Martin Gilbert (80-98)

Russia eventually abandoned the war cause because of political instability, why do you think they waited so lonog and lost so many soliders before they opted to pull out of the war?

The Technology contibuting to the outcome of World War 1

The new technologies created before and during the first World war had a signigficant impact on the outcome of the war. They also lead up to the atrocities of the second world war.
        Most of the new technologies made were weapons. These weapons had a logical idea, but were not maniuplated to be as effective as they could have been. Also, many of these new inventions were new and not widely available of renewable. An example would be gas. Gas use was introduced early on in the war, during trench warfare, and was used on both sides of the war. Types of gas such as chorene gas and phosgene, which could paralyze and kill soliders and wipe out mass amounts of tropps in a matter of minutes.
 Gas was definately a game changer, the downside was  that neither sides had enough resources to keep up with gas attacks, so they would lose the ground that they gained.
Transportation technologies such as airplanes, tanks and armored ships gained prominance. The German- Uboat use aslo influenced the United States decision on entering the war. Airplanes were intially used as a way of spying, and later manipulated to drop bombs, setting the stage for the airplane warfare which would define the combat of World War 2. Tanks were new and not used to their full capability.

The new technology especially effected the war by increasing the causality numbers monumentally, bu also contributed to the stalemate, when both sides were equally equpit with the same about of new type of technology.

Historiography of World War l

Sideney Bradshaw Fay, The Origins of the World War (1928)

Fay made his interpretation of the World War in the 1920's, a time when the revisionalist perspective was popular. The Revisionalist perspective reevaluated the Orthodox perspective of looking at how blame was distributed after the first world war. So, with WWl, the Orthodox interpretation originally placed the most blame on Germany, and served as a sort of justification for the Treaty of Versaille. Fay's revisionalist view contradicted the Orthodox view and asserted that Germany was not the primary country to blame, infact other countries, or to an extent most all European countries, shared responsibilty, as a result of actions that failed to take, that could have prevented war. I agree most with this perspective, despite the fact that it rests alot upon hypothetic situations.

Germany was not the sole country to blame for the First World War. Germany did not want a World War, but evidence does support that Germany wanted a localized conflict between Serbia and Austira Hungary. However, other countries such as Great Britatin, could have had a large role in preventing war. Britain could have threatened Germany, or told France they would not intevene, so that France would stop Russia, inorder to produce a localized conflict, and not a war on a world scale. France's responsibility on stopping the war could have consisted of asking Russia to not get involved, instead of doing everything to just strenghten their alliance. Russia was also ambigous, they had supported Serbian unity in the end. They had convinced Austria-Hungary that they may intervene, which wouldn't have produced a localized conflict. Austrian-Hungarian leaders, influenced by Germany did not make a distinction between Serbia as a country, versus Serbian nationalists. Germany supported them, to support their own alliance, and they did not want to be alone and isolated. This is why I believe that many countries shared responsiblity.