Well, the scene in Europe is growing boring so they just start fighting in their colonies. Most of the colonies are owned by the British and French. Australia is quick to take over German New Guinea. The colonies of the alliance in Africa starts a war with the German colonies. Two other countries join the foray: Japan and Italy. Without anime, the Japanese were busy building their Empire and were more than happy to take over the German islands. Italy, was chums with Germany, but with some classic French seduction (they used land), Italy sided with the alliance and battled Austria in the mountains.
A colorized still from the World War I documentary, “Thou Shall not Grow Old” by Peter Jackson.
In the middle east, the Ottoman empire is confused whether they want to join or not. Sick of all the indecisiveness, some politicians went ahead and fired some shells at Russia and came back. Now they don’t have to decide, they are at war. The British are now concerned beyond anything, because the middle-easterners have oil. They must take the oil.
Attempt #1: The Ottomans start by attacking through the mountains as part of the Caucasus campaign. But it was too cold and they froze to death (spoiler alert for WWII). Attempt #2: The campaign was directed towards the Suez Canal, where the British had set up shop. But they get beaten because they just walked 3000km into the desert. Attempt #3: A place called Gallipoli seems easy to conquer. Turns out to be a bad idea when they realise there are both French and British troops present there. The Ottomans grew weary of this and blame it all on the Armenians. And as if the death in the battle was not enough, they initiate a mass genocide to have 1.5 million people dead.
Meanwhile in the Mainland:
The Hague Conference was a conference which set up rules for war before it all started. It talked about not using chemical weapons, no killing civilians etc. Overall, it said: “Don’t be a bunch of jerks”. The Germans were already tired of the boredom that followed the trench warfare. So, they held a meeting with the agenda: “Let’s be a bunch of Jerks”. They start air raids, chlorine gas attacks and surprise submarine kabooms on civilian ships. One of the ships turns out to be American and Uncle Sam is now up and about screaming against the Germans.
All these shenanigans went on and on until everyone hit a point of saturation on their supplies and energy. The question that remains: ‘Who will concede first?’. It was Russia. A full-blown revolution saw a change of governments as the Tsar is overthrown, and soon the Bolsheviks overthrow the new government. They promptly pull Russia out of the war. Some sunshine for the Germans follows as they can now focus on a new challenge: The ‘muricans.
The Americans have built up a good economy by selling supplies to the alliance. When the Americans suspect German foul-pay with Mexico, they get into the field to fight. It was pretty much game over for now, because the big guy had entered the game. The central powers were pushed back from all sides by the allies and one by one they were beaten. Bulgaria collapsed, then the Ottoman empire collapsed and it was followed by Austria-Hungary. Finally, on 11th November 1918, Germany surrendered.
Obviously, everyone had to rub it in Germany’s face with a peace treaty: Treaty of Versailles. Germany was forced to reduce its military and pay the bill for the war with complimentary war guilt. With 17 million people dead, 20 million wounded and so much impact on the world, everyone learnt a lesson and never had such a dreadful and destructive war again.
Kidding. They didn’t do it for 20 years.
Then they had a showdown.