Why were the Central Powers defeated in the First World War?

The First World War had split Europe into two huge power blocs, that of the Allied forces of the Triple Entente (France, Great Britain and Russia), and that of the Central Powers of the Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy). As the war progressed, Russia backed out of the war, and the USA entered against Germany (though ostensibly not as a part of the Allied forces, but as an independent country), while Italy joined the Allied forces against the Central Powers. On the other hand, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria joined the Central Powers. While both sides were seemingly evenly matched, the failure of the Schlieffen Plan and the subsequent Battle of Marne transformed the First World War into a war of attrition on both the Eastern and the Western Fronts. This meant that the side with the most resources would ultimately win the war. The Allied Forces had the support of their many colonies, which provided them with a large number of soldiers. With the addition of the USA (who provided a great deal of resources, both in the form of soldiers and other provisions like food and weapons), the Allied forces were bolstered to a large extent. By the end of the war, the Central Powers were fighting 27 countries, and were facing internal revolution as well. The war of attrition petered out when Austria was defeated by Italy, Bulgaria by Britain, and Turkey was exhausted completely Germany was left on her own. The culmination of all these factors spelled defeat for the Central Powers and victory for the Allied forces. The Germans had pinned all their hope on the celebrated Schlieffen Plan, which was made in order to avoid fighting a war on two fronts, what with both Russia and France as their enemies. However, the Plan failed and in failing, backfired completely. The plan was to attack France and defeat it quickly, before Russia could mobilize her troops completely. The war was to have been a short one, with the Germans emerging as victors. However, there were some drawbacks to the plan the most politically consequential drawback being that the Germans would have to invade Belgium, a neutral country. This invasion of course later drew Great Britain into the war. The Schlieffen Plan was modified by Helmuth Von Moltke who pulled away troops from the offensive in order to defend Alsace-Lorraine and fortify the forces on the Russian border. These changes were described by L.C.F. Turner as a substantial modification in the Schlieffen Plan and one which probably doomed the German campaign in the west before it was ever launched. 1 These changes meant that the German offensive was not able to break through the Allied defenses, rendering the Schlieffen Plan a failure. At the same time, the Russian troops were mobilized far faster than the Plan had anticipated. All in all the failure of the Schlieffen Plan led to loss of confidence on the German side, an end to the German offensive, the beginning of years of trench and attrition warfare, and a long and costly war on two fronts for the Germans. The shortcomings of the Schlieffen Plan enabled the Allied Forces to successfully win the decisive Battle of Marne and put a stop to the German offensive. The Battle of Marne was the French counter-attack that caused the Germans to abandon the Schlieffen Plan and retreat back into the northeast. At first the Germans had won several smaller battles in both France and Belgium. However, in the Battle of Marne, they were met with considerable resistance in the form of six French armies and one British army. The German Army committed a gross error in its military tactics: in trying to surround the
1

Foley, Robert Alfred von Schlieffen's Military Writings. London: Frank Cass, 2003.

French armies, it exposed its right flank to attack. In order to reduce the repercussions of this error, the German army split up and as a result committed a further tactical error an opening of 50 km was created between the two armies. The Allied forces naturally took advantage of this, and that was the end of the German Offensive. General Von Multke suffered a nervous breakdown and told Kaiser Wilhelm II that they had lost the war. The repercussions of the Battle of Marne were enormous The war became a stalemate after the Allies won the Battle of the Marne The German defeat and subsequent retreat ended any hopes of a quick victory for Germany in the West. 2 Italy, though originally a part of the Triple Entente, remained a neutral country at the beginning of the war. In 1915, Italy approached the Hapsburg Empire in a fever of territorial greed, offering her support in return for several Austrian territories. This offer was declined, so Italy then turned to the Allied Forces, with whom she settled The London Pact. This turned out to be a mistake on the part of Austria-Hungary and the Central Powers, because Italy then proceeded to attack Austria-Hungary and engage her in a battle that soon progressed into another stalemate. The Italian offensive was fended off effectively by Austria-Hungary s defensive plans, and both sides settled in for a war of attrition. Throughout the year there were several attacks and counter-attacks on both sides, but no significant progress was made until late 1917. The war of attrition caused great loss of morale on both sides, and it soon caused Austria-Hungary to ask for German help. This was one of the characteristic features of the war Germany was no doubt a great power, but her allies were weakened and were constantly in need of support. The Germans in fact described their alliance with Austria-Hungary as being shackled to a corpse. The Italians, on the other hand, were supported by American supplies of strategic materials. In 1918, the stalemate was finally overcome as Germany pulled out her troops in order to support her offensives on other fronts. The result was the Battle of Vittorio Veneto, which heralded the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Army as an effective fighting force, and also triggered the disintegration of Austria-Hungary. 3 This defeat spelled disaster for Germany, as it exposed the German army s southern flank. Bulgaria entered the war in 1915 on the side of the Central Powers. Unfortunately for Germany, Bulgaria was yet another weak ally whose defeat would cause several problems for Germany. Although Bulgaria initially held off the British forces effectively and succeeded in occupying a large chunk of Greek territory, it was in the end no match for the British Naval forces. By the summer of 1918, the Bulgarian army was facing not only British and Greek offensives, but also internal strife desertion and mutiny immobilised the Bulgarian army. 4 The resulting defeat of the Bulgarian forces in Macedonia caused civil unrest in the Bulgarian capital, and Bulgaria was forced to withdraw from the war in the fall of 1918. The Bulgarian defeat left Germany even more exposed and led to an Allied attack up the Danube.

