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Unit 3

Canada and the

1st World WarPart 1

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→ By 1914, all the major world powers were in Europe, with the exception of the U.S.A

→ the european countries had a lot of history of fighting and competing with each other, even though they were often related.

→ Nationalism was very strong in these old imperial powers.

→ the competition between powers led to them making secret Alliances between major powers to protect each other.

→ Many of the major powers had created alliances between themselves, basically creating teams of countries that would help and defend each other in case of troubles. There were two main groups involved:

Triple Alliance → Germany

Austria­Hungary

Italy

Triple Entente → Great Britain

France

Russia

→ This did not just involve the European powers. Each of the members of these groups also owned colonies or had close ties to other countries which spread worldwide. This included the young Dominion of Canada, being still a member of the British Commonwealth and a close ally of England.

Setting up for Conflict

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This is a map of Europe as it is today. This is a very different view than the pre world war I map.

The world map of 1914 shows the connections of countries around the world to the European colonialists.

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By 1914, Europe was a "powder keg", ready to explode. All the tension was building which needed only a small spark to ignite.

The spark happened on June 28, 1914, when Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were shot while on a visit to Serbia. Ferdinand was not only an Archduke but was also considered to be the heir to the throne of Austria.

Serbian nationals were held responsible for the shooting. Austria had been planning to take over Serbia but Serbian radicals wanted to fight them. In protest, they assassinated the Archduke. The assassin was Gavrilo Princip, a 19 year old Serb who was captured and tried and was put in jail until he died, almost 4 years later.

­ July 28,1914 → Austria declares war on Serbia.

­ July 28 → Russia comes to Serbia's support and declares war on A/H.

­ Aug 1 → Germany enters war to support Austria.

­ Aug 3 → Germany declares war on France.

­ Aug 4 → Britain declares war on Germany, causing members of the Commonwealth to enter war also.

­ Aug 5 → The Governor General of Canada: The Earl Albert Grey (Representing king George I), officially declares War for Canada.

Timeline

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TheGerman attack plan

(The Schlieffen Plan).

This was a plan for a super heavy & fast attack, breaking through Belgium into France, to take over most of Europe before the Entente could react.

The Germans thought that Russia and Britain would not be able to respond quick enough to stop them, but they were wrong.

The Russians were able to get a force of men along the border with Germany in a surprisingly short time and the British were already moving to help protect Belgium because of an alliance with them so thery were there in short time to stop the Germans

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Here is a link to show where the Canadian volunteers came from during WWI

Back in Canada...We had a very small standing army of permanent, professional soldiers. We did have a very large militia: a volunteer force with partial training ready to call in emergencies.

Sam Hughes, is the minister of the militia. He put out a call to enlist for the Canadian Expeditionary Force. They wanted 25000, but got 32,000 volunteers,

The best response came from English Canada, because the French saw it as a British War. Most of Canada's volunteers came from Ontario, as it had the most direct descendants from Britain and it had the largest population in the country.

Hughes created a training camp at Valcartier, Quebec to get militia ready for fighting. The first Canadian forces shipped out by October 1914.

see: Images of Forgotten War.

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Images of ValCartier

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The Newfoundland Regiment.

­ During the war, about 2000 men volunteered for the NL. Regiment.

­ 350 KIA's (killed in Action)

­ Newfoundland got the bulk of its casualties at the battle of Beaumont Hamel on July 1, 1916

­ Most of the volunteers would be from St John's, but many came from outports and from Labrador. Ex: John Shiwak, an Inuit, became NL's best sniper.

­ By the end of the war the Newfoundland Regiment had served so well that it earned recognition from the King of England. Today they are known as the Royal Newfoundland Regiment.

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New WarfareTechnology1) Trench Warfare.

GermansAllies

No

Man's

Land

The trenches were semi­permanent dug­in positions which left the armies camped within gunshot of each other.

Soldiers could spend weeks 'on the front line' in the mud with poor food and water supplies before being rotated to rear trenches or sent to town for time off.

Soldiers had to deal with many problems in the trenchs:

­ trench foot: a condition where fungus would grow in on a soldiers feet because they were continuaously wet. The feet would begin to rot away.

­ Emotional Stress: the ever present danger of being attacked or hit by a stray bullet or enemy sniper wore away at a person's moral. The constant state of fear and discomfort would make soldiers lose hope.

­ Vermin: lice and rats were common in the trenches because of poor washing facilities and the presence of garbage and food.

­ General Conditions: poor food, no heat, sleeping on ground or in mud.

2) Machine guns.

­improved ability of one man to guard a larger area.­the older command tactics of charging against the opposition's lines led to many more deaths.

3) Biological Weapons,­chlorine gas and mustard gas were used for the first time. They ate at the skin and destroyed soldiers lungs; killing many through suffocation.

4) Planes

­ Aircraft of any type (planes, balloons, blimps) were used mainly for spotting enemies and spying before WWI. During the war they became useful because of being able to mount machine guns that worked in time with the engines so that they would not shoot their own propellor off. Dog fighting; planes fighting each other, came to be.

5) Tanks

Tanks were extremely heavy machines that used a lot of gas and got stuck. However, they also provided soldiers a fairly safe platform that could be used to approach the enemy without putting your forces at too much risk. They mounted machine gun positions on tanks allowing them to attack through No Man's Land.

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Canada's Role in the War.3.4

­

­When the CEF troops first joined the allied forces, they were put under the command of British Officers.

Lt.­General E­A. Alderson

Lt.­General Julian Byng.

The Canadians were seen as untried troops to be part of the British army. As they proved themselves, they were given their own Canadian leader;

Lt­General Arthur Currie.

1915 (April­ May) Ypres (Flanders, Belgium)

Flanders is the region of northern Belgium. The Germans were making a strong push to get through the Allied lines in this area to try and take over the supply ports of Dunkirk and Calais, along the English Channel. This would cut off new supplies from getting to the Allied forces.

They were going to break through at the town of Ypres, through lines manned by the CEF. The Germans thought that it would be able to overwhelm the Canadians and get through.

This was the place where the Germans first used poison gas in an attack. The Canadians kept up the defense through all the attacks until reinforcements arrived. They lost 6000 Canadian soldiers during the battle at Ypres.

1916 (July­Nov)The Battle of the Somme

In this instance the Allied Forces had planned a major offensive to push through the German lines and reach up to the town of Courcelette, along the Somme River.

The Germans were able to put up good opposition and slowed the Allied progress.

During the fighting, the Canadian forces lost about 24,000 men.

Note: General Currie was the very first Canadian officer to be given command of their own Division in June of 1917. This demonstrated how Canadian troops were being recognized as having worth as their own units, a sign that Canada was being recognized as a more independent country. Currie was later described as "the ablest Corps commander in the British Army".

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On July 1, the first day of the Battle of the Somme, the Newfoundland Regiment was on the front lines of the Allied forces, attached to the 1st Battalion and Lt. Colonel Arthur Hadow.

When they were called up into the fighting the forward trenches were full of the wounded and being bombed with artillery shells so the Colonel decided to bring his men to the front by walking across the surface. This made them clearly visible to the Germans.

While trying to advance the troops came under fire as the only men moving on the battlefield. They were picked off by German soldiers and never got across No Man's Land.

Of the 780 Newfoundlanders who set off, only 110 of them survived, with only 68 available for roll call the next day. This meant that the Newfoundland Regiment had suffered the second greatest casualty rate of any group in the war.

The Newfoundland Regiment

and the Battle of

Beaumont Hamel

The ground that this battle was founght on was later sold to the Newfoundland government in 1921 and set up as a memorial to the deaths of so many young Newfoundlanders.