The Central Powers and the Entente

The First World War was fought between two coalitions. On one side stood the Central Powers: Germany and Austria-Hungary, joined by the Ottoman Empire in autumn 1914 and by Bulgaria in October 1915. On the other stood the Entente: France, Russia and Britain with its whole empire, and with them Serbia, Belgium and Japan, later Italy, Romania, Portugal and Greece, and from 1917 the United States, which fought as an “associated power” without a formal alliance. Many states of Latin America, Asia and Africa also sided with the enemies of the Central Powers, though some of them only broke off diplomatic relations. The war began with Austria-Hungary’s declaration of war on Serbia on 28 July 1914 and ended with the armistices of autumn 1918.

Two blocs before 1914

The core of the Central Powers was the alliance of Germany and Austria-Hungary of 1879, which became the Triple Alliance when Italy joined in 1882. Romania attached itself to the bloc in 1883. On the other side stood the Franco-Russian alliance of 1892, the Anglo-French Entente Cordiale of 1904 and the Anglo-Russian agreement of 1907. Only the first was a military alliance; the other two settled spheres of influence, hence the name Triple Entente.

Both blocs were defensive in design, and in the summer of 1914 not all their members went to war. The name “Central Powers” came from the position of Germany and Austria-Hungary in the middle of Europe. In wartime the word “Entente” no longer meant just the three powers but the whole coalition of their allies. On 5 September 1914 Britain, France and Russia pledged in the Pact of London not to make a separate peace. The Entente then became a formal wartime alliance.

Summer 1914: who went to war

After the declaration of war on Serbia, events moved fast. On 1 August 1914 Germany declared war on Russia, and on 3 August on France. That same day Italy declared neutrality, holding that the Triple Alliance did not oblige it to join a war started by Austria-Hungary. On 4 August Germany told Belgium it would use force and entered its territory, and Belgium broke off relations with it. At 11 p.m. London time the British ultimatum expired and Britain found itself at war with Germany. The whole empire went to war with it: Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Union of South Africa and British India.

In the following days the formalities between states already fighting each other were completed. On 5 August Montenegro declared war on Austria-Hungary, and on 8 August it found itself at war with Germany. On 6 August Austria-Hungary declared war on Russia, and Serbia on Germany. On 10 August France broke off relations with Austria-Hungary, and on 12 August Britain and France declared war on it. On 22 August Austria-Hungary declared war on Belgium.

The first state outside Europe to enter the war as an independent participant was Japan, bound to Britain by an alliance since 1902. On 15 August it sent Germany an ultimatum, and when it expired, on 23 August it declared war. The same day Germany broke off relations with Japan, on 24 August Austria-Hungary did so, and on 25 August Japan broke off relations with Vienna and the two states found themselves at war. On 7 November 1914 the German fortress of Tsingtao surrendered.

The Ottoman Empire signed a secret alliance with Germany as early as 2 August, but for three months it put off entering the war. What decided it was the Ottoman fleet’s raid on Russian ports on the Black Sea on 29 October, carried out without a declaration of war under the command of a German admiral. On 30 October the Russian, British and French ambassadors asked for their passports in Constantinople. On 2 November Russia declared war on Turkey, the same day Serbia found itself at war with Turkey, and on 5 November Britain and France declared war. On 6 November Turkey broke off relations with Belgium, but did not declare war on it. The Ottoman Empire formally proclaimed a state of war on 11 November.

Who joined, and why

After declaring neutrality, Italy bargained with both sides. The Entente could offer more, because it was promising other people’s land. On 26 April 1915 Italy signed a secret agreement in London that bound it to enter the war within a month in return for Trentino, Trieste, Istria and part of Dalmatia. On 4 May it renounced the Triple Alliance, and on 23 May it declared war on Austria-Hungary. Rome wanted to avoid war with Germany. Berlin broke off relations, but the two states did not go to war with each other. Italy declared war on Turkey in August 1915, and on Germany only on 28 August 1916.

Both sides bid for Bulgaria for a whole year. The Central Powers could promise more, because they were paying at others’ expense. On 6 September 1915 Bulgaria concluded a secret alliance with Germany in Sofia, which promised it Serbian Macedonia, and a military convention at Pless on a joint attack on Serbia. On 5 October Russia broke off relations with Bulgaria, in mid-month Britain did the same, and on 14 October Tsar Ferdinand issued a manifesto on war with Serbia. The next day Britain and Montenegro declared war on Bulgaria, on 16 October France, and on 19 October Russia and Italy.

Portugal, bound by alliance to Britain, at London’s request declared in 1914 neither neutrality nor entry into the war, although on 23 November 1914 parliament authorised the government to take part in the war at Britain’s side. When in February 1916 the Portuguese seized German ships in their ports, on 9 March 1916 Germany declared itself at war with Portugal. On 15 March Austria-Hungary broke off relations with it and was likewise at war with it. In early 1917 a Portuguese corps landed in France.

