i. Introduction
- World War I, often abbreviated WW1, also known as the First World War and contemporaneously known as the Great War, was an international conflict that began on 28 July 1914 and ended on 11 November 1918
- The war pitted the Central Powers—mainly Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey—against the Allies—mainly France, Great Britain, Russia, Italy, Japan, and, from 1917, the United States
- It ended with the defeat of the Central Powers.
- The war was virtually unprecedented in the slaughter, carnage, and destruction it caused.
- World War I was one of the great watersheds of 20th-century geopolitical history.
- It led to the fall of four great imperial dynasties (in Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey), resulted in the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, and, in its destabilization of European society, laid the groundwork for World War II