World War I 1

1. The main Entente Powers were Russia, France, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, and the United States. These were solidified by series of treaties, creating a domino effect that occurred after Russia mobilized against Austria-Hungary and Germany and after Germany invaded neutral Belgium. The Central Powers were originally Germany and Austria-Hungary, but the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria. Germany fought to secure its power, Austria-Hungary fought to keep itself unified, and the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria gambled that the Central Powers would win so they could gain personally. After Germany invaded Belgium, its Schlieffen plan was disrupted by the Belgian army retreating to rendezvous with a British force and the German armies in Lorraine failed to retreat and suck French armies into Germany. On September 6, 1914, French general Joseph Joffre attacked the German at the Battle of the Marne and repulsed their attack. The French and British armies could not rout the German retreat, nor could either side outflank the other. Thus, both sides dug trenches from Belgium to Switzerland to protect themselves from machine guns. Both sides used trenches, mines, and barbed wires, and shelled the other with heavy artillery to kill the enemy and its fortifications. Soldiers would then go over the top of the trenches to attack the enemy. The French and British offensives during 1915 never gained more than 3 miles of earth from the enemy. The Battle of the Somme in the summer of 1916 had the British and French gain 125 square miles while having 600,000 casualties and 500,000 German casualties. The unsuccessful German attack on Verdun killed 700,000 men. In 1917, French general Robert Nivelle’s army was almost destroyed in an attack at Champagne. At Passchendaele, the British lost 400,000 for 50 square miles. The war also led to disillusionment and injured survivors.

2. Italy had declared its neutrality in 1914 because Austria had launched a war of aggres-sion. It would then join the Triple Entente in May 1915 in return for promises of Austria territory. Bulgaria allied with the Central Powers in September 1915 to settle old scores with Serbia. The Balkans, except for Greece, came to be occupied by the Central Powers, with the Ottomans repulsing a British attack in 1915 in the Dardanelles. The Entente then incited Arab nationalists against their Ottoman rulers, such as British colonel Lawrence of Arabia in early 1917. In 1918, British armies from Egypt defeated the Ottomans with the help of British troops from Australia, New Zealand, and India. The colonial subjects of the British and French remained loyal to their masters, to the dismay of the Germans. Great Britain, France, and Japan seized Germany’s colonies. In April 1917, the United States declared war on Germany due to German submarines, sympathy for the Entente Powers, and the increasing desperation of total war. At the start of the war, Britain and France had established a total naval blockade to strangle the Central Powers and prevent food and goods. This annoyed Americans, but propaganda against Germany and profits from selling war supplies to Britain and France silenced them. In early 1915, Germany launched a counter-blockade using submarines. In May 1915, after sinking ninety ships in the British war zone, a German submarine sank the British passenger liner Lusitania, which carried arms, munitions, and more than a thousand people, with 139 Americans. President Woodrow Wilson protested, and Germany relaxed its submarine warfare. Then, in 1917, Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare. Britain, however, had established the convoy system for safe transatlantic shipping. Wilson declared that the German submarines hurt commerce, and with all the other reasons, the United States declared war.

B.
1. People were greatly involved in the war and enthusiastic about it. Every country be-lieved that their nation was in the right and defending itself from aggression, with great public support. There was little need to break general strikes protesting the war and ar-resting socialists, as they were in favor of the war. The support of the working class add-ed to national unity and the war effort. Each country had underestimated the supplies and men they needed, as there were many shortages due to the slowing of foreign trade and international division of labor. Economic life and organization had to change to keep the country fighting. Thus came about total war, in which free-market capitalism was temporarily abandoned and government-planning boards established priorities and decided what was to be produced and consumed. Rationing, price and wage controls, and restrictions on workers’ freedom of movement was established. It also meant con-centrating all productive means on the war. It also blurred the lines between soldiers on the battlefield and civilians at home.

2. However, government-controlled economies strengthened socialism. Socialism was now considered practical rather than a utopian concept. Germany had the most extensive government control of the economy. Industrialist Walter Rathenau convinced the gov-ernment to establish the War Raw Materials Board to ration and distribute raw mate-rials. All useful material was inventoried and rationed, and the board successfully at-tempts to produce substitutes like synthetic rubber and nitrates. As for rationing, men and women doing hard manual work received more food. During the last two years of the war, only children and expectant mothers received milk rations. In early 1915, Ger-man authorities believed pigs ate too much food and ordered them killed, only to see that they ate the abundant potatoes. Germany did not tax the war profits of private firms enough, leading to deficit financing, inflation, the growth of a black market, and class conflict. After Verdun and the Somme, Hindenburg and Ludendorff seized power from Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg in 1917 and stated that all men, women, and child-ren should be drafter into the service of the war. In December 1916, the Auxiliary Ser-vice Law was passed, required all males between seventeen and sixty to work only at jobs considered critical to the war effort. More women were forced into labor, and children were organized by their teachers into garbage brigades to collect scraps of use-ful materials. People had about a thousand calories a day. In Great Britain in 1915, the Ministry of Munitions was established to have private industry produce for the war, control profits, allocate labor, fix wage rates, and settle labor disputes. More than two hundred factories and 90% of all imports were bought and allocated by the state.

