End of WW1
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End of WW1
Review of WW1 Beginnings• War started by Serbian
assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary
• Russia defended Serbia• Germany allied with Austria• German “Schlieffen Plan”
attacked France through Belgium
• Western Front & Eastern Front• Trench warfare “stalemate”• Naval blockades and U-Boats• Zimmerman Note: US Entrance
Implications of US Entrance• American troops used on western
front; Russian exit made western front more important
• War became a “world” war with entrance of US and Latin America
• US needed soldiers: “Selective Service Act” created the first US draft of soldiers
• “American Expeditionary Force” (AEF) fought in France, but only under American control
• Black Americans served too, usually mixed with Whites
• All-Black 369th Regiment fought under French control: highly decorated
• Entrance of US politicized the goals of the war -- Wilson's "14 Points" gave ideological nobility to the highly destructive war
New Technologies• Machine guns: mostly mounted
on land because they were heavy
• “Howitzer” guns (large cannons) were sometimes on railways
• Flamethrowers cleared trenches and rooms off trenches
• Aircraft first used for surveillance, later used for attack
• Germany’s Fokker planes timed propeller with machine gun fire
• Battleships and convoys of battleships to protect merchant ships
• Tanks: ended trench stalemate
Final Offensives• Germany made final large attack in
northern France, trying to take Paris
• French, British, and US forces defended Paris
• “Meuse-Argonne Offensive”: Allies pushed through German lines to take key railway used to supply troops
• After 6 weeks, Allies won battle
• Germany surrendered after lines had been broken, even though Germany was not invaded
• German generals agreed to an unconditional surrender, even though most Germans did not realize war had been “lost”