1914 World War I Outbreak Newspaper Vintage II Daily News & Leader Retro Great • EUR 0,01 (2024)

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Venditore: checkoutmyunqiuefunitems ✉️ (4.124) 99.9%, Luogo in cui si trova l'oggetto: Manchester, Take a look at my other items, GB, Spedizione verso: WORLDWIDE, Numero oggetto: 276530294218 1914 World War I Outbreak Newspaper Vintage II Daily News & Leader Retro Great. For the London newspaper published in 1987, see London Daily News. For other uses, see Daily News. The News was founded in 1846 by Charles Dickens, who also served as the newspaper's first editor. It was conceived as a radical rival to the right-wing Morning Chronicle. World War I Newspaper GREAT BRITIAN at war with GERMANY Replica Daily News & Leader Newspaper from Monday 5th August 1914 The Cover Story is the outbreak of World War I Lots of important news information, photos of the time and adverts The back has some great photos of Britain on the day War was Declared. 8 Pages In Excellent Condition A2 Size Broadsheet - 41cm x 58cm Magnificent Keepsake Souvenir to Remember the start of the Great War Would make an Excellent Gift or Collectable Keepsake souvineer of a historic country Sorry about the poor quality photos. They don't do the coin justice. A lot of my buyers tell me the coin looks better in real life than in my photos In Excellent Condition I always combined postage on multiple items I have a lot of World War Items on Ebay so Please CLICK HERE TO VISIT MY SHOP Bid with Confidence - Check My 100% Positive Feedback from over 3000 Satisfied Customers I always combine items and discount postage on multiple I Specialise in Unique Fun Items So For that Interesting Conversational Piece, A Birthday Present, Christmas Gift, A Comical Item to Cheer Someone Up or That Unique Perfect Gift for the Person Who has Everything....You Know Where to Look for a Bargain! Be sure to add me to your favourite sellers list All Items Dispatched within 24 hours of Receiving Payment and feedback let immedialtley as soon as payment received I always combined postage on multiple items so Click This Line to Check out my other items! All Payment Methods in All Major Currencies Accepted. All Items Sent out within 24 hours of Receiving Payment. 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I have sold items to coutries such as Afghanistan * Albania * Algeria * American Samoa (US) * Andorra * Angola * Anguilla (GB) * Antigua and Barbuda * Argentina * Armenia * Aruba (NL) * Australia * Austria * Azerbaijan * Bahamas * Bahrain * Bangladesh * Barbados * Belarus * Belgium * Belize * Benin * Bermuda (GB) * Bhutan * Bolivia * Bonaire (NL) * Bosnia and Herzegovina * Botswana * Bouvet Island (NO) * Brazil * British Indian Ocean Territory (GB) * British Virgin Islands (GB) * Brunei * Bulgaria * Burkina Faso * Burundi * Cambodia * Cameroon * Canada * Cape Verde * Cayman Islands (GB) * Central African Republic * Chad * Chile * China * Christmas Island (AU) * Cocos Islands (AU) * Colombia * Comoros * Congo * Democratic Republic of the Congo * Cook Islands (NZ) * Coral Sea Islands Territory (AU) * Costa Rica * Croatia * Cuba * Curaçao (NL) * Cyprus * Czech Republic * Denmark * Djibouti * Dominica * Dominican Republic * East Timor * Ecuador * Egypt * El Salvador * Equatorial Guinea * 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Montserrat (GB) * Morocco * Mozambique * Myanmar * Namibia * Nauru * Navassa (US) * Nepal * Netherlands * New Caledonia (FR) * New Zealand * Nicaragua * Niger * Nigeria * Niue (NZ) * Norfolk Island (AU) * North Korea * Northern Cyprus * Northern Mariana Islands (US) * Norway * Oman * Pakistan * Palau * Palestinian Authority * Panama * Papua New Guinea * Paraguay * Peru * Philippines * Pitcairn Island (GB) * Poland * Portugal * Puerto Rico (US) * Qatar * Reunion (FR) * Romania * Russia * Rwanda * Saba (NL) * Saint Barthelemy (FR) * Saint Helena (GB) * Saint Kitts and Nevis * Saint Lucia * Saint Martin (FR) * Saint Pierre and Miquelon (FR) * Saint Vincent and the Grenadines * Samoa * San Marino * Sao Tome and Principe * Saudi Arabia * Senegal * Serbia * Seychelles * Sierra Leone * Singapore * Sint Eustatius (NL) * Sint Maarten (NL) * Slovakia * Slovenia * Solomon Islands * Somalia * South Africa * South Georgia (GB) * South Korea * South Sudan * Spain * Sri Lanka * Sudan * Suriname * Svalbard (NO) * Swaziland * Sweden * Switzerland * Syria * Taiwan * Tajikistan * Tanzania * Thailand * Togo * Tokelau (NZ) * Tonga * Trinidad and Tobago * Tunisia * Turkey * Turkmenistan * Turks and Caicos Islands (GB) * Tuvalu * U.S. Minor Pacific Islands (US) * U.S. Virgin Islands (US) * Uganda * Ukraine * United Arab Emirates * United Kingdom * United States * Uruguay * Uzbekistan * Vanuatu * Vatican City * Venezuela * Vietnam * Wallis and Futuna (FR) * Yemen * Zambia * Zimbabwe and major cities such as Tokyo, Yokohama, New York City, Sao Paulo, Seoul, Mexico City, Osaka, Kobe, Kyoto, Manila, Mumbai, Delhi, Jakarta, Lagos, Kolkata, Cairo, Los Angeles, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Moscow, Shanghai, Karachi, Paris, Istanbul, Nagoya, Beijing, Chicago, London, Shenzhen, Essen, Düsseldorf, Tehran, Bogota, Lima, Bangkok, Johannesburg, East Rand, Chennai, Taipei, Baghdad, Santiago, Bangalore, Hyderabad, St Petersburg, Philadelphia, Lahore, Kinshasa, Miami, Ho Chi Minh City, Madrid, Tianjin, Kuala Lumpur, Toronto, Milan, Shenyang, Dallas, Fort Worth, Boston, Belo Horizonte, Khartoum, Riyadh, Singapore, Washington, Detroit, Barcelona,, Houston, Athens, Berlin, Sydney, Atlanta, Guadalajara, San Francisco, Oakland, Montreal, Monterey, Melbourne, Ankara, Recife, Phoenix/Mesa, Durban, Porto Alegre, Dalian, Jeddah, Seattle, Cape Town, San Diego, Fortaleza, Curitiba, Rome, Naples, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Tel Aviv, Birmingham, Frankfurt, Lisbon, Manchester, San Juan, Katowice, Tashkent, Fukuoka, Baku, Sumqayit, St. Louis, Baltimore, Sapporo, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Taichung, Warsaw, Denver, Cologne, Bonn, Hamburg, Dubai, Pretoria, Vancouver, Beirut, Budapest, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Campinas, Harare, Brasilia, Kuwait, Munich, Portland, Brussels, Vienna, San Jose, Damman , Copenhagen, Brisbane, Riverside, San Bernardino, Cincinnati and Accra The Daily News (UK) Article Talk Read Edit View history Tools From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This article is about the former British newspaper. For the London newspaper published in 1987, see London Daily News. For other uses, see Daily News. The Daily News Front cover of 1858 edition Type Daily newspaper Format Broadsheet Founder(s) Charles Dickens Founded 1846 Language English Ceased publication 1930 (Merged with The Daily Chronicle, to become the News Chronicle) City London Country England Media of England List of newspapers A Reader of The Daily News by Joseph Clayton Clark, c. 1900 The Daily News was a national daily newspaper in the United Kingdom published from 1846 to 1930. The News was founded in 1846 by Charles Dickens, who also served as the newspaper's first editor. It was conceived as a radical rival to the right-wing Morning Chronicle. The paper was not at first a commercial success. Dickens edited 17 issues before handing over the editorship to his friend John Forster, who had more experience in journalism than Dickens. Forster ran the paper until 1870.[1] Charles Mackay, Harriet Martineau, George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, G. K. Chesterton and Ferdinando Petruccelli della Gattina were among the leading reformist writers who wrote for the paper during its heyday. In 1870, the News absorbed the Morning Star.[2] In 1876, The Daily News and its correspondents Edwin Pears and (later) Januarius MacGahan sounded the first alarm respecting the Turkish atrocities in Bulgaria.[3][4] In 1901, Quaker chocolate manufacturer George Cadbury bought The Daily News and used the paper to campaign for old age pensions and against sweatshop labour.[2] As a pacifist, Cadbury opposed the Boer War, and the Daily News followed his line.[5] In 1906, the News sponsored an exhibition on sweated labour at the Queen's Hall. This exhibition was credited with strengthening the women's suffrage movement. In 1909, H. N. Brailsford and H. W. Nevinson resigned from the paper when it refused to condemn the force feeding of suffragettes.[6] In 1912, the News merged with the Morning Leader, and was for a time known as the Daily News and Leader.[1] In 1928, it merged with The Westminster Gazette, and in 1930, with the Daily Chronicle to form the centre-left News Chronicle.[6] The chairman from 1911 to 1930 was Edward Cadbury, eldest son of George Cadbury.[7] Editors Source:[2] 1846: Charles Dickens 1846: John Forster 1847: Eyre Evans Crowe 1851: Frederick Knight Hunt 1854: William Weir 1858: Thomas Walker 1869: Edward Dicey 1869: Frank Harrison Hill 1886: Sir John Richard Robinson 1896: Edward Tyas Cook 1901: Rudolph Chambers Lehmann 1902: Alfred George Gardiner 1921: Stuart Hodgson[8] 1926: Tom Clarke[9] References London Daily News: General Description, Rossetti Archive.Undated.Accessed: 2007-09-14. Chisholm, Hugh (1911). "Newspapers" . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 19 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 544–581, see page 559. "Daily News." & The history of the Daily News, founded in 1846, has been told.... Gladstone, William Ewart (1876). Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East (1 ed.). London: John Murray. p. 13. Retrieved 29 March 2016 – via Internet Archive. Frederick Moy Thomas, ed. (1904). Fifty Years of Fleet Street being the Life and Letters of Sir John Richard Robinson (1 ed.). London: Macmillan. pp. 183–186. Retrieved 5 June 2016 – via Internet Archive. Grant, Kevin (2005). A civilised savagery: Britain and the new slaveries in Africa, 1884–1926. Routledge. p. 110. ISBN 0-415-94901-7. Elizabeth Crawford, The Women's Suffrage Movement, p. 453. "Mr Edward Cadbury". Glasgow Herald. 21 November 1948. p. 4. "Hodgson, (John) Stuart". Who's Who & Who Was Who. doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.U226904. Retrieved 4 July 2021. Hunter, Fred (2009). "Clarke, Thomas". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/32433. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.) External links "London Daily News" at the British Newspaper Archive vte Charles Dickens Bibliography Novels The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1836–1837)Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress (1837–1839)Nicholas Nickleby (1838–1839)The Old Curiosity Shop (1840–1841)Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of Eighty (1841)The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit (1843–1844)Dombey and Son (1846–1848)David Copperfield (1849–1850)Bleak House (1852–1853)Hard Times: For These Times (1854)Little Dorrit (1855–1857)A Tale of Two Cities (1859)Great Expectations (1860–1861)Our Mutual Friend (1864–1865)The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870) Christmas books A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas (1843)The Chimes: A Goblin Story of Some Bells that Rang an Old Year Out and a New Year In (1844)The Cricket on the Hearth: A Fairy Tale of Home (1845)The Battle of Life: A Love Story (1846)The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain, A Fancy for Christmas-Time (1848) Short stories To Be Read at Dusk (1852)"The Long Voyage" (1853)"The Signal-Man" (1866)"The Trial for Murder" (1865) Short story collections Sketches by "Boz," Illustrative of Every-day Life and Every-day People (1833–1836)The Mudfog Papers (1837–1838)Master Humphrey's Clock (1840–1841) Non-fiction American Notes for General Circulation (1842)Pictures from Italy (1846)The Life of Our Lord (1846–1849)A Child's History of England (1851–1853)The Uncommercial Traveller (1860–1861)Letters (1821–1870) Plays The Frozen Deep (1856)No Thoroughfare (1867) Journalism Bentley's Miscellany (1836–1838)Master Humphrey's Clock (1840–1841)The Daily News (1846–1870)Household Words (1850–1859)All the Year Round (1859–1870) Collaborations "A House to Let" (1858)"The Haunted House" (1859)"A Message from the Sea" (1860)"Mugby Junction" (1866)No Thoroughfare (1867) Family Parents John DickensElizabeth Dickens Brothers Frederick DickensAlfred Lamert DickensAugustus Dickens Partners Catherine Dickens (wife)Ellen Ternan (mistress) Children Charles Dickens Jr.Mary DickensKate PeruginiWalter Landor DickensFrancis DickensAlfred D'Orsay Tennyson DickensSydney Smith Haldimand DickensHenry Fielding DickensDora Annie DickensEdward Dickens Related Epitaph of Charles Irving ThorntonBleak HouseTavistock HouseGads Hill PlaceGrip (raven)Dickens fairDickens and Little Nell (statue)Charles Dickens in His Study (1859 painting)Dickens of London (1976 miniseries)Dickens in America (2005 documentary)The Invisible Woman (2013 film)Dickensian (2015 TV series)The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017 film) Category vte Defunct newspapers of the United Kingdom National Dailies British GazetteBritish WorkerThe BullionistDaily ChronicleDaily CitizenThe Daily CourantDaily DispatchDaily ExpressDaily GazetteDaily GazetteerDaily HeraldThe IndependentDaily NewsDaily SketchDaily SportThe DayFinancial NewsFinancier and BullionistGreyhound ExpressThe HourIndicatorJewish TimesThe Morning ChronicleMorning HeraldMorning LeaderThe Morning PostMorning StandardMorning StarNew DailyNews ChronicleThe PostSporting ChronicleSporting LifeThe Sportsman (1865)The Sportsman (2006)Today Sundays Empire NewsIndependent on SundayLloyd's Weekly NewspaperNational NewsNews of the WorldNews on SundayThe Planet on SundayReynold's NewsSunday BusinessSunday ChronicleThe Sunday CorrespondentSunday DispatchSunday Evening TelegramSunday GraphicSunday IllustratedSunday RefereeSunday SpecialSunday SportsmanSunday TodaySunday Worker Weeklies ActionAthletic NewsThe AgeBlack and WhiteThe BlackshirtEarly TimesThe EraThe EuropeanThe ExaminerThe Fascist WeekThe GraphicThe Illustrated London NewsThe LeaderMark Lane ExpressShurey's IllustratedShurey's Pictorial BudgetThe SphereThe Weekly True SunThe Whirlwind Regional London evening newspapers The EchoEvening NewsEvening PostEvening TimesThe GlobeJewish Evening NewsLondon Evening NewsLondon Evening PostLondon LiteThe Pall Mall GazetteSt James's GazetteThe Star (1788–1831)The Sun (1792–1876)The Star (1888–1960)The Sun (1893–1906)True SunThe Westminster GazetteWhitehall Evening Post Dailies Birmingham Evening DespatchBristol MercuryBristol Evening WorldBurnley Evening StarChatham Evening PostChelmsford Evening HeraldDaily PostDarlington Evening DispatchDoncaster Evening PostEdinburgh Evening DispatchEvening Citizen (Glasgow)Hereford Evening NewsHuddersfield Daily ChronicleEastern Morning News (Hull)Glasgow Evening NewsJewish Post and Gazette (London)Jewish Times (London)Kent TodayLeicester Daily PostLeicester Evening MailLiverpool CourierLiverpool Daily PostLiverpool Evening ExpressLiverpool MercuryLondon Daily NewsThe London PaperLuton Evening PostManchester Evening ChronicleNorthern Whig (Belfast)Nottingham Daily ExpressNottingham Evening NewsNottingham JournalNottingham MercuryNottingham ReviewShields Evening NewsSouthern Daily Mail (Portsmouth)Slough Evening MailSurrey Daily AdvertiserWatford Evening EchoYorkshire Evening News Sundays Sunday News (Belfast)Sunday Pink (Manchester)Sunday Sentinel (Stoke)Western Independent (Plymouth)Yorkshire on SundayThe Atlas Weeklies Brighton HeraldLeeds MercuryTrewman's Exeter Flying Post Other British JournalCaledonian Mercury (thrice weekly)Edinburgh Evening Courant (thrice weekly)The New DayScottish Daily NewsScottish Leader (daily) Related Burney Collection of Newspapers Category Categories: 1846 establishments in the United KingdomCharles DickensDefunct newspapers published in the United KingdomPublications disestablished in 1931Newspapers established in 1846 World War I 1914–1918 Also known as: First World War, Great War, WWI Written by , See All Fact-checked by Last Updated: Apr 27, 2024 • Article History World War I World War I See all media Also called: First World War or Great War Date: July 28, 1914 - November 11, 1918 Participants: Bulgaria France Germany Italy Japan Ottoman Empire Portugal Russia United Kingdom United States Major Events: Gallipoli Campaign First Battle of the Somme Battle of Verdun Christmas Truce Battle of Passchendaele Key People: Kemal Atatürk Winston Churchill Georges Clemenceau Franz Joseph David Lloyd George Recent News Apr. 25, 2024, 4:11 AM ET (ABC News (Australia)) Copeman family's legacy of service across WWI, WWII, and Vietnam War to be recognised Top Questions What was the main cause of World War I? What countries fought in World War I? World War I, 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 World War I A collection of significant facts about World War I. Explore the roles of Marie Curie, Mabel St. Clair Stobart, and Aileen Cole Stewart in World War I Explore the roles of Marie Curie, Mabel St. Clair Stobart, and Aileen Cole Stewart in World War I Three notable women of World War I: Marie Curie, Mabel St. Clair Stobart, and Aileen Cole Stewart. See all videos for this article 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 With Serbia already much aggrandized by the two Balkan Wars (1912–13, 1913), Serbian nationalists turned their attention back to the idea of “liberating” the South Slavs of Austria-Hungary. Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijević, head of Serbia’s military intelligence, was also, under the alias “Apis,” head of the secret society Union or Death, pledged to the pursuit of this pan-Serbian ambition. Believing that the Serbs’ cause would be served by the death of the Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir presumptive to the Austrian emperor Franz Joseph, and learning that the Archduke was about to visit Bosnia on a tour of military inspection, Apis plotted his assassination. Nikola Pašić, the Serbian prime minister and an enemy of Apis, heard of the plot and warned the Austrian government of it, but his message was too cautiously worded to be understood. D-Day. American soldiers fire rifles, throw grenades and wade ashore on Omaha Beach next to a German bunker during D Day landing. 1 of 5 Allied beachheads est. in Normandy, France. The Normandy Invasion of World War II launched June 6, 1944. Britannica Quiz A History of War Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, duchess of Hohenberg Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, duchess of Hohenberg Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, duchess of Hohenberg, in an open carriage at Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, shortly before their assassination, June 28, 1914. 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. Conrad had already (October 1913) been assured by William II of Germany’s support if Austria-Hungary should start a preventive war against Serbia. This assurance was confirmed in the week following the assassination, before William, on July 6, set off upon his annual cruise to the North Cape, off Norway. 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. Special 30% offer for students! Finish the semester strong with Britannica. Serbia replied to the ultimatum on July 25, accepting most of its demands but protesting against two of them—namely, that Serbian officials (unnamed) should be dismissed at Austria-Hungary’s behest and that Austro-Hungarian officials should take part, on Serbian soil, in proceedings against organizations hostile to Austria-Hungary. Though Serbia offered to submit the issue to international arbitration, Austria-Hungary promptly severed diplomatic relations and ordered partial mobilization. Home from his cruise on July 27, William learned on July 28 how Serbia had replied to the ultimatum. At once he instructed the German Foreign Office to tell Austria-Hungary that there was no longer any justification for war and that it should content itself with a temporary occupation of Belgrade. But, meanwhile, the German Foreign Office had been giving such encouragement to Berchtold that already on July 27 he had persuaded Franz Joseph to authorize war against Serbia. War was in fact declared on July 28, and Austro-Hungarian artillery began to bombard Belgrade the next day. Russia then ordered partial mobilization against Austria-Hungary, and on July 30, when Austria-Hungary was riposting conventionally with an order of mobilization on its Russian frontier, Russia ordered general mobilization. Germany, which since July 28 had still been hoping, in disregard of earlier warning hints from Great Britain, that Austria-Hungary’s war against Serbia could be “localized” to the Balkans, was now disillusioned insofar as eastern Europe was concerned. On July 31 Germany sent a 24-hour ultimatum requiring Russia to halt its mobilization and an 18-hour ultimatum requiring France to promise neutrality in the event of war between Russia and Germany. Both Russia and France predictably ignored these demands. 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. In the night of August 3–4 German forces invaded Belgium. Thereupon, Great Britain, which had no concern with Serbia and no express obligation to fight either for Russia or for France but was expressly committed to defend Belgium, on August 4 declared war against Germany. 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. Romania had renewed its secret anti-Russian alliance of 1883 with the Central Powers on February 26, 1914, but now chose to remain neutral. Italy had confirmed the Triple Alliance on December 7, 1912, but could now propound formal arguments for disregarding it: first, Italy was not obliged to support its allies in a war of aggression; second, the original treaty of 1882 had stated expressly that the alliance was not against England. 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. Causes and start of World War I Causes and start of World War I Overview of the start of World War I, including details of the June 28, 1914, assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. See all videos for this article 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. Forces and resources of the combatant nations in 1914 When war broke out, the Allied powers possessed greater overall demographic, industrial, and military resources than the Central Powers and enjoyed easier access to the oceans for trade with neutral countries, particularly with the United States. Table 1 shows the population, steel production, and armed strengths of the two rival coalitions in 1914. Strength of the belligerents, Aug. 4, 1914 resources Central Powers Allied Powers population (in millions) 115.2 265.5 steel production (in millions of metric tons) 17.0 15.3 army divisions available for mobilization 146 212 modern battleships 20 39 All the initial belligerents in World War I were self-sufficient in food except Great Britain and Germany. Great Britain’s industrial establishment was slightly superior to Germany’s (17 percent of world trade in 1913 as compared with 12 percent for Germany), but Germany’s diversified chemical industry facilitated the production of ersatz, or substitute, materials, which compensated for the worst shortages ensuing from the British wartime blockade. The German chemist Fritz Haber was already developing a process for the fixation of nitrogen from air; this process made Germany self-sufficient in explosives and thus no longer dependent on imports of nitrates from Chile. Of all the initial belligerent nations, only Great Britain had a volunteer army, and this was quite small at the start of the war. The other nations had much larger conscript armies that required three to four years of service from able-bodied males of military age, to be followed by several years in reserve formations. Military strength on land was counted in terms of divisions composed of 12,000–20,000 officers and men. Two or more divisions made up an army corps, and two or more corps made up an army. An army could thus comprise anywhere from 50,000 to 250,000 men. World War I events The land forces of the belligerent nations at the outbreak of war in August 1914 are shown in Table 2. Land forces of the belligerents, Aug. 4, 1914 country regular divisions (with number of field armies) other land forces total manpower *Restricted in 1914 to service at home. Central Powers Germany 98 (8) 27 Landwehr brigades 1,900,000 Austria-Hungary 48 (6) 450,000 Allied Powers Russia 102 (6) 1,400,000 France 72 (5) 1,290,000 Serbia 11 (3) 190,000 Belgium 7 (1) 69,000 fortress troops 186,000 Great Britain 6 (1) 14 territorial divisions* 120,000 The higher state of discipline, training, leadership, and armament of the German army reduced the importance of the initial numerical inferiority of the armies of the Central Powers. Because of the comparative slowness of mobilization, poor higher leadership, and lower scale of armament of the Russian armies, there was an approximate balance of forces between the Central Powers and the Allies in August 1914 that prevented either side from gaining a quick victory. Germany and Austria also enjoyed the advantage of “interior lines of communication,” which enabled them to send their forces to critical points on the battlefronts by the shortest route. According to one estimate, Germany’s railway network made it possible to move eight divisions simultaneously from the Western Front to the Eastern Front in four and a half days. Even greater in importance was the advantage that Germany derived from its strong military traditions and its cadre of highly efficient and disciplined regular officers. Skilled in directing a war of movement and quick to exploit the advantages of flank attacks, German senior officers were to prove generally more capable than their Allied counterparts at directing the operations of large troop formations. Sea power was largely reckoned in terms of capital ships, or dreadnought battleships and battle cruisers having extremely large guns. Despite intensive competition from the Germans, the British had maintained their superiority in numbers, with the result that, in capital ships, the Allies had an almost two-to-one advantage over the Central Powers. The strength of the two principal rivals at sea, Great Britain and Germany, is compared in Table 3. British and German naval strength, August 1914 type British German *Including Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand destroyers of all classes. dreadnought battleships 20 14 battle cruisers 9 4 pre-dreadnought battleships 39 22 armoured cruisers 34 9 cruisers 64 41 destroyers 301* 144 submarines 65 28 The numerical superiority of the British navy, however, was offset by the technological lead of the German navy in many categories, such as range-finding equipment, magazine protection, searchlights, torpedoes, and mines. Great Britain relied on the Royal Navy not only to ensure necessary imports of food and other supplies in wartime but also to sever the Central Powers’ access to the markets of the world. With superior numbers of warships, Great Britain could impose a blockade that gradually weakened Germany by preventing imports from overseas. Technology of war in 1914 Maxim machine gun Maxim machine gun German infantrymen operating a Maxim machine gun during World War I. Somme; machine gun Somme; machine gun French soldiers operating a Saint-Étienne machine gun at the Somme, World War I. cannon cannon The French 75-mm cannon, the archetypal rapid-firing gun from its introduction in 1897 through World War I. The planning and conduct of war in 1914 were crucially influenced by the invention of new weapons and the improvement of existing types since the Franco-German War of 1870–71. The chief developments of the intervening period had been the machine gun and the rapid-fire field artillery gun. The modern machine gun, which had been developed in the 1880s and ’90s, was a reliable belt-fed gun capable of sustained rates of extremely rapid fire; it could fire 600 bullets per minute with a range of more than 1,000 yards (900 metres). In the realm of field artillery, the period leading up to the war saw the introduction of improved breech-loading mechanisms and brakes. Without a brake or recoil mechanism, a gun lurched out of position during firing and had to be re-aimed after each round. The new improvements were epitomized in the French 75-millimetre field gun; it remained motionless during firing, and it was not necessary to readjust the aim in order to bring sustained fire on a target. See how No Man's Land between World War I trenches led to the use of chemical weapons, tanks, and warplanes See how No Man's Land between World War I trenches led to the use of chemical weapons, tanks, and warplanes Heavy fighting on what became known as “No Man's Land” spawned the first military use of airplanes, tanks, and many other deadly weapons. See all videos for this article Machine guns and rapid-firing artillery, when used in combination with trenches and barbed-wire emplacements, gave a decided advantage to the defense, since these weapons’ rapid and sustained firepower could decimate a frontal assault by either infantry or cavalry. When was the motorized ambulance invented? When was the motorized ambulance invented? Learn about the medical innovations that came from World War I. See all videos for this article There was a considerable disparity in 1914 between the deadly effectiveness of modern armaments and the doctrinal teachings of some armies. The South African War and the Russo-Japanese War had revealed the futility of frontal infantry or cavalry attacks on prepared positions when unaccompanied by surprise, but few military leaders foresaw that the machine gun and the rapid-firing field gun would force armies into trenches in order to survive. Instead, war was looked upon by many leaders in 1914 as a contest of national wills, spirit, and courage. A prime example of this attitude was the French army, which was dominated by the doctrine of the offensive. French military doctrine called for headlong bayonet charges of French infantrymen against the German rifles, machine guns, and artillery. German military thinking, under the influence of Alfred, Graf von Schlieffen, sought, unlike the French, to avoid frontal assaults but rather to achieve an early decision by deep flanking attacks; and at the same time to make use of reserve divisions alongside regular formations from the outset of war. The Germans paid greater attention to training their officers in defensive tactics using machine guns, barbed wire, and fortifications. The initial stages of the war Initial strategies The Schlieffen Plan Schlieffen Plan of 1905 Schlieffen Plan of 1905 Years before 1914, successive chiefs of the German general staff had been foreseeing Germany’s having to fight a war on two fronts at the same time, against Russia in the east and France in the west, whose combined strength was numerically superior to the Central Powers’. The elder Helmuth von Moltke, chief of the German general staff from 1858 to 1888, decided that Germany should stay at first on the defensive in the west and deal a crippling blow to Russia’s advanced forces before turning to counterattack the French advance. His immediate successor, Alfred von Waldersee, also believed in staying on the defensive in the west. Alfred, Graf von Schlieffen, who served as chief of the German general staff from 1891 to 1905, took a contrary view, and it was the plan he developed that was to guide Germany’s initial wartime strategy. Schlieffen realized that on the outbreak of war Russia would need six full weeks to mobilize and assemble its vast armies, given the immense Russian countryside and population, the sparsity of the rail network, and the inefficiency of the government bureaucracy. Taking advantage of this fact, Schlieffen planned to initially adopt a purely defensive posture on the Eastern Front with a minimal number of troops facing Russia’s slowly gathering armies. Germany would instead concentrate almost all of its troops in the west against France and would seek to bypass France’s frontier fortifications by an offensive through neutral Belgium to the north. This offensive would sweep westward and then southward through the heart of northern France, capturing the capital and knocking that country out of the war within a few weeks. Having gained security in the west, Germany would then shift its troops to the east and destroy the Russian menace with a similar concentration of forces. Encyclopaedia Britannica thistle graphic to be used with a Mendel/Consumer quiz in place of a photograph. Britannica Quiz 41 Questions from Britannica’s Most Popular World History Quizzes By the time of his retirement in 1905, Schlieffen had elaborated a plan for a great wheeling movement of the right (northern) wing of the German armies not only through central Belgium but also, in order to bypass the Belgian fortresses of Liège and Namur in the Meuse valley, through the southernmost part of the Netherlands. With their right wing entering France near Lille, the Germans would continue to wheel westward until they were near the English Channel; they would then turn southward so as to sever the French armies’ line of retreat from France’s eastern frontier to the south; and the outermost arc of the wheel would sweep southward west of Paris, in order to avoid exposing the German right flank to a counterstroke launched from the city’s outskirts. If the Schlieffen Plan succeeded, Germany’s armies would simultaneously encircle the French army from the north, overrun all of northeastern France, and capture Paris, thus forcing France into a humiliating surrender. The large wheeling movement that the plan envisaged required correspondingly large forces for its execution, in view of the need to keep up the numerical strength of the long-stretched marching line and the need to leave adequate detachments on guard over the Belgian fortresses that had been bypassed. Accordingly, Schlieffen allocated nearly seven-eighths of Germany’s available troop strength to the execution of the wheeling movement by the right and centre wings, leaving only one-eighth to face a possible French offensive on Germany’s western frontier. Thus, the maximum of strength was allocated to the wheel’s edge—that is, to the right. Schlieffen’s plan was observed by the younger Helmuth von Moltke, who became chief of the general staff in 1906. Moltke was still in office when war broke out in 1914. Eastern Front strategy, 1914 Russian Poland, the westernmost part of the Russian Empire, was a thick tongue of land enclosed to the north by East Prussia, to the west by German Poland (Poznania) and by Silesia, and to the south by Austrian Poland (Galicia). It was thus obviously exposed to a two-pronged invasion by the Central Powers, but the Germans, apart from their grand strategy of crushing France before attempting anything against Russia, took note of the poverty of Russian Poland’s transportation network and so were disinclined to overrun that vulnerable area prematurely. Austria-Hungary, however, whose frontier with Russia lay much farther east than Germany’s and who was moreover afraid of disaffection among the Slav minorities, urged some immediate action to forestall a Russian offensive. Moltke therefore agreed to the Austrian general staff’s suggestion for a northeastward thrust by the Austrian army into Russian Poland—the more readily because it would occupy the Russians during the crisis in France. The Russians, for their part, would have preferred to concentrate their immediately available forces against Austria and to leave Germany undisturbed until their mobilization should have been completed. The French were anxious to relieve the German pressure against themselves, however, and so they persuaded the Russians to undertake an offensive involving two armies against the Germans in East Prussia simultaneously with one involving four armies against the Austrians in Galicia. The Russian army, whose proverbial slowness and unwieldy organization dictated a cautious strategy, thus undertook an extra offensive against East Prussia that only an army of high mobility and tight organization could have hoped to execute successfully. The strategy of the Western Allies, 1914 For some 30 years after 1870, considering the likelihood of another German war, the French high command had subscribed to the strategy of an initial defensive to be followed by a counterstroke against the expected invasion: a great system of fortresses was created on the frontier, but gaps were left in order to “canalize” the German attack. France’s alliance with Russia and its entente with Great Britain, however, encouraged a reversal of plan, and after the turn of the century a new school of military thinkers began to argue for an offensive strategy. The advocates of the offensive à l’outrance (“to the utmost”) gained control of the French military machine, and in 1911 a spokesman of this school, General J.-J.-C. Joffre, was designated chief of the general staff. He sponsored the notorious Plan XVII, with which France went to war in 1914. Plan XVII gravely underestimated the strength that the Germans would deploy against France. Accepting the possibility that the Germans might employ their reserve troops along with regular troops at the outset, Plan XVII estimated the strength of the German army in the west at a possible maximum of 68 infantry divisions. The Germans actually deployed the equivalent of 83 1/2 divisions, counting Landwehr (reserve troops) and Ersatz (low-grade substitute troops) divisions, but French military opinion ignored or doubted this possibility; during the war’s crucial opening days, when the rival armies were concentrating and moving forward, the French Intelligence counted only Germany’s regular divisions in its estimates of the enemy strength. This was a serious miscalculation. Plan XVII also miscalculated the direction and scope of the coming onslaught: though it foresaw an invasion through Belgium, it assumed that the Germans would take the route through the Ardennes, thereby exposing their communications to attack. Basing itself on the idea of an immediate and general offensive, Plan XVII called for a French thrust toward the Saar into Lorraine by the 1st and 2nd armies, while on the French left (the north) the 3rd and 5th armies, facing Metz and the Ardennes, respectively, stood ready either to launch an offensive between Metz and Thionville or to strike from the north at the flank of any German drive through the Ardennes. When war broke out, it was taken for granted that the small British Expeditionary Force (BEF) under Sir John French should be used as an adjunct to France’s forces, more or less as the French might see fit. It is clearly evident that the French were oblivious to the gigantic German offensive that was being aimed at their left (northern) wing. Alfred Thayer Mahan More From Britannica 20th-century international relations: The roots of World War I, 1871–1914 The war in the west, 1914 The German invasion World War I; German sailors World War I; German sailors German sailors marching through the streets of Brussels, 1914. For the smooth working of their plan for the invasion of France, the Germans had preliminarily to reduce the ring fortress of Liège, which commanded the route prescribed for their 1st and 2nd armies and which was the foremost stronghold of the Belgian defenses. German troops crossed the frontier into Belgium on the morning of August 4. Thanks to the resolution of a middle-aged staff officer, Erich Ludendorff, a German brigade occupied the town of Liège itself in the night of August 5–6 and the citadel on August 7, but the surrounding forts held out stubbornly until the Germans brought their heavy howitzers into action against them on August 12. These 420-millimetre siege guns proved too formidable for the forts, which one by one succumbed. The vanguard of the German invasion was already pressing the Belgian field army between the Gete River and Brussels, when the last of the Liège forts fell on August 16. The Belgians then withdrew northward to the entrenched camp of Antwerp. On August 20 the German 1st Army entered Brussels while the 2nd Army appeared before Namur, the one remaining fortress barring the Meuse route into France. The initial clashes between the French and German armies along the Franco-German and Franco-Belgian frontiers are collectively known as the Battle of the Frontiers. This group of engagements, which lasted from August 14 until the beginning of the First Battle of the Marne on September 6, was to be the largest battle of the war and was perhaps the largest battle in human history up to that time, given the fact that a total of more than two million troops were involved. The planned French thrust into Lorraine, totaling 19 divisions, started on August 14 but was shattered by the German 6th and 7th armies in the Battle of Morhange-Sarrebourg (August 20–22). Yet this abortive French offensive had an indirect effect on the German plan. For when the French attack in Lorraine developed, Moltke was tempted momentarily to postpone the right-wing sweep and instead to seek a victory in Lorraine. This fleeting impulse led him to divert to Lorraine the six newly formed Ersatz divisions that had been intended to increase the weight of his right wing. This was the first of several impromptu decisions by Moltke that were to fatally impair the execution of the Schlieffen Plan. Meanwhile, the German imperial princes who commanded armies on the Germans’ left (southern) wing in Lorraine were proving unwilling to forfeit their opportunity for personal glory. Crown Prince Rupert of Bavaria on August 20 ordered his 6th Army to counterattack instead of continuing to fall back before the French advance as planned, and Crown Prince William of Germany ordered his 5th Army to do the same. The strategic result of these unplanned German offensives was merely to throw the French back onto a fortified barrier that both restored and augmented their power of resistance. Thus, the French were soon afterward enabled to dispatch troops to reinforce their left flank—a redistribution of strength that was to have far-reaching results in the decisive Battle of the Marne. Learn how the Triple Entente and Triple Alliance evolved into the Allies and Central Powers in World War I Learn how the Triple Entente and Triple Alliance evolved into the Allies and Central Powers in World War I Europeans were fighting heavily on two fronts before the U.S. entered the war in 1917. See all videos for this article While this seesaw campaign in Lorraine was taking place, more decisive events were occurring to the northwest. The German attack on Liège had awakened Joffre to the reality of a German advance through Belgium, but not to its strength or to the wideness of its sweep. In preparing a counterattack against the German advance through Belgium, Joffre envisaged a pincer movement, with the French 3rd and 4th armies on the right and the 5th, supported by the BEF, on the left, to trap the Germans in the Meuse–Ardennes area south of Liège. The fundamental flaw in this new French plan was that the Germans had deployed about 50 percent more troops than the French had estimated, and for a vaster enveloping movement. Consequently, while the right-hand claw of the French pincer (23 divisions) collided with the German 5th and 4th armies (20 divisions) in the Ardennes and was thrown back, the left-hand claw (13 French and four British divisions) found itself nearly trapped between the German 1st and 2nd armies, with a total of 30 divisions, on the one hand, and the 3rd, on the other. As the French 5th Army, under General Charles Lanrezac, was checked in its offensive south of the Sambre River by a German attack on August 21, the British, who reached Mons on August 22, at first agreed to stand there to cover Lanrezac’s left; but on August 23 news of the fall of Namur and of the German 3rd Army’s presence near Dinant induced Lanrezac to wisely order a general retreat; and on August 24 the British began their retreat from Mons, just in time to escape envelopment by the German 1st Army’s westward march around their unprotected left flank. At last Joffre realized the truth and the utter collapse of Plan XVII. Resolution was his greatest asset, and with imperturbable coolness he formed a new plan out of the wreckage. Joffre decided to swing the Allied centre and left back southwestward from the Belgian frontier to a line pivoted on the French fortress of Verdun and at the same time to withdraw some strength from the right wing so as to be able to station a newly created 6th Army on the extreme left, north of Paris. This plan might, in turn, have collapsed if the Germans had not themselves departed from Schlieffen’s original plan due to a combination of Moltke’s indecisiveness, poor communications between his headquarters and the field army commanders of the German right wing, and Moltke’s resulting confusion about the developing tactical situation. In the first place, the German right wing was weakened by the subtraction of 11 divisions; four were detached to watch Antwerp and to invest French fortresses near the Belgian frontier, instead of using reserve and Ersatz troops for this as earlier intended, and seven more regular divisions were transferred to check the Russian advance into East Prussia (see below). In the second place, Alexander von Kluck, in command of the 1st Army, did in fact wheel inward north of Paris rather than southwest of the city. Kluck’s change of direction meant the inevitable abandonment of the original wide sweep around the far (western) side of Paris. Now the flank of this wheeling German line would pass the near side of Paris and across the face of the Paris defenses into the valley of the Marne River. The premature inward wheel of Kluck’s 1st Army before Paris had been reached thus exposed the German extreme right wing to a flank attack and a possible counter-envelopment. On September 4 Moltke decided to abandon the original Schlieffen Plan and substituted a new one: the German 4th and 5th armies should drive southeastward from the Ardennes into French Lorraine west of Verdun and then converge with the southwestward advance of the 6th and 7th armies from Alsace against the Toul–Épinal line of fortifications, so as to envelop the whole French right wing; the 1st and 2nd armies, in the Marne valley, should stand guard, meanwhile, against any French countermove from the vicinity of Paris. But such an Allied countermove had already begun before the new German plan could be put into effect. The First Battle of the Marne Already on September 3, General J.