The shape of the future world after August 1914
would now be decided by force. At the outset of
the war all the major nations launched offensives
to knock out the enemy quickly, and every one
of these offensives had failed by the autumn of
1914 with great loss of life. War ended four years
later not by defeat of the armies in the field alone,
as in the wars of the nineteenth century, but with
the breakdown of the political and economic
structure of the defeated, their societies weakened
or shattered.
On the eastern war-front in August 1914 the
two Russian armies assigned to invade East Prussia
were badly led. Fulfilling their undertaking to the
French, the Russian armies, superior in numbers,
invaded East Prussia. After some initial Russian
success General von Hindenburg was called from
retirement to take command of the German
defence and he selected General Ludendorff as his
chief of staff. The myth of Hindenburg the heroic
war leader was born. At the battle of Tannenberg
on 28 and 29 August one Russian army was practically
destroyed; the other was mauled in a subsequent
engagement – the battle of the Masurian
Lakes – but was able to withdraw to Russia in
good order. Tannenberg is celebrated by the
Germans in the tradition of the ancient Teutonic
knights defeating hordes of Slavs. What followed
was as important as the battle itself and is less
heroically Wagnerian. The pursuing German army
of the second Russian army was, in its turn,
thrown back by the Russians. The end result of the
year’s fighting was heavy casualties on both sides
and neither a German nor a Russian decisive victory
but a stalemate.
Farther south, the Russians more than balanced
their defeat in Prussia by proving their military
superiority over the Habsburg armies.
Austria-Hungary had launched an offensive into
Polish Russia and in September suffered a crushing
defeat; almost half (400,000) of the Austro-
Hungarian army was lost and the Russians
occupied Galicia. Russia also suffered heavy casualties,
a quarter of a million men. The ‘forgotten’
war in the east for three long years from 1915 to
1917 sapped Germany’s military strength by
forcing a division of Germany’s armies between
the two major fronts, east and west. German
victory in the east came too late to save it.
Another military campaign which is forgotten,
though it cost France 300,000 casualties, was the
1914 French offensive into Lorraine. The French
initiative came to be overshadowed by the German
breakthrough in north-west France. In accordance
with the (modified) Schlieffen Plan the German
armies attacked Belgium and were pouring into
France in a great enveloping move. At the frontier
the French armies were beaten and the small
British army, right in the path of the Germans,
withdrew from Mons having suffered heavy casualties.
The French commander-in-chief, General
Joffre, did not lose his nerve despite these almost
overwhelming reverses. The French armies withdrew
in good order and escaped encirclement.
As the Germans rapidly advanced, their offensive
ran out of steam. General Gallieni, appointed
to defend Paris, now conceived of a counterstroke.
The Germans had wheeled in before Paris.
Joffre and Gallieni halted the retreat and counterattacked.
The outcome was the battle of the
Marne, won by the French during the period 6
to 13 September. Now it was the Germans’ turn
to withdraw; they halted 100 kilometres from
Paris having established a firm defence. The
battles spread and raged to the west, all the way
to Flanders, in a ‘race to the sea’ as the armies
attempted to outflank each other. The British,
French and Germans suffered heavy casualties in
these epic struggles around Ypres. By the end of
November 1914, the machine gun, the trenches
and barbed wire finally proved the strength of the
defensive. The western front was now deadlocked.
The French had already suffered heavy
casualties in the fighting in north-west France,
with 380,000 killed and 600,000 wounded. This
was matched by casualties on the German side.
Yet it was only the beginning. The war in the west
would from now on be won not by superior strategy,
nor by movement and rapid encirclement,
but by the slow process of attrition. The Great
War had turned into the first ‘industrial war’ to
be won as decisively on the home front producing
ever vaster quantities of guns and munitions,
as in the field.
In Britain the Liberal government of Asquith at
first preserved most civic freedoms. There was no
conscription. Two million men volunteered in
response to Kitchener’s appeal for a New Army.
But soon there were doubts whether the war could
be won by peacetime-style government. In the
spring of 1915 the government was being blamed
for a shortage of munitions. Asquith strengthened
the government by bringing in the Conservatives;
Labour, too, was found a place. A small War
Committee took over a tighter direction. Lloyd
George, the new minister of munitions, built up a
network of control over raw materials and manufacturing
industry. War supplies improved and
national economic planning was seen to work,
which after the war boosted the claims of the
socialists. The war could not be fought in the traditions
of previous victorious struggles. That
became clear when conscription for military service
was introduced early in 1916. Even so 1916
did not bring the expected victory. The politicians
sought a new leader to direct the war with
more ruthless purpose and energy. In December
1916 the fiery and charismatic Welshman, Lloyd
George, replaced Asquith and headed a coalition
government for the remainder of the war.
