The Great War - A History Thread

Discussion in 'Writers' Corner' started by SoulPunisher, Sep 9, 2018.

  1. Part I: Pax Britannica

    In 1815, the Napoleonic Wars met their end at Waterloo in the Netherlands. The German states of Hannover (joined in personal union with the UK at the time), Brunswick, Nassau and Prussia, lead by the United Kingdom, met Napoleon Bonaparte in battle. To cut a long story short, France lost. Napoleon fled to Paris and tried to muster popular support to keep his position, but he failed. The Congress of Vienna/Wiener Kongress met to discuss peace, bringing about an end to the issues arising throughout Europe due to the French Revolution. The main goal was to downsize the major powers to maintain balance - Russia, Prussia and Austria enlarged themselves, cutting into countries like Sweden and the North Italian states, but they were all still relatively balanced against one another. Spheres of influence were also established, with Austria taking central Europe. Prussia established a customs union, the Zollverein, to establish its dominance over North Germany. This European Balance of Power had long been a foreign policy goal of the UK, who believed that not one country should hold absolute power over Europe... they just didn't take into account that Prussia was already growing in strength at a rapid rate and had now just increased it even more at this Congress. It was somewhat tempered by the German Confederation, an association of the German states with Prussia and Austria as its two leaders, but it was a weak union.

    The peace was long. There were some minor hiccups along the way, such as when the United Kingdom and the new French Republic, aiding the falling Ottoman Empire, went to war with the Russian Empire in 1853. But for the most part, things were peaceful. The United Kingdom of the Netherlands split in 1839 after a revolution, splitting into the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg - the Treaty of London, negotiated between the British and the rest of the great powers (France, Prussia, Austria, etc.), affirmed that Belgium would be a neutral nation, like Switzerland. This was an era of peace that had never been seen on the European continent since the Romans began to collapse.

    The peace was rocked in 1866. Tensions within the German Confederation between Prussia and Austria erupted into war. Prussia, aided by the Kingdom of Italy, lead the North German states against Austria and the South Germans. The war lasted only seven weeks, and Austria rolled over in defeat. The German Confederation collapsed, being replaced by the Prussian-led North German Confederation that completely excluded Austria and the South Germans, and Italy annexed Venetia from Austria. Eventually, in 1870, the South German states betrayed Austria and joined the North German Confederation, which then adopted a new constitution calling it the German Empire. This German Empire was born in war, as the North German Confederation had just declared war on France. France lost to the German Empire, losing the territory of Alsace-Lorraine, inciting a bitter hatred between the two nations that would last until the formation of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1952.

    The United Kingdom was extremely alarmed by what its traditional ally, and the other German states it had a long and happy history with - even sharing monarchs and being ruled by a German royal house - had evolved into. This hegemony over the region was not supposed to happen. Indeed, the German Empire was an economic and military powerhouse, with a rapidly growing population, which was the largest in Europe. While Germany tried to be friends, even agreeing with the UK on most things, the UK wanted to remain isolated from the rest of the world and not be allies with anyone. Germany was frightened of the alliance between Russia and France, and wanted the UK to scare them off, but they didn't want to. Germany settled on healing relations with Austria, and formed an alliance with Austria-Hungary in 1879.

    The UK passed the Naval Defence Act in 1889, which made the British commit to having a navy the size of Germany's and France's combined. Germany saw this as a contest, and a foreign policy goal became having a navy larger than the UK's, or at least to have one so powerful the British would never even try to take it on in battle. Germany also began gaining colonies abroad, even trading the German island of Heligoland, which the British owned, with the African colony of Zanzibar. Germany couldn't keep up, however, and the British eventually created the Dreadnought out of this naval race.

    When the British repeatedly antagonised the South African Republic through actions such as raiding them in 1896, Kaiser Wilhelm II personally sent a telegram to the Boer President, congratulating him on fending off the British. During the Boer War, in which the British invented the concentration camp and the British people realised the Empire wasn't worth the trouble it brought, the German Empire openly sympathised with the Boers, further escalating tensions.

    By 1900, the German Empire surpassed the United Kingdom as the second largest global economy, only being beaten by the United States. Its army was the largest in the world. Its population continued to grow, eventually hitting 68 million in 1913. It gained more Nobel Prizes than any other country on the planet, proving that it was also a scientific powerhouse.

