in june of 1914 the assassination in bosnia of archduke franz ferdinand heir to the throne of the austro-hungarian empire started a chain of events that engulfed europe and the most devastating war the world had ever seen european nations that were engaged in the scramble for colonies over the previous decades had entered into a series of alliances these alliances sought to bolster each nation's military position in europe and they were entered into largely in order to ensure that if one nation came into conflict with another european nation elsewhere in the world in say africa or asia then they could count on their allies to help them back in europe to have their back in other words but now when austria-hungary declared war on serbia as retribution for the assassination of their crown prince now this web of alliances came into effect because of the alliance system britain france russia and japan as well as a few others found themselves bound together in what came to be known as the allied powers they were pitted at war with another block of nations the so-called central powers which consisted of germany austria-hungary and the ottoman empire when the first world war began it was incredibly popular the french war board for instance estimated that once it called up the men of fighting age to report for introduction to the military about 87 of them would answer the summons and voluntarily show up in fact 98.5 of the men showed up throughout europe on both sides of the conflict there was almost a glee about going to war europe had not seen a major conflict since the fall of napoleon there had really only been wars that were limited in scope like the crimean war and the franco-prussian war these were relatively small-scale conflicts that were fought over tiny bits of territory so when war seemed likely in the late summer of 1914 there were no vivid memories of how destructive war could be the only combat that most europeans had any experience with were imperial wars fighting african tribes or in the case of the british fighting in india in these cases the europeans had possessed such a strong technological advantage that they usually just mowed down their opponents with rifle fire by 1914 europe's armies really did not have experience squaring off in battle against an opponent that was armed really even with rifles much less machine guns and high-powered artillery but by 1914 europe had undergone the industrial revolution and european armies had lots of machine guns even portable machine guns they also had massive mortars think of them as powerful and more accurate cannon which were capable of firing huge shells and they had even longer range howitzers so halfway through the war the germans for instance began deploying these massive howitzers a certain class of which was known as big bertha big bertha could fire a shell that weighed more than fifteen hundred pounds more than six miles normally it would explode on impact but then the germans also devised a delayed timer so that when this massive shell hit it burrowed up to 40 feet into the ground then it exploded the destruction was incredible and there were aircraft and tanks both of which would be deployed for the first time during this war there was also poison gas which would be used by the germans and the germans deployed submarines ultimately it would be the german threat of submarine attacks against u.s ships in the atlantic ocean or british ships carrying americans that would provoke the united states to come into the war so you're getting the picture here there's a huge amount of new military technology that is novel and it is very destructive because european powers had not fought one another in decades really for the better part of a century there was no real appreciation though of just how destructive these technologies could be especially and this is important to keep in mind when the european powers were almost equally well equipped so the war started in earnest with this idea that it would be brief at the time many people referred to war as a storm and this storm of war would somehow clear the air you know this was a catastrophic mistake armies acros across europe squared off in the late summer and the expectations that it would be brief were quickly proved wrong the war would quickly become a bloodbath once the war started german military planners were obsessed with the idea of a quick victory a plan had been devised a decade earlier known as the schlieffen plan and it was put into effect the schlieffen plan proposed to solve germany's geographic problem of being in effect boxed in by countries that it considered hostile france to the west and russia to the east the german military staff reasoned that it was impossible to fight a war on two fronts france on one side russia on the other side just look at russia it's enormous and it simply had a lot more men that it could put into battle but the schlieffen plant assumed that russia which was not nearly as technologically advanced as germany would take far more time to mobilize its troops to fight because as you can see from any map the vast hinterland of russia that folds into siberia is thousands of miles away so the germans were thinking that if they could move quickly enough they could launch a lightning invasion of france catch the french off guard seize paris within six weeks and then relying on germany's advanced railroad system quickly redeploy their troops to the east in order to have them rapidly advancing all by the time that russia managed to mobilize its military all of this relied on a strict adherence to timetables with the army quickly advancing on select cities knocking them out and moving on some historians have taken to calling this war by the numbers and as such it did not offer any contingency for strong resistance that would slow in advance it did not factor for surprises or setbacks it did not take into account an enemy and the enemy's fighting spirit that would lead an army to simply refuse to give ground but that's exactly what happened in august of 1914 the german empire invaded belgium according to the edicts of the schlieffen plan and they expected the belgians would just let the german army pass by they didn't in fact the belgian king a man named albert the first actually did something that was completely unexpected by the germans albert the first quickly told the british basically i'll hold the germans off but you're my ally and he made good on his word albert himself personally led the belgian army into combat against the far more powerful germans the king went into battle against three german armies and in august it was really just tiny belgium led by its king fighting off the german empire that was 18 times its size then the french army mobilized and came into the war on behalf of the belgians then the british mobilized and came into the war on behalf of its ally belgium and with that there went the schlieffen plan by the fall of 1914 germany's plan to knock france out of the war in six weeks had clearly failed the germans and austro-hungarians on one side and the french british and belgians on the other side had bogged down into trench warfare in a stalemate that would continue for the next four years all the while each time one side or another tried to attack they were mowed down by machine gun fire or pulverized by howitzers or in some cases poisoned by gas up until 1914 every war in history had a casualty rate that was skewed toward gradual death soldiers got wounded and died from infection or in cramped sleeping quarters or trenches diseases like typhus dysentery or malaria set in and ravaged the men who were often starving and had not bathed in the crimean war of the mid-1850s which was similar to the u.s civil war in terms of casualty trends in the crimean war five times as many men died from infection or diseases than died from direct wounds on the battlefield but the first world war was different more soldiers died on the battlefield right there on the spot directly from enemy fire by the end of 1914 the french alone had lost 300 000 soldiers another 600 000 frenchmen were wounded the death toll would rise to at least 10 million for all combatants by the war's end but even at this point at the end of 1914 just the death toll endured by the french that figure alone is almost unimaginable for most americans to put that into perspective throughout all of us history from the american revolution to the war of 1812 to the war against mexico to the u.s civil war including both the confederate dead and the union dead to the spanish-american war to all the various raids and wars against native american tribes every single military casualty from 1775 up to 1917 every casualty amounted to less than the number of men that france lost in just the last four months of the year 1914.