Wouldn’t it make more sense to lump France with Greece and Bulgaria, who are within a percentage point or two? It’s as if someone was deliberately trying to create the impression that France suffered disproportionally compared with most other European nations. This makes no sense unless you are trying to create a specific impression. What? 4% to 10% is one group when all the other divisions are a couple percentage points? Why? This puts Romania with 9% and France with 4% in the same category despite the large disparity. Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the WorldĪre you surprised by the map? Leave your comments below:.The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914.The Guns of August: The Pulitzer Prize-Winning Classic About the Outbreak of World War I.You can learn more about the First World War from the following books: A pointless conflict that need not have happened, yet had been predicted 36 years earlier by German’s then Chancellor Otto Von Bismark (1878):Įurope today is a powder keg and the leaders are like men smoking in an arsenal … A single spark will set off an explosion that will consume us all … I cannot tell you when that explosion will occur, but I can tell you where … Some damned foolish thing in the Balkans will set it off. Overall, the war resulted in a combined 37 million military and civilian casualties of which 17 million were killed and a further 20 million wounded.

The German and Austro-Hungarian Empires would also cease to exist at the end of the conflict. In terms of absolute numbers, both the Russia and the Ottoman Empires fared the worst, with potential deaths of over 3 million apiece and the end of both Empires. To put that into comparison here some World War I casualty figures as a percentage of prewar population from other countries (source: Wikipedia – note ranges given when sources do not agree): Depending on sources, Serbia’s death rate during the war could have been as high as 27.78% or up to 1.25 million people. Instead, you have to look south to the country where the fighting began, Serbia. While most people in Western Europe and North America focus on the trench warfare in Northern France and Belgium, it shows that Western European countries were nowhere close to suffering the worst casualty rates in the war. Other European countries like France, Italy, and Romania increased in size.Įurope during the Interwar period (1919 – 1939) deviantart.The map above reveals a rather shocking aspect of the First World War. The collapse of these empires led to the formation of multiple new countries, the most important of which included Poland, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia. By the end of the war, over 20 million people would be killed.Īfter World War I four empires collapsed (The German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, Russian Empire). World War I began in the Balkans and occurred between July 1914 and November 11, 1918. Poland was divided between Austria-Hungary, Prussia, and Russia.Įurope before the First World War (1871 – 1914) The largest nation before the First World War was Austria-Hungary. The countries involved in the war were much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the United States, with battles extending into the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. About nine million people were killed in the war, while over five million civilians died from bombardment, military occupation, starvation, and disease. WWI was one of the deadliest war conflicts in history. World War I, or Great War, started on 28 July 1914 and ended on 11 November 1918.

Map of the world after ww1