World War I: Events And Character of the World War I

World War I: Events and Character of the World War I

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By 1914, the rival alliances and diplomatic crises covered earlier in this series had produced full-scale war — but understanding World War I also means tracing how the fighting actually unfolded, which powers joined on which side and when, and what made this conflict fundamentally different from the wars that came before it. This article covers the war’s principal phases from 1915 through to the Armistice of November 1918, its defining character as history’s first “total war,” and the reasons — military, economic, and psychological — why it dragged on for four years, and why the Central Powers ultimately lost. This is a key continuation of the UPSC History Optional coverage of the First World War.

The Two Opposing Sides

• The Allies (Entente Powers):
  • Britain and her empire, including troops from Australia, Canada, India, and New Zealand
  • France
  • Russia (left the war in December 1917)
  • Italy (entered May 1915)
  • Serbia
  • Belgium
  • Romania (entered August 1916)
  • USA (entered April 1917)
  • Japan
• The Central Powers:
  • Germany
  • Austria-Hungary
  • Turkey (entered November 1914)
  • Bulgaria (entered October 1915)

Entry of Italy (May 1915)

• Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary in May 1915.
  • The Italians hoped to seize Austria-Hungary’s Italian-speaking provinces, as well as territory along the eastern shore of the Adriatic Sea.
  • A secret treaty signed in London saw the Allies promise Italy the Italian-speaking provinces of Austria-Hungary, some islands in the Aegean Sea, and a protectorate over Albania.
• The Allies hoped that by tying down thousands of Austrian troops, Italy’s entry would relieve pressure on the Russians.
  • In practice, however, the Italians made little headway, and their efforts proved of no avail — the Russians were still unable to stave off defeat.

1917: Two Turning-Point Events

The year 1917 was marked by two developments that profoundly affected the fortunes of the war.

The Russian Revolution and the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

• As a result of the Russian Revolution, the Tsar was expelled from the throne, and power soon passed into the hands of the extremist Bolsheviks.
• In 1918, the Bolsheviks concluded the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany, under which Russia withdrew from the war and surrendered all her western provinces to Germany, including Poland and the Baltic Provinces.
• This peace allowed Germany to transfer a large body of troops to the Western Front, rendering the Allied position very critical — but the entry of the United States soon saved the situation.

The Entry of the United States (April 1917)

• The USA joined the war on the side of the Allies for several reasons:
  • As a protest against Germany’s unrestricted submarine campaign, conducted in violation of international law and humanity.
  • Following the discovery that Germany was trying to persuade Mexico to declare war on the USA, promising her Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona in return.
  • The Americans had earlier hesitated to side with the autocratic Russian government, but the overthrow of the Tsar in the March Revolution removed this obstacle.
• The USA made a decisive contribution to the Allied victory:
  • She placed enormous resources of men and money at the Allies’ disposal, supplying Britain and France with food, merchant ships, and credit — though actual military help arrived more slowly. By the end of 1917, only one American division had seen action, but by mid-1918 over half a million American troops were involved.
  • Most important, perhaps, was the psychological boost that America’s vast potential in men and materials gave the Allies, and the corresponding blow it dealt to German morale.

1918: The Central Powers Are Defeated

The German Spring Offensive

• Germany’s major offensive of 1918 was launched as a last, desperate attempt to win the war before too many US troops arrived, and before mounting discontent at home led to revolution.
  • It very nearly succeeded: throwing in the extra troops released from the Eastern Front after peace with Russia, Germany launched a series of offensives on the Western Front, and the Allied line seemed close to falling apart.
• However, under the overall command of the French Marshal Foch — which gave the Allies the crucial advantage of a unified command — they managed to hold on as the German advance lost momentum.

The Allied Counter-Offensive (8 August 1918)

• The Allied counter-offensive was launched simultaneously at many points along a wide front, giving the enemy no time to rally. This forced the Germans to withdraw along their entire line, and they were slowly pushed back.
• The Allies also achieved decisive successes elsewhere in quick succession: the defeat of the Turks in Syria, the surrender of the Bulgarians, and the collapse of Austria.
  • Although Germany itself had not yet been invaded, her armies were steadily pushed back, and at last, worn out and exhausted, Germany made overtures of peace.

