RUBEN YGUA

RUBEN YGUA
UNIFORMS

FIRST WORLD WAR

UNIFORMS FIRST WORLD WAR

Contacts with the author: [email protected]

RUBEN YGUA

The content of this work, including the spelling check, is the sole
responsibility of the author.

UNIFORMS FIRST WORLD WAR

Dedicated to my family. .

RUBEN YGUA

Introduction

This book is a catalogue of most of the uniforms worn by the countries

participating in

the First World War, between 1914 and 1918.

My objective was to gather a complete reference guide for illustrators,

scriptwriters, historians or for all

those who, like me, are simply interested in world history.

Ruben Ygua

UNIFORMS FIRST WORLD WAR

THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE OR CENTRAL POWERS

Coalition formed by Germany, Austria-Hungary, Ottoman Empire and
Bulgaria.

GERMANY

Unified in 1871 by the Prussian monarchy, Germany inherited the main

problem of the

Holy Empire and the Austrian monarchy: rivalry with France. After
defeating Napoleon III

and humiliating the French by proclaiming the German Empire in the halls
of Versailles,

Chancellor Bismarck feared France's vengeance, that was the beginning of

the systems of

alliances, political intrigues and international tension that passed into

History as Armed

Peace. We can say that this rivalry dragged the rest of the world into a war
of

unprecedented proportions. It was fought on most continents, in the oceans

and, for the

first time, in the air.

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Austrian officers and soldiers in 1914

AUSTRIA- HUNGARY

The Austro-Hungarian empire entered the twentieth century with serious

territorial disputes with its

neighbors, to the south the Italians claimed the so-called "Unredeemed

Italy", while in the Balkans were

agitated strong nationalist currents. To the east the Russian tsar pressured
the eastern provinces with the

ambition of controlling Galicia and ancient Poland. From the west his
traditional French enemy stalked,

threatening to strangle central Europe, thanks to the Franco-Russian pact. It

would be in the Balkans
where the spark that would provoke the conflict would explode, following
the Sarajevo attack, unleashing

a deadly domino effect.

Almost unwittingly, inevitably, Europe was plunged into a total war.

From the first moment the Austro-Hungarian army revealed itself to be ill-
prepared, and the disaster was

only avoided after Germany sent aid, rejecting the Russians.

In the Balkans, Serbia had stopped the Austrian offensive and everything
indicated that it would not delay

in counterattacking, while the Italian ally hesitated, opening secret

conversations with French and

English. Once again, Germany had to divert important contingents to

intervene in Serbia, which would

eventually be knocked out. Austria-Hungary was not prepared for war, and
that would be fatal to it.

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OTTOMAN EMPIRE

Punished by serious internal problems, such as the revolution of the Young

Turks, the Ottoman Empire

was not prepared to face a long-lasting war; this became evident after the
disasters before the Russians in

the Caucasus.

The Allies assumed that it would be relatively easy to invade Turkey in a

quick offensive from the Aegean

in the direction of Constantinople, but they were surprised by the energetic

attitude of a great general,

Ataturk, who stopped the invasion at Gallipoli, delivering a hard blow to

the Anglo-French.

Accused of genocide in Armenia, and weakened by internal secessions, the

sultan had to request German

aid, which sent advisors and supplies, but nothing could prevent the series
of defeats in the desert, where
the Arabs, with effective English support, began a struggle for
independence that would extend for two

years.

In 1917, although the Russian threat in the Caucasus disappeared during the
Revolution, the Arabs seized

Baghdad, Jerusalem and Mecca, and the Turkish army was retreating. In
1918, the Allies advanced from

Macedonia, and the English entered Damascus, and Aleppo, while their
fleet threatened to bomb

Constantinople. . Turkey ceased fighting.

Turkish soldiers in the Caucasus- 1915

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BULGARIA

The Bulgarian government wanted to recover the losses suffered in the

recent Balkan War, and the

outbreak of war seemed to give them that opportunity. By signing an

alliance with the Central Powers,

the Bulgarians participated in the Serbian campaign in 1915.

Despite their country being occupied, the Serbs moved their army to
Greece, from where they continued

the fight, and the Macedonian front became a thorn embedded in the
Bulgarian southern flank
throughout the war. Victories in Romania did not change the course of the
war, and after Greece officially

entered the conflict, a powerful allied army advanced in the decisive 1918
offensive, which put Bulgaria

out of combat.

Bulgarian soldiers in 1915. Most of their equipment is of German origin.

