Serbian Campaign Austria invaded and fought the Serbian army at the Battle of Cer and Battle of Kolubara beginning on August. 12 Over the next two weeks, Austrian attacks were thrown back with heavy losses, which marked the first major Allied victories of the war and dashed Austro-Hungarian hopes of a swift victory. As a result, Austria had to keep sizable forces on the Serbian front, weakening its efforts against Russia. Serbia's defeat of the Austro-Hungarian invasion of 1914 counts among the major upset victories of the twentieth century.
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African Campaigns Some of the first clashes of the war involved British, French, and German colonial forces in Africa. On August 6-7, French and British troops invaded the German protectorate of Togoland and Kamerun. On August 10, German forces in South-West Africa attacked South Africa; sporadic and fierce fighting continued for the rest of the war. The German colonial forces in German East Africa, led by Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, fought a guerrilla warfare campaign during World War I and only surrendered two weeks after the armistice took effect in Europe.
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Western frontsMilitary tactics developed before World War I failed to keep pace with advances in technology and had become obsolete. These advances had allowed the creation of strong defensive systems, which out of date military tactics could not break through for most of the war.Barbed wire was a significant hindrance to massed infantry advances, while artillery, vastly more lethal in the 1870s, coupled with machine guns, made crossing open ground extremely difficult. Commanders on both sides failed to develop tactics for breaching entrenched positions without heavy casualties. In time, however, technology began to produce new offensive weapons, such as gas and the tank
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