Armed Forces (German Empire) In July 1914 the Army of the German Empire numbered 761,000 men, organized in 25 army corps. An additional 79,000 men served in the navy, and 9,000 in the colonial protection force. Those mobilized at the beginning of the war numbered 3.820 million in all, 2.086 million of whom made up the field army, divided into 40 army corps. Thus began a development that, during the years that followed, led to the general, extended mobilization of the German nation’s human resources for war. Some 13 million men served in the forces of the German Reich during the war. These figure…

Bülow, Karl von (March 24, 1846, Berlin – August 31, 1921, Berlin), German field marshal. The son of a Prussian lieutenant colonel, he fought in the wars of 1866 and 1870–1871. A captain with the General Staff in 1877, he was given command of the 4th Foot Guards Regiment in 1894. In 1897 he was promoted to major general and appointed director of the Central Department at the Prussian War Ministry. In 1902 he became deputy chief of the General Staff. In 1903 he commanded IIIrd Army Corps, and while …

German Revolution With the German Revolution of 1918/1919, the German Empire became a German Republic. The deep roots of this upheaval lay in the war-weariness of the exhausted and malnourished civilian population and the overburdened soldiery. The German Revolution was more a collapse of the traditional order than a militant mass rebellion. In this, it resembled the Russian February Revolution of 1917 rather than the revolutions of 1848. The Russian October Revolution, with Lenin’s proclamation o…

Aerial Warfare A form of waging war in and from the air with airborne or ground-based weapons against war-critical targets and the air power of the enemy, and in direct or indirect support of land or naval forces. These forms and features of a war being fought in and from the air had been contemplated and partially put into practice in the years leading up to World War I, but the key concepts were laid down by the major powers based on their aerial operations between 1914 and 1918. In the highly-developed industrial nations, with th…

Eichhorn, Hermann von (February 13, 1848, Breslau [current Wrocław] – July 30, 1918, Kiev), German field marshal. Eichhorn attended military academy after participating in the wars of 1866 and 1870/1871, and joined the general staff in 1883. In 1904 he became commanding general of the XVIIIth Army Corps in Frankfurt am Main, and in 1912 moved to Saarbrücken as inspector-general of the Seventh Army inspectorate; here in 1913 he was promoted to colonel general ( Generaloberst). Eichhorn was to take over command of the Fifth Army in Metz in the event of mobilization, but,…

Geneva Convention The Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field of August 22, 1864, is one of the most important human rights agreements still in force. In place of the regulations once agreed upon as necessary for each new war, there was now a permanent treaty. Its inspiration can be traced back to the great number of wounded soldiers who died after battles owing to poor medical care during both the Crimean War of 1854–1856 and the Second Italian War…

Espley, Richard - “How Much of an ‘Experience’ Do We Want the Public to Receive?”: Trench Reconstructions and Popular Images of the Great War Keywords: 1990s memory culture | Britain | Distant Bridges | First World War | The Unknown Soldier ISFWWS-Keywords: Britain | Great Britain | Women and War | Literature | Legacy | Western Front | Soldiers and Combat | Culture | Society Abstract: An approach to addressing the shifts and changes in 1990s memory culture with regard to the First World War becomes manifest in the construction of a narrative framewo…

Bernhardi, Friedrich Adam Julius von (November 22, 1849, Saint Petersburg – July 10, 1930, Kunnersdorf, Silesia), German general and military writer. After serving in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871 Bernhardi was posted to Greece and then Switzerland as military attaché. This was followed in 1898 by his appointment as chief of the War Historical Section I at the Great General Staff, where he laid the foundations for his career as a military writer. From 1909, Bernhardi dedicated his entire time in retirement to that activity. Central to his writings was the propagation of t…

Burgfrieden (Fortress Truce) On August 1, 1914, Emperor Wilhelm II spoke the following words from his balcony: “Should it now come to a battle, then there will be no more political parties. Today we are all German brothers.” These words mark the beginning of the propagated state of peace within German society of which the term Burgfrieden (“fortress truce”) became constitutive. Wilhelm repeated his message, in slightly altered form, when he opened the Reichstag on August 4: “I no longer recognize any parties, I recognize only Germans.” Wilhelm thus m…

