For a major conflict, the European powers were feverishly preparing for several decades before 1914. Nevertheless, it can be argued: no one expected or wanted such a war. The general staffs expressed confidence: it will last a year, maximum one and a half. But the common misconception was not only about its duration. Who could have guessed that the art of command, belief in victory, military honor would turn out to be not only not the main qualities, but sometimes even harmful to success? The First World War demonstrated both the grandeur and the senselessness of belief in the possibility of calculating the future. The faith with which the optimistic, clumsy and half-blind 19th century was so full.
In Russian historiography, this war ("imperialist", as the Bolsheviks called it) never enjoyed respect and was studied very little. Meanwhile, in France and Britain, it is still considered almost more tragic than even the Second World War. Scientists are still arguing: was it inevitable, and if so, what factors - economic, geopolitical or ideological - most influenced its genesis? Was the war a consequence of the struggle of the powers that entered the stage of "imperialism" for sources of raw materials and sales markets? Or perhaps we are talking about a by-product of a relatively new phenomenon for Europe - nationalism? Or, while remaining “a continuation of politics by other means” (Clausewitz’s words), this war only reflected the eternal confusion of relations between large and small geopolitical players - is it easier to “cut” than to “unravel”?
Each of the explanations looks logical and … insufficient.
On the First World War, the rationalism, which was customary for the people of the West, from the very beginning was overshadowed by the shadow of a new, eerie and bewitching reality. He tried to ignore her or tame her, bent his line, completely lost, but in the end, contrary to the obvious, he tried to convince the world of his own triumph.
Planning is the basis for success
The famous "Schlieffen Plan", the favorite brainchild of the German Great General Staff, is rightly called the pinnacle of the system of rational planning. It was he who rushed to perform in August 1914, hundreds of thousands of Kaiser's soldiers. General Alfred von Schlieffen (by that time already deceased) reasonably proceeded from the fact that Germany would be forced to fight on two fronts - against France in the west and Russia in the east. Success in this unenviable situation can be achieved only by defeating opponents in turn. Since it is impossible to defeat Russia quickly because of its size and, oddly enough, backwardness (the Russian army cannot quickly mobilize and pull up to the front line, and therefore it cannot be destroyed with one blow), the first "turn" is for the French. But a frontal attack against them, who had also been preparing for battles for decades, did not promise a blitzkrieg. Hence - the idea of flanking bypass through neutral Belgium, encirclement and victory over the enemy in six weeks.
July-August 1915. Second Battle of the Isonzo between Austro-Hungarians and Italians. 600 Austrian soldiers take part in the transportation of one long-range artillery gun. Photo FOTOBANK / TOPFOTO
The plan was simple and uncontested, like everything ingenious. The problem was, as is often the case, precisely in his perfection. The slightest deviation from the schedule, the delay (or, conversely, excessive success) of one of the flanks of the gigantic army, which performs a mathematically accurate maneuver for hundreds of kilometers and several weeks, threatened not that it would be a complete failure, no. The offensive "only" was delayed, the French had a chance to take a breath, organize a front, and … Germany found itself in a strategically losing situation.
Needless to say, this is exactly what happened? The Germans were able to advance deep into enemy territory, but they did not succeed either in capturing Paris or encircling and defeating the enemy. The counter-offensive organized by the French - "a miracle on the Marne" (helped by the Russians who rushed into Prussia in an unprepared disastrous offensive) clearly showed that the war will not end quickly.
