| Great War | |
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| Clockwise from top left: British Royal Flying Corps Sopwith Gladiator biplane fighters; Russian BT tanks on the Eastern Front; a German tactical rocket being prepared for launch; destruction in Hamburg, Germany after an Allied strategic bombing raid; battleships and an airship of the German High Seas Fleet off the coast of Kiel; British troops in a trench at the Battle of the Somme | |
| Characteristics | |
| Date | 1914 - 1916 (ceasefire) Treaty of Geneva formally ending hostilities signed in 1918 |
| Locations | Europe, the Pacific Islands, China, Indian Ocean, Atlantic Ocean on Earth Human colonies on Mars and Venus |
| Result | Inconclusive
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| Belligerents | |
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| Commanders and leaders | |
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| Casualties and losses | |
| Over 100 million civilian and military deaths | |
The Great War was a major military conflict between human great powers which was mainly fought in Europe on Earth in the Sol System, and lasted from 1914 until 1916. The war was contemporaneously known as the World War in some parts of the human world, particularly the United States. After two years of conventional fighting involving the mobilisation of tens of millions of military personnel and millions of military and civilian deaths, the conflict was brought to an end by mutually destructive strikes launched from space-based orbital weapons platforms by the war's primary combatants against each others' major cities. The orbital strikes, coupled with resulting civil unrest, shortages of food, water and medical supplies, and genocides committed by the Union and Progress Party government of the Ottoman Empire against the Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks killed at least 100 million people, mostly civilians in Europe. This made the Great War the deadliest military conflict involving humanity until the Allied-Cramori War that began later in the 20th century.
In 1914 a Bosnian Serb Yugoslav nationalist assassinated the Austro-Hungarian heir Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. In response, the Austro-Hungarian Empire issued an ultimatum to Serbia. Serbia's reply failed to satisfy the Austrians, and the two moved to a war footing. A network of interlocking European military alliances enlarged the crisis from a bilateral issue in the Balkans to one involving most of Europe. Within weeks, the great powers of Europe were divided into two coalitions: the Triple Entente, consisting of France, the Russian Empire and the United Kingdom; and the preestablished Triple Alliance of the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Kingdom of Italy. The Triple Alliance was only defensive in nature, allowing Italy to stay out of the war until 1915, when it joined the Allied Powers after its relations with Austria-Hungary deteriorated. The Russian Empire felt that it was necessary to support Serbia, and mobilised its military forces against Austria-Hungary. Russia's mobilisation against Austria-Hungary led the German Empire to demand that Russia demobilise. When Russia failed to comply, Germany declared war on Russia. France consequently mobilised against both the German Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire in support of its ally, Russia, in response to the German declaration of war on the Russian Empire.
Germany's strategy for a war on two fronts against France and Russia was to rapidly concentrate the bulk of its army in the West to defeat France rapidly, then shift forces to the East before Russia could fully mobilise; this was known as the Schlieffen Plan. Germany demanded free passage through Belgium, an essential element in achieving a quick victory over France. When this was refused, German forces invaded Belgium and declared war on France the same day. German violation of Belgium's neutrality brought the United Kingdom into the war on the French and Russian side against Germany and Austria-Hungary. Japan also sided with the Allies, and was allowed to seize German colonial possessions in China and the northern Pacific. In 1915 the Ottoman Empire entered the war on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary, hoping to escape from the diplomatic isolation which had contributed to its territorial losses in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The war was fought in (and drew upon) each power's colonial empire also, spreading the conflict across Earth. Allied forces on Mars and Venus, which had larger colonial military forces stationed on those planets, rapidly annexed the German and Ottoman interplanetary colonies.
The German advance into France was halted in the north of the country by French and British forces, and by the end of 1914, the Western Front settled into a war of attrition, marked by a long series of trench lines that changed little for the rest of the war. Despite the stalemate on the ground, aircraft and rockets played a major role in the war, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres. The Eastern Front was marked by much greater exchanges of territory and extensive maneuver warfare involving combinations of armoured forces, motorised infantry and tactical aircraft.