Romania, formally an ally of the Central Powers, did not join the war in 1914. Prime Minister Ion I.C. Brătianu wanted to win Transylvania at the lowest possible cost and at the most convenient moment. On 17 August 1916 he signed a secret treaty with the Entente, which promised Romania Transylvania, the Banat and most of Bukovina. On 27 August Romania declared war on Austria-Hungary, but on it alone. War was declared on Romania by Germany on 28 August, by Turkey on 30 August, and on 1 September by Bulgaria, with which Bucharest had broken off relations on 30 August.

The United States long remained neutral. In response to Germany’s announcement of unrestricted submarine warfare, on 3 February 1917 it broke off relations with Germany, and on 6 April 1917 Congress and President Woodrow Wilson declared a state of war with Germany. The resolution concerned Germany alone. On 8 April Austria-Hungary broke off relations with the USA, and on 20 April Turkey did so. The United States declared war on Austria-Hungary only on 7 December 1917, and never fought Turkey or Bulgaria. Nor did it ally itself with the Entente: Wilson called his country an “associated”, not an allied, power.

Greece argued for almost three years over whether to fight. In early October 1915 King Constantine I gave assurances that Greece would stay neutral, and on 8 October the government declared armed neutrality. On 23 November 1916 the Provisional Government of National Defence of Eleftherios Venizelos in Salonika declared war on Germany and Bulgaria, and Greece now had two governments. On 12 June 1917 the king, forced by the Entente, left Athens, and on 27 June Venizelos took power in the capital. His government broke off relations with the Central Powers, and the whole of Greece took the side of the Entente.

In 1917 states far from the fronts joined the war, chiefly for a seat at the peace table. On 4 August Liberia declared war on Germany, with which it had broken off relations in May. On 22 July Siam declared war on Germany and Austria-Hungary, and on 14 August China did the same, having broken off relations with Germany on 14 March. China wanted to recover the German rights in Shandong province and had no intention of fighting at the front, but by 1918 more than 100,000 Chinese labourers were working behind the front in France.

Latin America followed the United States, though not all of it. On 7 April 1917 Cuba and Panama declared war on Germany, and in December on Austria-Hungary as well (Panama on 10 December, Cuba on 16 December). Brazil broke off relations with Germany on 11 April, and on 26 October 1917 recognised that Germany had imposed a state of war on it. Following a similar pattern, first breaking off relations and then declaring war, came Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Haiti and Honduras. Their declarations came in 1918: Guatemala’s on 23 April, Nicaragua’s on 8 May (against Germany and Austria-Hungary), Costa Rica’s on 23 May, Haiti’s on 12 July and Honduras’s on 19 July. According to a 1919 survey by the Pan American Union, eight of the twenty Latin American states declared war on Germany.

Several others stopped at breaking off diplomatic relations. This was done by Bolivia on 13 April 1917, by the American-occupied Dominican Republic in June, by Peru on 5 October, Uruguay on 7 October and Ecuador on 7 December. These countries did not become belligerents. People who did not yet have states of their own also drew close to the Entente. On 13 August 1918, according to the British chronology, the Czechoslovaks proclaimed a state of war with Germany as well, already fighting with three armies: in Russia, France and Italy.

War aims

Neither side announced a full programme at the start of the war. The most far-reaching plans were drawn up in Berlin. On 9 September 1914 a secret September memorandum was produced in the office of Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg. It provided for the annexation of the French ore basin of Briey, a war indemnity from France, the incorporation of Liège into Prussia and the reduction of Belgium to a vassal state. Luxembourg was to become a state of the Reich. A Central European economic association with France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Austria-Hungary and Poland was to secure Germany’s economic predominance, and in Africa a contiguous colonial empire was planned.

Germany’s allies fought for nearer aims. Austria-Hungary wanted to settle accounts with Serbia, Bulgaria to regain Macedonia and, should Romania enter the war, also the Dobruja lost in 1913. When Russia collapsed, the Central Powers showed what their peace would look like. In the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk Russia renounced sovereignty over Poland, Lithuania and Courland, agreed to evacuate Livonia, Estonia, Finland and Ukraine, and to hand over to Turkey the districts of Kars, Ardahan and Batumi.

The Entente’s aims were settled in secret agreements. In a secret agreement of spring 1915 Russia secured the right to the Straits and Constantinople, which Prime Minister Alexander Trepov announced in the Duma on 2 December 1916. Italy was promised land on the Adriatic, Romania Transylvania, and in 1916 Britain, France and Russia divided the Sultan’s Asian possessions among themselves in the Sykes-Picot agreement. At the conference of Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne in April 1917 the Italians demanded compensation for this in Asia Minor.

