Wars and Memory
The First World War (1914-1918)
The conflict that changed the world
In 1914, Europe was a powder keg waiting to ignite. The spark came on 28 June of that fateful year, with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo by a Serbian nationalist.
This murder set off a cascade of events, exposing a world fractured by political rivalries, imperialist ambitions and a frenzied arms race.
The tensions had been building for decades. Nationalism exacerbated long-standing grievances, particularly between France and Germany, still marked by the loss of Alsace-Lorraine in 1871. When Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, the alliance system rapidly drew the whole of Europe into a conflict of unprecedented scale.
A world conflict
What began as a European conflict rapidly became a world war, pitting two blocs against one another:
The Central Powers
Germany · Austria-Hungary
Ottoman Empire · Bulgaria
The Allies
France · United Kingdom · Russia
Italy (1915) · Japan · United States (1917)
The First World War also marked a rupture in the way war was waged. Modern weapons — machine guns, tanks, chemical gases, aircraft — transformed battlefields into a living hell. Soldiers found themselves buried in trenches, living in inhuman conditions, while battles became wholesale slaughter.
Key battles
September 1914
The Marne
The German advance was halted a few kilometres from Paris: the first check of the conflict.
1915-1916
Gallipoli
In south-eastern Europe, the Allies confronted the Ottoman Empire to control the Dardanelles Strait. The campaign ended in costly failure, particularly for Australian and New Zealand troops.
1916
Verdun
A symbol of French resistance and one of the two bloodiest battles in history, claiming hundreds of thousands of lives without achieving a decisive victory.
1916
The Somme
The Allies attempted to break through the German lines. Millions of dead and wounded, for a front that barely moved.
A catastrophic human and material toll
9 M
soldiers killed
7 M
civilians killed
21 M
military wounded
The material destruction was equally staggering, reducing entire villages, infrastructures and economies to nothing.
The end of fighting: the armistice
After four years of horror, the Central Powers collapsed under the weight of Allied offensives and their own economic exhaustion.
11 November 1918
At 5:15 in the morning, an armistice was signed in a railway carriage at Compiègne, France.
At 11 o'clock, the guns fell silent, marking the end of fighting.
But peace was still far from assured.
Lasting consequences
The Treaty of Versailles (1919)
Heavy reparations were imposed on Germany, which was forced to cede Alsace-Lorraine to France and drastically limit its military power. These sanctions nurtured a deep resentment that would pave the way for the rise of Nazism.
The collapse of empires
The Austro-Hungarian, Russian, German and Ottoman empires all collapsed. New states (Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia) were born, upending the political balance of Central and Eastern Europe.
The League of Nations (1920)
Created to maintain peace and prevent future wars, the League would be hampered by its lack of authority and the absence of major powers such as the United States.
A war that changed everything
Beyond borders, the First World War marked a turning point in human history. It ushered in an era of industrial-scale conflict, shook societies to their foundations and left millions of families bereaved. The entire world, hoping never to live through such a tragedy again, called it "The war to end all wars". But history would show it was only a prelude to an even more destructive global catastrophe.
This war remains a reminder of the devastating impact of division and violence at a global scale. It redefined borders, mentalities, and the entire history of the 20th century.