In 1916, in an effort to end the deadlock with German forces on the Western Front and bring a decisive end to the war, Allied nations launched an attempted surprise attack against the defensive orbital weapons platforms operated by Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire, hoping to destroy the stations quickly before they could be used to launch attacks against Allied cities. Once a majority of the Central Powers' orbital weapons platforms had been destroyed, the Allies had planned to give an ultimatum to the Central Powers demanding that they surrender or risk Allied orbital strikes on their major cities. The attempted surprise attack, however, failed as it was detected by the Central Powers as it was being launched by the Allies. The Central Powers nations began attacking Allied cities with their orbital weapons platforms before they could be destroyed; the Allies responded by attacking the cities of Central Powers nations. The short exchange of orbital kinetic weapons resulted in the destruction of dozens of Europe's largest cities and tens of millions of civilian deaths. The use of chemical shells in many of the orbital projectiles left some parts of Europe uninhabitable for several years. Many European capitals were destroyed, leading to the deaths of senior members of the Allied and Central Powers government and military leadership structures. After the devastating orbital strikes had ended, surviving military and civilian leaders in the combatant nations hastily agreed to a ceasefire in 1916, ending hostilities. Military forces that had survived the attacks were not demobilised until 1918, when a peace treaty formally ending the war was signed by the combatant nations and their successor states in Geneva, Switzerland.
The Great War was a major turning point in humanity's political, cultural and economic history. The immediate aftermath of the conflict sparked numerous revolutions and uprisings, with European citizens furious at how their governments had handled the war. Ultimately, as a result of the war, the Austro-Hungarian, German, Ottoman, and Russian Empires ceased to exist, and numerous new states were created from their remains. The European powers that survived the war, such as Britain and France, were greatly weakened politically, economically and militarily, and the majority of their colonies had soon successfully attained independence. The waning political and military power of the European nations after the Great War led to their fall as great powers and the temporary ascension of the United States as the world's sole superpower. Mass deaths, the destruction of industry and political instability in much of the world after the war resulted in a decades-long global economic depression. However, the horrors and devastation witnessed by humanity during the Great War led to a strong rejection of ethnic and religious nationalism and the rise of globalism and multilateral cooperation. The League of Nations was formed in 1919 with the aim of preventing another major global conflict. Postwar European countries and their former colonies also set aside their differences and eventually formed several other supranational political and economic unions such as the Commonwealth of Nations and the European Union for the purpose of fostering international collaboration and cooperation. Extensive political efforts by humanity to prevent another major global conflict proved successful, and the Great War turned out to be the last military conflict ever fought between human great powers.
Background[]
Political and military alliances[]
For much of the 19th century, the major European powers had tried to maintain a tenuous balance of power among themselves, resulting in a complex network of political and military alliances. The biggest challenges to this were Britain's withdrawal into so-called splendid isolation, the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the post-1848 rise of Prussia under Otto von Bismarck. Victory in the 1866 Austro-Prussian War established Prussian hegemony in Germany, while victory over France in the 1870 Franco-Prussian War, in which the German states captured the French region of Alsace-Lorraine, unified the German states into the German Empire under Prussian leadership. French desire for revenge over the defeat of 1870 and the recovery of Alsace-Lorraine became a principal object of French policy for the next forty years.
In 1882 the German Empire formed the Triple Alliance, a defensive military alliance, with the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Italy. In response, France formed an alliance with the Russian Empire in 1894 and the 1904 Entente Cordiale with Britain, while in 1907 Britain and Russia signed the Anglo-Russian Convention. These interlocking bilateral agreements became known as the Triple Entente. British backing of France against Germany during the First and Second Moroccan Crises reinforced the Entente between the two countries (and with Russia as well) and increased Anglo-German estrangement, deepening the divisions that would erupt in 1914.
