^ BY LOUIS L SNYDER WORUIVyAR I A FIRST BOOK^RE^SED EDITION f : WARI BY LOUIS L. SNYDER A FIRST BOOK | REVISED EDITION FRANKLIN WATTS NEW YORK 1 LONDO...
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BY LOUIS L SNYDER
WORUI VyAR
I
A FIRST BOOK^RE^SED EDITION
f
:
WARI BY LOUIS
L.
SNYDER
A FIRST BOOK REVISED EDITION FRANKLIN WATTS NEW YORK LONDON TORONTO SYDNEY |
1
|
|
|
1981
BOOK IS FOR MERYL ANN LIEBERMAN
THIS
BRANCH LIBRARY
The Bettmann Archives
Cover photo courtesy
of
Photographs courtesy
of:
The Bettmann Archives:
pp.
5,
33;
Editorial Photocolor Archives: p. 13;
Imperial
War Museum:
pp. 16, 19, 46;
United Press International: pp. 27, 57, 83; National Archives: pp. 30, 35, 64, 77 top;
Associated Press: p. 49; Culver Pictures: pp. 52, 77 bottom;
Army Photographs:
U.S.
Maps courtesy
of
pp. 70, 74.
Vantage
Art, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Snyder, Louis Leo, 1907-
World War (A
first
I.
book)
Includes index.
Summary: Spotlights the important events and of World War World War, 1914-1918—Juvenile World War, 1914-1918] I. Title.
people
I.
1.
[1. (
^52ZS65
1981
literature.
81-7479
940.3
AACR2
ISBN 0-531-04332-0 Copyright All rights
Printed
6
5
in
4
©
1981, 1958 by Louis L.
Snyder
reserved the United States of
3
2
1
America
CONTENTS
MURDER AT SARAJEVO
1
HOW THE WAR STARTED
2
ON THE EDGE OF THE ABYSS, JULY, 1914 7 A RIVER OF STEEL: GERMANY INVADES BELGIUM
WAR FEVER
12
THE TAXICAB ARMY AT THE MARNE 14 LIKE MOLES IN THE TRENCHES 15 "RACE TO THE SEA" 18 <-- WAR ON THE RUSSIAN FRONT 20 CLASHES AT SEA, 1914 23 WAR IN ASIA AND AFRICA 25 GALLIPOLI: A BRITISH DISASTER 26 -THE GERMANS USE POISON GAS 29 BATTLES IN THE SKIES 31 THE RED BARON 32 "THE ZEPPELINS ARE COMING!" 34 THE BATTLE OF WORDS 36 -^GERMAN U-BOATS: SHARKS OF THE SEA 38 ^SINKING OF THE LUSITANIA 41 "-^ ITALIANS GO TO WAR 43 GERMAN CONQUEST OF POLAND 43
9
THE BALKANS AND THE NEAR EAST 44 BLOODBATH AT VERDUN 47 BATTLE OF THE SOMME 48 MONSTER TANKS GO INTO ACTION 50 BATTLE OF JUTLAND 51 RUMANIA TURNS TO THE ALLIES 54 CALLS FOR PEACE 55
"^AMERICA GOES TO WAR 56 THE WESTERN FRONT, 1917 59 RUSSIA IN CHAOS: "MAD MONK" RASPUTIN REVOLUTION: RUSSIA LEAVES THE WAR 63 JERUSALEM FALLS TO THE ALLIES 66 ITALIAN DISASTER AT CAPORETTO 67 THE YEAR 1918: BEGINNING OF THE END 68 THE LOST BATTALION 69 COLLAPSE OF THE CENTRAL POWERS 71 THE FOURTEEN POINTS AND THE SECRET TREATIES 72
\THE
treaty of VERSAILLES, 1919 A HARD PEACE 78
AFTERMATH
80
WHAT THE WAR COST 81 ^HE TRAGEDY OF WAR 82 WORLD WAR WORDS 85 I
INDEX 88
75
62
WORLD WAR
I
M
il Powe
Power
e»
9-
s Allied
Centra
Meutra
^
—
MURDER AT SARAJEVO It
was June,
in
1914.
In
a humble cafe
in
the heart of the Balkans
Central Europe sat a group of angry men. Most of them
were students. There were also teachers, tradesmen, workers, and farmers. All lived in the small provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina (in what is now called Yugoslavia). These provinces once had belonged to Serbia, but a few years earlier they had been annexed by the great Austro-Hungarian Empire.
The men
sitting
around the cafe tables were members
of
a Serbian society called Narodna Odbrana. That means "National Defense."
On
They swore
to fight for
that special night these
men
freedom from Austria.
held a meeting to discuss
The Austrian Archduke, Francis Ferdinand, was coming on an inspection tour in the nearby mountains. He was going to visit Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The grim men in that cafe did not want such a display of armed might in their conquered land. The date of the visit made them even more hostile. It was June 28 Vidov Don, or a desperate
who was
St.
act.
heir to the throne,
Vitus Day, the five hundred twenty-fifth anniversary of Ser-
bia's
former independence.
The terrorists took a pledge: Death to the Archduke! They chose seven members to carry out their plan. The conspirators were to wait 500 yards (450 m) apart along the route the Archduke would travel from the railroad station to the town hall. Hidden among the crowds, one of them would surely succeed in killing the royal heir. Among the terrorists was Gavrilo Princip, a nineteen-year-
When he was a small boy, he tended sheep in From highland peasants he learned the old folk tales and songs of Serbia's glorious past. He had been expelled from school at Sarajevo because of revolutionary activities. He went to Belgrade, capital of Serbia. Homeless, ill, and often hungry, he was kept alive only by his hope of leading his old student.
Bosnia.
people to freedom. At dawn on June 28 the conspirators were armed and waiting along the route. When the Archduke appeared, one of them hurled a grenade at his car. The Archduke threw himself hall
back and was not injured. After the reception at the town he was urged to le^ve by the shortest route out of the
city.
As the
official
car turned at the bridge over the river Mil-
stepped forward and fired two shots. One pierced the Archduke's neck. Blood spurted from his mouth. The other struck the Archduke's wife who died instantly. The Archduke's last words were, "Sophie dear, Sophie dear, do jacka,
Princip
not die! Live for our children!"
Police seized Princip.
They knocked him down, beat him
with the hilts of their swords, and
The student, trian prison.
the world.
all
but killed him.
Princip, later died of tuberculosis in an
Aus-
But the shots he fired at Sarajevo echoed around
They
set off the explosion of
World War
I.
HOW THE WAR STARTED The causes
wars are never simple. work quietly under the years before they are recognized. In 1914 few peoof great
There may be surface for
bitter feelings that
pie thought there to
would be a war
in
Europe
that
would spread
continents of the world.
all
At that time Europe seemed to be more peaceful than it had been for many years. Below the calm surface, however, there were old rivalries, suspicions, and hatreds. They were ready to erupt at any time. To understand the situation we must go back to the late nineteenth century. The nations of Europe were then engaged in a fierce struggle of clashing imperialisms. They wanted raw materials for their industries and commerce, and markets for their products. People everywhere needed food and goods. Bankers in every country wanted places to invest their money, ^ome countries were successful at the expense of others. At the time Great Britain was the strongest power in the world. Her products were sold everywhere. She had the largest colonial empire. Her Royal Navy ruled the seas. It was said: "The sun never sets on the British Empire." The picture began to change at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Germany emerged as
mans began
to
They were hard-working and
efficient.
in
rival.
The Ger-
shipping and trade.
They began
to outstrip
The ribetween Germans and Britons grew ever stronger and
the British valry
a dangerous
challenge the British
in
the production of coal, iron, and steel.
more bitter. An evil
—
—
spirit was growing in Europe a spirit which set peoples apart from one another. It was the spirit of national-
ism.
Nationalism live in
the
same
is
who same language, and have
the feeling that binds together people
country, speak the
customs and ideas. But the kind of nationalism that spread in Europe during the late nineteenth century was like a crippling disease. Each nation began to feel susimilar
began
to
perior to other nations.
longed to others.
Many were greedy
Some were even
for land that be-
ready to go to war to get
what they wanted. By 1914 this nationalism had produced many "sore spots" in the world. One of them was Alsace-Lorraine, the rich industrial region between Germany and France. These two countries fought over Alsace-Lorraine for a thousand years. Germany had won it in the war of 1870-1871. Now France wanted it
back.
Then there was the great Austro-Hungarian monarchy, where Austriahs and Hungarians were the favored people. The other subjects among them Czechs, Poles, Serbs, and Rumanians wanted to break away and form their own na-
—
—
tions or join other states.
The people of Italy were dissatisfied, too. They believed Fiume and Trieste, then under Austrian control, and Nice and Savoy, then part of France, were really Italian cities. They pointed out that most of the people who lived in these cities spoke Italian and followed Italian customs. Poland was not even on the map in 1914. In the late eighteenth century it had been split up three times among Russia, Austria, and Prussia. But the feeling of Polish nationalism had never died. All over Europe there were people who still spoke Polish and had Polish customs. They wanted their country that
back.
Along with extreme nationalism, still another deadly disease infected Europe. This was militarism a warlike spirit. Each country, fearful that war would break out, began to arm and prepare for war. The people were heavily taxed to pay
—
for
weapons
of war.
They resented
it.
Restless and uneasy, the nations of Europe began to combine
in
a series of alliances
—
treaties
between two or more
German troops invade Belgium.
— —
nations promising to work together if war came. In 1882 Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy formed the secret Triple Alliance.
There was no world government, such as the United Nabetween nations. The only way to stop a country that broke the laws of nations was to go to war against it. In 1899 and later, in 1907, there were International Peace Conferences at The Hague that tried to solve the problems in Europe. They failed. Nations agreed on rules of land and naval warfare, the rights of neutrals, and the handling of prisoners of war, but they were not able to prevent the outbreak of war on a giant scale. Diplomacy, the art of handling relations between nations, became a kind of trickery. A diplomat was said to be a man "who lied for his country." Sworn allies were not necessarily loyal friends. In some cases nations even made secret agreements with the enemies of their allies. In 1905 trouble flared in Morocco. Germany wanted part of that country, but France objected. War was barely avoided. France, Russia, and Great Britain suspected that Germany was preparing for war. Although these three countries had been enemies in the past, they decided that they must get together for protection. In 1907 they formed their own tions today, to help solve quarrels
alliance, calling
it
the Triple Entente.
Unlike the Triple Alliance, the Triple Entente
was
not se-
Both the Allies and the Central Powers did make secret agreements during the war. But Great Britain and France were cret.
countries
in
which formal treaties had
by their parliaments
—the Chamber
of
to
be made publicly in France and
Deputies
House of Commons in Great Britain. Europe became divided into two great hostile camps the Triple Alliance on one side and the Triple Entente on the the
other. With suspicion
growing and tensions tightening,
it
was
anyone's guess who would fire the first shot. For years there had been trouble in the Balkans, "the powder keg of Europe." The Turks had held land in the lower all wanted war against Turkey and won. among themselves for the best
Balkans. Greece, Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria that land. In 1912 they
Then they began
to
went
fight
to
pieces of Turkey!
You can see that Europe was in trouble. Anything might happen. What happened was war after Gavrilo Princip fired
—
those shots
in
Sarajevo.
ON THE EDGE OF THE ABYSS, JULY, 1914 who makes the mistakes that lead The Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister, Count Leopold von Berchtoid, bears much of the blame for what happened in 1914. Von Berchtoid was furious with the Serbs for the murder of the Archduke. He was eager to strike back at them. The GerIt
is
never easy to decide
to war.
man
Kaiser, Wilhelm
that the
II, an emotional, headstrong man, agreed Serbs deserved a lesson. He promised to support the
Austrians
even
if
in
punishing the Serbs. The Kaiser believed that,
the Serbs resisted, the conflict would be a small one.
He was mistaken. On July 23,
1914,
von
Berchtoid,
sure
of
Germany's
was actually an "ultimatum," which means a final demand. He insisted that the Serbs punish all those who had taken part in the plot. He debacking, sent a harsh note to the Serbs.
