In March 1918, with nearly 50 additional divisions freed by the Russian surrender on the Eastern Front, the German Army launched a series of attacks on the Western Front, hoping to defeat the Allies before U.S. forces could be fully deployed. In the north, the British 5th Army was virtually destroyed by two major offensive operations, Michael and Georgette around the Somme. A third offensive launched in May against the French between Soissons and Reims, known as the Third Battle of the Aisne, saw the Germans reach the north bank of the Marne river at Château-Thierry, 95 kilometres (59 mi) from Paris, on 27 May. Two U.S. Army divisions, the 2nd and the 3rd, were thrown into the Allied effort to stop the Germans. On 31 May, the 3rd Division held the German advance at Château-Thierry and the German advance turned right towards Vaux and Belleau Wood.[3]…
Baumer receives seventeen days of leave, but will then be reported to a training base to return to the front in six weeks. While on leave we receive a better understanding of how war has changed our brave soldier and how he will never be the same. “I imagined leave would be different from this… at the time i still knew nothing about the war”(Remarque 75). As our narrator sees people in his hometown he now realizes he isn't the person he was before war “I have been crushed without knowing it… I find i do not belong here anymore”. He cannot shake the feeling of “strangeness” as he no longer feels at home in a place that used to think of as his safe place . His mother starts to asks if it was “very bad out there” yet Paul lies to her (Remarque…
Contrary to other literary history works, “All Quiet on the Western Front” by Remarque Erich Maria is so unique because of the way it displays such a realistic view of war and the associated loss of humanity, innocence, and emotion that accompany it. Throughout this novel, Remarque proves his point that war is unnecessary, and dishonorable. The novel really emphasizes on the accumulating body count everyday, showing every aspect of how war is absolutely gruesome and such a waste of pure lives. Also, “All Quiet on the Western Front” shows how the position of being in war can change a person dramatically preventing them from returning to their previous lives, and scarring them permanently.…
1. Paul feels alone in battle and his only friend and family seems to be mother earth. He finds comfort and protection with earth since he’s alone in battle and there’s nothing else protecting him except for earth’s materials like bushes and trees hiding him form the enemy. Like a mother would protect her son. I’m not sure if this has much to do with the Oedipus Complex but since Paul is loving the earth ever so passionately he probably subconsciously is yearning for something more than just a mother figure in his life.…
Germany had decided to march through Belgium and then proceed on to Paris from the North at high speed; their plan was to defeat France in 6 weeks. As they knew that France was allied with Russia they had to attack as fast as possible to avoid a double engagement from the East and West.…
▪ Under The Schlieffen Plan, Germany would seek to knockout France in a massive, lighting attack while just holding off the Russians in the east, and then, with France defeated, would deal with the Russians in what was likely to be a longer campaign.…
A lost generation, emotional destruction, the reality of war, these are all ideas displayed in the novel All Quiet on the Western Front that prove the validity of the statement in the preface. These ideas and more expressed by the author, Erich Maria Remarque, present the reader with the war novel of a lifetime. A war novel that is different from any other because of these ideas and the way Remarque presents them.…
In 1940 an attack on France by the Germans was imminent. On 10th May 1940, the Germans attacked. The French had built a line of strong fortifications on the Franco-German border called the Maginot Line. This was supposed to be an impregnable wall which the Germans could not get through. Instead, the Germans skirted round the north of the wall through a weakly defended region called the Ardennes. This was a rugged, mountainous forest which the French thought was impassable which is why they placed their weakest, worst troops there. This idea led to them placing troops in Belgium where they thought the Germans would attack from, just like in 1914. Meanwhile, the German plan, drawn up by Erich Von Manstein, called for the Germans to break through the Ardennes region and then head north, cutting off Allied troops in Belgium, a bit like a reverse Schlieffen Plan. This was a clever move by the Germans as they realised the Allies would be expecting an attack through Belgium and so used the element of surprise to catch them off guard. The Germans were supposed to take three days to cross the Ardennes but it only took them three hours. The Germans had to cross a single weir over River Meuse which was undefended and could have seriously hindered German advances if it was manned. The Germans stormed north and reached the English Channel in eleven days, facing little resistance along the way. This showed that the Allies were caught so off guard by the Germans that there was little they could do to stop them. The troops in Belgium did…
2. (TCO 6) The main fronts in World War I were in: (Points : 4)…
World War I had a definite impact on the European home front; the war was called total war for a reason. The term total war has many meanings when concerned with WWI, but it could also be talking about the fact that the civilians were directly impacted and involved in the war. The home front was impacted during WWI because women were having to replace the men in jobs, everyone was romanticizing the war at first then were struck by reality, and the people were having to ration food.…
The second battle of the Marne was the major event that marked the turning of the tide in the First World War. The battle began with the final German offensive of the conflict. This was closely followed by initial offensive victory in 1918. After succeeding in the previous four offensives against the French that took place between March and June 1998, General Erich, who was the Chief of the German Supreme Command, organized another offensive as a way of drawing the French solders further from the Flanders (Venzon, 2013). Notably, he planned to channel his concluding decisive offensive against this. Erich’s intention was to capture Reims and disorganize the French soldiers when he organized the diversionary attack. Notably, The US Expeditionary…
During World War I, many soldiers were impacted by the mental and physical effects that have changed their lives in positive, but mostly negative ways. There are two novels that talk about two men in World War I, however each tells a different story on their struggles on the battlefield. On one of the books, The Wars by Timothy Findley, focuses on the protagonist Robert Ross, a Canadian soldier that joined the war. Robert Ross mainly joined to war because it was his way of isolating himself after his sister’s death, while on the other book, All Quiet on The Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, in which the story is about a teenager named Paul Baumer. Paul Baumer is a German soldier who was influenced from his teacher that going to war was a courageous decision. War focuses us to sacrifice our humanity in exchange for survival, which leads us to our self-destruction, where we become like animals for the sake of our survival. The meaning behind this is that wars take our feelings and human instincts thus replacing them to animal instincts to survive. In the end, life becomes difficult to come back to which leads to our own destruction.…
The fighting of the war mostly took place along several fronts that broadly encircled the European continent. The Western Front was marked by a system of trenches, breastworks, and fortifications separated by an area known as no man's land.[5] These fortifications stretched 475 miles (more than 600 kilometres)[5] and precipitated a…
The Two Front war and the Schlieffen Plan both were both catalysts towards the incoming war in the European countries. Although The Schlieffen Plan was not successful, it used the ideas from the Second Punic War and today, leads the strategies of many military leaders alike. The Two Front War also used military-based philosophies which are now used today as…
The Schlieffen Plan was a plan created by the Germans which was created in order to help Germany win the war. It went like this: The Germans had some of the best railway systems in the world and this would enable them to transport troops quickly and efficiently to the front line. They decided to attack Belgium with lots of force so that they would have a quick and easy route into France. They did this by making the forces eight times stronger than the Ardennes Region troops. Then, six weeks later they would have encircled Paris from the East and West, making them surrender and the French making peace with them. Then they could transport the troops by rail to take down the Russians. They did this because they knew that they couldn’t take down both the French and the Russians at the same time.…