Certain empires were trying to increase their empire, claiming more territory and therefore, more resources from those territories. As these empires were sizing each other up, tensions began to increase.
All it took then was just a spark like a match to a gas-soaked log of wood to ignite the fire. The icing on the cake was also Serbia fighting for independence.
World War I Source: pinterest. With all the countries having aligned themselves with each other in various treaties, they all had a stake in what happened between the two small countries. It came down to a power struggle as one by one, more and more countries were thrown into the mix through binding agreements to defend each other.
The world was split between the two groups: the Central Powers and the Allied Powers. World War I officially began in as the teams were picked.
Poison gas used in World War I. Source: lit. The fighting took place mostly in the trenches. Other than the trained infantry, most of their weaponry and methods of fighting back then consisted of artillery, machine guns, tanks, poisonous gas, and early renditions of warplanes. In Britain alone, over one million men volunteered to fight in the war at its onset. The first tank was introduced into the war by the British in as they realized that they needed a better and safer way to be mobile.
Germany was rather frustrated with having to fight in the trenches not being able to move forward particularly since they were outnumbered — something Hitler took into account in World War II. During the war, the Ottoman Empire was trying to wipe out the Armenian people. World War I: A U. Army detachment leaves Le Havre, France, for the front. Source: ausa. By the end of the war, which ended in , there were around 10 million military deaths and seven million civilian deaths.
One-third of the military deaths were due to the Spanish flu. The opening shot by a member of the British forces in was fired not in Europe but in Africa, by a soldier named Alhaji Grunshi serving with the British as they attacked the German colony of Togoland. The Western Front, which cut through Belgium and Northern France, is well known, reaching, for much of the war, from Dunkirk in the north to Belfort on the Swiss border in the south.
But much of the rest of Europe also became a war zone. The Eastern Front, which stretched from the Baltics in the north to the borders of Austria-Hungary in the south - with much fighting in what is now modern day Poland, Hungary and Romania - covered a vast swathe of territory; Serbia was harshly occupied. Italy fought on a front that cut across its north eastern border and through the Dolomite mountains, with cities such as Venice threatened by aerial bombardment.
Russia fought the Ottoman Empire in a terrible and bloody front that stretched across the Caucasus. As the warring parties sought to break the deadlock the conflict spread even further. The British opened fronts in Gallipoli, at the Dardanelles straits; in Mesopotamia - what is now modern-day Iraq - where after a series of setbacks they ultimately captured Baghdad; and in Palestine, where they fought up from Egypt to capture Jerusalem.
In the South Pacific, the Australians fought to capture a series of German colonial island territories, including New Guinea which Australia then occupied for the rest of the war. There was fighting in , as the Japanese captured the German territory of Tsing-tau. Not all of the above fronts existed for the whole of the war, but their span is truly remarkable. An estimated two million Africans served in World War One as soldiers or labourers. Moreover, beyond each front there was a massive hinterland where normal life was disrupted.
Whole agricultural economies were ruined. Civilians starved or fled. In Africa, all of the armies used porters - locals used to carry the soldiers' food and munitions during the campaign, who were often coerced and who endured terrible conditions and high death rates.
The war also gave rise to epic refugee flows in much of Eastern Europe, particularly in Russia, a process aggravated even further by the outbreak of revolution there in The war saw severe treatment of minorities.
In particular, Tsarist Russia persecuted its Jewish population and the Ottoman Empire deliberately destroyed its Armenian minority through massacre and deportation. World War One was also global in terms of the range of ethnicities and nationalities mobilised to fight. The British mobilised more than a million Indian men for the war.
The difference between WWI and WWII is that the first world war was fought with the motive of acquiring territories and colonies hence imperialism was the cause whereas the second World War was based on the domination of ideologies like Fascism, Nazism, and communism.
Archduke Franz Ferdinand Austria was assassinated on 28 th June This was a greater trigger to start the war. After the assassination, Austria and Hungary tried to invade Serbia and achieved it. In the meantime, Luxembourg, Belgium, and France were invaded by Germany.
Hence Russia started to attack Germany. Hence the war started. In the year U. S joined the Allied Powers. The whole war was making Europe as the target. As a result of the war, there were losses of many casualties. At the end of the war, the Central Powers were defeated. To prevent further conflicts, the League of Nations was formed. But the war did not cease here. The first world war became a major reason for the beginning of the Second World War. But it seemed to be a failure when the Second World War began.
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