World War One A Brief History For Beginners

By Kevin Arnett

Learn the history of World War I in an easy afternoon read.

World War One, or the “Great War” as it was called at the time, was the devastating consequence of a Serbian revolutionary group’s 1914 murder of a royal couple of the Austro-Hungarian empire.

When the war ended four years later, 9 million soldiers and 5 million civilians were dead, and 7 million soldiers were disabled. Billions of dollars of national treasure had been spent waging the war and dealing with the aftermath. It was the first war in which extensive use was made of poison gas, with its scarring of those who lived and excruciating death for those who didn’t.

Learn about the major battles of World War I and the endless trench warfare that destroyed millions of lives. Find out how modern technology was introduced to the art of warfare, from submarines to tanks to airplanes to sophisticated artillery.

The Brief Historical Guide series is a collection of clearly written, professionally edited guides that introduce the reader to topics of major historical importance. Aimed at history lovers with limited free time to read, the series is designed to make learning about history easy and fun.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kevin Arnett
• Release date: Apr 2, 2016
• ISBN: 9788892587533

Book preview

Peace

Introduction

My great-grandfather passed when I was three years old, so I was far too young to know about World War I, let alone ask him about his service. I wish I had been able to. Instead, I’ve written this book because I wanted to learn everything I could about what he fought for and why, and about the millions of others like him who took part in what was referred to at the time as the Great War. 

Its effects were far reaching, though no one knew at the time how far reaching they would be. As I was researching this book, I found that World War I tends to be downplayed in importance, at least in comparison to World War II. And yet, it was the first world war that planted the seeds of the second one. The legacy of World War I directly set in motion the events that only twenty-one years later would give the world the rise of Adolf Hitler, his terrifying march through Europe, the Japanese attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, and the development of the atomic bomb.

Indirectly, the Great War had much to do with Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and the country’s eventual commitment to socialism, which spawned the Cold War. Other countries ruled by royal families fell around the same time, including Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Turkey’s Ottoman Empire. As a parting shot, the Turks carried out a systematic genocide of its Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian populations, and Italy became a fascist state in 1922.

Economically, the war’s devastation of Europe’s monetary wealth left a gap that the United States stepped in to fill, making it the economic giant of the world. The Great Depression was in part a reaction to the inflated postwar economy of the Roaring Twenties.

As if all this weren’t enough, the physical stress of the war and the close quarters under unsanitary conditions sparked a worldwide epidemic of the H1N1 flu virus (known today as the swine flu) in 1918 that killed an estimated 50 million people, about 3 percent of the world’s population at the time â€" most of them young and previously healthy.Staying true to its name, the war continued to bring in more countries and in January of 1915, South Africa entered the war. This was done in an attempt to show South Africa’s loyalty to the British Empire and have the potential added benefit of expanding its tiny sphere of world influence. On January 14th South Africa sent troops into the German occupied seaside town of Swakopmund. The battle was short, but it resulted in a British and South African victory and the territory was annexed by South Africa and out of German hands.

The irony is that essentially, World War I was declared because of nationalistic pride. Right up until the last minute, it could have been avoided with some basic communication skills â€" things that my generation takes for granted. Europe, and the world, were