World War 1 Timeline: 1914-1918 Year by Year
World War 1 lasted 1,568 days: from Austria-Hungary's declaration of war on Serbia on 28 July 1914 to the armistice that took effect at 11:00 Paris time on 11 November 1918. That is four years, three months and two weeks, and inside it sit four very different wars: the war of movement in 1914, the trench deadlock of 1915-1916, the political turning point of 1917, and the final offensives of 1918. This World War 1 timeline is written for readers who want a usable skeleton of dates rather than a pile of disconnected facts. At the end you will see how the same rhythm of escalation plays out in a match of Frontkrieg, a free browser grand strategy game.
Five dates that hold the whole timeline together
- 28 July 1914: Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia. The formal start.
- 5-12 September 1914: the Battle of the Marne. The plan for a quick victory in the west collapses.
- 21 February 1916: the Verdun offensive opens and runs for roughly 300 days.
- 6 April 1917: the United States declares war on Germany.
- 11 November 1918: the Compiegne armistice ends the fighting.
Memorise those five points and everything else slots in between them. Here is the year-by-year breakdown.
1914: from Sarajevo to a continuous line of trenches
The July Crisis: 37 days from an assassination to a world war
Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. The chain of alliance commitments did the rest: on 23 July Vienna issued an ultimatum to Serbia, on 28 July it declared war, on 1 August Germany declared war on Russia, on 3 August on France, and on 4 August Britain entered after German troops invaded neutral Belgium. Thirty-seven days separated a single shot from a continent-wide war. The full breakdown of that escalation is in Why World War 1 Started.
August to December: manoeuvre that ended with a shovel
The first weeks were a war of movement. Between 26 and 30 August German forces destroyed the Russian Second Army at Tannenberg, while in the west the German advance reached the outskirts of Paris. From 5 to 12 September the French and British armies stopped it on the Marne, burying the assumption that the campaign could be won in six weeks. What followed was the so-called Race to the Sea, with each side trying to outflank the other and hitting a new line every time. By December 1914 the front had hardened into a continuous trench system roughly 700 kilometres long, from the North Sea to the Swiss border.
1915: the year the war turned positional
1915 barely moved the western front, but it changed the nature of the fighting. On 22 April at Ypres the German army used chlorine gas on a large scale for the first time. On 25 April the Entente landed at Gallipoli, an operation that ended eight months later in evacuation with nothing gained. On 7 May a German submarine sank the liner Lusitania, poisoning Germany's standing in American public opinion for years.
The east and south moved faster. In May the Gorlice breakthrough pushed Russian forces back hundreds of kilometres, on 23 May Italy joined the Entente, and in October Bulgaria joined the Central Powers and helped overrun Serbia. The result was simple: the coalitions grew, and victory came no closer. Why defence beat attack so decisively is covered in the article on trench warfare.
1916: the year of attrition
1916 produced three battles that ended up in every textbook. The German offensive at Verdun opened on 21 February and ran until 18 December; both sides together lost roughly 700,000 men killed and wounded. On 31 May and 1 June the Battle of Jutland brought the main British and German fleets together for the only time: tactically inconclusive, strategically it left the British naval blockade intact.
On 4 June the Brusilov Offensive began, the most successful Russian operation of the war. On 1 July the Allies attacked on the Somme, where the British Army suffered 57,470 casualties on the first day alone, 19,240 of them killed - the worst single day in British military history. On 15 September 1916, also on the Somme, tanks were used in combat for the first time. How those machines shifted the balance, and how they behave in game, is covered in WW1 tanks, while the fighting in the east is detailed in the Eastern Front.
1917: politics outweighs artillery
On 1 February 1917 Germany declared unrestricted submarine warfare, betting on starving Britain out within months. The bet failed, and on 6 April the United States entered the war, tilting the manpower and industrial balance decisively toward the Entente. The Nivelle Offensive failed in April, after which large parts of the French army refused to attack.
The east changed in parallel. The February Revolution broke Russian army discipline, the Bolsheviks took power on 7 November, and an armistice on the Eastern Front was signed on 15 December. The British offensive at Passchendaele ran from July to November and cost hundreds of thousands of casualties for a few kilometres of mud. The American decision is unpacked in Why the US entered World War 1.
1918: the last push and the armistice
On 3 March 1918 the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk took Russia out of the war and freed German divisions for the west. The Spring Offensive opened on 21 March: in places the Germans advanced tens of kilometres, something unseen since 1914, but without reserves they could not hold the tempo. On 18 July the Allies counterattacked on the Marne, and on 8 August at Amiens came what Erich Ludendorff called the black day of the German Army.
In the autumn the Central Powers collapsed one by one: Bulgaria capitulated on 29 September, the Ottoman Empire on 30 October, Austria-Hungary on 3 November. At 05:10 on 11 November 1918, in a railway carriage in the forest of Compiegne, the armistice was signed; it took effect at 11:00. The terms and consequences are covered in How World War 1 ended.
What this timeline teaches a Frontkrieg player
A skeleton of dates is not only exam material. It exposes three patterns that also govern a match on a 4,800-province map where a new game starts every day.
- Tempo is uneven. The war began mobile, froze for two years, and turned mobile again at the end. A match runs the same way: fluid opening days, a long positional middle, an abrupt finish.
- Windows are short. The Marne in 1914 and Amiens in 1918 were decided in days. If your strike force is ready and your neighbour's is not, hesitating costs more than a mistake.
- Coalitions win wars, single armies do not. Germany did not lose one battle; it lost a resource race against a larger coalition. With dozens of live players and 70 AI-run nations in a match, diplomacy weighs as much as the front line.
Frequently asked questions
How long did World War 1 last?
World War 1 lasted 1,568 days, or four years, three months and two weeks, from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. For several countries the legal state of war ended later, with the peace treaties signed in 1919 and 1920.
What happened between 1914 and 1918?
Four phases: a war of movement in 1914 that ended in stalemate, trench deadlock through 1915 and 1916 with Verdun and the Somme, a political turning point in 1917 when the United States entered and Russia left, and the 1918 offensives that ended in the armistice.
What was the order of events in WW1?
Sarajevo assassination in June 1914, declarations of war in July and August 1914, the Marne in September 1914, gas at Ypres and Gallipoli in 1915, Verdun, Jutland, Brusilov and the Somme in 1916, US entry and the Russian revolutions in 1917, then Brest-Litovsk, the Spring Offensive, Amiens and the armistice in 1918.
When and how did World War 1 end?
Fighting stopped at 11:00 on 11 November 1918 after the armistice was signed at Compiegne. The final settlement was fixed by the Treaty of Versailles, signed on 28 June 1919.
Conclusion
A World War 1 timeline is not a list of dates for its own sake; it is a map of tempo, with a fast start, a long grind and a short finish. Seeing those phases makes both 1914 and your own strategy match far easier to read.
The fastest way to test these patterns is to play one yourself. A new match starts every day and registration is free: pick a game in the lobby. More history and mechanics breakdowns are in the blog.