WWI Detail

Question 1

What was the phrase often used to describe the war?

Answer 1

‘The war to end all wars’

Question 2

Why did the Schlieffen Plan fail?

Answer 2

• History of short wars (Franco-Prussian 1970-71)
• Eventually captured Brussels on the 14th of August, took over two weeks due to unexpectedly strong Belgian resistance
• Britain brought into war because of the 1839 Treaty of London
• Meanwhile, the Serbs had driven Austria out of Serbia, and the Russian army quickly entered Austria
• French + British launched a counterattack at the river Marne on the 9th September
• ‘The miracle of the Marne’ saved France

Question 3

What happened at the Battle of Verdun? What type of warfare was this?

Answer 3

• 21st February 1916: Germans attacked at Verdun, French would not stop resupplying troops, 350,000 casualties by November. Eventually French Victory.
• This demonstrated the ‘war of attrition’ - relentless wearing down

Question 4

What opinion does S.A.R have on the battle of Verdun? Why should we be critical of this?

Answer 4

Stephane Audoin-Rouzeau: “I think that in the total war, the battle of Verdun was a total battle”

Question 5

Why was Germany’s unrestricted U boat warfare unsuccessful?

Answer 5

• January 1917: Germany announced the U-Boat campaign in an attempt to choke of Britain’s food supplies
• US shipping and commerce suffered severely -> On 6 April 1917 President Wilson declared war on the Central Powers
• In May a convoy system was introduced by the Allied Powers to defeat Germany’s submarines
• Allied ships were escorted with US help over the Atlantic and the Mediterranean
• Britain introduced rationing

Question 6

Why did the Ludendorff Offensive fail?

Answer 6

• ‘Storm troops’ tactic worked at first: in March 1918, 35 German divisions on the Somme made gains of about 65km
• Allies were under the coordinated control of General Ferdinand Foch and were now using planes and tanks
• 8 August Ludendorff called this ‘The Black Day’ - Allies achieved the furtherest advance since the beginning of the war. By late September, they had reached the Hindenburg line
• In May and August of the Spring Offensive German advance stopped as they had overstretched themselves and had no reserved to call on to replace the 800,000 casualties they had sustained in the offensive
• Ludendorff called for an armistice in October 1918, came into place in November

Question 7

What does Historian AW think of it?

Answer 7

• Alexander Watson: ‘Their [Ludendorff and Hindenburg’s] desperate desire for peace… was due principally to the parlous state of their army’

Question 8

What showed that the German people were ready for a revolution?

Answer 8

• Germans suffered severe food shortages in 1918 due to the success of the Allied blockade
• The average daily calorie input for a civilian adult dropped from around 1,500 in 1915 to below 1000 in the winter of 1916-17
• Morale was very low, epidemic of Spanish fly in 1918
• The government was using just 2% of its budget on civilians, and 83% on its military. In contrast, Britain spent 16% on its civilians and 62% on its military, which kept morale up.
• Oct 28, 1918: Sailors rebelled at the Kiel mutiny

Question 9

How was the economic situation in Germany in 1918?

Answer 9

• Money was raised entirely though loans and government savings bonds- only 6% was raised by taxation in contrast to 20% in Britain.
• Germany planned to pay for the war through the imposition of severe treaties on its defeated enemies, but in 1918 it was bankrupt

Question 10

How were the German’s doing well by 1917?

Answer 10

• 3rd March 1918: Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
• Meant that troops could be moved to the Western Front
• Russia agreed to pay six billion marks in compensation to German interests for their losses.
• Haig’s third battle of Ypres was hugely unsuccessful due to muddy trenches
• February 1917: Germans withdrew behind the heavily fortified Hindenburg line
• When Russia collapsed with the revolution in 1917, the Central Powers tried to cripple the economy with unrestricted submarine warfare

Question 11

Why did the US enter the war?

