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Western Front

1914: First clashes and the Battles of the Frontiers

4–26 August 1914

In the first weeks of the war in the west, two plans collided. Germany, following the Schlieffen Plan, struck through Belgium to bypass the French fortifications and encircle the French army. France, pursuing its own offensive plan, attacked in Alsace and Lorraine and then in the Ardennes. After Belgian resistance at Liège, a series of bloody clashes along the frontiers ended in defeat for the French and British, who began the great retreat towards the Marne.

1914: The Great Retreat

24 August – 5 September 1914

After their defeats in the Battles of the Frontiers, the French armies and the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) began to fall back south, towards Paris and the Marne. The German right wing pressed after them in a great pursuit, trying to encircle the Allies. Yet the retreat was no disorderly flight. The withdrawing troops fought a series of delaying battles, at Le Cateau, on the Meuse and at Guise, while in Lorraine the French halted the Germans before Nancy. This allowed Joffre to regroup his forces and form a new army, which at the beginning of September went over to the counter-offensive on the Marne.

1914: The First Battle of the Marne

4–13 September 1914

At the beginning of September the German armies stood a few dozen kilometres from Paris. The German right wing, instead of swinging round the capital to the west, turned east of it, exposing its flank. Joffre seized the opportunity. On 5 September the new French Sixth Army struck from the Paris area on the River Ourcq, and the following day all the Allied armies, together with the British Expeditionary Force, went over to the counter-offensive. At the same time, in Lorraine, the French repulsed a German attack on Nancy. After several days of bitter fighting the Germans began to withdraw to the Aisne. The plan for a swift victory in the west had collapsed, and the war began to turn into a long, drawn-out struggle.

1914: The Aisne and the Race to the Sea

12 September – October 1914

After their defeat on the Marne, the German armies withdrew north and dug in on the heights above the River Aisne, above all on the Chemin des Dames ridge. The advancing French and British were unable to dislodge them. Both sides began building ever more extensive trenches, and the front on this sector froze for years. Each side then tried to outflank the other to the north. A series of successive clashes, known as the Race to the Sea, pushed the front towards the coast, until in October the line of trenches reached the North Sea.

1914: The Belgian Army and the defence of Antwerp

18 August – 10 October 1914

After the fall of Liège and the retreat from the Gete, the Belgian army took refuge in the fortress of Antwerp, the so-called National Redoubt. From there King Albert I launched sorties against the flank and rear of the German armies marching on France, forcing the Germans to leave substantial forces in Belgium. At the end of September the Germans began the siege of Antwerp with heavy artillery. Despite British help the fortress fell on 10 October, and the Belgian army withdrew to the Yser.

1914: The fighting in Flanders

10 October – 22 November 1914

In October 1914 the Race to the Sea came to an end in Flanders. The British Expeditionary Force was moved north from the Aisne, the Belgian army withdrew to the Yser after the fall of Antwerp, and the Germans sent new reserve corps here, made up largely of young volunteers. From La Bassée through Armentières and Messines to Ypres and the mouth of the Yser, a chain of fierce battles flared up in which each side tried to break through the front or outflank the enemy. Neither succeeded, and the line of trenches reached the North Sea and froze for many years. The First Battle of Ypres became the grave of the old, professional British Army.

1914–1915: Winter offensives on the Western Front

December 1914 – March 1915

When the fighting at Ypres died down at the end of November 1914, the Western Front already ran as an unbroken line of trenches from the North Sea to the Swiss border. General Joffre, however, had no intention of waiting until spring. He believed that the Germans, by transferring troops to the east, had weakened the front in France, and that the allies in the east needed relief. In December the French and British struck in Flanders and Artois and, above all, in Champagne, where the first great offensive against fortified positions began. The winter attacks in mud and rain brought heavy losses and negligible gains of ground. They showed how hard it was to break through a front manned by machine guns and protected by barbed-wire entanglements.

