World War I: Difference between revisions

← Older edit

World War I (view source)

Revision as of 19:35, 25 April 2023

1,923 bytes removed , 1 year ago

fixes and some additions

VisualWikitext

GethN7

Bureaucrats, Forum administrators, Interface administrators, Administrators

10,154

edits

Revision as of 06:21, 15 November 2018 (view source) InternetArchiveBot (talk \| contribs) (Rescuing 1 sources and tagging 0 as dead. #IABot (v2.0beta10)) ← Older edit		Latest revision as of 19:35, 25 April 2023 (view source) GethN7 (talk \| contribs) (fixes and some additions)
(8 intermediate revisions by 5 users not shown)
Line 6: Once upon a time, in 1918, a war between the richest and most powerful nations on earth ended. It was the biggest, most expensive, most bloody, most disruptive, most damaging and most traumatising war the world had ever seen. It left millions dead, maimed, shell-shocked, dispossessed, impoverished, starving and bitter. Victory brought relief more than it did elation or sorrow, and in the aftermath the world's great powers resolved to form a better world from the ashes of the old. This was a war that crushed attitudes, destroyed lives, brought down empires and in its conclusion sowed the seeds of further conflict and suffering. The extent to which it did all these things made the First World War a war the likes of which the world had never seen.... [[Foreshadowing\|but the world was yet to see the last of this magnitude of conflict.]] Formerly known as "The Great War", or as [[Tempting Fate\|"The War to End All Wars"]], or "The World War", or "The First ''World'' War" [[Captain Obvious\|until]] [[World War Two\|the sequel]] [[Numbered Sequels\|broke out]] (at which point it became "The ''First'' World War"). Ironically, the [[Napoleonic Wars]] had previously been known as The Great War until ''this'' one broke out. This was quite possibly the most unpopular conflict in the history of civilization [[Overly Narrow Superlative\|in hindsight]], and even at the time it wasn't exactly everybody's favorite. It perhaps comes a close second in the Franco-Anglosphere for the [[Vietnam War\|Indo-Chinese conflicts]]. Even the final resolution of the war has been come to be dubbed "the peace to end all peaces." Generally seen in Anglospheric popular culture in one of two settings: Line 46: The Austrians carried out their first invasion of Serbia and were unlucky (or stupid) enough to face the Serbian army outside of its own weapons range. The Austrians were quickly disposed of. War between Austria and Serbia, however, did not immediately equal World War One. What it did do was convince Russia that Germany had something planned. They figured rightly that Austria would not act without Germany's backing, but they mistook this as the possible first step in a larger plan for initiating a war of conquest. Just to be safe, Russia began to mobilize its reserves. It would be six months before they would be ready for war. This is the point at which the Great War becomes inevitable. Germany has long anticipated a war against Russia and France. It had feared and readied itself for this moment. They could mobilize their reserves in just two weeks. As stated, they had the best army in the world, but they could not fight a war on two fronts. If it came to that, they would be doomed. Their only chance at victory was to quickly eliminate France before the Russians could mobilize, then turn their army against Russia. For this to work, Germany had to act quickly, at the first sign of trouble. If the Russians mobilized their reserves, Germany couldn't afford to wait and see. The orders went out as soon as they received the news. [As another aside, the Kaiser actually tried to abort the invasion of France, but due to the above -mentioned military plans on auto-pilot, his minister of war told him that he couldn't simply reverse all the trains. If he did, (he could have, indeed, the man in charge of organizing the trains published a book after the war showing ~~precisly~~precisely how it could have been done) the war might have stayed as a local Germany/Austria-Hungary vs. Serbia/Russia war... assuming the French would be in the mood to not attack Germany of course, which, to the Germans at least, didn't look very likely.] Germany's plan, as stated, was to quickly take out France before Russia could ~~mobilise~~mobilize and then turn to face the Russians, something known as the Schlieffen Plan. To take out France ~~quick~~quickly enough (avoiding French frontier ~~defences~~defenses on their mutual border), Germany had to go through Belgium -- a neutral country. Germany planned to just walk through Belgium, promising that they'd leave the Belgians alone. But those Belgians weren't having any of that, so they resisted. While terribly outgunned, at the very least tying up resources in Belgium did manage to slow Germany down a bit. The invasion (followed by frequently exaggerated but sometimes dismally true tales of atrocities) brought Britain into the war because Britain had guaranteed Belgian neutrality. While France had intended to invade Belgium itself if German forces were allowed transit through it, Albert's refusal of access to the Germans shelved that plan (see [[Crowning Moment of Awesome]] below). [As an aside, Britain technically did not have to enter the war because of German encroachment on Belgian territory nor was this their primary concern. Britain had a massive global empire with colonies spread out all over the world. For the protection and administration of these colonies, they were dependent upon the good will of France and Russia, both of which owned territories neighboring their own. Besides this, the British economy was largely dependent on trade with the continent. Because of their bad relations with Germany and the economics of a united Europe, it was very much in their best interests that the continent remain divided in a balance of power. Lastly, Britain was in competition with Germany at this time for control of global trade. The two countries were locked in a naval arms race competing for the same markets. There was no room for them to be allies.] Line 58: America, while Britain's ally, stayed out of the war at this point for a number of reasons including but not limited to: a strong isolationist fervor among the American populace, a worry over a possible repeat of the casualty numbers from [[The American Civil War\|their Civil War]], a hesitancy over the loyalty of German immigrants, and a perceived lack of relevance (i.e, "What does it matter to us if Europe shoots itself up?") Despite this surface neutrality, however, America secretly shipped munitions and other supplies to Britain and the other Allies almost from day one. This didn't slip past Germany, which partially started unrestricted submarine warfare for this reason--the ''Lusitania'''s sinking, which so enraged Americans, was mainly done to take out the piles of munitions it was carrying to Europe. To anyone who cared to look, it was clear what side the U.S. was rooting for. Romania entered the war on the Allied side in 1916 hoping to gain the largely ethnic Romanian territory of Transylvania<ref>The Allies are now believed to have just promised this to get Romania into war without intending to fulfill it; it took a ''lot'' of activism by Queen Marie and the Romanian delegation at Versailles to get the Allies to ~~recognise~~recognize Transylvania as Romanian territory</ref>, and promptly got defeated thanks to poor training, horrible planning and (historically completely understandable) distrust towards Russia; the Japanese came in on the Allied side because of treaty obligations with Britain in late 1914, (and not because they wanted the German colonies in the Pacific, as many American scholars have falsely declared,) and made a good showing in every theater in which they were involved, especially in the Far Eastern and Mediterranean theaters. Tiny Serbia held off three Austro-Hungarian armies [[Mood Dissonance\|before getting pwned]] by the Germans and the Bulgarians. British, German, French, and Belgian armies chased each other all over Africa. Brazil joined the Allies and her navy went sub-hunting in the Atlantic. The British Empire was still going, so men from Ireland, Canada, Newfoundland (then a separate Dominion), South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, India and elsewhere all fought in France, not to mention the millions of Senegalese, Algerians, Moroccans and so on in the French army. The British drove the Turks out of Arabia and the Holy Land and decided it would be a great idea to split it up into countries like Iraq, Kuwait, Syria, and Lebanon. That worked out slightly better than Gallipoli, a textbook example of a military fiasco and [[A Simple Plan]] going