talwabatal - 1914

Imperial coat of arms of the Austro-Hungarian Empire,[17] used between the years 1815–1866 and 1867–1915.

The Habsburg monarchy

also known as the Danubian monarchy , or Habsburg Empire , was the collection of empires, kingdoms, duchies, counties and other polities that were ruled by the House of Habsburg, especially the dynasty's Austrian branch.[3]

The history of the Habsburg monarchy can be traced back to the election of Rudolf I as King of Germany in 1273[3] and his acquisition of the Duchy of Austria for the Habsburg in 1282. In 1482, Maximilian I acquired the Netherlands through marriage. Both realms passed to his grandson and successor, Charles V, who also inherited the Spanish throne and its colonial possessions, and thus came to rule the Habsburg empire at its greatest territorial extent. The abdication of Charles V in 1556 led to a division within the dynasty between his son Philip II of Spain and his brother Ferdinand I, who had served as his lieutenant and the elected king of Hungary and Bohemia. The Spanish branch (which held all of Iberia, the Netherlands, Burgundy, and lands in Italy) became extinct in 1700. The Austrian branch (which ruled the Holy Roman Empire, Hungary, Bohemia and various other lands) was itself split into different branches in 1564 but reunited 101 years later.

The Habsburg monarchy was a personal union of crowns, with no uniform laws or shared institutions other than the Habsburg court itself; the territorial possessions of the monarchy were thus united only by virtue of a common monarch. The Habsburg realms were unified in 1804 with the formation of the Austrian Empire and later split in two with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867. The monarchy began to fracture in the face of inevitable defeat during the final years of World War I and ultimately disbanded with the proclamation of the Republic of German-Austria and the First Hungarian Republic in late 1918.[5][6]

In historiography, the terms "Austria" or "Austrians" are frequently used as shorthand for the Habsburg monarchy since the 18th century. From 1438 to 1806, the rulers of the House of Habsburg almost continuously reigned as Holy Roman Emperors. However, the realms of the Holy Roman Empire were mostly self-governing and are thus not considered to have been part of the Habsburg monarchy. Hence, the Habsburg monarchy (of the Austrian branch) is often called "Austria" by metonymy. Around 1700, the Latin term monarchia austriaca came into use as a term of convenience.[7] Within the empire alone, the vast possessions included the original hereditary lands, the Erblande, from before 1526; the lands of the Bohemian crown; the formerly Spanish Netherlands from 1714 until 1794; and some fiefs in Imperial Italy. Outside the empire, they encompassed all the lands of the crown of Hungary as well as conquests made at the expense of the Ottoman Empire. The dynastic capital was Vienna, except from 1583 to 1611, when it was in Prague.[8]

1914

The Central Powers

, also known as the Central Empires,[1][notes 1] was one of the two main coalitions that fought in World War I (1914–1918). It consisted of the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Bulgaria and was also known as the Quadruple Alliance.[2][notes 2]

The Central Powers' origin was the alliance of Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1879. Despite having nominally joined the Triple Alliance before, Italy did not take part in World War I on the side of the Central Powers. The Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria did not join until after World War I had begun. The Central Powers faced and were defeated by the Allied Powers that had formed around the Triple Entente.

Leaders of the Central Powers (left to right): Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany; Kaiser and King Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary; Sultan Mehmed V of the Ottoman Empire; Tsar Ferdinand I of Bulgaria The caption reads: "Vereinte Kräfte führen zum Ziel" "United Powers Lead to the Goal"

German soldiers on the battlefield in August 1914 on the Western Front, shortly after the outbreak of war

Austro-Hungarian soldiers marching up Mount Zion in Jerusalem in the Ottoman Empire, during the Middle Eastern campaign

Bulgarian soldiers firing at incoming aircraft

Ottoman soldiers in military preparations for an assault on the Suez Canal in 1914

Kaiser Wilhelm II visiting the Turkish cruiser Yavuz Sultan Selim during his stay in Istanbul in October 1917 as a guest of Sultan Mehmed V

The leaders of the Central Powers in 1914

Europe in 1914

The Central Powers as of 6 September 1915

A postcard depicting the flags of the Central Powers' countries

1914

The Allies

, or the Entente powers, were an international military coalition of countries led by France, the United Kingdom, Russia, the United States, Italy, and Japan against the Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria during the First World War (1914–1918).

By the end of the first decade of the 20th century, the major European powers were divided between the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance. The Triple Entente was made up of France, Britain, and Russia. The Triple Alliance was originally composed of Germany, Austria–Hungary, and Italy, but Italy remained neutral in 1914. As the war progressed, each coalition added new members. Japan joined the Entente in 1914 and, despite proclaiming its neutrality at the beginning of the war, Italy also joined the Entente in 1915. The term "Allies" became more widely used than "Entente", although France, Britain, Russia, and Italy were also referred to as the Quadruple Entente and, together with Japan, as the Quintuple Entente.[1][2] The colonies administered by the countries that fought for the allies were also part of the Entente Powers such as British India, French Indochina, and Japanese Korea.

The United States joined near the end of the war in 1917 (the same year in which Russia withdrew from the conflict) as an "associated power" rather than an official ally. Other "associated members" included Serbia, Belgium, Montenegro, Asir, Nejd and Hasa, Portugal, Romania, Hejaz, Panama, Cuba, Greece, China, Siam (now Thailand), Brazil, Armenia, Luxembourg, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Haiti, Liberia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay, and Honduras.[3] The treaties signed at the Paris Peace Conference recognised Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan and the United States as 'the Principal Allied and Associated Powers'.[4]

Marshal Foch's Victory-Harmony Banner

Map of the World showing the participants in World War I. Those fighting along with the Allied Powers (at one point or another) are depicted in green, the Central Powers in orange, and neutral countries in grey.

First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, 1914

President Raymond Poincaré and King George V, 1915

Douglas Haig and Ferdinand Foch inspecting the Gordon Highlanders, 1918

USAAS recruiting poster, 1918

The use of naval convoys to transport US troops to France, 1917

Russian troops marching to the front

French artillery in action near Gallipoli, 1915

Alpini troops marching in the snow at 3,000 m altitude, 1917

Belgian Congolese Force Publique troops in German East Africa, 1916

Military leaders of World War I: Alphonse Jacques de Dixmude (Belgium), Armando Diaz (Italy), Ferdinand Foch (France), John J. Pershing (United States), and David Beatty (United Kingdom)

1914

World War I

or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. It was fought between two coalitions, the Allies (primarily France, the United Kingdom, Russia, Italy, Japan, and the United States) and the Central Powers (led by Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire). Fighting occurred throughout Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Pacific, and parts of Asia. An estimated 9 million soldiers were killed in combat, plus another 23 million wounded, while 5 million civilians died as a result of military action, hunger, and disease. Millions more died as a result of genocide, while the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic was exacerbated by the movement of combatants during the war.

The first decade of the 20th century saw increasing diplomatic tension between the European great powers. This reached breaking point on 28 June 1914, when a Bosnian Serb named Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. Austria-Hungary held Serbia responsible, and declared war on 28 July. Russia came to Serbia's defence, and by 4 August, defensive alliances had drawn in Germany, France, and Britain.

German strategy in 1914 was to first defeat France, then attack Russia. However, this failed, and by the end of 1914, the Western Front consisted of a continuous line of trenches stretching from the English Channel to Switzerland. The Eastern Front was more fluid, but neither side could gain a decisive advantage, despite a series of costly offensives. Attempts by both sides to bypass the stalemate caused fighting to expand into the Middle East, the Alps, the Balkans, and overseas colonies, bringing Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, and others into the war.

The United States entered the war on the side of the Allies in April 1917, while the Bolsheviks seized power in the Russian October Revolution, and made peace with the Central Powers in early 1918. Freed from the Eastern Front, Germany launched an offensive in the west on March 1918, hoping to achieve a decisive victory before American troops arrived in significant numbers. Failure left the German Imperial Army exhausted and demoralised, and when the Allies took the offensive in August 1918, they could not stop the advance.

Between 29 September and 3 November 1918, Bulgaria, the Ottoman Empire, and Austria-Hungary agreed to armistices with the Allies, leaving Germany isolated. Facing revolution at home, and with his army on the verge of mutiny, Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated on 9 November. The Armistice of 11 November 1918 brought the fighting to a close, while the Paris Peace Conference imposed various settlements on the defeated powers, the best-known being the Treaty of Versailles. The dissolution of the Russian, German, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman Empires resulted in the creation of new independent states, among them Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. Failure to manage the instability that resulted from this upheaval during the interwar period contributed to the outbreak of World War II in September 1939.

1914

The Schlieffen Plan

(German: Schlieffen-Plan, pronounced [ʃliːfən plaːn]) is a name given after the First World War to German war plans, due to the influence of Field Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen and his thinking on an invasion of France and Belgium, which began on 4 August 1914. Schlieffen was Chief of the General Staff of the German Army from 1891 to 1906. In 1905 and 1906, Schlieffen devised an army deployment plan for a decisive (war-winning) offensive against the French Third Republic. German forces were to invade France through the Netherlands and Belgium rather than across the common border.

After losing the First World War, German official historians of the Reichsarchiv and other writers described the plan as a blueprint for victory. Generaloberst (Colonel-General) Helmuth von Moltke the Younger succeeded Schlieffen as Chief of the German General Staff in 1906 and was dismissed after the First Battle of the Marne (5–12 September 1914). German historians claimed that Moltke had ruined the plan by tampering with it, out of timidity. They managed to establish a commonly accepted narrative that Moltke the Younger failed to follow the blueprint devised by Schlieffen, condemning the belligerents to four years of attrition warfare.

In 1956, Gerhard Ritter published Der Schlieffenplan: Kritik eines Mythos (The Schlieffen Plan: Critique of a Myth), which began a period of revision, when the details of the supposed Schlieffen Plan were subjected to scrutiny. Treating the plan as a blueprint was rejected because this was contrary to the tradition of Prussian war planning established by Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, in which military operations were considered to be inherently unpredictable. Mobilisation and deployment plans were essential but campaign plans were pointless; rather than attempting to dictate to subordinate commanders, the commander gave the intent of the operation and subordinates achieved it through Auftragstaktik (mission tactics).

In writings from the 1970s, Martin van Creveld, John Keegan, Hew Strachan and others, studied the practical aspects of an invasion of France through Belgium and Luxembourg. They judged that the physical constraints of German, Belgian and French railways and the Belgian and northern French road networks made it impossible to move enough troops far enough and fast enough for them to fight a decisive battle if the French retreated from the frontier. Most of the pre-1914 planning of the German General Staff was secret and the documents were destroyed when deployment plans were superseded each April. The bombing of Potsdam in April 1945 destroyed much of the Prussian army archive and only incomplete records and other documents survived. Some records turned up after the fall of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), making an outline of German war planning possible for the first time, proving wrong much post-1918 writing.

