1. World In Conflict The Great War –World War I

3. The World War of 1914-18 - The Great War, as contemporaries called it -- was the first man-made catastrophe of the 20th century. Historians can easily identify the literal "smoking gun" that set the War in motion: ***a revolver used by a Serbian nationalist to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand (heir apparent to the Austro-Hungarian throne) in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914.

4. Scholars are still debating the underlying causes----------? Was it the desire for greater empire, wealth and territory? A massive arms race ? The series of treaties which ensured that once one power went to war, all of Europe would quickly follow? Was it social turmoil and changing artistic sensibilities brought about by the Industrial Revolution? Or was it simply a miscalculation by rulers and generals in power ?

5. In the spring of 1915 the trenches along the western front were filled with millions of soldiers, at the average rate of one soldier per four inches of trench.

6. In early 1916, the British had over 1 million men in Belgium and France, while the French and German armies had re-supplied their front line troops. Instead, by year's end, both sides would lose nearly one million men with very little change in position of the front line trenches. The battlefields became "killing fields" and only one word, " slaughter ",

7. In 1917, after the loss of millions of live, the combatant nations, many people - civilians and soldiers alike - still wanted to continue fighting to victory. The combatant nations rejected all the peace initiatives that were proposed in 1917.

8. However, people on both sides of the conflict began to question the violence and massive slaughter. People everywhere sought ways to cope with, if not escape, the environment of war.

9. Russian front line soldiers grew increasingly disillusioned and apathetic. Many refused to obey orders, retreating when commanded to advance; they deserted the military and engage in open rebellion and mass mutiny. In France, a failed offensive in the spring of 1917 resulted in a mutiny against the way it was waged by the general staff.

10. After three years of war, men, armies and nations were nearing a breaking point. For individual soldiers, it emerged as "shell shock," a personal withdrawal from an intolerable reality of trench warfare.

11. World War I Tank

12. Military Airplanes of World War I

13. Naval Battle Ships

14. WWI Chemical Weapons

15. The crippling effects of gas warfare on individual soldiers in WWI inspired unprecedented artistic expression of the harsher side of war, from poetry to painting. John Singer Sargent portrays the aftermath of a gas attack in his painting Gassed. Many lie dead from the gas attack, but even the survivors are terribly wounded—bandages cover their eyes; mucous membranes were particularly vulnerable to poison gas.