World War 1 Ace Pilot

WW1 Ace Pilot

 

 

 

The son of Major Albrecht von Richthofen, a Prussian nobleman and his wife, Kunigunde, he enrolled at age 11 at the military school at Wahlstatt, and then attended the Royal Military Academy at Lichterfelde.  He was a better athlete than he was a scholar, and applied his horseback riding skills to become a cavalry officer.  He was commissioned in April 1911 in the 1st Regiment of Uhlans Kaiser Alexander III, and promoted to Lieutenant in 1912. Richthofen served briefly in the trenches before transferring to the German Air Force in May 1915.  The star pupil of Oswald Boelcke, Richthofen learnt quickly and achieved immediate success.  He took his first solo flight after only 24 hours of flight training, on 10 October 1915.  A month after receiving his first Albatros, Richthofen had scored six 'kills' against Allied aircraft. 

A cool and precise hunter, Richthofen flamboyance was expressed mainly in his brightly painted aircraft, a Fokker DR-1 Dridecker.  His success in the air led to his being named der Rote Kampfflieger by the Germans, le petit rouge by the French, and the Red Baron by the British.

Richthofen was appointed commander of the Flying Circus in June 1917.  Comprised of Germany's top fighter pilots, the new unit was highly mobile and could be quickly sent to any part of the Western Front where it was most needed.  Richthofen and his pilots achieved immediate success during the air war over Ypres during August and September.

After scoring 80 confirmed kills, Richthofen was finally shot down as he flew deep into British lines in pursuit of Wilfrid May on 21 April 1918.  Although Canadian flyer Arthur 'Roy' Brown - who was flying to May's aid - was officially credited with the victory, controversy remains over who actually shot Richthofen down; other evidence suggests he was hit by a single bullet fired by Australian gunners in the trenches.  In any event, Manfred von Richthofen crashed into a field alongside the road from Corbie to Bray.  He was 25.  He was survived by his brother Lothar, also a noted ace.

A British pilot flew over the German aerodrome at Cappy and dropped a note informing the Germans of Richthofen's death.  Buried in France by the British with full military honours, Richthofen's body was later exhumed and reburied in the family cemetery at Wiesbaden. 

 

 

 

 

Paul Rene Fonck (1894-1953) was the Allies' most successful Ace pilot of World War One, and also the highest-scoring survivor of the war.



Fonck was conscripted into the French Army in 1914 and attended Flying School the following February.  During the early stages of the war he flew with a French reconnaissance unit before transferring in time to the more active fighter service.  He claimed his first 'kill' (a German aircraft on the Western Front) on 6 August 1916.

A brilliant shooter rather than an accomplished pilot (and reputed for his conservative use of ammunition), Fonck claimed no fewer than six victories in a single day, all German aircraft on 9 May 1918 over Montdidier (a feat he was later to repeat).

His tally by the close of the war, 75, made him not only the highest scoring French and Allied ace, but also the most successful fighter pilot to survive the war.  Never an especially modest man, Fonck personally claimed to have downed some 127 aircraft - at least - during his service.

In addition to innumerable French honours Fonck was also the recipient of the British Military Cross and DCM.

Following the armistice Fonck worked as a racing and demonstration pilot.  From 1937-39 he acted as Inspector of fighter aviation within the French Air Force.  However his later record of working with the Vichy government following the fall of France in June 1940 later besmirched his reputation.

He died in 1953.

 

 



 

LIST OF THE ACE PILOT WITH SCORE

 

 

Germany	Manfred von Richthofen	80
France	Rene Fonck	75
Canada	William Bishop	72
UK	Edward Mannock	61
South Africa	A. Beauchamp-Proctor	47
Australia	Robert Little	47
Ireland	George McElroy	47
Belgium	Willy Coppens	37
Austria-Hungary	Godwin Brumowski	35
Italy	Francesco Baracca	34
USA	Eddie Rickenbacker	26
Russia	Alexei Kazakov	17

The leaders of the Allied and Central nations

The leaders of the Allied and Central nations in World War I 

 Austria- Hungary
The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was one of the primary catalysts in the outbreak of the war.

