World War I and not touched development. It is recommended to check the materials of this paragraph using a home test, the questions of which cover all parts of the paragraph and not only concern. England's role in starting the war

World War I

Introduction

Much has gone forever from history with the salutes of the "salute of nations" that sounded on November 11, 1918 - too much for the historian's thoughts not to turn again and again to the events of the World Crisis.

The point is not only and not so much in the human sacrifice of the Great War, it is not in the huge material and financial losses. Although these losses were many times higher than the conservative estimates of pre-war theorists, it is unjustified to call them "incalculable" or "beyond human imagination." In absolute figures, the human losses were less than from the 1918-1919 flu epidemic, and the material losses were inferior to the consequences of the 1929 crisis. As for the relative figures, the First World War does not stand up to any comparison with the medieval plague epidemics. Nevertheless, it is the armed conflict of 1914 that we perceive (and was perceived by our contemporaries) as a terrible, irreparable catastrophe that led to a psychological breakdown in the entire European civilization.

In this work, I will try to consider what economic and political motives allowed the outbreak of a world war at the beginning of the last century and will sum up this grandiose event.

1. Causes, nature and main stages of the First World War

Economic reasons for the outbreak of the First World War

The world entered the XX century in the conditions of a crushing industrial crisis of 1900-1901. It began almost simultaneously in the United States and Russia, and soon the crisis became general, engulfing England, France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Belgium and other countries. The crisis hit the metallurgical industry, then the chemical, electrical and construction industries. It led to the ruin of a mass of enterprises, causing a rapid rise in unemployment. The crisis of 1907 was a serious shock for many countries that barely coped with the consequences of the crisis at the turn of the century.

Monopolies in the pursuit of profit influenced the sphere of pricing, which led to the creation of imbalances within the national economy of individual countries and intensified international economic contradictions. Thus, the economic crises were associated not with disruptions in the sphere of commodity and money circulation, but with the policy of monopolies. This is what determined the peculiarities of the course of crises, their cyclical nature, depth, length and consequences.

Having carefully looked at the pre-war political map of Europe, we will see that it is impossible to explain the nature and origin of the World Crisis of 1914 based on the geopolitical interests of the countries participating in the conflict. Germany plays the role of the attacking side in the World War, having no meaningful territorial claims at all. France, acting under the banner of revenge and the return of lost territories, on the contrary, is defending itself. Russia, which is destined for the southern direction of expansion (the Straits Zone and the Middle East), is planning operations against Berlin and Vienna. Perhaps only Turkey is trying (albeit unsuccessfully) to act in some accordance with its geopolitical goals.

Orthodox Marxism, which explains the origin of the First World War by economic reasons - first of all, the most acute competitive struggle between Germany and Great Britain, is probably closer to the truth than a geopolitical concept. Anyway, the British-German economic rivalry did take place. The sharp rise in industrial production in Germany (with relatively low labor costs) seriously undermined the position of the UK in the markets and forced the UK government to adopt a protectionist trade policy.

By the beginning of the XX century. the struggle of the capitalist powers for markets and sources of raw materials has reached extreme acuteness.

Political reasons

Russia's foreign policy after 1905

The Russo-Japanese War and the Revolution of 1905-1907 complicated the situation in the country. The army was demoralized and incapable of fighting, the finances were in disarray. Domestic political problems made it difficult for tsarist diplomacy to pursue a foreign policy course that would allow the country to avoid participation in international conflicts. But the rivalry between the great powers took on too acute forms. Anglo-German antagonism came to the fore. Under these conditions, back in 1904, London agreed to an agreement with Paris on the division of spheres of influence. This is how the Anglo-French Entente took shape. Russia, allied with France, was in no hurry to draw closer to England. Germany actively sought to draw Russia into the channel of its policy and split the Franco-Russian alliance. In 1905, during a meeting between Nicholas II and Wilhelm II in Bjerke, the Kaiser persuaded the tsar to sign an agreement on mutual assistance in the event of an attack on one of the sides. Despite the indignation of William II, the Bjork agreement, which was in conflict with the treaty of alliance with France, had no practical results and in the fall of 1905 it was essentially annulled by Russia. The logic of the development of international relations pushed the autocracy towards the Entente. In 1907, a Russian-Japanese agreement on political issues was signed. The parties agreed to maintain the "status quo" in the Far East. At the same time, the Russian-English conventions on Persia, Afghanistan and Tibet were concluded. Persia was divided into three zones: northern (Russian sphere of influence), southeastern (English sphere of influence) and central (neutral). Afghanistan was recognized as the sphere of influence of England.

These agreements became an important stage in the formation of the anti-German coalition. In 1908, Minister of Foreign Affairs A.P. Izvolsky, in the course of negotiations with his Austrian colleague A. Erenthal, agreed to annex to Austria-Hungary Bosnia and Herzegovina, occupied by the Austrians after the Berlin Congress (1878), having received in exchange a promise not to object to the opening of the Black Sea straits for Russian military ships. However, England and France did not support the claims of the tsarist diplomacy. Autro-Hungary announced the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Germany sent an ultimatum to Russia in March 1909, demanding the recognition of this act. The tsarist government was forced to yield. The Bosnian crisis turned into a "diplomatic Tsushima" for the autocracy. A.P. Izvolsky was dismissed in 1910, and S.D. Sazonov. Despite the deterioration in Russian-German relations, Germany continued to try to drag Russia into the orbit of its policy. But she did not manage to achieve the desired results, and only in the summer of 1911 an agreement was signed concerning only the Persian question (the Potsdam Agreement), which in fact did not lead to the settlement of the disputed problems.

The prologue to the First World War was the attack on Turkey by Italy in 1911, which heralded another aggravation of the Eastern question. Without waiting for the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the Italian government decided to carry out its colonial claims to Tripolitania and Cyrenaica by armed means. And the Balkan wars of 1912-1913. In 1912, Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria and Greece, united as a result of the active efforts of Russian diplomacy, began a war against Turkey and defeated it. Soon the winners quarreled with each other. This was facilitated by Germany and Auto-Hungary, who viewed the formation of the Balkan Union as a success of Russian diplomacy. They took measures aimed at its collapse, and pushed Bulgaria to oppose Serbia and Greece. During the second Balkan war, Bulgaria, against which Romania and Turkey also began fighting, was defeated. All these events significantly aggravated the Russian-German and Russian-Austrian contradictions. Turkey more and more submitted to German influence. German general L. Von Sanders in 1913 was appointed commander of the Turkish corps located in the area of ​​Constantinople, which was rightly regarded by St. Petersburg as a serious threat to Russian interests in the straits zone. Only with great difficulty did Russia manage to achieve the transfer of L. von Sanders to another post.

The tsarist government, realizing the country's unpreparedness for war and relying in the event of (defeat) a new revolution, sought to delay the armed clash with Germany and Autro-Hungary. At the same time, in the context of a progressive deterioration in relations with its western neighbors, it tried to conclude an alliance with England. But the latter did not want to be bound by any obligations. At the same time, allied relations between Russia and France by 1914 significantly strengthened. In 1911-1913. at the meetings of the chiefs of the Russian and French general staffs, decisions were made that provided for an increase in the number of troops deployed against Germany in the event of a war, and an acceleration of the time for their concentration. The naval headquarters of England and France concluded a naval convention, which entrusted the protection of the Atlantic coast of France to the English fleet, and the protection of England's interests in the Mediterranean to the French.

The Entente as a coalition of England, France and Russia, directed against the Triple Alliance, which included Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy (the latter, however, had actually already departed from its partners, it was replaced by Turkey), became a reality, despite the fact that England was not connected with Russia and France by an alliance agreement5. The formation of two hostile blocs of great powers, which took place against the backdrop of an intensified arms race, created a situation in the world that threatened to turn into a global military conflict at any moment.

Events in Sarajevo. On June 15 (28), 1914, a Serbian student from the Black Hand national - terrorist organization Gavrilo Princip shot the heir to the Austrian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his wife. This happened in the Bosnian town of Sarajevo, where the Archduke arrived for the maneuvers of the Austrian troops. Bosnia at that time was still a part of Austria-Hungary, and Serbian nationalists considered part of Bosnian territory, including Sarajevo, theirs. The assassination of the Archduke, the nationalists wanted to reiterate their claims.

As a result, Austria-Hungary and Germany received an extremely convenient opportunity to defeat Serbia and gain a foothold in the Balkans. The main question now is whether the Russia that patronized Serbia will stand up for Serbia. But in Russia just at that time there was a major reorganization of the army, which was planned to be completed only by 1917. Therefore, in Berlin and

Vienna hoped that the Russians did not risk getting involved in a serious conflict. And yet Germany and Austria-Hungary discussed the plan of action for almost a month. Only on July 23, Austria-Hungary handed Serbia an ultimatum with a number of demands, which boiled down to a complete cessation of all anti-Austrian actions, including propaganda. Two days were allotted to fulfill the conditions of the ultimatum.

Russia advised the Serb allies to accept the ultimatum, and they agreed to fulfill nine of its ten conditions. They only refused to allow the Austrian representatives to investigate the assassination of the Archduke. But Austria-Hungary, pushed by Germany, was determined to fight even if the Serbs accepted the entire ultimatum. On July 28, she declared war on Serbia and immediately began hostilities, shelling the Serbian capital Belgrade.

The very next day, Nicholas II signed a decree on general mobilization, but almost immediately received a telegram from Wilhelm II. The Kaiser assured the tsar that he would do his best to "pacify" the Austrians. Nikolai canceled his decree, but the Minister of Foreign Affairs S.N. Sazonov managed to convince him, and on July 30, Russia nevertheless announced a general mobilization. In response, Germany itself began a general mobilization, simultaneously demanding that Russia cancel its military preparations within 12 hours. Having received a decisive refusal, Germany on August 1 declared war on Russia. It is characteristic that even on the eve of the Germans announced their intention to France, insisting on her observance of neutrality. However, the French, bound to Russia by treaty, also announced mobilization. Then on August 3, Germany declared war on France and Belgium. The next day, England, initially showing some hesitation, declared war on Germany. So the Sarajevo murder led to a world war. Later, 34 states were drawn into it on the side of the opposite bloc (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria).

Causes of the war:

1. The struggle of the capitalist powers for markets and sources of raw materials;

Aggravation of all contradictions in the capitalist countries;

Creation of two opposing blocks;

Weak peace-loving forces (weak labor movement);

Striving to divide the world.

The nature of the war:

For all, the war was aggressive, but for Serbia it was fair, because the conflict with her (presentation of an ultimatum on July 23, 1914) of Austria-Hungary was only a pretext for the outbreak of hostilities.

Goals of states:

¾ Germany sought to establish world domination.

¾ Austro-hungary Control over the Balkans => control over the movement of ships in the Adriatic => enslave the Slavic countries.

¾ England sought to seize Turkish possessions, as well as Mesopotamia and Palestine with their oil possessions

¾ France sought to weaken Germany, return Alsace and Lorraine (lands); capture the coal basin, claims to be the hegemon in Europe.

¾ Russia sought to undermine Germany's position and secure free passage through the Vasbor and Dardanelles in the Mediterranean. Strengthen influence in the Balkans (by weakening Germany's influence on Turkey).

¾ Turkey sought to leave the Balkans under its influence, to seize the Crimea and Iran (raw material base).

¾ Italy Domination of the Mediterranean and Southern Europe.

The war can be divided into three periods:

During the first period (1914-1916), the Central Powers sought the preponderance of forces on land, while the Allies dominated the sea. This period ended with negotiations on a mutually acceptable peace, but each side still hoped for victory.

In the next period (1917), two events took place that led to an imbalance of forces: first, the United States entered the war on the side of the Entente, and second, the revolution in Russia and its withdrawal from the war.

The third period (1918) began with the last major offensive of the Central Powers in the west. The failure of this offensive was followed by revolutions in Austria-Hungary and Germany and the surrender of the Central Powers.

The first main stage of the war. The allied forces initially included Russia, France, Great Britain, Serbia, Montenegro and Belgium and had overwhelming superiority at sea (Table 2). The Entente had 316 cruisers, while the Germans and Austrians had 62. But the latter found a powerful countermeasure — submarines. By the beginning of the war, the armies of the Central Powers numbered 6.1 million; the Entente army - 10.1 million people. The Central Powers had an advantage in internal communications, which allowed them to quickly transfer troops and equipment from one front to another. In the long term, the Entente countries possessed superior resources of raw materials and food, especially since the British fleet paralyzed Germany's ties with overseas countries, from where copper, tin and nickel were supplied to German enterprises before the war. Thus, in the event of a protracted war, the Entente could count on victory. Germany, knowing this, relied on a blitzkrieg war.

The Germans put into effect the Schlieffen plan, which assumed that a large attack on France through Belgium would ensure rapid success in the West. After the defeat of France, Germany counted, together with Austria-Hungary, by transferring the liberated troops, to deliver a decisive blow in the East. But this plan was not implemented. One of the main reasons for his failure was the sending of part of the German divisions to Lorraine in order to block the enemy's invasion of southern Germany. On the night of August 4, the Germans invaded Belgium. It took them several days to break the resistance of the defenders of the fortified areas of Namur and Liege, which blocked the way to Brussels, but thanks to this delay, the British ferried an almost 90,000-strong expeditionary force across the English Channel to France (August 9-17). The French gained time for the formation of 5 armies, which held back the German offensive. Nevertheless, on August 20, the German army occupied Brussels, then forced the British to leave Mons (August 23), and on September 3, the army of General A. von Kluck was 40 km from Paris. Continuing the offensive, the Germans crossed the Marne River and on September 5 stopped along the Paris-Verdun line. The commander of the French forces, General Jacques Joffre, having formed two new armies from the reserves, decided to launch a counteroffensive.

