TIMEBASE1910-19

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1910 January The Jewish population of Vienna has grown to 175,294 out of a total of 2, 031, 420 (8.75%). In some neighborhoods Jews accounted for 20 percent of the residents.

1910 February 9 Adolf Hitler settles into quarters at the Mannerheim, a comfortable residence for bachelors in Vienna. It was partially financed by the Rothschild family.

(Note: Josef Greiner later claimed that Hitler had a substantial collection of Lanz von Liebenfels' Ostara. He also claimed to remember Hitler engaging in heated discussions about Lanz's racial ideas with a fellow-boarder named Grill.)(Daim)

1910 May 30 Philipp Stauff writes a letter to Heinrich Kraeger in which he mentions the idea of an antisemitic lodge with the names of members kept secret to prevent enemy penetration. Stauff was convinced that the powerful influence of Jews in German life could be understood only as a result of a widespread Jewish secret conspiracy, and such a conspiracy could best be combatted by a similar antisemitic organization. (Bundesarchiv, Koblenz)

1910 August 5 Hitler testifies in court during a lawsuit he had filed against Reinhold Hanisch, an ex-business partner.

1910 Autumn A Hammer group is established in Magdeburg.

1910 November 8 Franklin Delano Roosevelt is elected to the New York state senate.

1910 December Rudolf Glauer (Rudolf von Sebottendorff) claims to have founded a mystical lodge in Constantinople while writing a study on Baktashi dervishes. (Roots)

1910 Averell Harriman's mother finances building of the Eugenics Records Office, an American branch of the Galton National Laboratory in London.

1910 Jean Monnet moves to Montreal and soon becomes associated with the Hudson Bay company and the banking firm, Lazard Brothers.

1910 Edward VII dies and is succeeded by his only surviving son, who becomes King George V.

1910 Guido von List publishes Die Bilderschrift der Ario-Germanen or Ario-Gernische Hieroglyphik (GLB 5), a glossary of secret "Aryan" messages in hieroglyphs and heraldic devices. (Roots)

1910 British politician Winston Churchill is appointed First Lord of the Admiralty.

1910 Philipp Stauff moves to Kulmbach in Franconia from Enzisweiler on Lake Constance where he had published a nationalist newspaper since 1907. (Roots)

1910 Philipp Stauff joins the List Society and quickly becomes one of its most active members. (Roots)

1911 January 18 Johannes Hering, a member of the local Hammer group in Munich, the Pan-German League and a close friend of both Guido von List and Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels, writes to Philipp Stauff, the prominent völkisch journalist, telling him that he has been a Freemason since 1894, but this "ancient Germanic institution" has been polluted by Jewish and parvenu ideas. He concluded that a revived "Aryan" lodge would be a great boon to antisemites. (Bundesarchiv, Koblenz; Roots)

1911 March 21 Johanna Polzl, Hitler's aunt, dies after giving him a modest inheritance shortly before her death.

1911 April 5 The Hammer group in Magdeburg institutes what is called the Wotan Lodge, with Hermann Pohl elected Master. (Roots)

1911 April 15 A Grand Lodge is formed with Theodor Fritsch as Grand Master, but the work of formulating rules and rituals is undertaken by theWotan Lodge. (Roots)

1911 May 4 Hitler is ordered by a court in Linz to surrender his orphan's pension to his sister, Paula.

1911 John Foster Dulles joins the law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell in New York City.

1911 The Austrian DAP wins three seats in the Austrian parliamentary elections.

1911 Summer The Hoher Armanen-Orden or High Armanen-Order (HAO), a tiny inner circle of initiates within the List Society, is formally founded at the midsummer solstice, when the most dedicated List Society members in Berlin, Hamburg and Munich, including Philipp Stauff, travel to meet their Austrian colleagues in Vienna. (Roots)

1911 June 23 Guido von List takes members of the HAO on a "pilgrimage" to the St. Stephen's catacombs in Vienna, where List claimed to have first sensed Wotan while still a child. They then continued on to other Wotanist "sanctuaries" on the Kahlenberg, the Leopoldsberg and at Klosterneuburg. (List; Roots)

1911 June 24 During the next three days, List and 10 members of the HAO, including Philipp Stauff, travel to Bruhl near Mödling, Burg Kreuzenstein, and finally Carnuntum, where a photo of the "pilgrims" is taken. (Roots)

1911 July The Germans send a gunboat to Agadir to put pressure on the French to guarantee German iron interests in West Morocco and also to cede parts of the French Congo to Germany during what is called the second Moroccan crisis. (Roots)

1911 Italy's attempt to annex Cyrenaica and Tripolitania leads to the Italo-Turkish War.

1911 September 6 Dr. Jorg Lanz-Liebenfel (Adolf Joself Lanz) uses the title "von" on his letterhead to Johannes Hering (the first traceable use by Lanz).(Bundesarchiv, Koblenz) (Goodrick-Clark says Lanz was using title by 1903.)

1911 September 14 Russian Prime Minister Pyotyr Stolypin is assassinated while watching an opera with the Czar in Kiev. The assassin, Dmitri Bogrov, is said to be a terrorist, but was later discovered to be a police agent.

1911 October 25 Winston Churchill is appointed First Lord of the Admiralty in Britain.

1911 November 11 Guido von List receives a letter from an individual calling himself "Tarnhari," who claims to be the descendant or reincarnation of a chieftain of the ancient Wölsungen tribe in prehistoric Germany. During the early postwar years this same person (Ernst Lauterer) is closely associated with Dietrich Eckart, Hitler's mentor in the early days of the Nazi Party.

(Tarnhari popularized List's writings during WWI as can be seen from the writings of Ellegaard Ellerbek (Gustav Leisner), a völkisch-mystical writer who paid extravagant tribute to both List and Tarhari.) (Roots)

1911 November Hermann Pohl sends a circular to some fifty potential antisemitic collaborators, stating that the Hammer group in Magdeburg has already established a lodge upon appropriate racial principles with a ritual based on Germanic pagan tradition. Pohl urges his correspondents to join his movement and to form lodges of their own, adding that this project has the full support of Theodor Fritsch. (Bundesarchiv, Koblenz; Roots)

1911 Rudolf Glauer (Rudolf von Sebottendorff) becomes a Turkish citizen in Constantinople. (Roots)

1911 Mikhail Kaganovich, the older brother of Lazar Kaganovich, is arrested for being a member of the Bolshevik party.(Wolf)

1911 Guido von List publishes his GLB 2a (Die Armanenschaft der Ario-Germanen. Zweiter Teil), continuing his "exploration" of the Wotanist priesthood. (Roots)

1911 Lazar Kaganovich first sees Leon Trotsky, at a speech in Kiev. Trotsky, he later said, was already a well-known figure throughout Russia.

1911 Italian forces seize Tripoli.

1911 Otto Richard Tannenberg a well-known Pan-German writer, publishes Greater Germany: The Work of the Twentieth Century, urging his countrymen to create a great European empire by uniting all German and German-related peoples. (Architect)

1912 January The Deutsch-Soziale Reformpartei wins only three seats in the German parliament. (Roots)

1912 January 12 Hermann Pohl writes a manifesto for the "loyal lodges" of the Germanenorden, which stresses his desire for a fervent, rather than numerous, following, which would usher in an "Aryan-Germanic religious revival" stressing obedience and devotion to the cause of a pan-German "Armanist Empire" (Armanenreich) and the rebirth of a racially pure German nation, in which the "parasitic and revolutionary mob-races" (Jews, anarchist crossbreeds and gypsies) would be deported. (Bundesarchiv, Koblenz; Roots)

1912 Austrian DAP headquarters in Vienna are located in the same district where Adolf Hitler has his apartment. (Unknown Nazis)

1912 February Karl August Hellwig , a retired colonel and follower of Guido von List living in Kassel, drafts a constitution for the future Reichshammerbund. This document sets up a council of twelve members called the Armanen-Rat. (Bundesarchiv, Koblenz; Roots)

1912 March Theodor Fritsch, recalling the weakness of the earlier antisemitic political parties, demands a new antisemitic organization "above the parties." (Hammer #11; Roots)

1912 March 12 The Grand Lodge, founded on April 5, 1911, adopts the name Germanenorden upon the suggestion of Theodor Fritsch. (Roots)

1912 Heinrich Class, the antisemitic chairman of the Alldeutscher Verband (Pan-German League), publishes Wenn ich der Kaiser wär! (If I was Kaiser!), appealing for the establishment of a dictatorship, the suspension of parliament, and denouncing the Jews. (Roots)

1912 April Theodor Fritsch writes a set of guidelines for the Reichshammerbund which urges collaboration with Catholics and a coordinated propaganda campaign amongst workers, farmers, teachers, civil servants, military officers and university students. (Roots)

1912 May 24-25 Theodor Fritsch, twenty prominent Pan-Germans, antisemites, and disciples of Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels and Guido von List found two groups to indoctrinate German society. Karl August Hellwig, a List Society member since 1908, now heads the Reichshammerbund, which has grown into a confederation of all existing Hammer groups. Hermann Pohl, from Magdeburg, becomes head of the Germanenorden, a secret twin-organization. (see photo, Bundesarchiv, Koblenz)

1912 July Hermann Pohl publishes the first Germanenorden newsletter, which records that lodges have been ceremonially established at Breslau, Dresden and Königsberg that spring. Lodges in Berlin and Hamburg are already active prior to this time. Brothers in Bromberg, Nuremberg, Thuringia and Düsseldorf, he writes, are still recruiting and plan to found new lodges in the near future. (Bundesarchiv; Roots)

1912 October 4 Theodore Roosevelt is shot by an assassin in Milwaukee, but insists on giving his speech before being taken to the hospital.

1912 November 5 Woodrow Wilson is elected President of the U.S., defeating the Republican incumbent, William Howard Taft, and Theodore Roosevelt who has split the Republican vote by running on the independent Bull Moose ticket.

1912 December The Germanenorden newsletter claims 316 members in six major German cities have already joined the new organization: 99 in Breslau, 100 in Dresden, 42 in Königsberg, Hamburg 27, Berlin 30, and 18 in Hanover. (Bundesarchiv, Koblenz; Roots)

1912 Philipp Stauff moves to Berlin where he soon publishes a directory of Pan-German and antisemitic groups entitled Das deutsche Wehrbuch (German Defense Book) for Heinrich Kraeger, who with Alfred Brunner, will found the Deutsch-Sozialistische Partei in 1918. (Between 1912 and 1914, Stauff will publish Semi-Gotha and Semi-Alliancen, genealogical handbooks which purport to identify Jews amongst the German aristocracy. These and his other writings soon involve Stauff in a number of on-going legal suits.) (Roots)

1912 American Indian, Jim Thorpe, wins both the decathlon and the pentathlon at the Olympic Games in Stockholm. George S. Patton places fifth in the pentathlon.

1912 Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili takes the alias "Stalin" from the Russian word "stal" (steel). Between 1902 and 1912, Stalin had been arrested many times, but escaped repeatedly to continue working as a Bolshevik organizer. To obtain funds for the Bolsheviks, he staged a number of robberies.

