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The Armistice of 11 November 1918

the armistice was signed with Germany, marking the end of WWI and the battles on land, sea and air

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SOCIALISM, BRIEF OVERVIEW

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How Socialism Emerged

The intellectual roots of socialism go back at least as far as ancient Greek times, when the philosopher Plato depicted a type of collective society in his dialog, Republic (360 B.C.). In 16th-century England, Thomas More drew on Platonic ideals for his Utopia, an imaginary island where money has been abolished and people live and work communally.

In the late 18th century, the invention of the steam engine powered the Industrial Revolution, which brought sweeping economic and social change first to Great Britain, then to the rest of the world. Factory owners became wealthy, while many workers lived in increasing poverty, laboring for long hours under difficult and sometimes dangerous conditions.
READ MORE: The Original Luddites Raged Against the Machine of the Industrial Revolution
Socialism emerged as a response to the expanding capitalist system. It presented an alternative, aimed at improving the lot of the working class and creating a more egalitarian society. In its emphasis on public ownership of the means of production, socialism contrasted sharply with capitalism, which is based around a free market system and private ownership.

Utopian Socialism

Early socialists like Henri de Saint-Simon, Robert Owen and Charles Fourier offered up their own models for social organization based on cooperation rather than competition. While Saint-Simon argued for a system where the state controls production and distribution for the benefit of all society's members, both Fourier and Owen (in France and Britain, respectively) proposed systems based on small collective communities, not a centralized state.
READ MORE: Five 19th-Century Utopian Communities in the United States
Owen, who had owned and operated textile mills in Lanark, Scotland, headed to the United States in 1825 to launch an experimental community in New Harmony, Indiana. His planned commune was based on the principles of self-sufficiency, cooperation and public ownership of property. The experiment soon failed, and Owen lost much of his fortune. More than 40 small cooperative agricultural communities inspired by Fourier's theories, were founded across the United States. One of these, based in Red Bank, New Jersey, lasted into the 1930s.

Influence of Karl Marx

It was Karl Marx, undoubtedly the most influential theorist of socialism, who called Owen, Fourier and other earlier socialist thinkers "utopians," and dismissed their visions as dreamy and unrealistic. For Marx, society was made up of classes: When certain classes controlled the means of production, they used that power to exploit the labor class.

In their 1848 work The Communist Manifesto, Marx and his collaborator, Friedrich Engels, argued that true "scientific socialism" could be established only after a revolutionary class struggle, with the workers emerging on top.

Though Marx died in 1883, his influence on socialist thought only grew after his death. His ideas were taken up and expanded upon by various political parties (such as the German Social Democratic Party) and leaders like Vladimir Lenin and Mao Zedong.

Marx's emphasis on the revolutionary clash between capital and labor came to dominate most socialist thought, but other brands of socialism continued to develop. Christian socialism, or collective societies formed around Christian religious principles. Anarchism saw not just capitalism but government as harmful and unnecessary. Social democracy held that socialist aims could be achieved through gradual political reform rather than revolution.
READ MORE: Communism Timeline
Socialism in the 20th Century

In the 20th century-particularly after the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the formation of the Soviet Union-social democracy and communism emerged as the two most dominant socialist movements throughout the world.

By the end of the 1920s, Lenin's revolution-focused view of socialism had given way to the foundation of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and its consolidation of absolute power under Joseph Stalin. Soviet and other communists joined forces with other socialist movements in resisting fascism. After World War II, this alliance dissolved as the Soviet Union established communist regimes across Eastern Europe.

With the collapse of these regimes in the late 1980s, and the ultimate fall of the Soviet Union itself in 1991, communism as a global political force was greatly diminished. Only China, Cuba, North Korea, Laos and Vietnam remain communist states.

Meanwhile, over the course of the 20th century, social democratic parties won support in many European countries by pursuing a more centrist ideology. Their ideas called for a gradual pursuit of social reforms (like public education and universal healthcare) through the processes of democratic government within a largely capitalist system.

Socialism in the United States

In the United States, the Socialist Party never enjoyed the same success as in Europe, reaching its peak of support in 1912, when Eugene V. Debs won 6 percent of the vote in that year's presidential election. But social reform programs like Social Security and Medicare, which opponents once denounced as socialist, became over time a well-accepted part of American society.
READ MORE: How Much Did the First Social Security Check Pay Out?
Some liberal politicians in the United States have embraced a variation on social democracy known as democratic socialism. This calls for following socialist models in Scandinavia, Canada, Great Britain and other nations, including single-payer health care, free college tuition and higher taxes on the wealthy.

On the other side of the political spectrum, conservative U.S. politicians often label such policies as communist. They point to authoritarian socialist regimes such as that of Venezuela to raise concerns about big government.

The wide range of interpretations and definitions of socialism across the political spectrum, and the lack of a common understanding of what socialism is or how it looks in practice reflects its complicated evolution. Nonetheless, socialist parties and ideas continue to influence policy in nations around the world. And socialism's persistence speaks to the enduring appeal of calling for a more egalitarian society.

Sources

Pablo Gilabert and Martin O'Neill, "Socialism." The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Fall 2019 Edition, Edward N. Zalta (ed.)

Peter Lamb, Historical Dictionary of Socialism (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016)

Glenn Kessler, "What is socialism?" Washington Post, March 5, 2019.

Fact Check

We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate.

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Socialism - Definition, Origins & Countries

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The term "socialism" has been applied to very different economic and political systems throughout history. Common to these systems is an opposition to an unrestricted market economy and the belief that public ownership of property and natural resources will lead to better distribution of wealth and a more egalitarian society.

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THE TREATY OF VERSAILLES

International Treaty

Europe was in a state of devastation and economic crisis after 4 yrs of world war

delegations from across the world came together on January 18, 1919

Controversial

"one of the most controversial agreements in history."

"It's cracks left open the possibility of a second global conflict."

One of US President Wilson's Fourteen Points

drew upon one of US President Wilson's Fourteen Points, "open diplomacy, rejecting secret treaties and negotiations behind closed doors."

Issue of Disarmament

another aspect of the Treaty of Versailles was disarmament, demands public making after 4 years of complete war

Colonies

also addressed the colonies; point of view of colonized must have equal weight as the colonial power

National Boundaries Redrawn (geopolitics)

"those who fought alongside the allies demanded recognition"

pressed for an independent Arab Kingdom

Ho Chi Minh sought Vietnamese liberty from France

"Pan African Congress petitioned for Africans to take part in governing their country"

Missing from the Conference

Germany wasn't present; it relied on US meditation for the peace it wanted

Germans didn't take part in the conference but invited in May 1919 to come later; there wasn't any dialogue, only through writing

British Prime Minister David Lloyd George &  US President Woodrow Wilson felt French Prime Minister Georges Clémenceau was being too harsh on Germany

Signing of The Treaty of Versailles

June 28, 1919 signed at The Hall of Mirrors in Versailles (a symbolic date as it was the anniversary of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and a symbol place as the Hall of Mirrors was where the unification of Germany was proclaimed in Franco-Prussian War)

Conditions of Treaty of Versailles on Germany

Germany lost a tenth of its population

13% of its territory in Europe

lost all of its colonies

lost part of its army

German public felt it was unfair

"Article 231" was found to be particularly humiliating--perceived as forcing Germany to accept full responsibility for causing the war

sum of reparations remained to be decided = the actual amount Germany had to pay to countries it invaded

"the reparations issue became extremely inflammatory."

Germany faced a height of inflation; economic crisis

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1919-1939: The Treaty of Versailles, a truce that led to another war

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EVENTS & KEY DATES

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When did World War I begin? What countries were involved? When did it end? This page provides a brief summary of the important events and battles of the war, from the start of the conflict through the peace treaties.

To learn more, please explore our Interactive WWI Timeline, which provides an in-depth look into the chronology of the war, using photographs, original video footage and audio recordings.

June 28, 1914

Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie Chotek, are assassinated by Bosnian Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip. Austria suspects Serbia is responsible.

July 28, 1914

Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia.

August 1914

Germany declares war on Russia, France and Belgium.
Britain declares war on Germany.
Austria-Hungary declares war on Russia.
France and Britain declare war on Austria-Hungary.
Japan declares war on Germany.
Austria-Hungary declares war on Belgium.

The United States declares its neutrality.

September 4, 1914

Germany invades Belgium, but is stopped at the First Battle of the Marne. The Schlieffen Plan fails.

October 31, 1914

First Battle of Ypres: Attempting to outflank each other, Allied and German troops were unable to win a decisive victory, leading to the onset of trench warfare.

November 5, 1914

Britain and France declare war on the Ottoman Empire.

January 10, 1915

German zeppelin raids on Great Britain begin, bringing the war home to British civilians.

February 4, 1915

Germany initiates a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare, whereby all merchant ships, including those of neutral countries, would be subject to attack.

April 22-May 25, 1915

Second Battle of Ypres: Germans launch the first successful gas attack in history. By the end of the war, both Allied and Central Powers will have used chemical weapons.

April 25, 1915

British and French troops, including Australians and New Zealanders (ANZAC) land on the Gallipoli peninsula in the Ottoman Empire.

May 7, 1915

German U-boat torpedoes the Lusitania, a British passenger liner. 128 Americans are killed.

May 23, 1915

Italy declares war on Austria-Hungary, entering World War I on the side of the Allies.

September 28, 1915

Allied troops move through Mesopotamia to capture Baghdad from the Ottomans.

October 6, 1915

A combined force of Austro-Hungarians and Germans (and later Bulgarians) invade Serbia. After weeks of stubborn fighting, the Serbian Army was forced to retreat through Montenegro and Albania.

February 21, 1916

Battle of Verdun: Hoping to "bleed France white," the German Army launches a major offensive against the symbolic fortress of Verdun. Fighting will not end until December.

April 22, 1916

Around 20,000 French women and girls are deported from industrial cities like Lille to perform forced agricultural work in other parts of occupied France.

May 16, 1916

Great Britain and France secretly sign the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Assuming they will defeat the Ottoman Empire, they divide the Middle East. France claims Syria and Lebanon. Britain claims Jordan, Iraq, the Gulf states and the Palestine Mandate.

May 31, 1916

Battle of Jutland: In the largest naval battle of the war, Britain's Royal Navy Grand Fleet and the German Navy's High Seas Fleet fought to a draw, though both sides claimed victory.

June 5, 1916

Arab nationalists revolt against Ottoman rule in the "Great Arab Rising."

July 1, 1916

Battle of the Somme: After a seven-day artillery bombardment, Allied troops launch an offensive meant to divert German troops from Verdun. The British suffered around 50,000 casualties on the first day and fighting continued until November.

February 3, 1917

After Germany resumes its campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare, the U.S. severs diplomatic relations with Germany.

March 1, 1917

British intelligence intercepts the Zimmermann Telegram, a secret communication from Germany proposing an alliance with Mexico should the United States enter World War I.

April 1, 1917

Germany sinks the SS Aztec, a U.S. cargo ship bound for France.

April 2,1917

U.S. President Woodrow Wilson delivers a war message to Congress, famously stating that "the world must be made safe for democracy."

April 6, 1917

Following passage of the war resolution by the Senate and House, the United States is officially at war with the German Empire.

April 16, 1917

Having traveled on a sealed train from Switzerland, Vladimir Lenin returns to Petrograd (St. Petersburg) after a decade of exile to personally lead the Russian Revolution.

May 18, 1917

The U.S. Congress authorizes the Selective Service Act, initiating the first military draft since the Civil War.

May 25, 1917

General John J. Pershing selected as commander of the American Expeditionary Forces.

June 15, 1917

Congress passes the Espionage Act, making it a crime for any person to convey information intended to interfere with the prosecution of the war effort or to promote the success of the country's enemies.

July 31, 1917

Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele): Allied troops, largely those from the British Empire, launch an attack to seize key ridges near Ypres. They achieve victory, but only after months of fighting in horrific conditions and sustaining heavy casualties.

November 2, 1917

Britain issues the Balfour Declaration, a statement of support for the establishment of a Jewish nation in Palestine.

November 7, 1917

Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks assume complete control over the new Soviet Russian state.

December 6, 1917

A French munitions ship collides with a Belgian relief ship resulting in 11,000 casualties.

December 9, 1917

The British capture Jerusalem from the Ottomans.

January 8, 1918

U.S. President Woodrow Wilson outlines his Fourteen Points for peace.

March 3, 1918

Russia and Germany sign the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, officially removing Russia from World War I.

March 8, 1918

Camp Funston at Fort Riley, Kansas makes the first report of influenza. The disease spreads overseas to the Western Front. Over the next year this "Spanish Influenza" kills 20 million worldwide.

May 28, 1918

Battle of Cantigny: In its first major battle of World War I, American troops captured the town of Cantigny, depriving the Germans of an important observation point.

July 17, 1918

Bolsheviks murder the former czar of Russia, Nicholas II, and his family.

July 18-August 6, 1918

Aisne-Marne Offensive: Marks a major turning point in the fighting on the Western Front. Two days after its conclusion, the British attack at Amiens is called the "Black Day of the German Army."

September 12-15, 1918

Battle of Saint-Mihiel: First major offensive operation by General John J. Pershing's American Expeditionary Forces.

September 26, 1918

Meuse-Argonne Offensive: After a short artillery bombardment, American and French troops advance toward German positions in the Argonne Forest and along the Meuse River. The largest offensive in U.S. history, it played a major role in bringing about an end to the war.

October 24-November 3, 1918

Battle of Vittorio Veneto: Austro-Hungarian forces are severely defeated by the Italian Army, ending the war on the Italian Front and ushering in the final dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

November 9, 1918

German Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicates and flees to Holland. German Republic (later the Weimar Republic) proclaimed.

November 11, 1918

Having been given 72 hours to agree to Allied demands, Germany signs the armistice. Supreme Allied Commander Marshal Ferdinand Foch orders that all hostilities on the Western Front cease at 11 a.m. Paris time.

December 1, 1918

Allied troops move into Germany and begin occupation.

December 1, 1918

Yugoslavia, a kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes is proclaimed an independent state.

February 14, 1919

At the Paris Peace Conference, Allied nations propose constitution for the League of Nations to promote international cooperation.

June 28, 1919

Germany is forced to sign the Treaty of Versailles. Germany cedes Alsace-Lorraine to France, recognizes Belgian sovereignty, disarms and agrees to pay war reparations. U.S. Senate refuses to ratify the Treaty of Versailles, thus preventing the country from joining the League of Nations.

August 10, 1920

The Treaty of Sevres officially ends the war between the Allies and the Ottoman Empire and marks the beginning of the latter's partitioning. Only the territory that becomes Turkey is independent of British and French control.

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Key Dates | National WWI Museum and Memorial

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When did World War I begin? What countries were involved? When did it end? This page provides a brief summary of the important events and battles of the war, from the start of the conflict through the peace treaties.To learn more, please explore our Interactive WWI Timeline, which provides an in-depth look into the chronology of the war, using photographs, original video footage and audio recordings.

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INTERACTIVE WWI TIMELINE

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U.S. War Department authorizes Chemical Warfare Service

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How long did World War I last? Who fought whom? Journey through the story of the Great War with our Interactive WWI Timeline, covering the world events of 1914‑1920.

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= a framework historians use for analyzing WWI

MILITARISM
THE ALLIANCE SYSTEM
IMPERIALISM
NATIONALISM

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The 4 M-A-I-N Causes of World War One in 6 Minutes

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ASSASSINATION of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire

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How a Wrong Turn Started World War I | History

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The Treaty of London, 1839
Great Britain protecting Belgium's neutrality

The Triple Entente, 1907
Great Britain, France & Russia

The Triple Alliance,1882
Germany, Austro-Hungary (& Italy)

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THE CENTRAL POWERS
Austria-Hungary Empire
Germany Empire
Bulgaria
Ottoman Empire (now Turkey)

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THE ALLIED POWERS
Great Britain
France
Russia
Belgium
Greece
Italy
Montenegro
Portugal
Romania
Serbia
The United States
Canada
Australia
New Zealand
Indian Empire
Newfoundland
South Africa
East Africa
Empire of Japan
Luxembourg

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NEUTRAL NATIONS
Denmark
Norway
Sweden

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Alliances leading to World War I | The 20th century | World history | Khan Academy

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noun

“the act of allying or state of being allied.”

“a formal agreement or treaty between two or more nations to cooperate for specific purposes.”

“a merging of efforts or interests by persons, families, states, or organizations"

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Why the war started, how the Allies won, and why the world has never been the same

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A century ago, an assassin, a Serbian nationalist, killed the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary as he visited Sarajevo. This act was the catalyst for a massive conflict that lasted four years. More than 65 million soldiers were mobilized by more than 30 nations, with battles taking place around the world. Industrialization brought modern weapons, machinery, and tactics to warfare, vastly increasing the killing power of armies. Battlefield conditions were horrific, typified by the chaotic, cratered hellscape of the Western Front, where soldiers in muddy trenches faced bullets, bombs, gas, bayonet charges, and more. On this 100-year anniversary, I've gathered photographs of the Great War from dozens of collections, some digitized for the first time, to try to tell the story of the conflict, those caught up in it, and how much it affected the world. This entry is part 1 of a 10-part series on World War I. In this installment, I hope to give a glimpse of the war's beginnings, and a preview of what is to come.

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A century ago, in the summer of 1914, a series of events set off an unprecedented global conflict that ultimately claimed the lives of more than 16 million people, dramatically redrew the maps of Europe, and set the stage for the 20th Century.

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Archduke Franz Ferdinand

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The causes of World War I, also known as the Great War, have been debated since it ended. Officially, Germany shouldered much of the blame for the conflict, which caused four years of unprecedented slaughter. But a series of complicated factors caused the war, including a brutal assassination that propelled Europe into the greatest conflict the continent had ever known.

The murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand outraged Austria-Hungary.
In June 1914, Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie traveled to Bosnia-which had been annexed by Austria-Hungary-for a state visit.

On June 28, the couple went to the capital city of Sarajevo to inspect imperial troops stationed there. As they headed toward their destination, they narrowly escaped death when Serbian terrorists threw a bomb at their open-topped car.

Their luck ran out later that day, however, when their driver inadvertently drove them past 19-year-old Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip who shot and killed Franz Ferdinand and his wife at point-blank range. Austria-Hungary was furious and, with Germany's support, declared war on Serbia on July 28.

Within days, Germany declared war on Russia-Serbia's ally-and invaded France via Belgium, which then caused Britain to declare war on Germany.

Limited industrial resources fueled imperialist expansion.
A state's desire to expand its empire was nothing new in European history, but by the early 20th century the Industrial Revolution was in full force.

