You Won't Believe How WWI Began

salvadortampol988

3 months ago

A short summary of ww1

Transcript

00:00Before the First World War began, Europe was like a big pile of dry wood just waiting for a match.

00:06Many countries were building up their armies and navies,

00:09kinda getting ready for a fight they thought was coming.

00:11This was called, militarism.

00:14At the same time, countries were making secret promises to help each other,

00:18if a war started.

00:19These were called alliances.

00:21If one country got into a fight, its friends would have to join in,

00:25pulling more and more nations into the conflict.

00:27In the Balkan region of Europe known as the Powder Keg of Europe,

00:31these feelings were especially strong.

00:34The big spark came on a sunny day June 28, 1914.

00:38Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne was visiting Sarajevo.

00:43He was riding in an open-top car with his wife Sophie.

00:46A young man, a Serbian nationalist named Gavrilo Princip, was waiting in the crowd.

00:51He saw his chance and fired his pistol.

00:53Both the Archduke and his wife were killed.

00:55After the assassination everything happened very quickly like a line of dominoes falling

01:00one after the other.

01:01Austria-Hungary was the first to act.

01:03On July 28, 1914 they declared war on Serbia.

01:07Serbia had a powerful friend, Russia.

01:10Russia saw itself as the protector of Slavic peoples including the Serbs,

01:14so Russia began mobilizing its massive army.

01:16Mobilization looked like a threat to others, especially Germany.

01:20Germany was Austria-Hungary's main ally.

01:22They had promised support.

01:25Germany sat between Russia and France on the map.

01:28They feared a two-front war.

01:29Expecting French entry, Germany acted first with the Schlieffen Plan.

01:34Germany declared war on Russia on August 1, 1914.

01:37Germany declared war on France on August 3, 1914.

01:41Invading Belgium was a major mistake.

01:44Britain had a treaty to protect Belgian neutrality.

01:46German troops crossed into Belgium.

01:48Britain was outraged.

01:49On August 4, 1914, Britain declared war on Germany.

01:54With Britain and its empire involved, the conflict became a world war.

01:58Everyone thought the war would be over by Christmas.

02:01The soldiers marched off in the summer of 1914, smiling expecting quick glory.

02:06But the German plan to defeat France quickly failed.

02:09French and British counterattack at the Marne stopped Germans just outside Paris.

02:13Both sides tried to outflank each other, racing to the sea.

02:17Race to the sea ended in stalemate.

02:19Neither side could push the other back.

02:22To avoid deadly machine guns, soldiers dug into the ground.

02:26This began trench warfare.

02:27A trench line stretched nearly 500 miles from the Swiss Alps to the North Sea, the Western Front.

02:34Life in the trenches was miserable day after day.

02:36The trenches were filled with mud-dirty water rats as big as cats.

02:41Soldiers lived in constant fear of enemy attacks, artillery shells, sniper fire.

02:45The zone between trenches was no man's land.

02:48It was desolate barbed wire, deep craters from exploding shells.

02:52Generals ordered men to go over the top.

02:54Soldiers climbed out of trenches charged across no man's land.

02:57They ran into storms of machine gun fire.

02:59Thousands could die in minutes with very little land gained.

03:02For the first few years, the war was stuck in a deadly deadlock.

03:06To break it, both sides tried to invent new weapons and technologies.

03:10The Germans were the first to use poison gas on a large scale.

03:13Chlorine gas choked soldiers and damaged their lungs.

03:17Mustard gas caused terrible blisters on the skin, could blind people.

03:21Soldiers had to quickly develop and wear gas masks to protect themselves.

03:25These chemical weapons added another layer of horror to trench warfare.

03:29Another new invention that changed the battlefield was the tank.

03:32The British developed armored vehicles to cross no man's land.

03:36They were covered in thick metal plates to protect the crew inside from machine gun fire.

03:41They had caterpillar tracks that could roll over barbed wire and across muddy ground.

03:45The first tanks were slow, clumsy, and often broke down.

03:49But they gave soldiers a way to advance across the deadly open ground with some protection.

03:54The war was also fought in the air.

03:56At the beginning of the war, airplanes were simple and used mostly for watching the enemy.

04:00Pilots would fly over the trenches to see where the enemy soldiers were and take pictures.

04:06Soon they started trying to shoot at each other with pistols and rifles.

04:10Then they figured out how to mount machine guns on the planes.

04:13This led to exciting but deadly air battles called dogfights between skilled pilots known as

04:18aces.

04:19The biggest turning point of the war came in 1917.

04:22First, Russia, which had suffered enormous losses, had a revolution.

04:27Russia quit the war.

04:28This was good news for Germany, as they could now move all their soldiers to the western front.

04:33But then, something even more important happened.

04:36The United States of America joined the war on the side of the Allies.

04:40With American soldiers pouring into France, the Allied powers launched a major attack in

04:44the summer of 1918.

04:46This was known as the Hundred Days Offensive.

04:49Using new tactics with coordinated attacks by infantry tanks airplanes, the Allies finally

04:54began to break through the German lines.

04:56The German army, exhausted after four long years of fighting running low on supplies and

05:01soldiers, could not stop the advance.

05:04Austria-Hungary collapsed.

05:06The Ottoman Empire, collapsed.

05:08Russia collapsed, surrendering one by one.

05:11The German people back home were starving because of the British naval blockade which had

05:15stopped food from getting into the country.

05:17The German military leaders told their government that the war was lost and they had to seek peace.

05:22The German emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, was forced to give up his throne.

05:27On November 11, 1918 at 11 o'clock in the morning, Germany signed an armistice.

05:33An agreement to stop fighting.

05:35All across the world people celebrated the end of the war.

05:38The guns on the western front finally fell silent after more than four years of constant

05:43noise and destruction.

05:44The Great War was over.

05:45The world was a very different place after the war.

05:49The cost was immense.

05:50More than 15 million people, both soldiers and civilians were dead.

05:54Huge parts of France and Belgium were completely destroyed.

05:58The map of Europe was redrawn.

06:00Austria-Hungary gone.

06:01Ottoman Empire gone.

06:02Russia gone.

06:03Poland created.

06:05Czechoslovakia created.

06:06Yugoslavia created.

06:07The leaders of the winning countries met in Paris to decide the terms of peace.

06:11They created the Treaty of Versailles, which officially ended the war.

06:15The Treaty of Versailles placed all the blame for the war on Germany.

06:19It forced Germany to pay huge sums of money, called reparations, to the allied countries

06:24for the damage caused by the war.

06:26Many people, especially in Germany, felt that the treaty was incredibly unfair.

06:30This anger and resentment would fester for years.

06:33Instead of creating a lasting peace, the end of the First World War created new problems that

06:38would eventually lead to an even bigger and more destructive conflict just 20 years later,

06:43the Second World War.

06:45It seemed like they were not

You Won't Believe How WWI Began

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