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warfare in which opposing armed forces attack, counterattack, and defend from relatively permanent systems of trenches dug into the ground -
Telegram of Austria-Hungary`s declaration of war on Serbia on 28th July 1914 marked the beginning of the First World War – one of the world's most tragic conflicts in the history of the human race and initiated the era of unprecedented suffering. -
Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated by Gavrilo Princip. Ferdinand was chosen as a target because he was to be the heir of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. -
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Germany declared a war zone around Britain, within which merchant ships were sunk without warning. This 'unrestricted submarine warfare' angered neutral countries, especially the United States. -
Allied troops landed on the Gallipoli peninsula in Ottoman Turkey. The Gallipoli campaign was the land-based element of a strategy intended to allow Allied ships to pass through the Dardanelles, capture Constantinople (now Istanbul) and ultimately knock Ottoman Turkey out of the war. -
the German submarine (U-boat) U-20 torpedoed and sank the Lusitania, a swift-moving British cruise liner traveling from New York to Liverpool, England. -
In March 1915 Sonnino began serious negotiations with London and France . The Treaty of London was signed on 26 April 1915 and Italy declared war against Austria-Hungary -
after the United States entered World War I, Gen. John J. Pershing arrived in France with his staff to establish American forces in Europe -
the German army began pounding the forts and trenches with artillery fire. 1,200 guns smashed the French positions. -
after a week-long artillery bombardment of the German lines. Advancing British troops found that the German defences had not been destroyed as expected and many units suffered very high casualties with little progress. The Somme became an attritional or 'wearing-out' battle. -
ritish cryptographers deciphered a telegram from German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmermann to the German Minister to Mexico, Heinrich von Eckhardt, offering United States territory to Mexico in return for joining the German cause. -
President Woodrow Wilson asked a special joint session of the United States Congress for a declaration of war against the German Empire. -
American women recruited to serve as bilingual telephone operators for the AEF arrive in Europe. -
an ambitious blueprint for ending World War I that emphasized “national self-determination” for both small and large nations, and included the creation of a cooperative League of Nations to peaceably resolve all future disputes. -
General Pershing's troops launched an attack along the Meuse River and into northern France's rugged Argonne Forest that would prove to be the deadliest battle in American history. -
the use of chemical weapons such as chlorine, phosgene, and mustard gas had resulted in more than 1.3 million casualties and approximately 90 000 deaths -
The Armistice was signed at 5:00 a.m. by Marshal of France Ferdinand Foch, along with other Allies and Germany, inside of Foch's private railway car at Compagnie, France. -
British and American forces enter Germany. -
The Paris Peace Conference was an international meeting convened in January 1919 at Versailles just outside Paris. The purpose of the meeting was to establish the terms of the peace after World War. -
With the ground thus well prepared, and under Wilson's resolute leadership, the conference was able to draw up, in a few days of intensive committee work, a document which it called the Covenant of the League of Nations. -
the controversial Treaty of Versailles — which established the terms for peace at the end of World War I — went into effect -
the Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles, which formally ended World War I, in part because President Woodrow Wilson had failed to take senators' objections to the agreement into consideration.
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On 10 May 1940, Germany invaded the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France. Luxembourg was occupied that same day. The Netherlands surrendered on 15 May, and Belgium on the 28th.