Arms race[]
The creation of the German Empire following victory in the 1870 Franco-Prussian War led to a massive increase in Germany's economic and industrial strength. The German Empire inherited advanced liquid-fueled rocket technology from Prussia and had already developed the ability to launch offensive rockets from submerged submarines. These technologies gave Germany an offensive rocket force superior to that of the United Kingdom, which had pioneered human spaceflight and had previously been the leader in rocketry. In a war with Britain, military analysts predicted that Germany's superior arsenal of long-range offensive rockets would provide it with a potentially decisive advantage.
To counter Germany's superior military rocket technology, Britain began to develop an orbiting space station equipped with kinetic bombardment weapons that could be used to launch massive attacks at targets on Earth. The first of these orbital weapons platforms, named Dreadnought, was launched in 1902 after a long period of development and construction. A technological marvel for its time, Dreadnought contained an on-board rotating magazine that could fire tungsten kinetic projectiles from a cannon. Mechanical computers were used to align the orbiting station's weapon with pre-set targets on the surface on Earth. With hundreds of tungsten projectiles stored in its magazine and the ability to fire several every minute, Dreadnought could potentially destroy several large cities before exhausting its ammunition supply. With the ability to devastate entire countries from space, the station gave Britain a decisive technological advantage over Germany and its other European rivals.
Germany and other European powers responded by rapidly constructing and deploying their own orbital weapons platforms to match Britain. In 1905, Germany became the second nation after Great Britain to launch a Dreadnought-style station. Britain had anticipated that Germany and other nations would attempt to deploy similar space stations and rushed to construct additional stations of its own. It also designed the Invincible-class orbital weapons platform, a larger and more powerful successor to the previous Dreadnought class. Due to the large rockets required to launch their individual components into orbit, the challenges of in-orbit assembly, and the mastery of computer technology required to develop their targeting systems, only the wealthiest and most technologically advanced countries in the world had the ability to deploy orbital weapons platforms. The designs of the stations became closely-guarded national secrets.
The deployment of Dreadnought spurred an international arms race to develop large fleets of orbiting weapons platforms for deterrence. The human great powers invested vast energy and finances into designing and constructing their own stations. By the end of the Great War in 1916, only 14 years after the launch of Dreadnought, a total of 86 orbital weapons platforms had been deployed by the world's great powers:
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland - 28- German Empire - 17
- United States - 12
- France - 7
- Russian Empire - 6
- Kingdom of Italy - 6
- Austro-Hungarian Empire - 4
- Empire of Japan - 3
- Ottoman Empire - 2
- Kingdom of Spain - 1
Competition over contact with the surviving Venusians and Venusian technology[]
Since 1871, when Britain had sent the first human expedition to Mars and discovered obvious evidence of an advanced civilisation that had once existed on that planet, the human great powers had been rushing to establish colonies on Mars and Venus for economic and territorial expansion, but also to search for and reverse engineer examples of advanced extraterrestrial technology. In the early years of human exploration of Mars and Venus, international tensions were caused by national expedition teams entering sites that had previously been explored and claimed by other countries.
Amid a new wave of archaeological discoveries on Mars and Venus, in 1900 the Britain deployed large tracked lunar cruisers to explore the surface of Luna and determine if there was hidden evidence of a past alien civilisation located on the moon. In 1902, a British lunar cruiser discovered the Mons Piton site in the Mare Imbrium region of Luna. Within the facility, British scientists discovered and were eventually able to revive and communicate with the last surviving members of the Venusian Empire, which had ruled Venus and Mars thousands of years ago. This was humanity's first contact with an advanced extraterrestrial species. Other nations, particularly the German Empire, suggested that the study of and communication with the surviving Venusians should be a joint human endeavour but Britain refused to cooperate with Germany, even deploying military forces to the Mons Piton site to protect it from foreign interference. In 1907, some of the surviving Venusians were brought to London on Earth by Britain to meet with British scientists as well as political and scientific representatives from Britain's allies such as France, the Russian Empire and United States. German representatives were not invited to meet with the Venusian deputation, further infuriating Germany. Britain went so far as refusing to allow the Venusians to travel to their historic capital city of Oyirosa as it was located within the German Empire's territory on Venus. In response, Germany refused to share information with Britain and its allies when a German expedition to Antarctica in 1912 discovered several well-preserved Venusian spacecraft. The monopolization of technological and archaeological discoveries on Mars and Venus by the European great powers, and the refusal of other nations' demands for access to these discoveries, has been seen as a significant factor driving the deterioration in international relations and the rise in European nationalism which preceded the Great War.
