July 31, Third Battle of Ypres Passchendaele : Allied troops, largely those from the British Empire, launch an attack to seize key ridges near Ypres. They achieve victory, but only after months of fighting in horrific conditions and sustaining heavy casualties. November 2, Britain issues the Balfour Declaration, a statement of support for the establishment of a Jewish nation in Palestine.
November 7, Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks assume complete control over the new Soviet Russian state. December 6, A French munitions ship collides with a Belgian relief ship resulting in 11, casualties. December 9, The British capture Jerusalem from the Ottomans. January 8, President Woodrow Wilson outlines his Fourteen Points for peace.
March 3, March 8, Camp Funston at Fort Riley, Kansas makes the first report of influenza. The disease spreads overseas to the Western Front.
May 28, Battle of Cantigny: In its first major battle of World War I, American troops captured the town of Cantigny, depriving the Germans of an important observation point. July 17, Bolsheviks murder the former czar of Russia, Nicholas II, and his family.
July August 6, September , September 26, The largest offensive in U. October November 3, November 9, German Republic later the Weimar Republic proclaimed. November 11, Having been given 72 hours to agree to Allied demands, Germany signs the armistice. Paris time. December 1, Allied troops move into Germany and begin occupation. Yugoslavia, a kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes is proclaimed an independent state. February 14, At the Paris Peace Conference, Allied nations propose constitution for the League of Nations to promote international cooperation.
Germany is forced to sign the Treaty of Versailles. April 16 th : France launched the unsuccessful Nivelle Offensive. Lenin returned to Russia from Switzerland. April 17 th : First signs of a mutiny in the French Army witnessed at Aisne. April 20 th : Nivelle admitted that his offensive had failed in its object but the attacks continued until May 9 th. June 17 th : Gotha bombers bombed London. The crisis led to the overthrow of Tsar Nicholas II in early and the creation of a reform government under Kerensky.
However, the war did not go well for the Allies in The Germans continued to make major gains. This provided an opportunity for the Bolsheviks to seize power. German intelligence played a major role by assisting Lenin to return to Russia and encouraging unrest in Russia. Indeed, the role of intelligence and secret diplomacy deserves more attention in general accounts of the period. The Germans supported Irish opposition to British rule and sought to stir up Muslim dissidence in the British and French empires.
So also with the British search for support within the imperial systems of Eastern Europe, a search that is one of the contexts for the Balfour Declaration as well as for the cause of national self-determination in Eastern Europe.
The Bolshevik revolution created a crisis for the Allies opposed to the Central Powers as it provided Germany with the opportunity to knock Russia out of the war. This opportunity came from a number of directions. The Bolsheviks sought peace and wanted to abandon the alliance with Britain and France. Meanwhile, the Germans continued to advance, and disruption within Russia made resistance more difficult.
In the event at Brest-Litovsk, the Bolsheviks accepted a peace treaty that left the Germans with major territorial gains.
These provided Germany with the opportunity both to acquire resources, such as Ukrainian grain potentially obviating the Allied naval blockade and to fight a one-front war on the Western Front. In short, the Russian collapse spelled trouble for the Western Allies. Today, that may not trouble enthusiasts for counterfactual history who propose either that German success would have prevented the subsequent rise of Hitler and still worse calamities, or who argue that Germany has ultimately won the contest for Europe in the shape of the European Union.
Those views are misguided as they compare markedly dissimilar phenomena. They also underrate the seriousness of the challenge posed by the Germans in World War I—their drive for domination, as well as the particular crisis created for the Allies by German successes in and early Aside from Russia, Italy had nearly been knocked out of the war by the Caporetto offensive, and required the transfer of British and French forces to be saved.
In early , the Germans launched heavy blows on Allied lines on the Western Front, leading the British to contemplate withdrawal from France. It was scarcely surprising that American entry into the war became crucial. The German government argued that unrestricted submarine warfare would close the Atlantic, and thus destroy the impact of this entry, but this assessment proved totally mistaken.
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