WWI Strategies

German's war plan (The Schlieffen Plan): rely on the railway to fight upon two fronts. First, rapidly defeat the French in a cyclic fashion; then, shuttle individuals to the slower Russian front.

When implementing part 1 of the plan, the Germans were took by surprise when the Russians pushed into Germany. Furthermore, the French later quickly got reinforcements from England. While German communication was cut off intermittantly, the French and English conversatinos were uninterrupted. Because of the machine gun, which made foot soilders kind of useless, the war turned into a stalemate with no one being able to advance. The germans tried to take Russia; they killed a lot of people, but no hope was given up. The English/French tried to take Turkey, lots of people died, but still nothing.

• General Pétain had to fight and defend the Verdun area with minimum resources; both German and French armies suffered great casulties, but eventually the Germans gave up.
• The Allied offensive tried to use a stupid amount of weaponary and people to move through the front, however, it was to very little gain.
• The allies did not observe the international rules preventing noncontraband imports for countries at war; hence, they slowly abolished the economic rules and leveraged this to create a naval blocade to starve german economy.
• The US tried to protest this, because they did business with Germany; however, when the US entered the war on behalf of the Allies, they ditched that and enforced the same regulatinos.
• The Germans, citing the English abuse of naval law, started torpeedoing anything they see next to English waters with a submarine.
• Once a British ship was torpeedoed by Germany, 118 American lives were lost.
• Woodrow Wilson threatened that another such act would be reconized as "deliberately unfriendly" behavior by the Germans, which caused them to stop torpeedoing by much for 2 years.
• The Germans threw a lot of resources on naval fighting in hopes of preventing the blocade from starving them. Although they took out a lot of British men, they did not successfully undermind the British sea dominance.
• Against the will of most italians, the Allies secretly bought the support of Italy by promising them land and larger colonies.
• The Germans equally tried to stir the nationalistic ideals of poland and ukraine and Ireland and bought the sultan to proclaim holy war. Nothing amounted to much.
• The German Zimmermann telegram tried to leverage Mexico as a line of defense against the United States — that if the US attacked germany, Mexico would attack the US. This shocked US public opionion.
• Instead of appealing to route nationalism, allies appealed to nationalistic discontent.
• Appealing to the Jews and the Armenians, the British government dragged them into the conflict and disrupted the ottoman empire.
• The allies then took German colonies.
• Allied with the British, Japan also forced China to make a series of consessions that protected the Nortern China region from the Germans.
• Woodrow wilson, although personally allied with England and France, kept out of the war and tried to bring peace without a victory.
• CLAIM: Russia was the first victim in the war. The troops mutinied and the government abdicated to create a provisional russian goverment.