Humanities Unit 3 notes (World War I)

1. In the early 1900s, there were two superpower countries in the world, which had a lot of
money, multiple colonies across the world, and crazy military power: France and Britain.
2. Germany wasn’t very powerful back then, and it was bullied for so long and only in the
late 1800s did they even become a country but Otto-van Bismarck, known as the Father
of Germany, managed to get it out of its trouble into a decent position and unite all the
small German-speaking states into one country.
3. Russia, France, and Britain signed a triple entente, which is an MDA (mutual defence
alliance) that means that these three countries are legally bound to support each other.
4. It was also signed as a counter to the triple alliance, signed between Austria-Hungary (a
pretty powerful country at the time), Germany, and Italy (who betrayed Germany and
Austria-Hungary in the end)
5. Slavs are a group of religiously, culturally, and linguistically similar countries, consisting
of countries like Servia, Russia, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina
6. The reason I underlined Bosnia, is because Bosnia was under control by
Austria-Hungary (we’ll call Bosnia and Herzegovina B&H for now, and Austria-Hungary
AH for now) and the Bosnians didn’t like it.
7. Serbians wanted to unite all slavic countries under one country, and to do that, they
wanted Bosnia to break away from AH. So what they did was they created an
organization called “The Black Hand” which trained all the rebels from B&H to break free
from AH’s grasp
8. So news came out that Austrian archduke Ferdinand Franz was going to tour around
B&H to make peace, but that was when the B&H rebels planned to assassinate him. So
a Bosnian teenager named Gavrillo Princip assassinated him.
9. This made AH very pissed, and they knew Serbia was the cause of this, so AH declared
war on Serbia

The war begins

1. AH declares war on Serbia, and Russia declares war on Austria-Hungary to support

them, and Germany, who spends over 70% of their income on their army, declares war
on Russia, and since France and Russia have an MDA, Germany decides to declare war
on France.
2. Britain stays neutral for now, but not for long.
3. France has a lot of defenses in its border with Germany, and Germany, (Kaiser Wilhelm
was their emperor at the time) knows that it will be futile to try and penetrate the French
border that way, so they decide to go around the border and invade neutral countries
Belgium and Luxembourg, which they did in early August 1914.
4. I guess I should take some time to talk a bit about the Schlieffen plan. They planned that,
while Russia was getting ready, they would go around the Germany-France border, wipe
out France, take Paris, then quickly move all the soldiers to the Russian border, then
 take out Russia. They estimated this would take 40 days… Well clearly that didn’t go to
plan
5. Okay, so while Germany is moving it’s troops through Belgium and Luxembourg, Britain
gets pissed that Germany is invading neutral countries so they declare war on Germany.
6. Right now it is: Germany and Austria-Hungary vs. Serbia, France, Britain, and Russia
(Tsar Nicholas II)
7. It is also worth noting that Italy still stays neutral, although they signed a triple alliance
(Germany, AH and Italy) and furthermore, Italy would betray Germany in the future as
well.
8. Okay, back to the war
9. BEF - British Expeditionary Force (the forces sent from Britain to France to help France
defend against Germany)
10. This war is also the first war to feature all three modes of war - Land, Water, and Air.
11. Germany and Britain had by far the best naval army,and Britain’s was slightly better
12. So in early august, Germany starts marching its troops through France, and they get
pretty close to Paris, but then they stop retreating at the River Marne and start fighting.
They fought pretty well so the Germans were pushed back. The Germans then dug
trenches to defend themselves and the allies did the same.
13. On the Eastern Front, things were going well for the Germans as well. So basically,
Austria- Hungary was supposed to defend Germany from Russia, but they failed so
Russia got into Germany. To counter, Germany sent a lot of their forces from France to
Russia. Russia had a strategy to sandwich Germany by attacking from 2 sides, but
because of a miscommunication, one Russian troop came 2 days late and one 2 days
early and Germany ended up winning easily, taking 90k prisoners, and a ton of valuable
loot.
14. Back on the Western Front, there was a particular type of ptsd called Shell-Shock, where
since the opposing side would pummel this side with so many artillery shells, so after the
war, any time one of these soldiers heard a bomb, they would get trauma.
15. By this point, the war was kind of stuck in a stalemate, nothing special or new happened
16. The allies took all of Germany’s colonies in other continents
17. In 23 August 1914, Japan entered the war against Germany as well
18. And now surprising everyone, Italy betrayed the Triple Alliance, and joined the
allies/entente powers in 1915, because Britain and France promised them austria land
19. On 31 october 1914, the Ottoman empire joined Germany and AH
20. The Battle of Gallipoli was a battle where the allies tried to control the sea route from
Russia to Europe by taking gallipoli. It lasted from April 1915 to January 1916, and
wanted to take out another one of Germany’s allies. They also wanted to send ships
from France to Russia without disturbance.
21. But the Allies miserably failed and failed to take control of Gallipoli.
22. This was one of the first nuclear wars, with both sides using chlorine gas to kill people
and also Germany’s zeppelin air raids bombed British cities.
23. The Germans also engaged in a bit of a naval rampage, and they blew up/sunk multiple
civilian ships.
24. One of these was the Lusitania, and it had over 150 Americans on board.
 25. Three main battles happened in the war after that:
● Battle of verdun
● Battle of the somme
● Naval battle of jutland

26. Because of the war, Russia’s economy was bust. And Tsar Nicolas just said “chill, after
we win the war, our econonmy will be top” but people didn’t like that, so they formed a
union and over threw Tsar Nicholas II and someone called Lenin took over and pulled
russia out of the war.
27. Since they surrendered, Germany made Lenin sign the breast litovsk treaty which stated
that they lose a lot of land and are proud losers of the conflict between Germany and
Russia
28. Germany was happy because they now had to only focus on the western front, but it
looked like the USA might join the war.
29. So Germany sent a message (Zimmerman telegram) in 1917 to Mezxico asking them to
invade USA, but Britain intercepted it and showed it to USA, and they joined the war.
30. After the three battles mentioned above, Germany was getting worse and worse, and
then Germany collapsed.
31. With USA troops arriving, victory was sealed. The Ottomans collapsed, followed by AH,
and then in Novemnber 11th, 1918 Germany surrendered and were forced to sign the
treaty of Versailles. They were made to reduce their army, pay a lot of reparation
charges, and also lost land. That was the end of world war 1.

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