-S. Gallieni, the military governor of Paris, had guessed the significance of the German 1st Army’s swing inward to the Marne east of Paris. On September 4 Joffre, convinced by Gallieni’s arguments, decisively ordered his whole left wing to turn about from their retreat and to begin a general offensive against the Germans’ exposed right flank on September 6. The French 6th Army, under M.-J. Maunoury, forewarned by Gallieni, had actually begun attacking on September 5, and its pressure caused Kluck finally to engage the whole 1st Army in support of his right flank when he was still no farther up the Marne valley than Meaux, with nothing but a cavalry screen stretched across the 30 miles between him and Karl von Bülow’s 2nd Army (at Montmirail). While the French 5th Army was turning to attack Bülow, the BEF (between the 5th and the 6th armies) was still continuing its retreat for another day, but on September 9 Bülow learned that the British too had turned and were advancing into the gap between him and Kluck. He therefore ordered the 2nd Army to retreat, thus obliging Kluck to do likewise with the 1st. The counterattack of the French 5th and 6th armies and the BEF developed into a general counterattack by the entire left and centre of the French army. This counterattack is known as the First Battle of the Marne. By September 11 the German retreat extended to all the German armies. There were several reasons for this extraordinary turn of events. Chief among them was the utter exhaustion of the German soldiery of the right wing, some of whom had marched more than 150 miles (240 kilometres) under conditions of frequent battle. Their fatigue was ultimately a by-product of the Schlieffen Plan itself, for while the retreating French had been able to move troops by rail to various points within the circle formed by the front, the German troops had found their advance hampered by demolished bridges and destroyed rail lines. Their food and ammunition supply was consequently restricted, and the troops also had to make their advance by foot. Moreover, the Germans had underestimated the resilient spirit of the French troops, who had maintained their courage and morale and their confidence in their commanders. This fact was strikingly evidenced by the comparatively small number of prisoners taken by the Germans in the course of what was undeniably a precipitous French retreat. Meanwhile, the assault by the German 6th and 7th armies on the defenses of the French eastern frontier had already proved a predictably expensive failure, and the German attempt at a partial envelopment pivoted on Verdun was abandoned. The German right wing withdrew northward from the Marne and made a firm stand along the Lower Aisne River and the Chemin des Dames ridge. Along the Aisne the preponderant power of the defense over the offense was reemphasized as the Germans repelled successive Allied attacks from the shelter of trenches. The First Battle of the Aisne marked the real beginning of trench warfare on the Western Front. Both sides were in the process of discovering that, in lieu of frontal assaults for which neither had the manpower readily available, the only alternative was to try to overlap and envelop the other’s flank, in this case the one on the side pointing toward the North Sea and the English Channel. Thus began the “Race to the Sea,” in which the developing trench networks of both sides were quickly extended northwestward until they reached the Atlantic at a point just inside coastal Belgium, west of Ostend. The First Battle of the Marne succeeded in pushing the Germans back for a distance of 40 to 50 miles and thus saved the capital city of Paris from capture. In this respect it was a great strategic victory, since it enabled the French to renew their confidence and to continue the war. But the great German offensive, though unsuccessful in its object of knocking France out of the war, had enabled the Germans to capture a large portion of northeastern France. The loss of this heavily industrialized region, which contained much of the country’s coal, iron, and steel production, was a serious blow to the continuation of the French war effort. The Belgian army, meanwhile, had fallen back to the fortress city of Antwerp, which ended up behind the German lines. The Germans began a heavy bombardment of Antwerp on September 28, and Antwerp surrendered to the Germans on October 10. After the failure of his first two attempts to turn the Germans’ western flank (one on the Somme, the other near Arras), Joffre obstinately decided to try again yet farther north with the BEF—which in any case was being moved northward from the Aisne. The BEF, accordingly, was deployed between La Bassée and Ypres, while on the left the Belgians—who had wisely declined to participate in the projected attack—continued the front along the Yser down to the Channel. Erich von Falkenhayn, however, who on September 14 had succeeded Moltke as chief of the German general staff, had foreseen what was coming and had prepared a counterplan: one of his armies, transferred from Lorraine, was to check the expected offensive, while another was to sweep down the coast and crush the attackers’ left flank. The British attack was launched from Ypres on October 19, the German thrust the next day. Though the Belgians of the Yser had been under increasing pressure for two days already, both Sir John French and Ferdinand Foch, Joffre’s deputy in the north, were slow to appreciate what was happening to their “offensive,” but in the night of October 29–30 the Belgians had to open the sluices on the Yser River to save themselves by flooding the Germans’ path down the coast. The Battle of Ypres had its worst crises on October 31 and November 11 and did not die down into trench warfare until November 22. By the end of 1914 the casualties the French had so far sustained in the war totaled about 380,000 killed and 600,000 wounded; the Germans had lost a slightly smaller number. With the repulse of the German attempt to break through at the Battle of Ypres, the strained and exhausted armies of both sides settled down into trench warfare. The trench barrier was consolidated from the Swiss frontier to the Atlantic; the power of modern defense had triumphed over the attack, and stalemate ensued. The military history of the Western Front during the next three years was to be a story of the Allies’ attempts to break this deadlock. The Eastern and other fronts, 1914 The war in the east, 1914 On the Eastern Front, greater distances and quite considerable differences between the equipment and quality of the opposing armies ensured a fluidity of the front that was lacking in the west. Trench lines might form, but to break them was not difficult, particularly for the German army, and then mobile operations of the old style could be undertaken. Urged by the French to take offensive action against the Germans, the Russian commander in chief, Grand Duke Nicholas, took it loyally but prematurely, before the cumbrous Russian war machine was ready, by launching a pincer movement against East Prussia. Under the higher control of General Ya.G. Zhilinsky, two armies, the 1st, or Vilna, Army under P.K. Rennenkampf and the 2nd, or Warsaw, Army under A.V. Samsonov, were to converge, with a two-to-one superiority in numbers, on the German 8th Army in East Prussia from the east and the south, respectively. Rennenkampf’s left flank would be separated by 50 miles from Samsonov’s right flank. Max von Prittwitz und Gaffron, commander of the 8th Army, with his headquarters at Neidenburg (Nidzica), had seven divisions and one cavalry division on his eastern front but only the three divisions of Friedrich von Scholtz’s XX Corps on his southern. He was therefore dismayed to learn, on August 20, when the bulk of his forces had been repulsed at Gumbinnen (August 19–20) by Rennenkampf’s attack from the east, that Samsonov’s 13 divisions had crossed the southern frontier of East Prussia and were thus threatening his rear. He initially considered a general retreat, but when his staff objected to this, he approved their counterproposal of an attack on Samsonov’s left flank, for which purpose three divisions were to be switched in haste by rail from the Gumbinnen front to reinforce Scholtz (the rest of the Gumbinnen troops could make their retreat by road). The principal exponent of this counterproposal was Lieutenant Colonel Max Hoffmann. Prittwitz, having moved his headquarters northward to Mühlhausen (Młynary), was surprised on August 22 by a telegram announcing that General Paul von Hindenburg, with Ludendorff as his chief of staff, was coming to supersede him in command. Arriving the next day, Ludendorff readily confirmed Hoffmann’s dispositions for the blow at Samsonov’s left. Meanwhile, Zhilinsky was not only giving Rennenkampf time to reorganize after Gumbinnen but even instructing him to invest Königsberg instead of pressing on to the west. When the Germans on August 25 learned from an intercepted Russian wireless message (the Russians habitually transmitted combat directives “in clear,” not in code) that Rennenkampf was in no hurry to advance, Ludendorff saw a new opportunity. Developing the plan put forward by Hoffmann, Ludendorff concentrated about six divisions against Samsonov’s left wing. This force, inferior in strength, could not have been decisive, but Ludendorff then took the calculated risk of withdrawing the rest of the German troops, except for a cavalry screen, from their confrontation with Rennenkampf and rushing them southwestward against Samsonov’s right wing. Thus, August von Mackensen’s XVII Corps was taken from near Gumbinnen and moved southward to duplicate the planned German attack on Samsonov’s left with an attack on his right, thus completely enveloping the Russian 2nd Army. This daring move was made possible by the notable absence of communication between the two Russian field commanders, whom Hoffmann knew to personally dislike each other. Under the Germans’ converging blows Samsonov’s flanks were crushed and his centre surrounded during August 26–31. The outcome of this military masterpiece, called the Battle of Tannenberg, was the destruction or capture of almost the whole of Samsonov’s army. The history of imperial Russia’s unfortunate participation in World War I is epitomized in the ignominious outcome of the Battle of Tannenberg. The progress of the battle was as follows. Samsonov, his forces spread out along a front 60 miles long, was gradually pushing Scholtz back toward the Allenstein–Osterode (Olsztyn–Ostróda) line when, on August 26, Ludendorff ordered General Hermann von François, with the I Corps on Scholtz’s right, to attack Samsonov’s left wing near Usdau (Uzdowo). There, on August 27, German artillery bombardments threw the hungry and weary Russians into precipitate flight. François started to pursue them toward Neidenburg, in the rear of the Russian centre, and then made a momentary diversion southward, to check a Russian counterattack from Soldau (Działdowo). Two of the Russian 2nd Army’s six army corps managed to escape southeastward at this point, and François then resumed his pursuit to the east. By nightfall on August 29 his troops were in control of the road leading from Neidenburg eastward to Willenberg (Wielbark). The Russian centre, amounting to three army corps, was now caught in the maze of forest between Allenstein and the frontier of Russian Poland. It had no line of retreat, was surrounded by the Germans, and soon dissolved into mobs of hungry and exhausted men who beat feebly against the encircling German ring and then allowed themselves to be taken prisoner by the thousands. Samsonov shot himself in despair on August 29. By the end of August the Germans had taken 92,000 prisoners and annihilated half of the Russian 2nd Army. Ludendorff’s bold recall of the last German forces facing Rennenkampf’s army was wholly justified in the event, since Rennenkampf remained utterly passive while Samsonov’s army was surrounded. Having received two fresh army corps (seven divisions) from the Western Front, the Germans now turned on the slowly advancing 1st Army under Rennenkampf. The latter was attacked on a line extending from east of Königsberg to the southern end of the chain of the Masurian Lakes during September 1–15 and was driven from East Prussia. As a result of these East Prussian battles Russia had lost about 250,000 men and, what could be afforded still less, much war matériel. But the invasion of East Prussia had at least helped to make possible the French comeback on the Marne by causing the dispatch of two German army corps from the Western Front. Having ended the Russian threat to East Prussia, the Germans could afford to switch the bulk of their forces from that area to the Częstochowa–Kraków front in southwestern Poland, where the Austrian offensive, launched on August 20, had been rolled back by Russian counterattacks. A new plan for simultaneous thrusts by the Germans toward Warsaw and by the Austrians toward Przemyśl was brought to nothing by the end of October, as the Russians could now mount counterattacks in overwhelming strength, their mobilization being at last nearly completed. The Russians then mounted a powerful effort to invade Prussian Silesia with a huge phalanx of seven armies. Allied hopes rose high as the much-heralded “Russian steamroller” (as the huge Russian army was called) began its ponderous advance. The Russian armies were advancing toward Silesia when Hindenburg and Ludendorff, in November, exploited the superiority of the German railway network: when the retreating German forces had crossed the frontier back into Prussian Silesia, they were promptly moved northward into Prussian Poland and thence sent southeastward to drive a wedge between the two armies of the Russian right flank. The massive Russian operation against Silesia was disorganized, and within a week four new German army corps had arrived from the Western Front. Ludendorff was able to use them to press the Russians back by mid-December to the Bzura–Rawka (rivers) line in front of Warsaw, and the depletion of their munition supplies compelled the Russians to also fall back in Galicia to trench lines along the Nida and Dunajec rivers. The Serbian campaign, 1914 The first Austrian invasion of Serbia was launched with numerical inferiority (part of one of the armies originally destined for the Balkan front having been diverted to the Eastern Front on August 18), and the able Serbian commander, Radomir Putnik, brought the invasion to an early end by his victories on the Cer Mountain (August 15–20) and at Šabac (August 21–24). In early September, however, Putnik’s subsequent northward offensive on the Sava River, in the north, had to be broken off when the Austrians began a second offensive, against the Serbs’ western front on the Drina River. After some weeks of deadlock, the Austrians began a third offensive, which had some success in the Battle of the Kolubara, and forced the Serbs to evacuate Belgrade on November 30, but by December 15 a Serbian counterattack had retaken Belgrade and forced the Austrians to retreat. Mud and exhaustion kept the Serbs from turning the Austrian retreat into a rout, but the victory sufficed to allow Serbia a long spell of freedom from further Austrian advances. The Turkish entry The entry of Turkey (or the Ottoman Empire, as it was then called) into the war as a German ally was the one great success of German wartime diplomacy. Since 1909 Turkey had been under the control of the Young Turks, over whom Germany had skillfully gained a dominating influence. German military instructors permeated the Turkish army, and Enver Paşa, the leader of the Young Turks, saw alliance with Germany as the best way of serving Turkey’s interests, in particular for protection against the Russian threat to the straits. He therefore persuaded the grand vizier, Said Halim Paşa, to make a secret treaty (negotiated late in July, signed on August 2) pledging Turkey to the German side if Germany should have to take Austria-Hungary’s side against Russia. The unforeseen entry of Great Britain into the war against Germany alarmed the Turks, but the timely arrival of two German warships, the Goeben and the Breslau, in the Dardanelles on August 10 turned the scales in favour of Enver’s policy. The ships were ostensibly sold to Turkey, but they retained their German crews. The Turks began detaining British ships, and more anti-British provocations followed, both in the straits and on the Egyptian frontier. Finally the Goeben led the Turkish fleet across the Black Sea to bombard Odessa and other Russian ports (October 29–30). Russia declared war against Turkey on November 1; and the western Allies, after an ineffective bombardment of the outer forts of the Dardanelles on November 3, declared war likewise on November 5. A British force from India occupied Basra, on the Persian Gulf, on November 21. In the winter of 1914–15 Turkish offensives in the Caucasus and in the Sinai Desert, albeit abortive, served German strategy well by tying Russian and British forces down in those peripheral areas. The war at sea, 1914–15 World War I; Royal Navy World War I; Royal Navy Assembly of the Royal Navy at Spithead for fleet review, July 1914. World War I: torpedo boat World War I: torpedo boat German torpedo boats assembled at port during World War I. In August 1914 Great Britain, with 29 capital ships ready and 13 under construction, and Germany, with 18 and nine, were the two great rival sea powers. Neither of them at first wanted a direct confrontation: the British were chiefly concerned with the protection of their trade routes; the Germans hoped that mines and submarine attacks would gradually destroy Great Britain’s numerical superiority, so that confrontation could eventually take place on equal terms. The first significant encounter between the two navies was that of the Helgoland Bight, on August 28, 1914, when a British force under Admiral Sir David Beatty, having entered German home waters, sank or damaged several German light cruisers and killed or captured 1,000 men at a cost of one British ship damaged and 35 deaths. For the following months the Germans in European or British waters confined themselves to submarine warfare—not without some notable successes: on September 22 a single German submarine, or U-boat, sank three British cruisers within an hour; on October 7 a U-boat made its way into the anchorage of Loch Ewe, on the west coast of Scotland; on October 15 the British cruiser Hawke was torpedoed; and on October 27 the British battleship Audacious was sunk by a mine. On December 15 battle cruisers of the German High Seas Fleet set off on a sortie across the North Sea, under the command of Admiral Franz von Hipper: they bombarded several British towns and then made their way home safely. Hipper’s next sortie, however, was intercepted on its way out: on January 24, 1915, in the Battle of the Dogger Bank, the German cruiser Blücher was sunk and two other cruisers damaged before the Germans could make their escape. Abroad on the high seas, the Germans’ most powerful surface force was the East Asiatic squadron of fast cruisers, including the Scharnhorst, the Gneisenau, and the Nürnberg, under Admiral Graf Maximilian von Spee. For four months this fleet ranged almost unhindered over the Pacific Ocean, while the Emden, having joined the squadron in August 1914, was detached for service in the Indian Ocean. The Germans could thus threaten not only merchant shipping on the British trade routes but also troopships on their way to Europe or the Middle East from India, New Zealand, or Australia. The Emden sank merchant ships in the Bay of Bengal, bombarded Madras (September 22; now Chennai, India), haunted the approaches to Ceylon (Sri Lanka), and had destroyed 15 Allied ships in all before it was caught and sunk off the Cocos Islands on November 9 by the Australian cruiser Sydney. Meanwhile, Admiral von Spee’s main squadron since August had been threading a devious course in the Pacific from the Caroline Islands toward the Chilean coast and had been joined by two more cruisers, the Leipzig and the Dresden. On November 1, in the Battle of Coronel, it inflicted a sensational defeat on a British force, under Sir Christopher Cradock, which had sailed from the Atlantic to hunt it down: without losing a single ship, it sank Cradock’s two major cruisers, Cradock himself being killed. But the fortunes of the war on the high seas were reversed when, on December 8, the German squadron attacked the Falkland (Malvinas) Islands in the South Atlantic, probably unaware of the naval strength that the British, since Coronel, had been concentrating there under Admiral Sir Doveton Sturdee: two battle cruisers (the Invincible and Inflexible, each equipped with eight 12-inch guns) and six other cruisers. The German ships were suffering from wear and tear after their long cruise in the Pacific and were no match for the newer, faster British ships, which soon overtook them. The Scharnhorst, with Admiral von Spee aboard, was the first ship to be sunk, then the Gneisenau, followed by the Nürnberg and the Leipzig. The British ships, which had fought at long range so as to render useless the smaller guns of the Germans, sustained only 25 casualties in this engagement. When the German light cruiser Dresden was caught and sunk off the Juan Fernández Islands on March 14, 1915, commerce raiding by German surface ships on the high seas was at an end. It was just beginning by German submarines, however. The belligerent navies were employed as much in interfering with commerce as in fighting each other. Immediately after the outbreak of war, the British had instituted an economic blockade of Germany, with the aim of preventing all supplies reaching that country from the outside world. The two routes by which supplies could reach German ports were: (1) through the English Channel and the Strait of Dover and (2) around the north of Scotland. A minefield laid in the Strait of Dover with a narrow free lane made it fairly easy to intercept and search ships using the Channel. To the north of Scotland, however, there was an area of more than 200,000 square miles (520,000 square kilometres) to be patrolled, and the task was assigned to a squadron of armed merchant cruisers. During the early months of the war, only absolute contraband such as guns and ammunition was restricted, but the list was gradually extended to include almost all material that might be of use to the enemy. The prevention of the free passage of trading ships led to considerable difficulties among the neutral nations, particularly with the United States, whose trading interests were hampered by British policy. Nevertheless, the British blockade was extremely effective, and during 1915 the British patrols stopped and inspected more than 3,000 vessels, of which 743 were sent into port for examination. Outward-bound trade from Germany was brought to a complete standstill. The Germans similarly sought to attack Great Britain’s economy with a campaign against its supply lines of merchant shipping. In 1915, however, with their surface commerce raiders eliminated from the conflict, they were forced to rely entirely on the submarine. The Germans began their submarine campaign against commerce by sinking a British merchant steamship (Glitra), after evacuating the crew, on October 20, 1914. A number of other sinkings followed, and the Germans soon became convinced that the submarine would be able to bring the British to an early peace where the commerce raiders on the high seas had failed. On January 30, 1915, Germany carried the campaign a stage further by torpedoing three British steamers (Tokomaru, Ikaria, and Oriole) without warning. They next announced, on February 4, that from February 18 they would treat the waters around the British Isles as a war zone in which all Allied merchant ships were to be destroyed, and in which no ship, whether enemy or not, would be immune. Yet, whereas the Allied blockade was preventing almost all trade for Germany from reaching that nation’s ports, the German submarine campaign yielded less satisfactory results. During the first week of the campaign seven Allied or Allied-bound ships were sunk out of 11 attacked, but 1,370 others sailed without being harassed by the German submarines. In the whole of March 1915, during which 6,000 sailings were recorded, only 21 ships were sunk, and in April only 23 ships from a similar number. Apart from its lack of positive success, the U-boat arm was continuously harried by Great Britain’s extensive antisubmarine measures, which included nets, specially armed merchant ships, hydrophones for locating the noise of a submarine’s engines, and depth bombs for destroying it underwater. For the Germans, a worse result than any of the British countermeasures imposed on them was the long-term growth of hostility on the part of the neutral countries. Certainly the neutrals were far from happy with the British blockade, but the German declaration of the war zone and subsequent events turned them progressively away from their attitude of sympathy for Germany. The hardening of their outlook began in February 1915, when the Norwegian steamship Belridge, carrying oil from New Orleans to Amsterdam, was torpedoed and sunk in the English Channel. The Germans continued to sink neutral ships occasionally, and undecided countries soon began to adopt a hostile outlook toward this activity when the safety of their own shipping was threatened. sinking of the Lusitania sinking of the Lusitania The New York Herald reporting the sinking of the Lusitania, a British ocean liner, by a German submarine on May 7, 1915. Much more serious was an action that confirmed the inability of the German command to perceive that a minor tactical success could constitute a strategic blunder of the most extreme magnitude. This was the sinking by a German submarine on May 7, 1915, of the British liner Lusitania, which was on its way from New York to Liverpool: though the ship was in fact carrying 173 tons of ammunition, it had nearly 2,000 civilian passengers, and the 1,198 people who were drowned included 128 U.S. citizens. The loss of the liner and so many of its passengers, including the Americans, aroused a wave of indignation in the United States, and it was fully expected that a declaration of war might follow. But the U.S. government clung to its policy of neutrality and contented itself with sending several notes of protest to Germany. Despite this, the Germans persisted in their intention and, on August 17, sank the Arabic, which also had U.S. and other neutral passengers. Following a new U.S. protest, the Germans undertook to ensure the safety of passengers before sinking liners henceforth; but only after the torpedoing of yet another liner, the Hesperia, did Germany, on September 18, decide to suspend its submarine campaign in the English Channel and west of the British Isles, for fear of provoking the United States further. The German civilian statesmen had temporarily prevailed over the naval high command, which advocated “unrestricted” submarine warfare. The loss of the German colonies Germany’s overseas colonies, virtually without hope of reinforcement from Europe, defended themselves with varying degrees of success against Allied attack. Togoland was conquered by British forces from the Gold Coast (now Ghana) and by French forces from Dahomey (now Benin) in the first month of the war. In the Cameroons (German: Kamerun), invaded by Allied forces from the south, the east, and the northwest in August 1914 and attacked from the sea in the west, the Germans put up a more effective resistance, and the last German stronghold there, Mora, held out until February 18, 1916. Operations by South African forces in huge numerical superiority were launched against German South West Africa (Namibia) in September 1914 but were held up by the pro-German rebellion of certain South African officers who had fought against the British in the South African War of 1899–1902. The rebellion died out in February 1915, but the Germans in South West Africa nevertheless did not capitulate until July 9. In Jiaozhou (Kiaochow) Bay a small German enclave on the Chinese coast, the port of Qingdao (Tsingtao) was the object of Japanese attack from September 1914. With some help from British troops and from Allied warships, the Japanese captured it on November 7. In October, meanwhile, the Japanese had occupied the Marianas, the Caroline Islands, and the Marshalls in the North Pacific, these islands being defenseless since the departure of Admiral von Spee’s naval squadron. In the South Pacific, Western Samoa (now Samoa) fell without blood at the end of August 1914 to a New Zealand force supported by Australian, British, and French warships. In September an Australian invasion of Neu-Pommern (New Britain) won the surrender of the whole colony of German New Guinea within a few weeks. The story of German East Africa (comprising present-day Rwanda, Burundi, and continental Tanzania) was very different, thanks to the quality of the local askaris (European-trained African troops) and to the military genius of the German commander Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck. A landing of troops from India was repelled with ignominy by the Germans in November 1914. A massive invasion from the north, comprising British and colonial troops under the South African J.C. Smuts, was launched in February 1916, to be coordinated with a Belgian invasion from the west and with an independent British one from Nyasaland in the south, but, though Dar es Salaam fell to Smuts and Tabora to the Belgians in September, Lettow-Vorbeck maintained his small force in being. In November 1917 he began to move southward across Portuguese East Africa (Germany had declared war on Portugal in March 1916), and, after crossing back into German East Africa in September 1918, he turned southwestward to invade Northern Rhodesia in October. Having taken Kasama on November 9 (two days before the German armistice in Europe), he finally surrendered on November 25. With some 12,000 men at the outset, he eventually tied down 130,000 or more Allied troops. The years of stalemate Rival strategies and the Dardanelles campaign, 1915–16 By late 1914 the state of deadlock on the Western Front had become clear to the governments of the warring countries and even to many members of their general staffs. Each side sought a solution to this deadlock, and the solutions varied in form and manner. Erich von Falkenhayn had succeeded the dispirited Moltke as chief of the German general staff in September 1914. By the end of 1914 Falkenhayn seems to have concluded that although the final decision would be reached in the West, Germany had no immediate prospect of success there, and that the only practicable theatre of operations in the near future was the Eastern Front, however inconclusive those operations might be. Falkenhayn was convinced of the strength of the Allied trench barrier in France, so he took the momentous decision to stand on the defensive in the West. Falkenhayn saw that a long war was now inevitable and set to work to develop Germany’s resources for such a warfare of attrition. Thus, the technique of field entrenchment was carried to a higher pitch by the Germans than by any other country; Germany’s military railways were expanded for the lateral movement of reserves; and the problem of the supply of munitions and of the raw materials for their manufacture was tackled so energetically and comprehensively that an ample flow was ensured from the spring of 1915 onward—a time when the British were only awakening to the problem. Here were laid the foundations of that economic organization and utilization of resources that was to be the secret of Germany’s power to resist the pressure of the British blockade. The western Allies were divided into two camps about strategy. Joffre and most of the French general staff, backed by the British field marshal Sir John French, argued for continuing assaults on the Germans’ entrenched line in France, despite the continued attrition of French forces that this strategy entailed. Apart from this, the French high command was singularly lacking in ideas to break the deadlock of trench warfare. While desire to hold on to territorial gains governed the German strategy, the desire to recover lost territory dominated the French. Mark I tank Mark I tank British Mark I tank with anti-bomb roof and “tail,” 1916. British-inspired solutions to the deadlock crystallized into two main groups, one tactical, the other strategical. The first was to unlock the trench barrier by inventing a machine that would be invulnerable to machine guns and capable of crossing trenches and would thus restore the tactical balance upset by the new preponderance of defensive over offensive power. Such a machine had long been contemplated, and the early years of the 20th century saw the first attempts at a practical armoured fighting vehicle. British efforts were nourished and tended in infancy by Winston Churchill, then first lord of the Admiralty, and ultimately, after months of experiment hampered by official opposition, came to maturity in 1916 in the weapon known as the tank. Some of the British strategists, on the other hand, argued that instead of seeking a breakthrough on the Germans’ impregnable Western Front, the Allies should turn the whole position of the Central Powers either by an offensive through the Balkans or even by a landing on Germany’s Baltic coast. Joffre and his supporters won the argument, and the Balkan projects were relinquished in favour of a concentration of effort on the Western Front. But misgivings were not silenced, and a situation arose that revived the Middle Eastern scheme in a new if attenuated form. Know about the disastrous Gallipoli Campaign and the role of ANZAC troops in the battles of World War I Know about the disastrous Gallipoli Campaign and the role of ANZAC troops in the battles of World War I An overview of the 1915–16 Gallipoli Campaign of World War I, with a focus on ANZAC troops. See all videos for this article World War I: Allied troops on the Gallipoli Peninsula World War I: Allied troops on the Gallipoli Peninsula Allied troops lining the shore at "ANZAC Cove" on the Gallipoli Peninsula. The cove was named after the ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) troops that were part of the Allied forces. The Dardanelles Campaign against the Turks was a bloody defeat for the Allies. Early in January 1915 the Russians, threatened by the Turks in the Caucasus, appealed to the British for some relieving action against Turkey. The British, after acrimonious argument among themselves, decided in favour of “a naval expedition in February to bombard and take the Gallipoli Peninsula (the western shore of the Dardanelles), with Constantinople as its objective.” Though subsequently it was agreed that army troops might be provided to hold the shores if the fleet forced the Straits, the naval attack began on February 19 without army support. When at last Sir Ian Hamilton’s troops from Egypt began to land on the Turkish shores, on April 25, the Turks and their German commander, Otto Liman von Sanders, had had ample time to prepare adequate fortifications, and the defending armies were now six times as large as when the campaign opened. Listen to a Turkish perspective on the Gallipoli Campaign, known to Turkish people as the Battle of Çanakkale, 1915–16 Listen to a Turkish perspective on the Gallipoli Campaign, known to Turkish people as the Battle of Çanakkale, 1915–16 A Turkish perspective on the Gallipoli Campaign (1915–16), widely known among Turks as the Battle of Çanakkale. See all videos for this article Against resolute opposition from the local Turkish commander (Mustafa Kemal, the future Atatürk), Australian and New Zealand troops won a bridgehead at “Anzac Cove,” north of Kaba Tepe, on the Aegean side of the peninsula, with some 20,000 men landing in the first two days. The British, meanwhile, tried to land at five points around Cape Helles but established footholds only at three of them and then asked for reinforcements. Thereafter little progress was made, and the Turks took advantage of the British halt to bring into the peninsula as many troops as possible. The standstill of the enterprise led to a political crisis in London between Churchill, the Liberal government’s first lord of the Admiralty, who, after earlier doubts, had made himself the foremost spokesman of the Dardanelles operation, and John, Lord Fisher, the first sea lord, who had always expressed doubts about it. Fisher demanded on May 14 that the operation be discontinued and, when he was overruled, resigned the next day. The Liberal government was replaced by a coalition, but Churchill, though relieved of his former post, remained in the War Council of the Cabinet. Learn about the use of animals especially among the ANZAC soldiers during World War I Learn about the use of animals especially among the ANZAC soldiers during World War I The use of animals during World War I, especially among ANZAC troops. See all videos for this article Gallipoli Campaign: “ANZAC Cove” Gallipoli Campaign: “ANZAC Cove” British army officers in a trench at “ANZAC Cove” during the Gallipoli Campaign of World War I. In July the British began sending five more divisions to the peninsula, and a new plan was hatched. In the hope of cutting the Turks’ north–south communications down the peninsula by seizing the Sari Bair heights, which commanded the Straits from the west, the British reinforced the bridgehead at “Anzac Cove” and, in the night of August 6–7, landed more troops at Suvla Bay (Anafarta Limanı), farther to the north. Within a few days, both the offensive from “Anzac” and the new landing had proved ineffectual. More argument ensued in the War Council, and only late in the year was it acknowledged that the initially promising but ill-conducted enterprise should be given up. The evacuation of the troops was carried out from Suvla Bay and from “Anzac Cove” under cover of darkness in December 1915, and from the Cape Helles beaches in January 1916. The Dardanelles campaign thus came to a frustrating end. Had it succeeded it might well have ended Turkey’s participation in the war. In failing, it had cost about 214,000 casualties and achieved nothing. The Western and Eastern fronts, 1915 The Western Front, 1915 Repeated French attacks in February–March 1915 on the Germans’ trench barrier in Champagne won only 500 yards (460 metres) of ground at a cost of 50,000 men. For the British, Sir Douglas Haig’s 1st Army, between Armentières and Lens, tried a new experiment at Neuve-Chapelle on March 10, when its artillery opened an intense bombardment on a 2,000-yard front and then, after 35 minutes, lengthened its range, so that the attacking British infantry, behind the second screen of shells, could overrun the trenches ravaged by the first. But the experiment’s immediate result was merely loss of life, both because shortage of munitions made the second barrage inadequate and because there was a five-hour delay in launching the infantry assault, against which the Germans, having overcome their initial surprise, had time to rally their resistance. It was clear to the Allies that this small-scale tactical experiment had missed success only by a narrow margin and that there was scope for its development. But the Allied commands missed the true lesson, which was that a surprise attack could be successfully made immediately following a short bombardment that compensated for its brevity by its intensity. Instead, they drew the superficial deduction that mere volume of shellfire was the key to reducing a trench line prior to an assault. Not until 1917 did they revert to the Neuve-Chapelle method. It was left to the Germans to profit from the experiment. In the meantime, a French offensive in April against the Germans’ Saint-Mihiel salient, southeast of Verdun, sacrificed 64,000 men to no effect. The Germans, in accordance with Falkenhayn’s strategy, remained generally on the defensive in the West. They did, however, launch an attack on the Allies’ Ypres salient (where the French had in November 1914 taken the place of the British). There, on April 22, 1915, they used chlorine gas for the first time on the Western Front, but they made the mistake of discharging it from cylinders (which were dependent on a favourable wind) rather than lobbing it onto the enemy trenches in artillery shells. The gas did throw the agonized defenders into chaotic flight; but the German high command, having been disappointed by the new weapon’s performance under adverse conditions in Poland earlier in the year, had failed to provide adequate reserves to exploit its unforeseen success. By the end of a month-long battle, the Allies’ front was only slightly retracted. On May 9, meanwhile, the Allies had launched yet another premature offensive, combining a major French onslaught between Lens and Arras with two thrusts by Haig’s 1st Army, from Festubert and from Fromelles, against the Aubers Ridge north of Lens. The French prolonged their effort until June 18, losing 102,000 men without securing any gain; the British, still short of shells against the Germans’ mass of machine guns, had suspended their attacks three weeks earlier. An even worse military failure was the joint offensive launched by the Allies on September 25, 1915. While 27 French divisions with 850 heavy guns attacked on a