Conscription A state’s compulsory enlistment of its citizens for military service. Conscription in the modern sense arose during the French Revolution. The new state, founded on the will of the people, demanded military service from its citizens. This enabled the state to expand its armed forces enormously, and to intensify its military activities accordingly. European monarchies too had to resort to this means of raising an army, if they wished to assert themselves militarily against France. Once Napoleon…

Albion (Celtic: white-land) Earliest known name given to the island of Great Britain by Greek geographers of the 5th century BC, transmitted by the Roman poet Avianus. In Roman times the term was also associated with the white cliffs of Dover (Lat. albus = white). During the Middle Ages, “Albion” came to be used as a synonym for the Kingdom of England, and later the British Empire, most often in a negative connotation as “perfidious Albion.” This derogatory slogan has its origins in France, where it can be traced as far back as the 14th…

Mobilization The conversion of a nation’s military forces to a state of war, callled specifically “military mobilization,” and the adaptation of its government and industry to the demands of the war, known as “military mobilization.” Military mobilization for the World War had been planned in detail during peacetime. The preplanned procedures were intended to outfit military units with personnel, uniforms and equipment so as to bring them swiftly up to war strength. When the war began, frontier p…

Carol I, King of Romania (April 20, 1839, Sigmaringen – October 10, 1914, Peleş Castle near Sinaia), born Karl Eitel Friedrich Zephyrin of Hohenzollern, Prince of Romania (1866–1881), from 1881 King of Romania. After Alexandru Cuza, the first ruler of the Romanian state created from the united principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, was deposed in April 1866, the Romanian Parliament elected Carol, a member of the House of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, as the new head of state. Despite the initial skepticism of Austria in particul…

Klinkert, W. - Fall K. German Offensive Plans against the Netherlands 1916–1918 Keywords: army leadership | Dutch neutrality | Netherlands | Operationsentwurf Fall K ISFWWS-Keywords: Germany | Netherlands | International Relations during the War | Naval Warfare | Britain Abstract: This chapter is divided into the following parts: 1914, when the fortified positions take shape, 1915, when the tension rose, 1916, when the Operationsentwurf Fall K took form, 1917, when attack on the Netherlands was planned and 1918, which …

Verdun A French fortress that was continually expanded since the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/1871. With its 20 forts and 40 intermediate redoubts, Verdun was without any doubt the strongest defense work in France. The principal forts in the vicinity of Verdun included Douaumont, Vaux, Souville, and Tavannes. Verdun was considered to be practically impregnable. During the German advance of August 1914, the German Fifth Army (under Crown Prince Wilhelm of Prussia) operated in the sector before Verd…

Meteling, Wencke - German and French Regiments on the Western Front, 1914–1918 Keywords: First World War | French armies | German army | Western Front ISFWWS-Keywords: Western Front | French Army and its combattants | Germany | Military organisation of combat | Experience of combat | Published memoirs and biographies | Science, Technology, and Medicine | Society | Legacy Abstract: This chapter talks about how the fundamental changes in the German and French armies developed at regimental level during the First World War. It explores a central …

Liebau, Heike - Kaiser kī jay (Long Live the Kaiser): Perceptions of World War I and the Socio-Religious Movement Among the Oraons in Chota Nagpur 1914–1916 Keywords: India | Religion | Home fronts | Politics | The French and British Empires | Germany | Literature 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-618.59 © 2010 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Liebau, Heike

Hindenburg Program Economic and armaments program of the Supreme Army Command. Two days after taking over military leadership in Germany, on August 31, 1916, the Operations Branch of the Supreme Army Command (Hindenburg/Ludendorff ) presented the Prussian War Ministry with demands for the wholesale impressment of all economic resources for the war effort and a considerable expansion of armaments production. It was soon common parlance to speak of the “Hindenburg Program.” The armaments program was…

War Experience Experience as such had been discovered around the turn of the 19th to the 20th century. Authors such as Wilhelm Dilthey and Georg Simmel popularized the concept, which expressed a longing for wholeness and a need for totality. Within the process of experiencing, distinctions such as those between reflection and sensory perception or thought and action were believed to disappear. Simmel gave this notion a more emphatic note by comparing experience with adventure. Experience thus stoo…

