"World War I began as a European war. The spark that started the war came from Eastern Europe. The major combatants—the Central Powers (led by Germany and Austria-Hungary) and the Allies (led by France, Russia, and Great Britain)—entered the war to protect their territory and their interests in Europe. And the majority of the fighting and the deaths came on two European fronts. But soon after the war started, fighting spread to far-flung European colonies in the Pacific Ocean and in Africa, to the Italian border with Austria-Hungary, and to key strategic points in the Middle East and in western Asia, in what was then known as the Ottoman Empire and is now known as Turkey. Though much of the distant fighting had little bearing on the war, the fighting in Turkey and Italy was especially intense and destructive. As with every aspect of this wide-spread war, it was also very disruptive. This chapter surveys the various distant theaters of operations (areas where combat took place) that turned a European conflict into the first war to be fought all over the world.
In the years before the war started, Germany had worked hard to establish colonies in distant parts of the world. These colonies provided ports for German shipping and supplied raw materials for German industry. Among the most distant of these colonies were several groups of islands in the south and central Pacific Ocean known as the Marianas, the Carolines, the Solomon Islands, and the Marshall Islands. Germany also controlled a small region on the coast of China called Kiaochow.
Soon after the war began in August 1914, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand raced to strip Germany of these colonies. Japan declared war on Germany on August 23 purely as an excuse to grab German territory in the Far East. By October, Japanese forces had overwhelmed the very small number of German soldiers stationed in the area and had claimed the Marianas, the Marshall Islands, and the Carolines. The Japanese faced a more difficult challenge in Kiaochow. For two weeks, three thousand German marines defended the port city of Tsingtao against a combined Japanese and British force of nearly twenty-five thousand. Surprised at this resistance, the Japanese and British were forced to use artillery and airplane bombing to attack the Germans, who finally gave in and surrendered on November 7…"
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Armand
adds an infantry platoon to his WWI Brits.
