World War I

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World War I
Date 28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918 (4 years, 3 months, and 2 weeks) Location Europe, Africa, the Middle East, the Pacific Islands, China, Indian Ocean, North and South Atlantic Ocean Result Entente victory Territorial changes • Dissolution of the German Empire • Dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire • Dissolution of the Russian Empire • Dissolution of the Ottoman Empire

World War I, also known as the First World War or the First Imperialist War and abbreviated as WW1 or WWI, was an international conflict that began with the Austro-Hungarian Empire declaring war on Serbia on 28 July 1914, and ended on 11 November 1918, when Germany signed the armistice with the Entente. It is called a world war due to the fact that most countries in the world at the time directly participated in the conflict. Most of these participants were colonies of the main imperialist powers, as much of the conflict took place in Europe. World War I ended with a series of revolutions, including the Irish War of Independence, the Russian Revolution, the German Revolution, and the Turkish War of Independence.

Causes

Tangier Crisis

The image captures a historical moment during the First Moroccan Crisis on March 31, 1905, in Tangier. It depicts British Colonel Sir Harry MacLean giving instructions to Moroccan officers in preparation for the arrival of the German Kaiser, Wilhelm II.

The Tangier Crisis or The First Moroccan Crisis of 1905 was a diplomatic dispute between the French Third Republic and the German Empire over the status of Morocco as a sovereign nation,  through recognizing Morocco as a sovereign national the German Empire used it as pretext for a preventative war against the French Third Republic or potentially as a way to test the strength of the newly formed Anglo-French Alliance.

In March, Kaiser Wilhelm II landed in Tangier, Morocco where he was received by the Sultan’s uncle and in a three-hour meeting the Kaiser recognized Morocco as an independent state and expected the country to stand up against the French Third Republic. The German Empire kept this recognition, with it insisting in an international conference that the future of Morocco was necessary and also stated that if this were to be prevented the German Empire would go to war.

In a later conference held in Algeciras, Spain in January 1906 the German Empire was isolated in terms of recognizing Morocco as a sovereign nation, though the crisis fizzled out over time. After the conference, the French Third Republic and the United Kingdom started discussing military talks.

Pan-Slavism

This early 1920s Czech propaganda postcard, titled "Byli jsme a budem!" (We were and we will be), promotes the concept of Czechoslovakism following World War I. It depicts figures in traditional and symbolic dress, including a member of the patriotic Sokol movement, unified under a single national flag to represent the birth of the new Czechoslovak state.

Austria-Hungary was a massive multi-ethnic state under the Habsburg family, the country had a vast and diverse amount of marginalized Slavs who were treated as second-class citizens which included Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Bosniaks, Czechs, Slovaks, Poles and Russians despite making up a major 50% of the country they didn’t have any political power and few rights  and this inequality bred a resentment that fed a Slavic sense of nationalism.

After the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, this sense of nationalism was being sparked and Austria-Hungary viewed Serbia as the primary culprit of driving Slav nationalism. The Russian Empire was the sponsor of Slav nationalism through their Pan-Slav policy which put a wedge between it and Austria-Hungary.  Serb nationalism surged with the murder of King Alexander Obrenovich of Serbia in 1903 and was replaced with the Karageorgevich family who had ties to the Russian Empire.

Through the Karageorgevich family, Russian influence was spread in Belgrade, Serbia which put Austria-Hungary in a state of domestic crisis.

Annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina

This image depicts the Bosnian Annexation, showing the rulers of Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria tearing away pieces of the Ottoman Empire's territory. It serves as a visual metaphor for the formal annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Since the Treaty of Berlin in 1878, Bosnia-Herzegovina was administered by Austria-Hungary although it was officially under the sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary in the October of 1908 took advantage of the Young Turks Revolution and annexed the two provinces which ruined diplomatic relations with its neighbouring countries.

The German Empire decided to back Austria-Hungary diplomatically which damaged its already strained relationship with the Russian Empire, they backed Austria despite the diplomatic harm it caused them as the Russian Empire had been weakened after it’s recent military defeat by Japan and the Revolution of 1905. The Russian Empire and the Kingdom of Serbia expressed resentment over the annexation but in 1909, the German Empire suggested to the Russian Empire that they should formally recognize the annexation and when the Russian Empire hesitated, the German Empire pushed it as if it was an ultimatum.

