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Benito Mussolini. Kicked out
of Italy's Socialist
Party for
supporting Italy joining the war.
Gallipoli landings. 
By now, Italy had joined the war. Some in Italy had sympathized with Austria-Hungary, seeing it as a great Catholic empire and a bulwark against the Eastern Orthodox Church. Some who favored siding with Austria-Hungary and Germany hoped that this would allow Italy to gain colonial territory at the expense of France or Britain. Some others wanted their country to join Britain and France, believing that the Habsburgs were traditional enemies of the Italians, and some believed that because Britain "ruled the waves" siding with Britain would prevent a loss of maritime trade, while some others hoped for gain in territory at the expense of Austria-Hungary and perhaps the Ottoman Empire.
Britain and France were able to offer Italy a better bargain than were the Germans: Tyrol, Trieste and northern Dalmatia at the expense of Austria-Hungary, and a share of Asia Minor at the expense of the Ottoman Empire. Italy's political leadership came down on the side of joining Britain, France and Russia. And in its agreement to join the war, Italy was to receive loans and was in turn to attempt to pressure the Pope into refraining from making peace initiatives.
Italy declared war on May 23. Not yet recovered from its war against the Ottoman Turks in 1911-12, Italy was short of artillery, machine guns, transport and other items needed to keep an army functioning. But it sent a force northeast, intending to break through the Austrian lines, and 66,000 Italian soldiers died before the year was over. Along the Austria-Italian border another stalemate had developed, while in Austria hatred had arisen for Italy, for stabbing Austria in the back, and this hatred inspired renewed commitment to their nation's war efforts.
Germany's plan for 1915 was to stay on the defensive in the west while trying to knock out the Russians, hoping that with Russia out of the war England and France would be more inclined to negotiate a peace that would be favorable to Germany. British plans for 1915, and their answer to stalemate in France, was to strike at what they perceived was the soft underbelly of Turkey, to open the straits to the Black Sea and their access to Russia. They also planned for offensives on the Western Front, believing the British public opinion would accept nothing less.
The British and French began bombarding gun positions on the Gallipoli Peninsula in February, and the landing of troops began on April 25 - British troops at Cape Hellas, French at Kum Kale, and New Zealanders and Australians at Anzac. The Turks contained the invasions, and fighting lasted through the summer. A second wave of invaders struck in early August. In September stalemate set in, and in December the Allied forces withdrew. The Allies having died in the Gallipoli campaign was approximately 46,000 and those wounded were 219,000.
On the Western Front, defensive warfare continued to demonstrate its superiority over offensive warfare. The French and British offensives gained little ground. At Neuve Chapelle in early March the British gained a mile and a quarter and suffered 13,000 casualties. A French offensive at St. Mihiel ended after eighteen days of fighting with no meaningful gains and heavy losses in men. In April, against French colonial troops at Ypres, the Germans experimented with chlorine gas - the first major gas attack - which made gaps in the line. The British rushed troops to where the gas attacks had occurred, and they suffered 60,000 more casualties.
A French offensive at Artois raged from May 9 to mid-June, the French suffering 100,000 more casualties and the Germans 75,000. On September 25, after a summer of recuperation, the British and French tried another offensive. Little was gained and 142,000 men were lost, the Germans losing 141,000. On the Western Front in 1915 the British suffered about a million casualties, the French about 1.9 million, and the Germans about 612,000, with the battle lines little changed.
The French and British had hoped that offensives in the west would remove German pressures against the Russians, but this did not happen. Germany and Austria-Hungary drove the Russians from Lithuania and Poland, the Russians burning crops, killing cattle and leaving their wounded without medical attention as they retreated. The Russians suffered from shortages of supplies, including boots and ammunition, and only a third of its infantry had rifles, with other frontline soldiers waiting for the rifle of someone who had fallen in battle.
The Russian army was less devoted to hygiene than were the Germans, their delousing program breaking down and typhus and cholera spreading wherever they went. A huge army of refugees moved ahead of the advancing Germans. Jews suffered again, this time in Lithuania, where again they were accused again of supporting Germany, and they were accused of waiting for the arrival of German troops. Again there was widespread looting of Jewish shops and homes, with the Russian Cossacks, traditionally anti-Semitic, driving Jews into flight.
By the end of September, the front line in the east was between Riga in the north and Czernowitz at the border of Romania, with the Germans in possession of Russia's frontier fortresses. Hungry refugees packed into Russian towns and cities already short of food. In various Russian cities, food riots erupted. The Russians had lost so many men and such large amounts of supplies that they were now precluded from playing a decisive role in the war. But at the end of the year, Nicholas II still hoped for victory, and, following a tradition among Russian tsars, he chose to make that victory certain by taking personal command of his armies.
Meanwhile, impressed by the success of Germany and Austria-Hungary on the Eastern Front, Bulgaria entered the war on their side, Germany having promising Bulgaria land at the expense of Bulgaria's old rival from the wars of 1913: Serbia.
Serbia's soldiers and civilians were already suffering from an outbreak of typhus when Bulgaria and a combined force from Germany and Austria-Hungary attacked. A British and French force landed in Salonika (Salonica) - at the invitation of Greece - but they were unable to rescue the Serbs. It was now, with the prolongation of the war, that the Serbs suffered the most. In 1914 the Serbs had successfully defended themselves. They had driven Austria-Hungary's forces out of Serbia. They would have been better off had the Russians not intervened on their behalf. It had brought Germany into the war, and the German army was too much for the Serbs. Surviving Serb soldiers took refuge in Montenegro, Albania and on the Greek island of Corfu. And the British and French retreated back to Salonika.
Recommended Books
The First World War: A Complete History, by Martin Gilbert, 1996.
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U.S. Considers War, 1915 
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