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The history of World War I in six minutes is a quick and easy way to get up to speed on what the war was about. The centenary takes place from 2014 to 2018.

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Aleppo was once Syria's largest city and the country's industrial and financial centre, but since 2012 it has been a key battleground in the country's civil war.

Control of parts of the city has changed a number of times this year. So who is currently laying siege to whom in Aleppo?

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Aleppo: Key battleground in Syria's civil war - BBC News

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Aleppo was once Syria's largest city and the country's industrial and financial centre, but since 2012 it has been a key battleground in the country's civil war. Control of parts of the city has changed a number of times this year. So who is currently laying siege to whom in Aleppo?

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This literally helped me to do my effects column for WW1 in like 2 minutes... :) ~ Wasian

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On the face of it, President Trump's decision to attack Syria doesn't make a lot of sense. Launching 59 missiles at a single airbase, as Trump did, is not going to seriously change the outcome of a years-long civil war. So what's the point of doing it at all?

Understanding the answer to that question, and really anything the United States does and does not do in Syria, requires understanding the real nature of the country's horrific civil war. At its heart, it is a conflict between a regime that represents a minority of its citizens and the majority who want it gone. But over time, it has spiraled into an immensely complicated international war, with some of America's most significant enemies and closest partners on various different sides.

"It has been one of the hardest issues that I've faced as president," President Barack Obama said in a December 2016 press conference. "Syria is the most complex, complicated issue I have ever had to deal with," then- CIA Director John Brennan said during a discussion at the Brookings Institution last year.

Getting involved in this war in any serious way is immensely complicated and risky, which is why the Obama administration largely avoided doing so, and why it never struck Assad directly. Trump's strike tried to thread the needle by punishing the Assad regime specifically for its use of chemical weapons without getting dragged into the broader conflict.

What follows is a guide to the core dynamics at work in Syria: how the civil war began, how it evolved, when US foes like Russia got involved, what two American presidents have been willing to do - and what happens next.

How Syria's civil war began - and why America cares so much

When Syrians rose up as part of the wave of Arab Spring protests against Middle East dictators in 2011, Assad quickly decided to emulate his father, Hafez, and try to tamp down the protests through the use of force. The goal was to turn the broad-based protest movement from a political struggle - which Assad's unpopular regime was bound to lose - into a military one, where his control of the army meant he might be able to kill his way to victory.

"It was very much a strategic decision that the regime made, to militarize the conflict right away," Glenn Robinson, an associate professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, told me in an interview. "I think in their mind, and correctly, if this becomes a political battle where populations matter, the regime probably only has support of a third of the country. ... If this becomes a political contestation, the opposition has the numbers."

The grim way of implementing this plan, slaughtering protestors en masse until they were forced to pick up arms in self-defense, got Assad the war he wanted. In July 2011, defectors from Assad's regime formed an organized militia called the Free Syrian Army to protect protesters and strike back at Assad. By January 2012, the Syrian uprising had devolved into a full-blown civil war pitting the FSA and other assorted rebel groups against Assad and his supporters.

The strategic stakes of this war, both for the Middle East as a region and for the United States, are enormous - for three main reasons.

The first is Iran. Syria's alliance with Tehran dates back to 1980 and is critical to Iran's regional ambitions. It uses Syria to convey weapons and other goods to its proxy militias and allies, most notably Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. In return, Assad's regime gets military and political assistance from Tehran.

Iranian leaders saw the revolt against Assad as a threat not just to him but also to them. In 2012, Iran responded by sending in Hezbollah to fight on Assad's side, an intervention that played an important role in Assad's campaign against the rebels.

At the same time, though, Iran's backing made Assad into a target for some of America's closest partners in the region. Since the Iraq War, and maybe earlier, the oil-rich Sunni Arab states along the Persian Gulf - particularly Saudi Arabia, the largest and strongest - had been embroiled in a sort of cold war with Iran, a Shiite theocracy. Both sides wish to steer the political course of the Middle East, and see the other as a fundamental threat to their security.

So when Assad began to teeter, the Gulf states saw an opportunity to unseat one of Iran's principal allies and started sending arms to the Syrian rebels. In March 2013, the Arab League voted to give its members explicit permission to arm the Syrian opposition. In May of that year, the Financial Times reported that Qatar alone had given $3 billion in aid to the rebels. In just one shipment in 2015, Saudi Arabia provided rebels with 500 deadly TOW anti-tank missiles.

The Syrian conflict thus became more than just a civil war: It became a proxy fight between Iran and America's Gulf allies, whose outcome was of vital significance for both sides.

It also quickly became a proxy standoff between Washington and Moscow.

Russia's ties to Syria go all the way back to the Cold War: According to one scholar, the Soviets "essentially built" the modern Syrian military in the 1960s. Continued support for the Assad government gave the USSR its most reliable ally and proxy in the Middle East.

Today, Syria remains one of Russia's few reliable allies outside of the former Soviet republics, a vestige of Moscow's former superpower status and a final military toehold in the Middle East. Russia maintains a valuable naval base today at Tartus, on Syria's Mediterranean coast, and has sold a number of surplus weapons to Assad. Between 2006 and 2010, 48 percent of Syrian arms imports came from Russia. Assad's defeat, then, would have been a major strategic blow to Vladimir Putin's regime - which has ambitions of restoring Russia's Cold War status as a great power with global influence.

"This matters to [the Russians] ... more than it would if they had another 10 [allies to spare]," says Doug Ollivant, who oversaw Iraq policy at the National Security Council from 2008 to 2009 and is now a managing partner at Mantid International.

As a result, Russia has been backing Assad since the war began. In 2011 alone, Russia vetoed a UN Security Council resolution condemning Assad's crackdown on protesters, and sold nearly $1 billionin arms to Assad's regime.

Putin's support for Assad has steadily escalated, with Moscow selling Assad advanced air defense systems and refurbished MI-25 attack helicopters. By September 2015, Russia was a direct participant in the war. Russian warplanes and helicopters are hitting Assad's enemies from the air, and Moscow has artillery pieces bombarding rebels and special forces embedded with Syrian troops. Some estimates place the number of Russian soldiers in Syria today at around 10,000.

The third and final issue is terrorism. Since practically the beginning of the conflict, al-Qaeda had been sending forces into Syria, seeing a chaotic civil war as a great environment for them to use as a safe haven and a place to get recruits. By mid-2012, the Syrian al-Qaeda franchise, Jabhat al-Nusra, had allied with some relatively moderate rebels - and established themselves as one of the most effective anti-Assad fighting forces. Qatar in particular showered Nusra with cash in an effort to quickly topple Assad.

Put those three things together - Iran, Russia, and terrorism - and you get a sense of why first Obama and now Trump have to varying degrees felt the need to involve America in a brutal and seemingly intractable conflict.

The US policy under Obama: (mostly) non-intervention

Obama was president during the bulk of the Syrian civil war, and his legacy as commander in chief will be shaped in part by what he chose to do there - and what he chose to avoid.

One of those things was to refuse to endorse any kind of large-scale effort aimed at toppling Assad - repeatedly overruling members of his administration, like Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and CIA Director David Petraeus, who wanted to provide more advanced weaponry to the rebels. Parallel CIA and Pentagon efforts to recruit, train, and arm Syrian rebels did little to shape the course of the conflict; in 2015, the Defense Department had to concede that its $250 million effort had trained a grand total of 60 fighters (that's more than $4 million per trainee).

Perhaps the defining moment came on August 21, 2013, when Assad's forces launched sarin gas - a horrifying and deadly chemical weapon - into the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, killing up to 1,423 people. Most of the dead were civilians.

Prior to the attack, President Obama had declared chemical weapons use to be a "red line": If Assad used them, it would trigger an American military response. But after Ghouta, Obama didn't seem to want to follow through. He submitted a plan for punitive airstrikes in Syria to Congress, where lawmakers from both parties signaled that it was likely to fail.

Russia offered Obama a way out of his self-made dilemma. It brokered a deal with Assad where he would agree to give up his chemical weapons and submit to international inspections if the United States agreed not to attack Assad.

The Obama team accepted this as a lifeline. As they saw it, the critical issue was never the Syrian civil war, which the president had decided was too risky to intervene in. Rather, it was the use of chemical weapons - a particularly heinous act prohibited by international law. If the threat of American military force got Assad to back down from chemical use, that would make chemical weapons use less likely in Syria and in other conflicts without putting American troops in harm's way or risking a wider conflagration.

"I'm very proud of this moment," Obama told the Atlantic 's Jeffrey Goldberg. ""The overwhelming weight of conventional wisdom and the machinery of our national-security apparatus had gone fairly far. The perception was that my credibility was at stake, that America's credibility was at stake. And so for me to press the pause button at that moment, I knew, would cost me politically [but] I believe ultimately it was the right decision to make."

Critics, by contrast, saw it as a cop-out. They argued that if Obama wouldn't intervene after drawing a "red line" about chemical use, Assad and his allies would see it as proof that the US would never intervene for any reason. This, according to some experts, is the key reason Russia decided to escalate so dramatically in 2015: They came to believe that Obama wasn't as invested in trying to push out Assad as they were in trying to keep him in power, which means the US would largely give them a free hand. In essence, Obama's attempt to deter chemical weapons use destroyed his ability to deter Russian intervention.

"It is precisely when Obama went for the chemical weapons deal over strikes in 2013 that Moscow understood it had escalation dominance in Syria," Emile Hokayem, a Syria expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, wrote in April.

This is a debatable point, to be sure. But there is no question that Obama left office with a civil war that had already killed at least 470,000 Syrians grinding along with no end in sight.

Wait, wasn't the US bombing Syria before Trump?

There was one major exception to Obama's hands-off policy in Syria: the war on ISIS. But it was carefully limited, in ways that show why Trump's strike was such a major shift.

After the militant group swept across northern Iraq in June 2014, and came to control a swath of territory in Syria and Iraq roughly the size of Great Britain, the scale of the terrorist threat became impossible to deny. This, together with the videotaped beheadings of two American journalists, prompted Obama to declare a plan to "degrade and ultimately destroy" ISIS on September 10.

The linchpin of the plan was a series of American airstrikes, both in Syria and in Iraq, supporting forces on the ground that were fighting ISIS. In Iraq, that meant the official Iraqi army as well as tribal leaders and Shia militias. But it wasn't clear, initially, who that would be in Syria.

Most rebel groups were preoccupied fighting Assad, and had no ability to really refocus on the Islamic State. The same was true, in reverse, for Assad; he had long maintained a sort of de facto ceasefire with ISIS so he could focus on fighting the moderate rebels whom he saw as a bigger threat.

The US ended up settling on fighters from the Kurdish ethnic group, based in northern Syria near the Turkish border, as their key allies. These Kurds were mostly uninvolved in the main civil war, as their chief objective was carving out a Kurdish state in majority-Kurdish areas rather than toppling Assad's regime in Damascus. Moreover, ISIS had invaded their territory, and was besieging a Kurdish city named Kobane at the time of the US intervention.

