Free Essays on World War 1 to Get Inspired & Learn by Example

The First World War was, without a doubt, one of mankind’s most wide-reaching and horrific conflicts in human history. Its legacy includes expanding the scope of warfare over several continents and disrupting the delicate balance of power that had existed in Europe for hundreds of years. In order to start such an incredibly widespread conflict, a variety of factors had to fall into place in order to bring about animosity between previously-peaceable countries such as France, Russia, Germany, Austria-Hungary and the United Kingdom, among others, many of which were simply the culmination of tensions which had been simmering Continue reading...

The dehumanizing effects wrought by World War I caused profound psychological and physical trauma, which resulted in observed aberrant behaviors associated with effeminacy such as uncontrollable crying, paranoia, and neurasthenia. Literary critic and scholar Paul Fussell had famously declared that “dawn has never recovered from what the Great War did to it” (Fussell 3). World War I created mass devastation on an unprecedented scale in Europe, which created a void and power vacuum that spanned the entire globe. Although soldiers had initially felt a sense of excitement and optimism about the war as it loomed and seemed imminent, the Continue reading...

The Ottoman Empire, which began as a small Turkish state in Asia Minor during the downfall of the Seljuk Turks, started to emerge as one of the most powerful empires of the world. During the reign of powerful kings, such as Osman I, Orkhan, Beyazid I and Murad I, the Ottoman Empire began to expand at the cost of the great Byzantine Empire, Serbia and Bulgaria. Bursa and Adrianople became the capitals of the Ottoman Empire after their downfall in 1326 and 1361 respectively. The most famous and important victories of the Ottoman Empire, which include the Kosovo Field Continue reading...

The term “Nazi” conjures up horrific images of German soldiers brutally murdering millions of Jews and other social groups German Nazis categorized as “non-Aryans.” The Holocaust has been called the darkest period of human history and the greatest crime against humanity that has hitherto been recorded in history. This methodical and systematic elimination of so-called “undesirables” was made possible by an amalgam of factors: ripe conditions in a war-torn Europe that enabled fascism to take form. * Despite national idiosyncrasies, Nazi Germany as the Third Reich and Fascist Italy, along with other fascist movements, retained many commonalities that allow for Continue reading...

Questions: The New Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century and the Ottoman and Russian Empires

Chapter 25
The Ottoman Empire dominated the Middle East and North Africa during a period between 1500 and 1700, prior and following which its territorial domains were much smaller.
Vienna has long been considered by the Ottoman Empire as a highly strategic point of trade due to its access to the northern, southern, eastern and western parts of Europe, hence its strong desire to occupy it. The Austrians, under the Holy Roman Empire, were assisted by the German States and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Reforms in education and technology proved necessary for the Ottoman Empire during the early 1700s, not Continue reading...

INTRODUCTION

Even though fascism touted itself as a movement based on national and social unity and homogeneity, the fractures within fascist totalitarianism as a result to religious, regional, economic, political, social, and cultural differences convey the dissonance between fascist practices and rhetoric. Robert Paxton locates fascism’s beginnings in a series of intellectual, cultural, emotional, political, social, and economic challenges unique to Europe in the early twentieth century (Paxton, 2004, p. 55). Fears over modernity, Bolshevism, and bourgeois indulgences converged with increasing nationalism, mass politics, and an eager youth. Though early fascist rhetoric indicated an aversion to capitalism and individualism, Continue reading...

The term “chemical warfare” has many definitions, but they all essentially mean a type of military tactic that involves using chemical agents to incapacitate or kill the enemy 1. The use of chemicals such as phosgene, chlorine, and mustard gas in World War I initiated the use of a weapon not seen before on any battlefield 2. The toxins were used in addition to more traditional strategies involving hand-carried weapons, artillery, bombs, and so on. But the introduction of chemical warfare was an innovative method of removing men from the engagement; the topic of this paper is the use Continue reading...

Introduction

Austria-Hungary declared war against Serbia on 28 July, 1914 with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, in Bosnia along with his wife by a Serbian nationalist. However, this apparently small conflict between the two nations spread like wild fire soon. Germany, Great Britain, France and Russia were gradually pulled into the war, mainly due to their involvement in some treaties that made them obligatory to protect certain other countries. Within a few weeks, the conflict spread around the world and all the major powers joined the war. The two major opposing war alliances Continue reading...

Private Charles Robert Bottomley: Canadian Soldier Who Fought in the First World War

Introduction
Canada was one of the countries which participated actively in the First World War. The involvement of Canada in the First World War began when Britain joined the war. On the fourteenth of August nineteen fourteen, the British declared war against Germany. At the time, Canada was a British dominion. The entry of Britain into the war therefore meant that Canada was also technically at war with Germany owing to its legal status which meant that its foreign policy was majorly controlled by the British. Even though the Canadian government still had powers to determine the country’s Continue reading...

1. The Allied powers officially ended World War I when they signed the Treaty of Versailles at the infamous palace of Versailles in the aftermath of World War I. John Maynard Keyes, a British economist, had attended the peace conference but left prematurely as an act of protest against the peace treaty itself. I found this unusual for a member of the Allied powers to react so strongly to a treaty that seemingly would benefit from the agreements made in it. Indeed, Keynes publically decried and critiqued the punitive nature of the Treaty of Versailles through his writings. He Continue reading...