We explain who were the main political leaders during World War I and what was their role during this confrontation.
What was World War I?
World War I was an international military conflict that faced the central empires (Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire) with the entrance (headed by France, the United Kingdom, Russia, Italy, Japan and, since 1917, United States).
The conflict began with the declaration of war of the Austrohungal Empire to Serbia on July 28, 1914, after the murder of the heir to the Austrohungal throne by a Serbiobosnio nationalist. At the beginning of August 1914, The war became international and extended over more than four yearsuntil the signature of the armistice on November 11, 1918 that sealed the victory of the entente.
Political leaders of the main powers involved in war They made decisions such as entry into the contest (Generally in response to previously contracted alliances or pacts) and the appointment or dismissal of the commanders who were in charge of military operations. Some also participated in the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 and in the signing of the peace treaties.
- See also: Military Chiefs of World War I
David Lloyd George (1863-1945)
Born in Manchester (England) and son of a school teacher, David Lloyd George He joined the Liberal Party very young Already the 27 years was chosen for the House of Commons. From very soon he militated in the most radical wing of the party.
During the government of the Liberal Herbert Henry Aschch, he was Minister of Finance from 1908 to 1915 and Minister of Munitions from 1915 to 1916. He finally led the country as prime minister from 1916 to 1922.
He was an efficient leader during the final phase of the First World Waralthough He also made criticized decisions, such as putting British troops under the command of the French general Robert levelle during the 1917 offensive, which ended in a failure.
It was one of the protagonists of the Treaty of Versailles (1919), where He defended a more conciliatory policy with Germany than the one proposed by the French authorities.
During the final phase of the interwar period, opposed the appeasement policy propitiated by the conservative Neville Chamberlain (British Prime Minister between 1937 and 1940), although he recognized that Germany had been treated with extreme hardness in the Treaty of Versailles and, even, I had held an encounter with Adolf Hitler in 1936.
- See also: World War I alliances
Raymond Poincaré (1860-1934)
Raymond Poincaré was a politician French Republican of conservative and nationalist trends. His long political career began in 1887, when he was elected deputy.
He was president of the Council of Ministers several times and President of the Republic Between 1913 and 1920, so he had to preside over the third republic during World War. Although he was a political adversary of Georges Clemenceau, in November 1917 he appointed him president of the Council of Ministers to guarantee the French victory in the war. From now on, it was largely marginalized from political decisions.
Presided over the Council of Ministers between 1922 and 1924 and promoted a hardness policy with Germany who contrasted with the policy of his predecessor, Aristide Briand. Poincaré insisted on the need for Germany to completely pay the war repairs established in the Versailles Treaty (1919).
Before the German non -paymentordered the invasion of the Ruhr basin in collaboration with Belgian troops. The passive resistance decreed by Foreign Minister Wilhelm Cuno led to the economic catastrophe to Germany (hyperinflation) and international isolation to France. The United Kingdom and the United States harshly condemned the occupation.
Defeated in the 1924 elections, Poincaré presided again for the Council of Ministers between 1926 and 1929 and applied measures that contributed to the stabilization of the French Francés.
Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929)
Mayor of Montmartre in 1870, Georges Clemenceau went from being a Combative Republican of the Anticlerical Leftknown as “El Tigre” for its aggressive oratory, to lead the nationalist right in France.
He was president of the Council of Ministers between 1906 and 1909, and his policy was characterized by hostility towards the Socialists and the labor movement. Appointed again Prime Minister in 1917, when World War I entered his last stage, got the British to accept French marshal Ferdinand Foch as commander in chief of the troops of the entente.
In Versailles, he represented the hard position against Germany. Since he crashed with Woodrow Wilson, president of the United States, he failed to introduce all his proposals in the Versailles treaty. However, he achieved among other things that the treaty was signed in the gallery of the mirrors of the Palace of Versailles, where the German empire had been proclaimed in 1871 after the German victory over France in the Franco-Prussian war.
In 1920, Clemenceau was defeated in the elections and went to a secondary role in French politics. Until the end of his days he maintained that Germany had been treated too benevolent In the postwar period.
Francisco José I (1830-1916)
Francisco José I was an emperor of Austria since 1848 and king of Hungary since 1867, when he became Sovereign of a dual monarchy, the Austrohungal Empire. Since 1879 he formed an alliance with the German Empire.
The configuration of the Austrohungal Empire fueled nationalist conflicts in the Balkans. He granted greater influence to the Hungarian to the detriment of the Slavs, Bosnia was annexed and tense their relations with Serbia, which since 1903 approached the Russian Empire.
When a Serbian nationalist murdered Archduke Francisco Fernando, heir to the Austrohungara crown, in June 1914, Francisco José sent an ultimatum to Serbia's government with a list of difficult demands to meet. Serbia accepted all demands except one and, on July 28, 1914, Austria-Hungary declared war to Serbia, which began the First World War.
Francisco José He died during the war, on November 21, 1916. It was happened on the throne by Carlos I, last monarch of Austria-Hungary, who was forced to resign in November 1918.
- Can serve you: Francisco José I
Guillermo II (1859-1941)
Guillermo II became an emperor of Germany in 1888, when his grandfather Guillermo I died successively (who had reigned since 1871) and his father Federico III. In 1890 dismissed Otto von Bismarckwho had been chancellor from the foundation of the German Empire in 1871, and began an international policy that I was looking to make Germany the hegemonic power (known as Weltpolitik).
In 1908 he was carried away by an emotional outburst during an interview with a British newspaper and He affirmed that much of the German people were anti-English. This caused problems in Germany and, from now on, his position had less weight in decision making in Berlin.