So the thousands of missions flown by American warplanes, and hundreds of US special forces deployed to Syria, were supposed to accomplish two things: cut ISIS's supply lines between Syria and Iraq, and back Kurdish forces in their fight against ISIS.

On this metric, they've more or less succeeded. American airstrikes helped break the siege of Kobane and allowed Kurdish forces to launch a counteroffensive that swept over ISIS's holdings in north central Syria. Today, a joint Kurdish-Arab military group called the Syrian Democratic Forces is camped out within miles of ISIS's capital city, Raqqa - and are preparing to attack the city itself, with major backing from US troops.

But note the delicacy of this strategy when it came to the main conflict in Syria.

The United States was fanatical about limiting the scope of this counter-ISIS campaign - in particular, making sure it never became a counter-Assad campaign. When the Pentagon sent weapons to some Syrian rebels whom they wanted to fight ISIS, it made them promise not to use those weapons against Assad. (The tiny number of rebels who took the US up on this weak offer were swiftly slaughtered by al-Qaeda forces.)

This only intensified after the Russian intervention began in September 2015. US and Russian forces developed a procedure for flying in the same airspace, called deconfliction, designed to ensure that there was no accidental US bombing of Russians or Assad forces. US and Russian planes managed to fly near each other, for well over a year, with no major incident - even as Russian planes were on their way to drop bombs on Syrian civilians.

This made crystal clear to both the Russians and the Syrians that the United States had no interest in intervening in their war on the rebels. They developed a sense of impunity - enabling atrocities like Tuesday's chemical attack.

Why Trump's strike is a major, but limited, escalation

There was little reason to believe that Trump would treat Assad and Russia more harshly than Obama did. During the red line debate in 2013, he tweeted repeatedly and angrily against a strike, warning Obama to back down.

During the presidential campaign, Trump even suggested that Assad's rule was better for Syria than the alternatives. "We don't know who the rebels are," he said in an October presidential debate. "If they ever did overthrow Assad ... you may very well end up with worse than Assad."

Trump did not return to his "partner with Russia" policy after taking office. But he did shift the US's Syria policy, at least rhetorically, with several administration officials suggesting the US would accept Assad staying in power. (Obama wasn't doing anything substantive to oust Assad but was at least rhetorically committed to his departure.)

The April 4 gas attack profoundly changed that calculus.

First, Trump seemed genuinely angry and horrified by the photos and videos of children killed in the chemical weapons strike, and wanted something done about it.

This isn't as much of a surprise as it might seem: Trump has always been more of an instinctive hawk than was genuinely believed. Back in March 2011, when Libya's Muammar Qaddafi was killing his own people in the early stages of the country's civil war, Trump released a video calling on then-President Obama to "stop this guy" and "save these lives."

Thomas Wright, a scholar at the Brookings Institution who has spent the past several months studying Trump's foreign policy doctrine, thinks a similar kind of emotional reaction might be at work here.

"There [have been] very few iconic images of brutality from the Syrian civil war," he says. "A picture of a lot of children gassed is pretty horrific for anyone to see."

The second factor here is the nature of the attack itself.

The goal of the 2013 deal Obama made with Syria wasn't just to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons stockpile (a goal at which it clearly failed). It was to show that chemical weapons were somehow different from normal weapons, more unacceptable. The agreement was supposed to show that rogue actors like Assad have two choices: either agree to stop using chemical weapons or face some kind of punishment.

Since 2013, this had more or less worked: Assad had not used a nerve agent prohibited by the Chemical Weapons Convention (though he has used chlorine gas, a chemical weapon that isn't explicitly banned).

What's known as the "norm" against chemical weapons use - the idea that chemical weapons were, like nuclear and biological weapons, a special kind of evil to be prohibited even in vicious wars - had been upheld, seemingly backstopped by US threat of force.

Tuesday's attack made clear that Assad was prepared to break that norm at will, something certainly not lost on Defense Secretary Mattis or National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster. They know how serious a violation of the norms around chemical weapons this attack is and how important it is to limit the use of such of weapons. They have likely told the president this, and informed him that American credibility is on the line.

"This is a kind of flagrant flouting of that agreement. ... It's physical proof that they've duped the international community," Michael Hanna, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation who follows the Syria conflict, says. "It is different than other kinds of war crimes committed by the regime, and ... that view is clearly going to be relayed to him by his close advisers."

This appears to be the main reason Trump struck Syria. His goal wasn't to intervene in any of the broader and more complicated dynamics of the war - to stop the civil war or weaken Iran. Rather, it's a pinpoint, one-off strike designed to tell Assad that chemical weapon use will be punished. As Trump put it in his address Thursday night:

Tonight, I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched. It is in the vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread of chemical weapons.

By going out of his way to emphasize that this US strike targeted the exact airbase from where the chemical attack was launched, Trump is making it clear that the strike was designed as a specific punishment for the recent chemical attack - and not a broader effort aimed at striking Assad until he stops bombing civilians or leaves power.

Meanwhile, the rebels are in trouble. The city of Aleppo, a major rebel stronghold, fell to Assad in December 2016. While he may not be on the verge of defeating the rebels outright, it's clear that they're in no position to topple him. Trump's limited strike won't change that: The damage was so contained, in fact, that Syrian warplanes were already flying missions out of the sole airbase Trump targeted by Friday afternoon.

There are two main questions going forward. First, will Trump's strikes successfully deter Assad from using chemical weapons again - and they don't, how will Trump respond? Second, could this limited initial attack quickly escalate into something far larger, with Trump potentially being pressured into trying to not just constrain Assad but push him out of power?

We don't know the answers to these questions yet. But they will play a significant role in determining America's role in Syria - and, possibly, the future course of the Syrian civil war itself.

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On the face of it, President Trump's decision to attack Syria doesn't make a lot of sense. Launching 59 missiles at a single airbase, as Trump did, is not going to seriously change the outcome of a years-long civil war. So what's the point of doing it at all?

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More than 250,000 Syrians have lost their lives in four-and-a-half years of armed conflict, which began with anti-government protests before escalating into a full-scale civil war. More than 11 million others have been forced from their homes as forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and those opposed to his rule battle each other - as well as jihadist militants from so-called Islamic State. This is the story of the civil war so far, in eight short chapters.

1. Uprising turns violent

Pro-democracy protests erupted in March 2011 in the southern city of Deraa after the arrest and torture of some teenagers who painted revolutionary slogans on a school wall. After security forces opened fire on demonstrators, killing several, more took to the streets.

The unrest triggered nationwide protests demanding President Assad's resignation. The government's use of force to crush the dissent merely hardened the protesters' resolve. By July 2011, hundreds of thousands were taking to the streets across the country.

Opposition supporters eventually began to take up arms, first to defend themselves and later to expel security forces from their local areas.

2. Descent into civil war

Violence escalated and the country descended into civil war as rebel brigades were formed to battle government forces for control of cities, towns and the countryside. Fighting reached the capital Damascus and second city of Aleppo in 2012.

By June 2013, the UN said 90,000 people had been killed in the conflict. By August 2015, that figure had climbed to 250,000, according to activists and the UN.

The conflict is now more than just a battle between those for or against Mr Assad. It has acquired sectarian overtones, pitching the country's Sunni majority against the president's Shia Alawite sect, and drawn in regional and world powers. The rise of the jihadist group Islamic State (IS) has added a further dimension.

3. War crimes

A UN commission of inquiry has evidence that all parties to the conflict have committed war crimes - including murder, torture, rape and enforced disappearances. They have also been accused of using civilian suffering - such as blocking access to food, water and health services through sieges - as a method of war.

The UN Security Council has demanded all parties end the indiscriminate use of weapons in populated areas, but civilians continue to die in their thousands. Many have been killed by barrel bombs dropped by government aircraft on gatherings in rebel-held areas - attacks which the UN says may constitute massacres.

IS has also been accused by the UN of waging a campaign of terror. It has inflicted severe punishments on those who transgress or refuse to accept its rules, including hundreds of public executions and amputations. Its fighters have also carried out mass killings of rival armed groups, members of the security forces and religious minorities, and beheaded hostages, including several Westerners.

4. Chemical weapons

Hundreds of people were killed in August 2013 after rockets filled with the nerve agent sarin were fired at several suburbs of Damascus. Western powers said it could only have been carried out by Syria's government, but the government blamed rebel forces.

Facing the prospect of US military intervention, President Assad agreed to the complete removal and destruction of Syria's chemical weapons arsenal.

The operation was completed the following year, but the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has continued to document the use of toxic chemicals in the conflict. Investigators found chlorine was used "systematically and repeatedly" in deadly attacks on rebel-held areas between April and July 2014.

IS has also been accused of using homemade chemical weapons, including sulphur mustard. The OPCW said the blister agent was used in an attack on the northern town of Marea in August 2015 that killed a baby.

5. Humanitarian crisis

More than 4.5 million people have fled Syria since the start of the conflict, most of them women and children. Neighbouring Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey have struggled to cope with one of the largest refugee exoduses in recent history. About 10% of Syrian refugees have sought safety in Europe, sowing political divisions as countries argue over sharing the burden.

A further 6.5 million people are internally displaced inside Syria, 1.2 million were driven from their homes in 2015 alone.

The UN says it will need $3.2bn to help the 13.5 million people, including 6 million children, who will require some form of humanitarian assistance inside Syria in 2016. About 70% of the population is without access to adequate drinking water, one in three people are unable to meet their basic food needs, and more than 2 million children are out of school, and four out of five people live in poverty.

The warring parties have compounded the problems by refusing humanitarian agencies access to civilians in need. Up to 4.5 million people in Syria live in hard-to-reach areas, including nearly 400,000 people in 15 besieged locations who do not have access to life-saving aid.

6. Rebels and the rise of the jihadists

The armed rebellion has evolved significantly since its inception. Secular moderates are now outnumbered by Islamists and jihadists, whose brutal tactics have caused global outrage.

So-called Islamic State has capitalised on the chaos and taken control of large swathes of Syria and Iraq, where it proclaimed the creation of a "caliphate" in June 2014. Its many foreign fighters are involved in a "war within a war" in Syria, battling rebels and rival jihadists from the al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, as well as government and Kurdish forces.

In September 2014, a US-led coalition launched air strikes inside Syria in an effort to "degrade and ultimately destroy" IS. But the coalition has avoided attacks that might benefit Mr Assad's forces. Russia began an air campaign targeting "terrorists" in Syria a year later, but opposition activists say its strikes have mostly killed Western-backed rebels and civilians.

In the political arena, opposition groups are also deeply divided, with rival alliances battling for supremacy. The most prominent is the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, backed by several Western and Gulf Arab states. However, the exile group has little influence on the ground in Syria and its primacy is rejected by many opponents of Mr Assad.