The first battle on the Marne began on 5 September and ended on 12 September. It was attended by 6 Anglo-French and 5 German armies. The Germans were defeated. One of the reasons for their defeat was the absence on the right flank of several divisions, which had to be transferred to the eastern front. The French offensive on the weakened right flank made the withdrawal of the German armies to the north, to the line of the Aisne River, inevitable. The battles in Flanders on the Isère and Ypres rivers from October 15 to November 20 were also unsuccessful for the Germans. As a result, the main ports on the English Channel remained in the hands of the Allies, which provided communication between France and England. Paris was saved, and the Entente countries were given time to mobilize resources. The war in the west took on a positional character, Germany's calculation of the defeat and withdrawal of France from the war turned out to be untenable.

There were hopes that on the Eastern Front the Russians would be able to crush the armies of the Central Powers bloc. On August 17, Russian troops entered East Prussia and began to push the Germans to Konigsberg. The German generals Hindenburg and Ludendorff were assigned to lead the counter-offensive. Taking advantage of the mistakes of the Russian command, the Germans managed to drive a "wedge" between the two Russian armies, defeat them on August 26-30 near Tannenberg and drive them out of East Prussia. Austria-Hungary did not act so successfully, abandoning the intention to quickly defeat Serbia and concentrating large forces between the Vistula and Dniester. But the Russians launched an offensive in a southern direction, broke through the defenses of the Austro-Hungarian troops and, taking several thousand prisoners, occupied the Austrian province of Galicia and part of Poland. The advance of the Russian troops created a threat to Silesia and Poznan - industrial regions important for Germany. Germany was forced to transfer additional forces from France. But an acute shortage of ammunition and food stopped the advance of the Russian troops. The offensive cost Russia huge sacrifices, but undermined the power of Austria-Hungary and forced Germany to keep significant forces on the Eastern Front.

Back in August 1914, Japan declared war on Germany. In October 1914, Turkey entered the war on the side of the Central Powers bloc. With the outbreak of the war, Italy, a member of the Triple Alliance, declared its neutrality on the grounds that neither Germany nor Austria-Hungary were attacked. But at secret London talks in March-May 1915, the Entente countries promised to satisfy Italy's territorial claims in the course of a post-war peace settlement if Italy would side with them. On May 23, 1915 Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary. On August 28, 1916, the British were defeated on the western front of Germany in the second battle at Ypres. Here, during the battles that lasted for a month (April 22 - May 25, 1915), chemical weapons were used for the first time. After that, poisonous gases (chlorine, phosgene, and later mustard gas) began to be used by both warring parties. The large-scale Dardanelles landing operation also ended in defeat - a naval expedition, which was equipped by the Entente countries at the beginning of 1915 with the aim of taking Constantinople, opening the Dardanelles and Bosphorus straits for communication with Russia through the Black Sea, withdrawing Turkey from the war and attracting the Balkan states to the side of the allies. On the Eastern Front, by the end of 1915, German and Austro-Hungarian troops drove the Russians out of almost all of Galicia and from most of the territory of Russian Poland. But they failed to force Russia to a separate peace. In October 1915, Bulgaria declared war on Serbia, after which the Central Powers, together with a new Balkan ally, crossed the borders of Serbia, Montenegro and Albania. After capturing Romania and covering the Balkan flank, they turned against Italy.

war historic versailles peace

The balance of forces at the beginning of the war

Country Number of army after mobilization (million people) Number of light guns Number of heavy guns Number of aircraftRussia5.3386.848240263United Kingdom1.0001.50050090France3.7813.960688156Antanta10.11912.3081.428449Germany3.62.428449

War at sea. Control at sea made it possible for the British to freely move troops and equipment from all parts of their empire to France. They kept sea lines of communication open to US merchant ships. The German colonies were captured, and the trade of the Germans through the sea routes was suppressed. In general, the German fleet - except for the submarine, was blocked in its ports. Only from time to time did small fleets come out to strike at British coastal cities and attack Allied merchant ships. During the entire war, there was only one major naval battle - when the German fleet entered the North Sea and unexpectedly met the British off the Danish coast of Jutland. The battle of Jutland on May 31 - June 1, 1916 led to heavy losses on both sides: the British lost 14 ships, about 6,800 people killed, captured and wounded; the Germans, who considered themselves victors, - 11 ships and about 3,100 people killed and wounded. Nevertheless, the British forced the German fleet to withdraw to Keele, where it was effectively blocked. The German fleet on the high seas no longer appeared, and Great Britain remained the ruler of the seas.

Having taken a dominant position at sea, the Allies gradually cut off. Central powers from overseas sources of raw materials and food. According to international law, neutral countries, such as the United States, could sell goods that were not considered "military contraband" to other neutral countries - the Netherlands or Denmark, from where these goods could be delivered to Germany. However, the belligerent countries did not usually bind themselves to compliance with the norms of international law, and Great Britain expanded the list of goods considered to be smuggled so much that practically nothing passed through its screens in the North Sea.

The naval blockade forced Germany to resort to drastic measures. Its only effective means at sea was the submarine fleet, capable of freely bypassing surface barriers and sinking the merchant ships of neutral countries that supplied the allies. It was the turn of the Entente countries to accuse the Germans of violating international law, which obliged them to rescue the crews and passengers of torpedo ships.

On February 1915, the German government declared the waters around the British Isles a war zone and warned of the danger of ships from neutral countries entering them. On May 7, 1915, a German submarine torpedoed and sank the ocean-going steamer Lusitania carrying hundreds of passengers, including 115 US citizens. President W. Wilson protested, and the United States and Germany exchanged harsh diplomatic notes.

Verdun and the Somme. Germany was ready to make some concessions at sea and look for a way out of the impasse in actions on land. In April 1916, British troops had already suffered a serious defeat at Kut al-Amar in Mesopotamia, where 13,000 people surrendered to the Turks. On the continent, Germany was preparing for a large-scale offensive operation on the Western Front, which was supposed to turn the tide of the war and force France to ask for peace. The key point of the French defense was the old fortress of Verdun. After an unprecedented artillery bombardment of 12 German divisions, on February 21, 1916, they went over to the offensive. The Germans moved slowly until the beginning of July, but did not achieve their goals. The Verdun "meat grinder" clearly did not justify the calculations of the German command. Operations on the Eastern and Southwestern Fronts were of great importance during the spring and summer of 1916. In March, at the request of the allies, Russian troops carried out an operation near Lake Naroch, which significantly influenced the course of hostilities in France. The German command was forced to cease attacks on Verdun for some time and, keeping 0.5 million people on the Eastern Front, to transfer here an additional part of the reserves. At the end of May 1916, the Russian High Command launched an offensive on the Southwestern Front. During the fighting under the command of A.A. Brusilov managed to carry out a breakthrough of the Austro-German troops to a depth of 80-120 km. Brusilov's troops occupied part of Galicia and Bukovina, entered the Carpathians. For the first time in the entire previous period of trench warfare, the front was broken through. If this offensive had been supported by other fronts, it would have ended in disaster for the Central Powers. To ease the pressure on Verdun, on July 1, 1916, the Allies launched a counterattack on the Somme River. For four months - until November - there were unceasing attacks. Anglo-French troops, having lost about 800 thousand people, were never able to break through the German front. Finally, in December, the German command decided to end the offensive, which had cost the lives of 300,000 German soldiers. The 1916 campaign claimed more than 1 million lives, but did not bring tangible results to either side.

Foundations for Peace Negotiations. At the beginning of the 20th century, the methods of conducting military operations completely changed. The length of the fronts increased significantly, armies fought on fortified lines and carried out attacks from trenches, machine guns and artillery began to play a huge role in offensive battles. New types of weapons were used: tanks, fighters and bombers, submarines, asphyxiant gases, hand grenades. Every tenth resident of the belligerent country was mobilized, and 10% of the population was engaged in supplying the army. In the belligerent countries, there was almost no room left for ordinary civilian life: everything was subject to titanic efforts aimed at maintaining the military machine. The total cost of the war, including property losses, was estimated at between $ 208 and $ 359 billion. By the end of 1916, both sides were tired of the war, and it seemed that the time was right to start peace negotiations.

Second main stage of the war. On December 12, 1916, the Central Powers asked the United States to hand over a note to the Allies with a proposal to start peace negotiations18. The Entente rejected this proposal, suspecting that it was made with the aim of destroying the coalition. In addition, she did not want to talk about a peace that would not provide for the payment of reparations and the recognition of the right of nations to self-determination. President Wilson decided to initiate peace negotiations and on December 18, 1916, he asked the belligerent countries to determine mutually acceptable peace terms.

Germany on December 12, 1916 proposed to convene a peace conference. The civilian authorities in Germany clearly strove for peace, but they were opposed by the generals, especially General Ludendorff, who was confident of victory. The allies made their conditions concrete: the restoration of Belgium, Serbia and Montenegro; withdrawal of troops from France, Russia and Romania; reparations; the return of France of Alsace and Lorraine; liberation of subordinate peoples, including Italians, Poles, Czechs, elimination of the Turkish presence in Europe.

The Allies did not trust Germany and therefore did not take the idea of ​​peace negotiations seriously. Germany intended to take part in the December 1916 peace conference, relying on the benefits of its martial law. The case ended with the Allies signing secret agreements calculated to defeat the Central Powers. Under these agreements, Great Britain laid claim to the German colonies and part of Persia; France was to gain Alsace and Lorraine, as well as establish control on the left bank of the Rhine; Russia acquired Constantinople; Italy - Trieste, Austrian Tyrol, most of Albania; possessions of Turkey were subject to division among all allies.

US entry into the war. At the beginning of the war, public opinion in the United States was divided: some were openly on the side of the Allies; others, such as Irish Americans who were hostile to England, and German Americans, supported Germany. Over time, government officials and ordinary citizens increasingly sided with the Entente. Several factors contributed to this, and, above all, the propaganda of the Entente countries and the German submarine war.

On January 22, 1917, President Wilson set out in the Senate the terms of peace acceptable to the United States. The most important of them boiled down to the demand for "peace without victory," that is, non-annexations and indemnities; others included the principles of equality of peoples, the right of nations to self-determination and representation, freedom of the seas and trade, the reduction of armaments, the rejection of the system of rival alliances. If peace is concluded on the basis of these principles, Wilson argued, then a world organization of states can be created, guaranteeing security for all peoples. On January 31, 1917, the German government announced the resumption of unlimited submarine warfare with the aim of disrupting enemy communications. Submarines blocked the Entente supply lines and put the Allies in an extremely difficult position. Among Americans, hostility to Germany was growing, as the blockade of Europe from the west foreshadowed trouble for the United States. In case of victory, Germany could establish control over the entire Atlantic Ocean.

Along with the aforementioned circumstances, other motives also pushed the United States towards war on the side of its allies. The economic interests of the United States were directly connected with the Entente countries, since military orders led to the rapid growth of American industry. In 1916, the warlike spirit was spurred on by plans to develop combat training programs. Anti-German sentiment among North Americans increased further after the publication on March 1, 1917, of Zimmermann's secret dispatch of January 16, 1917, intercepted by British intelligence and transmitted to Wilson. German Foreign Minister A. Zimmermann offered Mexico the states of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona if it would support Germany's actions in response to the US entering the war on the side of the Entente. By early April, anti-German sentiment in the United States had reached such a level that Congress on April 6, 1917, voted to declare war on Germany.

Russia's withdrawal from the war. In February 1917, a revolution took place in Russia. Tsar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate. The Provisional Government (March - November 1917) could no longer conduct active military operations on the fronts, since the population was extremely tired of the war. On December 15, 1917, the Bolsheviks, who took power in November 1917, at the cost of huge concessions, signed an armistice agreement with the Central Powers. Three months later, on March 3, 1918, the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty was concluded. Russia renounced its rights to Poland, Estonia, Ukraine, part of Belarus, Latvia, Transcaucasia and Finland. In total, Russia has lost about 1 million square meters. km. She was also obliged to pay an indemnity to Germany in the amount of 6 billion marks.

The third main stage of the war. The Germans had enough reason to be optimistic. The German leadership used the weakening of Russia, and then its withdrawal from the war to replenish resources. Now it could transfer the eastern army to the west and concentrate troops on the main directions of the offensive. The allies, not knowing where the blow would come from, were forced to strengthen their positions along the entire front. American aid was late. In France and Great Britain, defeatism was growing with menacing force. On October 24, 1917, Austro-Hungarian troops broke through the Italian front at Caporetto and defeated the Italian army.

German offensive of 1918 On a foggy morning on March 21, 1918, the Germans launched a massive attack on British positions near Saint-Quentin. The British were forced to retreat almost to Amiens, and its loss threatened to break the united Anglo-French front. The fate of Calais and Boulogne hung in the balance.

However, the offensive cost Germany heavy losses - both human and material. The German troops were exhausted, and their supply system was shaken. The Allies managed to neutralize the German submarines by creating convoy and anti-submarine defense systems. At the same time, the blockade of the Central Powers was carried out so effectively that food shortages began to be felt in Austria and Germany.

Long-awaited American aid soon began to arrive in France. The ports from Bordeaux to Brest were filled with American troops. By the early summer of 1918, about 1 million American soldiers had landed in France.

July 1918 the Germans made their last breakthrough attempt. The second decisive battle unfolded on the Marne. In the event of a breakthrough, the French would have to leave Reims, which, in turn, could lead to the retreat of the Allies along the entire front. In the first hours of the offensive, German forces advanced, but not as quickly as expected.

The last Allied offensive. On July 18, 1918, a counterattack by American and French forces began to ease the pressure on Château Thierry. In the battle of Amiens on August 8, German troops suffered a heavy defeat, and this undermined their morale. Earlier, the Chancellor of Germany, Prince von Gertling, believed that by September the Allies would ask for peace. “We hoped to take Paris by the end of July,” he recalled. - So we thought on the fifteenth of July. And on the eighteenth, even the greatest optimists among us realized that everything was lost. " Some military men convinced Kaiser Wilhelm II that the war was lost, but Ludendorff refused to admit defeat.

