This article is dedicated to the brave men and women who fought, and died in World War I.
Published on 11th November 2018., 100 years after the end of World War I.
The Moroccan crises, the Balkan crisis, the Anglo-German naval arms race and a pull of a trigger, that's all it took to start a global conflict that would cause death directly to 16 million soldiers and civilians with another 100 million deaths caused by war related factors like the Spanish flu and genocides.
Like in any other war, there were two sides. The Entente on one side and the Central Powers on the other. They expected that the war would end before Christmas 1914. but instead the war lasted for more than 4 years. Leaders of both sides craved for colonies, for resources, for money. They would expand their territories for the wellbeing of their people, at the cost of other nations's peace and security. But the soldiers were the ones that fought for homeland, for their families.
The war affected almost every corner of the world, from the Pacific islands, the Middle East, the coasts of the Americas, to the largest fronts in the West and Eastern Europe. On the Western front the war raged. France, the British Empire and Belgium fought fierce battles with Germany and Austria-Hungary. With the massive progress in development of artillery, the soldiers had to dig into the ground, creating trenches where they would spend months sitting in mud and blood, praying not to get blown up by an artillery shell. In that condition, the frontlines didn't change much until 1917. when first tanks were introduced. They could break the line, push through and create an opportunity, maybe even contribute to the final victory of the Entente.
Great battles were fought also on the other side of Europe. Expanding from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south, the Eastern front was the largest war-affected area of World War I. The German and Austro-hungarian armies conqured large areas of Russia and Romania, forcing them to surrender. The defeat lead to a revolution in Russia that caused the fall of the centuries old Romanov tsarist regime. With the defeat of the Central Powers on the Western front, all the peace treaties of the Eastern front were terminated. It's also important to mention that great battles were fought in the Alps, in Serbia and at Gallipoli.
The war caused destruction of an unimaginable scale. It destroyed cities and fields, poisoned the land and rivers, crushed millions of homes. But what it damaged the most were the young people, numerous generations and whole nations. Empires have fallen, new countries were founded. But at what cost? The war showed man's finest hours, darkest moments. It unveiled what horrible and amazing acts man is capable of committing, what a monster and a hero he can become.
People were saying that World War I, because of the size of the destruction and casulties it brought, would be the last, final war and that there would never be a war as great as it. But instead it lead to a even bigger global conflict. To even more destruction. To even more atrocities. To even more tears.
World War I was "the war to end all wars“.
It ended nothing.
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Today we also celebrate 100 years of Polish independence.
Happy Independence Day to our Polish friends!
For shout:
[100 years] It ended nothing.
https://www.erepublik.com/hr/article/2683719
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Sadly for me but this was brotherhood war where in ukrainians from west fights agains ukrainians from east because Austria were part of Central Powers while Russia part of Entente. In this war our first state for almost 300 were born and after this war falled.
Lets newer forget this people, ordinary as we are. But brave and strong peoples, lets newer do this in future.
It ended nothing? Begining of other more blodly. My grandfather experienced auschwitz, fortunatly he escape and lived to tell us(minus two fingers on the right hand) the hell.
Your grandfather was lucky that he escaped alive from that concentration camp.
If he didn't you probably won't read this now.
The First World War was the first economic war, since it didn't start, as they explain, with an assassination, but it was needed to finally force nations to be dependent on loans so that the economical powers could dominate the political ones. Since World War I, in fact, almost every big nation on earth had to create and rapidly increase, their foreign debt, giving, in exchange for the money obtained, a silent but inexorable domination over the political affairs of countries. It's a paradox, but it's true, and it's proved from the fact that globalization and its dynamics started in that period. Also, since then, big nations which seemed to be run by solid democracies, started to let economical powers (lobbies) directly into the political contest, allowing them to finance campaigns and driving whole sections of workers to vote for a candidate just because of the support to some economical stakeholder. The purification of those who had economical power but didn't accept this new state of things was obtained with the "great depression" and the second world war got the chance of fighting nazi-fascism to legitimate some international institutions who were born claiming to ensure the international laws and human rights, but eventually became a control and limitation of national powers. While the right to vote was extended to women, while the colonies were "released" and while the human rights were proclaimed like "untouchable", the freedom was silently taken away, and now we pretend to live in free countries where, in the end, the politicians interact more with the economical powers than with the voters.
So in the end WWI was where everything started, more than where everything was going to end.
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report because not about game 😛
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Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
\o/
Serbia lost 1.250.000 or 24% of the total number of citizens in the WWI.
Last week on celebration in Paris beside the countries that won the war, members of countries that did not exist at the time and countries that fought the war on the aggressors side, fascistic countries were sitting next to french and Russian presidents, while Serbian president was in the back, with the smaller countries that were not even so involved in the war.
The tides have changed, liberalism is strong I can understand that. But I cannot understand tendencies to change the history and why so much open injustice in Europe and in the world. Have we all became America and have money and interests behind money become everything that's worth? I know it is, but I am always disappointed when I remember.
Because of that celebrating this kind of events became pointless. The world should just openly start celebrating money.
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