WORLD WAR I

THE OUT BRAKE OF THE WAR

• Over 30 nations declared war between 1914 and 1918. The majority joined
on the side of the Allies, including Serbia, Russia, France, Britain, Italy
and the United States. They were opposed by Germany, Austria-Hungary,
Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire, who together formed the Central
Powers. What began as a relatively small conflict in southeast Europe
became a war between European empires. Britain and its Empire’s entry
into the war made this a truly global conflict fought on a geographical
scale never seen before. Fighting occurred not only on the Western Front,
but in eastern and southeast Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
 THE SCHLIEFFEN PLAN

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• The Schlieffen Plan, devised a decade before the start of World War I, outlined a
strategy for Germany to avoid fighting at its eastern and western fronts simultaneously.
But what had been meticulously designed to deal a swift “right hook” attack on France
and then advance on Russia, dragged on to become an ugly, brutal war of attrition.
 THE SCHLIEFFEN PLAN

• Schlieffen’s strategy assumed that Russia, having recently lost the Russo-Japanese War, would take at least six
weeks to mobilize its troops and attack Germany from the East. In that time, Germany would stage an attack
on France by marching west through the neutral territory of the Netherlands and Belgium.
• This route avoided the heavily fortified direct border with France. Then German forces would swoop south,
delivering a hammer blow through Flanders, Belgium and onward into Paris, enveloping and crushing French
forces in less than 45 days.
• Once France was defeated, according to the plan, Germany could transport its soldiers east using its railroad
network and deploy them against the Russian troops, which Schlieffen believed would require six weeks to
mobilize and attack Germany’s eastern border.
 BATTLE OF THE MARNE

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• The Allied check of the German advance during the Battle of the Marne made the struggle one of the most
decisive battles in history. Events at the Marne signaled the demise of Germany’s aggressive two-front war
strategy, known as the Schlieffen Plan; they also marked the end of the general belief, held on both sides of the
line, that the conflict that broke out in the summer of 1914 would be a short one. As the historian Barbara
Tuchman wrote as a conclusion to her book The Guns of August (1962): “The Battle of the Marne was one of
the decisive battles of the world not because it determined that Germany would eventually lose or the Allies
ultimately win the war but because it determined that the war would go on. There was no looking back, Joffre
told the soldiers on the eve. Afterward there was no turning back. The nations were caught in a trap, a trap
made during the first thirty days out of battles that failed to be decisive, a trap from which there was, and has
been, no exit.”
 BELGIUM ALLIANCE WITH BRITISH

• Schlieffen’s plan was adopted by Helmuth von Moltke, chief of the German General Staff when war broke out in
1914. Moltke made some critical modifications to the plan, including reducing German forces making up the right
hook attack into France and invading through Belgium, but not the Netherlands, during the initial offensive.
• The problem, says Prof. Fritzsche, is the Schlieffen blueprint proved inflexible. First, Belgium refused Germany's
free passage and fought the incoming German soldiers.
• Moreover, the violation of Belgium’s neutral territory drew England into the war since they had promised to
defend Belgium under the Treaty of London of 1839.
• After facing fierce resistance in Belgium and with soldiers from the British Empire in the fight alongside France,
Germany’s planned swift offensive was slowed.
 RUSSIA X GERMANY

• Russia also proved to be more adept at mobilizing its army than German military leaders had expected.
Russia managed to attack East Prussia within 10 days in August 1914 – not six weeks as was earlier
assumed.
• The Russian initial offensive was defeated, but their advances prompted Germany to send corps from France
to East Prussia, bleeding Germany’s forces on the Western Front of essential fighting manpower.
• The Schlieffen Plan’s strategy required that France be defeated swiftly – but this didn’t happen. That failure
led to sustained trench warfare on the Western Front. In those grim battles of attrition, such as the Battle of
the Somme and the Battle of Verdun, Allied forces ultimately outnumbered the Germans.
10 SIGNIFICANT BATTLES OF THE WWI

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LIFE IN THE TRENCH
“WAR IS HELL” - WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN

• Trenches—long, deep ditches dug as protective defenses—are most often associated with World War I, and the
results of trench warfare in that conflict were hellish indeed.
• Trench warfare in World War I was employed primarily on the Western Front, an area of northern France and
Belgium that saw combat between German troops and Allied forces from France, Great Britain and, later, the
United States.
• Although trenches were hardly new to combat: Prior to the advent of firearms and artillery, they were used as
defenses against attack, such as moats surrounding castles. But they became a fundamental part of the strategy with
the influx of modern weapons of war.
• Long, narrow trenches dug into the ground at the front, usually by the infantry soldiers who would occupy them for
weeks at a time, were designed to protect World War I troops from machine-gun fire and artillery attacks from the
air.
TRENCH WAR

• As the “Great War” also saw the wide use of chemical warfare and poison gas, the
trenches were thought to offer some degree of protection against exposure. (While
significant exposure to militarized chemicals such as mustard gas would result in almost
certain death, many of the gases used in World War I were still relatively weak.)
• Thus, trenches may have afforded some protection by allowing soldiers more time to take
other defensive steps, such as putting on gas masks.
 RATS, LICE AND DISEASES

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• With soldiers fighting in close proximity in the trenches, usually in unsanitary conditions, infectious diseases such as
dysentery, cholera and typhoid fever were common and spread rapidly.
• Constant exposure to wetness caused trench foot, a painful condition in which dead tissue spread across one or both feet,
sometimes requiring amputation. Trench mouth, a type of gum infection, was also problematic and is thought to be
associated with the stress of nonstop bombardment.
• As they were often effectively trapped in the trenches for long periods of time, under nearly constant bombardment, many
soldiers suffered from “shell shock,” the debilitating mental illness known today as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
• It’s likely all of these factors, which stemmed from the widespread use of trench warfare, made World War I the deadliest
conflict in global history to that point. It’s believed that as many as one in 10 of all fighting forces in the conflict were
killed.
QUESTIONS

• How is life in the trenches described?

1. Using any two sources and your own knowledge, describe life in the trenches for soldiers
on the Western Front’.
2. ‘Choose another two sources. Assess how useful these sources would be for a historian
studying life in the trenches. In your answer, consider the perspective provided by the two
sources as well as the reliability of each source’.