The Russian Empire recognized it was unable to fight for Bosnia and so recognized the annexation, the German Empire’s insistence on humiliating Russia was a mistake as it would not forget and had the unintentional consequence of pushing it towards the United Kingdom and the French Third Republic, these events created the conditions which would be constrained and explode into the world war that emerged in 1914.

Agadir Crisis

The image depicts German Kaiser Wilhelm II extending an armored "mailed fist" over the Moroccan port of Agadir, symbolizing Germany's aggressive military posturing during the 1911 Agadir Crisis.

The Agadir Crisis or the Second Moroccan Crisis of 1011 was the second iteration of the Tangier Crisis, as the German Empire decided to put pressure onto the French Third Republic once again after five years. It was justified as France sent troops into Morocco in 1911 and so is breaching the sovereignty of Morocco, it was another attempt to divide the French Third Republic and the United Kingdoms.

Germany sent the SMS Panther to Agadir Port, alongside their attempt to pressure the United Kingdom to separate from the French Third Republic, they also desired to use this gun-boat diplomacy as a way to get France to give them parts of the French Congo and in exchange the French were allowed to occupy Morocco. It only pushed the United Kingdom and the French Third Republic closer together, solidifying the Triple Entente despite the German Empire succeeding in forcing this exchange, they only received swampland and jungle in the Congo.

Potsdam War Council

Kaiser Wilhelm II received a report from Chancellor Richard Haldane who stated that If Austria-Hungary attacked Serbia, and Russia came to Serbia's defense, Britain would not stay neutral and allow Germany to crush France. Furious, which led to Wilhelm II to summon the top military brass of the German Empire and argued that Austria-Hungary should attack the Kingdom of Serbia immediately and in case the Russian Empire intervened, that Germany would join the battle even if it meant fighting against the Russian Empire, the French Third Republic and the United Kingdom.

Helmuth von Moltke strongly agreed but Alfred von Tirpitz argued that the German navy was not ready to take on the British Royal Navy and asked for a postponement of the war for eighteen months to allow the German navy to finish widening the Kiel Canal and the Kaiser listened and waited for eighteen months, unsurprisingly since Tirpitz asked for an 18-month delay in December 1912. Exactly 18 months later, in the summer of 1914, Germany went to war.

Assassination in Sarajevo

Although a war between the imperialist powers had been brewing for decades due to imperialist competition, the immediate cause for the war was nonetheless the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, by Serbian nationalists in Sarajevo, Bosnia on June 28, 1914, it is believed that Dragutin Dimitrijević sanctioned and helped organize the assassination.

The image depicts the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary and his wife Sophie in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914.

Taking advantage of the situation, Austria-Hungary, with German support, delivered an absurd ultimatum to Serbia on July 23. Although the Serbian government agreed to meet almost all of the demands in the ultimatum, Austria-Hungary was unsatisfied and declared war on Serbia on July 28 and began shelling the Serbian capital of Belgrade. This set off a chain of events in which all the great powers declared war on each other due to alliances being triggered, starting with Russian mobilization which Germany took as an act of war and declared war on Russia on August 1. Germany then declared war on France and Belgium on August 3 and August 4 respectively whilst Britain and its colonies declared war on Germany on August 4. On August 23, Japan also declared war on Germany whilst Italy, although formally remained a member of the Triple Alliance, declared its neutrality on August 2.

Although the German 'blank cheque' for the Austro-Hungarian Empire to initiate aggression against Serbia was the immediate cause, structural issues of the world capitalist order at the time can be identified. The main branches of bourgeois historiography pin down Imperial Germany as responsible for the war, though misguided in noting the firebrand nature of Kaiser Wilhelm II (The Fischer thesis), or surmise that the war occurred due to a diplomatic breakdown, with each side 'sleepwalking' into the war.

Imperialism

Map of colonial empires in the world in 1914. Note the relative size of each. Smaller possessions would form the Triple Alliance, while bigger possessions would form the Triple Entente.

As Lenin explains in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, as the Industrial Revolution was winding down in several European countries, they were turning towards imperialism to keep capitalism afloat -- for example investing heavily the Russian Empire. Yet others that had industrialized later were going through their industrial revolution still. These countries would later form the Triple Alliance.