7. Peace efforts

With neither side able to inflict a decisive defeat on the other, the international community long ago concluded that only a political solution could end the conflict in Syria. The UN Security Council has called for the implementation of the 2012 Geneva Communique, which envisages a transitional governing body with full executive powers "formed on the basis of mutual consent".

Talks in early 2014, known as Geneva II, broke down after only two rounds, with then-UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi blaming the Syrian government's refusal to discuss opposition demands.

Mr Brahimi's successor, Staffan de Mistura, focused on establishing a series of local ceasefires. His plan for a "freeze zone" in Aleppo was rejected, but a three-year siege of the Homs suburb of al-Wair was successfully brought to an end in December 2015.

At the same time, the conflict with IS lent fresh impetus to the search for a political solution in Syria. The US and Russia led efforts to get representatives of the government and the opposition to attend "proximity talks" in Geneva in January 2016 to discuss a Security Council-endorsed road map for peace, including a ceasefire and a transitional period ending with elections.

8. Proxy war

What began as another Arab Spring uprising against an autocratic ruler has mushroomed into a brutal proxy war that has drawn in regional and world powers.

Iran and Russia have propped up the Alawite-led government of President Assad and gradually increased their support. Tehran is believed to be spending billions of dollars a year to bolster Mr Assad, providing military advisers and subsidised weapons, as well as lines of credit and oil transfers. Russia has meanwhile launched an air campaign against Mr Assad's opponents.

The Syrian government has also enjoyed the support of Lebanon's Shia Islamist Hezbollah movement, whose fighters have provided important battlefield support since 2013.

The Sunni-dominated opposition has, meanwhile, attracted varying degrees of support from its international backers - Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan, along with the US, UK and France.

Until late 2015, rebel appeals for anti-aircraft weapons to stop devastating government air strikes were rejected by the US and its allies, amid concern that they might end up in the hands of jihadist militants. A US programme to train and arm 5,000 rebels to take the fight to IS on the ground also suffered a series of setbacks before being abandoned.
Produced by Lucy Rodgers, David Gritten, James Offer and Patrick Asare

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More than 250,000 Syrians have lost their lives in four-and-a-half years of armed conflict, which began with anti-government protests before escalating into a full-scale civil war. More than 11 million others have been forced from their homes as forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and those opposed to his rule battle each other - as well as jihadist militants from so-called Islamic State.

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Persian Gulf War - Facts & Summary - HISTORY.com

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Find out more about the history of Persian Gulf War, including videos, interesting articles, pictures, historical features and more. Get all the facts on HISTORY.com

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Iran-Iraq War - Facts & Summary - HISTORY.com

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Find out more about the history of Iran-Iraq War, including videos, interesting articles, pictures, historical features and more. Get all the facts on HISTORY.com

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First Indochina War vs Vietnam War - Wars Comparison

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Compare Wars: First Indochina War vs Vietnam War. Compare by geography, battles, time period, casualties, and more.

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What led to the Six Day War in 1967?

Terrorist Attacks on Israel

Looking at the events that led up to the war, the main cause comes out to be increasing tensions between Israel and its neighboring Arab countries during the mid 1960s.

Israel adopted a policy of diverting water from the Jordan River to the Negev Desert and this was became the cause of the tension. Naturally, this angered Arabs so much that they threatened to divert this flow into Lake Galilee. Syria was bombed by Israel in 1965 and 1966 soon after they began implementing their policy of diverting water from Israel.

After the formation of the PLO and Fatah movements against Israel, the already intense relations between Israel and its neighbors took on a new extremity. Most of these activities were initiated from the West Bank and Golan Heights so Israel saw war as an effective solution of wiping out these movements. In 1966, when the Ba'ath party, a militant anti-Israeli group, took charge in Syria, President Nasser of Egypt also had to take a militant stance against Israel considering it to be hiding behind UN.

Many historians also lay down that Israel wanted a war in the face of all the economic problems faced at that time, taking on the strategy that a war would distract people's minds from these economic fiascos and will also bring in foreign aid. In addition, many Jews were of the view that the Israeli government should have been harder on the Arabs after the 1956 Suez War and the former Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion believed that another war would allow them to tighten Israeli grip on the Arabs.
Events Leading Up to War
On April 7, 1967, Israel attacked the Syrian artillery positions and the Golan Heights, thus taking the first step towards the outbreak of war. Six Syrian MiG fighter planes were shot down during this operation while the situation became worse when Israeli jet planes deliberately started flying low over Damascus. Shortly after this, Syrian government received intelligence information by the Soviet Union stating that Israel is amassing forces on the Syrian border to launch an attack. There is no evidence about the authenticity of this information; however, it made Syria and Egypt come together and stand against Israel.

Egypt became a part of this issue due to the defense pact of 1966. It has been observed that President Nasser didn't want a war, but he nevertheless took some actions which brought the war closer. He asked the UN peacekeepers to leave the Sinai desert by sending his troops there. As a response, Israeli army was activated and Syria, Jordan and Egypt had to declare emergency.

In May, leading from these events, Nasser isolated the Israeli port of Eliat by closing the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, which eventually led to the Suez War. Three days later, the Arab armies (consisting of joint forces of Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq and Egypt) moved towards the border to confront Israel. Jordan also joined these forces on May 30, forming the Arab Defense Pact.

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Terrorist Attacks on Israel Looking at the events that led up to the war, the main cause comes out to be increasing tensions between Israel and its neighboring Arab countries during the mid 1960s. Israel adopted a policy of diverting water from the Jordan River to the Negev Desert and this was became the cause of the tension.

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Milestones: 1961-1968 - Office of the Historian

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Vietnam War, (1954-75), a protracted conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam and its allies in South Vietnam, known as the Viet Cong, against the government of South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. Called the "American War" in Vietnam (or, in full, the "War Against the Americans to Save the Nation"), the war was also part of a larger regional conflict ( see Indochina wars) and a manifestation of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies.

At the heart of the conflict was the desire of North Vietnam, which had defeated the French colonial administration of Vietnam in 1954, to unify the entire country under a single communist regime modeled after those of the Soviet Union and China. The South Vietnamese government, on the other hand, fought to preserve a Vietnam more closely aligned with the West. U.S. military advisers, present in small numbers throughout the 1950s, were introduced on a large scale beginning in 1961, and active combat units were introduced in 1965. By 1969 more than 500,000 U.S. military personnel were stationed in Vietnam. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union and China poured weapons, supplies, and advisers into the North, which in turn provided support, political direction, and regular combat troops for the campaign in the South. The costs and casualties of the growing war proved too much for the United States to bear, and U.S. combat units were withdrawn by 1973. In 1975 South Vietnam fell to a full-scale invasion by the North.

The human costs of the long conflict were harsh for all involved. Not until 1995 did Vietnam release its official estimate of war dead: as many as 2 million civilians on both sides and some 1.1 million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters. The U.S. military has estimated that between 200,000 and 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers died in the war. In 1982 the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C., inscribed with the names of 57,939 members of U.S. armed forces who had died or were missing as a result of the war. Over the following years, additions to the list have brought the total past 58,200. (At least 100 names on the memorial are those of servicemen who were actually Canadian citizens.) Among other countries that fought for South Vietnam on a smaller scale, South Korea suffered more than 4,000 dead, Thailand about 350, Australia more than 500, and New Zealand some three dozen.

Vietnam emerged from the war as a potent military power within Southeast Asia, but its agriculture, business, and industry were disrupted, large parts of its countryside were scarred by bombs and defoliation and laced with land mines, and its cities and towns were heavily damaged. A mass exodus in 1975 of people loyal to the South Vietnamese cause was followed by another wave in 1978 of " boat people," refugees fleeing the economic restructuring imposed by the communist regime. Meanwhile, the United States, its military demoralized and its civilian electorate deeply divided, began a process of coming to terms with defeat in what had been its longest and most controversial war. The two countries finally resumed formal diplomatic relations in 1995.

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Vietnam War | Facts, Summary, Years, Timeline, Casualties, Combatants, & Facts

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Vietnam War (1954-75), conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam and its allies in South Vietnam, the Viet Cong, against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. It was part of a larger regional conflict as well as a manifestation of the Cold War.

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Railing at the prohibition to take revenge on North Korea for his humiliating defeat, MacArthur went public with his dissatisfaction, earning his dismissal by President Truman in April 1951. With Ridgway now commander in chief, the UN forces fought the Communists back and forth across Freed POW's, 1953 that line through June 1951, when the two sides agreed upon an agenda to negotiate an end to the war.

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It is said that when asked about what he thought of the French Revolution, the Chinese foreign minister Zhu Enlai replied that it is too early to say. This famous quip about the French Revolution can be applied also to the consequences of World War II. This article is the final installment in a series of articles which dealt with the greatest conflict ever to have been fought and provides a short-list of the far reaching consequences of this event. The list of consequences should not be viewed by the readers as being definitive and I strongly urge them to add more or comment on them.

Political consequences:

The end of World War II in September 1945 marked the end of an international system centered on the European Great Powers. At the end of World War II Germany, Italy and most of France lay in ruins while Great Britain was bankrupt. Now there were only two great powers left: the United States which at the end of the war had an intact economy, an intact army and a virtual monopoly on the manufacture and employment of nuclear weapons; the other great power left standing, but nevertheless scarred by the Nazi onslaught was the Soviet Union, which had a large and intact army and was in control of almost half the European continent.

The final demise of the European Great Power system led to the development of a bipolar world dominated by the flank powers: the United States and the USSR. The bipolar configuration of the international system was marked for the next 50 years by the Cold War - a political and ideological rivalry on a global scale between the US and the Soviet Union.

With the end of the war and the demise of the European Great Power System ( Kennedy, pp. 357-373) the process of decolonization occurred. The defeated powers which had overseas colonies or conquered overseas territories were forced by the allies to surrender them - this was the case of Italy and Japan. France and Great Britain, the great European colonizing nations were gradually forced to give up their empires due to the cost of maintaining colonies, the relative weakness of the metropolises in the international system, the development of violent and/or peaceful national liberation movements and foreign pressure coming from the US and USSR or from former colonies which supported the process of de-colonization.

The demise of the European Great Power System and the destruction caused by the war led the Western European nation to explore and then embark on the process of European integration. Behind the protection provided by the armed forces of the United States deployed in Europe to curtail a possible Soviet invasion, the foundations of the European Union could be laid.

A further consequence of the World War II was the redrawing and stabilization of the borders of Europe. Indeed most of today's European borders are the result of World War II, the best example being the Polish-German border. The basic configuration of the Europe's borders after World War II was confirmed by the signing of the Helsinki Accords in 1975. Despite post-Cold War evolutions in Europe, which saw the break-up of the Soviet Union, the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the peaceful dissolution of Czechoslovakia the vast majority of Europe's current borders originated as a consequence of World War II.