horribly wrong, which was planned by [[Winston Churchill]] and very nearly ended his career. Russia did very badly; their soldiers fought as bravely as any others, but the supply situation was absolutely horrendous from the outset, their "steamroller" tactics were ineffective and by 1917 they had been pushed back hundreds of miles and had lost all of Poland and Lithuania to the Germans (though in fairness they had some competent chaps like Brusilov, who in 1916 had gone back on the offensive and broken the back of the Austro-Hungarian army). Perhaps worse, the Russian economy collapsed; nearly all Russian pre-war overseas trade went through either the Baltic (controlled by Germany) or through the Dardanelles (controlled by the Ottoman Empire - opening a route to bring badly needed supplies to Russia was the most pressing reason for Gallipoli). The casualties, the shortages and the inflation of the war led to the overthrow of the Tsar. When the new government didn't end the war, the Bolsheviks took over and promptly did so- for a while. Line 64: The British even had a mini-conflict all of their own in Ireland, where the Easter Rising took place. Ironically, the war had seemed to Britain like a golden opportunity to submerge Irish tensions (which were getting close to bursting over the issue of Home Rule)... but, like just about every other war aim, things went badly wrong. The longest -running theatre of the war was in Africa, as the British and French tried to cut off Germany from its colonies. Most fell easily and quickly, but the story was different in German East Africa (now Burundi, Rwanda, and most of Tanzania). [[Magnificent Bastard\|German commander Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck]] managed to tie down 300,000 Allied troops with a far smaller force of mostly African soldiers. He fought through the whole war and only surrendered in late November 1918, after being informed by the British (while he was making plans for another offensive) that Germany herself had already surrendered. A recent revisionist theory (or rather a once popular but long forgotten one) is (re-)emerging that the most decisive theatre was not on land at all but at sea. Pre-war British theory was based on the idea of the naval blockade, essentially that Britain could use its most powerful weapon (the largest navy in the world) to strangle Germany. Germany depended heavily on overseas trade, indeed she possessed the second largest merchant fleet in the world in 1914, and without vital materials, she could not go on. As it happened the British underestimated the German capacity to find alternative sources of material, but the basic idea was sound: food (a third of which had been imported before 1914) could be grown in Germany, but this was only a partial solution -- and a short term one as Germany began to run out of even these essentials and the country starved. German chemists invented ersatz bread, ersatz coffee, ersatz beverages, and many other ersatzes, but this wasn't a solution that made people happy. It has been argued that this (rather than any specific military defeat) is what broke the German will to continue the war. At the very least it led to the reckless gamble of unrestricted submarine warfare, which brought the US into the war. The most famous naval battle of the war, the Battle of Jutland in May 1916, was a [[Pyrrhic Victory]] for Germany - their fleet was badly damaged and spent the rest of the war in home waters. Still, Britain suffered heavier losses in terms of ships and men, including two of their [[Glass Cannon]] Battlecruisers. This was arguably Germany's strategy - they knew Britain depended on on a two -power standard (having as many ships as the next two greatest combined) so they thought they just needed enough to threaten any individual nation's balance of power, and so Britain wouldn't enter the war or engage in battle if the German fleet was merely large enough to ruin that. Interestingly the German revolution began with disaffected sailors of the High Seas Fleet, rather than the soldiers who saw much more action and heavier losses. Eventually, the German tactics of allowing their submarines to sink any ship they wanted, whoever it belonged to -- along with a botched plot to convince Mexico to invade the US<ref>a.k.a. the Zimmerman Telegram. History students may redeem this factoid for two (2) points extra credit on any WWI exam. Extra Special Bonus points for the Cuba Memorandum (German decision to attack American power in the Americas, signed in 1898) Manufacturer's coupon; no expiration date.</ref> -- annoyed the Americans so much that they got involved too (though volunteers had been joining the British, French, and Italian forces throughout). The Germans had one more big push in the Spring of 1918 to try and win before the Yanks arrived in numbers -- they broke through the lines into the open country beyond and it looked for a while as if they might actually do it. But in the end they ran out of steam and the French, newly-arrived Americans, British, Canadians and [[ANZACs]] (in order of size) pushed them right back across the lines and won the war. Just. Pushing 1918 into the winner's circle for the title of Worst Year [[Tempting Fate\|Ever]] (cough1945cough) was an influenza pandemic. The Spanish Flu (which actually originated in Fort Riley, Kansas) struck that fall, killing between ''fifty and a hundred million people'' (2.5-5% of the then global population) compared to the war's ten or fifteen million, but has largely been forgotten by history and fiction. The war actually helped its spread (troop transportation), and four years of malnutrition and stress probably hadn't strengthened anyone's immune system, but today it's thought that that flu strain was killed by inciting a cytokine storm (basically, [[Explosive Overclocking\|your immune system goes berserk]]). Certainly, the 1918 flu was unusual in that it mostly killed healthy adults, as opposed to the more usual flu victims: the sick, the very young, and the very old. Also ''very'' unusual in that almost ''none'' of the stories or films set in the period even ''mention'' it--even contemporary fiction. ''[[Anne of Green Gables\|Rilla of Ingleside]]'', by [[L. M. Montgomery]], chronicles the entire war without touching on it at all. Four empires were toppled (Russian, German, Austrian-Hungarian and Ottoman) and the winners took the opportunity in the Treaty of Versailles to redraw the map of Europe along what were supposed to be ethnic lines but in fact just stored up more problems for the future (Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Danzig, to name the biggest). The treaty terms were really harsh on the Germans (including the Austrians, who voted to join Germany and were told to stuff it... until 1938, anyway) and the Hungarians (who lost two -thirds of their country) storing up lots of resentment that would come back to haunt the Allies later - though some modern historians now believe they were actually not hard ''enough'' and served the worst of both worlds in angering Germany but not substantially weakening her. Additionally, it's been argued that - if the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk negotiated by the Germans and the new Bolshevik government in Russia was any indicator - whatever treaty the victorious Germans might have come up with could have been even harsher. [[Foreshadowing\|Russia became the first Communist country late in this war]], although that was only because of ~~the~~ wartime starvation itself. Similarly, the Treaty of Versailles completely ignored the pleas from imperial colonies like French Indochina or disadvantaged countries like China to reform the European policies in said countries; this lead to anger and mistrust throughout the 20s and 30s that contributed to said countries later becoming Communist. Interestingly, two of the most iconic German symbols of the war -- the spiked "Pickelhaube" helmet and the bright red Fokker Triplane -- were relatively short-lived. The Pickelhaube looked cool (sort of) but was useless for keeping the wearer's head safe so was quickly replaced by the end of 1915 by the Stahlhelm, "coal-scuttle" helmet, whose improved version became the symbol of the German forces in [[World War II]]. The Triplane was never that successful and quickly withdrawn after April 1917. The only red ones were flown by the [[Red Baron]], Manfred von Richthofen, and his younger brother Lothar -- the iconic image simply stuck. Line 82: The war also ushered in modern espionage, to say nothing of modern spy fiction (although it had already had a leg up from Erskine Childer's ''The Riddle of the Sands'', which was actually semi-predicting the war at the beginning of the 20th century). There were many future writers