professor david stevenson

The First World War Conference

17 July 201417 July 2014

Session Four: Coalition Warfare

Professor David Stevenson

LSE

Coalition Warfare: the Political Aspects

Three Phases -

• Pre-War Planning and 1914

• Stalemate, 1915-1917

• An Atlantic Alliance, 1917-1918?

First Phase

Pre-War Planning

• Austro-German alliance, 1879

• Triple Alliance (A-H, Germany, Italy), 1882

• Staff talks (Moltke, Conrad, Pollio)

• Franco-Russian alliance, formed 1891-94

• British ententes with France (1904) and Russia (1907)

• Franco-Russian and Franco-British staff talks

1914 War Plans

• Germany: Schlieffen-Moltke Plan

• Austria-Hungary: Fall ‘B’, ‘R’, and ‘I’

• Italy: from Rhineland to neutrality

• Russia: Plan 19 Altered

• France: Plan XVII

• Britain: Scheme ‘W’

Pre-War Planning: Western Front

Eastern Front, 1914

Stalemate, 1915-1917

What do we do now?

Three sub-phases:

1915: Central Powers drive eastwards; Allies in disarray – Russia on the defensive, France on the offensive, Britain between Dardanelles and defensive, France on the offensive, Britain between Dardanelles and Western Front

1916: Verdun and the Trentino; Chantilly I – Brusilov, the Somme, Romania, Gorizia

1917: Chantilly II and its breakdown - the Calais conference and the Nivelle offensive

Stalemate Phase

The Nivelle Plan, 1917

1917-1918: an Atlantic Alliance?

• Disarray, 1917: Russian Revolution, French

mutinies, Passchendaele, Caporetto

• November 1917: Supreme War Council

• March-April 1918: Foch General-in-Chief• March-April 1918: Foch General-in-Chief

• Diplomatic, economic, and logistical co-

ordination

• The Armistice and the limits to co-operation

The Final Phase

An Overstated Case?

‘The war was won primarily by a tremendous

combined system of co-ordination and goodwill,

which focused all the efforts of the Allies on the

supreme task of defeating the enemy, but which supreme task of defeating the enemy, but which

only reached its zenith in the last year of the

war.’

Sir Maurice Hankey