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Amid regional conflicts such as Gaza and Ukraine, and tensions between the US and China, Israel and Iran and Russia and NATO, the shadow of great-power rivalry looms large. These tensions also remind us of the volatile prelude to the First World War when local conflicts within Europe escalated into a global catastrophe. Let’s revisit the prelude, escalation and consequences of WWI.
The WWI was perhaps the world’s first truly global event, with far-reaching ramifications across the world. It ended on November 11, 1918, with the declaration of the armistice at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month and led to a change in the world order. One of the most immediate and obvious changes that the First World War brought about was the collapse of longstanding empires most notably the Ottoman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Russian Romanov Empire.
The outbreak of the First World brought an end to the ‘Hundred Years’ Peace’ (1815-1914) that had endured since the Congress of Vienna in 1815. This is not to say that no war happened during this period – wars such as the Crimean War between 1853-56 did occur – but they were limited in scale in comparison to wars such as the First World War.
The first shot that precipitated the First World War was fired on June 28, 1914, when Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary was assassinated by a Serb nationalist, Gavrilo Princip, in the Bosnian city of Sarajevo. In the years preceding these events, particularly between 1912-13, the Balkan Wars had resulted in the territorial expansion of Serbia, which posed a threat to Austria-Hungary. Exactly a month after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Austria-Hungary with the help of Germany declared war on Serbia on July 28, 1914. Serbia was in turn backed by Russia.
The Balkan region was dominated by the Ottoman Empire, which extended from its Muslim Anatolian heartlands into Christian-dominated areas that abutted the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The region gave rise to the political term ‘Balkanisation’, which implies a breakup of a larger entity into smaller fragments. As mentioned earlier, the end of the First World War signified the ‘Balkanisation’ or break up of larger entities like empires into smaller fragments. This is especially true with reference to the vast territorial swathe of the Ottoman Empire as smaller nation-states emerged from the rubble created by its collapse.
Although called a world war, the First World War predominantly involved the continent of Europe and was driven by the shifting balance of power among major European states, such as Great Britain, which was at that time the foremost power in the world, France, with its extensive colonial holdings, Austria-Hungary, the irrepressible power of Germany, and Russia.
As a predominantly European war with global ramifications, it ironically led to the beginning of Europe’s decline. In the aftermath, two non-European powers emerged – the US on the other side of the Atlantic to the West and the Soviet Union, which had taken over the territories of the collapsed Russian-Romanov Empire, to the East. These two would go on to become the rival super-powers of the Cold War era, which began with the end of the Second World War. This was a mere three decades after the end of the First World War.
The theatres of WWI were predominantly in Europe. The now-legendary battlefields of Ypres, Somme and Verdun were located on the Western Front that stretched from the Belgian coast in the North, through France, down to the border of Switzerland. The Western Front refers to the western extremity of Germany’s advance that constituted part of the Central powers, which included Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Ottoman Turkey. On this front, the German advance was met with and checked by the Allied powers – primarily Great Britain and France. Russia was also an allied power that pressed upon the eastern flank of the Germans and the Central Powers.
The battlefields of the Western front were to provide the most important attribute of the First World War – primarily through the fixed and grueling nature of trench warfare. Opposing sides faced each other off in trenches that had been dug into the ground and any military advance was thwarted by the very entrenched nature of the battle.
It is important to remember that technologically, the First World War was not characterised by major advances in the methods of warfare. Air power had made a very limited appearance and had not become a major component of modern warfare. Tanks had just about made their appearance to overcome the limitations of trench warfare, with the British using them for the first time in 1916. The limited influence of the battle tank can be seen in the fact that the Western Front largely remained a fixed line, showing how much the First World War was fought in the trenches.
While the Allied Powers – Britain and France – were to ultimately prevail in the First World War over the Central powers – Germany, Austria-Hungary and Ottoman Turkey – the Gallipoli campaign (between February 1915 and January 1916) was to end in defeat for the Allies as they attempted to take control of the Dardanelles straits from Ottoman Turkey.
The lack of scientific advances during the war meant that a large number of young men died on the battlefields, often because of untreated wounds that turned septic. Penicillin, for instance, was discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1928 after the First World War. The effects of young men dying or being maimed on these bloody battlefields gave rise to some very famous war poets such as Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and Rupert Brooke. Their poetry captures the immense psychological and emotional scars on the minds of young men – what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
India also contributed men in large numbers to the war effort, with over a million Indian soldiers fighting in Europe and other theatres in the Middle East and Africa. The India Gate is a war memorial to the Indian soldiers who lost their lives fighting these predominantly European wars.
A year before the end of the First World War in November 1917, two major events within days of each other occurred which would have a huge impact on the emerging world order after the war ended in November 1918. The Bolshevik Revolution of November 7 brought an end to the rule of the Romanov dynasty over the vast territory of the Russian Empire to create the Soviet Union.
Some days prior to this on November 2, the Balfour Declaration was issued that committed Britain to the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine that would become the state of Israel in May 1948 after the end of the Second World War. Intriguingly, one of the first countries to recognize the Jewish state of Israel was the Soviet Union.
A consequence of the Bolshevik takeover of power in November 1917 was the Russian decision to leave the war in March 1918 through the signing of the treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The US entered the war at a relatively late stage in 1917, but in keeping with its rising global stature, it was able to influence events that heralded the end of the First World War. One of the most important of these was the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 where President Woodrow Wilson with his idealism and famed ‘fourteen points’ were to figure very prominently.
The ‘War Guilt’ clause number 231 of the Versailles Treaty put the blame for the war on the Central powers. One of the even more undesirable aspects of the various agreements reached was the war reparations that were put on Germany. Germany was not only defeated but made to bear the costs of the war and this led to a great deal of suffering of German pride. This laid the groundwork for the travails of the Weimar Republic that was established in Germany after the First World War and collapsed with the rise of Hitler in 1933 in the run up to the Second World War which began in 1939.
The limitations of the Treaty of Versailles, meant to establish peace after the First World War, were captured by the famous British economist John Maynard Keynes, who was present at Versailles, in his book The Economic Consequences of the Peace.
The end of the First World War created the League of Nations which established a system of mandates to oversee territories that belonged to Germany and the Ottoman Empire. In the Middle East, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine (territories belonging to the collapsed Ottoman Empire) were placed under the authority of two European mandatory powers. Syria and Lebanon went to France and Iraq and Palestine went to Great Britain. The political solutions devised after the First World War were tenuous and unstable. That explains why the Second World War was to begin just over two decades after the end of the First World War.
How far is it correct to say that the First World War was fought essentially for the preservation of balance of power?
What long-term impact did the “balkanisation” of empires following WWI have on regional and global stability?
How did the rise of the US and the Soviet Union after World War I set the stage for the Cold War?
In what ways did the experiences of war influence the themes and tone of war poetry during WWI?
In what way did India contribute to WWI?
(Amir Ali is an Assistant Professor at the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi)
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