World War I History Help?

Question

I am doing an assignment on events of World War I, the battles, armaments, and the generals. I have searched across google and yahoo, and I don't want to rely on wikipedia since it can be changed by anyone at anytime. These are the ones that I couldn't find, or get a good explination of:
1. Royal Navy BLockade of Germany
2. League of Nations
Can somebody help me with this?

Answer 1

On 28 June 1914 the Austro-Hungarian successor to the throne, Arch-Duke Franz Ferdinand, and his wife, the Duchess of Hohenberg, were assassinated by a member of a band of Serbian conspirators. On August 1st, 1914 war errupted between Central Powers [Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire] and the Entente [France, Belgium, Great Britain, Italy, Russia and Serbia].

The War was caused in part by a military doomsday machine, devised by war planners who lacked firm political guidance. General war came about because statesmen lost control over their military machines during an international confrontation. Before the War, Germany’s military leaders faced the difficult strategic problem of preparing for a two-front war. Their solution was to develop an audacious strategy known as the Schlieffen Plan. In an attempt to obtain a quick military decision, Germany employed the Schlieffen Plan at the War’s outbreak. When this quick decision failed to occur, Germany’s leaders found themselves embroiled in a grinding war of attrition against a powerful coalition of opposing states.

World War I, "the Great War," lasted from 1914 through 1918. The Western Front was stalemated by static trench warfare, in which hundreds of thousands of men died in senseless attacks, from the beginning of the war until the armistice of November 1918.

When the fighting came to an end with the Armistice of November 11, 1918, more than eight million soldiers had lost their lives. An estimated 12-million civilians also perished. The war ended without clear solutions, leaving future military and political leaders to grapple with a host of strategic, tactical and technological dilemmas.

The peace settlement of 1919 remains a controversial topic. The international order created by this settlement lasted barely twenty years. The 1919 Versailles settlement failed to establish a stable international order, illustrating that winning a war does not always mean winning the peace. In the aftermath of the war, huge changes occurred. The center of wealth transferred from Europe to the United States; the political map of Europe was significantly redrawn; and Germany was left in financial shambles, its people driven to the brink of starvation - a situation that helped lead to the rise of Adolf Hitler and, ultimately, World War Two.

The organisation of the League of Nations

The League of Nations was to be based in Geneva, Switzerland. This choice was natural as Switzerland was a neutral country and had not fought in World War One. No one could dispute this choice especially as an international organisation such as the Red Cross was already based in Switzerland.

If a dispute did occur, the League, under its Covenant, could do three things - these were known as its sanctions:
It could call on the states in dispute to sit down and discuss the problem in an orderly and peaceful manner. This would be done in the League’s Assembly - which was essentially the League’s parliament which would listen to disputes and come to a decision on how to proceed. If one nation was seen to be the offender, the League could introduce verbal sanctions - warning an aggressor nation that she would need to leave another nation's territory or face the consequences.
If the states in dispute failed to listen to the Assembly’s decision, the League could introduce economic sanctions. This would be arranged by the League’s Council. The purpose of this sanction was to financially hit the aggressor nation so that she would have to do as the League required. The logic behind it was to push an aggressor nation towards bankruptcy, so that the people in that state would take out their anger on their government forcing them to accept the League’s decision. The League could order League members not to do any trade with an aggressor nation in an effort to bring that aggressor nation to heel.
if this failed, the League could introduce physical sanctions. This meant that military force would be used to put into place the League’s decision. However, the League did not have a military force at its disposal and no member of the League had to provide one under the terms of joining - unlike the current United Nations. Therefore, it could not carry out any threats and any country defying its authority would have been very aware of this weakness. The only two countries in the League that could have provided any military might were Britain and France and both had been severely depleted strength-wise in World War One and could not provide the League with the backing it needed. Also both Britain and France were not in a position to use their finances to pay for an expanded army as both were financially hit very hard by World War One.

I hope I helped you with this!!!

Answer 2

There's no need for any "revision" because there is ample scholarship published on this fire raid and the others which destroyed large portions of more than sixty Japanese cities. If you'd go to any decent public library and check out any book dealing with the air war in the Pacific or the 20th Air Force you'd find all the details you could ever want. Its not like its something anyone has ever tried to hide. Its just that the Japanese have decided they were victims in the war they started, and prefer to emphasize the nuclear attacks as they think this makes their victimhood special. The 20th Air Force originally tried to bomb as was done in Europe, from high altitude against industrial targets. The problems were that the winds aloft in the Pacific can exceed 200 mph, and dropping bombs from five miles up was producing few hits, and the Japanese further dispersed their production into a kind of cottage industry mode, with subcontractors working from their homes. Curtis LeMay had been a successful bomber commander in Europe when he was sent in to assume command of the 20th Air Force. He analyzed the results obtained so far and saw that nothing was being accomplished. He staked his career on radical changes. He did this on his own initiative, without seeking authority from any higher HQ. He removed guns and gunners from the B-29s, and sent them in at low altitude to drop incendiary bombs, reasoning that since traditional Japanese building methods involved wood and paper 20 pound incendiaries on many rooftops would overwhelm firefighting efforts. If he had been wrong his career would have ended, but it worked and he became the first commander of the Strategic Air Command. I assure you few of the aircrew lost any sleep over it at the time. Four Japanese cities, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki were deliberately spared fire raids to preserve them as nuclear targets. It may be they got off light, considering the firestorms some of these fire raids caused. The purpose of the raids was to destroy the Japanese means of producing war materials, and to kill and demoralize the workers in those industries.. This was crystal clear at the time, and any historians you may have read contending otherwise are revisionists who have ignored a multitude of sources. The results obtained were generally satisfying to many Americans but this does not change the purpose.

Answer 3

The royal navy (the brittish navy) blockaded germany in the north atlantic to choke off its shipping lanes, this cumulated with the Battle of The Jutland inwhich England destroyed the bulk of the german navy. As far as the league of nations, it was one of the stipulations in Wilson's "points of peace" for the aftermath of the war (basically one of the few stipulations the other western allies agreed upon). The league of nations was the precursor to the UN in many respects, it was an international political union of countries to regulate foreign policy and prevent another large scale war (of course they failed miserably because WWII happened not too long after, many credit the rise of hitler and WWII with the failure of the league of nations and other policies imposed on Germany by the western allies after WWI).

Answer 4

http://search.yahoo.com/search?ei=utf-8&fr=slv8-msgr&p=League%20of%20Nations