Union of Democratic Control British association of radical-liberal and socialist politicians and intellectuals who spoke out against imperialistic politics and annexationist war aims while advocating a democratically controlled foreign policy. The U.D.C. was founded on September 5, 1914, as a manifestation of open protest against British politics during the July Crisis by James Ramsay MacDonald, Norman Angell, Arthur Ponsonby, and Edmund Dene Morel. Other co-founders included, among others, Bertrand…

Narew Offensive In mid-June of 1915, the Russian High Command (Stavka) reviewed the depressing military situation at a conference in Cholm (Chełm). The conference was called in the aftermath of the defeat in Galicia and the Russian Army was now half a million men understrength. In the north, in Courland, the German Army Group Lauenstein (later: Army of the Neman) was now in a favorable position that enabled it to level threats both at Riga, Russia’s most important Baltic port and one of Russia’s m…

Baumeister, Martin - War Enacted: Popular Theater and Collective Identities in Berlin, 1914–1918 Keywords: Germany | Home fronts | Culture | Society | Visual Arts | Politics ‛Endangered Cities’ Marcus Funck and Roger Chickering, Publication Editor: Brill, The Netherlands, 2004 e-ISBN: 9789047409812 DOI: 10.1163/9789047409812.008 © 2004 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Baumeister, Martin

War Collections From the first weeks of the war, so-called “war collections” were set up in many of the countries at war. Most people were convinced that they were witnessing a revolutionary event. They accordingly attempted to collect as many things as possible from this “great time,” in order to be able to inform future generations about the Great War. Collectors included museums, libraries, archives, and also private individuals. In 1917 in Germany alone more than 200 such collections are known…

Suez Canal A ship canal in Egypt, running between Port Said in the north and Suez in the south. The Suez Canal links the Mediterranean Sea with the Indian Ocean, via the Gulf of Suez and the Red Sea. The canal was the target of Ottoman/German offensives launched from the Sinai Peninsula in 1915 and 1916, and from the beginning of 1917 the starting point for British operations against Palestine. It was of great strategic importance to the British Empire, as it was the shortest route between Britain and its colonies in East Africa, India, and Southeast Asia. After the Ottoman Empire’s entry in…

Churchill, Winston Leonard Spencer (November 30, 1874, Blenheim Palace – January 24, 1965, London), British politician. Churchill’s political development in the years leading up to World War I was significantly shaped by the events of the Second Moroccan Crisis of 1911, in the wake of which he was named first lord of the Admiralty. Churchill held several ministerial posts after switching from the Conservatives to the Liberal Party in 1904: from 1905 to 1908 he served as under-secretary of state for …

Erzberger, Matthias (September 20, 1875, Buttenhausen [now part of Münsingen] – August 26, 1921 [assassinated], near Bad Griesbach [now Bad Peterstal-Griesbach]), German politician. Erzberger was a Center Party member of the Reichstag from 1903. Influenced by South German Catholicism, before the First World War he favored fundamental reform of the state; he decidedly rejected cooperation with the Social Democrats. After the outbreak of war, Erzberger used his connections (to include the Roman Curi…

Hertling, Georg Graf von (August 31, 1843, Darmstadt – January 4, 1919, Ruhpolding), German politician (Reich chancellor). Born into an old-established Hessian Catholic civil service family, Hertling originally wanted to become a priest, but in 1867 he gained his doctorate in philosophy at Bonn. In 1875 he was elected to the Reichstag for the Center Party. As a member of the Reichstag until 1890, and again from 1896 to 1912, he was a committed advocate of the political implementation of the tenets o…

Troop Strength The initial numbers of soldiers mobilized for immediate wartime service. The peacetime strength of the individual armies before 1914 provided the foundation for troop strength in the war. A cadre of commanders for reserve units and an attachment of reservists for these troop units were included in their mobilization plans. This would make it possible to raise units to wartime strength once the mobilization was begun. The troop strengths planned in the event of war, and the troop str…

Hugenberg, Alfred (June 19, 1865, Hannover – March 12, 1951, Kükenbruch [now part of Extertal, Kreis Lippe]), a leading figure in German commerce and industry, and politician. After studying law and economics from 1894 to 1899 Hugenberg worked for the Prussian Settlement Commission in Posen, where he distinguished himself as a rigorous champion of the Germanization policy. In 1890 he was one of the founding members of the extreme right-wing Pan-German League ( Alldeutscher Verband), for whom he subsequently remained active, if frequently behind the scenes. In 1909 Hugenberg becam…

