Conducting World War One

Changes In Warfare

• No previous war had killed so many soldiers and civilians

• Conscription: compulsory enlistment in the armed forces, often driven by patriotism.

• War was drawn as glorious to thousands of teenage Europeans in 1914, causing them to enlist with their friends to have a “good” and “heroic” time. But they found out how brutal war is.

• World War One was the most gruesome war the world had ever seen at that time, with new technology being introduced:

  • Trench Warfare: Combatant nations dug hundreds of miles of trenches facing each other. Soldiers ate, slept, and fought in them for months at a time, many developed deadly diseases.

  • Poison Gas: Using chlorine, phosgene, and mustard gas, soldiers experienced long lasting extreme pain that would have lung effects for survivors.

  • Machine Guns: Shooting over 500 round of ammunition per minute, warfare was made very deadly and hard to win any territory.

  • Submarines: Destroyed shipping lanes in the Atlantic Ocean.

  • Tanks: Landships developed by the royal navy that protected troops while traveling across battlefields, with the ability to fire powerfully at soldiers.

  • Airplanes: Fitted with machine guns for aerial combat, fighters engaged in dog fights.

• Stalemate: battle condition in which neither side can progress position.

United States Entrance

• America had economic ties with the Allies and believed they were more democratic than the central powers, leading them to support the allies.

• Germany had submarine attacks on ships with American civilians, growing tensions.

• Zimmermann Telegram Interception: The United States intercepted a document from Germany that proposed help to Mexico for them to regain American territory. This ultimately drove the U.S. into joining the allied forces.

Total War Tactics

• Total War: When combating nations commit all their resources (population and money) into winning a war.

• Labor shortages in Europe from military enlistment were filled by Chinese migrants and women.

• Factories centered on producing war resources and were regulated by government.

• Propaganda: information communicated in order to influence people’s opinions, in this case on the war.

• Governments used propaganda in articles, newspapers, and posters that depicted war incorrectly or demonized the enemy in order to recruit soldiers.

The Global War

• Imperialism extended the boundaries of the war and motivated nations like Japan to join in order to claim German colonies.

• ANZAC: Australian and New Zealand Corps.

• Imperial powers in the war drafted men from their colonies, like Britain in India and Africa.

• Arabs in the Ottoman Empire’s land fought with the allies as they were promised self-rule if they won.

• Women had to work on factories farms, and medical help on the front lines as they were not allowed to fight.

• Russia established a female military unit as propaganda to shame men into enlisting.

Paris Peace Conference

• Paris Peace Conference: Meeting between the victorious allies after WW1, to set peace terms with the defeated central powers.

• Leaders at the Paris Peace Conference: Woodrow Wilson (U.S.), David Loyd George (Britain), Georges Clemenceau (France), and Vittorio Orlando (Italy).

• Russia was not invited to the conference due to their communist revolution.

• Wilson’s peace proposal: no one country should be severely punished or rewarded. Along with conquered people from Central Power colonies should decide their own political fates.

• Clemenceau peace proposal: Revenge should be seeked and France should have special protection against Germany as they suffered the most.

• The Fourteen Points: Document stating President Wilson’s peace principles including the creation of a League of Nations.

• League of Nations: Organization in which all nations would discuss tensions openly to avoid war.

• Treaty of Versallies: 1919 peace treaty with Germany that was ratified by the U.S. Senate.

• The treaty treated Germany harshly as they had to pay billions in reparations, give up all colonies, restrict military size. All of which caused Germany to resent the rest of the world, economic hardships, and the rise of the Nazi party.