https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fi1OyVB2laY
The Great Powers of Europe are divided into two rival alliance ,The Triple Entente: France, Britain and Russia, united by fear and suspicion of Germany, Europe’s new strongest power, and the Triple Alliance: Germany, which fears encirclement by its rivals; Austro-Hungary,clinging onto a fragile empire; and Italy, seeking gains at French expense. The spark comes on 28th June, in the city of Sarajevo.
Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, is assassinated by a 19 year-old Slav
nationalist named Gavrilo Princip. Austro-Hungary accuses its Balkan rival Serbia of having aided the assassin, and sends an ultimatum, demanding humiliating concessions. Serbia rejects the ultimatum, and Austro-Hungary declares war. Within hours Austrian forces are shelling Belgrade.The Russian Tsar, Nicholas II, feels honour-bound to defend Serbia, a fellow Slav nationand orders the Russian army to mobilise.
German Emperor Wilhelm II has promised his support to Austro-Hungary. He and his generals see conflict with Russia as inevitable – and the sooner the better, as Russian strength grows year on year. Russian mobilisation is used to justify German mobilisation, followed by a declaration of war on Russia.
Germany knows war with Russia means war with Russia’s ally, France. It has developed the Schlieffen Plan to meet this threat of a war on two fronts – first, its armies will advance rapidly through neutral Belgium to encircle and destroy French armies near Paris, and win a quick victory. Then its forces can move east to deal with Russia, whose huge army will take much longer to mobilise. And so Germany declares war on France. Six million men are now marching to war across Europe.,Italy, however, remains neutral. The terms of the Triple Alliance don’t bind it to join an offensive war. The United States also declares its neutrality. President Wilson and the American public have no desire to get entangled in Europe’s war.
Britain is France’s ally, but at first it’s not clear if it will join the war against Germany. But when German troops invade Belgium, whose neutrality Britain has guaranteed, an ultimatum is sent from London to Berlin demanding they withdraw. It’s ignored, and Britain declares war.
A British Expeditionary Force lands in France, while the German invasion is held up for crucial days by Belgian resistance at the fortress-city of Liège. German troops commit several massacres against Belgian civilians. The atrocities are inflated by Allied propaganda, and help turn public opinion in neutral countries against Germany. France, unaware of Germany’s great encircling attack, launches Plan XVII, an offensive into German territory. But in the Battle of the Frontiers they’re driven back, with enormous losses on both sides.
The British Expeditionary Force clashes with the German army at Mons. But the British are heavily outnumbered, and soon join the French in retreat. The Allies make their stand at the River Marne, 40 miles outside Paris. Their desperate counter attack saves the city and drives the Germans back. Both sides suffer a quarter of a million casualties. The Race to the Sea’ begins, as both sides try to outflank each other to the north. A series of clashes leads to the First Battle of Ypres, where the Allies desperately cling on and prevent a German breakthrough. There are more heavy losses on both sides.
The two armies then dig-in along the entire 350 mile front, seeking shelter from deadly machine-gun fire and artillery shells. Trench warfare has begun. British warships win the first naval battle of the war at Heligoland Bight, sinking threeGerman cruisers.
Britain has the most powerful navy in the world: 29 modern battleships to Germany’s 19. They now impose a naval blockade on Germany, preventing contraband goods, including food,from reaching it by sea. The aim is to bring Germany’s economy to its knees and force it to surrender. The British cruiser HMS Pathfinder becomes the first victim in history of a lethal new weapon – the submarine-launched torpedo. German submarines, or U-boats, have a surface range of 9000 miles, and can attack undetected from beneath the waves. They herald a deadly new challenge to Britain’s command of the seas.
On the Eastern Front, Russian armies invade East Prussia. But they blunder into disaster at the Battle of Tannenberg, where General von Hindenburg and his Chief of Staff Erich Ludendorff mastermind a brilliant German victory, taking 90,000 prisoners and destroying an entire Russian army. The Russians contribute to their own defeat by transmitting uncoded wireless messages. A second massive German victory at Masurian Lakes forces the Russians into retreat.In just six weeks, the Russian army suffers nearly a third of a million casualties.
Meanwhile Austro-Hungary’s invasion of Serbia suffers a humiliating reverse at the Battle of Cer. Austro-Hungary’s offensive against Russia also ends in disaster and retreat, with the loss of more than 300,000 men.The fortress-town of Przemysl is cut-off and besieged by the Russians.The Germans are forced to come to the rescue, launching a diversionary attack towards Warsaw.It leads to weeks of brutal, winter fighting around the Polish city of Lódz, but there is no clear winner.
