The First World War · KS3 History

Causes

The long-term causes are often remembered as MAIN: militarism (building up armies and navies), alliances, imperialism (competition for empires) and nationalism.
Two alliances faced each other: the Triple Entente (Britain, France and Russia) and the Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy).
The trigger was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914.
Britain declared war on 4 August 1914, after Germany invaded Belgium as part of the Schlieffen Plan.

Soldiers dug trenches from the Channel coast to Switzerland, and the war became a stalemate. No man's land lay between the enemy trenches.
Conditions: mud, rats, lice, trench foot and shell shock. New weapons included machine guns, heavy artillery, poison gas (first used by Germany in 1915) and tanks (first used by Britain at the Somme in 1916).
On the first day of the Battle of the Somme, 1 July 1916, the British army had about 57,000 casualties.
The Royal Guernsey Light Infantry suffered heavy losses at Cambrai in 1917 and in the battles of 1918.

Volunteers joined up at first; conscription began in 1916. Food rationing started in 1918. The Defence of the Realm Act (DORA) gave the government new powers.
Women took on jobs men had left, including dangerous work in munitions factories.
The fighting ended at 11 am on 11 November 1918 (the Armistice). The Treaty of Versailles (1919) punished Germany. About 9 to 10 million soldiers died.