World War I: From Stalemate to Armistice
Western Front: Stalemate
By early 1915, opposing armies on the Western Front had dug miles of parallel trenches to protect themselves from enemy fire, creating a new form of combat known as trench warfare. The space between the opposing trenches was called “no man’s land”. When the officers ordered an attack, the soldiers went to the top of the trench and there they had to face rounds of machine-gun fire and shells of all calibers. Most of the offensives, most of the attacks to the enemy trenches, failed, and tens of thousands of soldiers died for nothing.
For example, in July 1916, the British Army attacked the Germans at the valley of the Somme River. 20,000 British soldiers were killed to gain less than 10km. In February 1916, Germans launched a massive attack. After months of war, Germans and French suffered more than 300,000 deaths each. Germans advanced only five km. The Western Front became a huge trench. Nearly 700 km were dug from the North Sea to the Swiss Border. New weapons such as machine guns, poison gas, and artillery killed huge numbers of people more effectively.
Russia’s Collapse and Withdrawal
By 1916, Russia’s war effort was near collapse. Russia was not an industrialized nation. As a result, the Russian army was continually short of food, guns, ammunition, clothes, and boots. The Allies were unable to establish a supply line with Russia: in the north, the German Navy blocked the Baltic Sea, and in the south, the Ottomans controlled the straits between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.
The Russian Army had only one asset: its numbers, its great population. But by 1916, Russia had suffered 2 million deaths and more than five million wounded. In March 1917, demonstrations in Petrograd culminated in the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II and the appointment of a weak Provisional Government, which shared power with the Petrograd Soviet socialists. This arrangement led to confusion and chaos both at the front and at home. The army became increasingly ineffective.
Discontent and the weaknesses of the Provisional Government led to a rise in the popularity of the Bolshevik Party, led by Vladimir Lenin, which demanded an immediate end to the war. The successful armed uprising by the Bolsheviks in November was followed in December by an armistice and negotiations with Germany. At first, the Bolsheviks refused the German terms, but when German troops began marching across Ukraine unopposed, the new government acceded to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on March 3, 1918. The treaty ceded vast territories, including Finland, the Baltic provinces, parts of Poland, and Ukraine to the Central Empires.
USA Enters the War
On May 7, 1915, a German submarine sank the British passenger ship Lusitania. The attack left almost 1,200 people dead, including 128 US citizens. President of the USA Woodrow Wilson sent a strong protest to Germany, and they agreed to stop attacking neutral or passenger ships. But in 1917, Germany intensified submarine warfare in the Atlantic Ocean. Since the beginning of the war, the British Navy had imposed a naval blockade around Germany, which had caused severe food shortages in Germany. Desperate to strike back, Germany decided to establish its own naval blockade around Great Britain. Germans knew that this measure might lead to war with the United States, but they thought that the blockade would defeat Great Britain even before the United States could mobilize its troops.
In February 1917, the British intercepted a telegram from Germany’s foreign minister, Arthur Zimmermann, to the German ambassador in Mexico. The message said that Germany would help Mexico to reconquer the land it had lost to the United States (California, New Mexico, Texas, etc.) if Mexico would ally with Germany. Obviously, the British sent the message to the government of the USA. Then, on April 2, President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Germany.
1918: USA In, Russia Out
Russia’s withdrawal from the war allowed Germany to send all its forces to the Western Front. In March 1918, the Germans launched a massive attack. As in the first weeks of the war, the Germans advanced. By May, the Germans reached the Marne River again. Paris was less than 60 km away. But the effort to reach the Marne River had exhausted men and supplies, and for the first time in the war, 140,000 American soldiers were ready for a counterattack.
In July 1918, the Allies, led by 350 new tanks and 2 million American troops, broke German front lines and advanced toward Germany. Bulgarians and Ottomans surrendered. In October, a revolution in Austria-Hungary collapsed the empire. In Germany, soldiers rebelled. On November 9, Kaiser Wilhelm II resigned, and Germany declared a Republic. A representative of the new German republic met the Head of the Allied High Command, Marshal Ferdinand Foch, and in a railway car near Paris, signed an agreement to stop fighting. On November 11, World War I ended.