7.3: Beyond the Western Front

The Brusilov Offensive

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): "Russian cavalry on the eastern front during the Brusilov Offensive, 1916," in the Public Domain.

The conflict on the Eastern Front, where the Germans and Austro-Hungarians faced the Russians, was more mobile. In 1916, as the months-long Battle of Verdun seemed to be going against the French, the Russian Army overwhelmed Austrian forces in the Brusilov Offensive (see Figure 7.3.1), the largest and most deadly of the war. Hundreds of thousands died on both sides as the Russian army advanced, forcing the Germans to divert their forces from the Western Front. Austro-Hungarian offensive capabilities were largely destroyed, but Russian soldiers were also disillusioned and began to seriously question the competence and decisions of their officers and commanders, including the Tsar himself. Figure 7.3.1 shows the Russian cavalry charging against the armies of the Central Powers on the Eastern Front in 1916.

Japan and East Africa

Even before the entry of the United States in 1918, the war had become truly global. Japan was eager to be counted as a world power, and Japanese leaders seized upon the opportunity the war provided to improve their status in Asia. After taking control of German colonies in China and the Pacific in 1914, Japan sent the Chinese government a list of 21 Demands. The Chinese believed that giving in to Japan’s demands would have basically resulted in China becoming a colony of the Japanese Empire. The Chinese government agreed to some of the demands but leaked the list to British diplomats, who intervened to prevent a complete shift in the balance of power in Asia. 

In Africa, Germany lost its colonies in the fighting. A German commander in East Africa, led a largely native African force in guerrilla tactics against Allied troops for most of the war. The scale of fighting in Africa may have paled in comparison to the main theaters of the war, but the deaths were no less tragic. Nor was it only soldiers who died. In eastern Africa, for instance, disruptions to crop cultivation led to hundreds of thousands of deaths by starvation and disease.  

The Ottoman Empire controlled territory on either side of the Bosporus Straits, which connect the Black Sea with the Mediterranean. In 1915, the Allies landed troops at Gallipoli, a peninsula on the European side of the Bosporus, about 200 miles (320 km) from the Ottoman capital in Istanbul. The plan was to take Istanbul, knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war and open a third front against Austria-Hungary and Germany through the Balkans. However, the Ottoman military held the high ground above the landing site chosen for the mostly colonial troops. Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) troops were decimated, in a battle that marks the beginning of a sense of nationality in those countries. The anniversary of the Gallipoli landing, April 25th, is still celebrated as ANZAC Day. The disastrous plan nearly ended the political career of the British First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill.

Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): “Those who fell by the wayside," Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, in the Public Domain.

Gallipoli Invasion

The eleven-month-long Gallipoli invasion was even more important for the Turks. The hard-fought victory was led by General Mustafa Kemal, who soon became a national hero and would go on to found the modern Turkish Republic and serve as its first president after the war. However, at nearly the same time as the Gallipoli landings, the Ottoman government also decided to take action against the Christian minority in Armenia. Armenians had suffered from periodic pogroms in the decades preceding World War One. The Armenians were loyal subjects (many were serving in the army when the persecution began), but after an unsuccessful Russian attempt to invade Turkey from the east, some military leaders in the Turkish government accused the Armenians of collaborating with the Russian troops and decided to eliminate the Armenian population. Men were executed, while women and children were force-marched across the desert to Mesopotamia. Numbers are hard to verify, but at least one million likely died in what would come to be called the Armenian Genocide. Henry Morgenthau, the U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, while the genocide was ongoing claimed that an Ottoman official he spoke to, "made no secret of the fact that the Government had instigated [the massacres], and, like all Turks of the official classes, he enthusiastically approved this treatment of the detested race." Morgenthau also photographed some of the aftermath. Figure 7.3.2 is one of his photographs that documents the Armenian genocide during the war, and the caption reads: "Those who fell by the wayside." Scenes like this were common all over the Armenian provinces in the spring and summer months of 1915. Death in its several forms—massacre, starvation, exhaustion—destroyed the larger part of the refugees. The Turkish policy was that of extermination under the guise of deportation.” Western powers were appropriately swift in their denunciation of the Genocide, but it had only been two years earlier, in 1913, when Muslims in former Ottoman territories had been subject to ethnic cleansing at the hands of Balkan Christians with the tacit approval of Europe’s Great Powers. 

In an interview with a German newspaper from May of 1915, Talaat Pasha, one of the leading figures in the Ottoman Empire, attempted to justify his government's genocidal policy towards Armenians saying: 

We have been blamed for not making a distinction between guilty and innocent Armenians. [To do so] was impossible. Because of the nature of things, one who was still innocent today could be guilty tomorrow. The concern for the safety of Turkey simply had to silence all other concerns. Our actions were determined by national and historical necessity.

Later in the year, Talaat met with a German embassy official and explained: "Turkey is taking advantage of the war in order to thoroughly liquidate its internal foes, i.e., the indigenous Christians, without being thereby disturbed by foreign intervention…What on earth do you want? The question is settled. There are no more Armenians." The Armenian Genocide is the clearest example that the costs of the war were not only paid on the battlefields of Europe.

Review Questions

• How did the war on the Eastern Front and in the Mediterranean differ from the Western Front?
• The international community was generally quick to condemn Ottoman actions against the Armenians, yet the Armenian Genocide was not the last such event to occur over the next century. What factors might explain why genocide was so prevalent across the 20th century?