World War I

WORLD WAR I. - The formal cause of the outbreak of World War I was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Habsburg throne, and of his consort, which took place at Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. The assassin, G. Princip, an Austrian citizen but of Slavic nationality, carried out the crime with the support of a Serbian terrorist organization. Austria-Hungary, eager to humiliate Serbia in order to strike indirectly at Slavic irredentism, which was very strong among the populations subject to the dual monarchy, sent an ultimatum to Belgrade on 23 July containing extremely harsh conditions, which were rejected. On 28 July Austria declared war on Serbia. Russia came to the aid of its fellow South Slav nation, an intervention that drew Germany and France into the conflict and, after the invasion of Belgium by German troops, England as well. Alongside the Central Powers (Germany and Austria-Hungary) Turkey and Bulgaria later ranged themselves, and against them many other powers, among them Japan (1914), Italy (1915), Romania (1916), the United States of America (1917). The remote, 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 the decisive ones. To these must be added France's desire for revanche after 1871, a revenge preached even before Bismarck's dismissal and the accession of William II, but which appeared achievable above all after the German Chancellor's retirement, when his successors no longer wished to renew in 1890 the Reinsurance Treaty with Russia. From this arose the Franco-Russian alliance of 1893. Even the "Triple Alliance" (Austria,

Germany, Italy) of 1882 had lost much of its solidity after the Franco-Italian agreements at the beginning of the new century, and the neutrality of Rome in the first months of the war was a 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 an agreement, the obstacles standing in the way of an understanding with England. Thus, well before the outbreak of open hostilities, the European Powers found themselves ranged 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 attempt failed in the face of the heroic resistance of the Belgian people and before the shrewd defense 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 dragged on until the end of the conflict, despite bloody German and Allied attempts at breakthrough (1916, Verdun and the Somme; 1917, the offensive on the Aisne and the Battle of Flanders; 1918, the 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 the Russian offensive and halted it, the Central Powers reoccupied in the summer of 1915 Austrian Galicia, which had been conquered in the previous autumn by the Tsar's troops, and penetrated deeply into enemy territory, conquering Poland and Lithuania. On the Italian front the fortune of arms was at first favorable to the Italian troops, who in 1916 occupied Gorizia, but in 1917, the year of the Central Powers' maximum effort, the rout of Caporetto forced the Italian army to retreat to the Piave line, from which it victoriously resumed the offensive in Oct. 1918 and routed the enemy, forcing it to request an armistice (4 Nov.). The year 1917 was, as has already been said, the year of the maximum effort on the part of the Central Powers. The unrestricted submarine warfare decided by Germany in Feb. 1917, both to combat effectively the danger represented by the rigid Allied naval blockade and to prevent the decisive contribution of American supplies and troops to the Entente powers, came within a little of achieving its intended 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 the armistice of Brest-Litovsk with the Central Powers (15 Dec. 1917), allowed the German high command to shift considerable forces to the western front, but in the face of the progressive increase of 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. World War I was brought to an end 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), of Sèvres (11 Aug. 1920, with Turkey). The new Europe differed profoundly from that of the prewar period. The Habsburg monarchy fell apart and new States arose from its scattered members: Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia. Germany became a republic. Russia, likewise a republic, lost its Polish territories, which together with those already held by Germany and Austria-Hungary constituted the new Republic of Poland. Finland, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia also became independent States.

The outbreak of World War I had a pernicious effect on the mind and body of the nearly eighty-year-old pontiff Pius X, so as to cause his death less than a month later. The new pope Benedict XV, from his very 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" is the first of his thoughts, an end necessary «for the good of society, so that, once peace is obtained, it may truly advance in every branch of progress» and «for the good of the Church of Jesus Christ, so that, no longer held back by further impediments, it may continue even in the most remote regions of the earth to bring men comfort and salvation». From the beginning to the end of the conflict the Pontiff remained rigorously faithful to this program of peace, set forth a few weeks after his elevation to the tiara. Father of all Catholics, he always kept himself above the fray and supported neither one nor the other of the two parties in conflict: evident proof of this absolute impartiality is given by the fact that he was accused by both belligerent groups of favoring the enemy; for Clemenceau, Benedict XV was the Pape boché, for Ludendorff the «French Pope». The Pontiff's activity, limited in the first years of the conflict to moral manifestations of deploration and to exhortations, issued in 1917 in a true and proper attempt at mediation between the two parties. The moment was particularly suitable, since both the Entente and the Central Powers were beginning to be weary of the conflict and were not averse to carefully considering eventual peace proposals. The Holy See therefore submitted on 24 July 1917 to the attention of the German government a peace plan of its own, which could serve as a basis of discussion for further negotiations between the belligerents. The nuncio in Munich, Pacelli, having gone purposely to Berlin to communicate the pontifical proposal and to solicit a positive response, unfortunately obtained from Chancellor Michaelis only vague assurances of a careful taking into consideration. After having waited in vain for the German position, the Pontiff decided to transmit to all the heads of state of the powers at war, without distinction, the points of the mediation. In this appeal for peace of 1 Aug. 1917, transmitted in the form of a secret diplomatic note not before the 14th of the same month, precisely because the Pontiff was awaiting the German response, it was maintained in the first place that there was a necessity that «the moral forces of right» should take the place of «the material force of arms», that there should be a «simultaneous and reciprocal diminution of armaments» and that there should be created «in substitution for arms, the institution of arbitration with its high pacifying function». There followed then the affirmation of the freedom of the seas and the request for reciprocal evacuation of the occupied territories. These were the cornerstones of the papal message. But neither the Central Powers nor the Entente approved such a basis of discussion. Germany did not want to renounce Belgium; the allies accused the Pope of favoring their enemies with this «white peace» without vanquished or victors, without any penalty being inflicted on Germany which through the mouth of its Chancellor at the moment of invading Belgium had declared that necessity knows no law and that treaties were scraps of paper. Alongside this persistent work of pacification which found its highest expression in the offer of mediation to the belligerents, Benedict XV labored without limits in favor of prisoners of war, of the populations of the occupied territories and in general of all those who were the most tried victims of the immense conflict. The activity of the missions suffered a harsh setback. Especially in the German colonies the war inflicted considerable damages, both material and spiritual, on the work of evangelization among the natives. Even the missions situated in the possessions of the powers of the Entente felt the effects of the war and many priests had to abandon their stations, forced to return to their homeland in order to perform military service or interned because of enemy nationality. Thus the Church, which never desisted from deploring this crime committed against humanity, suffered its harshest consequences: buildings of worship destroyed, clergy dispersed, missions abandoned — this was the sad condition of a good part of the Catholic world at the end of the 1st World War.

Silvio Furlani