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Battles along the western front: AD 1915-1917
In each year of this gargantuan contest both sides mount offensives, usually more costly to them than to the defenders. In 1915 the Germans move first, in April, in the northwest section of the line near Ypres. In May the French retaliate further south, between Lens and Arras. In the autumn the Allies launch twin campaigns, the British in the north near Loos and the French in the southeastern part of the line around Reims.
The first offensive of 1916 is a German thrust towards Verdun, a town behind the Allied lines at the eastern end of the trenches. Beginning in February, the battle for Verdun lasts for the rest of the year and severely stretches the resources of the French defenders - commanded by Philippe P¨¦tain, who becomes a national hero.
The pressure on Verdun is eased in July, when the Allies advance in the valley of the Somme, in the centre of the line, in what becomes the most deadly single engagement of the entire war. On the very first day 60,000 of the British troops running forward from their trenches are mown down by enemy fire. Four months later, when torrential rain brings the battle finally to an end with little gained, the British have lost 420,000 men, the French 195,000 and the Germans more than 600,000.
Allied strategic plans are dislocated in March 1917 by a surprise German move. The line of trenches has given the Germans a southwest bulge between Arras and Reims. Deciding not to hold this, the Germans now make an unexpected withdrawal.
They pull their troops back to a newly prepared line, reinforced with a very effective innovation - concrete pillboxes to house machine-guns. This defensive barrier becomes known as the Hindenburg Line, after the recently appointed German commander-in-chief. The territory which has been abandoned is left as a heavily mined wasteland.
By this stage of the war both French and Germans have learnt the value of taking a defensive stance in this new form of warfare, but the British commander, Field Marshal Haig, is still convinced that aggression must ultimately prevail. After attempting to soften up the opposition with a bombardment of 4,500,000 shells, he launches on 31 July 1917 a massive attack from Ypres at the northern extremity of the line of trenches.
As so often previously in the war, three months of horror end with nothing achieved. The campaign lasts until early November, when a macabre last-ditch advance by British and Canadian infantry, wading through knee-deep mud churned up by constant bombardment in the autumn rain, results in the capture of a trivial but by now symbolic prize - the village of Passchendaele. It stands just five miles from where the attack began in July. Since then some 250,000 British soldiers have died.
There is one briefly effective campaign in late November 1917. A suitable terrain is chosen near Cambrai for the first serious outing of a British innovation, the tank. These strange vehicles achieve a rapid advance. But there are not enough infantry in support to consolidate the gain.
Innovations on the western front: AD 1915-1917
There are occasional innovations on the western front, when radically new weapons are brought to the battlefield in an attempt to clear the enemy more effectively from their trenches.
The Germans first try the use of chlorine gas against the Russians in Poland in January 1915, but the extreme cold makes it ineffective. They make a second attempt at Ypres in April 1915. This time the creeping poisonous green vapour immediately empties the French trenches. But the Germans, not anticipating such an immediate success, fail to take advantage of their opportunity. Five months later the British use chlorine gas, at Loos in September - again to little advantage, partly because the wind changes and blows the gas back over their own men.
By the end of the war both sides make frequent use of even more alarming gases (phosgene and mustard). The damage is limited by the gas mask, soon part of the basic equipment of every soldier, though mustard gas also causes severe burns to the skin.
From 1916 poison gas is no longer released from canisters, to drift with the wind across the enemy's position. Now it is fired in compressed form in shells and mortars, to expand on impact. During one advance, in the Ypres region in March 1918, the Germans fire half a million mustard gas shells into the Allied lines. But protective measures by now ensure that even such a heavy bombardment results in only 7000 gas casualties and less than 100 deaths.
Poison gas has been relatively little used in subsequent wars, for fear of retaliation in kind. But modern warfare has been transformed by another innovation on the western front.
During the battle of the Somme, on 15 September 1916, the British send into action eleven vehicles of an entirely new kind, the Mark I tank. On this first occasion they make relatively little impression. But on their second outing, at Cambrai in November 1917, they prove their unmistakable value in clearing the battleground for the infantry following behind them. Unlike foot soldiers, tanks can advance against the dreaded machine gun and can crash through the barbed wire barricades protecting the enemy trenches.
Balkan alliances: AD 1915-1916
During 1915, as the war first settles into stalemate on the western front, the European theatre with the greatest volatilty is the Balkans - where there is much unfinished business in the aftermath of the recent series of Balkan Wars.
At the outbreak of war, in 1914, all but one of the nations in this turbulent region keep their options open with declarations of neutrality. The exception is Serbia, at the heart of the conflict from the very start and surprisingly resilient during the rest of 1914 in keeping the armies of Austria-Hungary at bay.
Serbia and Bulgaria become a high priority for both sides. For the Central Powers, if Serbia can be occupied and Bulgaria brought into their alliance, a crucial railway link can be made between Vienna and the Turkish capital at Istanbul. For the Allies there is strategic value in preventing this happening, and an important element of prestige in being seen to protect Serbia.
