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Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party (, abbreviated NSDAP), commonly known as the Nazi Party. He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and served as head of state as Führer und Reichskanzler from 1934 to 1945.
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Alfred von Tirpitz
Alfred von Tirpitz (March 19, 1849 – March 6, 1930) was a German Admiral, Secretary of State of the German Imperial Naval Office, the powerful administrative branch of the Kaiserliche Marine from 1897 until 1916. He is considered to be the founder of the German Imperial navy.
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Ante Trumbić
Ante Trumbić (May 17, 1864 - November 17, 1938) was a Croatian politician in the early 20th century. He was one of the key politicians in the creation of a Yugoslav state.
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Antonio Salandra
Antonio Salandra (August 13, 1853, Troia, Province of Foggia – December 9, 1931) was a conservative Italian politician who served as the 33rd Prime Minister of Italy between 1914 and 1916. He graduated from the University of Naples in 1875 and then became instructor and later professor of administrative law at the University of Rome.
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Armando Diaz
Armando Diaz, 1st Duca della Vittoria (December 5, 1861 – February 29, 1928) was an Italian general and a Marshal of Italy.
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Armenians
Armenian people or Armenians (, hayer) are a nation and ethnic group native to the Caucasus and the Armenian Highland.
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Assyrian people
The Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac people (frequently known as Assyrians, Syriacs, Syriac Christians, Suroye/Suryoye, Chaldeans, and other variants, see names of Syriac Christians) are an ethnic group whose origins lie in the Fertile Crescent. Today that ancient territory is part of several nations; the Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac people have been minorities under other ethnic groups' rule since the early Middle Ages. They have traditionally lived in northern Iraq, Syria, northwest Iran, and Turkey's Southeastern Anatolia. Many have migrated to the Caucasus, North America and Europe during the past century. The major sub-ethnic division is between an Eastern group ("Nestorians" and "Chaldean Christians") and a Western one ("Syrian Jacobites").
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Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini KSMOM GCTE (29 July 1883, Predappio, Province of Forlì-Cesena - 28 April 1945) was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism.
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Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, socialist, pacifist, and social critic. He spent most of his life in England; he was born in Wales where he also died, aged 97.
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Billy Hughes
William Morris "Billy" Hughes, CH, KC (25 September 1862 – 28 October 1952), Australian politician, was the seventh Prime Minister of Australia from 1915 to 1923.
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Boghos Nubar
Boghos Nubar also known as Boghos Nubar Pasha (1851-1930) was a Chairman of the Armenian National Assembly, liberal, the son of Egyptian Prime Minister Nubar Pasha and the founder, alongside ten other Armenian national movement leaders, of the Armenian General Benevolent Union on April 15, 1905.
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Calvin Coolidge
John Calvin Coolidge, Jr., (July 4, 1872 January 5, 1933) was the 30th President of the United States (1923–1929). A Republican lawyer from Vermont, Coolidge worked his way up the ladder of Massachusetts state politics, eventually becoming governor of that state. His actions during the Boston Police Strike of 1919 thrust him into the national spotlight. Soon after, he was elected as the 29th Vice President in 1920 and succeeded to the Presidency upon the sudden death of Warren G. Harding in 1923. Elected in his own right in 1924, he gained a reputation as a small-government conservative.
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Cevat Çobanlı
Cevat Pasha Çobanlı (1870 – 1938) military commander and Grand Vizier in the Ottoman Empire. He signed the Armistice of Mudros. He was one of the Malta exiles. His nephews and niece were Cevat Şakir Kabaağaçlı (the Fisherman of Halicarnassus/Halikarnas Balıkçısı) and painter Aliye Berger and Princess Fahrelnissa Zeid.
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Chaim Weizmann
Chaim Azriel Weizmann, , (27 November 1874 – 9 November 1952) was a Zionist leader, President of the Zionist Organization, and the first President of the State of Israel. He was elected on 1 February 1949, and served until his death in 1952. Weizmann was also a chemist who developed the ABE-process, which produces acetone through bacterial fermentation. He founded the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel.
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Charles I of Austria
:"Karl I" redirects here. For the Prince of Liechtenstein, see Karl I of Liechtenstein.
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Charles Mangin
Charles Marie Emmanuel Mangin (6 July 1866, Sarrebourg, Moselle – 12 May 1925) was a French general during World War I. A graduate of Saint-Cyr, Mangin served in Sudan (under Jean-Baptiste Marchand) and in French North Africa. In 1910 he published La force noire,where he called for the use of French Colonial Forces in the event of a European war. During the war he rose from divisional command to that of the 10th Army for the Second Battle of the Marne commanding both French and American troops. Nicknamed "the Butcher" for his espousal of la guerre à outrance and his faith in the suitability of North African troops for the attack, there was no doubt in the French Army that Mangin was personally fearless.
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David Lloyd George
David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor OM, PC (17 January 1863 – 26 March 1945) was a British Liberal politician and statesman. He was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom at the head of a wartime coalition government between the years 1916-1922 and was the Leader of the Liberal Party from 1926-1931.
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Despina Storch
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Drastamat Kanayan
General Drastamat Kanayan ( (Drastamat Kanahyean), known as General Dro, Դրօ, May 31, 1884 March 8, 1956), was a politician, revolutionary, military commander of Hitler’s Armenian Legion of the Wehrmacht, the armed forces of Nazi Germany, and part of Armenian national liberation movement as a member of the A.R.F. Dashnaktsuyun.
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Edmund Allenby
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Enver Pasha
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Erich Ludendorff
Erich Friedrich Wilhelm Ludendorff (sometimes given incorrectly as von Ludendorff) (9 April 1865 – 20 December 1937) was a German military officer, victor of Liège, and, with Paul von Hindenburg, one of the victors of the battle of Tannenberg. From August 1916 his appointment as Generalquartiermeister made him joint head (with von Hindenburg) of Germany's war effort. From this point on he ran Germany's war effort in World War I until his resignation in October 1918.
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Erich von Falkenhayn
Erich von Falkenhayn (11 September 1861 – 8 April 1922) was a German soldier and Chief of the General Staff during World War I. He became a military writer after World War One.
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Ernst Haeckel
Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (February 16, 1834 – August 9, 1919),
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European Civil War
The European Civil War is a term that is to characterise both World War I and World War II and the inter-war period as a protracted civil war taking place in Europe. It is used in referring to the repeated confrontations that occurred during the early 20th century. There is no firm consensus over the details and links, such as the level of international involvement in the Spanish Civil War and, occasionally, the Russian Civil War. The term is often used to explain the rapid decline of Europe's global hegemony and the emergence of the European Union. Dr. Franz-Willing argues that during this period: "By this self-mutilation, Europe lost its position in the world, its hegemony, and caused itself to be divided into two spheres of influence: one American, and one Russian".
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Fakhri Pasha
Fakhri Pasha or Umar Fakhr ud-Din Pasha(Ömer Fahrettin Paşa) (1868 Rousse -1948 Istanbul) was the commander of Ottoman army and governor of Medina from 1916 to 1919.
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Ferdinand Foch
Ferdinand Foch (pronounced "Fosh") OM GCB (2 October 1851 – 20 March 1929) was a French soldier, military theorist, and writer credited with possessing "the most original and subtle mind in the French army" in the early 20th century. He served as general in the French army during World War I and was made Marshal of France in its final year: 1918. Shortly after the start of the Spring Offensive, Germany's final attempt to win the war, Foch was chosen as supreme commander of the Allied armies, a position that he held until 11 November 1918, when he accepted the German request for an armistice. In 1923 he was made Marshal of Poland.
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Franchet d'Esperey
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Gabriele d'Annunzio
'''Gabriele D'Annunzio or d'Annunzio (ennobled by the King of Italy in 1924 as Principe di Montenevoso'''; ; 12 March 1863 – 1 March 1938) was an Italian poet, journalist, novelist, dramatist, and daredevil. His role in politics is controversial due to his influence on the Italian Fascist movement and his status as the alleged forerunner of Benito Mussolini.
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Gavrilo Princip
Gavrilo Princip (Serbian Cyrillic: Гаврило Принцип, ; – ) was a Bosnian Serb who was a Yugoslav nationalist associated with the movement Mlada Bosna (Young Bosnia). Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914, succeeding where one of his co-conspirators had just failed. Princip and his accomplices were arrested and implicated a number of members of the Serbian military, leading Austria-Hungary to issue a démarche to Serbia known as the July Ultimatum. This set off a chain of events that led to World War I.
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Georges Clemenceau
Georges Benjamin Clemenceau (; 28 September 1841 – 24 November 1929) was a French statesman, physician, and journalist. He served as the Prime Minister of France from 1906 to 1909, and again from 1917 to 1920. For nearly the final year of World War I he led France, and was one of the major voices behind the Treaty of Versailles at the Paris Peace Conference in the aftermath of the war. He is commonly nicknamed "The Walrus" and "le Père-de-la-Victoire" (Father Victory) for his determination as a wartime leader.
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Grand Duke Nicholas
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Grigori Rasputin
Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin ( ) ( – ) was a Russian mystic who is perceived as having influenced the latter days of the Russian Emperor Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra, and their only son Alexei. Rasputin had often been called the "Mad Monk", while others considered him a "strannik" (or religious pilgrim) and even a starets (, "elder", a title usually reserved for monk-confessors), believing him to be a psychic and faith healer.
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H. H. Asquith
Herbert Henry Asquith, 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith, KG, PC, KC (12 September 1852 – 15 February 1928) served as the Liberal Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1908 to 1916. He was the longest continuously serving Prime Minister in the twentieth century until early 1988.
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Henry Tonks
Henry Tonks, FRCS (9 April 1862 – 8 January 1937) was an English surgeon, artist and art teacher.
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Herbert Asquith
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Hew Strachan
Professor Hew Francis Anthony Strachan, DL, FRSE, FRHS (born 1 September, 1949 in Edinburgh, Scotland) is a Scottish military historian, well known for his work on the administration of the British Army and the history of the First World War. He is a Brigadier and Member of Council of the Queen's Bodyguard for Scotland (Royal Company of Archers).
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Horace Smith-Dorrien
General Sir Horace Lockwood Smith-Dorrien GCB, GCMG, DSO, ADC (26 May 1858 – 12 August 1930) was a British soldier and commander of the British II Corps and Second Army of the BEF during the Great War.
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Istria
Istria (Croatian, Slovene: Istra; Italian: Istria; Istriot: Eîstria; Hungarian: Isztria), formerly Histria (Latin), is the largest peninsula in the Adriatic Sea. The peninsula is located at the head of the Adriatic between the Gulf of Trieste and the Bay of Kvarner. It is shared by three countries: Croatia, Slovenia, and Italy.Alan John Day, Roger East, Richard Thomas, [http://books.google.com/books?id=dt2TXexiKTgC&pg;=PA280&dq;=istria+croatia+slovenia+italy&hl;=cs&ei;=-B6VTO-GAcOU4Aak6MWGBA&sa;=X&oi;=book_result&ct;=result&resnum;=2&ved;=0CDQQ6AEwATgU#v=onepage&q;=istria%20croatia%20slovenia%20italy&f;=false A political and economic dictionary of Eastern Europe], Routledge, 1sr ed. (2002), ISBN 1857430638
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Italians
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John Burns
John Elliot Burns (20 October 1858 – 24 January 1943) was a British trade unionist and politician of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly associated with London politics. He was a socialist and then a Liberal Member of Parliament and Minister. He was anti-drink and a keen sportsman. After retiring from politics, he developed an expertise in London history and coined the phrase "The Thames is liquid history".
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John J. Pershing
John Joseph "Black Jack" Pershing, GCB (Hon) (September 13, 1860 – July 15, 1948) was a general officer in the United States Army. Pershing is the only person to be promoted in his own lifetime to the highest rank ever held in the United States Army—General of the Armies (a retroactive Congressional edict passed in 1976 promoted George Washington to the same rank but with higher seniority). Pershing also holds the first United States officer service number (O-1). Pershing led the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I, and was regarded as a mentor by the generation of American generals who led the United States Army in Europe during World War II, including George C. Marshall, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Omar N. Bradley, and George S. Patton.
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John McCrae
Lieutenant Colonel John Alexander McCrae (November 30, 1872 – January 28, 1918) was a Canadian poet, physician, author, artist and soldier during World War I and a surgeon during the battle of Ypres. He is best known for writing the famous war memorial poem "In Flanders Fields".
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John Morley
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Julian Byng
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Kaiser Wilhelm II
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Karl Liebknecht
(13 August 1871, Leipzig, Saxony, Germany – 15 January 1919, Berlin, Germany) was a German socialist and a co-founder with Rosa Luxemburg of the Spartacist League and the Communist Party of Germany. He is best known for his role in the Spartacist uprising of 1919. The uprising was crushed by the social democrat government and the Freikorps (WWI veterans defending the Weimar Republic) and Liebknecht and Luxemburg were killed.
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Leonida Bissolati
Leonida Bissolati (Cremona, February 20, 1857 -- Rome, March 6, 1920) was a leading exponent of the Italian socialist movement at the turn of the nineteenth century.
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Luigi Cadorna
Luigi Cadorna GCB (September 4, 1850, Verbania, Piedmont – December 21, 1928) was an Italian
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Max Arthur
Max Arthur is an author who specialises in first-hand recollections of historical events. He has worked closely with the Imperial War Museum to bring together two books in the Forgotten Voices series, Forgotten Voices of the Great War and Forgotten Voices of the Second World War. Prior to becoming a writer, he served with the Royal Air Force and for some years was an actor.
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Mehmed V
Mehmed V Reshad (Ottoman Turkish: محمد خامس Meḥmed-i ẖâmis, or ) (2/3 November 1844 – 3/4 July 1918) was the 35th Ottoman Sultan. He was the son of Sultan Abdülmecid I. His Mother was Valide Sultan Gülcemal, (Caucasus, 1826 - Constantinople, Ortaköy, Ortaköy Palace, 16 November 1851), originally named Sofiya, an Albanian.
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Movses Silikyan
Movses Silikyan (), , Movses Silikov) (1862–1937) was a famed Armenian general and national hero of World War I, Major General in the Russian army and subsequently in the Armenian army. He was arrested, charged and executed during Stalin's Great Purge of 1937 against military officers and countless other suspected enemies.
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Muirhead Bone
Sir Muirhead Bone (23 March 1876 – 21 October 1953) was a Scottish etcher, drypoint and watercolour artist.
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Nikola Zhekov
Nikola Todorov Zhekov (Bulgarian: Никола Тодоров Жеков; 1864 – 1949) was a Minister of War of Bulgaria in 1915 and served as Commander-in-Chief from 1915 to 1918 during World War I.
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Nikolai Yudenich
Nikolai Nikolaevich Yudenich () (July 18 ,1862 (July 30, New Style ) – October 5, 1933), was a commander of the Russian Caucasus Army and one of the most successful generals of the Russian Imperial Army during World War I. He was later a leader of the counterrevolution in Northwestern Russia during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1920.
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Norman Angell
Sir Ralph Norman Angell (26 December 1872 – 7 October 1967) was an English lecturer, journalist, author, and Member of Parliament for the Labour Party.
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Oskar von Hutier
Oskar von Hutier (27 August 1857 – 5 December 1934) was one of Germany's most successful and innovative generals of World War I.
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Otto von Bismarck
Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck (1 April 1815 – 30 July 1898) was a Prussian/German statesman of the late 19th century, and a dominant figure in world affairs. As Ministerpräsident, or Prime Minister, of Prussia from 1862–1890, he oversaw the unification of Germany. In 1867 he became Chancellor of the North German Confederation. He designed the German Empire in 1871, becoming its first Chancellor and dominating its affairs until his dismissal in 1890. His diplomacy of Realpolitik and powerful rule gained him the nickname "The Iron Chancellor".
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Ottoman Empire
The Sublime Ottoman State (Ottoman Turkish, Persian: دَوْلَتِ عَلِيّهٔ عُثمَانِیّه Devlet-i ʿAliyye-yi ʿOsmâniyye, Modern Turkish: Yüce Osmanlı Devleti or Osmanlı İmparatorluğu) was an empire that lasted from 1299 to 1923.
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Paolo Boselli
Paolo Boselli (June 8, 1838 – March 10, 1932) was an Italian politician who served as the 34th Prime Minister of Italy during World War I.
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Paul Nash (artist)
Paul Nash (11 May, 1889 – 11 July, 1946) was an English landscape painter, surrealist and war artist, and the older brother of the artist John Nash. He is widely considered one of the most important English artists of the first half of the twentieth century.
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Paul von Hindenburg
Paul Ludwig Hans Anton von Beneckendorff und von Hindenburg (), known universally as Paul von Hindenburg (; 2 October 1847 – 2 August 1934) was a German field marshal, statesman, and politician, and served as the second President of Germany from 1925 to 1934.
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Philipp Scheidemann
Philipp Scheidemann (26 July 1865 Kassel – 29 November 1939 Copenhagen) was a German Social Democratic politician, who proclaimed the Republic on 9 November 1918, and who became the second Chancellor of the Weimar Republic.
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Philippe Pétain
Henri Philippe Benoni Omer Joseph Pétain (; 24 April 1856 – 23 July 1951), generally known as Philippe Pétain or Marshal Pétain (Maréchal Pétain), was a French general who reached the distinction of Marshal of France, and was later Chief of State of Vichy France ''(Chef de l'État Français)'', from 1940 to 1944. Pétain, who was 84 years old in 1940, ranks as France's oldest head of state.
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Poles
The Polish people, or Poles ( , singular Polak) are the inhabitants of Poland and Polish emigrants irrespective of their ancestry. Their religion is predominantly Roman Catholic. As a nation, they are bounded by the Polish language, which belongs to the Lechitic subgroup of west slavic languages of Central Europe. A wide-ranging Polish diaspora exists throughout Western and Eastern Europe, the Americas and Australia. Polish citizens live predominantly in Poland.
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Pontic Greeks
The Pontian Greeks (also called Pontic Greeks, Pontians or Greeks of Pontus; or , ) are an ethnic group consisting of Greeks from the shores of the Black Sea (or Pontos in Greek, also see:Pontus). They traditionally speak Pontic, a distinct form of the Greek language which, due to the remoteness of Pontus, has had a process of linguistic evolution different from that of the rest of the Greek world.
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R. J. Rummel
Rudolph Joseph Rummel (born October 21, 1932) is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Hawaii. He has spent his career assembling data on collective violence and war with a view toward helping their resolution or elimination. Rummel coined the term democide for murder by government, his research claiming that six times as many people died of democide during the 20th century than in all that century's wars combined. He concludes that democracy is the form of government least likely to kill its citizens and that democracies do not wage war against each other (see Democratic peace theory).
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Ramsay MacDonald
James Ramsay MacDonald (12 October 1866 – 9 November 1937) was a British Labour politician, who served two separate terms as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He rose from humble origins to become the first ever British Labour Prime Minister in 1924.
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Raymond Poincaré
Raymond Poincaré (; 20 August 1860 – 15 October 1934) was a French conservative statesman who served as Prime Minister of France on five separate occasions and as President of France from 1913 to 1920.
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Reinhard Scheer
Reinhard Scheer (30 September 1863 – 26 November 1928) was an Admiral in the German Kaiserliche Marine. Scheer joined the navy in 1879 as an officer cadet; he progressed through the ranks, commanding cruisers and battleships, as well as major staff positions on land. At the outbreak of World War I, Scheer was the commander of the II Battle Squadron of the High Seas Fleet. He then took command of the III Battle Squadron, which consisted of the newest and most powerful battleships in the navy. In January 1916, he was promoted to Admiral and given control of the High Seas Fleet. Scheer led the German fleet at the Battle of Jutland on 31 May–1 June 1916, one of the largest naval battles in history.
