WW1 POSTERS

Comparative Strength of Belligerents

a. Economic Power
b. Armament
c. Air Power
d. Naval Power

Economic Power

By 1914, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and the United States had become highly industrialized nations. Raw materials not available at home were readily obtainable in other lands, and adequate shipping had been constructed to meet transportation needs. The principal limitation to the capacity of these nations to produce armaments was a shortage of skilled workers. Japan and Belgium also had made great strides in industrialization, but Russia lagged behind and required major assistance from her allies to meet her war needs. Germany bore the additional burden of supporting her allies: Austria-Hungary required substantial aid, and Bulgaria and Turkey were almost wholly dependent on Germany for war materials.

At the outbreak of war, Germany lost her colonial empire, and, hemmed in by the Allied naval blockade, the Central Powers were in danger of strangulation. Moreover, the Allies waged intensive economic warfare to stifle the trade of the Central Powers with neutral European countries. Under these conditions the outlook for the Central Powers was dark, but they made up most of their deficiencies through territorial expansion and the exploitation of the resources of captured Allied areas. Their offensive in western Europe gave them control of Belgium and of the heavily industrialized area of northern France. They thereby gained the major portion of French steel, iron, coal, wool, and sugar production. Later, they acquired the resources and facilities of Russian Poland, Serbia, and Rumania, and when Russia collapsed in 1917, the rich granaries of the Ukraine and the Russian Baltic provinces also came under their control. Despite the Allied blockade and measures of economic warfare, the Central Powers were therefore capable of engaging in a long war. Shortages of skilled workers were compensated for in large measure by the employment of women, who were found to be adept in many delicate phases of industrial production. The Allies also took advantage of these skills of women but to a lesser extent. When the United States with ifs vast resources and industrial capacity joined actively in the war, the balance "of economic power swung sharply in favor of the Allies.

Manpower.-The greater population of the Allied countries gave them a distinct advantage over the Central Powers in the mobilization of manpower. The accompanying table presents an estimate of the numbers of men in the standing armies and trained reserves of the various belligerents when they entered the war and of the total number of men mobilized during the war.

Armament

Neither side had unusual difficulties in meeting the needs for armament and equipment for their field armies. Industrialization had not progressed far in Russia, however, and she required substantial aid from her allies. The armament of the opposing forces was generally similar. Except for the tank, no revolutionary types of infantry or artillery weapons were introduced during the war. The Germans did construct a long-range gun, known as Big Bertha , with which to shell Paris from a distance of 74 miles, but its effect was only one of harassment. Both opponents emphasized the machine gun, which, when used in conjunction with barbed wire and trench systems, was highly effective against infantry assaults. The artillery weapons of the opposing forces were largely comparable, but the French 75-mm. gun (especially when used by Frenchmen) was the deadliest weapon on the battlefield. The Germans respected it highly, and the American Expeditionary Force was equipped almost entirely with this weapon. With the introduction of the airplane on the battle scene, antiaircraft guns of up to 75-mm. caliber were developed in limited quantities by both sides.

The Germans tried to gain a decisive advantage by the employment of poison gas. When it was first used as the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915, it caused panic among the Allied troops at the front, and they fled. The German troops ran into their own gas, however, and halted the attack.. Countermeasures were soon developed, and though both sides employed gas occasionally throughout the war, its use had only nuisance value.

The Allies won a decided advantage with the development and introduction of the tank by the British in 1916. It was first used in the Battle of the Somme, where the approach of the monsters caused the German troops to drop their arms and flee in terror. The results of this first tank attack were not great, for only 36 units were employed, but the potentialities of the new weapon were readily recognized, and all the major powers hastily began to build them. The production of the Germans lagged, however, and they were never able to assemble enough tanks for a decisive drive. In contrast, Allied production and improvement of the tank advanced rapidly as the war progressed. In 1918 mass attacks by as many as 500 Allied tanks were not unusual, and they exerted a decisive influence on the outcome of operations. The tank played a major role in breaking the stalemate on the western front and in bringing the war to an end.

