WORLD WAR 1
1905 Words
In Greece, King Constantine, who has favoured neutrality, is forced to abdicate, and Greece joins the Allies.
Russia's Provisional Government orders a new attack, but the July Offensive is a disaster: the morale and discipline of the Russian army has collapsed. It can no longer be relied on to fight, and the Central Powers' counterattack is almost unopposed.
At sea, the Allies begin to group their merchant ships into convoys, which sail under naval escort.
The new system leads to a steady fall in losses.
The tide is turning in the U-boat war.
As discontent with the war grows in Germany, the German parliament, the Reichstag, passes a 'Peace Resolution', calling for 'a peace of understanding and reconciliation'.
It's ignored by the German High Command, which now effectively rules the country as a military dictatorship.
In Belgium, the British launch their major offensive of the Third Battle of Ypres.
It will be remembered as Passchendaele.
Heavy shelling, rain and broken irrigation channels turn the battlefield into a sea
of mud.
In these impossible conditions, all hopes of a breakthrough soon fade.
The attack is called off after months,
by which point the British have suffered casualties, the Germans On the Italian Front, at the th Battle of the Isonzo, Italian and Austro-Hungarian forces batter
each other into exhaustion. There are Italian casualties, Austro-Hungarian.
That year, the list of Allied nations grows. Brazil... Liberia...
China... and Siam... all declare war on Germany, as a result of German U-boat attacks,
or to curry favour with the Allies.
China will contribute many thousands
of labourers, working for the Allies in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
That year in the Middle East, British forces avenge their humiliation at Kut, by defeating the Ottoman Turks and marching on to occupy Baghdad.
British forces in Egypt advance across the Sinai Desert, but are thrown back by Ottoman forces at the First and Second Battles of Gaza.
In July, Arab rebels capture the strategic Ottoman port of Aqaba. They are accompanied by a British military advisor, Captain T.E. Lawrence, better known as 'Lawrence of Arabia'.
That autumn, British foreign secretary Arthur Balfour issues the 'Balfour Declaration', expressing support for the creation of a national home for the Jews in Palestine.
The aim is to rally Jewish support for the Allies, but the declaration contradicts existing pledges to Arab leaders.
In October, the British finally win at Gaza, clearing the way for an advance into Palestine.
Six weeks later, General Allenby leads British troops into Jerusalem, ending years of Ottoman rule.
With Russian forces in disarray, Germany is able to move troops from the East to the Italian Front.
At the Battle of Caporetto, they help to smash through the Italian army,
advancing miles and taking quarter of a million prisoners.
British and French divisions, desperately needed on the Western Front, have to be redeployed to shore-up the line.
In Russia, a second revolution brings Lenin's Bolshevik Party to power. He is determined to end Russia's involvement in the war.
In France, Georges Clemenceau becomes Prime Minister. Nicknamed 'the Tiger',
he promises total war, and total victory.
But for the Allies in late final victory looks uncertain: Russia has stopped fighting; French armies are recovering from mutiny;
the Italian front has almost collapsed. And American reinforcements still seem a long way off.
For the time being, the British are the only effective Allied force in the field...
So the British attack at Cambrai, with the first major tank assault in history.
On the first day, nearly tanks spearhead an advance of several miles through German defences.
But then the tanks break down or are knocked out; the Germans rush in reinforcements, and the gains are lost.
Finland declares independence from Russia.
Rumania, isolated by the Russian collapse, signs an armistice with the Central Powers.
Six days later, Russia also signs an armistice. The Allied Eastern Front is no more.
Has seen one major Allied power,
Russia, knocked out of the war – but the arrival of a fresh, new ally, America.
Germany knows only military victory can now save it from being overwhelmed by Allied resources, and begins planning one last, massive onslaught, for the spring of
After three and a half years of war, the Allies are in crisis.
Russia has been rocked by Revolution, and its new Bolshevik government has signed an armistice with the Central Powers.
Thousands of German troops will be freed up to fight on the Western Front, where the c*****e of trench warfare has already claimed more than a million lives.But Germany is also desperate.
Britain's long naval blockade has led to shortages and social unrest at home...
While America's entry into the war brings fresh manpower and vast resources to the Allied cause.
Germany faces inevitable defeat, unless it can win a quick victory on the Western Front.
US President Wilson announces his 'Fourteen Points'. They outline his vision for a post-war world, including an end to secret treaties, a reduction in the size of armed forces, self-determination for the people of the Austro-Hungarian Empire,
and an international organisation to settle future disputes.
But most European leaders dismiss his ideas as wishful thinking.
At Brest-Litovsk, Bolshevik Russia signs a peace treaty with the Central Powers.
Russia gives up vast amounts of territory in exchange for peace.
Half a million German troops can now be redeployed from the East to the Western Front, where German General Erich Ludendorff plans an all-out, last-ditch offensive to win the war.
Ludendorff's Spring Offensive catches the Allies off-guard. German stormtroopers, using new infiltration tactics, help to overwhelm the British th Army, which is soon in full retreat.
The German advance threatens to split the British and French armies, with disastrous consequences. So French General Ferdinand Foch is appointed Supreme Commander of Allied Forces, to co-ordinate strategy.