January Strikes Between January 28 and February 2, 1918, there arose in Berlin and other industrial and economic centers (Kiel, Hamburg, and the Rhine-Westphalia industrial area) mass protests and strike actions, in which between 200,000 and 500,000 workers took part. In contrast with the 1917 strikes, which may be understood primarily as social protest, the January Strikes had to a great extent a direct political motive. In light of the Soviet government’s offer of peace, and the brutally extreme claims for annexation of the German S…

Benoît, Majerus - Controlling Urban Society during World War I: Cooperation between Belgian Authorities and the Forces of Military Occupation Keywords: Belgium | Germany | Western Front | Home fronts | Society | Economy ‛Endangered Cities’ Marcus Funck and Roger Chickering, Publication Editor: Brill, The Netherlands, 2004 e-ISBN: 9789047409812 DOI: 10.1163/9789047409812.005 © 2004 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Majerus, Benoît

Kramer, Alan - The First World War and German Memory Keywords: First World War | German memory | lightning warfare | Weimar Republic ISFWWS-Keywords: Germany | Legacy | Intellectuals and the War | Literature | Culture | Politics | Belgium Abstract: This chapter outlines the German memory of the First World War. It discusses collective memory, political culture and historical scholarship in the period 1918 to 1939, the Second World War, and since 1945. The memory of the war was increasingly a battleground in the final …

Brockdorff-Rantzau, Count Ulrich von (May 29, 1869, Schleswig – September, 8, 1928, Berlin), German diplomat. The first foreign minister of the Weimar Republic was descended from the ancient nobility of Holstein. After obtaining his doctorate in law Brockdorff-Rantzau chose to pursue a diplomatic career which took him from Brussels via Saint Petersburg to Vienna, where in 1901 he became embassy secretary, and the influential German ambassador Count Carl von Wedel was his mentor. It was also thanks t…

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…

War Toys The leisure activities of children changed during the First World War in conformity with national propaganda interests. Such pastimes had to adjust to the laws of the market as they applied to the youth culture in wartime. Children’s expectations (or the expectations of family circles) were to be met by the commercial production of toys, games, and children’s books. Long before the war of 1914, politics had found access to the nursery through the medium of toys in Europe. There was already a tradition of patriotic and military toys, and their pro…

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…

Balloons The early 19th century saw the first balloons employed for military purposes. The use of free balloons in the Franco-Prussian War attracted much attention. The balloons helped the beleaguered capital maintain communications with the surrounding countryside. After 1871 most European Powers created military airship detachments in particular to operate tethered balloons, as they offered a controllable observation platform at altitude. Interest in balloons declined with the emergence of diri…

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…

Nicolai, Walter (August 1, 1873, Braunschweig [Brunswick] – May 4, 1947, Moscow), German officer and leader of the Military Intelligence Service of the German Supreme Army Command. Nicolai joined the 2nd Hessian Infantry Regiment, No. 82 in 1893; in 1907, he was promoted to captain. As a major in 1912, he was entrusted with the directorship of Department IIIb, the Military Intelligence Bureau of the General Staff. In early August 1914, he was named chief of the section. The work of Department IIIb…

Schulenburg, Friedrich von der (November 21, 1865, Bobitz – May 20, 1939, St. Blasien), German general. After completing his secondary education Schulenburg took a law degree at Heidelberg and then began a military career. In 1888 he became an officer in the Gardes du Corps Regiment in Potsdam, and in 1988 was transferred to the General Staff. There followed an assignment as German military attaché in London (1902–1906). In 1913 he was promoted and became commander of the Gardes du Corps Regiment. H…

Naumann, Friedrich (March 25, 1860, Störmthal [Leipzig] – August 24, 1919, Travemünde), German politician and publicist. After completing his theological studies, Naumann had many experiences at the Rauh Haus, a Protestant aid foundation for children and youth that influenced him regarding the social problems of his heavily industrialized era. He became a spokesman for the young Christian socialists at the Evangelical Social Congress of 1890, speaking out for a renewal of the institution of German Protestantism. Under the …

