World War I 19141918

1
World War I (August 1914 - Nov. 1918)

• Suspicion of Alliances
• Weapons of Destruction Machine Guns, Artillery,
  Gas
• Trench Warfare
• Major Events and Battles
• Casualties and Cost

2
Suspicion and Alliances

• Triple Alliance (Central Powers)
• Triple Entente(the Allies)
• Europeans deeply distrusted each other.
• Other causes

3
Paris The First Day of Mobilization, Sunday
August 2 1914
4
WEAPONS OF DESTRUCTION

• Industrialization advances in technology
• armored vehicles, submarines (u-boat),
• aircraft (Zeppelins Planes), bombs,
• flame-thrower, tank, poison gas, grenades,
• the machine gun.
• Warfare strategies had not adapted to these new
• weapons.

5
The Machine Gun
British Vickersfired 8 rounds per second, at a
distance of 2,900 yards.
6
Super Killing Machines

• They drove men into trenches and foxholes.
• War, became a battle of inches (stalemate)

7
Artillery
Industrialization the arms race created
artillery that fired with greater power and
carried much farther than before.
8
Battle of Verdun 1916

• 24 million shells used
• equates to 1,000 shells
• per square meter of the
• Battlefield.

9
CHEMICAL WARFARE

• Types Mustard, Chlorine, Phosgene
• Drifted in the windoften affected their own
• troops

10

• Burned body lungs
• caused blindness, asphyxiation, death
• Chemical Warfare banned after World War I

Survivors of a Gas Attack
11
TRENCH WARFARE
Stretched for 475 miles, from the North Sea in
No. France to the Mts. of the Swiss Border.
Trench Line Along Western Front
12
Soldiers preparing to go over the top.
Trench warfare consisted of mass charges of
infantry preceded by long artillery bombardments.
13
View of no mans land

• Strip of territory between trench lines,
• laden with barbed wire and landmines.
• Average width250 yards

14
Few soldiers ever made it to the other sides
trenches.
15
Life in the Trenches

• Dangerous, boring, and terrifying
• Subjected to constant artillery bombardment
• Sell shock and diseasetyphus trench foot

16
Life in the Trenches
Crowded, damp, muddy rat infested
17
Battle of Tannenberg May-August 1914

• Germans Austrians push Russians
• out of East Prussia Carpathian Mts.

• Russians retreat beyond Brest-Litovsk,
• Poland.

• Russia--one million killed or wounded
• one million captured.

18
Battle of the Marne Sept.-Nov. 1914

• Germans encounter heavy
• resistance at the Marne River

• French Germans dig
• defensive trenches

• Halts German offensive

19
Battle of Ypres, Belgium November 1914

• Last open Battle of the Western Front

• British and French halt German advance to
• English Channel

• German French Casualties
• 300,000 killed 600,000 wounded

20
Battle of Salonika, Greece Nov. 1915

• Allies aided Serbia against
• Bulgaria(joined Central Powers
• October 1915).

• By December, Serbia crushed by
• Germany, Aust-Hungary, Bulgaria

• Tied up 500,000 Allied troops.

21
Battle of Gallipoli April-Dec. 1915

• Objectives
• Open the Dardanelles to supply Russia
• through the Black Sea.

• Prevent Turks from disrupting Suez
• Canal trade.

• Strengthen British colonial interests
• in the Middle East.

22
Gallipoli 1915
Allied troops, mostly ANZUS (Australian NZ,
lost between 200-400,000 before retreating.
23
Battle of Verdun February-July 1916

• Germans believed they could win a war of
  attrition
• w/ Allies.

• Verdun, a series of fortifications in rolling
  hills.

• Almost 1,000,000 killed or wounded.

• French lost 325,000 (90,000 killed), in one
  assault at
• Dead Mans Hill.

24
Battle of the Somme July-Nov. 1916

• British French felt a massive assault on German
  forces
• would turn tide of war.

• After a week of constant bombardment, the British
  came
• out of their trenches.

• By the end of the first day, British casualties
  were 110, 000
• (19,000 dead).

25
Battle of the Somme 1916

• Britain lost 420,000 France-200,000
  Germany-650,000.

• More British soldiers died in the first three
  days at the Somme than
• Americans in WWI, Korea Vietnam combined.

• Ends in a Stalemate

26
Casualties Cost

• Armistice signed on November 11, 1918 _at_ 11 am
• 10 million soldiers killed, 20 million wounded

27

• Homelessness, food shortages high prices
• 13 million civilians killed disease, famine
  injuries

28

• Industry manufacturing dropped 25 below 1914
  levels
• Cities lay in ruins, transportation in some areas
  was impossible
• Estimated total cost 350 billion

29
Ideals were destroyed most Europeans were
ashamed as they looked at their huge cemeteries.
30
Reshaped the map of Europe

• 8 new nations Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia,
• Yugoslavia, Finland, the Baltic States
• (Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania)
• 4 new mandates in the Middle East (from Ottoman
  Empire)
• Syria, Trans-Jordan, Iraq, Palestine
• League of Nations--attempt to create an
  international
• organization to settle disputes before they
  escalated to war

31
Bibliography
Brouwer, Rene. The First World War 1914-1918.
Available at http//home.zonnet.nl/rene.brouwer/
Carlson, Robert. The Great War. The Great War
Webring. Available at http//www.westfront.de/
Iavarone, Mike.World War One. Trenches on the
Web. Available at http//www.worldwar1.com/ Ro
berts, J.M., A History of the World. Viking
Penguin New York 1995.