This me having a pint in The Beer Garden on holiday in Cornwall. It was really nice to sit outside and have a couple of pints in the garden. 🍻

This was the Bodmin Jail Hotel in Cornwall me and my Dad and Bern stayed in the Hotel was really nice and my Hotel Cell Room was very nice to. This is the yellow front door inside my Hotel Cell Room that is the bottom photo and the top photo is the Hotel Cell Room from just outside my room. You also can see the corridor outside of my room and my bathroom and bed were very nice to my bed was really relaxing to lie in to it was really nice and comfortable.

World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. It was fought between two coalitions, the Allies and the Central Powers. Fighting took place throughout Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Pacific, and parts of Asia, especially East Asia. An estimated 9 million soldiers were killed in combat, plus another 23 million wounded, while 5 million civilians died as a result of military action, hunger, and disease. Millions more died as a result of genocide, while the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic was exacerbated by the movement of combatants during the war.

The first decade of the 20th century saw increasing diplomatic tension between the European great powers. This reached a breaking point on 28 June 1914, when a Bosnian Serb named Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. Austria-Hungary held Serbia responsible, and declared war on 28 July. Russia came to Serbia’s defence, and by 4 August, defensive alliances had drawn in Germany, France, and Britain, with the Ottoman Empire joining the war in November.

German strategy in 1914, known as the Schlieffen Plan, was to first defeat France and bypass their fortifications by moving through Belgium, then attack Russia. However, this manoeuvre failed due to heavy French and Belgian resistance, and British reinforcements. By the end of 1914, the Western Front consisted of a continuous line of trenches stretching from the English Channel to Switzerland. The Eastern Front was more fluid, but neither side could gain a decisive advantage, despite a series of costly offensives. Fighting expanded onto secondary fronts as Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, and most notably Italy, and others entered the war between 1915 and 1916.

The United States entered the war on the side of the Allies in April 1917, while the Bolsheviks seized power in the Russian October Revolution, and made peace with the Central Powers in early 1918. Freed from the Eastern Front, Germany launched an offensive in the west on March 1918, hoping to achieve a decisive victory before American troops arrived in significant numbers. Failure left the German Imperial Army exhausted and demoralised, and when the Allies took the offensive in August 1918, German forces could not stop the advance.

Between 29 September and 3 November 1918, Bulgaria, the Ottoman Empire, and Austria-Hungary agreed to armistices with the Allies, leaving Germany isolated. Facing revolution at home, and with his army on the verge of mutiny, Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated on 9 November. The Armistice of 11 November 1918 brought the fighting to a close, while the Paris Peace Conference imposed various settlements on the defeated powers, the best-known being the Treaty of Versailles. The dissolution of the Russian, German, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman Empires resulted in the creation of new independent states, among them Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. Failure to manage the instability that resulted from this upheaval during the interwar period contributed to the outbreak of World War II in September 1939.

Names

The term world war was first coined in September 1914 by German biologist and philosopher Ernst Haeckel. He claimed that “there is no doubt that the course and character of the feared ‘European War’ … will become the first world war in the full sense of the word,” in The Indianapolis Star on 20 September 1914.

The term First World War had been used by Lt-Col. Charles à Court Repington, as a title for his memoirs (published in 1920); he had noted his discussion on the matter with a Major Johnstone of Harvard University in his diary entry of 10 September 1918.

Prior to World War II, the events of 1914–1918 were generally known as the Great War or simply the World War. In August 1914, The Independent magazine wrote “This is the Great War. It names itself”. In October 1914, the Canadian magazine Maclean’s similarly wrote, “Some wars name themselves. This is the Great War.”Contemporary Europeans also referred to it as “the war to end war” and it was also described as “the war to end all wars” due to their perception of its then-unparalleled scale, devastation, and loss of life. After World War II began in 1939, the terms (often abbreviated as WWI or WW1) became more standard, with British Empire historians, including Canadians, favouring “The First World War” and Americans “World War I”

Political and military alliances

Rival military coalitions in 1914: Triple Entente in green; Triple Alliance in brown. Only the Triple Alliance was a formal “alliance”; the others listed were informal patterns of support.

