The Great War, Part 1: a little background, history and reasons for the war.

To be blunt, there were no valid reasons for this war. This was a war of dying empires attempting to regain or retain as much land and power as possible and hopefully rebuild their past glory.

On one side was the relatively new nation of Germany. With her was the Austrian-Hungary and Ottoman Empires, both of which were rapidly fading into obscurity. Together these, along with a handful of minor countries, were known as: The Central Powers.

On the other side was the Russian Empire of the Czars, herself dying but still ready to lend a hand to the Baltic nations if they needed it. France remained quite powerful and still owned several colonies in Africa, Asia and South America. Most importantly, she was anxious to regain her provinces of Alsace and Lorraine as well as the pride she had lost in the Franco-Prussia war in 1870-71. Germany, of course, wanted to keep the provinces and was willing to fight for them.

Great Britain was still the worlds largest and most powerful nation with a massive navy and numerous large and wealthy members of her commonwealth.( Australia, India, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa….)

Belgium was a tiny country that considered herself neutral and simply wished to be left alone. Unfortunately she wasn’t, and soon found herself at centre stage and immersed in the greatest war the world had ever fought.

Although Great Britain didn’t have a treaty with France, it was understood that she would come to France’s aid in case Germany attacked. GB did have a treaty signed with Belgium.

The U. S. was still trying to recover from the Civil War, bring her various states into an integrated nation and build or rebuild her industries, all while dealing with her problems with Mexico, so was essentially considered to be out of any war that should occur.

It seemed that although every nation in Europe knew that a war was inevitable, no one knew when it would happen or even why, let alone what would be the trigger. When the event that did finally trigger the war it almost passed unnoticed on the world’s conscience and would probably have faded into history if it had occurred at any other time or in any other location.

And then we come to little Serbia. Serbia was controlled by the Austria-Hungary Empire and wasn’t happy about it. So the Nationalist Black Hand Movement decided to do something about it and unwittingly became the finger that pulled the trigger that started the war.
(to be continued tomorrow……)