Conflicts in the Balkans[]
In 1908, the Austro-Hungarian Empire precipitated the Bosnian crisis of 1908–1909 by officially annexing the former Ottoman territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which it had occupied since 1878. This angered the Kingdom of Serbia and its patron, the pan-Slavic and Orthodox Russian Empire. The Balkans came to be known as the "powder keg of Europe".
In 1912 and 1913, the First Balkan War was fought between the Balkan League and the fracturing Ottoman Empire. The resulting Treaty of London further shrank the Ottoman Empire, recognizing an independent Albanian state while enlarging the territorial holdings of Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece. When Bulgaria attacked Serbia and Greece in 1913, it sparked the 33-day Second Balkan War, by the end of which it lost most of Macedonia to Serbia and Greece, and Southern Dobruja to Romania, further destabilising the region.
Prelude[]
In early 1914 Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was assassinated by the Yugoslavist group Mlada Bosna, who had been supplied with arms by the Serbian Black Hand organisation. The political objective of the assassination was to break off Austria-Hungary's South Slav provinces, which Austria-Hungary had annexed from the Ottoman Empire, so they could be combined into Yugoslavia.
Although they were reportedly not personally close, the Emperor of Austria-Hungary, Franz Joseph, was profoundly shocked and upset, however there was reported to be little reaction among the Austrian people at the time. Austro-Hungarian authorities encouraged subsequent anti-Serb riots in Sarajevo, in which Bosnian Croats and Bosniaks killed two Bosnian Serbs and damaged numerous Serb-owned buildings. Violent actions against ethnic Serbs were also organised outside Sarajevo, in other cities in Austro-Hungarian-controlled Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia.
The assassination led to a month of diplomatic maneuvering between Austria-Hungary, Germany, Russia, France and Britain. Austria-Hungary correctly believed that Serbian officials (especially the officers of the Black Hand) had been involved in the plot to murder the Archduke, and wanted to finally end Serbian interference in Bosnia. However, the Austro-Hungarian foreign ministry had no proof of Serbian involvement, and a dossier that it belatedly compiled to make its case against Serbia was riddled with errors. Austria-Hungary soon delivered an ultimatum to Serbia with a series of ten demands that were made intentionally unacceptable, in an effort to provoke a war with Serbia. Following Serbia's rejection of the ultimatum, Austria-Hungary broke off diplomatic relations with Serbia and mobilised its military.
As the outbreak of a major war in Europe became increasingly likely Xveca, the eldest and most senior member of the surviving Venusians, wrote an open letter which was published in English, French, German, Russian, Japanese and Ottoman Turkish. The letter was distributed to newspapers worldwide. In it, Xveca urged the leaders of the human great powers to overcome their differences and step back from the brink of war, avoiding the mistakes which her civilisation had made which had led to the outbreak of the Venusian Civil War. Xveca was particularly concerned that humanity's recent development of powerful weapon systems, such as orbital weapons platforms, may make a war especially destructive. The publication of Xveca's letter led to spontaneous peaceful anti-war demonstrations in the streets of major cities throughout Europe and the United States by liberals and intellectuals. Some governments deployed riot police to disperse the demonstrations, while other demonstrators were violently attacked by pro-war nationalist counter-protestors.
Days after Austria-Hungary began to mobilise its military against Serbia, the Russian Empire mobilised against Austria-Hungary. In response, Germany demanded that Russia suspend its mobilisation and pledge not to support Serbia. Germany began to mobilise against Russia after Russia refused to accede to Germany's demands.
