Causes of the War
-Lots of Instability
Nationalism
Old Empires
Old Style Gov ’ ts
Alliance System

Alliances
-Led to an arms race
-Triple Alliance
(Central Powers)
Germany, Austria-Hungary,
Ottoman Empire
-Triple Entente
(Allies)
France, Britain, Russia

The Balkans

Strategy
-War starts
Assassination of Archduke
Ferdinand
-Alliances cause chain reaction to Austria-Hungary ’ s attack on
Serbia after the assassination

Chain Reaction
• Russia moves army to Austrian AND
German borders
• Germany declares war on Russia
• Two days later… Germany declares war on France
• Great Britain declares war on Germany

Nations Take Sides
Central Powers
• Germany and Austria-
Hungary
• Bulgaria and the Ottoman
Empire join later
– Hopes of regaining lost territory
Allies
• Great Britain, France,
Russia
• Japan joins within weeks
• Italy joins later
– Accuses its former Triple
Alliance partners of starting the war unjustly

Western Front

First Battle of the Marne

Trench Warfare

New Tools of Warfare

Slaughter Continues
Battle of Verdun
• 1916- fighting at its peak
• Germans launch a massive attack on French near Verdun
• Lasts 303 days
• 377,231 French casualties, 337,000
German casualties- or,
70,000 casualties for each month of battle
Battle of Somme River
(AKA Somme Offensive)
• British army tries to relieve the French
• First day of battle 20,000
British killed
• 1 million casualties- one of the bloodiest battles in human history
• Germans advanced about
4 miles
• British gained about 5 miles

The Eastern Front

Russia Struggles
• Not industrialized = Army not supplied
• Russia’s one assetnumbers
• For more than 3 years,
Russia keeps hundreds of thousands of German troops occupied in the east- meaning Germany could not apply its full force at the Western
Front

War Affects the World
• Australia and Japan enter on Allied side
• India supplies troops to fight alongside
British
• Ottoman Turks and Bulgaria ally with
Germany and the Central Powers

Gallipoli

Battles in Africa and Asia
• Germany’s colonial possessions in Asia and Africa came under assualt
• Japanese overran German outposts in
China and captured Germany ’s Pacific island colonies
• English and French troops attacked
Germany ’s four African possessionsseized control of three

America Joins the Fight
• 1917- focus of the war shifts to high seas
• Unrestricted submarine warfare
• Sinking of the
Lusitania
• Zimmerman Note

War Affects the Home Front
• Europe has lost more men in battle than in all the wars of the previous three centuries
• The Great War = Total War
– Countries devote all resources to the war effort

Russia Withdraws
• March 1917- civil unrest forces
Czar Nicholas to step down
• Eight months after new government took over, revolution hits
• Vladimir Ilyich Lenin seizes power
– Treaty of Brest-Litovskends war between
Germany and Russia

Second Battle of the Marne
• Germans send nearly all forces to the
Western Front
• March 1918- Germans launch a final, massive attack on the Allies in France
• July 1918- Second Battle of the Marne
• 350 tanks, 2 million additional American troops

Central Powers Crumble
• Bulgarians and Ottoman Turks surrendered
• Revolution swept through Austria-Hungary
• German soldiers mutinied
• November 1918- Kaiser Wilhelm II stepped down, Germany declares itself a republic
• Armistice is signed between France and
Germany

Legacy of the War
• A new kind of war
– New technologies
– Ushered in notion of war on a grand and global scale
– Left behind a landscape of death and destruction
• Human cost
• Economic Impact
• Sense of disillusionment

Paris Peace Conference
Left to Right: David Lloyd George (Britain), Vittorio Orlando (Italy),
Georges Clemenceau (France), Woodrow Wilson (U.S.)

Wilson ’s Plan for Peace

Treaty of Versailles
• Signed June 18, 1919
• Establishes League of Nations
• Punishes Germany
– Article 231- the “war guilt” clause
• One of five treaties negotiated by the
Allies
– Created feelings of bitterness and betrayal

Creation of New Nations

Peace Will Not Last…
• U.S. rejected the Treaty of Versailles
• German people are left with bitterness and hatred“war guilt” clause
• People of Africa and Asia angry at the way the Allies disregarded their desire for independence
• Japan and Italy not satisfied with the outcome