World+War+I

__World War I__
World War I had many names to it like The First World War, [|the Great War], and the War to End All Wars. It primarily took place in the European countries but there were some conflicts going on in the USSR. It started in 1914 and by the end of the war in 1918 there were over 40 million casualties and half of them were civilian deaths. The war had two main alliances the Entente Powers and the Central Powers. The Entente Powers was made up of France, the United Kingdom, and Russia. Many others joined later the most noticeable was Italy. The central Powers was made up of Germany and Austria-Hungary. The Ottoman Empire later joined the Central Powers followed a year later by Bulgaria. There were 4 countries that were neutral and they were Spain, The Netherlands, Switzerland, and the Scandinavian nations. The wars ended with a bunch of treaties and the most noticeable one was the Treaty of Versailles. America tried to stay out of the war for as long as possible. In 1917, though, America finally joined the war on the side of Great Britain, after seeing what all Germany did to the British that was unfair. The war ended in 1918, which shows how much America did to the outcome of the war.

__**Prisoners of War (POW)**__ Prisoners of war are people who surrendered during a battle and were held at camps. During World War I, there were a total of 8 million men who were held at POW camps. People who were held prisoners actually had a higher survival rate than those who were in battles. Sometimes soldiers who surrendered were shot when they were helpless. Conditions at these camps were fairly decent, except for the Ottoman Empire and much better than World War II because the International Red Cross helped out and neutral nations inspected the camps. Russia held the most prisoners of war with 2.9 million prisoners being held at camp and Germany had 2.5 prisoners.

__**Consequences of World War I**__

World War I involved many different countries which made it a global military conflict and it took place mainly in Europe. This war resulted in over forty million casualties, including around twenty million military and civilian deaths. Over sixty million European soldiers had been fighting in this war. This war had two major alliances. The fighting took places on many fronts that ran around European continent. This war ended by many treaties, the one most known is the Treaty of Versailles.


 * __Treaty of Versailles__**

This treaty was the one that officially ended World War One when it was signed on June 28, 1919. This was exactly 5 years after an assassination (the man was Archduke Franz Ferdinand) which was one of the main triggers for World War One. The actual fighting had ended November 11, 1918 but the had to get this treaty signed so that there would be no more battles. This took them six months to do this and it took place at the Paris Peace Conference, to finish the peace treaty.