During the years of the war the individual lost
many rights as hope of a quick victory vanished. In
accepting state direction, organised labour cooperated
with the national government, and a political
‘truce’ was proclaimed in Britain as in other
belligerent countries. Due in no small measure to
Lloyd George’s skill, the dominant style was that
of cooperation rather than coercion, of preserving
constitutional parliamentary government rather
than resorting to authoritarian rule.
In France President Poincaré called for a ‘sacred
union’ in defence of the fatherland. Patriotism for
the anti-clerical republic was sanctified. Political
and social issues which had rent the republic before
were now subordinated in face of the common
enemy invading France for a second time.
Symbolically the veteran socialist leader, Jean
Jaurès, who had so fervently denounced militarism
and had worked for Franco-German reconciliation,
was assassinated by a nationalist fanatic on the
very eve of the war. He, too, would have joined
with his fellow socialists in the defence of France.
For France, invaded and losing large tracts of
the country right at the beginning of the war, it
could not be ‘business as usual’ – the inappropriate
words of calm coined by Winston Churchill
across the Channel – because from the start
France was in imminent danger of defeat. That is
why the French were the first to establish a government
of national unity representing all parties
from left to right.
Although the war was fought on French soil,
and the loss of industrial north-western France was
serious, the French improvised war production and
relied on financial and material aid from Britain
and the US. Shortages of food and of necessities
sent prices soaring. Increasingly authoritarian
control of production, allocation of labour and
distribution had to be undertaken by the state.
The first of the belligerents to organise their
production and manpower, however, were the
Germans. The British naval blockade reducing
essential supplies from overseas – though war
materials continued to pass through neutral
Scandinavian and Dutch ports – made careful
planning all the more essential. Substitute
(Ersatz) materials were invented with scientific
skill and ingenuity. As the general staff, with an
almost characteristic lack of prudence, had made
no plans for a long-drawn-out war, the war the
Germans had to fight, it was a ‘civilian’, Walter
Rathenau, in August 1914, who was responsible
for setting up a centralised organisation to ensure
the supply of essential raw materials.
In Germany, too, the political parties closed
ranks to support the nation at war. Only a small
minority of socialists continued to oppose the war.
The kaiser responded emotionally, declaring that:
‘I do not know parties any more, only Germans.’
He actually received the Social Democratic leaders
in his palace and they were happy to shake hands
with their kaiser. Who would have believed a year
earlier such a thing would happen? Until 1916 the
Burgfrieden (literally ‘Courtpeace’, another typically
Wagnerian phrase) held, but then tensions
began to appear and a larger group of socialists
began to oppose the war. The Reichstag, unfettered,
debated war aims and the conduct of government,
culminating in the famous peace
resolution of July 1917: ‘The Reichstag strives for
a peace of understanding and lasting reconciliation
of nations. Such a peace is not in keeping
with forcible annexations of territory . . . .’ But
it turned out that, if German armies were to
prove victorious, the Reichstag did not expect
its resolution to be taken too literally.
In any case, the chancellor was dependent
not on the Reichstag but increasingly on the
high command. The kaiser, too, became more
and more of a shadow. After Hindenburg and
Ludendorff had been appointed to the high command,
they demanded in 1917 the dismissal of
the Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg. He was too
independent. His successors were nonentities and
Germany practically fell under a Hindenburg–
Ludendorff military dictatorship during the last
year and a half of the war.
If Austria-Hungary had been on the verge of
dissolution through the disaffection of the
Habsburgs’ Slav subjects this would certainly have
shown itself when the Monarchy’s Slav neighbours
– the Russians and Serbs – went to war. In
Vienna and Budapest there was much concern.
The Serb, Ruthene and Czech populations were
lukewarm in their war effort. Some Czechs and
Poles formed their own Legions, which fought
for the Allies. But there were no large-scale
defections, let alone national uprisings. Croats,
Slovenes, Italians, Romanians fought bravely side
by side with Germans, Austrians and Magyars,
and so did many Poles and Czechs.