For much of the 19th century, the major European powers maintained a tenuous balance of power among themselves, known as the Concert of Europe. After 1848, this was challenged by a variety of factors, including Britain’s withdrawal into so-called splendid isolation, the decline of the Ottoman Empire, New Imperialism, and the rise of Prussia under Otto von Bismarck. The 1866 Austro-Prussian War established Prussian hegemony in Germany, while victory in the 1870–1871 Franco-Prussian War allowed Bismarck to consolidate the German states into a German Empire under Prussian leadership. Avenging the defeat of 1871, or revanchism, and recovering the provinces of Alsace-Lorraine became the principal objects of French policy for the next forty years.

In order to isolate France and avoid a war on two fronts, Bismarck negotiated the League of the Three Emperors (German: Dreikaiserbund) between Austria-Hungary, Russia and Germany. After Russian victory in the 1877–1878 Russo-Turkish War, the League was dissolved due to Austrian concerns over Russian influence in the Balkans, an area they considered of vital strategic interest. Germany and Austria-Hungary then formed the 1879 Dual Alliance, which became the Triple Alliance when Italy joined in 1882. For Bismarck, the purpose of these agreements was to isolate France by ensuring the three Empires resolved any disputes between themselves; when this was threatened in 1880 by British and French attempts to negotiate directly with Russia, he reformed the League in 1881, which was renewed in 1883 and 1885. After the agreement lapsed in 1887, he replaced it with the Reinsurance Treaty, a secret agreement between Germany and Russia to remain neutral if either were attacked by France or Austria-Hungary.

Bismarck viewed peace with Russia as the foundation of German foreign policy but after becoming Kaiser in 1890, Wilhelm II forced him to retire and was persuaded not to renew the Reinsurance Treaty by Leo von Caprivi, his new Chancellor. This provided France an opportunity to counteract the Triple Alliance, by signing the Franco-Russian Alliance in 1894, followed by the 1904 Entente Cordiale with Britain, and the Triple Entente was completed by the 1907 Anglo-Russian Convention. While these were not formal alliances, by settling long-standing colonial disputes in Africa and Asia, British entry into any future conflict involving France or Russia became a possibility. British and Russian support for France against Germany during the Agadir Crisis in 1911 reinforced their relationship and increased Anglo-German estrangement, deepening the divisions that would erupt in 1914.

Arms race

SMS Rheinland, a Nassau-class battleship, Germany’s first response to the British Dreadnought

German industrial strength significantly increased after 1871, driven by the creation of a unified Reich, French indemnity payments, and the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine. Backed by Wilhelm II, Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz sought to use this growth in economic power to build a Kaiserliche Marine, or Imperial German Navy, which could compete with the British Royal Navy for world naval supremacy. His thinking was influenced by US naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan, who argued possession of a blue-water navy was vital for global power projection; Tirpitz had his books translated into German, while Wilhelm made them required reading for his advisors and senior military personnel.

However, it was also an emotional decision, driven by Wilhelm’s simultaneous admiration for the Royal Navy and desire to outdo it. Bismarck calculated that Britain would not interfere in Europe so long as its maritime supremacy remained secure, but his dismissal in 1890 led to a change in policy and an Anglo-German naval arms race. Despite the vast sums spent by Tirpitz, the launch of HMS Dreadnought in 1906 gave the British a technological advantage over their German rival which they never lost. Ultimately, the race diverted huge resources into creating a German navy large enough to antagonise Britain, but not defeat it; in 1911, Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg acknowledged defeat, leading to the Rüstungswende or ‘armaments turning point’, when he switched expenditure from the navy to the army.

This decision was not driven by a reduction in political tensions, but German concern over Russia’s recovery from defeat in the Russo-Japanese War and subsequent 1905 Russian Revolution. Economic reforms backed by French funding led to a significant post-1908 expansion of railways and infrastructure, particularly in its western border regions. Since Germany and Austria-Hungary relied on faster mobilisation to compensate for their numerical inferiority compared to Russia, the threat posed by the closing of this gap was more important than competing with the Royal Navy. After Germany expanded its standing army by 170,000 troops in 1913, France extended compulsory military service from two to three years; similar measures were taken by the Balkan powers and Italy, which led to increased expenditure by the Ottomans and Austria-Hungary. Absolute figures are hard to calculate due to differences in categorising expenditure, since they often omit civilian infrastructure projects like railways which also had a military use. However, from 1908 to 1913, military spending by the six major European powers increased by over 50% in real terms.