However, he supported Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz in his naval rearme policy that led Britain to sign the cordiale entente with France. He also supported his chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg when he encouraged the Austrohungal Empire to respond hard after the murder of Archduke Francisco Fernando in Sarajevo in June 1914.
Although Guillermo II was theoretically the commander in chief of the German armies during World War I, His proposals were less and less heard, especially when Marshal Paul Von Hindenburg and General Erich Ludendorff established a kind of military dictatorship between 1916 and 1918. On November 9, 1918 he abdicated and fled to the Netherlands where he died in 1941.
Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg (1856-1921)
German Chancellor from 1909 to 1917Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg had a malleable and soft reputation but won the reputation of Liberal between the nationalist and hard right among German Democrats and Liberals.
He did not hesitate to encourage the Austrohungal Empire to respond vigorously after the murder of Archduke Francisco Fernando in Sarajevo, although he thought that the conflict would be limited to Russia.
Throughout World War I, His power was decreasingso that by 1916 the military, and especially the Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, were the ones who handled the situation. It was dismissed in 1917 and replaced by Georg Michaelis, who was even less successful than his predecessor. This was the case Georg von Hertling, who resigned on September 30, 1918, when the German defeat was imminent.
Nicolás II (1868-1918)
Nicolás II was the last Tsar of Russia. He happened to his father Alejandro III in 1894. convinced Slavist (supporter of the nationalist aspirations of the Slavs) and defender of the autocracy, resisted westernizing the Russian empire. In 1905 he attended Russian defeat against Japan and a revolutionary attempt that anticipated the events of 1917.
Although the German emperor Guillermo II was his cousin, promoted the formation of the triple entente (alliance between Russia, France and the United Kingdom). After the First World War began, the initial successes soon led to important failures, so In 1915 Nicolás II personally assumed the Headquarters of the Russian armies.
In March 1917, The Russian revolution forced him to abdicate. After refusing the British monarch Jorge V to accept his exile in England, he was transferred with his whole family to Ekaterimburg in the Urals. There he was taken prisoner from a Bolshevik departure and He was shot together with his family in July 1918.
Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924)
Vladimir Ilich Ulianov, better known as Lenin, It was since 1903 the leader of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party. After the outbreak of World War I participated in the Zimmerwald conference, in Switzerland, which in 1915 summoned socialists from different countries that were against the war. There he defended the minority position of Promote class struggle and revolution.
In March 1917, the enormous amount of Russian casualties and the shortage of food, armaments and ammunition favored The outbreak of the revolution that caused the abdication of Tsar Nicolás II and the formation of a provisional government. The revolutionaries were divided among those who sought to establish a democratic government and contribute to the defeat of Germany and those who, like Lenin, sought to sign peace with Germany and establish a communist regime in Russia.
Lenin returned to Russia of his exile in Switzerland in April 1917, with the support of the German government, and In November 1917 He starred in the Bolshevik revolution against the provisional government. The new government, chaired by Lenin, signed on March 3, 1918 the Brest-Litovsk treaty with the central empires, which decided the departure of Russia from the war and the transfer of important territories to the German Empire.
This situation relieved the Eastern front of Germany but promoted the support of the Western powers to the counterrevolutionaries fighting the Bolsheviks in the Russian civil war. Lenin died in 1924 and the power of the Soviet Union was then concentrated in Iosif Stalin.
- See more in: Lenin
Vittorio Emanuele Orlando (1860-1952)
The Kingdom of Italywhose head was King Víctor Manuel III, He entered World War in May 1915. At that time the prime minister was Antonio Salandra, who assured that Italy joined the entente. In June 1916, after the Italian offensives against the Austro -Hungarian Empire failed, Salandra had to resign.
Salandra was replaced by Paolo Boselli, in whose cabinet He held the position of Interior Minister Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, which had previously served as Minister of Justice and had supported Italy's entry into war.
The Italian defeat in the Battle of Caporetto (1917) led to the resignation of Boselli and the arrival of Orlando to the position of Prime Minister in October 1917. Orlando reorganized the army, forced the resignation of Luigi Cadador of the supreme command of the Italian forces and appointed in its place Armando Díaz, who He got important military victories in the last months of the war.
When the war ended, Orlando participated in the Paz Conference in Paris but maintained disagreements with the other allied leaders, who rejected part of the Italian territorial claims. Orlando's failed negotiation led to his resignation in June 1919.
- See also: Vittorio Emanuele Orlando
Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924)
The Democrat Woodrow Wilson was President of the United States between 1913 and 1921. When World War I broke out, he maintained United States neutrality. The sinking of the British transatlantic RMS Lusitania for German submarines led to the US sentence of the German underwater war, because in the attack almost two thousand people died, including 128 American passengers.
In February 1917, Germany resumed underwater war without restrictions and this motivated Wilson to request the United States Congress The declaration of war to Germanyfact that took place on April 6, 1917. Wilson He appointed General John Pershing commander of the American expeditionary force, who contributed to the allied victory in 1918.
Before the war concluded, Wilson proposed his “fourteen points” to promote peace. In the Peace Conference of Paris in 1919 he joined the Committee of the Four with Georges Clemenceau, David Lloyd George and Vittorio Emanuele Orlando.
Promoted the creation of the Nations Society and the defense of the principle of nationalities, but the Senate prevented the signing of the Versailles Treaty and the entry into the Nations Society for the United States. Wilson suffered a stroke in October 1919 and culminated his presidential mandate in 1921.
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References
- Showalter, from & Royde-Smith, JG (2023). World War I. Britannica Encyclopedia. https://www.britannica.com/
- Stevenson, D. (2013). 1914-1918. History of World War I. Debate.
- Stone, N. (2013). Brief History of World War I. Ariel.