1915: The Second Battle of Ypres

April – May 1915

In the spring of 1915 the fighting returned to Ypres, where after the autumn battle the Allied front formed a deep salient jutting towards the German lines. In mid-April the British attacked the small Hill 60 south of the town. On 22 April the Germans, for the first time on the Western Front, used a cloud of chlorine gas, which opened a gap in the French line on the northern edge of the salient. The Canadians, British and French managed to close it, but in the following weeks, in a series of battles for the ridges around the town, they had to give up a large part of the salient. Ypres was almost entirely ruined by shellfire, but it remained in Allied hands.

1915: The spring offensive in Artois

May – June 1915

In May 1915, while the fighting at Ypres was still going on, the Allies launched a great spring offensive in Artois. General d’Urbal’s French Tenth Army struck at Vimy Ridge on 9 May, and on the same day the British attacked Aubers Ridge to the north of it to tie down the German reserves. In the first hours the French broke through the German line and reached the edge of the ridge, but could not hold it. The British attack collapsed within a single day, and a renewed assault at Festubert in mid-May brought only small gains. The fighting in Artois dragged on until mid-June and cost both sides enormous losses without producing a breakthrough. The failure at Aubers sparked the Shell Crisis in Britain.

1915: The fighting in the Vosges

1915

The southernmost sector of the Western Front ran through the Vosges mountains, close to the old Franco-German border in Alsace. Here the fighting took place in difficult, wooded terrain for individual summits and ridges from which one could observe the Rhine valley or the valleys leading into France. In the winter and spring of 1915 the French and Germans took the summit of the Hartmannswillerkopf from each other several times. In the summer French chasseurs alpins attacked the German positions on the Lingekopf (Le Linge) ridge above the Munster valley. The fighting in the Vosges, often conducted at grenade-throwing range, cost both sides heavy losses for small changes in the front line.

1915: The autumn offensive – Loos and Champagne

September – November 1915

In the autumn of 1915 the Allies made their largest attempt yet to break through the Western Front. Joffre hoped that simultaneous blows in Champagne and Artois would tear apart the German line and force the enemy to retreat from France, while also relieving the Russians, who were retreating in the east. On 25 September the French attacked in Champagne and at Vimy, and the British at Loos, where for the first time they used a cloud of chlorine gas on a large scale and threw New Army divisions into the battle. On the first day they took the first line of German trenches, but the second position, prepared by the Germans over the summer, proved impassable. The fighting lasted until November and brought both sides enormous losses without a decision. The failure at Loos cost the commander of the British Expeditionary Force, John French, his post.

1916: Verdun

from February 1916

On 21 February 1916 the German Fifth Army, under the command of Crown Prince Wilhelm, attacked Verdun, a fortress on the Meuse which since the beginning of the war had formed a salient in the French front. The Chief of the German General Staff, Erich von Falkenhayn, wanted, as he later wrote, to force France to defend a place it could not give up and to bleed its army white under a storm of artillery fire. After a few days the Germans captured Fort Douaumont, but the defence under General Philippe Pétain stiffened, and the only road from Bar-le-Duc, later called the Sacred Way (Voie Sacrée), brought men and ammunition to the front. The battle turned into a slaughter lasting almost the whole year, in which both sides lost hundreds of thousands of men, and Verdun became for the French a symbol of endurance.

1916: The Western Front beyond Verdun

from June 1916

While the longest battle of the war raged at Verdun, on the other sectors of the Western Front the British Army grew from month to month. New volunteer divisions and troops from the Dominions arrived in Flanders and Artois, taking over further sectors of the front from the French. The fighting was for individual hills, craters and trenches, as at Ypres, where in June 1916 the Canadians defended the heights of Mount Sorrel. All this, however, was preparation for the great joint Anglo-French offensive on the Somme, planned for the summer.

1916: The Battle of the Somme

from July 1916

On 1 July 1916 the British and French armies attacked the German positions on both sides of the River Somme in Picardy. The offensive had been planned since December 1915 as the Allies’ main joint effort on the Western Front, and after the outbreak of the Battle of Verdun it was also meant to relieve the French. After a week-long artillery bombardment the British infantry, largely volunteers from Kitchener’s New Armies, went over the top and on the very first day suffered the heaviest losses in the history of the British Army. The battle turned into a war of attrition lasting until November for successive woods, ridges and villages, in which Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians and South Africans also fought on the British side, and in September tanks were used for the first time in history.

