World War I· built byUuser-e8a0f3

World War I 90

• 1882 The Triple Alliance Vienna, Austria-Hungary Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy signed a defensive pact. Italy would spend 1914 arguing it did not apply, and joined the other side in 1915.
• 1888 Wilhelm II becomes Kaiser Berlin, Germany Twenty-nine years old, with a withered left arm and a conviction that Germany deserved a place among the great powers. He would dismiss Bismarck within two years.
• 1890 Bismarck is dismissed Berlin, Germany The chancellor who had built the German Empire and spent twenty years keeping France isolated was forced out. The Reinsurance Treaty with Russia lapsed months later.
• 1894 The Franco-Russian Alliance Paris and Saint Petersburg The alliance Bismarck had spent his career preventing. Germany now faced the prospect of war on two fronts, which shaped every plan it made thereafter.
• 1898 The German Naval Laws Berlin, Germany Tirpitz began building a battle fleet aimed squarely at Britain, on the theory that a navy strong enough to hurt the Royal Navy would buy German influence. It bought British hostility instead.
• 1904 The Entente Cordiale London, United Kingdom Britain and France settled their colonial quarrels. Not an alliance, but the end of centuries of enmity — and the beginning of staff talks about a European war.
• 1905 The First Moroccan Crisis Tangier, Morocco The Kaiser landed at Tangier to challenge French influence, hoping to split the new entente. It drew Britain and France closer together instead.
• 1905 The Schlieffen Plan Berlin, Germany Germany's answer to a two-front war: knock out France in six weeks by swinging through Belgium, then turn east. It committed Germany to invading a neutral country in any war with Russia.
• 1906 HMS Dreadnought is launched Portsmouth, United Kingdom All big guns and turbine engines made every existing battleship obsolete overnight — including Britain's own. The naval race restarted from zero, which suited Germany.
• 1907 The Triple Entente is complete Saint Petersburg, Russia An Anglo-Russian convention over Persia and Afghanistan joined the last piece. Germany now saw itself encircled, a belief that made its generals argue for war sooner rather than later.
• 1908 Austria annexes Bosnia Vienna, Austria-Hungary Serbia was enraged, Russia humiliated, and the Balkans left with a grievance that would produce the spark six years later.
• 1911 The Agadir Crisis Agadir, Morocco A German gunboat sent to a Moroccan port brought Europe close to war over a colonial dispute, and convinced Britain its future lay alongside France.
• 1912 – 1913 The First Balkan War The Balkans The Balkan League drove the Ottomans almost entirely out of Europe. Serbia doubled in size, which Vienna regarded as intolerable.
• 1913 The Second Balkan War The Balkans The victors fell out over the spoils. Bulgaria lost, nursed a grievance, and joined the Central Powers in 1915.
• 1914 Franz Ferdinand is assassinated Sarajevo, Bosnia Gavrilo Princip shot the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne and his wife Sophie after the motorcade took a wrong turn and stopped in front of him. Six other conspirators had already failed that morning.
• 1914 The blank cheque Berlin, Germany Germany promised Austria-Hungary unconditional support against Serbia, whatever the consequences. It removed the last restraint on Vienna.
• 1914 The ultimatum to Serbia Belgrade, Serbia Ten demands with a 48-hour deadline, written to be rejected. Serbia accepted nine and Austria declared the reply insufficient.
• 1914 Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia Vienna, Austria-Hungary A local war intended to punish Serbia. The alliance system turned it into a continental one within a week.
• 1914 Russia orders general mobilisation Saint Petersburg, Russia The Tsar ordered, cancelled and reordered mobilisation in one day. In German planning, Russian mobilisation was the trigger that started the clock.
• 1914 Germany declares war on Russia Berlin, Germany Crowds cheered in the capitals. Almost everyone expected the war to be over by Christmas.
• 1914 Germany declares war on France Berlin, Germany Edward Grey watched the lamps being lit outside the Foreign Office and said they were going out all over Europe.
• 1914 Germany invades Belgium; Britain declares war Brussels and London The Schlieffen Plan required violating Belgian neutrality, which Britain had guaranteed since 1839. The German chancellor called the treaty a scrap of paper.
• 1914 The Battle of Mons Mons, Belgium The British Expeditionary Force's first action, holding briefly against a far larger German force before a long retreat south.
