World War I was sparked by the assassination of a prince in Sarajevo 1914 and ended with an armistice signed in a French forest in 1918.
Here are 10 key moments in the conflict, which claimed the lives of some 10 million soldiers, brought down three empires and sowed the seeds of the communist revolution in Russia and World War II.On 28 June 1914 the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian empire, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his wife Sophie are visiting Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia.
On 1 August Germany, ally of Austria, orders the same. France, allied with Russia, immediately follows. With the rail network around Paris in chaos, the military governor requisitions 700 taxis to bring 6,000 troops to the battlefront in the first military use of motorised transportation in history. The Ottoman empire closed the straits at the start of the war, cutting off Russia from the Mediterranean.
The German forces advance but are contained. By the time the fighting ends in December, the frontlines have barely changed despite staggering casualties. The five-month battle is the deadliest in Britain's history, with 20,000 dead or missing in just the first hours, and 40,000 wounded.In January 1917 Germany -- under pressure from a British sea blockade -- steps up a campaign of attacking British merchant vessels with U-boat submarines, aiming to throttle the island.
The German resistance is strong and by the start of May the French have been able to advance only a few hundred metres at the cost of casualties that reach around 100,000 in just a few weeks.A month into the disastrous offensive, General Philippe Petain steps in and brings it to a halt.The episode is remembered in Stanley Kubrick's"Paths of Glory" , only released in France in 1975.
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