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Period: to
WW1 - the events leading up to, during, and after the war.
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Revolution overthrows Austria-Hungarian Emperor
Revolution overthrows Austria-Hungarian Emperor, Franz Joseph. Radicals became angry at the Emperor and caused him to flee the country. A national government was set up in place of the emperor. -
Italy officially unified
The period known today as the Italian Unification, dates from around the 1848-1870. 1848 was when revolution began in Italy, and 1870 is when Italy annexed Rome and was able to fully complete its unification. In 1861, under the rule of King Victor Emmanuel II, Italy officially became an established unified state. -
Compromise of 1867
Compromise of 1867, the compact, finally concluded on Feb. 8, 1867, that regulated the relations between Austria and Hungary and established the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary. The kingdom of Hungary had desired equal status with the Austrian Empire, which was weakened by its defeat in the Seven Weeks’ War (Austro-Prussian War) of 1866. -
Germany officially unified
The third and final act of German unification was the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, orchestrated by Bismarck to draw the western German states into alliance with the North German Confederation. With the French defeat, the German Empire was proclaimed in January 1871 in the Palace at Versailles, France. -
France loses Franco Prussian War
July 19, 1870–May 10, 1871), war in which a coalition of German states led by Prussia defeated France. The war marked the end of French hegemony in continental Europe and resulted in the creation of a unified Germany. -
Ottoman-Germany alliance formed
Formed in May 1882 and renewed periodically until World War I. -
Triple Alliance formed
Triple Alliance, secret agreement between Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy formed in May 1882 and renewed periodically until World War I. The treaty provided that Germany and Austria-Hungary were to assist Italy if it were attacked by France without Italian provocation; Italy would assist Germany if Germany were attacked by France. In the event of a war between Austria-Hungary and Russia, Italy promised to remain neutral. -
Russo-Japanese War
The Russo-Japanese War was fought during 1904-1905 between the Russian Empire and the Empire of Japan over rival imperial ambitions in Manchuria and Korea. -
Triple Entente alliance formed
Triple Entente, association between Great Britain, France, and Russia, the nucleus of the Allied Powers in World War I. It developed from the Franco-Russian alliance that gradually developed and was formalized in 1894, the Anglo-French Entente Cordiale of 1904, and an Anglo-Russian agreement of 1907, which brought the Triple Entente into existence. -
Austria-Hungary annexes Bosnia
the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary announces its annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, dual provinces in the Balkan region of Europe formerly under the control of the Ottoman Empire. -
Russian army out of ammunition
December 1914 When soldiers ran out of ammunition, they fought with their bayonets. The Russian Army averaged one surgeon for every 10,000 men. -
Archduke Franz Ferdinand Assassinated
Nedjelko Cabrinovic, threw a grenade at the royal couple’s car. Anti-Serb protests and riots followed throughout Austria-Hungary in the wake of the assassination. -
Schlieffen Plan put into action
The Schlieffen Plan was put into action by Von Moltke on August 2, 1914.
The Schlieffen plan was a battle plan that was proposed by Alfred, graf von Schlieffen in 1905. Helmuth von Moltke, Schlieffen’s successor, decided to implement this plan during World War I, but heavily modified it, greatly reducing the size of the army, which finally lead to its ultimate failure. The implementation of the Schlieffen Plan also led Britain to declare war on Germany to help defend France. -
Japan declares war on Germany
August 23, 1914, Japan formally declared war against Germany. -
Battle of Tannenberg
World War I battle fought at Tannenberg, East Prussia (now Stębark, Poland), that ended in a German victory over the Russians. The crushing defeat occurred barely a month into the conflict, but it became emblematic of the Russian Empire’s experience in World War I. -
Battle of Marne
an offensive during World War I by the French army and the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) against the advancing Germans who had invaded Belgium and northeastern France and were within 30 miles (48 km) of Paris. The French threw back the massive German advance and thwarted German plans for a quick and total victory on the Western Front. -
Unrestricted submarine warfare commences
Unrestricted submarine warfare was first introduced in World War I in early 1915, when Germany declared the area around the British Isles a war zone, in which all merchant ships, including those from neutral countries, would be attacked by the German navy. A string of attacks on merchant ships followed, culminating in the sinking of the British ship Lusitania by a German U-boat on May 7, 1915. -
Battle of Gallipoli
Gallipoli Campaign, also known as the Dardanelles Campaign, the Battle of Gallipoli, or the Battle of Çanakkale (Turkish: Çanakkale Savaşı), was a campaign of the First World War that took place on the Gallipoli peninsula (Gelibolu in modern Turkey) in the Ottoman Empire between 17 February 1915 and 9 January 1916. -
Lusitania sinks
May 7, 1915, the British ocean liner Lusitania is torpedoed without warning by a German submarine off the south coast of Ireland. Within 20 minutes, the vessel sank into the Celtic Sea. Of 1,959 passengers and crew, 1,198 people were drowned, including 128 Americans. -
Battle of Verdun
February 21–December 18, 1916), World War I engagement in which the French repulsed a major German offensive. It was one of the longest, bloodiest, and most-ferocious battles of the war; French casualties amounted to about 400,000, German ones to about 350,000. Some 300,000 were killed. -
Battle of Jutland
attle of the Skagerrak, (May 31–June 1, 1916), the only major encounter between the main British and German battle fleets in World War I, fought near the Skagerrak, an arm of the North Sea, about 60 miles (97 km) off the west coast of Jutland (Denmark). -
Battle of Somme
July 1–November 13, 1916), costly and largely unsuccessful Allied offensive on the Western Front during World War I. The horrific bloodshed on the first day of the battle became a metaphor for futile and indiscriminate slaughter. -
Bolsheviks emerge as a political group
