Editing The World Wars (section)

===Campaigns===
====Western Europe==== 
{{topquote|What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?<br>— Only the monstrous anger of the guns.<br>Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle<br>Can patter out their hasty orisons.<br>No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;<br>Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,—<br>The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells<br>And bugles calling for them from sad shires.|Wilfred Owen, "Dulce et Decorum Est"}}

Of all the fronts in WWI, Western Europe is the one that's been most documented and seared into the popular consciousness. It cut through Belgium and France all the way down to Switzerland. When Italy joined the Allies, the front was extended to across the Italo-Austrian border. Germany's Schlieffen Plan was intended to be used to quickly deal with France, and once France was broken troops could be diverted to support the Eastern Front. This didn't come to pass as diplomatic pressure caused troops to be diverted East, preventing their use in the Schlieffen Plan and resulting in the offensive against France stalling out short of its goal of capturing Paris. As neither side had a real advantage over the other, they were forced to dig in for the long haul, creating the conditions for trench warfare, the ugliest and most iconic aspect of WWI. This is where all the stereotypical images of the war originated: endless lines of trenches, forests and fields reduced to blasted, muddy moonscapes, barbed wire and rotting corpses everywhere, clouds of mustard gas, and soldiers armed with bolt-action rifles and bayonets charging into no-man's-land to be slaughtered in the thousands by machine guns and artillery. 

The front lines would effectively remain static throughout the war, though both sides made attempts to break the stalemate and resume a true offensive. The Entente attempted breakthroughs at the Battles of the Somme and Ypres, both of which ended in massive casualties for minimal gains. The British army suffered over 57,000 killed, wounded, and missing on the first day of the Somme, which is still the worst casualty rate in its history. Ypres was a series of battles fought in the same general area, collectively becoming known as the First through Fifth Battles of Ypres. Second Ypres saw the Germans' first mass deployment of chemical weapons, while Third Ypres, aka Passchendaele, resulted in somewhere between 400,000-800,000 casualties on both sides. Verdun was a 1916 attempt to knock France out of the war by attacking the fortified city of Verdun, a keystone of France's defensive line. The idea was to grind the French army down through sheer attrition; it backfired and wound up costing the Germans almost as many troops as it did the French (~336,000 German vs. ~379,000 French). Meanwhile, the Spring Offensive of 1918 was a last-ditch attempt to win the war after the Russian capitulation and before the Americans could show up in sufficient numbers to turn the tide. Some indicator of how well this was going to go came from Ludendorff himself, who declared that all the German army had to do was punch a hole in the Allied lines and they'd somehow just win from there. 

When Italy joined the fight, basically nothing changed except that the Austro-Hungarians now had to defend their western border in addition to their south and east. The only other significant nation to join the Allies in western Europe was Portugal, who were wooed by promises of protection for their colonial empire in Africa in exchange for joining the Entente.

====Eastern Europe====
Eastern Europe receives comparatively little study compared to the Western Front, mainly because records from that time weren't well preserved or were destroyed during the chaos of the Russian Revolution. While just as bloody in some instances, it offered many more opportunities for maneuver warfare than was afforded on the Western Front. An attack by the Russians on East Prussia went terribly, but just as France hoped, it forced the Germans to divert men away from France and the Schlieffen Plan and into the Eastern Front. This slow advance by the Central Powers in the east would only be halted and reversed in 1916 by the Brusilov Offensive, a brutal assault wherein the Russians shoved the Austro-Hungarians back into their homeland. 

This was too much at too high a cost, because mass desertions, poor battlefield performance, inadequate food supply and widespread dissatisfaction with the ruling aristocracy along with everything else wrong with the Russian empire saw the country basically collapse. Tsar Nicholas was forced to abdicate, after which he and his family were eventually murdered by the Bolsheviks, and a provisional government was set up. This government proceeded to try an attack against Austria-Hungary with horrific results, stoking further unrest. This was eventually followed by the November 1917 Russian Revolution that brought in Trotsky, Lenin, and the Bolsheviks, who would later become the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The peace agreement between Germany and Russia saw the latter have a ton of territory taken from them in March, which eventually led to the formation of the Baltic nations, Poland, and Ukraine, among others. Finland also broke away during the chaos of the revolution, and with much bigger problems on their plate, the Russians kinda just let it happen. 

