World War I -------------------------------- The assassination of the Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914 proved to be the spark that ignited World War I (1914-18). Called "the Great War," it quickly came to involve all the great powers of Europe and eventually most countries of the world, and cost the lives of more than 8 million soldiers. Among the causes of the war were rising nationalist sentiment (manifested both in the chauvinism of the great European powers and in the unrest among the subject peoples of the multinational European empires), colonial and economic rivalries, the formation of hostile alliance systems, and arms races, all of which contributed to the growing sense of international tension during the prewar years. Evolution of the Alliances. The Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 had left Germany the most powerful commercial and industrial nation of Continental Europe. France, forced to cede the province of Alsace and part of Lorraine and to pay a large indemnity to Germany, had nonetheless recovered quickly and by 1914 was second only to Germany among the Continental powers. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries the crumbling Austro-Hungarian Empire was plagued with continuing internal unrest. The desire of many of the Slavs in the southern provinces to join neighboring Serbia had intensified friction among the empire's Germanic, Magyar, and Slavic peoples. The Austrians nevertheless hoped to increase their strength and territory in the Balkans at the expense of the disintegrating Ottoman Empire, thereby antagonizing Russia, which also hoped to absorb much of the Ottoman territory. Russia, although the largest nation in Europe, was in some respects weaker than Austria-Hungary. In addition to its defeat in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05), Russia was also plagued by revolutionary unrest and industrial backwardness. These conflicting national interests in western and eastern Europe led to the creation of two rival alliance systems. In 1879, Germany's chancellor, Otto von BISMARCK, concluded a defensive accord with Austria-Hungary against Russia. Within 3 years Italy, a rival of France in the Mediterranean, had joined Germany and Austria to create the TRIPLE ALLIANCE. Germany and Austria agreed to support Italy in the event of an attack by France, in exchange for Italian agreement to remain neutral in case of war between Austria-Hungary and Russia. Bismarck, who feared the possibility of an alliance between France and Russia against Germany, sought to prevent it by concluding (1887) a Reinsurance Treaty with Russia. He also attempted to maintain friendly relations with Great Britain. In 1890, however, young Emperor WILLIAM II dismissed Bismarck from the chancellorship. He allowed the Reinsurance Treaty to lapse, and in 1894, Bismarck's fear became a reality with the formation of a Franco-Russian alliance. William, moreover, soon aroused British suspicions by his imperialistic policies and by his intensified effort to build up the German fleet, threatening Britain's position as the dominant European naval power. This situation led to the formation of the Anglo-French Entente in 1904. By supporting Austrian ambitions in the Balkans, William also further embittered Russia, which in 1907 concluded an entente with Britain. Thus Britain, France, and Russia, previously fierce rivals in colonial expansion, came together in the TRIPLE ENTENTE. Several smaller countries became indirectly involved in the alliances, dividing Europe into two armed camps. In order to prevent further Austrian expansion into the Balkans, and out of sympathy with what was regarded as a "little Slavic sister," Russia pledged to aid Serbia in case of war with Austria-Hungary. Belgium was in an anomalous position because its neutrality had been guaranteed (1839) by Britain, France, Russia, Prussia (Germany), and Austria. Armed Forces. All the major European powers except Britain had conscript armies by 1914. The German army was by far the best trained and equipped, and it was directed by a highly efficient general staff. In the wake of the German victory in the Franco-Prussian War, the other European countries had also attempted to develop efficient staff systems. Moreover, all these general staffs had prepared war and mobilization plans to meet all possible combinations of opponents. The French, whose army was ranked second only to the Germans in overall efficiency, had one basic deficiency: their war plans and all of their military training were focused on the offensive to the total neglect of defensive tactics. The Austrian and Russian army systems were, in general, poor copies of the German and French, respectively. Britain's small volunteer army was well trained, but British war strategy focused on the Royal Navy, the largest sea force in the world. The buildup of the German fleet alarmed the British, who would be starved into submission if a hostile navy were to prevent British merchant ships from delivering food. Thus, as Germany's navy grew, so did Britain's. The Royal Navy of 1914 was primarily the creation of Adm. Sir John Fisher (later Lord FISHER OF KILVERSTONE), first sea lord from 1904 to 1910. He had introduced (1905) the DREADNOUGHT battleship, with its ten huge guns. He had also developed the battle cruiser, which combined the power of eight of these big guns with the speed of the cruiser. The other navies of the world, including the German, followed the British lead and concentrated on big ships with big guns. Britain, however, kept ahead. Most of the Royal Navy was concentrated in the waters around the British Isles, organized in the Grand Fleet or the Home Fleet, under the command of Adm. Sir John Jellicoe. Ultimate control, however, was exercised by the lord commissioners of the Admiralty, headed by a civilian official, the first lord of the Admiralty. In 1914 this position was held by Winston CHURCHILL. In Germany the emperor was commander in chief of all the armed forces. His secretary of state for the navy, Grand Adm. Alfred von TIRPITZ, had directed the expansion and modernization of the German fleet. Most of the ships of the German navy were organized as the High Seas Fleet, commanded by Adm. Friedrich von Ingenohl. The fleet was based primarily at Wilhelmshaven on the North Sea and at Kiel on the Baltic. Wilhelmshaven and the other German ports on the North Sea were well protected by the heavily fortified island of Heligoland and a series of minefields. Behind that screen, German ships could seek even greater security by passing through the Kiel Canal into the secure waters of the Baltic Sea. Although the German navy could not match the numerical strength of the British fleet, German ships were more modern and in some respects tougher, more powerful, and more maneuverable than Britain's. Nonetheless, when World War I broke out, the Royal Navy controlled the seas with 28 dreadnoughts and battle cruisers to Germany's 18. Germany in 1914 had fewer submarines than Britain, and as yet had no concept of how they could best be used. Germany had, however, a number of large airships, or dirigibles--also called Zeppelins after their inventor, Ferdinand, Graf von ZEPPELIN. These huge, rigid, lighter-than-air ships, several hundred feet long, were intended for use in high-seas patroling and scouting. They were capable of ranging all over the North Sea at altitudes that no airplane or antiaircraft gun of the time could reach, and they seemed to offer promise of great advantage to the German navy. Moroccan and Balkan Crises. The formation (1904) of the Anglo-French Entente alarmed Germany, which in 1905 attempted to isolate France diplomatically by announcing its support of Moroccan independence. Contrary to German expectations, however, the British rallied to the support of the French, and the ALGECIRAS CONFERENCE (1906) approved the French plan of establishing a protectorate over Morocco. A second crisis concerning Morocco erupted in 1911, when a German gunboat, the Panther, entered the Moroccan port of Agadir, ostensibly to seek compensation for alleged violations of the Algeciras agreement. This action particularly alarmed the British, who responded with a strong warning. The French and Germans, however, negotiated an agreement by which Germany received minor compensation. Both MOROCCAN CRISES were successfully weathered, but they were symptomatic of the growing tension in European affairs and in turn contributed to that tension. Another point of tension in Europe was the Balkans. During the early 1900s, Serbian economic dependence on Austria-Hungary began to wane, and relations between the two countries deteriorated. A crisis developed when Austria-Hungary annexed (1908) the former Turkish provinces of Bosnia and Hercegovina, largely inhabited by Serbian and other Slavic peoples. The annexation outraged Serbia and Montenegro, which had regarded the provinces as potential elements of a united Slav state in the Balkans. Russia backed Serbia, and Germany affirmed its support of Austria-Hungary, but armed hostilities were avoided. Nonetheless, the incident resulted in increased bitterness between Serbia and Austria-Hungary. In 1912, Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, and Montenegro formed the Balkan League for protection against their longtime common adversary--Ottoman Turkey. The first Balkan War (see BALKAN WARS) erupted shortly thereafter, during which the league successfully ousted the Turks from the Balkans. Fearing a spread of hostilities, the great powers intervened to terminate the war by the Treaty of London (May 30, 1913). Within a month, however, a second war began, when Bulgaria opened surprise offensives against Serbia and Greece in the hope of occupying all of the contested districts of Macedonia that had been won from Turkey before the great powers intervened. Romania and Turkey joined Greece and Serbia; Bulgaria was quickly defeated and overrun by her four neighbors. Under the Treaty of Bucharest (Aug. 10, 1913), Serbia and Greece were awarded possession of those parts of Macedonia they had claimed. Romania also received territory from Bulgaria, and under the Treaty of Constantinople (Sept. 29, 1913), Turkey recovered the greater part of the province of Adrianople from Bulgaria. The two Balkan wars resulted in renewed antagonism between Bulgaria and the other Balkan states, especially Serbia. It also left all the Balkan states generally dissatisfied because of the interference of the great powers in Balkan politics. Assassination at Sarajevo. On June 28, 1914, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke FRANZ FERDINAND, and his wife were murdered by a Serb terrorist in the Bosnian town of Sarajevo. Eager to expand in the Balkans and relying on German support, Austria accused the Serbian government of having instigated the assassination and delivered (July 23, 1914) an ultimatum demanding a virtual protectorate over Serbia. Serbia accepted all but one of the demands, but its response was unsatisfactory to Austria-Hungary. Refusing to submit the disputed terms to international arbitration, Austria-Hungary, on July 28, 1914, declared war on Serbia. The next day Austrian artillery bombarded Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. Russia immediately ordered mobilization against Austria, whereupon, on August 1, Germany declared war against Russia. Russia's ally, France, then began to mobilize, prompting Germany to declare (August 3) war against France. Britain was not bound by the entente to enter the conflict (the entente powers did not form military alliances until after the outbreak of the war), but when the Germans began marching toward France through Belgium, the British government decided that it must honor its commitment to defend Belgian neutrality. It declared war on Germany on August 4. Within 2 days Austria-Hungary had declared war against Russia. Italy temporarily remained neutral, claiming that its obligations to the Triple Alliance were void because Austria had initiated the war. The Opposing Strategies. The German war plan had been designed by Alfred, Graf von SCHLIEFFEN, chief of the German general staff (1891-1905). Anticipating a two-front war against France and Russia, Schlieffen envisioned holding the slower mobilizing Russians in check with a minimum of force while a massive German offensive crushed France, the more dangerous enemy. Assuming that France would attempt to recover Alsace-Lorraine, Schlieffen schemed to entice the French into a major offensive there while 90 percent of the German army stormed through Belgium and the Netherlands, encircling the French and attacking them from the rear behind their weak left flank, ultimately driving them either into Switzerland or against the German fortified positions in Alsace-Lorraine. The principal German armies would then be transported to the eastern front by rail to crush the Russians. If carried out as conceived, this plan might have ended the war within a few weeks. Schlieffen's successor, however, Gen. Helmuth von MOLTKE, faced different conditions in 1914 and was reluctant to violate Dutch neutrality; he decided to route the northernmost German troops through Belgium. Moltke also strengthened the forces defending both Alsace-Lorraine and Germany's eastern frontier, thus putting only 60 percent of German mobile field forces in the right-wing blow against France instead of Schlieffen's 90 percent. The French Plan XVII called for an immediate attack through Alsace-Lorraine, as Schlieffen had anticipated. The French commander in chief, Gen. Joseph J. C. JOFFRE, was relying on the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) to reinforce the French left flank. He was also depending on the ability of the Russian army to launch simultaneous offensives against Germany and Austria in the east, disregarding the fact that Russian mobilization could not be completed for 3 months. The initial Austrian war plans called for advances into Serbia and into Russian Poland, the vulnerable westernmost portion of the Russian Empire. Western Front. On August 4 a specially trained German task force of about 30,000 men crossed the Belgian frontier and attacked Liege, one of the strongest fortresses of Europe. Some of the fortifications were captured in a daring night attack led by Maj. Gen. Erich LUDENDORFF. The rest, pounded into submission by giant howitzers, surrendered on August 16. The German First Army under Gen. Alexander von Kluck and the Second, commanded by Gen. Karl von Bulow, poured through the Liege corridor and across the Meuse. Hastily mobilized Belgian field forces were brushed aside, and Brussels was occupied on August 20. The Belgians, personally commanded by King ALBERT I, retreated to Antwerp. Farther east, the remaining German armies and the Anglo-French armies clashed in four almost simultaneous encounters called the Battles of the Frontiers. On August 8, French troops under Gen. Paul Pau advanced across the frontier to Mulhouse in Alsace. After 6 days a full-scale French offensive called the Battle of Lorraine began southeast of Metz. Following planned withdrawals, the Germans counterattacked, throwing the French back to the fortified heights of Nancy, where they barely managed to halt the German drive. Farther west, on August 20, advancing French troops collided with a numerically superior German force in the Battle of the Ardennes. After 4 days of furious fighting, the devastated French fell back to reorganize west of the Meuse. With German armies sweeping west and southwest through Belgium toward northern France, Joffre ordered troops under Gen. Charles Lanrezac into the Sambre-Meuse angle. In the Battle of the Sambre (August 22-23) two German armies struck Lanrezac southwest of Namur, on the Sambre River, forcing him to retreat. The Belgian defenders of Namur were overwhelmed (August 23) by Bulow's troops after a brief siege. The newly landed BEF under Field Marshal Sir John FRENCH had moved (August 21) into Belgium to support Lanrezac's advance. Near Mons the BEF was struck (August 23) by the full weight of Kluck's German First Army. Learning of the fall of Namur, Lanrezac ordered a general retreat, leaving the outnumbered British with an unprotected left flank and forcing them to withdraw during the night. The French offensive had failed completely. Moltke, however, hampered by poor communications with his armies, overestimated the extent of the initial German victory. Confident that the French armies were on the brink of destruction, he detached two corps from Kluck's army to the eastern front, where the Russians were threatening East Prussia. German troops were also dispatched to contain the Belgian army at Antwerp and to besiege the French fortress of Maubeuge, reducing the three German right-wing armies from a total strength of 16 corps to 11. The already watered-down Schlieffen Plan--dependent on a right-wing hammer blow--was thus further weakened. Joffre, who was maintaining close contact with his field commanders, anticipated the German battle plan and mapped a counterattack. Ordering his First and Second Armies to hold Verdun and the Nancy heights at all costs, Joffre created the Sixth Army, under Gen. Michel J. Maunoury, which assembled first near Amiens, later in and around Paris, and prepared to attack east. At Le Cateau on August 27, French's BEF fought off a double envelopment by the full strength of Kluck's army; the survivors successfully disengaged at nightfall. To relieve German pressure on the British at Le Cateau, Joffre ordered the French Fifth Army, itself pressed hard by the German Second Army, to make a 90-degree shift westward to attack the left flank of the German First Army at Guise. The initial attack on August 29 was inconsequential, but Gen. Louis Franchet d'Esperey, commanding Lanrezac's I Corps, halted the German advance, achieving the first French tactical success in the campaign. Bulow called on Kluck for aid the next day. General von Kluck assumed that his victories at Mons and Le Cateau had driven the British out of the picture. Believing the French Fifth Army to be the left-flank unit of the opposing field forces, Kluck responded to Bulow's call for assistance by shifting his direction of march to the southeast, thus discarding the remnants of the Schlieffen Plan. This change would cause him to pass east of Paris; he knew nothing of General Maunoury's concentration in the fortified area of the capital. Belatedly, Moltke sent a message to Kluck, agreeing to the move east of Paris but ordering Kluck to guard the right flank of the Second Army. For Kluck to have obeyed the order would have meant halting his army for 2 days, a move he believed would permit the French either to escape or to rally. Intent on driving the French out of Paris, Kluck continued southward across the Marne, just east of Paris, his right flank wide open. On September 4, Joffre set in motion a plan to envelop the exposed German right flank on September 6. Meanwhile, Maunoury's Sixth Army, temporarily under the regional command of Gen. Joseph S. GALLIENI, the military governor of Paris, had begun an advance from Paris toward the Ourcq River, where Kluck's right flank lay invitingly open. The First Battle of the Marne (see MARNE, BATTLES OF THE) was joined on September 5, and after 2 days of furious fighting Kluck turned his entire army westward in savage counterattacks that halted the French and forced Maunoury to fall back on the defensive (September 7-9). Only the arrival of reinforcements rushed from Paris by Gallieni--some in commandeered taxicabs--permitted Maunoury to stem the German advance. By this time the action had become general along the entire front west of Verdun. Assuming that the BEF was no longer a threat, Kluck shifted westward, widening an already existing gap between his army and that of Bulow, which was still advancing south. Exploiting the gap, the French commander Franchet d'Esperey, in a vigorous night attack, wrested Marchais-en-Brie from the Germans. This outcome was probably the turning point of the battle. Bulow--personally defeated--was about to retreat. Kluck's First Army was making headway in the northwest against Maunoury's left, but the BEF's northward advance into the gap threatened Kluck's left and rear. Realizing that his offensive had failed, Moltke ordered a retreat to the Noyon-Verdun line. On September 14, Moltke was relieved; Gen. Erich von FALKENHAYN replaced him. The German strategy failed because of Moltke's modifications to the Schlieffen Plan and inefficiency. After emasculating the plan, he subsequently lost all personal touch with his army commanders and their progress. Joffre, on the other hand, emerged as a decisive and capable leader whose bold counterattack was masterfully executed by the resilient French army. The BEF, a small but efficient professional army, played a role out of proportion to its size. Casualties on both sides were enormous--the Allies lost about 250,000 men; German losses were somewhat greater. During 3 weeks of war, each side had suffered more than half a million men killed, wounded, or captured. The First Battle of the Marne, tactically inconclusive, was a clear-cut strategic victory for the Allies as Joffre emerged as the savior of France. Moreover, the encounter ended the possibility of Germany's winning the war quickly. The Allied nations had far superior resources, and a long war gave them a definite advantage over the Central Powers. Both sides now extended their operations northward, each attempting to outflank the other in a series of maneuvers that has been called "the race to the sea." Maubeuge, on France's northern border, fell to the Germans on September 8, as did the Belgian fortress of Antwerp on October 9. Fierce battles in Picardy (September 22-26) and Artois (September 27-October 10) were followed in late October and November by the Battle of the Yser and the bloody First Battle of Ypres (see YPRES, BATTLES OF). At Ypres, the BEF was nearly demolished while successfully repelling a German drive. Shortly thereafter the era of stabilized trench warfare began, as mass conscript armies used the spade, machine gun, and barbed wire to deny maneuver between the North Sea and the Swiss border. By this time operations on the western front had resulted in nearly 1 million Allied casualties; German losses were almost as great. Eastern Front. Short of materiel and with mobilization only one-third complete, the Russians nevertheless began their offensive in mid-August in response to French requests. On August 17 the Russian Northwest Army Group began to advance into East Prussia. From the east came Gen. Pavel K. Rennenkampf's First Army; from the south Aleksandr Samsonov's Second Army. Opposing them was German Gen. Max von Prittwitz and Gaffron's Eighth Army, its mission one of elastic defense and delay until the bulk of the German army could be shifted from the western front. The center of Rennenkampf's widely strung advance was badly mauled (August 17) by Gen. Hermann K. von Francois's German I Corps near Stalluponen. Subsequently, 3 days later at Gumbinnen, two-thirds of Prittwitz's forces were repulsed by Rennenkampf, who had attacked from the east. Prittwitz, fearing envelopment by Samsonov's army, decided to withdraw to the Vistula River, thus ceding all of East Prussia. He telephoned Moltke at Coblenz, reporting his decision and requesting reinforcements to hold the Vistula line. Moltke at once relieved Prittwitz of command, appointing in his place the 67-year-old Gen. Paul von HINDENBURG, who had retired in 1911; Gen. Erich Ludendorff, the brilliant hero of Liege, was named Hindenburg's chief of staff. The revamped German battle plan, developed on August 21--2 days before Hindenburg and Ludendorff assumed command--called for the deployment of one lone cavalry division to delay Rennenkampf, while the bulk of the German army was shifted south, by rail and road, to confront Samsonov. Advancing without reconnaissance or cavalry screen, Samsonov's troops encountered entrenched Germans near Frankenau on August 24. Severe fighting raged the entire day between Frankenau and Tannenberg (see TANNENBERG, BATTLES OF). While other units of the Eighth Army rushed to join the battle, the Germans intercepted Samsonov's uncoded radio messages and learned the locations of all Russian units. On August 26 the Germans counterattacked from north, east, and west. By nightfall of August 29, General von Francois stretched his I Corps across the entire Russian rear and the encirclement was complete. Samsonov, who disappeared the night of August 29, evidently committed suicide. Only one-third of the Russian Second Army escaped the German net; 125,000 Russians were killed, wounded, or taken prisoner, compared to German losses of 10,000 to 14,000 men. Turning northeastward, the German Eighth Army promptly moved against the Russian First Army in the First Battle of the Masurian Lakes (September 9-14). Again, Francois and his I Corps excelled. Rennenkampf, almost surrounded, finally disengaged under cover of a stout two-division counterattack. Aside from its strategic significance, the German double victory was a tremendous psychological coup. Russian troops had been expelled from East Prussia, the Russian army had been dealt a devastating blow, and Allied confidence in Russia was shattered. Nonetheless, the heavy fighting in the east had eased German pressure on the western powers, and in the afterglow of Tannenberg and Masurian Lakes enthusiastic Germans overlooked the true significance of the Battle of the Marne, which ended on September 10. Austrian Invasions of Serbia. On August 12, Austrian troops numbering 200,000, commanded by Gen. Oskar Potiorek, crossed the Sava and Drina rivers to invade Serbia. They were driven back (August 16) by the numerically superior Serbian army, inadequately equipped but battlewise from their Balkan Wars experience, commanded by the able Marshal Radomir Putnik. Putnik, victorious at Cer Mountain (August 15-20) and Sabac (August 21-24), assaulted the Austrian bridgeheads in the Battle of Drina on September 8. After 10 days of vicious, bitter fighting, and experiencing a shortage of ammunition, Putnik withdrew to more defensible positions southwest of Belgrade. The third Austrian offensive began on November 5. A reinforced Austrian army succeeded in occupying Belgrade on December 2, but Putnik's troops--having received desperately needed ammunition from France--counterattacked the next day, driving the invaders from Serbian terrain and recapturing Belgrade on December 15. Austrian casualties in this savagely fought campaign were approximately 227,000 out of 450,000 engaged. Serbian losses were approximately 170,000 out of 400,000. Operations in Poland. Humiliated in East Prussia, the Russian army was more successful farther south. In the Galician Battles (August 23-September 11), Russian forces under Gen. Nikolai Ivanov repelled an Austrian offensive, seizing all of Austrian Galicia except for the key fortress of Przemysl. Following this debacle, Hindenburg moved to assist the defeated Austrians in Galicia and prevent a Russian invasion of Silesia. With extraordinary efficiency, four German corps of the Eighth Army were transferred by rail to the vicinity of Krakow, becoming the German Ninth Army, commanded directly by Hindenburg. On September 28 a general Austro-German advance began. Meanwhile, as the Germans expected, Grand Duke Nikolai, the Russian supreme commander, was preparing for a general offensive through Poland into Silesia, the heart of Germany's mineral resources. Before the Russians could move, however, their left flank was hit (September 30) by the German Ninth Army. By October 9 the Germans reached the Vistula River south of Warsaw, but, outnumbered more than three to one, they halted their offensive on October 12. Hindenburg withdrew skillfully 5 days later, leaving a ravaged countryside behind him. By the end of October the Austro-German armies had fallen back to their original line but had seriously delayed the projected Russian offensive. On November 1, Hindenburg was appointed commander in chief of the Austro-German eastern front, with Ludendorff still his chief of staff. He was informed that he could expect no reinforcements although the Russians had renewed their advance. The German Ninth Army, now commanded by Gen. August von Mackensen, was smoothly shifted northwest to the Posen-Thorn area, again leaving a wide gap of ravaged territory in front of the vast Russian concentration southwest of Warsaw. The German Ninth Army opened the Battle of Lodz (November 11-25), striking southeast between the First and Second Russian armies, which were protecting the northern flank of the grand duke's planned offensive. The Russian First Army (still under Rennenkampf) was crushed and the new Second, near Lodz, was embraced by a German pincer. The key element of the German stroke was the XXV Reserve Corps, commanded by Gen. Reinhard von Scheffer-Boyadel. It rolled through the gap between the Russian armies and turned south and then west before the Russian Fifth Army from the south and an improvised group from the northern forces checked Scheffer's advance. Completely surrounded, Scheffer, in an amazing display of leadership, not only broke through to safety but also brought back with him 16,000 prisoners, 65 captured guns, and his own wounded men. The Battle of Lodz was tactically a Russian victory because the Russians checked the German advance. Nevertheless, it was a strategic success for the Germans: Lodz was evacuated, and the Russians--their offensive called off--fell back in a general retirement, no longer a threat to Germany. German losses were about 35,000 killed and wounded. Russian losses are not known; a conservative estimate would be 90,000. The year ended in a stalemate on the eastern front. The War at Sea. The Germans hoped to equalize the struggle for control of the seas by employing a kind of maritime guerrilla warfare--land mines and submarine attacks--to chip away at the numerically superior British fleet. At the war's beginnings the British Grand Fleet, poised in its bases at Scapa Flow and Rosyth, kept the German High Seas Fleet bottled up behind the highly fortified Heligoland-Jade littoral in the North Sea. Neutral Denmark locked the Baltic gateway to both contestants by mining the Skagerrak. On August 28 a British raid into the Heligoland Bight resulted in the war's first naval battle, in which four German vessels were sunk. In late August the fast German light cruiser Emden, under Capt. Karl von Muller, sailed from the China Sea into the Indian Ocean where it harassed British shipping, taking 21 prizes and destroying ships and cargo valued at more than $10 million. On September 22 the Emden bombarded Madras, India. The end of its gallant cruise came on November 9 when it was sunk in a hard-fought action with the Australian cruiser Sydney at the Cocos Islands. Submarine warfare erupted on September 22, when the German submarine U-9, off the Dutch coast, sank three British cruisers in quick succession. A U-boat raid on Scapa Flow on October 18, although unsuccessful, resulted in the temporary transfer of the British Grand Fleet to Rosyth on the Scottish coast while antisubmarine nets were installed at Scapa. The cruiser HMS Hawk was torpedoed and sunk on October 15. The battleship Audacious struck a German mine, laid by a submarine off the Irish coast, and sank on October 27. The French battleship Jean Bart was torpedoed on December 25 by an Austrian submarine in the Straits of Otranto. Meanwhile, British Vice Adm. Sir Christopher Cradock, with two elderly heavy cruisers and one light cruiser, plus a converted merchant-ship auxiliary cruiser, pursued Adm. Graf von Spee's China Squadron--two heavy and three light cruisers--to the coast of Chile. The rival naval forces met in the Battle of Coronel on November 1. On paper the fire power of the two forces was about equal, but Cradock possessed fewer large-caliber guns than the Germans. In a stunning upset, Spee sank the two British heavy cruisers without losing a single ship. Shocked by the Coronel disaster, the British Admiralty rushed the battle cruisers Invincible and Inflexible, under Vice Adm. Sir Frederick Sturdee, to seek Spee, who had taken his squadron around Cape Horn into the South Atlantic. He planned to raid the British wireless and coaling station at Port Stanley, Falkland Islands, but discovered Sturdee's squadron there, refueling. The surprised Germans fled but were pursued and destroyed; approximately 1,800 Germans--including Spee--perished on the sunken ships. The German light cruiser Dresden, which escaped the Falkland Islands debacle, was sunk off the Juan Fernandez Islands on Mar. 14, 1915. By the end of 1914, except for the High Seas Fleet in the Jade and the Baltic command based on Kiel, the German flag had been practically swept from the seas. Allied maritime traffic was uninterrupted, while Germany, feeling the pinch of naval blockade, focused its attention on the one major weapon left to it on the high seas: the submarine. Other Operations. Six small British overseas expeditions--four from England and two from Australia and New Zealand--moved in August against German colonies. Togoland, southwest Africa, Samoa, and some of the German Pacific islands were taken in late 1914 or early 1915. The Cameroons fell in 1916. Japan, entering the war on the Allied side on August 23, besieged Tsingtao, the only German base on the China coast, capturing it on November 7. Japan also occupied Germany's Marshall, Marianas, Palau, and Caroline Island groups. On Oct. 29, 1914, Turkey, encouraged by the Germans, declared war against the Allies, announcing its entrance into the war with a surprise bombardment of the Russian Black Sea coast. Great Britain responded to the Turkish threat by annexing (November 5) Turkish Cyprus. On December 17, Britain declared a protectorate over Egypt--nominally a state subject to Turkey--and began moving troops there to defend the Suez Canal. OPERATIONS IN 1915 Global Strategy. Turkey's alignment with the Central Powers had closed the Dardanelles to the Allies, thus physically separating Russia from Britain and France. Russia, shaken by the reverses of 1914, was now almost completely cut off from vitally needed Franco-British war supplies. The western Allies, at the same time, were anxious to regain access to the Ukrainian grain fields. This situation led to a strategic debate in Britain: Winston Churchill, first lord of the Admiralty, urged immediate seizure of the Dardanelles to restore the vital Mediterranean-Black Sea supply route to Russia; the British war minister, Herbert Horatio, Lord KITCHENER, was equally insistent that a decision be obtained on the stalemated western front. Kitchener--and the French leadership--opposed reduction of strength in the west for a peripheral operation in the east. Nevertheless, in early January, the British War Council approved an expedition against the Dardanelles. In the camp of the Central Powers, strategical opinion was also divided. The Hindenburg-Ludendorff team urged an all-out effort against the faltering Russians. Falkenhayn, reconciled to a war of attrition, believed that it would have to be won in the west. He maintained that tactical victories in the east would be meaningless because of Russia's vast territorial and manpower resources. Austrian-Hungarian reverses in Galicia, however, led the emperor and Falkenhayn to provide German troops to assist their ally. Accordingly, the Germans adopted a defensive posture in the west, while seeking a decision against Russia. Western Front. At the beginning of the year the Allies continued futile offensives in Artois and Champagne. The British failed at Neuve Chapelle on March 10, after nearly achieving a breakthrough. French casualties approached 400,000 during this period; British and German losses were also heavy. On the night of January 19-20 bombing attacks on Britain by Zeppelin dirigible airships under the control of the German navy resulted in few casualties, causing more anger than panic. During that year 18 more such raids occurred. The largest killed 59 people in London on October 13. On