The First World War

1918

Nearly sixty thousand British soldiers became casualties on the first morning alone, the worst single day in the army's history, and the ground gained by the time the offensive stopped four months later measured under seven miles.

A German general designed a battle specifically to kill French soldiers rather than to capture ground, a strategy of attrition so explicit it survives in his own recorded planning language.

1919

1915

It was never Spanish, and wartime censorship is the only reason the name stuck: Spain simply had a free press willing to report it.

Trotsky tried to end Russia's war by simply declaring it over without signing anything, a strategy called neither war nor peace that lasted exactly until Germany resumed advancing and proved it did not work.

1919

One historian has compared the Sarajevo assassination to a modern terrorist attack, a single event 'charged with historic meaning' rather than proof that war was already unavoidable before the shot was fired.