World War I 1914-1918

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World War I1914-1918

• It was "The War To End All Wars,"- a senseless
  slaughter that set the stage for the bloodiest
  century in human history.

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The Great War
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I. Setting the Stage

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An Uneasy Peace

• At the turn of the 20th Century, the nations of
  Europe had been at peace with one another for
  nearly 30 years.
• However, below the surface, several forces were
  at work that would help propel Europe into war.

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Long-Term Causes of WWI

• 1. Nationalism, or a deep devotion to ones
  nation.
• Nationalism can serve as a unifying force within
  a country. However, it can also cause intense
  competition between nations, with each seeking to
  overpower the other.
• What kinds of things can nations compete over?

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Long-Term Causes of WWI

• 2. Imperialism, or larger nations controlling
  weaker nations and territories.
• The nations of Europe competed fiercely for
  colonies in Asia and Africa which sometimes
  pushed them to the brink of war.

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Long-Term Causes of WWI

• 3. Militarism, the the development of armed
  forces and their use as a tool for diplomacy.
• The nations of Europe believed that to be truly
  great, they needed to have a powerful military.

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Long-Term Causes of WWI

• 4. Alliance System, treaties of countries to
  support one another in case of attack.
• The Triple Alliance joined Germany, Italy and
  Austria-Hungary.
• In turn, Britain, France, and Russia join the
  Triple Entente.
• A dispute between two rival powers could draw the
  entire continent into war.

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An Assassination Leads to War

• Nowhere was that dispute more likely to occur
  than on the Balkan Peninsula.
• This mountain peninsula in the southeastern
  corner of Europe was home to an assortment of
  ethnic groups.
• With a long history of nationalist uprisings and
  ethnic clashes, the Balkans were known as the
  powder keg of Europe.

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An Assassination Leads to War

• On June 28, 1914, the heir to the Austrian
  throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was
  assassinated by a Serbian rebel.
• Austria-Hungary declared what it expected to be a
  bright, brisk little war against Serbia.

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An Assassination Leads to War

• A war between Austria and Serbia meant a war
  between Austria and Russia, Serbia's traditional
  ally.
• That meant war between Russia and Germany.
• And that meant war between Germany and France.
• And that meant war between Germany and Great
  Britain.
• In a flash, the whole continent was at war.

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II. War Consumes Europe
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The Schlieffen Plan

• Germany quickly put its military plan into
  effect.
• Under the Schlieffen Plan, a large part of the
  German army would race west, to defeat France,
  and then fight Russia in the east.
• The German army would avoid Frances line
  fortifications by sweeping west through neutral
  Belgium and then turning in a huge arc south into
  France. The French army would be destroyed
  defending Paris.

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Europeans Take Sides

• By mid-August 1914, the battle lines were clearly
  drawn.
• Central Powers Germany, Austria-Hungary,
  Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire
• Allies Great Britain, France, Russia, Japan,
  and Italy.

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Europeans Take Sides
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Europeans Take Sides

• In the late summer of 1914, millions of soldiers
  marched happily off to battle, convinced that the
  war would be short.

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A Bloody Stalemate

• German plans for the Western Front soon began
  unraveling.
• As the German right flank drove deeper, it
  separated from the rest of the invading force.
• Recognizing their vulnerability, the Germans
  pulled up twenty-five miles short of Paris.
• Now, it was Frances chance to attack.
• What followed was the Battle of the Marne where
  the German advance was stopped.

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A Bloody Stalemate

• As a result of the Battle of Marne, Germanys
  lightning-quick strike instead turned into a long
  and bloody stalemate along the battlefields of
  France.
• The deadlocked region in northern France became
  known as the Western Front.
• A quick victory in the west no longer seemed
  possible for Germany.
• They were going to have to fight a long war on
  two fronts.

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War in the Trenches

• When the German advance was stopped, two lines of
  deep trenches zigzagged from the English Channel
  to Switzerland.
• Trenches were rat-infested, muddy, and filled
  with shell craters and barbed-wire.
• Armies traded huge losses for pitifully small
  land gains.

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War in the Trenches

• The space between the opposing trenches won the
  grim name of, no mans land.
• When officers ordered an attack, the men went
  over the top of their trenches.
• They were usually met with murderous rounds of
  machine gun fire.
• Artillery fire and poison gas brought death right
  into the trenches.

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New Weapons of War

• Machine Guns
• Firepower increased from several rounds per
  minute to 600 rounds per minute.
• Because the gun could wipe out waves of attackers
  and make it difficult for forces to advance, it
  helped create a stalemate.

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New Weapons of War

• Tanks
• First developed by the British were used to clear
  a path through barbed wire for the infantry.
• The first tanks were slow and clumsy. The tanks
  top speed was 4 mph.

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New Weapons of War

• Poison Gas
• Introduced by the Germans, the greenish-yellow
  fog of chlorine blinded and caused death by
  choking.
• Soldiers wore gas masks to protect themselves.

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New Weapons of War

• Airplanes
• Originally, planes were used for taking
  photographs of enemy lines.
• Soon, both sides used them to drop bombs.
• Guns soon were attached to the planes, and pilots
  fought each other in the air.

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New Weapons of War

• Submarines
• German submarines, known as U-boats, eventually
  waged unrestricted warfare on Allied ships.
• The U-boats primary weapon was the torpedo, a
  self-propelled underwater missile.

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New Weapons of War

• New tools of war had not delivered the
  fast-moving war many had expected.
• All this new technology did was kill huge numbers
  of people more effectively.
• In February 1916, the Germans launched a massive
  attack against the French near Verdun. Each side
  lost more than 300,000 men.
• In July of 1916, the British army attached the
  Germans in Verdun. On the first day more than
  20,000 British soldiers were killed.
• By the time the battle ended, each side had
  suffered over half a million casualties.