Ultimately, the responsibility for the failure was blamed on Schlieffen's successor, Helmut von Moltke Jr., who resigned. But the plan was impossible in principle! Moreover, as the subsequent four and a half years of battles on the Western Front, which were distinguished by fantastic persistence and no less fantastic sterility, showed, much more modest plans of both sides were impracticable …
Even before the war, the story "A Sense of Harmony" appeared in print and immediately gained fame in military circles. Its hero, a certain general, clearly copied from the famous war theorist, Field Marshal Moltke, prepared such a verified battle plan that, not considering it necessary to follow the battle itself, he went fishing. The detailed development of maneuvers became a real mania for military leaders during the First World War. The assignment for the English 13th Corps alone in the Battle of the Somme was 31 pages (and, of course, was not completed). Meanwhile, a hundred years earlier, the entire British army, entering the battle of Waterloo, had no written disposition at all. Commanding millions of soldiers, the generals, both physically and psychologically, were much further from real battles than in any of the previous wars. As a result, the "general staff" level of strategic thinking and the level of execution on the front line existed, as it were, in different universes. Operations planning under such conditions could not but turn into a self-contained function divorced from reality. The very technology of war, especially on the Western Front, excluded the possibility of a spurt, a decisive battle, a deep breakthrough, a selfless feat and, ultimately, any tangible victory.
All Quiet on the Western Front
After the failure of both the "Schlieffen Plan" and the French attempts to quickly seize Alsace-Lorraine, the Western Front was completely stabilized. The adversaries created a deeply echeloned defense from many rows of full-profile trenches, barbed wire, ditches, concrete machine-gun and artillery nests. The huge concentration of human and firepower made a surprise attack from now on unrealistic. However, even before it became clear that the lethal fire of machine guns makes the standard tactics of a frontal attack with loose chains meaningless (not to mention the dashing raids of cavalry - this once most important type of troops turned out to be absolutely unnecessary).
Many regular officers, brought up in the “old” spirit, that is, who considered it a shame to “bow to bullets” and put on white gloves before the battle (this is not a metaphor!), Laid down their heads in the first weeks of the war. In the full sense of the word, the former military aesthetics also turned out to be murderous, which demanded that the elite units stand out with the bright color of their uniforms. Rejected at the beginning of the century by Germany and Britain, it remained in the French army by 1914. So it is no coincidence that during the First World War with its “burrowing into the ground” psychology, it was the Frenchman, cubist artist Lucien Guirand de Sewol who came up with camouflage nets and coloring as a way to merge military objects with the surrounding space. Mimicry became a condition for survival.
The United States has entered the war, and the future is in aviation. Classes at the American flight school. Photo BETTMANN / CORBIS / RPG
But the level of casualties in the active army quickly surpassed all imaginable ideas. For the French, British and Russians, who immediately threw the most trained, experienced units into the fire, the first year in this sense became fatal: the cadre troops actually ceased to exist. But was the opposite decision less tragic? The Germans sent divisions hastily formed from student volunteers into battle near the Belgian Yprom in the fall of 1914. Almost all of them, with songs going into the attack under the aimed fire of the British, died senselessly, due to which Germany lost the intellectual future of the nation (this episode was called, not devoid of black humor, "Ypres massacre of babies").
In the course of the first two campaigns, the opponents developed some common combat tactics by trial and error. Artillery and manpower were concentrated on the sector of the front chosen for the offensive. The attack was inevitably preceded by many hours (sometimes many days) artillery barrage, designed to destroy all life in the enemy trenches. The fire adjustment was carried out from airplanes and balloons. Then the artillery began to work at more distant targets, moving behind the first line of enemy defense in order to cut off the escape routes for the survivors, and, on the contrary, for the reserve units, the approach. Against this background, the attack began. As a rule, it was possible to "push through" the front by several kilometers, but later the onslaught (no matter how well prepared it was) fizzled out. The defending side pulled up new forces and inflicted a counterattack, with more or less success recapturing the surrendered spans of land.
For example, the so-called "first battle in Champagne" at the beginning of 1915 cost the advancing French army 240 thousand soldiers, but led to the capture of only a few villages … But this turned out to be not the worst in comparison with the year 1916, when in the west, the largest battles unfolded. The first half of the year was marked by the German offensive at Verdun. “The Germans,” wrote General Henri Pétain, the future head of the collaborationist government during the Nazi occupation, “tried to create a death zone in which not a single unit could stay. Clouds of steel, cast iron, shrapnel and poisonous gases opened up over our forests, ravines, trenches and shelters, destroying literally everything …”At the cost of incredible efforts, the attackers managed to achieve some success. However, the advance of 5-8 kilometers due to the persistent resistance of the French cost the German army such colossal losses that the offensive was choked. Verdun was never taken, and by the end of the year the original front was almost completely recovered. On both sides, the losses amounted to about a million people.
