The Central Powers—Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire,
and Bulgaria—put their armies under a unified command in September
1916. The countries of the Entente—Great Britain, France, and Italy—and
the United States did the same only in the spring of 1918. Thus, the first
campaigns were fought by military leaders in clumsy, often strained cooperation
with one another. German and Austrian generals, along with their
British and French counterparts, fought together as best they could.
From the start, much of the military sphere was walled off from civilian
influence. Bethmann Hollweg had as little to say about the conduct of the
German offensive into France as French prime minister Rene Viviani did
about the counterstrategy of General Joseph Joffre. In all countries, civilian
leaders were discouraged from visiting the front, not only in 1914 but for
years thereafter. Only in 1917, when the record of failure and blood had
become too obvious to ignore, did leaders like Britain's David Lloyd George
and France's Georges Clemenceau try to apply the principle often attributed
to Clemenceau that "war is too serious to be left to the generals." And even
then, they had only mixed success.
World History
