Chapter 20

The conflict of the " Great War " which came to be called the First World War  or World War 1 (1914- 1998 ) achieved the twentieth century. The incident took place on June 28, 1914 when the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated by a Serbian nationalist. As the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire) fought against the Allied Powers (Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Romania, Japan, and the United States), it created many legacies of this "Great War." In 1939, as Hitler invaded Poland from the West, France and Britain declared war on Germany. The Second World War was "the most destructive conflict in world history, with total deaths estimated at around 60 million, some six times that of World War I." World War II gave rise to horrible amounts of nuclear weapons, blockades, mass murder, starvation, and concentration camps, affecting so many men, women, and children.  European civil war provoked the Russian Revolution and the start of world communism. The beginnings of world communism followed by the economic meltdown of the Great Depression and the horror of the Holocaust. The actions of the Europeans led to Asia's tension with western countries.