The First World War or the Great War (July 28, 1914 - November 11, 1918) was a military conflict involving 38 countries between two coalitions of states in Europe, the fighting of which also spread to the Middle East, Africa and parts of Asia.
One of the deadliest conflicts in history: about 9 million people died in battles and more than 5 million civilians as a result of military occupation, bombing, famine and disease. Millions more people died as a result of the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire and the 1918 flu pandemic. By 1914, the great powers of Europe were divided into two military-political blocs: the Entente, which included France, Russia and Great Britain; and the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy. Tensions in the Balkans reached a climax on June 28, 1914, after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to Austria-Hungary, by Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip. Austria-Hungary blamed Serbia for this, which led to the July crisis - an attempt to avoid a conflict by diplomatic means. Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on July 28. Russia announced the defense of Serbia, and by August 4, the alliance system had drawn Germany, France and Britain into the war with their respective colonies. In November, the Ottoman Empire, Germany and Austria-Hungary formed a bloc of Central Powers, and in April 1915 Italy sided with Great Britain, France, Russia and Serbia, forming a bloc of Allies in the First World War.
At the outbreak of war on two fronts strategy of Germany in 1914, according to the Schlieffen plan was first to defeat France, then to shift its forces in Eastern Europe and defeat Russia. However, Germany's advance into France was halted, and by the end of 1914, the Western Front had stabilized from the English Channel to Switzerland, changing little until 1917. On the contrary, the Eastern Front was more mobile - Austria-Hungary and Russia conquered and lost significant territories. Other theaters of combat operations are the Middle East, Italian and Balkan, which dragged Bulgaria, Romania and Greece into the war.
In August and September 1914, Russian troops won the Battle of Gumbinnen, but lost in the Battle of the Masurian Lakes. Success accompanied the Russian troops in the Galician and Warsaw-Ivangorod battles. The siege of Przemysl was also a success for Russia. By May, the Germans launched an offensive on Gorlice and Tarnow, which forced the Russian troops to retreat. By August 5, Warsaw was occupied by the Germans. Their offensive ended in September 1915, when all of Poland and part of the Minsk province were occupied.
In 1916, Russia conducted a successful Brusilov offensive. At the beginning of 1917, Germany launched an unrestricted submarine war, as a result of which the previously neutral United States of America entered the war on April 6, 1917. In Russia, the Bolsheviks seized power as a result of the October Revolution of 1917 and concluded peace under the Brest-Litovsk Treaty on March 3, 1918, releasing a large number of German troops. Having transferred these forces to the Western Front, the German General Staff launched the German spring offensive in March 1918. The offensive was soon stopped by the Allies, and in August they launched a Hundred-Day Offensive, and although the Imperial German army continued to fight hard, it could no longer stop their advance.
By the end of 1918, the union of the Central Powers began to disintegrate; on September 29, Bulgaria signed an armistice, followed by Turkey on October 31, and Austria-Hungary on November 3. Isolated, faced with the German revolution inside the country and the army on the verge of rebellion, Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated on November 9, and the new German government signed an armistice on November 11, 1918. The Paris Peace Conference of 1919-1920 imposed various agreements on the defeated powers, the most famous of which is the Treaty of Versailles. The collapse of the Russian, German, Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires led to numerous uprisings and the creation of independent states such as Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. The instability resulting from these shocks during the interwar period led to the outbreak of World War II in September 1939.
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