Consequences and Proceedings of World War I
Consequences of World War I
On October 27, 1918, Germany agreed to peace negotiations, and William II had to hand over power. A proletarian revolution spread throughout Germany, which was subsequently suppressed. Preparations for the Versailles Conference began in Europe.
In 1919, representatives of the victorious countries met at Versailles to prepare the final peace treaty. That same year, Germany signed the Treaty of Versailles. It was forced to drastically reduce its army and weapons and pay heavy economic sanctions as compensation for damages caused to the Allies during the war. In addition, Germany lost its colonial empire and many areas in Europe.
After the defeat of Germany in World War I, the victors did not reach an agreement on war reparations to be paid by the vanquished nation. The leaders of the United States, Britain, France, and Italy attended the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 and drafted the Treaty of Versailles. This imposed on Germany a series of restrictive and compensatory measures involving large-scale demilitarization and compensation.
While all nations were confident that the agreements reached after the conflict would restore world peace on a stable foundation, the conditions imposed promoted an even more destructive conflict. The Central Powers agreed to the fourteen points made by President Wilson as the foundation of the armistice, hoping that the Allies would take them as a basic reference in the peace treaties. However, most of the Allied powers went to the Versailles Conference with the determination to seek indemnification by way of war reparations equivalent to the total cost thereof and to divide the territories and possessions of the defeated countries by secret agreements. During the peace negotiations, President Wilson insisted that the Paris Peace Conference accept the program, but eventually dropped his original intent and focused on getting the support of the Allies for the formation of the League of Nations.
Proceedings of the War
Germany 1914.
The war began as a clash between Austria-Hungary and Serbia, but Russia joined the conflict, as it was considered the protector of all Slavic countries. After the Austro-Hungarian declaration of war on Russia on August 1, 1914, the conflict became a European-scale military confrontation. Finally, hostilities grew into a global war that involved 32 countries, 28 of them called “Allies.” Among them were the French, British, and Russian empires, Canada, the USA, and Italy, which had abandoned the Triple Alliance. This group faced a coalition of the “Central Powers,” made up of the Austro-Hungarian, German, and Ottoman Empires, accompanied by Bulgaria.
Trigger of the Conflict
The triggering event was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, and his wife, Duchess of Hohenberg Sophie, in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, at the hands of a young Serbian nationalist student, Gavrilo Princip.
The Austro-Hungarian Empire demanded, with the support of the German Empire, to investigate on Serbian territory, as it saw the Pan-Slav Black Hand organization had a connection with the secret services of this country. Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum on July 28. Serbia did not accept all the conditions imposed, which would have meant losing all its sovereignty. The Austro-Hungarian attack triggered the provisions under the system of alliances: on July 30, Russia declared war on Austria-Hungary to help the Serbs; the German Empire, in turn, declared war on Russia on August 1 and after France on November 3. On August 4, the German army began the invasion of France, violating Belgian territory (neutral), which led to the declaration of war on the German Empire by the British Empire, which was the guarantor of Belgian sovereignty. The generalized system of alliances later the conflict, namely that a single event triggered the rupture of unstable equilibrium that had been maintained for years after that defensive military alliance system.
This was the beginning of the war. Among major European countries, only Spain, Norway, and Sweden (and Italy provisionally) remained neutral. The two camps were balanced: the Central Powers and the Allies had a similar number of soldiers. The Germans had an advantage from the point of view of heavy artillery, but that was offset by the British supremacy at sea.