World War I: A Visual History

World War I began in the summer of 1914 after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo set off a chain of alliances and mobilisations. The Allies (France, Britain, Russia, later Italy and the United States) fought the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria). On the Western Front the war became a stalemate of trenches, artillery and machine guns; elsewhere it ranged from the Eastern Front to Gallipoli, the Middle East, Africa and the oceans. It ended with the armistice of 11 November 1918. The Russian, German, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires all collapsed, and the peace of 1919 sowed the seeds of the next war.

When it was fought: the era ribbon

The bold bar is World War I. The lighter bars are empires and wars from the same era and the same part of the world. Click any bar to jump to its page.

Estimated military deaths by country

Approximate military deaths only; civilian deaths add several million more.

Timeline of World War I

1. 28 Jun 1914
   Sarajevo assassinationFranz Ferdinand shot by Gavrilo Princip.
2. Aug 1914
   War declaredGermany invades Belgium; Britain enters on 4 August.
3. Sep 1914
   First Battle of the MarneThe German advance on Paris is stopped.
4. 1915
   Gallipoli; LusitaniaAllied landings fail; the liner is sunk with 128 Americans aboard.
5. 1916
   Verdun and the SommeThe war's longest and bloodiest battles.
6. Apr 1917
   United States entersAfter the Zimmermann telegram and U-boat attacks.
7. Nov 1917
   Russian RevolutionBolsheviks seize power; Russia leaves the war in March 1918.
8. Mar 1918
   German spring offensiveLast great German attack.
9. 8 Aug 1918
   AmiensThe Hundred Days Offensive begins.
10. 11 Nov 1918
    ArmisticeFighting stops at 11 a.m.
11. 1919
    Treaty of VersaillesSigned 28 June, five years to the day after Sarajevo.

July 1914

Europe in 1914 was divided into two armed camps: the Triple Entente of France, Russia and Britain, and the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy. When a Bosnian Serb nationalist, Gavrilo Princip, shot the heir to the Austrian throne on 28 June 1914, Austria-Hungary, backed by Germany, issued Serbia an ultimatum designed to be refused and declared war on 28 July.

Russia mobilised to support Serbia; Germany declared war on Russia (1 August) and France (3 August) and invaded neutral Belgium to get at Paris, which brought Britain in on 4 August. Within a week the great powers were all at war, and most of them expected it to be short.

Stalemate in the West, movement in the East

Germany's Schlieffen Plan came within 30 miles of Paris before it was stopped at the Marne in September 1914. Both sides then dug in from the Channel to Switzerland, and for three and a half years the Western Front barely moved. Verdun and the Somme in 1916 and Passchendaele in 1917 killed hundreds of thousands for a few miles of mud. Poison gas, tanks and aircraft appeared but did not break the deadlock.

In the East the war was more mobile. Germany crushed the Russians at Tannenberg in 1914 and drove them out of Poland in 1915. The Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers in late 1914, defeated the Allied landing at Gallipoli, and carried out the Armenian genocide. Italy joined the Allies in 1915 and fought a dozen bloody battles on the Isonzo.

1917: revolution and America

The strain broke Russia first. The February Revolution of 1917 toppled the Tsar and the October Revolution brought Lenin's Bolsheviks to power; they signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918 and left the war. Germany's gamble on unrestricted submarine warfare, and the Zimmermann telegram offering Mexico American territory, brought the United States into the war in April 1917.

The French army mutinied after the failed Nivelle offensive; the British bled at Passchendaele; Italy nearly collapsed at Caporetto. But by early 1918 American troops were arriving in France at 10,000 a day, and the Allied blockade was starving Germany.

1918 and the peace

Germany's spring offensives of 1918, using troops freed from the Eastern Front, gained more ground than any attack since 1914 but exhausted the army. From 8 August, the 'black day of the German army', the Allies advanced continuously in the Hundred Days Offensive. Bulgaria, the Ottomans and Austria-Hungary surrendered in turn, the German fleet mutinied and the Kaiser abdicated. The armistice took effect at 11 a.m. on 11 November 1918.

The Treaty of Versailles imposed reparations, territorial losses and a 'war guilt' clause on Germany and created the League of Nations, which the United States never joined. New states appeared across Eastern Europe and the Middle East was carved into British and French mandates. The influenza pandemic that followed killed more people than the war.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• Russian Empire (1721 to 1917)
• Austro-Hungarian Empire (1867 to 1918)
• Ottoman Empire (1299 to 1922)
• British Empire (1583 to 1997)
• German colonial empire (1884 to 1919)
• Empire of Japan (1868 to 1947)

Wars of the same era and region

• World War II (1939 to 1945)
• Russian Civil War (1917 to 1922)
• Turkish War of Independence (1919 to 1923)
• Balkan Wars (1912 to 1913)
• Russo-Japanese War (1904 to 1905)
• Conquests of Menelik II (1878 to 1904)

10 surprising things about World War I

1. The Christmas truce of 1914 was real: German and British soldiers exchanged gifts and, in some places, played football in no man's land. Commanders made sure it never happened again.
2. The assassin Gavrilo Princip only got his chance because the Archduke's driver took a wrong turn and stopped to reverse in front of him.
3. The German and British monarchs, Wilhelm II and George V, were first cousins, and Tsar Nicholas II was cousin to both.
4. The war's first British shot and last British shot were fired near the same Belgian town, Mons, four years apart.
5. Tanks were called 'tanks' as a cover story: workers were told they were building water carriers for Mesopotamia.
6. The Zimmermann telegram was decrypted by British intelligence, who had to disguise the fact they were also reading American cables.
7. Around 1,000 pigeons served on the Western Front; one, Cher Ami, delivered a message that saved 194 American soldiers despite being shot through the breast.
8. The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 killed an estimated 50 million people, more than twice the war's death toll.
9. The armistice was signed at 5 a.m. but did not take effect until 11 a.m., and about 2,700 men died in the six hours between.
10. Germany made its final World War I reparations payment on 3 October 2010, 92 years after the armistice.

Sources

• World War I Encyclopaedia Britannica
• World War I casualties Wikipedia
• First World War Imperial War Museums
• 1914-1918-online: International Encyclopedia of the First World War Freie Universitat Berlin
• Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers (2012) Allen Lane
• Hew Strachan, The First World War (2003) Simon and Schuster

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