World War I

Trench Warfare

Trench Foot

Machine Guns

• What was one problem with water cooled guns?

• Why were machine guns used mainly for defensive fighting and hard to use for offensive operations?

• One machine gun = about 80 rifles What does this mean?

Poison Gas

Casualties From Gas - The Numbers

Country Total Casualties DeathsAustria-Hungary 100,000 3,000British Empire 188,706 8,109 France 190,000 8,000 Germany 200,000 9,000 Russia 419,340 56,000 USA 72,807 1,462

• What were the two types of gas mentioned?• Why do you think the use of poison gas

damaged German relations with neutral countries?

• Why did using poison gas backfire on the side that was attacking?

Airplane

Aces

• Why do you think pilots were hailed as national hero’s and received a lot of publicity? (more then sailors or soldiers on the ground)

• Why do you think the technology of the airplane advanced so quickly during the war?

• Why do you think airplane pilots were not allowed to use parachutes during World War I? (men in the blimps and hot air balloons used them)

U-Boats

• What was meant by unrestricted warfare, which the German’s used late in the war?

• Were the German’s right or wrong in sinking the luxury liner (cruise ship)Lusitania?

• Though the German U-boat campaign was largely ineffective, it did have one bad result for Germany? Think about relations with other countries.

Tank

• Why did the Royal navy supply the crews for the British tanks?

• Why was the only successful attack of tanks in WW I later ruled as ineffective? (think of the infantry)

• Why did the use of the tank herald the end of trench warfare?

Questions for all?

• Which weapon caused the most casualties in World War I?

• As in most other wars, fighting was not the number one killer of men, what was?

• Of the 22 million people who died, over half of them were civilians, what would you do if you could to stop this from happening again?