1917: The Western Front

from February 1917

At the beginning of 1917 both sides drew lessons from the slaughter at Verdun and on the Somme. The Germans, lacking the strength for another such battle, withdrew to the new, heavily fortified Hindenburg Line, shortening the front and leaving a devastated belt of land behind them. The Allies were preparing a great spring offensive: the new French commander-in-chief, General Nivelle, promised to break through the front within two days, and the British were to support him with an attack at Arras. At the same time the declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare pushed the United States into the war, though its troops would not appear at the front for several months.

1918: The German Spring Offensive

from March 1918

After making peace with Russia, Germany was able to transfer several dozen divisions to the west and, for the first time since 1914, gain numerical superiority. Ludendorff wanted to decide the war before masses of American troops reached France. On 21 March 1918 Operation Michael, the largest attack of the war, began on the Somme: after a short, hurricane bombardment, storm troops broke into the lines of the British Fifth Army and within a few days advanced several dozen kilometres. The crisis forced the Allies to entrust General Foch with coordinating the operations of the British and French armies.

1917: Arras and the Nivelle Offensive

April – May 1917

In the spring of 1917 the Allies returned to great offensives on the Western Front. General Nivelle promised a breakthrough within two days on the Aisne and the Chemin des Dames, and the British were first to tie down the German reserves with an attack at Arras. The first day at Arras and the capture of Vimy Ridge by the Canadians were among the greatest successes of the British Army in this war, but the French offensive ended in heavy losses and dashed hopes, and mutinies broke out in the French army.

1917: Flanders

from June 1917

After the collapse of the Nivelle Offensive and the mutinies in the French army, the burden of the fighting on the Western Front passed to the British. Haig had long wanted to strike in Flanders: to drive the Germans from the ridges around Ypres and, in the longer term, to reach the Belgian coast and the German submarine bases. The first step was the capture of Messines Ridge in June 1917, preceded by the detonation of huge mines beneath the German positions.

1918: The Allied counter-offensive

from July 1918

In the summer of 1918 the initiative on the Western Front passed to the Allies. At Hamel the Australians showed how to combine infantry, tanks, artillery and aircraft, and the last German offensive on the Marne collapsed within a few days. On 18 July Foch and Mangin struck the exposed German flank near Soissons, and the hundreds of thousands of Americans arriving every month ensured that the Germans would never regain the initiative.

Balkan Front

1914: The first invasion of Serbia

12–24 August 1914

The war began with Austria-Hungary’s conflict with Serbia, and Vienna counted on dealing swiftly with its neighbour. On 12 August Austro-Hungarian troops crossed the Drina and the Sava. The Serbian army, commanded by Vojvoda Radomir Putnik, though less well armed, had experience from the Balkan Wars and knew the terrain well. Within two weeks it routed the invaders in the Battle of Cer and drove them back across the rivers, winning the Allies’ first victory of the war.

1914: The second invasion of Serbia

6 September – 4 October 1914

At the beginning of September, under pressure from Russia, the Serbian army went on the offensive and entered Austro-Hungarian territory, in Syrmia. At the same time General Potiorek began the second invasion of Serbia across the Drina. The Serbs had to break off their offensive and turn their troops back to the threatened front. In the mountains above the Drina fierce fighting raged for weeks, in which both sides suffered enormous losses. Austria-Hungary managed to hold bridgeheads on the Serbian bank, but failed to destroy the Serbian army. A period of exhausting positional warfare followed on the front.

1914: The third invasion of Serbia

6 November – 15 December 1914

At the beginning of November 1914 General Potiorek struck at Serbia for the third time, this time from bridgeheads on the Drina and the Sava. The exhausted Serbian army, short of ammunition, fell back into the interior of the country, and on 2 December the Austrians entered the abandoned city of Belgrade. Vojvoda Putnik, however, halted the retreat in the mountains above the Kolubara. When ammunition arrived from the allies, the Serbs went over to the counter-offensive, routed Potiorek’s forces and by mid-December had driven them out of the whole country. It was one of the Allies’ greatest victories in the first year of the war.

