World War I

We explain everything about the First World War. The participating sides and countries, the causes and consequences of the war.

What was World War I?

The First World War, known at the time as the Great Warit was a armed confrontation that involved almost all the countries of the European continent and several nations from Asia, Africa, America and Oceania over four years, between 1914 and 1918.

The countries in dispute were organized into two opposing alliances: the Central Powers and the Entente. These alliances were led by the great empires and military and industrial powers of the time.

Almost 70 million soldiers faced each other in the trenches and battlefields, coming from European nations and their colonies.

The First World War It was the second armed conflict with the highest cost in lives in history, only surpassed by World War II. This was due to the enormous number of participants and the variety of technical innovations and technologies derived from industrialization, which were used in the war, from aerial bombing, machine guns and tanks to the use of poison gases.

This conflict was extremely important for the political and economic order of the world, since it caused revolutions (such as the Russian Revolution of 1917), collapsed empires, reconfigured borders and allowed the rise of new powers.

The end point of the First World War was the surrender of Germany in November 1918, followed by the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on June 28, 1919.

The humiliating conditions imposed on Germany in that treaty fueled the discontent that contributed to the rise of Nazism and the start of World War II two decades later.

• See also: Vietnam War

Countries participating in the First World War

The two sides fighting in the First World War were the following:

The Central Powers

This side had its origins in the Triple Alliance, formed in 1882 by Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy. However, Italy did not enter the war until 1915, and did so on the side of the Entente, thus abandoning the Triple Alliance. Its place was taken by the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Bulgaria.

Other nations that directly or indirectly supported the Central Powers were the Sultanate of Darfur, the Dervish State, the Emirate of Jabal Shammar, and the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic.

The Entente

This side was based on the alliance between the United Kingdom, France and Russia that before the war was called the Triple Entente. During the war it included more nations, which is why it is often known simply as the Entente.

Some of the nations that joined the Entente were Japan, Serbia, Montenegro, Belgium, Italy, Romania, Portugal, Greece, the United States and Brazil. Russia abandoned the Entente and the war in 1917.

Causes of the First World War

The event that caused the start of the First World War was the assassination in Sarajevo of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, at the hands of a Bosnian Serb nationalist on June 28, 1914.

A large-scale diplomatic conflict was unleashed that quickly led to violence, as The Austro-Hungarian Empire declared war on Serbia and this activated alliances on both sides: Russia mobilized to defend Serbia, Germany declared war on Russia and invaded neutral Belgium to reach France, and the United Kingdom and France declared war on Germany and Austria-Hungary. .

The war also had other causes, such as the conflict over the division of the world between the European imperial powers which had begun the previous century following the colonization of Africa and Asia. Colonial domination had allowed the economic and industrial development of the European powers thanks to the obtaining of raw materials.

The colonial dominance of England and France generated conflicts, especially with Germany, which had begun to boost its industry and was led by a nationalist ruling class that sought to affirm German prestige in the world through imperialism.

• Causes and consequences of the First World War

Consequences of the First World War

The First World War left a balance of almost nine million combatants and seven million civilians killed plus twenty million wounded and maimed. In addition, it had important political consequences, such as the dissolution of four of the participating empires: the Russian, the German, the Ottoman and the Austro-Hungarian.

• The Russian Empire It disintegrated when the Russian Revolution occurred in 1917, which overthrew the tsar in March (the so-called February Revolution) and led to the formation of a Bolshevik government in November (the so-called October Revolution). The Bolshevik government withdrew from the war and took the first steps toward building a socialist state that later became the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
• The Austro-Hungarian Empire It was divided into the nations of Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (future Yugoslavia) and Poland (whose southern part had belonged to the empire).
• The Ottoman Empire It disintegrated and its territories in the Middle East were distributed as mandates of the League of Nations between the United Kingdom (Palestine, Iraq, Transjordan) and France (Syria, Lebanon). Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's nationalist movement founded the Republic of Türkiye, which was largely limited to the Anatolian peninsula.
• The German Empire suffered a dissolution that involved the loss of all its colonial territories in Africa, Asia and Oceania, in addition to the transfer of European territories to other countries such as France, Belgium, Poland and Denmark, and the temporary occupation of an area west of the Rhine River. by the winning troops.

These conditions were set in the Treaty of Versailles, which also imposed a reduction in the German armed forces and Germany was forced to pay costly war reparations. This fueled resentment among much of the German population and allowed the growth of Nazism, a far-right nationalist movement that brought Adolf Hitler to power in 1933.

References

• Hart, P. (2014). The Great War 1914-1918. Military history of World War I. Criticism.
• Showalter, D.E. & Royde-Smith, J.G. (2023). World War I Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/
• Stevenson, D. (2013). 1914-1918. History of World War I. Debate.
• Stone, N. (2013). Brief history of World War I. Ariel.