D’Annunzio, Gabriele (March 12, 1863, Pescara – March 1, 1938, Cargnacco [Lake Garda]; from 1924 Prince of Montenevoso), Italian writer. The chief correspondent of the newspaper Corriere della Sera was a significant figure in public life in Italy. He was celebrated by his supporters in May 1915 as the most important exponent of interventionist “spectacle politics” when, on several occasions, he delivered exhortations for war at sites of Italian “national memory,” among them the Capitol in Rome. His speeches at these events…

Kitchener, Horatio Herbert (June 24, 1850, Crotter House near Listowel [County Kerry, Ireland] – June 5, 1916, off the Orkney Islands; from 1914 the First Earl Kitchener of Khartoum and of Broome), British field marshal (minister of war). Kitchener’s early military career took him predominantly to the Middle East, where in 1892 he became Sirdar (commander in chief ) of the Egyptian Army. In this function he conquered the Sudan, and in 1898 led the successful military expedition to Khartoum (Battle of Omdurman). This brought Kitchener the status of …

Military Losses (Casualties) There is little agreement in the literature as to the casualties sustained by the states that took part in the First World War. Figures vary between about 6 and about 13 million. A principle reason for the different estimates lies in the fact that definitions of the term “casualties” differ greatly. In the narrow military terminology of the time and in the specialized military literature, “casualties” frequently included all those soldiers who were no longer available t…

Millerand, Alexandre Etienne (February 10, 1859, Paris – April 6, 1943, Versailles), French politician. For more than 40 years, Millerand had an undisputed place among the leading figures of the French Third Republic. He came to national attention at the beginning of the 1890s as leader of the reform wing of the Socialist Party. In 1899, at the peak of the Dreyfus Affair, he entered the gouvernement de défense républicaine (Government for the Defense of the Republic) of Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau. As minister of commerce, Millerand then quickly became alienated from…

Newspapers The print medium that offers “the most recent topical events in quickest regular succession to the widest public” (Emil Dovifat). Newspapers became a mass product as society became industrialized. It was only after the First World War that they had to contend with significant competition from any other medium, and then in particular from the radio. Some 4,200 newspapers existed in Germany before 1914, and their numbers decreased during the war by just one thousand. The medium was soon …

North Africa Geographical area stretching from the Atlantic coast of present-day Morocco in the west to the Suez Canal and the Red Sea in the east. The territories in question experienced various phases of political and military subjugation by the European colonial powers before the outbreak of the First World War. The North African territories were subject to differing external and internal political arrangements, and were then administered under direct and indirect forms of rule. France claimed formal sovereignty in Al…

Maurras, Charles (March 20, 1868, Martigues [Département Bouches-du-Rhône] – November 16, 1952, Tours), French politician. Maurras is considered one of the most influential theorists and instigators of French conservatism in the first half of the 20th century. His influence extended far beyond the neo-royalist organization Action française, of which he was the leader for over 40 years, and also far beyond the newspaper that bore the same name. The appeal of Maurras’ ideas lay in their highly original manner of combining royalist and nationa…

Switzerland Switzerland experienced the First World War as a small state in an exposed, central geographical position. The Swiss government responded to the tense European situation by proclaiming general mobilization on August 1, 1914, and three days later the neutrality of the Swiss Confederation. The traditional pillars of the state’s self-conception and territorial defenses alike were perpetual neutrality and the readiness to defend that neutrality militarily by means of a militia army. Corps…

Tirpitz, Alfred von (March 19, 1849, Küstrin – March 6, 1930, Ebenhausen), German admiral and politician. Tirpitz joined the Prussian Navy in 1865 and the Imperial Navy in 1871. From 1877 to 1888 he organized the navy’s torpedo arm. In 1892 became chief of staff of the naval command, and in 1896 chief of the cruiser division in East Asia, where he prepared the capture of Jiaozhou (Kiautschou). In June 1897 Tirpitz became secretary of state of the Imperial Navy, and additionally in 1898 a Prussian minister of state. In 1900 he was ennobled. In his Memorandum IX of 1894 he had already given t…

War Service Act ( Kriegsleistungsgesetz) The German law of June 13, 1873, regarding war services subsequently amended by numerous implementing provisions that regulated “obligations of federal territories to all services” with respect to the German Reich. This law dealt with work service, billeting, and services and supplies in kind to the military by communes, individuals, and commercial companies, including the railways, which were obliged to convey men and materials at defined prices. These services were to be called upon only …

