Era VI · 1914 to 1918
The First World War
From 1914 to 1918 the First World War buried the war of movement in mud and wire, and battles like Verdun and the Somme went on for months. It was fought from Flanders to Gallipoli, and in its last year American troops joined the fighting in France.
28 battles · 3 commanders
Film: a heavy gun firing during the St. Mihiel offensive, September 1918. U.S. Army Signal Corps, U.S. National Archives 111-H-1329. Public domain.
Where the battles were fought
Every battle of the era with a story in the Field Dispatch. Tap a dot to read it.
Europe in close-up
Not on the map: Battle of Vimy Ridge.
Basemap: Natural Earth, public domain. Modern coastlines.
The battles in order
- 1914Battle of Coronel
How von Spee's cruisers sank Cradock's Good Hope and Monmouth off Chile with all hands, and why Britain struck back.
- 1914Battle of Kraśnik
Dankl's Austro-Hungarian First Army runs into the Russian Fourth Army south of Lublin and drives it back.
- 1914Battle of Lorraine
Two French armies invade German Lorraine, are thrown back at Morhange and Sarrebourg, then hold Nancy.
- 1914Battle of Penang
At dawn on 28 October 1914 the disguised German cruiser Emden sank the Russian cruiser Zhemchug and the French destroyer Mousquet at Penang.
- 1914Battle of Tannenberg
At Tannenberg in 1914 the German Eighth Army encircled and destroyed Russia's Second Army, taking around 90,000 prisoners in a near-total victory.
- 1914Battle of the Falkland Islands
How Sturdee's battlecruisers caught von Spee's squadron off Port Stanley and sank four of its five cruisers in a day.
- 1914Battle of Łódź
The vast German and Russian battle of maneuver around the city, its 200,000 dead and why it was forgotten.
- 1914First Battle of Champagne
How Joffre's first great attack on the trench line in Champagne gained a few kilometers for tens of thousands of dead.
- 1914First Marne
In September 1914 France and Britain halted the German advance on the Marne, wrecked the Schlieffen Plan and turned the war into four years of trenches.
- 1914First Ypres
In late 1914 the First Battle of Ypres ended the war of movement in the west, froze the front from the Channel to Switzerland and made the Ypres salient.
- 1914Siege of Antwerp
German siege guns smash Belgium's ring of forts, but King Albert's army escapes to fight on at the Yser.
- 1915Battle of Dogger Bank
Codebreakers sent Beatty after Hipper's battlecruisers, but a crippled flagship and a garbled signal let them escape.
- 1915Gallipoli Campaign
The Gallipoli campaign of 1915 to 1916, when Allied troops landed on the Dardanelles against the Ottoman Empire and became locked in a bloody stalemate.
- 1915Second Battle of Artois
Pétain's corps and the Moroccan Division reach the crest of Vimy Ridge, then lose it; six weeks cost France over 100,000 men.
- 1916Battle of Verdun
How ten months of grinding slaughter around a French fortress town became the longest battle of the First World War and a symbol of endurance.
- 1916Brusilov Offensive
Russian armies break the Austro-Hungarian front in Volhynia and Galicia at a terrible cost to both sides.
- 1916Somme
From July to November 1916 the Battle of the Somme cost around a million casualties for a few miles of ground, the enduring symbol of industrial war.
- 1917Battle of Arras
Tunnels, Vimy Ridge, the cavalry at Monchy-le-Preux and Bullecourt in the costliest British offensive of the war by daily rate.
- 1917Battle of Caporetto
On 24 October 1917 German and Austro-Hungarian troops broke the Italian front at Caporetto and drove Italy's army back to the Piave. What it cost.
- 1917Battle of Passchendaele
The story of the Third Battle of Ypres in 1917, when a British-led offensive in Flanders sank into a sea of mud in the fight for Passchendaele.
- 1917Battle of Vimy Ridge
How the Canadian Corps took a ridge that had defied the French, why the German defense failed, the cost and the myth it became.
- 1917Second Battle of Heligoland Bight
How British cruisers caught German minesweepers in the Heligoland Bight, lost them in smoke and mines, and met German battleships.
- 1918Battle of Belleau Wood
In June 1918 US Marines fought a brutal three-week battle to clear Belleau Wood, helping halt the German advance on Paris and earning a lasting legend.
- 1918Defence of Lwów
How Polish volunteers, many of them schoolboys, fought street by street for the city and became the Lwów Eaglets. Full story.
- 1918Hundred Days Offensive
From Amiens on 8 August to the armistice of 11 November 1918, British Empire, French, American and Belgian armies broke the German army in the west.
- 1918Meuse-Argonne Offensive
In autumn 1918 over a million American soldiers fought the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, the largest and deadliest battle in US history, helping end the war.
- 1918Zeebrugge Raid
Royal Navy blockships, a storming party on the Mole and a submarine full of explosives try to shut the U-boats in Bruges.
- 1919Scuttling of the German fleet at Scapa Flow
Interned in Orkney, the German High Seas Fleet sinks itself on Admiral von Reuter's signal rather than be handed over.
Commanders of the era
Film archive
Short clips from the archives, silent, as they were filmed. Every caption follows the archive's own catalogue record.
Artillery tractors on the St. Mihiel front, 1918
- Shows
- A tracked artillery tractor carrying soldiers drives along a muddy forest road towards the camera, towing a gun. The film records American heavy and railway artillery moving guns and howitzers during the offensive.
- Date
- St. Mihiel offensive, 10 to 25 September 1918
- Filmed by
- U.S. Army Signal Corps (camera operator not named in the record)
- Archive
- U.S. National Archives, 111-H-1329, NAID 24832
- Licence
- Public domain, work of the U.S. federal government
- Catalogue record
- The St. Mihiel Offensive, heavy and railway artillery activities
The 110th Infantry marches through Varennes, 1918
- Shows
- A column of American soldiers with packs and rifles walks down a rubble-strewn street past shell-damaged buildings. The catalogue record opens with troops of the 110th Infantry, 28th Division, marching through Varennes.
- Date
- Meuse-Argonne offensive, 26 September to 11 November 1918
- Filmed by
- U.S. Army Signal Corps (camera operator not named in the record)
- Archive
- U.S. National Archives, 111-H-1415, NAID 24917
- Licence
- Public domain, work of the U.S. federal government
- Catalogue record
- Meuse-Argonne Offensive, 28th Division
Shellfire over a field in the Argonne, 1918
- Shows
- A static view across a grassy field towards a tree line, where a shell burst throws up white smoke. Among its scenes the catalogue record lists German shells exploding in a nearby field.
- Date
- Meuse-Argonne offensive, 26 September to 11 November 1918
- Filmed by
- U.S. Army Signal Corps (camera operator not named in the record)
- Archive
- U.S. National Archives, 111-H-1415, NAID 24917
- Licence
- Public domain, work of the U.S. federal government
- Catalogue record
- Meuse-Argonne Offensive, 28th Division
The U.S. fleet comes home, December 1918
- Shows
- An American battleship with cage masts and heavy gun turrets steams slowly past the camera through gray, misty water. The record describes Navy ships passing a reception boat in New York harbor a month after the Armistice.
- Date
- December 1918
- Filmed by
- U.S. Army Signal Corps (camera operator not named in the record)
- Archive
- U.S. National Archives, 111-H-1224, NAID 24729
- Licence
- Public domain, work of the U.S. federal government
- Catalogue record
- Return of the U.S. Fleet in December 1918
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