The Entente offensive on the Somme River, similar in scale and results, began on July 1, 1916. Already its first day became "black" for the British army: almost 20 thousand killed, about 30 thousand wounded at the "mouth" of the attack only 20 kilometers wide. "Somma" has become a household name for horror and despair.
The machine gun is a weapon of the new century. The French are scribbling directly from the headquarters of one of the infantry regiments. June 1918. Photo ULLSTEIN BIDL / VOSTOCK PHOTO
The list of fantastic, incredible in terms of "effort-result" ratio of operations can be continued for a long time. It is difficult for both historians and ordinary readers to fully understand the reasons for the blind persistence with which the staffs, each time hoping for a decisive victory, carefully planned the next "meat grinder". Yes, the already mentioned gap between the headquarters and the front and the stalemate strategic situation, when two huge armies rested against each other and the commanders had no choice but to try to move forward again and again, played a role. But in what was happening on the Western Front, it was easy to grasp the mystical meaning: the familiar and familiar world was methodically destroying itself.
The stamina of the soldiers was amazing, which allowed the opponents, practically without moving, to exhaust each other for four and a half years. But is it any wonder that the combination of external rationality and the profound meaninglessness of what was happening undermined people's faith in the very foundations of their life? On the Western Front, centuries of European civilization have been compressed and ground - this idea was expressed by the hero of an essay written by a representative of the same “war” generation, which Gertrude Stein called “lost”: “You see a river - no more than two minutes walk from here? So, it took the British a month then to get to her. The whole empire went forward, advancing several inches in a day: those in the front ranks fell, their place was taken by those walking behind. And the other empire retreated just as slowly, and only the dead remained lying in countless heaps of bloody rags. This will never happen in the life of our generation, no European people will dare to do this …"
It is worth noting that these lines from the novel Tender is the Night by Francis Scott Fitzgerald saw the light of day in 1934, just five years before the start of a new grandiose massacre. True, civilization "learned" a lot, and World War II developed incomparably more dynamically.
Saving madness?
The terrible confrontation was a challenge not only to the entire strategy and tactics of the past, which turned out to be mechanistic and inflexible. It became a catastrophic existential and mental test for millions of people, most of whom grew up in a relatively comfortable, cozy and "humane" world. In an interesting study of frontline neuroses, the English psychiatrist William Rivers found out that of all the branches of the army, the least stress in this sense was experienced by the pilots, and the greatest - by the observers, who corrected fire from fixed balloons over the front line. The latter, forced to passively wait for a bullet or projectile to hit, had attacks of insanity much more often than physical injuries. But after all, all the infantrymen of the First World War, according to Henri Barbusse, inevitably turned into "waiting machines"! At the same time, they were not expecting a return home, which seemed distant and unreal, but, in fact, death.
April 1918. Bethune, France. Thousands of British soldiers are sent to the hospital, blinded by German gases near Fox. Photo ULLSTEIN BIDL / VOSTOCK PHOTO
It was not bayonet attacks and single combats that were driven crazy - in the literal sense - (they often seemed like deliverance), but hours of artillery shelling, during which several tons of shells were sometimes fired per linear meter of the front line. “First of all, it puts pressure on consciousness … the weight of the falling projectile. A monstrous creature is rushing towards us, so heavy that its very flight presses us into the mud,”wrote one of the participants in the events. And here is another episode related to the last desperate effort of the Germans to break the resistance of the Entente - to their spring offensive of 1918. As part of one of the defending British brigades, the 7th battalion was in reserve. The official chronicle of this brigade dryly narrates: “At about 4.40 in the morning, enemy shelling began … Rear positions that had not been shelled before were exposed to it. From that moment on, nothing was known about the 7th battalion. It was completely destroyed, as was the 8th on the front line.
