On this day in 1918, in a conference of Allied military leaders at Abbeville, France, the U.S., Britain and France argue over the entrance of American troops into World War I. On March 23, two days after the launch of a major German offensive in northern France, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George telegraphed the […]

In the well-trafficked skies above the Somme River in France, Baron Manfred von Richthofen, the notorious German flying ace known as the Red Baron,” is killed by Allied fire on April 21, 1918. Richthofen, the son of a Prussian nobleman, switched from the German army to the Imperial Air Service in 1915. By 1916, he […]

With the Germans, in the throes of a major spring offensive on the Western Front, hammering their positions in Flanders, France, British forces evacuate Passchendaele Ridge, won by the Allies at such a terrible cost just five months earlier, on April 15, 1918. Under the command of Erich von Ludendorff, the German army launched “Operation […]

As part of Germany’s support of Finland and its newly declared parliamentary government, German troops wrest control of Helsingfors (Helsinki) from the Red Guard, an army of Finnish supporters of the Russian Bolsheviks, on April 13, 1918. Finland, under Russian control since 1809, took the opportunity of the upheaval in Russia in 1917 (including the […]

The Congress of Oppressed Nationalities, convened in Rome, Italy, during the second week of April 1918, closes on April 10, after representatives from the Czechoslovak, South Slav (or Yugoslav), Romanian and Polish National Committees proclaim their right to become “completely independent national States” after World War I ends. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s call for “self-determination” […]

On this day in 1918, German troops launch “Operation Georgette” the second phase of their final, last-ditch spring offensive, against Allied positions in Armentieres, France, on the River Lys. On March 21, 1918, the Germans under Erich Ludendorff, chief of the general staff, launched their first major offensive on the Western Front in more than […]

One month after Russia signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, formally ending its participation in World War I, Winston Churchill secretly proposes to the British War Cabinet a method by which Britain’s former ally could be persuaded to reenter the war. Russia’s withdrawal from the war was a direct result of the sweeping revolution of 1917 […]

On April 5, 1918, General Erich Ludendorff formally ends “Operation Michael,” the first stage of the final major German offensive of World War I. Operation Michael, which marked the first sizeable German offensive against Allied positions on the Western Front in more than a year, began on March 21, 1918, with a five-hour-long bombardment of […]