Conflict & Tension Part 2 Flashcards
Schlieffen Plan failure - the Battle of the Marne
Russia moved faster than expected, german commander pulled 10,000 troops out of the army advancing Paris to fight them.
France&Britain didn’t manage to stop Germans along line of river marine.
Both sides dug trenches, machine guns& barbed wire added. First signs of stalemate war.
Trench warfare - conditions
Millions of men thousands of horses lived together.
In Summer: smell was appalling, rotting corpses, sewage& unwashed soldiers.
Wet weather: soldiers up to ankles/knees in water. Would get trench-foot from this.
Infested with rats, fattened by eating dead soldiers. Soldiers had lice.
Trench warfare - ‘over the top’
Attacking side bombard front line of enemy trench (barrage).
Troops climb out of trench, race between them and defenders begins.
Defenders usually have advantage, swept up advancers with machine gun fire, sometimes cross fire.
If attackers captured positions, it’d generally be impossible to hold them.
Attackers often forced back.
New war technology: artillery
At the start: inaccurate, often bombarded their own forward trenches before getting their range right.
By 1918: artillery tactics were very sophisticated. Much more powerful and accurate.
Key weapon of the Great War.
New war technology: machine guns
At the start: heavy, mainly used to defend trenches.
Could fire abt 8 bullets per second.
1918: most groups of soldiers had own light weight machine guns.
Made it inevitable that any charge on an enemy trench would cost many lives.
New war technology: poison gas
1915: primitive. Pumped into No Mans Land, hope the wind would carry it. Had psychological impact: couldn’t see it coming.
1918: gas masks had been made. Weapon of mass destruction. Scientists on both sides perfected new + more lethal gases, eg mustard gas which burned/blinded/killed victim slowly over 4-5 weeks.
New war technology: tanks
1916: used first in Battle of the Somme. Tanks made drivers ill- fumes.
Germans too slow to get their own, so captured enemy tanks. Also developed bullets that pierced tanks.
Middle of war: the Mark IV made, lots of armour, weapons. Then Mark V, faster, reliable, only need 1 driver not 4.
1918: Whippet, 3 crew. Fastest tank.
New war technology: aircraft
Start: basic & dangerous.
Pilots weapons were hand guns. Reconnaissance: took pics of enemy trenches.
‘Dog fights’ german&british planes fight over trenches.
1918: machine guns built into planes. New engineering: only fired if propellor blade wasn’t in the way. Dropped bombs and supplies.
War of attrition
Began in 1916.
Attrition: wearing the enemy down resulting in eventual defeat
Battle of Verdun
Germans planned to wear French, force surrender: ‘bleed France white’.
Didn’t go as planned for Falkenhayn.
Both suffered roughly equal losses.
6 months of pouring men into battle.
Battle for air superiority, spy on enemy.
July 1916: 700,000 men had fallen. French led by general Pitain held out, by summer 1916 they were breaking.
Battle of the Somme
Aim was to take pressure off French at Verdun.
Brits, led by Field Marshal Douglas Haig launched it.
After week long artillery British advanced not expecting enemy survivors. They were mown down.
57,000 British casualties on day 1.
Fighting continued to November 1916, with losses of 1.25 mil people.
War became a contest, who could put up with it the longest. The nations forced to accept terrible losses.
Sept 26th: brits used new tactic of ‘creeping barrage’ advancing in the smoke of shells to appear invisible
Failures and successes of the first day of the battle of the Somme
Britain were casual, so Britain lost 20,000 soldiers in no mans land.
Brits vastly outnumbered Germans but Germans had had previous experience and the brits hadn’t.
The Lochnager bomb didn’t go off beneath the trenches so Germans survived and mowed down the brits.
The battle of Passchendaele (or the third battle of Ypres)
Began July 1917, shows how new tech was badly affected by weather.
Brits detonated mines, destroying german artillery&killing 10,000 soldiers at a stroke. But the infantry advance that followed was threatened when heavy rain created awful conditions. Tanks were used at Cambrai in Nov, 350 tanks made good progress but couldn’t hold captured land.
Nearly quarter of a mil casualties, even more German.
The Gallipoli campaign
Casualties mounting on western front, no prospect of ending stalemate.
Churchill persuaded government an attack should be mounted on Dardanelles strait, gave them a passage to the Black Sea. They’d attack the Turks & would enable supplies to get to Russia to help them.
Seemed like a good idea, Britain’s navy was the most powerful.
What went wrong with Gallipoli campaign
As British tried to attack, they sailed into the sea mines along Dardanelles.
British, French & ANZAC troops decided to attack via land, but Turks supported by Germans had strengthened defences & dug trenches. The troops were stuck in Helles beach. Disease from heat& dead bodies adding to casualties. By Dec, it was clear they wouldn’t succeed. The withdrawal was well organised but campaign seen as failure, Churchill forced to resign.