Meanwhile, Serbia would hold out until 1915 against Austria-Hungary, until being overrun after Bulgaria declared for the Central Powers and helped chase the Serbs into Greece. Montenegro followed a few months later in 1916. Greece eventually forced their king to abdicate and declared for the Entente in 1917. The Bulgarians were forced into an armistice after the defeat at Dobro-Pole.  

Romania joined the war after seeing the debacle of the Brusilov Offensive, thinking they could join in on the tail-end and steal some land from a couple of dying empires. They were promptly disabused of this notion after they got their shit kicked in by Bulgaria, Germany, and Austria-Hungary, and their army took up a supporting role alongside the Russians until the Bolshevik revolution forced them to sign an armistice. In the end they still managed to increase their territories as a result of their participation in the conflict, so they got what they'd wanted even if it hadn't gone exactly as planned.

====Ottoman Empire==== 
When the guns of August started blasting, the Ottoman Empire was in the final stages of collapse. A series of military defeats throughout the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries had led to the Tanzimat period of the 19th century, which had bought the empire some time thanks to extensive reforms that had taken place, but there was increasing unrest in the Balkans and elsewhere. Though the Turks suppressed several nationalist uprisings, the Russo-Turkish War of 1877 forced them to grant independence to Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro, while Austria-Hungary walked in and took Bosnia-Herzegovina and Britain gained ''de facto'' control of Cyprus and Egypt. The empire's last throw of the dice came with the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, a ''coup d'etat'' that attempted to reform the empire into a democratic state by restoring its constitution and establishing an electoral system. The Italo-Turkish War in 1911 cost the Empire its North African territories and the Dodecanese, while the First Balkan War the following year cost it almost all its territories in the Balkans. 

When the war broke out, the Ottomans officially declared neutrality at first, though they talked to both sides to see what they might get out of joining either one. They ultimately came down on the German side after being offered territorial concessions and a guarantee of defense against Russia, along with the Germans essentially forcing the issue by sending a battlecruiser and light cruiser through the Dardanelles strait to Constantinople. Turkey bought the ships and officially commissioned them into their navy, only for the Germans to run off and start bombarding Russia's Black Sea ports without formal authorization from the Turkish government, however it is acknowledged that Germanonphile members of the government likely gave unofficial approval.

Turkey's most well-known contribution to World War I was its defense of the Dardanelles, the strait which allows passage from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. They had closed the strait to all Allied shipping not long after entering the war. This inflicted a crippling blow to Russia's economy, which depended on grain exports from the Crimea and elsewhere on the Black Sea coast. The British made several attempts to capture the strait, which would let them put ships into the Black Sea, threaten Constantinople directly, and reopen Russia's lifeline. Several purely naval efforts to smash the forts and gun positions defending the strait failed, after which Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, proposed a landing at the Gallipoli peninsula. A protracted and bloody campaign ensued which saw Australian and New Zealander troops (the famed ANZACs) being fed into the grinder while the Turks more than held their own (no thanks to high command, big thanks to then Colonel Mustafa Kemal). The British ultimately conceded defeat and withdrew their troops, and the Dardanelles remained closed for the rest of the war. The campaign became an emotional flashpoint for Australia and New Zealand, who (not inaccurately) viewed it as a senseless sacrifice of their best young men by their colonial overlords, and was part of the reason they began pushing for greater autonomy and eventually independence after the war. The failure also got Churchill fired from the Admiralty, which most people at the time figured was the end of his career. Perhaps the biggest consequence of this was the shattering of the notion of colonial invincibility, which officially ignited the spark of anti-colonialism across the globe.

