World War 1 | History, Causes and Effects of the WW1

 After Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was killed in 1914, World War I, commonly known as the Great War, started. His assassination sparked a war in Europe that raged until 1918. The Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire) engaged in combat with the Allies—Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Romania, Canada, Japan, and the United States—during the war (the Allied Powers). The horrors of trench warfare and new military innovations contributed to World War 1's extraordinary levels of death and damage. Completed 16 million people had died by the time the war was over and the Allied Powers declared victory, including both troops and civilians.

 World War 1 | History, Causes and Effects of the WW1

Ø Archduke Franz Ferdinand

Years before World War 1 actually started, tensions had been building throughout Europe, notably in the unstable Balkan region of southeast Europe.

Numerous alliances including European nations, the Ottoman Empire, Russia, and other parties had been in place for some time, but they were in danger of dissolving due to the political unrest in the Balkans, especially in Bosnia, Serbia, and Herzegovina.

The shooting deaths of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, by the Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip on June 28, 1914, in Sarajevo, Bosnia, served as the catalyst for the start of World War One. Bosnia and Herzegovina was under Austro-Hungarian administration, and Princip and other nationalists fought to overthrow it.

A quickly spiraling series of events began with the killing of Franz Ferdinand: Austria-Hungary, like many other nations, blamed the Serbian government for the attack and planned to use the catastrophe as a reason for permanently resolving the issue of Serbian nationalism.

 

  World War 1 | History, Causes and Effects of the WW1

Ø Kaiser Wilhelm II

Austria-Hungary delayed declaring war until its authorities had assurances from German leader Kaiser Wilhelm II that Germany would back their cause since formidable Russia supported Serbia. The authorities of Austria-Hungary feared that Russian involvement would also involve France, an ally of Russia, and perhaps Great Britain.

Kaiser Wilhelm covertly guaranteed his support on July 5, offering Austria-Hungary a "blank check" guarantee of Germany's support in the event of a conflict. The Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary then delivered Serbia an ultimatum that was so difficult to accept because of its harsh provisions.

 

Ø Beginning of World War 1

The Serbian government ordered the mobilization of the Serbian army and made a request for aid from Russia after coming to the conclusion that Austria-Hungary was preparing for war. When Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on July 28, the shaky truce between the continent's major nations was rapidly broken.

Russia, Belgium, France, Great Britain, and Serbia formed an alliance against Austria-Hungary and Germany in less than a week, sparking the start of World War 1.

  World War 1 | History, Causes and Effects of the WW1

Ø Western Front

German Field Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen's ambitious military plan, known as the Schlieffen Plan, was the impetus for Germany's entry into World War 1 on two fronts, with an invasion of France through neutral Belgium in the west and an offensive against Russia in the east.

German soldiers crossed the border into Belgium on August 4, 1914. The Germans attacked the heavily fortified city of Liege in the opening engagement of World War 1, employing the most potent weapons in their arsenal—huge siege cannons—to take the city by August 15. As they pushed through Belgium and into France, the Germans left death and ruin in their path. They shot at civilians and executed a Belgian priest who they had accused of instigating civilian resistance.

 

Ø The First Marne Battle

The German army had already advanced far into northeastern France and was only 30 miles from Paris when the French and British forces engaged it in the First Battle of the Marne, which took place from September 6 to September 9, 1914. German advances were halted by Allied forces, who then conducted a successful counterattack that drove the Germans back north of the Aisne River.

German aspirations for an easy win in France were put to rest by the setback. The Western Front served as the battlefield for an agonizing attrition-based conflict that would persist for more than three years. Both sides constructed trenches.

Verdun (February–December 1916) and the Battle of the Somme were two particularly drawn-out and expensive battles in this campaign (July-November 1916). The Battle of Verdun alone cost about a million lives for German and French troops.

  World War 1 | History, Causes and Effects of the WW1

Ø Front Eastern

Invading Russian forces on the Eastern Front of World War 1 were halted in their tracks at the Battle of Tannenberg in late August 1914 by German and Austrian forces in East Prussia and Poland, which were under German control.

Despite that triumph, Germany was forced by Russia's attack to transfer two corps from the Western Front to the Eastern Front, which contributed to the German defeat at the Battle of the Marne.

The ability of Russia's massive war machine to mobilize relatively swiftly in the east, coupled with the fierce Allied opposition in France, ensured a longer, more arduous fight rather than the quick victory Germany had intended to achieve under the Schlieffen Plan.

 

Ø Revolution in Russia

Russia's army launched three offensives on the Eastern Front of World War I between 1914 and 1916, but it was unable to get beyond German defenses.

The majority of Russia's population, especially the poor workers and peasants, became more dissatisfied as a result of military defeat, economic instability, and a lack of food and other necessities. This heightened animosity was aimed at Czar Nicholas II's imperial government and his unpopular wife Alexandra, who was born in Germany.

The Russian Revolution of 1917, led by Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks, destroyed czarist power and put an end to Russian involvement in World War 1. This revolution also caused Russia to withdraw from the war.

Early in December 1917, Russia and the Central Powers agreed to an armistice, allowing German forces to engage the surviving Allies on the Western Front.

