Allies of World War I

The Allies of World War I are sometimes also referred to as the Entente Powers or Entente Forces. The main allies were the French Third Republic, Imperial Russia, the British Empire, Italy and the United States. France, Russia and Britain entered World War I in 1914, as a result of their Triple Entente alliance. Many other countries later joined the Allied side in the war (see below).

It should be noted that U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and his administration were determined not to define the U.S. as an ally. The United States declared war on Germany on the grounds of German violations of American neutrality by attacking many international carriers, and was not at war with the Ottoman Empire at all. Therefore, the U.S. entered the war as an "associated power", rather than a formal ally of France and Britain, and maintained that distance throughout the war.

Although the Dominions and Crown Colonies of the British Empire made significant contributions to the Allied war effort, they did not have independent foreign or defence policies during World War I. The Dominion governments controlled recruiting in their countries, and while they did not have operational control of their personnel, they did remove personnel from front line duties as they saw fit. Overall control was in the hands of the five-member British War Cabinet (BWC). From early 1917 the BWC was superseded by the Imperial War Cabinet, which had Dominion representation. Late in the war, the First Australian Imperial Force and Canadian Expeditionary Force were grouped in their own separate army corps, under the command of Australian and Canadian generals, who reported in turn to British generals.

In April 1918, operational control of all Allied forces on the Western Front passed to the new supreme commander, Maréchal de France Ferdinand Foch.

Allied states

as well as:

Allied Powers Personnel

(These are estimates of the cumulative number of different men in uniform 1914-1918, including army, navy and auxiliary forces. At any one time the armies were much smaller. Only a fraction of them were combat troops.)

Russian Empire: 12,000,000 men
British Empire: 8,904,500 men

Canada: 619,636 men (http://collections.ic.gc.ca/turner/ar_overview.html)
India: 161,000 men
- France: 8,410,000 men
Italy: 5,615,000 men
United States: 4,355,000 men
Romania: 750,000 men
Serbia: 707,300 men
Belgium: 267,000 men
Greece: 230,000 men
Portugal: 100,000 men
Montenegro: 50,000 men

Total: 41,000,000 men

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Allied states

Allied Powers Personnel

See also