WORLD WAR I

© MMXX V.1.0.0

by Morley Evans

The Vickers gun

TECHNOLOGICAL INTRODUCTIONS

of WWI

World War I introduced new and innovative ways to kill people.

War used the aeroplane for the first time. The Wright Brothers invented the plane only a few years before (patented in 1903). The British Sopwith Camel (named after Sir Thomas Sopwith) may have been the most successful fighter. The German ace Baron Manfred von Richthofen was the most famous flier — and the Red Baron still is today.

Along with the aeroplane came the machine guns. They were invented by American Hiram Maxim who sold them around the world. These machine guns acquired the names of the factories that manufactured them. They were essentially what Maxim had invented.

After American Hiram Maxim had invented the Maxim Gun, Americans advised him to sell it to the Europeans, "So they can slaughter each other." That is exactly what happened.

Hilaire Belloc penned this poem: “Whatever happens, we have got. The Maxim gun and they have not.”

That worked well enough until everyone had one.

The British machine gun was called the Vickers gun. It was water-cooled to keep it from melting. A machine gun crew included someone to aim the gun, another to fire the gun, many husky soldiers to carry ammunition and spare parts, and a mechanic to replace barrels and other things that could wear out. 

The weapon had a reputation for great solidity and reliability. Ian V. Hogg, in Weapons & War Machines, describes an action that took place in August 1916, during which the British 100th Company of the Machine Gun Corps fired their ten Vickers guns continuously for twelve hours. Using 100 barrels, they fired a million rounds without a failure. "It was this absolute foolproof reliability which endeared the Vickers to every British soldier who ever fired one."^[14]

For the first time, poison gas was used: the Germans, French, and the British used gas. Gas masks were invented.

Investigated was Biological warfare.

Zeppelins were invented and used by the Germans. They seemed other-worldly and terrified civilians in England.

Intelligence became organized. Spying was not new, of course.

T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) organized the Arabs of Hejaz to fight and defeat the Ottoman Empire.

Propaganda became more sophisticated as intellectuals developed psychology.

Greatly improved artillery took centre stage. It has been written that more soldiers were killed by artillery than by machine guns or anything else.

The mass-produced bolt-action Lee-Enfield .303 rifle was the standard British army and Commonwealth weapon. This rifle was accurate, durable, heavy, and saw service into the Vietnam War where Australians used it. Over seventeen million were produced. Troops were trained to fire twenty to thirty aimed and accurate shots per minute at 3,000 yards.

No longer used were calvary charges.

The tank was invented and used by the British. Germans studied Sir Basil Liddell Hart's books on mechanized warfare during the Interwar. The British paid the price for ignoring Hart, according to Heinz Guderian.

The Germans perfected Unterseebooten.

Naval mines were invented. A naval mine (was it British?) sank the ship carrying onboard to Murmansk, Russia, Field Marshal Lord Kitchener, supreme commander of the British Army.

The British developed merchant marine convoys.

The British tried amphibious attacks. Gallipoli was a disaster.

The Royal Navy created the starvation blockade of Germany.

Erich Ludendorff, Germany’s de facto leader, sent Lenin on a “sealed train” from Switzerland to St. Petersburg. Lenin created the Russian Revolution that destroyed the Russian Empire from within, relieving Germany from the eastern front.

During the interwar period, Ludendorff created and promoted the “stab-in-the-back” explanation that the Jews were responsible for Germany’s defeat. Ludendorff was an important factor in the creation and rise to power of the NAZI Party. He took a seat as a NAZI in the Reichstag when the NAZI Party was elected in 1933.

After the Great War, the so-called “Spanish flu” pandemic killed millions around the world. Current studies say the “flu” originated with the United States vaccination of American soldiers with a vaccine from the Rockefeller Institute. Tuberculosis killed everyone. Not a virus.

Everyone had a grand time slaughtering his neighbour from 1914 to 1918. The Great War destroyed the civilization that had existed before. Ten huge empires were extinguished. The British Empire survived. The USA became dominant.

WW I and WW II were essentially two chapters of the same war with a twenty-year intermission to reload.

It was popular to blame the Germans for everything at Versailles. That is not quite fair. Everyone participated in the destruction of the world. The destruction of the world is what happened. 

As a point of fact, the Germans agreed to an armistice which is a cessation of hostilities. They naively believed in Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points and expected fair treatment. The Kaiser had abdicated. Germany was leaderless. The German Empire, like the Russian Empire, had collapsed. 

The Germans did not get fair treatment at Versailles. They got unconditional surrender. Woodrow Wilson, who was taller than everyone else, anyway, insisted his chair sit on a dais to allow him to preside grandly over meetings.

That one thing tells everyone what Versailles was all about. 

The Interwar period (1918 to 1939) was an intermission that gave everyone a chance to reload for Chapter Two of The Great War. Even better weapons were created. Americans had been enriched by World War I. Everyone else had been devastated and impoverished. 

Americans were to do even better with WW II, Chapter Two of The Great War. The Cold War was Chapter Three. We are into Chapter Four now. No one knows how this story will end, or when.