Talk:World War I

Semi-protected edit request on 20 November 2017

Under the section "Peace treaties and national boundaries", please provide some context or introductory information about Hagen Schulze as follows:

From: Schulze said the Treaty placed Germany "under legal sanctions, deprived of military power, economically ruined, and politically humiliated."

To: German historian Hagen Schulze said the Treaty placed Germany "under legal sanctions, deprived of military power, economically ruined, and politically humiliated."

Stokerm (talk) 06:02, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Done, although you could have made the edit yourself because you are autoconfirmed. Gulumeemee (talk) 07:38, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

phrasing on the section on "new nations"

The article explains: "The Russian Empire, which had withdrawn from the war in 1917 after the October Revolution, lost much of its western frontier as the newly independent nations of Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland were carved from it. Romania took control of Bessarabia in April 1918.[204]"

It is misleading to claim both that Poland was a "new nation" and that it was "carved out" of Russia. The Wikipedia Article The Territorial Evolution of Poland clearly shows that large parts of Poland were annexed by the German Empire and the Austo-Hungarian Empire in the period before WW1.

This paragraph should be re-written to be more accurate.

ZeroXero (talk) 14:44, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

Result: Allied Victory?

The panel on the right hand side states:

Result: Allied Victory

However, this is inaccurate and misleading. I have changed this twice to:

Result: Allied Victory (exception: Russian defeat)

This is to highlight the fact that a key members of the Allies, Tsarist Russia, was defeated by the Central Powers in 1917-18 before the war was concluded by the rump of the allies in 1918-19. This is highly significant. A Victory for Russia would have called into question the emergence of a free Poland and the Baltic states and Tsarist Russia may even have annexed Constantinople. The Russians did not participate in the treaty of Versailles, arguably one of the greatest weaknesses of the treaty. Therefore this is an important exception which needs to be highlighted prominently. I further argue that this change can be done unobtrusively by the addition of the parenthesis. Not all the Allies of 1914 emerged victorious in this war. Views please? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Keith Johnston (talk • contribs) 13:16, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

If as stated above, "The Russian Empire, which had withdrawn from the war in 1917 after the October Revolution, ... " is accurate it was by then no longer a belligerent, and so there is no need to qualify the result. By November 1918 Russia was no longer a combatant.

British Commonwealths in World War 1

I would like to see the individual commonwealths mentioned instead of the British Empire. We deserve as much credit as the empire we came to the aid of. I believe it is disrespectful to my great great grandfather who died from mustard gas syndrome.

ArizonaRanger21 (talk) 17:14, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

Each of the British Dominions has a complete and detailed article that describes their respective commitments, and sacrifices in the war. I do not object to expanding this article wherever relevant; but considering the massive amount of subject matter that it encompasses it is an ongoing struggle to decide what to include here and what can be better served by putting it in the various branching articles. Mediatech492 (talk) 02:31, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

I should have specified more, what I mean is I would like the commonwealths mentioned in the belligerents under allied powers. ArizonaRanger21 (talk) 15:04, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but listing all the consituent parts of the British Empire would be an exceptionally long list, and would only raise the question of why we should include these, and not the territories of France, Russia, the US, or any other country on the list. I'm sorry, but all that information is currently in the main articles, for example, British Empire or Russian Empire, and I'm afraid interested readers will probably have to go to the main articles for that level of detail. GMG^talk 15:18, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Some specific mentions are made in the body of the article about particular units and campaigns. Which unit, which campaign is your focus? The British Commonwealth didn’t exist until 1949, btw, so I think the British Empire in those days would naturally include such independent countries as e.g. Canada.

Gravuritas (talk) 16:02, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

None of the Empire's constituent countries awarded their own citizenship until after WW II. Before then the people from all parts of the Empire were British subjects, so 'British' refers to them too. It was their empire as much as anyone's. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.149.173.52 (talk) 09:03, 9 December 2017 (UTC)