The Allied offensive began on other fronts as well. In Austria-Hungary, ethnic unrest flared up - not without the influence of the allies, who encouraged the desertion of Poles, Czechs and South Slavs. The Central Powers rallied the remnants of their forces to contain the anticipated invasion of Hungary. The way to Germany was open.

Tanks and massive artillery shelling became important factors in the offensive. In early August 1918, attacks on key German positions intensified. In his Memoirs, Ludendorff called the beginning of the Battle of Amiens on August 8 - "a black day for the German army." The German front was torn apart: whole divisions surrendered almost without a fight. By the end of September, even Ludendorff was ready to surrender. On September 29, Bulgaria signed a truce. A month later, Turkey surrendered, and on November 3, Austria-Hungary.

To negotiate peace in Germany, a moderate government was formed, headed by Prince Max B., who already on October 5, 1918 proposed to President Wilson to begin the negotiation process. In the last week of October, the Italian army launched a general offensive against Austria-Hungary. By October 30, the resistance of the Austrian troops was broken. The cavalry and armored vehicles of the Italians made a rapid raid behind enemy lines and captured the Austrian headquarters. On October 27, Emperor Charles I made an appeal for an armistice, and on October 29, 1918, he agreed to conclude peace on any terms.

Brief conclusions. At the beginning of the XX century. the struggle of the capitalist powers for sales markets and sources of raw materials reached extreme acuteness, against the background of economic rivalry, political disagreements took place, which led to political rivalry between the great powers, the result of the rivalry was the formation of two political blocs: the Entente and the Triple Alliance. The formation of two hostile blocs of great powers, which took place against the backdrop of an intensified arms race, created a situation in the world that threatened to turn into a global military conflict at any moment. The impetus for the outbreak of the First World War was the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914. Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. But Russia intervened in the events and began to mobilize its army. Germany demanded its termination. When Russia did not respond to her ultimatum, Germany declared war on her and later on France on August 1. Then Great Britain and Japan entered the war. The First World War began. The German command believed that after the defeat of France, the army should have been transferred to the east against Russia. Initially, the offensive in France developed successfully. But then part of the German troops were transferred to the Eastern Front, where the Russian army began an offensive. The French took advantage of this and stopped the advance of the German army on the Marne River. The Western Front was formed. Soon the Ottoman Empire entered the war on the side of the Triple Alliance. Military operations against her began in Transcaucasia, Mesopotamia, on the Sinai Peninsula. April 6, 1917 the United States declares war on Germany, the United States sided with the Entente countries. By the beginning of the summer of 1918, the United States is landing its troops in France. The First World War ended with the complete defeat of the countries of the Triple Alliance. In October 1918, an armistice was signed for 36 days and the German government appealed to US President Woodrow Wilson with a proposal to conclude an armistice on all fronts. On June 28, 1919, the Versailles Treaty is signed, which put an end to World War I.

Timeline of important events in the First World War

Year The course of hostilities Features of the war On August 4, 1914 the Germans invaded Belgium Continuing the offensive, the Germans crossed the Marne River and on September 5 stopped along the Paris-Verdun line. The battle of Verdun was attended by 2 million people, 5 German and 6 million people. Anglo-French soldiers. The war was of an opposition nature. On August 4, the Russian army invaded Germany's chapels. The German army is defeated. On August 23, Japan begins the war. New fronts were formed in Transcaucasia and Mesopotamia, on the Sinai Peninsula. The war is fought on 2 fronts and takes on a positional character (i.e. protracted). 1915 Use of chemical weapons. On the western front, near Iprom, chemical weapons were first used, namely chlorine. A total of 15 thousand people died. 1916Germany transfers its efforts to the western frontThe main theater (place) of hostilities was the city of Verdun. The operation was called the Verdun meat grinder. It lasted from February 21 to December, and killed 1 million people. There is an active offensive of the Russian army, the strategic initiative was in the hands of the Entente. Bloody battles that depleted the resources of all the belligerent countries. The situation of the workers worsened, revolutionary actions of soldiers grew, especially in Russia. 1917 The USA enters the war In October, Russia withdrew from the war. Revolution in Russia. Spring of 1918 Anglo-French troops had a significant advantage under the German armies. For the first time, the Entente troops used tanks. German troops were driven out of the territory of France, Belgium, the soldiers of Austria-Hungary refused to fight. On November 3, 1918, a revolution took place in Germany itself, and on November 11, "MIR" was signed in the Compiegne forest.

The use of tanks. In all the belligerent countries, violent revolutionary uprisings took place.

2. Socio-economic situation in Russia during the First World War

The specifics of the economic and social development of Russia at the beginning of the XX century. led to the fact that the country was a complex conglomerate of almost autonomous socio-economic enclaves with their own, often irreconcilable interests. Under these conditions, the flexibility and foresight of the authorities acquired particular importance, the ability not so much to adapt to existing conditions as to influence them by means of advanced steps that could keep the entire socio-economic system in balance and prevent its collapse. At the same time, it should be noted once again that for the time being, not a single social force, except for a part of the intelligentsia, openly raised the issue of forcibly changing the autocratic principle of government, relying only on the fact that government policy would take into account their interests. Therefore, all strata jealously perceived the traditional attachment of the authorities to the nobility, and the latter became openly aggressive at any attempt to encroach on its primordial rights and interests.

In such conditions, the personality of the monarch was of decisive importance. However, at a crucial time, a person who did not understand the scale of the tasks at hand ended up on the Russian throne. Nikolai, unlike his famous grandfather, did not feel the alarming atmosphere of general expectation, leading the country to a revolutionary explosion. Lacking his own program, he was forced to take advantage of the one that was strenuously imposed by the liberal forces to overcome the crisis. But Nikolai was inconsistent. His internal policy has lost its historical logic, therefore, met with rejection and irritation both from the left and from the right. The result was a rapid decline in the prestige of the authorities. Not a single tsar in the history of Russia was subjected to such a daring and open reproach as Nicholas II. This led to a decisive turning point in public consciousness. The most terrible thing happened: the halo of the tsar as a Divine chosen one, a bright and infallible personality dissipated. And from the fall of the moral authority of the authorities there was only a step to its overthrow. It was accelerated by the First World War.

At the same time, most political parties, lacking a real social base, appealed to the darkest instincts of the masses. The Black Hundreds, with their bloody pogroms and anti-Semitism, the Bolsheviks, with their furious rejection of the idea of ​​social peace, the Socialist-Revolutionaries, with their romanticization of the most serious sin - the murder of a person - all of them introduced the ideas of hatred and enmity into the mass consciousness. Populist, beating on the go, slogans of radical parties - from the Black Hundreds "beat the Jew, save Russia" to the revolutionary "plunder the loot" - were simple and understandable. They influenced not the mind, but the feelings, and could at any moment turn ordinary people into a crowd capable of any illegal actions. Some prophetic warnings about the perniciousness of such moods remained "a voice crying in the wilderness." The psychology of hatred, destruction, the loss of a sense of the very value of human life has been multiplied by the world war. The slogan of the defeat of his government became the apogee of the moral decay of the Russian people. And the disintegration of traditional moral foundations inevitably had to entail the disintegration of the state. It was accelerated by the revolution.

Changes in the country's economy during the First World War:

The national science and technology were also the pride of the nation. They are represented by the names of I.P. Pavlova, K.A. Timiryazeva and others I.P. Pavlov was the first Russian scientist to be awarded the Nobel Prize.

Changes in the economy have led to changes in the social sphere. This process was reflected in the increase in the size of the working class. However, the country was still 75% of the population were peasants. In the political sphere, Russia remained a Duma monarchy.

By March 1917, the total expenditures on the war had already exceeded 30 billion rubles. Money spent on war is not returned in the form of goods or profits, which leads to an increase in the total amount of money in the country26. Their depreciation sets in. So, by February 1917, the ruble fell to 27 kopecks. Food prices have increased by 300%. Silver coins began to disappear from circulation; instead, a large amount of paper money was issued.

Industrial enterprises have reduced their output. Small businesses were closed. Consequently, the mobilization of industry accelerated.

The role of banks has grown significantly. In 1917, the largest Russian banks dominated railway companies, machine building, controlled 60% of share capital in ferrous and nonferrous metallurgy, oil, timber and other industries.

Russia has lost its traditional trading partner, Germany. The system of free market relations was supplanted by the order system. The redistribution of funds for the needs of the military industry caused a shortage of goods in the country of free competition.

Rebuilding the economy for military needs:

By this time, it became clear that victory was determined not so much by actions at the front as by the position in the rear. The command of all the belligerent countries counted on the short duration of hostilities. Large stocks of equipment and ammunition were not made. Already in 1915, everyone faced difficulties in supplying the army. It became clear that a drastic expansion of the scale of military production was required. The restructuring of the economy began. In all countries, it primarily meant the introduction of strict state regulation. The state determined the volume of required production, placed orders, provided raw materials and labor. Labor service was introduced, which made it possible to reduce the shortage of workers caused by the conscription of men into the army. As war production grew at the expense of peaceful production, there was a shortage of consumer goods. This forced the introduction of price regulation and consumption rationing. The mobilization of men and the requisition of horses wreaked havoc on agriculture. In all the belligerent countries, except England, food production declined, and this led to the introduction of the rationing system for distributing food. In Germany, which traditionally imported food, due to the blockade, a particularly deplorable situation has developed. The government was forced to prohibit feeding cattle with grain and potatoes, to introduce all kinds of low-nutritional substitutes for food products - ersatz.

At the time of the October uprising in Russia and in the first time after it, the Bolsheviks did not have a clear and detailed plan for transformations, including in the economic sphere. They hoped that after the victory of the revolution in Germany, the "German proletariat, being more organized and advanced," would take on the task of working out a socialist course, while the Russian one would only have to support this course. At that time, Lenin sounded characteristic phrases such as "We do not know how to build socialism" or "We dragged socialism into everyday life and here we have to figure it out."

The reference point for the economic policy of the Bolsheviks was the model of the economic structure described in the works of the classics of Marxism. According to this model, the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat had to become a monopoly of all property, all citizens became hired employees of the state, and equalization had to reign in society, i.e. a course was taken to replace commodity-money relations with a centralized distribution of products and administrative management of the national economy. Lenin described the socio-economic model he presented as follows: "The whole society will be one office and one factory with equality of labor and equality of pay."

In practice, these ideas were realized in the liquidation of industrial, banking and commercial capital. All private banks were nationalized, all external government loans were canceled, foreign trade was monopolized - the financial system was completely centralized.

In the first weeks after October, industry was transferred under "workers' control," which did not have a noticeable economic - and even political - effect. A forced nationalization of industry, transport, and the merchant fleet was carried out, which Lenin called the "Red Guard attack on capital." All trade, including small shops and workshops, was quickly nationalized.

The strictest centralization of the management of the national economy was introduced. In December 1917, the Supreme Council of the National Economy was created, in whose hands all economic management and planning were concentrated. The requirement of military discipline in production was declared, and universal labor service was introduced for persons from 16 to 50 years old. Evasion of compulsory labor was subject to severe penalties. The idea of ​​creating a labor. armies were nurtured and actively put into practice by Trotsky. Lenin declared the need to move "from labor service as applied to the rich."

Trading was replaced by card distribution of products. Those who were not engaged in socially useful work did not receive cards.

Quite quickly, having solved the task of suppressing the big bourgeoisie, the Bolshevik leaders announced the transfer of the center of the class struggle and economic reforms to the countryside. The surplus appropriation system was introduced. This measure reflected the theoretical ideas of the Bolsheviks: an attempt was made to administratively abolish commodity-money relations in the countryside. But, on the other hand, concrete practice also left the Bolsheviks with a rather small choice: after the liquidation of the landlord and monastic economic complexes, the mechanism for the procurement and sale of food was broken. The peasantry, in conditions of communal locality, tended to naturalism in the management of the economy. The Bolsheviks tried to create state farms and agricultural communes in the countryside, to transfer agriculture to the rails of centralized production and management. More often than not, these attempts failed. There was a threat of hunger. The authorities saw overcoming food difficulties in extraordinary measures and in the use of force. Agitation was conducted among the urban workers, calling for a "campaign against the kulaks." The food detachments were allowed to use weapons.

Centralizing tendencies in the economy appeared even before the Bolsheviks. During the war years, rationing of production, marketing and consumption was typical for all the belligerent countries. In 1916, the tsarist government in Russia made a decision on food appropriation, this measure was also confirmed by the Provisional Government: in the conditions of the world war, it was clearly forced. The Bolsheviks, on the other hand, turned the surplus appropriation system into a program requirement, striving for its conservation and carrying it out much tougher. Coercion against the peasantry was becoming the norm. In addition to the in-kind grain service, the peasants were required to participate in the system of labor obligations, in the mobilization of horses and carts. All grain storage facilities were nationalized, and all private farms were rapidly liquidated. Fixed prices for agricultural products were introduced. They were 46 times lower than the market ones. Everything was aimed at the accelerated creation of an economic model.

The Bolshevik leaders insistently called the rationing system a sign of socialism, and trade as the main attribute of capitalism. The organization of labor took militarized forms, the extreme centralization of production and product exchange was designed to oust money from economic life.

Communist, natural elements were introduced into everyday life: food rations, utilities, industrial clothing for workers, city transport were declared free; some printing, etc. Such a system had its supporters among employees, unskilled workers, etc. In those difficult economic conditions, they were afraid of free-market prices. The fight against speculation was welcomed by many.

On the whole, however, the economic policy of the Bolsheviks caused dissatisfaction. She focused not on the development of production, but on the control over distribution and consumption. Money was artificially devalued. The peasants did not want to work in conditions of a decrease in sowing. The grain harvest has decreased by 40%, the sown area of ​​industrial crops has decreased 12-16 times compared to the pre-war period. The number of livestock has decreased significantly. Workers were transferred from piecework to tariffs, which also lowered their interest in productive labor. Money lost its productive and stimulating function. In conditions of natural exchange of products, the role of money as a universal equivalent was gradually eroded, without which it was impossible to establish normal production. The economy quickly deteriorated. The pre-revolutionary production assets were consumed, there was no new construction, and there was no expansion of them. The life of the people was getting harder and harder.

