Background

Background:

The great alliances (1879- 1914)

The most outstanding international development in the period preceding World War I was the formation of 2 alliances:

1. The triple alliance

• Bismarck was responsible for the formation. He had been responsible for three wars (paradoxically) but he wanted peace. Moreover, he wanted peace for consolidating the newly formed German Empire. He feared a coalition of power with France in the head; and in order to prevent it he supported Republic in France, thinking that a republic form of government would be weak, and encouraged French expansion in Africa and Asia. He removed the “French isolation” stage.

• He formed an alliance with Austria and Russia (League of three Emperors, 1872) in order to keep them coming to terms with French.

• He recognized the weakness of the League of three Emperors, and made a separate argument with Austria (1879), as a defense against Russia and France.

• Italy become a party to the alliance in (1882), it was seeking revenge against France for having taken Tunis.

• It was purely a defensive alliance. At the beginning of World War I, Italy withdrew from the alliance.

Communication

l  Communication: Aerial technology was used to have communication. The solders had to carry it with them.It was a telicommunication system.
Dirigible balloons were used as stationary reconnaissance points on the front lines.

l  World War I (Summary)

Date:1914–1918
Locations: Europe, Africa, Pacific, Atlantic, Indian Ocean,
Middle East
Outcome: Entente victory

l  Deaths (approx.)

Military:9 million
Civilian:7 million
Total:16 million

l  Main participants

Entente Powers
Serbia, Russia, France, Belgium,
British Empire and Dominions,
Japan, Montenegro,
Italy, more...

l  Map of the World with the Participants in World War I. The Allies are depicted in green, the Central Powers in yellow, and neutral countries in grey.

l  Central Powers

Germany,
Austria-Hungary,
Ottoman Empire,
Bulgaria
more...

CONSEQUENCES

l  The direct consequences of World War I brought many old regimes crashing to the ground, and ultimately, would lead to the end of 300 years of European hegemony in the world.

l  TECHNOLOGY

l  In the First World War, many new technologies were used.
As the war was happened in three sides, (air, water and earth) many weapons were used there.
Technology was used for destruction and communication as well.

l  Land: In earth the solders used Rifles with Bayonets, Trench mortars, Pistols, Gardner gun, Grenade, Stan gun standing with car, Machine guns, Flamethrower, 
Tanks were introduced in World War I by British.
The first tank was nicknamed Mother.
 The first use of tanks was during the Battle of the Somme on
15 September 1916.

The basic idea of a flamethrower is to spread fire by launching burning fuel.

l  Chemical warfare was a major distinguishing factor of the war. Gases used ranged from tear gas to disabling chemicals such as mustard gas and killing agents like phosgene.

l  Water:During the war in sea the liner shipes were used by Garman.
 U-boats (submarines) were used in combat shortly after the war began. Alternating between restricted and unrestricted submarine warfare during the First Battle of the Atlantic.

l  Air:Fixed-wing aircraft were first used militarily
during the First World War.

SOCIAL TRAUMA

l  All aspects of the societies fighting were affected by the conflict, often causing profound social change, even if the countries were not in the war zone.

l  With the death or absence of the primary wage earner, women were forced into the workforce in unprecedented numbers, at least in many of the Entente powers. At the same time, industry needed to replace the lost laborers sent to war. This aided the struggle for voting rights for women.

l  Throughout 1915-17, the British Empire and France suffered many more casualties than Germany, but both sides lost millions of soldiers to injury and disease. Around 800,000 soldiers from the British Empire were on the Western Front at any one time.

l  SOCIAL TRAUMA

l  The experiences of the war led to a sort of collective national trauma afterwards for all the participating countries. The optimism of 1900 was entirely gone and those who fought in the war became what is known as "the Lost Generation" because they never fully recovered from their experiences. Some people were revolted by nationalism and what it had caused and began to work toward a more internationalist world through organizations such as the League of Nations. Pacifism became increasingly popular.

l  OTHER NAMES

l  World War I has also been called "The Great War" (a title previously used to refer to the Napoleonic Wars) or sometimes "the war to end all wars" until World War II.

