The World War I is not the only name given to this tremendously long and forceful war. The other name is the Total War. It all began in the first days of August 1914. Emperor William II reassured the Germans that it would be a short war. But to his dismay, the "Total War", was indeed a lasting war. It started in August 1914 and ended in the fall of 1918. Wars before World War I did not prepare Europeans for what was about to come their way. The Total War is different from all previous wars. This was involved many great powers and were very short wars. Fro example, in one previous war, the Prussians defeated Austria in six weeks during the Austro-Prussian War of 1886. The nineteenth century wars were limited in different ways. Earlier wars had small professional armies; whose weapons and tactics differed from the Napoleonic era.Many great powers were at conflict; therefore there was more hostility towards each contender. This so called "conflict" became a world war as other nations began to fight outside of Europe. Other non-European powers started to join in such as Japan and the United States. This was a significant number of powers fighting in this war unlike no other wars. Railroads and motorized transports permitted fighting nations to bring full force of new strengths to battle. In this war, new weapon systems included flamethrowers, poison gas, the tank, the airplane, the dirigible, and the submarine. Another big issue in World War I was firepower of new modern weaponry. The nations dug into the earth building trenches that stretched through France from the England Channel to the border of Switzerland. Due to the industrial revolution, weapons became more modernized. The machine gun came into play in World War I. The increased firepower also resulted in trench warfare. Soldiers dug trenches to avoid the increased firepower. The soldiers fought mainly from the trenches turning the land between the opposing sides into a "No Man'...
