In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
Canadian Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae
8 December 1915
The Great War. The First World War. World War One. The War to End all Wars. Whichever name you call it, the conflict from 1914-1918 was one of the most devastating in human history. Armies would scar the lands for generations to come. Four empires were torn apart as an entire continent was set ablaze due to one assasination in the balkans. Yet, this was just the spark, a spark that lit decades of tensions and rivalries.
After the balance of European power shifted to Germany following the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War (1870), tensions between the Great powers had steadily risen. The resignation of statesman Otto von Bismarck in and the demise of his policy of Realpolitik only served to escalate tensions. In the lead up to the Great War, there were several diplomatic incidents and minor wars that had threatened to flare up into a major conflict. The Fashoda incident (1898) almost resulted in a colonial war between France and Great Britain. In 1898, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany announced Germany’s aim to build a fleet to rival the British Royal Navy, sparking the Anglo-German Naval race and a steady deterioration in Anglo-German relations. In 1904, Japan went to war with Russia and dealt them a resounding defeat, decisively thrashing the Russian army and navy in the Battles of the Yellow Sea, Mukden and Tsushima. The Austro-Hungarian annexation of Bosnia in 1908 was almost met by a declaration of war by a recovering Russia. Italy, seeking colonial glory, conquered Libya in a war against the Ottoman Empire in 1911. The two Balkan Wars in 1912 and 1913 (Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece against the Ottoman Empire, and Serbia, Greece, Romania and the Ottomans against Bulgaria) further threatened to undermine Balkan stability at the expense of Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. International tensions and rivalries had continually threatened to erupt into total war, an event the post-war powers wanted to avoid.
By 1914, Europe had been divided into two power blocs, the Entente and the Central Powers. The Entente consisted of France and Russia, with Great Britain loosely aligned with France, while the Central Powers consisted of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy. Tensions between the two blocs were at a peak, and all it would take was one spark to blow all of Europe to flames.
That spark came in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia. The heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated by Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip, a member of the Black Hand. The Black Hand was a terrorist group dedicated to the establishment of a Greater Serbian state at the expense of Austria-Hungary, and it enjoyed support from the Serbian military. Ironically, Franz Ferdinand, had he come to the throne, had wanted to increase autonomy for the Slavs within the Empire (turning the Dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary into a Triple Monarchy of Austria-Hungary-Illyria). Accusing Serbia of the assassination of Franz, Kaiser Franz Joseph sent Serbia an ultimatum. Serbia refused, Austria-Hungary mobilised and the dominos began to fall.
Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on the 28th of July. Russia mobilised in support of Serbia. Germany mobilised in support of Austria-Hungary and demanded that Russia ceased mobilisation. When Russia refused, Germany and Austria-Hungary declared war on Russia on the 1st and 6th of August respectively. France mobilised in support of Russia on the 2nd. On the same day, Germany demanded free passage through Belgium. Belgium refused, and Germany entered the country on the 3rd, declaring war on France. Great Britain, allied with Belgium, declared war on Germany on the 4th of August. On the 23rd, Japan would declare war on Germany, seeking to conquer its Pacific colonies. The Great War had begun.
The German Schlieffen Plan had envisioned a war on two fronts. Although this plan had begun as a thought experiment by General von Schlieffen and was not meant to be an actual war plan, it was adopted by German High Command and was enacted when the war began. The Schlieffen Plan envisioned screening forces against Russia in the East, while the bulk of the German Army would march through Belgium to outflank the French, destroying the French army and capturing Paris in the process. France would capitulate, and the Central Powers would be able to defeat Russia. Everything immediately did not go to plan. While the German advance through Belgium was swift, the fortress of Liege delayed the Germans long enough to allow the British Expeditionary Force to cross into France and join the fight. Further, Russia mobilised far quicker than anticipated and invaded Galicia and East Prussia, forcing the Germans to send the 8th army to the east. The Germans were stopped at the First Battle of the Marne (5-12 September 1914) barely 30 miles from Paris, and were forced to retreat. After attempting to outflank each other in the Race to the Sea, the end of 1914 on the Western Front saw both sides settled into trench warfare.
For five long years, the war would swing back and forth between the two sides. All the way to the very end, the war was a very close affair, with both sides nearly gaining victory in multiple occasions. Germany successfully knocked Russia out of the war by 1917 in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and almost delivered a decisive blow in the west in 1918. However, the Entente would prevail, as the arrival of American forces to the west in the summer of 1918 allowed the Entente to consolidate, then counterattack with hundreds of Tanks at Amiens. The Great War would end with an armistice at 11:00 on the 11th of November, 1918.
In the end, five harsh years of trench warfare on the western front was the main driving force behind French revanchism during the Paris Peace Conference. France had to deal with the majority of the fighting on her soil. Armies had ravaged North-western France, causing billions of dollars of damage. Shells had scarred the battlefields of Verdun, the Somme and Amiens, while gas had left much of northern France barren and lifeless. Further the harsh treaty of Brest-Litovsk in the east, where Germany and Austria-Hungary had forced Russia to cede large amounts of Eastern Europe to the Central Powers, was to be used as a template for the Paris Peace Conference. Alsace-Lorraine, taken from France after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 was to be returned, while major reparations would be extracted from the defeated Germans. Some hawkish French politicians even wanted Germany to be dismantled into its pre unification states and the border to be shifted to the Rhine River, Frances “Natural border”.
Despite suffering tremendous losses in the fields of Flanders, the Levant and Mesopotamia, the British entered the Paris Peace negotiations with the goal of preserving Germany as a continental trading partner. Germany had been Britain’s largest trading partner before the war, and British jobs had depended on exports to Germany. However, the British public nevertheless wanted Germany to pay. Germany had challenged British dominance of the seas prior to World War 1, a severe problem for British national security. Germany had disrupted the Pax Britannica, and British Prime Minister Lloyd George wanted to strip Germany of her colonies, her navy and her empire.
The Americans had suffered the least in the war and had only been fighting for around a year. Led by President Woodrow Wilson, they aimed to establish a fair world after the war, where the nations of the world would be democratic and work together to solve their problems, instead of resorting to war. This idea was the League of Nations. Wilson was a big fan of national self determination, and hated the idea of large empires controlling large swaths of the globe. In his fourteen points, Wilson advocated for an independent Poland and a League of Nations, while aiming to ensure Germany wasn’t harshly punished.
The two other great powers at the Paris Peace Conference, Italy and Japan, also had substantial aims. Italy had sacrificed hundreds of thousands of its men in the Isonzo and Trentino, and they desired to annex South Tirol, Istria and large parts of the Dalmatian coast from the now dissolved Austria-Hungary. Japan aimed to acquire Germany’s Pacific Colonies and gain a decisive say in Chinese domestic affairs. The Japanese also advocated for a racial equality clause, to ensure all nations would be treated equally regardless of race.
Although Germany had been defeated, their army was still in the field and still occupied large parts of Belgium and France. Fighting never reached German soil, and there was a great feeling of betrayal amongst the German populace (the beginning of the stab in the back myth). Furthermore, they were not invited to the negotiations at Paris, which was beginning to seem like a diktat (a dictated peace).
In the end, it was the wartime trauma and experiences of each nation that was the main driving force behind the Treaty of Versailles. Although allied, each member of the Entente had vastly differing war aims, and it would take several long months for a formal treaty to be agreed upon.
