Czar Nicholas

Czar Nicholas

On 28 June 1914 Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, was assassinated by a Bosnian Serb nationalist in Sarajevo, who opposed Austria-Hungary’s annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The outbreak of war was not inevitable, but leaders, diplomats, and nineteenth-century alliances created a climate for large-scale conflict.

The concept of Pan-Slavism and shared religion created strong public sympathy between Russia and Serbia. The territorial conflict created rivalries between Germany and France and between Austria-Hungary and Serbia, and as a consequence alliance networks developed across Europe.

The Triple Entente and Triple Alliance networks were set before the war.

Nicholas wanted neither to abandon Serbia to the ultimatum of Austria nor to provoke a general war.

In a series of letters exchanged with Wilhelm of Germany (the “Willy–Nicky correspondence”) the two proclaimed their desire for peace, and each attempted to get the other to back down.

Nicholas desired that Russia’s mobilization be only against Austria-Hungary, in the hopes of preventing war with Germany.

On 25 July 1914, at his council of ministers, Nicholas decided to intervene in the Austro-Serbian conflict, a step toward general war. He put the Russian army on “alert”

on 25 July. Although this was not general mobilization, it threatened the German and Austro-Hungarian borders and looked like military preparation for war.

However, his army had no contingency plans for a partial mobilization, and on 30 July 1914, Nicholas took the fateful step of confirming the order for general mobilization, despite being strongly counseled against it.

On 28 July, Austria-Hungary formally declared war against Serbia.

On 29 July 1914, Nicholas sent a telegram to Wilhelm with the suggestion to submit the Austro-Serbian problem to the Hague Conference (in Hague tribunal).

Wilhelm did not address the question of the Hague Conference in his subsequent reply.

Count Witte told the French Ambassador, Maurice Paléologue that from Russia’s point of view the war was madness, Slav solidarity was simply nonsense and Russia could hope for nothing from the war.

On 30 July, Russia ordered a general mobilization, but still maintained that it would not attack if peace talks were to begin. Germany, reacting to the discovery of partial mobilization ordered on 25 July, announced its own pre-mobilization posture, the Imminent Danger of War.

Germany requested that Russia demobilize within the next twelve hours.

In Saint Petersburg, at 7 pm, with the ultimatum to Russia having expired, the German ambassador to Russia met with the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Sazonov, asked three times if Russia would reconsider, and then with shaking hands, delivered the note accepting Russia’s war challenge and declaring war on 1 August.

Less than a week later, on 6 August, Franz Joseph signed the Austro-Hungarian declaration of war on Russia.

The outbreak of war on 1 August 1914 found Russia grossly unprepared.

Russia and her allies placed their faith in her army, the famous ‘Russian steamroller’.

Its pre-war regular strength was 1,400,000; mobilization added 3,100,000 reserves and millions more stood ready behind them.

In every other respect, however, Russia was unprepared for war.

Germany had ten times as many railway tracks per square mile, and whereas Russian soldiers traveled an average of 1,290 kilometers (800 mi) to reach the front, German soldiers traveled less than a quarter of that distance.

Russian heavy industry was still too small to equip the massive armies the Tsar could raise, and her reserves of munitions were pitifully small; while the German army in 1914 was better equipped than any other, man-for-man, the Russians were severely short on artillery pieces, shells, motorized transports, and even boots.

With the Baltic Sea barred by German U-boats and the Dardanelles by the guns of Germany’s ally, the Ottoman Empire, Russia initially could receive help only via Archangel, which was frozen solid in winter, or via Vladivostok, which was over 6,400 kilometers (4,000 mi) from the front line.

By 1915, a rail line was built north from Petrozavodsk to the Kola Gulf and this connection laid the foundation of the ice-free port of what eventually was called Murmansk.

The Russian High Command was moreover greatly weakened by the mutual contempt between Vladimir Sukhomlinov, the Minister of War, and the incompetent Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolayevich who commanded the armies in the field.

In spite of all of this, an immediate attack was ordered against the German province of East Prussia. The Germans mobilised there with great efficiency and completely defeated the two Russian armies which had invaded.

The Battle of Tannenberg, where an entire Russian army was annihilated, cast an ominous shadow over Russia’s future.

Russia had great success against both the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman armies from the very beginning of the war, but they never succeeded against the might of the German Army.

In September 1914, in order to relieve pressure on France, the Russians were forced to halt a successful offensive against Austria-Hungary in Galicia in order to attack German-held Silesia.

Russian prisoners after the Battle of Tannenberg, where the Russian Second Army was annihilated by the German Eighth Army
Gradually a war of attrition set in on the vast Eastern Front, where the Russians were facing the combined forces of the German and Austro-Hungarian armies, and they suffered staggering losses.

General Denikin, retreating from Galicia wrote, “The German heavy artillery swept away whole lines of trenches and their defenders with them. We hardly replied.

There was nothing with which we could reply.

