"Europe Plunges
into War
Lesson 2

The Big Idea
One European nation after
another was drawn into a large
and industrialized war that
resulted in many casualties.
Why It Matters Now
Much of the technology of
modern warfare, such as
fighter planes and tanks, was
introduced in World War I.
Key Terms and People
Central Powers
Allies
Western Front
Schlieffen Plan
trench warfare
Eastern Front

Setting the Stage
By 1914, Europe was divided into two rival camps.
One alliance, the Triple Entente, included Great Britain,

France, and Russia. The other, known as the Triple Alli-
ance, included Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy.

Austria-Hungary’s declaration of war against Serbia
set off a chain reaction within the alliance system. The
countries of Europe followed through on their pledges
to support one another. As a result, nearly all of Europe
soon joined what would be the largest, most destructive
war the world had yet seen.
The Great War Begins
In response to Austria’s declaration of war, Russia, Serbia’s ally,
began moving its army toward the Russian-Austrian border.
Expecting Germany to join Austria, Russia also mobilized
along the German border. To Germany, Russia’s mobilization
amounted to a declaration of war. On August 1, the German
government declared war on Russia.
Russia looked to its ally France for help. Germany, however,
did not even wait for France to react. Two days after declaring
war on Russia, Germany also declared war on France. Soon
afterward, Great Britain declared war on Germany. Much of
Europe was now locked in battle.
Nations Take Sides By mid-August 1914, the battle lines

were clearly drawn. On one side were Germany and Austria-
Hungary. They were known as the Central Powers because of

their location in the heart of Europe. Bulgaria and the Otto-
man Empire would later join the Central Powers in the hopes of

regaining lost territories. On the other side were Great Britain,
France, and Russia. Together, they were known as the Allied
Powers or the Allies. Japan joined the Allies within weeks. Italy
joined later. Italy had been a member of the Triple Alliance with
Germany and Austria-Hungary. However, the Italians joined
the other side after accusing their former partners of unjustly
starting the war.

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GREAT BRITAIN

EAST
PRUSSIA

MONTENEGRO
SERBIA

0°

8°E

16°E

24°E

32°E

8°W

50°N

42°N
ATLANTIC
OCEAN

North
Sea

Baltic
Sea

Black Sea

Loire R.

Danube R.

Rhine R.

Po R.

GREAT BRITAIN

AUSTRIA-
HUNGARY

BELGIUM GERMANY

FRANCE

OTTOMAN EMPIRE

BULGARIA
ROMANIA

GREECE ALBANIA
SERBIA
MONTENEGRO

RUSSIA

SPAIN

ITALY
SWITZ.

SWEDEN

DENMARK

NETH.

LUX. Paris

Berlin

Milan

Rome

Madrid

London
Ypres, Nov. 1914

1st Marne, Sept. 1914
2nd Marne, July 1918 Verdun,
Feb. 1916

Tannenberg,
Aug. 1914

Galicia,
May 1915
Limanowa,
Dec. 1914
Lodz,
Nov. 1914

Czernowitz,
June 1916

Gallipoli,
Feb. 1915–
Jan. 1916
Kovel,
June 1916
Kerensky Offensive,
July 1917

Masurian Lakes,
Sep. 1914

Caporetto,
Oct. 1917

Somme, July 1916
Amiens, Aug. 1918

Vienna

Dec., 1917

1916
1918
1914
1914
1916

1916
1917

Treaty of Brest-Litovsk March, 1918

1916
1918
Allied countries
Central Powers
Neutral countries
Farthest Central Powers
advance
Central Powers victory
Allied victory
Central Powers advance

Farthest Allied advance
Allied advance

Armistice Line, Nov. 1918

0 200 400 mi
0 400 800 km
N
S
W E

HMH—High School World History—2016
HS_SNLESE669116_873M
2nd proof 03/20/16
Explore ONLINE!

Reading Check
Analyze Issues
Was the system of
alliances the only
reason other nations
entered the war?

