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Ypres, 1915
The Second Battle of Ypres was fought from 22 April – 25 May 1915, during the First World War, for control of the tactically-important high ground to the east and the south of the Flemish town of Ypres, in western Belgium. The First Battle of Ypres had been fought the previous autumn. The Second Battle of Ypres was the first mass use by Germany of poison gas on the Western Front. Background The German chemist Walther Nernst, who in 1914 was a volunteer driver, proposed to Colonel Max Bauer, the German general staff officer responsible for liaison with scientists, that they could empty the opposing trenches by a surprise attack with tear gas. Observing a field test of this idea, the chemist Fritz Haber instead proposed using heavier-than-air chlorine gas. The German commander Erich von Falkenhayn agreed to try the new weapon but intended to use it in a diversionary attack by the 4th Army. Falkenhayn wanted to use the gas to cover the transfer of Imperial German Army u ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Western Front (World War I)
The Western Front was one of the main Theatre (warfare), theatres of war during World War I. Following the outbreak of war in August 1914, the Imperial German Army, German Army opened the Western Front by German invasion of Belgium (1914), invading Luxembourg and Belgium, then gaining military control of important industrial regions in Third Republic of France, France. The German advance was halted with the First Battle of the Marne, Battle of the Marne. Following the Race to the Sea, both sides dug in along a meandering line of fortified trench warfare, trenches, stretching from the North Sea to the Swiss frontier with France, the position of which changed little except during early 1917 and again in 1918. Between 1915 and 1917 there were several offensives along this Front (military), front. The attacks employed massive artillery bombardments and massed infantry advances. Entrenchments, machine gun emplacements, barbed wire, and artillery repeatedly inflicted severe casualties ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fritz Haber
Fritz Jakob Haber (; 9 December 1868 – 29 January 1934) was a German chemist who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918 for his invention of the Haber process, a method used in industry to synthesize ammonia from nitrogen gas and hydrogen gas. This invention is important for the large-scale synthesis of fertilizers and Explosive material, explosives. It is estimated that a third of annual global food production uses ammonia from the Haber–Bosch process, and that this food supports nearly half the world's population. For this work, Haber has been called one of the most important scientists and industrial chemists in human history. Haber also, along with Max Born, proposed the Born–Haber cycle as a method for evaluating the lattice energy of an ionic solid. Haber, a known German nationalist, is also considered the "father of chemical warfare" for his years of pioneering work developing and Chlorine#Use as a weapon, weaponizing chlorine and other poisonous gases during ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Otto Hahn
Otto Hahn (; 8 March 1879 – 28 July 1968) was a German chemist who was a pioneer in the field of radiochemistry. He is referred to as the father of nuclear chemistry and discoverer of nuclear fission, the science behind nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons. Hahn and Lise Meitner discovered isotopes of the radioactive elements isotopes of radium, radium, Isotopes of thorium, thorium, isotopes of protactinium, protactinium and isotopes of uranium, uranium. He also discovered the phenomena of atomic recoil and nuclear isomerism, and pioneered rubidium–strontium dating. In 1938, Hahn, Meitner and Fritz Strassmann Discovery of nuclear fission, discovered nuclear fission, for which Hahn alone was awarded the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. A graduate of the University of Marburg, which awarded him a doctorate in 1901, Hahn studied under Sir William Ramsay at University College London and at McGill University in Montreal under Ernest Rutherford, where he discovered several new radi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughly one-sixth of the world's landmass, making it the list of largest empires, third-largest empire in history, behind only the British Empire, British and Mongol Empire, Mongol empires. It also Russian colonization of North America, colonized Alaska between 1799 and 1867. The empire's 1897 census, the only one it conducted, found a population of 125.6 million with considerable ethnic, linguistic, religious, and socioeconomic diversity. From the 10th to 17th centuries, the Russians had been ruled by a noble class known as the boyars, above whom was the tsar, an absolute monarch. The groundwork of the Russian Empire was laid by Ivan III (), who greatly expanded his domain, established a centralized Russian national state, and secured inde ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary, also referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Dual Monarchy or the Habsburg Monarchy, was a multi-national constitutional monarchy in Central Europe#Before World War I, Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. A military and diplomatic alliance, it consisted of two sovereign states with a single monarch who was titled both the Emperor of Austria and the King of Hungary. Austria-Hungary constituted the last phase in the constitutional evolution of the Habsburg monarchy: it was formed with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 in the aftermath of the Austro-Prussian War, following wars of independence by Hungary in opposition to Habsburg rule. It was dissolved shortly after Dissolution of Austria-Hungary#Dissolution, Hungary terminated the union with Austria in 1918 at the end of World War 1. One of Europe's major powers, Austria-Hungary was geographically the second-largest country in Europe (after Russian Empire, Russia) and the third-most populous (afte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eastern Front (World War I)