• 1914 The Battle of Tannenberg East Prussia, Germany Hindenburg and Ludendorff destroyed a Russian army, taking 92,000 prisoners. The defeated Russian commander shot himself in the forest.
• 1914 The First Battle of the Marne Marne, France The French counter-attack that stopped the German advance on Paris and ended the Schlieffen Plan. Reserves were rushed to the front in Paris taxis. The war of movement was over.
• 1914 The First Battle of Ypres Ypres, Belgium The last attempt by either side to outflank the other. It ended with the pre-war British regular army effectively destroyed and a continuous trench line from the Channel to Switzerland.
• 1914 The Battle of Coronel Off Chile A German squadron sank two British cruisers with no losses, the Royal Navy's first defeat at sea in over a century.
• 1914 The Ottoman Empire enters the war Constantinople, Ottoman Empire Joining the Central Powers opened fronts in the Caucasus, Mesopotamia, Palestine and the Dardanelles, and turned a European war into a global one.
• 1914 The Battle of the Falkland Islands South Atlantic The Royal Navy hunted down and destroyed the squadron that had won at Coronel five weeks earlier.
• 1914 The Christmas Truce Western Front Along stretches of the line men climbed out of the trenches, exchanged cigarettes and buried their dead. Commanders on both sides made sure it did not happen again.
• 1915 The first Zeppelin raid on Britain Norfolk, United Kingdom Airships bombed Great Yarmouth and King's Lynn, killing four. Civilians far from any front line were now targets.
• 1915 Unrestricted submarine warfare declared Berlin, Germany Germany announced it would sink merchant ships around Britain without warning, including neutral ones.
• 1915 The naval attack on the Dardanelles Dardanelles, Ottoman Empire An Anglo-French fleet tried to force the straits and lost three battleships to mines in a single day. The failure led directly to the land campaign.
• 1915 Gas at Second Ypres Ypres, Belgium German troops released 168 tonnes of chlorine from cylinders, opening a four-mile gap in the Allied line. It was the first large-scale use of chemical weapons in war, and within a year both sides were using them.
• 1915 The Armenian Genocide begins Constantinople, Ottoman Empire Hundreds of Armenian intellectuals were arrested in the capital, the start of deportations and massacres that killed an estimated one million people or more.
• 1915 – 1916 The Gallipoli campaign Gallipoli, Ottoman Empire Allied troops landed on the peninsula and never got off the beaches. Eight months and around 250,000 casualties on each side ended in evacuation — the campaign's only well-executed phase.
• 1915 The Lusitania is sunk Off Ireland A U-boat torpedoed the liner off the Old Head of Kinsale. She sank in 18 minutes with 1,198 dead, including 128 Americans, and shifted American opinion sharply against Germany.
• 1915 Italy enters the war Rome, Italy Italy abandoned the Triple Alliance and joined the Entente, promised Austrian territory in a secret treaty. It opened a front in the Alps that would cost 600,000 Italian lives.
• 1915 – 1917 The Battles of the Isonzo Isonzo river, Italy Eleven battles fought over the same stretch of river and mountain in two years, for almost no ground. The twelfth would be Caporetto.
• 1915 The Battle of Loos Loos, France Britain's first use of poison gas, some of which blew back onto its own troops. Rudyard Kipling's son John was killed here and his body was not identified for eighty years.
• 1915 Edith Cavell is executed Brussels, Belgium The British nurse was shot by a German firing squad for helping around 200 Allied soldiers escape occupied Belgium. Her last words were that patriotism was not enough.
• 1915 Bulgaria joins the Central Powers Sofia, Bulgaria Still resentful over the Second Balkan War, Bulgaria attacked Serbia and helped overrun it within weeks.
• 1916 The Battle of Verdun Verdun, France Falkenhayn chose a place the French would defend to the last man and set out to bleed France white. Ten months, around 700,000 casualties, and the line ended almost where it started. The French rotated most of their army through it.
• 1916 The Easter Rising Dublin, Ireland Irish republicans seized central Dublin while Britain was at war. The rising failed in six days; the execution of its leaders turned opinion towards independence.
• 1916 The surrender at Kut Kut, Mesopotamia After a five-month siege, 13,000 British and Indian troops surrendered to the Ottomans. Most died in captivity.
• 1916 The Battle of Jutland North Sea The only full-scale clash of battle fleets in the war. Britain lost more ships and men, but the German fleet returned to port and stayed there — which settled the blockade, and the war's outcome, more than any battle on land.
