World War I Begins

Convinced that Austria-Hungary was readying for war, the Serbian government ordered the
Serbian army to mobilize and appealed to Russia for assistance. On July 28, Austria-Hungary
declared war on Serbia, and the tenuous peace between Europe’s great powers quickly collapsed.

Within a week, Russia, Belgium, France, Great Britain and Serbia had lined up against Austria-
Hungary and Germany, and World War I had begun.

The Western Front

According to an aggressive military strategy known as the Schlieffen Plan (named for its
mastermind, German Field Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen), Germany began fighting World War
I on two fronts, invading France through neutral Belgium in the west and confronting Russia in
the east.

On August 4, 1914, German troops crossed the border into Belgium. In the first battle of World
War I, the Germans assaulted the heavily fortified city of Liege, using the most powerful
weapons in their arsenal—enormous siege cannons—to capture the city by August 15. The
Germans left death and destruction in their wake as they advanced through Belgium toward
France, shooting civilians and executing a Belgian priest they had accused of inciting civilian
resistance.

First Battle of the Marne

In the First Battle of the Marne, fought from September 6-9, 1914, French and British forces
confronted the invading Germany army, which had by then penetrated deep into northeastern
France, within 30 miles of Paris. The Allied troops checked the German advance and mounted a
successful counterattack, driving the Germans back to north of the Aisne River.
The defeat meant the end of German plans for a quick victory in France. Both sides dug into
trenches, and the Western Front was the setting for a hellish war of attrition that would last more
than three years.

Particularly long and costly battles in this campaign were fought at Verdun (February-December
1916) and the Battle of the Somme (July-November 1916). German and French troops suffered
close to a million casualties in the Battle of Verdun alone.

World War I Books and Art

The bloodshed on the battlefields of the Western Front, and the difficulties its soldiers had for
years after the fighting had ended, inspired such works of art as “All Quiet on the Western Front”
by Erich Maria Remarque and “In Flanders Fields” by Canadian doctor Lieutenant-Colonel John
McCrae. In the latter poem, McCrae writes from the perspective of the fallen soldiers:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

Published in 1915, the poem inspired the use of the poppy as a symbol of remembrance.

Visual artists like Otto Dix of Germany and British painters Wyndham Lewis, Paul Nash and
David Bomberg used their firsthand experience as soldiers in World War I to create their art,
capturing the anguish of trench warfare and exploring the themes of technology, violence and
landscapes decimated by war.

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The Eastern Front

On the Eastern Front of World War I, Russian forces invaded the German-held regions of East
Prussia and Poland, but were stopped short by German and Austrian forces at the Battle of
Tannenberg in late August 1914.

Despite that victory, Russia’s assault had forced Germany to move two corps from the Western
Front to the Eastern, contributing to the German loss in the Battle of the Marne.

Combined with the fierce Allied resistance in France, the ability of Russia’s huge war machine to
mobilize relatively quickly in the east ensured a longer, more grueling conflict instead of the
quick victory Germany had hoped to win under the Schlieffen Plan.

READ MORE: Was Germany Doomed by the Schlieffen Plan?

Russian Revolution

From 1914 to 1916, Russia’s army mounted several offensives on World War I’s Eastern Front,
but was unable to break through German lines.

Defeat on the battlefield, combined with economic instability and the scarcity of food and other
essentials, led to mounting discontent among the bulk of Russia’s population, especially the
poverty-stricken workers and peasants. This increased hostility was directed toward the imperial
regime of Czar Nicholas II and his unpopular German-born wife, Alexandra.

Russia’s simmering instability exploded in the Russian Revolution of 1917, spearheaded by

Russia reached an armistice with the Central Powers in early December 1917, freeing German
troops to face the remaining Allies on the Western Front.
America Enters World War I

At the outbreak of fighting in 1914, the United States remained on the sidelines of World War I,
adopting the policy of neutrality favored by President Woodrow Wilson while continuing to
engage in commerce and shipping with European countries on both sides of the conflict.

Neutrality, however, was increasing difficult to maintain in the face of Germany’s unchecked
submarine aggression against neutral ships, including those carrying passengers. In 1915,
Germany declared the waters surrounding the British Isles to be a war zone, and German U-boats
sunk several commercial and passenger vessels, including some U.S. ships.

Widespread protest over the sinking by U-boat of the British ocean liner Lusitania—traveling
from New York to Liverpool, England with hundreds of American passengers onboard—in May
1915 helped turn the tide of American public opinion against Germany. In February 1917,
Congress passed a $250 million arms appropriations bill intended to make the United States
ready for war.

Germany sunk four more U.S. merchant ships the following month, and on April 2 Woodrow
Wilson appeared before Congress and called for a declaration of war against Germany.