1915: The conquest of Serbia

October – December 1915

In the autumn of 1915 the Central Powers resolved to deal with Serbia once and for all and to open a land route to Turkey. On 6 October German and Austro-Hungarian armies under August von Mackensen struck across the Sava and the Danube, and a few days later Bulgaria joined them, attacking the Serbs from the east and cutting them off from Salonika. The French and British landed at Salonika and advanced up the Vardar, but they arrived too late and too weak to help their ally. The trapped Serbian army, together with the king, the government and thousands of civilians, retreated through the snow-covered mountains of Albania and Montenegro to the Adriatic. Serbia came under occupation for three years.

1916: The conquest of Montenegro and northern Albania

January – February 1916

After the fall of Serbia, Austria-Hungary turned against its small ally. At the beginning of January 1916 General Kövess’s army attacked Montenegro from the Bay of Kotor and from the Sanjak. The mountain fortress of Lovćen, which for a year and a half had threatened the Austro-Hungarian fleet base at Kotor, fell after a few days, followed by the capital, Cetinje. King Nicholas asked for an armistice, but the negotiations broke down and the country was occupied within a few weeks. The Austrians also entered northern Albania, reaching Scutari and San Giovanni di Medua, from where the remnants of the Serbian army had only recently been evacuated. In February they occupied central Albania and, at the end of the month, after the Italians had withdrawn, the port of Durazzo.

1916: The Salonika front

from August 1916

In the summer of 1916 the front in Macedonia, almost motionless for half a year, came back to life. At Salonika there now stood General Sarrail’s multinational army: French, British, the Serbian army rebuilt on Corfu, and from August also Russians and Italians. The Allies were preparing an offensive intended to ease Romania’s entry into the war, but the Bulgarians forestalled them. In mid-August they struck on both wings of the front, taking Florina and eastern Macedonia as far as the Struma, while in Salonika itself supporters of Venizelos rose against the government in Athens.

1916: The Romanian campaign

from August 1916

On 27 August 1916 Romania, encouraged by the successes of the Brusilov Offensive and by the Entente’s promises, declared war on Austria-Hungary. Its armies crossed the Carpathian passes and entered Transylvania, which was to be the reward for joining the war. The Central Powers responded quickly: Germany, Turkey and Bulgaria declared war on Romania, and Falkenhayn, who had been replaced by Hindenburg, was sent to Transylvania. From the south, through Dobruja, Mackensen advanced. Romania, surrounded on two sides and largely dependent on Russian help, had to fight on a front more than one and a half thousand kilometres long.

1917: The Romanian front

from July 1917

After the defeat of 1916 and the loss of Bucharest, the Romanian army survived the winter in Moldavia. Under the eye of General Berthelot’s French mission it was re-equipped and retrained, and by the summer of 1917, together with Russian troops, it was once again fit for combat. In July and August the Romanians fought battles at Mărăști, Mărășești and Oituz which halted the last attempt to drive them out of the country.

1918: The Salonika front

from May 1918

After Greece entered the war in 1917, the Greek army became a mainstay of the Salonika front. In the spring of 1918 the new commander of the Allied forces, General Guillaumat, prepared it for battle, and its first test was the capture of the Bulgarian positions at Skra-di-Legen. Bulgaria, exhausted by the war and dissatisfied with the division of the spoils, was weakening, and in Salonika the plan for a great offensive was maturing, which General Franchet d’Espèrey carried out in September.

1917: The Salonika front

from March 1917

The capture of Monastir in November 1916 brought no breakthrough in Macedonia. The town lay within range of Bulgarian and German guns positioned on the surrounding hills, and General Sarrail’s army, weakened by disease and winter, lacked the strength for a great offensive. In the spring of 1917 the Allies tried to push the enemy back from Monastir and break through his positions between Lake Prespa and Lake Doiran, but the attacks in the mountains cost much and achieved little.

Italian Front

1918: The Italian front

from June 1918

After the defeat at Caporetto the Italians held the front on the Piave and on the Asiago plateau, and General Diaz rebuilt the army. In the spring of 1918 Austria-Hungary, pressed by the Germans and starving, prepared a last great offensive intended to crush Italy with a single blow. In June it struck simultaneously in the mountains and on the Piave, but it had overreached itself, and its defeat foreshadowed the break-up of the monarchy.