New industrial and manufacturing technologies created the need to dominate new territories and their natural resources, including oil, rubber, coal, iron and other raw materials.

With the British Empire extending to five continents and France controlling many the African colonies, Germany wanted a larger slice of the territorial pie. As countries vied for position, tensions rose, and they formed alliances to position themselves for European dominance.

The rise of nationalism undermined diplomacy.
During the 19th century, rising nationalism swept through Europe. As people took more pride in country and culture, their desire to rid themselves of imperial rule increased. In some cases, however, imperialism fed nationalism as some groups claimed superiority over others.

This widespread nationalism is thought to be a general cause of World War I. For instance, after Germany dominated France in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, France lost money and land to Germany, which then fueled French nationalism and a desire for revenge.

Nationalism played a specific role in World War I when Archduke Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated by Princip, a member of a Serbian nationalist terrorist group fighting against Austria-Hungary's rule over Bosnia.

Entangled alliances created two competing groups.
In 1879, Germany and Austria-Hungary allied against Russia. In 1882, Italy joined their alliance (The Triple Alliance) and Russia responded in 1894 by allying with France.

In 1907, Great Britain, Russia and France formed the Triple Entente to protect themselves against Germany's growing threat. Soon, Europe was divided into two groups: The Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy; and the Allies, which included Russia, France and Britain.

As war was declared, the allied countries emboldened each other to enter the fray and defend their treaties, although not every coalition was set in stone-Italy later changed sides. By the end of August 1914, the so-called "entangled alliances" had caused what should have been a regional conflict to expand to all of Europe's powerful states.

Militarism sparked an arms race.
In the early 1900s, many European countries increased their military might and were ready and willing put it to use. Most of the European powers had a military draft system and were in an arms race, methodically increasing their war chests and fine-tuning their defense strategies.

Between 1910 and 1914, France, Russia, Britain and Germany significantly increased their defense budgets. But Germany was by far the most militaristic country in Europe at the time. By July 1914, it had increased its military budget by a massive 79 percent.

Germany was also in an unofficial war with Britain for naval superiority. They doubled their naval battle fleet as Britain's Royal Navy produced the first Dreadnought battleship which could outgun and outrun any other battleship in existence. Not to be outdone, Germany built its own fleet of Dreadnoughts.

By the start of World War I, the European powers were not just prepared for war, they expected it and some even counted on it to increase their world standing.

Although the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand was the spark that caused Austria-Hungary to strike the first blow, all the European powers quickly fell in line to defend their alliances, preserve or expand their empires and display their military might and patriotism.

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Did Franz Ferdinand's Assassination Cause World War I?

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The causes of World War I, also known as the Great War, have been debated since it ended. Officially, Germany shouldered much of the blame for the conflict, which caused four years of unprecedented slaughter. But a series of complicated factors caused the war, including a brutal assassination that propelled Europe into the greatest conflict the continent had ever known.

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Gavrilo Princip, Revolutionary
Bosnian Serb nationalist

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the man who started wwi: 7 things you didn't know - cnn

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By Tim Butcher, historian and writer, Special to CNN

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The man who started WWI: 7 things you didn't know - CNN

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A century ago this Saturday on a street corner in Sarajevo, Gavrilo Princip fired the shot that started World War I when he killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand. What do we know about history's greatest teenage troublemaker?

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Otto von Bismarck

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Table of Contents

1. Otto von Bismarck: Early Years

2. Otto von Bismarck: The Iron Chancellor

3. Otto von Bismarck: Kulturkampf, Welfare State, Empire

4. Otto von Bismarck: Final Years and Legacy

Germany became a modern, unified nation under the leadership of the "Iron Chancellor" Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898), who between 1862 and 1890 effectively ruled first Prussia and then all of Germany. A master strategist, Bismarck initiated decisive wars with Denmark, Austria and France to unite 39 independent German states under Prussian leadership. Although an arch-conservative, Bismarck introduced progressive reforms-including universal male suffrage and the establishment of the first welfare state-in order to achieve his goals. He manipulated European rivalries to make Germany a world power, but in doing so laid the groundwork for both World Wars.

Otto von Bismarck: Early Years

Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck was born April 1, 1815, at his family's estate in the Prussian heartland west of Berlin. His father was a fifth-generation Junker (a Prussian landowning noble), and his mother came from a family of successful academics and government ministers. Throughout his life Bismarck would emphasize his rural Junker roots, underplaying his considerable intellect and cosmopolitan outlook.

Did you know? Although German leader Otto von Bismarck wore a general's uniform in public for much of his later life (and successfully prosecuted three wars as chancellor), his only prior military service was a brief, unwilling stint in a reserve unit.

Bismarck was educated in Berlin and after university took a series of minor diplomatic posts before retiring, at age 24, to run his family's estate at Kneiphof. In 1847 he married and was sent to Berlin as a delegate to the new Prussian parliament, where he emerged as a reactionary voice against the liberal, anti-autocratic Revolutions of 1848.

From 1851 to 1862 Bismarck served a series of ambassadorships-at the German Confederation in Frankfurt, in St. Petersburg and in Paris-that gave him valuable insight into the vulnerabilities of Europe's great powers.

Otto von Bismarck: The Iron Chancellor

William I became Prussia's king in 1861 and a year later appointed Bismarck as his chief minister. Though technically deferring to William, in reality Bismarck was in charge, manipulating the king with his intellect and the occasional tantrum while using royal decrees to circumvent the power of elected officials.

In 1864 Bismarck began the series of wars that would establish Prussian power in Europe. He attacked Denmark to gain the German-speaking territories of Schleswig-Holstein and two years later provoked Emperor Franz-Josef I into starting the Austro-Prussian War (1866), which ended in a swift defeat for the aging Austrian empire. At the time, Bismarck wisely declined to levy a war indemnity against the Austrians.

Bismarck was less circumspect in his conduct of the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71). Seeing the opportunity to unify Germany's loose confederations against an outside enemy, Bismarck stirred political tensions between France and Prussia, famously editing a telegram from William I to make both countries feel insulted by the other. The French declared war, but the Prussians and their German allies won handily. Prussia levied an indemnity, annexed the French border provinces of Alsace and Lorraine and crowned William emperor of a unified Germany (the Second Reich) in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles-a tremendous insult to the French.

Otto von Bismarck: Kulturkampf, Welfare State, Empire

With Germany unified, William I and Bismarck turned to entrenching their domestic power. For much of the 1870s Bismarck pursued a Kulturkampf (cultural struggle) against Catholics, who made up 36 percent of Germany's population, by placing parochial schools under state control and expelling the Jesuits. In 1878 Bismarck relented, allying with the Catholics against the growing socialist threat.

In the 1880s Bismarck set aside his conservative impulses to counter the socialists by creating Europe's first modern welfare state, establishing national healthcare (1883), accident insurance (1884) and old age pensions (1889). Bismarck also hosted the 1885 Berlin Conference that ended the "Scramble for Africa," dividing the continent between the European powers and establishing German colonies in Cameroon, Togoland and East and Southwest Africa.

Otto von Bismarck: Final Years and Legacy

William I died in 1888 and was succeeded by his son Frederick III and then his grandson William II, both of whom Bismarck found difficult to control. In 1890 the new king forced Bismarck out. William II was left in control of a flourishing unified state but was ill-equipped to maintain Bismarck's carefully manipulated balance of international rivalries. Respected and honored by the time of his death eight years later, Bismarck quickly became a quasi-mythic figure invoked by political leaders calling for strong German leadership-or for war.

Fact Check

We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate.

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Otto von Bismarck - Biography, World Wars & Facts

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Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898)-also known as the "Iron Chancellor"-was Chancellor of the newly-united German Empire from 1862 to 1890. During his tenure he modernized the nation and helped set the stage for World War I.

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Kaiser Wilhelm I

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The accusations were explosive: a head of state had not only begun an illegal war, but egged his troops on to a series of horrific atrocities that left thousands dead and an entire continent in ruins. By then, the accused was one of history's most hated and debated figures, a monarch known for making erratic decisions and doubling down on his sometimes inexplicable actions.

There was just one problem: The accused, Wilhelm II of Germany, couldn't testify. The accused had been dead for 75 years.

It could have been the trial of the century-if it had been conducted a century before. The trial of Wilhelm II, Germany's emperor between 1888 and 1918, was a moot one, conducted by historians and legal experts grappling with one of the great mysteries of 20th-century history. Was Wilhelm II guilty of war crimes?

Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis/Getty Images

It's a question that was never answered during Wilhelm's lifetime. Though the Allies accused him of starting one of history's bloodiest wars and violating international law, and his troops of committing barbaric acts, he never stood trial. Today, these accusations are remembered as the first stirrings of a modern conception of war crimes. But at the end of World War I, Wilhelm's responsibility for the bloodshed was a hotly contested-and ultimately unresolved-issue.

The thought of trying him at all was a radical notion. Until World War I, going to war had been seen as the right of any nation or head of state, and war crimes were considered part of war. A sense of victors' justice held that atrocities committed by the winning side would go unpunished, while the victors could punish or even execute those on the losing side with impunity.

But World War I changed the face of war-and combat norms-forever. Armed with newly destructive weapons of war like tanks, heavy artillery and gas, both sides sustained huge numbers of casualties while deadlocked in years of trench warfare. Over 6.6 million casualties and 8 million combatants died during the war.

From the beginning, atrocities were part of the Great War. After Germany invaded Belgium in August 1914, German troops began murdering civilians. The massacres, sparked in part by the false belief that Belgian villagers were snipers, claimed over 5,000 victims and sparked a fierce debate about which methods of violence were justified during war.

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As the war dragged on, and more and more civilians on both sides died, both the Allied and Central powers accused one another of war crimes. But when the war ended, only one side was taken to task for its conduct.

Germans believed that the sword had been "forced into [their] hand" by threats from hostile powers. But to the Allies, it appeared that Wilhelm II, Germany's emperor, had used his power to force the world into war. When the parties gathered at the end of the war to hash out the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the Allies insisted that Germany not only accept full responsibility for the war, but that Wilhelm be tried as a war criminal. As part of the treaty, the signatories agreed to assemble a special tribunal to try Wilhelm for "a supreme offense against international morality and the sanctity of treaties." The Allies formally requested his extradition.

It was an unprecedented move: Never before had a head of state been tried for starting a war, and though Germany was the loser it still had alliances and ties throughout Europe. At the time, Wilhelm was in the neutral Netherlands, where he had fled at the end of the war at the invitation of the country's sympathetic Queen Wilhelmina. There, he lived in splendid exile at a former castle filled with his valuable possessions.

Despite pressure to extradite the Kaiser for trial, the Dutch refused to comply, claiming it would compromise their neutrality to take sides. The Kaiser's guilt had become an article of faith to the Allies; in both France and Great Britain, it had been an important election issue, with Britain's new prime minister, David Lloyd George, promising to both try and hang the Kaiser. But quibbling and infighting among the Allies, along with the Dutch refusal to extradite Wilhelm, meant he was never extradited or tried.

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The treaty did result in other trials, though. In 1921, Germany's highest court began a series of war crimes trials in Leipzig. The Leipzig Trials only affected a tiny fraction of the people initially accused of war crimes that ranged from looting to abusing prisoners. But no one could agree whether the trials were, in fact, legal, and the German court used German laws, not international ones, in the trials. No one was happy with the outcome. For the Allies, the Leipzig trials were an empty charade. For Germans, they were victors' justice, a blatant overreach of international boundaries.

The trials ended with a whimper: Though over 901 cases of war crimes were identified, only 17 were tried. By the late 1920s, the rest had been dropped and few who had been convicted served any time whatsoever. Though the Leipzig trials and the debate over Wilhelm's war guilt helped set the stage for both international law and the prosecution of war crimes, they failed to achieve the goal of actually punishing anyone who committed or enabled atrocities during the war.

Wilhelm was never tried, and died in exile in 1941. Historians are still split on his role in causing World War I. So how did the deposed Kaiser fare in his posthumous "trial"? The verdict was mixed. Though the historians found him guilty of causing German troops to invade neutral Belgium, they acquitted him on all other counts.

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Why Kaiser Wilhelm Was Never Tried for Starting World War I

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The accusations were explosive: a head of state had not only begun an illegal war, but egged his troops on to a series of horrific atrocities that left thousands dead and an entire continent in ruins. By then, the accused was one of history's most hated and debated figures, a monarch known for making erratic decisions and doubling down on his sometimes inexplicable actions.

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Vladimir Lenin

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Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924) was a Russian communist revolutionary and head of the Bolshevik Party who rose to prominence during the Russian Revolution of 1917, one of the most explosive political events of the twentieth century. The bloody upheaval marked the end of the oppressive Romanov dynasty and centuries of imperial rule in Russia. The Bolsheviks would later become the Communist Party, making Lenin leader of the Soviet Union, the world's first communist state.

Who Was Vladimir Lenin?

Vladimir Lenin was born Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov in 1870 into a middle-class family in Ulyanovsk, Russia. The son of Ilya Ulyanov and Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova, he was the third of six siblings in an educated family and would go on to become first in his class in high school. But it was exactly their educational background that made the family a target of the government; his father, an inspector of schools, was threatened with early retirement by officials wary of public education. As a teenager, Lenin became politically radicalized after his older brother was executed in 1887 for plotting to assassinate Czar Alexander III.

Later that year, 17-year-old Lenin-still known as Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov-was expelled from Kazan Imperial University, where he was studying law, for taking part in an illegal student protest. After his expulsion, Lenin immersed himself in radical political literature, including the writings of German philosopher and socialist Karl Marx, author of Das Kapital.

In 1889, Lenin declared himself a Marxist. He later finished college and received a law degree. Lenin practiced law briefly in St. Petersburg in the mid-1890s.

He soon was arrested for engaging in Marxist activities and exiled to Siberia. His fiancée and future wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, joined him there. The two would marry on July 22, 1898.

Lenin later moved to Germany and then Switzerland, where he met other European Marxists. During this time, he adopted the pseudonym Lenin and established the Bolshevik Party.

Russia in World War I

Russia entered World War I in August 1914 in support of the Serbs and their French and British allies. Militarily, imperial Russia was no match for modern, industrialized Germany. Russian participation in the war was disastrous: Russian casualties were greater than those sustained by any other nation, and food and fuel shortages soon plagued the vast country.

Lenin advocated for Russian defeat in World War I, arguing that it would hasten the political revolution he desired. It was during this time that he wrote and published Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916) in which he argued that war was the natural result of international capitalism.

Hoping that Lenin could further destabilize their foe, the Germans arranged for Lenin and other Russian revolutionaries living in exile in Europe to return to Russia. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill later summed up the move by the Germans: "They turned upon Russia the most grisly of weapons. They transported Lenin in a sealed truck like a plague bacillus."

Russian Revolution

When Lenin returned home to Russia in April 1917, the Russian Revolution was already beginning. Strikes over food shortages in March had forced the abdication of the inept Czar Nicholas II, ending centuries of imperial rule.

Russia came under the command of a Provisional Government, which opposed violent social reform and continued Russian involvement in World War I.

Lenin began plotting an overthrow of the Provisional Government. To Lenin, the provisional government was a "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie." He advocated instead for direct rule by the workers and peasants in a "dictatorship of the proletariat."

By fall of 1917, Russians had become even more war weary. Peasants, workers and soldiers demanded immediate change in what became known as the October Revolution.

Lenin, aware of the leadership vacuum plaguing Russia, decided to seize power. He secretly organized factory workers, peasants, soldiers and sailors into Red Guards-a volunteer paramilitary force. On November 7 and 8, 1917, Red Guards captured Provisional Government buildings in a bloodless coup d'état.

The Bolsheviks seized power of the government and proclaimed Soviet rule, making Lenin leader of the world's first communist state. The new Soviet government ended Russian involvement in World War I with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

War Communism

The Bolshevik Revolution plunged Russia into a three-year civil war. The Red Army-backed by Lenin's newly formed Russian Communist Party -fought the White Army, a loose coalition of monarchists, capitalists and supporters of democratic socialism.

During this time, Lenin enacted a series of economic policies dubbed "War Communism." These were temporary measures to help Lenin consolidate power and defeat the White Army.

Under war communism, Lenin quickly nationalized all manufacturing and industry throughout Soviet Russia. He requisitioned surplus grain from peasant farmers to feed his Red Army.

These measures proved disastrous. Under the new state-owned economy, both industrial and agricultural output plummeted. An estimated five million Russians died of famine in 1921 and living standards across Russia plunged into abject poverty.

Mass unrest threatened the Soviet government. As a result, Lenin instituted his New Economic Policy, a temporary retreat from the complete nationalization of War Communism. The New Economic Policy created a more market-oriented economic system, "a free market and capitalism, both subject to state control."

Cheka

Soon after the Bolshevik Revolution, Lenin established the Cheka, Russia's first secret police.

As the economy deteriorated during the Russian Civil War, Lenin used the Cheka to silence political opposition, both from his opponents and challengers within his own political party.

But these measures did not go unchallenged: Fanya Kaplan, a member of a rival socialist party, shot Lenin in the shoulder and neck as he was leaving a Moscow factory in August 1918, badly injuring him.

Red Terror

After the assassination attempt, the Cheka instituted a period known as the Red Terror, a campaign of mass executions against supporters of the czarist regime, Russia's upper classes and any socialists who weren't loyal to Lenin's Communist Party.

By some estimates, the Cheka may have executed as many as 100,000 so-called "class enemies" during the Red Terror between September and October 1918.

Lenin Creates the USSR

Lenin's Red Army eventually won Russia's civil war. In 1922, a treaty between Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and the Transcaucasus (now Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan) formed the Union of Soviet Republics (USSR).

Lenin became the first head of the USSR, but by that time, his health was declining. Between 1922 and his death in 1924, Lenin suffered a series of strokes which compromised his ability to speak, let alone govern.

His absence paved the way for Joseph Stalin, the Communist Party's new General Secretary, to begin consolidating power. Lenin resented Stalin's growing political power and saw his ascendency as a threat to the USSR.

Lenin dictated a number of predictive essays about corruption of power in the Communist Party while he was recovering from a stroke in late 1922 and early 1923. The documents, sometimes referred to as Lenin's 'Testament,' proposed changes to the Soviet political system and recommended that Stalin be removed from his position.

Lenin's Death and Tomb

Lenin died on January 21, 1924, in Gorki Leninskiye near Moscow. He was 53 years old.

became public only after Lenin's death in January 1924. By that time, Stalin had already come to power (power he would do anything to keep, as evidenced by the Great Purge of 1936-38).

About a million people braved the cold Russian winter to stand in line for hours before paying their respects to Lenin, who was lying in state at the House of Trade Unions in Moscow.