April 22, Allied preparations for another coordinated offensive at Ypres were spoiled by a surprise German attack preceded by a cloud of chlorine gas emitted from about 5,000 cylinders. This was the first use of poison gas in the west. Two German corps drove through two terrorized French divisions and bit deeply into British lines, creating a wide gap. The Germans, however, had no reserves available, most of their troops having been diverted to the eastern front. Local counterattacks by the British Second Army finally stemmed the German advance after bitter fighting. In May and June the Allies renewed their offensives in the north, but were repulsed in the Second Battle of Artois. Exhausted by their costly and unsuccessful assaults during the first half of the year, the Allies spent the rest of the summer resting, reorganizing, and reinforcing, as did the Germans. Both sides had come perilously close to expending their ammunition reserves and were now waiting for munitions production to catch up with consumption. In September and October the Allies again launched unsuccessful offensives: the Second Battle of Champagne and the Third Battle of Artois. The minor gains made were out of proportion to the casualties suffered: more than 200,000 French, nearly 100,000 British, and 140,000 Germans. Blamed for the failure at Loos in the Third Battle of Artois, French was replaced by Sir Douglas HAIG in command of the BEF. Increase of lethal firepower, both machine gun and field artillery, had revolutionized combat tactics. The advantage was now with the defense, which was able to bring up reserves to limit a penetration before the attackers could move forward sufficient reserves and artillery to exploit a breakthrough. The continuous battle line on the western front prevented classical offensive maneuvers. The Germans, recognizing this change long before the Allies, had adopted an elastic defense, in two or more widely separate lines, highly organized with entrenchments and barbed wire, heavy in machine guns, and supported by artillery. Assaulting troops broke through the first line only to be almost demolished by the fire from the succeeding lines and pounded by artillery beyond the range of their own guns. Appalling losses were suffered during 1915 on both sides: 612,00 Germans, 1,292,000 French, and 279,000 British. The year ended with no appreciable shift in the hostile battle lines scarring the land from the North Sea to the Swiss Alps. The Italian Front. Baited by shrewd Allied diplomacy offering vast territorial gains, Italy declared war on Austria on May 23. The Italian army, commanded by Gen. Luigi Cadorna, was about 875,000 strong, but it was deficient in artillery, transport, and ammunition reserves. The Italian plan intended to hold the Trentino salient into Italy by offensive-defense action, while taking the offense eastward in the Isonzo salient projecting into Austrian territory. The immediate objective was Gorizia, but Italian military men envisioned advancing through Trieste to Vienna. Austria had heavily fortified its mountainous Italian border. Austrian archduke Eugene was in overall command of the Italian front. Gen. Svetozar Borojevic von Bojna, with approximately 100,000 men, held the critical Isonzo sector. On June 23 two Italian armies, each about 100,000 strong, attacked toward Gorizia in the First Battle of the Isonzo. They battered in vain against the Austrian defenses. Cadorna, bringing up more artillery, tried again on July 18, retreating on August 3 when artillery ammunition gave out. On October 18 the Italians--reorganized, strengthened, and supported by 1,200 guns--struck once more at Gorizia and were again repulsed in the Third Battle of the Isonzo. After a lull of 6 days, the Italians tried again on November 10. When the offensive broke off on December 2, no material gain had been made, despite huge Italian losses. As in France, the invulnerability of highly organized positions to frontal assault had been proved. The Austrian defense was skillful; the Italian offensive tactics were inefficient, despite much gallantry. The Eastern Front. The Central Powers, reinforcing their armies in the east, launched a great offensive under Hindenburg on January 31 with the Battle of Bolimov, a feint by the German Ninth Army aimed at Warsaw, designed to distract Russian attention. Poison gas shells were used for the first time, but they were not highly effective in the freezing temperatures, and the Russians did not report the gas attack. On February 7, farther north, the German Eighth Army, in a blinding snowstorm, struck the left flank of the Russian Tenth Army. The next day the new German Tenth Army to the north hit the Russian right. The Russians were rapidly driven back into the Augustow Forest, barely escaping encirclement by the end of the month. About 90,000 prisoners were taken in this Winter Battle, or Second Battle of the Masurian Lakes. The newly formed Russian Twelfth Army counterattacked Hindenburg's right on February 22, halting German progress after an advance of 113 km (70 mi). Meanwhile, following initial Austrian successes, further progress into Galicia was halted by a Russian counterattack, and after a siege of 194 days, Przemysl and its garrison of 110,000 men surrendered (March 22) to the Russians. Still determined to defeat Russia decisively, the emperor ordered Falkenhayn to give full priority to the eastern front. Sending reinforcements, Falkenhayn came east to assume direct overall command. While Hindenburg's army group kept the Russians occupied north of Warsaw, the new German Eleventh Army, under Gen. August von Mackensen, supported by Austrian units, was to make the main effort farther south between Tarnow and Gorlice. Concentrating superior force for the main effort, on May 2 the Austro-German armies crashed through the Russian Third Army on a 48-km (28-mi) front. The southern face of the great Russian Polish-Galician salient began to crumble. Przemysl was retaken on June 3, Lemberg occupied on June 22, and the next day German troops crossed the Dnestr River. Thrusting into northern Poland, Gen. Max von Gallwitz's new German Twelfth Army advanced toward Warsaw, which fell on August 5. The entire Russian front was in complete collapse. On August 25, Brest-Litovsk fell, and Grodno a week later. The German occupation of Vilna on September 18 climaxed the colossal advance of 480 km (300 mi). Skillfully, Grand Duke Nikolai had kept his armies intact, and they withdrew in fairly good order, evading German attempts at envelopment. Autumn rains eventually turned roads into quagmires, and the reeling Russians were able to halt the German advance. By the year's end the eastern front was a line running north and south from Riga on the Baltic to the eastern end of the Carpathians. Unlike the trench-dominated western front, vast expanses and limited troop strength allowed a war of movement on a grand scale, part of it in mountainous terrain, all of it hampered by primitive road conditions. German operations had been both methodical and brilliant. Austrian operations were spotty, due partly to lower professional standards and partly to friction resulting from Austrian resentment of German arrogance. On the Russian side, poor troop leadership and lack of weapons and supplies were jointly responsible for defeat. Russian casualties on this front in 1915 were more than 2 million men, of whom about half had been captured. Combined German and Austrian casualties were in excess of 1 million. The Balkan Front. Direct communication between Turkey and its allies was essential to the Central Powers if the Turkish Straits were to be held and Russia kept isolated from the Western Allies. The railway line passing through Serbia had been closed since the beginning of the war; munitions from Germany to Turkey passed through neutral Romania until June, when Romania closed the channel. Meanwhile, Bulgaria saw an opportunity to gain revenge for the Second Balkan War by threatening Greece, which was prepared to aid Serbia. Greece requested Allied aid, and on October 9 a small Franco-British force disembarked at Salonika. On the same day, however, a political upheaval in Greece completely altered the situation; the pro-German king, CONSTANTINE I, dismissed his pro-Allied prime minister, Eleutherios VENIZELOS, and announced he would maintain Greek neutrality. Meanwhile, on October 6, two armies--one Austrian and one German--drove south across the Serbian Sava-Danube border. Two Bulgarian armies struck west on October 11; one on Nis, the other on Skopje. Half-hearted Allied efforts to assist Serbia by advance from Salonika were turned back by superior Bulgarian forces. After a dismal retreat through the snow-covered mountains, the remnants of the Serbian army, accompanied by a horde of civilian refugees, reached the Adriatic in late November, pursued by the Austrians. The Dardanelles and Gallipoli. In January the British began planning for a major operation to knock Turkey out of the war and to reopen communications between the Western Allies (Britain and France) and Russia. Winston Churchill directed an Allied fleet--mostly British--to force the Dardanelles, then steam to Constantinople to dictate peace terms. The operation began on February 19, when a Franco-British fleet under British Vice Adm. Sackville Carden attempted systematic reduction of formidable fortifications lining both sides of the narrow Straits. By February 25 the outer Turkish forts were silenced, and Allied vessels could enter the straits. The principal fortifications at the Narrows were attacked on March 18, under the command of Rear Adm. John de Robeck, who took command after Carden became ill. Success seemed imminent as Turkish guns fell silent, but in a startling reversal of fate, three British battleships were struck by mines. Unaware that the Turks were at the end of their resources and almost devoid of ammunition, de Robeck withdrew. Meanwhile, a hastily gathered British expeditionary force of 78,000 men (including one French division) was en route from England and Egypt for the purpose of capturing the Gallipoli Peninsula on the western shore of the Dardanelles (see GALLIPOLI CAMPAIGN). German Gen. Otto Liman von Sanders, in command of approximately 60,000 Turkish troops, was fully aware of the impending invasion and positioned his men accordingly. On April 25 the British, under Gen. Ian Hamilton, conducted several amphibious landings near the tip of the Gallipoli Peninsula. Although the troops came ashore, they were soon pinned down in several unconnected beachheads, stopped by a combination of stubborn Turkish defense and Hamilton's inability to coordinate and direct the scattered landings. The Turks ringed the tiny beachheads with entrenchments, and the British found themselves in trench warfare like that on the western front, but with even less room for maneuver. On August 6, after the arrival of reinforcements, Hamilton attempted new landings, but because of fear of German submarines, no battleships were available to provide artillery support. The second assault fared no better than the first. The operation had failed. Russia was permanently cut off from its allies. Hamilton was relieved on October 15 by Gen. Sir Charles Monro, who directed a masterful evacuation, completed on Jan. 8-9, 1916. Allied casualties for the Dardanelles campaign amounted to 252,000. The Turks lost 251,000. With the possible exception of the Crimean War, the Gallipoli expedition was the most poorly mounted and ineptly controlled operation in modern British military history. On the Turkish side Liman von Sanders conducted a brilliant, active defense. Mustafa Kemal (see ATATURK, KEMAL), his chief subordinate, who later became one of the founders of modern Turkey, shone as an aggressive division commander. OPERATIONS IN 1916 Global Strategy. The year opened with the Central Powers and the Allies at approximately equal strength. The manpower drain in France was serious. Britain was on the verge of instituting compulsory military service to fill its expanding armies. Unrest in Ireland was approaching rebellion. Russia, with more than sufficient manpower, hoped for time to reorganize and supply it. Germany now sought a decision on the western front because, as Falkenhayn told the emperor, France would be "bled white" in attempting to prevent a German victory. In an Allied conference at Chantilly in December 1915, Joffre succeeded in obtaining agreement from Britain, Russia, Italy, and Romania that coordinated offensives would be launched on the western, eastern, and Italian fronts, probably about June, when Russia would be ready. The Western Front. Both Joffre and Falkenhayn planned great offensives to break the deadlock in the west. But the Germans struck first. Following an enormous bombardment on February 21, the crown prince's German Fifth Army attacked the fortified but lightly garrisoned region of Verdun, lying in the middle of a salient jutting into the German zone (see VERDUN, BATTLE OF). The first German assault, on a 13-km (8-mi) front east of Verdun, gained considerable territory and captured a key position, Fort Douaumont. Joffre, however, intent to hold Verdun as a symbol of French determination and to retain an anchor for his battle lines, prohibited further retreat. He sent Gen. Henri Philippe PETAIN with reinforcements to defend the region. The next German attack, launched (March 6) against the western face of the salient, was eventually checked by French counterattacks. For the rest of the month attacks and counterattacks heaped the ground with corpses. The watchword for the defense became France's motto for the remainder of the war: Ils ne passeront pas! ("They shall not pass!") The third German offensive, which struck both sides of the salient on April 9, was checked by May 19. Renewed German assaults on the western salient face in late June and early July almost broke the French line, but the French clung to their positions, and the Germans hesitated. Pressing demands for replacements on the eastern front then drained 15 German divisions from Verdun. Falkenhayn was relieved of command on August 19, and the Hindenburg-Ludendorff team, replacing him, decided to follow defensive tactics in the west. In October and November the French--now under Gen. Robert NIVELLE--proceeded to the offensive, retaking Forts Douaumont and Vaux. By December 18 the French front had almost reached the lines held in February, bringing the campaign to a close. The casualties in this bitterly fought battle were approximately 542,000 French and 434,000 German. The year-long crisis at Verdun forced postponement of Joffre's long-planned Allied offensive. Finally, on June 24, the attack was launched by a week-long artillery bombardment. The main effort was to be made by British Gen. Henry S. Rawlinson's Fourth Army north of the Somme, with Gen. Edmund ALLENBY's Third Army farther north also attacking. South of the river the French Army Group of the North would make a holding attack (see SOMME, BATTLES OF THE). On July 1 the British infantry, following an artillery barrage, were mowed down by German machine guns. By nightfall the British had lost about 60,000 men, 19,000 of them dead--the greatest 1-day loss in the history of the British army. The French, surprisingly, made greater advances, since the Germans had not expected them to participate in the initial assault and consequently were surprised by the attacks south of the Somme. Despite the appalling losses of the first day, the British continued to forge ahead in a series of small, limited attacks. Falkenhayn, determined to check the threat, began shifting reinforcements from the Verdun front. To this extent, one objective of the offensive had been accomplished. The second German line was cracked on July 13, but little advantage was gained. Haig, commander of the BEF, launched another major offensive on September 15, southwest of Bapaume. British tanks--never before used in battle--had been secretly shipped to the front, and spearheaded the attack. Despite the surprise their appearance caused to the Germans, the tanks were underpowered, unreliable, too slow, and too few in number to gain a decisive victory (out of 47 brought up, only 9 completed their tasks in the battle). As at Verdun, casualty figures were horrendous: British losses were 420,000; French losses were 195,000; German casualties numbered nearly 650,000. The Italian Front. On March 11 the Italians launched the Fifth Battle of the Isonzo. Like its predecessors, this battle was a succession of inconclusive conflicts. The Austrians began a long-planned offensive in the Trentino area on May 15, catching the Italians unprepared. Terrain difficulties and Italian reinforcements finally checked the drive on June 10. An Italian counteroffensive and the need to rush troops to the eastern front caused the Austrians to withdraw to defensive positions. Italian casualties reached more than 147,000; the Austrians lost 81,000 troops. On August 6, Cadorna again struck the Austrian Isonzo front. In this Sixth Battle of the Isonzo the Italians took Gorizia, but no breakthrough was effected. Psychologically, the operation boosted Italian morale, lowered by the heavy losses in the Trentino. The Eastern Front. Responding to French appeals, on March 18 the Russians launched a two-pronged drive in the Vilna-Naroch area to counter the German Verdun assault in the west. But the Russian assault soon broke down in the mud of the spring thaw. Its cost--between 70,000 and 100,000 casualties and 10,000 prisoners--did not improve Russian morale. German losses were about 20,000 men. The Austrian spring offensive against Italy brought another appeal to Tsar Nicholas for help. In response, Gen. Aleksei A. Brusilov, the capable and courageous commander of the Russian Southwestern Army Group, attacked on a 480-km (300 mi) front on June 4. In order to gain surprise, there was no prior massing of troops or preliminary artillery preparation. Well-planned, rehearsed, and executed, the assaults bit through the Austro-German line in two places. Brusilov, however, received little or no aid or cooperation from the two other Russian army groups on the front, and on June 16 a German counteroffensive checked his northern thrust. Again taking the offensive on July 28, Brusilov made further gains, until slowed down by ammunition shortages. His third assault, begun on August 7, brought him into the Carpathian foothills by September 20. The offensive ended when German reinforcements, rushed from Verdun, bolstered the shattered Austrians, who were in danger of being knocked out of the war. The Brusilov Offensive was the most competent Russian operation of World War I. It weakened the Central Powers' offensives in Italy and at Verdun, contributing to the downfall of Falkenhayn. The Russians, however, had suffered 1 million casualties. The Brusilov Offensive thus contributed to the resentments that produced the Russian Revolutions of 1917. Austrian losses were even greater, and the defeat was the most important element in the disintegration of the Habsburg Empire. After long haggling with the Allies for a promise of rich territorial gain, Romania was so impressed by the early success of the Brusilov Offensive that it declared war on Germany and Austria on August 27. Romanian armies advanced into Transylvania, where they were repulsed by Falkenhayn, now commanding the Ninth Army. Mackensen, commanding the German-reinforced Bulgarian Danube Army, drove north through the Dobruja and crossed the Danube on November 23. Penned in a salient, Romanian Gen. Alexandru Averescu was disastrously defeated in the Battle of the Arges River (December 1-4). Bucharest was occupied on December 6, and by the year's end the remnants of the Romanian armies had been driven north into Russia, holding one tiny foothold in their own country with belated Russian support. The bulk of Romanian wheat fields and oil wells fell into German hands. The Balkan Front. The Allied forces now held a fortified position--the "Bird Cage"--around Salonika. French Gen. Maurice P. E. Sarrail was technically in command, but the British took orders from their home government. In July the reconstituted Serbian army, 118,000 strong, arrived by ship, and with additional reinforcements the Allied strength rose to more than 250,000. Sarrail planned an offensive up the Vardar Valley, but on August 17 Bulgar-German attacks initiated the Battle of Florina. The Allied forces were driven back to the Struma River line by August 27. Sarrail's counteroffensive, launched on September 10, dwindled to a stop as Sarrail bickered with his subordinates. In Albania active operations began in July. An Italian corps finally pushed an Austrian corps north and linked with Sarrail's main body at Lake Ochrida on November 10. The Turkish Fronts: The Caucasus, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Palestine , Arabia.General Yudenich, one of the few highly capable Russian commanders, advanced from Kars toward Erzerum on January 11, reaching the city and breaking through its ring of forts in a 3-day battle (February 13-16). Trebizond (Trabzon) was captured on April 18, facilitating Russian logistical support. Enver Pasha launched the Turkish counteroffensive in late June. Yudenich, moving with characteristic rapidity and judgment on July 2, routed the Turkish Third Army completely on July 25. He then turned on the Turkish Second Army. Kemal, hero of Gallipoli and now a corps commander, scored the only Turkish successes, capturing Mus and Bitlis in August; Yudenich quickly retook them, however. Fighting ceased when both sides retired to winter quarters. In Mesopotamia, Townshend's besieged force at Kut-el-Amara vainly waited for help. The British suffered 21,000 casualties in a series of unsuccessful rescue attempts, and with starvation near, Townshend capitulated on April 29, surrendering 2,070 British and approximately 6,000 Indian troops. To divert Turkish forces from Mesopotamia, Russian Gen. N. N. Baratov moved on the Persian town of Kermanshah. He reached Karind on March 12 and advanced on Baghdad. After Kut fell, Turkish commander Halil Pasha shifted his forces, repulsed a Russian attack at Khanikin on June 1, and retook Kermanshah by August. British Gen. Sir Frederick S. Maude, appointed to the Mesopotamian command in August, found himself reduced to a defensive role while possible British withdrawal from the theater was considered. When he received permission to resume the offensive, Maude began movement up both banks of the Tigris on December 13 with 166,000 men, two-thirds of them Indian. British forces in Egypt, under Gen. Sir Archibald Murray, began an eastward extension of Suez Canal defenses into the Sinai Desert, a complex plan involving the laying of water pipelines, construction of roads and a railway, and fortifications. Several skirmishes occurred in Sinai as British covering troops met Turkish resistance. On June 5 an Arab revolt against the Turks broke out in the Hejaz. Initially unimpressive, the revolt spread to Palestine and Syria under the leadership of British archaeologist T. E. LAWRENCE, a brilliant tactician who joined forces with HUSAYN IBN ALI. With a force of only a few thousand Arabs, Lawrence succeeded in threatening the Turks' entire line of land communications north through Syria to the Taurus Mountains. On August 3, German Gen. Kress von Kressenstein, with 15,000 Turkish troops and German machine gunners, struck the British Sinai railhead at Rumani in a surprise attack. He was repelled, and as the year ended a massive British advance was underway. The War at Sea: The Battle of Jutland. From the beginning of 1916, Germany had made an intensive effort to reduce the size of the British fleet, employing submarines, airships, and mines. The campaign, however, was progressing too slowly, and consequently by spring plans were formulated to lure a portion of the Grand Fleet into an open-seas confrontation, surrounding and destroying the British ships before reinforcements could arrive. The German High Seas Fleet under Vice Adm. Reinhard Scheer put to sea on May 30, led by von Hipper's scouting fleet--40 fast vessels built around a nucleus of five battle cruisers, sailing northward. Well behind was the main fleet of 59 ships. Warned of the sortie by German radio chatter, the Grand Fleet under Adm. Sir John Jellicoe headed toward the Skagerrak. Leading was Beatty's scouting force of 52 ships, including his 6 battle cruisers and Adm. Hugh Evan-Thomas's squadron of 4 new superdreadnoughts. Jellicoe's main fleet, following, was composed of 99 vessels. Overall, the British had 37 capital ships at sea: 28 dreadnoughts and 9 battle cruisers; the Germans had 27 capital ships: 16 dreadnoughts, 6 older battleships, and 5 battle cruisers. At 3:31 PM on May 31, Beatty's two eastbound divisions sighted Hipper's force steaming south. (Hipper had already sighted Beatty and was returning toward the German main fleet.) As Hipper hoped, Beatty turned on a parallel course to the German squadron, signaling Evan-Thomas's dreadnought squadron--which Hipper had not yet sighted--to follow. Both battle-cruiser forces opened fire at a 15,000-m (16,500-yd) range, with the German gunnery more accurate. Beatty's flagship Lion received several hits, followed by mortal blows to two thin-skinned British battle cruisers, Indefatigable and Queen Mary. Beatty, with only 4 ships left to oppose the German 5, and Evan-Thomas still out of range, tersely signaled, "Engage the enemy closer." Nevertheless, at 4:42 Beatty sighted the German main fleet approaching; reversing course, he turned north to join Jellicoe, hoping to lure the German fleet toward him. Hipper had already turned and was firing accurately at Beatty's ships and those of Evan-Thomas, who was slow in turning and was now also being pounded by Scheer's main battle line. For over an hour the chase to the north continued, both sides sustaining considerable damage. Shortly after 6 PM, Beatty sighted Jellicoe's six divisions approaching from the northwest in parallel columns, behind Rear Adm. Sir Horace Hood's squadron of three battle cruisers and two light cruisers. Both Jellicoe and Beatty began to swing entirely around Scheer, hoping to block him from his base. Shortly before 6:30, Scheer sighted Hood's squadron to his right front; simultaneously British dreadnought shells began to fall around the German battle line. Within minutes practically every major ship in both fleets was within range and a furious general engagement erupted. The German battle cruisers caught the worst of the storm; Hipper's flagship Lutzow was hammered out of action. On the British side Hood's flagship and two British cruisers were sunk. The High Seas Fleet was now inside the converging arc of the Grand Fleet and taking heavy punishment. At 6:35, Scheer, under cover of a smoke screen and destroyer attacks, suddenly reversed course by a difficult and perfectly executed simultaneous 180-degree turn, breaking out of the British net and heading west. Jellicoe, instead of pursuing, continued southward, because he knew his fleet was now between the Germans and their bases. Then, at 6:55, Scheer made another 180-degree fleet turn back toward the British, subjecting his ships to the might of almost the entire Grand Fleet. This time it seemed that the Germans could not escape destruction in the hail of great projectiles, but Scheer again made a simultaneous turn away, while four remaining German battle cruisers charged toward the British line to cover the withdrawal. Then, German destroyers sped in toward Jellicoe's battleships to launch a torpedo attack and spread a smoke screen. Jellicoe, overly cautious and wary of torpedoes, turned away. By the time he had resumed his battle line, the German High Seas Fleet had disappeared westward into the dusk as Scheer made another 180-degree turn. Amazingly, none of the German battle cruisers had been sunk in their courageous "death ride." Although the main battle was over, Scheer knew that the British fleet was heading southward, hoping to trap him as he returned to his home ports. Aware that his fleet could not survive a renewed general battle, after dark Scheer boldly turned to the southeast, deliberately crashing into a formation of light cruisers at the tail of Jellicoe's southbound fleet. He battered his way through in a chaotic midnight battle of collisions, sinkings, and gunfire. By dawn, Scheer was shepherding his crippled fleet toward the Jade anchorage. The British now turned back to their bases. They had lost three battle cruisers, three cruisers, and eight destroyers; they had 6,784 casualties. The Germans lost one old battleship, one battle cruiser, four light cruisers, and five destroyers; casualties were 3,039. The Battle of Jutland marked the end of an epoch in naval warfare. It was the last great fleet action in which the opponents slugged it out within eyesight of one another. A drawn battle tactically, it did not change the strategic situation, other than to convince the Germans that they had no chance of defeating the Grand Fleet. In the main, German naval effort was now concentrated on submarine activities. Tremendous toll was taken on Allied shipping: 300,000 tons per month by December. Operations in 1917 Global Strategy. Toward the end of 1916, at another Allied conference called by Joffre at Chantilly, general agreement had been reached to continue a policy of joint Anglo-French large-scale operations on the western front in conjunction with simultaneous Russian and Italian offensives. These would have priority over all operations elsewhere, although the new British prime minister, David LLOYD GEORGE, decided to undertake a major campaign in Palestine as well. On Dec. 31, 1916, Joffre was retired, and was succeeded by Nivelle. This turn of events immediately complicated Allied coordination. Nivelle, who was planning a giant joint Anglo-French offensive, clashed with Haig about their command relationship. The French government supported Nivelle, and the British were divided. Lloyd George, who distrusted Haig and admired Nivelle, placed the BEF under Nivelle's command, to the horror of Haig and Sir William Robertson, the new chief of the Imperial General Staff. Through this bickering, and Nivelle's own imprudent announcements, secrecy was lost. Ludendorff, aware of the Allied preparations and realizing the vulnerability of overextended German lines in the west, deliberately chose a defensive attitude on both major fronts while forcing Austria (with German assistance) to take decisive action against Italy, which he believed could be defeated in 1917. The emperor approved this strategic concept, and also concurred in the inauguration of unrestricted submarine warfare, regardless of American opinion. He virtually granted unlimited authority to the military high command. United States Entry. When World War I erupted, U.S. President Woodrow WILSON declared that the United States would adopt a policy of strict neutrality. Wilson urged all Americans to be "impartial in thought as well as in action." Past loyalty to France as well as the German invasion of neutral Belgium, however, resulted in the development of a pro-Allied slant in the United States. In addition, Wilson's inner circle contained a number of officials--including Col. Edward M. HOUSE, Wilson's closest advisor--whose partisanship toward the Allied cause was obvious. When Britain began a blockade of Germany, the Germans countered by establishing a war zone around the British Isles and announcing that their submarines would sink all vessels in the area. By the middle of 1915 a number of relatively minor incidents had occurred with small losses of American lives. American travelers, however, remained undaunted. The sinking of the Lusitania sent the first shock wave. Wilson strongly protested against what he regarded as needless slaughter. Following the sinking of the British liner Arabic on Aug. 19, 1915, the German government, fearing American involvement in the war on the side of the Allies, agreed to pay indemnities and guaranteed that submarines would not sink passenger liners without warning. Despite this agreement, another passenger ship, Sussex, was torpedoed by German U-boats on Mar. 24, 1916, and several Americans were killed. Germany subsequently announced (May 10) abandonment of the extended submarine campaign. During this period Great Britain, seeking to maintain a blockade, violated American neutrality rights by illegally seizing American vessels with such frequency that Wilson threatened to provide convoys for all American merchant ships. The 1916 presidential election was one of the closest in American history. The Republicans nominated Justice Charles Evans Hughes over Theodore Roosevelt, whereas the Democrats unanimously renominated Wilson. The Democratic slogan, "He kept us out of war," appealed to voters in the middle and far west, and support for Wilson in these sections enabled him to win reelection. Then, in a complete about-face, Germany announced resumption of its policy of unrestricted submarine warfare on Jan. 31, 1917. On February 3, Wilson broke off all diplomatic relations with Germany. A month later the Zimmermann note--written by Arthur Zimmermann, the German foreign minister, to the German ambassador in Mexico--was turned over to the U.S. government by British intelligence, who had intercepted and decoded the message. The note indicated that if Germany and the United States were to go to war, Germany would seek an alliance with Mexico--and offer the Mexicans Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona for their efforts against their northern neighbor. This, along with the news that more American ships had been sunk by German submarines, aroused Americans to a warlike stance. By Apr. 6, 1917, Congress approved a war resolution against Germany. War against Austria-Hungary was not declared until 8 months later, on December 7. The United States was ill-prepared for war. The army numbered barely more than 200,000, and not a single division had been formed. Maj. Gen. John J. PERSHING was selected to command the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) and the First Division, an amalgam of existing regular army units, was shipped to France in June. Pershing's plan called for a 1-million-man army overseas by May 1918, with long-range provision for 3 million men in Europe at a later date. A draft law--the Selective Service Act--was passed on May 18, 1917. The Western Front. Anticipating an Allied offensive, the Germans withdrew (February 23-April 5) to a highly organized defensive zone--the Hindenburg line, or Siegfried zone--about 32 km (20 mi) behind the winding, overextended line from Arras to Soissons. This new line could be held with fewer divisions, thus providing a larger and more flexible reserve. Behind a lightly held outpost line, heavily sown with machine guns, lay two successive defensive positions, heavily fortified. Farther back lay the German reserves concentrated and prepared for counterattack. The long-awaited Nivelle Offensive began on April 9 when British troops, following a heavy bombardment and gas attack, crashed into the positions of the German Sixth Army near Arras. British air supremacy was gained rapidly. Canadian troops stormed and took Vimy Ridge the first day. The British advance was finally halted by April 15, but the next day the French armies assaulted on a 64-km (40-mi) front between Soissons and Reims to take the Chemin des Dames, a series of wooded, rocky ridges paralleling the front. The Germans held the sector, fully cognizant of French plans as a result of Nivelle's confident public boasts of victory. Immediately before the attack, German fliers swept the sky of French aerial observation and German artillery fire destroyed approaching French tanks. Although the French managed to reach and capture the first German line, repeated attacks gained little ground. The operation was a colossal failure, costing the French nearly 120,000 men in 5 days. German losses, despite 21,000 captured, were much fewer. Disheartened following the disaster, the exhausted French army mutinied beginning on April 29. The bombastic Nivelle was replaced by Petain