1915: The Italian front and the Battles of the Isonzo

from June 1915

On 24 May 1915 Italy, bound to the Entente by the secret Treaty of London, began its war with Austria-Hungary. The Chief of Staff, General Luigi Cadorna, sent his main forces east, to the River Isonzo, from where he intended to strike at Gorizia and Trieste. Austria-Hungary, occupied with the war against Russia and Serbia, nevertheless held favourable positions on the hills and the Karst Plateau, and its Fifth Army under General Svetozar Boroević repulsed attack after attack. The very first Battles of the Isonzo in the summer of 1915 showed that the war in the mountains and on the rocky Karst would be as bloody and static as in France. By the autumn of 1917 the Italians had launched eleven offensives on this river.

1916: The Italian front

from May 1916

In 1916 the Italian front ceased to be solely the scene of Italian attacks on the Isonzo. The Chief of the Austro-Hungarian General Staff, Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, had long wanted to punish his former ally for changing sides, and in May he struck from the Tyrol across the Asiago and Lavarone plateaus, hoping to descend into the Po valley and cut off the Italian armies on the Isonzo. The offensive, which the Austrians called the Punitive Expedition, initially made considerable gains, but stalled on the last ridges before the plain when Cadorna brought up a new reserve army and, in the east, Russia’s Brusilov Offensive began.

1917: The Italian front

from May 1917

After the capture of Gorizia in August 1916 and three autumn battles on the Isonzo, General Cadorna was preparing another blow for the spring of 1917. The Allies, disappointed by the Nivelle Offensive, hoped that the Italians would tie down Austro-Hungarian forces, and promised heavy artillery. In May and June the Italians attacked on the Karst Plateau and on the heights above Gorizia, and in the summer they prepared the largest of their offensives, on the Bainsizza plateau.

Eastern Front

1914: The fighting in East Prussia

17 August – 29 September 1914

Russia, committed to France to launch a rapid offensive, attacked East Prussia as early as mid-August, before it had completed mobilisation. General Rennenkampf’s First Army advanced from the east, and General Samsonov’s Second Army from the south, from the Kingdom of Poland. The German Eighth Army was on the defensive. After an initial Russian success at Gumbinnen, the Germans, under the new command of Hindenburg and Ludendorff, destroyed Samsonov’s army at Tannenberg and then drove Rennenkampf back from the Masurian Lakes. The Russian offensive nevertheless forced the Germans to transfer part of their forces from the Western Front to the east.

1914: The Battle of Galicia

23 August – 11 September 1914

At the same time as the fighting in East Prussia, the main forces of Austria-Hungary and Russia clashed in the south of the front. The Austro-Hungarian armies struck north from Galicia into the Kingdom of Poland and won initial victories at Kraśnik and Komarów. Meanwhile the Russians were advancing from the east on Lviv, which they took at the beginning of September. Threatened with encirclement, the Austro-Hungarian forces withdrew behind the San, leaving the besieged fortress of Przemyśl behind them. It was one of the largest battles of the entire war, and most of the fighting took place on Polish soil.

1914: Przemyśl, the San and the Vistula

September 1914 – March 1915

After their defeat in the Battle of Galicia, the Austro-Hungarian armies withdrew behind the San and further west, leaving the fortress of Przemyśl encircled. The Russians advanced deep into Galicia and up to the Carpathian passes. To help their ally, the Germans formed a new Ninth Army in Silesia, which at the turn of September and October struck through the Kingdom of Poland towards Warsaw and Dęblin. In the autumn of 1914 great battles were fought on Polish soil on the Vistula and the San, and Przemyśl was briefly relieved, only to be besieged again soon afterwards.

1914: The Battles of Łódź and Kraków

November 1914 – July 1915

After the failure of the autumn offensive on the Vistula and the San, the armies of the Central Powers withdrew west, and the Russians set off in pursuit, preparing a blow against Silesia and Kraków. Hindenburg and Ludendorff forestalled them. They moved the Ninth Army north by rail to the area of Toruń and struck the flank of the Russian armies, leading to the fierce Battle of Łódź. At the same time, in the south, the Russians approached Kraków, and the fortress prepared for a siege. The threat was only averted by the Austro-Hungarian victory at Limanowa in December. The fighting on Polish soil in November and December 1914 halted the Russian march west, and the front in the east began to freeze into trenches. On the Rawka and the Bzura positional warfare lasted until the summer of 1915.

