World war I

1. World war I The World’s First Global War

2. The dawn of the 20th century • At the dawn of the 20th century, Europe's competing nations were as quarrelsome as ever. • Nationalism and imperialism increased tensions and conflict among the Great Powers of Europe as they competed for military power and colonial possessions. • European countries strengthened their armies and navies and formed alliances so they would have friends in case of war.

3. Alliances • These entangling alliances meant that a fight between any two nations could drag more countries into the conflict. Europe was a powder keg waiting to explode.

4. The shot that changed the world • In August 1914, a young Serbian nationalist, hoping to trigger an uprising of Serbs living in Austria, assassinated Archduke Francis Ferdinand, the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary. • The spark that ignited World War I came from the Balkans, a region of many cultures and ethnic groups north of Greece that included the nation of Serbia.

5. The first global war • Serbia's friend Russia declared war on Austria. • The system of entangling alliances kicked in trapping Europe in an unstoppable chain of events. • Six weeks after the assassination, much of Europe was at war

6. alliances • The alliance led by Russia, France, and Britain, was known as the Allies • The alliance of Austria-Hungary, Germany and the Turkish Ottoman Empire was called the Central Powers.

7. The central powers • With enemies on both sides, the Central Powers had to fight a war on two fronts. • The fighting in Belgium and France was the Western Front • The war in Russia was the Eastern Front

8. New technology in WWI • Five new technologies changed the nature of warfare: • The airplane • The tank • The submarine • Poison gas • The machine gun

9. The machine gun • Machine gun was the most devastating. • At the beginning of the war, generals familiar with an earlier style of combat hurled heroic cavalry and infantry charges against the enemy, but horses and human bodies offered little resistance to machine gun bullets.

10. trench warfare • Soldierson the Western Front began digging hundreds of miles of muddy, rat-infested trenches where they tried to hide from machine guns and exploding artillery shells.

11. trench warfare • Between the trenches lay a "no man's land" of barbed wire, shattered trees, shell craters, and rotting corpses. • When ordered to attack, soldiers climbed out of their trenches, ran across no man's land toward the enemy trenches, and were mowed down like fields of wheat by machine gun, rifle, and artillery fire.