The Great War: 100 Years Ago

Denis Patrick Dowd Jr. becomes the first American citizen to enter service in WW1.  Dowd, a graduate of Columbia and an adventurer, decided to enlist in the French Foreign Legion to support the French war efforts.  

Dowd would not be the only U.S. citizen to fight before the American entry into the war.  By 1915 thousands of Americans were serving ovcerseas, either because they held dual citizenship, or because like Dowd, they decided to fight for reasons of personal morals or seeking adventure.  The most famous Americans to serve in a foriegn military was  Arthur Guy Empey, who served in the British Army and wrote the best seller "Over the Top", and Ernest Hemmingway, who served as an ambulance driver on the Italian front.

Joffre, after activating the French plan XVII whose goal was to regain Alsace Lorraine and invade the German Ruhr industrial areas, made attackes with the "Army of Lorraine" on the town of Mulhouse, a French town captured by Germany during the Franclo-Prussian war of 1870 and retained by that nation.  The French saw recovery of these regions as key to their strategy.  After a few days of fighting, they were able to take Mulhouse.  Upon entering the town Joffre posted this message:

CHILDREN of ALSACE! After forty-four years of sorrowful waiting, French soldiers once more tread the soil of your noble country. They are the pioneers in the great work of revenge. For them what emotions it calls forth, and what pride! To complete the work they have made the sacrifice of their lives. The French nation unanimously urges them on, and in the folds of their flag are inscribed the magic words, "Right and Liberty". Long live Alsace. Long live France. General-in-Chief of the French Armies, JOFFRE.

While billed as a success, Mulhouse was a limited victory that almost lost France the war.  First, it caused Joffre to ignore the envelopment that was forming on the left despite the cries of the general of the 5th Army that the main force of the German attack would be nearly 15 divisions stricking his area in a few days.  Second, the Mulhouse invasion was unsustainable.  The French did not have the machine guns or heavy artillery to match German firepower and suffered nearly 3000 casualties.  The Mulhouse gain would be lost a few days later and the third negative effect was that the people of Mulhouse suffered deadly reprisal by the Germans for "treason."  

With the war in the west underway and Germany at war with Russia and France, Austria-Hungary declares war itself on Russia.  Oddly enough, this triggers the UK to declare war on Austria-Hungary, whom it had yet to consider an adversary.

In an act of solidarity with the allies. Serbia declares war on Germany.

Dr. Fritz Haber, a German physical chemist, had been working just prior to the start of the Great War on a means of converting an industrial bioproduct, chlorine, to weaponized uses.  All of the Allies and Entente powers had signed the Hague Convention of 1907, but the Germans considered the convention void if the "extingency of war" called for it and claimed, at least for chlorine.  The first use of chlorine gas as a killing agent was not noted by the Allies, who may not have been aware in the hectic first month of the war what had happened, but German sources claimed to have killed "150 British officers" using the gas sometime before this date.