During the summer of 1915 both sides promise Bulgaria the return of territory in Macedonia lost in the Bucharest treaty of 1913. It is a more convincing promise from the Central powers, since much of the land went to Serbia. Moreover the king of Bulgaria is strongly pro-German. In September Bulgaria takes the plunge by declaring war on Serbia.
This act places the focus firmly on Greece. A friendly Greece is essential to the Allies, since an expedition north from the Greek coast is the only practical way of bringing assistance to land-locked Serbia. Moreover Greece can reasonably be expected to enter the fray. After the First Balkan War, in 1913, she signed a treaty with Serbia in which each promised to help the other if attacked by Bulgaria.
However opinion in Greece is deeply divided. The king and his senior commanders are pro-German, while the prime minister sympathizes with the Allies. The result is that Greece fails to side with Serbia, but Allied troops nevertheless land at Salonika for a push inland (claiming to have been invited to do so by the prime minister).
French and British divisions are rushed from Gallipoli to land at Salonika on October 5 (the Greek king dismisses his insubordinate prime minister on the same day). But the expedition proves a fiasco. Advancing up the Vardar river, the Allies finds the Bulgarians ahead of them in Serbia. An Austrian and Bulgarian attack from both flanks is finally subduing this small country, with Belgrade falling to the Austrians on October 9. The Serb army, abandoning an unequal struggle, escapes through the mountains into Albania.
The Allied forces, having failed in their mission, withdraw in December back to Salonika. At this same moment the British and French are also pulling ignominiously out of Gallipoli.
It would make tactical sense to abandon both these unsuccessful ventures, but it is decided that there are strategic reasons for staying in Salonika. One is prestige in this important part of Europe. The other is the hope that Romania, still neutral, may soon join in on the Allied side. As a result further French and British divisions are sent in 1916 to Salonika. They are joined by the escaped Serbian army and by Italian contingents.
The Germans decide not to disturb this quiet encampment, which at times ties up nearly 500,000 Allied troops - until at last they go into action in 1918.
Romania does eventually join the Allies, in August 1916, on being promised much of Hungary after the defeat of the Austrian empire. Romania's decision pays off after the war, but in the short term it brings disaster. Early in December the capital city, Bucharest, falls to an Austro-Hungarian army. The king and his ministers flee to exile in the neighbouring Russian province of Moldavia.
Meanwhile the split in Greece between the factions of the king and his dismissed prime minister become more extreme. In September 1916 the prime minister moves to Salonika to set up an independent Greek government under Allied protection. This government, in November, declares war on Bulgaria. The rival Balkan alliances are at last complete.
The Battle of Jutland: AD 1916
The early summer of 1916 brings the only major sea battle of the entire war. Since the loss of the Bl¨¹cher at Dogger Bank in January 1915, the German High Seas Fleet has been content to remain in the safety of German waters in the Baltic, leaving the U-boats to carry on the war at sea. Meanwhile Britain's larger Grand Fleet watches over the North Sea from its base at Scapa Flow.
However in 1916 the Germans devise a plan which they hope will entice into a trap one half of the British fleet, which can then be destroyed in isolation. The scheme has two related parts.
First a small force of cruisers is despatched to bombard the east coast ports of Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft. It is hoped that this will prompt Admiral Jellicoe to send down less than the whole fleet from Scapa Flow, to end this annoyance. He does just that, despatching one battle squadron.
The next step in the German plan is to send a scouting group of cruisers up the Norwegian coast, tempting the British across the sea to move south of them and cut them off. But the cruisers are to be followed at a distance of fifty miles by the entire High Seas Fleet under its admiral, Reinhard Scheer.
A succession of accidents frustrate and alter these plans. British listening devices intercept a message on May 30 suggesting that the High Seas Fleet is on the move. Jellicoe responds by steaming south with the rest of the Grand Fleet from Scapa Flow, heading for a rendezvous near the entrance to the Skagerrak (the channel to the north of Denmark's province of Jutland). This accidentally brings the British and German fleets into the same area of sea.
They fail to notice each other until a chance encounter in the early afternoon of May 31. At that stage the battleships of both fleets are still miles apart. By about 4 p.m. the cruisers of both sides are in combat. Two hours later the battleships open fire.
In the gathering dusk these massive vessels, armed with enormous guns, cumbrously manoeuvre and wheel about with the same objective as the old ships-of-the-line - to be in position to fire a broadside at an enemy less well placed. In the event the chaos is such that neither side has a decisive advantage before night falls and contact is lost.
When the tally is taken, the Germans are the winners. The British lose marginally more ships and twice as many men (about 6000). But in another sense the German effort fails. After the battle of Jutland (known to the Germans as the battle of the Skagerrak) the Grand Fleet is still in command of the North Sea - while the German fleet prefers once again to remain safely at home, shy of the high seas after which it is named.
Mesopotamia: AD 1914-1916
With the collapse of the Gallipoli campaign in 1915, the only untried route of attack against the Turkish empire is in the Middle East, up through Mesopotamia or Palestine.
