World War I

During the War, soldiers lived in the trenches for weeks at a time, fighting boredom and terror and enduring cold, mud, rats, and disease.

• True

• False

To attack, the soldiers charged “over the top” of their own trenches and ran across “no man’s land” to the enemy’s trenches.

• True

• False

The Battle of Verdun was one of the bloodiest of the war, causing both sides to suffer more than a half-million casualties.

• True

• False

The British introduced a new weapon during the battle of the Somme–an armored vehicle called the jeep.  It was still to clumsy and slow to be an effective weapon, however. 

• True

• False

The year 1916 opened with the war on the Western Front still stalemated.

• True

• False

Later that year, the Russians, aided by France, launched an offensive against the Germans in the Somme River valley in northern France.

• True

• False

World War I proved to be the breaking point for czarist rule in Russia.  By 1917, morale in the Russian army had reached bottom.

• True

• False

The provisional government, which consisted of middle-class Duma representatives, soon had a rival for power–the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies.

• True

• False

One man who moved easily between the provisional government and the Petrograd Soviet was Czar Nicholas II, a moderate socialist.

• True

• False

The Bolsheviks’ leader, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, urged them to make plans to topple the provisional government from power.

• True

• False