-in-chief Jonnart, Constantine abdicated in June 1917 and went into exile. Venizelos, in turn, returned to Athens from Salonika, summoned the parliament elected in 1915, and formed a government that promptly declared war on the Central Powers. The new king became Alexander I.
In the 11th Battle of the Isonzo (August 17-September 12), Austria-Hungary narrowly escaped a heavy defeat. Since Emperor Charles I feared that he would not be able to withstand the next Italian attack, he and the Austrian high command requested German support, which was provided in the form of the 14th Army (including the German Alpine Corps) newly raised for this operation. The expected Italian attack was pre-empted with an offensive of their own, and in the Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo (also known as the "Battle of Carfreit", Italian "Battaglia di Caporetto", 24-27 October/11 November), the Central Powers achieved a surprising breakthrough, advancing 130 kilometers in eleven days, occupying Udine, the first major Italian city, and standing 30 kilometers from Venice. The Italians lost more than 305,000 men (Central Powers: 70,000), including 265,000 prisoners of war. The success was based mainly on the "Stoßtruppverfahren" (rapid advance of assault battalions along a narrow corridor without special attention to flank protection) developed from the experience of the first years of the war and used for the first time on a large scale in the battle for Riga. The front was stabilized with difficulty at Piave and Monte Grappa. The Allies sent five British and six French divisions in support. However, the rudimentary revolutionary situation in Italy (strikes, mass desertion) subsided as a result of the disaster, because: "The war of aggression became a war of defense". In response to this defeat, the Allied Supreme War Council was formed on November 7 at the Rapallo Conference, and the Italian Chief of the General Staff, Luigi Cadorna, was replaced by Armando Diaz.
The last major offensive of the war year 1917 was also the last major cavalry attack in military history: On October 31, 1917, the Australian 4th Light Horse Brigade with 12,000 cavalrymen and the British 5th Mounted Brigade under the command of General Edmund Allenby attacked Be'er Sheva, which was held by Ottoman and German troops, and succeeded in capturing it. Falkenhayn then moved into his headquarters in Jerusalem on November 5, intending to defend the city at all costs. However, the OHL ordered the evacuation so as not to further damage the reputation of the Central Powers in the eyes of the world in the event that the holy sites were destroyed. The battle for Jerusalem with the support of insurgent Arabs (T. E. Lawrence) thus ended for the time being on December 9 with the capture of Jerusalem by British troops without a fight.
Politics and peace initiatives
In the Easter message of April 7, Wilhelm II held out the vague prospect of democratic reforms after the war. On April 11, the USPD was founded in Gotha as a split from the SPD; the background was the escalated disciplining of party leftists in the SPD to maintain the Burgfrieden policy, the Russian February Revolution and the April strikes. A week later, on April 19, the SPD (increasingly referred to as the MSPD later in the year) demanded equal citizenship rights and steps toward a parliamentary system ("parliamentarization") and declared its agreement with the Petrograd Soviets' demand of late March: peace without annexations and reparations, free national development of all peoples. Reich Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg, who had already increasingly isolated himself with his indifferent attitude to the war aims and to political reforms, was thus put in a tight spot: Since, in view of the MSPD declaration, he could now "no longer master the Social Democracy" from the OHL's point of view, Hindenburg and Ludendorff demanded of the Kaiser - initially still unsuccessfully - that the chancellor be dismissed. However, at the war aims conference in Bad Kreuznach on April 23, the chancellor, under pressure from the OHL, signed a protocol which, even in Admiral Müller's view, was a document of "complete excess" with regard to the annexation goals.
From June 2 to June 19, the Stockholm Conference of the Second International took place, but it was as ineffective as various soundings for a separate peace, especially on the part of the new Austro-Hungarian Emperor Charles I. Attempts at peace with Russia in the spring initially failed because of the unacceptable German demands.
