HY 102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 77: Nivelle Offensive, Trench Warfare, Central Powers
31 May 2018
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I.Stalemate, 1915
A. The search for new partners
1. Ottomans joined Germany and Austria in 1914
2. Italy joined the Allies in May 1915
3. Bulgaria joined the Central Powers in 1915
4. Major effect was to expand the war geographically
B. Gallipoli and naval warfare
1. Turkish intervention
a. Threatened Russia's supply lines
b. Endangered British control of the Suez Canal
2. Churchill argued for a naval offensive in the Dardanelles
3. Gallipoli landing (April 25, 1915)
. Incompetent naval leadership
a. Lacked adequate planning, supply lines, and maps
b. Fought for seven months and then the British withdrew
c. Major Allied defeat
i. Two hundred thousand casualties
ii. Gallipoli did not shift the focus away from the Western Front
C. A war of attrition
1. The nature of modern war
2. The total mobilization of resources
3. The Allies imposed a naval blockade on Germany
4. Germany responded with submarine warfare
. Germans sank the Lusitania (May 7, 1915)
. Almost twelve hundred killed
i. Provoked the animosity of the United States
5. The blockade stained Germany's national economy
D. Trench warfare
1. Life in the trenches—the "lousy scratch holes"
2. Twenty-five thousand miles of trenches along the Western Front
. Attack, support, and reserve trenches
a. "Over the top"
3. "Wastage"
. Seven thousand British soldiers killed daily
4. New weapons
. Artillery, machine guns, and barbed wire
a. Exploding bullets and liquid fire
b. Poison gas
. First used by the Germans at the second battle of Ypres (April 1915)
i. Physically devastating and psychologically disturbing
ii. Gas took more lives but did not alter the stalemate
II. Slaughter in the Trenches: The Great Battles, 1916-1917
. General observations
1. Bloodiest battles occurred during 1916-1917
2. Hundreds of thousands of casualties with little territorial gain
3. War as carnage
4. Military planners refused to alter traditional offensive strategies
5. The "cult of the offensive"
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