World War One (1914-18)

1. “Rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.” World War One (1914-18) Be sure to use the Cornel Notes system !! Ch. 8, Sec. 1

4. The Five Great Powers: 1914 German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck’s adage was always to be in a majority of three in any dispute among the five great European powers. He wanted to preserve Germany’s peaceful ties with Russia, but the Kaiser didn’t renew Germany’s friendship with Russia.

5. Ι. The Road to WWI. A. Nationalism and “System of Alliances.” 1. Triple Alliance (1882) – Germany, Austria-Hungary, & Italy (Italy changes sides). Otto von Bismarck of Germany

6. 2. Triple Entente (1907) – UK, France, & Russia. “Entente” means agreement

8. 3. Class conflict: a) Lower classes wanted ↑ power. b) Labor Unions: better pay & conditions. c) Socialism. 4. Militarism – Aggressive prep for war. a) Industrial Revolution – more destructive weapons. b) ↑ of armies. c) Conscription (military draft), 1913.

9. The Draft was nothing new: samurai in Japan, warriors in Aztec Empire, and militiamen of ancient Greece & Rome. Triple Alliance (Red):Triple Entente (Orange): German = 900,000 menBritish = 250,000 Aust-Hung = 450,000French = 800,000 Italian = 300,000Russia = 1.3 million

10. European countries all had conscription by 1914. “System of Alliances” ACTIVITY Leader Army Reserves Positives (+) Negatives (-) Aust-Hung Great Britain France Germany Italy Russia

11. B. Outbreak of the Great War (1914). 1. Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Aust-Hung was assassinated in Sarajevo, June 28, 1914. Franz (Francis) Ferdinand and his wife, Sophia.

12. a) Black Hand (Gavrilo Princip) – Wanted Bosnia free of Aust-Hung rule. 2. Aust-Hung, supported by Germany (Kaiser William II), declared war on Bosnia, July 28, 1914. Kaiser William II Emperor Franz Joseph Ferdinand of Aust-Hung Gavrilo Princip

13. Bang bang, Gavrilo PrincipBang bang, shoot me GavriloBang bang, the first six are for youBang bang, the seventh is for meBang bang, Gavrilo PrincipBang bang, Europe's going to weepAll for you, all for you, all for you, Sophia (x4)Bang bang, history's completeBang bang, shoot me GavriloBang bang, the first six are for youBang bang, the seventh is for meBang bang, Gavrilo PrincipBang bang, shoot me Gavrilo All for you, all for you, all for you, Sophia (x4)The Black Hand holds the gunThe devil takes his runUrban, take the Appel QuayIt's June the twenty-eighthThe seventh was for meBang bang, Gavrilo PrincipBang bang, shoot me GavriloBang bang, the first six are for youBang bang, the seventh is for meBang bang, Gavrilo PrincipBang bang, shoot me Gavrilo “All For You, Sofia”by Franz Ferdinand

17. C. Italy joins Allies ($ & land). 1. Allied Powers (Allies) – Fra, UK, Rus, & Ita. 2. Central Powers – Germ, Aust-Hung (later Bulgaria & Ottoman Emp).

18. Triple Entente and Triple Alliance before WWI. How could the Central Powers be limited on the water? The Allies and the Central Powers at beginning of WWI.

19. ΙΙ. The War (1914-1918). Clockwise from top: Trenches on the Western Front; a British Mark IV tank crossing a trench; Royal Navy battleship HMS Irresistible sinking after striking a mine at the Battle of the Dardanelles; a Vickers machine gun crew with gas masks, and a Sopwith Camel biplane.

20. Germany’s war plan (Schlieffen Plan) was for both France and Russia – invading France through Belgium First, and then invade Russia second. (SHLEE-fun)

21. (SHLEE-fun) A. The Western Front – Schlieffen Plan; Germans through Belgium. 1. 1st Battle of the Marne (Sept, 1914) – Germans stopped @ Marne, near Paris. a) Trench Warfare - Stalemate for 4 years - dug trenches (ditches). French leaders loaded 2,000 taxis w/ soldiers & sent then to front line.

22. Front Line = Green French = Purple British = Red Belgian = Orange German = Yellow ► The trenches would stretch almost 500 miles long by 1918. ► The trenches were about 100 feet apart from each other.

