On this day in the Great War

from the History Channel:

December 16, 1914
Germans bombard English ports of Hartlepool and Scarborough
At approximately 8 o’clock in the morning, German battle cruisers from Franz von Hipper’s Scouting Squadron catch the British navy by surprise as they begin heavy bombardment of Hartlepool and Scarborough, English port cities on the North Sea.

The bombardment lasted for about one and a half hours, killing more than 130 civilians and wounding another 500. It would unleash a damning response from the British press, which pointed to the incident as yet another example of German brutality. The German navy, however, saw the two port cities as valid targets due to their fortified status.

Two defense batteries in Hartlepool responded to the attacks, damaging three of the German vessels, including the heavy cruiser Blucher. Hipper’s squadron hoped to draw British forces to pursue them across waters freshly laced with mines. Another German fleet, commanded by Admiral Friedrich von Ingenohl, sat waiting offshore to provide support. A major confrontation did not take place, however, as the British decided to keep most of their fleet—depleted by the dispatch of their major cruisers to pursue the dangerous squadron of Admiral Maximilian von Spee—in the harbor.

An attempt by the Scouting Squadron one month later to repeat the tactics used to surprise the British at Scarborough and Hartlepool resulted in the Battle of Dogger Bank, where Hipper’s squadron was defeated but managed to avoid capture.
 
from the History Channel:

December 18, 1916
Battle of Verdun ends
The Battle of Verdun, the longest engagement of World War I, ends on this day after ten months and close to a million total casualties suffered by German and French troops.

The battle had begun on February 21, after the Germans—led by Chief of Staff Erich von Falkenhayn—developed a plan to attack the fortress city of Verdun, on the Meuse River in France. Falkenhayn believed that the French army was more vulnerable than the British, and that a major defeat on the Western Front would push the Allies to open peace negotiations. From the beginning, casualties mounted quickly on both sides of the conflict, and after some early gains of territory by the Germans, the battle settled into a bloody stalemate. Among the weapons in the German arsenal was the newly-invented flammenwerfer, or flamethrower; that year also saw the first use by the Germans of phosgene gas, ten times more lethal than the chlorine gas they previously used.

As fighting at Verdun stretched on and on, German resources were stretched thinner by having to confront both a British-led offensive on the Somme River and Russia’s Brusilov Offensive on the Eastern Front. In July, the Kaiser, frustrated by the state of things at Verdun, removed Falkenhayn and sent him to command the 9th Army in Transylvania; Paul von Hindenburg took his place. By early December, under Robert Nivelle, who had been appointed to replace Philippe PÉtain in April, the French had managed to recapture much of their lost territory, and in the last three days of battle took 11,000 German prisoners before Hindenburg finally called a stop to the German attacks.

The massive loss of life at Verdun—143,000 German dead out of 337,000 casualties, to France’s 162,440 out of 377,231—would come to symbolize, more than that of any other battle, the bloody nature of trench warfare on the Western Front.
 
from the History Channel:

December 19, 1915
Haig becomes commander-in-chief of the British army in France
In the wake of the British defeat at the Battle of Loos in September 1915, Sir Douglas Haig replaces Sir John French as commander-in-chief of all British forces on the Western Front.

Haig, who commanded the 1st Army of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) at Loos, had asked French to authorize the release of two reserve divisions before the battle. French eventually consented, but due to disorganization and the long distance they had to travel, the reserves arrived too late to make a difference. The offensive at Loos ended in failure, and the incident contributed to French’s removal from his position in December in favor of Haig, who enjoyed some influence with King George V.

The controversial Haig served as commander of the BEF through the end of the war—from devastating battles at Verdun and the Somme to the Allied offensives in 1918 that would lead to victory—despite criticism from such formidable detractors as British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, who wrote later that at times he wondered if he should have resigned rather than allow Haig to pursue his strategy.