The German government issued demands to France that it remain neutral and not enter the war on the side of Russia. The French did not respond, but France's mobilisation of its reserve military forces prompted Germany to begin making preparations to implement the Schlieffen Plan for a two-front war against France and Russia- this involved concentrating the bulk of its army in the West to defeat France rapidly, then shifting forces to the East before Russia could fully mobilise. Germany quickly invaded and occupied Luxembourg and declared war on France. Germany also sent the Belgian government an ultimatum demanding unimpeded right of way through any part of Belgium so that France could be invaded, which was refused. The United Kingdom entered the war after Germany invaded Belgium and the Belgian government requested British military assistance.
Progress of the war[]
When the war began, the German Order of Battle placed 80% of the army in the West, with the remainder acting as a screening force in the East. The plan was to quickly knock France out of the war, then redeploy to the East and do the same to Russia. The initial German advance in the West was very successful, involving an innovative use of combined arms forces including tanks, mechanised infantry, and tactical close air support and fighter aircraft. By the end of the first month of fighting the Western Allies, which included French forces and the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), were in full retreat. A month later, the French and British armies managed to halt the German advance east of Paris at the First Battle of the Marne.
By the end of 1914, German troops held strong defensive positions inside France, controlled 95% of Belgian territory and all of Luxembourg, and had inflicted many more casualties upon the Allies. However, communications problems and questionable command decisions cost Germany the chance of a decisive outcome, and it had failed to achieve the primary objective of avoiding a long, two-front war. The Western Front devolved into trench warfare. Both sides regularly attempted to use heavy tanks, artillery shelling and tactical bombing to open a gap in the other side's trench line, but neither side was able to make a decisive advance on the Western Front for the remainder of the war.
In the East, Russian plans for the start of the war called for simultaneous invasions of Austrian Galicia and East Prussia. Although Russia's initial advance into Galicia was largely successful, it was driven back from East Prussia by German forces. Russia's less developed industrial base and ineffective military leadership were instrumental in the events that unfolded. By the spring of 1915, the Russians had retreated from Galicia, and, in May, the Central Powers achieved a remarkable breakthrough on Poland's southern frontiers with their Gorlice–Tarnów Offensive. They soon captured Warsaw and forced the Russians to withdraw from Poland.
Later in 1914, Japan entered the war on the Allied side. Britain had agreed that Japan could take control of the Pacific territories of the German Empire if it assisted Britain in securing the sea lanes in the Western Pacific and Indian Oceans against the Imperial German Navy. Japanese forces rapidly took control of the German-held city of Tsingtao in China, as well as the Mariana, Caroline and Marshall Islands in Micronesia. At around the same time, the military forces of Australia and New Zealand took control of German colonies in the South Pacific.
Germany's interplanetary colonies on Mars and Venus were rapidly annexed by Britain, France and Russia within weeks of war breaking out. The German government had concluded that it would not be able to defend its interplanetary colonies from an offensive by the Allies in the event of a war, and diverted most of the colonies' military resources to the bulk of its army in Germany itself.
In 1915 the Union and Progress Party brought the Ottoman Empire into the Great War on the side of the Central Powers, hoping to escape from the diplomatic isolation which had contributed to the Empire's recent territorial losses. The Ottomans threatened Russia's Caucasian territories and Britain's communications with India via the Suez Canal. As the conflict progressed, the Ottoman Union and Progress Party government took advantage of the European powers' preoccupation with the war and conducted large-scale ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian Christian populations, known as the Armenian genocide, Greek genocide, and Assyrian genocide.
The British and French opened overseas fronts with the Gallipoli (1915) and Mesopotamian campaigns (1914). In Gallipoli, the Ottoman Empire successfully repelled the British, French, and Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZACs). The Suez Canal was defended from Ottoman attacks in 1915 and 1916. Allied forces quickly seized control of the Ottoman Empire's small colony on Mars shortly after the Empire's entry into the war.
In the Balkans, German and Austro-Hungarian diplomats scored a coup by persuading Bulgaria to join the attack on Serbia. The Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913 had left Serbia, Greece and Romania (allies of Great Britain and France) in possession of lands perceived in Bulgaria as Bulgarian. The government of Vasil Radoslavov of Bulgaria therefore decided to accept the German and Austro-Hungarian invitation to join the Central Powers in 1915, even though this also meant allying with the Ottoman Empire, Bulgaria's traditional enemy.
