| Trench warfare | a form of warfare in which opposing armies fight each other from trenches dug in the battlefield. |
| The War begins | In response to Austria’s declaration of war, Russia, Serbia’s ally, began moving its army toward the Russian-Austrian border and along the German border. To Germany, this Russian mobilization amounted to a declaration of war. On August 1, the German government declared war on Russia.
Russia looked to its ally France for help. Germany, however, did not even wait for France to react. Two days after declaring war on Russia, Germany also declared war on France. Soon afterward, Great Britain declared war on Germany. |
| Central Power | Germany and Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire would later join in hopes of regaining lost territories. |
| Allied Power | Great Britain, France, and Russia. Japan joined the Allies within weeks. Italy joined later. |
| Wester front | the region of northern France where the forces of the Allies and the Central Powers battled each other. had become a “terrain of death.” It stretched nearly 500 miles from the North Sea to the Swiss border. Military strategists were at a loss. |
| Schlieffen Plan | Germany’s military plan in which German troops would rapidly defeat France and then move east to attack Russia. The Germans felt they could carry out such a plan because Russia lagged behind the rest of Europe in its railroad system and thus would take longer to supply its front lines.
By early September, German forces had swept into France and reached the outskirts of Paris. A major German victory appeared just days away. On September 5, however, the Allies regrouped and attacked the Germans northeast of Paris, in the valley of the Marne River. Every available soldier was hurled into the struggle. When reinforcements were needed, more than 600 taxicabs rushed soldiers from Paris to the front. After four days of fighting, the German generals gave the order to retreat. This plan was a fail and the defeat of the Germans left the Schlieffen Plan in ruins. |
| Battle of valley of the Marne | the First Battle of the Marne was perhaps the single most important event of the war. Although it was only the first major clash on the Western Front, the First Battle of the Marne was perhaps the single most important event of the war. The defeat of the Germans left the Schlieffen Plan in ruins. In the east, Russian forces had already invaded Germany. Germany was going to have to fight a long war on two fronts. |
| Why the war was so deadly | TECHNOLOGY: Because they had advanced technologies. They came up with synthetic rubber for the tires in a German fabric. Now they don’t need to depend on raw material
CHEMICAL WEAPONS: The Germans came up with poison gas. It was used by both. Some gases caused blindness or severe blisters, others death by choking.
TANKS: Introduced by the British an armored combat vehicle that moved on-chain tracks and thus could cross many types of terrain
AUTOMATIC WEAPONS: soldiers carried the weapons. The machine gun fires ammunition automatically. The gun could wipe out waves of attackers
PLANES: Now the fight was also in the sky. The Americans were the first ones and they started to manufacture
Submaries: gemrna invasion and germans dominate the warts thatnk to the U-boats |
| casualties | anyone killed, injured, captured, or considered missing in action |
| Medical Field | They come up with the first MOBILE X-RAY machines to localize the gun balls.
A system of STORING BLOOD for blood transfusions. These were coolers to keep the blood cold
PLASTIC SURGERY for reconstructive surgeries for the soldiers
PROSTHETIC LIMB for replacing the limbs |
| "No Man’s Land.” | The space between the opposing trenches |
| Battle of Verdun | Bloodiest war, In February, the Germans launched a massive attack against the French near Verdun. Each side lost more than 300,000 men. In July, the British army tried to relieve the pressure on the French. British forces attacked the Germans northwest of Verdun, in the valley of the Somme River. Each side had suffered more than half a million casualties. |
| Eastern Front | the region along the German-Russian border where Russians and Serbs battled Germans, Austrians, and Turks.
Here, Russians and Serbs battled Germans and Austro-Hungarians. The war in the east was a more mobile war than that in the west. |
| Early fighting | At the beginning Russian forces launched an attack into both Austria and Germany. At the end of August 1914, Germany counterattacked near the town of Tannenberg. The Germans crushed the invading Russian army and drove it into full retreat. More than 30,000 Russian soldiers were killed.
Russian forces defeated the Austrians twice in September 1914. Not until December of that year did the Austrian army manage to turn the tide. Austria defeated the Russians and eventually pushed them out of Austria-Hungary. |
| Why did the Russians struggled | *INDUSTRIALIZATION came late and modernization was just starting. The things they used were more old fashion. As a result, the Russian army was continually short on food, guns, ammunition, clothes, boots, and blankets.
*The RAILROAD network wasn’t very efficient so the front troops lacked of material. The allies tried to send supplies but because they had to come across the ottoman empire they didn’t let them cross and on the other side they had to come across the submarines of Germany so the supplies could almost never come.
*The only asset that Russia had was its NUMBERS of soldiers. It had a huge population. The deaths of soldiers could easily be replaced
Military aviation
At the end of the war, there were many airplanes used. It was the first time there was a war up in the sky |