-If I remember the quote right, Lloyd George said he was "brilliant to the tops of his boots"
Cheers,
shredward
 
from the History Channel:

December 20, 1914

First Battle of Champagne begins
After minor skirmishes, the First Battle of Champagne begins in earnest, marking the first major Allied attack against the Germans since the initiation of trench warfare on the Western Front.
Still determined to win a quick victory, and despite early defeats in the trenches against German positions, French commander Joseph Joffre planned a major offensive stretching throughout the Artois and Champagne regions of France from Nieuport in the north to Verdun in the south. After minor attacks on December 10 near Perthes in eastern Champagne, heavy fighting occurred simultaneously at Givenchy, Perthes, and Noyon, where the numerical advantage enjoyed by the French resulted in few gains in territory. The Germans were well-entrenched and their defense proved superior. From the outset of the war, machine gun battalions were used along with the regular infantry, which proved lethally effective in Champagne.

Winter weather made for dismal conditions on the battlefield: guns became clogged with mud and refused to fire, and heavy rainfall often made the trenches practically unusable. Fighting continued in the region from mid-December until mid-February, when the French paused briefly to reorganize, and then again until March 17, 1915. On that day, due to their continuing lack of gains and the strength of German counter-attacks since the beginning of the year, the French called off the attack. Joffre did not give up hope of eventual success in Champagne, however, and would begin another offensive there in the fall of 1915.
 
from the History Channel:

December 21, 1915
Sir William Robertson is appointed chief of the Imperial General Staff
Shortly after Sir Douglas Haig is installed as the new commander-in-chief of the British forces, his steadfast supporter, Sir William Robertson, is appointed the new chief of the Imperial General Staff, with King George's backing and over the head of the embattled British war secretary, Sir Horatio Kitchener.

Robertson, who first enlisted as a private solder in 1877, became the only man in the British army to rise from such humble beginnings to the rank of field marshal by the end of the Great War. His impressive ascent included stints as an officer in India and South Africa; positions in British Intelligence in both the Russian and colonial areas; head of the Foreign Section of the War Office in London; chief of the general staff under Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien; commandant of the Staff College from 1910 to 1913; and finally director of military training at the War Office, where he was serving when war broke out in August 1914.

With the start of war, Robertson was plucked from his duties in London and sailed to Boulogne, France, as quartermaster-general of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), then led by Sir John French. When Haig replaced French on December 19, 1915, the new commander-in-chief saw his chance to appoint his ally to replace Sir Archibald Murray as chief of an Imperial General Staff that had been allowed to weaken under Kitchener's watch since before the war.

The strong-willed Robertson had already concluded by the time of his appointment that the war could only be won on the Western Front. He wrote to Kitchener on December 27 that "we can only end the war in our favour by attrition or by breaking through the German line." In this view, Robertson coincided with Haig, but the force of his personality ensured that he would be more that just Haig's puppet. In his new role, he effectively served as a liaison between the army and the government. He supported the ousting of Prime Minister Herbert Asquith in December 1916 in favor of David Lloyd George, then clashed bitterly with Lloyd George over the latter's attempts to subordinate Haig and Robertson himself through the formation of a Superior War Council that would direct the war's policy. In early 1918, when the new council created a strategic reserve corps of its own, against Haig's wishes and out of Robertson's command, Robertson resigned his position. He was replaced by Sir Henry Wilson.

Robertson subsequently returned to London. After the war, he served as commander in chief of the British Army on the Rhine. In March 1920, he was made a field marshal. He published two memoirs about his military career: From Private to Field Marshal and Soldiers and Statesmen. Sir William Robertson died in 1933.
 
from the History Channel:

December 29, 1915
French government gives land for British war cemeteries
On this day in 1915, the French National Assembly passes a law formally ceding the land that holds the British war cemeteries to Great Britain. The move ensured even as the war was being fought that its saddest and most sacred monuments would be forever protected.

The law stated that the land was “the free gift of the French people for a perpetual resting place of those who are laid there.” By the end of the war, it would apply to more than 1,200 cemeteries along the Western Front, the majority located near the battlefields in the Somme, Nord, and Pas-de-Calais regions. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission, established in 1917 by a British royal charter, supervised the construction of the cemeteries and their monuments, which were designed by some of the most prominent British architects of the day. The last monument was put in place in 1938.