It
manded to
this
To Serbia,
in
was done. this meant
to
go
into
Serbia
giving up her rights as an indepen-
No country allows
dent state.
own
be allowed
that Austrian officials
see that
foreign agents to act within
its
borders.
The ultimatum demanded a reply within forty-eight hours. This was a deadly serious matter for the Serbs. They were trouble. They asked for advice from Russia, a friendly state.
Russia urged the Serbs to
The Serbs time
limit,
make a moderate reply. On July 25, minutes
did just that.
they sent their answer. They accepted
mands except
short of the all
the de-
the one insisting that Austrian officials be sent
into Serbia.
Count von Berchtold was cept your answer," he said.
"It is
still
furious:
"We cannot
ac-
unsatisfactory."
On July 28 Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. The Russians began to mobilize their armies. "Mobilize" was a dangerous word. It meant that armies were to be ready to fight at a moment's notice. Mobilizing was the next thing to
a declaration of war. In
London and Berlin officials begged the Russians not to They also urged the Austrians to accept a peaceful
mobilize. solution.
But it was too late. Soon the "men of peace" would themselves in the midst of war. On August 1 1914, Germany declared war on Russia. Two days later, Germany declared war on France.
find
,
Italy left
the Triple Alliance.
She
said that
Germany and
Austria-Hungary had started the war. They were not defending
themselves but attacking others. After
Italy's
Germany and Austria-Hungary were known as Powers. France, Great
Britain,
and Russia
withdrawal, the Central
(the Triple Entente)
were known as the Allies. Both the Central Powers and the Allies were joined by other nations as the war spread. On August 4, Germany marched into neutral Belgium as the first step in an attack on France. The Great War had begun!
A RIVER OF STEEL:
GERMANY INVADES BELGIUM The Germans were well prepared. They had superior numbers, and they had a plan for a short, quick war. It was called the Schlieffen Plan. First,
while the Russians were
mans would
strike
at
the
still
mobilizing, the Ger-
French. They would
not
attack
where the French had strong forthe Germans would sweep up and around
straight across the border tifications. Instead,
the French
line.
Then, while holding the Russians
they would swing
down hard
The attack would be in its
like
for a
a gigantic
in
the east,
knockout blow on
hammer
with
all
Paris.
the force
head.
their plan to attack Paris, the Germans would have to swing in a wide arc through Belgium, which lies between Germany and France. Back in 1839 all the great states of Europe had signed a treaty guaranteeing the neutrality of
To carry out
little country. In case a great war broke out, the warring armies would not enter Belgian territory.
that
Now one of paper."
of the German leaders called this treaty "a scrap On August 4, 1914, the German armies surged
across the Belgian border.
A famous American war
correspondent, Richard Harding
was in Brussels, the capital of Belgium, the day the Germans marched through. He wrote a famous story about it Davis,
for the
New York
Tribune:
The German army moved into this city as smoothly and as compactly as an Empire State Express. There were no halts, no open places, no stragglers. ".
.
.
.
"It
came
with the
in
.
smoke pouring from cookstoves on
wheels, and
in an hour had set up postoffice wagons, from which mounted messengers galloped along the line of column distributing letters and at which soldiers posted picture
postcards.
.
.
.
"The men of the infantry sang 'Fatherland, My Fatherland.' Between each line of song they took three steps. At times two thousand men were singing together in absolute rhythm and beat. When the melody gave way, the silence was broken only by the stamp of iron-shod boots, and then again the song rose. "Like a river of steel the army flowed, gray and ghostlike. Then, as dusk came and as thousands of horses' hoofs and thousands of iron boots continued to tramp forward, they struck tiny sparks from the stones, but the horses and the men who beat out the sparks were invisible "Whether they marched all night or not do not know, but now for twenty-six hours the gray army has rumbled by with the mystery of fog and the pertinacity of a steam roller." The little Belgian army resisted fiercely, but it was no match for the powerful Germans. Tiny Belgium was beaten within two weeks. Shocked by the invasion of Belgium ("our front yard"), the British declared war on the Central Powers. Now the two great alliances were at war with each other. What had started as a little war in the Balkans now gave .
.
.
I
way
to world conflict. 11
WAR FEVER The lamps
are going out
all
over Europe," said Sir Edward
Grey, British Secretary for Foreign Affairs, just before the
war began.
seemed relieved armed peace was broken. Men, women, and children in every land were swept along in an outburst of patriotism. Newspapers and politicians shrieked that "our country" was the innocent victim of attack by the enemy. Berlin was afire with war fever. People thronged the streets Yet
the warring capitals the people
in all
that the strain of the
shouting, "War! War!" German troops goose-stepped down the avenue called Unter den Linden to the tune of Teutonic warrior songs. Girls kissed the blushing soldiers and put flowers in their
In
guns. Paris joyful
crowds surged down the boulevards as
shouts arose, "To Berlin! To Berlin!" Parisians massed Place de for
la
revenge
Concorde and sang for
in
the
Speakers called 1870-1871, when the Germans had beaten battle songs.
France. In
Piccadilly Circus,
and shouted: "Death
in
the heart of London, crowds sang
Hun!" British troops, marching to if on a holiday. There was the same war fever in Russia. Peasants left their plows and headed for the cities to join the army. The people of St. Petersburg changed the name of their city to Petrograd because Petersburg seemed like a German-sounding name. to the
the tune of "Tipperary," set out as
They attacked the German Embassy. "Victory sia!" they cried.
A
was
first
offered to the
Mother Rus-
Russian soldier to set foot
in Berlin.
—
seemed to be an adventure, just an exciting game time. Young people were told that it was fine and noble It
the
for
prize of 200,000 rubles (about $100,000)
12
at
to
IVar fever: mobilization in
Germany
die for one's country.
The war,
and glorious: grin and bear It
was a
it
was
said,
would be short
it!
The men, women, and children knew nothing about what modern war would was not glory it was tragedy. tragic mistake.
of that time
mean.
It
—
THE TAXICAB ARMY AT THE MARNE weeks it will all be over." That was the telegram that General Helmuth von Moltke sent to Kaiser Wilhelm II after the German invasion of Bel-
'In
six
gium. This invasion was the striking head of the
—the Schlieffen Plan
mer
A
million
(32
German ham-
action.
German troops poured
into France.
Despite the
Germans pushed steadforward. Sometimes they marched as much as 20 miles
arrival of British ily
in
km) a day on
and French
units, the
foot.
Germans tried to do too much too quickly. In those days messages between units of the army were carried by men on horseback and by motorcyclists. Many messengers lost their way in the confusion of the advance. Besides, the Germans had made the mistake of destroying all French telegraph lines and stations. Often German field commanders lost But the
touch with each other and with their headquarters. haste, they also got too far
ahead
In
their
of their supplies.
In the midst of the confusion, General von Moltke received an urgent message from East Prussia that said the Russians were pouring in and begged for help. He promptly trans-
ferred four of his divisions to the east. 14
It
was a serious mis-
German '"hammer*' was no down and crush Paris. of this, the Germans did reach the river Marne. km) from Paris, in the first week of September.
take. Without those divisions, the
longer strong enough to swing spite
In
15 miles (24
The French government
fled to
Bordeaux. But the French and
staged a desperate counterattack. General Joseph Joffre. commander of the French troops, said to his men. 'The time for looking backward has passed. Die in your British forces
tracks rather than retreat."
Marne lasted five days, from men were gripped in a battle At one point seemed that the Germans were French commanders called for help from Paris.
The famous September 5 to to the death.
about
to win.
First Battle of the
9.
Two
million it
Then an amazing thing happened. From the streets of came a long line of taxicabs and buses, headed for the front. French troops were piled into this strange fleet. Finally, the tide of battle turned in favor of the Allies. The Germans could scarcely believe it. For four weeks they had rolled on through Belgium and France. Now they had hit a stone wall. They halted and retreated to the Aisne River. General von Moltke's "six weeks'" were over. Although the Germans were still in a strong position, they had failed to reach their goal. Gone was their hope for a quick victory and a short war. Paris
LIKE IN
MOLES
THE TRENCHES
The Germans were stopped on their drive to Paris. Now both sides dug into the ground. The firepower of machine guns 15
Digging a
field
gun out of
tfie
mud at
Ypres.
and it.
field
guns was so great
that
none could stand up against
Like moles, soldiers began to seek safety under the ground.
There was nothing new about the trench. Caesar had used trenches against the Gauls. And both the North and the South had dug them in the American Civil War. What was new was the use of trenches on a grand scale. First, each side dug a long line of trenches underground, stretching nearly 600 miles (960 km) from Belgium down to Switzerland. However, a single trench system did not offer much protection. So both sides made second and third line trenches were infested with vermin rats, and also body lice
—
hold the All
first line.
these lines were connected underground so that the move from one line to another without being
soldiers could
exposed
to
enemy
tions, troops'
and
fire.
Under the ground were
officers' quarters, kitchens,
first-aid sta-
supply depots,
even miniature railway cars. The area between the German and Allied trenches was called No Man's Land. It was covered with mounds of dirt and tangles of barbed wire. It was a dangerous place in which to be caught, because it was always swept by gunfire of all kinds. Day after day, week after week, the opposing armies lived in the water, muck, and mud of these trenches. In the summer it was burning hot, in the winter, cold and wet. The trenches were infested with vermin rats, and also body lice which the troops called "cooties." During the day the ground trembled with the concussion
—
heavy guns. The soldiers' ears ached with the incessant bark of these big guns. Added to their deep-throated bass was the rattle of machine guns, each firing three hundred of
shots a minute. At night the battlefront was lighted by huge flares. Every 17
few seconds flashes of gunfire came from the big guns. Giant fireworks lit up the sky and made the scene as bright as day. During the night it was time for the rats to take over. They swarmed in and out of the dugouts and jumped over the heads of the sleeping soldiers.
Just before break of dawn, soldiers waited at the edge of the trench for the signal to "go over the top." Knowing they
had only a small chance Land, they were usually ders,
and they had
to
go
was only 10 yards
of in
coming back
alive
from No Man's
a cold sweat. But orders were or-
to the attack.
Sometimes the enemy
m) away. A contrasting problem was boredom. Nobody could make headway against the combination of trenches, machine guns, and barbed wire. Both sides tried to blast their way through
trench
(9
it was impossible to mount a major attack. Commanders on both sides hurled their men against positions which just could not be taken. It was a stalemate. No one side could advance unless it came up with new weapons.
with the help of big guns, but
"RACE TO THE SEA" September 1914 the Germans and the Allies tried each other in the west to get around the side of the enemy and hold him in a trap. Each tried to do this by capturing ports on the English Channel. It appeared to be a race to the sea. If the Germans won it, they could cut off all British aid to France. That would mean a quick end to the war. In the first two weeks the Germans took one Belgian city after another and almost captured the Channel ports. The AlBeginning
to outflank
ia
in
—
The trenches were not much
like
home.
lies then rallied and stopped the Germans in Flanders, a little corner of western Belgium extending into France. Here, a terrible battle took place in a little town called Ypres. (The "Tommies," as the British soldiers were called,
could not pronounce
and called it "Wipers.") In Ypres thouwounded. One British division entered the battle with 400 officers and 12,000 men. It came out of the slaughter with only 44 officers and 2,300 men! Thousands were buried in Flanders. John McCrae, a sensitive Canadian poet, wrote his famous poem In Flanders sands were
Fields.
It
it
killed or
began: In
Flanders fields the poppies blow,
Between the crosses row on row. There followed one
of the
most heroic stands
in
the history
The British held on to Flanders for four years. The Germans had all the high ground. The British, caught in the lowlands, had no way to hide. They had to dig holes, crawl of war.
into
them, and suffer while the holes
winter they were up to their knees
high
in icy
in
filled
mud
up with water.
In
or standing waist
water.
But the British "stuck
it
They held on
out."
to this strip
of land for the rest of the war.
They also controlled the French
cities
of
Calais,
Dun-
kerque, and Boulogne on the English Channel. These ports
were
vital to
the Allies.
WAR ON THE RUSSIAN FRONT Let us
now turn our eyes
to the east.
As the war began, one 20
of the
Russian armies moved
into
East Prussia and headed for the city of Konigsberg. Russian troops, under the hot August sun, swept across the
Dreaded Cossacks, Russian
fighters
sandy soil. on horseback, charged
across the countryside.
