The Great War: 100 Years Ago

The British Expeditionary Force arrived in France on 4 August, 1914, with a force of 2 Army corps, each made up of 2 infantry divisions with support units, and an array of cavalry units.  Although supposedly based upon experience during the Boer war, in fact most of the lessons of that war had been discarded during infighting between two cliques.  The BEF was initially lead by Field Marshal Sir John French who had commanded the Cavalry division during the 2nd Boer war and became part of the African clique under General Roberts, allowing his career to advance after Redver's Buller lost position.

Unfortunately for the BEF, French had been involved in one of the last successful cavalry lance charges in the war, and although he later used concentrated firing lines successfully, he was enamored with the potential of "cold steel" to settle the battlefield.  As a result, though the BEF was professionally trained and lead, it was deficient in tactics to deal with modern war, just likes it French counterparts.  The emphasis on the bayonet had another tragic consequences.  During the Boer war the effectiveness of artillery and rapid-fire machine guns was shown conclusively, but French and other generals who came to power afterward were slow to innovate in this area.  The British went to war considerably under-equipped with heavy canon and machine guns.

During the battle of the Frontiers, the BEF overcame deficiencies of leadership and equipment and fought very well.  Field Marshall French tried to use his cavalry as mounted reserve infantry, a role that better suited than the original plan to use them as an attacking force, but poor coordination with the larger French units often squandered the results of British bravery.  During the initial stages of the battle General Charles Lanrezac of the French Fifth Army felt that the British, being available only in two corps strength, should coordinate their actions closely with the French, while Field Marshall French felt that, for the same reason (the small size of the BEF) it was his responsible to act more independently and maintain an escape route should the French resistance fail.  Part of this disagreement was not either leader's fault, the French needed to British to move into line against the rapidly lengthening German offensive to avoid it outflanking their left, while the British were acutely aware that there existed no reserves in England and if the bulk of the experienced army was lost, there would be no cadre to rebuild.

The problems were further made difficult by the personalities of French generals and the lack of pre-war coordinations.  Few British officers were familiar with the ground over which they fought, did not know the French language (the assumption being that the language of the country being fought over and that of the biggest army should be the language of command), and the French highest command ranks, notably Joffre, were hardly the type of commander to take over a multiple nation military structure.  In fact, the none of the best French generals could be said to be diplomatic, and Joffre was neither diplomatic, nor a good General. 1

The initial BEF organization would expand in the coming years to form a significant force, itself made up of multiple nations (including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and India).

Footnote

1. The French eventually made an arrangement to have a poor General whose political skills were excellent, Foch, have overall command of the combined allied armies, while keeping nearly all of the strategic and tactical thinking in the hands of Philippe Pétain.

Wilhelm II publically spoke on the crisis in Serbia by stating that he felt Austria should use force to settle accounts with Serbia.  His statement was widely seen around the world as indicating that Germany would soon become involved in the war themselves, causing a general move across the continent to mobilize military forces.  German generals, on discovering that other nations were mobilizing for war because of Wilhelm II's comments, used these mobilizations to convince the Kaiser that they to should mobilize and prepare for the coming war.  

On June 28th, 1914, Archeduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were killed by an assasination team lead by Danilo Ilić of Young Bosnia, and organized by Black Hand leader Dragutin Dimitrijević.  

Franz Ferdinand was the heir to the mulit-national Austro-Hungarian Empire, where he was a voice of liberal reform for the nation.  He hoped to increase the stability of the Empire by granting important rights of self-determination to many ethnic minorities.  He especially wanted to address the concerns of ethnic slavs living in the Empire to reduce tensions with neihboring nations such as Serbia and Russia.  

Black Hand members such as Dragutin Dimitrijević were concerned that their plans to create a pan-Slavic nation would be harmed by the liberal moves of the Empire.  Assasination was already a tool that the Black Hand used for political expression.  Dimitrijević was himself directly responsible for King Alexander of Serbia and his wife's assasination in 1903, and the Black Hand group he lead, devoted to the unification of Serbia, had already touched off several Balkan incidents through violent action.

The actual killer of Ferdinand, Gavrilo Princip, was part of an assasination team that was organized to kill the Archduke.  The team had prepared to bomb the Archduke's car, but this was unsuccessful.  Princip was able though to shoot Ferdinand and his wife after the driver of the Archduke's car took a wrong turn and stalled trying to back up.

In later years the assasination would lead to a wide range of conspiracy theories, made worse by the hatred of the Archduke shown by Alfred, 2nd Prince of Montenuovo (the Emperor's Chamberlien) who turned the royal couple's funeral into an insulting farce, and because the Serbians had actually warned the Empire of the plot, knowing its full details from Dragutin Dimitrijević.  

Of all the events that could be called instrumental in the start of the Great War, the Franco-Prussian war was one of the main causal factors that made at least a limited conflict between Germany and France a possibility.

In 1870 the second French Empire of Napoleon III was the strongest military power in Europe.  Her strength came from a strong economy and a well educated population.  At the same time Prussia, the most powerful German state, was itself a growing influence on the continent that had recently defeated Austria and was moving to unify the northern and southern German states into a single political body under the influence of the master statesman Otto von Bismarck.