In the 2000s, a document, RH61/v.96, was discovered in the trove inherited from the GDR, which had been used in a 1930s study of pre-war German General Staff war planning. Inferences that Schlieffen's war planning was solely offensive were found to have been made by extrapolating his writings and speeches on tactics into grand strategy. From a 1999 article in War in History and in Inventing the Schlieffen Plan (2002) to The Real German War Plan, 1906–1914 (2011), Terence Zuber engaged in a debate with Terence Holmes, Annika Mombauer, Robert Foley, Gerhard Gross, Holger Herwig and others. Zuber proposed that the Schlieffen Plan was a myth concocted in the 1920s by partial writers, intent on exculpating themselves and proving that German war planning did not cause the First World War. Later scholarship did not uphold the Zuber thesis except as a catalyst for research which revealed that Schlieffen had been far less dogmatic than had been assumed.

Count Alfred von Schlieffen in 1906

Generalleutnant Helmuth von Moltke (the Younger), Chief of the General Staff, 1906–1914 (cropped)

Portrait of Generalfeldmarschall Helmuth Graf von Moltke by Conrad Freyberg (1877)

"Western Front 1914; Schlieffen Plan of 1905. French Plan XVII" (USMA) "...a mishmash...." and "An armchair strategist's dream....", according to Terry Zuber (2011)[64][65][66]

Plan XVII

The Battle of the Frontiers, August 1914.

Belgian troops, with machine-guns pulled by dogs, photographed during the Battle of the Frontiers

Headline in Le Soir, 4 August 1914

Photo of Joseph Jacques Césaire Joffre (1852–1931) before 1931, when he was Marshal of France.

1914

The Battle of the Frontiers

(French: Bataille des Frontières, German: Grenzschlachten, Dutch: Slag der Grenzen) comprised battles fought along the eastern frontier of France and in southern Belgium, shortly after the outbreak of the First World War. The battles resolved the military strategies of the French Chief of Staff General Joseph Joffre with Plan XVII and an offensive adaptation of the German Aufmarsch II deployment plan by Helmuth von Moltke the Younger. The German concentration on the right (northern) flank, was to wheel through Belgium and attack the French in the rear.

The German advance was delayed by the movement of the French Fifth Army (General Charles Lanrezac) towards the north-west to intercept them and the presence of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) on the French left. The Franco-British troops were driven back by the Germans, who were able to invade northern France. French and British rearguard actions delayed the Germans, allowing the French time to transfer forces on the eastern frontier to the west to defend Paris, culminating in the First Battle of the Marne.

1915

The Gallipoli campaign

[a] was a military campaign in the First World War that took place on the Gallipoli peninsula (Gelibolu in modern Turkey), from 19 February 1915 to 9 January 1916. The Entente powers, Britain, France and the Russian Empire, sought to weaken the Ottoman Empire, one of the Central Powers, by taking control of the Ottoman straits. This would expose the Ottoman capital at Constantinople to bombardment by Allied battleships and cut it off from the Asian part of the empire. With Turkey defeated, the Suez Canal would be safe and a year-round Allied supply route could be opened through the Black Sea to warm-water ports in Russia.

The attempt by the Allied fleet to force a passage through the Dardanelles in February 1915 failed and was followed by an amphibious landing on the Gallipoli peninsula in April 1915. In January 1916, after eight months' fighting, with approximately 250,000 casualties on each side, the land campaign was abandoned and the invasion force withdrawn. It was a costly campaign for the Entente powers and the Ottoman Empire as well as for the sponsors of the expedition, especially the First Lord of the Admiralty (1911–1915), Winston Churchill. The campaign was considered a great Ottoman victory. In Turkey, it is regarded as a defining moment in the history of the state, a final surge in the defence of the motherland as the Ottoman Empire retreated. The struggle formed the basis for the Turkish War of Independence and the declaration of the Republic of Turkey eight years later, with Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who rose to prominence as a commander at Gallipoli, as founder and president.

The campaign is often considered to be the beginning of Australian and New Zealand national consciousness; 25 April, the anniversary of the landings, is known as Anzac Day, the most significant commemoration of military casualties and veterans in the two countries, surpassing Remembrance Day (Armistice Day).[13][14][15]

Panoramic view of the Allied fleet in the Dardanelles

Heavy artillery from the German inland gun emplacement, 1915

French troops land at Lemnos, 1915.

Landing at Gallipoli, April 1915

Dispositions of the Ottoman 5th Army

Graphic map of the Dardanelles and Gallipoli, showing the Allied bridgeheads at Cape Helles and ANZAC Cove before the Suvla Bay landing. The map highlights the narrowest part of the peninsula between Gaba Tepe (south of ANZAC) and Maidos and "The Narrows" of the Dardanelles between Kilid Bahr and Chanak.

Sir Mark Sykes, 6th Baronet (1879-1919)

Picot cropped image from image published in L'Illustration, 26 January, 1918…

Il Ministro degli Esteri britannico Edward Grey nel 1914.…

French diplomat Paul Cambon (1843-1924)

Area allotted to Russia in the Constantinople Agreement on 18 March 1915…

Area allotted to Italy in the Treaty of London on 26 April 1915…

Minutes of the first negotiation on 23 November 1915, in which both sides set out their starting positions Picot proposed that the French area include: "the whole of Syria and Palestine, and that their southern boundary must be the present Egypto-Turkish frontier," that the boundary line would then go to "Deir ez-Zor and from there Eastwards to the south of Kirkuk, turning east of that place and running north to include the whole of the Mosul district; thence West to include Diyarbekir, and on to include the whole of Cilicia." The British had proposed as an eastern boundary: "the line of the Euphrates as far south as Deir ez-Zor and thence in south-westerly direction." With respect to Palestine, the British noted that "Jerusalem, Nazareth and other places was a question apart, and affected various other nations including Russia: and that this question could not now be gone into."…

On 17 December, Sykes set out his objectives for the negotiation in an interview with the British War Committee. He stated his desire for British control over Palestine ("such country south of Haifa"), creating "a belt of English-controlled country" south of "a line from the 'e' in Acre to the last 'k' in Kirkuk".…

Excerpt from The Manchester Guardian, Monday, November 26, 1917. This was the first English-language reference to what became known as the Sykes Picot Agreement.

Map of the agreement, signed by Balfour in August 1917

1916

The Sykes–Picot Agreement

(/ˈsaɪks ˈpiːkoʊ, - pɪˈkoʊ, - piːˈkoʊ/)[1] was a 1916 secret treaty between the United Kingdom and France, with assent from the Russian Empire and the Kingdom of Italy, to define their mutually agreed spheres of influence and control in an eventual partition of the Ottoman Empire.

The agreement was based on the premise that the Triple Entente would achieve success in defeating the Ottoman Empire during World War I and formed part of a series of secret agreements contemplating its partition. The primary negotiations leading to the agreement took place between 23 November 1915 and 3 January 1916, on which date the British and French diplomats, Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot, initialled an agreed memorandum.[2][3] The agreement was ratified by their respective governments on 9 and 16 May 1916.[4]

The agreement effectively divided the Ottoman provinces outside the Arabian Peninsula into areas of British and French control and influence. The British- and French-controlled countries were divided by the Sykes–Picot line.[5] The agreement allocated to the UK control of what is today southern Israel and Palestine, Jordan and southern Iraq, and an additional small area that included the ports of Haifa and Acre to allow access to the Mediterranean.[6][7][8] France was to control southeastern Turkey, the Kurdistan Region, Syria and Lebanon.[8]

As a result of the included Sazonov–Paléologue Agreement, Russia was to get Western Armenia in addition to Constantinople and the Turkish Straits already promised under the 1915 Constantinople Agreement.[8] Italy assented to the agreement in 1917 via the Agreement of Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne and received southern Anatolia.[8] The Palestine region, with a smaller area than the later Mandatory Palestine, was to fall under an "international administration".

The agreement was initially used directly as the basis for the 1918 Anglo–French Modus Vivendi, which provided a framework for the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration in the Levant. More broadly it was to lead, indirectly, to the subsequent partitioning of the Ottoman Empire following Ottoman defeat in 1918. Shortly after the war, the French ceded Palestine and Mosul to the British. Mandates in the Levant and Mesopotamia were assigned at the April 1920 San Remo conference following the Sykes–Picot framework; the British Mandate for Palestine ran until 1948, the British Mandate for Mesopotamia was to be replaced by a similar treaty with Mandatory Iraq, and the French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon lasted until 1946. The Anatolian parts of the agreement were assigned by the August 1920 Treaty of Sèvres; however, these ambitions were thwarted by the 1919–23 Turkish War of Independence and the subsequent Treaty of Lausanne.

The agreement is seen by many as a turning point in Western and Arab relations. It reneged upon the UK's promises to Arabs [9] regarding a national Arab homeland in the area of Greater Syria in exchange for supporting the British against the Ottoman Empire. The agreement, along with others, was made public by the Bolsheviks [10] in Moscow on 23 November 1917 and repeated in The Manchester Guardian on 26 November 1917, such that "the British were embarrassed, the Arabs dismayed and the Turks delighted".[11][12][13] The agreement's legacy has led to much resentment in the region, among Arabs in particular but also among Kurds who were denied an independent state.[14][15][16][17]

1916

Franz Joseph I

or Francis Joseph I (German: Franz Joseph Karl IPA: [fʁant͡s ˈjoːsef kaʁl], Hungarian: Ferenc József Károly, 18 August 1830 – 21 November 1916) was Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary, and the other states of the Habsburg monarchy from 2 December 1848 until his death on 21 November 1916.[1] In the early part of his reign, his realms and territories were referred to as the Austrian Empire, but were reconstituted as the dual monarchy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1867. From 1 May 1850 to 24 August 1866, he was also president of the German Confederation.

In December 1848, Franz Joseph's uncle Emperor Ferdinand abdicated the throne at Olomouc, as part of Minister President Felix zu Schwarzenberg's plan to end the Revolutions of 1848 in Hungary. Franz Joseph (his father having renounced his rights) then acceded to the throne. Largely considered to be a reactionary, he spent his early reign resisting constitutionalism in his domains. The Austrian Empire was forced to cede its influence over Tuscany and most of its claim to Lombardy–Venetia to the Kingdom of Sardinia, following the Second Italian War of Independence in 1859 and the Third Italian War of Independence in 1866. Although Franz Joseph ceded no territory to the Kingdom of Prussia after the Austrian defeat in the Austro-Prussian War, the Peace of Prague (23 August 1866) settled the German Question in favour of Prussia, which prevented the unification of Germany from occurring under the House of Habsburg.[2]

Franz Joseph was troubled by nationalism during his entire reign. He concluded the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, which granted greater autonomy to Hungary and created the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary. He ruled peacefully for the next 45 years, but personally suffered the tragedies of the execution of his brother Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico in 1867, the suicide of his son Crown Prince Rudolf in 1889, the assassination of his wife Empress Elisabeth ("Sisi") in 1898, and the assassination of his nephew and heir-presumptive, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in 1914.