1915: The winter war in the Carpathians

January – April 1915

In the winter of 1915 Austria-Hungary, supported by the German South Army, attacked in the Carpathians to push the Russians back from the passes leading into Hungary and to relieve besieged Przemyśl. The Russians responded with an offensive of their own. The fighting in the mountains, in snow and frost, brought both sides enormous losses, in large part from disease and frostbite. Przemyśl could not be relieved, and the fortress capitulated in March.

1915: Masuria and Przasnysz

February 1915

In February 1915 the Germans struck on the northern wing of the Eastern Front. Hindenburg and Ludendorff, reinforced by the newly formed Tenth Army, attacked the Russian Tenth Army by the Masurian Lakes in snow and frost and drove it out of East Prussia. In the Augustów Forest the encircled Russian XX Corps was forced to lay down its arms. An attempt to exploit the success southwards, towards the Narew, ended in failure at Przasnysz, however, where the Russians forced the Germans to retreat. Despite heavy losses on both sides, the front in the north stabilised near the border of East Prussia.

1915: Gorlice and the Russian retreat from Galicia

from May 1915

In the spring of 1915 Germany decided to rescue a weakening Austria-Hungary and deal Russia a blow that would knock it out of the war. The new German Eleventh Army under General August von Mackensen and the Austro-Hungarian Fourth Army, supported by powerful artillery, were concentrated in the area of Gorlice and Tarnów. On 2 May, after a bombardment lasting several hours, they attacked the Russian Third Army and broke through its front. The Russians, who had bled themselves white in the Carpathians over the winter and were suffering from a shortage of ammunition, had to abandon the Carpathian passes and retreat across the whole of Galicia. Within a few weeks the Central Powers had regained the line of the San, Jarosław and Przemyśl, and the offensive turned into the great retreat of the Russian army, which in the summer engulfed the entire Kingdom of Poland.

1915: The Great Retreat of the Russian army

July – September 1915

In the summer of 1915 the Central Powers extended the offensive to the entire Eastern Front. After regaining Galicia, Mackensen’s armies turned north, between the Vistula and the Bug, towards Lublin and Chełm, and on 13 July Hindenburg’s German armies struck from the East Prussian border towards the Narew. The aim was to encircle the Russian forces in the westward-jutting Kingdom of Poland. The Russians, deprived of ammunition and reserves, fought stubborn delaying actions but were unable to hold the line of the Vistula and the Narew. In August they abandoned Warsaw, Ivangorod and Novogeorgievsk, and by the autumn they had withdrawn from the whole of the Kingdom of Poland, Lithuania and part of Courland. The Great Retreat ended Russian rule over central Poland, which had lasted since 1815.

1916: The Eastern Front

from March 1916

After the Great Retreat of 1915 the Eastern Front froze on a line running from the Gulf of Riga along the Dvina, through Polesia and Volhynia, to the Romanian border. Over the winter the Russian army rebuilt its strength, its ammunition supply and its reserves. At the request of the French, who were being bled white at Verdun, the Russians attacked at Lake Naroch in Belarus as early as March 1916. The offensive, conducted during the thaw and without sufficient artillery support, collapsed after a few weeks with heavy losses. The Russian command nevertheless drew lessons from it which in the summer brought the Tsarist army its greatest success of the war.

1917: The Kerensky Offensive and its defeat

from July 1917

The Provisional Government, under pressure from the Allies and convinced that victory would strengthen the revolution, decided to go on the offensive in the summer of 1917. The Minister of War, Alexander Kerensky, toured the front making speeches to the soldiers, but an army shattered by committees, desertion and anti-war agitation was by now a shadow of its former strength. The offensive in Eastern Galicia stalled after a few days of success, and a German counter-attack turned it into a disorderly retreat.

