Development Of New Weapons During The World War I

World War I, or The Great War, is one of the biggest wars with the massive scale of destruction. It had impacted the way people lived and forced people to developed new weapons and techniques to fight against each other. One main reason that World War I has militarism, the competition between nations’ armies and weapons. During World War I, various types of weapons had been developed in order to the victory on the battlefields, new techniques had been introduced, including, the convoy system, the trench warfare, bomber aircraft, and more. Meanwhile, citizens were forced to build and work on war supplies. World War I forced people to develop new weapons and change the way people lived by forcing them to work harder to boost production. During World War I, after the United States had joined in the battle, a lot of money ha been used to buy weapons and equipment, also some of that had been invested in researching. This required increasing industrial output and retooling some plants to produce military material. This ramp-up was not accomplished easily, as many young men went into military service. To meet their production targets, many factories introduced overtime and speedups, some of which led to resistance and strikes. The National War Labor Board (NWLB) was created to make sure industrial disputes ended through voluntary, peaceful arbitration. Its main purpose was to keep labor disputes from disrupting the country's many large contracts for war supplies. It was created by the executive order of President Woodrow Wilson in 1918, the nonstatutory NWLB did not have the force of law, but relied upon cooperation between employers and workers and upon patriotic public opinion for its decisions to be carried out. The board main purpose was to prevent the strike and win workers’ right by using the collective bargaining technique. Collective bargaining is a process for determining terms and conditions of employment that involves negotiations between an employer and representatives of the employees, usually a labor union. Collective bargaining can transform the employment relationship from an at-will relationship, in which workers can be fired or quit at any time for any reason, to a bilateral relationship in which workers have a voice and representation.

The effectiveness of the boards is easily seen when one looks at the increased levels of capital or labor conflict that occurred once the boards were dissolved. NWLB was not enough to put down the strike by itself, so the government decided to introduce a new technique to boost workers’ morale; the propaganda. “World War I was the first great war in history in which media played an important role. As one German observer put it, propaganda was ‘more powerful than the navy, more dangerous than the army’. Propaganda could be used to arouse hatred of the foe, warn of the consequences of defeat, and idealize one's own war aims in order to mobilize a nation, maintain its morale, and make it fight to the end.” The propaganda and NWLB share the goals in commons; to reduce the worker strike chance and help boost workers’ morale. Numerous weapons have been developed during World War I, one of the deadliest weapons not the gun, but the poison gas. These poison gas are known as Chemical Warfare. “Chemical Warfare is the use of lethal or disabling chemical agents against an enemy force or people. The agents can take the form of gasses, liquids, or solids and may also be deployed against animals or plants to deny the enemy resources”. There is another similar technique called the biological warfare. Biological Warfare is a related activity and can be deployed against the same targets of Chemical Warfare, but it involves the use of infectious microbes that can sicken or kill. As the fighting of World War I reached a stalemate in the trenches of a massive front that stretched across France, both sides turned to more decisive measures to gain the upper hand. The Germans moved first, releasing chlorine gas along their front in Ypres, Belgium on April 22, 1915. As the stinging, asphyxiating gas blew over the French lines, the soldiers panicked and fled their positions, but fortunately, the introduction of gas masks reduced the effectiveness of the weapon, which saved a lot of soldier lives. Meanwhile, Germany and the United States had introduced light machine guns, which is a lighter version of the normal machine guns. “The machine gun is the weapon with devastating firepower, but because their heaviness and their recoil power, it must be mounted on the tripod before use”.

The light machine guns are basically the machine gun with lower firepower, lower recoil, and lower weight, allowed soldier to use them in combat instantly without setting up the tripod. Later in the war, German had developed their first flamethrower. “The flamethrower was designed by a Berlin chemical engineer. The flamethrower is either used as a support unit that used to suppressed soldiers in the battlefield, or it can be used as a defensive weapon in the trench”. The first flamethrower assault of the war took place on February 26, 1915, when this battalion successfully attacked and routed the French in defensive position north of Verdun in the forest of Malancourt. As a result, this battalion was expanded to 800 men and was used to attack British troops during the Second Battle of Ypres in July 1915. By the battles of the Somme and Verdun, flamethrowers were used increasingly, especially in trench raids, by German, British, and French forces. World War I forced people to develop new weapons and change the way people lived. Five years of destruction came from nothing but the desired to gain the upper hand and archive the victory in the war. Five years of destruction resulted in twenty million lives sacrificed, half of the number were innocent civilians, new weapons and techniques were brought up, and the workers must work harder to maintain their normal life. This massive war was given a nickname “The War to End All War”, however, a few years later, a new war force people to bring up their weapons and fight in the battlefield forced people to work harder to fulfill the will to win the war. This proved that humans are competitive, and they will do anything to archive whatever they wanted.