World War I

World War I, also known as the Great War, was a major European and global conflict which lasted from 1914 to 1918. It saw the Central Powers, Germany and Austria-Hungary, later joined by the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria, fighting the Entente powers, led by Britain, France, and Russia, later joined by Italy, the United States, and many other countries. The war resulted in the defeat of the Central Powers, the fall of the Habsburg, Hohenzollern, and Romanov dynasties in Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia, and helped bring about the end of European world hegemony.

Origins

The origins of the war can be traced back to the unification of Germany in 1871. Germany's annexation of the French region of Alsace-Lorraine in that year, a result of France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, led to continuing French resentment against Germany. The German chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, made preventing France from finding an ally into the principal aim of his diplomacy, embarking on a complex policy of maintaining German friendship with both Austria-Hungary and Russia, while also exploiting French and British colonial rivalries.

Rivalries between Austria and Russia in the Balkans made this task difficult, however. The Three Emperor's League of 1873 faltered as a result of the Eastern Crisis of 1875-1878, and Bismarck signed a permanent military alliance with Austria-Hungary in 1879, which promised German aid to Austria-Hungary in resisting Russian aggression. This alliance was expanded in 1882 into the Triple Alliance between Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy, directed against the possibility of French aggression. Despite increasing Austro-Russian antagonism in the Balkans over the course o f the 1880s, Bismarck maintained good relations with Russia throughout his tenure, going so far as to sign the Reinsurance Treaty with Russia in 1887, which promised Russia German aid in the event of an Austro-Hungarian attack.

When Bismarck was dismissed by the ambitious new Emperor Wilhelm II in 1890, however, his successors abandoned his policy of maintaining alliances with both Russia and Austria-Hungary, and instead chose not to renew the Reinsurance Treaty. This led Russia into the arms of the French, and a Franco-Russian Alliance was finalized by 1894. Continental Europe was thus divided into two camps, the Triple Alliance between Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy on one side, and the Dual Alliance of Russia and France on the other.

Of the European great powers, only Britain remained aloof from the alliance system. The Germans, who saw the British as their natural allies, assumed that Britain's colonial rivalries with Russia and France would prevent the British from joining the opposing alliance, but hoped to attain a real alliance with Britain. When the British seemed uninterested in leaving their "Glorious Isolation," the Germans, influenced by the naval theories of the American Alfred Thayer Mahan, embarked on a campaign of naval building, which the Kaiser and his naval minister, Alfred von Tirpitz, hoped would help Germany achieve her "place in the sun" among the world powers, and force the British into an alliance through fear of German naval power. The German naval building campaign, however, was not able to meet its goals, and the British became increasingly alienated from the Germans, whom they increasingly saw as rivals and potential European hegemons. The British also became increasingly insecure in their position of avoiding permanent alliances, as the Boer War (1899-1902) saw nearly the entire western world arrayed against Britain's campaign of conquest against the Boer republics of South Africa. As a result, the British abandoned their policy of isolation, first signing an alliance with Japan in 1902 to safeguard British interests in East Asia against Germany and Russia, and then drawing closer to France. The Entente Cordiale of 1904, which dealt with outstanding colonial questions between France and Britain in North Africa, symbolized the Franco-British rapprochement.

The Germans, knowing that Russia, preoccupied with internal revolution and the disastrous Russo-Japanese War, provoked the First Moroccan Crisis in 1905 in an attempt to prove the Entente hollow and meaningless. Instead, the Crisis strengthened the Entente, as the British supported French ambitions in Morocco at the Congress of Algeciras in 1906. The Crisis instead served to demonstrate German isolation. The German position grew even worse the next year, with the Anglo-Russian Entente of 1907 settling outstanding conflicts of interest between Russia and Britain in Persia and Central Asia, and resulting in a general alignment of France, Britain, and Russia as the Triple Entente.