Can someone explain World War I to me?

Here's a very good series on WWI, also known as "The Great War"

The Great War episode 1 Exposion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRtdSoeYQYk&feature=relmfu

The first world war, boys
it came and it went,
the reason for fighting
I never did get"

Bob Dylan from "With God on our Side"

People hungry for the voice of god
Hear lunatics and liars

I glanced at a few of the comments in this long thread. There are bound to be a very few, very good comments, some mediocre ones and quite a few fatuous ones. I am well read on this topic (begining at age 12, I'm now 67). That most Americans are ignorant doesn't stop them from yammering when they should be reading. At age 12 or 13 I dicovered a tiny book in the local library on armour piercing ammunition and steel armour plate. It dated to about 1912 (just before the start of WWI) and it was illustrated with pictures (called plates in the book). It was unintentionally hillarious. It showed new developements in armour plate using new alloys of steel, and the effects of new types of of amour piercing shells fired at the steel plate. It showed an aspect of and the nature of the arms race that preceeded WWI. Krupp to name the most famous, but merely one of many, arms manufacturer and dealer would sell new armour plate to Romania for the turrets of a fortress on their border, and then sell the latest in armour piercing sells to Austria-Hungary for their guns and howitzers. The second industrial revolution had by this time transformed Europe, and was revolutionizing warfare. I was a smart kid and understood the implications. There were corporations and cartels in all the developed countries in Europe getting huge contracts for ships, artillery, machine guns and the latest in lethal engines of war. Military aircraft, poison gas, tanks, barbed wire, and other innovations would be used en mass before it was over. The heavy industry required centered around steel production requiring coal and iron ore. That dictated which were the most developed countries, the richest and the most militarilly advanced perforce. There are many other factors in the causes of the war. The arms race, and military rivalry was a very big one. Find and see "The Fall of Eagles" a series that ran on PBS many years ago for a shrewd depiction of the almost feudal imperialism that contributed to the war. For the U.S. entry read Barbra Tuchman's "The Zimmerman Telegram" for the immediate opening of the war Tuchman's "The Guns of August." Wiki is also very good for a start.

In a nutshell, Britain, France and Russia went to war with Germany because a Serbian fanatic shot and killed an Austrian Archduke. Does that help?

"It ain't dying I'm talking about, it's LIVING!"
Captain Augustus McCrae

Isn't it interesting how just asking people to explain World War I, starts another little war right here?

If we were to explain it with one word, the main cause for the war was fear, fear of war itself. This is what makes World War I the paradigm of the absurdity, much more than World War II, where the contenders had more or less clear goals - whether those goals were noble or innoble, that´s another issue -.

The cause of the fear was mostly the increasing power of the German Empire and its superiority over the rest of the continental powers. This made France and Russia allies. Great Britain would have stayed neutral but became alarmed when Germany started the construction of a naval large fleet, something which they regarded as a direct threat. Germany´s isolation lead the German Government and military to the conviction that there would be a war sooner or later and that they had to get ready in order to strike first and in the best possible conditions, which in turn raised again suspicions and distrust on the side of french, russians and brittons.

The only German statesman who recognized at once the danger that German´s power would generate a counterreaction from most of the european countries was Bismarck. All his diplomatic policy was oriented towards avoding this and keeping France isolated. But the German Emperor Wilhelm II, a not very bright man, disposed of him almost as soon as he rose to the throne and from then on the Government was held more or less indirectly by the military, turning away from Bismarck´s diplomacy and ultimately leading to the disaster.

It's humbling to admit this, but I'm a 28-year-old U.S. resident and I know very, very little about World War I. I have the sketchiest of sketches. I know it was fought in the early 1900s, and involved people with pointy helmets, but not much more than that.

Anyway, I really would like to better understand this very significant part of history, but I've found the Wikipedia articles hard to follow (a little too factual, maybe). Is anyone out there able to give me sort of a general summary in plain language I could use as a road map for future studies? (Who, what, where, and most importantly why)

I know this is an odd request, but I thought it wouldn't hurt to ask!

I heard that it started when a bloke called Archie Duke shot an ostrich 'cause he was hungry.



"Leave the gun, take the cannoli."