Beyer, Rick, The Greatest Stories Never Told, A&E Television Networks / The History Channel, ISBN 006-001401-6. p. 148-149 3 Thompson, Mark (2008). The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919. London: Faber & Faber. ISBN 0571223338. 4 http://www.firstworldwar.com/features/minorpowers_bulgaria.htm

Great Britain had long been called the Queen of the Seas, and not without reason her naval force was indeed a force to be reckoned with. The British Navy Intelligence and the French had long been planning a series of naval blockades in the event of a war with Germany. As soon as war broke out in 1914, these blockades were put in place, effectively reducing Germany s imports by 55%. Many historians5 claimed that the blockade was the sole factor that won the war in favor of the Allied Forces, but these claims were later refuted. However, the fact remains that the British blockade had far reaching consequences throughout the war. The blockade led to a shortage of raw materials like coal and metals, but more importantly it led to widespread food shortages because of a lack of agricultural fertilizers. The food shortages slowly starved the Austro-Hungarian and German populations and sparked widespread civil unrest in both empires. The Central Powers were also hit harder by the Spanish influenza because the armies were rife with malnutrition. The German response to these naval blockades was unrestricted submarine warfare, which meant that all ships supplying provisions to the Allied forces would be attacked indiscriminately an effort on the part of the Germans to starve the Allied forces in turn. The new German policy of unrestricted submarine warfare backfired, however, when the Germans attacked several US civilian ships, including the Lusitania. This, coupled with the Zimmerman Telegraph (in which Germany was encouraging Mexico to join the war and attack the US), enraged the United States population to such an extent that the peace-promoting Woodrow Wilson was forced to declare war on Germany. The US entry into the war meant that the Russian withdrawal would not have the far-reaching consequences predicted. It also meant that the Allied forces now had more resources than the Central Powers something that was essential in a war of attrition. The single biggest factor was the entry of the United States into the war. The money supplied by the United States and seemingly unlimited supply of soldiers took away the option of outlasting Britain and France as they (the Central Powers) had done to Russia. 6 Although the US entry into the war did not at first provide direct military support (the American troops had to be trained first), it did provide economic support by supplying merchant ships and food exports. Eventually, the US entry also meant the addition of millions of fresh soldiers to the Allied forces, leading to the rejuvenation of the Allies and the launching of the Hundred Days Offensive. The Hundred Days Offensive refers to the final offensives of the Allied forces that forced the Germans to retreat behind the Hindenburg Line and effectively forced Germany to sign an armistice. These last battles marked, in short, the end of the First World War as well as the complete collapse of the Central Powers due to a mixture of exhaustion of resources and internal conflicts. The Central Powers had finally been defeated by the Allied forces as a result of several factors, including the initial failure of the Schlieffen Plan and the subsequent entrenched war of attrition, the American intervention, the weakness of Germany s allies, the effectiveness of the British Blockade and the eventual exhaustion of Germany herself.

Vincent, C. Paul (1985). The Politics of Hunger: The Allied Blockade of Germany, 1915-1919. Athens (Ohio) and London: Ohio University Press. 6 http://www.chicousd.org/~bsilva/projects/wars/wwi/causes_defeat_central_powers.htm

Bibliography 1. Kennedy, Paul (1988). The Rise and Fall of the Great Power. London, Unwin Hyman Limited
2. SparkNotes Editors. SparkNote on World War I (19141919). SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2005. Web. 10 Aug. 2010.

3. Duffy, Michael. "A multimedia history of World War One". <http://www.firstworldwar.com/index.htm>. 4. "World War 1-Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia". Wikipedia. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I>. 5. "Blockade of Germany-Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia". Wikipedia. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_Germany>. 6. "World War One, The Great War". History World International. <http://historyworld.org/world_war_one.htm>. 7. Silva, Brett. "Reasons for the defeat of the Central Powers". <http://www.chicousd.org/~bsilva/projects/wars/wwi/causes_defeat_central_powers.htm>.