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Germany officially unified
Unification exposed several glaring religious, linguistic, social, and cultural differences between and among the inhabitants of the new nation, suggesting that 1871 only represents one moment in a continuum of the larger unification processes -
France loses Alsace and Lorraine to Germany
When Otto Von Bismark unifies Germany. Took them from France because he did not believe that belonged to them. -
Triple Alliance formed
The Triple Alliance was the military alliance among Germany, Austria–Hungary, and Italy, (as opposing the Triple Entente which consisted of an alliance between Britain, France and Russia), that lasted from 1882[1] until World War I in 1914 -
Bolscheviks emerge as a political group
were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split apart from the Menshevik faction[4] at the Second Party Congress in 1903.[5]
The Bolsheviks were the majority faction in a crucial vote, hence their name. They ultimately became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.[6] The Bolsheviks came to power in Russia during the October Revolution phase of the Russian Revolution of 1917, and founded the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic which would later -
Russo-Japanese War
The Russo-Japanese War (8 February 1904 – 5 September 1905) was "the first great war of the 20th century."[4] It grew out of rival imperial ambitions of the Russian Empire and the Empire of Japan over Manchuria and Korea. The major theatres of operations were Southern Manchuria, specifically the area around the Liaodong Peninsula and Mukden; and the seas around Korea, Japan, and the Yellow Sea. -
Triple Entente alliance formed
The Triple Entente (from French entente [ɑ̃tɑ̃t] "friendship, understanding, agreement") was the alliance linking Russia, France, and the United Kingdom after the signing of the Anglo-Russian Entente on August 31, 1907. The alliance of the three powers, supplemented by agreements with Portugal and Japan, constituted a powerful counterweight to the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy. -
Austria-Hungary annexes Bosnia
The Bosnian Crisis of 1908-09 was very much the precursor of the events in the Balkans that spilled over into the assassination of Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo in June 1914. In this sense the Bosnian Crisis needs to be analysed within the same context as the assassination that was to trigger World War One. -
Ottomon-Germany Alliance formed
The Ottoman – German Alliance was an alliance between the German Empire and the Ottoman Empire that was ratified shortly following the outbreak of World War I. The alliance was created as part of a joint-cooperative effort that would strengthen and modernize the ailing Ottoman military, as well as provide Germany safe passage into neighboring British colonies -
Trotsky flees Russia
On 3 August 1914, at the outbreak of World War I, in which Austria-Hungary fought against the Russian empire, Trotsky was forced to flee Vienna for neutral Switzerland to avoid arrest as a Russian émigré. -
Archduke Franz Ferdinand Assassinated
On 28 June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, were shot dead in Sarajevo, by Gavrilo Princip, one of a group of six assassins (five Serbs and one Bosnian Muslim), coordinated by Danilo Ilić. -
Austria declares war on Serbia
World War I began in the Balkans, an area of southeastern Europe. In the early 1900′s, the Balkan states fought the Ottoman Empire in the First Balkan War (1912-1913). The states then fought each other in the Second Balkan War (1913). The major European powers stayed out of those wars. However, the major powers did not escape the third Balkan crisis -
Schlieffen Plan put into action
The Schlieffen Plan (German: Schlieffen-Plan, pronounced [ʃliːfən plaːn]) was the German General Staff's early-20th-century overall strategic plan for victory in a possible future war in which the German Empire might find itself fighting on two fronts: France to the west and Russia to the east. The First World War later became such a war, with both a Western and an Eastern Front. -
Japan Declares war on Germany
Japan participated in World War I from 1914 to 1918 in an alliance with the Entente Powers and played an important role in securing the sea lanes in the South Pacific and Indian Oceans against the German Kaiserliche Marine. Politically, Japan seized the opportunity to expand its sphere of influence in China, and to gain recognition as a great power in postwar geopolitics. -
Battle of Tannenberg
The Battle of Tannenberg was an engagement between the Russian and the German Empires in the first days of World War I. It was fought by the Russian Second Army against the German Eighth Army between 26 August and 30 August 1914.[4] The battle resulted in the almost complete destruction of the Russian Second Army, as well as the death of its commander Alexander Samsonov. A series of follow-up battles (the First Battle of the Masurian Lakes) destroyed the majority of the First Army as well, and k -
Period: to
Battle of Marne
