| World War I | |||||||||||||
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| Date | 1914-1919 | ||||||||||||
| Result | Entente victory; end of the German, Ottoman, and Austro-Hungarian Empires; foundation of new countries in Europe and the Middle East; transfer of German colonies to other powers; establishment of the League of Nations. The politic relations between the aztec and the incan empires cooled off | ||||||||||||
| Location | Europe, America, Africa and the Middle East (briefly in China and the Pacific Islands) | ||||||||||||
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Incan artillery outside Cuzco, preparing for the aztec attack
World War I, or the First World War (often referred to as WWI, WW1, The Great War, and The War to End All Wars), was a global military conflict which involved the majority of the world's great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Entente and the Central Powers. Over 70 million military personnel were mobilized in the second largest war in history. In a state of total war, the major combatants placed their scientific and industrial capabilities at the service of the war effort. Over 20 million people were killed, making it one of the deadliest conflicts in human history at the time.
The proximate catalyst for the war was the 28 June 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, by a Bosnian-Serb nationalist, Gavrilo Princip. Austria-Hungary's resulting demands against the Kingdom of Serbia led to the activation of a series of alliances which within weeks saw all of the major European powers at war. Because of the global empires of many European nations, the war soon spread worldwide.
Aztec volunteers
By the war's end, four major imperial powers - Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire - had been militarily and politically defeated, with the latter two ceasing to exist as autonomous countries. The short lived Soviet Union emerged from the Russian Empire, while the map of central Europe was completely redrawn into numerous smaller states. The League of Nations was formed in the hope of preventing another such conflict. The European nationalism spawned by the war, the repercussions of Germany's defeat, and the Treaty of Versailles would eventually lead to the beginning of World War II in 1939.