On July 6, the Reichstag speech of Matthias Erzberger (German Center Party) caused a "sensation in all political circles": The conservative politician, originally an advocate of a "victorious peace," proved the military wrong about the effectiveness of submarine warfare and advocated a "peace of understanding." Germany would have to renounce annexations. On the same day, leading deputies from the MSPD, the Center and the liberal Progressive Party also agreed on the Inter-Factional Committee as a coordinating body for the majority factions, which was seen as the prelude to the parliamentarization of Germany and was accordingly interpreted contemporarily by conservatives as the "beginning of the revolution." As a result of Erzberger's speech, Hindenburg and Ludendorff approached the emperor on July 7 and demanded the chancellor's replacement, which the emperor again refused. The chancellor obtained from the emperor on July 10 a promise of equal suffrage in Prussia after the war (as opposed to three-class suffrage), which became public knowledge on July 12. That same evening, Hindenburg and Ludendorff threatened to resign if the chancellor was not recalled, causing the emperor to back down. On the morning of July 13, Bethmann Hollweg, who had been informed of this, submitted his resignation, and the largely unknown Georg Michaelis was appointed as his successor.
On July 19, 1917, the majority of the Reichstag approved the very general peace resolution submitted by Erzberger, which accordingly remained inconsequential. Domestically, however, the Reichstag's peace resolution had an impact, among other things, insofar as the annexationist, völkisch-nationalist Deutsche Vaterlandspartei (German Fatherland Party) was founded as a backlash on September 2. Pope Benedict XV's peace note Dès le début to the leaders of the belligerent countries on August 1 also remained inconsequential. Here the Pope proposed, among other things, peace without annexations and reparations, free sea routes and a settlement of the disputed issues with the help of international law. This initiative, combined with humanitarian activities (e.g., initiating an exchange of wounded and a missing persons search service) and a repeated condemnation of the war ("useless bloodshed"), is considered the prelude to the Holy See's modern foreign policy.
Since Chancellor Michaelis evidently saw himself largely as an agent of the OHL, the majority of the Reichstag had been pressing for his dismissal since the end of October and succeeded in doing so, succeeding Georg von Hertling on November 1.
Negotiations between Russia and the Central Powers on a separate peace began on December 3, and Finland proclaimed its independence from Russia on December 6.
War year 1918
Wilson's 14 points and mass strikes
President Woodrow Wilson presented his 14-point program in a programmatic speech to both houses of the U.S. Congress on January 8. Wilson claimed to want to realize liberal political principles globally; as the most important goal, Wilson proclaimed the right of peoples to self-determination. Among other things, the 14 Points called for the evacuation and restoration of Belgium, Serbia and Montenegro, as well as the evacuation and abandonment of Alsace-Lorraine, a separate Polish state, freedom of the seas, arms restrictions and "autonomous development" for the peoples of Austria-Hungary. On January 24, Germany and Austria-Hungary rejected the 14 points.
January 14 saw the start of January strikes at armaments factories in and around Wiener Neustadt; the strike front expanded and only crumbled in the face of massive military force, and work resumed on January 23. In Germany, between January 28 and February 2, there were mass protests and strike actions in Berlin and other industrial centers involving more than a million workers (January strike), which, in contrast to earlier actions, were primarily politically motivated and spoke out in favor of "general peace" and against "annexations and tributes," primarily aimed at the annexationist stance of the OHL at Brest-Litovsk. The MSPD sent Friedrich Ebert, Otto Braun, and Philipp Scheidemann to the Action Committee to "keep the movement in an orderly fashion." Similar to Austria, however, the movement could only be suppressed with military repression; on January 31, authorities in Berlin declared an intensified state of siege, arrested members of the strike leadership, and subsequently sent 50,000 participating workers to the front. As of February 3, most factories resumed work.