Our regiments, although completely exhausted, were beating off one attack after another by bayonet … Blood flowed unendingly, the ranks became thinner and thinner and thinner. The number of graves multiplied.”

On 5 August, with the Russian army in retreat, Warsaw fell. Defeat at the front bred disorder at home. At first, the targets were German, and for three days in June shops, bakeries, factories, private houses, and country estates belonging to people with German names were looted and burned.

The inflamed mobs then turned on the government, declaring the Empress should be shut up in a convent, the Tsar deposed and Rasputin hanged.

Nicholas was by no means deaf to these discontents.

An emergency session of the Duma was summoned and a Special Defense Council established, its members drawn from the Duma and the Tsar’s ministers.

In July 1915, King Christian X of Denmark, first cousin of the Tsar, sent Hans Niels Andersen to Tsarskoye Selo with an offer to act as a mediator.

He made several trips between London, Berlin, and Petrograd and in July saw the Dowager Empress Maria Fyodorovna.

Andersen told her they should conclude peace.

Nicholas chose to turn down King Christian’s offer of mediation, as he felt it would be a betrayal for Russia to form a separate peace treaty with the Central Powers when its allies Britain and France were still fighting.

The energetic and efficient General Alexei Polivanov replaced Sukhomlinov as Minister of War, which failed to improve the strategic situation.

In the aftermath of the Great Retreat and the loss of the Kingdom of Poland, Nicholas assumed the role of commander-in-chief after dismissing his cousin, Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolayevich, in September 1915.

This was a mistake, as the Tsar came to be personally associated with the continuing losses at the front. He was also away at the remote HQ at Mogilev, far from the direct governance of the empire, and when the revolution broke out in Petrograd he was unable to halt it.

In reality, the move was largely symbolic, since all important military decisions were made by his chief-of-staff General Michael Alexeiev, and Nicholas did little more than review troops, inspect field hospitals, and preside over military luncheons.

Nicholas II with his family in Yevpatoria, Crimea, May 1916

The Duma was still calling for political reforms and political unrest continued throughout the war.

Cut off from public opinion, Nicholas could not see that the dynasty was tottering.

With Nicholas at the front, domestic issues and control of the capital were left with his wife Alexandra. However, Alexandra’s relationship with Grigori Rasputin, and her German background, further discredited the dynasty’s authority.

Nicholas had been repeatedly warned about the destructive influence of Rasputin but had failed to remove him.

Rumors and accusations about Alexandra and Rasputin appeared one after another; Alexandra was even accused of harboring treasonous sympathies towards Germany.

Anger at Nicholas’s failure to act and the extreme damage that Rasputin’s influence was doing to Russia’s war effort and to the monarchy led to Rasputin’s eventual murder by a group of nobles, led by Prince Felix Yusupov and Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, a cousin of the Tsar, in the early morning of Saturday 17 December 1916 (O.S.) / 30 December 1916 (N.S.).

Collapse

Nicholas with members of the Stavka at Mogilev in April 1916.

As the government failed to produce supplies, mounting hardship resulted in massive riots and rebellions.

With Nicholas away at the front from 1915 through 1916, authority appeared to collapse and the capital was left in the hands of strikers and mutineers, soldiers.

Despite efforts by the British Ambassador Sir George Buchanan to warn the Tsar that he should grant constitutional reforms to fend off a revolution, Nicholas continued to bury himself away at the Staff HQ (Stavka) 600 kilometers (400 mi) away at Mogilev, leaving his capital and court open to intrigues and insurrection.

Ideologically the tsar’s greatest support came from the right-wing monarchists, who had recently gained strength.

However they were increasingly alienated by the tsar’s support of Stolypin’s Westernizing reforms, by tsar’s liberal reforms taken early in the Revolution of 1905, and especially by the political power, the tsar had bestowed on Rasputin.

By early 1917, Russia was on the verge of the total collapse of morale.

An estimated 1.7 million Russian soldiers were killed in World War I.

The sense of failure and imminent disaster was everywhere.

The army had taken 15 million men from the farms and food prices had soared. An egg cost four times what it had in 1914, butter five times as much. The severe winter dealt the railways, overburdened by emergency shipments of coal and supplies, a crippling blow.

Russia entered the war with 20,000 locomotives; by 1917, 9,000 were in service, while the number of serviceable railway wagons had dwindled from half a million to 170,000.

In February 1917, 1,200 locomotives burst their boilers and nearly 60,000 wagons were immobilized. In Petrograd, supplies of flour and fuel had all but disappeared.

War-time prohibition of alcohol was enacted by Nicholas to boost patriotism and productivity, but instead damaged the treasury and funding of the war due to the treasury now being deprived of alcohol taxes.

On 23 February 1917 in Petrograd, a combination of very severe cold weather and acute food shortages caused people to start to break shop windows to get bread and other necessities.

