Progress of the War

World War I lasted four years and can be broken down into six phases of varying length.

Phase 1. The war begins, August 1914-December 1914. From the beginning, Germany was far better prepared for war than the Allies and, with France in Russia in an alliance, had long been planning the best way to handle a two-front war. The answer was the Schlieffen Plan, named for Alfred Schlieffen, the German Chief of Staff from 1891-1906. The plan called for Germany to hold its Western border—France was well-fortified along its border with Germany, and the Germans knew it made little sense to attack the French at those strong points—and sweep into France through Luxembourg and Belgium in the north. The Germans would march west through northern France and sweep into Paris from the east. Once France was subdued, the Germans would be able to focus on Russia and the Eastern front.

In the early going, the plan went well. The French attempted an offensive in the disputed provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, but the German troops held them off and the attack was a miserable failure—the French army suffered 250,000 casualties. Meanwhile, the Germans were able to move through Belgium and into France, reaching the outskirts of Paris in the first week of September, a month after war was declared.

But there were serious holes in the Schlieffen Plan. For one thing, the Belgians, even after they were defeated by the Germans, continued to resist and created havoc for Germany’s army. For another thing, there was no way for supply lines to keep up with the fast pace of the German invasion of France—by the time German armies reached Paris, they were stretched thin. That problem was made worse by the fact that, on the Eastern front, the Russians had mobilized faster than Germany had expected, and the German army was not able to fully focus on the Western front.

A Map of the War Front By the end of 1914, the Western front was well-established and would not change much until the end of the war.

When French Gen. Joseph Joffre engaged the Germans in the First Battle of the Marne in early September 1914, he was leading an army that was desperately in need of a victory against a German army that had petered out. Joffre and the Allies won at the Marne and saved Paris, elevating Joffre to national-hero status. The French were able to push the Germans away from Paris. From there, the French and Germans attacked and counterattacked, moving steadily northward from Champagne in attempts to outflank each other. This became known as, “The Race to the Sea.” By late October, the French and Germans were fighting the Battle of the Yser near the North Sea. Three months into the war, the Western front was essentially established and would not change much over the coming four years.

The final battle to be resolved in the Race to the Sea was the First Battle of Ypres, which went from October 14 to November 30. That fight would set the tone for the rest of the war—there were great casualties in extended fighting over a small piece of land. The Allies combined to suffer well over 100,000 casualties. Germany, meanwhile, suffered about 100,000 casualties, many of which were enthusiastic young student volunteers who could not have foreseen the horrors of war. The Germans came to know First Ypres as, “The Massacre of the Innocents.”

Phase 2. Stalemate and slaughter. January 1915-April 1917. While war spread around the globe—Italy entered on the side of the Allies, the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers, while colonial interests in the Middle East, Africa and the Far East got involved—the Western front didn’t budge much.

As foretold by events at Ypres, the war became a series of impossibly bloody battles for limited territory. In early 1915, the French attempted an offensive in Champagne. After more than a month of fighting, they had taken just one small slice of land, at a cost of 240,000 casualties. The Germans, concentrating on the Eastern front, launched only one major offensive on the Western front in 1915—the Second Battle of Ypres, which saw the introduction of large-scale use of poison gas by the German army. The Germans didn’t gain much land, but Ypres itself was reduced to rubble in the battle, and more than 100,000 combined casualties were reported.

In February 1916, Germany attempted an attack on Verdun, a battle that would drag on until December and finish indecisively. But it cost 250,000 lives and another 500,000 casualties, making it one of the bloodiest battles in human history. Meanwhile, in July 1916, the Allies tried an offensive of their own in the Battle of the Somme. They would fight for five months and the two sides would incur a stunning 1.2 million casualties. The British suffered 57,000 casualties on the first day of the battle, the worst single day in the history of the British military. For such a prolonged battle, and for so many casualties, when the Battle of the Somme ended, the Allies gained no significant ground.

Phase 3. Enter the U.S. On April 6, 1917, the United States formally entered the war against Germany, inciting great jubilation among the Allies. But the Allies overestimated the Americans’ preparedness for war. The U.S. army stood at only about 200,000 soldiers, a puny force in the face of the An aerial view of the city of Verdun in flames. (Photo courtesy of Great War Primary Document Archive, www.gwpda.org/photos) mass casualties seen in the dragged-out battles of the war. The Americans would need at least a year to raise a sufficient army, and that army would need to be trained.

Slowing the process further was the insistence by Gen. John Pershing that the Americans would only fight as a whole army, and that U.S. soldiers would not be rushed to the lines merely as replacements for worn-out British and French troops. Pershing estimated that the U.S. army would not be ready to participate until late in 1918, or even 1919. He would be forced to relent.

Phase 4. Mutiny and revolution, 1917. One of the factors that forced Pershing to relent were the two Russian Revolutions. In March 1917, control of Russia’s government was seized by the Duma, the nation’s legislative body, forcing Czar Nicholas II to abdicate and leaving a Provisional Government in control. Chaos ensued. Months later came the October Revolution, in which the Bolsheviks (led by Vladimir Lenin) took control of the country from the Provisional Government. Civil war broke out, and would continue for years.

One important offshoot of the turmoil was that the Bolsheviks wanted immediate peace with Germany. Once that was secured, Germany could, effectively, stop fighting on the Eastern front and focus its attention, troops and supplies on the Western front.

Russia did not have a monopoly on chaos. In France, Gen. Joffre was replaced by Robert Nivelle as head of the French army in December 1916, and Nivelle began pitching a plan that he claimed could win the war for France in 48 hours—a concentrated offensive along the German lines at the Aisne River. In April 1917, after delays caused by very bad weather, Nivelle finally put his plan into action. It didn’t work. Fighting went on for a month, and the French suffered heavy casualties. Nivelle, four months into the job, was dumped and replaced by Henri Petain.

French soldiers grew restless. As many as 30,000 left the front. Others refused to obey orders or move to the front-line trenches. Petain came down hard, though, arresting mutineers and dissenters, and eventually, pulled the French army back together.

Phase 5. The Spring Offensives. March 1918-July 1918. By the spring of 1918, it was clear to German commanders that if the war was to be won, it would have to be done soon. The Russian Revolution had been a blessing for Germany, boosting its supplies and forces by shutting down the Eastern front. The U.S. had been slow to mobilize and did not seem to be in a hurry to pitch in and help the struggling Allies. Now, it seemed, was the time to attack—while German morale was high and before the Americans could send waves of fresh troops.

The Germans’ first offensive (the Michael Offensive, named for the patron saint of Germany) opened in late March 1918 and was designed to break the British troops in the middle of the Western front. However, this offensive went much like the Germans’ initial invasion of France in 1914. Trenches were narrow, cramped and highly unsanitary. Here, British soldiers climb out of their trench. (Photo courtesy of Great War Primary Document Archive, www.gwpda.org/photos) They were able to advance a large swath of land (98 miles) and wiped out the British Fifth army, but when it came time for the force to achieve its main objective—the taking of Arras—German troops were worn too thin to finish the job and the British were able to hold them off.

On April 9, German troops began their second offensive, the Georgette Offensive, which focused on pushing back the lines in Flanders. Again, with good initial success, but a lack of significant tactical gains. Georgette was abandoned three weeks after it began and Germany quickly moved to what would be the most successful of its Spring Offensives—Blucher-Yorck, on the southern part of the front. The attack, launched on May 27, took the Allies by surprise. The Germans were easily able to advance past the Aisne. They were halted at Chateau Thierry, in part with the help of American troops who were getting their first real taste of the war.

The Michael, Georgette and Blucher-Yorck offensives were very successful, but came at a high cost. In the three offensives, the Germans suffered nearly 500,000 casualties, losses it could ill afford. Meanwhile, some U.S. divisions were put into action. The troop deficit showed in the failed fourth and fifth offensives that the Germans launched. The German army was exhausted. The Spring Offensives had failed to win the war for Germany. On July 17, Allied forces began their counterattack.

Phase 6. The endgame. The Allies’ offensives in the summer of 1918 were much more focused and less ambitious than Germany’s Spring Offensives. They took back the Marne by early August. They took Montdidier on August 10. They took Lys, and advanced past the Hindenburg Line, the base point of German defense. In September, the American army got its first action as a unit, easily taking the St. Mihiel salient.

Elsewhere, Germany’s allies were on the verge of implosion. There wasn’t much hope. By September 29, German military commanders called for an armistice. In October, Kaiser Wilhelm II secretly telegrammed President Woodrow Wilson, asking for peace. Wilson refused to negotiate with the current German government, though. On November 9, the Kaiser abdicated and fled to the Netherlands the next day. An armistice was declared on November 11.

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