Lenin's body was moved several times following his death, from a mausoleum in Moscow's Red Square to the distant city of Tyumen, Russia, for safekeeping during World War II. His embalmed body remains on display in Lenin's tomb in Red Square.

Sources

Vladimir Lenin; pbs.org.
Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924); BBC.
Vladimir Lenin's Return Journey to Russia Changed the World Forever; Smithsonian Magazine.
Secret Police; Library of Congress.

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Vladimir Lenin was a Russian communist revolutionary and head of the Bolshevik Party who rose to prominence during the Russian Revolution of 1917. The Bolsheviks would later become the Communist Party, making Lenin leader of the Soviet Union, the world's first communist state.

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David Lloyd George. England

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David Lloyd George (1863-1945) was a liberal British statesman who became prime minister during World War I. After earning election to the House of Commons in 1890, he was named chancellor of the exchequer in 1908, and introduced health and unemployment benefits with the National Insurance Act of 1911. Lloyd George became minister of munitions early in World War I, eventually taking over as war minister before becoming prime minister in December 1916. After retiring from the post in 1922, he served as leader of the Liberal Party from 1926 to 1931. Shortly before his death, he was elevated to the peerage as Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor.

A Liberal politician of advanced views, David Lloyd George acquired his vivid speaking style from Welsh churchgoing and his radicalism from his uncle, David Lloyd, who oversaw his education. First a lawyer, Lloyd George was elected to the House of Commons from Caernarvon in 1890. From 1905 he held cabinet office, notably as chancellor of the exchequer from 1908 into 1915, acquiring a reputation as a social reformer. A pacifist in 1914, he underwent a conversion after the invasion of Belgium, taking up the new Ministry of Munitions and transforming the nation into an arsenal. In 1916 he became war minister, upstaging the indecisive though once cunning prime minister, H. H. Asquith, architect of an ineffective multiparty coalition. British forces were then bogged down in a war of attrition in Flanders and in stalemate, at best, in the eastern Mediterranean.

When Asquith reacted to reverses with commissions of inquiry and continued tolerance of myopic and costly generalship, Lloyd George pressed for a small supercabinet to run the war. Although he preferred running a war cabinet to the more encompassing and unwieldy premiership, when Asquith declined a reduction to nominal prime minister, Lloyd George claimed both jobs in December 1916. He recruited efficient civilians to devise strategy and operations, proving to be a shrewd judge of talent. He persuaded key experts that Britain required a government that would prosecute the war with vigor and that he had the potential to lead. They took cabinet posts.

Overhauling the war-making machinery in Whitehall proved easier than remaking the bloodied expeditionary force in France. "Delay in war is as fatal as an illness," he charged. "An operation which may succeed today is no good six weeks later... So in war." Although his war cabinet, with an effective secretariat under a former colonel, Sir Maurice Hankey, managed the fronts from London, Lloyd George was frustrated by his commanding generals, Douglas Haig and William Robertson, who-despite the butcheries at the Battle of the Somme and Passchendaele-elicited steadfast loyalty from influential industrialists, politicians, press lords, and even the king. Lloyd George and Haig regarded each other as a misfortune. To Haig it was "a calamity for the country to have such a man at the head of affairs in this time of great crisis. We can only try and make the best of him."

The prime minister did rid the navy of Haig's counterpart, Admiral John Rushworth Jellicoe, who opposed the convoy system, despite a hemorrhage of sinkings, and safeguarded warships from U-boats by keeping the Royal Navy uselessly close to home. Admiral David Beatty proved more aggressive at sea; but ashore, Haig continued the trench war of expensive but minuscule movement until the spring of 1918, when necessity forced him into a unified command under Ferdinand Foch. While the Germans exhausted themselves in last-ditch offensives, Foch held on to await the mammoth American buildup that would force the enemy into acknowledging that an armistice late in 1918 would be preferable to a defeat on German soil in 1919.

At Versailles, Lloyd George put his prodigious energies to winning the peace for Britain, but, although harsher on Germany than the idealistic American president, Woodrow Wilson, neither could moderate France's appetite for retribution. Radical elements across the Rhine, notablyAdolf Hitler's fascists, would prosper on promises to reverse Versailles. Lloyd George's near-dictatorial postwar ministry failed to exploit his wartime mystique. He retained office in December 1918 with a large Unionist majority but only 133 of his own Liberals. Although he negotiated an Irish settlement and influenced international disarmament treaties, external affairs caused his fall late in 1922 when his pro-Greek bluster in the Chanak crisis threatened war with Turkey and undid his coalition. He resigned that October.

His years as elder statesman were tarnished by a goatish sexual reputation and revelation of a traffic in honors to bolster party coffers. In 1940 he declined, on grounds of health, a war cabinet post underWinston Churchill. Elevated to the House of Lords as Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor only in the last months of his life, he died two months before the second surrender of Germany, in 1945.

The Reader's Companion to Military History. Edited by Robert Cowley and Geoffrey Parker. Copyright © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

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David Lloyd George (1863-1945) was a liberal British statesman who became prime minister during World War I. After earning election to the House of Commons in 1890, he was named chancellor of the exchequer in 1908, and introduced health and unemployment benefits with the National Insurance Act of 1911.

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Raymond Poincaré, France

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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.

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.

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 German 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 the 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.

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:

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.

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 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.

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, it was increasingly 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.

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 the 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.

The Harlem Hellfighters and Other All-Black Regiments

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.

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.

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 a 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.

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.

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 remain in effect today.

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World War I: Summary, Causes & Facts | HISTORY

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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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TRULY FASCINATING!

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This article gives an overview of the battles on the Western Front.

Creation of The Western Front

During The First World War of 1914-1918 the Allied Forces of Belgium, France, Great Britain, the Dominion Forces of the British Empire (Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, Newfoundland and South Africa), Portugal and the United States (from April 1918) made a stand against the Imperial German Army's advance and occupation of Belgium from 4 August 1914 and north-eastern France from 6 August 1914.

This article provides an overview of the major battles which took place in Belgium and France from the autumn of 1914 to the 11 November Armistice of 1918. The outcome of the battles resulted in the formation of a battle front, which saw three years of attrition warfare in 1915, 1916 and 1917, with only a few months of mobile warfare at the start and at the end of four years of fighting.

Origin of the Name

This battle front was known to the Germans as " die Westfront ", as Imperial Germany's "western front" for those Imperial German Armies engaged in hostilities against France. The Imperial German Armies engaged against Russia were in action on Germany's "eastern front".

To the French Army the battle front, which stretched for several hundred miles within the northern, north-eastern and eastern borders of the French nation, was translated into French. The French word for "western" is "occidental", and so the literal translation for this battle front in France became " Le Front Occidental ".

The British Expeditionary Force, fighting on the battlefields in Belgium and France for four years, also translated the German name of "die Westfront" into English, and named this battle front in France as " The Western Front ".

Map: The Battles and their Locations

The grey shaded areas on the map illustrate the main areas on the Western Front where the 1914-1918 battles took place. The battlefields ranged from the northern end of this battle front on the Belgian coast to the village of Pfetterhouse on the Swiss frontier at its southern end. The map shows the Franco-German border as it was in 1914 when the war broke out. An overview of the major battles that shaped the formation of the Western Front is given below the map.

1914 First Encounters and Battles of the Frontiers

Battlefield locations:

Battle and Siege of Liège

The Battle and Siege of Liège (4 - 16 August 1914) was the first battle action on the Western Front, fought between the German Imperial Army and the Belgian Army. The historic Belgian city was located on high ground on the banks of the River Meuse. The city was surrounded by fortresses, built as defences to protect it because it was located on an important route into Belgium along the Meuse river valley between the Dutch border and the Ardennes forests. Twelve main forts encircled the city, being built below ground on a radius of approximately 4-6 miles from the city and with approximately 3 miles distance between each fort.

Six brigades from the German Second Army were sent to Liège capture the forts on 4 August. One German brigade succeeded in breaking through the line of forts. The Germans occupied the city on 7 August after attacks on it by a Zeppelin airship and artillery fire. From 12 - 16 August the shells from 11 huge howitzers, these being two German "Dicke Bertha" (Big Bertha") guns made by Krupp and 9 Austrian "Schlanke Emma" (Skinny Emma") guns made by Skoda, smashed the forts to pieces. Following the capitulation of the city the German Imperial troops marched south-westwards along the river Meuse valley to the fortified city of Namur.

French Attempts to Liberate Alsace

Within the first few days of the outbreak of hostilities between Germany and France, on 7 August the French crossed the border into German-occupied Alsace at the southern end of the Vosges mountains near Thann. Fighting took place on the Rhine plain of Alsace as the French attempted to capture Mulhouse and liberate the province of Alsace from its German occupation since 1871. In the Battle of Mulhouse (8 - 25 August 1914) this important industrial city on the Rhine river was entered and occupied two times by the French during August, but both times the German Seventh Army retook it.

Battles of the Frontiers

Battlefield locations:

The Battles of the Frontiers (14 - 25 August 1914) took place on the French-German border in Alsace-Lorraine and the French-Belgian border in north-eastern France. As the seven Imperial German Armies advanced westwards, according to a carefully timetabled, meticulously programmed German plan for an invasion of France by the name of The Schlieffen Plan, they came up against defiant Belgian and French troops intent on defending every inch of their national soil.

In the event of an attack from Imperial Germany the directive of the French military plan for the defence of France, Plan XVII, was that the French armies would mount an offensive operation on the eastern border with Germany (this being the border with the German occupied provinces of Alsace and Lorraine) and the north-eastern Franco-Belgian border in the Ardennes region. On the declaration of war between Germany and France, the French Army was mobilized and advanced eastwards and north-eastwards to meet the German threat. The Battles of the Frontiers comprised four major battles:

Battle of Lorraine (14 - 25 August 1914)

Battle of the Ardennes (21 - 28 August 1914)

Battle of Charleroi (21 - 23 August 1914)

Battle of Mons (23 August 1914)

Battles of the Frontiers: Lorraine

On 14 August the French First and Second Armies crossed the Franco-German border into Lorraine and fought the Germans in the Battles of Morhange and Sarrebourg (14 - 20 August) and the Battle of Mortagne (14 - 25 August). As with Alsace, the province of Lorraine had been under German occupation since 1871 and the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian war. It was a matter of national pride to liberate this province, rich in coal and iron deposits and a hub of rail and road networks at the fortified city of Metz. Allowing the French to make some progress in their advance, and with the intent of drawing the French troop strength away from the German Armies successfully advancing through Belgium, the Germans then counter-attacked in Lorraine causing thousands of French casualties.

Battles of the Frontiers: Ardennes

From 21 August the French encountered the numerically superior German forces of the Fourth and Fifth Armies in the forests of the Ardennes region. The Germans had selected good defensive positions in the woods in their field grey uniforms. The Germans were armed with heavy artillery pieces and machine guns. The attacking French soldiers were not as well-equipped nor were they as well trained in the tactics of defence as the Germans. Added to this the French soldiers were dressed in dark blue jackets and red pantalon trousers, which served to highlight their positions both in wooded terrain and open countryside. The French attacks were cut down with heavy casualties. The French Fourth Army held up the Germans at the Battle of the Meuse (26 - 28 August). Although the French attacks had held up the German advance for a few days, by 28 August the French had been outnumbered and were compelled to withdraw to the towns of Verdun, Stenay and Sedan.

Germans Capture Namur

The situation in the Belgian area of the Sambre-Meuse rivers became critical in the third week of August as the German Second and Third Armies pushed on to the south-west along the Meuse river following the capture of Liège. The Belgian city of Namur lay at the junction of the Sambre and the Meuse rivers. It was also fortified with a ring of forts around it, but it could not hold out against the might of the huge German and Austrian siege howitzers. With support from only one regiment of French troops being able to reach the city, the Belgian forces defending Namur were compelled to leave. By 25 August Namur was occupied by German troops. With the withdrawal of the French Armies from the Ardennes region further south, the right flank of the Allied troops still in the Sambre-Meuse area was becoming dangerously exposed.

Battles of the Frontiers: Charleroi

The Battle of Charleroi (21 - 23 August 1914) was fought at the town of Charleroi between the French Fifth Army and the German Second and Third Armies. The French were moving north to the Sambre river and the Germans were continuing their advance to the south-west after the fall of Namur. The French Fifth Army could not hold on and a general withdrawal was ordered.

Battles of the Frontiers: Mons

The Battle of Mons (23 August 1914) was one of the major battles in the Battles of the Frontiers and was the first encounter between British and German forces on the Western Front. The British Expeditionary Force (B.E.F.) comprised four infantry divisions and one cavalry division of the British First Army, which had landed at the French coast from 16 August. The B.E.F. had advanced through northern France and Belgium to move in on the French Fifth Army's left flank on the Sambre river. Having reached the area of Mons on 22 August the B.E.F. encountered German patrols at Soignies, which were advancing ahead of the German First Army. The next day, 23 August, the German First Army launched an attack at a strength of over two to one against four British divisions with a cavalry division in reserve. The British managed to hold up the Germans, commanded by General von Kluck, inflicting heavy casualties by the superior rifle fire from the highly trained British soldiers. With the realization that the small British force was up against a much greater force in terms of German manpower and artillery, the British ordered a retreat from Mons. With orders to maintain contact with the French forces also retreating on their right flank, the British found themselves fighting a rearguard action during their withdrawal and fought the Battle of Le Cateau (26 August 1914).

French Counter-Attack at Guise

Following the fall of Charleroi and the British withdrawal from Mons, the French Fifth Army was also retreating south to the Oise river. The French made a counter-attack at the Battle of Guise (29 August 1914) in the area of St. Quentin and Guise to hold a line there north of the Oise river on 29 August. The position at Guise was, however, precarious and the order was given to withdraw. The French Fifth Army continued its retreat south across the river Oise, destroying the bridges behind it.

By the end of August the French and the German Armies had sustained some 300,000 casualties, including wounded or killed, on both sides. The German advance had successfully penetrated the French border in several places and was pressing on with its advance following on the heels of the French and British forces withdrawing in a south-easterly direction.

German Advance Blocked at Nancy

The Battle of Grand Couronné (4 - 13 September 1914) took place in the Meuse-Meurthe area of Lorraine between the French Second Army and the German Sixth Army. Following on from the failure of the French to hold the German advance at the Battle of Lorraine the French Second Army occupied an arc of high ground on a series of hills near Nancy. The German Sixth Army was aiming to capture the city, a prize which would be worthy of a grand entrance by Kaiser Wilhelm II himself. Indeed, he arrived in his Royal Train to observe the German attack and to attend a victory parade in the captured city. The Germans caused damage to villages and to Nancy by artillery bombardments, but did not succeed in capturing the city. Pont-à-Mousson and Lunéville were reoccupied by the French and Nancy was securely held in French territory for the duration of the war.

German Advance Blocked at the Marne

Battlefield location:

The advance towards Paris of five of the German Armies stretching along a line from Verdun to Amiens was set to continue at the end of August 1914. The German First Army was within 30 miles of the French capital. By 3 September the British Expeditionary Force (B.E.F.) had crossed the Marne river in a retreat to the south and was in a position east of Paris between the French Sixth and French Fifth Armies. However, the commander of the German First Army made a fateful change to the original directive of The Schlieffen Plan, making an assumption that the Allies were not in a position to hold out against an attack on Paris from the east. The original Schlieffen Plan directive had been for German forces to attack Paris from the north in an encircling manoeuvre. Launching an attack east of Paris on 4 September the German First Army made progress in a southerly direction. However, the change to the Schlieffen Plan now exposed the right flank of the German attacking force. From 5to 8 September the French Armies and British First Army carried out counter-attacks against the German advance on a line of approximately 100 miles from Compiègne east of Paris to Verdun. The Battle of the Ourcq River (5- 8 September 1914) was carried out by the French Sixth Army against the German First Army of General von Kluck.

On 9 September the German First Army began to pull back as the British First Army moved in on its left flank. With no option but to make a fighting withdrawal, all the German forces in the Marne river region retreated in a northerly direction, crossing the Aisne to the high ground of the Chemin des Dames ridge.

The First Battle of the Marne was a strategic victory for the Allied Forces. It marked a decisive turn of events for the Allies in the early weeks of the war and Germany's Schlieffen Plan was stopped in its tracks. One of the famous events in the crucial defence of Paris is that 600 Parisian taxis were sent from the city carrying French reinforcement troops to the fighting front.

The Germans Entrench their Positions on the Aisne

Battlefield location:

From 12 September 1914 the German Army began to "dig in" on the high ground of the Chemin des Dames ridge on the north bank of the river Aisne. The Germans dug defensive trenches with the intention of securing the position and preventing any further possibility of withdrawal. This battlefield area witnessed the beginnings of entrenched positions and the change from a mobile war to a static deadlock between the opposing forces. From this date the entrenchments would gradually spread along the whole length of the Western Front, would become deeper and more impregnable and would characterize the siege warfare fighting of the Western Front for the following three and a half years.

During the First Battle of the Aisne (12 - 15 September 1914) the German right wing could not be dislodged by the Allied forces of the French Sixth Army, the British Expeditionary Force and the French Fifth Army. The consequence of the Germans establishing entrenched positions on the Chemin des Dames ridge was that the Allied armies were unsuccessful in making a frontal assault on it. They were, therefore, compelled to look for open ground on either flank of the German position. A French assault on the German First Army's exposed right flank (i.e. the northern flank) caused the Germans to move their Seventh Army from Alsace to protect this exposed right/northern flank.

Siege of Antwerp

Battlefield location:

After the fall of Liège on 16 August the Belgian King, Albert I, had ordered his 65,000 Belgian troops in the field to withdraw to Antwerp, where they joined with the 80,000 strong garrison holding the fortified city. During the late August battles in southern Belgium and northern France, as the French and the British Expeditionary Force were being pushed towards the Marne by the Imperial German armies, the Belgian troops in Antwerp had posed a threat to the German First Army of General von Kluck by attacking his rear columns. The Germans decided to take Antwerp to dispel this threat. On 28 th September the German heavy siege guns shelled Antwerp's outlying ring of forts, which fell. Three brigades of British Royal Naval troops were sent to support the defence of the port and city on 6 October. However, on the day they arrived the Belgian government had already left the city. The order to evacuate the city was given for the next day, 7 October. Most of the British and Belgian troops in the city left in a south-westerly direction and the Belgian coast at Ostend. The German Army moved in to occupy Antwerp two days later.
The Siege of Antwerp 1914
The "Race to the Sea": Outflanking the Enemy

Battlefield locations (south to north):

Over the next few weeks from late September to the end of November 1914 the Allied and German Armies attempted to outflank one another, responding to each other manoeuvring their armies to make a stand or cover their exposed northern flank. Operationally it was not an intentional race to reach the French or Belgian coast before the other. However, the fight to capture the unoccupied ground on each other's northern flank, the German attempt to capture more French ground and reach Paris, against the French determination to hold up their enemy's advance resulted in the movement of the armies in a north-westerly direction towards the coast. Battles took place as the armies sidestepped one another towards the French-Belgian coast and the Channel ports of Calais, Dunkirk, Ostend and Zeebrugge. This period of fighting has become known as "The Race to the Sea".

