The Impacts of World War I

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The Impacts of World War I The First World War was truly ‘the Great War’. Its origins were complex, it’s scale was vast and it’s conduct was intense. Its impact on military operations was revolutionary, in the sense that new weapons were created, eg the tank, and the use of different gases. Its human and material costs were enormous. In short the first world war helped shape and change the world and it’s people. The war was a global conflict. Thirty-two nations were eventually involved. Twenty-eight of these constituted the Allied and Associated Powers, mainly being the British Empire, France, Italy, Russia, Serbia, and the United States of America. They were opposed by the Central Powers: Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, Germany, and the Ottoman Empire. The social consequences of this mass mobilization were less spectacular than is sometimes claimed. There were advances for the organized working class, especially its trade unions, especially in Britain, and arguably for women, but the working class of Europe paid a high price on the battlefield for social advances at home. In the defeated states there was very little social advance anyway. The First World War redrew the map of Europe and the Middle East. Big empires such as the Ottoman Empire were defeated and collapsed, and were replaced by a number of weak successor states. Russia underwent a bloody civil war involving the overthrow of two Governments (the monarchy and the provisional government) before the establishment of a Communist Soviet Union which put it beyond European diplomacy for quite some time. Germany became a republic who expected defeat, and they were increasingly weakened by the burden of (arguably unfair) Allied reparations. France recovered the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine and received reparations, but continued to fear (maybe too strong a word?) the German province/empire that had once dominated them. In terms of alliances and let downs, Italy was disappointed by the territorial rewards of its military sacrifice. This provided ground for Mussolini's Fascists to establish themselves within the Italian government, and they had overthrown parliamentary democracy by 1924.

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