The Austro-Hungarian army was a unique
multinational force. But in one respect it was not
unique: the incompetence of its leadership. The
ordinary soldiers suffered appalling hardships, and
casualties during the first nine months of the war
exceeded 2 million. Even so, new conscripts
allowed fresh armies to be formed. In 1915,
facing war on three fronts with Russia, Romania
and Italy, the Monarchy was too weak to meet all
its enemies, and substantial German armies were
needed to sustain the ally. The ‘national’ division
between Austria and Hungary also impeded the
war effort. The Hungarians refused to go short of
grain and profited by raising prices to the Austrian
half of the Monarchy, which went hungry. War
production, concentrated in Bohemia, was inefficient.
But the multinational army fought on
doggedly, though new recruits failed to maintain
its strength, sapped by the losses in the field. In
1916 the aged Emperor Franz Josef died. His
successor, Charles, believed the Monarchy was
close to collapse, having overtaxed its strength,
and he was soon secretly trying to make peace.
The army remained loyal to the dynasty virtually
to the end.
New weapons killed in new ways: attacks from
Zeppelins from the air and poison gas on land.
Far more serious in its effect of spreading war to
non-combatants was the conflict on the oceans.
In 1915 Germany attempted to break the effects
of the British-imposed blockade by ordering its
submarines to sink all belligerent and neutral
ships which entered a ‘war zone’ around the
British Isles. To avoid capture the submarines torpedoed,
without warning, boats bound for
Britain. On 7 May 1915 the Germans sank the
British passenger liner Lusitania; almost 2,000
crew and passengers, including women and children,
lost their lives. World opinion, especially in
the US, was outraged: 128 Americans had been
among those who had lost their lives. Germany’s
excuse that starving women and children in
Germany were victims of Britain’s food blockade
was always flimsy. The submarine campaign failed
completely in its objective. It failed to cut off vital
supplies from reaching France and Britain and it
failed to frighten the neutral countries from continuing
to expand their trade with the Allies.
Germany launched a propaganda campaign of
hatred directed especially against Britain. This had
little effect on those actually engaged on the battlefronts.
Much to the embarrassment of the generals
on both sides, the German and Allied troops
on the western front spontaneously stopped fighting
on Christmas Day 1914, exchanged gifts and
even played football between the trenches. There
was little hatred, even a good deal of fellow feeling.
The soldiers knew that there was no way out of the
war except through death or injury or victory.
The Great War differed from the Second
World War in one very important respect. There
were no planned atrocities committed by the military
on prisoners of war or on civilians. Wartime
propaganda was, for the most part, lies. There
were no savage Huns killing Belgian priests, nuns
and babies, nor Belgian civilians behind the lines
gouging out the eyes of wounded Germans. The
Red Cross was respected in all countries, including
tsarist Russia. Brutalities no doubt occurred
but they were isolated. The blot on this record
was the forced deportation of some 60,000
Belgians in 1916 to work in German factories.
Though it was wartime, the socialists in the
Reichstag loudly protested; the deportations
ceased, and by the summer of 1917 the great
majority of the Belgians had been sent home
again. In Belgium itself no coercion was exercised
to force Belgian industry to work for the German
war effort, though factories were dismantled.
Only the miners, with the permission of the
Belgian government, continued to produce coal.
Both among the Belgians and in occupied
Russian Poland, the Germans and Austrians
attempted to win over the population to their
cause. The Poles were promised an independent
state at least in form, though in practice such an
independent Poland would have become a
German satellite. There was no maltreatment.
The Poles of Prussia and of the Habsburg
Monarchy fought with much loyalty for Germany
and the Habsburgs, seeing tsarist Russia as the
oppressor.
Unquestionably the worst atrocity against
defenceless civilians occurred in Turkey against
the Christian Armenian people in 1915 and
1916. When the war went badly for the Turks
in 1915 and the Russians were pushing into
Anatolia, the Russians attempted to inflame and
exploit Armenian nationalism against the Turks.
An Armenian Legion fought for the Russians and
an Armenian puppet government was set up. The
Turks, uncertain of the loyalty of the Armenian
population in Asia Minor committed the worst
atrocity of the war by ordering the wholesale
deportation of the Armenians from the lands
adjoining the battlefront to Syria. Armenian historians
accuse the Turks of genocide against their
people. Turkish historians admit that large massacres
took place but deny that the Turkish government
intended them to happen. Sporadic
massacres had already taken place before 1914,
shocking Western Europe. What is certain is that
the tragedy of 1915 and 1916 was on an even
greater scale. The forced deportation of men,
women and children caused the deaths of tens of
thousands through starvation and disease. Some
(by no means all) of the Turks reverted to outright
massacres on the spot. There are no reliable
figures for those who perished. They vary, according
to whether the sources are Turkish or
Armenian, from 200,000 to more than 2 million.
