Knowt - Honors WW1 Vocabulary

  1. Casualty: human being killed, wounded, or missing in action.
  2. Alsace-Lorraine: the name given to the territory that was ceded by France to Germany in 1871 after the Franco-German War.
  3. barrage balloon: hydrogen-filled balloons, moored by a cable by which they could be raised or lowered, to force enemy aircraft to fly higher out of fear of entanglement in the cables, where they would be at greater risk from heavy anti-aircraft fire.
  4. Western Front: 400-mile long zone in France and Flanders where British, French, Belgian, and later Americans fought Germans.
  5. CPI: Committee on Public Information (CPI)influence public opinion in favor of the war
  6. George Creel: American writer and newspaperman who, as head of the U.S. publicity bureau during World War I, did much to shape subsequent government programs of publicity and propaganda.
  7. Diplomacy: formal and informal communications between nations and their governments.
  8. Conscientious Objector: an individual who refused to enlist in the military or fight in the war because of religious, political, or pacifist beliefs
  9. Alliance: a formal agreement between two or more nations, pledging military, logistic or financial support to each other in the event of war or aggression
    1. Reparations: payment or other compensation offered for loss, damage or suffering. The Treaty of Versailles (1919) formally ordered Germany to pay reparations to the Allies.
    2. Dogfight: an aerial battle between aircraft
    3. Duckboard: the narrow path of wooden slats in a trench or over field mud; also called trench board.
    4. Big Bertha: German 42-cm howitzer with a 15 km range built by Gustav Krupp’s factories in 1914 and nicknamed after his wife.
    5. Mobilization: the process of preparing for war
    6. Self-Determination: the political principle that populations should be able to determine their own nationality, government, and political status.
    7. Doughboys: American soldier (slang); at first disparaging, later positive; from the buttons on the Union Army uniforms of the Civil War that resembled doughnuts.
    8. Propaganda: material intended to persuade or invoke an emotional response, often through distortion or misrepresentation.
    9. Woodrow Wilson: 1. President of the United States of America who was passionate about international peace. He developed the Fourteen Points and the idea for the League of Nations.
    10. Fourteen Points: Woodrow Wilson's plan for world peace after WWI, which included the creation of the League of Nations.
    11. League of Nations: an international organization formed after World War I as part of the Treaty of Versailles to promote world peace.
    12. Treaty of Versailles: the peace treaty signed at the Palace of Versailles near Paris on 28 June 1919 between the Allies and Germany.
    13. Zimmerman Telegraph: Telegram sent to Mexico in 1917 from a German military advisor named Arthur Zimmerman who asked Mexico to invade the southwest border of the U.S.
    14. Lusitania: British passenger ship torpedoed without warning by a German U-boat on 7 May 1915 off the coast of Ireland; it sank within 18 minutes. 1,198 died, and 761 were rescued. 124 (out of 197) Americans died, prompting the US to enter the war.
    15. Trench warfare: a prolonged struggle between competing entities in which neither side is able to win.
    16. Militarism: where the military occupies a privileged and influential position in society and government.
    17. Isolationism: foreign policy approach where a nation does not commit to alliances or ‘take sides’ in international disputes.
    18. No-man’s land: Territory between Allied and German trenches on the Western Front; a desolate, barren wasteland of barbed wire, shell craters, mud, debris, and corpses.
    19. U-boat: German submarine
    20. Central power: Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire (Turkey), and Bulgaria.
    21. Total war: intense warfare that requires a society or nation to mobilize most of its people and resources.
    22. Conscription: a system of compulsory military recruitment. In January 1916, Parliament passed the first conscription laws in Britain, for single men and childless widowers aged 18 to 41; by 1918 compulsory service included all men aged 18 to 51.
    23. Dreadnought: huge, heavily armed battleship first launched by Britain in 1906; it carried ten 12-inch guns and had a top speed of 18 knots.
    24. Dugout: rough shelter on the side of a hill or the wall of a trench, varying from a small one-man area to a deep dugout ten or more feet underground.
    25. Jutland: the peninsula of northern Europe comprising mainland Denmark and northern Germany; the Battle of Jutland was the only major naval battle of the Great War.
    26. Mustard gas: Volatile, corrosive poison gas (dichloroethyl sulphide) first used by the Germans at Ypres in 1917; it attacked mucous membranes, lung tissue, and eyes, causing severe skin wounds, lung burns, and conjunctivitis.
    27. Quartermaster: army officer in charge of supplies, rations, ammunition, fuel, and the administration of all quarters and barracks in his regiment or battalion.
    28. Schlieffen Plan Germany would attack and defeat France and then turn the full force of France’s army against the Russians.
    29. Shell shock: a medical condition caused by prolonged exposure to trench warfare.
    30. Triple Entente: a partnership between France, Britain, and Russia signed in 1907.
    31. Duckboard: a wooden platform installed at the bottom of a trench, to provide soldiers with a firm footing and lift them out of water or muddy ground.
    32. Trench foot: term for a foot infection caused by constant immersion in water and inadequate changes of footwear.
    33. Armenian genocide: Assault carried out by mainly Turkish military forces against the Armenian population in Anatolia in 1915; over a million Armenians perished and thousands fled to Russia and the Middle East.