In the late summer of 1914, millions of soldiers marched happily off to
battle, convinced that the war would be short. Only a few people foresaw
the horror ahead. One of them was Britain’s foreign minister, Sir Edward
Grey. Staring out over London at nightfall, Grey said sadly to a friend,
“The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again
in our lifetime.”
A Bloody Stalemate
It did not take long for Sir Edward Grey’s prediction to ring true. As the
summer of 1914 turned to fall, the war turned into a long and bloody
stalemate, or deadlock, along the battlefields of France. This deadlocked
region in northern France became known as the Western Front.
The Conflict Grinds Along Facing a war on two fronts, Germany had
developed a battle strategy known as the Schlieffen Plan, named after its
designer, General Alfred von Schlieffen (SHLEE•fuhn). The plan called
for attacking and defeating France in the west and then rushing east to
fight Russia. The Germans felt they could carry out such a plan because
Russia lagged behind the rest of Europe in its railroad system and thus

Interpret Maps
1. Location In which country was most of the war in the West fought?
2. Location What geographic disadvantage did Germany and Austria-Hungary
face in fighting the war? How might this have affected their war strategy?

World War I in Europe, 1914–1918

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Vocabulary
casualty in war,
anyone killed, injured,
captured, or considered
missing in action
This soldier wears a gas
mask during training
exercises.

would take longer to supply its front lines. Nonetheless, speed was vital to

the Schlieffen Plan. German leaders knew they needed to win a quick vic-
tory over France.

Early on, it appeared that Germany would do just that. By early Sep-
tember, German forces had swept into France and reached the outskirts

of Paris. A major German victory appeared just days away. On September
5, however, the Allies regrouped and attacked the Germans northeast of
Paris, in the valley of the Marne River. Every available soldier was hurled

into the struggle. When reinforcements were needed, more than 600 taxi-
cabs rushed soldiers from Paris to the front. After four days of fighting,

the German generals gave the order to retreat.
Although it was only the first major clash on the Western Front, the
First Battle of the Marne was perhaps the single most important event
of the war. The defeat of the Germans left the Schlieffen Plan in ruins. A
quick victory in the west no longer seemed possible. In the east, Russian
forces had already invaded Germany. Germany was going to have to fight
a long war on two fronts. Realizing this, the German high command sent
thousands of troops from France to aid its forces in the east. Meanwhile,
the war on the Western Front settled into a stalemate.
Technological Innovations On both sides of the conflict, governments
called on academic and industrial scientists to further the war effort. Even

before the war began, German scientists began work on finding replace-
ments for some key resources, such as rubber for car and truck tires. Syn-
thetic rubber now supplies most of the world’s rubber needs.

German chemists also developed chemical weapons such as poison gas,
which military strategists hoped could help them quickly win the war. In

response, scientists in France and Great Britain developed their own chem-
ical weapons and worked on ways to protect soldiers from these weapons.

Other new weapons included guns that could fire multiple rounds
or that could shoot across a great distance. By 1915, the war took to
the skies when fighter planes were developed. All of these innovations
increased the number of casualties at the front. Soon, research and field
experience combined to improve care for the wounded. Injured soldiers
could be given initial treatment on the field, then moved by ambulance
for further treatment. Mobile X-ray units made it possible to find bullets

and shrapnel in wounds. A safe way of storing blood was developed, lead-
ing to the creation of the first rudimentary blood banks. As a result, many

soldiers survived, even with serious injuries. The number of disfiguring
head injuries led doctors to develop reconstructive surgery techniques.
There was also an increased focus on rehabilitation and new approaches to
prosthetic limbs.
War in the Trenches By early 1915, opposing armies on the Western Front
had dug miles of parallel trenches to protect themselves from enemy fire.
This set the stage for what became known as trench warfare. In this type
of warfare, soldiers fought each other from trenches, and armies traded
huge losses of human life for pitifully small gains in territory.

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Reading Check
Analyze Effects
Why was the First
Battle of the Marne
so significant?
German soldiers
manning a machine
gun from an entrenched
position.

