![A crowd in front of the Berlin Cathedral (Berliner Dom) cheers the declaration of World War I. [LCID: 2514826]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/8eec930d-d9fb-4890-8a77-10729f943b3f.jpg)
A crowd in front of the Berlin Cathedral (Berliner Dom) cheers the declaration of World War I. Berlin, Germany, August 1914.
Many enthusiastically believed that World War I would be over quickly. Instead, the war became a stalemate of costly battles and trench warfare. It lasted for years and was the first great international conflict of the twentieth century. The impact of the conflict and its divisive peace would reverberate in the decades following.
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