More than sixty million soldiers participated in the First World War. There were approximately 10 million dead civilians and military personnel and about 20 million injured.
On 28 June 1914, Archduke François-Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne and his wife were murdered in Sarajevo. Through alliances, the triple-Agreement (France, United Kingdom, Russia) enters into war against the triple Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Ottoman Empire).
The fighting takes place mainly on two fronts. The West's front: following the war of movement and the race to the sea, the conflict engulfed over 600 kilometres of a set of trenches and fortifications separated by no man's land. It is the "war of the trenches". On the eastern front, the conflict was equally widespread with major fighting in the Balkans, the Middle East and Italy.
Despite the failures of the battles of Verdun and the Somme, a new frontal plan of attack at the Chemin des Dames was drawn up by General Nivelle on the area between Reims and Soissons.
In 1918, the armistice was signed in the forest of Compiègne on November 11, 1918 in the train of Marshal Foch.
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