Answer 11

• Declared war on the 4th April
• Sinking of the Lusitania in 1915
• Zimmerman telegram intercepted in January 1917 caused public outrage as Germany had offered US soil to Mexico

Question 12

How did the Allies survive unrestricted submarine warfare?

Answer 12

• Britain survived by expanding food production, introducing rationing and organising convoys to protect merchant shipping

Question 13

Why did trench warfare lead to a stalemate?

Answer 13

• After the ‘race to the sea’ the conflict settled into a static ‘positional’ warfare
• Attackers suffered twice as many casualties than defenders during an assault on enemy trench line - ‘over the top’

Question 14

What did JK say about this type of ‘positional’ warfare

Answer 14

John Keegan talked about the battle of the Somme where ‘the advance checked, halted and eventually stopped literally dead’

Question 15

What were machine guns like?

Answer 15

• Whereas infantryman could fire 25 rounds a minute with a bolt-action rifle, he could fire 600 rounds a minute with a machine gun
• also there was a submarine gun known as a ‘trench sweeper’

Question 16

How did heavy artillery change warfare?

Answer 16

• Over the course of WWI, artillery inflicted 70% of all casualties! Wtf
• sometimes ineffective: in the battle of the Somme the British fired more than 1.5 million shells in five days, but these failed to cut the barbed wire or destroy the German trenches
• Tactics developed such as the ‘creeping barrage’ and ‘artillery ambush’

Question 17

How did chemical warfare chance the way that the war was fought?

Answer 17

• first poison gas attack made at Ypres by the Germans in April 1915 - chlorine caused intense panic amongst the Allied soldiers and disabled more that 6.5km of trenches
• Phosphene gas soon developed - 18 times stronger than chlorine gas

Question 18

How did tanks change the fighting?

Answer 18

• Developed by the British and the French, 49 of them were first used at the battle of the Somme
• Not that effective
• more used at the battle of Cambrai in 1917

Question 19

What did IB (lol Nooo) say about the tanks?

Answer 19

Ian Beckett: ‘Tanks during the war remained what GHQ concluded in 1918, a “mechanical contrivance” with potential usefulness only as an adjunct to combined infantry and artillery assault’

Question 20

What did JB say about technological advances during WW1?

Answer 20

John Bourne: ‘Firepower replaced manpower as the instrument of victory. This represented a revolution in the conduct of war’

Question 21

What was the importance of mines and submarines?

Answer 21

• U-boat (Unterseebooten, underwater boats) campaign blocked British ships
• Development of the torpedo and the submarine made allied ships defenceless
• risky: sinking of the Lusitania and the loss of 1,000 lives (128 Americans) led to protests in the US
• Actually almost successful: in April 1917 Britain lost 834,000 tons of shipping, and was down to only 6 weeks worth of supplies of corn

Question 22

How many did Britain survive the U-boat blockade?

Answer 22

• Turning point: Lloyd George supported the idea of a convoy system in which large numbers of merchant ships would sail together with a naval escort
• By October 1917, a total of 99 homeward-bound convoys had reached the harbour safely
• Technology developed to defeat U-boats: Sonar and echo ranging introduced, and in 1918 the Germans lost 69 U-boats and were unable to replace them!
• improves submarine nets designed for use at the entrance of the English Channel

Question 23

What happened at the battle of Jutland?

Answer 23

• date: 31 May- 1 June 1916
• major challenge to British supremacy of the sea
• Germans unable to destroy Britain’s fleet
• famous journalist remarked: ‘the High Sea Fleet has succeeded only in assaulting it’s gaoler (jailer) before returning to gaol’
• now that the British proved their supremacy, it could move 8.5 million troops elsewhere

Question 24

What technological developments were made in terms of airships, bombs and civilian targets?

Answer 24

• Zeppelins initially used in German raids, but as British defences improved they were replaced with bomber aircraft (e.g. The Gotha)

Question 25

What developments were made with aircraft?