Emperor Franz Joseph I
was the Emperor of Austria-Hungary in 1914. Following his nephew, Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination, Emperor Franz Joseph I issued Serbia a harsh ultimatum.

It is believed that this ultimatum and its terms were drawn up by Austria-Hungary’s foreign minister, Count Leopold von Berchtold.


Count Karl von Stürgkh
was the minister-president of Austria and Count István Tisza
was minister-president of Hungary in 1914.

Germany
Kaiser Wilhelm II
was Germany’s last kaiser, or emperor. Kaiser Wilhelm II and Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg
, played a significant role in the July Crisis of 1914. Their support and assurances egged Austria-Hungary on to take a harsh stand against Serbia, leading to the outbreak of World War I.

Helmuth von Moltke
was the Army Chief of Staff in 1914. Moltke implemented Alfred von Schlieffen's plan to overwhelm France in World War I.

Ottoman Empire
Sultan Mehmed V
, the sultan and caliph of the Ottoman Empire, declared jihad against the Allied nations on November 11, 1914, thus announcing the entry of the Ottoman Empire into World War I.

Britain
King George V
of the United Kingdom was the monarch of Britain and reigned over the British colonies at the start of World War I in 1914.

Herbert Henry Asquith
served as the Prime Minister of United Kingdom and headed the Liberal government from 1908 to 1916. He was succeeded by David Lloyd George.

In the early years, Sir Winston Churchill
, First Lord of the Admiralty, and Field-Marshal Lord Henry Kitchener
, Secretary of State for War, played central roles in managing the war. In 1915, David Lloyd George
took over munitions from Lord Kitchener and eventually went on to become the Prime Minister of United Kingdom.

Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey
and commander of the BEF, Sir John French
, played important roles in the military decision-making of United Kingdom.

Bulgaria
Tsar Ferdinand I
, regent of Bulgaria, initially declared his country's neutrality in World War I. Subsequent to the initial German victories, the Tsar joined the Central Powers in October 1915. Forced to abdicate at the end of the war, Tsar Ferdinand I spent the rest of his days in Germany.

France
In 1914, the leadership of France rested with President Raymond Poincare
, and Prime Minister Rene Viviani

Russia
Tsar Nicholas II
led Russia through World War II and was the last Russian emperor.

Serbia
Crown Prince Alexander
oversaw all offices and acted as the supreme commander of the Serbian army in 1914, due to the poor health of the regent King Peter I

United States of America
At the outbreak of World War I, President Woodrow Wilson
declared U.S. neutrality, and called for the country to be neutral in both thought and action. In the 1916 presidential elections, his campaign slogan “He kept us out of war” ensured that President Wilson was re-elected for a second term. The United States could not keep out of war for long, though. America’s thought and action tipped in favor of the Allies and Wilson’s Fourteen Points became the major agenda. The League of Nations was the brainchild of President Wilson.

World War 1 Heroes

Heroes of First World War  

 

    

 



Amidst the slaughter of the First World War, countless people displayed acts of great courage and bravery. Many of these actions were lost in the turmoil of the trenches. These people stand as a representation of the human spirit in the most testing of circumstances

Nurse Edith Cavell. Edith Cavell was working as a nurse in Brussels, Belgium, when the Germans invaded and occupied in 1914. With the help of others, she aided many British servicemen to safety. For helping British servicemen to escape she was executed by the German occupying army. Before her execution, amongst her last recorded words were. 'Patriotism is not enough, I must have no hatred or bitterness to anyone." - Nurse Edith Cavell
Wilfred Owen. Wilfred Owen was decorated with the military cross for bravery in action. However, he is best remembered as one of the greatest war poets. His poems poignantly reflected the paradox between hope and reality of the war.

