It began at 11.15 on the morning of June 28th 1914 in an outpost of the Austro-Hungarian Empire called Sarajevo ...... Following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand - the Austro-Hungarian government used the assassination as a pretext to deal with the Serbian question. Germany supported the action. On 23 July an ultimatum was sent to Serbia with demands so extreme that it was rejected. The Serbians relying on support from Russia ordered mobilization. Austria-Hungary issued a declaration of war on 28 July. Initially, Russia ordered partial mobilization, directed at the Austrian frontier. On 31 July after the Russian General Staff informed the Czar that partial mobilization was logistically impossible - a full mobilization was ordered. The Schlieffen Plan, which relied on a quick strike against France, could not afford to allow the Russians to mobilize without launching an attack. Thus, the Germans declared war against Russia on 1 August and on France two days later. Next - Germany violated Belgium's neutrality by the German march through it to Paris. With this - five of the six European powers were now involved in the largest continental European conflict since the Napoleonic Wars So began the war to end all wars ....... Annie
World War I (abbreviated WWI or WW1 - also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Wars) was a global war fought chiefly in Europe from 1914 to 1918. The war was one of the crucial events in the history of the 20th century. The war was unprecedented in scale and intensity, with more men fighting and more casualties in action than any war before. Over 60 million soldiers took part. The war claimed over 40 million casualties, including approximately 20 million civilian and military dead. Many of the events attendant upon the war - blockade, revolution, genocide and disease - increased the misery. For this reason, the war is vividly remembered even today as a historic human tragedy. The war had sweeping consequences for politics and diplomacy in the rest of the 20th century. The war resulted in the collapse and fragmentation of the Empires of Austria-Hungary, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire. The German Empire was overthrown, and Germany lost territory. As a consequence, the maps of Europe and the Middle East were re-drawn; ancient monarchies were replaced by communist or democratic republics. For the first time, an international body, the League of Nations, was created to prevent war ever occurring again. The terms of the treaties ending the war, and the instability of new nations, were important factors leading towards World War II twenty years later. The causes of the war can be traced to the unification of Germany in 1871, and the uneasy balance of power among the European Great Powers in the opening years of the 20th century. Slow fuses to final detonation included continuing French resentment over the loss of territory to Germany in the 19th century; growing economic, military and colonial competition between Britain and Germany; and the continuing instability of Austro-Hungarian rule in the Balkans. The spark for the war happened on 28 June 1914, as a Bosnian Serb succeeded in the assassinating the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. Austria-Hungary's demands for revenge against the Kingdom of Serbia led to the activation of a series of alliances which within weeks saw most European powers at war. Because of the global empires of many European nations, the war soon spread worldwide. The war was fought between two major alliances. The Entente Powers initially consisted of France, the United Kingdom, Russia, and their associated empires and dependencies. Numerous other states joined these allies, most notably Japan in August 1914, Italy in April 1915, and the United States in April 1917. The Central Powers, so named because of their central location on the European continent, initially consisted of Germany and Austria-Hungary and their associated empires. The Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers in October 1914, followed a year later by Bulgaria. By the conclusion of the war, only The Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain, the Scandinavian nations, and Monaco remained officially neutral among the European countries, though several may have provided financial and materiel support to one side or the other. The fighting of the war mostly took place along several fronts that broadly encircled the European continent. The Western Front was marked by a system of trenches, breastworks, and fortifications separated by an area known as no man's land. These fortifications stretched 475 miles (more than 600 kilometres) and precipitated a style of fighting known as trench warfare. On the Eastern Front, the vastness of the eastern plains and the limited railroad network prevented the stalemate of the Western Front, though the scale of the conflict was just as large. There was heavy fighting on the Balkan Front, the Middle Eastern Front and the Italian Front; there were also hostilities at sea and in the air http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I
