Throughout history, all wars have been given names. But not the one to which this book is dedicated. It was simply called the Great War. This epithet perfectly reflects the scale of this vast and terrible war, which was beyond the confines of all previous experience. By 1914, demographic changes and industrialisation enabled warring states to send armies larger than ever seen before to the battlefield, and to supply them for as long as was needed to achieve victory. The Great War became the first global conflict in history, engulfing all five continents, and fought on land, at sea, in the sky, across deserts and high in snowy mountains. It introduced revolutionary new military technologies: submarines, tanks, airships, fighter planes, bombers, quick-firing artillery, flamethrowers and poison gas. The Great War was meant to strengthen the world of imperialism and monarchs and end all wars by the Christmas of 1914. The reality turned out to be quite different. The Great War became a global military disaster and a European catastrophe: it was to last for fifty-two months and claim the lives of more Austrian, British, Bulgarian, Hungarian, French, Italian and Turkish soldiers than any other conflict in history. It changed the world forever and shaped the twentieth century. The Great War marked the twilight of the British and French colonial empires and signalled the emergence of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Ireland and Poland as new sovereign states; brought about the end of the German, Austro- Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman monarchies; and propelled the United States of America to the status of global power. It resulted in the establishment of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and an enlarged Romania, along with new countries in a reshaped Middle East, and set the stage for an even more devastating war some twenty years later by fomenting a brutal struggle between capitalism, fascism and communism. After these epic changes, it is no surprise that one hundred years later, the legacy of the Great War-today also referred to as the First World War or World War One-is still part of our everyday lives. The events of 1914-1918 and the sacrifices made by our forebears a century ago should always be remembered, because understanding the reasons and the consequences of the First World War will help to prevent the Third World War.