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,

- From Dulce et Decorum Est, Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Owen was killed by a bullet to the head, shortly before the armistice in November 1918.

Baron Manfred Von Richtofen. Widely known as the 'Red Baron' he was the top flying ace of the war, with over 80 credited kills. He became a great hero in his native Germany and was well known on the Allied side. Amongst airmen, there was a mutual respect and a certain code of honor was kept to. He died in April 1918, towards the end of the war.

TE Lawrence of Arabia .TE Lawrence was a British officer posted to the Middle East. Against great odds, he raised an Arab revolt against the Turkish army. With a small cache of arms, they harried the Turks; and in one of the most daring attacks of the war, took a small Arab army through the desert to surprise the Turks at Aqaba. Lawrence displayed great love for both Britain and his Arab allies who looked to him as a natural leader.

Woodrow Wilson. Perhaps the most idealistic person of the war. Wilson strived to keep America neutral, as he had a deep dislike for war. When Germany began unrestricted submarine warfare and rumors of a German alliance with Mexico began, Wilson reluctantly took his country into war. Perhaps his biggest contribution was in trying to shape the peace. His 14 points sought to create a peace based on common principles of justice. He was also a proponent of a new association - The League of Nations, which he hoped would prevent future wars.

Siegfried Sassoon. A great war poet and fearless soldier. He was known for his reckless courage in the face of action. But, grew increasingly disenchanted with the horrors of trench warfare. He wrote a letter to the Times, criticising the conduct of the war. Coming from a celebrated poet and military hero, this was quite a shock.

David Lloyd George . In 1916, David Lloyd George took over from Asquith as Prime Minister of Great Britain. There was concerns that Asquith was not up to the task of being a war leader. With great enthusiasm and energy, Lloyd George reorganised British industry and put the country on a path to total war. He also played a pivotal role in persuading the Navy to adopt the convoy system. This convoy system was crucial in protecting Allied shipping against the devastating losses of the German U-Boat campaigns.

Marshall Petain. Petain was the hero of Verdun. In the bitter fighting of 1916, there was a real danger the Germans would break through at the fortress of Verdun. However, Petain rallied the embittered French army in a last ditch defence, which ultimately held out. In 1917, the exhausted French army mutinied, fed up with a series of defeats and difficult conditions. Petain was made commander of the army and succeeded in restoring the morale and overcoming the mutiny.

Ataturk. The Turkish general who held off the allied attack at Gallipoli. If the Allies had broken through, Istanbul could easily have fallen. Turks fought with great spirit, and there existed a mutual respect amongst the competing armies - despite the dreadful scale of the slaughter.

John J. Pershing. Commander in Chief of the American army in France. Though criticised for being slow to release American troops to the war, he later achieved success in the final Allied advance of the war. Like Woodrow Wilson, was highly critical of the Treaty of Versailles.

World War I casualties

 

No-one would have dared to predict the casualties of World War I. When World War I was declared there were street celebrations in most of Europe's capital cities. No-one even envisaged trench warfare in August 1914 let alone the appalling casualties that occurred over 4 years of fighting. In August 1914, Ypres remained a fine example of a medieval city. By 1918, it lay in ruins and the surrounding land had witnessed death by the tens of thousands. The Somme and Verdun witnessed appalling slaughter. No-one could have predicted the horrifying consequences of modern weaponry being used together with out-of-date tactics. The grim figures 'speak' for themselves.

The total number of casualties in World War I, both military and civilian, was about 37 million: 16 million deaths and 21 million wounded. The total number of deaths includes 9.7 million military personnel and about 6.8 million civilians. The Entente Powers (also known as the Allies) lost about 5.7 million soldiers while the Central Powers lost about 4 million.
Unlike most (if not all) conflicts that took place in the 19th century and before, the majority of military deaths in World War I were caused by combat as opposed to disease. Improvements in medicine as well as the increased lethality of military weaponry were both factors in this development. Nevertheless, disease (including the Spanish flu) still caused a significant proportion of military deaths for all belligerents.

