Editing History of Germany (section)

===World War I===
{{Main|World War I|History of Germany during World War I|German Revolution of 1918–1919}}
[[File:German soldiers in a railroad car on the way to the front during early World War I, taken in 1914. Taken from greatwar.nl site.jpg|thumb|alt=Men waving from the door and window of a rail goods van|German soldiers on the way to the front in 1914. Awaiting a short war, a message on the car spells out "Trip to Paris".]]

====Causes====
Ethnic demands for nation states upset the balance between the empires that dominated Europe, [[causes of World War I|leading to World War I]], which started in August 1914. Germany stood behind its ally Austria in a confrontation with Serbia, but Serbia was under the protection of Russia, which was allied to France. Germany was the leader of the Central Powers, which included Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and later Bulgaria; arrayed against them were the Allies, consisting chiefly of Russia, France, Britain, and in 1915 Italy.

In explaining why neutral Britain went to war with Germany, author Paul M. Kennedy recognized it was critical for war that Germany become economically more powerful than Britain, but he downplays the disputes over economic trade imperialism, the Baghdad Railway, confrontations in Central and Eastern Europe, high-charged political rhetoric and domestic pressure-groups. Germany's reliance time and again on sheer power, while Britain increasingly appealed to moral sensibilities, played a role, especially in seeing the invasion of Belgium as a necessary military tactic or a profound moral crime. The German invasion of Belgium was not important because the British decision had already been made and the British were more concerned with the fate of France. Kennedy argues that by far the main reason was London's fear that a repeat of 1870&nbsp;– when Prussia and the German states smashed France&nbsp;– would mean that Germany, with a powerful army and navy, would control the English Channel and northwest France. British policy makers insisted that would be a catastrophe for British security.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Kennedy |first=Paul M. |url=https://archive.org/details/riseofanglogerma0000kenn |title=The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, 1860–1914 |date=1980 |isbn=978-0-0494-0060-3 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/riseofanglogerma0000kenn/page/464 464]–470|publisher=Allen & Unwin }}</ref>

====Western Front====
[[File:German trench WW1 French attack.gif|thumb|Entrenched German troops fighting off a French attack]]
In the west, Germany sought a quick victory by encircling Paris using the [[Schlieffen Plan]]. But it failed due to Belgian resistance, Berlin's diversion of troops, and very stiff French resistance on the [[Marne (river)|Marne]], north of Paris. The [[Western Front (World War I)|Western Front]] became an extremely bloody battleground of [[trench warfare]]. The stalemate lasted from 1914 until early 1918, with ferocious battles that moved forces a few hundred yards at best along a line that stretched from the [[North Sea]] to the Swiss border. The British imposed a tight naval blockade in the North Sea which lasted until 1919, sharply reducing Germany's overseas access to raw materials and foodstuffs. Food scarcity became a serious problem by 1917.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Winter |first=J.M. |title=Capital Cities at War: Paris, London, Berlin, 1914–1919 |date=1999}}</ref> The United States joined with the Allies in April 1917. The entry of the United States into the war – following Germany's declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare – marked a decisive turning-point against Germany.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Strachan |first=Hew |title=The First World War |date=2004}}</ref>

Total casualties on the Western Front were 3,528,610 killed and 7,745,920 wounded.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Clodfelter |first=Micheal |title=Warfare and Armed Conflicts: A Statistical Encyclopedia of Casualty and Other Figures, 1492–2015, 4th ed |date=2017 |publisher=McFarland |isbn=978-0-7864-7470-7 |page=407}}</ref>

