Allies of World War I
The Allies of World War I, also known as the Entente Powers, were the countries that opposed the Central Powers during the First World War.The members of the original Entente Alliance of 1907 were the French Republic, the British Empire and the Russian Empire; Italy ended its alliance with the Central Powers and entered the war on the side of the Entente in 1915. Japan was another important member. Belgium, Serbia, Greece, Montenegro, and Romania were secondary members of the Entente.The 1920 Treaty of Sèvres defines as the Principal Allied Powers: British Empire, French Republic, Italy and Japan. The Allied Powers comprised – together with the Principal Allied Powers – Armenia, Belgium, Greece, Hejaz, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serb-Croat-Slovene state and Czechoslovakia.The United States of America declared war on Germany in 1917 on the grounds that Germany had violated U.S. neutrality by attacking international shipping and because of the Zimmermann Telegram sent to Mexico. The U.S. entered the war as an ""associated power"", rather than as a formal ally of France and the United Kingdom, in order to avoid ""foreign entanglements"". Although the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria severed relations with the United States, neither declared war on her.Although the Dominions and Crown Colonies of the British Empire made significant contributions to the Allied war effort, they did not have independent foreign policies during World War I. The five-member British War Cabinet (BWC) exercised operational control of British Empire forces. However, the Dominion governments controlled recruiting, and did remove personnel from front-line duties as they saw fit.From early 1917 the BWC was superseded by the Imperial War Cabinet, which had Dominion representation. The Australian Corps and Canadian Corps were placed for the first time under the command of Australian and Canadian Lieutenant Generals John Monash and Arthur Currie, respectively, who reported in turn to British generals. In April 1918 operational control of all Entente forces on the Western Front passed to the new supreme commander, Ferdinand Foch.The only countries represented in the 1918 armistice which ended combat on the Western Front were Britain, France and Germany.