The Road to War and Beyond Timeline

Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia, thus beginning World War 1.

Werner Horn, a German officer, is arrested in Maine for a bombing that damages the Saint Croix-Vanceboro Railway Bridge, which connects the U.S. and Canada.

A German U-boat torpedoes and sinks the RMS Lusitania. Of the more than 1,900 passengers and crew members on board, more than 1,100 perished, including more than 120 Americans.

Woodrow Wilson is reelected under the campaign slogan “he kept us out of the war.”

The United States severs diplomatic relations with Germany. President Wilson tells a joint session of Congress that Germany’s policy of unrestricted U-boat warfare poses an unacceptable threat to “freedom of the seas.”

German U-boat torpedoes the U.S.S. Aztec without warning as it enters British waters. Twenty-eight Americans drown.

The United States declares war on Germany.

In Washington, D.C., a blindfolded Secretary of War Newton D. Baker draws the first capsules from a large fishbowl in a lottery for the first American draftees, as prescribed under the Selective Service Act.

Soldiers of the First Division enter combat on the Western Front under French command. It is less than two weeks later, on Nov. 1, when First American soldiers, members of the 1st Division, are killed in action: James Gresham, Merle D. Hay and Thomas F. Enright

The disease, known as the “Spanish flu,” spreads through contact or close proximity to infected persons. It is carried from the U.S. overseas on troop ships to the Western Front and then throughout the world. Over the next year, 550,000 Americans will die from the disease and more than 20 million worldwide.

The U.S. 1st Division’s 28th Infantry Regiment mounts an assault on the German observation strongpoint in broad daylight. Within thirty-five minutes, the Doughboys have the village. The next day, desperate German counterattacks fail to dislodge the Americans.

By war’s end, the U.S. Navy places a total of 56,570 sea mines, helping to create a 300-mile barrier against Germany, stretching from Scotland to Norway. At least five U-Boats were sunk by the barrage and many others forced to waste valuable time avoiding the mines.

Czar Nicholas II, his wife and children are shot by Bolsheviks at Ekaterinburg.

Germany signs Armistice.

The Preamble states that the League will exist to promote international cooperation and to achieve international peace and security through specific rules of conduct among the world’s governments.

Representatives of Germany and the Allied and Associated Powers sign the Treaty of Versailles. The Chinese delegates refuse to sign in protest against the Shantung settlement that turns over German mines railroads and telegraph cables in China to the Japanese.

President Wilson submits the Versailles Treaty to the Senate and the great debate ensues.

The President embarks on an 8,000-mile journey, giving 40 speeches in 29 cities in 22 days to build support for the Treaty of Versailles. He collapses from exhaustion and is rushed back to the White House. The following month he suffers a stroke.

In attendance at the Liberty Memorial groundbreaking ceremony in Kansas City, MO, were 200,000 people, including then-Vice President Calvin Coolidge, Lieutenant General Baron Jacques of Belgium, Admiral Earl Beatty of Great Britain, General Armando Diaz of Italy, Marshal Ferdinand Foch of France, and General John Pershing of the United States, along with sixty thousand members of the American Legion.