New technique used by the Russians during the First World War:

At the beginning of the century, the development of automatic weapons began in Russia. Its sample was created by a soldier - a blacksmith J. Rocepei. Despite being awarded a large silver medal, weapons were not produced until the very First World War.

In 1906 V. Fedotov designed an automatic rifle. In 1911, the first sample was released. The following year, 150 pieces were manufactured. However, the tsar spoke out against further release, since for her, they say, there are not enough cartridges.

T. Kotelnikov created the first parachute. During the First World War, the tsarist government paid foreigners 1,000 rubles. for the right to manufacture a parachute at the Triangle plant in Petrograd.

M. Naletov created the world's first submarine designed for laying mines.

Russia was the only country that at the beginning of the war had bomber aircraft for further action - the Ilya Muravets aircrafts.

On the eve of the war, Russia had excellent field artillery, but was much inferior to the Germans in heavy artillery.

Industry

The war made its demands on industry as well. In order to mobilize it for the needs of the front, the government decided to set up meetings and committees. In March 1915, a committee for the distribution of fuel was created, in May of the same year - the main food committee, etc. Almost simultaneously with these actions of the government, military-industrial committees began to form. In them, the leading role belonged to the bourgeoisie, and it created 226 committees. The Russian bourgeoisie was able to attract 1,200 private enterprises to the production of weapons. The measures taken made it possible to significantly improve the supply of the army. Paying tribute to them, we emphasize that the reserves produced were enough for the civil war.

At the same time, the development of industry was one-sided. Enterprises not related to military production were closed, thereby accelerating the process of monopolization. The war disrupted traditional market ties. Some factories were closed because it was impossible to get equipment from abroad. The number of such enterprises in 1915 was 575. The war led to the strengthening of state regulation of the economy and the curtailment of free market relations. For the country's economy, the curtailment of market relations and the strengthening of state regulation resulted in a fall in industrial production. By 1917 it was 77% of the pre-war level. Small and medium capital was least of all interested in the development of the tendency noted above and showed an extreme interest in ending the war.

Transport also found itself in a difficult situation. By 1917, the locomotive fleet was reduced by 22%. The transport did not provide either military or civilian cargo transportation. In particular, in 1916 he carried out only 50% of the food transportations for the army.

Agriculture was also in a difficult position. During the war years, 48% of the male population was mobilized from the village to the army. The lack of labor led to a reduction in acreage, an increase in prices for processing agricultural products, and, ultimately, to an increase in retail prices. Livestock breeding suffered enormous damage. The total number of livestock and, especially, the main draft force - horses - has sharply decreased.

All this had its consequences. The food problem associated with transport and other troubles has become extremely aggravated in the country. It increasingly encompassed both the army and the civilian population. The situation was greatly aggravated by the financial disorder. The commodity value of the ruble by 1917 was 50% of the pre-war value, and the issue of paper money increased 6 times.

Failures at the front, the deterioration of the internal situation led to the growth of social tension in society. It manifested itself in all areas. Unity based on patriotic sentiments was replaced by disappointment and dissatisfaction with the policies of the government and the monarchy, and as a result - a sharp increase in the political activity of various social groups. In August 1915, the Progressive Bloc was formed. It included representatives of bourgeois and partly monarchist parties - only 300 Duma deputies. The bloc representatives presented their program. Its main provisions were: the creation of a ministry of public trust, a broad political amnesty, which included the permission of trade unions, the legalization of the workers' party, the weakening of the political regime in Poland, Finland and other national outskirts.

... Treaty of Versailles

In October 1918, an armistice was signed for 36 days: the development of conditions for peace, but they were tough. They were dictated by the French. The peace was not signed. The truce lasted 5 times. There was no unity in the camp of the allies. The first positions were kept by France. It was greatly weakened by the war, both economically and financially. She demanded the payment of colossal reparations, as she sought to crush the German economy. She demanded the partition of Germany, but England opposed this.

Germany agreed with Wilson's Fourteen Points, a document that served as the basis for a just world. Nevertheless, the Atlanta countries demanded from Germany full compensation for the damage caused to the civilian population and the economy of these countries. In addition to demands for restitution, the negotiations were complicated by territorial claims and secret agreements concluded by England, France and Italy with each other and with Greece and Romania in the last year of the war.

June 1919 - Signing of the Treaty of Versailles, which ended the First World War. The peace treaty between Germany and the Entente countries was signed in the Hall of Mirrors of the Palace of Versailles in the suburbs of Paris. The date of its signing went down in history as the day of the end of World War I, despite the fact that the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles entered into force only on January 10, 1920.

It was attended by 27 countries. It was a treaty between the victors and Germany. Germany's allies did not participate in the conference. The text of the peace treaty was created during the Paris Peace Conference in the spring of 1919. In fact, the conditions were dictated by the leaders of the "Big Four" in the person of British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, French President Georges Clemenceau, American President Woodrow Wilson and Italian head Vittorio Orlando. The German delegation was shocked by the harsh terms of the treaty and the apparent contradictions between the armistice agreements and the provisions of the future peace. Particular indignation of the defeated was caused by the wording of Germany's war crimes and the incredible amount of her reparations.

The legal basis for Germany's reparations was accusations of her war crimes. It was unrealistic to calculate the real damage caused by the war to Europe (especially France and Belgium), but the approximate amount was $ 33 million. Despite the statements of world experts that Germany will never be able to pay such reparations without pressure from the Entente countries, text the peace treaty contained provisions that allowed for certain measures of influence on Germany. Among the opponents of the recovery of reparations was John Maynard Keynes, who, on the day of the signing of the Versailles Peace Treaty, said that Germany's huge debt in the future would lead to a world economic crisis. Unfortunately, his forecast came true: in 1929, the United States and other countries suffered the Great Depression. By the way, it was Keynes who was at the origin of the creation of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

The leaders of the Entente, in particular Georges Clemenceau, were interested in excluding any possibility of Germany unleashing a new world war. To this end, the treaty provided for provisions according to which the German army was to be reduced to 100,000 personnel, and military and chemical production in Germany was prohibited. The entire territory of the country east of the Rhine and 50 km to the west was declared a demilitarized zone.

From the very signing of the Versailles Peace Treaty, the Germans declared that "the Entente imposed a peace treaty on them." In the future, the tough provisions of the treaty were relaxed in favor of Germany. However, the shock that the German people experienced after the signing of this shameful peace remained in the memory for a long time, and Germany harbored hatred for the rest of Europe. In the early 30s, on the wave of revanchist ideas, Adolf Hitler managed to come to power in an absolutely legal way.

The surrender of Germany allowed Soviet Russia to denounce the provisions of the Brest Separate Peace, concluded between Germany and Russia in March 1918, and to return its western territories.

Germany has lost a lot. Alsace and Lorraine went to France, and northern Schleswick to Denmark. Germany lost more territories that were given to Holland. But France did not succeed in drawing the border along the Rhine. Germany was forced to recognize the independence of Austria. Unification with Austria was prohibited. In general, a colossal number of different bans were imposed on Germany: a ban on creating a large army and having many types of weapons. Germany was forced to pay reparations. But the issue of quantity was not resolved. A special commission was created, which was practically engaged only in appointing the amount of reparations for the next year. Germany was deprived of all its colonies.

Austria-Hungary split into Austria, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. From Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Herzegovina and Southern Hungary at the end of the war, the Serbo-Croatian-Slavic state was formed, which later became known as Yugoslavia. They looked like Versailles. Austria lost a number of its territories and army. Italy received South Tyrol, Trieste, Istria and the surrounding areas. The Slavic lands of Bohemia and Moravia, which for a long time were part of Austria-Hungary, became the basis of the formed Czechoslovak Republic. Part of Silesia passed to it. The Austro-Venegerian naval and Danube fleets were placed at the disposal of the victorious countries. Austria had the right to keep an army of 30 thousand people on its territory. Slovakia and Transcarpathian Ukraine were ceded to Czechoslovakia, Croatia and Slovenia were incorporated into Yugoslavia, Transylvania, Bukovina and most of Banat-Romania. The size of the Vegerian army was determined at 35 thousand people.

It came down to Turkey. Under the Treaty of Sevres, she lost about 80% of the former lands. England received Palestine, Transjordan and Iraq. France - Syria and Lebanon. Smyrna and the surrounding areas, as well as the islands in the Aegean Sea, were to go to Greece. In addition, Masuk went to England, Alexandretta, Killikia and a strip of territories along the Syrian border to France. The creation of independent states in the east of Anatolia - Armenia and Kurdistan - was envisaged. The British wanted to turn these countries into a springboard for the fight against the Bolshevik threat. Turkey was limited to the territory of Asia Minor and Constantinople with a narrow strip of European land. The straits were entirely in the hands of the victorious countries. Turkey officially renounced its previously lost rights to Egypt, Sudan and Cyprus in favor of England, Morocco and Tunisia in favor of France, and Libya in favor of Italy. The army was reduced to 35 thousand people, but it could be increased to suppress anti-government protests. In Turkey, the colonial regime of the victorious countries was established. But due to the beginning of the national liberation movement in Turkey, this treaty was not ratified and then canceled.

The United States withdrew from the Versailles conference dissatisfied. It has not been ratified by the US Congress. This was her diplomatic defeat. Italy was also not happy: she did not get what she wanted. England was forced to reduce the fleet. It is expensive to maintain it. She had a difficult financial situation, a large debt to the United States, and they put pressure on her. In February 1922, a treaty of 9 powers on China was signed in Washington. He did not sign the Versailles Treaty, as it was planned to give some territory of German China to Japan. The division into spheres of influence in China was liquidated, there were no colonies left there. This agreement gave rise to another discontent in Japan. This is how the Versailles-Washington system was formed, which lasted until the mid-1930s.

4. Results of the First World War

November at 11 o'clock in the morning, a signalman, standing at the headquarters car of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, sounded the signal "cease fire." The signal was transmitted along the entire front. At the same moment, hostilities were stopped. The First World War is over.

The Russian monarchy did not stand the test of the world war either. It was swept away within a few days by the storm of the February Revolution. The reasons for the fall of the monarchy are the chaos in the country, the crisis in the economy, politics, the contradictions of the monarchy with the broad strata of society. The catalyst for all these negative processes was the ruinous participation of Russia in the First World War. Largely due to the inability of the Provisional Government to solve the problem of achieving peace for Russia, the October coup took place.

World War I 1914-1918 lasted 4 years, 3 months and 10 days, it was attended by 33 states (the total number of independent states - 59) with a population of more than 1.5 billion people (87% of the world's population).

The imperialist world war of 1914-1918 was the bloodiest and most brutal of all wars the world had known before 1914. Never before have the opposing sides deployed such huge armies for mutual destruction. The total number of armies reached 70 million people. All the achievements of technology and chemistry were aimed at exterminating people. They killed everywhere: on land and in the air, on water and under water. Poisonous gases, explosive bullets, automatic machine guns, shells from heavy weapons, flamethrowers - everything was aimed at destroying human life. 10 million killed, 18 million wounded - this is the result of the war.

In the minds of millions of people, not even directly affected by the war, the course of history split into two independent streams - "before" and "after" the war. "Before the war" - a free common European legal and economic space (only politically backward countries - like Tsarist Russia - humiliated their dignity with passport and visa regimes), continuous development "upward" - in science, technology, economics; a gradual but steady increase in personal freedoms. "After the war" - the collapse of Europe, the transformation of most of it into a conglomerate of small police states with a primitive nationalist ideology; permanent economic crisis, aptly dubbed by Marxists "the general crisis of capitalism", a turn towards a system of total control over an individual (state, group or corporate).

The post-war redistribution of Europe according to the treaty looked like this. Germany lost about 10% of its original territory. Alsace and Lorraine passed to France, and Saarland - under the temporary control of the League of Nations (until 1935). Three small northern provinces were given to Belgium, and Poland received West Prussia, Pozdnan region and part of Upper Silesia. Gdansk was declared a free city. German colonies in China, the Pacific and Africa were divided between England, France, Japan and other allied countries.

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In Moscow, Sergei Kulichkin's book "The First World War" was published, which has already aroused readers' interest. Its author, the editor-in-chief of the Military Publishing House and the secretary of the Union of Writers of Russia, analyzes in detail all the events of that period, talks about their secret background and military-political consequences.

- Sergei Pavlovich, your book came out, as they say, by the date. And yet, I think this is not what made you turn to the theme of the First World War. And what exactly?

- I will say this: to the analysis of little-known, especially controversial issues related to the events and personalities of the First World War, I was pushed by resentment and sadness about the undeservedly forgotten heroes of the Masurian swamps, Carpathian passes, Sarikamysh and Moonsund. And also disagreement with the current interpreters of the "new truth" about this war. I am especially confused by their comparative analysis of the two world wars in relation to the participation of our Fatherland in them.

- In my opinion, it is rather difficult to compare. If the USSR, without any doubt, bore the brunt of the war with Nazi Germany on its shoulders, then the role of Russia in the First World War seems much more modest ...

- Let me disagree with that. Russia was perhaps the most active participant in those tragic and heroic events that lasted not a day, not a month, but several years. By the way, our losses were the greatest.

- Then why did the First World War turn into an unknown war for us? Purely for ideological reasons?

- Not only. I want to note the most important feature that characterizes the entire course of the First World War: from the first to the last hour, the Western Front was the main vector of the struggle for Germany. It was there, in the Western theater of operations, that the course and outcome of the war were to be decided - primarily on the fields of France. Therefore, the best part of the German troops was concentrated there. In the same place, first of all, new tactical schemes, methods and means of armed struggle were used and worked out, new models of weapons and military equipment were tested. Even in 1915, when Germany concentrated its main efforts on the defeat and withdrawal from the war of Russia, the Western Front, strategically, remained the main one for the Germans. So it's not about the revolution and Russia's withdrawal from the war ...

