World War I Terms
Terms
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- Mohandas Ghandi
- Led sustained all-India campaign for independence from British Empire after World War I. Stressed nonviolent but aggressive mass protest.
- Mustard Gas
- Carried by the wind and burned out lungs. First used by Germans against British at Ypres. Frothing yellow mucus and blue faces.
- Article 231
- Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles (1919) is commonly known as the "Guilt Clause" or the "War Guilt Clause", in which Germany was forced to take complete responsibility for starting World War I. The United Kingdom and France played the primary role in the article, while the United States played a lesser role, mostly due to President Woodrow Wilson's principle of "peace without victory."
- Zimmerman Telegram
- A German telegram sent to Mexico intercepted by the British asking Mexico to go to war with The United States to distract The United States.
- Alexander Kerensky
- Headed the Provisional government of Russia in 1917. Refused to redistribute confiscated landholdings to the peasants. Thought fighting the war was a national duty.
- Black Hand
- Officially called Unification or Death, was a secret society founded in Serbia in May 1911, as part of the Pan-Slavism nationalist movement, with the intention of uniting all of the territories containing South Slav populations annexed by Austria-Hungary. This society's possible connections to the June 28, 1914 assassination in Sarajevo of Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria is considered to have been the main catalyst to the start of World War I.
- Battle Of Verdun
- One of the most critical battles in World War I on the Western Front, fought between the German and French armies from 21 February to 18 December 1916 around the city of Verdun-sur-Meuse in northeast France. Resulted in more than a quarter of a million deaths and at least a million wounded. It was the longest battle and one of the bloodiest in World War I and more generally in human history. In both France and Germany it has come to represent the horrors of war.
- Gallipoli
- Peninsula south of Istanbul. Site of decisive 1915 Turkish victory over Australian and New Zealand forces under British command during World War I.
- 14 Points
- Were listed in a speech delivered by President Woodrow Wilson of the United States to a joint session of the United States Congress on January 8, 1918. This speech was intended to make a plan for peace in Europe after World War I. The common people of Europe welcomed Wilson as a hero but his Allied colleagues (Clemenceau, Lloyd George, and Orlando) remained skeptical of the applicability of Wilsonian idealism.
- Lusitania
- British passenger boat sunk by a German submarine that claimed 1,000 lives. One of main reasons America decided to join the war.
- Leon Trotsky
- Lead the Bolsheviks of Russian along side Lenin. He was a spellbinding revolutionary orator and independent racial Marxist, who brilliantly executed the Bolshevik seizure of power by convincing the Petrograd Soviet to form a special military-revolutionary committee and make him its leader. His soldiers joined with the Bolsheviks to overtake members of the provisional government and win the vote of the Congress of soviets. He was also leader of the Red Army in the civil war.
- Balfour Declaration
- British minister Lord Balfour's promise of support for the establishment of Jewish settlement in Palestine issued in 1917.
- Eric Ludendorff
- A German army officer during World War I. One of the victors of the battle of Tannenberg. After the war, he briefly supported Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. He was acquitted of criminal charges for his role in the Nazis' unsuccessful Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. He became disillusioned with politics and retired from public life that year.
- Kemal Ataturk
- Also known as Mustafa Kemal. Leader of Turkish republic formed in 1923. Reformed Turkish nation using Western models.
- Battle Of The Somme
- Also known as the Somme Offensive, fought from July 1916 to November 1916, was one of the largest battles of the First World War. With more than one million casualties, it was also one of the bloodiest battles in human history. The Allied forces attempted to break through the German lines along a 95-mile front north and south of the River Somme in northern France. One purpose of the battle was to draw German forces away from the Battle of Verdun; however, by its end the losses on the Somme had exceeded those at Verdun.
- Plan XVII
- France's plan to defeat Germany. One aim of Plan XVII was to recapture Alsace and Lorraine. Four French armies would advance on either side of Metz and Thionville. This left only one army to defend northern France but French planners were convinced that Germany would not invade through Belgium, as this would lead to British involvement. It failed.
- Brest Litovsk
- Ended the Russia war with Germany by conceding Lithuania, Poland, and Finland in March 1918. Although Lenin supported peace many other Bolsheviks were not prepared to lose one third of the population to Germany.
- Treaty Of Versailles
- A peace treaty that officially ended World War I. It was signed on June 28, 1919, exactly 5 years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, one of the events that triggered the start of the war. Although the armistice signed on November 11, 1918 put an end to the actual fighting, it took six months of negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference to conclude a peace treaty.
- Armistice
- The effective end of a war, when the warring parties agree to stop fighting. The armistice treaty between the Allies and Germany was signed in a railway carriage in Compiègne Forest on November 11, 1918, and marked the end of the First World War on the Western Front.
- League Of Nations
- International diplomatic and peace organization created in Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I. One of the chief goals of President Woodrow Wilson of the United States in the peace negotiations. The United States was never a member.
- Nicholas II
- Tsar of Russia from 1894-1917 who forcefully suppressed political opposition and resisted constitutional government. Deposed by revolution in 1917.
- Alsace-Lorraine
- A territorial entity created by the German Empire in 1871 after the annexation of most of Alsace and parts of Lorraine in the Franco-Prussian War.
- Schlieffen Plan
- Germany's plan to avoid a two front war between France and Russia and any future conflict. Germany had two hostile neighbors so they required Germany to focus on defeating France in the next six weeks and then advance to Russia because they knew that Russia would take at least six weeks to prepare. It failed because Schlieffen's successor altered the plan [and Russia got ready too fast].
- William II
- The last German Emperor and King of Prussia ruling both the German Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia from 15 June 1888 to 9 November 1918.
- Franz Ferdinand
- Heir apparent to the Austro-Hungarian throne whose assassination in Sarajevo set in motion the events that started World War I.
- Race To The Sea
- The name given to a period of World War I when, on the Western Front, the two sides were still engaged in mobile warfare. With the German advance stalled at the First Battle of the Marne, the opponents continually attempted to outflank each other through north-eastern France. This process brought the forces back to positions prepared under British Admiralty guidance, on the North Sea coast in Western Belgium. The nature of operations then changed to trench warfare, which is very large scale siege warfare. This produced a continuous front line of trench fortifications more than two hundred miles long, which by the following Spring extended from the coast to the Swiss border.
- Tannenburg
- In 1914 during World War I a German army under the command of Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg won an important victory over two Russian armies in the Second Battle of Tannenberg who had invaded East Prussia.
- No Man's Land
- An unoccupied territory between rival trenches, very dangerous and containing barbed wire.
- Christmas Truce
- During World War I, on Christmas Day both sides stopped fighting and joined together peacefully for Christmas.