The Great War WWI

Europe

Assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, 1914 Two bullets fired on a Sarajevo street on a sunny June morning in 1914 set in motion a series of events that shaped the world we live in today. World War One, World War Two, the Cold War and its conclusion all trace their origins to the gunshots that interrupted that summer day. The Great War began with the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand who was heir to the throne of the mighty empire of Austria-Hungary. In the summer of 1914, he and his wife, Sophie, made a visit to the troubled province of Bosnia, where on June 28, Serbian nationalist Gavril Princip fatally shot them. This event triggered the World War I and plunged the world into a chaos that lasted for four years and cost millions of lives. Archduke Francis Ferdinand Gavril Princip

A Mess of Ideals Militarism Nationalism At the turn on the century governments in Europe saw war as a valid foreign policy. Nearly all the governments of Europe at this time shared this ideal. Therefore the governments themselves were heavily influenced by or included military leaders. Basically nationalism is the belief that your country better than all others. It is kind of like school rivalries, except it’s entire nations and instead of sports they used war to decide was better. There was also a commonly held belief everyone having a big strong military was a good thing when paired with good strong alliances because they acted as deterrents. The argument is much the same as the argument commonly used for attaining a Nuclear Weapon.

Horrors of the Mechanized War Germany: 2,200,000 soldiers, 97 warships Austria-Hungry: 810,000 soldiers, 28 warships Italy: 750,000 soldiers, 36 warships France: 1,125,000 soldiers, 62 warships Russia: 1,200,000 soldiers, 30 warships Great Britain: 711,000 soldiers, 185 warships Over the course of WWI there were 70,000,000 men and women in uniform. Of that number it is estimated that 35,000,000 of them were killed, wounded, or taken as prisoners of war. War dead estimates are as high as 17,000,000

Go over pages Do the Terms #1-2 on page 360, from the chapter not the glossary. List the causes of WWI