WWI Notes 3: Progresses + Alternative Fronts

World Wars Hamer

February 9-11, 2011

• To cover today:– Progression of the Eastern Front– Southern Front• Gallipoli• Italy• Ottoman Empire

– African Fronts

The Eastern Front

Mythology of the Eastern Front

• Not as imprinted on popular memory as the Western Front

• 1931 Winston Churchill wrote a book on the Eastern Front called The Unknown War

Generalities of the Eastern Front

• Different from the Western Front:– Greater mobility – not as many trenches– Enormous Scale– Outcome – Central Powers victorious

• Originally Central Powers could not agree on priorities until Germany took over the military decisions for Austria-Hungary

Initial Russian Victories• Initially the Russian forces invaded the East

Prussia region of Germany– Russia moved early to alleviate pressure from the

French in 1914• Russia was not really ready

– Russian forces outnumbered German 2 to 1

• German solution:– Brought in Colonel-General Paul von Hindenburg and

Chief of Staff Major-General Erich Ludendorff to take over

Tide Turns for Germany• Germans decided to attack against the

Russian Warsaw army while only a few of the German cavalry troops guarded against the Russian Vilna army

• Germans won Battle of TannenbergAugust 26-30, 1914– Germans intercepted Russian un-coded

communications– Poor communication between 2 Russian armies– 92,000 Russian prisoners taken– Pushed back the Vilna army in mid-September

Map 1

German Eastern Front Leaders• Hindenburg and

Ludendorff: “Heroes of Tannenberg”– Heroes in a time of losses

on Western Front

• Hindenburg made Supreme Commander in East on November 1, 1914

• Basically became war dictators of Germany by 1916

1915 on the Eastern Front• Germany seized an area the size of France from

Russia including:– Poland– Lithuania– Latvia

• Russian forces pushed back 300 miles; retreated with scorched earth– Russians now had 2.5 million casualties (dead,

wounded, or prisoners)– Tsar Nicholas II took over the army…bad call

• Front stabilized by Fall and the Germans turned back to the Western Front

Occupied Territory

• The land seized by Germany had to be occupied – took a large effort:– Lands were demolished by war– Germans didn’t know much about the people

• Poland given a civil Government• North of Poland was a military state called

OberOst

Austria Hungary• Split forces: one group in

Russia, one in Serbia, one going back and forth

• Failed a lot early on– More than 1 million

casualties in 1914• Winter of 1914-1915

fought with the Russians in the Carpathian Mountains

• Germany had to come in and help A-H win some battles

Brusilov Offensive• Russians launch a major

offensive led by General Brusilov during June - August 1916– Partly to draw Germany away from

Verdun– Attacked the region where

Germany and A-H joined

• Southern areas took 250,000 A-H prisoners

• Successes convinced Romania to join the allies…bad timing!

• Last major success for Russia because northern armies didn’t support them – 1 million losses for Brusilov’s forces

Map 1

Central Powers Winning by 1917

• Bulgaria was impressed enough to join the Central Powers on September 6, 1915

• Winter of 1915: German, A-H, and Bulgarian armies overran Serbia

• December of 1916: conquered Romania

Russia Crumbles• Government faced

mini-revolution in 1905

• Tsar taking over army made him to blame for losses– Tsar was overthrown

and army crumbled

• Russia was out of the war by the end of 1917

• Signed Treaty of Brest-Litovsk March 3, 1918

Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

• Signed by the Bolsheviks who just wanted out of the war

• In all, the treaty took away a quarter of Russia's population, a quarter of its industry and nine-tenths of its coal mines (according to Wikipedia)

The Southern Fronts

Turkish Entry into WWI• Secret treaty joined Turkey with the Central

Powers August 2, 1914– Young Turk movement sympathized with and was

influenced by Germany

• Germans and Turks quickly shell the Russian port of Odessa with 2 German battleships given to Turkey on October 1914– Goebenand Breslau

