Hot answers tagged ww1
21
Italy's main issue was its enmity with Austria-Hungary, Germany's main ally. That made Italy the "odd man out" in the so-called Triple Alliance with the other two.
Italy had joined (reluctantly) with Germany out of a fear of France. This occurred when France and Britain concluded an alliance that made Britain responsible for the mutual defense of the ...
17
As Shmuel Brill points out, there really wasn't a way around the trenches, the only choice was through, and that was a tough proposition. We're talking about ground troops who do not have significant body armor other than a helmet, armed primarily with bolt action rifles and bayonets, advancing on foot over significant distances of open ground against ...
15
Very unfavorable. While the Treaty of Versailles doesn't explicitly call it a surrender, Germany did surrender and was forced to accept all responsibility for the war (while obviously not being the only party responsible). I will refer to the text of the treaty in the following. In particular:
Germany lost the Saar Basin to France "as compensation for the ...
15
Here's the exact description of the photo, according to Hitlerpages.com:
Hitler and his fellow-soldiers in Fournes en Weppes, April 1915.
First row: Adolf Hitler, Balthasar Brandmayer, Anton Bachmann, Foxl,
Max Mund. Second row: Ernst Schmidt, Johann Sperl, Jakob Weiß, Karl
Tiefenböck.
This way, your man is called Balthasar Brandmayer. But it ...
14
Shields for soldiers were tried during the First World War. In order to stop high power rifle rounds, they had to be rather heavy weight steel plate. This made them difficult to move and carry.
One French design made a wheeled shield known as the Mobile Personnel Shield. This proved too heavy and cumbersome to use in combat. However, it may have played a ...
13
I think the book For the Common Defense: A Military History of the United States of America said it best on page 346 "The American role in World War I derived its character less from strategic thinking than from the geopolitical notion that the future well-being of the United States depended upon the balance of power in Europe and the outcome of the war."
...
13
Complimentary to Tom's answer, you have to ask yourself which side they'd come in on. There's nothing really useful in terms of territory they could get out of Germany or Austria-Hungary, since both were way on the other side of Europe.
If they'd gone in on the other side, they could perhaps have gotten useful territory from France. However, French forces ...
12
There were trenches from the sea to Switzerland. There was no way to outflank them.
Tanks (as well as cars) were invented not long before the war, and were impractical until 1916. Without tanks, there was no way to break through clear ground protected by entrenched machine gunners.
12
The effect of WWI on the US economy was considerable. There are two effects that the war had on the US economy: short term, and long term.
For the short term effect the US economy grew in the buildup to the war and during its prosecution. From 1915 the US made tons of loans to the UK to help them in their war effort. It is not a stretch to say that WWI was ...
12
Simply because Switzerland was a worse alternative plan strategically than Netherlands and Belgium.
Hitler had a plan to attack Switzerland, named Operation Tannenbaum but the Maginot line could be breached through Belgium and Netherland. So it became needless conflict with no gain.
It is a less known fact that Switzerland (German part namely) was part of ...
11
It's unclear if you mean whether it was (1) a ruse by Wilson against the American public, or (2) Germany against the USA, or (3) Germany against Mexico, or (4) British against USA?
As far as being a ruse by Wilson (e.g. he made up the telegram to present to Congress), this can likely be discounted since there is documentary evidence - in 2005, an ...
11
The Eastern Crisis was certainly one of the factors that led to World War I, however it was not the only one.
On the one hand, clearly the decay of the Ottoman Empire caused both Austria-Hungary and Russia to seek control over the Balkans. These two countries started WWI, mainly over their interests on the Balkans (with the assassination of Franz Ferdinand ...
10
The moral justification isn't hard to find. Russia was the only Allied power to enter the war "on its own". If you look at the stated reasons of other countries: Germany declared war on France because it expected France to ally with Russia. Great Britain joined the war because Germany violated Belgian neutrality. And USA joined the war because of German ...
9
World War One was at the dawn of the modern military age. Military leaders had to adapt to new technologies with new strategies. Near the beginning of the war, soldiers would just stand up out of their trenches and shoot each other. Later, elaborate tactics and new technologies were employed. The battle of Vimy Ridge details the adoption of no less than six ...
9
I strongly suspect that it is due to technical limitations: Rifle bullets travel at very, very high velocity, and thus even a steel shield would be unlikely to stop them. I recall hearing that the metal helmets they wore would not stop a direct hit, so I don't think a shield would either, at least not when limited by the amount a human can support.
If you ...
