World War I

28 Jun 1914 – 28 Jun 191984 items

empireswar
Australian gunners on a duckboard track through Chateau Wood, near Hooge in the Ypres salient, 29 October 1917. Photo: Frank Hurley. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Australian gunners on a duckboard track through Chateau Wood, near Hooge in the Ypres salient, 29 October 1917. Photo: Frank Hurley. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

From Sarajevo to Versailles

Two pistol shots in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914 set off a war that by the end of the year was being fought in Flanders, East Prussia, Serbia, the Caucasus, Mesopotamia, East Africa, the Pacific and on every ocean. This timeline follows it from the assassination to the Armistice of 11 November 1918, with a short coda to the peace signed at Versailles five years to the day after Sarajevo.

The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our life-time. — Sir Edward Grey, British Foreign Secretary, on the eve of war, as he recalled it in 1925

By the numbers

  • about 10 million soldiers killed, by Antoine Prost’s count of the national figures, and several million civilians, a toll nobody counted reliably

  • four empires gone by 1922: German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman

  • eleven fronts drawn here as bands, on three continents and at sea

Reading it

Each front is a band, and the events that belong to one sit inside it: open the map to see the Western Front as a line from the Channel to Switzerland, the advance up the Tigris and the road from Suez to Aleppo. The biggest battles are bands of their own. Filter by diplomacy for the road into the war and out of it, maritime for the blockade and the U-boats, technology for gas, tanks and bombers, colonialism for the colonial fronts and the soldiers of the empires, civilians for the war on non-combatants, the Armenian genocide among them, and usa for America’s road to war.

Times are UTC. Two Russian dates are entered in the Julian calendar, which Russia kept until February 1918: the general mobilisation of 17 July 1914 and the opening of Brusilov’s offensive on 22 May 1916. The app places them on 30 July and 4 June, where the rest of Europe dated them.

Items

  1. The July Crisis

    ≈ 1 month, 7 days

  2. Franz Ferdinand assassinated in Sarajevo

    Latin Bridge, Sarajevo

  3. Germany’s “blank cheque” to Austria-Hungary

    Neues Palais, Potsdam

  4. Austria-Hungary’s ultimatum to Serbia

    Belgrade

  5. Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia

    Belgrade

  6. The Balkans and Salonika

    ≈ 4 years, 2 months · The Macedonian front, Vlorë to the Struma, 1916–1918

  7. Russia orders general mobilisation

    Peterhof, near St Petersburg

  8. The Western Front

    ≈ 4 years, 3 months · The Western Front, Nieuport to the Swiss border, 1915–1917

  9. The war at sea

    ≈ 4 years, 3 months

  10. German troops cross into Belgium

    Gemmenich, on the German–Belgian border

  11. Britain declares war on Germany

    Foreign Office, Whitehall, London

  12. East Africa

    ≈ 4 years, 3 months · German East Africa

  13. Battle of Cer

    9 days · Cer mountain, western Serbia

  14. The Eastern Front

    ≈ 3 years, 6 months · The Eastern Front, Riga to Czernowitz, 1915–1916

  15. Louvain burned

    University Halls, Louvain (Leuven)

  16. Battle of Tannenberg

    4 days · Hohenstein (Olsztynek), East Prussia

  17. Togoland surrenders

    Kamina radio station, near Atakpamé, Togoland

  18. First Battle of the Marne

    7 days · The Allied line on the Marne, Meaux to Verdun

  19. First Battle of Ypres

    1 month, 4 days · Ypres (Ieper)

  20. The Ottoman Empire enters the war

  21. Khudadad Khan wins the Victoria Cross

    Hollebeke, south of Ypres

  22. The Caucasus

    ≈ 4 years · Erzurum, eastern Anatolia

  23. Battle of Tanga

    3 days · Tanga

  24. Mesopotamia

    ≈ 3 years, 11 months · Up the Tigris from Fao to Baghdad

  25. Tsingtao surrenders to Japan

    Tsingtao (Qingdao)

  26. Battle of the Falkland Islands

    South-east of the Falkland Islands

  27. Battle of Sarikamish

    26 days · Sarıkamış

  28. The Christmas truce

    Ploegsteert, south of Ypres

  29. Sinai and Palestine

    ≈ 3 years, 9 months · Suez Canal to Aleppo

  30. Gallipoli

    10 months, 24 days · Gallipoli peninsula

  31. The Allied fleet fails at the Narrows

    Erenköy Bay, Dardanelles

  32. First chlorine gas attack at Ypres

    Langemark, north of Ypres

  33. The Armenian genocide

    ≈ 1 year, 7 months · Deir ez-Zor, Syrian desert

  34. Armenian leaders arrested in Constantinople

    Constantinople (Istanbul)