    In 1905, France attempted to establish a protectorate over Morocco, informing the United Kingdom, but not Germany. Germany was infuriated by this, and backed Moroccan independence. In 1906, a conference was held between all the great powers, with only Austria-Hungary backing Germany. The United States made sure that France compromised and slightly loosened their control over Morocco.

    In 1908, Kaiser Wilhelm II made a visit to the United Kingdom, intending to improve their worsening relations. The Daily Telegraph, with the Kaiser's permission, published an 'interview' that was actually just a collection of notes a British Army officer had collected of a conversation with the Kaiser a year beforehand. In it, the Kaiser implied that Germans hate British people, that France and Russia had conspired to make Germany intervene against the UK in the Boer War, and that the German naval race was intended for Japan and not the UK. The Kaiser stopped making diplomatic outings, the Germans called for his abdication, he slumped into a deep depression - only returning to sack his Chancellor, who had allowed the interview to go ahead, and the British remarked that he was an insane madman just like the German nation.

    In 1911, France seemed to forget what it had agreed to in 1905 and seized more power in Morocco. Germany was angered, agreeing that if France gave it concessions in the French Congo, they would allow it - they got what they wanted. However, the UK was now angered, saying that Germany's moves were an intolerable humiliation. They threatened war, eventually deciding they wouldn't, but relations were still... more unfriendly than they had ever been before.

    What sparked the war was unlikely. Greece, Bulgaria, Montenegro, and Serbia had banded together in 1913 to get their land back off the crumbling Ottoman Empire. The only other country that still owned one of their lands afterwards was Austria-Hungary, who had annexed Bosnia and owned Northern Serbia. The Serbs also wanted to unite Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia and Montenegro. A terrorist group, who had also murdered members of the Serbian royal family, assassinated the Archduke of Austria-Hungary while he visited Bosnia. Austria was, obviously, angry, and also now had a convenient reason to annex Serbia, which they had wanted to do for a very long time. Austria pinned the blame on them, attempted to get them to agree to unreasonable terms, knowing they wouldn't accept, and encouraged its people to attack Serbs in their streets. Serbia declined the Austrian terms. Austria declared war on Serbia.

    It should have ended there. However, the Russian Empire believed it was the protector of the Slavic people and Orthodox faith (this is the reason it went to war with the Ottomans and got beaten by the French and British in 1853!). Austria-Hungary invading a Slavic and Orthodox country was not to be tolerated. They declared war on Austria-Hungary, and used their alliance with France to call them into the war too - proof that their alliance was more than just a signature on a piece of paper, as Germany had thought. The German Empire rushed to protect its ally. France asked the UK to join them and Russia, but the UK declined.

    Germany wanted a quick way to reach Paris and force the French to surrender. The French-German border where Alsace-Lorraine was was, obviously, heavily fortified. North France was not. How do you get to North France? Through Belgium... which was neutral. And under the protection of the British. Of course, the Germans, as we can now see, have a tendency to think agreements aren't actually able to be held to. They invaded Belgium and were particularly brutal doing it, burning villages and doing unspeakable things to its population, including but not limited to random massacres. The British were not only angry that the Germans had violated Belgian neutrality, they were also furious at how they had gone about it. Reluctantly, they joined the French and Russians in war with Germany and Austria. They believed the war would be over within just a few months, being entirely oblivious to the fact that they had developed technologies that were extremely and equally deadly (they had previously only used these on African and Asian nations that were not technologically advanced at all) and didn't have updated tactics to compensate for that (they hadn't gone to war against eachother for a hundred years).

    They didn't know it yet, but Pax Britannica, an as-of-then unprecedented era of peace overseen by the British Empire, was over. The Great War had begun.
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  2. Part II: Over By Christmas

    British and French forces quickly moved into German Togoland (modern day Ghana and the Tongolese Republic) in Africa, causing the Germans there to surrender within weeks. The British and French split the spoils between themselves, bringing the beginning of the end to German Colonial Empire.

    The German Empire and the Ottoman Empire signed a secret alliance just before the British landed their Expeditionary Force in France. On August 23rd, the Japanese Empire, having proven their capability against Europeans in the Russo-Japanese War in 1904 (they won), entered the war on the side of the UK, France and Russia - the Central Powers were a threat to their long term goals and the odds weren't exactly tipped in their favour anyway. They would be useful in the occupation of German Pacific territories and as naval support for the British.