Battles in the autumn of 1914 during this period of mobile fighting were:

Trench Warfare

By the end of 1914 the battles of movement in the first weeks of the war had been brought to a halt. The fierce defence of strategic landmarks by the Allied forces resulted in a situation which became one of deadlock. Carefully selecting the most favourable high ground the Imperial German Army began the construction of a strong defensive line from early in 1915.

The consolidation of the Front Lines consisted of trenches, wire defences, mined dugouts and deep bunkers, reinforced concrete emplacements and selected strongpoints, usually a reinforced farm, in an Intermediate, Second and Third defensive line. Gradually the building and digging was carried on on both sides of the wire along a distance of approximately 450 miles, creating a more or less continous line of trenches separating the warring belligerents along the length of The Western Front.

In 1915, 1916 and 1917 both sides made attempts to break the deadlock with major battle offensives. The characteristics of siege warfare which developed on the Western Front in these three years created conditions never witnessed before. Instead of expecting to achieve objectives at a considerable distance from the start of an offensive, the type of trench warfare fighting created a situation where attacks were carried out in phases with short distance objectives and usually following a bombardment of enemy trench lines beforehand. This strategy led to prolonged periods of fighting with success counted in gains hundreds of yards rather than miles. The human cost of casualties and dead in such a grinding type of siege warfare would be recorded in the thousands in the space of a single day. Over a period of these three years both sides suffered heavy losses in human casualties and aminals, expenditure in ammunition and equipment. In spite of this the Front Lines stretching from the Swiss border to the Belgian coast remained more or less in the same location with little ground gained by either side.

1915 Battles for a Breakthrough

Battlefield locations:

Allied Spring Offensive in Champagne

From 10 December 1914 the French launched their first offensive against the entrenched defences of the German Front in the Champagne region, the First Champagne Offensive (10 December 1914 - 17 March 1915). The fighting went on for four months, with Allied attacks also carried out against the German Front from the Yser sector in the Belgian coastal region to the Woeuvre heights south of Verdun. The gain in ground for the Allies was very little, being up against a well-entrenched enemy and Allied casualties from the campaign were in the region of 90,000.

British Break the German Line in Artois

The Battle of Neuve Chapelle (10 - 13 March 1915) was launched with the aim of capturing the high ground of the Aubers Ridge and in so doing, to create a threat to the German Army in occupation of the city of Lille. Although the British broke through the German Front Line and captured the village of Neuve Chapelle, the German Sixth Army carried out counter-attacks and the British attack was halted from advancing any further.

First British Mining Operation on the Western Front

The Battle of Hill 60 (17 - 22 April 1915) was launched with the explosion of mines underneath the German positions on the relatively high ground of Hill 60, south-east of Ypres. This was the first operation carried out by the British Army to lay large mines underneath the enemy position in order to blow him out of his defences. The fighting was fierce but the British successfully captured the hill. During the Second Battle of Ypres in the days following the close of the Battle of Hill 60 the ground was recaptured by the Germans on 5 May 1915.

German Gas Cloud Trial Leads to a Breakthrough

The Second Battle of Ypres (22 April - 25 May 1915) started on a warm spring afternoon with the trial of a new weapon of war in the Ypres sector: a cloud of poisonous gas. After two attempts to release the gas earlier in the month, this was a cloud of chlorine gas released by the German Fourth Army, followed by an infantry attack. The gas cloud was blown on a gentle breeze across two French divisions in the north part of the Ypres Salient. The German infantry advance behind the cloud was rapid, the Allied Front Line was broken and the way to Ypres was open by the end of the day. The battle for the defence of Ypres and the recapture of lost ground included more German gas cloud attacks against the Allied troops.

The Second Battle of Ypres consisted of four battles starting with the surprise gas attack by the Germans:

The following three battles were counter-attacks by the allied troops to try to regain the ground lost to the Germans. The three battles were:

the Battle of St Julien

the Battle of Frezenburg Ridge

the Battle of Bellewarde Ridge.

Battle Study: Build-up to the Second Battle of Ypres

Allied Offensive in Artois

In May 1915 the Allies carried out an offensive north of Arras towards Lille. This was the Second Battle of Artois (9 May - 18 June 1915) with the aim to push the Germans off the dominating high ground of the Loretto and Vimy Ridges north of Arras. British attacks on the German line took place a little further north on the flat Flanders plain at Aubers Ridge and Festubert. By the end of the offensive there were approximately 100,000 French casualties, 26,000 British casualties and 90,000 German casualties.

French Offensive in the Vosges Mountains

In July 1915 the French carried out an offensive almost 3,000 feet above sea level on the rounded peaks of the Vosges mountains of Alsace. The offensive followed battles between the French and the Germans for possession of the peaks in deep snow and storms in the early part of 1915. Following a limited offensive to try to push the Germans out of the Fecht valley on the east side of the mountain range at Munster the French pressed on later in the summer to try to take the peaks and mountain road toutes around Le Linge. The Battle of Le Linge (20 July - 15 October 1915) was fought for almost three months. Since the fighting there earlier in the year the Germans had reinforced their lightly-held positions by constructing an impregnable fortress of tunnels, trenches and bunkers hewn either out of the rock or supplemented by reinforced concrete. The German line could not be broken and after the close of the battle the Front Lines on this peak remained static, and only a few yards apart in places, for the rest of the war.

Allied Autumn Offensives in Artois and Champagne

In the autumn of 1915 the French and British Armies carried out a second large-scale, two-pronged offensive against the German positions, which were by this time well-consolidated and proving increasingly more difficult to break into. The Second Champagne Offensive (25 September - 6 November 1915), had the objective of forcing the German Third and Fifth Armies in the Argonne sector to withdraw along the Meuse river towards Belgium. A simultaneous attack by French and British forces from Vimy Ridge to La Bassée, called the Artois-Loos Offensive or the Third Battle of Artois (25 September - 15 October 1915), aimed to break through the German Front in Artois. This would compel the German Second and Seventh Armies caught between the two attacks to pull back to the Belgian border in order to protect their road and rail routes in their Lines of Communication on the Douai plain.

The Champagne offensive gained a few miles of ground and captured some 25,000 German prisoners, but with German reinforcements brought into the sector from the Eastern Front, the French could not withstand repeated German counter-attacks. French losses were over 145,000 casualties by the time the Champagne offensive drew to a close.

The Artois offensive witnessed the first use of a gas cloud weapon by the British Army on the Western Front at the Battle of Loos (25 September - 8 October 1915). The French managed to get onto the Vimy Ridge but did not succeed in pushing the Germans off this dominating ridge. The British attack achieved some success north of Loos and by the end of the first day they had passed through Loos village and reached the outskirts of the industrial, built-up town of Lens. Crucial time lost by the delayed arrival of the reserve divisions added to problems of command and control of the troops on the ground east of Loos, who had inadvertently headed south instead of east in the confusion of battle and the confusion created by similar pit-head landscape features in this mining area. The pause in the attack gave the German Fourth Army time to bring in reserves to the area overnight who reinforced a new German Second Position located on higher ground with good views across the British attack area. The British did not succeed in making any headway against this Second Position and suffered heavy casualties on 26 September. A second British advance against the German Second Position failed with heavy casualties in early October as bad weather closed in.

The lessons learned by the German defenders in these 1915 autumn battles was the value of "Defence in Depth". This is the term for a tactic whereby the defenders man the Front Line lightly, the attacker is initially allowed to gain some ground beyond his own artillery cover in the opening phase of an attack, and then he is counter-attacked by groups of well-placed defenders in second and third positions constructed behind the Front Line.

1916 Grinding Battles of Attrition: Verdun and the Somme

Battlefield locations:

The year 1916 witnessed two of the most notorious battles of attrition in the Great War, resulting in thousands of casualties for both the Allied and German Armies on the Western Front.

German Attempt to Break the French Army

The Battle of Verdun (21 February - 18 December 1916) was the longest battle in the First World War, lasting for almost a year. The battle took place in the sector of the fortified town of Verdun on the river Meuse. Lying in the middle of a salient Verdun had a citadel fort at its heart and was surrounded by a ring of forts on the high ground of the northern and eastern banks of the Meuse. The town had been saved from German occupation in the Battles of the Frontiers in autumn 1914. The German Chief of Staff, General von Falkenhayn, decided to attack Verdun, which had become a symbol of defiance and national pride to the French people. Falkenhayn's intention was to launch a long drawn-out, large-scale offensive against the sector in order to draw the French to defend it at all costs, and which would ultimately bleed the French Army of all of its strength.

The opening bombardment began on 21 February and lasted for 21 hours. The infantry offensive was launched by the German Fifth Army with one million men against a French force of about 200,000 men. Within three days the Germans had advanced almost four miles, had captured Fort Douaumont and the French-held Woeuvre plain to the east of the Verdun salient. The French Commander-in-Chief, General Joffre, decided to hold Verdun at all costs, placed General Pétain in charge of the sector to reorganize the defences and save the situation. The stand made by the French over the following months into the autumn and winter of 1916 became legendary. The battlefield became known as "the mincing machine" to the French troops, but they continued to hold out and Verdun was never captured. The road from Verdun to Bar le Duc was the only road from the Verdun sector into the French rear areas. Every day this road was filled with lorries passing each other every few seconds taking supplies up to the battlefront and taking wounded out of it. It became known as "la Voie Sacrée" (the "Sacred Way") and, like the whole of the battlefield sector at Verdun, the role this road played in the battle is treated with reverence by the French nation. Casualties at the close of the battle amounted to over 400,000 German casualties and over 540,000 French casualties, many thousands of whom were killed.

Franco-British Offensive on the Somme Front

The 1916 Battle of the Somme (1 July - 18 November 1916) was an Allied offensive carried out jointly by the British Army and the French Army in the sector of the Western Front north and south of the river Somme. The length of German Front Line under attack stretched between the village of Gommecourt and the town of Péronne. A proposal for the joint offensive was put forward by the French Commander-in-Chief, General Joffre, on 30 December 1915. An agreement between General Joffre and the new British Commander-in-Chief, General Haig, for the offensive to take place in July 1916 was made on 14 February 1916. Just one week later the German Army had attacked at Verdun.

In spite of the German Army's huge commitments at Verdun the Commander-in-Chief, General Falkenhayn, was approached by some of his Army commanders to make attacks on the Allied sectors at Ypres, Arras, the Somme and the Aisne. By late May 1916 the Second German Army commander in the Somme sector was given agreement to prepare for a two-phased offensive against the British Front Line north of the Somme river. Following a breakthrough on the Eastern Front at Lutsk German reinforcements were sent from the Western Front to the Eastern Front and the German Second Army's attack was shelved. Initially the French Army was to carry the main force of the attack, but as the Battle of Verdun continued and began to claim heavy French casualties, the Battle of the Somme became mainly a British offensive to take German-held ground and also to draw off German reserves from Verdun.

The battle began in the early morning of 1 July after an artillery bombardment lasting several days, and such as had never been witnessed on the Western Front or any other battlefield before. The first day of the battle claimed over 58,000 British casualties of whom more than 19,000 were killed. This was the largest loss on a single day in the history of the British Army. 1 July 1916 was a day of tragedy for many thousands of families in Britain. Over a period of four and a half months the battle continued in several phases, with the British Army making limited advances by capturing key villages and ridges, but advancing only a few miles by the close of the battle and the wintry weather in November. The Battle of the Somme in 1916 witnessed the first use of tanks in combat at the Battle of Flers-Courcelette (15 - 22 September 1916).

The Battle of the Somme 1916 comprised several phases as:
Battles of the Somme 1916
Allied Diversion at Fromelles in July

The Battle of Fromelles (19 - 20 July 1916) was a combined action by British and Australian troops intended not only to divert German attention away from the Battles of the Somme taking place just to the south, but was also an operation to retake the ground just north of Fromelles.

1917 Allied Offensives - Aisne, Artois, Champagne, Flanders, Cambrai

Battlefield locations:

German Withdrawal to The Hindenburg Line

At the end of August 1916 General von Falkenhayn was replaced as Commander-in-Chief of the German forces by the dual command of Field Marshal von Hindenburg and General Ludendorff. After they took over German Supreme Command they made a decision to construct a heavily fortified line of defence behind the current German Front Line on the central and northern Western Front, to which they would make a planned withdrawal. Some of the sectors already had fortifications and the plan was to build on them. Other sectors were still being constructed as late as 1918.

This German line of defence was called The Hindenburg Line, after Field Marshal von Hindenburg. It was named in several sections or positions:

The Wotan Stellung (position) stretched from the Belgian coast to Cambrai;

the Siegfried Stellung stretched from Cambrai to St Quentin;

the Alberich Stellung stretched from St. Quentin to Laon;

the Brunhilde Stellung stretched from Laon across the Champagne Front;

the Kriemhilde Stellung stretched from the Argonne Forest to Metz.

From 21 February 1917 the German Army began a planned withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line from Artois (Arras) to the Aisne (Soissons), a manoeuvre which was named Operation Alberich and which took about five weeks to complete. During the withdrawal the Germans deliberately destroyed buildings, damaged wells and watercourses, roads and railway tracks to prevent the pursuing Allies from taking over the abandoned ground in a good state.

Allied 1917 Spring Offensive in Artois and Champagne

In December 1916 General Nivelle replaced General Joffre as Commander-in-Chief of French forces. Nivelle proposed a major Allied offensive in Artois and Champagne for the spring of 1917. It was to be similar to the two-pronged offensive carried out by General Joffre two years before. This time he would employ more French troops, about one million, on the Aisne-Champagne Front between Roye and Reims. The French offensive was called the Second Battle of the Aisne or the Nivelle Offensive (16 April - 9 May 1917). The Battle of the Hills or the Third Battle of Champagne (17 - 20 April 1917) was a diversionary battle carried out during the Second Battle of the Aisne.

The British Expeditionary Force was to carry out diversionary attacks as part of an Artois offensive at Arras. Some disruption to the battle planning was caused by the German withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line between Arras and Soissons, but also reservations were expressed by the French government about Nivelle's optimistic forecast of a surprise attack and a victory for the offensive. A vote of confidence in Nivelle's plan resulted in the collapse of the French governement.

British Battles at Arras

The British attacks began a week before the French offensive, with the Battle of Arras (9 April - 4 May 1917) comprising 8 battle phases:

1. the First Battle of the Scarpe (9 to 14 April 1917)

2. the Battle of Vimy Ridge (9 to 12 April 1917)

3. the First Battle of Bullecourt (10 to 11 April 1917)

4. the Battle of Lagnicourt (15 April 1917)

5. the Second Battle of the Scarpe (23 to 24 April 1917)

6. the Battle of Arleux (28 to 29 April 1917)

7. the Third Battle of the Scarpe (3 to 4 May 1917)

8. the Battle of Bullecourt (3 to 17 May 1917)

The British attacks achieved some limited success, but the French offensive further south was a failure with 187,000 casualties. Mutiny in the French units became widespread and morale was very low. Once again General Pétain was requested to take control of the situation and he was appointed as Commander-in-Chief of French Forces on 15 May.

British Flanders Offensive

Battlefield area:

Ypres Salient (West-Flanders)

On 7 June 1917 the British Commander-in-Chief, General Haig, launched the first phase of an offensive which had the objective to break out of the Ypres Salient and also to relieve the pressure on the weakened French Army after the Nivelle Offensive. This was the Battle of Messines (7 - 14 June 1917). The launch of the infantry assault was preceded by the explosion of 19 huge mines under the German Front Line along the ridge of high ground, the Wyteschaete Ridge, south of Ypres. Preparations for an attack on the ridge had been carried out since early in 1916. German senior commanders did not heed warnings by some commanders in the field that the British might be carrying out significant mining operations, and, fortunately for the British, the German Front Line was not withdrawn to the eastern part of the ridge. The attack was successful in pushing the German Front Line off the Wyteschaete Ridge.

The next phase of the British Flanders offensive was the launch of the Third Battle of Ypres (31 July - 6 November 1917). Bouyed up by the success of the Battle of Messines, the British Commander-in-Chief, General Haig, was of the belief that the German Army was weak and would not withstand an attempted breakthrough in the north-east of the Ypres Salient. Once a breakthough of the German Front Line had been achieved, the British would be able to possess the dominant views of the high ground of the Passchendaele Ridge. They would then be in a good position to continue to the German-held ports of Ostend and Zeebrugge on the Belgian coast. Not only were both ports being used by the Germans for light shipping traffic, but Zeebrugge was the location of pens for German submarines, which were attacking Allied shipping.

The preliminary bombardment before the battle lasted for 10 days, during which time 3,000 guns fired 4.25 million artillery shells. Along an 11 mile front the infantry attack comprised a corps of the French First Army on the left, the British Fifth Army in the centre and a corps of the British Second Army on the right of the attack. The German Fourth Army held off the attackers in most places. Within hours of the start of the battle rain began to fall and crucially did not stop, carrying on into the following weeks. The constant rain produced conditions completely unsuitable for the continued movement of men, animals and heavy equipment, such as artillery pieces and tanks. The battle, however, continued to grind on in short phases for several weeks throughout the late summer, the autumn and into the winter until the eventual capture of the crest of the Passchendaele Ridge and Passchendaele village on 6 th November. The final phase of the battle, called The Battle of Passchendaele, was a name which became synonymous to the British nation with the mud, blood, horror and terrible human loss that was the trench warfare of the Great War of 1914-1918. The British Expeditionary Force sustained over 300,000 casualties. The Third Battle of Ypres comprised 8 phases:
Battles in the Ypres Salient 1917
First Allied Mass Tank Attack

Battlefield area:

Cambrai (Nord-Pas-de-Calais)

The first use of the new tank weapon in a large-scale attack was launched at the Batle of Cambrai (20 November - 7 December 1917) with over 450 tanks against the German Front Line at the Cambrai salient. There was no preliminary bombardment before the attack and the assault on the German lines was a surprise. According to Field Marshal Prince Rupprecht, it was the only time the Allies achieved a complete surprise attack. The Germans lost ground on the first day of the battle. Fighting continued over the next few days and on 30 November a German counter-attack of 20 divisions began to push the British back across the ground they had captured. By 7 December the battle had ended and the British had lost almost all the ground taken in the first few days of the attack.

