World War One: A New Style of War

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World War OneA New Style of War
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Schlieffen Plan

• Germany wanted to sweep down through Belgium and
  take France quickly
• Massed forces on western front for quick victory,
  then shift focus to the east
• Germans were stopped and stalemate ensued

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Stalemate on the Western Front

• Unable to break through the French lines, the
  Germans dig trenches to hold their position
• Allies dig trenches as well
• Stretched from the North Sea to Switzerland and
  did not move much

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Trench Warfare

• There were several lines of trenches
• Fire trenches
• Support trenches
• Reserve trenches
• Communication trenches
• Trenches were approximately 7 ft deep and 6 ft
  wide

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No Mans Land

• Between enemy trenches was called no mans
  land, a waste land of barbed wire and land
  mines.
• As small as 7 yards, as large as over 500,
  usually around 250.
• Attacking across No Mans Land was extremely
  difficult due to barbed wire and shell craters

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Life in the trenches was hell on earth. Lice,
rats, trench foot, trench mouth, where the gums
rot and you lose your teeth. And of course dead
bodies everywhere.
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Life in the Trenches

• Trenches were often waterlogged and full of
  disease
• The trenches were wet and cold and at this
  time some of them did not have duckboards or
  dug-outs. The battalion lived in mud and water.

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Trench Foot

• Infection of the foot caused by cold, wet, and
  unsanitary conditions

• During the winter of 1914-15 over 20,000 men in
  the British army were treated for trench foot.
• Soldiers were required to change socks multiple
  times a day as well as grease their feet with
  whale oil

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Trench Foot Amputees

• Your feet swell to two or three times their
  normal size and go completely dead. You could
  stick a bayonet into them and not feel a thing.
  If you are fortunate enough not to lose your feet
  and the swelling begins to go down. It is then
  that the intolerable, indescribable agony begins.
  I have heard men cry and even scream with the
  pain and many had to have their feet and legs
  amputated.

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Trench Rats

• The outstanding feature of the trenches was the
  extraordinary number of rats. The area was
  infested with them. It was impossible to keep
  them out of the dugouts. They grew fat on the
  food that they pilfered from us, and anything
  they could pick up in or around the trenches
  they were bloated and loathsome to look at. Some
  were nearly as big as cats.

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Trench Rats

• Rats came up from the canal, fed on the plentiful
  corpses, and multiplied exceedingly. While I
  stayed here with the Welch. a new officer joined
  the company and, in token of welcome, was given a
  dug-out containing a spring-bed. When he turned
  in that night he heard a scuffling, shone his
  torch on the bed, and found two rats on his
  blanket tussling for the possession of a severed
  hand.

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Trench Rats

• a pair of rats were capable of producing some 800
  offspring within a single year.
• Soldiers would often hunt rats to pass the time
  by attracting them with food and then attacking
  them with bayonets or rifles

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Trench Rats
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Lice in the Trenches
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Over the Top

• An offensive consisted of days of shelling the
  enemys defenses followed by an order to go Over
  the Top and into No Mans Land
• Offensives were very ineffective and resulted in
  huge losses of life
• About 800,000 at Verdun alone

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Mechanization and New Weapons

• WWI was an industrialized war that mass produced
  new weapons.
• These new weapons were more efficient and more
  deadly
• Military tactics and strategies had not developed
  with the new weapons ? lead to a tremendous
  amount of deaths

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Machine Gun

• Hiram Maxim invented worlds first automatic
  portable machine gun
• fifty Rhodesian police fought off 5,000 Matabele
  warriors with just four Maxim guns
• Rapid fire mowed down waves of soldiers as they
  raced across no mans land

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Chlorine Gas

• The effects are these - a splitting headache and
  terrific thirst (to drink water is instant
  death), a knife edge of pain in the lungs and the
  coughing up of a greenish froth off the stomach
  and the lungs, ending finally in insensibility
  and death. The colour of the skin from white
  turns a greenish black and yellow, the colour
  protrudes and the eyes assume a glassy stare. It
  is a fiendish death to die.

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Mustard Gas

• "Great mustard-coloured blisters, blind eyes, all
  sticky and stuck together, always fighting for
  breath, with voices a mere whisper, saying that
  their throats are closing and they know they will
  choke."

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Tanks

• Tanks were first used during WWI
• They were able to cross the trenches, across
  broken ground and barbed wire while facing heavy
  machine gun fire

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Artillery

• Used to weaken enemy fortifications before
  offensives

Big Bertha
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U-Boat

• Unterseebooten Germans were first to develop
  submarines. Waged unrestricted submarine warfare
  in the Atlantic.

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Aircraft

• Planes were first used for reconnaisance missions
• Pilots then engaged in small battles in the air
  where they would shoot at each other with pistols
• Later in the war, planes began to drop bombs and
  engage in dogfights with mounted machine guns.

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Zeppelins

• Blimps that Germans used to drop bombs
• Use for only 2 yrs as they were easily shot down
  by enemy soldiers and planes

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THE HUMAN COST
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The Aftermath of an Artillery Raid
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A Man With a Broken Face
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39 million Casualties
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Countries Total Mobilized Killed Died Wounded Prisoners Missing Total Casualties Casualties of Mobilized
Allied Powers            
Russia 12,000,000 1,700,000 4,950,000 2,500,000 9,150,000 76.3
France 8,410,000 1,357,800 4,266,000 537,000 6,160,800 76.3
British Empire 8,904,467 908,371 2,090,212 191,652 3,190,235 35.8
Italy 5,615,000 650,000 947,000 600,000 2,197,000 39.1
United States 4,355,000 126,000 234,300 4,500 364,800 8.2
Japan 800,000 300 907 3 1,210 0.2
Romania 750,000 335,706 120,000 80,000 535,706 71.4
Serbia 707,343 45,000 133,148 152,958 331,106 46.8
Belgium 267,000 13,716 44,686 34,659 93,061 34.9
Greece 230,000 5,000 21,000 1,000 17,000 11.7
Portugal 100,000 7,222 13,751 12,318 33,291 33.3
Montenegro 50,000 3,000 10,000 7,000 20,000 40.0
Total 42,188,810 5,152,115 12,831,004 4,121,090 22,104,209 52.3
Central Powers            
Germany 11,000,000 1,773,700 4,216,058 1,152,800 7,142,558 64.9
Austria-Hungary 7,800,000 1,200,000 3,620,000 2,200,000 7,020,000 90.0
Turkey 2,850,000 325,000 400,000 250,000 975,000 34.2
Bulgaria 1,200,000 87,500 152,390 27,029 266,919 22.2
Total 22,850,000 3,386,200 8,388,448 3,629,829 15,404,477 67.4
Grand Total 65,038,810 8,538,315 21,219,452 7,750,919 37,508,686 57.6