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  • With both sides stuck in a hard stalemate, they knew this war wasn't going to be about taking territory,

  • but about simply wearing each other down.

  • The Allies had plenty of men to expend from its overseas dominions.

  • And the British also started a naval blockade,

  • so Germany couldn't import stuff, like food.

  • Neither side really wanted a long grueling war, though.

  • So, they both thought of ways to break the deadlock on the western front.

  • Idea number one: New Frontiers.

  • When the war first broke out Australia was quick to take German New Guinea

  • The Allies also quickly jumped on Germany's colonies in Africa,

  • and particularly in German East Africa,

  • locals were enlisted as soldiers and carriers by both sides.

  • Leading to a tragic loss of life for the Native Africans.

  • Some new combatants entered the war as well.

  • The Allies newest friends were Italy,

  • and Japan.

  • Japan was busy building itself an empire.

  • So, it was more than happy to take away German Islands and colonies in East Asia

  • Italy actually had an alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary before the war.

  • But after some tense relations,

  • and then the Allies promising to give them some of Austria-Hungary's stuff,

  • they switched sides.

  • Italy opened up a front in the mountains here,

  • but like everyone else,

  • they were stuck in stalemate for most of the war.

  • The Central Powers' new friend was a struggling empire in the middle East.

  • The Ottomans....

  • (Ottomen?)

  • The Ottomen where divided on whether to actually join the war or not,

  • since they had been exhausted by the recent Balkan Wars.

  • Some of the politicians who did want to join went off on their own and fired some shells at Russia.

  • And then came back and said,

  • "Whoops, looks like we're at war now."

  • The Ottoman entry into the war was of particular concern to the British,

  • since the middle East was full of oil and Britain wanted all of that oil.

  • First, the Ottomans tried to attack Russia in the Caucasus Mountains.

  • But they weren't prepared for the cold and many of them froze to death.

  • Then they crossed miles of desert to take the Suez Canal from the British.

  • But that failed, too.

  • Then the Allies tried to take the Dardanelles at Gallipoli in a long and hard trench warfare campaign....

  • but that also failed.

  • The Ottomans blamed their initial losses on the ethnic Armenians living within Ottoman territory.

  • And the resulting Armenian genocide

  • led to the deaths of one and a half million people.

  • Then, the Germans sent spies into Afghanistan

  • to try to convince the Arab tribes there to rise up in Jihad against the British

  • and attack India.

  • But that plan failed. Partly because the spies got bored, brewed their own alcohol, and got drunk....

  • which is a bad thing to do in Afghanistan.

  • All these new Frontiers hadn't done much to change the war.

  • Aware that the Allies had more men and supplies than them,

  • the Germans knew they had to do something to break the stalemate.

  • Before the war, there was a big conference that set out the rules of Modern warfare:

  • No chemical weapons,

  • no killing civilians.

  • Basically: Don't be jerks.

  • The Germans held a meeting, and decided to be jerks.

  • Zeppelin air raids commenced over British cities,

  • they also started attacking the ally trenches with chlorine gas,

  • and they used submarines to sink civilian ships.

  • One such civilian ship was the Lusitania

  • which had a hundred and fifty-nine Americans on board when it was sunk.

  • Further swaying US opinion against the Germans.

  • Not to be completely unfair to the Germans,

  • the Allies also engaged in chemical warfare soon after,

  • and they had been hiding anti-submarine weapons on their civilian ships.

  • Which led the Germans justify their attacks.

  • Meanwhile, Austria-Hungary still hadn't dealt with Serbia,

  • so the central powers enlisted some help.

  • Bulgaria wished it was bigger and was still bitter about

  • losing the second Balkan war.

  • The Central Powers promised to make all of Bulgaria's wildest dreams come true if they helped.

  • So they signed on and together they knocked out Serbia.

  • The Serbian troops retreated through Albania

  • which was neutral but had some ties to Austria-Hungary.

  • So, Austria-Hungary entered Albania in a 'friendly invasion' to chase down the Serbians

  • many of whom escaped by sea.

  • It's 1916 and a lot is happening.

  • As if they didn't have enough enemies already,

  • Germany added one more to the list.

  • Portugal had been getting a bit chummy with the allies behind the scenes ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

  • and Germany didn't like that one bit.