    Also on August 23rd, the first big battle of the war broke out between the British and Germans in Mons, Belgium. The British inflicted over 5,000 casualties on the Germans, only losing 1,000 of their own, but were forced to retreat after the French retreated, exposing their flank. The retreat lasted longer than expected, over two weeks, and had the British and French almost end up in Paris. Three days later, on August 26th, the Russian Empire clashed with Germany in Tannenberg (in modern day Poland, the town was not actually called Tannenberg but the German general wanted to 'avenge' the Teutonic Order, who called the town that) - the Russian division was entirely annihilated and their general killed himself. On the August 30th, Germany performed its first air raid on Paris, dropping five small bombs and a note telling them to surrender.

    On September 6th, the British and French finally pushed forwards, realising that the Germans were way too close to Paris - only 10 miles away from it. The British and French lost 263,000 men in the battle, with the Germans losing 250,000, in just six days. The battle was a victory for the allies, shattering Germany's Schlieffen Plan and forcing them into a retreat. They tried to retreat to the sea, but the British and French chased them down. Both sides tried to outflank eachother. Eventually, the Germans dug a trench to wear the British, French, and Belgians out. The British, French, and Belgians had the same idea. This was the beginning of trench warfare.

    Meanwhile, Austria-Hungary had tried to invade Serbia in August, but failed spectacularly. They launched another offensive, the Battle of the Drina, on September 6th. It lasted until October 12th, resulting in a Serbian retreat, 19,000 Serbian and Montenegrin deaths, and 17,000 Austrian deaths. The Russian Empire, failing in its German offensive, was not finding similar disappointments against Austria-Hungary: the Austro-Hungarians were retreating from their own border, unable to defend it, and the Russians were having an easy time until Germany sent some troops from the French front to stop the Russian advance.

    Remember that secret Ottoman Empire-German Empire alliance signed way back in August? Wellll... on October 29th, the Turkish launched a surprise naval bombardment on the Russian-owned cities (all within modern day Ukraine) of Odessa, Sevastopol, and Feodosia. The British and French were, understandably, incredibly angry at this, and severed diplomatic ties with the Ottomans immediately. Two days later, the Russian Empire declared war on the Ottoman Empire. The UK and France did the same two days later. Meanwhile, German submarines attacked the British towns of Scarborough (I've been there!) and Yarmouth at night.

    Austria-Hungary tried to invade Serbia again. Once again, they failed, in a battle lasting over a month.

    By now, the soldiers and war leaders are all well aware that the promise 'it'll be over by Christmas' can no longer be true. The war is far from ending. The Western Front had not moved at all since September, just a month into the war, more and more countries kept entering, and now civilians were being caught in the crossfire.

    On December 25th, as the national leaders reconsidered their strategies to get the war back into 'full speed ahead' mode, soldiers all across the Western Front - French, Germans, British - stopped shooting at eachother. They walked into their No Man's Lands and talked, gave eachother Christmas greetings, shared food, sang Christmas carols, played football, cleaned up their dead that littered the floor, and released their prisoners. This would never be seen again throughout the war, as it turned even more brutal than it had already been just months and weeks afterwards.
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  3. That was a tough read, but a very good one. Thanks.
    It's incomprehensible to me that these things really happened. And so little time ago, even.
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  4. Part III: The Stalemate

    The early morning of January 1st, 1915 was marked by the HMS Formidable, a British battleship, being sunk by a German submarine. Submarine warfare was Germany's way of fighting the British naval blockade, which was starving the German people to death, and would go on to cause more problems than it solved. Things were mostly quiet until the 19th January, when the first German air raid on the United Kingdom commenced - a zeppelin attack on the South-Eastern English towns of Great Yarmouth and King's Lynn, which killed four people and injured a further sixteen. British civilians were now officially dragged into the war effort, something that had previously only happened when a civil war erupted.

