Sequencing the War, 1914 to 1919

The idea

Put the war on one line by year and the turning points sort themselves. Nineteen fourteen: Sarajevo on the twenty-eighth of June, Austria's declaration on the twenty-eighth of July, Britain in on the fourth of August, the Marne and Tannenberg in September, trenches by winter. Nineteen fifteen: gas, Gallipoli, the Lusitania in May, Italy's entry. Nineteen sixteen: Verdun from February, Jutland, the Somme from July, the Arab Revolt. Nineteen seventeen: unrestricted submarine warfare in February, Zimmermann in March, America in April, Russia's revolutions. Nineteen eighteen: the Fourteen Points in January, Brest-Litovsk, the Spring Offensive in March, Kiel and the abdication in November, the armistice on the eleventh. Nineteen nineteen: Versailles in June. The shape: two years of failed plans and invented trench war, one year of attrition, one year of exits and entries, one year of collapse. Practice by naming the year of each before checking the month.