In the streets, red banners appeared and the crowds chanted “Down with the German woman! Down with Protopopov! Down with the war! Down with the Tsar!”

Police started to shoot at the populace from rooftops, which incited riots. The troops in the capital were poorly motivated and their officers had no reason to be loyal to the regime.

They were angry and full of revolutionary fervor and sided with the populace.

The Tsar’s Cabinet begged Nicholas to return to the capital and offered to resign completely. The Tsar, 800 kilometers (500 mi) away, was misinformed by the Minister of the Interior, Alexander Protopopov, that the situation was under control, and he ordered that firm steps be taken against the demonstrators.

For this task, the Petrograd garrison was quite unsuitable.

The cream of the old regular army had been destroyed in Poland and Galicia.

In Petrograd, 170,000 recruits, country boys or older men from the working-class suburbs of the capital itself, remained to keep control under the command of wounded officers invalided from the front and cadets from the military academies.

The units in the capital, although many bore the names of famous Imperial Guard regiments, were in reality rear or reserve battalions of these regiments, the regular units being away at the front. Many units, lacking both officers and rifles, had never undergone formal training.

General Khabalov attempted to put the Tsar’s instructions into effect on the morning of Sunday, 11 March 1917.

Despite huge posters ordering people to keep off the streets, vast crowds gathered and were only dispersed after some 200 had been shot dead, though a company of the Volinsky Regiment fired into the air rather than into the mob, and a company of the Pavlovsky Life Guards shot the officer who gave the command to open fire. Nicholas, informed of the situation by Rodzianko, ordered reinforcements to the capital and suspended the Duma.

However, it was too late.

On 12 March, the Volinsky Regiment mutinied and was quickly followed by the Semenovsky, the Ismailovsky, the Litovsky Life Guards, and even the legendary Preobrazhensky Regiment of the Imperial Guard, the oldest and staunchest regiment founded by Peter the Great.

The arsenal was pillaged, the Ministry of the Interior, Military Government building, police headquarters, the Law Courts, and a score of police buildings were put to the torch.

By noon, the fortress of Peter and Paul, with its heavy artillery, was in the hands of the insurgents. By nightfall, 60,000 soldiers had joined the revolution.

The order broke down and members of the Duma and the Soviet formed a Provisional Government to try to restore order.

They issued a demand that Nicholas must abdicate.

Faced with this demand, which was echoed by his generals, deprived of loyal troops, with his family firmly in the hands of the Provisional Government and fearful of unleashing civil war and opening the way for German conquest, Nicholas had little choice but to submit.

Nostalgia: The Russian Empire of Czar Nicholas II: The Russian Empire of Czar Nicholas II Captured in Colored Photographs by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii

New Zealand

New Zealand during World War 1

The military history of New Zealand during World War I began in August 1914.

When Britain declared war on Germany at the start of the First World War, the New Zealand government followed without hesitation, despite its geographic isolation and small population.

It was believed at the time that any declaration of war by the United Kingdom automatically included New Zealand; and the Governor (the Earl of Liverpool) announced that New Zealand was at war with Germany from the steps of Parliament on 5 August.

The total number of New Zealand troops and nurses to serve overseas in 1914–18, excluding those in British and other Dominion forces, was 100,444, from a population of just over a million.

Forty-two percent of men of military age served in the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, fighting in the Gallipoli Campaign and on the Western Front.

16,697 New Zealanders were killed and 41,317 were wounded during the war – a 58 percent casualty rate.

Approximately a further thousand men died within five years of the war’s end, as a result of injuries sustained, and 507 died while training in New Zealand between 1914 and 1918.

The First World War saw Māori soldiers serve for the first time in a major conflict with the New Zealand Army (although a number had fought in the Second Boer War when New Zealand recruiters chose to ignore British military policy of the time of disallowing ‘native’ soldiers).

A contingent took part in the Gallipoli campaign and later served with distinction on the Western Front as part of the New Zealand (Māori) Pioneer Battalion.

2688 Māori and 346 Pacific islanders, including 150 Niueans, served with New Zealand forces in total.

Military Service Tribunals and Boards in the Great War: Determining the Fate of Britain's and New Zealand's Conscripts

Australia

.Australia During World War 1

In early 1915, however, it was decided to carry out an amphibious landing on the Gallipoli peninsula with the goal of opening up a second front and securing the passage of the Dardanelles.

The Australians and New Zealanders grouped together as the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC), went ashore on 25 April 1915, and for the next eight months the Anzacs, alongside their British, French, and other allies fought a costly and ultimately unsuccessful campaign against the Turks.

The force was evacuated from the peninsula in December 1915 and returned to Egypt, where the AIF was expanded.

In early 1916 it was decided that the infantry divisions would be sent to France, where they took part in many of the major battles fought on the Western Front.

Most of the light horse units remained in the Middle East until the end of the war, carrying out further operations against the Turks in Egypt and Palestine. Small numbers of Australians served in other theatres of war.

