Study sheet: The First World War

📋 Course Outline

1. Origins and Outbreak of War
2. Fronts and Phases of Combat
3. Industrial Warfare and Verdun
4. Soldiers, Mutinies, and Violence
5. Civilians and Total War

📅 Key Dates

1. 28 June 1914The assassination in Sarajevo of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne triggered a generalized conflict involving most European powers
2. 2 August 1914France launched mobilization; on 3 August 1914, Germany declared war on France
3. 21 February to 19 December 1916The Battle of Verdun lasted 300 days and involved 700,000 soldiers
4. 1917Soldiers faced the threat of the most formidable weapons, contributing to mutinies in which they refused to fight
5. 1924The French Senate again refused to grant women the right to vote despite their wartime mobilization

📖 1. Origins and Outbreak of War

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Sacred Union : a government supported by all the political parties of the same country

📝 Essential Points

• The Central Powers were the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire.

• Systems of alliances became linked together and led to the First World War.

💡 Memory Hook

Sarajevo assassination → alliances → generalized war

📖 2. Fronts and Phases of Combat

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• No man's land : the zone located between the two enemy armies

★ Must-know

📌 The eastern front opposed Germany and the Russian Empire, whereas the western front opposed France and Germany.

• 🔄 The war developed through three phases:
  1. a war of movement until 1915
  2. trench warfare until the end of 1917
  3. a return to movement warfare until 1918

Further detail

• A trench system included three lines:
  • the first, closest to the front
  • the second, allowing soldiers to reach the first
  • the third, farthest from the front and used for rest

💡 Memory Hook

Movement → trenches → movement

📖 3. Industrial Warfare and Verdun

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Industrial war : The First World War was an industrial war because new weapons were developed, including heavy artillery on railway tracks, flamethrowers, cannons, and poison gas.

📝 Essential Points

• At Verdun, 2 million shells were fired on the first day and 30 million shells were fired over the 300 days of the battle.

• At Verdun, 275,000 French soldiers and 240,000 German soldiers were killed or disappeared.

💡 Memory Hook

A railway gun firing across the trench landscape

📖 4. Soldiers, Mutinies, and Violence

★ Must-know

• General Pétain ended the 1917 mutinies by sanctioning soldiers, and many soldiers were shot as examples.

• Soldiers experienced three forms of violence:

  • physical violence, including mutilations known as gueules cassées
  • moral violence caused by separation from their families
  • psychological violence caused by fear of death, constant noise, and exposure to corpses

Further detail

• At the beginning of the war, French poilus wore red trousers, a blue jacket, and a blue kepi, which were later replaced by horizon-blue uniforms.

• French troops were reinforced by the arrival of Senegalese and Algerian workers.

💡 Memory Hook

Physical violence wounds bodies, while moral and psychological violence affects minds

📖 5. Civilians and Total War

★ Must-know

• Civilians suffered food shortages because occupying forces requisitioned large quantities of food, while rationing further constrained daily life.

• Civilians were affected by combat, especially during movement warfare, when populations in combat zones were evacuated; women also suffered violence and entire populations were sometimes deported to enemy countries.

• From August 1914, women replaced mobilized men in economic life by working in fields and armaments factories, where they were called Munitionnettes.

• Governments maintained morale through:

  • propaganda
  • censorship of demoralizing news
  • appeals for national unity behind the army

• The war economy redirected a large part of industrial and agricultural resources toward the war effort, used science and technology to create increasingly destructive weapons, and relied on massive loans to finance rising expenses.

Further detail

• The Angels Blancs were volunteers who went to the front and became nurses, while war godmothers supported soldiers' morale through correspondence.

💡 Memory Hook

Requisitions and propaganda → civilian mobilization and economic war

📊 Synthesis Tables

War Phases and Combat Organization

Phase or element	Characteristics	Period or position
War of movement	Mobile combat	Until 1915 and again until 1918
Trench warfare	Defensive trench systems and no man's land	Until the end of 1917
First trench line	Closest to the front	Front line
Third trench line	Farthest from the front and used for rest	Rear