The Great War Part Two Section II. Europe Plunges into War ‘Continues’ A Bloody stalemate Battle on the Western Front The deadlocked, stalemate, region in northern France became known as the Western Front. The Conflict Grinds along facing a war on two-fronts was the German plan, the Schlieffen Plan. It called for attacking and defeating France in the west and then rushing east to fight Russia. Though, German forces had swept into France and reached the outskirts of Paris. And, a major German victory appeared just days away. The Allies regrouped and attacked the German's northeast of Paris, in the valley of the Marne River in the Battle of Marne, 1914. In the east, Russian forces had already invaded Germany. Realizing this, the German high command …show more content…
This set the stage for what became known as trench warfare. Life in the trenches was pure misery. The Western Front had become a “terrain of death.” It stretched nearly 500-miles from the North Sea to the Swiss border. Military strategists were at a loss. New tools of war machine guns, poison gas, armored tanks, and larger artillery—Had not delivered the fast-moving war, they had expected. All this new technology was killing greater numbers of people more effectively. Western front Battle continued. The Germans launched a massive attack against the French near Verdun Castle in 1916. Each side lost more than 300,000-men. British forces attacked the German's northwest of Verdun, in the valley of the Somme River. By the time the Battle of the Somme in 1916 ended, each side had suffered more than half a million-casualties. What did the warring sides gain? Near Verdun, the Germans advanced about four miles. In the Somme Valley, the British gained about five miles. The Battle on the Eastern Front-Eastern Front. This area was a stretch of the battlefield along the German and Russian …show more content…
English and French troops attacked Germany’s four African possessions. They seized control of three. Elsewhere in Asia and Africa, the British and French recruited subjects in their colonies for the struggle. Fighting troops, as well as laborers, came from India, South Africa, Senegal, Egypt, Algeria, and Indochina. Some subjects volunteered in the hope that service would lead to their independence. This was the view of Indian political leader Mohandas Gandhi, who supported Indian participation in the war. America Joins the Fight On May 7, 1915, a German submarine, or U-boat, had sunk the British passenger ship Lusitania. The attack left 1,198 people dead, including 128 U.S. citizens. Germany claimed that the ship had carried ammunition, which turned out to be true. Nevertheless, the American public was outraged. President Woodrow Wilson sent a strong protest to Germany. After two further attacks, the Germans finally agreed to stop attacking neutral and passenger ships. However, the Germans returned to unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917. In February 1917, another German action pushed the United States closer to
Robert leaves from London to Waterloo where he rides by train and reaches a town called Magdalene Wood. It is here when he realizes that he has been separated with his bag. Robert is now left without rations, clean clothing, and his gun. Magdalene Wood lies about 12 miles from Bailleul. Robert decides he wants to make it before sunrise so he must walk the remainder of the way. Soon Robert joined two horsemen and rode the remainder of the way.
In World War II the Allied Forces had a "Europe First" campaign of invading the Atlantic countries before the Pacific. This is because Germany served as a bigger threat than Japan to the Allied Powers. In the United States, Franklin Delanor Roosevelt was the President. He kept America neutral at first, but later entered in after Pearl Harbor. George Patton was a popular U.S. Army leader who started tank warfare in America. Bernard Montgomery commanded the 8th Army which had victories in Europe including D-Day. At the near end of the war Omar Bradley toured through Germany notifying the rest of the world what had gone on there with all of the death camps during the Holocaust, which was where the murder of over 6 millioin Jewish people took place.
