What qualifies a world war

How the War Started


The First World War started in August 1914. It would last for more than four years, and kill about nine million people in uniform. In the same time period the war and other violent conflicts would kill an estimated twenty million civilians. The world would never be the same.

Tensions in Europe

The major powers in Europe had been preparing for war for years. The situation was so tense before the war that many called Europe a powder keg waiting to explode. Key factors in the build-up to war included:


Arms races to build bigger and more powerful armies and navies;

Growing disputes over trade and land;

Dissatisfaction with the balance of power in Europe;

Resentment from the legacy of past grievances.


Alliances and Treaties Divided Europe

Complicated military alliances and treaties between the European powers divided much of Europe. The consequence of these alliances and treaties meant that if one country or power bloc went to war, the others would likely go to war too. The two opposing sides in Europe were:

The Central Powers:


Germany

Austria-Hungary

The Ottoman Empire (Turkey)


The Triple Entente or Allies:


France

Russia

Great Britain


Ital

Causes of World War One



What caused World War One?



When Britain entered the war in August 1914 the government proclaimed that it needed to honour a long standing commitment to protect Belgium. In the short term, this was indeed one of the spurs for British involvement but the underlying reasons for war stretched back over many years.

Wars occur when the aims and ambitions or the interests of countries clash and they are unable to resolve them peacefully. Events in the summer of 1914 may have sparked off the conflict but the long term factors were what propelled the great European powers into conflict.

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What alliances were formed in the lead up to World War One?







Triple Entente
: As Germany grew more powerful, the balance of power between the nations of Europe became unstable. In 1907 Britain, France and Russia signed the Triple Entente, an alliance designed to hem in a powerful Germany.


Triple Alliance
: Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy signed the Triple Alliance in 1882.


The intention of these alliances was to act as a deterrent towards aggression. A country knew that to start a war would invite a response from an entire alliance.

However, if th

Were They Always Called ‘World War I’ and ‘World War II’?



The short answer is no, though it’s hard to pinpoint precisely when the World War I and World War II—or First World War and Second World War—monikers arose. During World War I, of course, nobody knew that a second global conflict would follow closely on the heels of the first, so there was no need to distinguish it as the first of its kind.



After initially referring to the “European War,” U.S. newspapers adopted “World War” once America entered the confrontation in 1917. On the other side of the Atlantic, meanwhile, Britons preferred “Great War” until the 1940s—with the notable exception of Winston Churchill, who reminisced about the “World War” in the 1927 volume of his memoir
The World Crisis
.



“World War II,” on the other hand, first appeared in print all the way back in February 1919, when a
Manchester Guardian
article used the term much in the way people today predict a hypothetical “World War III.” But it was Franklin D. Roosevelt who in 1941 would publicly label the conflict the “Second World War,” and his fellow Americans quickly followed suit. (In Britain, it remained simply “the War” until the late 19

U.S. Entry into World War I, 1917


On April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson went before a joint session of Congress to request a declaration of war against Germany. Wilson cited Germany’s violation of its pledge to suspend unrestricted submarine warfare in the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean, as well as its attempts to entice Mexico into an alliance against the United States, as his reasons for declaring war. On April 4, 1917, the U.S. Senate voted in support of the measure to declare war on Germany. The House concurred two days later. The United States later declared war on German ally Austria-Hungary on December 7, 1917.


World War I Trenches in France


Germany’s resumption of submarine attacks on passenger and merchant ships in 1917 became the primary motivation behind Wilson’s decision to lead the United States into World War I. Following the sinking of an unarmed French boat, the Sussex, in the English Channel in March 1916, Wilson threatened to sever diplomatic relations with Germany unless the German Government refrained from attacking all passenger ships and allowed the crews of enemy merchant vessels to abandon their ships prior to any attack. On May 4, 1916, t