World War I (1914-1918)
The Great War claimed 20 million lives and shattered the old world order. For Germany, it ended in defeat, humiliation, and the seeds of something far worse.
The Road to War
By 1914 Europe was divided into two armed alliance systems: the Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy) vs the Triple Entente (France, Russia, Britain). Decades of arms races, colonial competition, and nationalist tensions had created a powder keg. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914 by Gavrilo Princip set off a chain of mobilizations that no government knew how to stop.
Germany's War Plan - The Schlieffen Plan
Germany's military strategy rested on avoiding a two-front war. The Schlieffen Plan called for a rapid sweep through neutral Belgium to knock France out in six weeks, then transfer troops east to face Russia. The plan required speed above all else. When it began in August 1914, it nearly worked - German forces reached the outskirts of Paris within weeks. But the Marne counter-attack stopped the advance and both sides dug trenches stretching from the English Channel to Switzerland.
The Western Front
Four years of trench warfare produced incomprehensible casualties for minimal territorial gains. The Battle of the Somme (1916) cost Britain 57,470 casualties on the first day alone - the bloodiest day in British military history. The Battle of Verdun (1916) lasted 10 months and cost nearly 700,000 casualties. New weapons - poison gas, tanks, aircraft, machine guns - made attacks devastating but defense even stronger. The industrial scale of killing was entirely new to human experience.
Germany at War - Home Front
The British naval blockade cut off Germany from global trade, causing severe food shortages by 1916. The "turnip winter" of 1916-1917 left Germans subsisting on turnips as their primary food. Industrial production shifted entirely to war material. Women entered the workforce in large numbers. Political divisions deepened between those who wanted to fight to victory and those who wanted a negotiated peace. Morale collapsed by 1918.
Defeat and Revolution
By autumn 1918 the German military was collapsing. Germany's allies had surrendered. American troops were pouring into France. A naval mutiny at Kiel spread to a full-blown revolution. Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated on November 9, 1918. Two days later, on November 11, the Armistice ended the fighting. Germany had not been invaded - many soldiers returned home unbeaten in the field - creating the dangerous myth that they had been "stabbed in the back" by civilian politicians and Jews.
The Treaty of Versailles (1919)
Germany was forced to accept sole responsibility for the war (Article 231, the "war guilt clause"), pay massive reparations (132 billion gold marks), surrender territory (13% of land, 10% of population including Alsace-Lorraine to France), lose its colonies, and reduce its army to 100,000 men. Germans of all political stripes considered the treaty a humiliation. The economist John Maynard Keynes predicted it would cause another war. He was right. Hitler's entire political program was built on reversing Versailles.