World War I :: World War I

World War I, also known as the Great War, was a global war which took place primarily in Europe from 1914 to 1918. The immediate cause of the World War I was the June 28, 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, by Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb citizen of Austria-Hungary and member of the Black Hand. The retaliation by Austria-Hungary against the monarchy of Serbia activated a series of alliances that set off a chain reaction of war declarations. Within a month, much of Europe was in a state of open warfare. And World War II or the Second World War was a global military conflict, the joining of what had initially been two separate conflicts. The first began in Asia in 1937 as the Second Sino-Japanese War; the other began in Europe in 1939 with the German invasion of Poland World War I was fought by two major alliances. The Entente Powers initially consisted of France, England, Russia, and their associated empires. Numerous other states joined these allies, most notably Italy in April 1915, and the United States in April 1917. The Central Powers, named because of their central location on the European continent, initially consisted of Germany and Austria-Hungary and their associated empires. The Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers in October 1914, followed a year later by Bulgaria. By the conclusion of the war; only The Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain and the Scandinavian nations remained officially neutral among the European countries, though many of those provided financial and material support to one side or the other. World War II was also fought by two major alliances, the Allied and Axis power. The AXIS powers consisted of Germany, Italy (changed sides and split in half 1943) Hungary, Romania Bulgaria, Finland (changed sides 1945) Spain was meant to be neutral but they helped Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy and sent troops to fight alongside the Germans in Russia. The major Allied Powers were Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, the United States, and China. The fighting of World War I mostly took place along several fronts that broadly encircled the European continent. The Western Front was marked by a system of trenches, breastworks, and fortifications separated by an area known as no man's land. These defenses stretched 475 miles and precipitated a style of fighting known as trench warfare. On the Eastern Front, the vastness of the eastern plains and the limited railroad network prevented the stalemate of the Western Front, though the scale of the conflict was just as large.