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Four Causes of WWI
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Assassination of Franz Ferdinand
websitevideoArchduke Franz Ferdinand was heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Him and his wife Sophie were in Bosnia for a meeting at the City Hall when a bomb bounced off their car exploding near by. Unhurt, they continued on to the meeting. Afterwards, they were on their way to a picnic and the car stopped. That is when Gavrilo Princip shot the Archduke twice, killing him. -
Allies vs. Central Powers
websiteThe Triple Entente or Allies in WWI were France, Britain, and Russia. The Triple Alliance were Germany, Austria-Hungary, Hungary. When the Ottoman Empire joined, they became known as the Central Powers. The United States was neutral, but they still helped the Allies. -
British Blockade
Britain blockaded the German coast to prevent weapons and other military supplies from getting through. They expanded the goods forbidden to be supplied by neutrals to those engaged in war, or contraband, including food. Also, they extended the blockade to neutral ports and mined the entire North Sea.The affect to this was first, that American ships carrying goods for Germany refused to challenge the blockade and seldom reached their destination. Second, Germany found it increasingly difficult -
British Blockade
to import foodstuffs and fertilizers for crops. By 1917, there was an estimated 750,000 Germans who starved to death from famine due to the British blockade. Americans were angry about the blockade, which threatened freedom of the seas and prevented American goods from reaching German ports. Germany's response to the blockade soon outraged American public opinion. -
Fighting Begins
Germany invaded Belgium in 1914, following the Schlieffen Plan. The plan was meant to quickly take over France by going thorough Belguim to Paris. As German troops swept across Belgium, thousands of civilians fled in terror. After France had fallen, they turned the attention over to Russia. -
Three New Weapons
machine guns on the plane for the pilot to shoot at the enemy and eventually were built to travel faster and carry heavy bomb loads. Another new weapon was poison gas which was a yellow-green chlorine fog that sickened, suffocated, burned, and blinded its victims. They then made gas masks to prevent getting affected by the horrible gas. -
Three New Weapons
videoThe two most innovative weapons were the tank and the airplane. Together, they put a start to mechanized warfare, or warfare that relies on machines powered by gasoline and diesel engines. Tanks ran on caterpillar treads and were built of steel so that bullets bounced off. Eventually, the British had learned how to drive large numbers of tanks through barbed wire defenses, clearing a path for the infantry. Airplanes were very flimsy at first, but after awhile, they got more ideas. They mounted -
Lusitania
websitevideoGermany responded to the British blockade with a counter blockade by U-boats which were submarines. Any British or Allied ship found in the waters around Britain would be sunk. One of the worst disasters was when a U-boat sank the British liner Lusitania off the southern coast of Ireland. There were 128 Americans of the 1,198 persons lost on the ship. The Germans defended their action assuming that the liner carried ammunition. Americans were still very outraged with Germany because of the loss -
Lusitania
the loss of lives. America then turned against Germany and the Central Powers. -
Trench Warfare
videoTrenches crossed France from the Belgian coast to the Swiss Alps. German soldiers occupied one set of trenches, Allied soldiers the other. The three main kinds of trenches were front line, support, and reserve. Soldiers were rotated through each trench. The officers' quarters were dug underground rooms, and were also used as command postss. Between the trenches of the two enemies was a place called "no man's land" --a unhabited plain of mud covered with shell craters and filled with barbed wire. -
Great Migration
The Great Migration was the large-scale movement of hundreds of thousands of Southern blacks to cities in the North. There were several factors that contributed to the tremendous increase in black migration. First, many African Americans sought to escape racial discrimination in the South, which made it hard to make a living and often threatened their lives. Also, a boll weevil infestation, aided by floods and droughts, had ruined much of the South's cotton fields. In the North, there were more -
Great Migration
websitejob opportunities. However, racial prejudice against African Americans also existed in the North. The press of new migrants to Northern cities caused overcrowding and intensified racial tensions. Between 1910 and 1930, hundreds of thousands of them migrated to such cities as Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and St. Louis. -
