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The Battle of Liège was the first battle of the war, and could be considered a moral victory for the allies, as the heavily outnumbered Belgians held out against the German Army for 12 days. From 5 to 16 August 1914, the Belgians successfully resisted the numerically superior Germans, and inflicted surprisingly heavy losses on their aggressors.
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).
Key markers were the 1894 Franco-Russian Alliance, the 1904 Entente Cordiale with Britain, and the 1907 Anglo-Russian Convention, which led to the Triple Entente. 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 ...
Although general narratives of the war tend to emphasize the importance of alliances in binding the major powers to act in the event of a crisis such as the July Crisis, historians such as Margaret MacMillan warn against the argument that alliances forced the Great Powers to act as they did: "What we tend to think of as fixed alliances before ...
Russia during World War I – food shortages in the major urban centres, and poor morale due to lost battles and heavy losses sustained, brought about civil unrest which led to the February Revolution, the abdication of the Tsar, and the end of the Russian Empire. Russian Revolution (1917) – end of Imperial Russia February Revolution –
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."
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.
The United States was a major supplier of war materials to the Allies but remained neutral in 1914, in large part due to domestic opposition. [7] The most significant factor in creating the support Wilson needed was the German submarine offensive, which not only cost American lives, but paralysed trade as ships were reluctant to put to sea. [ 8 ]