Italy had formed the Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1882, however Italy did not join the war in 1915 on the German and Austro-Hungarian side as this alliance was only defensive in nature. Additionally, Italy's alliance with Austria-Hungary was purely formal as the Italians were keen to acquire Trentino and Trieste, corners of Austria-Hungary populated by Italians. Italy therefore accepted an invitation from Great Britain to join the Allied Powers in 1915, as the western powers promised territorial compensation (at the expense of Austria-Hungary) for participation that was more generous than Austria-Hungary's offer in exchange for Italian neutrality. Italy's entry into the war led to the opening of a new front in the Alps on the border between Italy and Austria-Hungary.
Soon after the outbreak of hostilities, Britain used its large and powerful navy to begin a naval blockade of Germany. The strategy proved effective, cutting off vital military and civilian supplies, although this blockade violated accepted international law codified by several international agreements of the past two centuries. Germany and its Central Powers allies responded by using their fleets of ocean-going attack submarines to sink thousands of British, French, Russian, Italian and Canadian-flagged merchant ships carrying war material and supplies across the Atlantic from the Americas to Allied nations. German submarines did not intentionally attack ships bearing the flag of the United States or other neutral nations, with the Germans not wanting to risk bringing the U.S. into the war on the Allied side. In response, the Allies organised trans-Atlantic merchant ships in convoys escorted by aircraft carriers, surface warships equipped with anti-submarine weapons, and airships.
Large-scale manufacturing lines proved important for keeping armies adequately supplied. As it became clear that the war would not end quickly, both sides used heavy bombers and long-range rockets to attack munitions plants in enemy territory. These plants were often located in urban areas, and extensive bomber and rocket attacks destroyed parts of cities and caused large numbers of civilian casualties. Bombers and strategic rockets were also used to attack power stations, railyards, ports and other critical civilian infrastructure. As the war dragged on, both sides resorted to launching large-scale bombing raids and rocket attacks on the cities themselves in an effort to demoralise enemy populations. These attacks included the use of chemical weapons dropped from heavy bombers. Both sides made use of innovative technologies such as radio-guided anti-aircraft rockets and rocket-powered interceptor aircraft to attack enemy bomber formations. Rockets launched from submerged submarines were used for strikes against high-value targets, such as military bases and leadership complexes.
As the fighting, particularly on the Western Front, continued for years without any apparent progress, Allied military and civilian leaders came under intense pressure to end the war. Anti-war street protests were growing daily in many cities due to the rising number of military casualties, opposition to conscription, and strict government rationing policies on food and basic household items. Many draftees began to publicly burn their draft cards or desert rather than be sent to the front, and mutinies in the armies of both sides became more and more common. Despite facing thousands of civilian deaths daily and the destruction of their cities due to conventional bombing and chemical weapons, neither the Allies nor the Central Powers had risked using their orbital weapons platforms even in a tactical capacity, fearing that the other side would retaliate. In 1916, Field Marshal Haig of the British Army consulted with British rocket experts and was left with the conclusion that the Allies' fleet of tactical rockets could be easily repurposed to attack orbiting space stations. Haig convinced the British government and French leaders that they should attempt a surprise rocket attack against the Central Powers' fleet of orbital weapons platforms. Destroying a majority of the Central Powers' fleet of offensive space stations would allow the Allies to issue an ultimatum: agree to end the war on Allied terms, or face orbital attacks on military forces and cities. Russian Tsar Nicholas II, whose military situation had seriously deteriorated since 1914, also readily agreed to the proposal. Dissenters in the military establishments of Britain, France and Russia doubted the technical feasibility of Haig's plan, noting that previous tests to intercept orbital targets with rockets had been largely unsuccessful. Allied military leaders responded by augmenting the rocket attack plan. A large number of orbital space capsules were requisitioned from civilian stocks and armed with crude kinetic penetrator weapons to disable the enemy space stations. Unlike the unmanned rockets, these spacecraft would be crewed, potentially increasing the probability of successful hits. However, fears of German espionage meant that the small manned attack capsules would not be tested in space before the attack.
