World War I (1914-1918) (1/6)

With a staggering 888,000 military casualties – over DOUBLE the military casualties of World War II – the first World War remains absolutely uncontested as the deadliest military conflict in British history. Also known as the Great War, the armed conflict began on 28th July 1914 shortly after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and saw around 20 million military and civillian casualties in total. Suffice to say, though Britain emerged victorious from the war, it was not without great cost: an entire generation of young men with bright futures ahead of them had been lost on the western front. As a direct result of the losses suffered in the war, the British Empire began to decline and the United States came forward to take up the mantle of preeminent global power.