1916

The year in brief

On the night of 8–9 January 1916 the last British troops sailed from Cape Helles and the Gallipoli campaign ended in Allied defeat. On 16 February the Russians took Erzurum, and on 29 April, after a siege of 147 days, the British garrison of Kut surrendered to the Turks. On 21 February the Germans attacked at Verdun, and the battle turned into a struggle of attrition that lasted until 18 December. On 24 April the Easter Rising broke out in Dublin, and on 31 May the Battle of Jutland, the largest naval battle of the war, began. On 4 June the Brusilov offensive began, shattering a large part of the Austro-Hungarian army, and on 5 June the Arab Revolt began near Medina. On 1 July the British and French attacked on the Somme, and the British Army lost 57,000 men that day. On 27 August Romania entered the war on the side of the Entente, and on 29 August Hindenburg became Chief of the General Staff, with Ludendorff as his deputy. The Battle of the Somme, in which tanks went into action for the first time on 15 September, ended on 18 November without a breakthrough. On 21 November Emperor Franz Joseph I died, and on 6 December the Germans entered Bucharest unopposed. On 12 December Germany and her allies proposed peace negotiations to the Entente, which rejected the offer on 30 December.

For Poland it was a year in which Poles fought on both sides of the front: the Legions on the Austro-Hungarian side and the Polish Rifle Brigade in the Russian army. In July brigades of the Legions held up the Russian attack at Kostiuchnówka for three days, losing about 2,000 killed and wounded. After the fighting in Volhynia Józef Piłsudski demanded his discharge in protest at the treatment of the Legions, and in September the Legions were renamed the Polish Auxiliary Corps. On 5 November a manifesto of the German and Austrian emperors was proclaimed in Warsaw and Lublin, promising a Kingdom of Poland, called self-governing but without a king, a government or borders. As early as 9 November the occupiers called on the Poles to volunteer, which caused indignation, and few volunteers came forward. On 6 December the occupiers proclaimed an ordinance on the Provisional Council of State, whose members were only to advise. Russia protested against the act, and on 25 December Tsar Nicholas II listed among Russia's war aims the creation of a free Poland from all three partitions.