23. Australian trench, Ypres.

24. B. The Great Slaughter (1916-1917). 1. New weapons, tech, industrialization, & trench warfare made WWI deadly. 2. Trench warfare to escape machine-gun fire. a) “No-man’s land” - Land between 2 trenches. No-man’s Land. ► Christmas Eve truce of 1914 – both sides played soccer and exchanged gifts.

25. British soldier French soldiers in the Lorraine region of France.

26. Belgian periscope rifle. French soldiers in Alsace using trench periscope.

27. Officers walking through a flooded communication trench. James Lovegrave interviewed in 1993: “Life in the trenches was hell on earth. Lice, rats, trench foot, trench mouth, where the gums rot and you lose your teeth. And of course dead bodies everywhere.”

28. The British and French troops, by digging and defending trenches, were able to hold the German advance. The use of machine-guns and barbed wire made it difficult for troops to cross the land between the two sets of trenches. This land was called "No Man's Land." “Life was hard in the trenches. Soldiers were often knee-deep in mud and water. Many were drowned when they slipped into flooded shell holes. When the temperature dropped they suffered from frost-bite. The soldiers also had to put up with rats. One pair of rats can produce 880 offspring in a single year and so the trenches were soon swarming with them. They lived mainly off dead bodies, but they were also known to attack wounded or even sleeping soldiers.” ► Allies and Germans both dug tunnels under ‘No-man’s Land’ (Arras, France = Hitler)

29. Trench Warfare - barbed-wire entanglements (5ft X 30-yards), concrete machine-gun nests, other gun batteries, supported by heavy artillery farther back.

30. Canadian troops going “over the top.”

31. Women serving as ambulance drivers, World War One

32. Removing the dead and wounded from the battle front. Industrial Revolution - largely responsible for bringing change to how wars were fought: railroads were able to supply troops much more quickly and replace worn-out troops with ready reserves; factories turned out munitions on a scale never seen before and long bombardments became routine; shelling and bombings maimed, disfigured, and killed many WWI soldiers.

33. C. Battle of Verdun (Feb-Dec 1916) – Symbolic of new kind of war. 1. “They shall not pass,” Honor-bound. 2. German goal: bleed the Fr army white. 3. War of attrition – Wear down other side by constant attacks & heavy losses. The Battle of Verdun was the longest and one of the bloodiest engagements of WWI. An estimated 328,000 German dead and 348,000 French dead. Verdun was a French fortress city on the French / German border.

34. D. New Weapons:  tank, poison gas, airplane, U-boats, battleships, & aircraft carrier (later). 1. The Tank – UK psychological weapon. • Origins = “Little Willie” in 1915 with help from Winston Churchill (1st Lord of Admiralty). Armored vehicle on a Caterpillar tractor w/ a max speed of 3-4 mph, but couldn’t cross trenches. Mark I, in 1916.

35. Battle of the Somme • The Battle of the Somme (July to November 1916), was among the largest battles of WWI. With more than 1.5 million casualties, it is also one of the bloodiest military operations recorded. • The first day of battle, July 1, 1916, the British suffered 57,470 casualties, including 19,240 dead—the bloodiest day in history of British Army. • Adolf Hitler, a message runner, injured (awarded the Iron Cross by a German Jew). New Zealand infantry in the trenches. ► 5 months; 80,000 soldiers never found; British later adopted “creeping” tactics instead of walking together across No-Man’s Land.

36. Tanks were first used in WWI at the Battle of the Somme,1916. They were developed to cope with conditions on the Western Front. • Early stats: • ● 28 tons; average 3-4 MPH; • ● 8-man crew (4-hour limit); • ● 6-lbs & machine guns on side; • ● broke-down a lot; loud; hot; • ● carbon dioxide inside. The original shipping crates of these vehicles were labeled Tanks and the name stuck. The Somme, 1916.

37. British Mark III, 1917. a) Battle of Cambrai (1917) – 1st tank battle in history. • ● First time used in large numbers – • 474 Tanks (not tank on tank since • Germans had no tanks in 1917). • ● Success for one day, broke 3-year • deadlock and crossed Hindenburg • Line (3 sets of ditches), then Germans • counter-attacked and got back 5-miles • of land originally lost. • ● Tanks crushed barb wire; used • anchor to drag it away. Bundles of • hay tied on top of tank to dump into • trenches to cross wide trenches. • ● Had to be used in large #’s, firm/hard • ground, and surprise if possible. British tank stuck in trench, Cambrai, 1917.

