Difference between revisions of "World War I"
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| − | World War I, also known as '''The Great War''', was waged primarily in Europe from 1914 to 1918. It was the first global war in history. World War I also saw the first use of | + | World War I, also known as '''The Great War''', was waged primarily in Europe from 1914 to 1918. It was the first global war in history. World War I also saw the first use of poisonous gas, large artillery, and armored tanks. It was a "total war" because the governments involved took control over the economy and factories, giving first priority to the goods needed for war. Wage and price controls were imposed, there was rationing of goods for civilians, and free speech was limited. The governments put out propaganda to maximize support for the war and dislike of the enemy. World War I caused an entire generation of men to die. |
Revision as of 23:16, April 6, 2007
World War I, also known as The Great War, was waged primarily in Europe from 1914 to 1918. It was the first global war in history. World War I also saw the first use of poisonous gas, large artillery, and armored tanks. It was a "total war" because the governments involved took control over the economy and factories, giving first priority to the goods needed for war. Wage and price controls were imposed, there was rationing of goods for civilians, and free speech was limited. The governments put out propaganda to maximize support for the war and dislike of the enemy. World War I caused an entire generation of men to die.
On one side of the war were the Central Powers, Austria-Hungary, the Second German Empire, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire. The Allies consisted of the British and French Empires, the Tsarist Russian Empire, Italy, Japan, and after 1917, the United States. Although the German Empire was only forty-three years in existence when war broke out, its aim was to achieve domination of the European continent.
Contents
Great Battles of World War I
World War I consisted mostly of trench warfare. This method of waging war was very slow and messy. Soldiers might wait in their trenches for weeks, only to advance a few feet and wait in a new trench. It is not hard to guess why trench warfare has not been used since World War I. There were four important battles which were fought before America joined the war.
Gallipoli
In April 1915, an amphibious Allied force landed on the Turkish peninsula of Gallipoli in a misguided attempt to knock Turkey out of the war. Although the Allies greatly outnumbered the Turks, the extremely tenacious Turkish fighters held their ground. The Allies did not understand the terrain adequately and suffered from limited knowledge of their enemy. Nine months later the Allies had to withdraw, after suffering 46,000 deaths among over 250,000 casualties.
Verdun
In 1916, the Battle of Verdun between the French and Germans may have been the most demanding battle in world history. The struggle started when the Germans attacked Verdun, France, a city surrounded by a ring of underground forts. At least 220,000 soldiers died, and at least 480,000 were wounded in this 10-month struggle that accomplished nothing. At the end the front lines were in nearly the same locations as at the beginning.
Somme
Also in 1916, and also in France, the British and French armies met at the Somme River and began a massive attack on the Germans in order to distract them from Verdun. This became the Battle of the Somme, and the fighting was even heard across the British channel in England. First the Allies shelled the Germans to weaken them, and then 100,000 British soldiers charged the enemy. But the shelling did not have its intended effect, as the Germans were dug in too deeply to be affected by it. On July 1, 1916, the Germans killed 20,000 of the British soldiers and wounded over 40,000, making it the single worst day in British military history. This battle, which did not succeed in moving trench lines, eventually involved over 2 million men along a 30-mile front. The British and French lost nearly 750,000 men.
Third Battle of Ypres or the Battle of Passchendaele
For 18 months the British hid 19 huge land mines underneath the German lines southeast of Ypres, Belgium, a location that had already seen battles in 1914 and 1915. The British then detonated those massive mines, and charged the German positions in July 1917. At first the strategy worked, as the Germans were confused and disorganized. But the British did not pursue the Germans as quickly as they should have. Rain began to drench the area in one of the wettest fall seasons there in years. Soon the British forces were stuck in a mountain of mud, and this Allied plan was yet another failure.
The United States Joins the War
For the first three years of World War I, the United States attempted to stay out of the war. The United States had friends and citizens on both sides of the war, and the wise move was not to move, to remain neutral. When the Germans used a U-boat to sink the Lusitania in 1915, killing over one thousand people, the Americans were outraged. Later, when Britain implemented a naval blockade of Germany, the Germans announced they would sink any ship entering or leaving Britain. They held true to their word and sunk three ships from America with the U-boats. America now had many reasons to fight back, but she was still not ready to join the war.
