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Recommended Reading:
- Powerpoint presentation
- The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman won the Pulitzer Prize and is widely considered to be the best account of the opening weeks of World War I.
- John Keegan’s The First World War is a reliable narrative, although it does tend to overemphasize the British role.
- Robin Prior’s Gallipoli: The End of the Myth forcefully argues that the Gallipoli campaign was a disaster from beginning to end.
- Niall Ferguson is one of the better Establishment historians. His The Pity of War makes the case that the global nature of World War I was entirely Britain’s fault.
- The Road to Verdun: World War I’s Most Momentous Battle and the Folly of Nationalism by Ian Ousby.
- For the circumstances surrounding U.S. entry into the war, see Tom Woods’s Politically Incorrect Guide to American History.
World War I – Quiz
- Identify the major Central Powers and Allied Powers of World War I.
- Explain the strategy behind the Schlieffen Plan and why it ultimately failed.
- Explain the significance of the Gallipoli campaign in 1915.
- Identify the two major battles that took place in France in 1916.
- Identify the events of 1917 that began to turn the tide of the war in favor of the Allies.
- Explain the implications of the Ludendorff Offensive.
- Central Powers: Germany, Austria-Hungary, Ottoman Empire (also Bulgaria); Allied Powers: Britain, France, Italy, Russia (and the USA as an “associated power”)
- German army was to march through Belgium into France and outflank the French forces; some German troops were diverted to the Eastern Front, and British troops reinforced the French line.
- It was an attempt to knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war and was the first large-scale amphibious invasion in military history. It failed utterly at enormous cost.
- Verdun and the Somme
- February Revolution in Russia helped facilitate U.S. entry into the war on the Allied side.
- It was a last-ditch German effort to break the stalemate on the Western front. Its failure weakened the Germans to the point where they had to begin a general retreat.