Another consequence of World War II was a renewed and somewhat misplaced trust in international institutions as a means to manage international politics. Despite the fact that it did not achieve its objectives of preventing conflict, the United Nations provided the necessary framework and the arena to discuss and debate some of the issues of the International System.

Economic consequences:

The only nation to emerge with its economy intact out of World War II was the United States. Europe and Asia had been devastated by the war and the Soviet Union did not fare better either in economic terms, despite being one of the winners. The economic order created at Bretton Woods has partially survived to this day, being overtaken however by new economic developments. It should also be understood that the circumstances that led to the creation of the Bretton Woods international economic regime were exceptional and unique. The Bretton Woods regime is responsible in many ways for the post-war economic development and prosperity.

The advent of the Cold War divided the world economy in two camps: free market economies and soviet style planed economies. The former colonies that gained their independence after World War II tried to combine the best of both worlds in order to develop and created economies that were neither free market nor planned (although most tended to be planned). The economic results in this case were dubious at best, the poor economic record of planned economies forcing the non-aligned nations to move towards market economies in the late 1980s.
George VIŞAN

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The End Game: the consequences of World War II

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It is said that when asked about what he thought of the French Revolution, the Chinese foreign minister Zhu Enlai replied that it is too early to say. This famous quip about the French Revolution can be applied also to the consequences of World War II.

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Home World History Wars, Battles & Armed Conflicts
Table of Contents

Also called:

Second World War

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Date:

September 3, 1939 - September 2, 1945

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What was the cause of World War II?

What countries fought in World War II?

Who were the leaders during World War II?

What were the turning points of World War II?

How did World War II end?

How many people died during World War II?

World War II, conflict that involved virtually every part of the world during the years 1939-45. The principal belligerents were the Axis powers- Germany, Italy, and Japan-and the Allies- France, Great Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and, to a lesser extent, China. The war was in many respects a continuation, after an uneasy 20-year hiatus, of the disputes left unsettled by World War I. The 40,000,000-50,000,000 deaths incurred in World War II make it the bloodiest conflict, as well as the largest war, in history.

Along with World War I, World War II was one of the great watersheds of 20th-century geopolitical history. It resulted in the extension of the Soviet Union's power to nations of eastern Europe, enabled a communist movement to eventually achieve power in China, and marked the decisive shift of power in the world away from the states of western Europe and toward the United States and the Soviet Union.
(Read Sir John Keegan's Britannica entry on the Normandy Invasion.)

Axis initiative and Allied reaction

The outbreak of war

By the early part of 1939 the German dictator Adolf Hitler had become determined to invade and occupy Poland. Poland, for its part, had guarantees of French and British military support should it be attacked by Germany. Hitler intended to invade Poland anyway, but first he had to neutralize the possibility that the Soviet Union would resist the invasion of its western neighbour. Secret negotiations led on August 23-24 to the signing of the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact in Moscow. In a secret protocol of this pact, the Germans and the Soviets agreed that Poland should be divided between them, with the western third of the country going to Germany and the eastern two-thirds being taken over by the U.S.S.R.

Pop Quiz: 17 Things to Know About World War II

Having achieved this cynical agreement, the other provisions of which stupefied Europe even without divulgence of the secret protocol, Hitler thought that Germany could attack Poland with no danger of Soviet or British intervention and gave orders for the invasion to start on August 26. News of the signing, on August 25, of a formal treaty of mutual assistance between Great Britain and Poland (to supersede a previous though temporary agreement) caused him to postpone the start of hostilities for a few days. He was still determined, however, to ignore the diplomatic efforts of the western powers to restrain him. Finally, at 12:40 pm on August 31, 1939, Hitler ordered hostilities against Poland to start at 4:45 the next morning. The invasion began as ordered. In response, Great Britain and France declared war on Germany on September 3, at 11:00 am and at 5:00 pm, respectively. World War II had begun.

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World War II | Facts, Summary, History, Dates, Combatants, & Causes

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World War II was a conflict that involved virtually every part of the world during 1939-45. The main combatants were the Axis powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan) and the Allies (France, Great Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and China). It was the bloodiest conflict, as well as the largest war, in human history.

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KS2 History learning resources for adults, children, parents and teachers organised by topic.

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The Second Sino-Japanese War began on July 7, 1937 and ended on September 9, 1945 after Japan surrendered to China and the Allied forces. This war ignited from a conflict between Chinese and Japanese troops for control of Chinese mainland. The Second Sino-Japanese War was the biggest Asian war in the twentieth century and contributed to more than 50 percent of casualties in the Pacific War. This war merged into World War II, after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941. In addition to that, the war played a big role in the ultimate Communist defeat of the Nationalist troops in 1949.

Origin

The origin of the Second Sino-Japanese War can be traced back to the First Sino-Japanese War that lasted from 1894 to 1895. After the end of First Sino-Japanese War which made Korea a part of Japan, Japan took her troops along a railroad from Manchuria to Korean ports-of-trade. This railroad was used to transport raw materials and other finished goods to Korean docks to be shipped to Japan. Japanese troops controlled this railway and wanted more free resources from Manchuria. Therefore, the Japanese started to attack Chinese troops and succeeded in gaining control of Manchuria. Although Chinese had insufficient resources, they managed to fight back especially after receiving economic help from the Soviet Union and the U.S.

Outbreak

The leader of Nationalist government's forces, Chiang Kai-Shek, was kidnapped in 1936 by Chang Hsueh-liang, commander of the Communist forces. Chiang was forced to agree to have a common anti-Japanese front as a condition for his release. With the two sides united, they were able to defend themselves against the Japanese in Manchuria and North China. This resulted in the commencement of the Second Sino-Japanese War.

Japan's Strategy

Japan aimed at taking all roads, railroads, and cities, in order to gain total control. Despite the fact that Japanese forces were controlling the eastern coastal region, guerrilla fighting continued in the conquered areas. The Chinese Nationalist government had been forced to retreat to a transitory capital at Chongqing. However, Japanese did not have the capability or intention of directly controlling all of China. So, they set up friendly "puppet" governments which would favor their interests. These governments were not very popular especially after Japan refused to negotiate with China's Communist Party.

China's Strategy

China, on the other hand, was not ready for war. Moreover, she had few mechanized divisions, lacked significant military industrial strength, and had no armor support. China largely depended on the League-of-Nations to come to her aid and offer countermeasures to Japan's assault. Furthermore, the Kuomintang, or the Chinese Nationalist Party, was caught up in an internal fight against the Communists. Due to all these disadvantages, the Chinese were forced to come up with a strategy which aimed at preserving their army strength. In addition to that, occupied areas would continue to exert pockets of resistance in order to disturb Japanese forces and make their control of China as difficult as possible.

Foreign Aid for China

After the Japanese left the League of Nations in 1933, they practiced an aggressive foreign policy whose aim was to create the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere. This offered a serious threat to the economic influences and interests of European powers and the U.S. in Asia. When the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out, the United State's government imposed economic sanctions on the Japanese. Japan turned to the Axis Powers and signed the Tripartite Pact with Italy and Germany in 1940. Japan managed to occupy French Indochina in mid 1941, but the U.S. continued to avoid any direct confrontation. However, Japan's imperial goals in the Pacific led to an untimely collision with U.S.A. The United States responded by imposing an oil ban which would suffocate Japan's economy. For this reason, Japan strategized on how to remove the U.S. from the Pacific region so as to control the whole of Southeast Asia.

When Japanese bombed the Pearl Harbor, the United states and China declared war against Japan. This merged the second Sino-Japanese War into World War II. China also declared war on Italy and Germany. Eight hours after the bombing, Japan attacked Hong Kong and destroyed the Allied forces' aircrafts. Britain and the U.S. offered financial support to China as well as setting up military air bases on the mainland. This support from Britain and the U.S. relieved China, and forced Japan to divert troops elsewhere. Nonetheless, China's military strength continued to worsen until April, 1945. The Japanese seemed unstoppable, especially after sinking Britain's two biggest warships in Singapore during an air attack on December 10, 1941.

Japan's Surrender

With help from the western allies, China managed to launch a successful offensive on August 14 1945, at Zhijiang. This was a big blow to the Japanese who had been winning consistent victories. The U.S.A. dropped an atomic-bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Three days later, the Soviet Union attacked the Japanese in Manchuria. On August 9, 1945, the U.S. dropped another atomic bomb, this time on Nagasaki. Emperor Hirohito of Japan officially surrendered to the Allies on August 15, 1945. The Soviet Union on the other hand continued to attack the Kwantung Army (the main Japanese fighting force) and destroyed them completely within two weeks. Japan's official surrender to the Allies was signed on September 2, 1945 aboard the USS Missouri battleship.

Now that the Allied Forces had won the war, Gen. Douglas ordered all Japanese troops within China (except those in Manchuria), French Indochina and Formosa to surrender to Chiang Kai-Shek. The Japanese forces in China surrendered officially on September 9, 1945, marking the end of the 2nd Sino-Japanese War as well as World War II. In addition to that, Taiwan, the Pescadores and Manchuria were restored to China, as per the conditions of the Cairo Declaration.

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Second Sino-Japanese War (1937 - 1945) Summary & Facts

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The Second Sino-Japanese War began on July 7, 1937 and ended on September 9, 1945 after Japan surrendered to China and the Allied forces. This war ignited from a conflict between Chinese and Japanese troops for control of Chinese mainland.

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World War I, also known as the Great War, began in 1914 after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. His murder catapulted into a war across Europe that lasted until 1918. During the conflict, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire (the Central Powers) fought against Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Romania, Japan and the United States (the Allied Powers). Thanks to new military technologies and the horrors of trench warfare, World War I saw unprecedented levels of carnage and destruction. By the time the war was over and the Allied Powers claimed victory, more than 16 million people-soldiers and civilians alike-were dead.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand

Tensions had been brewing throughout Europe-especially in the troubled Balkan region of southeast Europe-for years before World War I actually broke out.

A number of alliances involving European powers, the Ottoman Empire, Russia and other parties had existed for years, but political instability in the Balkans (particularly Bosnia, Serbia and Herzegovina) threatened to destroy these agreements.

The spark that ignited World War I was struck in Sarajevo, Bosnia, where Archduke Franz Ferdinand -heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire-was shot to death along with his wife, Sophie, by the Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip on June 28, 1914. Princip and other nationalists were struggling to end Austro-Hungarian rule over Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The assassination of Franz Ferdinand set off a rapidly escalating chain of events: Austria-Hungary, like many countries around the world, blamed the Serbian government for the attack and hoped to use the incident as justification for settling the question of Serbian nationalism once and for all.
READ MORE: 8 Events Leading to the Outbreak of World War I
Kaiser Wilhelm II

Because mighty Russia supported Serbia, Austria-Hungary waited to declare war until its leaders received assurance from German leader Kaiser Wilhelm II that Germany would support their cause. Austro-Hungarian leaders feared that a Russian intervention would involve Russia's ally, France, and possibly Great Britain as well.