1918 German Offensives to Break the Deadlock

Battlefield areas:

In the spring and summer of 1918 the German Supreme Command committed thousands of troops, tons of equipment and hundreds of guns as part of a plan to make a series of large-scale surprise offensives and diversions against the Allied lines held by French, British, Belgian and Portuguese troops. This was an attempt to break the deadlock on the Western Front before the U.S. Army was ready to take to the French battlefields in full force. The Germans hoped to punch through the Allied defensive line, cut off the British forces from the French, push the British forces to the French and Belgian coast and trap them there. Planning and secret preparations were carried out between January and 21 March 1918 for attacks to take place in a given sequence on almost every sector of the Allied Front Line. After initial successes and some significant ground gained the German offensives ran into difficulties one by one, not only where the Allied forces were able to put up a stubborn defence, but as a result of problems incurred by overstretching the limits of the German ability to resupply their troops with sufficient food, equipment, fresh horsepower and reinforcements.

The five main sequential phases of the German 1918 spring offensive comprised:

Kaiserschlacht: Michael Offensive, or Second Battle of the Somme (21 March - 5 April 1918)
Battles of the Somme 1918: Spring

1. Lys: Battle of the Lys (9 - 29 April 1918)

2. Aisne: Third Battle of the Aisne (27 May - 6 June 1918)

3. Noyon: Noyon-Montdidier Offensive (9 - 13 June 1918)

4. Marne: Marne Offensive or Second Battle of the Marne (15 July - 5 August 1918)

Phase 1: Kaiserschlacht - the German Michael Offensive

This first phase of the spring offensive was known to the German Army commanders as the " Kaiserschlacht" (Kaiser's Battle). Under the codename of " Operation Michael " the first German offensive of 1918 was launched against the British Front Line on the foggy morning of 21 March between Cambrai, St. Quentin and La Fère on the Somme battlefield. The aim of this offensive was to push the British westwards and drive a wedge along the boundary of the British and French Armies at La Fère. In the original plan the French forces were to be held and kept busy with their own defence so they would be less likely to move reinforcements to support the British further north.

A massive artillery bombardment preceded the surprise attack on 21 March. The German assault was made against the British-held Front Line for a distance of 50 miles. The defenders of the British Third and Fifth Armies were up against a superiority in troop numbers of three to one; 26 British divisions were up against 62 German divisions, with an accompanying strength of 6,600 German artillery pieces compared to 2,600 British guns. The attack divisions were trained in the techniques of aggressive assault as storm troopers and there had been training in the co-ordination of command between the infantry and artillery.

The German advance made significant gains on the first day in the British Fifth Army sector. The French Marshal Ferdinand Foch was appointed to co-ordinate and command the Allied French and British defence. North of the Somme river the British Third Army blocked the German advance on 26 April.

Under the codename " Operation Mars" the Germans attacked the southern Arras sector but it was not successful. South of the Somme river the German advance did continue to within 10 miles of the Allied rail centre of Amiens. The Allies halted the Germans in a stand at the village of Villers-Bretonneux, called the Actions of Villers-Bretonneux on 24 April.

Despite the large amount of Allied ground captured in the first few days of the offensive, the German advance faltered because the troops became exhausted, there was difficulty keeping the troops at the front of the advance supplied with food and equipment by having to cover long distances over destroyed ground. Some of the destruction of the roads, railway lines and villages had, ironically, been carried out deliberately by the Germans during their withdrawal in Operation Alberich (February-March 1917) to the Hindenburg Line exactly one year before.

Phases of the Allied defence of the line during the German Kaiserschlacht: Operation Michael comprised:
Battles of the Somme 1918: Spring
Phase 2: The German Lys Offensive

As the weather conditions began to improve after the winter, a second phase of the offensive, codenamed " Operation Georgette" in the German plan was the start of the Battle of the Lys (9 - 29 April 1918). The offensive was launched against the Allied line in the low-lying, British-held sector on both sides of the Lys river in French Flanders. The German objective was the important Allied rail centre of Hazebrouck. If the town could be captured there would be an opportunity to push the German advance further west to reach the French coast and, in so doing, cut off the British, French and Belgian forces holding the Ypres Salient in Belgium.

On the first day the German Sixth Army attack was launched against two divisions of the Portuguese Army, holding the Allied Front Line between La Bassée and Armentières. The Portuguese could not withstand the force of the attack and the Germans captured almost four miles of ground. On the following day, 10 th April, the German Fourth Army made an attack a little further to the north against the British Second Army holding the Front Line in Belgian Flanders. The British were pushed back beyond the villages of Messines and Wyteschaete, which they had captured in the successful Battle of Messines (7 - 14 June 1917) almost exactly one year before. The situation for the British was very serious by 12 April, which compelled them, under the leadership of General Plumer, to make tortuous decisions about making tactical withdrawals to positions which could be more easily defended. Passchendaele, the village on the crest of the ridge which had eventually been captured after weeks of terrible fighting in the summer and autumn of 1917, was one of the areas of ground reluctantly given up to the tactical withdrawal.

The German attacks continued against the British line and also against the Belgian Army holding the line north of Ypres but no ground was gained. French reinforcements arrived to support the British defence on the high ground of Mount Kemmel. The Germans attacked these newly arrived French troops on 25 April. By 29 April the German offensive had been blocked and no further attacks were made. The Germans had not captured any of their objectives as the Allies had held onto Hazebrouck and the Channel ports.

Phases of the Allied defence during the German Lys Offensive comprised:

the Battle of Éstaires (9 - 11 April 1918)

the Battle of Messines (10 - 11 April 1918)

the Battle of Hazebrouck (12 - 15 April 1918)

the Battle of Bailleul (13 - 15 April 1918)

the First Battle of Kemmel Ridge or First Battle of Kemmelberg (17 - 19 April 1918)

the Battle of Béthune (18 April 1918)

the Second Battle of Kemmel Ridge or Second Battle of the Kemmelberg (25 - 26 April 1918)

the Battle of the Scherpenberg (29 April 1918)

British Naval Raids on Zeebrugge & Ostend

The British carried out a daring raids on the Belgian ports of Zeebrugge and Ostend, with the aim of blocking the sea entrances to the canals leading to the German submarine pens and torpedo boats moored in the inland port of Bruges.

Raid on Zeebrugge (23 April 1918)

Raids on Ostend (23 April 1918 & 10 May 1918)

British Naval Raids on Zeebrugge & Ostend
Phase 3: The German Aisne Offensive

This was the third phase of the German 1918 offensive as an attack on the French forces in the Aisne sector. In the German plan it was code-named " Operation Blücher-Yorck". The aim of this offensive was to focus French attention in this region and thereby stop them from moving reserves further north to support the British defence in the Flanders-Lys battle sector. The Third Battle of the Aisne (27 May - 2 June 1918) was launched with an artillery bombardment by over 4,500 guns. 17 infantry divisions attacked the Allied Front Line along a front of nine miles on the Chemin des Dames ridge. The Allied defenders comprised four French divisions and three tired British divisions in the Front Line, with 9 divisions in the rear as support. The bridges over the Aisne river were captured by the Germans and they advanced approximately ten miles by the end of the first day. This was the greatest gain of ground in one day for either side since the end of the battles of 1914 in the "Race to the Sea".

The Germans continued their advance, being only 80 miles from Paris. On 30 th May the German Army was on the Marne river at Château-Thierry. The American Third Division was brought to the area and it held up the German advance at Château-Thierry. By 2 nd June the German High Command called the operation to a close as they were not able to maintain the advance any further, finding themselves hemmed in inside a 35 mile deep and 20 mile wide salient. This situation posed a threat for the likelihood of Allied attacks on the exposed flanks and being cut off to the rear.

First American Attack

The first American attack on the Western Front took place during the German Aisne Offensive. The Battle of Cantigny (28 May 1918) took place near Montdidier on the second day of the German offensive on the Aisne river. The American First Division capatured the village of Cantigy and 200 German prisoners, which was a great boost to Allied morale. Casualties for the Americans were 1,603, of whom 199 were killed.

American Counter-Attack at Belleau Wood

At the of the German Aisne Offensive the fighting lines had reached the west of Château-Thierry at Vaux and Belleau Wood by the end of May 1918. The American Second Division, moved in to replace a French corps in the sector. The German advance was stopped on 4 June. Two days later this American division made a counter-attack against four German divisions. This battle, the Battle of Belleau Wood (6 June - 1 July 1918) was the first major battle by the Americans against the German Army and Vaux and Belleau Wood were successfully recaptured.

Phase 4: the German Noyon-Montdidier Offensive

The Noyon-Montdidier Offensive known in the German plan by its code-name of " Operation Gneisenau" (9 - 13 June 1918). Also known as the Battle of Matz it was the fourth German offensive launched in 1918. The German plan was to push the German Front Line westwards in the sector between two salients; the northern salient had been formed from the fighting towards Amiens and the southern one at the end of the previous German offensive in the Aisne sector. If the Germans could make progress in the centre sector here, the indented Front Line of the bulge between these two salients could be straightened out. Although the Germans made progress on the first day, the French organized a counter-attack on 11 June. Three French and two American divisions were supported by tanks. Two days later the Germans halted their offensive.

Australian Success at Le Hamel

The Battle of Le Hamel (4 July 1918) was a victory for the Allies, and most specifically for the Australian 4th Division, four companies of US infantry and the supporting troops with 60 Allied tanks and machine gun units. The aim for the attack was to straighten a German-held salient bulging into the Allied line. The carefully planned attack was a complete surprise to the Germans and the salient was won and closed up within about 90 minutes, with casualties on the Allied side of about 1,000. Almost 1,500 Germans surrendered.

Battle of Le Hamel

Phase 5: The German Marne Offensive or Second Battle of the Marne

The Marne Offensive (15 July - 5 August 1918) became the last German offensive of the war. It was intended as a diversionary attack either side of Reims to cross the river Marne and draw the Allied reserves away from Flanders, where Ludendorff was planning to make another offensive to break through the Allied line once and for all.

The German attack east of Reims was blocked by the French defence on the first day. The attack west of Reims did succeed in crossing the Marne river. On 18 July an Allied counter-attack, comprising French, British, American and Italian troops, pushed the German forces back. Soissons was re-captured on 2 August and the Germans withdrew to entrenched positions on a line along the Vesle and Aisne rivers. As a result of the defeat of this German offensive the proposed German offensive in Flanders was called off. This retreat and defeat, the last in a series of offensives which each ended in an unsuccessful strategic conclusion, marked the beginning of the gradual retreat of the German forces which was to come over the following months to 11 th November 1918.

1918 Allied Advance to Victory: 100 Days Offensive

Battlefield locations:

Amiens Offensive

From July 1918 the Allies launched offensives against a weakening German defensive line. This push by the Allied Armies on several parts of the Western Front succeeded in once again creating a war of movement. The Allied Amiens Offensive or Third Battle of Picardy (8 August - 3 September 1918) was an attack launched in fog against the German positions by the British Fourth Army, comprising an attack in the centre of a 14 mile front by 11 British divisions and the left wing of the French First Army on their right flank. Canadian forces would attack in the centre sector. An attack by 435 Allied tanks went in ahead of the infantry assault. By the end of 8 August the British divisions had pushed the Germans about 10 miles east of their position that morning. The swift advance by the British and French divisions caught the Germans by surprise. By the end of the second day of the battle 30,000 German prisoners had been captured and 300 artillery pieces. On 10 August the French Third Army launched attacks in the southern sector of the advance. Montdidier was re-captured and the Paris-Amiens railway line was once again in Allied control. On 12 August the first phase of the battle drew to a close.

The second phase of the offensive began on 21 August as the Second Battles of the Somme 1918. The French Tenth and Third Armies, and the British Third and First Armies attacked. The ANZACs captured ground north of the Somme river at Péronne and Mont St. Quentin. Canadian forces captured ground near Quéant. By 4 September the German forces had withdrawn to the Hindenburg Line, the position from which they had advanced to make the offensives in the earlier part of the year. The two phases of the Allied Amiens Offensive comprised the main battles of:
Somme Battles 1918: Summer
Allied Diversionary Offensives and Advances

From September a series of Allied offensives on the Western Front were launched in sequence at about the same time as the main Meuse-Argonne Offensive. This was to avoid the situation whereby the Germans might mass their available reserves in one particular place and create a problem for the momentum of the Allied advance along the northern half of the Western Front. The series of Allied attacks took place in part against the heavily defended Hindenburg Line in the following offensives:

the French and Belgian Flanders Offensive

the Ypres Offensive

the Cambrai Offensive

the St. Quentin Offensive

the Meuse-Argonne Offensive

Advances in Flanders

Allied advances took place in French and Belgian Flanders between late September into October 1918. The main series of battles were known as The Flanders Advance or the Fifth Battle of Ypres or the Battle of the Peaks of Flanders (28 September - 2 October 1918) by the British Second and Fifth Armies and the 27th American Division. The advance included an action in August called the Action at Outtersteene Ridge (18 August 1918).
Battles of the Ypres Salient 1918
First American Offensive at St. Mihiel Salient

The Battle of St. Mihiel (12 - 16 September 1918) was the first large-scale, separate offensive by American forces on the Western Front. By late summer 1918 the strategic importance of the German-held salient south of Verdun had was not so prominent as it was in 1917, when the newly arrived American Staff officers arrived on the Western Front. Their desire at that time was to carry out a separate offensive by American forces against the danger posed by this salient. Marshal Foch, commander of the Allied forces on the Western Front in late 1918, had to be convinced it was still relevant to make the attack. He did agree, although he was also wishing to use the American forces for an assault west of Verdun in the Meuse-Argonne sector. The German forces were in the process of evacuating the salient when the American First Army attacked them, supported by French tanks and artillery and 600 Allied aircraft. The offensive successfully cleared the Germans from the salient and 15,000 German prisoners were captured with 250 guns. A few days later the American First Army transferred to the Meuse-Argonne sector in preparation for an attack.

The Allied Meuse Argonne Offensive

The Meuse Argonne Offensive (26 September - 11 November 1918) was an Allied offensive with the aim of pushing the German Armies further east from their positions at the Hindenburg Line, cutting the Germans off from their important rail routes supplying their front line sectors. The Allied attack comprised a total of 37 French and US divisions opposing 24 German divisions. There were three fortified German lines, two of which were breached by 5 October. Another assault was started up again on 14 October by the First and Second US Armies but they suffered heavy casualties without making progress. Once again on 1 November the Allied offensive started up and the third German defensive line was breached. As the advance progressed northwards the towns of Mézières, Charleville and Sedan were recaptured.

Breaking Through the Hindenburg Line

The Battle of Havrincourt (12 September 1918) was launched as a successful attack by the British Third Army with three divisions against four German Army divisions holding the fortified town of Havrincourt.

The Battle of Epéhy (18 September 1918) was launched against a 20 mile section of outpost positions for the Hindenburg Line. Following the success at Havrincourt, three corps of the British Fourth Army, one corps of the British Third Army and units of the French First Army. The left and right wings of the advance progressed with difficulty, but the two Australian divisions in the centre of the advance were successful in achieving an advance of three miles. The success of this attack showed to the Allies that the German defence, even on the fortified Hindenburg Line positions, was not impossible to break through.

The Battle of Canal du Nord (27 September - 1 October 1918) took place against a section of the canal and the outskirts of Cambrai. The British First Army was to cross the canal continuing the advance following on from the Battle of the Drocourt-Quéant Line and advance towards Cambrai.

The Battle of the St. Quentin Canal (29 September - 2 October 1918) was an attack launched on 29 September by US, French and British forces. A north-south stretch of this canal between St. Quentin and Vendhuille had been incorporated into the German defences of the Hindenburg Line. The German defences on the canal comprised not only barbed wire entanglements and traps, but generally this stretch of canal was in a deep cutting of about 50 to 80 metres. The canal ran through a tunnel at Bellicourt and there was a bridge further south of the tunnel at Bellenglise. The British Fourth Army and the French First Army had reached the canal sector in mid September, and were tasked with crossing the canal at the tunnel section or by the bridge. An attempt by a US regiment to clear the German strongpoints at Bellicourt in advance of the main attack did not succeed, and the attack by US and Australian troops on 29 th September did not make progress through the Hindenburg Line at Bellicourt. However, an attack by the British IX Corps at Bellenglise did succeed in crossing the bridge with two divisions before the Germans could blow it up. With reinforcements brought down from Bellicourt following across the bridge, the Allied crossing of the canal advanced about 6 miles beyond the canal by the end of the day. Over 5,000 German prisoners were captured.

The Battle of the Beaurevoir Line (3 - 5 October 1918)

The Second Battle of Cambrai (8 October - 10 October 1918) was a successful offensive by the British First, Third and Fourth Armies with the support of tanks. The advance crossed three German lines of defence which were lightly manned, took Cambrai within two days and suffered very light casualties.

The Battle of Courtrai, also known as the Battle of Roulers or the Second Battle of Belgium (14 - 19 October 1918) followed on after a pause of a couple of weeks from the end of the Allied Flanders Advance. By this time the Army Group of Flanders (GAF) comprised a total of 28 divisions from the Belgian, British and French Armies under the command of King Albert I of Belgium. The successful advance recaptured a number of Belgian towns including Menin, Courtrai, Roulers (Flemish name: Roeselare), Ostend, Bruges, Zeebrugge, and the French towns of Lille and Douai. Units of the advance reached the Dutch border by 19 October.

The Battle of the Selle (17 - 26 October 1918) took place as the Allies continued the advance after the Second Battle of Cambrai, recapturing French villages one by one as the German forces reatreated to the north-east.

The Battle of Valenciennes (1 November 1918) was an offensive carried out by the British Third Army to advance to the French-Belgian border and the city of Valenciennes. The city was re-captured by Canadian troops on 2 nd November.

The Battle of the Sambre (4 November 1918) was a continuation of the Allied advance by Haig's Army Group (the First, Third and Fourth Armies and the French First Army) coming from the direction of Valenciennes. The Allied troops were to advance from the Condé Canal on a thirty mile front towards Maubeuge-Mons. The offensive included the the Second Battle of Guise (4 - 5 November 1918).

1918 Armistice: the Guns Fall Silent on 11 November

By mid November 1918 the Imperial German Army was defeated and an Armistice on the Western Front was agreed for 11.00 o'clock on 11 November. The guns finally fell silent and four years of warfare on the Western Front came to an end.

