World war or the First World War, commonly abbreviated as WWI or WW1, was a worldwide battle originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. Contemporaneously called the Great War or the battle to end all wars , it resulted in the mobilisation of even more than 70 million army personnel, including 60 million Europeans, making it one of the biggest wars in history, and additionally among the most dangerous conflicts in background, with an approximated 8.5 million combatant deaths as well as 13 million civilian deaths as a direct result of the war. Resulting genocides and also the related 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic caused another 17-- 100 million fatalities worldwide, including an approximated 2.64 million Spanish influenza fatalities in Europe and as several as 675,000 in the United States.On 28 June 1914, Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb Yugoslav nationalist and participant of the Serbian Black Hand army society, executed the Austro-Hungarian heir Archduke