Western Civilization - HIST 102 Resource Guide

War between the Central European Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and allies) on one side and the Triple Entente (Britain and the British Empire, France, and Russia) and their allies, including the USA (which entered in 1917), on the other side.

World War I was the defining event of the twentieth century. Its unfinished political and military business laid the foundation for an even greater world war that began in 1939.

Despite the best efforts of the delegates to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, Europe was not a more stable or a more peaceful place after the end of World War I. Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia were embroiled in civil wars as the Great War ended. Many national boundaries had been redrawn or had shifted without regard to the ethnicities of populations, and the Treaty of Versailles was an enormous disappointment to almost everyone involved, either because it was too harshly punitive toward Germany or not punitive enough.

Britain and its Empire lost almost a million men during World War One; most of them died on the Western Front.

Stretching 440 miles from the Swiss border to the North Sea, the line of trenches, dug-outs and barbed-wire fences moved very little between 1914-1918, despite attempts on both sides to break through.

On June 28, 1914, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir apparent to the Hapsburg throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was assassinated in Sarajevo, along with his wife, Sophie, and the declaration of World War I became imminent.

World War I, two unsuccessful German offensives in northern France. In the First Battle 6-9 September 1914, German advance was halted by French and British troops under the overall command of the French general Jospeh Joffre; in the Second Battle 15 July-4 August 1918, the German advance was defeated by British, French, and US troops under the French general Henri Pétain, and German morale crumbled.

The Somme campaign in 1916 was the first great offensive of World War I for the British, and it produced a more critical British attitude toward the war.

In World War I, three major battles 1914-17 between German and Allied forces near Ypres, a Belgian town in western Flanders, 40 km/25 mi south of Ostend.

World War I battle between Allied and German forces 15-31 October 1914; the final engagement of the Allied ‘race to the sea’. This battle saw the successful defence of the River Yser from Nieuport to Dixmude by a mixed Belgian and French force against the 4th German Army.

Formulation of a peace program, presented at the end of World War I by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson in an address before both houses of Congress on Jan. 8, 1918.

World War I ended in November 1918. At the beginning of 1919 the victorious allies met at the French Palace of Versailles, near Paris. Their aim was to decide how to treat the defeated enemy (Germany) and to redraw the map of Europe.