1912 Lenin rewards Stalin by naming him to the Bolshevik Central Committee. From there, Stalin rapidly gains influence and power among the Bolsheviks and becomes the first editor of Pravda, the party newspaper.

1912 David Mitford, Lord Redesdale, the father of Unity Mitford, names his family property in Canada: Swastika. His father, Bertram Mitford, had not only written the introduction to Houston Stewart Chamberlain's famous book, The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, but was also a close, personal friend of the Wagner family. Richard Wagner's son, Siegfried, kept a photo of Bertram Mitford on his desk until his death. (The House of Mitford)

1912 Levick Kaganovich and his family move to the U.S. Levick had been like a father to Lazar Kaganovich. His son, Morris, was Lazar's best friend.

1912 Lazar Kaganovich joins the Bolshevik party in Mozyr and is designated as a party organizer.

1912 Johannes Baum founds the New Thought publishing house. Although initially concerned with translations of American material, this firm will play a vital role in German esoteric publishing during the 1920s. (Spirits in Rebellion; Roots)

1912 Phillip Stauff becomes a committee member of the List Society and a generous patron. (Roots)

1912 A U.S. federal committee investigates J.P. Morgan and his various business operations. Many believe that his mergers and consolidations have created unfair monopolies and developed restrictive trade practices.

1912 Archduke Otto von Habsburg is born.

1912 Rudolf Steiner breaks with the Theosophists and soon founds the Anthroposophical Society.

1912 The British luxury liner Titanic sinks after colliding with an iceberg on her maiden voyage, 1517 die, only 706 manage to survive.

1912 China becomes a republic.

1912 Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, and Montenegro form the Balkan League for protection against their longtime common adversary--Ottoman Turkey.

1912 The Balkan League makes war on Turkey, successfully ousting the Turks from the Balkans during what is called the First Balkan War.

1912 Benito Mussolini becomes editor of the Milan-based, Socialist party newspaper Avanti!

1912 Colonel Edward Mandell House publishes Philip Dru, Administrator, a book who's hero seizes the government of the United States with the backing of a secret cartel of rich and powerful financiers. Dru describes his new government as "...Socialism as dreamed of by Karl Marx," and begins to adopt several key Marxist programs such as a graduated income tax and a graduated inheritance tax. He also prohibits the "selling of ... anything of value," just as described by Marx. Colonel House will later become President Woodrow Wilson's top personal advisor.

1913 January A Germanenorden lodge is established at Duisburg with 30 brothers. Lodges in Nuremberg and Munich are established later in the year, but are not as successful as those in Northern and Eastern Germany. (Bundesarchiv, Koblenz; Roots)

1913 Kaiser Wilhelm II and H.S. Chamberlain plot to steal the Helige Lanz (Holy Lance) from Austria at a Germanic art exposition in Berlin. General Helmuth von Moltke foils their plan by alerting the Austrians.

1913 Walter Riehl and Rudolf Jung draft a new program for the Austrian German Worker's party (DAP) at Iglau. (Forgotten Nazis)

1913 Drew Ali, a black leader, founds a Moorish Science Temple in Newark, N.J., and establishes a religious tradition that will lead to the founding of the Black Muslims and other Islamic groups in the U.S.

1913 February 3 Wyoming approves the Sixteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, becoming the last of the 36 states needed to authorize a federal income tax.

1913 February 14-19 Philipp Stauff is involved in a series of spiritualist seances which claim to communicate with the long-dead priest-kings of the old religion. Guido von List later writes about these seances in depth. (Roots)

1913 February 25 The 16th Amendment becomes law in the United States. Earlier, the Supreme Court had found that an income tax whose monies are not reapportioned to the states is unconstitutional. The 16th amendment provides the necessary legal basis for a graduated federal income tax. (Schlesinger I)

1913 March King George I of Greece is assassinated and is succeeded by his son, Constantine I.

1913 March 4 Woodrow Wilson takes his oath of office as 28th President of the United States. Marshall becomes Vice President.

1913 March 31 J.P. Morgan dies in Rome, Italy. His son, J.P. (Jack) Morgan, Jr., takes over operation of his various business enterprises.

1913 April 27 The dead body of 14-year-old Mary Phagan is found is found in a pencil factory in Marietta, Georgia. Leo Frank, a 29-year-old Jew is convicted of the crime even though Miss Phagan left a note saying she had been assaulted by a Negro. After Frank's sentence was commuted by the governor, Tom Watson, a Georgia demagogue, denounced him as "King of the Jews." (See August 16, 1915)

1913 May Adolf Hitler leaves Vienna for Munich in Bavaria.

(Note: In 1959, Elsa Schmidt-Falk, who was in charge of a genealogical research group within the Nazi party in Munich during the 1920's, told Wilfried Daim that Hitler had regularly visited her and her husband at their Munich home. At these meetings, Hitler often mentioned reading Guido von List and quoted his books enthusiastically. She also claimed that Hitler told her that members of the List Society in Vienna had given him a letter of introduction to the President of the List Society in Munich. (Daim; Inge Kunz; Roots)

1913 May 24 Hitler moves to Schleissheimerstrasse 34 in Munich, lodging with the family of a tailor named Papp. He registers with the police as a painter and artist.

1913 May 30 Fearing a spread of hostilities in the Balkans, the major powers intervene to terminate the war with the Treaty of London, a preliminary peace treaty, under which Turkey agrees to surrender its Balkan territories and create the state of Albania. Peace in the Balkans lasts less than a month.

1913 May 31 The 17th Amendment is passed, establishing the popular election of U.S. Senators. This amendment dramatically alters America's republican form of government and further reduces the power of the individual states.

1913 June Nineteen Reichshammerbund branches have by now been established throughout Germany. (Roots)

1913 June A second war begins in the Balkans, when Bulgaria makes surprise attacks against Serbia and Greece in the hope of occupying the contested districts of Macedonia won from Turkey before the great powers had intervened. Bulgaria is quickly defeated and overrun by Romania, Turkey, Greece and Serbia.

1913 August 10 The Treaty of Bucharest awards Serbia and Greece possession of those parts of Macedonia they had previously claimed. Romania also received territory from Bulgaria.

1913 September 6 Philipp Stauff closes a letter to Lanz von Liebenfels with the salute "Armanengruss und Templeisensieg." Lanz had first written Stauff in 1909. (Balzli; Roots)

1913 September 29 Rudof Diesel, inventor of the diesel engine, apparently drowns after he mysteriously disappears from the mail steamer Dresden while crossing the English Channel. Legend has it that he was carrying secret plans for a new engine that ran on nothing but pure water.

1913 September 29 Under the Treaty of Constantinople, Turkey recovers the greater part of the province of Adrianople from Bulgaria.

1913 October 3 Congress enacts the Underwood-Simmons Tariff Act which lowers tariffs on 958 articles, including food-stuffs, clothing and raw materials. Rates on cotton are cut 50% and on woolens over 50%. Congress will enact the graduated income tax to make up the difference in revenues. (See October 22, 1914) (Schlesinger I)

1913 December 23 The Federal Reserve Act, already passed by the U.S. Congress, is approved by President Wilson.

1913 Rudolf Glauer, now calling himself Rudolf von Sebottendorff, moves to Berlin, claiming to have been adopted by Baron Heinrich von Sebottendorff in Turkey in 1911. The Baron's family in Germany recognizes the adoption and seems genuinely fond of him. (Roots)

1913 "Unionist" gunrunners cause bloodshed at Londonderry in Ireland.

1913 Danish physicist Niels Bohr publishes his atomic theory.

1913 Stalin is exiled to Siberia by the Czarist government. He will not return to Russia until 1917.

1913 Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels in Ostara I, #69, interprets the holy grail as an electrical symbol pertaining to the "panpsychic" powers of the pure-blooded "Aryan" race. The quest of the "Templeisen" (Templars) for the grail was a metaphor, Lanz said, for the strict eugenic practices of the Templar Knights designed to breed god-men. (Roots)

1913 Dr. Eugen Fischer's book Die Rehobother Bastards und das Bastardisierungsproblem beim Menschen (The Bastards of Rehoboth and the problem of miscegenation in Man) is published. In it he writes about the people of mixed blood in German South-West Africa: "We should provide them with the minimum amount of protection which they require, for survival as a race inferior to ourselves, and we should do this only as long as they are useful to us. After this, free competition should prevail and, in my opinion, this will lead to their decline and destruction." (Science)

1913 Antonius von der Linden begins publishing Geheime Weissenschaften (Secret Science, 1913-1920) consisting of reprints of esoteric texts from the Renaissance scholar Agrippa von Nettesheim. (Roots)

1913 Medical missionary Albert Schweitzer builds a hospital at Lambarene in Africa.

1913 Sigmund Livingstone among others forms the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), and a civil-rights statute is enacted in New York at the request of several other Jewish organizations.

1913 Russian revolutionary Joseph Stalin is exiled to Siberia by the Czarist government.

1913 American Charles Callahan publishes Washington: The Man and the Mason. It contain a letter wriiten by George Washington in 1798 to Reverend G.W. Snyder, acknowledging Washington's belief in the existence of the Illuminati and the revolutionary principles of Jacobinism in the United States. It is "too evident to be questioned," Washington writes. (View document)

1913 Mexican President Francisco Madero is killed in a military coup led by Victoriano Huerta.

1913 Rosa Luxemburg publishes her chief work, Accumulation of Capital (English translation, 1951), presenting her theory of imperialism.

1913 Adolf Hitler establishes contact with certain proto-Nazi circles in Munich, even before World War I. (Mein Kampf)

1914 January 11 A Germanenorden initiation ceremony held in the Berlin Province features racial tests by Berlin phrenologist Robert Burger-Villingren, inventor of the "plastometer," a device used for determining the relative "Aryan purity" of a subject by measurement of the skull. (Roots)

1914 January 12 Adolf Hitler is ordered to report for Austrian military service.

1914 January 19 Hitler writes to the Austrian Consulate pleading for leniency in regard to his failure to report for military service.

1914 February 5 Hitler is rejected by the Austrian army as unfit for duty.

1914 February 9 Detlef Schmude, one of Jorg Lanz von Liebenfel's earliest and most enthusiastic supporters in Germany, founds the second priory of the Order of the New Templars (ONT) at Hollenberg near Kornelmünster. (Roots)

1914 May 20 A letter from Arthur Strauss to Julius Rüttinger says that a Reichshammerbund group was founded in Munich that spring by Wilhelm Rohmeder, chairman of the Deutscher Schulverein and a member of the List Society since 1908. (Bundesarchiv; Roots)

1914 June King Peter I of Serbia, in poor health, appoints his son, Alexander as regent of Serbia.

1914 June 28 Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary is assassinated at Sarajevo, capital of the Austrian province of Bosnia, by a Serbian assassin, Gavrilo Princip. Princip has ties to both Britain and Russia.