- Honestly, it is not entirely clear: Russia took an active part in the war, suffered huge losses - but still, the main vector of the struggle was the Western Front. What, then, is the role of Russia?

- Well, look ... The Battle of the Marne is rightfully considered the main battle of 1914. But at the same time in the East, we carried out two major strategic operations - East Prussian and Galician. The Russians tried to draw off the German forces at all costs - they were obliged to have an allied duty. And the Germans were really forced to transfer part of their troops advancing on Paris to East Prussia. These corps and divisions, which left at the most decisive moment to the East, were one of the reasons for the German defeat on the Marne ... And in the Battle of Galicia, the Austro-Hungarian troops suffered a crushing defeat: they lost about 400 thousand people, of which more than 100 thousand were captured, 400 guns , 200 machine guns and 8 banners - that is, half of its combat strength. Impressive compared to the numbers of the battle on the Marne ...

- And what were the results there?

- The Germans lost in killed, wounded and missing about 250 thousand, the allies - more than 260 thousand. Somehow they don't say about big trophies.

- But this is the very beginning of the war, and what happened next?

- Let's turn to 1916. Many battles took place in the theaters of operations that summer, but the main one was undoubtedly the victorious offensive operation of the troops of the Southwestern Front under the command of General Brusilov.

- Brusilov breakthrough?

- Yes. By the way, this is the only operation of the World War, which was named not by geographical location, but by the name of the military leader, commander. This operation was unexpectedly so successful that it was rightfully recognized as the main operation of the summer of 1916. This was recognized by both Russia and its allies in the Entente bloc. And this despite the fact that the bloody battles continued near Verdun, drawing hundreds of thousands of soldiers of the opposing sides into their orbit, despite the full-scale offensive of the Anglo-French troops on the Somme River ...

- That is, almost until the very end of the empire, Russia took an active part in the World War?

- Not "almost", but really - until the very collapse of the empire and even longer! Already in 1917, when the revolution led to the death of both the Russian army and the Russian empire, we continued to advance in Galicia and defend in the Baltic states, attracting 124 enemy divisions, of which 84 were German - the largest number since the beginning of the war. The numbers speak for themselves. And even then, in the seventeenth, Russian blood was poured abundantly both on the Eastern Front and on the Western, where the Russian divisions of the Expeditionary Force covered themselves with unfading glory. In general, without going into many other details, one can understand that the role of Russia in the World War was very great.

How much Russian blood has been shed because of someone's ambitions and for these worthless "allies".

- And meanwhile, she actually turned out to be forgotten - both in our homeland and abroad.

- I would not say so unambiguously. In the West, they remember both the Russian imperial army and our millions of victims. The famous military museum in Paris - in the House of Invalids - alone can tell more about this than all our memorial memory. By the way, recently in the center of Paris, near the Alexander III bridge, a monument to the soldiers of our Expeditionary Force was erected. For the sake of justice, it should be noted that in our country the First World War, to one degree or another, of course, has always remained in the field of view of historical science, especially military. Even in the first years after the establishment of Soviet power in our country, thousands of military theoretical works, memoirs, memoirs of the participants in the war were published.
Why did the First World War not become the Second Patriotic War? Everything is simple. The country frankly did not understand this war. The chatter about the straits and the Russian flag over Istanbul somehow did not reach the majority of people and did not touch at all. There was no idea.
The unprecedented enthusiasm and enthusiasm during the Turkish campaign can be easily explained: then there was an idea. To save Orthodox Bulgarian brothers from the Turkish foe is, admittedly, a working idea, capable of seriously captivating. It's another matter that these same brothers, frankly, did not deserve the shed Russian blood at all - but this is a different topic ...
Neither in the Russo-Japanese, nor in the First World War, the overwhelming majority of Russians did not feel these wars as their own. And since a person is so arranged that he categorically does not agree to die for goals incomprehensible to him, the lower classes did not want to fight. Desertion began en masse. Only later, in 1920, when, due to the war with Poland, a general mobilization began, deserters who had pulled from the front in 1915 and who had sat behind the stove all the turbulent events like revolution and civil ...
In 1915, in Moscow, the wounded from the infirmary raged in droves, so that even the policemen were killed. In 1916, a company commander was raised on bayonets near Riga - without any Bolshevik agitation. Rods whistled everywhere: even in the fifteenth, soldiers began to flog for the slightest offense and even to ... raise morale!
And no one has yet expressed himself better than Trotsky about the upper echelons:

"Everyone was in a hurry to grab and eat, in fear that the blessed rain would stop, and everyone indignantly rejected the shameful idea of ​​a premature peace."

- But then ...

- Yes, the prevailing ideology and internal politics affected. The Bolsheviks, who turned, in their terminology, the "damned" and "unjust" imperialist war into a "just" Civil War, quickly and successfully carried out a campaign to completely discredit everything connected with Russia's participation in the First World War. Moreover, none of the new rulers on the fronts of the First World War even noted.

- Thus, the “Great Patriotic War”, as it was called in pre-revolutionary Russia, turned into a “forgotten”, “unknown” war. The war that they are now trying to "return" to our national history.

- Unfortunately, here again, everything is not so simple. It would seem that in our time God himself ordered the restoration of forgotten or falsified pages of history. But some of the current "truth-tellers" have gone to the other extreme, apparently proceeding from the fact that everything that was hated by the Bolsheviks must now be glorified necessarily and unconditionally. And now the man in the street is surprised to learn that imperial Russia on the eve of the war was almost the most prosperous state in the world, that the God-bearing people fought in a single impulse for the tsar-father, the Orthodox state, and that only the intrigues of the Bolsheviks clouded, muddied the bright mind of the Russian people and they threw him into the crucible of revolution and fratricidal war.

- Meanwhile, it is well known that the Bolsheviks did not take any part in the overthrow of Nicholas II - this is the result of a palace conspiracy with the participation of the Grand Dukes, the leaders of the Duma, the highest generals, the ambassadors of the Entente countries. And the hierarchs of the sovereign's church, alas, did not support it ... In general, as it always happens with us - out of the fire and into the fire! Either everything is good or everything is bad. There is no middle way!

- Yes, unfortunately, now they are seriously proving to us that the real heroes of the First World War ended up in the camp of the White Guards, and the exaggerated heroes - in the ranks of the Red Army. Now they are proving that the Red Army on the eve of the Great Patriotic War is a gathering of people covered up by commissars and NKVEDs, led by mediocre commanders. That in the First World War we did not give the enemy even an inch of Russian land, and the Stalinists allowed the Germans to reach the Volga ... How sad it all is! We again rush from one extreme to another.

- As I understand it, the purpose of your book is to warn the reader against these shuffles?

- You can say so. I do not pretend to be the ultimate truth, as well as comprehensive coverage of the events of the First World War. This is backbreaking work. However, I try to back up my personal, subjective position with weighty arguments.
An attempt to debunk long-standing myths, as life shows, is unproductive. That's why they are myths - eternally alive, indestructible. But it is necessary to draw the attention of the interested reader to the controversial moments of our past, so as not to generate new myths. Therefore, I allow myself to focus on key, controversial points and try to remind in my book of the glorious deeds, the glorious heroes of those half-forgotten battles - in a mandatory comparison with the events of World War II and the Great Patriotic War.
And I also try to answer the question why that war did not become the Great Patriotic War, and tell about how the fate of its main characters and antiheroes developed.

Premiere of the eight-part documentary "World War I" from the author's cycle Felix Razumovskiy"WHO ARE WE?" will take place on September 11 at 20:40 on the channel "Russia. Culture ".

About what the soldiers fought in the First World War, whether the February coup of 1917 was a betrayal, and about many other things, Felix Razumovsky told Pravmir.

- In the new cycle, you are probably talking about the causes of the First World War. On this topic, you can often hear that we fought for some unknown reason. And the soldiers did not know why they were sent to die.

“You know, I believe that conversations of this kind contain a fair amount of guile. Do you really think that the miraculous heroes, led by Suvorov in the Italian campaign, understood the intricacies of European politics at the end of the eighteenth century? Of course not. However, they did not ask for an explanation about the need to cross the Alps. The order of their favorite commander was enough for them.

When the First World War began more than a hundred years later, the situation was already different. Not a trace of Russian optimism of the 18th century has remained. There was no national hero among the high command, whom the army trusts and cherishes. Of course, there were favorite commanders, but in this case we are talking about something else. About figures of the scale of Suvorov, Kutuzov or Nakhimov.

The officials of the Headquarters, and first of all the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, is a man of very average abilities, who did not have the necessary military talents and spiritual qualities. Yes, at the beginning of the war, the Grand Duke was popular ... That's all. In order to send thousands of people to their death, this is clearly not enough.

I will say more, the Russian soldier always had a poor idea of ​​imperial tasks and needs. And here I see no big trouble. Soldiers' loyalty - that was the basis for a huge country. However, the First World War showed an obvious decline in the soldier's spirit. And not only a soldier's. And so, in the end, we didn’t do it.

An amazing situation unprecedented in history arose: on the threshold of victory, we refused to fight, betrayed ourselves, our Fatherland. For us, the First World War is not a forgotten, but a betrayed war. And since it is unpleasant to remember this betrayal and treason, we talk a lot about the senselessness of that war, about the absence of clear goals, about the fact that the people did not understand why they were demanding such sacrifices. However, the war was very, very difficult, including psychologically difficult, it is true.

–The war that was the harbinger of the revolution, the collapse of Russia?

- This war for Russia ended in a national catastrophe, the nation committed suicide. Although we had everything we needed to defeat the enemy. As in 1812, Russia had to throw away all internal strife. And to unite, at least from the instinct of self-preservation. Alas, this did not happen. The country began to rapidly split, internally divided - into military men and politicians, soldiers and generals, into power and society, into "white" and "black" bones.

There was a predisposition to such a collapse for a long time. It was no accident that Tolstoy in War and Peace depicted a scene of a peasant revolt in the village of Bogucharovo, in the estate of the Bolkonsky princes. This was an important sign of that wartime. The invasion of Napoleon, the "thunderstorm of 1812" shook the usual order of Russian life. And in this life, both strengths and weaknesses immediately showed themselves. “Bonaparte will come, he will give us freedom, but we don't want to know the masters anymore,” such words could be heard from peasants near Moscow. And not only those near Moscow.

But this is not class enmity, despite serfdom. This is something more serious: a cultural split. The traditional village that provides the soldiers and the Europeanized manor house that provides the officers speak different languages. A hundred years later, during the First World War, this split will lead to the collapse of the Russian army and the death of historical Russia.

–But from the Entente countries, it seems, no one suffered so much before self-destruction as Russia ...

- This is an important topic. The fate of Russia, its position and role in the First World War is unique. It may not be quite obvious. As you know, as a result of the war, three more empires collapsed. But only we wanted to destroy ourselves "to the ground": both the political regime, and the very foundations of national life, that is, the entire Russian world, which was created for centuries.

Various forces pushed the country towards this catastrophe, but the Bolsheviks surpassed everyone with their recklessness and cynicism. They staked on national treason, on the destruction of the country. And they won. The call to "turn the imperialist war into a civil war" (Lenin) is precisely an incitement to treason.

So, the calculation turned out to be correct, despite the fact that Lenin's understanding and vision of the First World War is nothing more than a crude and primitive simplification. The creator of the new type of party has glued the label "imperialist" to the war. Supposedly this is only a struggle of interests, a struggle for markets, spheres of influence, and so on. Russia does not fit into this picture at all.

Our goal cannot be the assertion of national exclusivity and pride. We have enough of our historical illnesses and ailments, why should we ascribe to ourselves strangers. It is in Germany that militant Germanism, a kind of European nationalism, triumphs. And in our country you can only find something opposite - the manifold manifestations of Russian nihilism. But first of all, of course, the Troubles, the collapse and self-destruction of Russian life. The war, which demanded the utmost exertion of forces from Russia, again opened the way for the Troubles.

The films of the new cycle show what actions of the authorities and society contributed to the growth of the Troubles. For example, it was impossible to drive a wave of Germanophobia in a country where many Germans lived. Where they traditionally served in the Russian army. Accusations against the Germans resounded everywhere and everywhere, idle talk about "hostile subjects" caused enormous damage to the army. And they provoked a German pogrom in Moscow in the summer of 1915.

- How do you assess the behavior of those senior military officials of the Russian army who participated in the coup d'état in February - March 1917? At a time when the country was at war?

- By the beginning of the 17th year, the Troubles were corrupting not only the soldiers' mass, but also, to a large extent, the generals. In March 1917, the army, represented by its high command, will support the abdication of Nicholas II. As you know, only two generals will send telegrams to Headquarters with a different attitude to events. Only two generals will want to support the monarchy. The rest will lightly rejoice at the change of power.

In fact, there will be no new government, anarchy will begin. “With the fall of the tsar, the very idea of ​​power fell,” and without this idea, both the state and the army are inevitably destroyed. A soldier who has rejected his oath, loyalty, duty is simply a "man with a gun." It makes no sense in this case to discuss whether Nicholas II was good or bad. It was impossible to save the Russian army after his abdication.

All that will be afterwards is agony. The army will be overwhelmed by revolution, democratization, soldiers' councils and committees will appear in military units, and the murder of officers and desertion will become commonplace.

It is impossible not to notice that the Great War for the first time in Russian history did not leave the pantheon of national heroes. And this is not about the Bolsheviks alone, believe me. Well, who do we remember today, whom can we put on a par with the names of Kutuzov, Nakhimov, Skobelev? There is nothing to say about Rumyantsev and Suvorov. There are no such names in the history of the First World War. There were victories and exploits. There was a heroic defense of the Osovets fortress, there were victories in Galicia. And the national memory is silent. And that means ... That means that the nation as such was no longer there.