Peace with Russia, Spring Offensive and Turnaround of the War
In the Brest-Litovsk peace negotiations, the German side demanded in ultimate form on January 19 that Russia relinquish Poland, Lithuania, and western Latvia, whereupon Soviet negotiator Leon Trotsky obtained a pause in negotiations. In Petrograd, the government and Central Committee opted for Trotsky's proposal to delay negotiations in anticipation of the imminent uprising of the West European proletariat. On January 25, Ukraine had declared independence by decision of the non-Bolshevik Zentralna Rada, and on February 9 the Central Powers concluded a special peace ("Bread Peace") with Ukraine. In return for the generous demarcation of borders in western Ukraine, the Central Powers demanded substantial grain deliveries from the Ukrainian government; at the same time, they issued an ultimatum to Russia to accept the peace terms, whereupon Trotsky - still hoping for the imminent revolution in Germany - unilaterally announced demobilization without signing the treaty. The Central Powers therefore advanced from February 18 in Operation Fist Strike, occupying in a few weeks large parts of the western border areas in the Baltic, western Ukraine, Crimea, the industrial area on the Donets River, and Belarus. Without re-entering negotiations, the Soviet delegation had to accept the considerably tightened German conditions, and the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty was signed on March 3. In it, the Central Powers undertook to vacate the occupied territories with the exception of Livonia, but Russia had to renounce territorial claims in Poland, Lithuania and Courland, as well as territory in the Caucasus claimed by Turkey. In connection with the treaty, Germany agreed in March to an independent Lithuania closely tied to Germany (declaration of independence on February 16). A supplementary treaty signed on August 27 stipulated Russian renunciation of Livonia and recognition of the independence of Finland and Ukraine. The German Empire had earlier (June 28) made the momentous decision not to advance to Petrograd and, despite ideological reservations, to keep Bolshevism alive because the other groups in the Russian Civil War did not accept the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty. With the treaty, Russia surrendered a third of its population and most of its raw material and industrial potential.
The relief of the Eastern Front, already foreseeable at the end of 1917, led to the decision by the German army command in Mons on November 11, 1917, to launch an offensive on the Western Front, for which various competing plans were drawn up and which was intended to turn the war around before the arrival of the Americans. Another aspect was the poor supply situation at home, which made a quick military decision seem necessary.
On January 21, 1918, Hindenburg and Ludendorff decided on a variant under the code name "Michael": an offensive in the St. Quentin area along the Somme River that would swing northwest, encompass the British Army, and force it to retreat to the Channel ports. The withdrawal of troops, mainly from Russia, increased the number of German divisions in the west from 147 to 191, facing only 178 Allied ones - for the first time since 1914, the German army had regained numerical superiority, but still not material superiority. On March 10, Hindenburg issued the attack order for March 21.
Early in the morning of March 21, 1918, the German spring offensive began. After comparatively short artillery preparation - over five hours - the German stormtroopers achieved a deep penetration of the British front with their infiltration tactics (coined by Herman Geyer). A novel, German infantry weapon - the MP18 submachine gun - contributed to the success. However, the OHL shifted the focus and direction of the attack several times in the days that followed. Most notably, Ludendorff "abandoned the strategy of a single, massive advance and opted for a three-pronged attack, none of which was strong enough to achieve a breakthrough," which earned him considerable criticism from the General Staff and weakened the offensive: "As in 1914 in the advance on Paris, the German Army reacted to events and followed the line of least resistance rather than seizing the law of the action." Added to this were logistical difficulties in the devastated Somme region. Attacks were also held up in no small part by the fact that poorly supplied German troops were looting British depots. Furthermore, the Allies' material superiority could not be permanently compensated for by the surprising shift in emphasis. It can be considered a novelty in the history of the war that for the first time on longer sections of the front, the majority of German losses were due to air raids. Under the pressure of events, the Allies agreed on Ferdinand Foch as joint commander-in-chief on April 3. Although German troops had advanced up to 60 kilometers deep on a front 80 kilometers wide (from St. Quentin to west of Montdidier), the offensive had created a large new frontal arc with heavy losses that could not be compensated for and had not achieved any strategic objectives. After a counterattack by Australian troops outside Amiens, Company Michael was halted on 5 April.