After the Austro-Prussian War, Austria-Hungary turned its attention to the Balkans, which was a hotspot of international tension because of conflicting interests of Austria with not only the Ottoman but also the Russian Empire. The Bosnian Crisis was a result of Franz Joseph's annexation in 1908 of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which had already been occupied by his troops since the Congress of Berlin (1878). On 28 June 1914, the assassination of his nephew Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo resulted in Austria-Hungary's declaration of war against the Kingdom of Serbia, which was an ally of the Russian Empire. That activated a system of alliances declaring war on each other, which resulted in World War I. The Emperor died in 1916, after ruling his domains for almost 68 years. He was succeeded by his grandnephew Charles I & IV.

Soldiers of the Sharifian Army in southern Yanbu carrying the Flag of the Arab Revolt.

The flag of the Arab Revolt in the Martyrs' Memorial, Amman, Jordan.

The Hejaz railway (Damascus-Mecca pilgrim route), built at great expense by the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century, but quickly fell into disrepair after the Arab revolt of 1917

Feisal party at Versailles Conference. Left to right: Rustum Haidar, Nuri as-Said, Prince Faisal (front), Captain Rosario Pisani (rear), T. E. Lawrence, Faisal's slave (name unknown), Captain Hassan Khadri.

1916

The Arab Revolt

(Arabic: الثورة العربية, al-Thawra al-‘Arabiyya) or the Great Arab Revolt (Arabic: الثورة العربية الكبرى, al-Thawra al-‘Arabiyya al-Kubrā) was a military uprising of Arab forces against the Ottoman Empire in the Middle Eastern theatre of World War I. On the basis of the McMahon–Hussein Correspondence, an agreement between the British government and Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca, the revolt was officially initiated at Mecca on June 10, 1916.[a] The aim of the revolt was to create a single unified and independent Arab state stretching from Aleppo in Syria to Aden in Yemen, which the British had promised to recognize.

The Sharifian Army led by Hussein and the Hashemites, with military backing from the British Egyptian Expeditionary Force, successfully fought and expelled the Ottoman military presence from much of the Hejaz and Transjordan. The rebellion eventually took Damascus and set up the Arab Kingdom of Syria, a short-lived monarchy led by Faisal, a son of Hussein.

Following the Sykes–Picot Agreement, the Middle East was later partitioned by the British and French into mandate territories rather than a unified Arab state, and the British reneged on their promise to support a unified independent Arab state.

Thomas Edward Lawrence

CB DSO (16 August 1888 – 19 May 1935) was a British archaeologist, army officer, diplomat, and writer who became renowned for his role in the Arab Revolt (1916–1918) and the Sinai and Palestine Campaign (1915–1918) against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. The breadth and variety of his activities and associations, and his ability to describe them vividly in writing, earned him international fame as Lawrence of Arabia, a title used for the 1962 film based on his wartime activities.

He was born out of wedlock in August 1888 to Sarah Junner (1861–1959), a governess, and Sir Thomas Chapman, 7th Baronet (1846–1919), an Anglo-Irish nobleman. Chapman left his wife and family in Ireland to cohabit with Junner. Chapman and Junner called themselves Mr and Mrs Lawrence, using the surname of Sarah's likely father; her mother had been employed as a servant for a Lawrence family when she became pregnant with Sarah. In 1896, the Lawrences moved to Oxford, where Thomas attended the High School and then studied history at Jesus College, Oxford, from 1907 to 1910. Between 1910 and 1914 he worked as an archaeologist for the British Museum, chiefly at Carchemish in Ottoman Syria.

Soon after the outbreak of war in 1914 he volunteered for the British Army and was stationed at the Arab Bureau (established in 1916) intelligence unit in Egypt. In 1916, he travelled to Mesopotamia and to Arabia on intelligence missions and became involved with the Arab Revolt as a liaison to the Arab forces, along with other British officers, supporting the Arab Kingdom of Hejaz's independence war against its former overlord, the Ottoman Empire. He worked closely with Emir Faisal, a leader of the revolt, and he participated, sometimes as leader, in military actions against the Ottoman armed forces, culminating in the capture of Damascus in October 1918.

After the First World War, Lawrence joined the British Foreign Office, working with the British government and with Faisal. In 1922, he retreated from public life and spent the years until 1935 serving as an enlisted man, mostly in the Royal Air Force (RAF), with a brief period in the Army. During this time, he published his best-known work Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926), an autobiographical account of his participation in the Arab Revolt. He also translated books into English, and wrote The Mint, which detailed his time in the Royal Air Force working as an ordinary aircraftman. He corresponded extensively and was friendly with well-known artists, writers, and politicians. For the RAF, he participated in the development of rescue motorboats.

Lawrence's public image resulted in part from the sensationalised reporting of the Arab revolt by American journalist Lowell Thomas, as well as from Seven Pillars of Wisdom. On 19 May 1935, Lawrence died, at the age of 46, six days after being injured in a motorcycle accident in Dorset.

T E Lawrence and the Arab Revolt 1916 - 1918 A flag bearer mounted on a camel leading the triumphal entry into Akaba.

Thomas Edward Lawrence – a.k.a. Lawrence of Arabia after the Battle of Aqaba.

Discussing surrender terms, 5 July

Lawrence at Rabigh, north of Jeddah, 1917

Photograph of Auda abu Tayi, probably taken by G. Eric Matson (1888–1977).Tabuk, Hejaz 1921

Arab fighters in Aqaba on 28 February 1918. Autochrome colour photograph.

The Aqaba Flagpole holding the flag of the Arab Revolt, commemorating the site of the Battle of Aqaba.

1917

The Battle of Aqaba

was fought for the Red Sea port of Aqaba (now in Jordan) during the Arab Revolt of World War I. The attacking forces, led by Sherif Nasir and Auda abu Tayi and advised by T. E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia"), were victorious over the Ottoman Empire defenders.[3][4][5]

1917

The Russian Revolution

was a period of political and social revolution that took place in the former Russian Empire, begun during the First World War. This period saw Russia abolish its monarchy and adopt a socialist form of government following two successive revolutions and a bloody civil war. The Russian Revolution can also be seen as the precursor for the other European revolutions that occurred during or in the aftermath of WWI, such as the German Revolution of 1918.

The Russian Revolution was inaugurated with the February Revolution in 1917. This first revolt focused in and around the then-capital Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg). After major military losses during the war, the Russian Army had begun to mutiny. Army leaders and high ranking officials were convinced that if Tsar Nicholas II abdicated, the domestic unrest would subside. Nicholas agreed and stepped down, ushering in a new government led by the Russian Duma (parliament) which became the Russian Provisional Government. This government was dominated by the interests of prominent capitalists, as well as the Russian nobility and aristocracy.

In response to these developments, grassroots community assemblies (called Soviets) were formed. These Soviets were led by soldiers and urban industrial proletarians, as well as rural farmers. The Soviets initially permitted the new Provisional Government to rule, however the Soviets did insist on a prerogative (privilege) in order to influence the government and to control various militias. By March, Russia was locked in a dual power as neither government trusted the other. The Provisional Government held state power in areas such as military and international affairs, whereas the network of Soviets held more power concerning domestic affairs. Critically, the Soviets held the allegiance of the working-class, as well as the growing urban middle-class.

During this chaotic period, there were frequent mutinies, protests and strikes. Many socialist and other leftist political organizations were engaged in daily struggle and vied for influence within the Provisional Government and the Soviets. Notable factions include the Social-Democrats or Mensheviks, the Social Revolutionaries, and the Anarchists. These organizations competed with the Bolsheviks ("Ones of the Majority"), a far-left party led by Vladimir Lenin, for political power and popular influence. Initially the Bolsheviks were a marginalized faction, however that changed following a series of developments including the use of their slogan, peace, land, and bread which promised to cease war with Germany, give land to the peasantry, and end the famine caused by Russia's involvement in WWI. These slogans had a direct effect on the growing Bolshevik popularity.[1] Despite the virtual universal disdain towards the war effort, the Provisional Government chose to continue fighting anyway, giving the Bolsheviks and other socialist factions a justification to advance the revolution further. The Bolsheviks merged various workers' militias loyal to them into Red Guards, which would be capable of revolution.[2]

The volatile situation in Russia reached its climax with the October Revolution, which was a Bolshevik armed insurrection by workers and soldiers in Petrograd that successfully overthrew the Provisional Government, transferring all its authority to the Bolsheviks. Under pressure from German military offensives, the Bolsheviks soon relocated the national capital to Moscow. The Bolsheviks which by now had secured a strong base of support within the Soviets and, as the supreme governing party, established their own government, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR). The RSFSR began the process of reorganizing the former empire into the world's first socialist state, to practice soviet democracy on a national and international scale. Their promise to end Russia's participation in the First World War was fulfilled when the Bolshevik leaders signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany in March 1918. To further secure the new state, the Bolsheviks established the Cheka, a secret police that functioned as a revolutionary security service to weed out, execute, or punish those considered to be "enemies of the people" in campaigns called the Red Terror, consciously modeled on those of the French Revolution.

Although the Bolsheviks held large support in urban areas, they had many enemies both foreign and domestic that refused to recognize their government. As a result, Russia erupted into a bloody civil war, which pitted the "Reds" (Bolsheviks), against the enemies of the Bolshevik regime collectively called the White Army. The White Army consisted of: independence movements, monarchists, liberals, and anti-Bolshevik socialist parties. In response, Leon Trotsky began ordering workers' militias loyal to the Bolsheviks to begin merging and formed the Red Army. While many notable historical events occurred in Moscow and Petrograd, there were also major changes in cities throughout the state, and among national minorities throughout the empire and in the rural areas, where peasants took over and redistributed land.

As the war progressed, the RSFSR began establishing Soviet power in the newly independent republics that seceded from the Russian Empire. The RSFSR initially focused its efforts on the newly independent republics of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, and Ukraine. Wartime cohesion and intervention from foreign powers prompted the RSFSR to begin unifying these nations under one flag and created the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Historians generally consider the end of the revolutionary period to be in 1923 when the Russian Civil War concluded with the defeat of the White Army and all rival socialist factions. The victorious Bolshevik Party reconstituted itself into the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and would remain in power for over six decades.

Manifesto of abdication.

Abdication statement of Nicholas II, signed 2 March 1917 O.S.

Memorial plaque on the Pskov Railway Station.

