Two World Wars of the 20th Century Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Two World Wars of the 20th Century - Essay Example As the report declares World War I was immediately triggered by the assassination of the Crown Prince to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914. Serbia wanted to be independent from Austria-Hungary and saw the assassination as a way to put their message across. When Austria-Hungary and its German ally attacked Serbia in retaliation, the latter’s Russian ally came to the rescue together with their allies Britain and France. World War II was like a continuation of the unfinished business of World War I where Germany aimed at strengthening its hold on Europe by having a large Empire under its control. Its ambition for world domination thwarted by their loss in 1918, Germany began building up its armed forces and its military power under the guidance of misguided politicians with grand ambitions. This paper stresses that both wars featured heavy casualties because of the use of technology. While the wars in previous centuries were marked by battles of mass troop formations, the two world wars became the laboratory for weapons of mass destruction in the form of poison chemical gases, landmines, explosive projectiles that were created to inflict death or serious injury from remote locations, armored vehicles that could carry troops and ammunitions across great distances, and in Japan in 1945, the use of atomic weapons that claimed many civilian casualties and that flattened two cities. World War I affected a few countries, mostly in Europe. On the side of the Allies were Britain, France, and Russia, but there were troops from the United States, Australia, northern Africa, and Eastern Europe. The Axis powers were Germany, Austro-Hungary, and Italy. World War II affected more countries with the entry of Japan as one of the Axis powers carrying the war to island nations in the Pacific and the Asian continent. The impact on world