World War I

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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

Tangier Crisis

The image captures a historical moment during the First Moroccan Crisis on March 31, 1905, in Tangier. It depicts British Colonel Sir Harry MacLean giving instructions to Moroccan officers in preparation for the arrival of the German Kaiser, Wilhelm II.

The Tangier Crisis or The First Moroccan Crisis of 1905 was a diplomatic dispute between the French Third Republic and the German Empire over the status of Morocco as a sovereign nation,  through recognizing Morocco as a sovereign national the German Empire used it as pretext for a preventative war against the French Third Republic or potentially as a way to test the strength of the newly formed Anglo-French Alliance.

In March, Kaiser Wilhelm II landed in Tangier, Morocco where he was received by the Sultan’s uncle and in a three-hour meeting the Kaiser recognized Morocco as an independent state and expected the country to stand up against the French Third Republic. The German Empire kept this recognition, with it insisting in an international conference that the future of Morocco was necessary and also stated that if this were to be prevented the German Empire would go to war.

In a later conference held in Algeciras, Spain in January 1906 the German Empire was isolated in terms of recognizing Morocco as a sovereign nation, though the crisis fizzled out over time. After the conference, the French Third Republic and the United Kingdom started discussing military talks.

Pan-Slavism

This early 1920s Czech propaganda postcard, titled "Byli jsme a budem!" (We were and we will be), promotes the concept of Czechoslovakism following World War I. It depicts figures in traditional and symbolic dress, including a member of the patriotic Sokol movement, unified under a single national flag to represent the birth of the new Czechoslovak state.

Austria-Hungary was a massive multi-ethnic state under the Habsburg family, the country had a vast and diverse amount of marginalized Slavs who were treated as second-class citizens which included Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Bosniaks, Czechs, Slovaks, Poles and Russians despite making up a major 50% of the country they didn’t have any political power and few rights  and this inequality bred a resentment that fed a Slavic sense of nationalism.

After the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, this sense of nationalism was being sparked and Austria-Hungary viewed Serbia as the primary culprit of driving Slav nationalism. The Russian Empire was the sponsor of Slav nationalism through their Pan-Slav policy which put a wedge between it and Austria-Hungary.  Serb nationalism surged with the murder of King Alexander Obrenovich of Serbia in 1903 and was replaced with the Karageorgevich family who had ties to the Russian Empire.

Through the Karageorgevich family, Russian influence was spread in Belgrade, Serbia which put Austria-Hungary in a state of domestic crisis.

Annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina

This image depicts the Bosnian Annexation, showing the rulers of Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria tearing away pieces of the Ottoman Empire's territory. It serves as a visual metaphor for the formal annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Since the Treaty of Berlin in 1878, Bosnia-Herzegovina was administered by Austria-Hungary although it was officially under the sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary in the October of 1908 took advantage of the Young Turks Revolution and annexed the two provinces which ruined diplomatic relations with its neighbouring countries.

The German Empire decided to back Austria-Hungary diplomatically which damaged its already strained relationship with the Russian Empire, they backed Austria despite the diplomatic harm it caused them as the Russian Empire had been weakened after it’s recent military defeat by Japan and the Revolution of 1905. The Russian Empire and the Kingdom of Serbia expressed resentment over the annexation but in 1909, the German Empire suggested to the Russian Empire that they should formally recognize the annexation and when the Russian Empire hesitated, the German Empire pushed it as if it was an ultimatum.

The Russian Empire recognized it was unable to fight for Bosnia and so recognized the annexation, the German Empire’s insistence on humiliating Russia was a mistake as it would not forget and had the unintentional consequence of pushing it towards the United Kingdom and the French Third Republic, these events created the conditions which would be constrained and explode into the world war that emerged in 1914.

Agadir Crisis

The image depicts German Kaiser Wilhelm II extending an armored "mailed fist" over the Moroccan port of Agadir, symbolizing Germany's aggressive military posturing during the 1911 Agadir Crisis.

The Agadir Crisis or the Second Moroccan Crisis of 1011 was the second iteration of the Tangier Crisis, as the German Empire decided to put pressure onto the French Third Republic once again after five years. It was justified as France sent troops into Morocco in 1911 and so is breaching the sovereignty of Morocco, it was another attempt to divide the French Third Republic and the United Kingdoms.

Germany sent the SMS Panther to Agadir Port, alongside their attempt to pressure the United Kingdom to separate from the French Third Republic, they also desired to use this gun-boat diplomacy as a way to get France to give them parts of the French Congo and in exchange the French were allowed to occupy Morocco. It only pushed the United Kingdom and the French Third Republic closer together, solidifying the Triple Entente despite the German Empire succeeding in forcing this exchange, they only received swampland and jungle in the Congo.

Potsdam War Council

Kaiser Wilhelm II received a report from Chancellor Richard Haldane who stated that If Austria-Hungary attacked Serbia, and Russia came to Serbia's defense, Britain would not stay neutral and allow Germany to crush France. Furious, which led to Wilhelm II to summon the top military brass of the German Empire and argued that Austria-Hungary should attack the Kingdom of Serbia immediately and in case the Russian Empire intervened, that Germany would join the battle even if it meant fighting against the Russian Empire, the French Third Republic and the United Kingdom.

Helmuth von Moltke strongly agreed but Alfred von Tirpitz argued that the German navy was not ready to take on the British Royal Navy and asked for a postponement of the war for eighteen months to allow the German navy to finish widening the Kiel Canal and the Kaiser listened and waited for eighteen months, unsurprisingly since Tirpitz asked for an 18-month delay in December 1912. Exactly 18 months later, in the summer of 1914, Germany went to war.

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, it is believed that Dragutin Dimitrijević sanctioned and helped organize the assassination.

The image depicts the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary and his wife Sophie in Sarajevo 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

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.

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

The First World War in the summer of 1914 was the culmination of uneven development, the export of capital, and the imperial core's competition for markets and colonies, all of which made a world war inevitable. The assassination was merely the trigger; the conflict was already an inevitability due to the growth of finance capital, the militarization of states, and the end of balance-of-power agreements. By the end of 1914, the illusion that it would be a short military skirmish was shattered as the war continued.