Ludendorff, who by now was openly accused of leadership errors in the General Staff, resorted to an alternative plan to the Michael Offensive: Operation Georg, an attack in Flanders along the river Leie on a front width of 30 kilometers with the objective of the Channel coast west of Ypres (Fourth Battle of Flanders). Due to Operation Michael, the action could only be carried out on a reduced scale and was accordingly renamed Georgette. After some initial successes, such as the capture of the strategically important Kemmelberg on April 25, Georgette ran aground. The offensive saw the first major tank battle in the history of the war, but the most famous event was the death of Manfred von Richthofen. More serious for the German Army, however, was the increasing refusal of attack orders among exhausted and disillusioned troops from about mid-April. The dwindling morale of its own troops was not lost on the OHL, which immediately launched a new offensive on May 27 (Battle of the Aisne or Operation Blücher-Yorck) with the heaviest artillery deployment of the war to date, nearly 6,000 guns firing two million shells in four hours. On May 29, the Germans were again on the Marne, and on June 3, just outside Villers-Cotterêts, putting Paris only 90 kilometers by road and 62 kilometers as the crow flies from the German front - shells from the Paris gun hit the French capital, and the British Cabinet discussed evacuating the British Expeditionary Army on June 5. However, the Marne Line was stabilized with the help of American troops. The OHL called off the attack on June 5-6 because of casualties, Allied counterattacks, and logistical problems. As part of the fighting, the Battle of Belleau Forest occurred with the participation of the United States Marine Corps.
As early as June 9, Ludendorff opened another attack at Matz (Operation Gneisenau), which also had to be called off on June 14 due to American-French counterattacks. Shortly thereafter, a final attack by Austro-Hungarian forces on the Italian front also ended in failure (Second Battle of Piave, June 15-22). The real turning point of the war on the Western Front was the Second Battle of the Marne: the German attack launched on July 15 with all troops still available initially made good progress, but on July 18 the French and Americans counterattacked with massive deployment of small and maneuverable tanks (Renault FT). The German troops, worn out, poorly supplied, and therefore (according to some authors) more affected by the first wave of Spanish flu than the Allies, were caught by surprise and retreated back across the Marne River, which had been crossed only three days earlier. The 7th Army's rearward communications were threatened; almost all the territory captured in May and June had to be abandoned. July 18 was regarded in contemporary official war historiography as the real "turning point of the war." The Allies won the initiative on this day, not to relinquish it again until the end of the war.
Hundred Days Offensive of the Allies
In the Battle of Amiens, which began on August 8, 1918, the German Army suffered a heavy defeat ("Black Day of the German Army"); the battle initiated the Hundred Days Offensive. Aided by heavy fog, 530 British and 70 French tanks - followed by Australian and Canadian infantry - pushed through the surprised and undermanned lines east of Villers-Bretonneux. The stricken 2nd Army was in a desolate condition ("shadow army" with a "militia-like" character) after the spring offensive. German losses amounted to about 27,000 men, including at least 12,000 prisoners, on August 8 alone, and 75,000 men, including 50,000 prisoners, at the end of the battle. Although the operational success (penetration of a maximum of 20 kilometers to Bray-sur-Somme and Chaulnes) was rather average compared to the German attacks in March, the moral effect was enormous, especially since considerable parts of the army had obviously lost the will to continue fighting.
On August 13, the OHL came to the realization that the initiative in the war could not be regained. However, at the Spa Conference on August 13-14, the OHL represented to the Kaiser and Reich Chancellor Hertling that defensive operations would paralyze the Allied will to fight and that Germany should offer peace talks only after the next success in the West. Objections from Hertling, Foreign Minister Paul von Hintze, and Kaiser Karl did not come to fruition; the OHL's view was still decisive.
By mid-September, the Allies were gradually gaining ground; on August 21, the British launched an attack at Albert; by early September, the Germans had been pushed back to the initial position of their March offensive; on September 2, the OHL reluctantly ordered a retreat to the Siegfried position. On September 12, the Americans launched their first independent offensive with the Battle of St. Mihiel, which was followed on September 26 by the large-scale Meuse-Argonne Offensive that lasted until the end of the war; on September 29, the Siegfried position was breached for the first time. Although the German troops were initially able to inflict heavy losses, especially on the inexperienced Americans, they became increasingly demoralized. Due to cumulative losses, desertion, capture and disease, the number of troops had dropped drastically, and reserves were no longer available. Added to this were poor rations-namely the lack of basic foodstuffs such as potatoes-and other supply problems. The Allies increasingly played to their material and personnel superiority, and tactical improvements in their warfare also had an effect. Although the Allies, and especially the United States, were more severely affected by the second wave of Spanish flu than Germany - the Americans lost more soldiers to it than to combat - it had a more serious impact on Germany because of the overall situation. However, the German front did not completely collapse until the armistice on November 11, which helped fuel the so-called stab-in-the-back legend after the war. In November 1918, German troops still occupied only a small part of northeastern France and a good half of Belgium as well as Luxembourg; the Allies still occupied hardly any German territory.