The abdication of Nicholas II on 2 March 1917 O.S. Pictured aboard the Imperial Train: Minister of the Imperial Court Baron Woldemar Freedericksz, Commander of the Northern Front General Nikolai Ruzsky, State Duma deputies Vasily Shulgin and Alexander Guchkov, Nicholas II. (State Historical Museum)…

1917

Abdication of Nicholas II

(Russian: Отречение Николая II) was a manifesto of the Emperor Nicholas II, signed in Pskov on 2 March (O.S.) / 15 March (N.S.) 1917, in the midst of World War I and the February Revolution. The Emperor renounced the throne of the Russian Empire on behalf of himself and his son, Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich, in favor of his brother Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich.[1] The next day the Grand Duke refused to accept the imperial authority,[1] stating that he would accept it only if that was the consensus of democratic action by the Russian Constituent Assembly, which shall define the form of government for Russia.[2] The rule of the 300 year-old House of Romanov ended with the Grand Duke's decision.[3] Power in Russia then passed to the Russian Provisional Government, signaling the victory for the February Revolution.

1917

The October Revolution

,[a] officially known as the Great October Socialist Revolution[b] in the former Soviet Union, also known as the Bolshevik Revolution,[2] was a revolution in Russia led by the Bolshevik Party of Vladimir Lenin that was a key moment in the larger Russian Revolution of 1917–1923. It was the second revolutionary change of government in Russia in 1917. It took place through an armed insurrection in Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg) on 7 November 1917 [O.S. 25 October]. It was the precipitating event of the Russian Civil War.

The October Revolution followed and capitalized on the February Revolution earlier that year, which had overthrown the Tsarist autocracy, resulting in a liberal provisional government. The provisional government had taken power after being proclaimed by Grand Duke Michael, Tsar Nicholas II's younger brother, who declined to take power after the Tsar stepped down. During this time, urban workers began to organize into councils (soviets) wherein revolutionaries criticized the provisional government and its actions. The provisional government remained unpopular, especially because it was continuing to fight in World War I, and had ruled with an iron fist throughout the summer (including killing hundreds of protesters in the July Days).

Events came to a head in the fall as the Directorate, led by the left-wing Socialist Revolutionary Party, controlled the government. The left-wing Bolsheviks were deeply unhappy with the government, and began spreading calls for a military uprising. On 10 October 1917 (O.S.; 23 October, N.S.), the Petrograd Soviet, led by Trotsky, voted to back a military uprising. On 24 October (O.S.; 6 November, N.S.) the government shut down numerous newspapers and closed the city of Petrograd in an attempt to forestall the revolution; minor armed skirmishes broke out. The next day a full scale uprising erupted as a fleet of Bolshevik sailors entered the harbor and tens of thousands of soldiers rose up in support of the Bolsheviks. Bolshevik Red Guards forces under the Military-Revolutionary Committee began the occupation of government buildings on 25 October (O.S.; 7 November, N.S.), 1917. The following day, the Winter Palace (the seat of the Provisional government located in Petrograd, then capital of Russia) was captured.

As the Revolution was not universally recognized, the country descended into the Russian Civil War, which would last until 1923 and ultimately lead to the creation of the Soviet Union in late 1922. The historiography of the event has varied. The victorious Soviet Union viewed it as a validation of their ideology, and the triumph of the worker over capitalism. During Soviet times, revolution day was a national holiday, marking its importance in the country's founding story. On the other hand, the Western Allies saw it as a totalitarian coup, which used the democratic Soviet councils only until they were no longer useful. The event inspired many cultural works, and ignited communist movements across Europe and globally. Many Marxist–Leninist parties around the world celebrate October Revolution Day.

Red Guard unit of the Vulkan factory in Petrograd, October 1917

After the capture of the Winter Palace. Petrograd. 26 October 1917. Photo by P. Novitsky

The New York Times headline from 9 November 1917

Anniversary of October Revolution in Riga, Soviet Union in 1988

Lenin in 1920

Photograph of Trotsky that was published on the cover of the magazine "Prozhektor" in January 1924.

Minister-Chairman of the Russian Provisional Government Alexander Kerensky

Russian peasants. The Left SRs presented itself as their main representative and sole defender of the populist program against the passivity of the moderate Socialist Revolutionary Party. The reforms they led during the first months of 1918 gave the government significant support in the countryside.

European theatre of the Russian Civil War

Soviet delegation with Trotsky greeted by German officers at Brest-Litovsk, 8 January 1918

Anti-Bolshevik Volunteer Army in South Russia, January 1918

February 1918 article from The New York Times showing a map of the Russian Imperial territories claimed by the Ukrainian People's Republic at the time, before the annexation of the Austro-Hungarian lands of the West Ukrainian People's Republic

Admiral Alexander Kolchak reviewing the troops, 1919

Russian soldiers of the anti-Bolshevik Siberian Army in 1919

London Geographical Institute's 1919 map of Europe after the treaties of Brest-Litovsk and Batum and before the treaties of Tartu, Kars, and Riga

General Pyotr Wrangel in Tsaritsyn, 15 October 1919

Admiral Alexander Kolchak (seated) and General Alfred Knox (behind Kolchak) observing military exercise, 1919

Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge, a famous Bolshevik Constructivist propaganda poster by artist El Lissitsky uses abstract symbolism to depict the defeat of the Whites by the Red Army.

The Government of South Russia created by Pyotr Wrangel in Sevastopol, 1920

Tambov Rebellion was one of the largest and best-organised peasant rebellions challenging the Bolshevik regime

White propaganda poster "For united Russia" representing the Bolsheviks as a fallen communist dragon and the White Cause as a crusading knight

"Why aren't you in the army?", Volunteer Army recruiting poster during the Russian Civil War

1917

The Russian Civil War

(Russian: Гражданская война в России, tr. Grazhdanskaya voyna v Rossii; 7 November 1917 — 16 June 1923)[1] was a multi-party civil war in the former Russian Empire sparked by the overthrowing of the monarchy and the new republican government's failure to maintain stability, as many factions vied to determine Russia's political future. It resulted in the formation of the RSFSR and later the Soviet Union in most of its territory. Its finale marked the end of the Russian Revolution, which was one of the key events of the 20th century.

The Russian monarchy had been overthrown by the 1917 February Revolution, and Russia was in a state of political flux. A tense summer culminated in the Bolshevik-led October Revolution, overthrowing the Provisional Government of the new Russian Republic. Bolshevik rule was not universally accepted, and the country descended into civil war. The two largest combatants were the Red Army, fighting for the Bolshevik form of socialism led by Vladimir Lenin, and the loosely allied forces known as the White Army, which included diverse interests favouring political monarchism, capitalism and social democracy, each with democratic and anti-democratic variants. In addition, rival militant socialists, notably the Ukrainian anarchists of the Makhnovshchina and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, were involved in conflict against the Bolsheviks. They, as well as non-ideological green armies, opposed the Bolsheviks, the Whites and the foreign interventionists.[12] Thirteen foreign nations intervened against the Red Army, notably the Allied intervention whose primary goal was re-establishing the Eastern Front. Three foreign nations of the Central Powers also intervened, rivaling the Allied intervention with the main goal of retaining the territory they had received in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

The Bolsheviks initially consolidated control over most of the former empire. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was an emergency peace with the German Empire, who had captured vast swathes of the Russian Empire during the chaos of the revolution. In May 1918, the Czechoslovak Legion in Russia revolted in Siberia. In reaction, the Allies began their North Russian and Siberian interventions. That, combined with the creation of the Provisional All-Russian Government, saw the reduction of Bolshevik-controlled territory to most of European Russia and parts of Central Asia. In November, Alexander Kolchak launched a coup to take control of the Russian State, establishing a de facto military dictatorship.

In 1919, the White Army launched several attacks from the east in March, the south in July, and west in October. The advances were later checked by the Eastern Front counteroffensive, the Southern Front counteroffensive, and the defeat of the Northwestern Army. The White Movement also suffered greater losses after the Allies pulled back from northern and southern Russia. With the main base of the RSFSR secured, the Bolsheviks could now strike back, with a solid defensive position.

The armies under Kolchak were eventually forced on a mass retreat eastward. Bolshevik forces advanced east, despite encountering resistance in Chita, Yakut and Mongolia. Soon the Red Army split the Don and Volunteer armies, forcing evacuations in Novorossiysk in March and the Crimea in November 1920. After that, anti-Bolshevik resistance was sporadic for several years until the collapse of the White Army in Yakutia in June 1923, but continued on in Central Asia and Khabarovsk Krai until 1934. There were an estimated 7 to 12 million casualties during the war, mostly civilians.[1]: 287

Many pro-independence movements emerged after the break-up of the Russian Empire and fought in the war.[3]: 7 Several parts of the former Russian Empire—Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland—were established as sovereign states, with their own civil wars and wars of independence. The rest of the former Russian Empire was consolidated into the Soviet Union shortly afterwards.[13]

1917

The White movement

(Russian: pre–1918 Бѣлое движеніе / post–1918 Белое движение, tr. Beloye dvizheniye, IPA: [ˈbʲɛləɪ dvʲɪˈʐenʲɪɪ]) also known as the Whites (Бѣлые / Белые, Beliye), was a loose confederation of anti-communist forces that fought the communist Bolsheviks, also known as the Reds, in the Russian Civil War (1917–1923) and that to a lesser extent continued operating as militarized associations of insurrectionists both outside and within Russian borders in Siberia until roughly World War II (1939–1945). The movement's military arm was the White Army (Бѣлая армія / Белая армия, Belaya armiya), also known as the White Guard (Бѣлая гвардія / Белая гвардия, Belaya gvardiya) or White Guardsmen (Бѣлогвардейцы / Белогвардейцы, Belogvardeytsi).

During the Russian Civil War the White movement functioned as a big-tent political movement representing an array of political opinions in Russia united in their opposition to the Bolsheviks—from the republican-minded liberals and Kerenskyite social democrats on the left through monarchists and supporters of a united multinational Russia to the ultra-nationalist Black Hundreds on the right.

Following the military defeat of the Whites, remnants and continuations of the movement remained in several organizations, some of which only had narrow support, enduring within the wider White émigré overseas community until after the fall of the European communist states in the Eastern European Revolutions of 1989 and the subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1990–1991. This community-in-exile of anti-communists often divided into liberal and the more conservative segments, with some still hoping for the restoration of the Romanov dynasty.

