Tell us what you know about the history of WORLD WAR I without using anything but your own brain

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
61

American.

The Austo-Hungarian Empire: 1914, still alive. 1918, not still alive.
The Russian Empire: 1914, oppressing the peasants, plotting with the family, and partying at the Winter Palace till all hours. 1917, nothing.

Ever since France settled into its Third Republic, the endless fighting in post-Renaissance Europe had finally gotten a lot less fierce. Most of the rest of the Long Nineteenth Century passed relatively peacefully unless you happened to be a Boer, a Zulu, a Crimean, a Congolese, or anyone else who wasn’t actually in Europe at the time.

This peace was maintained by a series of shifting alliances maintaining a balance of power with the British dominating the seas and everyone except Italy and Russia controlling their own little colonies around the world. This was shaken to some extent by Kaiser Wilhelm’s insistence upon building a big navy but, ultimately, everyone was satisfied with the current state of affairs and the belle epoque remained fairly belle.

Then Archduke Franz Ferdinand decided to take a little trip to Sarajevo, part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the most ethnically diverse European political unit of the era. In plain terms, this meant the Austrians got to dominate a whole lot of other ethnic groups, including such peace-loving peoples as the Serbs and the Croats. Gavrilo Princip, a Serb, came very close to entirely failing to kill the Archduke. I mean, a fucking hand grenade didn’t even work.

In any event, that meant war. The Austro-Hungarian Empire drug the Germans in, Pan-Slavic Nationalism drug the Russians in, some damn thing or other drug the French in, and the British were sure to follow. Everyone was sure it would be over by Christmas, especially the Germans, who had a really neat plan to drive through neutral Belgium and take the French out in one knockout blow. This outraged the world, especially since there were scandalous stories about nuns being raped and babies being tossed into the air to be impaled on the Germans’ pointy helmets. The mad dashes were over by 1915 and all sides settled into trench warfare, broken by a single Christmas Truce. Sightings of a beagle flying overhead remain unconfirmed at this time.

Trench warfare means that both sides know roughly where the enemy is, and can use long-range artillery to blast and gas them, but don’t know where troops are being massed. This lead to the development of aircraft for reconnaissance, then aircraft to kill those aircraft, then aircraft to kill those aircraft, and then finally aircraft to simply drop bombs on the enemy. Meanwhile, the idea of ‘mobile cover’ matured away from the practice of carrying Burnham Wood with you into the precursor of the modern tank. However, the utterly idiotic tactics of the era meant infantrymen were still sent charging into machine gun fire and that artillery was not closely coordinated with armor or infantry, as it would be in WWII.

In 1916, a German U-Boat sunk the Lusitania, a British ship, which brought America into the war in 1917. This made perfect sense to Wilson, as he explicitly ran on a platform of keeping us out of the war in Europe. However, we would not let Theodore Roosevelt fight, because that would have been stupid. In any case, entering the war in 1917 allowed us to win a four-year war with only one year of fighting. U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

Also in 1917, the Russian Empire fractured into something like clam chowder, with the Red and the White fighting for supremacy. The Reds were Soviets, advocating a Communist state, lead by Lenin, and the Whites were everyone else, advocating things from Social Democracy to Constitutional Monarchy, lead by people who would be killed or exiled. During the Revolution, soldiers stopped fighting and went back home, battleships mutinied, baby carriages rolled unimpeded down long staircases, and you, too, could have had your own Theme. Anastasia is alive and well and working on a reunion tour with Elvis, Tupac, and Black Michael Jackson.

Meanwhile in the colonies, fighting was going on as well. Japan was on the Allied side, fighting the Germans and being at least something of an asset with the understanding that it would be able to expand its empire afterwords. Bogie and Hepburn got tortured in Africa, the Chinese continued fighting their Civil War which began in 1911, and the Russians were happy they didn’t have to fight the Japanese again, seeing as how they lost to them so badly in 1909.

