In 1914, late July, Austria-Hungary had declared war on Serbia. A tiny nation in Eastern Europe. In the days that followed, other major powers - Germany, Russia, France - had joined the conflict. People in Europe were giving in to the idea of a terrible loss. When war finally came thousands of lives were lost, homes and property were destroyed. The normal pattern of everyday life was interrupted.By 1914, Europeans had enjoyed almost a century without a major war. They had witnessed incredible changes. Rapid advances in science and industry had fed a belief in unlimited progress. Peace and prosperity. That confidence, which Europeans had enjoyed for so long came crashing down on August 19 ...view middle of the document...
Millions met untimely death. Many mistaken instructions wrong turning and belated, tried to redress error entered into the making of the First World War. The ambushing of an Austrian couple was the precipitating incident.Fear of Change By the spring of 1915 the contagion out of Europe had spread fear around the globe. The people still at peace far out numbered those belligerent. But they could not escape the war. Its unparalleled dimensions awed them, and its far-reaching effect changed everywhere the patterns of casual conversation altered living cost, stimulated interest in military training, exacerbated mistrust of strangers. Whetted partisan frictions, reconditioned the outlook of great men in finance, industrial magnated and average householders concerned with the future well being of the family group.Early Years of War The war anodic sputtering across the Eurasian land mass had little to do with this. Japan had joined the war on August 23, 1914, on the side of the Allies. It was a variety of scavenger hunt. Japan wanted Kiaochow, the German held mortgage on Shantung province. To get it, the Japanese Army and Navy had to attack the taken garrisoned point of Tsingtao. They did it with trumpets on October 31, and, after some days of ostentatious bombardment, the German governor ran up the surrender flag. The Japanese went on to grab the Mariana, Caroline, and Marshallis of the Central Pacific. But the Australians beat them to German owned Neu-Pmmern, later known as New Britain. These actions ended the story of German authority in Asia and throughout the Pacific.The U.S. Remained Neutral By the end of 1914 German shipping and its protection were all but gone from the seas. The widely separated actions by which it was routed, which dramatic, did not immediately compound international tensions, instead, difficulties accumulated over Allied command of the seas. Economically, The United States was beginning to prosper from the war. Its markets and munitions plants were open to all belligerents. But except for a very few militarily useful commodities, such as cotton, which could be transshipped to Germany through Holland only the Allied nations could take the delivery. Vainly Wilheim's government protested that this single-track supplying of the Allied camp violated neutrality. That the charge was false and the American course wholly legal were from the German view irrelevant. In retaliation, the German diplomatic and undercover apparatus in the United States undertook to hamper Allied purchasing by fomenting trouble in the war plants. Although in the early months German submarine warfare and the mining of international water were not intense or systematically directed toward the wrecking of international commerce, these threats steadily mounted. As the squeeze on the German economy tightened, more U-boats came from the shipyards and the two factors combined to produce a greater violence.Germans had the Upper Hand On January 24, 1915, occurred...
