WORLD WAR I
World War I officially broke out when the Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo in 1914 .
What was new about this war was its INTERNATIONAL CHARACTER .
The second important feature of the war was that it involved the MOBILISATION OF MASSES OF PEOPLE .
Both sides in World War I used the trench warfare : the difficult fighting conditions quickly led to a standstill and the war became a war of attrition . The trenches streched for kilometers and they protected the soldiers , but it was difficult for the armies to advance . They were cold , disgusting places full of rats and mud . The neutral area between the trenches was called “ no man's land “.
World War I used new inventions such as aeroplanes , submarine and tanks.
When the war began there was no conscription in the UK : all soldiers who went to war were volunteers . They thougth it was heroic to serve their country .
During the war women had to do all work because the men were away fighting ; often the men didn't return from war and there was nobody to support women and their children .
Almost a milion British soldiers died .There were also a disparity between the cost of the war in terms of resources and human lives and the result attained . If at the beginning of the war the dominant mood in all the combatant nations was that of an aggressive patriotism , by 1916 most people in Britain wanted the war to end as soon as possible .
Fighting in Worl War I stopped in 1918 and the Peace Treaty was signed in Versailles , with the aim of preventing Germany from building its military power again .
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