On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, the Armistice was signed, meaning the fierce bombardments that happened a few minutes before were forgiven and forgotten. Baldrick went home and fathered many children. Armistice Day, now called Veterans Day, became a fixed holiday, giving people the occasional Wednesday off for no reason they could discern. The War to End All Wars was over, Germany was given treaty obligations just onerous enough to piss it off but not harsh enough to keep it down entirely, France invested in a very well-defended wall, Japan got shut out of the pie-dividing almost entirely even though it was on the winning side, and America learned the Charleston, secure in its borders and prosperity.

62

So not fictional, then? :slight_smile: Good to know.

63

WW1 fell between the old 19thC warfare and the industrialised warfare of 20thC.
Lessons might have been learned from the US civil war siege of Richmond about the capacity of modern weapons - as this too was trench warfare, but no-one saw it at the time.

Maybe we also consider the outcomes too.

At the end of the war, the US effectively became the superpower that is recognisable today, whereas previous world powers declined or completely fell apart.

The settlement of the war led to the Weimar republic, and also laid the foundations for the causes of WWII.

The way that Germany surrendered, coupled with German propaganda led to many Germans believing they had been betrayed rather than having lost - the German propaganda had led the German public to believe they were on the edgeo fo victory almost right to the surrender, when it was better to say that the war was on a knife edge of disaster - had Germany not surrendered when it did, it would have cuased land invasion of their own territory and would surely have removed any illusions that the German populace had over the outcome.

Large numbers of lower orders - workers, travelled in a way they had never done before, and were thus exposed to differant viewpoints and lifestyles - they would take all this back to their own countries where huge changes in industrial relations and democratic structures would take place - for example suffrage - the right to vote was extended more widely among men and then on to women.

Changes were forced upon the warrring participants where women were employed in industries that were once the almost exclusive preserve of men.

Politics changed with the growth of socialism, communism, fascism which all had their own longer term outcomes and changed the process of national government and international relations.

The lower upper classes were wiped out in UK, which led to immense social changes - the old order of patronage and deference was severely dented and would never recover.

Nascent nationalist movement emerged in many colonies which would in most cases lead to independence.

Military technology and tactic changed dramatically, horse cavelry was made obselete, yet was replaced by the new tank. Artillery changed from direct fire to indirect fire, advances could only be made through co-ordinated actions with air intelligence, armour, artilery and infantry - the British came up with the idea of combined arms which was the refined by the Germans much later on and become more recognisable as Blitzkrieg.

Combined arms operations is still the main concept of military planning today, although we have moved to a differant scenario with recent modern conflicts in Afghanistan.

Also worth mentioning was the flu outbreak of 1918 which led to millions of deaths right around the globe and which killed more people in one year than all all theatres of war from 1914-18 and ultimately anything up to seven times as many deaths

The first aircraft carriers came into existance, HMS Furious and HMS Glorious, whose early promise would be fulfilled later on - and evolve into current navy deployment, exemplified in the idea of the US carrier battle group and its role of power projection.

64

Without even reading the thread:

Some guy (anarchist/patriot/insurgentr/something) in Serbia killed an Austrian Arch Duke (and his wife, too?)

Shouts, threats, and recriminations flowed hotly, and everyone was aligned one-way-or-another with “mutual defense treaties.” Little fish went to war over the assasination, dragging all their bigger brothers (their “Patron States,” I gues I’d call them) into the fray.

Tactics had not caught up with technology. The machinegun, and newer, more accurate and more rapid firing artillery chewed up masses of attack formations designed to be used against defenders with singe-shot rifles, causing massive losses of life for little, if any, gain.

France and Britain were getting their collective butts kicked by the Germans until the U.S.A. joined the war, and won it single-handedly.:wink:

Okay, the above is nothing more than common porpoganda.

Seriously, Britain used its Navy to largely nullify the German Navy, and France was deadlocked with Germany on the ground. Neither force had sufficient reserves to initiate a war of maneuver.

The arrival of the U.S. Expeditionary Force provided that reserve, tipping the manpower balance against Germany. Britain developed the Tank, and was able to use it effectively to break Germany’s lines.

War over.