World War One, A Very Peculiar History by Jim Pipe

Author:Jim Pipe
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: gift, information, facts, trivia, quirky, stories, england, germany, survival, weapon, gun, soldier, trench, remembrance, slang, russian, submarine, front, battle, death
ISBN: 9781908759269
Publisher: The Salariya Book Company
Published: 2012-01-16T16:00:00+00:00

Germany wasn’t going to take the blockade lying down, and stepped up its submarine campaign. Neutral ships were now on the hit list after two U-boats were sunk by HMS Baralong, a British warship disguised as a merchant vessel (and sneakily flying an American flag). It was a risky policy. On the morning of 6 May 1915, a luxury passenger liner travelling from the United States, the RMS Lusitania, was sunk off the southern coast of Ireland. Almost 1,200 civilians were drowned, including 128 Americans. For a while, the German fleet was forced to withdraw to port, afraid that a continued campaign might bring the United States into the war on the side of the Allies. Up to now, US President Woodrow Wilson had tried to keep the USA out of the war. It was very wise for the Germans to keep it that way.

In the past, most wars had been fought by professional soldiers on distant battlefields. The Great War was the first ‘Total War’: now millions of ordinary citizens were caught up in the fighting or sent to work in the factories to make armaments. Terrifying modern weapons brought the conflict to people’s doorsteps.

On 31 May 1915, London was bombed by German Zeppelin airships and over the course of the war, 2,000 British civilians were killed or injured by such raids.

Few countries escaped the fallout of modern war. In Armenia, the invading Turkish forces systematically killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. Russian peasants starved as grain supplies were diverted to the front line, and in Poland millions of civilians caught in war zones were forced to leave their country and shelter in refugee camps. In Serbia, the typhus carried by soldiers heading home on leave killed a third of the population.

The lives of women were affected more than most. Before the war, most thought women shouldn’t go to work or be allowed to vote. In Britain, female protestors known as suffragettes campaigned for the right of women to vote. Many were arrested and sent to prison and one, Emily Davison, died in June 1913 after she threw herself underneath King Edward VII’s horse during the Derby.

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