Outside Amiens, British and Australian troops improvise
a defence, and finally halt the German advance.
The German offensive switches to the north, targeting the Channel ports.
But the British inflict heavy losses on the Germans, and prevent a breakthrough.
Above the trenches, the first air war continues to escalate.
Each side now has more than aircraft in service on the Western Front. But by the Allies have won air superiority, thanks to greater resources.
On st April, Germany's most famous pilot, Manfred von Richthofen, the 'Red Baron',
is shot down and killed near Amiens. With victories, he's the war's highest-scoring ace, and is buried by the Allies with full military honours.
Britain's new 'Independent Bombing Force' launches a daylight raid
against Cologne. It marks the beginning of Britain's own strategic bombing campaign.
On the ground, Ludendorff's offensive switches south, targeting the French. German troops advance miles, but are halted at the River Marne, just as fresh American divisions enter the line.
The US st Division is the first to see combat, at the Battle of Cantigny.
Three days later the US nd Division wins victory at the Battle of Belleau Wood.
By now there are nearly a million American soldiers in France, with more arriving every day.
The fourth phase of the German Offensive leads to a mile advance,
but is finally halted by a French counterattack.
In Italy, Austria-Hungary launches an attack at Asiago and the Piave River,
to support Ludendorff's offensive in France.
But it's repulsed with heavy losses, and morale amongst the Austro-Hungarian army collapses.
British and French troops land at Murmansk in northern Russia. It's the beginning of Allied intervention in Russia's Civil War, on the side of so-called 'White', or anti-Bolshevik, forces.
On the Western Front, the Germans' final attack is defeated in the Second Battle of the Marne.
Ludendorff's Offensive has cost the Germans more than casualties, and has failed to make a decisive breakthrough.
Germany's final gamble has failed.
The Allies now go on the attack. At the Battle of Amiens, British, Australian,
Canadian and French troops, supported by tanks and aircraft, advance miles in a single day.
General Ludendorff calls th August 'the Black Day of the German army'.
German troops are exhausted, hungry and demoralised, and begin to surrender in their thousands.
The Battle of Amiens begins the Allies' 'Hundred Days Offensive':
trench warfare is over; the Germans are in full retreat.
In the Balkans, a new Allied offensive at Dobro Pole breaks through Bulgarian positions. The overstretched Bulgarian army collapses, and two weeks later Bulgaria signs an armistice.
In the Middle East, British-led forces defeat the Turks at the Battle of Megiddo, taking prisoners. Allied troops soon occupy Damascus and Aleppo.
On the Western Front, Marshal Foch orders a general attack. British, French and American
armies reach the Hindenburg Line, a line of reinforced German defences, and break through.
Ludendorff informs the Kaiser that the military situation is hopeless,
and that Germany must seek an armistice.
Germany sends a request to US President Woodrow Wilson, who, in return, demands German withdrawal from all occupied territory, and the Kaiser's abdication.
On the Italian Front, the Allies deliver the final blow to Austria-Hungary at the Battle
of Vittorio Veneto. The Austro-Hungarian army disintegrates, and prisoners are taken.
With the Central Powers facing collapse,
the Ottoman Empire signs an armistice with the Allies at Mudros.
Four days later, Austria-Hungary signs an armistice with the Allies at Villa Giusti.
At Kiel, the German High Seas Fleet is ordered to make a suicidal attack
on the British navy, but instead, it mutinies.
Revolution spreads through Germany. The Kaiser abdicates and a German republic is proclaimed.
On th November a German delegation signs an armistice with
the Allies, inside Marshal Foch's railway carriage at Compiègne.
It comes into force at am, but fighting continues until the last moment.
American private Henry Gunther is killed charging a German machinegun at .
He is thought to be the last soldier killed during World War One.
Three days later, in East Africa, German General Von Lettow-Vorbeck surrenders his army on the Chambezi River. For four years he has tied down huge numbers of Allied troops, remaining undefeated, while cut-off from home.
He is still considered one of history's greatest guerrilla leaders.
The Paris Peace Conference opens at the Palace of Versailles, just outside the French capital.
Delegates accept a proposal to create a 'League of Nations', to settle future international disputes.
The Versailles Treaty, signed in June, imposes harsh terms on Germany:
its military is restricted in size, it must pay war reparations to the Allies, it loses territory to its neighbours, and its colonies are seized by the victors.
Germany must also accept responsibility for the war, in a 'war guilt' clause – a source of lasting resentment in Germany.
The boundaries of Europe are redrawn:
Poland re-emerges after a hundred years of foreign rule. While Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and an enlarged Romania emerge from the ashes of the Austro-Hungarian empire.
The Ottoman Empire is dismantled.
New states, most under European control, are created in the Middle East.
Here, as in Europe, the seeds of future conflict are sown.
While in the Far East, former German possessions in China are handed to Japan, to China's outrage.
World War One claimed the lives of nine and a half million soldiers, in of those who fought.
million more were wounded. million civilians also lost their lives.
Huge areas of Europe were left devastated.
Old empires vanished; new states were born; lives across the world were transformed.
The world was never the same again.
- Writer