on May 15. After a 2-week period, Petain quelled the mutiny and restored the situation with a combination of tact, firmness, and justice. By amazingly efficient censorship control, French counterintelligence agencies completely blotted out all news of the mutiny. By the time Ludendorff finally learned of it, renewed British attacks had already drawn German reserves to the northern front, where Haig had launched an offensive, partly to relieve German pressure on the French and partly because he believed he could now break through the German lines. The Ypres salient was Haig's target, but first the British had to take the dominating Messines Ridge. On June 7, after a 17-day general bombardment, British mines packed with 500,000 kilograms (1.1 million pounds) of high explosives tore a wide gap in the German lines on the Messines Ridge. Then, under cover of the British air force, Gen. Sir Herbert Plumer's Second Army successfully occupied Messines. Elbowroom had been gained for the main offensive, and the clear-cut victory bolstered British morale. The bloody Third Battle of Ypres began on July 31 when the British attacked the Germans from the northeast. The low ground, sodden with rain, had been churned to a quagmire by a preliminary 3-day bombardment. Overhead the Allies had won temporary air superiority, but all surprise had been lost by the long preparation, and the German defense was well organized. After some early gains, the advance literally bogged down. In a series of limited assaults on narrow fronts, begun on September 20, the British inched forward against determined counterattacks. For the first time, the Germans used mustard gas, which scorched and burned the British troops. The taking of Passchendaele Ridge and Passchendaele village by Canadian troops on November 6 concluded the offensive. The Ypres salient had been deepened for about 8 km (5 mi), at great cost--approximately 240,000 British and 8,528 French casualties. German losses were estimated at 260,000. Determined to keep pressure on the Germans to permit French recovery from the mutiny, Haig brought the tank back into action. On November 20, Gen. J. H. G. BYNG's British Third Army surprised Gen. Georg von der Marwitz's German Second Army positions in front of Cambrai. At dawn approximately 200 tanks, followed by wave after wave of infantry, plowed into the Germans. The German defense collapsed temporarily and the assault bit through the Hindenburg line for 8 km (5 mi) on a 10-km (6-mi) front. Although two cavalry divisions were poised to exploit the breakthrough, infantry reserves were weak, many of the tanks broke down, and the advance slowed. On November 30, German counterattacks fell on the salient and Haig ordered a partial withdrawal on December 3. Nonetheless, Cambrai marked a turning point in western front tactics on two counts: successful assault without preliminary bombardment and the first mass use of tanks. The Italian Front. Cadorna, despite promises to aid the Allied offensive, did not actually start until after the battles of Arras and the Aisne were over. On May 12 the Italians again attempted to batter their way over mountainous terrain in the Tenth Battle of the Isonzo. After 17 days gains were small but losses huge: about 157,000 Italian casualties against about 75,000 Austrians. Cadorna now decided to make a supreme effort. With 52 divisions and 5,000 guns he launched the Eleventh Battle of the Isonzo on August 18. An assault between Gorizia and Trieste was fended off, but north of Gorizia the heavily reinforced Italian Second Army made a clear-cut advance, capturing the strategically important Bainsizza Plateau. The Austrians, close to collapse, asked for German help. A new Austrian Fourteenth Army (seven of its divisions and most of its artillery were German), under German Gen. Otto von Below, suddenly crashed against the Italian Second Army, sparking the Battle of CAPORETTO (Twelfth Isonzo) on October 24. Surprise bombardment, with clouds of gas and smoke shells, disrupted Italian signal communications. Then the German assault elements streamed through the zone. The battered Second Army was driven from its defensive lines back across the Tagliamento and Livenza rivers. The Italian Third Army withdrew smoothly along the coast, but part of the so-called Carnic Force on the northern Alpine fringe was trapped. By November 12, Cadorna had managed to stabilize his defense from Mount Pasubia, south of Trent, along the Piave River to the Gulf of Venice. There, the Austro-German offensive slowly ground to a halt, having outdistanced its supply. The catastrophe cost the Italians 40,000 killed and wounded plus 275,000 prisoners; Austro-German losses were about 20,000. Cadorna was replaced by Gen. Armando Diaz, and French and British reinforcements were moved into Italy to bolster the shaken Italians. A direct result of the disaster at Caporetto was the Rapallo Conference (November 5), which set up the Supreme War Council, the first attempt to attain overall Allied unity of command. The Eastern Front: Revolution in Russia. On March 12 (Febuary 27, O.S.) the garrison and workers of Petrograd (now Leningrad), capital of Russia, mutinied, beginning the RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONS OF 1917. Within 3 days Tsar Nicholas II had abdicated, being replaced by a provisional government of a new Russian Republic. The new regime, bickering with the Bolshevik-dominated Petrograd Soviet (Council of Workers and Soldiers' Deputies), pledged itself to continue war against the Central Powers until Allied victory. On March 14 the Soviet defied the provisional government and issued the notorious "Order No. 1," depriving officers of disciplinary authority. Broadcast throughout the armed forces, it produced the results desired by the Bolsheviks--breakdown of all military discipline. The Russian army and navy collapsed as threadbare, battle-weary soldiers and sailors murdered or deposed officers. The delighted Germans, halting all offensive movements on the eastern front lest the Russians reunite in defense of the homeland, diverted their troops to the western and Italian fronts. To undermine the provisional government, the Germans smuggled Vladimir Ilich LENIN and other Bolshevik activists into Russia, where Leon TROTSKY joined them. Despite all the turmoil, Aleksandr KERENSKY, appointed minister of war on May 8, responded to pressure from the alarmed Allies by ordering Brusilov, now commander in chief, to mount an offensive on the Galician front. On July 1, Brusilov attacked toward Lemberg with the few troops still capable of combat operations. After some initial gains, the Russian supply system broke down, and Russian enthusiasm and discipline faded quickly as German resistance stiffened. Gen. Max Hoffmann, commanding on the eastern front, began the German assault on July 19, crushing the demoralized Russian armies. The Germans halted their advance at the Galician border, but on September 1, Gen. Oscar von Hutier's Eighth Army attacked Riga, the northern anchor of the Russian front. As a holding attack on the west bank of the Dvina River threatened the city, three divisions crossed the river to the north on pontoon bridges, encircling the fortress, while exploiting elements poured eastward. The Russian Twelfth Army fled in complete panic, and a small German amphibious force occupied Osel and Dago islands in the Gulf of Riga. The German victory at Riga left the Russian capital unprotected. The Kerensky government (Kerensky had become head of the provisional government on July 20), which had made the fatal mistake of continuing the unpopular war effort, fled Petrograd for Moscow. On November 7 (October 25, O.S.) the Bolshevik leaders Lenin and Trotsky seized power. Lured by promises of "land, peace, bread," Russian soldiers deserted in droves and the revolutionary government abandoned the war effort on November 26. A truce was signed on December 15, ending hostilities on the eastern front and permanently erasing Russia from the Allied ranks. Lenin, anxious to focus his attention on the burgeoning revolution in Russia, agreed to the harsh Treaty of BREST-LITOVSK (Mar. 3, 1918), whereby Russia recognized the independence of the Ukraine, Finland, and Georgia; gave up control of Poland, the Baltic states, and a portion of Belorussia; and ceded Kars, Ardahan, and Batumi to Turkey. The Ukraine, which remained occupied throughout 1918, provided grain to save the German people from starvation. The Balkan Front. In Greece, King Constantine's government continued to conciliate the Central Powers. Finally, bowing to Allied pressure, Constantine abdicated on June 12. He was replaced by his son Alexander, who appointed (June 26) Venizelos as premier, and the next day Greece entered the war. The ineffective General Sarrail was replaced by Gen. M. L. A. Guillaumat, who set out to reorganize the Greek forces and plan an offensive. The Turkish Fronts: Palestine and Mesopotamia. The Russian Revolution eliminated the Caucasus as a consequential war theater early in the year, freeing Turkish troops to support other fronts. On January 8-9, in the Battle of Magruntein, the British cleared the Sinai Peninsula of all organized Turkish forces. Sir Archibald Murray was then authorized to begin a limited offensive into Palestine, where the Turks were established in defensive positions along the ridges between Gaza and Beersheba, the two natural gateways to the region. An attack on Gaza (March 26) led by Gen. Sir Charles M. Dobell failed because of defective staff work and a communications breakdown between Dobell's mounted force and infantry. Murray's report, however, presented this First Battle of Gaza as a British victory, and Murray was ordered to advance without delay and take Jerusalem. On April 17, Dobell attempted a frontal assault and was again thrown back by the now well-prepared Turks. Both Dobell and Murray were then relieved, the latter being replaced by General Allenby, a fighting cavalryman with the gift of leadership and tactical ability. His instructions were to take "Jerusalem before Christmas." On October 31, Allenby attacked in the Third Battle of Gaza (Battle of Beersheba). Reversing his predecessor's plans, Allenby left three divisions demonstrating in front of Gaza and secretly moved against Beersheba. Surprise was complete, and an all-day battle culminated at dusk in a mounted charge by an Australian cavalry brigade through and over the Turkish wire and trenches into Beersheba itself, capturing the vital water supply. Hastily evacuating, the Turkish Seventh Army now lay with its left flank open. Allenby struck north on November 6, launching the Desert Mounted Corps across the country toward the sea. The Turks evacuated Gaza in time to avoid the trap, but Allenby, pursuing closely, struck again on November 13, driving the Turks back north. Turning now toward Jerusalem, Allenby was detained by the appearance of Turkish reserves and the arrival of General von Falkenhayn, who reestablished a front from the sea to Jerusalem. Forging ahead, Allenby assaulted the enemy positions on December 8, driving the Turks from the Holy City, which was occupied by the British the next day. In Mesopotamia, Sir Frederick Maude skillfully assaulted Kut on February 22, forcing the Turks back toward Baghdad. After several days of fighting along the Diyala River, Maude entered the city on March 11, the Turkish forces retreating in some disorder. Maude now launched three exploiting columns up the Tigris, Euphrates, and Diyala rivers, securing his hold on Baghdad. When the summer heat subsided, Maude struck sharply northwestward up the Euphrates River, pursuing the Turkish survivors into central Mesopotamia. He prepared to continue his advance to the oil fields of Mosul, but died of cholera on November 18. Gen. Sir William R. Marshall succeeded him. The War at Sea. After careful calculations the German naval command had concluded that unrestricted submarine warfare would force Britain to sue for peace in 5 months. It almost worked. British shipping losses soared to 875,000 tons per month by April. British and neutral merchant sailors began to refuse to sail. Recommendations for instituting convoys were rejected by the Admiralty as an unsound waste of available cruisers and destroyers. The efforts of light warships to sink submarines were disappointing, however. Admiral Jellicoe (now first sea lord) calculated that Britain would be depleted of food and other needed raw materials by July. The insistence of Prime Minister Lloyd George, combined with the strong recommendations of U.S. Adm. William S. SIMS and of Beatty (now commander of the Grand Fleet), finally forced adoption of the convoy system on May 10. The results were spectacular. British escort vessels, joined by American destroyers in May, provided adequate protection to merchant ships and at the same time were able to sink more submarines. Unquestionably the convoys saved Britain. Although shipping losses by the end of the year exceeded 8 million tons, Allied shipbuilding programs more than offset the losses. In other naval actions German destroyers raided in the English Channel in February, March, and April. In response the British made several raids on Ostend and Zeebrugge. Later in the year the British raided German coastal shipping off Holland and, in November, made an unsuccessful battle-cruiser raid against German minesweeping operations in Heligoland Bight. In December the Germans raided several British-Scandinavian convoys. These raids inflicted serious losses on British merchant shipping, forcing Beatty to use a squadron of battleships as a covering force for future convoys. Operations In 1918 Global Strategy. The Allied situation at the beginning of 1918 was grim. The major Allied offensives of 1917 had failed. Russia had collapsed, and Italy was on the verge of collapse. The German U-boat campaign still threatened the maritime supply route from the United States. Many months would pass before American soldiers could bolster depleted Allied manpower. Both Britain and France were on the defensive. Nor had the Central Powers been successful. They were being strangled by the Allied naval blockade. Austria was at the end of its resources; Turkey and Bulgaria were wobbling; the burden of the war fell more and more heavily on Germany. Hindenburg and Ludendorff had established a virtual military dictatorship in Germany and exercised almost as much authority over the subservient governments of Austria, Bulgaria, and Turkey. The American Buildup. The United States, unprepared for war, was faced with organizing, equipping, training, transporting, and supplying an overseas military force. From a strength of 200,000 men and 9,000 officers, the army swelled to more than 4 million men, including 200,000 officers; about half reached Europe before the war ended. Of these, more than half were in combat units--42 divisions of about 28,000 men each--the remainder in supporting roles. Training emphasis was on mobile warfare in offensive combat, with stress on individual marksmanship. Pershing hoped to break out of the constraints of trench warfare. Pershing and Allied leaders agreed on the Lorraine area east of Verdun as the American combat zone. Supplies from the United States went to ports in southwest France, and movement overland conflicted little with the Allied efforts farther north. Overseas transportation, the province of the U.S. Navy, was in part provided by German merchant vessels seized in American ports, plus an improvised fleet of the American merchant marine. The combined fleet carried more than a million American soldiers to France without loss of a single vessel--on eastbound voyages. (The remaining million sent overseas were transported on Allied ships.) The 800,000-man U.S. Navy was primarily involved in convoy and other antisubmarine activities, laying 56,000 of the 70,000 mines constituting the North Sea mine belt from Scotland to Norway. Also, a division of five battleships joined the British Grand Fleet and three other battleships operated in Irish waters against surface raiders. Since the United States was not technically one of the Allies, Pershing was directed that his expeditionary force was to be "a separate and distinct component of the combined forces, the identity of which must preserved." The Allies, short of manpower and unsure of the inexperienced Americans' military ability, wanted the AEF turned over in toto as a replacement reservoir for the French and British armies, but War Secretary Newton D. BAKER and President Wilson upheld Pershing despite pleas from French premier Georges CLEMENCEAU and Lloyd George. In an address to Congress on Jan. 8, 1918, President Wilson laid down his famous FOURTEEN POINTS for peace, calling for--among other things open diplomacy, armament reduction, national self-determination, and the formation of a league of nations. These idealistic war aims appeared to give moral weight to the Allied cause. Operations on the Western Front. Ludendorff realized that Germany's only hope of winning the war lay in a decisive victory in the west in 1918, before American manpower could exercise a significant effect. With Russia out of the war, he was able to shift most German forces from the east to prepare for a major offensive. His intention was to smash the Allied armies in a series of powerful thrusts. Recognizing the divergent interests of the French (concerned with protection of Paris) and the British (interested in their lines of communications with the Channel ports), he intended to drive a wedge between their armies and then destroy the British in subsequent assaults. The Germans began their drive, the Second Battle of the Somme, at dawn on March 21 in heavy fog, striking the right flank of the British sector on a 100-km (60-mi) front between Arras and La Fere. Following a surprise 5-hour bombardment, specially trained German shock elements rolled through the fog, each division pressing as far and as fast as possible. The stunned British fell back, allowing the German Eighteenth Army to reach and pass the Somme. As British reserves raced to stop the German advance, Haig appealed for French reinforcements, but Petain was more concerned with protecting Paris. The British pressed for a supreme commander, and on April 3 the Allied Supreme War Council, meeting at Beauvais, appointed Ferdinand FOCH as the Allied commander in chief. Immediately he began to send reserves to aid the British. Meanwhile, the German drive, after gaining 64 km (40 mi), lost momentum. Foch's shifting of reserves checked the German assault after it reached Montdidier, and Ludendorff brought it to a halt. Allied losses amounted to about 240,000 casualties (163,000 British, 77,000 French); German casualties were almost as high. The most serious consequence of the offensive, from the German point of view, had been the institution of an Allied unified command. Meanwhile, on March 23, a remarkable long-range German cannon began a sporadic bombardment of Paris from a position 105 km (65 mi) away. This amazing weapon seriously damaged Parisian morale and eventually inflicted 876 casualties, but did not significantly affect the war. On April 9, in the Battle of Lys, the Germans struck the British sector again, this time in Flanders on a narrower front, threatening the important rail junction of Hazebrouck and the Channel posts. German troops quickly cut through unprepared British divisions and a Portuguese division. On April 12, after announcing, "Our backs are to the wall," Haig forbade further retreat and galvanized British resistance. The German drive was halted on April 17 after gaining 16 km (10 mi), which included the recapture of Messines Ridge. Again, and for the same reasons as before, Ludendorff had achieved tactical success, but strategical failure. There was no breakthrough, and the Channel ports were safe. Ludendorff struck again--the Third Battle of Aisne--on May 27, this time on a 40-km (25-mi) front along the Chemin des Dames. This action was a diversion against the French, preparatory to a planned decisive blow to be struck against the British in Flanders. German troops, preceded by tanks, routed 12 French divisions (3 of them British), and by noon the Germans were crossing the Aisne; by evening they had crossed the Vesle, west of Fismes, and on May 30 reached the Marne. On May 28, as Pershing was rushing reinforcements to the French on the Marne, the first American offensive of the war took place at Cantigny, 80 km (50 mi) northwest. Although only a local operation, its success--against veteran troops of Hutier's Eighteenth Army--boosted Allied morale. At the same time the U.S. Second and Third Divisions were flung against the nose of the German offensive along the Marne, moving into position on May 30. The Third Division held the bridges at Chateau-Thierry, then counterattacked and, with assistance from rallying French troops, drove the Germans back across the Marne. The Second Division checked German attacks west of Chateau-Thierry. Ludendorff called off his offensive on June 4. The Second Division then counterattacked, spearheaded by its marine brigade. Between June 5 and June 17 the Germans were uprooted from positions at Vaux, Bouresches, and Belleau Wood. A German advance on Compiegne, begun on June 9, was halted by French and American troops on June 12. Ludendorff, still planning a climactic drive against the British in Flanders, attempted one more preliminary offensive in Champagne to lure French troops away from the British front. The Second Battle of the Marne began on July 14-15 when the Allies, warned of the blow by deserters, aerial reconnaissance, and prisoners, battered the advancing Germans with artillery. East of Reims the attack was halted within a few hours by the French. West of Reims approximately 14 divisions of the German Seventh Army crossed the Marne, but American forces snubbed the attack there. Then Allied aircraft and artillery destroyed the German bridges, disrupting supply and forcing the attack to halt on July 17. In the space of 5 months the Germans had suffered half a million casualties. Allied losses had been somewhat greater, but American troops were now arriving at a rate of 300,000 a month. As Ludendorff prepared to pull back, the Allied counteroffensive began on July 18. The French armies, using light tanks and aided by U.S. and British divisions, assaulted the Marne salient from left to right, reaching the Vesle River and recapturing Soissons. Ludendorff now called off his proposed Flanders drive, concentrating on stabilizing the situation along the Vesle. The Marne salient no longer existed. Strategically, the Second Battle of the Marne turned the tide; the initiative had been wrested from the Germans. Ludendorff's gamble had failed. On August 8, near Amiens, Haig threw his Fourth Army and the attached French First Army against the German Eighteenth and Second armies. The Germans, caught off guard by a well-mounted assault, began a panicky withdrawal. Ludendorff bitterly declared that August 8 was the "Black Day of the German Army." He later added: "The war must be ended!" The Germans managed to reestablish a position 15 km (10 mi) behind the former nose of the salient, but on August 10, French troops forced the evacuation of Montdidier. On August 21 the British and French armies renewed the assault in the second phase of the Battle of the Amiens. Ludendorff ordered a general withdrawal from the Lys and Amiens areas, but his plans were disrupted when the Anzacs penetrated across the Somme on August 30-31. The entire German situation deteriorated, necessitating retreat to the final position--the Hindenburg line. By this time Haig had expended his reserves and could not further exploit his victory. German casualties were more than 100,000, including about 30,000 prisoners. Allied losses were 22,000 British and 20,000 French. Tactically and strategically, the Allies had gained another major victory; German morale plummeted. On August 30, Pershing, having won his fight for a separate and distinct U.S. army operating on its own assigned front, moved toward the Saint-Mihiel salient, which the Germans had occupied since 1914. Supported by an Allied air force of about 1,400 planes--American, French, Italian, and Portuguese--under U.S. Col. Billy MITCHELL, the U.S. First Army attacked both faces of the salient on September 12. The assault was completely successful; the salient was entirely cleared by September 16, and Pershing at once turned to the tremendous job of shifting his entire army to another front. More than 1 million men, with tanks and guns, had to be moved 100 km (60 mi)--entirely at night--to the area of the Argonne Forest, west of the Meuse River, and made ready to start another major offensive. Foch planned two major assaults. One was to be a Franco-American drive from the Verdun area toward Mezieres, a vital German supply center and railroad junction. The other was a British offensive between Peronne and Lens, with the railroad junction of Aulnoye as its objective. If successful, this double penetration would jeopardize the entire German logistical situation on the western front. After the Americans swept through Vauquois and Montfaucon on September 26-27, their drive slowed as the Germans rushed in reinforcements. Replacing a number of his assault divisions with rested troops from the Saint-Mihiel operation, Pershing renewed the offensive on October 4. No room for maneuver existed; the First Army battered its way slowly forward in a series of costly frontal attacks, but the Argonne Forest was cleared, facilitating the advance of the French Fourth Army, on the left, to the Aisne River. French Prime Minister Clemenceau, exasperated by the slow progress of the Americans, attempted unsuccessfully to have Pershing relieved. Foch, aware that the American offensive was drawing all available German reserves from the rest of the western front, declined to support Clemenceau. As October ended, the First Army had punched through most of the third and final German line. With rested divisions replacing tired ones, the First Army advanced again on November 1, smashing through the last German positions northeast and west of Buzancy, thus enabling the French Fourth Army to cross the Aisne. In the open now, American spearheads raced up the Meuse Valley, reaching the Meuse before Sedan on November 6 and severing by artillery fire the Mezieres-Montmedy rail line, a vital supply artery for the entire German front. On September 27, a day after the beginning of the American offensive, Haig's army group flung itself against the Hindenburg line; but his drive soon slowed down, however, in the face of skillful German defense. Because of American pressure in the Meuse-Argonne, a German retreat all along the line became necessary. In a renewed assault, the British broke through German defenses on the Selle River on October 17. At the same time the Belgians and British under the Belgian king Albert began to move again in Flanders. The German army began to crack. On October 6, as the front lines began to crumble, the new German chancellor, Prince Max, of Baden, sent a message to President Wilson, requesting an armistice on the basis of Wilson's Fourteen Points. An exchange of messages was concluded on October 23 with Wilson's insistence that the United States and the Allies not negotiate an armistice with the existing military dictatorship of Germany. Immediately before formal dismissal, Ludendorff resigned on October 26 to permit the desperate German government to comply with Wilson's demand. Hindenburg, however, retained his post as German field commander, with Gen. Wilhelm GROENER replacing Ludendorff as quartermaster general, or chief of staff. Revolution and Armistice. Inspired by the Communists and sparked by a mutiny of the High Seas Fleet, which erupted on October 29, revolts flared inside Germany. A new socialist government took power and proclaimed a republic on November 9. The emperor fled to the Netherlands the next day. Meanwhile, a German delegation, headed by civilian Matthias Erzberger, negotiated an armistice with Foch in his railway-coach headquarters on a siding at Compiegne. Agreement was finally reached at 5:00 AM, Nov. 11, 1918. The terms specified that the German army must immediately evacuate all occupied territory and Alsace-Lorraine; immediately surrender great quantities of war materiel; surrender all submarines; and intern all other surface warships as directed by the Allies. In addition the Germans were to evacuate German territory west of the Rhine, and three bridgeheads over the Rhine were to be occupied by the Allies. The armistice became effective immediately; hostilities ceased at 11:00 AM on November 11. Although the AEF was a vital factor in the final Allied victory, the American role was primarily to add a final increment of numbers and fresh initiative, permitting the much larger and more experienced Allied armies to achieve equally spectacular successes in the final weeks of the war. The Italian Front. During the spring Germany transferred its troops in Italy to the western front, insisting that the Austrians crush Italy single-handedly because Russia was out of the war. Following a diversionary attack in the west at the Tonale Pass, which was repulsed on June 13, Austrian drives toward Verona and Padua were similarly checked. Diaz, marking time until certain of Allied success on other fronts, finally prepared a double offensive. (By this time the Austro-Hungarian government was requesting an armistice.) The Italians attacked on October 24 in the Battle of Vittorio Veneto but were quickly halted on the Piave River line. French troops, however, clawed a footing on the left, and British troops gained a large bridgehead on the right, splitting the front by October 28. The penetration reached Sacile on October 30. The next day, as Italian reinforcements exploited the ever-widening gap, Austrian resistance collapsed. Belluno was reached on November 1 and the Tagliamento on the next day, while in the western zone British and French troops drove through to Trent on November 3. That same day Trieste was seized by an Allied naval expedition in the Gulf of Venice, and a few hours later an armistice was signed. Hostilities ended on November 4. The Balkan Front. At Salonika the brilliant French general Franchet d'Esperey succeeded Guillaumat in July. Grudgingly the Supreme War Council agreed to allow him to mount a major offensive. He nominally commanded nearly 600,000 men--Serb, Czech, Italian, French, and British--but only about 350,000 were available for duty. Opposing him were about 400,000 Bulgars. Practically all German troops had been withdrawn except for command and staff. Covered by heavy artillery support, Serbian troops attacked the center of the front on September 15, flanked by French and Greek forces. The penetration was successful, as was a British diversionary attack on the right on September 18. Gaining momentum, the assault reached the Vardar on September 25, splitting the Bulgarian front. The British drive reached Strumitsa the next day, and French cavalry, passing through the main effort, took Skopje on September 29. Allied air forces created panic among the fleeing Bulgars. On September 29 the Bulgarians asked for and received an armistice, but Franchet d'Esperey kept his troops moving north. On November 1 they crossed the Danube at Belgrade and were prepared to march on Budapest and Dresden when Germany's armistice halted hostilities. The Turkish Fronts: Palestine, Syria, and Mesopotamia. During the early part of the year Allenby at Jerusalem was restricted to minor operations because of drafts on his force to the western front. To the south and east, however, Arabia was in flames. T. E. Lawrence, with a small group of British officers, reaped a harvest from the Arab rebellion against Turkish rule. Lawrence's guerrilla forces regularly raided the Hejaz Railway, running approximately 970 km (600 mi) from Amman, Palestine, to Medina in Arabia, the southernmost Turkish garrison. In all, Lawrence's activities kept more than 25,000 Turkish troops pinned down to blockhouses and posts along this line. By September, Lawrence, with Emir FAISAL, son of Husayn ibn Ali, self-styled "King of the Hejaz," had isolated Medina by destroying the railway line and was moving north to operate on Allenby's right flank. Meanwhile, Allenby had been reinforced during the late summer. He prepared meticulously for what was to be the decisive blow. The Turkish defensive line, skillfully fortified, lay from the Mediterranean, north of Jaffa, to the Jordan Valley. Allenby's plan was to mass his main effort on the seashore, burst open a gap, and then let his cavalry corps through while the entire British line swung north and east like a gate, pivoting on the Jordan Valley. Utmost secrecy was kept. At 4:30 AM on September 19 the offensive began. An infantry attack tore a wide gap along the seacoast, through which poured the Desert Mounted Corps. At the same time the Royal Air Force bombed rail junctions and all Turkish army headquarters, completely paralyzing communications. By dawn on September 20 the Turkish Eighth Army had ceased to exist, and the Seventh was falling back eastward in disorder toward the Jordan. The British cavalry then swept through Nazareth and turned east to reach the Jordan just south of the Sea of Galilee on September 21. On the desert flank to the east Lawrence and Faisal cut the railway line at Deraa on September 27, while Allenby pressed to take Damascus on October 1 and Beirut the next day. The Desert Mounted Corps continued to spearhead the advance, reaching Homs on October 16 and Aleppo on October 25. Within 5 days Turkey had signed an armistice at Mudros, ending the war in the Middle East. Allenby's victory at Megiddo was one of the most brilliant operations in the history of the British army. In 38 days Allenby's troops advanced 580 km (360 mi), taking 76,000 prisoners (4,000 of them Germans and Austrians). In Mesopotamia a British force under Lt. Gen. A. S. Cobbe was hurriedly pushed north from Baghdad on October 23 to secure the Mosul oil fields before the expected Turkish collapse. After a sharp fight at Sharqat on October 29, Cobbe hurried his cavalry to the outskirts of Mosul on November 1. Despite the provisions of the October 30 armistice, Cobbe was ordered to take the place. After some squabbling, the Turkish garrison of Halil Pasha agreed to march out and the British remained. The entire checkered Mesopotamian campaign had hinged on possession and protection of the oil fields. The war's end found them in Britain's hands, at a total cost of 80,007 casualties. On November 12 the Allied fleet steamed through the Dardanelles, arriving off Constantinople (Istanbul) the next day, dramatizing the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The War at Sea. By early 1918, German submarine warfare had been contained by the Allied convoy system. It was, nevertheless, still a menace. U-boats operated from bases at Zeebrugge, Ostend, and Bruges. British Rear Adm. R. J. B. Keyes, commanding the Dover Patrol, organized a raid against the bases. On April 22-23 the light cruiser Vindictive dashed into Zeebrugge, with destroyer and submarine escort. At the same time a British submarine loaded with high explosives was blown up against the lock gates and two blockships were also sunk. The Vindictive escaped after inflicting some damage, but the base was not entirely sealed. A simultaneous raid against Ostend failed, but a later sortie (May 9-10) to block Ostend was partially successful. The German battle cruiser Goeben and light cruiser Breslau sailed into the Aegean Sea on January 20, but the voyage ended in disaster; the Goeben was badly damaged by British mines, and the Breslau was sunk. The Goeben, however, was saved despite British aerial bombing. As Germany approached collapse, German commanders planned a desperate sortie to provoke a final battle with the British Grand Fleet, but on October 29 the crews mutinied and seized control of the warships, ending the war at sea. Operations in East Africa. Despite intensive efforts the British were unable to overcome the elusive Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck during 4 years of continuous search and pursuit. They drove him into Portuguese East Africa in 1917, where he continued an active and aggressive guerrilla campaign, capturing Portuguese military posts and maintaining his small command by captured supplies. He then reentered German East Africa and, although he had only 4,000 men and was opposed by forces totaling 130,000, he succeeded in capturing several small posts before marching into British Northern Rhodesia. Finally, after the British were able to inform him of the armistice, he ended hostilities on November 14 and surrendered his command on November 23. Postarmistice. On November 17, under the terms of the armistice, Allied troops began to reoccupy those portions of France and Belgium that had been held by the Germans since 1914. Allied and U.S. troops followed the withdrawing Germans into Germany. On December 9, Allied troops crossed the Rhine into the bridgeheads agreed in the armistice. The British were at Cologne, the Americans at Coblenz, and the French at Mainz. Meanwhile, on November 21 the German High Seas Fleet sailed into the Firth of Forth, between the lines of the British Grand Fleet. It later was shifted to Scapa Flow. The Peace Treaties The First Debate at Versailles. The peace conference at Versailles (see PARIS PEACE CONFERENCE) opened officially on Jan. 18, 1919. In attendance were 70 delegates, representing 27 victorious Allied powers. Neither Germany nor the new Russian Soviet republic were represented. The principal participants in the conference were the leaders of the four great powers: Woodrow Wilson of the United States, Georges Clemenceau of France, David Lloyd George of Britain, and Vittorio ORLANDO of Italy. It soon became apparent that they had widely divergent motives and interests. Wilson was, at least at the outset, determined on implementing his Fourteen Points, which had been the basis for the armistice negotiations. Principally, Wilson was most intent on the establishment of a League of Nations, which would provide a basis for orderly international relations and the preservation of peace. Clemenceau was a tough, determined, and skillful politician. He was also a vengeful old man, who had seen much of France ruined, the flower of French manhood consumed in the horrendous war, and who could personally remember the harsh peace terms that Germany had imposed on his country after the Franco-Prussian War. He was determined not only that Germany should suffer, but that the peace terms should make it impossible for Germany to wage war ever again. Lloyd George was also a skilled politician. Although generally inclined to make a practical, moderate peace, he had been elected on the basis of promises that Germany and its war leaders would be punished. In general he distrusted Wilson's idealism and was determined that none of the Fourteen Points should be allowed to interfere with Britain, its traditional policies, or its commitments to others. Orlando, the least important of the so-called Big Four, was determined that Italy receive the huge territorial rewards that had been promised in 1915 to lure Italy into the war on the Allied side. On January 25 the conference unanimously adopted a resolution to establish the LEAGUE OF NATIONS. Then, after a committee was appointed to draft the Covenant of the League, the peace terms were hammered out by the Supreme Council, which consisted of the heads of government and foreign ministers of the five principal Allied powers: the United States, Britain, France, Italy, and Japan. Slowly and painfully, after 3 and one-half months of argument, the Allied leaders reached compromise solutions on all of the issues and secured the agreement of the smaller powers in matters in which they were concerned. By May 6 the Treaty of Versailles was finally ready to present to Germany. The Treaty of Versailles. The Covenant of the League of Nations was made an integral part of the treaty, and every nation signing the treaty had to accept the world organization. The League was intended to provide a mechanism for the peaceful settlement of disputes, for the promotion of world disarmament, and the general betterment of humankind. Except for the return of Alsace-Lorraine to France, which was agreed to unanimously, all of the important treaty provisions regarding German territory were compromises. Allied occupation of the Rhineland was to continue for at least 15 years, and possibly longer, and the region was to remain perpetually demilitarized, as was a belt of territory 50 km (30 mi) deep along the right bank of the Rhine. Three smaller frontier regions near Eupen and Malmedy were to be ceded to Belgium. Parts of the German provinces of Posen and West Prussia were to be given to Poland to provide that revived nation with access to the Baltic Sea; the Baltic seaport of Gdansk (Danzig) was to become a free state, but linked economically to Poland. This left East Prussia completely separated from the rest of Germany by this POLISH CORRIDOR to the Baltic. All of Germany's overseas possessions were to be occupied by the Allies but were to be organized as "mandates," subject to the supervision and control of the League of Nations. Britain and France divided most of Germany's African colonies, and Japan took over the extensive island possessions in the South Pacific. The treaty required Germany to accept sole responsibility and guilt for causing the war. The former emperor and other unspecified German war leaders were to be tried as war criminals. (This provision was never enforced.) A number of other military and economic provisions were designed not only to punish Germany for its war guilt, but also to insure France and the rest of the world against the possibility of future German aggression. The German army was limited to 100,000 men and was not to possess any heavy artillery, the general staff was abolished, and the navy was to be reduced. No air force would be permitted, and the production of military planes was forbidden. Germany was to pay for all civilian damages caused during the war. This burden, combined with payment of REPARATIONS to the Allies of great quantities of industrial goods, merchant shipping, and raw materials, was expected to prevent Germany from being able to finance any major military effort even if it were inclined to evade the military limitations. The Second Debate at Versailles. On April 29 a German delegation headed by Graf Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantzau, the German foreign minister, arrived at Versailles. On May 7 the members of the delegation were summoned to the Trianon Palace at Versailles to learn the treaty terms. After carefully reading the treaty, Brockdorff-Rantzau denounced it. He reminded the Allied leaders that the Fourteen Points had provided the basis for the armistice negotiations and thus were as binding on the Allies as on Germany. He insisted that the economic provisions of the treaty were impossible to fulfill. Although refusing to sign the treaty, the German delegation took it back to Berlin for the consideration of the government. Chancellor Philipp SCHEIDEMANN also denounced the treaty. The Allies had maintained their naval blockade of Germany, however, and after long and bitter debates in Berlin, it became obvious that Germany had no choice but to sign the treaty. Scheidemann and Brockdorff-Rantzau resigned on June 21. That same day, at Scapa Flow, the German High Seas Fleet staged a dramatic protest. Despite every conceivable British precaution, the German sailors scuttled each of their 50 warships in the harbor. On June 28 the new German chancellor, Gustav Bauer, sent another delegation to Versailles. After informing the Allies that Germany was accepting the treaty only because of the need to alleviate the hardships on its people caused by the "inhuman" blockade, the Germans signed. The Other Treaties. On September 10 representatives of the now tiny republic of Austria signed the Treaty of Saint-Germain, just outside Paris. The once great Habsburg empire had completely disintegrated in October and November 1918. The treaty, therefore, merely legalized the disappearance of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Austria recognized the independence of Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, and Hungary; it also recognized the award of Galicia to Poland, and of the Trentino, South Tyrol, Trieste, and Istria to Italy. The Austrian army was limited to 30,000 men, and Austria agreed to pay economic reparations to Allied nations that had been victims of Austro-Hungarian aggression. Austria was forbidden to unite with Germany, as many people of both countries had envisioned. On November 27, Bulgaria signed a treaty with the Allies at Neuilly, another suburb of Paris. Bulgaria recognized the independence of Yugoslavia, and agreed to cede territory to Yugoslavia, Romania, and Greece. Bulgaria's army was restricted, and the country was forced to pay reparations to its Allied neighbors. Hungary signed the Treaty of Trainon at Versailles on June 4, 1920, which reduced the country in area from 283,000 sq km (109,000 sq mi) to less than 93,000 sq km (36,000 sq mi). The Hungarian army was limited to 35,000 troops, and reparations were demanded, although the amount was unspecified. Because of a number of complications, the peace settlement with Turkey was long delayed. When finally signed--at Sevres, another suburb of Paris, on Aug. 10, 1920--it was somewhat meaningless, because Turkish strongman Mustafa Kemal Pasha was leading a nationalist movement and establishing a powerful and proud government. After reconquering Turkish Armenia, which had become independent, and after ejecting a Greek army from Turkey in a brilliant campaign, Mustafa Kemal reoccupied Thrace, or European Turkey, which had been given to Greece by the Treaty of Sevres. He then informed the Allies that he was willing to accept most of the other provisions of the original peace settlement, consistent with the Fourteen Points. The Allies, having no desire for a new war, and accepting the reasonableness of the Turkish position, agreed. By the Treaty of Lausanne (see LAUSANNE, TREATY OF), signed on July 24, 1923, Turkey recognized the independence of the Arab Kingdom of Hejaz, the French mandate over Syria, and the British mandates over Palestine and Mesopotamia. Turkey also recognized Greek and Italian occupation of most of its former Aegean islands and agreed to demilitarize the straits, retaining the right to close them in time of war. Turkey was to pay no reparations. It was a fair and responsible treaty that left Turkey better off than it had been before the war, because all of the territories lost were really non-Turkish and had been perpetual military and economic problems for the old empire. In the United States, despite President Wilson's efforts, the Senate failed to ratify the Versailles peace agreement. As a result the United States arranged separate treaties with Germany, Austria, and Hungary. Technology Goes to War More major military technological innovations occurred during World War I than in any other war in history. With the single important exception of the atomic bomb, all of the important means of warfare of World War II were merely improvements or modifications of weapons in use in 1918. Aircraft and Air Warfare. Although balloons had been used in earlier wars--such as the U.S. Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War--serious directed and controlled flight above the ground was less than a decade-and-a-half old when World War I broke out. At first two varieties of aircraft were used: the rigid, lighter-than-air dirigible balloon, or airship, and the heavier-than-air airplane. The best known and most successful type of dirigible airship was the German Zeppelin. The airplanes were greatly improved versions of the crude prototype first flown (1903) in the United States by the Wright brothers. The Germans used their Zeppelin dirigibles in a number of high-altitude raids on Paris and London, but long before the end of the war the Germans abandoned mass Zeppelin raids because rapidly improving Allied airplanes were able to climb to the same altitude, and by firing tracer machine-gun bullets into the hydrogen-filled gas bags of the dirigibles, turn them into aerial holocausts. Zeppelins were used for long-distance transportation--one memorable nonstop flight from Bulgaria took much-needed supplies to the tiny isolated German army of General von Lettow-Vorbeck in East Africa--but by the end of the war the Zeppelin had been eclipsed by the combat airplane. The air war, for all its color, romance, and glory, had little influence on the outcome of World War I. For the most part, aerial warfare consisted of a number of individual combats, bearing little relation to the course of the great ground battles. Bombing did not seriously damage any war industry, and communications and supply lines on the ground were never disrupted to any important extent. Basically, the air war of 1914-18 was a forerunner of things to come and a proving ground for tactical and technical theory. The Submarine. The first efforts toward submarine warfare were pioneered by Americans in the Revolutionary and Civil wars. Truly effective military submersibles, however, made their appearance in World War I. Before 1914 a few German naval thinkers had seen the potential of the submarine as a means of offsetting Britain's worldwide dominance of the sea by harassing and attempting to block Great Britain's vulnerable overseas lines of communications. It almost worked. The submarine campaign of 1917 very nearly forced Britain out of the war, but the convoy system saved Britain, and ultimately the submarines were no longer a serious threat. The Tank. As dramatic and important a new weapon as the airplane and the submarine, the tank also demonstrated a potential that would come to be fully realized only in subsequent warfare. By the end of World War I the tank was becoming a major force in ground battles. It was slow, cumbersome, and vulnerable to hostile artillery, but it could provide mobility and firepower to the attacker. Poison Gas. Poison gas was, largely because of its stealth and its asphyxiating fumes, the most terror-inspiring of all weapons of the war. Countermeasures soon reduced poison gas to little more than a means of harassment, but its deadly potential led to an international agreement, the Geneva Protocol of 1925, banning poison gas as a means of warfare. The Machine Gun. Like the airplane and the submarine, the machine gun was an American invention that was improved in Europe. Early in World War I its value as a defensive weapon was demonstrated. In combination with trenches, barbed wire, and high-explosive artillery shells, the machine gun dominated the long stalemate of the trenches between late 1914 and early 1918. The Germans ultimately recognized the offensive potential of the machine gun and pioneered the development of light machine guns to provide mobile firepower within every squad. Artillery and High explosives. Smoothbore cannon had dominated the battlefields of Europe in Napoleonic times. That dominance had suddenly and dramatically disappeared in the U.S. Civil War, as the rifled musket became the most lethal weapon on the battlefield. Three new developments, however, immediately before World War I restored artillery to its place as the arbiter of battles. These were the accurate, quick-firing field gun with sophisticated recoil mechanism and fast-locking breachblock; high-explosive shells, which could sweep large areas with destructive blasts and jagged splinters of steel; and perhaps most important, new means of rapid communication by telephone, which permitted guns to be placed behind ridge lines and forests and fired over these masks at targets the gunners could not see, by following telephoned directions from easily concealed observers at the front lines. Tube artillery weapons also approached their full potential of lethality during World War I. The French 75mm field gun, developed in 1897--the most effective artillery piece of the war--remained a useful weapon when World War II broke out in 1939; the German long-range gun that shelled Paris in early 1918 had one of the longest firing ranges of any ballistic cannon. Electronic Communications. Field telephones not only revitalized artillery, but they provided instantaneous communication between commanders and subordinate units. Although the wires were vulnerable to hostile artillery fire and could be cut by daring night patrols, efficient repair crews could keep the telephones operating under almost any conditions. A new means of electronic communication also appeared during World War I, barely 10 years after its invention--the radio. Its invisible signals could not be cut by artillery fire or wire cutters, although means of jamming transmission were soon found--and just as soon evaded. Radio permitted much more rapid installation of communications, at far longer ranges, than was possible with field telephones. Few improvements have been made in field telephones since World War I; improvements in radio transmission, however, have been continuous, with the future potential of electronics in warfare still unlimited. Aftermath. The increased technology of World War I had greatly expanded humankind's potential for killing, but it was also hoped that this "war to end all wars" had served as a lesson to nations and that future bloodshed could be avoided. The League of Nations was established to settle international disputes peaceably, and the Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928) sought to outlaw war completely. Many aspects of the peace settlement at Versailles, however, sowed the seeds of future conflict. The harsh penalties levied against Germany created economic and political instability and thus assisted the rise of Adolf Hitler. As the outbreak of World War II 20 years later would prove, humanity had not yet found the means to peace. Reviewed by ROBERT D. RAMSEY III Bibliography Bibliography: GENERAL: Falls, Cyril B., The Great War (1959; repr. 1961); Ferro, Marc, The Great War, 1914-1918, trans. by Nicole Stone (1973); Hayes, G. P., World War I: A Compact History (1972); Liddell Hart, Basil H., The Real War, 1914-1918 (1930; repr. 1966); Marshall, S. L. A., The American Heritage History of World War I (1964). MILITARY: Banks, Arthur, A Military Atlas of the First World War (1975); Bennett, Geoffrey, Naval Battles of the First World War (1969); Cameron, James, 1914 (1959); Clark, Alan, Aces High: the War in the Air over the Western Front (1973); Coffman, Edward M., The War to End All Wars: The American Military Experience in World War I (1968); Cooke, David C., Sky Battle, 1914-1918: the Story of Aviation in World War I (1970); Gray, Edwyn, The Killing Time: the U-Boat War, 1914-1918 (1972); Hoehling, A. A., The Great War at Sea (1965); Marder, Arthur J., From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow, 5 vols. (1961-70); Robinson, D. H., The Zeppelin in Combat: A History of the German Naval Airship Division (1962); Rutherford, Ward, The Russian Army in World War I (1975); Stallings, Laurence, The Doughboys: the Story of the A.E.F., 1917-1918 (1963); Stone, Norman, The Eastern Front, 1914-1918 (1975); Wren, Jack, The Great Battles of World War I (1971). DIPLOMATIC AND POLITICAL: Albertini, Luigi, The Origins of the War of 1914, Eng. trans., 3 vols. (1952-1959); Bass, Herbert J., ed., America's Entry into World War I: Submarines, Sentiment, or Security? (1964); Fay, Sidney B., The Origins of the World War, 2 vols. (1966); Fischer, Fritz, Germany's Aims in the First World War, Eng. trans. (1968); Lederer, Ivo John, ed., The Versailles Settlement (1960); Mayer, Arno J., Politics and Diplomacy of Peacemaking, 1918-1919 (1967); Ritter, Gerhard, The Sword and the Scepter, Eng. trans., 4 vols. (1969-72); Silberstein, Gerard E., The Troubled Alliance: German-Austrian Relations, 1914-1918 (1970); Turner, L. C. F., Origins of the First World War (1970); Zeman, Z. A. B., The Gentleman Negotiators: A Diplomatic History of the First World War (1971). ============================================================================== Albert I, King of Germany -------------------------------- Albert I, b. c.1250, king of the Germans (1298-1308), was the son of RUDOLF I, the first HABSBURG to wear the German crown. In 1282 Rudolf granted Albert the duchies of Austria and Styria. When Rudolf died in 1291, however, the German princes, fearful of the growing Habsburg power, denied Albert the crown and instead elected Adolf of Nassau as king. Discontent with Adolf soon enabled Albert to win over the princes, who deposed Adolf in 1298 and elected Albert king. The new king defeated the old at Gollheim (July 1298), where Adolf was slain. As king, Albert attempted to add Holland and Zealand to the Habsburg domains. This unsuccessful effort, coupled with his alliance with the French king PHILIP IV, provoked a revolt in the Rhineland that was backed by Pope BONIFACE VIII. The revolt was finally crushed in 1302, and the following year Albert secured papal confirmation of his election in return for an oath of obedience to the pope. Albert was assassinated on May 1, 1308, by accomplices of his nephew, John Parracide of Swabia. He was succeeded by HENRY VII. Ludendorff, Erich -------------------------------- (loo-den-dorf, ay'-rik) Erich Friedrich Wilhelm Ludendorff, b. Apr. 9, 1865, d. Dec. 20, 1937, was a German general in WORLD WAR I. A career officer, he entered the elite Prussian general staff before World War I and distinguished himself in the opening days of the war by capturing the Belgian fortress-city of Liege. He was thereupon made chief of staff to Gen. Paul von HINDENBURG, who had just been called from retirement to come to the rescue of East Prussia, which the Russians were overrunning. Stunning victories at TANNENBERG and the Masurian Lakes in the late summer of 1914 saved the eastern front and made the two generals national heroes. In 1916, Emperor William II gave Hindenburg and Ludendorff, with joint operational responsibility, virtually dictatorial control of the German supreme command. They consolidated the German lines on the stalemated western front and in 1917 commenced unrestricted submarine warfare, which resulted in the entry of the United States into the war against Germany. When their last great offensive failed in 1918, Hindenburg and Ludendorff insisted on an armistice. It was finally granted on Nov. 11, 1918, but on terms that caused Ludendorff to resign in protest. In 1923, Ludendorff participated in Adolf HITLER's abortive MUNICH PUTSCH. He was a National Socialist member of the Reichstag from 1924 to 1928 but played no part in the Third Reich. DONALD S. DETWILER Bibliography: Goodspeed, D. J., Ludendorff: Genius of World War I (1966); Ludendorff, Erich, My War Memories, 1914-18, trans. anon., 2 vols. (1919). Triple Entente -------------------------------- The Triple Entente--an alignment of Britain, France, and Russia that led to their alliance in WORLD WAR I--resulted from a series of bilateral diplomatic agreements among them between 1894 and 1907. The Franco-Russian Alliance of 1894 stemmed from France's fear of isolation at the hands of Germany, which had formed the TRIPLE ALLIANCE with Austria-Hungary and Italy in 1882. Russia wanted support against Austria-Hungary, its rival in the Balkans. In 1904, Britain, fearing growing German naval power, entered into the Entente Cordiale with France. Thus, the two longtime antagonists terminated their colonial rivalry in Africa. Britain also sought reconciliation with its inveterate enemy Russia, which was amenable following a humiliating defeat in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05). The Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907 settled their differences by establishing separate spheres of influence in Persia. With this agreement, the Triple Entente, an understanding rather than an alliance, was complete. In World War I the Triple Entente faced the Triple Alliance minus Italy, which defected to the Entente. ROBIN BUSS Bibliography: Schmitt, Bernadotte E., Triple Alliance and Triple Entente (1934); Triple Alliance -------------------------------- The name Triple Alliance has been applied to several separate coalitions of European powers. The Triple Alliance of 1668, formed by England, Sweden, and the Dutch Republic, was aimed at halting encroachment into the Low Countries by France's LOUIS XIV. The Triple Alliance of 1717, made up of France, Britain, and the Dutch Republic, was directed against Spanish aspirations to Italian territory. The Holy Roman emperor's adherence to the pact in 1718 made it a Quadruple Alliance. The Triple Alliance of 1788, consisting of Britain, the Dutch Republic, and Prussia, sought to check French influence in the Netherlands and Russia's ambitions in the Middle East. The most famous Triple Alliance was that of 1882, composed of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy. Its terms provided that if any of the parties were attacked by two or more powers, its allies would come to its aid. Orchestrated by German chancellor Otto von BISMARCK, it originated with the Dual Alliance of 1879, between Germany and Austria-Hungary, to which Italy was added in 1882. Germany was motivated by a desire to isolate France; Austria-Hungary sought support against Russia, its rival in the Balkans; and Italy, although fearful of Austro-Hungarian expansion, wanted help in pursuing its North African territorial ambitions. The alliance was renewed periodically. Meanwhile, a series of bilateral agreements produced the TRIPLE ENTENTE (1907) among Britain, France, and Russia. Europe was thus divided into the two camps that fought each other in WORLD WAR I, except that Italy renounced the alliance and joined the Entente powers in 1915. Bibliography: Coolidge, Archibald Cary, Origins of the Triple Alliance (1917); Langer, W. L., European Alliances and Alignments, 1871-1890, 2d ed. (1950; repr. 1964); Taylor, A. J. P., The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, 1848-1918 (1954; repr. 1971). Triple Alliance, War of the -------------------------------- In the War of the Triple Alliance (1865-70), also known as the Paraguayan War, Paraguay confronted an alliance of Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. Hostilities began when Uruguayan conservatives convinced the dictator of Paraguay, Francisco Solano LOPEZ, that Brazil and Argentina were about to invade Paraguay. Lopez declared war (January 1865) on Brazil and then on Argentina when Argentine president Bartolome Mitre refused him permission to cross Argentine territory. Uruguay, which had made a secret alliance with Brazil and Argentina, declared war on May 1, 1865. Alliance armies defeated the vastly outnumbered Paraguayan forces on land and sea and then blockaded all river traffic, but the Paraguayans fought back, subduing the alliance at Curupayty (September 1866). In 1868, Brazilian troops took river fortresses, and at the beginning of 1869, alliance forces sacked the Paraguayan capital at Asuncion. Lopez was shot (Mar. 1, 1870) by the allies, and the bloody war ended shortly thereafter. Paraguay, whose population was severely reduced, took decades to recover. Bibliography: Kolinski, C. J., Independence or Death: The Story of the Paraguayan War (1965); Phelps, G., Tragedy of Paraguay (1975). Falkenhayn, Erich von -------------------------------- {fahl'-ken-hyn, ay'-rik fuhn}^Erich Georg Anton Sebastian von Falkenhayn, b. Sept. 11, 1861, d. Apr. 8, 1922, was chief of the German general staff (1914-16) during World War I. Succeeding Helmuth Johannes Ludwig von MOLTKE, Falkenhayn adopted the strategy of a war of attrition on the western front. Believing that the war would be won there, he opposed the plans of Generals Paul von HINDENBURG and Erich LUDENDORFF for an offensive against Russia but was overruled by Emperor WILLIAM II. To break the deadlock in the west, Falkenhayn planned a major assault on Verdun, which began on Feb. 21, 1916. Six months later, as the unsuccessful and costly battle continued, he was relieved of his command. He subsequently commanded forces in Romania, Palestine, and Lithuania. Bibliography: Horne, Alistair, The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916 (1962). Lawrence, T. E. -------------------------------- Colonel T. E. Lawrence, known as Lawrence of Arabia, was a guerrilla leader in the Arab Revolt of 1916-18, which expelled the Turks from western Arabia and Syria during WORLD WAR I. Lawrence was an aloof, complex, versatile, somewhat arrogant genius, and his exploits made him a popular, if enigmatic, hero in the Western world. Thomas Edward Lawrence was born at Tremadoc, Wales, on Aug. 15, 1888. His father, Sir Thomas Robert Chapman, was an Anglo-Irish landholder who left his wife for his family's governess. Thomas was the second of five sons produced by this union. Adopting the name Lawrence, the family settled in Oxford, where Thomas eventually entered the university. Specializing in archaeology, architecture, and history, he began learning Arabic when he visited Syria and Palestine. After graduating in 1910, he worked as an archaeologist in the Middle East until early 1914. After the outbreak of World War I, Lawrence returned to Egypt in December 1914 as an intelligence officer. In October 1916 he accompanied a British mission to aid HUSAYN IBN ALI of Mecca, who had launched the Arab Revolt against Ottoman Turkish rule. Shortly thereafter, he joined Husayn's son and army commander, Faisal (later King FAISAL I of Iraq), as an advisor. Together, Faisal and Lawrence proceeded to push back the Ottoman forces by raiding the Damascus-Medina railroad and overrunning Ottoman strongpoints. In October 1918 the Arabs took Damascus, and Lawrence returned to Britain. As a member of the British delegation to the Paris Peace Conference (1919), Lawrence championed the cause of Arab independence, but without effect. Following a research fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford, he became a Middle Eastern advisor at the Colonial Office under Winston Churchill. Although he succeeded in having Faisal appointed king of Iraq, Lawrence had tired of fame and what he termed "the shallow grave of public duty." Resigning from his post in 1922, he completed his famous account of his Arabian experiences, the Seven Pillars of Wisdom (printed privately, 1926; published, 1935). Under the assumed names of Ross and, later, Shaw, he spent most of the remainder of his life as an enlisted man in the Royal Air Force and Tank Corps. He developed a passion for high-speed boats and motorcycles and died on May 19, 1935, after a motorcycle accident. Lawrence also wrote The Mint (1955), an account of his life in the air force. ROBERT G. LANDEN Bibliography: Aldington, Richard, Lawrence of Arabia: A Biographical Enquiry, rev. ed. (1969); Garnett, David, ed., The Letters of T. E. Lawrence (1938); Graves, Robert, Lawrence and the Arabian Adventure (1928); Knightley, Phillip, and Colin, Simpson, The Secret Lives of Lawrence of Arabia (1969); Lawrence, Arnold W., ed., T. E. Lawrence by his Friends (1937); Liddell Hart, Basil, Colonel Lawrence, The Man Behind the Legend, rev. ed. (1964); Mack, John E., A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T. E. Lawrence (1975); Stewart, Desmond, T. E. Lawrence (1977). Marne, Battles of the -------------------------------- (mahrn) The Battles of the Marne, two important WORLD WAR I battles, derived their name from the Marne River, a small tributary of the Seine, in France. First Battle of the Marne (Sept. 5-10, 1914). In the opening days of the war the Germans, sweeping through Belgium and southward into France, hoped to encircle Paris and score a quick victory. The First Battle of the Marne, although tactically inconclusive, was strategically a great Allied victory--and one of the most decisive in history--thwarting the German plan for an early end to the war. After major victories in the Battles of the Frontiers (August 14-25), four right-flank German armies thrust deep into northeastern France, driving before them the French Third, Fourth, and Fifth armies and (on the Allied left) the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). The French commander in chief, Gen. Joseph JOFFRE, assembled a newly created Sixth Army in Paris and inserted another new army--the Ninth--between the Fourth and the Fifth. Joffre's plan was that as the German army on the extreme right flank--the First, commanded by Gen. Alexander von Kluck--advanced east of Paris in pursuit of the retreating British and French, it would be struck on its right flank by the Sixth Army on September 6, and the retreating armies, bolstered by the Ninth, would turn in counterattack. Joffre's plan was almost ruined on September 5 when right-flank units of Kluck's army detected the French Sixth Army advance from Paris and counterattacked. The aggressive Kluck then launched an attack toward Paris in the Battle of the Ourcq. By turning west, however, Kluck created a gap to his left between his army and the Second, under Gen. Karl von Bulow. Energetic counterattacks by Gen. Louis Franchet d'Esperey's French Fifth Army in the Battle of the Petit Morin drove back von Bulow's right flank, further widening the gap. Into this gap slowly moved the BEF, commanded by Field Marshal Sir John FRENCH. Meanwhile, further to the Allied right, inconclusive struggles matched Gen. Ferdinand FOCH's Ninth French Army against the left of the German Second and the right of the Third in the Battle of the St. Gond Marshes. Still further on the Allied right, in the Battle of Vitry le Francois, the French Fourth Army under Gen. Fernand de Langle de Cary battled to a standstill against the German Fourth under Duke Albert of Wurttemberg. Unable to maintain adequate communications with his fast-moving right-flank armies, the German commander in chief, Gen. Helmuth Johannes Ludwig von MOLTKE, sent a trusted staff officer, Lt. Col. Richard Hentsch, to assess the situation, and to issue orders if necessary. When on September 9 Hentsch discovered that von Bulow's Second Army had been pushed back by the French Fifth, and he realized that the British were moving into the gap between the German First and Second Armies, Hentsch ordered both armies to retreat to the Aisne River. Kluck retreated to prevent his army from being encircled. Allied losses in the first Battle of the Marne were about 250,000; German casualties amounted to nearly 300,000. Second Battle of the Marne (July 15-17, 1918). The Second Battle of the Marne stopped the fifth and last of Gen. Erich LUDENDORFF's great 1918 German offensives. Although the Germans were quickly stopped along most of the Champagne-Marne front, the Seventh Army broke through Allied lines west of Reims and drove about 16 km (10 mi) to the Marne River, which was then crossed by 14 German divisions. The Allied lines soon stiffened, however, largely because of the stubborn defense of the American 3d Division and the arrival of other American units. Within three days of the start of the offensive the Germans were halted, and on July 18 the Allies began a counteroffensive that did not stop until the Armistice on November 11. COL. T. N. DUPUY Bibliography Bibliography: Bloem, Walter, The Advance from Mons, trans. by G. C. Wynne (1930; repr. 1967); Spears, Edward L., Liaison 1914, 2d ed. (1968); Tyng, Sewell, The Campaign of the Marne (1935). Tannenberg, Battles of -------------------------------- (tahn'-en-bairk) Two famous battles were fought in the vicinity of Tannenberg (now Stebark, Poland; formerly in East Prussia) near the Baltic coast. The first, on July 15, 1410, sometimes called the Battle of Grunwald, was a Polish-Lithuanian victory over the TEUTONIC KNIGHTS. The clash halted the Knights' advance eastward along the Baltic and helped spur their decline. The second battle, in late August 1914, was a German victory early in World War I over Russian armies that had invaded East Prussia. German commander Paul von HINDENBURG and Erich LUDENDORFF, his chief of staff, directed movements that encircled Gen. A. V. Samsonov's Second