Sign in

World History / Unit 10: The World Wars

10.2 Fighting the Great War

3 practice questionsNot yet reviewed

Notes

World War I was a new kind of war, fought with industrial weapons around the world.

  • On the Western Front in France and Belgium, both sides dug trenches, leading to a stalemate. Battles such as the Somme (1916) killed hundreds of thousands for little ground.
  • New weapons: machine guns, poison gas, tanks, airplanes and submarines (U-boats).
  • Total war: governments directed whole economies toward the war, used rationing and propaganda, and many women took factory jobs.
  • The war was global: colonial troops from India, Africa and elsewhere fought; the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers; Allied troops failed at Gallipoli (1915).
  • During the war, the Ottoman government carried out the Armenian Genocide (beginning 1915), killing about 1 million or more Armenians.
  • Germany's unrestricted submarine warfare and the Zimmermann Telegram (proposing a German alliance with Mexico) brought the United States into the war in 1917.
  • An armistice ended the fighting on November 11, 1918. About 9 to 10 million soldiers died.

Practice

Why did fighting on the Western Front become a stalemate?
A government takes over factories to make weapons, rations food and uses posters to urge citizens to support the war. This is an example of:
Which two factors helped bring the United States into World War I in 1917?

Ready for more? Take the Unit 10 test.