The French power, although unquestioned, was actually at its weakest point in the past 100 years.  Long considered the masters of warfare and heirs to Napoleon, her military technology and skills in planning and organization were no longer the best in Europe, although many factors conspired to hide this.  In particular, the French military had failed to note the lessons of the American Civil War, which had ended just five years earlier, and a massive armament program, although resulting in some innovative weapons such as the Mitrailleuse and the Chassepot rifle, had failed to keep up with innovations in steel artillery and military rail logistics.  In addition, the French army was still lead directly rather than through a professional staff, an innovation that was seen in the Civil War but was normalized and brought to a high level of efficiency by Germany in the form of the General Staff.

Finally, France had a largely professional army which was only beginning to work on a functional conscription system, while German was able to call effectively on a levee en masse of nearly 1 million soldiers.  Napoleon the III was aware of the numerical disadvantage he faced, but the French army command structure assured him repeatedly they were ready to face any enemy on the continent.  Despite this Napoleon III was hesitant to engage in a war with any enemy.

Understanding this, and knowing that the only way Prussia would prevail in unifying Germany and defeating France was if French power was limited by diplomatic isolation, Bismarck went to work after defeating Austria creating conditions that would assure a victory.  His own writings reveal that war was France was his goal, but he wanted to have that war occur only when there was an advantage for Germany.  He did this by engineering a diplomatic crisis over Spanish succession, then manipulating French news media to create a sense of outrage among the French public against Prussia.  The result was massive French support for war with Prussia, and a declaration of war against Prussia by the French.

The war was intense but short.  The French army was unable to efficiently mobilize, lacked logistics and trained manpower for prolonged resistance, and was generally poorly lead by its general officer corps.  The Germans, in contrast, were equipped with modern Krupp artillery which devastated the French forces it encountered, had modern training in use trains and industrial quality logistics, and was lead competently.  In the end Prussia set up a situation where its primary objective, the unification of the German peoples of Europe (save those of Austria) could be carried out almost as an afterthought.

Had Germany stopped there, the history of the world might have been far different.  Instead, and to some extent possibly against Bismarck's wishes, Germany demanded a huge repatriation payment from France and transferred two key French speaking regions, Alsace and Lorraine, from the French Empire to the German Empire.  These two moves set up French and Germany for a collision - it assured that France could not ever have truly peaceful relations with Germany, and in turn caused a great deal of worry among other European powers helping to isolate Germany in the future. 

The Austro-Hungarian Empire was one of the lesser known participants in the Great War.

The Holy Roman Empire was developed at the same time as the Frankish Empire (which would become France in the middle ages) with the crowning of Charlemagne by Pope Leo III in CE 800.  This lead to one of the ironies of the Great War, three of the largest combatants (France, Germany, and Austro-Hungary) could trace some portion of their historical formation to the same event in history.  During the beginning of the 19th century the Empire was ripped apart by the Napoleonic wars, and the independent Austrian Empire was formed from the lands held by the Hapsburg Empires and centered on the old capital of Vienna.

The Austrian Empire, like the earlier Holy Roman Empire, was never a cohesive nation like France or England.  It was instead made from dozens of cultural groups divided into two main areas of influence, the German speaking Austrian Kingdom, and the Hungarian speaking Hungarian Kingdom (whose court language was Latin).  The Hapsburg Emperor was German speaking and was often seen as a foreign ruler by individual peoples.

This was made worse by the struggles that the southern portions of the empire had with the Ottoman Turks.  The Battle of Mohács in 1526 and the ending of the ruling Jagiellonian dynasty with the death of Louis II has resulted in Austrian rule more as an expression of the lack of other choices rather than a voluntary association.  Even after the Empire fell and the Austrian Empire was formed, the Hungarian Kingdom was not all that connected to their German speaking brethren.  

This came to a head in 1848 when young Hungarian intellectuals revolted against the Hapsburgs in 1848 and were only defeated with the aid of Russia. Despite putting down the rebellion the Hapsburgs recognized that their Empire was not a strong as those of the French or Russians.  The issues were made worse by the creation of a unified Italian state, formation of great Prussia from the Northern German states, and the defeat of Austria by Prussia.

The compromise of 1866 saw a two headed Empire being formed.  The Kingdom of Austria and the Kingdom of Hungary agreed to form an equal partnership that shared defense and foreign trade but were otherwise ruled separately.  Each Kingdom had its own monarchy, but each operated under a single Emperor. The Empire itself would adopt the Roman Catholicism of the Hapsburgs, and would have two primary and six regional "official" languages.  A single monetary policy and currency would cover both Kingdoms, but the citizens of the two kingdoms would have different passports and be subject to local laws.  The nation itself would be the second largest in Europe in terms of land (with 680,000 square kilometers) and would be the third largest in terms of population (with 52 million  inhabitants in 1914).  The army would be built of three parts: the Imperial Army, the Austrian Landwehr, and the Hungarian Honved.  The joint Imperial Army had a reputation of being poorly lead and equipped, since most military funding coming from the Austrian and Hungarian Kingdoms went to their own units instead of the joint force.