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the assassination of Franz Ferdinand Stated the great war.
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Threats from russia have caused Germany to take all action.
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On the night of 31 May 1915, a single German Zappelin airship appeared over North London and began dropping its deadly cargo on the darkened streets below.
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A German submarine sinks the passenger liner Lusitania. The ship carries 1,198 people, 128 of them Americans.
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The battle of verdun, fought from 21 February -18 December 1916, was one of the largest battles of the First World War on the Western Front Between the German and French armies.
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The British employ the first tanks ever used in battle, at Delville Wood. Although they are useful at breaking through barbed wire and clearing a path for the infantry, tanks are still primitive and they fail to be the decisive weapon, as their designers thought they would be.
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British intelligence gives Wilson the so-called Zimmermann Telegram, a message from German foreign secretary Arthur Zimmermann proposing that Mexico side with Germany in case of war between Germany and the United States. In return, Germany promises to return to Mexico the "lost provinces" of Texas and much of the rest of the American Southwest. Mexico declines the offer, but the outrage at this interference in the Western Hemisphere pushes American public opinion to support entering the war.
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The Germans sign a peace treaty with the new Bolshevik government of Russia. The terms of the treaty give Germany huge tracts of land that had been the Ukraine and Poland, and peace on the Eastern Front allows Germany to shift soldiers to the Western Front, causing serious problems for the French, British, and Americans.
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At 5:10 am, in a railway car at Compiègne, France, the Germans sign the Armistice which is effective at 11 am--the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.
