The 20th Century in Review

From Wikinfo

Europe:

The 20th century starts with the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, she was regarded as the Grandmother of europe, being related with most european dynasties. In 1904/05 the Japanese won a war against the Russians. The First World war started in 1914 and ended in 1918, it was ignited by the assassination of the Austrian Empires heir to the Throne Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand. The allies compromised the British Empire, Russia and France, later also Italy and in 1917 the USA, on the other side fought Germany along with Austria-Hungary and later the Ottoman Empire. Important Battles include:

- Verdun (German - French) - The Somme (British - German) - Marnes (The French halt the German advance in 1914)

In 1917 Russia and Germany signed a peace treaty (in Brest-Litowsk) which strongly favoured Germany and its allies, so from 1917 Russia ended hostile actions against Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, although Germany shifted huge forces from the east to the west front after the Treaty of Brest - Litowsk it couldn't stop the allied advance.

After the depression of the 20s, dictatorship spread over Europe with Hitler coming to power in 1933 in Germany, after Austria had been anexed, the "Anschluss", and large parts of the Tzech Republic had been occupied by Germany, the British and French Appeasers acted to ensure the survival of Poland, when in 1939 Germany attacked Poland war broke out in Europe, because of the Treaty signed between Britain,France and Poland had to declare war to Germany. in 1945 the war ended and the world was embarrassed to see the crimes Germany had committed, this is called the Holocaust. In the 1950s/60s/70s/80s the Cold war and De-colonization were predominant, smaller wars were fought in 1982, the Falklands War, in 1990/91, the Gulf War, and in 1999, the Kosovo war. Two larger wars, in which neither side could gain its objectives were the Vietnam war which had developed from the Indochina war and the 1.Gulf war between Iran and Iraq.

Non-eurocentric summary:

References

• Adapted from the Wikipedia article, "The_20th_Century_in_Review" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_20th_Century_in_Review, used under the GNU Free Documentation License