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Richard von Kühlmann
Richard von Kühlmann (May 3, 1873-February 16, 1948) was a German diplomat and industrialist. From 6 August 1917 to 9 July 1918, he served as Germany's Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
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Robert Borden
:Not to be confused with his cousin Frederick Borden, Canadian Minister of Militia and Defence from 1896 to 1911.
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Robert Nivelle
Robert Georges Nivelle (15 October 1856 – 22 March 1924) was a French artillery officer who served in the Boxer Rebellion, and the First World War. He took command of one of the main French armies engaged in the Battle of Verdun, leading it during its successful counter-offensives against the Germans, but was accused of wasting French lives during some of his attacks. He became Commander-in-Chief of the French armies on the Western Front in December 1916, and was criticised in that capacity for not exploiting good opportunities to attack the Germans. He was responsible for the Nivelle Offensive, which faced a very large degree of opposition during its planning stage. When the offensive failed to achieve a breakthrough on the Western Front, Nivelle was replaced as Commander-in-Chief in May 1917.
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Russian Civil War
The Russian Civil War (1917–1923) was a multi-party war that occurred within the former Russian Empire after the Russian provisional government collapsed to the Soviets, under the domination of the Bolshevik party. Soviet forces first assumed power in Petrograd (St. Petersburg) and subsequently gained control throughout Russia.
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Senussi
The Senussi or Sanussi refers to a Muslim political-religious order in Libya and Sudan founded in Mecca in 1837 by the Grand Senussi, Sayyid Muhammad ibn Ali as-Senussi. Senussi was concerned with both the decline of Islamic thought and spirituality and the weakening of Muslim political integrity. He was influenced by the Salafi movement, to which he added teachings from various Sufi orders. From 1902 to 1913 the Senussi fought French expansion in the Sahara, and the Italian colonisation of Libya beginning in 1911. The Grand Senussi's grandson became King Idris I of Libya in 1951. In 1969, King Idris I was overthrown by a military coup led by Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi. A third of the population in Libya continue to be affiliated with the Senussi movement.
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Shandong
For the people of Shandong, see Shandong people
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Sherif Hussein
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Sir Arthur Currie
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Sir Edward Grey
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Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt (October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919) His last name is, according to Roosevelt himself, "pronounced as if it was spelled 'Rosavelt.' That is in three syllables. The first syllable as if it was 'Rose.'" ; An [http://vvl.lib.msu.edu/record.cfm?recordid=509 Audio recording] in which Roosevelt pronounces his own last name distinctly. To listen at the correct speed, slow the recording down by 20%. Retrieved on July 12, 2007. ) was the 26th President of the United States. He is noted for his energetic personality, range of interests and achievements, leadership of the Progressive Movement, and his "cowboy" image and robust masculinity. He was a leader of the Republican Party and founder of the short-lived Progressive ("Bull Moose") Party of 1912. Before becoming President (1901–1909) he held offices at the municipal, state, and federal level of government. Roosevelt's achievements as a naturalist, explorer, hunter, author, and soldier are as much a part of his fame as any office he held as a politician.
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Tovmas Nazarbekian
Tovmas Nazarbekian (Nazarbekov), (b. 1855 Tbilisi – d. 1931 Tbilisi), was an Armenian general in the Russian Caucasus Army that appointed as the governor of the Administration for Western Armenia and later promoted to Commander-in-chief of Democratic Republic of Armenia.
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Vasil Radoslavov
Vasil Radoslavov () (27 July 1854 - 21 October 1929) was a leading Bulgarian liberal politician who twice served as Prime Minister. He was Premier of the country throughout most of World War I.
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Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (22 April 1870 – 21 January 1924) was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years (1917–1924), as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a socialist economic system.
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Volga Germans
The Volga Germans ( or Russlanddeutsche, , Povolzhskie nemtsy) were ethnic Germans living along the River Volga in the region of southern European Russia around Saratov and to the south. They maintained German culture, language, traditions and churches: Lutherans, Reformed, Roman Catholics, and Mennonites. Many Volga Germans emigrated to the Midwestern United States, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and other countries in the 19th and early 20th centuries. During World War II, many died in Soviet labour camps. In the late 20th century, many of the remaining ethnic Germans moved to Germany.
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Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Edward Salter Owen MC (18 March 1893 – 4 November 1918) was a British poet and soldier in the first world war, and one of the leading poets of the First World War. His shocking, realistic war poetry on the horrors of trenches and gas warfare was heavily influenced by his friend Siegfried Sassoon and sat in stark contrast to both the public perception of war at the time, and to the confidently patriotic verse written earlier by war poets such as Rupert Brooke. Some of his best-known works—most of which were published posthumously—include "Dulce et Decorum Est", "Insensibility", "Anthem for Doomed Youth", "" and "". His preface intended for a book of poems to be published in 1919 contains numerous well-known phrases, especially "War, and the pity of War", and "the Poetry is in the pity".
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Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856 – February 3, 1924) was the 28th President of the United States. A leader of the Progressive Era, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913. With Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft dividing the Republican Party vote, Wilson was elected President as a Democrat in 1912.
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World War I
World War I was a military conflict centered on Europe that began in the summer of 1914. The fighting ended in late 1918. This conflict involved all of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Allies (centred around the Triple Entente) and the Central Powers. More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilized in one of the largest wars in history. More than 9 million combatants were killed, due largely to great technological advances in firepower without corresponding ones in mobility. It was the second deadliest conflict in history.
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Yugoslavs
Yugoslavs (Serbo-Croatian: Jugoslaveni Cyrillic script: Југословени; Slovene: Jugoslovani; Macedonian: Jugosloveni) is a national designation used by a small minority of South Slavs across the countries of Former Yugoslavia and in diaspora.
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Albania ( , , Gheg Albanian: Shqipnia/Shqypnia), officially known as the Republic of Albania (, pronounced ), is a country in South Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Montenegro to the northwest, Kosovo to the northeast, the Republic of Macedonia to the east and Greece to the south and southeast. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea to the west, and on the Ionian Sea to the southwest. It is less than from Italy, across the Strait of Otranto which links the Adriatic Sea to the Ionian Sea.
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Alsace-Lorraine (, generally Elsass-Lothringen) was a territory created by the German Empire in 1871 after the annexation of most of Alsace and the Moselle region of Lorraine in the Franco-Prussian War. The Alsatian part lay in the Rhine Valley on the west bank of the Rhine River and east of the Vosges Mountains. The Lorraine section was in the upper Moselle valley to the north of the Vosges Mountains.
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Amman (; , ʿAmmān) is the capital and largest city of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. A city of about 2 million inhabitants (2008 estimate), it is the country's political, cultural and commercial centre and one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. Amman is the administrative seat of the homonymous governorate.
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Anatolia (, from Greek '; also Asia Minor, from , ') is a geographic and historical term denoting the westernmost protrusion of Asia, comprising the majority of the Republic of Turkey. The region is bounded by the Black Sea to the north, Georgia to the northeast, the Armenian Highland to the east, Mesopotamia to the southeast, the Mediterranean Sea to the south and the Aegean Sea to the west. Anatolia has been home to many civilizations throughout history, such as the Hittites, Phrygians, Lydians, Persians, Greeks, Assyrians, Armenians, Romans, Byzantines, Anatolian Seljuks and Ottomans. As a result, Anatolia is one of the archeologically richest areas in the world.
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Arkhangelsk (), or Archangel in English, is a city and the administrative center of Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia. It lies on both banks of the Northern Dvina River near its exit into the White Sea in the far north of European Russia. City districts spread for over along the banks of the river and numerous islands of its delta. Arkhangelsk was the chief seaport of medieval Russia. It is served by Talagi Airport and the smaller Vaskovo Airport. The city is located at the end of a long railroad, connecting it to Moscow via Vologda and Yaroslavl. Population:
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Asiago (Cimbrian: Slege, German: Schlägen) is the name of both a minor township (population roughly 6,500) and the surrounding plateau region (the Altopiano di Asiago or Altopiano dei Sette Comuni, Asiago plateau) in the Province of Vicenza in the Veneto region of Northeastern Italy. It is near the border between the Veneto and Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol regions in the foothills of the Alps, and about equidistant (100 km) from the major cities of Trento to the west and Vicenza to the south.
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Baghdad (, , ) is the capital of Iraq and of Baghdad Governorate, with which it is coterminous. Having a population estimated between 7 and 7.5 million, it is the largest city in Iraq and the second largest city in the Arab World (after Cairo, Egypt).
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Baku (), sometimes known as Baqy, Baky, Baki or Bakou, is the capital, the largest city, and the largest port of Azerbaijan and all the Caucasus. Located on the southern shore of the Absheron Peninsula, the city consists of two principal parts: the downtown and the old Inner City (21.5 ha). Dating to antiquity, its urban population at the beginning of 2009 was estimated at just over two million people.
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The Baltic states (, , , Russian: Прибалтика (Pribaltika) lit. "At the Baltic Sea"), Baltic nations or Baltic countries are three countries in Northern Europe, all members of the European Union: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Between 1918 and 1920 in the aftermath of World War I, following centuries of foreign domination, the Baltic countries were established as independent nations. For a relatively-short time following 1918, Finland was considered to be one of the Baltic States - since it too had emerged from Russian domination along with the other three countries under similar circumstances. Today however, Finland is more often grouped within the Nordic countries.
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The Battle of Asiago (Battle of the Plateaux) or the Trentino Offensive (in Italian: Battaglia degli Altipiani), nicknamed Strafexpedition ("Punitive expedition") by the Austrians, was a counteroffensive launched by the Austro-Hungarians on the Italian Front on May 15, 1916, during World War I. It was an unexpected attack that took place near Asiago in the province of Vicenza (now in northeast Italy, then on the Italian side of the border between the Kingdom of Italy and Austria-Hungary) after the Fifth Battle of the Isonzo (March 1916).
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The Battle of Caporetto (also known as the Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo or the Battle of Karfreit as it was known by the Central Powers; ), took place from 24 October to 19 November 1917, near the town of Kobarid (now in Slovenia), on the Austro-Italian front of World War I. The battle was named after the Italian name of the town of Kobarid (known as Karfreit in German).
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The World War I naval Battle of Coronel took place on 1 November 1914 off the coast of central Chile near the city of Coronel. German Kaiserliche Marine forces led by Vice-Admiral Graf Maximilian von Spee met and defeated a Royal Navy squadron commanded by Rear-Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock.
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The third Battle of Doiran was fought from 18 September to 19 September 1918, with the Greeks and the British assaulting the positions of the Bulgarian First Army near Dojran Lake. The battle was part of World War I and took place in the Balkan Theatre. The battle ended with Bulgarians repulsing all attacks, but then retreating.
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The Battle of Jutland (; ) was the largest naval battle of World War I, and the only full-scale clash of battleships in that war. It was the third major fleet action between steel battleships, following the battles of the Yellow Sea and Tsushima during the Russo-Japanese War.
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The Battle of Verdun (, , ) was one of the major battles during the First World War on the Western Front. It was fought between the German and French armies, from 21 February to 18 December 1916, on hilly terrain north of the city of Verdun-sur-Meuse in north-eastern France. The Battle of Verdun ended in a French victory since the German High Command failed to achieve its two strategic objectives: the capture of the city of Verdun and a much higher casualty count inflicted on the French adversary.
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The Battle of Vimy Ridge was a military engagement fought primarily as part of the Battle of Arras, in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region of France, during the First World War. The main combatants were the Canadian Corps against three divisions of the German Sixth Army. The battle, which took place from 9 April to 12 April 1917, was part of the opening phase of the British-led Battle of Arras, a diversionary attack for the French Nivelle Offensive.
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Belgium (, ), officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, as well as those of several other major international organizations such as NATO. Belgium covers an area of , and it has a population of about 10.8 million people.
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Belgrade (Serbian: Београд, Beograd - ) is the capital and largest city of Serbia. The city lies at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, where the Pannonian Plain meets the Balkans. With a population of 1,630,000 (official estimate 2007), Belgrade is the fourth largest city in Southeastern Europe, after Istanbul, Athens and Bucharest. Its name in Serbian translates to White city.
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Bermuda (; officially, the Bermudas or Somers Islands) is a British overseas territory in the North Atlantic Ocean. Located off the east coast of the United States, its nearest landmass is Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, about to the west-northwest. It is about south of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and northeast of Miami, Florida. Its capital city is Hamilton but the largest municipality is the town of Saint George's.
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:For other uses, see Bessarabia (disambiguation).
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Bitola (, ; formerly Monastir or Manastır; known also by several alternative names) is a city in the southwestern part of the Republic of Macedonia. The city is an administrative, cultural, industrial, commercial, and educational centre. It is located in the southern part of the Pelagonia valley, surrounded by the Baba and Nidže mountains, 14 km north of the Medžitlija-Níki border crossing with Greece. It is an important junction connecting the south of the Adriatic Sea with the Aegean Sea and Central Europe. It was known during the Ottoman period as "the city of the consuls", since many European countries had consulates in Bitola. According to some sources, Bitola is the second largest town in the country, and to others the third. Bitola is also the centre of the Bitola Municipality.
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The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height it was the largest empire in history and, for over a century, was the foremost global power. By 1922 the British Empire held sway over about 458 million people, one-quarter of the world's population at the time, and covered more than 13 million square miles (34 million km2), almost a quarter of the Earth's total land area. As a result, its political, linguistic and cultural legacy is widespread. At the peak of its power, it was often said that "the sun never sets on the British Empire" because its span across the globe ensured that the sun was always shining on at least one of its numerous territories.
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Bucharest ( ) is the capital city, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmboviţa River.
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Budapest (, also , ; ; ) is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it serves as the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2010, Budapest had 1,721,556 inhabitants, down from 1980 peak of 2.06 million. The Budapest Commuter Area is home to 3,271,110 people. The city covers an area of within the city limits. Budapest became a single city occupying both banks of the river Danube with a unification on 17 November 1873 of right (west)-bank Buda and Óbuda with left (east)-bank Pest.
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Bulgaria ( , Balgariya, ), officially the Republic of Bulgaria (, Republika Balgariya, ), is a country in Southern Europe. Bulgaria borders five other countries: Romania to the north (mostly along the Danube), Serbia and the Republic of Macedonia to the west, and Greece and Turkey to the south. The Black Sea defines the extent of the country to the east.
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Canada () is a country in North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean. It is the world's second largest country by total area. Canada's common border with the United States to the south and northwest is the longest in the world.
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The Canadian War Museum (CWM) () is Canada’s national museum of military history. Located in Ottawa, Ontario, the museum covers all facets of Canada’s military past, from the first recorded instances of death by armed violence in Canadian history several thousand years ago to the country’s most recent involvement in conflicts. It includes major permanent exhibitions on wars that have been fought on Canadian soil, the total wars of the twentieth century, the Cold War and peace support operations abroad, and Canada’s history of honouring and remembrance. There is also an open storage area displaying large objects from the Museum’s collection, from naval guns to tanks, from motorcycles to jet aircraft. The exhibits depict Canada’s military past in its personal, national and international dimensions, with special emphasis on the human experience of war and the manner in which war has affected, and been affected by, Canadians’ participation.
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The Canal du Nord is a long canal in northern France. The canal connects the Canal latéral à l'Oise at Pont-l'Évêque to the Sensée Canal at Arleux. The French government, in partnership with coal-mining companies in the Nord and Pas-de-Calais regions, developed the canal to help French coal mining companies withstand foreign competition. Construction of the canal began in 1908 but halted in 1914, because of the First World War. The war caused widespread destruction of the canal and the French government made no attempt to resume construction until 1959. Construction recommenced in 1960 and the waterway opened to the public in 1965. The Canal du Nord and the Canal de Saint-Quentin will soon be supplanted by the Seine-Nord Europe Canal, a projected high capacity link between the Oise River at Janville and the high capacity Dunkirk-Escaut Canal.
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The Carpathian Mountains or the Carpathians are a range of mountains forming an arc roughly long across Central and Eastern Europe, making them the second longest mountain range in Europe (after the Scandinavian Mountains, ). They provide the habitat for the largest European populations of brown bears, wolves, chamois and lynxes, with the highest concentration in Romania, as well as over one third of all European plant species.
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The Caucasus or Caucas (also referred to as Caucasia, , , , (''K'avk'asia''), , , , , , , ) is a geopolitical region at the border of Europe and Asia. It is home to the Caucasus Mountains, including Europe's highest mountain (Mount Elbrus).
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Cobh () is a seaport town on the south coast of County Cork, Ireland. The locality, which had had several different Irish-language names, was first referred to as Cove ("The Cove of Cork") in 1750. It was renamed Queenstown in 1849 to commemorate a visit by Queen Victoria and so remained until the name Cobh (closer to the Irish spelling) was restored in 1922 with the foundation of the Irish Free State.
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Constantinople (, , Turkish: Istanbul) was the imperial capital of the Roman Empire, the Byzantine/Eastern Roman Empire, the Latin Empire and the Ottoman Empire. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.
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Croatia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Croatia (Croatian: Republika Hrvatska ), is a country in Central Europe and Southeastern Europe at the crossroads of the Pannonian Plain, the Balkans, and the Adriatic Sea. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. Croatia borders Slovenia to the north, Hungary to the northeast, Bosnia and Herzegovina to the southeast, Serbia to the east, and Montenegro to the southeast.
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Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia (Czech and Slovak: Československo, Česko-Slovensko) was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992. From 1939 to 1945 the state did not have de facto existence, due to its forced division and partial incorporation into Nazi Germany, but the Czechoslovak government-in-exile nevertheless continued to exist during this period. In 1945 the eastern part of Carpathian Ruthenia was taken over by the Soviet Union. On 1 January 1993, Czechoslovakia peacefully split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
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Dalmatia (, see names in other languages) is a historical region on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea. It spreads between the island of Rab in the northwest and the Bay of Kotor in the southeast. The hinterland, the Dalmatian Zagora, ranges from fifty kilometers in width in the north to just a few kilometers in the south. Dalmatia today lies mostly in Croatia, also with smaller parts in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Neum Municipality) and Montenegro (around the Bay of Kotor). The Dalmatian dog received its name from Dalmatia.
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Damascus ( , commonly known as الشام ash-Shām also known as the "City of Jasmin" ) is the capital of Syria as well as one of the country's 14 governorates. The Damascus Governorate is ruled by a governor appointed by the Minister of Interior. In addition to being widely known as the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, Damascus is a major cultural and religious center of the Levant.
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Daraa (), also Darʿā, , Deraa, Dera ("fortress", compare Dura-Europos) and Derʿā, is a city in southwestern Syria, near the border with Jordan. It is the capital of Daraa Governorate, known throughout history as the Hauran region. The city is located about 100 km south of Damascus.
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The Drina (Serbian: Дрина) is a 346 kilometer long river, which forms most of the border between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia. It is the longest tributary of the Sava River and the longest karst river in the Dinaric Alps which belongs to the Danube river watershed. Its name is derived from the Latin name of the river () which in turn is derived from Greek (Ancient Greek: ).
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East Prussia (, pronounced ; ; or Rytprūsiai; or Vostochnaya Prussiya) is the main part of the region of Prussia along the southeastern Baltic Coast from the 13th century to the end of World War II in May 1945. From 1772–1829 and 1878–1945, the Province of East Prussia was part of the German state of Prussia. The capital city was Königsberg.
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Egypt (; , Miṣr, ; Egyptian Arabic: مصر, Maṣr, ; Coptic: , ; Greek: Αίγυπτος, Aiguptos; Egyptian:
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The English Channel (, the "sleeve") is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that separates Great Britain from northern France, and joins the North Sea to the Atlantic. It is about long and varies in width from at its widest, to only in the Strait of Dover. It is the smallest of the shallow seas around the continental shelf of Europe, covering an area of some .
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Finland (pronounced ), officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden on the west, Norway on the north and Russia on the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.
