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The Great War
1914 – 1918
They called it "the war to end all wars." It was supposed to be over by Christmas. Instead, it lasted four years, killed twenty million people, and destroyed an entire generation. It redrew the map of the world, toppled four empires, and planted the seeds of an even deadlier war twenty years later.
In this simulation, you are a British war correspondent covering the conflict from its first shot to its final silence. You will witness the key battles, confront the decisions that sent millions to their deaths, and face the questions that soldiers in the trenches asked every day: What are we fighting for? And is it worth the cost?
The people in this story were real. The battles happened. The mud, the wire, and the graves are still there.
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Field Dispatch
War Correspondent — British Expeditionary Force
PRIORITY FILING — BATTLE OF THE SOMME, JULY 1, 1916
You have just witnessed the worst day in British military history. As a credentialed war correspondent attached to the BEF, you are filing an urgent dispatch from behind the lines at the Somme. Complete this form carefully — your dispatch will be transmitted to your newspaper's editorial desk and may shape how millions of people at home understand what just happened.
Note: This is an educational simulation. However, the decisions journalists made about how to report the Somme had enormous consequences for public understanding of the war. Military censors controlled what correspondents could publish — many of the truths about July 1 did not reach the British public for weeks or months.
I certify that this dispatch is based on my best reporting and judgment as a credentialed correspondent. I understand that this filing will be reviewed by military censors before publication. I accept that certain operational details may be redacted for security purposes, but I affirm that the substance of this report is truthful and accurate.
Primary Source
Wilfred Owen — "Dulce et Decorum Est" (1917)
Written in 1917 while Owen was recovering from shell shock at Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh, where he met Siegfried Sassoon. The poem describes a gas attack on the Western Front with devastating clarity. Its title is taken from the Roman poet Horace: "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" — "It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country." Owen calls this "the old Lie." He was killed on November 4, 1918, one week before the armistice. He was 25 years old.
In January 1917, German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann sent a coded telegram to the German ambassador in Mexico proposing a military alliance against the United States. In exchange for Mexican support, Germany promised to help Mexico recover the territories of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona — lost in the Mexican-American War of 1848. British intelligence intercepted and decoded the telegram using codebreaking capabilities developed at Room 40 of the Admiralty. When the telegram was made public on March 1, 1917, it caused an explosion of outrage in the United States and was a major factor in America's decision to enter the war five weeks later.
President Woodrow Wilson — Address to Congress Requesting a Declaration of War (April 2, 1917)
On April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson stood before a joint session of Congress and asked for a declaration of war against Germany. Wilson had won re-election just five months earlier on the slogan "He kept us out of war." But Germany's resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare and the Zimmermann Telegram had made neutrality untenable. Wilson framed America's entry not as a war of conquest but as a crusade for democracy: "The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty." Congress voted to declare war four days later. Over two million American soldiers would eventually serve in France.
Siegfried Sassoon — "Finished with the War: A Soldier's Declaration" (July 1917)
In July 1917, Second Lieutenant Siegfried Sassoon — a decorated combat officer who had earned the Military Cross and been recommended for the Victoria Cross — sent a letter to his commanding officer declaring that he was "finished with the War." The statement was read aloud in the House of Commons by a sympathetic MP. Sassoon accused the military and political leadership of prolonging the war through "deliberate cruelty and incompetence," and said that the war was "being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it." The Army, unwilling to court-martial a war hero, sent him to Craiglockhart War Hospital for treatment of "shell shock" — where he met and mentored a young poet named Wilfred Owen.
The armistice was signed at 5:00 a.m. on November 11, 1918, in the railway carriage of Supreme Allied Commander Ferdinand Foch in the Forest of Compiègne. The terms required Germany to immediately evacuate all occupied territory (including Alsace-Lorraine), withdraw its forces behind the Rhine, surrender enormous quantities of artillery, machine guns, aircraft, locomotives, and railway cars, and release all Allied prisoners of war. The naval terms required the surrender of the German submarine fleet and the internment of the High Seas Fleet. The armistice was initially set for 36 days and was renewed multiple times until the Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919.
Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles — The "War Guilt Clause" (June 28, 1919)
Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles forced Germany to accept sole responsibility for causing the war: "The Allied and Associated Governments affirm and Germany accepts the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies." This clause — known as the "War Guilt Clause" — became the legal basis for demanding reparations from Germany and was one of the most bitterly resented provisions of the treaty. Germans across the political spectrum rejected the idea that Germany bore sole responsibility for a war that all the great powers had helped to cause. The resentment fueled nationalist movements, including the Nazi Party, and Adolf Hitler made repudiation of Versailles a central promise of his political platform.