We Can't Keep Ignoring The Things That Don't Make Sense About WWI

Beyond teasing out the tangled mess that caused such a massive war, there are many other confusing circumstances and incidents that still don't make sense about the Great War. Some nations routinely blocked able-bodied soldiers from joining the fight, while others just couldn't figure out how to move beyond grueling trench warfare until the arrival of tanks made it all a moot point. Yet more lost entire ships and perhaps even entire divisions ... that is, if wild rumors and colorful legends haven't obscured things even further. And, perhaps just as confounding, some who contributed vast amounts of time and effort to the cause were literally painted out of history. It doesn't help that, in the intervening decades, we've also come up with some common myths about the First World War that make things all the more obscure.

Dubbed the Great War and the war to end all wars (first idealistically and then ironically, given that it did no such thing), World War I began with the 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary. Due to the shifting and entangled alliances between European nations at that time, that single murder sparked a chain reaction that ignited the powder keg that Europe had become. As conflict spread throughout the continent, soon the major nations of the world joined in the fracas, aligning themselves with one of two distinct camps: the Central Powers (which included Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire) and the Allied Powers (Britain, Russia, Italy, France, Romania, Japan, Canada, and, finally, the U.S.).

World War I is part of the national history of many countries today. The incredible scale of the Great War meant it touched countless lives across the world, from the U.K. to the South Pacific. As a result, plenty of us have our own family stories about the war and view it in a uniquely sentimental light.