Overview

Along the Western Front of the war, the Germans became locked into a stalemate with the French. The Western Front now revolved around "trench warfare", the tactic of digging a trench and staying in that trench for days to protect from machine guns. The Eastern Front was a much more mobile war. The Russian army moved into Germany, but was defeated in the Battles of Tannenberg and Masurian Lakes. The Russians were no longer a threat to Germany. Austria-Hungary on the other hand, were defeated by the Russians in Galicia, and kicked out of Serbia. Italy then betrayed the Triple Alliance, attacking Austria-Hungary, and thus joining the Allied Powers. Germans had now come to the aid of Austria-Hungary, pushing the Russians back into their own territory. Russian casualties now stood at 2.5 million, almost knocking them out of the war. Joined by Bulgaria in 1915, Germany and Austria-Hungary attacked and eliminated Serbia from the war. After millions of men died in the trench warfare on the western front, WWI turned into a "war of attrition", a war based on wearing the other side down by constant attacks and heavy losses. Starting in 1915, planes were being used on the battlefield for the first time in history. At first, they were used for locating enemies, and eventually were used for bombing and mid air fights. The Germans used giant zeppelins filled with hydrogen to bomb England, although their enemies found out that hydrogen will explode from AA guns. During 1914, the Ottoman Empire allied with Germany. A year later, the allies tried to open a Balkan front by landing at Gallipoli, southwest of Constantinople. This turned out to be a disaster because of all the opposition. In 1917, Lawrence of Arabia, a British officer, urged the Arab princes to revolt against the Ottoman empire. This started a chain of events which ended up getting countries as far as Japan and Australia involved in the war. Because of Germany's unrestricted submarine warfare, they sank everything around Britain, including passenger liners. The sinking of the Lusitania in 1915, and the continued unrestricted submarine warfare, forced the US to join the war in 1917. By now, the war had become a total war, involving a mobilization of all resources and people. Because of the unexpected length of the war, economies of warring countries were greatly affected. This caused capitalistic European nations to set up planned economies - they controlled food rations, prices, regulated imports and exports, etc. Because the public support for the war wained in many countries, propaganda was set up by many nations, convincing the public of the importance and greatness of the war. Women played a much greater role in society during WWI. They were asked to take jobs that normally men would take, although when the war was over, they were quickly replaced with the men who came back.