Gallipoli Campaign

With World War I having effectively settled into a stalemate in Europe, the Allies attempted to
score a victory against the Ottoman Empire, which entered the conflict on the side of the Central
Powers in late 1914.

After a failed attack on the Dardanelles (the strait linking the Sea of Marmara with the Aegean
Sea), Allied forces led by Britain launched a large-scale land invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula
in April 1915. The invasion also proved a dismal failure, and in January 1916 Allied forces
staged a full retreat from the shores of the peninsula after suffering 250,000 casualties.

Did you know? The young Winston Churchill, then first lord of the British Admiralty, resigned
his command after the failed Gallipoli campaign in 1916, accepting a commission with an
infantry battalion in France.
British-led forces also combated the Ottoman Turks in Egypt and Mesopotamia, while in
northern Italy, Austrian and Italian troops faced off in a series of 12 battles along the Isonzo
River, located at the border between the two nations.

Battle of the Isonzo

The First Battle of the Isonzo took place in the late spring of 1915, soon after Italy’s entrance
into the war on the Allied side. In the Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo, also known as the Battle of
Caporetto (October 1917), German reinforcements helped Austria-Hungary win a decisive
victory.

After Caporetto, Italy’s allies jumped in to offer increased assistance. British and French—and
later, American—troops arrived in the region, and the Allies began to take back the Italian Front.

World War I at Sea

In the years before World War I, the superiority of Britain’s Royal Navy was unchallenged by
any other nation’s fleet, but the Imperial German Navy had made substantial strides in closing
the gap between the two naval powers. Germany’s strength on the high seas was also aided by its
lethal fleet of U-boat submarines.

After the Battle of Dogger Bank in January 1915, in which the British mounted a surprise attack
on German ships in the North Sea, the German navy chose not to confront Britain’s mighty
Royal Navy in a major battle for more than a year, preferring to rest the bulk of its naval strategy
on its U-boats.

The biggest naval engagement of World War I, the Battle of Jutland (May 1916) left British
naval superiority on the North Sea intact, and Germany would make no further attempts to break
an Allied naval blockade for the remainder of the war.

World War I Planes

At the dawn of World War I, aviation was a relatively new field; the Wright brothers took their
first sustained flight just eleven years before, in 1903. Aircraft were initially used primarily for
reconnaissance missions. During the First Battle of the Marne, information passed from pilots
allowed the allies to exploit weak spots in the German lines, helping the Allies to push Germany
out of France.

The first machine guns were successfully mounted on planes in June of 1912 in the United
States, but were imperfect; if timed incorrectly, a bullet could easily destroy the propeller of the
plane it came from. The Morane-Saulnier L, a French plane, provided a solution: The propeller
was armored with deflector wedges that prevented bullets from hitting it. The Morane-Saulnier
Type L was used by the French, the British Royal Flying Corps (part of the Army), the British
Royal Navy Air Service and the Imperial Russian Air Service. The British Bristol Type 22 was
another popular model used for both reconnaissance work and as a fighter plane.

Dutch inventor Anthony Fokker improved upon the French deflector system in 1915. His
“interrupter” synchronized the firing of the guns with the plane’s propeller to avoid collisions.
Though his most popular plane during WWI was the single-seat Fokker Eindecker, Fokker
created over 40 kinds of airplanes for the Germans.

The Allies debuted the Handley-Page HP O/400, the first two-engine bomber, in 1915. As aerial
technology progressed, long-range heavy bombers like Germany’s Gotha G.V. (first introduced
in 1917) were used to strike cities like London. Their speed and maneuverability proved to be far
deadlier than Germany’s earlier Zeppelin raids.

By war’s end, the Allies were producing five times more aircraft than the Germans. On April 1,
1918, the British created the Royal Air Force, or RAF, the first air force to be a separate military
branch independent from the navy or army.

Second Battle of the Marne

On July 15, 1918, German troops launched what would become the last German offensive of the
war, attacking French forces (joined by 85,000 American troops as well as some of the British
Expeditionary Force) in the Second Battle of the Marne. The Allies successfully pushed back the
German offensive and launched their own counteroffensive just three days later.

After suffering massive casualties, Germany was forced to call off a planned offensive further
north, in the Flanders region stretching between France and Belgium, which was envisioned as
Germany’s best hope of victory.

The Second Battle of the Marne turned the tide of war decisively towards the Allies, who were
able to regain much of France and Belgium in the months that followed.