"On
to Berlin!" cried the Russians. Tales of their ferocity
seeped into Germany, inflaming German hatred. The Russians were soon in trouble. They had two main armies, one commanded by General Aieksandr Samsonov, and the other by General Pavel Karlovich Rennenkampf. The two generals hated each other. Each wanted the honor of leading his troops into Berlin first. Each refused to tell the other where he was with his men. That was a strange way to fight a war! The Germans did not have as many men as the Russians, but they had brilliant military leaders. General Paul von Hin-
denburg was a sixty-seven-year-old war-horse and a great commander. General Erich Ludendorff was a Bavarian staff officer who had shown his courage in taking the fortresses of Belgium at the start of the war. The two German generals had a shrewd plan. They would take on the two Russian armies separately, one after the other. In this way they could use maximum force against the enemy. The plan worked. Between August 23, 1914, and August 31, 1914, German troops destroyed Samsonov's army at the Battle of Tannenberg. That became a famous name in history for German schoolboys.
^
A week
later, trains
carried
German
forces northward to
a second victory. Here, at the Battle of the Masurian Lakes,
they defeated Rennenkampf. \
of
It
was a disastrous defeat
their
amounts
invading of
troops were
for the Russians.
destroyed.
They
Two-thirds lost
war supplies. Now they were on the defensive.
huge
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t'
^Cs
You can imagine the joy in Germany. General von Hindenburg was hailed as a national savior. A huge wooden statue was erected in Berlin to honor him. Children who paid a small
sum were allowed Soon the
to drive a nail into the "Iron
covered with
statue,
nails,
Hindenburg." in the mid-
was gleaming
day sun. It
was because
of these
two great victories that the Ger-
man generals von Hindenburg and Ludendorff supreme warlords The Russians
became
later
Germany.
in
did better against other enemies.
In
Galicia
they drove the Austrians back to the Carpathian Mountains.
send so many of their troops to fight subdue tiny Serbia. On the Eastern Front as on the Western Front, fighting was a seesaw affair. Neither side gained or lost very much after
The Austrians had
to
the Russians that they were unable to
the
German
victories.
Gradually, war
fare
— much as
in
in
the east settled
down
to trench
war-
the west.
At the end of 1914 opposing armies
in
the east faced each
other on a front running 800 miles (over 1,280 km) from the Baltic
Sea
to the
Rumanian border.
CLASHES AT SEA,
1914
The war was fought not only on land but on
sea. Neither side
could strike a knockout blow on land. Each one tried hard to win the In
backbone the seas. 23
war
at sea.
those days huge warships called battleships were the of
navies.
When
For
many years
the war began
in
the British
had ruled
1914, they had as
many as
— forty battleships.
The Germans had
thirty-three; the French,
twenty-one; the Austrians, thirteen.
As
their first task the British tried to clear the Mediter-
ranean Sea of enemy surface craft. In August, 1914, British warships trapped two German cruisers, the Goeben and the Breslau, there. The German ships fled the Mediterranean and
escaped to friendly Turkish waters. As their second and even more important task, the British Royal Navy closed off the sea routes from the North Sea to the Atlantic. This was known as a "blockade." The idea was to keep German ships from moving into the Atlantic Ocean, and to prevent war supplies or food from reaching Germany from any neutral nation. That blockade caused great bitterness not only inside Germany but also in countries which were not at war. British warships British ports,
made
all
neutral ships
where they were searched
for
come
into
"contraband"
enemy could use for war. navy did well. By December 1914 all surface raiders had been captured. Soon most German merchant ships were either captured or driven into neutral ports. It was an old story the British navy was just too powerful. What could the Germans do? They knew that they had to break that blockade or starve. It was slowly strangling them. anything that the
The
British
—
They had a large food supply put away for the war, but it was enough. They were worried. Soon they would use up all their oil, rubber, fuel, and cotton. The Germans had a plan to break the blockade. They had many U-boats (undersea boats), which we call submarines. These boats moved slowly and silently under the sea and waited for enemy freighters to come into sight. Then their
just not
captains sent torpedoes hurtling through the water to blow
up enemy targets. 24
German U-boat sank three was a severe blow to the British. The struggle at sea was bitter. Two German cruisers, the Gneisenau and the Scharnhorst, moved through the Pacific. Their commanders made for home around Cape Horn, at the As
early as September, 1914, a
old British cruisers.
southern
tip of
It
South America.
The British were aware of these two cruisers, for they had been sinking British ships. A deadly game began. The German ships were like two foxes being chased by a merciless pack of hounds. The British hounds caught the German foxes and sent them to the bottom of the sea on December 8, 1914. That was the Battle of the Falkland Islands. It proved that the British still held their power on the oceans.
WAR
IN
ASIA AND AFRICA
In Asia and Africa the major powers fought for important sources of food and raw materials. In 1914 Japan, allied with Great Britain, attacked and occupied Kiao-chau, a district in northeast China. Kiao-chau was a German stronghold in the Far East. That was the only part Japan took in the war, except for patrolling the Pacific to protect British ships against Ger-
man
attack. In
the early months of the war, British and French colonial
armies attacked and occupied the German colonies of Togo and the Cameroons in Africa. In 1915, South African armies under command of General Jan Smuts conquered German Southwest Africa. In German East Africa, British, Portuguese,
and Belgian colonial troops fought against a small force
Germans leading 25
local soldiers.
of
With the British
saw their
in
command
of the seas, the
colonial empire pass into the
hands
Germans
of the Allies.
GALLIPOLI:
A BRITISH DISASTER Turkey was neutral at the start of the war. But the Allies were aware that the Turks favored the Germans. On October 30, 1914, the Turks declared war on the Allies. The Allies in turn declared War on the Turks. In order to trade munitions and guns with Russia for badly needed grains, the Allies decided early in 1915 that they would have to capture Constantinople (now called Istanbul). Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, argued for a combined naval-land attack at Gallipoli. If Turkey were defeated, he said, the war could be shortened by two years. Now let us pretend for a few moments that we are armchair strategists, amateur generals.
It
is
a safe
way
to fight
a war!
The big inland sea called the Black Sea is between Rusand Turkey. For centuries the Russians tried to get from the Black Sea into the warm waters of the Mediterranean. In the north they had only cold water ports which freeze over in sia
winter. If
a Russian ship tries to get to the Mediterranean from
British transport sinldng after a
U-boat
down 26
attacl<. Tiie
crew climb
ropes, dropping into
tlie
water.
;:?N>
the Black Sea,
it must first pass through the Straits of Bosporus separating Europe from Asia. On the shores of the Straits is the Turkish city of Constantinople (istanbul), fa-
mous old gateway to the markets of the Orient. Then the ship comes into the inland Sea of Marmara. Next must pass it
through the Straits of the Dardanelles, on the north side of which is the peninsula of Galiipoli. Finally, it must dodge the
Aegean Sea to get into the Mediterranean Sea. you reverse the process, you will see that it is just as hard to bring a ship from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea and Russia. On February 19, 1915, a powerful Anglo-French fleet of about one hundred ships, headed by the superdreadnought Queen Elizabeth, appeared at the entrance of the Dardanelles. The great naval guns boomed and soon silenced the guns of the Turkish forts guarding the entrance. The Allied fleet now sailed into the narrows of the Dardanelles. Here they met disaster. Floating bombs called mines endangered the warships. From the shores heavy German guns poured fire on the invaders. Several ships were lost. The fleet islands of the If
withdrew. Obviously, a
way through
the Dardanelles could not be
An army went ashore under the command of General Sir Ian Hamilton. There were British and French troops, French Senegalese, Ghurka regiments, and Anzacs (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps). Altogether, some five hundred thousand fighting men were brought ashore on this tongue of rock and scrub. forced without the aid of land forces.
The invading army fought hand-to-hand. They attacked could not capture the fortified hills that commanded the plains. The combination of Turkish defenders, German guns, heat, flies, and dysentery was just too much fiercely, but they
28
for them. After a
campaign
lasting nearly nine months, the Al-
gave up their precarious toe hold in Gallipoli. Poor coordination between the British and the French and between army and navy ruined the plan. It was a costly and tragic defeat Britain's greatest failure of the war. lies
THE GERMANS USE POISON GAS was April 22. 1915. British Tommies at Ypres in western Belgium were miserable and wet in their tiny dugouts. There was no glory in this kind of war. Suddenly they saw a mysterious cloud coming right at them. They were puzzled. What could it be? Men grasped their throats in pain. Some began to cough violently. Many choked to death quickly. Others saved themselves by stuffing handkerchiefs into their mouths. iThis was the first large-scale poison gas attack in history.] The Germans were using chlorine, a deadly gas which It
I
and lungs. gas was against the Geneva Convention, a treaty that had tried to set up rules to make war as humane affects nose, throat,
The use
I
of
as possible. troops in the trenches did what they could to prothemselves against German gas. At first they tied wet cotton pads over their mouths. (Later, they were issued gas masks which could filter out the gas from the air and save their lives.! The Germans also used other types of poison gas. including mustard and phosgene gas. These were new and horrible weapons. lAllied
tect
1
('/
UVidMBISrx
At times the wind would change, and the gas the lies
let
loose by
Germans would come back to strike them. When the Albegan to use gas, too, the Germans became discouraged. Poison gas did not bring the Germans the victory they
wanted. \
BATTLES The
IN
THE SKIES little biplane streaked out of a over 100 miles (160.9 km) an hour.
British pilot in a fragile
cloud at top speed
—a
little
Below him he spotted a plane with a German cross on its all the chambers of his revolver at the German pilot. The enemy plane began to stag-
wings. Swooping down, he emptied
ger crazily.
As the British pilot flew by, he lifted his goggles and galwaved his hand at his opponent. The German saluted
lantly
back as
his plane spun to the ground. combat in the early days of World War was seen as a personal fight between two "knights of the air." At first, both sides used rickety little planes for scattering propaganda leaflets, and similar planes to discover enemy positions or to direct artillery fire. The pilots had to fly high and try to keep
Air
I
out of sight.
Then
in
May, 1915, a twenty-five-year-old Dutchman, An-
ton Fokker, invented a machine gun that could
fire
bullets
from planes without striking the propeller blades. With this
Carrier pigeons being
gas-proof cage by 31
stowed
German
in
a
soldiers.
tlie Germans ruled the skies for a year. But soon the had equal or even better guns on their planes. Single combat gave way to battles between organized squadrons, which consisted of about ten to twenty planes each. When the flight leader of a British squadron sighted enemy aircraft, he gave a signal. All the planes went helterskelter in every direction. It was each pilot for himself in these
invention
Allies
"dogfights."
—
There were many tricks of aerial acrobatics the Immelmann turn, the side-slip, the nose-spin, and others. The idea was to get behind and just below the tail of an enemy plane. There the attacking pilot could not be reached by enemy fire and was well placed to get in a burst of fire at close range.
The feats of courage in these air duels were extraordiAny pilot who shot down at least five enemy planes was called an "ace." Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, a famous American ace, shot down twenty-six German planes in the brief time he was at the front. Rene Fonck and Georges Guynemer were distinguished French aces. Others were Billy Bishop of Canada and Albert Ball of Great Britain. nary.
THE RED BARON He was a squat
little
man
those kindly eyes was a
World War
with an innocent killer
—the
air.
But behind
deadliest flying ace of
I.
In the dogfights
each 32
it
was
pilot for himself.
This German ace was known all over the world as the "Red Baron" or the "Red Knight." He was the leader of a group of German fighter pilots called the Flying Circus. He had a fantastic blood-red triplane (a plane with three wings).
The Red Baron moved into combat like a flash of lightning. He seemed to enjoy those heart-stopping dogfights, as pilots zoomed in and out in a mad scramble. He swooped in on an enemy from out of the blinding sun and then zeroed in on the tail
of the Allied plane.
Then with a shattering burst
of bullets
sent the unlucky target to the ground
Manfred von Richthofen was great hero. His
from his guns, he
flames.
his real
name. He became to him as a kills more
German boys looked up cunning and skill won him eighty
the scourge of the skies.
than any other
in
flier in
—
the war.
