The Great War from A to Z
From Aircraft to Zeppelin, here is an A to Z of the Great War:
AIRCRAFT: Combat aviation was still in its infancy in 1914, but by the end of hostilities France alone had some 3,700 aircraft. Verdun, in eastern France, was host to the world's first large-scale aerial battle.
BLOCKADE: Britain's supremacy over the seas enabled it to inflict a punishing economic blockade on its enemies. The naval blockade of the Central Powers -- starving their population and hobbling their economies -- was eventually decisive in tipping the balance in the Allies' favor.
COLONIAL WARFARE: The contribution of blood and riches from colonies from Algeria to Australia and Jamaica was critical to Allied victory, with 1.5 million men mobilized in India alone.
DARDANELLES: The Allies in 1915 launched a Franco-British naval expedition to unblock the strait giving access to Istanbul and the Black Sea. Led by a young Winston Churchill, the entire campaign was a failure, marked by a disastrous attempt to land troops from Australia and New Zealand at Gallipoli.
EMPIRES: The five great empires of the world -- British, Austro-Hungarian, German, Russian and Ottoman -- plunged into conflict, with only the British Empire surviving the war. The Russian Empire was overthrown in the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and the other three were dismantled in the peace settlement.
FRATERNISING: During quieter times, it was not uncommon for rival trench lines to observe tacit periods of truce -- as at Christmas 1914 when French, Scottish and German troops emerged from their trenches to share gifts and sweets and play football.
GAS: Poison gas brought a previously unknown level of terror to soldiers on the front line. Panicked, blinded and choking, thousands died in agony. Chlorine poison gas was first used by German forces at Ypres in April 1915, followed by mustard gas in 1917. Although gas attacks caused less than one percent of all war deaths, their horror would permanently scar the collective imagination.
HEADQUARTERS: The deployment of unprecedented numbers of combat troops in World War I meant battles could no longer be fought under the eye of a single commander. Fighting was extended over dozens of miles, following commands from generals based in headquarters far behind the frontline.
INFLUENZA: A Spanish Influenza epidemic that broke out at the end of the war claimed 20 to 40 million lives between 1917 and 1919, among populations often weakened by years of deprivation.
JEWISH HOMELAND: World War I redrew the map of the Middle East, sowing the seeds of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Cutting across agreements with the French and the Arabs, the British promised a homeland for Jewish people in Palestine under the Balfour Doctrine of 1917, the basis for the creation of the Israeli state three decades later.
KAMERAD: Meaning "comrade," the cry sounded by German soldiers when they surrendered.
LEAGUE OF NATIONS: Set up under the Treaty of Versailles of 1919, it is the first attempt at a global security organisation. But the precursor to the United Nations was hobbled by the United States' refusal to take part -- despite having helped design it -- and proved powerless to prevent World War II.
MUTINY: Mutiny broke out in French ranks in 1917 after the disastrous Chemin des Dames offensive, with tens of thousands downing their weapons. On the losing side of the war, the October 1918 mutiny in the German navy in Kiel helped accelerate the collapse of the German empire. Likewise, the Russian army mutinies of 1917 fueled the unrest that brought about the Bolshevik Revolution.
NO MAN'S LAND: The name given, from the end of 1914, to the ravaged expanses between enemy trench lines, sometimes only a few dozen meters apart.
OTTOMAN EMPIRE: Broken up following World War I, the Ottoman Empire lost its Arabian possessions and was subsequently invaded by British, Italian and Greek forces, until a fight for independence that led to the foundation of the modern Turkish state in 1923.
World War I saw the Turks carry out a campaign of massacres against Armenians it accused of backing the Russian enemy, so savage as to be qualified as genocide.
POILU: The French name given to the conflict's foot soldiers -- meaning "the unshaven". Australia and New Zealand called them "Diggers", for Britain it was "Tommies", America had "Sammies", Germany "Landsers" and the Turks "Mehmetcik".
QUAGMIRE: For three years of World War I, millions of soldiers were holed up in a warren of trenches, fighting and dying in nightmarish conditions along a barely moving frontline. For the French, British, Germans and others who saw combat on the Western Front, the rain and biting cold, the stench of death and scourge of rats would haunt their lives as much as the enemy onslaught.
REPARATIONS: The punitive war reparations demanded of Germany were intended to cover everything from interest on war loans to pensions for war widows. The Allied demands were eventually dropped in 1932, but the festering resentment they caused is widely credited for sowing the seeds of World War II.
SHELLS: Heavy artillery played a crucial role in the conflict with more than 1.3 billion shells fired, causing 70 percent of all military casualties. Barrages of artillery and constant sniper fire gave rise to the term shell-shock, the trauma and mental breakdown suffered by many soldiers on the Western Front.
TANKS: The new caterpillar-tracked armored vehicle developed by the British and first used in combat at the Somme in September 1916. Initially clumsy, plodding and prone to break-downs, it was perfected by both the French and British to become a key tool for penetrating enemy lines in the closing stages of the war.
U-BOAT: Unable to compete with Britain above the waterline, Germany turned its attention to the submarine, or "U-boat". By 1917, Germany set itself a target of sinking 600,000 tonnes of shipping every month, and was at first successful, until the Allies developed a convoy system to protect their ships.
VERDUN: The battle that came to symbolize the war for the French. German forces launched an offensive on February 21, 1916 to try to force Paris to the negotiating table. French troops eventually contained the German drive and won back most of the terrain lost in early fighting. The battle lasted until December 18 at a staggering cost of at least 770,000 dead, missing or wounded.
For the British and Germans, the war's defining battle was the Somme, its most deadly with total casualties of 1.2 million including 440,000 dead or missing.
WILSON: Thomas Woodrow Wilson, the U.S. president who brought his country into the war in 1917, declaring it a crusade for democracy and the rights and liberties of small nations.
SOLDIER X: Unknown soldiers -- their bodies recovered from World War I battlefields -- lie buried under the Paris Arc de Triomphe and in Westminster Abbey in London to symbolize the sacrifice of war, a gesture repeated in most of the warring nations.
YPRES: The First Battle of Ypres, in 1915, saw the end of mobile warfare on the Western Front, giving way to three years of trench warfare along a line stretching from the North Sea to Switzerland.
ZEPPELIN: German dirigible balloons, named after their chief sponsor Count von Zeppelin, were deployed early in the war by the Germans to carry out night raids on Brussels, Paris and London. But their overall role was negligible as they gave way to more reliable long-range aircraft.
