Navigating the Heartache WWI Brings
The Lusitania is perhaps the most famous ocean liner to be sunk during World War I. At the start of the war, the liner was less than a decade old. Built by Cunard, the vessel, for a time, was the world’s largest ship. It also won the coveted Blue Riband award for crossing the Atlantic…
Decades before the Jewish Holocaust there was another slaughter of an innocent minority group, this one lesser known to history. It was the Armenian Genocide of World War I. Historians estimate anywhere from 600,000 to 1.3 million Armenians were killed during the genocide. It was the continuation of the mass murder of Armenians that have…
Alliances, nationalism, militarism and conflict would congregate in one event: The assassination of Austria-Hungary’s Archduke Franz Ferdinand by 19-year-old Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip. In 1914, nearly half of Austria-Hungary’s population was neither Austrian or Hungarian. Assassination in Sarajevo On June 28, 1914, Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were visiting Sarajevo in Bosnia-Herzegovina, an Austrian-Hungarian province.…
Several smaller conflicts tested the alliances established by the great European powers and set the stage for the great conflict that would erupt in 1914. These are some of the smaller conflicts that rocked the world during the new century. Russo-Japanese War (1904): Russia and Japan go to war over Korea and Manchuria. Russia…
Militarism is defined as maintaining a large military and being prepared to use it to defend a nation’s interests. In the early 20th century, this arms race led to disaster. Industrial Output The years prior to the war saw a surge in industrialization. Manufacturing output grew, buildings were electrified, municipal water works were constructed, and…
Nationalism is defined as patriotism and the spirit of a country. It also is defined as asserting that your country’s interests are separate from the interests of others. This second definition led to the belief that there is no greater and more honorable death than to die for one’s country. In the pre-World War I…
n 1878, the major European powers met in Germany to discuss territorial disputes. The Congress of Berlin assigned regions to different empires. Bosnia-Herzegovina, for example, was given to Austria-Hungary. It soon became clear that there were problems with this arrangement. The powers could not incur new territory without risking war with another country. Russia, especially,…
Understand the history of Russia and you understand modern Russia. It is a nation that has been plagued for centuries by tyrants, wars, political unrest and social equality. This all came to a head during The Russian Revolution. The revolution also led to the Russia withdrawing from World War I via the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.…
Creativity can’t be stopped, even in the worst of conditions. Such was the case during World War I when soldiers and sailors used materials they had on hand to create art. Available materials included shell casings, melted shrapnel, fabric, wood and bone. Despite the name, trench art wasn’t just produced in the trenches. It also…
If you were to time travel and attend a wedding in 1914, you would be quite familiar with the ceremony and customs. Weddings have not changed in the past century. However, marriage and how the couple got to the altar has. Dating, as we know it, came into existence in the 1920s, a direct result…