One day. Baron von Richthofen was to lose his own life combat. Roy Brown, a twenty-four-year-old Canadian pilot, sent the Red Baron crashing down in flames. in
"THE ZEPPELINS
ARE COMING!" The Germans also used an enormous bomb-carrying airship in an attempt to terrorize the British. It was called a Zeppelin. It was invented in 1898 by Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, a retired army officer.
a 34
From its gun platform mounted on top, German Zeppelin fires on a figtiter plane.
It looked like a huge, long cigar, it had an aluminum hull covered with a weatherproof fabric. It was filled with lighterthan-air hydrogen gas (which was treacherous because it was
inflammable).
The German government spent great sums the Zeppelin, believing
it
in
developing
could be used as a silent raider to
bomb the British into submission. On a night in spring, 1915, the
great sprawling wartime
London was blacked out. Suddenly, the sirens began to sound. Shouts echoed through the streets. "The Zeppelins are coming! The Zeppelins are coming!" High over the city gigantic shadows, shaped like huge cigars, came floating through the air. From them rained a hail of bombs. People scattered for cover. Searchlights pointed city of
fingers of light at the monsters. Planes took off to attack them.
guns began to rattle. The Zeppelins finished their errand
Antiaircraft
silently
of death
and
drifted
away, disappearing into the mist.
The Zeppelins had serious they could be
They caught
hit
by ground
fire easily.
faults.
fire
They were huge and
or by bullets from aircraft.
They were slow
—they could
fly
only
trol
54 miles (86.4 km) an hour. And they were hard to conin rough weather.
not
good enough
up
to
Once
again, the to
Germans used a new weapon
that
was
just
win the war.
THE BATTLE OF WORDS World War was the first great conflict in history in which whole nations went to war. It was a war not only of profesI
36
sional soldiers but of civilians.
Some
civilians did their part
on farms; others helped to make war equipment; still others worked to defend the home front. Everybody took part in one
way
or another.
To make the necessary sacrifices, both sides had to be convinced that the war they were fighting was just, and that the enemy had to be beaten. Governments began to use propaganda on a large scale to influence thoughts and emotions. Creators of propaganda used whatever served them best slogans, speeches, newspaper and magazine articles, pictures. In Vienna a business firm printed propaganda photographs that could be used by either side!
Some
of the German slogans were: "God Punish England." "On to Paris." "Germany Above All."
And here
are
some
British slogans:
"England Expects Every Man to Do His Duty." "King and Country Need You."
"God Speed the Plow and the Woman Who Drives It." "More Men and Still More Until the Enemy Is Crushed." To create hatred for the enemy, the Germans had a popular song called the Hasslied, or "Song of Hate": French and Russian they matter not, A blow for a blow and a shot for a shot We will never forego our hate, We have but one single hate,
We love as one, we hate as one. We have one foe, and one alone ENGLAND! 37
—
The German propagandists made up atrocity tales which the people read eagerly. These stories told how Belgians offered cigars filled with gunpowder to German soldiers. They charged French priests gave poisoned coffee to German troops. Allies had little trouble arousing hatred for the Germans. When the German army invaded Belgium, Belgian patriots "sniped," or shot, at the troops from windows. In revenge, the German commanders took hostages town officials, priests, women, children anyone they could pick up. They said that unless the snipers were handed over they would shoot every tenth person among the hostages. The whole world was horrified. In addition, people in the Allied countries thought that German U-boat, or submarine, warfare was sneaky and cow-
that
The
—
—
The Germans answered that everything was fair in war. of the propaganda was true; some of it false. For example, the Allies said that the Germans cut off the hands of babies and attacked women. They even said that the Germans
ardly.
Some
boiled children
in
scalding water to get
oil
for their
machines!
These things were not true, of course, but they made people hate the Germans which was what the propagandists wanted. The Allies won the battle of propaganda. British skill in the "war of words" helped to win over American public opinion. It was one reason why the United States entered the war on the side of the Allies in 1917.
GERMAN U-BOATS: SHARKS OF THE SEA One of the things which offended man U-boat campaign. 38
the Americans
was
the Ger-
Early
in
1915
in
response
many declared a "war zone"
to the British blockade, in
Ger-
the waters around the Brit-
She said she would sink any enemy ships in this zone was a violation of international law, which required that a ship be warned before it was sunk, and ish Isles.
without warning. This
be made Germany argued that
that every effort
ily
to
save the
the U-boat
lives of the
was
destroyed by gunfire or ramming.
armed merchant
It
passengers.
thin-shelled and eas-
could be sunk by a
it had suddenly and secretly. Once they had set up a war zone around Britain, the Germans began to use their U-boats to strike at Allied ships
single shot from an
ship. Therefore,
to strike
engaged
in
trade.
German U-boats took a
terrible toll of Allied ships.
Some-
times they sank ships almost daily. Altogether these iron
sharks of the sea sank five thousand Allied and neutral merchant and fishing ships during World War I.
Spectacular as
this
was,
it
did not succeed
in
starving
out the British. Toward the end of the war, the Allies worked out a system of convoys, by which merchant ships, guarded
by sleek, fast destroyers, moved together on the ocean lanes. down the heavy losses. Another method used by the Allies in fighting the U-boats was sending out innocent-looking merchant ships called Q-
This cut
ships which could be changed into warships
in
a few sec-
onds. These craft sailed along looking like unarmed freighters.
Suddenly, their sides went down, guns emerged, their
went up, and a U-boat was attacked. The Germans used this trick, too, with great success. Their disguised ships were called raiders. In fifteen months one German raider sank or captured thirty-eight Allied ships. Capreal flag
tain
Karl von MiJIIer of the raider
Emden
destroyed 70,000
tons (63,000 mt) of Allied shipping valued at 11 million dol39
All
the Fit
News Thafs to Print"
®lyje JC^Ur HBW
foRK.
fixrk
SATl«lDAY.
MAY
«.
mmt0.
1»15.— TWENTY-POUR
THE WEATHER
PAGES.
BY A SUBMARINE, PROBABLY IfiOO DEAD; TWICE TORPEDOED OFF IRISH COAST; SINKS IN 15 MINUTES; AMERICANS ABOARD INCLUDED VANDERBILT AND FROHMAh WASHINGTON BELIEVES THAT A GRAVE CRISIS IS AT HAl
USITANIA SUNK
nc
M
ncBOT
New York Times, May 8, 1915. To the right is the advertisement placed in New York newspapers by the German Embassy.
Front page of The
lars.
An Australian warship
and beached
finally
Emden
caught up with the
her.
Neither their sharks of the sea nor their surface raiders
were able to win the war for the Germans. U-boats caused heavy damage but they did not bring victory.
—
SINKING OF THE LUSITANIA No one ever dreamed that the Germans would sink a passenger They did just that and helped bring the United States
—
ship.
it
into the war.
The
was
Lusitania, a four-stacker of 30,395 tons (27.355.5 mt).
the fastest ship afloat, the
queen
New York
Cunard Line pas-
of the
on May 1. 1915. day the German Embassy in Washington placed an advertisement in the New York newspapers warning that all ships flying the flag of Great Britain "are liable to destruction and travellers sailing in the war zone ... do so at their
senger
On
.
.
fleet.
She
left
for Liverpool
that
.
own
risk."
No one paid any attention. It was unthinkable that the Germans would be foolish enough to sink a passenger ship with 197 Americans on board and many women and children. On Friday. May 7, the giant floating hotel was about 10
—
miles (16 km)
off
the coast of Ireland. Without warning, a
torpedo crashed into her side. She trembled, her forward, and she began to settle. There
bow dipped
was panic as desper-
ate passengers and crew rushed to the lifeboats.
Captain Turner said:
torpedo speeding toward 41
'1
was on the bridge when
us.
Immediately
I
tried
to
saw a change
I
our course, but was unable to maneuver out of the way.
was cold-blooded murder." A passenger, Dr. Moore "The Lusitania sank
down
in
saw a number
just
of
South Dakota, described
It
it:
eighteen minutes. As she went
people jump from the topmost point heard no screaming at the last, but a long, wailing, mournful, despairing, beseeching cry." And what did the U-boat commander, Lieutenant-Captain Schwieger, think? He reported in his log what he saw through of the
I
deck
of
into the sea.
his periscope:
and lowered
I
"Great confusion.
to water.
.
.
.
.
.
Lifeboats being cleared
.
Many boats crowded. ...
I
sub-
merge to 24 meters and go to sea. could not have fired a second torpedo into this throng of humanity struggling to I
save themselves." There were 1,957 persons on board. Only 761 were saved. Of the 197 Americans, 128 lost their lives. German authorities claimed that the Lusitania was really a British warship, not a passenger vessel, and that she carried Canadian soldiers as well as huge supplies of ammunition and shrapnel shells. In Germany, the sinking was hailed as a great victory. Schoolchildren were given a holiday, and a special medal was struck off to celebrate the event. The tragedy sent a wave of mingled horror and anger through the United States. True, the Lusitania carried 4,200 cases of cartridges for rifles, and 1,250 cases of shrapnel. Yet
was never proved that she was armed. Most important of she carried unarmed men, women, and children. The sinking was clearly a violation of international law and the cusit
all,
toms of a civilized society. The Lusitania disaster, like the invasion of Belgium, hardened public opinion against Germany. It was one of the main reasons why the United States went to war. 42
ITALIANS
GO TO WAR
What would the Italians do? Italy was joined to Germany and Austria-Hungary in the Triple Alliance. But when the war broke out in 1914, the Italians stayed home.
1915 both the Central Powers and the Allies began to
In
woo
the Italians.
ritory
if
The Italians
would
The Germans promised them additional come into the war on their side.
ter-
only they would
Allies had nothing to lose. They, too, promised the even more territory, including South Tyrol, if they
join the Allied
cause. They also offered the Italians
Trieste, the Istrian Peninsula,
part of Austria).
The
and a part
of
Dalmatia (then
make
Allies said that the Italians could
the Adriatic Sea "an Italian lake." Not only that, but the Allies told
the Italians that they could have colonies
and a sphere It
would
Africa
was a kind of game. The them the most.
Italians
waited to see
who
offer
On May 23, lost
in
of influence in Asiatic Turkey.
1915, Italy joined the Allies.
There was dismay and anger in Berlin. The Germans had one of their main allies. For Germany, it was a severe blow.
GERMAN CONQUEST OF POLAND Back licia,
in 1914 the Russians had driven the Austrians from Gaa Polish province then under Austrian control. In May,
43
1915, the Germans went to the aid of their Austrian allies; they smashed the Russian troops in Poland and sent them reeling. In ful
August, just a year after the start of the war, a power-
German army moved on Warsaw. Warsaw was
the Polish
and the central point of the Polish rail system. Hundreds of thousands of Poles had to flee the city. Russian troops in retreat, desperate to get away, shoved the refugees to their deaths in marshlands along the roads. It was chaos. By winter, victorious Germans had pushed Russians back to the Pripet Marshes. In this campaign the Russians lost more than a million men and huge stocks of weapons. The Russians never got over that smashing defeat. It was one of the reasons for the Russian revolutions of 1917. capital
THE BALKANS AND THE NEAR EAST The war was spreading. The Germans had put the Russians on the defensive and they had checked the British and French.
Now
the
German High Command turned
to Serbia,
which had
provided the spark to start the war.
The Germans promised the King of Bulgaria that if he would make a flank attack on Serbia, they would make him overlord of
all
the Balkans.
The king accepted. Bulgaria joined
the Central Powers on October
8,
1915.
German and Austrian arGerman General August von Mackensen, swooped down on Serbia from the north. Bulgarian troops came in from the east. Little Serbia was overcome. The Greeks, who Several days later two strong
mies, led by
to help her, backed down. The Central Powers were now triumphant from the North
had promised 44
Sea to the Near East.
Tigris River in
Mesopotamia
in
the heart of the
In 1915 a British force from India invaded Mesopotamia and advanced as far as Kut-el-Amara. The idea was to take Baghdad and join up with the Russians. The little British army was almost overwhelmed by the Turks. There was too much against them heat, lack of water, exhaustion.