The former countries had already colonized the world and so had enjoyed the benefits of colonialism and imperialism for decades. The latter countries on the other hand had to start their imperialist phase (as it is a natural progress for capitalism, when markets are so saturated that new ones must be opened by force to keep GDP growing and prevent a recession), but could not as the world was already carved up. As such, they had no choice but to enter a war to redistribute colonial possessions to their advantage.

Contradictions were becoming apparent between the two camps. On the one hand, the Triple Entente had a vested interest in keeping their colonial gains intact and saw it difficult to attack each other (several colonial wars between the British, French and Americans for example resulted in very little change of territory overall) leading to an alliance. The Triple Alliance had a "natural" alliance as they were moving towards their imperialist phase of capitalism, and in case they won, had more than enough territory to share between themselves.

Alliances

Two major alliances faced off in the conflict. The Triple Entente, composed of:

• France
• United Kingdom
• Russian Empire
• United States of America (starting in 1917)

Against the Triple Alliance, composed of:

• German Empire
• Austro-Hungary
• Italy

Campaign

1914

The First World War in the summer of 1914 was the culmination of uneven development, the export of capital, and the imperial core's competition for markets and colonies, all of which made a world war inevitable. The assassination was merely the trigger; the conflict was already an inevitability due to the growth of finance capital, the militarization of states, and the end of balance-of-power agreements. By the end of 1914, the illusion that it would be a short military skirmish was shattered as the war continued.

The year 1914 was characterized by military doctrine lagging behind the technological and industrial transformations of the world. Mass conscript armies and industrial firearms, such as machine guns, had outpaced nineteenth-century military strategy, resulting in mass casualties.

For the German Empire, the Russian Empire’s mobilization posed such a severe threat that it prompted Germany to demand Russia's demobilization. When Russia refused, Germany declared war on them, and shortly after, declared war on France. When Germany subsequently invaded Belgium, it triggered the Treaty of London, which Britain had signed with Belgium leading Britain to declare war on Germany. This rapid escalation was the result of inter-imperialist rivalries turning the local crisis in the Balkans into a world war, facilitated by alliances and the pretext the crisis served for each ruling class's material interests.

Western Front

Hostilities began in the west with the German invasion of Luxembourg on August 2 and Belgium on August 4, the latter having rejected a German ultimatum to allow military access to its territory. Relying on the fortified areas of Liège and Namur, The Belgian Army put up resistance through a ring of concrete fortresses, and the German Empire responded with siege artillery specifically the Big Berthas which destroyed the fortresses within days. The Belgian Army stubbornly resisted on the Meuse River line but were forced to abandon Liège after bitter fighting on August 16 with the Belgian Army retreating toward Antwerp. By August 20, Germany had occupied Brussels, later murdering civilians and destroying towns such as Louvain on August 26. The German Empire did this as a form of intimidation, deterrence, and propaganda. Meanwhile, the main German force pressed to the south towards the French border where they met the Franco-British forces, fighting the battle of the Frontiers between August 21–25. The French command ultimately deciding to retreat its armies in Belgium and the armies that attempted an offensive from August 7 to 14 in Alsace and Lorraine in order to regroup.

The period between August 7 and September 6, during which the borders of France, Belgium, and Germany were heavily contested, is known as the Battle of the Frontiers. It involved 68 German divisions facing over 60 French, British, and Belgian divisions, making it the largest battle in human history up to that point. The French launched offensives into Alsace during the Battle of Mulhouse and Lorraine, where French infantry running across open fields with bayonets were slaughtered by German machine guns. Through mass conscription, working-class lives were treated as expendable to preserve bourgeois property.

The peak of this slaughter occurred on August 22, 1914, during the battles in the Ardennes and along the Sambre River at Charleroi. The French saw an estimated 27,000 soldiers murdered in a single 24-hour period, marking the bloodiest day in French military history. Human life was sacrificed on an industrial scale as a means to preserve the power of the ruling class.

The British Expeditionary Force (BEF), a army of roughly 120,000 men, advanced into Belgium and took up positions along the Mons-Condé Canal. The outnumbered BEF encountered the German First Army and inflicted notable casualties. However, despite this tactical effectiveness serving as an example of uneven development, these smaller units though experiencing moments of success could not change the fate of the mass industrial war.

