The assassination that triggered a series of events that led to the First World War happened exactly one hundred years ago, today. What follows
is the presentation given in school two years ago by my then 8-year-old
son Eitan, reproduced here with his permission:
Slide 1
Word War I 1914-1918
Slide 2
How did it all start?
A Serbian man by the name of Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austrian throne
Caption under the photos:
The assassinated, the assassin
Allied powers: England, France, Italy, Russia, United
States, Serbia vs
Central powers: Austro–Hungarian
Empire, Germany, Turkey, Bulgaria
Slide 4
Map of Europe before the war
Slide 5
Map of Europe after the war
After the war the Austro-Hungarian Empire disintegrated and
the following countries were born:
Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Austria, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia,
Poland and Hungary
The First World War was a war in the trenches
What did they fight with?
British tank German gun – Big Bertha
British airplane German airplane
A part of the war even took place in Be’er Sheva . On 31st October 1917 the Australian Light Brigade arrived to take the city from the
Turks
Slide 10
On 11th of November 1918 at 11 a.m. the armistice was signed between
the Allied and Central powers. This was a very deadly
war - 15 000 000 people were killed
The Treaty of Versailles was signed of 28 June 1919.
The End By Eitan
And
a slightly different perspective, from Winston
S. Churchill’s "The
World Crisis", Volume
I, pages 204, 205, Charles Schribner's Sons, New York 1923, renewed in 1951.
The discussion had
reached its inconclusive end, and the Cabinet was about to separate, when the
quiet grave tones of Sir Edward Grey's voice were heard reading a document
which had just been brought to him from the Foreign Office. It was the Austrian note to Serbia. He had being reading or speaking for several
minutes before I could disengage my mind from the tedious and bewildering
debate which had just closed. We were all very tired, but gradually as the
phrases and sentences followed one another impressions of a wholly different
character began to form in my mind. This note was clearly an ultimatum;
but it was an ultimatum such as had never been penned in modern times. As the
reading proceeded it seemed absolutely impossible that any State in the world
could accept it, or that any acceptance, however abject, would satisfy the
aggressor. The parishes of Fermanagh and Tyrone faded back into the mists
and squalls of Ireland, and a strange light began immediately, but by
perceptible graduations, to fall and grow upon the map of Europe.
I always take the
greatest interest in reading accounts of how the war came upon different
people; where they were, and what they were doing, when the first impression
broke on their mind, and they first began to feel this overwhelming event
laying its fingers on their lives. I never tire of the smallest detail, and I
believe that so long as they are true and unstudied they will have a definite
value and an enduring interest for posterity...
Update May 5, 2018
Here is an excellent presentation on the causes of WWI by
Update May 26, 2018
Now that I am half way through it, I realize Christopher Clark's book has become indispensable to the understanding of the mess that led to WWI