Bäumer, Gertrud (September 12, 1873, Hohenlimburg – March 25, 1954, Bethel, now part of Bielefeld), German literary author and women’s rights campaigner. Bäumer was a leading representative of the moderate wing within the bourgeois women’s movement, a distinguished liberal politician and commentator as well as an author of historical novels. From 1910 to 1919 she chaired the Federation of German Women’s Organizations (Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine, BDF), the umbrella organization of the bourgeois women’s movement. The trained teacher, who held a doctorate in German lit…

Pétain, Henri Philippe (April 24, 1856, Cauchy-à-la-Tour [Département Pas-de-Calais] – July 23, 1951, Port-Joinville [L’Île d’Yeu]), French marshal. Pétain graduated from the École Spéciale Militaire de Saint- Cyr (Specialized Military School of St. Cyr) in 1876. In 1914, he actually was a colonel facing the end of his career as a professional soldier. Moreover, his defensive orientation was not well suited to the then-prevailing offensive doctrine. Nevertheless he was swiftly promoted upon the outbreak of war. By August …

Tannenberg Location of a battle in East Prussia on August 26–30, 1914, which ended when the German Eighth Army enveloped and then destroyed the Russian Second Army. Since the Russian leadership had begun their offensive against East Prussia earlier than anticipated, at France’s insistence, the German war plan for the Eastern Front proved illusory. The Russian Northwest Forces under their Commander General Zhilinski planned a two-pronged advance: the first from north of Lötzen Fortress by the Njem…

Wilhelm II, King of Württemberg (Stuttgart February 25, 1848, Stuttgart – October 2, 1921, Bebenhausen Castle), King of Württemberg. Wilhelm acceded to the throne in 1891, and distinguished himself by his civilian, almost bourgeois way of life, and at the same time by the presidential style in which he discharged his office. He had little power to influence foreign and military policy, and that power was further diminished during the war. In 1914 he retired from the Württemberg army without regret. In the course of the war he sought to demonstrate his attachment to…

Jewish Census A census of Jews in the German field forces, rear area, and army of occupation, including those rejected as unfit for service and those whose service had been deferred, ordered by Prussian War Minister Wild von Hohenborn in October 1916, and implemented on November 1, 1916. Owing to missing military documents, the administrative prehistory of the Jewish Census is largely unknown. It occurred at a time when the military position for Germany was characterized by a high casualty rate, fading prospects of victory, and a dire supply …

Rear Area Originally the term for the area devoted to the storage of military supplies behind the frontline. The German term Etappe derives from the French étape. The zone located directly behind the rearward limits of the combat area, and serving, among other things, for the supply and transportation of men and materials. Owing to the increased supply needs of large-scale modern armies, the term came to refer to the zone linking the fighting troops with their home territory. Its forward limit was defined by the operatio…

Creeping Barrage Moving curtain of fire laid down by the artillery in front of the attacking infantry. It was designed to keep the defenders, especially the defending infantry, from taking defensive measures and mounting counterattacks. For this purpose, it was essential that the advancing infantry followed the creeping barrage as closely as possible and was prepared to take casualties from short artillery rounds. The creeping barrage was first used by the German Army on the Eastern Front in 1916 …

Tunnel Warfare Warfare by means of planting subterranean destructive charges. Following the onset of positional warfare, the belligerents soon turned to tunneling and mining along the stationary front lines, especially on the Western Front and in the Alps. A distinction must be made between offensive and defensive mining: offensive mining was conducted for the purpose of destroying key positions or entire sections of the enemy’s trenches immediately before a planned infantry attack. This was accom…

Roques, Pierre Auguste (December 20, 1856, Marseillan [département Hérault] – February 26, 1920, Saint-Cloud [near Paris]), French general (minister of war). Roques first made his reputation during his service in the French colonial army in the 1890s as General Gallieni closest subordinate in the pacification and development of Madagascar, where he was responsible for the creation of a technical infrastructure. General of a division and responsible in the war ministry for technical troops from 1909…

Chantilly Conference The second Interallied Conference in 1915, held in the French headquarters north of Paris. Ever since the beginning of the war, the Allies had fought without really attempting to coordinate their operations. This approach benefited the interests of the Central Powers, whose geographical position allowed them to reinforce their troops in precisely those sectors where it was needed. During the first two years of the war the general situation seemed rather favorable for the Central Powers, even though they were unable to achieve a decisive victory. The Allies were…