The year 1914 was characterized by military doctrine lagging behind the technological and industrial transformations of the world. Mass conscript armies and industrial firearms, such as machine guns, had outpaced nineteenth-century military strategy, resulting in mass casualties.

For the German Empire, the Russian Empire’s mobilization posed such a severe threat that it prompted Germany to demand Russia's demobilization. When Russia refused, Germany declared war on them, and shortly after, declared war on France. When Germany subsequently invaded Belgium, it triggered the Treaty of London, which Britain had signed with Belgium leading Britain to declare war on Germany. This rapid escalation was the result of inter-imperialist rivalries turning the local crisis in the Balkans into a world war, facilitated by alliances and the pretext the crisis served for each ruling class's material interests.

Western Front

The German Empire enters Luxembourg, Belgium in the 2nd of August 1914.

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 put up resistance through a ring of concrete fortresses, and the German Empire responded with siege artillery specifically the Big Berthas which destroyed the fortresses within days. 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. By August 20, Germany had occupied Brussels, later murdering civilians and destroying towns such as Louvain on August 26. The German Empire did this as a form of intimidation, deterrence, and propaganda. 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 period between August 7 and September 6, during which the borders of France, Belgium, and Germany were heavily contested, is known as the Battle of the Frontiers. It involved 68 German divisions facing over 60 French, British, and Belgian divisions, making it the largest battle in human history up to that point. The French launched offensives into Alsace during the Battle of Mulhouse and Lorraine, where French infantry running across open fields with bayonets were slaughtered by German machine guns. Through mass conscription, working-class lives were treated as expendable to preserve bourgeois property.

The peak of this slaughter occurred on August 22, 1914, during the battles in the Ardennes and along the Sambre River at Charleroi. The French saw an estimated 27,000 soldiers murdered in a single 24-hour period, marking the bloodiest day in French military history. Human life was sacrificed on an industrial scale as a means to preserve the power of the ruling class.

The British Expeditionary Force (BEF), a army of roughly 120,000 men, advanced into Belgium and took up positions along the Mons-Condé Canal. The outnumbered BEF encountered the German First Army and inflicted notable casualties. However, despite this tactical effectiveness serving as an example of uneven development, these smaller units though experiencing moments of success could not change the fate of the mass industrial war.

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.

Between August 5 and September 5, the French Army suffered approximately 329,000 casualties, while the Germans suffered similar losses as they pushed forward. The conflict's transformed into a war of attrition by late 1914.

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.

Eastern Front

The Eastern Front stretched over 1,000 miles from the Baltic Sea to Romania in the south. It was characterized by vast agricultural plains and forests, reflecting the uneven development relative to the Western Front. Consequently, warfare here was fundamentally dedicated to sweeping maneuvers across these immense distances.

Dead Russian soldiers in the Battle of Tannenberg nearby Uzdowo, East Prussia.

The Russian Empire, activated by its alliance with France, launched an invasion into the German province of East Prussia in the middle of August. Subordinate to these alliances, the Russian Empire involved itself in imperialist aims as the Russian ruling class sought to preserve its sections of capital and state interests. The offensive was led by the Russian First Army under General Paul von Rennenkampf advancing from the east, and the Second Warsaw Army under General Alexander Samsonov advancing from the south.

The Russian plan aimed to destroy the German Eighth Army in a large pincer movement; however, the geography of the Masurian Lakes physically separated the two Russian armies by 90 kilometers, making mutual support impossible. This failure was due not only to geography but also to the Russian Empire’s poor logistics and rail networks, alongside the organizational incompetence of Tsarist Russia. Ultimately, this collapse on both fronts fed the Revolution.

The Battle of Tannenberg, fought between August 26 and 30, was one of the most important operations in military history. Tsarist General Samsonov’s Second Army marched blindly forward, their supply lines stretching until they broke, before the German Empire slammed into both of its exposed flanks. Pushed into dense forests and swamps while being fired upon by German artillery, the Russian forces disintegrated entirely. Poor supply lines, logistics, and administration were the fatal blunders that resulted in a massive strategic defeat and a staggering loss of life.

Tsarist Russia’s defeat was extreme: of the 180,000 men in the Second Army, over 120,000 were murdered, wounded, or captured. General Samsonov, unable to face the Tsar, walked into the woods and committed suicide. This Russian loss had massive implications for the war; the crisis panicked Moltke into transferring two German army corps and a cavalry division to the Eastern Front. Their absence at the First Battle of the Marne was a decisive factor in the failure of the Schlieffen Plan. It was a failure of imperialist states attempting to control incompatible sections of world markets and colonies. Ultimately, this Russian loss saved France from collapse.

The Austro-Hungarian crisis was characterized by the empire being held together by reactionary rule, alongside its internal contradictions such as the oppression of Slavic peoples and a weak industrial base. These issues were exacerbated when they attempted to crush Serbia while simultaneously defending against Tsarist Russia in the north. Dividing their forces against German advice, Austro-Hungarian leadership ordered their First and Fourth Armies to launch an offensive into Russian Poland.

Austria-Hungary achieved initial success by defeating Russian forces at the Battle of Kraśnik from August 23 to 25. However, this northern push left the Austro-Hungarian eastern flank exposed, and Tsarist Russia unleashed its Third and Eighth Armies against this vulnerability. These initial victories were unable to resolve the empire's unequal industrial and social development. This accelerated the breakdown of the Habsburg monarchy, a positive development, as imperialist wars deepen internal contradictions and open the space for revolutionary action.

During the Battle of Gnila Lipa (August 26 to 30) and the Battle of Rawa Ruska, the larger numbers and superior artillery of Tsarist Russia overwhelmed Austria-Hungary, causing their lines to collapse. By September 3, the Russian Empire had captured Lemberg, and by late September, they had driven the Austro-Hungarian forces back into the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains. This left the Austro-Hungarian fortress of Przemyśl isolated, subjecting it to a siege that would last 133 days into the spring of 1915.

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.