From the start of the war Mesopotamia has been the site of British muddle and disaster. As soon as Britain and Turkey are at war, early in November 1914, a British force is despatched to seize the Turkish port of Basra on the Shatt-al-Arab (the confluence of the two great rivers of Mesopotamia, the Tigris and the Euphrates). The purpose is precise and limited. Basra is a mere fifty miles upstream from the Persian port of Abadan, where the recently established Anglo-Persian Oil company refines and ships out its precious commodity. Britain needs to protect its supply of diesel for the navy.
This limited objective is rapidly achieved. Basra is taken on 22 November 1914, and a defensive outpost is established some fifty miles further north at the junction between the Tigris and the Euphrates. But during 1915, as the campaign in Gallipoli gets bogged down, an impressive advance up the Tigris becomes politically attractive.
Amara is taken on 3 June 1915, followed by Kut on September 29. This is more than half way towards the mesmerizing prize of Baghdad. A British and Indian advance party, too small for the task and too far from reliable sources of supply, pushes on up the river.
It finally reaches strong Turkish opposition at the historic site of Ctesiphon, a mere twenty miles from Baghdad. The date, 22 November 1915, is exactly a year after the successful capture of Basra. With heavy losses (half the 8500 men are killed or wounded), the Allied force withdraws to join its supporting troops in Kut. There they find themselves trapped. For five months they are besieged by a Turkish army until, on 29 April 1916, the British commander finally surrenders. 10,000 British and Indian soldiers are taken into Turkish captivity.
This adventure against the Turks has been as humiliating as the contemporary events at Gallipoli. But meanwhile a new development in Arabia seems to offer greater hope.
Arabia and Palestine: AD 1916
When the Turks enter the war, in 1914, the hereditary amir of Mecca (Husain ibn Ali) sees a chance of extricating his territory from Ottoman rule. He secretly begins negotiating with the British. By June 1916 he is ready to launch an Arab revolt along the Red Sea coast.
The most effective part of this uprising is conducted by Faisal, one of Husain's sons, in conjunction with T.E. Lawrence, a young British officer seconded for the purpose. Together they attack the most strategically important feature in the region, the railway which runs south from Damascus, through Amman and Ma'an, to Medina. This is the only route by which the Turks can easily send reinforcements to Arabia.
The policy succeeds and by the summer of 1917 the Arabs have moved far enough north to capture Aqaba. This is achieved on July 6 in a dramatic raid by Lawrence and some Arab chiefs with a few hundred of their tribesmen. Together they kill or capture some 1200 Turks at a cost of only two of their own lives.
The port of Aqaba occupies an important position at the head of the gulf of the same name. It offers relatively easy access up towards the Dead Sea. Faisal's army is now well placed to support a British thrust into Palestine, by operating from the desert region of the Negev to bring pressure on the eastern flank of the Turks.
During the winter of 1916 the British have been laying a railway along the northern coast of the Sinai peninsula. This makes possible an attack on Gaza, the gateway into Palestine. But on two separate occasions - in March and April 1917 - the campaign is seriously bungled. As a result a new commander, Edmund Allenby, is brought in.
Allenby succeeds in taking Gaza on November 7. He follows this with the capture of Jerusalem a month later, on December 9. Meanwhile Britain's fortunes in Mesopotamia have also been transformed by a new commander, Stanley Maude. Maude retakes Kut on 24 February 1917 and captures Baghdad on March 11.
So by the end of 1917 the Allies, occupying both Jerusalem and Baghdad, have completed half the necessary task in the Middle East. But they are still a long way from the frontier of Turkey itself. On the Mediterranean front Damascus and Aleppo lie ahead, in Mesopotamia there is still Mosul to be taken. And even then there is the almost impenetrable terrain of Anatolia before one can reach Istanbul.
With massive armies confronting each other on the western front, this all seems a long way from the centre of the action. But this year of 1917 has meanwhile brought two major developments, in the USA and Russia, which in their very different ways profoundly alter the equation of the war.
US involvement: AD 1915-1917
From the start of the war public opinion and the majority of political leaders in the USA have been of one mind - America's best interest lies in remaining a neutral nation, uninvolved in the European conflict. Yet from the very first months this conviction already tends to be undermined by the maritime strategy of the two main combatants.
Britain is busy using her navy to blockade Germany, preventing even neutral ships from trading with continental ports. In doing so, she harms America's trade (and even seizes a few US ships for breaking the terms of the blockade). Meanwhile Germany, relying on submarine warfare to frustrate the blockade, represents a threat to the actual lives of American citizens on the high seas.
The sinking of the Lusitania in May 1915 provides the first crisis. Later in 1915, under US pressure, the Germans modify their submarine campaign. But there are regular demands from the military to revive it, and in February 1916 Germany announces a renewal of activity. On March 24 an unarmed Channel steamer, the Sussex, is sunk with the loss of many lives, among them US citizens.
The US president, Woodrow Wilson, is facing a presidential election later in the year. One plank in his campaign is that he has kept America out of the war. He demands new assurances from the Germans that they will not attack other merchant ships without warning, while behind the scenes he tries to get himself accepted as a mediator between the warring parties.
