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At the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th
month of 1918, the Great War ends. At 5 a.m. that morning, Germany,
bereft of manpower and supplies and faced with imminent invasion,
signed an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car
outside Compiégne, France. The First World War left nine million
soldiers dead and 21 million wounded, with Germany, Russia,
Austria-Hungary, France, and Great Britain each losing nearly a
million or more lives. In addition, at least five million civilians
died from disease, starvation, or exposure.
On June 28, 1914, in an event that is widely regarded as sparking
the outbreak of World War I, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the
Austro-Hungarian empire, was shot to death with his wife by Bosnian
Serb Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo, Bosnia. Ferdinand had been
inspecting his uncle's imperial armed forces in Bosnia and
Herzegovina, despite the threat of Serbian nationalists who wanted
these Austro-Hungarian possessions to join newly independent Serbia.
Austria-Hungary blamed the Serbian government for the attack and
hoped to use the incident as justification for settling the problem
of Slavic nationalism once and for all. However, as Russia supported
Serbia, an Austro-Hungarian declaration of war was delayed until its
leaders received assurances from German leader Kaiser Wilhelm II
that Germany would support their cause in the event of a Russian
intervention.
On July 28, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, and the tenuous
peace between Europe's great powers collapsed. On July 29,
Austro-Hungarian forces began to shell the Serbian capital,
Belgrade, and Russia, Serbia's ally, ordered a troop mobilization
against Austria-Hungary. France, allied with Russia, began to
mobilize on August 1. France and Germany declared war against each
other on August 3. After crossing through neutral Luxembourg, the
German army invaded Belgium on the night of August 3-4, prompting
Great Britain, Belgium's ally, to declare war against Germany.
For the most part, the people of Europe greeted the outbreak of war
with jubilation. Most patriotically assumed that their country would
be victorious within months. Of the initial belligerents, Germany
was most prepared for the outbreak of hostilities, and its military
leaders had formatted a sophisticated military strategy known as the
"Schlieffen Plan," which envisioned the conquest of France through a
great arcing offensive through Belgium and into northern France.
Russia, slow to mobilize, was to be kept occupied by
Austro-Hungarian forces while Germany attacked France.
The Schlieffen Plan was nearly successful, but in early September
the French rallied and halted the German advance at the bloody
Battle of the Marne near Paris. By the end of 1914, well over a
million soldiers of various nationalities had been killed on the
battlefields of Europe, and neither for the Allies nor the Central
Powers was a final victory in sight. On the western front--the
battle line that stretched across northern France and Belgium--the
combatants settled down in the trenches for a terrible war of
attrition.
In 1915, the Allies attempted to break the stalemate with an
amphibious invasion of Turkey, which had joined the Central Powers
in October 1914, but after heavy bloodshed the Allies were forced to
retreat in early 1916. The year 1916 saw great offensives by Germany
and Britain along the western front, but neither side accomplished a
decisive victory. In the east, Germany was more successful, and the
disorganized Russian army suffered terrible losses, spurring the
outbreak of the Russian Revolution in 1917. By the end of 1917, the
Bolsheviks had seized power in Russia and immediately set about
negotiating peace with Germany. In 1918, the infusion of American
troops and resources into the western front finally tipped the scale
in the Allies' favor. Germany signed an armistice agreement with the
Allies on November 11, 1918.
World War I was known as the "war to end all wars" because of the
great slaughter and destruction it caused. Unfortunately, the peace
treaty that officially ended the conflict--the Treaty of Versailles
of 1919--forced punitive terms on Germany that destabilized Europe
and laid the groundwork for World War II.
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