World War I
From Wikinvestor
World War I (abbreviated WWI or WW1; also known as the First World War or the Great War) was a global war fought chiefly in Europe from 1914 to 1918.
The scale and intensity of the conflict were unprecedented, with more men fighting and more casualties in action than any prior human conflict. Over 60 million soldiers took part in the fighting. New technologies - machine guns, better artillery, advanced logistics, poison gas, aerial warfare and submarines - increased the scale of the carnage. The war claimed over 40 million casualties, including approximately 20 million civilian and military dead. Many of the events attendant upon the war - blockade, revolution, genocide and a global influenza pandemic - increased the misery.
The war had sweeping consequences for politics and diplomacy in the rest of the 20th century. The war resulted in the collapse and fragmentation of the Austria-Hungary Empire, the Russian Empire,and the Ottoman Empire. The German Empire was overthrown, and Germany lost territory. As a consequence, the maps of Europe and the Middle East were re-drawn; ancient monarchies were replaced by communist or democratic republics. For the first time, an international body, the League of Nations, was created to prevent war ever occurring again. The terms of the treaties ending the war, and the instability of new nations, were important factors leading towards World War II twenty years later.
The causes of the war can be traced to the unification of Germany in 1871,[citation needed] and the uneasy balance of power among the European Great Powers in the opening years of the 20th century. Additional spurs to conflict included continuing French resentment over the loss of territory to Germany in the 19th century; growing economic, military and colonial competition between Britain and Germany; and the continuing instability of Austro-Hungarian rule in the Balkans.
The proximate trigger for the war was the 28 June 1914 assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne by a Bosnian Serb. Austria-Hungary's demands for revenge against the Kingdom of Serbia led to the activation of a series of alliances which within weeks saw most European powers at war. Because of the global empires of many European nations, the war soon spread worldwide.
The war was fought between two major alliances. The Entente Powers initially consisted of France, the United Kingdom, Russia, and their associated empires and dependencies. Numerous other states joined these allies, most notably Japan in August 1914, Italy in April 1915, and the United States in April 1917. The Central Powers, so named because of their central location on the European continent, initially consisted of Germany and Austria-Hungary and their associated empires. The Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers in October 1914, followed a year later by Bulgaria. By the conclusion of the war, only The Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain, the Scandinavian nations, and Monaco remained officially neutral among the European countries, though several may have provided financial and material support to one side or the other.
The fighting of the war mostly took place along several fronts that broadly encircled the European continent. The Western Front was marked by a system of trenches, breastworks, and fortifications separated by an area known as no man's land. These fortifications stretched 475 miles (more than 600 kilometres) and precipitated a style of fighting known as trench warfare. On the Eastern Front, the vastness of the eastern plains and the limited railroad network prevented the stalemate of the Western Front, though the scale of the conflict was just as large. There was heavy fighting on the Balkan Front, the Middle Eastern Front and the Italian Front; there were also hostilities at sea and in the air.