• 1916 The Brusilov Offensive Galicia, Eastern Front The most successful Russian operation of the war, and one of the most lethal offensives in history. It broke the Austro-Hungarian army as an independent force and exhausted Russia's own.
• 1916 The Arab Revolt begins Hejaz, Ottoman Empire Sharif Hussein of Mecca rose against Ottoman rule with British backing, and a young officer named T. E. Lawrence attached himself to the campaign.
• 1916 The Battle of the Somme Somme, France On the first day the British Army took 57,470 casualties, 19,240 of them dead — the worst day in its history. The battle ran for 141 days and moved the line about six miles.
• 1916 Tanks go into action Flers-Courcelette, France Forty-nine Mark I tanks were sent forward on the Somme; most broke down or ditched. The idea worked well enough to be worth persisting with.
• 1916 Franz Joseph dies Vienna, Austria-Hungary The emperor who had signed the declaration of war on Serbia died after 68 years on the throne. His empire outlived him by two years.
• 1916 Lloyd George becomes Prime Minister London, United Kingdom He replaced Asquith promising to fight the war more energetically, and spent much of the next two years at odds with his own generals.
• 1917 The Zimmermann Telegram Berlin, Germany Germany secretly offered Mexico an alliance and the return of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona if the United States entered the war. British intelligence intercepted and decoded it, then arranged for Washington to see it.
• 1917 Unrestricted submarine warfare resumes Berlin, Germany Germany gambled that it could starve Britain out before America could mobilise. Shipping losses peaked in April, when convoys were finally introduced.
• 1917 The February Revolution Petrograd, Russia Bread queues became strikes, the garrison refused to fire, and within a week the Tsar had abdicated — ending three hundred years of Romanov rule. The provisional government kept Russia in the war, which destroyed it.
• 1917 The United States declares war Washington, United States Wilson, re-elected months earlier on having kept America out, asked Congress for a declaration. American troops arrived slowly, but the promise of millions of them changed every calculation on both sides.
• 1917 Vimy Ridge Arras, France All four Canadian divisions attacked together for the first time and took a ridge that had defeated earlier French and British attempts. It is widely treated as the moment Canada started thinking of itself as a nation.
• 1917 The Nivelle Offensive Chemin des Dames, France Promised as the breakthrough that would end the war in 48 hours. It gained a few hundred yards at a cost of 187,000 French casualties.
• 1917 The French army mutinies Western Front Units in around half the French divisions refused to attack, though most kept defending the line. Pétain restored order with leave, better food, and 43 executions. The Germans never learned how bad it was.
• 1917 The mines at Messines Messines, Belgium Nineteen mines holding 450 tonnes of explosive were detonated under the German lines at once. The sound was heard in London, and around 10,000 German soldiers died instantly.
• 1917 Passchendaele Ypres, Belgium The Third Battle of Ypres was fought through the wettest autumn in decades, on ground whose drainage the shelling had destroyed. Men and horses drowned in the mud. Around half a million casualties for five miles.
• 1917 Caporetto Isonzo, Italy A German-Austrian attack using new infiltration tactics broke the Italian line and drove it back 80 miles. Italy lost 300,000 men, most of them prisoners.
• 1917 The Balfour Declaration London, United Kingdom A letter of 67 words committing Britain to a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine, while promising not to prejudice the rights of the existing population. Both halves are still being argued over.
• 1917 The October Revolution Petrograd, Russia The Bolsheviks seized power, promising peace, land and bread. Russia's exit from the war freed fifty German divisions for the Western Front — and set the century's other great course.
• 1917 Cambrai Cambrai, France Nearly 400 tanks attacked together over firm ground without a preliminary bombardment, and broke through. Church bells rang in Britain. A German counter-attack took most of the ground back.
• 1917 Jerusalem falls Jerusalem, Ottoman Empire Allenby entered the city on foot out of respect, after four centuries of Ottoman rule. Lloyd George called it a Christmas present for the British people.
• 1918 The Fourteen Points Washington, United States Wilson set out war aims based on self-determination, open diplomacy and a league of nations. Germany would later argue it had surrendered on these terms and been given something else.
• 1918 The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk Brest-Litovsk Russia left the war, surrendering Poland, the Baltics, Finland, Ukraine and the Caucasus — a third of its population and half its industry. The terms were harsher than Versailles would be on Germany.