The German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmermann sent an encrypted telegram to the German ambassador in Mexico which sought to induce Mexico to declare war on the United States. British intelligence intercepted and deciphered the telegram, however, and gave it to the United States to help the British cause. President Woodrow Wilson made the contents of the telgram public. The telegram promised that Germany would help Mexico regain land it had lost to the United States in the Treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo which ended the Mexican War if it would declare was on the United States. At first, the Americans doubted if the telegram was real and thought it had been forged by the British to make America favor them. But then Zimmermann was foolish enough to promise the pledge to Mexico in a public speech.
The Germans had gone too far. On April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson spoke in favor of declaring war on Germany in an address to the joint houses of Congress. Congress then formally declared war on April 6, 1917.[1]
Russia
As the United States was entering the war on the side of the Allies, Russia suffered two successive internal Revolutions which would later caused it to withdraw from the side of the Allies and leave the war altogether. The February Revolution overthrew the centuries old monarchy of the Tsar; the October Revolution ended any hopes for democracy within the former Tsarist territories for another two generations. The lack of success against the German and Austrian Empires, and the hyperinflation caused by unsustainable military spending by the Russian government led to much internal discontent and economic chaos.
Losses and hardship of the war had weakened Russian Czar Nicholas II. He abdicated the throne in March 1917 in favor of a provisional government headed by Alexander Kerensky. Hopes for a democratic revolution still existed at this time. But in October 1917, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, and the Communist Party, which was never strong enough to challenge the Czar, overthrew the fledgling provisional government. The Communists later executed every member of the Czar's family including the children.
Lenin became the founder of the Soviet state. He was both a writer and a revolutionary, a rare combination. He was the brother of the "bomb thrower" Alexander Ulyanov who was hanged for his involvement in terrorist activity and an assassination attempt on Czar Alexander III in 1887. An atheist, he personally converted in 1889 to Marxism. He obtained a law degree shortly afterwards, and by 1895 was a subversive who was arrested and sent to the Tsarist gulag along the Lena River in frigid Siberia where he adopted the name Lenin after the place of his internment. Once he served his time he left for Zurich, where he developed his ideas further and became a leader of the Bolsheviks. He was returned to Russia by the Germans in the wake of chaos during the Kerensky regime with the hope to led the Bolsheviks to power and negotiate a peace settlement with the Germans. After the Versailles Treaty failed to recognize the settlement between Germany and the Soviet Unions in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, he then ruled the Soviet Union and imposed a system of Marxism-Leninism (communism) that remained in force there until the 1990s.
The Western Front
The exit of Russia allowed Germany to shift a majority of their troops from the eastern front to the western front. This gave them a final chance to try and break the Allies before the Americans arrived. Known as Operation Michael, the German offensive began in March of 1918.
The Germans launched five major campaigns in a four month period in 1918 on the Western Front. The Germans had technology and lots of energy. They had elite storm-troopers with automatic rifles, light machine guns, flame-throwers and artillery fire. They used poisonous mustard gas lavishly. They easily defeated the British Fifth Army. The Germans were advancing and taking property.
But fresh American troops entered the scene. In the Second Battle of the Marne in July 1918, the Allies started winning. Nine American divisions fought in this battle about 75 miles northeast of Paris. The Germans started this battle on another one of their offensives, but the Americans turned the tables and enabled the Allies to win it. Casualties were enormous for everyone, including the Americans. Former President Teddy Roosevelt’s son Quentin was killed in this battle.
American Capt. Jesse Woolridge, 38th Inf., 3rd Division described the battle as follows: “It’s God’s truth that one Company of American soldiers beat and routed a full regiment of picked shock troops of the German Army ... At ten o’clock ... the Germans were carrying back wounded and dead [from] the river bank and we in our exhaustion let them do it - they carried back all but six hundred which we counted later and fifty-two machine guns... We had started with 251 men and 5 lieutenants...I had left 51 men and 2 second lieutenants."
The War Ends
As the Americans and the Allies advanced toward Germany, the Ottoman Turks and Bulgarians surrendered. There was a revolution in Austria-Hungary that overthrew its government, and Germany would not recognize that new government. Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated his throne in Germany on November 1918, and the Germans formed a new republic. Members of the German republic signed an armistice (agreement to stop fighting) on November 11, 1918. The "war to end all wars", was over.
Further reading
- War By Time-Table: How the First World War Began, A.J.P. Taylor, New York: American Heritage, 1969.