The French office of the commission is charged with the maintenance of these cemeteries; between 400 and 500 members of its staff tend the graves and the surrounding horticulture. In addition to the cemeteries, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission also tends to the numerous monuments that exist on the Western Front to commemorate the missing. One of the largest of these stands at Thiepval, on the Somme battlefield, and bears the names of 73,357 British and South African soldiers and officers who died there between July 1915 and March 1918 and whose final resting place is not known.
 
Researchers unlock secrets of 1918 flu pandemic
Mon Dec 29, 2008 5:44pm EST
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers have found out what made the 1918 flu pandemic so deadly -- a group of three genes that lets the virus invade the lungs and cause pneumonia.

They mixed samples of the 1918 influenza strain with modern seasonal flu viruses to find the three genes and said their study might help in the development of new flu drugs.

The discovery, published in Tuesday's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could also point to mutations that might turn ordinary flu into a dangerous pandemic strain.

Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin and colleagues at the Universities of Kobe and Tokyo in Japan used ferrets, which develop flu in ways very similar to humans.

Usually flu causes an upper respiratory infection affecting the nose and throat, as well as so-called systemic illness causing fever, muscle aches and weakness.

But some people become seriously ill and develop pneumonia. Sometimes bacteria cause the pneumonia and sometimes flu does it directly.

During pandemics, such as in 1918, a new and more dangerous flu strain emerges.

"The 1918 influenza pandemic was the most devastating outbreak of infectious disease in human history, accounting for about 50 million deaths worldwide," Kawaoka's team wrote.

It killed 2.5 percent of victims, compared to fewer than 1 percent during most annual flu epidemics. Autopsies showed many of the victims, often otherwise healthy young adults, died of severe pneumonia.

"We wanted to know why the 1918 flu caused severe pneumonia," Kawaoka said in a statement.

They painstakingly substituted single genes from the 1918 virus into modern flu viruses and, one after another, they acted like garden-variety flu, infecting only the upper respiratory tract.

But a complex of three genes helped to make the virus live and reproduce deep in the lungs.

The three genes -- called PA, PB1, and PB2 -- along with a 1918 version of the nucleoprotein or NP gene, made modern seasonal flu kill ferrets in much the same way as the original 1918 flu, Kawaoka's team found.

Most flu experts agree that a pandemic of influenza will almost certainly strike again. No one knows when or what strain it will be but one big suspect now is the H5N1 avian influenza virus.
 
from the History Channel:

January 1, 1915
Formidable is torpedoed
In the early-morning hours of New Year’s Day, 1915, the 15,000-ton British HMS class battleship Formidable is torpedoed by the German submarine U-24 and sinks in the English Channel, killing 547 men. The Formidable was part of the 5th Battle Squadron unit serving with the Channel Fleet. The Formidable and the seven other battleships of the 5th Battle Squadron were under the command of Admiral Lewis Bayly, and were in the channel for firing practice on New Year’s Eve.

Unbeknownst to the British, the German submarine U-24, captained by Rudolph Schneider, had been watching the squadron all day and waiting for the perfect moment to strike. Schneider found his moment with the squadron heading west in Lyme Bay. At a little before 0230 hours the German submarine fired a torpedo into the starboard side of the Formidable by the fore funnel. The battleship began taking on water and began to list to its starboard side before being plunged into darkness. The German captain maneuvered the submarine into position and fired a second torpedo into the port side of the Formidable about 45 minutes after the first strike. The Formidable was now taking on water fast and capsized and sank about 90 minutes after the second torpedo strike. Only 233 of the original crew of 780 survived.
 
from the History Channel:

January 5, 1916
First conscription bill is introduced in British Parliament
With the Great War edging into its third calendar year, British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith introduces the first military conscription bill in his country’s history to the House of Commons on this day in 1916.

Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchener, Britain’s secretary of state for war, had warned from the beginning that the war would be decided by Britain’s last 1 million men. All the regular divisions of the British army went into action in the summer of 1914 and the campaign for volunteers based around the slogan "Your King and Country Need You!” began in earnest in August of that year. New volunteers were rapidly enlisted and trained, many of them joining what were known as “Pals battalions,” or regiments of men from the same town or from similar professional backgrounds.

Though the volunteer response was undoubtedly impressive—almost 500,000 men enlisted in the first six weeks of the war alone—some doubted the quality of these so-called “Kitchener armies.” British General Henry Wilson, a career military man, wrote in his diary of his country’s "ridiculous and preposterous army" and compared it unfavorably to that of Germany, which, with the help of conscription, had been steadily building and improving its armed forces for the past 40 years.

By the end of 1915, as the war proved to be far longer and bloodier than expected and the army shrank—Britain had lost 60,000 officers by late summer—it had become clear to Kitchener that military conscription would be necessary to win the war. Asquith, though he feared conscription would be a politically unattractive proposition, finally submitted. On January 5, 1916, he introduced the first conscription bill to Parliament. It was passed into law as the Military Service Act later that month and went into effect on February 10.

Britain had entered the war believing that its primary role would be to provide industrial and economic support to its allies, but by war's end the country had enlisted 49 percent of its men between the ages of 15 and 49 for military service, a clear testament to the immense human sacrifice the conflict demanded.
 
from Wikipaedia
January 6, 1916

King Edward VII sunk

On 6 January 1916, King Edward VII, having transferred her flag temporarily, departed Scapa Flow at 0712 hours on a voyage around the northern coast of Scotland to Belfast, where she was scheduled to undergo a refit. At 1047 hours she struck a mine that had been laid by the German auxiliary cruiser SMS Möwe off Cape Wrath. The explosion occurred under the starboard engine room, and King Edward VII listed eight degrees to starboard. Her commanding officer, Captain MacLachlin, ordered her helm put over to starboard to close the coast and beach the ship if necessary, but the helm jammed hard to starboard and the engine rooms quickly flooded, stopping the engines. Counterflooding reduced her list to five degrees.
Signals to the passing collier Princess Melita induced her to close with King Edward VII and attempt to tow the battleship; soon flotilla leader HMS Kempfenfelt also arrived and joined the tow attempt. Towing began at 1415 hours, but King Edward VII settled deeper in the water and took on a 15-degee list in a rising sea and strong winds and proved unmanageable. Princess Melita's towline parted at 1440 hours, after which Captain MacLachlin ordered Kempfenfelt to slip her tow as well.
With flooding continuing and darkness approaching, Captain MacLachlin ordered King Edward VII abandoned. Destroyer Musketeer came alongside at 1445 hours, and she and destroyers Fortune and Marne, took off the crew without loss of life, the last man off being Captain MacLachlin, who boarded destroyer Nessus at 1610 hours. Fortune, Marne, and Musketeer departed to take the battleship's crew to port, while Nessus stayed on the scene until 1720 hours with tugs that had arrived to assist. After Nessus departed, the tugs continued to stand by, and saw King Edward VII capsize at 2010 hours and sink around nine hours after the explosion.
At the time it was not clear whether King Edward VII had hit a naval mine or a been torpedoed. The presence of the minefield was determined from an examination of German records after the war.
The wreck of King Edward VII, in 115 meters of water, was first visited by divers in April 1997.
Like all British battleships since the Majestic class, the King Edward VII-class ships had four 12-inch guns in two twin turrets (one forward and one aft). Mounting of the 6-inch guns was in a central battery amidships protected by 7-inch armored walls. King Edward VII and her sisters were the first British battleships with balanced rudders since the 1870s and were very maneuverable, with a tactical diameter of 340 yards at 15 knots. However, they were difficult to keep on a straight course, and this characteristic led to them being nicknamed "the Wobbly Eight" during their 1914-1916 service in the Grand Fleet. They had a slightly faster roll than previous British battleship classes, but were good gun platforms, although very wet in bad weather.
By 1914, King Edward VII and her sister ships were, like all predreadnoughts, so outclassed that they spent much of their 1914-1916 Grand Fleet service steaming at the heads of divisions of the far more valuable dreadnoughts, protecting the dreadnoughts from naval mines by being the first battleships to either sight or strike them.
 
from the History Channel:

January 7, 1915
Bolshevik envoy approaches German ambassador in Turkey
As Bolshevik groups work to foment revolution among Russia’s peasants, Alexander Helphand, a wealthy Bolshevik businessman working as a German agent, approaches the German ambassador to Turkey in Constantinople to let him know how closely German and Bolshevik interests are aligned.

