Study materials
The first global military conflict in human history. Two coalitions met on the battlefield — the Central Powers and the Entente. In four years some 17 million people died, four empires collapsed (the German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman), and the map of Europe was redrawn for good. The contradictions laid down in 1919 detonated 20 years later as the Second World War.
Who fought whom
Two coalitions clashed in the war. The Entente (the Allies): France, Great Britain and the Russian Empire; later joined by Italy (1915) and the United States (1917). The Central Powers: the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria.
In all, more than 30 countries were at war, and some 70 million people were mobilized. This was the first truly worldwide war.
How it all began
On 28 June 1914, in Sarajevo, a Serbian nationalist shot dead the Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand — heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary. Just one murder, or so it seemed.
But Europe was entangled in a system of alliances in which countries had promised to defend one another. Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia — and in a matter of days, like dominoes, all the great powers were dragged into the war.
Four years in the trenches
Germany hoped to defeat France quickly, but the French stopped her before Paris — what became known as the "Miracle on the Marne". After that the front froze in place.
From Switzerland to the North Sea stretched an unbroken line of trenches: barbed wire, machine guns, endless artillery bombardment. Soldiers sat for months in the mud, and every offensive cost hundreds of thousands of lives for the sake of a few kilometers. At Christmas 1914 the two sides even held their fire for a single day and sang carols together — but the high command never allowed it again.
Terrible new weapons
The First World War became a testing ground for horrifying new inventions. For the first time poison gas was used on a mass scale (at Ypres in 1915), along with combat aircraft and submarines, and in 1916 tanks appeared on the battlefield for the first time.
Industry turned the war into a conveyor belt of death: now it was possible to kill faster, and in greater numbers, than ever before.
Verdun and the Somme
1916 brought the two most terrible battles. At Verdun the French and the Germans ground each other down for almost a year, under the French slogan "They shall not pass".
On the river Somme, on the first day alone the British lost about 57,000 men — the bloodiest day in the history of the British army. Together these two battles claimed more than a million lives, and the front line barely moved.
Ukraine in the war
The front line ran through Ukrainian lands as well. Worst of all, Ukrainians found themselves on both sides of the front: some fought in the Russian army, others in the Austro-Hungarian, often against one another.
And when the empires began to totter at the end of the war, Ukrainians tried to win a state of their own — the Ukrainian People's Republic was born. The struggle for independence would go on for several more years.
1917: the turning point
Revolution broke out in the Russian Empire: the tsar abdicated, and the Bolsheviks, having seized power, pulled Russia out of the war by signing a separate peace with Germany.
But that same year the United States entered the war — with fresh troops and vast industrial power. One ally had dropped out; in its place came another, far more powerful — and this decided the fate of the war.
The end of the war
By 1918 Germany was exhausted: the naval blockade had left it short of food, its soldiers were worn out, and fresh American troops were pressing ever harder.
At 11 in the morning on 11 November 1918 the guns fell silent — an armistice had been signed. The Kaiser fled abroad, and a republic was proclaimed in Germany. The Great War was over.
What the war left behind
The war claimed some 17 million lives and destroyed four empires at a single stroke — the German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman. New states arose in their place.
In 1919 the victors signed the Treaty of Versailles, which punished Germany harshly. Many Germans saw it as a humiliation — and it was precisely this grievance that, 20 years later, helped to kindle the Second World War. The French marshal Foch aptly observed at the time: "This is not peace, it is an armistice for 20 years".