    In February, Germany deployed the flamethrower on the frontline for the first time. They were fired from within the trench, burning allied soldiers who charged across the no man's land to death. March was marked by British battles gaining ground and then immediately losing it to Germans. In April, the British used Welsh miners to deploy large land mines in the Battle of Hill 60, a Belgian hill that became important because it was the only place in the battleground not flooded - it ended up being a salient, which the enemy surrounds, causing them to retreat. This began the Second Battle of Ypres, during which Germany unleashed chlorine gas on the allied soldiers, which they had already acknowledged as a war crime in an international treaty. Canadian soldiers made impromptu gas masks by peeing on cloths and holding it up to their faces. Meanwhile, in Turkey, British, Australian, New Zealander, and Canadian troops landed in Gallipoli - a battle masterminded by the Liberal Party's Winston Churchill (the future Conservative Party British Prime Minister during WW2), fought in by Clement Attlee (the future first ever Deputy Prime Minister, serving for Winston Churchill, and the Labour Party's future Prime Minister/Winston Churchill's successor), as well as Ataturk, who fought for the Turks. At the end of the month, Italy finished negotiations with the British and French, being promised land if they fought in the war on the allied side.

    May came, and the war was still nowhere near its end. On the 7th, the RMS Lusitania, a British passenger liner, was sunk by the German Empire in the Celtic Sea, killing almost all of the near 2,000 civilians on board. In the United States, this turned public opinion against the German Empire, causing the American government to start teaching their German-speaking population English, and the people began to burn German books and beat ethnic Germans in the streets. Italy mobilised and declared war against Austria-Hungary days later, where they would now have to fight through the Alps. The Ottoman Empire also began its needless genocide of Armenians.

    In July, German and Austrian forces launched an attack against Russia, pushing them out of Poland and back into Russia - a line that would remain stationary until Russia left the war in 1917. September arrived and Bulgaria began to mobilise, entering on the Triple Entente's (Germany, Ottomans, Austria) side. The British used poison gas against Germany for the first time. In October, Serbia finally fell to Austria-Hungary, with Serbia asking Greece to intervene - Greece declined. Bulgaria declared war on Serbia, pushing Serbia out of Serbia - its army retreated into Albania, regularly being attacked by Albanian hill tribes and dying due to illness and harsh conditions.

    December arrived, and the British evacuated Gallipoli, hiding it from the enemy so they wouldn't charge and kill the soldiers as they retreated. Winston Churchill resigned from his government post. The only success of Gallipoli was the fact most soldiers managed to retreat safely. Throughout 1915, the lines of the war stayed the same as they had been at the end of 1914. If either side was going to win, they would have to push harder, get more soldiers, and employ more brutality.
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  5. Thanks for reminding me I should probably add a new part :p
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  6. Part IV: Hell On Earth

    The year began with the Military Service Act of 1916 being presented by the British Prime Minister, the Liberal Party's H.H Asquith, to the British parliament. His Home Secretary, Sir John Simon, resigned and attacked Asquith and the government in his resignation speech. He and thirty-four other Liberals voted against the bill, alongside thirteen Labour Party MPs, and fifty-nine Irish Parliamentary Party MPs. The bill passed with six-hundred-and-three votes in favour. The act conscripted all unmarried English, Welsh, and Scottish men aged eighteen to forty-one - the Irish were excluded, as the situation in Ireland was increasingly precarious, with home rule and independence movements reaching their boiling point at the time. The act came into effect the following March.

    In February, the Battle of Verdun began. Verdun is a French town that, during the Franco-Prussian War, became a symbol of French resistance to Germany, and losing it to the Germans would be national morale hit. Because of this, the Germans attacked it to draw French troops away from Belgium so they could continue trying to push to Paris and siege it. It worked.

    March rolled around, and Germany declared war on Portugal after several clashes between Portuguese Africa and German Africa - Portugal had caused these clashes because it traded heavily with the British, whose trade was no longer reaching Portugal due to German submarine warfare in the European seas.

    In Ireland, on 24th April, the Easter Rising broke out. The Irish Volunteers (led by a schoolteacher), the socialist Irish Citizens Army, and the women's army Cumann na mBan rose up in Dublin together to end British rule and establish an independent Irish Republic. The British put the rebellion down, killing hundreds of citizens, forcing the armies to unconditionally surrender, and executed most of the leaders, and also rounded up thousands of Irish citizens, most of whom had nothing to do with the rebellion, and put them in prison camps. They then declared martial law over Ireland.