The Eastern Front or Eastern Theater, of World War I, was a theater (warfare), theater of operations that encompassed at its greatest extent the entire frontier between Russian Empire, Russia and Kingdom of Romania, Romania on one side and Austria-Hungary, Kingdom of Bulgaria, Bulgaria, the Ottoman Empire, and German Empire, Germany on the other. It ranged from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south, involved most of Eastern Europe, and stretched deep into Central Europe. The term contrasts with the Western Front (World War I), Western Front, which was being fought in Belgium and French Third Republic, France. Unlike the static warfare on the Western Front, the fighting on the geographically larger Eastern Front was maneuver warfare, more dynamic, often involving the flanking and encirclement of entire formations, and resulted in over 100,000 square miles of territory becoming occupied by a foreign power. At the start of the war Russia launched offensives agai ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Imperial German Army
The Imperial German Army (1871–1919), officially referred to as the German Army (), was the unified ground and air force of the German Empire. It was established in 1871 with the political unification of Germany under the leadership of Kingdom of Prussia, Prussia, and was dissolved in 1919, after the defeat of the German Empire in World War I (1914–1918). In the Federal Republic of Germany, the term refers to the German Army, the land component of the . Formation and name The states that made up the German Empire contributed their armies; within the German Confederation, formed after the Napoleonic Wars, each state was responsible for maintaining certain units to be put at the disposal of the Confederation in case of conflict. When operating together, the units were known as the German Federal Army, Federal Army (). The Federal Army system functioned during List of wars: 1800–1899, various conflicts of the 19th century, such as the First Schleswig War from 1848 to 1852. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
4th Army (German Empire)
The 4th Army () was an army level command of the German Army in World War I. It was formed on mobilisation in August 1914 from the VI Army Inspection. The army was disbanded in 1919 during demobilization after the war. History At the outset of war, the 4th Army, with the 5th Army, formed the center of the German armies on the Western Front, moving through Luxembourg and Belgium in support of the great wheel of the right wing that was to pin down and defeat the French armies. The 4th Army defeated Belgian forces on the frontier, drove the French out of the Ardennes and then encountered the British Expeditionary Force in the "Race to the Sea" at the First Battle of Ypres. The 4th Army faced the British in Flanders for the rest of the war, notably defending in the Battle of Passchendaele (1917), attacking in the 1918 German spring offensive and finally being pushed back in the Hundred Days Offensive from August 1918. At the end of the war it was serving as part of '' Heeresg ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Erich Von Falkenhayn
Erich Georg Sebastian Anton von Falkenhayn (11 September 1861 – 8 April 1922) was a German general and Ottoman Field Marshal who served as Prussian Minister of War and Chief of the German General Staff during the First World War. Falkenhayn replaced General Helmuth von Moltke the Younger in September 1914 after his invasion of France was stopped at the First Battle of the Marne and was in turn removed on 29 August 1916 after the failure of his offensive strategy in the west at the Battle of Verdun, the opening of the Battle of the Somme, the Brusilov Offensive and the Romanian entry into the war. Having planned to win the war before 1917, the German army was reduced to hanging on. Falkenhayn was given important field commands in Romania and Syria. As a commander in the Middle East, he prevented a planned Ottoman deportation of Jews from Palestine. His reputation as a war leader was attacked in Germany during and after the war, especially by the faction supporting Field ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chlorine
Chlorine is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Cl and atomic number 17. The second-lightest of the halogens, it appears between fluorine and bromine in the periodic table and its properties are mostly intermediate between them. Chlorine is a yellow-green gas at room temperature. It is an extremely reactive element and a strong oxidizing agent, oxidising agent: among the elements, it has the highest electron affinity and the third-highest electronegativity on the revised Electronegativity#Pauling electronegativity, Pauling scale, behind only oxygen and fluorine. Chlorine played an important role in the experiments conducted by medieval Alchemy, alchemists, which commonly involved the heating of chloride Salt (chemistry), salts like ammonium chloride (sal ammoniac) and sodium chloride (common salt), producing various chemical substances containing chlorine such as hydrogen chloride, mercury(II) chloride (corrosive sublimate), and . However, the nature of fre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
German General Staff
The German General Staff, originally the Prussian General Staff and officially the Great General Staff (), was a full-time body at the head of the Prussian Army and later, the Imperial German Army, German Army, responsible for the continuous study of all aspects of war, and for drawing up and reviewing plans for mobilization or campaign. It existed unofficially from 1806, and was formally established by law in 1814. The first Staff (military), general staff in existence, it was distinguished by the formal selection of its officers by intelligence and Merit system, proven merit rather than patronage or wealth, and by the exhaustive and rigorously structured training which its staff officers undertook. The Prussian General Staff also enjoyed greater freedom from political control than its contemporaries, and this autonomy was enshrined in law on the unification of Germany and the establishment of the German Empire in 1871. It came to be regarded as the home of Militarism#Germany, G ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