—
This British defeat
was somewhat
invasion of Turkey from the northeast.
Russians captured the Armenian
offset
In
city of
by a Russian
February, 1916, the
Erzurum, then under
Turkish control. Farther to the south
among
in
the Near East, British agents worked
the Arab chieftains, inciting them to rebel against their
Turkish overlords. The most famous of these agents, one of the great resistance fighters of
all
time,
was Colonel
T.
E.
Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia. A graduate of Oxford University, Lawrence was a gentle, shy archaeologist. When World War began, he was digging and studying the remains of past civilizations in the Near East. He had a vast knowledge of this area, especially of Arabia. Rejected by the British for military service because he was too short, he asked to be allowed to work with the I
Arabs.
And what important work he
did!
Promising the Arabs
he urged them to revolt against their Turkish masters. He led them in raids on trains and Turkish
freedom
after the war,
Lawrence had the full confidence of the Arabs. He knew their language. He dressed like them. He became "more Arab than the Arabs." British cash brought many Arab leaders to the Allied side. But the success of the Arab revolt was largely due to military bases.
Colonel Lawrence, the
little
fighter
whom
called "El-Oren, the destroyer of engines." 45
the grateful Arabs
u
m u
1^
A %» .-^H
.f.<
BLOODBATH AT VERDUN At the opening of the second year of the war, the Central Powers held in
all
of
Belgium and the industrial regions
of France,
the east they had blocked Russia. Six months later they
decided to try to break the Allied line on the Western Front. Overlooking the Mouse Valley in France is the city of Verdun. For years this city, surrounded by a triple ring of fortresses, was a symbol of the power of France. The Germans knew that if they were to capture it, they would not only have a new base for attack on Paris, but would hurt French morale. On February 21, 1916, began the epic battle of Verdun, one of the bloodiest chapters in the history of war. General Erich von Falkenhayn had secretly gathered the best of the
German army in was to smash the foot soldiers:
the area directly before Verdun. His plan city with his big
"The
artillery
guns and then send
in
his
conquers, the infantry occupies."
The Germans opened the campaign with the heaviest bombardment ever known. Within the first twelve hours of battle they hurled more than a million shells from thousands of
cannon against the French defenders. Then, behind a cur-
German infantry moved forward. The German High Command was delighted. A general an-
tain of fire, the
nounced, "We are fighting the last battle of the war!" By June the Germans were only 4 miles (6.4 km) from Verdun. The French commander in chief. General Joseph Joffre, or "Papa Joffre" as his troops called him, telegraphed to
Thomas Edward Lawrence "Lawrence 47
of Arabia"
—
— "Every officer who gives an order to be tried by court-martial." The French front-line soldiers were known as poilus, or "hairy ones," because they did not clip their hair short. They were not known as great fighters. In fact, many people questioned their courage. At Verdun, however, the poilus battled the German Boches, or "hardheads," to the death. The more desperate the German attack, the more determined was the French defense. his top field officers,
all
retreat will
The poilus shouted,
"lis
ne passeront pas!" ("They
shall
not pass!")
Week
week, month after month, the bloodbath went all the land was burned by shellfire. The Germans even tried a new kind of poison gas diphosgene which penetrated the gas masks of the French. It was all in vain. The Germans did not take Verdun. Once again, as at the Marne, they were stopped. France was saved. on.
In
after
20 square miles (32 sq km)
—
The cost was in
frightful.
More than
half
men died Germans fully
a million
the raging battle. Neither the French nor the
this mass carnage. After Verdun, the British, Americans, had to bear the main burden of fighting for the Allies on French soil.
recovered from
and
later the
BATTLE OF THE
SOMME
While the Battle of Verdun was being fought. General Douglas Haig, the British commander in chief, raised a new army of
In
France: receiving the medal of the
Croix de Guerre for bravery 48
in battle.
rm^
— He planned to launch a heavy counterattack on Germans and relieve Verdun. At the same time, the Russians and Italians would strike at the Germans elsewhere. conscripts.
the
General Haig had 1,500 big guns, 20 yards (18 m) apart, Somme River. At the end of June, 1916, the British began an eight-day bombardment of the Germans. In the early morning of July 1 the British infantry went "over the top."
along the
,
time in World War the German soldier was on the defensive against an enemy equipped with weapons equal to his own. By this time, British war production was For the
first
I,
humming.
When
winter came, bad weather turned the fighting area sea of mud and blood. Neither side could make any headway. One British Tommy said, "It was the glory and graveyard of our army!"
into a
When, after four months, the fighting stopped, the Brithad conquered a small strip of soil 30 miles (48 km) long and 7 miles (11.2 km) deep. But at what a cost! They lost 410,000 men. The Battle of the Somme had two important results, however. It relieved German pressure on Verdun, and it forced the Germans to retreat on a 100-mile (160.9-km) front running from east of Noyon to Arras in northeastern France. ish
MONSTER TANKS
GO It
INTO ACTION
was
their
at the Battle of the
Somme
answer to trench warfare. One day at the battlefront
some badly 50
frightened
—
German
it
that the Allies
unleashed
was September 15, 1916 saw a long, narrow
soldiers
monster coming at them. It moved on huge caterpillar An astounded German officer wrote: "It did look something like a threshing machine. But why should it arrive there in the middle of a war? We watched and waited. Then it moved. It actually came toward us. But that was not all. Suddenly another came into view. Side by side they came on, ugly and ungainly, but terribly businesslike. Then, without warning, from both of them came a stream of bullets. Next they were on top of us." These were new British tanks. The idea was not new. Many centuries ago the Chinese used "war cars." And in Europe there had been talk about "battle wagons" and "land ships." But the British tanks were more deadly than any such vehicle used before. They were really steel-plated automobiles, using caterpillar tracks, which enabled them to move across soft ground, up and down hill, through barbed wire, and across trenches. Meanwhile, they spat out smoke and steel
treads.
bullets.
Before long the Germans began to build tanks, too. You be interested in the name they gave their tanks. At first they called a tank a Schutzengrabenvernichtungsautomobile, which means "an automobile built for the purpose of dewill
stroying trenches."
This word
may have caused
Later they changed
it
to
the
Germans some
trouble.
Panzerwagen, meaning "armored
car."
BATTLE OF JUTLAND Added
to the great battles
conflict at sea. 51
on land there was
What would happen
if
to
be one major
the giant battlewagons
t^^tJ^S^'^
Tank and infantry going into action. Caterpillar tracks enabled tanks to move across any kind of terrain.
of the British
Grand
Fleet
man Empire clashed
and the High Seas Fleet
battle?
in
A
of the
Ger-
victory for either side could
change the entire course of the war. The battle finally took place during May 31 and June 1, 1916. It was the only big naval battle of World War The two fleets met in the North Sea, off Jutland, the largest province of Denmark. The German fleet, commanded by Admiral Reinhard Scheer, steamed out into the North Sea. At once the British fleet, under Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, headed out to meet I.
them.
Each
fleet
was made up
of giant battleships
and destroyers.
units of battle cruisers
It
was
and smaller
like
a deadly
game. The German admiral sent his cruisers ahead to meet the British and lure them back within range of his big battleships. As the British cruisers moved to meet them, the Germans turned away and steamed back to join their main fleet. The British cruisers pursued, leaving their own big battleships far behind.
At
first
the
German
ers found themselves
strategy worked, and the British cruis-
in
trouble.
Then the
British battleships
caught up with the rest of the fleet. Now all the warships big and small joined in the battle. Giant steel shells rained through the air. Salvo after salvo fell on the decks, killing
—
or
wounding unlucky
Some warships
sailors.
skill, mandodge torpedoes speeding through the water. British captains were ordered to work their way to the east of the Germans. They wanted to get between the German
aged
exploded. Others, with great
to
ships and their
home
ports.
Admiral Scheer saw the danger and ordered his ships to head for home base. Protected by fast-moving destroyers
and a covering torpedo attack the German fleet steamed away in a screen of gray smol
Who won
this Battle of
Jutland?
No
one.
There was no real victory for either side. The British lost more men and ships than the Germans: three battle cruisers, three light cruisers, and eight destroyers. The Germans lost one battleship, one battle cruiser, four light cruisers, and five destroyers. Loss of life was heavy on both sides. Nearly the entire crew of the British Queen Mary, a battle cruiser, died when the ship exploded and sank. Never in history had the British Royal Navy been so badly hurt in a major naval battle. Both the Germans and the British claimed a moral victory.
The "victory" fleet did not
for the British lay in the fact that the
come
German
out to fight again.
Great Britain retained her control of the seas. She was
was strangling her eneoutcome of the war.
able to continue the blockade that mies. That meant everything
in
the
RUMANIA TURNS TO THE ALLIES It
was a black summer
for the Allies in 1916.
There came one
flash that lightened the gloom, but not for long.
For two long years, Rumania, of
the southeastern corner
—the
Allies
Rumanians bargained with both sides get the most they could. Finally, in August 1916, they chose
or the Central Powers. to
in
Europe, could not decide which side to join
the Allies. 54
was great news for London and Paris. But the joy did Rumanian troops moved into Transylvania, but their drive stalled. The German and Austrian forces pushed the Rumanians out of Transylvania and turned on Rumania itself. They were just too strong for the Rumanians. On December 6, 1916, the capital city, Bucharest, fell. The Rumanians were beaten. They had to sign the Treaty of Bucharest, giving up This
not
last.
much
of their land.
was a sad blow for the Allies, too. The valuable oil and great supplies of wheat in Rumania were now in the hands of the Central Powers. The Allies now had to find these It
fields
critical
materials elsewhere.
CALLS FOR PEACE In August 1914 people on both sides thought it was going to be a short and "glorious" war. It did not turn out that way! After two years of bitter fighting, much of it a bloodbath in the trenches, both sides were
tired of war.
The the
Allied world
Somme. The
about to explode
counted the heavy cost
Italian in
front
was
in
of
Verdun and
deadlock. Russia was
revolution.
were appalled by the casualty lists with too many names of killed and wounded. By now they knew that their chances to win were very small. Austrians and Hungarians were also restless and starting to talk of peace. On December 12, 1916, the German government issued a call for a "negotiated peace." That meant both sides would agree that neither one could win. The Germans said that they Germans,
55
too,
had no wish
to destroy the Allies!
arrogant note. They rejected the
The
Allies did not like that
German
offer.
George, the new British Prime Minister, said: going to put our heads into a noose."
David Lloyd
"We
are not
The American President, Woodrow Wilson, had his say. He had been working for peace since the start of the war. He proposed a "peace without victory": "Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser. Only a peace between equals can
last."
That was good
common
sense. But
German demands. Each
in to
other side could not accept. The war
more
it
seemed
like giving
side insisted on terms that the
was
to
go on
for
two
years.
AMERICA GOES TO WAR What about
the Americans?
At the outbreak of war
in
1914, the people of the United
States had been hesitant and confused.
The United States
is
made up of different peoples. The families of many Americans came originally from all over Europe. Many were sympathetic to the Allies. But there
man background who the Irish
in
were also millions felt
of
Americans
of
Ger-
close to the Fatherland. Most of
America were anti-British because they homeland, was oppressed by Britain.
felt
that
Ireland, their
High heels don't seem like mechanic's wear, but this worker handles her blow torch with confidence. 56
i
— When the war broke out in 1914, America was neutral she took no side. The idea was not to make "entangling alliances" with European powers as advised by the Founding
—
Fathers of the American republic.
The United States government protested strongly when warships stopped American ships to search for con-
British
traband.
When the American presidential election took place in Woodrow Wilson was returned to office on the slogan:
1916,
"He kept us out
of war."
Gradually, however, America began to turn against Ger-
many. Americans were shocked by the way Germany fought by her invasion of Belgium, her use of poison gas, her bombing of cities, and the sinking of unarmed ships. Again and again Washington warned the Germans to stop sinking American ships. U-boat attacks on American merchant vessels were one of the main reasons the United States entered the war
—
the war.
The Germans also aroused American resentment by sendblow up munitions factories and freight
ing secret agents to
ships
in
German
the United States. Popular feeling flared high
spies were accused of setting
the Black
Tom
off
when
a great explosion
munitions shipping terminals
in
New
in
Jersey.
