The War to End All Wars Could Not Keep Its Vow

This was a war known largely for its horrors: poison gas and the thousands of miles of muddy, stinking trenches in which shellshocked young men lived, slept, fought hours of boredom and then fought the enemy.

World War I would start on a decidedly 19th century military note, with German cavalrymen crossing the Belgian border bearing lances and wearing spiked helmets. And it would introduce an era of modern weaponry, of machine guns, aircraft and tanks. It would start with an assassin’s bullet and end with the deaths of more than 9 million.

Europe was flexing its muscles in the first decade of the 20th century, with heavy industry pumping new military and economic power into rival regimes.

Demands for political change were escalating in Germany, England, France, Russia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Socialist fervor rattled the established order. It was a precarious time, one in which a network of military alliances provided a tripwire to war.

“Some damned foolish thing in the Balkans” could be the trigger, 19th century German Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck once speculated. Indeed, on June 28, 1914, Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian radical, assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, in the faraway Bosnian capital of Sarajevo.

That shot committed the European powers to action. Austria rushed into war against Slavic Serbia. Germany, allied with Austria, challenged Russia, Serbia’s champion. And with war clouds rising, the generals in Berlin dusted off their 19th century plans to attack and conquer France through Belgium, declaring war on both. The Germans crossed the Belgian border Aug. 4, and Britain entered the war the same day.

By the end of 1914, the lines were drawn. The European powers would fight for four years in one of history’s bloodiest and ugliest wars, with the Americans joining the battle in 1917, and the war spilling into Turkey, Palestine and Mesopotamia at its outer reaches.

Historians called it “the Great War,” but the adjective demands examination.

*

The goal was raw conquest, and at war’s end in November 1918, the high promise that opened the 20th century lay dead on the battlefields of France.

Berlin’s plan was to drive through Belgium, bypass French strong points, then turn on Paris. Delays gave the French and British just enough time to deploy in front of Paris for the Battle of the Marne, and the Germans were stopped, in part by troops who rode out to the battleground in Parisian taxis.

The clash of old weapons versus new led to extraordinary contrasts and horrifying casualties. The French, in early battles against the Germans, would arrive on horseback with bayonets drawn, and be mowed down by machine guns.

Worse horrors lay ahead. In the 1916 battle of Verdun, the Germans introduced phosgene gas, which unlike its predecessor, chlorine gas, was invisible. Allied troops thus did not know when to use their gas masks. About 700,000 died in the battle.

A few months later, when England introduced its new technological wonder--tanks--in the Somme campaign, all 47 broke down on the battlefield. But tanks would prove to be one of the most valuable weapons of the war, able to roll over ditches and the ubiquitous barbed wire. They would become a fixture of 20th century military might, as would two other innovations of the conflict: warplanes and submarines.

Finally, the U.S. decision to enter the war in 1917 gave new impetus to the Allied forces, which would push back the Germans’ final attempt to enter Paris at the second battle of the Marne.

Hostilities ceased Nov. 11, 1918, under a harsh treaty that called for Germany to pay for all the damage it had caused to Allied nations. Ships and trains took soldiers home to cities and villages that held little joy. Too many had lost so much.

The Bolsheviks had taken power in Russia. The French looked at their ruined country and wept. Americans returned to their troopships, glad to get away in one piece. And the Germans would never fully accept their bitter, punitive treaty.

An Austrian-born corporal decorated with the Iron Cross (second class) headed home to Munich. There, in 1923, he staged the failed “Beer Hall Putsch.” Sentenced to five years in prison, he wrote “Mein Kampf,” the premise of National Socialism, setting the stage for what would be the world’s most disastrous conflict.

The “War to End All Wars” could not keep its promise.