[100 years] It ended nothing.

Day 4,009, 04:27 • Published in Belgium Belgium • by Danijel Kralj
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.