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France's informal alignment with Britain and its formal alliance with Russia against Germany and Austria eventually led Russia and Britain to enter World War I as France's allies. [26] [27] Britain abandoned its policy of splendid isolation in the 1900s, after it had been isolated during the Second Boer War. Britain concluded agreements ...
November 2 Naval, Atlantic: The United Kingdom begins the naval blockade of Germany. Politics: Serbia declares war on the Ottoman Empire. [24] November 2–21 Middle Eastern, Caucasian: Bergmann Offensive, first military engagement in the Caucasus of the First World War. November 3 Politics: Montenegro declares war on the Ottoman Empire.
In 1914 the war was so unexpected that no one had formulated long-term goals. An ad-hoc meeting of the French and British ambassadors with the Russian Foreign Minister in early September led to a statement of war aims that was not official, but did represent ideas circulating among diplomats in St. Petersburg, Paris, and London, as well as the secondary allies of Belgium, Serbia, and Montenegro.
Before World War II, the events of 1914–1918 were generally known as the Great War or simply the World War. [1] In August 1914, the magazine The Independent wrote "This is the Great War. It names itself". [2] In October 1914, the Canadian magazine Maclean's similarly wrote, "Some wars name themselves. This is the Great War."
Berlin did not go to war in 1914 in a bid for ‘world power’, as historian Fritz Fischer claimed, but rather first to secure and thereafter to enhance the borders of 1871. Secondly, the decision for war was made in July 1914 and not, as some scholars have claimed, at a nebulous ‘war council’ on 8 December 1912.
It involved all the world's great powers, [1] which were assembled in two opposing alliances: the Allies (centred on the Triple Entente of Britain, France and Russia) and the Central Powers (originally centred on the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy). [2]
The First World War: Volume I: To Arms (2003). Tucker, Spencer C., ed. The European Powers in the First World War: An Encyclopedia (1996) 816pp; Watson, Alexander. Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary in World War I (2014) Wawro, Geoffrey. A Mad Catastrophe: The Outbreak of World War I and the Collapse of the Habsburg Empire (2014)
The United States had a moral responsibility to enter the war, Wilson proclaimed. The future of the world was being determined on the battlefield, and US national interest demanded a voice. Wilson's definition of the situation won wide acclaim, and, indeed, has shaped the US's role in world and military affairs ever since.