World War I formerly known as the Great War before the events of World War II was a war fought in Europe which began on July 28, 1914 and ended on November 11, 1918 lasting a total of 4 years, 3 months and 14 days, and ended when Germany accepted the terms of the armistice.
Where did it happen?
It occurred in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, the coasts of America, briefly in China and the islands of the Pacific Ocean.
It got the qualification of “world” because all those involved in this war were great industrial and military powers of that time and which were separated into two alliances. On the other hand the third alliance that was formed was by the Central Powers, the German Empire, Austria-Hungary and Italy that was a member of this triple alliance, these together did not join the central power, since Austria was against the agreed terms, and was the aggressor nation that caused all this conflict. On the other side was the triple entente, the United Kingdom, France and the Russian Empire.
Both suffered from changes and it was those nations that would end up joining the ranks as the war progressed. Italy, the Empire of Japan and the United States entered the triple entente, while the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Bulgaria entered the Central Powers, a number of more than 70 million soldiers, 60 million of whom were Europeans, emigrated and fought in one of the then largest wars that would mark their mark on history.
Great War
Before the Second World War, this was called “World War” or “Great War” this last expression began to be used in Germany since it became known, however it was only widely used in France and the United Kingdom in the 1930s, although in the United States this denomination began to be used from 1917 with respect to its intervention, since in this it was known as “European War”.
However the imperialism that had been developing for a long time with the powers involved was the main reason for the underlying, the detonator of the conflict was provoked on July 28, 1914 in Sarajevo with the involved assassination of Archduke, being Gavrilo Princip a young man who was a Serbian nationalist, this event provoked a diplomatic crisis when Austria-Hungary decided to They made an ultimatum to the Kingdom of Serbia and invoked the different alliances which were international, created over the decades in a span of a few weeks, all the great powers were already at war and the fight spread to other places quickly.
On July 28, the Austro-Hungarians began hostilities with an attempted invasion of Serbia. As Russia moved, Germany attacked Belgium, which had declared itself neutral, and Luxembourg was on its way to France, the violation of Belgian sovereignty led the United Kingdom to declare war on Germany. Then the Germans were stopped by the French a few kilometers from Paris, and a war of attrition began which the trench lines would hardly suffer variations until 1917.
On the Eastern Front, the Russian army achieved victories against the Austro-Hungarians, however they were stopped by the Germans in the midst of an attempt to invade East Prussia. In November 1914 the Ottoman Empire entered the war, which means that the opening of different fronts in the Caucasus, Mesopotamia and Sinai, Bulgaria and Italy entered the war in 1915, Romania in 1916 and the United States in 1917.
After three years of relative stagnation, this war began its denouement in 1917 in March with a fall of a Russian government following the revolution in February and with the signing of a peace agreement between revolutionary Russia and each central power after recovering from the October Revolution in March 1918. on November 3, 1918, the Austro-Hungarian Empire signed. After the German offensive in early 1918 to the entire Western Front, the Allied pushed back the Germans with offensives. Germany, in full revolution, was made to request an armistice on November 11, 1918, putting an end to the war with the victory of the ally.
End of the First World War
After the end of the war, the four great empires ceased to exist, the German, Russian, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires. The successor states of the first 2 lost much of their important part of their territories, and the last two were dismantled. The map of Europe and each of its borders began to change completely, several nations became independent and were created. After the First World War the Russian Revolution was forged, which led to the creation of the Soviet Union.
