“A country cannot simultaneously prepare and prevent war,” famous German scientist Albert Einstein who lived during the time of the First World War once said this. Indeed Germany had the Schlieffen plan prepared since 1905 but in 1914, though it could invade Belgium and go onto France, due to France’s cooperation with British Expeditionary Force, the plan failed and Germany had to face war on both western and eastern front. As Britain and France dug trenches, Germany did the same, having a strong deadlock which was not able to be broken until 1918. From 1914, both Central powers and the Allies attempted to break the deadlock by battles, searching for allies and persuading the public with their war aims. How can merely “persuade the public” end a deadlock when the public is already at war?
The battles occurred from 1914 to 1918 were the most frequent attempts of breaking the deadlock. The outbreak of the Battle of Champagne was on 20 December 1914, by the French’s attempt to break the deadlock. Joffre, the French commander-in-chief, though was not quite successful in attacking against trench lines, could start attacking the Germans along the line from Nieuport to Verdun, throughout the Artois and Champagne regions. The offensive began with minor attacks on 10 December 1914 at the southern edge of the Sayon salient in eastern Champagne. France started to have heavy fighting at Givenchy on December 18th to 22nd, Perthes on 20th of the same month, and at Noyon on 22th but could have insignificant achievement because the German lines were well entrenched with its preeminent defensive warfare. After a temporary break in the battle in mid-February, the battle resumed on March 17th by German attacks and the French could gain a little amount of territory across the line, enabling the Fourth Army to progress on the hills of eastern Champagne no more than 3km, which was much below Joffre’s expectation. There were 90,000 of French casualties and German Third Army numbered the same with them.[1] The Battle of Neuve Chapelle, from March 10 to 12 in 1915 was the first attempt of the British to break the stalemate. That’s good Since the Royal Flying Corps, the air arm of the British military, could achieve swift aerial dominance, they commenced to attack German reserves and its transportation to secure Neuve Chapelle, the area that they had dominated. However, their aerial photography had a flaw, not being able to identify Germany’s strong defensive points, and impossible communication among the commanders brought a disturbance in their route of supplies. On March 12th, German army, with its fortification of its position, started to attack British forces, and prevented them from further dominance. During the battle, 40,000 Allied troops had participated but by the end of the battle, on March 13th, 11,200 (7,000 British, 4,200 Indian)[2] of them could not return, and the Germans lost approximately the same number. Consequently, in the contrary to the perfect beginning of the battle, the British could gain only over 2km of the area they had lost. Germany also tried to have a breakthrough, so it came up with the Second Battle of Ypres, which occurred from April 22nd to May 25th in 1915, the first time Germany used poison gas to a large extent. It started with the release of 160 tons of chlorine gas over a 6.5km front on the part of the line that belonged to French Territorial and its colonial Moroccan and Algerian troops of the French 45th and 78th divisions at around 5:00 pm on April 22nd of 1915. It incurred about 6,000 deaths of French and its colonial troops in 10 minutes.[3] The troops reluctantly had to escape from their trenches, leaving the gap in the front line. Nonetheless, General von Falkenhayn, Chief of German General Staff, did not expect the poison gas to have a great effect and ordered 4th Army not to have any further expectation[4], so there were no reserves to use this gap. Using this opportunity, a Canadian Division started to take action in order to prevent gas attacks until May 3rd 1915, sacrificing 6000 of them.[5] On April 24th, the Germans again released the poison gas directly where the Canadians had their position, west of St. Julien and the region was occupied. On May 10th, another release of chlorine gas took place as the German’s aim of breaking Allied lines but it was not effective. The last gas attack on 24th made the British to retreat to the north and south. By the end of the battle, Ypres salient now got reduced and was severely damaged. These typical countries who were in conflict, such as France, Britain and Germany all had tried to break the deadlock but they all failed and had to suffer from extreme amount of casualties. Due to their failure of the battles, they found another way to force a breakthrough, which was the search for allies. Very good, clearly explaining how this wasa to break the deadlock and what the end result was.
