World War I wasn't just the first world war, it was the first total war. Total war is when all parts of society are mobilized for the fight. Shoe and rubber cement factories turn into gun and ammunition factories. The economy becomes war-based. Families ration food, and able-bodied men strap on weapons and head to the front.
Because it was a total war, governments became centralized during World War I, and they had two big jobs. First, the government needed to make sure the war had public support. After all, it's kind of hard to get people stoked about rationing breakfast cereal if they don't believe in the cause. Second, the government needed to make sure the economy was ready for war. To that end, they didn't just have to win over the hearts and minds of the people; they also had to win over their wallets and purses.
That's where propaganda came in. Posters in Great Britain, for example, reminded families of the importance of food rations, proclaiming "The kitchen is the key to victory. Eat less bread." During World War I, governments also engaged in censorship—both to protect their own troops and to hide the nastiest details of combat from the public. Soldiers' letters home from the trenches were frequently censored so that their locations, the kind of weapons they were using, and who had died were left out.
World War I was also different from previous conflicts because most of the countries involved filled out their militaries using conscription, which is when men—and, during World War I, it was only men—are drafted into the military. A draft does two things: It increases the size of the army and increases it quickly, and it beefs up overall participation in the war effort. For some countries, like Germany, conscription was the status quo. In August 1914, for example, their army ballooned from 800,000 troops to over 3.5 million troops in less than two weeks. Great Britain, on the other hand, refused to use conscription to fill its ranks—until World War made it clear that, if they wanted to stay militarily mighty, they needed a draft.
Picking up a gun wasn't the only way citizens helped. Women dove headfirst into the workforce back home, taking over jobs vacated by men who'd gone to the front, keeping the agricultural sector growing (literally), and manufacturing guns, ammo, and other wartime supplies. People who didn't particularly want to support their country in the world's first global war were forced to participate, too, such as the prisoners and colonial soldiers who were forced to fight for the good of the empire.
Ultimately, World War I established industrial capability as the centerpiece of a nation's ability to triumph on the battlefield. It made it clear that, if a country wanted to enter the fray, they needed their whole population behind the war effort, cranking out resources left and right, faster than you can say "Man, total war sounds terrible."
Many of those resources, specifically on the weapons side of things, were new and improved for World War I, and they changed the entire way war was waged. Machine guns, for example, weren't new in 1914, but they were relatively new to the battlefield. Because they had better range and aim than the unwieldy rifles and bayonets that came before them, the use of machine guns led to trench warfare. Old-school attacks were virtually useless. Instead of getting turned into Swiss cheese like Sonny Corleone at the toll booth, soldiers dug trenches, settled in, and tried to hold their position. As a result, combat in World War I became a massive network of trenches. Picture an ant farm, only fortified with barbed wire, mortars, and machine gun nests. Predictably, these trenches were riddled with diseases, too, thanks to the abundance of rotten food, stagnant water, dead bodies, and no good way to dispose of waste.
As trench warfare trended in World War II, both sides chose their weapons accordingly. In addition to machine guns and artillery, flamethrowers and grenades both figured heavily into the struggle. Flamethrowers, which were primarily used by the German army, were portable, efficient, and a handy way to wipe out all enemies in a trench without destroying the trench itself. While slightly messier, grenades were super-easy to use and just as efficient. If chucking a grenade into an enemy trench didn't kill everyone inside, it almost certainly injured them. First used by the Germans, grenades were later adopted by the British and the French as well.
While armies incorporated machine guns, flamethrowers, and grenades in new ways for World War I, they weren't new inventions. Tracer bullets were, though. Since most of the combat in World War I took place at night, these glow-in-the-dark bullets were created to help troops shoot. Each bullet contained flammable material that released a phosphorescent trail behind it when discharged, and they were a massive improvement on randomly firing your weapon into the black of night.
One of the nastiest battlefield practices established by World War I was the use of poison gas. The Germans were first to incorporate it into their strategy, but ultimately everybody followed suit. First came chlorine gas. Then came phosgene, which was responsible for 85% of all poison gas deaths in World War II. In the end, it's mustard gas that's most synonymous with World War I, though. While it wasn't as deadly as phosgene, mustard gas caused a host of nasty symptoms, from blisters and burns to swollen eyes and internal bleeding.
Between trenches, the average World War I battlefield was a no man's land. Literally; that's what they called it—because no man in his right mind would step foot out on that turf filled with land mines, barbed wire, and machine gun fire. Still, soldiers needed some way to encroach upon their enemies if World War I was ever going to end.
Enter the tank. Essentially a giant, metal, heavily-fortified car with tough-as-nails treads, tanks made crossing no man's land a breeze. Being outfitted with a mounted gun or two didn't hurt, either. They moved stegosaurus-slow, but without tanks, the stalemates caused by trench warfare may've gone on indefinitely.
Airplanes helped armies overcome the challenges of trench warfare, too. Initially, they were used to gather intel: pilots could cruise behind enemy lines, take a look around, and then fly home and tell everybody what they saw. Then somebody said, "Hey, I bet we could put a gun on that." By the end of World War I, fighter planes were used for a variety of jobs, from supply carriers to long-range bombers. Perhaps more importantly, they showed the military capabilities of the airplane to the world—a preview that would have an even greater impact on World War II.
In the end, World War I gave the globe its first glimpse of modern warfare. In a word, it was scary—not just because of phosgene and flamethrowers, but because, in total war, no one is safe. When everyone's involved in the fight, everyone's a target. Previously, wars had largely been fought by professional soldiers. Now they were being fought by friends and family, and that rubber cement factory turned munitions factory was a target. Ditto for the nearby school and your favorite sandwich shop.
World War I introduced the elements of uncertainty and irresolution to warfare, too. The world had seen wars with higher casualty-counts per country, and there would be more global war, but World War I was a war that nobody wanted in the first place, and that everybody believed would be short and sweet—or as sweet as global conflict can be. In actuality, it was a war with no conclusive victories that strangled the global economy and all but etched "To be continued" across the ravaged battlefields of Europe.
World War I changed the ways wars are fought. In World War I, there were many new weapons that were introduced into combat. The Browning machine gun was used, which was a more powerful and more accurate weapon than had previously been seen in combat. Chlorine gas was a new weapon that could harm people in a chemical manner. This led to the introduction of gas masks to help protect the soldiers that might be exposed to this form of chemical warfare.
New technologies were used in the air, on land, and on the seas. The use of the submarine changed the method of naval warfare. The submarine was designed to attack by surprise and to strike fear into the hearts of those people who were traveling by water, shipping products by sea, and serving in the navy. Convoys were used by the Allies to help combat the use of the submarines by the Germans. Airplanes were introduced in World War I, suggesting that they would have a much greater role in future wars. The use of tracer ammunition allowed a gunman in an airplane to see where his shots were going. Tanks were also introduced as a weapon in World War I. When World War I began, soldiers were using horses. Tanks, airplanes, and submarines were being dominantly used by the time World War I ended.
http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/inside-story/articles/2014/8/5/world-war-i-fouryearsthatchangedtheglobeforever.html
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/daily-videos/how-wwi-changed-the-world-forever/
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