The First World War

The First World War shaped the twentieth century. It sparked the Russian Revolution, and it launched America as a world power. The fault lines from its failed peace settlement led to a second terrible world war barely twenty years later.

The first months of the war on the Western Front were mobile, fast and dangerous; casualty rates were higher than with later trench warfare. The Germans were halted by the Allies at the Battle of the Mame, fell back to high ground and dug in. The Allies followed suit.

War for Europe meant war for the world. Germany gambled that Britain might risk everything to protect her Empire - even victory on the Western Front. So, to divert British resources, maverick German commanders led the British a dance; across the Pacific, Africa and the Middle East.

The Ottoman Empire, Germany's ally, summoned all Muslims to Jihad - holy war - to overthrow Allied power in the Middle East.

The war on the Eastern Front was racial; Slav verses Teuton. It was highly mobile, fought across brutal terrain from the Urais to the Alps. It initiated many horros of twentieth century warfare: chemical weapons, mass expulsions of civilians, the persecution of Jews.

Attrition; "lions led by donkeys", the slaughter only ceasing for a brief truce one Christmas - old, mistaken views of the war on the Western Front. In fact there was constant tactical evolutions; hundreds of generals died in action; some men adopted a system of "Live and Let Live", with countless informal local truces.

The British expected a second Trafalgar - but within days German submarines turned the North Sea into a no-go area for Britain's great battleships. The British responded with a blockade of Europe to starve the enemy out. Germany launched submarine attacks against civilian ships, including the Lusitania with 1200 lives lost.

Increasingly governments faced the risk of their men mutinying, morale cracking, and civilians rising up in strikes and civil disobedience. As governments worried about containing unrest at home, they set agents working to foment revolution among the enemy.

In March 1918 Germany launched a massive offensive on the Western Front - her bid to win the war before the Americans arrived. The master was General Erich Ludendorff - a genius but unstable. Within days the British 5th Army was in retreat, Paris was under shell-fire.

The war's last months were more destructive than trench warfare had been. Germany remained on French soil, believing herself unbeaten. The Armistice was the Allies' bid to obtain - on paper - Germany's unconditional surrender.