In August, 1914, Europe exploded into war. Although it has been blamed on Germany, since its troops moved first, in fact all governments shared blame. The United States stayed out of the war at first. In 1916, President Wilson ran on a platform that promised neutrality. World War I was the bloodiest conflict ever seen until World War II. In the west, the armies were locked in a bloody stalemate over France and Belgium for nearly four years. In the east, German armies and their Austrian-Hungarian allies began to make headway against Russia, which had the biggest army in Europe. Russia’s defeats eventually weakened that country and it fell into revolution. The communist government that emerged took it out of the war. In the south, the Ottoman Empire ( Turkey) fought against the British and French. In the end, Turkey lost all of its Middle Eastern territories, including Palestine, Iraq, and Syria. The United States finally entered the war in 1917. Its involvement proved crucial to the winning of the war by the Allies (Great Britain, France, Belgium, Italy and the United States). The Treaty of Versailles in 1919 broke up several empires and redrew the map of the world.