Of the 1.6 million Armenians between a half and
three-quarters of a million perished.
The five great nations of Europe went to war
in 1914 not for any specific territorial gains. It
was not a ‘limited’ war in the post-Napoleonic
nineteenth-century manner. The war was a gigantic
contest between them to determine their
power in Europe and the wider world. It belongs
with the wars of international insanity of the first
half of the twentieth century. When that contest
was decided, it was widely believed, it would
inevitably bring about also the ruin of the imperial
world ambitions of the defeated and provide
new imperial prospects of conquest and influence
for the victors. The illusion was fostered that this
contest would settle the power struggle for ever.
Hence the phrase ‘the war to end wars’.
For two small nations there was no choice.
Serbia was guilty of provoking Austria-Hungary
and then in 1914, when faced with the Austrian
ultimatum, fought for its independence. The
Belgians were guilty of nothing. Their misfortune
was their strategic position between France and
Germany. Both French and German military planners
wanted to march through Belgian territory,
but Britain had prevented France from taking the
initiative. Belgium wished to preserve its neutrality.
The king of the Belgians, even after the invasion
of his country, remained suspicious of both
sides. He claimed he was defending the little bit
of Belgium still free from German occupation as
a neutral and not as an ally of Britain and France.
In the Balkans another small nation, Greece,
was finally brought into the war in 1917 by
France and Britain against the wishes of the
king of Greece. Britain and France sent a military
expedition to Salonika in October 1915 and then
attempted to coerce the pro-German King
Constantine into war on the Allied side. Although
not as blatant as German aggression in Belgium,
it was another violation of the rights of a small
nation.
A number of European countries chose and
were able to remain neutral throughout the war:
the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway,
Switzerland and Spain. Their sympathies between
the contestants were divided.
Some industries in neutral countries experienced
a great boom. The Spanish coal mines in
Asturias and textile mills in Catalonia supplied the
French. Dutch industry developed; the Swiss
found a ready market for clocks, machines and
textiles. The shortage of food made farming
highly profitable. But in the last two years of the
war, while the farmers and some industrialists
continued to do well, the standard of living of the
mass of the workers in the neutral countries of
Europe fell due to soaring food prices.
The US was by far the most important and powerful
of the neutrals from 1914 to 1917, the only
great power in the world not at war. The feeling
of most Americans was that the war in Europe
was but one further chapter in the history of the
folly of European nations; it reinforced in their
view the wisdom of the Founding Fathers in
establishing the American republic and separating
its destiny from the rivalries of Europe. In
Europe, the French, the English, Italians and
Russians were fighting the Germans, Austrians
and Hungarians. During the Easter rising in
Dublin in 1916 some Irish were fighting the
English too; in the US their descendants lived at
peace with each other. Americans were convinced
that they were building a higher civilisation and
from this stemmed a genuine desire to help its
neighbours on the American continent and in
the world to attain the blessings of liberty. This,
too, was the faith of President Wilson. It helps
to explain the missionary style of American
diplomacy.
Wilson’s moralising certainly led to some
decidedly contradictory behaviour. The US intervened
on its own continent, sending troops to
the countries of weaker neighbours in Mexico,
Haiti, Santo Domingo and Nicaragua to establish
American supremacy and naval bases in the
Caribbean. But this was not seen as anything at
all like European ‘imperialism’. The purpose of
the US was ‘pure’: to teach its badly governed
neighbours the benefits of American democracy.
If people were enlightened and were given a free
choice then Americans believed they would
choose the American way.
In August 1914 Wilson issued a neutrality
proclamation. Both Allied and German propaganda
sought to persuade the American people
that right and justice were on their side. The
Germans emphasised that they were fighting a
despotic and cruel regime in Russia, whose persecution
of the Jews had already led to a great
exodus of immigrants to the US. The British
dwelt on the rights of small nations and the
dangers to a peaceful Europe if the kaiser and
Prussian militarism were to get away with breaking
treaties and attacking weaker neighbours. The
behaviour of the countries at war made a deep
impression on the US and nothing more so than
Germany’s warfare against defenceless merchant
vessels and even passenger liners. The president
took his stand legalistically on ‘neutral rights’, the
right of Americans to travel the oceans safely and
of American merchant ships to trade with Europe.