1915

The German Empire’s failure with the Schlieffen Plan converted the world war into a static war of attrition in the trenches of the Western Front. The major powers opened a new Southern Front as a means to relieve pressure and seize the markets and resources within the South, which spanned the Ottoman Empire, Italy, and the Balkans.

1915 was a period of technological escalation. The deadlock of trenches and machine guns led to the introduction of large-scale poison gas, flamethrowers, the first prototype tanks, gas masks, and early anti-aircraft guns. By 1915, a line of fortified trenches stretched from Belgium to the Swiss border, becoming known as the Western Front. This front was characterized by a static war of trenches and machine guns, whereas the Eastern Front spanned a vast, freezing landscape that severely hampered mobility.

Western Front

The year began with both the French and German states pursuing the strategies of grignotage and zermürben, which both roughly translate to attrition or "wear down." The goal for both was to wear down each other’s reserves. As decisive attacks failed, they resorted to trying to consume the rival imperialist states' manpower and material through persistent local attacks, such as the repeated French assaults against the German trenches in the Champagne region of France between December 20, 1914, and March 17, 1915.

French soldiers waiting in a trench during the First Battle of Champagne.

This campaign led France to use massive amounts of ammunition and sacrifice 50,000 men in February and March alone. Although they managed to push 460 meters into the German trenches, the sheer volume of artillery fire created a shell crisis for France. This crisis triggered the rapid militarization of the economy, which produced catastrophic social costs and shortages.

France’s initial success in pushing into the German trenches was eventually repelled as the French exhausted their artillery ammunition. This shortage severely affected the civilian population, as the French state put over 400,000 French women to work handling explosives and toxic chemicals. These substances turned their hair and skin yellow and inflicted chronic respiratory issues, skin burns, and fatal poisoning. Women and their labor were subordinated to the needs of the state and capital, with both these women and working men treated as expendable in the pursuit of imperialist rivalry.

Workers were forced to work 11- to 12-hour days, seven days a week, to produce shells. Factories ran 24/7 to meet a quota of 100,000 shells per day, which led to male and female workers frequently losing limbs or suffering injuries in explosions due to their handling of explosives and chemicals, compounded by the long hours and intense pace of work. Skilled workers were pulled back from the frontlines and into factories under the threat of being sent back to the trenches if they protested the conditions. This militarization of the economy intensified exploitation, suspended labor rights, and hollowed out trade unions.

Inflation, price increases, and wage suppression plunged families into poverty, forcing them to work in inhumane conditions. The state prioritized preserving ornaments and defending capitalist property by portraying labor unions and protests as treason, stripping workers of any power to bargain for better conditions. In times of crisis, capitalism abandons the concessions and liberties it had reluctantly granted to workers.

On January 19, 1915, the German Empire launched a bombing campaign against the United Kingdom. The deliberate targeting of civilians, industrial logistics, and transport networks established them as legitimate military targets, demonstrating how war under capitalism extends into society as a whole.

By the spring of 1915, lethal poison gas was introduced and the Southern Front opened. The spring began with the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) at the Battle of Loos attempting a concentrated but short chlorine gas bombardment across an 1,828-meter front. The gas attack lasted about 35 minutes and succeeded in overrunning the German forward trenches. However, the BEF’s artillery shortage and broken communications prevented a secondary attack. A five-hour delay allowed the Germans to recover; since many were underground, they were shielded from the chlorine gas and were able to man their machine guns with a perfectly clear view in broad daylight of the British reserves. This led to 60,000 total BEF casualties. Chemical weapons came as a shock, but inadequate logistical organization created a contradiction that compounded existing shortages of ammunition and industrial capacity.

The Western Front changed in April during the Second Battle of Ypres (April 22 to May 25, 1915), when the German Empire successfully initiated the first large-scale lethal poison gas attack in history. They released chlorine gas from thousands of cylinders, creating a massive gap of corpses in the Allied trenches. However, a lack of coordinated planning and insufficient infantry made this breakthrough unexploitable. This battle nonetheless began the process of all combatants adapting to chemical warfare, escalating the chemical weapons arms race.

In the spring, the British faced a shell crisis similar to France’s. Their failures at the Battle of Aubers Ridge and the Battle of Festubert triggered a shell and logistics crisis within the United Kingdom. Like other European armies prior to World War I, the British had relied on quick-firing field artillery and troops in bright uniforms. However, the realities of trench warfare and barbed wire made the British convert their national economy into ammunition factories, imposing austerity and labor repression while simultaneously pressuring workers to produce shells in a manner similar to France.

Eastern Front

While the industrialized and densely fortified Western Front reflected the 19th century’s accumulation of concentrated mass firepower and logistics, creating a static war of attrition in the trenches, the Eastern Front’s vast geographical spaces, poorer rail and road networks, and uneven industrialization produced greater operational mobility, especially during the winter.

Ottoman soldiers marching Armenian men from the city of Kharpert to an execution site during the Armenian Genocide in April 1915.

On January 31, 1915, the German Empire became the first to deploy large-scale chemical warfare. German forces fired 18,000 shells filled with tear gas; however, due to freezing conditions, the shells failed to activate, rendering both the attack and the munitions useless. The German push for chemical warfare resulted from conventional tactics stalling, leading them to resort to these new, inhumane techniques to break the standstill. In the south, the Ottoman Empire launched its Caucasus campaign but was thwarted. The Ottoman Turkish Third Army suffered a defeat near Kars, which the Russian Empire shortly invaded. Simultaneously, the Young Turk government initiated the Armenian Genocide with forced deportations in February 1915. Facing military defeats and internal political strife, the Young Turks began mass deportations, an outcome of imperial collapse and reactionary state policies within the dying empire.

In East Prussia, the German Eighth and Tenth Armies launched a successful offensive against the Tsarist Russian Tenth Army in the Masurian Lakes region between February 7 and February 22, 1915. They pushed the Tsarist Russian forces into the Augustów Forest and decimated them. This German success reflected how better interior road and rail networks, along with a concentration of experienced units, allowed for rapid offensives on the Eastern Front. These losses exacerbated Russia's internal strains, including military shortages, peasant unrest, and the erosion of Romanov authority.