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The First Battle of Gaza was a World War I battle on the southern border of Palestine. After eight months of painstaking advances, British Empire forces had succeeded in driving the Turkish forces from the Sinai Peninsula where they had been attempting to menace the Allied supply route through the Suez Canal. Now the Allies were trying to advance into Palestine with the ultimate goal of cutting off the Turkish forces in Mesopotamia and on the Arabian Peninsula. As a first step, they needed to capture the stronghold of Gaza which dominated the southern coastal route into Palestine.
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Flanders (Dutch: , ) is the (political) community of the Flemings but also one of the institutions in Belgium, and a geographical region located in parts of present-day Belgium, France, and the Netherlands. Over the course of history, the geographical territory that was called "Flanders" has varied.
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The Forest of Argonne forms a long strip of rocky mountain and wild woodland in north-eastern France.
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{{Infobox Country
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Georgia (, sak’art’velo ; ) is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Situated at the juncture of Eastern Europe and Western Asia, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the south by Turkey and Armenia, and to the east by Azerbaijan. Georgia covers a territory of 69,700 km² and its population is more than 4.6 million. Georgia's constitution is that of a representative democracy, organized as a unitary, semi-presidential republic. It is currently a member of the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the World Trade Organization, the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Community of Democratic Choice, the GUAM Organization for Democracy and Economic Development, and the Asian Development Bank. The country aspires to join NATO and the European Union.
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The German Empire (, called by some German historians as Kaiserlich Deutsches Reich or Kaiserreich) refers to Germany from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871 to 1918, when it became a federal republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of Wilhelm II (28 November 1918). Deutsches Reich remained the official name of Germany throughout the Weimar period and most of the Nazi period until 1943, when it was changed to Großdeutsches Reich ("Great German Empire").
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Gnjilane or Gjilan ( or Gjilan; , Gnjilane; ) is a city and municipality in eastern Kosovo. It is the administrative center of the District of Gnjilane. It is famous for having been recorded the lowest temperature in Kosovo with on 25 January 1963.
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Gorizia (, , ) is a town and comune in northeastern Italy, in the autonomous region of Friuli Venezia Giulia. It is located at the foot of the Julian Alps, bordering Slovenia. It is the capital of the Province of Gorizia, and it is a local center of tourism, industry, and commerce. Since 1947, a twin town of Nova Gorica has developed on the other side of the Italian-Slovenian border. Both towns constitute a conurbation, which also includes the Slovenian municipality of Šempeter-Vrtojba.
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Harbin (; ; Russian ), is a sub-provincial city and the capital of the Heilongjiang Province in Northeast China. It lies on the southern bank of the Songhua River. Harbin is the tenth largest city in China (pop. 9.87 million), serving as a key political, economic, scientific, cultural and communications hub in Northeastern China.
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Hungary ( ), officially the Republic of Hungary (Magyar Köztársaság ), is a landlocked country in the Carpathian Basin in Central Europe, bordered by Austria, Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia. Its capital is Budapest. Hungary is a member of the European Union, NATO, the OECD, the Visegrád Group, and is a Schengen state. The official language is Hungarian, the most widely spoken non-Indo-European language in Europe, being part of the Finno-Ugric family.
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Ireland (,; , ; Ulster Scots: Airlann) is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island in the world. It lies to the northwest of continental Europe and is surrounded by hundreds of islands and islets. To the east of Ireland is Great Britain, separated from it by the Irish Sea. The island is divided between the Republic of Ireland, which covers just under five-sixths of the island, and Northern Ireland, a part of the United Kingdom, which covers the remainder and is located in the northeast of the island. The population of Ireland is approximately 6.2 million people. Just under 4.5 million live in the Republic of Ireland and just under 1.8 million live in Northern Ireland.
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Israel (, ''Yisrā'el; , Isrā'īl), officially the State of Israel (Hebrew: , Medīnat Yisrā'el; , Dawlat Isrā'īl''), is a parliamentary republic in the Middle East located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan and the West Bank in the east, Egypt and Gaza on the southwest, and contains geographically diverse features within its relatively small area. Israel is the world's only predominantly Jewish state, and is defined as A Jewish and Democratic State by the Israeli government.
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Istria (Croatian, Slovene: Istra; Italian: Istria; Istriot: Eîstria; Hungarian: Isztria), formerly Histria (Latin), is the largest peninsula in the Adriatic Sea. The peninsula is located at the head of the Adriatic between the Gulf of Trieste and the Bay of Kvarner. It is shared by three countries: Croatia, Slovenia, and Italy.Alan John Day, Roger East, Richard Thomas, [http://books.google.com/books?id=dt2TXexiKTgC&pg;=PA280&dq;=istria+croatia+slovenia+italy&hl;=cs&ei;=-B6VTO-GAcOU4Aak6MWGBA&sa;=X&oi;=book_result&ct;=result&resnum;=2&ved;=0CDQQ6AEwATgU#v=onepage&q;=istria%20croatia%20slovenia%20italy&f;=false A political and economic dictionary of Eastern Europe], Routledge, 1sr ed. (2002), ISBN 1857430638
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Jenin ({{lang-ar|; ), is a third largest Palestinian city in west bank located in the northern West Bank. It serves as the administrative center of the Jenin Governorate and is a major agricultural center for the surrounding towns. In 2007, the city had a population of 39,004 not including the adjacent refugee camp (also named Jenin) with 10,371 residents. Jenin is designated under the administration of the Palestinian Authority.
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Jerusalem ( , ; Arabic: , al-Quds Sharif, "The Holy Sanctuary") is the capital of Israel, though not internationally recognized as such. If the area and population of East Jerusalem is included, it is Israel's largest city in both population and area, with a population of 763,800 residents over an area of . Located in the Judean Mountains, between the Mediterranean Sea and the northern edge of the Dead Sea, modern Jerusalem has grown far beyond the boundaries of the Old City.
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:For the ancient, Biblical city, see Jezreel (city)
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{{Geobox|River
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The Kingdom (Tsardom) of Bulgaria () was established on October 5, 1908 (September 22 O.S.) when the Principality of Bulgaria officially proclaimed itself independent from the Ottoman Empire and was elevated to the style of kingdom. This move also formalised the annexation of the Ottoman province of Eastern Rumelia, which had been under Bulgarian control since 1885. In 1946 the monarchy was abolished, its final Tsar was sent into exile and the kingdom was replaced by a People's Republic. Although rarely, it is sometimes referred to as the Third Bulgarian Empire, as in the Middle Ages the term Tsardom meant an Empire. However, the Third Bulgarian state was internationally recognized as a Kingdom.
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The Kingdom of Hungary emerged in 1000, when the Principality of Hungary, founded in 896, was recognized as a Kingdom. The form of government was changed from monarchy to Republic briefly in 1918 and again in 1946, ending the Kingdom and creating the Republic of Hungary. During most of its history, it was a considerable state in Central Europe, including, besides Hungary proper and Transylvania, Croatia-Slavonia and a territory known as the Military Frontier.Aldásy, Antal. "Hungary", The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 7. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910. 17 April 2009 .
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The Kingdom of Serbia (Serbian: Краљевина Србија, Kraljevina Srbija) was created when Prince Milan Obrenović, ruler of the Principality of Serbia, was crowned King in 1882. The Principality of Serbia was ruled by the Karadjordjevic dynasty from 1817 onwards (at times replaced by the Obrenovic dynasty). The Principality, suzerain to the Porte, had expelled all Ottoman troops by 1867, securing its de facto independence. The Congress of Berlin in 1878 recognized the formal independence of the Principality of Serbia.
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The Kingsland Explosion was an incident that took place during World War I at a munitions factory in New Jersey.
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Latvia (; ), officially the Republic of Latvia () is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia (343 km), to the south by Lithuania (588 km), to the east by the Russian Federation (276 km), and to the southeast by Belarus (141 km). Across the Baltic Sea to the west lies Sweden. The territory of Latvia covers and it has a temperate seasonal climate.
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Lithuania (, U.S. usually ; ), officially the Republic of Lithuania () is a country in Northern Europe, the southernmost of the three Baltic states. Situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, it shares borders with Latvia to the north, Belarus to the southeast, Poland, and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad to the southwest.
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Ljubljana (; , , ) is the capital of Slovenia and its largest city. It is the centre of the City Municipality of Ljubljana. It is located in the centre of the country in the Ljubljana Basin, and is a mid-sized city of some 280,000 inhabitants. Throughout its history, it has been influenced by its geographic position at the crossroads of Germanic, Latin and Slavic cultures.
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Luxembourg ( ), officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg (, , ), is a landlocked country in western Europe, bordered by Belgium, France, and Germany. Luxembourg has a population of over half a million people in an area of approximately 2,586 square kilometres (999 sq mi).
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Mecca (), also spelled Makkah (occasionally 'Bakkah') (; Makkah and in full: transliterated Makkah Al Mukarramah ) is a city in Saudi Arabia, and the holiest meeting site in Islam, closely followed by Medina.
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Medina (; , , or المدينة ; also transliterated as Madinah; officially al-Madīnah al-Munawwarah (the radiant city)) is a city in the Hejaz region of western Saudi Arabia, and serves as the capital of the Al Madinah Province. It is the second holiest city in Islam, and the burial place of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad and it is historically significant for being his home after the Hijrah.
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Mexico, (pronounced ; ), officially known as the United Mexican States (), is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of Mexico. Covering almost 2 million square kilometres (over 760,000 sq mi), Mexico is the fifth-largest country in the Americas by total area and the 14th largest independent nation in the world. With an estimated population of 111 million, it is the 11th most populous country and the most populous Hispanophone country on Earth. Mexico is a federation comprising thirty-one states and a Federal District, the capital city.
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Milan (, ; Western Lombard: Milan, ) is a city in Italy and the capital of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1,310,000, while the urban area is the first in Italy and the fifth largest in the European Union with a population of 4,345,000 over an area of . The Milan metropolitan area, by far the largest in Italy, is estimated by the OECD to have a population of 7,400,000.
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Montenegro ( or ; Montenegrin: Crna Gora, Црна Гора, , meaning "Black Mountain") is a country located in Southeastern Europe. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea to the south-west and is bordered by Croatia to the west, Bosnia and Herzegovina to the northwest, Serbia to the northeast, Kosovo to the east and Albania to the southeast. Its capital and largest city is Podgorica, while Cetinje is designated as the Prijestonica (Пријестоница), meaning the former Royal Capital City.
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Nablus (sometimes Nābulus; ; ; , Šəḫem) (Biblical Shechem) is a Palestinian city in the northern West Bank, approximately north of Jerusalem, with a population of 126,132. Located in a strategic position between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim, it is the capital of the Nablus Governorate and a Palestinian commercial and cultural center.
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Nazareth (; , Natzrat or Natzeret; al-Nāṣira or al-Naseriyye) is the largest city in the North District of Israel. Known as "the Arab capital of Israel," the population is predominantly made up of Arab citizens of Israel. In the New Testament, the city is described as the childhood home of Jesus, and as such is a center of Christian pilgrimage, with many shrines commemorating biblical events. The name "Nazareth" may derive from the Hebrew verb na·tsar, נָצַר, meaning "watch, guard, keep."
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New Britain, or Niu Briten, is the largest island in the Bismarck Archipelago (named after Otto von Bismarck) of Papua New Guinea. It is separated from the island of New Guinea by the Dampier and Vitiaz Straits and from New Ireland by the St. George's Channel. The main towns of New Britain are Rabaul/Kokopo and Kimbe.
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Oakland () is the eighth-largest city in the U.S. state of California. It is a major West Coast port, located on San Francisco Bay, about 8 miles (13 km) east of San Francisco. Oakland is a major hub city for the Bay Area subregion collectively called the East Bay, and it is the county seat of Alameda County. Based on United States Census Bureau estimates for 2010, Oakland is the 41st-largest city in the USA with a population of 446,901.
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Ontario is a Province of Canada located in the east-central part of Canada, the largest by population and second largest, after Quebec, in total area, (Nunavut and the Northwest Territories are larger in area, but they are not provinces.) The province's largest metropolitan area and Canada's most populous city, Toronto, is the capital city of Ontario. The national capital of Canada, Ottawa, is located in Ontario as well.
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Padua ( , , Latin: Patavium, ) is a city and comune in the Veneto, northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Padua and the economic and communications hub of the area. Padua's population is 212,500 (). The city is sometimes included, with Venice (Italian Venezia), in the Padua-Venice Metropolitan Area, having a population of c. 1,600,000.
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Poland (), officially the Republic of Poland (Rzeczpospolita Polska), is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north. The total area of Poland is , making it the 69th largest country in the world and the 9th largest in Europe. Poland has a population of over 38 million people, which makes it the 34th most populous country in the world and the sixth most populous member of the European Union, being its most populous Slavic member.
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(; ) also known in the West by its postal map spelling Tsingtao, is a major city in eastern Shandong province, People's Republic of China. It borders Yantai to the northeast, Weifang to the west and Rizhao to the southeast. Lying across the Shandong Peninsula while looking out to the Yellow Sea, Qingdao today is a major seaport, naval base, and industrial center. It is also the site of the Tsingtao Brewery. The character (qīng) in Chinese means "green" or "lush", while the character (dǎo) means "island". Qingdao is administratively at the sub-provincial level. In 2008, Qingdao was named China's 7th-most livable city.
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Quebec or ( ) is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level.
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Romania ( ; dated: Rumania; ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, north of the Balkan Peninsula, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea. Romania shares a border with Hungary and Serbia to the west, Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova to the northeast, and Bulgaria to the south.
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Saint Petersburg () is a city and a federal subject (a federal city) of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city's other names were Petrograd (, 1914–1924) and Leningrad (, 1924–1991). It is often called just Petersburg () and is informally known as Piter ().
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Salisbury Plain is a chalk plateau in central southern England covering . It is part of the Southern England Chalk Formation and largely lies within the county of Wiltshire, with a little in Hampshire. The plain is famous for its rich archaeology, including Stonehenge, one of England's best known landmarks. Largely as a result of the establishment of the Army Training Estate Salisbury Plain (ATE SP), the plain is sparsely populated and is the largest remaining area of calcareous grassland in north-west Europe. Additionally the plain has arable land, and a few small areas of beech trees and coniferous woodland.
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Sarajevo (Serbian Cyrillic: Сарајево) is the capital and largest city of Bosnia and Herzegovina, 305,242 people in the four municipalities that make up the city proper, and a metro area population of 423,645 people in the Sarajevo Canton . It is also the capital of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina entity, as well as the center of the Sarajevo Canton. Sarajevo is located in the Sarajevo valley of Bosnia, surrounded by the Dinaric Alps and situated around the Miljacka river.
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Scapa Flow (Old Norse: Skalpaflói) is a body of water in the Orkney Islands, Scotland, United Kingdom, sheltered by the islands of Mainland, Graemsay, Burray, South Ronaldsay and Hoy. At with a sandy bottom and relatively shallow (not deeper than and most of it about deep), it is one of the great natural harbours/anchorages of the world, with sufficient space to hold a number of navies. Viking ships anchored in Scapa Flow more than 1000 years ago, but it is best known as the site of the United Kingdom's chief naval base during World War I and World War II. The base was closed in 1956.
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For the people of Shandong, see Shandong people
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The Sinai Peninsula or Sinai; ''sīnā'a''; Hebrew סיני) is a triangular peninsula in Egypt which is about . It lies between the Mediterranean Sea to the north, and the Red Sea to the south, and is the only part of Egyptian territory located in Asia as opposed to Africa. In addition to its formal name, Egyptians also refer to it affectionately as the "Land of Fayrouz", based on the Ancient Egyptian "Dumafkat", which has the same meaning. The peninsula is divided into two Egyptian governorates, and has a population of approximately 1.3 million people.
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Slovenia ( ), officially the Republic of Slovenia (, ), is a country in Central Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy on the west, the Adriatic Sea on the southwest, Croatia on the south and east, Hungary on the northeast, and Austria on the north. The capital and largest city of Slovenia is Ljubljana.
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South Morava (Serbian Јужна Морава, Južna Morava; Macedonian Јужна Морава) is a river in the Republic of Macedonia and Serbia which represents the shorter headwater of Great Morava. Today, it is 295 km long, flowing generally in the south to north direction, from Macedonian border through Kosovo to Central Serbia, where it meets West Morava at Stalać, to create Great Morava.
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The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR, , abbreviated СССР, SSSR), informally known as the Soviet Union () or Soviet Russia, was a constitutionally socialist state that existed on the territory of most of the former Russian Empire in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991.
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The Soča (in Slovene) or Isonzo (in Italian) (other names , archaic , ) is a 140 km long river that flows through western Slovenia and northeast Italy. An Alpine river in character, its source lies in the Trenta Valley in the Julian Alps in Slovenia, at an elevation of around 1,100 metres. The river runs past Slovenia's highest peak, Triglav (2,864 m) before heading south past the towns of Bovec, Kobarid, Tolmin, Kanal ob Soči, Nova Gorica (where it is crossed by the Solkan Bridge) and Gorizia, entering the Adriatic Sea close to the Italian town of Monfalcone.
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The Suez Canal is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. Opened in November 1869, it allows water transportation between Europe and Asia without navigating around Africa. The northern terminus is Port Said and the southern terminus is Port Tawfik at the city of Suez. Ismailia lies on its west bank, north of the half-way point.
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The Free State of Thuringia (, ) is a state of Germany, located in the central part of the country. It is known as the "[http://www.eu2007.de/de/Germany/Bundeslaender/Thueringen/province.html green heart of Germany]", due to the dense forest that covers the terrain. It has an area of and 2.29 million inhabitants, making it the sixth smallest by area and the fifth smallest by population of Germany's sixteen states. The capital is Erfurt.
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Tiberias (; , Tverya ; , ) is a city on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, Lower Galilee, Israel. Established in 20 CE, it was named in honour of the emperor Tiberius. Since the 16th century, Tiberias has been considered one of Judaism's Four Holy Cities, along with Jerusalem, Hebron and Safed. In the 2nd-10th centuries, Tiberias was the largest Jewish city in the Galilee, and the political and religious hub of the Jews of Palestine. According to Christian tradition, Jesus performed several miracles in the Tiberias district, making it an important pilgrimage site for devout Christians. Tiberias has historically been known for its hot springs, believed to cure skin and other ailments, for thousands of years.
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The Tondern raid, officially designated Operation F.7, was a British bombing raid mounted by the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force against the Imperial German Navy's airship base at Tondern in Germany. It was the first attack in history made by aircraft flying from a carrier flight deck. On 19 July 1918 seven Sopwith Camels took off from the converted large cruiser Furious. For the loss of one man, the British destroyed two German zeppelins, L.54 and L.60 and a captive balloon.
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Trieste (, ; ; ; ) is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is situated towards the end of a narrow strip of land lying between the Adriatic Sea and Italy's border with Slovenia, which lies almost immediately south, east and north of the city. Trieste is located at the head of the Gulf of Trieste and throughout history it has been influenced by its location at the crossroads of Germanic, Latin and Slavic cultures. In 2009, it had a population of about 205,000 and it is the capital of the autonomous region Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Trieste province.
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Tulkarm or Tulkarem (, Ṭūlkarm; ) is a Palestinian city in the Tulkarm Governorate in the extreme northwestern West Bank. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, Tulkarm city and the adjacent refugee camp had a population of approximately 58,962 inhabitants at mid-year 2006. Its land area consists of 28,793 dunam.
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Tunisia (pronounced , ; Tūnis), officially the Tunisian Republic ( al-Jumhūriyya at-Tūnisiyya), is the northernmost country in Africa. It is an Arab country and is bordered by Algeria to the west, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Its area is almost 165,000 km², with an estimated population of just over 10.3 million. Its name is derived from the capital Tunis located in the north-east.