    May was mostly quiet of any major events, with the final day erupting into the Battle of Jutland. There hadn't been many significant naval battles throughout the war, despite the naval arms race between Germany and the United Kingdom that lasted for two decades, and this was the first and only - the Germans preferred their submarine warfare. Sixteen German battleships, five battlecruisers, six pre-dreadnoughts, eleven light cruisers, and sixty-one torpedo boats fought against twenty-eight British battleships, nine battlecruisers, eight armoured cruisers, twenty-six light cruisers, seventy-eight destroyers, a minelayer, and a seaplane carrier (the ancestor of the aircraft carrier). The British lost 6,000 sailors, with the Germans only losing 2,500. Fourteen British ships were sank, and eleven German ships were sank. The battle ended after just a few hours. The British claimed a strategic victory, as they accomplished their goals in the battle, while the Germans also claimed victory because of the destruction and death they caused to the British - however, the Germans still retreated. The British press slammed the battle as a failure. It was the last time battleships were ever used in a major battle, and the last time the Germans would challenge the British at sea until World War II.

    On June 4th, the Brusilov Campaign, a Russian eastern offensive on Germany to relieve the French troops at Verdun, began. It would last until September, and cause 1 million Russian soldiers to die, and 1.3 million German and Austro-Hungarian troops to also die, crippling Austria-Hungary and granting Russia major breakthroughs... but also crippled the Russian Empire.

    July 1st opened with the Battle of the Somme commencing. It was designed to end the war and relieve the pressure on the French at Verdun. July 1st saw 60,000 British troops die after a week of artillery shelling the German position, which did nothing. The day is infamous in British history as the day that taught the British 'war is bad', and is the single most deadly day in British military history. The French actually ended up having to reinforce the British, the exact opposite of what the battle was supposed to do, as the battle dragged on longer than it was designed to. It ended in November, with the British and French gaining eight kilometres of land - 656,000 allied troops and 500,000 German troops died just for the allies to gain eight kilometres. However, the German troops were suffering severely from attrition they had accrued from defending the waves of the Somme assault. It also clearly showed that the British economy and wartime production was now far ahead of Germany's, making it a definite turning point.

    In August, Romania entered the war by attacking Austria-Hungary... their own ally... because they wanted to join the war for some reason... and the Romanian public only supported joining the Triple Entente. They were now being descended upon from all sides by the Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary, and Bulgaria.

    While I did just discuss the end of the Somme, it was in September that the first ever tank was deployed by the British on September 21st in the Battle of the Somme, in a scheme masterminded by Winston Churchill. The Germans were apparently so scared of them that they ran away. The British Prime Minister congratulated Churchill on the success of the tank - however, the British eventually found that using the tanks in the small numbers that they did limited their success, and the tanks were also prone to breaking down, and moved extremely slowly.

    After the end of the Somme, Greece joined the war, like Serbia had asked them to before they were completely invaded a year before.

    The rest of the year was mostly quiet. The Battle of Verdun ended in December, resulting in a French victory, but causing the deaths of 163,000 French soldiers and 400,000 German soldiers. However, in the United Kingdom, the political climate was... quite bad. After the other parties and the public attacked Prime Minister Asquith for the losses throughout the war, as well as the uprising in Ireland, he resigned as Prime Minister in December. His Chancellor, David Lloyd George, was then appointed Prime Minister by King George (the first ever Welshman to become Prime Minister). The Liberal Party was divided, with half of it still rallying behind Asquith. They were also a minority in the coalition government, being dwarfed by the Conservative Party and constantly losing election ground to the Labour Party (especially when the country became a democracy in 1918). David Lloyd would be the last ever Liberal Prime Minister.

    Germany also diplomatically reached out to the United Kingdom in December, offering to sit down at the negotiating table with the United States as a mediator and host. Although the United Kingdom wanted to get out of the war, the Germans refused to negotiate with France and Russia. The Triple Entente, including the UK, rejected the offer.

    Aaaand that's 1916.
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  7. Part V: The Tide

    The first two months of 1917 were not good for Germany. After their offer of peace was rejected, they started to get desperate. They reached out to their ambassador in Mexico through telegram, knowing that their next few moves would drag the United States into the war, and offered Mexico an alliance. In the event that the United States intervened, Mexico would distract American troops by fighting them at home, and once the war was over they would be given Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico, some of the territory that the US had taken off Mexico throughout the 1800s. Mexico denied the alliance, as they knew they would be crushed by the United States and were also currently embroiled in a civil war. The British intelligence agency intercepted the telegram and got to work on decoding it. On January 31st, Germany declared unrestricted submarine warfare - they would have their submarines descend upon any ships they saw in the ocean and blow them up.