Election of 1916
The Democrats renominated Wilson,&the Republicans nominated Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes. Wilson campaigned on the slogan “He Kept Us Out of War.” Hughes pledged to uphold America's right to freedom of the seas but also promised not to be too severe on Germany. The election kept changing sides hour to hour, but Wilson won it. America did not like Germany anymore so they didn't want Hughes to go easy on them. Also, they knew Wilson from the previous election&he kept them out of war. -
Zimmermann Note
The Zimmermann note was a telegram from the German foreign minister to the German ambassador in Mexico that was intercepted by British agents. The telegram proposed an alliance between Mexico and Germany and promised that if war with the United States broke out, Germany would support Mexico in recovering “lost territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.” -
America Joins the War
The Americans joined the war after Germany had shown the the “actual overt acts.” For instance, the Zimmermann note, the sinking of four unarmed American merchant ships, and when the oppressive Russian monarchy was replaced with a representative government. Now supporters of American entry into the war could claim that this was a war of democracies against brutal monarchies. President Wilson delivered his war resolution at the Capitol building on April 2, 1917, that America was no longer neutral -
Women's Roles
websiteWhen America entered the war, the women took over the jobs that had been held exclusively by men. They became railroad workers, cooks, dockworkers, and bricklayers, They mined coal and took part in shipbuilding. At the same time, women continued to fill more traditional jobs as nurses, clerks, and teachers. Many women worked as volunteers, serving at Red Cross facilities and encouraging the sale of bonds and the planting of victory gardens. Other women were very active in the peace movement. In -
Women's Roles
In 1919, Congress finally passed the Nineteenth Amendment, granting women the right to vote. They showed Congress that they could work equal to men, therefore they could have equal rights. -
CPI
websiteThe Committee on Public Information was the nation's first propaganda agency, which is biased communication designed to influence peoples thoughts and actions. The head of the CPI was a former muckraking journalist George Creel. He persuaded the nation's artists and advertising agencies to create thousands of paintings, posters, cartoons, and sculptures promoting the war. He recruited some 75,000 men to serve as “Four-Minute Men,” who spoke about everything relating to the war. He -
CPI
recruited some 75,000 men to serve as “Four-Minute Men,” who spoke about everything relating to the war. He distributed some 75 million pamphlets, booklets, and leaflets, many with the help of the Boy Scouts. Creel's propaganda campaign was highly effective. -
Selective Service Act
The government desperately needed more fighting power to go into war, so Congress passed the Selective Service Act. The act required men to register with the government in order to be randomly selected for military service. By the end of 1918, 24 million men had registered under the act. Of this number, almost 3 million were called up. About 2 million troops reached Europe before the truce was signed, and three-fourths of them saw actual combat. Most of the inductees had not attended high school -
Selective Service Act
and about one in five was foreign-born. Although women were not allowed to enlist, the army reluctantly accepted women in the Army Corps of Nurses, but denied them army rank, pay, and benefits. About 13,000 women accepted noncombat positions in the navy and marines, where they served as nurses, secretaries, and telephone operators, with full military rank. -
Espionage & Sedition Acts
Under the Espionage and Sedition Acts a person could be fined up to $10,000 and sentenced to 20 years in jail for interfering with the war effort or for saying anything disloyal, profane, or abusive about the government or the war effort. These laws clearly violated the spirit of the First Amendment. The purpose of them was to get rid of the hysteria from the war against Germany. -
WIB
websiteThe War Industries Board was an agency established during WWI to increase efficiency and discourage waste in war-related industries. It was reorganized in 1918 under the leadership of Bernard M. Baruch, a prosperous businessman. Some ways they conserved were gasless Sundays or lightless nights. Benjamin Franklin thought of daylight-savings time which took advantage of the longer days of summer. -
