the great war

http://www.pbs.org/greatwar/
http://drnissani.net/mnissani/WWI/encarta.htm





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World War I

I. INTRODUCTION
A military conflict, from August 1914 to November 1918, that involved many of the countries of Europe as well the United States and other nations throughout the world. World War I was one of the most violent and destructive wars in European history. Of the 65 million men who were mobilized, more than 10 million were killed and more than 20 million wounded. The term World War I did not come into general use until a second worldwide conflict broke out in 1939 (see World War II). Before that year, the war was known as the Great War or the World War.
World War I was the first total war. Once the war began, the countries involved mobilized their entire populations and economic resources to achieve victory on the battlefield. The term home front, which was widely employed for the first time during World War I, perfectly symbolized this new concept of a war in which the civilian population behind the lines was directly and critically involved in the war effort.
The war began as a clash between two coalitions of European countries. The first coalition, known as the Allied Powers, included the United Kingdom, France, Belgium,Serbia, Montenegro, and the Russian Empire (see Russia). The Central Powers, which opposed them, consisted of the empires of Germany and Austria-Hungary. Japanjoined the Allied Powers in 1914. The Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers in 1914, as did Bulgaria in 1915. The same year, Italy entered the war on the Allied side. Although the United States initially remained neutral, it joined the Allies in 1917. The conflict eventually involved 32 countries, 28 of which supported the Allies. Some of these nations, however, did not participate in the actual fighting.
The immediate cause of the war was the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand, the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, by a Serbian nationalist. The fundamental causes of the conflict, however, were rooted deeply in the European history of the previous century, particularly in the political and economic policies that prevailed in Europe after 1871, the year that Germany emerged as a major European power.
By the end of 1914 the war entered a stalemate. Both sides became mired in two main, stationary fronts—the western front, primarily in northeastern France, and the eastern front, mainly in western Russia. At the fronts, the troops fought each other from numerous parallel lines of interconnected trenches. Each side laid siege to the other's system of trenches and endeavored to break through their lines.
When the war finally came to an end on November 11, 1918, and the Central Powers were defeated, the political order of Europe had been transformed beyond recognition. The German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and Ottoman empires had collapsed. New areas were carved out of their former lands, and the boundaries of many other countries were redrawn. The war also helped precipitate the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia (see Russian Revolutions of 1917), which ushered in the ideology of Communism there.
The war also had important long-term consequences. The enormous cost of the war undermined the financial stability of all of the countries involved, and they had to bear an onerous burden of debt for many years to come. These financial losses, combined with the battlefield deaths and physical destruction, severely weakened the European powers.
II. THEATERS OF WAR
Most of the fighting during World War I was carried out by land armies in Europe. Naval forces were used primarily to prevent food and supplies from reaching their destinations. Airplanes were also used in a major military campaign for the first time during World War I, although they played a small role in the war's outcome.
A. Land Warfare
Most of the decisive land campaigns of World War I occurred on the continent of Europe. The two chief centers of operations were the western front and the eastern front. On the western front, German armies confronted those of the British Empire, France, Belgium, and, later, the United States. Most of the fighting on this front took place in northeastern France. The trenches of the western front ran from the North Sea to the border of Switzerland. On the eastern front, where German and Austro-Hungarian armies faced the Russians, the fighting began in the frontier regions between Germany and Poland (then divided among the Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and German Empires) and between Austria-Hungary and Russia. Gradually the battle lines moved eastward and northeastward, deep into Russian territory.
A subsidiary theater of war in Europe was the alpine frontier between Italy and Austria-Hungary, where the two countries fought each other after Italy joined the Allies in the spring of 1915. Another subsidiary theater was the Balkan Peninsula, where Serbia, Romania, and the Greek-held area of Salonika (see Thessaloníki) were successively the scenes of local campaigns.
Since the major participants in the war had colonial empires in Africa, Asia, and what is now called the Middle East, the war quickly spread to those parts of the world. Although Germany was a late entry in the race for overseas colonies, it had obtained the rudiments of a colonial empire in Africa, including Togo, Cameroon, German South-West Africa, and German East Africa. It also had an assortment of islands in the Pacific Ocean, including the Marshall, Mariana, and Caroline islands; German New Guinea; the Bismarck Archipelago; the Solomon Islands; and Samoa. Germany also possessed a land grant with special economic and residence rights at Kiaochow (Jiaozhou) on China's Shantung (Shandong) Peninsula.
At the outbreak of war in Europe, British, French, Belgian, and South African military forces invaded German possessions in Africa. Japan seized Germany's island possessions north of the equator while Australia and New Zealand took control of the German islands to the south. The remnants of the Ottoman Empire, located in the area later known as the Middle East, came under military attack from British forces based in Egypt.
World War I saw advances in the area of battlefield weapons. At the start of the war, the principal infantry weapon was the bolt-action magazine rifle, which was capable of firing 6 to 10 aimed shots per minute The machine gun, which had been developed in the 1880s, was just gaining acceptance by the major European armies as the war began. It could fire rifle ammunition automatically at a rate of 200 to 250 shots per minute. It was an excellent defensive weapon, capable of devastating waves of cavalry and infantry. Other important weapons developed during the war were the flamethrower, the hand grenade, poison gas, and the tank. All these weapons were designed to restore mobility to the troops huddled in the trenches avoiding machine gun and heavy artillery fire.