1914 July The Master of the Leipzig Geramanenorden lodge politely proposes that Hermann Pohl retire from his office as head of the order. (Roots)

1914 July 23 Austria-Hungary presents a warlike, 48-hour ultimatum to the Serbian government, demanding a virtual protectorate over Serbia. Serbia accepts all but one of the demands, but still its response is unsatisfactory to Austria-Hungary.

1914 July 28 Austria-Hungary, refusing to submit the disputed terms to international arbitration, declares war on Serbia. Within a week most of Europe will at war.

WORLD WAR I

1914 July 29 Austrian forces invade Serbia and begin an artillery bombardment of Belgrade, the Serbian capital.

1914 July 29 Russia mobilizes its troops near the Austrian border.

1914 July 31 The London Stock Exchange, at this time the most influential in the world, announces its closing due to war. The U.S. follows suit and for several weeks all other important exchanges will also close. (Schlesinger I)

1914 August 1 Fighting begins on the German-Russian frontier and Germany declares war on Russia.

1914 August 2 General Helmuth von Moltke is appointed commander of all German armies in the field.

1914 August 3 Germany declares war on France.

1914 August 3 Hitler petitions King Ludwig III of Bavaria for permission to enlist in the Bavarian army.

1914 August 3 The French firm of Rothschilds Freres cables J.P. Morgan & Co. in New York suggesting the floatation of a loan of $100,000,000, a substantial part of which is to be left in the United States to pay for French purchases of American goods. (America Goes to War,Charles C. Tansill. Little, Brown. Boston, 1938)

1914 August 4 Germany invades Belgium. A specially trained task force of about 30,000 men crosses the frontier and attacks Liege, one of the strongest fortresses in Europe. Some of the fortifications are captured in a daring night attack led by General Erich Ludendorff.

1914 August 4 Great Britain declares war on Germany.

1914 August 5 British ships dredge up and cut the German trans-Atlantic cables to America. Thereafter, the bulk of the war news will be routed through London and the British censors.

1914 August 5 The U.S. makes a formal statement announcing it will remain neutral in the European wars, but offers its services as a mediator in the mushrooming conflicts. (Schlesinger I)

1914 August 6 Austria-Hungary declares war against Russia. Italy temporarily remains neutral, claiming its obligations to the Triple Alliance are void because Austria had initiated the war.

1914 August 8 French troops under Gen. Paul Pau advance across the frontier to Mulhouse in Alsace.

1914 August 12 Austrian troops numbering 200,000, commanded by Gen. Oskar Potiorek, cross the Sava and Drina Rivers and invade Serbia.

1914 August 14 A full-scale French offensive, the Battle of Lorraine, begins southeast of Metz. Following a planned withdrawal, the Germans counterattack, throwing the French back to the fortified heights of Nancy.

1914 August 14 Kaiser Wilhelm II leaves Berlin, choosing to live at Pless, in Silesia, or near the Western front for the remainder of the war.

1914 August 15 U.S. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan writes to J.P. Morgan telling him that loans to belligerents goes against the U.S. policy of neutrality. (See October 15) (Schlesinger I)

1914 August 15-20 Serbian Marshal Putnik is victorious over the Austrians at Cer Mountain.

1914 August 16 The last fortifications at Liege, pounded into submission by giant howitzers, surrenders. The German First Army under Gen. Alexander von Kluck and the Second, commanded by Gen. Karl von Bulow, pour through the Liege corridor and across the Meuse.

1914 August 16 Adolf Hitler enrolls in the 1st Company of the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry.

1914 August 16 Austrian troops are driven back by the numerically superior Serbian army, inadequately equipped, but battlewise from their Balkan Wars experience. They are commanded by Marshal Radomir Putnik.

1914 August 17 The Russian Northwest Army Group begins to advance into East Prussia. From the east came Gen. Pavel K. Rennenkampf's First Army; from the south Aleksandr Samsonov's Second Army. Opposing are German Gen. Max von Prittwitz and Gen. Gaffron's Eighth Army. Their mission one of elastic defense and delay until the bulk of the German army can be shifted from the Western Front.

1914 August General Helmuth von Moltke, chief of the German general staff, hampered by poor communications with his armies, overestimates the extent of the initial German victory. Confident that the French armies are on the brink of destruction, he detaches two corps from Kluck's army to the Eastern front, where the Russians are threatening East Prussia.

1914 August 17 The center of Rennenkampf's advance is mauled by General Hermann K. von Francois's German I Corps near Stalluponen.

1914 August 18 President Woodrow Wilson issues his "Proclamation of Neutrality," temporarily keeping America out of the war.

1914 August 20 Brussels is occupied by the Germans. The Belgians, personally commanded by King Albert I, retreat to Antwerp.

1914 August 20 Advancing French troops collide with a numerically superior German force in the Battle of the Ardennes.

1914 August 20 Rudolf Hess joins the 1st Bavarian Infantry Regiment and is soon transported to the battlefields of France. (Missing Years)

1914 August 20 At Gumbinnen in East Prussia, Prittwitz's forces are thrown back by Rennenkampf, who has attacked from the east. Prittwitz, fearing envelopment by Samsonov's army, withdraws to the Vistula River, thus ceding all of East Prussia. Prittwitz phones Moltke at Coblenz, reporting his decision and requesting reinforcements to hold the Vistula line. Moltke immediately relieves Prittwitz, appointing in his place 67-year-old Gen. Paul von Hindenburg who had retired in 1911. Gen. Erich Ludendorff, the hero of Liege, is named Hindenburg's chief of staff.

1914 August 20 Pope pius X dies, just one day after issuing a futile plea for peace.

1914 August 20 Britain, in its Order of Council, enlarges the list of goods it unilaterally considers contraband and thereby subject to search and seizure. British ships immediately begin confiscating the contraband cargoes, which include even cotton, now used in making munitions. (Schlesinger I)

1914 August 21 The newly landed British Expeditionary Force (BEF) under Field Marshal Sir John French moves into Belgium to support Lanrezac's advance.

1914 August 21 Serbian Marshall Putnik defeats the Austrians at the battle of Sabac (August 21-24).

1914 August 22 Two German armies strike Gen. Charles Lanrezac southwest of Namur, on the Sambre River, forcing him to retreat on the 23rd.

1914 August 23 The Belgian defenders of Namur are overwhelmed by Bulow's troops after a brief siege.

1914 August 23 The BEF near Mons is struck by the full weight of Kluck's German First Army. Learning of the fall of Namur, Lanrezac orders a general retreat, leaving the outnumbered British with an unprotected left flank and forcing them to withdraw during the night.

1914 August 23 In the Galician Battles (August 23-September 11), Russian forces under Gen. Nikolai Ivanov repelled an Austrian offensive, seizing all of Austrian Galicia except the key fortress of Przemysl.

1914 August 23 Japan declares war on Germany and soon besieges Tsingtao, the only German base on the China coast.

1914 August 23 Hindenburg and Ludendorff arrive to take command on the Eastern Front.

1914 August 24 After four days of furious fighting, the devastated French fall back in the Ardennes and reorganize west of the Meuse.

1914 August 24 Main German armies enter France.

1914 August 24 Samsonov's troops encounters the Germans near Frankenau and severe fighting rages the entire day between Frankenau and Tannenberg.

1914 August 26 In East Prussia, the Germans counterattack from north, east, and west. Samsonov's uncoded radio messages are intercepted and Ludendorff learns the locations of all Russian units.

1914 August Alexander I becomes nominal Commander-in-Chief of the Serbian army.

1914 August St. Petersburg's name is changed to Petrograd in order to eliminate the German ending "burg".

1914 August 27 At Le Cateau French's BEF fights off a double envelopment by the full strength of Kluck's army. The survivors successfully disengaged at nightfall.

1914 August 28 A British raid into the Heligoland Bight results in the war's first naval battle. Four German ships are sunk.

1914 August 29 Russian forces in East Prussia but are defeated at the Battle of Tannenberg. Hindenburg and Ludendorff direct the movements that encircle General Samsonov's Second Russian Army. By nightfall the encirclement is complete. Samsonov, who disappeared during the night, evidently committed suicide. 35,000 Russians are killed, and 90,000 taken prisoner. German losses are 10,000 to 14,000.

1914 August 29 Hoping to relieve German pressure on the BEF at Le Cateau, Joffre orders the French Fifth Army, itself pressed hard by the German Second Army, to make a 90-degree shift westward to attack the left flank of the German First Army at Guise. The initial attack, however, is inconsequential.

1914 August Gen. Louis Franchet d'Esperey, commanding the French I Corps, halts the German advance, achieving the first French tactical success of the campaign. Bulow calls on Kluck for aid the next day.

1914 August Kluck responds to Bulow's call for assistance by shifting his direction of march to the southeast, thus discarding the remnants of the Schlieffen Plan. This change would cause him to pass east of Paris. He knew nothing of General Maunoury's concentration in the fortified area of the capital. Belatedly, Moltke sends a message to Kluck, agreeing to the move east of Paris, but ordering Kluck to guard the right flank of the Second Army. For Kluck to have obeyed this order would have meant halting his army for two days, a move he believes will permit the French either to escape or to rally. Intent on driving the French out of Paris, Kluck continues southward across the Marne, just east of Paris, his right flank wide open.

1914 September 4 General Wilson sets in motion a plan to envelop the exposed German right flank. Gen. Maunoury's Sixth Army, temporarily under the regional command of Gen. Joseph S. Gallieeni, the military governor of Paris, begins an advance from Paris toward the Ourcq River, where Kluck's right flank lies open.

1914 September 5 The First Battle of the Marne begins. Joffre's plan is almost ruined when right-flank units of Kluck's army detect the French Sixth Army advance from Paris and counterattack. Kluck then launches an attack toward Paris in the Battle of the Ourcq. By turning west, however, Kluck creates a gap to his left between his army and the Second, under Gen. Karl von Bulow.

1914 September 6 After two days of furious fighting, the German offensive bogs down only twenty-five miles from Paris.

1914 September 6-15 The Battle of the Masurian Lakes.

1914 September 7-9 Kluck then turns his entire army westward in savage counterattacks, halting the French and forcing them to fall back. Only fresh reinforcements rushed from Paris, some in taxicabs, permits Maunoury to stem the German advance.

1914 September 8 Maubeuge, on France's northern border, falls to the Germans.

1914 September 9 Lt. Col. Richard Hentsch, a trusted staff officer sent by Moltke to assess the situation and issue orders if necessary, discovers that von Bulow's Second Army had been pushed back by the French Fifth, and that the BEF is moving into the gap between the German First and Second Armies, Hentsch then orders both armies to retreat to the Aisne River. Kluck retreats to prevent his army from being encircled.

1914 September 9-14 Russian troops are expelled from East Prussia, after the German Eighth Army defeats the Russian First Army in the First Battle of the Masurian Lakes.

1914 September 10 Assuming the BEF is no longer a threat, Kluck shifts westward, widening the existing gap between his army and that of Bulow, which is still advancing to the south. Exploiting this gap, French commander Franchet d'Esperey, in a vigorous night attack, takes Marchais-en-Brie from the Germans. This is probably the turning point of the battle. Bulow, personally defeated, is about to retreat. Kluck's First Army is making headway in the northwest against Maunoury's left, but the BEF's northward advance into the gap threatens Kluck's left and rear. Moltke, realizing that his offensive has failed, then orders a retreat to the Noyon-Verdun line. (Allied losses are about 250,000; German casualties nearly 300,000.)

