World War I Battles and Battlefields

The First World War, often called the Great War, was fought from 1914 to 1918 and produced some of the most costly battles in human history. After rapid movement in the opening weeks, the war on the Western Front settled into a long stalemate of trench warfare, in which opposing armies faced each other across fortified lines stretching from the North Sea to the Swiss frontier.

Several battles came to symbolise the character of the conflict. The Battle of Verdun in 1916 was one of the longest and bloodiest engagements of the war, fought between French and German forces. The fighting in Flanders, including the area remembered through the poem “In Flanders Fields,” saw repeated offensives over waterlogged ground. The Gallipoli campaign of 1915, an Allied attempt to force the Dardanelles in the Ottoman Empire, ended in costly failure. On the Eastern Front, fighting ranged across a more mobile and far broader area between Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia, while the Balkans, where the war's spark was lit, formed another theatre.

The battlefields of 1914 and 1915, and the great attritional battles that followed, were shaped by new and deadly technology, including machine guns, heavy artillery and poison gas. The enormous casualties for limited territorial gains made the war a byword for futile slaughter. Today these battlefields, with their preserved trenches, monuments and vast military cemeteries, are major sites of remembrance across Europe.

Frequently asked questions

Why did the Western Front become a stalemate?

Machine guns, artillery and entrenched defences made attacks extremely costly, so the front settled into static trench warfare with little movement for years.

What was the Battle of Verdun?

It was a prolonged 1916 battle between French and German forces, among the longest and most lethal of the war, fought over fortified positions near Verdun in France.

What was the Gallipoli campaign?

It was an Allied attempt in 1915 to seize the Dardanelles straits from the Ottoman Empire. The operation failed after heavy losses and was eventually abandoned.