The “Great War”, 1914-1918: Democracies and Autocracies
The “Great War”, 1914-1918: Democracies and Autocracies The “Great War”, 1914-1918, was “the largest and bloodiest war in human history to that time.” (Snow and Drew 2010). The war was fought across the globe from the trenches and fields across Europe to the steppes of Russia, the deserts of the Middle East, and the Atlantic. All over Europe hundreds of thousands of men and women went to work in factories. Manufacturing and industry was pressed into service as this war was the first that included aircraft, submarines, lethal chemicals and machineguns. Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Bulgaria comprised the ‘Quadruple Alliance’ also known as the ‘Central Powers’. The ‘Central Powers’ were pitted against the Allied Powers, or Triple Entente, from the major nations of France, Russia, the United Kingdom and her colonies. Allies were from as far away as New Zealand and Hon...