Alsace-Lorraine

World War I was one of the most gruesome wars in history, with a death toll of 8.5 million and 20 million were left injured as a result of the war. Why so many innocent people joined to fight in the war? It was because of the glorification of war and people romanticized about experiences in war. The government told half-truths to the people in order to boost their nationalism which would benefit them when fighting the war. As a result, most of the civilian population believed that war was…

accountable for many of the damage done during the war. “The treaty had clauses that resulted in areas of land being taken from Germany”.(7) Several maps printed will clearly show that Germany suffered large territorial losses. “The provinces of Alsace and Lorraine returned to France; parts of Schleswig were ceded to Denmark; to the east, new countries were created to roughly match the ethnic balance of the area and finally, 'The Polish Corridor' was created which gave the Poles a broad strip…

Visual WWI Memory Project by: Lance Canlas Conditions/ Life in the Trenches Conditions in the trenches were considered horrific and filthy, with many men living in a very small area. Living half underground and being unable to cleanse yourself for days or weeks on end created severe health risks for the soldiers. Rats were a common pest that would spread disease and inevitably infect hundreds of soldiers for months. Lice would also spread disease and would often live in the hair follicles of…

On August 25, 1944 Paris was liberated by Allied forces just seven weeks after the Normandy landings. Hitler’s order to have the city razed to the ground, an order executed in the cultural capitals of Warsaw and later by the Allied forces in Berlin, was not realized and French troops loyal to the resistance fought off German forces and reclaimed the city without the use of urban warfare. On the same day that Paris was liberated General Charles de Gaulle, leader of the Free French resistance…

1. The Opium Wars contributed to the creation of Imperialism greatly. Right before the first war, Chinese leaders were trying to purge themselves of the drug making Europeans upset. They believed they had the right to trade with whomever they wanted which led to fighting. British beat the Chinese and with the Treaty of Nanking got trading privileges, and access to five cities and Hong Kong, controlling trade. After the second war, other countries thought they should have the same rights and…

WWI waged on for a devastating four years, yet in only six weeks, France succumbed to German attack and plunged society into its next world war. Historians wrestle with explanations, trying to pin-point specific political, psychological and military French failures which were the catalyst for the actual Fall of France. For these researchers, trying to demystify events often resurrects their own personal perspectives on history. Sometimes their bias seeps into their works. None-the-less, Julian…

BIOLOGY OF A MONSTER When we look at Adolf Hitler’s life, for the most part see a monster, which killed millions of people who he thought were of lessor life. He can be described as one who brought terrible tragedy upon our world with his ideologies of a great race, need for land, and thirst for that power that was lost in the Great War. By all means Hitler was all of those terrible things that we have stuck in the vision of our minds, but what brought him to that breaking point? At what point…

Although it is generally agreed upon that the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary was the event that sparked World War I, this singular act was really just the last straw. Such a bloody, widespread conflict, cannot be explained away or blamed on just one event, but as the war was so devastating, placing blame was something everyone seemed eager to do when it came time to create peace in 1919 with the Treaty of Versailles. As such, the question became: is it possible to…

The long nineteenth century was undoubtedly the most unstable periods of French history which saw numerous varying regimes govern over the French people. However, as a result of a constant inability to represent the interests of its people, these regimes came and went in perhaps the most bloodiest of means, whether that was the horrifying events of la Terreur or the disastrous defeat by the new German state during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71. Arguably, the most interesting of these…