front 18 miles long in Champagne, north and east of Reims, simultaneous blows were delivered in distant Artois by 14 French divisions with 420 heavy guns on a 12-mile front south of Lens and by six British divisions with only 117 guns at Loos north of Lens. All of these attacks were disappointing failures, partly because they were preceded by prolonged bombardments that gave away any chance of surprise and allowed time for German reserves to be sent forward to close up the gaps that had been opened in the trench defenders’ ranks by the artillery bombardment. At Loos the British use of chlorine gas was less effective than Haig had hoped, and his engagement of all his own available forces for his first assault came to nothing when his commander in chief, Sir John French, was too slow in sending up reserves; the French on both their fronts likewise lost, through lack of timely support, most of what they had won by their first attacks. In all, for a little ground, the Allies paid 242,000 men, against the defenders’ loss of 141,000. Having subsequently complained bitterly about Sir John French’s management of operations, Haig was appointed British commander in chief in his place in December. The Eastern Front, 1915 Russian troops; World War I Russian troops; World War I Russian troops in the trenches at the East Prussian frontier. The Russians’ plans for 1915 prescribed the strengthening of their flanks in the north and in Galicia before driving westward again toward Silesia. Their preparations for a blow at East Prussia’s southern frontier were forestalled, as Ludendorff, striking suddenly eastward from East Prussia, enveloped four Russian divisions in the Augustów forests, east of the Masurian Lakes, in the second week of February; but in Galicia the winter’s fighting culminated, on March 22, in the fall of Przemyśl to the Russians. World War I World War I Historical map of the Eastern Front during World War I. For the Central Powers, the Austrian spokesman, Conrad, primarily required some action to relieve the pressure on his Galician front, and Falkenhayn was willing to help him for that purpose without departing from his own general strategy of attrition—which was already coming into conflict with Ludendorff’s desire for a sustained effort toward decisive victory over Russia. The plan finally adopted, with the aim of smashing the Russian centre in the Dunajec River sector of Galicia by an attack on the 18-mile front from Gorlice to Tuchów (south of Tarnów), was conceived with tactical originality: in order to maintain the momentum of advance, no daily objectives were to be set for individual corps or divisions; instead, each should make all possible progress before the Russians could bring their reserves up, on the assumption that the rapid advance of some attacking units would contagiously promote the subsequent advance of others that had at first met more resistance. Late in April, 14 divisions, with 1,500 guns, were quietly concentrated for the stroke against the six Russian divisions present. Mackensen was in command, with Hans von Seeckt, sponsor of the new tactic of infiltration, as his chief of staff. The Gorlice attack was launched on May 2 and achieved success beyond all expectation. Routed on the Dunajec, the Russians tried to stand on the Wisłoka, then fell back again. By May 14, Mackensen’s forces were on the San, 80 miles from their starting point, and at Jarosław they even forced a crossing of that river. Strengthened with more German troops from France, Mackensen then struck again, taking Przemyśl on June 3 and Lemberg (Lvov) on June 22. The Russian front was now bisected, but Falkenhayn and Conrad had foreseen no such result and had made no preparations to exploit it promptly. Their consequent delays enabled the Russian armies to retreat without breaking up entirely. Falkenhayn then decided to pursue a new offensive. Mackensen was instructed to veer northward, so as to catch the Russian armies in the Warsaw salient between his forces and Hindenburg’s, which were to drive southeastward from East Prussia. Ludendorff disliked the plan as being too much of a frontal assault: the Russians might be squeezed by the closing-in of the two wings, but their retreat to the east would not be cut off. He once more urged his spring scheme for a wide enveloping maneuver through Kovno (Kaunas) on Vilna (Vilnius) and Minsk, in the north. Falkenhayn opposed this plan, fearing that it would mean more troops and a deeper commitment, and on July 2 the German emperor decided in favour of Falkenhayn’s plan. The results justified Ludendorff’s reservations. The Russians held Mackensen at Brest-Litovsk and Hindenburg on the Narew River long enough to enable the main body of their troops to escape through the unclosed gap to the east. Though by the end of August all of Poland had been occupied and 750,000 Russians had been taken prisoner in four months of fighting, the Central Powers had missed their opportunity to break Russia’s ability to carry on the war. Too late, Falkenhayn in September allowed Ludendorff to try what he had been urging much earlier, a wider enveloping movement to the north on the Kovno–Dvinsk–Vilna triangle. The German cavalry, in fact, approached the Minsk railway, far beyond Vilna; but the Russians’ power of resistance was too great for Ludendorff’s slender forces, whose supplies moreover began to run out, and by the end of the month his operations were suspended. The crux of this situation was that the Russian armies had been allowed to draw back almost out of the net before the long-delayed Vilna maneuver was attempted. Meanwhile, an Austrian attack eastward from Lutsk (Luck), begun later in September and continued into October, incurred heavy losses for no advantage at all. By October 1915 the Russian retreat, after a nerve-wracking series of escapes from the salients the Germans had systematically created and then sought to cut off, had come to a definite halt along a line running from the Baltic Sea just west of Riga southward to Czernowitz (Chernovtsy) on the Romanian border. Other fronts, 1915–16 The Caucasus, 1914–16 The Caucasian front between Russia and Turkey comprised two battlegrounds: Armenia in the west, Azerbaijan in the east. While the ultimate strategic objectives for the Turks were to capture the Baku oilfields in Azerbaijan and to penetrate Central Asia and Afghanistan in order to threaten British India, they needed first to capture the Armenian fortress of Kars, which, together with that of Ardahan, had been a Russian possession since 1878. A Russian advance from Sarıkamış (Sarykamysh, south of Kars) toward Erzurum in Turkish Armenia in November 1914 was countered in December when the Turkish 3rd Army, under Enver himself, launched a three-pronged offensive against the Kars–Ardahan position. This offensive was catastrophically defeated in battles at Sarıkamış and at Ardahan in January 1915; but the Turks, ill-clad and ill-supplied in the Caucasian winter, lost many more men through exposure and exhaustion than in fighting (their 3rd Army was reduced in one month from 190,000 to 12,400 men, the battle casualties being 30,000). Turkish forces, which had meanwhile invaded neutral Persia’s part of Azerbaijan and taken Tabriz on January 14, were expelled by a Russian counterinvasion in March. During this campaign the Armenians had created disturbances behind the Turkish lines in support of the Russians and had threatened the already arduous Turkish communications. The Turkish government on June 11, 1915, decided to deport the Armenians. In the process of deportation, the Turkish authorities committed atrocities on a vast scale: most estimates of Armenian deaths have ranged from 600,000 to 1,500,000 for this period. Grand Duke Nicholas, who had hitherto been commander in chief of all Russia’s armies, was superseded by Emperor Nicholas himself in September 1915; the Grand Duke was then sent to command in the Caucasus. He and General N.N. Yudenich, the victor of Sarıkamış, started a major assault on Turkish Armenia in January 1916; Erzurum was taken on February 16, Trabzon on April 18, Erzıncan on August 2; and a long-delayed Turkish counterattack was held at Oğnut. Stabilized to Russia’s great advantage in the autumn, the new front in Armenia was thereafter affected less by Russo-Turkish warfare than by the consequences of revolution in Russia. Mesopotamia, 1914–April 1916 The British occupation of Basra, Turkey’s port at the head of the Persian Gulf, in November 1914 had been justifiable strategically because of the need to protect the oil wells of southern Persia and the Abadan refinery. The British advance of 46 miles northward from Basra to al-Qurnah in December and the further advance of 90 miles up the Tigris to al-ʿAmārah in May–June 1915 ought to have been reckoned enough for all practical purposes, but the advance was continued in the direction of the fatally magnetic Baghdad, ancient capital of the Arab caliphs of Islām. Al-Kūt was occupied in September 1915, and the advance was pushed on until the British, under Major General Charles Townshend, were 500 miles away from their base at Basra. They fought a profitless battle at Ctesiphon, only 18 miles from Baghdad, on November 22 but then had to retreat to al-Kūt. There, from December 7, Townshend’s 10,000 men were besieged by the Turks; and there, on April 29, 1916, they surrendered themselves into captivity. The Egyptian frontiers, 1915–July 1917 Even after the evacuation from Gallipoli, the British maintained 250,000 troops in Egypt. A major source of worry to the British was the danger of a Turkish threat from Palestine across the Sinai Desert to the Suez Canal. That danger waned, however, when the initially unpromising rebellion of the Hāshimite amir Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī against the Turks in the Hejaz was developed by the personal enterprise of an unprofessional soldier of genius, T.E. Lawrence, into a revolt infecting the whole Arabian hinterland of Palestine and Syria and threatening to sever the Turks’ vital Hejaz Railway (Damascus–Amman–Maʿān–Medina). Sir Archibald Murray’s British troops at last started a massive advance in December 1916 and captured some Turkish outposts on the northeastern edge of the Sinai Desert but made a pusillanimous withdrawal from Gaza in March 1917 at the very moment when the Turks were about to surrender the place to them; the attempt the next month to retrieve the mistake was repulsed with heavy losses. In June the command was transferred from Murray to Sir Edmund Allenby. In striking contrast to Murray’s performance was Lawrence’s capture of Aqaba (al-ʿAqabah) on July 6, 1917: his handful of Arabs got the better of 1,200 Turks there. Italy and the Italian front, 1915–16 Great Britain, France, and Russia concluded on April 26, 1915, the secret Treaty of London with Italy, inducing the latter to discard the obligations of the Triple Alliance and to enter the war on the side of the Allies by the promise of territorial aggrandizement at Austria-Hungary’s expense. Italy was offered not only the Italian-populated Trentino and Trieste but also South Tirol (to consolidate the Alpine frontier), Gorizia, Istria, and northern Dalmatia. On May 23, 1915, Italy accordingly declared war on Austria-Hungary. The Italian commander, General Luigi Cadorna, decided to concentrate his effort on an offensive eastward from the province of Venetia across the comparatively low ground between the head of the Adriatic and the foothills of the Julian Alps; that is to say, across the lower valley of the Isonzo (Soc̆a) River. Against the risk of an Austrian descent on his rear from the Trentino (which bordered Venetia to the northwest) or on his left flank from the Carnic Alps (to the north), he thought that limited advances would be precaution enough. The Italians’ initial advance eastward, begun late in May 1915, was soon halted, largely because of the flooding of the Isonzo, and trench warfare set in. Cadorna, however, was determined to make progress and so embarked on a series of persistent renewals of the offensive, known as the Battles of the Isonzo. The first four of these (June 23–July 7; July 18–August 3; October 18–November 4; and November 10–December 2) achieved nothing worth the cost of 280,000 men; and the fifth (March 1916) was equally fruitless. The Austrians had shown on this front a fierce resolution that was often lacking when they faced the Russians. In mid-May 1916 Cadorna’s program was interrupted by an Austrian offensive from the Trentino into the Asiago region of western Venetia. Though the danger of an Austrian breakthrough from the mountainous borderland into the Venetian plain in the rear of the Italians’ Isonzo front was averted, the Italian counteroffensive in mid-June recovered only one-third of the territory overrun by the Austrians north and southwest of Asiago. The Sixth Battle of the Isonzo (August 6–17), however, did win Gorizia for the Italians. On August 28 Italy declared war on Germany. The next three months saw three more Italian offensives on the Isonzo, none of them really profitable. In the course of 1916 the Italians had sustained 500,000 casualties, twice as many as the Austrians, and were still on the Isonzo. Serbia and the Salonika expedition, 1915–17 Austria’s three attempted invasions of Serbia in 1914 had been brusquely repulsed by Serbian counterattacks. By the summer of 1915 the Central Powers were doubly concerned to close the account with Serbia, both for reasons of prestige and for the sake of establishing secure rail communications with Turkey across the Balkans. In August, Germany sent reinforcements to Austria’s southern front; and, on September 6, 1915, the Central Powers concluded a treaty with Bulgaria, whom they drew to their side by the offer of territory to be taken from Serbia. The Austro-German forces attacked southward from the Danube on October 6; and the Bulgars, undeterred by a Russian ultimatum, struck at eastern Serbia on October 11 and at Serbian Macedonia on October 14. Sarrail, Maurice Sarrail, Maurice Maurice Sarrail, World War I. The western Allies, surprised in September by the prospect of a Bulgarian attack on Serbia, hastily decided to send help through neutral Greece’s Macedonian port of Salonika, relying on the collusion of Greece’s pro-Entente prime minister, Eleuthérios Venizélos. Troops from Gallipoli, under the French general Maurice Sarrail, reached Salonika on October 5, but on that day Venizélos fell from power. Mabel St. Clair Stobart Mabel St. Clair Stobart Mabel St. Clair Stobart (left), founder of the Women's Sick and Wounded Convoy Corps and the Women's National Service League. Mabel St. Clair Stobart Mabel St. Clair Stobart Learn more about the life of Mabel St. Clair Stobart. See all videos for this article The Allies advanced northward up the Vardar into Serbian Macedonia but found themselves prevented from junction with the Serbs by the westward thrust of the Bulgars. Driven back over the Greek frontier, the Allies were merely occupying the Salonika region by mid-December. The Serbian Army, meanwhile, to avoid double envelopment, had begun an arduous winter retreat westward over the Albanian mountains to refuge on the island of Corfu. English relief worker Mabel St. Clair Stobart, who had been commissioned a major in the Serbian army, led the First Serbian-English Field Hospital (Front) during the retreat. Stobart achieved some renown for the feat, as her unit was one of the few to reach the Albanian coast without suffering any losses or desertions. In the spring of 1916 the Allies at Salonika were reinforced by the revived Serbs from Corfu as well as by French, British, and some Russian troops, and the bridgehead was expanded westward to Vodena (Edessa) and eastward to Kilkis; but the Bulgars, who in May obtained Fort Rupel (Klidhi, on the Struma) from the Greeks, in mid-August not only overran Greek Macedonia east of the Struma but also, from Monastir (Bitola), invaded the Florina region of Greek Macedonia, to the west of the Allies’ Vodena wing. The Allied counteroffensive took Monastir from the Bulgars in November 1916, but more ambitious operations, from March to May 1917, proved abortive. The Salonika front was tying down some 500,000 Allied troops without troubling the Central Powers in any significant way. Major developments in 1916 The Western Front, 1916 In 1914 the centre of gravity of World War I had been on the Western Front, in 1915 it shifted to the Eastern, and in 1916 it once more moved back to France. Though the western Allies had dissipated some of their strength in the Dardanelles, Salonika, and Mesopotamia, the rising tide of Britain’s new armies and of its increased munition supplies promised the means for an offensive far larger in scale than any before to break the trench deadlock. Britain’s armies in France had grown to 36 divisions by the end of 1915. By that time voluntary enlistments, though massive, had nevertheless proved to be inadequate to meet Britain’s needs, so in January 1916, by the Military Service Act, voluntary service was replaced by conscription. In December 1915 a conference of the leaders of the French, British, Belgian, and Italian armies, with representatives present from the Russian and Japanese armies, was held at Joffre’s headquarters. They adopted the principle of a simultaneous general offensive in 1916 by France, Great Britain, Russia, and Italy. But military action by Germany was to dislocate this scheme, and only the British offensive came fully into operation. Brutal truths of the Battle of Verdun Brutal truths of the Battle of Verdun Overview of the Battle of Verdun, 1916. See all videos for this article By the winter of 1915–16, Falkenhayn regarded Russia as paralyzed and Italy as inconsiderable. He considered the time at last ripe for positive action against France, after whose collapse Great Britain would have no effective military ally on the European continent and would be brought to terms rather by submarine warfare than by land operations. For his offensive in the West, however, Falkenhayn clung always to his method of attrition. He believed that a mass breakthrough was unnecessary and that instead the Germans should aim to bleed France of its manpower by choosing a point of attack “for the retention of which the French Command would be compelled to throw in every man they have.” The town of Verdun and its surrounding complex of forts was chosen, because it was a menace to the main German lines of communications, because it was within a French salient and thus cramped the defenders, and because of the certainty that the French would sacrifice any number of men to defend Verdun for reasons of patriotism associated with the town itself. The keynote of Falkenhayn’s tactical plan was to place a dense semicircle of German heavy and medium artillery to the north and east of Verdun and its outlying fortresses and then to stage a continuous series of limited infantry advances upon the forts. These advances would draw the French infantry into defending or trying to retake the forts, in the process of which they would be pulverized by German artillery fire. In addition, each German infantry advance would have its way smoothed by a brief but extremely intense artillery bombardment that would clear the targeted ground of defenders. Verdun, France Verdun, France French troops passing though the ruins of Verdun, France, 1916. Although French Intelligence had given early warnings of the Germans’ offensive preparations, the French high command was so preoccupied with its own projected offensive scheme that the warning fell on deaf ears. At 7:15 am on February 21, 1916, the heaviest German artillery bombardment yet seen in the war began on a front of eight miles around Verdun, and the French trenches and barbed wire fields there were flattened out or upheaved in a chaos of tumbled earth. At 4:45 pm the German infantry advanced—although for the first day only on a front of two and a half miles. From then until February 24 the French defenders’ lines east of the Meuse River crumbled away. Fort-Douaumont, one of the most important fortresses, was occupied by the Germans on February 25. By March 6, when the Germans began to attack on the west bank of the Meuse as well as on the east bank, the French had come to see that something more than a feint was intended. To relieve the pressure on France, the Russians made a sacrificial attack on the Eastern Front at Lake Naroch (see below The Eastern Front, 1916); the Italians began their fifth offensive on the Isonzo (see above Italy and the Italian front, 1915–16); and the British took over the Arras sector of the Western Front, thus becoming responsible for the whole line from the Yser southward to the Somme. Meanwhile, General Philippe Pétain was entrusted with commanding the defense of Verdun. He organized repeated counterattacks that slowed the German advance, and, more importantly, he worked to keep open the one road leading into Verdun that had not been closed by German shelling. This was the Bar-le-Duc road, which became known as La Voie Sacrée (the “Sacred Way”) because vital supplies and reinforcements continued to be sent to the Verdun front along it despite constant harassment from the German artillery. Slowly but steadily the Germans moved forward on Verdun: they took Fort-Vaux, southeast of Fort-Douaumont, on June 7 and almost reached the Belleville heights, the last stronghold before Verdun itself, on June 23. Pétain was preparing to evacuate the east bank of the Meuse when the Allies’ offensive on the Somme River was at last launched. Thereafter, the Germans assigned no more divisions to the Verdun attack. Preceded by a week’s bombardment, which gave ample warning of its advent, the Somme offensive was begun on July 1, 1916, by the 11 British divisions of Rawlinson’s new 4th Army on a 15-mile front between Serre, north of the Ancre, and Curlu, north of the Somme, while five French divisions attacked at the same time on an eight-mile front mainly south of the Somme, between Curlu and Péronne. With incredibly misplaced optimism, Haig had convinced himself that the British infantry would be able to walk forward irresistibly over ground cleared of defenders by the artillery. But the unconcealed preparations for the assault and the long preliminary bombardment had given away any chance of surprise, and the German defenders were well prepared for what was to come. In the event, the 60,000 attacking British infantrymen moving forward in symmetrical alignment at a snail’s pace enforced by each man’s 66 pounds (30 kilograms) of cumbrous equipment were mowed down in masses by the German machine guns, and the day’s casualties were the heaviest ever sustained by a British army. The French participants in the attack had twice as many guns as the British and did better against a weaker system of defenses, but almost nothing could be done to exploit this comparative success. Resigning himself now to limited advances, Haig concentrated his next effort on the southern sector of his Somme front. The Germans’ second position there (Longueval, Bazentin, and Ovillers) fell on July 14, but again the opportunity of exploitation was missed. Thenceforward, at great cost in lives, a methodical advance was continued, gaining little ground but straining the German resistance. The first tanks to be used in the war, though in numbers far too small to be effective, were thrown into the battle by the British on September 15. In mid-November early rains halted operations. The four-month Battle of the Somme was a miserable failure except that it diverted German resources from the attack on Verdun. It cost the British 420,000 casualties, the French 195,000, and the Germans 650,000. At Verdun, the summer slackening of German pressure enabled the French to organize counterattacks. Surprise attacks directed by General Robert-Georges Nivelle and launched by General Charles Mangin’s army corps recovered Fort-Douaumont on October 24, Fort-Vaux on November 2, and places north of Douaumont in mid-December. Pétain’s adroit defense of Verdun and these counterattacks had deprived Falkenhayn’s offensive of its strategic fulfillment; but France had been so much weakened in the first half of 1916 that it could scarcely satisfy the Allies’ expectations in the second. Verdun was one of the longest, bloodiest, and most ferocious battles of the war; French casualties amounted to about 400,000, German ones to about 350,000. The Battle of Jutland The summer of 1916 saw the long-deferred confrontation of Germany’s High Seas Fleet and Great Britain’s Grand Fleet in the Battle of Jutland—history’s biggest naval battle, which both sides claimed as a victory. Admiral Reinhard Scheer, who became commander in chief of the High Seas Fleet in January 1916, planned to contrive an encounter on the open sea between his fleet and some part of the British fleet in separation from the whole, so that the Germans could exploit their momentary superiority in numbers to achieve victory. Scheer’s plan was to ensnare Admiral Beatty’s squadron of battle cruisers at Rosyth, midway up Britain’s eastern coast, by stratagem and destroy it before any reinforcements from the Grand Fleet’s main base at Scapa Flow could reach it. To set the trap, five battle cruisers of the German High Seas Fleet, together with four light cruisers, were to sail northward, under Hipper’s command, from Wilhelmshaven, Ger., to a point off the southwestern coast of Norway. Scheer himself, with the battle squadrons of the High Seas Fleet, was to follow, 50 miles behind, to catch Beatty’s forces in the gap once they had been lured eastward across the North Sea in pursuit of Hipper. But the signal for the German operation to begin, made in the afternoon of May 30, was intercepted and partially decoded by the British; and before midnight the whole British Grand Fleet was on its way to a rendezvous off Norway’s southwestern coast and roughly across the planned route of the German fleet. At 2:20 pm on May 31, when Admiral John Jellicoe’s Grand Fleet squadrons from Scapa Flow were still 65 miles away to the north, Beatty’s advance guard of light cruisers—five miles ahead of his heavier ships—and Hipper’s scouting group learned quite accidentally of one another’s proximity. An hour later the two lines were drawn up for battle, and in the next 50 minutes the British suffered severely, and the Indefatigable was sunk. When Beatty’s battle cruisers came up, however, the German cruisers, in their turn, sustained such damage that Hipper sent a protective screen of German destroyers in to launch a torpedo attack. The British had lost another battle cruiser, the Queen Mary, before the German High Seas Fleet was sighted by a British patrol to the south, at 4:35 pm. On this report Beatty ordered his ships northward, to lure the Germans toward the Grand Fleet under Jellicoe’s command. Not until 6:14 pm, after Jellicoe’s squadrons and Beatty’s had been within sight of one another for nearly a quarter of an hour, was the German fleet precisely located—only just in time for Jellicoe to deploy his ships to the best advantage. Jellicoe arrayed the Grand Fleet end-to-end in a line so that their combined broadsides could be brought to bear on the approaching German ships, who could in turn reply only with the forward guns of their leading ships. The British ships in effect formed the horizontal stroke and the German ships the vertical stroke of the letter “T,” with the British having deployed into line at a right angle to the German ships’ forward progress. This maneuver was in fact known as “crossing the enemy’s T” and was the ideal situation dreamed of by the tacticians of both navies, since by “crossing the T” one’s forces temporarily gained an overwhelming superiority of firepower. For the Germans this was a moment of unparalleled risk. Three factors helped prevent the destruction of the German ships in this trap: their own excellent construction, the steadiness and discipline of their crews, and the poor quality of the British shells. The Lützow, the Derfflinger, and the battleship König led the line and were under broadside fire from some 10 British battleships, yet their main guns remained undamaged and they fought back to such effect that one of their salvoes fell full on the Invincible and blew it up. This success, however, did little to relieve the intense bombardment from the other British ships, and the German fleet was still pressing forward into the steel trap of the Grand Fleet. Relying on the magnificent seamanship of the German crews, Scheer extricated his fleet from the appalling danger into which it had run by a simple but, in practice, extremely difficult maneuver. At 6:30 pm he ordered a turn of 180° for all his ships at once; it was executed without collision; and the German battleships reversed course in unison and steamed out of the jaws of the trap, while German destroyers spread a smoke screen across their rear. The smoke and worsening visibility left Jellicoe in doubt about what had happened, and the British had lost contact with the Germans by 6:45 pm. Yet the British Grand Fleet had maneuvered in such a way that it ended up between the German High Seas Fleet and the German ports, and this was the situation Scheer most dreaded, so at 6:55 pm Scheer ordered another reverse turn, perhaps hoping to pass around the rear of the British fleet. But the result for him was a worse position than that from which he had just escaped: his battle line had become compressed, and his leading ships found themselves again under intense bombardment from the broadside array of the British ships. Jellicoe had succeeded in crossing the Germans’ “T” again. The Lützow now received irreparable damage, and many other German ships were damaged at this point. At 7:15 pm, therefore, to cause a diversion and win time, Scheer ordered his battle cruisers and destroyers ahead to virtually immolate themselves in a massed charge against the British ships. This was the crisis of the Battle of Jutland. As the German battle cruisers and destroyers steamed forward, the German battleships astern became confused and disorganized in trying to execute their reverse turn. Had Jellicoe ordered the Grand Fleet forward through the screen of charging German battle cruisers at that moment, the fate of the German High Seas Fleet would likely have been sealed. As it was, fearing and overestimating the danger of torpedo attacks from the approaching destroyers, he ordered his fleet to turn away, and the two lines of battleships steamed apart at a speed of more than 20 knots. They did not meet again, and when darkness fell, Jellicoe could not be sure of the route of the German retreat. By 3:00 am on June 1 the Germans had safely eluded their pursuers. The British had sustained greater losses than the Germans in both ships and men. In all, the British lost three battle cruisers, three cruisers, eight destroyers, and 6,274 officers and men in the Battle of Jutland. The Germans lost one battleship, one battle cruiser, four light cruisers, five destroyers, and 2,545 officers and men. The losses inflicted on the British, however, were not enough to affect the numerical superiority of their fleet over the German in the North Sea, where their domination remained practically unchallengeable during the course of the war. Henceforth, the German High Seas Fleet chose not to venture out from the safety of its home ports. The Eastern Front, 1916 In the hope of diverting German strength from the attack at Verdun on the Western Front, the Russians gallantly but prematurely opened an offensive north and south of Lake Naroch (Narocz, east of Vilna) on March 18, 1916, and continued it until March 27, though they won very little ground at great cost and only for a short time. They then reverted to preparations for a major offensive in July. The main blow, it was planned, should be delivered by A.E. Evert’s central group of armies, assisted by an inward movement of A.N. Kuropatkin’s army in the northern sector of the front. But at the same time, A.A. Brusilov’s southwestern army group was authorized to make a supposedly diversionary attack in its own sectors. In the event, Brusilov’s attack became by far the more important operation of the offensive. Surprised by the Austrians’ Asiago offensive in May, Italy promptly appealed to the Russians for action to draw the enemy’s reserves away from the Italian fronts, and the Russians responded by advancing their timetable again. Brusilov undertook to start his attack on June 4, on the understanding that Evert’s should be launched 10 days later. Thus began an offensive on the Eastern Front that was to be imperial Russia’s last really effective military effort. Popularly known as Brusilov’s offensive, it had such an astonishing initial success as to revive Allied dreams about the irresistible Russian “steamroller.” Instead, its ultimate achievement was to sound the death knell of the Russian monarchy. Brusilov’s four armies were distributed along a very wide front, with Lutsk at the northern end, Tarnopol and Buchach (Buczacz) in the central sector, and Czernowitz at the southern end. Having struck first in the Tarnopol and Czernowitz sectors on June 4, Brusilov on June 5 took the Austrians wholly by surprise when he launched A.M. Kaledin’s army toward Lutsk: the defenses crumbled at once, and the attackers pushed their way between two Austrian armies. As the offensive was developed, the Russians were equally successful in the Buchach sector and in their thrust into Bukovina, which culminated in the capture of Czernowitz. By June 20, Brusilov’s forces had captured 200,000 prisoners. Evert and Kuropatkin, however, instead of striking in accordance with the agreed plan, found excuses for procrastination. The Russian chief of general staff, M.V. Alekseyev, therefore tried to transfer this inert couple’s reserves to Brusilov, but the Russians’ lateral communications were so poor that the Germans had time to reinforce the Austrians before Brusilov was strong enough to make the most of his victory. Though his forces in Bukovina advanced as far as the Carpathian Mountains, a counterstroke by Alexander von Linsingen’s Germans in the Lutsk sector checked Russian progress at the decisive point. Further Russian drives from the centre of Brusilov’s front were launched in July; but by early September the opportunity of exploiting the summer’s victory was lost. Brusilov had driven the Austrians from Bukovina and from much of eastern Galicia and had inflicted huge losses of men and equipment on them, but he had depleted Russia’s armies by about 1,000,000 men in doing so. (A large portion of this number consisted of deserters or prisoners.) This loss seriously undermined both the morale and the material strength of Russia. Brusilov’s offensive also had indirect results of great consequence. First, it had compelled the Germans to withdraw at least seven divisions from the Western Front, where they could ill be spared from the Verdun and Somme battles. Second, it hastened Romania’s unfortunate entry into the war. Disregarding Romania’s military backwardness, the Romanian government of Ionel Brătianu declared war against Austria-Hungary on August 27, 1916. In entering the war, Romania succumbed to the Allies’ offers of Austro-Hungarian territory and to the belief that the Central Powers would be too much preoccupied with other fronts to mount any serious riposte against a Romanian offensive. Some 12 of Romania’s 23 divisions, in three columns, thus began on August 28 a slow westward advance across Transylvania, where at first there were only five Austro-Hungarian divisions to oppose them. The riposte of the Central Powers was swifter than the progress of the invasion: Germany, Turkey, and Bulgaria declared war against Romania on August 28, August 30, and September 1, respectively; and Falkenhayn had plans already prepared. Though the miscarriage of his overall program for the year led to his being replaced by Hindenburg as chief of the German general staff on August 29, Falkenhayn’s recommendation that Mackensen should direct a Bulgarian attack on southern Romania was approved; and Falkenhayn himself went to command on the Transylvanian front, for which five German as well as two more Austrian divisions were found available as reinforcements. Mackensen’s forces from Bulgaria stormed the Turtucaia (Tutrakan) bridgehead on the Danube southeast of Bucharest on September 5. His subsequent advance eastward into the Dobruja caused the Romanians to switch their reserves to that quarter instead of reinforcing their Transylvanian enterprise, which thereupon came to a halt. Falkenhayn soon attacked: first at the southern end of the 200-mile front, where he threw one of the Romanian columns back into the Roter Turm (Turnu Roşu) Pass, then in the centre, where by October 9 he had defeated another at Kronstadt (Braşov). For a month, however, the Romanians withstood Falkenhayn’s attempts to drive them out of the Vulcan and Szurduk (Surduc) passes into Walachia. But just before winter snows blocked the way, the Germans took the two passes and advanced southward to Tîrgu Jiu, where they won another victory. Then Mackensen, having turned westward from the Dobruja, crossed the Danube near Bucharest, on which his and Falkenhayn’s armies converged. Bucharest fell on December 6, and the Romanian Army, a crippled force, could only fall back northeastward into Moldavia, where it had the belated support of Russian troops. The Central Powers had access to Romania’s wheat fields and oil wells, and the Russians had 300 more miles of front to defend. German strategy and the submarine war, 1916–January 1917 Both Admiral Scheer and General Falkenhayn doubted whether the German submarines could do any decisive damage to Great Britain so long as their warfare was restricted in deference to the protests of the United States; and, after a tentative reopening of the submarine campaign on February 4, 1916, the German naval authorities in March gave the U-boats permission to sink without warning all ships except passenger vessels. The German civilian statesmen, however, who paid due attention to their diplomats’ warnings about U.S. opinion, were soon able to prevail over the generals and the admirals: on May 4 the scope of the submarine campaign was again severely restricted. The controversy between the statesmen and the advocates of unrestricted warfare was not dead yet. Hindenburg, chief of the general staff from August 29, had Ludendorff as his quartermaster general, and Ludendorff was quickly won over to supporting the chief of the Admiralty staff, Henning von Holtzendorff, in his arguments against the German chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, and the foreign minister, Gottlieb von Jagow. Whereas Bethmann and some other statesmen were hoping for a negotiated peace (see below), Hindenburg and Ludendorff were committed to a military victory. The British naval blockade, however, threatened to starve Germany into collapse before a military victory could be achieved, and soon Hindenburg and Ludendorff got their way: it was decided that, from February 1, 1917, submarine warfare should be unrestricted and overtly so. Peace moves and U.S. policy to February 1917 Examine how German U-boats and the Zimmerman Telegram pushed the United States into World War I Examine how German U-boats and the Zimmerman Telegram pushed the United States into World War I See why the United States abandoned its policy of neutrality and decided to enter World War I. See all videos for this article There were few efforts by any of the Central or Allied Powers to achieve a negotiated peace in the first two years of the war. By 1916 the most promising signs for peace seemed to exist only in the intentions of two statesmen in power—the German chancellor Bethmann and the U.S. president Woodrow Wilson. Wilson, having proclaimed the neutrality of the United States in August 1914, strove for the next two years to maintain it. (See the video.) Early in 1916 he sent his confidant, Colonel Edward M. House, to sound London and Paris about the possibility of U.S. mediation between the belligerents. House’s conversations with the British foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, resulted in the House–Grey Memorandum (February 22, 1916), declaring that the United States might enter the war if Germany rejected Wilson’s mediation but that Great Britain reserved the right to initiate U.S. mediatory action. By mid-1916, the imminent approach of the presidential election in the United States caused Wilson to suspend his moves for peace. In Germany, meanwhile, Bethmann had succeeded, with difficulty, in postponing the declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare. Wilson, though he was reelected president on November 7, 1916, let another month pass without doing anything for peace, and during that period the German victory over Romania was taking place. Thus, while Bethmann lost patience with waiting for Wilson to act, the German military leaders came momentarily to think that Germany, from a position of strength, might now propose a peace acceptable to themselves. Having been constrained to agree with the militarists that, if his proposals were rejected by the Allies, unrestricted submarine warfare should be resumed, Bethmann was allowed to announce, on December 12, the terms of a German offer of peace—terms, however, that were militarily so far-reaching as to preclude the Allies’ acceptance of them. The main stumbling block was Germany’s insistence upon its annexation of Belgium and of the occupied portion of northeastern France. On December 18, 1916, Wilson invited both belligerent camps to state their “war aims.” The Allies were secretly encouraged by the U.S. secretary of state to offer terms too sweeping for German acceptance; and the Germans, suspecting collusion between Wilson and the Allies, agreed in principle to the opening of negotiations but left their statement of December 12 practically unchanged and privately decided that Wilson should not actually take part in any negotiation that he might bring about. By mid-January 1917 the December overtures had ended. Strangely enough, Wilson’s next appeal, a speech of January 22, 1917, preaching international conciliation and a “peace without victory,” elicited a confidential response from the British expressing readiness to accept his mediation. In the opposite camp, Austria-Hungary would likewise have listened readily to peace proposals, but Germany had already decided, on January 9, to declare unrestricted submarine warfare. Bethmann’s message restating Germany’s peace terms and inviting Wilson to persevere in his efforts was delivered on January 31 but was paradoxically accompanied by the announcement that unrestricted submarine warfare would begin the next day. Wilson severed diplomatic relations between the United States and Germany on February 3, 1917, and asked Congress, on February 26, for power to arm merchantmen and to take all other measures to protect U.S. commerce. But American opinion was still not ready for war, and the Germans wisely abstained from attacks on U.S. shipping. What changed the tenor of public feeling was the publication of the Zimmermann Telegram. Arthur Zimmermann had succeeded Jagow as Germany’s secretary of state for foreign affairs in November 1916; and in that same month the Mexican president, Venustiano Carranza, whose country’s relations with the United States had been critical since March, had virtually offered bases on the Mexican coast to the Germans for their submarines. Zimmermann on January 16, 1917, sent a coded telegram to his ambassador in Mexico instructing him to propose to the Mexican government that, if the United States should enter the war against Germany, Mexico should become Germany’s ally with a view to recovering Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona from the United States. Intercepted and decoded by the British Admiralty Intelligence, this message was communicated to Wilson on February 24. It was published in the U.S. press on March 1, and it immediately set off a nationwide demand for war against Germany. Developments in 1917 The Western Front, January–May 1917 The western Allies had good reason to be profoundly dissatisfied with the poor results of their enterprises of 1916, and this dissatisfaction was signalized by two major changes made at the end of the year. In Great Britain, the government of H.H. Asquith, already turned into a coalition in May 1915, was replaced in December 1916 by a coalition under David Lloyd George; and that same month in France the post of commander in chief of the army was transferred from Joffre to General R.