World War I 1914-1918
 Causes
of the war
 Technology of the war
 Military techniques / Battles
 War at Home “Total War”
 US / Russia and the end of the
war
Traditional European
Rules of War
 1.
A country must declare war before
attacking another country.
 2.
Each side must wear uniforms or
identify themselves to each other
before attacking. Soldiers wearing an
enemy uniform will be shot as a spy.
Traditional European
Rules of War
 3.
Commanding officers should not
be targeted
 4.
Civilians, Surrendering Soldiers
and Medical Personnel will not be
attacked.
Traditional European
Rules of War
 5.
Hand to Hand combat is
honorable, shooting from a distance
is cowardly
 6.
Soldiers must be given the
opportunity to surrender honorably.
Roots of War
Long Term Causes
 Nationalism Deep
Devotion to One’s Nation
 Competition and Rivalry developed
between European nations for
territory and markets
 (Example France and GermanyAlsace-Lorraine)
Long Term Causes
 Militarism Glorifying
Military Power
 Keeping a large standing army
prepared for war
 Arms race for military technology
Long Term Causes
 Imperialism European
competition for colonies
 Quest for colonies often almost led
to war
 Imperialism led to rivalry and
mistrust amongst European nations
Long Term Causes
 Alliance
System-
 Designed
to keep peace in Europe,
instead pushed continent towards
war
 Many Alliances made in secret
 By 1907 two major alliances: Triple
Alliance and Triple Entente
The Two Sides
Triple Alliance
Triple Entente
Germany
Austria-Hungary
Italy
Central Powers
England
France
Russia
Allied Powers
Germany
Austria-Hungary
Ottoman Empire
England, France,
Russia, United
States, Italy, Serbia,
Belgium, Switzerland
Leaders
Triple Alliance
Triple Entente
Kaiser Wilhelm II
David Lloyd George
(Germany)
(England)
Franz Joseph I
Raymond Poincare
(Austria-Hungary)
(France)
Vittorio Orlando
Czar Nicholas II
(Italy)
(Russia)
Major Colonies

Triple Entente
France- Vietnam,
Parts of Africa
 England- Africa,
Australia, Hong
Kong, India,
Canada, S. America


Triple Alliance

GermanyAfrica, Parts of
Asia
Short-Term Cause


June 28th 1914
Assassination of Franz Ferdinand
Summer of 1914
Triple Entente/Triple Alliance Actions




July 23rd Austria Hungary Presents Serbia with
an ultimatum
July 28th Austria-Hungary declares war on
Serbia
July 29th Russia Mobilizes its troops
August 1, 1914 Germany mobilizes troops.
Summer of 1914
Triple Entente/Triple Alliance Actions





August 2nd Germany declares war on Russia
Germany invades Poland and Luxemburg,
invasion of France starts
August 3: Germany declares war on France
August 4: Germany declares war on Belgium
and invades it,
August 4:England declares war on Germany
August 5: Austria declares war on Russia and
Great Britain
Who Declared War on Who?





Austria-Hungary Declares War on Serbia
Russia Declares War on Austria Hungary
Germany Declares War on Russia
Germany Declares War on France
England Declares War on Germany and
Austria Hungary

By the end of 1914, not only Europe
was at war, but also all of Europe’s
colonies in Asia, Africa and South
America.
Modern Warfare
The Schlieffen Plan
 The
German plan against France was
to rush into the country as fast as
possible
 The Machine Gun stopped this plan
Trench Warfare

Both sides dug long trenches that faced each
other. The trenches ran for miles.

From time to time, one side would attempt to
cross the “No-Man’s Land” the area in
between the trenches.
“Stalemate” caused both the Central Powers
and Allied Powers to be stuck in war for 4
total years

French Soldiers Attacking a
German Trench
A Multi-Front War
The Great War
Western Front

Germans, Austria-Hungarians vs. French,
British and later Americans

Germany develops the Schlieffen Plan

Battle of the Marne (1914- German
Defeat)

Trench Warfare on the Western Front
Western Front: Battles

Battle of Verdun





Ten months long
French and German armies.
Estimated 540,000 French and 430,000 German casualties
No strategic advantages were gained for either side.
Battle of Somme




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y79-PJt-YzE (40:50)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPT1MKOP8TQ (Somme)
English and French vs Germany
Six months of fighting
Five miles of advancement for Allies
1 million men killed
A Multi-Front War
Eastern Front

Russians and Serbs vs. Germans and
Austria-Hungarians

War more mobile but still a stalemate

Russia’s disadvantages



Not Industrialized
Short on Supplies
Russia’s advantage

People
Eastern Front: Battles

Battle of Tannenberg:



August 1914- First major eastern battle.
Russia was badly defeated and pushed back.
Russia lost millions of men against Germany,
undersupplied, under gunned
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yB-Ituc3MRQ
Other Fronts

Japan, Australia, India join Allies

Ottoman Turks, Bulgaria join Central Powers

Gallipoli Campaign in the Ottoman Empire

Battles occur in Africa and Asia for Colonial
Possessions
Russia Exits the War




In March 1917, Nicholas II abdicates his
throne,
The Russian Duma continues to fight.
In October 1917: Lenin and the Bolsheviks
take command: The Soviet Union is created.
March 1918: Soviets and Germans sign the
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, ending the war in
the East.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v
=jtRQ6lOGdec
Technology:
Chemical Weapons
WWI was the first major war to use
chemical weapons
Mustard Gas and Chlorine Gas were
the two most popular weapons: They
caused suffocation, blindness, and
death
Soldiers would protect themselves
using Gas Masks
New Technology
Guns
The
 It
Machine Gun
was used by both sides, hundreds
of rounds a minute could be shot by
one person.
Technology:
Airpower

Both sides used aircraft for observation,
limited bombing, and air battles

Airplanes were slow, clumsy, and unreliable,

The most famous German pilot was Baron von
Richthofen (The Red Baron)
Manfred von Richthofen
Red Baron
Dog Fighting – Flying tactic in WWI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axSyUyfKUW4
Technology:
Tanks
Technology:
Tanks
Technology:
Flame Throwers
US claims Neutrality
I didn’t raise my boy to be a
soldier
I brought him up to be my
pride and joy
Who dares to place a
musket on his shoulder,
To shoot some other
mother’s darling boy?
Technology:
The U-boat (Submarine)
 Germany’s
secret weapon during the
war
 Sank
dozens of British ships,
controlled the oceans.
Why would the British think the Uboat was breaking the rules of War ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v
=RCrzaC4aLPg (U-boats)
US Road to War

British Blockade
did not allow products to leave or enter
Germany

German U-Boat Response
counter to blockade, destroy all boats headed
for British shores
Bell Ringer
US Road to War
19
May 7, 1915
Sinking of the Lusitania
15
120
1,100
1,900
Explain how these numbers are related?
US Road to
th 1915
May
7
War
Sinking of the Lusitania
1916 Presidential Election
And the Winner is…
Woodrow Wilson
- Internationalist!
Because
“he kept us out
of the war”
US Road to War
The Last Straw
Zimmerman Note
https://w
ww.yout
ube.com
/watch?
v=Gedy
8LwQT
aw
US Declares War
Senate Declares War April 4th 1917
 House of Representatives Declares War April
6th 1917
 Wilson’s reasoning for War make the world
“Safe for Democracy” (Pg 291)
 Isolationist not happy!
 Interventionist Happy!

War on the Homefront

World War I as a Total War

All Resources devoted to homefront

Gov’t took over factories to make Military goods

All had to work (Women took place of men in
factories)