On July 5, Kaiser Wilhelm secretly pledged his support, giving Austria-Hungary a so-called carte blanche, or "blank check" assurance of Germany's backing in the case of war. The Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary then sent an ultimatum to Serbia, with such harsh terms as to make it almost impossible to accept.

World War I Begins

Convinced that Austria-Hungary was readying for war, the Serbian government ordered the Serbian army to mobilize and appealed to Russia for assistance. On July 28, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, and the tenuous peace between Europe's great powers quickly collapsed.

Within a week, Russia, Belgium, France, Great Britain and Serbia had lined up against Austria-Hungary and Germany, and World War I had begun.
READ MORE: World War I Battles: Timeline
The Western Front

According to an aggressive military strategy known as the Schlieffen Plan (named for its mastermind, German Field Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen), Germany began fighting World War I on two fronts, invading France through neutral Belgium in the west and confronting Russia in the east.

On August 4, 1914, German troops crossed the border into Belgium. In the first battle of World War I, the Germans assaulted the heavily fortified city of Liege, using the most powerful weapons in their arsenal-enormous siege cannons-to capture the city by August 15. The Germans left death and destruction in their wake as they advanced through Belgium toward France, shooting civilians and executing a Belgian priest they had accused of inciting civilian resistance.

First Battle of the Marne

In the First Battle of the Marne, fought from September 6-9, 1914, French and British forces confronted the invading Germany army, which had by then penetrated deep into northeastern France, within 30 miles of Paris. The Allied troops checked the German advance and mounted a successful counterattack, driving the Germans back to north of the Aisne River.

The defeat meant the end of German plans for a quick victory in France. Both sides dug into trenches, and the Western Front was the setting for a hellish war of attrition that would last more than three years.

Particularly long and costly battles in this campaign were fought at Verdun (February-December 1916) and the Battle of the Somme (July-November 1916). German and French troops suffered close to a million casualties in the Battle of Verdun alone.
READ MORE: 10 Things You May Not Know About the Battle of Verdun
World War I Books and Art

The bloodshed on the battlefields of the Western Front, and the difficulties its soldiers had for years after the fighting had ended, inspired such works of art as " All Quiet on the Western Front" by Erich Maria Remarque and " In Flanders Fields"by Canadian doctor Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae. In the latter poem, McCrae writes from the perspective of the fallen soldiers:

To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Published in 1915, the poem inspired the use of the poppy as a symbol of remembrance.

Visual artists like Otto Dix of Germany and British painters Wyndham Lewis, Paul Nash and David Bomberg used their firsthand experience as soldiers in World War I to create their art, capturing the anguish of trench warfare and exploring the themes of technology, violence and landscapes decimated by war.
READ MORE: How World War I Changed Literature

The Eastern Front

On the Eastern Front of World War I, Russian forces invaded the German-held regions of East Prussia and Poland, but were stopped short by German and Austrian forces at the Battle of Tannenberg in late August 1914.

Despite that victory, Russia's assault had forced Germany to move two corps from the Western Front to the Eastern, contributing to the German loss in the Battle of the Marne.

Combined with the fierce Allied resistance in France, the ability of Russia's huge war machine to mobilize relatively quickly in the east ensured a longer, more grueling conflict instead of the quick victory Germany had hoped to win under the Schlieffen Plan.
READ MORE: Was Germany Doomed by the Schlieffen Plan?
Russian Revolution

From 1914 to 1916, Russia's army mounted several offensives on World War I's Eastern Front, but was unable to break through German lines.

Defeat on the battlefield, combined with economic instability and the scarcity of food and other essentials, led to mounting discontent among the bulk of Russia's population, especially the poverty-stricken workers and peasants. This increased hostility was directed toward the imperial regime of Czar Nicholas II and his unpopular German-born wife, Alexandra.

Russia's simmering instability exploded in the Russian Revolution of 1917, spearheaded by Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks, which ended czarist rule and brought a halt to Russian participation in World War I.

Russia reached an armistice with the Central Powers in early December 1917, freeing German troops to face the remaining Allies on the Western Front.

America Enters World War I

At the outbreak of fighting in 1914, the United States remained on the sidelines of World War I, adopting the policy of neutrality favored by President Woodrow Wilson while continuing to engage in commerce and shipping with European countries on both sides of the conflict.

Neutrality, however, was increasing difficult to maintain in the face of Germany's unchecked submarine aggression against neutral ships, including those carrying passengers. In 1915, Germany declared the waters surrounding the British Isles to be a war zone, and German U-boats sunk several commercial and passenger vessels, including some U.S. ships.

Widespread protest over the sinking by U-boat of the British ocean liner Lusitania-traveling from New York to Liverpool, England with hundreds of American passengers onboard-in May 1915 helped turn the tide of American public opinion against Germany. In February 1917, Congress passed a $250 million arms appropriations bill intended to make the United States ready for war.

Germany sunk four more U.S. merchant ships the following month, and on April 2 Woodrow Wilson appeared before Congress and called for a declaration of war against Germany.
READ MORE: Should the US Have Entered World War I?
Gallipoli Campaign

With World War I having effectively settled into a stalemate in Europe, the Allies attempted to score a victory against the Ottoman Empire, which entered the conflict on the side of the Central Powers in late 1914.

After a failed attack on the Dardanelles (the strait linking the Sea of Marmara with the Aegean Sea), Allied forces led by Britain launched a large-scale land invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula in April 1915. The invasion also proved a dismal failure, and in January 1916 Allied forces staged a full retreat from the shores of the peninsula after suffering 250,000 casualties.

Did you know? The young Winston Churchill, then first lord of the British Admiralty, resigned his command after the failed Gallipoli campaign in 1916, accepting a commission with an infantry battalion in France.

British-led forces also combated the Ottoman Turks in Egypt and Mesopotamia, while in northern Italy, Austrian and Italian troops faced off in a series of 12 battles along the Isonzo River, located at the border between the two nations.

Battle of the Isonzo

The First Battle of the Isonzo took place in the late spring of 1915, soon after Italy's entrance into the war on the Allied side. In the Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo, also known as the Battle of Caporetto (October 1917), German reinforcements helped Austria-Hungary win a decisive victory.

After Caporetto, Italy's allies jumped in to offer increased assistance. British and French-and later, American-troops arrived in the region, and the Allies began to take back the Italian Front.

World War I at Sea

In the years before World War I, the superiority of Britain's Royal Navy was unchallenged by any other nation's fleet, but the Imperial German Navy had made substantial strides in closing the gap between the two naval powers. Germany's strength on the high seas was also aided by its lethal fleet of U-boat submarines.

After the Battle of Dogger Bank in January 1915, in which the British mounted a surprise attack on German ships in the North Sea, the German navy chose not to confront Britain's mighty Royal Navy in a major battle for more than a year, preferring to rest the bulk of its naval strategy on its U-boats.

The biggest naval engagement of World War I, the Battle of Jutland (May 1916) left British naval superiority on the North Sea intact, and Germany would make no further attempts to break an Allied naval blockade for the remainder of the war.

World War I Planes

World War I was the first major conflict to harness the power of planes. Though not as impactful as the British Royal Navy or Germany's U-boats, the use of planes in World War I presaged their later, pivotal role in military conflicts around the globe.

At the dawn of World War I, aviation was a relatively new field; the Wright brothers took their first sustained flight just eleven years before, in 1903. Aircraft were initially used primarily for reconnaissance missions. During the First Battle of the Marne, information passed from pilots allowed the allies to exploit weak spots in the German lines, helping the Allies to push Germany out of France.

The first machine guns were successfully mounted on planes in June of 1912 in the United States, but were imperfect; if timed incorrectly, a bullet could easily destroy the propeller of the plane it came from. The Morane-Saulnier L, a French plane, provided a solution: The propeller was armored with deflector wedges that prevented bullets from hitting it. The Morane-Saulnier Type L was used by the French, the British Royal Flying Corps (part of the Army), the British Royal Navy Air Service and the Imperial Russian Air Service. The British Bristol Type 22 was another popular model used for both reconnaissance work and as a fighter plane.

Dutch inventor Anthony Fokker improved upon the French deflector system in 1915. His "interrupter" synchronized the firing of the guns with the plane's propeller to avoid collisions. Though his most popular plane during WWI was the single-seat Fokker Eindecker, Fokker created over 40 kinds of airplanes for the Germans.

The Allies debuted the Handley-Page HP O/400, the first two-engine bomber, in 1915. As aerial technology progressed, long-range heavy bombers like Germany's Gotha G.V. (first introduced in 1917) were used to strike cities like London. Their speed and maneuverability proved to be far deadlier than Germany's earlier Zeppelin raids.

By war's end, the Allies were producing five times more aircraft than the Germans. On April 1, 1918, the British created the Royal Air Force, or RAF, the first air force to be a separate military branch independent from the navy or army.

Second Battle of the Marne

With Germany able to build up its strength on the Western Front after the armistice with Russia, Allied troops struggled to hold off another German offensive until promised reinforcements from the United States were able to arrive.

On July 15, 1918, German troops launched what would become the last German offensive of the war, attacking French forces (joined by 85,000 American troops as well as some of the British Expeditionary Force) in the Second Battle of the Marne. The Allies successfully pushed back the German offensive and launched their own counteroffensive just three days later.

After suffering massive casualties, Germany was forced to call off a planned offensive further north, in the Flanders region stretching between France and Belgium, which was envisioned as Germany's best hope of victory.

The Second Battle of the Marne turned the tide of war decisively towards the Allies, who were able to regain much of France and Belgium in the months that followed.

Role of the 92nd and 93rd Divisions

By the time World War I began, there were four all-Black regiments in the U.S. military: the 24th and 25th Infantry and the 9th and 10th Cavalry. All four regiments comprised of celebrated soldiers who fought in the Spanish-American War and American-Indian Wars, and served in the American territories. But they were not deployed for overseas combat in World War I.

Blacks serving alongside white soldiers on the front lines in Europe was inconceivable to the U.S. military. Instead, the first African American troops sent overseas served in segregated labor battalions, restricted to menial roles in the Army and Navy, and shutout of the Marines, entirely. Their duties mostly included unloading ships, transporting materials from train depots, bases and ports, digging trenches, cooking and maintenance, removing barbed wire and inoperable equipment, and burying soldiers.

Facing criticism from the Black community and civil rights organizations for its quotas and treatment of African American soldiers in the war effort, the military formed two Black combat units in 1917, the 92nd and 93rd Divisions. Trained separately and inadequately in the United States, the divisions fared differently in the war. The 92nd faced criticism for their performance in the Meuse-Argonne campaign in September 1918. The 93rd Division, however, had more success.

