9 Reasons to Study World War 1

For homeschoolers, and others considering a unit on World War 1:

It's always fun comparing what happened 100 years ago today, and playing, "had they but known...."

1. More fun dressing up in a pickle helmet (Pickelhaube) than any helmet since.
2. Yes! The Red Baron was actually a baron! (Now find out what is a baron compared to a count, a duke, an earl, a knight, and Queen Victoria.)
3. How about studying Queen Victoria's family tree, and how it affected the war? (A gene for hemophilia results in a major power falling apart, which results in the British king's cousin almost overrunning Europe....)
4. First war fought in the third dimension (yes there were balloons before, but the balloons weren't attacking each other.) Being behind the front lines doesn't mean so much anymore.
5. Calculate the miles of trenches across Europe. Did you include both sides? Did you include the front trenches and the back trenches with rooms in them? What volume of earth was moved, by hand shovels, under fire, assuming trenches were at least as deep and wide as a man?
6. For the medically inclined: learn about trenchfoot, trench fever, the effect of various poison gases on the lungs, and most of all the spread of the influenza pandemic.
7. After 1000 years of Britain fighting France, why were they allies in WWI? (Hint: look where the attention of the German states had been for 1000 years. Note how new a concept "Germany" was.)
8. Try understanding WWII, today's Middle East tensions, America as a superpower, submarines, tanks, airplanes, and total war without understanding WWI!

And finally, you have heard of the "guns of August"; did you ever stop to notice how few days in the month of August 1914 DIDN'T have somebody declaring war on somebody? Looking at the story as shown on our t-shirt below, does the term "dogpile" come to mind?