World War One Timeline

By Jande1
  • Assassination of Archduke Ferdinand

    Assassination of Archduke Ferdinand
    Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was the heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne. He and his wife, Sophie, were shot and killed in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip, one of a group of sex assassins. The objective of the assassination was to break off Austria-Hungary’s South Slav provinces so that they could be combined into a Yugoslavia. The motives of the assassins’ were steady with the movement known as Young Bosnia. The assassination led to the First World War when Austria-Hungary issued
  • Schlieffen Plan

    Schlieffen Plan
    The Schlieffen Plan was the name given after WW1 to the thinking behind the German invasion of France and Belgium in August. Field Marshal Alfred Von Schlieffen was the Chief of the Imperial German General Staff. He devised a deployment plan for a war-winning offensive, in a one-front war against the French Third Republic.
  • Trench warfare began

    Trench warfare began
    The Trench Warfare occured when a revolution in firepower wasn’t matched by similar afvances in mobility, resulting in a grueling form of warfare in which the defender held the advantage. On the Western Front in 1914-1918, both sides constructed elaborate trench and dugout systems opposing each other along a front, protected from assault by barbed wire. The area between opposing trench lines, known as "no man's land" was fully exposed to artillery fire from both sides. Attacks, even if successf
  • Christmas Truce along Western Front

    Christmas Truce along Western Front
    The so-called Christmas Truce of 1914 came only five months after the outbreak of war in Europe and was one of the last examples of the outdated notion of chivalry between enemies in warfare. It was never repeated—future attempts at holiday ceasefires were quashed by officers’ threats of disciplinary action—but it served as heartening proof, however brief, that beneath the brutal clash of weapons, the soldiers’ essential humanity endured.
  • Germans introduce poison gas

    Germans introduce poison gas
    On April 22, 1915, German forces shock Allied soldiers along the western front by firing more than 150 tons of lethal chlorine gas against two French colonial divisions at Ypres, Belgium. This was the first major gas attack by the Germans, and it devastated the Allied line.
  • Sinking of Lusitania

    Sinking of Lusitania
    The sinking of the Cunard ocean liner RMS Lusitania occurred on Friday, 7 May 1915 during the First World War, as Germany waged submarine warfare against the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
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    Battle of Verdun

    On February 21, 1916, more than 1,220 guns around an eight-mile perimeter opened fire. It was the sort of drenching shellstorm that would distinguish the battle. But even from the start, the “Meuse Mill” did not achieve the five-to-two kill ratio Falkenhayn had predicted. By the time their advance ground to a halt in mid-December, they were close to the line where the battle had started. caulaties were between 600 and 700 thousand.
  • Sussex Pledge

    Sussex Pledge
    Sussex Pledge was a promise made in 1916 during World War I by Germany to the United States prior to the latter's entry into the war.
  • Zimmerman Telegram

    Zimmerman Telegram
    The Zimmermann Telegram (or Zimmermann Note) was an internal diplomatic communication issued from the German Foreign Office in January, 1917 that proposed a military alliance between Germany and Mexico in the event of the United States' entering World War I against Germany.
  • General John J. Pershing became AEF leader

    General John J. Pershing became AEF leader
    Didnt give a clear date ,but PRINT
    CITE
    U.S. Army general John J. Pershing (1860-1948) commanded the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) in Europe during World War I. The president and first captain of the West Point class of 1886, he served in the Spanish- and Philippine-American Wars and was tasked to lead a punitive raid against the Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa. In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson selected Pershing to command the American troops being sent to Europe. Although Pershing aime
  • President Woodrow Wilson asked for declaration of war

    President Woodrow Wilson asked for declaration of war
    On this day in 1917, President Woodrow Wilson asks Congress to send U.S. troops into battle against Germany in World War I. In his address to Congress that day, Wilson lamented it is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war. Four days later, Congress obliged and declared war on Germany.
  • Committee on Public Information formed

    Committee on Public Information formed
    Committee on Public Information (CPI), was established on April 13, 1917 and headed by George Creel. The CPI provided propaganda during WW1 to rally the support of American citizens for all aspects of the war effort.
  • Selective Service Act became law

    Selective Service Act became law
    The Selective Service Act or Selective Draft Act (Pub.L. 65–12, 40 Stat. 76, enacted May 18, 1917) authorized the federal government to raise a national army for the American entry into World War I through the compulsory enlistment of people. It was envisioned in December 1916 and brought to President Woodrow Wilson's attention shortly after the break in relations with Germany in February 1917. The Act itself was drafted by then-Captain (later Brigadier General) Hugh S. Johnson after the United
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    Battle of Argonne Forest

    The Meuse-Argonne Offensive, also known as the Maas-Argonne Offensive and the Battle of the Argonne Forest, was a major part of the final Allied offensive of World War I that stretched along the entire Western Front. It was fought from September 26, 1918, until the Armistice of 11 November 1918, a total of 47 days.The Meuse-Argonne Offensive was the greatest American battle of the First World War. In six weeks the AEF lost 26,277 killed and 95,786 wounded.
  • World War I ended

    World War I ended
    At the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the Great War ends. At 5 a.m. that morning, Germany, bereft of manpower and supplies and faced with imminent invasion, signed an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car outside Compiégne, France. The First World War left nine million soldiers dead and 21 million wounded, with Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary, France, and Great Britain each losing nearly a million or more lives. In addition, at least five million civilians