    The United States got very angry at this. They severed diplomatic ties with the German Empire on February 3rd. On February 25th, two American citizens were killed when the passenger liner RMS Laconia was sunk by a German submarine, angering them even more. Just a few days later is when the American press released the Zimmerman Telegram to the American public - Zimmerman then appeared in front of the German Reichstag and confirmed he had sent the telegram to Mexico. Anti-German and anti-Mexican sentiment in the United States reached a boiling point. Meanwhile on the Western Front, German troops started retreating to a defensive line after the heavy losses they had sustained in the Battle of Verdun and Battle of the Somme.

    March was not a good month for the Russian Empire. In Petrograd (now known as St. Petersburg), the capital, a series of strikes initiated on International Women's Day turned violent. Russian soldiers were brought in to control the situation, but they didn't want to attack the large number of women who were involved. Tsar Nicholas II, the king of Russia, abdicated on March 15th, with a provisional government taking his place.

    On April 6th, things went from bad to horrendous for the German Empire. The United States of America declared war on Germany, joined by Cuba and Panama. Germany needed Russia out of the war as soon as possible, and so decided they would send a sealed train into Switzerland. The train picked up Vladimir Lenin, a communist who had been exiled from Russia, and travelled straight into Petrograd, where it dropped him off.

    The Battle of the Aisne ignited a mutiny within the French army. The offensive had cost a massive toll in French lives, and had to be abandoned. The General was sacked, being replaced with one who had much better ideas that switched France from attacker to patient defender.

    Russian forces made a final push in July, attempting to repeat the success of the Brusilov Offensive, pretty much. It failed horrendously. Russian soldiers were exhausted from the war and refused to follow orders, and there weren't that many of them left anyway. Austria-Hungary pierced deep into Ukraine while the Russian ranks faltered. The British commenced the Third Battle of Ypres at the end of the month, hoping to finally capture the Belgian town after three years and failing twice previously. China entered the war in August after negotiating with the British that Chinese soldiers would only provide support and take care of manual labour for the exhausted Allied troops. The same month, Germany was dealt yet another defeat at Verdun.

    The later half of the year was quite the mixed bag for the Germans. The offensive against Russia was disgustingly successful, but the Western Front had the British deploy the first mass use of tanks in the Battle of Cambrai and breach the Hindenburg Line, although they lost over 400,000 British troops in the Battle of Passchendaele, an offensive that was controversial for not waiting for the American troops to arrive. Meanwhile, the Russian Empire descended into civil war after Vladimir Lenin attempted a coup on the Russian provisional government, with the Russian White Army fighting back against it. By December, the German attack at Cambrai had pushed the British back, even with the British use of tanks. The UK also captured Jerusalem.

    The end of the year relieved some pressure on the German Empire. Romania signed an armistice, as they were now alone and surrounded from all sides by the Central Powers with not even Russia to back them up. The Russian Bolsheviks also signed an armistice with the German Empire just six days later, agreeing to meet for a permanent peace deal that would send Russia out of the war. The German relocation of troops from Eastern Europe to the West began immediately, as they had to knock France and the United Kingdom out of the war before the Americans arrived.

    1918 was going to be bloody.
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  8. uh... wow.
  9. Part VI: The War To End All Wars

    From the ashes of the no man's lands of 1914 to 1917 rose a phoenix of modern day warfare tactics, forged through harsh and bloody lessons and technological advancement. Now it was time to put these to use.

    In January, the American President, Woodrow Wilson, presented his Fourteen Points to the United States Congress. He believed that peace negotiations with Germany should be conducted in the public eye, that after the war the oceans would be available for international use, breaking down the European empires and the possibility for another Great War by making them dependent on eachother for trade (the European empires were all mostly self-sustainable and thus going to war cost them very little, unlike in the modern day where the entire global economy would come crashing down), that all countries would only have power to defend themselves, and an adjustment of European colonial claims. Germany would remove itself from Russia and the Allies would 'help Russia determine its own fate', Belgium and France would have German presence removed from them, the Balkans were to be evacuated, Italy should be readjusted to ethnic borders, and Poland should become independent, and the League of Nations should be formed. These were extremely similar to what the British had in mind, but the French were angry Wilson hadn't even told anyone about his plans for this speech. France and Italy later accepted them.

