Opposition to World War I was widespread during the conflict and included socialists, such as anarchists, syndicalists, and Marxists, as well as Christian pacifists, anti-colonial nationalists, feminists, intellectuals, and the working class. The socialist movement had declared before the war their opposition to a war which they said could only mean workers killing each other in the interests of their bosses.
Once the war was declared, most socialists and trade unions decided to back the government of their country and support the war. For example, on 25 July 1914, the executive of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) issued an appeal to its membership to demonstrate against the coming war, only to vote on 4 August for the war credits the German government wanted. Likewise, the French Socialist Party and its union, the CGT, especially after the assassination of the pacificist Jean Jaurès, organized mass rallies and protests until the outbreak of war, but once the war began they argued that in wartime socialists should support their nations against the aggression of other nations and also voted for war credits.Prelude to Revolution: Class Consciousness and the First World War by Megan Trudell
Groups opposed to the war included the Russian Bolsheviks, the Socialist Party of America, the Italian Socialist Party, and the socialist faction led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg in Germany (later to become the Communist Party of Germany). In Sweden, the socialist youth leader Zeth Höglund was jailed for his anti-war propaganda, even though Sweden did not participate in the war.
Women Women across the spectrum were much less supportive of the war than men.Anne Wiltsher, Most Dangerous Women: Feminist Peace Campaigners of the Great War. (Routledge, 1985). Women in church groups were especially anti-war; however, women in the suffrage movement in different countries wanted to support the war effort, asking for the vote as a reward for that support. In France, women activists from both the working-class socialist women's and the middle-class suffrage movements formed their own groups to oppose the war. They were unable to coordinate their efforts because of mutual suspicion due to class and political differences. After 1915, the groups weakened and dissolved entirely as their leading militants left to work within nonfeminist organizations opposing the war.Charles Sowerwine, "Women Against the War: A Feminine Basis for Internationalism and Pacifism? Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Western Society for French History 6#363. (1978).
The women's suffrage movement in Britain split on the war issue. The main official groups supported the war but it was opposed by a number of prominent women's rights campaigners, including Helena Swanwick, Margaret Ashton, Catherine Marshall, Maude Royden, Kathleen Courtney, Chrystal Macmillan, and Sylvia Pankhurst. It was an early coalition of women's campaigning with pacifism that led to the formation of Women's International League for Peace and Freedom in 1915.
Pacifists
Although the onset of the First World War was generally greeted with enthusiastic patriotism across Europe, peace groups were still active in protesting the starting of the war.
In 1915, the League of Nations Society was formed by British Liberal Party leaders to promote a strong international organization that could enforce the peaceful resolution of conflict. Later that year the League to Enforce Peace was established in America to promote similar goals. Hamilton Holt published an editorial in his New York City weekly magazine The Independent called "The Way to Disarm: A Practical Proposal" on 28 September 1914. It called for an international organization to agree upon the arbitration of disputes and to guarantee the territorial integrity of its members by maintaining military forces sufficient to defeat those of any non-member. The ensuing debate among prominent internationalists modified Holt's plan to align it more closely with proposals offered in Great Britain by Viscount James Bryce, a former ambassador from Britain to the U.S. These and other initiatives were pivotal in the change in attitudes that gave birth to the League of Nations after the war. Christian pacifists and the traditional peace churches such as the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) opposed the war. Most American Pentecostal denominations were critical to the war and encouraged their members to be conscientious objectors.Beaman, Jay "Pentecostal Pacifism" 2017.
In the United States, some of the many groups that protested against the war were the Woman's Peace Party (which was organized in 1915 and led by noted reformer Jane Addams), the American Union Against Militarism, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and the American Friends Service Committee.. Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to Congress, was another fierce advocate of pacifism, the only person to vote no to America's entrance into both World Wars.
Catholic Church
Pope Benedict XV, elected to the papacy less than three months into WW1, made the war and its consequences the main focus of his early pontificate. In stark contrast to his predecessor, Pope Pius X, five days after his election he spoke of his determination to do what he could to bring peace. His first encyclical, Ad beatissimi Apostolorum, given 1November 1914, was concerned with this subject. Benedict XV found his abilities and unique position as a religious emissary of peace ignored by the belligerent powers. The 1915 Treaty of London between Italy and the Triple Entente included secret provisions whereby the Allies agreed with Italy to ignore papal peace moves towards the Central Powers. Consequently, the publication of Benedict's proposed seven-point Peace Note of August 1917 was roundly ignored by all parties except Austria-Hungary.