Instruction in Patriotic Values (German) The need for a methodical, propagandistic strengthening of the army’s and population’s will to hold out had thrust itself upon the German government since the aggravation of the military and economic situation in the year 1916. Under the impression of the Reichstag’s Peace Resolution, the military leadership decided to take the initiative. On July 29, 1917, the chief of the General Staff issued the Leitsätze für die Aufklärungsarbeit unter den Truppen ( Guidelines for dispensing instruction among the troops), which henceforth regulated …

Black Market (Contemporary German Schleichhandel) Term for illegal trading in rationed goods subject to a system of state control, by evading and infringing the statutes of wartime economies. The term black market, current in English since American Prohibition legislation of the 1920s, did not become established in German usage (as Schwarzmarkt) until the Second World War. Illegal markets in certain scarce goods arose in all the warring countries owing to national systems established at the beginning of the war to determine maximum prices ( Gesetze gegen Preistreiberei, Lois su…

Romania Having come into being in 1859 in the union of the two Danube principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, Romania endeavored to remain aloof from the great diplomatic crises and military upheavals that gripped the Balkans from the end of the 19th century. The country accordingly did not participate in the Balkan League comprising Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria, and Montenegro, which declared war on the Ottoman Empire in 1912. However, when Bulgaria’s success in the Balkan War of 1912 appeared to …

Kipling, Rudyard (December 30, 1865, Bombay – January 18, 1936, London), English writer. This extraordinarily successful author was for his whole life a prominent advocate of the ideals of British imperialism. Liberal critics in particular associate him with the Victorian and Edwardian culture of imperial “jingoism,” or belligerent nationalism. Kipling spent his early childhood years (until 1871) in Lahore, India, the son of a museum curator, before being educated in English boarding schools. The …

Below, Otto von (January 18, 1857, Danzig, modern Gdańsk – March 9, 1944, Besenhausen near Göttingen), German general. After attending secondary school, Below joined the Prussian army as a cadet in 1871. From 1884 to 1887 he attended the Prussian Military Academy and was subsequently appointed to the General Staff. He was given command of a battalion in 1897, a regiment in 1905, and a brigade in 1909. In 1912 he was promoted to lieutenant-general, with command of the 2nd Division at Insterburg (Chernyakhovsk) in East Prussia. At the start of the war Below commanded the Ist Reserve…

Yanushkevich, Nicolai Nikolaevich (May 13, 1868 – October 18, 1918, Tiflis [Tbilisi]), Russian general. Yanushkevich graduated from Mikhailovskaya Artillery Academy in 1888, and from the (Imperial Russian) General Staff Academy in 1896. In 1913–1914 he was the commander of the Imperial Nicholas Military Academy. After 1914 he was a general of infantry. Between March and July 1914, Yanushkevich was chief of the general staff. Then, after the outbreak of the First World War, he became chief of staff …

Jarboe, Andrew - Indian and African Soldiers in British, French and German Propaganda during the First World War ISFWWS-Keywords: Soldiers and Combat | Home fronts | The French and British Empires | Germany | Western Front | Africa | India | Politics | Culture | Visual Arts | Legacy World War I and Propaganda Troy R.E. Paddock , (2014) Publication Editor: Brill, The Netherlands, 2014 e-ISBN: 9789004264571 DOI: 10.1163/9789004264571_010 © 2014 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Jarboe, Andrew

Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria (March 18, 1869, Munich – August 2, 1955, Schloss Leutstetten, Bavaria), Crown Prince of Bavaria, German Field Marshal. In 1886 he entered the Bavarian infantry regiment as a lieutenant. He then studied in Munich and Berlin, under Count Hertling and Hans Delbrück among others. His further military training took place according to the aristocratic norms. In 1899 he was made colonel and in 1906, general of infantry and commander of the Ist Bavarian Army Corps. In 1913…

War Bonds A form of government borrowing for the financing of war expenditures. War bonds were issued by the belligerent states during the World War, thus allowing for the mobilization of significant parts of the social wealth. Both their attractive conditions – interest rates frequently better than in peacetime – as well as a massive propaganda drive, ensured that the first war bonds were able to raise a considerable amount of capital. The bondholders typically reflected a broad spectrum of the p…