With dwindling armies, France asked America for reinforcements, and General John Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Forces, sent regiments in the 93 Division to over, since France had experience fighting alongside Black soldiers from their Senegalese French Colonial army. The 93 Division's, 369 regiment, nicknamed the Harlem Hellfighters , fought so gallantly, with a total of 191 days on the front lines, longer than any AEF regiment, that France awarded them the Croix de Guerre for their heroism. More than 350,000 African American soldiers would serve in World War I in various capacities.
READ MORE: A Harlem Hellfighter's Searing Tales from the WWII Trenches
Toward Armistice

By the fall of 1918, the Central Powers were unraveling on all fronts.

Despite the Turkish victory at Gallipoli, later defeats by invading forces and an Arab revolt that destroyed the Ottoman economy and devastated its land, and the Turks signed a treaty with the Allies in late October 1918.

Austria-Hungary, dissolving from within due to growing nationalist movements among its diverse population, reached an armistice on November 4. Facing dwindling resources on the battlefield, discontent on the homefront and the surrender of its allies, Germany was finally forced to seek an armistice on November 11, 1918, ending World War I.
READ MORE: Why World War I Ended With an Armistice Instead of a Surrender
Treaty of Versailles

At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, Allied leaders stated their desire to build a post-war world that would safeguard itself against future conflicts of such devastating scale.

Some hopeful participants had even begun calling World War I "the War to End All Wars." But the Treaty of Versailles, signed on June 28, 1919, would not achieve that lofty goal.

Saddled with war guilt, heavy reparations and denied entrance into the League of Nations, Germany felt tricked into signing the treaty, having believed any peace would be a "peace without victory," as put forward by President Wilson in his famous Fourteen Points speech of January 1918.

As the years passed, hatred of the Versailles treaty and its authors settled into a smoldering resentment in Germany that would, two decades later, be counted among the causes of World War II.
READ MORE: The Treaty of Versailles Punished Germany With These Provisions
World War I Casualties

World War I took the lives of more than 9 million soldiers; 21 million more were wounded. Civilian casualties numbered close to 10 million. The two nations most affected were Germany and France, each of which sent some 80 percent of their male populations between the ages of 15 and 49 into battle.
READ MORE: The Perilous But Critical Role of World War I Runners
The political disruption surrounding World War I also contributed to the fall of four venerable imperial dynasties: Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia and Turkey.

Legacy of World War I

World War I brought about massive social upheaval, as millions of women entered the workforce to replace men who went to war and those who never came back. The first global war also helped to spread one of the world's deadliest global pandemics, the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918, which killed an estimated 20 to 50 million people.

World War I has also been referred to as "the first modern war." Many of the technologies now associated with military conflict-machine guns, tanks, aerial combat and radio communications-were introduced on a massive scale during World War I.

The severe effects that chemical weapons such as mustard gas and phosgene had on soldiers and civilians during World War I galvanized public and military attitudes against their continued use. The Geneva Convention agreements, signed in 1925, restricted the use of chemical and biological agents in warfare and remains in effect today.

Photo Galleries

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World War I began in 1914, after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and lasted until 1918. During the conflict, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire (the Central Powers) fought against Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Romania, Japan and the United States (the Allied Powers).

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Russian Civil War, (1918-20), conflict in which the Red Army successfully defended the newly formed Bolshevik government led by Vladimir I. Lenin against various Russian and interventionist anti-Bolshevik armies.

Seeds of conflict

Russia's disastrous performance in World War I was one of the primary causes of the Russian Revolution of 1917, which swept aside the Romanov dynasty and installed a government that was eager to end the fighting. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (1918) whereby Russia yielded large portions of its territory to Germany caused a breach between the Bolsheviks ( Communists) and the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, who thereupon left the coalition. In the next months there was a marked drawing together of two main groups of Russian opponents of Lenin: (1) the non-Bolshevik left, who had been finally alienated from Lenin by his dissolution of the Constituent Assembly and (2) the rightist whites, whose main asset was the Volunteer Army in the Kuban steppes. This army, which had survived great hardships in the winter of 1917-18 and which came under the command of Gen. Anton I. Denikin (April 1918), was now a fine fighting force, though small in numbers.

At the same time, the Western Allies, desperately pressed by a new German offensive in northern France in the spring of 1918, were eager to create another front in the east by reviving at least a part of the Russian army. In March 1918 a small British force was landed at Murmansk with the consent of the local soviet. On April 5 Japanese forces landed at Vladivostok, without any approval.

A further factor was the Czechoslovak Legion, composed of Czech and Slovak deserters from the Austro-Hungarian army, whom previous Russian governments had allowed to form their own units. In March 1918 the Bolshevik government agreed to let these units leave Russia by the Far East, but in May violent incidents took place during the evacuation, and on May 29 Leon Trotsky, commissar for war, ordered them to surrender their arms. They refused, defeated attempts of the local soviets to disarm them, and took control of the Trans-Siberian Railroad. In the vacuum created by this action, two anti-Bolshevik authorities appeared: the West Siberian Commissariat, of predominantly liberal complexion, based at Omsk; and the Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly, composed of Socialist Revolutionaries, based at Samara.

These events caused the Moscow government to crack down heavily on non-Bolshevik socialists. The Menshevik and Socialist Revolutionary deputies were expelled from the central and local soviets and prevented from engaging in any organized political activity. Eventually, in September, the government proclaimed a campaign of "Red terror," including shooting hostages and giving increased powers to the Cheka (political police) of summary arrest, trial, and execution of suspects.

Assassination of the tsar and the battle for Ukraine

Among the early victims of the civil war, which may be considered to have begun in earnest in June 1918, were the former imperial family. Tsar Nicholas II, his wife, and his children had been moved in August 1917 to Tobolsk and in the spring of 1918 to Yekaterinburg. With the development of anti-Bolshevik forces in Siberia, the local soviet feared that Nicholas might be liberated. In the night of July 16-17, 1918, all the members of the family were taken to the cellar of their prison house and shot.

In the late summer the Communists' hastily reorganized armed forces, the Red Army, recovered most of eastern European Russia. At Omsk, which became the centre of the anti-Communists, a new army was hastily trained under the command of Adm. Aleksandr V. Kolchak, with the assistance of British and U.S. military missions. Meanwhile the British forces at Murmansk were at war with the Communists. In August further British forces landed at Arkhangelsk, and the Japanese forces in the Far Eastern territories of Russia had been greatly reinforced.

In Omsk relations between the Socialist Revolutionaries and Kolchak steadily deteriorated. Kolchak and his officers disliked the left-wing views of the politicians and found it difficult to distinguish between Socialist Revolutionaries and Communists, lumping together all "Reds" as enemies. The conflict came to a head when, on November 18, 1918, Kolchak set up his own dictatorship. Kolchak's coup d'état coincided with the collapse of Germany and the end of the European war.

At the beginning of 1919 Red Army forces invaded Ukraine. The remnants of the forces of the Socialist Revolutionaries, headed by Symon Petlyura, retreated westward, where they joined forces with Ukrainian nationalist forces from formerly Austrian Galicia. For the next months the mixed Petlyurist-Galician forces held parts of Ukraine; other areas were in the hands of anarchist bands led by Nestor Makhno; and the main cities were held by the Communists, ruling not directly from Moscow but through a puppet Ukrainian "government" in Kharkov (now Kharkiv). The defeat of Germany had also opened the Black Sea to the Allies, and in mid-December 1918 some mixed forces under French command were landed at Odessa and Sevastopol, and in the next months at Kherson and Nikolayev.

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Russian Civil War | Casualties, Causes, Combatants, & Outcome

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Russian Civil War (1918-20), conflict in which the Red Army successfully defended the newly formed Bolshevik government led by Vladimir Lenin against various Russian and interventionist anti-Bolshevik armies. The Bolshevik victory ensured the supremacy of the Russian Communists in the nascent Soviet Union.

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A chronology of key events:

1918 October - Arab troops led by Emir Feisal, and supported by British forces, capture Damascus, ending 400 years of Ottoman rule.

1919 - Emir Feisal backs Arab self-rule at the Versailles peace conference, following the defeat of Germany and the Ottoman Empire in World War I.

1920 March - National Congress elected the previous year proclaims Emir Feisal King of Syria from the Taurus mountains of Turkey to the Sinai desert in Egypt.

French control

1920 June - San Remo conference puts Syria-Lebanon under a French mandate and Palestine under British control. King Feisal flees abroad ahead of French occupation forces the following month.

1920-21 - Syria is divided into three autonomous regions by the French, with separate areas for the Alawis on the coast and the Druze in the south. Lebanon is separated off entirely.

Uprising

1925-6 - Nationalist agitation against French rule develops into uprising. French forces bombard Damascus.

1928 - Elections held for a constituent assembly, which drafts a constitution for Syria. French High Commissioner rejects the proposals, sparking nationalist protests.

1936 - France agrees to work towards Syrian independence and dissolves the autonomous regions, but maintains military and economic dominance and keeps Lebanon as a separate state.

1941 - British and Free French troops occupy Syria. General De Gaulle promises to end the French mandate.

1943 - Veteran nationalist Shukri al-Kuwatli is elected first president of Syria, leads the country to full independence three years later.

Baath Party founded

1947 - Michel Aflaq and Salah-al-Din al-Bitar found the Arab Socialist Baath Party.

1949-1954 - Civilian government disrupted by repeated coups.

1955 - Shukri al-Kuwatli returns to power, seeks closer ties with Egypt.

1958 February - Syria and Egypt form the United Arab Republic. Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser heads the new state. He orders the dissolution of Syrian political parties, to the dismay of the Baath party, which had campaigned for union.

Israel occupied the Golan Heights in 1967 during the Six Day War
Golan Heights profile
1961 September - Discontent with Egyptian domination prompts a group of Syrian army officers to seize power in Damascus and dissolve the union.

Rise of Assad

1963 March - Baathist army officers seize power.

1966 February - Salah Jadid leads an internal coup against the civilian Baath leadership. Hafez al-Assad becomes defence minister.

1967 June - Israeli forces seize the Golan Heights from Syria and destroy much of Syria's air force in the Six Day War with Egypt, Jordan and Syria.

1970 November - Hafez al-Assad overthrows president Nur al-Din al-Atasi and imprisons Salah Jadid.

1973 - Rioting breaks out after President Assad drops the constitutional requirement that the president must be a Muslim. Suppressed by the army.

War with Israel

1973 October - Syria and Egypt go to war with Israel, but fail to retake the Golan Heights seized in 1967.

1975 February - President Assad says he's prepared to make peace with Israel in return for an Israeli withdrawal from "all occupied Arab land".

1976 June - Syrian army intervenes in the Lebanese civil war to ensure that the status quo is maintained, keeping its Maronite Christian allies in a position of strength.