The normal response to danger, psychiatrists say, is aggression. Deprived of the opportunity to manifest it, passively waiting, waiting and awaiting death, people broke down and lost all interest in reality. In addition, opponents introduced new and more sophisticated methods of intimidation. Let's say combat gases. The German command resorted to the large-scale use of toxic substances in the spring of 1915. On April 22, at 17 o'clock, 180 tons of chlorine were released at the position of the 5th British corps in a few minutes. Following the yellowish cloud that spread over the ground, the German infantrymen cautiously moved into the attack. Another eyewitness testifies to what was happening in the trenches of their enemy: “First surprise, then horror and, finally, panic gripped the troops when the first clouds of smoke enveloped the entire area and forced people, gasping for breath, to fight in agony. Those who could move fled, trying, mostly in vain, to outrun the chlorine cloud that pursued them relentlessly. The positions of the British fell without a single shot - the rarest case for the First World War.
However, by and large, nothing could disrupt the existing pattern of military operations. It turned out that the German command was simply not ready to build on the success gained in such an inhuman way. No serious attempt was even made to introduce large forces into the resulting "window" and turn the chemical "experiment" into a victory. And the allies in place of the destroyed divisions quickly, as soon as the chlorine dissipated, moved new ones, and everything remained the same. However, later both sides used chemical weapons more than once or twice.
Brave New World
On November 20, 1917, at 6 o'clock in the morning, German soldiers, "bored" in the trenches near Cambrai, saw a fantastic picture. Dozens of terrifying machines slowly crawled into their positions. So for the first time the entire British Mechanized Corps went on the attack: 378 battle and 98 auxiliary tanks - 30-ton diamond-shaped monsters. The battle ended 10 hours later. The success, according to current ideas about tank raids, is simply insignificant, by the standards of the First World War, it turned out to be amazing: the British, under the cover of "weapons of the future", managed to advance 10 kilometers, losing "only" one and a half thousand soldiers. True, during the battle 280 vehicles were out of order, including 220 for technical reasons.
It seemed that a way to win trench warfare had finally been found. However, the events near Cambrai were more a herald of the future than a breakthrough in the present. Sluggish, slow, unreliable and vulnerable, the first armored vehicles nevertheless, as it were, signified the traditional technical superiority of the Entente. They appeared in service with the Germans only in 1918, and there were only a few of them.
This is what is left of the city of Verdun, for which so many lives have been paid that it would have been enough to populate a small country. Photo FOTOBANK. COM/TOPFOTO
The bombing of cities from airplanes and airships made an equally strong impression on contemporaries. During the war several thousand civilians suffered from air raids. In terms of firepower, the then aviation could not be compared with artillery, but psychologically, the appearance of German aircraft, for example, over London meant that the former division into a "warring front" and a "safe rear" is becoming a thing of the past.
Finally, a truly enormous role was played in the First World War by the third technical novelty - submarines. Back in 1912-1913, naval strategists of all powers agreed that the main role in the future confrontation on the ocean would be played by huge battleships - dreadnought battleships. Moreover, naval spending accounted for the lion's share of the arms race, which had been exhausting the leaders of the world economy for several decades. Dreadnoughts and heavy cruisers symbolized imperial power: it was believed that a state claiming a place "on Olympus" was obliged to demonstrate to the world a string of colossal floating fortresses.
Meanwhile, the very first months of the war showed that the real significance of these giants is limited to the sphere of propaganda. And the pre-war concept was buried by imperceptible "water striders", which the Admiralty had refused to take seriously for a long time. Already on September 22, 1914, the German submarine U-9, which entered the North Sea with the task of interfering with the movement of ships from England to Belgium, found several large enemy ships on the horizon. Having approached them, within an hour, she easily launched the cruisers "Kresi", "Abukir" and "Hog" to the bottom. A submarine with a crew of 28 killed three "giants" with 1,459 sailors on board - almost the same number of British killed in the famous Battle of Trafalgar!