Emblem used by white émigré volunteers in the Spanish Civil War

Ataman Semyonov

Ataman Semyonov with the representatives of the American expedition to the Russian Civil War. Seated: Semyonov (left) and General Graves (right)

Photo of Semyonov after his arrest by Soviet authorities

Lavr Georgievich Kornilov, 1916

Denikin in 1918

In the summer of 1919, Denikin's troops captured Kharkiv

In the summer of 1919 Denikin's troops captured Kharkov

White Russian anti-Bolshevik propaganda poster, c. 1919. Senior Bolsheviks (Sverdlov, Zinoviev, Lenin, Trotsky, Kamenev, and Radek) sacrifice an allegorical character representing Russia to a statue of Karl Marx.

Poster depicting Wrangel, c. 1919

Pyotr Wrangel, portrait medium

Kolchak in 1919

Kolchak with French general Maurice Janin

Kolchak with Radola Gajda in 1919

The last photo of Kolchak taken before his execution in 1920

Monument of Admiral Kolchak in Irkutsk

Anatoliy Pepelaev, Russian General of White Army

Russian èmigré anti-Bolshevik poster, c. 1932

Kornilov's Shock Detachment (8th Army), later became the Volunteer Army's elite Shock Regiment

Indian troops at a Persian well in Baku, 1917.

Allied troops parading in Vladivostok, 1918

Czechoslovak troops in Vladivostok (1918)

American troops parading in Vladivostok, August 1918

The positions of the Allied expeditionary forces and of the White Armies in European Russia, 1919

Russian Civil War in the west in 1918–19

Polish, British and French officers inspecting a detachment of Polish troops of so-called Murmansk Battalion before their departure for the front, Archangelsk 1919.

Canadian Siberian Expeditionary Force, 1919

Indian troops at a parade in Batum to mark the Allied evacuation, 1920.

Monument to the Victims of the Intervention in Murmansk

Captured British Mark V tank in Arkhangelsk

A Japanese lithograph showing troops occupying Blagoveschensk

William Sidney Graves in 1918

1918

The Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War

consisted of a series of multi-national military expeditions that began in 1918. The initial impetus behind the interventions was to secure munitions and supply depots from falling into the German Empire's hands, particularly after the Bolsheviks signed the Treaty of Brest Litovsk, and to rescue the Allied forces that had become trapped within Russia after the 1917 October Revolution.[20] After the Armistice of 11 November 1918, the Allied plan changed to helping the White forces in the Russian Civil War. After the Whites collapsed, the Allies withdrew their forces from Russia by 1925.[21]

Allied troops landed in Arkhangelsk (the North Russia intervention of 1918–1919) and in Vladivostok (as part of the Siberian intervention of 1918–1922). The British also intervened in the Baltic theatre (1918–1919) and in the Caucasus (1917–1919). French-led Allied forces participated in the Southern Russia intervention (1918–1919).

Allied efforts were hampered by divided objectives, war-weariness after World War I, and a rising discontent among some troops and sailors who were reluctant to fight the world's first socialist state, sometimes erupting in mutiny. These factors, together with the evacuation of the Czechoslovak Legion in September 1920, led the western Allied powers to end the North Russia and Siberian interventions in 1920, though the Japanese intervention in Siberia continued until 1922 and the Empire of Japan continued to occupy the northern half of Sakhalin until 1925.[22]

Soviet and Russian interpretations generally exaggerate the role of the Allies in the Civil War and allege they intended to partition Russia.[23] "Overall the extent of allied intervention during the civil war was minuscule and inconsequential", according to Flake (2019).[24]

1918

Spanish flu

The 1918 flu pandemic,[6] also known as the Great Influenza epidemic or by the common misnomer of the Spanish flu, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 influenza A virus. The earliest documented case was March 1918 in Kansas, United States, with further cases recorded in France, Germany and the United Kingdom in April. Two years later, nearly a third of the global population, or an estimated 500 million people, had been infected in four successive waves. Estimates of deaths range from 17 million to 50 million,[7] and possibly as high as 100 million, making it one of the deadliest pandemics in history.

The pandemic broke out near the end of World War I, when wartime censors in the belligerent countries suppressed bad news to maintain morale, but newspapers freely reported the outbreak in neutral Spain, creating a false impression of Spain as the epicenter and leading to the "Spanish flu" misnomer.[8] Limited historical epidemiological data make the pandemic's geographic origin indeterminate, with competing hypotheses on the initial spread.[2]

Most influenza outbreaks disproportionately kill the young and old, with a higher survival rate in-between, but this pandemic had unusually high mortality for young adults.[9] Scientists offer several explanations for the high mortality, including a six-year climate anomaly affecting migration of disease vectors with increased likelihood of spread through bodies of water.[10] The virus was particularly deadly because it triggered a cytokine storm, ravaging the stronger immune system of young adults,[11] although the viral infection was apparently no more aggressive than previous influenza strains.[12][13] Malnourishment, overcrowded medical camps and hospitals, and poor hygiene, exacerbated by the war, promoted bacterial superinfection, killing most of the victims after a typically prolonged death bed.[14][15]

The 1918 Spanish flu was the first of three flu pandemics caused by H1N1 influenza A virus; the most recent one was the 2009 swine flu pandemic.[16][17] The 1977 Russian flu was also caused by H1N1 virus.[16][18]

Emergency hospital during influenza epidemic, Camp Funston, Kansas. Emergency hospital during influenza epidemic (NCP 1603), National Museum of Health and Medicine. Description: Beds with patients in an emergency hospital in Camp Funston, Kansas, in the midst of the influenza epidemic. The flu struck while America was at war, and was transported across the Atlantic on troop ships. Date: circa 1918 Photo ID: NCP 1603 Source Collection: OHA 250: New Contributed Photographs Collection, Otis Historical Archives, National Museum of Health and Medicine. Rights: No known restrictions upon publication, physical copy retained by the National Museum of Health and Medicine. Publication and high resolution requests should be directed to NMHM (www.medicalmuseum.mil). This is our most-requested flu photograph. It may be on another or our Flickr pages.

H1N1 virus

El Sol (Madrid), 28 May 1918: "The three-day fever – In Madrid 80,000 Are Infected – H.M. the King is sick"

Front page of The Times (London), 25 June 1918: "The Spanish Influenza"

Advertisement in The Times, 28 June 1918 for Formamint tablets to prevent "Spanish influenza"

"Spanish influenza," "three-day fever," "the flu." by Rupert Blue, U.S. Surgeon General, 28 September 1918

Seattle policemen wearing cloth face masks handed out by the American Red Cross during the Spanish flu pandemic, December 1918

American Expeditionary Force flu patients at U.S. Army Camp Hospital no. 45 in Aix-les-Bains, France, 1918

Public health recommendations from the Illustrated Current News

American Red Cross nurses tend to flu patients in temporary wards set up inside the Oakland Municipal Auditorium

U.S. Army flu patients at Field Hospital No. 29 near Hollerich, Luxembourg 1918. As U.S. troops deployed en masse for the war effort in Europe, they carried the Spanish flu with them.

US Army symptomology of the flu

Poster with the slogan: "Coughs and sneezes spread diseases"

Coromandel Hospital Board (New Zealand) advice to influenza sufferers (1918)

In September 1918, the Red Cross recommended two-layer gauze masks to halt the spread of "plague".[223]

1918 Chicago newspaper headlines reflect mitigation strategies such as increased ventilation, arrests for not wearing face masks, sequenced inoculations, limitations on crowd size, selective closing of businesses, curfews, and lockdowns.[224] After October's strict containment measures showed some success, Armistice Day celebrations in November and relaxed attitudes by Thanksgiving caused a resurgence.[224]

Difference between the flu mortality age-distributions of the 1918 pandemic and normal epidemics – deaths per 100,000 persons in each age group, United States, for the interpandemic years 1911–1917 (dashed line) and the pandemic year 1918 (solid line)[236]

Three pandemic waves: weekly combined flu and pneumonia mortality, United Kingdom, 1918–1919[237]

Deaths from all causes for New York, London, Paris, and Berlin with peaks in October and November 1918

Japanese women in Tokyo during the Spanish flu pandemic, 1919

Provincial Board of Health poster from Alberta, Canada

Mass burial site of flu victims from 1918 in Auckland, New Zealand

An electron micrograph showing recreated 1918 influenza virions

The basement of the Ipatiev house where the Romanov family was killed, the wall has been torn apart in search of bullets and other evidence by investigators following the shooting.

Clockwise from top: the Romanov family, Ivan Kharitonov, Alexei Trupp, Anna Demidova, and Eugene Botkin

Location of the main events in the last days of the Romanov family, who were held at Tobolsk, Siberia, before being transported to Yekaterinburg, where they were killed.

Nicholas II, Tatiana and Anastasia Hendrikova working on a kitchen garden at Alexander Palace in May 1917. The family was allowed no such indulgences at the Ipatiev House.[28]

Ipatiev House, with the palisade erected just before Nicholas, Alexandra and Maria arrived on 30 April 1918. On the top left of the house is an attic dormer window where a Maxim gun was positioned. Directly below it was the tsar and tsarina's bedroom.[45]

The Romanov entourage. From left to right: Catherine Schneider; Ilya Tatishchev; Pierre Gilliard; Anastasia Hendrikova; and Vasily Dolgorukov. They voluntarily accompanied the Romanov family into imprisonment but were forcibly separated by the Bolsheviks at Ekaterinburg. All except Gilliard were later murdered by the Bolsheviks.[59]

From left to right: Grand Duchesses Maria (age 18), Olga (age 22), Anastasia (age 16) and Tatiana Nikolaevna (age 21) of Russia in captivity at Tsarskoe Selo in the spring of 1917. This is one of the last known photographs of Nicholas II's daughters.

In the hasty disposal of the bodies, several belongings like these topazes were overlooked by Yurovsky's men and eventually recovered by Sokolov in 1919.[10]

Railroad ties on the Koptyaki Road in 1919. Investigator Nikolai Sokolov took this photograph as evidence of where the Fiat truck had got stuck at 4:30am on 19 July, unaware that it was in fact the second burial site.[122]

The Sokolov investigation inspecting the mineshaft in Spring 1919

The remains of the dog "Jimmy" found by Sokolov

Recovered Romanov belongings on display at the Holy Trinity Seminary in Jordanville, New York. On the right is a blouse that belonged to one of the grand duchesses.[135]

1920 photograph inscribed: "I am standing on the grave of the Tsar." Peter Ermakov survived the civil war unscathed; however, unlike the other killers, he received no awards or advancements, for which he grew bitter. For the rest of his life,[145] he fought relentlessly for primacy by inflating his role in the murders as well as the revolution.[146] Local Communist Party members annually pay tribute to his gravestone on the anniversary of the murders, though on a few occasions it has also been vandalized.[147]

Members of the Ural Regional Soviet – the Bolsheviks who issued the order to execute Tsar Nicholas II Romanov and his family.

