FIRST WORLD WAR

On 28 June 1914 a Serbian student named Gavrilo Princip assassinated the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria at Sarajevo in Bosnia. It was the last straw for a Europe in political turmoil. Feeling protective of the Balkans, on 30 July Russia mobilised against Austria. On 1 August Germany - ally to Austria - declared war on Russia, and France 2 days later. And on 4 August the Great War was on as Germany invaded Belgium as prelude to the invasion of France. Britain joined in on the same day, soon to be followed by Turkey on the other side.
The First World War had several fronts. In the east, the Russian advance into East Prussia came to an end at the battle of Tannenburg, the Germans going on to threaten Russia, resulting in Russia leaving the war in December 1917. The Australian Gallipoli Campaign beginning in 1915 against the Turks proved a disaster. The Mesopotamian Campaign failed to hold back the Turks in the Middle East, their only real problem being an Arab revolt, led by a junior British officer who became known as Lawrence of Arabia.
In the Atlantic, Germany took a great toll on British merchant shipping, and the Battle of Rutland of May 1916 ended indecisively, but proved Britain to no longer rule the waves. But the major war was fought on the Western Front.
When Germany attacked Belgium on 4 August 1914 the idea was to outflank the French and attack Paris. However, the British Expeditionary Force brought them to a halt at Marne. Joined by the French, a further assault was halted at the first Battle of Ypres, resulting in stalemate and the picture of the war to come, with barbed wire, trenches, machine guns and mud. The next four years would become a battle of attrition.
The following year saw 3 major battles - Neuve-Chapelle, the second Battle of Ypres and the Battle of Loos - but the stalemate continued into the 1916 battle at Verdun and the Somme, which saw over a million casualties. By 1917 the Germans were pushed back to the Hindenburg Line, a series of prepared defensive positions. Soon the Americans were to enter the war and at the third Battle of Ypres (Flanders), Passchendale was taken.
The spring of 1918 saw another German assault, brought to a halt at the second Battle of Marne, the British commander, Haig, breaching the Hindenburg Line in September. Germany began talking of peace, hostilities ceasing on 11 November 1918. At the resulting Treaty of Versailles the Germans lost Alsace-Lorraine and were made to pay a heavy financial price.
The First World War was fought chiefly because of the failure of bluff by leaders who wanted power, not realising the abomination they were about to unleash. Industry had produced the ability to make more and more weaponry, thus requiring a more bloody effort to beat an enemy, the war of attrition attempting to weaken the very industrial base. And industrialisation was to have a greater political and social effect as the war ended, the middleclass already empowered, and the working classes about to seek their own emancipation. Indeed, the combinations unleashed by industrialisation were to make the Great War the first stage of a European civil war.

(c) Anthony North, January 2003

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