World War I

**World War I**, also called the **First World War** and often abbreviated as **WWI** or **WW1 or The Great War**, was a war that lasted from July 28, 1914 to November 11, 1918.

## World War I

### Result

The Allies won World War I* Germany After WWI
* French Third Republic
* United States
* The Ottoman Empire
* The Kingdom of Hungary
* First Austrian Republic
* The First Czechoslovak Republic
* The Second Polish Republic
* Kingdom of Yugoslavia
* Kingdom of Romania
* RSFSR

New technology, including the airplane, trench warfare, and especially chemical weapons made it one of the deadliest conflicts in history.

Soldiers died in combat, civilian deaths as a result of military actions during the war.

# Prelude

By 1914, the European great powers were divided between the Triple Entente, comprising France, Russia, and Britain, and the Triple Alliance, containing Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy.

Tensions in the Balkans came to a head on 28 June 1914 following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Austria-Hungary blamed Serbia, which led to the July Crisis,

# War

Russia came to Serbia's defence following Austria-Hungary's declaration of war on the latter on 28 July, and by 4 August, the system of alliances drew in Germany, France, and Britain, along with their respective colonies, although Italy remained neutral. In November 1914, the Ottoman Empire, Germany, and Austria-Hungary formed the Central Powers, while in April 1915, Italy joined Britain, France, Russia, and Serbia as the Allies of World War I.

Facing a war on two fronts, German strategy in 1914 was to concentrate its forces on defeating France in six weeks before moving them to the Eastern Front and doing the same to Russia.

However, the German offensive in France failed to achieve this and by the end of 1914, the two sides faced each other along the Western Front, a continuous series of trench lines stretching from the English Channel to Switzerland that changed little until 1917.

By the end of 1915, both Russia and Austria-Hungary had suffered enormous casualties in the East, while Allied offensives against the Ottomans and on the Western Front ended in failure. A major German attack on Verdun in 1916 and a British offensive on the Somme also achieved little other than large numbers of casualties on both sides, while a Russian offensive in the East ground to a halt after some initial success.

The Allied naval blockade had led Germany to initiate unrestricted submarine warfare in early 1917, bringing the previously-neutral United States into the war on 6 April 1917.

In Russia, the rebels seized power and exited the war with the March 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, freeing up a large number of German troops.

By transferring these to the Western Front, the German General Staff hoped to win a decisive victory before the arrival of significant American reinforcements and took the offensive in March 1918. Despite initial success, it was soon halted by heavy casualties and ferocious defence; in August, the Allies launched the Hundred Days Offensive and although the Imperial German Army continued to fight hard, it could only slow the advance, not stop it.

# End

Towards the end of 1918, the Central Powers began to collapse, facing the German Revolution, The new German government signed the Armistice of 11 November 1918, bringing the conflict to a close.