The First World War
1914 - 1919
Europe in 1914
Collect a blank map of Europe and identify the following countries;
GREAT BRITAIN
FRANCE
ITALY
GERMANY
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY
TURKEY
RUSSIA
SERBIA
ROMANIA
BULGARIA
GREECE
BELGIUM
the following seas and oceans:
BLACK SEA
NORTH SEA
MEDITERRANEAN SEA
BALTIC SEA
ATLANTIC OCEAN
the following capital cities;
London
Paris
St Petersburg
Vienna
Belgrade, Berlin
Istanbul
the following straits.
STRAITS OF GIBRALTAR
STRAITS OF THE DARDANELLES
and the following place:
BOSNIA
Why does Bosnia have a dotted line around its borders?
What is Bosnia’s capital city?
The Great Powers
Complete the ‘Vocabulary Match-Up’ exercise from the PowerPoint. Write the words and matching definitions in the front of your jotter when you have finished.
Task 3
(i) Which two European countries had the largest empires in 1914?
(ii) Which other European country wanted to build a large empire and what problems did this cause?
Task 4
Complete the ‘Great Powers’ exercise, as instructed by your teacher.
Causes of the War - The Alliances
/ Task 5Collect a blank Venn Diagram and complete it, showing the alliances and agreements that existed between the Great Powers in 1914.
Causes of the War - The Arms Race
/ Task 6Use the information on the next two pages to create a timeline of the Naval Arms Race before the First World War. This should take up about a page in your jotter. Each event should have a date, a heading, a description of what happened and a picture.
The Naval Race between Britain and Germany
‘Britannia Rules the Waves’
During the nineteenth century, Britain was the world’s greatest sea power and “ruled the waves”, especially in the North Sea and English Channel. The Royal Navy played a vital role in protecting Britain from threat of invasion and in protecting both its empire and overseas trade. The strength and size of the British Navy justified Britain feeling strong and confident enough to follow the policy of ‘splendid isolation’, where Britain did not enter into any formal alliances or agreements with other countries.
In 1889, Britain adopted the ‘two-power standard’. This meant the British Navy must be larger than the fleets of the next two largest navies combined. It was assumed that the next two largest navies were those of France and Russia. To ensure that Britain had a navy powerful enough to meet the ‘two-power standard’, the British government allocated money in order to build eight first-class battleships.
Germany builds a fleet
/ Britain did not consider the German Navy to be a threat until Kaiser Wilhelm II decided that Germany must have a modern fleet. Kaiser Wilhelm II believed this would help establish Germany’s position as a Great Power and also help with trade. In 1895, the Kiel Canal opened in order to give German ships easier access between the Baltic and North Seas.In 1898, the Reichstag (the German parliament) passed the German Naval Law, and Germany began a major ship building programme.
Britain saw this as a direct threat. Many British people were extremely suspicious about German naval aims and urged the government to increase spending on the navy.
HMS DreadnoughtIn 1904, Admiral Sir John Fisher was appointed First Sea Lord and he immediately set about modernising the British fleet. Older warships were scrapped and new battleships were built-HMS Dreadnought. This was the first of a revolutionary new type of battleship whose speed, armour and revolving guns turrets made all other battleships out of date. HMS Dreadnought was launched in February 1906. /
HMS Dreadnought
The race to build the most new battleships
When Germany launched a similarly modern type of battleship, the Nassau, in 1908, a naval race began. Both Britain and Germany spent huge amounts of money on ship-building programmes, trying to out do one another. Germany announced plans to build twelve more Nassau-class ships over the next four years, causing widespread fear and panic in Britain. Britain responded by building eight new Dreadnoughts in 1909. Germany’s next decision to widen the Kiel Canal so its largest battleships could enter the North Sea more quickly, also threatened Britain.
The Naval Race continued until the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914. By this time, Britain had launched twenty-nine modern Dreadnought-class battleships and Germany had launched seventeen Nassau-class battleships.
A German Nassau-class battleship
Sarajevo – The Spark That Lit the Fire.
/ Task 7Collect the instruction sheet for the assessment task on the assassination at Sarajevo. Complete this task according to the instructions.
