Important facts on ww1

I have just finished studying World War One as a part of my History project and we actually got to go to the somme!! Well anyway, I found this such an interesting topic, that I have been following up more. here is what I have learned:

The Von schliefen plan: The kaiser (king of Germany) wanted to attack France in under 6 weeks, (the time they thought Russia would mobilise its troops) when the war started, so he sent men through Belgium instead of crossing the border between germany and France. As a result, The british only agreed that they would only be included in the War if belgium got attacked. (Allinace System). So the Belgians held up the German army long enough for Britain to join the war. When the Germans managed to break through belgium, they had to contend with British Expeditionary Force (B.E.F) and the french which held them up. The Kaiser’s aim was to take Paris within this timelimit so he could send troops to the eastern front to beat the Russians. However, it only took the Russians 4 weeks to mobilise so the germans were stuck. On th western front, they dug in and formed trenches. This lead to the static war/trenchwar.

General haig was a very poor leader, because he sent men walking across no mans land because of lack of trust, in a straight line, whicj enabled the german machine gunners to open fire and slaughter the british and french. However in the part of the war when there was no trench war Haig was an excellent leader.

The germans had the high ground and the british had the low ground which meant when it rained all the water fload down hill into the british trenches. as a result the british trenches were constantly flooded, which led to trenchfoot, and men even drowning!

The armistice was signed at 5:00am in the morning on the 11th of November 1918, that involved the Britsh, French and German Gnerals in Fosh’s carrage park in an artillery siding. However the seize fire did not happen until 11:00am. from then on, some very tragic stories were told, like a german commander who had walked over to a group of Americans who did not know the war was over. So the german was shot dead, and all he wanted to say was that his men had moved out of some buildings that they could occupy.

Hope I can help some more!

Some of our troops talked in codes. Atleast 6 of them did. The assanation of Franz Ferinand was the main cause of world war one.

Train accident killed 600 of our men 4 countries fought in the war Poland england France and Germany It got called the great war because it was global and was meant to be the war that ended all wars