With Austria-Hungary on the verge of collapse, the German Army provided military support to prevent its ally's downfall. This required the German Empire to pivot from the Western Front to focus on the Eastern Front. The Gorlice-Tarnów Offensive began as a joint Austro-German operation targeting the Tsarist Russian Third Army in Galicia, a region within Austria-Hungary. The joint Austro-German forces mobilized substantial material resources and artillery, utilizing coordinated staff and infantry operations to exploit the Tsarist Russians' logistical weaknesses.

The joint operation fired over 700,000 shells, destroying the Tsarist Russian trenches. Weakened by ammunition shortages and a lack of rifles, the Russian Army was incapable of defending itself, forcing a retreat that allowed the Austro-German forces to reverse all of the Russian Empire’s gains since the start of the war. The German Empire’s insistence on protecting Austria-Hungary stemmed from their interstate alliance dynamics and the need to defend their allied ruling class, the Habsburg dynasty.

Following the victory at Gorlice-Tarnów, the joint Austro-German army pushed a new offensive across the entire Eastern Front in July 1915. Facing imminent encirclement, Tsarist Russia ordered a withdrawal known as the “Great Retreat,” which lasted from July 13 to September 19, 1915. The scale of this retreat spanned more than 600 miles. While retreating, Russian forces implemented a scorched-earth policy by systematically destroying crops, livestock, railways, bridges, drinking water installations, and entire cities. This was an attempt to deny resources to the enemy, but it simultaneously destroyed the material basis of civilian life. The state’s willingness to sacrifice the peasantry and workers in order to preserve the autocracy further fueled social breakdown.

The destruction of agricultural lands created an imminent threat of starvation, while the razing of cities and towns caused mass displacement. The Tsar’s deep antisemitism led to the deportation of half a million Jews across the Empire, which disproportionately affected the marginalized and the poor. These deportations, accompanied by plunder, beatings, and executions, were mirrored against ethnic Poles, Lithuanians, and ethnic Germans within the Empire. These terrified and dispossessed civilian populations created a massive refugee crisis. The Great Retreat resulted in the loss of roughly 300,000 square kilometers of territory, including all of Poland and Lithuania. Approximately 1.5 to 2.5 million people were killed, wounded, or captured; 10% of steel production and 50% of chemical production were lost; and six million people were displaced. All of this led the peasantry and the proletariat to increasingly view Tsarism and the capitalist order as antithetical to their survival, which became the basis for revolution.

Southern Front

As the Western Front was locked in a static stalemate, the Triple Entente intended to outflank the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria by opening a Southern Front. The Triple Entente aimed to knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war. This began with the Gallipoli Landings, an attempt to break the standstill by defeating the Ottomans and opening supply lines to the Russian Empire. On April 25, 1915, Allied forces conducted maritime landings on the Gallipoli Peninsula at Cape Helles and Anzac Cove.

Triple Entente troops, stores, and boats at Anzac Cove on the Gallipoli Peninsula during the Battle of Gallipoli.

The landings immediately faced resistance from Ottoman forces under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who rapidly counterattacked and secured the high ground. The British, Australian, and New Zealand troops were pushed back into narrow strips of beach, and within days, the situation devolved into a trench stalemate mirroring the Western Front. As summer approached, piles of corpses, swarms of flies, and rotting food led to disease outbreaks among the Triple Entente forces. Despite continued efforts, the Triple Entente secured only insignificant gains, while suffering immense casualties estimated at 214,000 to 265,000.

In May 1915, the Kingdom of Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary. Its entry was secured through the secret Treaty of London in 1915, in which the Triple Entente promised Italy a large portion of Austro-Hungarian territory in exchange for its participation. The treaty converted Italy’s bourgeois ambitions into participation in the world war. Italy initially attempted an aggressive and rapid push into Austria-Hungary, but it misunderstood both its own geography and Austro-Hungarian defenses. While Italy’s terrain naturally favored a defensive posture, Austria-Hungary had anticipated an invasion and had already constructed fortifications on the high ground of the river valleys. The Italians, largely unfamiliar with "modern" industrial warfare, suffered as the Italian ruling class mobilized workers and peasants for its expansionist ambitions and launched the war with the First Battle of the Isonzo.

The Italian army believed that numerical superiority, enthusiasm, and morale could compensate for its technical weaknesses in technology, logistics, and terrain. However, Italy’s military was unadapted to the realities of "modern" industrial warfare, including machine guns, artillery, entrenchments, barbed wire, and complex logistical supply systems. This lack of adaptation resulted in human lives being extinguished in frontal assaults against fortified Austro-Hungarian positions. As the Second and Third Armies moved across rivers and scaled fortified heights, a scarcity of ammunition and an inability to cut Austrian barbed wire led to the Italians being beaten back, suffering 15,000 casualties.

1916

1916 was characterized by rival imperial nations mass-producing industrial warfare and slaughter. On both the Western and Eastern Fronts, generals relied on mass conscription and industrial artillery in massive offensives in their pursuit to break the stalemate of trench warfare. This mass death radicalized both the soldiers and the workers, who labored unhealthy hours to produce resources for the war, and created the conditions for revolution.

Western Front

French soldiers resting beside stacked rifles as a supply convoy of trucks moves along the Voie Sacrée toward the front lines of the Battle of Verdun.

The German Empire launched the Battle of Verdun on February 21, 1916. It was a military and political operation intended to break French morale by launching a massive offensive against the French city of Verdun. By expending vast resources, the Germans pursued a strategy of pure attrition, forcing France to defend a position of national importance. The scale of German artillery bombardment was unprecedented in the war, as the French mounted a determined defense of the city. This war of attrition consumed vast resources and caused massive casualties among the soldiers, fostering a strong sense of alienation between the troops and their officers and the ruling class. This alienation led to mutinies and strikes, with soldiers refusing orders.

The Battle of the Somme was a joint Anglo-French offensive designed to breach the German lines, relieve Verdun from bombardment, and ultimately merge into an attritional meat-grinder. It began with a week-long artillery bombardment that failed to destroy the German bunkers. Because the artillery proved ineffective, commanders were forced to send in British infantry. Consequently, the first day became the bloodiest in the history of the British Army, with nearly 60,000 deaths in a single day.

