Tag Archives: germany

03/6/11

Stop Sunking pur ships!

Most of us know that The sinking of the Lusitania was one of the factors to the United States entering the Great War, The sinking was due to  the German U-boat campaign, where Germany declared that all Allied and neutral ship were to be sunk on sight.  They wanted to cut off Britain supplies from America.  By March 1917, Germany U-boat seven American vessels.Woodrow Wilson realized that staying neutral and out of the war could not be avoided, and Declared war on Germany.  I honestly believe that staying out of the war so long is what helped the United stated win.  They entered a war that opposing side and the allies were both decreasing in the number of soldier.  The United states lost over 100,000 soldiers, which sad as it may be was only 1 % of the soldiers that were lost in this Great War!

03/4/11

Assassination of Archduke Ferdinand

One cause of WWI is the assassination of Archduke, Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary and his wife on June 28, 1914 by a Serbian nationalist from the Black Hand organization. Immediately this event is the trigger that set off declarations of the war. In response to the assassination of Ferdinand, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Austria blamed Serbia for the assassination since Serbia supported the Black Hand’s in order to be free of Austria’s rule. Due to Austria’s alliance with Germany, Serbia tried to get help from Russia. When Russia began to mobilize in result of its alliance with Serbia, Germany declared war on Russia on August 1, 1914. Two days later Germany declared war on France. Germany swept through Belgium on its way to France, the invasion of Belgium caused Britain to declare war on Germany.

03/2/11

Peace Treaty Gone Wrong

World War I ended with the peace treaty signing called the Treaty of Versailles. Within this treaty, the victors asked for unreasonable demands. Some of these demands include putting all the blame of this war on Germany, dividing the land up, occupying the lands rich of iron and coal, restriction on Germany’s future army size and even ask for astronomical reparations reaching between $33 billion to $56 billion. Wilson initially wanted to this to be a peace treaty that ended future wars, but with such demands, anger and frustration was bound to lead into another war. The only thing good that came out of this treaty in Wilson’s eyes was the League of Nations.

Foner’s description of the Treaty of Versailles was well made but seemed a bit vague. It didn’t seem like it completely covered all aspects of this treaty. Foner confirmed my knowledge of this history in that this treaty was unjust and over demanding.