History 271

Summer 2010

Devine

World War I Review Questions

1. Why did a Serbian nationalist’s assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 start a conflict that engulfed all of Europe?

2. By 1914, certain technologies had advanced further than others. What were some of these technologies? How did the uneven advance lead to staggering casualties on the battlefields of Europe during World War I?

3. How did the U.S. respond to the outbreak of war in Europe 1914? Why did neutrality seem the best policy to both President Wilson and the American public?

4. What steps did the British take to insure the Americans would be more likely to enter the war on the Allies’ side?

5. Why did the Germans resort to submarine warfare? Why did the British protest this new form of warfare?

6. How did German submarine warfare bring the United States into World War I?

7. Why was the Zimmermann telegram significant?

8. President Woodrow Wilson ran for re-election in 1916 on a slogan of “he kept us out of war.” Why was this ironic?

9. What role did the U.S. play in bringing the Great War to an end?

10. What were the 14 Points and how did they propose to prevent future wars?

11. Why did many in the U.S. Congress oppose the League of Nations, particularly its stipulation that all member nations were obliged to defend another member nation that was the victim of aggression?

12. Why, in the words of the diplomat George Kennan, was the First World War “the seminal catastrophe of the twentieth century”?

13. Why was the First World War a “psychological blow” to Western culture?

14. How did the ideas of Marx and Lenin differ from 19^th Century Western culture’s inventions of capitalism and democracy? How did their ideas about human nature and about the nature of power differ from earlier Western ideas?