Related Topics

1914-1918 Timeline

See a list of the main events and battles of 1914-1918:
WW1 Timeline - a detailed timeline of the Great War
Visiting the WW1 Battlefields

Battlefield sectors in detail listing places to visit and where to stay:

Visiting the Antwerp, Yser/IJzer and Belgian Coast Battlefields
Visiting the Ypres Salient Battlefields Visiting the French Flanders & Artois Battlefields Visiting the Somme Battlefields

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This article gives an overview of the battles on the Western Front. During The First World War of 1914-1918 the Allied Forces of Belgium, France, Great Britain, the Dominion Forces of the British Empire (Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, Newfoundland and South Africa), Portugal and the United States (from April 1918) made a stand against the Imperial German Army's advance and occupation of Belgium from 4 August 1914 and north-eastern France from 6 August 1914.

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Emperor Franz Josep, Austro-Hungary

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"The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, the deadliest in history, infected an estimated 500 million people worldwide—about one-third of the planet’s population—and killed an estimated 20 million to 50 million victims, including some 675,000 Americans."

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What Is the Flu?

Influenza, or flu, is a virus that attacks the respiratory system. The flu virus is highly contagious: When an infected person coughs, sneezes or talks, respiratory droplets are generated and transmitted into the air, and can then can be inhaled by anyone nearby.

Additionally, a person who touches something with the virus on it and then touches his or her mouth, eyes or nose can become infected.

Did you know? During the flu pandemic of 1918, the New York City health commissioner tried to slow the transmission of the flu by ordering businesses to open and close on staggered shifts to avoid overcrowding on the subways.

Flu outbreaks happen every year and vary in severity, depending in part on what type of virus is spreading. (Flu viruses can rapidly mutate.)

Flu Season

In the United States, "flu season" generally runs from late fall into spring. In a typical year, more than 200,000 Americans are hospitalized for flu-related complications, and over the past three decades, there have been some 3,000 to 49,000 flu-related U.S. deaths annually, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Young children, people over age 65, pregnant women and people with certain medical conditions, such as asthma, diabetes or heart disease, face a higher risk of flu-related complications, including pneumonia, ear and sinus infections and bronchitis.

A flu pandemic, such as the one in 1918, occurs when an especially virulent new influenza strain for which there's little or no immunity appears and spreads quickly from person to person around the globe.

Spanish Flu Symptoms

The first wave of the 1918 pandemic occurred in the spring and was generally mild. The sick, who experienced such typical flu symptoms as chills, fever and fatigue, usually recovered after several days, and the number of reported deaths was low.

However, a second, highly contagious wave of influenza appeared with a vengeance in the fall of that same year. Victims died within hours or days of developing symptoms, their skin turning blue and their lungs filling with fluid that caused them to suffocate. In just one year, 1918, the average life expectancy in America plummeted by a dozen years.

What Caused the Spanish Flu?

It's unknown exactly where the particular strain of influenza that caused the pandemic came from; however, the 1918 flu was first observed in Europe, America and areas of Asia before spreading to almost every other part of the planet within a matter of months.

Despite the fact that the 1918 flu wasn't isolated to one place, it became known around the world as the Spanish flu, as Spain was hit hard by the disease and was not subject to the wartime news blackouts that affected other European countries. (Even Spain's king, Alfonso XIII, reportedly contracted the flu.)

One unusual aspect of the 1918 flu was that it struck down many previously healthy, young people-a group normally resistant to this type of infectious illness-including a number of World War I servicemen.

In fact, more U.S. soldiers died from the 1918 flu than were killed in battle during the war. Forty percent of the U.S. Navy was hit with the flu, while 36 percent of the Army became ill, and troops moving around the world in crowded ships and trains helped to spread the killer virus.

Although the death toll attributed to the Spanish flu is often estimated at 20 million to 50 million victims worldwide, other estimates run as high as 100 million victims-around 3 percent of the world's population. The exact numbers are impossible to know due to a lack of medical record-keeping in many places.

What is known, however, is that few locations were immune to the 1918 flu-in America, victims ranged from residents of major cities to those of remote Alaskan communities. Even President Woodrow Wilson reportedly contracted the flu in early 1919 while negotiating the Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I.

Why Was The Spanish Flu Called The Spanish Flu?

The Spanish Flu did not originate in Spain, though news coverage of it did. During World War I, Spain was a neutral country with free media that covered the outbreak from the start, first reporting on it in Madrid in late May of 1918. Meanwhile, Allied countries and the Central Powers had wartime censors who covered up news of the flu to keep morale high. Because Spanish news sources were the only ones reporting on the flu, many believed it originated there (the Spanish, meanwhile, believed the virus came from France and called it the "French Flu.")

Where Did The Spanish Flu Come From?

Scientists still do not know for sure where the Spanish Flu originated, though theories point to France, China, Britain, or the United States, where the first known case was reported at Camp Funston in Fort Riley, Kansas, on March 11, 1918.

Some believe infected soldiers spread the disease to other military camps across the country, then brought it overseas. In March 1918, 84,000 American soldiers headed across the Atlantic and were followed by 118,000 more the following month.

Fighting the Spanish Flu

When the 1918 flu hit, doctors and scientists were unsure what caused it or how to treat it. Unlike today, there were no effective vaccines or antivirals, drugs that treat the flu. (The first licensed flu vaccine appeared in America in the 1940s. By the following decade, vaccine manufacturers could routinely produce vaccines that would help control and prevent future pandemics.)

Complicating matters was the fact that World War I had left parts of America with a shortage of physicians and other health workers. And of the available medical personnel in the U.S., many came down with the flu themselves.

Additionally, hospitals in some areas were so overloaded with flu patients that schools, private homes and other buildings had to be converted into makeshift hospitals, some of which were staffed by medical students.

Officials in some communities imposed quarantines, ordered citizens to wear masks and shut down public places, including schools, churches and theaters. People were advised to avoid shaking hands and to stay indoors, libraries put a halt on lending books and regulations were passed banning spitting.

According to The New York Times, during the pandemic, Boy Scouts in New York City approached people they'd seen spitting on the street and gave them cards that read: "You are in violation of the Sanitary Code."

Aspirin Poisoning and the Flu

With no cure for the flu, many doctors prescribed medication that they felt would alleviate symptoms... including aspirin, which had been trademarked by Bayer in 1899-a patent that expired in 1917, meaning new companies were able to produce the drug during the Spanish Flu epidemic.

Before the spike in deaths attributed to the Spanish Flu in 1918, the U.S. Surgeon General, Navy and the Journal of the American Medical Association had all recommended the use of aspirin. Medical professionals advised patients to take up to 30 grams per day, a dose now known to be toxic. (For comparison's sake, the medical consensus today is that doses above four grams are unsafe.) Symptoms of aspirin poisoning include hyperventilation and pulmonary edema, or the buildup of fluid in the lungs, and it's now believed that many of the October deaths were actually caused or hastened by aspirin poisoning.

The Flu Takes Heavy Toll on Society

The flu took a heavy human toll, wiping out entire families and leaving countless widows and orphans in its wake. Funeral parlors were overwhelmed and bodies piled up. Many people had to dig graves for their own family members.

The flu was also detrimental to the economy. In the United States, businesses were forced to shut down because so many employees were sick. Basic services such as mail delivery and garbage collection were hindered due to flu-stricken workers.

In some places there weren't enough farm workers to harvest crops. Even state and local health departments closed for business, hampering efforts to chronicle the spread of the 1918 flu and provide the public with answers about it.

How U.S. Cities Tried to Stop The 1918 Flu Pandemic

A devastating second wave of the Spanish Flu hit American shores in the summer of 1918, as returning soldiers infected with the disease spread it to the general population-especially in densely-crowded cities. Without a vaccine or approved treatment plan, it fell to local mayors and healthy officials to improvise plans to safeguard the safety of their citizens. With pressure to appear patriotic during wartime and with a censored media downplaying the disease's spread, many made tragic decisions.

Philadelphia's response was too little, too late. Dr. Wilmer Krusen, director of Public Health and Charities for the city, insisted mounting fatalities were not the "Spanish flu," but rather just the normal flu. So on September 28, the city went forward with a Liberty Loan parade attended by tens of thousands of Philadelphians, spreading the disease like wildfire. In just 10 days, over 1,000 Philadelphians were dead, with another 200,000 sick. Only then did the city close saloons and theaters. By March 1919, over 15,000 citizens of Philadelphia had lost their lives.

St. Louis, Missouri, was different: Schools and movie theaters closed and public gatherings were banned. Consequently, the peak mortality rate in St. Louis was just one-eighth of Philadelphia's death rate during the peak of the pandemic.

Citizens in San Francisco were fined $5-a significant sum at the time-if they were caught in public without masks and charged with disturbing the peace.

Spanish Flu Pandemic Ends

By the summer of 1919, the flu pandemic came to an end, as those that were infected either died or developed immunity.

Almost 90 years later, in 2008, researchers announced they'd discovered what made the 1918 flu so deadly: A group of three genes enabled the virus to weaken a victim's bronchial tubes and lungs and clear the way for bacterial pneumonia.

Since 1918, there have been several other influenza pandemics, although none as deadly. A flu pandemic from 1957 to 1958 killed around 2 million people worldwide, including some 70,000 people in the United States, and a pandemic from 1968 to 1969 killed approximately 1 million people, including some 34,000 Americans.

More than 12,000 Americans perished during the H1N1 (or "swine flu") pandemic that occurred from 2009 to 2010. The COVID-19 pandemic, which started in December 2019, spread around the world before an effective COVID-19 vaccine was made available in December 2020. By May of 2023, when the World Health Organization declared an end to the global coronavirus emergency, almost 7 million people had died of COVID-19.

Each of these modern day pandemics brings renewed interest in and attention to the Spanish Flu, or "forgotten pandemic," so-named because its spread was overshadowed by the deadliness of World War I and covered up by news blackouts and poor record-keeping.

Sources

Salicylates and Pandemic Influenza Mortality, 1918-1919 Pharmacology, Pathology, and Historic Evidence. Clinical Infectious Diseases.

In 1918 Pandemic, Another Possible Killer: Aspirin. The New York Times.

How the Horrific 1918 Flu Spread Across America. Smithsonian Magazine.

What the Spanish Flu Debacle Can Teach Us About Coronavirus. Politico.

WHO declares end to Covid global health emergency. NBC News.

COVID-19 Dashboard. WHO.

Fact Check

We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate.

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Spanish Flu - Symptoms, How It Began & Ended

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The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, the deadliest in history, infected an estimated 500 million people worldwide-about one-third of the planet's population-and killed an estimated 20 million to 50 million victims, including some 675,000 Americans.

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Tsar Nikolas II, Russia

Serbia's ally

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General Joffre, France

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King George V, Great Britain

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HIGHLY INFORMATIVE ONLINE WWI ONLINE MUSEUM EXHIBITION!

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The Volunteers: Americans Join World War I examines the stories of the young men and women who transformed the meaning of volunteerism. Prompted by altruism, personal ambition, a search for adventure

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The Volunteers: Americans Join World War I examines the stories of the young men and women who transformed the meaning of volunteerism. Prompted by altruism, personal ambition, a search for adventure

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VIRTUAL TOUR OF THE TRENCHES

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Trenches - National WWI Museum and Memorial - Google Arts & Culture

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Google Arts & Culture features content from over 2000 leading museums and archives who have partnered with the Google Cultural Institute to bring the world's treasures online.

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European Empires in the early 1900s

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20th Century Ideologies

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Benito Mussolini, an Italian World War I veteran and publisher of Socialist newspapers, breaks with the Italian Socialists and establishes the nationalist Fasci di Combattimento, named after the Italian peasant revolutionaries, or "Fighting Bands," from the 19th century. Commonly known as the Fascist Party, Mussolini's new right-wing organization advocated Italian nationalism, had black shirts for uniforms, and launched a program of terrorism and intimidation against its leftist opponents.

In October 1922, Mussolini led the Fascists on a march on Rome, and King Emmanuel III, who had little faith in Italy's parliamentary government, asked Mussolini to form a new government. Initially, Mussolini, who was appointed prime minister at the head of a three-member Fascist cabinet, cooperated with the Italian parliament, but aided by his brutal police organization he soon became the effective dictator of Italy. In 1924, a Socialist backlash was suppressed, and in January 1925 a Fascist state was officially proclaimed, with Mussolini as Il Duce, or "The Leader."

Mussolini appealed to Italy's former Western allies for new treaties, but his brutal 1935 invasion of Ethiopia ended all hope of alliance with the Western democracies. In 1936, Mussolini joined Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in his support of Francisco Franco's Nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War, prompting the signing of a treaty of cooperation in foreign policy between Italy and Nazi Germany in 1937. Although Adolf Hitler's Nazi revolution was modeled after the rise of Mussolini and the Italian Fascist Party, Fascist Italy and Il Duce proved overwhelmingly the weaker partner in the Berlin-Rome Axis during World War II.

In July 1943, the failure of the Italian war effort and the imminent invasion of the Italian mainland by the Allies led to a rebellion within the Fascist Party. Two days after the fall of Palermo on July 24, the Fascist Grand Council rejected the policy dictated by Hitler through Mussolini, and on July 25 Il Duce was arrested. Fascist Marshal Pietro Badoglio took over the reins of the Italian government, and in September Italy surrendered unconditionally to the Allies. Eight days later, German commandos freed Mussolini from his prison in the Abruzzi Mountains, and he was later made the puppet leader of German-controlled northern Italy. With the collapse of Nazi Germany in April 1945, Mussolini was captured by Italian partisans and on April 29 was executed by firing squad with his mistress, Clara Petacci, after a brief court-martial. Their bodies, brought to Milan, were hanged by the feet in a public square for all the world to see.

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Benito Mussolini, an Italian World War I veteran and publisher of Socialist newspapers, breaks with the Italian Socialists and establishes the nationalist Fasci di Combattimento, named after the Italian peasant revolutionaries, or "Fighting Bands," from the 19th century.

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BENITO MUSSOLINI

"an Italian political leader who became the fascist dictator of Italy from 1925 to 1945. Originally a revolutionary socialist, he forged the paramilitary fascist movement in 1919 and became prime minister in 1922. Called “Il Duce” (the Leader) by his countrymen or simply “Mussolini,” he allied himself with Adolf Hitler during World War II, relying on the German dictator to prop up his leadership."

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Childhood

Born on July 29, 1883, in Verano di Costa, Italy, Mussolini was the son of blacksmith and ardent socialist Alessandro Mussolini and a devout Catholic mother, Rosa Maltoni. By most accounts, Mussolini's family lived in simple, small quarters.

Young Mussolini was expelled from his first boarding school at age 10 for stabbing a fellow student. At 14, he stabbed another student but was only suspended.

Socialist Activism

Much of Mussolini's early adulthood was spent traveling around Switzerland, getting involved with that country's Socialist Party and clashing with police. In 1909, he moved to Austria-Hungary to become editor of a socialist newspaper, but was deported back to Italy after being accused of violating laws meant to regulate press freedom.

In 1910, Mussolini became the editor for another Italian socialist newspaper, but soon spent six months in jail for inciting violence. During his incarceration, he began to write his autobiography-though still in his twenties-detailing his troubled school years and his many romantic conquests.

Mussolini split from the Socialist Party in 1914. Starting his own newspaper, he encouraged violence from his supporters as unrest spread across the country.

Italian Facism

In 1915, Mussolini joined the Italian army in World War I. He fought on the front lines and obtained the rank of corporal before being discharged for a war wound. Mussolini returned to newspapers and by 1918 called for a dictator to seize control of Italy. Pressure from Mussolini and his followers forced the government to order the internment of foreigners they considered enemies.

After the Treaty of Versailles in 1919-and his dissatisfaction with it-Mussolini gathered the various fascist groups into a national organization called Fasci Italiani di Combattimento. The Italian Fascists courted war veterans and encouraged violence against socialists. Mussolini stockpiled weapons and explosives in his newspaper offices.

Children and Marriages

Mussolini was married twice: to Ida Dalser in 1914, and to his longtime mistress Rachele Guidi one year later. Additionally, Mussolini had a number of other mistresses and liaisons.

His first marriage produced a son, Benito Albino Mussolini. Following Mussolini's second marriage, records of his first marriage and son were destroyed or suppressed, and both wife and son were kept under constant surveillance. Italian authorities sent Ida to an island near Venice, where she died in 1937. Her son was forced into an asylum near Milan, where he died in 1942 at age 26.

Mussolini's marriage to Rachele lasted until his death. The couple had five children: three sons, Vittorio, Bruno and Romano, and two daughters, Edda and Anna Maria. Rachele died in 1979 at age 89.

Rise to Power

By the end of 1919, Mussolini stood in a general election as the Fascist candidate but lost in a Socialist sweep. Two days later, Mussolini was arrested for allegedly collecting arms to overthrow the government. He was released without charges the next day.

In 1921, the Italian King Victor Emmanuel III dissolved Parliament amidst growing violence and chaos. Elections brought a huge win for the Fascists, with Mussolini taking a seat as a deputy in Parliament. The party changed its name to Partito Nazionale Fascista.

Fascists Seize Control of Italy

In 1922, Fascists were instructed to wear uniforms, including black shirts, in squads that were modeled after Roman army groups. All party members were considered squad members.

Soon after, several Italian cities were seized by Fascist squads, who also burned down communist and socialist offices.

In October 1922, Mussolini threatened to march on Rome to take control of the government through violent force if it was not handed over. King Victor Emmanuel and the government were slow to act, eventually dispatching troops, though Fascists had already seized control of some local governments.

Refusing to pass martial law, Victor Emmanuel watched as thousands of armed Fascists entered Rome. He dissolved the government and asked Mussolini to form a new one.

Prime Minister Mussolini

Mussolini became Prime Minister, as well as Minister of the Interior and Minister for Foreign Affairs. Mussolini did not become a dictator overnight, but a speech he gave to the Italian parliament on January 3, 1925, asserting his right to supreme power is generally seen as the effective date that Mussolini declared himself dictator of Italy.

Mussolini's first act as prime minister was to demand special emergency powers allowing him to rig elections in the Fascists' favor. Soon after, the Italian parliament made suspicion of being anti-Fascist punishable by imprisonment without trial.

The next year police rounded-up Socialists, and the government restricted their publishing activities. A Socialist deputy plotted to assassinate Mussolini, but the betrayal of a friend led to his arrest just before the attempt. Several other assassination attempts followed.

Italy Under Fascism

In 1926, Fascists created a youth group called the Opera Nazionale Balilla, pressuring children to join. The Catholic Boy Scouts were dissolved and the formation of other youth groups became illegal.

The same year, all communist members of Parliament were arrested, and all Socialist Party members expelled. Anyone who could not be prosecuted for a crime was detained for up to five years and placed in island internment camps.

