Portal:World War I
The World War I portal World War I (abbreviated WWI), also known as the First World War, the Great War and The War to End all Wars was a global military conflict that took place mostly in Europe between 1914 and 1918. The main combatants were the Allied Powers, led by France, the Russian Empire, the British Empire, Serbia, Belgium, and later Italy, Romania and the United States, who fought against the Central Powers: Austria-Hungary, the German Empire, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire (present day Turkey). Much of the fighting in World War I took place along the Western Front, within a system of opposing manned trenches and fortifications (separated by a "no man's land") running from the North Sea to the border of Switzerland. On the Eastern Front, the vast eastern plains and limited rail network prevented a trench warfare stalemate from developing, although the scale of the conflict was just as large. Hostilities also occurred on and under the sea and — for the first time — in the air. More than nine million soldiers died on the various battlefields, and millions more civilians perished. The war caused the disintegration of four empires: the Austro-Hungarian, German, Ottoman, and Russian. Germany lost its overseas empire, and states such as Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were created, or recreated, as in the cases of Lithuania and Poland. This contributed to a decisive break with the world order that had emerged after the Napoleonic Wars, which was modified by the mid-19th century’s nationalistic revolutions. The results of World War I would also be important factors in the development of World War II just over two decades later. Selected event The Battle of Arras was an offensive during World War I by forces of the British Empire between 9 April and 16 May 1917. British, Canadian, and Australian troops attacked German trenches near the French city of Arras. At this stage of the war, the Western Front was a continuous line of trenches stretching from the Belgian coast to the Swiss border. With minor adjustments caused by the ebb and flow of asaults and counter-assaults, this corresponded roughly to the final line of confrontation in the last phase of the war of movement of 1914. From behind barbed wire and fortifications, about 100 German divisions faced about 150 French and British Empire divisions in seeming deadlock. In its simplest terms, the Allied objective from early 1915 onwards was to break through the German defences into the open ground beyond and engage the numerically inferior German army in open battle. The Battle of Arras was planned in conjunction with the French High Command, who were planning a massive attack (the Nivelle Offensive) about eighty kilometres to the south. This had the stated aim of ending the war in forty-eight hours. At Arras, the British Empire's immediate objectives were more modest: (i) to draw German troops away from the ground chosen for the French attack and (ii) to take the German-held high ground that dominated the plain of Douai. When the battle officially ended on 16 May, British Empire troops had made significant advances, but had been unable to achieve a major breakthrough at any point. New tactics had been battle-tested, particularly in the first phase, and had demonstrated that set-piece assaults against heavily fortified positions could be successful. This sector then reverted to the stalemate that typified most of the war on the Western Front. Selected equipment The Fokker D.VII was a late World War I fighter aircraft designed by Reinhold Platz at the Fokker company. When introduced into combat in 1918, it quickly proved to be superior to existing Allied fighters, leading to a second Fokker Scourge. So infamous was the airplane, that it was the only weapon specifically mentioned by name by the Allies in the armistice agreements at the end of the war (Surrender in good condition by the German Armies of [...] all aircraft of the D7 type [...]). Selected quote
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