During
World War IWorld War I , also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Wars, was a global military conflict which involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance...
, the
German EmpireThe German Empire is the name commonly used in English to describe Germany from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871 to 1918, when it became a German republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of Wilhelm II .The term Second Reich...
was one of the
Central PowersThe Central Powers was one of the two sides that participated in World War I, the other being the Entente Powers.-Member states:...
that ultimately lost the war. It began participation with the conflict after the declaration of war against
SerbiaThe Kingdom of Serbia was created when Prince Milan Obrenović, ruler of the Principality of Serbia, was crowned King in 1882. The Principality of Serbia was ruled by the Karadjordjevic dynasty from 1817 onwards...
by its ally,
Austria-HungaryAustria–Hungary, also known as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Dual Monarchy or the k.u.k. Monarchy, or Dual State, was a monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in Central Europe...
. German forces fought the
AlliesThe Entente powers were the countries at war with the Central Powers during World War I. The key members of the Entente were the United Kingdom, France, and the Russian Empire. New Zealand, Belgium, Serbia, Canada, Australia, Italy, Romania and the United States were also drawn into the war...
on both the
easternThe Eastern Front was a theatre of war during World War I in Central and, primarily, Eastern Europe. The term is in contrast to the Western Front. Despite the geographical separation, the events in the two theatres strongly influenced each other...
and
westernFollowing the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the German army opened the Western Front by first invading Luxembourg and Belgium, then gaining military control of important industrial regions in France. The tide of the advance was dramatically turned with the Battle of the Marne...
fronts, although German territory itself remained relatively safe from widespread invasion for most of the war.
Germans responded to the beginning of war during 1914 with the same general enthusiasm as did many people of other countries of
EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus Mountains , and the Black Sea to the southeast...
; this enthusiasm is known as the
Spirit of 1914The Spirit of 1914 refers to the alleged jubilation in Germany at the outbreak of World War I. Many individuals remembered that euphoria erupted on 4 August 1914 after all the political parties in the Reichstag, including the previously antimilitarist Social Democratic Party of Germany , supported...
.
During
World War IWorld War I , also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Wars, was a global military conflict which involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance...
, the
German EmpireThe German Empire is the name commonly used in English to describe Germany from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871 to 1918, when it became a German republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of Wilhelm II .The term Second Reich...
was one of the
Central PowersThe Central Powers was one of the two sides that participated in World War I, the other being the Entente Powers.-Member states:...
that ultimately lost the war. It began participation with the conflict after the declaration of war against
SerbiaThe Kingdom of Serbia was created when Prince Milan Obrenović, ruler of the Principality of Serbia, was crowned King in 1882. The Principality of Serbia was ruled by the Karadjordjevic dynasty from 1817 onwards...
by its ally,
Austria-HungaryAustria–Hungary, also known as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Dual Monarchy or the k.u.k. Monarchy, or Dual State, was a monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in Central Europe...
. German forces fought the
AlliesThe Entente powers were the countries at war with the Central Powers during World War I. The key members of the Entente were the United Kingdom, France, and the Russian Empire. New Zealand, Belgium, Serbia, Canada, Australia, Italy, Romania and the United States were also drawn into the war...
on both the
easternThe Eastern Front was a theatre of war during World War I in Central and, primarily, Eastern Europe. The term is in contrast to the Western Front. Despite the geographical separation, the events in the two theatres strongly influenced each other...
and
westernFollowing the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the German army opened the Western Front by first invading Luxembourg and Belgium, then gaining military control of important industrial regions in France. The tide of the advance was dramatically turned with the Battle of the Marne...
fronts, although German territory itself remained relatively safe from widespread invasion for most of the war.
Germans responded to the beginning of war during 1914 with the same general enthusiasm as did many people of other countries of
EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus Mountains , and the Black Sea to the southeast...
; this enthusiasm is known as the
Spirit of 1914The Spirit of 1914 refers to the alleged jubilation in Germany at the outbreak of World War I. Many individuals remembered that euphoria erupted on 4 August 1914 after all the political parties in the Reichstag, including the previously antimilitarist Social Democratic Party of Germany , supported...
. The German government, dominated by the economic and political elite, thought of the war as a way to end Germany's disputes with neighbors and rivals like
FranceFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
, the
United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the formal name and the state form of the United Kingdom from 1 January 1801 until 12 April 1927...
, and
RussiaThe Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia, and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
. The beginning of war was thus presented in authoritarian Germany as the chance for the nation to secure "our place under the sun" as the Kaiser Wilhelm II put it, which was readily supported by the prevailing nationalism of the public. The Kaiser and the German establishment hoped the war would unite the public behind the monarchy, and lessen the threat posed by the dramatic growth of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, which had been the most vocal critic of the Kaiser in the
ReichstagThe Reichstag was the parliament of the Holy Roman Empire, and subsequently of the North German Confederation, and of Germany until 1945...
before the war. Despite their history, the
Social Democratic Party of GermanyThe Social Democratic Party of Germany is Germany's oldest political party. The party governed at the federal level in a grand coalition with the Christian Democratic Union and the Christian Social Union until conceding defeat in the federal election of September 2009...
ended its differences with the government and abandoned its principles of internationalism to support the war effort.
