World War I, military conflict, from August 1914 to November 1918, that involved many of the countries of Europe as well as the United States and other nations throughout the world. World War I was one of the most violent and destructive wars in European history. Of the 65 million men who were mobilized, more than 10 million were killed and more than 20 million wounded. The term World War I did not come into general use until a second worldwide conflict broke out in 1939 (see World War II). Before that year, the war was known as the Great War or the World War. World War I was the first total war. Once the war began, the countries involved mobilized their entire populations and economic resources to achieve victory on the battlefield. The term home front, which was widely employed for the first time during World War I, perfectly symbolized this new concept of a war in which the civilian population behind the lines was directly and critically involved in the war effort. World War I began in August 1914. The two coalitions fighting were the Allied Powers (Britain, France, Russia, Italy, and others) and the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire). After the Central Powers were defeated in 1918, the two coalitions signed various peace treaties that changed the shape of Europe. This map shows the countries and boundaries of Europe before and after World War I. The countries shown in gray, such as Britain and Norway, are ones whose boundaries did not change after the war. The war began as a clash between two coalitions of European countries. The first coalition, known as the Allied Powers, included the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Serbia, Montenegro, and the Russian Empire (see Russia). The Central Powers, which opposed them, consisted of the empires of Germany and Austria-Hungary. Japan joined the Allied Powers in 1914. The Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers in 1914, as did Bulgaria in 1915. The same year, Italy entered the war on the Allied side. Although the United States initially remained neutral, it joined the Allies in 1917. The conflict eventually involved 32 countries, 28 of which supported the Allies. Some of these nations, however, did not participate in the actual fighting. The immediate cause of the war was the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand, the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, by a Serbian nationalist. The fundamental causes of the conflict, however, were rooted deeply in the European history of the previous century, particularly in the political and economic policies that prevailed in Europe after 1871, the year that Germany emerged as a major European power. Military Casualties from World War I Note: World War I casualty statistics vary greatly from source to source. Official records are often lacking and based on differing criteria. These figures remain open to interpretation and deba. By the end of 1914 the war entered a stalemate. Both sides became mired in two main, stationary fronts—the western front, primarily in northeastern France, and the eastern front, mainly in western Russia. At the fronts, the troops fought each other from numerous parallel lines of interconnected trenches. Each side laid siege to the other’s system of trenches and endeavored to break through their lines. When the war finally came to an end on November 11, 1918, and the Central Powers were defeated, the political order of Europe had been transformed beyond recognition. The German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and Ottoman empires had collapsed. New areas were carved out of their former lands, and the boundaries of many other countries were redrawn. The war also helped precipitate the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia (see Russian Revolutions of 1917), which ushered in the ideology of Communism there. The war also had important long-term consequences. The enormous cost of the war undermined the financial stability of all of the countries involved, and they had to bear an onerous burden of debt for many years to come. These financial losses, combined with the battlefield deaths and physical destruction, severely weakened the European powers.
Posted on: Mon, 27 May 2013 06:41:55 +0000
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