how did new technology change warfare in the first world war? can anyone help me??|||Well, take a look at the airplane. Entering the war it was pretty much viewed as just an observation platform. It was the pilots and observers who lead to real changes there. They realized that the other side was doing the same thing so if they took up some guns they could try shooting down the opposing side%26#039;s observervation planes. Also they realized that small hand held bombs or percussion grenades could be dropped on enemy lines from the air. Both these realizations lead directly to the development of the fighter, which was built specifically to shoot down other aircraft, and the bomber, which was built specifically to attack enemy troops and cities.
Fighters also offered the option to strafe enemy positions. Machine guns during WWI were even more bulky than they are today and thusly a bit like field artillery of about fifty years prior. That is to say it could be mobile but you more set it up in one position and left it there rather than move it forward. Yet fighters were a mobile machine gun platform that actually allowed the guns to be used offensively against the enemy rather than defensively as they were on the ground.
And bombers weren%26#039;t merely short range aircraft carrying light loads. By the end of the war you had bombers that could remain aloft for about eight hours and carry upwards of 7,500 lbs of bombs.|||The Tank was invented during world war 1.|||Think communications.|||Key issue: everyone expected a short, decisive war and instead they got years of trench deadlock.
This was because the defensive had become far more powerful than the offensive: it was almost impossible to successfully attack.
This situation was the result of technology: the repeating rifle (which allowed accurate fire out to over 500 metres, compared to under 100 metres fifty years earlier); the machine gun; %26#039;quick-firing%26#039; artillery, which specifically means an artillery gun that can fire repeatedly without having to be re-aimed every shot. These made it much easier to defend than attack.
These created the situation the warring nations found themselves in. They tried technologies to get their attacks going again, including flamethrowers, poison gas, and tanks (armoured vehicles).
Also contributing in a wide sense were railways and aeroplanes, which allowed rapid movement of armies and for excellent observation of the enemy.
Another way to look at the question is very broadly: WW1 was the first war between nations... not just their armies, but their whole economic and financial resources, with the whole national effort going toward the war. Industrialisation, colonisation and mass transport (steamships) and communication (electric telegraph) all created this situation, with the war being on a huge scale, lasting for years and destroying so much. So in this sense industrial technology and the organisation of society around it was the key thing, not a particular weapon.|||It was the industrial scale of warfare never before seen.
Trains could transport hundreds of thousands of troops to battlefields whereas in the American Civil War it was tens of thousands.
Industrial capacity could provide for huge armies supplied with food, ammunition, and weapons - - numbers of armed soldiers never before seen.
Automatic weapons - machine guns - first used.
Tanks, airplanes, submarines - all first used in WWI.|||Try asking this question instead: how did war change technology?
Wars bring about technology changes by showing a need in the field.
Tanks were talked about before the war, as a kind of moving fortress. But the war made industry creat a way to make them work.
Airplanes had military uses before WWI. The first ones were used as scouts, watching enemy movements or finding enemy positions. But the war brought about aerial combat. The first attempts to put machine guns on planes tended to shoot the propellers off the plane, Not good at 1000 feet, or at any altitude. So they developed a way to make the guns fire in sync with the propellers.
WWi had little effect on infantry weapons at the time, but it had some effect on the weapons of WWII. The light machine gun and submachine gun were developed from WWI experience and used with great effect in WWII by all sides.
The Axis poweres were still using WWI rifles in WWII but the US began using the automatic Garrand M1 which was a semiautomatic rifle which while not quite as accurate at 1000 yards as the Mousser, was more than accurate enough at 500 yards and very little infantry action took place at more than 500 yards.
But my point is that warfare changes technology before technology changes warfare.|||Trains, telegraphs, tanks, aircraft, and machine guns were new to European warfare, though trains and telegraphs were a staple for our Civil War.
The net effect of all of this technology was that huge armies could be mustered and fielded. Since the generals of the day mostly did not appreciate the effects of the new weapons, absolutely huge casulties resulted. Look up Passiondale.
