FIGHTING%20WORLD%20WAR%20I

1
FIGHTING WORLD WAR I
2
Woodrow Wilson

• Woodrow Wilson was elected President in 1912.
  His theories on world peace included a belief in
  democracy and economic stability. One of his
  main goals was to keep the US out of conflicts in
  Europe.

3
Nationalism in Europe

• Europe was divided into small nationalistic
  states, each seeking to assert power over the
  other.

4
Europe Today
5

• Serbs, Bosnians, Croats and Slovenes had similar
  languages and cultures. They called themselves
  Yugoslavs.
• Serbs were the first to gain independence
  formed Serbia.
• This area of Europe is known as the Balkans.

6

• In 1908, Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia. They
  had no intentions of allowing the Slavic peoples
  to be independent.

7

• June 1914 Archduke Franz Ferdinand (heir to the
  Austro-Hungarian throne) and his wife Sofie are
  killed by a Serbian nationalist.
• July 28th, Austria declared war on Serbia.

8
The Great War begins

• Europe begins to divide into two camps

9
Names to Remember

• The Great War
• The War to End all Wars
• The European War
• World War I
• WWI was the first war to pit entire societies
  against one another.

10
Lusitania

• In 1915, a German U boat sank the British ship
  Lusitania.
• The Germans claimed that the ship was carrying
  weapons (it probably was)
• It held over 2200 passengers, including
  Americans. Nearly 1200 died.
• German unrestricted submarine warfare led the
  U.S. to join the Allies in the war

11

• By spring of 1917, The Great War had devastated
  Europe and claimed millions of lives
• Old strategies and new technologies resulted in
  heavy damage.
• Where have we heard this before? Explain.

12

• Trench warfare demonstrated that troops who dug
  in and relied on modern rifles and machine guns
  could hold off an enemy for months.

13

• On the Western Front, trenches stretched from the
  English Channel to the Swiss border.
• The land between the trenches was called no
  mans land.
• The only way to win a trench war was to run
  across and drop grenades into other trenches
  after heavy artillery fire. This resulted in
  heavy losses and slow progress.

14
(No Transcript)
15
New Weapons

• U boats (submarines)
• machine guns
• grenades
• poison gas
• tanks
• airplanes

16
Over There

• 1917 the U.S. enters the war after nearly 3
  years of attempting to affect the outcome without
  becoming embroiled in it.
• Nearly 2 million doughboys join the Allies.
• U.S. troops were inexperienced but fresh. They
  boosted the morale of the Allies.

17
Minorities Women in the War Effort

• 400,000African-Americans were drafted, of which
  42,000 served overseas as combat troops. Their
  units were racially segregated.
• WWI was the first war in which women officially
  served in the armed forces. .Women served in
  non-combat positions, mainly in clerical and
  nursing positions.
• Women filled industrial jobs vacated by men in
  the military. Nearly half a million
  African-Americans migrated from the South to
  northern industrial jobs. Over 100,000 Mexicans
  moved to America, providing farm/ranch labor and
  wartime factory workers.

18
War Effort on the Homefront

• War Industries Board (WIB) coordinated the
  production of war materials, telling business
  leaders what they could and could not make.
• Victory Gardens, Wheatless Mondays Meatless
  Tuesdays, high prices on farm produce
• Daylight Savings Time introduced to conserve
  energy
• Money to pay for war was obtained by raising
  taxes and borrowing money from the American
  people through the sale of Liberty bonds and
  Victory bonds.

19

• March, 1918 Russia withdrew from the war after
  its Communist revolution. Germany launched a
  massive attack on the Western Front. American
  and French troops were able to stop the offensive
  before the Germans reached Paris.

20
Meuse-Argonne Offensive

• The largest military engagement in U. S. history,
  involving 1.2 million American soldiers, of whom
  117,000 were killed or wounded
• One of a series of Allied attacks known as the
  Hundred Days Offensive, which brought the war to
  an end.
• Began September 26, 1918 and lasted a total of 47
  days.
• The Meuse-Argonne was the principal engagement of
  the American Expeditionary Forces during WWI.

21
Battle of the Argonne Forest

• Gen. Pershing assembled over 600,000 American
  troops and 40,000 tons of supplies for a massive
  attack between the Meuse River and the Argonne
  Forest in France.
• After 6 weeks of fighting, the Americans broke
  through German lines.
• The Meuse-Argonne was one of the bloodiest
  battles in U.S. history, leaving over 26,000 U.S.
  forces dead.

22
The Great War Ends

• A revolution arose in Austria-Hungary. The
  Ottoman Empire surrendered. With the loss of
  their allies, the German people forced the
  Kaiser
  to step down.
• Nov. 11, 1918 at 1100 an armistice
  was signed to end
  the war.

23
Treaty of Versailles

• The Big Four (leaders of the victorious allied
  nations) met in Paris in 1919 for a peace
  conference.
• Germany was not included.
• Pres. Wilson presented his plan, the
  Fourteen Points, based on
  
  justice to all peoples and nationalities. It
  called for the creation of a League of Nations to
  prevent future wars.
• Many of Wilsons proposals were discarded as too
  lenient. The final treaty required Germany to
  acknowledge guilt for the war, pay 33 billion in
  reparations to the Allies, and be stripped of its
  armed forces.

24
Treaty of Versailles

• Four empires were dissolved and nine new
  countries were created (map pg. 477)
• The U.S. Senate, led by Henry Cabot Lodge,
  refused to ratify the Versailles Treaty. Wilson
  suffered a stroke after travelling 8,000 miles in
  3 weeks trying to gain the publics support.
• The U.S. negotiated separate peace treaties with
  each of the Central Powers

25
Impact on United States

• While devastating for Europe, WWI propelled the
  U.S. into a position of international leadership.
• As a military struggle, it was brief, decisive,
  and without the massive casualties suffered by
  others. American deaths numbered 112,000 (half of
  them from influenza or non-combat causes.)
• Economically, the war sparked an industrial boom
  that led to years of prosperity.

26
Impact at Home

• Rapid inflation increases cost of living and
  leads to wave of labor strikes
• Racial Unrest
• Red Scare
• Palmer Raids
• Sense of disillusionmentdesire for return to
  normalcy end of Progressivism

27
(No Transcript)