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Consequently, on July 31, Germany demanded that Russia demobilize. When Russia did not comply, Germany declared war on Russia on August 1, 1914. According to its war plan, Germany prioritized its offensive against France, declaring war on August 3. Germany deployed its main armies through Belgium with the aim of encircling Paris.
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."
On the eve of the Great War, [1] Russia was the most populous state in Europe: with 175 million inhabitants, it had almost 3 times the population of Germany, an army of 1.3 million men, and almost 5 million reservists. Its industrial growth, on the order of 5% per year between 1860 and 1913, and the vastness of its territory and natural ...
[82] Russia's withdrawal from the war turned out to be a nightmare for the Western Allies. Even the entry of the United States into the war did not immediately help the Allies recover from the loss of strength and assistance that the Russian army had brought to the Allied war effort. [83]
The Allies or the Entente was an international military coalition of countries led by France, the United Kingdom, Russia, the United States, Italy, and Japan against the Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria in World War I (1914–1918).
On 22 July 1917, Siam declared war on Germany and Austria-Hungary. Twelve German vessels docked in Siamese ports were immediately seized. The crews and other Central Power nationals were detained and sent to India to join their fellow citizens in British India's existing civilian internment camps.
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.
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 .