A. Causes 2. Alliances European nations were arranged into competing alliances.

. Any small conflict could easily become a large one. 3. Nationalism and Militarism Europeans were proud of their nations and wanted to prove they were the best. a. Militarism the belief that a nation should have and use a large military force. ***These factors would be an explosive combination. B. How The War Began 1. Archduke of Austria-Hungary, Francis Ferdinand was assassinated on June 28th, 1914. -Franz Ferdinand and his wife were killed in Sarajevo, the capital of the AustroHungarian province of Bosnia and Herzegovina, by Gavrilo Princip, 19 at the time, The couple had previously been attacked when a grenade was thrown at their car. Ferdinand deflected the grenade and it detonated far behind them. He is known to have shouted in anger to local officials, "So you welcome your guests with bombs?!"[25] , Franz and Sophie decided to go to the palace, but their driver took a wrong turn onto a side street, where Princip spotted them.[25] As the car was backing up, Princip approached and shot Sophie in the abdomen and Franz Ferdinand in the jugular. He was still alive when witnesses arrived to render aid.[4] His dying words to Sophie were, 'Don't die darling, live for our children.'[25] 2. Serbia is blamed for the murder and Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia. 3. Russia backs Serbia. 4. Germany backs Austria-Hungary, declares war on Russia and France. 5. When Germany marched through Belgium to invade France, that brought Britain into the war. C. Nature of the War and Technology 1. War was a stalemate, neither side was able to win a decisive battle. 2. Trench warfare was common. 6,250 miles psychological devastation Trench Warfare was a form of field fortification, consisting of parallel rows of trenches. During World War 1 trenches had begun to appear by late 1914. On the western front, trenches ran from the Belgium border to the Swiss Border, and they soon became home to millions of soldiers. Trench warfare baffled military leaders.

3. Massive casualties resulted. 4. Technology was major reason for large casualties. -World War I was mainly fought in the deep trenches of Europe. For the armies, the trenches provided very little mobility. The new weapons of the war were designed to help with the lack of mobility

a. Tanks first used. -The armored tank was one of the most influential weapons developed during World War I because it provided movement in the immobile trenches. But, because it was so new, it was unreliable. It was modeled after a caterpillar track which was used on farms. Germany, Britain, France, Russia, and Austria had armored vehicles before the war but they were not made for the rough trenches of Europe but they did move heavy weaponry around well. Top speed of a tank was 4mph b. Airplanes first used. c. Machine guns used extensively for the first time. .The new machine guns could shoot several hundred rounds of bullets a minute. the main line of defense was still the infantry. The machine gun mutilated the infantry and made the death toll rise by the thousands. The machine guns that were used most by the British were the Vickers gun, the Hotchkiss gun, and the Lewis. The Vickers gun was their standard machine gun. The Vickers gun could shoot 450 bullets a minute. It had a water cooling jacket to keep the gun from melting. It was heavy, about 20kg, so it had at team of about 6 men and it had to be used with a tripod. The machine gun proved to be especially valuable when the enemy was coming over a set of trenches. Before the enemies could fight back, the machine gun was killing most of the enemy infantry. d. Poison gas first used in battle. -Poison gas was also a major development during World War I. Although not nearly as much as the machine gun, poison gas still killed a lot of people. Poison gas was vicious it could not be hidden from. Most of the time, soldiers were not able to get gas masks on before the gas started attacking them so they would suffer for weeks before they eventually died. If a soldier was able to get a mask on, sometimes the masks didnt work. Soldiers could make makeshift masks if they were caught in an attack without a mask by urinating on a cloth and blocking the gas from their face. For the army using the poison gas against their enemy, the only real danger was the wind changing and blowing the gas back into their camp. Tear gas was first used by the French in 1914 against the Germans. The gas was made of chlorine and put into pressurized cylinders. It was one of the answers to the lack of mobility in the trenches. By using the poison gas, armies could destroy their enemys front line and advance forward without having fired any gun shots. Phosgene gas would cause damage to the body 48 hours after being inhaled. By that time, it was too late to do anything because the gas had already settled into the respiratory organs. Many times, soldiers would not know that they had inhaled this gas because it did not cause sever coughing. Mustard gas caused the body to blister both internally and externally just hours after inhalation. If the infected survived, they were most likely blind. Poison gas was the silent killer of the war. e. Submarines first used extensively. By the eve of World War I all of the major navies included submarines in their fleets, but these craft were relatively small, were considered of questionable military value, and

generally were intended for coastal operations. The most significant exception to the concept of coastal activity was the German Deutschland class of merchant U-boats