1914 September 14 General Moltke, blamed for the failure at the Marne and with violating the Schlieffen Plan, is relieved by by the Kaiser and ordered to report to Berlin. He is replaced by Gen. Erich von Falkenhayn.

1914 September 15 The first trenches are dug.

1914 September 15 The German victory at Masurian effectively knocks out the Russians as an important consideration in Allied strategy. (Schlesinger I)

1914 September 17 The German "Race to the Sea" begins.

1914 September 22-26 Fierce battles are fought in Picardy.

1914 September 22 The German cruiser Emden bombards Madras, India.

1914 September 22 The German U-9 sinks three British cruisers in quick succession off the Dutch coast.

1914 September 26 U.S. Secretary of State Bryan protests Britain's Order of Council and the confiscation of cargoes from U.S. ships. (See August 20)

(Note: The U.S. has begun to profit from the war and is sending cargoes to all belligerents including Germany, which is getting its goods funneled through neutral countries.) (Schlesinger I)

1914 September 27 Heavy fighting at Artois until October 10.

1914 September 28 A general Austrian-German advance begins in Galicia. Hindenburg moves to assist the defeated Austrians and prevent the Russian invasion of Silesia. Four German corps of the Eighth Army are transferred by rail to the vicinity of Krakow.

1914 September 30 Before Grand Duke Nikolai, the Russian supreme commander, can move through Poland into Silesia, the heart of Germany's mineral resources, Hindenburg attacks their left flank.

1914 October 9 The Belgian fortress of Antwerp falls.

1914 October 9 Germans troops under Hindenburg reach the Vistula River south of Warsaw.

1914 October 12 The first battle for the Belgian city of Ypres begins.

1914 October 12 Hindenburg outnumbered more than three to one, halts the Polish offensive.

1914 October 15 The U.S. declares it will not prohibit shipments of gold or the extension of credit to belligerents. (See August 15)

1914 October 15 The British cruiser HMS Hawk is torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat.

1914 October 17 Hindenburg skillfully withdraws, leaving a ravaged Polish countryside behind him.

1914 October 18 A German U-boat raid on Scapa Flow, although unsuccessful, results in the temporary transfer of the British Grand Fleet to Rosyth on the Scottish coast while antisubmarine nets are installed at Scapa.

1914 October 21 Hitler is assigned to the Western Front and soon becomes a regimental orderly and dispatch runner.

1914 October 22 The Revenue Act passes the U.S. Congress. It imposes the first income tax on incomes over $3,000 to offset loss of tariff money brought about through enactment of the Underwood-Simmons Act of 1913. (See October 3, 1913) (Schlesinger I)

1914 October 22 The U.S. formally withdraws its demand that Britain keep to the letter of the Declaration of London and cease confiscating American cargoes. The British are now willingly paying for the confiscated goods, and Americans are making a good profits without loss of life to their crews. Thereafter, Britain contains the German fleet in harbor and dries to a trickle the flow of goods to the Central Powers. Smarting under the impact of the blockade, Germany is forced to increase its U-boat activity. (Schlesinger I)

1914 October 27 The British battleship Audacious sinks after striking a German submarine-laid mine off the Irish coast.

1914 October 29 Turkey, encouraged by the Germans, declares war against the Allies, announcing its entrance into the war with a surprise bombardment of the Russian Black Sea coast.

1914 November 1 Hindenburg is appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Austrian-German Eastern Front. Ludendorff remains his chief of staff.

1914 November 1 Adm. Graf von Spee's China Squadron, two heavy and three light cruisers, sinks two British heavy cruisers without losing a single ship in the Battle of Coronel, off the coast of Chile. Some time later the British battle cruisers Invincible and Inflexible, under Vice Adm. Sir Frederick Sturdee, sought out Spee, who had taken his squadron around Cape Horn into the South Atlantic. Spee had planned to raid the British wireless and coaling station at Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands, but discovered Sturdee's squadron there, refueling. The surprised Germans fled and were pursued and destroyed; approximately 1,800 Germans--including Admiral Spee--perished on the sunken ships.

1914 November 2 Britain declares the entire North Sea a military area. Neutral ships bound for neutral ports now become subject to search and seizure. (Schlesinger I)

1914 November 3 General Moltke is officially replaced as German Chief of Staff.

1914 November 5 A reinforced Austrian army begins a third offensive in Serbia.

1914 November 5 Great Britain responding to Turkey's recent alliance with Germany annexes Turkish Cyprus.

1914 November 7 The Japanese capture Tsingtao, the only German base on the China coast. Japan also occupies Germany's Marshall, Marianas, Palau, and Caroline Island groups.

1914 November 9 The German cruiser Emden is sunk in action with the Australian cruiser Sydney in the Cocos Islands.

1914 November The first battle of Ypres comes to and end, concluding the so-called "race to the sea" after the German defeat at the First Battle of the Marne.

1914 November 22 Hermann Pohl writes to Julius Rüttinger, Master of the Franconian Germanenorden province, who is serving at the front. Pohl tells him that the order is in financial difficulty because half of the brethren are serving in the armed forces. "A great number of the brothers have already been killed in action." (Roots)

1914 December American Magazine runs an article saying that Ray Stannard Baker reported in 1909 that the Christian churches in America had "awakened as never before to the so-called Jewish problem"

1914 December 2 Adolf Hitler is awarded the Iron Cross, second class, for bravery under fire.

1914 December 2 A reinforced Austrian army succeeds in occupying Belgrade.

1914 December 3 Marshal Putnik's Serbian troops counterattack after receiving much needed ammunition from France.

1914 December 8 The Battle of the Falkland Islands.

1914 December 11 Serbians troops recapture Belgrade.

1914 December 14 England breaks the German war code, so that "By the end of January 1915, (British Intelligence was) able to advise the Admiralty of the departure of each U-boat as it left for patrol..." (Simpson)

1914 December 15 Putnik's troops recapture Belgrade and soon drive the Austrian invaders from Serbia. Austrian casualties in this savagely fought campaign are approximately 227,000 out of 450,000 engaged. Serbian losses are approximately 170,000 out of 400,000.

1914 December 17 Britain declares a protectorate over Egypt, previously subject to Turkey, and begins moving troops there to defend the Suez Canal.

1914 December 25 The French battleship Jean Bart is torpedoed by an Austrian submarine in the Straits of Otranto.

1914 Giacomo della Chiesa becomes Pope Benedict XV, succeeding Pius X.

1914 Benito Mussolini, editor of the Milan Socialist party newspaper Avanti!, is at first opposed to Italy's involvement in the war but soon reverses his position and calls for Italy's entry on the side of the Allies. Expelled from the Socialist party for this stance, he founds his own newspaper in Milan, Il popolo d'Italia which will later become the party newspaper of the Fascist movement. Mussolini will serve in the Italian army until wounded in 1917.

1914 Jean Monnet obtains a lucrative monopoly contract for the shipment of vital war materials from Canada to France, making a fortune as a war profiteer.

1914 Lazar Kaganovich moves to Kiev, takes a factory job and begins to organize a Bolshevik union of sales employees. After several strikes, Lazar is fired. He then finds work as a leather dresser across town and continues to organize, though more cautiously.

1914 Guido von List publishes GLB 6 (Die Ursprache der Ario-Germanen und ihre Mysteriensprache) his so-called "masterpiece" of occult linguistics and symbology. (Roots)

1914 Albert Einstein returns to Germany to occupy the most prestigious and best-paying post a theoretical physicist can hold in central Europe: professor at the Kaiser-Wilhelm Gesellschaft in Berlin, but does not reapply for German citizenship. He is one of only a handful of German professors who remained a pacifist and did not support Germany's war effort. Although he held a cross-appointment at the University of Berlin, from this time on, he will never again teach regular university courses, but remains on the staff until 1933.

1914 The Panama Canal is completed, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

1914 U.S. Marines land at Veracruz, Mexico, and President Huerta resigns.

1915 January 3 The Turks plan a wide envelopment of the Russians at the Battle of Sarikamis In the Caucasus between Russia and Turkey. The Russians counterattack, smashing the Turkish army.

1915 January 14 Turkish commander Djemal Pasha secretly sets out across the Sinai Peninsula from Beersheba with an army of 22,000, intending to seize the Suez Canal.

1915 January 19-20 Bombing attacks on Britain by Zeppelin dirigibles, under the control of the German navy, result in few casualties, causing more anger than panic. During the year, 18 more raids will take place.

1915 January 23 A German battle cruiser squadron under Vice Admiral Franz von Hipper moves out to raid the English coast and harass the British fishing fleet.

1915 January 24 British Admiral David Beatty's battle cruiser squadron attacks Hipper off the Dogger Bank. Hipper wisely flees, but Beatty, with superior speed, catches him, sinking one cruiser. Both flagships are damaged.

1915 January 30 Colonel Edward M. House, Wilson's good friend and advisor, sails to Europe on the Lusitania to try to mediate a peace settlement. Both sides still feel they can get what they want and are unwilling to settle the conflict so quickly. (Schlesinger I)

1915 January 31 The Central Powers, reinforcing their armies in the east, launch a great offensive under Hindenburg in the Battle of Bolimov, a feint aimed at Warsaw to distract Russian attention. Poison gas shells are used for the first time, but are not highly effective in the freezing temperatures, and the Russians do not report the gas attack.

1915 January Winston Churchill orders a mostly British, Allied fleet to force the Dardanelles, then steam on to Constantinople (Istanbul) to dictate peace terms.

1915 February Hitler writes a long, autobiographical letter to his lawyer and friend, Ernst Hepp. (Hepp Letter)

1915 February The German submarine blockade of Great Britain begins.

1915 February 2 Advance elements of Djemal Pasha's army strike across the Suez canal in pontoon boats, but are repelled. No further Turkish assaults are made against the canal, but the threat holds back reinforcements from Gallipoli.

1915 February 4 Germany proclaims a war zone around the British Isles in retaliation for the blockade of its ports. Germany intensifies its submarine campaign against Allied merchant ships and attacks neutral ships.

1915 February 8 The new German Tenth Army hits the Russian right. The Russians are driven back into the Augustow Forest, barely escaping encirclement. 90,000 Russian prisoners are taken by the end of the month.

1915 February 10 President Wilson warns Germany that the U.S. will hold it "to a strict accountability" for "property damaged or lives lost." German submarine warfare is taking a heavy toll on neutral shipping, including American.

(Note: U-boat captains are in a difficult position because they cannot safely surface to allow enemy crews to board liferafts before being sunk. The fragile U-boats themselves are easily sunk by small-caliber deck guns.)

1915 February 19 A Franco-British fleet under British Admiral Sackville Carden begin a systematic reduction of the Turkish fortifications lining the Dardanelles.

