War Economy






Military History



World War I was completely different from the previous major wars (Franco-German War 1870/71, American Civil War 1861/65, Russo-Japanese War 1904/05) as wars were not determined by isolated battles and sieges; now, there were continuous FRONTS - the western front, the Italian front, the Serbian front, the Russian front.
France, in preparation for a war with Germany, had established a chain of fortresses along it's border to Germany, a chain which proved instrumental in the defense of the country as it forced Germany to circumvent it by marching through Belgium; the chain of fortresses held throughout the war.
The French forces, by sending in the reserves just at the right time, were able to halt the German juggernaut in 1914 - the war now turned into a stalemate; in the TRENCH WARFARE the military object was not to conquer ground, but to exhaust the enemy. BATTLEs OF MATERIEL were fought at Verdun, on the Somme, at Ypres and Langemarck. The machine gun was the dominating weapon; waves of attacking soldiers were mown down by machine gun barrages.
The BATTLE OF TANNENBERG illustrates the effectivity of this strategy : 40,000 Germans faced 160,000 Russians. Of the latter, 50,000 fell, 90,000 were taken prisoner.

Tanks and airplanes were first used in World War I. As they were deployed to serve infantry battalions, they were not very effective.
The war brutalized; GAS WARFARE was introduced, used first by the Germans, with the Entente quick to retaliate.



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This page is part of World History at KMLA
First posted in 2000, last revised on November 16th 2004

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