First World War and Its effects, Timeline, Summary

World War I, also called the First World War or Great War, an international conflict that in 1914–18 embroiled most of the nations of Europe along with Russia, the United States, the Middle East, and other regions. The war pitted the Central Powers- mainly Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey- against the Allies- mainly France, Great Britain, Russia, Italy, Japan, and, from 1917, the United States. It ended with the defeat of the Central Powers.

World War I was one of the great watersheds of 20th-century Geo-political history. It led to the fall of four great imperial dynasties (in Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey), resulted in the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, and, in its destabilization of European society, laid the groundwork for World War II.

World War I began in 1914 after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and lasted until 1918. A century ago, an assassin, a Serbian nationalist, killed the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary as he visited Sarajevo. This act was the catalyst for a massive conflict that lasted four years. More than 65 million soldiers were mobilized by more than 30 nations, with battles taking place around the world. Industrialization brought modern weapons, machinery, and tactics to warfare, vastly increasing the killing power of armies. Battlefield conditions were horrific, typified by the chaotic(अराजक), cratered hellscape(गड्ढा नरक) of the Western Front, where soldiers in muddy trenches faced bullets, bombs, gas, bayonet charges, and more. Thanks to new military technologies and the horrors of trench warfare, World War I saw unprecedented levels of carnage and destruction. By the time the war was over and the Allied Powers claimed victory, more than 16 million people- soldiers and civilians alike- were dead.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand:

Tensions had been brewing throughout Europe- especially in the troubled Balkan region of southeast Europe- for years before World War I actually broke out. A number of alliances involving European powers, the Ottoman Empire, Russia, and other parties had existed for years, but political instability in the Balkans (particularly Bosnia, Serbia, and Herzegovina) threatened to destroy these agreements.

The spark that ignited World War I was struck in Sarajevo, Bosnia, where Archduke Franz Ferdinand- heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire- was shot to death along with his wife, Sophie, by the Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip on June 28, 1914. Princip and other nationalists were struggling to end Austro-Hungarian rule over Bosnia and Herzegovina. The assassination of Franz Ferdinand set off a rapidly escalating chain of events: Austria-Hungary, like many countries around the world, blamed the Serbian government for the attack and hoped to use the incident as justification for settling the question of Serbian nationalism once and for all.

Causes of the war:

There was no single event that caused World War One. The war happened because of several different events that took place in the years building up to 1914.

> Firstly, there was the role of the empire. Great Britain, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia all had empires. This meant that they ruled many countries all over the world. Each of these countries wanted to keep their empire strong and was afraid of other countries taking over new territories. They saw this as a threat to their own empires. So when Germany and Austria-Hungary took control of smaller countries like Bosnia and Morocco, it looked to the rest of the world like they were being aggressive.

> Secondly, many countries had made alliances with one other. They agreed to protect one another. This meant that if one country was attacked, the others would get involved to defend that country. However, the trigger for the beginning of WW1 occurred on 28 June 1914.

> Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, was shot while he was visiting Sarajevo in Bosnia. He was killed by a Serbian person, who thought that Serbia should control Bosnia instead of Austria. Because its leader had been shot, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia.

As a result:

> Russia got involved because Russia had an alliance with Serbia.

> Germany then declared war on Russia because Germany had an alliance with Austria-Hungary.

> Britain declared war on Germany because of its invasion of neutral Belgium - Britain had agreements to protect both Belgium and France.

World War I Begins:

On July 28, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, and the tenuous peace between Europe’s great powers quickly collapsed. Within a week, Russia, Belgium, France, Great Britain, and Serbia had lined up against Austria-Hungary and Germany, and World War I had begun.

On the night of August 3-4 German forces invaded Belgium. Thereupon, Great Britain, which had no concern with Serbia and no express obligation to fight either for Russia or for France but was expressly committed to defending Belgium, on August 4 declared war against Germany.

Austria-Hungary declared war against Russia on August 5; Serbia against Germany on August 6; Montenegro against Austria-Hungary on August 7 and against Germany on August 12; France and Great Britain against Austria-Hungary on August 10 and on August 12, respectively; Japan against Germany on August 23; Austria-Hungary against Japan on August 25 and against Belgium on August 28.

Romania had renewed its secret anti-Russian alliance of 1883 with the Central Powers on February 26, 1914, but now chose to remain neutral. Italy had confirmed the Triple Alliance on December 7, 1912, but could now propose formal arguments for disregarding it: first, Italy was not obliged to support its allies in a war of aggression; second, the original treaty of 1882 had stated expressly that the alliance was not against England.

