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The mass of volunteers in 1914–1915, popularly known as Kitchener's Army, was destined to go into action at the battle of the Somme. [ 1 ] : 504 In January 1916 , conscription was introduced (initially of single men, extended to married men in May), and by the end of 1918, the army had reached its peak of strength of 4.5 million men.
The Battle of Liège was the first battle of the war, and could be considered a moral victory for the allies, as the heavily outnumbered Belgians held out against the German Army for 12 days. From 5 to 16 August 1914, the Belgians successfully resisted the numerically superior Germans, and inflicted surprisingly heavy losses on their aggressors.
The Battle of Britain (German: Luftschlacht um England) was an effort by the German Air Force during the summer and autumn of 1940 to gain air superiority over the Royal Air Force (RAF) of the United Kingdom in preparation for the planned amphibious and airborne forces invasion of Britain by Operation Sea Lion.
In 1906, official histories were being written by three departments at the War Office and one in the Admiralty. Lord Esher, a member of the Committee of Imperial Defence, suggested that a subcommittee be established as the Historical Section, to centralise the collection of army and navy archives, as a repository of the lessons of war for strategists.
Before World War II, the events of 1914–1918 were generally known as the Great War or simply the World War. [1] In August 1914, the magazine The Independent wrote "This is the Great War. It names itself". [2] In October 1914, the Canadian magazine Maclean's similarly wrote, "Some wars name themselves. This is the Great War."
HMS Dreadnought.The 1902, 1904 and 1907 agreements with Japan, France and Russia allowed Britain to refocus resources during the Anglo-German naval arms race. In explaining why Britain went to war with Germany, British historian Paul Kennedy (1980) argued that a critical factor was the British realisation that Germany was rapidly becoming economically more powerful than Britain.
21 December – World War I: First bombing raid on Britain when a German floatplane drops bombs in Dover Harbour. [27] 24 December – World War I: British and German soldiers begin an unofficial Christmas truce. Britain's mainland is bombed for the first time when a German floatplane drops a bomb on Dover. [6]
The Battle of Britain (German: Luftschlacht um England, lit. 'air battle for England') was a military campaign of the Second World War, in which the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the Fleet Air Arm (FAA) of the Royal Navy defended the United Kingdom (UK) against large-scale attacks by Nazi Germany's air force, the Luftwaffe.