In a single day at the Battle of the Somme in 1916, 100,000 British troops plodded across no man's land into steady machine-gun fire from German trenches a few yards away. The tear gas forced the British to remove their gas masks the chlorine then scarred their faces and killed them. In 1918, the Germans fired shells containing both tear gas and lethal chlorine. But by the time the conflict was over, tanks, submarines, airplane-dropped bombs, machine guns, and poison gas had transformed the nature of modern warfare. The great powers mobilized more than a million horses. At first the armies relied on outdated methods of communication, such as carrier pigeons. No one expected a war of the magnitude or duration of World War I. World War I was a product of miscalculation, misunderstanding, and miscommunication. At any point during the five weeks leading up to the outbreak of fighting the conflict might have been averted. But a belief in human progress was shattered by World War I, a war few wanted or expected. Europe had not fought a major war for 100 years. At the dawn of the 20th century, most Europeans looked forward to a future of peace and prosperity. The war also brought vast social consequences, including the mass murder of Armenians in Turkey and an influenza epidemic that killed over 25 million people worldwide.įew events better reveal the utter unpredictability of the future. It ignited colonial revolts in the Middle East and in Southeast Asia.Įconomically, the war severely disrupted the European economies and allowed the United States to become the world's leading creditor and industrial power. It contributed to the Bolshevik rise to power in Russia in 1917 and the triumph of fascism in Italy in 1922. Politically, it resulted in the downfall of four monarchies-in Russia in 1917, in Austria-Hungary and Germany in 1918, and in Turkey in 1922. World War I probably had more far-reaching consequences than any other proceeding war. It left at least 7 million men permanently disabled. It was the first war to use airplanes, tanks, long range artillery, submarines, and poison gas. World War I killed more people-more than 9 million soldiers, sailors, and flyers and another 5 million civilians-involved more countries-28-and cost more money-$186 billion in direct costs and another $151 billion in indirect costs-than any previous war in history. The Great Depression, the Cold War, and the collapse of European colonialism can also be traced, at least indirectly, to the First World War. Just about everything that happened in the remainder of the century was in one way or another a result of World War I, including the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, World War II, the Holocaust, and the development of the atomic bomb. A recent list of the hundred most important news stories of the twentieth century ranked the onset of World War I eighth.
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