Collapse of the German Allies and October Reform
The final defeat of the Ottoman army occurred in the Battle of Palestine on September 19-21. More importantly, however, the resistance of the Bulgarian army collapsed in mid-September, and Bulgaria asked for an unconditional armistice on September 26; with its conclusion on September 29, Romania, as the central supplier of oil, as well as Hungary and the k. u. k. Forces in Albania and Serbia were threatened. Even earlier, on September 14, Austria-Hungary had sent a note (initially unanswered) to the Allies asking for peace. This development and the all-out attacks on the Western Front led Ludendorff to suffer a nervous breakdown at Grand Headquarters (at Spa at the time) on September 28. On the morning of September 29, the OHL presented the military situation to Foreign Minister Paul von Hintze, immediately followed by Wilhelm II. An agreement was reached for a "revolution from above" in the form of a broad national government involving all parties represented in the Reichstag; a military dictatorship, also under discussion, was to be abandoned. When Reich Chancellor Georg von Hertling - who rejected democratic reforms - arrived late at Spa, he found himself faced with a fait accompli and resigned. He was succeeded on October 3 by Max von Baden, who formed a new cabinet, to which Social Democrats were appointed for the first time in Philipp Scheidemann and Gustav Bauer. The previous day, October 2, Major von dem Bussche had explained the militarily hopeless situation to the stunned party leaders of the Reichstag. Ludendorff did not allow reservations on the part of the new Reich Chancellor and the government against an immediate offer of an armistice, so the new cabinet sent a note to President Wilson on the night of October 4-5: Wilson was asked to take in hand the establishment of peace on the basis of his 14 points and the supplementary 5 points of September 27, 1918, and to bring about an immediate armistice. Untimely, a German submarine sank the British passenger ship RMS Leinster shortly thereafter (October 10), which was immediately reflected in the American notes of October 14 and 23. Wilson demanded a guarantee of continued Allied military superiority (i.e., extensive disarmament of Germany) and parliamentary control of politics and the military as conditions for peace negotiations (but not necessarily for the armistice). Ludendorff and Hindenburg, in the face of the American notes of October 14 and 23, again took a negative position against peace negotiations, drove from headquarters to Berlin without imperial permission, and declared in an army order (October 24) that the last Wilson notes (disarmament) were unacceptable. Reich Chancellor Max von Baden was able to prove the insubordination of the OHL and insisted on a change of personnel. Ludendorff and Hindenburg had to ask Kaiser Wilhelm for their dismissal on October 26; the Kaiser accepted Ludendorff's request for dismissal, but not that of Hindenburg. The October reforms brought about a change in the system of government, and Germany was formally a parliamentary monarchy for the first time in its history from October 28 to November 9.