1918: The Eastern Front

from February 1918

When the Bolsheviks broke off the negotiations at Brest-Litovsk, declaring that they would neither fight nor sign a peace, Germany and Austria-Hungary renounced the armistice and advanced east. Within two weeks, meeting almost no resistance from the disintegrating Russian army, they occupied Livonia, Estonia and much of Belarus, and on 1 March entered Kiev. By May they had occupied the whole of Ukraine. The offensive forced Lenin to accept far harsher peace terms, signed on 3 March 1918.

1919–1921: The Polish–Soviet War

from February 1919 to March 1921

In the east the Great War did not end on 11 November 1918. As the Germans withdrew from the lands of the former Russian Empire, the reborn Polish army and the Red Army moved into the gap. Clashes in February 1919 grew into a war over where Poland's border would run and whether the revolution would reach the West. After the Kyiv offensive and Tukhachevsky's advance, it was decided by the Battle of Warsaw in August and the Battle of the Niemen in September 1920. Peace was signed at Riga in March 1921.

Asia and the Pacific

1914: The Far East and the Pacific

August – November 1914

The war quickly reached Asia and the Pacific, where Germany held the Kiautschou leased territory with the port of Tsingtao, as well as numerous islands. Japan, Britain’s ally, declared war on Germany and besieged Tsingtao, and its navy occupied the German islands north of the equator. South of the equator the German colonies were seized by troops from Australia and New Zealand. By the end of 1914 Germany had lost all its possessions in the Far East and the Pacific.

War at sea

1914: The war at sea

August – December 1914

Before the war Britain and Germany had waged a naval arms race, and both sides expected a great fleet battle in the North Sea. It did not happen. The British Grand Fleet blockaded the exits from the North Sea, and the German High Seas Fleet avoided open battle with its stronger opponent. Instead there were smaller clashes between cruisers and destroyers, hunts for German raiders on the oceans, and the first submarine attacks, which quickly showed what a dangerous weapon submarines had become. The most celebrated episode of the year was the voyage of Admiral von Spee’s German squadron across the Pacific, which ended in victory at Coronel and defeat at the Falklands.

1915: The war at sea

from January 1915

In 1915 the war at sea changed its character. The German High Seas Fleet continued to avoid a decisive battle with the Grand Fleet, and its raids on the English coast ended in January with the clash at Dogger Bank. An ever greater role was played by submarines, which the Germans began sending against merchant ships around the British Isles.

1916: The war at sea

from April 1916

In 1916 the German High Seas Fleet, under a new commander, Admiral Reinhard Scheer, adopted a bolder strategy. Instead of waiting in port, it was to lure parts of the British Grand Fleet out into the North Sea and destroy them with superior numbers before the main force could arrive. This was the purpose of the German battlecruiser raids on the east coast of England, combined with operations by submarines and airships. The British responded by laying minefields and with ever better radio intelligence, thanks to which they knew when the German fleet was putting to sea.

1918: The war at sea

from January 1918

In the last year of the war the convoy system and increasingly effective anti-submarine measures deprived Germany of any hope of starving Britain into submission, although the U-boats were still sinking hundreds of ships. The High Seas Fleet rarely left port, and the main clashes took place in coastal waters and on the periphery: at the entrance to the Dardanelles, in the Strait of Otranto and off the coast of Flanders, where the British tried to block the submarine bases at Zeebrugge and Ostend.

Africa

1914: The war in Africa

August 1914 – January 1915

The war quickly spread to the colonies in Africa. Germany had four colonies there: Togoland, Kamerun, German South West Africa and German East Africa. Britain, France and Belgium wanted to seize them, deprive Germany of its ports and radio stations, and secure their own possessions. Togoland fell as early as August, and in Kamerun the Allies occupied the coast. In the east of the continent the German forces of Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck inflicted painful defeats on the British and began a campaign that lasted until the end of the war. In January 1915 they also recaptured the border post of Jassin. The burden of the fighting in Africa was borne mainly by African soldiers and porters.