1924 Photograph of Ural Bolsheviks From left to right: Top 1st row – A. I. Paramonov, N. N., M. M. Kharitonov, B.V. Didkovsky, I. P. Rumyantsev, N. N., A. L. Borchaninov; Bottom 2nd row – D. E. Sulimov, G.S. Frost, M.V. Vasilyev, V.M. Bykov, A.G. Kabanov, P. S. Ermakov. They stand and sit on a bridge of sleepers under which the royal family was buried, and next lies Ermakov's mauser, with which, in his own words, he "shot the Tsar".

The final resting places of the Romanov family and their servants in St. Catherine's Chapel in the Peter and Paul Cathedral. The names of Maria (third from right) and Alexei (far left) on the wall do not have a burial date inscribed at the bottom.

1918

Murder of the Romanov family

The Russian Imperial Romanov family (Nicholas II of Russia, his wife Alexandra Feodorovna, and their five children: Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Alexei) were shot and bayoneted to death[2][3] by Bolshevik revolutionaries under Yakov Yurovsky on the orders of the Ural Regional Soviet in Yekaterinburg on the night of 16–17 July 1918. Also murdered that night were members of the imperial entourage who had accompanied them: court physician Eugene Botkin; lady-in-waiting Anna Demidova; footman Alexei Trupp; and head cook Ivan Kharitonov.[4] The bodies were taken to the Koptyaki forest, where they were stripped, buried, and mutilated with grenades to prevent identification.[3][5]

Following the February Revolution in 1917, the Romanovs and their servants had been imprisoned in the Alexander Palace before being moved to Tobolsk, Siberia, in the aftermath of the October Revolution. They were next moved to a house in Yekaterinburg, near the Ural Mountains before their execution in July 1918. The Bolsheviks initially announced only Nicholas's death;[6][7] for the next eight years,[8] the Soviet leadership maintained a systematic web of misinformation relating to the fate of the family,[9] from claiming in September 1919 that they were murdered by left-wing revolutionaries,[10] to denying outright in April 1922 that they were dead.[9] The Soviets finally acknowledged the murders in 1926 following the publication in France of a 1919 investigation by a White émigré but said that the bodies were destroyed and that Lenin's Cabinet was not responsible.[11] The Soviet cover-up of the murders fuelled rumors of survivors.[12] Various Romanov impostors claimed to be members of the Romanov family, which drew media attention away from activities of Soviet Russia.[9]

In 1979, amateur sleuth Alexander Avdonin discovered the burial site.[13] The Soviet Union did not acknowledge the existence of these remains publicly until 1989 during the glasnost period.[14] The identity of the remains was later confirmed by forensic and DNA analysis and investigation, with the assistance of British experts. In 1998, eighty years after the executions, the remains of the Romanovs were reinterred in a state funeral in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in Saint Petersburg.[15] The funeral was not attended by key members of the Russian Orthodox Church, who disputed the authenticity of the remains.[16] In 2007, a second, smaller grave which contained the remains of the two Romanov children missing from the larger grave, was discovered by amateur archaeologists;[17][13] they were confirmed to be the remains of Alexei and a sister—either Anastasia or Maria—by DNA analysis. In 2008, after considerable and protracted legal wrangling, the Russian Prosecutor General's office rehabilitated the Romanov family as "victims of political repressions".[18] A criminal case was opened by the Russian government in 1993, but nobody was prosecuted on the basis that the perpetrators were dead.[19]

According to the official state version of the Soviet Union, ex-Tsar Nicholas Romanov, along with members of his family and retinue, were executed by firing squad by order of the Ural Regional Soviet.[20][21] Most historians attribute the execution order to the government in Moscow, specifically Vladimir Lenin and Yakov Sverdlov, who wanted to prevent the rescue of the Imperial family by the approaching Czechoslovak Legion during the ongoing Russian Civil War.[22][23] This is supported by a passage in Leon Trotsky's diary.[24] A 2011 investigation concluded that, despite the opening of state archives in the post-Soviet years, no written document has been found which proves Lenin or Sverdlov ordered the executions;[25] however, they endorsed the murders after they occurred.[26] Other sources argue that Lenin and the central Soviet government had wanted to conduct a trial of the Romanovs, with Trotsky serving as prosecutor, but that the local Ural Soviet, under pressure from Left Socialist-Revolutionaries and anarchists, undertook the executions on their own initiative due to the approach of the Czechoslovaks.[27]

1918

The partition of the Ottoman Empire

(30 October 1918 – 1 November 1922) was a geopolitical event that occurred after World War I and the occupation of Istanbul by British, French and Italian troops in November 1918. The partitioning was planned in several agreements made by the Allied Powers early in the course of World War I,[1] notably the Sykes–Picot Agreement, after the Ottoman Empire had joined Germany to form the Ottoman–German Alliance.[2] The huge conglomeration of territories and peoples that formerly comprised the Ottoman Empire was divided into several new states.[3] The Ottoman Empire had been the leading Islamic state in geopolitical, cultural and ideological terms. The partitioning of the Ottoman Empire after the war led to the domination of the Middle East by Western powers such as Britain and France, and saw the creation of the modern Arab world and the Republic of Turkey. Resistance to the influence of these powers came from the Turkish National Movement but did not become widespread in the other post-Ottoman states until the period of rapid decolonization after World War II.

The sometimes-violent creation of protectorates in Iraq and Palestine, and the proposed division of Syria along communal lines, is thought to have been a part of the larger strategy of ensuring tension in the Middle East, thus necessitating the role of Western colonial powers (at that time Britain, France and Italy) as peace brokers and arms suppliers.[4] The League of Nations mandate granted the French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon, the British Mandate for Mesopotamia (later Iraq) and the British Mandate for Palestine, later divided into Mandatory Palestine and the Emirate of Transjordan (1921–1946). The Ottoman Empire's possessions in the Arabian Peninsula became the Kingdom of Hejaz, which the Sultanate of Nejd (today Saudi Arabia) was allowed to annex, and the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen. The Empire's possessions on the western shores of the Persian Gulf were variously annexed by Saudi Arabia (al-Ahsa and Qatif), or remained British protectorates (Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar) and became the Arab States of the Persian Gulf.

After the Ottoman government collapsed completely, its representatives signed the Treaty of Sèvres in 1920, which would have partitioned much of the territory of present-day Turkey among France, the United Kingdom, Greece and Italy. The Turkish War of Independence forced the Western European powers to return to the negotiating table before the treaty could be ratified. The Western Europeans and the Grand National Assembly of Turkey signed and ratified the new Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, superseding the Treaty of Sèvres and agreeing on most of the territorial issues. One unresolved issue, the dispute between the Kingdom of Iraq and the Republic of Turkey over the former province of Mosul, was later negotiated under the auspices of the League of Nations in 1926. The British and French partitioned Greater Syria between them in the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Other secret agreements were concluded with Italy and Russia.[5] The Balfour Declaration encouraged the international Zionist movement to push for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. While a part of the Triple Entente, Russia also had wartime agreements preventing it from participating in the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire after the Russian Revolution. The Treaty of Sèvres formally acknowledged the new League of Nations mandates in the region, the independence of Yemen, and British sovereignty over Cyprus.

Franchet d'Espere marching in Beyoğlu, February 8, 1919

The armored cruiser Averof of the Greek Navy in the Bosphorus, 1919

British occupation forces at the port of Karaköy, in front of the coastal tram line. The art nouveau style building in the background is the Turkish Maritime Lines (Türkiye Denizcilik İşletmeleri) headquarters.[18]

Constantinople, 23 May 1919: Protests against the Occupation of Smyrna by the Kingdom of Greece

Allied occupation troops marching along the Grande Rue de Péra

M1 in Istanbul.

French Senegalese Tirailleurs during Military Drill on Sultanahmet Square in 1919

1918

Armistice of Mudros

Concluded on 30 October 1918 and taking effect at noon the next day, the Armistice of Mudros (Turkish: Mondros Mütarekesi) ended hostilities in the Middle Eastern theatre between the Ottoman Empire and the Allies of World War I. It was signed by the Ottoman Minister of Marine Affairs Rauf Bey and British Admiral Somerset Arthur Gough-Calthorpe, on board HMS Agamemnon in Moudros harbor on the Greek island of Lemnos.[1]

Among its conditions, the Ottomans surrendered their remaining garrisons outside Anatolia, granted the Allies the right to occupy forts controlling the Straits of the Dardanelles and the Bosporus, and to occupy any Ottoman territory "in case of disorder" threatening their security. The Ottoman Army (including the Ottoman Air Force) was demobilized; and all ports, railways and other strategic points were made available for use by the Allies. In the Caucasus, the Ottomans had to retreat to within the pre-war borders between the Ottoman and the Russian Empires.

The armistice was followed by the occupation of Constantinople (Istanbul) and the subsequent partitioning of the Ottoman Empire. The Treaty of Sèvres (10 August 1920), which was signed in the aftermath of World War I, imposed harsh terms on the Ottoman Empire, but it was never ratified by the Ottoman Parliament in Istanbul. The Ottoman Parliament was officially disbanded by the Allies on 11 April 1920 due to the overwhelming opposition of the Turkish MPs to the provisions discussed in Sèvres. Afterward, the Turkish War of Independence was fought from 1919 to 1923. The Grand National Assembly of Turkey, established in Ankara on 23 April 1920 by Mustafa Kemal Pasha and his followers (including former MPs of the closed Ottoman Parliament), became the new de facto government of Turkey. The Armistice of Mudros was superseded by the Treaty of Lausanne, signed on 24 July 1923, following the Turkish victory in the War of Independence.

HMS Agamemnon

Agamemnon fires her 9.2-inch guns at Ottoman Turkish forts at Sedd el Bahr on 4 March 1915

Agamemnon has her main guns replaced at Malta in May–June 1915…

Rauf Orbay as the captain of the cruiser Hamidiye

Rauf Orbay in naval uniform. The text reads "Brave commander of the resolute Hamidiye, Hussein Rauf Beg

Sir Somerset Gough-Calthorpe

The Battleship, HMS Superb, which, as Gough-Calthorpe's flagship, led the Allied fleet that steamed into Constantinople in November 1918

Barricade during the Spartacus uprising.

Kiel mutiny: the soldiers' council of Prinzregent Luitpold.

Crowds outside the Reichstag on 9 November as the creation of the republic was announced.

"Berlin seized by revolutionists": The New York Times on Armistice Day, 11 November 1918.

Proclamation of the Bremen revolutionary republic, outside the town hall, on 15 November 1918.