14 Points
websiteWoodrow Wilson presented his fourteen points speech to Congress before the war was even over. They were his plan of world peace. The first five points were issues that he believed had to be addressed to prevent another war. The next eight points dealt with boundary changes and how different ethnic groups were to form their own nation-states or decide for themselves what nation they would belong. The fourteenth point was the League of Nations. It would provide a forum for nations to discuss -
14 Points
and settle their grievances without having to resort to war. -
Armistice
The armistice was the truce that Germany signed to agree to cease-fire and officially end the war. They were too exhausted to continue fighting against the Allies now that Austria-Hungary had surrendered and kaiser gave up the throne. World War I was the bloodiest war in history up to that time. Deaths numbered about 22 million, more than half of them civilians. In addition, 20 million people were wounded, and 10 million more became refugees. The direct economic costs of the war may have been -
Armistice
about $338 billion. The United States lost 48,000 men in battle, with another 62,000 dying of disease. More than 200,000 Americans were wounded. The news of peace with the Central Powers brought great relief to the allies. -
Map
The Treaty of Versailles established nine new nations and shifted the boundaries of other nations. The new nations were Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Prussia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, and Transjordan. Five areas from the Ottoman Empire were given to France and Great Britain as mandates. The two allies had to administer the mandates until they were ready for self-rule and then independence. -
Big Four
websiteThe “Big Four” included Woodrow Wilson from the U.S., Georges Clemenceau of France, David Lloyd George of Britain, and Vittorio Orlando of Italy. These four men worked out the peace treaty's details among themselves. Wilson conceded on most of his Fourteen Points for the establishment of the League of Nations. -
Schenck vs United States
websiteCharles Schenck, an official of the U.S. Socialist Party, mailed thousands of pamphlets to men who had been drafted into the armed forces. They explained that the government had no right to send American citizens to other countries to kill people. Schenck was then convicted of sedition and sentenced to prison, but he argued that the conviction, punishment, and even the law itself violated his right to free speech. The Supreme Court agreed to hear his appeal. A unanimous court upheld Schenck's -
Schenck vs United States
conviction, stating that under wartime conditions, the words in the pamphlets were not protected by the right of free speech. However, the decision was that Schenck did not violate his First Amendment right to free speech, therefore they supported his conviction. -
League of Nations
websiteThe League of Nations was the last of the fourteen points Wilson presented. It would provide a forum for nations to discuss and settle their grievances without having to resort to war. -
Treaty of Versailles
It established nine new nations and shifted the boundaries of other nations. Five areas from the Ottoman Empire were given to France and Great Britain as mandates. The two allies had to administer the mandates until they were ready for self-rule and then independence.
Germany could not keep an army and they had to return the region of Alsace-Lorraine to France and pay $33 billion to the allies for war damages. This treatment of Germany weakened the ability of the Treaty of Versailles to provide -
Treaty of Versailles
websitea lasting peace in Europe and would eventually lead to the Second World War. Also, for three years the Russians had fought on the side of the Allies, suffering higher casualties then any other nation. However, because Russia was excluded from the peace conference, it lost more territory than Germany. Finally, the treaty ignored claims of colonized people for self-determination. -
Final Statistics
France; $24,265,583,000 Italy; $12,413,998,000 Britain; $35,334,012,000 USA; $22,625,253,000. The Allies with a total of $125,690,477,000 and Central Powers $186,333,637,000. -
Final Statistics
websiteHere are the estimated death tolls of the Great War: Germany; 1,773,700 Austria-Hungary; 1,200,000 Turkey; 325,000 Russia; 1,700,000 France; 1,357,800 Italy; 650,000 Britain; USA; 126,000. The estimated total of deaths for all of the Allies are 5,152,115 and 3,386,200 for the Central Powers. The total of both is 8,538,315. Here are the costs of the war for these countries: Germany; $37,775,000,000 Austria-Hungary; $20,622,960,000 Turkey; 1,420,000,000 Russia; $22,593,950,000
