The 7 Surprising Twists of Fate of World War I by Rob Kerby l World War 1 l American History l World History

Who Vanished?

Gone forever were: 1) the German Empire ruled by Kaiser (Caesar) Wilhelm, who considered himself the successor to Charlemagne on the throne of the Holy Roman Empire. 2) the opulent Austria-Hungary Empire, which dominated central Europe; 3) the vast Ottoman Empire, a 700-year-old Islamic Caliphate founded during the Crusades that stretched from Algiers to Mecca, from Egypt to Austria, from Baghdad to the Ukraine.

And toward the end of the war, the world’s largest nation, 4) the Russian Empire, stretching from Europe to Alaska’s Bering Sea was overthrown by ideologue revolutionaries who murdered the royal family, founded the Soviet Union and plunged Russians into 70 years of Communism, repression and totalitarianism.

Code Breakers

The Germans were skilled at intercepting and solving Allied codes. So, more than 500,000 homing pigeons carried messages between headquarters and the front lines. Cages of the cooing birds were dropped to soldiers by parachute. Then eight Native American soldiers in the Oklahoma National Guard suggested broadcasting in Choctaw and Cherokee – which the Germans never managed to break. The eight were known as the Code Talkers … even though the U.S. government didn’t grant Native Americans citizenship until 1924, well after the end of the war. The concept of Native American code talkers was revived to great success during World War II utilizing Navajos as well as Lakotas and Comanches.

Gertrude of Arabia

Gertrude Bell was one of the first females to attend Oxford University. Mountain-climbing in Switzerland, she exhibited unusual courage and a mountain in the Alps still bears her name, Gertrude's Peak. Fluent in Arabic, Persian, French, German, Italian and Turkish, she had traveled throughout the Ottoman Empire. At the end of the war, she was tapped to divide former Ottoman territories into new nations governed by Britain and France.

Bell took a pencil and a ruler and drew lines around the three former Turkish provinces of Mosul, Baghdad and Basra, creating the nation of Iraq. She excluded an oil-rich corner which became Kuwait. Most of her borders totally ignored ethnic divisions – such as the need for the country of Kurdistan. Then the British and French expanded on her borders to create modern Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the Arab emirates on the Persian Gulf – and a sliver along the Mediterranean Sea that today is Israel.