It was an attempt that focused on firepower rather than tactical adaptation. Although the Allies felt pressure to act, they lacked the structure and command necessary to adapt to the realities of the Verdun and Somme battlefields. The human cost of the Somme and Verdun fueled mutinies, strikes, and anger both domestically and on the battlefield, which the ruling class repressed through censorship and propaganda.

During the Battle of Flers-Courcelette, a phase of the Somme offensive, the British deployed the first armored tanks. Although they were mechanically unreliable and too few to be decisive, they nonetheless carried a psychological impact and accelerated the shift toward mechanized warfare, a trend that intensified as a result of capitalist competition.

As winter approached, the British officially halted the Somme offensive after almost five months of attritional warfare. The Allies advanced only seven miles in total, in exchange for both sides losing one million men combined. The battle drained immense lives and resources, placing impossible burdens on each nation's economy and leading to industrial labor shortages, strikes, and increased militancy within the working class.

On December 18, following successful French counter-offensives in the autumn, French forces recaptured key forts such as Fort Douaumont, effectively ending the Battle of Verdun. The German strategy of attrition failed and cost them almost as much as it cost France, with an estimated 700,000 to 900,000 combined casualties. This was a self-destructive war for both sides; despite the French "victory" in territorial terms, it translated to social and economic collapse. Furthermore, the battle exacerbated crises of legitimacy in all the imperialist states.

Eastern Front

At France's request to relieve pressure at Verdun, the Russian Empire responded with an offensive at Lake Naroch (present-day Belarus) to tie down German reserves. However, poorly coordinated and lacking sufficient heavy artillery, and plagued by a spring thaw that turned the battlefield into a freezing swamp, the Russian forces suffered 100,000 casualties with almost no territorial gains and alleviated only an insignificant amount of pressure on the Western Front. This merely pushed the Russian Empire into another self-sacrificing operation, a reality the soldiers recognized, which radicalized them and helped fuel the revolution.

Illustration of Russian soldiers charging during the Brusilov Offensive.

The Brusilov Offensive was a Russian operation targeting Austro-Hungarian lines in present-day Ukraine. General Brusilov favored shorter, more accurate artillery barrages and the use of shock troops to target Austro-Hungarian weak points. This approach shattered the Austro-Hungarian army and resulted in the capture of thousands of prisoners, forcing the German Empire to divert divisions to stabilize its collapsing ally. Although it temporarily shifted the strategic balance, the cost to Russian peasant-soldiers and workers was enormous. Furthermore, it prompted Romania to enter the war and led the Triple Entente to overextend itself out of misplaced confidence.

Misunderstanding the balance of power and encouraged by Austria-Hungary’s setbacks during the Brusilov Offensive, Romania declared war on Austria-Hungary, driven by expansionist ambitions to annex Transylvania. Although initially successful, the underequipped Romanian army was quickly outflanked by a joint Austro-German and Bulgarian offensive. The Romanian ruling class had gambled everything on expansion and now faced occupation by Austria-Hungary and the German Empire.

Although the Brusilov Offensive was initially effective, mounting casualties, supply shortages, and strengthening German resistance soon placed the Russian Empire in a dire situation. Despite the tactical victories that crippled Austria-Hungary’s military, the loss of up to a million Russian soldiers meant that these limited successes could not prevent the growing unrest among peasants and workers, which eventually erupted into revolution.

With Austria-Hungary and Germany occupying the capital of Bucharest and largely conquering Romania by the end of the year, they gained access to vital oil and grain reserves. The seizure of these raw materials and strategic corridors provided temporary relief and neutralized the Allied front in the region; however, in the long run, it only deepened the occupying powers' burdens and further destabilized the imperial order.

By the end of 1916, the war had remained territorially unchanged on both the Western and Eastern fronts. Yet, military exhaustion accelerated the decomposition of capitalist rule. The mass radicalization of workers and soldiers, driven by the staggering loss of life at Verdun, the Somme, and during the Brusilov Offensive, drained all combatant states. These battles forced changes in military leadership and strategy, depleted the economies of the imperialist countries, and set the stage for the Revolution of 1917.

1917

1917 was a turning point in the World War, which had been born out of rival imperialist blocs driven by their greed for markets, colonies, and superprofits, making a world war inevitable. The year is characterized by the October Revolution, the U.S. entry into the war, and widespread mutinies and insurrections among armed workers and soldiers. Class antagonisms were high during this period of imperialist decay, as soldiers were stuck in stalemates driven purely by attrition, alongside the submarine warfare between the German Empire and the United Kingdom.

Western Front

On February 1, the German Empire resumed unrestricted submarine warfare. As German finance, industry, and the military were confronted and bogged down by blockades and attrition, they turned to submarine warfare to raid Entente logistics. Rather than de-escalating, the German Empire’s pursuit of defending its market position as an imperial power only escalated and intensified the war’s destructiveness. This resumption of submarine warfare gave the United States a justification and pretext to enter the war, as the U.S. bourgeoisie was interested in imperial competition and in supplying the consumption of industrial and manpower resources on the Western Front, which altered the balance of power in favor of the Entente.

The German Empire initiated Operation Alberich on February 9, a mass retreat to a newly constructed, heavily fortified line called the Siegfriedstellung, or the Hindenburg Line. This line featured deep dugouts, concrete pillboxes, reverse slopes, and dense walls of barbed wire. While retreating, the Germans leveled entire villages, cut down orchards, destroyed roads and railways, poisoned wells, and booby-trapped infrastructure to delay the Entente. They showed no regard for the peasantry, as the remaining peasants were enslaved.

On April 6, the United States was informed of the unrestricted submarine warfare and the Zimmermann Telegram, a secret diplomatic message between Mexico and the German Empire proposing a military alliance if the United States declared war on Germany. However, as previously stated, this was not done out of moral outrage; rather, it was used as a pretext to justify U.S. involvement in the war to supply the Triple Entente’s consumption of industrial and manpower resources. This move strengthened the post-war geopolitical position by advancing U.S. capital’s global ambitions.

