In 1914 war broke out in Europe. After the assassination of the australian hungarian crown prince Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, The double monarchy declared war on Serbia. As a consequence of this a war started between the two great European alliances, France, Great-Brittain and Russia on one side and on the other side the Austrian Hungarian double monarchy and Germany. This was the beginning of an until then unknown kind of modern kind of warfare, especially on the western front.

The idea of most countries was that this be a short war (" Home before Christmas ") but due to the modernisation of most armies such as the machine gun and massive artillery, the war in the west turned into a bloody stalemate. From the North sea in southwest Belgium across the north of France to the swiss border the germans dug themselves in while on the other side the french and the the british did the same. Four years of trench warfare followed and none of the belligerants were able to break this deadlock. The only gains of the countless offensives were a few miles of land and this at an extremely high cost, the losses of thousands of lives.


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