World War I

The war that made Germany a single country began here. France lost fast and lost badly, and the humiliation shaped French politics for the next forty years.

A new great power appeared in the middle of Europe with the largest army on the continent and an economy that soon passed Britain's. Every alliance made between 1879 and 1907 was an answer to that fact.

This was the first of the alliances that pulled Europe into two camps. It tied Germany to an empire with a dozen restless nationalities and a long quarrel with Russia over the Balkans, and in July 1914 that promise was called in.

On paper the Central Powers now stretched from the North Sea to Sicily. In practice Italy had its own quarrel with Austria-Hungary over land on the Adriatic, and when the war came it stayed neutral for nine months, then joined Britain and France against Austria in May 1915.

The scramble for colonies gave the great powers new things to fight over, and the two Moroccan crises that followed showed how close they came. Germany arrived late to the race and felt cheated, which fed its demand for a 'place in the sun'.

Bismarck had kept Germany's rivals apart by careful diplomacy. Wilhelm wanted a navy, colonies and respect, and the way he demanded them frightened Britain, France and Russia into each other's arms.

It did the opposite. Britain lived by the sea, and a German battle fleet in the North Sea looked like a threat aimed at Britain and nobody else. The naval race that followed did more than anything else to push Britain toward France.

The test failed. Britain backed France, and Germany found itself nearly alone at the conference that followed. Germany learned that bluster brought its rivals closer together, but it tried the same thing again in 1911.

Every older battleship, including Britain's own, was suddenly second rate. The race started again from zero, and Germany decided to build dreadnoughts of its own. By 1914 Britain had 29 and Germany 17.

Europe was now split into two blocs of three. Germany's leaders talked of being surrounded by enemies, and the feeling that time was running against them made a preventive war look tempting.

Russia backed down when Germany stood behind Austria, and swore it would never back down again. Serbian anger over Bosnia produced the Black Hand and, six years later, the killing in Sarajevo.

The society trained and armed the young Bosnians who killed Franz Ferdinand in 1914. Its head, Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijevic, also ran Serbian military intelligence, which is why Austria-Hungary blamed the Serbian state.

Germany settled for a strip of the French Congo and came away looking like a bully that had been faced down. Inside Germany the retreat was seen as a humiliation, and the generals argued that next time they should not back off.

Austria-Hungary watched Serbia grow and decided it could not let that continue. Russia backed Serbia. The two empires that would start the world war in 1914 were already facing each other across the same small country.

Bulgaria came out of it bitter and looking for revenge, which is why it joined Germany in 1915. Serbia came out of it larger and more confident than ever, which is why Austria-Hungary wanted it crushed.

Serbia accepted almost everything, which surprised Europe, but it would not accept Austrian police on its soil. Austria had wanted a refusal, and it treated the answer as one.

This was the first declaration of war. Russia answered by mobilizing, Germany answered Russia, and the chain reaction that had been feared for years ran to the end in seven days.

Germany's only war plan called for beating France first, so a war with Russia meant a war with France whether France wanted one or not. The decision to fight in the east made the invasion of the west automatic.

France had been waiting for this war since 1871 and went into it united. The German demand on Belgium turned a continental war into a British one, because Britain had guaranteed Belgian neutrality since 1839.

Everything about the first month of the war came from this plan: the attack on Belgium, Britain's entry, and the race for Paris. When it failed on the Marne, Germany was left with the two-front war the plan had been written to avoid.

August 22nd, 1914, is still the deadliest day in French history. The French army learned in a month what massed firepower did to men in the open, and the lesson cost it more than 200,000 casualties.

Austria-Hungary's army never recovered its strength or its confidence. For the remaining four years of the war it depended on German troops to hold its front, and Germany was pulled deeper into a war in the east it had planned to win in six weeks.

German propaganda made Hindenburg and Ludendorff national heroes on the strength of it, and by 1916 they were running Germany. It also took the pressure off the west just as the Schlieffen Plan was failing, because Moltke had already sent two corps east that were missed on the Marne.

By the middle of October there was no flank left to turn. The war of movement was over in the west, and trench warfare and stalemate took its place. The only way forward was straight through the enemy's trenches.

Ypres held, but the old British regular army was largely used up doing it. The bulge in the line around the town, called the Ypres Salient, was fought over for four more years and became the most hated ground on the Western Front.

