World War I Final

Instructions: Do two of the following questions posted on this page. In your answer, provide the analysis and evidence that is required as well as the documentation, i.e., footnotes/endnotes or bibliography that is required to successfully complete the assignment. The final is due sometime during final week, and should be turned in no later than Friday by e-mail as an attachment in MSWord format by December 14, 2007. 

1. World War I was called the “war to end all wars”; however, the peace that followed made sure that would not happen. Why did the Versailles Conference fail? Who was responsible? What went wrong? Explain.
2. One can argue that World War I was the birth of modernity. Is that true? How did the First World War change world history? What is the political and social legacy of World War I?
3. World War I was not sexy like other conflicts in the twentieth century. As a result, people tended to forget the sacrifices that made in places like Flanders, the Somme, and Verdun, just to name a few. Why is that? What accounts for the amnesia that has plagued society following the war? How did the former belligerents remember the conflict and the men who fought in the trenches?
4. Ernst Jünger in Storm of Steel presented a graphic picture of the war from a soldier who lived the horrors of the war. How did his picture differ from what you had read before reading his account? What made his book more different than Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front?
5. The First World War demonstrated that the new technologies that emerged from the growth of industrialism far exceeded the tactical development of the belligerents. Why did happen? Use the lessons of Passchendaele to explain why that had happened?
6. How did World War I help mask Turkish intentions of finally resolving their problem with the Armenians? What made the Turkish decision to eliminate the Armenians genocide?
7. Sometimes myth and memory collide. How do we explain the strange event that occurred during Christmas of 1914? Was there a "truce?" How did it happen?
8. During World War II the United States became the great arsenal for democracy. What was the American role in the war during the war's early years? What factors drove the United States into conflict? How did the British help expedite Wilson's decision to declare war in the spring of 1917?
9. After it had become obvious that the war was stalemated on the Western Front, the British were looking for another theater to weaken the Central Powers. What happened at Gallipoli? Why did the British support the Arab rising against the Ottomans?
10. How significant was intelligence services in World War I? What role did British codebreakers play in Germany's eventual defeat?