World War I: A New Kind of War

1. World War I: A New Kind of War CH 27 Section 2

2. The Belligerents • The warring countries formed two powerful sides • {Central Powers-consisted of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire • Allied Powers- were Great Britain, France, and Russia} • The Central powers had the advantage of easy communication and rapid troop movement • The allied powers had more troops and were more industrialized than the central powers • This along with Britain having the largest navy in the world allowed them to get food or raw materials from anywhere in the world • It also gave them the ability to blockade the central powers

4. Innovations in warfare • Because WWI was an industrialized war weapons were mass produced as never before and were also trying new weapons • {The Germans were the first to effectively use submarines (or U boats) in naval warfare} along with poison gas on the battlefield • Among new weapons were machine guns and long range artillery • Machine guns originally were fired by a team of people and to defend against them trenches were dug

6. Continued • {Another new weapon was the airplane} which were mainly used for observing troop movement at the beginning of WW I • Later they were used against other enemy airplanes in dogfights and for dropping bombs on enemy targets • {In 1916 Britain introduced the tank which would tear through barbed wire and cut through enemy defenses} • Even the soldiers were changed most fighting in this war were drafted civilians and before they were professional soldiers • The government also used propaganda to back the war effort

8. Early years of the war • Belgium wanted to remain out of the war • Germany asked to pass through on their way to France and Belgium declined • {Germany went through Belgium anyway bringing Britain into the war} • By September 1914 the {Germans were as far as the Marne river on their way to Paris when they met resistance from the French and British} • The battle of the Marne changed the entire nature of the war when both sides dug in and soon had trenches dug from Switzerland to the north sea

9. Trench Warfare

10. Western Front • Late in August 1914 the Russians battled a German force at the Battle of Tannenberg The Russian army suffered a humiliating defeat. About half its force was lost, • With this victory, the Germans launched an offensive, moving into Russian Poland. • Russia did not have the weapons to equip its soldiers properly • In 1915 Great Britain and France tried to change this situation. They decided to try to force their way through the Dardanelles so they could capture Constantinople. • They hoped to remove the Ottoman Empire from the war. Then they would be able to get needed supplies to the Russians.

11. Naval Warfare • {The British decided to blockade the North Sea to keep merchant ships from reaching Germany} • At first the blockade was aimed at cutting off the flow of raw materials to German factories • Eventually the blockade became an attempt to ruin the German economy and starve the German people. • In May 1916 the only large naval battle of the war was fought, at the Battle of Jutland, in the North Sea off the coast of Denmark • Both Germany and Great Britain claimed victory, However, the German navy remained in port for the rest of the war.

12. German U Boat

13. The Lusitania • {In the process of this naval war a German U boat sank the British passenger ship the Lusitania} • The passengers on the ship included 128 Americans • The attack was denounced by Woodrow Wilson and angered many Americans who wanted to join the war • Understanding they could not afford America entering the war, Germany backed off their unrestricted submarine warfare

14. The Lusitania

15. The Stalemate • By late 1915 the war in the west had become a stalemate on land as well as on sea • Both sides wondered if they would be able to break through the others front lines • Both sides continued to attack exchanging small pieces of land and losing thousands of lives in the process • The conflict became a {war of attrition a slow wearing-down process in which each side was trying to outlast the other}

16. The United States and World War I • Most Americans had agreed with President Wilson’s declaration in 1914 that the United States should be neutral and that the war was strictly a European affair. • According to international law, however, if a ship carried contraband the goods could be seized. • British propaganda had a great influence on Americans. Stories about German {atrocities-brutal acts against defenseless civilians}-angered Americans. They did not realize that many of the stories were exaggerated or not true. • {In January, Arthur Zimmermann sent a secret telegram to the German ambassador in Mexico proposing an alliance between Germany and Mexico}

18. The Zimmerman note • In the Zimmerman note Germany offered to help Mexico regain Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas if it would help fight on Germany’s side • The British intercepted the telegram and decoded it and it was then published in American newspapers. • Americans were enraged.

19. America Joins the war • After the Zimmerman note and the sinking of the Lusitania the American people understood it was a matter of time before they joined the war • As a result Germany continued their unrestricted u boat attacks • None of the Central powers had a democratic government while all of the allied powers had so • When revolutionaries in Russia overthrew the czarist government president Wilson went to Congress and said “the world must be made safe for democracy” • On April 6, 1917 the Congress voted to declare war on Germany

20. Review Questions • Who made up the Central powers? • Who made up the Allied powers? • Who were the first to effectively use submarines in war? • Name two new weapons used for the first time during this war. • Germans were as far as the Marne river on their way to Paris when they met resistance from what two countries? • What was the name f the British passenger ship the Germans sank?