The main German army continued its offensive toward Paris winning a series of local victories over the Entente armies at Le Cateau on August 26, Nesle and Proyart from August 28–29, and St. Quentin and Guise from August 29–30, reaching the Marne River between Paris and Verdun by September 5. The French command completed the regrouping of its forces and, having formed new armies from reserves, successfully consolidated its forces in preparation for the defence. In the battle of the Marne from September 5–12, the German troops were defeated and forced to withdraw to the Aisne and Oise rivers, where they dug in and prevented an allied counteroffensive by September 16.

Between August 5 and September 5, the French Army suffered approximately 329,000 casualties, while the Germans suffered similar losses as they pushed forward. The conflict's transformed into a war of attrition by late 1914.

From September 16 to October 15, the operation commonly known as the "Race to the Sea" developed out of both sides attempts to seize the as of yet unoccupied territory in western Belgium, in order to control as much of the territory that formed the front as possible. The forces of both sides reached the coast west of Ostend whilst the Belgian Army, which had been forced to withdraw from Antwerp on October 8, occupied a sector on the left flank of the Allied armies. The battle in Flanders on the Yser and Ypres river lasting from October 15 to November 20 did little to change the front and attempts by the Germans to take the ports on the Pas-de-Calais were also unsuccessful. With losses rising, both sides stopped their offensives and instead dug in and established a static front from the North Sea to the Swiss border, which in December 1914 was 720km long with most of the allied side controlled by the French with smaller British and Belgian sections.

Eastern Front

The Eastern Front stretched over 1,000 miles from the Baltic Sea to Romania in the south. It was characterized by vast agricultural plains and forests, reflecting the uneven development relative to the Western Front. Consequently, warfare here was fundamentally dedicated to sweeping maneuvers across these immense distances.

The Russian Empire, activated by its alliance with France, launched an invasion into the German province of East Prussia in the middle of August. Subordinate to these alliances, the Russian Empire involved itself in imperialist aims as the Russian ruling class sought to preserve its sections of capital and state interests. The offensive was led by the Russian First Army under General Paul von Rennenkampf advancing from the east, and the Second Warsaw Army under General Alexander Samsonov advancing from the south.

The Russian plan aimed to destroy the German Eighth Army in a large pincer movement; however, the geography of the Masurian Lakes physically separated the two Russian armies by 90 kilometers, making mutual support impossible. This failure was due not only to geography but also to the Russian Empire’s poor logistics and rail networks, alongside the organizational incompetence of Tsarist Russia. Ultimately, this collapse on both fronts fed the Revolution.

The Battle of Tannenberg, fought between August 26 and 30, was one of the most important operations in military history. Tsarist General Samsonov’s Second Army marched blindly forward, their supply lines stretching until they broke, before the German Empire slammed into both of its exposed flanks. Pushed into dense forests and swamps while being fired upon by German artillery, the Russian forces disintegrated entirely. Poor supply lines, logistics, and administration were the fatal blunders that resulted in a massive strategic defeat and a staggering loss of life.

Tsarist Russia’s defeat was extreme: of the 180,000 men in the Second Army, over 120,000 were murdered, wounded, or captured. General Samsonov, unable to face the Tsar, walked into the woods and committed suicide. This Russian loss had massive implications for the war; the crisis panicked Moltke into transferring two German army corps and a cavalry division to the Eastern Front. Their absence at the First Battle of the Marne was a decisive factor in the failure of the Schlieffen Plan. It was a failure of imperialist states attempting to control incompatible sections of world markets and colonies. Ultimately, this Russian loss saved France from collapse.

The Austro-Hungarian crisis was characterized by the empire being held together by reactionary rule, alongside its internal contradictions such as the oppression of Slavic peoples and a weak industrial base. These issues were exacerbated when they attempted to crush Serbia while simultaneously defending against Tsarist Russia in the north. Dividing their forces against German advice, Austro-Hungarian leadership ordered their First and Fourth Armies to launch an offensive into Russian Poland.

Austria-Hungary achieved initial success by defeating Russian forces at the Battle of Kraśnik from August 23 to 25. However, this northern push left the Austro-Hungarian eastern flank exposed, and Tsarist Russia unleashed its Third and Eighth Armies against this vulnerability. These initial victories were unable to resolve the empire's unequal industrial and social development. This accelerated the breakdown of the Habsburg monarchy, a positive development, as imperialist wars deepen internal contradictions and open the space for revolutionary action.

