The Great War, 1871–1923 · TEST YOURSELF
WWI quiz: 8 questions
Try these 8 multiple-choice questions on The Great War, 1871–1923 for free. After each answer, you can read the explanation.
Germany allowed its Reinsurance Treaty with Russia to lapse in 1890. What was the most important consequence?
Once the treaty lapsed, Russia could seek another partner. France, itself isolated since 1871, offered both loans and an alliance. The military convention ratified in 1894 put blue on the map at both of Germany’s borders. Facing the possibility of a war on two fronts, German generals moved toward the Schlieffen plan: defeat France before Russia was ready.
Why did the Western Front settle into trench warfare for four years?
An attacker on foot faced machine guns, wire and quick-firing artillery. Even when troops opened a breach, defenders could use railways to reach it faster than the attackers could cross the shelled zone. This was a problem of arithmetic, not cowardice.
What allowed Brusilov’s June 1916 offensive to succeed where every other attack failed?
Brusilov avoided the telltale massing of troops at a single point. His forces dug saps close to the enemy and spread their reserves wide, achieving surprise across 300 km and shattering Austria-Hungary. Russia’s railways, shells and state could sustain such an effort once; they could not repeat it.
How should we assess Jutland (1916), the war’s only great fleet battle?
Britain lost more ships at Jutland, yet the blockade held and the German High Seas Fleet never seriously sortied again. The distinction between losses and the strategic result is captured in the observation: “the prisoner has assaulted his jailer, but he is still in jail.”
Germany’s unrestricted U-boat campaign in 1917 aimed to sink 600,000 tons a month and starve Britain before America could matter. What upset that calculation?
Convoys brought merchant ships together under escort. A U-boat had fewer isolated ships to find, and an attack meant confronting their escorts. Losses fell by two-thirds as U-boat sinkings doubled. The gamble’s one lasting result was American belligerency.
When America entered the war in April 1917, how did it first change the balance?
The Entente’s dollar credit was weeks from exhaustion in 1917, so American credit, shipping and supplies mattered before large numbers of soldiers arrived. The doughboys’ weight told in 1918, when the arithmetic had already turned.
Germany’s spring offensives in 1918 finally broke the trench deadlock. Why did they still fail?
“We chop a hole; the rest follows” — yet the rest did not follow. Germany suffered a million casualties to gain salients of shelled mud, while 10,000 Americans landed daily. Tactical brilliance could not make up for the failures of strategy.
Why did the “stab-in-the-back” myth, which held that Germany’s army had never really been beaten, take root?
No Allied soldier stood on German soil at the armistice, leaving room for a gap between the defeat and how it appeared to civilians. Ludendorff, who had demanded the armistice, later helped blame socialists and republicans. That gap became a birth defect of Weimar.
YOUR RESULT
The full map quiz adds 9 questions you answer by finding the place on the map.
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