World In Conflict
The Great War –World War I
•The World War of 1914-18 - The Great War,as contemporaries called it -- was the firstman-made catastrophe of the 20th century.
• Historians can easily identify the literal"smoking gun" that set the War in motion:
•***a revolver used by a Serbian nationalist toassassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand (heirapparent to the Austro-Hungarian throne) inSarajevo on June 28, 1914.
•Scholars are still debating theunderlying causes----------?
• Was it the desire for greater empire,wealth and territory?
•A massive arms race?
• The series of treaties which ensuredthat once one power went to war, allof Europe would quickly follow?
•Was it social turmoil and changingartistic sensibilities brought about bythe Industrial Revolution?
•Or was it simply a miscalculation byrulers and generals in power?
•In the spring of 1915 the trenchesalong the western front were filledwith millions of soldiers, at theaverage rate of one soldier per fourinches of trench.
•In early 1916, the British had over 1million men in Belgium and France,while the French and German armieshad re-supplied their front line troops.
•Instead, by year's end, both sideswould lose nearly one million menwith very little change in position ofthe front line trenches.
•The battlefields became "killing fields"and only one word, "slaughter",
• In 1917, after the loss of millions oflive, the combatant nations, manypeople - civilians and soldiers alike -still wanted to continue fighting tovictory.
•The combatant nations rejected allthe peace initiatives that wereproposed in 1917.
•However, people on both sides of theconflict began to question the violence andmassive slaughter.
• People everywhere sought ways to copewith, if not escape, the environment of war.
•Russian front line soldiers grewincreasingly disillusioned andapathetic.
•Many refused to obey orders,retreating when commanded toadvance; they deserted the militaryand engage in open rebellion andmass mutiny.
•In France, a failed offensive in thespring of 1917 resulted in a mutinyagainst the way it was waged by thegeneral staff.
•After three years of war, men, armies andnations were nearing a breaking point.
• For individual soldiers, it emerged as "shellshock," a personal withdrawal from anintolerable reality of trench warfare.
•World War I Tank
•Military Airplanes of World War I
Naval Battle Ships
•WWI Chemical Weapons
•The crippling effects of gas warfareon individual soldiers in WWI inspiredunprecedented artistic expression ofthe harsher side of war, from poetry topainting.
•John Singer Sargent portrays theaftermath of a gas attack in hispainting Gassed. Many lie dead fromthe gas attack, but even the survivorsare terribly wounded—bandagescover their eyes; mucous membraneswere particularly vulnerable to poisongas.