Russian Army. After the Germans took about 90,000 prisoners, Samsonov killed himself, and his remaining men were forced to retreat. ROBIN BUSS Ataturk, Kemal -------------------------------- (ah'-tah-toork, kuh-mahl') Kemal Ataturk, b. Mar. 12, 1881, d. Nov. 10, 1938, was the founder and first president of the Turkish Republic (1923-38). Originally named Mustafa Kemal, he joined the YOUNG TURKS as a young military officer and led the extension of the movement to his native Salonika (Thessaloniki). He took an active role in the military coup that overthrew the Ottoman sultan ABD AL-HAMID II in 1909. Kemal was the only Ottoman commander to gain fame during World War I. He defeated the British attempt (1915) to land at Gallipoli and later kept the Turkish army of Syria together as it was pushed back into Anatolia by the British, helped by the Arab Revolt. Kemal vigorously opposed the Turkish government's decision to surrender (1918) to the Allies and sign the Treaty of Sevres (1920), which gave up large areas of Anatolia to foreign occupation or influence. Because of the government's desire to stimulate resistance despite the foreign occupation of Istanbul, however, he was assigned to supervise demobilization of the remaining troops in Anatolia. He used this authority and his wartime reputation to coalesce rising Turkish resistance forces, organizing a national army based at Ankara. This army ultimately drove out the various Allied occupying forces, abolished the sultanate, and replaced it with a republic with its capital at Ankara. As reward, Kemal was given the name Ataturk ("Father of the Turks") by a grateful nation. As president of the republic, Ataturk instituted the forms of democracy, including a unicameral parliament (the Grand National Assembly), a responsible government, led mostly by Prime Minister Ismet INONU, and a modern bureaucracy. But he allowed only one party--his own Republican People's party--to assure rapid modernization and avoid destructive opposition by vested interests. Turkish nationalism was emphasized as a means of rallying popular support for the drastic, revolutionary measures needed to modernize the nation. A populist program encouraged mass adult education and support for the republic through a nationwide system of Peoples' Houses. Secularism was promoted, with the disestablishment of Islam as the state religion, replacement of religious with secular institutions of education and justice, emancipation of women, adoption of modern Western clothing and Latin script, and enforcement of equality for all citizens regardless of religion. Initial attempts to develop the economy by encouraging private enterprise foundered because of inefficient management as well as the economic crisis of the 1930s; so Ataturk developed statism--state control of the basic means of production through national banks. Friendly relations were maintained with Turkey's former subject peoples, now independent states or mandate territories, through a series of alliances. In the last years before his death, the rise of Italian Fascism and German Nazism led Ataturk into close relations with Britain and France. STANFORD J. SHAW Bibliography: Kinross, Lord, Ataturk: A Biography of Mustafa Kemal, Father of Modern Turkey (1965); Webster, D. E., The Turkey of Ataturk: Social Process in the Turkish Reformation (1939). Ferdinand I, Emperor of Austria -------------------------------- Ferdinand I, b. Apr. 19, 1793, d. June 29, 1875, succeeded his father, Francis I (earlier Holy Roman Emperor FRANCIS II), as emperor of Austria in 1835. Subject to fits of insanity, he was an ineffectual ruler, and the empire was governed by a council under Klemens von METTERNICH. Unable to deal with the REVOLUTIONS OF 1848, Ferdinand abdicated in favor of his nephew FRANCIS JOSEPH in December of that year. ROBIN BUSS Joffre, Joseph Jacques Cesaire -------------------------------- (zhawf, zhoh-zef' zhahk say-zair') Joseph Jacques Cesaire Joffre, b. Jan. 12, 1852, d. Jan. 3, 1931, was commander in chief of the French Army at the outbreak of World War I. He had received that post in 1911, as one of a new group of republican officers elevated in response to the DREYFUS AFFAIR. When war broke out in August 1914, Joffre's plan for a French offensive into Alsace-Lorraine was frustrated by the speed of the German advance through Belgium into northeastern France. An orderly retreat enabled the Allies to regroup and counterattack, however, in the First Battle of the MARNE (Sept. 5-10, 1914). For this victory, Joffre was hailed as the savior of France. Joffre's failure to provide further victories led to increasing criticism, however. After the costly battles of Verdun and the Somme in 1916 (see SOMME, BATTLE OF; VERDUN, BATTLE OF), Joffre was transferred to an advisory position, which he left on Dec. 26, 1916. He was made a marshal of France on the same day. Joffre's Memoirs was published in translation in 1932. P. M. EWY Bibliography: Dawbarn, Charles, Joffre and His Army (1916); Joffre, Joseph, My March to Timbuktu (1915); King, Jere C., Generals and Politicians: Conflict Between France's High Command, Parliament and Government, 1914-1918 (1951). Pershing, John J. -------------------------------- (pur'-shing) John Joseph "Black Jack" Pershing, b. Laclede, Mo., Sept. 13, 1860, d. July 15, 1948, commanded the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) in World War I. He graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 1886 and then served in the cavalry in the West. He received a law degree from the University of Nebraska and joined (1896) the staff at army headquarters in Washington, D.C. He returned to West Point in 1897 as a member of the tactical staff. During the Spanish-American War, Pershing distinguished himself at Kettle and San Juan hills, later serving as head of the War Department's new Division of Customs and Insular Affairs. He went (1899) to the Philippines, where he led a series of important expeditions among the hostile Moros. In 1905 he became military attache in Tokyo and then went to Manchuria as an observer of the Russo-Japanese War. In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt elevated Pershing in rank from captain to brigadier general. Pershing took command of Fort McKinley near Manila and then became (1909) governor of Moro province in the southern Philippines, thoroughly defeating the Moros by 1913. Given command of the 8th Brigade in 1914, he led (1916-17) the difficult punitive expedition against Pancho VILLA in Mexico. Experience and seniority brought him command of the AEF in 1917. Pershing's tasks in France during World War I were more managerial than warlike; he had to organize, train, and supply an inexperienced force that eventually numbered more than 2 million. Constantly rebuffing British and French efforts to siphon his men off into their depleted ranks, Pershing found himself waging two wars--against the Germans and against the Allies. AEF successes in the war were largely credited to Pershing, and he emerged from the war as its most celebrated American hero. Congress created for him a new rank, general of the armies. His memoirs, My Experiences in the World War (2 vols., 1931), won him the 1932 Pulitzer Prize for history. FRANK E. VANDIVER Bibliography: Braddy, Haldeen, Pershing's Mission in Mexico (1966); Goldhurst, Richard, Pipe Clay and Drill: John J. Pershing--The Classic American Soldier (1976); Palmer, Frederick, John J. Pershing, General of the Armies, A Biography (1948); Vandiver, Frank E., Black Jack: Life and Times of John J. Pershing, 2 vols. (1977). Verdun, Battle of -------------------------------- The WORLD WAR I Battle of Verdun (Feb. 21-Nov. 26, 1916), an unsuccessful German effort to take the offensive in the west, was one of the longest and bloodiest encounters of the war. Total casualties have been estimated at about 542,000 French and about 434,000 Germans. The German assault, directed by Gen. Erich von FALKENHAYN, began with a furious bombardment followed by an attack on the region surrounding Verdun, which lay in the middle of an Allied salient jutting into the German zone in northeastern France. Initially successful, the Germans captured Fort Douamont (February 25). Gen. Joseph JOFFRE, the French commander in chief, was determined to halt further retreat for reasons of morale as well as strategy. On February 25 he assigned Gen. Henri Philippe PETAIN to head the Verdun defense. Petain, fighting under the famous motto Ils ne passeront pas! ("They shall not pass!"), reorganized his command and brought up reinforcements while the weary German troops paused. On March 6 the Germans attacked the western face of the salient; they were halted after initial advances, but the loss of life on both sides was enormous. A third offensive, from both east and west, began on April 9, but again the Germans were stopped. German assaults continued into early July, and Petain, who had been promoted and replaced as local commander by Gen. Robert NIVELLE, recommended withdrawal. During the summer, however, the Anglo-French Somme offensive (see SOMME, BATTLES OF THE) and the Russian Brusilov offensive drew off German manpower, and in the late summer the Germans adopted a defensive posture on the western front. The French soon took the offensive. Under Gen. Charles Mangin they recaptured Fort Douamont (October 24) and Fort Vaux (November 2). By the time the fighting at Verdun had ended in mid-December, the French had advanced almost to their February lines. COL. T. N. DUPUY Bibliography: Blend, Georges, Verdun, trans. by Frances Frenaye (1964); Hermanns, William, The Holocaust: From a Survivor of Verdun (1972); Horne, Alistair, Death of a Generation: From Neuve Chapelle to Verdun and the Somme (1970) and The Price of Glory: Verdun, 1916 (1962). Verdun, Treaty of -------------------------------- The Treaty of Verdun (Aug. 10, 843) divided Charlemagne's Frankish Empire among the three sons of LOUIS I (Louis the Pious). The divisions coincided roughly with later national boundaries in Europe: CHARLES II (Charles the Bald) received lands corresponding to most of modern France; LOUIS THE GERMAN gained the lands east of the Rhine River (Germany); and LOTHAIR I, the eldest, took the imperial title and the Lombard kingdom (Italy) as well as heterogeneous territories to the north. ROBIN BUSS Nivelle, Robert Georges -------------------------------- (nee-vel') Robert Georges Nivelle, b. Oct. 15, 1856, d. Mar. 23, 1924, was commander in chief (December 1916-May 1917) of the French Army in World War I. From May to December 1916 he successfully defended Verdun, but his April 1917 offensive, in which he commanded the combined French and British armies, failed. Mutinies broke out in the French army, and on May 15, Nivelle was replaced by Gen. Philippe PETAIN. In December he was transferred to North Africa. Bibliography: Spears, Edward L., Prelude to Victory (1939). Petain, Henri Philippe -------------------------------- (pay-tan') Henri Philippe Petain, b. Apr. 24, 1856, d. July 23, 1951, a World War I French military hero, headed the VICHY GOVERNMENT in France during World War II. A student and later a teacher at the Ecole de Guerre, Petain attained the rank of general after the outbreak of World War I. He directed various operations during the war, becoming a hero after the Battle of Verdun (1916; see VERDUN, BATTLE OF), in which he halted the advance of German troops despite massive French losses. In 1917 he became commander in chief of armies in the field, and a year later he was made marshal of France. Between the two world wars Petain held high military and government posts. After France's defeat (1940) by the Germans, the French government fled to Bordeaux, and Petain became premier. He concluded an armistice with Germany and became chief-of-state in the fascist-oriented Vichy Government of unoccupied France, with full powers granted by the French parliament. Although at first he was nominally independent, he found it increasingly difficult to resist German demands. In December 1940, Petain dismissed his foreign minister Pierre LAVAL, a collaborator who had helped to bring him to power, but in 1942 he recalled Laval at German insistence. After the Allied victory (1945), the French brought Petain to trial. He was sentenced to death, but the provisional president Charles de Gaulle commuted the sentence to life imprisonment. P. M. EWY Bibliography: Griffiths, Richard M., Petain: A Biography of Marshal Philippe Petain of Vichy (1972); Huddleston, Sisley, France: The Tragic Years, 1939-1947 (1965); Tournoux, Jean-Raymond, Sons of France: Petain and de Gaulle, trans. by Oliver Coburn (1966). Gallipoli campaign -------------------------------- (guh-lip'-uh-lee) The Gallipoli campaign of 1915 was an Allied attempt to knock Ottoman Turkey out of WORLD WAR I and reopen a supply route to Russia. The initial plan, proposed by British First Lord of the Admiralty Winston CHURCHILL, called for an Allied fleet--mostly British--to force the Dardanelles Strait and then to steam to Constantinople to dictate peace terms. On Feb. 19, 1915, a Franco-British fleet under British Vice Admiral Sackville Carden began systematic reduction of the fortifications lining the Dardanelles. The principal fortifications were attacked on March 18. Sixteen battleships--including the powerful Queen Elizabeth--provided the principal firepower. Just as the bombardment had silenced the Turkish batteries, however, three battleships were sunk in an undetected minefield, and three others were disabled. The Turks had nearly expended their ammunition, many of their batteries had been destroyed, and their fire-control communications were out of action. The Allies, however, did not know this. Rear Admiral John de Robeck, who had taken command when Carden fell ill, called off the attack and withdrew his ships from the strait. In the meantime, the Allies had hastily assembled a force of 78,000 men and dispatched it from England and Egypt to Gallipoli. As his flotilla gathered near the peninsula, however, the commanding general, Ian Hamilton, discovered that guns and ammunition had been loaded on separate ships. The transports had to steam to Egypt to be properly loaded for combat. The Turks, now alerted to the Allied plan, used the resulting month's delay to improve their defenses. Some 60,000 Turkish troops, under the German general Otto Liman von Sanders, awaited the Allies. On April 25, British and ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) troops landed at several points near the tip of the peninsula. Simultaneously, on the Asiatic side of the strait, the one French division made a diversionary landing, and off Bulair, on the neck of the peninsula, a naval force attempted to distract the Turks. The Allied troops were soon pinned down in several unconnected beachheads, stopped by a combination of Turkish defenses and British mismanagement. Losses were high. The Turks ringed the tiny beachheads with entrenchments, and the British and ANZAC troops soon found themselves involved in trench warfare. After three months of bitter fighting, Hamilton attempted a second assault--on the western side of the peninsula. This assault lacked adequate naval gunfire support; it failed to take any of its major objectives and resulted in heavy casualties. Hamilton was relieved on October 15, and by December 10 his replacement, Gen. Charles Monro, had evacuated the bulk of the troops and supplies. The remaining 35,000 men were withdrawn without the Turks realizing it on Jan. 8-9, 1916. By contrast with the operation as a whole, the withdrawal was a masterpiece of planning and organization, with no loss of life. Estimates of Allied casualties for the entire campaign are about 252,000, with the Turks suffering almost as many casualties--an estimated 251,000. COL. T. N. DUPUY Bibliography: Bush, Eric W., Gallipoli (1975); Hamilton, Sir Ian, Gallipoli Diary (1920); James, R. R., Gallipoli (1965); Moorehouse, Alan, Gallipoli (1956); Liman von Sanders, Otto, My Five Years in Turkey (1927). French, John, 1st Earl of Ypres -------------------------------- John French, b. Sept. 28, 1852, d. May 22, 1925, was a British field marshal who commanded the British forces in Belgium and France in the early stages of World War I. He served in the South African War (1899-1902) and was chief of the imperial general staff (1912-14). Given command of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in August 1914, he failed to coordinate with the French armies, and the BEF suffered huge casualties at the first and second battles of Ypres and at Loos. In December 1915 he was replaced by Gen. Douglas Haig. Gallieni, Joseph Simon -------------------------------- {gahl-lee-ay'-nee} Joseph Simon Gallieni, b. Apr. 24, 1849, d. May 27, 1916, was a French general who worked to integrate France's colonial conquests into the FRENCH COLONIAL EMPIRE. He served in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) and later in the 1870s was sent to Africa. In the course of his colonial military and administrative career he served in the Upper Niger area, Martinique, French Sudan, Indochina, and Madagascar. In Madagascar he created a system of compulsory labor as part of his policy to have the natives raise their own standard of living. In 1911, Gallieni declined the position of supreme commander of the French army because of ill health and age. Nonetheless, he was appointed military governor of Paris in August 1914 and raised troops to drive back the Germans in the First Battle of the Marne. He served as minister of war from 1915 to 1916 and was made a marshal of France posthumously. Gallieni wrote several works on his colonial campaigns and policies. P. M. EWY Bibliography: Matthew, V. L., "Joseph Simon Gallieni," in African Proconsuls, ed. by L. H. Gann and Peter Duignan (1978). William II, Emperor of Germany -------------------------------- King of Prussia and the third German emperor, William II, b. Jan. 27, 1859, d. June 4, 1941, led Germany into WORLD WAR I. From birth he had an underdeveloped left arm and hand, which may have contributed to his unstable and restless personality. William developed a strong antagonism toward England, the country of his strong-willed mother, Victoria, the daughter of the British queen Victoria. His father, the less dominant parent, did not achieve the throne--as FREDERICK III--until March 1888, when he was already dying. William opposed the relatively liberal principles of his parents, identifying instead with the conservative policies of his grandfather, William I, although he lacked the older man's ability to judge character. Despite his intelligence and good intentions, William never learned to concentrate, and his military training had prepared him poorly when he succeeded his father on June 15, 1888. William's youth, inexperience, and desire to rule on his own brought a decisive clash with Chancellor Otto von BISMARCK, who opposed further extension of social welfare measures--temporarily desired by William to counteract August Bebel's Social Democrats. With Bismarck's dismissal in 1890, William gradually extended his own authority. He relied heavily on irresponsible military advisors, rather than on civilian statesmen. Volatile, unpredictable, and never applying himself methodically, he was unable to coordinate government policy. His chancellors--Georg Leo, Graf von CAPRIVI; Chlodwig, Furst zu Hohenlohe-Schillingfurst; Bernhard, Furst von BULOW; and Theobald von BETHMANN-HOLLWEG--made half-hearted suggestions that concessions should be made to effect the gradual transformation of a monarchy dominated by landowners and industrialists into a state more responsive to the majority of the people. Such suggestions were thwarted, however, by William's insistence upon absolutism and his opposition to parliamentary control. Great material prosperity masked a failure to achieve meaningful political reform. In his foreign policy William aimed to enhance German prestige, expressing a strident nationalism in warlike speeches that alarmed all Europe and backing colonial expansion and Admiral Alfred von TIRPITZ's construction of a large battle fleet. William abandoned Bismarck's ties with Russia in 1890 and, despite later attempts at alliance, alienated his cousin Russian emperor NICHOLAS II by his tactlessness. Britain--offended by William's encouragement of the Boers in his telegram (1896) to South African president Paul KRUGER--was disturbed by German imperialism and commercial competition, and threatened by the German navy. William's attempts to frighten France into alliance, notably in the first of the MOROCCAN CRISES (1905-06), only strengthened French ties with Britain and Russia. He encouraged Austrio-Hungarian expansion in the Balkans, going far beyond the terms of the alliance between Germany and Austria-Hungary. William wavered between peace and war in July 1914; it was his tragedy to bear heavy responsibility for the outbreak of World War I through his sword-rattling, his backing of Austria, his fleet increases, and his approval of the war plan of Alfred, Graf von SCHLIEFFEN. By removing himself to army headquarters during the war (1914-18), William lost contact with the German people and identified the monarchy with the war's outcome. He contributed to defeat by supporting far-reaching annexationist plans and unrestricted submarine warfare, which brought the intervention of the United States, and by opposing peace proposals and domestic reform. He lost authority to the party leaders in the Reichstag and to the dictatorship (1916-18) of Paul von HINDENBURG and Erich LUDENDORFF. With the armistice of November 1918, William fled to the Netherlands, where he abdicated on Nov. 28, 1918; he died in exile there. His memoirs were published in English translation in 1922. FREDERIC B. M. HOLLYDAY Bibliography: Balfour, Michael, The Kaiser and His Times, 2d ed. (1972); Cowles, Virginia, The Kaiser (1963); Fischer, Fritz, The War of Illusions: German Policies from 1911 to 1914, trans. by Marian Jackson (1975); Kurtz, Harold, The Second Reich: Kaiser Wilhelm II and His Germany (1970); Ludwig, Emil, William Hohenzollern: The Last of the Kaisers, trans. by Ethel Mayne (1927; repr. 1970); Rohl, J. C. G., Germany without Bismarck: The Crisis of Government in the Second Reich, 1890-1900 (1967). Churchill, Sir Winston -------------------------------- (statesman) Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill held most of the high offices of state in Great Britain, was a member of Parliament for more than 60 years, and served twice as prime minister. As Britain's leader through most of WORLD WAR II, he personified resistance to tyranny. Early Life. Winston Churchill was born at Blenheim Palace on Nov. 30, 1874. His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was the third son of the 7th duke of Marlborough, and Winston was thus directly descended from the 1st duke of MARLBOROUGH, of whom he was to write a monumental biography. His mother was Jennie Jerome, an American. Churchill's childhood was unhappy. He loathed most of his time at school (Harrow) and obstinately refused to learn any Greek beyond the alphabet. He loved to read history and poetry, however, and was fascinated by soldiers and battles. From childhood he had an extraordinary memory. Declining the suggestion that he might go to a university, Churchill enrolled in the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. He graduated in 1894 and was commissioned in the 4th Hussars. After service in Cuba and India, he took part in the Battle of Omdurman (1898) in the Sudan and published an account of it in The River War (2 vols., 1899). He had already written for British newspapers while on military duty. Sent to cover the SOUTH AFRICAN WAR for the Morning Post, he was captured by the Boers in 1899. His daring escape made him an overnight celebrity. Liberal Statesman. Churchill was already set in the ambition to become a politician. He was elected to Parliament as a Conservative in 1900 and, although he found speaking an ordeal, quickly made his mark. His political sympathies began to change, however, and he abandoned the Conservative party for the Liberals in 1904. When the Liberals came to power in 1905, Churchill entered the government as under secretary of state for the colonies. In 1908, the year of his marriage to Clementine Hosier, he became a member of the cabinet as president of the Board of Trade; in 1910 he was appointed home secretary and in the following year first lord of the Admiralty. Even in Herbert ASQUITH's cabinet of high ability, Churchill stood out as a coming man. Working closely with Admiral Lord FISHER OF KILVERSTONE, who was largely responsible for the modernization of the Royal Navy, Churchill completed British naval preparations for war. After World War I began, he attempted to exploit the navy's mobility in forcing (1915) the Dardanelles (see GALLIPOLLI CAMPAIGN). This audacious assault failed, and when the Conservatives, many of whom now detested him, joined the government in 1915, Churchill was moved from the Admiralty. After a period of active military service in France, he became (1917) minister of munitions under David LLOYD GEORGE. He subsequently served as secretary of state for war and air (1918-21) and for the colonies (1921-22) and helped negotiate the treaty (1921) that created the Irish Free State. But he lost both his office and his seat in Parliament when Lloyd George's coalition government fell in 1922. Conservative Chancellor and Critic. Over the next year or two, Churchill gradually moved back into alliance with the Conservatives. He used to remark with a mischievous twinkle, "Any fool can rat, but I flatter myself that it takes a certain ingenuity to re-rat." Returned to Parliament in 1924, he was offered the post of chancellor of the exchequer in Stanley BALDWIN's Conservative government (1924-29). The measure with which he is chiefly identified at the exchequer was the return to the gold standard, giving the pound a fixed value against other currencies, in 1925. Churchill took this step with many misgivings, and it proved a mistake, worsening the already poor economic situation. During the General Strike of 1926, Churchill was vehement in his condemnation of the strikers. Afterward he made efforts to heal the breach with labor, but he was never entirely successful. Between 1929 and 1939 Churchill did not hold office. He disapproved violently of Baldwin's Indian policy, which pointed toward eventual self-government. At the same time he warned against the ambitions of Nazi Germany and urged that Britain should match Germany in air power. As World War II drew nearer, his warnings were seen to be justified. When general war broke out in September 1939, Churchill was offered his old post of first lord of the Admiralty by Prime Minister Neville CHAMBERLAIN. Following the abortive Allied attempt to dislodge the Germans from Norway, for which Churchill bore considerable responsibility, Chamberlain determined to resign. Churchill replaced him as prime minister as Germany invaded the Low Countries on May 10, 1940. War Leader. The prime minister was largely responsible for many aspects of war policy. He established personal relations of the highest value with U.S. President Franklin D. ROOSEVELT, who began to supply arms to Britain immediately after the British army lost most of its equipment at DUNKERQUE (June 1940). In the late summer of 1940, as the Battle of Britain (see BRITAIN, BATTLE OF) raged overhead and no one knew whether Britain would be invaded, Churchill daringly diverted an armored division--one of only two in Britain--to the Middle East. Although no one had been a more convinced opponent of the USSR, he decided immediately to give help to the USSR when it was invaded by Germany in the summer of 1941. The entry of the United States into the war at the end of the same year gave the Allies the advantage in greater resources. The new shape of the alliance also meant that Britain's influence was bound to diminish as the USSR and the United States developed their full power. Churchill, however, was determined that the slaughter that he had seen in World War I should not be repeated. Accordingly, he refused to attempt an invasion of mainland Europe until North Africa and the Mediterranean had been cleared of the enemy. The Allied invasion of Sicily and Italy, "the soft underbelly of the Axis," finally began in the summer of 1943, to be followed a year later by the NORMANDY INVASION. By this time, however, Churchill carried less weight at conferences and in the general formation of war strategy. For example, in the final stages of the war he favored a fast Western Allied drive on Berlin to forestall Soviet occupation but was overruled by the Allied commander in chief Dwight EISENHOWER, who wanted to crush the last German resistance in the West. It is not certain, however, that further penetration by British and American forces into Europe would have held the Soviets at bay. Moreover, Churchill did not then foresee the full Soviet threat. At the time of the YALTA CONFERENCE (February 1945), when substantial concessions were made to the USSR, Churchill spoke in terms of high confidence about Soviet intentions. He soon came to a different opinion, and in 1946, in a speech delivered in Fulton, Mo., he spoke of the "iron curtain" that had descended across Europe. Although Churchill wished to keep the wartime coalition government in being, a general election was called in Britain in July 1945. Then, after the unconditional surrender of Germany and just before the final collapse of Japan, the British electorate voted the Conservatives out. When the first results were received, showing a substantial swing to the Labour party, Churchill was taking a bath. He remarked: "There may well be a landslide and they have a perfect right to kick us out. That is democracy. That is what we have been fighting for. Hand me my towel." Later Years. Labour accordingly took office with a large majority. Churchill felt deeply this rejection by the electorate and determined to reverse it. By the end of 1951 he was back in power, with a small majority. Although he never quite matched in this last phase as prime minister the performance of his wartime days, his energy in the first year or two remained astonishing. Churchill gave authority to the administration; his very presence as prime minister helped to still criticism. In July 1953, soon after his knighthood and the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, he suffered a stroke. Sir Anthony EDEN, whom Churchill had long wanted as his successor, was himself ill at the time, and part of Churchill's motive in remaining in office was doubtless to ensure that Eden was not cheated of his succession. Churchill finally left office in April 1955. Sir Winston's last ten years, marked by an increasing feebleness in health, were occupied by occasional travel, a little painting, and the publication of his History of the English Speaking Peoples (4 vols., 1956-58). This was the last of his many notable writings, which included Lord Randolph Churchill (1906), The World Crisis (4 vols., 1923-29), My Early Life (1930), Marlborough (4 vols., 1933-38), and The Second World War (6 vols., 1948-54). Churchill occupied to the end a special place in the affections of the British people, symbolizing a magnificent national performance in heroic days. He died on Jan. 24, 1965, 70 years to the day after his father, at the age of 90. DAVID DILKS Bibliography Bibliography: American Heritage, Churchill: The Life Triumphant (1965); Bonham-Carter, Lady Violet, Winston Churchill: An Intimate Biography (1965); Churchill, Randolph S., and Gilbert, Martin, Winston S. Churchill, 5 vols. (1966-76, incomplete); Feis, Herbert, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin: The War They Waged and the Peace They Sought, rev. ed. (1966); James, Robert Rhodes, Churchill: A Study in Failure, 1900-1939 (1970); Lash, Joseph, Roosevelt and Churchill, 1939-1941 (1976); Pelling, Henry, Churchill (1974); Roskill, Stephen, Churchill and the Admirals (1978); Rowse, A. L., The Churchills (1966); Taylor, A. J. P., et al., eds., Churchill Revised: A Critical Assessment (1969); Thompson, R. W., Generalissimo Churchill (1974); Thomson, Malcolm, Churchill: His Life and Times, rev. ed. (1965). Bismarck, Otto von -------------------------------- {biz'-mahrk} The Prussian statesman Otto von Bismarck was the architect of German unification and the arbiter of European power politics in the second half of the 19th century. EARLY LIFE Bismarck was born at Schonhausen in Brandenburg on Apr. 1, 1815. His father came of the old Prussian nobility, his mother from the upper bourgeoisie. Distaste for the study of law and bureaucracy caused Bismarck to turn to management of the family estates in Brandenburg. There he was converted to the fundamentalist religious views of the Lutheran pietists. During the REVOLUTIONS OF 1848, Bismarck gained political notice in Prussia as an extreme reactionary, who supported suppression of revolt and continued Austrian leadership in Germany. As Prussian minister to the GERMAN CONFEDERATION in Frankfurt (1851-59), he adopted the independent line of realpolitik, backing a policy based on Prussian interests, without regard for ideology, or humanitarianism. He now supported the ZOLLVEREIN against Austria, favored cooperation with NAPOLEON III of France, and opposed intervention in the internal affairs of other states in the interest of legitimate sovereigns. After briefly representing Prussia at St. Petersburg and Paris he was summoned home to become (Sept. 22, 1862) minister president and foreign minister for the Prussian king (later German emperor) WILLIAM I. UNIFICATION After proclaiming the policy of "iron and blood," Bismarck defied the Prussian Chamber of Deputies, which was locked in a constitutional conflict with the king, by implementing army reforms, administering without an approved budget, and following an independent foreign policy. His diplomacy brought victorious wars with Denmark (over SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN, 1864) and Austria (the SEVEN WEEKS' WAR of 1866), as a result of which the chamber passed an indemnity bill (in effect forgiving Bismarck's constitutional transgressions) and approved past budgets. With Austria excluded by force from Germany the North German Confederation was formed (July 14, 1867) under Prussian control. Under the constitution of the new state the Prussian king retained control of the army and policy-making, and the chancellor (Bismarck) was responsible only to him. The Bundesrat (federal council) represented the interests of the separate states, while in the parliament, or REICHSTAG, universal adult male suffrage (which Bismarck had discussed with the socialist Ferdinand LASSALLE) was instituted. In 1870, Bismarck's backing of a HOHENZOLLERN prince as candidate for the Spanish throne, coupled with his inflammatory editing of the Ems Dispatch (a message from William I to Napoleon III), had the desired effect of provoking France into the FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR. France was rapidly defeated, the German Empire (including the southern German states) was proclaimed at Versailles on Jan. 18, 1871, and Bismarck was named prince and German chancellor. The 1867 constitution was retained, and Bismarck also maintained civilian control over the army with William. He was thus able to block preventive war in the following years. Imperial Chancellor. Bismarck's foreign policy was now directed at maintaining and strengthening the power of the German Empire, which he saw as satiated territorially. Its security was ensured by marshaling its political and diplomatic resources in Europe and by isolating France diplomatically. When the Three Emperors' League (1873) with Russia and Austria disintegrated as a result of rivalry in the Balkans, Bismarck sought to mediate as an "honest broker" at the Congress of Berlin (1878; see BERLIN, CONGRESS OF). Increasing Russian hostility brought--against William's wishes--the Dual Alliance with Austria (1879), which became the TRIPLE ALLIANCE when Italy joined it in 1882. Bismarck, however, sought to tie Russia