Cinemas were required to screen government propaganda in the form of newsreels. Fascists owned 66 percent of the newspapers and controlled reporting, issuing daily editorial guidelines and threatening editors with arrest.

The Order of Journalists was created and membership was mandatory. Newspapers were allowed to criticize the government as long as they generally expressed support.
READ MORE: How Mussolini Seized Power in Italy
Mussolini and Hitler

At first, Mussolini disapproved of Germany's Adolf Hitler, but over time their partnership grew and Mussolini embraced Hitler's anti-Semitic measures.

Following Italy's 1935 invasion of Ethiopia, Germany was the second country to recognize Italy's legitimacy there. Both Hitler and Mussolini sided with Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War in 1936, with Mussolini providing 50,000 troops.

In 1937, Italy left the League of Nations in solidarity with Germany, and in March of 1938, Hitler invaded Austria with Mussolini's support.

Mussolini wrote an article in 1938 that aligned Italians with the German concept of the Aryan race. When anti-Jewish laws began to appear in Italy, Germany felt they were weak, but Mussolini was prepared to increase their severity as needed. Soon after, Mussolini called for the expulsion of foreign Jews from Italy.
WATCH VIDEO: American Women in World War II
Axis Powers

Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1939 immediately caused Britain and France to declare war against Germany, but Mussolini, for the moment, remained neutral.

Germany's invasion of Denmark and Norway convinced Mussolini that Hitler would win the war. Soon Holland and Belgium also fell to Hitler. On May 22, 1939, Italy and Germany signed the " Pact of Steel" officially creating the Axis powers. ( Japan would join in September of 1940 with the signing of the Tripartite Pact.)

As the Germans plowed through France in June 1940, Mussolini announced Italy's entrance into the war. Italy declared war on France and Great Britain on June 10, 1940.

The Plot Against Mussolini

By 1943, after years of fighting in World War II, Italy was viewed by its own citizens as losing the war.

On July 25, 1943, Mussolini was voted out of power by his own Grand Council, arrested after a visit with the king and sent to the island of La Maddalena.

When Italy accepted the terms of secret peace talks with the Allies, Hitler ordered German forces into Italy, which resulted in two Italian nations, one occupied by Germans.

Mussolini, fearful of being handed over, was instead rescued by Hitler's forces. Transported to German-occupied northern Italy, he was installed as Hitler's puppet leader, creating the Italian Social Republic and leading to the extermination of thousands of Italian Jews.

Allied forces began barreling through Italy in June 1944, and Mussolini attempted to flee to Spain in April 1945 with his lover, Claretta Petacci, but was discovered and arrested by partisans searching troop transport trucks.

How Did Mussolini Die?

There are conflicting stories about how Mussolini died, but autopsy reports state the dictator was executed by firing squad on April 28, 1945, shot by soldiers firing several bullets-with four of them near the heart-causing immediate death.

The bodies of both Mussolini and Petacci were hung upside down at the Piazzale Loreto in Milan and displayed for crowds to kick and spit on. One day later, Hitler committed suicide and the following week, Germany surrendered.

Mussolini's Body

Mussolini's body was buried in an unmarked grave, which was unearthed in 1946 by Fascist supporters, who took the body to a convent in Lombardy. The government recovered it and interred it in a monastery near Milan.

Mussolini's wife petitioned to have the body moved from a grave in Milan to a family mausoleum in Predappio in 1957.

In 1966, she was given an envelope containing a piece of her husband's brain. The American diplomat who handed it to her claimed that the Americans had taken the brain in order to study what makes a dictator. She had the relic placed in his tomb, which receives 100,000 visitors a year.

Mussolini Quotes

"It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep."

"Democracy is a kingless regime infested by many kings who are sometimes more exclusive, tyrannical and destructive than one, even if he be a tyrant."

"Many think, and I myself am one of them, that capitalism is scarcely at the beginning of its story."

Sources

Mussolini: The Last 600 Days of Il Duce. Ray Moseley.
Mussolini. Jasper Ridley.
Mussolini. Rupert Colley.
Benito Mussolini (1883-1945). BBC.

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Benito Mussolini: Children, Death & World War II - HISTORY

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Benito Mussolini, an Italian political leader who allied himself with Adolf Hitler during World War II, became the fascist dictator of Italy from 1925-1945.

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COMMUNISM TIMELINE

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Since its start a century ago, Communism, a political and economic ideology that calls for a classless society in which everything is shared equally, has seen a series of surges-and declines. What started in 1917 Russia, became a global revolution, taking root in countries as far-flung as China and Korea to Kenya and Sudan to Cuba and Nicaragua.

Communism launched from Lenin's October Revolution and spread to China with Mao Zedong's rise to power and to Cuba, with Fidel Castro's takeover. It was the ideology behind one side of the Cold War and saw a symbolic decline with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Today just a handful of countries remain under communist rule. Below is a timeline of notable events that shaped Communism's arc in history.

Soviet Union Emerges From October Revolution

* February 21, 1848: German economist and philosopher Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels publish The Communist Manifesto, calling for a working-class revolt against capitalism. Its motto, "Workers of the world, unite!" quickly became a rallying cry.

Communism Takes Hold in China and Beyond

* July 1, 1921: Inspired by the Russian Revolution, the Communist Party of China is formed.

* 1940 to 1979: Communism is established by force or otherwise in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Yugoslavia, Poland, North Korea, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, China, Tibet, North Vietnam, Guinea, Cuba, Yemen, Kenya, Sudan, Congo, Burma, Angola, Benin, Cape Verde, Laos, Kampuchea, Madagascar, Mozambique, South Vietnam, Somalia, Seychelles, Afghanistan, Grenada, Nicaragua and others.

Cold War Begins

* October 1, 1949: Following a civil war, China's Communist Party leader, Mao Zedong declares his creation of the People's Republic of China, leading the United States to end diplomatic ties with the PRC for decades.

* July 5, 1950: Leading United Nations forces, the first U.S. troops engage in the Korean War, after communist North Korea invaded South Korea with the intent of creating a unified communist state. The war would last until July 27, 1953, with North Korea, China and the United Nations signing an armistice agreement.

Communists Win in Cuba, Vietnam

* January 1, 1959: Fidel Castro overthrows the corrupt Fulgencio Batista regime, and Cuba becomes a Communist state.

* June 4, 1989: After weeks of protests, the Communist Chinese government sends in its military to fire on demonstrators calling for democracy in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. The bloody violence ends in hundreds to thousands of deaths (no official death toll was ever released).

Berlin Wall Falls, Soviet Union Dissolves

* November 9, 1989: The Berlin Wall -that separated communist East Berlin from democratic West Berlin for nearly 30 years-falls. The years 1989-90 see the collapse of communist regimes in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, Benin, Mozambique, Nicaragua and Yemen.

Sources

"History of Communism," Stanford University
"Communism: Karl Marx to Joseph Stalin," Center for European Studies, University of North Carolina
"From Tsar to U.S.S.R.: Russia's Chaotic Year of Revolution," National Geographic
"The Truman Doctrine, 1947," U.S. Department of State
"The Chinese Revolution of 1949," U.S. Department of State
"The Korean War: Timeline," CBS News
"Tiananmen Square Fast Facts," CNN
"United States Invades Grenada," Politco

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Since its start a century ago, Communism, a political and economic ideology that calls for a classless society in which everything is shared equally, has seen a series of surges-and declines. What started in 1917 Russia, became a global revolution, taking root in countries as far-flung as China and Korea to Kenya and Sudan to Cuba and Nicaragua.

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VLADIMIR LENIN (1870–1924)

"Vladimir Lenin was founder of the Russian Communist Party, leader of the Bolshevik Revolution and architect and first head of the Soviet state."

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Quick Facts

Name

Vladimir Lenin

Birth Date

April 22, 1870

Death Date

January 21, 1924

Education

Kazan University

Place of Birth

Simbirsk, Russia

Place of Death

Gorki, Russia

Originally

Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov

AKA

Vladimir Ulyanov

Full Name

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Who Was Vladimir Lenin?

Vladimir Lenin founded the Russian Communist Party, led the Bolshevik Revolution and was the architect of the Soviet state. He was the posthumous source of "Leninism," the doctrine codified and conjoined with Marx's works by Lenin's successors to form Marxism-Leninism, which became the Communist worldview. He has been regarded as the greatest revolutionary leader and thinker since Marx.

Early Years

Widely considered one of the most influential and controversial political figures of the 20th century, Vladimir Lenin engineered the Bolshevik revolution in Russia in 1917 and later took over as the first leader of the newly formed Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

He was born Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov on April 22, 1870, in Simbirsk, Russia, which was later renamed Ulyanovsk in his honor. In 1901, he adopted the last name Lenin while doing underground party work. His family was well-educated, and Lenin, the third of six children, was close to his parents and siblings.

School was a central part of Lenin's childhood. His parents, both educated and highly cultured, invoked a passion for learning in their children, especially Vladimir. A voracious reader, Lenin went on to finish first in his high school class, showing a particular gift for Latin and Greek.

But not all of life was easy for Lenin and his family. Two situations, in particular, shaped his life. The first came when Lenin was a boy and his father, an inspector of schools, was threatened with early retirement by a suspicious government nervous about the influence public school had on Russian society.

The more significant and more tragic situation came in 1887, when Lenin's older brother, Aleksandr, a university student at the time, was arrested and executed for being a part of a group planning to assassinate Emperor Alexander III. With his father already dead, Lenin now became the man of the family.

Aleksandr's involvement in oppositional politics was not an isolated incident in Lenin's family. In fact, all of Lenin's siblings would take part to some degree in revolutionary activities.

Young Revolutionary

The year of his brother's execution, Lenin enrolled at Kazan University to study law. His time there was cut short, however, when, during his first term, he was expelled for taking part in a student demonstration.

Exiled to his grandfather's estate in the village of Kokushkino, Lenin took up residence with his sister Anna, whom police had ordered to live there as a result of her own suspicious activities.

There, Lenin immersed himself in a host of radical literature, including the novel What Is To Be Done? by Nikolai Chernyshevsky, which tells the tale of a character named Rakhmetov, who carries a single-minded devotion to revolutionary politics. Lenin also soaked up the writing of Karl Marx, the German philosopher whose famous book Das Kapital would have a huge impact on Lenin's thinking. In January 1889, Lenin declared himself a Marxist.

Eventually, Lenin received his law degree, finishing his schoolwork in 1892. He moved to the city of Samara, where his client base was largely composed of Russian peasants. Their struggles against what Lenin saw as a class-biased legal system only reinforced his Marxist beliefs.

In time, Lenin focused more of his energy on revolutionary politics. He left Samara in the mid-1890s for a new life in St. Petersburg, the Russian capital at the time. There, Lenin connected with other like-minded Marxists and began to take an increasingly active role in their activities.

The work did not go unnoticed, and in December 1895 Lenin and several other Marxist leaders were arrested. Lenin was exiled to Siberia for three years. His fiancée and future wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, joined him.

Following his release from exile and then a stint in Munich, where Lenin and others co-founded a newspaper, Iskra, to unify Russian and European Marxists, he returned to St. Petersburg and stepped up his leadership role in the revolutionary movement.

At the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party in 1903, a forceful Lenin argued for a streamlined party leadership community, one that would lead a network of lower party organizations and their workers. "Give us an organization of revolutionaries," Lenin said, "and we will overturn Russia!"

The Revolution of 1905 and WWI

Lenin's call was soon supported by events on the ground. In 1904 Russia went to war with Japan. The conflict had a profound impact on Russian society. After a number of defeats put a strain on the country's domestic budget, citizens from all walks of life began to vocalize their discontent over the country's political structure and called for reform.

The situation was heightened on January 9, 1905, when a group of unarmed workers in St. Petersburg took their concerns directly to the city's palace to submit a petition to Emperor Nicholas II. They were met by security forces, who fired on the group, killing and wounding hundreds. The crisis set the stage for what would be called the Russian Revolution of 1905.

Hoping to placate his citizens, the emperor issued his October Manifesto, offering up several political concessions, most notably the creation of an elected legislative assembly known as the Duma.

But Lenin was far from satisfied. His frustrations extended to his fellow Marxists, in particular, the group calling itself the Mensheviks, led by Julius Martov. The issues centered around party structure and the driving forces of a revolution to fully seize control of Russia. While his comrades believed that the power must reside with the bourgeoisie, Lenin passionately distrusted that segment of the population. Instead, he argued, a real and complete revolution, one that could lead to the Socialist Revolution that could spread outside of Russia, must be led by the workers, the country's proletariat.

From the Mensheviks' point of view, however, Lenin's ideas really paved the way for a one-man dictatorship over the people he claimed he wanted to empower. The two groups had sparred since party's Second Congress, which had handed Lenin's group, known as the Bolsheviks, a slim majority. The fighting would continue until a 1912 party conference in Prague, when Lenin formally split to create a new, separate entity.

During World War I Lenin went into exile again, this time taking up residence in Switzerland. As always, his mind stayed focus on revolutionary politics. During this period he wrote and published Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916), a defining work for the future leader, in which he argued that war was the natural result of international capitalism.

Russian Leader

In 1917, a tired, hungry and war-weary Russia deposed the tsars. Lenin quickly returned home and, perhaps sensing his own path to power, quickly denounced the country's newly formed Provisional Government, which had been assembled by a group of leaders of the bourgeois liberal parties. Lenin instead called for a Soviet government, one that would be ruled directly by soldiers, peasants and workers.

In late 1917 Lenin led what was soon to be known as the October Revolution, but was essentially a coup d'état. Three years of civil war followed. The Lenin-led Soviet government faced incredible odds. The anti-Soviet forces headed mainly by former tsarist generals and admirals, fought desperately to overthrow Lenin's Red regime. They were aided by World War I Allies, who supplied the group with money and troops.

Determined to win at any cost, Lenin showed himself to be ruthless in his push to secure power. He launched what came to be known as the Red Terror, a vicious campaign Lenin used to eliminate the opposition within the civilian population.

In August 1918 Lenin narrowly escaped an assassination attempt, when he was severely wounded with a pair of bullets from a political opponent. His recovery only reinforced his larger-than-life presence among his countrymen, though his health was never truly the same.

Despite the breadth of the opposition, Lenin came out victorious. But the kind of country he hoped to lead never came to fruition. His defeat of an opposition that wished to keep Russia tethered to Europe's capitalist system, ushered in an era of international retreat for the Lenin-led government. Russia, as he saw it, would be void of class conflict and the international wars it fostered.

But the Russia he presided over was reeling from the bloody civil war he'd helped instigate. Famine and poverty shaped much of society. In 1921, Lenin now faced the same kind of peasant uprising he'd ridden to power. Widespread strikes in cities and in rural sections of the country broke out, threatening the stability of Lenin's government.

To ease the tension, Lenin introduced the New Economic Policy, which allowed workers to sell their grain on the open market.

Later Years and Death

Lenin suffered a stroke in May 1922, and then a second one in December of that year. With his health in obvious decline, Lenin turned his thoughts to how the newly formed USSR would be governed after he was gone.

Increasingly, he saw a party and government that had strayed far from its revolutionary goals. In early 1923 he issued what came to be called as his Testament, in which a regretful Lenin expressed remorse over the dictatorial power that dominated Soviet government. He was particularly disappointed with Joseph Stalin, the general secretary of the Communist Party, who had begun to amass great power.

On March 10, 1923, Lenin's health was dealt another severe blow when he suffered an additional stroke, this one taking away his ability to speak and concluding his political work. Nearly 10 months later, on January 21, 1924, he passed away in the village now known as Gorki Leninskiye. In a testament to his standing in Russian society, his corpse was embalmed and placed in a mausoleum on Moscow's Red Square.
Watch "Vladimir Lenin: Voice of Revolution" on HISTORY Vault

Fact Check

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Name Vladimir Lenin Birth Date April 22, 1870 Death Date January 21, 1924 Education Kazan University Place of Birth Simbirsk, Russia Place of Death Gorki, Russia Originally Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov AKA Vladimir Ulyanov Full Name Vladimir Ilyich Lenin Vladimir Lenin founded the Russian Communist Party, led the Bolshevik Revolution and was the architect of the Soviet state.

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JOSEPH STALIN (1878–1953)

"Joseph Stalin ruled the Soviet Union for more than two decades, instituting a reign of death and terror while modernizing Russia and helping to defeat Nazism."

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Who Was Joseph Stalin?

Joseph Stalin rose to power as General Secretary of the Communist Party in Russia, becoming a Soviet dictator after the death of Vladimir Lenin. Stalin forced rapid industrialization and the collectivization of agricultural land, resulting in millions dying from famine while others were sent to labor camps. His Red Army helped defeat Nazi Germany during World War II.

Early Life

On December 18, 1879, in the Russian peasant village of Gori, Georgia, Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili - later known as Joseph Stalin - was born.

The son of Besarion Jughashvili, a cobbler, and Ketevan Geladze, a washerwoman, Stalin was a frail child. At age 7, he contracted smallpox, leaving his face scarred.

A few years later he was injured in a carriage accident which left arm slightly deformed (some accounts state his arm trouble was a result of blood poisoning from the injury).

The other village children treated him cruelly, instilling in him a sense of inferiority. Because of this, Stalin began a quest for greatness and respect. He also developed a cruel streak for those who crossed him.

Stalin's mother, a devout Russian Orthodox Christian, wanted him to become a priest. In 1888, she managed to enroll him in church school in Gori. Stalin did well in school, and his efforts gained him a scholarship to Tiflis Theological Seminary in 1894.

A year later, Stalin came in contact with Messame Dassy, a secret organization that supported Georgian independence from Russia. Some of the members were socialists who introduced him to the writings of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin. Stalin joined the group in 1898.

Though he excelled in seminary school, Stalin left in 1899. Accounts differ as to the reason; official school records state he was unable to pay the tuition and withdrew. It's also speculated he was asked to leave due to his political views challenging the tsarist regime of Nicholas II.

Stalin chose not to return home, but stayed in Tiflis, devoting his time to the revolutionary movement. For a time, he found work as a tutor and later as a clerk at the Tiflis Observatory. In 1901, he joined the Social Democratic Labor Party and worked full-time for the revolutionary movement.

Russian Revolution

In 1902, he was arrested for coordinating a labor strike and exiled to Siberia, the first of his many arrests and exiles in the fledgling years of the Russian Revolution. It was during this time that he adopted the name Stalin, meaning "steel" in Russian.

Though never a strong orator like Vladimir Lenin or an intellectual like Leon Trotsky, Stalin excelled in the mundane operations of the revolution, calling meetings, publishing leaflets and organizing strikes and demonstrations.