Another major front for the Ottomans was the Mesopotamian campaign, which saw them fighting the British in the Middle East. Though the empire did well for the first two years, the Arab Revolt of 1916-1917, led by T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia) and Faisal bin Al-Hussein, saw Arabic irregulars waging a guerrilla war against the Ottomans that tied down great numbers of troops and ultimately led to their defeat in the theater. Britain fucked up here as well; to secure Arabic support for the revolt, they had promised to back the creation of a unified Arab state, which they would recognize after the war. They promptly reneged on that deal once the war was over, instead signing the Sykes-Picot Agreement with France. The agreement haphazardly carved the Middle East into a bunch of mandate territories, all of whom had and still have beef with each other for various reasons. It is still the cause of widespread resentment in the region to this day.

After the war had really gotten rolling, the Ottomans also decided they might as well do some war crimes while they were at it and promptly committed genocides against the Greeks, Armenians, and Assyrians. [[/pol/|Turkey claimed at the time, and still insists today, that the Armenian genocide in particular was not a genocide, that the Armenians were resettled for totally legitimate military reasons, and that the Armenians were actually the ones doing the genociding, so they totally had it coming, etc etc]]. Bringing this up around anyone from Turkey is a ''really'' good way to start a fight; Turkey's founding myths rest on the notion that the genocide never happened, so the modern Turkish government is quick to banhammer any kind of pop culture that even mentions it. The average citizen either doesn't care or if educated sees any and all actions taken as desperate survival measures against colonization (not an unfair concern if one looks at Africa or India). The indisputable Turkish hero of the war and founder of the modern nation state, Mustafa Kemal, fighting at Gallipoli while the whole mess that was Anatolia at the time was taking place while Enver Pasha was in the lap of luxury pretending to be a soldier also makes sure that the modern republic is fiercely held as being wholly separate so even modernists won't agree with Western historians on this matter.

====Africa====
Before the war, most of the colonial powers seemed to agree that if a war ever started, Africa should be left out of it. The risk of breaking the grasp of the metropoli over the colonies was too great, and if the colonial powers kicked each other to the curb in Africa, it could give the natives ideas about declaring independence, especially if they were armed and trained for war. The Conference of Berlin had already stated decades ago that any war between colonial powers would set the colonies aside as neutral parties. Of course, once the war started, all the high-minded rhetoric went down the drain; the Entente saw the German colonies as easy pickings, isolated and surrounded as they were by the much bigger colonial holdings of the British, the French, and the Portuguese. Thus, Germany had lost control over most of its colonies by 1916, since it couldn't really afford to divert resources to the colonies (and the British Navy would have intercepted them anyway). In German East Africa, however, General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck decided he wasn't going to let any damned Limeys roll over on him, so he rallied his small force of native askaris and German officers and led a notably successful campaign of guerrilla/mobile warfare against the British colonial troops. They managed to hold out against British, Belgian, and Portuguese armies many times their size (hell, by the time he learned Germany had lost the war, [[awesome|he was invading British territory]]). 

As an equally badass postscript, when the German government finally agreed to award the askaris back pay several decades later, most of the survivors had lost their uniforms and certificates of service. To prove that they had served under von Lettow-Vorbeck, each man who came forth was handed a broom and ordered in German to execute the manual of arms. [[Awesome|Every one of them remembered their training]].

====Pacific====
Easily the quietest theater of the war. Mostly just Japan taking over Germany's scattered Pacific colonies. There were a few minor naval engagements between the German Far East Squadron and the Royal Navy and some attacks by German commerce raiders, but overall it was pretty sparse compared to what would happen in the sequel. The biggest consequence was that the Chinese had joined the Allied Powers, hoping to show solidarity with them and get some of their land back from at least one of the imperial powers that had been carving them up like Peking duck for the last century, so they were understandably pissed when Japan was awarded those German territories instead. Japan was also given a bunch of other German island colonies scattered across the western Pacific, which put them a lot closer to Britain and America's colonial holdings and caused all three powers to start side-eyeing each other.