Life in the trenches was pure misery. “The
men slept in mud, washed in mud, ate mud, and
dreamed mud,” wrote one soldier. The trenches
swarmed with rats. Fresh food was nonexistent.
Sleep was nearly impossible.
The space between the opposing trenches won
the grim name “no man’s land.” When the officers
ordered an attack, their men went over the top of
their trenches into this bombed-out landscape.
There they usually met murderous rounds of
machine-gun fire. Staying put, however, did not
ensure one’s safety. Artillery fire brought death
right into the trenches. “Shells of all calibers kept
raining on our sector,” wrote one French soldier.
“The trenches disappeared, filled with earth . . . the

air was unbreathable. Our blinded, wounded, crawl-
ing, and shouting soldiers kept falling on top of us

and died splashing us with blood. It was living hell.”
The Western Front had become a “terrain of death.” It stretched nearly
500 miles from the North Sea to the Swiss border. A British officer
described it in a letter:
“Imagine a broad belt, ten miles or so in width, stretching from
the Channel to the German frontier near Basle, which is positively
littered with the bodies of men and scarified with their rude
graves; in which farms, villages and cottages are shapeless heaps of
blackened masonry; in which fields, roads and trees are pitted and
torn and twisted by shells and disfigured by dead horses, cattle, sheep
and goats, scattered in every attitude of repulsive distortion and
dismemberment.”

—Valentine Fleming, quoted in The First World War
Military strategists were at a loss. New tools of war—machine guns,

poison gas, armored tanks, larger artillery—had not delivered the fast-
moving war they had expected. All this new technology did was kill greater

numbers of people more effectively.
The slaughter reached a peak in 1916. In February, the Germans
launched a massive attack against the French near Verdun. Each side lost
more than 300,000 men. In July, the British army tried to relieve the
pressure on the French. British forces attacked the Germans northwest of
Verdun, in the valley of the Somme River. In the first day of battle alone,
more than 20,000 British soldiers were killed. By the time the Battle of the

Somme ended in November, each side had suffered more than half a mil-
lion casualties.

What did the warring sides gain? Near Verdun, the Germans advanced
about four miles. In the Somme valley, the British gained about five miles.
Meanwhile, the network of trenches had long-term consequences for the
environment.

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Views of War
When World War I broke out, Europe had not experienced a war involving all the major
powers for nearly a century, since Napoleon’s defeat in 1815. As a result, people had
an unrealistic view of warfare. Many expected the war to be short and romantic. Many
men enlisted in the army because of patriotism or out of a desire to defend certain
institutions. What the soldiers experienced changed their view of war forever.
Fritz Kreisler
In his autobiography, Austrian Fritz Kreisler drew upon his own battle experience.

Wilfred Owen
The English poet Wilfred Owen
was killed in the trenches just one
week before World War I ended.
This excerpt from one of his
poems describes a gas attack.

Analyze Historical Sources
Judging from these sources, what was life in the trenches like for the average soldier?
Explain how you think such experiences affected the average soldier’s view of war.
Document-Based Investigation Historical Sources

“Suddenly I saw the face of the colonel riding next to me, light up with excitement . . .
‘The regiment of my son is fighting on the hill. It is one of their men they have brought
by.’ . . . Suddenly another stretcher was brought past. The colonel at my side jumped from
his horse, crying out, ‘My boy,’ and a feeble voice answered, ‘Father.’ . . . The old colonel
stood like a statue of bronze. His face had become suddenly ashen gray. He looked at the
doctor and tried to catch his expression. The doctor seemed grave. But the young man
urged us on . . . The colonel mounted his horse, sternly commanding us to march forward,
but the light had died out of his eyes.”

—Fritz Kreisler, Four Weeks in the Trenches: The War Story of a Violinist

“Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.”

—Wilfred Owen, from “Dulce et Decorum Est”
Allied troops crawl
through a trench along
the Western Front.

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The Battle on the Eastern Front
Even as the war on the Western Front claimed thousands of lives, both
sides were sending millions more men to fight on the Eastern Front. This
area was a stretch of battlefield along the German and Russian border.
Here, Russians and Serbs battled Germans and Austro-Hungarians. The
war in the east was a more mobile war than that in the west. Here too,
however, slaughter and stalemate were common.
Early Fighting At the beginning of the war, Russian forces had launched
an attack into both Austria and Germany. At the end of August, Germany
counterattacked near the town of Tannenberg. During the four-day battle,
the Germans crushed the invading Russian army and drove it into full
retreat. More than 30,000 Russian soldiers were killed.
Russia fared somewhat better against the Austrians. Russian forces
defeated the Austrians twice in September 1914, driving deep into their
country. Not until December of that year did the Austrian army manage to
turn the tide. Austria defeated the Russians and eventually pushed them
out of Austria-Hungary.
Russia Struggles By 1916, Russia’s war effort was near collapse. Unlike

the nations of western Europe, Russia had yet to become industrial-
ized. As a result, the Russian army was continually short of food, guns,

