World War I was the most destructive conflict the world had ever seen. Few could have predicted how the assassination of the Austrian-Hungarian heir to the throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and the subsequent declaration of war on Serbia in July 1914 would escalate into a global conflict that would claim the lives of more than nine million people in little more than four years.
With the 20th century still just a teenager, Germany, Great Britain, Russia, and France – obliged by historic treaties to defend other nations – were soon drawn into the conflict. Their leaders failed to grasp the full implications of the hostilities and it was commonly expected that the war would be finished by Christmas. Troops were quickly mobilized, with the Western and Eastern Fronts soon taking shape as the conflict spread.
The Great War, as it became known, saw horrific acts of violence that included: German submarines targeting neutral merchant and civilian ships as well as military vessels; the first use of chemical weapons (German deployment of a poisonous gas during the Second Battle of Ypres); and the use of fledgling flying machines to bombard towns and their civilian inhabitants. Both sides, desperate to gain supremacy, waged a frantic battle that saw technological advances in the weapons of war with aircraft, tanks, and naval vessels being continuously developed and improved.
The conflict saw some of the most infamous engagements of all time in the Gallipoli Campaign, the Battle of Verdun, the Battle of Passchendaele, and the Battle of the Somme before peace was restored to the world in November 1918.
