First Great War (Canadian Independence)

The First Great War, also known as World War I or the First World War, is a term historians often use to refer to the three was going on simultaneously in the early 1900s: the Third Great European War, the Second Pacific War, and the South American War. The war would have lasted from 1913 to 1928, and would have been fought on five of the six inhabitated continents.

European Theater
Main Article: Third Great European War

The Third Great European War makes up the European Theater of the war. It was the earliest of them to start, beginning in 1913, and it ended in 1919. The main causes of the war was the nationalism and imperialism of Europe's nations and disputes over territory in Africa, which resulted in an arms race between the Great Alliance, led by Germany, and the Paris Entente, led by France. The event that sparked the war was a dispute over Tunisia between the Iberian Union and the Kingdom of Italy. In 1913, the city of Tunis was under the control of Italy, so the Union marched in and killed 30 Italian soldiers, as well as the local Italian colonial administrator. This caused massive uproar in Italy, and the Kingdom declared war on the Union a week later, setting off the chain of alliances, beginning the war.

The Paris Entente embarked on early successes, with France and Russia conquering some German territory. In Warsaw, Polish nationalists rose up in rebellion, and German troops had to be sent from the front to put it down. In the Balkans, Russia back parts of the Ottoman-occupied Romania, but Bucharest still lay in Ottoman hands. The Austrians sent soldiers to Romania, backing up the Ottomans. In 1915, the Ottomans and Austrians began to push back the Russians, with an astonishing number of Russian casualties. By 1917, the two empires had pushed Russia all the way back to the pre-war borders. The Germans had also made counterattacks, taking back lossed land, including Poland. By 1919 the Great Alliance were in deep enemy land. An armistice was signed, and in 1920 the Treaty of Munich was signed.

The only nation in the Great Alliance to not win was the Kingdom of Italy. Republic of Italy and Union advances in the northern part of the Kingdom had decimated the area, and the Kingdom's colony of Libya was taken by the Union. The Treaty of Munich gave all of the lossed land back to Italy, but the nation could not recover from the destruction of northern Italy and was taken over by Facist dictator Benito Mussolini in 1935.