History in Depth
The New Weapons of War

Poison Gas
Soldiers wore masks to protect themselves from poison
gas. Gas was introduced by the Germans but used by
both sides. Some gases caused blindness or severe
blisters, others death by choking.
Machine Gun
The machine gun, which fires ammunition
automatically, was much improved by the time of World
War I. The gun could wipe out waves of attackers and
thus made it difficult for forces to advance.
Tank
The tank was an armored combat vehicle that moved
on chain tracks and thus could cross many types of
terrain. It was introduced by the British in 1916 at the
Battle of the Somme.
Submarine
In 1914, the Germans introduced the submarine as an
effective warship. The submarine’s primary weapon
against ships was the torpedo, an underwater missile.

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event two event four

Reading Check
Synthesize Why
was Russia’s
involvement in the
war so important
to the other Allies?

ammunition, clothes, boots, and blankets. Moreover, the Allied supply

shipments to Russia were sharply limited by German control of the Bal-
tic Sea, combined with Germany’s relentless submarine campaign in the

North Sea and beyond. In the south, the Ottomans still controlled the
straits leading from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea.
The Russian army had only one asset—its numbers. Throughout the
war the Russian army suffered a staggering number of battlefield losses.
Yet the army continually rebuilt its ranks from the country’s enormous

population. For more than three years, the battered Russian army man-
aged to tie up hundreds of thousands of German troops in the east. As a

result, Germany could not hurl its full fighting force at the west.
Germany and her allies, however, were concerned with more than
just the Eastern or Western Front. As the war raged on, fighting spread
beyond Europe to Africa, as well as to Southwest and Southeast Asia. In
the years after it began, the massive European conflict indeed became a
world war.

1. Organize Information Create a timeline like the one
below to organize key events in the outbreak of World
War I.

2. Key Terms and People For each key term or person in
the lesson, write a sentence explaining its significance.

3. Summarize What were the characteristics of trench
warfare?
4. Compare and Contrast How was war on the Western
and Eastern Fronts the same? How was it different?

5. Analyze Causes Why did the Schlieffen Plan ulti-
mately collapse? Cite specific details from the text.

Lesson 2 Assessment
The Frozen Front
For soldiers on the Eastern Front, the overall misery
of warfare was compounded by deadly winters.
“Every day hundreds froze to death,” noted one
Austro-Hungarian officer during a particularly
brutal spell.
Russian troops suffered too, mainly due to their lack
of food and clothing. “I am at my post all the time—
frozen [and] soaked . . . ,” lamented one soldier. “We
walk barefoot or in rope-soled shoes. It’s incredible
that soldiers of the Russian army are in rope-soled
shoes!”
Social History

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Military Aviation
World War I introduced airplane warfare—and by doing so, ushered
in an era of tremendous progress in the field of military aviation.
Although the plane itself was relatively new and untested by 1914,
the warring nations quickly recognized its potential as a powerful
weapon. Throughout the conflict, countries on both sides built
faster and stronger aircraft, and designed them to drop bombs and
shoot at one another in the sky. Between the beginning and end of
the war, the total number of planes in use by the major combatants
soared from around 850 to nearly 10,000. After the war, countries
continued to maintain a strong and advanced air force, as they
realized that supremacy of the air was a key to military victory.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

A World War I pilot shows off an early
air-to-ground communication device.

1. Designers kept nearly all weight in the center, giving the planes
tremendous maneuverability.
2. A timing device enabled machine guns to fire through the propeller.
3. Engines were continuously strengthened for greater speed and
carrying capability.
Two Top Fighter Planes: A Comparison

Fokker D VII
(German)

Sopwith F1Camel
(British)
Length 23 feet 18 feet 8 inches
Wingspan 29 feet 3 inches 28 feet
Maximum Speed 116 mph 122 mph
Maximum Height 22,900 feet 24,000 feet
Maximum Flight Time 1.5 hours 2.5 hours

Critical Thinking
1.Draw Conclusions Why would
communication with someone outside
the plane be important for pilots in
World War I and today?
2.Compare Using the Internet and other
resources, find out more about a recent
innovation with regard to fighter
planes and explain its significance." Make very detailed notes for a quiz.