Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire entered the First World War on the side of the Central Powers in November 1914. The real decision to take this step was not made by the cabinet, but by an inner circle of Young Turk politicians on October 25. Two days later, on the orders of minister of war Enver Pasha, a Turkish naval force under the command of the German Admiral Souchon attacked the Russian Black Sea Fleet in its bases. The Turks later sought to justify this unprovoked attack by claiming that th…

Montenegro The smallest of the Balkan states, Montenegro was strategically defined by its borders with Austria-Hungary and Serbia. To the south the kingdom bordered Albania, from which it had won territory populated by Albanians during the Second Balkan War. Since the Montenegrin populace itself was ethnically mainly Serbian, during the July Crisis of 1914 their support for their Serbian neighbors arose. The land had been ruled since 1860 by Nikola Petrović I, who had crowned himself king in 1910…

Norway Constitutional monarchy under Regent Haakon VII (r. 1905–1957). Norway’s attitude to the World War is only understandable in view of the fact that Norway had only achieved independence from Sweden in 1905, and that Great Britain was Norway’s most important guarantor nation. These security policy considerations, the mainstay of Norway’s foreign policy, were strengthened by a corresponding trade policy orientation. The war having begun, Norway followed Sweden’s lead on August 8, 1914, by iss…

Marne River in France. Two battles of far-reaching significance in the First World War occurred on the Marne. In September 1914, after a long period when the Allies were retreating, the French Army and the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) resumed the offensive and forced the German Army to retreat, bringing about the failure of the original German operational plan. France had not been defeated in six weeks, and a long war became a possibility. This was the First Battle of the Marne. In July 1918…

Zimmermann Telegram On January 16, 1917, after the German government’s decision to resume unrestricted submarine warfare (from February 1, 1917), Arthur Zimmermann, secretary of state at the German foreign ministry, sent a coded telegram to the German ambassador in Washington, Johann Heinrich Graf von Bernstorff, to be forwarded to the German ambassador in Mexico, Heinrich von Eckardt. The telegram instructed Eckardt to propose to the Mexican government an alliance against the United States. In re…

Remarque, Erich Maria ( June 22, 1898, Osnabrück – September 25, 1970, Locarno; born Erich Paul Remark), German writer. Remarque was born into a working-class family, and trained in Osnabrück as an elementary-school teacher; conscripted into the army in 1916, he underwent initial military training at Osnabrück and Celle. He served as a sapper on the Arras and Ypres fronts from June 1917. On July 31 at Houthulst in Flanders he was seriously wounded and spent the rest of the war in a military hospita…

Stinnes, Hugo (February 12, 1870, Mülheim an der Ruhr – April 10, 1924, Berlin), German industrial magnate. Stinnes was of the most influential industrialists of the Wilhelminian Empire and the Weimar Republic. The heir to a Ruhr family enterprise engaged in coal mining, trading, and shipping, the entrepreneur founded the Rhine Westphalia Electric Power Corporation in Essen in 1898, serving as chairman of the board after 1902, as well as the Deutsch-Luxemburgische Bergwerks- und Hütten-AG (German-Luxembourg Mining Inc.) in 1901. Stinnes advocated vociferously for the extens…

Moeyes, P. - Neutral Tones. The Netherlands and Switzerland and Their Interpretations of Neutrality 1914–1918 Keywords: First World War | Netherlands | Scandinavian countries | Swiss federal republic | Swiss neutrality | Vienna Congress ISFWWS-Keywords: Netherlands | Switzerland | International Relations during the War | Home fronts | Neutral States | Politics | Germany Abstract: Switzerland's neutrality was guaranteed by the leading nations at the Vienna Congress in 1815, Belgium was proclaimed a neutral nation after its separation from …

Luxemburg, Rosa (March 5, 1870, Zamość [Vistula Land, Russia; now Poland] – January 15, 1919, Berlin [assassinated]), German politician and journalist. Luxemburg originally came from Poland. She studied classical economics and gained her doctorate in Zurich. After becoming a German citizen in 1898, she joined the German Social Democratic Party and lectured at the Party’s central school. As a leading member of the Social Democratic left, after the outbreak of the First World War she vehemently oppo…

Deportations Forcible expulsions were practised for various reasons, and by all sides, during the First World War. Initially, they were a means of securing zones of conflict and occupation. During the German invasion in the West alone, at least 10,000 French citizens were deported to Germany and interned in barracks that stood vacant. The number of Belgians deported in 1914 is unknown, but may have amounted to several thousands. These first deportations, which included women and children, were in…

