WW1 timeline: the First World War year by year

The First World War began on 28 July 1914, when Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, and the fighting ended with the Armistice at 11 a.m. on 11 November 1918. The Treaty of Versailles, signed on 28 June 1919, formally closed the war with Germany. These are the dates that shaped it.

Notice the first and last dates: 28 June 1914 and 28 June 1919. The treaty was signed five years to the day after the assassination that started it all.

World War 1 started when a Bosnian Serb, Gavrilo Princip, shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on 28 July. The alliances then pulled in Russia, Germany, France and, after Germany invaded Belgium on 4 August, Britain.

Germany’s plan was to defeat France quickly before turning on Russia. It failed at the Marne in September, and by the end of 1914 both sides had dug trenches running about 700 km from the Belgian coast to Switzerland. That December, soldiers on parts of the front left their trenches for an unofficial Christmas truce.

The First World War coloring book opens with that spark in Sarajevo, then moves to the Western Front. You color the cascade of ultimatums and the first trenches, and the caption beside each scene explains how one shot became a world war.

In 1915 the war spread and both sides searched for a way past the trenches. Germany used chlorine gas at Ypres in April. The Allies landed at Gallipoli to strike the Ottoman Empire, and failed. A German U-boat sank the Lusitania in May, and Italy joined the Allies the same month.

Gallipoli became a defining memory for Australia and New Zealand, whose ANZAC troops landed on 25 April, now commemorated as ANZAC Day. The campaign dragged on until the last Allied troops left in January 1916, with nothing gained.

1916 was the year of the great battles of attrition. At Verdun, from February to December, France and Germany lost over 300,000 dead between them. On the Somme, the British Army suffered 57,000 casualties on 1 July alone. On the Eastern Front, Russia’s Brusilov Offensive cost both sides enormous losses.

Neither Verdun nor the Somme broke the line. They did change the war: the first tanks went into action on the Somme on 15 September 1916, and both battles became, for France and Britain, the defining image of the Great War.

The Somme and Verdun are two of the six turning points in the book. They are also the pages people linger on longest, because the scale of what happened only lands when you spend time inside one scene.

1917 changed the balance of the war. Germany’s return to unrestricted submarine warfare brought the United States into the war on 6 April. In Russia, revolution toppled the Tsar in March, and the Bolsheviks seized power in November and took Russia out of the war.

On the Western Front, the British offensive at Passchendaele from July to November ground through mud for a few kilometres of ground. At Cambrai in November, massed tanks broke the German line for the first time, a glimpse of how the war would end.

The Eastern Front has its own chapter in the book, from the vast Russian armies of 1914 to the revolution that shattered the Tsar’s empire. It is the front most timelines skip, and the one that explains why Germany could attack again in 1918.

The First World War ended with the Armistice signed in a railway carriage at Compiègne, which took effect at 11 a.m. on 11 November 1918. Germany’s Spring Offensive had failed, the Allied Hundred Days offensive from August pushed its armies back, and its allies collapsed one after another.

Around 9 to 10 million soldiers died, and millions of civilians. The Armistice stopped the fighting, but the war was settled only by the Treaty of Versailles in June 1919, which redrew the map of Europe and the Middle East.

The Armistice is the final scene of the book: the moment the guns fall silent and a broken world begins counting its losses. On Armistice Day, Remembrance Day or Veterans Day, it is a quiet, fitting page to color. Our gifts for veterans who love history guide has more ideas for the occasion.

To remember the WW1 timeline, hang it on one image per year: Sarajevo for 1914, Gallipoli for 1915, the Somme for 1916, the US entry for 1917 and the Armistice for 1918. Five anchors carry the whole war. Coloring one scene for each turns the anchors into pictures.

The First World War coloring book follows the war in that order, with 30+ researched scenes and a verified fact on each. It is an instant PDF you can print tonight on A4 or US Letter, and reprint for every family member or student. See why the method works in learning history through coloring, or compare formats in our PDF vs physical coloring book guide.

For the war that followed, the First and Second World War bundle carries the story on to 1945. It also makes a gift that gets used; see our best gifts for history lovers.

Five years from Sarajevo to Versailles, four of them at war, and five anchor dates that carry the whole story. Learn them in order and the war stops being a blur.

Print the first scene tonight, start with the shot in Sarajevo, and color your way to the silence of 11 November.