3-3-14
World War 1

Events in the summer of 1914:
• June 28—Assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand by a member of a Serbian terrorist organization

July 28—Austria declared war on Serbia

• *****The alliances in place and war plans turned the conflict between Austria and Serbia into a conflict between the major powers in Europe (see textbook for details)

• August 4, 1914—World War I has bagun

o Major Powers: (They bring their Empires with them)

 CENTRAL POWERS—Austria and Germany Vs.
 ALLIED POWERS—Russia, France, and Britain
- United States (1917)

****The mood in Europe at the outbreak of war in August 1914; ideas about war in August 1914
• Most people were excited and happy for war!
• Germans & Austrians are excited that they’re going to war o Adolf Hitler, “Overpowered by storming enthusiasm, I fell down on my knees and thanked Heaven for granting me the good fortune of being permitted to live at this time.” o Stefan Zweig, “We’ll be home at Christmas,” the recruits shouted laughingly to their mothers in August 1914 o “A rapid excursion into the romantic, a wild, manly adventure” o “afraid that they might miss this most wonderful and exciting experience of their lives”

****World War I will be a new kind of war

(1) Weapons/chemical warfare
- The machine gun
- The artillery weapons: Railway howitzer (2, 500 lbs shells)
- ‘Big Bertha’ a shell weighing about 1 ton (German)
- 1st effective use of poison gas—April 22, 1915 at 5:30pm, Chlorine gas (Bayer) (Germany)
- Mustard gas, produced by Bayer, Germans are the 1st in mid-1917
- caused blindness and attacked the skin, if inhaled it would burn your lungs and you would choke on your own blood
- Before gas mask, they soaked cotton in urine and strapped it to their faces to neutralize the chlorine gas
- the tank
- the airplane