====Eastern Front====
More wide open was the fighting on the [[Eastern Front (World War I)|Eastern Front]]. In the east, there were decisive victories against the Russian army, the trapping and defeat of large parts of the Russian contingent at the [[Battle of Tannenberg (1914)|Battle of Tannenberg]], followed by huge Austrian and German successes. The breakdown of Russian forces – exacerbated by internal turmoil caused by the 1917 [[Russian Revolution]] – led to the [[Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (Russia–Central Powers)|Treaty of Brest-Litovsk]] the Bolsheviks were forced to sign on 3 March 1918 as Russia withdrew from the war. It gave Germany control of Eastern Europe. Spencer Tucker says, "The German General Staff had formulated extraordinarily harsh terms that shocked even the German negotiator."<ref>{{Cite book |first=Spencer C. |last=Tucker |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2YqjfHLyyj8C&pg=PA225 |title=World War One |publisher=ABC-CLIO |date=2005 |isbn=978-1-8510-9420-2 |page=225}}</ref> When Germany later complained that the [[Treaty of Versailles]] of 1919 was too harsh on them, the Allies responded that it was more benign than Brest-Litovsk.<ref>{{Cite book |first=Zara S. |last=Steiner |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=V00vGP4TobwC&pg=PA68 |title=The Lights that Failed: European International History, 1919–1933 |publisher=Oxford U.P. |date=2005 |isbn=978-0-1982-2114-2 |page=68}}</ref>

====1918====
By defeating Russia in 1917, Germany was able to bring hundreds of thousands of combat troops from the east to the Western Front, giving it a numerical advantage over the Allies. By retraining the soldiers in new storm-trooper tactics, the Germans expected to unfreeze the Battlefield and win a decisive victory before the American army arrived in strength.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Herwig |first=Holger H. |title=The First World War: Germany and Austria–Hungary 1914–1918 |date=1996}}</ref> However, the spring offensives all failed, as the Allies fell back and regrouped, and the Germans lacked the reserves necessary to consolidate their gains. In the summer, with the Americans arriving at 10,000 a day, and the German reserves exhausted, it was only a matter of time before multiple Allied offenses destroyed the German army.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Paschall |first=Rod |url=https://archive.org/details/defeatofimperial0000pasc |title=The defeat of imperial Germany, 1917–1918 |date=1994 |publisher=Hachette Books |isbn=978-0-3068-0585-1}}</ref>

====Homefront====
Although war was not expected in 1914, Germany rapidly mobilized its civilian economy for the war effort, the economy was handicapped by the British blockade that cut off food supplies.<ref>Feldman, Gerald D. "The Political and Social Foundations of Germany's Economic Mobilization, 1914–1916", ''Armed Forces & Society'' (1976) 3#1 pp 121–145. [http://afs.sagepub.com/content/3/1/121 online]</ref>

Steadily conditions deteriorated rapidly on the home front, with severe food shortages reported in all urban areas. Causes involved the transfer of many farmers and food workers into the military, an overburdened railroad system, shortages of coal, and especially the British blockade that cut off imports from abroad. The winter of 1916–1917 was known as the "turnip winter", because that vegetable, usually fed to livestock, was used by people as a substitute for potatoes and meat, which were increasingly scarce. Thousands of soup kitchens were opened to feed the hungry people, who grumbled that the farmers were keeping the food for themselves. Even the army had to cut the rations for soldiers.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Chickering |first=Roger |title=Imperial Germany and the Great War, 1914–1918 |date=2004 |pages=141–142}}</ref> Morale of both civilians and soldiers continued to sink. According to historian [[William H. McNeill (historian)|William H. MacNeil]]:
:By 1917, after three years of war, the various groups and bureaucratic hierarchies which had been operating more or less independently of one another in peacetime (and not infrequently had worked at cross purposes) were subordinated to one (and perhaps the most effective) of their number: the General Staff. Military officers controlled civilian government officials, the staffs of banks, cartels, firms, and factories, engineers and scientists, workingmen, farmers-indeed almost every element in German society; and all efforts were directed in theory and in large degree also in practice to forwarding the war effort.<ref>William H. McNeill, ''The Rise of the West'' (1991 edition) p. 742.</ref>

1918 was the year of the deadly [[1918 flu pandemic|1918 Spanish Flu pandemic]] which struck hard at a population weakened by years of malnutrition.