Task 8
Complete a timeline showing the steps to war. Use Mair p22 and think of an imaginative and colourful way of summarising the steps to war in 1914.
The Schlieffen Plan
The Franco-Russian Alliance alarmed Germany- it meant that if war broke out, Germany would need to fight a war against both Russia and France. Germany would therefore have to fight a war on two fronts- against France to the west, and Russia to the east. This would stretch the German army to the maximum and make it very difficult to win.
By 1905, the German Army’s Chief of Staff, Count von Schlieffen, had drawn up plans for a war on two fronts. Schlieffen stated that Germany must defeat France speedily before Russia was ready to fight. He had based his plan on several assumptions.
/ Task 9· Collect the table about the Schlieffen Plan.
· Read over the assumptions made by Count von Schlieffen in the table
· Fill in the ‘Reality of the Schlieffen Plan’ column, using Mair, pp 22-29 and class discussion.
Task 10
Collect and complete the ‘Bravo Belgium’ cartoon exercise.
The Eastern Front
Read the information on the next two pages, then answer the questions below in sentences in your jotter.
(i) Explain why Russia joined the war in 1914. Try to give two reasons.
(ii) Why were the battles at Tannenberg and Masurian Lakes in 1914 a disaster for Russia?
The Eastern Front refers to the war in Eastern Europe. It was fought on the land to the east of Germany, and stretched over a thousand miles from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south. The fighting was between the armies of the Russian Empire against the Germans and Austrians.
The Eastern Front stretched from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Black sea in the south. The dark line on the map shows where the battlefield front lines were at the end of 1916.
There are two main reasons explaining why Russia got involved in the First World War.
1. When the Germans invaded France in 1914, the terms of the 1894 Franco-Russian Alliance meant that the Russians were obliged to help their ally, France.
2. The Russians felt the need to support their fellow Slavs in Serbia.
Battles in 1914
The Battle of Tannenberg was fought between 26th – 31st August 1914. The Germans inflicted a crushing defeat on the Russians, with around 120,000 Russian soldiers killed, wounded or captured. In contrast, German losses were around 15,000. Shamed by this disaster, the Russian commander General Samsonov, committed suicide.
For the Russians, things went from bad to worse. At the Battle of the Masurian Lakes (9th – 14th September 1914), another 125,000 Russian soldiers were lost, along with 150 artillery cannons. German losses were about 40,000.
Several factors help explain these Russian defeats:
· The Germans certainly had much better leadership than the Russians.
· Lack of preparation as shown by the shortage of supplies also played a part.
· Soldiers ran out of ammunition, and some even went into battle without rifles. They had been ordered to pick up rifles from other soldiers that had been killed.
· A lack of railways and good roads meant fresh supplies and reinforcements were slow to arrive.
· Lack of medical care meant that wounded Russian soldiers usually died.
· Many of the Russian soldiers were poorly-trained conscripts, in comparison with the highly trained German troops.
· Russian military signals were not coded. The Germans listened in on them and knew every move the Russian armies were about to make!
Although the Russians had a bit more success against the Austrians, the Russians never really recovered from these disasters early in the war.
Trench Warfare on the Western Front
/ Task 12· What was the ‘Western Front’
· How did it develop?
/ Task 13
· Look at the diagrams of a trench system and trench.
· Collect the Trenches “heads and tails” and match the heads and tails appropriately.
· Copy the correctly matching terms and definitions into your jotter.
New Technology
/ Task 14In groups, research and prepare a presentation on one of the following weapons of the First World War:
· Tanks
· Gas
· Planes – Bombers and Fighters
· Zeppelins
· Artillery
· Machine guns
Your presentation should have at least FOUR slides:
1. How this weapon was developed and by which country
2. How this weapon was used during the war and how it was developed during the war (2 slides)
3. Whether this weapon was a war-winning weapon or not and WHY
Trench Conditions
/ Task 15Imagine you are a British soldier in the front lines. Write a letter home describing what conditions are like in the trenches.
