WORLD WAR I
The formal cause of the outbreak of the World War was the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Hapsburg throne, and of his wife, which took place at Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. The assassin, G. Princip, an Austrian citizen but of Slav nationality, carried out the crime with the support of a Serbian terrorist organization. Austria-Hungary, desirous of humiliating Serbia in order to strike indirectly at Slav irredentism, which was strong among the populations subject to the Dual Monarchy, sent a harsh ultimatum to Belgrade on 23 July, containing conditions so severe that they were rejected. On 28 July Austria declared war on Serbia. In support of its southern Slav ally, Russia intervened, an intervention that drew Germany and France into the conflict, and, after the invasion of Belgium by German troops, also Britain. Beside the Central Powers (Germany and Austria-Hungary) there then aligned themselves Turkey and Bulgaria, and against them many other powers, including Japan (1914), Italy (1915), Romania (1916), and the United States of America (1917). The remote, or, so to speak, substantial causes of this conflict were many, and among them the Anglo-German rivalry on the seas and in world markets and the Austro-Russian rivalry for influence in the Balkans were decisive. To these was added France’s desire for revanche after 1871, a desire for revenge preached even before the dismissal of Bismarck and the advent of William II, but which seemed realizable especially after the retirement of the German Chancellor, when his successors no longer wished to renew in 1890 the Reinsurance Treaty with Russia. From this emerged the Franco-Russian alliance of 1893. The “Triple Alliance” (Austria, Germany, Italy) of 1882 had also lost much of its solidity after the Franco-Italian agreements at the beginning of the new century, and Italy’s neutrality in the first months of the war was the consequence of Italy’s pro-French political line, which had become evident at the Algeciras Conference of 1906. In 1904 France had moreover removed by agreement the obstacles that stood in the way of an understanding with England. Thus, long before the outbreak of open hostilities, the European Powers found themselves aligned in two opposing camps: Austria-Hungary and Germany on one side, France, Great Britain, and Russia on the other.
The war plan of the Central Powers envisaged a rapid victory over France. The invasion of Belgium was intended precisely to facilitate the achievement of this result, but the intention failed in the face of the heroic resistance of the Belgian people and the shrewd defence of General Joffre, who, with the Battle of the Marne (Sept. 1914), stabilized the front. Thus began on the Western Front a war of position that lasted until the end of the conflict, despite bloody attempts by the Germans and the Allies to break through (1916, Verdun and the Somme; 1917, offensive on the Aisne and the Battle of Flanders; 1918, German offensives on the Somme and the Lys and the Battle of Picardy). On the Eastern Front, after the Battle of Tannenberg (1914), where the Germans successfully opposed and halted the Russian offensive, the Central Powers in the summer of 1915 retook Austrian Galicia, which had been conquered in the previous autumn by the troops of the Tsar, and penetrated deeply into enemy territory, conquering Poland and Lithuania. On the Italian front the fortunes of war were at first favourable to the Italian troops, who in 1916 occupied Gorizia, but in 1917, the year of the Central Powers’ greatest effort, the rout of Caporetto forced the Italian army to retreat to the Piave line, from which it resumed the offensive victoriously in October 1918 and routed the enemy, forcing it to seek an armistice (4 Nov.). 1917 was, as has already been said, the year of the Central Powers’ greatest effort. The unrestricted submarine warfare declared by Germany in February 1917, both to combat effectively the danger represented by the Allied naval blockade and to prevent the decisive contribution of American supplies and troops to the Entente Powers, nearly achieved its aim, and only the institution of convoys saved England and France from defeat. The fall of the Tsarist regime and the advent of Bolshevism in Russia, which signed an armistice with the Central Powers at Brest-Litovsk (15 Dec. 1917), allowed the German high command to transfer considerable forces to the Western Front, but before the progressive increase in the Allied war potential even Germany, exhausted by the long struggle and reduced to extremities by the naval blockade, was forced on 11 Nov. 1918 to sign the armistice. The World War was ended by the Treaties of Versailles (18 June 1919, with Germany), of St-Germain (10 Sept. 1919, with Austria), of Neuilly (27 Nov. 1919, with Bulgaria), of Trianon (4 June 1920, with Hungary), and of Sèvres (11 Aug. 1920, with Turkey). The new Europe differed profoundly from that of the pre-war period. The Hapsburg monarchy collapsed and new States arose from its scattered limbs: Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. Germany became a republic. Russia, also a republic, lost its Polish territories, which, together with those already held by Germany and Austria-Hungary, formed the new Republic of Poland. Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia also became independent States.