Answer 25

• Dog-fights became a common sight over the trenches

* By 1918, there were more that 8,000 aircraft in operation on both sides

Question 26

What resources did the Allies have?

Answer 26

• The combined economy of the Allied powers was 60% larger than that of the central powers, and their populations were 4.5 times larger
• Entry of US in April 1917 brought loans and extensive economic resources

Question 27

What role to women play in Britain vs Germany?

Answer 27

• Britain: percentage of women in the workforce rose from 24% to 37% over the course of the war
• Germany: remained stagnant

Question 28

How did their status change

Answer 28

Remember to finish

Question 29

How did agriculture and rationing help the allied powers? How did Germany fail at this?

Answer 29

• British and French civilian mortality dropped due to the rationing of unhealthy foods
• Germany had a 134% increase in monthly death rate during the ‘turnip winter’ of 1917
• Rationing helped them survive the U-boat campaign

Question 30

How did the governments control production during WW1?

Answer 30

• Key industries such as coal mining and shipping were nationalised
• Wages and prices to ensure that inflation did not he out of hand.
• In Germany, Walter Rathenau tried to bring industry under the control of the War Boards to oversee production, but he was not as successful as the British government as he faces frustrating interference from the German military

Question 31

When did Hindenburg and Ludendorff come to military power? What did they fail at?

Answer 31

Field marshal Paul Bon Hindenburg and General Erich von Ludendorff were appointed to head the army’s Supreme Command in August 1916, and the exercised a virtual dictatorship over the home front and the western front
• Although Wilhelm II ran the German government, power shifted to the military leaders in the last 2 crucial years of war
• Authoritarian nature of the regime could not motivate and inspire the population like Lloyd George did in Britian, and Clemenceau did in France.

Question 32

What historian argues the Germans were doing well until the country’s leadership made miscalculations?

Answer 32

Graham goodlad

Question 33

What showed allied success in leadership?

Answer 33

• The Allied forces were more willing to adopt new and more effective fighting method
• the forces followed a ‘learning curve’ after the battle of the Somme in 1916
• creeping barrage was improved drastically
• allowed them to launch an impressive counterattack to Ludendorff’s offensive known as the ‘Hundred Days’

Question 34

How did the Allies have much better resources?

Answer 34

• Germany’s main allies, Austria-Hungary and Turkey, were weaker powers
• France was a MUCH better Allie- provided 3/4 of the field artillery, tanks and aeroplanes used by the US forces
• The western powers were able to use foreign financial markets, whereas Germany had to rely on domestic borrowing which damaged the economy

Question 35

How did Germany compete with the lilies in terms of industrial output?

Answer 35

• start of 1918: allies producing 100,000 motorised lorries, compared to 23,000 for Germany - G more reliant on horse drawn transport- logistical weakness that hampered the Ludendorff offensive massively
• Germany only managed to construct 10 of its tanks (A7V Sturmpanzerwagen); made more use of the captured British tanks!

Question 36

How did German troops compare to the Allies?

Answer 36

• could not replace losses so easily
• Auxiliary Labour Law, passed as part of the 1917 Hindenburg programme, transferred thousands of men from the format line to work in factories -> damaging for Army (foolish by Hindenburg)
• At the same time, 64,000 US troops joined in March 1918, rising to 227,000 by October

Question 37

What was the ‘stab in the back’ legend?

Answer 37

The myth that Germany had lost because of an internal conspiracy by socialist and liberal politicians. The ‘November criminals’ had stabbed the German Army in the back by seeking an Armistice.

In reality, they lost because of poor decision making and resources. Did not have a plan ‘B’ after the Schliefflen Plan failed

Question 38

What historian points out how Germany distributed it’s food?

Answer 38

Nail Ferguson points out that despite the hardships of the Allied blockade, commanders ensured that their troops had enough calories. Those that suffered were women, civil servants and middle class professionals, who were least vital to the war effort..