Epic History: World War One - 1915

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• published: 02 Jan 2016
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The second year of World War One in 13 minutes, with maps and a blow-by-blow account so you can follow events in detail, and make sense of the big picture. Help Epic History TV to keep making videos by pledging as little as one dollar per video at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/EpicHistoryTV?ty=h Fokker Eindecker images courtesy of Jerry Boucher. Check out his excellent collection of military aviation art at The Virtual Aircraft Website http://www.the-vaw.com/ Website: http://www.epichistory.tv Twitter: https://twitter.com/EpicHistoryTV 'World War One - 1915' is the second of our five-part series covering the Great War. This episode covers one of the first strategic bombing raids in history, when two German Zeppelin airships bombed the British ports of King's Lynn and Great Yarmouth. At sea, the British Royal Navy won the Battle of Dogger Bank. Germany then announced an Exclusion Zone around the British Isles, where its U-boats would wage 'unrestricted submarine warfare' against British ships. On the Eastern Front, 1915 began with further success for German Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, defeating the Russians at the Second Battle of Masurian Lakes, and taking 100,000 prisoners. But the Russians had their own success at Przemyśl, taking 100,000 Austro-Hungarian prisoners of their own. British and French battleships arrived at the Dardanelles, intending to force the Ottoman Empire to surrender by threatening its capital, Constantinople. But Turkish shore-forts and sea mines caused heavy losses amongst Allied ships. Troops landed at Gallipoli, including the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZACs), became pinned down by fierce Turkish resistance. On the Western Front, the British attacked at Neuve Chapelle. Indian Army units played a major role, but the offensive ended in failure. A German attack, the Second Battle of Ypres, opened with the first use of chemical weapons on the Western Front. Large clouds of chlorine gas helped the Germans to seize French frontline trenches almost unopposed, but the Allies later fought the German to a standstill. In April, the Ottoman Empire began the arrest, deportation and execution of ethnic Armenians, whom they suspected of sympathising with Turkey's enemies. The events remain controversial, with the Turkish government arguing that the number of deaths has been exaggerated and cannot be described as 'genocide'. Most historians and many other national governments disagree, describing these events as the Armenian Genocide and placing the death-toll between 1 and 1.5 million. On the Eastern Front, a joint German-Austro-Hungarian operation, the Gorlice–Tarnów Offensive, breaks through Russian lines and leads to huge gains. Przemyśl is recaptured, and soon the Russian army is in general retreat, abandoning Poland. Tsar Nicholas II replaced his cousin, Grand Duke Nicholas, as commander-in-chief of the army. At sea, British passenger ship RMS Lusitania was sunk by a U-boat, leading to 1198 civilian deaths, including 128 Americans. President Woodrow Wilson and the American public were outraged. The sinking of SS Arabic later in the year resulted in three more American deaths. In response to American warnings, Germany agreed to suspend attacks on passenger ships. A new Allied attempt to break the Western Front stalemate at the Second Battle of Artois ended with heavy losses, after failed attacks at Vimy Ridge, Aubers Ridge and Festubert. In the air, Germany gained air superiority thanks to the Fokker Eindecker, a monoplane armed with a forward-firing machine-gun. In June 1915 Italy joined the war, attacking Austria-Hungary in the first of many battles of the Isonzo River. At Gallipoli, the Allies failed to break the stalemate with new landings at Suvla Bay and a series of attacks known as the Battle of Sari Bair (including ANZAC assaults at Lone Pine and the Nek.) France and Britain launched their Great Autumn Offensive to relieve pressure on their Russian ally. But French attacks at the Third Battle of Artois and Second Battle of Champagne, as well as a British attack at the Battle of Loos, led to massive losses with few significant gains. In the Balkans, the Allies landed troops at Salonika in Greece, hoping to bring aid to Serbia. But when Bulgaria entered the war on the side of the Central Powers, Serbian forces were outflanked and outnumbered. Belgrade fell, and Serbia was overrun. The Serbian army fled through the Albanian mountains, but suffered catastrophic losses from hunger and cold. In the Middle East, a British advance on Baghdad was stopped by Ottoman forces at the Battle of Ctesiphon. The British force, largely made up of Indian Army troops, retreated to Kut, where it was besieged.