A History of Europe, Key Battles

In Spring 1918 a massive German offensive made significant territorial gains, but ultimately not the intended breakthrough, and the Allied forces stood firm. Exhausted and demoralised at the scale of casualties, the Germans were pushed back in a major counter-attack in the late Summer and Autumn. And on 26 September, the Allies launched a general offensive along the entire Western Front.

Meanwhile, the Habsburg empire was fast falli...

After the Russian withdrawal from the frontlines following the October revolution, the treaty of Brest-Litovsk is negotiated between Germany and Russia.

The Germans sought to conclude war on the Eastern Front as quickly as possible, while at the same time trying to establish an informal empire in east-central Europe, one composed of newly independent nation states on Russia’s western periphery. However, back on the German home fron...

While the nations of Europe fought each other to a bitter stalemate, the President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, urged both sides to make peace. However, no agreement is made and the United States joined the war on the side of the Entente allies.

In the meantime, the Germans ordered a general withdrawal at the western front, abandoning the battlefields of the Somme in order to establish a shorter, straighter and more well-fo...

As the year 1917 dawned, Europe had been at war for two and a half years, and pressures on the home fronts were becoming intolerable. Every participant nation came under huge strain.

In Russia the Tsarist regime falls in March, but the interim government is unstable and itself falls in the famous October Revolution, led by Vladimir Lenin, who promises to withdraw Russia from the war.

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Europe entered the year 1916 exhausted by one and a half years of conflict of a scale hitherto unimaginable, with profound effects on citizens at home, as well as those on the front line.

The most intensive battles on the western front in 1916 are at Verdun and the Somme, with extraordinary numbers of casualties.

Meanwhile, on the eastern front the Russians launch a major attack, the Brusilov offensive.

Romania declared war on Austro-...

For the Germans, 1915 was a year that should not have been. Their whole strategy had been based on a quick war, but they now found themselves embroiled in a two-front war – on the eastern front against Russia, and on the western front against France fully mobilised and also Britain.

Throughout 1915, in a succession of attacks of increasing intensity, the various armies learned the techniques of the new kind of war at very heavy cost...

The first months of fighting in the First World War had seen no major breakthrough from any side. The Germans had captured about ten percent of France, and reached within sixty miles of Paris, but then reached a stalemate as both sides fortified their positions with great long lines of trenches running from Belgium to the Swiss border.

Both sides attempt to bring other countries into the war to help break the stalemate and to ti...

The Russians strike hard against their most powerful enemy, Germany. Austro-Hungary help their German ally although their military forces are under-resourced, in large part because through the years the Hungarian parliament had restricted military finding by using it as a bargaining chip for political concessions.

While the Austrians attack Serbia, the Germans achieve a significant victory against Russia at the Battle of Tannenberg.

The first main clash of the First World War was on the borders of France and Germany and in Belgium. The Belgians put up more resistance than the Germans expect. However, the Battle of the Frontiers, on the Franco-German border, from 7 August to 6 September 1914 was a disaster for the French army, who suffered very heavy casualties. Meanwhile, the British Expeditionary Force were making their way to the front.

The war was set on a g...

The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne. A month later Austria retaliates by declaring war on Serbia, which in turn brings Russia and the other great powers of Europe into conflict. As Edward Grey memorably expressed it: “The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again on our lifetime”.

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Music composed by Frederic Cho...

Why did the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand trigger the First World War?

I also describe how the long struggle between European powers for mastery in central Africa reaches its climax. 

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Picture - The Nine Sovereigns at Windsor for the funeral of King Edward VII

Music composed by Frederic Chopin (The Polish Dancer)

Theme tune for the podcast by Nico Vettese, www.we...

An analogy often given to the Balkans leading up to the First World War is a tinderbox, awaiting a flame to ignite it and set off a major conflagration across Europe. In fact, the region suffered a large-scale conflict already two years before the First World War began.

Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia and Montenegro had all acquired their independence from the Ottoman Empire over the course of the 19th century. None of them, however, w...

Following their countries independence in the mid 19th century, the Italians hoped to establish their status among the Great European Powers by acquiring colonial possessions. Their first main attempt was an unsuccessful invasion of Ethiopia, with a defeat at the Battle of Adowa in 1896

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Music composed by Frederic Chopin

Picture - Battle of Adwa

In the first years of the 20th century the Austrian Empire faced numerous problems, most of all the rising sense of nationalism among its various peoples. Attempting a more assertive foreign policy, the Austrians set about a plan to formally annex Bosnia and Herzegovina, which since 1878 had been administered by Vienna but still remained under nominal Ottoman suzerainty. However, this decision backfired terribly, triggering a six m...

The Ottoman Empire is in disarray and its treasury bankrupt. Under Sultan Abdul Hamid, the Red Sultan, there are violent suppression of uprisings of the Armenians in Anatolia. And in the Balkans the Macedonians and Albanians appeal for independence. A rebellion in Macedonia leads to the The Young Turk revolution and the overthrow of the sultan.

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Music: Mazurkas by Chopin

Pictur...

Tsar Alexander II of Russia is assassinated in March 1881. He was probably the most liberal of all tsars of Russia, but succeeded by reactionary leaders Alexander III and then Nicholas II. Nicholas unwisely provokes Japan into a war, and is defeated, which is a catalyst for an attempted revolution in Russia in 1905

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Music composed by Petr Tchaikovsky (Symphony nr 6 in B Minor)

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A summary of the main events from the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 to the beginning of the First World War in 1914

At the end of the nineteenth century the Balkans had multiple crises. The Treaty of Berlin 1878 was an attempt by the Great Powers of Europe to find a framework for stability in a region with various competing interests, many of them incompatible with each other. In effect, it created two spheres of influe...

In April 1877, two Russian armies invaded the Ottoman empire. The focus of the war became the siege of Plevna in Bulgaria. The strong resistance there gave the Turks real hope for a final victory, or at least holding off the enemy and forcing a more favourable diplomatic solution. 

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Music composed by Rimsky-Korsakov: Polonaise, and Russian Easter Festival Overture

Picture ...