to this alliance by reviving the Three Emperors' League (1881-87) and through the Reinsurance Treaty (1887-90). He also gained British cooperation. Domestically in alliance with the National Liberals from 1867 to 1877, Bismarck extended the powers of the imperial government, adopted laissez-faire economic policies, and fought the political power of the Roman Catholic church in the KULTURKAMPF. The growth of the Catholic Center party and the challenges created by an economic depression (1873-96) brought a break with the liberals and the abandonment of laissez-faire. With Conservative, intermittent Center, and some remnants of National Liberal support, he embarked upon a policy of protective tariffs, suppression of the Social Democrats under August BEBEL, and pioneering social welfare measures, including insurance against illness, accident, and old age. Increasing socialist strength and the desire of the new emperor, WILLIAM II, to conciliate his people brought Bismarck's dismissal on Mar. 18, 1890. Until his death on July 30, 1898, he devoted his time to attacking his successors and dictating his savage reminiscences (1898; trans. by A. J. Butler as Bismarck, the Man and the Statesman, 1898). Bismarck unified Germany and maintained European peace for a generation, but he also perpetuated the obsolete dominance of the Prussian landed aristocracy (JUNKERS) and upper middle class, as well as a tradition of intolerance of partisan and personal dissent. Under William II, Bismarck's alliance system (with crucial modifications) contributed to World War I and the collapse of the German Empire. FREDERIC B. M. HOLLYDAY Bibliography Bibliography: Eyck, Erich, Bismarck and the German Empire, 3d ed. (1968); Hollyday, Frederic B. M., Bismarck (1970); Palmer, Alan, Bismarck (1976); Pflanze, Otto, Bismarck and the Development of Germany (1963); Stern, Fritz, Gold and Iron: Bismarck, Bleichroder and the Building of the German Empire (1977). Fisher of Kilverstone, John Arbuthnot Fisher, 1st Baron -------------------------------- The British admiral Lord Fisher, b. Jan. 25, 1841, d. July 10, 1920, entered the Royal Navy in 1854 and became admiral of the fleet in 1905. As first sea lord in the Admiralty (1904-10), Fisher improved the military preparedness of the navy, introducing, among other things, a new class of battleship, the DREADNOUGHT (1906) and converting the fleet from coal to oil, a step that led the British to acquire oil interests in the Middle East. Fisher's policies enabled the Royal Navy to match the German naval buildup under Admiral von TIRPITZ and to neutralize the German fleet during World War I. Brought back as first sea lord under Winston CHURCHILL in 1914, Fisher opposed the disastrous GALLIPOLI CAMPAIGN and resigned in May 1915. Bibliography: Hough, Richard, Admiral of the Fleet: The Life of John Fisher (1970); Jameson, William, The Fleet that Jack Built (1962); Mackay, R. F., Fisher of Kilverstone (1973); Marder, A. J., From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow, 5 vols. (1961-70). Dreadnought -------------------------------- H.M.S. Dreadnought, launched in 1906, was the first BATTLESHIP in which secondary armament was entirely dispensed with. The British ship's main battery consisted of ten 300-mm (12-in) guns in five armored turrets. It was also the first battleship to be powered by steam turbines. With a maximum speed of 21 knots, Dreadnought was a major advance in the performance of warships. Although the idea of the "all big gun" battleship did not originate with Dreadnought, the initial novelty of its speed, size, and firepower, as well as the remarkable accomplishment of its being constructed in only 366 days, caused its name to be given to this class of ship. JOHN F. GUILMARTIN Bibliography: Hough, Richard, Dreadnought: A History of the Modern Battleship, 3d ed. (1974). Tirpitz, Alfred von -------------------------------- (tir'-pits) Alfred von Tirpitz, b. Mar. 19, 1849, d. Mar. 6, 1930, created the German High Seas Fleet and was one of the most powerful figures in the imperial government of WILLIAM II. Entering the Prussian Navy in 1865, he supervised the development of torpedoes for the German fleet in the 1870s and '80s. Later, as head of the Imperial Naval Office (from 1897) and grand admiral (from 1911), he skillfully built a battleship fleet second only to Britain's. Despite Tirpitz's efforts and his initially strong official and public backing, the German government decided to limit its buildup, which had succeeded in alienating the British and in coopting resources needed to maintain the strength of the army. The German Navy was thus unprepared for World War I. Frustrated also in his support of unrestricted submarine warfare, Tirpitz resigned in 1916, thereafter helping to organize a new ultranationalistic political party. He wrote a personal defense, My Memoirs (1919; Eng. trans., 2 vols., 1919). From 1924 to 1928 he represented an extreme right-wing party in the Reichstag. FREDERIC B. M. HOLLYDAY Bibliography: Kehr, Eckart, Battleship Building and Party Politics in Germany, 1894-1901 (1973); Steinberg, Jonathan, YesterdaSy's Deterrent: TirpiEtz and the Birth of the German Battle Fleet (1965). Zeppelin, Ferdinand, Graf von -------------------------------- (tsep-uh-leen') Ferdinand, Graf von Zeppelin, b. July 8, 1838, d. Mar. 8, 1917, was a retired German army general who invented the rigid dirigible. Zeppelin was nearly 62 years old when he made the first directed flight on July 2, 1900. His 126-m-long (419-ft) zeppelin was kept aloft by 16 bags, or cells, full of hydrogen enclosed in a fabric-covered, cigar-shaped aluminum framework and powered by two 16-hp engines. During World War I about 40 zeppelins were shot down while on air raids over London. The most famous of the zeppelins, the HINDENBURG, went down in flames over Lakehurst, N.J., in 1937. The zeppelin was too slow and explosive a target in wartime and too fragile to withstand bad weather. Its short but dramatic era ended soon after the Lakehurst tragedy. RICHARD K. SMITH Bibliography: Guttery, Thomas E., Zeppelin: An Illustrated Life of Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, 1838-1917 (1973); Nitske, W. Robert, The Zeppelin Story (1977). Algeciras Conference -------------------------------- Early in 1906 European diplomats met at Algeciras, Spain, to settle a dispute arising from the German challenge to the impending partition of Morocco by France and Spain. Although Germany declared its support for Moroccan independence, its primary intention was to break up the Anglo-French Entente of 1904. The effect of the conference was to delay the partition of Morocco (to 1912, after a second international crisis), but Britain stood by France and thus strengthened the entente. Moroccan crises -------------------------------- The Moroccan crises of 1905 and 1911 arose over the French plan to make Morocco a protectorate. Germany's attempts to challenge French rights in Morocco brought Europe close to war twice before World War I. The first Moroccan crisis occurred when Germany tried to block French designs on Morocco, thus isolating France and testing the strength of the Entente Cordiale (see TRIPLE ENTENTE) recently concluded between France and Great Britain. The German emperor WILLIAM II went to Tangier in March 1905 and announced his support for Moroccan independence. A war scare ensued, and the French foreign minister was forced from office. The European powers met in Algeciras, Spain, in January 1906 and were able to resolve the conflict temporarily (see ALGECIRAS CONFERENCE). The episode had the important results of leaving Germany almost isolated and arousing British concern over German aggressiveness. The second crisis developed in 1911 after France and Spain were called in to restore order in Morocco during a revolt. Germany, concerned about French advances, sent the gunboat Panther to Agadir, supposedly to protect German civilians. The move was seen as a threat to the French, and Britain responded strongly. The Mansion House speech by David Lloyd George on July 21 showed British determination not to back down. For a time war seemed imminent. On November 4, however, Germany agreed to a French protectorate in Morocco in exchange for territory in equatorial Africa. DONALD S. BIRN Bibliography: Anderson, Eugene N., The First Moroccan Crisis, 1904-1906 (1930; repr. 1966); Barlow, Irma C., The Agadir Crisis (1940). Balkan Wars -------------------------------- The Balkan Wars of 1912-13 were two short wars fought over the disposition of the Ottoman Empire's former Balkan territories. Tsarist Russia supported the efforts of Bulgaria and Serbia in 1911 to establish an alliance that would check Austria-Hungary's advances southeastward into the Balkans. In the aftermath of the 1908 revolt of the YOUNG TURKS, these two smaller states were additionally interested in dividing the remaining Turkish-controlled territory in Europe, specifically MACEDONIA. On Mar. 13, 1912, Serbia and Bulgaria signed a treaty of mutual assistance. Greece joined in a pact with Bulgaria on May 29, 1912, and Montenegro arranged agreements with Bulgaria and Serbia in late September. With Turkey already involved in a war with Italy over Libya, and despite protests from the great powers, the Balkan League began its war against the Ottoman Empire on Oct. 8, 1912. To the surprise of most observers, the Balkan allies won quick, decisive victories. The Treaty of London (May 30, 1913) forced the Ottoman Empire to cede virtually all of its remaining European territory--except for the region immediately adjacent to Constantinople--to the Balkan states. Subsequently, the allies disputed the division of the territorial gains. Bulgaria challenged, in particular, Greek and Serbian claims to Macedonia. Overestimating its strength, Bulgaria launched an attack on its former allies on June 30, 1913. This second Balkan War soon found Romania and Turkey joining the fighting with Greece and Serbia. Thus attacked from all sides, Bulgaria had to sign an armistice on July 31. The Treaty of Bucharest (Aug. 10, 1913) stripped Bulgaria of some recently conquered territory. Greece, which in the earlier conflict had taken Crete and some Aegean islands from Turkey, now formally acquired the important port of Salonika (Thessaloniki) and most of coastal Macedonia, while Serbia received north and central Macedonia. Romania obtained a large section of the DOBRUJA from Bulgaria, which also had to yield the greater part of Thrace to Turkey. Although all the Balkan states significantly increased the size of their territories at the expense of Turkey, Bulgaria remained embittered by its defeat in the second Balkan War, and its neighboring states sought still other lands for expansion. The Balkan disputes were to be continued in the larger context of WORLD WAR I. S. VICTOR PAPACOSMA Bibliography: Helmreich, E. C., The Diplomacy of the Balkan Wars, 1912-1913 (1938; repr. 1969); Young, George, Nationalism and War in the Near East (1915; repr. 1970). Schlieffen, Alfred, Graf von -------------------------------- (shlee'-fen) The German military officer Alfred, Graf von Schlieffen, b. Feb. 28, 1833, d. Jan. 14, 1913, was the author of the Schlieffen plan, Germany's strategic master plan at the beginning of WORLD WAR I. Son of a Prussian general, he served (1891-1906) under Emperor WILLIAM II as chief of the general staff, becoming a field marshal in 1911. Schlieffen postulated an inevitable two-front war that Germany could win only by placing preponderant force on the right wing of the western front, which would sweep through Belgium and complete a swift, annihilating encirclement of the French army. With France conquered, the army would be transferred to the Russian front by railroad. In his plan, Schlieffen did not press for diplomatic preparation for war, an army increase, or naval action against Britain, although the violation of Belgian neutrality would ensure British intervention. As a professional soldier he considered himself a technician who was not concerned with the political implications of warfare. When war broke out in 1914, Germany put the Schlieffen plan into operation, although Schlieffen's successor as chief of general staff, H. J. L., von MOLTKE, modified--and weakened--the plan by building up the eastern front at the expense of the western. Most military historians, however, believe that there were inherent weaknesses in the plan that would have surfaced regardless of what Moltke did. FREDERIC B. M. HOLLYDAY Bibliography: Ritter, Gerhard, The Schlieffen Plan: Critique of a Myth, Eng. trans. by Andrew and Eva Wilson (1958; repr. 1968). Hindenburg, Paul von -------------------------------- (hin'-den-boork) Paul Ludwig Hans Anton von Beneckendorff und von Hindenburg, b. Oct. 2, 1847, served as a German field marshal in WORLD WAR I and subsequently as president of Germany. He was the son of a Prussian army officer. After a military career that began with service since the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, he retired as a general in 1911. In August 1914, at the beginning of World War I, Hindenburg was recalled to take command of the defense of East Prussia, which was being invaded by two Russian armies. The victories he and his chief of staff, Gen. Erich LUDENDORFF, achieved within a month at Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes, and their subsequent successes on the eastern front, led to their being entrusted with the supreme German command in 1916. Their attempt to break the stalemate on the western front by an unrestricted submarine blockade against Britain resulted in the sinking of American ships, the entry of the United States into the war in 1917, and the deployment of sufficient American troops by mid-1918 to stop the last great German offensive. With no hope of victory and his armies at the breaking point, Hindenburg called for an armistice. By the time it went into effect, on Nov. 11, 1918, the German emperor, WILLIAM II, had abdicated. Hindenburg remained in command until June 1919, but he held aloof from subsequent events, allowing Ludendorff's successor, Wilhelm GROENER, to act for him in cooperating with the provisional republican regime, led by Friedrich EBERT. Groener supervised the withdrawal of German forces still on foreign soil and employed them, where necessary, to restore domestic order. In 1925, on Ebert's death, Hindenburg was elected president as the candidate of the nationalists. Seven years later, in 1932, he was reelected, defeating Adolf HITLER. By this time parliamentary government had broken down, and the aged president was under the influence of Gen. Kurt von SCHLEICHER. Nonetheless, when Schleicher asked for emergency powers, Hindenburg dismissed him and appointed Hitler in his place (January 1933). Although he detested Hitler, Hindenburg believed that he could be easily controlled. His mistake was soon apparent, but, increasingly senile, he acquiesced in Hitler's consolidation of power. By the time Hindenburg died on Aug. 2, 1934, Hitler's control was so complete that he was able to usurp the authority of the presidency and abolish the office altogether. Bibliography: Dorpalen, Andreas, Hindenburg and the Weimar Republic (1967); Hindenburg, Paul von, Out of My Life, trans. by Frederic A. Holt (1920); Wheeler-Bennett, John W., Wooden Titan: Hindenburg in Twenty Years of German History, 1914-1934 (1936; repr. 1963). Tannenberg, Battles of -------------------------------- (tahn'-en-bairk) Two famous battles were fought in the vicinity of Tannenberg (now Stebark, Poland; formerly in East Prussia) near the Baltic coast. The first, on July 15, 1410, sometimes called the Battle of Grunwald, was a Polish-Lithuanian victory over the TEUTONIC KNIGHTS. The clash halted the Knights' advance eastward along the Baltic and helped spur their decline. The second battle, in late August 1914, was a German victory early in World War I over Russian armies that had invaded East Prussia. German commander Paul von HINDENBURG and Erich LUDENDORFF, his chief of staff, directed movements that encircled Gen. A. V. Samsonov's Second Russian Army. After the Germans took about 90,000 prisoners, Samsonov killed himself, and his remaining men were forced to retreat. ROBIN BUSS Husayn ibn Ali -------------------------------- (hoo-sayn' ib-uhn ah'-lee) Husayn ibn Ali, b. c.1854, d. June 4, 1931, became sharif of Mecca in the Hejaz in 1908 and in 1916, as leader of the Arab Revolt against Ottoman Turkish rule, proclaimed himself "king of the Arab lands." Recognized only as king of the Hejaz by the Allies of World War I, he refused to accept the postwar settlement of the Paris Peace Conference (1919). His rule over Arabia was challenged by IBN SAUD of Riyadh, and after defeat by the latter's forces, Husayn abdicated in October 1924. His sons included ABDULLAH, later king of Jordan, and FAISAL I, later king of Iraq. ROBIN BUSS Ypres, Battles of -------------------------------- The Belgian city of Ypres was the focal point of several World War I battles. The first battle was fought in October and November 1914; it concluded the "race to the sea" after the German defeat at the First Battle of the Marne. A German drive to seize the English Channel ports of northern France was blocked by the arrival of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) under Field Marshal Sir John FRENCH. The British--assisted by Belgian and French troops--stopped the German drive, but the BEF was almost destroyed. Losses on each side were nearly 100,000 casualties. The second Battle of Ypres (April 22-May 25, 1915) began when the Germans disrupted a planned Allied offensive. A German poison gas attack, the first on the western front, demoralized the Allied troops and created a large gap in their lines, but the Allies retrieved the situation after a bitter struggle. The British suffered approximately 50,000 casualties, the French about 10,000, and the Germans about 35,000. Allied operations around Ypres in the spring and early summer of 1917 were disappointing. The British attempted a second offensive on July 31; after more than 3 months and a total advance of 8 km (5 mi), this offensive culminated in the capture of the ridge and village of Passchendaele on November 6. It distracted German attention, however, from the collapsing French armies, thus helping to prevent a German victory in 1917. The British suffered more than 300,000 casualties, the French about 9,000, and the Germans about 260,000. Additional operations were undertaken in and around Ypres in the spring and fall of 1918. COL. T. N. DUPUY Bibliography: Giles, John, The Ypres Salient (1970). Kitchener, Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl -------------------------------- Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener, b. June 24, 1850, d. June 5, 1916, was Britain's foremost general at the beginning of the 20th century. Commissioned in the Royal Engineers in 1871, he was attached to the Egyptian army in 1883 and became its commander in chief in 1892. In that capacity he established his reputation by reconquering the Sudan from the Mahdists, winning the famous Battle of Omdurman in 1898. That same year his tactful treatment of the French in the FASHODA INCIDENT may have avoided a war with France. After serving as governor of the Sudan, Kitchener became (1899) chief of staff to Frederick Sleigh ROBERTS in the SOUTH AFRICAN WAR and succeeded as commander in chief in 1900. He was much criticized for interning Afrikaner civilians in concentration camps. As commander in chief in India (1902-09), Kitchener quarreled with the viceroy, Lord CURZON, over military policy, but the London government supported him and made him a field marshal. From 1911 to 1914 he was the virtual ruler of Egypt as British consul general. At the start (1914) of World War I, Kitchener became secretary of state for war, the first serving officer to hold this post. He expanded the army from 20 divisions to 70, but he was blamed for the munitions shortage on the western front. Kitchener was drowned when his ship was torpedoed while on a mission to Russia. DON M. CREGIER Bibliography: Arthur, George, Life of Lord Kitchener, 3 vols. (1920); Magnus, Philip, Kitchener: Portrait of an Imperialist (1958). Somme, Battles of the -------------------------------- (suhm) The Battles of the Somme were two encounters fought along the Somme River in northwestern France during World War I. The First Battle of the Somme (June 24-Nov. 13, 1916). The Allies' long-standing plans to attack the Central Powers were delayed when the Germans launched (Feb. 21, 1916) an offensive at Verdun (see VERDUN, BATTLE OF) in an attempt to breach the French line. On July 1, following a week-long artillery barrage, the Allies finally began their attack on the highly fortified German line along the Somme; they now had the secondary purpose of relieving the pressure on Verdun. The British, under Field Marshal Sir Douglas HAIG, played the leading role, with a smaller French force to their right. Only small gains were made on the first day of battle, and the British suffered 60,000 casualties, including 19,000 dead; it was the greatest one-day loss in the history of the British army. Throughout the summer and autumn, the British continued a series of limited attacks, including the last large-scale use of horse cavalry in Western Europe. The British also used tanks for the first time in battle, although not very effectively. The battle ended in a deadlock. Little land had changed hands; the campaign had succeeded only in the objective of relieving Verdun. The cost was enormous: the British lost 420,000 men; the French lost 195,000; German casualties were about 600,000. The Second Battle of the Somme (Mar. 21-Apr. 5, 1918). In early 1918, German general Erich LUDENDORFF opened the Second Battle of the Somme, also known as the Somme Offensive. His purpose was to breach the Allied line before American reinforcements could arrive. German shock troops struck along a 92-km (60-mi) front and succeeded in rolling back the Allies as much as 64 km (40 mi). It was the Germans' first major breakthrough since the early days of the war. Haig failed to get support from the French forces under General Henri PETAIN, who was occupied with the defense of Paris, and the Allies assigned General Ferdinand FOCH the task of coordinating the Allied efforts. Foch immediately sent French reserves to the Somme, and the German drive lost momentum. Like the First Battle of the Somme, the second was fought at enormous cost: the British suffered 163,000 casualties and the French, 77,000; German losses were almost as high as those of the Allies. COL. T. N. DUPUY Bibliography Bibliography: Keegan, John, The Face of Battle (1976); Matloff, Maurice, World War I: A Concise Military History (1978). Allenby, Edmund Henry Hynman, 1st Viscount Allenby of Megiddo -------------------------------- Edmund Henry Hynman Allenby, b. Apr. 23, 1861, d. May 14, 1936, was a British general who commanded the British forces in the Middle East during World War I. A cavalry officer, he served (1899-1902) in the South African War. At the outbreak of World War I he went to France as commander of British cavalry and subsequently led (1915-17) the Third Army. Sent (1917) to Egypt, he began a systematic campaign to expel the Turks from Palestine, capturing Jerusalem in December 1917. His victory at Megiddo (Sept. 18-21, 1918) began the offensive that pushed the Turks back through Syria. Created (1919) a viscount, Allenby was high commissioner for Egypt from 1919 to 1925. Bibliography: Gardner, Brian, Allenby of Arabia (1965); Wavell, Archibald P., Allenby: A Study in Greatness, 2 vols. (1941-43) and Allenby, Soldier and Statesman (1948). Gallieni, Joseph Simon -------------------------------- {gahl-lee-ay'-nee} Joseph Simon Gallieni, b. Apr. 24, 1849, d. May 27, 1916, was a French general who worked to integrate France's colonial conquests into the FRENCH COLONIAL EMPIRE. He served in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) and later in the 1870s was sent to Africa. In the course of his colonial military and administrative career he served in the Upper Niger area, Martinique, French Sudan, Indochina, and Madagascar. In Madagascar he created a system of compulsory labor as part of his policy to have the natives raise their own standard of living. In 1911, Gallieni declined the position of supreme commander of the French army because of ill health and age. Nonetheless, he was appointed military governor of Paris in August 1914 and raised troops to drive back the Germans in the First Battle of the Marne. He served as minister of war from 1915 to 1916 and was made a marshal of France posthumously. Gallieni wrote several works on his colonial campaigns and policies. P. M. EWY Bibliography: Matthew, V. L., "Joseph Simon Gallieni," in African Proconsuls, ed. by L. H. Gann and Peter Duignan (1978). Venizelos, Eleutherios -------------------------------- (ven-ee-zel'-aws, el-ef-thair'-ee-aws) Eleutherios Venizelos, b. Aug. 23, 1864, d. Mar. 18, 1936, several times prime minister of Greece, was one of the leading Greek politicians of his era. A native of Crete, he headed the liberal, nationalist movement on the island and participated in the 1897 revolt against Turkish rule. In 1905, Venizelos proclaimed the union of Crete with Greece, a goal not realized until 1913. Venizelos went to Greece in 1909 to advise the Military League shortly after its coup d'etat. He was the Liberal party's leader and became prime minister in 1910. During the BALKAN WARS (1912-13), Venizelos helped defeat the Turks and almost doubled Greece's territory. Favoring Britain and France in World War I he resigned in 1915 because of conflicts with the pro-German king CONSTANTINE I, who advocated continuing neutrality. Venizelos formed a rival government in Salonika in 1916. He returned to Athens as prime minister in 1917, after Franco-British pressure forced Constantine to abdicate. Greece then entered the war on the Allied side. After the war, Venizelos acquired substantial territory for Greece, particularly at Turkey's expense, but lost the elections in 1920. He served briefly as prime minister in 1924 and won the 1928 elections, but the worldwide depression led to his defeat in 1932. Implicated in the unsuccessful antimonarchist revolt of 1935, he fled Greece and died in exile in Paris. S. VICTOR PAPACOSMA Bibliography: Alastos, Doros, Venizelos: Patriot, Statesman, Revolutionary (1942; repr. 1978); Box, P. H., Three Master Builders and Another (1925). Lloyd George, David, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor -------------------------------- {loyd, doo-ee'-vor} David Lloyd George was one of the commanding figures in 20th-century British politics and the only person of Welsh extraction to become prime minister. Born in Manchester, England, on Jan. 17, 1863, he was raised by his uncle, a village shoemaker and sectarian lay preacher in North Wales. In 1878 he was apprenticed to a solicitor (nontrial lawyer), and he opened his own law practice in 1884. As "the poachers' lawyer," willing to defend clients accused of breaking the harsh game laws, Lloyd George acquired a loyal following among North Wales tenant farmers and quarrymen. In 1890 he was elected to Parliament as a Liberal, beginning a 55-year career at Westminster. Lloyd George acquired recognition speaking for the interests of Welsh nonconformists--including temperance, disestablishment of the Anglican church in Wales, nondenominational education, and local autonomy. He was viewed as an unorthodox, independent Liberal, a reputation enhanced by his uncompromising opposition to the South African War (1899-1902). Later he won national prominence as leader of the nonconformist opposition to the Conservative government's Education Act of 1902. When Sir Henry CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN formed his Liberal cabinet in 1905, he included Lloyd George as a representative of nonconformist interests. In the post of president of the Board of Trade, Lloyd George was highly successful as a champion of business and labor negotiator. Prime Minister Herbert ASQUITH promoted him to chancellor of the exchequer in 1908. Lloyd George became an active social reformer, horrifying traditionalists by using the annual government budget to construct policy as well as to raise money. His "people's budget" of 1909, with its land taxes, provoked a clash with the Conservative-dominated House of Lords, ending in curtailment (1911) of the House of Lords' power to veto legislation. In 1911, Lloyd George guided through Parliament his pioneering National Health Insurance Act. This act, in conjunction with his Old Age Pensions Act (1908), is often identified as the foundation of the British welfare state. At first reluctant to approve Great Britain's entry (August 1914) into WORLD WAR I, Lloyd George soon advocated a knockout blow against Germany, demanding greater vigor and efficiency from the government. As munitions minister in 1915-16, he ensured that a steady supply of guns and shells reached the western front, becoming a hero of the press but making many political enemies. He became minister of war shortly before he joined with the Conservative leaders to maneuver Asquith out of office in December 1916. Lloyd George then became prime minister and the dominant figure in the new 5-member coalition war cabinet. Lloyd George imposed an effective regime of "war socialism" upon the British people, but he quarreled with his generals, particularly Douglas HAIG, and was unable to cut the heavy casualties on the western front. Nevertheless, he was popularly regarded as the man who won the war, and he exploited this reputation to win a huge election victory for his coalition following the 1918 armistice. The last 4 years of Lloyd George's premiership (1918-22) were anticlimactic. He was the principal British negotiator at the PARIS PEACE CONFERENCE and five subsequent international parleys, but his "conference diplomacy" failed to mitigate postwar tensions. His government's housing program ("homes for heroes") was a disaster; there was mounting unemployment and labor unrest; and a major recession began in 1921. In Ireland he initially adopted a policy of harsh repression against the nationalist rebels, but he finally negotiated the treaty (1921) that established the Irish Free State. This settlement was his one major postwar success, but it damaged his relations with the Conservatives, on whom his government depended. The Conservatives finally withdrew their support after the CHANAK CRISIS (1922) in which Lloyd George brought Britain to the brink of war with Turkey. After the coalition fell in October 1922, Lloyd George was reunited with the Asquithian Liberals. He later split with Asquith again but succeeded him as Liberal party leader (1926-31). With the decline of Liberalism, Lloyd George's fortunes waned. He never again held office, although he was a leading parliamentary critic of Labour and, more so, Conservative foreign and domestic policies. He was awarded an earldom shortly before his death on Mar. 26, 1945. DON M. CREGIER Bibliography: Fry, Michael, Lloyd George and Foreign Policy, vol. 1 (1977); Grigg, John, Lloyd George, 2 vols. (1979, 1985), and The Young Lloyd George (1973); Morgan, Kenneth, Consensus and Disunity (1979); Woodward, David, Lloyd George and the Generals (1983). Wilson, Woodrow -------------------------------- Woodrow Wilson, 28th president of the United States (1913-21), secured a legislative program of progressive domestic reform, guided his country during WORLD WAR I, and sought a peace settlement based on high moral principles, to be guaranteed by the LEAGUE OF NATIONS. Early Life and Career. Thomas Woodrow Wilson was born in Staunton, Va., on Dec. 28, 1856. He was profoundly influenced by a devoutly religious household headed by his father, Joseph Ruggles Wilson, a Presbyterian minister, and his mother, Janet Woodrow Wilson, the daughter of a minister. Woodrow (he dropped the Thomas in 1879) attended (1873-74) Davidson College and in 1875 entered the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University), graduating in 1879. Wilson studied (1879-80) at the University of Virginia Law School, briefly practiced law in Atlanta, and in 1883 entered The Johns Hopkins University for graduate study in political science. His widely acclaimed book, Congressional Government (1885), was published a year before he received the doctoral degree. In 1885 he married Ellen Louise Axson; they had three daughters. Wilson taught at Bryn Mawr College (1885-88) and Wesleyan University in Connecticut (1888-90) before he was called (1890) to Princeton as professor of jurisprudence and political economy. A popular lecturer, Wilson also wrote a score of articles and nine books, including Division and Reunion (1893) and his five-volume History of the American People (1902). In 1902 he was the unanimous choice of the trustees to become Princeton's president. His reforms included reorganization of the departmental structure, revision of the curriculum, raising of academic standards, tightening of student discipline, and the still-famous preceptorial system of instruction. But Wilson's quad plan--an attempt to create colleges or quadrangles where students and faculty members would live and study together--was defeated. Opposed by wealthy alumni and trustees, he also lost his battle for control of the proposed graduate college. The Princeton controversies, seen nationally as a battle between democracy and vested wealth, propelled Wilson into the political arena. George Harvey, editor of Harper's Weekly, with help from New Jersey's Democratic party bosses, persuaded Wilson to run for governor in 1910. After scoring an easy victory, he cast off his machine sponsors and launched a remarkable program of progressive legislation, including a direct-primary law, antitrust laws, a corrupt-practices act, a workmen's compensation act, and measures establishing a public utility commission and permitting cities to adopt the commission form of government. Success in New Jersey made him a contender for the Democratic presidential nomination. Although Wilson entered the 1912 Democratic National Convention a poor second to Speaker of the House Champ Clark, his strength increased as Clark's faded, and he won the nomination after 46 ballots. Offering a program of reform that he called the New Freedom, Wilson ran against a divided Republican party. In November, with only 42 percent of the popular vote, he won 435 electoral votes to 88 for Progressive candidate Theodore Roosevelt and 8 for the Republican candidate, President William Howard Taft. Progressive as President. By presenting his program personally before the Democratically controlled Congress, employing personal persuasion as well as patronage, and appealing to the American public with his stirring rhetoric, Wilson won passage of an impressive array of progressive measures. The Underwood Tariff Act (1913), the first reduction in duties since the Civil War, also established a modest income tax. The Federal Reserve Act (1913) provided for currency and banking reform. Antitrust legislation followed in 1914, when Congress passed the Federal Trade Commission Act and the CLAYTON ANTI-TRUST ACT. In 1915, Wilson supported the La Follette Seamen's bill, designed to improve the working conditions of sailors. The following year he signed the Federal Farm Loan Act, providing low-interest credit to farmers; the Adamson Act, granting an 8-hour day to interstate railroad workers; and the Child Labor Act, which limited children's working hours. In foreign policy, Wilson was faced with greater problems than any president since Abraham Lincoln. He attempted to end U.S. dollar diplomacy and promote the mediation of disputes. He rejected a loan to China on the grounds that it impaired Chinese sovereignty, and he helped thwart Japanese designs on the Chinese mainland. He approved Secretary of State William Jennings BRYAN's efforts to minimize the danger of war through a series of "conciliation treaties" and joined him in an unsuccessful attempt to negotiate a Pan-American pact guaranteeing the integrity of the Western