1915 February 19 A German submarine sinks a Norwegian ship in British waters.

1915 February 25 The outer Turkish forts are silenced and Allied vessels enter the Dardanelles.

1915 March 10 A British attack at Neuve Chapelle fails after nearly achieving a breakthrough.

1915 March 11 Britain declares a blockade of all German ports.

1915 March 18 Turkish fortifications on the Dardanelles are attacked by sixteen British and French battleships. After the bombardment silences the Turkish shore batteries, three battleships are sunk in a minefield and three others are disabled.

1915 March 22 The Austrian garrison at Przemysl, Galicia, surrenders after a siege of 194 days. 110,000 troops are taken prisoner by the Russians.

1915 March 30 President Wilson protests the blockade of German ports and asks the British to allow neutrals to continue their trade as usual. Britain refuses.

1915 April 22 The second Battle of Ypres in Belgium begins when the Germans disrupt a planned Allied offensive. A German poison gas attack, the first on the Western Front, demoralizes Allied troops and creates a large gap in their lines, but the Allies retrieve the situation after a bitter struggle. (About 5,000 cylinders of chlorine gas was used by the Germans.)

1915 April List convenes an HAO meeting in Vienna. A number of well-known, Austrian public figures gather to hear Guido von List's Easter address. (Roots)

1915 April 25 Sir Ian Hamilton lands a force of British and Anzacs (Australia-New Zealand Army Corps) troops on the narrow Gallipoli Peninsula. The Turks ring the tiny beachheads with entrenchments, and the British find themselves locked in trench warfare much like that on the western front.

1915 April 26 The Allied powers sign the secret Treaty of London with Italy, which pledges to enter the war against Austria in exchange for territorial concessions. Although Italy fulfills its obligation, it receives only part of the territories promised when peace is concluded (1918-19).

1915 May-June The Allies renew their offensives in the north, but are repulsed in the Second Battle of Artois. Costly and unsuccessful assaults during the first half of the year have exhausted the Allies, who spend the rest of the summer resting, reorganizing, and reinforcing, as do the Germans. Both sides come perilously close to expending their ammunition reserves and now wait for munitions production to catch.

1915 May In Mesopotamia, British commander Gen. Sir John Nixon, lured by the prospect of capturing the legendary Baghdad, sends forces under Gen. Charles Townshend up the Tigris.

1915 May 1 A German U-boat torpedoes the American tanker Gulflight, causing three deaths. Germany quickly offers to make reparations and promises not to attack again without warning, unless the enemy ship tries to escape. Germany refuses to abandon submarine warfare, the only maritime warfare it can successfully carry out.

1915 May 1 The German Ambassador, Count von Bernstorff, issues a warning in the New York newspapers stating that it is unwise to travel into a war zone on vessels carrying cargoes vital to the Allies.

1915 May 7 A German submarine torpedoes and sinks the British passenger liner Lusitania off Kinsale Head, Ireland. 1,198 are lost, including 124 Americans. According to the Germans, the ship is carrying munitions, although the British deny this. Roosevelt calls it "murder on the high seas." (See May 1)

1915 May 10 Count von Bernstorff offers his condolences for the tragic loss of life upon the sinking of the Lusitania, but this only serves to rub salt into the wounds. (Schlesinger I)

1915 May 13 Secretary of State Bryan sends a note to Germany demanding disavowal of the attack upon the Lusitania and immediate reparations. Unfortunately, Bryan then proceeds to informs the Austrian Ambassador that the note "means no harm, but had to be written in order to pacify excited public opinion." The German Foreign Minister, Arthur Zimmerman, quickly learns of Bryan's indiscretion and claims to have called the American "bluff." Bryan is later forced to resign and the Germans never make a disavowal or pay reparations. (See June 8) (Schlesinger I)

1915 May 23 Italy declares war on Austria-Hungary. The Italian army, commanded by General Luigi Cadorna, is about 875,000 strong.

1915 May 25 The second Battle of Ypres comes to an end. The British suffer approximately 50,000 casualties, the French 10,000, and the Germans about 35,000.

1915 May 30 Colonel House confides in his diary, " I have concluded that war with Germany is inevitable..." adding that he will persuade President Wilson to act.

1915 May 31 Townshend, in Mesopotamia, overwhelms a Turkish outpost near Qurna in an amphibious assault, and begins to move inland.

1915 Summer Five hundred German housewives stage a protest against the war in Berlin.

1915 June 3 Austrian-German armies retake Przemysl in Galicia.

1915 June 8 Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan resigns on the grounds that as a pacifist he cannot sign a strongly worded second Lusitania note to the Germans that has been written by President Wilson and other members of the Cabinet. Bryan says "a ship carrying contraband should not rely upon passengers to protect her from attack -- it would be like putting women and children in front of the army." (Schlesinger I)

1915 June 9 Wilson sends the second Lusitania note to the Germans, demanding an end to their procrastination over reparations for sinking the unarmed passenger ship. Wilson refuses to recognize the previously non-existent "war zone" set up by Germany around the British Isles.

1915 June 17 The League to Enforce Peace is organized at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. It is a prototype for the future League of Nations. William Howard Taft is made president.

1915 June 22 Lemberg is occupied by Austrian-German forces.

1915 June 23 Two Italian armies, each of approximately 100,000 troops, attack toward Gorizia during the First Battle of the Isonzo. They batter in vain against the heavily fortified Austrian defenses.

1915 July 2 Erich Muenter, a German instructor at Cornell University, explodes a bomb in the U.S. Senate reception room.

1915 July 3 Erich Muenter shoots J.P. (Jack) Morgan, Jr., for representing the British government in war contract negotiations. Muenter is quickly arrested and jailed. (Schlesinger I)

1915 July 6 Erich Muenter commits suicide while in police custody.

1915 July 15 Dr. Heinrich Albert, head of German propaganda in America, accidentially leaves his briefcase on a subway in New York. A secret service agent retrieves it and exposes the existence of an extensive espionage network and subversive activities across the nation. German consuls, embassy staff, officials of the Hamburg-American Steamship Line and many German-Americans are implicated.

1915 July 15 Rudolf von Sebottendorff marries Berta Anna Iffland, the divorced daughter of Friedrich Wilhelm Müller, a wealthy Berlin merchant. The marriage takes place in Vienna. (Roots)

1915 July 21 President Wilson sends a third Lusitania note to the Germans. It warns that any future infringement of American rights will be deemed "deliberately unfriendly." (Schlesinger I)

1915 July 25 A U-boat sinks the American cargo ship Leelanaw off the coast of Scotland.

1915 July 27 Wireless communications are set up between Japan and the U.S.

1915 July The Warburg Bank sends a telegram to the Imperial Navy Cabinet warning of the mounting anti-German mood in America after the sinking of the Lusitania. (Warburgs)

1915 August 5 Gen. Max von Gallwitz's new German Twelfth Army captures Warsaw.

1915 August 6 Hamilton attempts new landings at Gallipoli after the arrival of reinforcements, but because of the fear of German submarines, no battleships are available to provide artillery support and the operation fails. Russia is permanently cut off from its allies.

1915 August 10 General Leonard Wood sets up a military training camp in Plattsburg, New York. It will train 1,200 volunteers who pay for their own travel expenses, food and uniforms. By the summer of 1916, 16,000 men will be in unofficial military training.

1915 August 16 Leo Frank is taken from his prison hospital by a mob and lynched on the outskirts of Marietta, Ga.

1915 August 19 The British liner Arabic is sunk, with the loss of four more American lives.

1915 August 25 Brest-Litovsk falls and the entire Russian front is in complete collapse.

1915 September A circular of the Franconian Germanenorden clarifies its aims, rules and rituals. The principal aim of the order is the monitoring of the Jews and their activities by the creation of a center to which all antisemitic material would flow for distribution. Subsidiary aims include mutual aid of brothers in respect to business introductions, contracts and finance. Lastly, all brothers are committed to the circulation of völkisch journals, especially the Hammer, their "sharpest weapon against Jewry and other enemies of the people." (Roots)

(Note: The articles of the Germanenorden state that all nationals, male or female, of flawless Germanic descent are eligible for admission. Application forms request details about the color of the applicants hair, eyes and skin. The ideal coloration was blond to dark blond hair, blue to light brown eyes, and pale skin. Details regarding the parents, grandparents and spouse are also required. A guide to recruitment states that physically handicapped or "unpleasant looking" people were barred.) (Roots)

1915 September 1 Germany announces cessation of unlimited submarine warfare. The Germans, fearing U.S. involvement in the war on the side of the Allies, agrees to pay indemnities and guarantees that submarines will not sink passenger liners without warning.

1915 September-October The Allies again launch unsuccessful offensives in the Second Battle of Champagne and Third Battle of Artois. Casualties are more than 200,000 French, nearly 100,000 British, and 140,000 Germans. Sir Douglas Haig replaces French as commander of the BEF.

1915 September 5 Czar Nicholas II takes command of the Russian armies. Many consider it a grave mistake.

1915 September 6 On the Eastern Front, the German and Austrian "great offensive" has conquered all of Poland and Lithuania. Russia has lost 1 million men to date.

1915 September 18 The German occupation of Vilna climaxes a colossal 300 mile advance. Russian Grand Duke Nikolai skillfully keeps his armies intact, withdrawing in fairly good order, while evading German envelopment.

1915 September 24 Grand Duke Nikolai is unceremoniously relieved of command in Poland by the Czar and soon takes command in the Caucasus.

1915 October 6 Two armies, one Austrian and one German, drive south across the Serbian Sava-Danube border.

1915 October 11 Two Bulgarian armies strike west, one on Nis, the other on Skopje.

1915 Oct 12 British nurse, Edith Cavell, charged with espionage is executed by a German firing squad.

1915 October 13 The largest Zeppelin raid of the war kills 59 people in London.

1915 October 14 Britain and France declare war on Bulgaria.

1915 October 15 Sir Ian Hamilton is relieved at Gallipoli and replaced by General Sir Charles Monro, who soon directs a masterful evacuation.

1915 October 15 U.S. bankers arrange a $500 million loan to the British and French.

1915 October 15 Admiral Henning von Holzendorff visits Max Warburg at his home to ask his opinion on the economic impact of intensified U-boat warfare. Warburg tells him that unrestricted U-boat warfare will only draw America into the war. (Warburgs)

1915 October 18 The Italians, reorganized, reinforced, and supported by 1,200 guns strike once more at Gorizia and are again repulsed in the Third Battle of the Isonzo.

1915 October 21 Siegmund von Sebotendorff dies in Wiesbaden. His funeral is attended by Rudolf von Sebottendorff and his wife. (Wiesbaden Zeitung, November 23; Roots)

1915 November 7 The Italian liner Ancona, carrying 27 Americans, is sunk without warning by an Austrian submarine.

1915 November 13 Norman Hapgood in Harper's Weekly says that a sharp line separates Jews from Gentiles in America and concludes that antisemitic prejudice is becoming more distinct. "Americans do not deprive Jews of any rights," he wrote, "but they do not on the whole like them."