Then on January 19, 1917, the German Foreign Secretary, Zimmermann, did something that can be described only as foolish. He sent a note to the German Ambassador in Mexico, proposing an alliance with Mexico for a joint war against the United States. As a reward, Mexico would be given territory in New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona. The note was intercepted and decoded by the British, who handed it to the United States Ambassador in London, Walter Hines Page. Then the note was published in the United States. You Alfred
can imagine the reaction 58
to that!
Next, on January 29, 1917, the
Germans announced
to the
world that they would begin "unrestricted submarine warsight. One Amerwas torpedoed and sunk. What could the Americans do? The United States did not know how long the war was going to last. If Germany drove U.S. shipping from the seas, American commerce and indus-
fare." Their
U-boats would sink any ship on
ican ship after another
try
would be
On
in
serious trouble.
America declared war on Germany. The Germans reacted with shock and dismay. General von Hindenburg said: "We now have a new enemy. America April 6, 1917,
the world. Will she appear
is
the most powerful country
in
time to snatch the victor's laurel from our brow?"
in
The answer was "Yes!" At
first
only a few Yanks, as the American soldiers were
soon they descended on Euan avalanche. Within a year more than two million men under the command of General John J. Pershing were
called, crossed the ocean. But
rope
like
sent to the battlefields of France. Never before of the
world had so
in
the history
many men been transported and supplied
from bases so far away!
THE WESTERN FRONT, 1917 Following the Battle of the
Somme, and throughout
1917, the
Western Front remained deadlocked.
On in
April 9, 1917, the British struck the
the north. First they spent three
They followed
this with five
days
weeks
of
Hindenburg Line
cutting barbed wire.
heavy bombardment from
nearly three thousand guns. Sixty tanks went into action. Ca-
nadian troops 59
made
a furious assault on
Vimy Ridge,
driving
Germans back some distance. But at the end of two weeks, the British had captured only 75 square miles (120.7 sq km) at a cost of thirty thousand killed. Meanwhile, the French started their own big offensive farther south on the Hindenburg Line at a point on the Aisne the
River between Soissons and Rheims. Here at the
Second
Bat-
the Aisne, they received one of the bloodiest beatings
tle of
of the war.
Many French
poilus,
revolted by the massacre,
threw down their weapons and went home.
demned
to
Some 150 were condeath for desertion, but only twenty-three were
executed. Order was restored by changing the French leadership.
General Robert Georges Nivelle was replaced by GenNot only France but her allies were
eral Henri Philippe Retain.
shaken by
this disastrous defeat.
Then, on June
amazing plan
7,
Second Army put an
1917, the British
into action. British soldiers
burrowed a tunnel
8,000 yards (7,200 m) directly under the
of
German trenches
and exploded nineteen huge mines in it. Soon 2,300 heavy guns opened fire. The British infantry swarmed in. But at the end of seven days, this advance, too, was halted. The British tried again at the Battle of Passchendaele in July 1917. Their guns poured more than four million shells on the Germans, but the enemy doggedly held its positions. Once more, in November, the British went to the attack at the Battle of Cambrai. Here they used 380 tanks in a sudden, mighty offensive action. The attack took the Germans by surprise and almost won the victory for the British. But men and supplies were exhausted before the battle could be won. In the end, Cambrai came close to being a costly failure, but it showed the power of tank warfare, and especially of surprise attack. It also showed that surprise and attack together could break through trench barriers.
helped the Allies to win the war. 60
In
the end, these lessons
RUSSIA IN CHAOS: 'MAD MONK" RASPUTIN In
the spring of 1917, just as America entered the war, Russia
was ready
to
drop
out.
Why? To understand what happened we must go back
in
Russia
1917,
in
a few years.
For a long time the Russians had been on the verge of revolution.
The people were miserable under the harsh rule of II. Many of them saw little use in fighting
their Czar, Nicholas for
a ruler they hated.
The anger
of the
gori Efimovich, better
people was inflated by known as Rasputin.
the rise of Gri-
Rasputin was a peasant who could not even write his own name. He became a wandering religious fanatic, calling himself a "man of God." Strange to say, he was to become the most powerful man in Russia. How did he do it? Behind his rise to power was a sad story.
The Czarevitch
Alexis, the
young son
terrible disease called hemophilia.
of the Czar,
had a
He was a "bleeder."
Like
other boys of his age, he enjoyed sports. But every time he got a small scratch, he began to bleed heavily. His doctors
could not check the bleeding. Alexis's mother, the Czarina, like mothers everywhere,
would have done anything that
the
to help her son.
monk Rasputin had
Czarina called him
strong
Someone
healing
told her
powers.
The
in.
The "holy man" used hypnosis on the bleeding boy. He would dangle a watch before Alexis's eyes, and mumble some "magic" words. Then he would say in a deep tone, "You are getting better! You are getting better!" 62
Indeed, sometimes the bleeding would stop for a while! The Czarina was sure Rasputin was responsible. She did not care what anyone else said about Rasputin. She thought that he was a genius. He was helping her beloved son! Nothing, in her view, was too good for Rasputin. Soon Rasputin became powerful in court. He began to meddle in politics. The Czar, wanting to please his wife, allowed Rasputin more and more power: the monk even chose or dismissed ministers of state.
Meanwhile, he held wild orgies of feasting, dancing, and Word of his excesses flew throughout the land. Angry Russians begged the Czar to throw the rascal out. In late 1916, two nobles decided to kill Rasputin. They gave him poisoned cakes and wine, but nothing happened. drinking.
Finally, they shot him.
his
body
To make sure he was dead, they threw Neva River.
into the frozen
REVOLUTION: RUSSIA LEAVES THE
WAR
Rasputin's death did not save Russia from revolution. There
were too many severe problems would not solve. Russian troops
at the front,
that the
some
Czar could not or
fighting
even without
were about to mutiny. The disastrous Russian defeat in Poland in August 1915 lowered morale. At home there was a serious shortage of food. Workers went on strike. Revolutionary feeling spread quickly. The Czar ordered troops to rifles,
disperse the angry people, but the troops refused to their fellow Russians.
63
They even joined the mobs.
fire
on
On March
15, 1917,
Czar Nicholas
II
gave up
his throne.
Sixteen months later he and his entire family were shot to
death
in
a cellar by the revolutionists.
Following the abdication of the Czar, the revolutionists set
up a provisional, or temporary, government under the
leadership of Alexander Kerensky.
It
was more
or less a de-
mocracy. The Allies were pleased. Now they could say they were really fighting to "make the world safe for democracy." The provisional government tried to continue fighting on the side of the Allies. But the Russian masses, tired of military blundering and heavy losses at the front, turned against the war.
Meanwhile, a lonely exile in Switzerland watched his hour of destiny approach. He was called Lenin, but that was
name was Vladimir llyich Ulyanov. He was a person consumed with hatred for the Russian govnot his real name. His true
ernment
that long
ago had executed
his older brother as a
He had planned his course of action. The Germans wanted revolution in Russia so that one of their enemies would be out of the fight. They allowed Lenin to cross Germany from Switzerland in a sealed train. Lenin arrived in Russia on April 16, 1917. He declared that the overthrow of the Czar was only the beginning of the revolution. The provisional government, he said, represented radical.
ple in business, doctors, lawyers,
—
capitalists such as peoand teachers. He demanded
the middle class or "bourgeoisie"
all power for the working class, or "proletariat." His slogan Peace! Land! Bread! became a battle cry for the downtrodden workers and peasants.
—
Vladimir llyich Ulyanov 65
—Lenin
members of Lenin's party were called BolThe party was small but well organized. It had able leaders. In November, 1917, it staged a second great revolu"the ten days that shook the world." The Bolsheviks tion overthrew Kerensky and set up what Lenin called a "dictatorship of the proletariat." Actually, it was the dictatorship of one man Lenin. The Russians had exchanged one tyrant for At this time
sheviks.
—
—
another.
Once
in
power, the Bolsheviks signed a treaty of peace
with the Germans. With the harsh treaty of Brest Litovsk,
March all
3,
1918, the Bolsheviks signed over to
the territory the Russians
had won
in
Germany
nearly
Europe
Eastern
since the time of Peter the Great (1672-1725).
The
Allies
were stunned by
this
desertion.
now released from the Russian There was great danger that unless
troops were France.
German
front to fight in
the fighting
brought to a speedy end, the Bolshevik revolution
spread through
all
of
was
might
war-exhausted Europe.
JERUSALEM FALLS TO THE ALLIES The year 1917 was a hard one for the Allies. There was one bright hope. They were doing well against the Turks. In
early 1917, British troops under General Sir
Maude captured Baghdad
F.
Stanley
Mesopotamia. Later that year another British army under General Edmund Allenby joined the war against the Turks. Allenby was helped by Arab guerrillas serving under the famous Lawrence of Arabia. Damascus, in Turkish Syria, fell to the Allies in October 1918. in
Just before Christmas, 1917, the Allied troops marched 66
into
Jerusalem. For the
sades
in
first
time since the end of the Cru-
the thirteenth century, the Holy City
was returned
to
Christian possession.
ITALIAN DISASTER AT CAPORETTO In late
1917, this time from southern Europe,
came to the Allies. Some Italians the war at
all.
believed that they should not have entered
Italy,
they said, had no coal, without which no
nation could fight a
had
little
gan
to
more bad news
modern war. Once
the war the people
in
or no will to win.
Nevertheless,
hammer
in
at the
the spring of 1915 the Italian armies be-
mountainous borders
of Austria-Hungary.
Suddenly, on October 24, 1917, with no warning, a huge combined German and Austrian army swept down on Caporetto,
in
weeks the
entire
crumbled. The defenders were thrown back
to the
northeastern
Italian line
Italy.
Within
three
Piave River, 15 miles (24 km) north of the canals of Venice.
The
Battle of Caporetto
disaster for the Allies.
The
desperately trying to save
was a complete Italian
itself.
rout for
armies turned
Italy,
into a
a
mob
The roads were so clogged army could not have
with fleeing people that even a fighting retreated
in
British
order.
and French troops were sent
to help the Italians.
The defeat at Caporetto stung the pride of a sensitive people. Italians were angered by what other peoples said about them. Young Italian boys, not yet seventeen, were rushed to the front. They fought well among the seasoned troops, but many of them died. 67
The Italians were able to win back only a little ground, and they never got over the crippling blow at Caporetto.
THE YEAR 1918: BEGINNING OF THE END
—
and the end was not yet Powers seemed to be in a favorable position. The Germans had two million men defending the Hindenburg Line on the Western Front. Russia was out of the war. Serbia, Rumania, and Italy were no longer important as military powers. The U-boat campaign was working havoc on Allied shipping. England was facing starvation. No one knew whether the Americans were ready to face the German veterans. Then it came the German superoffensive. On March 21, 1918, German armies, under Generals von Hindenburg and Ludendorff, surged forward. The plan was to end the war by a series of hammer strokes before the Americans could arrive in overwhelming numbers. The Allies lost 1,500 square miles (2,400 sq km) which they had won after Three and a in sight. In
half
years had gone by
early 1918 the Central
—
three years of bloody fighting.
For the
first
time
in
the war the Allies agreed to work
command. General Ferdinand Foch, a Frenchman, was named Supreme Commander of all the Allied forces. No longer would there be petty bickering among the Allied commanders. On April 9, 1918, the Germans struck again against the together under a single
Another such push and the Channel would be captured. Then the Germans turned on the French at the southern end of the Hindenburg Line. Their hammer strokes carried British lines to the north.
ports, so vital for the safety of England,
68
them forward again to the Marne River. They were on the verge of victory when the Americans began to arrive. Now a great Allied counteroffensive was prepared all along the
line.
attack them other.
The
The idea was to give the Germans no rest, to at one section of the line and then at anpush came in July, 1918. The British struck at
first
big
the north on their old battlefield, the
forced the
Germans
out of
Somme. Slowly
they
the positions they had gained
all
since March. Farther to the south, from Amiens to Rheims, the French pushed the Germans back to their original line. The great Second Battle of the Marne (July 15-August 8, 1918) was part of this campaign. It was a stunning Allied victory. General Ludendorff said, "August 8 was the black day of the German army. It put the decline of our fighting power beyond all doubt." Next came the great assault on the Hindenburg Line. Here the raw American troops distinguished themselves. The Germans dropped back into the Argonne Forest, a wooded and rocky plateau in the Meuse and Ardennes region of France. Some of the most desperate fighting of the war followed.
