World War I – The war to end all wars?

World War I – The war to end all wars?

How did WWI start?• Binding alliances that

Washington warned us about

• Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria killed by Serbian terrorists• Austria declares war on

Serbia• Russia declares war on

Austria• Germany declares war on

Russia and France• Britain declares war on

Germany

But what about us?• At first, we were neutral, and

tried to sell weapons to both sides.

• Rise of German U-Boat activity (Unterseeboot)

• Unrestricted submarine warfare• May 1915- Lusitania (128)

• Germany- “Our bad”• Aug 1915- Arabic (2)

• Germany- “JK, we’ll be good”• March 1916- Sussex (0, several

wounded)• Germany- “Ok, no more sinking

merchant ships!” ;)

• Zimmerman Note• Feb 1917

A War of Firsts• First National Draft

• 200,000 poorly equipped volunteers before the draft

• First American Soldiers Fighting in Europe

• By the end of the war, 2 million American soldiers served in the American Expeditionary Force (AEF)

• First African-American Officers

• White and Black soldiers were segregated

• 369th Regiment (all African- American)– fought so fiercely, were nicknamed the “Hell Fighters” by Germans

New weapons• Machine Guns

• Maxim, M1917 Browning• Railroad Gun

• Shelled Paris from 81miles away

• Poison Gas• Chlorine, Mustard Gas

• Tank• Very slow, “heavily”

armored• Airplane

• biplanes

The Red Baron

• German fighter pilot• Top “ace” of WWI with

80 air combat victories• Shot down and killed

on April 21, 1918

New tactics

• Old- Mass Bayonet Charge

• Cavalry and artillery support

• New- Trench Warfare

• “No Man’s Land”• Storm-troopers

• Walk behind giant shield

• Tank advances

Trench Warfare

Poison Gas

How does it end?• Early 1918- Treaty of

Brest-Litovsk• Russia and Germany

• Sept 1918- Meuse-Argonne Offensive

• Final Allied offensive• Wanted to cut German

supply/communication lines• More than 1 million US

troops involved• Armistice (truce) signed

Nov 11, 1918 “stop shooting”

• Treaty of Versailles (1919) actual peace treaty

• Casualties (Deaths)Central- 15,404,477Allied- 22,062,427