in the trenches: notably, [[J. R. R. Tolkien\|JRR Tolkien]] and [[A. A. Milne\|AA Milne]] served in the British infantry, while [[Ernest Hemingway]] and [[Walt Disney]] volunteered to serve as Red Cross ambulance drivers; on the other side, philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein served in the Austrian artillery. One who did not survive his service was [[William Hope Hodgson]], author of ''[[The Night Land]]'' who was killed by a shell in 1918; the accomplished [[Dead Baby Comedy]] writer [[Saki (author)\|Saki]] was also killed, shot by a German sniper after yelling at another soldier to put out his cigarette ([[Irony\|he was discovered because of his yell]]). The famous German painter and founding member of "''The Blue Rider"'', [[Franz Marc]], was killed by a grenade at Verdun. And sadly, there was at least ~~one~~ one young, promising scientist in the trenches: the physicist Henry Moseley, who discovered the principle underlying atomic number, establishing the periodic law, was killed at Gallipoli, just as his career was getting off the ground. The French lost Andre Durkheim, a promising young linguist and the son and protegee of the notable sociologist Emile Durkheim. Sent to the Belgian front in late 1915 Andre Durkheim was declared missing in January, and declared dead in April of 1916. The elder Durkheim never quite recovered from the loss of his son, dying himself in 1917. The loss of many of his other protegees and friends in the trenches didn't exactly help. Fighting on the German side was another physicist, Karl Schwarzschild, who was the first to use [[Albert Einstein]]'s new General Theory of Relativity to predict black holes. He died on the Russian front. Another [[Sarcasm Mode\|semi-important character]] who fought in the trenches, [[Godwin's Law\|some obscure painter]] [[From Nobody to Nightmare\|named]] [[Adolf Hitler\|Adolf something]], would eventually set off [[World War 2\|the sequel]]. Line 88: ---- {{tropelist\|Tropes of WWI}} * [[Ace Pilot]]: The very origin of the trope ~~and~~ and its name, and the chronological home of... The [[Red Baron]]: Manfred von Richthofen, the best -known flying ace in history. He was the highest -scoring pilot of the war, with 80 kills, although his score was beaten by quite a few people in [[World War Two]]. His reputation at the time and among both sides ~~have~~has turned him into something of an archetype for the [[Ace Pilot]], however. Billy Bishop: a Canadian flying ace. [[Berserk Button\|Do not insult him in front of Canadians.]] * [[Appropriated Title]]: The conflict was originally referred as ''The Great War'' or [[Tempting Fate\|''The War to End All Wars'']] by its contemporaries and historians. It only got the name ''World War One'' after the sequel came out. ** The name was actually already being used by, or just after, its end — the more forward-looking military historians ~~recognising~~recognizing that the war had left far too many scores unsettled for there ''not'' to be a rematch. {{quote\|'''Ferdinand Foch:''' This is not a peace. It is an armistice for twenty years.}} * [[Armored Coffins]]: Plane crews did not have parachutes. Some officers considered that the crew should not be allowed to leave the plane, as that would be cowardice. It was thought at the time that if a pilot had a parachute, he would jump from the plane when hit rather than trying to save the aircraft. Line 100: ** [[wikipedia:Paris Gun\|The Paris Gun.]] * [[Body Horror]]: Soldiers who survived the [http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/photos/uncategorized/mask_pair4.jpg worst] [http://www.documentingreality.com/forum/attachments/f149/89557d1251704696-world-war-1-facial-injuries-ww1pic3.jpg imaginable] [http://www.documentingreality.com/forum/attachments/f149/89555d1251704681-world-war-1-facial-injuries-ww1pic2.jpg injuries] often had to exist in a state of [[A Fate Worse Than Death]] ''[[And I Must Scream\|for the rest of their lives...]]'' If you were injured and disfigured young? Too bad for you... * [[Break Out the Museum Piece]]: Rear line troops often got quite outdated equipment with black powder firearms seeing regular use. ** Mortars, invented in the 16th Century and otherwise discarded for some time after the 18th, saw a major renaissance in this war. * [[Didn't See That Coming]]: The Germans were caught by surprise by the French using tear gas on their soldiers, and the Allies were even more surprised when the Germans deployed poison gas. Also, [[Tank Goodness\|tanks]] was an absolute and terrifying surprise. The MAS (short for ''motobarca armata SVAN'', SVAN being the original manufacturer), the torpedo boats of the Italian Navy, were essentially speedboats with a torpedo strapped on either side, and discounted as nothing more than a nuisance. The Austro-Hungarian Navy literally failed to see two of them having a chance encounter with their flagship, sink it, and run away, and thought the ''Szent Istvan'' had been ~~sank~~sunk by submarines until the Italian propaganda started boasting. [[Driven to Suicide]]: As a result of the above and the below -mentioned [[Crapsack World]]. ** Modern plastic surgery owes its [https://web.archive.org/web/20131103053830/http://www.plasticsurgery.org/about-asps/history-of-plastic-surgery.html beginnings] to this. The results were [http://bitchitoldyouigottaste.tumblr.com/post/11508919065/some-photos-of-wwi-veterans-with-their-tin-masks primitive]{{broken link}} by today's standards, but they were far better than nothing. In particular, big advancements were made in prosthetic eyes. * [[Book Ends]]: The treaty that ended the war and the German Empire was signed in Versailles, the same place where the German Empire was unified and proclaimed after the [[Franco-Prussian War]]. * [[Cassandra Truth]]: Charles I of the Austro-Hungarian Empire protested against [[Imperial Germany]]'s plan to allow certain dissidents hiding in Switzerland safe passage into Russia in the hopes of driving them out of the war, with the Germans ultimately dismissing the warning. Said dissidents also happened to include [[Vladimir Lenin]], their return having [[Commie Land\|drastic consequences]]. * [[Colonel Kilgore]]: A disturbingly large number of veterans threw themselves back into fighting almost as soon as the war ended - the [[Weimar Germany\|Freikorps]] might be the most famous. ~~but~~Still, even in nominally victorious Britain at least 10,000 [[wikipedia:Black and Tans\|ex-British]] [[wikipedia:Auxiliary Division\|soldiers]] ''volunteered'' to fight the IRA (itself with more than a few ex-soldiers in its ranks) in Ireland. Although, considering what some of those soldiers did in Ireland... * [[Crowning Moment of Awesome]]: ** The German military strategy for the start of WWI, named the ''Schlieffen Plan'' after it's creator Field-Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen, involved a sweeping attack that bypassed the formidable French defences in Alsace-Lorraine to attack via neutral Belgium, and knock Britain and France out of a war by taking Paris (effectively beating France), Dunkirk and Calais (cutting the British off from the mainland) - leaving Germany to fight (and probably beat) Russia alone. They needed this to take a maximum of six weeks - and the crucial element of that was that the outnumbered (reportedly more than 10:1), out-skilled, poorly-commanded and under-equipped Belgian army would simply surrender and let the Germans through. When the Germans came to Belgium, they found King Albert I in personal command of the full Belgian Army, ready to hold them off for a crucial three months - something that, though all too often forgotten, was probably the single most important reason the Germans didn't win the war. The icing on the cake? When the Germans actually sent King Albert the ultimatum demanding that his men step aside and let the German army pass, he responded simply by saying; "I rule a nation, not a road!". * Perhaps it wasn't [[Canada]]'s finest hour in WWI, but the [[w:Battle of Vimy Ridge\|Battle of Vimy Ridge]] in April 1917 was the first time all of the Canadian Corps fought together - and they took and held a ridge that other Entente forces could not. The battle has become mythologized in Canada as the event where the nation began to be taken seriously in world affairs. (On the other hand, the Germans' inability to retake the ridge was a contributing factor in their decision to adopt scorched earth tactics elsewhere in France.) ** Another came in 1918 for the Italians. Italy was the [[Butt Monkey]] of the Allies, only good enough to keep the Austro-Hungarian Army away from France, where the war was being decided. In 1918 the tide was turning against the Central Powers, with Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire forced to sue for peace when the Allies broke through the Macedonian Front and the pro-British Arab Revolt became too strong respectively, but Austria-Hungary and Germany could still offer a stiff fight and extort concessions during the peace talks... When the Italians literally destroyed the Austro-Hungarian Army as organization in the battle of Vittorio Veneto, starting the chain reaction that dissolved the Austro-Hungarian Empire and opening the way for the Italian Army to march not just on Berlin (a condition the Italians required for not simply continuing the advance and wipe out Austria itself), as the German Army was tied up in France against the rest of the Allies. According to German general Ludendorff, the massive [[Oh Crap]] caused by the Austro-Hungarian collapse caused Germany to sue for peace instead than continue the war during the winter to get a less harsh peace. * [[Crowning Moment of Funny]]: General Plumer before the Battle of Messines (1917), in which the Allied plan was to detonate 450 tons of TNT underneath the German trenches prior to an attack: "Gentlemen, we may not make history tomorrow, but we shall certainly change the geography." ** The plan worked very well, thank you, but some of that explosive still lurks beneath Flanders fields. Somewhere. * [[Crying Wolf]]: A lot of people did not take reports of German rearmament or the [[World War Two]] Holocaust seriously because the last generation was jaded from exaggerated propaganda about the brutality of the enemy in this war. ** The Holocaust started well after World War II began. Also, in addition to a jaded populace, the British government knew that war with Germany would be, at best, a [[Pyrrhic Victory]] (They did lose their superpower status inat the end of World War II, so their fears were justified). * [[Dawn of an Era]]: A rather dark example, as the war and its aftermath, would decisively shape the modern world as we know it ~~todau~~today. * [[Disaster Dominoes]]: How that war was triggered. And arguably what the war's end [[World War II\|eventually triggers]]. * [[Earth Is a Battlefield]]: Although it's mostly known for fighting in France, Belgium and Russia, there were battles all over the place. Technically, as they were Empires, the governments involved covered the entire earth, but the fighting was heavily concentrated on small fronts. * [[The Empire]]: Several of them, and some of those empires ceased to exist because of this war. ~~Which~~This leads to... * [[End of an Age]]: By the time the war was over, the Russian, German, Ottoman, and ~~Austo~~Austro-Hungarian Empires had collapsed, their colonies and territories either carved up by the victors or declaring themselves independent nations. Britain was the only European empire still standing, and it soon found its overseas territories clamoring for home rule. The time when the world would be ruled by a handful of ancient monarchies came to an end, to be replaced by international cooperation among a diverse collection of independent republics. At least, that's what the revolutionaries [[Wrong Genre Savvy\|hoped would happen]]. Things didn't exactly pan out that way. * [[Feuding Families]]: Since virtually all the European monarchies were by now related, the whole war was technically this. Kaiser Wilhelm and Tsar Nicholas II, second cousins, called one another [http://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/The_Willy-Nicky_Telegrams "Willy" and "Nicky"] before things went too far downhill for diplomacy. Both were first cousins of King George V, then -current monarch of England, as was Nicholas' wife Alexandra, whose grandmother was Queen Victoria. ** To drive this home, [http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2011/254/2/f/in_coburg_by_alixofhesse-d49klk6.png this picture] shows [[Queen Victoria]] at Coburg inn 1894 with her some of her extended family. In that picture, you have two future British Kings, as well as the last Kaiser (of Germany) and the last Czarina (of Russia), and those are just children and grandchildren. * [[Flanderization]]: World War I more often than not [[Hollywood History\|tends to be associated with trench warfare and other harrowing scenes from the Western Front]], sidelining the other aspects of the conflict. * [[Foreshadowing]]: Line 128 ⟶ 124: "The lights are going out all over Europe: we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime." - Sir Edward Grey, British Foreign Minister, as the war began "This is no peace, it is an armistice for twenty years." - French Marshal Ferdinand Foch, on the Treaty of Versailles. }} Continuing on the Foch quote; US general Pershing hated the idea of an Armistice, because he believed that unless they obtained an unconditional surrender the German people would come to believe that they were defeated for reasons other ~~then~~than military. [[wikipedia:Stab-in-the-back legend\|He was right.]] A cartoon from the time of the Versailles treaty shows Lloyd-George saying to his fellow leaders: "Listen. Do you hear a child crying?" Said child is unseen in a corner weeping over a torn copy of the treaty. Virtually any boy born in England or France in 1918-1919 would have been conscripted in 1939. * [[Friend or Foe]]: Everywhere, especially with artillery and between the Austro-Hungarians, who were divided by language. * [[Gambit Pileup]]: The entire war was a textbook example of this; in some cases, the gears had been turning since the ''seventeenth century''. * [[General Failure]]: On virtually every side and a large part of why the war was as horrible and bloody as it was. Generals, and most senior officers, of the time, often had their position from politics rather than competence, having never seen combat in their career, dreamed of glorious victories with lost men as statistics, and often hated other countries ''that were on the same side'' all while refusing to embrace modern tactics. * [[Go-Karting with Bowser]]: On Christmas, 1914, forces in certain areas took a break from the war to go into No Man's Land and play soccer/football with each other and generally fraternize with the enemy. It was not universal, and ended up being stopped by the higher -ups on both sides, but stands out as a bit of heartwarmingness in one of the bleakest periods of the Twentieth Century. * [[Gray and Gray Morality]]: Unlike [[World War Two\|the sequel]], the good-versus-evil battle was far less obvious; as almost all the countries initially involved were motivated by a combination of greed, racism, and nationalistic fervor. While the Central Powers did things like [[Fascists' Bed Time\|impose extremely nasty measures in the areas they occupied]] and [[Obligatory War Crime Scene\|violated several agreements regarding the rules of war that they were party to]], as well as [[What Could Possibly Go Wrong?\|giving the Bolsheviks the leg up they needed to seize power]], and the use of genocide to "Germanify" or "Turkify" several regions under their control, [[Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat\|all of which ironically probably led to their defeat.]] The Allies were better, but they still were willing to launch air attacks against civilian targets (though not on the scale of the sequel), and blockade Germany and its allies even AFTER the war on the justification that the war was not over until Berlin signed the peace treaty and recalled its holdouts in some of the still-occupied regions, used poison gas, smuggled war materials in neutrally-flagged ships, and (in the case of the Russian government) indulged in anti-~~semetic~~Semitic paranoia. Nobody descended to QUITE the level [[Those Wacky Nazis]] did, [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero\|but the failure to prosecute war criminals after the war doubtless didn't discourage them.]] * [[Harsher in Hindsight]]: Immediately after the war ended, many people were so disgusted by the scale of death and destruction that they declared that they had finally seen the worst humanity was capable of. [[World War Two\|They]] [[Adolf Hitler\|were]] [[Nazi Germany\|wrong.]] * [[Historical Hero Upgrade]]: Very rare in today's media, but in the immediate aftermath Hindenburg (who didn't do much) and Ludendorff (who lost) both made out that they were True German Heroes who had been betrayed by defeatists at home. [[Woodrow Wilson]], the President of the US and overseer of the Treaty of Versailles, was a fairly good-hearted man who genuinely tried to avert another such conflict and seriously attempted to make things better for countries... [[Values Dissonance\|provided their populations were white]]. His racism and his purposeful creation of an imperfect schooling system (intended to create primarily staff for factories) are generally glossed over. Sir Douglas Haig, in one of his wiser moments, ~~realised~~realized that the only way it could end well ~~was~~as if the same [[Imperial Germany]] which had started the war signed the armistice to end it; this proved not to be the case, and the job (and the blame) fell on the civilians. * [[Hey, It's That Guy!]]: Many people who later became famous in a variety of fields were anonymous soldiers in [[World War I]] - whether it be political leaders like [[Adolf Hitler]] or writers like [[J. R. R. Tolkien\|JRR Tolkien]] and [[Ernest Hemingway]]. A common, poignant [[Alternate History]] speculation ~~centres~~centers around considering, given how many gifted people came out of the trenches, how many more would that generation have produced if so many of their comrades hadn't died there. It may also work the other way, given how so many of these notables were spurred onto their future actions in one way or another by their experiences in the trenches and how they may have lacked similar impetus without the war. * [[Historical Villain Upgrade]]: German Emperor Wilhelm II, in most portrayals from Allied countries. By extension, Germany as a whole, and to a lesser extent Austria and Russia, seem to get this treatment. For example, referring to Germany's policy of creating dependent nations from the peoples of what had been the Russian empire as [[Those Wacky Nazis\|"Lebensraum"]]. * Though that one case was largely justified, as [[Does This Remind You of Anything?\|those nations were largely viewed as placeholders under German colonization could take place.]] ** The Japanese got hit with this as well, mostly thanks to American views on the [[Yellow Peril\|subject]], and the perception at the time by some Royal Navy Officers, most notably Admiral John Jellicoe, the commander of the British Grand Fleet, that the Japanese weren't contributing that much to the war effort, despite heavy involvement in secondary theaters (Tsingtao, anyone?) and in tasks like escorting troopships and convoys headed for Europe. The whole bit about [[Only in It For the Money\|just being in it for the German Pacific colonies]] is a pretty hefty exaggeration, but not entirely a fabrication. They did also end up with pretty hefty rewards for relatively limited pain (about 415 dead and 907 wounded.) * [[Hollywood Tactics]]: Heavily exaggerated by, ironically enough, Hollywood, but some pretty stupid things were done. Sadly enough, this was justified. Technology had far outstripped an understanding of tactics by then. The last big wars were fought against Napoleon, using formations and muzzle-loading muskets - or at the very least, artillery that was short-ranged and slow to load. Of the nations fighting ''this'' one, only one had had any prior experience with the levels of Dakka flying around: the ~~latecoming~~late-coming Yanks, from [[The American Civil War]]. (And even then we would have been out of our depths with the aircraft and tanks.) * It's hardly true that the American Civil War was the most recent or relevant war by WWI. Later and more relevant military experience came from the British during the Boer War (1899-1902), and the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905). Both wars involved much of the same technology that lead to the stalemate in the Great War-barbed wire and long-ranged, rapid -fire infantry weapons that could drive artillery from the field. The first made defenses incredibly difficult for infantry to breach, while the second ensured that artillery fire was indirect and therefore imprecise, mandating the long bombardments as seen at the Somme. In the Boer War, the British found that their forces could be pinned down by very small numbers of Boers armed with modern rifles, and that shock attacks were essentially useless (see especially the early days of the war). By the end of the war, the British were using barbed wire to parcel in the remaining Boers, denying mobility. The Russo-Japanese ~~war~~War involved several engagements that closely resembled WWI-style trench warfare, especially the Battle of Mukden. Both sides were well entrenched, with barbed wire, machine- guns, and trenches. The minor gains and ~165 000 casualties were certainly similar to a WWI battle. Both wars (and the American Civil War) were well observed by the major powers of WWI, and it's pretty clear that everyone knew what they were getting into. It took until ~1917, however, for them to figure out what to do about it. ** The 1870 Franco-Prussian War was the main reason for France to declare war to Germany in 1914. Some of the tactics (and clothing, with red "shoot-me" pants) were still in use in the French army more than forty years later, much to ~~disatrous~~disastrous effects, which lead to trenches warfare and blue outfits. * [[Home by Christmas]]: The countries involved were confident that their soldiers would come home victoriously within months, a popular belief too; the soldiers on their way to the front were cheerfully saluted and joined by the citizens for a few miles. The scenario of an industrialized meat grinder war of attrition had not been experienced in Europe yet. * [[Idiot Plot]]: The [[Idiot Ball]] gets passed back and forth between everyone. France and Britain ~~going~~went to war with Germany, which produced 90% of their high explosives, without the ready ability to manufacture elsewhere. The Belgians ~~claiming~~claimed their forts were still holding out weeks after the Germans had captured them, the ~~allies~~Allies ~~believing~~believed that Victorian tactics could work, and finally the Germans for trying to get Mexico to invade the US and ~~alienating~~alienate most of the world. [[Fridge Logic]] was introduced by the Mexican General Staff, which was forwarded the Zimmerman Note for analysis by President Carranza. They concluded that Germany was trying to incite Mexico to attack the United States [[Let's You and Him Fight\|with no risk or sacrifice to Germany]]. Assurances of German financial support were meaningless, as the only country capable of selling Mexico enough arms to defeat the United States ''was the United States itself!'' And Germany's own wartime demands (to say nothing of the British blockade) ensured that the Germans could not provide Mexico with additional troops, weapons, or technical support. The Mexican army also concluded that the occupation would not be worth the trouble even if Mexico did manage to win, and that provoking the United States would alienate the rest of Latin America (or possibly bring them into the war on the side of the Allies). Carranza, subsequently, told the Germans what they could do with their note. Nothing beats the Italian general staff, though. When somebody sticks to the same Napoleonic Era- war plan even after their army has been beaten attempting to cross that one river for the ''11th'' time, you have to wonder what the hell ~~were~~ they were smoking. * Less the Italian General Staff (who were- all things considering- about as competent as anybody else and probably the equals or superiors of their Austro-Hungarian opponents) and more Luigi Cadorna, who came within a few steps of turning Italy into a military dictatorship under his command and who practically ran the war for the first two years of Italy's involvement. How bad was he? To this day the term ~~cadorna~~Cadorna is still used as slang for something crappy BY THE ITALIANS. Unsurprisingly, the front turned around almost immediately when Cadorna was finally removed from power and replaced with Diaz in spite of Diaz inheriting the exact situation Cadorna had had with the additional negative effect of the enemy's smashing victory and Caporetto a month or so earlier. Also ~~the way~~ the way war broke out was because of the various war plans. If Russia thought there would be any trouble with Austria they would mobilize against Austria and Germany, and if Germany thought Russia was mobilizing they would immediately invade France and Belgium. Guess what happened. * [[Improvised Weapon]]: Early on in the war, the British were able to defeat the Germans using ~~massed~~mass rifle fire. However, as trench warfare developed, much of the fighting ~~occured~~occurred in close quarters when raiding trenches, for which the long bolt action rifles, with bayonets fixed, were utterly impractical. Soldiers took to using shovels, knives, brass knuckles, clubs, and ''maces'' as mêlée weapons. As the British had discontinued the use of grenades several decades earlier, soldiers had to improvise those as well until the Mills Bomb was issued. * [[It Got Worse]]: After the war ended, the world was devastated by the Spanish Flu -- spread by the returning soldiers who had more or less created ideal pandemic conditions by staying in wet trenches with corpses everywhere -- which killed up to 100 million people (by comparison, four years of War killed perhaps 16 million people) * [[Knight Templar Parent]]: Franz Joseph. ** If this is in reference to Archduke Franz Ferdinand, then it should be pointed out that Franz Joseph didn't particularly like him. The declaration of war against Serbia was to take a ~~hardline~~hard line against violent nationalism, not revenge. * [[Last of His Kind]]: Most of the last surviving veterans of the war have died in the past 15 years. As of 2011, nobody who saw active combat remains (the last, Claude Choules (British-born Australian, served in the RN and RAN) died May 5th, 2011). The last known survivor was Florence Green (British, last female veteran, died 7 Feb 2012). The last Canadian, Polish, Ukrainian and Austro-Hungarian veterans died only recently, only one to four years ago. Also, the last American veteran, Frank Buckles, died on February 27th, 2011. * [[Memetic Badass]]: Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, commander of German forces in East Africa, intentionally built up a crazy reputation among both his enemies and his own troops ~~though~~through such acts as personally ~~reconoitering~~reconnoitering a battlefield on his bicycle. When he lost his glass eye and one of his Askaris (African troops) found it, returned it, and asked why he had dropped it, he replied "I left it there, to make sure that you would do your duty." By the end of the campaign, his enemies believed he was carrying his men on his back and going barefoot to conserve boots. After the war, he managed to get England to pay the retirement funds of his African troops. Let me repeat that: he managed to get England to pay for the retirement of the people who had ''shot at their soldiers''.▼ * [[Mata Hari]]: The [[Trope Namer]] was a spy during this war. ** He was also a [[Father to His Men]], insisting that his black troops be treated the same as his white troops. When Lettow-Vorbeck returned to ~~east~~East Africa in 1953, his surviving askaris assembled and serenaded him with their marching song.▼ ▲* [[Memetic Badass]]: Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, commander of German forces in East Africa, intentionally built up a crazy reputation among both his enemies and his own troops though such acts as personally reconoitering a battlefield on his bicycle. When he lost his glass eye and one of his Askaris (African troops) found it, returned it, and asked why he had dropped it, he replied "I left it there, to make sure that you would do your duty." By the end of the campaign, his enemies believed he was carrying his men on his back and going barefoot to conserve boots. After the war, he managed to get England to pay the retirement funds of his African troops. Let me repeat that: he managed to get England to pay for the retirement of the people who had ''shot at their soldiers''. ▲ He was also a [[Father to His Men]], insisting that his black troops be treated the same as his white troops. When Lettow-Vorbeck returned to east Africa in 1953, his surviving askaris assembled and serenaded him with their marching song. Lettow-Vorbeck was offered the ambassadorship to Great Britain by Hitler but, distrusting the Nazi party, [[Crowning Moment of Awesome\|told Hitler what he could do with the proposal]]. According to one interview: {{quote\|"I understand that von Lettow told Hitler to go fuck himself." "That's right, but I don't think he put it that politely." }} ** Also, Canadian troops are the origin of the term Stormtrooper. The German forces called them that because whenever you saw Canadians in the line, you knew there was going to be an attack in the morning. It eventually reached the point where the command could draw German troops away from an area by supplying them with misinformation on the locations of Canadian units. There was also a nasty ~~rumour~~rumor that Canadians were immune to gas attacks and the cold. Only the latter is true. * [[Misblamed]]: The Spanish Flu actually originated in Kansas. Since Spain was the only neutral country around, the Spanish press was the only one that gave more importance to the disease than to the war, and people came to believe it had originated in Spain. * [[Modern Major-General]]: Far too many officers on every side tried to use nineteenth -century tactics against twentieth -century weapons for the first few years of the war. It was not a success. * [[Mordor]]: What the most frequented frontlines looked like after years and years of bombardment and endless battles, notably on the Western Front. The battlefield near Paschendale looked particularly dreary in 1917 - a hellish, completely blasted-to-bits muddy wasteland. Tolkien even hinted at, years later, that the frontlines in Belgium and France (where he served as an army medic) gave him a lot of inspiration for Mordor. So, oddly, they sort of count as a [[Trope Codifier]]. * In particular, the Dead Marshes crossed by Frodo, Sam, and Gollum in ''[[The Two Towers]]'' were directly inspired by things ~~Tolkein~~Tolkien saw during the war: a wretched swamp filled with the corpses of soldiers. * [[More Dakka]]: Probably set a record for extreme concentrations of firepower. As just one example, the Battle of the Somme saw the British fire 12,000 ''tons'' of artillery ordnance at the German lines. The Germans, largely sheltered in excellent German engineering bunkers, emerged to intercept the following infantry attack - and inflict ''60,000'' British casualties in one day with machine guns. ''Nineteen thousand people were shot to death in one day'' and that was just the start of the battle; it went on for five months and ultimately caused well over ''one million'' casualties. A detachment of the British Machine Gun Corps with 12 Vickers machine guns worked their way through a ''million'' rounds in 12 hours at High Wood. Line 177 ⟶ 172: After all was totted up, it's reckoned that one ton of explosives was spent killing each of the war's casualties. ** There is also the Paris Gun, an enormous cannon built by the Germans that could fire shells ''eighty miles'', so far and high that Coriolis Force affected the shots. * [[Mundane Utility]]: One of the first ~~military~~militaries uses for aircraft, a technology ~~which~~that man has sought desperately since its infancy millions of years ago and has only now just acquired, was to look at the enemy from a very high place. Technically beaten to by the use of balloons in the [[American Civil War]], but those could barely reach fraction of the height a plan could and were of much more limited utlity. ** [http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2016/04/04/the-winchester-machine-rifle-wwis-anti-balloon-assault-rifle/ Winchester prototyped an assault rifle], decades before the Germans made the STG44, for ~~the~~ the purpose of shooting down balloons. * [[Multinational Team]]: Applies to most belligerent empires/states: British Empire and Commonwealth armies were assembled from a quarter of the globe. A flotilla of Japanese destroyers even served with the British Mediterranean fleet. France used troops from across its Empire (mostly from Senegal) and the famous [[Legion of Lost Souls\|Foreign Legion]]. The Austro-Hungarian Empire included not only Austria and Hungary but many other central European and Balkan regions, nations and city -states as well. The Ottoman Empire included modern Turkey and all of the middle east from present-day Iraq to Egypt (although Egypt split off almost as soon as the war began--being semi-independent since the early 19th century and occupied by Britain since the 1880s). ** Russian Empire formed the first Latvian Riflemen brigades during this war. That came to bite them in the ass when the Riflemen supported Bolsheviks, giving the ~~reds~~Reds a good number of battle -hardened troops resenting the Empire. * [[Neutral No Longer]]: Several examples. The British Empire after the invasion of neutral Belgium and the United States when Germany enacted unrestricted submarine warfare. * [[Never My Fault]]: The Ottoman Empire's reaction to its crippling loss to the Russians after trying to invade in the dead of winter. Instead of blaming bad judgment on their part, they turned on the minorities within their empire for allegedly 'helping' the Russians. It is certain that a good number of the Armenians and Pontic Greeks on the campaign were spies for the Russians (though they were ironically outnumbered by the number of spies amongst the ethnic Turks the Russians had been cultivating since the ~~1870's~~1870s) in part because of the Young Turk's savage reprisals against their entire communities for the actions of a handful of radicals. It is also certain that they did next to nothing in contributing to the Turkish defeat compared to the pure idiocy of Enver Pasha. * Ironically if the Ottoman army had invested more in helping the Germans fight rather than using much of their firearms and soldiers executing a [[Final Solution]] on their own citizens they may have stood more of a chance of winning. But, since they'd been massacring their Christian population on and off since the ~~1890's~~1890s, they likely just saw their defeat by Russia as a good excuse to spread paranoia about all of them being traitors and finish them all off, regardless of how many actually were rooting for the other side. But one can hardly blame, for instance, the Armenians of the city of Van for holding out for the Russian army to liberate them while being put under a siege because they wouldn't let the Ottoman army march them into the Syrian desert to die. * [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero]]: The Treaty of Versailles. Especially the debate in the United States over its ratification. Anti-Treaty Republicans wanted to compromise, especially in ~~regards~~regard to President Woodrow Wilson's idea for the [[League of Nations]]. Having spurned the Republicans at Versailles, Wilson found a firestorm of opposition waiting for him at home, and attempted to launch a nationwide campaign to rally support for the League. He overexerted himself campaigning and suffered a debilitating stroke that left the nation devoid of any real executive power at a critical juncture. The US failed to join the League as a result, upon hearing of its final defeat on the Senate floor, in one of his brief moments of coherence, Wilson is said to have commented "they have shamed us in the eyes of the world". The US failed to give its own critical involvement to the League of Nations, leaving it a weak and toothless organization that would largely prove impotent when faced ~~against~~with aggressive and ambitious dictators willing to flaunt international law There's also a far-reaching incident that happened with Wilson while he was eating at a restaurant. A Vietnamese waiter came up to him and wanted to talk to him about French Indochina and the possibility of its independence from France. Wilson brushed him off. The waiter's name? [[wikipedia:Ho Chi Minh\|Ho Chi Minh]]. The first recorded cases of Spanish flu were among soldiers in ''Kansas''. This makes it likely that American soldiers sent to the front lines were the ones who unknowingly carried it over to Europe, [[Typhoid Mary]] style. Line 195 ⟶ 190: Nice job helping Lenin get back to Russia, allowing a Communist takeover which would beat you in [[World War Two]] and dooming the world to half a century of [[Cold War]], Germany. Nice job training German soldiers in secret after the war, Russia. * [[Obvious Beta]]: World War I was a testing ground for many military technologies that would see much greater use in later wars: Tanks were born in this conflict, at least in the earliest form that can be associated with the modern use of the term. The tactics for their use would only become usable in WW2. Aircraft carriers got their first use in this war, albeit in a very limited role. Actual profound usage in combat would be in WW2. Airplanes had most of their basic tactics honed and refined in this war, with later wars expanding on them greatly. Mass deployment of poison gas was pioneered in this war. While discouraged in later wars due to the horrific effects they had as applied to all sides in WWI, further refinements and enhancements to their use and protection from the same would develop based on their debut in WWI. * [[Only Sane Man]]: Charles I of Austria-Hungary, who became [[The Emperor\|Emperor]] right in the middle of a war he didn't want to fight. He proposed a "peace without recriminations" in which all parties would simply lay down their weapons and go home to rebuild their shattered countries. The Allies simply scoffed at the proposal, the Germans were furious about Charles' plan to "abandon" them. Charles was then [[It Got Worse\|deposed]] at the end of the war. He tried to [[Rightful King Returns\|regain the Hungarian throne]], but the Allies would never have allowed it, and the [[Regent for Life\|sitting ruler]] of Hungary didn't want trouble from them, even though it meant breaking his former oaths of loyalty to Charles. In the end, Charles died [[Impoverished Patrician\|in poverty]], [[The Exile\|exiled to]] the Portuguese island of Madeira. For everything he had done, he was Beatified by [[The Pope\|Pope John Paul II]], and he will probably be [[Patron Saint\|Canonised a saint]] before long. {{quote\|'''Anatole France:''' ''Emperor Karl is the only decent man to come out of the war in a leadership position, yet he was a saint and no one listened to him. He sincerely wanted peace, and therefore was despised by the whole world. It was a wonderful chance that was lost.''}} ** Benedict XV , too. He repeatedly said that the war was "the suicide of civilized Europe", even from the beginning, and proposed peace treaties similar to Blessed Karl's every year of the war. Nobody listened to him, either. * [[Paper-Thin Disguise]]: In September 1914 the British auxiliary cruiser Carmania, disguised as the German liner Cap Trafalgar, encountered the German auxiliary cruiser Cap Trafalgar, which was disguised as the British liner Carmania. [[wikipedia:Battle of Trindade\|Oops]]. * [[Patriotic Fervour]]: Everyone. At least, at the start. It became a big factor at the end, too, with national independence movements springing up all over the place. One example over-looked by historians in the latter 20th Century but now starting to be studied more because of [[wikipedia:2010%E2%80%932011 Middle East and North Africa protests\|recent events]] is now starting to be looked at a little more closely, what is being referred to is the series of the uprising against the collapsing Ottoman Empire known as the [[wikipedia:Arab Revolt\|Arab Revolt]] which saw the almost-independence of most of the Middle-East before the Allied Powers swept in and started mandating and redrawing the map of the middle east with very far-reaching consequences. With Anti-German sentiment running high in the US, many things were re-named to disassociate them from German origins: Sauerkraut -> "Liberty Cabbage", Dachshunds -> "Liberty Hounds", German Measles -> ''"Liberty Measles"'', Frankfurters -> "Hot Dogs" * Only ''one'' of those terms gained lasting traction in common usage. [[Captain Obvious\|See if you can guess which one]]. Line 205: Berlin, Ontario->Kitchener. * Subverted in that the residents of Berlin/Kitchener never really wanted the name changed because the majority of them were ethnically German; the movement to rename the city came from people outside Berlin [[With Us or Against Us\|who thought the pacifist Mennonite majority of the city were being disloyal]]. In the end, [[Executive Meddling]] won out. Averted in Berlin, New Hampshire. They kept the name perhaps because the local ~~pronounciation~~pronunciation accented the first syllable (BER-lin as opposed to ber-LIN). Even in Russia, Sankt Petersburg > Petrograd (> Leningrad, post -Russian Civil War). In France, too: A little town named Allemagne (Germany) was renamed Fleury-sur-Orne. It didn't apply just to places or items, many immigrants were forced to change their names to more "American" sounding ones. *** "Schmidt" became "Smith", "Schneider" became "Snider" (why not "Taylor"? That's what it means, after all), "Huber" became "Hoover"... * [[Pretext for War]]: The Assassination of Franz Ferdinand. Despite the mediator's ~~attempting~~attempts to stop the war. * [[Rightful King Returns]]: Defied at the end of the war. The Allied powers and "Little Entente" made a point to ensure that the Habsburgs never regained power. * [[Red Scare]]: The Trope codifier, as it saw the [[Red October\|Bolsheviks came to power in Russia]] [[Old Shame\|with the help of the Germans despite Austro-Hungarian objections]], who proceeded to break away from the Allies and try to confiscate various Allied military supplies still in Russia, which eventually ballooned into all out civil war, a Western intervention, and several foreign invasions that left a great deal of animosity between the Soviets and most of the rest of the World and sharp internal divisions and suspicion of the domestic Left throughout the West. Line 218: * [[Russian Guy Suffers Most]]: They had the largest death toll, followed by France and Austria-Hungary. Debateable: Germany suffered the largest ''confirmed'' death toll at around 2 million. Russian figures may have been higher, but no one is sure. If you include the immediately subsequent Russian civil war, then this trope is played straight. * Problem with Russia is how do you figure 'Russian' death tolls as it was a multinational empire at the war's start and a different