#MAP OF THE WORLD AFTER WW1 DRIVER#

Right from the outset things did not go Germany's way. This was a risky move on Germany's part, but German war-planning long regarded a quick, decisive blow against France as the best possible hope of winning a two-front war. The attack on Belgium brought the British Empire into the war, with British politicians citing their country's obligation to uphold Belgian neutrality. Belgium was not part of any pre-war alliances and attempted to stay neutral in the war. The fastest route to the French capital happens to run through Belgium, so the first battle of the war was a German attack on the Belgian city of Liège. The German war plan called for the swiftest possible capture of Paris, hoping to knock France out of the war before Russia could fully mobilize its large but low-tech military. But the literal timing shouldn't confuse you - it had long been French policy to support Serbia against Austria in hopes of initiating a war in which Russia would help France fight Germany, which was far too powerful for France to fight alone. The violation of Belgian neutrality brought Britain into the war and it was off to the races. Thus the main practical step Germany took to defend Austria was to launch a preemptive attack on France and Belgium, neither of whom had officially entered the war yet.

German war planning assumed that any war with Russia would expand to include war with France, and the operational plan called for attacking France first. This required Germany to go to war in defense of its ally. Then Russia declared war on Austria-Hungary. First Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia after Serbia refused to acceed to Vienna's extensive demands regarding Serbian support for anti-Austrian groups. The main participants in the war mobilized over the course of about a week. By chance, Gavrilo Princip had by this time moved over to Franz Joseph Street and he was able to take the fatal shot.

#MAP OF THE WORLD AFTER WW1 DRIVER#

Franz Ferdinand ordered his car to turn around so he could visit people injured by the grenade but his driver misunderstood, and continued on the original route where, while attempting to turn around, his car stalled. The assassins believed their plot had failed. The motorcade then continued past the other assassins, none of whom acted as they lacked clear shots in the commotion. The second assassin tossed a grenade that injured several people. The first assassin was standing near a policeman and didn't use his weapon. He was joined in the city by seven Serbian terrorists there to kill him, in hopes of removing a prominent moderate from the line of succession and heightening the tensions between Vienna and its South Slavic subjects.

This is due in no small part part to the fact that European leaders recognise that they have far more to gain from working together than they do trying to compete with one another.įood for thought for those who see the EU as a failed project.Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand arrived in Sarajevo, then part of the Habsburg dominion, on June 28, 1914. Thankfully, Europe today is far more peaceful than it was in the 20th century.

World War One, World War Two and the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe repeatedly redrew the map of Europe to create today’s modern states, but at an extremely high human cost. Also, France no longer controls the states of North Africa as it did in 1914.įinally, by 1914, while the Ottoman Empire had largely retreated from Europe, it still had nominal control over most of the Middle East.Īnd what had been the European bits of the Ottoman Empire were just emerging as their own nation states following the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913.

For example, the Republic Ireland is an independent country and no longer part of the United Kingdom. Germany was also much larger than it is today and controlled what are now bits of Poland, France, Denmark, Belgium and Lithuania.īorders in Western Europe have also changed a little since 1914. Moreover, Russia’s control also stretched north and included the Baltic states and Finland as well as south into the Caucasus. The Austro-Hungarian Empire and Russian Empires in particular controlled most of the today’s Central and Eastern European states. The first thing that jumps out at you is how many fewer countries there were. The map above shows what Europe’s borders looked on the eve of World War One in 1914, overlaid on top of the borders of European countries today.

Map of the world after ww1