{"product_id":"what-was-world-war-i-isbn-9780593521663","title":"What Was World War I?","description":"\u003cb\u003eThis compelling addition to the What Was? series covers what was supposed to be “the war to end all wars” but tragically wasn't.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1914, the assassination of an Austrian archduke set off a disastrous four-year-long conflict involving dozens of countries with battles taking place in all parts of the world. World War I was the first to use planes and tanks as well as deadly gases that left soldiers blinded or “shell shocked” (a condition now called Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome). There were battles that lasted for months with opposing troops fighting from rat-infested trenches, battles that often ended in a hollow victory with only a small area of land retaken. The author of many successful Who HQ titles Nico Medina gives young readers a clear and compelling account of this long and tragic event, a war that left over 20 million dead and was the lead-up to World War II barely twenty years later.Nico Medina is the author of several Who HQ books, including \u003ci\u003eWhat Was Stonewall?, Who Is RuPaul\u003c\/i\u003e?, \u003ci\u003eWhat Is the AIDS Crisis\u003c\/i\u003e?, \u003ci\u003eWho Was Aretha Franklin?\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eWhat Was the Ice Age?\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIndonesian born Dede Putra is a digital artist living in Auckland, New Zealand. He is a bit of a foodie\" and a \"big audio\/visual guy.\"\u003cb\u003eWhat Was World War I?\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003eBy late December 1914, a war in Europe had been raging for more than four months. The armies fighting against one another were holed up inside deep trenches.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Twin lines of these trenches zigzagged five hundred miles from Switzerland all the way to the North Sea. This was the Western Front in the bloody war. (Fighting was also taking place in eastern Europe.) Defending one line of trenches were soldiers from Great Britain, Belgium, and France. Behind the other line was the German army.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e In between the trenches was a wide expanse known as no-man’s-land. It was about 250 yards across and laden with barbed wire. Littered with abandoned military equipment and fallen soldiers, no-man’s-land was extremely dangerous to cross.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e The trenches were three to six feet wide and up to ten feet deep. They were disgusting places, muddy and full of rodents. But they offered troops some protection from enemy fire—­if they kept their heads down! New kinds of rifles were being used and could fire from longer distances than ever before. And heavy artillery shells from each side blasted deep holes in the ground and could blow soldiers’ bodies apart.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Battles along the trench lines dragged on for weeks or months, not days. Attack after attack was repelled by the other side. Often there was no clear victory. Neither army gained much ground, and the bodies kept piling up. In just one day at the Battle of the Somme, more than nineteen thousand British soldiers died.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e It was a vicious kind of warfare never seen before. But for one day that winter, there was a moment of peace and goodwill.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e On Christmas Eve, British soldiers in Belgium heard something coming from the other side of no-man’s-land. The Germans were singing Christmas carols! The British soldiers began singing, too.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Come over here!” one German soldier shouted in English.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “You come halfway, I come halfway!” replied one of the British sergeants.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e And so they did!\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e The two groups of soldiers climbed cautiously out of their trenches and stepped into no-man’s-land. They met in the middle and shook hands, wishing one another a Merry Christmas. Gifts of cigarettes, wine, and sweets were exchanged. Christmas trees were lit with candles.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e The celebration lasted all night and into Christmas Day, when a friendly game of soccer took place.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “How marvelously wonderful, yet how strange it was,” a German lieutenant later wrote. “Christmas, the celebration of love, managed to bring mortal enemies together as friends for a time.”\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e The Christmas Truce was celebrated by as many as one hundred thousand soldiers, all along the Western Front. But it didn’t last long. The following day, both sides went right back to killing each other.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Many of these men and boys had expected to be home for the holidays. Their countries’ leaders had said the war would be over quickly. But it would be almost four more years before it ended.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e In World War I, Germany and its allies, the Central Powers, battled the Allied forces of France, Great Britain, and Russia (and eventually the United States) across four continents—­on land, in the air, and at sea. Advances in weaponry—­tanks, machine guns, poison gas, warplanes—led to unimaginable death tolls and near-­total destruction.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e More than nine million soldiers were killed, and more than twenty-­one million wounded. Millions more were imprisoned or went missing. As many as thirteen million civilians died of starvation, disease, or at the hands of invading forces.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e By the time Germany lost the war, its population was starving and its economy lay in ruins. Its empire had crumbled, along with the royal monarchies of Austria-­Hungary and Russia. Europe and the world were forever changed.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e How had this all come to pass?\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eChapter 1: Rival Empires\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e In 1914, the world looked very different than it does today. Africa and South Asia were largely ruled by the British and French empires. Raw materials from France’s and Britain’s overseas colonies made the empires very rich and powerful.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Germany was still a young nation. Once a collection of small kingdoms, it had unified only in 1871. But Germany modernized rapidly.