What kind of war was wwi

By the time the other AIF divisions arrived in France, the war on the Western Front had long been in a stalemate, with the opposing armies facing each other from trench systems that extended across Belgium and north-east France, all the way from the English Channel to the Swiss border.

The development of machine-guns and artillery favoured defensive over offensive operations, and this compounded the impasse that lasted until the final months of the war. Troops of 53rd Battalion wait to don equipment for the attack at Fromelles, 19 July Only three of these men survived. While the fighting continued throughout and , the Australians and other allied armies repeatedly attacked the German trenches, preceded by massive artillery bombardments intended to cut barbed wire and destroy defences.

The surviving Germans, protected by deep and heavily reinforced bunkers, were usually able to repel the attackers with machine-gun fire and artillery support from the rear. These attacks often resulted in limited territorial gains followed, in turn, by German counter-attacks. Although this style of warfare favoured the defensive armies, both sides sustained heavy losses. In July Australian troops were introduced to this type of combat at Fromelles, where they suffered 5, casualties in 24 hours.

By the end of the year about 40, Australians had been killed or wounded on the Western Front. In a further 76, Australians became casualties in battles such Bullecourt, Messines, and the four-month campaign around Ypres known as the battle of Passchendaele. Australian wounded infantrymen at the first battle of Passchendaele, near Zonnebeke railway station.

In March the German army launched a massive Spring Offensive, hoping for a decisive victory before the industrial strength of the United States could be fully mobilised in support of the allies.

The Germans initially met with great success, advancing 64 kilometres past the Somme battlefields of , but eventually lost momentum. Between April and November the stalemate of the preceding years began to give way. When the German offensive failed, the allied armies began their own counter-offensive combining infantry, artillery, tanks, and aircraft to great effect, demonstrated in the Australian capture of Hamel on 4 July In early October, after the fighting at Montbrehain, the Australian divisions withdrew from the front for rest and refitting; they were preparing to return to the fighting when Germany signed the Armistice on 11 November.

The Australians in the Middle East fought a mobile war against the Ottoman Empire in conditions completely different from the mud and stagnation of the Western Front. Mounted troops of the Australian Light Horse and the Imperial Camel Corps endured extreme heat, harsh terrain, and water shortages, yet casualties were comparatively light, with 1, Australians killed or wounded in three years of fighting.

The desert campaign began in when Australian troops took part in the defence of the Suez Canal and the allied action to take back the Sinai Desert. In the following year Australian troops participated in a British push into Palestine that captured Gaza and Jerusalem; by they had occupied Lebanon and Syria and were riding into Damascus. Though his most popular plane during WWI was the single-seat Fokker Eindecker, Fokker created over 40 kinds of airplanes for the Germans.

On April 1, , the British created the Royal Air Force, or RAF, the first air force to be a separate military branch independent from the navy or army. With Germany able to build up its strength on the Western Front after the armistice with Russia, Allied troops struggled to hold off another German offensive until promised reinforcements from the United States were able to arrive.

On July 15, , German troops launched what would become the last German offensive of the war, attacking French forces joined by 85, American troops as well as some of the British Expeditionary Force in the Second Battle of the Marne. The Allies successfully pushed back the German offensive and launched their own counteroffensive just three days later. The Second Battle of the Marne turned the tide of war decisively towards the Allies, who were able to regain much of France and Belgium in the months that followed.

All four regiments comprised of celebrated soldiers who fought in the Spanish-American War and American-Indian Wars , and served in the American territories.

But they were not deployed for overseas combat in World War I. Blacks serving alongside white soldiers on the front lines in Europe was inconceivable to the U. Instead, the first African American troops sent overseas served in segregated labor battalions, restricted to menial roles in the Army and Navy, and shutout of the Marines, entirely. Their duties mostly included unloading ships, transporting materials from train depots, bases and ports, digging trenches, cooking and maintenance, removing barbed wire and inoperable equipment, and burying soldiers.