During the Battle of Gnila Lipa (August 26 to 30) and the Battle of Rawa Ruska, the larger numbers and superior artillery of Tsarist Russia overwhelmed Austria-Hungary, causing their lines to collapse. By September 3, the Russian Empire had captured Lemberg, and by late September, they had driven the Austro-Hungarian forces back into the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains. This left the Austro-Hungarian fortress of Przemyśl isolated, subjecting it to a siege that would last 133 days into the spring of 1915.

Balkan Front

On August 12 Austria-Hungary launched an offensive to the south in the Balkans against Serbia and its ally Montenegro. The invaders were defeated in battle on August 16 in the region of Cer Mountain and by August 24 the Austro-Hungarian forces had been pushed back to beyond the Drina and Sava rivers. However, on September 7 they renewed the offensive and a shortage of artillery and ammunition forced the Serbs to withdraw on November 7 to east of the Kolubara River. But after receiving supplies from Russia and France, they launched a counteroffensive on December 3 and by mid-December Serbia had been liberated from enemy forces with the two sides taking up defensive positions on the river boundary lines following the failed offensive.

Colonial Fronts

In Africa and Asia all German colonies were seized almost immediately leading to little actual combat for the majority of the war after the initial confrontations excluding some German guerrilla movements. In 1914 Japan seized the Caroline, Mariana, and Marshall islands in the Pacific Ocean as well as Tsingtao, a German naval base in China whilst the Australians seized the German part of New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, and New Zealand captured Samoa. Meanwhile, Anglo-French forces occupied the German colonies in Africa: Togo in August 1914, the Cameroons in January 1916, Namibia (German Southwest Africa) by July 1915, and Tanzania (German East Africa) by late 1917.

Reliance on colonies

Colonies played a primordial role in this conflict, with their masters requiring soldiers and resources be sent to aid in the war effort.

A major rebellion against the tsarist colonial government broke out in the Central Asian region in 1916. Another uprising against the British colonists, the Easter uprising also took place in 1916.

In his book The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon recalled a poem by Keita Fodeba, African Dawn, in which a Malian youth is sent to fight for France in World War 1. Picked by the village for his bravery, he leaves in a ship soon after heading for the French front. During his time in the army, his wife receives sparse letters from him and fears for the worst every day. Eventually near the end of the war, she learns that he will be coming back. But on the day his ship arrives back in his home country, he is killed in an undisclosed altercation with two white colonial police officers.

Fanon notes that "There is not a single colonized person who will not re­ceive the message that this poem holds." He further writes that "this is Sétif in 1945, this is Fort-le-France, this is Sai­gon, Dakar, and Lagos".

Result

Ultimately, the forces of the Triple Alliance failed to upset the balance like they sought to, instead surrendering in 1918 and losing their colonial possessions. German and Turkish colonies were redistributed among the remaining imperialist powers in the following way: Syria and Lebanon mandates were taken by France; Rwanda and Burundi to Belgium; Palestine, Tanganyika, Kamerun and Togoland mandates were taken over by the British Empire (along with German Southwest Africa being absorbed by the dominion of South Africa). The infamous Versailles treaty was imposed upon members of the Alliance.

Faced with heavy penalties from the victors and coupled with the fact that they had become unable to enter an imperialist phase and sustain capitalism, fascism was able to take hold in Germany, Italy, and Austria, ultimately leading to World War II. It should be noted that fascism was already starting to appear in Italy under an ultra-nationalist veneer, and as such it wasn't WW1 by itself that was the triggering factor for fascism as an ideology to exist.

Resistance to World War I

Several European socialist parties confirmed their commitment against the warmongering machinations of their respective ruling classes at the Basel Conference in 1912. However, most parties turned back on this commitment and joined their ruling classes to wage war against workers from other countries. Lenin organized the Zimmerwald Conference in 1915 to organize remaining anti-war socialists and continued to call for the imperialist war to be turned to Russia, after having undergone the Bolshevik Revolution, withdrew from the war in 1917 and appealed to all countries to cease the war. The last phase of the war was very revelational in demonstrating the nature of the war while the Entente continued to engage with Germans on the Western front, Reichswehr soldiers were allowed to occupy the Baltics to stave off the Bolshevik "menace."