The Battle of the Marne (French: Première bataille de la Marne) (also known as the Miracle of the Marne) was a First World War battle fought between 5 and 12 September 1914. It resulted in an Allied victory against the German Army under Chief of Staff Helmuth von Moltke the Younger. The battle effectively ended the month long German offensive that opened the war and had reached the outskirts of Paris. The counterattack of six French field armies and one British army along the Marne River forced -
Russian Army out of ammunition
Russia is out. -
Lusitania sinks
On May 7, 1915, the British ocean liner RMS Lusitania, which primarily ferried people and goods across the Atlantic Ocean between the United States and Great Britain, was torpedoed by a German U-boat and sunk. Of the 1,959 people on board, 1,198 died, including 128 Americans. The sinking of the Lusitania enraged Americans and hastened the United States' entrance into World War I. -
Period: to
Battle of Gallipoli
he Gallipoli Campaign, also known as the Dardanelles Campaign, the Battle of Gallipoli or the Battle of Çanakkale (Turkish: Çanakkale Savaşı), was a World War I campaign that took place on the Gallipoli peninsula[6] in the Ottoman Empire between 25 April 1915 and 9 January 1916. The peninsula forms the northern bank of the Dardanelles, a strait that provides a sea route to what was then the Russian Empire, one of the Allied powers during the war. Intending to secure it, Russia's allies Britain a -
Battle of Verdun
The Battle of Verdun (Bataille de Verdun, IPA: [bataj də vɛʁdœ̃], Schlacht um Verdun, IPA: [ʃlaxt ˀʊm vɛɐdœŋ]) was fought from 21 February – 18 December 1916 during the First World War on the Western Front between the German and French armies, on hills north of Verdun-sur-Meuse in north-eastern France. The German Fifth Army attacked the defences of the Région Fortifiée de Verdun (RFV) and the Second Army on the right bank of the Meuse, intending rapidly to capture the Côtes de Meuse (Meuse Heigh -
Period: to
Battle of Jutland
The Battle of Jutland (German: Skagerrakschlacht) was a naval battle fought by the Royal Navy's Grand Fleet (which also included ships and individual personnel from the Royal Australian Navy and Royal Canadian Navy[1]) against the Imperial German Navy's High Seas Fleet during the First World War. The battle was fought on 31 May and 1 June 1916 in the North Sea near Jutland, Denmark. It was the largest naval battle and the only full-scale clash of battleships in the war. It was only the third-eve -
Period: to
Battle of Somme
The Battle of the Somme (French: Bataille de la Somme, German: Schlacht an der Somme), also known as the Somme Offensive, was a battle of the First World War fought by the armies of the British and French empires against the German Empire. It took place between 1 July and 18 November 1916 on either side of the River Somme in France. The battle was one of the largest of World War I, in which more than 1,000,000 men were wounded or killed, making it one of humanity's bloodiest battles. A Franco-Br -
Zimmerman Telegraph found
The Zimmermann Telegram (or Zimmermann Note) was a 1917 diplomatic proposal from the German Empire for Mexico to join the Central Powers, in the event of the United States entering World War I on the side of the Entente Powers. The proposal was intercepted and decoded by British intelligence. Revelation of the contents outraged American public opinion and helped generate support for the United States declaration of war on Germany in April of that year -
October Revolution
The October Revolution (Russian: Октя́брьская револю́ция, tr. Oktyabr'skaya revolyutsiya, IPA: [ɐkˈtʲæbrʲskəjə rʲɪvɐˈlʲʉtsɨjə]), officially known as the Great October Socialist Revolution and commonly referred to as Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a seizure of state power instrumental in the larger Russian Revolution of 1917. -
Vladimir Lenin seizes power in Russia
In 1917, two revolutions completely changed the fabric of Russia. First, the February Russian Revolution toppled the Russian monarchy and established a Provisional Government. Then in October, a second Russian Revolution placed the Bolsheviks as the leaders of Russia, resulting in the creation of the world's first communist country. -
Unrestricted submarine warfare commences
Unrestricted submarine warfare is a type of naval warfare in which submarines sink vessels such as freighters and tankers without warning, as opposed to attacks per prize rules (also known as "cruiser rules"). Prize rules call for submarines to surface and search for merchantmen[1] and place crews in "a place of safety" -
Tsar Nicholas II abdicates
At the end of the "February Revolution" of 1917 (February in the Old Russian Calendar), on 2 March (Julian Calendar)/ 15 March (Gregorian Calendar) 1917, Nicholas II chose to abdicate. He first abdicated in favour of Tsarevich Alexei, but swiftly changed his mind after advice from doctors that the heir-apparent would not live long apart from his parents, who would be forced into exile -
Period: to
Battle of Passchendaele
