Battles of World War I

The war in brief

The First World War (1914 to 1918) was fought between the Allies, led by France, Britain and Russia and later the United States, and the Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. Its first weeks were mobile: Tannenberg destroyed a Russian army in the east, and the Marne stopped the German advance on Paris and led to the trench lines of the Western Front. Verdun and the Somme in 1916, and Passchendaele in 1917, show the cost of attacking those lines, with casualties counted in hundreds of thousands. Jutland was the war's great clash at sea, Caporetto nearly knocked Italy out, and Sarikamish and Aqaba show the war against the Ottomans.