We can say that the Germans began the deep-sea war as an act of despair: it did not work out to come up with a different tactic for dealing with the powerful fleet of His Majesty, which completely blocked the sea routes. Already on February 4, 1915, Wilhelm II announced his intention to destroy not only military, but also commercial, and even passenger ships of the Entente countries. This decision turned out to be fatal for Germany, since one of its immediate consequences was the entry into the war of the United States. The loudest victim of this kind was the famous "Lusitania" - a huge steamer that made a flight from New York to Liverpool and was sunk off the coast of Ireland on May 7 of the same year. Killed 1,198 people, including 115 citizens of the neutral United States, which caused a storm of indignation in America. A weak excuse for Germany was the fact that the ship was also carrying military cargo. (It is worth noting that there is a version in the spirit of "conspiracy theory": the British, they say, themselves "framed" "Lusitania" in order to drag the United States into the war.)
A scandal broke out in the neutral world, and for the time being Berlin "backpedaled", abandoned the brutal forms of struggle at sea. But this question was again on the agenda when the leadership of the armed forces passed to Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff - "hawks of total war." Hoping with the help of submarines, the production of which was increasing at a gigantic pace, to completely interrupt the communication of England and France with America and the colonies, they persuaded their emperor to re-proclaim February 1, 1917 - on the ocean, he no longer intends to restrain his sailors with anything.
This fact played a role: perhaps because of him - from a purely military point of view, at least - she was defeated. The Americans entered the war, finally changing the balance of power in favor of the Entente. The Germans did not receive the expected dividends either. The losses of the merchant fleet of the Allies were really huge at first, but gradually they were significantly reduced by developing measures to combat submarines - for example, a naval formation "convoy", so effective already in World War II.
War in numbers
During the war, more than 73 million people joined the armed forces of the countries participating in it, including:
4 million - fought in career armies and fleets
5 million - volunteered
50 million - were in stock
14 million - recruits and untrained in units on the fronts
The number of submarines in the world from 1914 to 1918 increased from 163 to 669 units; aircraft - from 1.5 thousand to 182 thousand units
During the same period, 150 thousand tons of toxic substances were produced; spent in a combat situation - 110 thousand tons
More than 1,200,000 people suffered from chemical weapons; of them 91 thousand died
The total line of trenches during the hostilities amounted to 40 thousand km
Destroyed 6 thousand ships with a total tonnage of 13.3 million tons; including 1, 6 thousand combat and auxiliary ships
Combat consumption of shells and bullets, respectively: 1 billion and 50 billion pieces
By the end of the war, the active armies remained: 10 376 thousand people - from the Entente countries (excluding Russia) 6 801 thousand - from the countries of the Central Bloc
Weak link
In a strange irony of history, the erroneous step that caused the US intervention was made literally on the eve of the February Revolution in Russia, which led to the rapid disintegration of the Russian army and, ultimately, to the fall of the Eastern Front, which once again returned Germany's hope of success. What role did the First World War play in Russian history, did the country have a chance to avoid revolution, if not for her? It is naturally impossible to answer this question mathematically precisely. But on the whole it is obvious: it was this conflict that became the test that broke the three-hundred-year monarchy of the Romanovs, as, a little later, the monarchies of the Hohenzollerns and the Austro-Hungarian Habsburgs. But why were we the first on this list?
The "production of death" is on the conveyor belt. Home front workers (mostly women) issue hundreds of rounds of ammunition at the Shell factory in Chilwell, England. Photo ALAMY / PHOTAS
“Fate has never been as cruel to any country as to Russia. Her ship went down when the harbor was already in sight. She had already endured the storm when everything collapsed. All the sacrifices have already been made, all the work has been completed … According to the superficial fashion of our time, it is customary to interpret the tsarist system as a blind, rotten, incapable of tyranny. But the analysis of the thirty months of the war with Germany and Austria was to correct these lightweight ideas. We can measure the strength of the Russian Empire by the blows that it endured, by the disasters that it experienced, by the inexhaustible forces that it developed, and by the restoration of strength that it was capable of … Holding the victory already in hand, she fell to the ground alive like an ancient Herod devoured by worms”- these words belong to a man who has never been a fan of Russia - Sir Winston Churchill. The future prime minister had already grasped that the Russian catastrophe was not directly caused by military defeats. The "worms" really undermine the state from within. But after all, internal weakness and exhaustion after two and a half years of difficult battles, for which it turned out to be much worse than others, were obvious to any unbiased observer. Meanwhile Great Britain and France tried hard to ignore the difficulties of their ally. The eastern front, in their opinion, should only divert as much of the enemy's forces as possible, while the fate of the war was decided in the west. Perhaps this was the case, but this approach could not inspire millions of Russians who fought. It is not surprising that in Russia they began to say with bitterness that "the allies are ready to fight to the last drop of the Russian soldier's blood."