THE LOST BATTALION In
big
wars
take place to
tell
little
like
in
World War
I,
thousands
of strange incidents
the heat of combat. Fathers and grandfathers like
boys about the heroic deeds
war
of the
in
which
they took part. Often they forget the blood and the misery and
shock
of battle.
One
They forget
"Lost Battalion." 69
that
war
of the strangest stories of
is
deadly.
World War
I
is
that of the
Under heavy the
Germans
fire,
in
mm gun is set up against Meuse-Argonne offensive.
a 37
the
It
was
in
the
Argonne
Forest.
On
the night of October
2,
1918, a battalion of the American Seventy-seventh Division,
commanded by Major tack on
Germans deep
Charles Whittlesey, took part in
in
an
at-
the forest.
(In the American army, a company usually had from sixty one hundred infantrymen; a battalion was made up of four companies; and three battalions formed a regiment. Sometimes the units were larger. There were six hundred men in
to
the Lost Battalion.)
Advancing
in
single
file,
the Americans were not quite
broke, they found Germans in and on both sides! What could the Americans do? They were lost in the forest. They were blasted by heavy gunfire and peppered with machine gun bullets. For five days they had no food or water. Their ammunition ran out. Other Americans did not know where to find them. The Lost Battalion held out. At long last, on October 7, 1918, those who remained alive were rescued. As many as four hundred men died in the slaughter.
sure where they were. As
dawn
front of them, behind them,
COLLAPSE OF THE CENTRAL POWERS By the end
of
September 1918, the Central Powers were close
One by one they began to give up. Bulgaria was the first: she surrendered on September
to defeat.
29,
Then Turkey on October 30. Then Austria-Hungary on November 3. The end was near. The Americans were pushing ahead along the entire Western Front. Soon the Hindenburg Line began to crumble. 1918.
71
German
unable to make a stand, staggered back.
troops,
Their generals
blamed "fresh American troops"
for
their
defeat.
German commanders sent bad news back to was lost. The German home front was already falling
Berlin.
The
apart.
The
war, they said,
people were depressed by huge losses on the most every family had lost a father, son, or
was
little
to eat.
The people
lived
battlefields. Alrelative.
There
mostly on turnips. Their
bread was made of turnips, their coffee of turnips. Cigarettes of turnips. They ate turnip soup. They could
were made
scarcely bear to look at a turnip!
were moving rapidly toward the German The German government gave up at last. The armistice (an agreement for a temporary end to war) was signed on November 11, 1918. The ceremony took place aboard a railway car in the forest near Compiegne. Remember that name Compiegne! In 1940, in the early months of World War II, the Germans won a smashing victory over the French. Adolf Hitler, the German dictator, took vengeance on the French. He used the same railway car at exactly the same place to humiliate the French. He planned it Allied armies
borders.
—
that way; he
had been a corporal
in
World War
I.
THE FOURTEEN POINTS AND THE SECRET TREATIES On January
8,
1918,
famous Fourteen They were: 72
President Wilson had announced the
Points, a statement of America's
war aims.
Abolition of secret diplomacy.
1.
2.
Freedom
3.
Equality of trade for
4.
nations.
5. 6.
Evacuation of Russian
7.
Restoration of Belgium.
8.
Return of Alsace-Lorraine to France.
Readjustment
Freedom
territory.
of the frontiers of Italy.
peoples of Austria-Hungary. Evacuation of Serbia, Montenegro, and Rumania.
10. 1 1
for the
13.
Freedom for the peoples subjugated by Turkey. An independent Polish state.
14.
Establishment of a League of Nations.
12.
is
all
Reduction of armaments. Adjustment of colonial aims.
9.
It
of the seas.
important to
weapons
in
remember
that thoughts
and words are also
war. Copies of Wilson's Fourteen Points were
lofted into enemy territory by rockets and guns, and scattered from planes and balloons. They were broadcast (for the first
time)
by
The German people took them seriously. had been fooled. They had arms, they said, because of Wilson's promise
radio.
Later, they said bitterly that they
put
down
their
of a better world.
The Fourteen Points won the greatest diplomatic victory World War Remember that the Fourteen Points were American aims. America's allies had other plans. After the war, Communists who were anxious to embarrass the capitalist powers, revealed that the other Allies had made a number of secret treati.es. Russia was to get Constantinople. Italy was promised parts of Austria. Russia, Britain, France, and Italy were to split the Turkish Empire among themselves. The German colonies were to be divided among the Allies. of
I.
73
The
those secret treaties was just the opposite expressed in the Fourteen Points. On one side of
spirit of
of the ideas
the peace talks world.
On
was President Wilson's
plan
for
a better
the other were those secret treaties which could
lead only to further trouble.
THE TREATY OF VERSAILLES, 1919 "Vive Vil-son!" cried the French
in Paris.
shouted the crowds in London. "Viva Voovro Veelson!" screamed the crowds in Rome. Everywhere it was the same endless cheers and cries that "Hurrah
for Wilson!"
—
seemed
to
come from
the heart of humanity. For the
first
time
American history an American President had traveled to Europe during his term of office. He had come to lead the in
world to a just peace. He told the cheering crowds: "The cause being just and holy, the settlement must be of
A supreme moment of history has come. The eyes people have been opened and they see. The hand of
like quality.
of the
God
is upon the nations." The terrible war was over. Europe was a shambles. The people were exhausted and insecure. They looked upon President Wilson as a messiah who would lead them from a world
of decay.
Things went wrong from the
start.
Thirty-two Allied na-
tions gathered to dictate terms to the defeated Central
American troops celebrate the armistice. 75
Pow-
ers.
There was a bad omen
make
the treaty.
It
was
in
the very place they picked to
the Hall of Mirrors
in
the Palace of
Versailles, near Paris. Here, forty-eight years earlier, the Ger-
mans,
after defeating the French,
had proclaimed
Empire. Already there was revenge
The
in
their
German
the air at Versailles.
were called the "Big Four." They were Clemenceau of France, Prime Minister David Lloyd George of England, and Prime Minister Vittorio Emanuele Orlando of Italy. Orlando walked out because he felt Italy was being slighted. He expected to be called back, but he was not, and the "Big Four" Allied leaders
President
Woodrow
Wilson, Premier Georges
became the "Big Three." Clemenceau was called
the "Old Tiger of France," although he looked more like a walrus than a tiger. He hated Germany, which had always been a danger to France. He redie," he garded the Germans as a sinful nation. "When said, "bury me deep, standing up, marching toward Germany." The Germans could expect no mercy from him. Lloyd George, the British Prime Minister, had just been re-elected to office on the slogan "Hang the Kaiser!" He promised his people that he would collect from Germany the costs of the war, "shilling for shilling, and ton for ton." I
Above: the Hall of Mirrors
m
the Palace of Versailles during the signing of the
peace
treaty.
Below: the Big Four: (left to right) David Lloyd George, Vittorio Emanuele Orlando,
Georges Clemenceau,
Woodrow 76
Wilson.
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i 1 •III ^M IHII f WMW^^ M
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The conference rot
at Versailles
was
called "a riot
house." There were endless battles
among
in
a par-
the Big Three.
Clemenceau was bored by Wilson. Of Wilson's Fourteen Points he said, "Wilson has Fourteen; the Good Lord Himself had
The constant bickering shattered Wilson's He caught a cold from Clemenceau, who coughed all the time. And Lloyd George was disgusted. "What am to do," he asked, "between a man who thinks he is Jesus Christ and another who thinks he is Napoleon?" Ten!"
only
nerves.
I
Wilson had one aim
in
mind
—there must be a League
Nations to prevent another world war luctantly
accepted some
return for support of his
of the harsher
League
in
the future.
He
terms of the treaty
of rein
of Nations.
A HARD PEACE At Versailles the Allies stripped in
Germany
of
Africa and the Far East. Alsace-Lorraine
France. The ning
in
new
her colonies to
was created, part of it runthrough old German lands. The Saar
state of Poland
a corridor right
territory,
all
was returned
sometimes called the Pittsburgh
of
Germany, with
was placed under French control for fifteen years. The German Rhineland was occupied by the victor powers for the same period. Five years of emotional propaganda had done their work. The Allied peoples and their governments viewed leaders of the Central Powers as criminals who were to be punished. Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles, the famous warguilt clause, blamed Germany and her allies for causing the war. On the basis of this clause, the Germans were required all its
coal mines and factories,
78
pay an enormous amount of money and goods, called repThey would not, and could not, pay such vast amounts, and in 1932 the Allies finally dropped their demands. The Allies wanted to be sure that Germany would be too weak to fight another war. They cut her army to one hundred thousand men. They limited her navy to six battleships, six to
arations.
light cruisers, twelve destroyers, and twelve torpedo boats. The Germans could have no more U-boats, nor could they make any more poison gas. The angry Allies did everything they could to humiliate the Germans. The Germans protested bitterly. But they could not do anything about that harsh peace treaty. They had to accept it or face more war. On June 28, 1919, a reluctant German delegation signed
the Treaty of Versailles.
AFTERMATH The Germans took They showed
their defeat with great bitterness.
their feelings
sailed their fleet of warships
naval base
in
on June 21, 1919, when they into
Scapa Flow, the British it was to be surren-
the Orkney Islands, where
German
opened the seacocks of their ships. went to the bottom. This was the German way of showing their contempt for the victors. The Germans were also supposed to return to France the
dered.
Some
sailors
fifty-three vessels
French flags captured cers and students
in
in
A group of offiburned these flags before the statue
battle in 1870-1871.
Berlin
of Frederick the Great, the Prussian hero-king of the eigh-
teenth century. 80
Harsh treaties similar to that of Versailles were also imposed on the other losers on Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey.
—
So it went. Crowns rolled in the gutter, ancient tyrannies were broken. Four imperial governments were swept away Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, and Turkey. At the same time a wave of republicanism washed over Europe. In 1914 there were only five republics France, Switzerland, Portugal, San Marino, and Andorra. Eighteen years later there were sixteen republics on the European continent. Even though people hoped that the world really would be made safe for democracy, this was not the case. In healing the old scars, the peacemakers made new wounds. New military alliances were formed. Europe was divided once more into hostile camps. Three new political experiments got under way bolshevism in Russia, Mussolini's fascism in Italy, and Hitler's Nazism in Germany. Each one was a new deadly danger for an unhappy world.
—
—
WHAT THE WAR COST 'Not until our children's time," said
"can the former joy
of
life
come
one general
War about ten million men was twice as many men as were killed
During the four years of World died. Think of this! That in all
after the war,
into the world." I
the major wars from 1790 to 1913.
that was not all. More than twenty-one million men were wounded, about a third of them permanently disabled. Six million men were taken prisoners, or were reported miss-
And
si
ing. No record was ever kept of the number of war orphans, widows, and refugees. It is impossible to take in the effects of this mass tragedy disease, epidemics, starvation, and the
—
loss of
young manhood.
Human tire
Added erty,
to this
men was
loss of an en-
the worst cost of the war.
were great material losses
the cost of munitions and
shipping
The
casualties cannot be replaced.
generation of young
weapons
—damage
of war,
to prop-
and losses
in
among them.
It was an enormous amount of money, even in terms of 1918 currency. Let us do some figuring with it. Do you know
what
it
1.
could have bought? It
could have given every family
in
England, France,
Belgium, Germany, Russia, the United States, Canada, and Australia a furnished house and a 2.
It
lot,
and
could have given a large library to every community
about 200,000 inhabitants in those countries, and 3. It could have set up a fund yielding enough interest to give a substantial bonus every year to 125,000 teachers and 125,000 nurses for an indefinite period, and of
4.
It
could have replaced the entire wealth of France and
Belgium. Instead of
wonder
this.
intelligent
World War
I
scraped Europe bare. No
people, horrified by the costs, said,
must not happen again!"
