These amazing colorized photographs bring World War I to life

By Amanda Macias From Business Insider

One month after a Bosnian-Serb assassinated Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, on a street corner in Sarajevo, the Austro-Hungarian Empire declared war on Serbia, effectively beginning World War I.

Ferdinand’s murder sent the Great Powers into a war that would last five years and cost the lives of 10 million troops.

Thought of as the “war to end all wars,” World War I marked a number of firsts in military conflict, including the use of planes, tanks, and chemical weapons.

On June 28, 1919, the victorious Allied leaders signed the Treaty of Versailles, officially ending World War I and spurring German nationalism, which in turn gave Nazi leader Adolf Hitler a political platform.

Attached are a few colorized photographs published by The Open University showing life during World War I.

MAGES:

Trench warfare was one of the hallmarks of World War I.
Open University
Soldiers could spend the majority of their deployments in the trenches. Here, a soldier receives a haircut from a barber on the Albanian front.
Open University
Here, a German Field Artillery crew poses with its gun at the start of the war in 1914.
Open University
Trenches provided no protection against the deployment of chemical weapons. Here, a Canadian soldier poses with his horse while wearing a gas mask at the Canadian Army Veterinary Corps Headquarters. Open University
Fearing a gas attack, Indian infantry soldiers don their masks while taking position in a trench. Open University
Chemical weapons represented a fearsome technological advance on the battlefield. But carrier pigeons, carried by mobile pigeon lofts, were still used to transport messages back to headquarters from the front lines.
Open University
World War I was truly a global conflict. These soldiers were members of the 1st Australian Imperial Force, and are pictured here at a military base in their home country.
Open University
Soldiers from the Canadian infantry pose with their unit’s animal mascot. The pets were a common means of boosting morale in the midst of an unimaginably violent conflict.
Open University
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