1915 November 22 Townshend attacks Ctesiphon, in Mesopotamia, but after 4 days of bitter fighting withdraws to Kut.

1915 November 25 The almost dormant Ku Klux Klan is revived in Atlanta, Georgia, by Colonel William J. Simmons.

1915 November Late in the month, the remnants of the Serbian army, accompanied by a horde of civilian refugees, reaches the Adriatic, pursued by the Austrians.

1915 November 30 Sabotage is suspected in an explosion at the DuPont munitions plant in Wilmington, Delaware.

1915 December Violent anti-war demonstrations break out in Berlin.

1915 December In an Allied conference at Chantilly, Joffre succeeds in obtaining agreement from Britain, Russia, Italy, and Romania that coordinated Allied offensives will be launched on the Western, Eastern, and Italian fronts, about June, when Russia should be ready.

1915 December 4 "To get the boys out of the trenches by Christmas," Henry Ford begins fitting out a "Peace Ship" on which he plans to travel to Europe to end the war. (Schlesinger I)

1915 December 6 Töpfer, Rüttinger's successor in the Nuremberg Germanenorden province, writes Julius Rüttinger complaining that the brothers are now weary of the ritual, ceremony and banquets, which Pohl seems to regard as the main purpose of the Order. (Roots)

1915 December 7 President Wilson asks for a standing army of 142,000 and a reserve of 400,000.

1915 December 7 General Townshend at Kut, in Mesopotamia, is besieged by the Turks.

1915 December 10 After suffering extremely heavy casualties, the bulk of the Allied troops and supplies at Gallipoli are evacuated by this date.

1915 December 31 Appalling losses have been suffered during 1915 on both sides: 612,000 Germans, 1,292,000 French, and 279,000 British. The year ends with no appreciable shift in the battle lines scarring the landscape from the North Sea to the Swiss Alps. Russian casualties on the Eastern Front are more than 2 million men, about half of whom had been captured. Combined German and Austrian casualties exceed 1 million.

1915 Sir Douglas Haig replaces Sir John French as the Commander-in-Chief of British forces.

1915 Albert Einstein, after a number of false starts, publishes his General Theory of Relativity, the definitive form of his general theory.

1915 Radical, antisemitic poet and journalist Dietrich Eckart returns to Munich after being gassed at the front.

1915 Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels coins the word Ariosophy. Its earliest mention is in Ostrara I, 82. (Roots)

1915 The Allied governments retain J.P. Morgan & Co. as their agent to handle purchases of war supplies in the United States. Thomas Lamont, of the House of Morgan, appoints Edward R. Stettinius, Sr. to oversee this vast operation. Stettinius soon becomes a partner, heading a special department that apportions British and French orders of war materiels among U.S. steel mills, powder plants, tool works and dozens of other industries.

1916 January 7 Germany notifies the U.S. State Department that it will abide by strict international rules of maritime warfare.

1916 January 8-9 The remaining 35,000 Allied troops at Gallipoli are secretly withdrawn without alerting the Turks. Allied casualties for the entire campaign are estimated at 252,000, with the Turks suffering about 251,000.

1916 January 10 General Francisco "Pancho" Villa, in an attempt to embroil the U.S. in the turmoil in Mexico, forces 18 American mining engineers off a train and shoots them in cold blood.

1916 January 11 General Yudenich, one of the most capable Russian commanders, advances from Kars toward Erzerum in the Caucasus.

1916 February 13 General Yudenich reaches Erzerum and breaks through its ring of forts in a 3-day battle (February 16).

1916 February 21 Following an enormous bombardment, the crown prince's German Fifth Army attacks the fortified but lightly garrisoned area around Verdun. The assault gains considerable territory, capturing a key position, Fort Douaumont. Joffre prohibits any further retreat and sends Gen. Henri Philippe Petain with reinforcements to defend the region.

1916 January 24 The U.S. Supreme Court rules that a federal income tax is constitutional.

1916 March Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg and 17 other Social Democrats are expelled from the party's Reichstag delegation for their radiacal extremism.

1916 March 6 The second German attack at Verdun, launched on the western face of the salient, is eventually checked by French counterattacks. For the remainder of the month, attacks and counterattacks litter the battlefield with corpses. The watchword for the defense becomes France's motto for the rest of the war: Ils ne passeront pas! ("They shall not pass!")

1916 March 9 Pancho Villa leads a raid into New Mexico, killing 17 Americans.

1916 March 11 The Italians launch the Fifth Battle of the Isonzo. Like its predecessors, this battle is a succession of inconclusive conflicts.

1916 March 12 Russian General N. N. Baratov reaches Karind and advances on Baghdad.

1916 March 18 The Russians, responding to French appeals, launch a two-pronged drive in the Vilna-Naroch area as a counter to the German Verdun assault in the west. The Russian assault soon breaks down in the mud of the spring thaw, costing 70,000 to 100,000 casualties and 10,000 prisoners. German losses are about 20,000 men.

1916 March 24 German U-boats torpedo another passenger ship, the Sussex, and several more Americans are killed, despite Germany's guarantees of 1915.

1916 April Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg and their associates found the radical Independent Socialist Party, commonly referred to as the Spartacus League.

(Rosa Luxemburg, while in prison (1916-18) for revolutionary activity writes the so-called Spartacus Letters.)

1916 April 9 The third German offensive at Verdun strikes both sides of the salient, but is checked by May 19.

1916 April 18 General Yudenich captures Trebizond (Trabzon), facilitating Russian logistical support

1916 April 20 The Lafayette Escadrille, a French squadron made up of American volunteers, flies in action for the first time on the Western Front.

1916 April 29 In Mesopotamia, General Townshend's besieged and starving force at Kut-el-Amara capitulates, surrendering 2,070 British and 6,000 Indian troops to the Turks. The British had already taken 21,000 casualties in a series of unsuccessful rescue attempts.

1916 Spring Prescott Bush, the father of future President George Bush, and Roland "Bunny" Harriman are chosen for membership in the elite Yale secret society known as Skull and Bones.

1916 May 9 President Wilson orders mobilization of U.S. troops along the Mexican border. This will lead Carranza, the Mexican president, to order U.S. troops out of Mexico.

1916 May 10 Germany announces abandonment of its extended submarine campaign. During this period Great Britain, seeking to maintain a blockade, illegally seizes American vessels with such frequency, that Wilson threatens to provide convoys for all American merchant ships to guarantee their neutrality rights.

1916 May 15 The Austrians begin a long-planned offensive in the Trentino area, catching the Italians unprepared.

1916 May 30 The German High Seas Fleet under Adm. Reinhard Scheer puts to sea, led by Hipper's scouting fleet--40 fast ships with a nucleus of five battle cruisers. Following well behind is the main fleet of 59 ships.

1916 May 30 Alerted by German radio chatter, the British Grand Fleet under Admiral Sir John Jellicoe heads toward the Skagerrak. Leading is Beatty's scouting force of 52 ships, including 6 battle cruisers and 4 new super-dreadnoughts. Following behind is Jellicoe's main fleet of 99 vessels. Overall, the British have 37 capital ships: 28 dreadnoughts and 9 battle cruisers; the Germans had 27: 16 dreadnoughts, 6 older battleships, and 5 battle cruisers.

1916 May 31 At about 3:30pm, The Battle of Jutland, the most important naval engagement of the war begins. Fewer than four hours later the British have lost three battle cruisers, three cruisers, and eight destroyers; with 6,784 casualties. The Germans have lost only one old battleship, one battle cruiser, four light cruisers, and five destroyers; with 3,039 casualties. The Battle of Jutland is the end of an era: the last great fleet action in which both opponents slug it out within eyesight of one another. Yet neither side can claim a victory, and the German High Sea Fleet will not put to sea for the remainder of the war.

1916 June 1 Turkish commander Halil Pasha repulses a Russian attack at Khanikin in Mesopotamia.

1916 June 4 The Austrian spring offensive against Italy brings yet another appeal to Czar Nicholas for help. General Aleksei A. Brusilov, the commander of the Russian Southwestern Army Group, attacks along a 300- mile-long front. Well-planned and well executed, The Brusilov Offensive devastates the Austro-German line in two places and drives forward.

1916 June 5 British Minister of War, Lord Kitchener, dies when HMS Hampshire is sunk.

1916 June 5 An Arab revolt breaks out against the Turks in the Hejaz region of Saudi Arabia. The revolt spreads to Palestine and Syria under the leadership of British archaeologist T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), a brilliant tactician who joins forces with Husayn Ibn Ali. Lawrence, with a force of only a few thousand Arabs, threatens the Turks' entire line of communications through Syria to the Taurus Mountains.

1916 June-September The Brusilov Offensive, although successful, demoralizes the Russians, and costs them one million men, significantlycontributing to the hardships and resentments that lead to the Russian Revolutions of 1917.

(Note: Austrian losses were even greater, and their defeat by the Russians was the single most important element in the disintegration of the Habsburg Empire.)

1916 June-July Renewed German assaults at Verdun almost break the French line, but the French hang on to their positions until demands for replacements on the Eastern Front drain 15 German divisions from Verdun.

1916 June 10 The Austrian drive in the Trentino area is halted by difficult terrain and arrival of Italian reinforcements. An Italian counteroffensive and the desperate need to rush troops to the Eastern Front causes the Austrians to withdraw to defensive positions. Italian casualties reach more than 147,000; Austrian 81,000.

1916 June 12 Rudolf Hess is wounded at Verdun, but manages to continue fighting despite his injury.

1916 June 14 President Wilson leads a "preparedness" parade in Washington, D.C.

1916 June 16 Brusilov, receiving little or no aid from the two other Russian army groups on the front, is battered by a German counteroffensive.

1916 June 16 President Wilson is renominated for president at the Democratic Convention in St. Louis, Missouri. Thomas R. Marshall is nominated for vice president. Wilson campaigns on the slogan "He kept us out of war," while skillfully preparing the way for entrance on the side of the Allies. (Schlesinger I)

1916 June 18 General Helmuth von Moltke dies, a broken and disillusioned man.

1916 June 20 Frau Eliza von Moltke, the widow of General Moltke, begins "speaking in tongues" and soon begins writing hundreds of pages of what she claims are the General's supernatural "prophesies," delivered from beyond the grave. Frau Moltke soon names Adolf Hitler as the future leader of Germany, while Hitler is still an unknown messenger on the Western Front. Frau Moltke says it will be General von Ludendorff who will bring Hitler to power and the well-known English writer, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who will name Hitler as the long-awaited German Messiah. (Frau Moltke, Spear)

1916 June 21 President Carranza orders his troops to attack American troops still on Mexican soil. 18 Americans are killed or wounded. The Mexicans warn that a repetition will occurr unless Americans leave Mexico. Wilson refusesuntil order is restored along the border.

1916 June 24 Joffre launches his long-planned Allied offensive on the Somme with a week-long artillery bombardment.

1916 July A reconstituted Serbian army of about 118,000 men arrives by ship in the Balkans, and with additional reinforcements rises to more than 250,000.