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The TRIPLE ENTENTE or ALLIED COUNTRIES

The coalition was formed from the TRIPLE ENTENTE, signed in 1914,
between France, Russia and the

United Kingdom with the British Overseas Territories: Australia, India,

Canada, Newfoundland, South

Africa and New Zealand. Subsequently: Belgium and its colonies, Serbia,
Italy, Romania, Portugal, the

United States, Puerto Rico, Montenegro, and Japan joined the coalition.
Brazil also entered the Entente,

but did not send troops to the combat front, and limited itself to deploying
medical teams to France and

some naval patrol actions, opening its ports to allied ships. Some peoples
that did not yet constitute an

independent State also participated with irregular forces or militias at the

service of other countries, such
as Armenia, Czechoslovakia, Finland, Nepal, Siam and San Marino.

FRANCE

The French government viewed with concern the growth of the German
empire worldwide, because it

had a population superior in number to the French, a thriving economy, and

a strategic position in the

European center, which seemed destined to the domination of the continent.

The dismissal of the German

Chancellor Bismarck and the signing of the Franco-Russian pact seemed to

tip the balance for the French

side. When the conflict began, the main French objective was to avoid the
repetition of the campaign of

1871, for that reason the French army was stationed in bases from which
could threaten the provinces of

Alsace-Lorraine, whose recovery was the main French territorial aspiration.

With a powerful air force,

the best of its time, with an army reformulated at the end of the 19th
century, and owners of a powerful

colonial empire, the French longed for a historic rematch against the
Germans.

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RUSSIA

On the eastern front, the Russian army failed in its offensive in East Prussia,
suffering two major defeats

against the Germans. A little further south, they had initial success against
the Austrian forces, until the

German intervention. In the same way, they did not obtain major advances
against the Turks in the

Caucasus, in spite of certain momentary victories. The February

Revolutions of 1917 and October 1918

forced the new government to request an armistice, signed in March of that

year. Despite having eight

million soldiers, the Russian army was made up of peasants without

military training, badly armed and

equipped, the officer corps was mediocre and failed to organize, the army
suffered from a lack of supplies,
food and shelter, high desertion rates, as well as sabotage by anarchists and
revolutionary groups. The

tsar himself proved incapable of controlling the situation.

Russian soldiers in 1914

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UNITED KINGDOM

When the Germans invaded Belgium in 1914, violating their neutrality,

England declared war on them

that same day. An Expeditionary Corps was immediately sent to French

territory where, after a series of

attacks and retreats, both sides barricaded themselves.

The Western Front would remain with few modifications until the final
offensives of 1918, in a terrible

war of positions that consumed lives and materials on a scale never seen
before. In spite of being

victorious, the British Empire emerged weakened from the conflict, with
enormous debts and an

economic crisis that would persist for several years in the postwar period.
Little by little, London will give up its place as the predominant power in
the world, for the United States.

King George inspects the British Expeditionary Corps, destined for France-
1914

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UNITED STATES

It was after this conflict that the United States began to play an active role
in international politics, in

spite of the isolationism that prevailed during the following post-war

decades.

Submarine warfare served as a pretext to enter the conflict in 1917, when

European countries had

already been fighting intensely for three years, but American troops arrived
in Europe only in 1918, in

time to take part in the final offensives.

Between 1914 and 1917, the American economy benefited greatly from the
war, increasing its exports,

mainly to Western allies, while President Wilson established an agreement

with a group of international
bankers, who, in exchange for the creation of the FED, would conduct big
business in the early years of

the European war.

The U.S. economy prospered, despite being forever chained to the decisions
of that small group of foreign

bankers since 1913.

American soldiers in France- 1918

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ITALY

When the war began, Italy remained neutral, ignoring requests for help
from the German Kaiser and the

Austrians, in the name of the alliance that united them. Italian diplomacy
began a series of more or less

secret meetings with both sides, presenting a list of territorial demands as a

condition for their entry into

the war. Kaiser William, seeing that they could lose a valuable ally, put
pressure on the emperor of

Austria, who ended up giving up after several months of negotiations,

promising to return the provinces

to Italy after the end of the war. But it was too late.
Italy had signed a secret pact with England and France, and was preparing
to recover northern Italy by

force. The Alpine front would become a bloody war of attrition, with
nowhere to gain territorial

advantage, and it was only in 1918, when Austria-Hungary split up, that
Italian troops finally made

significant progress.

The end of the war brought the Italians the disappointment of seeing their
demands set aside by their

allies, and only the northern Italian provinces were annexed. Italy was not
allowed to seize lands in the

Aegean or the East at the expense of the Ottoman Empire. Such a change in
Anglo-French policy would

have important consequences in the not-too-distant future.

Italian officers photographed in 1915

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