/his/ I need to write a paper about World War I in 48 hours,

Also feel free to add any input. It's much appreciated.

>>1937807
United State was neutral and upon arrival in Europe decide that french weapon were the way to go.
AH got seven mobilisation plan in case of war, but were Poland tier level of developpement.
French were more prepared but their will to not go in war fuck them hard in the first day of war.

>>1937807
The US dindu nothin. They are good boys.

>>1937807
that's an insanely broad topic, so I'll just tell you the things that stuck with me about it.
There was an ideological shift before the war away from maintaining a status quo to promoting your own country's cause aggressively, which was in part influenced by german foreign policy and also by the collapse of the ottoman empire. The collapse of the ottoman empire also created a power vacuum, and the "eastern question", which was "what happens to turkey's territory now that they're rubbish?", which russia and Austria-Hungary both wanted to fill. The war broke out, legally, because Austria-Hungary wanted to make a move on serbia, and because of Russia's pan-slavic racial supremacist ideology, they would not permit that. They also couldn't let it slide because if they did, it would solidify Russia's reputation in the international community as a bunch of worthless milquetoasts, which found it's roots in Russia losing the sino-japanese war, which was the first time a European power had lost to an eastern one. So because of national pride, Russia had to move in. Also, earlier, Russia had embarassed herself in the bosnia-herzogovina crisis (if I remember correctly), which was where the Russian foreign minister agreed to support Austria-Hungary annexing bosnia-herzogovina as long as Russia gained territory in the straits, bulgaria and in serbia. However, this agreement was never taken to an international council (as Russia had expected), and instead Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia-Herzogovina and left Russia to sort itself out, which caused Russia to be deplored by the League of Nations. This was another reason why Russia had to go to war with Austria-Hungary: national pride, but also because it was one of a series of crises that made international councils seem unable to solve serious problems, and so a peaceful solution was not possible.

>>1937823
Thank you a lot for the input I'll make sure to hit that point during the paper. If it helps specify I'm sort of trying to talk about how well prepared they were as far as medicine and weaponry is concerned.

Germany had also agreed to support Austria-Hungary militarily and unconditionally, for no apparent reason aside from her desire to escape encirclement and have allies for once, which was rather problematic, honestly, because Russia had a treaty with France that stated that if two powers attacked Russia at once, France would become involved, and so Germany faced the prospect of fighting a war against two powers she had a land border (more or less) with, for, lets be honest, no real reason. It is important to note that Germany had made a national identity out of moronic foreign policy choices by this point. She had started a process of industrialisation and naval armament, creating an arms race with Britain out of a desire to throw her weight around and gain colonies, and then, with the moroccan crisis, sent a warship to bother French territory as a show of strength (Germany chose to support the moroccan sultan or whatever as the rightful ruler, in morocco rather than the French), which, considering Britain and France were fairly close at this time, was a bit dumb. The result was an international tribunal at which all major powers except for Austria-Hungary voted in France's favour, as well as a deepening split in Anglo-Germanic relations, which may account, at least in part, for Germany's desire to support Austria-Hungary, her only real ally, against Russia in 1914.
I've sort of forgotten where I was going with this, but the important thing to remember is that Germany attacked France before Russia, which the France were expecting. However, Germany attacked through Belgium, bypassing French defences along the border, but traditional military thinking on both sides led to a fairly straightforward war of attrition, which is what the first world war is famous for. The British expeditionary force (a ludicrously small group of british cavalrymen, who got massacred a few times trying to charge machine gun emplacements) remarked on how enormous the German Army was, [cont]

>>1937807
Well, as far as the three cuontries you mention are concerned... "not very". France was scared of an invasion by Germany - a much stronger oponent at the time - and tried to avoid war, A-H was nowhere near ready to wage war against Russia (who was not a powerhouse either but enough to take out A-H) but its blind actions with regards to Serbia kickstarted the whole thing, and the US while decidedly NOT isolationist was unprepared in terms of a military, but at least could tap into its vast economy and manpower reserves.