1915: The war in Africa

from February 1915

In 1915 the Allies began taking further colonies from Germany in the interior of the continent. In July the forces of the Union of South Africa compelled German South West Africa to capitulate. In Kamerun, British, French and Belgian columns captured Garua and Ngaoundéré, and in the autumn advanced again on Yaoundé, deep into the forested south of the country. In the north the mountain fortress of Mora still held out. In German East Africa the war stalled: Lettow-Vorbeck harassed the British Uganda Railway, while the British waited for reinforcements before going on the offensive.

1916: The war in Africa

from March 1916

By the beginning of 1916 only one German colony in Africa remained to be conquered. Kamerun capitulated in February, and command in East Africa was taken over by the South African general Jan Smuts, who received reinforcements from the Union of South Africa, India and Rhodesia. In March his troops attacked the German positions at the foot of Kilimanjaro and drove Lettow-Vorbeck from the northern borderlands of the colony. At the same time, in Sudan, the British began a campaign against the Sultan of Darfur, Ali Dinar, who had allied himself with Turkey and the Senussi order.

Middle East

1914: The Ottoman Empire enters the war

November 1914 – February 1915

At the end of October 1914 the Ottoman fleet under the command of the German admiral Souchon attacked Russian ports on the Black Sea. Within a few days Russia, Britain and France declared war on the Ottoman Empire, and the Sultan proclaimed a jihad. The war spread to new regions: the Caucasus, where the Russian and Ottoman armies clashed; Mesopotamia, where troops from India landed at the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab; and also the Dardanelles and the Suez Canal. In winter Enver Pasha led an offensive in the Caucasus which ended in catastrophe for his army at Sarikamish, and at the beginning of February 1915 Ottoman troops unsuccessfully attacked the Suez Canal. The Ottoman Empire’s entry into the war cut Russia off from its allies via the Black Sea straits and extended the war to the whole of the Middle East.

1915: The Dardanelles

from February 1915

At the beginning of 1915 the British government decided to force the Dardanelles with the fleet, capture Constantinople, knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war and open a sea route to Russia. In February British and French warships began bombarding the forts guarding the entrance to the strait. It soon became clear that the fleet alone could not cope with the forts and minefields, and land forces began to be assembled in Egypt and on the island of Lemnos.

1915: Mesopotamia, Persia and the Caucasus

from April 1915

In the spring of 1915 the Ottoman Empire, despite its winter defeat at Sarikamish, tried to regain the initiative on its eastern marches. In Mesopotamia Ottoman troops and tribal allies attacked the British defending Basra, but were beaten at Shaiba, which opened the way for a British advance up the Tigris and Euphrates. In the borderlands with Persia and Russia the war brought tragedy to the civilian population. The Ottoman authorities began deportations and massacres of Armenians, and in Van the Armenians held out against a siege for several weeks until Russian troops arrived.

1916: The relief of Kut and the Erzurum Offensive

from January 1916

At the beginning of 1916 the British tried to free General Townshend’s division, besieged in Kut on the Tigris. General Aylmer’s relief corps, hastily cobbled together from units arriving from France and India, attacked in winter downpours and mud at Sheikh Sa’ad, on the Wadi and at Hanna, suffering heavy losses without breaking through to the town. Meanwhile in the Caucasus General Yudenich, taking advantage of the fact that the Turks were transferring forces from Gallipoli, launched an offensive in the middle of winter which ended with the capture of the fortress of Erzurum. In Persia the Russians were driving Ottoman troops and their Persian allies out of the western provinces.

1917: Baghdad and Gaza

from March 1917

After retaking Kut in February 1917, General Maude’s troops set off in pursuit of the Turks up the Tigris and in March took Baghdad, the first great British prize in the Middle East. At the same time the Russians were again advancing into western Persia. At the other end of the Ottoman Empire, General Murray’s army, which for a year had been building a railway and a water pipeline across Sinai, stood on the borders of Palestine, before the Turkish positions at Gaza.

1918: Palestine, Syria and Persia

from January 1918

After the capture of Jerusalem, Allenby’s troops consolidated their hold on Judea, while the Arab forces of Emir Faisal, supported by the British, carried the fight to the east bank of the Jordan. The disintegration of the Russian army opened the way for the Turks into the Caucasus and Persia, where the British sent small missions from Baghdad to keep Ottoman and German troops away from the Caspian Sea and the borders of India.