While the main focus of the Australian military’s effort was the ground war, air and naval forces were also committed.

Squadrons of the Australian Flying Corps served in the Middle East and on the Western Front, while elements of the Royal Australian Navy carried out operations in the Atlantic, the North Sea, Adriatic, and the Black Sea, as well as the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

By the end of the war, Australians were far more circumspect.

The nation’s involvement cost more than 60,000 Australian lives and many more were left unable to work as a result of their injuries.

The impact of the war was felt in many other areas as well.

Financially it was very costly, while the effect on the social and political landscape was considerable and threatened to cause serious divides in the nation’s social fabric.

Conscription was possibly the most contentious issue and ultimately, despite having conscription for home service, Australia was one of only three combatants not to use conscripts in the fighting. 

Nevertheless, for many Australians, the nation’s involvement in World War I and the Gallipoli campaign was seen as a symbol of its emergence as an international actor, while many of the notions of the Australian character and nationhood that exist today have their origins in the war, and Anzac Day is commemorated as a national holiday

Our Forgotten Volunteers: Australians and New Zealanders with Serbs in World War One

Canada

Canada during World War 1

The military history of Canada during World War I began on August 4, 1914, when the United Kingdom entered the First World War (1914–1918) by declaring war on Germany.

The British declaration of war automatically brought Canada into the war, because of Canada’s legal status as a British Dominion which left foreign policy decisions in the hands of the British parliament.

However, the Canadian government had the freedom to determine the country’s level of involvement in the war.

On August 4, 1914, the Governor-General declared war between Canada and Germany.

The Militia was not mobilized and instead, an independent Canadian Expeditionary Force was raised.

Canada’s sacrifices and contributions to the Great War changed its history and enabled it to become more independent, while also opening a deep rift between the French and English speaking populations.

For the first time in Canadian military history, Canadian forces fought as a distinct unit, first under a British commander but ultimately under a Canadian-born commander.

The highpoints of Canadian military achievement during the Great War came during the Somme, Vimy, and Passchendaele battles and what later became known as “Canada’s Hundred Days”.

Canada’s total casualties stood at the end of the war at 67,000 killed and 173,000 wounded, out of an expeditionary force of 620,000 people mobilized (39% of mobilized were casualties).

Canadians of British descent—the majority—gave widespread support arguing that Canadians had a duty to fight on behalf of their Motherland.

Indeed, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, although French-Canadian, spoke for the majority of English-Canadians when he proclaimed: “It is our duty to let Great Britain know and to let the friends and foes of Great Britain know that there is in Canada but one mind and one heart and that all Canadians are behind the Mother Country.”

However, this did not stop Laurier along with Henri Bourassa from leading the opposition to conscription three years later in 1917.

The Story of the Great War, Volume VIII (of VIII): Victory with the Allies; Armistice; Peace Congress; Canada's War Organizations and vast War ... (The Story of the Great War (Set of 8 Vols))

China

China During World War 1

The Chinese Labour Corps (CLC; French: Corps de Travailleurs Chinois; simplified Chinese: 中国劳工旅; traditional Chinese: 中國勞工旅; pinyin: Zhōngguó láogōng lǚ) was a force of workers recruited by the British government in World War I to free troops for front line duty by performing support work and manual labour.

The French government also recruited a significant number of Chinese labourers, and although those labourers working for the French were recruited separately and not part of the CLC, they are often considered to be so.

In all, some 140,000 men served for both British and French forces before the war ended and most of the men were repatriated to China between 1918 and 1920.

In 1916, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig requested that 21,000 labourers be recruited to fill the manpower shortage caused by casualties during World War I.

Recruiting labourers from other countries was not something unusual at that time.

Other than the Chinese, labour corps were serving in France from Egypt, Fiji, India, Malta, Mauritius, Seychelles, and the British West Indies, as well as a native labour corps from South Africa.

At the end of the war, an estimated over 300,000 workers from the colonies, 100,000 Egyptians, 21,000 Indians and 20,000 native South Africans were working throughout France and the Middle East by 1918.

As China was initially not a belligerent nation, her nationals were not allowed by their government to participate in the fighting. As a result, the early stage of the recruiting business in China was somewhat sketchy, with semi-official support from local authorities.

However, after China declared war against Germany and Austria-Hungary, on 14 August 1917, the Labour Department of the Chinese government began organizing the recruitment officially.

The scheme to recruit Chinese to serve as non-military personnel was pioneered by the French government.

A contract to supply 50,000 labourers was agreed upon on 14 May 1916, and the first contingent left Tianjin for Dagu and Marseille in July 1916.

The British government also signed an agreement with the Chinese authorities to supply labourers.

The recruiting was launched by the War Committee in London in 1916 to form a labour corps of labourers from China to serve in France and to be known as the Chinese Labour Corps.

