Competitive Advantage Of The Allies In World War One

World War 1

World War I was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. More than 70 million military personnel were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history (Willmott 2003). The war involved two opposing alliances: the Allies (based on the Triple Entente of the Russian Empire, the French Third Republic, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland) versus the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. The trigger for the war was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand (Willmott 2003).

The importance of size played a pivotal role. The overwhelming size advantage of the Allies in terms of population and production in 1914, the outcome of World War I was inevitable. However, the quality as well as the quantity of national resources mattered (Broadberry 2005). The main factor in quality was the level of peacetime development, which can be measured by the average real income per capita. Richer countries were able to mobilise

Austria-Hungary, Turkey, Germany, and Russia all ran short of food long before they ran out of guns, because of the negative impact of peasant agriculture on mobilisation (Brennan 1982). In Germany, wartime mobilisation redirected resources away from farming requiring the diversion of food supplies from rural households to government purchasers. But the motivation for farmers to sell food was reduced (Brennan 1982). Many farmers were peasants who grew food partly for their own consumption. What they sold they took to market primarily to buy manufactured goods for their families. But war dried up the supply of manufactured goods to the countryside, as the industrial sector concentrated on supplying the army with weapons. Farmers thus retreated into subsistence activities and the economy began to disintegrate (Brennan