First World War

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World War I
Date 28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918 (4 years, 3 months, and 2 weeks) Location Europe, Africa, the Middle East, the Pacific Islands, China, Indian Ocean, North and South Atlantic Ocean Result Entente victory Territorial changes • Dissolution of the German Empire • Dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire • Dissolution of the Russian Empire • Dissolution of the Ottoman Empire

World War I, also known as the First World War or the First Imperialist War and abbreviated as WW1 or WWI, was an international conflict that began with the Austro-Hungarian Empire declaring war on Serbia on 28 July 1914, and ended on 11 November 1918, when Germany signed the armistice with the Entente. It is called a world war due to the fact that most countries in the world at the time directly participated in the conflict. Most of these participants were colonies of the main imperialist powers, as much of the conflict took place in Europe. World War I ended with a series of revolutions, including the Irish War of Independence, the Russian Revolution, the German Revolution, and the Turkish War of Independence.

Causes

Map of colonial empires in the world in 1914. Note the relative size of each. Smaller possessions would form the Triple Alliance, while bigger possessions would form the Triple Entente.

Assassination in Sarajevo

Although a war between the imperialist powers had been brewing for decades due to imperialist competition, the immediate cause for the war was nonetheless the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, by Serbian nationalists in Sarajevo, Bosnia on June 28, 1914. Taking advantage of the situation, Austria-Hungary, with German support, delivered an absurd ultimatum to Serbia on July 23. Although the Serbian government agreed to meet almost all of the demands in the ultimatum, Austria-Hungary was unsatisfied and declared war on Serbia on July 28 and began shelling the Serbian capital of Belgrade. This set off a chain of events in which all the great powers declared war on each other due to alliances being triggered, starting with Russian mobilization which Germany took as an act of war and declared war on Russia on August 1. Germany then declared war on France and Belgium on August 3 and August 4 respectively whilst Britain and its colonies declared war on Germany on August 4. On August 23, Japan also declared war on Germany whilst Italy, although formally remained a member of the Triple Alliance, declared its neutrality on August 2.

Although the German 'blank cheque' for the Austro-Hungarian Empire to initiate aggression against Serbia was the immediate cause, structural issues of the world capitalist order at the time can be identified. The main branches of bourgeois historiography pin down Imperial Germany as responsible for the war, though misguided in noting the firebrand nature of Kaiser Wilhelm II (The Fischer thesis), or surmise that the war occurred due to a diplomatic breakdown, with each side 'sleepwalking' into the war.

Imperialism

As Lenin explains in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, as the Industrial Revolution was winding down in several European countries, they were turning towards imperialism to keep capitalism afloat -- for example investing heavily the Russian Empire. Yet others that had industrialized later were going through their industrial revolution still. These countries would later form the Triple Alliance.

The former countries had already colonized the world and so had enjoyed the benefits of colonialism and imperialism for decades. The latter countries on the other hand had to start their imperialist phase (as it is a natural progress for capitalism, when markets are so saturated that new ones must be opened by force to keep GDP growing and prevent a recession), but could not as the world was already carved up. As such, they had no choice but to enter a war to redistribute colonial possessions to their advantage.

Contradictions were becoming apparent between the two camps. On the one hand, the Triple Entente had a vested interest in keeping their colonial gains intact and saw it difficult to attack each other (several colonial wars between the British, French and Americans for example resulted in very little change of territory overall) leading to an alliance. The Triple Alliance had a "natural" alliance as they were moving towards their imperialist phase of capitalism, and in case they won, had more than enough territory to share between themselves.

Alliances

Two major alliances faced off in the conflict. The Triple Entente, composed of:

• France
• United Kingdom
• Russian Empire
• United States of America (starting in 1917)

Against the Triple Alliance, composed of:

• German Empire
• Austro-Hungary
• Italy

Campaign

1914

Western Front

Hostilities began in the west with the German invasion of Luxembourg on August 2 and Belgium on August 4, the latter having rejected a German ultimatum to allow military access to its territory. Relying on the fortified areas of Liège and Namur, the Belgian Army stubbornly resisted on the Meuse River line but were forced to abandon Liège after bitter fighting on August 16 with the Belgian Army retreating toward Antwerp. Meanwhile, the main German force pressed to the south towards the French border where they met the Franco-British forces, fighting the battle of the Frontiers between August 21–25. The French command ultimately deciding to retreat its armies in Belgium and the armies that attempted an offensive from August 7 to 14 in Alsace and Lorraine in order to regroup.

The main German army continued its offensive toward Paris winning a series of local victories over the Entente armies at Le Cateau on August 26, Nesle and Proyart from August 28–29, and St. Quentin and Guise from August 29–30, reaching the Marne River between Paris and Verdun by September 5. The French command completed the regrouping of its forces and, having formed new armies from reserves, successfully consolidated its forces in preparation for the defence. In the battle of the Marne from September 5–12, the German troops were defeated and forced to withdraw to the Aisne and Oise rivers, where they dug in and prevented an allied counteroffensive by September 16.