“The interests of the German government are identical with those of the Russian revolutionaries,” Helphand claimed. The Bolsheviks were working feverishly to destroy the czarist regime and break the country into smaller socialist republics. At the same time, Germany was depending on a major upheaval within Russia to break the stalemate on the Eastern Front and push the immense but volatile country toward peace negotiations with the Germans. Helphand persuaded the German Foreign Ministry that a mass strike was the key to revolution in Russia—and that Germany should lend a hand to the Bolsheviks in their efforts to engineer that strike.

The conversation marked the beginning of Germany’s growing interest in the fomentation of the Russian revolution—an interest that culminated in their facilitation, in April 1917, of the return of exiled Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin from Switzerland to Petrograd in a train that passed over German soil. His journey was the result of efforts made by the German foreign secretary, Arthur Zimmermann, to convince the Kaiser and the army that Lenin’s presence was paramount to the success of revolution in Russia—a revolution Germany should support despite the inherent threat Marxism posed to imperial regimes like the kaiser’s. Germany did not have to wait long to see the results of its investment. In November 1917 Lenin and the Bolsheviks seized power. Barely a month later, Russia sought peace with Germany.
 
from the History Channel:

January 8, 1917
Wilson outlines the Fourteen Points
In an address before a joint meeting of Congress, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson discusses the aims of the United States in World War I and outlines his famous "Fourteen Points" for achieving a lasting peace in Europe.

The peace proposal, based on Wilson’s concept of “peace without victory,” called for the victorious Allies to set unselfish peace terms, including freedom of the seas, the restoration of territories conquered during the war and the right to national self-determination in such contentious regions as the Balkans. Most famously, Wilson called for the establishment of “a general association of nations”—what would become the League of Nations—to guarantee political independence to and protect the territorial lines of “great and small States alike.”

Wilson’s principal purpose in delivering the speech was to present a practical alternative both to the traditional notion of an international balance of power preserved by alliances among nations—belief in the viability of which had been shattered by the Great War—and to the Bolshevik-inspired dreams of world revolution that at the time were gaining ground both within and outside of Russia. Wilson hoped also to keep a conflict-ridden Russia in the war on the Allied side. This effort met with failure, as the Bolsheviks sought peace with the Central Powers at the end of 1917, shortly after taking power. In other ways, however, Wilson’s Fourteen Points played an essential role in world politics over the next several years. The speech was translated and distributed to the soldiers and citizens of Germany and Austria-Hungary and contributed significantly to their decision to agree to an armistice in November 1918.

Like the man himself, Wilson’s Fourteen Points were liberal, democratic and idealistic—he spoke in grand and inspiring terms but was less certain of the specifics of how his aims would be achieved. At Versailles, Wilson had to contend with the leaders of the other victorious nations, who disagreed with many of the Fourteen Points and demanded stiff penalties for Germany. The terms of the final peace treaty—including an ineffectual League of Nations convention that Wilson could not even convince his own Congress to ratify—fell far short of his lofty visions and are believed by many to have ultimately contributed to the outbreak of a second world war two decades later.
 
As a newbie to this forum and a history teacher, this is an outstanding thread! :ernae:
 
from the History Channel:

January 9, 1917
Battle of Khadairi Bend begins
After several months of preparations, British troops under the command of their new regional chief Sir Frederick Maude launch an offensive against Turkish forces at Khadairi Bend, to the north of Kut, Mesopotamia.