Role of the 92nd and 93rd Divisions

By the time World War I began, there were four all-Black regiments in the U.S. military: the
24th and 25th Infantry and the 9th and 10th Cavalry. All four regiments comprised of celebrated
soldiers who fought in the Spanish-American War and American-Indian Wars, and served in the
American territories. But they were not deployed for overseas combat in World War I.

Blacks serving alongside white soldiers on the front lines in Europe was inconceivable to the
U.S. military. Instead, the first African American troops sent overseas served in segregated labor
battalions, restricted to menial roles in the Army and Navy, and shutout of the Marines, entirely.
Their duties mostly included unloading ships, transporting materials from train depots, bases and
ports, digging trenches, cooking and maintenance, removing barbed wire and inoperable
equipment, and burying soldiers.

Facing criticism from the Black community and civil rights organizations for its quotas and
treatment of African American soldiers in the war effort, the military formed two Black combat
units in 1917, the 92nd and 93rd Divisions. Trained separately and inadequately in the United
States, the divisions fared differently in the war. The 92nd faced criticism for their performance
in the Meuse-Argonne campaign in September 1918. The 93rd Division, however, had more
success.

With dwindling armies, France asked America for reinforcements, and General John Pershing,
commander of the American Expeditionary Forces, sent regiments in the 93 Division to over,
since France had experience fighting alongside Black soldiers from their Senegalese French
Colonial army. The 93 Division’s, 369 regiment, nicknamed the Harlem Hellfighters , fought so
gallantly, with a total of 191 days on the front lines, longer than any AEF regiment, that France
awarded them the Croix de Guerre for their heroism. More than 350,000 African American
soldiers would serve in World War I in various capacities.

READ MORE: A Harlem Hellfighter's Searing Tales from the WWII Trenches

Toward Armistice

By the fall of 1918, the Central Powers were unraveling on all fronts.

Despite the Turkish victory at Gallipoli, later defeats by invading forces and an Arab revolt that
destroyed the Ottoman economy and devastated its land, and the Turks signed a treaty with the
Allies in late October 1918.

Austria-Hungary, dissolving from within due to growing nationalist movements among its
diverse population, reached an armistice on November 4. Facing dwindling resources on the
battlefield, discontent on the homefront and the surrender of its allies, Germany was finally
forced to seek an armistice on November 11, 1918, ending World War I.

Treaty of Versailles

At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, Allied leaders stated their desire to build a post-war
world that would safeguard itself against future conflicts of such devastating scale.
Some hopeful participants had even begun calling World War I “the War to End All Wars.” But
the Treaty of Versailles, signed on June 28, 1919, would not achieve that lofty goal.

Saddled with war guilt, heavy reparations and denied entrance into the League of Nations,
Germany felt tricked into signing the treaty, having believed any peace would be a “peace
without victory,” as put forward by President Wilson in his famous Fourteen Points speech of
January 1918.

As the years passed, hatred of the Versailles treaty and its authors settled into a smoldering
resentment in Germany that would, two decades later, be counted among the causes of World
War II.

World War I Casualties

World War I took the lives of more than 9 million soldiers; 21 million more were wounded.
Civilian casualties numbered close to 10 million. The two nations most affected were Germany
and France, each of which sent some 80 percent of their male populations between the ages of 15
and 49 into battle.

READ MORE: The Perilous But Critical Role of World War I Runners

The political disruption surrounding World War I also contributed to the fall of four venerable
imperial dynasties: Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia and Turkey.

Legacy of World War I

World War I brought about massive social upheaval, as millions of women entered the
workforce to replace men who went to war and those who never came back. The first global war
also helped to spread one of the world’s deadliest global pandemics, the Spanish flu epidemic of
1918, which killed an estimated 20 to 50 million people.
World War I has also been referred to as “the first modern war.” Many of the technologies now
associated with military conflict,machine guns, tanks, aerial combat and radio communications
were introduced on a massive scale during World War I.

The severe effects that chemical weapons such as mustard gas and phosgene had on soldiers and
civilians during World War I galvanized public and military attitudes against their continued use.
The Geneva Convention agreements, signed in 1925, restricted the use of chemical and
biological agents in warfare and remains in effect today.

Photo Galleries

World War I In Color

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World War I Leaders

Franz Ferdinand Archduke Of Austria And His Wife Sophie Duchess Of Hohenberg

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World War I: Trench Warfare

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Haunting Photos from the Battle of the Somme

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Dog Heroes of World War I

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World War I Technology

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Dazzle Camouflage

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World War I Inventions Still Used Today

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Citation Information

Article Title

World War I
Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/world-war-i-history

Access Date

April 7, 2021

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

January 13, 2021

Original Published Date

October 29, 2009

TAGSWORLD WAR I BATTLES

BY HISTORY.COM EDITORS