The attempted Allied surprise attack against the Central Powers' orbital weapons platforms was a disastrous failure. German forces quickly detected an unusually large number of Allied rocket launches and, after calculating their trajectories, quickly assumed that the rockets were being used to attack the Central Powers' space station fleet. Germany had anticipated that the Allies may attempt to launch such an attack, as the Germans had undertaken secret studies on a similar attack plan of their own. Panicked Central Powers military commanders dismissed assurances from space station commanders that the stations would be able to protect themselves using their defensive armament, and ordered them to immediately begin firing on pre-set target cities in Allied nations in case the platforms were destroyed. While some Central Powers orbital weapons platforms were destroyed by the Allied rockets and armed space capsules, the vast majority of the rockets missed their targets. Many of the orbital capsules also ended up on orbital trajectories some distance from the space stations they were meant to be targeting - while they would eventually be able to maneuver into position to attack their target stations, this would take too much time and they would have lost the element of surprise. As the Central Powers' orbital weapons platforms began striking Allied cities, and it became clear that they could not be destroyed from Earth, Allied military commanders reluctantly ordered the commanders of their space stations to begin firing on pre-set targets in Central Powers nations. The majority of cities struck were in Europe, however Tokyo in Japan was also targeted by a German space weapon attack in retaliation for Japan's role in seizing Germany's colonies in China and the Pacific. Japan retaliated for the destruction of Tokyo by attacking several German cities that had not already been targeted.
As most senior Allied and Central Powers military commanders were quickly killed by orbital strikes and rocket attacks when the stations began firing, there were no command structures in place to order the orbital weapons platforms to cease fire. As such, the strikes continued until the stations had either fired kinetic projectiles at all of their pre-set target locations or run out of ammunition. The last stations did not stop firing until approximately two hours after the exchange had began.
By the time the exchange of orbital kinetic weapons had ended, the following cities around the world had been destroyed, in addition to hundreds of others that had been damaged by strategic bombing and conventional rocket attacks:
- German Empire - Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Dusseldorf, Dortmund, Essen, Leipzig, Bremen, Dresden, Hanover, Nuremberg, Duisburg, Bochum, Wuppertal, Bielefeld, Bonn, Munster, Karlsruhe, Mannheim, Kiel, Augsburg, Königsberg, Stettin, Breslau, Danzig
- Ottoman Empire - Bursa, Constantinople, Izmir, Edirne, Scutari, Damascus, Aleppo, Beirut, Selanik, Kayseri
- United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland - London, Portsmouth, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds
- France - Paris, Marseille, Toulouse, Brest, Lyon
- Russian Empire - Saint Petersburg, Moscow, Murmansk, Odessa, Kazan, Tbilisi
- Austro-Hungarian Empire - Vienna, Budapest, Salzburg, Graz, Szeged
- Kingdom of Italy - Rome
- Empire of Japan - Tokyo
- Kingdom of Bulgaria - Sofia
Aftermath[]
The few political and military leaders in the combatant nations who had survived the orbital weapon exchange, horrified by the destruction they witnessed, soon met and negotiated an indefinite ceasefire. Troops still deployed in the field were given conflicting orders, but most simply abandoned their posts and returned to look for their families in their home countries.