Rationing- limit consumption of resources/goods
necessary for the war effort

Propaganda- one-sided information to keep support
for the war
Propaganda
US
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6k9XZB6O26w ( Over There)
Propaganda
Great Britain
Propaganda
Germany
Go on soldier! And fulfill
your duty! Christ, the good
shepherd watches over his
flock.
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
Your kingdom come, your
will be done, on earth as it
is in Heaven.
Opportunities for
African-Americans in WW1
“Great Migration.”
1916 – 1919  70,000
War industries work.
Enlistment in segregated
units.(Jim Crow Laws in Service)
1917 – Selective Service Act
24,000,000 men registered for
the draft by the end of 1918.
4,800,000 men served in WW1
(2,000,000 saw active combat).
400,000 African-Americans
served in segregated units.
15,000 Native-Americans served
as scouts, messengers, and
snipers in non-segregated units.
Conscientious
objectors –
people who
moral or
religious beliefs
forbid them to
fight in war
Council of National Defense
War Industries Board (WIB) –
Bernard Baruch – influential wall street broker who reported to
the President and regulated all war related industries.
Committee on Public Information (CPI) – George Creel
Educate the public about the causes and nature of war
* Used Propaganda to influence and persuade Americans
Food Administration –
Herbert Hoover
Railroad Administration –
William McAdoo
National War Labor Board –
W. H.Taft & Frank P. Walsh
True Sons of Freedom
https://www.youtube
.com/watch?v
=kk46pKnoSbQ
(AA in WWI)
Appeal to Women
as Homemakers
RATIONING!
Page 295
Thinking Critically
Questions 1-2
Munitions Work
The Girls They Left Behind Do Their
Bit!
Women Used In Recruitment
Hello, Big Boy!
Even Grandma Buys Liberty
Bonds
The Red Cross - Greatest
Mother in the World
YWCA – The
Blue Triangle
https://www.youtu
be.com/watch?v=Z
MCOzuE1Lvo
(Women in WWI)
Read page 300
Government Excess & Threats to the
Civil Liberties of Americans
Espionage Act – 1917
- forbade actions that
obstructed recruitment or
efforts to promote
insubordination in the military.
- ordered the Postmaster General
to remove Leftist materials
from the mail.
- fines of up to $10,000 and/or
up to 20 years in prison.
Government Excess & Threats
to the Civil Liberties of Americans
Sedition Act – 1918
- it was a crime to speak against the
purchase of war bonds or willfully
utter, print, write or publish any
disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or
abusive language about this form of US
Govt., the US Constitution, or the US
armed forces or to willfully urge, incite,
or advocate any curtailment of
production of things necessary or
essential to the prosecution of the
war…with intent of such curtailment to
cripple or hinder, the US in the
prosecution of the war.
Government Excess & Threats
to the Civil Liberties of Americans
3Schenck v. US – 1919
- in ordinary times the mailing of the
leaflets would have been protected by the
1st Amendment.
- BUT, every act of speech must be judged
acc. to the circumstances in which it was
spoken.
-The most stringent protection of free
speech would not protect a man in falsely
shouting fire in a theater and causing a
panic. [Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes]
- If an act of speech posed a clear and
present danger, then Congress had
the power to restrain such speech.
Government Excess & Threats
to the Civil Liberties of Americans
Abrams v. US – 1919
- majority ruling --> cited Holmes’
“Clear and present danger” doctrine.
- Holmes & Brandeis dissented:
The best test of truth is the
power of the thought to get
itself accepted in the competition
of the market, denying that a
“silly leaflet” published by an
“unknown man” constituted such a
danger.
Woodrow Wilson
War Address, 1917
“We have no quarrel with the German people.
We have no feeling toward them but one of sympathy
and friendship. It was not upon their impulse that their
government acted in entering this war. It was not with
their previous knowledge or approval.
It was a war determined upon as wars used to be
determined upon in the old, unhappy days when peoples
were nowhere consulted by their rulers and wars were
provoked and waged in the interest of dynasties or of
little groups of ambitious men who were accustomed
to use their fellow men as pawns and tools.
We are glad, now that we see the facts with no veil of false
pretense about them, to fight thus for
 the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of
its peoples, the German peoples included
 for the rights of nations great and small and the privilege of
men everywhere to chose their way of life and of obedience.
 The world must be made safe for democracy.
 Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of
political liberty.
 We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest,
no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no
material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make.
 We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind.
Wilson, War, and Peace

Convoy - a group of merchant
vessels sailing together, with or
without naval escort, for mutual
security and protection (Why?)
Defining America’s War Goals
Receiving Mixed Messages
The Allies Struggle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQUAW_CdBds




Russia exhausted on Eastern front + war +
revolutions
Vladimir Lenin – radical communist who
overthrew Czar Nicholas II and gained
control of Russia
October 1917: Lenin and the Bolsheviks take
command: The Soviet Union is created.
March 1918: Soviets and Germans sign the Treaty of
Brest-Litovsk, ending the war in the East.
American enters the Front
Germany sends troops from Eastern to
Western front
 March of 1918 Germany begins a massive
attack on France
 John J. Pershing – commander of
American forces in Europe
 Early 1918 – Americans met Germans on
Western Front
 Allies fighting together
= Britain+ France + Italy + Americans

“I shall always believe we could and ought to have kept out of this
war,”
House majority leader Claude Kitchin, a Democrat from North Carolina.
Ending the War (1918)
The Tide Turns




German troops fatigued
US had 140,000 “fresh” troops
2nd Battle of the Marne (June 1918)
Central Powers Crumble https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UamKIlTs



Revolutions in Austria Hungary
Ottoman Empire surrenders
German soldiers mutiny, German public turns
against Kaiser Wilhelm II
Ending the War (1918)



Kaiser Wilhelm
abdicates on November
9th 1918
11th hour of the 11th day
of the 11th month in
1918 Germany agrees
to a cease-fire
Cost of 338 billion
dollars
The Somme American
Cemetary, France
116,516 Americans Died
Casualties of War
Ending the War
The Paris Peace Conference

Meeting of the “Big Four” at the Paris Peace
Conference (Prime Ministers David Lloyd George of Great Britain, Vittorio Orlando of
Italy, Georges Clemenceau of France, and President Woodrow Wilson)