A former railway engineer, Thomas J. Bourne, who had worked in China for 28 years, arrived at Weihaiwei (then a British colony) on 31 October 1916 with instructions to establish and run a recruiting base.

The Chinese Labour Corps comprised Chinese men who came mostly from Shandong Province,and to a lesser extent from Liaoning, Jilin, Jiangsu, Hubei, Hunan, Anhui and Gansu Provinces.

The first transport ship carrying 1,088 labourers sailed from the main depot at Weihaiwei on 18 January 1917.

The journey to France took three months.

Most travelled to Europe (and later returned to China) via the Pacific and by Canada.

The tens of thousands of volunteers were driven by the poverty of the region and China’s political uncertainties and also lured by the generosity of the wages offered by the British.
Each volunteer received an embarkment fee of 20 yuan, followed by 10 yuan a month to be paid over to his family in China.

Two of the unit’s commanders, Colonel Bryan Charles Fairfax and Colonel R.L. Purdon, had served with the 1st Chinese Regiment in the Boxer Rebellion in 1900.

Service Members of the Chinese Labour Corps and British soldiers working at a timber yard, Caëstre, July 1917 CLC men load 9.2-inch shells onto a railway wagon at Boulogne for transport to the front line, August 1917 Labour Corps men and a British soldier cannibalise a wrecked Mark IV tank for spare parts at the central stores of the Tank Corps, Teneur, spring 1918.

A deal between the Chinese government and the allies resulted in the enlistment of thousands of Chinese who formed the Chinese Labour Corps (CLC) mainly poor Chinese men from the north who were told they would be in non-combatant roles.

The Canadian government had restricted the arrival of all Asians and the CLC were secretly landed at Victoria, British Columbia.

They were drilled in the old quarantine station at Metchosin, British Columbia on Vancouver Island. Roughly 81,000 Chinese men were then taken on Canadian Pacific Railway trains to Halifax to board steamships to England.

On arrival, they crossed the English Channel to France.

After the war, over 40,000 returned by ship to Halifax and then by train to Vancouver; they were returned by ship to China.

Unknown numbers never made it to the war front, died and buried in unmarked graves in British Columbia (including 21 at William Head Prison) and Ontario (1 known grave of Chou Ming Shan in Petawawa, Ontario). A total of about 140,000 Chinese workers served on the Western Front during and after the war.

Among them, 100,000 served in the British Chinese Labour Corps. About 40,000 served with the French forces, and hundreds of Chinese students served as translators.

By the end of 1917, 54,000 Chinese labourers were with the British Imperial Forces in France and Belgium.

In March, the admiralty declared itself no longer able to supply the ships for transport and the British government were obliged to bring recruitment to an end.

The men already serving in France completed their contracts.

By the time of the armistice, the CLC numbered nearly 96,000, while a further 30,000 were working for the French.

In May 1919, 80,000 Chinese Labour Corps were still at work.

The British soldier Arthur Bullock, in his wartime memoir, gives a vivid account of the interactions between the British soldiers and Chinese workers.

He also drew a sketch of one Chinese man, Tchung Camena Tungwa, who invited him to have tea in Beijing when he was next there (he never was).

The workers, mainly aged between 20 and 35, served as labour in the rear echelons or helped build munitions depots. They were asked to carry out essential work to support the frontline troops, such as unloading ships, building dugouts, repairing roads and railways, digging trenches, and filling sandbags.

Some worked in armaments factories, others in naval shipyards, for a pittance of one to three francs a day.

At the time, they were seen just as cheap labour, not even allowed out of the camp to fraternise locally, dismissed as mere coolies.

When the war ended, some were used for mine clearance, or to recover the bodies of soldiers and fill in miles of trenches.

Men fell ill from poor diets and the intense damp and cold, and on occasion, they mutinied against their French and British employers or ransacked local restaurants in search of food.

The harshness of the conditions in which some of these men worked is recorded by Arthur Bullock in his wartime memoir, along with the contemporary justification for it.

Bullock also recalls the differences between the ‘coolies’ and the German prisoners of war, in terms of their attitudes to work and to each other.

After the armistice, the Chinese, each identified only by an impersonal reference number, were shipped home.

Only about 5,000 to 7,000 stayed in France, forming the nucleus of the later Chinese community in Paris.

Most who survived returned to China in 1918.

The contribution of these Chinese men went forgotten for decades until military ceremonies resumed in 2002 at the Chinese cemetery of Noyelles-sur-Mer.

Throughout the war, trade union pressure prevented the introduction of Chinese labourers to the British Isles.

Sidney and Beatrice Webb suggested that the CLC was restricted to carrying out menial unskilled labour due to pressure from British trade unions.

However, some members of the corps carried out skilled and semiskilled work for the Tank Corps, including riveting and engine repair.

One member of the corps, First Class Ganger Liu Dien Chen, was recommended for the Military Medal for rallying his men while under shellfire in March 1918.