The British had previously occupied Kut, a strategically important town located on the Tigris River in the Basra province of Mesopotamia—modern-day Iraq—but had surrendered it, along with 10,000 troops under Sir Charles Townshend, in late April 1916 after a five-month siege by the Turks. The humiliating loss of Townshend’s forces caused the British War Office to seek a replacement for Sir John Nixon as regional commander in Mesopotamia. Maude, a cautious and systematic general, arrived in Mesopotamia in mid-1916 as commander of the front-line corps on the Tigris, relieving General George Gorringe, and was soon given command of the entire front. By October 1916, Maude had become determined to use the 150,000 troops under his command to launch a renewed offensive toward Kut.

On January 7 and 8, 1917, General Maude’s forces launched a series of minor diversionary attacks nearby as a lead-in to what turned out to be an unusually effective bombardment by artillery on January 9 at Khadairi Bend, a heavily fortified town in a loop of the Tigris north of Kut. The resulting battle continued for almost three weeks, including two counterattacks by the Turks, before the town fell on January 29. In a report Maude made of the offensive several months later, he recounted “severe hand-to-hand fighting” and “heavy losses” by the enemy at Khadairi Bend, which contrasted with some of the quicker victories earned by the British in the preceding months.

The Battle of Khadairi Bend proved to be just a prelude to the major Allied offensive in Mesopotamia, the Second Battle of Kut, which began the following month and ended with Kut in British hands. Spurred on by victory, Maude’s forces continued toward the region’s most important city, Baghdad, which fell on March 11.

Also on this day, the rearguard of the Newfoundland Regiment was evacuated from the Gallipoli peninsula: the disastrous Dardanelles campaign was finally over.
 
January 12, 1916
Kaiser awards Pour le Mérite

Max Immelmann becomes the first pilot to be awarded Pour le Mérite, Germany's highest military honour. The medal became colloquially known as the "Blue Max" in the German Air Service in honor of Immelmann. His medal was personally presented by Kaiser Wilhelm II on January 12, 1916. Oswald Boelcke received Pour le Mérite at the same ceremony. Each had claimed their eighth victories that very day, and a ceremony was quickly convened.

Cheers,
shredward
 
from the History Channel:

January 13, 1916
Battle of Wadi
In an attempt to relieve their compatriots under heavy siege by Turkish forces at Kut-al Amara in Mesopotamia, British forces under the command of Lieutenant General Fenton Aylmer launch an attack against Turkish defensive positions on the banks of the Wadi River.

British forces under Sir Charles Townshend had occupied Kut, a town on the Tigris River in the Basra province of Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) by September 1915. On December 5, the Turks had begun a siege of the town, inflicting heavy casualties. In response to Townshend’s calls for assistance, the British regional command, led by Sir John Nixon, assembled a relief force led by Aylmer that included three new infantry divisions dispatched from India.

On January 4, 1916, Aylmer set out up the Tigris from the British forward base at Ali Gharbi with 19,000 troops, 46 guns and two aircraft. His path was blocked by 22,500 Turkish troops and 72 guns under commander Nur-Ur-Din at Sheikh Sa’ad, just 15 kilometers upriver from Ali Gharbi and 32 kilometers from Kut. On January 6, Aylmer’s forces launched an initial attack, which the Turks quickly repelled, resulting in heavy British losses; another attack the next day failed as well. On the night of January 8-9, however, when Aylmer’s forces struck again, they were surprised to find that the Turkish troops had withdrawn for some unknown reason; Nur-Ur-Din was subsequently removed from command after he failed to justify the withdrawal.

Still, after losing more than 4,000 men, Aylmer’s troops were exhausted and demoralized as they continued to make their way up the Tigris toward Kut, and their progress was hampered by the region’s typical shortage of available roads and supply routes. Meanwhile, the Turkish army under new regional commander Khalil Pasha set up new and firmer defensive positions—with some 20,000 troops—along the banks of the smaller Wadi River, through which the British would have to pass in order to reach Kut.