Wilson protested at Britain’s conduct of the
blockade and Germany’s ruthless submarine
warfare designed to cut off the British Isles from
the world’s arteries of trade essential to its war
effort. Wilson’s protests were effective. Rather
than risk an American declaration of war, the
German government desisted from attacking
American ships in 1915 and on 1 September also
pledged not to sink any more Allied passenger
liners, which had also led to the loss of American
lives. Meanwhile, the loss of American lives and
the ruthlessness of German warfare had swung the
majority of American opinion in favour of the
Allied cause. But this was sentiment, not action;
the Americans also stood behind their president
in wishing to keep out of the war.
The American people, at the same time, saw
no reason why they should not profit from the
huge increase of trade brought about by the war.
While Germany was just about able to maintain
its trade with the US through neutrals, US trade
with the Allies increased fourfold. By 1916 that
trade was calculated at a staggering $3,214
million, whereas trade with Germany and the
neutrals amounted to a little over $280 million.
The war resulted in a great expansion of American
industry. During the war years Ford developed a
mass market for motor cars and trucks. It was the
beginning of the motor revolution, which
matched in importance the earlier railway revolution
in transport. Free from the burdens of war,
the US developed new technologies and more
efficient methods of industrial manufacture, outdistancing
the European nations more and more.
As the Allies used up their capital to purchase
from the US, America itself replaced Britain as the
principal source of capital to other nations.
American prosperity came to depend on Allied
purchases and, when these could no longer be
met by payment, the prohibition against loans to
the belligerents was relaxed. However, Britain’s
command of the sea prevented the Germans
importing goods directly through their ports
from overseas, though supplies did reach them
through neutral ports. America’s response to
Allied needs meant that its economic strength was
thrown predominantly behind the Allied cause
long before it formally abandoned neutrality.
There was no reason for the US to go to war.
It was still safe from European attack and was
constructing a navy designed to be as powerful as
any in the world to guarantee that safety in the
future. It coveted no more territory. But already
Americans perceived weaknesses in their position.
The growth of Japanese power in Asia, no longer
checked by the Europeans, threatened American
interests in Asia. Even more worrying appeared to
be the prospect of the European conflict ending
in the complete victory of one side or the other.
That would destroy the global balance of power.
Would not the US then be faced with the threat
of a European superpower? American naval war
plans before April 1917 were intended to meet
that danger and not the possibility of joining on
the Allied side. It made sense that Wilson would
attempt to preserve the European balance by
attempting to persuade the belligerents to conclude
a compromise peace. But all his efforts in
1915 and 1916 failed. They failed for a simple
reason. As long as the Germans occupied Belgium
and northern France they felt themselves at least
partially victorious, but the Allies would contemplate
no peace unless Germany gave up all its conquests.
This would have made the sacrifices of
Germany all in vain. In truth, neither side was
ready to conclude a peace that might prove
merely temporary. The only way they could conceive
of ensuring a durable peace was through
total defeat of the enemy.
When the first two months of the war did not lead
to the expected decision, France, Britain and
Russia and Germany and Austria-Hungary hoped
to strengthen their position by winning new
allies and opening up new war-fronts to threaten
their enemies. The Germans were the first to be
successful in this respect, persuading the Turks to
attack Russia and enter the war in October 1914.
The Turkish decision not only widened the area of
conflict but also profoundly changed the history
of the Middle East. The future of the Middle East
became a bargaining counter between the powers
at war. Britain invaded Mesopotamia to secure the
oilfields, and supported an Arab revolt. Less successful
was a British and French naval attack on
the Dardanelles repelled by the Turks in February
and March 1915. However, an attack on Turkey
was still seen by Churchill and Lloyd George as
the best way of striking a decisive blow in a war
deadlocked in the west but immensely costly in
human life. In April 1915 British and French
troops landed on the Gallipoli peninsula with the
object of capturing Constantinople. But the Turks
defended resolutely, and the Anglo-French campaign
was a failure. Turkish and Allied losses were
heavy before the Allies finally decided on evacuation,
which they completed in January 1916. The
Ottoman Empire did not play a decisive role in the
war: the Turkish participation on the losing side
resulted in its dismemberment and the dramatic
growth of Arab nationalism.