However, he was eventually awarded the Meritorious Service Medal, as it was decided CLC members were not eligible for the Military Medal.

By the end of the war, the Meritorious Service Medal had been awarded to five Chinese workers.

After the war, the British government sent a war medal to every member of the CLC.

The medal was like the British War Medal issued to every member of the British armed forces, except that it was of bronze, not silver.

China's Great Convulsion, 1894-1924: How Chinese Overthrew a Dynasty, Fought Chaos and Warlords, and Still Helped the Western Allies Win World War One

United States of America

United States during World war 1

The United States declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917, nearly three years after World War I started.

A ceasefire and Armistice was declared on November 11, 1918.

Before entering the war, the U.S. had remained neutral, though it had been an important supplier to the United Kingdom, France, and the other Allied powers.

The U.S. made its major contributions in terms of supplies, raw materials, and money, starting in 1917.

American soldiers under General of the Armies John Pershing, Commander-in-Chief of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), arrived at the rate of 10,000 men a day on the Western Front in the summer of 1918. During the war, the U.S. mobilized over 4 million military personnel and suffered 110,000 deaths, including around 45,000 who died due to the 1918 Spanish influenza outbreak (30,000 before they even reached France).

The war saw a dramatic expansion of the United States government in an effort to harness the war effort and a significant increase in the size of the U.S. Armed Forces.

After a relatively slow start in mobilizing the economy and labor force, by spring 1918, the nation was poised to play a role in the conflict.

Under the leadership of President Woodrow Wilson, the war represented the climax of the Progressive Era as it sought to bring reform and democracy to the world, although there was substantial public opposition to U.S. entry into the war.

Contents 1 Entry 2 Neutrality 3 Public opinion 4 Preparedness movement 4.1 Democrats respond 4.2 National debate 5 War declared 6 Home front 6.1 Food 6.2 Finance 6.3 Labor 6.3.1 Women and labor 6.4 Propaganda 6.5 Children 7 American military 7.1 Women in the U.S. military 7.2 Impact of US forces on the war 8 After the war 9 See also 10 References 11 Further reading 11.1 Historiography and memory 12 External links Entry Main article:

American entry into World War I

The American entry into World War I came on April 6, 1917, after a year-long effort by President Woodrow Wilson to get the United States into the war.

Apart from an Anglophile element urging early support for the British, American public opinion sentiment for neutrality was particularly strong among Irish Americans, German Americans, and Scandinavian Americans, as well as among church leaders and among women in general.

On the other hand, even before World War, I had broken out, American opinion had been more negative toward Germany than towards any other country in Europe.

Over time, especially after reports of atrocities in Belgium in 1914 and following the sinking of the passenger liner RMS Lusitania in 1915, the American people increasingly came to see Germany as the aggressor.

1917 political cartoon about the Zimmermann Telegram published in the Dallas Morning News As U.S. President, it was Wilson who made the key policy decisions over foreign affairs: while the country was at peace, the domestic economy ran on a laissez-faire basis, with American banks making huge loans to Britain and France — funds that were in large part used to buy munitions, raw materials, and food from across the Atlantic.

Until 1917, Wilson made minimal preparations for a land war and kept the United States Army on a small peacetime footing, despite increasing demands for enhanced preparedness.

He did, however, expand the United States Navy.

In 1917, with the Russian Revolution and widespread disillusionment over the war, and with Britain and France low on credit, Germany appeared to have the upper hand in Europe,

while the Ottoman Empire clung to its possessions in the Middle East. In the same year, Germany decided to resume unrestricted submarine warfare against any vessel approaching British waters; this attempt to starve Britain into surrender was balanced against the knowledge that it would almost certainly bring the United States into the war.

Germany also made a secret offer to help Mexico regain territories lost in the Mexican–American War in an encoded telegram known as the Zimmermann Telegram, which was intercepted by British Intelligence. 

Publication of that communique outraged Americans just as German U-boats started sinking American merchant ships in the North Atlantic.

Wilson then asked Congress for “a war to end all wars” that would “make the world safe for democracy”, and Congress voted to declare war on Germany on April 6, 1917.

On December 7, 1917, the U.S. declared war on Austria-Hungary.

U.S. troops began arriving on the Western Front in large numbers in 1918.

Neutrality I am neutral but not afraid of any of them 1915 After the war began in 1914, the United States proclaimed a policy of neutrality despite President Woodrow Wilson’s antipathies against Germany.

Early in the war, the United States started to favor the British and their allies with 1452 soldiers stationed in Europe.

President Wilson aimed to broker a peace and sent his top aide, Colonel House, on repeated missions to the two sides, but each remained so confident of victory that they ignored peace proposals.

When the German U-boat U-20 sank the British liner Lusitania on 7 May 1915 with 128 US citizens aboard, Wilson demanded an end to German attacks on passenger ships, and warned that the US would not tolerate unrestricted submarine warfare in violation of “American rights” and of “international obligations.”