-G. Nivelle. As for the military situation, the fighting strength of the British Army on the Western Front had grown to about 1,200,000 men and was still growing. That of the French Army had been increased by the incorporation of colonial troops to some 2,600,000, so that, including the Belgians, the Allies disposed an estimated 3,900,000 men against 2,500,000 Germans. To the Allies, these figures suggested an offensive on their part. Nivelle, who owed his appointment to the contrast between the brilliant success of his recent counterattacks at Verdun and the meagre results of Joffre’s strategy of attrition, was deeply imbued with the optimism of which experience was by now curing Joffre. He also had ideas of national glory and, accordingly, modified plans made by Joffre in such a way as to assign to the French Army the determinant role in the offensive that, it was calculated, must decide the issue on the Western Front in 1917. Nivelle’s plan in its final stage was that the British should make preparatory attacks not only north of the wilderness of the old Somme battlefields but also south of them (in the sector previously held by French troops); that these preparatory attacks should attract the German reserves; and, finally, that the French should launch the major offensive in Champagne (their forces in that sector having been strengthened both by new troops from the overseas colonies and by those transferred from the Somme). The tactics Nivelle planned to use were based on those he had employed so successfully at Verdun. But he placed an optimistic overreliance on his theory of combining “great violence with great mass,” which basically consisted of intense artillery bombardments followed by massive frontal attacks. Meanwhile, Ludendorff had foreseen a renewal of the Allied offensive on the Somme, and he used his time to frustrate Nivelle’s plans and to strengthen the German front in two different ways. First, the hitherto rather shallow defenses in Champagne were by mid-February reinforced with a third line, out of range of the French artillery. Second, Ludendorff decided to anticipate the attack by falling back to a new and immensely strong line of defense. This new line, called the Siegfriedstellung, or “Hindenburg Line,” was rapidly constructed across the base of the great salient formed by the German lines between Arras and Reims. From the German position east of Arras, the line ran southeastward and southward, passing west of Cambrai and Saint-Quentin to rejoin the old German line at Anizy (between Soissons and Laon). After a preliminary step backward on February 23, a massive withdrawal of all German troops from the westernmost bulges of the great salient to the new and shorter line was smoothly and quickly made on March 16. The major towns within the areas evacuated by the Germans (i.e., Bapaume, Péronne, Roye, Noyon, Chauny, and Coucy) were abandoned to the Allies, but the area was left as a desert, with roads mined, trees cut down, wells fouled, and houses demolished, the ruins being strewn with explosive booby traps. This baffling and unexpected German withdrawal dislocated Nivelle’s plan, but, unperturbed by warnings from all quarters about the changed situation, Nivelle insisted on carrying it out. The Battle of Arras, with which the British started the offensive on April 9, 1917, began well enough for the attackers, thanks to much-improved artillery methods and to a new poison gas shell that paralyzed the hostile artillery. Vimy Ridge, at the northern end of the 15-mile battlefront, fell to the Canadian Corps, but the exploitation of this success was frustrated by the congestion of traffic in the British rear, and though the attack was continued until May 5, stiffer German resistance prevented exploitation of the advances made in the first five days. Nivelle’s own offensive in Champagne, launched on April 16 on the Aisne front from Vailly eastward toward Craonne and Reims, proved to be a fiasco. The attacking troops were trapped in a web of machine-gun fire, and by nightfall the French had advanced about 600 yards instead of the six miles anticipated in Nivelle’s program. Only on the wings was any appreciable progress achieved. The results compared favourably with Joffre’s offensives, as some 28,000 German prisoners were taken at a cost to the French of just under 120,000 casualties. But the effect on French morale was worse, because Nivelle’s fantastic predictions of the offensive’s success were more widely known than Joffre’s had ever been. With the collapse of Nivelle’s plan, his fortunes were buried in the ruins, and after some face-saving delay he was superseded as commander in chief by Pétain on May 15, 1917. This change was made too late to avert a more harmful sequel, for in late April a mutiny broke out among the French infantry and spread until 16 French army corps were affected. The authorities chose to ascribe it to seditious propaganda, but the mutinous outbreaks always occurred when exhausted troops were ordered back into the line, and they signaled their grievances by such significant cries as: “We’ll defend the trenches, but we won’t attack.” Pétain restored tranquillity by meeting the just grievances of the troops; his reputation for sober judgment restored the troops’ confidence in their leaders, and he made it clear that he would avoid future reckless attacks on the German lines. But the military strength of France could never be fully restored during the war. Pétain insisted that the only rational strategy was to keep to the defensive until new factors had changed the conditions sufficiently to justify taking the offensive with a reasonable hope of success. His constant advice was: “We must wait for the Americans and the tanks.” Tanks were now being belatedly built in large numbers, and this emphasis on them showed a dawning recognition that machine warfare had superseded mass infantry warfare. The U.S. entry into the war Dill Pickle Club poster Dill Pickle Club poster Poster advertising an antiwar dance (1918) sponsored by the Dill Pickle Club in Chicago. After the rupture of diplomatic relations with Germany on February 3, 1917, events pushed the United States inexorably along the road to war. Using his authority as commander in chief, Wilson on March 9 ordered the arming of American merchant ships so that they could defend themselves against U-boat attacks. German submarines sank three U.S. merchant ships during March 16–18 with heavy loss of life. Supported by his Cabinet, by most newspapers, and by a large segment of public opinion, Wilson made the decision on March 20 for the United States to declare war on Germany, and on March 21 he called Congress to meet in special session on April 2. He delivered a ringing war message to that body, and the war resolution was approved by the Senate on April 3 and by the House of Representatives on April 6. The presidential declaration of war followed immediately. Uncle Sam Uncle Sam Army recruiting poster featuring Uncle Sam, designed by James Montgomery Flagg, 1917. The entry of the United States was the turning point of the war, because it made the eventual defeat of Germany possible. It had been foreseen in 1916 that if the United States went to war, the Allies’ military effort against Germany would be upheld by U.S. supplies and by enormous extensions of credit. These expectations were amply and decisively fulfilled. The United States’ production of armaments was to meet not only its own needs but also France’s and Great Britain’s. In this sense, the American economic contribution alone was decisive. By April 1, 1917, the Allies had exhausted their means of paying for essential supplies from the United States, and it is difficult to see how they could have maintained the war effort if the United States had remained neutral. American loans to the Allies worth $7,000,000,000 between 1917 and the end of the war maintained the flow of U.S. arms and food across the Atlantic. World War I: U.S. Army recruits World War I: U.S. Army recruits U.S. Army recruits at Camp Pike, Arkansas, in 1918, following the United States' entry into World War I in April 1917. The American military contribution was as important as the economic one. A system of conscription was introduced by the Selective Service Act of May 18, 1917, but many months were required for the raising, training, and dispatch to Europe of an expeditionary force. There were still only 85,000 U.S. troops in France when the Germans launched their last great offensive in March 1918; but there were 1,200,000 there by the following September. The U.S. commander in Europe was General John J. Pershing. World War I World War I Woman working in an American airplane factory during World War I, 1917. The U.S. Navy was the second largest in the world when America entered the war in 1917. The Navy soon abandoned its plans for the construction of battleships and instead concentrated on building the destroyers and submarine chasers so desperately needed to protect Allied shipping from the U-boats. By July 1917 there were already 35 U.S. destroyers stationed at Queenstown (Cobh) on the coast of Ireland—enough to supplement British destroyers for a really effective transatlantic convoy system. By the end of the war there were more than 380 U.S. craft stationed overseas. The U.S. declaration of war also set an example to other states in the Western Hemisphere. Cuba, Panama, Haiti, Brazil, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Honduras were all at war with Germany by the end of July 1918, while the Dominican Republic, Peru, Uruguay, and Ecuador contented themselves with the severance of relations. The Russian revolutions and the Eastern Front, March 1917–March 1918 Russian Revolution Russian Revolution Demonstrators gathering before the Winter Palace in Petrograd (St. Petersburg) in January 1917, prior to the February Revolution. The Russian Revolution of March (February, old style) 1917 put an end to the autocratic monarchy of imperial Russia and replaced it with a provisional government. But the latter’s authority was at once contested by soviets, or “councils of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies,” who claimed to represent the masses of the people and so to be the rightful conductors of the revolution. The March Revolution was an event of tremendous magnitude. Militarily it appeared to the western Allies as a disaster and to the Central Powers as a golden opportunity. The Russian Army remained in the field against the Central Powers, but its spirit was broken, and the Russian people were utterly tired of a war that the imperial regime for its own reasons had undertaken without being morally or materially prepared for it. The Russian Army had been poorly armed, poorly supplied, poorly trained, and poorly commanded and had suffered a long series of defeats. The soviets’ propaganda—including the notorious Order No. 1 of the Petrograd Soviet (March 14, 1917), which called for committees of soldiers and sailors to take control of their units’ arms and to ignore any opposition from their officers—served to subvert the remnants of discipline in troops who were already deeply demoralized. But the leaders of the provisional government foresaw that a German victory in the war would bode ill for Russia in the future, and they were also conscious of their nation’s obligations toward the western Allies. A.F. Kerensky, minister of war from May 1917, thought that a victorious offensive would enhance the new government’s authority, besides relieving pressure on the Western Front. The offensive, however, which General L.G. Kornilov launched against the Austrians in eastern Galicia on July 1, 1917, was brought to a sudden halt by German reinforcements after 10 days of spectacular advances, and it turned into a catastrophic rout in the next three weeks. By October the advancing Germans had won control of most of Latvia and of the approaches to the Gulf of Finland. Meanwhile, anarchy was spreading over Russia. The numerous non-Russian peoples of the former empire were one after another claiming autonomy or independence from Russia—whether spontaneously or at the prompting of the Germans in occupation of their countries. Finns, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, and Poles were, by the end of 1917, all in various stages of the dissidence from which the independent states of the postwar period were to emerge; and, at the same time, Ukrainians, Georgians, Armenians, and Azerbaijanis were no less active in their own nationalist movements. The provisional government’s authority and influence were rapidly fading away in Russia proper during the late summer and autumn of 1917. The Bolshevik Revolution of November (October, O.S.) 1917 overthrew the provisional government and brought to power the Marxist Bolsheviks under the leadership of Vladimir I. Lenin. The Bolshevik Revolution spelled the end of Russia’s participation in the war. Lenin’s decree on land, of November 8, undermined the Eastern Front by provoking a homeward rush of soldiers anxious to profit from the expropriation of their former landlords. On November 8, likewise, Lenin issued his decree on peace, which offered negotiations to all belligerents but precluded annexations and indemnities and stipulated a right of self-determination for all peoples concerned. Finally, on November 26, the new Bolshevik government unilaterally ordered a cessation of hostilities both against the Central Powers and against the Turks. An armistice between Lenin’s Russia and the Central Powers was signed at Brest-Litovsk on December 15, 1917. The ensuing peace negotiations were complicated: on the one hand, Germany wanted peace in the east in order to be free to transfer troops thence to the Western Front, but Germany was at the same time concerned to exploit the principle of national self-determination in order to transfer as much territory as possible into its own safe orbit from that of revolutionary Russia. On the other hand, the Bolsheviks wanted peace in order to be free to consolidate their regime in the east with a view to being able to extend it westward as soon as the time should be ripe. When the Germans, despite the armistice, invaded Ukraine to cooperate with the Ukrainian nationalists against the Bolsheviks there and furthermore resumed their advance in the Baltic countries and in Belorussia, Lenin rejected his colleague Leon Trotsky’s stopgap policy (“neither peace nor war”) and accepted Germany’s terms in order to save the Bolshevik Revolution. By the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (March 3, 1918), Soviet Russia recognized Finland and Ukraine as independent; renounced control over Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and most of Belorussia; and ceded Kars, Ardahan, and Batumi to Turkey. Greek affairs Greece’s attitude toward the war was long uncertain: whereas King Constantine I and the general staff stood for neutrality, Eleuthérios Venizélos, leader of the Liberal Party, favoured the Allied cause. As prime minister from 1910, Venizélos wanted Greece to participate in the Allies’ Dardanelles enterprise against Turkey in 1915, but his arguments were overruled by the general staff. The Allies occupied Lemnos and Lesbos regardless of Greece’s neutrality. Constantine dismissed Venizélos from office twice in 1915, but Venizélos still commanded a majority in Parliament. The Bulgarians’ occupation of Greek Macedonia in summer 1916 provoked another political crisis. Venizélos left Athens for Crete late in September, set up a government of his own there, and transferred it early in October to Salonika. On November 27 it declared war on Germany and Bulgaria. Finally, the Allies, on June 11, 1917, deposed King Constantine. Venizélos then returned to Athens to head a reunified Greek government, which on June 27 declared war on the Central Powers. Caporetto On the Italian front, Cadorna’s 10th Battle of the Isonzo in May–June 1917 won very little ground; but his 11th, from August 17 to September 12, during which General Luigi Capello’s 2nd Army captured much of the Bainsizza Plateau (Banjška Planota), north of Gorizia, strained Austrian resistance very severely. To avert an Austrian collapse, Ludendorff decided that the Austrians must take the offensive against Italy and that he could, with difficulty, lend them six German divisions for that purpose. The offensive was boldly planned, very ably organized, and well executed. While two Austrian armies, under General Svetozar Borojević von Bojna, attacked the eastern end of the Italians’ Venetian salient on the Bainsizza Plateau and on the low ground near the Adriatic shore, the German 14th Army, comprising the six German divisions and nine Austrian ones under Otto von Below, with Konrad Krafft von Dellmensingen as his chief of staff, on October 24, 1917, began to force its way over the barrier of the Julian Alps at the northeastern corner of the Venetian salient, with Caporetto approximately opposite the middle point of the line. The Italians, completely surprised by this thrust, which threatened their forces both to the north and to the south, fell back in confusion: Below’s van reached Udine, the former site of the Italian general headquarters, by October 28 and was on the Tagliamento River by October 31. Below’s success had far exceeded the hopes of the planners of the offensive, and the Germans could not exploit their speedy advance as effectively as they wished. Cadorna, with his centre shattered, managed by precipitate retreat to save the wings of his army and was able, by November 9, to rally his remaining 300,000 troops behind the Piave River, north of Venice. The Italians had sustained about 500,000 casualties, and 250,000 more had been taken prisoner. General Armando Diaz was then appointed commander in chief in Cadorna’s place. The Italians managed to hold the Piave front against direct assaults and against attempts to turn its left flank by an advance from the Trentino. The Italians’ defense was helped by British and French reinforcements that had been rushed to Italy when the collapse began. A conference of the military and political leaders of the Allies was held at Rapallo in November, and out of this conference there sprang the joint Supreme War Council at Versailles, and ultimately a unified military command. Mesopotamia, summer 1916–winter 1917 The British forces in Mesopotamia, neglected hitherto and discouraged by the disaster at al-Kūt (see above Mesopotamia, 1914–April 1916), received better attention from London in the second half of 1916; and Sir Frederick Stanley Maude, who became commander in chief in August, did so much to restore their morale that by December he was ready to undertake the recapture of al-Kūt as a first step toward capturing Baghdad. By a series of outflanking movements, the British made their way gradually and methodically up the Tigris, compelling the Turks to extend their defenses upstream. When the final blow at al-Kūt was delivered by a frontal attack on February 22, 1917, British forces were already crossing the river from the west bank behind the town; but though al-Kūt fell two days later most of the Turkish garrison extricated itself from the threatened encirclement. Unable to hold a new line on the Diyālā River, the Turkish commander, Kâzim Karabekir, evacuated Baghdad, which the British entered on March 11. In September the British position in Baghdad was definitively secured by the capture of ar-Ramādī, on the Euphrates about 60 miles to the west; and early in November the main Turkish force in Mesopotamia was driven from Tikrīt, on the Tigris midway between Baghdad and Mosul. Maude, having within a year changed the Mesopotamian scene from one of despair to one of victory, died of cholera on November 18, 1917. His successor in command was Sir William Marshall. Palestine, autumn 1917 Having assumed command in Egypt (see above The Egyptian frontiers, 1915–July 1917), Allenby transferred his headquarters from Cairo to the Palestinian front and devoted the summer of 1917 to preparing a serious offensive against the Turks. On the Turkish side, Falkenhayn, now in command at Aleppo, was at this time himself planning a drive into the Sinai Peninsula for the autumn, but the British were able to strike first. The Turkish front in southern Palestine extended from Gaza, on the coast, southeastward to Abu Hureira (Tel Haror) and thence to the stronghold of Beersheba. To disguise his real intention of achieving a breakthrough at Abu Hureira, for which, however, the capture of Beersheba was obviously prerequisite, Allenby began his operation with a heavy bombardment of Gaza from October 20 onward. When Beersheba had been seized by converging movements on October 31, a feint attack on Gaza was launched next day to draw the Turkish reserves thither. Then, the main attack, delivered on November 6, broke through the weakened defenses at Abu Hureira and into the plain of Philistia. Falkenhayn had attempted a counterstroke at Beersheba, but the collapse of the Turkish centre necessitated a general retreat. By November 14 the Turkish forces were split in two divergent groups, the port of Jaffa was taken, and Allenby wheeled his main force to the right for an advance inland on Jerusalem. On December 9 the British occupied Jerusalem. The Western Front, June–December 1917 Pétain’s decision to remain temporarily on the defensive after Nivelle’s failure gave Haig the opportunity to fulfill his desire for a British offensive in Flanders. He took the first step on June 7, 1917, with a long-prepared attack on the Messines Ridge, north of Armentières, on the southern flank of his Ypres salient. This attack by General Sir Herbert Plumer’s 2nd Army proved an almost complete success; it owed much to the surprise effect of 19 huge mines simultaneously fired after having been placed at the end of long tunnels under the German front lines. The capture of the ridge inflated Haig’s confidence; and, though General Sir Hubert Gough, in command of the 5th Army, advocated a step-by-step method for the offensive, Haig committed himself to Plumer’s view that they “go all out” for an early breakthrough. Haig disregarded the well-founded forecast that, from the beginning of August, rain would be turning the Flanders countryside into an almost impassable swamp. The Germans, meanwhile, were well aware that an offensive was coming from the Ypres salient: the flatness of the plain prevented any concealment of Haig’s preparations, and a fortnight’s intensive bombardment (4,500,000 shells from 3,000 guns) served to underline the obvious—without, however, destroying the German machine gunners’ concrete pillboxes. Thus, when the Third Battle of Ypres was begun, on July 31, only the left wing’s objectives were achieved: on the crucial right wing the attack was a failure. Four days later, the ground was already swampy. When the attack was resumed on August 16, very little more was won, but Haig was still determined to persist in his offensive. Between September 20 and October 4, thanks to an improvement in the weather, the infantry was able to advance into positions cleared by bombardment, but no farther. Haig launched another futile attack on October 12, followed by three more attacks, scarcely more successful, in the last 10 days of October. At last, on November 6, when his troops advanced a very short distance and occupied the ruins of Passchendaele (Passendale), barely five miles beyond the starting point of his offensive, Haig felt that enough had been done. Having prophesied a decisive success without “heavy losses,” he had lost 325,000 men and inflicted no comparable damage on the Germans. Pétain, less pretentious and merely testing what might be done with his rehabilitated French Army, had at least as much to show for himself as Haig. In August the French 2nd Army under General M.-L.-A. Guillaumat fought the last battle of Verdun, winning back all the remainder of what had been lost to the Germans in 1916. In October General P.-A.-M. Maistre’s 10th Army, in the Battle of Malmaison, took the ridge of the Chemin des Dames, north of the Aisne to the east of Soissons, where the front in Champagne joined the front in Picardy south of the Somme. The British, at least, closed the year’s campaign with an operation of some significance for the future. When the offensive from Ypres died out in the Flanders mud, they looked again at their tanks, of which they now had a considerable force but which they could hardly use profitably in the swamps. A Tank Corps officer, Colonel J.F.C. Fuller, had already suggested a large-scale raid on the front southwest of Cambrai, where a swarm of tanks, unannounced by any preparatory bombardment, could be released across the rolling downland against the German trenches. This comparatively modest scheme might have been wholly successful if left unchanged, but the British command transformed it: Sir Julian Byng’s 3rd Army was to actually try to capture Cambrai and to push on toward Valenciennes. On November 20, therefore, the attack was launched, with 324 tanks leading Byng’s six divisions. The first massed assault of tanks in history took the Germans wholly by surprise, and the British achieved a far deeper penetration and at less cost than in any of their past offensives. Unfortunately, however, all of Byng’s troops and tanks had been thrown into the first blow, and, as he was not reinforced in time, the advance came to a halt several miles short of Cambrai. A German counterstroke, on November 30, broke through on the southern flank of the new British salient and threatened Byng’s whole army with disaster before being checked by a further British counterattack. In the end, three-quarters of the ground that the British had won was reoccupied by the Germans. Even so, the Battle of Cambrai had proved that surprise and the tank in combination could unlock the trench barrier. The Far East China’s entry into the war in 1917 on the side of the Allies was motivated not by any grievance against the Central Powers but by the Peking government’s fear lest Japan, a belligerent since 1914, should monopolize the sympathies of the Allies and of the United States when Far Eastern affairs came up for settlement after the war. Accordingly, in March 1917 the Peking government severed its relations with Germany; and on August 14 China declared war not only on Germany but also on the western Allies’ other enemy, Austria-Hungary. China’s contribution to the Allied war effort was to prove negligible in practical effects, however. Naval operations, 1917–18 Since Germany’s previous restrictions of its submarine warfare had been motivated by fear of provoking the United States into war, the U.S. declaration of war in April 1917 removed any reason for the Germans to retreat from their already declared policy of unrestricted warfare. Consequently, the U-boats, having sunk 181 ships in January, 259 in February, and 325 in March, sank 430 in April. The April sinkings represented 852,000 gross tons, to be compared both with the 600,000 postulated by the German strategists as their monthly target and with the 700,000 that the British in March had pessimistically foretold for June. The Germans had calculated that if the world’s merchant shipping could be sunk at the monthly rate of 600,000 tons, the Allies, being unable to build new merchant ships fast enough to replace those lost, could not carry on the war for more than five months. At the same time, the Germans, who had 111 U-boats operational when the unrestricted campaign began, had embarked on an extensive building program that, when weighed against their current losses of one or two U-boats per month, promised a substantial net increase in the U-boats’ numbers. During April, one in every four of the merchant ships that sailed from British ports was destined to be sunk, and by the end of May the quantity of shipping available to carry the vital foodstuffs and munitions to Great Britain had been reduced to only 6,000,000 tons. The April total, however, proved to be a peak figure—primarily because the Allies at last adopted the convoy system for the protection of merchant ships. Previously, a ship bound for one of the Allies’ ports had set sail by itself as soon as it was loaded. The sea was thus dotted with single and unprotected merchant ships, and a scouting U-boat could rely on several targets coming into its range in the course of a cruise. The convoy system remedied this by having groups of merchant ships sail within a protective ring of destroyers and other naval escorts. It was logistically possible and economically worthwhile to provide this kind of escort for a group of ships. Furthermore, the combination of convoy and escort would force the U-boat to risk the possibility of a counterattack in order to sink the merchant ships, thus giving the Allies a prospect of reducing the U-boats’ numbers. Despite the manifest and seemingly overwhelming benefits of the convoy system, the idea was novel and, like any untried system, met with powerful opposition from within the military. It was only in the face of extreme necessity and under great pressure from Lloyd George that the system was tried, more or less as a last resort. The first convoy sailed from Gibraltar to Great Britain on May 10, 1917; the first from the United States sailed later in May; ships using the South Atlantic sailed in convoy from July 22. During the later months of 1917 the use of convoys caused an abrupt fall in the sinkings by U-boats: 500,500 tons in May, 300,200 in September, and only about 200,600 in November. The convoy system was so quickly vindicated that in August it was extended to shipping outward-bound from Great Britain. The Germans themselves soon observed that the British had grasped the principles of antisubmarine warfare, and that sailing ships in convoys considerably reduced the opportunities for attack. Apart from the convoys, the Allies improved their antisubmarine technology (hydrophones, depth charges, etc.) and extended their minefields. In 1918, moreover, Admiral Sir Roger Keyes, in command at Dover, set up a system whereby the English Channel was patrolled by surface craft with searchlights, so that U-boats passing through it had to submerge themselves to depths at which they were liable to strike the mines that had been laid for them. Subsequently, most of the U-boats renounced the Channel as a way into the Atlantic and instead took the passage north of Great Britain, thus losing precious fuel and time before reaching the heavily traveled sea lanes of the western approaches to Great Britain. In the summer of 1918, U.S. minelayers laid more than 60,000 mines (13,000 of them British) in a wide belt across 180 miles of the North Sea between Scotland and Norway, so as to obstruct the U-boats’ only access from Germany to the Atlantic other than the closely guarded Channel. The cumulative effect of all these measures was the gradual containment and ultimately the defeat of the U-boat campaign, which never again achieved the success of April 1917. While sinkings by submarines, after that month, steadily fell, the losses of U-boats showed a slow but steady rise, and more than 40 were destroyed in the first six months of 1918. At the same time the replacement of merchant vessels in the building program improved steadily, until it eventually far outstripped losses. In October 1918, for example, 511,000 tons of new Allied merchant ships were launched, while only 118,559 tons were lost. Air warfare At the start of the war the land and sea forces used the aircraft put at their disposal primarily for reconnaissance, and air fighting began as the exchange of shots from small arms between enemy airmen meeting one another in the course of reconnoitering. Fighter aircraft armed with machine guns, however, made their appearance in 1915. Tactical bombing and the bombing of enemy air bases were also gradually introduced at this time. Contact patrolling, with aircraft giving immediate support to infantry, was developed in 1916. Strategic bombing, on the other hand, was initiated early enough: British aircraft from Dunkirk bombed Cologne, Düsseldorf, and Friedrichshafen in the autumn of 1914, their main objective being the sheds of the German dirigible airships, or Zeppelins; and raids by German airplanes or seaplanes on English towns in December 1914 heralded a great Zeppelin offensive sustained with increasing intensity from January 1915 to September 1916 (London was first bombed in the night of May 31–June 1, 1915). In October 1916 the British, in turn, began a more systematic offensive, from eastern France, against industrial targets in southwestern Germany. German Gotha G.III German Gotha G.III German Gotha G.III long-range twin-engine bomber airplane, c. 1917. While the British directed much of their new bombing strength to attacks on the bases of the U-boats, the Germans used theirs largely to continue the offensive against the towns of southeastern England. On June 13, 1917, in daylight, 14 German bombers dropped 118 high explosive bombs on London and returned home safely. This lesson and that of subsequent raids by the German Gotha bombers made the British think more seriously about strategic bombing and about the need for an air force independent of the other fighting services. The Royal Air Force (RAF), the world’s first separate air service, was brought into active existence by a series of measures taken between October 1917 and June 1918. Peace moves, March 1917–September 1918 Until the end of 1916, the pursuit of peace was confined to individuals and to small groups. In the following months it began to acquire a broad popular backing. Semi-starvation in towns, mutinies in the armies, and casualty lists that seemed to have no end made more and more people question the need and the wisdom of continuing the war. Francis Joseph, Austria’s venerable old emperor, died on November 21, 1916. The new emperor, Charles I, and his foreign minister, Graf Ottokar Czernin, initiated peace moves in the spring of 1917 but unfortunately did not concert their diplomatic efforts, and the channels of negotiation they opened between Austria-Hungary and the Allies had dried up by that summer. In Germany, Matthias Erzberger, a Roman Catholic member of the Reichstag, had, on July 6, 1917, proposed that territorial annexations be renounced in order to facilitate a negotiated peace. During the ensuing debates Bethmann Hollweg resigned the office of chancellor, and the emperor William II appointed the next chancellor, Ludendorff’s nominee Georg Michaelis, without consulting the Reichstag. The Reichstag, offended, proceeded to pass its Friedensresolution, or “peace resolution,” of July 19 by 212 votes. The peace resolution was a string of innocuous phrases expressing Germany’s desire for peace but without a clear renunciation of annexations or indemnities. The Allies took almost no notice of it. Erzberger’s proposal of July 6 had been intended to pave the way for Pope Benedict XV’s forthcoming note to the belligerents of both camps. Dated August 1, 1917, this note advocated a German withdrawal from Belgium and from France, the Allies’ withdrawal from the German colonies, and the restoration not only of Serbia, Montenegro, and Romania but also of Poland to independence. France and Great Britain declined to give an express reply pending Germany’s statement of its attitude about Belgium, on which Germany avoided committing itself. An unofficial peace move was made in London: on November 29, 1917, the Daily Telegraph published a letter from Lord Lansdowne suggesting negotiations on the basis of the status quo antebellum. Lloyd George rejected Lansdowne’s theses on December 14. The U.S. president Woodrow Wilson made himself the chief formulator and spokesman of the war aims of the Allies and the United States. The first nine months of 1918 saw Wilson’s famous series of pronouncements on his war aims: the Fourteen Points (January 8), the “Four Principles” (February 11), the “Four Ends” (July 4), and the “Five Particulars” (September 27). Most important, not least because of Germany’s deluded reliance on them in its eventual suing for peace, were the Fourteen Points: (1) open covenants of peace and the renunciation of secret diplomacy, (2) freedom of navigation on the high seas in wartime as well as peace, (3) the maximum possible freedom of trade, (4) a guaranteed reduction of armaments, (5) an impartial colonial settlement accommodating not only the colonialist powers but also the peoples of the colonies, (6) the evacuation of all Russian territory and respect for Russia’s right of self-determination, (7) the complete restoration of Belgium, (8) a complete German withdrawal from France and satisfaction for France about Alsace-Lorraine, (9) a readjustment of Italy’s frontiers on an ethnic basis, (10) an open prospect of autonomy for the peoples of Austria-Hungary, (11) the restoration of Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro, with free access to the sea for Serbia and international guarantees of the Balkan states’ independence and integrity, (12) the prospect of autonomy for non-Turkish peoples of the Ottoman Empire and the unrestricted opening of the Straits, but secure sovereignty for the Turks in their own areas, (13) an independent Poland with access to the sea and under international guarantee, and (14) “a general association of nations,” to guarantee the independence and integrity of all states, great and small. The three subsequent groups of pronouncements mainly consisted of idealistic expansions of themes implicit in the Fourteen Points, with increasing emphasis on the wishes of subject populations; but the first of the “Four Ends” was that every arbitrary power capable by itself of disturbing world peace should be rendered innocuous. Celebrating the end of World War I Celebrating the end of World War I Crowds on Wall Street celebrating the end of World War I, New York City, 1918. Wilson’s peace campaign was a significant factor in the collapse of the will to fight of the German people and the decision of the German government to sue for peace in October 1918. Indeed, the Germans conducted their preliminary peace talks exclusively with Wilson. And the Armistice, when it came on November 11, 1918, was formally based upon the Fourteen Points and additional Wilsonian pronouncements, with two reservations by the British and French relating to freedom of the seas and reparations. The last offensives and the Allies’ victory The Western Front, March–September 1918 As the German strength on the Western Front was being steadily increased by the transfer of divisions from the Eastern Front (where they were no longer needed since Russia had withdrawn from the war), the Allies’ main problem was how to withstand an imminent German offensive pending the arrival of massive reinforcements from the United States. Eventually Pétain persuaded the reluctant Haig that the British with 60 divisions should extend their sector of the front from 100 to 125 miles as compared with the 325 miles to be held by the French with approximately 100 divisions. Haig thus devoted 46 of his divisions to the front from the Channel to Gouzeaucourt (southwest of German-held Cambrai) and 14 to the remaining third of the front from Gouzeaucourt past German-held Saint-Quentin to the Oise River. On the German side, between November 1, 1917, and March 21, 1918, the German divisions on the Western Front were increased from 146 to 192, the troops being drawn from Russia, Galicia, and Italy. By these means the German armies in the west were reinforced by a total of about 570,000 men. Ludendorff’s interest was to strike from his temporary position of strength—before the arrival of the major U.S. contingents—and at the same time to ensure that his German offensive should not fail for the same reasons as the Allies’ offensives of the past three years. Accordingly he formed an offensive strategy based on taking the tactical line of least resistance. The main German attacks would begin with brief but extremely intense artillery bombardments using a high proportion of poison gas and smoke shells. These would incapacitate the Allies’ forward trenches and machine-gun emplacements and would obscure their observation posts. Then a second and lighter artillery barrage would begin to creep forward over the Allied trenches at a walking pace (in order to keep the enemy under fire), with the masses of German assault infantry advancing as closely as possible behind it. The key to the new tactics was that the assault infantry would bypass machine-gun nests and other points of strong resistance instead of waiting, as had been the previous practice on both sides, for reinforcements to mop up the obstructions before continuing the advance. The Germans would instead continue to advance in the direction of the least enemy resistance. The mobility of the German advance would thus be assured, and its deep infiltration would result in large amounts of territory being taken. Such tactics demanded exceptionally fit and disciplined troops and a high level of training. Ludendorff accordingly drew the best troops from all the Western Front forces at his disposal and formed them into elite shock divisions. The troops were systematically trained in the new tactics, and every effort was also made to conceal the actual areas at which the German main attacks would be made. Ludendorff’s main attack was to be on the weakest sector of the Allies’ front, the 47 miles between Arras and La Fère (on the Oise). Two German armies, the 17th and the 2nd, were to break through the front between Arras and Saint-Quentin, north of the Somme, and then wheel right so as to force most of the British back toward the Channel, while the 18th Army, between the Somme and the Oise, protected the left flank of the advance against counterattack from the south. Code-named “Michael,” this offensive was to be supplemented by three other attacks: “St. George I” against the British on the Lys River south of Armentières; “St. George II” against the British again between Armentières and Ypres; and “Blücher” against the French in Champagne. It was finally decided to use 62 divisions in the main attack, “Michael.” Preceded by an artillery bombardment using 6,000 guns, “Michael” was launched on March 21, 1918, and was helped by an early morning fog that hid the German advance from the Allied observation posts. The attack, which is known as the Second Battle of the Somme or the Battle of Saint-Quentin, took the British altogether by surprise, but it did not develop as Ludendorff had foreseen. While the 18th Army under von Hutier achieved a complete breakthrough south of the Somme, the major attack to the north was held up, mainly by the British concentration of strength at Arras. For a whole week Ludendorff, in violation of his new tactical emphasis, vainly persisted in trying to carry out his original plan instead of exploiting the unexpected success of the 18th Army, though the latter had advanced more than 40 miles westward and had reached Montdidier by March 27. At last, however, the main effort of the Germans was converted into a drive toward Amiens, which began in force on March 30. By that time the Allies had recovered from their initial dismay, and French reserves were coming up to the British line. The German drive was halted east of Amiens and so too was a renewed attack on April 4. Ludendorff then suspended his Somme offensive. This offensive had yielded the largest territorial gains of any operation on the Western Front since the First Battle of the Marne in September 1914. The Allies’ cause at least derived one overdue benefit from the collapse of one-third of the British front: at Haig’s own suggestion, Foch was on March 26 appointed to coordinate the Allies’ military operations; and on April 14 he was named commander in chief of the Allied armies. Previously, Haig had resisted the idea of a generalissimo. On April 9 the Germans began “St. George I” with an attack on the extreme northern front between Armentières and the canal of La Bassée, their aim being to advance across the Lys River toward Hazebrouck. Such was the initial success of this attack that “St. George II” was launched the next day, with the capture of Kemmel Hill (Kemmelberg), southwest of Ypres, as its first objective. Armentières fell, and Ludendorff came to think for a time that this Battle of the Lys might be turned into a major effort. The British, however, after being driven back 10 miles, halted the Germans short of Hazebrouck. French reinforcements began to come up; and, when the Germans had taken Kemmel Hill (April 25), Ludendorff decided to suspend exploitation of the advance, for fear of a counterstroke against his front’s new bulge. Learn how U.S. troops helped Allied forces push Germany out of France and force an armistice Learn how U.S. troops helped Allied forces push Germany out of France and force an armistice The course of the war quickly changed once the American First Army began fighting in France. See all videos for this article Thus far Ludendorff had fallen short of strategic results, but he could claim huge tactical successes—the British casualties alone amounted to more than 300,000. Ten British divisions had to be broken up temporarily, while the German strength mounted to 208 divisions, of which 80 were still in reserve. A restoration of the balance, however, was now in sight. A dozen U.S. divisions had arrived in France, and great efforts were being made to swell the stream. Furthermore, Pershing, the U.S. commander, had placed his troops at Foch’s disposal for use wherever required. Ludendorff finally launched “Blücher” on May 27, on a front extending from Coucy, north of Soissons, eastward toward Reims. The Germans, with 15 divisions, suddenly attacked the seven French and British divisions opposing them, swarmed over the ridge of the Chemin des Dames and across the Aisne River, and, by May 30, were on the Marne, between Château-Thierry and Dormans. Once again the attack’s initial success went far beyond Ludendorff’s expectation or intention; and, when the Germans tried to push westward against the right flank of the Allies’ Compiègne salient, which was sandwiched between the Germans’ Amiens and Champagne bulges, they were checked by counterattacks, which included one sustained for a fortnight from June 6 by U.S. divisions at Belleau Wood (Bois de Belleau). An attack from Noyon, against the left flank of the Compiègne salient, came too late (June 9). Overtaken by the inordinate fruition of his own offensives, Ludendorff paused for a month’s recuperation. The tactical success of his own blows had been his undoing; yielding to their influence, he had pressed each too far and too long, using up his own reserves and causing an undue interval between blows. He had driven three great wedges into the Allied lines, but none had penetrated far enough to sever a vital rail artery, and this strategic failure left the Germans with a front whose several bulges invited flanking counterstrokes. Moreover, Ludendorff had used up many of his shock troops in the attacks, and the remaining troops, though strong in numbers, were relatively lower in quality. The Germans were to end up sustaining a total of 800,000 casualties in their great 1918 offensives. Meanwhile, the Allies were now receiving U.S. troops at the rate of 300,000 men per month. Marne, Battle of the Marne, Battle of the Engineers of the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division preparing to cross the Marne River near Mézy, France, July 1918. The next German offensive, which opened the Second Battle of the Marne, was launched in Champagne on July 15. It came to nothing: a German thrust from the front east of Reims toward Châlons-sur-Marne was frustrated by the “elastic defense” that Pétain had recently been prescribing but that the local commanders had failed to practice against the offensive of May 27. A drive from Dormans, on the left flank of the Germans’ huge Soissons–Reims bulge, across the Marne toward Épernay simply made the Germans’ situation more precarious when Foch’s long-prepared counterstroke was launched on July 18. In this great counterstroke one of Foch’s armies assailed the Germans’ Champagne bulge from the west, another from the southwest, one more from the south, and a fourth from the vicinity of Reims. Masses of light tanks—a weapon on which Ludendorff had placed little reliance, preferring gas instead in his plans for the year—played a vital part in forcing the Germans into a hasty retreat. By August 2 the French had pushed the Champagne front back to a line following the Vesle River from Reims and then along the Aisne to a point west of Soissons. Having recovered the initiative, the Allies were determined not to lose it, and for their next blow they chose again the front north and south of the Somme. The British 4th Army, including Australian and Canadian forces, with 450 tanks, struck the Germans with maximum surprise on August 8, 1918. Overwhelming the German forward divisions, who had failed to entrench themselves adequately since their recent occupation of the “Michael” bulge, the 4th Army advanced steadily for four days, taking 21,000 prisoners and inflicting as many or more casualties at the cost of only about 20,000 casualties to itself, and halting only when it reached the desolation of the old battlefields of 1916. Several German divisions simply collapsed in the face of the offensive, their troops either fleeing or surrendering. The Battle of Amiens was thus a striking material and moral success for the Allies. Ludendorff put it differently: “August 8 was the black day of the German Army in the history of the war.