Use Mair Chapter 4 or Cameron Chapter 4 and make sure to mention the following:
Food
Water
Lice
Rats
Trench Foot/Trench Mouth/Trench Fever
Shell shock
Typhus, Cholera and other diseases
Constant dangers
Daily duties/Soldier’s routine
Flies
Smell
Military Discipline
The Battles of the Western Front
/ Task 16Collect and complete the summary pages about the following key battles of the First World War. You can choose whether to do one on Loos or on Verdun. You MUST then do a second one on the Battle of the Somme.
Ø The Battle of Loos, 1915
Ø The Battle of the Somme, 1916
Ø The Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele) 1917
The Home Front
/ Task 17Collect and complete the ‘Recruitment Posters Exercise’.
/ Task 18
Use Mair pp47 – 48 to complete the questions below about volunteers, conscription and conchies.
Volunteers
(i) Who believed that the war would last several years and was in charge of the recruitment campaign at the start of the war?
(ii) Explain why so many men volunteered in 1914 and 1915. Use the following as sub-headings. Do it as a spider-diagram if you like.
Patriotism
Propaganda
Public Pressure
Adventure
The ‘King’s Shilling’
The Belgian Atrocities
Over by Christmas
+ any other reasons that you can think of.
(iii) What is conscription and when was it introduced in Britain during the First World War?
(iv) Watch the ‘Boy Soldiers’ DVD and have a class vote on whether you think conchies were cowards or brave.
Women at War
Take a double-page in your jotter and spilt it into six sections – one for each of the following headings and one for a title. In each section explain the role played by women during the First World War:
Munitionettes
WRNS/WAACS/WRAF
The Land Army
VAD/FANY/Nursing/Elsie Inglis
OTHER JOBS (e.g. transport, office workers…)
Use Mair pp98 – 100 or Cameron pp53 – 56
/ Task 20
What ‘reward’ was given to women in June 1918?
Why were some British women disappointed?
The Sinking of the Lusitania/The USA Joins the War
· What is a U-boat?
· Describe the sinking of the Lusitania in May 1915.
· Make a table showing ‘Why the Germans believed the sinking was justified’ and ‘Why the British and Americans believed the sinking was wrong’.
· Come to your own conclusion about whether the sinking of the Lusitania was justified.
Use Mair pp82-83 and the DVD ‘The Liners’
Task 22
Explain WHEN and WHY America did eventually join the First World War on the Allied side. (Use Mair pp107 – 108)
The Russian Revolution and Russia’s Exit from the War
During the second half of 1916 and early 1917, Russian armies won very few battles. Losses in battle were heavy and there was a shortage of artillery shells and guns. In the cities food was scarce and people were unhappy with the way Tsar Nicholas II was leading the war effort. Over the bitterly cold winter of 1916-17, Russian people were starving, fuel was in short supply and soldiers and civilians were sick of warfare. As there was no way ordinary people could influence the Tsar, some people began thinking that the only way forward was by replacing the Tsar with a new form of government.
First Revolution (February 1917)
Workers were on the streets of the capital city, St.Petersburg, demonstrating for peace and demanding food. Army generals and politicians agreed that the only way to save Russia from total collapse was for the Tsar to abdicate (give up the throne). Reluctantly Tsar Nicholas II agreed, and in March 1917, Russia had become a republic (a country with no king or queen, or in this case, Tsar).
The Provisional Government (February – October 1917):
An in-between or Provisional Government was formed, to rule Russia, while the revolutionaries decided what to do next. This new government had little effect on conditions in Russia as it carried on fighting the war against Germany and Austria.
Second Revolution (October 1917)
In October 1917, a revolutionary group called the Bolsheviks decided to seize power from the unpopular Provisional Government. Armed Bolsheviks took control of the main buildings in St. Petersburg, arrested the members of the Provisional Government and installed the Bolshevik leader Lenin as the new leader of Russia. One of the main policies of the Bolsheviks was to get Russia out of the war. /Lenin
Russian Withdrawal From the War
The new Bolshevik government of Russia began talks with the Germans and Austrians about bringing the fighting to an end. On 3rd March 1918 the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed and the First World War was over on the Eastern Front. It was a devastating treaty for Russia.