The British Empire initiated the Battle of Arras on April 9 to draw German forces away from a planned French offensive to the south. Using counter-battery artillery fire and a creeping barrage, the British achieved an initial victory by capturing the fiercely defended Vimy Ridge. However, this strategy could not overcome the reality of attrition, and British forces soon found themselves locked in a grinding stalemate against a strengthening German resistance. This resulted in a deadly deadlock in which the United Kingdom suffered its highest daily death rate of the war, culminating in 160,000 total casualties.

French Commander Robert Nivelle launched the Nivelle Offensive, also known as the Second Battle of the Aisne, on April 6 along the Chemin des Dames. He promised it would be the breakthrough that would win the war within 48 hours. However, the Germans obtained the battle plans on April 4, nearly two weeks in advance, which allowed them to reinforce their positions. French infantry, alongside the new Schneider CA1 tanks, advanced into heavily fortified defenses where they were mowed down by machine-gun and artillery fire. They were completely defeated, resulting in over 187,000 French casualties and accelerating anti-war sentiment among soldiers and workers.

The massive failure of the Nivelle Offensive triggered the French Army Mutinies, which approximately half the army refused to launch attacks. Forty-nine French infantry divisions refused to launch suicidal attacks, though they agreed to hold their trenches. Robert Nivelle was dismissed and replaced with Philippe Pétain, who suspended major offensives and attempted to restore the authority of the ruling class through minor concessions. These included slightly improving living conditions with better food and expanded leave, while simultaneously repressing dissenters through executions.

The United Kingdom launched the Battle of Messines in Flanders, France, on June 7. The battle began with the detonation of 19 underground mines containing 453 tons of explosives placed beneath the German lines. The explosions, which were said to have been heard all the way to London, destroyed the German frontline. British, Australian, and New Zealand infantry then advanced, capturing the Messines Ridge. The ranks of these forces had been boosted by colonial subjects who were forced to fight and die for their exploiters.

The United Kingdom launched the Third Battle of Ypres, known as Passchendaele, on July 31, with the goal of breaking through the German Empire’s lines in Flanders and securing the Belgian coast. The initial attack struggled against deep German defensive fortifications. Millions of artillery shells destroyed the region's natural drainage systems, and when combined with heavy rains, this turned the battlefield into a quagmire of deep mud that swallowed soldiers, horses, and artillery.

Conditions worsened further when the German Empire introduced mustard gas. Unlike other chemical weapons, it blistered the skin, caused both permanent and temporary blindness, and lingered in the deep mud and trenches for weeks. The Passchendaele campaign became an attritional slog that dragged on for three months. The British ultimately captured the ruins of Passchendaele, but this represented a territorial advance of only five miles at a combined cost of 500,000 casualties on both sides.

The United Kingdom initiated the Battle of Cambrai on November 20, deploying nearly 400 Mark IV tanks alongside a surprise artillery barrage. They successfully breached the Hindenburg Line on the first day. However, the exhausted and depleted infantry could not exploit this breakthrough and were stalled at Bourlon Wood. Ten days later, on November 30, the Germans launched a counteroffensive using stormtrooper tactics, reclaiming all the territorial gains the British had initially secured.

Eastern Front

Exacerbated shortages and rising mortality, driven by severe food shortages, hyperinflation, and war casualties produced an objective crisis of state power, which resulted in the February Revolution in St. Petersburg. Amid the freezing winter, bread riots were sparked; these combined with the mutiny of the Volynsky Regiment of the Russian military, whose soldiers refused to shoot the protesters and instead joined the striking workers, as they were closely tied to the workers and peasants. By March 15, Nicholas II fled and abandoned the throne, ending the Romanov dynasty. The bourgeois Provisional Government was then established, which made the decision to continue the war.

The Provisional Government, maintaining bourgeois state continuity, desperately attempted to restore morale and satisfy the Triple Entente's demands. It launched the Kerensky Offensive, also known as the July Offensive, against the Austro-German joint force in Galicia on July 1. This offensive was spearheaded by Alesei Brusilov and featured the new Women's Battalion of Death, which was formed to shame male soldiers into fighting, a weak attempt at military revival, as the soldiers were no longer interested in defending bourgeois interests.

However, this offensive was completely defeated and collapsed, which led soldiers to form their own soviets to discuss combat orders internally, shoot their officers, and initiate and encourage mass desertions. During this time, the German Empire launched a counter-offensive that shattered the Russian lines, drove them back hundreds of miles, and broke the Provisional Government's ability to wage war.

Taking advantage of the total collapse of the Provisional Government's army following the failed Kerensky Offensive, the German Empire launched the Battle of Jugla on September 1 and successfully captured Riga, the Baltic port city. This battle was used as a testing ground for German infiltration tactics, such as Stormtroopers who bypassed strongpoints alongside Feuerwalze (rolling artillery bombardments). This strategy was later deployed on the Western Front.

The German Empire launched Operation Albion on October 12, a maritime and land offensive that successfully occupied the islands of Oesel, Dago, and Moon. Using their dreadnought battleships, they forced the Russian Baltic Fleet to flee. This occupation removed a key geographic barrier protecting St. Petersburg and underscored how the Provisional Government could not defend the nation's land or people.

The Provisional Government's constant mistakes and the suffering of the proletariat and the peasantry catalyzed the October Revolution. The Bolsheviks overthrew the Russian Provisional Government by storming the Winter Palace. As soon as the Bolsheviks overthrew the bourgeois state, Lenin issued the Decree on Peace, in which he proposed an immediate armistice; this was the beginning of Russia's involvement in this imperialist war.

By December 15, after the revolution, Grigori Sokolnikov, under the instruction of Lenin and Trotsky, signed the formal armistice with the Quadruple Alliance/Central Powers. Formal peace negotiations were subsequently held at Brest-Litovsk. Trotsky initially attempted to stall, advocating "neither war nor peace," but material realities forced these concessions. With Russia leaving the war and officially ending hostilities on the Eastern Front, the German Empire was freed to redirect roughly 50 divisions toward their final, decisive Spring Offensive planned for 1918 on the Western Front.