- 100 years have passed since the beginning of the First World War. But we did not fully comprehend it, did not study it. How does this "echo" to us?

- How could we comprehend the First World War, if it was deleted from historical memory? The Bolsheviks at one time did not want to remember this war, because they participated and took advantage of national betrayal, treason. The destruction of the state and the army during the war is precisely treason, there can be no two opinions. The Bolsheviks always remembered this and did everything possible to consign the First World War to oblivion.

However, this is actually only half the truth. Because we ourselves did not really want to remember that war either. In a sense, this is natural; a person prefers to refer to the unpleasant and even more shameful pages of his life as rarely as possible. The nation does the same. In a word, we did not begin to learn the bitter lessons of the First World War. And therefore, we still cannot deal with the issue of historical continuity.

Which Russia do we inherit: historical or Soviet? There is still no clear answer. Our sitting on two chairs continues. This "reverberates" to us, in particular, the lack of political will, the inability to determine the vector of our development. Build a memory policy. It is impossible to talk about national revival without understanding the phenomenon of the 17th year.

The persistence of the Soviet myth of the Great October Revolution is a consequence of the oblivion of the First World War. The same applies to the Civil War (more precisely, the Troubles), which began just before the coup on October 17th and in many ways prepared it. And this great tragedy of ours remained not excessive. Many years have passed, but we still do not know how to restore the unity of the Russian world, the unity of Russia, destroyed by the civil war.

–Did the whole story of the First World War fit into eight episodes of the film?

- These series are part of a large historical project. The films to be shown this season cover the first year of the war. The first film is called "On the Threshold of War" and is dedicated to its prehistory. And we end with the events of the fall of 1915, when we managed to stabilize the front after the Great Retreat.

It should be noted in passing that we then retreated not to Moscow and not even to Smolensk. This, among other things, speaks of the strength and resilience of the Russian soldiers. Our almost unarmed army, devoid of shells, did not flee, but gradually retreated in full order into the interior of the country.

Probably, the consequences of the "shell hunger" could have been not so tragic, if not for the Headquarters and its mediocre actions. It was impossible to endure this any longer, and in August 1915 Nicholas II removed the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich. The sovereign himself takes over the command of the army and heads the Headquarters. This concludes the first stage of the war and the first 8-episode block of our cycle.

Our colleague, journalist Konstantin Gayvoronsky is seriously keen on military history. He studied a huge amount of literature and historical documents, devoted dozens of articles to the participants, battles and little-known episodes of the First World War and is now finishing a voluminous book on this topic.
Konstantin outlined his views on the causes and lessons of the war, the centenary of which Europe and Russia began to celebrate last year, on Saturday. He believes that Russia itself partly unleashed the world massacre - and itself became its victim. The war fueled revolutionary sentiments, split the nation, the empire collapsed, and the people were plunged into bloody civil strife. However, other countries participating in the war had to endure the hardest tests. Modern politicians should learn well the lessons of the First World War. For example, to realize that petty nagging and big humiliation of national minorities do not lead to good.
* Why is the First World War more important for Europe than the Second World War?
* Why does Russia keep silent about some facts about the First World War?
* How did the First World War change the world community?
Natalia SEVIDOVA,
Olga KNYAZEVA.

Disillusionment

- Kostya, why are you interested in the period of the First World War (WWI)?
- Because it has become an unprecedented example of a military conflict in the history of Europe and the world, in which people began to fight with weapons and tactics invented back in the 19th century. And by the end of the war in 1918, all types of weapons that we have today, except for nuclear weapons, were already present on the battlefields. Poisonous substances, tanks, aircraft, strategic bombing of cities - all this happened. They began bombing London already in 1915, and they bombed so that once a shell hit a school and killed 32 children. It was a shock for ordinary people.
Europeans were convinced that a world of progress and social well-being awaited everyone. And they were one step away from this: in Germany by that time there were both insurance and old-age pensions. And then suddenly a war, and, it would seem, from scratch. The First World War literally broke the Europeans. Many call it the suicide of European civilization.

By prior agreement

- In the USSR, they wrote about the First World War in textbooks like this: it was an imperialist war, where the interests of major powers collided. In your opinion, where were the roots of the conflict?
- The lesson and paradox of this war lies in the fact that a group of persons, and far from being the first persons of the state, by prior conspiracy can plunge several countries into a military conflict. Yes, there were contradictions between the powers, but they always existed, and Europe somehow knew how to smooth them out. Two groups - Germany and Austria-Hungary against England, France and Russia - coexisted quite peacefully, although they could not always share something. Of all the heads of state, only Raymond Poincaré, the President of France, was a supporter of the war. Everyone else was against it. Although more often England is blamed for unleashing the war. But this decision was the hardest for her, since the ministers who were in favor of the war were in the minority in the cabinet.

They wanted to return export, but lost the country

- Let me remind you about the crisis at the end of 1912, when Austria-Hungary was going to defeat Serbia. The Russian generals, impressed by that hidden mobilization, decided that we, too, would do the same. And Russia announced a general mobilization, and this was then considered the beginning of hostilities. Thus, Russia launched a chain reaction.
While Foreign Minister Sazonov was negotiating with the Germans to resolve the military conflict, the generals carried out mobilization measures.
How did the Germans react to this? They were geographically sandwiched between two potential adversaries: Russia and France. And they understood perfectly well that if these countries mobilized faster than them, they would lose the war. Therefore, the Germans had no choice but to declare war. All this happened from July 24 to August 1, 2014.
Moreover, Minister Sazonov was warned: do not give free rein to the military! And he pretended that he had nothing to do with it, that it was all the generals to blame! Although on the most critical day for his career - July 30, 1914, when Nicholas II first allowed and immediately forbade mobilization, Sazonov first delayed the tsar's letter about the cancellation of mobilization, and then nevertheless persuaded the emperor to take this fatal step.
- What explains such belligerence of the tsar's entourage?
- Germany by that time practically ousted Russia from the grain markets of Europe. Sazonov and his assistants, Generals of the General Staff, Minister of Agriculture Krivoshein advocated that with the help of military force, return the possibility of export to Russia.

For Latvians, the First World War was domestic

- Are the losses of the First World War known?
- There are no exact numbers. Statistics in Russia were poorly maintained. From 900 thousand to two million dead Russians are named. In total, about nine million people died in WWI. If we compare these two wars, then the loss of people on the battlefield during the Second World War was about eight to nine million people, the remaining 15-20 million people are civilians who died in burned villages, from hunger, epidemics and bombing.
- For this reason, Russia has a completely different attitude to the Second World War than in Europe, where there are a lot of memorials and monuments about the WWII?
- Undoubtedly. During the Great Patriotic War, the question was really about the country's survival and the existence of the Russian people: the "OST" plan to consolidate the domination of the Third Reich in Eastern Europe was known. And during the First World War, in the second year, people ceased to understand: what, in fact, are we fighting for? The Germans are not on Russian territory, that is, there is no obvious enemy. For the Latvians, this war was patriotic: when the front line passes through Latvia, and Kurzeme remains occupied by German territory, of course, you are eager to liberate them. And some Siberian shooter from Omsk had a completely different attitude, in front of whom his comrades die every day, and tomorrow his turn will come. Very soon the soldiers had a question: what is it all for?

Behind the front line - horned inhumans

- At first, the military was told: we are helping the Serb brothers. It worked for a while. And in the third year of the war, any soldier began to think: is it really all this is worth so many lives, or maybe it was possible to agree in a different way? The decay of the Russian army went faster, because many of its soldiers were illiterate. It was difficult to influence them with printed propaganda. In England, France and Germany, soldiers were convinced to the last that this was a righteous war in the name of civilization. The propaganda was terrible! In the days of July 1914, when the question of the outbreak of hostilities was being decided in England, there was a widespread anti-war movement. Industrialists, banks, professors, students - almost all were against: they say, why should we fight the civilized country of Schiller and Goethe? A year later, the British were successfully convinced that the Germans are almost new Huns, they are barbarians, that they rape Belgian girls, and then cut off their arms to the elbows. Mass hysteria began: they say, everything German needs to be removed from the streets. Even the dachshund was recognized as a German breed, which was encouraged to take to shelters. The British royal family was forced to change their surname from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor. It was no better in Russia. In May 1915, it came to German pogroms: the Germans were disrupted to withdraw, shops were destroyed.
To keep the soldiers in the trenches, they were told that we were opposed by inhumans with horns! But the Germans had helmets with horns. And the Germans were told that they were at war with homosexuals and degenerates, who had nothing sacred in their souls. The same propaganda methods are being used today.
- In Ukraine and Russia?
- Yes, and nothing new has been invented! The enemy must be presented, on the one hand, miserable and insignificant, on the other - predatory and insidious.
Civilians were not spared
- And the methods of warfare were the same as during the Second World War?
- Almost the same, only the scale is smaller due to the limited technology. Shelling, chemical weapons, bombing of cities were used. The only difference was that the attitude of the prisoners was softer. But there were atrocities against civilians during WWI. Unless the Jewish question was so acute. In Belgium, for example, the Germans took hostages, and if suddenly the partisans killed a couple of German soldiers, they responded by shooting 20-30 famous residents of the city.

Forgotten War

- Why is there little talk about the First World War in Russia?
- The memory of her was erased by the Civil War. PMA mainly affected those who were drafted into the army, as well as their relatives. The civil war affected absolutely everyone. And there were many more victims. 20 million people who died during the Civil War on the battlefield and from hunger, epidemics - these were colossal losses. In addition, after WWI, a revolution followed and we began to build a new world. And our attitude to the world after this war was completely different. Europe after WWI was a pitiful sight. When people came to their senses in 1918, they grabbed their heads: my God, why did we lay down a whole generation of our young people ?! For Europeans, losses in WWI are the same as losses for Russia in the Great Patriotic War. The West received the same lost generation that Hemingway wrote about in his novels.
Good example. The British have a memorial day - July 1. On this day, they lay out poppies. This is the day the Battle of the Somme began. They went on the offensive and on the very first day they lost 60 thousand people. These are the largest losses in one day in all wars that have ever been. In 1941, our daily losses did not reach this figure. There were only a couple of days in 1941 when we were just approaching this level. Moreover, along the entire length of the front. And they lost 60 thousand people at once on a small sector of the front. Therefore, for Europeans, WWII is undoubtedly a more significant memorable date than WWII.

A thin world is better than a good quarrel

- Are wars like the First World War unpredictable?
- In most cases, yes - they are unleashed by politicians who think like this: if now I do not solve this problem with the help of war, I will never solve it again. In Austria-Hungary, they decided that if they did not deal with Serbia now, they would no longer have such an opportunity. It was decided in Russia that if now they do not receive the Black Sea straits in order to control the export of grain, the window of opportunity will also close. The straits were controlled by the Turks, who were heavily influenced by Germany. After a couple of years, the Russians realized that there were other methods of achieving these goals. And after 20 years, historians found out that the goals were also false. If Austria-Hungary had waited, then it would have solved its problem with the Serbs without a war. Austria-Hungary was a dynamically developing country with a European bureaucracy, while Serbia was a small, corrupt Balkan state. And sooner or later, the Serbs would have made a choice in favor of a more prosperous life. Everyone understood this, except for the scumbags and bawlers who organized anti-Serb movements. The same goes for Russia. For her, it would be incredibly more profitable to get these straits for 20 years of peace, as Stolypin said.

The European powers feverishly prepared for a major conflict for several decades before 1914. Nevertheless, it can be argued that no one expected or wanted such a war. The general staffs expressed confidence: it will last a year, maximum one and a half. But the common misconception was not only about its duration. Who could have guessed that the art of command, belief in victory, military honor would turn out to be not only not the main qualities, but sometimes even harmful to success? The First World War demonstrated both the grandeur and the senselessness of believing in the possibility of calculating the future. The faith with which the optimistic, clumsy and half-blind 19th century was so full.

Photo BETTMANN / CORBIS / RPG

In Russian historiography, this war ("imperialist", as the Bolsheviks called it) never enjoyed respect and was studied very little. Meanwhile, in France and Britain, it is still considered almost more tragic than even the Second World War. Scientists are still arguing: was it inevitable, and if so, what factors - economic, geopolitical or ideological - most influenced its genesis? Was the war a consequence of the struggle of the powers that entered the stage of "imperialism" for sources of raw materials and sales markets? Or perhaps we are talking about a by-product of a relatively new phenomenon for Europe - nationalism? Or, while remaining "a continuation of politics by other means" (Clausewitz's words), this war only reflected the eternal confusion of relations between large and small geopolitical players - is it easier to "cut" than "unravel"?
Each of the explanations looks logical and ... insufficient.

On the First World War, the rationalism, which was customary for the people of the West, from the very beginning was overshadowed by the shadow of a new, eerie and bewitching reality. He tried not to notice her or tame her, bent his line, completely lost, but in the end, contrary to the obviousness, he tried to convince the world of his own triumph.

"Planning is the basis for success"

The famous "Schlieffen Plan", the favorite brainchild of the German Great General Staff, is rightly called the pinnacle of the system of rational planning. It was he who rushed to perform in August 1914, hundreds of thousands of Kaiser's soldiers. General Alfred von Schlieffen (by that time already deceased) reasonably proceeded from the fact that Germany would be forced to fight on two fronts - against France in the west and Russia in the east. Success in this unenviable situation can be achieved only by defeating opponents in turn. Since it is impossible to defeat Russia quickly because of its size and, oddly enough, backwardness (the Russian army cannot quickly mobilize and pull up to the front line, and therefore it cannot be destroyed with one blow), the first "turn" is for the French. But a frontal attack against them, who had also been preparing for battles for decades, did not promise a blitzkrieg. Hence - the idea of ​​flanking bypass through neutral Belgium, encirclement and victory over the enemy in six weeks.