The most difficult for the country was the 1915 campaign, when the Germans decided that, since the blitzkrieg in the west had failed, all forces should be thrown to the east. Just at this time, the Russian army was experiencing a catastrophic shortage of ammunition (pre-war calculations were hundreds of times lower than real needs), and they had to defend themselves and retreat, counting every cartridge and paying in blood for failures in planning and supply. In defeats (and it was especially hard in battles with a perfectly organized and trained German army, not with the Turks or Austrians), not only the allies were blamed, but also the mediocre command, mythical traitors "at the very top" - the opposition constantly played on this topic; "Unlucky" king. By 1917, largely under the influence of socialist propaganda, the idea that the slaughter was beneficial to the possessing classes, the "bourgeois", had spread widely among the troops, and they were especially for it. Many observers noted a paradoxical phenomenon: disappointment and pessimism grew with distance from the front line, especially strongly affecting the rear.
Economic and social weakness multiplied immeasurably the inevitable hardships that fell on the shoulders of ordinary people. They lost hope of victory earlier than many other warring nations. And the terrible tension demanded a level of civil unity that was hopelessly absent in Russia at that time. The powerful patriotic impulse that swept the country in 1914 turned out to be superficial and short-lived, and the "educated" classes of much less elites in Western countries were eager to sacrifice their lives and even prosperity for the sake of victory. For the people, the goals of the war, in general, remained distant and incomprehensible …
Churchill's later assessments should not be misleading: the Allies took the February events of 1917 with great enthusiasm. It seemed to many in liberal countries that by “throwing off the yoke of autocracy,” the Russians would begin to defend their newfound freedom even more zealously. In fact, the Provisional Government, as we know, was unable to establish even the semblance of control over the state of affairs. The "democratization" of the army turned into a collapse under conditions of general fatigue. To "hold the front," as Churchill advised, would only mean accelerating decay. Tangible successes could have stopped this process. However, the desperate summer offensive of 1917 failed, and from then on it became clear to many that the Eastern Front was doomed. It finally collapsed after the October coup. The new Bolshevik government could stay in power only by ending the war at any cost - and it paid this incredibly high price. Under the terms of the Brest Peace, on March 3, 1918, Russia lost Poland, Finland, the Baltic States, Ukraine and part of Belarus - about 1/4 of the population, 1/4 of the cultivated land and 3/4 of the coal and metallurgical industries. True, less than a year later, after the defeat of Germany, these conditions ceased to operate, and the nightmare of the world war was surpassed by the nightmare of the civil one. But it is also true that without the first there would be no second.
Victory. November 18, 1918. The planes shot down by the French during the entire war are on display at the Place de la Concorde in Paris. Photo ROGER VIOLLET / EAST NEWS
A respite between the wars?
Having received the opportunity to strengthen the Western Front at the expense of units transferred from the east, the Germans prepared and carried out a whole series of powerful operations in the spring and summer of 1918: in Picardy, in Flanders, on the Aisne and Oise rivers. In fact, that was the last chance of the Central Bloc (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey): its resources were completely depleted. However, the successes achieved this time did not lead to a turning point. “The hostile resistance turned out to be above the level of our forces,” Ludendorff stated. The last of the desperate blows - on the Marne, as in 1914, completely failed. And on August 8, a decisive Allied counteroffensive began with the active participation of fresh American units. At the end of September, the German front finally collapsed. Then Bulgaria surrendered. The Austrians and Turks had long been on the brink of disaster and held back from concluding a separate peace only under the pressure of their stronger ally.
