Transcript World War One: A New Style of War

World War One:
A New Style of War
An Introduction to Johnny Got His
Gun
English Honors
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
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
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
No Man’s Land
• Between enemy trenches
was called “no man’s 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 Man’s
Land was extremely difficult
due to barbed wire and shell
craters
“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.”
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 dugouts. The battalion
lived in mud and
water.”
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
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.
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.”
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.
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
Trench Rats
Lice in the Trenches
Over the Top
• An offensive
consisted of days of
shelling the
enemy’s defenses
followed by an order
to go “Over the Top”
and into No Man’s
Land
• Offensives were
very ineffective and
resulted in huge
losses of life
• About 800,000 at
Verdun alone
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
Machine Gun
• Hiram Maxim invented
world’s 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
man’s land
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.
Mustard Gas
• "Great mustardcoloured 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."
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
Artillery
• Used to weaken enemy fortifications before
offensives
“Big Bertha”
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.
Zeppelins
• Blimps that Germans used to drop bombs
• Use for only 2 yrs as they were easily shot down
by enemy soldiers and planes
THE
HUMAN
COST
The Aftermath of an Artillery Raid
A Man With a “Broken Face””
39 million
Casualties
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
50,000
3,000
10,000
7,000
20,000
40.0
42,188,810
5,152,115
12,831,004
4,121,090
22,104,209
52.3
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
Montenegro
Total
Central Powers
Germany