World War I

The War to End All Wars

Europe on the eve of War

• Austria-Hungary had annexed Bosnia, was looking toward Serbia

• Serbians wanted all Slavs united in one nation, angry at A-H

The spark• Gavrilo Princip-

member of Serbian Nationalist group “Black Hand” Assassinated Archduke Ferdinand and his wife

Assassination of Archduke Ferdinand

• "What is the good of your speeches?  I come to Sarajevo on a visit, and I get bombs thrown at me.  It is outrageous!"

Archduke Franz Ferdinand interrupting the Mayor's welcome speech at Sarajevo's city hall, 28 June 1914.

Bodies of Ferdinand and his wife Sophie

Chain Reaction

• Austria-Hungary, backed by Germany, attacks Serbia (July 28)

• Allies-Russia, Britain, France and others

• Central Powers- Germany, A-H, Turkey, Bulgaria

Europe 1914

Causes of World War I

• Nationalism

• Imperialism

• Militarism

• Entangling Alliances

Kaiser Wilhelm

• Germany’s leader during World War 1

After the War a Medal and Maybe a Job, antiwar cartoon by John French Sloan, 1914.

Life in the Trenches• Lice-no effective way to get rid of them

• Trench foot-a result of constant standing in water with wet feet. 20,000 British soldiers suffered from it, some resulting in amputation

• Shell shock-(due to tiredness, fear, constant bombing. Some committed suicide

• Trench rats

Trench periscope

Trench foot

• Britain soon ordered its men to carry three pairs of socks and change them at least twice a day

Weapons of War

25-man team moving heavy gun

240mm French gun made of paper

Tractor used to pull German guns

Gas Bombs exploding

Treating a Mustard gas victim

Gas masks for horse and soldier

Gas bombs exploding in “No Man’s land”

“No Man’s land”

French Renault light tank

Original British Tank, “Little Willie”

British Light tank, called “Whippet”

French grenade launching crossbow

French troops using flame throwers

Dummy French mortars

Phosphorous grenades

Barbed Wire in a Lorraine wood

British plane wrecked in tree

British Dirigible R27

Nurse Balloons in hangar

Wreckage of a Zeppelin and body of commander

US Captain Eddie Rickenbacker

Unterseeboot

Submarine Warfare

• Britain blockaded Germany in an effort to starve Germany into submission

• Germany responded by attacking any ships carrying food or weapons to Britain.

Field of French and German dead

Armenian Christians massacred by Turks

Armenian Genocide• Armenians had lived in their traditional lands

for thousands of years. For much of the last thousand years they had lived as an ethnic and religious minority (Christian) in the Ottoman Empire. In 1915, during the First World War, the Turkish government resolved the "Armenian Question" by eliminating this population from the Ottoman Empire. In February of 1915 the government ordered Armenian men serving in the army disarmed. They were organized into labor groups and eventually were killed. In April they rounded up and summarily arrested Armenian community leaders and intellectuals. Nearly all of these men were executed.

Deportees

Along the route

Skulls of victims--evidence left behind

Deportee women sleeping in the street

Armenian boy who starved to death

Armenian boys who diedin Syria

• Less than 10 percent reached their destinations. Of those who made it to the Syrian and Iraqi deserts, most eventually died. Estimates of the number of dead vary from 600,000 to 2 million. The United Nations Human Rights Sub-commission report of 1985 puts the figure at "at least one million." The Turkish government denies that the genocide took place.

– After the War:

• After their defeat in World War I, the new Ottoman government tried the leaders of the genocide and sentenced them to death in absentia. However within a few months the proceedings were suspended and the matter dropped. The Armenian survivors were not allowed to return to the Armenian plateau.

• In 1939 Adolf Hitler, on his way to the "final solution," made this statement on his plan for Poland:

• "I have issued the command - and I'll have anybody who utters but one word of criticism executed by a firing squad - that our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formations in readiness - for the present only in the East - with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion , men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space (Lebensraum) which we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?"

Russian mass grave

German remains at Verdun

Russian soldier dead in wire

Dead horses in harness

Ruins of Ypres as seen from air

Refugees

Belgian refugees in Holland

American Neutrality

“…neutral in thought as well as in name.”

Lusitania

Burial Victims of the Lusitania

Lusitania

• Both T.R. and Taft called for war. Sec. of State Wm. Jennings Bryan resigned from office as Wilson became more stern with Germany.

• T.R. said “Professor Wilson” represents all “flubdubs, mollycoddles, and flapdoodle pacifists.”

Sussex Pledge

• Germany sinks French ship Sussex, also killing Americans. (1916)

• Germany promised not to sink merchant ships without warning.

• Wilson begins military build up.

Election of 1916

• Wilson runs on campaign of “He kept us out of war.”

• Called for “Peace without victory.”

The Zimmerman Note (1917)

Zimmerman Telegram• Berlin, January 19, 1917

• On the first of February we intend to begin submarine warfare unrestricted. In spite of this, it is our intention to endeavor to keep neutral the United States of America.

• If this attempt is not successful, we propose an alliance on the following basis with Mexico: That we shall make war together and together make peace. We shall give general financial support, and it is understood that Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory in New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona. The details are left to you for settlement....

• You are instructed to inform the President of Mexico of the above in the greatest confidence as soon as it is certain that there will be an outbreak of war with the United States and suggest that the President of Mexico, on his own initiative, should communicate with Japan suggesting adherence at once to this plan; at the same time, offer to mediate between Germany and Japan.

• Please call to the attention of the President of Mexico that the employment of ruthless submarine warfare now promises to compel England to make peace in a few months.

• Zimmerman(Secretary of State)

US declaration of War

• April 2, 1917- Wilson asks for declaration of war.

• “World must be made safe for Democracy.”