On September 5, 1914, Russia, France, and Great Britain concluded the Treaty of London, each promising not to make a separate peace with the Central Powers.

Battle of the Somme:

One of the most famous battles was the Battle of the Somme which started in July 1916 in France. It involved Britain, France, and Germany. The Battle of the Somme was a very bloody battle. In total, around one million soldiers were killed, wounded or missing: 420,000 from Britain, 200,000 from France, and 500,000 from Germany. A total of 65 million troops from around the world fought in the war. This included the British army, which was made up of around 4 million men from England, 558,000 men from Scotland, 273,000 men from Wales, and 134,000 men from Ireland. Just under 1 million British troops died.

The Western Front:

According to an aggressive military strategy known as the Schlieffen Plan, Germany began fighting World War I on two fronts, invading France through neutral Belgium in the west and confronting Russia in the east.

On August 4, 1914, German troops crossed the border into Belgium. In the first battle of World War I, the Germans assaulted the heavily fortified city of Liege, using the most powerful weapons in their arsenal(शस्त्रागार)- enormous siege cannons to capture the city by August 15. The Germans left death and destruction in their wake as they advanced through Belgium toward France, shooting civilians and executing a Belgian priest they had accused of inciting civilian resistance. 

First Battle of the Marne:

In the First Battle of the Marne, fought from September 6-9, 1914, French and British forces confronted the invading Germany army, which had by then penetrated(घुसना) deep into northeastern France, within 30 miles of Paris. The Allied troops checked the German advance and mounted a successful counterattack, driving the Germans back to the north of the Aisne River.

The defeat meant the end of German plans for a quick victory in France. Both sides dug into trenches, and the Western Front was the setting for a hellish war of attrition that would last more than three years.

Particularly long and costly battles in this campaign were fought at Verdun (February-December 1916) and the Battle of the Somme (July-November 1916). German and French troops suffered close to a million casualties in the Battle of Verdun alone.

America Enters World War I:

At the outbreak of fighting in 1914, the United States remained on the sidelines of World War I, adopting the policy of neutrality favored by President Woodrow Wilson while continuing to engage in commerce and shipping with European countries on both sides of the conflict.

Neutrality, however, was increasingly difficult to maintain in the face of Germany’s unchecked submarine aggression against neutral ships, including those carrying passengers. In 1915, Germany declared the waters surrounding the British Isles to be a war zone, and German U-boats sank several commercial and passenger vessels, including some U.S. ships.

Widespread protest over the sinking by U-boat of the British ocean liner Lusitania- traveling from New York to Liverpool, England with hundreds of American passengers onboard- in May 1915 helped turn the tide of American public opinion against Germany. In February 1917, Congress passed a $250 million arms appropriations bill intended to make the United States ready for war.

Germany sank four more U.S. merchant ships the following month, and on April 2 Woodrow Wilson appeared before Congress and called for a declaration of war against Germany.

The American battle in the Meuse-Argonne, from September 26 to November 11, 1918, pierced the most redoubtable section of the Hindenburg Line, reached Sedan on both banks of the Meuse- denying the Germans the river as a defensive shield- and cut the vital four-track railway there, which carried 250 German trains a day. With it, the Germans had moved five divisions every two days to any point on the Western Front; without it, they could barely move a single division in the same span. The American offensive was, a British war correspondent concluded, “the matador’s thrust in the bull-fight.” It cut the German throat.

The Doughboys won the war by trapping the German army in France and Belgium and severing its lifeline. Looking at 1918 in this new way, restoring the enormous impact of the U.S. military to its proper scale and significance, achieves two important things. First, it fundamentally revises the history of the First World War. Second, it brings out the thrilling suspense of 1918, when the fate of the world hung in the balance, and the revivifying(पुनर्जीवित) power of the Americans saved the Allies, defeated Germany, and established the United States as the greatest of the great powers.

How did the war end?

World War One ended at 11 am on the eleventh day of the eleventh month. In 1918, Germany and her allies realized it was no longer possible to win the war. Furthermore, the United States joined the war in April 1917, which gave the Triple Entente greater power. The leaders of the German army told the German government to end the fighting. Kaiser Wilhelm, Germany's leader, left his job on 9 November 1918. Two days later on 11 November 1918, Germany signed the armistice(युद्ध-विराम) and the guns fell silent. People in Britain, France, and all of the countries that supported them, celebrated the end of the war - a war that had lasted four years and four months. In London, a huge crowd gathered in Trafalgar Square.

