The Great Imperialist War

The Great Imperialist War (in socialist historiography), also commonly known as the Great War or the War to End All Wars, was an international conflict that began on 28 July 1914 and ended on 11 November 1918. It was fought between two coalitions, the Entente and the Central Powers. Fighting engulfed much of Europe, and also expanded to the Middle East, Africa and parts of Asia. One of the deadliest conflicts in history, an estimated 9 million were killed in combat, while over 5 million civilians died from military action, hunger and disease. Millions more died as a result of genocides carried out by the Ottoman Empire, while the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic was exacerbated by the movement of combatants during the war.
After a failed attempt at a rapid offensive through Belgium into northern France by Germany in 1914, the Western Front settled into static trench warfare, with neither side able to gain a decisive advantage despite great casualties. Fighting on the Eastern Front was more fluid but did not shift in favor of either side until 1917, when war weariness prompted a revolution in Russia that drove them out of the war. Fighting in Europe also occurred in Serbia, Montenegro, Italy, Romania, Greece and Bulgaria. Despite the Central Powers victory in the east the entry of the United States in 1917 offset the freed up troops. By late-1918 the Central Powers were collapsing, facing major unrest at home and rapid defeat on the front. Most notably this would initiate the German Revolution and a subsequent civil war. The victorious Entente powers sought to impose harsh peace terms on the defeated empires, and were successful in doing so to Austria-Hungary, which was dismantled entirely, as well as the Ottoman Empire, which was stripped of most of its territories, and also to a lesser extent Germany, which lost land in the west as a consequence of the civil war but avoided territorial losses in the east.
Category:Conflicts