Wilson’s Fourteen Points and the Path to Armistice

• By this stage, US President Wilson had already set out the Allied war aims in his address to Congress in January 1918.
  • In his famous “Fourteen Points,” he outlined the basis for a peace settlement and gave expression to his ideal of establishing a lasting peace among the war-scarred nations of the world.
• Germany hoped to secure less severe peace terms by appealing to Wilson’s Fourteen Points; this would also spare her from invasion and preserve the reputation of her army.

The Armistice (11 November 1918)

• On the basis of the Fourteen Points, and subject to certain reservations, the Allies agreed to consider Germany’s appeal for peace.
  • Germany accepted the Allies’ demands and signed an armistice on 11 November 1918.
• While the terms of the armistice were still being discussed, a mutiny broke out in the German navy — the signal for a general revolution. The Kaiser fled to Holland, and a republic was set up in Germany; it was this new republican government that ultimately signed the armistice.
  • Under its terms, Germany agreed to surrender her navy and a large proportion of her guns and war material, and to evacuate the invaded countries by withdrawing to the right bank of the Rhine.
• Thus, the First World War came to an end after four years.

Character of the War

World War I as the First ‘Total War’

• The war stood apart from earlier conflicts in its unprecedented magnitude and conduct — a revolutionary departure from traditional theories of warfare, and is often termed the first total war in modern history:
  • It was a worldwide war, drawing in almost all the “civilised” nations, with battles fought across every quarter of the globe. As a result, the armies involved were huge beyond all precedent.
  • It was unusually destructive of human life, in large part because of the aid science had lent to warfare — submarines, poison gases, liquid fire, tanks, and armoured motor cars were novel features of this war, accounting for its exceptionally heavy casualties.
  • It was a war in which the entire resources of the State, and the whole activity of the nation, were mobilised for war purposes. By extension, the enemy community as a whole — its scientists, workers, and farmers — became a legitimate object of war.
  • The omnipotence of the State was exercised as never before: it took control of every sphere of life and subordinated it to the demands of war. Food and countless other goods were rationed, private houses requisitioned, and factories placed under state control — bringing the war home to every family, and making everybody, in some sense, a contributor to the war effort.

A War for the Balance of Power

• Yet despite these unprecedented features, the war was also akin to most of the great European wars of the past in being fought over the Balance of Power.
  • Since 1871, Prussia had held all of Europe in awe. Her ascendancy and aggressive militarism posed a standing menace to European peace — which is why so many Powers eventually made common cause against her.

Why Did the War Last So Long?

When the war began, most people on both sides believed it would be over by Christmas. Britain’s Secretary for War, Lord Kitchener, told the Cabinet — much to its collective dismay — that it would last nearer three years than three months. He was one of the very few to judge the situation correctly. The war dragged on for several interlinked reasons:

• Evenly balanced sides: The two coalitions were fairly evenly matched in strength, making a quick, decisive outcome unlikely.
• A widening, global conflict: Although the main theatre of war was in Europe, the conflict quickly turned global. Countries outside the original alliance systems joined in — some to seize the chance of new territory, others waiting to see which side looked more likely to win before committing.
  • Italy (May 1915), Romania (August 1916), the USA (April 1917), and Japan joined the Allied side, while Turkey (November 1914) and Bulgaria (October 1915) joined the Central Powers.
  • Troops from the British Empire — India, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and South Africa — all played their part, and the fighting eventually spread into the eastern Mediterranean, Asia, and Africa.
• Irreconcilable war aims: The main countries involved held very strongly, and absolutely, to their war aims:
  • The Germans, anxious to avoid being “encircled,” aimed to take territory from Poland in the east and Belgium in the west as buffer zones against Russia and France.
  • The French were fixated on reclaiming Alsace-Lorraine, lost to Germany in 1871.
  • The British would never allow Belgium — so close to their own coast — to fall under the control of a hostile power like Germany.
  • Austria-Hungary was desperate to preserve her empire against Serbian ambitions.
  • These competing war aims made an acceptable negotiated settlement almost impossible from the very start.
• The trench stalemate favoured the defender: Once stalemate set in on the Western Front, with troops bogged down in lines of trenches, the Allies faced serious difficulties.
  • The weapons available to the defending Central Powers were simply more deadly than those available to the attackers.
  • German troops, using fixed machine-guns in trenches protected by barbed wire, held a huge advantage over attackers who relied too heavily on preceding artillery bombardments.
• The power of propaganda: Propaganda played a remarkable role in sustaining public and military morale on both sides.
  • Newspapers, posters, films, and advertisements aimed at every class of society sought to make people proud of their own country and way of life, while spreading stories of horror and atrocity about the enemy.
  • In Germany, despite food shortages, labour unrest, and general war-weariness, public support for the war continued — and Russia’s defeat encouraged the German generals to press on with the struggle.