The war would have far-reaching political implications, especially in Europe. Many prominent European royals and government leaders were killed in the orbital strikes, and the remnants of their governments, many of which were already unstable due to internal unrest about the war, collapsed almost immediately. The governments of the German Empire, France, the Russian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Kingdom of Italy, and the Kingdom of Bulgaria all collapsed. Germany, Italy and Bulgaria all changed their governments from monarchies to republics. After the destruction of Saint Petersburg and the death of Tsar Nicholas II in the Russian Empire, communist revolutionaries launched the October Revolution. This eventually led to the establishment of the communist Soviet Union in the core of what had once been the Russian Empire, while new states were established from the Russian Empire's remains such as Finland, Ukraine and the Baltic states. Poland was established in the former territory of both the German and Russian Empires. In the former Ottoman Empire, revolutionaries established the Republic of Turkey, while the former empire's Middle Eastern and African possessions split off from Turkey to form new states such as the Kingdom of Hejaz and Isratin. A resurgent Greece also took advantage of instability in Turkey and took control of parts of Anatolia from the new country. The Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed, resulting in the establishment of the Republic of German-Austria (which would eventually unify with Germany) and Hungary. Many of the Austro-Hungarian Empire's former south Slavic provinces declared independence and soon joined with Serbia to form the Yugoslav Federation. Irish Republicans took advantage of the instability in Britain and overran the entire island of Ireland, declaring independence from the United Kingdom in 1918. Britain and France would see revolutions spring up in their overseas colonies, attempting to capitalise on the military and economic weakness of the two colonial powers. These decolonisation movements spread to the colonies of European powers that had been neutral during the war, such as Spain and the Netherlands. Most European nations had seen their overseas empires collapse by 1930.
The Treaty of Geneva was signed between the combatant nations and their successor states in Switzerland in 1918, by which time Europe's political map had already changed considerably. Germany was allowed to keep control of Alsace-Lorraine, Belgium and Luxembourg, while the captured German and Ottoman territories on Mars and Venus were divided among Britain and France. The perceived unfairness of the Treaty of Geneva toward France and Italy culminated in fascist coup attempts in both of those countries in the early 1920s. The Treaty of Geneva also established the League of Nations in 1919, an intergovernmental body designed to preserve world peace.
Many of the newly-established states were politically unstable in the immediate aftermath of the war. The success of the October Revolution in Russia had particularly shocked the United States, which had managed to remain neutral during the war but was politically and culturally aligned with the democracies of Western Europe such as Britain and France. After the near-collapse of the new German Republic to another communist revolution attempt in 1918, the United States, wanting to avoid other European countries falling to communist movements that may ally with the Soviet Union, began to provide economic aid to many Western European governments to assist them in rebuilding from the war and to strengthen their institutions against communist influence. The rise of communism in Russia also motivated the United States to intervene in the campaign to reunify China in the early 1920s.
Relations between the primary combatants in the war, Great Britain, France and Germany, remained tense for several years after the conflict had officially ended despite the signing the armistice agreement in 1918. The major point of contention was Germany's continued post-war military occupation of most of Belgium and all of Luxembourg, which the German government claimed was necessary due to its concerns about a possible British and French invasion of Germany. From the early 1920s, however, the European political climate had greatly shifted from the previous decade. Europeans roundly rejected nationalism and advocated liberalism and pan-European relations to avoid another European war. Under pressure from the international community and even advocacy groups within Germany itself, in 1923 Germany voluntarily relinquished control over the parts of Belgium and Luxembourg which it had occupied since the Great War. This led to a dramatic improvement in relations between Germany, Great Britain and France, paving the way for international trade to resume between the three nations. Despite optimism that peace could be maintained on the European continent during the 20th century, political wisdom in Britain was to isolate itself politically and economically from Europe and pursue greater engagement with its former colonies in Asia, Africa and the Pacific - Britain spearheaded the formation of the Commonwealth of Nations in 1939 in order to do so. In contrast, European countries such as France, Germany and Italy pursued closer integration, eventually leading to the establishment of the European Union in 1951. By the 1950s, British foreign policy had also shifted to pursuing closer economic and political relations with Europe again. In 1968, the European Union and the Commonwealth of Nations were merged to form the United Commonwealth, which by the early 21st century would become the preeminent economic, political and military power in the world.
The Great War resulted in a worldwide economic depression which lasted until the middle of the 20th century. Most European countries did not return to their pre-war levels of economic productivity until the 1940s, and some not until the 1960s. The collapse of individual European nations as great powers saw them replaced as the preeminent players on the geopolitical stage by nations such as the United States, the Soviet Union, Japan, China and India later in the 20th century.