Germany didn’t win the struggle in 1914 as a result of reaching perfection whereas transitioning from principle to operations is unattainable. The truth of deploying large armies threw up every kind of points: provide strains grew too lengthy because the advance was so fast, and forces suffered main breaks in communication. As well as, a military of this measurement inevitably comprised largely inexperienced, terrified males seeing fight for the primary time.
2. Belgians fought Germany just about alone in the beginning of the battle
We all know a lot in regards to the experiences of British troops within the trenches, however all too typically we overlook in regards to the French and Belgian armies who fought on their house soil.
Within the opening weeks of the struggle, the British Expeditionary Drive (BEF) in France and Belgium was nonetheless comparatively tiny – solely about 60,000 males. Throughout this era, the a lot bigger Belgian military fought just about alone – with out the assistance of its allies – desperately battling to halt the large German forces invading their nation.
Equally, on the outbreak of struggle, tons of of 1000’s of Frenchmen instantly went into battle alongside a line stretching from Alsace all the best way into Belgium, with territorials extending the Allied line far past the top of the British sector.
For example this level, think about the battle of Mons on 23 August 1914. This conflict is well-known amongst British audiences – but in reality it was tiny in scale, and only one part of the month-long battle of the Frontiers that raged alongside the Belgian-French and German-French borders.
3. Neutrality was a lie
Regardless of the protestations of non-combatant nations, full neutrality was unattainable to practise by 1914. World commerce had grow to be the norm, with the end result that no single energy might produce all it wanted to struggle a struggle and provide huge armies by itself. As an alternative, it needed to name on the assets and manufacturing capability of nominally impartial nations to provide items and supplies.
On a extra base and self-serving degree, no forward-thinking imperialist nation might afford to be neglected when the victors started dividing up the spoils of struggle. To this finish, the likes of Turkey and Italy successfully picked sides as quickly as struggle commenced, and merely delayed their entry into the preventing for so long as potential – or till they had been promised the rewards they thought their contribution deserved.
4. The jap entrance was simply as vital because the west
Whereas preventing raged on the western entrance in France and Belgium, an equally monumental but less-known struggle was concurrently being waged to the east and within the Balkans. Armies numbering thousands and thousands of troops clashed alongside the banks of the Drina river (now alongside the border between Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina), among the many Masurian Lakes (at present in Poland) and throughout the rolling hills of Galicia, straddling south-east Poland and western Ukraine.
Russians, Germans, Serbs, Austrians, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Romanians, Poles and extra bled by their 1000’s for his or her respective kings and emperors. Their tales, experiences and voices have been largely written out of the narrative, their struggle relegated to mere ‘sideshows’.
Nonetheless, the impression of those bloody battles within the east was profound, not solely on the opening levels of the struggle however on its onward course. Nothing occurred on one facet of Europe with out affecting the struggle on the opposite, and it’s unattainable to completely perceive the unprecedented scale of this battle with out greedy these occasions within the east.
5. Many ‘German’ troopers weren’t German
Giant numbers of enemy troopers going through the BEF within the first motion at Mons weren’t actually German in any respect. As an alternative, a number of of the regiments that charged the British positions on that day hailed from areas of Germany that had, previous to 1864, been a part of Denmark, and a sizeable proportion of these troops had been Danes. In whole, round 30,000 Danes had been conscripted into the German military through the struggle. Some 5,000 of them wouldn’t return from the battle alive.
Alex Churchill‘s new e book, co-authored with Nicolai Eberholst, is Ring of Hearth: A New World Historical past of the Outbreak of the First World Struggle (Bloomsbury). Alex and Nicolai are trustees of the Nice Struggle Group
This text was first revealed within the July 2025 problem of BBC History Magazine