38. Dog wearing a gas mask. British gas casualties, Bethune, 1918. Poison Gas (Mustard Gas) Germans in gas masks.

40. 2. Airplanes - 1915, in battle for 1st time. a) Began attacking ground targets (comms). French blimp. •  Plane was only a decade old, considered dangerous w/ no real benefit. • At first, planes were used to spot enemy positions (recon).  Machine guns were later mounted on planes.

41. b) The Red Barron - deadliest fighter pilot. i. 75 yrs later, combat pilots still study tactics.  Manfred von Richthofen had 80 kills; Get close (100 yards) to get a kill.  Crash landed his first time flying; shot down twice (killed 2nd time).  Not a great pilot, but a great marksman (grew up hunting).  Plane painted red. Never had a girlfriend.  Life expectancy – 2 weeks (new skills; unreliable planes).  First Aircraft carrier, 1918 – (British) HMS Argus, carried 18 planes.

42. 3. U-Boats – WWI, patrolled solo to pick off Allied ships. German WWI U-Boat.  Br blockade to starve out the Germans; blocked North Sea; food shortages.  Br merchant ships flew flags of all/neutral nations; Germ: “all Br waters a war zone.”  Russians got a Germ U-boat code book and shared it with Br (Germ didn’t know).

43. E. Weapons improved:  artillery, machine gun, barbed wire, & land mines. Vickers Gun Maxim Gun •  Machine Gun – originally designed to save lives (fewer men on the field), •  “Gatling Gun” – (1861) just after Civil War, multiple barrels, rapid fire (1 vs. 100). •  “Maxim Gun” – American,1883, recoil reload weapon, 1st truly automatic gun. • “Vickers Gun” – Br. var of Maxim Gun, 450 rnds p/ minute, 470 rnds for Oak tree. • Battle of the Somme – machine gun tactics (kill zones) w/ interlocking firing zones.

44. British Howitzer in 1914. British WWI Howitzer.

45. Later in WWI, a mobile German howitzer (43 tons) called Big Bertha (named after Gustav Krupp's wife) could fire a 2,200 lb shell over 9 miles.

46. The Vickers Gun could fire over 600 rounds per minute and had a range of 4,500 yards. Being water-cooled, it could fire continuously for long periods. 80% of all British ground casualties were caused by the machine gun. A painting of Lieutenant Thomas Wilkinson winning the Victorian Cross in 1916 by using a Vickers Gun to stop a German advance.

47. British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill “Tommy Gun” – 1920’s, U.S. Col. Thompson, 1st submachine gun, circular magazine, 100 rounds, ¼ weight of Maxim Gun, used by gangsters after WWI. First gangster hit failed (missed w/ every shot due to firing pushing barrel down – Spike O’Donnell quit bootlegging afterwards. Modified to become a “semi-automatic” to be more accurate for the cops.

48. Grenades (hand-thrown bombs) first began being used in the 16th century. Originally they were hollow iron balls filled with gunpowder and ignited by a slow burning match. To be effective, soldiers had to be able to throw them over 100 feet and the tall, strong soldiers selected for this task became known as grenadiers. In the opening months of WWI the British Army used Grenade No 1 (Mills Bomb). This was a cast-iron canister on an 18 inch stick. Soldiers soon discovered that they were dangerous to use when in a front-line trench. There were several cases of soldiers being killed when the grenade hit the front of the trench. The German stick grenade had a wooden handle about ten inches long that carried a metal canister at his head. The head unscrewed to allow the detonator to be inserted. The screw cap at the end covered a string which was pulled to ignite the fuse inside the head.

49. Gas shells exploding in No-Man's Land. French soldiers. French troops using flamethrowers.

50. F. The Eastern Front – (opposite of Western Front) mobility & Russian defeats. Russian mass grave in Galicia. German victories; Russia no longer a threat to Germ; 2.5 million Russian casualties. Aust-Hung didn’t fare so well (defeated by Russians at Galicia and thrown out of Serbia).