Ottoman territory was held out as bait during
the war in order to keep one ally, Russia,
involved. In the famous ‘secret treaties’, Britain
and France in 1915 promised Constantinople and
the Straits to Russia. Other portions of the empire
were promised to Italy as colonies by the Treaty
of London (April 1915) to induce the Italians to
join the Allies and attack Austria-Hungary to the
north.
Though nominally partners of the Triple
Alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary, the
Italians had declared their neutrality in August
1914. For the next nine months they were wooed
by both sides. The Italian government in the end
chose war for territorial gain alone, though the
politicians were divided whether or not to go to
war. The government blatantly sought to extract
the best bid, an attitude dignified by Prime
Minister Salandra as conforming to sacro egoismo.
What was decisive for Italy was a determination
to complete its ‘liberation’ and to wrest from
Austria-Hungary the Italian-speaking lands of the
Trentino and Trieste. But its appetite was larger
than this; the Italian government hoped also to
acquire the German-speaking South Tyrol as well
as influence and territory in the Balkans and
Ottoman territory in Asia Minor. The Austrians
felt they were being blackmailed. ‘Against brigands
such as the Italians are now, no diplomatic
swindle would be excessive’, secretly wrote the
Austrian prime minister. The Allies offered the
most. In May 1915 the Italians declared war on
Austria-Hungary and so quite unnecessarily
entered a war that was to prove for the Italians
immensely costly in human life and material
resources.
For the Balkan states the Great War provided
an opportunity to start a third Balkan war for
the satisfaction of Balkan territorial ambitions.
Bulgaria in September 1915 joined the war on the
side of Germany and Austria-Hungary with the
promise of large territorial gains, including
Serbian Macedonia. A year later, in August 1916,
Romania was promised by the Allies Romanianspeaking
Transylvania and part of the Austro-
Hungarian Empire as well as other territories, and
it declared war to secure them.
In eastern Asia, Japan’s chosen policy was to
strengthen its position in China. It declared war
on Germany in August 1914, captured Germany’s
Chinese colonial sphere and then presented
to China the Twenty-one Demands to assure
itself a predominant position. The war begun by
Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, France and
Britain for one set of reasons widened to include
other nations, all of whom, with the exception of
the US, saw in it an opportunity for extending
their territorial empires.
In each of the belligerent countries there were
some politicians who, after the failure to win the
war in 1914, looked towards the conclusion of a
compromise peace. But, despite President Wilson’s
efforts to build a bridge between the combatants
through mediation, the generals and the governments
conceived only of a peace ended on the victor’s
terms. This attitude, as much as the outbreak
of the war itself, changed the course of world history.
In Berlin, Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg at
times viewed the unfolding drama in terms of
Greek tragedy; it would be disastrous for civilisation
whether Germany won or lost. In victory,
would he be able to keep in check crude concepts
of military conquest?
In the plans for a peace following a German
victory which Bethmann Hollweg drew up in
September 1914, he tried to create a new Europe,
at least a new continental Europe, because he
could not conceive of defeating Britain, only of
isolating it through the defeat of Russia and
France. He said he wished to conclude a so-called
‘Bismarckian’ peace of limited annexation. On the
other hand he was convinced that France and
Russia must be so weakened that they would never
be able to threaten Germany again. Belgium, and
even a coastal strip of northern France, would
have to fall under direct or indirect German control.
Through the creation of autonomous states,
carved out of the Russian Empire, but made
dependent on Germany, Russia would be pushed
far to the east. A continental economic custom
union would bring prosperity to all, and reconcile
continental Europe to German hegemony while
excluding Britain. All this he called ‘Middle
Europe’. To satisfy imperial ambitions, the
German African colonies would be augmented
with French and Belgian colonial possessions to
form German ‘Middle Africa’. The base of
Germany’s political and economic power would,
however, have lain in its domination of continental
Europe. There was to be no return to the balance
of power. This meant in practice the
destruction of Russia and France as great powers
and a compromise peace with Britain which would
acknowledge Germany’s continental domination
– hardly a limited Bismarckian peace!
Russian aims were both specifically territorial
and absolute. The Russian government wished to
fulfil what it regarded as Russia’s ‘historic mission’
of acquiring Constantinople and control of the
Straits. What this involved was the final destruction
of Ottoman power and its replacement by a
Russian domination of the Balkans, Asia Minor
and as much of the Middle East as France and
Britain would allow.
