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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).
France developed a strong bond with Russia by ratifying the Franco-Russian Alliance, which was designed to create a strong counter to the Triple Alliance. France's main concerns were to protect against an attack from Germany and to regain Alsace-Lorraine. A 1914 Russian poster in which the upper inscription reads "agreement".
The Allies waited for Russia to continue its war effort. In March 1917, the French called for a major offensive in the east to support their own Chemin des Dames offensive, but General Alekseyev replied that this was impossible: the thaw had made the roads impassable, horses and fodder were in short supply, and the troops had lost all ...
In 1914 the war was so unexpected that no one had formulated long-term goals. An ad-hoc meeting of the French and British ambassadors with the Russian Foreign Minister in early September led to a statement of war aims that was not official, but did represent ideas circulating among diplomats in St. Petersburg, Paris, and London, as well as the secondary allies of Belgium, Serbia, and Montenegro.
The outbreak of war on August 1, 1914, caught Russia severely unprepared. [28] The Allies relied heavily on the Russian army, which had a pre-war regular strength of 1,400,000 and added 3,100,000 reserves through mobilization. However, Russia was ill-equipped in other aspects for the war effort.
The Russian military was the largest in the world consisting of 1,400,000 men. They could also mobilize up to 5 million men, but only had 4.6 million rifles to give them. Russian troops were satisfactorily supplied at the beginning of the war, there was more light artillery than France, and no less than Germany. [50] [51]
Before World War II, the events of 1914–1918 were generally known as the Great War or simply the World War. [1] In August 1914, the magazine The Independent wrote "This is the Great War. It names itself". [2] In October 1914, the Canadian magazine Maclean's similarly wrote, "Some wars name themselves. This is the Great War."
The Central Powers, also known as the Central Empires, [1] [notes 1] were one of the two main coalitions that fought in World War I (1914–1918). It consisted of the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria; this was also known as the Quadruple Alliance.