Conflicts in the Balkans

Sarajevo citizens reading a poster with the proclamation of the Austrian annexation in 1908

The years before 1914 were marked by a series of crises in the Balkans as other powers sought to benefit from Ottoman decline. While Pan-Slavic and Orthodox Russia considered itself the protector of Serbia and other Slav states, they preferred the strategically vital Bosporus straits to be controlled by a weak Ottoman government, rather than an ambitious Slav power like Bulgaria. Since Russia had its own ambitions in northeastern Anatolia and their clients had over-lapping claims in the Balkans, balancing these divided Russian policy-makers and added to regional instability.

Austrian statesmen viewed the Balkans as essential for the continued existence of their Empire and Serbian expansion as a direct threat. The 1908–1909 Bosnian Crisis began when Austria annexed the former Ottoman territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which it had occupied since 1878. Timed to coincide with the Bulgarian Declaration of Independence from the Ottoman Empire, this unilateral action was denounced by the European powers, but accepted as there was no consensus on how to reverse it. Some historians see this as a significant escalation, ending any chance of Austria co-operating with Russia in the Balkans while damaging relations with Serbia and Italy, both of whom had their own expansionist ambitions in the region.

Tensions increased after the 1911–1912 Italo-Turkish War demonstrated Ottoman weakness and led to the formation of the Balkan League, an alliance of Serbia, Bulgaria, Montenegro, and Greece. The League quickly over-ran most of Ottoman Balkan territory in the 1912–1913 First Balkan War, much to the surprise of outside observers. The Serbian capture of ports on the Adriatic resulted in partial Austrian mobilisation on 21 November 1912, including units along the Russian border in Galicia. In a meeting the next day, the Russian government decided not to mobilise in response, unwilling to precipitate a war for which they were not yet prepared.

The Great Powers sought to re-assert control through the 1913 Treaty of London, which created an independent Albania, while enlarging the territories of Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro and Greece. However, disputes between the victors sparked the 33-day Second Balkan War, when Bulgaria attacked Serbia and Greece on 16 June 1913; it was defeated, losing most of Macedonia to Serbia and Greece, and Southern Dobruja to Romania. The result was that even countries which benefited from the Balkan Wars, such as Serbia and Greece, felt cheated of their “rightful gains”, while for Austria it demonstrated the apparent indifference with which other powers viewed their concerns, including Germany. This complex mix of resentment, nationalism and insecurity helps explain why the pre-1914 Balkans became known as the “powder keg of Europe“.

Prelude

Sarajevo assassination

Traditionally thought to show the arrest of Gavrilo Princip (right), this photo is now believed by historians to depict an innocent bystander, Ferdinand Behr

On 28 June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir presumptive to Emperor Franz Joseph, visited Sarajevo, capital of the recently annexed provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Six assassins from the movement known as Young Bosnia, or Mlada Bosna, took up positions along the route taken by the Archduke’s motorcade, with the intention of assassinating him. Supplied with arms by extremists within the Serbian Black Hand intelligence organisation, they hoped his death would free Bosnia from Austrian rule, although there was little agreement on what would replace it.

Nedeljko Čabrinović threw a grenade at the Archduke’s car and injured two of his aides, who were taken to hospital while the convoy carried on. The other assassins were also unsuccessful but an hour later, as Ferdinand was returning from visiting the injured officers, his car took a wrong turn into a street where Gavrilo Princip was standing. He stepped forward and fired two pistol shots, fatally wounding Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, who both died shortly thereafter.^[36] Although Emperor Franz Joseph was shocked by the incident, political and personal differences meant the two men were not close; allegedly, his first reported comment was “A higher power has re-established the order which I, alas, could not preserve”.

According to historian Zbyněk Zeman, his reaction was reflected more broadly in Vienna, where “the event almost failed to make any impression whatsoever. On 28 and 29 June, the crowds listened to music and drank wine, as if nothing had happened.” Nevertheless, the impact of the murder of the heir to the throne was significant, and has been described by historian Christopher Clark as a “9/11 effect, a terrorist event charged with historic meaning, transforming the political chemistry in Vienna”.