The plan was simple and uncontested, like everything ingenious. The problem was, as is often the case, precisely in his perfection. The slightest deviation from the schedule, the delay (or, conversely, excessive success) of one of the flanks of the gigantic army, which performs a mathematically accurate maneuver for hundreds of kilometers and several weeks, threatened not that it would be a complete failure, no. The offensive "only" was delayed, the French had a chance to take a breath, organize a front, and ... Germany found itself in a strategically losing situation.

Needless to say, this is exactly what happened? The Germans were able to advance deep into enemy territory, but they did not succeed in capturing Paris or encircling and defeating the enemy. The counter-offensive organized by the French - "a miracle on the Marne" (helped by the Russians who rushed into Prussia in an unprepared disastrous offensive) clearly showed that the war will not end quickly.

Ultimately, the responsibility for the failure was blamed on Schlieffen's successor, Helmut von Moltke Jr., who resigned. But the plan was impossible in principle! Moreover, as the subsequent four and a half years of battles on the Western Front, which were distinguished by fantastic persistence and no less fantastic sterility, showed, much more modest plans of both sides were impracticable ...

Even before the war, the story "The Sense of Harmony" appeared in print and immediately gained fame in military circles. Its hero, a certain general, clearly copied from the famous war theorist, Field Marshal Moltke, prepared such a verified battle plan that, not considering it necessary to follow the battle itself, he went fishing. The detailed development of maneuvers became a real mania for military leaders during the First World War. The assignment for the English 13th Corps alone in the Battle of the Somme was 31 pages (and, of course, was not completed). Meanwhile, a hundred years earlier, the entire British army, entering the battle of Waterloo, had no written disposition at all. Commanding millions of soldiers, the generals, both physically and psychologically, were much further from real battles than in any of the previous wars. As a result, the "general staff" level of strategic thinking and the level of execution on the front line existed, as it were, in different universes. Operations planning under such conditions could not but turn into a self-contained function divorced from reality. The very technology of war, especially on the Western Front, excluded the possibility of a spurt, a decisive battle, a deep breakthrough, a selfless feat and, ultimately, any tangible victory.

"All Quiet on the Western Front"

After the failure of both the "Schlieffen Plan" and the French attempts to quickly seize Alsace-Lorraine, the Western Front was completely stabilized. The opponents created a defense in depth from many rows of full-profile trenches, barbed wire, ditches, concrete machine-gun and artillery nests. The huge concentration of human and firepower made a surprise attack from now on unrealistic. However, even earlier it became clear that the lethal fire of machine guns makes the standard tactics of a frontal attack with loose chains meaningless (not to mention the dashing raids of cavalry - this once most important type of troops turned out to be absolutely unnecessary).

Many regular officers, brought up in the "old" spirit, that is, who considered it a shame to "bow to bullets" and put on white gloves before the battle (this is not a metaphor!), Laid down their heads already in the first weeks of the war. In the full sense of the word, the former military aesthetics also turned out to be murderous, which demanded that the elite units stand out with the bright color of their uniforms. Rejected at the beginning of the century by Germany and Britain, it remained in the French army by 1914. So it is no coincidence that during the First World War with its “burrowing into the ground” psychology, it was the Frenchman, cubist artist Lucien Guirand de Sewol who came up with camouflage nets and coloring as a way to merge military objects with the surrounding space. Mimicry became a condition for survival.

But the level of casualties in the active army quickly surpassed all imaginable ideas. For the French, British and Russians, who immediately threw the most trained, experienced units into the fire, the first year in this sense was fatal: the cadre troops actually ceased to exist. But was the opposite decision less tragic? The Germans sent divisions hastily formed from student volunteers into battle near the Belgian Yprom in the fall of 1914. Almost all of them, with songs going into the attack under the aimed fire of the British, died senselessly, due to which Germany lost the intellectual future of the nation (this episode was called, not devoid of black humor, "Ypres massacre of babies").

In the course of the first two campaigns, the opponents developed some common combat tactics by trial and error. Artillery and manpower were concentrated on the sector of the front chosen for the offensive. The attack was inevitably preceded by many hours (sometimes many days) artillery barrage, designed to destroy all life in the enemy trenches. The fire adjustment was carried out from airplanes and balloons. Then the artillery began to work at more distant targets, moving behind the first line of enemy defense in order to cut off the escape routes for the survivors, and, on the contrary, for the reserve units, the approach. Against this background, the attack began. As a rule, it was possible to "push through" the front by several kilometers, but later the onslaught (no matter how well prepared it was) fizzled out. The defending side pulled up new forces and inflicted a counterattack, with more or less success recapturing the surrendered spans of land.

For example, the so-called "first battle in Champagne" at the beginning of 1915 cost the advancing French army 240 thousand soldiers, but led to the capture of only a few villages ... But this turned out to be not the worst in comparison with the year 1916, when in the west, the largest battles unfolded. The first half of the year was marked by the German offensive at Verdun. “The Germans,” wrote General Henri Pétain, the future head of the collaborationist government during the Nazi occupation, “tried to create a death zone in which not a single unit could stay. Clouds of steel, cast iron, shrapnel and poisonous gases opened up over our forests, ravines, trenches and shelters, destroying literally everything ... ”At the cost of incredible efforts, the attackers managed to achieve some success. However, the advance of 5-8 kilometers due to the staunch resistance of the French cost the German army such colossal losses that the offensive was choked. Verdun was never taken, and by the end of the year the original front was almost completely recovered. On both sides, the losses amounted to about a million people.

The Entente offensive on the Somme River, similar in scale and results, began on July 1, 1916. Already its first day became "black" for the British army: almost 20 thousand killed, about 30 thousand wounded at the "mouth" of the attack only 20 kilometers wide. "Somma" has become a household name for horror and despair.

The list of fantastic, incredible in terms of "effort-result" ratio of operations can be continued for a long time. It is difficult for both historians and ordinary readers to fully understand the reasons for the blind persistence with which the staffs, each time hoping for a decisive victory, carefully planned the next "meat grinder". Yes, the already mentioned gap between the headquarters and the front and the stalemate strategic situation, when two huge armies rested against each other and the commanders had no choice but to try to move forward again and again, played a role. But in what was happening on the Western Front, it was easy to grasp the mystical meaning: the familiar and familiar world was methodically destroying itself.

The stamina of the soldiers was amazing, which allowed the opponents, practically without moving, to exhaust each other for four and a half years. But is it any wonder that the combination of external rationality and the profound meaninglessness of what was happening undermined people's faith in the very foundations of their lives? On the Western Front, centuries of European civilization have been compressed and ground - this idea was expressed by the hero of an essay written by a representative of the same “war” generation, which Gertrude Stein called “lost”: “You see a river - no more than two minutes walk from here? So, it took the British a month then to get to her. The whole empire marched forward, advancing several inches in a day: those in the front ranks fell, their place was taken by those walking behind. And the other empire retreated just as slowly, and only the dead remained lying in countless heaps of bloody rags. This will never happen in the life of our generation, no European people will dare to do this ... "

It is worth noting that these lines from the novel Tender is a Night by Francis Scott Fitzgerald were published in 1934, just five years before the start of a new grandiose massacre. True, civilization "learned" a lot, and World War II developed incomparably more dynamically.

Saving madness?

The terrible confrontation was a challenge not only to the entire staff strategy and tactics of the past, which turned out to be mechanistic and inflexible. It became a catastrophic existential and mental test for millions of people, most of whom grew up in a relatively comfortable, cozy and "humane" world. In an interesting study of front-line neuroses, the English psychiatrist William Rivers found out that of all the branches of the military, the least stress was experienced in this sense by the pilots, and the greatest - by the observers who corrected fire from fixed balloons over the front line. The latter, forced to passively wait for a bullet or projectile to hit, had attacks of insanity much more often than physical injuries. But after all, all the infantrymen of the First World War, according to Henri Barbusse, inevitably turned into "waiting machines"! At the same time, they were not expecting a return home, which seemed distant and unreal, but, in fact, death.

It was not bayonet attacks and single combats that were driven crazy - in the literal sense - (they often seemed like deliverance), but hours of artillery shelling, during which several tons of shells were sometimes fired per linear meter of the front line. “First of all, it puts pressure on consciousness ... the weight of the falling projectile. A monstrous creature is rushing towards us, so heavy that its very flight presses us into the mud, ”wrote one of the participants in the events. And here is another episode related to the last desperate effort of the Germans to break the resistance of the Entente - to their spring offensive of 1918. As part of one of the defending British brigades, the 7th battalion was in reserve. The official chronicle of this brigade dryly narrates: “At about 4.40 in the morning, enemy shelling began ... Rear positions that had not been shelled before were exposed to it. From that moment on, nothing was known about the 7th battalion. " He was completely destroyed, like the one on the front line of the 8th.

The normal response to danger, psychiatrists say, is aggression. Deprived of the opportunity to manifest it, passively waiting, waiting and awaiting death, people broke down and lost all interest in reality. In addition, opponents introduced new and more sophisticated methods of intimidation. Let's say combat gases. The German command resorted to the large-scale use of toxic substances in the spring of 1915. On April 22, at 17 o'clock, 180 tons of chlorine were released at the position of the 5th British corps in a few minutes. Following the yellowish cloud that spread over the ground, the German infantrymen cautiously moved into the attack. Another eyewitness testifies to what was happening in the trenches of their enemy: “First surprise, then horror and, finally, panic gripped the troops when the first clouds of smoke enveloped the entire area and forced people, gasping for breath, to fight in agony. Those who could move fled, trying, mostly in vain, to outrun the chlorine cloud that pursued them relentlessly. The positions of the British fell without a single shot - the rarest case for the First World War.

However, by and large, nothing could disrupt the existing pattern of military operations. It turned out that the German command was simply not ready to build on the success gained in such an inhuman way. No serious attempt was even made to introduce large forces into the resulting "window" and turn the chemical "experiment" into a victory. And the allies in place of the destroyed divisions quickly, as soon as the chlorine dissipated, moved new ones, and everything remained the same. However, later both sides used chemical weapons more than once or twice.

Brave New World

On November 20, 1917, at 6 o'clock in the morning, German soldiers, "bored" in the trenches near Cambrai, saw a fantastic picture. Dozens of terrifying machines slowly crawled into their positions. So for the first time the entire British mechanized corps went on the attack: 378 battle and 98 auxiliary tanks - 30-ton diamond-shaped monsters. The battle ended 10 hours later. The success, according to current ideas about tank raids, is simply insignificant, by the standards of the First World War, it turned out to be amazing: the British, under the cover of "weapons of the future", managed to advance 10 kilometers, losing "only" one and a half thousand soldiers. True, during the battle 280 vehicles were out of order, including 220 for technical reasons.

It seemed that a way to win trench warfare had finally been found. However, the events near Cambrai were more a herald of the future than a breakthrough in the present. Sluggish, slow, unreliable and vulnerable, the first armored vehicles nevertheless represented the traditional technical superiority of the Entente. They appeared in service with the Germans only in 1918, and there were only a few of them.

The bombing of cities from airplanes and airships made an equally strong impression on contemporaries. During the war several thousand civilians suffered from air raids. In terms of firepower, the then aviation could not be compared with artillery, but psychologically, the appearance of German aircraft, for example, over London meant that the former division into a "warring front" and a "safe rear" is becoming a thing of the past.

Finally, a truly enormous role was played in the First World War by the third technical novelty - submarines. Back in 1912-1913, naval strategists of all powers agreed that the main role in the future confrontation on the ocean would be played by huge battleships - dreadnought battleships. Moreover, naval spending accounted for the lion's share of the arms race, which for several decades depleted the leaders of the world economy. Dreadnoughts and heavy cruisers symbolized imperial power: it was believed that a state claiming a place "on Olympus" was obliged to show the world a string of colossal floating fortresses.

Meanwhile, the very first months of the war showed that the real significance of these giants is limited to the sphere of propaganda. And the pre-war concept was buried by imperceptible "water striders", which the Admiralty had refused to take seriously for a long time. Already on September 22, 1914, the German submarine U-9, which entered the North Sea with the task of interfering with the movement of ships from England to Belgium, found several large enemy ships on the horizon. Having approached them, within an hour she easily launched the cruisers "Kresi", "Abukir" and "Hog" to the bottom. A submarine with a crew of 28 killed three "giants" with 1,459 sailors on board - almost the same number of British killed in the famous Battle of Trafalgar!

We can say that the Germans began the deep-sea war as an act of despair: it did not work out to come up with a different tactic for dealing with the powerful fleet of His Majesty, which completely blocked the sea routes. Already on February 4, 1915, Wilhelm II announced his intention to destroy not only military, but also commercial, and even passenger ships of the Entente countries. This decision turned out to be fatal for Germany, since one of its immediate consequences was the entry into the war of the United States. The loudest victim of this kind was the famous "Lusitania" - a huge steamer that made a flight from New York to Liverpool and sunk off the coast of Ireland on May 7 of the same year. Killed 1,198 people, including 115 citizens of the neutral United States, which caused a storm of indignation in America. A weak excuse for Germany was the fact that the ship was also carrying military cargo. (It is worth noting that there is a version in the spirit of "conspiracy theory": the British, they say, themselves "framed" "Lusitania" in order to drag the United States into the war.)

A scandal broke out in the neutral world, and for the time being Berlin "backpedaled", abandoned the brutal forms of struggle at sea. But this question was again on the agenda when the leadership of the armed forces passed to Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff - "hawks of total war." Hoping with the help of submarines, the production of which was increasing at a gigantic pace, to completely interrupt the communication of England and France with America and the colonies, they persuaded their emperor to re-proclaim February 1, 1917 - on the ocean, he no longer intends to restrain his sailors with anything.

This fact played a role: perhaps because of him - from a purely military point of view, at least - she was defeated. The Americans entered the war, finally changing the balance of power in favor of the Entente. The Germans did not receive the expected dividends either. The losses of the merchant fleet of the Allies were really huge at first, but gradually they were significantly reduced by developing measures to combat submarines - for example, a naval formation "convoy", so effective already in World War II.