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Turkey (), known officially as the Republic of Turkey (), is a Eurasian country that stretches across the Anatolian peninsula in western Asia and Thrace in the Balkan region of southeastern Europe. Turkey is one of the six independent Turkic states. Turkey is bordered by eight countries: Bulgaria to the northwest; Greece to the west; Georgia to the northeast; Armenia, Azerbaijan (the exclave of Nakhchivan) and Iran to the east; and Iraq and Syria to the southeast. The Mediterranean Sea and Cyprus are to the south; the Aegean Sea to the west; and the Black Sea is to the north. The Sea of Marmara, the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles (which together form the Turkish Straits) demarcate the boundary between Eastern Thrace and Anatolia; they also separate Europe and Asia.
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Ukraine ( ; , transliterated: , ), with its area of 603,628 km2, is the second largest country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by the Russian Federation to the east and northeast, Belarus to the northwest, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary to the west, Romania and Moldova to the southwest, and the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to the south and southeast respectively.
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Vienna (; ; ) is the capital of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.7 million (2.3 million within the metropolitan area, more than 25% of Austria's population), and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre. It is the 10th largest city by population in the European Union. Vienna is host to many major international organizations such as the United Nations and OPEC.
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Wall Street is a street in Lower Manhattan, New York City. It runs east from Broadway to South Street on the East River, through the historical center of the Financial District. It is the first permanent home of the New York Stock Exchange, the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed companies. Over time, Wall Street became the name of the surrounding geographic neighborhood and also shorthand (or a metonym) for the "influential financial interests" of the American financial industry, which is centered in the New York City area. Anchored by Wall Street, New York City vies with the City of London to be the financial capital of the world.
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Warsaw ( ; see also other names) is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population as of June 2009 was estimated at 1,711,466, and the Warsaw metropolitan area at approximately 2,785,000. The city area is , with an agglomeration of (Warsaw Metro Area Obszar Metropolitalny Warszawy). Warsaw is the 9th largest city in the European Union by population.
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The Weimar Republic (, ) is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government. It was named after Weimar, the city where the constitutional assembly took place. Its official name was Deutsches Reich (sometimes translated as German Empire, but Reich can also mean realm or federal level of government), however, and it was usually known in English simply as Germany. Following World War I, the republic emerged from the German Revolution in November 1918. In 1919, a national assembly convened in Weimar, where a new constitution for the German Reich was written, then adopted on 11 August of that same year. Germany's period of liberal democracy lapsed in the early 1930s, leading to the ascent of the NSDAP and Adolf Hitler in 1933. Although the constitution of 1919 was never officially repealed, the legal measures taken by the Nazi government in February and March 1933, commonly known as Gleichschaltung ("coordination") meant that the government could legislate contrary to the constitution. The constitution became irrelevant; thus, 1933 is usually seen as the end of the Weimar Republic and the beginning of Hitler's Third Reich.
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Yugoslavia (Croatian, Serbian, Slovene: Jugoslavija; Macedonian, Serbian Cyrillic: Југославија) is a term that describes three political entities that existed successively on the western part of Balkan Peninsula in Europe, during most of the 20th century.
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Conflict | World War I |
---|---|
Date | 28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918 (Armistice) Treaty of Versailles signed 28 June 1919 |
Place | Europe, Africa, the Middle East, the Pacific Islands, China and off the coast of South and North America |
Casus | Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand (28 June) followed by Austro-Hungarian declaration of war on Kingdom of Serbia (28 July) and Russian mobilisation against Austria–Hungary (29 July). |
Result | Allied victory
|
Combatant1 | Allied (Entente) Powers (1914–17) France (1915–18) (1917–18) (1916–18) (1917–18) Portugal (1916–18) (1914–16) and others |
Combatant2 | Central Powers (1915–18) |
Commander1 | Leaders and commanders Nicholas II Nicholas Nikolaevich H. H. Asquith David Lloyd George Douglas Haig Raymond Poincaré Georges Clemenceau Ferdinand Foch Antonio Salandra Vittorio Orlando Luigi Cadorna Woodrow Wilson John J. Pershing and others |
Commander2 | Leaders and commanders Wilhelm II Paul von Hindenburg Erich Ludendorff Franz Joseph I Karl I Conrad von Hötzendorf Mehmed V Enver Pasha Ferdinand I Nikola Zhekov and others |
Strength1 | Allies
12,000,000
8,841,541 8,660,000 5,093,140 4,743,826 1,234,000 800,000 707,343 380,000 250,000 200,000 50,000 Total: 42,959,850 |
Strength2 | Central Powers
13,250,000 7,800,000 2,998,321 1,200,000 Total: 25,248,321 |
Casualties1 | Military dead:5,525,000Military wounded:12,831,500Military missing:4,121,000Total:22,477,500 KIA, WIA or MIA ...further details. |
Casualties2 | Military dead:4,386,000Military wounded:8,388,000Military missing:3,629,000Total: 16,403,000 KIA, WIA or MIA ...further details. |
Campaignbox | }} |
World War I (WWI), which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918. It involved all the world's great powers, which were assembled in two opposing alliances: the Allies (centred around the Triple Entente) and the Central Powers (originally centred around the Triple Alliance). More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history. More than 9 million combatants were killed, largely because of great technological advances in firepower without corresponding advances in mobility. It was the sixth deadliest conflict in world history.
The assassination on 28 June 1914 of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, was the proximate trigger of the war. Long-term causes, such as imperialistic foreign policies of the great powers of Europe, including the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire, the British Empire, France, and Italy, played a major role. Ferdinand's assassination by a Yugoslav nationalist resulted in a Habsburg ultimatum against the Kingdom of Serbia. Several alliances formed over the past decades were invoked, so within weeks the major powers were at war; via their colonies, the conflict soon spread around the world.
On 28 July, the conflict opened with the Austro-Hungarian invasion of Serbia, followed by the German invasion of Belgium, Luxembourg and France; and a Russian attack against Germany. After the German march on Paris was brought to a halt, the Western Front settled into a static battle of attrition with a trench line that changed little until 1917. In the East, the Russian army successfully fought against the Austro-Hungarian forces but was forced back by the German army. Additional fronts opened after the Ottoman Empire joined the war in 1914, Italy and Bulgaria in 1915 and Romania in 1916. The Russian Empire collapsed in 1917, and Russia left the war after the October Revolution later that year. After a 1918 German offensive along the western front, United States forces entered the trenches and the Allies drove back the German armies in a series of successful offensives. Germany agreed to a cease-fire on 11 November 1918, later known as Armistice Day.
By the war's end, four major imperial powers—the German, Russian, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires—had been militarily and politically defeated and ceased to exist. The successor states of the former two lost a great amount of territory, while the latter two were dismantled entirely. The map of central Europe was redrawn into several smaller states. The League of Nations was formed in the hope of preventing another such conflict. The European nationalism spawned by the war and the breakup of empires, the repercussions of Germany's defeat and problems with the Treaty of Versailles are generally agreed to be factors in the beginning of World War II.
Etymology
During the Interwar period the War was known by a variety of names in English-speaking countries. Besides being called the World War and the Great War,. which were the most common names, it was also referred to merely as The War, or The War in Europe, the War of Nations , the 1914 War, or some variation on these and other names. Occasionally different names were used interchangeably within a single work, as in this Time article from 1924. After the onset of the Second World War in 1939 the terms World War I or the First World War became standard, with British and Canadian historians favouring the First World War and Americans World War I. The notion that the "World War" was merely the first in a series was not a new idea at the time, however; it was first introduced in September 1914 by German biologist and philosopher Ernst Haeckel, who claimed that, "there is no doubt that the course and character of the feared 'European War'" ... will become the first world war in the full sense of the word." In France and Belgium, the war was sometimes referred to as La Guerre du Droit (the War for Justice) or La Guerre Pour la Civilisation / de Oorlog tot de Beschaving (the War to Preserve Civilisation), especially on medals and commemorative monuments.
Background
In the 19th Century, the major European powers had gone to great lengths to maintain a balance of power throughout Europe, resulting by 1900 in a complex network of political and military alliances throughout the continent. These had started in 1815, with the Holy Alliance between Prussia, Russia, and Austria. Then, in October 1873, German Chancellor Bismarck negotiated the League of the Three Emperors (German: Dreikaiserbund) between the monarchs of Austria–Hungary, Russia and Germany. This agreement failed because Austria–Hungary and Russia could not agree over Balkan policy, leaving Germany and Austria–Hungary in an alliance formed in 1879, called the Dual Alliance. This was seen as a method of countering Russian influence in the Balkans as the Ottoman Empire continued to weaken. In 1882, this alliance was expanded to include Italy in what became the Triple Alliance.After 1870, European conflict was averted largely through a carefully planned network of treaties between the German Empire and the remainder of Europe orchestrated by Chancellor Bismarck. He especially worked to hold Russia at Germany's side to avoid a two-front war with France and Russia. When Wilhelm II ascended to the throne as German Emperor (Kaiser), Bismarck's alliances were gradually de-emphasised. For example, the Kaiser refused to renew the Reinsurance Treaty with Russia in 1890. Two years later, the Franco-Russian Alliance was signed to counteract the force of the Triple Alliance. In 1904, the United Kingdom sealed an alliance with France, the Entente cordiale and in 1907, the United Kingdom and Russia signed the Anglo-Russian Convention. This system of interlocking bilateral agreements formed the Triple Entente.
German industrial and economic power had grown greatly after unification and the foundation of the Empire in 1870. From the mid-1890s on, the government of Wilhelm II used this base to devote significant economic resources to building up the Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial German Navy), established by Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, in rivalry with the British Royal Navy for world naval supremacy. As a result, both nations strove to out-build each other in terms of capital ships. With the launch of in 1906, the British Empire expanded on its significant advantage over its German rivals. The arms race between Britain and Germany eventually extended to the rest of Europe, with all the major powers devoting their industrial base to producing the equipment and weapons necessary for a pan-European conflict. Between 1908 and 1913, the military spending of the European powers increased by 50 percent.
Austria-Hungary precipitated the Bosnian crisis of 1908–1909 by officially annexing the former Ottoman territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which it had occupied since 1878. This angered the Kingdom of Serbia and its patron, the Pan-Slavic and Orthodox Russian Empire. Russian political manoeuvring in the region destabilised peace accords that were already fracturing in what was known as "the Powder keg of Europe".
In 1912 and 1913, the First Balkan War was fought between the Balkan League and the fracturing Ottoman Empire. The resulting Treaty of London further shrank the Ottoman Empire, creating an independent Albanian State while enlarging the territorial holdings of Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro and Greece. When Bulgaria attacked both Serbia and Greece on 16 June 1913, it lost most of Macedonia to Serbia and Greece and Southern Dobruja to Romania in the 33-day Second Balkan War, further destabilising the region.
On 28 June 1914, Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian-Serb student and member of Young Bosnia, assassinated the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo, Bosnia. This began a period of diplomatic manoeuvring among Austria-Hungary, Germany, Russia, France, and Britain called the July Crisis. Wanting to finally end Serbian interference in Bosnia, Austria-Hungary delivered the July Ultimatum to Serbia, a series of ten demands intentionally made unacceptable, intending to provoke a war with Serbia. When Serbia agreed to only eight of the ten demands, Austria-Hungary declared war on 28 July 1914. Strachan argues, "Whether an equivocal and early response by Serbia would have made any difference to Austria-Hungary's behaviour must be doubtful. Franz Ferdinand was not the sort of personality who commanded popularity, and his demise did not cast the empire into deepest mourning".
The Russian Empire, unwilling to allow Austria–Hungary to eliminate its influence in the Balkans, and in support of its longtime Serb protégés, ordered a partial mobilisation one day later. When the German Empire began to mobilise on 30 July 1914, France, angry about the German conquest of Alsace-Lorraine during the Franco-Prussian War, ordered French mobilisation on 1 August. Germany declared war on Russia on the same day. The United Kingdom declared war on Germany, on 4 August 1914, following an "unsatisfactory reply" to the British ultimatum that Belgium must be kept neutral.
Chronology
Opening hostilities
Confusion among the Central Powers
The strategy of the Central Powers suffered from miscommunication. Germany had promised to support Austria-Hungary's invasion of Serbia, but interpretations of what this meant differed. Previously-tested deployment plans had been replaced early in 1914, but never tested in exercises. Austro-Hungarian leaders believed Germany would cover its northern flank against Russia. Germany, however, envisioned Austria-Hungary directing most of its troops against Russia, while Germany dealt with France. This confusion forced the Austro-Hungarian Army to divide its forces between the Russian and Serbian fronts.On 9 September 1914, the Septemberprogramm, a possible plan which detailed Germany's specific war aims and the conditions that Germany sought to force on the Allied Powers, was outlined by German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg. It was never officially adopted.
African campaigns
Some of the first clashes of the war involved British, French and German colonial forces in Africa. On 7 August, French and British troops invaded the German protectorate of Togoland. On 10 August, German forces in South-West Africa attacked South Africa; sporadic and fierce fighting continued for the rest of the war. The German colonial forces in German East Africa, led by Colonel Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck, fought a guerrilla warfare campaign during World War I and only surrendered two weeks after the armistice took effect in Europe.
Serbian campaign
The Serbian army fought the Battle of Cer against the invading Austro-Hungarians, beginning on 12 August, occupying defensive positions on the south side of the Drina and Sava rivers. Over the next two weeks Austrian attacks were thrown back with heavy losses, which marked the first major Allied victory of the war and dashed Austro-Hungarian hopes of a swift victory. As a result, Austria had to keep sizeable forces on the Serbian front, weakening its efforts against Russia.
German forces in Belgium and France
At the outbreak of the First World War, the German army (consisting in the West of seven field armies) carried out a modified version of the Schlieffen Plan, designed to quickly attack France through neutral Belgium before turning southwards to encircle the French army on the German border. The plan called for the right flank of the German advance to converge on Paris and initially, the Germans were successful, particularly in the Battle of the Frontiers (14–24 August). By 12 September, the French with assistance from the British forces halted the German advance east of Paris at the First Battle of the Marne (5–12 September). The last days of this battle signified the end of mobile warfare in the west. The French offensive into Germany launched on 7 August with the Battle of Mulhouse had limited success.In the east, only one Field Army defended East Prussia and when Russia attacked in this region it diverted German forces intended for the Western Front. Germany defeated Russia in a series of battles collectively known as the First Battle of Tannenberg (17 August – 2 September), but this diversion aggravated problems of insufficient speed of advance from rail-heads not foreseen by the German General Staff. The Central Powers were denied a quick victory and forced to fight a war on two fronts. The German army had fought its way into a good defensive position inside France and had permanently incapacitated 230,000 more French and British troops than it had lost itself. Despite this, communications problems and questionable command decisions cost Germany the chance of early victory.
Asia and the Pacific
New Zealand occupied German Samoa (later Western Samoa) on 30 August. On 11 September, the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force landed on the island of Neu Pommern (later New Britain), which formed part of German New Guinea. Japan seized Germany's Micronesian colonies and, after the Siege of Tsingtao, the German coaling port of Qingdao in the Chinese Shandong peninsula. Within a few months, the Allied forces had seized all the German territories in the Pacific; only isolated commerce raiders and a few holdouts in New Guinea remained.
Early stages
Trench warfare begins
Military tactics before World War I had failed to keep pace with advances in technology. These advances allowed for impressive defence systems, which out-of-date military tactics could not break through for most of the war. Barbed wire was a significant hindrance to massed infantry advances. Artillery, vastly more lethal than in the 1870s, coupled with machine guns, made crossing open ground extremely difficult. The Germans introduced poison gas; it soon became used by both sides, though it never proved decisive in winning a battle. Its effects were brutal, causing slow and painful death, and poison gas became one of the most-feared and best-remembered horrors of the war. Commanders on both sides failed to develop tactics for breaching entrenched positions without heavy casualties.In time, however, technology began to produce new offensive weapons, such as the tank. Britain and France were its primary users; the Germans employed captured Allied tanks and small numbers of their own design. After the First Battle of the Marne, both Entente and German forces began a series of outflanking manoeuvres, in the so-called "Race to the Sea". Britain and France soon found themselves facing entrenched German forces from Lorraine to Belgium's coast. Britain and France sought to take the offensive, while Germany defended the occupied territories; consequently, German trenches were much better constructed than those of their enemy. Anglo-French trenches were only intended to be "temporary" before their forces broke through German defences. Both sides tried to break the stalemate using scientific and technological advances. On 22 April 1915 at the Second Battle of Ypres, the Germans (violating the Hague Convention) used chlorine gas for the first time on the Western Front. Algerian troops retreated when gassed and a six-kilometre (four-mile) hole opened in the Allied lines that the Germans quickly exploited, taking Kitcheners' Wood. Canadian soldiers closed the breach at the Second Battle of Ypres. At the Third Battle of Ypres, Canadian and ANZAC troops took the village of Passchendaele. On 1 July 1916, the British Army endured the bloodiest day in its history, suffering 57,470 casualties, including 19,240 dead, on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. Most of the casualties occurred in the first hour of the attack. The entire Somme offensive cost the British Army almost half a million men.
Neither side proved able to deliver a decisive blow for the next two years, though protracted German action at Verdun throughout 1916, combined with the bloodletting at the Somme, brought the exhausted French army to the brink of collapse. Futile attempts at frontal assault came at a high price for both the British and the French poilu (infantry) and led to widespread mutinies, especially during the Nivelle Offensive.
Throughout 1915–17, the British Empire and France suffered more casualties than Germany, because of both the strategic and tactical stances chosen by the sides. Strategically, while the Germans only mounted a single main offensive at Verdun, the Allies made several attempts to break through German lines. Tactically, German commander Erich Ludendorff's doctrine of "elastic defence" was well suited for trench warfare. This defence had a lightly defended forward position and a more powerful main position farther back beyond artillery range, from which an immediate and powerful counter-offensive could be launched.
Ludendorff wrote on the fighting in 1917, }}
On the battle of the Menin Road Ridge, Ludendorff wrote,
Around 1.1 to 1.2 million soldiers from the British and Dominion armies were on the Western Front at any one time. A thousand battalions, occupying sectors of the line from the North Sea to the Orne River, operated on a month-long four-stage rotation system, unless an offensive was underway. The front contained over of trenches. Each battalion held its sector for about a week before moving back to support lines and then further back to the reserve lines before a week out-of-line, often in the Poperinge or Amiens areas.
In the 1917 Battle of Arras, the only significant British military success was the capture of Vimy Ridge by the Canadian Corps under Sir Arthur Currie and Julian Byng. The assaulting troops could, for the first time, overrun, rapidly reinforce and hold the ridge defending the coal-rich Douai plain.
Naval war
At the start of the war, the German Empire had cruisers scattered across the globe, some of which were subsequently used to attack Allied merchant shipping. The British Royal Navy systematically hunted them down, though not without some embarrassment from its inability to protect Allied shipping. For example, the German detached light cruiser SMS Emden, part of the East-Asia squadron stationed at Tsingtao, seized or destroyed 15 merchantmen, as well as sinking a Russian cruiser and a French destroyer. However, most of the German East-Asia squadron—consisting of the armoured cruisers and , light cruisers and and two transport ships—did not have orders to raid shipping and was instead underway to Germany when it met British warships. The German flotilla and sank two armoured cruisers at the Battle of Coronel, but was almost destroyed at the Battle of the Falkland Islands in December 1914, with only Dresden and a few auxiliaries escaping, but at the Battle of Más a Tierra these too were destroyed or interned.Soon after the outbreak of hostilities, Britain began a naval blockade of Germany. The strategy proved effective, cutting off vital military and civilian supplies, although this blockade violated accepted international law codified by several international agreements of the past two centuries. Britain mined international waters to prevent any ships from entering entire sections of ocean, causing danger to even neutral ships. Since there was limited response to this tactic, Germany expected a similar response to its unrestricted submarine warfare.