Treaty of Versailles:

At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, Allied leaders stated their desire to build a post-war world that would safeguard itself against future conflicts of such a devastating scale. Some hopeful participants had even begun calling World War I “the War to End All Wars.” But the Treaty of Versailles, signed on June 28, 1919, would not achieve that lofty goal. Saddled with war guilt, heavy reparations, and denied entrance into the League of Nations, Germany felt tricked into signing the treaty, having believed any peace would be a “peace without victory,” as put forward by Wilson in his famous Fourteen Points speech of January 1918.

As the years passed, hatred of the Versailles treaty and its authors settled into a smoldering resentment in Germany that would, two decades later, be counted among the causes of World War II.

World War I Casualties:

World War I took the lives of more than 9 million soldiers; 21 million more were wounded. Civilian casualties caused indirectly by the war numbered close to 10 million. The two nations most affected were Germany and France, each of which sent some 80 percent of their male populations between the ages of 15 and 49 into battle. The political disruption surrounding World War I also contributed to the fall of four venerable imperial dynasties: Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, and Turkey

Legacy of World War I:

World War I brought about massive social upheaval, as millions of women entered the workforce to support men who went to war and to replace those who never came back. The first global war also helped to spread one of the world’s deadliest global pandemics, the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918, which killed an estimated 20 to 50 million people.

World War I has also been referred to as “the first modern war.” Many of the technologies we now associate with military conflict- machine guns, tanks, aerial combat, and radio communications- were introduced on a massive scale during World War I.

The severe effects that chemical weapons such as mustard gas and phosgene had on soldiers and civilians during World War I galvanized public and military attitudes against their continued use. The Geneva Convention agreements, signed in 1925, restricted the use of chemical and biological agents in warfare and remains in effect today.

=> IT WAS A GLOBAL WAR

Over 30 nations declared war between 1914 and 1918. The majority joined on the side of the Allies, including Serbia, Russia, France, Britain, Italy, and the United States. They were opposed by Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire, who together formed the Central Powers. What began as a relatively small conflict in southeast Europe became a war between European empires. Britain and its Empire’s entry into the war made this a truly global conflict fought on a geographical scale never seen before. Fighting occurred not only on the Western Front but in eastern and southeast Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.

=> IT IS FAR BETTER TO FACE THE BULLETS

The First World War was not inevitable or accidental but began as a result of human actions and decisions. Over 65 million men volunteered or were conscripted to fight in mass citizen armies. Millions of civilians also contributed to the war effort by working in the industry, agriculture, or jobs left open when men enlisted. Victory depended on popular support. Some nations were forced to surrender as their people, pushed to their physical and emotional limits, lost the will to continue fighting. The First World War was also a war against people. Invading armies committed atrocities against civilians in the areas they occupied. Attacks on civilians became increasingly common as each nation tried to break their opponents’ home morale and diminish popular support for the war. Propaganda demonized entire nations and attacked the ‘national characters’ of enemy peoples. 

=> IT WAS A WAR OF PRODUCTION:

National resources were mobilized as each combatant nation raced to supply its armed forces with enough men and equipment. In Britain, early failures in munitions manufacturing led to full government intervention in war production. These controls helped its industry produce nearly 4 million rifles, 250,000 machine guns, 52,000 airplanes, 2,800 tanks, 25,000 artillery pieces, and over 170 million rounds of artillery shells by 1918.

=> IT WAS A WAR OF INNOVATION

Advances in weaponry and military technology provoked tactical changes as each side tried to gain an advantage over the other. The introduction of aircraft into war left soldiers and civilians vulnerable to attacks from above for the first time. Major innovations were also made in manufacturing, chemistry, and communications. Medical advances made the First World War the first major conflict in which British deaths in battle outnumbered deaths caused by disease.

=> IT WAS A WAR OF DESTRUCTION

The First World War left an estimated 16 million soldiers and civilians dead and countless others physically and psychologically wounded. The war also forever altered the world’s social and political landscape. It accelerated changes in attitudes towards gender and class and led to the collapse of the Russian, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman empires. The cost of waging total war - and of rebuilding afterward - ravaged the national economies of both the victorious European Allies and the defeated Central Powers. The human cost of the First World War for Britain saw the creation of a new language of remembrance, which remains to this day. It can be seen in war memorials in cities, towns, schools, places of worship, and workplaces.

Conclusion:

The shadow of 1914-18 is thus still present in Europe today. Perhaps the biggest change is that military power is far less significant in European politics than it was a century ago. There is little or no appetite for using force to achieve political goals. Defense spending remains low. The numbers in Europe’s armed forces have been dramatically reduced since the end of the Cold War and despite Russian incursions into Ukraine, there is little or no appetite to increase numbers. the world moves from a hegemonic system based on the US hyper-power to a more multi-polar world that will have serious consequences for Germany and Europe.