The outbreak of the World War had a pernicious effect on the mind and body of the nearly eighty-year-old Pope Pius X, so much so that it caused his death less than a month later. The new Pope, Benedict XV, in his first encyclical (1 Nov. 1914) addressed the whole world, invoking the cessation of hostilities and the return of peace: “the end of the present most disastrous war” was his first thought.
necessary « for the good of society, so that, once peace is achieved, it may truly advance in every branch of progress » and « for the good of the Church of Jesus Christ, so that, unhampered by further obstacles, it may continue to bring comfort and salvation to men even in the most remote parts of the earth ». From the beginning to the end of the conflict, the Pontiff remained rigorously faithful to this program of peace, enunciated within weeks of his elevation to the tiara. As father of all Catholics, he always remained above the fray, supporting neither one nor the other of the two warring parties: the clearest proof of this absolute impartiality is seen in the fact that he was accused by both belligerent camps of favoring the enemy; to Clemenceau, Benedict XV was *le Pape bocche*, to Ludendorff the *French Pope*.
The Pope’s activity, limited in the early years of the conflict to moral expressions of deploration and exhortations, culminated in 1917 in a genuine attempt at mediation between the two sides. The moment was particularly opportune, as both the Entente and the Central Powers were growing weary of the war and were not averse to considering any peace proposals seriously. On 24 July 1917, therefore, the Holy See submitted to the German government a draft peace plan that could serve as a basis for further negotiations between the belligerents. The nuncio in Munich, Pacelli, had been sent specially to Berlin to convey the papal proposal and to urge a positive response, but the German chancellor Michaelis could only give vague assurances that it would be given careful consideration. After waiting in vain for a German response, the Pope decided to transmit the points of his mediation to all the heads of state of the warring powers without distinction. In this peace appeal of 1 August 1917, dispatched as a secret diplomatic note not before 14 August—precisely because the Pope was awaiting the German reply—he argued first for the necessity of replacing « the material force of arms with the moral force of law », for « a simultaneous and reciprocal reduction of armaments », and for the creation of « in place of arms, an institution of arbitration with its high pacifying function ». He then affirmed the freedom of the seas and demanded the mutual evacuation of occupied territories. These were the cornerstones of the papal message. Yet neither the Central Powers nor the Entente approved this basis for discussion. Germany was unwilling to relinquish Belgium; the Allies accused the Pope of favoring their enemies with this « white peace » without victors or vanquished, without any penalty being imposed on Germany, which, through its chancellor at the time of the invasion of Belgium, had declared that necessity knows no law and that treaties were mere scraps of paper.
Alongside this persistent work of pacification, which reached its highest expression in the offer of mediation to the belligerents, Benedict XV devoted himself unstintingly to the cause of prisoners of war, the populations of occupied territories, and indeed all those who suffered most grievously from the war. The work of the missions suffered a severe setback. Above all in the German colonies, the war inflicted heavy material and spiritual damage on the evangelization of the indigenous peoples. Even missions in the territories of Entente powers were affected by the war, and many priests had to abandon their stations, compelled to return home to perform military service or interned because of their enemy nationality. Thus the Church, which never ceased to deplore this crime against humanity, bore its harshest consequences: places of worship destroyed, clergy dispersed, missions abandoned—this was the sad condition of much of the Catholic world at the end of the Great War.