The 1916 Battle of Jutland (German: Skagerrakschlacht, or "Battle of the Skagerrak") developed into the largest naval battle of the war, the only full-scale clash of battleships during the war, and one of the largest in history. It took place on 31 May – 1 June 1916, in the North Sea off Jutland. The Kaiserliche Marine's High Seas Fleet, commanded by Vice Admiral Reinhard Scheer, squared off against the Royal Navy's Grand Fleet, led by Admiral Sir John Jellicoe. The engagement was a stand off, as the Germans, outmanoeuvred by the larger British fleet, managed to escape and inflicted more damage to the British fleet than they received. Strategically, however, the British asserted their control of the sea, and the bulk of the German surface fleet remained confined to port for the duration of the war.
German U-boats attempted to cut the supply lines between North America and Britain. The nature of submarine warfare meant that attacks often came without warning, giving the crews of the merchant ships little hope of survival. The United States launched a protest, and Germany changed its rules of engagement. After the notorious sinking of the passenger ship RMS Lusitania in 1915, Germany promised not to target passenger liners, while Britain armed its merchant ships, placing them beyond the protection of the "cruiser rules" which demanded warning and placing crews in "a place of safety" (a standard which lifeboats did not meet). Finally, in early 1917 Germany adopted a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare, realising the Americans would eventually enter the war. Germany sought to strangle Allied sea lanes before the U.S. could transport a large army overseas, but could maintain only five long-range U-boats on station, to limited effect.
The U-boat threat lessened in 1917, when merchant ships began travelling in convoys, escorted by destroyers. This tactic made it difficult for U-boats to find targets, which significantly lessened losses; after the hydrophone and depth charges were introduced, accompanying destroyers might attack a submerged submarine with some hope of success. Convoys slowed the flow of supplies, since ships had to wait as convoys were assembled. The solution to the delays was an extensive program to build new freighters. Troopships were too fast for the submarines and did not travel the North Atlantic in convoys. The U-boats had sunk more than 5,000 Allied ships, at a cost of 199 submarines.
World War I also saw the first use of aircraft carriers in combat, with HMS Furious launching Sopwith Camels in a successful raid against the Zeppelin hangars at Tondern in July 1918, as well as blimps for antisubmarine patrol.
Southern theatres
War in the Balkans
Faced with Russia, Austria-Hungary could spare only one-third of its army to attack Serbia. After suffering heavy losses, the Austrians briefly occupied the Serbian capital, Belgrade. A Serbian counter attack in the battle of Kolubara, however, succeeded in driving them from the country by the end of 1914. For the first ten months of 1915, Austria-Hungary used most of its military reserves to fight Italy. German and Austro-Hungarian diplomats, however, scored a coup by persuading Bulgaria to join in attacking Serbia. The Austro-Hungarian provinces of Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia provided troops for Austria-Hungary, invading Serbia as well as fighting Russia and Italy. Montenegro allied itself with Serbia.
Serbia was conquered in a little more than a month. The attack began in October, when the Central Powers launched an offensive from the north; four days later the Bulgarians joined the attack from the east. The Serbian army, fighting on two fronts and facing certain defeat, retreated into Albania, halting only once to make a stand against the Bulgarians. The Serbs suffered defeat near modern day Gnjilane in the Battle of Kosovo. Montenegro covered the Serbian retreat towards the Adriatic coast in the Battle of Mojkovac in 6–7 January 1916, but ultimately the Austrians conquered Montenegro, too. Serbian forces were evacuated by ship to Greece.
In late 1915, a Franco-British force landed at Salonica in Greece, to offer assistance and to pressure the government to declare war against the Central Powers. Unfortunately for the Allies, the pro-German King Constantine I dismissed the pro-Allied government of Eleftherios Venizelos, before the Allied expeditionary force could arrive. The friction between the king of Greece and the Allies continued to accumulate with the National Schism, which effectively divided Greece between regions still loyal to the king and the new provisional government of Venizelos in Salonica. After intensive diplomatic negotiations and an armed confrontation in Athens between Allied and royalist forces (an incident known as Noemvriana) the king of Greece resigned, and his second son Alexander took his place. Venizelos returned to Athens on 29 May 1917 and Greece, now unified, officially joined the war on the side of the Allies. The entire Greek army was mobilized and began to participate in military operations against the Central Powers on the Macedonian front. After conquest, Serbia was divided between Austro-Hungary and Bulgaria. Bulgarians commenced Bulgarization of the Serbian population in their occupation zone, banishing Serbian Cyrillic and the Serbian Orthodox Church. After forced conscription of the Serbian population into the Bulgarian army in 1917, the Toplica Uprising began. Serbian rebels liberated for a short time the area between the Kopaonik mountains and the South Morava river. The uprising was crushed by joint efforts of Bulgarian and Austrian forces at the end of March 1917.
The Macedonian Front was mostly static. Serbian forces retook part of Macedonia by recapturing Bitola on 19 November 1916. Only at the end of the conflict did the Entente powers break through, after most of the German and Austro-Hungarian troops had withdrawn. The Bulgarians suffered their only defeat of the war at the Battle of Dobro Pole but days later, they decisively defeated British and Greek forces at the Battle of Doiran, avoiding occupation. Bulgaria signed an armistice on 29 September 1918. Hindenburg and Ludendorff concluded that the strategic and operational balance had now shifted decidedly against the Central Powers and a day after the Bulgarian collapse, during a meeting with government officials, insisted on an immediate peace settlement.
The disappearance of the Macedonian front meant that the road to Budapest and Vienna was now opened for the 670,000-strong army of general Franchet d'Esperey as the Bulgarian surrender deprived the Central Powers of the 278 infantry battalions and 1,500 guns (the equivalent of some 25 to 30 German divisions) that were previously holding the line. The German high command responded by sending only seven infantry and one cavalry division but these forces were far from enough for a front to be reestablished.
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers in the war, the secret Ottoman-German Alliance having been signed in August 1914. It threatened Russia's Caucasian territories and Britain's communications with India via the Suez Canal. The British and French opened overseas fronts with the Gallipoli (1915) and Mesopotamian campaigns. In Gallipoli, the Ottoman Empire successfully repelled the British, French and Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZACs). In Mesopotamia, by contrast, after the disastrous Siege of Kut (1915–16), British Imperial forces reorganised and captured Baghdad in March 1917.Further to the west, the Suez Canal was successfully defended from Ottoman attacks in 1915 and 1916; in August a joint German and Ottoman force was defeated at the Battle of Romani. Following this victory, a British Empire force advanced across the Sinai Peninsula, pushing Ottoman forces back to the Battle of Magdhaba in December and to the Battle of Rafa on the border between the Egyptian Sinai and Ottoman Palestine in January 1917. In March and April at the First and Second Battles of Gaza, German and Ottoman forces stopped the advance but at the end of October the Sinai and Palestine Campaign resumed, when Allenby's Egyptian Expeditionary Force won the Battle of Beersheba. Two Ottoman armies were defeated a few weeks later at the Battle of Mughar Ridge and early in December Jerusalem was captured following another Ottoman defeat at the Battle of Jerusalem (1917). About this time Friedrich Freiherr Kress von Kressenstein was relieved of his duties as the Eighth Army's commander, to be replaced by Djevad Pasha and a few months later the commander of the Ottoman Army in Palestine Erich von Falkenhayn was replaced by Otto Liman von Sanders.
The Egyptian Expeditionary Force, under Field Marshal Edmund Allenby, broke the Ottoman forces at the Battle of Megiddo in September 1918. In six weeks, during virtually continuous operations, battles were successfully fought by British infantry and Australian, New Zealand and British Light Horse, Mounted Rifle and Yeomanry mounted brigades across the Jordan River to Amman in the east and northwards to capture Nablus and Tulkarm in the Judean Hills and following the Mediterranean coast into the Jezreel Valley (Esdraelon Plain) where Jenin and Nazareth were captured along with Daraa on the Hejaz railway, Semakh and Tiberias on to the Sea of Gallilee and finally Damascus and Aleppo. The Armistice of Mudros was signed on 30 October when two and a half Ottoman armies had been defeated and captured.
Russian armies generally had the best of it in the Caucasus. Enver Pasha, supreme commander of the Ottoman armed forces, was ambitious and dreamed of re-conquering central Asia, and areas that had been lost to Russia previously. He was, however, a poor commander. He launched an offensive against the Russians in the Caucasus in December 1914 with 100,000 troops; insisting on a frontal attack against mountainous Russian positions in winter, he lost 86% of his force at the Battle of Sarikamish.
General Yudenich, the Russian commander from 1915 to 1916, drove the Turks out of most of the southern Caucasus with a string of victories. In 1917, Russian Grand Duke Nicholas assumed command of the Caucasus front. Nicholas planned a railway from Russian Georgia to the conquered territories, so that fresh supplies could be brought up for a new offensive in 1917. However, in March 1917, (February in the pre-revolutionary Russian calendar), the Czar was overthrown in the February Revolution and the Russian Caucasus Army began to fall apart.
The army corps of Armenian volunteer units realigned under the command of General Tovmas Nazarbekian, with Dro as a civilian commissioner of the Administration for Western Armenia. The front line had three main divisions commanded by Movses Silikyan, Andranik, and Mikhail Areshian. Another regular unit was under Colonel Korganian. More than 40,000 men in Armenian partisan guerrilla detachments accompanied the main units.
Instigated by the Arab bureau of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Arab Revolt started with the help of Britain in June 1916 at the Battle of Mecca, led by Sherif Hussein of Mecca, and ended with the Ottoman surrender of Damascus. Fakhri Pasha, the Ottoman commander of Medina, resisted for more than two and half years during the Siege of Medina.
Along the border of Italian Libya and British Egypt, the Senussi tribe, incited and armed by the Turks, waged a small-scale guerrilla war against Allied troops. The British were forced to dispatch 12,000 troops to oppose them in the Senussi Campaign. Their rebellion was finally crushed in mid-1916.
Italian participation
Italy had been allied with the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires since 1882 as part of the Triple Alliance. However, the nation had its own designs on Austrian territory in Trentino, Istria and Dalmatia. Rome had a secret 1902 pact with France, effectively nullifying its alliance. At the start of hostilities, Italy refused to commit troops, arguing that the Triple Alliance was defensive and that Austria–Hungary was an aggressor. The Austro-Hungarian government began negotiations to secure Italian neutrality, offering the French colony of Tunisia in return. The Allies made a counter-offer in which Italy would receive the Southern Tyrol, Julian March and territory on the Dalmatian coast after the defeat of Austria-Hungary. This was formalised by the Treaty of London. Further encouraged by the Allied invasion of Turkey in April 1915, Italy joined the Triple Entente and declared war on Austria-Hungary on 23 May. Fifteen months later Italy declared war on Germany.Militarily, the Italians had numerical superiority. This advantage, however, was lost, not only because of the difficult terrain in which fighting took place, but also because of the strategies and tactics employed. Field Marshal Luigi Cadorna, a staunch proponent of the frontal assault, had dreams of breaking into the Slovenian plateau, taking Ljubljana and threatening Vienna. It was a Napoleonic plan, which had no realistic chance of success in an age of barbed wire, machine guns, and indirect artillery fire, combined with hilly and mountainous terrain.
On the Trentino front, the Austro-Hungarians took advantage of the mountainous terrain, which favoured the defender. After an initial strategic retreat, the front remained largely unchanged, while Austrian Kaiserschützen and Standschützen engaged Italian Alpini in bitter hand-to-hand combat throughout the summer. The Austro-Hungarians counter attacked in the Altopiano of Asiago, towards Verona and Padua, in the spring of 1916 (Strafexpedition), but made little progress.
Beginning in 1915, the Italians under Cadorna mounted eleven offensives on the Isonzo front along the Isonzo River, north east of Trieste. All eleven offensives were repelled by the Austro-Hungarians, who held the higher ground. In the summer of 1916, the Italians captured the town of Gorizia. After this minor victory, the front remained static for over a year, despite several Italian offensives. In the autumn of 1917, thanks to the improving situation on the Eastern front, the Austro-Hungarian troops received large numbers of reinforcements, including German Stormtroopers and the elite Alpenkorps. The Central Powers launched a crushing offensive on 26 October 1917, spearheaded by the Germans. They achieved a victory at Caporetto. The Italian Army was routed and retreated more than 100 kilometres (60 mi.) to reorganise, stabilising the front at the Piave River. Since in the Battle of Caporetto the Italian Army had heavy losses, the Italian Government called to arms the so-called '99 Boys (Ragazzi del '99): that is, all males who were 18 years old. In 1918, the Austro-Hungarians failed to break through, in a series of battles on the Piave River and, finally being decisively defeated in the Battle of Vittorio Veneto in October of that year. Austria-Hungary surrendered in early November 1918.
Romanian participation
Romania had been allied with the Central Powers since 1882. When the war began, however, it declared its neutrality, arguing that because Austria-Hungary had itself declared war on Serbia, Romania was under no obligation to join the war. When the Entente Powers promised Romania large territories of eastern Hungary (Transylvania and Banat), that had a large Romanian population, in exchange for Romania’s declaring war on the Central Powers, the Romanian government renounced its neutrality, and on 27 August 1916 the Romanian Army launched an attack against Austria-Hungary, with limited Russian support. The Romanian offensive was initially successful, pushing back the Austro-Hungarian troops in Transylvania, but a counter attack by the forces of the Central Powers drove back the Russo-Romanian forces and as a result of the Battle of Bucharest the Central Powers occupied Bucharest on 6 December 1916. Fighting in Moldova continued in 1917, resulting in a costly stalemate for the Central Powers. As Russia withdrew from the war in late 1917 as a result of the October Revolution, Romania was forced to sign an armistice with the Central Powers on 9 December 1917.In January 1918, Romanian forces established control over Bessarabia as the Russian Army abandoned the province. Although a treaty was signed by the Romanian and the Bolshevik Russian government following talks between 5–9 March 1918 on the withdrawal of Romanian forces from Bessarabia within two months, on 27 March 1918 Romania attached Bessarabia to its territory, formally based on a resolution passed by the local assembly of the territory on the unification with Romania.
Romania officially made peace with the Central Powers by signing the Treaty of Bucharest on 7 May 1918. Under that treaty, Romania was obliged to end war with the Central Powers and make small territorial concessions for Austria-Hungary, ceding control of some passes in the Carpathian Mountains and grant oil concessions for Germany. In exchange, the Central Powers recognised the sovereignty of Romania over Bessarabia. The treaty was renounced in October 1918 by the Alexandru Marghiloman government and Romania nominally re-entered the war on 10 November 1918. The next day, the Treaty of Bucharest was nullified by the terms of the Armistice of Compiègne. Total Romanian deaths from 1914 to 1918, military and civilian, within contemporary borders, were estimated at 748,000.
The role of India
The war began with an unprecedented outpouring of loyalty and goodwill towards the United Kingdom from within the mainstream political leadership, contrary to initial British fears of an Indian revolt. The Indian Army in fact outnumbered the British Army at the beginning of the war. India under British rule contributed greatly to the British war effort by providing men and resources. This was done by the Indian Congress in hope of achieving self-government as India was very much under the control of the British. The United Kingdom disappointed the Indians by not providing self-governance, leading to the Gandhian Era in Indian history. About 1.3 million Indian soldiers and labourers served in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, while both the Indian government and the princes sent large supplies of food, money, and ammunition. In all 140,000 men served on the Western Front and nearly 700,000 in the Middle East. Casualties of Indian soldiers totalled 47,746 killed and 65,126 wounded during World War I.
Eastern Front
Initial actions
While the Western Front had reached stalemate, the war continued in East Europe. Initial Russian plans called for simultaneous invasions of Austrian Galicia and German East Prussia. Although Russia's initial advance into Galicia was largely successful, they were driven back from East Prussia by Hindenburg and Ludendorff at Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes in August and September 1914. Russia's less developed industrial base and ineffective military leadership was instrumental in the events that unfolded. By the spring of 1915, the Russians had retreated into Galicia, and in May the Central Powers achieved a remarkable breakthrough on Poland's southern frontiers. On 5 August they captured Warsaw and forced the Russians to withdraw from Poland.
Russian Revolution
Despite the success of the June 1916 Brusilov Offensive in eastern Galicia, dissatisfaction with the Russian government's conduct of the war grew. The success was undermined by the reluctance of other generals to commit their forces to support the victory. Allied and Russian forces were revived only temporarily with Romania's entry into the war on 27 August. German forces came to the aid of embattled Austro-Hungarian units in Transylvania and Bucharest fell to the Central Powers on 6 December. Meanwhile, unrest grew in Russia, as the Tsar remained at the front. Empress Alexandra's increasingly incompetent rule drew protests and resulted in the murder of her favourite, Rasputin, at the end of 1916.In March 1917, demonstrations in Petrograd culminated in the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II and the appointment of a weak Provisional Government which shared power with the Petrograd Soviet socialists. This arrangement led to confusion and chaos both at the front and at home. The army became increasingly ineffective. The war and the government became increasingly unpopular. Discontent led to a rise in popularity of the Bolshevik party, led by Vladimir Lenin. He promised to pull Russia out of the war and was able to gain power. The triumph of the Bolsheviks in November was followed in December by an armistice and negotiations with Germany. At first the Bolsheviks refused the German terms, but when Germany resumed the war and marched across Ukraine with impunity, the new government acceded to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on 3 March 1918. It took Russia out of the war and ceded vast territories, including Finland, the Baltic provinces, parts of Poland and Ukraine to the Central Powers. The manpower required for German occupation of former Russian territory may have contributed to the failure of the Spring Offensive, however, and secured relatively little food or other materiel.
With the adoption of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the Entente no longer existed. The Allied powers led a small-scale invasion of Russia, partly to stop Germany from exploiting Russian resources and, to a lesser extent, to support the "Whites" (as opposed to "Reds") in the Russian Civil War. Allied troops landed in Archangel and in Vladivostok.
Central Powers proposal for starting peace negotiations
In December 1916, after ten brutal months of the Battle of Verdun and a successful offensive against Romania, the Germans attempted to negotiate a peace with the Allies. Soon after, U.S. President Wilson attempted to intervene as a peacemaker, asking in a note for both sides to state their demands. Lloyd George's War Cabinet considered the German offer as a ploy to create divisions amongst the Allies. After initial outrage and much deliberation, they took Wilson's note as a separate effort, signalling that the U.S. was on the verge of entering the war against Germany following the "submarine outrages". While the Allies debated a response to Wilson's offer, the Germans chose to rebuff it in favour of "a direct exchange of views". Learning of the German response, the Allied governments were free to make clear demands in their response of 14 January. They sought restoration of damages, the evacuation of occupied territories, reparations for France, Russia and Romania, and a recognition of the principle of nationalities. This included the liberation of Italians, Slavs, Romanians, Czecho-Slovaks, and the creation of a "free and united Poland". On the question of security, the Allies sought guarantees that would prevent or limit future wars, complete with sanctions, as a condition of any peace settlement. The negotiations failed and the Entente powers rejected the German offer, because Germany did not state any specific proposals. To Wilson the Entente powers stated, that they will not start peace negotiations until the Central powers evacuated all occupied Allied territories and provided indemnities for all damage which was done.
1917–1918
Developments in 1917
Events of 1917 proved decisive in ending the war, although their effects were not fully felt until 1918.The British naval blockade began to have a serious impact on Germany. In response, in February 1917, the German General Staff convinced Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg to declare unrestricted submarine warfare, with the goal of starving Britain out of the war. German planners estimated that unrestricted submarine warfare would cost Britain a monthly shipping loss of 600,000 tons. While it was realised that the policy was also likely to bring the United States into the conflict, British shipping losses would be so high that it would be forced to sue for peace after 5 to 6 months, before American intervention could make an impact. In reality, tonnage sunk rose above 500,000 tons per month from February to July. It peaked at 860,000 tons in April. After July, the newly re-introduced convoy system became extremely effective in reducing the U-boat threat. Britain was safe from starvation while German industrial output fell, and the United States troops joined the war in large numbers far earlier than Germany had anticipated.