The next way of trying to break the stalemate, searching for allies, incited the other countries to be engaged in the battles. In August 1914, Japan joined the Allies and seized German colonies in China and the Pacific. As Britain had signed a mutual defense treaty with Japan in 1902, Japan joined the Allies and declared war on 23rd August 1914, and seized German colony in China, Tsingtao, on November 7th, and German Marshall and Caroline Island groups in the Western Pacific. But this wasn’t too important. In the same year, the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers and formally entered World War I on 28 October, with the bombardment in Russian Black Sea ports. The reasons for Turkey to join the Central Powers were the pressure from Germany, the opportunism ? of the Turkish minister Enver Pasha, I’m not sure what you are refrring to Germany victories in early stages of the war and Turkey’s conflict with the Allied forces. It was also advantageous for the Germans as Turkey did not join their enemy and could encourage Bulgaria to join. In May 1915, Italy, a country once had been a member of Central powers from 1882 to 1914 but alter became neutral, joined the Entente powers. It was because in 26 April 1915, Britain and France persuaded Italy to join them by secretly offering the territory in the Alps and along the Adriatic coast which they wanted to seize from Austria-Hungary. At that time, Italian army fought 11 battles of the Isonzo with Austria-Hungary and despite of the Italians’ steady attacks, they did not have any worthy gains but had serious losses, and so did the Austro-Hungarians because they did not have enough men to use against both Italy and Russia. In October of the same year, Bulgaria joined German and Austro-Hungarian troops attacking on Serbia. Similar to Italy, Bulgaria joined the Central powers because they could gain territory held by Greece and Serbia if they won the war and the Central powers’ successes in Gallipoli and Italy convinced Bulgaria. As Serbia was overwhelmed by central powers with its new ally, British and French troops went to Salonika port in Greece to help Serbia but it was too late. It resulted in territorial gain of the Central powers from the Baltic Sea to the Persian Gulf. In August 1916, Romania joined the Allies under the pressure of them but their national unity was secured, so Romania could declare war on Austria-Hungary. However, it led them to a tragedy because the Central powers conquered two-thirds of the country and killed most of its army only in 4 months. In April 1917, the United States joined the Allies since Germany did not end its submarine attacks. USA first did not offered plenty of manpower but by the beginning of 1918, 130,000 of men increased into 2 million troops, giving a rapidly effective help to the Allies for demolishing Germany on western front. Meanwhile, Greece joined the Allies because the Central powers included the countries that Greece was against such as Turkey, Bulgaria and Austria-Hungary. Turkey controlled the Greeks in the East, never turning them back to Greece, Bulgaria was still struggling with Greece for gaining Macedonia, and Austria-Hungary was in conflict with the Greece’s ally Serbia over territorial achievement in Bosnia. In fact the Allies attracted more powerful nations while the central powers could not, but they all had tried hard to have new allies, such as offering some territories or promising the nations’ securities and later the allies were gained easily because those neutral countries still had the other opposing countries, so they chose either the Allies or Central powers, according to what their opponents chose. With more countries joining the war, the battles became more vehement and there were more territorial changes than before.
Another method they used with desire of a breaking the deadlock was to intrigue ? the public with their war aims. There were two people who came up with different war aims, Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg of Germany and Woodrow Wilson of USA. Germany’s war aims were claimed in September 1914. The following is Hollweg’s war aims from Germany’s War Aims in the First World War, written by Fritz Fischer, a German historian famous for his analysis of the causes of World War I.
- Open covenants of peace and advancement of diplomacy
- Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas
- Establishment of an equality of trade conditions
- Reduction of armament
- To have a free, open-minded, and impartial adjustment of all colonial claims.
- All Russian territory should be evacuated.
- Belgium should be restored.