ENTRY OF US

l 
Although the American contribution to the war was important, particularly in terms of the threat posed by an increasing US infantry presence in Europe, the United States was never formally a member of the Entente, but an "Associated Power". Significant numbers of American troops only arrived in Europe in the summer of 1918

l  VICTORY
American engineers returning from the front during the Battle of St. Mihiel in September 1918.

l  September 2, the Germans were on the Hindenburg Line, the starting point of the WarThe end of the fighting came swiftly. Bulgaria was the first of the Central Powers to sign an armistice (29 September 1918).Many war memorials date the end of the war as being when the Versaille treaty was signed, 1919; by contrast, most commemorations of the war's end concentrate on the Armistice of 1918; however, the formal ending of all hostilities was not until 1923.

l  ECONOMICS OF WAR
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) increased for the main Allies (the UK, Italy, and U.S.), but decreased in France and Russia, in neutral Netherlands, and in the main three Central Powers. The shrinkage in GDP in Austria, Russia, France, and the Ottoman Empire reached 30 to 40 percent. In Austria, for example, most of the hogs were slaughtered and, at war's end, there was no meat.

l  SOCIAL EFFECT
One of the most distinguishing impacts of the war was that the reality of totality set in. Many consider World War I to have been the first modern war, a total war where the civilian populations were deliberately endangered as a direct tactic of war, which has continued in all subsequent wars.

ITALIAN PARTICIPATION

Italy had been allied to the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires since 1882, but had its own designs against Austrian territory in the Trentino, Istria and Dalmatia, and maintained a secret 1902 understanding with France, effectively nullifying its alliance commitments. Italy refused to join Germany and Austria-Hungary at the beginning of the war, because their alliance was defensive, while Austria had declared war on Serbia. The Austrian government started negotiations to obtain Italian neutrality in exchange for French territories (Tunisia), but Italy joined the Entente by signing the London Pact in April and declaring war on Austria-Hungary in May 1915; it declared war against Germany fifteen months later.

l  In general, the Italians enjoyed numerical superiority, but were poorly equipped.

l  Beginning in 1915, the Italians mounted 11 major offensives on the other front, the Isonzo front (the part of the border nearest Trieste), all repelled by the Austro-Hungarians, who had the higher ground. In the summer of 1916, the Italians captured the town of Gorizia. After this minor victory, the front remained practically stable for over one year, despite several Italian offensives, again all on the Isonzo front. In the fall of 1917, thanks to the improving situation on the Eastern front, the Austrians received large reinforcements, including German assault troops. On October 26, they launched a crushing offensive that resulted in the victory of Caporetto: the Italian army was routed, but after retreating more than 100km, it was able to reorganize and hold at the Battle of the Piave River. In 1918, the Austrians repeatedly failed to break the Italian line, and, decisively defeated in the Battle of Vittorio Veneto, surrendered to the Entente powers in November.

l  The war, and the government, became more and more unpopular, and the discontent led to a rise in popularity of the Bolshevik party, led by Vladimir Lenin, who were able to gain power.

l  After the Russians dropped out of the war, Entente powers led a small-scale invasion of Russia.

l  In the trenches: A carrying party of the Royal Irish Rifles in a communications trench of the first day on the Somme, 1 July 1916.

l  Events of 1917 would prove decisive in ending the war, although their effects would not fully be felt until 1918.

l  With both German reinforcements and new American troops pouring into the Western Front, the final outcome of the war was to be decided in that front.

Another cause of the war was the building of alliances and arms races.

Another cause of the war was the building of alliances and arms races.
The major participants in the race were Britain and Germany due to new imperialism.

l  There is probably no single concise or conclusive assessment of the exact cause of the First World War.

BEGINNING
In 1914, the perception of war was romanticized by many people, and its declaration was met with great enthusiasm by these people. The common view on both sides was that it would be a short war of manoeuvre, with a few sharp actions (to "teach the enemy a lesson") and would end with a victorious entry into the enemy capital, then home for a victory parade or two and back to "normal" life.

By 1915 both sides were using poison gas--neither side ever won a battle with gas, but it made life even more miserable in the trenches and became one of the most feared, and longest remembered, horrors of the war.

In 1914, France possessed 162 aircraft and in 1918, 11 836, including 3 437 on the front lines - these figures say it all. A similar increase took place on the side of the central empire states and the Commonwealth.