Weapons of World War I

Main weapons of World War I

 

 

The bayonet was a comparatively simple weapon: a bracketed dagger attached to the end of a rifle barrel. Its primary function was to turn the rifle into a thrusting weapon, so its owner could attack the enemy without drawing too close. Bayonet charges were designed for psychological impact: men were trained to advance in rows, with faces contorted, lungs blaring and bayonets thrusting. Small arms and machine guns made these charges largely ineffective, but they were effective propaganda. When not employed as weapons, bayonets were detached and used as all-purpose tools, used for anything from digging to opening canned food.

The rifle was standard issue for infantrymen from each country: it was relatively cheap to produce, reliable, accurate and easy to carry. British soldiers were issued with the Lee-Enfield 303, while most Germans received a 7.92mm Mauser. Both were known for their durability and long range (both could fire accurately at around 500 metres, while the Enfield could potentially kill a man two kilometres away). But this long range was largely wasted on the Western Front, where distances between trenches could be as low as 40 metres. Rifle cleaning, maintenance and drilling occupied a good deal of an infantry soldier’s daily routine.

In World War I, pistols or revolvers were issued mainly to officers. Enlisted soldiers only received pistols if they were required in specialist duties, such as military police work or in tank crews, where rifles would be too unwieldy. The most famous pistol of the war was the German-made Luger, with its distinctive shape, narrow barrel and seven-shot magazine. British officers were issued with the Webley Mark IV, a reliable if somewhat ‘clunky’ weapon. The Webley could reportedly fire even when caked with mud – but it was also heavy and difficult to fire accurately. For this reason many British officers resorted to using captured Lugers. Pistols were not usually a significant weapon, though they were sometimes important as concealed weapons, or for close combat in the trenches

 The image of infantrymen charging pointlessly into machine-gun fire is a common motif of the war. There were fewer machine-guns deployed in the war than is commonly thought – but where used, they often proved deadly. At the outbreak of war Germany had the upper-hand in both the quality and quantity of machine-guns. The German army had more than 10,000 units in 1914, while the British and French had fewer than 1,000 each. Machine-guns of the time were capable of firing up to 500 rounds per minute – but they were cumbersome, very heavy (often more than 50 kilograms) and required at least three well-trained men to set up and operate effectively. Their rapid rate of fire also caused machine-guns to quickly overheat, requiring elaborate water and air-based cooling systems to prevent them from jamming or exploding.

Grenades are small bombs, thrown by hand or launched from a rifle
attachment, which are detonated on impact or by a timer. Germany, as it did for other small arms, led the way in grenade development. Early British models like the Mark I (a cylindrical device attached to a long stick) were awkward to use and prone to accidental detonation. These were superseded by the pineapple-shaped Mills bomb, with its safety pin and firing lever. Mills bombs were produced with four and seven second fuses. Allied soldiers were trained to hurl Mills bombs over-arm – in fact the best cricket players were often co-opted as grenade specialists.

Essentially a 1-2 man small-calibre artillery piece, mortars launched grenades or small bombs short distances. Since most focus had been on long-range artillery, mortars had fallen out of favour (in 1914 Germany had just 150 mortars, Britain barely any). But the development of trench warfare created an important use for mortars: they could be fired from the safety of a trench, lobbing explosives into enemy trenches from on high. Mortars were often used to target machine-gun nests, sniper positions or smaller defensive positions. They made a distinctive ‘whoomp’ sound when launched, which was often a signal to take cover.

 Tanks were another of World War I’s legacies to modern warfare. These large armoured carriers, impervious to rifle and machine-gun fire, were initially called ‘landships’. When the first prototypes were being developed, the British military’s cover story was that they were building ‘mobile water tanks’, hence the name. The first British tank, the Mark I, was rushed into battle at the Somme and proved susceptible to breakdown and immobility. But designers and operators soon learned from these problems, and by late 1917 the tank was proving a most useful offensive weapon – though none of them could move faster than just a few kilometres per hour.