Japan Japan rose to become a Great Power in East Asia during the two centuries preceding 1914. Although the Japanese Empire had become the object of Western imperialism during the late 19th century, they had resisted all attempts at colonization. After victories in both the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895 and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, Japan itself stepped into the imperialist arena in East Asia as the new colonial power. As Japan expanded its empire upon the Asian continent before 1914,…

Salonica (Thessalonika) Port in northern Greece. From October 1915 the base of the Entente’s so-called Army of the Orient. The multinational Entente campaign against Bulgaria was fought from the end of 1915 in inhospitable territory, and remained bogged down for long periods. In this theater of war the soldiers suffered most casualties from disease. The Entente forces finally achieved a sudden and decisive breakthrough in September 1918. After Bulgaria had received guarantees in respect of territorial gains in the Macedonian part of Serbia, its government signe…

Amersfoort, H. - Give Us Back Our Field Army! The Dutch Army Leadership and the Operational Planning during the Interwar Years Keywords: Dutch army leadership | Dutch field army | interwar years | operational planning ISFWWS-Keywords: Netherlands | Neutral States | Legacy | Germany | Military organisation of combat Abstract: The impasse in the Dutch defence policy that emerged in 1918 could only be broken by World War II and in the period following it. This conclusion makes the interwar years a fascinating and important period f…

Inflation An increase in the money supply and a rise of the monetary demand that is not matched by a corresponding amount of goods. Until long after the end of the war, people were accustomed to speak of “rising prices” instead of inflation or devaluation. In current research, the “age of inflation” denotes the period extending from the war to the beginning of the currency stabilization in November 1923. It also alludes to the economic, political, social, and cultural changes that resulted from the currency devaluation as well as to the ways of coming to terms with inflation. The causes of w…

Caritas Association In 1897 the various charitable services of the Catholic Church were gathered in the newly formed Caritas Association for Catholic Germany (since 1921: German Caritas Association). The principal purpose of the association was peacetime welfare work founded on Christian principles. During World War I the Caritas Association cared primarily for German prisoners of war and returning former prisoners. In cooperation with the Prussian War Ministry steps were taken to ensure that in the transit camps for returning prisoners…

Abbenhuis, Maartje M. - Neutral Borders, Neutral Waters, Neutral Skies: Protecting the Territorial Neutrality of the Netherlands in the Great War, 1914-1918 Keywords: Netherlands | Neutral States | International Relations during the War | Home fronts | Naval Warfare | Aviation | Germany | Belgium | Economy Boundaries and their Meanings in the History of the Netherlands Benjamin Kaplan, Marybeth Carlson and Laura Cruz , (2009) Publication Editor: Brill, The Netherlands, 2009 e-ISBN: 9789047429814 DOI:10.1163/ej.9789004176379.i-258.30 © 2009 Koninklijke Brill NV, L…

Liebknecht, Karl (August 13, 1871, Leipzig – January 15, 1919, Berlin [assassinated]), German politician. The son of Wilhelm Liebknecht, founder of the German Social Democratic Party ( Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands – SPD), Karl Liebknecht was a lawyer and a member of the SPD group in the Prussian lower house of Parliament, as well as later in the Reichstag. He also made a name as a writer of sociological and subversive literature. In 1907 Liebknecht was sentenced to 18 months in prison for antimilitary propaganda.…

Psychiatry The science that is concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of cerebral illnesses and functional brain disorders that primarily manifest themselves through psychological symptoms. Psychiatry constitutes a major aspect of the medico-military study and analysis of the effects of the World War on human beings. In 1916, the German psychiatrist Robert Gaupp (University of Tübingen) summarized the scientific-empirical value of the war for psychiatry in the following manner: “For psychiatr…

Second International International federation of national Socialist parties; founded in 1889 in succession to the First International (1864–1876), collapsed during the First World War. The attitude of the Second International to war was constantly debated at its congresses before the First World War. Although a resolution passed at the Stuttgart Congress in 1907 had called on the sections in the various countries to take countermeasures if war threatened, it had left the choice of means to the aff…

Albania Compared to other ethnic groups in the Balkan region the Albanians were relatively late to develop national aspirations of their own. Religious divisions within the population, the lack of a unified social stratum that would support a “modern” national movement, and the traditional, deeply fractured structure of Albanian society with its regional and clan affiliations delayed the creation of a politically organized movement of national rebirth ( Rilindja), which only emerged in the last quarter of the 19th century. When the peace negotiations after the R…