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okay let's talk about how World War I was fought and that means things are going to get real trenchy and real stal so if you're ready to get them bran Cal's milked Total War style then let's get to it so the first thing you have to know about the fighting of World War I is that this is the world's first Total War and by definition that's a war which requires the mobilization of a country's entire population both military and civilian in order to fight it that's kind of a big deal because in the past there was a pretty clear line between what soldiers were doing out in the battlefield and what civilians were doing back home but in Total War every last Schmo in the country is required to contribute in some way to the war effort and to make things more devastating in a total war even civilians were considered viable targets for military efforts oh and by the way if you want no guys to follow along with this video on all my videos and check that link in the description anyway as you may have guessed waging a total war is not easy so you're going to need to understand that governments use various strategies to keep morale up among the troops in the battlefield and civilians back home and the chief strategy that you need to know is that governments used all kinds of propaganda to motivate everyone to keep making the necessary sacrifices and these propaganda campaigns demonized enemies and often exag rated the atrocities that the enemies were committing so the goal was to remind everyone involved in the war that their own cause amounted to a righteous struggle against evil forces and therefore whatever sacrifice was demanded was worth it I mean look at this guy he's going to insult your mother eat your children and then deliberately hurt your feelings and so for all the States involved in World War I they went Bonkers producing this kind of material in the form of Art and various media including news reals and posters and pamphlets now one aspect of these propaganda campaigns that you really need to remember is that they used intensified forms of nationalism in order to get their messages across from the last video that nationalism was a big cause of this war people in various states began to view the world as kind of like a collection of enemy Rivals and that their National identities were the most important thing about them so much of this propaganda capitalized on these nationalist sentiments in order to generate fear of foreign enemies and pride in a nation's own people okay now let's turn the corner and talk about the general trends that describe how World War I was fought and look I could talk all day about Germany's schlein plan or the various battles that get military historians all tingly but you really only need to know one basic fact and a few ways to illustrate it and that fact is is this new military Technologies made World War I one of the deadliest Wars in human history now some of those Technologies included machine guns and chemical gas and tanks just to name a few but it wasn't just technology that made this war deadly it was also the nature of how they were used and here's where I tell you about the main feature of fighting namely trench warfare now to understand this let me give you a little context in the beginning of the war generals consulted the past for winning strategies and found that Victory always went to the first mover and those who leveraged the most spirited attacks therefore French and British armies charged across the field to fight Germans but they were were met with thousands of rounds of machine gun fire which led to massive casualties so it wasn't long before generals on both sides changed tactics to avoid such bloody encounters and that tactic is what we call trench warfare in which each side dug miles of trenches opposite each other and hunkered down for protection now to be clear trench warfare was not a new strategy invented for this war but the scale of it outstripped anything that came before and it was precisely fighting From The Trenches that caused so many casualties in World War I each side hid in their trenches which were fortified with machine guns and barbed wire and if one side came out of their trenches and charge they will be mowed down by machine guns or otherwise caught in the barbed wire and the same with the other side therefore this situation led to years of stalemates where casualties mounted but neither side made much progress and so what everyone believed would be a quick War turned into a yearslong effort and with so many men dying on the field that's when this war became truly Global in scope remember that the states fighting this war like Great Britain and France and Germany had spent a great deal of effort over the course of the last period building up massive Colonial empir so what's an imperial state to do when all of its own men are dying on the battlefield you call up colonial troops to fight your war and so these various Imperial Powers muster troops from Africa India China southeast Asia Australia Canada New Zealand and many more Colonial men were conscripted as Porters in the war whose job it was to carry military equipment to various locations and look you don't have to be a historical genius to understand that Colonial people who had been dominated and exploited by their Imperial overlords weren't that uh excited to go fight this war that had nothing to do with them and yet they did it in hopes that such sacrifices would help them gain independence or at least a greater degree of self-rule after the war and maybe it won't surprise you by now but that didn't really work out and it's going to cause all kinds of problems for Imperial Powers but we'll save that for another video anyway the war dragged on for four years and left an awful lot of Destruction in its way but a key turning point was the entry of the United States on the side of the Allied Powers namely Britain and France in 1917 now initially when the war broke out the US wanted to remain neutral but Germany had a habit of sinking ships with Americans on them and got sassy enough to try to incite Mexico to start a war with the US to keep them otherwise occupied and all those factors eventually drag the us into the war and with the fresh of troops backed by the might of American industry the tide turned against Germany and the Central Powers so the war officially ended in 1918 with the signing of the Treaty of Versa Germany and the Central Powers had lost while the Allied Powers had won despite American President woodro Wilson's attempts to forge peace without victory among the belligerent of the war France and Britain used the treaty to punish Germany which would play a major role in the causes of World War II but again that's a story for another video okay click here to keep reviewing for unit 7 and click here to grab my video note guides which to help you get all the contents of this course firmly crammed into your brain fold I'm glad we got to hang out I'll catch on the flip-flop himler out