This victory was expected for a long time (and it is worth noting that the Entente, out of habit exaggerating the strength of the enemy, did not plan to achieve it so quickly). On October 5, the German government appealed to US President Woodrow Wilson, who has repeatedly spoken in a peacekeeping spirit, with a request for a truce. However, the Entente no longer needed peace, but complete surrender. And only on November 8, after the revolution broke out in Germany and Wilhelm abdicated, the German delegation was admitted to the headquarters of the commander-in-chief of the Entente, the French Marshal Ferdinand Foch.
- What do you want, gentlemen? Foch asked without giving up his hand.
- We want to receive your proposals for a truce.
- Oh, we have no proposals for a truce. We like to continue the war.
“But we need your conditions. We cannot continue to fight.
- Oh, so you, then, came to ask for an armistice? This is a different matter.
World War I officially ended 3 days after that, on November 11, 1918. At 11 o'clock GMT, 101 gun salutes were fired in the capitals of all the Entente countries. For millions of people, these volleys meant a long-awaited victory, but many were already ready to recognize them as a mourning commemoration of the lost Old World.
Chronology of the war
All dates are in Gregorian ("new") style
June 28, 1914 Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip kills the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his wife in Sarajevo. Austria issues an ultimatum to Serbia
On August 1, 1914, Germany declares war on Russia, which interceded for Serbia. The beginning of the world war
August 4, 1914 German forces invade Belgium
September 5-10, 1914 Battle of the Marne. By the end of the battle, the sides switched to trench warfare
September 6-15, 1914 Battle in the Masurian Marshes (East Prussia). Heavy defeat of the Russian troops
September 8-12, 1914 Russian troops occupy Lviv, the fourth largest city in Austria-Hungary
September 17 - October 18, 1914"Run to the Sea" - Allied and German troops try to outflank each other. As a result, the Western Front stretches from the North Sea through Belgium and France to Switzerland
October 12 - November 11, 1914 The Germans are trying to break through the allied defenses at Ypres (Belgium)
February 4, 1915 Germany announces the establishment of an underwater blockade of England and Ireland
April 22, 1915 At the town of Langemark on Ypres, German troops use poison gases for the first time: the second battle at Ypres begins
May 2, 1915 Austro-German troops break through the Russian front in Galicia ("Gorlitsky breakthrough")
May 23, 1915 Italy enters the war on the side of the Entente
June 23, 1915 Russian troops leave Lviv
August 5, 1915 The Germans take Warsaw
September 6, 1915 On the Eastern Front, Russian troops stop the German offensive near Ternopil. The sides go over to trench warfare
February 21, 1916 Battle of Verdun begins
May 31 - June 1, 1916 Battle of Jutland in the North Sea - the main battle of the navies of Germany and England
June 4 - August 10, 1916 Brusilov breakthrough
July 1 - November 19, 1916 Battle of the Somme
On August 30, 1916, Hindenburg was appointed Chief of the General Staff of the German Army. The beginning of the "total war"
September 15, 1916 During the offensive on the Somme, Great Britain uses tanks for the first time
December 20, 1916 US President Woodrow Wilson sends a note to the participants in the war with a proposal to start peace negotiations
February 1, 1917 Germany announces the beginning of an all-out submarine war
March 14, 1917 In Russia, during the outbreak of the revolution, the Petrograd Soviet issues order No. 1, which marked the beginning of the "democratization" of the army
April 6, 1917 US declares war on Germany
June 16 - July 15, 1917 The unsuccessful Russian offensive in Galicia, launched on the orders of A. F. Kerensky under the command of A. A. Brusilova
November 7, 1917 Bolshevik coup in Petrograd
November 8, 1917 Decree on Peace in Russia
March 3, 1918 Brest Peace Treaty
June 9-13, 1918 The offensive of the German army near Compiegne
August 8, 1918 The Allies launch a decisive offensive on the Western Front
November 3, 1918 The beginning of the revolution in Germany
November 11, 1918 Compiegne Armistice
November 9, 1918 Germany proclaimed a republic
12 November 1918 Emperor of Austria-Hungary Charles I abdicates the throne
June 28, 1919 German representatives sign a peace treaty (Treaty of Versailles) in the Hall of Mirrors of the Palace of Versailles near Paris
Peace or truce
“This is not the world. This is a truce for twenty years, Foch prophetically characterized the Treaty of Versailles concluded in June 1919, which consolidated the military triumph of the Entente and instilled in the souls of millions of Germans a sense of humiliation and a thirst for revenge. In many ways, Versailles became a tribute to the diplomacy of a bygone era, when there were still undoubted winners and losers in wars, and the end justified the means. Many European politicians stubbornly did not want to fully realize: in 4 years, 3 months and 10 days of the great war, the world has changed beyond recognition.
