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World War I

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About The Summary of The War This is just a brief summary of what went on during the first world war. This war is also recognized as the Great War as well.
	Summary of World War I 1914 On June 28th 1914 Gavrilo Princip (a slav nationalist) assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and Austria-Hungary blamed Serbia for the killing. They blamed them because Europe was linked into diplomatic alliances. These alliances were as follows: Austria-Hungary/Germany/Italy were all part of the Central Powers, and Britain/France/Russia were all part of the Triple Entente/Allied Forces. This was the type of affair that le to war, and thatâ€™s exactly what it did. On August 4th 1914 Britain declared war on Germany, and they invaded the neutral part of Belgium. Britain also declared war on Austria-Hungary on August 12th 1914. It was on August 7th when British forces moved into France and wanted to stop the Germans from coming the Channel into Britain, and the British accomplished this goal with French forces in the Battle of Mons, and the Battle of Marne. When the Battle of Ypres occurred it suddenly became a World war because they allied with the Entente forces, and the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers. 1915 In the end of 1914 many of the soldiers thought the war would be over by Christmas, but as the year went by competing countries realized the war was going to be drawn out, so they prepared. When Britain found out it was going to continue, they had to pass the Defense of Realm Act (DORA) in March of 1915, and they had to get loans from the United States. DORA gave Britain the power to censor the press, control the pay of the war, and protect jobs. Since they were not ready for the war, they formed a Coalition Government, which ended the last Liberal Government. While the men were at war, the women played a bigger role in society taking up the mens role for repairing trains, and buses. When the two powers met again in the Second Battle of Ypres, poisonous gases were introduced and used on both sides, but it only accomplished very little, except for the fact that many lives were lost. In 1915 there were a lot of changes, and one of them was Austria-Hungary joining the Central Powers, because Bulgaria wiped out Russia and Serbia from the war. Another big change was Italy switching from the Axis Powers to the Allied Powers in April of 1915. The Gallipoli Campaign lasted nine months that same year and not a lot was achieved. On May 7th 1915 the luxury cruiser called the Lusitania was traveling from America and was sunk just south of Ireland by the Germans. This led to 1,200 deaths, and the Germans were scared because they thought that the United States would get involved in the war with the Allies. The Germans didnâ€™t want the United States in the war because of all of their manpower. Tragedy struck again on May 31st of that same year when London witnessed its first attack by German aircrafts. This attack killed and injured more than 2,000 people. By the end of 1915 the Germans suffered from food shortages and there were food riots going on in small German towns. By the end of 1915 this war became known as the first â€˜total war.â€™ 1916 These were the crucial years in the war, and yet the British wanted the war to end, and so they were thing of a way to do just that. After doing a lot of thinking, the British came up with the idea of a popular army. They used their War Minister Lord Kitchener to advertise saying that â€˜your country needs you,â€™ and he raised over 1,000,000 volunteers, but on February 9th a conscription came out asking for men who are between the ages of 18 and 41 to join the army. Once they had their conscription movement came through they came up with 4,500,000 people. 300,000,000 of those people were from the British Empire. In February Germany came up with their idea to end the war, and that solution was undertaking a big offense at Verdun, and this intention was known as the war of attrition. Within these two armies in two months there was over 1,000,000 casualties that had taken place. Afterward the British and the French put pressure on the Germans in the Battle of Somme, which took place on July1, 1916, and 20,000 British soldiers were killed along with 40,000 injured. There were many inventions in the war, such as tanks, which were invented on July15, 1916, but a lot of these inventions didnâ€™t have much impact on the war. The British and the Germans were known to have many sea battles, but the one that sticks out the most is the Battle of Jutland, where the British Fleet under Admiral Jellicoe caught the Germans off guard, and they ruined their cruiser. Even though the British lost more men and ships during these sea battles, the big damaged German cruiser spent most of the rest of the war in its home ports. This was a big defeat for the British, because afterward they were the ones who were controlling the seas. On April 24, 1916 an armed uprising occurred in Dublin, Ireland in an attempt to win Irish Independence. The rising eliminated British forces, and the Irish leaders rose to the top. 1917 In the year of 1917 there were a lot of changes to the war. It all go started in February when the German army executed a big retreat to its prepared places, known as the Hindenburg Line. The Germans were getting their plan together to move to the Western Front. They were also planning to get Mexico to invade the United States, and that didnâ€™t make the United States to happy, so on August 6, 1917 the United States declared war on Germany. The United States joined the war on the side of the Allies, and this assisted the Allies on the Western Front, because they got new ships, troops, supplies, and weapons. This also proved to have helped their financial situation, and their commercial assistance. In April of 1917 the British troops pushed to assist in the Battle of Arras, and in July they meet up in Ypres once again, and in the Battle known as the Second Battle of Ypres mustard gas was introduced to the soldiers, and used to break up the lines. Lots of territory was gained, and lots of British casualties were lost due to it. Tanks (July 1916) were used to gain a lot of ground, and thatâ€™s just what the Germans used to get their land that they lost back. Outside of Europe it was the Allied forces that held the control over what went on. In the middle of 1917 the Turks tried to gain control of the Suez Canal, and the British forces gained control over Baghdad and Jerusalem because of the Ottoman Empire. The Allied forces began running into food problems toward the end of this year, and so other parts of the Allied forces sent ships with military escorts to exchange meat, butter, lard, margarine, and sugar to help with this problem. One of the biggest events that occurred this year was the royal family changing its last name to Windsor to sound more British. 1918 In the very last year of this war the Germans released a major offensive break on the Western Front from the Eastern Front. The Germans failed to break the allied lines, and that basically pointed that the war was almost over. It was in August when Allied counter-offences at Marne and Amiens were very successful in the semi-mobile warfare, which held Germans back to the Hindenburg Line. On November 11, 1918 at 11:00 am in the Forest of Compregne an Armistice between the Allied Forces and Germany was signed and the fighting between the two stopped. There were other Axis Powers around the world that were still shadowed from peace, but the memories of the millions of young men will not be forgotten. Out of the millions of men 947,000 of them were from the British Empire. In Britain there were celebrations and everything returned back to normal. The general election over there was in December, and the Coalition Government returned with the majority of people. It was the women who were over 30 who could vote with men during the election. Even though the Armistice was signed in November of 1916, it wasnâ€™t until June 28, 1919 that the peace Treaty of Versailles was signed between the Allied and Axis Powers, and then the World War was at an end.

	For More Information If you would like to learn more on this war, please feel free to email me on the address on my Contact The Colony page, or go to my Colony Links page for a different website.