Air Power

Airpower was in its infancy at the beginning of the war, for the types of aircraft available were crude and limited in purpose. The Germans had about 380 planes and 30 dirigibles ( called zeppelins after their designer, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin); the French had 120 planes and 10 dirigibles; and the British had a comparable small number of planes, with about 60 assigned to the British Expeditionary Force in France. Russia possessed only a few planes; and the United States as late as April 1917, when she entered the war, had only 55 planes, all of which were obsolete or obsolescent. Originally, the military purpose of the airplane was to provide observation and reconnaissance on the battlefield. When it was found possible to synchronize the firing of an automatic gun through a rotating propeller, the true value of aircraft as a fighting weapon was appreciated, and the race for construction began. Improved designs led to planes capable of carrying heavy loads. These were converted into bombers, and large bombs were produced. Initially, the Germans emphasized zeppelins, and their heavy bomber production lagged. Many zeppelin raids were conducted over France and England in 1915 and early 1916, but the dirigibles then became easy prey for the improved types of Allied fighter planes, and their construction was discontinued. German bomber production never equaled that of the Allies. Although their bombers struck London a few times and attacked installations on the Continent, the effect fell far short of the results achieved by the superior Allied formations. In view of the greater Allied production capacity, the Germans were generally at a disadvantage in the air on the western front except for occasional local concentrations in support of particular attacks. The aircraft production of Russia was small, and she was frequently inferior to the Germans on the eastern front. Toward the end of the war, Allied attacks on parts of the western front were supported by fleets of as many as 1,500 fighters and bombers attacking front-line troops and rear supply installations.

Many thousands of aircraft were produced during the war. Since available production figures often comprise all types of aircraft, including civilian planes, it is difficult to secure accurate

statistics of the purely combat aircraft produced. As an indication of the comparative air strengths of the belligerents in combat aircraft, those with the armies at the time of the armistice were as follows: French, 3,321; German, 2,730; British, 1,758; Italian, 812; American, 740; Austrian, 622; and Belgian, 153. The planes with the American forces were preponderantly British and French. When the United States entered the war, the Americans were urged by the French and British to concentrate on the production of engines and bomber planes, for designs of fighter planes were changing too rapidly to initiate production of any one type. The 12-cylinder Liberty engine was accordingly designed and adapted for mass production. A superb engine, it was in great demand by the Allies, and more than 30,000 units were built during the war. The Liberty engine was the greatest single contribution of the United States to World War I aviation.

Naval Power

In 1914, Great Britain was the greatest naval power in the world, and Germany was second. The total completed tonnage of the British Navy was 2,157,850; that of the German - Navy, 951,713 (if tonnage under construction is included, the figures rise to 2,714,106 tons and 1,306,577 tons, respectively). When these figures are increased by the large navies of the other Allied powers and by the meager holdings of the German allies, it is evident that the Central Powers were hopelessly outclassed on the high seas. The relative strength in various types of warships of the British and German navies, respectively, was as follows: modern dreadnoughts and pre dreadnoughts, 40 and 33; battle cruisers and cruisers, 116 and 54; destroyers, 218 and 142; and submarines, 55 and 28. At the outbreak of the war the preponderance of the German High Seas Fleet was in home waters, where it was quickly bottled up by the superior British Grand Fleet. The 10 German cruisers on the high seas when war broke out were rounded up and destroyed, but not before they had sunk 5 British warships and 50 Allied merchantmen. The only hope of the Germans was to catch inferior portions of the British Fleet alone and thus to whittle down the disparity in naval strength. A sortie to this end was made in 1916, bringing on the Battle of Jutland, which resulted in a moral but unproductive victory for the Germans. No further major sorties were attempted.

The Central Powers were also greatly inferior in commercial shipping. In 1914 the commercial oceangoing steamships owned by the various nations had the following aggregate gross tonnages: Great Britain, 20,100,000; United States, 2,027,000; other Allies, 7,675,000; Central Powers, 6,325,000; and neutral nations, 6,640,000. Moreover, whereas Allied commercial shipping was free to roam the oceans, that of the Central Powers was restricted by the Allied blockade to inland waters under their control.
The submarine had been designed as an offensive weapon against major warships, and early in the war it was so considered even by the Germans. When it became evident that their navy was to be bottled up indefinitely by the British, however, the Germans turned to the use of the submarine for the destruction of merchant shipping. This was their last resort in an attempt to reduce the Allied advantage in shipping and thus to weaken the support of Allied land operations. The initial impact of the German submarine warfare was heavy, but the Allies developed the convoy system and other antisubmarine devices that proved fairly effective. Nevertheless, losses due to German submarine warfare were great, particularly in British shipping. Huge construction programs were inaugurated in British and American shipyards, and these succeeded in replacing most of the shipping destroyed.