Transcript WWI Spreads (World)

The Great War
War spreads throughout Europe
How the whole thing got started
 The assassination of Archduke
Ferdinand in June of 1914 was the
spark that started a wildfire in Europe
 Europe was already separated into two
alliances
 Triple Entente = Britain, France &
Russia
 Triple Alliance = Austria-Hungary,
Germany & Italy
 In response to Austria’s declaration of
war on Serbia, the Russians moved
troops to the Austrian-Russian border
 Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany saw this
as a threat and declared war on Russia
How the conflict widens
 Russia looked to France for help, but
Germany declared war on France
before they could even decide
 Germany adopted the Schlieffen Plan
 Germany figured if they had to fight
a war on two fronts (locations) they
should pick where to start
 Schlieffen Plan: A major portion of
the Germany army would attack
France on the west and then return to
fight Russia in the east.
 The Germans figured that Russia
would have a harder time mobilizing
(preparing) for war b/c it lacked
railroads
Everyone Chooses Sides
 Germany wanted to get to France, but
the French had soldiers lined along the
German/French border
 Going through Belgium gave Germany
an alternate route
 When Belguim refuse to let Germany
pass through the Germans invaded
 Britain joined the conflict to protect its
allies as well as neutral Belgium
 The Triple Alliance & Entente were
changed b/c of the invasion of Belgium
 Central Powers: Germany, AustriaHungary, Ottoman Empire & Bulgaria
 Allied Powers: Britain, France, Russia,
Japan & Italy
 Italy dropped out of its alliance w/
Germany after it invaded Belgium
 Nine months later it joined the Allied
Powers
Germany Attacks Western Front
 At first, Germany’s Schlieffen
Plan worked well
 The Germans had trampled
through Belgium & made it to
France by September 1914
 In the early days of September it
looked like the Germans were
about to take Paris
 However, Germany’s lightning
quick attack had turned into a
long drawn out bloody stalemate
in France
 The battlefields of Northern
France became known as the
Western Front
Germany Invades France
 On Sept. 5th the Germans attacked the
northeast outskirts of Paris along the
Marne River
 However, the French had received
intelligence beforehand telling them the
exact location of the attack
 French put every soldier @ Marne even
rushing reinforcements by taxi
 After four days, the Germans retreated
 By Sept. 13th the Germans had been
pushed back 60 miles
 The defeat destroyed the Schlieffen Plan
b/c it called for a quick victory in the
west and then attack Russia in the east
 When Russia invaded Germany from
the east, Germany had to split their
troops to fight on both the Western &
Eastern Front
Trench Warfare
 By early 1915, the Central & Allied powers
had dug miles of parallel trenches to
protect themselves from enemy fire
 Trench warfare: soldiers fought in
trenches. Huge losses in men, resulted in
only small gains in land (sometimes only
hundreds of feet)
 Life in the trenches was difficult at best.
Soldiers lived in mud and had to endure all
kinds of weather
 They suffered with rats & lice
 If men survived artillery fire they often
suffered from trench foot, dysentery & shell
shock
 The land between opposing trenches was
called “no-man’s land”
 Lined with barbed wire & dangerous b/c
one was an easy target to enemy fire
War Comes to a Standstill
 The Western Front stretched 500
miles from the North Sea to the Swiss
border
 There were many new weapons &
tools first introduced in WWI
 The airplane, armored tank, machine
gun & submarine were all new
 Everyone thought that these new tools
would make war more fast paced
 Soldiers soon realized that it just
caused more casualties, with little
gain in land
 The Germans tried to break the
stalemate when they introduced
posion gas as a weapon in 1915
 It eventually became a tool for both
sides
 Mustard and Chlorine gas caused
blinding, blisters & death by choking
War Rages on in East
 People tend to forget that while
battles were being fought on the
Western Front, there were just a
fierce warfare in the east
 The Eastern Front of the war was
fought along the German and
Russian border
 Russians/Serbs vs.
Germans/Austrians/Turks
 Battles on the Eastern Front
tended to be more mobile than
the trench warfare in the west
 But again there was little gain on
either side during the early years
of the war
Russians Try to Hold On
 Russia launched its initial attack in
Germany & Austria
 At first, the Russians were successful in
Austria during the fall of 1914
 However, during this same time period
the Russians were being forced to retreat
from Germany
 With help from the Germans the
Austrians pushed Russia out by Dec.
1914
 Things didn’t look good for the nonindustrialized Russians.
 By 1916 they were short on supplies
 2 million Russians were killed, captured
or wounded in 1915
 However, they were hanging tough and
occupying the German army
War Spreads Outside of Europe
 The Great War spread beyond
Europe in 1915
 The British & French attacked the
Ottoman controlled Gallipoli
peninsula in the Middle East
(2/1915)
 Gallipoli turned into another
bloody stalemate
 However the British supported
Arabs in the Middle East who
revolted against the Ottomans
 The British & French recruited
natives from their imperial
holdings in places like Egypt, S.
Africa, India & Indochina
 These groups attacked German
holdings in Africa & Asia
 While Japan hit German ports in
China
United States Joins War
 Germany was short on food b/c bad crops & British naval
blockade
 Germany responded by putting a blockade around Britain
 Germany warned the world that it would sink any ship near
Britain
 On 5/7/1915 the German U-boats (submarines) sank the Lusitania
a British passenger ship
 Germany said they sunk the ship b/c ammunition was on board
 However, 128 Americans died, putting the country in outrage
 Germany gambled & thought they could cripple Britain before
the U.S. could enter the war, so they continued sinking ships
 The final straw for the U.S. came when Britain decoded a message
from Germany to Mexico in Feb. 1917
 The Zimmerman Note was a German proposal for Mexico to align
itself with the Central Powers & attack the U.S.
 On April 2, 1917 President Woodrow Wilson & Congress
declared war on Germany