His good offices are not entirely welcome, particularly when - after his re-election in November 1916 - he intrusively demands that both sides state the terms on which they would be willing to end the war. In subsequent months he develops his own plans for a lasting settlement, based on the concept that it must be a 'peace without victory' (meaning no recriminations if either side is perceived as the loser).
These ideas evolve into his famous and influential Fourteen Points. But for the moment harsh reality is overtaking Wilson's idealism.
In January 1917 the German high command decides to resort once again to all-out submarine warfare. President Wilson is informed on January 31 that this will begin on the following day. Since this announcement breaks the pledge given to him after the Sussex incident, he severs diplomatic relations with Germany. And he persuades Congress to pass a bill allowing US merchant ships to be armed. Germany refrains from attacks on US ships during February, but three are sunk on March 18 with many lives lost. There is public outrage against Germany, and not for the first time this month. The previous occasion has been the publication, on March 1, of an intercepted German telegram.
The telegram, destined for Mexico, was sent by the German foreign secretary, Arthur Zimmermann. Intercepted, decoded and passed to President Wilson by the British admiralty, its content proves to be highly inflammatory. Zimmermann suggests that in the event of the USA entering the war, Mexico should side with Germany. Germany will in return back Mexican recovery of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.
Wilson therefore has widespread public support when he asks approval for a declaration of war on Germany, assuring Congress that the citizens of the USA will be privileged to make the necessary sacrifices to safeguard democracy. War is declared on 6 April 1917.
The USA can provide immediate support for the Allies in two areas. Credit and loans can be rapidly arranged (by the end of war, eighteen months later, these amount to as much as $9.5 billion). And the powerful US navy is in a state of readiness. But manpower is more problematical. The armed services number only 378,000 men when war is declared. Conscription is immediately introduced, in May 1917, and by November 1918 the number enlisted will amount to 4.8 million.
But it takes time to get the conscripts trained and ready for service in Europe. Germany can rely on a breathing space on the western front before the arrival of the Americans. And this same year, 1917, also provides an unexpected reprieve against the Russians in the east.
The Russian front: AD 1916-1917
After the campaigns of 1915, bringing into German hands the whole of Russian Poland, the German high command can reasonably expect a relatively quiet Russian front during 1916, enabling maximum forces to be deployed against Britain and France in the west.
However Russia springs a surprise in June 1916, with a sudden and completely unexpected advance (the 'Brusilov breakthrough') by a large army under Aleksey Brusilov. In the first three days 200,000 Germans and Austrians are captured on a broad front stretching from Lutsk to Chernovtsy, and for a few weeks the impetus is maintained. It brings the Russians back into the territory of the Austro-Hungarian empire, in eastern Galicia.
The Brusilov offensive also has a profound effect on the western front. It causes the diversion to the east of seven divisions which the Germans had been hoping to deploy against the British on the Somme.
The casualties suffered by the Central Powers at the hands of the Russians are immense (750,000 men dead, wounded or captured by the time Brusilov's advance is finally halted), but as so often in history Russia herself suffers even more, with an equivalent loss nearer to a million. In a war-weary and ill-provisioned Russian army, the summer's adventure lowers rather than heightens the appetite for a fight. Even more dramatic events in 1917 will have a similar effect.
The very sudden collapse of the Romanov dynasty, in March 1917, is followed by rival claimants to power (the Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet). This has a disastrous effect on the troops in the front line, confronted now by conflicting messages from home.
The Provisional Government wants the war to continue, being as eager as the tsar to humble Austria-Hungary and to win Istanbul and the Dardanelles from the Turks. The Petrograd Soviet has no interest in the war, except as a seedbed of revolution. On 15 March 1917 its members issue Order No. 1. This states that committees of soldiers and sailors are to be set up in all military units. They are to take control of all arms, which are only to be issued to officers as the committees decide.
The next stage in the destruction of the Russian army as an effective fighting force follows immediately after the revolution of November 1917. On November 8, the first day after the coup, Lenin issues a Decree on Land, abolishing the private ownership of large estates and assigning the land to the peasants. This has an immediate and debilitating effect at the front. It gives a strong incentive to peasant soldiers to hurry home and stake their claim.
On the same day Lenin also issues a Decree of Peace, offering to come to immediate terms with Russia's enemies on a basis of no annexations, no indemnities and self-determination for all who want it.
Meanwhile during 1917, confronted with a lack of stomach for the fight in both the Russian army and government, the Germans have continued their advance along the Baltic coast - among the small nations which are already proclaiming independence from Russia.
Lithuania has been in German hands since September 1915. Now a German army advances into Latvia, taking Riga on 3 September 1917. On November 26 Lenin's new government orders all Russian units on the European front to stop fighting. At the same time an armistice is proposed to Germany. It is signed at Brest-Litovsk on December 15.
