Europe Prior to World War I: Alliances and Enemies I PRELUDE TO WW1 - Part 1/3

My name is Indy Neidell, and welcome to our new channel "The Great War".

This show follows World War I, from July 28th 1914 to November 11, 1918, week by week exactly

100 years later, but in order for the initial weeks of the war to make more sense we’re doing

these prelude to war episodes to give you a little background...

All here on our new channel "The Great War"!

Do you know what happened 100 years ago last month? On June 28th, 1914,

Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated. This was the little match that ignited the

bonfire of the First World War.

Now, it took a full month after the assassination for war to be declared and on July 28, 2014,

it is exactly 100 years since the beginning of World War I, or the Great War, as it was called,

or even The War to End All Wars.

And unlike pretty much every other World War I show ever, we’re going to

ignore Franz Ferdinand for the moment, and talk about some other stuff.

The consequences of the Great War were massive, and affected pretty much every person

in every country on earth. Four great empires ceased to exist, a bunch of new nations saw the light of day,

and the explosive growth of an extraordinary number of social movements,

such as internationalism or facism, changed the world’s political landscape forever.

Just in terms of technology, the Great War moved the world ahead by leaps and bounds.

Cars and planes had existed prior to the war, but by 1918 we had tanks and diesel fuel,

bombers and fighters, and large planes ready to be converted into the first airliners.

And the tragedies were enormous. Although completely accurate records are impossible,

the war caused close to 40 million casualties – killed or wounded –

including nearly 10 million dead soldiers in a world whose population was only a quarter of what it is now.

But why the Great War? Why start it? Why go through with it?

There had certainly been enough talk about a European war during the early parts of the