>>1937837
when they first met them, and they also remarked on how all of them seemed to be untrained farmer's lads. This was because Germany had instated a draft, and as a result her army was something like an order of magnitude larger than France's, and was pretty well equipped too. Not that it matters in trench warfare.
Germany and Britain both had enormous navies, and they were fairly comparable, which meant that there were very few large naval engagements over the course of the war. Only one, if I remember correctly. On the other hand, the Germans had U-Boats, but they failed to break the British supply lines over the course of the war, because they flip-flopped between unrestricted and extremely restricted submarine warfare policies, due to international outry. It is fairly impossible to tell the difference between civilian and military boats from underneath, after all, so the Germans just sunk them all. The most famous example is the sinking of the lusitania, which was when the germans warned an american cruise ship to not make the trip from america to britain (you're sailing into a warzone you idiots!), and when they did it anyway, they sank it. The germans pointed out that the ship exploded twice, but was shot once, and therefore it was carrying arms, but that didn't lessen international outcry, and so they restricted their submarine warfare (for a little while).

As regards to how well prepared France, The US and Austria Hungary were (sorry about not explicitly answering this question)
The US - who cares? they didn't enter the war until around 1916, and so the point is irrelevant. They had pursued an isolationist policy before this point, remember.
Austria-Hungary - they started the war, so you'd hope they were ready! They didn't really have a particularly strong military, good commanders, or any real plan, but they had something, I suppose.
France: they had prepared fortificaitons, but they were bypassed, remember. They were able to get their [cont]

forces into position due to their railways, which were good.

None of the powers were prepared medicinally, economically or tactically to deal with the pressures to trench warfare. It was a collision between old-style aristocratic military incompetence and brand new technology. Neither side was capable of fighting the war in any method other than as a war of attrition. The closest anyone came to fighting effectively was the Brusilov offensive, Russia's single large military victory, which is when Alexei Brusilov pioneered the idea of small, highly trained groups of soldiers striking where the enemy is worst prepared, at night time, rather than rushing across no-man's land in broad daylight in an attempt to make the enemy waste as many bullets as possible killing your men (attrition).
Russia was not prepared at all. One gun for every two men (one carried the ammunition, the other, the gun, soldiers were advised to pick up a corpse's gun when they charged), not enough shoes, no rail lines to deploy people where they were needed, not enough supplies because her army was drawn directly from her agricultural laborer population, and so on and so forth, which is why the tsarist government was overthrown (and then the constituent assembly that replaced it was overthrown, and Lenin drew Russia out of the war, and then the allies attempted to overthrow lenin during the Russian civil war in an attempt to get Russia back into the game, but failed, because the Anti-communist forces were too poorly organised and too divided to win)

Penicillin was invented during the second world war. Before that, soldiers just died. Not a single field hospital was capable of coping with the massive amounts of injuries that trench warfare produced.

Did I miss anything, or whatever? Anything else you wanna know?

>>1937869
yeah, you missed out on labelling your posts as meme filled bullshittery
>The British expeditionary force (a ludicrously small group of british cavalrymen, who got massacred a few times trying to charge machine gun emplacements)
>her army was something like an order of magnitude larger than France's
>They had pursued an isolationist policy
>One gun for every two men (one carried the ammunition, the other, the gun, soldiers were advised to pick up a corpse's gun when they charged)
>There was an ideological shift before the war ... influenced ... by the collapse of the ottoman empire.
how can you combine genuinely above-average insights with such memeworthy stupidity

>>1937895
hyperbole to make it interesting, honestly. Also, because I can't remember a lot of the stuff. Sorry about that.
Can you clear things up for me, please?

There were stories of soldiers hopping off the trains, going for a walk in an orchard, and then hopping back on because of how slow it was going. (makersley). Compound this with the fact that they dedicated almost all of there forces against serbia as their opening moves of the war - which freaked germany out, rightly. When it was demanded that they move troops towards galacia to try and defend from the inevitable russian attack, they had to wait for the trains to almost perform a full loop. (cont.)

>>1937807
Austria had trouble mobilizing and deploying troops at the start, because their railroad infrastructure was so shit they had all trains go the same speed (the recommended speed for the shittiest railroad) just to coordinate.
Funny, Austria was holding military drills in Bosnia when the Archduke was assassinated.
And the Serbian army thought it was just a distraction and the Serbian army plan anticipated an attack from the Danube/Sava.
And Austria completely botched their initial attacks. The Austrian general Potiorek in charge of the invasion of Serbia got a rope from the high command and told to hang himself (which he didn't do), he was decommissioned and he pondered suicide for a long time. He also wrote some ramblings about Serbs and their plum trees. I think he went insane.

>>1937819
>but their will to not go in war fuck them hard in the first day of war.
Huh?

They were partially occupied by German troops so why would've their preparedness to fight have been an issue? Are you conflating WW1 with WW2?