Hemisphere. In attempting to deal with revolutionary Mexico, Wilson first sought to promote self-government by refusing to recognize the military usurper Victoriano HUERTA and forcing him to allow free elections. When Huerta resisted, Wilson tried to force him out by ordering (April 1914) limited American intervention at Veracruz and by supporting constitutionalist Venustiano CARRANZA. Mediation by Argentina, Brazil, and Chile helped to prevent a general conflict and led to Huerta's resignation in July 1914. A year later, Wilson recognized Carranza's provisional government, and in 1916 he intervened again after Carranza's rival, guerrilla leader Pancho VILLA, had raided a town in New Mexico, killing several Americans. In 1915 and 1916 he reluctantly sent troops to Haiti and Santo Domingo to establish U.S. protectorates. After the outbreak of the European war in August 1914, Wilson struggled with considerable success to fulfill the obligations of neutrality, to keep trade channels open, and to prevent any abridgement of U.S. rights, all in the face of the British blockade of Germany and the latter's introduction of submarine warfare. He warned Germany in February 1915 that it would be held to "strict accountability" for the loss of American lives in the sinking of neutral or passenger ships. After the LUSITANIA was sunk in May 1915 (with the loss of 128 Americans), he negotiated with such firmness that Secretary Bryan, fearing a declaration of war, resigned in protest. In September 1915, Wilson won pledges from Germany to provide for the safety of passengers caught in submarine attacks, and in May 1916 the Germans agreed to abandon unrestricted submarine warfare. Running on his record of reform and with the slogan "He kept us out of the war," Wilson sought reelection in 1916 against Republican Charles Evans Hughes. The president won a narrow victory, receiving 277 out of 531 electoral votes. Wartime Leader. When Germany renewed all-out submarine warfare in 1917, Wilson severed diplomatic relations. In April he asked Congress for a declaration of war, asserting that "the world must be made safe for democracy." As war president, Wilson made a major contribution to the modern presidency as he led Americans in a spectacular mobilization of the nation's resources. Establishing a series of war agencies, he extended federal control over industry, transportation, labor, food, fuel, and prices. In May 1917 he forced through Congress a Selective Service bill under which 2.8 million men were drafted by war's end. He sought and received legislative delegation of increased powers, thus leaving for his successors the precedents and tools to meet future crises. Wilson the Peacemaker. From 1914, Wilson had sought ways to mediate the conflict. In 1915 and 1916 he sent his advisor and confidant, Col. Edward M. HOUSE, to Europe to work toward a negotiated peace and postwar cooperation. In the spring of 1916, Wilson joined the call for a postwar association of nations; on Jan. 22, 1917, he called for a peace without victory and reaffirmed his support for a league of nations. With the United States in the war, Wilson hoped to have a stronger influence on the peace settlement. On Jan. 8, 1918, he presented his FOURTEEN POINTS, a comprehensive statement of war aims. It became at once a war weapon and a peace program, inspiring the peoples of the Allied powers while undermining the confidence of the Germans. Germany made its peace overture in the hope of obtaining just treatment under Wilson's proposals. Wilson headed the American delegation to the PARIS PEACE CONFERENCE. He erred seriously, however, by not developing bipartisan support for his peace plans; he did not appoint a prominent Republican to the delegation, and he called on voters to reelect a Democratic Congress in 1918 as a vote of confidence. Most contests were decided on local issues, and when Republicans captured both houses of Congress, his leadership seemed repudiated. Wilson was hailed as a hero upon his arrival in Europe. At the conference (January-June 1919) Allied leaders Georges CLEMENCEAU, David LLOYD GEORGE, and Vittorio ORLANDO favored a traditional settlement. Wilson worked tirelessly for a peace along the lines of his Fourteen Points; only his shrewd bargaining prevented even harsher terms from being imposed on Germany. Wilson characterized the Versailles Treaty as the best obtainable compromise and put his hopes in the League of Nations, an integral part of the treaty, as the institution through which inequities could be later rectified. Senate Republicans, led by Henry Cabot Lodge, refused to approve the peace treaty without significant modifications of the U.S. commitment to the League. Wilson accepted some compromise but then turned to the people. In a national speaking tour he eloquently defended the League and U.S. membership as essential to lasting world peace. Long months of exhausting labor had weakened the president, however, and he collapsed on Sept. 25, 1919, following a speech in Pueblo, Colo. A week later Wilson suffered a stroke that left him partially incapacitated for the remainder of his life. From his bed he continued to oppose severe restrictions to the League. The Senate, meanwhile, rejected the treaty in November 1919 and March 1920. Wilson urged that the 1920 presidential election be a referendum on the League. Republican Warren G. Harding, who desired strong reservations to the League, won in a landslide. In December 1920, Wilson won the Nobel Peace Prize for 1919. The former president and his second wife, Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, whom he married in 1915, after the death of his first wife, continued to make their home in Washington, D.C. Wilson died there on Feb. 3, 1924. DAVID W. HIRST Bibliography Bibliography: Baker, Ray S., Woodrow Wilson: Life and Letters, 8 vols. (1927-39; repr. 1968); Bell, Herbert C. F., Woodrow Wilson and the People (1945); Blum, John M., Woodrow Wilson and the Politics of Morality (1956); Bragdon, Henry W., Woodrow Wilson: The Academic Years (1967); Latham, Earl, ed., The Philosophy and Policies of Woodrow Wilson (1975); Levin, N. Gordon, Woodrow Wilson and World Politics (1968); Link, Arthur S., Wilson, 5 vols. (1947-65), and Woodrow Wilson: A Brief Biography (1963); Link, Arthur S., Hirst, David W., et al., eds., The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 32 vols. (1966-80); Walworth, Arthur, Woodrow Wilson, 3d ed. (1978). Factbox -------------------------------- Woodrow Wilson 28th President of the United States (1913-21) Nickname: "Schoolmaster in Politics" Born: Dec. 28, 1856, Staunton, Va. Education: College of New Jersey (now Princeton University; graduated 1879) Profession: Teacher, Public Official Religious Affilation: Presbyterian Marriage: June 24, 1885, to Ellen Louise Axson (1860-1914); Dec. 18, 1915, to Edith Bolling Galt (1872-1961) Children: Margaret Woodrow Wilson (1886-1944); Jessie Woodrow Wilson (1887-1933); Eleanor Randolph Wilson (1889-1967) Political Affiliation: Democrat Writings: George Washington (1896); A History of the American People (5 vols., 1902); Constitutional Government in the United Sttes (1908); Papers of Woodrow Wilson (1966- ), ed. by Arthur S. Link, et al. Died: Feb. 3, 1924, Washington, D.C. Buried: National Cathedral, Washington, D.C. Vice-President and Cabinet Members Vice-President: Thomas R. Marshall Secretary of State: William J. Bryan (1913-15); Robert Lansing (1915-20); Bainbridge Colby (1920-21) Secretary of the Treasury: William G. McAdoo (1913-18); Carter Glass (1918-20); David F. Houston (1920-21) Secretary of War: Lindley M. Garrison (1913-16); Newton D. Baker (1916-21) Attorney General: James C. McReynolds (1913-14); Thomas W. Gregory (1914-19); Alexander M. Palmer (1919-21) Postmaster General: Albert S. Burleson Secretary of the Navy: Josephus Daniels Secretary of the Interior: Franklin K. Lane (1913-20); John B. Payne (1920-21) Secretary of Agriculture: David F. Houston (1913-20); Edwin T. Meredith (1920-21) Secretary of Commerce: William C. Redfield (1913-19); Joshua W. Alexander (1919-21) Secretary of Labor: William B. Wilson House, Edward M. -------------------------------- Edward Mandell House, b. Houston, Tex., July 26, 1858, d. Mar. 28, 1938, known as Colonel House, became internationally prominent as the confidant and executive agent of U.S. president Woodrow WILSON. Independently wealthy, House early developed a passion for Democratic politics and played an influential role in the campaigns of four Texas governors. In 1911 he met Wilson, then governor of New Jersey. He supported Wilson's presidential candidacy in 1912, aided him materially in selecting his first cabinet, and became a useful, trusted advisor. With Wilson's approval, House visited the European capitals early in 1914 to survey the possibility of reducing armaments. During World War I he returned to Europe in 1915 and 1916 to promote Wilson's mediation efforts. The president appointed House head of U.S. preparations for the PARIS PEACE CONFERENCE of 1919, which House attended as a delegate and Wilson's closest associate. House soon incurred Wilson's displeasure, however, because of his failure to sustain the American position when left in charge of negotiations. Thereafter the friendship waned as evidence accumulated of the divergence of their views. After June 1919 they never met again, and House retired from public life. DAVID W. HIRST Bibliography: Floto, Inga, Colonel House in Paris (1973); George, Alexander L. and Juliet L., Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House: A Personality Study (1956; repr. 1964); Seymour, Charles, ed., The Intimate Papers of Colonel House, 4 vols. (1926-28). Paris Peace Conference -------------------------------- The Paris Peace Conference was organized by the victors at the end of WORLD WAR I to settle the issues raised by that conflict. Because the 27 nations represented had often-conflicting plans for peace, the sessions were tumultuous and the resulting treaties controversial. The conference convened on Jan. 18, 1919. Germany and the other defeated Central Powers were not permitted to sit at the conference tables. The four major victorious powers, Britain, France, Italy, and the United States, dominated the proceedings. U.S. president Woodrow WILSON favored a conciliatory settlement based on the liberal principles of his FOURTEEN POINTS, which included national self-determination in Europe among its goals. French premier Georges CLEMENCEAU, trying to secure his country against future German attack, was often at odds with Wilson. David LLOYD GEORGE, the British prime minister, and Vittorio ORLANDO, the Italian premier, were the other "Big Four" leaders of the Supreme Council that controlled the conference. Advisory committees worked on specialized areas such as REPARATIONS, economics, and future international organization. France conceded its key demand, that the left bank of the Rhine be detached from Germany and put under French military control, in exchange for British and American promises of future support. The Treaty of Versailles, presented to Germany in May 1919 and signed on June 28, was, however, still criticized as a harsh "dictated peace." Germany was compelled to admit war guilt, to give up territory, and to disarm; its Saar and Rhineland districts were placed under Allied occupation, and the country was supposed to pay heavy reparations. The Versailles treaty did not conform to the Fourteen Points, but Wilson was pleased with the other major result of the conference, the covenant of the LEAGUE OF NATIONS, which was given final approval on Apr. 28, 1919. This new international organization was to make the peace secure, administer former colonies of the defeated powers as mandates, and foster general disarmament. The Treaty of Saint Germain with Austria (September 10) and the Treaty of Neuilly with Bulgaria (November 27) were also signed at Paris. Treaties with the other defeated powers, Hungary and Turkey, were not completed at the conference, which ended on Jan. 16, 1920, with the formal inauguration of the League of Nations. DONALD S. BIRN Bibliography: Elcock, Howard L., Portrait of a Decision: The Council of Four and the Treaty of Versailles (1972); Goldberg, George, The Peace to End Peace; The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 (1969); Lansing, Robert, The Peace Negotiations, a Personal Narrative (1921; repr. 1969); Marston, F. S., The Peace Conference of 1919 (1944); Mayer, Arno, Politics and Diplomacy of Peacemaking (1967); Nicolson, Harold, Peacemaking, 1919 (1933; repr. 1965). Fourteen Points -------------------------------- The Fourteen Points were a program announced by U.S. President Woodrow WILSON before a joint session of Congress on Jan. 8, 1918, as the basis for a just peace settlement following World War I. Wilson hoped to rally liberal opinion throughout the world with his address, but his opening remarks were also designed as a sympathetic response to the new Bolshevik leaders in Russia, who had called upon Russia's western Allies to begin peace negotiations on a program of no annexations, no indemnities. Although many of Wilson's suggestions had been made before, in total effect the speech represented a radical departure from the old diplomacy and called upon future victors and vanquished to liberalize their diplomacy and ideology. The first 5 points included the following: open covenants, openly arrived at; freedom of the seas; removal of economic barriers in international trade; reduction of national armaments to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety; and adjustment of all colonial claims on the basis of the self-determination of peoples. Points 6 through 13 dealt with specific territorial settlements. The 14th point became most important to Wilson: a general association of nations for the purpose of providing mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity for all nations. Widely publicized and acclaimed in the belligerent countries on both sides, the address at once gave Wilson moral leadership of the Allies and became a powerful diplomatic and propagandist weapon. The Allies generally accepted it as a statement of war aims, and when Germany sued for peace it was on the basis of the Fourteen Points. At the PARIS PEACE CONFERENCE (1919-20) the second point was quickly repudiated by Britain, and several others were modified or compromised in spirit by territorial agreements. On the whole, however, the final settlement was nearer the Fourteen Points than Wilson and his major advisors had at first thought possible. Out of the 14th point came the LEAGUE OF NATIONS. DAVID W. HIRST Bibliography: Baker, Ray Stannard, Woodrow Wilson and World Settlement, 3 vols. (1922); Mayer, Arno, The Political Origins of the New Diplomacy, 1917-1918 (1959). Polish Corridor -------------------------------- The name Polish Corridor was commonly used between 1919 and 1939 for Polish Pomerania (Pomorze in Polish), a narrow neck of territory separating East Prussia from the rest of Germany. The area had once belonged to Poland but was seized in 1772 by Prussia. It was awarded to Poland by the Versailles Treaty (1919) at the end of World War I because of its preponderantly Polish population and because it would give Poland direct access to the Baltic Sea. GDANSK (or Danzig), a Baltic port east of the corridor, was made a free city. When the German-controlled legislative assembly at Gdansk limited Polish use of this port, the Poles developed a port at GDYNIA, to the northwest. In 1938, Adolf HITLER demanded the return of Gdansk to Germany; his demands for Gdansk and the Polish Corridor formed the pretext for Germany's invasion of Poland in September 1939. ANNA M. CIENCIALA Bibliography: Cienciala, A. M., Poland and the Western Powers, 1938-1939 (1968); Debicki, R., Foreign Policy of Poland, 1919-1939 (1962). reparations -------------------------------- Reparations is the term for money or other compensation that a defeated country pays to the victors or to individuals who have suffered in war. The word came into use after World War I. Germany was forced to pay reparations under the Versailles Treaty (see PARIS PEACE CONFERENCE), which blamed Germany for starting World War I and held it responsible for the resulting damage. Germans protested that the amount set by the interallied Reparations Commission in 1921, 132 billion gold marks, was unrealistically high and could not be paid. Many Americans sympathized with these German protests, and the United States waived most of its reparations claims. When Germany defaulted on its reparations payments, France and Belgium moved (1923) troops into the Ruhr district in western Germany to force payment. The occupation ended (1924) after an international commission headed by American Charles G. DAWES formulated the Dawes Plan, which lowered German payments to one billion gold marks annually for five years and 2.5 billion thereafter. This schedule was replaced (1929) by the Young Plan, named after another American, Owen D. YOUNG, which lowered payments again. All payments ceased with the economic crisis of the 1930s. After World War II reparations were imposed on Germany, Japan, and the other defeated powers, and the USSR enforced some claims against Germany. Victims of Nazi persecution, including the state of Israel, received about $2 billion from West Germany, but other reparation payments were modest. DONALD S. BIRN Bibliography: Bergman, Carl, A History of Reparations (1927); Kuklick, Bruce, American Policy and the Division of Germany: The Clash with Russia over Reparations (1972); Wheeler-Bennett, John, The Wreck of Reparations (1933; repr. 1972). Caporetto, Battle of -------------------------------- The Battle of Caporetto, or the 12th Battle of Isonzo, fought between Italian and Austro-German forces in October-November 1917, nearly brought about Italy's collapse in World War I. Since June 1915 the Italians, under Gen. Luigi Cadorna, had fought 11 battles along the Isonzo River on their northeastern border. They had made minimal advances, but in September 1917 their Austrian opponents called in German aid. On October 24, German troops under Gen. Otto von Below led a powerful attack against the weak Italian defenses at Caporetto, forcing Cadorna to withdraw along the entire front. The arrival of British and French reinforcements finally enabled Cadorna to stabilize the front at the Piave River on November 12. In this humiliating setback, Italy lost 40,000 killed and wounded, as well as 275,000 prisoners and probably as many deserters. Russian Revolutions of 1917 -------------------------------- The abdication of Emperor NICHOLAS II in March (N.S.; February, O.S.) 1917, in conjunction with the establishment of a provisional government based on Western principles of constitutional liberalism, and the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks in November (N.S.; October, O.S.) are the political focal points of the Russian Revolutions of 1917. The events of that momentous year must also be viewed more broadly, however: as an explosion of social tensions associated with rapid industrialization; as a crisis of political modernization, in terms of the strains placed on traditional institutions by the demands of Westernization and of World War I; and as a social upheaval in the broadest sense, involving a massive, spontaneous expropriation of gentry land by angry peasants, the destruction of traditional social patterns and values, and the struggle for a new, egalitarian society. Looking at the revolutionary process broadly, one must also include the Bolsheviks' fight to keep the world's first "proletarian dictatorship" in power after November, first against the Germans, and then in the civil war against dissident socialists, anti-Bolshevik "White Guards," foreign intervention, and anarchist peasant bands. Finally, one must see the psychological aspects of revolutionary change: elation and hope, fear and discouragement, and ultimately the prolonged agony of bloodshed and privation, both from war and repression, and the "bony hand of Tsar Hunger," who strangled tens of thousands and, in the end, brought the revolutionary period to a close after the civil war by forcing the Bolsheviks to abandon the radical measures of War Communism in favor of a New Economic Policy (NEP). Throughout, the events in Russia were of worldwide importance. Western nations saw "immutable" values and institutions successfully challenged, COMMUNISM emerged as a viable social and political system, and Third World peoples saw the power of organized workers' and peasants' movements as a means of "liberating" themselves from "bourgeois" exploitation. As such, the Revolutions of 1917 ushered in the great social, political, and ideological divisions of the contemporary world. Historical Background. Historians differ over whether the Revolutions of 1917 were inevitable, but all agree on the importance of three related causal factors: massive discontent, the revolutionary movement, and World War I, each operating in the context of the ineptitude of a rigid, absolutist state. The emancipation of the serfs in 1861 left the countryside in deep poverty. The newly freed peasants received inadequate land allotments, particularly in areas of fertile soil, and even these had to be purchased with "redemption payments." Class antagonisms sharpened, particularly since government-promoted industrialization sent impoverished peasants flocking to jobs in urban areas for low wages under oppressive conditions. Government efforts to industrialize also required huge tax revenues, which intensified pressures on workers and peasants alike. Meanwhile, the rising business and professional classes expressed unhappiness with tsarist rule and yearned for a Western-style parliamentary system. By 1905 discontent among the bourgeoisie, peasantry, and proletariat had spurred Russian intellectuals to create the major political organizations of 1917. Populist groups, organized in the countryside by the 1890s, joined radical socialist workers' groups in the founding of the Socialist Revolutionary party in 1901. The Marxist Social Democratic Labor party was established in 1898. Five years later it divided into two factions: the Mensheviks, who favored a decentralized, mass party; and the Bolsheviks of Vladimir Ilich LENIN, who wanted a tightly organized, hierarchical party (see BOLSHEVIKS AND MENSHEVIKS). Middle-class liberals formed the Constitutional Democratic party (Cadets) in 1905. Russian losses in the RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR precipitated the RUSSIAN REVOLUTION OF 1905. The massive urban strikes, rural rioting, and almost total liberal disaffection from the tsarist regime in 1905 have been called a "dress rehearsal" for 1917. Reluctantly, Nicholas II granted a range of civil liberties, established limited parliamentary government through a DUMA, abolished peasant redemption payments, and under Pyotr STOLYPIN began an agrarian reform program to promote the growth of a rural middle class. These measures momentarily quieted the populace, but they also raised new expectations; many concessions were later withdrawn, thus exacerbating tensions. Furthermore, the social stability that some thought the tsar's promises offered required time to develop, and this Russia did not have. The March Revolution. In 1914, Russia was again at war (see WORLD WAR I). Land reform was suspended, and new political restrictions were imposed. Disastrous military defeats sapped public morale, and ineffective organization on the home front made the government's incompetence obvious to all. The emperor, assuming command of the army in 1915, became identified with its weakness. The sinister influence of Empress ALEXANDRA's favorite, Grigory RASPUTIN, increased. By the winter of 1916-17, disaffection again rent all sectors of society--including liberals, peasants, and industrial workers. When food shortages provoked street demonstrations in Petrograd on Mar. 8 (N.S.; Feb. 23, O.S.), 1917, and garrison soldiers refused to suppress them, Duma leaders demanded that Nicholas transfer power to a parliamentary government. With the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, a special Duma committee on March 15 (N.S.; March 2, O.S.) established a provisional government headed by Prince Georgi Lvov, a liberal. On the same day, the emperor abdicated. He attempted to give the crown to his brother Michael, but Michael refused to accept it. The 300-year-old Romanov dynasty came to an end. The new provisional government was almost universally welcomed. Civil liberties were proclaimed, new wage agreements and an 8-hour day were negotiated in Petrograd, discipline was relaxed in the army, and elections were promised for a Constituent Assembly that would organize a permanent democratic order. The existence of two seats of power, however--the provisional government and the Petrograd Soviet--not only represented a potential political rivalry but also reflected the different aspirations of different sectors of Russian society. For most Russians of privilege--members of the bourgeoisie, the gentry, and many professionals--the March Revolution meant clearing the decks for victory over Germany and for the establishment of Russia as a leading European liberal democracy. They regarded the provisional government as the sole legitimate authority. For most workers and peasants, however, revolution meant an end to an imperialist war, major economic reforms, and the development of an egalitarian social order. They looked to the Petrograd Soviet and other soviets springing up around the country to represent their interests, and they supported the government only insofar as it met their needs. Political Polarization. Differing conceptions of the revolution quickly led to a series of crises. Widespread popular opposition to the war caused the Petrograd Soviet on April 9 (N.S.; March 27, O.S.) to repudiate annexationist ambitions and to establish in May a coalition government including several moderate socialists in addition to Aleksandr KERENSKY, who had been in the cabinet from the beginning. The participation of such socialists in a government that continued to prosecute the war and that failed to implement basic reforms, however, only served to identify their parties--the Socialist Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, and others--with government failures. On July 16-17 (N.S.; July 3-4, O.S.), following a disastrous military offensive, Petrograd soldiers, instigated by local Bolshevik agitators, demonstrated against the government in what became known as the "July Days." The demonstrations soon subsided, and on July 20 (N.S.; July 7, O.S.), Kerensky replaced Lvov as premier. Soon, however, the provisional government was threatened by the right, which had lost confidence in the regime's ability to maintain order. In early September (N.S.; late August, O.S.), General Lavr KORNILOV was thwarted in an apparent effort to establish a right-wing military dictatorship. Ominously, his effort was backed by the Cadets, traditionally the party of liberal constitutionalism. The crises faced by the provisional government reflected a growing polarization of Russian politics toward the extreme left and extreme right. Meanwhile, another revolution was taking place that, in the view of many, was more profound and ultimately more consequential than were the political events in Petrograd. All over Russia, peasants were expropriating land from the gentry. Peasant-soldiers fled the trenches so as not to be left out, and the government could not stem the tide. New shortages consequently appeared in urban areas, causing scores of factories to close. Angry workers formed their own factory committees, sequestering plants to keep them running and to gain new material benefits. By the summer of 1917 a social upheaval of vast proportions was sweeping over Russia. The November Revolution. Sensing that the time was ripe, Lenin and the Bolsheviks rapidly mobilized for power. From the moment he returned from exile on Apr. 16 (N.S.; Apr. 3, O.S.), 1917, Lenin, pressing for a Bolshevik-led seizure of power by the soviets, categorically disassociated his party from both the government and the "accommodationist" socialists. "Liberals support the war and the interests of the bourgeoisie!" he insisted, adding that "socialist lackeys" aided the liberals by agreeing to postpone reforms and continue fighting. With appealing slogans such as "Peace, Land, and Bread!" the Bolsheviks identified themselves with Russia's broad social revolution rather than with political liberty or the political revolution of March. Better organized than their rivals, the Bolsheviks worked tirelessly in local election campaigns. In factories they quickly came to dominate major committees; they also secured growing support in local soviets. A Bolshevik-inspired military uprising was suppressed in July. The next month, however, after Kornilov's attempted coup, Bolshevik popularity soared, and Lenin's supporters secured majorities in both the Petrograd and Moscow soviets, winning 51 percent of the vote in Moscow city government elections. Reacting to the momentum of events, Lenin, from hiding, ordered preparations for an armed insurrection. Fully aware of what was about to transpire, the provisional regime proved helpless. On the night of November 6-7 (N.S.; October 24-25, O.S.) the Bolsheviks seized power in Petrograd in the name of the soviets, meeting little armed resistance. An All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, meeting in Petrograd at the time, ratified the Bolsheviks' actions on November 8. The congress also declared the establishment of a soviet government headed by a Council of People's Commissars chaired by Lenin, with Leon TROTSKY in charge of foreign affairs. The Civil War and Its Aftermath. Few, however, expected Lenin's "proletarian dictatorship" to survive. Bolsheviks now faced the same range of economic, social, and political problems as did the governments they had replaced. In addition, anti-Bolsheviks began almost at once to organize armed resistance. Some placed hope in the Constituent Assembly, elected November 25 (N.S.; November 12, O.S.); others hoped for foreign intervention. Few appreciated Lenin's political boldness, his audacity, and his commitment to shaping a Communist Russia. These traits soon became apparent. The November Constituent Assembly elections returned an absolute majority for the Socialist Revolutionaries, but Lenin simply dispersed the Assembly when it met in January 1918. He also issued a decree on land in November 1917, sanctifying the peasants' land seizures, proclaiming the Bolsheviks to be a party of poor peasants as well as workers and broadening his own base of support. He sued the Germans for peace, but under terms of the Treaty of BREST-LITOVSK (March 1918) he was forced to surrender huge portions of traditionally Russian territory. Shortly afterward, implementing policies called War Communism, Lenin ordered the requisition of grain from the countryside to feed the cities and pressed a program to nationalize virtually all Russian industry. Centralized planning began, and private trade was strictly forbidden. These measures, together with class-oriented rationing policies, prompted tens of thousands to flee abroad. Not surprisingly, Lenin's policies provoked anti-Bolshevik resistance, and civil war erupted in 1918. Constituent Assembly delegates fled to western Siberia and formed their own "All-Russian" government, which was soon suppressed by a reactionary "White" dictatorship under Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak. Army officers in southern Russia organized a "Volunteer Army" under Generals Lavr Kornilov and Anton Denikin and gained support from Britain and France; both in the Volga region and the eastern Ukraine, peasants began to organize against Bolshevik requisitioning and mobilization. Soon anarchist "Greens" were fighting the "Reds" (Bolsheviks) and Whites alike in guerrilla-type warfare. Even in Moscow and Petrograd, leftist Socialist Revolutionaries took up arms against the Bolsheviks, whom they accused of betraying revolutionary ideals. In response, the Bolsheviks unleashed their own Red Terror under the Cheka (political police force) and mobilized a Red Army commanded by Trotsky. The Bolsheviks defeated Admiral Kolchak's troops in late 1919, and in 1920 they suppressed the armies of Baron Pyotr N. WRANGEL and General Denikin in the south. Foreign troops withdrew, and after briefly marching into Poland the Red Army concentrated on subduing peasant uprisings. Some Western historians attribute ultimate Bolshevik victory in this war to White disorganization, half-hearted support from war-weary Allies, Cheka ruthlessness, and the inability of Greens to establish a viable alternative government. Most important, however, was the fact that even while Bolshevik popularity declined, Lenin and his followers were still identified with what the majority of workers and peasants wanted most: radical social change rather than political freedom, which had never been deeply rooted in Russian tradition. In contrast, the Whites represented the old, oppressive order. Nevertheless, with the counterrevolution defeated, leftist anti-Bolshevik sentiment erupted. The naval garrison at Kronshtadt, long a Bolshevik stronghold, rebelled in March 1921 along with Petrograd workers in favor of "Soviet Communism without the Bolsheviks!" This protest was brutally suppressed. The Menshevik and Socialist Revolutionary parties, harassed but not abolished during the civil war, gained support as the conflict ended. The Bolsheviks outlawed these parties, signaling their intention to rule alone. Lenin, however, was astute enough to realize that a strategic retreat was required. At the Tenth Party Congress, in 1921, the NEW ECONOMIC POLICY was introduced, restoring some private property, ending restrictions on private trade, and terminating forced grain requisitions. The foundations had been laid for building Bolshevik socialism, but the revolutionary period proper had come to an end. WILLIAM G. ROSENBERG Bibliography Bibliography: Carr, E. H., The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923, 3 vols. (1951-53) and The Russian Revolution: From Lenin to Stalin (1979); Chamberlin, William H., The Russian Revolution (1935); Kenez, Peter, Civil War in South Russia, 2 vols. (1971, 1977); Medvedev, Roy A., The October Revolution, trans. by George Saunders (1979); Pares, Bernard, The Fall of the Russian Monarchy (1939); Pipes, Richard, The Formation of the Soviet Union, rev. ed. (1964); Rabinowitch, Alexander, The Bolsheviks Come to Power (1976); Rosenberg, William G., Liberals in the Russian Revolution (1974); Salisbury, Harrison, Black Night, White Snow: Russia's Revolution, 1905-1917 (1978); Shapiro, Leonard B., The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1960); Trotsky, Leon, The History of the Russian Revolution, trans. by Max Eastman (1932; repr. 1957). Lenin, Vladimir Ilich -------------------------------- (len'-in, vluhd-ee'-mir il-yeech') Vladimir Ilich Lenin, founder of the Russian Communist party, leader of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, and first head of state of the USSR, was also a masterful political thinker whose theories became a significant component of Communist thought. Early Life. V. I. Lenin was born Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov, Apr. 22 (N.S.; Apr. 10, O.S.), 1870, in the provincial city of Simbirsk (now Ulyanovsk, renamed in his honor) on the Volga River. By all accounts Lenin's middle-class family was warm and loving--hardly the background one might expect for a militant revolutionary. Lenin's father was a secondary-school teacher who rose in the civil service to become a provincial director of elementary education. His mother also taught. Both were deeply concerned with the popular welfare, and Lenin, along with his two brothers and two sisters, absorbed at an early age both a desire to learn and an intense commitment to improving the lives of ordinary Russians. In 1887, shortly after the death of his father, Lenin's older brother Aleksandr was arrested in Saint Petersburg (now Leningrad) for plotting against the tsar. He was convicted and hanged. The tragic event affected young Vladimir deeply, but there is no reason to believe that it caused him to embrace the revolutionary movement. Instead, he immersed himself in radical writings, particularly those of Karl MARX and Nikolai Gavrilovich CHERNYSHEVSKY, and continued his education. Graduating from high school with a gold medal, he entered the University of Kazan but was expelled and exiled because of his own developing radical views. In 1891, however, he passed the law examinations at the University of Saint Petersburg as an external student, scoring first in his class. He practiced law briefly in Samara (now Kuibyshev) before devoting himself full time to revolutionary activities. Communist Theoretician. Between 1893 and 1902, Lenin studied the problem of revolutionary change in Russia from a Marxist perspective and worked out the essential features of what has come to be called Leninism. Convinced with other Marxists that the development of industrial capitalism in Russia held the key to radical social change, Lenin remained troubled by the inability of Russian workers to develop spontaneously--as Marx had predicted--a radical consciousness capable of effective political action. In this the workers behaved like the peasants, whose failure to respond to radical appeals had frustrated populist revolutionaries for years. To solve the problem Lenin developed the notion that a radical consciousness had to be cultivated among workers through agitation by a well-organized revolutionary party. It was during this period that he began using his pseudonym "Lenin" (sometimes "N. Lenin"). He also met and married Nadezhda Konstantinovna KRUPSKAYA. In 1895, Lenin was arrested, imprisoned, and sent in exile to Siberia with other members of the Marxist organization known as the Union of Struggle. Lenin went abroad in 1900 and with Georgy Valentinovich PLEKHANOV and others he organized the clandestine newspaper Iskra (The Spark), designed to "ignite" radical consciousness. In Iskra, Lenin vigorously rejected the notion of a political alliance with liberals or other elements of the bourgeoisie (he was convinced that they would only preserve a position of dominance over workers and peasants) and stressed the importance of social, rather than political, democracy, as the basis for individual freedom. This phase of Lenin's career culminated with the publication of his pamphlet What Is to be Done? (1902) and the organization of the Bolshevik (see BOLSHEVIKS AND MENSHEVIKS) wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labor party in the summer of 1903. Lenin, like his populist predecessors in the Russian radical movement, stressed the need for a vanguard to lead the revolution. Organizing for the Revolution. After 1903, Lenin struggled to develop this vanguard organization, a revolutionary leadership party that many historians regard as having mixed the concepts of populist Jacobinism with Marx's views of proletarian class revolution. Lenin became widely known in this period for his absolute dedication to revolution and his complete lack of personal vanity. On political issues he was merciless, lashing out ruthlessly at opponents and castigating adversaries with biting sarcasm and scorn. He also showed himself a masterful political tactician. Although he was in forced exile until 1917 (except for a brief period--1905-07--during and after the RUSSIAN REVOLUTION OF 1905) in London, Paris, Geneva, and other European cities, he maneuvered for control over party committees and publications. He condemned his Social Democratic opponents as Mensheviks (the Minority Group) despite being outnumbered by them. Many of the Mensheviks were as radical as Lenin. They worried about the dictatorial propensities of his vanguard party concept, however, and urged instead the development of a mass popular base among the workers. But Lenin remained characteristically impatient and optimistic. He saw nothing to fear from a revolutionary elite genuinely dedicated to the welfare of workers and poor peasants; the danger lay instead with political liberals and a capitalist bourgeoisie, whose social system skimmed society's wealth from the people and whose imperialist wars led them to death and destruction. Masterminding the Revolution. In 1917, Lenin published Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (Eng. trans., 1933, 1939, 1947). In it he denounced World War I (in which Russia was engaged on the side of the Allies) as a fight among the imperialist powers for control of the markets, raw materials, and cheap labor of the underdeveloped world. Since neither the Allies nor the Central Powers offered any benefits to the working class, he urged all socialists to withhold their support from the war effort. Following his lead Russian Bolsheviks refused to support their government in its war efforts. The German government, looking to disrupt the Russian war efforts further, allowed Lenin to return to Russia from exile in Switzerland (traveling across Germany in a sealed train). He arrived at Petrograd (as the former Saint Petersburg was then called) on Apr. 16 (N.S.; Apr. 3, O.S.), 1917, and received a tumultuous welcome from his followers. In his "April Theses" (Eng. trans., 1951), published that year in Pravda, the Bolshevik newspaper, he denounced the liberal provisional government that had replaced the tsarist government, and he called for a socialist revolution. It was at this time that he gained the important support of Leon TROTSKY. An abortive uprising against the government in July forced Lenin into exile once again (this time to Finland). It was a short-lived exile, however. In September, correctly perceiving the increasingly radical mood in Russia, he sent a famous letter to the party's central committee calling for armed insurrection. He slipped back into Russia and successfully brought the Bolsheviks to power through the "Military Revolutionary Committees"; and during the first week of November (N.S.; October by the old-style calendar--hence the name October Revolution) he succeeded in bringing down the government of Aleksandr KERENSKY. On November 7 (N.S.; Oct. 25, O.S.) the first Bolshevik government was formed; Lenin became its chairman. Thus he brilliantly engineered the final act of the revolution that had begun only months before (see RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONS OF 1917). Head of Government. Lenin moved quickly to consolidate Bolshevik power. He reorganized the various party factions into the Russian Communist party, established a secret police (the Cheka), and totally reconstituted the desperate Russian economy along Marxist principles. In order to bring the country out of the war, he accepted a humiliating peace treaty with Germany in 1918 (see BREST-LITOVSK, TREATY OF). That same year civil war broke out, and he was forced to put a Red Army in the field against dissident forces. The dissidents, known as the Whites, were supported by the Allies and were not defeated until 1921. By that time the Russian economy was in shambles, and discontent among peasants and workers was dangerously widespread. In the face of such problems Lenin was forced to back away from his pure Marxian policies, instituting the NEW ECONOMIC POLICY. He granted economic concessions to foreign capitalists in order to encourage trade; he placed some light industry and most retail operations back into private hands; and to appease the peasants he permitted them to sell their produce on the open market. Despite these minor concessions, Lenin continued to press forward toward his goal of a Marxist Russia--and eventually a Marxist world. He established the COMINTERN in 1919 to assure that the Russian Communist party would remain in control of the Marxist movement. Although Lenin's power in the government was dictatorial and unquestioned, his control over party affairs was never absolute. The great rivalry between Trotsky and Joseph STALIN, which was to tear apart the Communist movement in later years, was already being formed at this period. On May 25, 1922, Lenin suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed. A series of strokes followed, and he died on Jan. 21, 1924, at the age of 53, the most revered personage--apart from Marx himself--in the world of communism. The former capital city of Saint Petersburg (then Petrograd) was renamed Leningrad in his honor. Lenin's mausoleum in Red Square, with his body embalmed and on display in a glass coffin, has become the greatest shrine in the Communist world. More important, Lenin's writings, along with those of Marx, form the basis for Communist theory; their legitimacy is accepted by all factions of the Marxist movement. WILLIAM G. ROSENBERG Bibliography Bibliography: Deutscher, Isaac, Lenin's Childhood (1970); Fischer, Louis, The Life of Lenin (1964); Krupskaya, N. K., Reminiscences of Lenin, trans. by Bernard Isaacs, 2 vols. (1930-32; repr. 1970); Lenin, Vladimir I., The Collected Works, ed. and trans. by Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute, 45 vols., 4th ed. (1960-70); Meyer, Alfred, Leninism (1957); Trotsky, Leon, Lenin: Notes for a Biographer, trans. by Tamara Deutscher (1971); Ulam, Adam, The Bolsheviks (1965); Valentinov, Nikolai, The Early Years of Lenin, trans. by Rolf Theen (1969), and Encounters with Lenin, trans. by Paul Rosta and Brian Pearce (1968); Wolfe, Bertram D., Three Who Made a Revolution (1962). Trotsky, Leon -------------------------------- (traht'-skee) Leon Trotsky, b. as Lev Davidovich Bronstein, Nov. 7 (N.S.), 1879, d. Aug. 21, 1940, was second only to Vladimir Ilich LENIN as polemicist and organizer of the Bolshevik phase of the RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONS OF 1917. A charismatic orator and superb tactician, he was also a brilliant theorist whose writings greatly influenced socialist movements worldwide. His practical skills enabled him to plan the Petrograd uprising in November 1917 and to create the Red Army that saved the Bolshevik regime in the ensuing Civil War (1918-20). But his fierce independence and aloofness prevented him from gaining broad party support after Lenin's death, in his unsuccessful struggle for power with Joseph STALIN. Early Life and Revolutionary Activity. Trotsky, the son of a relatively prosperous Jewish farmer in Yanovka, in the Ukraine, was sent at the age of 9 to school in Odessa. Rebellious and outspoken, he became at the age of 18 a professional revolutionary. He was arrested in 1898 and was later exiled to Siberia, where he joined the Social Democratic party. In 1902 he escaped abroad, met Lenin, and began his troubled relationship with the Bolshevik party (see BOLSHEVIKS AND MENSHEVIKS). Trotsky admired Lenin's pragmatism, but after the Social Democratic split in 1903 he sided with the Mensheviks because he feared that Lenin's "elitist" organizational methods would lead to dictatorship. An independent-minded left-winger, Trotsky wrote extensively in the radical press, and during the Russian Revolution of 1905 he returned to take a leading role in the Saint Petersburg (later Petrograd) Workers' Soviet. Arrested, tried, and again exiled to Siberia, he escaped abroad again in 1907 and wrote extensively until he returned to Russia in 1917. Trotsky's major writings centered on the question of revolutionary development. Recognizing the weakness of Russia's bourgeoisie, he argued that the first, "bourgeois" stage of revolution could be carried out only with the help of Russia's organized workers, and that this stage would lead to a condition of "permanent revolution." The proletariat, who would have brought the bourgeoisie to power, would then gradually assume political control. As the revolution passed into worker hands in backward Russia, workers' revolts would spread to the more advanced capitalist societies of Europe and would establish socialist regimes to aid and protect the weak Russian revolutionary government. Revolutionary Leader and Soviet Official. This outlook, soon to affect much Third World revolutionary thinking, structured Trotsky's activism in 1917. Returning to Russia independently of Lenin after the March 1917 revolution, he called on the workers to overthrow the liberal provisional government. In August he joined the Bolshevik party, whose long-time loyalists (including Stalin) regarded him as an interloper. However, Trotsky rapidly won a leading role with his spellbinding speeches and organizational energy. In September he was elected chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, and from that post he organized the Bolshevik forces that overthrew the regime of Aleksandr Kerensky. Appointed commissar of foreign affairs (1917-18), Trotsky unsuccessfully opposed the annexationist Brest-Litovsk treaty with Germany, but he retained Lenin's confidence and became commissar of war (1918-25). From the demoralized remnants of tsarist forces he managed to organize an efficient Red Army, a truly remarkable feat; but his brusque style, his impatience with criticism and incompetence, and his decision to rely on "military specialists" won him few friends. Rank-and-file party comrades saw him as aloof and remote. Known as a "left Bolshevik" and an advocate of both rapid, planned industrialization and party democracy, Trotsky watched impatiently after 1921 as the party course seemed to support neither. In a series of essays labeled "The New Course" (1923), he bitterly criticized the growing bureaucratization of the party and argued for greater centralized planning. Much of his hostility was directed against Stalin, whom he loathed. In response, Stalin stated his own position, both by his activities within the party organization and in his advocacy of "socialism in one country" (the antithesis of Trotsky's advocacy of world revolution). With Lenin's death in January 1924, Trotsky proved either too self-confident or too impatient to work carefully at practical politics. Within weeks he was censured for "factionalism," and within three years he was stripped of all posts and expelled from the party. Exile. Condemned to internal exile in 1928, he was banished from the USSR the following year. Trotsky then lived in Turkey (1929-33), France (1933-35), Norway (1935-36), and Mexico (1936-40). He continued to write on a wide range of issues: culture, literature, politics, international affairs, revolutionary theory, and women. He completed his massive History of the Russian Revolution (3 vols., 1931-33; Eng. trans., 1932-33), also working energetically to expose Stalin--most notably in The Revolution Betrayed (1937). At the treason trials held (1936-38) in Moscow, Trotsky was denounced in absentia as the archconspirator against the Soviet regime. He was finally axed to death by a Stalinist agent at his home in a suburb of Mexico City. Many of Trotsky's writings have appeared in English translation, including Literature and Revolution (1925), Terrorism and Communism (1921; rev. ed., 1935), and Diary in Exile, 1935 (1958). Trotsky's correspondence during his years in exile was made public by Harvard University in January 1980. WILLIAM G. ROSENBERG Bibliography Bibliography: Carmichael, Joel, Trotsky: An Appreciation of His Life (1975); Deutscher, Isaac, The Prophet Armed (1954), The Prophet Unarmed (1959), and The Prophet Outcast (1963); Eastman, Max, Leon Trotsky: Portait of a Youth (1925); Howe, Irving, Leon Trotsky (1978) and, as ed., The Basic Writings of Trotsky (1963); Segal, Ronald, Leon Trotsky: A Biography (1979); Serge, Victor, and Trotsky, Natalia Sedova, Life and Death of Leon Trotsky, trans. by Arnold J. Pomerans (1975); Warth, Robert D., Leon Trotsky (1977); Wolfe, Bertram D., Three Who Made a Revolution (1948). Kerensky, Aleksandr Fyodorovich -------------------------------- (kuh-ren'-skee or kair'-in-skee, uhl-yik-sahn'-dur fyoh'-dor-u) -vich0 Aleksandr Kerensky, b. Apr. 22 (N.S.), 1881, d. June 11, 1970, headed the Russian provisional government from July to October 1917, during the interim between the overthrow of the tsar and the Bolshevik Revolution. A lawyer and a democratic moderate, Kerensky joined the Socialist Revolutionary party in 1905 and was elected to the fourth DUMA in 1912. As premier, Kerensky was personally identified with Russia's abortive military offensive in World War I, a fact that further weakened his already shaky coalition government. In a vain effort to maintain control, Kerensky ordered V. I. LENIN's arrest as well as that of the right-wing general Lavr KORNILOV. Beleaguered by radicals and reactionaries alike, he fled Russia in October. He lived in Paris until 1940, after which he settled in New York City. WILLIAM G. ROSENBERG Bibliography: Kerensky, A. F., Prelude to Bolshevism: The Kornilov Revolt (1919), The Catastrophe (1927), The Crucifixion of Liberty (1934), and Russia and History's Turning Point (1965); Whitman, Alden, The Obituary Book (1971). Brest-Litovsk, Treaty of -------------------------------- (brest-lit-awfsk') The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, signed on Mar. 3, 1918, by Germany and Austria on the one hand and the new Soviet government of Russia on the other, ended Russian participation in WORLD WAR I. The USSR had to agree to massive territorial losses and payment of compensation. The treaty was annulled by the armistice between Germany and the Western powers signed in November 1918. Bibliography: Wheeler-Bennett, John, Brest-Litovsk, the Forgotten Peace (1938). Baker, Newton Diehl -------------------------------- Newton Diehl Baker, b. Martinsburg, W.Va., Dec. 3, 1871, d. Dec. 25, 1937, was secretary of war (1916-21) under President Woodrow Wilson and administered the U.S. war effort in World War I. He was early influenced by the reform Democratic mayor of Cleveland, Tom Loftin Johnson, under whom he served as city solicitor (1903-12). He was himself mayor of Cleveland from 1912 to 1916. Appointed secretary of war in March 1916, Baker, a pacifist, took little action until the United States entered (April 1917) World War I. Then he proved himself a vigorous administrator. He implemented military conscription, reorganized the War Department, and efficiently administered the huge war budget. Increasingly conservative in his later life, he opposed the New Deal policies of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Bibliography: Cramer, Clarence H., Newton D. Baker (1961); Palmer, Frederick, Newton D. Baker: America at War, 2 vols. (1931; repr. 1969). Foch, Ferdinand -------------------------------- (fawsh) Ferdinand Foch, b. Oct. 2, 1851, d. Mar. 20, 1929, was commander in chief of the Allied armies in France in the final stages of WORLD WAR I and helped to bring about the Allied victory. A fervent Roman Catholic with Jesuit training, he joined the army in 1871 and studied at the Ecole Superieure de Guerre (war college), where he later taught tactics. His lectures were published in two works, The Principles of War (Eng. trans., 1918) and De la conduite de la guerre ("On the Conduct of War," 1904). From 1908 to 1911 he was the school's director. In 1914, at the outbreak of World War I, Foch commanded the French Ninth Army in the first Battle of the MARNE. He also commanded an army group in the Battle of the SOMME (1916), but was then forced into retirement until he became chief of the French general staff in 1917. In April 1918, Foch was given unified command of all of the Allied troops in France. Halting the German advance in the Second Battle of the Marne (July 1918), Foch mounted the counteroffensive that turned the tide of the war. He was made a marshal, and three months later he accepted the German surrender (November 1918). P. M. EWY Bibliography: King, Jere C., Foch Versus Clemenceau: France and German Dismemberment (1960); Liddell Hart, B. H., Foch: The Man of Orleans (1932); Marshall-Cornwall, James, Foch as Military Commander (1976). Lausanne, Treaty of -------------------------------- The Treaty of Lausanne (1923) settled the boundaries of modern Turkey and resolved the territorial disputes raised in Anatolia by World War I. At the end of the war the Allies imposed the Treaty of Sevres (1920) on the defeated OTTOMAN EMPIRE; it effectively dismembered the empire, leaving only Anatolia (minus a Greek enclave at Smyrna, or IZMIR) under Turkish rule. This settlement was rejected by the Turkish nationalists led by Mustafa Kemal (later Kemal ATATURK). Although they accepted the loss of Iraq, Syria, Arabia, and other non-Turkish areas, they objected to the loss of Smyrna to Greece. After driving the Greek troops out of Smyrna and ousting the sultan, Kemal's government was able to force the negotiation of a new treaty, which was finally concluded at Lausanne, Switzerland, on July 24, 1923.^According to the Treaty of Lausanne, Turkey regained not only Smyrna but also eastern Thrace and some of the Aegean islands. It also resumed control of the Dardanelles (internationalized under the previous treaty) on the condition that they were kept demilitarized and open to all nations in peacetime. A separate agreement between Turkey and Greece provided for the exchange of minority populations. DONALD S. BIRN Bibliography: Sontel, S. R., Turkish Diplomacy, 1918-1923 (1975). Scheidemann, Philipp -------------------------------- (shyd'-e-mahn) Philipp Scheidemann, b. July 26, 1865, in Kassel, Hesse, of which he was mayor from 1920 to 1925, was a German socialist leader. A printer turned journalist, he was elected to the German parliament, the Reichstag, in 1903. In 1918 he joined the cabinet of Prince Max of Baden, the last imperial chancellor, on the eve of Germany's collapse at the end of World War I. On Nov. 9, 1918, following the abdication of Emperor William II, Scheidemann proclaimed from the Reichstag building the establishment of what came to be known, from the city where its constitution was drafted, as the WEIMAR REPUBLIC. In 1919 he served under President Friedrich Ebert as its first chancellor, or prime minister. He resigned in protest over the terms of the Versailles Peace Treaty. After Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, Scheidemann emigrated, dying in Copenhagen on Nov. 29, 1939. DONALD S. DETWILER Bibliography: Scheidemann, Philipp, The Making of New Germany, trans. by J. E. Michell, 2 vols. (1929; repr. 1970). Faisal I, King of Iraq -------------------------------- Faisal I, first king of the Iraqi state that emerged after World War I, contributed significantly to the maturing of Arab national consciousness. The third son of HUSAYN IBN ALI of Mecca, he was born on May 20, 1885. Abandoning his youthful vision of a reformed Ottoman Empire, he led his father's armies in the Arab Revolt (1916-18) during World War I. He was elected king of Syria in 1920 but was forced to abdicate by the French. In 1921, however, the British installed him as king of Iraq under their mandate. Shrewdly balancing British against local interests, Faisal gained legal independence for Iraq in 1932. He died suddenly on Sept. 8, 1933. ROBERT G. LANDEN Bibliography: Longrigg, Stephen H., Iraq, 1900 to 1950 (1953). League of Nations -------------------------------- The League of Nations was an organization established after World War I to promote international peace. Sixty-three nations were members, including all the major European powers at one time or another. The United States played an important role in setting it up but did not join. From its headquarters in Geneva, the league organized many social and economic welfare activities, although it concentrated on political matters. It was nominally responsible for the administration of many colonial territories under the mandate system. An important instrument of diplomacy in the 1920s, the league was unable to fulfill its chief aims of disarmament and peace-keeping in the 1930s. It lost members and fell into disuse before World War II. Some of its technical services continued to function until the organization was formally terminated on Apr. 18, 1946, when it was succeeded by the newly organized UNITED NATIONS. Creation. The outbreak of World War I in 1914 led people in Britain, France, the United States, and several neutral countries to explore alternatives to traditional diplomatic methods for keeping the peace. As the war went on, various schemes for world organization were advanced and won popular support. Some government leaders, including U.S. President Woodrow WILSON, Jan SMUTS of South Africa, and Lord Robert Cecil, a member of the British cabinet, gave their support to the league ideal as a way to prevent future wars. This ideal was one of the FOURTEEN POINTS put forward by Wilson as the basis for a just peace, and by the time of the PARIS PEACE CONFERENCE it was a leading war aim of the victorious Allied powers. It brought to world politics the same liberal precepts that, in theory at least, guided the political experience of the Western democracies: a sense of moral purpose, a belief in parliamentary procedure, and a faith that differences could be resolved peacefully. When the League of Nations was established on Jan. 10, 1920, it disappointed some of its early supporters. The Covenant, which was the basis for the league's operation, was included in the Treaty of Versailles imposed on defeated Germany. This made it appear that the league was a tool for the victors to use against their former enemies who were not members. The U.S. Senate refused to ratify the peace treaty and, in a blow to President Wilson, also kept the country out of the league. The USSR was also not a member at first, although like the United States it cooperated with the league disarmament conference and some other activities. Organization. The purpose and rules for the organization were set forward in the League of Nations Covenant, which consisted of 26 short articles. In approach it was more legalistic than the United Nations Charter; it was assumed that member nations could work together without compromising their sovereignty. Outlined in the Covenant were three approaches to preventing war: arbitration in settling disputes, disarmament, and collective security. Under the Covenant all member states were represented in an assembly, which held sessions at least once a year. Each nation had one vote, and unanimity was required for all decisions. The assembly regulated the budget and membership of the league and served as a sounding board for world public opinion. The main political work of the league and the settlement of international disputes were delegated to another, smaller body--the council. Permanent seats on the council were reserved for Britain, France, Japan, Italy, and, later, Germany and the USSR; other countries were elected to temporary representation on the council to make a total of 8, later raised to 10, and then 14 members. The third main organ of the league was the secretariat, which consisted of an international staff of several hundred officials who administered league activities. In addition, the league was linked to several other bodies, most notably the Permanent INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE, or World Court, which met at The Hague, and the INTERNATIONAL LABOR ORGANIZATION. Activities. In the early 1920s the league attempted to establish its position as a center of world affairs. The public enthusiasm that had helped launch it was hard to sustain in peacetime. It proved effective in finding peaceful solutions to several minor disputes, such as that between Sweden and Finland over the Aland Islands in 1920 and that between Greece and Bulgaria in 1925. Doubts remained about whether it could really stop aggression by a major power, however, and the position of Germany with regard to European security was still a major concern. Proposals to reinforce the Covenant and overcome these uncertainties did not win approval; the Geneva Protocol of 1924, which branded aggressive war as an international crime, failed because of British opposition. The collective security machinery of the league remained untested, and no international forces were assembled to secure it, although this was often proposed. Disarmament could not proceed while unease continued over security. This situation did not change fundamentally in the late 1920s, but the league gained in prestige because the threat of war was remote. The LOCARNO PACT of 1925 reassured Germany's neighbors and paved the way for German admission to the league the following year. Foreign ministers and other government leaders attended sessions in Geneva, and the league's reputation was high. It gained support through its valuable nonpolitical work--combating the spread of opium and other illicit drugs, contributing to child welfare, improving health conditions around the world, and lowering the barriers against international trade. The DEPRESSION OF THE 1930s and a series of international crises changed the political climate. The crisis ensuing from the Japanese invasion of MANCHURIA in September 1931 is often seen in retrospect as the first decisive challenge to the league system. At the time, however, the European statesmen on the league council did not so perceive it. In 1932 they sent a commission of inquiry to study the rights and wrongs of the war between China and Japan (see SINO-JAPANESE WARS). Japan soon left the league, but no effort was made to force it to give back the territory it had conquered. Manchuria was far away, and many people hoped that the league would still be effective if aggression occurred closer to Europe. Nonetheless, this failure eroded confidence in collective security. Adolf HITLER's rise to power in Germany aggravated the crisis. In 1933 he pulled Germany out of the GENEVA CONFERENCE on disarmament and then out of the league itself. As Germany began to rearm and overturn the restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles, the league was slow to respond. Its supporters continued to press for disarmament when force was needed to deter Germany. They tried to win Hitler back to the organization rather than work to stop him. Collective security was finally put to the test in 1935 when Italy attacked ETHIOPIA. After Ethiopia's emperor HAILE SELASSIE appealed for help, the league voted to impose economic sanctions against Italy until it stopped its aggression. Britain and France, whose cooperation was essential to this effort, acted timorously, as they did not want to antagonize the Italian dictator Benito MUSSOLINI. Hence they tried to work out various compromise solutions with him and did not attempt to cut off his vital oil supplies. Italy was able to overcome this half-hearted sanctions policy and complete its conquest of Ethiopia. Italy withdrew from the league in 1937 and went on to further foreign intervention, along with Germany and the USSR, in the SPANISH CIVIL WAR. The league never recovered from this setback. It continued to meet in the late 1930s but could take no effective action. One reaction of its supporters was to try to use the league as the rallying point for an anti-fascist coalition built around Britain, France, and the USSR. Another conflicting tendency was to ask for revisions of the Covenant to prevent the league from imposing sanctions. This tactic was supposed to improve the league's position in nonpolitical humanitarian work such as assisting refugees. The league was all but ignored in the rush of events that led to the outbreak of World War II. It revived briefly in December 1939 to make the meaningless gesture of expelling the USSR for its attack on Finland. Evaluation. Despite its eventual failure to halt the tide of war, the league was an important pioneering venture in international affairs. The recurrence of war only emphasized the world's need for an effective alternative to anarchy, and the United Nations followed the structure and methods of the league in its main outlines. The changes in emphasis in the new organization reflected some of the lessons of the league experience. The United Nations Charter is a more political and less legalistic document than the Covenant. It places more reliance on diplomacy and less on elaborate judicial procedures to prevent war. Moreover, the United Nations emphasizes nonpolitical work in economic development to a much greater degree than did the league. The United Nations is truly a worldwide group that tries to meet the needs of its members; the league was more limited in scope and membership. DONALD S. BIRN Bibliography Bibliography: Baer, George W., Test Case: Italy, Ethiopia and the League of Nations (1977); Dexter, Byron, The Years of Opportunity (1967); Egerton, George W., Great Britain and the Creation of the League of Nations (1978); Kimmich, Christopher M., Germany and the League of Nations (1976); Schiffer, Walter, The Legal Community of Mankind (1954; repr. 1972); Scott, George, The Rise and Fall of the League of Nations (1974); Walters, F. P., A History of the League of Nations (1952; repr. 1960); Zimmern, Alfred, The League of Nations and the Rule of Law, 1918-1935, 2d ed. (1969). Clemenceau, Georges -------------------------------- (kle-mahn-soh') The French statesman Georges Clemenceau, popularly known as "the Tiger," contributed to the Allied victory in World War I and helped formulate the Treaty of Versailles. Clemenceau was born on Sept. 28, 1841, and received a medical education. A lifelong republican, he opposed the regime of NAPOLEON III and, as a result, spent several years in the United States. In 1870, after the overthrow of Napoleon during the Franco-Prussian War, Clemenceau became mayor of Montmartre. He tried to prevent civil war when the radical COMMUNE OF PARIS revolted in 1871 but was unsuccessful in preventing the death of two generals at the mob's hands. He was later tried and cleared of the charges that resulted. As a journalist and, from 1876, a Radical deputy, Clemenceau uncompromisingly opposed clericalism and he helped overthrow many of France's moderate and conservative ministries. In 1892, however, he was caught in the web of the scandal involving bribes to the press and the deputies by the company constructing the Panama Canal. Clemenceau lost his seat in the chamber in 1893, but was returned to politics by the DREYFUS AFFAIR. In 1898 he published Emile ZOLA's open letter "J'accuse" in his newspaper L'Aurore. His fervent support of Dreyfus not only helped clear the latter's name but restored his own reputation. Elected to the Senate in 1902, Clemenceau served as premier from 1906 to 1909. Because he feared the power of Germany, he strengthened cooperation with Britain and approved the Anglo-Russian agreement of 1907 that, in effect, created the TRIPLE ENTENTE of France, Russia, and Britain. Labor unrest flared during Clemenceau's term, culminating in strikes in 1908-09. His use of troops to break one strike cost him the support of the Radicals, and he lost office. In November 1917, President Raymond POINCARE again called Clemenceau to the premiership, knowing that only Clemenceau could maintain French national unity. In a short time the new premier raised national morale, sustaining it through the onslaught of a fresh German offensive of March 1918. The next month he obtained unification of the Allied command under Gen. Ferdinand FOCH, who organized the Allied offensive that ended the war. Clemenceau led the French delegation at the PARIS PEACE CONFERENCE. There he advocated the establishment of French-occupied buffer states on the Rhine River and the creation of strong states on Germany's eastern border. He also demanded REPARATIONS from the Germans for French war damages. Although Clemenceau was much harsher toward the Germans than either President Woodrow WILSON or Prime Minister David LLOYD GEORGE, many in France criticized him as being too lenient. Old political grievances brought the Tiger down. Clemenceau had denounced some members of the Left as defeatists in 1917; in 1920 they defeated him in the presidential election. He retired from politics and died on Nov. 24, 1929. P. M. EWY Bibliography: Bruun, Geoffrey, Clemenceau (1943; repr. 1968); Jackson, J. H., Clemenceau and the Third Republic (1946; repr. 1962); Watson, David R., Clemenceau: A Political Biography (1976); Williams, Wythe, The Tiger of France (1949).