1918

With Russia officially leaving the conflict in March 1918, the German Empire was able to transfer its fifty divisions to the Western Front in a Spring Offensive as a race to crush the British and French before the United States could arrive in the war.

Western Front

On January 8, President Woodrow Wilson wrote the Fourteen Points, which proposed America’s leadership in the imperial core. This vision was cloaked in the language of self-determination and liberal cosmopolitanism through the League of Nations, which was a liberal propaganda tool that sidelined actual revolutionary movements.

Fearing American entry into the war, the German Empire launched the Spring Offensive, known as Kaiserschlacht. It began with Operation Michael on March 21, when a bombardment of over a million shells in five hours, combined with stormtroopers and infiltration tactics, shattered the British lines and allowed the Germans to penetrate 40 miles deep, the deepest advance since the start of the war. However, despite this military success, the offensive could not overturn the limits of logistics, industrial capacity, and labor.

The German Empire’s deep penetration into Triple Entente lines panicked Allied leadership and forced them to coordinate and restructure their command, resulting in the appointment of Ferdinand Foch as Supreme Allied Commander on March 26 during the Doullens Conference. This centralization merged the fragmented bourgeois nations’ militaries into one coordinated bloc under Foch, allowing them to absorb the Spring Offensive.

On April 9, the German Empire launched Operations Georgette and Blücher-Yorck, which pushed them to the Marne River and brought them within 75 miles of Paris. However, the Germans possessed an insufficient and overextended logistical and productive base. The offensive began to lose momentum as soldiers grew mentally and physically exhausted, the economy became war-torn, and the masses grew dissatisfied.

The Battle of Belleau Wood was the first major battle in which the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF), specifically the U.S. Marine Corps, took part, halting the German offensive toward Paris. This direct intervention of U.S. imperial power was integrated into the Triple Entente bloc, which used it to protect their capitalist interests.

The German Empire’s final major offensive was the Second Battle of the Marne, launched around July 15. Forewarned of the attack, the French constructed defenses reinforced by 85,000 Americans before the final offensive began. This preparation allowed them to absorb the attack and launch a counter-offensive supported by hundreds of tanks. Simultaneously, within the German Empire, strikes, mutinies, and unrest exploded into a bourgeois revolution known as the German Revolution.

The Battle of Amiens was launched during the Allied Hundred Days Offensive. Featuring 400 tanks, creeping barrages, and air support, it became known as the Black Day of the German Army. The Germans suffered 27,000 casualties and 12,000 surrendered, numbers unprecedented in the war, as soldiers recognized their class conditions, faced exhaustion, and became politically radicalized.

The Triple Entente launched the Meuse-Argonne Offensive on September 26. It was the largest U.S. military operation in history, involving over 1.2 million American soldiers fighting to sever the Sedan-Mézières railway, the logistical lifeline of the German Army. To achieve this, the U.S. paid with 26,277 lives, making it the bloodiest battle in U.S. history. During this 47-day campaign, Allied forces broke through the Hindenburg Line by September 29, symbolizing the German Empire’s exhaustion and imminent military collapse.

Between November 9 and 11, the Kiel Mutiny and the broader German Revolution across the German Empire forced the collapse of imperial rule under Kaiser Wilhelm II. The sailors' mutiny in Kiel was rooted in their conditions and ultimately led sailors and soldiers to challenge their officers and the bourgeois state. Although an armistice on November 11 ended the fighting, the German Revolution continued to erupt.

Italian Front

Following Italy’s defeat in the Battle of Caporetto in 1917, Italian forces retreated to the Piave River to establish a defensive position. However, by 1918, the Italian Front became the graveyard of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Austria-Hungary was rotting not only militarily but also economically, compounded by social contradictions such as industrial shortages, famines, and the state’s breakdown in its ability to force its various nationalities to die for its survival.

Inspired by the German Spring Offensive, Austria-Hungary launched the Second Battle of the Piave River on June 15. This multi-pronged assault was its final and ultimate attempt to defeat Italy. However, Italian intelligence acquired the exact date and time of the attack, allowing them to prepare and fortify the area before the assault even began. This preparation ensured the offensive failed completely, costing 150,000 lives and shattering the Austro-Hungarian army’s morale.

The defeat exposed the Habsburg regime’s incompetence to the public. Austro-Hungarian officers and the ruling class could no longer mask their failures regarding the war or the economy, nor could they manage to feed their own soldiers and civilians.

Between August and September, the Austro-Hungarian army faced widespread mutinies and mass desertions. Starvation ran rampant throughout the empire, and marginalized ethnic nationalities, such as the Czechs, Slovaks, Croats, and Poles began to openly demand independence. As military personnel and workers grew exhausted from a lack of labor, food, wages, and security, the empire’s oppressive structure became increasingly intolerable. Within an empire where Russian, German, and Magyar elites extracted wealth and exploited these nations and their people, there was a strong push to oppose this oppression and demand complete independence.’

On October 24, Italy launched the Battle of Vittorio Veneto. A combined force of Italian, British, and French troops stormed the Piave River, and the Austro-Hungarian defenses were completely destroyed. Soldiers, peasants, and workers refused to be sacrificed for imperial ambitions that offered them no material benefit or future. Consequently, soldiers abandoned their posts and marched toward their newly independent nations.

On November 3, Austria-Hungary signed the Armistice of Villa Giusti. The collapse freed four states: Czechoslovakia, the State of Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs (the precursor to Yugoslavia), the Republic of German-Austria (spanning mostly present-day Austria), and the Kingdom of Hungary. This ended the Habsburg monarchy, which had governed this multi-national, landlord-dominated bureaucratic state for nearly 400 years.

Palestine Front

The Palestine Front in 1918 consisted mainly of mobile operations, with the United Kingdom exploiting local currents such as Arab nationalists within the Ottoman Empire alongside Bedouins. While using liberatory rhetoric, in reality the UK was merely claiming Ottoman territories for itself, driven by interests in the redivision of markets and oil in the region.

By February 19, this combination of Indigenous forces and the United Kingdom captured Jericho from the Ottoman Empire, which allowed them to secure communication lines, economic control, and strategic flanks, enabling deeper penetration for operations in the Jordan Valley.

