World War I (Vote Socialist)

The First World War, often called the First Great War or simply the Great War due to it not technically involving the whole world. It led to the mobilisation of more than 60 million military personnel, making it one of the largest wars in history. It is also one of the deadliest conflicts in history, with an estimated nine million combatants and seven million civilian deaths as a direct result of the war, while resulting genocides and the resulting 1918 influenza pandemic caused another 50 to 100 million deaths worldwide.

On 28 June 1914, Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb Yugoslav nationalist, assassinated the Austro-Hungarian heir Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, leading to the July Crisis. In response, on 23 July Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum to Serbia. Serbia's reply failed to satisfy the Austrians, and the two moved to a war footing.

A network of interlocking alliances enlarged the crisis from a bilateral issue in the Balkans to one involving most of Europe. By July 1914, the great powers of Europe were divided into two coalitions: the Triple Entente—consisting of France, Russia, and Britain—and the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy (the Triple Alliance was only defensive in nature, allowing Italy to stay out of the war until April 1915, when it joined the Allied Powers after its relations with Austria-Hungary deteriorated). Russia felt it necessary to back Serbia and, after Austria-Hungary shelled the Serbian capital of Belgrade on the 28th, approved partial mobilisation. Full Russian mobilisation was announced on the evening of 30 July; on the 31st, Austria-Hungary and Germany did the same, while Germany demanded Russia demobilise within twelve hours. When Russia failed to comply, Germany declared war on Russia on 1 August in support of Austria-Hungary, with Austria-Hungary following suit on the 6th; France ordered full mobilisation in support of Russia on 2 August.

German strategy for a war on two fronts against France and Russia was to rapidly concentrate the bulk of its army in the West to defeat France within six weeks, then shift forces to the East before Russia could fully mobilise; this was later known as the Schlieffen Plan. On 2 August, Germany demanded free passage through Belgium, an essential element in achieving a quick victory over France.[19]  When this was refused, German forces invaded Belgium on 3 August and declared war on France the same day; the Belgian government invoked the 1839 Treaty of London and in compliance with its obligations under this, Britain declared war on Germany on 4 August. On 12 August, Britain and France also declared war on Austria-Hungary; on the 23rd, Japan sided with the Entente, seizing German possessions in China and the Pacific. In November 1914, the Ottoman Empire entered the war on the side of the Alliance, opening fronts in the Caucasus, Mesopotamia, and the Sinai Peninsula. The war was fought in and drew upon each power's colonial empire as well, spreading the conflict to Africa and across the globe. The Entente and its allies would eventually become known as the Allied Powers, while the grouping of Austria-Hungary, Germany and their allies would become known as the Central Powers.

The German advance into France was halted at the Battle of the Marne and by the end of 1914, the Western Front settled into a battle of attrition, marked by a long series of trench lines that changed little until 1917 (the Eastern Front, by contrast, was marked by much greater exchanges of territory). In 1915, Italy joined the Allied Powers and opened a front in the Alps. Bulgaria joined the Central Powers in 1915 and Greecejoined the Allies in 1917, expanding the war in the Balkans.

Serbia was defeated in 1915, and Romania joined the Allied Powers in 1916 only to be defeated in 1917, none of the great powers were knocked out of the war until 1917, when the February Revolution overthrew the Tsarist autocracy and emerged as a coalition of the Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, Ukrainian Socialists, and SRs governing a federal republic backed by the United States. An Entente-backed coup d'etat by general Lavr Kornilov initiated the Russian Civil War in an attempt to keep Russia in the war against Germany. During that time, the USA and the RSFR were nominally allied with Germany against the Entente. The war would finally end in 1919 as a wave of revolutions and general strikes would rock Europe and the world.This following revolutionary wave was brief and explosive and ended in a period of uneasy peace between the hegemonic German Empire, the United Kingdom, and the Socialist World. World War I would end in no specific treaty between the socialists and capitalists, only between the fellow capitalist German and British Empires in the wake of the declaration of the French Fourth Republic in order to secure France. The result was clearly a German victory, with Germany seizing Portuguese and French colonies, a large swath of land in Eastern Europe, and Belgium. Meanwhile, Germany defended Hawaii against Japanese aggression, but ultimately ended up dragging the country into World War I. German forces would be defeated across the pacific and Germany would be forced to give up Hawaii and Tsingtau to Japan. So it was not a complete German victory.