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The War at Sea

A contributing factor the pre-war tensions, the results of the naval race between Britain and Germany were now put to the test. Superior in numbers to the German High Seas Fleet, the Royal Navy opened the fighting with a raid on the German coast on August 28, 1914. The resulting Battle of Heligoland Bight was a British victory.

While neither side's battleships were involved, the fight led Kaiser Wilhelm to order the navy to "hold itself back and avoid actions which can lead to greater losses."

Off the west coast of South America, German fortunes were better as Admiral Graf Maximilian von Spee's small German East Asiatic Squadron inflicted a severe defeat on a British force at the Battle of Coronel on November 1. Touching off a panic at the Admiralty, Coronel was the worst British defeat at sea in a century. Dispatching a powerful force south, the Royal Navy crushed Spee at the Battle of the Falklands a few weeks later. In January 1915, the British utilized radio intercepts to learn about an intended German raid on the fishing fleet at Dogger Bank. Sailing south, Vice Admiral David Beattyintended to cut off and destroy the Germans. Spotting the British on January 24, the Germans fled for home, but lost an armored cruiser in the process.

With the Grand Fleet based at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands, the Royal Navy imposed a tight blockade on the North Sea to halt trade to Germany.

Though of dubious legality, Britain mined large tracts of the North Sea and stopped neutral vessels. Unwilling to risk the High Seas Fleet in battle with the British, the Germans began a program of submarine warfare using U-boats. Having scored some early successes against obsolete British warships, the U-boats were turned against merchant shipping with the goal of starving Britain into submission.

While early submarine attacks required the U-boat to surface and give warning before firing, the Kaiserliche Marine (German Navy) slowly moved to a "shoot without warning" policy. This was initially resisted by Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg who feared that it would antagonize neutrals such as the United States. In February 1915, Germany declared the waters around the British Isles to be a war zone and announced that any vessel in the area would be sunk without warning. German U-boats hunted throughout the spring until U-20torpedoed the liner RMS Lusitania off the south coast of Ireland on May 7, 1915. Killing 1,198 people, including 128 Americans, the sinking ignited international outrage. Coupled with the sinking of RMS Arabic in August, the sinking of Lusitania led to intense pressure from the United States to discontinue what had become known as "unrestricted submarine warfare." On August 28, Germany, unwilling to risk war with the United States, announced that passenger ships would no longer be attacked without warning.

Death From Above

While new tactics and approaches were being tested at sea, an entirely new military branch was coming into existence in the air. The advent of military aviation in the years prior to the war offered both sides the opportunity to conduct extensive aerial reconnaissance and mapping over the front. While the Allies initially dominated the skies, the German development of a working synchronization gear, which allowed a machine gun to safely fire through the arc of the propeller, quickly changed the equation.

Synchronization gear-equipped Fokker E.Is appeared over the front in the summer of 1915. Sweeping aside Allied aircraft, they initiated the "Fokker Scourge" which gave the Germans command of the air on the Western Front. Flown by early aces such as Max Immelmann and Oswald Boelcke, the E.I dominated the skies into 1916. Quickly moving to catch up, the Allies introduced a new set of fighters, including the Nieuport 11 and Airco DH.2. These aircraft allowed them to regain air superiority prior to the great battles of 1916. For the remainder of the war, both sides continued to develop more advanced aircraft and famous aces, such as Manfred von Richthofen, The Red Baron, became pop icons.

The War on the Eastern Front

While the war in the West remained largely stalemated, the fighting in the East retained a degree of fluidity. Though Falkenhayn had advocated against it, Hindenburg and Ludendorff began planning an offensive against the Russian Tenth Army in the area of the Masurian Lakes. This attack would be supported by Austrian offensives in the south with the goal of retaking Lemberg and relieving the besieged garrison at Przemysl. Relatively isolated in the eastern part of East Prussia, General Thadeus von Sievers' Tenth Army had not be been reinforced and was forced to rely on General Pavel Plehve's Twelfth Army, then forming to the south, for aid.

Opening the Second Battle of the Masurian Lakes (Winter Battle in Masuria) on February 9, the Germans made quick gains against the Russians. Under heavy pressure, the Russians were soon threatened with encirclement. While most of the Tenth Army fell back, Lieutenant General Pavel Bulgakov's XX Corps was encircled in the Augustow Forest and forced to surrender on February 21. Though lost, XX Corps' stand allowed the Russians to form a new defensive line further east. The next day, Plehve's Twelfth Army counterattacked, halting the Germans and ending the battle (Map). In the south, the Austrian offensives proved largely ineffective and Przemysl surrendered on March 18.

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