World War I

World War I was a world-scale imperialist war that broke out for the purpose of redividing the territories of the world and due to competition among major world powers for global hegemony under the background that capitalism was in transition to a stage of monopoly capitalism, i.e., imperialism; during the late 19th century and the early 20th century. It had also occurred due to the uneven economic and political development of various capitalist countries, as well as under the background that the colonies and semi-colonies in Asia, Africa, Latin America was carved up by capitalist cartels, syndicates and the intensified contradictions between the old and the new colonialism.

World War I started on June 28, 1914, when Archduke Ferdinand and his wife, crown prince of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, were shot and killed by a Serbian young person named Gavrillo Princip while the prince was inspecting Sarajevo. A month later, with the support of Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire declared war on Serbia under the pretext of Sarajevo incident, and then, Germany, Russia, France, Britain and other countries participated in the war one after another. There were two camps of belligerents: the first camp consisted of the Empires of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria, and the second camp consisted of Britain, France and Russia, and Serbia, Belgium, Italy and the United States.

After the outbreak of the World War I, the battle mainly took place in the European region in which the main battlefields included the Western Front where the armies of Britain, France, Belgium and other countries fought against the German army and the Eastern Front where the Russian army fought against the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the German army, and among them, the Western Front played a decisive role. World War I can be roughly divided into three stages: The year 1914 was the first stage of the war. According to the Schlieffen Plan formulated before the war, the German army first launched a large-scale attack on the Western Front. Due to the strong resistance of the French, British and Belgian armies in the campaigns such as the man river and the Russian attack on the eastern line, the German Schlieffen Plan went bankrupt. The two sides of the war at the Western Front built trenches, engaged in long-term confrontation and turned to positional warfare. The years 1915-1916 was the second stage of the war. In 1916, there were three large-scale land battles, namely, the Battle of Verdun in the West, the Battle of Somme River and the June Offensive of Russia in the East; at sea, Britain firmly controlled the maritime lanes. At this stage, the strategic initiative gradually shifted to the Allies. The years 1917-1918 was the third stage of the war. In 1917, the United States declared and entered war against Germany, and China and other countries also joined in the war one after another, which increased the number of the camp of the Allies to 27 countries, and Russia withdrew from the imperialist war after the breakout of February and October Revolutions. In November 1918, Germany announced its surrender, and the World War I ended with the defeat of the Allies. The World War I caused an unprecedented catastrophe to humanity and brought great disaster to all the countries participated in the war. More than 30 countries and 1.5 billion people were involved in the war. The war lasted for 4 years, about 65 million people participated in it, more than 10 million people were killed and 20 million wounded. It was an important stage in the development history of weaponry that all kinds of new weapons such as war planes, gas, tanks and long-range artilleries were put into war theater one after another. The war caused serious economic losses and brought serious disasters to the human society.

The World War I severely weakened the power of imperialism, destroyed the old European feudal empires such as Tsarist Russia in the east of Europe and the north of Asia, the German Empire in the Central Europe, the Austria-Hungarian Empire in the Central Europe and the northwest of Balkans, and while the imperialist countries such as Britain, France and Italy were weakened, it destroyed and disintegrated the Ottoman Empire, which used to span the three continents of Europe, Asia and Africa. In the late period of the War, the Russian proletariat broke the weakest link in the chain of imperialism and won the victory of the October Revolution under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party headed by Lenin. The October Revolution broke the status quo of sole capitalist domination across the world, shook the world capitalist system, overthrew the rule of the bourgeoisie and feudalism in a vast imperialist country, for the first time established a socialist country under the dictatorship of the proletariat and opened a brand-new era in human history.