Meanwhile, even before the signing of the peace, the carnage that ended caused a chain reaction of cataclysms of different scale and strength. The fall of the autocracy in Russia, instead of becoming a triumph of democracy over "despotism", led it to chaos, the Civil War and the emergence of a new, socialist despotism, which frightened the Western bourgeoisie with "world revolution" and "destruction of the exploiting classes." The Russian example turned out to be contagious: against the background of the deep shock of the people by the past nightmare, uprisings broke out in Germany and Hungary, communist sentiments swept over millions of inhabitants in quite liberal "respectable" powers. In turn, seeking to prevent the spread of "barbarism", Western politicians hastened to rely on nationalist movements, which seemed to them to be more controlled. The collapse of the Russian and then Austro-Hungarian empires caused a real "parade of sovereignties", and the leaders of the young nation-states showed the same dislike for both the pre-war "oppressors" and the communists. However, the idea of such absolute self-determination, in turn, turned out to be a ticking time bomb.
Of course, many in the West recognized the need for a serious revision of the world order, taking into account the lessons of the war and the new reality. However, good wishes too often only covered up selfishness and myopic reliance on strength. Immediately after Versailles, Colonel House, the closest adviser to President Wilson, noted: "In my opinion, this is not in the spirit of the new era that we vowed to create." However, Wilson himself, one of the main "architects" of the League of Nations and the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, found himself hostage to the former political mentality. Like other gray-haired elders - the leaders of the victorious countries - he was inclined to simply ignore many things that did not fit into his usual picture of the world. As a result, the attempt to comfortably equip the post-war world, giving everyone what they deserve and reaffirming the hegemony of "civilized countries" over "backward and barbaric" ones, has completely failed. Of course, there were also supporters of an even tougher line in relation to the vanquished in the camp of the winners. Their point of view did not prevail, and thank God. It is safe to say that any attempt to establish an occupation regime in Germany would be fraught with great political complications for the Allies. Not only would they not have prevented the growth of revanchism, but, on the contrary, would have sharply accelerated it. By the way, one of the consequences of this approach was the temporary rapprochement between Germany and Russia, which were erased by the allies from the system of international relations. And in the long term, the triumph of aggressive isolationism in both countries, the aggravation of numerous social and national conflicts in Europe as a whole, brought the world to a new, even more terrible war.
Of course, other consequences of the First World War were also colossal: demographic, economic, and cultural. Direct losses of nations that were directly involved in hostilities amounted to, according to various estimates, from 8 to 15.7 million people, indirect (taking into account a sharp drop in the birth rate and an increase in deaths from hunger and disease) reached 27 million. If we add to them the losses from the Civil War in Russia and the resulting hunger and epidemics, this number will almost double. Europe was able to reach the pre-war level of the economy only by 1926-1928, and even then not for long: the world crisis of 1929 drastically crippled it. For the United States alone, the war has become a profitable enterprise. As for Russia (USSR), its economic development has become so abnormal that it is simply impossible to adequately judge the overcoming of the consequences of the war.
Well, millions of those who "happily" returned from the front were never able to fully rehabilitate themselves morally and socially. For many years the “Lost Generation” tried in vain to restore the disintegrated connection of times and find the meaning of life in the new world. And having despaired of this, he sent a new generation to a new slaughter - in 1939.