Entente Also referred to as the Triple Entente, this was one of the great alliances that had formed in Europe at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. Although these alliances are ascribed a certain responsibility for the outbreak of the First World War, they were far less stable and less systematically structured than was later claimed. The system of alliances created by Reich Chancellor Bismarck after the war of 1870/1871 had as its goal the isolation of France in Europe, and to that end the maintenance of good relations with…

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…

War Neuroses An increasingly accepted designation of the First World War for psychopathologically induced disorders that appeared among soldiers as a consequence of combat experiences. The specialized literature also spoke of traumatic neurosis, purpose neurosis (German Zweckneurose), fright neurosis (German Schreckneurose), shell-shock and nervous shock, war hysteria, or simply of nervous disorders. Due to the prevalent symptoms, the patients were colloquially known in Germany as “war-tremblers” (German Kriegszitterer) or “shakers” (German Schüttler). Careful esti…

Rationing The systematic registration and distribution of goods in short supply, in order to meet priority needs. The aim of rationing is to achieve distribution which is as fair as possible, and adequate to the war economy. All belligerent nations, and even the neutral countries, realized that the destruction of established structures of the international division of labor, together with enemy blockades and the enormous needs of the defense economy, created shortages of raw materials and foodstu…

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…

Takahara, Shusuke - The Wilson Administration and the Mandate Question in the Pacific: Struggle among the Powers over the Disposition of Former German Colonies ISFWWS-Keywords: Asia | The United States of America | Peacemaking and Continued Conflict | Politics | Germany | International Relations during the War | Naval Warfare | Britain The Decade of the Great War Tosh Minohara , Tze-ki Hon and Evan Dawley , (2014) Publication Editor: Brill, The Netherlands, 2014 e-ISBN: 9789004274273 DOI: 10.1163/9789004274273_009 © 2014 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Takahara, Shu…

Disability In 1934, the Medical Report of the German Army estimated the number of German soldiers who had died of wounds, accident, suicide, or disease between August 2, 1914, and July 31, 1918, at 1,202,042. This number, which rose considerably in the period between the cessation of military casualty reports in July 1918 and the end of the war, must be viewed alongside the 702,778 dismissed from the armed forces in the same period as being unfit for service (503,713 with medical support, 199,065 without…

Driant, Emile (September 11, 1855, Neufchâtel-sur-Aisne – February 22, 1916, Verdun), French author and officer. As the brother-in-law of General Boulanger, and a friend of both Paul Déroulède and Maurice Barrès, Driant stood at the very center of all the battles of French nationalism, although without becoming particularly actively engaged. He did not begin his political career until after leaving the army by his own desire in 1906. At the same time, under the pseudonym Danrit, he continued work …

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…

Hand Grenade Hand-thrown missile filled with explosives and designed to be detonated on impact (percussion) or by a timed fuse. The latter became the standard type on account of its greater reliability. Hand grenades was one of the infantry soldier’s most important close-quarters combat weapons in World War One, but until the turn of the century they were viewed as archaic instruments of earlier wars and attracted attention chiefly for being favored by anarchists. Beginning with the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, the use of …

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 …

War Office The War Office was established by a cabinet order of November 1, 1916, to administer the Hindenburg Program initiated by the Operations Branch of the General Staff. The War Office was to centralize war economy measures and serve as the enforcement authority for the Auxiliary Service Bill. Officially placed beneath the Prussian War Ministry, it was a peculiar mix of military war-economy staff and civilian government boards. Lieutenant General Wilhelm Groener was named the War Office’s fi…

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…

Total War This expression first appeared in the French press in 1917 as la guerre totale, meant to stir the French to their ultimate war effort. “Total war” and related expressions played a major role in international discussions concerning military policy in the 1920s and 1930s. The Italian General Giulio Douhet and German General Erich Ludendorff in particular promoted total war as the warfare of the future. In the Second World War the call for total war became a thoroughly universal phenomenon. Joseph Goebb…

