The First World War
Industrial technology meets obsolete tactics
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It was the first fully industrialised conflict: machine guns, artillery, poison gas and mass production met an officer culture shaped by 19th-century wars of manoeuvre. The result was attrition and casualty figures without precedent. The consequences shaped the rest of the century: four empires fell, the Middle East was redrawn by Sykes–Picot, the Versailles settlement fed German revanchism, and the Russian Revolution sprang directly from war exhaustion.
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An assassination in Sarajevo set off a chain reaction of alliances, and within weeks all of Europe was at war. Soldiers dug into trenches that barely moved for four years. Around 17 million people died.
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Part of Terra Saga — the story of Earth on a timeline. terrasaga.org