• 1918 – 1920 The influenza pandemic Worldwide First recorded at a Kansas army camp and spread by troop movements, the pandemic killed somewhere between 25 and 50 million people — more than the war itself. Wartime censorship meant only neutral Spain reported it freely, which is how it got its name.
• 1918 The German Spring Offensive Western Front Ludendorff's last gamble, using troops freed from the east and stormtrooper tactics, before the Americans could arrive in force. It advanced further than anything since 1914, took 40 miles, and ran out of men and supplies short of anywhere decisive.
• 1918 The Royal Air Force is founded London, United Kingdom The Royal Flying Corps and Royal Naval Air Service merged into the world's first independent air force.
• 1918 The Red Baron is killed Somme, France Manfred von Richthofen, credited with 80 victories, was shot down by a single bullet from the ground while chasing a novice pilot too low. The Allies buried him with full military honours.
• 1918 The Second Battle of the Marne Marne, France The last German offensive of the war was stopped and then thrown back by a French and American counter-attack. From this point the Allies never lost the initiative.
• 1918 Amiens: the black day of the German Army Amiens, France Over 500 tanks, coordinated aircraft and artillery broke the German line and advanced seven miles in a day. Whole units surrendered without fighting. Ludendorff's phrase for it gave the battle its name.
• 1918 The Meuse-Argonne Offensive Argonne, France The largest operation in American military history to that point, involving 1.2 million troops and costing 26,000 American dead in six weeks.
• 1918 The Hindenburg Line is broken Saint-Quentin, France Allied troops crossed the canal and took the last prepared German defensive position. Ludendorff told the Kaiser the same day that Germany must seek an armistice.
• 1918 Bulgaria signs an armistice Salonika, Greece The first of the Central Powers to quit, opening the Danube and cutting the Ottomans off from Germany.
• 1918 The Ottoman Empire signs an armistice Mudros, Aegean Sea Six centuries of empire ended in a harbour off Lemnos. The partition of its Arab provinces was already agreed between Britain and France.
• 1918 Austria-Hungary signs an armistice Villa Giusti, Italy The empire dissolved into successor states faster than the terms could be implemented. Its army had simply gone home.
• 1918 The Kaiser abdicates Spa, Belgium Wilhelm II was told the army would no longer follow him, and fled to the Netherlands the next morning. He lived there until 1941.
• 1918 The Armistice Compiègne, France Signed in a railway carriage at 5:10 a.m. and effective at 11 a.m. Around 2,700 men died in the six hours in between, on a front where everyone knew the war was ending at eleven.
• 1919 – 1920 The Paris Peace Conference Paris, France Thirty-two states attended; Germany and Russia were not invited. Clemenceau wanted security, Lloyd George a workable Europe, Wilson his principles. The maps drawn here are still being contested.
• 1919 The German fleet is scuttled Scapa Flow, United Kingdom Rather than hand over the interned High Seas Fleet, its commander ordered 74 ships to open their seacocks. Most of the wrecks are still on the bottom.
• 1919 The Treaty of Versailles Versailles, France Signed five years to the day after Sarajevo, in the hall where the German Empire had been proclaimed in 1871. Germany lost 13 per cent of its territory, accepted sole guilt for the war and an unpayable reparations bill. Ferdinand Foch called it a twenty-year truce.
• 1919 The Treaty of Saint-Germain Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France Formally dissolved Austria-Hungary and forbade Austria from uniting with Germany.
• 1920 The League of Nations is founded Geneva, Switzerland Wilson's central idea came into being without the United States, whose Senate refused to ratify. He had suffered a stroke campaigning for it.
• 1920 The Treaty of Trianon Versailles, France Hungary lost two-thirds of its territory and around three million Hungarians found themselves in other countries. It remains a live political wound.
• 1920 The Treaty of Sèvres Sèvres, France Partitioned the Ottoman Empire so severely that it triggered a Turkish national movement under Mustafa Kemal, and was never implemented.
• 1920 The Unknown Warrior is buried London, United Kingdom An unidentified body brought back from France was buried in Westminster Abbey among kings. Over a million people filed past in the following week.
• 1923 The Treaty of Lausanne Lausanne, Switzerland Replaced Sèvres, recognised the Turkish Republic, and sanctioned a compulsory population exchange that uprooted around 1.6 million people. The last treaty of the First World War.