World War I, also known as the Great War, lasted from the summer of 1914 until the late fall of 1918. The war was fought between the Allies, which consisted mainly of the United Kingdom, France, and the Russian Empire, and the Central Powers, which consisted mainly of the German Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Kingdom of Bulgaria (Alliances - Entente and Central Powers). In total, it is estimated that twelve million civilians and nine million combatants died during this horrific and devastating war (DeGroot 1). When the war first began in 1914, many people thought that it would be a war of movement that would quickly be over. However, that changed when the Germans, who were trying to reach and capture the city of Paris in France, were forced to retreat during the Battle of the Marne in September 1914 (Ellis 10). German General von Falkenhayn, who felt that his troops must at all cost hold onto the parts of France and Belgium that they had overtaken, ordered his men to dig in and form defensive trench lines (Ellis 10). The Allies could not break through the enemies lines and were forced to create trenches of their own (Ellis 10). This was only the beginning of trench warfare. A war of movement had quickly come to a standstill on the Western Front. A massive trench line, 475 miles long, quickly spread and extended from the North Sea to the Swiss Frontier (Ellis 10). With neither side budging, soldiers were forced to live in the most miserable of conditions. Simply put, life in the trenches was a living hell. A lieutenant of the 2nd Scottish rifles wrote, “No one who was not there can fully appreciate the excruciating agonies and misery through which the men had to go [through] in those da...
The Generals and politicians thought the war was going to end very quickly where every I gets to go home on Christmas. Generals and Politicians said “A few quick campaigns and a few decisive victories would “bring the boys home by Christmas, “perhaps even by the fall” (Overfield, James H. Sources of Twentieth-century Global History. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002. Print.) , p74. They were definitely wrong on that note. The war lasted 4 years in the hell the soldiers called the battlefield. One of the first major battles on the western front was called the Battle of Marne. The battle that halted the Germans from entering France into a long standing stalemate. The trench warfare started here, where soldiers dug deep into the ground and settled down to fight off the enemy soldiers. It was a stalemate for man...
An article called, “The Real War,” written by Roger J. Spiller, begins with a quote by Walt Whitman, “The real war will never get in the books.” The author writes about an interview with Paul Fussell, who was a soldier in World War Two and has written many books about World War One and World War Two. Fussell is very opinionated and critical about other books written about these wars, asserting they are not realistic or portray the true essence of what really occurred by soldiers and other people participating in the wars. I claim that it is impossible to convey the actual personal feelings and emotions of those involved in a war in books or any other forms of media.
By December 1914 the First World War had reached a dilemma on the western front that neither the triple entente nor the triple alliance had expected. The war had reached a stalemate, a state where both sides are so evenly balanced that neither can breakthrough against the enemy. The advances in Technology played a big role in creating the stalemate through strong defensive weaponry such as Machine Guns and Artillery, this caused ‘trench warfare’ (BOOK 48). Trench war is when troops from both sides are protected from the enemy’s firepower through trenches. Many advances in technology also attempted to break the stalemate throughout the war with tanks, gas and aircraft, these however failed. Eventually the stalemate was broken through a combination of improved technology, new strategies and the blockading of the German ports.
Life on the Western Front During World War One A dispassionate look at the numbers of the horrendous casualties sustained by the armies of the Allies and the Central Powers on the Western Front in WW1, clearly indicate that these casualties figures are far inferior to what might be anticipated if, indeed, total war had reigned in every location, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and along all the 475 miles of trenches that extended from the North Sea to Switzerland. A couple of simple examples will readily make the case. Imagine two front-line trenches separated by only 20 to 30 yards of ‘No Man’s Land’ (in some extraordinary situations, distances were even less). A determined and prolonged effort by a few hand-grenade bombers on either side could make any hope of a sustained tenancy quite impossible. Again, given the accuracy and rapidity which trench mortars could be deployed against routinely manned trenches (one battalion per 1,000 yards) and their associated dug-outs, a quite short, but determined, and mutually hostile, barrage could readily reduce both trench systems to total ruin.
While marching on the dusty road towards Thièvres, the battalion faced hills and forest along with the scorching heat of the sun; therefore, many of the men fell out of line, so to keep the pace, higher ranking officials would carry two or three rifles. After reaching Somme, heavy rain and German shells began to flood upon the men. The British communications trench, was reduced to ash from a direct hit, although the train station survived the attack, allowing for a slo...
