End of WW1

Review of WW1 Beginnings• War started by Serbian

assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary

• Russia defended Serbia• Germany allied with Austria• German “Schlieffen Plan”

attacked France through Belgium

• Western Front & Eastern Front• Trench warfare “stalemate”• Naval blockades and U-Boats• Zimmerman Note: US Entrance

Implications of US Entrance• American troops used on western

front; Russian exit made western front more important

• War became a “world” war with entrance of US and Latin America

• US needed soldiers: “Selective Service Act” created the first US draft of soldiers

• “American Expeditionary Force” (AEF) fought in France, but only under American control

• Black Americans served too, usually mixed with Whites

• All-Black 369th Regiment fought under French control: highly decorated

• Entrance of US politicized the goals of the war -- Wilson's "14 Points" gave ideological nobility to the highly destructive war

New Technologies• Machine guns: mostly mounted

on land because they were heavy

• “Howitzer” guns (large cannons) were sometimes on railways

• Flamethrowers cleared trenches and rooms off trenches

• Aircraft first used for surveillance, later used for attack

• Germany’s Fokker planes timed propeller with machine gun fire

• Battleships and convoys of battleships to protect merchant ships

• Tanks: ended trench stalemate

Final Offensives• Germany made final large attack in

northern France, trying to take Paris

• French, British, and US forces defended Paris

• “Meuse-Argonne Offensive”: Allies pushed through German lines to take key railway used to supply troops

• After 6 weeks, Allies won battle

• Germany surrendered after lines had been broken, even though Germany was not invaded

• German generals agreed to an unconditional surrender, even though most Germans did not realize war had been “lost”