  35. Landings at Anzac Cove and Cape Helles

    Anzac Cove

  36. Breakthrough at Gorlice–Tarnów

    Gorlice to Tarnów, Galicia

  37. Lusitania sunk

    Off the Old Head of Kinsale

  38. Italy declares war on Austria-Hungary

  39. The Italian Front

    ≈ 3 years, 5 months · The Italian front, Stelvio to the Adriatic, 1915–1917

  40. Allied troops land at Salonika

    Salonika (Thessaloniki)

  41. The fall of Serbia and the retreat through Albania

    4 months, 12 days · Kragujevac to Kosovo, over the Albanian mountains to the coast and Corfu

  42. Siege of Kut

    4 months, 24 days · Kut-al-Amara

  43. Battle of Verdun

    ≈ 10 months · Verdun battlefield

  44. Fort Douaumont falls

    Fort Douaumont

  45. The Sykes–Picot Agreement

  46. Battle of Jutland

    1 day · North Sea, off Jutland

  47. The Brusilov Offensive

    3 months, 18 days · Lutsk, Volhynia

  48. The Arab Revolt

    ≈ 2 years, 3 months · Mecca to Damascus

  49. Battle of the Somme

    4 months, 20 days · Somme battlefield

  50. The first day on the Somme

    The British line on 1 July 1916, Gommecourt to Maricourt

  51. Tanks go into battle at Flers–Courcelette

    Flers–Courcelette

  52. The Zimmermann telegram

    Foreign Office, Wilhelmstraße, Berlin

  53. Germany resumes unrestricted submarine warfare

  54. British and Indian troops take Baghdad

    Baghdad

  55. The United States declares war on Germany

    United States Capitol, Washington

  56. Canadians take Vimy Ridge

    Vimy Ridge

  57. The Nivelle Offensive, then mutiny

    Chemin des Dames

  58. Gotha bombers raid London

    Upper North Street School, Poplar, London

  59. Arab forces take Aqaba

    Aqaba

  60. Passchendaele

    3 months, 12 days · Ypres salient, towards Passchendaele

  61. Battle of Caporetto

    26 days · Caporetto (Kobarid)

  62. The Light Horse charge at Beersheba

    Beersheba

  63. Tanks en masse at Cambrai

    Flesquières, south-west of Cambrai

  64. Allenby enters Jerusalem

    Jaffa Gate, Jerusalem

  65. Wilson’s Fourteen Points

    United States Capitol, Washington

  66. The German Spring Offensive

    3 months, 29 days · Arras to La Fère, the front of Operation Michael

  67. The Paris Gun opens fire

    Paris Gun emplacement, Crépy

  68. The Hundred Days Offensive

    ≈ 3 months, 4 days · East of Amiens

  69. Allies break through at Dobro Pole

    Dobro Pole

  70. Battle of Megiddo

    6 days · Plain of Sharon to the Jezreel Valley

  71. The Meuse-Argonne Offensive

    ≈ 1 month, 15 days · Meuse-Argonne sector

  72. Bulgaria signs an armistice

    Salonika (Thessaloniki)

  73. Damascus taken

    Damascus

  74. Battle of Vittorio Veneto

    10 days · The Piave, below Vittorio Veneto

  75. The Armistice of Mudros

    Moudros harbour, Lemnos

  76. Sailors revolt at Kiel

    Kiel

  77. Austria-Hungary signs the armistice of Villa Giusti

    Villa Giusti, near Padua

  78. Germany becomes a republic

    Reichstag, Berlin

  79. The Armistice is signed

    Glade of the Armistice, Forest of Compiègne

  80. Henry Gunther is killed

    Chaumont-devant-Damvillers

  81. The guns fall silent

    The Western Front, Nieuport to the Swiss border, 1915–1917

  82. Lettow-Vorbeck surrenders at Abercorn

    Abercorn (Mbala), Northern Rhodesia

  83. ≈ 6 months, 27 days

  84. The German fleet scuttles itself at Scapa Flow

    Scapa Flow, Orkney

  85. The Treaty of Versailles

    Hall of Mirrors, Versailles