New Delhi, July 28: In late June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo, Bosnia. An escalation of threats and mobilization orders followed the incident, leading to the outbreak of World War I on July 28, which pitted Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire against Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy and Japan. The four years of the Great War--as it was then known--saw unprecedented levels of carnage and destruction, thanks to grueling trench warfare and the introduction of modern weaponry such as machine guns, tanks and chemical weapons. By the time World War I ended in the defeat of the Central Powers in November 1918, more than 9 million soldiers had been killed and 21 million more wounded. Let's go back in history and see in pics the destruction caused by the Great War: Troops are seen in a trench in France during the First World War Soldiers emerge from a trench and go over the top into battle during the First World War American soldiers advancing on a bunker Austrian troops executing Serbs Baron von Richtofen (famously known as the "Red Baron") was Germany's top flying ace during World War I with 80 confirmed kills. The Jasta 11 was Richtofen's flying squadron. Bavarian Landsturm mortar crew with 15cm Magener Werfer British artillery battery at Mount Scopus British officers interrogating Turkish prisoners at Cape Helles British trench near Ovillers-la-Boisselle British tanks: World War 1 was the first conflict in which tanks were used. American soldiers returning home on the Agamemnon, Hoboken, New Jersey, 1918 The legendary Krupp's Big Bertha, a German 42cm howitzer of the type used to crush the Belgian fortresses in 1914. The results of artillery bombardment. The once tree-lined road to Guillemont British outpost in Flanders Péronne during the Battle of the Somme, 1916--Robert Carlson. "Don't be angry, just be amazed," was the calling card left by Germans on the destroyed town hall of Péronne after their withdrawal to the Hindenberg Line. The sign is on display in Péronne today in the Historial de la grande guerre. American railroad artillery detachment posed on a 14in. rail gun near Bassons, Gironde, France after the war A town destroyed by three years of fighting. German artillery turned Ypres' medieval Cloth Hall and adjacent buildings into pillars of rubble. The Belgian town was at the base of a British salient, pointing north-east into German lines. This salient was the site of four major battles known as Passchendeale; each resulted in bloody stalemate. German cemetery at Bethune Dead French soldiers in the Argonne. Many soldiers developed a defensive callousness after seeing such sights frequently, and blotted these images out of their conscious minds for ever Americans burying their dead, Bois de Consenvoye, France
