World War I

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1914-1915: Entrenchment

Military operations began on three major European fronts: the western, or Franco-Belgian; the eastern, or Russian; and the southern, or Serbian. In November 1914 Turkey entered the war on the side of the Central Powers, and fighting also took place between Turkey and Great Britain at the Dardanelles and in Turkish-held Mesopotamia. In late 1915 two more fronts had been established: the Austro-Italian, after Italy joined the Allies in May 1915; and one on the Greek border north of Salonica (Thessaloníki), after Bulgaria joined the Central Powers in October 1915.

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The Western Front

The initial German plan of the campaign was to defeat France quickly in the west, while a small part of the German army and the entire Austro-Hungarian army held in check an expected Russian invasion in the east. The speedy defeat of France was to be accomplished by a strategic plan known as the Schlieffen plan, which had been drawn up by Count Alfred von Schlieffen, German chief of staff from 1891 to 1907. The Schlieffen plan called for powerful German forces to sweep through Belgium, outflank the French by their rapid movement, then wheel about, surround, and destroy them. As executed with certain modifications in the autumn of 1914, the plan at first seemed likely to succeed. The swift German incursion into Belgium at the beginning of August routed the Belgian army, which abandoned the strongholds of Liège and Namur and took safety in the fortress of Antwerp. The Germans, rushing onward, then defeated the French at Charleroi and the British Expeditionary Force of 90,000 men at Mons, causing the entire Allied line in Belgium to retreat. At the same time the Germans drove the French out of Lorraine, which they had briefly invaded, and back from the borders of Luxembourg. The British and French hastily fell back to the River Marne, but three German armies advanced steadily to the Marne, which they then crossed. The fall of the French capital seemed so imminent that the French government moved to Bordeaux. After the Germans had crossed the Marne, however, the French under General Joseph Jacques Césaire Joffre wheeled around Paris and attacked the First German Army, commanded by General Alexander von Kluck, on the right of the three German armies moving on Paris.

In the First Battle of the Marne, which took place on September 6-9, the French halted the advance of Kluck's army, which had outdistanced the other two German armies and could not obtain their support. In addition, the German forces had been weakened on August 25 when, believing the victory had already been won in the west, the German chief of staff, General Helmuth von Moltke, dispatched six corps to the eastern front. The French pressure on the German right flank caused the retreat of Kluck's army and then a general retreat of all the German forces to the River Aisne. The French advanced and, in an endeavour to force the Germans from the Aisne, engaged them in three battles: the Battle of the Aisne; a battle on the River Somme; and the First Battle of Arras. The Germans, however, could not be dislodged, and even extended their line eastwards to the Meuse north of Verdun. A race to the North Sea ensued between the two belligerents, the objective being the channel ports. The Germans were prevented from advancing to the French channel ports chiefly by the flooding of the region of the River Yser by the Belgians. The western part of the Allied line was held by the British who, in the race for the channel, had advanced to Ypres, the south-west corner of Belgium. After taking Antwerp on October 10, the Germans endeavoured to break through the British positions in Belgium, but were checked in a series of engagements known collectively as the Battle of Flanders. In December the Allies attacked along the entire front, from Nieuport in the west to Verdun in the east, but failed to make any appreciable gains.

By the end of 1914 both sides had established lines extending about 800 km (about 500 mi) from Switzerland to the North Sea and had entrenched; these lines were destined to remain almost stationary for the next three years.

The Battle of Flanders marked the conclusion of the war of movement or fighting in the open on the western front. From the end of 1914 until nearly the end of the war in 1918, the fighting consisted largely of trench warfare, in which each side laid siege to the other's system of trenches, consisting of numerous parallel lines of intercommunicating trenches protected by lines of barbed wire, and endeavoured from time to time to break through the lines. In this type of fighting during 1915 in the west, the Allies were on the offensive; the Germans, who were engaged in a heavy offensive on the eastern front (see below), made only a single attack in the west during the year. The principal attempts in 1915 to force a breakthrough included a British attack at Neuve Chapelle in March, which took only the German advance line. The Germans unsuccessfully attacked Ypres in April, using clouds of chlorine gas, the first time in history that gas warfare was used in this manner on a large scale. A combined attack by the British and French along the front between Neuve Chapelle and Arras, in May and June, advanced troops 4 km (2.5 mi) into the German trench system, but did not secure a breakthrough. Unsuccessful simultaneous attacks were made in September by the British in the town of Lens and French at Vimy Ridge overlooking the town. A large-scale French attack in September on a front of about 25 km (15 mi) between Reims and the Argonne Forest, took the Germans' first line of trenches, but was stopped at the second. On the whole the lines that had been established in the west at the close of 1914 remained practically unchanged during 1915.