During the subsequent peace negotiations the Russian position is inevitably weak - though Lenin confidently hopes that revolution will break out in Berlin and Vienna to strengthen his hand. While he and his deeply divided colleagues prevaricate, the Germans reinforce their negotiating position by continuing to march through Latvia and into Estonia, in blatant disregard of the armistice.
On 3 March 1918, with only a tiny majority of his government in favour, Lenin signs the treaty of Brest-Litovsk. By its terms Russia loses control over Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and the Ukraine (together representing much of the nation's iron and coal resources). With the treaty signed, Germany is free to concentrate all her efforts on the western front.
U-boats and convoys: AD 1917-1918
In the spring of 1917, and then again a year later, Germany seems to have two real chances to clinch victory. The first is at sea and the second on the western front.
Germany's advantage at sea early in 1917 is the result of her decision in January to resume all-out submarine warfare. Three months later the success rate is 430 Allied and neutral merchant ships sunk during April alone (of merchant vessels leaving British harbours during that month one out of four fails to return). Both the Germans and the Allies calculate that if losses continue at this rate, the Allies will be starved into submission by the end of the year.
A rapid solution is essential, and it is found in a very simple change of procedure - though one which is considered highly controversial at the time. A proposal is put forward in the British admiralty early in 1917 that merchant ships should cross the Atlantic in convoys. Opponents point out what seems to many at the time blindingly obvious - that such a strategy merely gathers the ships together for a U-boat to pick them off, as a collection of sitting ducks.
But until now each vessel has been setting off on its own for its transatlantic journey, thus dotting the ocean with separate targets which a U-boat is much more likely to encounter. Moreover if ships are grouped together, it becomes feasible to provide an armed escort.
The argument is won by those in favour of convoys, which begin crossing the Atlantic in June 1917. There is an immediate and drastic fall in the number of ships sunk. In the following six months only ten fall prey to U-boats when travelling in convoy. Like fighter planes and bombers and tanks, the convoy system evolves in World War I before becoming a standard feature of later conflicts.
With the advantage at last turning, the Allies now take much more vigorous steps to retaliate against the U-boats. Vast numbers of mines, laid in the Channel and North Sea, bring many underwater victims. And successful raids are launched to block the Belgian harbours where the U-boats have been returning to refuel.
Western front: AD 1918
The Germans appear to win a second chance of victory on the western front early in 1918. It is by now a matter of urgency. Ludendorff, in command of the German armies, is aware that a decisive blow is essential if Germany is to prevail before the arrival of US troops tips the balance irretrievably.
Between March and June he launches three massive attacks in different parts of the line. They succeed as no such offensive has done in the past three years. Indeed the first, pushing towards Amiens, brings the Germans forty miles into France within a few days. The other two create similar great bulges into French territory.
But Ludendorff fails to make the breakthrough which he requires, either against the French towards Paris or against the British in the direction of the Channel ports. And in July and August he suffers two critical reverses at the hands of the Allied armies, now under the unified command (since April 1918) of the French marshal Ferdinand Foch.
In the second battle of the Marne (from July 18) and in the battle of Amiens (from August 8) the German forces are driven back. In both encounters the Allies make extremely effective use of the one weapon which is exclusively theirs. The attack at Amiens is led by as many as 450 tanks.
With these German defeats the psychological tide of the war finally turns. At the same time the balance of physical power is also tipping. US troops are in action on the western front in large numbers from May 1918, and many more divisions are on their way.
After the battle of Amiens, in August, Ludendorff concludes that the German cause is hopeless. He advises his emperor that peace negotiations should be started before the situation deteriorates further. Meanwhile Germany's allies are all about to drop separately out of the fray.
The Central Powers crumble: AD 1918
On all fronts, during the autumn of 1918, the Allies suddenly have successes where stalemate has previously prevailed.
The troops long bivouacked uselessly at Salonika begin in mid-September a successful thrust up the Vardar river towards Serbia. With the Serbians fighting in the vanguard to recover their own territory, rapid advances are made against German and Bulgarian forces. Before the end of the month the Bulgarians ask for a separate armistice. It is signed on September 29 in Salonika, leaving the Allies free to march east towards Istanbul. Meanwhile, in this same month, the Turks have been suffering similar reverses on their eastern front in Syria.
In Palestine, during the summer of 1918, Faisal and T.E. Lawrence keep a Turkish army occupied east of the Jordan in a campaign of guerrilla warfare. This has the effect of leaving the coastal area more lightly protected. Here, on 19 September 1918 at Megiddo (a historic site in the annals of warfare), Allenby sweeps aside the Turkish defenders and begins an advance which brings him into Damascus on October 1.
Further east, in Mesopotamia, there are similar successes. In the last week of October British forces are on the verge of capturing Mosul. But by this time the Turkish government has asked for peace.
An armistice between the Ottoman empire and the Allied powers is signed on 30 October 1918 on a British cruiser lying off Mudros (a port on the island of Lemnos). It leaves Austria-Hungary as the only Central Power still fighting as an ally of Germany. But this alliance too has only a few more days of life, after developments on the Italian front.
