On the Western Front, ripping across the muddy plains of northern France and Belgium, the bloodiest and most decisive battles of World War I was fought. In the war, which lasted from July 28, 1914, to November 11, 1918, Germany united with Austria-Hungary and Italy against Britain, France, and Russia.
Before we make any assumptions, let us first analyze the reasons why Germany lost the first world war.
The German administration considered entering the war to resolve long-standing disagreements with the United Kingdom, France, and Russia. Bernard von Bülow, the German Foreign Minister, had argued that going to war was necessary to "secure our position under the sun" in the face of increasing nationalism.
Kaiser Wilhelm II anticipated that the war would unite the populace and reduce the threat posed by the fast expansion of Germany's anti-Kaiser Social Democratic Party (SPD).
However, it was clear that Germany was unprepared for the war, which lasted four years. The German economy was reliant on food and raw materials imports, which were severely hampered by the British blockade of Germany, which lasted from 1914 to 1919.
During the so-called Turnip Winter of 1916-1917, when people were desperate to live, Germans were accustomed to restricting their food supply, resorting to mass pig slaughter, or, at one point, even consuming animal feed.
The German Board of Public Health estimated that about 800,000 German citizens perished due to famine and sickness brought on by the blockade in December 1918.
In Frankfurt am Main, Germany, in 1916, an older woman passed out while waiting in line for food.
From the North Sea to the Vosges Mountains in France, near Switzerland, the front line spanned over 700 kilometres.
However, the Great War also raged on the Russian, Balkan, and Italian fronts. It quickly expanded to the Middle East, colonial Africa, and Asia, where Japan allied with the Allies in 1914 to reclaim German possessions.
In 1917, the United States interfered late – but firmly – by enlisting the help of numerous Latin American countries. As a result of the Ottoman Empire's demise, the Middle East was completely reshaped.
On August 17, 1914, only weeks after the declaration of war, German forces marched into Belgium, destroying defences and driving a stream of refugees before them as they pushed on Paris.
The French were forced back and suffered significant losses while France's government retreated southwest to Bordeaux. On August 22, 27,000 men perished, making it the worst day in French military history.
On September 5th-12th, French General Joseph Joffre reorganized his fleeing soldiers to fight the First Battle of the Marne, which halted the German advance.
The employment of a powerful German trench mortar is being planned.
However, the scale of the casualties so early in the fight - more than half a million – ruled out any possibility of a truce.
To protect themselves from artillery fire, troops dug deeper into their trenches.
Despite repeated, violent attempts by both sides to break the deadlock, the fight became a three-year war of attrition with a little concrete outcome.
On the less crowded Eastern Front, where vast swaths of land made trench combat impractical, the fighting was radically different.
The Ottoman Empire, allied with Germany and Austria-Hungary, blocked the Bosphorus Strait to isolate Russia as soon as the war broke out, fighting alongside Britain and France.
On August 15, Russia began a massive onslaught into East Prussia, but its campaign was cut short after two crushing setbacks at Tannenberg and the Mazurian Lakes the following month.
On the point of collapse, Russia embarked on a haphazard eastward retreat that lasted until the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and the humiliating Brest-Litovsk Treaty of March 1918, which deprived Moscow of its western provinces and a third of its people.
On the Western Front, 1915 was highlighted by a series of deadly but indecisive offensives marked by the widespread use of new weaponry such as machine guns and heavy artillery. Near Ypres, Belgium, German soldiers used poison gas for the first time.
In 1941, the Allies started a naval and land battle in the Dardanelles to open the Bosphorus Strait, commanded by a youthful Winston Churchill on the British side.
The fight, which ended in a crushing loss for the Allies, left an indelible impression on Australia and New Zealand, where brave young troops stood out.
Russia was more successful in repelling Ottoman invaders in the Caucasus and Armenia. However, between 1915 and 1917, hundreds of thousands of Armenians were massacred in mass executions, accused of cooperating with the Russians in the battle.
Meanwhile, naval troops from the United Kingdom and Germany clashed in the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. To resist a maritime embargo, Germany initiated a brutal submarine warfare operation in 1915, culminating in 1917.
During the classic battle of Skagerrak in May/June 1916, a German capital ship fired a broadside.
This was decisive as a strategic maneuver, but not in Germany's favour: the United States entered the war in 1917 after being angered by the torpedoing of neutral ships or those carrying American people.
However, 1916 is remembered as the year of Verdun, the French war's defining battle, and the Somme, which retains the same place in British remembrance.
The Germans began their initial attack at Verdun in February, with French soldiers successfully halting their advance at the cost of about 800,000 killed and wounded.
To relieve the pressure on Verdun, British troops began the war's most significant fight along the Somme River in July, which resulted in 1.2 million soldiers killed, injured, or missing for modest territorial gains.
In 1914, British soldiers attacked Turkish land from the south, inciting the Arab populace to revolt against their Ottoman overlords.
The Sykes-Picot Agreement was signed in 1916 by Britain and France, and it began sketching out the outline of the future Middle East.
The British launched a massive onslaught in Flanders, Belgium, in July 1917. France had done the same in April at the Chemin des Dames, a disastrous failure that resulted in army mutinies.
Italian forces were defeated at Caporetto in October, leaving 300,000 prisoners in the hands of German and Austrian troops.
Meanwhile, after the Balfour Declaration, British commander Edmund Allenby occupied Jerusalem in December. Despite guarantees to the Arab population, Britain supported a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine.
Following the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, which terminated Russia's involvement, German forces began an all-out attack on Allied lines before the arrival of American soldiers, which they succeeded in doing in the spring of 1918.
They were once again within striking distance of Paris, pounding the city when they were halted by Allied troops placed under the unified direction of French General Ferdinand Foch in April.
The Germans, who appeared to be on the verge of victory, crumbled throughout the summer as the Allies recaptured northern France with a series of counter-offensives that culminated in the Second Battle of the Marne in July.
The Austro-Hungarian Empire, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire all suffered severe setbacks at the exact moment, forcing them to surrender.
On November 9, German Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated, only two days before an armistice was signed, securing the victory for the Allies.
Crowds of people cheered the news of the armistice in France and the United Kingdom, which had been debilitated by four years of all-consuming combat.
However, the Great War took years longer to finish, with a series of peace accords ending numerous sub-conflicts.
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