All Allied war aims were dependent on defeating
Germany. With Germany eliminated as a great
power, the reduced Habsburg Empire and the
smaller Balkan states presented no problem to
Russia. The rivalry of allies would be more serious
than the ambitions of former enemies. We can
gain a glimpse of Russian aims. According to the
French ambassador’s memoirs, the Russian
foreign minister, Sazonov, told him on 20 August
1914 that the ‘present war is not the kind of war
that ends with a political treaty after a battle of
Solferino or Sadowa’; Germany must be completely
defeated.
My formula is a simple one, we must destroy
German imperialism. We can only do that by
a series of military victories so that we have a
long and very stubborn war before us . . . But
great political changes are essential if . . . the
Hohenzollern are never again to be in a position
to aspire to universal dominion. In addition
to the restitution of Alsace-Lorraine to
France, Poland must be restored, Belgium
enlarged, Hanover reconstituted, Slesvig
returned to Denmark, Bohemia freed, and all
the German colonies given to France, England
and Belgium, etc. It is a gigantic programme.
But I agree with you that we ought to do our
utmost to realise it if we want our work to be
lasting.
It is a commonplace to compare the peace of
Brest-Litovsk of March 1918, which the Germans
imposed on the hapless Russians, with Versailles,
and to conclude that the Germans only justly
received what they had meted out to others. The
reverse is also true. The Russians had every intention
of treating the Germans as harshly as the
Germans treated Russia in defeat. When we
compare the ‘war aims’, it becomes rather hazardous
to pass comparative moral judgements on
them.
The French government also wanted to impose
conditions on the defeated so that they would
remain victors for all foreseeable time. The French,
alone among the great powers, were fighting the
same enemy for the second time for national survival.
French territorial demands were limited to
Alsace-Lorraine and colonies. But French requirements
went far beyond that, beyond the restoration
of Belgium, to the imposition of terms that as
Viviani, the French prime minister, declared to the
Chamber of Deputies in December 1914 would
destroy Prussian militarism. The economic imbalance
between Germany and France was to be
righted by territorial cessions and by forcing the
Germans to transfer wealth – gold – to France
under the heading of ‘reparations’. Germany
would be made to ‘pay for the war’, to weaken it
and to strengthen its neighbours.
The British approach was more pragmatic,
avoiding commitments as far as possible. There
was no desire whatever to reconstitute Hanover.
Indeed, there were no war aims formulated at all
during the first two years of the war, except for
the restoration of Belgian independence, since
this had been the principal ostensible reason for
going to war. Little thought was given to the
terms to be imposed on defeated Germany, far
more on what favourable inducements might
entice Germany’s allies to abandon it. There was
no desire to break up the Habsburg Empire. But
the one recurring theme, the destruction of the
war spirit of the principal enemy, was frequently
proclaimed. General Sir William Robertson, chief
of the imperial general staff, in a speech to munition
workers in April 1917, summed up this
uncompromising outlook: ‘Our aim is, as I
understand it, to deal German despotism such
a blow as will for generations to come prevent a
recurrence of the horrors of the last two and
a half years.’ But this did not mean exactly what
the Russians and French had in mind. Britain’s
prime minister, Lloyd George, as well as Arthur
Balfour, the foreign secretary, were convinced
that Germany’s great power on the continent
could not be permanently diminished. The best
hope for peace was the emergence of a peaceful
democratic post-war Germany. Thus, Germany
should not be driven to seek revenge to recover
territory won from it. Unjust and harsh treatment
of defeated Germany would only sow the seeds of
future conflict. Britain’s leaders looked to a close
alliance with the US to guarantee the maintenance
of peace. Later differences which emerged
with France over the right policy to adopt are
clearly foreshadowed in British war aims. These
were only ‘absolute’ on one point: the security of
the British Empire from any future German challenge.
Germany would not be permitted again to
compete with Britain’s naval supremacy. As for
other war aims, they were to be formulated by
Britain during the war in response to the demands
of allies, or would-be allies, or in pursuit of military
objectives. The latter led to the encouragement
of the Arab revolts against the Turks, for
instance, and so to the post-war transformation of
the Middle East.
The attempts of the belligerent nations to win a
decision in 1915 and 1916 all failed at a cost
in human life never before experienced. Both
sides on the western front attempted to break
through the other’s carefully prepared defences.
