Europe after WWI. Soldiers prone at the rifle range. Crouched behind smokescreen in support of anti-tank gun. Exhibits and Displays Events News Newsletter. Facebook Page.
Twitter Feed. Flickr Feed. Youtube Account. The unknown gas appeared to be a simple smoke screen, used to hide attacking soldiers, and Allied troops were ordered to the front trenches to repel the expected attack.
The gas had a devastating effect, killing many defenders; however, because attackers were also killed when the wind changed. In the end, relatively few war casualties were caused by gas, as effective countermeasures like gas masks were quickly created. The use of chemical warfare and small-scale strategic bombing were both outlawed by the Hague Conventions of and , and both proved to be of limited effectiveness though they captured the public imagination.
Australian infantry with gas masks, Ypres, The most powerful land-based weapons were railway guns, weighing dozens of tons apiece. The German ones were nicknamed Big Berthas, even though the namesake was not a railway gun. Germany developed the Paris Gun, able to bombard Paris from over 62 miles, though shells were relatively light at pounds.
Trenches, machine guns, air reconnaissance, barbed wire, and modern artillery with fragmentation shells helped bring the battle lines of World War I to a stalemate. The British and the French sought a solution with the creation of the tank and mechanized warfare. The first British tanks were used during the Battle of the Somme on September 15, Mechanical reliability was an issue, but the experiment proved its worth. Within a year, the British were fielding tanks by the hundreds, and they showed their potential during the Battle of Cambrai in November by breaking the Hindenburg Line while combined arms teams captured 8, enemy soldiers and guns.
Meanwhile, the French introduced the first tanks with a rotating turret, the Renault FT, which became a decisive tool of the victory. The conflict also saw the introduction of light automatic weapons and submachine guns, such as the Lewis Gun, the Browning automatic rifle, and the Bergmann MP Another new weapon, the flamethrower, was first used by the German army and later adopted by other forces.
Although not of high tactical value, the flamethrower was a powerful, demoralising weapon that caused terror on the battlefield. Trench railways evolved to supply the enormous quantities of food, water, and ammunition required to support large numbers of soldiers in areas where conventional transportation systems had been destroyed.
Internal combustion engines and improved traction systems for automobiles and trucks eventually rendered trench railways obsolete. Germany deployed U-boats submarines after the war began. Alternating between restricted and unrestricted submarine warfare in the Atlantic, the Kaiserliche Marine employed them to deprive the British Isles of vital supplies.
The deaths of British merchant sailors and the seeming invulnerability of U-boats led to the development of depth charges , hydrophones passive sonar, , blimps, hunter-killer submarines HMS R-1, , forward-throwing anti-submarine weapons, and dipping hydrophones the latter two abandoned in To extend their operations, the Germans proposed supply submarines Most of these would be forgotten in the interwar period until World War II revived the need.
Fixed-wing aircraft were first used militarily by the Italians in Libya in October during the Italo-Turkish War for reconnaissance, soon followed by the dropping of grenades and aerial photography the next year.
By , their military utility was obvious. They were initially used for reconnaissance and ground attack. To shoot down enemy planes, anti-aircraft guns and fighter aircraft were developed.
Strategic bombers were created, principally by the Germans and British, though the former used Zeppelins as well. Revolution had broken out in Germany, Russia, and other countries. Much of Europe was in ruins. Though the world vowed never to allow another war like it to happen, the roots of the next conflict were sown in the Treaty of Versailles , which was viewed by Germans as humiliating and punitive and which helped set the stage for the rise of fascism and World War II.
The technology that the war had generated would be used in the next world war just two decades later. All rights reserved.
Causes of the Great War World War I had a variety of causes, but its roots were in a complex web of alliances between European powers. Share Tweet Email. Why it's so hard to treat pain in infants. This wild African cat has adapted to life in a big city. Animals Wild Cities This wild African cat has adapted to life in a big city Caracals have learned to hunt around the urban edges of Cape Town, though the predator faces many threats, such as getting hit by cars.
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Despite precipitating a retreat of the whole Italian line, the offensive as a whole provided further proof that the defeat of one enemy Army could not be definitive. While the attack was more dynamic than anything it had managed before, the Austrian Army inevitably ran out of momentum as Italian reserves were redeployed to meet it.
The western front campaign was much more fluid than that of previous years, with well-equipped armies trained in modern methods trading blow for powerful blow in a fight to the finish.
For the first time individual battles were coordinated in a way that would allow them cumulatively to push back and destroy the enemy. Although the German spring offensives were tactically effective, it is acknowledged that Ludendorff lacked any clear operational rationale for the series of battles he fought from March to June However, it should be recognised that their potency lay partly in their scale, with more divisions committed to an individual attack than at any time since early This did not mean that there was no defence.
Only when modern defensive precepts were rejected, as the French 6 th Army did on the Chemin des Dames , would the defence collapse rapidly and entirely. The allied counter-offensive began in July with one such surprise attack against the flank of the Marne salient. The Second Battle of the Marne was perhaps as decisive as the first, demonstrating as it did that the allied armies could fight in unison and that the extended German lines were now vulnerable.
The first blow, the Amiens-Montdidier offensive from August, initiated a series of limited operations that destabilised the German front, obliging the enemy to retire to their pre-March Hindenburg Line defences. This complex defensive system state of the art when built in was taken within a week. Phase three was a follow-up pursuit, with each improvised German line of defence being overwhelmed in turn.
All the while German resources were exhausted, such that there were only two fresh enemy divisions in reserve behind the western front by the time the armistice was signed. Operational art would develop between the wars as the internal-combustion engine and radio telephony gave its techniques momentum and flexibility.
Philpott, William: Warfare Version 1. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, ed. DOI : Version 1. Warfare By William Philpott. But as Foch had predicted, The armies have outgrown the brains of the people who direct them. I do not believe that there is any man living big enough to control these millions. They will stumble about, and then sit down helplessly in front of each other thinking only of their means of communication to supply these vast hordes who must eat.
If they did not get there before the offensive halted, at least, he concluded: Against certain particularly strong positions Not requiring large numbers of infantry, they are above all costly in artillery munitions; all the same such a form of attack should not be rejected. They should find a place in our methods. Each attack will therefore be against a fixed objective, of limited width and depth, always preceded by an artillery preparation.
London Note by Foch, 3 November Lawrence Brown, Ian M. Dowling, Timothy C. Foley, Robert: German strategy and the path to Verdun.
Griffith, Paddy: Battle tactics of the Western Front. Krause, Jonathan: Early trench tactics in the French Army. Philpott, William: Bloody victory.
The sacrifice on the Somme and the making of the twentieth century , London Little, Brown. Thompson, Mark: The white war. Life and death on the Italian front, , London Faber and Faber. Zabecki, David T.
A case study in the operational level of war , London; New York Routledge. Citation Philpott, William: Warfare Version 1. Metadata Subjects.
Author Keywords. GND Subject Headings. LC Subject Headings. Rameau Subject Headings. Regional Section s. Thematic Section s. Images American troops with Vickers machine guns.
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