Jorge González Zavala

World War I
The First World War, or also called the Great War was an international conflict that
lasted from 1914 to 1918. This conflict was developed between most of Europe, USA
and part of Asia.

The war started officially in 1914, but there were already some problems between
nations before. The trigger for the war was the assassination of the Archduke from
Austria-Hungary Franscis-Ferdinand and his wife who was pregnant. The Archduke
was tried to be killed that same day in the morning without success, but then he was
killed successfully with his wife and his future son in June 28 th, 1914. The murderer
was a Serb called Gavrilo Princip.

Austria-Hungary used this event as an excuse to declare the war against Serbia and
tried to use Germany to stop Russia for helping Serbia, but Germany wasn’t in the
mood to do it. On July 28 from 1914 Austria-Hungary began to bombard Belgrade
and Russia went off over Austria-Hungary defending Serbia.
All these movements caused Germany to send an ultimatum of 24 hours to Russia
forcing it to stop the attacks and to France one of 18 hours forcing France to promise
neutrality in the war between Russia and Germany.

This ultimatums were ignored by both, Russia and France, so Germany declared the
war against Russia. But for declaring France the war it needed to pass across
Belgium, so after getting free passage across Belgium, which was a neutral country,
Germany declared war against France the 3rd of August of the same year.

War declarations were appearing out of everywhere: Austria-Hungary declared war

against Russia on August 5, Serbia against Germany on August 6, Montenegro
against Austria-Hungary on August 7, France against Austria-Hungary on August
10, Montenegro against Germany and Great Britain against Austria-Hungary on
August 12, Japan against Germany on August 23, Austria-Hungary against Japan
on August 25, and Austria-Hungary against Belgium on August 28, and many others.

So, as we can see, most of the war declarations were against Austria-Hungary and
in second place against Germany. By noting that some nations were against other
nations, alliances were formed. Actually, those alliances turned finally into 2 major
ones absorbing the small ones. Those 2 alliances were called the “Allies” and the
“Central Powers”.

The Allies were originally formed by Russia, Serbia, Japan, Montenegro, France,
Great Britain, Belgium and Romania. Then Italy, Greece, and finally in 1917 the
United States joined the Allies.

The Central Powers started with Austria-Hungary and Germany. But then Turkey
and Bulgaria joined them.

When war began the Allies, obviously, had greater industrial and military resources,
and had better access to the oceans for trade with countries that were declared as
neutral, mainly the United States. But Germany had a greater chemical industry so
it didn’t need the nitrate importation from Chile and it was self-sufficient in explosives.

Even though the Allies seem more capable to win quickly because Great Britain had
a voluntary army, when it was time to go into the battlefront Germany had a better
arrangement and management of large troop conformations than any of the Allies.

So Germany gave to the Central Powers a great advantage in land. But when talking
about seas, Great Britain had a superior navy than Germany in the number issues.
Though, as I already said Germany had a better chemical industry, so Germany was
offset by technological advances in its ships.
Taking the technological advances topic, during the First World War, there were
developed many advances in the artillery and weapons. The main and biggest
invention of the war was the machine gun because the old machine gun was
replaced by the French 75 millimeter field gun, this gun could stay motionless while
firing and it didn’t need readjustments on the aim.

During 1914 and 1916 there were lead many battles between the Allies and the
Central Powers, actually the Central Powers were presenting too much resistance
to the Allies, so both of them were getting weak. Their economies from both sides
were already crushed and many soldiers had died, and the remaining ones among
with the population of every nation were suffering hunger and lack of resources.

All that affliction stopped for a little while with the Battle of Jutland. The Battle of
Jutland occurred on the seas. It began because of the plan made by the German
admiral Reinhard Scheer, in 1916 he became a commander chief of a fleet, so he
planned to use his fleet to attack a small group of Great Britain’s fleet that was
separated from the rest and, taking advantage of their number, win the attack.

The plan was launched preparing 9 German cruisers from Scheer’s fleet, that were
then proceeded by some other ships, for the attack and sending them to the north
up to Norway so that they could catch Britain’s fleet. On March 30, 1916 the message
containing the signal for German operation to begin was sent, but it was intercepted
by Great Britain and before the sunset, the complete British fleet was on its way to
Norway.

