World War 1 was sparked by an assassination of Austria-Hungary’s Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The assassin of the Archduke (Gaurilo Princip) was in fact a “member of a secret society called the Black Hand.”(Danzer, p.556) The ‘Black Hand’s’ aim was to unite all Serbs under one government. After the assassination, Austria-Hungary declared that they were going to have a bright, brisk l

World War 1 will always be an unforgettable war that was sparked by a simple assassination. The melee of German trench warfare on the Western Front was a harsh and tedious anguish for millions of unfortunate pawns on the playing fields of the war to end all wars.

The soldier’s lives were complicated by their harsh conditions. The conditions of the trenches were unspeakable. They were rat infested water pools. Actually, the water level for the Germans was not as bad as for the French. The French were on lower ground, so after the French dug about a foot or two they hit water. Since the men did not want to sit in stagnant water, they dug a foot down and built up the rest of the trench with sandbags. The Germans, on the other hand, could dig down about five to six feet and then have sleeping areas and underground foxholes. (See Appendix A – Trench Warfare)

The Germans used a large variety of weapons in World War 1. Their stock consisted mainly of 77mm machine guns, infantry guns, and trench mortars. The machine guns in WW1 improved from shooting several rounds per minute at the beginning of the war to about 600 rounds per minute by the end of the war. The men also used a variety of grenades. They include, potato mashers, Molotov cocktails, jam-pots, Newton pippins, battyes hairbrushes and tortoiseshells. Tanks were also introduced in World War 1. Many tanks at the start of the war were stolen by Germany from France and Russia. The Germans first used the widespread use of poison gas in April of 1915 in the 2nd battle of Ypres. The German soldiers primarily used both mustard gas and chlorine gas against the enemy. Mustard

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