From September 16 to October 15, the operation commonly known as the "Race to the Sea" developed out of both sides attempts to seize the as of yet unoccupied territory in western Belgium, in order to control as much of the territory that formed the front as possible. The forces of both sides reached the coast west of Ostend whilst the Belgian Army, which had been forced to withdraw from Antwerp on October 8, occupied a sector on the left flank of the Allied armies. The battle in Flanders on the Yser and Ypres river lasting from October 15 to November 20 did little to change the front and attempts by the Germans to take the ports on the Pas-de-Calais were also unsuccessful. With losses rising, both sides stopped their offensives and instead dug in and established a static front from the North Sea to the Swiss border, which in December 1914 was 720km long with most of the allied side controlled by the French with smaller British and Belgian sections.

Balkan Front

On August 12 Austria-Hungary launched an offensive to the south in the Balkans against Serbia and its ally Montenegro. The invaders were defeated in battle on August 16 in the region of Cer Mountain and by August 24 the Austro-Hungarian forces had been pushed back to beyond the Drina and Sava rivers. However, on September 7 they renewed the offensive and a shortage of artillery and ammunition forced the Serbs to withdraw on November 7 to east of the Kolubara River. But after receiving supplies from Russia and France, they launched a counteroffensive on December 3 and by mid-December Serbia had been liberated from enemy forces with the two sides taking up defensive positions on the river boundary lines following the failed offensive.

Colonial Fronts

In Africa and Asia all German colonies were seized almost immediately leading to little actual combat for the majority of the war after the initial confrontations excluding some German guerrilla movements. In 1914 Japan seized the Caroline, Mariana, and Marshall islands in the Pacific Ocean as well as Tsingtao, a German naval base in China whilst the Australians seized the German part of New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, and New Zealand captured Samoa. Meanwhile, Anglo-French forces occupied the German colonies in Africa: Togo in August 1914, the Cameroons in January 1916, Namibia (German Southwest Africa) by July 1915, and Tanzania (German East Africa) by late 1917.

Reliance on colonies

Colonies played a primordial role in this conflict, with their masters requiring soldiers and resources be sent to aid in the war effort.

A major rebellion against the tsarist colonial government broke out in the Central Asian region in 1916. Another uprising against the British colonists, the Easter uprising also took place in 1916.

In his book The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon recalled a poem by Keita Fodeba, African Dawn, in which a Malian youth is sent to fight for France in World War 1. Picked by the village for his bravery, he leaves in a ship soon after heading for the French front. During his time in the army, his wife receives sparse letters from him and fears for the worst every day. Eventually near the end of the war, she learns that he will be coming back. But on the day his ship arrives back in his home country, he is killed in an undisclosed altercation with two white colonial police officers.

Fanon notes that "There is not a single colonized person who will not re­ceive the message that this poem holds." He further writes that "this is Sétif in 1945, this is Fort-le-France, this is Sai­gon, Dakar, and Lagos".

Result

Ultimately, the forces of the Triple Alliance failed to upset the balance like they sought to, instead surrendering in 1918 and losing their colonial possessions. German and Turkish colonies were redistributed among the remaining imperialist powers in the following way: Syria and Lebanon mandates were taken by France; Rwanda and Burundi to Belgium; Palestine, Tanganyika, Kamerun and Togoland mandates were taken over by the British Empire (along with German Southwest Africa being absorbed by the dominion of South Africa). The infamous Versailles treaty was imposed upon members of the Alliance.

Faced with heavy penalties from the victors and coupled with the fact that they had become unable to enter an imperialist phase and sustain capitalism, fascism was able to take hold in Germany, Italy, and Austria, ultimately leading to World War II. It should be noted that fascism was already starting to appear in Italy under an ultra-nationalist veneer, and as such it wasn't WW1 by itself that was the triggering factor for fascism as an ideology to exist.

Resistance to World War I

Several European socialist parties confirmed their commitment against the warmongering machinations of their respective ruling classes at the Basel Conference in 1912. However, most parties turned back on this commitment and joined their ruling classes to wage war against workers from other countries. Lenin organized the Zimmerwald Conference in 1915 to organize remaining anti-war socialists and continued to call for the imperialist war to be turned to Russia, after having undergone the Bolshevik Revolution, withdrew from the war in 1917 and appealed to all countries to cease the war. The last phase of the war was very revelational in demonstrating the nature of the war while the Entente continued to engage with Germans on the Western front, Reichswehr soldiers were allowed to occupy the Baltics to stave off the Bolshevik "menace."