Weygand, Maxime ( January 21, 1867, Brussels – January 28, 1965, Paris), French general. Weygand’s military career began when he joined the 4th Regiment of Dragoons at Chambéry in 1888. After 1900 he was stationed in Lunéville, where he proved to be one of the most capable officers. In 1902 Weygand became a training officer at the Military School of Saumur. By 1912 he had attained the rank of lieutenant colonel, and as an officer of very promising talent he joined the inner circle of commander in …

Futurism An avant-garde movement in Italian art with close affinities to cubism and constructivism as well as to the pre-1914 expressionist currents, combining a glorification of modern life with a radical rejection of tradition. The Italian futurists celebrated the outbreak of the World War in a similarly emphatic manner as the German expressionists. Where art strove to “make a tabula rasa of the past” (Giovanni Papini), where the traditional forms and achievements of civilization came to be challenged, where the muses and libraries were to be burned, t…

Renard, Virginie - Reaching Out to the Past: Memory in Contemporary British First World War Narratives Keywords: British fiction | collective memory | contemporary First World War narratives | Great War writers | Julian Barnes | official memory | Pat Barker ISFWWS-Keywords: Britain | Literature | Great Britain | Legacy | Western Front | Soldiers and Combat | Culture | Society Abstract: The First World War currently enjoys considerable literary status in Britain. The past decade has seen a flourishing of novels that powerfully re-imagine the Grea…

Merrheim, Alphonse (May 7, 1871, La Madeleine [Département Nord] – October 22, 1925 [unknown]), French trade union leader. Merrheim was born into a working class family in the industrial region of Northern France. In the 1890s he joined the Syndicalist movement aimed at the takeover of the means of production by autonomous trade unions, as advocated by the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT), in which he himself took on a leading role after the turn of the century. At the outbreak of the First World War, Merrheim differed from the leadership of the CGT under Léon Jouhaux in rejecting the U…

Poland At the beginning of the First World War, Poland existed only in the form of three territorial fragments: the largest and central portion belonged to the Russian Empire (Congress Poland/Russian Poland), the western and northwestern portion (Posen, West Prussia) to Prussia, and thus to the German Reich, and the southern (Galicia and Lodomeria) to Austria-Hungary. As the Central Powers and Russia bordered one another on Polish territory, the war in the East was predominantly fought there. Thr…

Sabotage (French: sabot, wooden shoe) This expression refers to actions committed with the intention of weakening the resolve of a state. Sabotage may be further categorized into acts perpetrated by members of foreign powers, such as agents and prisoners of war, versus acts by individuals against their own nation. In the World War, sabotage was mainly committed by foreign agents. As a rule intelligence agents were responsible for the planning and execution of sabotage acts. Included under the head…

Fayolle, Marie Émile (May 14, 1852, Le Puy – August 27, 1928, Paris), French general. Fayolle became commander of the French Sixth Army during the battle of the Somme in 1916, an engagement in which his new command particularly distinguished itself. At the end of 1917 he took command of five British and six French divisions earmarked to stabilize the Italian Front after the Italian defeat at Caporetto (Karfreit). His final great test during the war was as commander of the French military reserve br…

Balkan Wars Two wars in the Balkans region (1912–1913) that caused the Ottoman Empire to lose most of its European territories. During this period of conflict there were differences between the Great Powers concerning the consequences of the Balkan Wars. Against the backdrop of the Italo-Turkish war (1911–1912), the ethnically diverse and unstable Southeastern European States led by Serbia attempted to secure for themselves a share of the disintegrating Ottoman Empire. A direct consequence of the Turkish weakness wa…

Boelcke, Oswald (May 19, 1891, Giebichenstein, now part of Halle [Saale] – October 28, 1916, near Bapaume, Somme region), German fighter pilot. Initially an officer with a Prussian telegraph battalion, Boelcke became a military pilot in 1914 and was posted to a field flying unit set up for reconnaissance work on the Western Front. Beginning in 1915 he flew a single-seat fighter plane specifically designed to engage enemy aircraft, scoring a total of 40 victories. He developed standard offensive an…

Robertson, Sir William R. ( January 29, 1860, Welbourn [Lincolnshire] – February 12, 1933, London), British field marshal and chief of the General Staff. Robertson joined the army as a private in 1877, the first of many steps in his singular rise to field marshal. As a man of excellent intellect and initiative, Robertson was to become the first officer to have risen through the ranks and then passed the military academy. As a staff officer he would soon make his mark. He served as quartermaster gene…

