World War I

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Map of Europe at the start of World War I. Turkey refers to the Ottoman Empire.

World War I was a war fought by a lot of countries, which is why it is called a "world" war. Also called the Great War, it started in 1914 and ended in 1918.[1] Other names it has been called are The Great War and The War to End all Wars. 135 countries took part in World War I, and more than 15 million deaths happened during this time.[2]

World War I was fought through most of the continent of Europe. The actual fighting that happened during the war was fought amongst many different fronts. The Western Front was where most of the fighting between Germany and the Allies happened. The system of trenches marked the Western Front as the Western Front. There was also a no man's land that broke into this area.[3] Most of the fighting that happened in this area was trench warfare. The Eastern Front was fought in Central and Eastern Europe and was one of the main places where World War I took place. The fighting done on the Eastern Front was not trench warfare like it was on the Western Front, but instead depended on having front lines of soldiers ready to fight the enemy. The other fronts that had a lot of fighting includes the Middle Eastern Front and the Italian Front.

The war was ended by the signing of many different treaties, the most important being the Treaty of Versailles.

World War I was the first war where tanks, airplanes, and submarines, or underwater boats (U-boats) were used as common weapons.

Contents

Causes

On June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, who was heir to the throne in Austria-Hungary, visited Sarajevo with his wife. Because of riots in the city, the archduke's procession decided to leave the city quietly through back roads after making their public appearance.

A Serbian nationalist group called The Black Hand had sent five men to assassinate Ferdinand. All five of the men failed to kill the archduke while he passed through the large crowd. The grenades thrown at the car failed to kill him. After failing their mission, the five men decided to give up and go home. One of these men was a Bosnian student name named Gavrilo Princip, who was also part of a group called Young Bosnia.

The archduke and his wife were leaving the city when the driver of their car took a wrong turn onto a large street with many people. The cafe Princip was on this street, and he went outside and saw the archduke and his wife. He took four shots; two hit the archduke, one hit his wife, and the other hit the car. Both Ferdinand and his wife died shortly after.

Austria-Hungary blamed Serbia for the assassination. This quickly led to a full-scale war. [4] Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Both country's allies became involved in the war, and soon most of Europe became involved.

Germany v. France and Russia

Germany was friends with Austria-Hungary. Russia was friends with Serbia. The German government was afraid that because Austria-Hungary had attacked Serbia, that Russia would attack Austria-Hungary to help Serbia. So Germany felt it had to help Austria-Hungary by attacking Russia first, before it could attack Austria-Hungary. The problem was that Russia was also friends with France, and the Germans thought the French might attack them to help Russia. So the Germans decided that they could win the war if they attacked France first, and quickly. They could mobilize very quickly. They had a list of all the men who had to join the army, and where those men had to go, and the times of every train that would carry those men to where they would have to fight. France was doing the same thing, but could not do it as quickly. The Germans thought that if they attacked France first, they could “knock France” out of the war before Russia could attack them.

The Russian army

Russia had a big army, but Germany thought that it would take six weeks to mobilize and a long time before they could attack the Central Powers. That wasn't true, because the Russian Army mobilized in ten days. Also, the Russians drove deep into Austria.

Britain v. Germany

Although it was allies with France and Russia, Great Britain was involved in the war quickly,August 4th 1914,where they declared war against Germany when Germany attacked its important friend Belgium to get through to France. Britain had the biggest empire (parts of the world it ruled) and was afraid that Germany would take its and France's colonies and become the most powerful and biggest empire in the world. Britain was also worried about Germany's growing military power. This was because Germany was growing its very large army into one of the most powerful in the world. Britain’s army was quite small but more professional compared with large armies like Germany’s or Russia’s armies. Britain had the largest and best navy in the world, and initially thought that was enough to keep other navies from attacking. But now the Germans were growing a large navy too. The Germans were quickly building ships and putting even more men in its army and Germany was almost going to become as powerful as Britain.

Turkey

Turkey went into the war because it had lost much of its empire before the war and wanted to get it back from Britain and France. It hated Serbia because Serbia became its own country before the war and was once a Turkish colony. When Austria went to war against Serbia, Turkey declared war soon after.

Greece v. Turkey

Greece went into the war because their leader supported the Allied cause. Greece and Serbia became free again but a lot of Greek people still lived in Turkish lands which used to belong to Greece. The Greeks especially wanted their land to the north that was under Bulgarian and Turkish rule, so they declared war after a civil war.

Bulgaria v. Serbia and Greece

Bulgaria, like Greece and Serbia, was owned by Turkey before, got its freedom and took a lot of Turkish land. But when the Bulgarians did a short time before the war, the Serbians and Greeks felt cheated because the Bulgarians got a lot of land which they felt was Greek or Serbian. The Greeks and Serbians took back Bulgarian land and annoyed Bulgaria, which made Bulgaria become friends with their old enemy Turkey. They declared war on Serbia and Greece. This started a war which resulted in the deaths of thousands of people.

Italy's Betrayal

In 1915, Italy could see that the Germans were losing. So, in order to receive some profit from the German colonies, which would be divided at the end of the war, Italy left Germany and joined the Allied side.

But since they received nothing, they were interested in another war.

