1914

We will be hearing a lot this year about World War One and its origins and THC plans to add to your burden with a few posts as we progress through the year.  WWI is a historical turning point for Europe.  Without that war it is difficult to imagine WWII occurring, or at least the kind of extreme, devastating and horrific conflict that WWII became. 1914 marks the end of the long 19th century which began in 1789 with the inauguration of the first American President and the start of the French Revolution.  It also marks the start of the short 20th century which ended between 1989 and 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In 1914 European powers ruled a world without passports and with a level of global trade that was not to be reached again until the 1980s.  With the events of 1914, those powers committed suicide, reducing the continent to a charnel house by 1945 and, in the process, unleashing Communism, Fascism and National Socialism upon themselves and the rest of the world.

THC posts will cover the events that triggered the war.  One of these was covered in 2013 in the post First Balkan War.  Next up, events in Libya during 1911.