World War One was the first major conflict of the industrial age.The opposing nations found ways to use sophisticated machinery and mass production to inflict death and destruction on a wide scale.The war unleashed both the worst of humanity and the dark side of invention and technology.
Modern Artillery
Improved steelmaking techniques produced massive guns that launched enormous explosive shells across great distances. Artillerymen also developed new methods of aiming and concentrating their fire, increasing its deadliness. Most casualties in the war were caused by artillery.
Machine Guns
At the beginning of the war, most armies had few machine guns, gathered in specialized units. After the weapons proved their deadliness, all the armies increased their manufacture and use. Firing hundreds of bullets per minute, a single gun could wipe out dozens of men in seconds.
Poison Gas
The most hideous weapon of the war. Gas blistered the skin, eyes, airways and lungs. Masks and protective clothing helped reduce the lethality of gas attacks. But tens of thousands died in agony, and hundreds of thousands suffered lingering effects for the rest of their lives.
Tanks
Early tanks were called “landships” but were renamed to preserve their secrecy. The concept was simple - an armored vehicle that could cross uneven terrain to support infantry. Initial designs were primitive, but improvements increased their effectiveness later in the war.
Aircraft
The war began barely a decade after the Wright Brothers’ first flight. Airplanes initially served as scouts and observers, but pilots soon began carrying weapons into the air. Aircraft designs and weaponry improved rapidly, and soon both sides battled for control of the skies.
Life in the Trenches
While armies fielded new tools of war, their commanders clung to outdated concepts and methods of fighting. As always, the soldiers in the field suffered.
For three years, men faced each other in opposing trenches, separated by a battered strip of “No Man’s Land,” often only a few hundred yards wide. Each side took turns throwing troops against the enemy. When these attacks ran out of energy, the other side would counter- attack, and things would end up more or less where they had started -- except for those killed or maimed in the fighting.
“Months of boredom, punctuated by moments of sheer terror...”
In between these battles, the troops endured a daily routine of tedium and random death. Men spent daylight below ground level, cleaning themselves and their weapons, and maintaining the trench. Personal time was limited; reading or writing letters from home was a favorite pasttime. Nightfall gave the men more freedom to move above ground. They patrolled their area, repaired sandbags and barbed wire, and moved in supplies and reinforcements.
Their companions were vermin, disease and filth. Giant rats and hungry lice infested everything and spread infection. Frogs lived in pools of standing water, which also caused trench foot, a skin infection that could lead to amputation. The stale air carried the smell of sweat, unwashed clothing, lingering gas, smoke and decaying corpses.
The threat of death was constant. From time to time, enemy artillery would strike, blasting metal shrapnel through the trench, or burying men alive. Snipers targeted any head that appeared over the edge of the trench.
Then, at some point, troops would sense a change in the routine: increased movement and artillery firere from the enemy across the way... Was the other side planning an attack?
Or perhaps rumors, reinforcements, supplies... Would it soon be time to climb out of the trenches and head toward the enemy guns?
World War I
How, When & Why Did It Start?
At the dawn of the 20th century, few anticipated a global war, but what came to be known as the Great War began on June 28, 1914, with the assassinations of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, while they were visiting Sarajevo, Bosnia, a country recently annexed into the Austrian Empire. Many Bosnians and their Serbian neighbors resented this foreign rule and the Archduke’s visit to Sarajevo provided the opportunity for a small band of Serbian dissidents to strike back. Austria responded to the assassinations by teaming up with its ally, Germany, and declaring war on Serbia. The conflict soon involved Russia, France and Belgium. Fearful of a full-scale world war that would threaten its sea routes to other countries, Great Britain joined the fight against Germany and Austria.
Each country believed the fighting would last only a few months. Nations were categorized either as Central Powers or Allies. Countries that joined the Central Powers, such as Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire, supported Austria-Hungary and Germany. The Allies were Russia, France, Belgium and Great Britain, but they were later joined by Japan, Romania, China and the United States.
No Man’s Land: Trench Warfare
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. For stability, some trenches included wooden beams and/or sandbags. Even during lulls in the fighting, death occurred almost daily in the trenches due to a sniper’s bullet or the unsanitary living conditions which resulted in many diseases such as dysentery, typhus and cholera. Other diseases caused by the poor conditions were trench mouth and trench foot*.
*Trench mouth was an infection of the mouth due to overgrowth of certain oral bacteria. 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.
Barbed wire and explosive mines—as well as bullets and grenades—were essential weapons used to hinder infantry advances across “No Man’s Land,” the bleak landscape between the trenches of the opposing sides.
New offensive weapons were implemented during the war including tanks and poison gases*.
*Tanks, armored against artillery fire, were capable of rolling over barbed wire as well as crossing treacherous terrain.
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 1915, 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.
Though considered a novelty when the war began, aircraft were used by both sides for reconnaissance, allowing personnel to observe enemy troop positions, to direct artillery fire and to photograph enemy lines. By the end of the war, the concepts of aerial combat and aerial bombing had come into being.