World War I Collection Trivia Quiz

Answer:

The Battle of Jutland took place between 3I May and I June 1916 in the North Sea, and was the only major sea battle of the First World War. The British fleet was led by John Jellicoe while the German commander was Reinhard Scheer. The name comes from the location, which was off the coast of Denmark's Jutland Peninsula. The outcome remains inconclusive, with both countries claiming victory and no consensus regarding which, if either, was the winner. There were two Battles of Cambrai, but the first, in 1917, had some significance as it was the first major battle in which tanks played a role. Their use to flatten barbed wire defences gave the British the advantage on the first day, but the German counter attack, relying on artillery and mortars, meant that the gains were small.

Barbed wire formed a major defence role for both sides in what became of war of attrition, with both armies in trenches. Tanks were a new innovation in World War I, although they were relatively slow and cumbersome, with some of the muddy battlegrounds being beyond what they could cope with.

Georges Clemenceau was the Prime Minister of France during the latter stages of the war, following an earlier stint from 1906 until 1909. He was Prime Minister from 1917 until 1920 and was one of the hard liners in dictating the terms of the Treaty of Versailles which brought the war to an end. John Pershing, perhaps better known as 'Black Jack', was the leader of the American Expeditionary Forces when the USA joined the war in 1917. He was already in his eighties during World War II and his contribution to this war was as a mentor the the younger crop of generals.

Gavrilo Princip could be blamed for starting the conflict as he was the man who assassinated
Archduke Franz Ferdinand (and his wife) in June 1914. The event took place in Sarajevo and was the excuse for the war to begin. Wilfred Owen was one of the war poets from World War I, along with Siegfried Sassoon and Rupert Brooke, to name just a couple. Maybe his best known poem is 'Dulce et Decorum Est' where he refers to the 'great lie' of it being an honour to die for one's country. Owen nearly survived the war, being killed in action only a few days before the Armistice.

Two pilots from the war also appear. Billy Bishop was a Canadian ace fighter pilot, winning the Victoria Cross for his achievements. He also survived the war, The Red Baron was the nickname of the German ace, Manfred von Richthofen, who had eighty combat victories to his name before his death in 1918. He was shot during an aerial dog fight, but there is still debate over who actually fired the fatal bullet.

Ypres, in Belgium, was the site of a series of battles with the first being in 1914 and the final one in 1918. The bloodiest was the Battle of Passchendaele, the Third Battle of Ypres, which lasted from July to November 1917. Casualties on both sides were huge, into the hundreds of thousands, but actual numbers are hard to establish and remain disputed. 'RMS Lusitania' was a passenger liner, which was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine off the coast of Ireland in May 1915 with the loss of over a thousand lives. Since many of the passengers were American, the sinking served to bring the war home to the USA and, eventually, brought the country into the war itself.

The Central Powers were Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire - the opponents were known as the Allies, France, Britain and Russia among them. Named for the location of Germany and Austria, the Central Powers were seen as the aggressors. The First World War brought an end to the Ottoman Empire, based primarily in Turkey, with destabilisation of the dynasties in the other main countries. Russia, one of the Allies of course, went through a revolution in 1917.

The incorrect answers are associated with the Second World War. Charles de Gaulle was the leader in exile of the Free French while Bernard Montgomery was a British Field Marshal. Robert Capa was a renowned war photographer. The Spitfire was a British fighter plane and the Tirpitz was a German battleship. The St Nazaire Raid took place in March 1942 when British forces attacked the dockyard there, as it was being used by the Germans to shelter and repair their ships. The Battle of Monte Cassino or the Battle for Rome, took place in 1944 as the Allies sought to drive the Germans out of Italy.