3. Millions of men were needed to fight and many more were needed to provide for the military. Jobs were available for everyone, leading to little unemployment and poverty. Because of this, labor unions achieved great power and prestige. Unions cooperated with war governments on work rules, wages, and production schedules in return for participation in decisions. Large numbers of women left home and domestic service to work in industry, transportation, and offices. They also achieved high-status jobs like bank tellers and police officers. The male-dominated unions were initially hostile to women due to increased competition and rule changes. However, government pressure and the principle of equality overcame. Women served as nurses and doctors, and their war effort often led to their suffrage after the war. Women showed a growing spirit of independence, as they bobbed their haired, shortened their skirts, and smoked in public. War blurred class differences and lessened the gap between rich and poor due to more work. In 1924, a British government study revealed that the distribution of income had shifted in favor of the poorest, as only half as many families lived in severe poverty as in 1911. Greater equality was shown by full employment, rationing according to physical needs, and a sharing a hardships. War also killed the young aristocratic officers, putting the duty on drafted peasants and unskilled workers.

4. In April 1916, Irish nationalists in Dublin took advantage and started the Easter Rebel-lion, but were defeated and executed after a week. On May 1, 1916, Karl Liebknecht preached anarchy and antiwar messages to crowds. Strikes and protests over food shortage occurred more often. Soldiers’ morale declined, with Italian troops mutinying and French units refusing to fight. Toughness and an agreement for no more grand of-fensives enabled the new French general in chief to restore order. France’s civilian population rose up in war-weariness and defeatism before Georges Clemenceau pounced on strikes and jailed without trial journalists and politicians who suggested a compromise peace. In October 1916, the chief minister of Austria was assassinated and Emperor Francis Joseph died. Political dissatisfaction and conflicts among nationalities grew. Czech and Yugoslav leaders demanded autonomous democratic states. In the win-ter of 1916 to 1917, Germany’s military position appeared desperate as it had stale-mates and losses in the west and temporary Russian advances in the east, leading to the return of unrestricted submarine warfare. A growing minority of moderate socialists in the Reichstag voted against war credits and called for simply peace, and they did this in July 1917, but it was rejected. Revolutionary agitation and strikes were more frequent.

C.
a. Artillery barrages in the beginning of the war used up Russia’s supplies of shells and ammunition. German armies killed thousands of Russians. Hundreds of Russian soldiers were sent to the front in 1915 and had to search the dead for rifles. There were 2 mil-lion Russian casualties in 1915. Full mobilization was implemented, and the Duma and local governments set up special committees to coordinate defense, industry, transpor-tation, and agriculture. This led to Russian factories producing more than twice as many shells in 1916 as in 1915.

b. Tsar Nicholas II failed to form a close partnership with his citizens in order to fight the war more effectively, as he relied on the old bureaucratic apparatus, distrusted the Du-ma, rejected popular involvement, and resisted calls to share power. All Russian citizens became increasingly critical of the tsar’s leadership and formed, in September 1915, the Progressive bloc, calling for a completely new government responsible to the Duma. Ni-cholas then adjourned the Duma and announced that he was traveling to the front in order to lead and rally his armies. Tsarina Alexandra and self-proclaimed holy man Ras-putin were put in charge. She was against parliaments and in favor of absolute rule. She seated and unseated the top ministers and began to rely on Rasputin. After Rasputin was able to cure Alexandra’s daughter from hemophilia, she relied on him more while the government slid toward revolution. In order to fix the situation and end rumors that Rasputin was Alexandra’ lover, he was assassinated by three members of the high aris-tocracy in December 1916. Food shortages in the cities worsened, morale declined, and women rioted over bread in Petrograd. The tsar ordered troops to restore order, but they mutinied. The Duma declared a provisional government of March 12, 1917, and three days later, Nicholas abdicated.

c. The provisional government established equality before the law, freedom of religion and speech as well as assembly, the right of unions to organize and strike, and the other liberal measures. It also rejected social revolution and refused to confiscate large land-holdings and give them to peasants, as it could disrupt the war effort. Land reform was put off, but human sufferings and war-weariness grew. The provisional government had a rival in the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, a huge, fluctuating mass meeting of a few thousand workers, soldiers, and socialist intellectuals. This gov-ernment issued its own radical orders, weakening the provisional government. It also passed Army Order No. 1, which stripped officers of their authority and placed power in the hands of elected committees of common soldiers. Many officers were hanged for their sins. Many peasant soldiers returned to their villages to help their families get a share of the land in a great agrarian upheaval.