World War I

1914-1918

Also known as: First World War, Great War, WWI

World War I, also called First World War or Great War, an international conflict that in 1914–18 embroiled most of the nations of Europe along with Russia, the United States, the Middle East, and other regions.

The war pitted the Central Powers—mainly Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey—against the Allies—mainly France, Great Britain, Russia, Italy, Japan, and, from 1917, the United States. It ended with the defeat of the Central Powers. The war was virtually unprecedented in the slaughter, carnage, and destruction it caused.

World War I was one of the great watersheds of 20th-century geopolitical history. It led to the fall of four great imperial dynasties (in Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey), resulted in the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, and, in its destabilization of European society, laid the groundwork for World War II.

The last surviving veterans of World War I were American serviceman Frank Buckles (died in February 2011), British-born Australian serviceman Claude Choules (died in May 2011), and British servicewoman Florence Green (died in February 2012), the last surviving veteran of the war.

The outbreak of war

At 11:15 AM on June 28, 1914, in the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, Franz Ferdinand and his morganatic wife, Sophie, duchess of Hohenberg, were shot dead by a Bosnian Serb, Gavrilo Princip. The chief of the Austro-Hungarian general staff, Franz, Graf (count) Conrad von Hötzendorf, and the foreign minister, Leopold, Graf von Berchtold, saw the crime as the occasion for measures to humiliate Serbia and so to enhance Austria-Hungary’s prestige in the Balkans.

The Austrians decided to present an unacceptable ultimatum to Serbia and then to declare war, relying on Germany to deter Russia from intervention. Though the terms of the ultimatum were finally approved on July 19, its delivery was postponed to the evening of July 23, since by that time the French president, Raymond Poincaré, and his premier, René Viviani, who had set off on a state visit to Russia on July 15, would be on their way home and therefore unable to concert an immediate reaction with their Russian allies. When the delivery was announced, on July 24, Russia declared that Austria-Hungary must not be allowed to crush Serbia.

On August 1 Germany ordered general mobilization and declared war against Russia, and France likewise ordered general mobilization. The next day Germany sent troops into Luxembourg and demanded from Belgium free passage for German troops across its neutral territory. On August 3 Germany declared war against France.

Austria-Hungary declared war against Russia on August 5; Serbia against Germany on August 6; Montenegro against Austria-Hungary on August 7 and against Germany on August 12; France and Great Britain against Austria-Hungary on August 10 and on August 12, respectively; Japan against Germany on August 23; Austria-Hungary against Japan on August 25 and against Belgium on August 28.

On September 5, 1914, Russia, France, and Great Britain concluded the Treaty of London, each promising not to make a separate peace with the Central Powers. Thenceforth, they could be called the Allied, or Entente, powers, or simply the Allies.

The outbreak of war in August 1914 was generally greeted with confidence and jubilation by the peoples of Europe, among whom it inspired a wave of patriotic feeling and celebration. Few people imagined how long or how disastrous a war between the great nations of Europe could be, and most believed that their country’s side would be victorious within a matter of months. The war was welcomed either patriotically, as a defensive one imposed by national necessity, or idealistically, as one for upholding right against might, the sanctity of treaties, and international morality.

The United States Officially enters World War I

April 6, 1917: Two days after the U.S. Senate voted 82 to 6 to declare war against Germany, the U.S. House of Representatives endorses the declaration by a vote of 373 to 50, and America formally enters World War I.

When World War I erupted in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson pledged neutrality for the United States, a position that the vast majority of Americans favored. Britain, however, was one of America’s closest trading partners, and tension soon arose between the United States and Germany over the latter’s attempted quarantine of the British Isles.

On June 26, the first 14,000 U.S. infantry troops landed in France to begin training for combat. After four years of bloody stalemate along the western front, the entrance of America’s well-supplied forces into the conflict marked a major turning point in the war and helped the Allies to victory. When the war finally ended, on November 11, 1918, more than two million American soldiers had served on the battlefields of Western Europe, and some 50,000 of them had lost their lives.

Source: History.com Editors

https://www.britannica.com/event/World-War-I/Eastern-Front-strategy-1914

The Black and White War

As World War I radically transformed warfare and the experience of combat, it also changed the art commissioned to depict it.

When a squadron of artists was dispatched along with the troops for the first time to chronicle the American entry into the war a century ago, no longer would they stay home, rendering generals in heroic statues long after the fact.

These were the artists of the American Expeditionary Forces—eight professional illustrators commissioned as U.S. Army officers, embedded with the troops in France in early 1918.

In addition to the combat scenes, there are depictions of everyday life, starting with the months of planning and logistical build up. The artists, commissioned as U.S. Army officers, were with the Army Corps of Engineers as that extensive build-up began. Their work was typically of pen and ink wash and charcoal on paper.

The image of warfare represented at the American Legion Post 57 in Jacksonville, Al is a recreation of the charcoal techniques used by those wartime field artists.

Dan Seymour, Anniston, Al is the artist of this mural reflecting a charcoal like depiction of war.

More information on these wartime artists is available at https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/when-artists-became-soldiers-and-soldiers-became-artists-180962903/

Memorial Day poppies appear every year and raise funds for a great cause. But what is the history behind wearing one of these red flowers?

The red poppy, or Remembrance Poppy, has been a symbol of lives lost to war since World War I (1914–1918), and Memorial Day poppies play a big part in the history of Memorial Day. Sales of red poppies benefit veterans associations and fund many charities and veterans causes. The poppy is worn in many of the countries that were Allied during World War I, including Great Britain, France, Belgium, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States.

In most of those other countries, the poppy is worn on and leading up to Armistice Day (also known as Remembrance Day) on Nov. 11, which is Veterans Day in the United States. In New Zealand and Australia, it’s worn on ANZAC Day (April 25), which commemorates the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps troops who served in the 1915 Gallipoli Campaign. But in the United States, the poppy is worn on Memorial Day.

The poppy as a symbol of war casualties started with a poem. In the spring of 1915, a Canadian artillery unit brigade surgeon named Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae saw bright-red poppies blooming on the war-torn fields where so many soldiers had lost their lives. The sight moved him to write the famous poem “In Flanders Fields”:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

The poem was published in a London magazine and later syndicated to publications in other Allied countries, where it was seen by two women who would go on to play a role in making the poppy a symbol of Memorial Day.

American University of Georgia professor Moïna Michael wrote a poem in 1918 in response to McCrae’s, titled “We Shall Keep Faith.” She also started wearing a red poppy in honor of the troops and came up with the idea of making and selling red poppies to raise money for veterans.

Meanwhile, in France, Anna Guérin organized large poppy drives, making and selling poppies to raise money for widows, orphans and veterans, and to fund France’s post-war restoration efforts. She championed her idea for an “Inter-Allied Poppy Day” and started Poppy Days worldwide, during which fundraising poppies were sold in many Allied countries. Poppy factories were set up, often employing disabled servicemen to make the silk and paper blooms.

On Monday, May 29, 2023, many Americans will pin a bright-red poppy to their shirts as a sign of respect. In the United States, the poppy is not traditionally worn on Veterans Day, but on Memorial Day, the last Monday in May, to commemorate the lives of those who died fighting for their country.

Poppies are handmade by veterans as part of their therapeutic rehabilitation and distributed across the country by the American Legion Auxiliary in exchange for donations that assist disabled and hospitalized veterans.

Source: https://www.rd.com/article/memorial-day-poppies/

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