The front at Isonzo between Austria-Hungary and Italy has for much of the war been virtually static. The only exception has been a sudden Austrian advance after a battle at Caporetto on 24 October 1917. As many as 600,000 Italians either surrender or desert under the onslaught, and the Austrians are not held until they reach a new line some 70 miles further into Italy.
Now exactly a year later, on 24 October 1918, the Italians begin a push which rapidly recovers their territory from a demoralized Austrian army. It also triggers off the disintegration of Austria-Hungary. During the last week of October declarations are made in Budapest, Prague and Zagreb, proclaiming the independence of their respective parts of the old empire.
On October 29 the imperial authorities ask Italy for an armistice. It is signed in the Villa Giusti near Padua on November 3. Germany is now on her own. And she too is making enquiries about an armistice.
Germany's armistice: AD 1918
The German decision to seek an armistice comes with surprising speed after the start of a new Allied push in the west. This is a carefully coordinated assault on three fronts. On September 26 the French and the US 1st army (under John Pershing) advance at the eastern end of the line, near Verdun. A day later the British begin an assault on the central section, between Cambrai and St Quentin. And on the following day a French and Belgian army (commanded by the Belgian king, Albert I) attacks in the north, round Ypres.
Only in the centre is a rapid advance made, similar to the German successes earlier in the year. By October 5 the British, under Haig, are through the much vaunted Hindenburg Line.
These events seem to reinforce Ludendorff's advice (given after August 8) that it is time for an armistice. So does the capitulation of Bulgaria on September 29, opening up a new front to which German resources will need to be diverted if the conflict is to continue.
On October 3 the Kaiser appoints a new chancellor, Prince Max of Baden, who is internationally respected (during the war he has worked with the Red Cross for the welfare of prisoners on both sides). His task is to win Germany a just peace. The obvious channel, among the Allied leaders, is through Woodrow Wilson. During the past year the US president has spoken frequently on the necessary basis for a lasting peace in Europe. His blueprint is enshrined in his famous Fourteen Points.
During the night of October 3 Prince Max sends a message via Switzerland to President Wilson. It asks for an immediate armistice followed by peace negotiations based on the Fourteen Points. Over the next four weeks Wilson and the Allies stipulate various conditions. An armistice will only be signed with a government representing the German people (a direct threat to the Kaiser's autocracy). And its terms will have to ensure that Germany is in no position to renew the conflict before a peace treaty is agreed.
Seeing this as a demand for unconditional surrender, Ludendorff now argues that Germany should fight on. On October 26 Prince Max persuades the Kaiser to dismiss him.
Over the next ten days events give ever greater urgency to Germany's need for an armistice. On October 28 there is the start of a mutiny when the High Seas Fleet in Kiel is ordered into the North Sea (in the hope of a last-minute naval victory which might improve the peace terms). Within days the mood of rebellion spreads through the armed forces and erupts in German cities. On November 3 Austria-Hungary opts out of the war with its own separate armistice.
Prince Max moves swiftly. On November 6 he appoints a commissioner to negotiate for Germany. On November 9 he deposes the Kaiser and hands over his own powers as chancellor to a Social Democrat government, which proclaims a German republic. It is therefore a new but uncertain Germany which approaches the armistice and the peace.
Forest of Compi¨¨gne: AD 1918
The German delegation to the armistice talks consists of three men - the commissioner (a politician, Matthias Erzberger) and two army officers. They set off from Spa, in German-occupied Belgium, to their rendez-vous with the Allies. Their destination is a railway carriage parked on the track at Rethondes in the forest of Compi¨¨gne, north of Paris. Here, on November 8, they are confronted by a team led by the Allied commander-in-chief, Marshal Foch.
The terms on offer are uncompromising. In addition to the return of foreign land captured during this war, together with Alsace-Lorraine (won from France half a century previously), German territory to a line 31 miles (50 km) east of the Rhine is to be occupied by Allied troops for up to fifteen years and then be permanently demilitarized.
The advantageous German treaty with Russia is to be annulled. All German submarines are to be appropriated by the Allies, as is much military equipment. The High Seas Fleet is to be interned in Scapa Flow, pending any future decision. And the Allies will continue their blockade of Germany until peace is agreed. In addition there is one further ominous detail. France and Britain have announced they will insist on a postwar settlement not envisaged in Wilson's Fourteen Points - the compensation by Germany for damage done by land, sea or air to civilian property.
For the next two days the small German delegation struggles to improve these terms, mainly using the argument that both sides share an urgent need to prevent revolution in Germany on the Russian pattern.
They win some concessions, particularly in delaying the withdrawal of German troops on the highly sensitive eastern front. But the eventual agreement is nevertheless close to the one imposed from the start by the Allies. Both sides eventually sign at 5 a.m. on November 11. With a fine instinct for the drama of the occasion, the document states that hostilities will cease six hours later. So the great war ends, with memorable precision, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.
The Germans certainly expect the peace treaty to follow fairly soon. In the event their nation suffers the economic effects of the Allied blockade for a further six months before peace terms are finally offered.