Parliamentarization From 1871 the German Reich was a constitutional monarchy. The Kaiser appointed and dismissed the chancellor, who was the only member of the imperial government responsible to the Reichstag (the lower house of parliament), and without whose agreement the Kaiser could not take political action. The chancellor could not rule for long against a majority of the Reichstag, since the Reichstag had the right to adopt the budget. Even before 1914, constitutional reality had changed in …

Baker, Newton Diehl (December 3, 1871, Martinsburg West Virginia – December 25, 1937, Cleveland, Ohio), American politician (secretary of war). After earning his law degree Baker worked as a solicitor in Martinsburg and served as the mayor of Cleveland from 1912 to 1916. He is thought to be one of the architects of the progressive movement and played a major part in the nomination of Woodrow Wilson as the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party in 1912. Baker was highly regarded by President Wilson, who relied on him as a loyal follower and close advisor. In March…

Trade Unions In the German Empire in 1914 there were trade unions with social democratic (also called “free”), Christian Catholic, and liberal tendencies, divided according to occupations, and having respectively 2.53, 0.35 and 0.11 million members. These numbers sank rapidly in mid-August 1914 because wage strikes were forbidden, many workers were called up for military service, and unemployment dropped. By 1916 the number of members in the free trade unions had fallen to under a million, and tho…

Leopold, Prince of Bavaria (February 9, 1846, Munich – September 28, 1930, Munich), German and Bavarian field marshal. Leopold, the second son of the future prince regent Luitpold, joined the Bavarian Army in 1861 and took part in the 1866 and 1870–1871 campaigns. A lieutenant colonel in 1871, he was appointed commanding general of the Ist Bavarian Army Corps in 1887. From 1891 to 1913, Leopold served as inspector general of the Fourth Army District. During this period he attained the ranks of colon…

Espionage Clandestine gathering of information about the military opponent, usually through agents acting on behalf of intelligence services. In times of war espionage is regulated under international law. Articles 29 and 30 of the Annex to the Hague Convention Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land (1907) recognized espionage as a legitimate means of warfare and required that a spy caught in the act must not be punished without a proper trial. In World War I the intelligence services of all belligerent nations recruited agents for o…

Zimmerwald Movement An alliance of antiwar Socialists from the belligerent states, named after the town where it first met (September 5–8, 1915, at Zimmerwald near Bern). The aim of the movement, which came to symbolize socialist pacifism, was to revive international cooperation, which had been disrupted by the First World War. The first conference was initiated by the Swiss social democrat Robert Grimm, and those attending included Lenin and Zinoviev for the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party, and Adolph Hoffmann …

Brusilov, Aleksei Alekseevich (August 31, 1853, Tiflis, modern Tbilisi – March 17, 1926, Moscow), Russian general and commander in chief of the Russian Army. Brusilov was born into an ancient Russian noble family with a long military tradition. After completing his preparatory military training with the Imperial Corps of Pages he joined the Dragoons of the Tver Regiment in the Caucasus. He fought in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 and was decorated multiple times. At the élite Cavalry Officer Sc…

Wolff, Theodor (August 2, 1868, Berlin – September 23, 1943, Berlin), German journalist and politician. For more than 25 years, 1906–1933, the Berliner journalist was editor-in-chief of the Berliner Tageblatt, marked by his decidedly liberal orientation. Before 1914 Wolff already numbered among the most renowned representatives of his profession. Since 1894 he had been serving as the Tageblatt’s Paris correspondent, prominent as a knowledgeable critic of the Wilhelminian political scene. In foreign policy he advocated especially for a German-English r…

Albert I, King of the Belgians (April 8, 1875, Brussels – February 17, 1934, accident near Namur), King of the Belgians. Albert was the youngest son of Philippe Count of Flanders and Maria of Hohenzollern. In 1900 he married Elisabeth of Bavaria. They had three children: Leopold, Charles, and Marie-José. In 1909 he inherited the Belgian throne from his uncle Leopold II, and in stark contrast to the latter, immediately enjoyed enormous popularity. Instilled with a sense of duty, Albert also turned out to be a man of sober and level-headed conduct. In political terms Albert strove to end…