…It put the decline of our fighting power beyond all doubt.…The war must be ended.” He informed Emperor William II and Germany’s political chiefs that peace negotiations should be opened before the situation became worse, as it must. The conclusions reached at a German Crown Council held at Spa were that “We can no longer hope to break the war-will of our enemies by military operations,” and “the objects of our strategy must be to paralyse the enemy’s war-will gradually by a strategic defensive.” In other words, the German high command had abandoned hope of victory or even of holding their gains and hoped only to avoid surrender. Meanwhile, the French had retaken Montdidier and were thrusting toward Lassigny (between Roye and Noyon); and on August 17 they began a new drive from the Compiègne salient south of Noyon. Then, in the fourth week of August, two more British armies went into action on the Arras–Albert sector of the front, the one advancing directly eastward on Bapaume, the other operating farther to the north. From then on Foch delivered a series of hammer blows along the length of the German front, launching a series of rapid attacks at different points, each broken off as soon as its initial impetus waned, and all close enough in time to attract German reserves, which consequently were unavailable to defend against the next Allied attack along a different part of the front. By the early days of September the Germans were back where they had been before March 1918—behind the Hindenburg Line. The Allies’ recovery was consummated by the first feat executed by Pershing’s U.S. forces as an independent army (hitherto the U.S. divisions in France had fought only in support of the major French or British units): the U.S. 1st Army on September 12 erased the triangular Saint-Mihiel salient that the Germans had been occupying since 1914 (between Verdun and Nancy). The clear evidence of the Germans’ decline decided Foch to seek victory in the coming autumn of 1918 instead of postponing the attempt until 1919. All the Allied armies in the west were to combine in a simultaneous offensive. Other developments in 1918 Czechs, Yugoslavs, and Poles Something must now be said about the growth of the national movements, which, under the eventual protection of the Allies, were to result in the foundation of new states or the resurrection of long-defunct ones at the end of the war. There were three such movements: that of the Czechs, with the more backward Slovaks in tow; that of the South Slavs, or Yugoslavs (Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes); and that of the Poles. The Czech country, namely Bohemia and Moravia, belonged in 1914 to the Austrian half of the Habsburg monarchy, the Slovak to the Hungarian half. The Yugoslavs had already been represented in 1914 by two independent kingdoms, Serbia and Montenegro, but they were also predominantly numerous in territories still under Habsburg rule: Serbs in Bosnia and Hercegovina (an Austro-Hungarian condominium) and in Dalmatia (an Austrian possession); Croats in Croatia (Hungarian), in Istria (Austrian), and in Dalmatia; Slovenes in Istria and in Illyria (Austrian likewise). Poland was divided into three parts: Germany had the north and the west as provinces of the Kingdom of Prussia; Austria had Galicia (including an ethnically Ukrainian extension to the east); Russia had the rest. The Czechs had long been restless under the Austrian regime, and one of their leading intellectual spokesmen, Tomáš Masaryk (in fact a Slovak), had already envisaged the carving of Czechoslovak and Yugoslav states out of Austria-Hungary in December 1914. In 1916 he and a fellow émigré, Edvard Beneš, based respectively in London and in Paris, organized a Czechoslovak National Council. The western Allies committed themselves to the Czechoslovak idea from 1917 onward, when Russia’s imminent defection from the war made them ready to exploit any means at hand for the disabling of Austria-Hungary; and Wilson’s sympathy was implicit in his successive peace pronouncements of 1918. For the South Slavs of Austria-Hungary the Yugoslav Committee, with representatives in Paris and in London, was founded in April 1915. On July 20, 1917, this committee and the Serbian government in exile made the joint Corfu Declaration forecasting a South Slav state to comprise Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. The Polish nationalist leaders in the first years of the war were uncertain whether to rely on the Central Powers or on the Allies for a restoration of Poland’s independence. So long as the western Allies hesitated to encourage Polish nationalism for fear of offending imperial Russia, the Central Powers seemed to be the most likely sponsors; and Austria at least allowed Józef Piłsudski, from 1914, to organize his volunteer Polish legions to serve with Austrian forces against the Russians. Austria’s benevolence, however, was not reflected by Germany; and when the Two Emperors’ Manifesto of November 5, 1916, provided for the constitution of an independent Polish kingdom, it was clear that this kingdom would consist only of Polish territory conquered from Russia, not of any German or Austrian territory. When, after the March Revolution of 1917, the Russian provisional government had recognized Poland’s right to independence, Roman Dmowski’s Polish National Committee, which from 1914 had been functioning in a limited way under Russian protection, could at last count seriously on the sympathy of the western Allies. While Piłsudski declined to raise a Polish army to fight on against the new Russia, a Polish army was formed in France, as well as two army corps in Belorussia and in Ukraine, to fight against the Central Powers. The Bolshevik Revolution and Wilson’s Fourteen Points together consummated the alignment of the Poles on the side of the western powers. Eastern Europe and the Russian periphery, March–November 1918 treaties of Brest-Litovsk treaties of Brest-Litovsk Delegates at negotiations for the treaties of Brest-Litovsk, 1918. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (March 3, 1918) gave Germany a free hand to do what it liked with Russia’s former possessions in eastern Europe. While they pursued their plan of 1916 for a kingdom of Poland, the Germans took new measures for the other countries. Lithuania, recognized as independent, was to be a kingdom under some German prince. Latvia and Estonia were to be merged into a grand duchy of the Baltikum under the hereditary rule of Prussia. An expeditionary force of 12,000 men, under General Graf Rüdiger von der Goltz, was sent to Finland to uphold the Finnish general C.G.E. Mannerheim’s nationalist forces against the Red Guards, whom the Bolsheviks, despite their recognition of Finland’s independence, were now promoting there. And finally, the Ukrainian nationalist government, which had already been challenged by a Communist one before its separate peace with the Central Powers (Brest-Litovsk, February 9), was promptly displaced by a new regime after the advance of German and Austro-Hungarian troops into its territory. The Romanian armistice of December 1917 was converted into the Treaty of Bucharest on May 7, 1918. Under this treaty’s terms, southern Dobruja was ceded to Bulgaria; northern Dobruja was put under the joint administration of the Central Powers; and the latter obtained virtual control of Romania’s oil fields and communications. Romania, on the other hand, had some consolation from Bessarabia, whose nationalists, after receiving Romanian assistance against the Bolsheviks, had voted in March 1918 for their country’s conditional union with Romania. Even Transcaucasia began to slide into the German camp. The short-lived federal republic was dissolved by its three members’ individual declarations of independence—Georgia’s on May 26, Armenia’s and Azerbaijan’s on May 28. Treaties of friendship were promptly signed between Georgia and Germany and between Armenia and Turkey, and Turkish troops advanced into Azerbaijan, where they occupied Baku on September 15. The western Allies, meanwhile, were hoping that some new semblance of an Eastern Front could be conjured up if they supported the various and growing forces in Russia that were opposed to the peacemaking Bolsheviks. Since the Black Sea and the Baltic were closed to them, the Allies could land troops only on Russia’s Arctic and Pacific shores. Thus, the Allied “intervention” in Russia on the side of the anti-Bolshevik (“White”) forces, long to be execrated by Soviet historians, began with an Anglo-French landing at Murmansk, in the far north, on March 9, 1918. The subsequent reinforcement of Murmansk made possible the occupation of the Murmansk railway as far south as Soroka (now Belomorsk); and a further landing at Arkhangelsk in the summer raised the total Allied strength in northern Russia to some 48,000 (including 20,000 Russian “Whites”). By this time, moreover, there were some 85,000 interventionist troops in Siberia, where a strong Japanese landing at Vladivostok in April had been followed by British, French, Italian, and U.S. contingents. A “White” provisional government of Russia was set up at Omsk, with Admiral A.V. Kolchak as its dominant personality. The “White” resistance in the south of European Russia, which had been growing since November 1917, was put under the supreme command of General A.I. Denikin in April 1918. The Balkan front, 1918 At Salonika the Allies’ politically ambitious but militarily ineffective commander in chief, General Sarrail, was replaced at the end of 1917 by General Guillaumat, who was in turn succeeded in July 1918 by General L.-F.-F. Franchet d’Esperey, who launched a major offensive in September with six Serbian and two French divisions against a seven-mile front held by only one Bulgarian division. The initial assault, preceded by heavy bombardment at night, began in the morning of September 15, 1918, and a five-mile penetration was achieved by nightfall on September 16. The next day the Serbs advanced 20 miles forward, while French and Greek forces on their flanks widened the breach to 25 miles. A British attack, launched on September 18 on the front between the Vardar and Lake Doiran, prevented the Bulgars from transferring troops westward against the right flank of the penetration; and by September 19 the Serbian cavalry had reached Kavadarci, at the apex of the Crna–Vardar triangle. Two days later the whole Bulgarian front west of the Vardar had collapsed. While Italian forces in the extreme west advanced on Prilep, the elated Serbs, with the French beside them, pressed on up the Vardar Valley. The British in the east now made such headway as to take Strumica, across the old Bulgarian frontier, on September 26. The Bulgars then sued for an armistice; and on September 29, when a bold French cavalry thrust up the Vardar from Veles (Titov Veles) took Skopje, key to the whole system of communications for the Balkan front, Bulgarian delegates signed the Armistice of Salonika, accepting the Allies’ terms unreservedly. The Turkish fronts, 1918 The British–Turkish front in Palestine in the summer of 1918 ran from the Jordan River westward north of Jericho and Lydda to the Mediterranean just north of Jaffa. North of this front there were three Turkish “armies” (in fact, barely stronger than divisions): one to the east of the Jordan, two to the west. These armies depended for their supplies on the Hejaz Railway, the main line of which ran from Damascus southward, east of the Jordan, and which was joined at Déraa (Darʿā) by a branch line serving Palestine. Liman von Sanders, Falkenhayn’s successor as commander of the Turkish forces in Syria–Palestine, was convinced that the British would make their main effort east of the Jordan. Allenby, however, was really interested in taking a straight northerly direction, reckoning that the Palestine branch rail line at ʿAfula and Beisān, some 60 miles behind the Turkish front, could be reached by a strategic “bound” of his cavalry and that their fall would isolate the two Turkish armies in the west. Having by ruse and diversion induced the Turks to reduce their strength in the west, Allenby struck there on September 19, 1918, with a numerical superiority of 10 to one. In this Battle of Megiddo, a British infantry attack swept the astonished defenders aside and opened the way for the cavalry, which rode 30 miles north up the coastal corridor before swinging inland to cut the Turks’ northward lines of retreat. ʿAfula, Beisān, and even Nazareth, farther north, were in British hands the next day. When the Turks east of the Jordan River began to retreat on September 22, the Arabs had already severed the railway line and were lying in wait for them; and a British cavalry division from Beisān was also about to push eastward to intercept their withdrawal. Simultaneously, two more British divisions and another force of Arabs were racing on toward Damascus, which fell on October 1. The campaign ended with the capture of Aleppo and the junction of the Baghdad Railway. In 38 days Allenby’s forces had advanced 350 miles and taken 75,000 prisoners at a cost of less than 5,000 casualties. In Mesopotamia, meanwhile, the British had taken Kifrī, north of the Diyālā left-bank tributary of the Tigris, in January 1918, and Khān al-Baghdāẖī, up the Euphrates, in March. Pressing northward from Kifrī, they took Kirkūk in May but soon evacuated it. The British centre in Mesopotamia, advancing up the Tigris in October, was about to capture Mosul when the hostilities were suspended. The Ottoman government, seeing eastern Turkey defenseless and fearing an Allied advance against Istanbul from the west now that Bulgaria had collapsed, decided to capitulate. On October 30 the Armistice of Mudros was signed, on a British cruiser off Lemnos. The Turks, by its terms, were to open the Straits to the Allies; demobilize their forces; allow the Allies to occupy any strategic point that they might require and to use all Turkey’s ports and railways; and order the surrender of their remaining garrisons in Arabia, Syria, and Mesopotamia. The centuries-old Ottoman Empire had come to an end. Vittorio Veneto After the stabilization of the Italian front on the Piave River at the end of 1917, the Austrians made no further move until the following June. They then tried not only to force the Tonale Pass and enter northeastern Lombardy but also to make two converging thrusts into central Venetia, the one southeastward from the Trentino, the other southwestward across the lower Piave. The whole offensive came to worse than nothing, the attackers losing 100,000 men. Diaz, the Italian commander in chief, was meanwhile deliberately abstaining from positive action until Italy should be ready to strike with success assured. In the offensive he planned, three of the five armies lining the front from the Monte Grappa sector to the Adriatic end of the Piave were to drive across the river toward Vittorio Veneto, so as to cut communications between the two Austrian armies opposing them. When Germany, in October 1918, was at last asking for an armistice (see below The end of the German war), Italy’s time had obviously come. On October 24, the anniversary of Caporetto, the offensive opened. An attack in the Monte Grappa sector was repulsed with heavy loss, though it served to attract the Austrian reserves, and the flooding of the Piave prevented two of the three central armies from advancing simultaneously with the third; but the latter, comprising one Italian and one British corps, having under cover of darkness and fog occupied Papadopoli Island farther downstream, won a foothold on the left bank of the river on October 27. The Italian reserves were then brought up to exploit this bridgehead. Mutiny was already breaking out in the Austrian forces, and on October 28 the Austrian high command ordered a general retreat. Vittorio Veneto was occupied the next day by the Italians, who were also pushing on already toward the Tagliamento. On November 3 the Austrians obtained an armistice (see below). The collapse of Austria-Hungary The duality of the Habsburg monarchy had been underlined from the very beginning of the war. Whereas the Austrian parliament, or Reichsrat, had been suspended in March 1914 and was not reconvened for three years, the Hungarian parliament in Budapest continued its sessions, and the Hungarian government proved itself constantly less amenable to dictation from the military than had the Austrian. The Slav minorities, however, showed little sign of anti-Habsburg feeling before Russia’s March Revolution of 1917. In May 1917, however, the Reichsrat was reconvened, and just before the opening session the Czech intelligentsia sent a manifesto to its deputies calling for “a democratic Europe…of autonomous states.” The Bolshevik Revolution of November 1917 and the Wilsonian peace pronouncements from January 1918 onward encouraged socialism, on the one hand, and nationalism, on the other, or alternatively a combination of both tendencies, among all peoples of the Habsburg monarchy. Early in September 1918 the Austro-Hungarian government proposed in a circular note to the other powers that a conference be held on neutral territory for a general peace. This proposal was quashed by the United States on the ground that the U.S. position had already been enunciated by the Wilsonian pronouncements (the Fourteen Points, etc.). But when Austria-Hungary, after the collapse of Bulgaria, appealed on October 4 for an armistice based on those very pronouncements, the answer on October 18 was that the U.S. government was now committed to the Czechoslovaks and to the Yugoslavs, who might not be satisfied with the “autonomy” postulated heretofore. The emperor Charles had, in fact, granted autonomy to the peoples of the Austrian Empire (as distinct from the Hungarian Kingdom) on October 16, but this concession was ignored internationally and served only to facilitate the process of disruption within the monarchy: Czechoslovaks in Prague and South Slavs in Zagreb had already set up organs ready to take power. The last scenes of Austria-Hungary’s dissolution were performed very rapidly. On October 24 (when the Italians launched their very timely offensive), a Hungarian National Council prescribing peace and severance from Austria was set up in Budapest. On October 27 a note accepting the U.S. note of October 18 was sent from Vienna to Washington—to remain unacknowledged. On October 28 the Czechoslovak committee in Prague passed a “law” for an independent state, while a similar Polish committee was formed in Kraków for the incorporation of Galicia and Austrian Silesia into a unified Poland. On October 29, while the Austrian high command was asking the Italians for an armistice, the Croats in Zagreb declared Slavonia, Croatia, and Dalmatia to be independent, pending the formation of a national state of Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs. On October 30 the German members of the Reichsrat in Vienna proclaimed an independent state of German Austria. The solicited armistice between the Allies and Austria-Hungary was signed at the Villa Giusti, near Padua, on November 3, 1918, to become effective on November 4. Under its provisions, Austria-Hungary’s forces were required to evacuate not only all territory occupied since August 1914 but also South Tirol, Tarvisio, the Isonzo Valley, Gorizia, Trieste, Istria, western Carniola, and Dalmatia. All German forces should be expelled from Austria-Hungary within 15 days or interned, and the Allies were to have free use of Austria-Hungary’s internal communications and to take possession of most of its warships. Count Mihály Károlyi, chairman of the Budapest National Council, had been appointed prime minister of Hungary by his king, the Austrian emperor Charles, on October 31 but had promptly started to dissociate his country from Austria—partly in the vain hope of obtaining a separate Hungarian armistice. Charles, the last Habsburg to rule in Austria-Hungary, renounced the right to participate in Austrian affairs of government on November 11, in Hungarian affairs on November 13. The final offensive on the Western Front It was eventually agreed among the Allied commanders that Pershing’s American troops should advance across the difficult terrain of the Argonne Forest, so that the combined Allied offensive would consist of converging attacks against the whole German position west of a line drawn from Ypres to Verdun. Thus, the Americans from the front northwest of Verdun and the French from eastern Champagne, the former on the west bank of the Meuse, the latter west of the Argonne Forest, were to launch attacks on September 26, with Mézières as their objective, in order to threaten not only the Germans’ supply line along the Mézières–Sedan–Montmédy railway and the natural line of retreat across Lorraine but also the hinge of the Antwerp–Meuse defensive line that the Germans were now preparing. The British were to attack the Hindenburg Line between Cambrai and Saint-Quentin on September 27 and to try to reach the key rail junction of Maubeuge, so as to threaten the Germans’ line of retreat through the Liège gap. The Belgians, with Allied support, were to begin a drive from Ypres toward Ghent on September 28. Cloth Hall after the Battle of Ypres Cloth Hall after the Battle of Ypres British troops passing through the ruins of Ypres, West Flanders, Belgium, September 29, 1918. World War I: British army World War I: British army British soldiers of the North Lancashire Regiment passing through liberated Cambrai, France, October 9, 1918. The Americans took Vauquois and Montfaucon in the first two days of their offensive but were soon slowed down, and on October 14, when their attack was suspended, they had only reached Grandpré, less than halfway to Mézières. The French advance meanwhile was halted on the Aisne. The British, though they had broken through the German defenses by October 5 and thenceforward had open country in front of them, could not pursue the Germans fast enough to endanger their withdrawal. Nevertheless, the piercing of the Hindenburg Line unnerved the German supreme command. The Belgians were in possession of all the heights around Ypres by September 30. The end of the German war Georg von Hertling, who had taken the place of Michaelis as Germany’s chancellor in November 1917 but had proved no more capable than he of restraining Ludendorff and Hindenburg, tendered his resignation on September 29, 1918, the day of the Bulgarian armistice and of the major development of the British attack on the Western Front. Pending the appointment of a new chancellor, Ludendorff and Hindenburg obtained the Emperor’s consent to an immediate peace move. On October 1 they even disclosed their despondency to a meeting of the leaders of all the national political parties, thus undermining the German home front by a sudden revelation of facts long hidden from the public and its civilian leaders. This new and bleak honesty about Germany’s deteriorating military situation gave an immense impetus to the native German forces of pacifism and internal discord. On October 3 the new chancellor was appointed: he was Prince Maximilian of Baden, internationally known for his moderation and honorability. Though Max demanded a few days’ interval lest Germany’s overture for peace should appear too obviously an admission of imminent collapse, the military leaders insisted on an immediate move. A German note to Wilson, requesting an armistice and negotiations on the basis of Wilson’s own pronouncements, was sent off in the night of October 3–4. The U.S. answer of October 8 required Germany’s preliminary assent (1) to negotiations on the sole question of the means of putting Wilson’s principles into practice and (2) to the withdrawal of German forces from Allied soil. The German government’s note of October 12 accepted these requirements and suggested a mixed commission to arrange the postulated evacuation. On October 14, however, the U.S. government sent a second note, which coupled allusions to Germany’s “illegal and inhuman” methods of warfare with demands that the conditions of the armistice and of the evacuation be determined unilaterally by its own and the Allies’ military advisers and that the “arbitrary power” of the German regime be removed in order that the forthcoming negotiations could be conducted with a government representative of the German people. By this time the German supreme command had become more cheerful, even optimistic, as it saw that the piercing of the Hindenburg Line had not been followed by an actual Allied breakthrough. More encouragement came from reports of a slackening in the force of the Allies’ attacks, largely because they had advanced too far ahead of their supply lines. Ludendorff still wanted an armistice, but only to give his troops a rest as a prelude to further resistance and to ensure a secure withdrawal to a shortened defensive line on the frontier. By October 17 he even felt that his troops could do without a rest. It was less that the situation had changed than that his impression of it had been revised; it had never been quite so bad as he had pictured it on September 29. But his dismal first impression had now spread throughout German political circles and the public. Though they had endured increasing privations and were half-starved due to the Allied blockade by mid-1918, the German people had retained their morale surprisingly well as long as they believed Germany had a prospect of achieving victory on the Western Front. When this hope collapsed in October 1918, many, and perhaps even most, Germans wished only that the war would end, though it might mean their nation would have to accept unfavourable peace terms. German public opinion, having been more suddenly disillusioned, was now far more radically defeatist than the supreme command. A third German note to the United States, sent on October 20, agreed to the unilateral settlement of conditions for the armistice and for the evacuation, in the express belief that Wilson would allow no affront to Germany’s honour. The answering U.S. note of October 23 conceded Wilson’s readiness to propose an armistice to the Allies but added that the terms must be such as to make Germany incapable of renewing hostilities. Ludendorff saw this, militarily, as a demand for unconditional surrender and would therefore have continued resistance. But the situation had passed beyond his control, and on October 26 he was made to resign by the Emperor, on Prince Max’s advice. On October 27 Germany acknowledged the U.S. note. Wilson now began to persuade the Allies to agree to an armistice and negotiations according to the U.S.–German correspondence. They agreed, with two reservations: they would not subscribe to the second of the Fourteen Points (on the freedom of the seas); and they wanted “compensation…for damage done to the civilian population…and their property by the aggression of Germany.” Wilson’s note of November 5 apprised the Germans of these reservations and stated that Foch would communicate armistice terms to Germany’s accredited representatives. On November 8 a German delegation, led by Matthias Erzberger, arrived at Rethondes, in the Forest of Compiègne, where the Germans met face to face with Foch and his party and were informed of the Allies’ peace terms. German revolution: The last kaiser German revolution: The last kaiser Civil unrest and revolution breaking out in the face of Germany's imminent defeat in World War I and the abdication of William II, 1918. See all videos for this article Meanwhile, revolution was shaking Germany. It began with a sailors’ mutiny at Kiel on October 29 in reaction to the naval command’s order for the High Seas Fleet to go out into the North Sea for a conclusive battle. Though the U-boat crews remained loyal, the mutiny of the surface-ship crews spread to other units of the fleet, developed into armed insurrection on November 3, and progressed to open revolution the next day. There were disturbances in Hamburg and in Bremen; “councils of soldiers and workers,” like the Russian soviets, were formed in inland industrial centres; and in the night of November 7–8 a “democratic and socialist Republic of Bavaria” was proclaimed. The Social Democrats of the Reichstag withdrew their support from Prince Max’s government in order to be free to contend against the Communists for the leadership of the revolution. While William II, at Spa, was still wondering whether he could abdicate his imperial German title but remain king of Prussia, Prince Max, in Berlin on November 9, on his own initiative, announced William’s abdication of both titles. The Hohenzollern monarchy thus came to an end, joining those of the Habsburgs and the Romanovs. Prince Max handed his powers as chancellor over to Friedrich Ebert, a Majority Social Democrat, who formed a provisional government. A member of this government, Philipp Scheidemann, hastily proclaimed a republic. On November 10 William II took refuge in the neutral Netherlands, where on November 28 he signed his own abdication of his sovereign rights. The Armistice World War I: armistice World War I: armistice Parisians celebrating the end of World War I, November 11, 1918. World War I: German fleet surrender World War I: German fleet surrender The British battleship Queen Elizabeth leading the surrendering German fleet, November 21, 1918. The Allies’ armistice terms presented in the railway carriage at Rethondes were stiff. Germany was required to evacuate not only Belgium, France, and Alsace-Lorraine but also all the rest of the left (west) bank of the Rhine, and it had to neutralize that river’s right bank between the Netherlands and Switzerland. The German troops in East Africa were to surrender; the German armies in eastern Europe were to withdraw to the prewar German frontier; the treaties of Brest-Litovsk and Bucharest were to be annulled; and the Germans were to repatriate all prisoners of war and hand over to the Allies a large quantity of war materials, including 5,000 pieces of artillery, 25,000 machine guns, 1,700 aircraft, 5,000 locomotives, and 150,000 railroad cars. And meanwhile, the Allies’ blockade of Germany was to continue. Pleading the danger of Bolshevism in a nation on the verge of collapse, the German delegation obtained some mitigation of these terms: a suggestion that the blockade might be relaxed, a reduction in the quantity of armaments to be handed over, and permission for the German forces in eastern Europe to stay put for the time being. The Germans might have held out longer for further concessions if the fact of revolution on their home front had not been coupled with the imminence of a new blow from the west. World War I World War I U.S. troops in French tanks in northeastern France, October 10, 1918. Though the Allied advance was continuing and seemed in some sectors even to be accelerating, the main German forces had managed to retreat ahead of it. The Germans’ destruction of roads and railways along the routes of their evacuation made it impossible for supplies to keep pace with the advancing Allied troops; a pause in the advance would occur while Allied communications were being repaired, and that would give the Germans a breathing space in which to rally their resistance. By November 11 the Allied advance on the northern sectors of the front had come more or less to a standstill on a line running from Pont-à-Mousson through Sedan, Mézières, and Mons to Ghent. Foch, however, now had a Franco-U.S. force of 28 divisions and 600 tanks in the south ready to strike through Metz into northeastern Lorraine. Since Foch’s general offensive had absorbed the Germans’ reserves, this new offensive would fall on their bared left flank and held the promise of outflanking their whole new line of defense (from Antwerp to the line of the Meuse) and of intercepting any German retreat. By this time the number of U.S. divisions in France had risen to 42. In addition, the British were about to bomb Berlin on a scale hitherto unattempted in air warfare. World War I armistice World War I armistice Allied and German officials at the signing of the armistice that ended the fighting in World War I, November 11, 1918. Whether the Allies’ projected final offensive, intended for November 14, would have achieved a breakthrough can never be known. At 5:00 am on November 11, 1918, the Armistice document was signed in Foch’s railway carriage at Rethondes. At 11:00 am on the same day, World War I came to an end. The fact that Matthias Erzberger, who was a civilian politician rather than a soldier, headed the German armistice delegation became an integral part of the legend of the “stab in the back” (Dolchstoss im Rücken). This legend’s theme was that the German Army was “undefeated in the field” (unbesiegt im Felde) and had been “stabbed in the back”—i.e., had been denied support at the crucial moment by a weary and defeatist civilian population and their leaders. This theme was adopted soon after the war’s end by Ludendorff himself and by other German generals who were unwilling to admit the hopelessness of Germany’s military situation in November 1918 and who wanted to vindicate the honour of German arms. The “stab in the back” legend soon found its way into German historiography and was picked up by German right-wing political agitators who claimed that Allied propaganda in Germany in the last stages of the war had undermined civilian morale and that traitors among the politicians had been at hand ready to do the Allies’ bidding by signing the Armistice. Adolf Hitler eventually became the foremost of these political agitators, branding Erzberger and the leaders of the Social Democrats as the “November criminals” and advocating militaristic and expansionist policies by which Germany could redeem its defeat in the war, gain vengeance upon its enemies, and become the preeminent power in Europe. Killed, wounded, and missing The casualties suffered by the participants in World War I dwarfed those of previous wars: some 8,500,000 soldiers died as a result of wounds and/or disease. The greatest number of casualties and wounds were inflicted by artillery, followed by small arms, and then by poison gas. The bayonet, which was relied on by the prewar French Army as the decisive weapon, actually produced few casualties. War was increasingly mechanized from 1914 and produced casualties even when nothing important was happening. On even a quiet day on the Western Front, many hundreds of Allied and German soldiers died. The heaviest loss of life for a single day occurred on July 1, 1916, during the Battle of the Somme, when the British Army suffered 57,470 casualties. Sir Winston Churchill once described the battles of the Somme and Verdun, which were typical of trench warfare in their futile and indiscriminate slaughter, as being waged between double or triple walls of cannons fed by mountains of shells. In an open space surrounded by masses of these guns large numbers of infantry divisions collided. They fought in this dangerous position until battered into a state of uselessness. Then they were replaced by other divisions. So many men were lost in the process and shattered beyond recognition that there is a French monument at Verdun to the 150,000 unlocated dead who are assumed to be buried in the vicinity. This kind of war made it difficult to prepare accurate casualty lists. There were revolutions in four of the warring countries in 1918, and the attention of the new governments was shifted away from the grim problem of war losses. A completely accurate table of losses may never be compiled. The best available estimates of World War I military casualties are assembled in Table 4. Armed forces mobilized and casualties in World War I* *As reported by the U.S. War Department in February 1924. U.S. casualties as amended by the Statistical Services Center, Office of the Secretary of Defense, Nov. 7, 1957. country total mobilized forces killed and died wounded prisoners and missing total casualties percentage of mobilized forces in casualties Allied and Associated Powers Russia 12,000,000 1,700,000 4,950,000 2,500,000 9,150,000 76.3 British Empire 8,904,467 908,371 2,090,212 191,652 3,190,235 35.8 France 8,410,000 1,357,800 4,266,000 537,000 6,160,800 73.3 Italy 5,615,000 650,000 947,000 600,000 2,197,000 39.1 United States 4,355,000 116,516 204,002 4,500 323,018 8.1 Japan 800,000 300 907 3 1,210 0.2 Romania 750,000 335,706 120,000 80,000 535,706 71.4 Serbia 707,343 45,000 133,148 152,958 331,106 46.8 Belgium 267,000 13,716 44,686 34,659 93,061 34.9 Greece 230,000 5,000 21,000 1,000 27,000 11.7 Portugal 100,000 7,222 13,751 12,318 33,291 33.3 Montenegro 50,000 3,000 10,000 7,000 20,000 40.0 total 42,188,810 5,142,631 12,800,706 4,121,090 22,064,427 52.3 Central Powers Germany 11,000,000 1,773,700 4,216,058 1,152,800 7,142,558 64.9 Austria-Hungary 7,800,000 1,200,000 3,620,000 2,200,000 7,020,000 90.0 Turkey 2,850,000 325,000 400,000 250,000 975,000 34.2 Bulgaria 1,200,000 87,500 152,390 27,029 266,919 22.2 total 22,850,000 3,386,200 8,388,448 3,629,829 15,404,477 67.4 Grand total 65,038,810 8,528,831 21,189,154 7,750,919 37,468,904 57.5 Similar uncertainties exist about the number of civilian deaths attributable to the war. There were no agencies established to keep records of these fatalities, but it is clear that the displacement of peoples through the movement of the war in Europe and in Asia Minor, accompanied as it was in 1918 by the most destructive outbreak of influenza in history, led to the deaths of large numbers. It has been estimated that the number of civilian deaths attributable to the war was higher than the military casualties, or around 13,000,000. These civilian deaths were largely caused by starvation, exposure, disease, military encounters, and massacres. 