Aylmer, aware of these enemy movements, planned to surround the Turkish forces, sending troops around to secure the area immediately behind the Turkish lines while simultaneously attacking with artillery from the front. The attack, which began in the early afternoon of January 13—postponed from the morning because of a persistent mist and a slow advance by artillery across the river—quickly lost the intended element of surprise, as the outnumbered British forces on both sides of enemy lines struggled to assert themselves against a robust Turkish defense. By the time Aylmer called off the attack at the end of the day, his troops had gained control of the Wadi, but it was a small advance that was unworthy of the 1,600 men killed or wounded in the attack and did little to bring relief closer to Townshend’s beleaguered forces at Kut. In April 1916, after nearly five months under siege, Townshend finally submitted, along with 10,000 of his men, in the largest single surrender of British troops up to that time. The British won back Kut in February 1917, on their way to the capture of Baghdad the following month.
 
from the History Channel:

January 14, 1915
South African troops occupy Swakopmund in German Southwest Africa
As part of an attempt to display its loyalty to the British empire and, perhaps more importantly, enlarge its own sphere of influence on the African continent, South Africa sends troops to occupy Swakopmund, a seaside town in German-occupied Southwest Africa (modern-day Namibia).

When war broke out in 1914, South African Prime Minister Louis Botha immediately pledged full support for Britain, antagonizing a portion of South Africa’s ruling Afrikaner (or Boer) population, who were still resentful of their defeat, at the hands of the British, in the Boer War of 1899-1902.

That conflict had pitted the Boers, descendants of South Africa’s Dutch settlers who controlled two republics—the gold-rich Transvaal and the Orange Free State—against the colonial armies of Great Britain. A stiff Boer resistance, including an extensive campaign of guerrilla warfare, had ultimately been repressed by brutal methods—including concentration camps—introduced by the British commander in chief, Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchener (who later became Britain’s minister of war). Under the terms of the Treaty of Vereeniging, which ended the Boer War in 1902, the Boer republics were granted eventual self-government as colonies of the British empire. They received their own constitutions in 1907 and in 1910 the British Parliament’s South Africa Act established the Union of South Africa as a united self-governing dominion of the British empire. Botha, the leader of the South African Party, became its first head of government.

In 1914, Botha and Minister of Defense Jan Smuts, both generals and former Boer commanders, were looking to extend the Union’s borders further on the continent. Invading German Southwest Africa would not only aid the British—it would also help to accomplish that goal. The plan angered some Afrikaners, who were resentful of their government’s support of Britain against Germany, which had been pro-Boer in their war against the British. Several major military leaders resigned over their opposition to the invasion of the German territory and open rebellion broke out in October 1914. It was quashed in December and the conquest of Southwest Africa, carried out by a South African Defense Force of nearly 50,000 men, was completed in only six months.

On July 9, 1915, Germans in Southwest Africa surrendered to South African forces there; 16 days later, South Africa annexed the territory. At the Versailles peace conference in 1919, Smuts and Botha argued successfully for a formal Union mandate over Southwest Africa, one of the many commissions granted at the conference to member states of the new League of Nations allowing them to establish their own governments in former German territories. In the years to come, South Africa did not easily relinquish its hold on the territory, not even in the wake of the Second World War, when the United Nations took over the mandates in Africa and gave all other territories their independence. Only in 1990 did South Africa finally welcome a new, independent Namibia as its neighbor.
 