The Allies first said together and in public what they were fighting for in their reply to Wilson’s note of 10 January 1917. The British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour wanted it to name the return of Alsace and Lorraine to France, the union of Italian lands with Italy, the unification of the Serbs and the Romanians in their own states, the fulfilment of at least some of the aspirations of the Poles, and the liberation of Christians from Turkish rule. The Central Powers gave no terms at all in their reply. On 5 January 1918 Lloyd George set out Britain’s war aims, demanding the restoration of Belgium and an independent Poland, and three days later Wilson announced his Fourteen Points. On 3 June 1918 the prime ministers of France, Britain and Italy recognised, in the Versailles declaration, an independent Poland with access to the sea as a condition of peace.

How the coalitions worked

For most of the war the Entente had no joint command. Each army fought under its own commander, and operations were agreed at conferences. On 6 July 1915 at Calais the British and French prime ministers met for the first time, and the next day the first Allied military conference was held at Chantilly. The breakthrough was the second Chantilly conference of 6–8 December 1915, at which the commanders agreed on simultaneous offensives on all the main fronts in 1916. Further conferences followed at Chantilly in March 1916 and in November, when the plan for 1917 was drawn up. In June 1916 eight Entente states agreed in Paris on economic warfare against the Central Powers.

A permanent body was created only after the Italian defeat at Caporetto. At the Rapallo conference of 5–7 November 1917 the prime ministers of Britain, France and Italy set up the Supreme War Council, which met at Versailles on 1 December 1917. Unified command came out of a crisis. As the German offensive on the Somme was driving the British and French armies apart, on 26 March 1918 at Doullens General Ferdinand Foch was entrusted with coordinating the Allied armies. On 3 April at Beauvais the governments of France, Britain and the USA gave him strategic direction, and on 14 April Foch received the title of Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Armies in France. In early November the Entente leaders entrusted him with the direction of the war against Germany on all fronts.

On the other side Germany predominated from the start. From September 1914 the Ottoman fleet was commanded by the German admiral Wilhelm Souchon, and a German military mission was to have a real say in the command of the Ottoman army. The attack on Serbia in 1915, with Bulgarian participation, was directed by the German field marshal August von Mackensen. After the Brusilov offensive Austria-Hungary depended more and more on its German ally. At the end of August 1916 Paul von Hindenburg became Chief of the General Staff, with Erich Ludendorff as his deputy. In September the Central Powers agreed to a joint supreme command under Wilhelm II, in practice exercised by the German OHL. Wilson called the Habsburg monarchy “only the vassal of the German Government”.

Who left the war

The first to ask for an armistice was little Montenegro, whose government requested one in January 1916. The Entente’s biggest loss was Russia. After the October Revolution, on 21 November 1917 Lenin’s government proposed an armistice, and on 15 December at Brest-Litovsk a ceasefire was signed from the Baltic to the Black Sea. On 9 February 1918 the Central Powers made peace with the Ukrainian People’s Republic, and on 3 March 1918 Soviet Russia signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Russia thereby broke the Pact of London, and on 18 March the Entente prime ministers and foreign ministers declared that they did not recognise the Brest peace.

Isolated Romania, undefeated in the field, signed the Armistice of Focșani on 9 December 1917, a preliminary peace at Buftea on 5 March 1918, and on 7 May 1918 the Peace of Bucharest, under which it lost the Dobruja and the Carpathian passes. It returned to the war on 10 November 1918, the day before it ended.

In autumn 1918 the bloc of the Central Powers fell apart. Bulgaria signed an armistice at Salonika on 29 September and was the first of the Central Powers to leave the war. That same day at Spa Hindenburg and Ludendorff demanded an immediate request for an armistice. The Ottoman Empire signed the Armistice of Mudros on 30 October, and Austria-Hungary the Armistice of Villa Giusti on 3 November. Fighting on the Italian front stopped on 4 November at 3 p.m. Germany was left alone and on 11 November 1918 signed the Armistice of Compiègne. On 13 November Hungary concluded a separate military convention with the Allies in Belgrade.

How many were there

The Central Powers were just four states: Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria. The coalition of their enemies was much wider and harder to count. According to the Polish Wikipedia, a broad coalition of 25 states joined the core of the Entente, not all of which took an active part in the war. The Canadian War Museum lists on the Allied side, besides the great powers and the dominions, Portugal, Belgium, Romania and Greece, as well as Montenegro, San Marino, Brazil, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, China, Siam and Liberia. The differences arise because some lists also count states that only broke off relations with Germany.

The advantage in manpower lay with the Entente. According to the US War Department in 1924, 65 million men were mobilised in the 16 main belligerents. Russia called up between 12 million and 15.38 million soldiers, France between 7.94 and 8.41 million, and the British Empire with the dominions and India nearly 9 million. The United States mobilised between 4.27 and 4.36 million. On the other side Germany called up between 11 and 13.25 million, and Austria-Hungary between 7.8 and 9 million soldiers. The last act of this division came after the armistice: on 15 December 1918 Poland broke off relations with Germany.