9
There were two power blocs, the Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy), and the Triple Entente (Britain, France, Russia). Spain was part of neither and had no reason to support one or the other.(Italy later switched sides).
Spain was fortunate to be outside of the main battle areas: France, Belgium, Poland, the Balkans, western Russia. It had no ...
9
WWI was a pivotal time in military tactics due to the number of technological advances in warfare that had been relatively unused until that point in time. Machine guns had developed to a point that isn't much different from modern designs; field artillery had gotten a lot bigger, was capable of indirect fire, and had many different munition options; ...
9
Here are some rough specs for common planes (as I said in the comment, the endurance depends on various factors).
Sopwith Camel (BR)
combat endurance (at 1000 m) - 2:30 (hr.:min.)
cruise endurance (...) - 5:00
SPAD S.XIII (FR)
combat endurance (...) - 1:30-2:00
cruise endurance (...) - 3:00
Albatross D.III (GER)
combat endurance (...) - 1:30-2:00
...
8
"The world must be made safe for democracy." - Woodrow Wilson
The irony of Wilson's quote is that WWI did not directly make the world safe for democracy. In fact WWI directly led to the rise of state socialism in the former Russian Empire with its evolution into the USSR, and the rise of fascism in Italy and Germany. From a European standpoint WWI ...
7
The Allies never did make a real breakthrough in the West. At the end of the war, they were pushing the German Army back, but never breaking through.
The Germans did, against the Allies, but it's a matter of question whether German offensive practices were better than Allied, or Allied defensive practices were worse than German. Given that the British and ...
7
Britain didn't use their navy because ships don't work on land. You need boots on the ground to exert control. They could have bombed the few coastal cities and fortifications, but it wouldn't have achieved much. It would still be necessary to break the enemy line and posses their territory which the ships couldn't do. All that could be achieved is the ...
6
It is easy to explain why Italy didn't join the war: they had little to gain from it, maybe they also didn't feel prepared. Alliances are always theory and a country can refuse to be dragged into a conflict with powers that are much stronger than it.
The question why Italy later still decided to join is more difficult. This website gives the following ...
6
Germany sent, or tried to send the "Zimmerman telegram" to a Mexican government that basically didn't exist.
The reason was that Mexico was in throes of a "free for all" civil war at the time, which is to say that it was in a state of anarchy.
The reason the Germans thought otherwise was because the most unruly of the four major factions, the one under ...
6
The Dardanelles campaign was as much about resupplying Russia as knocking the Ottoman Empire out of the war by taking the capital, Istanbul. It's also easy to say in retrospect that not enough soldiers and ships were sent to that theatre, but at the time the commanders evidently thought they had enough. Calling the effort "half-baked" only makes sense with ...
6
Yes, both World War I and World War II involved South and Central America.
WWI
Here is a list of South American countries that severed relations and those that declared war. Sourced from here.
April 7, 1917 Panama declares war on Germany
April 13, 1917 Bolivia severs relations with Germany
October 6, 1917 Peru severs relations with Germany
October 7, ...
6
From 1516 to 1917 it was Ottoman money,
named gold liran asmali.
To be specific, from 1807 to 1918 they used a different Ottoman currency named
tamashlik,onlic,sikwin. In 1914 when the Ottomans lost in WWI, French Liran gold became prevalent. In 1917/11/23 the British announced that Egyptian money was legal, as well as Ottoman, and any money from allies.
...
5
To quote my grandfather's memoirs:
The enemy had gained possession of the high ground in the area during the November battle and even such small bumps as Hill 60 were in their hands. Entrenched on the forward slopes, they could observe and frequently enfilade the British lines, and, even more uncomfortably, could drain their positions into our lines. ...
5
I don't think it's really correct to say that biological warfare has happened for centuries. Yes, diseased animals were occasionally thrown into besieged cities, but before the discovery of the process of contagion there was no reason to think this would spread disease to the occupants. The intended effect was simply to demoralise them or to pollute their ...
5
In the big picture, Germany wanted a large empire and a large navy, which was incompatible with Britain's survival as a Great Power. This really didn't have anything to do with how the war directly started, but shaped a lot of the diplomacy around it. This doesn't assign responsibility either, as it would be just as reasonable to accuse Britain of holding ...
5
There are two ways of looking at the Eastern Crisis as trigger for World War 1.
The brooding war in the Balkans caused unrest and hostilities expanded out from the region until a critical point was reached. Hostilities reached a tipping point when political figures begin getting assassinated (i.e. Franz Ferdinand heir to Austria-Hungary throne). This ...
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