The War to End All Wars
The 1914-18 War
The Great War
The First World War
World War I
WWI
Two factions of Europe's greatest powers were allied in two opposing forces. These alliances fought a war without parallel in the scale of destruction wrought. The end result was the virtual disappearance of an entire generation of Europeans. It also sowed the seeds of a Second World War.
It was a war that the "leaders" of the day thought (or rather claimed) would be a lead-pipe cinch, a "cake walk" to quote a member of the Bush administration in anticipation of the Iraq War some 90 years later. They told the public it would "be over by Christmas". But in reality it lasted four years.
A total of some 65 million Europeans were mobilised by both sides. There were the central powers which included Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey, and the allied powers including Britain and its Empire, France, Belgium, Russia, Italy, the USA. Some 65 million men went to war and although no-one knows exactly how many were killed, it is generally acknowledged that up to 10 million men lost their lives and another 20 million were wounded.
European "leaders" apparently weren't satisfied with defiling their own lands and killing their own young men. No, they eventually decided it would do their men (those who survived at least) a world of good to see the world. And so they spread their lethal war games to the Asian and African continents. And into the oceans in the South Atlantic and the Pacific. And, oh yes, let's not forget the North American continent, to which the fighting didn't spread but men from the British Commonwealth countries of North America and even the USA joined the fighting.
And The Great War was the first of what might now be called TechnoWars. The use of new technologies such as airplanes, tanks and submarines all premiered in the 1914-18 war. But it was the rather more basic trench warfare which often stands out in our minds.
To read more about The War to End All Wars, many of the accounts contemporaneous, see here:
