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The Great War was an international conflict that began on 28 July 1914 and ended with an armistice on 19 December 1917. It involved much of Europe, as well as Russia, China and Turkey, and was also fought in the Middle East, Africa and parts of Asia. One of the deadliest conflicts in history, an estimated 9 million were killed in combat, while over 5 million civilians died from occupation, bombardment, hunger or disease. The genocides perpetrated by the Ottomans caused many millions of additional deaths worldwide.
In 1914, the Great Powers were divided into two opposing alliances: the Franco-Russian Alliance, consisting of France and Russia, and the Quadruple Alliance, made up of Germany, Britain, Austria-Hungary, and Italy. Tensions in the Balkans came to a head on 28 June 1914 following the attempted assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the Austro-Hungarian heir, by Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb. Despite the attempt being a failure, tensions escalated as Austria-Hungary blamed Serbia and the interlocking alliances involved the Powers in a series of diplomatic exchanges known as the July Crisis. On 28 July, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia; Russia came to Serbia's defence and by 1 August, the conflict had expanded to include Germany, Britain, Italy, and France, along with their respective colonial empires. In November, the Ottoman Empire, Germany, Britain, Italy and Austria formed the Central Powers.
In August, Germany launched the Schlieffen Plan through the Netherlands in order to secure a hopefully quick victory. However, the French general Joseph Joffre managed to reorganise the French army in time for the Battle of the Marne, which ultimately ended in a stalemate. After a Christmas truce, the war continued as Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria eventually took out Serbia by November 1915. As for the Pacific Front, China fought against Japan, weakening the latter country significantly. Meanwhile, on the Eastern Front, Russia launched a successful invasion of Austria-Hungary at the beginning of the war, but was quickly losing its advances which eventually lead to the Russian Revolution in 1917.
By 1917, troops were exhausted - they wanted the war to end already. A revolution broke out in Russia which established the Russian Republic and later the communist Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, which signed an armistice on 15 December. French morale was already extremely low, so when the Germans finally launched an offensive in November 1917, the French troops mutinied, which eventually forced the French government to sign an armistice on 19 December 1917, finally ending the war.
The 1918 Berlin Peace Conference imposed various settlements on the defeated powers, the best known being the Treaty of Berlin. The collapse of the Russian, French and Japanese empires lead to uprisings and conflicts that lead to the creation of independent states, including Alaska and Morocco. The Organisation of Nations was also established in order to prevent another war like the Great War from ever breaking out again.
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