Volta
Conflict28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918

World War I

Triggered by the assassination in Sarajevo, the European powers fought in two blocs. Four empires collapsed.

Soldiers of the Cheshire Regiment in a trench during the Battle of the Somme, July 1916
Soldiers of the Cheshire Regiment in a trench during the Battle of the Somme, July 1916

John Warwick Brooke · Public domain · Source

In the late 19th century the great powers, competing for colonies, split into the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy and the Triple Entente of Britain, France and Russia. In the Balkans, where Pan-Germanism clashed with Pan-Slavism, the region became known as the "powder keg of Europe". When the Austrian heir and his wife were assassinated in Sarajevo by a young Serbian nationalist on 28 June 1914, Austria declared war on Serbia on 28 July and the powers were drawn in one after another through their alliances.

Germany invaded France through Belgium but was halted at the Marne, and the Western Front settled into trench warfare. Machine guns, poison gas, tanks and aircraft appeared in a total war that mobilised whole nations. Germany’s unrestricted submarine warfare brought the United States into the war in 1917, and revolutionary Russia left it with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918.

The war ended when Germany signed the armistice on 11 November 1918. More than fifteen million soldiers and civilians are estimated to have died. Four empires — the German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman — collapsed.

At the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 the Treaty of Versailles was signed and the League of Nations founded (the Versailles system). President Wilson’s principle of national self-determination was applied only to the territories of the defeated powers, but it gave hope to colonised peoples and influenced Korea’s March First Movement and China’s May Fourth Movement.

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States and rulers at the time
Germany · Central Powers
Ottoman Empire · Central Powers
France · Allies
Great Britain · Allies
Russia · Allies
United States · Allies — President Woodrow Wilson

8 parts of this event

  1. 1
    1914Assassination in Sarajevo

    Gavrilo Princip, a young Bosnian Serb, shot dead the Austrian heir and his wife on their visit to Sarajevo. The killing set off the First World War.

  2. 2
    1914First Battle of the Marne

    French and British troops stopped the German army, which had swept through Belgium almost to Paris, on the river Marne. Germany’s plan for a short war collapsed and the Western Front froze into trench warfare.

  3. 3
    1915 – 1916Gallipoli Campaign

    British, French, Australian and New Zealand troops landed on the Gallipoli peninsula to force the Dardanelles and strike at Istanbul, but were held by the Ottoman army and withdrew after eight months.

  4. 4
    1916Battle of Verdun

    The German army attacked the fortress zone of Verdun for nearly ten months to bleed the French army dry, but the French under Pétain held. Casualties on both sides reached some 700,000.

  5. 5
    1916Battle of Jutland

    The largest naval battle of the First World War, fought between the British Grand Fleet and the German High Seas Fleet in the North Sea off Denmark’s Jutland peninsula. Britain lost more, but kept command of the sea.

  6. 6
    1916Battle of the Somme

    A great British and French offensive to break the German trench line along the river Somme. British casualties on the first day alone neared 60,000, and tanks were used for the first time. In four and a half months the Allies advanced little more than 10 kilometres.

  7. 7
    1917Unrestricted Submarine Warfare and US Entry into the War

    When Germany declared that its submarines would sink without warning any ship in the waters around Britain, the neutral United States declared war on Germany — a turning point that secured the Allied victory.

  8. 8
    1918Armistice of 11 November 1918

    Germany signed an armistice with the Allies in a railway carriage in the forest of Compiègne. At 11 a.m. on 11 November the guns fell silent and the First World War, more than four years long, came to an end.

Before and after

Earlier
1882 Triple Alliance and Triple Entente
Later
1915 Hussein–McMahon Correspondence

Related works

Dramatized works (films, dramas, novels) may differ from the historical record.

Themes that include this event

  • Imperialism and the Partition of the World1839 – 1914

    From the Tanzimat to Sarajevo — seventy-five years in which the powers carved up West Asia, India, Southeast Asia, Africa and the Pacific, and the peoples there answered with reform and resistance

  • World War I and the Russian Revolution1908 – 1923

    From the Balkan crises to a war of trenches and total mobilization that toppled four empires; the Russian Revolution it unleashed, which created the first socialist state; and the Versailles settlement of national self-determination and the League of Nations