Mines were large bombs or explosive charges, planted underground and detonated remotely or by the impact of soldiers’ feet. Navies also used sea mines, which floated on the ocean and exploded on contact with ships. The relatively immobile warfare of the Western Front meant there was little use for anti-personnel mines – however trench soldiers often dug tunnels to plant huge mines under enemy trenches and positions. One such attack occurred at Hill 60 during the Battle of Messines (June 1917) where Australian tunnelling specialists detonated 450,000 kilograms of underground explosives, killing thousands of German troops.

Barbed wire and caltrops (single iron spikes scattered on the ground) were used extensively in ‘no man’s land’ to stop enemy advances on one’s own trench. Barbed wire was laid as screens or ‘aprons’, installed by wiring parties who often worked at night. Attacking infantry often found large barbed wire screens impossible to penetrate; many died slow lingering deaths entangled in the wire. The positioning of wire often had strategic purpose: it could keep the enemy out of grenade range from the trench, or funnel them toward machine-gun positions. More than one million kilometres of barbed wire was used on the Western Front.

Flame-throwers, pioneered by the Germans but not widely used, were terrifying weapons. Usually wielded by an individual soldier sporting a backpack or tank, flame-throwers used pressurised gas to spurt burning oil or gasoline up to 40 metres. Their chief use was as a trench-clearing weapon: the burning fuel filled trenches, landing on both equipment and people and forcing them to withdraw. But the comparatively short range of flame-throwers required their carriers to be within close proximity of the enemy, where they were easy pickings for a competent rifleman. The British experimented with a larger fixed-position flame-thrower, using it to clear frontline trenches at the Somme.

Torpedos are self-propelled missiles that can be launched from submarines or ships, or dropped into the sea from the undercarriage of planes. The first examples, produced in the 1870s, ran on compressed air and were slow and inaccurate. The German navy pioneered the diesel-powered motorised torpedo, and by 1914 its torpedos could travel at up to 75 kilometres per hour over a range of several miles. This gave German U-boats a deadly advantage over Allied ships, particularly lightly-armed naval vessels and unarmed civilian shipping. The British made rapid advances in torpedoes and sank at least 18 German U-boats with them.

 

World War 1 Part 2

 Part 2

Gallipoli Campaign (1915-16)&Battles of the Isonzo (1915-17)

With World War I having effectively settled into a stalemate in Europe, the Allies attempted to score a victory against the Ottoman Empire, which had entered the conflict on the side of the Central Powers in late 1914. After a failed attack on the Dardanelles (the strait linking the Sea of Marmara with the Aegean Sea), Allied forces led by Britain launched a large-scale land invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula in April 1915. The invasion also proved a dismal failure, and in January 1916 Allied forces were forced to stage a full retreat from the shores of the peninsula, after suffering 250,000 casualties.

British-led forces also combated the Turks in Egypt and Mesopotamia, while in northern Italy Austrian and Italian troops faced off in a series of 12 battles along the Isonzo River, located at the border between the two nations. The First Battle of the Isonzo took place in the late spring of 1915, soon after Italy's entrance into the war on the Allied side; in the Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo, or the Battle of Caporetto (October 1917), German reinforcements helped Austria-Hungary win a decisive victory. After Caporetto, Italy's allies jumped in to offer increased assistance. British and French--and later American--troops arrived in the region, and the Allies began to take back the initiative on the Italian Front.

World War I at Sea (1914-17)

After the Battle of Dogger Bank in January 1915, the German navy chose not to confront Britain's mighty Royal Navy in a major battle for more than a year, preferring to rest the bulk of its strategy at sea on its lethal U-boat submarines. The biggest naval engagement of World War I, the Battle of Jutland (May 1916) left British naval superiority on the North Sea intact, and Germany would make no further attempts to break the Allied naval blockade for the remainder of the war.