Between March and May, two raids into Transjordan were launched in an attempt to sever the Hejaz Railway and link up with the Arab Northern Army. Specifically, British officers such as T.E. Lawrence, known as Lawrence of Arabia, used false promises of sovereign nations to harness Arab discontent in service of British imperial ambitions. These operations repelled Ottoman resistance and forced them to divert resources to defend Amman, Jordan.

By September 19, the United Kingdom launched the Battle of Megiddo, in which they lured the Ottoman Empire into defending the Jordan Valley while amassing their forces on the Mediterranean coast. This blunder tore apart the Ottoman defensive lines and allowed them to penetrate deeply. Meanwhile, Arab nationalist forces severed Ottoman railway communications in Daraa, Syria. However, the spoils were allocated to France and the United Kingdom, as the Indigenous troops, though mobilized, received nothing for their military service and labor.

By October 1, colonial troops and the Triple Entente entered Damascus, Syria. However, the change of flags and banners did not end exploitation; it merely rearranged which imperial and local elites would extract from and subjugate the population of Syria. The national liberation of Arabs and Bedouins was co-opted, leaving them subjugated under a new imperial framework.

By October 25, the United Kingdom and Indigenous forces captured Aleppo in northern Syria, which threatened the Ottoman center in Anatolia. This development began the unraveling of Ottoman authority and set the stage for the postwar treaties that would carve up their colonies. Essentially, Aleppo became a bargaining chip in exchange for resources, trade routes, and markets between the United Kingdom and the Ottoman Empire.

On October 30, facing the total destruction of their military and being cut off from German support, the Ottoman Empire signed the Armistice of Mudros. This ended Ottoman imperial domination in the Middle East but opened another chapter, one that merely reorganized domination under new British imperialist arrangements. The British intended to establish a settler colony for European Jews in Palestine, as per the Balfour Declaration of 1917.

Why the War Lasted So Long

World War I was a conflict that was expected to be quick, but several factors prolonged the war, such as:

The interaction between 19th-century military tactics and modern firepower, such as the Maxim machine gun and barbed wire, made infantry charges impossible. Commanders took orders from national elites whose social training, institutional conservatism, and political pressure made adapting to the reality of industrial war difficult. Furthermore, the industrialization and concentration of capital known as imperialism created the foundation for massive army conscription, while machine guns made mass slaughter efficient; a handful of men with machine guns could wipe out entire troops.

Railways allowed for the defensive transport of reserves to threatened areas, but offensives had to be carried out on foot. Infrastructure development was uneven: national rail networks, industrial centers, and colonial resource flows were concentrated in some regions, while others had none. By the time soldiers crossed the muddy terrain and seized a trench, they were exhausted and out of supplies. Meanwhile, defenders using the railways were able to rush in reinforcements and supplies. This dynamic made the war a constant defensive stalemate, with the working class forced to pay with their lives at the front and with longer working hours at home.

Military commanders on both the Triple Entente and the Triple or Quadruple Alliance insisted on and valorized offensives, launching waves of mass suicidal assaults at Verdun and the Somme. Soldiers were mowed down as they ran into machine-gun fire for only minor territorial gains, as the ruling class sought to preserve national honor and the prestige of the officer corps and was willing to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of lives for these limited victories. Meanwhile, back home, the labor aristocracy and reformist labor leaders were bribed with these imperial superprofits to police and dampen the class resistance brewing among workers and soldiers.

Industrialization, imperialist competition, monopolies, and finance capital all prioritized accumulation and national power over workers' lives. This system forcefully created multi-million-man armies and drove the employment and mobilization of women and working men into war production. Subjecting them to 12-hour workdays, seven days a week, these conditions created the groundwork for class struggle. However, the trade unions and reformist parties at the time contained any militancy or organization and compromised.

Technologically, early attempts to break the static trench warfare failed consistently. Poison gas was effective initially but was countered relatively quickly. Tanks had the potential to cross trenches and crush barbed wire but were unreliable and slow. The development of this technology was constrained by private capitalist firms engaged in competition and speculation, while bureaucratic inertia further limited and delayed the advancement and deployment of these weapons. Ultimately, ending the war required domestic political collapse, such as the Russian, German, and Austro-Hungarian Revolutions.

Why the Quadruple Alliance Lost

The defeat of the Quadruple Alliance, or Central Powers, was a result of economic strangulation, imperialism’s inbuilt parasitic decay, and domestic political crisis.

The United Kingdom blockaded the North Sea, cutting off the German Empire and Austria-Hungary from global trade. This led to severe shortages that undermined bourgeois rule, as it created social and class radicalization domestically. Mass starvation among civilians, coupled with a lack of food and materials, exposed the fissures among workers and soldiers, which formed the foundation of the revolutions.

U.S. intervention in the war was a reflection of American capital’s interest in securing a share of global markets and colonies. By bringing its industrial capacity and financial backing, the United States was able to feed its collapsing allies and save them from domestic unrest. By 1918, over 10,000 American soldiers were arriving in France daily to ensure that France did not lose the war of attrition against the German Empire.

After the German Empire gambled everything on the Spring Offensive in 1918, it captured vast amounts of territory but paid with 700,000 of its most experienced soldiers. The loss of almost all their seasoned stormtroopers left the German military overextended and without reserves, failing to capture strategic objectives while still under blockade. The ruling class, unable to consolidate this advance, exposed the fragility of the military command and its inability to recognize that it was incapable of sustaining a long war of attrition, especially as soldiers radicalized, workers struck, and sailors initiated mutinies.

Despite the German Empire possessing the largest land army in the world, subordinate client regimes such as Austria-Hungary had to prop it up throughout the entire conflict. When Bulgaria, the Ottoman Empire, and Austria-Hungary all suffered military defeat and diplomatic crisis, the shock reverberated back to Germany. The disintegration of these allies isolated and exposed the German Empire’s southern and eastern flanks. Coupled with national contradictions, the naval blockade, oppressed minorities, and imminent class revolt, these factors made the war impossible to continue.

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."