It soon became apparent that Germany was not prepared for a war lasting more than a few months. At first, little was done to regulate the economy for a wartime footing, and the German war economy would remain badly organized throughout the war. Germany depended on imports of food and raw materials, which were stopped by the British
blockade of GermanyThe blockade of Germany was a naval blockade conducted during World War I by the British Royal Navy from 1914 onwards, in an effort to restrict the maritime supply of raw materials and foodstuffs to Germany and its allies, and is considered one of the key elements in the eventual victory of the...
. Food prices were first limited, then rationing was introduced. The winter of 1916/17 was called "turnip winter". During the war, about 750,000 German civilians died from malnutrition
http://www.dhm.de/lemo/html/wk1/wirtschaft/versorgung/index.html.
Even more died after the war, as the Allied blockade was not ended until the summer of 1919.
Enthusiasm began to decrease as the enormous numbers of casualties began returning from the first battles. As the human cost increased during battles at the
MarneMarne is a department in north-eastern France named after the river Marne which flows through the department. The prefecture of Marne is Châlons-en-Champagne...
,
VerdunVerdun is a city in the Meuse department in Lorraine in north-eastern France. It is a sub-prefecture of the department....
, the
SommeThe Somme is a department of France, located in the north of the country and named after the Somme river. It is part of the Picardie region of France....
, and at
YpresYpres is a Belgian municipality located in the Flemish province of West Flanders. The municipality comprises the city of Ypres and the villages of Boezinge, Brielen, Dikkebus, Elverdinge, Hollebeke, Sint-Jan, Vlamertinge, Voormezele, Zillebeke, and Zuidschote...
in the west, and in
PolandThe Kingdom of Poland, also informally called Regency Kingdom of Poland , was the state proposed by the Act of November 5, 1916 issued by Imperial Germany and Austria-Hungary. It was to be created within the former Russian territory of Privislinsky Krai in 1916 and would exist as a puppet state of...
and
GaliciaGalicia is a historical region in East-Central Europe, currently divided between Poland and Ukraine, named after the Ukraіniаn city of Halych. The nucleus of historic Galicia is formed of three regions of western Ukraine: Lviv, Ternopil and Ivano-Frankivsk.-Tribal area:The region has a turbulent...
in the
EastEastern Europe is a region lying in the Eastern part of Europe. The term is highly context-dependent and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
, a grimmer and grimmer attitude began to prevail amongst the general population. Morale was helped by victories against Serbia,
GreeceThe Kingdom of Greece was a state established in 1832 in the Convention of London by the Great Powers...
,
ItalyThe Kingdom of Italy was a state forged in 1861 by the unification of Italy under the influence of the Kingdom of Sardinia which is its legal predecessor State, and with the decisive help of France and Great Britain...
, and Russia which made great gains for the Central Powers. Morale was at its greatest since 1914 at the end of 1917 and beginning of 1918 with the defeat of Russia following her rise into revolution, and the German people braced for what
LudendorffErich Friedrich Wilhelm Ludendorff was a German Army officer, victor of Liège, and, with Paul von Hindenburg, one of the victors of the battle of Tannenberg. From August 1916 his appointment as Generalquartiermeister made him joint head of Germany's war effort...
said would be the "Peace Offensive" in the west. In one of the bloodiest series of battles in history from March to August, Ludendorff's plans were thwarted by the combined Allied efforts and Germany's last chance to win the war was lost.
By September 1918, the Central Powers were exhausted from fighting, and the Allies had won the support of
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
forces. Even though the eastern front was hundreds of miles away from the borders of the
ReichReich is a German loanword cognate with the English reign, but used most often to designate an empire, realm, or nation. The qualitative connotation from the German is " sovereign state." It is also cognate with the Latin word and the Scandinavian rike/rige, , , ; as found in bishopric...
, an invasion of the
RhinelandThe Rhineland is the general name for the land on both sides of the river Rhine in the west of Germany. After the collapse of the French Empire in the early 19th century, the German and Dutch speaking regions at the middle and lower course of the Rhine were annexed to the kingdom of Prussia...
on the western front was possible. The hunger and popular dissatisfaction with the war precipitated uprisings and an attempted
revolutionThe German Revolution was the politically-driven civil conflict in Germany at the end of World War I. The period lasted from November 1918 until the formal establishment of the Weimar Republic in August 1919....
throughout Germany, deposing the Kaiser and creating the historical motive for far-right German nationalists to later develop the
DolchstoßlegendeThe Stab-in-the-Back Legend was a social theory popular in Germany in the period after World War I and before World War II, which attributed Germany's losing the war not to its inability to continue fighting, but to the public's failure to respond to its "patriotic calling" and the intentional...
. By the end of 1918, Germany had signed the Armistice, the Kaiser had abdicated, and the Empire had been replaced by the
Weimar RepublicThe Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government, named after Weimar, the place where the constitutional assembly took place. Its official name was still Deutsches Reich , however...
.
External links
WWI at German Historic Museum online