Taken together, these factors meant the war could only end in a fight to the finish — until one side was either overrun and occupied by the enemy, or so completely exhausted that it could no longer continue fighting.

Why Did the Central Powers Lose the War?

• Two-front strain after the Schlieffen Plan’s failure: Once the Schlieffen Plan had failed and the hope of a quick German victory disappeared, fighting a sustained war on two fronts was bound to place enormous strain on Germany.
• Allied sea power and the blockade: Allied control of the seas proved decisive — enforcing a deadly blockade that caused desperate food shortages among the German civilian population and crippled German exports, while ensuring the Allied armies remained fully supplied.
• Failure of the submarine campaign, and the entry of the USA: Germany’s submarine campaign ultimately failed in the face of convoys protected by British, American, and Japanese destroyers. The campaign itself proved to be a costly mistake, since it was precisely what brought the USA into the war.
  • The entry of the USA brought vast new resources to the Allies and made up for Russia’s departure from the war, allowing the Allied powers to out-produce the enemy in war materials — a decisive factor in the end.
• More competent Allied leadership: The Allied political leaders of the critical period — Lloyd George and Clemenceau — were probably more capable than their Central Powers counterparts.
• Unity of command and Haig’s generalship: The unified command under Foch likely helped the Allied cause, while British Commander Haig applied hard-won lessons from 1917 that proved crucial to the Allied victory in the war’s final stages.
  • Given that the British had no prior experience of trench warfare, and were the junior partners to the French, Haig learned remarkably quickly and proved to be an imaginative commander — his generalship was a crucial component of the Allied victory in 1918.
• German exhaustion and the Spanish flu: The continuous strain of heavy losses told on the Germans, who lost their best troops in the 1918 offensive and were left with young, inexperienced replacements — even as Allied forces kept growing with the steady arrival of more Americans.
  • An epidemic of deadly Spanish flu compounded German difficulties, and morale sank low during the retreat; many soldiers suffered a psychological collapse, and some 350,000 German troops surrendered in the war’s final three months alone.
• Germany let down by her allies: Germany was constantly having to prop up her weaker partners, Austria and Bulgaria.
  • The defeat of Bulgaria by the British and Serbs on 29 September 1918 was the final straw for many German soldiers, who could now see no realistic chance of victory.
  • When Austria was defeated by Italy and Turkey surrendered — both in October — the end was clearly near. The combination of military defeat and severe food shortages produced deep war-weariness, leading in turn to mutiny in the navy, the collapse of army morale, and revolution at home.

Editor’s End-Note

Content omitted (editorial notes-to-self, per your standing instruction):

• The line “Note: Events during war is not important” under the opening list of belligerents reads as an editorial reminder about exam relevance rather than publishable content, so it has been omitted from the rewrite.
• The bracketed aside “(14 points are mentions in topic of Paris Peace Settlement)” has also been omitted as a cross-referencing note-to-self. Since your original text doesn’t list the Fourteen Points themselves here either, I haven’t added them — I’ve assumed they’re intended to stay confined to your separate Paris Peace Settlement article, consistent with this note’s intent. Flagging in case you’d like a one-line cross-reference added instead.

Structural decisions:

• The two long, largely prose-paced sections “Why did the war last so long?” and “Why did the Central Powers lose the war?” have been restructured with bold lead-in labels for each distinct reason (e.g., “Evenly balanced sides,” “Irreconcilable war aims,” “Two-front strain after the Schlieffen Plan’s failure”) so each causal factor is independently scannable for revision — no reasons were added, removed, or reordered relative to your original sequence.

Grammar corrections (typos in the source, meaning unchanged):

• “noval feature” → “novel feature”; “heavy causalities” → “heavy casualties”; “ever family” → “every family”; “the united States” → “the United States.”

Completeness check: All countries, entry/exit dates, events, and figures (including the 350,000 German surrenders, the specific dates for Bulgaria’s and Austria’s collapse, and the full list of Allied/Central Powers members) from both the pasted text and the PDF are present in the rewrite.

SEO treatment:

• No target keywords were supplied, so organic terms already present in your content were surfaced more consistently in headers: World War I timeline, Allies and Central Powers, why did World War 1 last so long, why did the Central Powers lose, total war, Fourteen Points, Armistice 1918, Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. No keyword stuffing.