The Battle of Passchendaele (or Third Battle of Ypres or "Passchendaele") [Note 2] was a campaign of the First World War, fought by the British and their allies against the German Empire. The battle took place on the Western Front, between July and November 1917, for control of the ridges south and east of the Belgian city of Ypres in West Flanders, as part of a strategy decided by the Allies at conferences in November 1916 and May 1917.[3] -
Balfour Decleration
The Balfour Declaration (dated 2 November 1917) was a letter from the United Kingdom's Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to Baron Rothschild (Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild), a leader of the British Jewish community, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland. -
Fourteen points proposed
The "Fourteen Points" was a statement given on the 8th of January, 1918 by United States President Woodrow Wilson declaring that World War I was being fought for a moral cause and calling for postwar peace in Europe. Europeans generally welcomed Wilson's intervention, but his main Allied colleagues (Georges Clemenceau of France, David Lloyd George of Great Britain, and Vittorio Emanuele Orlando of Italy) were skeptical of the applicability of Wilsonian idealism. -
Influenza epidemic
The 1918 flu pandemic (January 1918 – December 1920)[1] was an unusually deadly influenza pandemic, the first of the two pandemics involving H1N1 influenza virus (the second being the 2009 flu pandemic). It infected 500 million[2] people across the world, including remote Pacific islands and the Arctic, and killed 50 to 100 million of them—three to five percent of the world's population[3] —making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history. -
Revolution overthrows Austria-Hungarian Emperor
From March 1848 through November 1849, the Habsburg Austrian Empire was threatened by revolutionary movements. Much of the revolutionary activity was of a nationalist character: the empire, ruled from Vienna, included Austrian Germans, Hungarians, Slovenes, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Ruthenians (Ukrainians), Romanians, Croats, Italians, and Serbs, all of whom attempted in the course of the revolution to either achieve autonomy, independence, or even hegemony over other nationalities. -
Russia signed Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was a peace treaty on March 3, 1918, between the new Bolshevik government of Russia (the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic) and the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey), which ended Russia's participation in World War I. The treaty was signed at Brest-Litovsk (now Brest, Belarus) after two months of negotiations. -
Armistice Signed
The armistice between the Allies and Germany – also known as the "Armistice of Compiègne" after the location it was signed – was the agreement that ended the fighting in western Europe that comprised the First World War. It went into effect at 11 a.m. on 11 November 1918, and marked a victory for the Allies and a complete defeat for Germany, although not technically a surrender. -
Kaiser Wilhelm II
Wilhelm II or William II (German: Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albrecht von Preußen; Frederick William Victor Albert of Prussia; 27 January 1859 – 4 June 1941) was the last German Emperor (Kaiser) and King of Prussia, ruling the German Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia from 15 June 1888 to 9 November 1918. -
Germany stops reparation payments to France
World War I reparations were the payments and transfers of property and equipment that Germany was forced to make under the Treaty of Versailles following its defeat during World War I. -
Treaty of Versailles
-
Treaty of Saint_Germain
The Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, was signed on 10 September 1919 by the victorious Allies of World War I on the one hand and by the Republic of German-Austria on the other. Like the Treaty of Trianon with Hungary and the Treaty of Versailles with Germany, it contained the Covenant of the League of Nations and as a result was not ratified by the United States but was followed by the US–Austrian Peace Treaty of 1921. -
New Economic Policy (NEP)
he New Economic Policy (NEP) was an economic policy of Soviet Russia proposed by Vladimir Lenin, who called it "state capitalism" -
Stalin takes over Russia
However, he ruled by terror, and millions of his own citizens died during his brutal reign. Born into poverty, Stalin became involved in revolutionary politics, as well as criminal activities, as a young man. After Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924) died, Stalin outmaneuvered his rivals for control of the party. Once in power, he collectivized farming and had potential enemies executed or sent to forced labor camps. Stalin aligned with the United States and Britain in World War II (1939 -
US declares war on Germany
On December 11, 1941, the United States Congress declared war upon Germany, in response to that nation's declaration of war following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor,[1] and only hours after Germany declared war on the United States.