Paris and Versailles: AD 1919
The delegates to the peace conference gather in Paris and hold their first full session on 18 January 1919. The terms to be imposed upon Germany are not agreed until May. The treaty is finally signed at Versailles, on 28 June 1919, in the Hall of Mirrors - the very room, so profoundly symbolic of triumphalist French power, which has been sullied by the proclamation here in 1871 of the German empire.
In most respects the terms follow Wilson's Fourteen Points (though distorted by an animosity towards Germany) and the broad outlines of the armistice. Historic national frontiers are restored except where the higher principle of self-determination is deemed to prevail (plebiscites in border regions between Germany and Poland are used to define new boundaries).
Germany's land and sea forces are to be permanently reduced to a very limited size, and she is to be allowed no air force at all. Her pre-war pride, the great High Seas fleet, is to be transferred to the Allies (a decree frustrated in a splendid act of defiance by the German sailors themselves who on 21 June 1919, under the very eyes of the British, manage to scuttle every one of the fifty German warships held in Scapa Flow).
The German empire is to be dismantled and all its colonies redistributed among the victorious powers under mandates from the League of Nations. And finally, under consideration by the delegates in Paris, there is the contentious matter of reparations.
Germany cannot complain at the principle of reparation, for in 1871 she imposed a vast indemnity on France after a brief war blatantly engineered by the Germans themselves. But in Paris there is profound disagreement as to the proper level of payment. The USA, Britain and Italy argue for a more moderate imposition than France and Belgium (the main sufferers) are inclined to demand.
Eventually, in 1921, the commission set up for the purpose assesses Germany's obligation at $33 billion. Of this some $21 billion is eventually paid, becoming a profound source of German grievance. The economic burden does not prove quite as crippling as is often implied. But the injury to a nation's pride is of a different order.
Other treaties: AD 1919
The delegates to Paris also need to settle peace treaties between the Allies and their other enemies. During the following year four such treaties are signed in various locations in or near the capital city.
The first, at St Germain on 10 September 1919, is with Austria - regarded, for the purposes of the treaty, as the much reduced rump of the pre-war Austro-Hungarian empire. On the principle of self-determination, enshrined in Wilson's Fourteen Points, there is international acceptance of the three new nations proclaimed in 1918 in Budapest, Prague and Zagreb. The treaty is mainly concerned with drawing the borders between Austria and these three newcomers (Hungary, Czechoslovakia and the future Yugoslavia).
In two regions the wishes of the majority of the local inhabitants are consciously disregarded. One is South Tirol, where the German-speaking population is brought within Italy to fulfil the promise made by the Allies in 1915.
The other linguistically isolated group, in the long run more significant, is the 3.5 million German-speaking inhabitants of the Sudetenland. Their link is with Vienna (rather than Berlin), but they are separated from Austria by Czech-speaking Bohemia. So it is decided in Paris that they will become, against their will, Czech citizens.
One of the three new nations, Hungary, has been part of the enemy, so a separate peace treaty is required. It is a long time in the pipeline because of the instability of the political situation in postwar Budapest, but finally a document is signed in the Trianon Palace at Versailles on 4 June 1920. It greatly reduces Hungary from its historic frontiers, with many border regions assigned to Czechoslovakia, Rumania and Yugoslavia (still known at this stage as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes).
A treaty with Bulgaria is signed at Neuilly on 27 November 1919, assigning Bulgarian territory in the west to the future Yugoslavia and in the south to Greece. The ceding to Greece of western Thrace, and with it access to the Mediterranean, is Bulgaria's most serious loss.
These treaties leave matters unresolved in relation to only one Central Power, the Ottoman empire. Owing to the vast rambling extent of the Ottoman territories, these discussions prove the most protracted.
When a treaty is eventually signed, at S¨¨vres on 10 August 1920, its terms are harsh to Turkey. The empire is entirely dismantled, with all the middle eastern provinces previously under Turkish control now made the responsibility of France and Britain as mandated territories. Inroads are even made on the Turkish heartland, Anatolia itself.
In May 1919 the Allies authorize the Greeks to occupy Smyrna (or Izmir) on the Anatolian coast. They immediately do so, and are pressing further into Turkish territory by the time the treaty of S¨¨vres is signed.
The results of this folly are a new Greco-Turkish war, a new nationalist government in Istanbul and a reconvened peace conference at Lausanne in November 1922. The replacement treaty, signed in Lausanne on 24 July 1923, rationalizes Turkey's frontier with Greece. The border becomes, as it remains today, the Aegean coast from the Maritsa river in eastern Thrace to the southwestern tip of Anatolia.
The League of Nations: AD 1919
The earliest and most high-profile achievement of the Paris peace conference is the establishment of the League of Nations. During the four-year carnage of the war, public opinion in many nations has been turning towards the utopian dream of an international organization strong enough to prevent the repetition of such a disaster. Before the end of 1914 a book by H.G. Wells provides the popular notion that this will be the war to end war.