Chickering, Roger - Why are We still Interested in This Old War? Keywords: American Revolution | First World War | Second World War | War ISFWWS-Keywords: General | Legacy | Literature | Culture | Society Abstract: This chapter begins with an immodest proposition. This is that the foundation of the Historiale in Peronne was not the only reason why the year 1992 was significant for the historiography of the First World War. In March of the same year, the first in a series of conferences took place in Washington, DC on the history …

Lamszus, Wilhelm (July 13, 1881, Altona [now part of Hamburg] – January 18, 1965, Hamburg), German primary school teacher and writer. In 1912 he published a novel entitled Das Menschenschlachthaus ( The Human Slaughter-House), originally intended for young people. It is still considered one of the few pre-1914 treatments of a future war. It describes in an unheroic and disillusioning manner the scale and brutality of the forthcoming conflict. Lamszus completely dismantled all the hero clichés accepted at that time, creating an …

Brest-Litovsk, Treaty of The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk is the peace treaty signed on March 3, 1918, by Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, Bulgaria, and Soviet Russia. After the October Revolution, the fact that the Bolsheviks had included a call for an immediate end to the war in their October Manifesto introduced the prospect of concluding a separate peace with the Central Powers. Already on November 8, 1917, one day after the fall of the Provisional Government, the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets rejected Lenin’s Decree on Peace, his proposal for an immediate “peace witho…

Porter, Patrick - New Jerusalems: Sacrifice and Redemption in the War Experiences of English and German Military Chaplains Keywords: Religion | Culture | Legacy | Politics | Germany | Britain | Society | Home fronts ‛Warfare and Belligerence’ Pierre Purseigle, Publication Editor: Brill, The Netherlands, 2005 e-ISBN: 9789047407362 DOI: 10.1163/9789047407362.005 © 2005 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Porter, Patrick

Dmowski, Roman (August 9, 1864, Kamionek [near Warsaw] – January 2, 1939, Drozdowo [near Łomża]), Polish politician and commentator. As leader of the right-leaning National Democratic Party ( Narodowa Demokracja – ND) and member of the Russian Duma, Dmowski advocated a future Poland as a centralist-democratic national state, occupying large parts of the German Reich, and with close ties to a liberal-democratic Russia. He combined his commitment to the creation of a Polish state with a decidedly anti-German position (“Piasti…

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich (Real name V.I. Ulyanov; April 22, 1870, Simbirsk [from 1924 Ulyanovsk] – January 21, 1924, Gorki [near Moscow]), Russian revolutionary and politician. Lenin was born into an upper class family. A critical youthful influence was the conviction and execution in 1887 of his older brother Alexander, who had taken part in an assassination attempt against the Tsar. Lenin qualified to practice as a lawyer after studying law at the University of Kazan. In 1893 he moved to Saint Pete…

Fraternizing Spontaneous and unauthorized ending of fighting and leaving one’s own position with a view to making direct contact with enemy soldiers. Precise details of the extent of fraternizing are, of course, not available. The available sources, however, show clearly that the center of these events is to be found in those sectors of the Western Front in which German and British soldiers faced one another. Individual acts of camaraderie at Christmas, and informal truces, were also reported from German-French sectors and from the Eastern Front. The most spectacular case of frat…

Owen, Wilfred (March 18, 1893, Oswestry [Shropshire] – November 4, 1918, Landrecies [Département du Nord; killed]), British lyric poet. During the World War Owen served on the Western Front with the Second Manchesters. His experiences in positional warfare provided the material for forceful lyrics, which after his death counted among the most significant English-language testimonials of the antiwar movement. Owen had already travelled to France, where he worked as a language teacher. Then in 1915, he returned to England to enlist as a volunteer soldier.…

German East Africa Situated on the coast of the Indian Ocean, between Portuguese Mozambique to the south, British East Africa to the north, and the Belgian Congo to the west, German East Africa comprised the modern states of Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi. Declared a territory of the German Reich in 1885, with 7.5 million inhabitants the country was the most populous German colony, and at 995,000 km2 also the largest. Some 5,300 Europeans lived in the colony in 1914. The British government decided to capture German East Africa as early as August 1914. As with t…

Richthofen, Manfred Baron von (May 2, 1892, Breslau – April 21, 1918, Vaux-sur-Somme near Amiens [killed in action]), German fighter pilot. Richthofen joined a Prussian Ulan regiment in 1911 after graduating from the cadet corps. He undertook patrol duties in 1914 and after the cavalry was in part transferred to the infantry in 1915, signed up to the Imperial Air Service. He was initially an observer, then a reconnaissance and bomber pilot. Between 1916 and April 1918, when he was shot down at Vaux-…

