We left off last time with Germany seeing its Schlieffen Plan fail as French, Belgian, and British troops held back the German army. We will continue today.
Knock Knock
Who’s there? Russia.
Russia has gotten its army ready for war way faster than Germany expected. So now Germany has to fight a war on two fronts, which will not be easy. Germany asks Austria-Hungary to fight Russia, a task which it cannot do. So Germany had to send some troops from the Western Front to battle Russia, which meant it could not gather all its power in one place. Normally, this shouldn’t be a problem since Germany has an ally in Austria-Hungary, and later Bulgaria and The Ottoman Empire.
Crappy Allies
Don’t get me wrong, Germany was crazy good at war, but it had a really hard time finding useful allies. Both Austria-Hungary and The Ottoman Empire were in steep decline at this point. Austria-Hungary would constantly ignore German advice and come running back for help as they got their butts kicked by Russia and Serbia.
New Allies!
The Ottoman Empire had already joined the war on the side of The Central Powers. They tried to invade Russia through the Caucasus but failed, mostly because of the cold. They also tried to take The Suez Canal from The British in Egypt but failed. In the Balkans, Austria-Hungary was still struggling with Serbia, so The Central Powers enlisted the help of Bulgaria, and together they knocked Serbia out of the war. The Allies got some new members too, Japan and Italy. Japan was busy building an empire after centuries of isolation, so when the opportunity to take Germany’s islands in the Pacific Ocean presented itself, they jumped for it. Italy had previously signed a defensive (alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary, but since the war had started when Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, Italy was not compelled to help the Central Powers since they were the aggressors.
Trench Warfare
These new fronts did nothing to change the war, so comes in Trench Warfare. This is perhaps the most famous part of The First World War. Both sides would dig a trench, and one side would bombard the other with hundreds of artillery shells. Then one side would run across no man’s land, riddled with barbed wire and corpses. The defending side would fire artillery shells at the exposed troops, and wave after wave would rush at the enemy lines until they were overrun or the opposing side gave up. This type of warfare heavily favored the defenders and resulted in massive casualties.