The situation in Austria-Hungary had deteriorated dramatically in 1918. The soldiers were undernourished, desertion, suicides and epidemics were increasing rapidly. The army was visibly disintegrating, and the armaments industry was close to collapse. Bohemia, Galicia, Hungary and Upper Austria stopped supplying food to other parts of the country where hunger was rampant. In addition, spectacular scandals and failures such as the Sixtus Affair (April 1918), the sinking of the SMS Szent István (June 10), the Second Battle of Piave (June 15-22), and Gabriele D'Annunzio's undisturbed propaganda flight over Vienna (August 9) had shaken Austria-Hungary. On August 21, at the Belluno briefing, Deputy Chief of the General Staff Alfred von Waldstätten explained the hopeless situation to the stunned generals of all armies. The first peace demonstration on September 14 was followed by another on October 4. In October 1918, the Austro-Hungarian Empire began to dissolve, and the state as a whole increasingly became a "sham". The Peoples' Manifesto of 16 October on the part of Emperor Karl could do nothing to change this, but further accelerated the dissolution. On October 6, the National Council of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs was constituted in Zagreb, and on October 25, the Hungarian National Council was formed in Budapest as part of the Aster Revolution. The day before, the Hungarian government issued an order to the soldiers in the Imperial and Royal Army to return home immediately. Army to return home immediately. At the same time, in this situation, the large-scale Allied attack began at Vittorio; on October 27, the attackers gained bridgeheads east of the Piave River. The Austro-Hungarian troops refused the order to counterattack, thus the situation had become hopeless. On October 28, a request for the armistice was issued. On the same day the Republic was proclaimed in Prague and Czechoslovakia was founded, on October 29 the state of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs. Already on October 7, the Polish Regency Council had issued a call for the establishment of a Polish state; moreover, on October 11, it assumed military command. On October 30, in response to the secession of all non-German territories, the state of German Austria was constituted. On November 1, an independent government was formed in Hungary after Hungary had denounced the Real Union with Austria on October 31; thus, the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy was dissolved. The attempt to shift responsibility for accepting the terms of the armistice to the parties in Parliament, unlike Germany, failed because of their refusal to end a war started by the emperor (as explicitly stated by Victor Adler in the Council of State). On November 3, General Weber signed the armistice of Villa Giusti with the Allies. On November 11, Charles I/IV renounced any share in the affairs of state as Emperor of Austria, and on November 13 in the same way as King of Hungary, thus ending the Habsburg monarchy.
November Revolution in Germany and Armistice
As early as September 30, one day after Ludendorff's demand for an armistice, Admiral Reinhard Scheer, the head of the naval command formed in August, had assembled the high seas fleet in the roadstead at Schillig near Wilhelmshaven without giving any reason. Fleet Command was signaled that a demand for surrender of the German fleet would have to be met. Rear Admiral Adolf von Trotha then developed a plan of attack on the Grand Fleet, which was more than twice as strong, on the basis of previous plans drawn up in the spring of 1917 and April 1918. The operational plan called for a night advance of the entire fleet into the Hoofden on 30 October. At daybreak, the Flanders coast and the Thames Estuary were to be attacked. Since the British fleet would almost certainly cut off the retreat to the German Bight, the naval leadership anticipated the great naval battle at Terschelling in the late afternoon of the second day of operations. The admirals saw a certain chance of victory, so they did not plan from the outset for a "death cruise" for 80,000 sailors, but such a voyage was accepted as the more likely option. Neither the Kaiser nor the Reich Chancellor were informed, but Ludendorff was. The motives of the fleet advance lay in questions of honor and existence of the admirals: It was believed that without a final deployment the coming reconstruction of the fleet would be endangered. Following the relevant fleet order of October 24, there were refusals of orders on some of the largest ships on October 27. Admiral Franz von Hipper on Oct. 29 countermanded the order to sail and ordered the fleet squadrons to their respective locations. The particularly unruly III Fleet Squadron arrived in Kiel on November 1, where 47 sailors considered to be major ringleaders were taken into custody. The Kiel sailors' uprising developed out of protests against this measure, during which seven demonstrating workers and soldiers were shot on November 3. The MSPD, whose leadership found the October reforms sufficient and rejected the revolution, was unable to stop its further development. The November Revolution gripped city after city in rapid succession. Workers' and soldiers' councils formed all over the Reich, taking power in Hamburg as early as November 6 and in Munich on November 7. Kaiser Wilhelm, who had been at Grand Headquarters in Spa, Belgium, since October 29, first faced official demands for his abdication on November 1 as a result of a note from U.S. President Wilson. After questioning 39 commanders on the Western Front, he received the answer on November 9 that the troops would overwhelmingly refuse to obey orders if deployed against the Revolution.
