Recent Event Highlights: The Fourteen Points, Fourteen Points, and 7 more...
Created by apingel on Oct 21, 2010
Last updated: 10/25/10 at 06:56 PM
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The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Treaty of Versailles, it came into being after World War One ended. The task of this organization was simple...to ensure that war never broke out again.
The Treaty of Versailles was one of the peace treaties that ended World War One. The treaty had 440 clauses...the first 26 had to do with the establishment of the League of Nations and the rest spelled out Germany's punishment.
1) Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view. 2) Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of international covenants. 3) The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance. 4) Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety. 5) A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined. 6) The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest cooperation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own political development and national policy and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions of her own choosing; and, more than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that she may need and may herself desire. The treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations in the months to come will be the acid test of their good will, of their comprehension of her needs as distinguished from their own interests, and of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy. 7) Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and restored, without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other free nations. No other single act will serve as this will serve to restore confidence among the nations in the laws which they have themselves set and determined for the government of their relations with one another. Without this healing act the whole structure and validity of international law is forever impaired. 8) All French territory should be freed and the invaded portions restored, and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years, should be righted, in order that peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all. 9) A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality. 10) The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity to autonomous development. 11) Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied territories restored; Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea; and the relations of the several Balkan states to one another determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines of allegiance and nationality; and international guarantees of the political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan states should be entered into. 12) The turkish portion of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guarantees. 13) An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant. 14) A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.
Fourteen Points was a speech given by President Woodrow Wilson. The intent of this speech was to assure the country that the Great War was being fought for a moral cause.
This act was passed by Congress on May 18, 1917. It was later drafted by Captain Hugh Johnson after the US entered WW1. This act authorized the fed. government to require all male citizens between the age of 21 and 31to register for the draft.
Conscientious Objectors were people who did not want to fight in World War One. These people had many reasons for not wanting to be involved in the war, ex: some were pacifists who were against the war in general, some religions such as the Jehovah Witnesses and the Quakers didn't allow their people to fight and be part of the war, and some were political objectors that did not consider Germany their enemy.
This war was between Germany and France, and was fought in the city of Verdun in north-eastern France.
After the US declared war on Germany they soon realized that their army of 126,000 men wasn't enough and even before the Selective Service Act was passed African American males eagerly joined the war effort, viewing the conflict as an opportunity to prove their worthiness, loyalty, and patriotism for equal treatment in the US.
Trenches were a form of field fortification, consisting of parallel rows of trenches. They began to appear in late 1914 and soon became home to millions of soldiers.
By 1914 thousands of women were working in munition factories, offices and hangars to build aircraft's. They also did voluntary work and knitted socks for the soldiers on the front. Many were employed on the line of communication where they performed tasks such as: store-keeping, cooking and catering, telephony and administration, printing, and motor vehicle maintenance. They also played a big role in nursing the sick and wounded soldiers back to health.
The front line directly faced the enemy that was usually 200-800 meters away...this area was protected by barbed wire that was secretly stood up at night. Behind the front line were the reserve trenches aka the second line or support trenches. These were the second line of defense and were used if the front line was captured by the enemy. Depending on the situation there might be a third line of defense known as the communication trenches which were used for fresh troops, water, food, mail, ammunition, etc.
In 1914 the UK relied heavily on the imports to feed their population and to supply the was industry; aware of this, the German navy attempted to blockade and starve Britain using commerce raiders and submarine warfare. The Germans used their submarines a lot, sinking as many of their enemies as they could.
Alvin received the Medal of Honor for leading an attack on a German machine gun nest...taking 32 machine guns, capturing 132 German soldiers and killing 28. York was one of the most decorated American soldiers in World War One.
The Black Hand was a Serbian terrorist group. Bosnia and Herzegovina were provinces that had been under Austro-Hungarian administration since 1878. Austria annexed the provinces in 1908 which upset governments in the west and outraged the Greater-Serbian proponents because they wanted to be part of a Serbian led pan-Slav state. Because Ferdinand was the Austrian leader the Black Hand went after him for making this decision.
On June 28, 1914 Archduke Ferdinand and his wife of Austria were shot dead in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip. The purpose was to break off Austria-Hungary's south-Slav provinces so they could combine into Yugoslavia or a Greater Serbia.
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