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The Eastern Front

On the eastern front, in accordance with the plans of the Allies, the Russians assumed the offensive at the very beginning of the war. In August 1914 two Russian armies advanced into East Prussia, and four Russian armies invaded the Austrian province of Galicia. In East Prussia a series of Russian victories against numerically inferior German forces had made the evacuation of that region by the Germans imminent, when a reinforced German army commanded by General Paul von Hindenburg decisively defeated the Russians in the Battle of Tannenberg, fought on August 26-30, 1914. The four Russian armies invading Austria advanced steadily through Galicia; they took Przemysl and Bukovina, and by the end of March 1915 were in a position to move into Hungary. In April, however, a combined German and Austrian army drove the Russians back from the Carpathians. In May the Austro-German armies began a great offensive in central Poland, and by September 1915 had driven the Russians out of Poland, Lithuania, and Courland, and had also taken possession of all the frontier fortresses of Russia. To meet this offensive the Russians withdrew their forces from Galicia. The Russian lines, when the German drive had ceased, lay behind the Dvina River between Riga and Dvinsk (Daugavpils), and then ran south to the Dnestr River. Although the Central Powers did not force a decision on the eastern front in 1914-1915, the Russians lost so many men and such large quantities of supplies that they were subsequently unable to play any decisive role in the war. In addition to the Battle of Tannenberg, notable battles on this front during 1914-1915, centred on Masuria were the First Battle of the Masurian Lakes (September 7-14, 1914), and the Second Battle of the Masurian Lakes (February 7-21, 1915), both German victories.

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The War in Serbia

On the Serbian front considerable activity took place in 1914-1915. In 1914 the Austrians undertook three invasions of Serbia, all of which were repulsed; the Serbs, however, made no attempt to invade Austria-Hungary. The front remained inactive until October 1915. Early that month, in anticipation of Bulgarian entrance into the war on the side of the Central Powers, and in order to aid Serbia, which would be the target of a Bulgarian attack, British and French troops were landed at Salonica, the gateway into the Balkans, by arrangement with the neutral Greek government. After Bulgaria declared war on Serbia on October 14, 1915, the Allied troops advanced into Serbia. The Bulgarian troops defeated Serbian forces in Serbia and also the British and French troops that had come up from Salonica. Also in anticipation of the Bulgarian declaration of war, on October 6 a strong Austro-German drive, commanded by General August von Mackensen, was launched from Austria-Hungary into Serbia. By the end of 1915 the Central Powers had conquered all of Serbia and eliminated the Serbian army as a fighting force. The surviving Serbian troops took refuge in Montenegro, Albania, and the Greek island of Corfu (Kérkira), which the French occupied in January 1916 in order to provide a place of safety for the routed Serbs. The British and French troops in Serbia retreated to Salonica, which they fortified and where they were held in readiness for later action.

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The Turkish Front

Turkey entered the war on October 29, 1914, when Turkish warships cooperated with German warships in a naval bombardment of Russian Black Sea ports; Russia formally declared war on Turkey on November 2, and Great Britain and France followed suit on November 5. In December the Turks began an invasion of the Russian Caucasus region. The invasion was successful at its inception, but by August 1915 the hold that Turkish forces had gained had been considerably reduced. Turkish pressure in the area, however, impelled the Russian government early in 1915 to demand a diversionary attack by Great Britain on Turkey. In response, British naval forces under the command of General Sir Ian Hamilton bombarded the Turkish forts at the Dardanelles in February 1915, and between April and August, two landings of Allied troops took place on the Gallipoli Peninsula, one of British, Australian, and French troops in April, and one of several additional British divisions in August. The Allied purpose was to take the Dardanelles; however, strong resistance by Turkish troops and bad generalship on the part of the Allied command made the Gallipoli campaign a complete failure. The Allied troops were withdrawn in December 1915 and January 1916.

In the Mesopotamian Valley, meanwhile, British forces from India defeated the Turks in several battles during 1914-1915, particularly that of Kut-al-Imara; but in the Battle of Ctesiphon, November 1915, the Turks checked the advance of the British towards Baghdad and forced them to retreat to Kut-al-Imara. On December 7 the Turks laid siege to this town.