  • Around the same time, the only sea battle of the war happened.

  • Both sides had a new powerful class of battleships called "Dreadnought."

  • But they were so expensive to build that neither side wanted to risk losing them in a battle.

  • So they kept them in port. Except for one time when they had a big fight and a bunch of them got damaged.

  • So they didn't try that again. The UK started conscripting men to the army so they had plenty of reserves.

  • Which is just as well because the western front was about to get brutal.

  • The longest and one of the bloodiest battles of the war started

  • when the Germans launched an attack around the French city of Verdun.

  • The French defended it desperately,

  • leading to hundreds of thousands of casualties.

  • Under pressure, the French called on its allies to do something to draw the Germans' attention away.

  • So, the British started their own long and brutal fight, the Battle of the Somne,

  • with 60,000 British casualties on just the first day.

  • It was also here that the British first used one crazy brand-new piece of Sci-Fi technology.

  • The Russians had been getting pushed back further and further into their own territory,

  • but in response to the French call for help,

  • they began a huge offensive

  • and did really well until they ran out of supplies and got stuck.

  • Seeing how well the Russians have been doing

  • Romania decided now would be a great time to jump in on win the war.

  • And then they got pounded.

  • The Greeks were fighting amongst themselves about whether to join the war or not

  • The king liked the Central powers while the prime minister wanted to join the Allies.

  • After a brief national Schism during which the country split into two,

  • the king finally abdicated and the country reunited.

  • With Allied help they began a new offensive.

  • In the Middle East, Russia was pushing into Ottoman territory from the North.

  • The British had also made a landing in Mesopotamia to protect Persia's oil fields.

  • And they'd also sent a small army up the Tigris river to try to take Baghdad

  • but the army got sieged in the town of Kut along the way

  • And eventually surrendered.

  • A new offensive was launched from the south with all-out desert warfare.

  • The offensive was aided by one famous British officer, better known as Lawrence of Arabia,

  • who helped to lead the Arab tribes in a revolt that wreaked Havoc on the Ottoman supply lines.

  • By the time 1917 rolled around everyone was exhausted.

  • There are mutinies in the French army, the German populace was starving,

  • and the war had drained all of Russia's supplies.

  • There is no clear winner, and it was still anyone's war.

  • The only question now was: Who is going to break first?

  • And the answer was: Russia.

  • Tired of not eating and mad that a crazy magic homeless guy was calling some of the shots

  • there was an uprising in Petrograd complete with riots and strikes.

  • The riots turned into a full-scale revolution

  • and a new government overthrew the Tsar.

  • Then a few months later the Bolsheviks overthrew the new government.

  • And they pulled Russia out of the war.

  • This was great news for Germany that now only had to focus on the western front.

  • But there was still one problem:

  • The pesky United States of America was looking increasingly like it was going to join the war.

  • America had been selling supplies to the Allies throughout the war

  • and was getting super rich off the back of it.

  • Meaning it was in fantastic shape and was dangerous to the Germans.

  • So Germany sent a telegram to Mexico saying:

  • "Wouldn't it be crazy cool if you guys attacked America?"

  • But the British intercepted the message, showed it to the Americans, and that was the final straw.

  • American troops began shipping out to Europe.

  • This was terrible news for Germany.

  • And they knew their only hope now is to force France and the UK to surrender

  • before the fresh American troops arrived. It was now or never.

  • So they started one final attack.

  • They converged their troops and hit hard at the Somme

  • and pushed the Allies back.

  • They hit a second time for the north, then again, and again.

  • With each hit the germans were spending more and more resources

  • while the allies were getting better and better at repelling their attacks.

  • By the fifth punch, the Allies held the line and even pushed back.

  • With American troops now arriving in larger numbers

  • the Allies launched a counter-attack, and that was it.

  • The central powers were being pushed back on all fronts.

  • Bulgaria collapsed first, followed by the Ottoman Empire,

  • then Austria-Hungary and finally on November 11th, 1918 at 11 o'clock, Germany surrendered.

  • At the peace treaty Germany was forced to

  • reduce its military, accept war guilt, and pay the bill for the war.

  • After indescribable suffering and millions dead, the world learned its lesson

  • and never had such an awful war again.

  • For about 20 years.

With both sides stuck in a hard stalemate, they knew this war wasn't going to be about taking territory,

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