15 of the Most Iconic Newspaper Headlines Ever Printed A photo of Ian Cowley By Ian Cowley Iconic headlines Image: DRB62 These shocking and occasionally uplifting headlines summarise but a few of the major historic events that have occurred since newspapers became popular and accessible to people worldwide. Extraordinary headlines such as these are incredibly powerful, thanks in large part to their brevity: in just a few short words, each conveys a message of history-changing significance to a potentially huge audience. Reading these headlines today, we are emotionally transported back to how we felt when we first heard this news. It's a sad reality of the human condition that big news is usually bad news: only five of the headlines we explore here accompany positive stories. Headlines are there to sell papers, and it seems that death is more profitable to the press than hope or success. Nevertheless, alongside headlines of war, natural disasters and murders, below you'll find headlines of hope and the overcoming of adversity. New York Times: "Titanic Sinks Four Hours After Hitting Iceberg" [16th April 1912] Titanic - New York Times This was one of the few accurate headlines printed on the day following the sinking of the Titanic. Journalists at some other papers were still in denial that a ship thought to be unsinkable could have failed so catastrophically: The Daily Mirror reported, "Everyone safe", and the Daily Mail, "No lives lost". Daily Mail: "Greatest Crash in Wall Street's History" [25th October 1929] The Wall Street Crash of 1929, fuelled by uncertainty following an artificial share price boom, was the worst in U.S. history. On 24th October, panicked investors traded an astonishing 12.9 million shares. The News Chronicle: "Hitler Dead" [2nd May 1945] On 2nd May 1945, The News Chronicle, which later became the Daily Mail, published this bold headline. At the time, nobody could be sure if this news was true. The accompanying article claimed that Hitler had been killed in action, although it later transpired he had committed suicide in a bunker under Chancery in Berlin. Daily Mail: "VE Day- It's All Over" [8th May 1945] Daily Mail - VE Day This headline appeared on the day World War II Allies accepted Nazi Germany's surrender. It marked the end of the War and Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. Chicago Tribune: "Assassin Kills Kennedy: Lyndon Johnson Sworn In" [22nd November 1963] Chicago Tribune - JFK Assassination John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Five years later, his brother Robert Kennedy was shot dead in a Los Angeles Hotel. The headline in the Daily Mirror following that event was simply: "God! Not Again!" Daily News: "Martin King Shot To Death: Gunned Down in Memphis" [5th April 1968] Daily News - Martin King Shot This shocking headline was printed the day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot and killed on the second-floor lobby of the Lorraine Motel, Memphis, Tennessee. He was 39-years-old. Evening Standard: "The First Footstep" [21st July 1969] Evening Standard - Moon Landing Neil Armstrong became the first man to step foot on the moon. As he touched the ground he famously declared: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." The New York Times: "Nixon Resigns" [9th August 1974] The New York Times - Nixon Resigns President Richard Nixon, fearing impeachment following the Watergate scandal, became the only President to ever resign from office. Gerald Ford later pardoned him, but he was never truly forgiven. The Sun: "King Elvis Dead" [17th August 1977] On 16th August 1977, "The King of Rock 'n' Roll" was found dead on his bathroom floor. As the subheading in the accompanying article reads: "He was 42 and alone". He had been using the toilet at the time of his death. Los Angeles Times: "Beatle John Lennon Slain" [9th December 1980] Los Angeles Times - John Lennon Slain At 10.49pm, on the day prior to this headline running, John Lennon was shot in the back four times by Mark David Chapman, a fan who had been stalking him for 3 months. City Press: "Mandela Goes Free Today" [11th February 1990] City Press - Mandela Goes Free Today State President F.W. de Klerk reversed the ban on the ANC on 2nd February 1990. Shortly thereafter, Nelson Mandela was freed from prison, where he had languished for 20 years. On 27th April 1994, Mandela and the ANC won South Africa's first multi-racial election. The Daily News: "Diana Dead" [31st August 1997] Newspaper Headlines - Diana Dead Princess Diana died after her Mercedes Benz S280 crashed into a pillar in the Pont de l'Alma tunnel, Paris. She was just 36. Her friend Dodi Al-Fayed was also killed in the collision. The Daily Telegraph: "War on America" [12th September 2001] On 12th September 2001, there was, of course, only one story dominating the headlines. On the previous day, terrorists had hijacked four commercial passenger jet airliners, crashing two of them into the Twin Towers and a third into the Pentagon. "War on America" was voted the most memorable headline of the last 100 years. The Times of India: "We saw the sea coming, we all ran. But God saves little" [28th December 2004] The Times Of India - Tsunami Just after midnight on 26th December 2004, an earthquake off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, triggered a huge tsunami, which killed over 225,000 people in 11 countries. New York Times: "Obama: Racial Barrier Falls in Decisive Victory" [5th November 2008] The New York Times - Obama Barack Obama, promising change for the USA, defeated John McCain in the 2008 presidential election to become the first non-white President of the United States. He was later inaugurated on 20th January 2009. Egypt Coordinates: 26°N 30°E Arab Republic of Egypt جمهورية مصر العربية[show] Flag of Egypt Flag Coat of arms of Egypt Coat of arms Anthem: "Bilady, Bilady, Bilady" "بلادي، بلادي، بلادي" "My country, my country, my country" MENU0:00 EGY orthographic.svg Capital and largest city Cairo 30°2′N 31°13′E Official languages Arabic National language Egyptian Arabic[a] Religion See Religion in Egypt Demonym(s) Egyptian Government Unitary semi-presidential republic • President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi • Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly • House Speaker Ali Abdel Aal Legislature House of Representatives Establishment • Unification of Upper and Lower Egypt[1][2][b] c. 3150 bc • Muhammad Ali dynasty inaugurated 9 July 1805[3] • Independence from United Kingdom 28 February 1922 • Revolution Day 23 July 1952 • Republic declared 18 June 1953 • Current constitution 18 January 2014 Area • Total 1,010,408[4] km2 (390,121 sq mi) (29th) • Water (%) 0.632 Population • 2020 estimate Increase 100,075,480 [5][6] (13th) • 2017 census 94,798,827[7] • Density 100/km2 (259.0/sq mi) (83th) GDP (PPP) 2019 estimate • Total Increase $1.391 trillion[8] (19th) • Per capita Increase $14,023[8] (94th) GDP (nominal) 2019 estimate • Total Increase $302.256 billion[8] (40th) • Per capita Increase $3,047[8] (126th) Gini (2015) Positive decrease 31.8[9] medium · 51st HDI (2018) Increase 0.700[10] high · 116th Currency Egyptian pound (E£) (EGP) Time zone UTC+2[c] (EET) Driving side right Calling code +20 ISO 3166 code EG Internet TLD .eg مصر. ^ Literary Arabic is the sole official language.[11] Egyptian Arabic is the spoken language. Other dialects and minority languages are spoken regionally. ^ "Among the peoples of the ancient Near East, only the Egyptians have stayed where they were and remained what they were, although they have changed their language once and their religion twice. In a sense, they constitute the world's oldest nation".[12][13] Arthur Goldschmidt Jr. ^ See Daylight saving time in Egypt. Egypt (/ˈiːdʒɪpt/ (About this soundlisten) EE-jipt; Arabic: مِصر Miṣr), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia by a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. Egypt is a Mediterranean country bordered by the Gaza Strip (Palestine) and Israel to the northeast, the Gulf of Aqaba and the Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south, and Libya to the west. Across the Gulf of Aqaba lies Jordan, across the Red Sea lies Saudi Arabia, and across the Mediterranean lie Greece, Turkey and Cyprus, although none share a land border with Egypt. Egypt has one of the longest histories of any country, tracing its heritage back to the 6th–4th millennia BCE. Considered a cradle of civilisation, Ancient Egypt saw some of the earliest developments of writing, agriculture, urbanisation, organised religion and central government.[14] Iconic monuments such as the Giza Necropolis and its Great Sphinx, as well the ruins of Memphis, Thebes, Karnak, and the Valley of the Kings, reflect this legacy and remain a significant focus of scientific and popular interest. Egypt's long and rich cultural heritage is an integral part of its national identity, which has endured, and often assimilated, various foreign influences, including Greek, Persian, Roman, Arab, Ottoman Turkish, and Nubian. Egypt was an early and important centre of Christianity, but was largely Islamised in the seventh century and remains a predominantly Muslim country, albeit with a significant Christian minority. From the 16th to the beginning of the 20th century, Egypt was ruled by foreign imperial powers: The Ottoman Empire and the British Empire. Modern Egypt dates back to 1922, when it gained nominal independence from the British Empire as a monarchy. However, British military occupation of Egypt continued, and many Egyptians believed that the monarchy was an instrument of British colonialism. Following the 1952 revolution, Egypt expelled British soldiers and bureaucrats and ended British occupation, nationalized the British-held Suez Canal, exiled King Farouk and his family, and declared itself a republic. In 1958 it merged with to form the United Arab Republic, which dissolved in 1961. Throughout the second half of the 20th century, Egypt endured social and religious strife and political instability, fighting several armed conflicts with Israel in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973, and occupying the Gaza Strip intermittently until 1967. In 1978, Egypt signed the Camp David Accords, officially withdrawing from the Gaza Strip and recognising Israel. The country continues to face challenges, from political unrest, including the recent 2011 revolution and its aftermath, to terrorism and economic underdevelopment. Egypt's current government is a semi-presidential republic headed by President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, which has been described by a number of watchdogs as authoritarian. Islam is the official religion of Egypt and Arabic is its official language.[15] With over 100 million inhabitants, Egypt is the most populous country in North Africa, the Middle East, and the Arab world, the third-most populous in Africa (after Nigeria and Ethiopia), and the thirteenth-most populous in the world. The great majority of its people live near the banks of the Nile River, an area of about 40,000 square kilometres (15,000 sq mi), where the only arable land is found. The large regions of the Sahara desert, which constitute most of Egypt's territory, are sparsely inhabited. About half of Egypt's residents live in urban areas, with most spread across the densely populated centres of greater Cairo, Alexandria and other major cities in the Nile Delta. Egypt is considered to be a regional power in North Africa, the Middle East and the Muslim world, and a middle power worldwide.[16] With one of the largest and most diversified economies in the Middle East, which is projected to become one of the largest in the world in the 21st century, Egypt has the third-largest economy in Africa, the world's 40th-largest economy by nominal GDP, and the 19-largest by PPP. Egypt is a founding member of the United Nations, the Non-Aligned Movement, the Arab League, the African Union, and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. Names The English name "Egypt" is derived from the Ancient Greek "Aígyptos" ("Αἴγυπτος"), via Middle French "Egypte" and Latin "Aegyptus". It is reflected in early Greek Linear B tablets as "a-ku-pi-ti-yo". The adjective "aigýpti-"/"aigýptios" was borrowed into Coptic as "gyptios", and from there into Arabic as "qubṭī", back formed into "قبط" ("qubṭ"), whence English "Copt". The Greek forms were borrowed from Late Egyptian (Amarna) Hikuptah "Memphis", a corruption of the earlier Egyptian name O6 t pr D28 Z1 p t H (⟨ḥwt-kȝ-ptḥ⟩), meaning "home of the ka (soul) of Ptah", the name of a temple to the god Ptah at Memphis.[17] "Miṣr" (Arabic pronunciation: [mesˤɾ]; "مِصر") is the Classical Quranic Arabic and modern official name of Egypt, while "Maṣr" (Egyptian Arabic pronunciation: [mɑsˤɾ]; مَصر) is the local pronunciation in Egyptian Arabic.[18] The name is of Semitic origin, directly cognate with other Semitic words for Egypt such as the Hebrew "מִצְרַיִם" ("Mitzráyim"). The oldest attestation of this name for Egypt is the Akkadian "mi-iṣ-ru" ("miṣru")[19][20] related to miṣru/miṣirru/miṣaru, meaning "border" or "frontier".[21] The ancient Egyptian name of the country was km m t O49 km.t, which means black land, likely referring to the fertile black soils of the Nile flood plains, distinct from the deshret (⟨dšṛt⟩), or "red land" of the desert.[22][23] This name is commonly vocalised as Kemet, but was probably pronounced [kuːmat] in ancient Egyptian.[24] The name is realised as kēme and kēmə in the Coptic stage of the Egyptian language, and appeared in early Greek as Χημία (Khēmía).[25] Another name was ⟨tꜣ-mry⟩ "land of the riverbank".[26] The names of Upper and Lower Egypt were Ta-Sheme'aw (⟨tꜣ-šmꜥw⟩) "sedgeland" and Ta-Mehew (⟨tꜣ mḥw⟩) "northland", respectively. History Main article: History of Egypt Prehistory and Ancient Egypt Main articles: Prehistoric Egypt and Ancient Egypt Temple of Derr ruins in 1960 There is evidence of rock carvings along the Nile terraces and in desert oases. In the 10th millennium BCE, a culture of hunter-gatherers and fishers was replaced by a grain-grinding culture. Climate changes or overgrazing around 8000 BCE began to desiccate the pastoral lands of Egypt, forming the Sahara. Early tribal peoples migrated to the Nile River where they developed a settled agricultural economy and more centralised society.[27] By about 6000 BCE, a Neolithic culture rooted in the Nile Valley.[28] During the Neolithic era, several predynastic cultures developed independently in Upper and Lower Egypt. The Badarian culture and the successor Naqada series are generally regarded as precursors to dynastic Egypt. The earliest known Lower Egyptian site, Merimda, predates the Badarian by about seven hundred years. Contemporaneous Lower Egyptian communities coexisted with their southern counterparts for more than two thousand years, remaining culturally distinct, but maintaining frequent contact through trade. The earliest known evidence of Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions appeared during the predynastic period on Naqada III pottery vessels, dated to about 3200 BCE.[29] The Giza Necropolis is the oldest of the ancient Wonders and the only one still in existence. A unified kingdom was founded c. 3150 BCE by King Menes, leading to a series of dynasties that ruled Egypt for the next three millennia. Egyptian culture flourished during this long period and remained distinctively Egyptian in its religion, arts, language and customs. The first two ruling dynasties of a unified Egypt set the stage for the Old Kingdom period, c. 2700–2200 BCE, which constructed many pyramids, most notably the Third Dynasty pyramid of Djoser and the Fourth Dynasty Giza pyramids. The First Intermediate Period ushered in a time of political upheaval for about 150 years.[30] Stronger Nile floods and stabilisation of government, however, brought back renewed prosperity for the country in the Middle Kingdom c. 2040 BCE, reaching a peak during the reign of Pharaoh Amenemhat III. A second period of disunity heralded the arrival of the first foreign ruling dynasty in Egypt, that of the Semitic Hyksos. The Hyksos invaders took over much of Lower Egypt around 1650 BCE and founded a new capital at Avaris. They were driven out by an Upper Egyptian force led by Ahmose I, who founded the Eighteenth Dynasty and relocated the capital from Memphis to Thebes. The Weighing of the Heart from the Book of the Dead of Ani The New Kingdom c. 1550–1070 BCE began with the Eighteenth Dynasty, marking the rise of Egypt as an international power that expanded during its greatest extension to an empire as far south as Tombos in Nubia, and included parts of the Levant in the east. This period is noted for some of the most well known Pharaohs, including Hatshepsut, Thutmose III, Akhenaten and his wife Nefertiti, Tutankhamun and Ramesses II. The first historically attested expression of monotheism came during this period as Atenism. Frequent contacts with other nations brought new ideas to the New Kingdom. The country was later invaded and conquered by Libyans, Nubians and , but native Egyptians eventually drove them out and regained control of their country.[31] Achaemenid Egypt Egyptian soldier of the Achaemenid army, c. 480 BCE. Xerxes I tomb relief. In 525 BCE, the powerful Achaemenid Persians, led by Cambyses II, began their conquest of Egypt, eventually capturing the pharaoh Psamtik III at the battle of Pelusium. Cambyses II then assumed the formal title of pharaoh, but ruled Egypt from his home of Susa in Persia , leaving Egypt under the control of a satrapy. The entire Twenty-seventh Dynasty of Egypt, from 525–402 BCE, save for Petubastis III, was an entirely Persian ruled period, with the Achaemenid Emperors all being granted the title of pharaoh. A few temporarily successful revolts against the Persians marked the fifth century BCE, but Egypt was never able to permanently overthrow the Persians.[32] The Thirtieth Dynasty was the last native ruling dynasty during the Pharaonic epoch. It fell to the Persians again in 343 BCE after the last native Pharaoh, King Nectanebo II, was defeated in battle. This Thirty-first Dynasty of Egypt, however, did not last long, for the Persians were toppled several decades later by Alexander the Great. The Macedonian Greek general of Alexander, Ptolemy I Soter, founded the Ptolemaic dynasty. Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt Main articles: Ptolemaic Kingdom and Egypt (Roman province) The Ptolemaic Queen Cleopatra VII and her son by Julius Caesar, Caesarion, at the Temple of Dendera. The Ptolemaic Kingdom was a powerful Hellenistic state, extending from southern in the east, to Cyrene to the west, and south to the frontier with Nubia. Alexandria became the capital city and a centre of Greek culture and trade. To gain recognition by the native Egyptian populace, they named themselves as the successors to the Pharaohs. The later Ptolemies took on Egyptian traditions, had themselves portrayed on public monuments in Egyptian style and dress, and participated in Egyptian religious life.[33][34] The last ruler from the Ptolemaic line was Cleopatra VII, who committed suicide following the burial of her lover Mark Antony who had died in her arms (from a self-inflicted stab wound), after Octavian had captured Alexandria and her mercenary forces had fled. The Ptolemies faced rebellions of native Egyptians often caused by an unwanted regime and were involved in foreign and civil wars that led to the decline of the kingdom and its annexation by Rome. Nevertheless, Hellenistic culture continued to thrive in Egypt well after the Muslim conquest. Christianity was brought to Egypt by Saint Mark the Evangelist in the 1st century.[35] Diocletian's reign (284–305 CE) marked the transition from the Roman to the Byzantine era in Egypt, when a great number of Egyptian Christians were persecuted. The New Testament had by then been translated into Egyptian. After the Council of Chalcedon in CE 451, a distinct Egyptian Coptic Church was firmly established.[36] Middle Ages (7th century – 1517) Main article: Egypt in the Middle Ages The Amr ibn al-As mosque in Cairo, recognized as the oldest in Africa The Byzantines were able to regain control of the country after a brief Sasanian Persian invasion early in the 7th century amidst the Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628 during which they established a new short-lived province for ten years known as Sasanian Egypt, until 639–42, when Egypt was invaded and conquered by the Islamic Empire by the Muslim Arabs. When they defeated the Byzantine armies in Egypt, the Arabs brought Sunni Islam to the country. Early in this period, Egyptians began to blend their new faith with indigenous beliefs and practices, leading to various Sufi orders that have flourished to this day.[35] These earlier rites had survived the period of Coptic Christianity.[37] In 639 an army of some 4,000 men were sent against Egypt by the second caliph, Umar, under the command of Amr ibn al-As. This army was joined by another 5,000 men in 640 and defeated a Byzantine army at the battle of Heliopolis. Amr next proceeded in the direction of Alexandria, which was surrendered to him by a treaty signed on 8 November 641. Alexandria was regained for the Byzantine Empire in 645 but was retaken by Amr in 646. In 654 an invasion fleet sent by Constans II was repulsed. From that time no serious effort was made by the Byzantines to regain possession of the country. The Arabs founded the capital of Egypt called Fustat, which was later burned down during the Crusades. Cairo was later built in the year 986 to grow to become the largest and richest city in the Arab Empire, and one of the biggest and richest in the world. Abbasid period The Ibn Tulun Mosque in Cairo, of Ahmad Ibn Tulun The Abbasid period was marked by new taxations, and the Copts revolted again in the fourth year of Abbasid rule. At the beginning of the 9th century the practice of ruling Egypt through a governor was resumed under Abdallah ibn Tahir, who decided to reside at Baghdad, sending a deputy to Egypt to govern for him. In 828 another Egyptian revolt broke out, and in 831 the Copts joined with native Muslims against the government. Eventually the power loss of the Abbasids in Baghdad has led for general upon general to take over rule of Egypt, yet being under Abbasid allegiance, the Ikhshids and the Tulunids dynasties were among the most successful to defy the Abbasid Caliph. The Fatimid Caliphate and the Mamluks See also: Fatimid Caliphate and Mamluk Sultanate (Cairo) The Al-Hakim Mosque in Cairo, of Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, the sixth caliph, as renovated by Dawoodi Bohra Muslim rulers nominated by the Caliphate remained in control of Egypt for the next six centuries, with Cairo as the seat of the Fatimid Caliphate. With the end of the Kurdish Ayyubid dynasty, the Mamluks, a Turco-Circassian military caste, took control about 1250. By the late 13th century, Egypt linked the Red Sea, India, Malaya, and East Indies.[38] The mid-14th-century Black Death killed about 40% of the country's population.[39] Early modern: Ottoman Egypt (1517–1867) Main article: Egypt Eyalet Egypt was conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1517, after which it became a province of the Ottoman Empire. The defensive militarisation damaged its civil society and economic institutions.[38] The weakening of the economic system combined with the effects of plague left Egypt vulnerable to foreign invasion. Portuguese traders took over their trade.[38] Between 1687 and 1731, Egypt experienced six famines.[40] The 1784 famine cost it roughly one-sixth of its population.[41] Egypt was always a difficult province for the Ottoman Sultans to control, due in part to the continuing power and influence of the Mamluks, the Egyptian military caste who had ruled the country for centuries. Napoleon defeated the Mamluk troops in the Battle of the Pyramids, 21 July 1798, painted by Lejeune. Egypt remained semi-autonomous under the Mamluks until it was invaded by the French forces of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1798 (see French campaign in Egypt and ). After the French were defeated by the British, a power vacuum was created in Egypt, and a three-way power struggle ensued between the Ottoman Turks, Egyptian Mamluks who had ruled Egypt for centuries, and Albanian mercenaries in the service of the Ottomans. The Muhammad Ali dynasty Main article: History of Egypt under the Muhammad Ali dynasty Egypt under Muhammad Ali dynasty Muhammad Ali was the founder of the Muhammad Ali dynasty and the first Khedive of Egypt and Sudan. After the French were expelled, power was seized in 1805 by Muhammad Ali Pasha, an Albanian military commander of the Ottoman army in Egypt. While he carried the title of viceroy of Egypt, his subordination to the Ottoman porte was merely nominal.[citation needed] Muhammad Ali massacred the Mamluks and established a dynasty that was to rule Egypt until the revolution of 1952. The introduction in 1820 of long-staple cotton transformed its agriculture into a cash-crop monoculture before the end of the century, concentrating land ownership and shifting production towards international markets.[42] Muhammad Ali annexed Northern Sudan (1820–1824),a (1833), and parts of Arabia and Anatolia; but in 1841 the European powers, fearful lest he topple the Ottoman Empire itself, forced him to return most of his conquests to the Ottomans. His military ambition required him to modernise the country: he built industries, a system of canals for irrigation and transport, and reformed the civil service.[42] He constructed a military state with around four percent of the populace serving the army to raise Egypt to a powerful positioning in the Ottoman Empire in a way showing various similarities to the Soviet strategies (without communism) conducted in the 20th century.[43] Muhammad Ali Pasha evolved the military from one that convened under the tradition of the corvée to a great modernised army. He introduced conscription of the male peasantry in 19th century Egypt, and took a novel approach to create his great army, strengthening it with numbers and in skill. Education and training of the new soldiers became mandatory; the new concepts were furthermore enforced by isolation. The men were held in barracks to avoid distraction of their growth as a military unit to be reckoned with. The resentment for the military way of life eventually faded from the men and a new ideology took hold, one of nationalism and pride. It was with the help of this newly reborn martial unit that Muhammad Ali imposed his rule over Egypt.[44] The policy that Mohammad Ali Pasha followed during his reign explains partly why the numeracy in Egypt compared to other North-African and Middle-Eastern countries increased only at a remarkably small rate, as investment in further education only took place in the military and industrial sector.[45] Muhammad Ali was succeeded briefly by his son Ibrahim (in September 1848), then by a grandson Abbas I (in November 1848), then by Said (in 1854), and Isma'il (in 1863) who encouraged science and agriculture and banned slavery in Egypt.[43] Khedivate of Egypt (1867–1914) Main article: Khedivate of Egypt Egypt under the Muhammad Ali dynasty remained nominally an Ottoman province. It was granted the status of an autonomous vassal state or Khedivate in 1867, a legal status which was to remain in place until 1914 although the Ottomans had no power or presence. The Suez Canal, built in partnership with the French, was completed in 1869. Its construction was financed by European banks. Large sums also went to patronage and corruption. New taxes caused popular discontent. In 1875 Isma'il avoided bankruptcy by selling all Egypt's shares in the canal to the British government. Within three years this led to the imposition of British and French controllers who sat in the Egyptian cabinet, and, "with the financial power of the bondholders behind them, were the real power in the Government."[46] Other circumstances like epidemic diseases (cattle disease in the 1880s), floods and wars drove the economic downturn and increased Egypt's dependency on foreign debt even further.[47] Local dissatisfaction with the Khedive and with European intrusion led to the formation of the first nationalist groupings in 1879, with Ahmad Urabi a prominent figure. After increasing tensions and nationalist revolts, the United Kingdom invaded Egypt in 1882, crushing the Egyptian army at the battle of Tel El Kebir and military occupying the country.[48] Following this, the Khedivate became a de facto British protectorate under nominal Ottoman sovereignty.[49] In 1899 the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium Agreement was signed: the Agreement stated that Sudan would be jointly governed by the Khedivate of Egypt and the United Kingdom. However, actual control of Sudan was in British hands only. In 1906, the Dinshaway Incident prompted many neutral Egyptians to join the nationalist movement. Sultanate of Egypt (1914–1922) Main article: Sultanate of Egypt The battle of Tel el-Kebir in 1882 during the Anglo-Egyptian War In 1914 the Ottoman Empire entered World War I in alliance with the Central Empires; Khedive Abbas II (who had grown increasingly hostile to the British in preceding years) decided to support the motherland in war. Following such decision, the British forcibly removed him from power and replaced him with his brother Hussein Kamel.[50][51] Hussein Kamel declared Egypt's independence from the Ottoman Empire, assuming the title of Sultan of Egypt. Shortly following independence, Egypt was declared a protectorate of the United Kingdom. Female nationalists demonstrating in Cairo, 1919 After World War I, Saad Zaghlul and the Wafd Party led the Egyptian nationalist movement to a majority at the local Legislative Assembly. When the British exiled Zaghlul and his associates to Malta on 8 March 1919, the country arose in its first modern revolution. The revolt led the UK government to issue a unilateral declaration of Egypt's independence on 22 February 1922.[52] Kingdom of Egypt (1922–1953) Main article: Kingdom of Egypt Following independence from the United Kingom, Sultan Fuad I assumed the title of King of Egypt; despite being nominally independent, the Kingdom was still under British military occupation and the UK still had great influence over the state. British infantry near El Alamein, 17 July 1942 The new government drafted and implemented a constitution in 1923 based on a parliamentary system. The nationalist Wafd Party won a landslide victory in the 1923–1924 election and Saad Zaghloul was appointed as the new Prime Minister. In 1936, the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty was concluded and British troops withdrew from Egypt, except for the Suez Canal. The treaty did not resolve the question of Sudan, which, under the terms of the existing Anglo-Egyptian Condominium Agreement of 1899, stated that Sudan should be jointly governed by Egypt and Britain, but with real power remaining in British hands.[53] Britain used Egypt as a base for Allied operations throughout the region, especially the battles in North Africa against Italy and Germany. Its highest priorities were control of the Eastern Mediterranean, and especially keeping the Suez Canal open for merchant ships and for military connections with India and Australia. The government of Egypt, and the Egyptian population, played a minor role in the Second World War. When the war began in September 1939, Egypt declared martial law and broke off diplomatic relations with Germany. It did not declare war on Germany, but the Prime Minister associated Egypt with the British war effort. It broke diplomatic relations with Italy in 1940, but never declared war, even when the Italian army invaded Egypt. King Farouk took practically a neutral position, which accorded with elite opinion among the Egyptians. The Egyptian army did no fighting. It was apathetic about the war, with the leading officers looking on the British as occupiers and sometimes holding some private sympathy with the Axis. In June 1940 the King dismissed Prime Minister Aly Maher, who got on poorly with the British. A new coalition Government was formed with the Independent Hassan Pasha Sabri as Prime Minister. Following a ministerial crisis in February 1942, the ambassador Sir Miles Lampson, pressed Farouk to have a Wafd or Wafd-coalition government replace Hussein Sirri Pasha's government. On the night of 4 February 1942, British troops and tanks surrounded Abdeen Palace in Cairo and Lampson presented Farouk with an ultimatum. Farouk capitulated, and Nahhas formed a government shortly thereafter. However, the humiliation meted out to Farouk, and the actions of the Wafd in cooperating with the British and taking power, lost support for both the British and the Wafd among both civilians and, more importantly, the Egyptian military. Most British troops were withdrawn to the Suez Canal area in 1947 (although the British army maintained a military base in the area), but nationalist, anti-British feelings continued to grow after the War. Anti-monarchy sentiments further increased following the disastrous performance of the Kingdom in the First Arab-Israeli War. The 1950 election saw a landslide victory of the nationalist Wafd Party and the King was forced to appoint Mostafa El-Nahas as new Prime Minister. In 1951 Egypt unilaterally withdrew from the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936 and ordered all remaining British troops to leave the Suez Canal. As the British refused to leave their base around the Suez Canal, the Egyptian government cut off the water and refused to allow food into the Suez Canal base, announced a boycott of British goods, forbade Egyptian workers from entering the base and sponsored guerrilla attacks, turning the area around the Suez Canal into a low level war zone. On 24 January 1952, Egyptian guerrillas staged a fierce attack on the British forces around the Suez Canal, during which the Egyptian Auxiliary Police were observed helping the guerrillas. In response, on 25 January, General George Erskine sent out British tanks and infantry to surround the auxiliary police station in Ismailia and gave the policemen an hour to surrender their arms on the grounds the police were arming the guerrillas. The police commander called the Interior Minister, Fouad Serageddin, Nahas's right-hand man, who was smoking cigars in his bath at the time, to ask if he should surrender or fight. Serageddin ordered the police to fight "to the last man and the last bullet". The resulting battle saw the police station levelled and 43 Egyptian policemen killed together with 3 British soldiers. The Ismailia incident outraged Egypt. The next day, 26 January 1952 was "Black Saturday", as the anti-British riot was known, that saw much of downtown Cairo which the Khedive Ismail the Magnificent had rebuilt in the style of Paris, burned down. Farouk blamed the Wafd for the Black Saturday riot, and dismissed Nahas as prime minister the next day. He was replaced by Aly Maher Pasha.[54] On July 22–23, 1952, the Free Officers Movement, led by Muhammad Naguib and Gamal Abdel Nasser, launched a coup d'état (Egyptian Revolution of 1952) against the king. Farouk I abdicated the throne to his son Fouad II, who was, at the time, a seven month old baby. The Royal Family left Egypt some days later and the Council of Regency, led by Prince Muhammad Abdel Moneim was formed, The Council, however, held only nominal authority and the real power was actually in the hands of the Revolutionary Command Council, led by Naguib and Nasser. Popular expectations for immediate reforms led to the workers' riots in Kafr Dawar on 12 August 1952, which resulted in two death sentences. Following a brief experiment with civilian rule, the Free Officers abrogated the monarchy and the 1923 constitution and declared Egypt a republic on 18 June 1953. Naguib was proclaimed as President, while Nasser was appointed as the new Prime Minister. Arab Republic of Egypt (1953–present) Main article: History of the Republic of Egypt Following the 1952 Revolution by the Free Officers Movement, the rule of Egypt passed to military hands and all political parties were banned. On 18 June 1953, the Egyptian Republic was declared, with General Muhammad Naguib as the first President of the Republic, serving in that capacity for a little under one and a half years. President Nasser (1956–1970) Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser in Mansoura, 1960 Naguib was forced to resign in 1954 by Gamal Abdel Nasser – a Pan-Arabist and the real architect of the 1952 movement – and was later put under house arrest. After Naguib's resignation, the position of President was vacant until the election of Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1956.[55] In October 1954 Egypt and the United Kingdom agreed to abolish the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium Agreement of 1899 and grant Sudan independence; the agreement came into force on 1 January 1956. Nasser assumed power as President in June 1956. British forces completed their withdrawal from the occupied Suez Canal Zone on 13 June 1956. He nationalised the Suez Canal on 26 July 1956; his hostile approach towards Israel and economic nationalism prompted the beginning of the Second Arab-Israeli War (Suez Crisis), in which Israel (with support from France and the United Kingdom) occupied the Sinai peninsula and the Canal. The war came to an end because of US and USSR diplomatic intervention and the status quo was restored. In 1958, Egypt and formed a sovereign union known as the United Arab Republic. The union was short-lived, ending in 1961 when Sceded, thus ending the union. During most of its existence, the United Arab Republic was also in a loose confederation with North Yemen (or the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen), known as the United Arab States. In 1959, the All-Palestine Government of the Gaza Strip, an Egyptian client state, was absorbed into the United Arab Republic under the pretext of Arab union, and was never restored. The Arab Socialist Union, a new nasserist state-party was founded in 1962. In the early 1960s, Egypt became fully involved in the North Yemen Civil War. The Egyptian President, Gamal Abdel Nasser, supported the Yemeni republicans with as many as 70,000 Egyptian troops and chemical weapons. Despite several military moves and peace conferences, the war sank into a stalemate. Egyptian commitment in Yemen was greatly undermined later. In mid May 1967, the Soviet Union issued warnings to Nasser of an impending Israeli attack ona. Although the chief of staff Mohamed Fawzi verified them as "baseless",[56][57] Nasser took three successive steps that made the war virtually inevitable: on 14 May he deployed his troops in Sinai near the border with Israel, on 19 May he expelled the UN peacekeepers stationed in the Sinai Peninsula border with Israel, and on 23 May he closed the Straits of Tira to Israeli shipping.[58] On 26 May Nasser declared, "The battle will be a general one and our basic objective will be to destroy Israel".[59] Israel re-iterated that the Straits of Tira closure was a Casus belli. This prompted the beginning of the Third Arab Israeli War (Six-Day War) in which Israel attacked Egypt, and occupied Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip, which Egypt had occupied since the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. During the 1967 war, an Emergency Law was enacted, and remained in effect until 2012, with the exception of an 18-month break in 1980/81.[60] Under this law, police powers were extended, constitutional rights suspended and censorship legalised.[citation needed] At the time of the fall of the Egyptian monarchy in the early 1950s, less than half a million Egyptians were considered upper class and rich, four million middle class and 17 million lower class and poor.[61] Fewer than half of all primary-school-age children attended school, most of them being boys. Nasser's policies changed this. Land reform and distribution, the dramatic growth in university education, and government support to national industries greatly improved social mobility and flattened the social curve. From academic year 1953–54 through 1965–66, overall public school enrolments more than doubled. Millions of previously poor Egyptians, through education and jobs in the public sector, joined the middle class. Doctors, engineers, teachers, lawyers, journalists, constituted the bulk of the swelling middle class in Egypt under Nasser.[61] During the 1960s, the Egyptian economy went from sluggish to the verge of collapse, the society became less free, and Nasser's appeal waned considerably.[62] President Sadat (1970–1981) Egyptian tanks advancing in the Sinai desert during the Yom Kippur War, 1973 In 1970, President Nasser died of a heart attack and was succeeded by Anwar Sadat. Sadat switched Egypt's Cold War allegiance from the Soviet Union to the United States, expelling Soviet advisors in 1972. He launched the Infitah economic reform policy, while clamping down on religious and secular opposition. In 1973, Egypt, along with launched the Fourth Arab-Israeli War (Yom Kippur War), a surprise attack to regain part of the Sinai territory Israel had captured 6 years earlier. It presented Sadat with a victory that allowed him to regain the Sinai later in return for peace with Israel.[63] Celebrating the signing of the 1978 Camp David Accords: Menachem Begin, Jimmy Carter, Anwar Sadat In 1975, Sadat shifted Nasser's economic policies and sought to use his popularity to reduce government regulations and encourage foreign investment through his program of Infitah. Through this policy, incentives such as reduced taxes and import tariffs attracted some investors, but investments were mainly directed at low risk and profitable ventures like tourism and construction, abandoning Egypt's infant industries.[64] Even though Sadat's policy was intended to modernise Egypt and assist the middle class, it mainly benefited the higher class, and, because of the elimination of subsidies on basic foodstuffs, led to the 1977 Egyptian Bread Riots. In 1977, Sadat dissolved the Arab Socialist Union and replaced it with the National Democratic Party. Sadat made a historic visit to Israel in 1977, which led to the 1979 peace treaty in exchange for Israeli withdrawal from Sinai. Sadat's initiative sparked enormous controversy in the Arab world and led to Egypt's expulsion from the Arab League, but it was supported by most Egyptians.[65] Sadat was assassinated by an Islamic extremist in October 1981. President Mubarak (1981–2011) Hosni Mubarak came to power after the assassination of Sadat in a referendum in which he was the only candidate.[66] Hosni Mubarak reaffirmed Egypt's relationship with Israel yet eased the tensions with Egypt's Arab neighbours. Domestically, Mubarak faced serious problems. Even though farm and industry output expanded, the economy could not keep pace with the population boom. Mass poverty and unemployment led rural families to stream into cities like Cairo where they ended up in crowded slums, barely managing to survive. On 25 February 1986 Security Police started rioting, protesting against reports that their term of duty was to be extended from 3 to 4 years. Hotels, nightclubs, restaurants and casinos were attacked in Cairo and there were riots in other cities. A day time curfew was imposed. It took the army 3 days to restore order. 107 people were killed.[67] In the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, terrorist attacks in Egypt became numerous and severe, and began to target Christian Copts, foreign tourists and government officials.[68] In the 1990s an Islamist group, Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, engaged in an extended campaign of violence, from the murders and attempted murders of prominent writers and intellectuals, to the repeated targeting of tourists and foreigners. Serious damage was done to the largest sector of Egypt's economy—tourism[69]—and in turn to the government, but it also devastated the livelihoods of many of the people on whom the group depended for support.