For the soldiers this meant leaving the security of
their own trench and advancing across a ‘noman’s
land’ raked by machine-gun fire to the
enemy trench protected by barbed wire and bayonets.
If you were lucky, artillery had cleared
something of a path before you and disorganised
the defence, but it was rarely totally effective. If
good fortune favoured you, you actually reached
the enemy trench; others only moved a few yards
beyond their own trench before falling to the
enemy fire. French and British offensives were
launched by Joffre and Haig in the spring of
1915. No breakthrough was achieved; the little
territory gained was no compensation for the
appalling losses. In the autumn of 1915 the Allies
renewed their offensive, ending again without
any worthwhile gain; 242,000 men were lost by
the Allies in that autumn offensive alone. New
recruits were nevertheless still increasing the size
of the armies.
On the eastern front German troops in 1915
were now essential to sustain the Austro-
Hungarian front as well as their own. In successive
Austrian and German offensives from January
to September 1915 the Russians suffered heavy
defeats, were driven from all German territory as
well as Habsburg Galicia and gave up a large area
of the Russian Empire including Russian Poland.
The Russian retreat demoralised the army. The
Germans and Austrians captured more than a
million prisoners and the Russians had lost
another million men. But the Russian war effort
was not broken. By enormous effort on the home
industrial front and by the raising of new troops
the Russian front-line strength reached 2 million
once again in 1916. Some 4 million men had by
then been lost. The tsarist government, despite
the vast reserve of population, was incapable of
doing more than making good the losses. The
Russian armies that would by sheer numbers
steamroller over Germany and Austria-Hungary
never materialised in the First World War as they
would in the Second. That nightmare vision for
the Germans, which had been so powerful an
influence on them in deciding for war in 1914,
was illusory.
Before 1915 was ended the first of the nations
to have gone to war in August 1914 was crushed.
Serbia was overwhelmed by a joint Bulgarian,
German and Austrian attack.
The new front created by Italy’s entry into the
war in May 1915 resembled the fighting in France
rather than in Russia. Although the Italians
enjoyed superiority over the Austrians, they suffered
heavy casualties in a series of offensives
during the course of 1915 without coming near
to winning any decisive battles or achieving a
breakthrough. Here, too, the short glorious war
that was expected proved an illusion and Italy was
locked in costly battles of attrition. It was easier
to enter the war than to leave it with profit.
The central powers (Germany, Austria-
Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria) planned to carry
on the war in 1916 so that through attrition the
enemy would be exhausted. The German commander
in the west, General Falkenhayn, calculated
that if the Germans attacked the fortress of
Verdun, then the French would sacrifice their
manpower to hold on to it. This would break
France’s morale.
Verdun became associated with the doggedness
of its French hero defender Pétain, who, like
Hindenburg, was to play a critical political role,
for which he was unsuited, in post-war Europe.
Falkenhayn failed to take Verdun or to limit
German casualties by the use of artillery as he had
planned. By the year’s end German casualties – a
third of a million men – were almost as heavy as
the French losses of 362,000 men.
During the summer months until the autumn
of 1916 the British and French armies not committed
to Verdun launched their great offensive
on the Somme intending to bring victory. The
casualties suffered in hurling men against wellprepared
positions were horrifying. The German
army was not beaten but, refusing to yield territory
in tactical withdrawals, also suffered enormous
casualties. The French, British and Germans
sacrificed more than a million men. British casualties
alone exceeded 400,000, French 190,000
men, and the Germans around 500,000. Still
there was no decision.
The Somme offensive in the west was part of
a co-ordinated inter-Allied plan to attack the
central powers. Only the Russians in 1916 gained
a great victory. General Brusilov’s summer offensive
was an overwhelming success, destroying the
independent Austro-Hungarian war effort. The
Austro-Hungarian army lost more than 600,000
men in casualties or as prisoners, the Germans
150,000. But Russia, too, failed to defeat Germany
in the east. Russian casualties were heavy
and multiplied during the fighting from August
to September. As it turned out, though no one
expected it at the time, the Brusilov offensive was
to be the last major Russian military effort before
the outbreak of the revolution in Russia. The
central powers did score one easy military success
in the east in 1916 after the halting of the Russian
offensive: the defeat of Romania. Its supplies of
foodstuffs and oil now became available to the
central powers.
While the war was being fought, during the
winter of 1916 and the following spring of 1917,
new forces were at work which changed its course
fundamentally: the intervention of the US and the
Russian Revolution.
World History