On 3 May 1917, during the Nivelle Offensive, the weary French 2nd Colonial Division, veterans of the Battle of Verdun, refused their orders, arriving drunk and without their weapons. Their officers lacked the means to punish an entire division, and harsh measures were not immediately implemented. Then, mutinies afflicted an additional 54 French divisions and saw 20,000 men desert. The other Allied forces attacked but sustained tremendous casualties. However, appeals to patriotism and duty, as well as mass arrests and trials, encouraged the soldiers to return to defend their trenches, although the French soldiers refused to participate in further offensive action. Robert Nivelle was removed from command by 15 May, replaced by General Philippe Pétain, who suspended bloody large-scale attacks.
The victory of Austria–Hungary and Germany at the Battle of Caporetto led the Allies at the Rapallo Conference to form the Supreme War Council to coordinate planning. Previously, British and French armies had operated under separate commands.
In December, the Central Powers signed an armistice with Russia. This released large numbers of German troops for use in the west. With German reinforcements and new American troops pouring in, the outcome was to be decided on the Western front. The Central Powers knew that they could not win a protracted war, but they held high hopes for success based on a final quick offensive. Furthermore, the leaders of the Central Powers and the Allies became increasingly fearful of social unrest and revolution in Europe. Thus, both sides urgently sought a decisive victory.
Entry of the United States
Non-Intervention
The United States originally pursued a policy of non-intervention, avoiding conflict while trying to broker a peace. When a German U-boat sank the British liner Lusitania in 1915, with 128 Americans aboard, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson vowed, "America is too proud to fight" and demanded an end to attacks on passenger ships. Germany complied. Wilson unsuccessfully tried to mediate a settlement. He repeatedly warned the U.S. would not tolerate unrestricted submarine warfare, in violation of international law and U.S. ideas of human rights. Wilson was under pressure from former president Theodore Roosevelt, who denounced German acts as "piracy". Wilson's desire to have a seat at negotiations at war's end to advance the League of Nations also played a role. Wilson's Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan, whose opinions had been ignored, resigned as he could no longer support the president's policy. Public opinion was angered at suspected German sabotage of Black Tom in Jersey City, New Jersey, and the Kingsland Explosion.In January 1917, Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare. The German Foreign minister, in the Zimmermann Telegram, told Mexico that U.S. entry was likely once unrestricted submarine warfare began, and invited Mexico to join the war as Germany's ally against the United States. In return, the Germans would send Mexico money and help it recover the territories of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona that Mexico lost during the Mexican-American War 70 years earlier. Wilson released the Zimmerman note to the public and Americans saw it as a casus belli—a cause for war.
U.S. declaration of war on Germany
After the sinking of seven U.S. merchant ships by submarines and the publication of the Zimmerman telegram, Wilson called for war on Germany, which the U.S. Congress declared on 6 April 1917.
First active U.S. participation
The United States was never formally a member of the Allies but became a self-styled "Associated Power". The United States had a small army, but, after the passage of the Selective Service Act, it drafted 2.8 million men and by summer 1918 was sending 10,000 fresh soldiers to France every day. In 1917, the U.S. Congress gave U.S. citizenship to Puerto Ricans when they were drafted to participate in World War I, as part of the Jones Act. Germany had miscalculated, believing it would be many more months before they would arrive and that the arrival could be stopped by U-boats.The United States Navy sent a battleship group to Scapa Flow to join with the British Grand Fleet, destroyers to Queenstown, Ireland and submarines to help guard convoys. Several regiments of U.S. Marines were also dispatched to France. The British and French wanted U.S. units used to reinforce their troops already on the battle lines and not waste scarce shipping on bringing over supplies. The U.S. rejected the first proposition and accepted the second. General John J. Pershing, American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) commander, refused to break up U.S. units to be used as reinforcements for British Empire and French units. As an exception, he did allow African-American combat regiments to be used in French divisions. The Harlem Hellfighters fought as part of the French 16th Division, earning a unit Croix de guerre for their actions at Chateau-Thierry, Belleau Wood and Sechault. AEF doctrine called for the use of frontal assaults, which had long since been discarded by British Empire and French commanders because of the large loss of life.
Austrian offer of separate peace
In 1917, Emperor Charles I of Austria secretly attempted separate peace negotiations with Clemenceau, with his wife's brother Sixtus in Belgium as an intermediary, without the knowledge of Germany. When the negotiations failed, his attempt was revealed to Germany, resulting in a diplomatic catastrophe.
German Spring Offensive of 1918
German General Erich Ludendorff drew up plans (codenamed Operation Michael) for the 1918 offensive on the Western Front. The Spring Offensive sought to divide the British and French forces with a series of feints and advances. The German leadership hoped to strike a decisive blow before significant U.S. forces arrived. The operation commenced on 21 March 1918 with an attack on British forces near Amiens. German forces achieved an unprecedented advance of 60 kilometres (40 miles).British and French trenches were penetrated using novel infiltration tactics, also named Hutier tactics, after General Oskar von Hutier. Previously, attacks had been characterised by long artillery bombardments and massed assaults. However, in the Spring Offensive of 1918, Ludendorff used artillery only briefly and infiltrated small groups of infantry at weak points. They attacked command and logistics areas and bypassed points of serious resistance. More heavily armed infantry then destroyed these isolated positions. German success relied greatly on the element of surprise.
The front moved to within 120 kilometres (75 mi) of Paris. Three heavy Krupp railway guns fired 183 shells on the capital, causing many Parisians to flee. The initial offensive was so successful that Kaiser Wilhelm II declared 24 March a national holiday. Many Germans thought victory was near. After heavy fighting, however, the offensive was halted. Lacking tanks or motorised artillery, the Germans were unable to consolidate their gains. This situation was not helped by the supply lines now being stretched as a result of their advance. The sudden stop was also a result of the four Australian Imperial Force (AIF) divisions that were "rushed" down, thus doing what no other army had done and stopping the German advance in its tracks. During that time the first Australian division was hurriedly sent north again to stop the second German breakthrough.
General Foch pressed to use the arriving American troops as individual replacements. Pershing sought instead to field American units as an independent force. These units were assigned to the depleted French and British Empire commands on 28 March. A Supreme War Council of Allied forces was created at the Doullens Conference on 5 November 1917. General Foch was appointed as supreme commander of the allied forces. Haig, Petain and Pershing retained tactical control of their respective armies; Foch assumed a coordinating role, rather than a directing role and the British, French and U.S. commands operated largely independently.
Following Operation Michael, Germany launched Operation Georgette against the northern English Channel ports. The Allies halted the drive with limited territorial gains for Germany. The German Army to the south then conducted Operations Blücher and Yorck, broadly towards Paris. Operation Marne was launched on 15 July, attempting to encircle Reims and beginning the Second Battle of the Marne. The resulting counterattack, starting the Hundred Days Offensive, marked their first successful Allied offensive of the war.
By 20 July the Germans were back across the Marne at their Kaiserschlacht starting lines, having achieved nothing. Following this last phase of the war in the West, the German Army never again regained the initiative. German casualties between March and April 1918 were 270,000, including many highly trained stormtroopers.
Meanwhile, Germany was falling apart at home. Anti-war marches became frequent and morale in the army fell. Industrial output was 53 percent of 1913 levels.
New states under war zone
In 1918, the internationally recognized Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, Democratic Republic of Armenia and Democratic Republic of Georgia bordering the Ottoman Empire and Russian Empire were established, as well as the unrecognized Centrocaspian Dictatorship and South West Caucasian Republic. Later, these unrecognized states were eliminated by Azerbaijan and Turkey.In 1918, the Dashnaks of the Armenian national liberation movement declared the Democratic Republic of Armenia (DRA) through the Armenian Congress of Eastern Armenians (unified form of Armenian National Councils) after the dissolution of the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic. Tovmas Nazarbekian became the first Commander-in-chief of the DRA. Enver Pasha ordered the creation of a new army to be named the Army of Islam. He ordered the Army of Islam into the DRA, with the goal of taking Baku on the Caspian Sea. This new offensive was strongly opposed by the Germans. In early May 1918, the Ottoman army attacked the newly declared DRA. Although the Armenians managed to inflict one defeat on the Ottomans at the Battle of Sardarabad, the Ottoman army won a later battle and scattered the Armenian army. The Republic of Armenia signed the Treaty of Batum in June 1918.
Allied victory: summer and autumn 1918
The Allied counteroffensive, known as the Hundred Days Offensive, began on 8 August 1918. The Battle of Amiens developed with III Corps British Fourth Army on the left, the French First Army on the right, and the Australian and Canadian Corps spearheading the offensive in the centre through Harbonnières. It involved 414 tanks of the Mark IV and Mark V type, and 120,000 men. They advanced 12 kilometres (7 miles) into German-held territory in just seven hours. Erich Ludendorff referred to this day as the "Black Day of the German army".
The Australian-Canadian spearhead at Amiens, a battle that was the beginning of Germany’s downfall, helped pull the British armies to the north and the French armies to the south forward. While German resistance on the British Fourth Army front at Amiens stiffened, after an advance as far as and concluded the battle there, the French Third Army lengthened the Amiens front on 10 August, when it was thrown in on the right of the French First Army, and advanced liberating Lassigny in fighting which lasted until 16 August. South of the French Third Army, General Charles Mangin (The Butcher) drove his French Tenth Army forward at Soissons on 20 August to capture eight thousand prisoners, two hundred guns and the Aisne heights overlooking and menacing the German position north of the Vesle. Another "Black day" as described by Erich Ludendorff.
Meanwhile General Byng of the Third British Army, reporting that the enemy on his front was thinning in a limited withdrawal, was ordered to attack with 200 tanks towards Bapaume, opening the Battle of Albert, with the specific orders of "To break the enemy's front, in order to outflank the enemies present battle front" (opposite the British Fourth Army at Amiens). Allied leaders had now realised that to continue an attack after resistance had hardened was a waste of lives and it was better to turn a line than to try to roll over it. Attacks were being undertaken in quick order to take advantage of the successful advances on the flanks and then broken off when that attack lost its initial impetus.
The British Third Army's front north of Albert progressed after stalling for a day against the main resistance line to which the enemy had withdrawn. Rawlinson’s Fourth British Army was able to battle its left flank forward between Albert and the Somme straightening the line between the advanced positions of the Third Army and the Amiens front which resulted in recapturing Albert at the same time. On 26 August the British First Army on the left of the Third Army was drawn into the battle extending it northward to beyond Arras. The Canadian Corps already being back in the vanguard of the First Army fought their way from Arras eastward astride the heavily defended Arras-Cambrai before reaching the outer defences of the Hindenburg Line, breaching them on the 28 and 29 August. Bapaume fell on the 29 August to the New Zealand Division of the Third Army and the Australians, still leading the advance of the Fourth Army, were again able to push forward at Amiens to take Peronne and Mont Saint-Quentin on 31 August. Further south the French First and Third Armies had slowly fought forward while the Tenth Army, who had by now crossed the Ailette and was east of the Chemin des Dames, was now near to the Alberich position of the Hindenburg Line. During the last week of August the pressure along a front against the enemy was heavy and unrelenting. From German accounts, "Each day was spent in bloody fighting against an ever and again on-storming enemy, and nights passed without sleep in retirements to new lines." Even to the north in Flanders the British Second and Fifth Armies during August and September were able to make progress taking prisoners and positions that were previously denied them.
thumb|left|upright|Close-up view of an American major in the basket of an observation balloon flying over territory near front linesOn 2 September the Canadian Corps outflanking of the Hindenburg line, with the breaching of the Wotan Position, made it possible for the Third Army to advance and sent repercussions all along the Western Front. That same day Oberste Heeresleitung (OHL) had no choice but to issue orders to six armies for withdrawal back into the Hindenburg Line in the south, behind the Canal du Nord on the Canadian-First Army's front and back to a line east of the Lys in the north, giving up without a fight the salient seized in the previous April. According to Ludendorff “We had to admit the necessity ... to withdraw the entire front from the Scarpe to the Vesle.”
In nearly four weeks of fighting since 8 August, over 100,000 German prisoners were taken, 75,000 by the BEF and the rest by the French. Since "The Black Day of the German Army" the German High Command realised the war was lost and made attempts for a satisfactory end. The day after the battle Ludenforff told Colonel Mertz "We cannot win the war any more, but we must not lose it either." On 11 August he offered his resignation to the Kaiser, who refused it and replied, "I see that we must strike a balance. We have nearly reached the limit of our powers of resistance. The war must be ended." On 13 August at Spa, Hindenburg, Ludendorff, Chancellor and Foreign Minister Hintz agreed that the war could not be ended militarily and on the following day the German Crown Council decided victory in the field was now most improbable. Austria and Hungary warned that they could only continue the war until December and Ludendorff recommended immediate peace negotiations, to which the Kaiser responded by instructing Hintz to seek the mediation of the Queen of the Netherlands. Prince Rupprecht warned Prince Max of Baden "Our military situation has deteriorated so rapidly that I no longer believe we can hold out over the winter; it is even possible that a catastrophe will come earlier." On 10 September Hindenburg urged peace moves to Emperor Charles of Austria and Germany appealed to the Netherlands for mediation. On the 14 September Austria sent a note to all belligerents and neutrals suggesting a meeting for peace talks on neutral soil and on 15 September Germany made a peace offer to Belgium. Both peace offers were rejected and on 24 September OHL informed the leaders in Berlin that armistice talks were inevitable.
September saw the Germans continuing to fight strong rear guard actions and launching numerous counter attacks on lost positions, with only a few succeeding and then only temporarily. Contested towns, villages, heights and trenches in the screening positions and outposts of the Hindenburg Line continued to fall to the Allies, with the BEF alone taking 30,441 prisoners in the last week of September. Further small advances eastward would follow the Third Army victory at Ivincourt on 12 September, the Fourth Armies at Epheny on 18 September and the French gain of Essigny-le-Grand a day later. On 24 September a final assault by both the British and French on a 4 mile (6 km) front would come within 2 miles (3 km) of St. Quentin. With the outposts and preliminary defensive lines of the Siegfried and Alberich Positions eliminated the Germans were now completely back in the Hindenburg Line. With the Wotan position of that line already breached and the Siegfried position in danger of being turned from the north the time had now come for an assault on the whole length of the line.
The Allied attack on the Hindenburg Line began on 26 September including U.S. soldiers. The still-green American troops suffered problems coping with supply trains for large units on a difficult landscape. The following week cooperating French and American units broke through in Champagne at the Battle of Blanc Mont Ridge, forcing the Germans off the commanding heights, and closing towards the Belgian frontier. The last Belgian town to be liberated before the armistice was Ghent, which the Germans held as a pivot until Allied artillery was brought up. The German army had to shorten its front and use the Dutch frontier as an anchor to fight rear-guard actions.
When Bulgaria signed a separate armistice on 29 September, the Allies gained control of Serbia and Greece. Ludendorff, having been under great stress for months, suffered something similar to a breakdown. It was evident that Germany could no longer mount a successful defence.
Meanwhile, news of Germany's impending military defeat spread throughout the German armed forces. The threat of mutiny was rife. Admiral Reinhard Scheer and Ludendorff decided to launch a last attempt to restore the "valour" of the German Navy. Knowing the government of Prince Maximilian of Baden would veto any such action, Ludendorff decided not to inform him. Nonetheless, word of the impending assault reached sailors at Kiel. Many rebelled and were arrested, refusing to be part of a naval offensive which they believed to be suicidal. Ludendorff took the blame—the Kaiser dismissed him on 26 October. The collapse of the Balkans meant that Germany was about to lose its main supplies of oil and food. The reserves had been used up, but U.S. troops kept arriving at the rate of 10,000 per day.
Having suffered over 6 million casualties, Germany moved towards peace. Prince Maximilian of Baden took charge of a new government as Chancellor of Germany to negotiate with the Allies. Telegraphic negotiations with President Wilson began immediately, in the vain hope that better terms would be offered than by the British and French. Instead Wilson demanded the abdication of the Kaiser. There was no resistance when the social democrat Philipp Scheidemann on 9 November declared Germany to be a republic. Imperial Germany was dead; a new Germany had been born: the Weimar Republic.
Armistices and capitulations
The collapse of the Central Powers came swiftly. Bulgaria was the first to sign an armistice on 29 September 1918 at Saloniki. On 30 October, the Ottoman Empire capitulated at Moudros (Armistice of Mudros).On 24 October, the Italians began a push which rapidly recovered territory lost after the Battle of Caporetto. This culminated in the Battle of Vittorio Veneto, which marked the end of the Austro-Hungarian Army as an effective fighting force. The offensive also triggered the disintegration of Austro-Hungarian Empire. During the last week of October declarations of independence were made in Budapest, Prague and Zagreb. On 29 October, the imperial authorities asked Italy for an armistice. But the Italians continued advancing, reaching Trento, Udine and Trieste. On 3 November Austria–Hungary sent a flag of truce to ask for an Armistice. The terms, arranged by telegraph with the Allied Authorities in Paris, were communicated to the Austrian Commander and accepted. The Armistice with Austria was signed in the Villa Giusti, near Padua, on 3 November. Austria and Hungary signed separate armistices following the overthrow of the Habsburg Monarchy.
Following the outbreak of the German Revolution of 1918–1919, a republic was proclaimed on 9 November. The Kaiser fled to the Netherlands. On 11 November an armistice with Germany was signed in a railroad carriage at Compiègne. At 11 a.m. on 11 November 1918; "the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month"; a ceasefire came into effect. Opposing armies on the Western Front began to withdraw from their positions. Canadian Private George Lawrence Price is traditionally regarded as the last soldier killed in the Great War: he was shot by a German sniper at 10:57 and died at 10:58.
Allied superiority and the stab-in-the-back legend, November 1918
In November 1918 the Allies had ample supplies of men and materiel to invade Germany, yet at the time of the armistice, no Allied force had crossed the German frontier and Berlin was still almost from the Western Front. The Kaiser's armies had also retreated from the battlefield in good order which enabled Hindenburg and other senior German leaders to spread the story that their armies had not really been defeated. This resulted in the stab-in-the-back legend which attributed Germany's losing the war not to its inability to continue fighting (even though up to a million soldiers were suffering from the 1918 flu pandemic and unfit to fight), but to the public's failure to respond to its "patriotic calling" and the intentional sabotaging of the war effort, particularly by Jews, Socialists and Bolsheviks.A formal state of war between the two sides persisted for another seven months, until signing of the Treaty of Versailles with Germany on 28 June 1919. Later treaties with Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire were signed. However, the latter treaty with the Ottoman Empire was followed by strife (the Turkish War of Independence) and a final peace treaty was signed between the Allied Powers and the country that would shortly become the Republic of Turkey, at Lausanne on 24 July 1923.
Some war memorials date the end of the war as being when the Versailles treaty was signed in 1919; by contrast, most commemorations of the war's end concentrate on the armistice of 11 November 1918. Legally the last formal peace treaties were not signed until the Treaty of Lausanne. Under its terms, the Allied forces divested Constantinople on 23 August 1923.
Technology
The First World War began as a clash of 20-century technology and 19th-century tactics, with inevitably large casualties. By the end of 1917, however, the major armies, now numbering millions of men, had modernised and were making use of telephone, wireless communication, armoured cars, tanks, and aircraft. Infantry formations were reorganised, so that 100 man companies were no longer the main unit of manoeuvre. Instead, squads of 10 or so men, under the command of a junior NCO, were favoured. Artillery also underwent a revolution.
In 1914, cannons were positioned in the front line and fired directly at their targets. By 1917, indirect fire with guns (as well as mortars and even machine guns) was commonplace, using new techniques for spotting and ranging, notably aircraft and the often overlooked field telephone. Counter-battery missions became commonplace, also, and sound detection was used to locate enemy batteries.
