UNIT 7 TOPIC 3
Conducting World War 1
THEME : Technology and Innovation
LEARNING OBJECTIVE : Explain how governments used a variety of methods to conduct war.
Let’s talk about how World War 1 was fought .
HOW THE WAR WAS FOUGHT
The first thing you have to know about the fighting of World War I is that this was the world’s first
total war . By definition, that’s a war which requires the mobilization of a country’s entire
population, both military and civilian , in order to fight. And that’s a big deal because in the
past , there was a pretty clear line between what soldiers were doing out in the battlefield and what
civilians were doing back home . But in total war, every last person in the country is required to
contribute in some way to the war effort . And, to make things extra devastating , in a total war,
even civilians were considered viable targets for military efforts.
As you may have guessed, waging a total war is not easy , so you’ll need to understand that
governments used various strategies to keep morale up among the troops and the civilians back
home. And the chief strategy you need to know is that governments used all kinds of propaganda
to motivate everyone to keep making the necessary sacrifices . And these propaganda campaigns
demonized enemies and often exaggerated the atrocities those enemies were committing. The
goal was to remind everyone involved in the war that their own cause amounted to a righteous
struggle against evil forces, and therefore, whatever sacrifice, it was worth it.
For all the states involved in World War I, they started producing this kind of material in the form of art
and various media including newsreels and posters and pamphlets .
One aspect of these propaganda campaigns you really need to remember is that they used intensified
forms of nationalism in order to get their messages across. Remember from the last topic that nationalism
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UNIT 7 TOPIC 3
Conducting World War 1
HOW THE WAR WAS FOUGHT cont’d
was a big cause of this war. People in various states began to view the world as a collection of enemy
rivals , and that their national identities were the most important thing about them. So much of
this propaganda capitalized on these nationalist sentiments in order to generate fear of foreign
enemies and pride in a nation’s own people.
SUMMARIZE the previous section in your own words. (2-4 sentences)
TOTAL WAR STRATEGIES
Let’s talk about the general trends that describe how World War I was fought. I could talk all day
about Germany’s Schlieffen Plan or various battles that get military historians excited, but you really
only need to know one basic fact and a few ways to illustrate it. And that fact is this: new military
technologies made World War I one of the deadliest wars in human history.
Some of those technologies included machine guns and chemical gas and tanks , to only name
a few. But it wasn’t just the technology that made this war deadly, it was also the nature of how it was
used, and here’s where I tell you about the main feature of fighting, namely, trench warfare . To
understand this, let me give you a little context . In the beginning of the war, generals consulted the
past for winning strategies and found that victory always went to the first mover and those who leveraged
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UNIT 7 TOPIC 3
Conducting World War 1
TOTAL WAR STRATEGIES cont’d
the most spirited attacks . Therefore, French and British armies charged across the field to fight the
Germans but were met with thousands of rounds of machine gun fire which led to massive casualties .
It wasn’t long before generals on both sides changed tactics to avoid such bloody encounters. And that
tactic is what we call trench warfare, in which each side dug miles of trenches opposite each other and
hunkered down for protection . To be clear, trench warfare was not a new strategy invented for this
war, but the scale of it outstripped anything that came before. And it was fighting from the trenches that
caused so many casualties in World War I. Each side hid in their trenches which were fortified
with machine guns and barbed wire . If one side charged, they would be mowed down or
otherwise caught in the barbed wire, and same with the other side. Therefore, this situation led to years of
stalemates where casualties mounted but neither side made much progress .
What everyone believed would be a quick war turned into a years' long effort. With so many
men dying on the field , that’s when this war truly became global in scope. Remember
that the states fighting this war like Great Britain and France and Germany had spent a great deal
of effort over the course of the last period building up massive colonial empires. So, what’s
an imperial state to do when all its own men are dying on the battlefield ? You call up colonial
troops to come fight your war. These various imperial powers mustered troops from Africa,
India , China, Southeast Asia, Australia , Canada, and New Zealand. And many more colonial men
were conscripted as porters in the war, whose job it was to carry military equipment to various
locations. You don’t have to be a historian to understand that colonial people who had been dominated
and exploited by their imperial overlords weren’t that excited to go fight this war that had nothing
to do with them. And yet, they did it in hopes that such sacrifices would help them gain independence , or
at least a greater degree of self-rule after the war. And maybe it won’t surprise you, but that didn’t really
work out and it’s going to cause all kinds of problems for imperial powers.
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UNIT 7 TOPIC 3
Conducting World War 1
SUMMARIZE the previous section in your own words. (2-4 sentences)
THE END OF THE WAR
The war dragged on for four years and left an awful lot of destruction in its wake. But a key turning
point was the entry of the United States on the side of the Allied Powers, namely Britain and France in
1917. Initially , when the war broke out, the U.S. wanted to remain neutral . But Germany had a habit
of sinking ships with Americans on them and got aggressive enough to try to incite Mexico to start
a war with the U.S. to keep them otherwise occupied. And all those factors eventually dragged the U.S.
into the war, and with the fresh surge of troops backed by the might of American industry, the tide turned
against Germany and the Central Powers .
The war officially ended in 1918 with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles , Germany and the Central
Powers had lost, while the Allied powers had won. And despite American president Woodrow Wilson ’s
attempts to forge peace without victory among the belligerents of the war, France and Britain used the
treaty to punish Germany which would play a major role in the causes of World War II.
SUMMARIZE the previous section in your own words. (2-4 sentences)
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UNIT 7 TOPIC 1
Conducting World War 1
RESPOND to the learning objective with an evidence-based, argumentative thesis.
LEARNING OBJECTIVE : Explain how governments used a variety of methods to conduct war.
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