The Encyclopaedia Britannica records that around 8. Exact figures are hard to come by, and some estimates have put the total death toll of military personnel at anywhere up to 15 million. The Triple Entente, consisting of the allied powers of France , Russia and Britain , is thought to have lost around six million troops.
These numbers include both combat deaths and those missing in action. A total of more than 21 million troops were wounded , and it is thought that around 1. The total number of military and civilian casualties from WW1, including the wounded, is a mind-blowing 40 million people , that's more than half the number of all those who fought. The first day of the Battle of the Somme remains the worst day in British military history, with British forces suffering around 57, casualties in just one day of fighting.
During the Battle of Amiens in August there were 27, casualties, while the Gallipoli campaign saw nearly , casualties and Brusilov Offensive in resulted in more than two million casualties.
There were around , casualties during the Battle of Passchendaele from July 31 to November 10, ES Money. Particularly long and costly battles in this campaign were fought at Verdun February-December and the Battle of the Somme July-November German and French troops suffered close to a million casualties in the Battle of Verdun alone.
In the latter poem, McCrae writes from the perspective of the fallen soldiers:. To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields. Visual artists like Otto Dix of Germany and British painters Wyndham Lewis, Paul Nash and David Bomberg used their firsthand experience as soldiers in World War I to create their art, capturing the anguish of trench warfare and exploring the themes of technology, violence and landscapes decimated by war.
This increased hostility was directed toward the imperial regime of Czar Nicholas II and his unpopular German-born wife, Alexandra.
Russia reached an armistice with the Central Powers in early December , freeing German troops to face the remaining Allies on the Western Front. At the outbreak of fighting in , the United States remained on the sidelines of World War I, adopting the policy of neutrality favored by President Woodrow Wilson while continuing to engage in commerce and shipping with European countries on both sides of the conflict.
In , Germany declared the waters surrounding the British Isles to be a war zone, and German U-boats sunk several commercial and passenger vessels, including some U. Widespread protest over the sinking by U-boat of the British ocean liner Lusitania —traveling from New York to Liverpool, England with hundreds of American passengers onboard—in May helped turn the tide of American public opinion against Germany.
Germany sunk four more U. With World War I having effectively settled into a stalemate in Europe, the Allies attempted to score a victory against the Ottoman Empire, which entered the conflict on the side of the Central Powers in late After a failed attack on the Dardanelles the strait linking the Sea of Marmara with the Aegean Sea , Allied forces led by Britain launched a large-scale land invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula in April The invasion also proved a dismal failure, and in January Allied forces staged a full retreat from the shores of the peninsula after suffering , casualties.
British-led forces also combated the Ottoman Turks in Egypt and Mesopotamia , while in northern Italy, Austrian and Italian troops faced off in a series of 12 battles along the Isonzo River, located at the border between the two nations. British and French—and later, American—troops arrived in the region, and the Allies began to take back the Italian Front. The biggest naval engagement of World War I, the Battle of Jutland May left British naval superiority on the North Sea intact, and Germany would make no further attempts to break an Allied naval blockade for the remainder of the war.
World War I was the first major conflict to harness the power of planes. At the dawn of World War I, aviation was a relatively new field; the Wright brothers took their first sustained flight just eleven years before, in Aircraft were initially used primarily for reconnaissance missions.
During the First Battle of the Marne, information passed from pilots allowed the allies to exploit weak spots in the German lines, helping the Allies to push Germany out of France. The first machine guns were successfully mounted on planes in June of in the United States, but were imperfect; if timed incorrectly, a bullet could easily destroy the propeller of the plane it came from.
The Morane-Saulnier L, a French plane, provided a solution: The propeller was armored with deflector wedges that prevented bullets from hitting it. The British Bristol Type 22 was another popular model used for both reconnaissance work and as a fighter plane. Dutch inventor Anthony Fokker improved upon the French deflector system in Though his most popular plane during WWI was the single-seat Fokker Eindecker, Fokker created over 40 kinds of airplanes for the Germans.
On April 1, , the British created the Royal Air Force, or RAF, the first air force to be a separate military branch independent from the navy or army. With Germany able to build up its strength on the Western Front after the armistice with Russia, Allied troops struggled to hold off another German offensive until promised reinforcements from the United States were able to arrive. On July 15, , German troops launched what would become the last German offensive of the war, attacking French forces joined by 85, American troops as well as some of the British Expeditionary Force in the Second Battle of the Marne.
The Allies successfully pushed back the German offensive and launched their own counteroffensive just three days later. The Second Battle of the Marne turned the tide of war decisively towards the Allies, who were able to regain much of France and Belgium in the months that followed. All four regiments comprised of celebrated soldiers who fought in the Spanish-American War and American-Indian Wars , and served in the American territories. But they were not deployed for overseas combat in World War I.
Blacks serving alongside white soldiers on the front lines in Europe was inconceivable to the U. Instead, the first African American troops sent overseas served in segregated labor battalions, restricted to menial roles in the Army and Navy, and shutout of the Marines, entirely. Direct civilian casualties. Austro-Hungarian Empire. Slovenians and the First World War. Map of the Walk of Peace. World War 1 casualties. Leiden, Boston: Brill, Isonzo Front.
International Encyclopedia of the First World War. United States of America. New Zealand.
0コメント