Leftist soldiers during Christmas fighting in the Pfeilersaal of the Berlin City Palace

The occupation of the Silesian railway station in Berlin by government troops, 1919

Spartacist militia in Berlin

A British Mark IV tank, captured during World War I, in use by German government troops. Berlin, January 1919

Machine-gun position on the quadriga of the Brandenburger Tor, Berlin, during the Spartacist uprising; ; Landesarchiv Berlin

1918

The German Revolution

or November Revolution (German: Novemberrevolution) was a civil conflict in the German Empire at the end of the First World War that resulted in the replacement of the German federal constitutional monarchy with a democratic parliamentary republic that later became known as the Weimar Republic. The revolutionary period lasted from November 1918 until the adoption of the Weimar Constitution in August 1919. Among the factors leading to the revolution were the extreme burdens suffered by the German population during the four years of war, the economic and psychological impacts of the German Empire's defeat by the Allies, and growing social tensions between the general population and the aristocratic and bourgeois elite.

The first acts of the revolution were triggered by the policies of the Supreme Command (Oberste Heeresleitung) of the German Army and its lack of coordination with the Naval Command (Seekriegsleitung). In the face of defeat, the Naval Command insisted on trying to precipitate a climactic pitched battle with the British Royal Navy utilizing its naval order of 24 October 1918, but the battle never took place. Instead of obeying their orders to begin preparations to fight the British, German sailors led a revolt in the naval ports of Wilhelmshaven on 29 October 1918, followed by the Kiel mutiny in the first days of November. These disturbances spread the spirit of civil unrest across Germany and ultimately led to the proclamation of a republic to replace the imperial monarchy on 9 November 1918, two days before Armistice Day. Shortly thereafter, Emperor Wilhelm II fled the country and abdicated his throne.

The revolutionaries, inspired by communist and socialist ideas, did not hand over power to Soviet-style councils as the Bolsheviks had done in Russia, because the leadership of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) opposed their creation. The SPD opted instead for a national assembly that would form the basis for a parliamentary system of government.[1] Fearing an all-out civil war in Germany between militant workers and reactionary conservatives, the SPD did not plan to strip the old German upper classes completely of their power and privileges. Instead, it sought to peacefully integrate them into the new social democratic system. In this endeavour, SPD leftists sought an alliance with the German Supreme Command. This allowed the army and the Freikorps (nationalist militias) to act with enough autonomy to quell the communist Spartacist uprising of 5–12 January 1919 by force. The same alliance of political forces succeeded in suppressing leftist uprisings in other parts of Germany, with the result that the country was completely pacified by late 1919.

The first elections for the new Constituent German National Assembly (popularly known as the Weimar National Assembly) were held on 19 January 1919, and the revolution effectively ended on 11 August 1919, when the Constitution of the German Reich (Weimar Constitution) was adopted.

The Spartacist uprising

(German: Spartakusaufstand), also known as the January uprising (Januaraufstand), was an armed uprising that took place in Berlin from 5 to 12 January 1919. It occurred in connection with the November Revolution that broke out following Germany's defeat in World War I. The uprising was primarily a power struggle between the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) led by Friedrich Ebert, which favored a social democracy, and the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, which wanted to set up a council republic similar to the one established by the Bolsheviks in Russia. In 1914 Liebknecht and Luxemburg had founded the Marxist Spartacus League (Spartakusbund), which gave the uprising its popular name.

The revolt was improvised and small scale and quickly crushed by the superior strength of government and paramilitary troops in what became known as Bloody Week.[3] The death toll was roughly 150–200, mostly among the insurgents. The most prominent deaths were those of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, who were murdered extrajudicially, almost certainly with the approval of the leaders of the provisional SPD-led government. The party's involvement hampered its position throughout the life of the Weimar Republic, although quashing of the uprising did allow elections for the National Assembly to take place as scheduled on 19 January. The Assembly went on to write the Weimar Constitution that created the first functioning German democracy.

1918

Wilhelm II

or William II (Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albert; 27 January 1859 – 4 June 1941) was the last German emperor (German: Kaiser) and king of Prussia from 15 June 1888 until his abdication on 9 November 1918. Despite strengthening the German Empire's position as a great power by building a powerful navy, his tactless public statements and erratic foreign policy greatly antagonized the international community and are considered by many to be one of the underlying causes of World War I. When the German war effort collapsed after a series of crushing defeats on the Western Front in 1918, he was forced to abdicate, thereby marking the end of the German Empire and the House of Hohenzollern's 300-year reign in Prussia and 500-year reign in Brandenburg.

Born during the reign of his granduncle Frederick William IV of Prussia, Wilhelm was the son of Prince Frederick William and Victoria, Princess Royal. Through his mother, he was the eldest grandchild of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom. In March 1888, Frederick William ascended the German and Prussian thrones as Frederick III. Frederick died just 99 days later, and his son succeeded him as Wilhelm II.

In March 1890, Wilhelm dismissed Chancellor Otto von Bismarck and assumed direct control over his nation's policies, embarking on a bellicose "New Course" to cement Germany's status as a leading world power. Over the course of his reign, the German colonial empire acquired new territories in China and the Pacific (such as Kiautschou Bay, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the Caroline Islands) and became Europe's largest manufacturer. However, Wilhelm often undermined such progress by making tactless and threatening statements towards other countries without first consulting his ministers. Likewise, his regime did much to alienate itself from other great powers by initiating a massive naval build-up, contesting French control of Morocco, and building a railway through Baghdad that challenged Britain's dominion in the Persian Gulf.[1][2][3] By the second decade of the 20th century, Germany could rely only on significantly weaker nations such as Austria-Hungary and the declining Ottoman Empire as allies.

Wilhelm's reign culminated in Germany's guarantee of military support to Austria-Hungary during the crisis of July 1914, one of the immediate causes of World War I. A lax wartime leader, Wilhelm left virtually all decision-making regarding strategy and organisation of the war effort to the German Army's Great General Staff. By August 1916, this broad delegation of power gave rise to a de facto military dictatorship that dominated national policy for the rest of the conflict. Despite emerging victorious over Russia and obtaining significant territorial gains in Eastern Europe, Germany was forced to relinquish all its conquests after a decisive defeat on the Western Front in the autumn of 1918. Losing the support of his country's military and many of his subjects, Wilhelm was forced to abdicate during the German Revolution of 1918–1919. The revolution converted Germany from a monarchy into an unstable democratic state known as the Weimar Republic. Wilhelm fled to exile in the Netherlands, where he remained during its occupation by Nazi Germany in 1940. He died there in 1941.

1918

The Weimar Republic

(German: Weimarer Republik [ˈvaɪmaʁɐ ʁepuˈbliːk] (listen)), officially named the German Reich, was a historical period of Germany from 9 November 1918 to 23 March 1933, during which it was a constitutional federal republic for the first time in history; hence it is also referred to, and unofficially proclaimed itself, as the German Republic (Deutsche Republik). The period's informal name is derived from the city of Weimar, which hosted the constituent assembly that established its government. In English, the republic was usually simply called "Germany", with "Weimar Republic" (a term introduced by Adolf Hitler in 1929) not commonly used until the 1930s.

Following the devastation of the First World War (1914–1918), Germany was exhausted and sued for peace in desperate circumstances. Awareness of imminent defeat sparked a revolution, the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II, formal surrender to the Allies, and the proclamation of the Weimar Republic on 9 November 1918.[7]

In its initial years, grave problems beset the Republic, such as hyperinflation and political extremism, including political murders and two attempted seizures of power by contending paramilitaries; internationally, it suffered isolation, reduced diplomatic standing and contentious relationships with the great powers. By 1924, a great deal of monetary and political stability was restored, and the republic enjoyed relative prosperity for the next five years; this period, sometimes known as the Golden Twenties, was characterised by significant cultural flourishing, social progress, and gradual improvement in foreign relations. Under the Locarno Treaties of 1925, Germany moved toward normalising relations with its neighbours, recognising most territorial changes under the 1919 Treaty of Versailles and committing to never go to war. The following year, it joined the League of Nations, which marked its reintegration into the international community.[8][9] Nevertheless, especially on the political right, there remained strong and widespread resentment against the treaty and those who had signed and supported it.

The Great Depression of October 1929 severely impacted Germany's tenuous progress; high unemployment and subsequent social and political unrest led to the collapse of Chancellor Hermann Müller's grand coalition and the beginning of the presidential cabinets. From March 1930 onwards, President Paul von Hindenburg used emergency powers to back Chancellors Heinrich Brüning, Franz von Papen and General Kurt von Schleicher. The Great Depression, exacerbated by Brüning's policy of deflation, led to a surge in unemployment.[10] On 30 January 1933, Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler as Chancellor to head a coalition government; Hitler's far-right Nazi Party held two out of ten cabinet seats. Von Papen, as Vice-Chancellor and Hindenburg's confidant, was to serve as the éminence grise who would keep Hitler under control; these intentions badly underestimated Hitler's political abilities. By the end of March 1933, the Reichstag Fire Decree and the Enabling Act of 1933 were used in the perceived state of emergency to effectively grant the new Chancellor broad power to act outside parliamentary control. Hitler promptly used these powers to thwart constitutional governance and suspend civil liberties, which brought about the swift collapse of democracy at the federal and state level, and the creation of a one-party dictatorship under his leadership.

Until the end of World War II in Europe in 1945, the Nazis governed Germany under the pretense that all the extraordinary measures and laws they implemented were constitutional; notably, there was never an attempt to replace or substantially amend the Weimar constitution. Nevertheless, Hitler's seizure of power (Machtergreifung) had effectively ended the republic, replacing its constitutional framework with Führerprinzip, the principle that "the Führer's word is above all written law".

1918

The Armistice

of 11 November 1918 was the armistice signed at Le Francport near Compiègne that ended fighting on land, sea, and air in World War I between the Entente and their last remaining opponent, Germany. Previous armistices had been agreed with Bulgaria, the Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary. It was concluded after the German government sent a message to American president Woodrow Wilson to negotiate terms on the basis of a recent speech of his and the earlier declared "Fourteen Points", which later became the basis of the German surrender at the Paris Peace Conference, which took place the following year.

Also known as the Armistice of Compiègne (French: Armistice de Compiègne, German: Waffenstillstand von Compiègne) from the place where it was officially signed at 5:45 a.m. by the Allied Supreme Commander, French Marshal Ferdinand Foch,[1] it came into force at 11:00 a.m. Central European Time (CET) on 11 November 1918 and marked a victory for the Allies and a defeat for Germany, although not formally a surrender.

The actual terms, which were largely written by Foch, included the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front, the withdrawal of German forces from west of the Rhine, Allied occupation of the Rhineland and bridgeheads further east, the preservation of infrastructure, the surrender of aircraft, warships, and military materiel, the release of Allied prisoners of war and interned civilians, eventual reparations, no release of German prisoners and no relaxation of the naval blockade of Germany. The armistice was extended three times while negotiations continued on a peace treaty. The Treaty of Versailles, which was officially signed on 28 June 1919, took effect on 10 January 1920.

