Chapter 26: WWI Terms

Question 0

atrocity

Answer 0

any horrible and violent action taken against an innocent or unarmed person or group

Question 1

armistice

Answer 1

the cessation of all hostilities prior to the beginning of official peace negotiations; not a peace treaty and doesn’t end a war; only stops all combat activities (usually for a fixed period of time) so that negotiations for a permanent cease-fire can occur

Question 2

attrition

Answer 2

the act of weakening or exhausting by constant harassment, abuse, or attack

Question 3

Big Bertha (Grosse Bertha in German)

Answer 3

the name given by the Allies to the German 420-mm artillery that could shoot a one-ton shell 9 miles

Question 4

collective indiscipline

Answer 4

refusal to take orders by military units; objection not to the war, but to the way it was conducted; (describes the mass mutiny of the French army, April-July 1917)

Question 5

daylight savings time

Answer 5

time change invented by the British during the war to help save on coal burning so that more coal could be converted from home use to war use

Question 6

doughboys

Answer 6

name given to the American soldiers; most likely origin of this nickname is from the large brass buttons on the uniforms of the Union soldiers during the American Civil War that looked like dumplings or “dough boys”

Question 7

Dreadnought

Answer 7

class of super battleships introduced by Britain in 1906; each ship carried ten 12-inch guns, had extra heavy armor and had a top speed of 21 knots; its nearest rival battle ship carried only four 12-inch guns, had less armor, and had a top speed of 18 knots

Question 8

hanging on the wire

Answer 8

slang for dead; also “gone west” and “bought the farm”

Question 9

kaiser

Answer 9

German for “Caesar” or “Emperor”

Question 10

land ships

Answer 10

original name given to tanks; “tank” was used as a code name, so that if Germans intercepted a message they would think the Allies were only bringing tanks of water up to the front

Question 11

liquid fire

Answer 11

original name given to the flames shot from flame throwers; introduced by Germans at Verdun in 1916

Question 12

mobilization

Answer 12

all the activities associated with preparing the armed forces of a nation to go to war

Question 13

national self-determination

Answer 13

the policy of allowing peoples to determine their own form of government and national boundaries; the nations so created should be sovereign ones, independent of all controls by another nation

Question 14

over the top

Answer 14

an expression referring to climbing out of a trench or over the front edge of the trench to begin moving across no man’s land

Question 15

Paris gun

Answer 15

an artillery capable of firing shells 75 miles, but not as accurate as Big Bertha; so named because it was first used to shell Paris

Question 16

propaganda

Answer 16

ideas and messages created to promote a cause or to damage an opposing cause and to persuade people to think in a particular way or to take particular actions

Question 17

race to the sea

Answer 17

name given to the continuous series of flanking movements by Germans and British in October and November 1914; resulted in a continuous line of trenches from the Marne to the English Channel

Question 18

stick bombs

Answer 18

a hand grenade attached to the end of a special wooden handle or “stick”

Question 19

tsar

Answer 19

Russian for “Caesar” or “Emperor”

Question 20

U-boat

Answer 20

short for Unterseeboot, the German name for submarine

Question 21

wastage

Answer 21

term for the daily deaths and other casualties in military units, whether or not in battle