Download The Great War - Galena Park ISD Moodle

The Great War
(WWI)
The Great War’s Many Names
 The Great War
 The ’14 – ’18 War
 The First World War
 World War One
Kings, Kaisers, and Czars
 George V – King of England
 Nicholas II – Czar of Russia
 Wilhelm II – Kaiser of Germany
 They were cousins
The Origins of the Great War
EUROPEAN CAUSES:
 Militarism
 Nationalism
 Alliances
 Imperialism
Militarism
 Aggressive preparation for war
 This includes
Conscription: military draft
Nationalism
 Intense and blind patriotism to your
country
Alliances
 Following the fall of Napoleon, the victors
formed the Concert of Europe to keep the
peace.
 With the rise of Nationalism, countries
began to compete instead of cooperate
 This led to the formation of alliances,
friendship between countries
 There were two big ones
Alliances
 ALLIED POWERS: Good Guys
– Great Britain
– France
– America (1917)
– Italy
– Russia
 CENTRAL POWERS: Bad Guys
– Germany
– Austria-Hungary
– Ottoman Empire
Imperialism
 Stronger nations extend economic,
political, and social power throughout the
world
The Emperor of
Germany, Kaiser Wilhelm
Victor Frederick Albert von
Hohenzollern; Wilhelm II.
Franz Josef II, the
Emperor of Austria, the
Uncle of the Archduke
Franz Ferdinand, and
the only friend of Kaiser
Wilhelm II.
Georges Clemanceau,
the Prime Minister of
France and the Architect
of the Versailles’ Treaty’s
War Guilt Clause, which
placed the blame of the
war squarely on
Germany.
David Lloyd-George, the
Prime Minister of Great
Britain. Hawkish towards war
and criticized for getting in the
way of the Generals.
Albert, King of the Belgians.
Refusing to let the German
Army through his country,
King Albert put on a valiant
stand. The Belgian Army was
crushed in August of 1914, but
it had slowed the German
timetable back enough to
throw off the Schleiffen plan
and give time enough for
Great Britain to send an army
to the continent. The
Germans destroyed Belgium,
but Albert is a hero to the
people of Belgium to this day.
King Constantine of
Greece. Supported by the
Russians and the British in
case of trouble with
Germany and Turkey,
Constantine found help
from neither as the Germans
and the Turks divided his
country piecemeal. Later
British invasions to
Gallipoli and Salonika did
nothing to relieve the
Balkan front.
King Ferdinand of
Bulgaria. Having liberated
his country from the Turks
in the First Balkan War,
Ferdinand was not going to
sit idly by as another
power, Austria-Hungary,
moved deeper and deeper
into the Balkans.
King Ferdinand of
Romania. The Balkans
united behind the cause of
Serbia, tied by their panSlavism and their shared
Orthodox religion. The
Balkans were ready for a
third Balkan War. They had
no idea it was to balloon
into a World War.
King George V of England.
The grandson of Queen
Victoria, a position he shared
with his cousins Kaiser
Wilhelm II of Germany and
Czar Nicholas II of Russia.
George was determined to
check German expansion
towards the Middle East, which
would be a threat to British
Interests spearheaded by the
British presence in India and
the Suez Canal.
Sultan Mohammed V
of the Ottoman
Empire. Having been
an ally of Great Britain
for centuries, the
government of Turkey
switched sides to
Germany at the last
minute before the war.
The Sultan's power
was at long last
exposed to being
meaningless, and he
ceased to be an
influence in affairs.
King Nicholas I of Montenegro. An
ally of the other Slavic and Orthodox
Balkan states, he annoyed everyone at
the funeral of his distant relative,
Queen Victoria, by referring to himself
as “Czar.”
Nicholas II, Czar of all the
Russians, and King George
V, King of all of England,
Ireland, Scotland, the
Dominions of the British
Empire, and the protectorate
of India. With a common
grandmother, Queen Victoria,
the two men shared a
common bond, a brotherhood
that threatened their other
cousin, Kaiser Wilhelm II.
Vittorio Orlando, the
Prime Minister of Italy.
Seeing that Germany was
not going to win the war,
Italy switched sides in late
1917 and joined the allies.
This ensured them a place
at the bargaining table at
the Treaty of Versailles,
where Orlando jockeyed
to gain German lands.