War in numbers During the war, more than 73 million people, including: 4 million- fought in career armies and fleets 5 million- signed up as volunteers 50 million- were in stock 14 million- recruits and untrained in units on the fronts The number of submarines in the world increased from 1914 to 1918 from 163 to 669 units; aircraft - with 1.5 thousand to 182 thousand units During the same period, produced 150 thousand tons toxic substances; used up in a combat situation - 110 thousand tons More than 1 200 thousand people; of them died 91 thousand The total line of trenches during the hostilities amounted to 40 thousand km Destroyed 6 thousand ships with a total tonnage 13.3 million tons; including 1.6 thousand combat and support ships Combat consumption of shells and bullets, respectively: 1 billion and 50 billion pieces By the end of the war, the active armies remained: 10,376 thousand people - from the Entente countries (excluding Russia) 6 801 thousand- for the countries of the Central Bloc

"Weak link"

In a strange irony of history, the erroneous step that caused the US intervention took place literally on the eve of the February Revolution in Russia, which led to the rapid disintegration of the Russian army and, ultimately, to the fall of the Eastern Front, which once again returned Germany's hope of success. What role did the First World War play in Russian history, did the country have a chance to avoid revolution, if not for her? It is naturally impossible to answer this question mathematically precisely. But on the whole it is obvious: it was this conflict that became the test that broke the three-hundred-year monarchy of the Romanovs, as, a little later, the monarchies of the Hohenzollerns and the Austro-Hungarian Habsburgs. But why were we the first on this list?

“Fate has never been as cruel to any country as to Russia. Her ship went down when the harbor was already in sight. She had already endured the storm when everything collapsed. All the sacrifices have already been made, all the work has been completed ... According to the superficial fashion of our time, the tsarist system is usually interpreted as a blind, rotten, incapable of tyranny. But the analysis of the thirty months of the war with Germany and Austria was supposed to correct these lightweight ideas. We can measure the strength of the Russian Empire by the blows that it endured, by the disasters that it experienced, by the inexhaustible forces that it developed, and by the restoration of forces that it was capable of ... earth alive, like ancient Herod devoured by worms ”- these words belong to a man who has never been a fan of Russia - Sir Winston Churchill. The future prime minister had already grasped that the Russian catastrophe was not directly caused by military defeats. The "worms" really undermine the state from within. But after all, internal weakness and exhaustion after two and a half years of difficult battles, for which it turned out to be much worse than others, were obvious to any unbiased observer. Meanwhile Great Britain and France tried hard to ignore the difficulties of their ally. The eastern front should, in their opinion, only divert as much of the enemy's forces as possible, while the fate of the war was decided in the west. Perhaps this was the case, but this approach could not inspire millions of Russians who fought. It is not surprising that in Russia they began to say with bitterness that "the allies are ready to fight to the last drop of the Russian soldier's blood."

The most difficult for the country was the 1915 campaign, when the Germans decided that, since the blitzkrieg in the west had failed, all forces should be thrown to the east. Just at this time, the Russian army was experiencing a catastrophic shortage of ammunition (pre-war calculations were hundreds of times lower than real needs), and they had to defend themselves and retreat, counting every cartridge and paying in blood for failures in planning and supply. In defeats (and it was especially hard in battles with a perfectly organized and trained German army, not with the Turks or Austrians), not only the allies were blamed, but also the mediocre command, mythical traitors "at the very top" - the opposition constantly played on this topic; "Unlucky" king. By 1917, largely under the influence of socialist propaganda, the idea that the slaughter was beneficial to the possessing classes, the "bourgeois", had spread widely among the troops, and they were especially for it. Many observers noted a paradoxical phenomenon: disappointment and pessimism grew with distance from the front line, especially strongly affecting the rear.

Economic and social weakness multiplied immeasurably the inevitable hardships that fell on the shoulders of ordinary people. They lost hope of victory earlier than many other warring nations. And the terrible tension demanded a level of civil unity that was hopelessly absent in Russia at that time. The powerful patriotic impulse that swept the country in 1914 turned out to be superficial and short-lived, and the "educated" classes of much less elites in Western countries were eager to sacrifice their lives and even prosperity for the sake of victory. For the people, the goals of the war, in general, remained distant and incomprehensible ...

Churchill's later assessments should not be misleading: the Allies took the February events of 1917 with great enthusiasm. It seemed to many in liberal countries that by “throwing off the yoke of autocracy,” the Russians would begin to defend their newfound freedom even more zealously. In fact, the Provisional Government, as we know, was unable to establish even the semblance of control over the state of affairs. The "democratization" of the army turned into a collapse under conditions of general fatigue. To "hold the front," as Churchill advised, would only mean accelerating decay. Tangible successes could have stopped this process. However, the desperate summer offensive of 1917 failed, and from then on it became clear to many that the Eastern Front was doomed. It finally collapsed after the October coup. The new Bolshevik government could stay in power only by ending the war at any cost - and it paid this incredibly high price. Under the terms of the Brest Peace, on March 3, 1918, Russia lost Poland, Finland, the Baltic States, Ukraine and part of Belarus - about 1/4 of the population, 1/4 of the cultivated land and 3/4 of the coal and metallurgical industries. True, less than a year later, after the defeat of Germany, these conditions ceased to operate, and the nightmare of the world war was surpassed by the nightmare of the civil one. But it is also true that without the first there would be no second.

A respite between the wars?

Having received the opportunity to strengthen the Western Front at the expense of units transferred from the east, the Germans prepared and conducted a whole series of powerful operations in the spring and summer of 1918: in Picardy, in Flanders, on the Aisne and Oise rivers. In fact, that was the last chance of the Central Bloc (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey): its resources were completely depleted. However, the successes achieved this time did not lead to a turning point. “The hostile resistance turned out to be above the level of our forces,” Ludendorff stated. The last of the desperate blows - on the Marne, as in 1914, completely failed. And on August 8, a decisive Allied counteroffensive began with the active participation of fresh American units. At the end of September, the German front finally collapsed. Then Bulgaria surrendered. The Austrians and Turks had long been on the brink of disaster and held back from concluding a separate peace only under the pressure of their stronger ally.

This victory was expected for a long time (and it is worth noting that the Entente, out of habit exaggerating the strength of the enemy, did not plan to achieve it so quickly). On October 5, the German government appealed to US President Woodrow Wilson, who has repeatedly spoken in a peacekeeping spirit, with a request for a truce. However, the Entente no longer needed peace, but complete surrender. And only on November 8, after the revolution broke out in Germany and Wilhelm abdicated, the German delegation was admitted to the headquarters of the commander-in-chief of the Entente, the French Marshal Ferdinand Foch.

What do you want, gentlemen? Foch asked without giving up his hand.
- We want to receive your proposals for a truce.
- Oh, we have no proposals for a truce. We like to continue the war.
“But we need your conditions. We cannot continue to fight.
- Oh, so you, then, came to ask for an armistice? This is a different matter.

World War I officially ended 3 days after that, on November 11, 1918. At 11 o'clock GMT, 101 gun salutes were fired in the capitals of all the Entente countries. For millions of people, these volleys meant a long-awaited victory, but many were already ready to recognize them as a mourning commemoration of the lost Old World.

Chronology of the war All dates are in Gregorian ("new") style June 28, 1914 Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip kills the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his wife in Sarajevo. Austria issues an ultimatum to Serbia August 1, 1914 Germany declares war on Russia, which interceded for Serbia. The beginning of the world war August 4, 1914 German troops invade Belgium September 5-10, 1914 Battle of the Marne. By the end of the battle, the sides switched to trench warfare September 6-15, 1914 Battle in the Masurian Marshes (East Prussia). Heavy defeat of the Russian troops September 8-12, 1914 Russian troops occupy Lviv, the fourth largest city in Austria-Hungary September 17 - October 18, 1914"Run to the Sea" - Allied and German troops try to outflank each other. As a result, the Western Front stretches from the North Sea through Belgium and France to Switzerland. October 12 - November 11, 1914 The Germans are trying to break through the allied defenses at Ypres (Belgium) February 4, 1915 Germany announces the establishment of a submarine blockade of England and Ireland April 22, 1915 At the town of Langemark on Ypres, German troops use poison gases for the first time: the second battle begins at Ypres May 2, 1915 Austro-German troops break through the Russian front in Galicia ("Gorlitsky breakthrough") May 23, 1915 Italy enters the war on the side of the Entente June 23, 1915 Russian troops leave Lviv 5 August 1915 Germans take Warsaw September 6, 1915 On the Eastern Front, Russian troops halt the advance of German troops near Ternopil. The sides go over to trench warfare February 21, 1916 Battle of Verdun begins May 31 - June 1, 1916 Battle of Jutland in the North Sea - the main battle of the navies of Germany and England June 4 - August 10, 1916 Brusilov breakthrough July 1 - November 19, 1916 Battle of the Somme August 30, 1916 Hindenburg is appointed Chief of the General Staff of the German Army. The beginning of the "total war" September 15, 1916 During the offensive on the Somme, Great Britain uses tanks for the first time December 20, 1916 US President Woodrow Wilson sends a note to war veterans inviting peace talks February 1, 1917 Germany announces the beginning of an all-out submarine war March 14, 1917 In Russia, during the outbreak of the revolution, the Petrograd Soviet issues order No. 1, which marked the beginning of the "democratization" of the army April 6, 1917 USA declares war on Germany June 16 - July 15, 1917 The unsuccessful Russian offensive in Galicia, launched on the orders of A.F. Kerensky under the command of A.A. Brusilova November 7, 1917 Bolshevik coup in Petrograd November 8, 1917 Decree on Peace in Russia March 3, 1918 Brest Peace Treaty June 9-13, 1918 The offensive of the German army at Compiegne August 8, 1918 Allies launch a decisive offensive on the Western Front November 3, 1918 The beginning of the revolution in Germany November 11, 1918 Compiegne truce November 9, 1918 Republic proclaimed in Germany November 12, 1918 Emperor of Austria-Hungary Charles I abdicates June 28, 1919 German representatives sign a peace treaty (Treaty of Versailles) in the Hall of Mirrors of the Palace of Versailles near Paris

Peace or truce

“This is not the world. This is a truce for twenty years, "Foch prophetically characterized the Treaty of Versailles concluded in June 1919, which consolidated the military triumph of the Entente and instilled in the souls of millions of Germans a sense of humiliation and a thirst for revenge. In many ways, Versailles became a tribute to the diplomacy of a bygone era, when there were still undoubted winners and losers in wars, and the end justified the means. Many European politicians stubbornly did not want to fully realize: in 4 years, 3 months and 10 days of the great war, the world has changed beyond recognition.

Meanwhile, even before the signing of the peace, the carnage that ended caused a chain reaction of cataclysms of different scale and strength. The fall of the autocracy in Russia, instead of becoming a triumph of democracy over "despotism", led it to chaos, the Civil War and the emergence of a new, socialist despotism, which frightened the Western bourgeoisie with "world revolution" and "destruction of the exploiting classes." The Russian example turned out to be contagious: against the background of the deep shock of the people by the past nightmare, uprisings broke out in Germany and Hungary, communist sentiments swept over millions of inhabitants in quite liberal "respectable" powers. In turn, trying to prevent the spread of "barbarism", Western politicians hastened to rely on nationalist movements, which seemed to them to be more controlled. The disintegration of the Russian and then Austro-Hungarian empires caused a real "parade of sovereignties", and the leaders of the young nation states showed the same dislike for the pre-war "oppressors" and for the communists. However, the idea of ​​such absolute self-determination, in turn, turned out to be a ticking time bomb.

Of course, many in the West recognized the need for a serious revision of the world order, taking into account the lessons of the war and the new reality. However, good wishes too often only covered up selfishness and myopic reliance on strength. Immediately after Versailles, Colonel House, the closest adviser to President Wilson, noted: "In my opinion, this is not in the spirit of the new era that we vowed to create." However, Wilson himself, one of the main "architects" of the League of Nations and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, found himself hostage to the former political mentality. Like other gray-haired elders - the leaders of the victorious countries - he was inclined to simply ignore many things that did not fit into his usual picture of the world. As a result, the attempt to comfortably equip the post-war world, giving everyone what they deserve and reaffirming the hegemony of "civilized countries" over "backward and barbaric" ones, has completely failed. Of course, there were also supporters of an even tougher line in relation to the vanquished in the camp of the winners. Their point of view did not prevail, and thank God. It is safe to say that any attempt to establish an occupation regime in Germany would be fraught with great political complications for the Allies. Not only would they not have prevented the growth of revanchism, but, on the contrary, would have sharply accelerated it. By the way, one of the consequences of this approach was the temporary rapprochement between Germany and Russia, which were erased by the allies from the system of international relations. And in the long run, the triumph of aggressive isolationism in both countries, the aggravation of numerous social and national conflicts in Europe as a whole, brought the world to a new, even more terrible war.

Of course, other consequences of the First World War were also colossal: demographic, economic, and cultural. Direct losses of nations that directly participated in hostilities amounted to, according to various estimates, from 8 to 15.7 million people, indirect (taking into account a sharp drop in the birth rate and an increase in deaths from hunger and disease) reached 27 million. If we add to them the losses from the Civil War in Russia and the resulting hunger and epidemics, this number will almost double. Europe was able to reach the pre-war level of the economy again only by 1926-1928, and even then for a short time: the world crisis of 1929 severely crippled it. Only for the United States did the war become a profitable enterprise. As for Russia (USSR), its economic development has become so abnormal that it is simply impossible to adequately judge the overcoming of the consequences of the war.

Well, millions of those who "happily" returned from the front were never able to fully rehabilitate themselves morally and socially. For many years the “Lost Generation” tried in vain to restore the disintegrated connection of times and find the meaning of life in the new world. And having despaired of this, he sent a new generation to a new slaughter - in 1939.