Expansion of violence in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Crowds on the streets in the aftermath of the anti-Serb riots in Sarajevo, 29 June 1914

The Austro-Hungarian authorities encouraged the subsequent anti-Serb riots in Sarajevo, in which Bosnian Croats and Bosniaks killed two Bosnian Serbs and damaged numerous Serb-owned buildings. Violent actions against ethnic Serbs were also organised outside Sarajevo, in other cities in Austro-Hungarian-controlled Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia. Austro-Hungarian authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina imprisoned and extradited approximately 5,500 prominent Serbs, 700 to 2,200 of whom died in prison. A further 460 Serbs were sentenced to death. A predominantly Bosniak special militia known as the Schutzkorps was established and carried out the persecution of Serbs.

The trench warfare of the Western Front encouraged the development of new weaponry to break the stalemate. Poison gas was one such development.

The first significant gas attack occurred at Ypres in April 1915, when the Germans released clouds of poisonous chlorine. The gas inflicted significant casualties among the British and Canadian forces at Ypres and caused widespread panic and confusion amongst the French colonial troops.

The chlorine was a strong irritant on the lungs, with prolonged exposure proving fatal. The immediate public outcry for retaliation resulted in quick adoption of defensive anti-gas measures including new companies of Royal Engineers responsible for offensive gas warfare.

Poison gas was initially released from cylinders, but this required ideal weather conditions and could be very risky. In the first British gas attack, at Loos in September 1915, much of the gas was blown back into the faces of the British troops. From 1916, gas was employed in shells instead, which allowed attacks from a much greater range.

Gases used included chlorine, mustard gas, bromine and phosgene, and the German Army was the most prolific user of gas warfare.

Gas did not prove as decisive a weapon as was anticipated but it was effective in clearing enemy forward positions. As a result, anti-gas measures became increasingly sophisticated. Primitive cotton face pads soaked in bicarbonate of soda were issued to troops in 1915, but by 1918 filter respirators using charcoal or chemicals to neutralise the gas were common.

The physical effects of gas were agonising and it remained a pervasive psychological weapon. Although only 3 per cent of gas casualties proved immediately fatal, hundreds of thousands of ex-soldiers continued to suffer for years after the war.

On 22 April 1915, German forces launched a renewed offensive against the Ypres Salient. Their attack featured a weapon that had not been used before on the Western Front – poison gas.  Archibald James, an observer in the Royal Flying Corps, saw it being used for the first time.

A soldiers evidence

I witnessed from the air the first gas attack when the Germans used chlorine gas in the Ypres Salient. Suddenly we saw to the north of us in the salient this yellow wall moving quite slowly towards our lines. We hadn’t any idea what it was. We reported it of course when we landed. And an hour or so later the smell of chlorine actually reached our aerodrome.

Other attacks soon followed. British officer Martin Greener watched as one gas cloud approached his position.

Just at dawn they opened a very heavy fire, especially machine-gun fire, and the idea of that was apparently to make you get down. And then the next thing we heard was this sizzling – you know, I mean you could hear this damn stuff coming on – and then saw this awful cloud coming over. A great yellow, greenish-yellow, cloud. It wasn’t very high; about I would say it wasn’t more than 20 feet up.  Nobody knew what to think. But immediately it got there we knew what to think, I mean we knew what it was. Well then of course you immediately began to choke, then word came: whatever you do don’t go down. You see if you got to the bottom of the trench you got the full blast of it because it was heavy stuff, it went down.

Prolonged exposure to the gas could be fatal. But British private George White recalled how unconcerned he felt about it.

Well, we weren’t in the thick of it but we were in the tail end of it so that we could smell it. So what we used to do was to wet a piece of implement and wear that across your mouth while the gas attack was on. That’s how it was. I don’t think there’s anything worse than gas. But it never seemed to occur to me about getting killed or anything of that sort. You just went about the job and that was that.

When the gas approached Allied lines, many of the troops understandably fled from it. Bert Newman of the Royal Army Medical Corps remembered this in particular.

And when this gas came over you could see on the brow all these Algerians running from this gas. Of course, the Canadians were there also and they got badly gassed. In the end you could see all these poor chaps laying on the Menin Road, gasping for breath. And the thing was it was no gas masks then, you see, and a lot of these chaps just had to wet their handkerchiefs and put it over their mouth or do what they could, you see. Well, we had a sergeant major with us called Bright who served in the South African war. And he thought to himself, ‘Well, I don’t know, I must try and relieve them somehow.’ So he got two or three big jars of Vaseline and he put it in the throats of these poor chaps to try to relieve them a bit, you see. There was no treatment for them but that’s what he did to try to stop them from gasping with this gas you see.

