Diplomatic history of World War I

In wartime Britain, and in neutral United States, reports of German atrocities and killing thousands of civilians, rounding up hostages, and destroying historic buildings and libraries caused a change of heart to an antiwar population.

An ad-hoc meeting of the French and British ambassadors with the Russian Foreign Minister in early September led to a statement of war aims that was not official, but did represent ideas circulating among diplomats in St. Petersburg, Paris, and London, as well as the secondary allies of Belgium, Serbia, and Montenegro.

One month into the war, Britain, France and Russia agreed not to make a separate peace with Germany, and discussions began about enticing other countries to join in return for territorial gains.

The overthrow of the Tsarist regime in March 1917 by Russian liberals greatly facilitated American entry into the war as President Wilson could for the first time proclaim a crusade for idealistic goals.

The Foreign Secretary Edward Grey argued that the secret naval agreements whereby France deployed her fleet to the Mediterranean imposed a moral obligation on Britain to defend the Channel, even though they had not been approved by the Cabinet.

Domestic politics was a factor too as the antiwar Liberal Party was in power and decided on war to support France as it had long promised and to hold together and keep out the militaristic Conservatives.

At the Paris Peace Conference, 1919, vengeance against defeated Germany was the main French theme, and Prime Minister Clemenceau was largely effective against the moderating influences of the British and Americans.

The government was entirely unaware of its fatal weaknesses and remained out of touch with public opinion; the foreign minister had to warn the tsar that "unless he yielded to the popular demand and unsheathed the sword on Serbia's behalf, he would run the risk of revolution and the loss of his throne."

The French ambassador was aghast, depicting Stürmer as, "worse than a mediocrity – a third rate intellect, mean spirit, low character, doubtful honesty, no experience, and no idea of state business.

[73] The stories of miseries, defeats and incompetence told by recruits on leave home gave a more powerful and negative narrative to every village; local anti-draft riots became common.

[74] Britain and France tried to meet Russia's problems with money and munitions, but the long supply line was so tenuous that Russian soldiers were very poorly equipped in comparison with their opponents in battle.

The German foreign ministry provided over 50 million gold marks to the Bolsheviks, and in 1917 secretly transported Lenin and his top aides from their exile in Switzerland across Germany to Russia.

"[81] The Provisional Government, even after giving Kerensky dictatorial powers, failed to meet the challenges of war weariness, growing discontent among peasants and workers, and intrigues by the Bolsheviks.

Britain, France and Russia pledged in the Declaration of Sainte-Adresse in February 1916 that Belgian would be included in the peace negotiations, its independence would be restored, and that it would receive a monetary compensation from Germany for the damages.

In the face of slow negotiations with the Chinese government, widespread anti-Japanese sentiment in China and international condemnation, Japan was obliged to withdraw the final group of demands when treaties were signed in May 1915.

In August 1914, former President of the United States William Howard Taft wrote that if Japan and his country remained neutral, they might be able to mediate and help end the new war in Europe.

Later that month, he explained himself privately to his top foreign policy advisor Colonel House, who recalled the episode later:[113] I was interested to hear him express as his opinion what I had written him some time ago in one of my letters, to the effect that if Germany won it would change the course of our civilization and make the United States a military nation.

Berlin's top espionage agent, debonair Fanz Rintelen von Kleist was spending millions to finance sabotage in Canada, stir up trouble between the US and Mexico and to incite labor strikes.

[122] Americans felt an increasing need for a military that could command respect; as one editor put it, "The best thing about a large army and a strong navy is that they make it so much easier to say just what we want to say in our diplomatic correspondence."

[133] In December 1917 the German Foreign Minister Richard von Kühlmann explained the main goals of his diplomacy was now to subvert enemy states and make peace with breakaway states and thus undermine the political unity of the Entente: According to historian Ron Carden, the German Foreign Ministry's propaganda campaign in Spain included diplomats and subsidies to networks of businessmen and influential Spaniards with the goal of convincing Spain to remain neutral, which it did.

As it became apparent that the Allies would win the war, nationalist movements, which had previously been calling for a greater degree of autonomy for their majority areas, started demanding full independence.

[144] As one of his Fourteen Points, President Woodrow Wilson demanded that "The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity to autonomous development.

In an apparent attempt to demonstrate good faith, Emperor Karl issued a proclamation ("Imperial Manifesto of 16 October 1918") two days later which would have significantly altered the structure of the Austrian half of the monarchy.

Karl's proposal was a dead letter when on 18 October U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing replied that the Allies were now committed to the causes of the Czechs, Slovaks and South Slavs.

In the two decades proceeding, the Ottomans suffered multiple humiliating defeats at the hands of European nations and by 1913 had lost all of holdings in North Africa and had been driven out of Europe entirely save Eastern Thrace.

German General Erich Ludendorff stated in his memoirs that he believed the entry of the Turks into the war allowed the outnumbered Central Powers to fight on for two years longer than they would have been able on their own, a view shared by historian Ian F.W.

[149] The Turks fought the war on multiple fronts: against Russia on the Black Sea and eastern Turkey and the Russian Caucasus; against Britain in Mesopotamia (Iraq) and Sinai and Palestine in 1917; and against the combined Allied forces at Gallipoli, near the approaches to Constantinople.

[152][153] In 1915, as the Russian Caucasus Army continued to advance into its eastern provinces the Ottoman military began the ethnic cleansing of the region's large historic Armenian population.

The genocide was implemented in two phases: the wholesale killing of able-bodied Armenian males through massacre and subjection as army conscripts to forced labour, followed by the deportation of women, children, the elderly, and the infirm on death marches to the Syrian desert.

[155] On 24 May 1915 the Allies issued a joint public denunciation of the “mass murders” of the Armenians, denouncing a new "crime against humanity and civilization," for which all guilty parties would be held personally responsible after the war.