| Term Paper Title | World Wars Of The 20th Century |
| # of Words | 1095 |
| # of Pages (250 words per page double spaced) | 4.38 |
World Wars of the 20th Century
The failure of the Europeans to learn from the American Civil War led them to fight the same kind of war in World War I. The armies of Europe and the United States fought for four years only to end in a stalemate. Nothing was settled despite massive loss of life.
Some of the techniques used were much the same as those used in the American Civil War. Like building of fortifications and digging of trenches before charging the enemy with rifle fire and the falling back to the trenches if no gain was made.
The armies of World War I were the largest put into the field up to that time. The Germans were able to move 2 million men in two days and within five days about 1 million soldiers were on the march toward France. Austria moved 500,000 men while France started out with 1,600,000. Russia called up an army of 1,400,000. Great Britain had only all-volunteers army in Europe, had only 120,000 at the start of the war.?????dont under stand sentence????
By 1917 the British Army had increased tenfold the French land forces had been enlarged to 2,600,000 and in 1918 the American Army in France numbered 1,200,000. It was the addition of troops from the United States that made it possible to defeat German forces numbering about 2.5 million.
Army organization for all the belligerents remained the same as it had been throughout the 19th century. They all had similar infantry and cavalry divisions, artillery brigades, engineering companies, supply units, and medical units.
The advances in technology that had been made since the American Civil War were not sufficient to tip the balance either way. Both sides made use of airplanes, tanks, radio, machine guns, and other inventions. The newness of these technologies meant that they had to be adapted to wartime use on a trial-and-error basis. Many inventions were developed for commercial use, such as the telephone, radio, and internal-combustion engine, and were only gradually adapted for use in warfare. It was not until World War II that full advantage was taken of the technologies of mechanized warfare.
The interwar period, from 1918 to 1939, was marked by a feeling of revulsion to all war on the part of most of the belligerents. The armies of the Allies--France, Britain, and the United States--were all drastically reduced in size. Only Germany differed in these matters. Convinced that their country had been betrayed by its politicians in World War I, the Germans continued to prepare secretly for another conflict. Russia, allied with France against Germany, had been knocked out of the conflict by the Revolution of 1917 and a hastily arranged treaty with the new Communist government.
The gravest mistake made by the former Allies between 1919 and 1939 was the failure of the military to keep up with industrial development and new technologies. The one change that was made was the addition of air force auxiliaries to the several armies.
While Germany was secretly modifying its industries for rapid changeover to wartime production, the other nations were convinced a war could not occur again. When war did come in 1939, the Allies had to make very rapid changes i...Read entire document
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