British NCO Alfred West recalled another way in which troops tried to counter the effects of the gas.

I remember them coming back with their handkerchiefs putting them in the water but a lot of them were… And the wounded – these French Algerians, I saw some of those. They were trying to drink some water out the side of the road. And they were almost visibly blowing up – their bodies were going coloured, but they were blowing up.  You could put your finger and make a little hole, almost, in them. And ’cause all the roads there were, instead of hedges it was water channels – most of the roads round there – and there was plenty of water, you see.  But the water wasn’t good and they were lying down, getting down and drinking it but that was the worst thing they could do. But there was nothing else they could do.

Jack Dorgan, of the Northumberland Fusiliers, suffered from the poison gas. He explained how he and the other British soldiers were affected.

Our eyes were streaming with water and with pain. Luckily again for me I was one of those who could still see. But we had no protection, no gas masks or anything of that kind. All we had was roll of bandages from our first aid kit which we carried in the corner of our tunic. So we had very little protection for our eyes. And then you had to be sent back. Anyone who could see, like I was, would go in front. And half a dozen or 10 or 12 men each with their hand on the shoulder of the man in front of them and lines – you could see lines and lines and lines of British soldiers going back with rolls of bandages round their eyes going back towards Ypres.

Beryl Hutchinson, a member of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, helped treat gassed soldiers. Afterwards, she was summoned to British General Headquarters.

So we went and climbed that long hill at Montreuil and got to the holy of holies, and were duly admitted. And sent in to an enormous room – yards of room – it was under the castle there, you know what these French castles are. And at the far end was this enormous table with officers dotted all around as though it was a stage set. So we trotted up, our knees shattering not knowing whether we were going to be executed as spies or not! And it appears they hadn’t had any real word about the gas attack and the effects. And they started asking us about it, ‘Were our respirators any good?’ And we said no, they weren’t, they were just little bits of wet cotton wool. And all those sorts of questions as they had no idea about what the gas attack was.

Stretcher bearer William Collins described the primitive means of combating the gas that soldiers were supplied with.

About midday that day, supplies of the first so-called gas masks came up. And all it consisted of was a pad of wool covered by gauze with an elastic band running right round and about four inches by two. It fitted over the nostrils and mouth and then the elastic went up over the head. But I found that in using it in the gas cloud that after a couple of minutes one couldn’t breathe and so it was pushed up over the forehead and we swallowed the gas. And could only put the thing back again for very short periods. It was not a practical proposition at all.

The development of tanks in World War I was a response to the stalemate that developed on the Western Front. Although vehicles that incorporated the basic principles of the tank (armour, firepower, and all-terrain mobility) had been projected in the decade or so before the War, it was the alarmingly heavy casualties of the start of its trench warfare that stimulated development. Research took place in both Great Britain and France, with Germany only belatedly following the Allies’ lead.

In Great Britain, an initial vehicle, nicknamed Little Willie, was constructed at William Foster & Co., during August and September 1915.The prototype of a new design that became the Mark I tank was demonstrated to the British Army on 2 February 1916. Although initially termed “Landships” by the Landship Committee, production vehicles were named “tanks”, to preserve secrecy. The term was chosen when it became known that the factory workers at William Foster referred to the first prototype as “the tank” because of its resemblance to a steel water tank.

The French fielded their first tanks in April 1917 and ultimately produced far more tanks than all other countries combined.

The Germans, on the other hand, began development only in response to the appearance of Allied tanks on the battlefield. Whilst the Allies manufactured several thousand tanks during the war, Germany deployed only 18 of its own.

The first tanks were mechanically unreliable. There were problems that caused considerable attrition rates during combat deployment and transit. The heavily shelled terrain was impassable to conventional vehicles, and only highly mobile tanks such as the Renault FTs and Mark IV performed reasonably well. The Mark I’s rhomboid shape, caterpillar tracks, and 26-foot (8 m) length meant that it could negotiate obstacles, especially wide trenches, that wheeled vehicles could not. Along with the tank, the first self-propelled gun (the British Gun Carrier Mk I) and the first armoured personnel carrier followed the invention of tanks.