The World War one, or how some of the historians call him „The great War“, ended on this day, on November 11, 1918. Why was this war so particularly important for our further history? Let’s find out together. We have to go hundred years back to see what exactly happened in the capital of Bosnia, Sarajevo on the day the war started. On 28 June 1914, Gavril Principe, a Bosnian Serb Yugoslav nationalist, assassinated the Austro-Hungarian heir Ferdinand in Sarajevo, leading to the July Crisis. In response to this event, on 23 of July Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum to Serbia, one of the countries which made Yugoslavia.
Serbia’s reply failed to satisfy the Austrians, and the two moved to a war footing. This is how it all started. Let’s look deeper into Gavril Principe’s life. So, Gavril Principe was a Bosnian Serb member of Young Bosnia, a Yugoslavist organization seeking an end to Austro-Hungarian rule in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but no one expected such a brutal ending.
„I am the son of peasants and I know what is happening in the villages. That is why I wanted to take revenge, and I regret nothing. “
„I only know that I fired twice or perhaps several times, without knowing whether I had hit or missed.“
Principe died on April 28, 1918, from tuberculosis caused by poor prison conditions that had cost him a limb earlier. Let’s talk more about the war itself. He did take away too many innocent lives, but it played a huge role in formatting new countries in Europe and Middle East. Like any other war, this one did affect mass media, and leading them to a huge social trauma. „Where do we go from here? This is the real hope“, is a name of a book written for veterans. I’m sure the title of the book said enough itself.
Traveling back in time, and to France, we can see an ending to a great Epoch; „La Belle Époque“, French for „Beautiful era“, was the Epoch of spreading optimism in fields of economic prosperity, an apex of colonial empires and technological, scientific, and cultural innovations etc. This particular name was given to the era after the ending of the war, because it was considered to be „The golden Age“, in comparison from the horror of the upcoming war.
The Germans, in the whole story, considered themselves as victims, the so called „stab-in-the-back“ legend was more popular than ever in this century. And if you think and imagine this war as one held by only male population, think again. A lot of girls and women participated in the war too, in their own kind of styles.
What about the economic effects? Not the brightest, either. Here’s what happened. In the WWI the countries the three Allies (Britain, Italy, and the United States) increased their BDP (Gross domestic product), but in other countries this number rapidly decreased. Fun fact about pigs in Austria: they were slaughtered, so there was no meat left to eat. Who would have known?
Macro- and micro-economic consequences devolved from the war. Families were altered by the departure of many men, because they couldn’t handle the pressure even when they survived, some of them never came back to their families again. With the death or absence of the primary wage earner, women were forced into the workforce in unprecedented numbers.
So, we see that a woman played a role in working. Industrialization took a mother away from a child and put her into the working zone. At the same time, industry needed to replace the lost laborers sent to war. This aided the struggle for voting rights for women. At the end, as a conclusion, thank god it is the 100st anniversary of the END of the WWI.