It was Germany's policy of unchecked submarine aggression against shipping interests headed to Great Britain that helped bring the United State into World War I in 1917. Widespread protest over the sinking by U-boat of the British ocean liner Lusitania in May 1915 helped turn the tide of American public opinion steadfastly against Germany, and in February 1917 Congress passed a $250 million arms appropriations bill intended to make the United States ready for war. Germany sunk four more U.S. merchant ships the following month and on April 2 President Woodrow Wilson appeared before Congress and called for a declaration of war against Germany.

Toward an Armistice (1917-18)

With Germany able to build up its strength on the Western Front after the armistice with Russia, Allied troops struggled to hold off another German offensive until promised reinforcements from the United States were able to arrive. On July 15, 1918, German troops under Erich von Ludendorff launched what would become the last German offensive of the war, attacking French forces (joined by 85,000 American troops as well as some of the British Expeditionary Force) in the Second Battle of the Marne. Thanks in part to the strategic leadership of the French commander-in-chief, Philippe Petain, the Allies put back the German offensive, and launched their own counteroffensive just three days later. After suffering massive casualties, Ludendorff was forced to call off a planned German offensive further north, in the Flanders region stretching between France and Belgium, which he had envisioned as Germany's best hope of victory.

The Second Battle of the Marne turned the tide of war decisively towards the Allies, who were able to regain much of France and Belgium in the months that followed. By the fall of 1918, the Central Powers were unraveling on all fronts. Despite the Turkish victory at Gallipoli, later defeats by invading forces and an Arab revolt had combined to destroy the Ottoman economy and devastate its land, and the Turks signed a treaty with the Allies in late October 1918. Austria-Hungary, dissolving from within due to growing nationalist movements among its diverse population, reached an armistice on November 4. Facing dwindling resources on the battlefield, discontent on the home front and the surrender of its allies, Germany was finally forced to seek an armistice on November 11, 1918, ending World War I.

World War I's Legacy

World War I took the life of more than 9 million soldiers; 21 million more were wounded. Civilian casualties caused indirectly by the war numbered close to 10 million. The two nations most affected were Germany and France, each of which sent some 80 percent of their male populations between the ages of 15 and 49 into battle. The war also marked the fall of four imperial dynasties--Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia and Turkey.

At the peace conference in Paris in 1919, Allied leaders would state their desire to build a post-war world that would safeguard itself against future conflicts of such devastating scale. The Versailles Treaty, signed on June 28, 1919, would not achieve this objective. Saddled with war guilt and heavy reparations and denied entrance into the League of Nations, Germany felt tricked into signing the treaty, having believed any peace would be a "peace without victory" as put forward by Wilson in his famous Fourteen Points speech of January 1918. As the years passed, hatred of the Versailles treaty and its authors settled into a smoldering resentment in Germany that would, two decades later, be counted among the causes of World War II

World War 1

World War I and why?

In late June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo, Bosnia. An escalation of threats and mobilization orders followed the incident, leading by mid-August to the outbreak of World War I, which pitted Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire (the so-called Central Powers) against Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy and Japan (the Allied Powers). The Allies were joined after 1917 by the United States. The four years of the Great War--as it was then known--saw unprecedented levels of carnage and destruction, thanks to grueling trench warfare and the introduction of modern weaponry such as machine guns, tanks and chemical weapons. By the time World War I ended in the defeat of the Central Powers in November 1918, more than 9 million soldiers had been killed and 21 million more wounded. The Treaty of Versailles, signed in 1919, determined post-war borders from Europe to the Middle East, established the League of Nations as an international peace organization and punished Germany for its aggression with reparations and the loss of territory. Tragically, the instability caused by World War I would help make possible the rise of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and would, only two decades later, lead to a second devastating international conflict.