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The Eastern Front

• Even as the war on the Western Front claimed
  thousands of lives, both sides were sending
  millions more men to fight on the Eastern Front,
  along the German and Russian border.
• Without modern technology, the Russian army was
  barely able to hang on.

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The Eastern Front

• By 1916, Russias war effort was near collapse.
• They had yet to become industrialized, so they
  were continually short on food, guns, ammunition,
  clothes, boots, and blankets.
• The Russian army did have one asset its
  numbers. Throughout the war, Russia suffered
  enormous battlefield losses.

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III. War Affects the World
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The World at War

• By early 1915, it was apparent to all the warring
  nations that swift victory had eluded them.
• As war on both European fronts promised to be a
  grim, drawn-out affair, all the Great Powers
  looked for new allies to tip the balance.
• They also sought new war fronts on which to
  achieve victory.

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The World at War
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The U. S. Role

• At first, the U.S. was neutral, selling goods to
  both the Allies and the Central Powers.
• Then, on May 7, 1915, the British liner,
  Lusitania is sunk by a German U-boat, killing
  1,198 people, including 128 Americans.

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The U. S. Role

• By 1917, failed crops and a British naval
  blockade, caused severe food shortages in Germany
• They were desperate to strike back.
• The Germans announced that their submarines would
  sink without warning any ship in the waters
  around Britain, a policy called unrestricted
  submarine warfare.
• Ignoring warnings by U.S. President Woodrow
  Wilson, German U-boats sank three American ships.

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The U. S. Role

• In February 1917, a German telegram, known as the
  Zimmerman note, was intercepted which suggested
  an alliance between Germany and Mexico.
• It said if war with the U.S. broke out, Germany
  would support Mexico in recovering its lost
  territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.
• On April 2, 1917 President Woodrow Wilson asked
  Congress to declare war.

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The U. S. Role

• Only about 200,000 men were in service at that
  time.
• American officers had little combat experience.
• Almost all of the armys weapons were outdated.
• The Selective Service Act passed in May 1917
  drafted 3 million men chosen by lottery.

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War Affects the Home Front

• World War I soon became a total war, the
  countries devoted all their resources to the war
  effort.
• In Great Britain, Germany, Austria, Russia, and
  France, the entire force of government was
  dedicated to winning the conflict.

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War Affects the Home Front

• In each country, the wartime government took
  control of the economy.
• Governments told factories what to produce and
  how much.
• Nearly every able-bodied civilian was put to work.

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War Affects the Home Front

• So many goods were in short-supply that
  governments turned to rationing.
• Rationing is a system where people can only buy
  small amounts of goods, such as butter and shoes.

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War Affects the Home Front

• Governments also censored news about the war.
• Many leaders feared that honest reporting of the
  war would turn people against it.
• Governments also used propaganda one sided
  information designed to persuade support for the
  war.

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The Wars Impact on Women

• Thousands of women replaced men in factories,
  offices, and shops.
• Women built tanks and munitions, plowed fields,
  paved streets, and ran hospitals.
• Although most women left the work force when the
  war ended, they changed many peoples views of
  what women were capable of doing.

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IV. A Flawed Peace
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The War Ends

• Although there were no Allied forces on German
  soil or no decisive battle that had been fought,
  the German war machine and economy were too
  exhausted to continue.
• So on Nov. 11, 1918, the two sides signed an
  armistice, an agreement to stop fighting.

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The War Ends
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The Treaty of Versailles

• On January 18, 1919, a conference to establish
  the terms of peace began at the Palace of
  Versailles, outside Paris.
• Delegates from 32 countries attended the talks.

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The Treaty of Versailles

• U.S. Pres. Wilson presented a plan for peace
  known as the Fourteen Points.
• The plan called for liberty and
  self-determination for all.
• The Allies rejected his plan.

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The Treaty of Versailles

• Britain and France were more concerned with
  national security.
• They wanted to strip Germany of its war-making
  power.
• They also wanted Germany to pay for the suffering
  the war had caused.

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The Treaty of Versailles

• The Treaty of Versailles, signed on June 28,
  1919, called for the following
• A League of Nations whose goal would be to keep
  peace among nations.

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The Treaty of Versailles

• The establishment of new nations including
  Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Yugoslavia.
• New territories for Britain and France in the
  Middle East.

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The Treaty of Versailles

• Limited Germanys military and forced them to pay
  reparations in the amount of 33 billion.
• Forced Germany to acknowledge that it alone was
  responsible for the war.

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Results of the Treaty of Versailles

• In the end, the Treaty of Versailles did little
  to build a lasting peace.
• The U.S., considered after the war to be the
  dominant nation in the world, rejected the
  treaty.
• Sowed seeds that led to the 2nd World War.

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Results of the Treaty of Versailles

• The treaty humiliated Germany.
• Other nations were no less responsible for the
  start of the war.
• A severe economic depression made it impossible
  for Germany to pay the reparations.
• The German mark became practically worthless.

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Results of the Treaty of Versailles

• Russia felt ignored.
• They fought with the allies for three years and
  suffered higher casualties than any other nation.
• The new government, the U.S.S.R. became
  determined to regain the territory it lost.

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The Legacy

• Both sides paid a tremendous price in terms of
  human life.
• 8.5 million dead
• 21 million wounded
• An entire generation of Europeans were wiped out
  became known as the Lost Generation.
• In addition, over 300 billion dollars were spent
  fighting the war, a staggering amount for that
  time.
• The Great War shook European society to its
  foundations