The “War to End All Wars” started in 1914. It started very unexpectedly when the Germans invaded the neutral country of Belgium. Everyone was surprised. Why would they attack a neutral country? Well, they did it to gain a better position on the French. But it led to Great Britain joining the war effort on the side of France. This ended up not helping the Germans. Why? Well, one reason was because the Brits had the latest and greatest war machine, the tank.
Now the tank wasn't a huge factor in the war but it did give the allies an advantage. Tanks, at least the Brit's tanks, were agile and almost indestructible. The Germans did end up building their own tank, but it was not as agile and destructive as the Brit's.
The Allies' tank: The German's tank:
So as you can see big differences in how the two tanks were built.
But what were some technological advances in WW1 that were bigger factors? Well, the biggest one of all was the new invention of the Airplane.
Now, if you'll remember the war started eleven years after the first successful flight by the Wright brothers. But immediately after the start of the warplanes became a huge factor. In the beginning, planes were only used for spying behind enemy lines. But in 1915 Anthony Fokker invented the interrupter gear. The mechanism was used to be able to shoot a machine gun (another big tech advance) through the propellers of the plane. The gun was connected to the propeller so that the gun was only able to shoot without hitting the propellers. This invention gave the Germans a big advantage in air battles.
Another advancement in this war was the invention of the flamethrower. The flamethrower was used to launch blasts of fire towards your enemies' trench line and burn them out at a long range.
The tracer bullet was invented in 1915 as a device to see where your bullet hit. The first one left a white for 50-100 yards. But this one wasn't very successful and was soon eclipsed by a tracer bullet that left a greenish-white trail for 800 yards. So you can see why the first one stopped being used.
But there are even more inventions and innovations than the few I've mentioned.
There were innovations with artillery. They were made to where you could shoot ammunition miles upon miles. One gun was made, called the Paris Gun, that could shoot 75 miles, although it didn't have good accuracy.
There was also the invention of poisonous gas. You could spread the gas over the enemies' trench and kill lots of people that way. But, there was also the invention of gas masks, which almost made the gas a mute point. Also, the invention of the zeppelin, a big blimp, helped the Germans
Yes, that thing actually flies. There was the invention of sanitary napkins, sort of like today's gauze pads, that were more absorbent and helped clean wounds better. These were used in army hospitals. Also, the first air traffic control system was used during this war. Submarines were used a lot by the Germans. Which led to the invention of depth charges. Depth charges were bombs dropped in the water and were set to blow up at a certain depth.
You can see just how many new things were used in this war. And most of them are still used today.
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