However, the Italian Socialist Party decided to oppose the war after anti-militarist protestors were killed, resulting in a general strike called Red Week. Mussolini formed the pro-interventionist Il Popolo d’Italia and the Fasci Rivoluzionario d’Azione Internazionalista (“Revolutionary Fasci for International Action”) in October 1914 that later developed into the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento in 1919, the origin of fascism. The Italian Socialist Party purged itself of pro-war nationalist members, including Mussolini.

The Australian prime minister, Billy Hughes, wrote to the British prime minister, David Lloyd George, “You have assured us that you cannot get better terms. I much regret it, and hope even now that some way may be found of securing agreement for demanding reparation commensurate with the tremendous sacrifices made by the British Empire and her Allies.” Australia received £5,571,720 in war reparations, but the direct cost of the war to Australia had been £376,993,052, and, by the mid-1930s, repatriation pensions, war gratuities, interest and sinking fund charges were £831,280,947. In the Balkans, Yugoslav nationalists such as the leader, Ante Trumbić, strongly supported the war, desiring the freedom of Yugoslavs from Austria-Hungary and other foreign powers and the creation of an independent Yugoslavia.

MacMillan, Margaret (2013). The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914. Profile Books.

Washington DC: National Academies Press. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. 1999). Nation and religion: perspectives on Europe and Asia (please click for source). MacMillan, Margaret (2013). The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914. Profile Books. Lieberman, Benjamin (2013). The Holocaust and Genocides in Europe. Mack Smith, Denis (1997). Modern Italy: A Political History. Lieven, Dominic (2016). Towards the Flame: Empire, War and the End of Tsarist Russia. New York: Continuum Publishing Corporation. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Love, Dave (May 1996). “The Second Battle of Ypres, April 1915”. Sabretache. Lehmann, Hartmut; van der Veer, Peter, eds.

As part of commemorations for the centenary of the 1918 Armistice, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited the site of the signing of the Armistice of Compiègne and unveiled a plaque to reconciliation. Teaching World War I has presented special challenges. The first efforts to comprehend the meaning and consequences of modern warfare began during the initial phases of the war and are still underway more than a century later. When compared with World War II, the First World War is often thought to be “a wrong war fought for the wrong reasons”; it lacks the metanarrative of good versus evil that characterises retellings of the Second World War.