Romania's alliances

Romania was on the side of the Central powers until 1916, when they were forced into the war by the Allied powers.

Important events in the war

British men in the trenches

Most people thought it would be a short war. They thought the armies would move around quickly to attack each other, and one would defeat the other without too many people getting killed. They thought the war would be about brave soldiers - they did not know what the war would really be like. Only a few people like Lord Kitchener said that the war would take a long time.

Germany's plan

Germany's generals had decided that the best way to defeat France was to go through Belgium using a plan called "The Schlieffen plan". This was invented by the Germany Army Chief of Staff, Alfred von Schlieffen. They could then attack the French army at the north side and the south side at the same time. The German Army went into Belgium on the 4 August. On the same day, Great Britain started a war on Germany, because Britain was a friend of Belgium. The British had said some time before, in 1839, that they would not let anyone control Belgium, and they kept their promise.

Germany's invasion of Belgium

When the Germans got to the Belgian city of Liège, the Belgians fought very hard to stop them from coming into the city. The Germans did finally push the Belgians out of the city, but it had taken longer than the German generals had planned. Then the Germans attacked the north side of the French army. The French and the British moved men up to fight the Germans. They could do this because the Belgians had fought so long at Liège. But the Germans pushed the French back at the Fronteirs, and the British held the Germans back at Mons, but afterwards they also fell back to join up with the retreating French army, until they were stopped at the river Marne.This was called The Miracle of the Marne.

Trench warfare

In the fighting, many men had been killed. The new guns the men had fired very quickly. Some had machine guns, that fire so many bullets that the bullets fell like rain. The men on both sides took spades and dug holes, because they did not want to be killed. The holes joined up into trenches, until the lines of trenches went all the way from Switzerland to the North sea. In front of the trenches, there was barbed wire that cut anyone who tried to climb over it, and mines that blew up anyone who tried to run across the "no man's land" that was in between the trenches.

In the East, the Russians had attacked the Germans. The Russians pushed back the Germans, but then the Germans defeated the Russians at the Battle of Tannenberg.

Christmas

On Christmas Day in 1914, many soldiers did not want to fight. They sang Christmas songs to each other. In many places on the Western front, they came out of the trenches and shook hands with each other. Sometimes they played football with each other. In some places, the men didn't want to fight again the next day. The generals were afraid and stopped this.

Machine gun warfare

The machine guns and the trenches and mines made it very difficult to attack. The generals didn't remember this, and they still ordered attacks anyway. At the battle of the Somme in 1916 many British men died in a single day. It was one of the bloodiest days in the history of the British army.

Often many men died fighting over very small pieces of land.

USA v. Germany

The German generals decided to use submarines. These submarines were named U-boats, from the German word Unterseeboot (meaning underwater boat). The U-boats attacked American ships that were carrying food and weapons to Great Britain. The Germans thought that the Americans were helping only the British and not being neutral. "Neutral" means that a country is not involved in the war. But then some Americans were killed by the submarines. Because of this, the United States joined the war against Germany and became part of the Allies.

Consequences of America joining the war

In the spring of 1918, the German generals decided they had to attack before many American soldiers came to Europe to attack them. The Germans attacked in a new way. They attacked where the Allies were weak, and did not attack the places where the Allies were strong. They pushed the British and French a long way in some places, but each time, the Germans were stopped. Then the Americans began to come to Europe. The British, the French and the Americans together began to push back the Germans. The Germans couldn't stop them. At last, the German generals told their government that the war had to be stopped, because Germany couldn't fight any longer. Germany asked for peace from the Allies, and the war ended on the 11th of November 1918.

Russia

The First Russian Revolution

In 1917, there was a revolution in Russia. The Tsar had to say he would not be Tsar any more, and that the people should have power. At first it was thought that Russia would fight harder now that the Tsar was gone. But the Russian people didn't want to fight anymore. They began to hate their new government because it wouldn't stop the war.

The Second Russian Revolution

Then, there was an October Revolution, which was a second revolution in Russia led by Communists that followed the ideas of Karl Marx. The leader of the revolution, and of Russia, then, was Vladimir Lenin. The new government asked for peace from the Germans. The Germans and Russians stopped fighting and signed the treaty of Brest-Litovsk. This gave Germany lots of land in eastern Europe and the Baltic sea.

After the War

Map of Europe before and after the war.

After the war, the Germans had to agree to the Treaty of Versailles. Germany had to pay $33 billion in reparations. Part of the treaty said the countries of the world should come together to make an international organization to stop wars from happening. This organization was called the League of Nations. The US Senate didn't agree with this, even though it was the idea of the US president, Woodrow Wilson. Woodrow Wilson tried to tell the American people that they should agree, but the U.S. never joined the League of Nations. Problem with the Treaty in Germany would later lead to the Second World War.

Notes

  1. ↑ The First World War.
  2. ↑ Military Casualties of World War One.
  3. ↑ Ashworth, Tony. Trench warfare 1914–1918, pp3–4. 2000: Macmillan Press, London.
  4. ↑ First World War.com Primary Documents: Archduke Franz Ferdinand's Assassination, 28 June 1914 (2002-11-03). Retrieved on 17 February 2008.

Other websites

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