World War One The Global Revolution

The European war quickly escalated into a world war, owing to the global nature of European colonial empires, commercial interests, and naval presence. The entry of Japan, honoring its alliance with Britain, caused the fighting to spread to East Asia and the Pacific islands. Admiral Graf Spee’s squadron abandoned Germany’s Chinese base at Tsingtao (which Japan took in November 1914), then steamed eastward across the Pacific to the coast of Chile, where Spee defeated a British squadron off Coronel in November before being crushed by another British squadron off the Falklands in December. While Japanese, Australian, and New Zealand troops occupied Germany’s Pacific island colonies, British, French, and Belgian forces attacked Germany’s four African colonies. Three of them fell quickly, but in German East Africa (the future Tanzania), troops under Lettow-Vorbeck resisted Allied forces for over four years, until the Armistice. During and after the pursuit of Spee’s squadron, Allied (mostly British) warships swept the world’s oceans of German cruisers, ending the naval war beyond European waters and the North Atlantic. This decisive success facilitated the unimpeded movement of men and supplies from around the world to bolster the Allied cause in Europe, and led Germany to embrace unrestricted submarine warfare.