Verdun, the Somme and Passchendaele were not accidents of stupidity alone; they were attempts to break a front that artillery and machine-guns favoured in defence. Commanders learned slowly, then all at once in 1918 with combined arms.
The blockade of the Central Powers and Germany's U-boat campaigns made food and shipping into weapons. The 1917 US entry added credit, men and a political end-state: Wilson's Fourteen Points. Russia's 1917 revolutions took it out of the war at Brest-Litovsk (March 1918). Italy bled on the Isonzo; Allenby took Jerusalem and Damascus; the Arab Revolt and Sykes-Picot drew a postwar Middle East.
Check each criteria to confirm findings against the atlas verdict.
Verdun, the Somme and Passchendaele were not accidents of stupidity alone; they were attempts to break a front that artillery and machine-guns favoured in defence. Commanders learned slowly, then all at once in 1918 with combined arms.
The blockade of the Central Powers and Germany's U-boat campaigns made food and shipping into weapons. The 1917 US entry added credit, men and a political end-state: Wilson's Fourteen Points. Russia's 1917 revolutions took it out of the war at Brest-Litovsk (March 1918). Italy bled on the Isonzo; Allenby took Jerusalem and Damascus; the Arab Revolt and Sykes-Picot drew a postwar Middle East.
East Africa under von Lettow-Vorbeck and the massacre of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire belong in the same war, even when Western Front museums omit them. The 11 November 1918 armistice stopped the shooting in France before Allied armies entered Germany in force -- a fact later twisted by the "stab in the back" myth. Versailles (1919), Saint-Germain, Neuilly, Trianon and Sevres/Lausanne dismantled empires.
League of Nations mandates in the Middle East and the Pacific, and the US Senate's rejection of the League, left an incomplete security system. The Second World War is not a sequel by fate, but it is unintelligible without this peace.
This explains a campaign, battle, or weapon in context. It is not a league of nations. It does not replace the full topic page.
Next question: World War II · Open the topic: World War I
Why is "a single assassination headline" the wrong stop when reading the August mobilization in 1914? · Why is "a paper count of tanks" the wrong stop when reading the campaign in France in 1940? · Why is "the landing nickname alone" the wrong stop when reading the Inchon landing in 1950? · Why is "a body-count column" the wrong stop when reading the Tet offensive in 1968? · Why is "the battle nickname alone" the wrong stop when reading Austerlitz in 1805? · Why is "one casualty total" the wrong stop when reading Gettysburg in 1863? · 50 campaign reading notes