[70] During Mubarak's reign, the political scene was dominated by the National Democratic Party, which was created by Sadat in 1978. It passed the 1993 Syndicates Law, 1995 Press Law, and 1999 Nongovernmental Associations Law which hampered freedoms of association and expression by imposing new regulations and draconian penalties on violations.[citation needed] As a result, by the late 1990s parliamentary politics had become virtually irrelevant and alternative avenues for political expression were curtailed as well.[71] Cairo grew into a metropolitan area with a population of over 20 million On 17 November 1997, 62 people, mostly tourists, were massacred near Luxor. In late February 2005, Mubarak announced a reform of the presidential election law, paving the way for multi-candidate polls for the first time since the 1952 movement.[72] However, the new law placed restrictions on the candidates, and led to Mubarak's easy re-election victory.[73] Voter turnout was less than 25%.[74] Election observers also alleged government interference in the election process.[75] After the election, Mubarak imprisoned Ayman Nour, the runner-up.[76] Human Rights Watch's 2006 report on Egypt detailed serious human rights violations, including routine torture, arbitrary detentions and trials before military and state security courts.[77] In 2007, Amnesty International released a report alleging that Egypt had become an international centre for torture, where other nations send suspects for interrogation, often as part of the War on Terror.[78] Egypt's foreign ministry quickly issued a rebuttal to this report.[79] Constitutional changes voted on 19 March 2007 prohibited parties from using religion as a basis for political activity, allowed the drafting of a new anti-terrorism law, authorised broad police powers of arrest and surveillance, and gave the president power to dissolve parliament and end judicial election monitoring.[80] In 2009, Dr. Ali El Deen Hilal Dessouki, Media Secretary of the National Democratic Party (NDP), described Egypt as a "pharaonic" political system, and democracy as a "long-term goal". Dessouki also stated that "the real center of power in Egypt is the military".[81] Revolution (2011) Main article: Egyptian revolution of 2011 Top: Celebrations in Tahrir Square after the announcement of Hosni Mubarak's resignation; Bottom: Protests in Tahrir Square against President Morsi on 27 November 2012. On 25 January 2011, widespread protests began against Mubarak's government. On 11 February 2011, Mubarak resigned and fled Cairo. Jubilant celebrations broke out in Cairo's Tahrir Square at the news.[82] The Egyptian military then assumed the power to govern.[83][84] Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, chairman of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, became the de facto interim head of state.[85][86] On 13 February 2011, the military dissolved the parliament and suspended the constitution.[87] A constitutional referendum was held on 19 March 2011. On 28 November 2011, Egypt held its first parliamentary election since the previous regime had been in power. Turnout was high and there were no reports of major irregularities or violence.[88] President Morsi (2012–2013) Mohamed Morsi was elected president on 24 June 2012.[89] On 2 August 2012, Egypt's Prime Minister Hisham Qandil announced his 35-member cabinet comprising 28 newcomers, including four from the Muslim Brotherhood.[90] Liberal and secular groups walked out of the constituent assembly because they believed that it would impose strict Islamic practices, while Muslim Brotherhood backers threw their support behind Morsi.[91] On 22 November 2012, President Morsi issued a temporary declaration immunising his decrees from challenge and seeking to protect the work of the constituent assembly.[92] The move led to massive protests and violent action throughout Egypt.[93] On 5 December 2012, tens of thousands of supporters and opponents of President Morsi clashed, in what was described as the largest violent battle between Islamists and their foes since the country's revolution.[94] Mohamed Morsi offered a "national dialogue" with opposition leaders but refused to cancel the December 2012 constitutional referendum.[95] Political crisis (2013) Main article: 2013 Egyptian coup d'état On 3 July 2013, after a wave of public discontent with autocratic excesses of Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood government,[96] the military removed Morsi from office, dissolved the Shura Council and installed a temporary interim government[97]. On 4 July 2013, 68-year-old Chief Justice of the Supreme Constitutional Court of Egypt Adly Mansour was sworn in as acting president over the new government following the removal of Morsi. The new Egyptian authorities cracked down on the Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters, jailing thousands and forcefully dispersing pro-Morsi and/or pro-Brotherhood protests.[98][99] Many of the Muslim Brotherhood leaders and activists have either been sentenced to death or life imprisonment in a series of mass trials.[100][101][102] On 18 January 2014, the interim government instituted a new constitution following a referendum approved by an overwhelming majority of voters (98.1%). 38.6% of registered voters participated in the referendum[103] a higher number than the 33% who voted in a referendum during Morsi's tenure.[104] President el-Sisi (2014–present) On 26 March 2014, Field Marshal Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Egyptian Defence Minister and Commander-in-Chief Egyptian Armed Forces, retired from the military, announcing he would stand as a candidate in the 2014 presidential election.[105] The poll, held between 26 and 28 May 2014, resulted in a landslide victory for el-Sisi.[106] Sisi was sworn into office as President of Egypt on 8 June 2014. The Muslim Brotherhood and some liberal and secular activist groups boycotted the vote.[107] Even though the interim authorities extended voting to a third day, the 46% turnout was lower than the 52% turnout in the 2012 election.[108] A new parliamentary election was held in December 2015, resulting in a landslide victory for pro-Sisi parties, which secured a strong majority in the newly-formed House of Representatives. In 2016, Egypt entered in a diplomatic crisis with Italy following the murder of researcher Giulio Regeni: in April 2016, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi recalled the Italian ambassador from El-Cairo because of lack of co-operation from the Egyptian Government in the investigation. The ambassador was sent back to Egypt in 2017 by the new Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni. El-Sisi was re-elected in 2018, facing no serious opposition. In 2019, a series of constitutional amendments were approved by the parliament, further increasing the President's and the military's power, increasing presidential terms from 4 years to 6 years and allowing El-Sisi to run for other two mandates. The proposals were approved in a referendum. Geography Main article: Geography of Egypt Nile valley near Luxor. Rocky landscape in Marsa Alam. Egypt lies primarily between latitudes 22° and 32°N, and longitudes 25° and 35°E. At 1,001,450 square kilometres (386,660 sq mi),[109] it is the world's 30th-largest country. Due to the extreme aridity of Egypt's climate, population centres are concentrated along the narrow Nile Valley and Delta, meaning that about 99% of the population uses about 5.5% of the total land area.[110] 98% of Egyptians live on 3% of the territory.[111] Egypt is bordered by Libya to the west, the Sudan to the south, and the Gaza Strip and Israel to the east. Egypt's important role in geopolitics stems from its strategic position: a transcontinental nation, it possesses a land bridge (the Isthmus of Suez) between Africa and Asia, traversed by a navigable waterway (the Suez Canal) that connects the Mediterranean Sea with the Indian Ocean by way of the Red Sea. Apart from the Nile Valley, the majority of Egypt's landscape is desert, with a few oases scattered about. Winds create prolific sand dunes that peak at more than 100 feet (30 m) high. Egypt includes parts of the Sahara desert and of the Libyan Desert. These deserts protected the Kingdom of the Pharaohs from western threats and were referred to as the "red land" in ancient Egypt. Towns and cities include Alexandria, the second largest city; Aswan; Asyut; Cairo, the modern Egyptian capital and largest city; El Mahalla El Kubra; Giza, the site of the Pyramid of Khufu; Hurghada; Luxor; Kom Ombo; Port Safaga; Port Said; Sharm El Sheikh; Suez, where the south end of the Suez Canal is located; Zagazig; and Minya. Oases include Bahariya, Dakhla, Farafra, Kharga and Siwa. Protectorates include Ras Mohamed National Park, Zaranik Protectorate and Siwa. On 13 March 2015, plans for a proposed new capital of Egypt were announced.[112] Climate Main article: Climate of Egypt Saint Catherine in southern Sinai, on a snowy winter morning. Most of Egypt's rain falls in the winter months.[113] South of Cairo, rainfall averages only around 2 to 5 mm (0.1 to 0.2 in) per year and at intervals of many years. On a very thin strip of the northern coast the rainfall can be as high as 410 mm (16.1 in),[114] mostly between October and March. Snow falls on Sinai's mountains and some of the north coastal cities such as Damietta, Baltim and Sidi Barrani, and rarely in Alexandria. A very small amount of snow fell on Cairo on 13 December 2013, the first time in many decades.[115] Frost is also known in mid-Sinai and mid-Egypt. Egypt is the driest and the sunniest country in the world, and most of its land surface is desert. The Qattara Depression in Egypt's north west. Egypt has an unusually hot, sunny and dry climate. Average high temperatures are high in the north but very to extremely high in the rest of the country during summer. The cooler Mediterranean winds consistently blow over the northern sea coast, which helps to get more moderated temperatures, especially at the height of the summertime. The Khamaseen is a hot, dry wind that originates from the vast deserts in the south and blows in the spring or in the early summer. It brings scorching sand and dust particles, and usually brings daytime temperatures over 40 °C (104 °F) and sometimes over 50 °C (122 °F) in the interior, while the relative humidity can drop to 5% or even less. The absolute highest temperatures in Egypt occur when the Khamaseen blows. The weather is always sunny and clear in Egypt, especially in cities such as Aswan, Luxor and Asyut. It is one of the least cloudy and least rainy regions on Earth. Prior to the construction of the Aswan Dam, the Nile flooded annually (colloquially The Gift of the Nile) replenishing Egypt's soil. This gave Egypt a consistent harvest throughout the years. The potential rise in sea levels due to global warming could threaten Egypt's densely populated coastal strip and have grave consequences for the country's economy, agriculture and industry. Combined with growing demographic pressures, a significant rise in sea levels could turn millions of Egyptians into environmental refugees by the end of the 21st century, according to some climate experts.[116][117] Biodiversity Main article: Wildlife of Egypt Egypt signed the Rio Convention on Biological Diversity on 9 June 1992, and became a party to the convention on 2 June 1994.[118] It has subsequently produced a National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan, which was received by the convention on 31 July 1998.[119] Where many CBD National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plans neglect biological kingdoms apart from animals and plants,[120] Egypt's plan was unusual in providing balanced information about all forms of life. The plan stated that the following numbers of species of different groups had been recorded from Egypt: algae (1483 species), animals (about 15,000 species of which more than 10,000 were insects), fungi (more than 627 species), monera (319 species), plants (2426 species), protozoans (371 species). For some major groups, for example lichen-forming fungi and nematode worms, the number was not known. Apart from small and well-studied groups like amphibians, birds, fish, mammals and reptiles, the many of those numbers are likely to increase as further species are recorded from Egypt. For the fungi, including lichen-forming species, for example, subsequent work has shown that over 2200 species have been recorded from Egypt, and the final figure of all fungi actually occurring in the country is expected to be much higher.[121] For the grasses, 284 native and naturalised species have been identified and recorded in Egypt.[122] Government Main article: Politics of Egypt Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is the current President of Egypt. The House of Representatives, whose members are elected to serve five-year terms, specialises in legislation. Elections were last held between November 2011 and January 2012 which was later dissolved. The next parliamentary election was announced to be held within 6 months of the constitution's ratification on 18 January 2014, and were held in two phases, from 17 October to 2 December 2015.[123] Originally, the parliament was to be formed before the president was elected, but interim president Adly Mansour pushed the date.[124] The Egyptian presidential election, 2014, took place on 26–28 May 2014. Official figures showed a turnout of 25,578,233 or 47.5%, with Abdel Fattah el-Sisi winning with 23.78 million votes, or 96.9% compared to 757,511 (3.1%) for Hamdeen Sabahi.[125] After a wave of public discontent with autocratic excesses of the Muslim Brotherhood government of President Mohamed Morsi,[96] on 3 July 2013 then-General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi announced the removal of Morsi from office and the suspension of the constitution. A 50-member constitution committee was formed for modifying the constitution which was later published for public voting and was adopted on 18 January 2014.[126] In 2013, Freedom House rated political rights in Egypt at 5 (with 1 representing the most free and 7 the least), and civil liberties at 5, which gave it the freedom rating of "Partly Free".[127] Egyptian nationalism predates its Arab counterpart by many decades, having roots in the 19th century and becoming the dominant mode of expression of Egyptian anti-colonial activists and intellectuals until the early 20th century.[128] The ideology espoused by Islamists such as the Muslim Brotherhood is mostly supported by the lower-middle strata of Egyptian society.[129] Egypt has the oldest continuous parliamentary tradition in the Arab world.[130] The first popular assembly was established in 1866. It was disbanded as a result of the British occupation of 1882, and the British allowed only a consultative body to sit. In 1923, however, after the country's independence was declared, a new constitution provided for a parliamentary monarchy.[130] Law Main article: Egyptian Civil Code The High Court of Justice in Downtown Cairo. The legal system is based on Islamic and civil law (particularly Napoleonic codes); and judicial review by a Supreme Court, which accepts compulsory International Court of Justice jurisdiction only with reservations.[54] Islamic jurisprudence is the principal source of legislation. Sharia courts and qadis are run and licensed by the Ministry of Justice.[131] The personal status law that regulates matters such as marriage, divorce and child custody is governed by Sharia. In a family court, a woman's testimony is worth half of a man's testimony.[132] On 26 December 2012, the Muslim Brotherhood attempted to institutionalise a controversial new constitution. It was approved by the public in a referendum held 15–22 December 2012 with 64% support, but with only 33% electorate participation.[133] It replaced the 2011 Provisional Constitution of Egypt, adopted following the revolution. The Penal code was unique as it contains a "Blasphemy Law."[134] The present court system allows a death penalty including against an absent individual tried in absentia. Several Americans and Canadians were sentenced to death in 2012.[135] On 18 January 2014, the interim government successfully institutionalised a more secular constitution.[136] The president is elected to a four-year term and may serve 2 terms.[136] The parliament may impeach the president.[136] Under the constitution, there is a guarantee of gender equality and absolute freedom of thought.[136] The military retains the ability to appoint the national Minister of Defence for the next two full presidential terms since the constitution took effect.[136] Under the constitution, political parties may not be based on "religion, race, gender or geography".[136] Human rights Main article: Human rights in Egypt See also: Sudanese refugees in Egypt, August 2013 Rabaa massacre, and Persecution of Copts The Egyptian Organization for Human Rights is one of the longest-standing bodies for the defence of human rights in Egypt.[137] In 2003, the government established the National Council for Human Rights.[138] Shortly after its foundation, the council came under heavy criticism by local activists, who contend it was a propaganda tool for the government to excuse its own violations[139] and to give legitimacy to repressive laws such as the Emergency Law.[140] Protesters from the Third Square movement, which supported neither the former Morsi government nor the Armed Forces, 31 July 2013 The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life ranks Egypt as the fifth worst country in the world for religious freedom.[141][142] The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, a bipartisan independent agency of the US government, has placed Egypt on its watch list of countries that require close monitoring due to the nature and extent of violations of religious freedom engaged in or tolerated by the government.[143] According to a 2010 Pew Global Attitudes survey, 84% of Egyptians polled supported the death penalty for those who leave Islam; 77% supported whippings and cutting off of hands for theft and robbery; and 82% support stoning a person who commits adultery.[144] In February 2016 Giulio Regeni, an Italian Ph.D student from the University of Cambridge studying trade unions and worker's rights in the country, was found brutally murdered in Cairo after he went missing in January of the same year. Subsequently, Italy withdrew its ambassador to Egypt. Egyptian law enforcement produced conflicting information on the fate of the Italian citizen, which was unacceptable to Italian investigators. As a result, the Italian press and foreign ministry pointed at the systematic human rights violations in Egypt, and threatened with political sanctions unless police leadership and practices undergo significant revisions.[145] Coptic Christians face discrimination at multiple levels of the government, ranging from underrepresentation in government ministries to laws that limit their ability to build or repair churches.[146] Intolerance of Bahá'ís and non-orthodox Muslim sects, such as Sufis, Shi'a and Ahmadis, also remains a problem.[77] When the government moved to computerise identification cards, members of religious minorities, such as Bahá'ís, could not obtain identification documents.[147] An Egyptian court ruled in early 2008 that members of other faiths may obtain identity cards without listing their faiths, and without becoming officially recognised.[148] Clashes continued between police and supporters of former President Mohamed Morsi. During violent clashes that ensued as part of the August 2013 sit-in dispersal, 595 protesters were killed[149] with 14 August 2013 becoming the single deadliest day in Egypt's modern history.[150] Egypt actively practices capital punishment. Egypt's authorities do not release figures on death sentences and executions, despite repeated requests over the years by human rights organisations.[151] The United Nations human rights office[152] and various NGOs[151][153] expressed "deep alarm" after an Egyptian Minya Criminal Court sentenced 529 people to death in a single hearing on 25 March 2014. Sentenced supporters of former President Mohamed Morsi were to be executed for their alleged role in violence following his removal in July 2013. The judgement was condemned as a violation of international law.[154] By May 2014, approximately 16,000 people (and as high as more than 40,000 by one independent count, according to The Economist),[155] mostly Brotherhood members or supporters, have been imprisoned after Morsi's removal[156] after the Muslim Brotherhood was labelled as terrorist organisation by the post-Morsi interim Egyptian government.[157] After Morsi was ousted by the military, the judiciary system aligned itself with the new government, actively supporting the repression of Muslim Brotherhood members. This resulted in a sharp increase in mass death sentences that arose criticism from then-U.S. President Barack Obama and the General Secretary of the UN, Ban Ki Moon. Homosexuality is illegal in Egypt.[158] According to a 2013 survey by the Pew Research Center, 95% of Egyptians believe that homosexuality should not be accepted by society.[159] In 2017, Cairo was voted the most dangerous megacity for women with more than 10 million inhabitants in a poll by Thomson Reuters Foundation. Sexual harassment was described as occurring on a daily basis.[160] Freedom of the press Reporters Without Borders ranked Egypt in their 2017 World Press Freedom Index at No. 160 out of 180 nations. At least 18 journalists were imprisoned in Egypt, as of August 2015. A new anti-terror law was enacted in August 2015 that threatens members of the media with fines ranging from about US$25,000 to $60,000 for the distribution of wrong information on acts of terror inside the country "that differ from official declarations of the Egyptian Department of Defense".[161] Military and foreign relations Main articles: Egyptian Armed Forces and Foreign relations of Egypt Egyptian honor guard soldiers during a visit of U.S. Navy Adm. Mike Mullen The military is influential in the political and economic life of Egypt and exempts itself from laws that apply to other sectors. It enjoys considerable power, prestige and independence within the state and has been widely considered part of the Egyptian "deep state".[66][162][163] According to the former chair of Israel's Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Yuval Steinitz, the Egyptian Air Force has roughly the same number of modern warplanes as the Israeli Air Force and far more Western tanks, artillery, anti-aircraft batteries and warships than the IDF.[164] Egypt is speculated by Israel to be the second country in the region with a spy satellite, EgyptSat 1[165] in addition to EgyptSat 2 launched on 16 April 2014.[166] Top: Former President Hosni Mubarak with former US President George W. Bush at Camp David in 2002; Bottom: President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi, August 2014. The United States provides Egypt with annual military assistance, which in 2015 amounted to US$1.3 billion.[167] In 1989, Egypt was designated as a major non-NATO ally of the United States.[168] Nevertheless, ties between the two countries have partially soured since the July 2013 overthrow of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi,[169] with the Obama administration denouncing Egypt over its crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, and cancelling future military exercises involving the two countries.[170] There have been recent attempts, however, to normalise relations between the two, with both governments frequently calling for mutual support in the fight against regional and international terrorism.[171][172][173] However, following the election of Republican Donald Trump as the President of the United States, the two countries were looking to improve the Egyptian-American relations. al-Sisi and Trump had met during the opening of the seventy-first session of the United Nations General Assembly in September 2016.[174] The absence of Egypt in President Trump's travel ban towards seven Muslim countries was noted in Washington although the Congress has voiced human rights concerns over the handling of dissidents.[175] On 3 April 2017 al-Sisi met with Trump at the White House, marking the first visit of an Egyptian president to Washington in 8 years. Trump praised al-Sisi in what was reported as a public relations victory for the Egyptian president, and signaled it was time for a normalization of the relations between Egypt and the US.[176] The Egyptian military has dozens of factories manufacturing weapons as well as consumer goods. The Armed Forces' inventory includes equipment from different countries around the world. Equipment from the former Soviet Union is being progressively replaced by more modern US, French, and British equipment, a significant portion of which is built under license in Egypt, such as the M1 Abrams tank.[citation needed] Relations with Russia have improved significantly following Mohamed Morsi's removal[177] and both countries have worked since then to strengthen military[178] and trade ties[179] among other aspects of bilateral co-operation. Relations with China have also improved considerably. In 2014, Egypt and China established a bilateral "comprehensive strategic partnership".[180] In July 2019, UN ambassadors of 37 countries, including Egypt, have signed a joint letter to the UNHRC defending China's treatment of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region.[181] The permanent headquarters of the Arab League are located in Cairo and the body's secretary general has traditionally been Egyptian. This position is currently held by former foreign minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit. The Arab League briefly moved from Egypt to Tunis in 1978 to protest the Egypt–Israel Peace Treaty, but it later returned to Cairo in 1989. Gulf monarchies, including the United Arab Emirates[182] and Saudi Arabia,[183] have pledged billions of dollars to help Egypt overcome its economic difficulties since the overthrow of Morsi.[184] President el-Sisi with US President Donald Trump, 21 May 2017 Following the 1973 war and the subsequent peace treaty, Egypt became the first Arab nation to establish diplomatic relations with Israel. Despite that, Israel is still widely considered as a hostile state by the majority of Egyptians.[185] Egypt has played a historical role as a mediator in resolving various disputes in the Middle East, most notably its handling of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the peace process.[186] Egypt's ceasefire and truce brokering efforts in Gaza have hardly been challenged following Israel's evacuation of its settlements from the strip in 2005, despite increasing animosity towards the Hamas government in Gaza following the ouster of Mohamed Morsi,[187] and despite recent attempts by countries like Turkey and Qatar to take over this role.[188] Ties between Egypt and other non-Arab Middle Eastern nations, including Turkey, have often been strained. Tensions with are mostly due to Egypt's peace treaty with Israel and s rivalry with traditional Egyptian allies in the Gulf.[189] Turkey's recent support for the now-banned Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and its alleged involvement in Libya also made of both countries bitter regional rivals.[190][191] Egypt is a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement and the United Nations. It is also a member of the Organisation internationale de la francophonie, since 1983. Former Egyptian Deputy Prime Minister Boutros Boutros-Ghali served as Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1991 to 1996. In 2008, Egypt was estimated to have two million African refugees, including over 20,000 Sudanese nationals registered with UNHCR as refugees fleeing armed conflict or asylum seekers. Egypt adopted "harsh, sometimes lethal" methods of border control.[192] Administrative divisions Main articles: Governorates of Egypt and Subdivisions of Egypt Egypt is divided into 27 governorates. The governorates are further divided into regions. The regions contain towns and villages. Each governorate has a capital, sometimes carrying the same name as the governorate.[193] Governorates of Egypt 1. Matrouh 2. Alexandria 3. Beheira 4. Kafr El Sheikh 5. Dakahlia 6. Damietta 7. Port Said 8. North Sinai 9. Gharbia 10. Monufia 11. Qalyubia 12. Sharqia 13. Ismailia 14. Giza 15. Faiyum 16. Cairo 17. Suez 18. South Sinai 19. Beni Suef 20. Minya 21. New Valley 22. Asyut 23. Red Sea 24. Sohag 25. Qena 26. Luxor 27. Aswan Economy Main article: Economy of Egypt Share of world GDP (PPP)[194] Year Share 1980 0.69% 1990 0.83% 2000 0.86% 2010 0.96% 2017 0.95% Egypt Exports by Product (2014) from Harvard Atlas of Economic Complexity Egypt's economy depends mainly on agriculture, media, petroleum imports, natural gas, and tourism; there are also more than three million Egyptians working abroad, mainly in Libya, Saudi Arabia, the Persian Gulf and Europe. The completion of the Aswan High Dam in 1970 and the resultant Lake Nasser have altered the time-honoured place of the Nile River in the agriculture and ecology of Egypt. A rapidly growing population, limited arable land, and dependence on the Nile all continue to overtax resources and stress the economy. The government has invested in communications and physical infrastructure. Egypt has received United States foreign aid since 1979 (an average of $2.2 billion per year) and is the third-largest recipient of such funds from the United States following the Iraq war. Egypt's economy mainly relies on these sources of income: tourism, remittances from Egyptians working abroad and revenues from the Suez Canal.[195] Egypt has a developed energy market based on coal, oil, natural gas, and hydro power. Substantial coal deposits in the northeast Sinai are mined at the rate of about 600,000 tonnes (590,000 long tons; 660,000 short tons) per year. Oil and gas are produced in the western desert regions, the Gulf of Suez, and the Nile Delta. Egypt has huge reserves of gas, estimated at 2,180 cubic kilometres (520 cu mi),[196] and LNG up to 2012 exported to many countries. In 2013, the Egyptian General Petroleum Co (EGPC) said the country will cut exports of natural gas and tell major industries to slow output this summer to avoid an energy crisis and stave off political unrest, Reuters has reported. Egypt is counting on top liquid natural gas (LNG) exporter Qatar to obtain additional gas volumes in summer, while encouraging factories to plan their annual maintenance for those months of peak demand, said EGPC chairman, Tarek El Barkatawy. Egypt produces its own energy, but has been a net oil importer since 2008 and is rapidly becoming a net importer of natural gas.[197] Economic conditions have started to improve considerably, after a period of stagnation, due to the adoption of more liberal economic policies by the government as well as increased revenues from tourism and a booming stock market. In its annual report, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has rated Egypt as one of the top countries in the world undertaking economic reforms.[198] Some major economic reforms undertaken by the government since 2003 include a dramatic slashing of customs and tariffs. A new taxation law implemented in 2005 decreased corporate taxes from 40% to the current 20%, resulting in a stated 100% increase in tax revenue by the year 2006. Smart Village, a business district established in 2001 to facilitate the growth of high-tech businesses. San Stefano Grand Plaza in Alexandria (left) and view from Cairo. Foreign direct investment (FDI) in Egypt increased considerably before the removal of Hosni Mubarak, exceeding $6 billion in 2006, due to economic liberalisation and privatisation measures taken by minister of investment Mahmoud Mohieddin.[citation needed] Since the fall of Hosni Mubarak in 2011, Egypt has experienced a drastic fall in both foreign investment and tourism revenues, followed by a 60% drop in foreign exchange reserves, a 3% drop in growth, and a rapid devaluation of the Egyptian pound.[199] Although one of the main obstacles still facing the Egyptian economy is the limited trickle down of wealth to the average population, many Egyptians criticise their government for higher prices of basic goods while their standards of living or purchasing power remains relatively stagnant. Corruption is often cited by Egyptians as the main impediment to further economic growth.[200][201] The government promised major reconstruction of the country's infrastructure, using money paid for the newly acquired third mobile license ($3 billion) by Etisalat in 2006.[202] In the Corruption Perceptions Index 2013, Egypt was ranked 114 out of 177.[203] The Suez Canal. Egypt's most prominent multinational companies are the Orascom Group and Raya Contact Center. The information technology (IT) sector has expanded rapidly in the past few years, with many start-ups selling outsourcing services to North America and Europe, operating with companies such as Microsoft, Oracle and other major corporations, as well as many small and medium size enterprises. Some of these companies are the Xceed Contact Center, Raya, E Group Connections and C3. The IT sector has been stimulated by new Egyptian entrepreneurs with government encouragement.[citation needed] An estimated 2.7 million Egyptians abroad contribute actively to the development of their country through remittances (US$7.8 billion in 2009), as well as circulation of human and social capital and investment.[204] Remittances, money earned by Egyptians living abroad and sent home, reached a record US$21 billion in 2012, according to the World Bank.[205] Egyptian society is moderately unequal in terms of income distribution, with an estimated 35–40% of Egypt's population earning less than the equivalent of $2 a day, while only around 2–3% may be considered wealthy.[206] Tourism Main article: Tourism in Egypt Muizz Street. Old Cairo has the greatest concentration of medieval architectural treasures in the Islamic world. Tourism is one of the most important sectors in Egypt's economy. More than 12.8 million tourists visited Egypt in 2008, providing revenues of nearly $11 billion. The tourism sector employs about 12% of Egypt's workforce.[207] Tourism Minister Hisham Zaazou told industry professionals and reporters that tourism generated some $9.4 billion in 2012, a slight increase over the $9 billion seen in 2011.[208] Sahl Hasheesh, a resort town near Hurghada. The Giza Necropolis is one of Egypt's best-known tourist attractions; it is the only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World still in existence. Egypt's beaches on the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, which extend to over 3,000 kilometres (1,900 miles), are also popular tourist destinations; the Gulf of Aqaba beaches, Safaga, Sharm el-Sheikh, Hurghada, Luxor, Dahab, Ras Sidr and Marsa Alam are popular sites. Energy Main article: Energy in Egypt An offshore platform in the Darfeel Gas Field. Egypt produced 691,000 bbl/d of oil and 2,141.05 Tcf of natural gas in 2013, making the country the largest non-OPEC producer of oil and the second-largest dry natural gas producer in Africa. In 2013, Egypt was the largest consumer of oil and natural gas in Africa, as more than 20% of total oil consumption and more than 40% of total dry natural gas consumption in Africa. Also, Egypt possesses the largest oil refinery capacity in Africa 726,000 bbl/d (in 2012).[196] Egypt is currently planning to build its first nuclear power plant in El Dabaa, in the northern part of the country, with $25 billion in Russian financing.[209] Transport Main article: Transport in Egypt Transport in Egypt is centred around Cairo and largely follows the pattern of settlement along the Nile. The main line of the nation's 40,800-kilometre (25,400 mi) railway network runs from Alexandria to Aswan and is operated by Egyptian National Railways. The vehicle road network has expanded rapidly to over 21,000 miles, consisting of 28 line, 796 stations, 1800 train covering the Nile Valley and Nile Delta, the Mediterranean and Red Sea coasts, the Sinai, and the Western oases. The Cairo Metro (line 2) The Cairo Metro in Egypt is the first of only two full-fledged metro systems in Africa and the Arab World. It is considered one of the most important recent projects in Egypt which cost around 12 billion Egyptian pounds. The system consists of three operational lines with a fourth line expected in the future. EgyptAir, which is now the country's flag carrier and largest airline, was founded in 1932 by Egyptian industrialist Talaat Harb, today owned by the Egyptian government. The airline is based at Cairo International Airport, its main hub, operating scheduled passenger and freight services to more than 75 destinations in the Middle East, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas. The Current EgyptAir fleet includes 80 aeroplanes. Suez Canal Main article: Suez Canal The Suez Canal Bridge. The Suez Canal is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt considered the most important centre of the maritime transport in the Middle East, connecting the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. Opened in November 1869 after 10 years of construction work, it allows ship transport between Europe and Asia without navigation around Africa. The northern terminus is Port Said and the southern terminus is Port Tawfiq at the city of Suez. Ismailia lies on its west bank, 3 kilometres (1.9 miles) from the half-way point. The canal is 193.30 kilometres (120.11 miles) long, 24 metres (79 feet) deep and 205 metres (673 feet) wide as of 2010. It consists of the northern access channel of 22 kilometres (14 miles), the canal itself of 162.25 kilometres (100.82 miles) and the southern access channel of 9 kilometres (5.6 miles). The canal is a single lane with passing places in the Ballah By-Pass and the Great Bitter Lake. It contains no locks; seawater flows freely through the canal. In general, the canal north of the Bitter Lakes flows north in winter and south in summer. The current south of the lakes changes with the tide at Suez. On 26 August 2014 a proposal was made for opening a New Suez Canal. Work on the New Suez Canal was completed in July 2015.[210][211] The channel was officially inaugurated with a ceremony attended by foreign leaders and featuring military flyovers on 6 August 2015, in accordance with the budgets laid out for the project.[212][213] Water supply and sanitation Main article: Water supply and sanitation in Egypt The piped water supply in Egypt increased between 1990 and 2010 from 89% to 100% in urban areas and from 39% to 93% in rural areas despite rapid population growth. Over that period, Egypt achieved the elimination of open defecation in rural areas and invested in infrastructure. Access to an improved water source in Egypt is now practically universal with a rate of 99%. About one half of the population is connected to sanitary sewers.[214] Partly because of low sanitation coverage about 17,000 children die each year because of diarrhoea.[215] Another challenge is low cost recovery due to water tariffs that are among the lowest in the world. This in turn requires government subsidies even for operating costs, a situation that has been aggravated by salary increases without tariff increases after the Arab Spring. Poor operation of facilities, such as water and wastewater treatment plants, as well as limited government accountability and transparency, are also issues. Green irrigated land along the Nile amidst the desert and in the delta Irrigated land and crops Due to the absence of appreciable rainfall, Egypt's agriculture depends entirely on irrigation. The main source of irrigation water is the river Nile of which the flow is controlled by the high dam at Aswan. It releases, on average, 55 cubic kilometres (45,000,000 acre·ft) water per year, of which some 46 cubic kilometres (37,000,000 acre·ft) are diverted into the irrigation canals.[216] In the Nile valley and delta, almost 33,600 square kilometres (13,000 sq mi) of land benefit from these irrigation waters producing on average 1.8 crops per year.[216] Demographics Main articles: Demographics of Egypt and Egyptians Egypt's population density (people per km2). Historical populations in thousands Year Pop. ±% p.a. 1882 6,712 — 1897 9,669 +2.46% 1907 11,190 +1.47% 1917 12,718 +1.29% 1927 14,178 +1.09% 1937 15,921 +1.17% 1947 18,967 +1.77% 1960 26,085 +2.48% 1966 30,076 +2.40% 1976 36,626 +1.99% 1986 48,254 +2.80% 1996 59,312 +2.08% 2006 72,798 +2.07% 2013 84,314 +2.12% 2017 94,798 +2.97% Source: Population in Egypt[217][7] Egypt is the most populated country in the Arab world and the third most populous on the African continent, with about 95 million inhabitants as of 2017.[218] Its population grew rapidly from 1970 to 2010 due to medical advances and increases in agricultural productivity[219] enabled by the Green Revolution.[220] Egypt's population was estimated at 3 million when Napoleon invaded the country in 1798.[221] Egypt's people are highly urbanised, being concentrated along the Nile (notably Cairo and Alexandria), in the Delta and near the Suez Canal. Egyptians are divided demographically into those who live in the major urban centres and the fellahin, or farmers, that reside in rural villages. The total inhabited area constitutes only 77,041 km², putting the physiological density at over 1,200 people per km2, similar to Bangladesh. While emigration was restricted under Nasser, thousands of Egyptian professionals were dispatched abroad in the context of the Arab Cold War.[222] Egyptian emigration was liberalised in 1971, under President Sadat, reaching record numbers after the 1973 oil crisis.[223] An estimated 2.7 million Egyptians live abroad. Approximately 70% of Egyptian migrants live in Arab countries (923,600 in Saudi Arabia, 332,600 in Libya, 226,850 in Jordan, 190,550 in Kuwait with the rest elsewhere in the region) and the remaining 30% reside mostly in Europe and North America (318,000 in the United States, 110,000 in Canada and 90,000 in Italy).[204] The process of emigrating to non-Arab states has been ongoing since the 1950s.[224] Ethnic groups Ethnic Egyptians are by far the largest ethnic group in the country, constituting 99.7% of the total population.[54] Ethnic minorities include the Abazas, Turks, Greeks, Bedouin Arab tribes living in the eastern deserts and the Sinai Peninsula, the Berber-speaking Siwis (Amazigh) of the Siwa Oasis, and the Nubian communities clustered along the Nile. There are also tribal Beja communities concentrated in the south-eastern-most corner of the country, and a number of Dom clans mostly in the Nile Delta and Faiyum who are progressively becoming assimilated as urbanisation increases. Some 5 million immigrants live in Egypt, mostly Sudanese, "some of whom have lived in Egypt for generations."[225] Smaller numbers of immigrants come from Iraq, Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan, and Eritrea.[225] The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimated that the total number of "people of concern" (refugees, asylum seekers, and stateless people) was about 250,000. In 2015, the number of registered refugees in Egypt was 117,000, a decrease from the previous year.[225] Egyptian government claims that a half-million refugees live in Egypt are thought to be exaggerated.[225] There are 28,000 registered Sudanese refugees in Egypt.[225] The once-vibrant and ancient Greek and Jewish communities in Egypt have almost disappeared, with only a small number remaining in the country, but many Egyptian Jews visit on religious or other occasions and tourism. Several important Jewish archaeological and historical sites are found in Cairo, Alexandria and other cities. Languages Main article: Languages of Egypt The official language of the Republic is Arabic.