International socialists
Many socialist groups and movements were antimilitarist, arguing that war by its nature was a type of governmental coercion of the working class for the benefit of capitalist elites. However, the national parties in the Second International increasingly supported their respective nations in war and the International was dissolved in 1916.
Before 1914 When the Second International, the primary international socialist organization before World War I, was founded in 1889, internationalism was one of its central tenets. "The workers have no Fatherland", Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels had declared in The Communist Manifesto. Between 1889 and 1914 the Second International repeatedly declared its opposition to war and that "[the working class shall] do all they can to prevent the outbreak of war"
The exact means of combating the outbreak of war was a matter of conflict within the Second International. On the far-left the radical French pacifist Gustave Hervé promoted building anti-government militias and instigating mutinies in the army. The center of the party, embodied by the German August Bebel and the French Jean Jaurès, were more circumspect with their preferred means. Jaurès particularly warned of the potential for a diversionary war.Alarmed by the growth of the socialist movement, a government might attempt to create a foreign diversion rather than directly battle Social Democracy. If a war breaks out in this way between France and Germany, would we permit the French and German proletariat to murder one another on behalf of the capitalists and for their benefit without Social Democracy attempting to exert the greatest effort to stop it? If we were not to make the attempt, we would all be dishonored.These statements were in tension with others. For example, Bebel was determined "never to abandon a single piece of German soil to the foreigner". Jaurès criticized Marx and Engels' maxim that the "workers have no Fatherland" as "vain and obscure subtleties" and a "sarcastic negation of history itself".
Germany After the repeal of the anti-socialist law in 1890 the SPD steadily gained support in the lower house of the Imperial German Parliament, the Reichstag. By 1914 it was the largest party in the Reichstag. Prior to 1914, the SPD had consistently voted against all imperial military spending under the slogan "Not one man, not one farthing for the current system."
During the July Crisis, it became clear that German mobilization, and therefor German war credit would be critical. A vote on war credits in the Reichstag was scheduled for 4 August, and required a simple majority to pass. This meant that a vote against war credits would only be symbolic for the SPD, unless a non-socialist party defected to their side.
On 2 August, the right faction of the German SPD met and agreed to support the upcoming war credits vote. On 3 August, the full SPD parliamentary delegation met. In the party's preparatory meeting on 3 August, there were, according to SPD representative Wolfgang Heine, "vile, noisy scenes" because of conflict between the right faction and Karl Liebknecht who believed that "the rejection of war loans was self-evident and unquestionable for the majority of the SPD Reichstag faction." In the end, the right faction successfully swayed the center of the party. On 4 August, the Reichstag, voted on war credits. Following a tradition of party discipline, the socialist delegates unanimously voted for the measures. The policy of supporting the government's war efforts became known as the Burgfrieden or civil truce.
France
The socialist parties of France had split and reunited several times since the founding of the republic. At the outbreak of the July Crisis the French Section of the Worker's International (SFIO) was the most prominently anti-war party in France. Its leader, Jean Jaurès, was actively searching for allies against a European war. To this end, a special congress of the Second International was planned for 9 August in Paris. On 4 August, socialists also rallied behind the war in France, where socialist acquiescence became known as the union sacrée.
Great Britain In Britain, the prominent peace activist Stephen Henry Hobhouse went to prison for refusing military service, citing his convictions as an "International Socialist and, a Christian"Hochschild, Adam, To end all wars: a story of loyalty and rebellion, 1914–1918, p. 277, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011, On 5 August, the Parliamentary Labour Party in the United Kingdom voted to support the government in the war.
Collapse of international resistance After the largest socialist parties of the Second International had voted in favor of war funding and shifted to support their national governments, organized international resistance by the socialist parties disintegrated. Reaction to these events would lead to the Zimmerwald Conference, and the splitting of socialist and communist movements.
Austria-Hungary Like all the armies of mainland Europe, Austria-Hungary relied on conscription to fill its ranks. Officer recruitment, however, was voluntary. The effect of this at the start of the war was that well over a quarter of the rank and file were Slavs, while more than 75% of the officers were ethnic Germans. This was much resented. The army has been described as being "run on colonial lines" and the Slav soldiers as "disaffected". Thus conscription contributed greatly to Austria's disastrous performance on the battlefield.
British Empire
Great Britain