World War I
Terms: 1 (not offered every term)
Grades: 11, 12, PG
World War I moves from the origins of The Great War with the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, into the German invasion of France, which resulted in a trench war that lasted for the next four years and killed over ten million people. The details of close combat in the trenches, of poison gas attacks and of simply trying to exist in a world of mud and slaughter are all illustrated with first-hand accounts of those who fought in the war. Visual sources are utilized to better understand crucial moments such as the battle of Gallipoli and the war in the Arabian desert, where T.E. Lawrence led an uprising that helped to defeat the Ottoman Empire. We study the war in the air, in which pilots like Manfred von Richtofen, €˜The Red Baron€™, drove terror into the hearts of his adversaries in the skies above France. We take a close look at the sinking of the Lusitania, which precipitated America€™s entry into the war, and also at the battle of the Argonne Forest, where the €˜Lost Battalion€™ of the American 77th Division held fast against overwhelming German attacks. Even though the last shots of this war were fired more than a century ago, the shock waves of this epic conflict are still being felt today.