[226] The spoken languages are: Egyptian Arabic (68%), Sa'idi Arabic (29%), Eastern Egyptian Bedawi Arabic (1.6%), Sudanese Arabic (0.6%), Domari (0.3%), Nobiin (0.3%), Beja (0.1%), Siwi and others. Additionally, Greek, Armenian and Italian, and more recently, African languages like Amharic and Tigrigna are the main languages of immigrants. The main foreign languages taught in schools, by order of popularity, are English, French, German and Italian. Historically Egyptian was spoken, of which the latest stage is Coptic Egyptian. Spoken Coptic was mostly extinct by the 17th century but may have survived in isolated pockets in Upper Egypt as late as the 19th century. It remains in use as the liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria.[227][228] It forms a separate branch among the family of Afroasiatic languages. Religion Main article: Religion in Egypt Egypt is a predominantly Sunni Muslim country with Islam as its state religion. The percentage of adherents of various religions is a controversial topic in Egypt. An estimated 85–90% are identified as Muslim, 10–15% as Coptic Christians, and 1% as other Christian denominations, although without a census the numbers cannot be known. Other estimates put the Christian population as high as 15–20%.[note 1] Non-denominational Muslims form roughly 12% of the population.[235][236] Egypt was a Christian country before the 7th century, and after Islam arrived, the country was gradually Islamised into a majority-Muslim country.[237][238] It is not known when Muslims reached a majority variously estimated from c. 1000 CE to as late as the 14th century. Egypt emerged as a centre of politics and culture in the Muslim world. Under Anwar Sadat, Islam became the official state religion and Sharia the main source of law.[239] It is estimated that 15 million Egyptians follow Native Sufi orders,[240][241][242] with the Sufi leadership asserting that the numbers are much greater as many Egyptian Sufis are not officially registered with a Sufi order.[241] At least 305 people were killed during a November 2017 attack on a Sufi mosque in Sinai.[243] There is also a Shi'a minority. The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs estimates the Shia population at 1 to 2.2 million[244] and could measure as much as 3 million.[245] The Ahmadiyya population is estimated at less than 50,000,[246] whereas the Salafi (ultra-conservative) population is estimated at five to six million.[247] Cairo is famous for its numerous mosque minarets and has been dubbed "The City of 1,000 Minarets".[248] St. Mark Coptic Cathedral in Alexandria Of the Christian population in Egypt over 90% belong to the native Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, an Oriental Orthodox Christian Church.[249] Other native Egyptian Christians are adherents of the Coptic Catholic Church, the Evangelical Church of Egypt and various other Protestant denominations. Non-native Christian communities are largely found in the urban regions of Cairo and Alexandria, such as the Syro-Lebanese, who belong to Greek Catholic, Greek Orthodox, and Maronite Catholic denominations.[250] Ethnic Greeks also made up a large Greek Orthodox population in the past. Likewise, Armenians made up the then larger Armenian Orthodox and Catholic communities. Egypt also used to have a large Roman Catholic community, largely made up of Italians and Maltese. These non-native communities were much larger in Egypt before the Nasser regime and the nationalisation that took place. Egypt hosts the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. It was founded back in the first century, considered to be the largest church in the country. Egypt is also the home of Al-Azhar University (founded in 969 CE, began teaching in 975 CE), which is today the world's "most influential voice of establishment Sunni Islam" and is, by some measures, the second-oldest continuously operating university in world.[251] Egypt recognises only three religions: Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. Other faiths and minority Muslim sects practised by Egyptians, such as the small Bahá'í and Ahmadi community, are not recognised by the state and face persecution by the government, which labels these groups a threat to Egypt's national security.[252][253] Individuals, particularly Baha'is and atheists, wishing to include their religion (or lack thereof) on their mandatory state issued identification cards are denied this ability (see Egyptian identification card controversy), and are put in the position of either not obtaining required identification or lying about their faith. A 2008 court ruling allowed members of unrecognised faiths to obtain identification and leave the religion field blank.[147][148] Largest cities See also: List of cities and towns in Egypt vte Largest cities or towns in Egypt 2017 census Rank Name Governorate Pop. Rank Name Governorate Pop. Cairo Cairo Alexandria Alexandria 1 Cairo Cairo 9,153,135 11 Asyut Asyut 462,061 Giza Giza Shubra El Kheima Shubra El Kheima 2 Alexandria Alexandria 5,039,975 12 El Khusus Qalyubia 459,586 3 Giza Giza 4,146,340 13 Ismailia Ismailia 386,372 4 Shubra El Kheima Qalyubia 1,165,914 14 Zagazig Sharqia 383,703 5 Port Said Port Said 751,073 15 6th of October Giza 350,018 6 Suez Suez 660,592 16 Aswan Aswan 321,761 7 Mansoura Dakahlia 548,259 17 New Cairo Cairo 298,343 8 El Mahalla El Kubra Gharbia 522,799 18 Damietta Damietta 282,879 9 Tanta Gharbia 508,754 19 Damanhur Beheira 262,505 10 Faiyum Faiyum 475,139 20 Minya Minya 245,478 Culture Main article: Culture of Egypt Bibliotheca Alexandrina is a commemoration of the ancient Library of Alexandria Egypt is a recognised cultural trend-setter of the Arabic-speaking world. Contemporary Arabic and Middle-Eastern culture is heavily influenced by Egyptian literature, music, film and television. Egypt gained a regional leadership role during the 1950s and 1960s, giving a further enduring boost to the standing of Egyptian culture in the Arabic-speaking world.[254] Al-Azhar Park is listed as one of the world's sixty great public spaces by the Project for Public Spaces Egyptian identity evolved in the span of a long period of occupation to accommodate Islam, Christianity and Judaism; and a new language, Arabic, and its spoken descendant, Egyptian Arabic which is also based on many Ancient Egyptian words.[255] The work of early 19th century scholar Rifa'a al-Tahtawi renewed interest in Egyptian antiquity and exposed Egyptian society to Enlightenment principles. Tahtawi co-founded with education reformer Ali Mubarak a native Egyptology school that looked for inspiration to medieval Egyptian scholars, such as Suyuti and Maqrizi, who themselves studied the history, language and antiquities of Egypt.[256] Egypt's renaissance peaked in the late 19th and early 20th centuries through the work of people like Muhammad Abduh, Ahmed Lutfi el-Sayed, Muhammad Loutfi Goumah, Tawfiq el-Hakim, Louis Awad, Qasim Amin, Salama Moussa, Taha Hussein and Mahmoud Mokhtar. They forged a liberal path for Egypt expressed as a commitment to personal freedom, secularism and faith in science to bring progress.[257] Arts The weighing of the heart scene from the Book of the Dead. The Egyptians were one of the first major civilisations to codify design elements in art and architecture. Egyptian blue, also known as calcium copper silicate is a pigment used by Egyptians for thousands of years. It is considered to be the first synthetic pigment. The wall paintings done in the service of the Pharaohs followed a rigid code of visual rules and meanings. Egyptian civilisation is renowned for its colossal pyramids, temples and monumental tombs. Well-known examples are the Pyramid of Djoser designed by ancient architect and engineer Imhotep, the Sphinx, and the temple of Abu Simbel. Modern and contemporary Egyptian art can be as diverse as any works in the world art scene, from the vernacular architecture of Hassan Fathy and Ramses Wissa Wassef, to Mahmoud Mokhtar's sculptures, to the distinctive Coptic iconography of Isaac Fanous. The Cairo Opera House serves as the main performing arts venue in the Egyptian capital. Literature Main article: Egyptian literature Naguib Mahfouz, the first Arabic-language writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Egyptian literature traces its beginnings to ancient Egypt and is some of the earliest known literature. Indeed, the Egyptians were the first culture to develop literature as we know it today, that is, the book.[258] It is an important cultural element in the life of Egypt. Egyptian novelists and poets were among the first to experiment with modern styles of Arabic literature, and the forms they developed have been widely imitated throughout the Arab world.[259] The first modern Egyptian novel Zaynab by Muhammad Husayn Haykal was published in 1913 in the Egyptian vernacular.[260] Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz was the first Arabic-language writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Egyptian women writers include Nawal El Saadawi, well known for her feminist activism, and Alifa Rifaat who also writes about women and tradition. Vernacular poetry is perhaps the most popular literary genre among Egyptians, represented by the works of Ahmed Fouad Negm (Fagumi), Salah Jaheen and Abdel Rahman el-Abnudi.[citation needed] Media Main article: Media of Egypt Egyptian media are highly influential throughout the Arab World, attributed to large audiences and increasing freedom from government control.[261][262] Freedom of the media is guaranteed in the constitution; however, many laws still restrict this right.[261][263] Cinema Main article: Cinema of Egypt Suad Husni, film star. Egyptian cinema became a regional force with the coming of sound. In 1936, Studio Misr, financed by industrialist Talaat Harb, emerged as the leading Egyptian studio, a role the company retained for three decades.[264] For over 100 years, more than 4000 films have been produced in Egypt, three quarters of the total Arab production.[citation needed] Egypt is considered the leading country in the field of cinema in the Arab world. Actors from all over the Arab world seek to appear in the Egyptian cinema for the sake of fame. The Cairo International Film Festival has been rated as one of 11 festivals with a top class rating worldwide by the International Federation of Film Producers' Associations.[265] Music Main article: Music of Egypt Egyptian music is a rich mixture of indigenous, Mediterranean, African and Western elements. It has been an integral part of Egyptian culture since antiquity. The ancient Egyptians credited one of their gods Hathor with the invention of music, which Osiris in turn used as part of his effort to civilise the world. Egyptians used music instruments since then.[266] Contemporary Egyptian music traces its beginnings to the creative work of people such as Abdu al-Hamuli, Almaz and Mahmoud Osman, who influenced the later work of Sayed Darwish, Umm Kulthum, Mohammed Abdel Wahab and Abdel Halim Hafez whose age is considered the golden age of music in Egypt and the whole Arab world. Prominent contemporary Egyptian pop singers include Amr Diab and Mohamed Mounir. Dances Tanoura dancer performing in Wekalet El Ghoury, Cairo. Today, Egypt is often considered the home of belly dance. Egyptian belly dance has two main styles – raqs baladi and raqs sharqi. There are also numerous folkloric and character dances that may be part of an Egyptian-style belly dancer's repertoire, as well as the modern shaabi street dance which shares some elements with raqs baladi. Museums Main article: List of museums in Egypt The Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Egypt has one of the oldest civilisations in the world. It has been in contact with many other civilisations and nations and has been through so many eras, starting from prehistoric age to the modern age, passing through so many ages such as; Pharonic, Roman, Greek, Islamic and many other ages. Because of this wide variation of ages, the continuous contact with other nations and the big number of conflicts Egypt had been through, at least 60 museums may be found in Egypt, mainly covering a wide area of these ages and conflicts. Tutankhamun's burial mask is one of the major attractions of the Egyptian Museum. The three main museums in Egypt are The Egyptian Museum which has more than 120,000 items, the Egyptian National Military Museum and the 6th of October Panorama. The Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), also known as the Giza Museum, is an under construction museum that will house the largest collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts in the world, it has been described as the world's largest archaeological museum.[267] The museum was scheduled to open in 2015 and will be sited on 50 hectares (120 acres) of land approximately two kilometres (1.2 miles) from the Giza Necropolis and is part of a new master plan for the plateau. The Minister of Antiquities Mamdouh al-Damaty announced in May 2015 that the museum will be partially opened in May 2018.[268] Festivals Egypt celebrates many festivals and religious carnivals, also known as mulid. They are usually associated with a particular Coptic or Sufi saint, but are often celebrated by Egyptians irrespective of creed or religion. Ramadan has a special flavour in Egypt, celebrated with sounds, lights (local lanterns known as fawanees) and much flare that many Muslim tourists from the region flock to Egypt to witness during Ramadan. The ancient spring festival of Sham en Nisim (Coptic: Ϭⲱⲙ‘ⲛⲛⲓⲥⲓⲙ shom en nisim) has been celebrated by Egyptians for thousands of years, typically between the Egyptian months of Paremoude (April) and Pashons (May), following Easter Sunday. Cuisine Main article: Egyptian cuisine Kushari, one of Egypt's national dishes. Egyptian cuisine is notably conducive to vegetarian diets, as it relies heavily on legume and vegetable dishes. Although food in Alexandria and the coast of Egypt tends to use a great deal of fish and other seafood, for the most part Egyptian cuisine is based on foods that grow out of the ground. Meat has been very expensive for most Egyptians throughout history, so a great number of vegetarian dishes have been developed. Some consider kushari (a mixture of rice, lentils, and macaroni) to be the national dish. Fried onions can be also added to kushari. In addition, ful medames (mashed fava beans) is one of the most popular dishes. Fava bean is also used in making falafel (also known as "ta‘miya"), which may have originated in Egypt and spread to other parts of the Middle East. Garlic fried with coriander is added to molokhiya, a popular green soup made from finely chopped jute leaves, sometimes with chicken or rabbit. Sports A crowd at Cairo Stadium to watch the Egypt national football team. Football is the most popular national sport of Egypt. The Cairo Derby is one of the fiercest derbies in Africa, and the BBC picked it as one of the 7 toughest derbies in the world.[269] Al Ahly is the most successful club of the 20th century in the African continent according to CAF, closely followed by their rivals Zamalek SC. They're known as the "African Club of the Century". With twenty titles, Al Ahly is currently the world's most successful club in terms of international trophies, surpassing Italy's A.C. Milan and Argentina's Boca Juniors, both having eighteen.[270] The Egyptian national football team, known as the Pharaohs, won the African Cup of Nations seven times, including three times in a row in 2006, 2008, and 2010. Considered the most successful African national team and one which has reached the top 10 of the FIFA world rankings, Egypt has qualified for the FIFA World Cup three times. Two goals from star player Mohamed Salah in their last qualifying game took Egypt through to the 2018 FIFA World Cup.[271] The Egyptian Youth National team Young Pharaohs won the Bronze Medal of the 2001 FIFA youth world cup in Argentina. Egypt was 4th place in the football tournament in the 1928 and the 1964 Olympics. Squash and tennis are other popular sports in Egypt. The Egyptian squash team has been competitive in international championships since the 1930s. Amr Shabana and Ramy Ashour are Egypt's best players and both were ranked the world's number one squash player. Egypt has won the Squash World Championships four times, with the last title being in 2017. In 1999, Egypt hosted the IHF World Men's Handball Championship, and will host it again in 2021. In 2001, the national handball team achieved its best result in the tournament by reaching fourth place. Egypt has won in the African Men's Handball Championship five times, being the best team in Africa. In addition to that, it also championed the Mediterranean Games in 2013, the Beach Handball World Championships in 2004 and the Summer Youth Olympics in 2010. Among all African nations, the Egypt national basketball team holds the record for best performance at the Basketball World Cup and at the Summer Olympics.[272][273] Further, the team has won a record number of 16 medals at the African Championship. Egypt has taken part in the Summer Olympic Games since 1912 and hosted and Alexandria h the first Mediterranean Games in 1951. Egypt has hosted several international competitions. The last one being the 2009 FIFA U-20 World Cup which took place between 24 September – 16 October 2009. On Friday 19 September 2014, Guinness World Records announced that Egyptian scuba diver Ahmed Gabr is the new title holder for deepest salt water scuba dive, at 332.35 metres (1,090.4 feet).[274] Ahmed set a new world record Friday when he reached a depth of more than 1,000 feet (300 metres). The 14-hour feat took Gabr 1,066 feet (325 metres) down into the abyss near the Egyptian town of Dahab in the Red Sea, where he works as a diving instructor.[275] On 1 September 2015 Raneem El Weleily was ranked as the world number one woman squash player.[276] Other female Egyptian squash players include Nour El Tayeb, Omneya Abdel Kawy, Nouran Gohar and Nour El Sherbini. Telecommunication Main article: Telecommunications in Egypt The wired and wireless telecommunication industry in Egypt started in 1854 with the launch of the country's first telegram line connecting Cairo and Alexandria. The first telephone line between the two cities was installed in 1881.[277] In September 1999 a national project for a technological renaissance was announced reflecting the commitment of the Egyptian government to developing the country's IT-sector. Post Main article: Egypt Post Egypt Post is the company responsible for postal service in Egypt. Established in 1865, it is one of the oldest governmental institutions in the country. Egypt is one of 21 countries that contributed to the establishment of the Universal Postal Union, initially named the General Postal Union, as signatory of the Treaty of Bern. Social Media In September 2018, Egypt ratified the law granting authorities the right to monitor social media users in the country as part of tightening internet controls.[278][279] Education Main article: Education in Egypt Cairo University. Egyptian literacy rate among the population aged 15 years and older by UNESCO Institute of Statistics The illiteracy rate has decreased since 1996 from 39.4 to 25.9 percent in 2013. The adult literacy rate as of July 2014 was estimated at 73.9%.[280] The illiteracy rate is highest among those over 60 years of age being estimated at around 64.9%, while illiteracy among youth between 15 and 24 years of age was listed at 8.6 percent.[281] A European-style education system was first introduced in Egypt by the Ottomans in the early 19th century to nurture a class of loyal bureaucrats and army officers.[282] Under British occupation investment in education was curbed drastically, and secular public schools, which had previously been free, began to charge fees.[282] In the 1950s, President Nasser phased in free education for all Egyptians.[282] The Egyptian curriculum influenced other Arab education systems, which often employed Egyptian-trained teachers.[282] Demand soon outstripped the level of available state resources, causing the quality of public education to deteriorate.[282] Today this trend has culminated in poor teacher–student ratios (often around one to fifty) and persistent gender inequality.[282] Basic education, which includes six years of primary and three years of preparatory school, is a right for Egyptian children from the age of six.[283] After grade 9, students are tracked into one of two strands of secondary education: general or technical schools. General secondary education prepares students for further education, and graduates of this track normally join higher education institutes based on the results of the Thanaweya Amma, the leaving exam.[283] Technical secondary education has two strands, one lasting three years and a more advanced education lasting five. Graduates of these schools may have access to higher education based on their results on the final exam, but this is generally uncommon.[283] Cairo University is ranked as 401–500 according to the Academic Ranking of World Universities (Shanghai Ranking)[284] and 551–600 according to QS World University Rankings. American University in Cairo is ranked as 360 according to QS World University Rankings and Al-Azhar University, Alexandria University and Ain Shams University fall in the 701+ range.[285] Egypt is currently opening new research institutes for the aim of modernising research in the nation, the most recent example of which is Zewail City of Science and Technology. Health Main article: Health in Egypt 57357 Hospital Egyptian life expectancy at birth was 73.20 years in 2011, or 71.30 years for males and 75.20 years for females. Egypt spends 3.7 percent of its gross domestic product on health including treatment costs 22 percent incurred by citizens and the rest by the state.[286] In 2010, spending on healthcare accounted for 4.66% of the country's GDP. In 2009, there were 16.04 physicians and 33.80 nurses per 10,000 inhabitants.[287] As a result of modernisation efforts over the years, Egypt's healthcare system has made great strides forward. Access to healthcare in both urban and rural areas greatly improved and immunisation programs are now able to cover 98% of the population. Life expectancy increased from 44.8 years during the 1960s to 72.12 years in 2009. There was a noticeable decline of the infant mortality rate (during the 1970s to the 1980s the infant mortality rate was 101-132/1000 live births, in 2000 the rate was 50-60/1000, and in 2008 it was 28-30/1000).[288] According to the World Health Organization in 2008, an estimated 91.1% of Egypt's girls and women aged 15 to 49 have been subjected to genital mutilation,[289] despite being illegal in the country. In 2016 the law was amended to impose tougher penalties on those convicted of performing the procedure, pegging the highest jail term at 15 years. Those who escort victims to the procedure can also face jail terms up to 3 years.[290] The total number of Egyptians with health insurance reached 37 million in 2009, of which 11 million are minors, providing an insurance coverage of approximately 52 percent of Egypt's population.[291] See also flag Egypt portal Index of Egypt-related articles Outline of ancient Egypt Outline of Egypt Notes The population of Egypt is estimated as being 90% Muslim, 9% Coptic Christian and 1% other Christian, though estimates vary.[229][230][231] Microsoft Encarta Online similarly estimates the Sunni population at 90% of the total.[232] The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life gave a higher estimate of the Muslim population, at 94.6%.[233] In 2017, the government-owned newspaper Al Ahram estimated the percentage of Christians at 10 to 15%.[234] References Goldschmidt, Arthur (1988). Modern Egypt: The Formation of a Nation-State. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. p. 5. ISBN 978-0-86531-182-4. Archived from the original on 6 September 2015. Retrieved 20 June 2015. Among the peoples of the ancient Near East, only the Egyptians have stayed where they were and remained what they were, although they have changed their language once and their religion twice. In a sense, they constitute the world's oldest nation. For most of their history, Egypt has been a state, but only in recent years has it been truly a nation-state, with a government claiming the allegiance of its subjects on the basis of a common identity. "Background Note: Egypt". United States Department of State Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. 10 November 2010. Retrieved 5 March 2011. Pierre Crabitès (1935). Ibrahim of Egypt. Routledge. p. 1. ISBN 978-0-415-81121-7. Archived from the original on 9 May 2013. Retrieved 10 February 2013. ... on July 9, 1805, Constantinople conferred upon Muhammad Ali the pashalik of Cairo ... "Total area km2, pg.15" (PDF). Capmas.Gov – Arab Republic of Egypt. Archived from the original (PDF) on 21 March 2015. Retrieved 8 May 2015. "الجهاز المركزي للتعبئة العامة والإحصاء". www.capmas.gov.eg. Retrieved 12 February 2020. "أقل زيادة في 10 سنوات.. رحلة الوصول إلى 100 مليون مصري (إنفوجرافيك)". www.masrawy.com. Retrieved 12 February 2020. "الجهاز المركزي للتعبئة العامة والإحصاء" (PDF). www.capmas.gov.eg. Archived (PDF) from the original on 13 October 2017. Retrieved 13 October 2017. "World Economic Outlook Database, October 2019". IMF.org. International Monetary Fund. Retrieved 14 December 2019. "GINI index". World Bank. Archived from the original on 9 February 2015. Retrieved 8 February 2013. "2019 Human Development Report". United Nations Development Programme. 2019. Retrieved 14 December 2019. "Constitutional Declaration: A New Stage in the History of the Great Egyptian People". Egypt State Information Service. 30 March 2011. Archived from the original on 27 April 2011. Retrieved 15 April 2011. name="USDept of State/Egypt" Arthur Goldschmidt (1988). Modern Egypt: The Formation of a Nation-State. Westview Press. ISBN 978-0-86531-182-4. Midant-Reynes, Béatrix. The Prehistory of Egypt: From the First Egyptians to the First Kings. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. "Constitution of The Arab Republic of Egypt 2014" (PDF). sis.gov.eg. Archived (PDF) from the original on 18 July 2015. Retrieved 13 April 2017. "Lessons from/for BRICSAM about south–north Relations at the Start of the 21st Century: Economic Size Trumps All Else?". International Studies Review. 9. Hoffmeier, James K (1 October 2007). "Rameses of the Exodus narratives is the 13th B.C. Royal Ramesside Residence". Trinity Journal: 1. Archived from the original on 24 November 2010. Retrieved 30 September 2012. Z., T. (1928). "Il-Belt (Valletta)" (PDF). Il-Malti (in Maltese) (2 ed.). Il-Ghaqda tal-Kittieba tal-Malti. 2 (1): 35. Archived from the original (PDF) on 17 April 2016. The ending of the Hebrew form is either a dual or an ending identical to the dual in form (perhaps a locative), and this has sometimes been taken as referring to the two kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt. However, the application of the (possibly) "dual" ending to some toponyms and other words, a development peculiar to Hebrew, does not in fact imply any "two-ness" about the place. The ending is found, for example, in the Hebrew words for such single entities as "water" ("מַיִם"), "noon" ("צָהֳרַיִם"), "sky/heaven" ("שָׁמַיִם"), and in the qere – but not the original "ketiv" – of "Jerusalem" ("ירושל[י]ם"). It should also be noted that the dual ending – which may or may not be what the -áyim in "Mitzráyim" actually represents – was available to other Semitic languages, such as Arabic, but was not applied to Egypt. See inter alia Aaron Demsky ("Hebrew Names in the Dual Form and the Toponym Yerushalayim" in Demsky (ed.) These Are the Names: Studies in Jewish Onomastics, Vol. 3 (Ramat Gan, 2002), pp. 11–20), Avi Hurvitz (A Concise Lexicon of Late Biblical Hebrew: Linguistic Innovations in the Writings of the Second Temple Period (Brill, 2014), p. 128) and Nadav Na’aman ("Shaaraim – The Gateway to the Kingdom of Judah" in The Journal of Hebrew Scriptures, Vol. 8 (2008), article no. 24 Archived 17 October 2014 at the Wayback Machine, pp. 2–3). "On the So-Called Ventive Morpheme in the Akkadian Texts of Amurru". www.academia.edu. p. 84. Archived from the original on 18 January 2016. Retrieved 18 November 2015. Black, Jeremy A.; George, Andrew; Postgate, J.N. (2000). A Concise Dictionary of Akkadian. Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. ISBN 978-3-447-04264-2. Rosalie, David (1997). Pyramid Builders of Ancient Egypt: A Modern Investigation of Pharaoh's Workforce. Routledge. p. 18. Muḥammad Jamāl al-Dīn Mukhtār (1990). Ancient Civilizations of Africa. p. 43. ISBN 9780852550922. Archived from the original on 31 January 2017. Retrieved 28 May 2016. Antonio Loprieno, "Egyptian and Coptic Phonology", in Phonologies of Asia and Africa (including the Caucasus). Vol 1 of 2. Ed: Alan S Kaye. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1997: p. 449 "A Brief History of Alchemy". University of Bristol School of Chemistry. Archived from the original on 5 October 2008. Retrieved 21 August 2008. Breasted, James Henry; Peter A. Piccione (2001). Ancient Records of Egypt. University of Illinois Press. pp. 76, 40. ISBN 978-0-252-06975-8. Midant-Reynes, Béatrix. The Prehistory of Egypt: From the First Egyptians to the First Kings. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. "The Nile Valley 6000–4000 BCE Neolithic". The British Museum. 2005. Archived from the original on 14 February 2009. Retrieved 21 August 2008. Shaw, Ian, ed. (2003). The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 69. ISBN 0-19-280458-8. "The Fall of the Egyptian Old Kingdom". BBC. 17 February 2011. Archived from the original on 17 November 2011. Retrieved 3 November 2011. "The Kushite Conquest of Egypt". Ancientsudan.org. Archived from the original on 1 February 2011. Retrieved 25 August 2010. Shaw, Ian, ed. (2003). The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 383. ISBN 0-19-280458-8. Bowman, Alan K (1996). Egypt after the Pharaohs 332 BC – AD 642 (2nd ed.). Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 25–26. ISBN 0-520-20531-6. Stanwick, Paul Edmond (2003). Portraits of the Ptolemies: Greek kings as Egyptian pharaohs. Austin: University of Texas Press. ISBN 0-292-77772-8. "Egypt". Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. Archived from the original on 20 December 2011. Retrieved 14 December 2011. See drop-down essay on "Islamic Conquest and the Ottoman Empire" Kamil, Jill. Coptic Egypt: History and Guide. Cairo: American University in Cairo, 1997. p. 39 El-Daly, Okasha (2005). Egyptology: The Missing Millennium. 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The word sphinx was derived by Greek grammarians from the verb sphingein (“to bind” or “to squeeze”), but the etymology is not related to the legend and is dubious. Hesiod, the earliest Greek author to mention the creature, called it Phix. The Great Sphinx at Giza, 4th dynasty. E. Streichan/Shostal Associates The winged sphinx of Boeotian Thebes, the most famous in legend, was said to have terrorized the people by demanding the answer to a riddle taught her by the Muses—What is it that has one voice and yet becomes four-footed and two-footed and three-footed?—and devouring a man each time the riddle was answered incorrectly. Eventually Oedipus gave the proper answer: man, who crawls on all fours in infancy, walks on two feet when grown, and leans on a staff in old age. The sphinx thereupon killed herself. From this tale apparently grew the legend that the sphinx was omniscient, and even today the wisdom of the sphinx is proverbial. wooden sphinx Striding winged sphinx, wood with paint, from Thebes, Egypt, c. 1352–36 BCE; in the Brooklyn Museum, New York. 8.9 × 9.4 cm. Photograph by Katie Chao. Brooklyn Museum, New York, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 56.100 Great Sphinx An investigation into who damaged the Great Sphinx, near Giza, Egypt. Contunico © ZDF Enterprises GmbH, Mainz See all videos for this article The earliest and most famous example in art is the colossal recumbent Great Sphinx at Giza, Egypt, dating from the reign of King Khafre (4th king of 4th dynasty, c. 2575–c. 2465 BCE). This is known to be a portrait statue of the king, and the sphinx continued as a royal portrait type through most of Egyptian history. Arabs, however, know the Great Sphinx of Giza by the name of Abū al-Hawl, or “Father of Terror.” Through Egyptian influence the sphinx became known in Asia, but its meaning there is uncertain. The sphinx did not occur in Mesopotamia until about 1500 BCE, when it was clearly imported from the Levant. In appearance the Asian sphinx differed from its Egyptian model most noticeably in the addition of wings to the leonine body, a feature that continued through its subsequent history in Asia and the Greek world. Another innovation was the female sphinx, which first began to appear in the 15th century BCE. On seals, ivories, and metalwork the sphinx was portrayed sitting on its haunches, often with one paw raised, and was frequently paired with a lion, a griffin (part eagle and part lion), or another sphinx. Get exclusive access to content from our 1768 First Edition with your subscription. About 1600 BCE the sphinx first appeared in the Greek world. Objects from Crete at the end of the middle Minoan period and from the shaft graves at Mycenae throughout the late Helladic age showed the sphinx characteristically winged. Although derived from the Asian sphinx, the Greek examples were not identical in appearance; they customarily wore a flat cap with a flamelike projection on top. Nothing in their context connected them with later legend, and their meaning remains unknown. After 1200 BCE the depiction of sphinxes disappeared from Greek art for about 400 years, though they continued in Asia in forms and poses similar to those of the Bronze Age. By the end of the 8th century, the sphinx reappeared in Greek art and was common down to the end of the 6th century. Often associated with Oriental motifs, it was clearly derived from an Eastern source, and from its appearance it could not have been a direct descendant of the Bronze Age Greek sphinx. The later Greek sphinx was almost always female and usually wore the long-tiered wig known on contemporary sculptures of the Daedalic style; the body became graceful, and the wings developed a beautiful curving form unknown in Asia. Sphinxes decorated vases, ivories, and metal works and in the late Archaic period occurred as ornaments on temples. Although their context is usually insufficient to enable their meaning to be judged, their appearance on temples suggests a protective function. By the 5th century clear illustrations of the encounter between Oedipus and the sphinx appeared on vase paintings, usually with the sphinx perched on a column (as can be seen on a red-figure Nolan amphora by the Achilles Painter in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston or on the Vatican Museum’s Attic cup). Other monuments of Classical age showed Oedipus in armed combat with the sphinx and suggested an earlier stage of the legend in which the contest was physical instead of mental. Of such a stage the literature gave no hint, but battles of men and monsters were common in Asian art from prehistoric times down to the Achaemenid Persians, and Greek art may have adopted from the Middle East a pictorial theme that Greek literature did not share. …who was shown as a sphinx with a lion’s body. Sphinxes could receive other heads, notably those of rams and falcons, associating the form with Amon and Re-Harakhty. Demons were represented in more extravagant forms and combinations; these became common in the 1st millennium bce. Together with the cult of… Léonor Fini …in particular that of a sphinx (a creature with a lion’s body and a human head), became the trademark of her work.… Manticore, also spelled mantichora, manticora, or mantiger, a legendary animal having the head of a man (often with horns), the body of a lion, and the tail of a dragon or scorpion. The earliest Greek report of the creature is probably a greatly distorted description of the Caspian tiger, a hypothesis that accords well with the presumed source of the Greek word, an Old compound meaning “man-eater.” Medieval writers used the manticore as a symbol of the devil. In Canadian author Robertson Davies’s The Manticore (1972), the protagonist dreams of a sibyl leading a manticore and examines his dream under Jungian analysis. manticore Lion, (Panthera leo), large, powerfully built cat (family Felidae) that is second in size only to the tiger. The proverbial “king of beasts,” the lion has been one of the best-known wild animals since earliest times. Lions are most active at night and live in a variety of habitats but… Dragon, legendary monster usually conceived as a huge, bat-winged, fire-breathing, scaly lizard or snake with a barbed tail. The belief in these creatures apparently arose without the slightest knowledge on the part of the ancients of the gigantic, prehistoric, dragon-like reptiles. In Greece the word drakōn, from which the English… Scorpion, (order Scorpiones or Scorpionida), any of approximately 1,500 elongated arachnid species characterized by a segmented curved tail tipped with a venomous stinger at the rear of the body and a pair of grasping pincers at the front. Although scorpions are most common and diverse in deserts, they also live… ring, circular band of gold, silver, or some other precious or decorative material that is worn on the finger. Rings are worn not only on the fingers but also on toes, the ears (see earring), and through the nose. Besides serving to adorn the body, rings have functioned as symbols of authority, fidelity, or social status. Basically, a ring consists of three parts: the circle, or hoop; the shoulders; and the bezel. The circle can have a circular, semicircular, or square cross-section, or it can be shaped as a flat band. The shoulders consist of a thickening or enlargement of the circle wide enough to support the bezel. The bezel is the top part of a ring; it may simply be a flat table, or it may be designed to hold a gem or some other ornament. The earliest existing rings are those found in the tombs of ancient Egypt. The Egyptians primarily used signet, or seal, rings, in which a seal engraved on the bezel can be used to authenticate documents by the wearer. Egyptian seal rings typically had the name and titles of the owner deeply sunk in hieroglyphic characters on an oblong gold bezel. The ancient Greeks were more prone to use rings simply for decoration, and in the Hellenistic period the bezel began to be used to hold individual cabochon stones, such as carnelians and garnets, or vitreous pastes. In Rome rings were an important symbol of social status. In the early centuries of the Roman Republic, most rings were of iron, and the wearing of gold rings was restricted to certain classes, such as patricians who had held high office. But by the 3rd century BC the privilege of wearing rings had been extended to the class of knights, or equites, and by the 3rd century AD, during the Roman Empire, practically any person except a slave was allowed to wear a gold ring. The Romans are also thought to have originated the custom of betrothal rings, or engagement rings, symbolizing a promise of marriage to a member of the opposite sex. Throughout the European Middle Ages the signet ring was of great importance in religious, legal, and commercial transactions. The Roman Catholic church conferred episcopal rings upon newly appointed bishops, and so-called papal rings were given by popes to cardinals. An enormous papal ring called the Fisherman’s Ring—made of gilded bronze and bearing the image of St. Peter fishing—is traditionally used by the pope as a seal for pontifical documents. Besides these types, there were memorial rings, upon which were engraved the name, date of death, or even the effigy of a deceased person; posy rings, upon which were engraved an inscription or a few lines of verse; occult rings, which functioned as talismans or amulets and were supposed to have magical powers; and poison rings, whose hollow bezels contained a poison for purposes of suicide or homicide. Rings with bezels that opened may also have held sentimental keepsakes in miniature. By the 19th century, the traditional distinctions between ring types had mostly broken down, giving way to rings of all kinds inspired by past styles. Fine-quality modern rings, many of which are machine-made, usually consist of gold or silver and feature standard-sized diamonds or other precious stones. They are worn either for purposes of simple adornment or as symbols of betrothal and marital fidelity. This article was most recently revised and updated by Amy Tikkanen. birthstone Introduction Fast Facts Related Content Media Images More Contributors Article History Home Visual Arts Decorative Art birthstone gemstone By The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica • Edit History Garnet birthstone See all media Related Topics: garnet pearl diamond emerald opal birthstone, gemstone associated with the date of one’s birth, the wearing of which is commonly thought to bring good luck or health. Supernatural powers have long been attributed by astrologers to certain gemstones. The stones now associated with each month, as listed in the table, have only slight relationship to the ancient beliefs, for the list is tempered by availability and cost. Before mineralogy had progressed to the point of chemical analysis, colour was of greater importance than some of the other physical characteristics, and little distinction was made between emerald and chrysoprase, for example, or between ruby and garnet, or between citrine and topaz. When it came to the ability to heal or bring good luck, the actual stone and the look-alikes were regarded as equally effective. Even the names used in ancient times do not necessarily refer to the stones that go by those names in the 21st century; the sapphire of the Bible is much more likely to have been lapis lazuli than what is now known as sapphire, and adamas (diamond) was probably white sapphire or white topaz. Basalt sample returned by Apollo 15, from near a long sinous lunar valley called Hadley Rille. Measured at 3.3 years old. BRITANNICA QUIZ (Bed) Rocks and (Flint) Stones Diamonds may be a girl’s best friend, but what is that mineral’s closest relative? Test your knowledge of rocks, minerals, and all things "yabba dabba doo" in this quiz. Birthstones month traditional gemstone 20th-century expansion synthetic supplement: trade name material of synthetic stone Garnet January garnet garnet dark red synthetic corundum Amethyst February amethyst amethyst purple synthetic corundum Bloodstone March bloodstone aquamarine aquamarine light blue synthetic spinel diamond April diamond white sapphire colourless synthetic spinel or corundum Emerald May emerald emerald synthetic emerald or synthetic green spinel Pearl June pearl alexandrite cultured pearl, alexandrite changeable synthetic corundum (synthetic spinel is rare) Ruby July ruby ruby red synthetic corundum Sardonyx August sardonyx peridot peridot green synthetic spinel Blue sapphire, natural specimen September sapphire sapphire blue synthetic spinel or corundum Carved opal October opal tourmaline (pink or green) rozircon pink synthetic corundum or spinel Precious topaz November topaz (precious) topaz quartz (citrine) topaz yellow synthetic corundum Turquoise cabachon (foreground) and natural specimen (background) December turquoise zircon zircon medium blue synthetic spinel Originally, the stones were considered to be those of the breastplate (ḥoshen) of the Jewish high priest. In the 20th century the list was supplemented with a series of synthetic stones that were recommended as alternatives for some of the rarer, less-attractive, or less-durable natural stones. The natural-stone list was also expanded to make it more acceptable to both sexes.

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