After escaping from exile, he was marked by the Okhranka, (the tsar's secret police) as an outlaw and continued his work in hiding, raising money through robberies, kidnappings and extortion. Stalin gained infamy being associated with the 1907 Tiflis bank robbery, which resulted in several deaths and 250,000 rubles stolen (approximately $3.4 million in U.S. dollars).

In February 1917, the Russian Revolution began. By March, the tsar had abdicated the throne and was placed under house arrest. For a time, the revolutionaries supported a provisional government, believing a smooth transition of power was possible.

But in April 1917, Bolshevik leader Lenin denounced the provisional government, arguing that the people should rise up and take control by seizing land from the rich and factories from the industrialists. By October, the revolution was complete and the Bolsheviks were in control.

Communist Party Leader

The fledgling Soviet government went through a violent period after the revolution as various individuals vied for position and control.

In 1922, Stalin was appointed to the newly created office of general secretary of the Communist Party. Though not a significant post at the time, it gave Stalin control over all party member appointments, which allowed him to build his base.

He made shrewd appointments and consolidated his power so that eventually nearly all members of the central command owed their position to him. By the time anyone realized what he had done, it was too late. Even Lenin, who was gravely ill, was helpless to regain control from Stalin.

Great Purge

After Lenin's death, in 1924, Stalin set out to destroy the old party leadership and take total control. At first, he had people removed from power through bureaucratic shuffling and denunciations.

Many were exiled abroad to Europe and the Americas, including presumed Lenin successor Leon Trotsky. However, further paranoia set in and Stalin soon conducted a vast reign of terror, having people arrested in the night and put before spectacular show trials.

Potential rivals were accused of aligning with capitalist nations, convicted of being "enemies of the people" and summarily executed. The period known as the Great Purge eventually extended beyond the party elite to local officials suspected of counter-revolutionary activities.

DOWNLOAD BIOGRAPHY'S JOSEPH STALIN FACT CARD

Reform and Famine

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Stalin reversed the Bolshevik agrarian policy by seizing land given earlier to the peasants and organizing collective farms. This essentially reduced the peasants back to serfs, as they had been during the monarchy.

Stalin believed that collectivism would accelerate food production, but the peasants resented losing their land and working for the state. Millions were killed in forced labor or starved during the ensuing famine.

Stalin also set in motion rapid industrialization that initially achieved huge successes, but over time cost millions of lives and vast damage to the environment. Any resistance was met with swift and lethal response; millions of people were exiled to the labor camps of the Gulag or were executed.

World War II

As war clouds gathered over Europe in 1939, Stalin made a seemingly brilliant move, signing a nonaggression pact with Germany's Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party.

Stalin was convinced of Hitler's integrity and ignored warnings from his military commanders that Germany was mobilizing armies on its eastern front. When the Nazi blitzkrieg struck in June 1941, the Soviet Army was completely unprepared and immediately suffered massive losses.

Stalin was so distraught at Hitler's treachery that he hid in his office for several days. By the time Stalin regained his resolve, German armies occupied all of the Ukraine and Belarus, and its artillery surrounded Leningrad.

To make matters worse, the purges of the 1930s had depleted the Soviet Army and government leadership to the point where both were nearly dysfunctional. After heroic efforts on the part of the Soviet Army and the Russian people, the Germans were turned back at the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943.

By the next year, the Soviet Army was liberating countries in Eastern Europe, even before the Allies had mounted a serious challenge against Hitler at D-Day.

Stalin and the West

Stalin had been suspicious of the West since the inception of the Soviet Union, and once the Soviet Union had entered the war, Stalin had demanded the Allies open up a second front against Germany.

Both British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt argued that such an action would result in heavy casualties. This only deepened Stalin's suspicion of the West, as millions of Russians died.

As the tide of war slowly turned in the Allies' favor, Roosevelt and Churchill met with Stalin to discuss postwar arrangements. At the first of these meetings, in Tehran, Iran, in late 1943, the recent victory in Stalingrad put Stalin in a solid bargaining position. He demanded the Allies open a second front against Germany, which they agreed to in the spring of 1944.

In February 1945, the three leaders met again at the Yalta Conference in the Crimea. With Soviet troops liberating countries in Eastern Europe, Stalin was again in a strong position and negotiated virtually a free hand in reorganizing their governments. He also agreed to enter the war against Japan once Germany was defeated.

The situation changed at the Potsdam Conference in July 1945. Roosevelt died that April and was replaced by President Harry S. Truman. British parliamentary elections had replaced Prime Minister Churchill with Clement Attlee as Britain's chief negotiator.

By now, the British and Americans were suspicious of Stalin's intentions and wanted to avoid Soviet involvement in a postwar Japan. The dropping of two atomic bombs in August 1945 forced Japan's surrender before the Soviets could mobilize.

Stalin and Foreign Relations

Convinced of the Allies' hostility toward the Soviet Union, Stalin became obsessed with the threat of an invasion from the West. Between 1945 and 1948, he established Communist regimes in many Eastern European countries, creating a vast buffer zone between Western Europe and "Mother Russia."

Western powers interpreted these actions as proof of Stalin's desire to place Europe under Communist control, thus formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to counter Soviet influence.

In 1948, Stalin ordered an economic blockade on the German city of Berlin, in hopes of gaining full control of the city. The Allies responded with the massive Berlin Airlift, supplying the city and eventually forcing Stalin to back down.

Stalin suffered another foreign policy defeat after he encouraged North Korean Communist leader Kim Il Sung to invade South Korea, believing the United States would not interfere.

Earlier, he had ordered the Soviet representative to the United Nations to boycott the Security Council because it refused to accept the newly formed Communist People's Republic of China into the United Nations. When the resolution to support South Korea came to a vote in the Security Council, the Soviet Union was unable to use its veto.

How Many People Did Joseph Stalin Kill?

It's estimated that Stalin killed as many as 20 million people, directly or indirectly, through famine, forced labor camps, collectivization and executions.

Some scholars have argued that Stalin's record of killings amount to genocide and make him one of history's most ruthless mass murderers.

Death

Though his popularity from his successes during World War II was strong, Stalin's health began to deteriorate in the early 1950s. After an assassination plot was uncovered, he ordered the head of the secret police to instigate a new purge of the Communist Party.

Before it could be executed, however, Stalin died on March 5, 1953. He left a legacy of death and horror, even as he turned a backward Russia into a world superpower.

Stalin was eventually denounced by his successor, Nikita Khrushchev, in 1956. However, he has found a rekindled popularity among many of Russia's young people.

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Joseph Stalin rose to power as General Secretary of the Communist Party in Russia, becoming a Soviet dictator after the death of Vladimir Lenin. Stalin forced rapid industrialization and the collectivization of agricultural land, resulting in millions dying from famine while others were sent to labor camps.

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US President Woodrow Wilson's famous "Fourteen Points"

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Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points | History

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THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS

Cooperation for international peace & security

the first 'world organization'

seen as an experiment by some

The League of Nations didn't manage to stop Adolf Hitler, when 20 years after WWI, there was WWII

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The League of Nations - the first 'world organisation'

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"The Economic Impact of World War I: How it Changed America"

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World War I was a global military conflict from 1914 through 1918. It killed 9 million soldiers, wounded 21 million, and left 7 million disabled. Another 10 million civilians died. Germany and France each lost 80% of their male population aged between 15 and 49.

It was called the Great War because it affected people in every continent. It was supposed to be the "War to End All Wars." Instead, it set the stage for World War II thirty years later. It had 10 lasting impacts that changed the world forever.

World War I Countries

The War was between the Central Powers and the Allied Powers. The Central Powers were Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire. The Triple Alliance was Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy.

The Allied Powers were Belgium, Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan, Montenegro, Romania, Russia, Serbia, and the United States.﻿﻿ The Triple Entente was Great Britain, France, and Russia.

The war had three fronts.﻿﻿ The Western Front was a series of trenches in France. German troops were on the east side, and French and British troops were on the west. Germans had dug in to avoid losing further ground. The Allies couldn't break through. Infantry attacks were no match against the heavy artillery that defended the trenches. When Allies built their own trenches, it created a stalemate that lasted for three years. Soldiers lived in them, making them easy targets for poison gas. The Allies finally broke the stalemate by using tanks in the last year of the war.﻿﻿

The Eastern front was in the German-held regions of East Prussia and Poland. Germany was on the west, and Russian troops were on the east. Russia had a hard time holding the front because of the two revolutions it experienced.

The Middle Eastern front opened in 1914 when the Ottoman Empire attacked Russia.﻿﻿ Great Britain promised independence to Arab rebels in the region. The combined forces entered the war to protect British interests in the Suez Canal.﻿﻿ Turkey signed a treaty with the Allies in October 1918.

In 1915, German U-Boats sank the British ocean liner Lusitania. It killed 128 American passengers. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson warned any further attacks would cause the United States to enter World War I.﻿﻿ Germany sunk four more U.S. ships. On April 6, 1917, Wilson declared war.﻿﻿

Why Did World War I Start?

On July 28, 1914, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. A nationalist Gavrilo Princip had assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, on June 28, 1914. They were visiting Sarajevo in Bosnia.

The Serbian nationalists wanted to end Austro-Hungarian rule over Bosnia and Herzegovina.﻿﻿ He thought Serbia should control Bosnia instead. As a result, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia.

How did this singular event lead to a world war? There were four underlying causes that led to the start of World War I.

Germany, Austria-Hungary, France, Russia, and Great Britain had relied on imperialism to build their wealth. The Austro-Hungarian Empire included countries in south-eastern Europe bordering Russia. Germany's empire included the formerly French regions of Alsace and Lorraine. Germany's and Italy's empire included countries in Africa.

On the Allied side, the Russian Empire included most of Eastern Europe, including Serbia. The British Empire included countries in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. The French Empire included Vietnam and most of northern Africa.

The lands of the Middle East and Africa were hotly contested among the Allies and Central Powers. Leaders of the Allied empires saw it as a threat to their sovereignty when Germany and Austria-Hungary took over small countries like Bosnia and Morocco.

Nationalism was increasing among countries that resented their inclusion in empires. Poles, Czechs, and Slovaks wanted their own nations. They were tired of being a minority in the Austro-Hungarian and German empires.

There was no United Nations to establish agreed-upon rules and no North Atlantic Treaty Organization to enforce them. The Hague Court of Arbitration existed, but compliance was voluntary.

Instead, countries relied on bilateral agreements that often conflicted with other treaties. As a result, the war against Serbia brought in Russia. Germany declared war on Russia because it had a treaty with Austria-Hungary. After Germany attacked Belgium, Great Britain entered the war to defend its ally.

Instead, European nations relied on militarism to feel protected. For example, Great Britain felt threatened by Germany's growing navy.

How the War Ended

By the end of 1917, France had lost 3 million soldiers. Half of its force had mutinied.﻿﻿ There were few reserves left, so there were no fresh troops. Great Britain had lost 2 million and was 25% below its normal strength. It was planning to reduce its divisions and abandon the ground war.

Germany had defeated the Russians and Italians. It was able to send 3.5 million Germans against the 2.5 million British and French. In 1917, Russia left the war.

In early 1918, the United States deployed 1 million fresh troops to Europe. In November 1918, they severed a critical German railway supply track at Meuse-Argonne. That crippled the German offensive.

In the fall of 1918, Germany began to collapse.﻿﻿ German Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated on November 9, 1918. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was dissolving, as its member countries revolted. On November 4, it agreed to an armistice.

Who Won World War I?

Technically, the Allied Powers won. But they gained no ground and were saddled with debt.

On January 18, 1918, President Wilson promoted the Fourteen Points.﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿ It called for the establishment of the League of Nations and independence for the smaller countries in the war. It didn't promote war reparations from Germany. Wilson received a Nobel Prize for his efforts to promote peace. On Nov. 11, 1918, a German delegation signed the Treaty of Versailles inside railroad car 2419D. It was also signed by the United States, Britain, France, Italy, and Russia.﻿﻿

But the Allies wanted to punish Germany. The Treaty forced the Germans to accept full blame and pay reparations. It limited the German army to 100,000 members. It also divided the former German territories among the Allied Nations.﻿﻿ That included 10% of its European holdings and all overseas colonies. This harsh treatment eventually led to World War II.

Before World War I, the global economy was growing robustly. Technology, like steamships, the telegraph, and the telephone, expanded global travel and communication. ﻿﻿﻿There were no limits on immigration and no need for passports. Governments were small and kept their budgets balanced.

The world changed after World War I. There were at least 10 major effects.

Countries imposed restrictions on trade, capital flow, and immigration. People became suspicious of foreigners. This protectionism set the stage for the Great Depression.

The war weakened the gold standard. Countries suspended it to pay for the war but suffered from hyperinflation. They reinstated a modified gold standard afterward, but became less attached to it and eventually dropped it.

During WWI, governments learned their people would submit to taxation and conscription if it meant protection from outside forces.﻿﻿ The U.S. top tax rate rose from 7% in 1915 to 77% in 1918.﻿﻿ In World War II, it rose above 90% in 1944 and remained there until President Johnson reduced it in 1964. Lenin called the rise of government influence during the war as "wartime socialism." He used it as the basis for the Soviet Union.

Russia's commitment to the war created food shortages. Starving people were open to the promises of communism. In 1917, the Russian Revolution ended the czarist regime and Russia's involvement in the war.

Troops helped the spread of the 1918 influenza pandemic.﻿﻿ Worldwide, one out of three or 500 million people got sick. Of those, 50 million died, some within hours. In the United States, one out of four got sick. Of those, 675,000 died.

The German government printed money to pay for the war. It increased the number of Deutschmarks in circulation from 13 billion to 60 billion. Germany's sovereign debt went from 5 billion to 100 billion marks. Germany also printed money to meet the 132 billion marks of Treaty of Versailles' reparations.﻿﻿

Production collapsed, leading to a shortage of goods, especially food. Because there was excess cash in circulation, and few goods, the price of everyday items doubled every 3.7 days. As Germans rapidly lost buying power, they began looking to anyone who offered a solution. Adolf Hitler was a World War I veteran. He blamed Jews for Germany's defeat. In 1940, he forced the French to surrender in the same railroad car used for the Treaty of Versailles.

The United States became a world power.﻿﻿ It ramped up its large natural resources in a short time. U.S economic output doubled in four years. As a result, America had developed a comparative advantage in the mass production of goods. It had also become a major military power. Wilson was the first U.S. president to visit Europe when he attended the Paris Peace Conference. He was also the first to claim the U.S. role of making the world "safe for democracy."

The war changed the face of the Middle East. In 1916, the Sykes-Picot agreement divided the Ottoman Empire's Middle Eastern territory between the British and French.﻿﻿ It did not grant the Arabs the independence they were promised.﻿﻿ Instead, the French controlled Lebanon and southern Turkey. It oversaw Arab-controlled Syria and northern Iraq. The British controlled Iraq bordering Iran and a portion of Palestine. It oversaw Arab-controlled western Iraq, Jordan, and a portion of Egypt. Its goal was to control the Suez Canal. The rest of Palestine fell under international control. These new countries did not reflect the Arab world's makeup, already complicated by the Sunni-Shia split.﻿﻿ In 1917, Great Britain issued the Balfour Declaration that supported a Jewish state in Palestine.﻿﻿

Women began working. This led to their advocating and receiving the right to vote.

It changed how wars were fought.﻿﻿ Civilians suffered from bombing, blockades, and attacks on commercial ships. It made war more expensive by introducing the power of heavy equipment and technology versus troops. Both sides used tanks, submarines, and planes. Long-range artillery, flamethrowers, steel helmets, and aircraft carriers were used for the first time. Most importantly, so was chemical warfare.

Impact of Chemical Warfare

Chemical warfare was widely used in World War I, despite being banned in the 1899 Hague Convention. More than 100,000 tons of poison gases were used, killing 90,000 people.﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿ Its terrifying effects were even more damaging.

The French used tear gas in August 1914.﻿﻿ But its impact was temporary.

In 1915, the Germans fired 150 tons of chlorine gas on the French. It burned the lungs, killing 1,100 in that attack.

In 1915, the Germans attacked with phosgene. It suffocated at least 77,000 soldiers. It could take hours or days to take effect.

The Germans introduced mustard gas in 1917. Although it wasn't deadly, it blistered the eyes, skin, and lungs. Soldiers had to remove their clothing to avoid burns. They spent six to eight weeks in the hospital.

Americans used chloropicrin, which irritated soldiers using gas masks. When they removed their masks, they were hit with other gases.

Fritz Haber led the German chemical weapons program. He also perfected Zyklon B, used to kill millions of Jews in the Nazi death camps. Some were Haber's relatives.

This cruelty of these weapons created bitterness among nations, leading the way to WWII. In 1925, the Geneva Convention banned these weapons again.﻿﻿

Economic Impact on the United States

World War I took the United States out of a recession into a 44-month economic boom.﻿﻿ Before the war, America had been a debtor nation. After the war, it became a lender, especially to Latin America.

U.S. exports to Europe increased as those countries geared up for war. Later, U.S. spending increased as it prepared to enter the war itself. It cost $32 billion or 52% of the gross domestic product. Here's how it was paid for:

22% from higher taxes.

58% from war bonds and Treasury notes.

20% addition to the money supply.

Three million citizens joined the military. The federal government hired another 500,000. Unemployment fell from 7.9%-1.4%.

Before World War I, at least 90% of American blacks remained in the South. They were illiterate and poor due to Jim Crow laws.﻿﻿ After the war, blacks moved north in the Great Migration.﻿﻿ The war had slowed immigration from Europe, creating a labor shortage in the North. Companies began recruiting black Southerners to work in their factories. Returning black veterans were open to a new way of life. By the 1970s, 47% of blacks lived in big cities in the North and West.

In 1916, Wilson signed the Adamson Act to create an eight-hour workday for railroad workers.﻿﻿ Wilson wanted to avoid a strike by the railroad unions while the country was gearing up. That set the standard for Ford Motor Company to do the same 10 years later.

The Federal Farm Loan Act set up government loans to farmers to develop and expand their businesses.﻿﻿ That made sure there was enough food during the crisis.

World War I set the stage for the New Deal that fought the Great Depression. During the war, economist John Maynard Keynes was Treasury Secretary for the United Kingdom. Franklin D. Roosevelt was running the U.S. Navy. They learned the government could and felt it should control the economy in peacetime as it did in wartime.﻿﻿ Most people running the New Deal had ramped up government programs during WWI.

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How World War I Changed America's Economy

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World War I was a global military conflict from 1914 through 1918. It killed 9 million soldiers, wounded 21 million, and left 7 million disabled. Another 10 million civilians died. Germany and France each lost 80% of their male population aged between 15 and 49.

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WWI Casulties