Europe and World War 1

Europe and World War I

I . Introduction

World War I was the great armed conflict of 1914-18 . Until World War II , it was often called the Great War because it was the most destructive and widespread war the world had ever seen

Wold War I began as a local conflict over a minor issue . Eventually it engulfed much of Europe and drew in , directly or indirectly , the entire major powers of the world . The first declaration of war was made by Austria-Hungary against Serbia (now part pf Yugoslavia ) on July 28

1914 . Before the armistice was signed on November 11 , 1918 , 28 nations (counting the British Empire as one nation ) were directly engaged in the conflict (Roth , pp . 216-218 / 2003

On one side were France , Belgium , the British Empire , Russia , and Serbia and , later , Japan , Italy , the United States , and 16 other countries . They were called the Allied and Associated Powers , or the Allies . The opposing side consisted of Germany , Austria-Hungary , the Ottoman Empire (Turkey , and Bulgaria . They were known as the Central Powers

After the war , there were reduced to small separate states and Czechoslovakia was created from Austro-Hungarian territory in Central Europe . The Kingdom of the Serbs , Croats , and Slovenes (which became Yugoslavia in 1929 ) was established , comprising Austro-Hungarian lands in the Balkans and the kingdoms of Serbia and Montenegro . Poland , which had been partitioned among the Germans , Austrians , and Russians in the 18th century was re-established along its historical bs (Brook-Shepard , pp . 64-67 / 2002 . Finland , Estonia , Latvia , and Lithuania were freed from Russian domination . In the Middle East , Iraq Syria , Lebanon , Egypt , Hejaz (a territory within modern Saudi Arabia Transjordan (modern Jordan , and Palestine were carved out of the Ottoman Empire

France 's quick defeat in World War II has been attributed , at least in part , to the devastation it suffered in World War I . The vast system of overseas holdings of Great Britain began to change from an empire to a commonwealth . The war was at least partly responsible for the success of the Russian revolution and the rise of Communism . The United States after the war , its first experience of being involved in European affairs , declined to take a role as a world leader and retreated into isolationism , refusing to join the League of Nations (Robbins , pp 161-164 / 2004

Many people thought of World War I as the war to end all wars fought to make the world safe for democracy ' Because of an overly harsh peace treaty , the weakness of the League of Nations , a worldwide economic depression , and the rise of fascism , the war had the opposite effect . It made the Second World War almost inevitable

Thesis Statement : This study scrutinizes and gives deeper understanding of Europe before World War I thus , this investigates the condition of Europe after World War I

II . Background

The history of Europe is the story of many different peoples and cultures . Some peoples lagged behind , while others surged far ahead in the development of social , intellectual , and...