Portal:World War I
 World War I (abbreviated WWI), also known as the First World War, the Great War and The War to End War was a global military conflict that took place mostly in Europe between 1914 and 1918. The main combatants were the Allied Powers, led by France, the Russian Empire, the British Empire, Serbia, Belgium, and later Italy, Romania and the United States, who fought against the Central Powers: Austria-Hungary, the German Empire, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire (present day Turkey). Much of the fighting in World War I took place along the Western Front, within a system of opposing manned trenches and fortifications (separated by a "no man's land") running from the North Sea to the border of Switzerland. On the Eastern Front, the vast eastern plains and limited rail network prevented a trench warfare stalemate from developing, although the scale of the conflict was just as large. Hostilities also occurred on and under the sea and — for the first time — in the air. More than nine million soldiers died on the various battlefields, and millions more civilians perished. The war caused the disintegration of four empires: the Austro-Hungarian, German, Ottoman, and Russian. Germany lost its overseas empire, and states such as Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were created, or recreated, as in the cases of Lithuania and Poland. This contributed to a decisive break with the world order that had emerged after the Napoleonic Wars, which was modified by the mid-19th century’s nationalistic revolutions. The results of World War I would also be important factors in the development of World War II just over two decades later. Template:/box-footer Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'Module:Box-header/colours' not found.  The Armenian Genocide (Armenian: Հայոց Ցեղասպանութիւն, Turkish: Ermeni Soykırımı) — also known as the Armenian Holocaust, "Great Calamity" (Մեծ Եղեռն) or the Armenian Massacre — refers to the forced mass evacuation and related deaths of hundreds of thousands to over a million Armenians, during the government of the Young Turks from 1915 to 1917 in the Ottoman Empire. Today, the Republic of Turkey rejects the notion that the event constituted a genocide and instead claims that the deaths among the Armenians were a result of inter-ethnic strife, disease and famine during the turmoil of World War I. However, most Armenian, Russian, Western, and an increasing number of Turkish scholars believe that it was indeed a genocide, or campaign of state-sponsored ethnic cleansing and mass extermination. For example, some Western sources point to the sheer scale of the death toll as evidence for a systematic, organized plan to eliminate the Armenians. The event is also said to be the second-most studied case of genocide, and often draws comparison with the Holocaust. To date 21 countries have here officially recognised it as genocide. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'Module:Box-header/colours' not found.  The use of poison gas in World War I was a major military innovation. The gases used ranged from disabling chemicals such as tear gas and the more severe, mustard gas to killing agents like phosgene. This chemical warfare was a major component of the first global war and first total war of the 20th century. The killing capacity of gas was limited — only 3% of combat deaths were due to gas — however, the proportion of non-fatal casualties was high and gas remained one of the soldiers' greatest fears. In that it was possible to develop effective countermeasures to gas, it was unlike most other weapons of the period. Hence in the later stages of the war as the use of gas increased, in many cases its effectiveness was diminished. This widespread use of these agents of chemical warfare, and wartime advances in the composition of high explosives, gave rise to an occasionally expressed view of World War I as "the chemists' war". Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'Module:Box-header/colours' not found.
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Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'Module:Box-header/colours' not found.  Field Marshal Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig KT GCB OM GCVO KCIE ADC (June 19, 1861 – January 28, 1928) was a British soldier and senior commander during World War I. He was commander of the British Expeditionary Force during the Battle of the Somme and the 3rd Battle of Ypres. His tenure as commander of the BEF made Haig one of the most controversial military commanders in British history.
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