The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was the six divisions the British Army sent to the Western Front during the First World War. Planning for a British Expeditionary Force began with the 1906–1912 Haldane Reforms of the British Army carried out by the Secretary of State for War Richard Haldane following the Second Boer War (1899–1902).
Erich Georg Sebastian Anton von Falkenhayn was a German general who was the second Chief of the German General Staff of the First World War from September 1914 until 29 August 1916. Falkenhayn replaced General Helmuth von Moltke the Younger after his invasion of France was stopped at the First Battle of the Marne and was in turn removed on 29 August 1916 after the failure of his offensive strategy in the west at the Battle of Verdun, the opening of the Battle of the Somme, the Brusilov Offensive and the Romanian entry into the war. Having planned to win the war before 1917, the German army was reduced to hanging on.
The Canadian Corps was a World War I corps formed from the Canadian Expeditionary Force in September 1915 after the arrival of the 2nd Canadian Division in France. The corps was expanded by the addition of the 3rd Canadian Division in December 1915 and the 4th Canadian Division in August 1916. The organization of a 5th Canadian Division began in February 1917 but it was still not fully formed when it was broken up in February 1918 and its men used to reinforce the other four divisions.
An army group is a military organization consisting of several field armies, which is self-sufficient for indefinite periods. It is usually responsible for a particular geographic area. An army group is the largest field organization handled by a single commander – usually a full general or field marshal – and it generally includes between 400,000 and 1,000,000 soldiers.
The Oberste Heeresleitung was the highest echelon of command of the army (Heer) of the German Empire. In the latter part of World War I, the Third OHL assumed dictatorial powers and became the de facto political authority in the Empire.
The Allies or the Entente was an international military coalition of countries led by France, the United Kingdom, Russia, the United States, Italy, and Japan against the Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria in World War I (1914–1918).
The Middle Eastern theatre of World War I saw action between 30 October 1914 and 30 October 1918. The combatants were, on one side, the Ottoman Empire, with some assistance from the other Central Powers; and on the other side, the British as well as troops from the British Dominions of Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, the Russians, and the French from among the Allied Powers. There were five main campaigns: the Sinai and Palestine, Mesopotamian, Caucasus, Persian, and Gallipoli campaigns.
Lieutenant General Sir Hugh Jamieson Elles was a British officer and the first commander of the newly formed Tank Corps during the First World War.
The Russian Expeditionary Force [REF] was a World War I military force sent to France and Greece by the Russian Empire. In 1915, the French requested that Russian troops be sent to fight alongside their own army on the Western Front. Initially they asked for 300,000 men, an unrealistically high figure, probably based on assumptions about Russia's 'unlimited' reserves. General Mikhail Alekseev, the Imperial Chief of Staff, was opposed to sending any Russian troops, although Nicholas II finally agreed to send a unit of brigade strength. The first Russian brigade finally landed at Marseille in April 1916.
The Tenth Army was a Field army of the French Army during World War I and World War II.
The Armée d'Orient (AO) was a field army of the French Army during World War I who fought on the Macedonian front.
The British Army during the First World War fought the largest and most costly war in its long history. Unlike the French and German Armies, the British Army was made up exclusively of volunteers—as opposed to conscripts—at the beginning of the conflict. Furthermore, the British Army was considerably smaller than its French and German counterparts. Photo taken by Ernest Brooks. During the First World War, there were four distinct British armies. The first comprised approximately 247,000 soldiers of the regular army, over half of whom were posted overseas to garrison the British Empire, supported by some 210,000 reserves and a potential 60,000 additional reserves.
This component formed the backbone of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), which was formed for service in France and became known as the Old Contemptibles. The second army was provided by the approximately 246,000-strong Territorial Force, initially allocated to home defence but used to reinforce the BEF after the regular army suffered heavy losses in the opening battles of the war. The third army was Kitchener's Army, which was composed of men who answered Lord Kitchener's call for volunteers in 1914–1915 and went into action at the Battle of the Somme in 1916. The fourth army was the reinforcement of existing formations with conscripts after the introduction of compulsory service in January 1916.
By the end of 1918, the British Army had reached its maximum strength of 3,820,000 men and could field over 70 divisions. The vast majority of the British Army fought in the main theatre of war on the Western Front in France and Belgium against the German Empire. Some units were engaged in Italy and Salonika against Austria-Hungary and the Bulgarian Army, while other units fought in the Middle East, Africa and Mesopotamia—mainly against the Ottoman Empire—and one battalion fought alongside the Japanese Army in China during the Siege of Tsingtao.
The war also posed problems for the army commanders, given that, prior to 1914, the largest formation any serving General in the BEF had commanded on operations was a division. The expansion of the British Army saw some officers promoted from brigade to corps commander in less than a year. Army commanders also had to cope with the new tactics and weapons that were developed. With the move from manoeuvre to trench warfare, both the infantry and the artillery had to learn how to work together. During an offensive, and when in defence, they learned how to combine forces to defend the front line. Later in the war, when the Machine Gun Corps and the Tank Corps were added to the order of battle, they were also included in the new tactical doctrine.
The men at the front had to struggle with supply problems–there was a shortage of food; and disease was rife in the damp, rat-infested conditions. Along with enemy action, many soldiers had to contend with new diseases: trench foot, trench fever and trench nephritis. When the war ended in November 1918, British Army casualties, as the result of enemy action and disease, were recorded as 673,375 killed and missing, with another 1,643,469 wounded. The rush to demobilise at the end of the conflict substantially decreased the strength of the British Army, from its peak strength of 3,820,000 men in 1918 to 370,000 men by 1920.
André Zeller was a French Army general. He served during World War I, the Franco-Turkish War, and World War II, and served as chief of staff of the French Army during the Algerian War.
Events from the year 1917 in Italy.
The British First World War cavalry generals, by the end of the war belonged to one of the smallest arms of the British Army, they did however, including those belonging to the British Indian Army, provided some of its highest ranking commanders.
General Officers of World War I is an oil painting by John Singer Sargent, completed in 1922. It was commissioned by South African financier Sir Abraham Bailey, 1st Baronet to commemorate the generals who commanded British and British Empire armies in the First World War.
The Allied Army of the Orient (AAO) was the name of the unified command over the multi-national allied armed forces on the Salonika front during the First World War.
The leaders of the Central Powers of World War I were the political or military figures who commanded or supported the Central Powers.
During the Russian Civil War of 1917-1923, a number of former Tsarist officers joined the Red Army, either voluntarily or as a result of coercion. This list includes officers of the Imperial Russian Army commissioned before 1917 who joined the Bolsheviks as commanders or as military specialists. For former Tsarist NCOs promoted under the Soviets, see Mustang.