    In February, Germany forcibly ended its armistice with Russia as the Bolsheviks refused to sign a peace treaty. After a day of German attack, Russia agreed to sign a peace treaty. With Russia now definitely out of the war, the German Empire brought on the Kaiserschlacht to the Western Front in March. This involved all of the German soldiers who weren't fighting Italy with Austria-Hungary in the south pushing against the Allies in Belgium. The offensive had no concrete objective and changed depending on whatever the tactical situation was, and the allied line did not falter, save for them abandoning strategically worthless ground. The British and French came at odds, with the French wanting to retreat to Paris and the British wanting to flee to the French ports - to combat this, the British and French leaders combined their strategic thinking into the office of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, occupied by Ferdinand Foch - the allies now, pretty much, acted like a single army. Furthermore, the German stormtroopers didn't have the ammunition or supplies for sustained attack, especially when they broke through into the abandoned lines the allies had left. Douglas Haig, the British field-marshal, delivered his famous 'backs to the wall' order:

    "Many amongst us now are tired. To those I would say that victory will belong to the side which holds out the longest. The French Army is moving rapidly and in great force to our support. There is no other course open to us but to fight it out. Every position must be held to the last man: there must be no retirement. With our backs to the wall and believing in the justice of our cause each one of us must fight on to the end."

    The main portion of the offensive ended in April, just before the American troops arrived in France. They were simply out of soldiers and supplies, and the best they could do was to defend, counter-attack, and pray that by some miracle the allies gave up first.

    The first major American battle, the Battle of Belleau Wood, took place in June. They plugged a gap left in the French line that the Germans had punched through. Almost 2,000 American soldiers were killed and almost 8,000 of them were wounded. The American general refused to collaborate with the British and French and learn their tactics, using those the United States always had. They were fighting like it was still 1914. Foch expressed frustration with this, and became increasingly angry at the US commander John Pershing because he kept ordering American attacks without consulting the British or French beforehand. The only reason he put up with it is because America was bringing millions of soldiers and a bountiful amount of resources that crushed any hope Germany ever had of winning.

    By September, Germany had been pushed back to the Hindenburg Line. Bulgaria surrendered to the allies and signed an armistice. The Americans and French launched an attack to cut the Germans off from their rail lines. In October, the German Empire and Austria-Hungary began to discuss their surrender to the United States. President Wilson demanded that Germany withdraw its troops from all occupied territories before discussing a peace, and Germany accepted. The Germans stopped their unrestricted submarine warfare, Belgium was completely retaken by the allies, and General Ludendorff resigned. Turkey surrendered to the allies.

    November opened up with Austria-Hungary surrendering. The German Revolution broke out too, when the German command ordered the navy to battle the British. The navy refused and went into port at Wilhelmshaven, and then those stationed at the Kiel Canal mutinied, both setting up soviets but not giving absolute power to them as the Russians had done. The Social Democratic Party of Germany formed a national assembly that functioned similar to the British parliament, and sought to give power to the German people. Germany looked like it was about to break out into full on civil war, with communists and socialists fighting against the upper class. The SPD allied with the German Supreme Command to prevent this. Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated and fled to the Netherlands, who granted him political asylum. Germany was now a democratic republic.

    On the 10th November, Romania re-entered the war, again as an ally. On the 11th November at 5AM, the allies and Germany signed an armistice. The last soldier, the American Henry Gunther, was killed at 10:59AM. Shots stopped firing a minute later, at 11AM.

    Throughout the war, 7 million civilians were killed. 10 million soldiers were killed. 65 million - the entire population of the modern day United Kingdom - soldiers in total were mobilised. 300,000 houses and 6,000 factories were destroyed, alongside 1,000 miles of railway and 112 coal mines - and that was just on the western front.

    Things weren't over yet, however...
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  10. Part VII: The Aftermath

    On the 4th January 1919, German communists rose up in Berlin in the Spartacist uprising. It was a power struggle between the SPD and the Communist Party and the Spartakusbund. It spread from Berlin to the Rhineland, the Ruhr, Bremen, Saxony, Hamburg, Thuringia and Bavaria, although the entire thing was suppressed by 15th January - just in time for Germany to hold its breath as the allies met to discuss their fate.