Fighting continued up until 11 a.m. CET on 11 November 1918, with 2,738 men dying on the last day of the war.[2]

Photograph taken after reaching agreement for the armistice that ended World War I. This is Ferdinand Foch's own railway carriage in the Forest of Compiègne. Foch's chief of staff Maxime Weygand is second from left. Third from the left is the senior British representative, Sir Rosslyn Wemyss. Foch is second from the right. On the right is Admiral Sir George Hope.

German prisoners of war captured near Amiens in late August 1918

Hindenburg, Kaiser Wilhelm and Ludendorff in discussion at the General Headquarters in Pszczyna Castle

The arrival of the German armistice delegates, 1918

Foch's personal headquarters carriage, "The Compiègne Wagon" in 1918

Painting depicting the signature of the armistice in the railway carriage. Behind the table, from right to left, General Weygand, Marshal Foch (standing) and British Admiral Rosslyn Wemyss and fourth from the left, British Naval Captain Jack Marriott. In the foreground, Matthias Erzberger, Major General Detlof von Winterfeldt (with helmet), Alfred von Oberndorff and Ernst Vanselow.

Last page of the Armistice agreement

American soldiers of the 64th Regiment, part of the 7th Division, celebrate the news of the Armistice.

Gravestone of Henry N. Gunther in Baltimore

Commemorations at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris on 11 November 2018, in remembrance for the centenary of the end of the war[40]

1918

Charles I

or Karl I (German: Karl Franz Josef Ludwig Hubert Georg Otto Maria, Hungarian: Károly Ferenc József Lajos Hubert György Ottó Mária; 17 August 1887 – 1 April 1922) was Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary (as Charles IV, Hungarian: IV. Károly),[1] King of Croatia, King of Bohemia (as Charles III, Czech: Karel III.), and the last of the monarchs belonging to the House of Habsburg-Lorraine to rule over Austria-Hungary. The son of Archduke Otto of Austria and Princess Maria Josepha of Saxony, Charles became heir presumptive of Emperor Franz Joseph when his uncle Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated in 1914. In 1911, he married Princess Zita of Bourbon-Parma. He is venerated in the Catholic Church, having been beatified by Pope John Paul II on 3 October 2004, and is known to the Catholic Church as Blessed Karl of Austria.[2]

Charles succeeded to the thrones in November 1916 following the death of his grand-uncle, Franz Joseph. He began secret negotiations with the Allies, hoping to peacefully end the First World War but was unsuccessful. Despite Charles's efforts to preserve the empire by returning it to federalism and by championing Austro-Slavism, Austria-Hungary hurtled into disintegration: Czechoslovakia and the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs were proclaimed, and Hungary broke monarchic ties to Austria by the end of October 1918. Following the Armistice of 11 November 1918, Charles "renounced participation" in state affairs, but did not abdicate. The Republic of German-Austria was proclaimed the following day, and in April 1919 the Austrian Parliament formally dethroned the Habsburgs and banished Charles from the German-Austrian Republic for life.

Charles spent the early part of his exile in Switzerland. He spent the remaining years of his life attempting to restore the monarchy. He made two attempts to reclaim the Hungarian throne in 1921; but failed due to the opposition of Hungary's Calvinist regent Admiral Miklós Horthy. Charles was exiled for a second time to the Portuguese island of Madeira, where he soon fell ill and died of respiratory failure in 1922.

The British Air Section at the conference

The Australian delegation, with Australian Prime Minister Billy Hughes in the center…

Woodrow Wilson, Georges Clemenceau, and David Lloyd George confer at the Paris Peace Conference (Noël Dorville, 1919)…

From left to right: Marshal Ferdinand Foch, Clemenceau, Lloyd George and the Italians Vittorio Emanuele Orlando and Sidney Sonnino…

The Japanese delegation at the Paris Peace Conference

The Japanese delegation at the Conference, with (seated left to right) former Foreign Minister Baron Makino Nobuaki, former Prime Minister Marquis Saionji Kinmochi, and Japanese Ambassador to Great Britain Viscount Chinda Sutemi…

Photograph Signed by the "Big Four" of the Versailles Peace Conference, 10 7/8 x 13 3/4 inch print on 14 1/2 x 15 1/2 inch card, [Paris, 1919] signed in lower margin by WOODROW WILSON ("Woodrow Wilson") as President of the United States, GEORGES CLEMENCEAU ("G Clemenceau") as Premier of France, DAVID LLOYD GEORGE ("D Lloyd George") as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and VITTORIO ORLANDO ("V.E. Orlando) as Prime Minister of Italy.…

The Zionist state claimed at the conference

British memorandum on Palestine before the conference

1919

The Paris Peace Conference

was the formal meeting in 1919 and 1920 of the victorious Allies after the end of World War I to set the peace terms for the defeated Central Powers. Dominated by the leaders of Britain, France, the United States and Italy, it resulted in five treaties that rearranged the maps of Europe and parts of Asia, Africa and the Pacific Islands, and also imposed financial penalties. Germany and the other losing nations had no voice in the Conference's deliberations; this gave rise to political resentments that lasted for decades.

The conference involved diplomats from 32 countries and nationalities. Its major decisions were the creation of the League of Nations and the five peace treaties with the defeated states; the awarding of German and Ottoman overseas possessions as "mandates", chiefly to Britain and France; the imposition of reparations upon Germany; and the drawing of new national boundaries, sometimes involving plebiscites, to reflect ethnic boundaries more closely. Wilsonian goals, stated in the Fourteen Points, became the basis for the terms of the German surrender during the conference, as it had earlier been the basis of the German government's negotiations in the Armistice of 11 November 1918.

The main result was the Treaty of Versailles with Germany; Article 231 of the treaty placed the whole guilt for the war on "the aggression of Germany and her allies". That provision proved very humiliating for Germany, and set the stage for the expensive reparations that Germany was intended to pay (it paid only a small portion before its last payment in 1931). The five great powers (France, Britain, Italy, Japan and the United States) controlled the Conference. The "Big Four" were French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, US President Woodrow Wilson, and Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Emanuele Orlando. They met informally 145 times and made all major decisions before they were ratified.[1]

The conference began on 18 January 1919. With respect to its end, Professor Michael Neiberg noted, "Although the senior statesmen stopped working personally on the conference in June 1919, the formal peace process did not really end until July 1923, when the Treaty of Lausanne was signed."[2] It is often referred to as the "Versailles Conference", although only the signing of the first treaty took place there in the historic palace; the negotiations occurred at the Quai d'Orsay in Paris.

1919

The Treaty of Versailles

[4] was a peace treaty signed on 28 June 1919. As the most important treaty of World War I, it ended the state of war between Germany and most of the Allied Powers. It was signed in the Palace of Versailles, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which led to the war. The other Central Powers on the German side signed separate treaties.[i] The United States never ratified the Versailles treaty and made a separate peace treaty with Germany. Although the armistice of 11 November 1918 ended the actual fighting, it took six months of Allied negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference to conclude the peace treaty. Germany was not allowed to participate in the negotiations—it was forced to sign the final result.

The most critical and controversial provision in the treaty was: "The Allied and Associated Governments affirm and Germany accepts the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies." The other members of the Central Powers signed treaties containing similar articles. This article, Article 231, became known as the War Guilt clause. The treaty required Germany to disarm, make ample territorial concessions, and pay reparations to certain countries that had formed the Entente powers. In 1921 the total cost of these reparations was assessed at 132 billion gold marks (then $31.4 billion or £6.6 billion, roughly equivalent to US$442 billion or UK£284 billion in 2023). Because of the way the deal was structured, the Allied Powers intended Germany would only ever pay a value of 50 billion marks.

Prominent economists such as John Maynard Keynes declared the treaty too harsh—a "Carthaginian peace"—and said the reparations were excessive and counter-productive. On the other hand, prominent Allied figures such as French Marshal Ferdinand Foch, criticized the treaty for treating Germany too leniently. This is still the subject of ongoing debate by historians and economists.[citation needed]

The result of these competing and sometimes conflicting goals among the victors was a compromise that left no one satisfied. In particular, Germany was neither pacified nor conciliated, nor was it permanently weakened. The problems that arose from the treaty would lead to the Locarno Treaties, which improved relations between Germany and the other European powers. The reparation system was reorganized resulting in the Dawes Plan, the Young Plan, and the indefinite postponement of reparations at the Lausanne Conference of 1932. The treaty's terms against Germany resulted in economic collapse and bitter resentment which powered the rise of the Nazi Party, and eventually the outbreak of a second World War.

Although it is often referred to as the "Versailles Conference", only the actual signing of the treaty took place at the historic palace. Most of the negotiations were in Paris, with the "Big Four" meetings taking place generally at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the Quai d'Orsay.

The cover of a publication of the Treaty of Versailles in English The text reads THE TREATY OF PEACE BETWEEN THE ALLIED AND ASSOCIATED POWERS AND GERMANY, The protocol annexed thereto, the Agreement respecting the military occupation of the territories of the Rhine, AND THE TREATY BETWEEN FRANCE AND GREAT BRITAIN RESPECTING Assistance to France in the event of unprovoked aggression by Germany. Signed at Versailles, June 28th, 1919.

The heads of the "Big Four" nations at the Paris Peace Conference, 27 May 1919. From left to right: David Lloyd George, Vittorio Orlando, Georges Clemenceau, and Woodrow Wilson

A view of the interior of the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, with the heads of state sitting and standing before a long table. Front Row: Dr Johannes Bell (Germany) signing with Herr Hermann Muller leaning over him. Middle row (seated, left to right): General Tasker H Bliss, Col E M House, Mr Henry White, Mr Robert Lansing, President Woodrow Wilson (United States); M Georges Clemenceau (France); Mr D Lloyd George, Mr A Bonar Law, Mr Arthur J Balfour, Viscount Milner, Mr G N Barnes (Great Britain); The Marquis Saionzi (Japan). Back row (left to right): M Eleutherios Venizelos (Greece); Dr Affonso Costa (Portugal); Lord Riddell (British Press); Sir George E Foster (Canada); M Nikola Pachitch (Serbia); M Stephen Pichon (France); Col Sir Maurice Hankey, Mr Edwin S Montagu (Great Britain); the Maharajah of Bikaner (India); Signor Vittorio Emanuele Orlando (Italy); M Paul Hymans (Belgium); General Louis Botha (South Africa); Mr W M Hughes (Australia). Note: This description was copied verbatim from the Imperial War Museum exhibit, where some names differ from their official spelling (Muller vs Müller, Eleutherios vs Eleftherios, Affonso vs Afonso, Saionzi vs Saionji, Patchitch vs Pašić, Stephen vs Stéphen). We keep the original text for historical accuracy.

Imperial Throne of Austria, made for Emperor Franz Joseph I