Wilson’s Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan, resigned, believing that the President’s protests against the German use of U-boat attacks conflicted with America’s official commitment to neutrality.

On the other hand, Wilson came under pressure from war hawks led by former president Theodore Roosevelt, who denounced German acts as “piracy”, and from British delegations under Cecil Spring Rice and Sir Edward Grey.

U.S. Public opinion reacted with outrage to the suspected German sabotage of Black Tom in Jersey City, New Jersey on 30 July 1916, and to the Kingsland explosion on 11 January 1917 in present-day Lyndhurst, New Jersey.

Crucially, by the spring of 1917, President Wilson’s official commitment to neutrality had finally unraveled.

Wilson realized he needed to enter the war in order to shape the peace and implement his vision for a League of Nations at the Paris Peace Conference.

The Great War in America: World War I and Its Aftermath

kingdom of Romania

 The Kingdom of Romania during World War 1

The Kingdom of Romania was neutral for the first two years of World War I, entering on the side of the Allied powers from 27 August 1916 until Central Power occupation led to the Treaty of Bucharest in May 1918, before re-entering the war on 10 November 1918.

It had the most significant oil fields in Europe, and Germany eagerly bought its petroleum, as well as food exports.

From the point of view of its belligerent status, Romania was a neutral country between 28 July 1914 – 27 August 1916, a belligerent country on the part of the Entente between 27 August 1916 – 9 December 1917, in a state of the armistice with the Central Powers between 10 December 1917 – 7 May 1918, a non-combatant country between 7 May 1918 – 10 November 1918, and finally a belligerent country in the Entente between 10 November 1918 – 11 November 1918.

At the start of World War I, King Carol favored Germany while the nation’s political elite favoured the Entente. As such, the crown council took the decision to remain neutral.

But after King Carol’s death in 1914, his successor King Ferdinand favored the Entente. For Romania, the highest priority was taking Transylvania from Hungary, with around 2,800,000 Romanians out of around 5,000,000 people.

The Allies wanted Romania to join their side in order to cut rail communications between Germany and Turkey and to cut off Germany’s oil supplies.

Britain made loans, France sent a military training mission, and Russia promised modern munitions. 

The Allies promised at least 200,000 soldiers to defend Romania against Bulgaria to the south, and help it invade Austria.

At the outbreak of hostilities, the Austro-Hungarian Empire invoked a casus foederis on Romania and Italy linked to the secret treaty of the alliance since 1883.

However, both Italy and Romania refused to honor the treaty on the grounds that it was not a case of casus foederis because the attacks on Austria were not “unprovoked”, as stipulated in the treaty of alliance.

In August 1916, Romania received an ultimatum to decide whether to join the Entente “now or never”. 

Under the pressure of the ultimatum, the Romanian government agreed to enter the war on the side of the Entente, although the situation on the battlefronts was not favorable.

The Romanian campaign was part of the Eastern Front of World War I, with Romania and Russia allied with Britain and France against the Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria.

Fighting took place from August 1916 to December 1917 across most of present-day Romania, including Transylvania, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the time, as well as in Southern Dobruja, which is currently part of Bulgaria.

The Romanian Campaign Plan (The “Z” Hypothesis) consisted of attacking Austria-Hungary in Transylvania while defending Southern Dobruja and Giurgiu from Bulgaria in the south.

Despite initial successes in Transylvania, after German divisions started aiding Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria, the Romanian forces (aided by Russia) suffered massive setbacks, and by the end of 1916 out of the territory of the Romanian Old Kingdom, only Western Moldavia remained under the control of the Romanian and Russian armies.

After several defensive victories in 1917 at Mărăști, Mărășești, and Oituz, with Russia’s withdrawal from the war following the October Revolution, Romania, almost completely surrounded by the Central Powers, was also forced to drop out of the war, it signed the Treaty of Bucharest with the Central Powers in May 1918.

The parliament signed the treaty, however, King Ferdinand refused to sign it, hoping for an Allied victory on the western front. 

On 10 November 1918, just one day before the German armistice and after all the other Central Powers had already capitulated, Romania re-entered the war after the successful Allied advances on the Macedonian front.

The Great War and the Romanians: Notes and Documents on World War I

Kingdom of Montenegro

Montenegro during World War 1

Montenegro with a largely ethnic Serbian population was still a part of the declining Ottoman Empire at the turn-of-the 20th century.

Knjaz Nikola proclaimed an independent kingdom in Cetinje (1910).

He became Nikola I.

The common ethnicity meant there were close ties with already independent Serbia. The Montenegrins joined Greece, Serbia, and Bulgaria in the First Balkan War (1912).

The Montenegrins suffered substantial casualties.

The Balkan War formally secured Montenegro’s independence from the Ottoman Empire.

When Austria-Hungary attacked Serbia (August 1914).

The small Montenegrin army fought with the Serbs.