Freikorps (Free Corps) Generally, the term Freikorps (literally free corps) denotes military formations manned by volunteers. More specifically it refers to those units which were formed in Germany between 1918 and 1921 with the aim of conducting counter-revolutionary operations and to protect Germany’s eastern border against Poland and Bolshevik Russia ( Grenzschutz Ost). When the German Army marched home in November 1918 it literally fell apart as it reached the homeland, with units simply disbanding themselves and going home. At the same time, …

Wartime Coalitions Before the World War, the European system of states had become strongly polarized. On the one side stood the Central Powers, namely the Dual Alliance of German Reich and Austria-Hungary that had been formed in 1879 as well as the (independently concluded) Triple Alliance of German Reich, Austria-Hungary, and Italy; however, the latter country declared itself neutral at the beginning of the war. On the other side stood the Entente Powers, among which France and Russia had been bound by a military alliance since 1893/1894, while France and Great Bri…

Argonne Forest Densely wooded plateau between the Champagne region and the Côtes Lorraines (Meuse Valley), extending some 12 km east to west, and about 50–60 km north to south. In World War I it was the theater of a tenacious small-scale war of attrition that was being fought on the edges of the larger decisive battles. During the German advance in late August and early September of 1914, neither the German Fifth (operating immediately to the west of Verdun) and Fourth Armies, nor the retreating F…

Netherlands On the eve of the World War, the Netherlands held the same neutral stand regarding international relations as it had for the preceding three-quarters of a century. The Netherlands thus stood apart from the international alliances. This decision rested as much upon the safeguarding of Netherlands’s economic and military-political interests, as it did upon considerations of civil rights and ethics. The deciding question, however, was whether the Great Powers would respect Netherlands’s …

Munitions Crisis Serious shortages of munitions experienced by all the warring powers between fall 1914 and spring 1915. Nations had failed to adequately mobilize their industries for war, or to stockpile raw materials needed for the war. Moreover, industrial manpower shortages were soon experienced owing to the growing personnel needs of the military. The result was a serious shortage of munitions supplies by fall 1914. The shortfall of munitions worsened for all armies until there was only enoug…

Headquarters Command centers for the supreme military, sometimes also political, leadership set up in the field for the duration of the war. Composition, location, and function of such a headquarters depended on the constitutional position of the supreme military command of each belligerent and the demands of modern mass and coalition warfare. – By far the most comprehensive headquarters at the outbreak of the war was the German “Great Headquarters.” Aside from the German Emperor as the nominal c…

Alsace-Lorraine As a Reichsland, part of the German Reich from 1871. The desire on the part of France to exact revenge for defeat in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870/1871, and reverse the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine by the newly founded German Reich under the terms of the Frankfurt Peace Treaty, has often been regarded, particularly by the Germans, as an important causal factor in respect of the origins of the First World War. In the light of recent research, however, this conception must now be seen as o…

Hitler, Adolf (April 20, 1889, Braunau am Inn, Austria – April 30, 1945, Berlin [suicide]), soldier, private first class, subsequently German politician (1933–1945 Reich chancellor). By Hitler’s own account, the First World War was for him “the most unforgettable and greatest period of my life on this earth” ( Mein Kampf, 1925). Even during the Second World War, he repeatedly reminded those around him of his time as a soldier from 1914 to 1918, “when nothing troubled me”; he had “passionately enjoyed being a soldier” ( Monologe im Führerhauptquartier, 1941). Living as an artist in Mu…

Haber, Fritz (December 9, 1868, Breslau – January 29, 1934, Basel), German chemist. Prior to the World War, Haber developed the scientific principles for the fixation of atmospheric nitrogen in the form of ammonia (NH3), which was then technically realized by Carl Bosch (Haber-Bosch process). However, ammonia was not only used as a base substance for the manufacturing of artificial nitrogenous fertilizers, but also for the production of explosives and was thus of crucial importance for the war economy. In 1911, Haber was appointed director of the newly founded Kaiser Wilhe…

George V, King of Great Britain and Ireland (June 3, 1865, London – January 20, 1936, Sandringham), king of Great Britain and Ireland (from 1910; from 1921 “of Northern Ireland”; from 1911 also “Emperor of India”). Grandson of Queen Victoria; originally third in succession to the throne. He received military training in the Royal Navy before succeeding his father Edward VII on the throne in 1910. After the outbreak of the First World War, George won great popularity with several visits to the front (on …