multinational dictatorship at the end. Do you count Polish, Ukrainian, Lithuanian etc. deaths as Russian or not? It impacts the overall numbers. ** Less debatable is the Russian military equipment being pretty sub-par. Malnourished and ill ~~equiped~~-equipped troops were the norm in that empire. * [[Schizo-Tech]]: The introduction of poison gas, tanks, and surveillance aircraft (as well as one of the first campaigns of aerial assault led by [[Colonel Badass\|Lt. Commander Peter Strasser]]) mixed with distinctly old-world attitudes and aesthetics. * [[Seductive Spy]]: The folklore that arose around former [[Trope Namer]] [[Mata Hari]] essentially codified the trope during this war. * [[Shell-Shocked Veteran]]: Practically ''every common footsoldier'' (though not only them). [[Trope Namer\|The war itself was the actual originator of the term "shell shock"]]. * [[Shotguns Are Just Better]]: So much so that the Germans decided that anybody captured with one would be executed on the spot. * [[Shot At Dawn]]: Not as common as people think. Most of the British soldiers killed were actually shot for things like murder and many sentences were commuted. ** Other armies such as the Italian army were a different story, however. Around 6% of the ranks were tried by Court Martial and shot. * [[A Simple Plan]]: The Schlieffen Plan. Many say it could never actually have worked whatever happened, but even despite one thing going wrong after another, the Germans did get uncomfortably close to Paris. By extension, the initial "Charge-Bangabang-Tea+ Crumpets-VICTORY!" war- plans of the Entente. To summarize, the Schlieffen Plan was Germany's grand strategy for fighting a two-front war with both France and Russia. The idea was to deploy ~90% of the German army against France, with projections of defeating them utterly within six to eight weeks, and then redeploy the whole shebang by rail to deal with the Russians. Against France, Germany was divided into two separate flanks: The left flank would be used as [[Schmuck Bait]] to lure the French forces into the Rhineland and parts of Germany proper, while the stronger right flank would wrap around through Belgium and the Netherlands and envelop the French from the flanks, leaving the bulk of the French army surrounded and a strong German force a hop, skip, and jump away from Paris. Unfortunately for the Germans, after Schlieffen's retirement, he was replaced by [[General Failure\|Field Marshal von Moltke]], who had issues with violating Dutch neutrality and with allowing France to occupy even a sliver of Germany, despite the strategic reasons for doing so. He altered the plan so as not to enter the Netherlands and redeployed over 250,000 men from the right flank to reinforce the left and the eastern front, wanting to beat the French in a stand-up fight with a minimum of detours through Belgium. Without those extra men, the German advance through Belgium and into France bogged down, leaving Germany to fight a war against France, a Belgian resistance force, the British expeditionary unit, and eventually Russia, exactly the situation the Schlieffen Plan was designed to prevent. * Schlieffen's plan was so precise that it even dictated the railroad timetables involved in moving troops in German, Belgium, and France. The 6-8 weeks figure comes from an intense study of the Russian railway system. The original plan that eventually led to Gallipoli was based on the (not ''entirely'' unreasonable) idea that the Ottoman Empire was so shaky that a force of battleships shelling Constantinople would knock the Turks out of the war. For a variety of reasons things didn't work out, but some military historians consider that the naval campaign at least had some merit. * Gallipoli--the Dardanelles operation, that is--failed because of terrible leadership from the generals on the scene. The idea was sound. * [[Stuffed Into the Fridge]]: the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires definitely shared this fate at the war's end. In terms of individual lives, as many as 65 million cases, depending upon whether you include things like the Spanish Flu, the famine and civil war in Russia, the Armenian genocide, and other incidents directly or proximately caused by the war. * [[Tank Goodness]]: The first in history. * [[Tear Jerker]]: Many heart-warming poems and gut-wrenching stories were written, but perhaps the greatest tearjerker of the entire conflict is the reality of millions of men, no matter their nationality, going into battle perfectly aware they were going to die. To make it even more tragic, the war itself resulted in little more than setting up an ''even worse'' world war. Line 236 ⟶ 237: * [[Ur Example]]: Some historians credit the [[Seven Years' War]] from 1756 to 1763 as the real first World War, because of its global nature. World War I may then just be the [[Trope Codifier]]. * [[War Is Hell]]: This war was so horrible that everyone involved decided to never engage in war again. * [[Warrior Poet]]: Many many poets and writers served in the war. Siegfried Sassoon, JRR Tolkien, and John McCrae are only a few examples. ~~With the~~The most famous war poet ~~being~~was Wilfred Owen, who died one week before the armistice. ** Gabriele D'Annunzio is the most ''in''famous due his ~~tendence~~tendency to pull insane acts and survive (including flying all the way from Italy to Vienna in a bomber and ~~drop~~dropping leaflets just to prove they could). * [[The War to End All Wars]]: An example where it didn't work at all. Also, the [[Trope Namer]]. * [[We Have Reserves]]: The war, unfortunately, was made of this trope. * [[Western Terrorists]]: Gavrilo Princip * [[Worthy Opponent]]: The [[Red Baron]] and Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck were highly respected by their enemies. ~~From~~On the other side, many famous Entente heroes were this way. ** Also Karl von Müller and the crew of the German commerce raider SMS ''Emden'', ~~which~~ sank 16 Allied merchant ships without taking a life. When she was finally sunk and her crew taken prisoner even the heavily anti-German British press saluted their courage and gallantry. * [[Wrong Genre Savvy]]: Lots of this, in many forms. Particularly once the Russian Civil War began, there was some romanticization of the War as a "global revolution." The 19th Century was very much the age of revolutions, with many nationalist and (small-r) republican movements springing up around the world. Colonial empires were slowly being dismantled from within, territories breaking away, becoming independent nations, and spreading democracy. From that perspective, the Great War was seen as the death throes of Imperialism, where the empires that dominated the world would fade away and be replaced by a more equitable, more modern form of government. Yeah...not exactly... ** Charles I of Austria-Hungary can arguably be described as the right person at the worst possible time. As all his efforts to save the Habsburg domains and end the war ultimately proved to be either for naught or too little, too late. * [[You Fail Economics Forever]]: Germany's strategy for paying for the war, instead of increasing wartime taxes and other such things that the other countries did? Just print money. This left the Germans with a useless form of currency, with the life savings of a retired citizen barely enough to cover a table. People were ''using marks as fuel for their fires or wallpaper'' because there was nothing else they could do with them. * [[Young Future Famous People]]: Due to conscription, you generally couldn't throw a brick in the trenches without hitting someone who would grow up to be an important writer/actor/scientist/future political leader etc. (Most notably [[Adolf Hitler]]). ~~Which~~This has led some to speculate on just how much the 20th century would have been enriched considering how many ''potential'' future famous people were killed in the war. * [[Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters]]: Many~~, many~~ cases. Most notably, the war's triggering event- if not its outright cause due to the powder keg nature of diplomacy at the time- was hethe assassination of Franz Ferdinand and his wife by Gavrilo Princip of the Anarchist/Nationalist (go figure) group Young Bosnia, which was a front for Unification Or Death AKA the Black Hand, and who is still viewed as a hero by large segments of the population of the former Yugoslavia. Also, see the nationalist undergrounds within the Turkish and Russian Empires and the Bolsheviks. * [[Zerg Rush]] - A commonly used strategy, usually leading to a resounding victory - for the defenders. Line 465 ⟶ 466: [[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]] [[Category:Pages with working Wikipedia tabs]] [[Category:Useful Notes/History]]