Much of this month is dedicated to reading books on World War One. I just recently finished James Stokesbury's A Short History of World War One, and I've cobbled together notes from the book to create a three-post "overview" of the war. You can snoop through it at the posts below. Or, if you're in a time crunch (or just generally disinterested), you can enjoy 10 Cool Facts About the Great War (also, as luck would have it, below).
World War One: 10 Facts
1. More than 65 million men from 30 countries fought in the Great War. 10 million died. The Allies (the Entente Powers) lost about 6 million soldiers. The Central Powers lost about 4 million.
2. There were over 35 million civilian and soldier casualties in the Great War. Over 15 million died and 20 million were wounded. Nearly 2/3 of military deaths in the Great War were in battle; nearly a third of military deaths were caused by an epidemic of the Spanish Flu overshadowed by the war itself. The Great War was the sixth deadliest conflict in world history.
3. Tanks were initially called "landships"; however, in an attempt to disguise them as water storage tanks, rather than as weapons, the British decided to code name them "tanks." British tanks were initially categorized into "male" and "female" units: male tanks had cannons, and females had heavy machine guns.
4. The term "dogfight" originated during the Great War. A pilot had to turn off the plane's engine from time-to-time so it wouldn't stall when the plane turned quickly in the air. When a pilot restarted his engine midair, it sounded like dogs barking.
5. Four empires collapsed in the wake of the Great War: the Ottoman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian empire, the German empire, and the Russian empire.
6. While the first military submarine (named the Turtle) was first used by the Continental Army during the American Revolution, submarines only made a large military impact during the Great War when Germany launched its fleet of U-boats. Its submarines tended to stay on the surface, submerging only to attack ships with torpedoes.
7. The trench network of the Great War stretched approximately 250,000 miles from the English Channel to Switzerland. This was the area known as the Western Front.
8. The French were the first to use gas against enemy troops: in August 1914 they fired the first tear gas grenades against the Germans. In January 1915, Germany first used tear gas against Russian armies, but the gas turned to liquid in the cold air. In April 1915, the Germans introduced their first poisonous chlorine gas.
9. The Great War transformed the United States into the largest military power in the world.
10. The Great War was the catalyst that transformed Russia into the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR). It was the creation of the world's first communist state and ushered in a new phase in world history. Historians often note that this was the most startling and important consequence of the war.
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