The Turkish Ottoman Empire has joined the Central Powers, declaring war on its old enemy, Russia. Turkish warships bombard the Russian ports of Odessa and Sevastopol,while in the Caucasus, Russian troops cross the Turkish frontier. Beyond Europe, the war rages on the world’s oceans and in far-flung European colonies. German troops cross into British East Africa (modern Kenya) and occupy Taveta; while Allied forces seize the German colony of Togoland (modern Togo).But British forces invading German Cameroon are defeated at Garua and Nsanakong, while 3,000 strong force attacking German South-West Africa, modern Namibia, is captured at Sandfontein.
British landings at Tanga end in chaos and defeat at the hands of a much smaller German force led by Colonel von Lettow-Vorbeck.Cut-off from Germany, Lettow-Vorbeck goes on to wage a highly successful guerilla war against the Allies, tying down huge numbers of troops. In Asia, Japan honours its treaty with Britain and declares war on Germany. Japanese forces go on to seize the German naval base at Tsingtao. The German colonies of Samoa and New Guinea surrender to troops from New Zealand and Australia.
But in the Pacific, off the coast of Chile, German Admiral von Spee’s powerful East Asia squadron sinks two British cruisers at the Battle of Coronel. Both ships are lost with all hands.
Five weeks later, he runs into a British naval task force at the Falkland Islands. Four of the five German cruisers are sunk. Von Spee goes down with his flagship. While in the Middle East, British troops seize control of the Ottoman port of Basra, securing access to the vital Persian oil that fuels the British fleet. That winter, Austrian troops finally capture Belgrade, but the Serbs then counterattack and drive them back once more.
The fighting in Serbia has already cost around 200,000 casualties on each side. In the North Sea, German warships mount a hit-and-run raid against English coastal towns, shelling Hartlepool, Whitby and Scarborough, and killing more than a hundred civilians. On the Western Front, the French launch their first major offensive against the German lines,but the First Battle of Champagne leads to small gains at a cost of 90,000 casualties. While in the Caucasus, an Ottoman offensive through the mountains in midwinter ends in disaster at Sarikamish. Turkish casualties total 60,000, many frozen to death. On the Western Front, that first Christmas is marked in some sectors by a short truce, and games of football in No Man’s Land, the killing zone between the trenches.
World War One is just five months old, and already around one million soldiers have fallen. A war that began in the Balkans has engulfed much of the world. The Central Powers: Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire, fight the Allies: Britain, France, Russia, Serbia and Montenegro, Belgium, and Japan.
In Poland and the Baltic, the Russian army has suffered a string of massive defeats, but continues to battle German and Austro-Hungarian forces. Austro-Hungarian troops have also suffered huge losses, and are humiliated by their failure to defeat Serbia.In the Caucasus Mountains, Russian and Ottoman forces fight each other in freezing winter conditions.
While on the Western Front, French, British and Belgian troops are dug in facing the Germans, in trenches stretching from the English Channel to Switzerland. As part of the world’s first strategic bombing campaign, Germany sends two giant airships, known as Zeppelins, to bomb Britain. They hit the ports of King’s Lynn and Great Yarmouth, damaging houses and killing 4 civilians. At sea, at the Battle of Dogger Bank, the British navy sinks one German cruiser, but the rest of the German squadron escapes. Command of the seas has allowed Britain to impose a naval blockade of Germany, preventing vital supplies, including food, from reaching the country by sea. Germany now retaliates with its own blockade: it declares the waters around the British
Isles to be a war zone, where its U-boats will attack Allied merchant ships without warning. Britain relies on imported food to feed its population. Germany plans to starve her into surrender. On the Eastern Front, German Field Marshal von Hindenburg launches a Winter Offensive, and inflicts another massive defeat on the Russian army at the Second Battle of Masurian Lakes. The Russians lose up to 200,000 men, half of them surrendering amid freezing winter conditions. The Russians have more success against Austria-Hungary: the city of Przemysl falls after a four month siege, netting the Russians 100,000 prisoners. Austria-Hungary’s total losses now reach two million.
The British and French send warships to the Dardanelles, to threaten Constantinople, capital of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. They believe a show of force will quickly cause Turkey to surrender. They bombard Turkish shore-forts in the narrow straits, but three battleships are sunk by mines, and three more damaged. The attack is called off.
On the Western Front, the British attack at Neuve Chapelle, but the advance is soon halted by German barbed wire and machineguns. British and Indian units suffer 11,000 casualties about a quarter of the attacking force. At the Second Battle of Ypres, the Germans attack with poison gas for the first time on the Western Front. A cloud of lethal chlorine gas forces Allied troops to abandon their trenches, but the Germans don’t have enough reserves ready to exploit the advantage.Soldiers on both sides are quickly supplied with crude gas-masks, as a chemical weapons arms-race begins.
