World War I

Hey, all unwelcome in this video, we're gonna be doing

part one of World War One.

We talked about World War One.

We're looking at the time period from 1914 to 1920.

It's a little longer than the actual fighting, but we'll

talk about that as we start every unit we want

to know.

What are the big ideas?

So what are the things that you're supposed to be

able to kind of take away and explain and understand?

At the end of the unit, with most wars, there's

gonna be kind of similar First, what were the causes

of World War One?

We want to know why war start second, how does

life change it home?

What we often refer to as the home front.

The impact of wars on how life is carried out

on a daily basis is often rather dramatic.

So we want to know how life changes during World

War one for Americans.

And lastly, what are the effects?

With most wars we talk about, we're gonna look at

those three things as big idea questions in this part

One lecture video.

We're only going to cover what the causes of World

War one work.

So let's get right into that.

First, the origins or the causes of World War One

thes they're gonna be four key terms.

I'll give you brief definitions of them thes air.

Not why the fighting starts but the's air.

Why it builds towards fighting First National is, um a

lot of these words are gonna end throughout our entire

year, and I s m ism words mean a belief

in something.

Nationalism is this intense belief and the fact that one's

country is better than someone else's country.

Nationalism was spread all across Europe through this time.

There was a lot of intense pride in countries they

thought their country was the best and needed to survive

second imperialism.

This is a idea of my country is stronger than

your country.

So I'm going thio, colonize or control your country and

take resource is from your country to make mine wealthier.

A lot of the European countries were practicing this all

around the world and they were starting to compete for

territory around the world that they could get wealthier from

because they're competing with one another.

There are a lot of secret alliances between countries also

some of those were publicas Well, but what this means

is if one country goes to war, their allies, they're

going to start jumping in, and it's going to cause

the conflict to growth.

Our last one is militarism.

So this is a belief in a need for a

strong military and building up a country's military.

So these four things together are the causes of the

world of of World War One.

It's because these different nations and empires were competing with

one another in these different areas.

This is what the world will look like prior.

Well, Europe really will look like prior to World War

One, you might recognize if you take a moment, you

can pause the video at any time toe.

Look at the map.

There's some countries you might not recognize them from being

around anymore.

Like down here in the bottom.

Right corner.

We have the Ottoman Empire.

Not around anymore.

Austria. Hungary has been all kind of split apart, and

so we'll be looking at.

That's gonna be some of the effects will get to

later. But this is what Europe looks like prior to

the war starting now, this event right here, the assassination

of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, by an

assassin is going to be the spark, the thing that

kicks the war off.

And that's because Austria, Hungary will become upset with Serbia.

Well, get ready to declare war.

And then there'll be a whole Siris of those alliances,

those allies that all start jumping in.

So it didn't seem like huge news.

At first, of course, is big news event if anything

like this happens.

But the assassination of the Archduke and his wife will

be the spark that starts World War One, because on

the previous page page those tensions existed.

The nationalism, imperialism, militarism and alliances something that's going to

take it from this conflict between Austria, Hungary and Serbia

and make it grow is going to be Germany's war

plants. Have a map to show you this.

We're gonna actually zoom way in.

But before we do that, I want to show you

a couple things you might notice.

Here in the center, where I'm moving my cursor, we

have some countries that are green, kind of down the

center, those they're going to be known as the central

powers on the outsides.

We have this kind of orangish color where I'm moving

my cursor thes air the big players on what is

going to be known as the Allies.

So in World War One, we have the allies versus

the central powers and that all this kind of depends

on who they had those secret treaties with.

So right here we have Germany and their war plan

was to attack France.

But that brought them through Belgium right here who happened

to be neutral.

But they had other allies.

And so again, this is just this domino effect where

Germany goes through Belgium to attack France.

But Belgium's friends jump in and Francis friends on the

other side, Russia jump in.

And so it becomes this domino effect because of the

war plans because of the assassination, all of a sudden,

all of Europe as at war with one another.

As Europe goes to war, we see it's a new

style of war.

So we're in the 20th century now.

We're in the 19 hundreds.

The common fighting style for World War one was called

trench warfare.

I'll talk about that more when I zoom in on

an image, but what we will see that trench warfare

is going to start because of these new powerful weapons.

And some of them are going to be developed because

of this style of fighting.

All these new weapons in this trench warfare will cause

World War One to be up to this point in

time in history, the deadliest war by far.

We see death on scales never imagined before.

Millions upon millions of soldiers were killed during this war.

So machine guns all of a sudden become common weapons

tanks or developed because of trench warfare.

Poison gas is developed because of trench warfare.

Airplanes have just become invented.

And now they're beginning to battle in the skies and

U boats, a German tool used a lot we'll talk

about later, are actually submarines.

So new weapons kind of lead to unprecedented unseen before

levels of death.

Part of that is because of trench warfare.

So what trench warfare really means.

And these trenches were actually dug all the way across

Europe. You're gonna have ah, trench a ditch in the

ground which the soldiers will dig for safety and they're

down in those trenches.

And you really have these two trenches lined up facing

one another.

They're constantly shooting cannon artillery fire at each of them,

trying the land shells in the trenches.

But the soldiers air occasionally ordered to get up out

of their trenches and charge across this open space.

So if you look at my cursor here on the

left and these soldiers air ordered up out of their

trench, they have to charge across this open space that

becomes known as no man's land.

