Dana's World War 1 Project
World War I Begins
World War I was caused, in part, because of the "I got your back system." In this 2 countries sign and entente.
An entente is an agreement between two countries that if either is attacked, the other will defend its ally.
The reason this led to World War I is that there were so many ententes that if one country declared war,
than many, many more would go to war in a chain reaction, or domino effect.
The "Spark," or formal declaration of war, happened when Archduke Franz Ferdinand,
heir to the Austria-Hungarian empire was assassinated by Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb, at a parade in Sarajevo.
This led Austria-Hungary to declare war on Serbia. Russia was allied with Serbia, so it declared war on Austria-Hungary.
Germany was allied with Austria-Hungary, so it declared war on Russia. Germany then declared war on France and invaded Belgium.
Great Britain declared war on Germany as Belgium's ally. Austrian-Hungary declared war on Russia, and Great Britain and
France declared war on Austria-Hungary. And so, in the space of 15 days, the stage was set for World War I.
New Weapons
World War I saw the use of many new and deadly weapons. The most heavily used was the
Thompson machine gun, or "Tommy," for short. The "Tommies" were used to defend trenches,
and these guns mowed down many of the men that died in World War I. Another new weapon was the air force,
which consisted of biplanes and zeppelins. Zeppelins were used to spy, and to drop deadly
mustard and chlorine gas, another mass killer. Biplanes fought in "dogfights" with other biplanes,
and destroyed enemy zeppelins.
Gas Attacks
Gas Attacks were horrible things. Every man had a gas mask, but they were only
useful if you got them on in the first 3 seconds or so. That was the time it took to be blinded,
directly after which it would paralyze you, and then proceed to slowly kill you over several hours.
Needless to say, the men kept their gas masks within reach at all times.
America Enters the War
America didn't enter the war until the summer of 1917. At the beginning of the war,
America naively thought it would trade with both sides. Not surprisingly, neither side
was going to let that happen. The British started to stop, search, and seize goods off all American
ships headed for German ports. The British would then take the American flag off the ship and put it
on their ship to slip past the German U-boats. Another thing England would do was to smuggle
weapons, supplies, and ammunition inside passenger ships that had Americans on board.
In Feb., 1915 Germany officially warned that it would destroy all ships, American or not,
that were entering or exiting British ports. On May 7, 1915 the British passenger ship "Luisitania"
was sunk by German U-boats and 128 Americans died. The final thing that got America into the war
was the Zimmerman telegram. The Zimmerman telegram was a telegram from Germany to Mexico
saying that if Mexico would invade the U.S., Germany would provide financial aid to take the southwest U.S.
Links
Trenches on the web
The Aerodrome
Britain in the great war
The Canadian great war homepage
Lost Poets of the Great War