Transcript 10.5 Lecture – Europe in World War I

10.5 Lecture – Europe
in World War I
I. The Great War Begins
A. In response to Austria’s declaration of war, Russia, Serbia’s ally, began
moving their army toward the Russian-Austrian border.
1. To Germany, Russia’s mobilization amounted to a declaration of
war.
2. On August 1, the German government declared war on Russia.
a. Russia looked to France as an ally.
b. Two days after declaring war on Russia, Germany
declared war on France.
c. Great Britain declared war on Germany.
3. Europe was now locked in battle.
B. Leaders
1. Allied Powers – Triple Entente
a. Great Britain – David Lloyd George
b. France – George Clemenceau
c. United States – Woodrow Wilson
d. Russia – Czar Nicolas I
2. Central Powers – Triple Alliance
a. Germany – Wilhelm (William) II
b. Austria-Hungary – Francis Joseph
C. Throughout Europe, people greeted the outbreak of war with parades and
flags, expecting a quick victory.
1. When the war began, very few imagined that their side might not
win, and no one foresaw that everyone would loose.
D. In Russia the effect of the war was especially devastating, for it destroyed
the old society, opened the door to revolution and civil war, and introduced a
radial new political system.
1. By clearing away the old, the upheaval of war prepared Russia
to industrialize under the leadership of professional revolutionaries.
II. Stalemate 1914-1917
A. The war that erupted in 1914 was known as the “Great War” until the
1940s, when a far greater one overshadowed.
B. Central Powers
1. Germany and Austria-Hungary
a. Location in the heart of Europe
b. Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire would later join the
Central Powers in the hopes of regaining lost territories.
C. Allied Powers
1. Great Britain, France, and Russia
2. Japan and Italy joined
a. Italy had been a member of the Triple Alliance with Germany and
Austria-Hungary.
b. The Italians joined the other side after accusing their former
partners of unjustly starting the war.
D. Late summer 1914, millions of soldiers marched happily off to battle, convinced that
the war would be short.
1. As the summer of 1914 turned to fall, the war turned into a long and
bloody stalemate, or deadlock, along the battlefields of France.
a. This deadlock in France became known as the Western Front.
2. Schlieffen Plan
a. A battle strategy called for attacking and defeating France in the
West and then rushing East to fight Russia.
1. Germany felt they could accomplish this because Russia
lagged behind the rest of Europe in its railroad system and
would take long to supply the front lines.
3. Early September, German forces had swept into France and reached
the outskirts of Paris.
a. On September 5, the Allies regrouped and attacked the
Germans northeast of Paris.
b. 1st major clash on the Western Front.
c. Battle of the Marne
1. The single most important event of the war.
2. The defeat of the Germans left the Schlieffen Plan in
ruins.
4. Russian forces had already invaded Germany.
a. Germany was going to have to fight a long war on two fronts.
E. Fighting
1. The advantage always went to the fastest moving army led by the
boldest general.
2. Believing that a spirited attack would always prevail, French generals
hurled their troops, dressed in bright blue-and-red uniforms, against the
well-defended German border and suffered a crushing defeat.
a. German armies defeated the French and the British.
3. During the next month, both sides spread out until they formed an
unbroken line extending over 300 miles from the North Sea to the border of
Switzerland.
F. The Western Front – Trench Warfare
1. Troops prepared their defenses
a. Their most potent weapons were machines guns, which
provided an almost impenetrable defense against advancing
infantry but were useless for the offensive because they were to
heavy for one man to carry and took to much time to setup.
2. To escape the deadly streams of bullets, soldiers dug holes in the
ground, connected the holes to form shallow trenches, they dug
communications trenches to the rear.
a. The battlefields were scarred by lines of trenches several feet
deep, their tops protracted by sandbags and their floors covered
with planks.
i) The soldiers spent much of the year soaked and
covered in mud.
ii) Trenches swarmed with rats, fresh food was
nonexistent, sleep was nearly impossible.
3. Military terms – it was a war in which defensive capabilities
outperformed offensive ones, so that neither side could achieve significant
break thoughts.
a. A war of position rather than a war of movement.
4. No Man’s Land
a. Four dehumanizing years of living and dying half buried in the
earth, wet, cold, frightened, and bombarded by the most
barbarically ingenious combinations of metal and chemicals the
Western mind could invent.
b. What was extraordinary was that the trenches along the entire
Western Front were connected, leaving no gaps through which
armies could advance.
1. How, then, could either, side ever hope to win?
5. Technology
a. New tools of war
1. Machine guns, poison gas, armored tanks, larger
artillery – had not delivered the fast moving war they had
expected.
2. This new technology only killed large amounts of
people more effectively.
G. The Battles
1. For four years, generals on each side again and again ordered their
troops to attack.
a. They knew the causalities would be enormous, but they
expected the enemy to run out of young men before their own
side did.
b. Thousands of young men on one side climbed out of their
trenches, raced across the open fields, and were mowed down
by enemy machine gun fire.