Bolsheviki, member of a wing of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party, which, led by Vladimir Lenin, and became the dominant political power. The group originated at the party’s second congress (1903) when Lenin’s followers, insisting that party membership be restricted to professional revolutionaries, won a temporary majority on the party’s central committee and on the editorial board of its newspaper Iskra -
Vladimir Lenin seizes pwer in Russia
In March 1917, the czar abdicated (stepped down) and a provisional goverment took control of Russia. Then, led by Lenin, the Bolsheviks seized power in November, 1917. -
Zimmerman Telegraph found
The Zimmermann Telegram (also called the Zimmermann Note) was a telegram sent to Mexico from Germany on January 16, 1917. It was what made America enter World War I. Zimmerman was the German Foreign Secretary. It said In the event that the United States entered World War I against Germany, Mexico would recover Texas, Arizona and New Mexico. The telegram was intercepted and decoded by British intelligence. -
Austria declares war on Serbia
one month to the day after Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife were killed by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo, Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia, effectively beginning the First World War. -
October Revolution in Russia
the second and last major phase of the Russian Revolution of 1917, in which the Bolshevik Party seized power in Russia, inaugurating the Soviet regime. -
Balfour Declaration
Balfour Declaration, (November 2, 1917), statement of British support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” -
Influenza epidemic in Spain
The 1918–1919 influenza pandemic was the most devastating epidemic in modern history. The infectious disease most likely reached Spain from France, perhaps as the result of the heavy railroad traffic of Spanish and Portuguese migrant workers to and from France. The total numbers of persons who died of influenza in Spain were officially estimated to be 147,114 in 1918, 21,235 in 1919, and 17,825 in 1920. -
Fourteen Points proposed
Fourteen Points, (Jan. 8, 1918), declaration by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson during World War I outlining his proposals for a postwar peace settlement. -
Russia signed Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
Treaties of Brest-Litovsk, peace treaties signed at Brest-Litovsk (now in Belarus) by the Central Powers with the Ukrainian Republic (Feb. 9, 1918) and with Soviet Russia (March 3, 1918), which concluded hostilities between those countries during World War I. -
Tsar Nicholas II and his family are killed
The Russian Imperial Romanov family (Tsar Nicholas II, his wife Tsarina Alexandra and their five children Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Alexei) and all those who chose to accompany them into imprisonment—notably Eugene Botkin, Anna Demidova, Alexei Trupp and Ivan Kharitonov, according to the conclusion of the investigator Sokolov, were shot and bayoneted to death in Yekaterinburg on the night of 16–17 July 1918. -
Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicates
Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated as German Emperor and King of Prussia in November 1918. The abdication was announced on 9 November by Prince Maximilian of Baden and was formally enacted by Wilhelm's written statement on 28 November, made while on exile in Amerongen, the Netherlands. -
Armistice Signed
The final Allied push towards the German border began on October 17, 1918. As the British, French and American armies advanced, the alliance between the Central Powers began to collapse. Turkey signed an armistice at the end of October, Austria-Hungary followed on November 3. -
Weimar Republic established
The Weimar Republic was Germany’s government from 1919 to 1933, the period after World War I until the rise of Nazi Germany. It was named after the town of Weimar where Germany’s new government was formed by a national assembly after Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated. -
Treaty of Saint-Germain
Treaty of Saint-Germain, (1919), treaty concluding World War I and signed by representatives of Austria on one side and the Allied Powers on the other. It was signed at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, near Paris, on Sept. 10, 1919, and came into force on July 16, 1920. -
Treaty of Versailles signed
Treaty of Versailles, peace document signed at the end of World War I by the Allied and associated powers and by Germany in the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles, France, on June 28, 1919; it took force on January 10, 1920. -
First German reparation Payment made
When it came time for Germany to make its first payment of $500 million in August 1921, it "just literally printed the paper money," says Schuker. -
New Economic Policy (NEP) (Vladimir Lenin)
Lenin characterized the NEP in 1922 as an economic system that would include "a free market and capitalism, both subject to state control", while socialized state enterprises would operate on "a profit basis" -
Stalin takes over Russia
When Lenin died in 1924, everybody expected Trotsky to take over the leadership. Instead, Stalin schemed his way into power, using his position as General Secretary, and a series of ruthless political moves . -
Dawes Plan
Dawes Plan, arrangement for Germany’s payment of reparations after World War I. On the initiative of the British and U.S. governments, a committee of experts, presided over by an American financier, Charles G. Dawes, produced a report on the question of German reparations for presumed liability for World War I. The report was accepted by the Allies and by Germany on Aug. 16, 1924. -
Trotsky flees Russia
In response, Stalin and his supporters launched a propaganda counterattack against Trotsky. In 1925, he was removed from his post in the war commissariat. One year later, he was expelled from the Politburo and in 1927 from the Communist Party. In January 1928, Trotsky began his internal exile in Alma-Ata and the next January was expelled from the Soviet Union outright. -
Germany stops reparation payments to France
When Adolf Hitler rose to power in 1933, he cancelled all reparations. "So there are all these bonds out there, held by private individuals, that instantly become worthless," says Schuker. -
Russia-Germany Pact violates Versailles
Nazi leader Adolf Hitler violates the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Pact by sending German military forces into the Rhineland, a demilitarized zone along the Rhine River in western Germany. -
US declares war on Germany
On December 11, 1941, the United States Congress declared war upon Germany hours after Germany declared war on the United States after the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Empire of Japan.