Transcript The British Gazette “It seems as if Britain is about to lose this war”

WWI Lecture #2- Total War
• Stalemate/War of
Attrition
• Attempts to Break the
Stalemate- Military
Technologies
• Total War
• Key Turning Points
Stalemate/War of Attrition
• Review
– The Schlieffen Plan almost worked, but the British
and French held out in a desperate battle at the
Marne River
• Trench building
– The ‘race to the sea’
– Eventually, realizing they couldn’t defeat the
French quickly, the Germans built trenches too, to
make sure they weren’t counterattacked
Paris
Marne
Trench Warfare
• Barbed wire. No Man’s Land. Over the top.
• Defenses were simply too strong
• Verdun and Somme were battles that became
symbolic of hopeless slaughter
–
–
–
–
Over half a million killed in each
Neither gained more than 5 miles of territory
20,000 killed in the Battle of the Somme on the first day
Traditional goals of battle are abandoned in favor of
slaughter
•
Goal at Verdun was to ‘bleed the French army white’
Attempts to Break the Stalemate
***New Military Technologies***
• Since ‘Over the
Top’ Isn’t
Working, You
Need
Something Else
• Doesn’t it make
sense that the
tank was
invented in
WWI?
U.S.
French Tank
Irony of British Development of the Tank
• British ended up thinking the tank was a failure
– Too expensive
– Often broke down
– After WWI, did not focus much on tank
development
• Germans think tank is an awesome weapon
– Why would they have a unique perspective?
– They do focus on the tank after WWI
– In WWII…
New Air Technology
• First War fought from the air!!! Remember, the
Wright Brothers flew for the 1st time in 1903
Germans used Zeppelins
-Both Zeppelins and Airplanes
were useful for spying and
dogfighting, but air power didn’t
have that big an impact on World
War I
- Occasionally small bombs were
dropped
-Will be hugely important in World
War II, so worth noting now
Submarines had a bigger impact.
• Germans especially
used submarines to
attack enemy ships.
• Does it make sense that
Germany relied on
subs (aka U-Boats)?
Poison Gas!!!
A.
Total War
• “when a nation focuses
its complete energies on
victory in a war”
• Are we in a total war
with Iraq/Afghanistan
now?
Gov’t Control of
the Economy
• Rationing
• Vital industries taken
over by the gov’t
and turned towards
war production
Propaganda
• ‘messages created
for a mass audience
and meant to
influence their
thinking in a
desired way’
Censorship
• “A reduction in the
freedoms of speech and
the press to prevent
unwanted messages
from reaching an
audience”
• Important tidbitGerman civilians aren’t
aware they are about to
lose until it happens…
will be important later
The British Gazette
“It seems as if
Britain is about to
lose this war”
Everyone is Encouraged/Ordered to Help
• For able bodied men- the German Auxiliary Service
Law
• School children hunt for metals to recycle
• Old women knit socks for the troops
• Young women go to work in factories to replace men
taken to ‘the front’
– Helps explain the success of women’s suffrage
movements after the war
• If everyone is helping, are there civilians?
– Bombing of civilians is widely accepted
Roots of ‘Totalitarian’ Government
• Censorship, propaganda, gov’t control of
economy
• After World War I, we will discuss the rise
of Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini
• People had already been conditioned to
follow governments during WWI
Each Side Sought to Weaken the
Other’s Total War Efforts
• Naval Blockades
– Germany develops a way to ‘fix’ nitrogen out
of the air, which helps it withstand the British
blockade
• Germany Uses the U-Boat to ‘siege’
England
Attempts to Force Nations to the Breaking Point
Led To the Major Turning Points of the War
• First nation to break under the strain?
– Russia
– Least industrialized nation
– Why is this so huge for Germany?
• However, Germany is on the brink too, and they
place a U-Boat siege on Britain in a desperate
attempt to force the British to give up
– Unrestricted submarine warfare
– U.S. was already leaning towards Britain
– When a British ship (the Lusitania) was sunk with
Americans on board, the U.S. entered the war and onto
the Western Front
•
2 million fresh soldiers
Germany Quickly Collapsed
• Kaiser stepped down and fled to Holland
• Moderate socialists in Germany, who had
been hoping for peace for a while,
negotiated surrender terms
• Germany itself was never invaded