2. Battle at Verdun, 1916
a. The year 1916 saw the bloodiest and most futile battles of the
war.
b. The Germans attacked French forts at Verdun.
c. The British army tried to relieve the pressure on the French.
1. British forces attacked the Germans Northwest of
Verdun, in the valley of the Somme River.
2. On the first day of battle over 20,000 British soldiers
were killed.
3. Six months later, Germany has still not taken control.
4. In the end more than ½ million soldiers on each side
had died.
3. Battle at Somme, 1916
a. In retaliation, the British attacked the Germans at the Somme
River and suffered 420,000 causalities – 60,000 on the first day
along – while the Germans lost 450,000 and the French 200,000.
b. British introduced new technology, the tank, but failed to be a
success during the war.
c. Thousands of British fell in a 24-hour period.
1. Described as the blackest day in the history of the
British army.
4. It was mass slaughter in a moonscape of mud, steel, and flesh.
a. Both sides attacked and defended, but neither side could win,
for trenches and machine guns stalemated the armies.
b. The Western Front moved no more than a few miles one way or
another.
5. Battle of the Sea
a. The British cut the German overseas telegraph cables,
blockaded the coasts of Germany and Austria-Hungary, and set
out to capture or sink all enemy ships still at sea.
1. So successful that Germany had to receive supplies
from neutral countries – Holland, Denmark, Sweden, and
Norway.
b. Britain ruled the waves but not the ocean below the surface.
1. In early 1915, in retaliation for the British naval
blockade, Germany announced a blockade of Britain by
submarines.
2. Submarines could not rescue the passengers of a
sinking ship or distinguish between neutral and enemy
ships.
3. German submarines attacked every vessel they could.
i) One of their victims was the British ocean
liner, Lusitania.
- The death toll from that attack was
1,198 people, 139 of them Americans.
ii) The US protested, Germany ceased its
submarine campaign, hoping to keep America
neutral.
6. The Battle on the Eastern Front
a. This area was a stretch of battlefield along the German and
Russian border.
1. Russians and Serbs vs Germans and AustroHungarians.
2. More mobile war than on the Western Front
3. Slaughter and stalemate were common.
b. Early fighting
1. Germans crushed the invading Russian army and
drove it into full retreat.
2. Russian forces defeated the Austrians and played a
tug-of-war fight with them during the war.
c. Russia Struggles
1. By 1916, Russia’s war effort was near collapse.
2. Russia had yet to become industrialized.
i) The Russian army was continually short of
food, guns, ammunition, clothes, boots, and
blankets.
ii) Allied shipments were limited due to the
German submarine blockade.
- In the south the Ottomans still
controlled the straits leading from the
Mediterranean to the Black Sea.
3. Russia had only one asset – its numbers
i) Had an enormous population.
III. The Home Front and the War Economy
A. Trench-bound armies demanded even more weapons, ammunition, and
food, so civilians had to work harder, eat less, and pay higher taxes.
1. Textiles, coal, meat, fats, and imported products such as tea
and sugar were strictly rationed.
2. Governments gradually imposed stringent controls over all
aspects of their economies.
B. Civilian Life
1. Food rations were allocated according to need, improving
nutrition among the poor.
2. Unemployment vanished.
a. Thousands of Africans, Indians, and Chinese were
recruited for heavy labor in Europe.
b. Hired women to fill jobs in steel mills, mines, and
ammunitions plants vacated by men off to war.
c. Women became streetcar drivers, mail carriers, and
police officers.
d. Found work in the burgeoning government
bureaucracies.
e. Many joined auxiliary military services as doctors,
nurses, mechanics, and ambulance drivers.
3. Though clearly intended “for the duration only,” these positions gave
thousands of women a sense of participation in the war effort and a taste of
personal and financial independence.
4. German civilians paid an especially high price for the war, for the British
naval blockade severed their overseas trade.
5. After the failure of the potato crop in 1916 came the “turnip winter,” when
people had to survive on 1,000 calories per day, half the normal amount
that an active adult needed.
a. Women, children, and the elderly were especially hard hit.
b. Soldiers at the front went hungry and raided enemy lines to
scavenge food.
C. Affect on Colonies
1. The war also brought hardships to Europe’s African colonies.
2. Many Europeans stationed in Africa joined the war, leaving large areas
with little or no European presence.
3. Over a million Africans served in the various armies, and perhaps three
times that number were drafted as porters to carry army equipment.
4. Faced with a shortage of young Frenchmen, France drafted Africans
into its army, where many fought side by side with Europeans.
D. United States
1. Grew rich during the war.
2. For two and a half years the US stayed technically neutral.
a. It did not fight but did a roaring business supplying France and
Britain.
3. Entered the war in 1917.
a. Business engaging in war production made spectacular profits.
b. Civilians were exhorted to help the war effort by investing their
savings in war bonds and growing food in backyard “victory
gardens.”
4. Facing labor shortages, employers hired women and African Americans.
a. Employment opportunities created by the war played a major
role in the migration of black Americans from the rural south to the
cities of the North