Muslim Brotherhood rises

Hafez al-Assad brought stability, but did so through repression
Obituary: Syria's shrewd master
1980 - After the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Muslim groups instigate uprisings and riots in Aleppo, Homs and Hama.

1980 September - Start of Iran-Iraq war. Syria backs Iran, in keeping with the traditional rivalry between Baathist leaderships in Iraq and Syria.

1981 December - Israel formally annexes the Golan Heights.

Uprising in Hama

1982 February - Muslim Brotherhood uprising in the city of Hama suppressed by army, tens of thousands of civilians killed.

1982 June - Israel invades Lebanon and attacks the Syrian army, forcing it to withdraw from several areas. Israel attacks the PLO base in Beirut.

1983 May - Lebanon and Israel announce the end of hostilities. Syrian forces remain in Lebanon.

1984 - President's brother Rifaat promoted to vice-president.

Return to Lebanon

1987 February - President Assad sends troops into Lebanon for a second time to enforce a ceasefire in Beirut.

1990 - Iraq invades Kuwait; Syria joins the US-led coalition against Iraq. This leads to improved relations with Egypt and the US.

1991 October - Syria participates in the Middle East peace conference in Madrid and holds talks with Israel that founder over the Golan Heights issue.

1994 - President Assad's son Basil, who was likely to succeed his father, is killed in a car accident.

1998 - President Assad's brother Rifaat is dismissed as vice-president.

1999 December - Further talks with Israel over the Golan Heights begin in the US, but are indefinitely postponed the following month.

Assad succession

2000 June - President Assad dies and is succeeded by his second son, Bashar.

2000 November - The new president orders the release of 600 political prisoners.

2001 April - Outlawed Muslim Brotherhood says it will resume political activity, 20 years after its leaders were forced to flee.

2001 June - Syrian troops evacuate Beirut, redeploy in other parts of Lebanon, following pressure from Lebanese critics of Syria's presence.

2001 September - Detention of MPs and other pro-reform activists, crushing hopes of a break with the authoritarian past of Hafez al-Assad. Arrest continue, punctuated by occasional amnesties, over the following decade.

Tensions with US

2002 May - Senior US official includes Syria in a list of states that make-up an "axis of evil", first listed by President Bush in January. Undersecretary for State John Bolton says Damascus is acquiring weapons of mass destruction.

Syria and Lebanon

The killing of former Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri sparked anti-Syrian protets in Beirut
Syria withdrawal: Lebanese speak
2004 January - President Assad visits Turkey, the first Syrian leader to do so. The trip marks the end of decades of frosty relations, although ties sour again after the popular uprising in 2011.

2004 May - US imposes economic sanctions on Syria over what it calls its support for terrorism and failure to stop militants entering Iraq.

2005 February-April- Tensions with the US escalate after the killing of former Lebanese PM Hariri in Beirut. Washington cites Syrian influence in Lebanon. Damascus is urged to withdraw its forces from Lebanon, which it does by April.

Mystery site

Israeli forces destroyed what they said was a nuclear facility under construction. Syria says it was an unused military facility

Diplomatic overtures

2006 November - Iraq and Syria restore diplomatic relations after nearly a quarter century.

2007 March - European Union relaunches dialogue with Syria.

2007 April - US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi meets President Assad in Damascus. She is the highest-placed US politician to visit Syria in recent years. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice meets Foreign Minister Walid Muallem the following month in the first contact at this level for two years.

2007 September - Israel carries out an aerial strike against a nuclear facility under construction in northern Syria.

2008 July - President Assad meets French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris. The visit signals the end of the diplomatic isolation by the West that followed the assassination of former Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri in 2005.

2008 October - Syria establishes diplomatic relations with Lebanon for first time since both countries established independence in 1940s.

2011 protests

Pro-democracy protests erupted in 2011; the government responded with violence

2009 March - Jeffrey Feltman, acting assistant US secretary of state for the Near East, visits Damascus with White House national security aide Daniel Shapiro in first high-level US diplomatic mission for nearly four years. Meets Foreign Minister Walid Muallem.

Trading launches on Syria's stock exchange in a gesture towards liberalising the state-controlled economy.

2010 May - US renews sanctions against Syria, saying that it supports terrorist groups, seeks weapons of mass destruction and has provided Lebanon's Hezbollah with Scud missiles in violation of UN resolutions.

Nationwide uprising

2011 March - Security forces shoot dead protestors in southern city of Deraa demanding release of political prisoners, triggering violent unrest that steadily spread nationwide over the following months.

President Assad announces conciliatory measures, releasing dozens of political prisoners, dismissing government, lifting 48-year-old state of emergency.

Civil war

The uprising against President Assad gradually turned into a full-scale civil war

2011 May - Army tanks enter Deraa, Banyas, Homs and suburbs of Damascus in an effort to crush anti-regime protests. US and European Union tighten sanctions.

Opposition rifts

Divisions and concern about the role of Islamists have bedevilled the opposition
Guide to the Syrian opposition
2011 June - The IAEA nuclear watchdog decides to report Syria to the UN Security Council over its alleged covert nuclear programme reactor programme. The structure housing the alleged reactor was destroyed in an Israeli air raid in 2007.

Opposition organises

2011 July - President Assad sacks the governor of the northern province of Hama after mass demonstration there, eventually sending in troops to restore order at the cost of scores of lives.

2011 October - New Syrian National Council says it has forged a common front of internal and exiled opposition activists.

2011 November - Arab League votes to suspend Syria, accusing it of failing to implement an Arab peace plan, and imposes sanctions.

Chemical arms claims

Government forces have faced - and denied - repeated allegations of chemical weapons use

2012 February - Government steps up the bombardment of Homs and other cities.

2012 March - UN Security Council endorses non-binding peace plan drafted by UN envoy Kofi Annan. China and Russia agree to support the plan after an earlier, tougher draft is modified.

2012 June - Turkey changes rules of engagement after Syria shoots down a Turkish plane, declaring that if Syrian troops approach Turkey's borders they will be seen as a military threat.

2012 July - Free Syria Army blows up three security chiefs in Damascus and seizes parts of the city of Aleppo in the north.

2012 August - Prime Minister Riad Hijab defects, US President Obama warns that use of chemical weapons would tilt the US towards intervention.

2012 October - Fire in Aleppo destroys much of the historic market as fighting and bomb attacks continue in various cities.

2012 November - National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces formed in Qatar, excludes Islamist militias. Arab League stops short of full recognition.

2012 December - US, Britain, France, Turkey and Gulf states formally recognise opposition National Coalition as "legitimate representative" of Syrian people.

2013 January - Syria accuses Israel of bombing military base near Damascus, where Hezbollah was suspected of assembling a convoy of anti-aircraft missiles bound for Lebanon.

Rise of Islamists

2013 September - UN weapons inspectors conclude that chemical weapons were used in an attack on the Ghouta area of Damascus in August that killed about 300 people, but do not allocate responsibility. Government allows UN to destroy chemical weapons stocks, process complete by June 2014.

2013 December - US and Britain suspend "non-lethal" support for rebels in northern Syria after reports that Islamist rebels seized bases of Western-backed Free Syrian Army.

2014 January-February - UN-brokered peace talks in Geneva fail, largely because Syrian authorities refuse to discuss a transitional government.

2014 March - Syrian Army and Hezbollah forces recapture Yabroud, the last rebel stronghold near the Lebanese border.

2014 June - Islamic State of Iraq and Syria militants declare "caliphate" in territory from Aleppo to eastern Iraqi province of Diyala.

2014 September - US and five Arab countries launch air strikes against Islamic State around Aleppo and Raqqa.

2015 January - Kurdish forces push Islamic State out of Kobane on Turkish border after four months of fighting.

2015 May - Islamic State fighters seize the ancient city of Palmyra in central Syria and proceed to destroy many monuments at pre-Islamic World Heritage site.

Jaish al-Fatah (Army of Conquest) Islamist rebel alliance takes control of Idlib Province, putting pressure on government's coastal stronghold of Latakia.

Russian intervention

2015 September - Russia carries out its first air strikes in Syria, saying they target the Islamic State group, but the West and Syrian opposition say it overwhelmingly targets anti-Assad rebels.

2015 December - Syrian Army allows rebels to evacuate remaining area of Homs, returning Syria's third-largest city to government control after four years.

2016 March - Syrian government forces retake Palmyra from Islamic State with Russian air assistance, only to be driven out again in December.

2016 August - Turkish troops cross into Syria to help rebel groups push back so-called Islamic State militants and Kurdish-led rebels from a section of the two countries' border.

2016 December - Government troops, backed by Russian air power and Iranian-sponsored militias, recapture Aleppo, the country's largest city, depriving the rebels of their last major urban stronghold.

2017 January - Russia, Iran and Turkey agree to enforce a ceasefire between the government and non-Islamist rebels, after talks between the two sides in Kazakhstan.

US intervenes

2017 April - US President Donald Trump orders a missile attack on an airbase from which Syrian government planes allegedly staged a chemical weapons attack on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun.

2017 May - US decides to arm the YPG Kurdish Popular Protection Units. These fight alongside the main opposition Syrian Democratic Forces, which captures the important Tabqa dam from Islamic State.

2017 June - US shoots down Syrian fighter jet near Raqqa after it allegedly dropped bombs near US-backed rebel Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

2017 July - The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and the Syrian army launch a military operation to dislodge jihadist groups from the Arsal area, near the Lebanese-Syrian border.

2017 October - The Islamic State group is driven from Raqqa, its de-facto capital in Syria.

2017 November - Syrian army takes full control of Deir al-Zour from Islamic State. Syrian and Iraqi forces put IS under pressure in the dwindling areas still under its control.

2017 December - Russian President Putin visits, declaring mission accomplished for his forces in the battle against Islamic State.

Government troops, with Russian support, continue reclaiming areas from rebels in the north-western Idlib province.

2018 January - Turkey launches an assault on northern Syria to oust Kurdish rebels controlling the area around Afrin. It seizes the town in March.

2018 February - Government launches a ferocious assault on Eastern Ghouta, the final rebel-held enclave near Damascus.

2018 April - Claims of a new chemical attack in Eastern Ghouta's main town of Douma prompt the US, Britain and France to carry out a wave of punitive strikes on Syrian targets.

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A chronology of key events: 1918 October - Arab troops led by Emir Feisal, and supported by British forces, capture Damascus, ending 400 years of Ottoman rule. 1919 - Emir Feisal backs Arab self-rule at the Versailles peace conference, following the defeat of Germany and the Ottoman Empire in World War I.

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Australian troops in Vietnam

Major Wars and Conflicts of The 20th Century

The 20th Century was the bloodiest, costliest century of warfare in human history. Two world wars, and a large number of major revolutions, along with significant social, political, and economic upheavals made the period from 1901 to 2000 of great importance in a historical and military sense.