And it's just covered in, uh, craters.

Big holes from where those cannons air constantly hitting.

There's dead bodies.

There's barbed wire there sparked spiked fences.

Excuse me.

This is an absolutely horrible open space of land which

is almost impossible to get across.

And there's no protection.

So they're ordered up out of these trenches.

They charge across this open space, and while they're running

across cannons, air blowing up all around them and wiping

out large numbers of them, they're running straight into machine

gun fire.

Which big lines of soldiers who are in these trenches

here are shooting back at them.

And it's one of the reasons we see these huge,

huge numbers, um, of military deaths and casualties as a

result of this ugly trench warfare.

Now this is all happening in Europe.

Let's go over to the United States at this point

in time.

Three. United States president is Woodrow Wilson.

We see him right here.

We're you know, 1914 is kind of where we're at

right now.

At the beginning of World War One and Wilson's main

goal, his number one goal, is to keep the United

States out of this war.

Stay neutral.

It's terrible.

Americans are aware of what's going on, and and for

the most part, the country does not want to get

involved in this warp.

The second goal that Wilson has is to try to

act as a mediator or, in other words, try to

find some way toe, help Europe go back to peace.

So we wanna promote peace without getting involved.

That's Wilson's foreign policy at the start of World War

One. Unfortunately, this is going to fail.

The United States will get involved in World War One.

That's because because there's gonna be historic ties between the

U. S.

And the Allies those countries identified earlier.

France, Great Britain, Russia.

And also there's going to be these financial ties between

us on I will show a map that's gonna explain

some of that.

But the United States was supplying weapons and goods to

the Allies, so we start becoming financially linked with them.

Part of that is because of geography.

So the geography real quick we can see appear the

United Kingdom or England in the top left corner and

below them France.

Those air Those countries were historically tied.

Thio Well, it's very easy.

United States would be somewhere over here on the left

across the Atlantic Ocean.

It's very easy for the United States to ship goods

to France and the United Kingdom.

But because of blockades that those countries had put up

using their ships, the United States is not able to

get supplies into the central powers.

So we are selling things to and making loans to

France and United Kingdom.

Because of their geography.

Their location plays a big impact on.

I just mentioned the loans United States some bankers had

loaned. They get authority toe loan, massive amounts of money

to the Allies, and so that's going to get the

United States somewhat more involved, because now people like J.

P. Morgan who is a huge, powerful financier.

They loan all this money to the Allies.

Well, as time goes by, they want to make sure

those allies win, so they get their money back.

So we become really connected to the Allies.

Even though we say we're neutral, we don't necessarily seem

neutral. And when I was showing you that map, I

had mentioned that the Allies had blockaded contraband.

Those are gonna be war items so we couldn't get

them to the United States.

Couldn't get them to the central powers, which means they

were only able to ship and sell them to the

Allies. You can imagine the central powers aren't gonna be

too happy about that.

We'll talk more about that later.

But the United States develops a negative opinion of public

opinion of Germany because of that and because of some

other things they had done.

So when we'll talk more about these propaganda posters later,

which is one of these, But you can see the

posters showing some terrible destruction, um, and wanting to get

men to enlist in the army.

But when Germany originally had gone through Belgium to attack

France, they committed horrible crimes against the Belgian people here,

You can kind of see a propaganda poster kind of

showing. Maybe this German soldier is gonna potentially do some

awful things to this young girl here.

So there's a lot of propaganda against or information used

against the Germans.

American public opinion really turns against them.

Germans had a submarine policy.

Okay, you're gonna ship your goods thes war supplies to

the allies.

What we don't want you to.

So they were using those U boats to sink ships

the most famous.

This is a key one to definitely no is.

The Lusitania is a British ocean liner, had Americans on

board, and it is sink in 1915.

And those Americans who are on board die.

So Americans go from this neutral stance to really being

financially connected to the allies and then starting to turn

against the central powers, mostly Germany, because of those terrible

things they heard about them doing in Belgium as well

as the German submarine policy, which was open submarine warfare.

They say you're shipping in the waters and your, you

know, potentially supplying stuffed.

Our enemies were going to attack you.

The Germans did say in 1916.

After a lot of pressure from Woodrow Wilson, the Sussex

pledged the Sussex was another ship that was saying, We

won't do this anymore And then they go back on

it now because the United States is getting close toe

war. There's gonna be some different groups now that start

rising up.

Some people were opposed to the war, the American neutrality.

We wanted nothing to do with the war.

The Women's Peace Party wanted nothing to do with war.

But then other Americans say, You know what we might

end up in war.

We need to be prepared.

So the National Defense Act actually kind of expands the

federal government's military powers and takes all these state militias

and turns them into the National Guard.

And we see, in the election of 1916 Woodrow Wilson,

who's running for president again, says, Hey, you know what?

I kept us out of war re elect me.

And he changes his idea from peace without excuse me,

from neutrality to we.

We wanna have a peace without victory.

He wants toe end this submarine warfare.

He ends up winning the election, although the map he's

blue looks very blue.

He doesn't win by a huge margin, but he is

re elected president of the United States.

And in part two we're going to see things start

to change so you can pause this video.

You can rewatch it.

Hopefully, it was helpful.

We'll see you next time for

World War I

Audio TranscriptAuto-generated