When Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia and sparked the first world war, many people had not experienced war. War was a story that their grandparents had told them and parts of their nations history. Many of these men that went to fight believed that the war was going to be an epic adventure that they would be able to tell to their grandchildren one day.
World war one is often described as The war to end all wars. It was fought with new technology that hasn't been seen in war before. New weapons like the tank, submarine, machine guns and poison gas, made infantry weaker than every before, meaning that it was a battle of resources like oil and metal that can make and fuel these new weapons. All of the major parties involved had many colonies supplying them with raw materials such as rubber or oil making them targets. Germany was the main power in the central powers and was winning the war against France, great Britain and Russia before america entered the war. After driving Russia out of the war Germany could focus their efforts on the western front. Germany was awfully close to winning the war but the intervention of america had a surprising impact on the outcome of the war. America mobilized 4 million military personnel to Europe shifting the war into the allies favor. The war was won a few years later leading to the treaty of Versailles officially ending the war with the allies as victors.
Adding on, because of the US intervention of the war, President Woodrow Wilson was able to take control. He created his 14 points which helped end the war in peace.
ReplyDeleteTo add on to the blog post above, there were multiple reasons as to why the United States decided to end their original neutrality and fight alongside the Allies. One major event that changed many American's perspectives on remaining neutral was the German sinking of the British ship the Lusitania that killed 128 Americans. When Germany agreed in the Sussex pledge to stop sinking merchant ships without warning, they attached the condition that the U.S. must help end the illegal British blockade. President Wilson rejected that condition, and so Germany didn't keep the pledge. Another event that fueled even more resentment against the Germans was the disclosure of the Zimmermann note, which called for cooperation between Mexico and Germany to take back U.S. territory.
ReplyDeleteRelating to World War 1 and setting aside weather it would be a good implantation or not, it can be said that if the League of Nations were to be set in place at the end of World War 1, World War 2 would never had started. Woodrow Wilson also said himself that if the League were to not be set in place, then there would most definitely be a second World War worse than the first. His prediction lived on to to be true. Not even half a century later, the second World War took place.
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