Germany was far ahead of the Allies in utilising heavy indirect fire. She employed 150 and 210 mm howitzers in 1914 when the typical French and British guns were only 75 and 105 mm. The British had a 6 inch (152 mm) howitzer, but it was so heavy it had to be hauled to the field in pieces and assembled. Germans also fielded Austrian 305 mm and 420 mm guns, and already by the beginning of the war had inventories of various calibers of Minenwerfer ideally suited for trench warfare.
Much of the combat involved trench warfare, where hundreds often died for each yard gained. Many of the deadliest battles in history occurred during the First World War. Such battles include Ypres, the Marne, Cambrai, the Somme, Verdun, and Gallipoli. The Haber process of nitrogen fixation was employed to provide the German forces with a constant supply of gunpowder, in the face of British naval blockade. Artillery was responsible for the largest number of casualties and consumed vast quantities of explosives. The large number of head-wounds caused by exploding shells and fragmentation forced the combatant nations to develop the modern steel helmet, led by the French, who introduced the Adrian helmet in 1915. It was quickly followed by the Brodie helmet, worn by British Imperial and U.S. troops, and in 1916 by the distinctive German Stahlhelm, a design, with improvements, still in use today. {|class="toccolours" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 2em; font-size: 85%; background:#white; color:black; width:30em; max-width: 40%;" cellspacing="5" |style="text-align: left;"|"Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!... Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; But someone still was yelling out and stumbling, And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime... Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning."- Wilfred Owen, DULCE ET DECORUM EST, 1917 |} The widespread use of chemical warfare was a distinguishing feature of the conflict. Gases used included chlorine, mustard gas and phosgene. Few war casualties were caused by gas, as effective countermeasures to gas attacks were quickly created, such as gas masks. The use of chemical warfare and small-scale strategic bombing were both outlawed by the 1907 Hague Conventions, and both proved to be of limited effectiveness, though they captured the public imagination.
The most powerful land-based weapons were railway guns weighing hundreds of tons apiece. These were nicknamed Big Berthas, even though the namesake was not a railway gun. Germany developed the Paris Gun, able to bombard Paris from over 100 kilometres (60 mi), though shells were relatively light at 94 kilograms (210 lb). While the Allies had railway guns, German models severely out-ranged and out-classed them.
Fixed-wing aircraft were first used militarily by the Italians in Libya 23 October 1911 during the Italo-Turkish War for reconnaissance, soon followed by the dropping of grenades and aerial photography the next year. By 1914 the military utility was obvious. They were initially used for reconnaissance and ground attack. To shoot down enemy planes, anti-aircraft guns and fighter aircraft were developed. Strategic bombers were created, principally by the Germans and British, though the former used Zeppelins as well. Towards the end of the conflict, aircraft carriers were used for the first time, with HMS Furious launching Sopwith Camels in a raid to destroy the Zeppelin hangars at Tondern in 1918. German U-boats (submarines) were deployed after the war began. Alternating between restricted and unrestricted submarine warfare in the Atlantic, they were employed by the Kaiserliche Marine in a strategy to deprive the British Isles of vital supplies. The deaths of British merchant sailors and the seeming invulnerability of U-boats led to the development of depth charges (1916), hydrophones (passive sonar, 1917), blimps, hunter-killer submarines (HMS R-1, 1917), forward-throwing anti-submarine weapons, and dipping hydrophones (the latter two both abandoned in 1918). To extend their operations, the Germans proposed supply submarines (1916). Most of these would be forgotten in the interwar period until World War II revived the need.
Trenches, machine guns, air reconnaissance, barbed wire, and modern artillery with fragmentation shells helped bring the battle lines of World War I to a stalemate. The British sought a solution with the creation of the tank and mechanised warfare. The first tanks were used during the Battle of the Somme on 15 September 1916. Mechanical reliability became an issue, but the experiment proved its worth. Within a year, the British were fielding tanks by the hundreds and showed their potential during the Battle of Cambrai in November 1917, by breaking the Hindenburg Line, while combined arms teams captured 8000 enemy soldiers and 100 guns. Light automatic weapons and submachine guns were also introduced during the conflict, such as the Lewis Gun, the Browning automatic rifle, and the Bergmann MP18.
Manned observation balloons, floating high above the trenches, were used as stationary reconnaissance platforms, reporting enemy movements and directing artillery. Balloons commonly had a crew of two, equipped with parachutes. If there was an enemy air attack, the crew could parachute to safety. At the time, parachutes were too heavy to be used by pilots of aircraft (with their marginal power output) and smaller versions would not be developed until the end of the war; they were also opposed by British leadership, who feared they might promote cowardice. Recognised for their value as observation platforms, balloons were important targets of enemy aircraft. To defend against air attack, they were heavily protected by antiaircraft guns and patrolled by friendly aircraft; to attack them, unusual weapons such as air-to-air rockets were even tried. Blimps and balloons contributed to air-to-air combat among aircraft, because of their reconnaissance value, and to the trench stalemate, because it was impossible to move large numbers of troops undetected. The Germans conducted air raids on England during 1915 and 1916 with airships, hoping to damage British morale and cause aircraft to be diverted from the front lines. The resulting panic took several squadrons of fighters from France.
Another new weapon, flamethrowers, were first used by the German army and later adopted by other forces. Although not of high tactical value, they were a powerful, demoralising weapon and caused terror on the battlefield. It was a dangerous weapon to wield, as its heavy weight made operators vulnerable targets.
Trench railways evolved to supply the enormous quantities of food, water, and ammunition required to support large numbers of soldiers in areas where conventional transportation systems had been destroyed. Internal combustion engines and improved traction systems for wheeled vehicles eventually rendered trench railways obsolete.
War crimes
Genocide and ethnic cleansing
Ottoman Empire
The ethnic cleansing of the Ottoman Empire's Christian population, with the most prominent among them being the deportation and massacres of Armenians (similar policies were enacted against the Assyrians and Ottoman Greeks) during the final years of the Ottoman Empire is considered genocide. The Ottomans saw the entire Armenian population as an enemy that had chosen to side with Russia at the beginning of the war. In early 1915, a number of Armenian nationalist groups, such as the Armenakan, Dashnak and Hunchak organisations, joined the Russian forces, and the Ottoman government used this as a pretext to issue the Tehcir Law. This authorised the deportation of the Armenians from eastern Anatolia to Syria between 1915 and 1917. The exact number of deaths is unknown, although Balakian gives a range of 250,000 to 1.5 million for the deaths of Armenians, the International Association of Genocide Scholars estimates over 1 million. The government of Turkey has consistently rejected charges of genocide, arguing that those who died were victims of inter-ethnic fighting, famine or disease during the First World War.Russian Empire
Approximately 200,000 Germans living in Volhynia and about 600,000 Jews were deported by the Russian authorities. In 1916, an order was issued to deport around 650,000 Volga Germans to the east as well, but the Russian Revolution prevented this from being carried out. Many pogroms accompanied the Revolution of 1917 and the ensuing Russian Civil War, 60,000–200,000 civilian Jews were killed in the atrocities throughout the former Russian Empire.
Rape of Belgium
In Belgium, German troops, in fear of French and Belgian guerrilla fighters, or francs-tireurs, massacred townspeople in Andenne (211 dead), Tamines (384 dead), and Dinant (612 dead). On 25 August 1914, the Germans set fire to the town of Leuven, burned the library containing about 230,000 books, killed 209 civilians and forced 42,000 to evacuate. These actions brought worldwide condemnation.
Soldiers' experiences
The soldiers of the war were initially volunteers, except for Italy, but increasingly were conscripted into service. Britain's Imperial War Museum has collected more than 2,500 recordings of soldiers' personal accounts and selected transcripts, edited by military author Max Arthur, have been published. The museum believes that historians have not taken full account of this material and accordingly has made the full archive of recordings available to authors and researchers. Surviving veterans, returning home, often found that they could only discuss their experiences amongst themselves. Grouping together, they formed "veterans' associations" or "Legions".
Prisoners of war
About 8 million men surrendered and were held in POW camps during the war. All nations pledged to follow the Hague Conventions on fair treatment of prisoners of war. A POW's rate of survival was generally much higher than their peers at the front. Individual surrenders were uncommon. Large units usually surrendered en masse. At the Battle of Tannenberg 92,000 Russians surrendered. When the besieged garrison of Kaunas surrendered in 1915, some 20,000 Russians became prisoners. Over half of Russian losses were prisoners (as a proportion of those captured, wounded or killed); for Austria-Hungary 32%, for Italy 26%, for France 12%, for Germany 9%; for Britain 7%. Prisoners from the Allied armies totalled about 1.4 million (not including Russia, which lost 2.-3.5 million men as prisoners.) From the Central Powers about 3.3 million men became prisoners.Germany held 2.5 million prisoners; Russia held 2.9 million; while Britain and France held about 720,000. Most were captured just prior to the Armistice. The U.S. held 48,000. The most dangerous moment was the act of surrender, when helpless soldiers were sometimes gunned down. Once prisoners reached a camp, in general, conditions were satisfactory (and much better than in World War II), thanks in part to the efforts of the International Red Cross and inspections by neutral nations. Conditions were terrible in Russia, starvation was common for prisoners and civilians alike; about 15–20% of the prisoners in Russia died. In Germany food was scarce, but only 5% died.
The Ottoman Empire often treated POWs poorly. Some 11,800 British Empire soldiers, most of them Indians, became prisoners after the Siege of Kut, in Mesopotamia, in April 1916, 4,250 died in captivity. Although many were in very bad condition when captured, Ottoman officers forced them to march to Anatolia. A survivor said: "we were driven along like beasts, to drop out was to die." The survivors were then forced to build a railway through the Taurus Mountains.
In Russia, where the prisoners from the Czech Legion of the Austro-Hungarian army were released in 1917 they re-armed themselves and briefly became a military and diplomatic force during the Russian Civil War.
While the Allied prisoners of the Central Powers were quickly sent home at the end of active hostilities, the same treatment was not granted to Central Power prisoners of the Allies and Russia, many of which had to serve as forced labor, e.g. in France until 1920. They were only released after many approaches by the Red Cross to the Allied Supreme Council. There were still German prisoners being held in Russia as late as 1924.
Military attachés and war correspondents
Military and civilian observers from every major power closely followed the course of the war. Many were able to report on events from a perspective somewhat akin to modern "embedded" positions within the opposing land and naval forces. These military attachés and other observers prepared voluminous first-hand accounts of the war and analytical papers.For example, former U.S. Army Captain Granville Fortescue followed the developments of the Gallipoli Campaign from an embedded perspective within the ranks of the Turkish defenders; and his report was passed through Turkish censors before being printed in London and New York. However, this observer's role was abandoned when the U.S. entered the war, as Fortescue immediately re-enlisted, sustaining wounds at Forest of Argonne in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, September 1918.
In-depth observer narratives of the war and more narrowly focused professional journal articles were written soon after the war; and these post-war reports conclusively illustrated the battlefield destructiveness of this conflict. This was not the first time the tactics of entrenched positions for infantry defended with machine guns and artillery became vitally important. The Russo-Japanese War had been closely observed by Military attachés, war correspondents and other observers; but, from a 21st century perspective, it is now apparent that a range of tactical lessons were disregarded or not used in the preparations for war in Europe and throughout the Great War.
Support and opposition to the war
Support
The war was primarily supported by nationalists, industrial producers, and imperialists. In the Balkans, Yugoslav nationalists such as Yugoslav nationalist leader Ante Trumbić in the Balkans strongly supported the war, desiring the freedom of Yugoslavs from Austria-Hungary and other foreign powers and the creation of an independent Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav Committee was formed in Paris on 30 April 1915 but shortly moved its office to London, Trumbić led the Committee.In the Middle East, Arab nationalism soared in Ottoman territories in response to the rise of Turkish nationalism during the war, with Arab nationalist leaders advocating the creation of a pan-Arab state. In 1916, the Arab Revolt began in Ottoman-controlled territories of the Middle East in an effort to achieve independence.
Italian nationalism was stirred by the outbreak of the war and was initially strongly supported by a variety of political factions. One of the most prominent and popular Italian nationalist supporters of the war was Gabriele d'Annunzio who promoted Italian irredentism and helped sway the Italian public to support intervention in the war. The Italian Liberal Party under the leadership of Paolo Boselli promoted intervention in the war on the side of the Allies and utilised the Dante Aligheri Society to promote Italian nationalism.
A number of socialist parties initially supported the war when it began in August 1914. Initially European socialists became split on national lines with the conception of class conflict held by radical socialists such as Marxists and syndicalists being overstepped by their support for war. Once the war began, Austrian, British, French, German and Russian socialists followed the rising nationalist current by supporting their country's intervention in the war.
Italian socialists were divided on whether to support the war or oppose it, some were militant supporters of the war including Benito Mussolini and Leonida Bissolati. However the Italian Socialist Party decided to oppose the war after anti-militarist protestors had been killed, resulting in a general strike called Red Week. The Italian Socialist Party purged itself of pro-war nationalist members, including Mussolini. Mussolini, a syndicalist who supported the war on grounds of irredentist claims on Italian-populated regions of Austria-Hungary, formed the pro-interventionist Il Popolo d'Italia and the Fasci Riviluzionario d'Azione Internazionalista ("Revolutionary Fasci for International Action") in October 1914 that later developed into the Fasci di Combattimento in 1919 and the origin of fascism. Mussolini's nationalism enabled him to raise funds from Ansaldo (an armaments firm) and other companies to create Il Popolo d'Italia to convince socialists and revolutionaries to support the war.
In April 1918 the Rome Congress of Oppressed Nationalities was held that included Czechoslovak, Italian, Polish, Transylvanian, and Yugoslav representatives that urged the Allies to support national self-determination for the peoples residing within Austria-Hungary.
Opposition
The trade union and socialist movements had long voiced their opposition to a war, which they argued, meant only that workers would kill other workers in the interest of capitalism. Once war was declared, however, many socialists and trade unions backed their governments. Among the exceptions were the Bolsheviks, the Socialist Party of America, and the Italian Socialist Party, and individuals such as Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg and their followers in Germany. There were also small anti-war groups in Britain and France.In Britain, in 1914, the Public Schools Officers' Training Corps annual camp was held at Tidworth Pennings, near Salisbury Plain. Head of the British Army Lord Kitchener was to review the cadets, but the imminence of the war prevented him. General Horace Smith-Dorrien was sent instead. He surprised the two-or-three thousand cadets by declaring (in the words of Donald Christopher Smith, a Bermudian cadet who was present) that war should be avoided at almost any cost, that war would solve nothing, that the whole of Europe and more besides would be reduced to ruin, and that the loss of life would be so large that whole populations would be decimated. In our ignorance I, and many of us, felt almost ashamed of a British General who uttered such depressing and unpatriotic sentiments, but during the next four years, those of us who survived the holocaust-probably not more than one-quarter of us - learned how right the General's prognosis was and how courageous he had been to utter it. Having voiced these sentiments did not hinder Smith-Dorien's career, or preventing him from doing his duty in World War I to the best of his abilities.
E.D.Morel had been extremely suspicious of the secret diplomacy pursued by the British Foreign Office and in 1911, he showed how a secret understanding between Britain and France over the control of Morocco, followed by a campaign in the British press based on misleading Foreign Office briefings, had stitched up Germany and very nearly caused a European war. In February 1912, he warned that "no greater disaster could befall both peoples [Britain and Germany], and all that is most worthy of preservation in modern civilization, than a war between them". Convinced that Britain had struck a second secret agreement with France that would drag the nation into any war which involved Russia, he campaigned for such treaties to be made public; for recognition that Germany had been hoodwinked over Morocco; and for the British government to seek to broker a reconciliation between France and Germany. In response, British ministers lied. The prime minister and the foreign secretary repeatedly denied that there was any secret agreement with France. Only on the day war was declared did the foreign secretary admit that a treaty had been in place since 1906. It ensured that Britain would have to fight from the moment Russia mobilised. Morel continued to oppose the war, was reviled in the press and physically attacked seven times for it, eventually being imprisoned in 1917.
At the end of July, 1914, when it became clear to the British government that the country was on the verge of war with Germany, four senior members of the government, David Lloyd George (Chancellor of the Exchequer), Sir Charles Trevelyan (Parliamentary Secretary of the Board of Education), John Burns (President of the Local Government Board) and John Morley (Secretary of State for India), were opposed to the country becoming involved in a European war. They informed the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, that they intended to resign over the issue. When war was declared on 4th August, three of the men, Trevelyan, Burns and Morley, resigned, but Asquith managed to persuade Lloyd George, his Chancellor of the Exchequer, to change his mind. The day after war was declared, Trevelyan began contacting friends about a new political organisation he intended to form to oppose the war. This included two pacifist members of the Liberal Party, Norman Angell and E. D. Morel, and Ramsay MacDonald, the leader of the Labour Party. A meeting was held and after considering names such as the Peoples' Emancipation Committee and the Peoples' Freedom League, they selected the Union of Democratic Control. The four men agreed that one of the main reasons for the conflict was the secret diplomacy of people like Britain's foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey. The founders of the Union of Democratic Control produced a manifesto and invited people to support it. Over the next few weeks several leading figures joined the organisation. This included J. A. Hobson, Charles Buxton, Ottoline Morrell, Philip Morrell, Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, Arnold Rowntree, Morgan Philips Price, George Cadbury, Helena Swanwick, Fred Jowett, Tom Johnston, Bertrand Russell, Philip Snowden, Ethel Snowden, David Kirkwood, William Anderson, Mary Sheepshanks, Isabella Ford, H. H. Brailsford, Israel Zangwill, Margaret Llewelyn Davies, Konni Zilliacus, Margaret Sackville and Olive Schreiner.
Ramsay MacDonald came under attack from newspapers because of his opposition to the First World War. On 1st October 1914, The Times published a leading article entitled Helping the Enemy, in which it wrote that "no paid agent of Germany had served her better" than MacDonald had done. The newspaper also included an article by Ignatius Valentine Chirol, who argued: "We may be rightly proud of the tolerance we display towards even the most extreme licence of speech in ordinary times... Mr. MacDonald' s case is a very different one. In time of actual war... Mr. MacDonald has sought to besmirch the reputation of his country by openly charging with disgraceful duplicity the Ministers who are its chosen representatives, and he has helped the enemy State ... Such action oversteps the bounds of even the most excessive toleration, and cannot be properly or safely disregarded by the British Government or the British people."
Many countries jailed those who spoke out against the conflict. These included Eugene Debs in the United States and Bertrand Russell in Britain. In the U.S., the Espionage Act of 1917 and Sedition Act of 1918 made it a federal crime to oppose military recruitment or make any statements deemed "disloyal". Publications at all critical of the government were removed from circulation by postal censors, and many served long prison sentences for statements of fact deemed unpatriotic.
A number of nationalists opposed intervention, particularly within states that the nationalists held hostility to. Irish nationalists staunchly opposed taking part in intervention with the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The war had begun amid the Home Rule crisis in Ireland that had begun in 1912 and by 1914 there was a serious possibility of an outbreak of civil war in Ireland between Irish unionists and republicans. Irish nationalists and Marxists attempted to pursue Irish independence, culminating in the Easter Rising of 1916, with Germany sending 20,000 rifles to Ireland in order to stir unrest in the United Kingdom. The UK government placed Ireland under martial law in response to the Easter Rising.
Other opposition came from conscientious objectors – some socialist, some religious – who refused to fight. In Britain 16,000 people asked for conscientious objector status. Many suffered years of prison, including solitary confinement and bread and water diets. Even after the war, in Britain many job advertisements were marked "No conscientious objectors need apply".
The Central Asian Revolt started in the summer of 1916, when the Russian Empire government ended its exemption of Muslims from military service.
In 1917, a series of mutinies in the French army led to dozens of soldiers being executed and many more imprisoned.