Russia and the Ottoman Empire• Turkey attacks

Russia through the Caucuses in the winter of 1914-1915– Wanted to have a

new Pan-Turanian Empire

– Lost badly, many froze to death, only 13% of the Turkish force survived

• Russia moved down from the Caucuses into Ottoman Empire and seen as liberators by some ethnic minorities, like the Armenians…

Ottoman Empire in Egypt• Turks attack the

Suez Canal– Important for Allied

shipping; especially between England and India

• Turkish Sultan declares a Jihad on November 14, 1914 in hopes to incite Muslims under Allied rule against the Allies

The Suez Canal

MAP 2

Straits of Dardanelles• Joins the Black Sea

with the Mediterranean

• Important to Russia because 1/3 of their exports went through the Dardanelles

• England promised the Dardanelles to Russia – change in former policy

Gallipoli Campaign• Aims: open the

Dardanelles to relieve Russia, knock the Ottomans from the war, and maybe open a backdoor to attack A-H

• Plan: land in Gallipoli (peninsula at the southern end of the Dardanelles), occupy Constantinople, and take over

MAP 2

Gallipoli Campaign• Those in favor:“Easterners” – those who thought

that another front was the way to win the war– Like Winston Churchill (1st Lord of the Admiralty)

• Pros: only strategic plan of the war• Cons: tried to force the Straits by battleship, these

failed and alerted the Turks to an attack; no real planning for after landing

Gallipoli Invasion• Began April 25, 1915• French, British, and Australian and New

Zealand (ANZAC) troops all landed

Gallipoli Invasion• Problems – Turks had

high ground and Allied troops were on the beaches

• Created trench warfare and deadlock of the Western Front in the Ottoman Empire

• Showed advantages of the defensive side

Allied Failure at Gallipoli• British Commander

Hamilton renewed assault with new landings to the North in August 1915

• These failed as well and troops were withdrawn secretly throughout December

• Evacuation was successful and was completed by January 9, 1916

January 7, 1916 British EvacueesNote explosion of Turkish Shell

Allied Failure at Gallipoli

• 200,000 Allied soldiers died (ANZAC had 62% of casualties)– Founding experience of Australian and New

Zealand identities

• 1 million soldiers involved total• Churchill got blamed and lost his position• Western Front was now the only option

Italy in WWI• Italy distanced itself from the Central Powers and

the Triple Alliance at the outbreak of war• Instead – sacred egoism – a defense of Italy’s

own interest– Led to a bidding war between the Central and Allied

Powers to woo Italy– Allies won because Italy wanted A-H territory

• Secret Treaty of London between Allies and Italy – April 26, 1915– Promised ethnically Italian areas in A-H plus more

land in Asia Minor– Italy declared war on May 23, 1915

Italy in WWI

• Not nearly as helpful as expected and would soon require Allied assistance

• 2 Fronts opened against A-H with a million men total– Alpine regions to the North – Trieste to the East

• 1916 took ½ million casualties

Blue areas are initial areas of Italian conquest

Map 3

Serbia

Alpine Wars

• Guns and artillery were hauled by pulleys

• Called the “White War” by Italians

• Rifles froze and soldiers threw rocks…

Going Poorly for Italy• Fall of 1917 Germans reinforced A-H with

soldiers (including Erwin Rommel!)• These troops attacked Italy in the Battle of

Caporetto and the Italian lines broke– Italy lost ½ million casualties and 250,000

prisoners

• After this Italy defended

Serbia• Overrun by

German, A-H, and Bulgarian armies in the winter of 1915

Serbia• Allied expedition tried

to help Serbia but was trapped in Salonika Greece

• Huge Serbian retreat across the Albanian mountains and were evacuated by Allied navies– Serbia lost 1/6 of its

population in this campaign

Austrians executing Serbians 1917 and Serbian Retreat

Salonika• Tried to help the Serbians by invading neutral

Greece – ironic– Greek Prime Minister, Eleutherios Venizelos, helped

the Allies and even though he was deposed, he fought to overthrow the king and eventually Greece joined the Allies in June 1917