Trench warfare had been used in past wars, but the Germans popularized this style during World War I. Germans sought to capture Paris, but faced the French at the Marne River on September 5, 1914. The French army had stopped the German advance and began to push them back (Torr, 30). The Germany army refused to give up gained territory so it dug into the ground to resist the French. Unknowingly, the Germans made the biggest mistake of the war. The trenches began to spread and soon became the predominant style of battle.
The German’s unrestricted submarine warfare was the main reason for the U.S. to enter war. Wilson had tremendous support from Americans. The Germans had to be stopped. The attacks came without warning killing many innocent people (Winter and Baggett, 1996). The Germans sank numerous ships including our own. The most famous ship sunk was the Lusitiania. Aboard that ship 128 Americans were killed (http://www.angelfire.com/in3/wilson/wilson.html). The Lusitania was torpedoed without any notice. The Lusitania sunk in 18 minutes killing a total of 1198 people (http://www.poltechnic.org/faculty/gfeldmeth/chart.ww1.html).
The Battle of Verdun took place in France and was the longest single battle to transpire in World War I. It was also known to the world as the deadliest battle of World War I. The battle commenced on February 21, 1916 and lasted until December 18, 1916. Since the beginning of the battle, the armies suffered substantial losses. The tragic loss of many men also classified this battle as the bloodiest of World War I. Although both sides endured harsh fatalities, the strategies and technology of the French were remarkable in their victory over the German Army in the Battle of Verdun.
The sinking of the Lusitania would ultimately cause the U.S. to get involved in the foreign war. “We and the government decided to reply to the sinking by declaring war” (4). The sinking turned public opinion in America against Germany during the time where nationalism and patriotism was growing. President Woodrow Wilson insisted on protecting the people of his country but in reality, nobody was safe out in the water. In order to stop the sinking, fighting was the only option. The U.S. was beginning to grow tired of people dying in order to cut off trading.
However, the U.S. did participate in the Eight Nation Alliance in the Boxer Rebellion, as well as invade other sovereign nations, such as the Philippines and Cuba, at the turn of the 19th century. However, in the United States, there was a large ethnic group of German-Americans that was beginning to be perceived as a threat to American culture due to the rise of German nationalism. For instance, the problem of German nationalism had become a problem due to the conflicting ethnic identity of German-Americans: “ A Philadelphia woman later recalled how, before the war, the beer wagons of German-American brewers in her city had an American flag on one side and German one on the other” (Boemke et al, 1999, p.117). In this ethnic and nationalist conflict, many Americans became suspicious of German loyalties to the Kaiser, which was part of the expanded nationalist and militaristic growth of the United States as a competing imperial power. In this climate of nationalism, many Americans became suspicious of Germans, which led to increased political support for overturning Woodrow Wilson’s promises of neutrality when the war broke out in Europe in July of 1914. The sinking of the Lusitania in 1914 was a major event that defined a rationale for Americas entering the war, since the Germans were creating major disruptions in American trade routes by sinking civilian and merchant ships in the Atlantic. In this hostile act, the Kaiser had broken international rules of law, which forced President Wilson and the United States to enter the war to stop the threat of German military power from taking complete control of Europe. Certainly, the Kaiser had awoken the “sleeping giant” of American industrial and military power, which allowed the Allied Powers to eventual defat Germany in 1918.
Wars are good business. They create an immediate demand for a wide variety of materials needed by the government in order to fight the war. They create work opportunities for people that might not ordinarily be considered part of the normal work force. And, while not necessarily good for the soldiers engaged in the fighting, wars are always good for the businesses that provide the materials used in a war. The Second World War was very good for business.
The Battle of the Somme epitomizes the harsh realities of trench warfare for the Allies and represents the negligent battle planning and technological advancements that are associated with the stalemate of World War One. Trench warfare was common across the Western Front, with similar strategies being employed by both opposing sides. Sir Douglas Haig, one of the British coordinators for the Somme offensive is blamed with an offensive strategy destined for failure. The British offensive, an utter failure, resulted in a stalemate, which was common throughout World War One. The British development of the tank, while it eventually ended the horrendous stalemate, was ineffectively used during the Somme.