Wartime Enterprises The concept of wartime enterprises refers to mostly quasi-governmental societies or companies that operated in the warring countries and assumed regulatory functions in the context of the war economy. In Germany, wartime enterprises in the narrow sense refer particularly to those organizations created to control the procurement and distribution of raw materials; established as non-profit organizations and vested with governmental powers, they intervened in the economic cycle an…

Conscientious Objection The rejection of the legal obligation to fulfill one’s military duty in times of war. A distinction must be drawn between conscientious objection in the narrow sense and other ways of evading wartime military service. Conscientious objection, which was also an important motive for emigrating from Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, was traditionally practiced by a number of religious communities, for instance by the Quakers and Mennonites. In 1914, however, no country with a conscript army had made provis…

Beurier, Joëlle - Information, Censorship or Propaganda? The Illustrated French Press in the First World War Keywords: censorship | French soldier | Great War | photographic propaganda ISFWWS-Keywords: French society during the war | Western Front | Home fronts | Visual Arts | Literature | Culture | Experience of combat Abstract: This chapter examines different photograph collections in order to enhance understanding of photographic propaganda during the Great War. The photograph of a dead French soldier showed the silhouetted body of a zouave, a soldier from the French colo…

Medals and Military Decorations Externally visible decorations recognizing particular achievements and merits. Starting with absolutist France, in the 18th and 19th centuries orders were created in all states as signs of particular attachment to the ruling house, or to reward military achievements. Their design and distribution, and the manner of wearing them, were precisely laid down in laws, statues and regulations. As a rule, decorations were given in a number of classes, the highest of which were linked…

Delbrück, Hans (November 11, 1848, Bergen [Rügen] – July 14, 1929, Berlin), German historian and political commentator. Delbrück had become known before 1914 as an advocate both of Germany’s world role, and of internal and socio-political reform. Politically, the historian was identified with the Free Conservative Party. Appointed to Berlin University as successor to Heinrich von Treitschke in 1896, he achieved particular distinction with his four-volume History of Warfare in the Context of Political History 1900–1920 ( Geschichte der Kriegskunst im Rahmen der politische…

Gallieni, Joseph-Simon (April 24, 1849, Saint-Béat [Haute-Garonne] – May 27, 1916, Versailles), French general and politician. Gallieni already had a long and impressive military career behind him when the First World War began. After taking part in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, he soon became probably France’s most celebrated colonial soldier. He was appointed commander in chief in French Sudan in 1886. In 1896 he was employed in the pacification of Madagascar. Back in France, Brigadier G…

Grigorovich, Ivan Konstantinovich (February 7, 1853, Saint Petersburg – March 3, 1930, Menton, France), Russian admiral and minister of the navy. Grigorovich graduated from the Naval Academy in 1874, served in the war against Turkey 1877–1878, and was posted to London as naval attaché from 1896 to 1898. Having commanded the battleship Zarevich in 1903, he was the officer in charge of the port at Port Arthur during the war with Japan in 1904. Following service as chief of staff for the Black Sea Fleet (1905), he was appointed chief of the Baltic p…

Benedict XV (November 21, 1854, Genoa – January 22, 1922, Rome; formerly Giacomo della Chiesa), Pope. Giacomo della Chiesa was elected Pope following the death of Pius X in September of 1914. He took the name of Benedict in memory of the great legislator Benedict XIV. Even though the promulgation of the Codex Iuris Canonici in May 1917 was of considerable theological significance, Benedict made history as the “Pope of the Great War,” especially since he died only a few years after the war. His entire tenure was characterized by a keen awareness of …

Ferdinand I, Tsar of Bulgaria (February 26, 1861, Vienna – September 10, 1948, Coburg) Ferdinand, from the house of Sachsen-Coburg-Koháry, was elected Prince of Bulgaria against the bitter resistance of Russia, and to the discontent of Bismarck, in 1887. He became the tsar in the context of a national and constitutional crisis triggered by the abdication of Prince Alexander of Battenberg that was compelled by Russia in 1886. However, his influence, both internally and externally, was initially slight…

Liebau, Heike; Bromber, Katrin; Lange, Katharina; Hamzah, Dyala; Ahuja, Ravi - The World in World Wars Keywords: Politics | India | Africa | Culture | Middle East | East Africa | Western Front | Society | Experience of combat | The French and British Empires The World in World Wars Heike Liebau, Katrin Bromber , Katharina Lange , Dyala Hamzah and Ravi Ahuja , (2010) Publication Editor: Brill, The Netherlands, 2010 e-ISBN: 9789004188471 DOI: 10.1163/ej.9789004185456.i-618.5 © 2010 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands