World War I began in 1914 after the assassination of Archduke Franz

Ferdinand and lasted until 1918. During the conflict, Germany,

Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire (the Central
Powers) fought against Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy,
Romania, Japan and the United States (the Allied Powers). 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.

Kaiser Wilhelm II
Because mighty Russia supported Serbia, Austria-Hungary waited to
declare war until its leaders received assurance from German
leader Kaiser Wilhelm II  that Germany would support their cause.
Austro-Hungarian leaders feared that a Russian intervention would
involve Russia’s ally, France, and possibly Great Britain as well.
On July 5, Kaiser Wilhelm secretly pledged his support, giving
Austria-Hungary a so-called carte blanche, or “blank check”
assurance of Germany’s backing in the case of war. The Dual
Monarchy of Austria-Hungary then sent an ultimatum to Serbia, with
such harsh terms as to make it almost impossible to accept.

World War I Begins

Convinced that Austria-Hungary was readying for war, the Serbian
government ordered the Serbian army to mobilize and appealed to
Russia for assistance. 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.

The Western Front

According to an aggressive military strategy known as the Schlieffen
Plan  (named for its mastermind, German Field Marshal Alfred von
Schlieffen ), 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—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 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 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.

World War I Books and Art

The bloodshed on the battlefields of the Western Front, and the
difficulties its soldiers had for years after the fighting had ended,
inspired such works of art as “All Quiet on the Western Front ”
by Erich Maria Remarque  and “In Flanders Fields ”  by Canadian
doctor Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae . In the latter poem, McCrae
writes from the perspective of the fallen soldiers:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
Published in 1915, the poem inspired the use of the poppy as a
symbol of remembrance.

Visual artists like Otto Dix of Germany and British painters Wyndham
Lewis, Paul Nash and David Bomberg used their firsthand
experience as soldiers in World War I to create their art, capturing
the anguish of trench warfare and exploring the themes of
technology, violence and landscapes decimated by war.
The Eastern Front
On the Eastern Front of World War I, Russian forces invaded the
German-held regions of East Prussia and Poland, but were stopped
short by German and Austrian forces at the Battle of Tannenberg  in
late August 1914.

Despite that victory, Russia’s assault had forced Germany to move

two corps from the Western Front to the Eastern, contributing to the
German loss in the Battle of the Marne.

Combined with the fierce Allied resistance in France, the ability of

Russia’s huge war machine to mobilize relatively quickly in the east
ensured a longer, more grueling conflict instead of the quick victory
Germany had hoped to win under the Schlieffen Plan.

Russian Revolution
From 1914 to 1916, Russia’s army mounted several offensives on
World War I’s Eastern Front, but was unable to break through
German lines.
Defeat on the battlefield, combined with economic instability and the
scarcity of food and other essentials, led to mounting discontent
among the bulk of Russia’s population, especially the poverty-
stricken workers and peasants. This increased hostility was directed
toward the imperial regime of Czar Nicholas II  and his unpopular
German-born wife, Alexandra.

Russia’s simmering instability exploded in the Russian Revolution  of

1917, spearheaded by Vladimir Lenin  and the Bolsheviks , which
ended czarist rule and brought a halt to Russian participation in
World War I.

Russia reached an armistice with the Central Powers  in early

December 1917, freeing German troops to face the remaining Allies
on the Western Front.

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 increasing 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  sunk 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 sunk 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.
Gallipoli Campaign
With World War I having effectively settled into a stalemate in
Europe, the Allies attempted to score a victory against the Ottoman
Empire, which entered the conflict on the side of the Central Powers
in late 1914.

After a failed attack on the Dardanelles (the strait linking the Sea of
Marmara with the Aegean Sea), Allied forces led by Britain launched
a large-scale land invasion of the Gallipoli  Peninsula in April 1915.
The invasion also proved a dismal failure, and in January 1916 Allied
forces staged a full retreat from the shores of the peninsula after
suffering 250,000 casualties.

Did you know? The young Winston Churchill, then first lord of the British Admiralty,
resigned his command after the failed Gallipoli campaign in 1916, accepting a commission
with an infantry battalion in France.
British-led forces also combated the Ottoman Turks in Egypt
and Mesopotamia , while in northern Italy, Austrian and Italian troops
faced off in a series of 12 battles along the Isonzo River, located at
the border between the two nations.

Battle of the Isonzo

The First Battle of the Isonzo  took place in the late spring of 1915,
soon after Italy’s entrance into the war on the Allied side. In the
Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo, also known as the Battle of
Caporetto  (October 1917), German reinforcements helped Austria-
Hungary win a decisive victory.

