The First World War

Causes of World War One

In 1914 Arch-Duke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was assassinated by a protester in Sarajevo.  At that time, Bosnia and Herzegovina, of which Sarajevo was the capital, was under Austrian rule.  Nationalist Gavrilo Princip killed both the Arch-Duke and his wife in an attempt to begin the unification of the various Slavic nations into one independent country.

The assassin was backed by an underground Serbian resistance movement, giving Austria-Hungary an excuse to enter a long expected war with Serbia.  Germany agreed to side with Austria-Hungary, as did the Ottoman Empire and Italy.  Miscalculating that Britain would remain neutral, or perhaps intending for a European war to settle age old conflicts over territory in Europe and colonies around the world, war was declared by Germany and her allies, the Central Powers or Quadruple Entente on Serbia in 1914.

Quickly, the other major powers entered the war due to obligations under peace treaties – The Triple Entente between France, Britain and Russia – and support for natural allies.  Russia, France, Britain and Japan all entered the war within a month of Germany’s declaration against Serbia; Britain declaring war when Germany invaded its ally, Belgium.

WW1 – a new form of war

At the turn of the 20th Century, warfare was still usually performed by professional soldiers in relatively small forces.  Horses were still the preferred method of transport and hand guns, rifles and swords favoured close combat.  World War One changed all that, with the adoption and development of new technologies like machine guns, grenades, tanks, mustard gas, aircraft, land and marine mines and submarines.

Probably the most famous image of the First World War is that of the soldier in the trench.  Trench warfare had actually been used for a long time in various battles but never on such a grand scale and with such seeming futility at the time.  Trenches dug in 1914 were still being used until 1918, a few weeks before the end of the war.  Conditions were grim in the trenches, wet, muddy and claustrophobic, infested with rats and disease, and with near constant enemy bombardment.  But going “over the top” into the no-man’s land between the two opposing lines was even worse.  Barbed wire, mines and enemy machine guns quickly picked off anyone attempting to cross the divide and attack the solders in the enemy trench.

It quickly became apparent that charging enemy lines on horseback, the traditional way of quickly attacking an enemy, was useless against machine guns and trenches.  However horses still had an important role to play, along with dogs, donkeys, mules, pigeons, oxen and even – on the desert fronts – camels.  The deep mud of the trenches meant that the early automated vehicles could rarely reach the troops to supply them with ammunition and essentials, so horses, donkeys, oxen and mules were used to drag supplies and weapons to the front, and bring the wounded back. 

It was impossible to get primitive radio equipment to work in the trenches and land lines were quickly broken once shelling started.  Dogs were therefore used to run messages, search and rescue, and to alert of enemy attacks, but their usefulness was questioned as the allied troops turned them into pets and would instead volunteer to do the message runs themselves!

Pigeons were also used extensively as messengers, both on land and at sea, due to their ability to find their way home from any given place.  Towards the end of the war, when the traditional beasts of burden were running short, even circus and zoo animals were requisitioned for use, with elephants being used by both sides to help with haulage.

For the ten million soldiers who died in the conflict, nine million animals – eight million of those horses – were also killed. 

The collapse of Russia into revolution in 1917 signaled the beginning of the end of the war.  Russia surrendered, allowing the German allies to withdraw troops and send them instead to the Western Front.  Things were not looking good for Britain and her allies in the west, but victories in the middle east by British, Australian, New Zealand and Indian troops over the Ottomans helped to push back the eastern front and regain territory.

In January 1917, British forces intercepted a telegram from Germany to Mexico offering them support in taking back the territories of Texas, Arizona and New Mexico from the United States.  Presenting this telegram to the previously neutral US encouraged them to join the war on the allied side.  The influx of American troops helped to turn the tide of the war on the western front.  A series of failed German advances and retreats, combined with fresh allied troops, meant that soon it became clear that Germany could no longer win the war.  The toll taken on every country in loss of manpower, manufacturing, agriculture, infrastructure and growing civilian unrest across all sides, plus a growing influenza pandemic meant that the war would have to be wrapped up quickly if the Central Powers were even to survive the winter.

On November 11th 1918 the armistice (end to fighting) was signed, but the war did not technically end until June 1919 and the Treaty of Versaille.  Even then, allied troops continued to occupy some areas and the legal end to the war did not occur until 1923 when allied troops finally left Constantinople (now Istanbul).

The Aftermath of war

The war killed so many and on such a grand scale that it was almost impossible to imagine that such a conflict could ever again happen.  But of course it did, just 21 years later.  A lot of what happened in the aftermath of WWI lead to the commencement of WWII.  Germany became a republic, its monarchy deposed and exiled.  Empires were broken up; Austria and Hungary separated, Russia was in a state of revolution, the Baltic states in turmoil, the Ottoman empire collapsed and new countries were formed.  Poland, Lithuania, Turkey, Estonia, Finland, Syria, Latvia: all were created or reinstated as independent countries. 

Britain had suffered tremendous losses and could no longer keep control of the Empire that had peaked under Queen Victoria.  Political and sometimes violent rebellions in the colonies ended in independent governance for Ireland, Egypt, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, and many more countries began the process of decolonisation.