On November 7, the MSPD made an ultimate demand to the Reich Chancellor to persuade the emperor to abdicate, otherwise it would leave the government. The MSPD feared that otherwise it would no longer be able to stop the revolution. Since, despite a vague promise from the emperor, the concrete abdication did not follow, on November 9 Berlin's large businesses went on general strike, large crowds with red flags paraded through the streets of Berlin, which were hoisted on many public buildings - such as the Brandenburg Gate. The MSPD resigned from the government at 9 a.m., and Reich Chancellor Max von Baden announced on his own authority that the emperor had abdicated and that the crown prince had abdicated the throne, handing over his office to Friedrich Ebert. At 2 p.m. Philipp Scheidemann - without consulting Friedrich Ebert, who was very angry about this - proclaimed the German Republic. Karl Liebknecht of the Spartacus League proclaimed the free socialist republic of Germany at 4 p.m. Under pressure from the grassroots, the hitherto hostile Social Democratic parties MSPD and USPD constituted a joint Council of People's Deputies on November 10; Liebknecht's call for a front against the MSPD met with practically nothing but protests. Wilhelm II, fearing the fate of the tsar's family, fled the same day from Spa to the Netherlands, where he did not formally renounce the crown of Prussia and the German imperial crown "for all future" until November 28. Wilhelm II left the country without words of thanks to the people and troops who had fought in his name, nor did he commemorate the fallen. Even many supporters from the conservative milieu felt that going into exile without first abdicating was desertion. In the Ebert-Groener Pact, Ebert and General Wilhelm Groener agreed on joint action against vaguely defined "Bolshevik" groups, which was to have far-reaching effects on the Weimar Republic.
From October 29 to November 4, a conference of the Allied war coalition was held in Paris to discuss armistice terms. The German combination of peace offer and armistice request was interpreted as an admission of defeat. For this reason, too, the American representative Edward Mandell House could no longer fully commit the prime ministers Georges Clemenceau and David Lloyd George to the 14-point program, so that in the so-called Lansing Note of November 5 two serious tightenings were formulated: freedom of the seas (thus also the lifting of the blockade) would be settled only in later negotiations, and the "restoration of the occupied territories" included the demand for comprehensive reparations. The reply arrived in Berlin on November 6, where, in view of the spreading November Revolution and due to pressure from the OHL, it was already being considered to send a delegation with a white flag across the front line even without a reply. Originally, General Erich von Gündell was intended to be the first plenipotentiary of the armistice commission, but in Spa, Secretary of State Matthias Erzberger (German Center Party) and Paul von Hintze agreed at short notice that Erzberger would take over the leadership, for which Erzberger had been given blank power of attorney while still in Berlin as a precaution. The momentous idea, first formulated at the cabinet meeting of November 2, of assigning a civilian secretary of state (de facto: minister) to the armistice commission in the first place, came from Erzberger himself. The four-member delegation, consisting of Erzberger, General Detlof von Winterfeldt, Captain at Sea Ernst Vanselow and the diplomat Alfred von Oberndorff, crossed the border on the present-day commune of La Flamengrie on November 7 at what is now the Monument de la Pierre. November at what is now the Monument de la Pierre d'Haudroy, and arrived in the early morning of November 8 at the clearing of Rethondes in the forest of Compiègne, where Marshal Ferdinand Foch had the terms of the armistice read out in the "Compiègne Carriage", which were considered very harsh. On the evening of November 8, Hindenburg expressly urged the German delegation in two dispatches - some of them uncoded - to accept the terms even if no improvements were possible. In the negotiations that followed, only minor relief was achieved. On the morning of November 11, between 5:12 a.m. and 5:20 a.m. French time, both delegations signed the Compiègne Armistice. This provided, among other things, for the evacuation of the areas occupied by the German army within 14 days and of the left bank of the Rhine and three bridgeheads in Mainz, Coblence and Cologne within 25 days. The peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk and the peace of Bucharest had to be rescinded, and large quantities of transport, weapons, and considerable parts of the fleet had to be surrendered in order to practically prevent the Reich from continuing the war. The armistice came into effect at 11 a.m. French time (12 p.m. German time) and was initially limited to 36 days, but effectively ended the war.