The Allies land ground troops at Gallipoli, including men of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, the ANZACs. Their goal is to take out the shore forts that are preventing Allied warships reaching Constantinople. But they immediately meet fierce Turkish resistance, and are pinned down close to the shore. The day before the landings, the Ottoman Empire begins the systematic deportation and murder of ethnic Armenians living within its borders. The Armenians are a long-persecuted ethnic and religious minority, suspected of supporting
Turkey’s enemies.Tens of thousands of men, women and children are transported to the Syrian desert and left to die. In all, more than a million Armenians perish. The Allies condemn the events as ‘a crime against humanity and civilisation’, and promise to hold the perpetrators criminally responsible. To this day, the Turkish government disputes the death toll, and that these events constituted a ‘genocide’.
On the Eastern Front, a joint German / Austro-Hungarian offensive in Galicia breaks through Russian defences, recapturing Przemysl and taking 100,000 prisoners. It is the beginning of a steady advance against Russian forces. At sea, the British passenger-liner Lusitania, sailing from New York to Liverpool, is torpedoed by a German U-boat off the coast of Ireland without warning. 1,198 passengers and crew perish, including 128 Americans.US President Woodrow Wilson and the American public are outraged. But Germany insists the liner was a fair target, as the British used her to carry military supplies.
In May, the Allies launch the Second Battle of Artois, in another effort to break through the German lines. The French make the main attack at Vimy Ridge, while the British launch supporting attacks at Aubers Ridge and Festubert. The Allies sustain 130,000 casualties, and advance just a few thousand yards.
That summer, above the Western Front, the Fokker Eindecker helps Germany win control of the air. It’s one of the first aircraft with a machinegun able to fire forward through its propeller, thanks to a new invention known as interruptor gear. Allied aircraft losses mount rapidly, in what becomes known as the ‘Fokker Scourge’.
Italy, swayed by British and French promises of territorial gains at Austro-Hungarian expense, joins the Allies, declaring war on Austria-Hungary, and later the Ottoman Empire and Germany. The Italian army makes its first assault against Austro-Hungarian positions along the Isonzo river, but is repulsed with heavy losses.The Allies face a crisis on the Eastern Front. The Russians have begun a general retreat, abandoning Poland. German troops enter Warsaw on 5th August. Tsar Nicholas II dismisses the army’s commander-in-chief, Grand Duke Nicholas, and takes personal command. It will prove disastrous for the Tsar, as he becomes more and more closely tied to Russian military defeat.
At Gallipoli, the Allies land reinforcements at Suvla Bay, but neither they nor a series of fresh attacks by the ANZACs can break the deadlock. Conditions for both sides are terrible, troops are tormented not only by the enemy, but by heat, flies, and sickness. In the Atlantic, a German U-boat sinks the liner SS Arabic: 44 are lost, including three Americans. In response to further US warnings, Germany ends all attacks on passenger ships. On the Western Front, the Allies mount their biggest offensive of the war so far, designed to smash through the front, and take pressure off their beleaguered Russian ally.
The French attack in the Third Battle of Artois and Second Battle of Champagne,The British, with the help of poison gas, attack at Loos. Despite initial gains, the attacks soon get bogged down, with enormous losses on all sides. Allied troops land at Salonika in Greece, to open a new front against the Central Powers, and bring aid to Serbia.But the Allies are too late. Bulgaria joins the Central Powers, and their joint offensive overruns Serbia in two months.
That winter the remnants of the Serbian Army escape through the Albanian mountains. Their losses are horrific – by the end of the war a third of Serbia’s army has been killed the highest proportion of any nation. Fierce fighting continues on the Italian front, as Italian troops launch the Third and Fourt Battles of the Isonzo. Austro-Hungarian forces, though outnumbered, are dug in on the high ground, and impossible to dislodge. In the Middle East, a British advance on Baghdad is blocked by Turkish forces at the Battle of Ctesiphon, 25 miles south of the city. The British withdraw to Kut, where they are besieged.
The Allies abandon the Gallipoli campaign. 83,000 troops are secretly evacuated without alerting Turkish forces. Not a man is lost. It’s one of the best executed plans of the war. The campaign has cost both sides quarter of a million casualties,1915 is a bad year for the Allies enormous losses, for no tangible gains. But there is no talk of peace instead all sides prepare for even bigger offensives in 1916, with new tactics developed from earlier failures. All sides still believe a decisive battlefield victory is within grasp. World War One was supposed to have been a short and glorious war. But by 1916, a new kind of industrialised warfare had seen the death toll soar into the millions, with no end in sight.