January 16,1917
Zimmermann Telegram Intercepted

The Zimmermann Telegram was a coded telegram dispatched on January 16, 1917 by the German Foreign Secretary, Arthur Zimmermann, to the German Ambassador to the United States, Johann von Bernstoff. On January 19, Bernstoff, per Zimmerman's request, forwarded the telegram to the German Ambassador to Mexico, Heinrich von Eckardt. Zimmerman sent the telegram in anticipation of the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare by the German Empire on February 1, an act which the German High Command feared would draw the United States into the war on the side of the Allies. The telegram instructed Ambassador Eckhardt that if the U.S. appeared likely to enter the war he was to approach the Mexican government with a proposal for a military alliance. He was to offer Mexico material aid in the reclamation of territory lost during the Mexican-American War, specifically the states of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. Eckardt was also instructed to urge Mexico to help broker and alliance between Germany and Japan.
On February 1, Germany had resumed "unrestricted submarine warfare", which caused many civilian deaths, including American passengers on British ships. This caused widespread anti-German sentiment. Publication of the telegram greatly increased this feeling. Besides the highly provocative anti-US proposal to Mexico, the telegram also mentioned "ruthless employment of our submarines."
The Zimmermann Telegram was intercepted and decoded by British cryptographers of Room 40. On February 19, 'Blinker' Hall, the head of Room 40, showed the telegram to the secretary of the US Embassy in London, Edward Bell. Bell was at first incredulous, thinking it was a forgery, then enraged. On February 20 Hall informally sent a copy to the US Ambassador, Walter Page. On February 23, Page met with the British Foreign Minister, Lord Balfour, and was given the ciphertext, the message in German, and the English translation. Page reported the story to President Wilson, including details to be verified from telegraph files in the US. At first, the telegram was widely believed to be a forgery by British Intelligence. This belief, which was not restricted to pacifist and pro-German lobbies, was promoted by German and Mexican diplomats, and by some American papers, especially the Hearst press empire. However, first on March 3, and later on March 29, Arthur Zimmermann himself admitted that the telegram was genuine.
Wilson responded by asking Congress to arm American ships so that they could fend off potential German submarine attacks. A few days later on April 2, 1917, Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Germany. On April 6 Congress complied, bringing the United States into the Great War.
Zimmermann's message was:
On the first of February, we intend to begin unrestricted submarine warfare. In spite of this, it is our intention to endeavour to keep the United States of America neutral.
In the event of this not succeeding, we propose an alliance on the following basis with Mexico: That we shall make war together and make peace together. We shall give generous financial support, and an understanding on our part tha Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory in New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona. the details of the settlement are left to you.
You are instructed to inform the President (of Mexico) of the above in the greatest confidence as soon as it is certain that there will be an outbreak of war with the United States and suggest that the President, on his own initiative, invite Japan to immediate adherence with this plan; at the same time, offer to mediate between Japan and ourselves.
Please call to the attention of the President that the ruthless employment of our submarines now offers the prospect of compelling England to make peace in a few months.
 
from the History Channel:

January 17, 1916
Winston Churchill in the Trenches
Winston Churchill, beginning his service as a battalion commander on the Western Front, attends a lecture on the Battle of Loos given by his friend, Colonel Tom Holland, in the Belgian town of Hazebrouck.

The Battle of Loos, which took place in September 1915, resulted in devastating casualties for the Allies and was taken by the British as a sign of the need to change their conduct of the war. In one major consequence, Sir John French was replaced by Sir Douglas Haig as British commander in the wake of that battle.

“Tom spoke very well,” Churchill wrote to his wife, Clementine, “but his tale was one of hopeless failure, of sublime heroism utterly wasted and of splendid Scottish soldiers shorn away in vain…with never the ghost of a chance of success….Afterwards they asked me what was the lesson of the lecture. I restrained an impulse to reply ‘Don’t do it again’. But they will--I have no doubt.”

Churchill had been demoted from First Lord of the Admiralty after the British plan to attempt a naval capture of the Turkish-controlled Dardanelle Straits met with resounding failure in mid-to-late-1915. Reduced to a minor ministerial position, Churchill resigned from the government in November 1915 and rejoined the army, heading to the Western Front with the rank of lieutenant colonel.

During his six months in Belgium, the young Churchill—who would later lead his country to victory in the Second World War and be celebrated as the greatest political leader in British history—saw first-hand the hardships of war and the sacrifices that unknown, unheralded soldiers made for their country. More than once, he himself narrowly escaped death by an enemy shell. As he wrote to Clementine, “Twenty yards more to the left and no more tangles to unravel, no more anxieties to face, no more hatreds and injustices to encounter…a good ending to a chequered life, a final gift--unvalued--to an ungrateful country.”
 
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