World War I

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World War I, also known as the First World War, the Great War, the War of the Nations and the War to End All Wars, was a world conflict occurring from 1914 to 1918. The war was fought by the Allies on one side, and the Central Powers on the other. No previous conflict had mobilized so many soldiers or involved so many in the field of battle. By its end, the war had become the second bloodiest conflict in recorded history (behind the Taiping Rebellion), though it was surpassed within a generation by World War II.

Related Topics:
World conflict - 1914 - 1918 - Allies - Central Powers - Taiping Rebellion - World War II

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No other war had changed the map of Europe so dramatically—four empires were shattered: The German, the Austro-Hungarian, the Ottoman, and the Russian. Their four dynasties, the Hohenzollerns, the Habsburgs, the Ottomans, and the Romanovs, who had roots of power back to the days of the Crusades, all fell during or after the war.

Related Topics:
German - Austro-Hungarian - Ottoman - Russian - Hohenzollern - Habsburg - Romanov - Crusade

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World War I became infamous for trench warfare, where troops were confined to trenches because of tight defenses. This was especially true of the Western Front. Over 9 million died on the battlefield, and nearly that many more on the home front due to food shortages, genocide, and ground combat. Among other notable events, chemical weapons were used for the first time, the first large-scale bombing from the air was undertaken, and some of the century's first large-scale civilian massacres took place.

Related Topics:
Trench warfare - Western Front - Genocide - Chemical weapon - Bombing from the air

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The causes of World War I were complex developments by themselves (see causes below).

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World War I proved to be the decisive break with the old world order, marking the final demise of absolutist monarchy in Europe. The post-war failure to deal effectively with many of the causes and results of the War would lead to the rise of Fascism in Italy, Nazism in Germany and the outbreak of World War II within a generation. The War was the catalyst for the Bolshevik Russian Revolution, which would inspire later Communist revolutions in countries as diverse as China and Cuba, and would lay the basis for the Cold War standoff between the Communist Soviet Union and the United States. The War ended the Ottoman Empire in the east, and laid the basis for a modern democratic successor state, Turkey. In Central Europe, new states Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were born and Poland was re-created.

Related Topics:
World order - Absolutist - Monarchy - Europe - Fascism - Italy - Nazism - Germany - World War II - Russian Revolution - China - Cuba - Cold War - Soviet Union - United States - Ottoman Empire - Turkey - Central Europe - Czechoslovakia - Yugoslavia - Poland

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Activity by the French and British Empire forces in the eastern part of the former Ottoman Empire would give rise to several modern conflicts, including the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Greco-Turkish conflict over Cyprus, the Iran-Iraq conflict of the 1980's, and the Gulf War of the 1990s by Iraq. The Greco-Turkish conflict, which ended in 1924, was the last direct major conflict of the war.

Related Topics:
Arab-Israeli conflict - Iran-Iraq conflict - 1980 - Gulf War - 1990 - Iraq - Greco-Turkish conflict - 1924

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warname=World War I

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