Naval blockades were beginning to cause shortages of food and fuel across Europe. While thousands of women had entered the workforce, replacing the men sent to fight in their millions. All sides were preparing for a long war. The war has raged for a year and a half, as the Allies continue to battle the CentralPowers, recently joined by Bulgaria. At sea, the British maintain their naval blockade of Germany, preventing the import of food and other vital raw materials. Germany has retaliated with a U-boat blockade of Britain, but has to limit its attacks to avoid provoking the neutral USA, whose citizens have already been caught in the crossfire. On the Western Front, French, British and Belgian troops are dug in opposite the Germans, both sides trapped in the bloody stalemate of trench warfare.
On the Eastern Front, the Russians have ended their long retreat and stabilised the line but their army has suffered huge losses. On the Italian Front, Italian troops have launched a series of costly, unsuccessful attacks against strong Austro-Hungarian defences. While on the Balkan Front, the Central Powers have overrun Serbia, whose army is forced to make a bitter retreat through the Albanian mountains.
Now, on 5th January, Austro-Hungarian troops attack Montenegro. They are delayed at the Battle of Mojkovac, but three weeks later Montenegro is forced to surrender. On the Caucasus Front, the Russians launch a surprise winter offensive against Ottoman Turkish forces. Six weeks later, Russian troops occupy the city of Erzurum. In April, they capture the Black Sea port of Trebizond. The British transport two motor boats to Lake Tanganyika in Africa. They finally arrive after a 10,000 mile trip by sea and land, and help the British seize control of the strategic lake from local German forces.
The same month, in German Cameroon, German troops, besieged on Mora mountain for 18 months, finally surrender to the Allies. It marks the end of the Cameroon campaign. On the Western Front, the Germans unleash a devastating assault on the French fortress-town of Verdun. German General Erich von Falkenhayn knows France will defend this symbolic town to the last man. His plan, in his own words, is to ‘bleed France white’ in its defence. It is the strategy of attrition.
Verdun becomes one of the most terrifying battles of the war: a mincing machine, where infantry divisions are destroyed almost as fast as they can be fed into the line. In Britain, one million men have already volunteered for military service. But the government realists it won’t be enough: so in March 1916, Britain becomes the last major power to introduce conscription. That spring on the Western Front, British troops are the last to be issued with steel helmets.
The nature of trench warfare produces a high proportion of head wounds: the German Stahlhelm, the French Adrian helmet, and the British Mark 1 steel helmet, offer limited protection from shell splinters and shrapnel. Neutral Portugal has been co-operating with the British, which seems to offer the best chance of holding onto her African colony, Portuguese Angola. On 9th March, Germany retaliate by declaring war on Portugal.
On the Eastern Front, Russia launches an attack near Lake Naroch, to relieve pressure on the French at Verdun. But it’s a disaster. There are 100,000 Russian casualties, and the attack fails to divert any German troops from the fighting at Verdun. In Dublin, Irish republicans launch an armed revolt against British rule. It becomes known as the Easter Rising, and is put down after six days of street fighting. In the Middle East, after a five month siege, British forces at Kut surrender. General Townshend leads 9,000 British and Indian soldiers into captivity. About half later die from starvation or disease.
Britain wants Arab support in its fight against the Ottoman Empire, so it’s promised Arab leaders an independent Arab state after the war. But now Britain and France secretly sign the Sykes-Picot Agreement, planning, after the war, to divide the Middle East into British and French zones of control. Unaware of this deal, Hussein bin Ali, Sherif of Mecca, leads the Arabs in revolt against Turkish Ottoman rule: in the Battle of Mecca, his forces seize control of the holy city. On the Italian front, Austro-Hungarian forces launch a surprise attack at Asiago. Italian defences give way; Austro-Hungarian troops are poised to break through into northern Italy.
That month, in the North Sea, the German High Seas Fleet clashes with the British Grand Fleet at the Battle of Jutland. In the only major naval battle of the war, the British suffer heavier losses, but claim victory, as the German fleet withdraws, and does not re-emerge from its base for the rest of the war. For the summer of 1916, the Allies have planned major, simultaneous offensives against the Central Powers from east and west. Now they are needed more than ever, to relieve pressure on the French at Verdun, and the Italians at Asiago.
The Russians launch their attack first: on the Eastern Front, General Alexei Brusilov has carefully maintained the element of surprise. His troops break through the enemy lines, in some places advancing 60 miles, and taking 200,000 prisoners. This brilliant though costly Russian attack achieves its aim, as the Central Powers are forced to redeploy troops from other fronts to shore up the line.