After Caporetto, Italy’s allies jumped in to offer increased assistance.

British and French—and later, American—troops arrived in the
region, and the Allies began to take back the Italian Front.

World War I at Sea

In the years before World War I, the superiority of Britain’s Royal
Navy was unchallenged by any other nation’s fleet, but the Imperial
German Navy had made substantial strides in closing the gap
between the two naval powers. Germany’s strength on the high seas
was also aided by its lethal fleet of U-boat submarines.

After the Battle of Dogger Bank in January 1915, in which the British
mounted a surprise attack on German ships in the North Sea, the
German navy chose not to confront Britain’s mighty Royal Navy in a
major battle for more than a year, preferring to rest the bulk of its
naval strategy on its U-boats.

The biggest naval engagement of World War I, the Battle of

Jutland  (May 1916) left British naval superiority on the North Sea
intact, and Germany would make no further attempts to break an
Allied naval blockade for the remainder of the war.

World War I Planes

World War I was the first major conflict to harness the power of
planes. Though not as impactful as the British Royal Navy or
Germany’s U-Boats, the use of planes in World War I presaged their
later, pivotal role in military conflicts around the globe.

At the dawn of World War I, aviation was a relatively new field;

the Wright brothers  took their first sustained flight just eleven years
before, in 1903. Aircraft were initially used primarily for
reconnaissance missions. During the First Battle of the Marne,
information passed from pilots allowed the allies to exploit weak
spots in the German lines, helping the Allies to push Germany out of
France.

The first machine guns were successfully mounted on planes in June

of 1912 in the United States, but were imperfect; if timed incorrectly,
a bullet could easily fell the propeller of the plane it came from. The
Morane-Saulnier L, a French plane, provided a solution: The
propeller was armored with deflector wedges that prevented bullets
from hitting it. The Morane-Saulnier Type L was used by the French,
the British Royal Flying Corps (part of the Army), the British Royal
Navy Air Service and the Imperial Russian Air Service. The British
Bristol Type 22 was another popular model used for both
reconnaissance work and as a fighter plane.
Dutch inventor Anthony Fokker improved upon the French deflector
system in 1915. His “interrupter” synchronized the firing of the guns
with the plane’s propeller to avoid collisions. Though his most
popular plane during WWI was the single-seat Fokker Eindecker,
Fokker created over 40 kinds of airplanes for the Germans.

The Allies debuted the Handley-Page HP O/400, the first two-engine

bomber, in 1915. As aerial technology progressed, long-range heavy
bombers like Germany’s Gotha G.V. (first introduced in 1917) were
used to strike cities like London. Their speed and maneuverability
proved to be far deadlier than Germany’s earlier Zeppelin raids.

By war’s end, the Allies were producing five times more aircraft than
the Germans. On April 1, 1918, the British created the Royal Air
Force, or RAF, the first air force to be a separate military branch
independent from the navy or army. 

Second Battle of the Marne

With Germany able to build up its strength on the Western Front after
the armistice with Russia, Allied troops struggled to hold off another
German offensive until promised reinforcements from the United
States were able to arrive.

On July 15, 1918, German troops launched what would become the
last German offensive of the war, attacking French forces (joined by
85,000 American troops as well as some of the British Expeditionary
Force) in the Second Battle of the Marne . The Allies successfully
pushed back the German offensive and launched their own
counteroffensive just three days later.

After suffering massive casualties, Germany was forced to call off a

planned offensive further north, in the Flanders region stretching
between France and Belgium, which was envisioned as Germany’s
best hope of victory.

The Second Battle of the Marne turned the tide of war decisively
towards the Allies, who were able to regain much of France and
Belgium in the months that followed.
Toward Armistice
By the fall of 1918, the Central Powers were unraveling on all fronts.

Despite the Turkish victory at Gallipoli, later defeats by invading

forces and an Arab revolt had combined to destroy the Ottoman
economy and devastate its land, and the Turks signed a treaty with
the Allies in late October 1918.

Austria-Hungary, dissolving from within due to growing nationalist

movements among its diverse population, reached an armistice on
November 4. Facing dwindling resources on the battlefield,
discontent on the homefront and the surrender of its allies, Germany
was finally forced to seek an armistice on November 11, 1918,
ending World War I.

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 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.

READ MORE: The Perilous But Critical Role of World War I

Runners

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.