1916 July The Germanenorden's newsletter begins featuring a swastika superimposed on a cross on its cover. All future issues will carry this same symbol. (Roots)

1916 July Allied forces begin active operations in Albania

1916 July 1 The British infantry, following the artillery barrage on the Somme, are mowed down by German machine guns as they attempt their assault. By nightfall the British have lost about 60,000 men, 19,000 of them dead--the greatest single, 1-day loss in the history of the British army.

1916 July 2 Despite the appalling British losses of the first day, Gen. Henry S. Rawlinson's British Fourth Army and Gen. Edmund Sllenby's Third Army continue with a series of small, limited attacks. Falkenhayn, determined to check the advance, begins shifting reinforcements from the Verdun front.

1916 July 13 The second German line in the Somme is cracked, but little advantage is gained.

1916 July 25 General Yudenich routs the Turkish Third Army, and then turns on the Turkish Second Army.

1916 Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph dies.

1916 Allen W. Dulles enters U.S. diplomatic service.

1916 August Italy declares war against Germany.

1916 August Kemal, the Turkish hero of Gallipoli and now a corps commander, captures the Caucasian cities of Mus and Bitlis.

1916 August In Persia, Halil Pasha retakes Kermanshah.

1916 August General Sir Frederick S. Maude becomes commander in Mesopotamian.

1916 August 3 German Gen. Kress von Kressenstein, with 15,000 Turkish troops and German machine gunners, makes a surprise attack on the British Sinai railhead at Rumani, but is repelled.

1916 August 6 General Cadorna again strikes the Austrian Isonzo front. In this Sixth Battle of the Isonzo the Italians take Gorizia, but no breakthrough is achieved. Psychologically, the operation boosts Italian morale, lowered by the heavy losses in the Trentino.

1916 August 17 Bulgarian-German attacks begin the Battle of Florina in the Balkans.

1916 August 19 Falkenhayn is relieved of command and replaced by General Paul von Hindenburg. Soon he and General Erich von Ludendorff will take full control of both the war and civilian affairs. Kaiser Wilhelm II becomes a mere figurehead.

1916 August 27 The Romanian government, impressed by the early success of the Brusilov Offensive, declares war on Germany and Austria-Hungary.

1916 August 27 The Allied-Serbian forces in the Balkans are driven back to the Struma River line.

1916 August-September Romanian armies advance into Transylvania, where they were repulsed by Falkenhayn, now commanding the Ninth Army.

1916 September Baron Rudolf von Sebottendorff visits Hermann Pohl, leader of the mysterious Germanenorden in Berlin. Pohl tells Sebottendorff he first became interested in the esoteric study of the runes through Guido von List, and that he is convinced racial miscegenation, especially with Jews, was responsible for obscuring the "Aryan's" knowledge of the mystical powers of the runes. Pohl says he believes this gnosis can be revived once the race has been purified of foreign contamination. (Sebottendorff; Roots)

1916 September 10 French Gen. Maurice Sarrail,technically in command in the Balkans, launches an abortive counteroffensive while bickering with his British subordinates.

1916 September 15 Gen. Haig, commander of the BEF, launches another major offensive in the Somme. British tanks, secretly shipped to the front and used in combat for the first time, spearhead the attack. Although a surprise to the Germans, the tanks are underpowered, unreliable, too slow, and too few in number to gain a decisive victory (out of 47 brought up, only 9 completed their assigned tasks). As at Verdun, the casualties were horrendous: British losses are about 420,000; French about 195,000; German nearly 650,000.

1916 Sept 20 Brusilov, slowed by ammunition shortages, reaches the Carpathian foothills. The offensive ends when German reinforcements, rushed from Verdun, bolster the shattered Austrians, who are in danger of being knocked out of the war.

1916 October-November The French, now under command of General Robert Nivelle, retake Forts Douaumont and Vaux.

1916 October 7 Hitler is wounded in combat and is taken to an army hospital at Beelitz.

1916 October 8 During a provincial meeting of the Germanenorden at Gotha in Thuringia, members from Berlin urge the Gotha assembly to remove Hermann Pohl as Chancellor. Pohl is incensed and declares himself Chancellor of a schismatic Germanenorden Walvater of the Holy Grail. Pohl succeeds in carrying with him the already established lodges in Silesia (Breslau), Hamburg, Berlin and the Osterland (Gera). Pohl's supporters in Berlin are G.W. Freese and Bräunlich, who founded new Berlin lodges in the city and at Gross-Lichterfelde. (Roots)

1916 October 20 General major Erwin von Heimerdinger becomes the new Chancellor of the original Germanenorden. Dr. Gensch becomes Treasurer and Bernhard Koerner, Grand Keeper of Pedigrees. Philipp Stauff and Eberhard von Brockhusen are principle officers of the Berlin province. (Bundesarchiv, Koblenz; Roots)

1916 November The Battle of the Somme comes to an end, costing the British more than 400,000 troops; the French 200,000; and the Germans about 450,000; with no strategic results (see June 24).

1916 November 3 Mackensen, commander of the German-reinforced Bulgarian Danube Army, crosses the Danube after driving north through the Dobruja.

1916 November 7 President Wilson is reelected. He has repeatedly promised the American people that if reelected he will keep them out of war.

1916 November 10 An Italian corps pushes an Austrian corps north and links with Sarrail's main body at Lake Ochrida in Albania.

1916 November 21 Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Josef dies.

1916 December From New York, Paul Warburg sends a letter to his brother, Max Warburg, in Germany, telling him that the Allies have nearly exhausted the market for American loans, but that unrestricted U-boat warfare would foster sympathy and expand the market. (The Warburgs)

1916 December 4 Romanian Gen. Alexandru Averescu, is disastrously defeated in the Battle of the Arges River (December 1-4).

1916 December 6 Bucharest, the Romanian capital, is captured.

1916 December 13 General Maude begins a movement up both banks of the Tigris River with 166,000 men, two-thirds of them Indian.

1916 December 18 The French front almost reaches the lines held prior to February, bringing the Verdun campaign to an end. Casualties in this bitterly fought battle are about 542,000 French and 434,000 Germans.

1916 December 18 President Wilson asks the warring powers to state their conditions for peace negotiations.

1916 December Shortly before Christmas, Pohl informs Sebottendorf that the Germanenorden has been reconstructed with Pohl, himself, as Chancellor. (Roots)

1916 December 31 Rasputin, a politically powerful Russian monk who is also a confidant and advisor to the Czar's family, is murdered by a group of noblemen lead by Prince Felix Yussoupov, the Czarina's cousin. Rasputin is poisoned, shot, clubbed and then thrown into the Neva River. Rasputin's real name was Grigori Yefimovich.

1916 December 31 General Joffre retires, and is succeeded by General Nivelle.

1916 December 31 The Romanian army, with belated Russian support, holds only one tiny foothold in their own country. The remnants of the Romanian armies have been driven north into Russia, and the bulk of Romania's wheat fields and oil wells fallen into German hands.

1916 Lazar Kaganovich, now a member of the Kiev Bolshevik Committee, makes a speech opposing the "imperialist war." He is quickly arrested and banished from Kiev. He then began a period of travelling and union organizing using various aliases.

1916 Lloyd George becomes prime minister of Britain's wartime coalition government.

1916 General Josef Pilsudski is imprisoned by the Germans after refusing to join the Central Powers.

1916 The Trans-Siberian railway, the longest continuous railroad line in the world, is completed.

1916 U.S. Marines land in Santo Domingo to quell unrest and will not leave until 1924.

1916 U.S. troops under General Pershing invade Mexico in retaliation for raids by Pancho Villa.

1916 Henry Ford spends $465,000 to finance a so-called "Peace Ship," and travels to Europe in an unsuccessful attempt to personally negotiate an end to the war. Ford later blames his failure on the Jews.

1917 January Leon Trotsky arrives in New York City and becomes an editor of the Russian socialist newspaper Novy Mir (New World). He spends only 10 weeks in America, but long enough to raise millions of dollars for a revolution in Russia.

1917 January The Hamburg Chamber of Commerce appeals to the Kaiser to start unrestricted submarine warfare. Max Warburg voices his opposition even though he knows his brothers and their associates in America will reap huge profits (See December 1916). (Warburgs)

1917 January 8-9 In the Battle of Magruntein, British forces clear the Sinai Peninsula of all organized Turkish forces. Sir Archibald Murray is then authorized to begin a limited offensive into Palestine, where the Turks have established defensive positions along the ridges between Gaza and Beersheba, the two natural gateways to the region.

1917 January 22 President Wilson appears before Congress and outlines a plan for a league of peace, an organization designed to bring about a federation of peaceloving nations.Wilson asks for a "Peace without victory," a concept that is unappealing to both warring factions.

1917 January 31 Germany announces it is resuming unrestricted submarine warfare, stating that neutral ships, armed or unarmed, that sail into a German war zone will be attacked without warning

(Note: On this same day, Max Warburg lunches at his club with Admiral Arndt von Holtzendorff, HAPAG's Berlin agent, and Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmerman. (Warburgs)

1917 Lazar Kaganovich first meets Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev at a meeting of leather tanners in Yuzovka and soon recruits him into the Bolshevik party. (Wolf)

1917 February 3 President Woodrow Wilson breaks off all diplomatic relations with Germany, less than a month after his inauguration for a second term, citing Germany's renewed submarine warfare as reason enough to intervene. That same day the the American steamship Housatonic is sunk without warning.

1917 February 22 In Mesopotamia, Sir Frederick Maude skillfully assaults Kut, forcing the Turks back toward Baghdad.

1917 February 23 Anticipating a major Allied offensive, the Germans begin withdrawing to a well fortified defensive zone known as the Hindenburg line, or Siegfried zone, about 20 miles behind the winding and overextended line from Arras to Soissons (to April 5).

1917 February 25 General Khabalov issues a police proclamation forbidding all assemblies in the streets of Petrograd and warning that his troops have been ordered to use their weapons to maintain order. Only hours later, 300 people are killed near Nicholas Station.

1917 February 24 The Zimmerman note, written by German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmerman to the German Ambassador in Mexico, is turned over to President Wilson by British intelligence, who had earlier intercepted and decoded the message. The note indicates that if Germany and the United States were to go to war, Germany would seek an alliance with Mexico -- offering the Mexicans Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona in return for their efforts. The British had held onto the note, waiting until the most propitious moment to present it to Wilson. It now becomes one of the most important factors in leading him to declare war on Germany. (Tuchman I)

1917 February 26 Wilson asks Congress for permission to arm merchant ships. Pacifist Senator La Follette leads a filibuster against the legislation.

1917 March 1 Bread riots in Russia are followed by more killings.

1917 March 5 President Wilson is inaugurated.

1917 March 8 Food shortages provoke more street demonstrations in Petrograd (February 23, O.S.), and garrison soldiers refuse to suppress them. Duma leaders demand that Czar Nicholas transfer power to a parliamentary government.

1917 March 9 President Wilson issues a directive for the arming of U.S. merchant ships after the Attorney General finds that such an order is within the power of the presidency.

1917 March 11 Revolution breaks out in Russia. (Sturdza)

1917 March 11 After several days of fighting along the Diyala River, General Maude enters Baghdad. He then launches three columns up the Tigris, Euphrates, and Diyala rivers, securing his hold on the city.