Below is a list (with links) of the major wars of the twentieth century. Any such list is by nature somewhat subjective, but the wars and conflicts listed below all had signifcant importance in history. This list of 20th Century wars is presented in rough chronological order, with the earliest listed first, and descending toward the also war-filled 21st Century.

The Second Boer War (1899-1902)--Britain vs. The Boer Republics (Orange Free State and Transvaal) in what is now South Africa.

Somali "Mad Mullah" Jihad (1899-1905)--Somali tribesmen led by religious leader Muhammad ibn Abd Allah Hasan waged a desert guerrilla war against Britain, Italy and Ethiopia. Following repeated defeats by the Somalis, the colonial powers offered him territory in Italian Somaliland in exchange for peace. He resumed his war in 1908 and harassed the occupiers of his country until 1920.

Philippine-American War (1899-1902)--Originally called the "Philippine Uprising", this was a war of independence fought by the Filipinos against the occupying American military. Filipino resistance was ruthlessly crushed.

The Boxer Rebellion (1899-1900)-- The Chinese secret religious and nationalistic Society of the Righteous Harmonious Fists (Boxers), initiated a rebellion against both foreign colonizers, missionaries and their own government in 1899. By 1900, the Chinese government had co-opted the rebels and directed their violent fury entirely upon the foreign presence in China. The Boxers, aided by Chinese Imperial troops, besieged the diplomatic legations (embassies) of the Western powers and Japan, sparking a truly international response. A retaliatory relief expedition composed of troops from: the United State, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Russia and Japan invaded China and captured the capital of Peking (now called Beijing).

Italo-Ottoman War (1911-1912)--( also known as the Turco-Italian War and the Tripolitanian War)--Italy decided to add to its growing African empire by attacking Ottoman-ruled Tripolitinia (Libya). The Italian victory began the very swift fall of the Ottoman Empire which would end with the Empire's disintegration at the end of World War One in 1918. The day after Ottoman Turkey made peace with Italy, the Balkan League attacked in the First Balkan War (see below).

First Balkan War (1912-1913)--The Balkan nations of Montenegro, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece defeated the Ottoman Empire, and seized nearly all of the Ottoman Empire's remaining European territories.

Second Balkan War (1913)--The victors in the First Balkan War fell out among themselves, with Bulgaria attacking Serbia and Greece in an attempt to gain more of the spoils from the first war. Rumania, Montenegro, and the Ottomans also joined the war against Bulgaria.

The Turkish War of Independence (1919-1922)

Greco-Turkish War (1921-1922)--Greek invasion of Turkey. Is considered part of Turkish War of Independence. The Greek offensive failed. See also theFall of the Ottoman Empire page

Russian Civil War

Polish-Soviet War (1919-1921)--Major war between Poland and Russia/The Soviet Union.

Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945)-Part of World War Two

Second Italo-Ethiopian War (1935-1936)--(also known as the Abyssinian War)--Italy's Fascist dicator, Benito Mussolini, wanted to conquer a new "Roman Empire," and chose Ethiopia as his first victim. Ethiopia had defeated Italy in the First Italo-Ethiopian War in 1896, and Mussolini sought revenge for that embarrassing Italian defeat. This war exposed the inherent weaknesses of the League of Nations (an earlier and very weak version of the United Nations) when it was unable to prevent war. Italy successfuly conquered Ethiopia in 1936. During World War Two , British, Commonwealth, Free French, Free Belgian, and Ethiopian forces liberated Ethiopia in 1941

Spanish Civil War (1936-1939)--The Spanish Civil War began as a right-wing rebellion against the leftist Republican government of Spain. Led by General Francisco Franco, the Nationalist rebels fought a long and bloody civil war against their Republican foes. Franco was received significant military aid from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. The Republican side was aided by the Soviet Union. Franco won the war in 1939 and set up a Fascist government. This war is considered one of the precursor conflicts leading to World War Two .

Cold War (1945-1990)

First Indochina War (1946-1954) --The "First IndochinaWar" was really a regional conflict involving France, as the colonial ruler of "French Indochina," against the nationalist (but Communist) rebels seeking independence for Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. This war was a part of the Cold War, since in also involved the United States (and to a lesser extent), Great Britain, aiding their ally France, while the Communist rebels (the Viet Minh, Pathet Lao, and Khmer Issarak), enjoyed aid from the Soviet Union and Communist China. Below are the "smaller" conflicts that in part made up the First Indochina War. This war led directly to the Second Indochina War, which in the United States is best known as the Vietnam War .

this conflict included:

French Indochina War (1946-1954) --(known in Vietnam as "The French War")--Communist Viet Minh rebels led by Ho Chi Minh waged a successful war of independence against French colonial forces who re-occupied Indochina following the Japanese defeat inWorld War Two . The Viet Minh were aided by the Soviet Union and by Communist China. France received significant material support from the United States. France agreed to grant independence to North Vietnam, South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia following the Viet Minh victory over French troops at Dien Bien Phu.
Pathet Lao War (1950-1954)--Laotian communist forces ( The Pathet Lao) were allied with the Viet Minh fought against French colonial forces. Independence achieved after the Vietnamese communists defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu. The Pathet Lao later continued their war against the new Laotian government, finally taking over the country in 1975.

Khmer Issarak War (1950-1954)-- Cambodian (Khmer) communist forces allied with the Viet Minh fought against French colonial forces. Independence achieved after the Vietnamese communists defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu. The Khmer communists (Khmer Rouge) later continued their war against the new Cambodian government, finally taking over the country in 1975.

First Kashmir War (1947-1948)--First war between India and Pakistan over possession of Kashmir.

First Arab-Israeli War (1948-1949)

Malayan War (1948-1960)- Communist insurgency against the new Malayan government. Britain, Australia, and other Commonwealth nations put down the insurgency in what would be the only outright military victory of the Western powers against the Communists in the Cold War.

Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962)- Algeria won independence from France after a very bloody guerilla war.

Second Indochina War (1956-1975) --The so-called "Vietnam War" was really a regional and international conflict involving not just North and South Vietnam and the U.S. but also embroiling Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. Below are some of the "smaller" conflicts that in part made up the Second Indochina War.

The Indochina conflict included:

Vietnam War (1956-1975)--The Communist North Vietnamese and the southern Viet Cong engaged in a long war to overthrow the pro-American government of South Vietnam. The U.S. and other allied nations sent troops to aid the Saigon regime. The last U.S. combat troops left in 1973 and Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese on April 30, 1975. Known in the U.S. and much of the world as "The Vietnam War." Known in Vietnam as "The American War."
Laotian Civil War (1959-1975)-- North Vietnam sent large numbers of troops into Laos to aid the Communist Pathet Lao against the U.S.-backed Royal Laotian government. The Pathet Lao seized power in 1975 and maintains a good relationship with Hanoi.

Cambodian Civil War (1967-1975) -- North Vietnam sent large numbers of troops into Cambodia to aid the Communist Khmer Rouge against the U.S.-backed Cambodian government. The North Vietnamese Army (NVA) had maintained a large presence in eastern Cambodia for years prior to the beginning of the Khmer Rouge war in 1967. Following the fall of the U.S.-backed governments in Cambodia and South Vietnam, the two former Communist allies engaged in warfare between themselves. (See below).

Yemen Civil War (1962-1970)-- Egypt sent troops to support the Yemeni Republican government against Royalist rebels supported by Saudi Arabia. This was a major rift in the Arab world.

Second Kashmir War (1965)--Second war between India and Pakistan over Kashmir.

Six-Day War (1967)-- Israel defeated the combined forces of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq in six days. This is considered the 3rd major Arab-Israeli War. Israel captured the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria.

Warsaw Pact Invasion of Czechoslovakia (1968)--The armed forces of the Communist Warsaw Pact (Soviet Union, East Germany, Poland, and Hungary) invaded Czechoslovakia to bring down a reformist Czech government.

Bengali War of Independence (1971) --Can also be considered a Pakistani civil war. East Pakistan rebelled against West Pakistan, seeking independence. India intervened and helped East Pakistan break away and become the new nation of Bangaladesh.

Yom Kippur War/Ramadan War (1973)--Egypt and Syria launched a surpise attack on Israeli forces in the occupied Sinai andGolan Heights . While the Arab nations failed to re-capture these territories, this conflict eventually led to the 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty.

Lebanese Civil War (1975-1991)

Ogaden War (1977-1978)- Ethiopia against Somalia and Somali rebels in the Ogaden desert area. The Soviet Union provided huge amounts of material and logistcal support and Cuba sent thousands of troops to fight on Ethiopia's side. This war was a part of the Cold War.

Third Indochina War (1977-1989) this conflict included:

Cambodia-Vietnam War (1977-1991)--During their war against the U.S.-sponsored regimes in Saigon and Phnom Penh, the North Vietnamese and the Khmer Rouge were able to mask their ideological differences and ignore the historical hostility between their two peoples. After taking power though, these differences turned violent. Beginning with low-level cross-border raids and escalating into full-fledged war in late December of 1978 when Vietnam launched a massive conventional invasion of Cambodia, swiftly occupying the nation within days. Vietnam set up a new government in Phnom Penh with Khmer Rouge defectors but found itself immersed in a long and difficult war of occupation as the Khmer Rouge returned to the guerrilla warfare they knew so well. Vietnamese troops left after more than a decade, with the friendly government of Heng Samrin in control of most of Cambodia.
China -Vietnam War (Feb. 17-Mar. 16, 1979)-- Similar to the difficulties between Cambodia and Vietnam, the Hanoi regime enjoyed good relations with China during the war against the United States and South Vietnam, but once that conflict ended, ideological and historical differences interfered with Sino-Vietnamese relations. Using the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia as a pretext, China launched a massive attack along their common border. Vietnam's border troops put up a very good defense, causing major casualties to the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA). Within a month of the invasion, China basically declared that it had taught Hanoi a lesson and withdrew. Results of this war include: moving Hanoi closer to the Soviet Union, which was a rival of China; a modernization of the PLA as China realized they did not do very well against a smaller country; and the beginning of a long-lasting but low-level border conflict with between Vietnam and China. (See below).

China-Vietnam Border Clashes (1979-1988)-- After the Chinese invasion of Vietnam in 1979, continued warfare and infiltration along the border kept these two neighbors in a state of low-level warfare. The two Communist neighbors now maintain cordial relations, but further research is needed to ascertain when the cross-border raids and artillery exchanges ended.

Thai-Laotian Border Clashes (1980, 1984, 1987 )

Iranian Hostage Crisis (1979-1981)--Though technically not a war, this was a major crisis that nearly brought the U.S. and Iran to war, and the repercussions of this conflict are still felt today. (see Iran War Scenarios for more information on the recent issues between America and Iran)

Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan (1979-1989)

Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988)

Falkland Islands War (1982)

Israeli Invasion and Occupation of Southern Lebanon (1982-2000)
Third Balkan War Second Chechen War Congo War

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