In Milan in May 1917, Bolshevik revolutionaries organised and engaged in rioting calling for an end to the war, and managed to close down factories and stop public transportation. The Italian army was forced to enter Milan with tanks and machine guns to face Bolsheviks and anarchists who fought violently until May 23 when the army gained control of the city with almost fifty people killed (three of which were Italian soldiers) and over 800 people arrested.
The Conscription Crisis of 1917 in Canada erupted when conservative Prime Minister Robert Borden brought in compulsory military service over the objection of French-speaking Quebecers. Out of approximately 625,000 Canadians who served, about 60,000 were killed and another 173,000 were wounded.
In 1917, Emperor Charles I of Austria secretly entered into peace negotiations with the Allied powers, with his brother-in-law Sixtus as intermediary, without the knowledge of his ally Germany. He failed, however, because of the resistance of Italy.
In September 1917, the Russian soldiers in France began questioning why they were fighting for the French at all and mutinied. In Russia, opposition to the war led to soldiers also establishing their own revolutionary committees and helped foment the October Revolution of 1917, with the call going up for "bread, land, and peace". The Bolsheviks reached a peace treaty with Germany, the peace of Brest-Litovsk, despite its harsh conditions.
The end of October 1918, in northern Germany, saw the beginning of the German Revolution of 1918–1919. Units of the German Navy refused to set sail for a last, large-scale operation in a war which they saw as good as lost, initiating the uprising. The sailors' revolt which then ensued in the naval ports of Wilhelmshaven and Kiel spread across the whole country within days and led to the proclamation of a republic on 9 November 1918 and shortly thereafter to the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II.
Conscription
As the war slowly turned into a war of attrition, conscription was implemented in some countries. This issue was particularly explosive in Canada and Australia. In the former it opened a political gap between French-Canadians, who claimed their true loyalty was to Canada and not the British Empire, and the Anglophone majority who saw the war as a duty to both Britain and Canada. Prime Minister Robert Borden pushed through a Military Service Act, provoking the Conscription Crisis of 1917. In Australia, a sustained pro-conscription campaign by Prime Minister Billy Hughes, caused a split in the Australian Labor Party and Hughes formed the Nationalist Party of Australia in 1917 to pursue the matter. Nevertheless, the labour movement, the Catholic Church, and Irish nationalist expatriates successfully opposed Hughes' push, which was rejected in two plebiscites.Conscription put into uniform nearly every physically fit man in Britain, six of ten million eligible. Of these, about 750,000 lost their lives and 1,700,000 were wounded. Most deaths were to young unmarried men; however, 160,000 wives lost husbands and 300,000 children lost fathers.
Aftermath
Health and economic effects
{|class="toccolours" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 2em; font-size: 99%; background:#white; color:black; width:30em; max-width: 40%;" cellspacing="5" |style="text-align: left;"| ..."Strange, friend," I said, "Here is no cause to mourn." "None," said the other, "Save the undone years"... |- |style="text-align: left;" |— Wilfred Owen, Strange Meeting, 1918 |}No other war had changed the map of Europe so dramatically — four empires disappeared: the German, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman and the Russian. Four dynasties: the Hohenzollerns, the Habsburg, Romanovs and the Ottomans, together with their ancillary aristocracies, all fell after the war. Belgium and Serbia were badly damaged, as was France with 1.4 million soldiers dead, not counting other casualties. Germany and Russia were similarly affected.
The war had profound economic consequences. Of the 60 million European soldiers who were mobilised from 1914–1918, 8 million were killed, 7 million were permanently disabled, and 15 million were seriously injured. Germany lost 15.1% of its active male population, Austria–Hungary lost 17.1%, and France lost 10.5%. About 750,000 German civilians died from starvation caused by the British blockade during the war. By the end of the war, famine had killed approximately 100,000 people in Lebanon. The best estimates of the death toll from the Russian famine of 1921 run from 5 million to 10 million people. By 1922, there were between 4.5 million and 7 million homeless children in Russia as a result of nearly a decade of devastation from World War I, the Russian Civil War, and the subsequent famine of 1920–1922. Numerous anti-Soviet Russians fled the country after the Revolution; by the 1930s the northern Chinese city of Harbin had 100,000 Russians. Thousands more emigrated to France, England and the United States. Diseases flourished in the chaotic wartime conditions. In 1914 alone, louse-borne epidemic typhus killed 200,000 in Serbia. From 1918 to 1922, Russia had about 25 million infections and 3 million deaths from epidemic typhus. Whereas before World War I, Russia had about 3.5 million cases of malaria, its people suffered more than 13 million cases in 1923. In addition, a major influenza epidemic spread around the world. Overall, the 1918 flu pandemic killed at least 50 million people.
Lobbying by Chaim Weizmann and fear that American Jews would encourage the USA to support Germany culminated in the British government's Balfour Declaration of 1917, endorsing creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. A total of more than 1,172,000 Jewish soldiers served in the Allied and Central Power forces in World War I, including 450,000 in Czarist Russia and 275,000 in Austria-Hungary.
The social disruption and widespread violence of the Revolution of 1917 and the ensuing Russian Civil War sparked more than 2,000 pogroms in the former Russian Empire, mostly in the Ukraine. An estimated 60,000–200,000 civilian Jews were killed in the atrocities.
In the aftermath of World War I, Greece fought against Turkish nationalists led by Mustafa Kemal, a war which resulted in a massive population exchange between the two countries under the Treaty of Lausanne. According to various sources, several hundred thousand Pontic Greeks died during this period.
Peace treaties and national boundaries
After the war, the Paris Peace Conference imposed a series of peace treaties on the Central Powers. The 1919 Treaty of Versailles officially ended the war. Building on Wilson's 14th point, the Treaty of Versailles also brought into being the League of Nations on 28 June 1919.In signing the treaty, Germany acknowledged responsibility for the war, agreeing to pay enormous war reparations and award territory to the victors. The "Guilt Thesis" became a controversial explanation of later events among analysts in Britain and the United States. The Treaty of Versailles caused enormous bitterness in Germany, which nationalist movements, especially the Nazis, exploited with a conspiracy theory they called the Dolchstosslegende (Stab-in-the-back legend). The Weimar Republic lost the former colonial possessions and was saddled with accepting blame for the war, as well as paying punitive reparations for it. Unable to pay them with exports (a result of territorial losses and postwar recession), Germany did so by borrowing from the United States. Runaway inflation in the 1920s contributed to the economic collapse of the Weimar Republic and the reparations were suspended in 1931 following the Stock Market Crash in 1929 and the beginnings of the Great Depression worldwide.
Austria–Hungary was partitioned into several successor states, including Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, largely but not entirely along ethnic lines. Transylvania was shifted from Hungary to Greater Romania. The details were contained in the Treaty of Saint-Germain and the Treaty of Trianon. As a result of the Treaty of Trianon, 3.3 million Hungarians came under foreign rule. Although the Hungarians made up 54% of the population of the pre-war Kingdom of Hungary, only 32% of its territory was left to Hungary. Between 1920 and 1924, 354,000 Hungarians fled former Hungarian territories attached to Romania, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.
The Russian Empire, which had withdrawn from the war in 1917 after the October Revolution, lost much of its western frontier as the newly independent nations of Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland were carved from it. Bessarabia was re-attached to the Greater Romania, as it had been a Romanian territory for more than a thousand years.
The Ottoman Empire disintegrated, and much of its non-Anatolian territory was awarded as protectorates of various Allied powers. The Turkish core was reorganised as the Republic of Turkey. The Ottoman Empire was to be partitioned by the Treaty of Sèvres in 1920. This treaty was never ratified by the Sultan and was rejected by the Turkish republican movement, leading to the Turkish Independence War and, ultimately, to the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne.
Legacy
The first tentative efforts to comprehend the meaning and consequences of modern warfare began during the initial phases of the war, and this process continued throughout and after the end of hostilities.
Memorials
Memorials were erected in thousands of villages and towns. Close to battlefields, the improvised burial grounds were gradually moved to formal graveyards under the care of organisations such as the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, the American Battle Monuments Commission, the German War Graves Commission and Le Souvenir français. Many of these graveyards also have central monuments to the missing or unidentified dead, such as the Menin Gate memorial and the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme.On 3 May 1915, during the Second Battle of Ypres, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer was killed. At his graveside, his friend John McCrae, M.D., of Guelph, Ontario, Canada wrote the memorable poem In Flanders Fields as a salute to those who perished in the Great War. Published in Punch on 8 December 1915, it is still recited today, especially on Remembrance Day and Memorial Day.
Liberty Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri is a United States memorial dedicated to all Americans who served in World War I. The site for the Liberty Memorial was dedicated on November 1, 1921. On this day, the supreme Allied commanders spoke to a crowd of more than 100,000 people. It was the only time in history these leaders were together in one place. In attendance were Lieutenant General Baron Jacques of Belgium; General Armando Diaz of Italy; Marshal Ferdinand Foch of France; General Pershing of the United States; and Admiral D. R. Beatty of Great Britain. After three years of construction, the Liberty Memorial was completed and President Calvin Coolidge delivered the dedication speech to a crowd of 150,000 people in 1926.
Liberty Memorial is also home to The National World War I Museum, the only museum dedicated solely to World War I in the United States.
Cultural memory
The First World War had a lasting impact on social memory. It was seen by many in Britain as signalling the end of Victorian England, and across Europe many regarded it as a watershed moment. Historian Samuel Hynes explained:}}
This has become the most common perception of the First World War, perpetuated by the art, cinema, poems and stories published subsequently. Films such as All Quiet on the Western Front, Paths of Glory and For King and Country have perpetuated the idea; while war-time films including Camrades, Flanders Poppies and Shoulder Arms indicate that the most contemporary views of the war were overall far more positive. Likewise, the art of Paul Nash, John Nash, Christopher Nevison and Henry Tonks in Britain painted a negative view of the conflict in keeping with the growing perception, while popular war-time artists such as Muirhead Bone painted more serene and pleasant interpretations subsequently rejected as inaccurate. Several historians have since countered these interpretations:
These beliefs did not become widely shared because they offered the only accurate interpretation of wartime events. In every respect, the war was much more complicated than they suggest. In recent years, historians have argued persuasively against almost every popular cliché of the First World War. It has been pointed out that, although the losses were devastating, their greatest impact was socially and geographically limited. The many emotions other than horror experienced by soldiers in and out of the front line, including comradeship, boredom and even enjoyment, have been recognised. The war is not now seen as a 'fight about nothing', but as a war of ideals, a struggle between aggressive militarism and more or less liberal democracy. It has been acknowledged that British generals were often capable men facing difficult challenges, and that it was under their command that the British army played a major part in the defeat of the Germans in 1918: a great forgotten victory.
Though these historians have discounted as "myths" these perceptions of the war, they are nevertheless prevalent across much of society. They have dynamically changed according to contemporary influences, reflecting in the 1950s perceptions of the war as 'aimless' following the contrasting Second World War, and emphasising conflict within the ranks during times of class conflict in the 1960s. The majority of additions to the contrary are often rejected.
Social trauma
The social trauma caused by unprecedented rates of casualties manifested itself in different ways, which have been the subject of subsequent historical debate. Some people were revolted by nationalism and its results, and so they began to work towards a more internationalist world, supporting organisations such as the League of Nations. Pacifism became increasingly popular. Others had the opposite reaction, feeling that only strength and military could be relied upon in a chaotic and inhumane world. Anti-modernist views were an outgrowth of the many changes taking place in society.The experiences of the war led to a collective trauma shared by many from all participating countries. The optimism of la belle époque was destroyed and those who fought in the war were referred to as the Lost Generation. For years afterwards, people mourned the dead, the missing, and the many disabled. Many soldiers returned with severe trauma, suffering from shell shock (also called neurasthenia, now called posttraumatic stress disorder). Many more returned home with few after-effects; however, their silence about the war contributed to the conflict's growing mythological status. In the United Kingdom, mass-mobilisation, large casualty rates and the collapse of the Edwardian era made a strong impression on society. Though many participants did not share in the experiences of combat or spend any significant time at the front, or had positive memories of their service, the images of suffering and trauma became the widely shared perception. Such historians as Dan Todman, Paul Fussell and Samuel Heyns have all published works since the 1990s arguing that these common perceptions of the war are factually incorrect.
Discontent in Germany
The rise of Nazism and fascism included a revival of the nationalist spirit and a rejection of many post-war changes. Similarly, the popularity of the Stab-in-the-back legend (German: Dolchstoßlegende) was a testament to the psychological state of defeated Germany and was a rejection of responsibility for the conflict. This conspiracy theory of betrayal became common, and the German populace came to see themselves as victims. The Dolchstoßlegende's popular acceptance in Germany played a significant role in the rise of Nazism. A sense of disillusionment and cynicism became pronounced, with nihilism growing. Many believed the war heralded the end of the world as they had known it because of the high fatalities among a generation of men, the dissolution of governments and empires, and the collapse of capitalism and imperialism.Communist and socialist movements around the world drew strength from this theory and enjoyed a new level of popularity. These feelings were most pronounced in areas directly or harshly affected by the war. Out of German discontent with the still controversial Treaty of Versailles, Adolf Hitler was able to gain popularity and power. World War II was in part a continuation of the power struggle never fully resolved by the First World War; in fact, it was common for Germans in the 1930s and 1940s to justify acts of international aggression because of perceived injustices imposed by the victors of the First World War.
The establishment of the modern state of Israel and the roots of the continuing Israeli-Palestinian Conflict are partially found in the unstable power dynamics of the Middle East which resulted from World War I. Prior to the end of the war, the Ottoman Empire had maintained a modest level of peace and stability throughout the Middle East. With the fall of Ottoman government, power vacuums developed and conflicting claims to land and nationhood began to emerge. The political boundaries drawn by the victors of the First World War were quickly imposed, sometimes after only cursory consultation with the local population. In many cases, these continue to be problematic in the 21st-century struggles for national identity. While the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I was pivotal in contributing to the modern political situation of the Middle East, including the Arab-Israeli conflict, the end of Ottoman rule also spawned lesser known disputes over water and other natural resources.
Views in the United States
U.S. intervention in the war, as well as the Wilson administration, became deeply unpopular. This was reflected in the U.S. Senate's rejection of the Versailles treaty and membership in the League of Nations. In the interwar era a consensus arose that U.S. intervention was a mistake, and the Congress passed laws in an attempt to preserve U.S. neutrality in any future conflict. Polls taken in 1937 and the opening months of World War II established that nearly 60% regarded the intervention as a mistake, with only 28% opposing that view. But, in the period between the fall of France and the attack on Pearl Harbor, public opinion changed dramatically and, for the first time, a narrow plurality rejected the idea that the war was a mistake.
New national identities
Poland reemerged as an independent country, after more than a century. As a "minor Entente nation" and the country with the largest casualties per head the Kingdom of Serbia and its dynasty became the backbone of the new multinational state, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later renamed Yugoslavia). Czechoslovakia, combining the Kingdom of Bohemia with parts of the Kingdom of Hungary, became a new nation. Russia became the Soviet Union and lost Finland, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, which became independent countries. The Ottoman Empire was soon replaced by Turkey and several other countries in the Middle East.In the British Empire, the war unleashed new forms of nationalism. In Australia and New Zealand the Battle of Gallipoli became known as those nations' "Baptism of Fire". It was the first major war in which the newly established countries fought and it was one of the first times that Australian troops fought as Australians, not just subjects of the British Crown. Anzac Day, commemorating the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, celebrates this defining moment.
After the Battle of Vimy Ridge, where the Canadian divisions fought together for the first time as a single corps, Canadians began to refer to theirs as a nation "forged from fire". Having succeeded on the same battleground where the "mother countries" had previously faltered, they were for the first time respected internationally for their own accomplishments. Canada entered the war as a Dominion of the British Empire and remained so afterwards, although she emerged with a greater measure of independence. While the other Dominions were represented by Britain, Canada was an independent negotiator and signatory of the Versailles Treaty.
Economic effects
One of the most dramatic effects of the war was the expansion of governmental powers and responsibilities in Britain, France, the United States, and the Dominions of the British Empire. In order to harness all the power of their societies, new government ministries and powers were created. New taxes were levied and laws enacted, all designed to bolster the war effort; many of which have lasted to this day. Similarly, the war strained the abilities of the formerly large and bureaucratised governments such as in Austria–Hungary and Germany; however, any analysis of the long-term effects were clouded by the defeat of these governments. Gross domestic product (GDP) increased for three Allies (Britain, Italy, and U.S.), but decreased in France and Russia, in neutral Netherlands, and in the main three Central Powers. The shrinkage in GDP in Austria, Russia, France, and the Ottoman Empire reached 30 to 40%. In Austria, for example, most of the pigs were slaughtered and, at war's end, there was no meat.
All nations had increases in the government's share of GDP, surpassing fifty percent in both Germany and France and nearly reaching fifty percent in Britain. To pay for purchases in the United States, Britain cashed in its extensive investments in American railroads and then began borrowing heavily on Wall Street. President Wilson was on the verge of cutting off the loans in late 1916, but allowed a great increase in U.S. government lending to the Allies. After 1919, the U.S. demanded repayment of these loans, which, in part, were funded by German reparations, which, in turn, were supported by American loans to Germany. This circular system collapsed in 1931 and the loans were never repaid. In 1934, Britain owed the US $4.4 billion of World War I debt.
Macro- and micro-economic consequences devolved from the war. Families were altered by the departure of many men. With the death or absence of the primary wage earner, women were forced into the workforce in unprecedented numbers. At the same time, industry needed to replace the lost labourers sent to war. This aided the struggle for voting rights for women.
In Britain, rationing was finally imposed in early 1918, limited to meat, sugar, and fats (butter and oleo), but not bread. The new system worked smoothly. From 1914 to 1918 trade union membership doubled, from a little over four million to a little over eight million. Work stoppages and strikes became frequent in 1917–1918 as the unions expressed grievances regarding prices, alcohol control, pay disputes, fatigue from overtime and working on Sundays and inadequate housing.
Britain turned to her colonies for help in obtaining essential war materials whose supply had become difficult from traditional sources. Geologists such as Albert Ernest Kitson were called upon to find new resources of precious minerals in the African colonies. Kitson discovered important new deposits of manganese, used in munitions production, in the Gold Coast.
Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles (the so-called "war guilt" clause) declared Germany and its allies responsible for all "loss and damage" suffered by the Allies during the war and provided the basis for reparations. The total reparations demanded was 132 billion gold marks which was far more than the total German gold or foreign exchange. The economic problems that the payments brought, and German resentment at their imposition, are usually cited as one of the more significant factors that led to the end of the Weimar Republic and the beginning of the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler. After Germany’s defeat in World War II, payment of the reparations was not resumed. There was, however, outstanding German debt that the Weimar Republic had used to pay the reparations. Germany finished paying off the reparations in October 2010.
Media
See also
Notes
References
For a comprehensive bibliography see List of books about World War I (translated from the German) , reviewed in . | publisher=University of California Press| issn=0030-8684}} , Wilson's maneuvering U.S. into war , general military history }} also published by Harper as "Ludendorff's Own Story, August 1914 – November 1918: The Great War from the Siege of Liege to the Signing of the Armistice as Viewed from the Grand Headquarters of the German Army" (original title Meine Kriegserinnerungen, 1914–1918) | journal=The Journal of Military History| volume=60| issue=3| month=July| year=1996| pages=495–511| doi=10.2307/2944522| publisher=Society for Military History| jstor=2944522}} cites "Cf. articles signed XXX in La Revue de Deux Mondes, March 1 and March 15, 1920" Deals with technical developments, including the first dipping hydrophones | doi=10.2307/1986064| publisher=Society for Military History| jstor=1986064 }} , major reinterpretation : the major scholarly synthesis. Thorough coverage of 1914 , reviewed at , tells of the opening diplomatic and military manoeuvres
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