The Serbian Problem
 South of Austria is an area called “The
Balkans”
 “The Balkans” included Serbia, Romania,
Albania, Bulgaria, and Greece
 These countries just got their independence
from the Ottoman Empire
 Some were Muslim, some were Christian
The Serbian Problem
 Austria-Hungary wanted to annex Serbia
 Serbia is Slavic
 So are a lot of Eastern European countries,
including Russia.
 All the Slavic countries got together to
help Serbia
 This was called Pan-Slavism
 Russia protected all Slav countries
ASSASSINATION!
 The Archduke of Austria, Franz Ferdinand
was assassinated
 He went to visit Sarajevo, the capitol of
Serbia
 He was assassinated with his wife
 Austria declared war on Serbia
The Archduke Franz
Ferdinand of
Austria, his wife
Sophie, and their two
children.
War!
 To protect Serbia, Russia declares war on
Austria-Hungary
 To protect Austria-Hungary, Germany
declares war on Russia
 To protect Russia, France and Great
Britain declare war on Germany
 Everyone begins declaring war to protect
their alliances
 This is how World War I started
The Schlieffen Plan
 German Plan
 They knew they couldn’t fight France and
Russia
 So they decided to fight one country at a
time
 First they would go to France, then they
would go to Russia
 HUGE Failure: Did NOT work
The Schlieffen Plan Fails
 German troops got stuck in France
 All because of the machine gun
 So the Germans decided to dig trenches
 The French and British did the same
 So now there’s a trench from the Swiss
border to the English Channel
 This was called the Western Front
The Schleiffen Plan
Trench Warfare: Western Front
 The Western Front was characterized by
Trench Warfare
 Soldiers lived and fought in the trenches
 They HATED IT
Trench Warfare
 Back in the West, millions of men fought
each other over yards
 In four years, the front line hardly moved
 At the Battle of Verdun, 600,000 men lost
their lives
 That’s as much as all Americans in the
Civil War
The end of the trench
The extreme north of the Western Front, the beach near Pas
de Calais, North France, where the trench ends…or begins.
A trench system,
shown in this map
of a town on the
western Front,
Beaumont Hamel.
The entire town
was destroyed.
The First World War
1914-1918
No Man’s Land, Flander’s Field, 1919
Fort de Loncin. Leige, Belgium, November 1919
Fort Douaoumont
Conditions in the
trenches :
Rats in their millions
infested trenches (900).
Gorging themselves on
human remains
(grotesquely disfiguring
them by eating their eyes
and liver) they could grow
to the size of a cat.
The Eastern Front
 In the East, Russia fought Germany
 Russia didn’t have a machine gun
 So they lost two big battles,
 Tannenburg and Masurian Lakes
 Then Russia got out of the war
Widening the War
 Some thought since the war can’t be won
in France, it has to be won elsewhere
 So they tried Gallipoli, in Turkey
 It didn’t work
 They also tried in Arabia, with Lawrence
 It worked a little,
 But Berlin isn’t in Arabia
“W” Beach, Gallipoli, April 26th, 1915.
“W” Beach, Gallipoli, today, taken from the same spot.
Unrestricted Submarine Warfare:
 Germany had a lot of submarines
 They sank a lot of ships headed for
England
 Some of them were American ships
 LUSITANIA: Americans OUTRAGED!
 We didn’t like the Germans because of this
 But we didn’t like war, so we stayed out
Sussex Pledge:
 German submarines sink the Sussex
 Americans killed
 US threatened to break off diplomatic ties
with Germany
 Germany’s response: Sussex Pledge
– Will warn ships of attack
– Allow lifeboats to be lowered
The Zimmerman Telegram
 Message sent to Mexico from German
Foreign Minister, Zimmerman
 Invade the United States, and keep them
out of the war
 It keeps them out of the war in Europe
 And you get back Texas, California, etc.
America Enters the War
 Americans were pissed at Zimmerman
 They declared war on Germany
 Then they sailed for France
 The war ended 18 months after they got
there
John J. Pershing
 Commander of
the American
Expeditionary
Forces, led a
well-trained
American force
Alvin York
 American soldier
during WWI reportedly
killed 25 Germans &
captured 132 prisoners
 Awarded the
Congressional Medal of
Honor
Verdun, before the 6 month battle of
1915 that took 700,000 lives
British troops
in the
trenches