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World War One was second worst war in history – only World War Two was more devastating. In the four years that World War One was fought, roughly 16 million people were killed and 20 million more were wounded. In total, 57% of the people who fought in the war were killed or wounded. The horrors of the war were only made worse by the fact that it was fought for no good reason and the outcome of the war only set the stage for World War Two, which began 20 years after World War One ended. One of the main reasons for the outbreak of World War One was because the major countries of Europe (England, France, Russia, Germany and Austria) had set up a set of alliances to protect each other in a case of war. England, France and Russia formed an alliance called the Allied Powers (the Allies) against Germany and Austria, which were called the Central Powers (because they were at the center of Europe).
These systems of alliances were meant to create peace through a “balance of power” strategy. A "balance of power" strategy is based on both sides having equal strength. This means that neither side has an advantage in a war and both sides would choose to keep the peace than risk a war they might lose. Unfortunately, this strategy for preventing war actually became a trap that pulled all the countries into war. The problem was that if a war broke out between two countries, then the system of alliances would bring all countries into one huge war involving all of Europe.
The second main reason for the outbreak of World War One was the idea of nationalism and how it affected Germany and Austria. Nationalism was the idea that people who speak a common language and share a common culture should live together in the same country. In the decades before World War One, this idea was used to create the country of Germany and was also tearing the Austrian Empire into smaller countries. Germany was formed through a series of wars. In one of those wars, Germany defeated France. After this, France wanted to get revenge on Germany. Nationalism affected the Austrian Empire the different national groups who lived in the empire wanted to break free and create their own countries. The Serbian people were one of these groups. They lived in southern Austria. The Serbians who lived in this region, wanted to break way and join the country of Serbia, which bordered Austria. The Austrian government wanted to prevent this because it feared that if the Serbians got their independence then other nationalities in Austria would also want theirs, and Austria would fall apart.
The spark that caused World War One was a single act of terrorism: the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria by a 19-year-old Serbian man in city of Sarajevo in June 1914. Franz Ferdinand was going to become the next leader of Austria. He was assassinated by a Serbian nationalist who wanted the Serbians to be free of Austria and to join Serbia. At the time of the assassination, nobody thought it would result in a war because many people in Austria did not like Franz Ferdinand. However, Austria used this as an opportunity to start a war with Serbia with goal of destroying Serbian nationalism. This war between between Austria and Serbia divided the countries in Europe into two groups - those that supported Austria (Central Powers) and those that supported Serbia (Allied Powers). Germany was Austria’s most important supporter. Germany gave Austria its full military support to defeat Serbia in a war. However, Serbia was supported by Russia, the largest country in Europe, which announced that it was preparing its army to help defend Serbia. At this point, Russia was supported by its allies of France and England. This system of alliances meant that a war between Austria and Serbia would result in a war between all of the countries in Europe.
The fighting in World War One began in August 1914 when Germany attacked France with the goal of defeating France before Russia would be ready for war. Germany was very successful in its attack on France and almost captured the French capital of Paris. However, before it could do this, it was stopped by a combined French and British army at the Battle of the Marne – a brutal six day battle in which more than a million and half soldiers were killed or wounded. At the end of the battle, the German invasion of France had been stopped, but the French and British were unable to push the Germans out of France. The war became a "stalemate" in which both sides were equally matched and neither side could defeat the other side. However, the leaders on both sides believed that they could win a battlefield victory and ordered their soldiers to keep fighting.
The process of constantly fighting over the same piece of land resulted in the development of "trench warfare". The soldiers on both sides dug defensive lines, called trenches, to find shelter from the brutality of the fighting. These trenches grew to stretch for more than 500 miles along the French-German border and became known as the Western Front. The German fought the British and French armies on the Western Front for almost four years with neither side gaining any land – just losing millions of soldiers. For example, in the Battle of Verdun in 1916, the Germans lost 300,000 soldiers to gain three miles. In the same year at the Battle of the Somme, the British lost 600,000 soldiers to gain five miles. Both sides used new weapons, like machine guns, airplanes, tanks and poison gas to defeat the other side. However, these weapons had no effect on the outcome of battles; they only killed and wounded soldiers. The front line moved only about 20 miles in four years of fighting.