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Germany’s leader, Kaiser Wilhelm II, believed the only way for his country to remain secure was to become the world’s most powerful empire. So Germany began to build factories, ports, and railways. It also expanded its military, stockpiled weapons, and took over parts of Africa, Asia, and several Pacific islands.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e France and Germany were neighbors—­and bitter rivals. They had fought many wars over the years and did not trust each other. France and Great Britain watched Germany’s rise with alarm. So did Russia, Germany’s neighbor to the east. \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e What if Germany tried to expand its empire within Europe?\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e France, Russia, and Great Britain decided to form alliances with one another. (An alliance is like a partnership between countries.) Alliances meant security and protection. If one country in an alliance was attacked, its allies would defend it.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Germany, surrounded by enemies, formed an alliance with its other neighbor, Austria-­Hungary. The Austro-­Hungarian Empire covered much of Central Europe. Franz Joseph I was its ruler.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Some fifty million people lived in the Austro-­Hungarian Empire. They came from many cultures and spoke more than a dozen languages. They didn’t feel like part of one empire. Each different area felt separate. Franz Joseph worried that some might try to form their own nations.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e In 1908, Franz Joseph took over a small nation called Bosnia. Bosnia’s neighbor was Serbia, which had become independent in 1878. (Both countries had formerly been part of another vast empire, the Ottoman Empire.)\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Many Serbians encouraged Bosnia—­and other places under Austro-­Hungarian rule—­to become a part of \u003ci\u003etheir\u003c\/i\u003e new country.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Did Franz Joseph like this? Absolutely not. He did not want to give up any of his empire.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Perhaps a quick, decisive war against Serbia would make other countries think twice before challenging the Austro-­Hungarian Empire.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e What would be the spark to ignite such a war?\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eChapter 2: One Wrong Turn in Sarajevo\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e On June 28, 1914, a nephew of Franz Joseph’s visited the city of Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia. He was fifty years old and an important nobleman: Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Someday, after his uncle died, Franz Ferdinand would become the emperor of Austria-­Hungary—­and rule over Bosnia.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e The people of Bosnia felt insulted by the archduke’s visit. It had to do with the date he chose to come. It was a solemn day in their history—­five centuries before, the region had been conquered by the Ottoman Empire. Angry at this show of disrespect, a group of young men armed themselves with guns and explosives.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Unwisely, the archduke ignored warnings about plots against his life. He and his wife, Sophie, even rode in the back of their convertible with the top down! His motorcade’s planned route had been published in newspapers ahead of his visit. So the terrorists knew exactly where to wait for him.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e As the motorcade proceeded through Sarajevo, a bomb was thrown at the archduke’s car. It bounced off the rear and exploded underneath the car behind the royal couple, injuring several people, including an official in the car. But the archduke and his wife were unharmed.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Franz Ferdinand refused to cancel the rest of his trip. He met with the mayor, as planned. Afterward, the archduke decided to visit the hospital to see the official who had been wounded by the bomb. For safety reasons, it was decided the archduke would take a different route out of the city. But his driver didn’t speak German and did not understand the new plan! \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e One fateful turn brought the archduke and his wife directly to the street where nineteen-­year-­old Gavrilo Princip was waiting. A Bosnian official riding with the royal couple told the driver he had gone the wrong way. The driver tried to reverse, but the car stalled.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Princip stepped onto the running board of the convertible and fired two shots, hitting the archduke in the neck and Sophie in the stomach. An hour later, Franz Ferdinand and his wife were dead.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Princip and the other terrorists were Serbian. They had been armed and trained in their country then snuck across the border into Bosnia. Because of this, Austria-­Hungary blamed Serbia for the archduke’s murder.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Now Franz Joseph felt it necessary to start a war. He intended to make Serbia part of his empire. This would discourage the nations within the Austro-­Hungarian Empire from declaring their independence.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e But Franz Joseph worried Serbia’s good friend Russia might come to its defense. So he approached his friend Kaiser Wilhelm II. The kaiser pledged Germany’s full support for Franz Joseph if war broke out. Like Franz Joseph, the kaiser saw the war as an opportunity to crush his rivals and expand his empire.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e On July 28, 1914, Austria-­Hungary declared war on Serbia. After that, it was like a row of dominoes falling. Soon, nearly all of Europe had taken sides: the Allies (France, Great Britain, and Russia) versus the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-­Hungary.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e One wrong turn and a fatal gunshot were all it took to spark what would become a worldwide war.","brand":"Penguin Workshop","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302184243429,"sku":"NP9780593521663","price":16.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780593521663.jpg?v=1742926523","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/what-was-world-war-i-isbn-9780593521663","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}