Way back on April 6th, 1917, the United States entered the First World War. France, England, Russia, Italy, Germany, Austria, and Turkey had already been duking it out for years by then. Roughly concurrent with America’s entry, Russ...
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Way back on April 6th, 1917, the United States entered the First World War. France, England, Russia, Italy, Germany, Austria, and Turkey had already been duking it out for years by then. Roughly concurrent with America’s entry, Russia was forced to pull out due to the success of the Bolsheviks in toppling the Romanov dynasty.
There are many odd facts about this war. For starters, at the war’s beginning, France and Switzerland were the
only European countries that weren’t monarchies. Along with this, the ruling monarchs of Russia, Germany and Great Britain were all first cousins. Kaiser Wilhelm II spoke fluent English, the result of paying many visits to his grandmother, Queen Victoria.
A sad irony involves the immense popularity the beginning of the war had with the common people. Europe had not been embroiled in a major conflict since Napoleon. The Crimean and Franco-Prussian Wars were fairly well contained. The Boer War was fought on the other side of the planet. Those in power, however, dreaded the prospect. They knew all too well about the destructive capabilities of modern weapons. The tacticians of the day had no idea how to fight against machine guns. The best they could do was to send so many troops against one that it would eventually run out of ammunition. When Wilhelm sent the telegram to launch the invasion of France as laid out in the Schlieffen plan, he then turned to his generals and famously said: “Gentlemen, we will regret this.”
Just prior to this meeting, Wilhelm was on vacation, sailing his yacht around the fjords of Norway. He first learned of the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia in a Norwegian newspaper. He, of course, turned the boat around and went right back home. Young history students are taught that WW I was the result of pre-existing military commitments, a.k.a. “interlocking alliances”, that kicked into place after Austria’s Archduke Ferdinand and his wife were murdered by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo, Bosnia. That’s pretty much the case, but I would still refer back to the lack of war-weariness among the general population and the fatal enthusiasm that took its place.
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