Nations were categorized either as Central Powers or Allies. During World War I, trench warfare was a defensive military tactic used extensively by both sides, allowing soldiers some protection from enemy fire but also hindering troops from readily advancing and thus prolonging the war.
Trench warfare was the major combat tactic in France and Belgium. Trenches were often dug up to 12 feet deep and stretched for miles. The condition was made worse by poor oral hygiene, smoking, malnutrition and psychological stress. To prevent trench foot, a fungal disease caused by exposure to wet and cold, soldiers frequently added wooden planks in the trenches to keep from having to stand in water.
Chlorine was one of the poisonous gases used in World War I. It was damaging to the eyes, nose, throat and lungs, and produced symptoms ranging from irritation to blindness and death.
In , the Germans used poison gases against the Allies fighting in the trenches on the Western Front. To protect soldiers from chemical warfare, gas masks were developed.
Great Britain made one of the first types of masks capable of minimizing the deadly impact of these gases on their troops. It was raining and had been so for many days. Mud was nearly knee deep. We finally found our dugout after walking miles it seemed [with] full pack, so slipping and sliding we went in the dugout. It had mud all over the floor and a big pool of water under the boards.
After unpacking we went to bed or rather got on a bunk. Well, when the candle went out and all was still we got introduced to the trench rats and oh what a welcome they gave us.
Never will I forget it or them. Whether soldiers were living in trenches or assaulting German positions, artillery was a greater danger than bullets. So, trenches had bomb proofs to provide shelter from frequent artillery attacks. By the time Americans arrived on the front, the use of poison chlorine gas was common. Soldiers on watch had to alert their comrades when gas was detected.
A hanging artillery shell casing often served as a warning bell, but they also used special wooden rattles to signal the presence of gas. American soldiers wore protective masks modeled after those used by the British.
These were always uncomfortable and sometimes did not work if they were used the wrong way. Barbed wire protected both German and Allied trenches. When it was destroyed by artillery fire, front line soldiers repaired the wire entanglements at night. National Guard sman William F. Under the cover of darkness, it was relatively safe to move about and work but, when [the Germans] shot up those flare lights you had better be lying in that mud; you had better not be up.
They would shoot up those flare lights and open up a machine gun on you. With Germany able to build up its strength on the Western Front after the armistice with Russia, Allied troops struggled to hold off another German offensive until promised reinforcements from the United States were able to arrive.
On July 15, , German troops launched what would become the last German offensive of the war, attacking French forces joined by 85, American troops as well as some of the British Expeditionary Force in the Second Battle of the Marne.
The Allies successfully pushed back the German offensive and launched their own counteroffensive just three days later. The Second Battle of the Marne turned the tide of war decisively towards the Allies, who were able to regain much of France and Belgium in the months that followed. All four regiments comprised of celebrated soldiers who fought in the Spanish-American War and American-Indian Wars , and served in the American territories.
But they were not deployed for overseas combat in World War I. Blacks serving alongside white soldiers on the front lines in Europe was inconceivable to the U. Instead, the first African American troops sent overseas served in segregated labor battalions, restricted to menial roles in the Army and Navy, and shutout of the Marines, entirely. Their duties mostly included unloading ships, transporting materials from train depots, bases and ports, digging trenches, cooking and maintenance, removing barbed wire and inoperable equipment, and burying soldiers.
Facing criticism from the Black community and civil rights organizations for its quotas and treatment of African American soldiers in the war effort, the military formed two Black combat units in , the 92nd and 93rd Divisions. Trained separately and inadequately in the United States, the divisions fared differently in the war.
The 92nd faced criticism for their performance in the Meuse-Argonne campaign in September The 93rd Division, however, had more success. With dwindling armies, France asked America for reinforcements, and General John Pershing , commander of the American Expeditionary Forces, sent regiments in the 93 Division to over, since France had experience fighting alongside Black soldiers from their Senegalese French Colonial army.
Despite the Turkish victory at Gallipoli, later defeats by invading forces and an Arab revolt that destroyed the Ottoman economy and devastated its land, and the Turks signed a treaty with the Allies in late October Austria-Hungary, dissolving from within due to growing nationalist movements among its diverse population, reached an armistice on November 4. Facing dwindling resources on the battlefield, discontent on the homefront and the surrender of its allies, Germany was finally forced to seek an armistice on November 11, , ending World War I.
At the Paris Peace Conference in , Allied leaders stated their desire to build a post-war world that would safeguard itself against future conflicts of such devastating scale. As the years passed, hatred of the Versailles treaty and its authors settled into a smoldering resentment in Germany that would, two decades later, be counted among the causes of World War II.
World War I took the lives of more than 9 million soldiers; 21 million more were wounded. Civilian casualties numbered close to 10 million. The two nations most affected were Germany and France, each of which sent some 80 percent of their male populations between the ages of 15 and 49 into battle.
The political disruption surrounding World War I also contributed to the fall of four venerable imperial dynasties: Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia and Turkey. World War I brought about massive social upheaval, as millions of women entered the workforce to replace men who went to war and those who never came back. The severe effects that chemical weapons such as mustard gas and phosgene had on soldiers and civilians during World War I galvanized public and military attitudes against their continued use.
The Geneva Convention agreements, signed in , restricted the use of chemical and biological agents in warfare and remains in effect today. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. When World War I broke out across Europe in , President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the United States would remain neutral, and many Americans supported this policy of nonintervention.
However, public opinion about neutrality started to change after the sinking of the British For four years, from to , World War I raged across Europe's western and eastern fronts, after growing tensions and then the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria ignited the war.
Trench warfare and the early use of tanks, submarines and airplanes meant the The instability created in Europe by the First World War set the stage for another international conflict—World War II—which broke out two decades later and would prove even more devastating. Rising to power in an economically and politically unstable Germany, Adolf World War I was unlike any conflict the world had ever seen.
Europe by Almost exactly a century before, a meeting of the European states at the Congress of Vienna had established an international order and balance of power that lasted for almost a century.
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