World War I

the best war ever. why? because there were kings and queens, but there were also advanced weapons. awesome!

there is one case in which world war i shouldn’t be considered the best war ever, and that’s if you fought in it.

how to fight in world war i:

1. sit in a stinky trench for a month. repeatedly get terribly ill from sleeping in mud mixed with sh-t.

2. get your -ss pounded by hundreds of thousands of artillery sh-lls launched by an invisible enemy. suffer from sh-ll-shock.

3. get g-ssed until you bleed out your -ss

4. jump out of your trench and get shot while mutilating your hands trying to climb over a barbed-wire fence.

5. get limbs amputated.

6. go home.

7. suffer awful post traumatic stress disorder that makes schizophrenia look normal.
world war i is cool to study, but if i wake up in a world war i bunker tomorrow i will shoot myself in the mouth.

the belligerent stages of world war i (the war had been subtly waiting to happen for decades) began when archduke franz ferdinand (awesome name and t-tle) was -ss-ssinated by a terrorist group called the black hand (frickin awesome name!) in sarajevo, bosnia (bad-ss city even today).

emperor franz josef (yes, “emperor”, it doesn’t get better than that) of the austro-hungarian empire then sent an ultimatum to the government of serbia, which it held responsible for ferdinand’s death. serbia failed to comply with the demands and was subsequently invaded by the emperor’s troops under general franz conrad von hotzendorf (this stuff is too cool to make up). soon, tzar nicholas of russia declared that he was mobilizing his m-ssive army. in response, kaiser wilhelm ii of germany, who really didn’t want war with russia but previously promised support to austria hungary, mobilized his troops, declared war on russia and france, and invaded belgium and luxembourg within days. his plan, the schlieffen plan, was to take france out of the war within three weeks, before russia could mount a major offensive against germany. he failed in this respect and the western front bogged down to a stalemate 50 miles outside of paris.
world war i was sparked by the -ss-ssination of archduke franz ferdinand, heir to the austro-hungarian throne, in sarajevo on 28 june 1914. the austria-hungarian goverment accused serbia of having something to do with the -ss-ssination. an ultimatum was presented by the austrian government to belgrade on thursday 23 july 1914 at 6 p.m. a response was demanded within two days, by sat-rday 25 july at 6 p.m. austria-hungary’s expectation was that serbia would reject the remarkably severe terms of the ultimatum, thereby giving her a pretext for launching a limited war against serbia.
there were differnt alliances made early in 1914. it was the triple entente; great britian, france and russia against the triple alliance which was germany, austria-hungray and italy.
germany surrendered in 1918 and in january 1919 the treaty of versallies was made to decide the fate of the defeated nations. the majority of the decisions was made by the ‘big three’- france, usa and britain.
the great war went on from 1914-1919. the estimated number of people killed in the war was 17,000,000 people. the heaviest casualties were;
allied powers:
russia- 2,500,000
france- 1,357,000
serbia- 1,264,000
britain- 908,000
central powers:
germany- 1,773,000
austria-hungary- 1,200,000
turkey- 325,000
italy also later joined the allies, and the ottoman empire became one of the central powers.
as a result, at the end of the war italy won control of the adriatic port city of trieste from austria.
a war that many historians believe was won thanks to canada.
canada – hey britain, how come we werent included in the triple entente? we could have made a “quadruple entente”, thats so much cooler.
britain – its simple, we dont like you.
a war lasting from 1914 to 1918 between two groups of allied countries, the allied and the central powers.

important allied powers:
the british empire
france
russia (until 1917)
united states (after 1917)

important central powers:
germany
austria
the ottoman empire

this unfortunate conflict led to the deaths of millions of men on each side, nearly an entire generation wiped out. entire cl-sses of schoolboys signed up and died together.
the fighting parties at that time – spring 1917 – were ready for peace when america entered. the 1916 disasters of jutland, verdun and somme had taken most, if not all, of the fighting spirit out of germany, britain and france. there had been already several peace-proposals from german and austrian sides and there were attempts at mediation going on by neutral danish, swedish and even american negotiators. peace at that moment would have saved over one million british, french, american, and other lives. but because the united states suddenly wanted their share of the war all peace-talk became useless.