- All French territory should be freed and invaded lands should be returned.
- A readjustment of Italy’s frontiers.
- The Austro-Hungarians should be able to have their own development.
- Rumania, Serbia and Montenegro should be evacuated.
- The Turkish portions should have a secure sovereignty but other countries under Turkish rule should be independent, and the Dardanelles should be freed for the ships and commerce of all nations.
- An independent Polish state should be constructed.
- A general association of nations must be formed with mutual guarantees of political
independence and territorial integrity. [7]
Deadlocks in battle are broken by force of arms, not having people cheer and agree.
Wilson also had said that “For such arrangements and covenants we are willing to fight and to continue to fight until they are achieved.” Comparing different war aims from Bethmann-Hollweg and Wilson, German war aims were mainly to weaken the other nations and strengthen Germany with gaining territorial achievements but on the other hand, Wilson’s 14 points were more idealistic and endeavoring after peace, and had no offense to Germany, while Hollweg was trying to provoke the public to be enthusiastic of overwhelming the countries in Allied side. The aims of Germany CAUSED the deadlock, not made up to end it.Although the public in Central powers’ side was quite persuaded, Wilson’s speech was inconvincible because the nations wanted effective assaults on the other countries, not a peace settlement at the moment. These antithetic war aims from Germany and USA with Hollweg and Wilson’s desire of agreement from the public, one of the attempts to break the deadlock, however was again not successful.
To sum up, both Central powers and the Allies had made many exertions in order to break the stalemate three examples of which are mentioned above. Three of the battles from 1914 to 1918, The Battle of Champagne (1914), The Battle of Neuve Chapelle(1915) and the Second Battle of Ypres (1915) each were breakthrough attempts from the French, British and Germans. After searching for allies, the Allies had Japan, Italy, Romania and Greece joined, and Turkey and Bulgaria for the Central powers. The war aims claimed by Bethmann-Hollweg of Germany and Woodrow Wilson of USA also were made to enable the countries to break the deadlock. However, the enthusiastic mood within two major powers resulted in terrible casualties and caused a lot of failures, consequently breaking the stalemate in final armistice on 11 November 1918
Good until the end where I didn’t accept your claims that persuading people was a valid attempt at breaking the deadlock.
19/20
| Mark awarded > | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| Criterion A: Knowledge | Each paragraph contains relevant evidence. | Each paragraph contains evidence, but not all evidence is relevant | There are several pieces of evidence, but not in each paragraph. | There are 1-2 pieces of evidence in the essay. | There is no evidence in the essay |
| Criterion B: Concepts | Understand the key terms and apply them correctly ESPECIALLY LAST TWO SENTENCES | Understand some key-terms | Tries to use the proper key terms (Industrialism, urbanisation, etc.) | Uses wrong key terms | There are no keywords, and poor understand of the topic. |
| Criterion C: Skills | Analysis in all paragraphs, Explanations all strong. | Analysis in all paragraphs, but Explanations are weak or missing. ESP. BEGINNING | Some attempts have been made at analysis. | The essay is a narrative. It is telling a story. | The essay is neither a narrative nor an analysis. |
| Criterion D: Organisation and presentation | The essay makes perfect use of P –E – E in all paragraphs | The essay is divided into paragraphs, with attempts of P – E – E | The essay is attempted divided into paragraphs. | The essay is not divided into paragraphs | The essay has incorrect or missing title The essay is too short. (min. 2 pgs.) |
[1] http://www.firstworldwar.com/battles/champagne1.htm
[2] http://anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Neuve_Chapelle
[3] http://anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_Ypres#_note-6
[4] http://www.greatwar.co.uk/westfront/ypsalient/secondypres/gravenstafel/gegains.htm
[5] http://anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_Ypres
[6] http://www.wwnorton.com/college/history/ralph/workbook/ralprs34.htm
[7] http://www.quotedb.com/speeches/fourteen-points
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