    On the 18th January, the Paris Peace Conference was held. Here, the League of Nations' creation was discussed, as was the Treaty of Versailles. The leaders of the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Italy, and Japan dictated all of the terms; this was despite the presence of other large nations like China and the Russian White Army council. The German and Ottoman Empires were carved up and awarded to the UK and France as 'mandates' - the borders were so horribly drawn they turned the Middle East into the mess it is today. Germany was forced to pay expensive reparations to repair France and give the UK money to make up for the British war costs. Austria-Hungary was split apart into Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Serbia took Bosnia, Croatia, and Slovenia, and formed Yugoslavia, despite Italy being promised they could have Croatia by the other powers. Japan was given nothing, with the British taking German New Guinea. Italy and Japan, extremely disillusioned with how they had been treated in the peace terms, would turn to fascism within the decade and attempt to get the colonies they thought they deserved.

    Meanwhile, Germany was upset about how it had no say in the peace terms. Some argument was had with the allies, but they eventually signed the Treaty of Versailles, much to the disgust of the German people. They also adopted a democratic constitution.

    France was disgusted with the peace terms, claiming they were far too lenient on Germany. Friedrich Foch claimed that it wasn't a peace deal, but a twenty year long armistice - World War II broke out twenty years after the treaty was signed.

    America didn't get involved in the League of Nations, instead leaving it to the United Kingdom and France. By the late 1930s, the League of Nations would prove utterly useless in enforcing anything and would collapse.

    The United Kingdom, meanwhile, was set on building a 'home for heroes' as their soldiers came home with disfigurements and shellshock (PTSD where your brain basically turns to mush thanks to artillery shells packing a hard punch). The suffragette movement - the UK's feminist movement - was essential in getting the British Parliament to extend the franchise to millions of poor men, and also to rich women (women of all wealth wouldn't be able to vote until 1930). The voting age was reduced from 30 to 21 for men. The welfare state had also begun to take shape after David Lloyd George became Prime Minister in 1916, however in the 1918 general election, the Liberal Party collapsed and the Conservative Bonar Law became Prime Minister. The welfare state wouldn't be expanded upon until the first short-lived Labour Party government, and would not reach the standard the British people wanted until the Labour Party came to power for six years in 1945. Ireland would also descend into civil war in 1919, with the British losing by 1921 and an independent Ireland being established in 1921 - the British would, however, keep Northern Ireland, sparking a seventy year long civil war in Ireland in which terrorist attacks were the method it was fought.

    The Ottoman Empire, now having lost its colonies to the British and French, descended into civil war with the Turkish War of Independence. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk led the Turkish Republic to victory against the Ottoman Empire, Greece, Georgia, Armenia, Italy, the United Kingdom, and France (the allies wanted to control the sultan, who was a mere puppet - can't control a democratically elected leader). It ended in 1922.

    And Russia? The United Kingdom, the United States, France, Japan, Greece, Estonia, Serbia, Italy, Romania, and China supported the White Movement militarily and with their resources, despite their public not wanting another war and the fact that the soldiers themselves were more war-weary than any soldiers before them. Germany wanted to get involved on the allies' side, but the allies refused to speak to them, and it was also too late. The Bolsheviks won in 1922, establishing the Soviet Union - a communist nation that would shape the rest of the 20th century - led by Vladimir Lenin.

    The Spanish Flu also ravaged the globe, spread in the trenches of the war and the soldiers who left them tk go home, and proceeded to 100 million people. It would subside in 1920. Its name was called the Spanish Flu because Spain was neutral in the war but also affected by the disease - the other infected countries didn't know they were infected because the governments of the allies and central powers didn't allow their press to report on the infection within their own borders. This created an impression of Spain being strangely harshly hit.

    That's it. Probably gonna do one of these about Germany during the interwar period next, so if anyone likes reading these, keep an eye out for that, I guess.
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  11. What's the White Movement? I did a Ctrl + F, supposing I'd missed it, but this was the only hit.
    Also quoted is a simple typo.
  12. The White Movement was a confederation of anti-communist Russian forces. Its members ranged from staunch monarchists to liberals, to social democrats and socialists who just didn't want communism. They fought the Bolsheviks in the Russian Civil War of 1917 - 1922 and were active until 1945, and to a lesser extent until 1991 during the collapse of the Soviet Union.