Class created WWI Discussion Questions
 If you were living during WWI would you have joined the war, waited to be drafted,
tried to stay at home, or run away from your country?
 If Archduke Franz Ferdinand was not assassinated, would the war still have
happened?
 If the countries could have somehow still known that 8.5 million people would die,
would they still have fought the war? Would you have?
 How might the rats in the trenches have a psychological effect on the soldiers?
 Did anything good come out of the results of WWI?
 Who was most responsible for WWI?
o Germany, Austria-Hungary, Serbia, Allies, anyone else?
 If you had the power to completely destroy Germany and its people after WWI,
would you? Even if that meant the loss of millions of innocent lives? Knowing that it
may have prevented Hitler’s rise to power.
 What might the current world look like if the Schlieffen plan had been successful and
Germany could have switches its attention to the Eastern Front?
 When it comes to war, what is more important, Family or Country?
 What do you think may have happened if the U.S. stayed out of the war?
 What do you believe would have happened if Mexico had invaded the U.S. and joined
the Central Powers?
 Do you believe that the soldiers of WWI ended up with PTSD? How can a society
help deal with this?
 How do you believe the soldiers dealt with the knowledge that they could die at
anytime and that they would be taking the lives of their enemies?
 Why do you believe that society keeps inventing new and more effective ways to kill
each other?
 Do you believe that nuclear weapons could have prevented this war from having as
much loss of life or would it have caused more loss of life?
 Do you believe that WWI was an “unnecessary war”?
 Are the inventors of these new weapons of war to blame for the loss of life?
 When making alliances do you believe that having the same culture is worth going to
war against other countries?
 Were the countries that spent the most money the most powerful in WWI? Does
spending more money automatically mean that you are more powerful?
 Do you think that the members of the Black Hand were justified in their actions
against the Austrians?
 What strategies could the Germans have used to have been more successful in the
war?
 Did hatred or greed play a role in the cause of WWI?