At the same time the Germans were fighting the British and the French on the Western Front, the Germans were also fighting the Russian army on the Eastern Front. The Russian army was the largest army in Europe, but it was badly equipped. Some soldiers did not even have guns or boots. The Russian army was also badly led; Russian officers treated their soldiers worse than animals. As a result, the German army won victory after victory because it better led and better equipped. For example, in Battle of Tannenburg, the smaller Germany army was able to defeat the Russians, and kill more than 30,000 Russians and take 95,000 prisoner. While the Germans could easily defeat the Russians in every battle, they were were unable to win. This is because Russia could just bring more men into its army. During the war, the Russians would draft 15 million men into its army, and would lose 5 million of them in battle (1 in every 3 soldiers killed). The problem for Germany was that they were fighting a war in which they could not be defeated, but they also could not win.
Beyond Europe, the colonies of the world-wide European empires fought against each other. The Allies and Germany fought battles in Africa, the Middle East and even China. The British and the French also recruited soldiers from their empires to fight on the Western Front. This meant that there were people from India, Africa and China fighting in World War I in Europe, as members of the armies of their colonizers.
The reason both the Allies and Central Powers could fight for so many years, despite losing so many soldiers, was because they had strong “home fronts”. The “home front” was the factories and farms that produced all of the equipment and food to keep the armies fighting. All across Europe, as the men joined the army to fight in the war, women went to work in factories to make weapons or on farms to grow food. The horrific reality of war between industrialized nations was that just winning battles would not determine the who would win the war. This was because armies could keep fighting as long as the home fronts could produce more men and equipment to fight the war. The importance of the work done by women on farms and in factories to support the war effort is shown by the fact that was called a “front,” meaning that it was just as important as the “fighting fronts”, like the Western Front. World War One was called a “total war” because both sides could use their home fronts to support their armies. The only way to defeat a country was to both defeat them in battle and to destroy their home front. A country would only surrender if it could not longer send more soldiers troops and equipment for fight the war. Both sides in the war tried to win the war defeating the other side's home front. The British navy blockaded Germany to prevented the country from getting food and war supplies, which resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Germans from starvation. The Germans used submarines to sink ships carrying food and supplies to England and used planes to bomb British cities, killing civilians. The first country to break under the stress of “total war” was Russia. In the spring of 1917, women in the Russian capital city of St. Petersburg began protesting the food shortages and demanding that the government give them food to feed their children. When the government refused, the people rose up in revolution against the government and overthrew the government. After this, Russia pulled out of the World War fell into a civil war to decide the new government of Russia. The civil war was finally won by a communist group called the Bolsheviks (We will learn more about the Russian Revolution later).
At roughly the same time Russia left the war, the United States joined the Allied side and the American army was sent to France to fight the Germans. The United States entered the war because of German attacks against America, including sinking ships that carried Americans. American President Woodrow Wilson said the reason America was joining the war was “to make the world safe for democracy”. The logic of this statement was that England and France were democracies while Germany was not.
Once America joined the war against Germany, it was clear that Germany would eventually lose the war. The German and Austrian home fronts were exhausted from nearly four years of war – their populations were starving, they had run out of young men to put in the army and could not build more weapons. With Russia out of the war, Germany planned to use all of its army in one final massive attack on France to win the war. However, this attack fell short of capturing the French capital of Paris and the French were able to hold on while the American Army arrived to help them fight the Germans.
After this, both the German and Austrian forces collapsed from exhaustion. In the fall of 1918, the German people rebelled against the government and the German emperor was forced to step down. A new democratic German government came to power and agreed to a cease-fire with the Allies, known as the Armistice. After the armistice, both sides prepared to negotiate a peace treaty to end the war. At the same time, the Austria Empire simply broke apart into smaller nationalistic countries. All that was left was a small country of Austria.
The leaders of the Allies met in Paris to write the peace treaty to end the war. The British and the French wanted to punish Germany for for starting a started the war in which they had lost a whole generation of young men. However, the United States wanted a peace treaty that would not punish Germany. Instead, the United States wanted to prevent future wars by creating a League of Nations, an international organization that would make all countries work together to prevent future wars. In the end, the British and French got their way and the peace treaty, called the Treaty of Versailles, forced Germany to take responsibility for the war and to pay $33 billion for the damages caused by the war. The Germans were angered by the treaty and the reality that they had also lost a generation of young men for nothing. Many Germans blamed the new democratic government of Germany for the treaty and began to support radial leaders like Adolf Hitler who promised to end the Treaty of Versailles and get revenge on France and Britain. This would be a major cause of World War Two.
Infographic - World War One by the Numbers
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