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The assassination of Archduke Franz
This single terrorist act set off a chain reaction within the alliance system that would result in the largest war Europe- and the world- had ever seen -
The Beginning of World War I
Austria started the war with Serbia. The Beginning of World War 1 -
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Schlieffen Plan
A large part of the German army would race west, to defeat France, and then return to fight Russia in the east. -
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The Development of Western Front
The First Battle of the Marne was perhaps the single most important event of war. The defeat of the Germans left the Schlieffen plan in ruins. A quick victory in the west no longer seemed possible. In the east, the Russians forces had already invaded Germany. -
The Western Front
Germany's lightning-quick strike instead turned into a long and bloody stalemate, or deadlock, along the battlefields of France. This deadlocked region northern France became as the Western Front. -
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The Trench Warfare
By early 1915, opposing armies on the Western Front had dug miles of parallel trenches to protect themselves from the enemy fire. This set the stage of what become known as the Trench Warfare, February 1915, It was known as the Gallipoli campaign. British, Australian, New Zealand, and French troops made repeated assaults on the Galipoli Peninsula on the Western side of the Strait. -
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The Warfare or Battle of 1916 February
In February, The Germans launched a massive attack against the Gremany near Verdun. Each side lost more than 300,000 men. -
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Battle of the Somme
In July of 1916, the British army tried to relieve the pressure on the France. British forces attacked Germany northwest of Verdun, in the valley of the Somme River. In the first day of battle alone, more than 20,000 British soldiers were killed. By the time the Battle of the Somme ended in November, each side suffered over half a million casualties. -
Unrestricted Submarine Warfare
In the 1917, The focus of the war shifted to the high seas. In January 1917, the Germans decided to announced that their submarines would sink without warning any ship in the waters of Britain. -
United States
President Wilson asked congress to declare war. The United States entered the war on the side of the Allies -
Russian not involved in the war and offered a truce
In 1917, Nearly 5,5 million Russian soldiers had been wounded, killed, or taken prisoner. The war-weary Russian army refused to fight any longer. In Nov of 1917, Communist leader Vladimir Ilyrich Lenin seized power. Lenin insisted on ending his country's involvement in the war. One of his first acts was to offer Germany a truce -
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
In March of 1918, Germany and Russia signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which ended the war between them. The Treaty was extremely hard on Russia. It required the Russian government to surrender lands to Germany that now include Finland, Poland, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Even though the Treaty became invalid after the war, these nations still gained their independence. -
Second Battle of Marne
The Allies and Germans clashed at the Second Battle of Marne, Leading the Allied attack were some 350 tanks that rumbled slowly forward, smashing through Germans lines. With arrival of 2 million more American troops, the Allied forces began to advance steadily toward Germany. -
The end of World War I
On Nov 11,1918, World War I came to an end. After four years of slaughter and destruction, the time had come to forge a peace settlement. Leaders of these victorious nations gathered outside of Paris to work out the terms of peace. While leaders had come to high hopes, the peace settlement they crafted left many feeling bitter and betrayed. -
The Treaty of Versailles
The differences between French, British, and U.S. aims led to heated arguments among the nations' leaders. Finally a compromise was reached. The Treaty of Versailles between Germany and The Allied powers was signed on July 28 1919----- Five years to the day after Franz Ferdinand's assassination in the Sarajevo.