THE TRAGEDY OF WAR What lessons can we
learn from
World War
I?
"It
::^^?it;'«I^S5si£p Poverty in Germany: potato peelings
being exchianged for firewood.
and most important, we learn that wars do not solve In fact they often create new problems. No one knows whether World War could have been prevented. The world of 1914 was full of hope and promise. Then, suddenly, caught up in the most horrible bloodbath in history. it was First
problems.
I
Whole nations entered
into this
grim test of power, not just
governments and armies. Factory, shop, and farm became as important as battlefields; civilians, as well as soldiers, did their part.
was
This
wanted
total
total
war and every country
victory.
Instead,
after
months, most of prewar Europe lay
that took part in
four
and
years
in ruins.
Nations
it
three
lost the
flower of their youth and wasted their national resources.
This to say,
it
told the
was supposed to be "the war to end all wars." Sad was not. After the war. President Woodrow Wilson
American people
Nations, a
world.
"If
that they should join the
League
of
new kind of parliament or congress of the whole we do not join the League," said Wilson, "I can
predict with
absolute certainty that there
will
be another
world war." The United States did not join the League, and President Wilson
was proved
right.
world safe for democracy. World harsh dictatorships and,
War
finally,
Instead of making the
War
I
gave
rise to
led to the tragedy of
many World
II.
World War holds another important lesson: nationalism can lead to war. People of all countries must learn to understand one another's problems and work together for strong international laws and organizations that will help solve these problems. Only in that way can we hope to see a future I
without war.
84
WORLD WAR
I
WORDS
ACE: Any World War
enemy
aviator
I
who
shot
down
at least five
planes.
ALLIES: France, Great
Britain,
Italy,
Russia, and the United
States, (joined by eighteen other nations).
ANZAC: A member
of the Australian
Corps, or the corps
BIG BERTHA: Slang long range,
for
named
und Halbach, head
and
New Zealand Army
itself.
any German gun
of large bore and Krupp von Bohlen the Krupp Works arms manufac-
after Frau Bertha of
turers.
BOCHE: Nickname
for the German soldier; from the French caboche, meaning "hardhead." BOOBY TRAP: A concealed grenade or mine set to explode
when
disturbed.
CENTRAL POWERS: Germany,
Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and
Turkey.
CONTRABAND:
In international law, war goods that may not be supplied to one nation at war except at the risk of seizure by an enemy nation. COOTIE: A body louse highly unpopular among World War I
soldiers.
COSSACK: From Russian kasak, a cavalry fighter. DOGFIGHT: A general free-for-all between two or more World War planes fighting at close quarters. DOLLAR-A-YEAR MEN: American businessmen and other leaders who work for the government for token pay of I
"a dollar a year."
DOUGHBOY:
Infantryman.
DRANG NACH OSTEN: fort to
"Push
to the east."
The German
ef-
gain control of the Near and Middle East.
DREADNOUGHT: A
British battleship of 17,000 tons (15,300
t),
an armament of ten 12-inch (30-cm) guns and twenty-four 12-pound (5.4-kg) quick-firing guns. Later applied to any battleship having as its main armament big guns all of one caliber. FLYING CIRCUS: Baron von Richthofen's fighter pilots. HINDENBURG LINE: The heavily fortified line to which the Germans retreated on the Western Front. HUNS: Name used by Allied propagandists to describe the
completed
Germans;
in
it
invaded the
1906-1907,
having
refers to the barbarous Asiatic
Roman Empire
in
the
Huns who
middle of the
fifth
century.
ITALIA IRREDENTA: "Italy Unredeemed." Areas of AustriaHungary and France bordering Italy, which Italy claimed to be Italian. JERRY: British nickname for a German soldier; from the word
"German."
KAMERAD!: German word meaning "comrade!" Used by German troops raising their arms in surrender. LIBERTY BONDS: U.S. war bonds sold during World War NO MAN'S LAND: A belt of ground separating the most adI.
vanced trenches
OVER THE TOP
of
opposing armies.
(Going over the top): Leaving the trenches
for an attack against the enemy. POILU: A first-line French soldier; from the French word poilu meaning "hairy"; suggested by the infantrymen's long hair.
Q-SHIPS: Ships disguised as merchant vessels; used U-boats to destruction.
86
to lure
SCHLIEFFEN PLAN: German
plan before 1914 to fight a two-
war against France and Russia. "SPURLOS VERSENKT!": "Sunk without a trace!" German front
way of reporting a U-boat kill. THRIFT STAMPS: Stamps bought effort;
they could be traded
TOMMY ATKINS name used
to help the
in for
American war
Liberty Bonds.
(Tommy): From "Thomas Atkins," a fictitious in official blank forms for private
as a model
soldiers of the British army.
TRIPLE ALLIANCE: Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy. TRIPLE ENTENTE: Great Britain, France, and Russia. U-BOAT: Untersee Boot, or Undersea Boat, a German submarine.
ULTIMATUM:
Final
either party
YANK: Name American
in
or
demands
insisted
upon
by
applied by foreigners and Americans to the soldier.
ZERO HOUR: The under way.
87
terms
a diplomatic dispute.
hour
at
which a planned attack
is
to get
INDEX Africa
in
World War
25-26
I,
Clemenceau, Georges, French premier,
Air warfare, 31-32, 33, 34, 35, 36
76, 77, 78 Convoys, use
Aisne, second battle of the, 60 Alexis, son of Nicholas
Edmund
Allenby,
II,
commander,
H., British
66
39
Damascus, capture
of, 66 Richard Harding, American war correspondent, 9-11
Davis,
8-9; and secret peace treaties, 73-75 American public opinion, 38-42, 56-59 Argonne Forest, battle of the, 69-71
Allies,
Armistice, 72, 74
Asia
of,
62-63
World War
in
Assassination
I,
Eastern
Emden, German
25
Falkenhayn,
1-2
eral,
Austria-Hungary, surrender
Canadian
A.,
German
39-41
air
Erich
von,
German gen-
47
Falkland Islands, battle of the, 25
of, 71
Baghdad, capture of, 66 Balkans and the Near East in World War I, 26-29, 44-45, 54-55, 66-67 Ball, Albert, British air ace, 32 Belgium, invasion of, 5, 9-11 Berchtold, Leopold von, Austro-Hungarian foreign minister, 7-8 Bishop, W.
raider,
Archduke Ferdinand,
of
Atrocity stories, 38
Breslau,
14-15, 20-23, 43-44, 62-
front,
66
ace, 32
Ferdinand, Francis, archduke of Austria, 1-2 Foch, Ferdinand, French general, allied
supreme commander, 68 Fokker, Anton, Dutch inventor, 31
Fonck, Rene, French air ace, 32 Fourteen Points, President Wilson's war aims program, 72-75, 78 France, invasion of, 14-15
cruiser, 24
Brest Litovsk, treaty
Gallipoli, naval-land attack on,
Bucharest, treaty
Geneva Convention, 29 Gneisenau, German cruiser, 25 Goeben, German cruiser, 24
of, 66 Brown, Roy, Canadian airman, 34
Cambrai, battle
of,
Caparetto, battle
and
Casualties
War Causes
of,
55
costs
48, 50, 60, 71,
I,
of
Grey, Sir Edward, British secretary for
60 67-68
foreign affairs, 12
of,
other
World War
I,
26-29
World
of
81-84 2-8
Central Europe, prewar unrest
Guynemer, Georges, French Haig, Sir Douglas, British
in,
1-2,
chief,
air ace,
commander
32
in
48-50
Hamilton, Sir Ian, British general, 28
7-8 Central Powers, 8-9 Churchill, Winston, British military
leader, 26 Civilian
war
88
effort,
36-37, 57
German song, 37 Hindenburg, Paul von, German general, 21, 23, 59, 68 Hitler, Adolf, German chancellor, 72 Hasslied,
In
Robert Georges, French commander, 60 No Man's Land, 17 North Sea blockade, 24, 51-54
Flanders Fields (McCrae), 20 peace conferences, 6
Nivelle,
International
World War
Italy in
I,
43,
67-68
Jellicoe, Sir John, British admiral, 53 Jerusalem, capture of, 66-67 Joffre, Joseph, French commander
Orlando, Vittorio Emanuele, prime minister, 76, 77
of.
51-54
Alexander,
Page, Walter Hines, American ambas-
Russian
revolu-
tionary leader, 65
sador, 58 Passchendaele, battle
Peace, early calls British
League
T.
of Arabia),
E.
of Nations, 78
Lenin, Nicolai, Russian
78
Lost Battalion, the. 69-71
21, 23, 68,
general,
41-42
eral, 44 Marne, battles of the, 15, 69 Masurian Lakes, battle of the, 21
Stanley,
of,
British
Karl
com-
28
von,
Queen
chief of
German
naval
com-
holy
man.
Richtofen, Manfred von,
34 Rickenbacker, Edward
German V.,
air
ace,
American
air
among European
nations,
pre-
war, 3-7
Naval warfare, 23-25, 28, 38-42, 51-54
World 26-29, 44-45, 54-55, 66-67
Near East and the Balkans
in
York Tribune, 11 Nicholas II, Czar of Russia, 62-65
89
Russian
62-63
Rivalry
I,
of, 39 Gregory,
ace, 32
Nationalism, 3-7
War
39
general. 21
German
mander, 39
New
of,
Elizabeth, British warship, 28
Raiders, use
14
MiJIIer,
Q-ships, use
Red Baron. See Richtofen, Manfred von Rennenkampf, Pavel Karlovich, Russian
Moltke. Helmuth von, staff,
assassin of Archduke
Gavrilo,
Ferdinand, 1-2
Rasputin,
Militarism, 4
Mines, use
com-
Propaganda, use
McCrae, John, Canadian poet, 20 Mackensen, August von, German gen-
Maude, Sir F. mander, 66
59
Propaganda slogans, 37 of, 36-38
69
Lusitania, sinking of the,
55-56
mander, 60 Poison gas, use of, 29-30, 48 Poland, conquest of, 43-44 Princip.
German
for,
P6tain, Henri-Phillipe, French
Lloyd George, David, British prime min-
Ludendorff. Erich von,
60
Peace terms of Versailles Treaty, 75-80 Pershing, John J., American commander in chief,
Communist
leader, 64, 65-66
ister, 56, 76, 77.
of,
Patriotic fervor, 12, 13, 14
(Lawrence agent, 45, 46
Lawrence,
Italian
47-48
chief, 15,
Jutland, battle
Kerensky.
in
Rumania, conquest of, 54-55 Russian revolution, 62-66
Samsonov, mander,
Aleksandr, 21
Russian
com-
Scharnhorst,
German cruiser, 25 German admiral, 53
United States, intervention
59
of,
Scheer, Reinhard,
Verdun, battle
Schlieffen Plan, the, 14
Schweiger,
Walther,
commander, 42 Sea warfare, 23-25,
German
U-boat
Vimy Ridge, 28, 38-42,
of,
47-48
Versailles, treaty of, 75-81
59-60
battle of,
51-54
of, 44 Smuts, Jan, South African general, 25 Somme, battle of the, 48-50 Submarine warfare, 24-25, 27, 38-42
Serbia, conquest
Western 51
,
14-20, 29-36, 47-
front, 9-11,
59-60, 68-72
American
Charles,
Whittlesey,
Wilhelm, Kaiser. See William
Tanks, use
of,
50-51, 52, 59-60
Tannenberg, battle of, 21 Trench warfare, 15-18, 19 Triple Italy,
Alliance
of
Austria-Hungary,
William
II,
11
German emperor,
king
of
Prussia, 7, 14
Wilson,
Woodrow, American
56, 58, 72-76, 77,
President,
78
and Germany, 6-7, 8
Triple Entente of France, Great Britain,
Ypres, battle
and Russia, 6-7, 8 Turkey, invasion of, 26-29
Zeppelin, Ferdinand von,
German
34-36 Zeppelins, use
36
Turner, William tania,
com-
mander, 71
T.,
captain of the Lusi-
41-42 of,
24-25, 27, 38-42
20 aero-
naut,
Zimmerman, U-boats, use
of, 16,
of,
34, 35,
Alfred,
German
of foreign affairs, 58
secretary
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