Famous for his imaginative visions of the future, Wells is quick off the mark with The War that will end War. In it he sees the conflict (not as yet sunk into the blood-stained sludge of trench warfare) as the prelude to a future world state.
Early in 1915 the term 'League of Nations' is coined to describe this future form of international cooperation. Societies are formed, particularly in Britain and the USA, to discuss and promote the idea. In January 1918, with President Wilson's formulation of his Fourteen Points, the concept acquires a high international profile.
The idea has widespread appeal - so much so that the first decision taken by the delegates to the Paris peace conference in 1919 is the establishment of the League of Nations. A document entitled the Covenant of the League of Nations is published in draft form in February. An amended text is adopted in April by a unanimous decision of the conference.
The Covenant is intended to be part of the eventual peace agreement, so it comes into effect only with the signing of the treaty of Versailles. The organization is to be based in Geneva, capital city of Europe's most consistently neutral country. An existing building on the north shore of the lake is selected as temporary headquarters.
From 1929 construction begins of an imposing Avenue of Peace, leading up from the lake to a custom-built Palace of the Nations. This imposing structure is not completed until 1937, by which time it is painfully evident that the League has failed in its central purpose.
The main forums of the League are the assembly (to which each member nation sends one or more delegates) and the council. In the early years the council is intended to have as permanent members the five major Allied powers (France, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, United States), who will be joined by four rotating temporary members selected by the assembly. The expectation is that Russia and Germany will in due course take their place as permanent members.
To Woodrow Wilson's profound disappointment, this scheme is frustrated by the absence of the United States. Opposition to Wilson in the senate, and a deep-rooted US instinct for isolationism, mean that the necessary majority is never achieved to ratify the Covenant. The US seat remains empty throughout the life of the League.
The League has some early successes in settling international disputes, and the long-term plan seems to be on course when Germany joins in 1926. But the resignation of Germany in October 1933 after Hitler's rise to power, and of Japan in March of this same year, is a clear indication that the international community is now faced by tensions beyond the powers of the League to resolve.
The discredited League is formally disbanded in April 1946. By then the United Nations is already in existence. The new organization, with its assembly and security council, adopts very closely the structures of its predecessor. So in spite of the disasters of the 1930s, the idealism of 1919 can be said at the very least to have lasted out the century.
The human cost: AD 1914-1919
No war in history up to this point has brought such a high cost in human life. The nature of trench warfare, with the infantry trapped under the almost permanent bombardment of heavy artillery in encounters lasting for months, means that men may die at any moment, often when themselves inactive, as well as being exposed to the sudden bursts of violent danger which have previously been the characteristic of battles.
These conditions, over four years, result in a death toll of serving personnel usually estimated in the region of 8 million.
The figure is extremely vague, because this has been a war in which casualties are hard to count. It is a war characterized by the rotting unrecovered bodies which litter the pounded earth of no man's land; by the rows of plain white crosses marking the graves of the unidentified dead; and by the profound emotion evoked by the concept of the Unknown Warrior, whose tomb can be found under the Arc de Triomphe in Paris and is the first to confront every visitor entering Westminster Abbey in London.
The broad estimates for the main combatant nations are 1.8 million German dead, 1.7 million Russian, 1.55 million French, 1 million from the Austro-Hungarian empire, 900,000 from Britain and her empire, 650,000 Italians. And these figures do not include civilians.
Civilian deaths are even harder to calculate, since the deprivations of war take their toll surreptitiously. Seven million people world-wide is the figure usually quoted, with victim groups such as the Armenians featuring largely in this total.
These calculations bring the total number of deaths caused by the war to around 15 million. And to add to the devastation of an entire generation (for the military deaths are almost exclusively of young adults), nature delivers a devastating new blow in the autumn of 1918. In the last two months of the war an influenza pandemic breaks out, bringing death in vast numbers to troops and civilians alike.
There are 1 million US soldiers in Europe that autumn. One in fifteen of them die of flu (the total of 62,000 is more than all the American casualties in action). In Britain 150,000 people are killed by the disease within a few weeks. The figures can be duplicated anywhere in the world, with the Indian subcontinent being particularly hard hit.
The war cannot be directly blamed, though a severely weakened European population is perhaps less able to resist (a global pandemic in 1889-90 has a similar rate of infection but far fewer deaths). Influenza deals a massive additional blow in an already shattered world. Figures for the number of deaths within a few months range from 12 to 20 million (with estimates of 6 to 12 million in India alone).
The winter and spring of 1918-19 also bring the threat of further human cost in the future, as a result of the treaty taking shape in Paris during these months. The reparations imposed on Germany, her virtual and indefinite disarmament, the permanent neutralization of her entire western region either side of the Rhine - all these slights, and the accompanying moral opprobrium, provide fertile ground in which resentment may fester and an aggressive nationalist spirit be nurtured.
The war may have ended badly for Germany. But the opportunities offered by the peace are not lost on Adolf Hitler, a corporal who has seen front-line service throughout the war and has been decorated in August 1918 with an Iron Cross (first class). | 
NEWS