Britannica Student Encyclopedia - 2010

Empire. On June 28, 1914, a Bosnian

who was loyal to the country of Serbia

shot and killed the Austro-Hungarian

emperor’s nephew, Archduke Francis

Ferdinand. Austria-Hungary accused

Serbian government workers of planning

the crime.

On July 28 Austria-Hungary declared

war on Serbia. Both countries asked for

help from their friends. Austria-

Hungary’s friends were Germany and

Italy. Their group was called the Triple

Alliance. Serbia was a small country, but

Russia protected it. Russia’s friends were

France and the United Kingdom (Great

Britain). Their group was called the

Triple Entente.

Within a few weeks most of the countries

of Europe were at war. Both sides

soon got new names. The Triple Alliance

became the Central Powers, and the

Triple Entente became the Allies. Italy

did not go to war at first.

The Western Front

Battlefields west of Germany were called

theWestern Front. The Germans had

hoped for an easy victory on theWestern

Front. But in September 1914 the

Gavrilo

Princip was

the name of

the Bosnian

who killed

Archduke

Francis

Ferdinand.

A poster encouraged British

people to join the army during

World War I. There was also a

U.S. version, in which the man

with the pointing finger was a

character called Uncle Sam.

BRITANNICA STUDENT ENCYCLOPEDIA World War I 61

 

Allies forced back the Germans at the

battle of the Marne, a river in France.

The armies on theWestern Front then

began four years of trench warfare. Each

side dug long trenches into the ground.

The soldiers stayed in these trenches for

protection. A “no-man’s land” covered

with barbed wire lay between the

trenches. Both sides used rapid-firing

machine guns against anyone who tried

to get across the no-man’s land.

Soldiers fought two of the war’s worst

battles on theWestern Front in 1916.

The battle of the Somme took place

near the Somme River in France from

July to November. More than 600,000

Allied soldiers were killed, wounded,

captured, or missing. They gained only

about 5 miles (8 kilometers) of ground.

The French and the Germans fought

another long battle near the French

town of Verdun in 1916.

Both sides tried new ways to break

through trench defenses. The Germans

used a poison gas called chlorine against

Allied troops in April 1915. Both sides

then tried other chemical weapons. Soldiers

got gas masks for protection

against them. The British invented an

Almost all the battles of World War I were fought in Europe and the Middle East. The two

sides fighting each other were known as the Allies and the Central Powers. Countries that

did not side with either group were called neutral.

62 World War I BRITANNICA STUDENT ENCYCLOPEDIA

 

armored car called a tank. Tanks had

crawler tracks to move them through

trenches and barbed wire. The British

first used tanks in 1916.

The Eastern Front and the

Middle East

Battlefields east of Germany were called

the Eastern Front. Armies moved faster

on the Eastern Front. In 1914 Russian

armies pushed west into Germany and

Austria-Hungary. In 1915 the Germans

drove them back. Bulgaria then joined

the Central Powers. The troops of Germany,

Austria, and Bulgaria took Serbia.

An Allied force landed at Salonika (now

Thessaloniki) in Greece to help the Serbians.

However, the Allies made little

progress until the end of the war.

At the end of 1914 the Ottoman

Empire (centered in what is now Turkey)

joined the Central Powers. The

Ottomans attacked Russia. British, Australian,

and New Zealand troops tried to

stop the Ottomans on Turkey’s Gallipoli

Peninsula, but they failed.

In 1915 Italy joined the Allies. The Italians

lost many soldiers fighting the Austrians.

When the war began, the Ottoman

Empire ruled Syria, Palestine, and Mesopotamia

(now Iraq). In 1915 British-led

troops tried and failed to take Baghdad

(now the capital of Iraq). In March

1917 they finally succeeded. Later that

year, the British took Palestine. In 1918

they took Syria as well.

TheWar at Sea

The British had more and better warships

than the Germans. The British

Navy was able to stop some ships from

reaching German ports. Such an action

is called a naval blockade.

However, the British were not able to

stop German submarines. In 1915 the

Germans announced that they would try

to sink all enemy ships in British waters.

On May 7, 1915, a German submarine

sank the British passenger ship Lusitania.

Nearly 1,200 people died, including

many U.S. citizens.

The submarine attacks hurt the United

Kingdom. By April 1917, one of every

four supply ships that left the country

never returned. By the end of that

month, the country had only a six

weeks’ supply of grain left.

The Allies tried to defend their supply

ships by putting guns on them. They

also had them sail in convoys, or groups,

African American troops served in the

trenches of the Western Front during the last

years of World War I.

German

submarines

were called

U-boats. The

term was short

for “undersea

boat”

(Unterseeboot

in German).

BRITANNICA STUDENT ENCYCLOPEDIA World War I 63

 

protected by warships. In all, German

submarines caused the loss of about

6,000 Allied ships. The United Kingdom

alone lost 13,000 lives in these

attacks.

TheWar in the Air