World War I Begins (1914)

Though tensions had been brewing in Europe--and especially in the troubled Balkan region--for years before conflict actually broke out, the spark that ignited World War I was struck in Sarajevo, Bosnia, where Archduke Franz Ferdinand, nephew of Emperor Franz Josef and heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was shot to death along with his wife by the Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip on June 28, 1914. The assassination of Franz Ferdinand and Sophie set off a rapid chain of events: Austria-Hungary, like many in countries around the world, blamed the Serbian government for the attack and hoped to use the incident as justification for settling the question of Slavic nationalism once and for all. As Russia supported Serbia, Austria-Hungary waited to declare war until its leaders received assurances from German leader Kaiser Wilhelm II that Germany would support their cause in the event of a Russian intervention, which would likely involve Russia's ally, France, and possibly Great Britain as well.

On July 5, Kaiser Wilhelm secretly pledged his support, giving Austria-Hungary a so-called carte blanche or "blank check" assurance of Germany's backing in the case of war. The Dual Monarchy then sent an ultimatum to Serbia, with such harsh terms as to make it almost impossible to accept. Convinced that Vienna was readying for war, the Serbian government ordered the Serbian army to mobilize, and appealed to Russia for assistance. On July 28, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, and the tenuous peace between Europe's great powers collapsed. Within a week, Russia, Belgium, France, Great Britain and Serbia had lined up against Austria-Hungary and Germany, and World War I had begun

World War I's Western Front (1914-17)

According to an aggressive military strategy known as the Schlieffen Plan (named for its mastermind, German Field Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen), Germany began fighting World War I on two fronts, invading France through neutral Belgium in the west and confronting mighty Russia in the east. On August 4, 1914, German troops under Erich Ludendorff crossed the border into Belgium, in violation of that country's neutrality. In the first battle of World War I, the Germans assaulted the heavily fortified city of Liege, using the most powerful weapons in their arsenal--enormous siege cannons--to capture the city by August 15. Leaving death and destruction in their wake, including the shooting of civilians and the deliberate execution of Belgian priest, whom they accused of inciting civilian resistance, the Germans advanced through Belgium towards France.

In the First Battle of the Marne, fought from September 6-9, 1914, French and British forces confronted the invading Germany army, which had by then penetrated deep into northeastern France, within 30 miles of Paris. Under the French commander Joseph Joffre, the Allied troops checked the German advance and mounted a successful counterattack, driving the Germans back to north of the Aisne River. The defeat meant the end of German plans for a quick victory in France. Both sides dug into trenches, and began the bloody war of attrition that would characterize the next three years on World War I’s Western Front. Particularly long and costly battles in this campaign were fought at Verdun (February-December 1916) and the Somme (July-November 1916); German and French troops suffered close to a million casualties in the Battle of Verdun alone.

World War I's Eastern Front and Revolution in Russia

 (1914-17)

On the Eastern Front of World War I, Russian forces invaded East Prussia and German Poland, but were stopped short by German and Austrian forces at the Battle of Tannenberg in late August 1914. Despite that victory, the Red Army assault had forced Germany to move two corps from the Western Front to the Eastern, contributing to the German loss in the Battle of the Marne. Combined with the fierce Allied resistance in France, the ability of Russia's huge war machine to mobilize relatively quickly in the east ensured a longer, more grueling conflict instead of the quick victory Germany had hoped to win with the Schlieffen Plan.

Over the next two years, the Russian army mounted several offensives on the Eastern Front but were unable to break through German lines. Defeat on the battlefield fed the growing discontent among the bulk of Russia's population, especially the poverty-stricken workers and peasants, and its hostility towards the imperial regime. This discontent culminated in the Russian Revolusion of 1917, spearheaded by Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks. One of Lenin's first actions as leader was to call a halt to Russian participation in World War I. Russia reached an armistice with the Central Powers in early December 1917, freeing German troops to face the other Allies on the Western Front.