 

Ø US. involvement in World War I

The United States adopted the neutrality stance espoused by President Woodrow Wilson at the start of World War I in 1914, remaining out of combat while yet conducting trade and shipping with European nations on both sides of the conflict.

However, in light of Germany's uncontrolled submarine aggression against neutral ships, particularly those carrying passengers, neutrality was becoming more and more difficult to preserve. Germany designated the waters surrounding the British Isles a war zone in 1915, and German U-boats sank a number of passenger and commercial ships, including some American ships.

Numerous demonstrations following the May 1915 sinking of the British ocean liner Lusitania by a German U-boat while it was en route from New York to Liverpool, England, and carrying hundreds of passengers from the United States, played a significant role in shifting American public opinion against Germany. A $250 million arms appropriations package was passed by Congress in February 1917 with the goal of preparing the US for war.

The following month, Germany sank four more American trade ships, and on April 2, Woodrow Wilson testified before Congress and urged the United States to declare war on Germany.

  World War 1 | History, Causes and Effects of the WW1

Ø First World War at Sea

Before World War 1, no nation's fleet could match the dominance of Britain's Royal Navy, but the Imperial German Navy had made significant progress toward bridging the gap between the two maritime powers. Germany's deadly fleet of U-boat submarines contributed to the country's strength on the high seas.

Following the Battle of Dogger Bank in January 1915, in which the British launched an unexpected attack on German ships in the North Sea, the German navy elected to base the majority of its naval strategy on its U-boats rather than engage Britain's powerful Royal Navy in a major conflict for more than a year.

The Battle of Jutland (May 1916), which was the largest naval battle of World War 1, preserved British naval dominance in the North Sea and ensured that Germany would not attempt to breach an Allied naval blockade again for the duration of the conflict.

 

Ø World War I aircraft

The first significant combat to effectively use aircraft was World War 1. The deployment of planes in World War One foreshadowed their subsequent, crucial role in military battles all over the world, despite not having the same impact as the British Royal Navy or Germany's U-boats.

Aviation was a relatively new field at the start of World War I; the Wright Brothers had made their first continuous flight only eleven years earlier, in 1903. At first, reconnaissance missions were mostly carried out by aircraft. Pilots' knowledge assisted the allies to take advantage of gaps in the German defenses during the First Battle of the Marne, which helped the Allies drive Germany out of France.

In the United States, the first machine guns were mounted on aircraft successfully in June 1912, but they were unreliable; if fired at the wrong moment, a bullet could easily destroy the plane's propeller. A remedy was offered by the French plane Morane-Saulnier L, whose propeller was protected by deflector wedges to stop bullets in their tracks. The French, British Royal Flying Corps (part of the Army), British Royal Navy Air Service, and Imperial Russian Air Service all employed the Morane-Saulnier Type L. Another well-liked type that was employed for both fighter and reconnaissance missions was the British Bristol Type 22.

The French deflector device was modified by Dutch inventor Anthony Fokker in 1915. To prevent crashes, his "interrupter" timed the gunfire with the plane's propeller. Fokker produced more than 40 different types of aircraft for the Germans during World War I, even though the single-seat Fokker Eindecker was his most well-known aircraft.

The Allies produced five times as many aircraft as the Germans at the conclusion of the war. The Royal Air Force, also known as the RAF, was established by the British on April 1, 1918, making it the first air force to exist independently of the army or navy.

 World War 1 | History, Causes and Effects of the WW1 

Ø The Armistice

The Central Powers were disintegrating on all fronts by the fall of 1918.

The Turks signed a pact with the Allies in late October 1918 notwithstanding the Turkish win at Gallipoli, further setbacks by invading forces, and an Arab uprising that decimated the Ottoman economy and devasted its country.

On November 4, Austria-Hungary, which was breaking apart internally as a result of escalating nationalist movements among its heterogeneous people, reached an armistice. On November 11, 1918, Germany was eventually obliged to request an armistice, ending World War 1 as a result of its allies' surrender, diminishing military resources, and domestic unrest.

 

Ø Casualties from World War One

More than 9 million troops lost their lives in World War 1, and another 21 million suffered injuries. The number of civilian deaths was close to 10 million. Germany and France were the two countries most negatively impacted since each of them mobilized about 80% of the male population between the ages of 15 and 49.

Four venerable imperial dynasties—Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, and Turkey—fell as a result of the political turmoil that followed World War One.

  World War 1 | History, Causes and Effects of the WW1

Ø Effects of World War One

As millions of women entered the labor to replace the males who went to war and those who never returned, World War I resulted in significant social upheaval. One of the world's deadliest pandemics, the Spanish flu outbreak of 1918, which is thought to have killed between 20 and 50 million people, was also made worse by the first global conflict.

The phrase "the first modern conflict" has also been used to describe World War I. Machine guns, tanks, aerial combat, and radio communications are just a few of the modern military technologies that were widely adopted during World War I.

During World War I, the devastating consequences of chemical weapons like mustard gas and phosgene on soldiers and civilians rallied the public and military against their further deployment. The 1925 Geneva Convention agreements, which still hold true today, limited the employment of chemical and biological weapons in combat.

 World War 1 | History, Causes and Effects of the WW1