The war spread to the Middle East, the Caucasus and the Dardanelles. Russia lost its only warm-water route to its allies, and Britain had to defend Egypt and the Suez Canal. Gallipoli, the Armenian Genocide and the modern map of the Middle East all follow from this day.

The trench line barely moved for three and a half years. Machine guns, barbed wire and quick-firing artillery made defending easy and attacking almost impossible, and every offensive until 1918 broke against that fact.

Men who had been shooting at each other for four months shook hands and swapped cigarettes. The soldiers plainly did not hate each other the way the newspapers said, and commanders on both sides made sure it never happened again: by Christmas 1915 the artillery was ordered to fire all day.

The Zeppelins did little damage but they changed what war meant, and they created the home front: the civilians behind the lines were now in the war too. Cities were now targets, and the idea that bombing could break a country's will to fight, which drove the air war of 1939 to 1945, began here.

It was Germany's answer to the British blockade, and it broke the old rule that a warship had to warn a merchant ship and let the crew off before sinking it. Neutral countries, above all the United States, took it as a threat to their own ships and citizens.

Gas was a weapon of attrition: it did not break the line, it wore the men behind it down. It became normal on every front within months, and both sides raced to build masks and worse gases. It caused about a million casualties in the war but never broke a front, because a defender with a mask could still fire a machine gun.

Around a million or more Armenians died. The Ottoman leaders used the war as cover, claiming that Armenians were siding with Russia after the Ottoman defeat in the Caucasus. The word genocide was invented in 1944 partly to describe what happened here.

Winston Churchill, who had pushed the plan, lost his job over it. Australia and New Zealand mark April 25th as Anzac Day, the day their countries' soldiers first fought under their own names, and the campaign made Mustafa Kemal the man who would found modern Turkey.

A new front opened in the mountains along the Isonzo River, where Italy attacked eleven times in two years and gained almost nothing. The promises made in London were only partly kept in 1919, and Italian anger about that helped bring Benito Mussolini to power in 1922.

It was the moment Britain accepted that the war would be won in the factories as much as in the trenches. Lloyd George built a new munitions industry, brought hundreds of thousands of women into it, and made his own name as the man who got things done.

Aircraft had begun the war as spotters for the artillery. The Fokker turned them into weapons that fought each other, and the fighter, the ace and the dogfight all date from this summer. The Allies caught up by early 1916, and the lead changed hands again and again until 1918.

Loos cost Britain 50,000 casualties for a few hundred yards and finished Sir John French as commander in chief. Douglas Haig replaced him in December and led the British army for the rest of the war.

Serbia, the country the war had begun over, was occupied for three years. With Bulgaria in, Germany had a railway link straight through to Constantinople, and the Central Powers held a solid block of territory from the North Sea to the Persian Gulf.

Britain had raised two and a half million volunteers, more than any country had ever done, and it was still not enough. Conscription meant the whole population belonged to the war, and every belligerent except the United States had reached the same point by 1916.

It was the most successful Allied attack of the year and Austria-Hungary's worst defeat. But it cost Russia at least half a million casualties it could not afford, and the exhaustion that followed fed the revolutions of 1917.

The tank was the first answer to the machine gun and barbed wire. The 1916 models broke down constantly and crawled at walking pace, but two years later, at Amiens, hundreds of them led the attack that began the end of the war.

The old emperor had been the one thing that held a dozen nationalities together. Karl tried to make a separate peace with France in 1917, was found out, and lost what was left of Germany's trust. Two years after Franz Joseph's death his empire no longer existed.

Lloyd George led Britain to victory and then to Versailles. He brought in the convoy system that beat the U-boats, took control of food, shipping and coal, and fought a running battle with his own generals over the cost of their offensives.

The telegram was published in American newspapers on March 1st and turned millions of Americans who had wanted to stay out of the war. Zimmermann then admitted it was real, which removed the last doubt.

It was Wilson's last attempt to end the war without joining it. Nine days later Germany announced unrestricted submarine warfare, and the speech became the outline of the peace he tried to build at Versailles instead.

Three years of war had broken Russia's cities: prices had risen four times over and the bread ran out. The Duma, the parliament the Tsar had granted in 1905 and largely ignored since, formed the government that took over. The revolution began with hunger, not ideas, and the government that replaced the Tsar made its fatal mistake by keeping Russia in the war.