THE GREAT WAR FROM A TO Z
Agence France Presse — English
February 26, 2014 Wednesday 3:26 AM GMT
PARIS, Feb 26 2014
>From Aircraft to Zeppelin, here is an A to Z of the Great War:
AIRCRAFT: Combat aviation was still in its infancy in 1914, but by
the end of hostilities France alone had some 3,700 aircraft. Verdun,
in eastern France, was host to the world’s first large-scale aerial
battle.
BLOCKADE: Britain’s supremacy over the seas enabled it to inflict
a punishing economic blockade on its enemies. The naval blockade of
the Central Powers — starving their population and hobbling their
economies — was eventually decisive in tipping the balance in the
Allies’ favour.
COLONIAL WARFARE: The contribution of blood and riches from colonies
from Algeria to Australia and Jamaica was critical to Allied victory,
with 1.5 million men mobilised in India alone.
DARDANELLES: The Allies in 1915 launched a Franco-British naval
expedition to unblock the strait giving access to Istanbul and the
Black Sea. Led by a young Winston Churchill, the entire campaign
was a failure, marked by a disastrous attempt to land troops from
Australia and New Zealand at Gallipoli.
EMPIRES: The five great empires of the world — British,
Austro-Hungarian, German, Russian and Ottoman — plunged into conflict,
with only the British Empire surviving the war. The Russian Empire
was overthrown in the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and the other
three were dismantled in the peace settlement.
FRATERNISING: During quieter times, it was not uncommon for rival
trench lines to observe tacit periods of truce — as at Christmas 1914
when French, Scottish and German troops emerged from their trenches
to share gifts and sweets and play football.
GAS: Poison gas brought a previously unknown level of terror to
soldiers on the front line. Panicked, blinded and choking, thousands
died in agony. Chlorine poison gas was first used by German forces
at Ypres in April 1915, followed by mustard gas in 1917. Although gas
attacks caused less than one percent of all war deaths, their horror
would permanently scar the collective imagination.
HEADQUARTERS: The deployment of unprecedented numbers of combat troops
in World War I meant battles could no longer be fought under the eye
of a single commander. Fighting was extended over dozens of miles,
following commands from generals based in headquarters far behind
the frontline.
INFLUENZA: A Spanish Influenza epidemic that broke out at the end
of the war claimed 20 to 40 million lives between 1917 and 1919,
among populations often weakened by years of deprivation.
JEWISH HOMELAND: World War I redrew the map of the Middle East,
sowing the seeds of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Cutting across
agreements with the French and the Arabs, the British promised a
homeland for Jewish people in Palestine under the Balfour Doctrine
of 1917, the basis for the creation of the Israeli state three
decades later.
KAMERAD: Meaning “comrade,” the cry sounded by German soldiers when
they surrendered.
LEAGUE OF NATIONS: Set up under the Treaty of Versailles of 1919,
it is the first attempt at a global security organisation. But the
precursor to the United Nations was hobbled by the United States’
refusal to take part — despite having helped design it — and proved
powerless to prevent World War II.
MUTINY: Mutiny broke out in French ranks in 1917 after the disastrous
Chemin des Dames offensive, with tens of thousands downing their
weapons. On the losing side of the war, the October 1918 mutiny in
the German navy in Kiel helped accelerate the collapse of the German
empire. Likewise, the Russian army mutinies of 1917 fuelled the unrest
that brought about the Bolshevik Revolution.
NO MAN’S LAND: The name given, from the end of 1914, to the ravaged
expanses between enemy trench lines, sometimes only a few dozen
metres apart.
OTTOMAN EMPIRE: Broken up following World War I, the Ottoman Empire
lost its Arabian possessions and was subsequently invaded by British,
Italian and Greek forces, until a fight for independence that led to
the foundation of the modern Turkish state in 1923.
World War I saw the Turks carry out a campaign of massacres against
Armenians it accused of backing the Russian enemy, so savage as to
be qualified as genocide.
POILU: The French name given to the conflict’s foot soldiers — meaning
“the unshaven”. Australia and New Zealand called them “Diggers”, for
Britain it was “Tommies”, America had “Sammies”, Germany “Landsers”
and the Turks “Mehmetcik”.
QUAGMIRE: For three years of World War I, millions of soldiers were
holed up in a warren of trenches, fighting and dying in nightmarish
conditions along a barely moving frontline. For the French, British,
Germans and others who saw combat on the Western Front, the rain
and biting cold, the stench of death and scourge of rats would haunt
their lives as much as the enemy onslaught.
REPARATIONS: The punitive war reparations demanded of Germany were
intended to cover everything from interest on war loans to pensions
for war widows. The Allied demands were eventually dropped in 1932,
but the festering resentment they caused is widely credited for sowing
the seeds of World War II.
SHELLS: Heavy artillery played a crucial role in the conflict with
more than 1.3 billion shells fired, causing 70 percent of all military
casualties. Barrages of artillery and constant sniper fire gave rise
to the term shell-shock, the trauma and mental breakdown suffered by
many soldiers on the Western Front.
TANKS: The new caterpillar-tracked armoured vehicle developed by the
British and first used in combat at the Somme in September 1916.
Initially clumsy, plodding and prone to break-downs, it was perfected
by both the French and British to become a key tool for penetrating
enemy lines in the closing stages of the war.
U-BOAT: Unable to compete with Britain above the waterline, Germany
turned its attention to the submarine, or “U-boat”. By 1917, Germany
set itself a target of sinking 600,000 tonnes of shipping every month,
and was at first successful, until the Allies developed a convoy
system to protect their ships.
VERDUN: The battle that came to symbolise the war for the French.
German forces launched an offensive on February 21, 1916 to try
to force Paris to the negotiating table. French troops eventually
contained the German drive and won back most of the terrain lost in
early fighting. The battle lasted until December 18 at a staggering
cost of at least 770,000 dead, missing or wounded.
For the British and Germans, the war’s defining battle was the Somme,
its most deadly with total casualties of 1.2 million including 440,000
dead or missing.
WILSON: Thomas Woodrow Wilson, the US president who brought his
country into the war in 1917, declaring it a crusade for democracy
and the rights and liberties of small nations.
SOLDIER X: Unknown soldiers — their bodies recovered from World War
I battlefields — lie buried under the Paris Arc de Triomphe and
in Westminster Abbey in London to symbolise the sacrifice of war,
a gesture repeated in most of the warring nations.
YPRES: The First Battle of Ypres, in 1915, saw the end of mobile
warfare on the Western Front, giving way to three years of trench
warfare along a line stretching from the North Sea to Switzerland.
ZEPPELIN: German dirigible balloons, named after their chief sponsor
Count von Zeppelin, were deployed early in the war by the Germans
to carry out night raids on Brussels, Paris and London. But their
overall role was negligible as they gave way to more reliable
long-range aircraft.
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