• Allies unable to break through the Bulgarian lines to the north and ½ million Allied soldiers were stuck in Greece– “largest internment camp of the Central Powers”

Map 3

Serbia

Romania• Entered the war at a bad time• Romania was invaded a week

after entering the war in September 1916

• Central Powers got Romanian oil and agricultural resources– British secret agents sabotaged

some Romanian oil fields (set them on fire) before Central Powers could get to them

• Romania lost 250,000 soldiers and 430,000 civilians in WWI – for a total of 9% of their population

Falkenhayn’s cavalry entering Bucharest – December 6, 1916

Results of the Southern Fronts

• No backdoor into winning the war for the Allies

• Solution would have to come elsewhere

Colonial Fronts

German Colonial Holdings - Africa

• Germany’s African and Asian colonies were quickly attacked

• German forces were quickly overrun in Africa:– Togo, Cameroon, German West

Africa

• German East Africa was really the only one that was able to defend itself– Askari (German colonial forces)

plus German troops held out until the war ended in Europe against the British in Africa

– 120,000 casualties from this though

Map 4

German Colonial Holdings - Asia

• New Zealand, Australia, and Japan fought against German holdings in Asia– German protectorate in China – held out for 2

months against Japan– Japan used this to make imperialist gains in

China• This freaked out America about Japan…

Germany Loses its Colonies

• Germany quickly lost its colonial holdings• Since they were already late to the game this

was it for them• Would lead to bitterness about this in the

interwar years

British Colonies Help Out• Troops of the Empire fought on the Western

Front and other theaters– Australia and New Zealand

(ANZAC)– India– South Africa– Canada– All contributed more soldiers than the US did later– NZ gave 20% of their adult males and India gave 1

million troops– Conscription still applied to the colonies

Use of Colonial Troops

• Colonial troops provided a vast reserve of manpower for the Allied side– French West and North African colonies– About 2 million Africans served in some

capacity on the Western Front and in Africa – approximately 10% died

• German propaganda denounced the barbaric principles of bringing non-European peoples to fight the “superior” Europeans

Middle Eastern Front

Middle Eastern Fighting

• November 1914– British and Indian forces land in Iraq and try to move inland…didn’t go well

• April 29, 1916 – British and Indian forces surrender to the Turkish army and were led on a death march to Turkey itself, 1/3 of the 12,000 died

• Baghdad and Persia were finally captured by the British in 1917

Map 5

British Success in the Middle East• British, with Thomas Edward

Lawrence, helped to encourage the Arab Revolt – the Arab resistance against the Ottomans– “Lawrence of Arabia”

• December 9, 1917 – British capture Jerusalem– Allies quickly publicized the good news

about capturing the Holy City (took on notes of a crusade)

• Much of this was done with sights to the future about redrawing the Middle East and Allied influence there

October 31, 1917 Balfour Declaration

• British government viewed with favor the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine as long as civil and religious rights of non-Jews in Palestine were protected

• Done in some part because Zionists organized groups to help the Allies in the war

• Conflicted with the Sykes-Picot Agreement of February 1916– British and French had agreed on spheres of

influence for England (Iraq) and France (Syria and Lebanon)

Weird Stuff about Other Countries

Winning Allies• German spent approximately $100 million to

sway American popular opinion to their side• British swayed policy makers by diplomatic

choices and networks– Diversity of American public led to problems within

• Japan joined the war for geopolitical reasons• China joined the Allies in August 1917 because of

diplomatic pressure and by joining the winning side they could get Japan off their back

• Portugal joined to protect their African holdings

Revolutionizing

• Attempt to cause disgruntled minorities to rebel against your enemy

• Germany did this towards the Irish, Russian minorities, and encouraged the Jihad Declaration

• Allies did this towards minorities of Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire

Switzerland

• Weird neutral space for spies and diplomats…

• Lenin was also hiding out there before the Russian Revolution

Plaque at Lenin’s House in Switzerland