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As soon as the war began, the major nations issued "color books" containing documents (mostly from July 1914) that helped justify their actions.A color book is a collection of diplomatic correspondence and other official documents published by a government for educational or political reasons, and to promote the government position on current or past events.
Consensus on the origins of the war remains elusive, since historians disagree on key factors and place differing emphasis on a variety of factors. That is compounded by historical arguments changing over time , particularly as classified historical archives become available, and as perspectives and ideologies of historians have changed.
Some of the distant origins of World War I can be seen in the results and consequences of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 and 1871 and the concurrent unification of Germany. Germany had won decisively and established a powerful empire, but France fell into chaos and experienced a years-long decline in its military power.
World War I was one of the deadliest conflicts in history, resulting in an estimated 10 million military dead and more than 20 million wounded, plus some 10 million civilian dead from causes including genocide. The movement of large numbers of people was a major factor in the deadly Spanish flu pandemic.
More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history. [3] [4] More than 9 million combatants were killed, largely because of great technological advances in firepower without corresponding advances in mobility. It was the sixth deadliest conflict in world history ...
In 1906, official histories were being written by three departments at the War Office and one in the Admiralty. Lord Esher, a member of the Committee of Imperial Defence, suggested that a subcommittee be established as the Historical Section, to centralise the collection of army and navy archives, as a repository of the lessons of war for strategists.
Dr. Holger H. Herwig (born 1941) is a German-born Canadian historian and professor. He is the author of more than a dozen books, including the award-winning, The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary 1914-1918 and The Origins of World War I, written with Richard F. Hamilton.
December 15 – Hōjō Coal Mine Disaster: A gas explosion at the Mitsubishi Hōjō mine in Kyūshū, Japan, kills 687 people (the worst coal mine disaster in Japanese history). [ citation needed ] December 16 – World War I: Raid on Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby : Imperial German Navy battlecruisers bombard British North Sea ports ...