When the German fleet encountered with the British one, the rest of the British fleet
hadn’t arrived yet so the small part of the fleet that was there performed their new
strategy called “Crossing the enemy’s T” because it set the British ships in a
horizontal line perpendicular to the Germans’ vertical line as a “T”. It was a great
success.
Germany’s fleet caused great damages to Great Britain’s one, making it lose 3 battle
cruisers, 3 cruisers, 8 destroyers and 6,274 men. So that’s why Germany considered
it as a victory. But Great Britain considered it as well as a victory mainly because it
could achieve to execute its new sea-battle tactic and in a smaller part because it
made Germany lose 1 battle cruiser, 4 light cruisers 5 destroyers and 2,545 men.
Also that Britain didn’t consider their loose as a great one because it had a larger
number of ships and men.

This conflict helped to regain strength on both sides of the war, which leaded to some
many other battles between the Allies’ nations and the Central Powers’ ones,
including the failed attempt of Germany to use submarines against Great Britain.

The United States had declared itself as neutral in 1914, and it remained the same
for 2 years until, in 1916 the president Woodrow Wilson proposed that the United
States became the mediator between both of the war sides. On February 22, 1916
Great Britain and the United States got into an agreement which said that Great
Britain would start with USA’s mediations and that if Germany refused the mediations
the United States were going to enter the war.

Germany by its side decided to start a peace proposal that if it was rejected by the
Allies, the submarine warfare would be continued.

On December 18, 1916 Wilson’s proposal started by inviting both sides to make their
aims for the war, but he convinced the Allies to make their terms too exaggerated
for the Germans. Germany, suspecting the alliance between Wilson and the allies,
accepted the negotiations, but keeping its peace proposals alive.

These peace ideas were forgotten when on January 31, 1917 Germany delivered a
message to Wilson, telling that if Germany’s peace terms were ignored, submarine
warfare would start again.
Wilson didn’t want to join the war yet, so he negotiated a few with Germany on
February 3, 1917, as well as he took every alternative measure to protect United
States’ commerce. While Germany decided not to attack the United States shipping,
but as a strategy.

Mexican relations with the United States were temporary since March from 1916, so
Venustiano Carranza (Mexican president) offered Mexico’s coasts to Germany so it
could set submarine bases. On January 16, 1917, Germany sent a telegram to
Mexico stating that if the United States entered the war against Germany, Mexico
should become Germany’s ally in change of the possibility to recover Texas, New
Mexico and Arizona. The message was intercepted and decoded by Great Britain
and then Wilson was communicated on February 24 and he published it on March
1, as well as declaring war against Germany.

In 1917, the Allies got a great increasement on its troops because Great Britain had
now an army of more than 1,200,000 men, France and Belgium had an army of
approximately 2,600,000 men. So there were almost 3,900,000 men from the Allies
against 2,500,000 men from Germany. This amount was already a great advantage
for the Allies, and with the United States joining them, the army grew up to almost
5,000,000 men. The Allies’ army doubled the Central Powers’ one.

But the United States not only helped with troops. As the Allies were in lack of
resources, the USA provided huge amounts of supplies. Because the armaments
production of the United States was big enough to fulfill the needs of France and
Great Britain among, of course, its own needs. Also United States’ contributed the
allies with approximately 7,000,000,000$ from 1917 to the end of the war. And,
unlike France and Britain, the United States did know how to manage a large troop
conformation into battle.

The USA support, undoubtedly helped to defeat Germany and the Central Powers.
On March 1918 Germany tried to attack for the last time, but with the big military
power of the Allies, it was pushed back and finally defeated. By the end of 1918
Germany accepted that the war had ended and Austria-Hungary stopped existing.

The war finally ended up on November 11, 1918 with the Armistice Treaty. And
officially on June 28, in 1919 with the Treaty of Versailles.

References
Ocaña, J. C. (2003). Historias Siglo 20. Recovered on September 20, 2017, from
http://www.historiasiglo20.org/IGM/guerra.htm
Pallardy, R. (Ed.). (2016). Encyclopedia Britannica. Recovered on September 19,
2017, from https://www.britannica.com/event/World-War-I/The-US-entry-
into-the-war