Dix, Otto (December 2, 1891, Untermhaus [now part of Gera] – July 25, 1969, Singen [Hohentwiel]), German painter and graphic artist. Dix continued longer than any other German artist to reprocess his war experience in his work. Trained as a machine-gunner, he served in the army throughout the war. In 1914, even before reporting to the front as a volunteer, he painted a Self-portrait as a soldier, and in 1915 a Self-portrait as Mars. Dix thus bears a strong resemblance to the radical agitator and fighter, disruptive of all forms of order, invoked by the early Expressi…

Poincaré, Raymond (August 20, 1860, Bar-le-Duc [Département Meuse] – October 15, 1934, Paris), French politician, state president. Poincaré came from a prosperous French provincial bourgeois family. Despite a political career that took place predominantly in Paris, his home town of Bar-le-Duc (capital of the Meuse Department) remained for him a haven of social and political retreat. Poincaré became one of the defining personalities of moderate republicanism in France. A lawyer by profession, he wa…

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…

Catholicism A view and attitude influenced by the Catholic Church and oriented to it, but not to be unconditionally equated with the Catholic Church as an institution. Within the German Reich before 1914 the Catholic Church, with just 40% of all Christian believers, constituted a political minority within the society of the Reich and was especially influential in the Center Party. The World War threw Catholicism in the warring European states into an insoluble dilemma. On the one hand, the Catholic Church maintained its claim to universalism. It was long …

Fischer, Christopher - Of Occupied Territories and Lost Provinces: German and Entente Propaganda in the West during World War I ISFWWS-Keywords: Germany | Western Front | Violence against civilians | International Relations during the War | Belgium | France | Politics | French society during the war | Children and War World War I and Propaganda Troy R.E. Paddock , (2014) Publication Editor: Brill, The Netherlands, 2014 e-ISBN: 9789004264571 DOI: 10.1163/9789004264571_011 © 2014 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Fischer, Christopher

Mayerhofer, Lisa - Making Friends and Foes: Occupiers and Occupied in First World War Romania, 1916–1918 Keywords: Austria-Hungary | civilian population | Germany | Military Administration | occupier | Romania | war experience ISFWWS-Keywords: Romania | Home fronts | Germany | Austria-Hungary | Politics | Russia | Economy | Prisoners of War | Bulgaria | The Ottoman Empire and the Middle East Abstract: The phenomenon of 'occupation' was thus an integral part of the war experience for numerous contemporaries. This chapter outlines how several Roman…

Bülow, Bernhard Heinrich Martin von (May 3, 1849, Klein Flottbek, now part of Hamburg – October 28, 1929, Rome), German politician (chancellor). Prince (from 1905) von Bülow, whose father was a high-ranking diplomat and whose mother came from a Hamburg bourgeois family, entered the diplomatic service at the age of 25 after completing his law studies. Rising quickly through the ranks, he became secretary of state for foreign affairs in 1897. In that capacity he directed the foreign policy of the Germa…

Lloyd George, David (January 17, 1863, Manchester – March 26, 1945, Llanystumdwy [Gwynedd]; from 1945 First Earl of Dwyfor), British statesman. This Welsh politician was one of the dominant figures on the British political scene during the First World War. Thanks to his extraordinary rhetorical talent, from the time of his first election to the House of Commons (lower house of parliament) in 1890 Lloyd George quickly made a name for himself as one of the leaders of the radical wing of the Liberal P…

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…

Saint-Mihiel Salient Located southeast of Verdun, this salient was the theater of the first independent World War offensive of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF), September 12–15, 1918. Created at the very beginning of positional warfare in 1914, the Saint-Mihiel Salient extended from Combres to St. Mihiel, then from there to Pont-à-Mousson. It interrupted the French communication lines running from the south toward Verdun and posed the constant threat of a flanking attack on the fortresses. …

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…

“Stab-in-the-Back” Legend ( Dolchstosslegende) The claim that Germany’s military defeat in 1918 was not, or not primarily, to be ascribed to the failure of the military leadership, or the exhaustion of the soldiers, but to failure or betrayal on the part of particular persons or groups on the home front. There were a number of quite different variants of the legend. Thus, for example, the inadequacy of supply in the battles for Verdun in 1916 was already referred to in military circles as a Dolchstoss. As early as July 1917, General von Seeckt gave voice to the typical accusati…