TheLizardKing
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The Great War
1914 – 1918
Whatever the implications of the Anglo-French intervention in the American Civil War, and the colonial squabbles of the First Berlin Conference, when the clock turned from the 19th century to the 20th most political and cultural thinkers believed that the world had settled upon what was to be a long, prosperous era of peace. With the benefit of hindsight, we can say assuredly, they could not know how tragically wrong they were. The harmonious opening chords of the 20th century were damned to be the deceptively-melodious intro to a discordant and disturbing concert of war, death, destruction and famine. Historians do not speak idly when they use phrases like “the world consumed itself”. The order of international cooperation and prosperity that the leaders of the 19th century had assembled, seemingly entirely against the odds, quickly disassembled itself as its primary players turned their backs on the spirit of peace in our time in preference for Bismarck's iron and blood. From the Year of Our Lord 1914 to the Year of Our Lord 1918 the civilized men of Europe would cover themselves in their own blood, bringing their perfect society to an awful and terrible ruin. Surely, someone won the Great War, but modern historians are forced to ask themselves who. Were the territorial gains of the Quadruple Alliance powerful enough to outweigh the crippling of European imperial power that was wrought by the war? Did the war bring an unfortunate end to a system that was unsustainable, or did it dash the world's best hope at “eternal peace”? We cannot yet have satisfactory answers to these questions, but we can accurately chronicle (to a point, in any case) the cold and hard facts of the greatest single military bloodletting in mankind's history.
The European War
In order to accurately account the conditions of the Great War in Europe, we need to know the history of a tiny and generally-unassuming country called Belgium. Any armchair scholar is aware of the infamous Belgian paroxysm. The circumstances and reasons for the Belgium's diplomatic self-contradiction are difficult to account for. What can be known and understood is that the Belgian diplomatic corps and the Belgian government tried desperately to somehow push the conflict away from Belgium, hoping to somehow placate both sides, when Belgium was besieged by the powers of Germany and France seeking to use it as a weapon against the other. Instead of pushing the conflict away from that small, flat and wooded state, they brought it directly to their doorsteps. When war in Europe began, it began in two places. Those places were Belgium and Italy. When Belgium's loyalties were essentially irrelevant (“Brave Little Belgium” was inevitably overrun arguably by both sides, allies and enemies destroying the Belgian countryside and Belgian cities in equality), Italy's were not only suspect but of importance. When Italy decided to honor its obligation to the Quadruple Alliance, it made a historic decision, and these decisions are the stuff of things that make or break nations and peoples. Or perhaps they are not. While British and French armies met German ones in the fields of Flanders and Walloonie, an Anglo-French combined fleet spearheaded a decisive assault on Italy at that nation's veritable heart. The “siege of Rome” as executed by seaborne and landborne artillery, was brief, largely on account on the city's (and the peninsula's) desertion by the Italian army, which was off reliving the glories of the Caesars in northern Africa. For fear of complete and crippling destruction of Italy and its internal infrastructure, the King of Italy authorized an emergency decision to sue for peace with Great Britain and France, producing the much-maligned and ephemeral “Treaty of Rome” that was supposed to have been the sum and total of Italy's involvement in the Great War. It was not. While so much of the British fleet was in the Mediterranean, contending not only with the Italian fleet (such as it was after the initial offensive) but with the Spanish, German admirals made an ambitious move to attack the British Isles. Their thrust at the very heart of the empire proved successful, to a point in any case, where they were able to threaten Britain from the Orkney Isles with their comparatively-undivided navy. British attention could not be maintained forever on expanding the occupation of Italy.
We briefly address Spain's involvement in the Great War as – perhaps – the collective failure of British policymakers. British firing upon Spanish merchant vessels is in retrospect a very poor reason for bringing another, relatively powerful, state into the interpower war that was already brewing in Europe. But of course, as these things are, the British categorically denied that any such incidents had occurred. Much like the infamous Spanish bombing of the Imperial Japanese ship Meiji, which began the brief and tumultuous Philippines War, we can never know who was truly responsible. What is important (and this type of dichotomy will appear again and again) is that no compromise could be reached and Spain did enter the war. Spain's involvement, in the early months of the war, was a potent force for the Quadruple Alliance powers. Spain's ability to threaten both Aquitaine and Provence, as well as disrupt British control of Gibraltar and the Anglo-French blockade and occupation of Italy, forced the Entente powers in western Europe to divide their already thin-spread forces. However, the full scope and importance of Spain's involvement in the war would become apparent only after the peace treaties were signed and the conscript armies disbanded.
German dominance in the North Sea and the weakening of the western front in the face of the movement of French forces to the Pyrenees put the Entente on the defensive on almost all the fronts of Europe to the exception of Italy, where to some extent the Anglo-French blockade remained in force and British boots remained on the ground. The grinding standstill on the eastern front was no reason for Entente commanders to be optimistic until something in the Ottoman Empire gave way in favor of the Entente powers. The Sultan of Rome announced his decision to commit the forces of the seemingly-recuperating Sick Man of Europe to the cause of the Entente, in a stunning but supposedly-necessary reversal of the previous trend of Ottoman allegiance to Germany. Suddenly not only did Entente commanders have naval reinforcement, but a second front against Austria and her allies. The misfortune, and even betrayal, of small Balkan states that had sided with the Quadruple Alliance was not only inconsequential but preferable. Someone had to sort out that section of the world, and if not the Germans then it might as well be the Turks. And yet the Turkish entrance to the war did little to solve the fundamental problem of the eastern front, which was the sheer size of the opposing German, Russian and Austrian armies. Whereas Austrian armies, haphazardly assembled from the various opposed and opposing minority (and majority) populations of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, were often not of comparison to their German and Russian counterparts (hence the pushing of the front southwest into Austrian Galicia), Russian armies made up for what they lacked in capability and training in sheer numbers. But numbers alone could not win the eastern front for Russia, which went up against the calculated and coordinated defense of the German army. Russian generals, unwilling to modernize or otherwise compromise their authority to foreign experts, found themselves forced to use human wave tactics against Germany. This, of course, would have disastrous consequences for Russia and for the Entente cause.
Meanwhile, events would unfold in the north that would add another dimension to the already broiling conflict. The reasons behind the failed War of Scandinavian Unification are best summed as latent Swedish nationalism, and Scandinavian pan-nationalism, which in the face of a weakening Russia and a Europe that was increasingly-unstable and unreliable boiled to the surface. The readiness and willingness of the Swedish people to go to war is more difficult to express except as a determination by the people of Sweden to take their fate into their own hands, instead of be at the mercy of foreign powers as had been seen in Belgium. Whatever the case, the Swedish Royal Navy and Army fell upon Denmark like a cold wind in the middle of the Year of Our Lord 1915 with devastating effect. The great powers, thus far embroiled in their own conflicts, took little notice of the plight of Denmark. However, Norway came to Denmark's aid (only a few years fresh from their own independence from Sweden). Threatening to go to war with Sweden if the Swedish did not engage in peace talks with Denmark immediately, Norway had asserted itself, but to what end? In 1915, the beginning of the War of Scandinavian Unification was an unfortunate footnote in the larger history of the Great War. This regional conflict's full importance would only come into play later.
While the continent and its many nations, powerful or otherwise, fought amongst each other rebellion brewed in Ireland. The Anglo-Irish history is a complex one. The propensity for English kings in queens, in times of success and plenty, to dabble in the politics of the nearby island was great. It lead, somewhat naturally and somewhat by force, to the integration of Ireland within the Anglo-Scottish United Kingdom. This had never sat well with the Irish, who had spent the intervening centuries being the least enthusiastic subjects of the British crown (perhaps even less enthusiastic than the Indians or the Boers) and sometimes the crown's greatest enemies. Nineteen-fifteen was one of those times when the grumbling, mumbling and weary Irish masses became more than a passing nuisance. Sensing weakness when the Kaiserliche Marine assaulted the Isles, the Irish seized the opportunity to make a bid for freedom. The Irish Republican Army, lead by the infamous Liam McCourt, brought much of the island into rebellion against Great Britain, seizing Dublin and declaring the intention for a separation from the United Kingdom. Consequently, the Asquith government declared Ireland to be in a state of illegal military rebellion. Stealing a destroyer from the Royal Navy, and receiving a submarine from the Kaiserliche Marine as a gift, the new revolutionaries of a free Ireland proved of a different and more virulent breed than their predecessors.
As the Irish made their bid for independence, across the sea and across the plains, mountains and foothills of Europe, the Ottoman Empire made its first blows in the name of the Entente. At the battle of Plovdiv, a Turco-Romanian coalition army annihilated the Bulgarian army and established effective suzerainty by the Ottoman Empire and Romania over Bulgaria. Complete control over access to the Black Sea resulted in the destruction of the Quadruple Alliance naval presence (such as it was), and the removal of Bulgaria from the conflict resulted in a historic division of the entire Bulgarian navy among the winners. The Battle of Plovdiv, and the defeat it harkened for Bulgaria, was one of (if not the most) decisive “knock-out” confrontations of the war, where many of the other fronts would remain uncertain for some time.
All the while, Portugal and Spain, the two opposing Iberian states that were (fortunately for both sides, unfortunately for their citizens) on opposite sides of the conflict engaged in their own form of trench stalemate warfare. The actual warfare between Spain and Portugal is not very well documented by those nations' own historians, owing largely to the influence exerted by Spanish socialists over the much-maligned “Portugese rumpstate”, but what we do know of the “miniature war” in Iberia is that it was on the scale of the two nations, just as devastating as the conflict between France and Germany on the western front if not more so. The Spanish army was, if not better-trained and supplied than its Portugese counterpart, certainly larger. However, Spanish manpower and determination was outweighed (at least in 1915) by the presence of British soldiers and ships as well as British supplies which were being constantly funneled into Portugal.
By 1916, what had changed substantially about the war was the entrance of the Ottoman Empire on the side of the Quadruple Entente, opening a second front against Austria-Hungary, the Irish rebellion, and the introduction of the War of Scandinavian Unification as a parallel conflict to the bloodshed elsewhere on the conflict. Whereas 1915 had proved relatively indecisive for either side except the Sultan of Rome, 1916 was destined to be one of the defining years of the war in Europe.
On the western front, for the first time in two years, the overall trend of Germany and the Quadruple Alliance gaining ground was seemingly reversed. French generals gave the go-ahead for a series of assaults against the German line in eastern France, regaining (relatively) large tracts of land lost to the Kaiser in '14 and '15. These gains can in hindsight be potentially attributed more to events on the eastern front that were beneficial for Germany, and less to the genius of a few French generals who made the startling and unprecedented decision of taking ground when the opportunity was given to do so, but all the same at the start of 1916 “things” did not bode poorly for the Quadruple Entente in Europe.
In contrast, on the eastern front, the Entente fared far less well. The great fault lines of conflict on the eastern front were the rivers of eastern and central Europe, chiefly the Vistula, and the cities that fell near or on them. Controlling the Vistula remained a good gauge of who was in control on the eastern front, insofar as no one could reasonably expect (after the past two years of grueling stalemate) major breakthroughs on the front to result in the capture of either Berlin or Moscow. Germany pushed across the northern Vistula in a successful bid to take Konigsberg during the year. Emboldened by success by Germany on the northern side of the front, Austria-Hungary was successful in making large gains against the Russians in Galicia where previously Ivan had been able to terrorize the Hapsburgs with routine. By the conclusion of the offensives, both Prussia and Galicia had been largely relieved. Russia's response was to attempt to throw more bodies at German lines along the Vistula, but to little avail, as already Russia's own infamous winter was beginning to settle in. With Germany in control of not only the Vistula, but Prussia and its primary port, and Austria-Hungary back (at least partially) in control of Galicia, at the conclusion of 1916 trends had been very rapidly reversed on the eastern front.
We turn our attention from the eastern front back to that peninsular boot called Italy. Thus far, war in Italy had largely been restricted to skirmishes between the occupying British army in central Italy and the Italian army in the north. If it appeared that the Treaty of Rome had largely been ignored up until this point, things would change even more in the coming months. Italian generals, who had expressed frustration and distaste towards the Treaty of Rome, ultimately took matters into their own hands in a very spectacular way in 1916. Believing, we must suppose, that if the Treaty of Rome were done away with all of Italy could adequately and efficiently mobilize a true defense against the British (whose ability and willingness to supply and defend an occupation of the peninsula was dwindling by the week), some sharp young officer decided the best way to deal with one of those meaningless pieces of paper that civilian policymakers called treaties was to eliminate the people who signed it. So, in the famed September Revolution, the Italian army massacred the Italian royal family. The King of Italy, and his sons, were hauled out of their palatial homes in northern Italy (having fled Rome after the signing of the treaty) and shot. Surprisingly, there was very little public outcry. It may have had something to do with the Italian people being too busy being shot at by British soldiers to make an adequate account of the fact that their army had murdered their royals, but in any case, the army was able to make amends by finding replacements. The count of Savoy was made King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel IV, by the nascent Italian army. With most of the British army in Lombardy and Trieste, fighting Austria to relieve pressure on Britain's Russian and Ottoman allies (unfortunately for the British, 1916 was when British high command made the poorly-timed decision to finally make good on its occupation of the peninsula), the newly-unencumbered Italian army and its German allies fell on the British force like a hammer. The British army was crushed, and caught between the vice of the combined German, Italian and Austrian armies, was forced to surrender. The blockade of Italy fell apart overnight, even as British soldiers that were late to the party landed in Genoa. Italy was free from the British yoke.
While things had gone poorly for Britain and the Entente in Italy, that was little compared to the rank humiliation that would result from the second Battle of the North Sea. British admirals had thought that the weakness of the home fleet during the war could be corrected by recalling ships from elsewhere, not an unsound instinct, if the decision had not come too late to make a difference in the combined German-American offensive that essentially spelled defeat for Britain. British ships rejoined with the home fleet in time for a massive American submarine offensive, combined with the full force of the Kaiserliche Marine. The Royal Navy, which had been quickly accumulated throughout the Isles and the Channel for a counter-offensive, was unprepared to make good on a defense against this onslaught. Furthermore, much to their surprise and consternation, the ruffled and panicked admirals of the Royal Navy discovered that in the intervening months German ships had been successful in mining the English Channel, after several of the Royal Navy's smaller vessels met gruesome ends at the hands of the Kruppworks' bombs. The Royal Navy was battered and broken, forced to return to port for fear of being caught in a vice by American submarines and German battleships and utterly destroyed. The Isles left unguarded by the end of the year, the British were forced to consider the possibility that they ought either to sue for peace or prepare for the invasion of Shakespeare's Sceptered Isle. With so much of the enthusiasm for war in Britain resting on two points of national pride – the strength and superiority of the Royal Navy, the invincibility of the island nation – the nation's politicians knew to which option their loyalties (and the loyalties of their constituents, frightened and dismayed) lay.
The assault on Britain was not alone in its decisiveness for Europe's conflicts. Germany, fearful of the potential of a powerful Scandinavian state to disrupt its control of the Baltic and North Sea and further destabilization of eastern and central Europe, threw itself against Sweden. Britain, which had for some reason decided prior to its humiliating defeat in the North Sea and the Channel to stretch its naval forces even thinner in support of Sweden, was caught in the crossfire. Sweden, with its army split fighting Danish soldiers in Jylland and Norwegian soldiers at home, faced a naval blockade and defeat that for all intents and purposes put an end to the brief and ambitious War of Scandinavian Reunification. Though the Swedes had claimed victory against the Danes in Jylland prior to the blockade, that seemed rather too little too late in the face of the overwhelming naval deathblow inflicted by Germany.
As the war in Europe wound down, decisive battles being fought and won, the “true losers” of the Great War began to feel their time had come. Potentially emboldened by the success of the Irish in fighting, perhaps even overthrowing, the hated English, Europe's oppressed masses of political and ethnic minorities rose up against their foreign (or bourgeouise) masters. In Russia, rebellion spread throughout Finland shortly after the defeat of the Russian armies in Prussia and Galicia, while soldiers and workers went on strike throughout the empire. Slavic rebellions, compounded by the enthusiastic joining of the war by Montenegro after the official surrender of the Bulgarian government, popped up in Austria-Hungary. Emboldened by their successes in Bulgaria with the Ottomans, Romanian soldiers pushed into Austrian Transylvania in concert with Serbian offensives, but with Great Britain and Russia reeling from their respective defeats and the Mediterranean back in the control of the Quadruple Alliance, all the Balkan enthusiasm seems just as misplaced as any of the other latecomers to the Great War.
In the waning days of the Year of Our Lord 1916, the great powers of Europe (to some specific exceptions) came to the peace table. The settlement of the Great War is an ambitious matter, and we will only devote our full attention here to the European national, economic and cultural implications. While Russia crumbled, Britain and France were carved up. Both sides of the Entente Cordiale blamed the other for the defeat. Britain betrayed France, France demonstrated its military incompetence, the Royal Navy was all bark and no bite. The defeat had sullied the Anglo-French relationship, and so consequently, when the Quadruple Alliance powers held peace talks at the “Second Berlin Conference” no unifying treaty could be reached. This was not the only reason that the Second Berlin Conference failed, but it is the one of primary relevance to the European sphere. Of course, not cooperating at the end of the war probably cost Britain and France more than it won them. Separate settlements between most of the combatant powers resulted in a huge transfer of territory, funds and geopolitical power from the Entente powers to the Quadruple Alliance. The Great War in Europe ended as quickly as it began, which is why historians sometimes use the phrase “peace broke out” as opposed to more conventional expressions like “a treaty was negotiated”. But it was not like after Britain and France surrendered the guns fell silent. This, as Marshal Foch would put later in his inflamed critique of the Bonapartist regime and its handling of the war, was only the silence between volleys.
By 1917, the Great War in Europe had become not a war between the great powers, but a war between those who were left in Europe after the Great War and the new Soviet, socialist threat from Russia. Communist radicals had, in the intervening period of negotiation, stormed the Winter Palace and murdered the Romanovs.
A new era in Europe's history had begun.
Like, at least Kentucky or something.