Wilson Proposes his “14 points”
“Big Four” create Treaty of Versailles




War Guilt Clause https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfnEy8FuElc
Break up of German, Austrian, Russian and
Ottoman Empire
Reparations
Legacy of bitterness and betrayal
Effects of World War I





Before World War I feeling of optimism and
progress of Human Kind
After the War feelings of pessimism
Return to isolationist ideas
New forms of Art, Literature, Philosophy and
Science
Roaring 20’s – changing of American culture
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y59wErqg4Xg
(crash course wrap up)
Homework – Decision Point
Page 308
Read pages 307-309
 Read and complete Decision Point pg 308
 Questions – You Decide 1-3
 Write Question and Answer

Bell Ringer - Map Skills
12/15/14
 Complete
Map Skills
 On page 307
 Questions 2-3
 Write questions and answer
A Just or Unjust Peace
The Versailles Treaty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v
=Pxb3j6Ps44c (American legacy
of WWI) -1:05
Key clauses of the Versailles Treaty



War guilt and Reparations – Money
paid to countries harmed by war to
repair nations
Dismemberment of Russian,
German and AustroHungarian Empires
League of Nations
America Becomes an Imperial Power
Wilson’s Fourteen Points – January 1918
1. Abolition of secret treaties
2. Freedom of the seas
3. Free Trade
4. Disarmament
5. Adjustment of colonial claims (decolonization and national self-determination)
6. Russia to be assured independent development; foreign powers to withdraw from Russian
territory
7. Restoration of Belgium to prewar independence
8. Province of Alsace-Lorraine returned to France from Germany
9. Italian borders redrawn on lines of nationality
10. Autonomous development for the people of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire
11. Romania, Serbia, Montenegro, and other Balkan states to be de-occupied and granted
integrity, with Serbia given access to the Adriatic Sea
12. The Turkish people of the former Ottoman Empire to comprise an independent nation;
autonomous development for national groups within the former Empire
13. Establishment of an independent Poland with access to the sea
14. Establishment of a multilateral international association of
nations to enforce the peace (League of Nations)
Fourteen Points - January 8, 1918

Freedom of the seas

Free trade

Disarmament

Self-determination

League of Nations
https://www.youtube.co
m/watch?v=F5mkjDaw
FBI
Balance of Power View
A Starting Point
Self-Determination – right of the people of their
own nation to determine their own type of government

Applying the American experience to the world




Britain had tutored colonies/now tutoring
Philippines
Enlarging Monroe Doctrine/Roosevelt Corollary
Assimilation of immigrants
White men should be in charge
Internationalists’ View
“There must be, not a
balance of power,
but a community of
power;
not organized rivalries,
but an organized
common peace.”
Wilson, Peace Without Victory,
1917
Competing Visions of US role in the world

Wilson’s internationalist vision

Balance of power/unilateral advocates

Isolationists

Moderates – like bits of them all
Need for Unilateral Action

The United States should render service
of being a force for good in the world “of
her own free will.”

Alliances, military intervention, moral
suasion
Isolationists
Avoid “The Insidious Wiles
of Foreign Influence”
and Entangling Alliances
“Against the insidious wiles
of foreign influence … the
[attention] of a free people
ought to be constantly
awake; since history and
experience prove, that
foreign influence is one of
the most baneful foes of
Republican Government.”
-- Farewell Address, September
17, 1796
Wilson’s Answer

By rejecting alliances in favor of collective
security, meets Washington’s objectives

“This project of the League of Nations is a
great policy of disentanglement.”
Article X of the League Covenant

The Members of the League undertake to
respect and preserve as against external
aggression the territorial integrity and
existing political independence of all the
members of the League. In case of any
such aggression or in case of any threat or
danger of such aggression the Council
shall advise upon the means by which this
obligation shall be fulfilled.
Room for
Compromise?
Language respecting
Congressional
authority, national
sovereignty
“Strangling his own child”
Why doesn’t Wilson Compromise?





Initial consideration
Strategy
President vs.
Congress in setting
foreign policy
Impaired mentally
Isolation from political
realities
Impact of WWI on US Foreign
Policy




Disarmament and Dollars in 1920s.
Outlawing War
Neutrality Laws in 1930s.
Ideological foundation for 20th century US
Foreign Policy
Wilsonianism: Its Lasting Legacy On US
Foreign Policy Goals
1. National self-determination:
national sovereignty and
democratic self-government
2. Free trade: spreading capitalism
3. Collective Security
4. US leadership needed to build a
better world
5. Good for US = Good for the world
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg5LW
HQYIrY (BBC WWI Wrap up)