World War 1- The Beginning of a World in Upheaval
World War 1 was centered in Europe and began on the 28th of July 1914 and lasted until the 11th of November 1918. This global war was only the beginning of a spiral of other battles to come. Fought between the Allies England, Russia and France vs. the central powers Austria-Hungary, Germany and Italy, this war proved deadly. There were also a number of other countries who joined later in the war. During this war there were many technological advances that in turn made the fighting deadlier than any other seen before. For example Trench warfare involved both sides digging extensive defenses. They would first attempt to weaken the enemy by firing artillery or poison gas at their lines for hours on end (leading to many deaths) and this would then be followed by a charge at their position.The surviving defenders would usually use machine guns to massacre the advancing enemy especially if they were getting stuck in the barbed wire.In the past battles doing this was impossible considering the highly efficient weapons such as the machine gun didn't exist.
The number of World War 1 casualties both military and civilian, was over 40 million (20 million deaths and 21 million wounded.) This includes 9.7 million military deaths and about 10 million civilian deaths. The Entente powers (also known as the Allies) lost more than 5 million soldiers and the central powers about 4 million.