Facing criticism from the Black community and civil rights organizations for its quotas and treatment of African American soldiers in the war effort, the military formed two Black combat units in , the 92nd and 93rd Divisions. Trained separately and inadequately in the United States, the divisions fared differently in the war. The 92nd faced criticism for their performance in the Meuse-Argonne campaign in September The 93rd Division, however, had more success.

With dwindling armies, France asked America for reinforcements, and General John Pershing , commander of the American Expeditionary Forces, sent regiments in the 93 Division to over, since France had experience fighting alongside Black soldiers from their Senegalese French Colonial army.

Despite the Turkish victory at Gallipoli, later defeats by invading forces and an Arab revolt that destroyed the Ottoman economy and devastated its land, and the Turks signed a treaty with the Allies in late October Austria-Hungary, dissolving from within due to growing nationalist movements among its diverse population, reached an armistice on November 4. Facing dwindling resources on the battlefield, discontent on the homefront and the surrender of its allies, Germany was finally forced to seek an armistice on November 11, , ending World War I.

At the Paris Peace Conference in , Allied leaders stated their desire to build a post-war world that would safeguard itself against future conflicts of such devastating scale.

As the years passed, hatred of the Versailles treaty and its authors settled into a smoldering resentment in Germany that would, two decades later, be counted among the causes of World War II. World War I took the lives of more than 9 million soldiers; 21 million more were wounded. Civilian casualties numbered close to 10 million.

The two nations most affected were Germany and France, each of which sent some 80 percent of their male populations between the ages of 15 and 49 into battle. The political disruption surrounding World War I also contributed to the fall of four venerable imperial dynasties: Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia and Turkey. World War I brought about massive social upheaval, as millions of women entered the workforce to replace men who went to war and those who never came back.

The severe effects that chemical weapons such as mustard gas and phosgene had on soldiers and civilians during World War I galvanized public and military attitudes against their continued use. The Geneva Convention agreements, signed in , restricted the use of chemical and biological agents in warfare and remains in effect today. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us!

Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. When World War I broke out across Europe in , President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the United States would remain neutral, and many Americans supported this policy of nonintervention. However, public opinion about neutrality started to change after the sinking of the British For four years, from to , World War I raged across Europe's western and eastern fronts, after growing tensions and then the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria ignited the war.

Trench warfare and the early use of tanks, submarines and airplanes meant the The instability created in Europe by the First World War set the stage for another international conflict—World War II—which broke out two decades later and would prove even more devastating. Rising to power in an economically and politically unstable Germany, Adolf Machine guns.

They had a sustained fire of — rounds per minute, allowing defenders to cut down attacking waves of enemy troops like a scythe cutting wheat. There was some speculation that the machine gun would completely replace the rifle. Contrary to popular belief, machine guns were not the most lethal weapon of the Great War.

That dubious distinction goes to the artillery. A German soldier practices using his flamethrower during a training exercise near Sedan, France, May Reports of infantry using some sort of flame-throwing device can be found as far back as ancient China.

But the first recorded use of hand-held flamethrowers in combat was on February 26, , when the Germans deployed the weapon at Malancourt, near Verdun. Over the course of the war, Germany utilized 3, Flammenwerfer troops; over flamethrower attacks were made.

The British and French both developed flame-throwing weapons but did not make such extensive use of them. British soldiers using a capture German Lanz-type light trench mortar. Canada Department of National Defence. Mortars of World War I were far advanced beyond their earlier counterparts. The British introduced the Stokes mortar design in , which had no moving parts and could fire up to 22 three-inch shells per minute, with a range of 1, yards.

A French battery preps a 75mm canon. Some giant guns could hurl projectiles so far that crews had to take into account the rotation of the earth when plotting their fire. French 75 mm field guns also saw action in the Second World War, during which some were modified by the Germans into anti-tank guns with limited success.