They helped occupy northern Kosovo which with the Central Powers offensive (October 1915) provided an escape route for the Serbian Army.

Montenegro like Serbia was overrun and occupied by the Central Powers (January 1916).

Nikola I signed the Corfu Declaration (July 1917). It affirmed the unification of Montenegro with Serbia after the War.

King Nichola was a strong believer in unification with Serbia to form a great Serbian state.

After the Austrian evacuation (October 1918) and the King’s return to liberated Montenegro, he proclaimed unification with Serbia (November 1918).

King Nicola quarrelled with King Alexander of Serbia over who should be the monarch of a united Serbia. King Alexander with a much larger army was able to engineer the dethroning and exiled of Nicola.

Greece

Greece during World War 1

At the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, the Kingdom of Greece remained neutral.

Nonetheless, in October 1914 Greek forces once more occupied Northern Epirus, from where they had retreated after the end of the Balkan Wars.

The disagreement between King Constantine, who favoured neutrality, and the pro-Allied Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos led to the National Schism, the division of the state between two rival governments. 

Finally, Greece united and joined the Allies in the summer of 1917.

Despite Greece remaining officially neutral, by September 1916 the country was effectively a battleground in the war.

The Bulgarians occupied eastern Macedonia, while relations with the Allies were marked by deep hostility and mistrust.

After repeated calls from Thessaloniki, on 25 September Venizelos, accompanied by many of his followers, sailed to Chania in his home island of Crete, with the intention of forming a revolutionary government. 

Although Venizelos stressed that his initiative served national rather than narrow party, interests it was welcomed in Crete and the islands of the eastern Aegean, which had been only recently seized during the Balkan Wars (when Venizelos had been prime Minister), but found few supporters in “Old Greece”, the pre-1912 territory of the kingdom.

Venizelos was joined by two respected military figures, Admiral Pavlos Kountouriotis and Lt.

General Panagiotis Danglis, in the so-called “triumvirate” (τριανδρία). Together they landed at Thessaloniki on 9 October and formed the Provisional Government of National Defence.

Soon recognized by the Allies, the new regime declared war on Germany and Bulgaria on 23 October and 24 October respectively.

Entente and Venizelist efforts to persuade the “official” royal government in Athens to abandon its neutrality and join them failed and relations irreparably broke down during the Noemvriana, when Entente and Venizelist troops clashed with royalists in the streets of the Greek capital.

The royalist officers of the Hellenic Army were cashiered, and troops were conscripted to fight under Venizelist officers, as was the case with the Royal Hellenic Navy.

Still, King Constantine, who enjoyed the protection of the Russian Tsar as a relative and fellow monarch, could not be removed until after the February Revolution in Russia removed the Russian monarchy from the picture.

In June 1917, King Constantine abdicated from the throne, and his second son, Alexander, assumed the throne as king (despite the wishes of most Venizelists to declare a Republic).

Venizelos assumed control of the entire country, while royalists and other political opponents of Venizelos were exiled or imprisoned.

Greece, by now united under a single government, officially declared war against the Central Powers on 30 June 1917 and would eventually raise ten divisions for the Entente effort, alongside the Royal Hellenic Navy.

Greece and the Allies 1914-1922

United States of Brazil

United States of Brazil During World War 1

During World War I (1914–1918), Brazil initially adopted a neutral position, in accordance with the Hague Convention, in an attempt to maintain the markets for its export products, mainly coffee, latex, and industrially manufactured items.

However, following the repeated sinking of Brazilian merchant ships by German submarines, President Venceslau Brás declared war against the Central Powers in 1917.

Brazil was the only country in Latin America to be directly involved in the war.

The major participation was the Brazilian Navy’s patrol of areas of the Atlantic Ocean.

Brazil officially declared neutrality on August 4, 1914.

At the beginning of the war, although neutral, Brazil faced a complicated social and economic situation.

Its economy was largely based on exports of agricultural products such as coffee, latex, and very limited industrial manufacturing.

As these products exported by Brazil were not considered essential by foreign consumers, customs duties and export fees (the main source of government income) decreased as the conflict continued.

This was accentuated further by the German blockade of Allied ports, and then by a British ban on the importation of coffee into England in 1917.

This arose because the British government now considered the cargo space on ships necessary for more vital goods, given the great losses of merchant ships as a result of German attacks.

The Brazilian merchant ship Rio Branco was sunk by a German submarine on May 3, 1916, but as this was in restricted waters and registered under the British flag and with most of its crew composed of Norwegians, it was not considered an illegal attack by the Brazilian government, despite the public uproar the event caused.

Relations between Brazil and the German Empire were shaken by the German decision to introduce unrestricted submarine warfare, allowing its submarines to sink any ship that breached the blockade.

On April 5, 1917, the large Brazilian steamship Paraná (4,466 tons), loaded with coffee and traveling in accordance with the demands made on neutral countries, was torpedoed by a German submarine with three Brazilians being killed.