1917 March 12 The garrison and workers of Petrograd (St. Petersburg), capital of Russia, mutiny, beginning the Russian Revolutions of 1917. Food riots, strikes, and war protests turn into mass demonstrations. The army refuses to fire on the demonstrators. (February 27, O.S.)

1917 March 12 The American merchant ship Algonquin is sunk without warning.

1917 March 13 Heavy fighting breaks out in the streets of Petrograd.

1917 March 15 The Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, a special Duma committee, establishes a provisional government headed by Prince Georgi Lvov, a liberal. Aleksandr Kerensky becomes the new Minister of Justice (March 2, O.S.).

1917 March 15 The Soviet defies the provisional government and issues the notorious "Order No. 1," depriving officers of disciplinary authority. The Russian army and navy collapses as threadbare, battle-weary soldiers and sailors murder or depose their officers.

1917 March 15 Czar Nicholas II abdicates in favor of his brother, Archduke Michael.

1917 March 16 Archduke Michael refuses to accept the crown and abdicates in favor of Prince Lvov's Provisional Government. The 300-year-old Romanov dynasty comes to an end (March 3, O.S.).

1917 March 17 The new Provisional government is almost universally welcomed. Civil liberties are proclaimed, new wage agreements and an 8-hour day are soon negotiated. Discipline in the army is relaxed, and elections are promised for a Constituent Assembly that would organize a permanent democratic order. The existence of two seats of power, the Provisional government and the Petrograd Soviet, however, creates a political rivalry representative of the differing aspirations within Russian society.

1917 March 18 The City of Memphis, Vigilante and Illinois, all American ships, are sunk without warning.

1917 March 21 Another American ship, the Healdon, is sunk off the Dutch coast.

1917 March 22 The U.S. recognizes the new Russian government formed by Prince Lvov and Aleksandr Kerensky.

1917 March 24 The Sixtus Letter - a secret letter sent by Karl I, emperor of Austria, attempts to negotiate a separate peace with England and France. Karl willingly offers to recognize France's "just demand" in regard to Alsace-Lorraine.

1917 March 26 An attack on Gaza, led by Gen. Sir Charles Dobell, fails because of defective staff work and bad communications. General Murray's report, however, presents this First Battle of Gaza as a British victory, and Murray is ordered to advance without delay to take Jerusalem.

1917 March 27 Leon Trotsky and a group of communist revolutionaries sail from New York aboard the S.S. Christiania Fiord, bound for Russia.

1917 March British naval authorities in Halifax, Novia Scotia, remove Trotsky and five of his companions along with millions of dollars in gold from the Christiania Fiord.

1917 Stalin returns to Petrograd after the March Revolution had overthrown the monarchy.

1917 April 2 President Wilson asks Congress to declare war on Germany. "The world," he says, "must be made safe for democracy."

1917 April 4 The U.S. Senate concurs with Wilson's request to declare war on Germany.

1917 April 5 Two telegrams reach the office of British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour. One, from Berne, informs Balfour that Lenin and his group of Russian Communists are negotiating with the Germans for safe passage through Germany. The other, from Lord Halifax, informs him that, Trotsky and five of his associates have been seized in Nova Scotia and that Trotsky is now "the leader of a movement to start a revolution against the present Russian Government, the funds being subscribed by socialists and Germans." (Tuchman II)

1917 April 6 The U.S. House of Representatives approves Wilson's resolution against Germany and the United States declares war. The Zimmerman note along with the news that more American ships had been sunk by U-boats had finally aroused Americans out of their isolationism.

1917 April 9 The long-awaited Allied Offensive (the Nivelle Offensive) begins when British troops, following a heavy bombardment and gas attack, assault the German Sixth Army positions near Arras. British air superiority is rapidly achieved.

1917 April 9 In Russia, widespread popular opposition to the war causes the Petrograd Soviet to repudiate annexationist ambitions (March 27, O.S.).

1917 April British and American diplomats pressure for Trotsky's release even though he has promised to take Russia out of the war. An act which is almost certain to cost the lives of tens of thousands of Allied soldiers on the Western Front.

1917 April Trotsky is freed by the British and steams off to ferment a revolution in Russia with an American passport and millions of dollars in gold at his disposal.

1917 April 15 The British advance near Arras is finally halted.

1917 April 16 The French armies attack on a 40-mile front between Soissons and Reims to take the Chemin des Dames, a series of rocky, wooded ridges running parallel to the front. The Germans, fully aware of French plans as a result of Nivelle's confident public boasts, turn the assault into a disaster. The entire operation is a colossal failure, costing the French nearly 120,000 men in 5 days.

1917 April 16 Lenin, Zinoviev, Lunacharski and 30 other Bolsheviks, a number of them from New York City, arrive in Petrograd by train from Switzerland, via Germany, Sweden and Finland.

1917 April 17 Trotsky and his companions arrive in Petrograd from New York and soon join forces with Lenin.(Prince Michael Sturdza of Romania says Lenin arrived on the 17th and that Trotsky was already in Petrograd when Lenin arrived.) Stuart Kahan in The Wolf of the Kremlin says that Trotsky didn't arrive until early May, and went directly to the Tauride Palace where the Soviet was already in session.

1917 April 29 Almost the entire French army, disheartened and exhausted after the disastrous Nivelle offensive, rebels in mutiny.

1917 April German submarine warfare reaches its peak. Adoption of the convoy system greatly reduces Allied losses.

1917 May A coalition government is established in Russia that includes several moderate socialists in addition to Aleksandr Kerensky, who had been in the cabinet from the beginning. The participation of such socialists in a government that continues to prosecute the war and fails to implement basic reforms, however, only serves to identify their parties -- the Socialist Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, and others -- with government failure.

1917 May 8 Aleksandr Kerensky is appointed minister of war and soon responds to pressure from the alarmed Allies by ordering Brusilov, now commander in chief, to mount an offensive on the Galician front.

1917 May 10 The Allied convoy system is officially adopted.

1917 May 12 The Italians once again attempt to battle their way over mountainous terrain in the Tenth Battle of the Isonzo. Casualties are huge: 157,000 Italian and 75,000 Austrians.

1917 May 13 Our Lady of Fatima, an apparition of the Virgin Mary, is allegedly seen by three Portuguese children near the village of Fatima in Portugal.

1917 May 15 Nivelle is replaced by General Philippe Petain, who quells the mutiny and restores the situation with a combination of tact, firmness, and justice. French counterintelligence completely blots out all news of the mutiny, even from the Germans.

1917 King George of England changes royal family name from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor (1901-1917).

1917 May 16 Kerensky becomes Minister of War and begins a systematic disintegration of the Russian Army (Prakkase No. 1). It is Kerensky's persistence in fighting the war that dooms the provisional government. The Bolsheviks led by Lenin continue to undermine the war effort by spreading communist propaganda among the soldiers and the working class.

1917 May 18 The Selective Service Act, a draft and conscription law, is passed in the U.S. for all men between 21 and 30.

1917 June General Lord Edmund Allenby takes command of the British Egyptian Expeditionary Force, which will soon take the war to the Turks in Palestine.

1917 June 7 After a 17-day general bombardment, British mines, packed with over a million pounds of high explosives tears a huge gap in the German lines on Messines Ridge. General Sir Herbert Plumer's Second Army successfully occupied Messines. This clear-cut victory bolsters British morale.

1917 June 12 Britain and France force Constantine I to abandon the Greek throne to his son, Alexander.

1917 June 24 The American Expeditionary Force (AEF) and the First Division, an amalgam of existing regular army units, under Major. General John J. Pershing arrive in France. Pershing's calls for a million-man army overseas by May 1918.

1917 June 26 King Alexander of Greece reinstates Eleutherios Venizelos as prime minister.

1917 June 27 Greece enters the war on the side of the Allies.

1917 Summer By the summer of 1917 a social upheaval of vast proportions is sweeping over Russia. All over Russia, peasants are expropriating land from the gentry. Peasant-soldiers flee the trenches so as not to be left out, and the government can not stem the tide. New shortages consequently appear in the cities, causing scores of factories to close. Angry workers form their own factory committees, sequestering plants to keep them running and to gain new material benefits.

1917 July A mutiny is successfully put down at the German naval base at Kiel.

1917 July 1 Russian Commander-in-Chief Brusilov attacks toward Lemberg with the few troops still capable of combat operations. After a few minor gains, the Russian supply system breaks down, and Russian enthusiasm and discipline quickly disappears as German resistance stiffens.

1917 July 4 Colonel Charles E. Stanton, speaking at the tomb of Lafayette, the French hero of the American War of Independence, proudly states, " Lafayette, we are here."

1917 July 14 The U.S. House of Representatives appropriates $640 million for the military aviation program. The army begins the war with 55 planes and 4,500 aviators. By the end of the war more than 16,000 U.S. aircraft will be in service.

1917 July 16-17 Following a disastrous military offensive, Petrograd soldiers, instigated by local Bolshevik agitators, demonstrate against the government in what be comes known as the "July Days." (July 3-4, O.S.)

1917 July 16-18 The Bolsheviks make a premature attempt to seize power in Petrograd. Trotsky is arrested and Lenin is forced to go into hiding in Finland.

1917 July Stalin plays an important organizational role in the Bolshevik party after the first unsuccessful Bolshevik attempt to seize power during the "July days".

1917 July 19 General Max Hoffmann, commanding on the Eastern Front, begins a new German assault, crushing the demoralized Russian armies. The Germans halt their advance at the Galician border.

1917 July 20 Prince Lvov resigns and Kerensky becomes Prime Minister and head of the provisional government.

1917 July 25 Rudolf Hess is injured in his left arm at Oituz Pass in Romania, but stays with his unit. (Missing Years)

1917 July 31 The bloody Third Battle of Ypres begins when the British attack the Germans from the northeast. The low ground, sodden with rain, has been turned into a quagmire by a preliminary 3-day bombardment, and the British advance quickly bogs down. More than 250,000 British troops will be killed capturing the small village of Passchendaele.

1917 August Trotsky joins the Bolshevik Party, whose longtime loyalists (including Stalin) regard him as an interloper. Nevertheless, Trotsky soon wins a leading role with his spellbinding speeches and organizational energy.

1917 August Rudolf Hess is felled by a rifle bullet in his left lung during a charge by the 18th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment at Unguereana in Romania, and almost bleeds to death. (Missing Years)

1917 August 10 Herbert Hoover is put in charge of the food program set up by the Lever Food and Fuel Control Act. It is designed to increase food production and distribution.

1917 August 18 General Luigi Cadorna launches the Eleventh Battle of the Isonzo with 52 Italian divisions and 5,000 guns.

1917 September Austria is reinforced in Italy by seven German divisions under General Otto von Below.

1917 September 1 General Oscar von Hutier's Eighth Army attacks Riga, northern anchor of the Russian front. As a holding attack on the west bank of the Dvina River threatens the city, three divisions cross the river to the north on pontoon bridges, encircling the fortress, while exploiting elements pouring eastward. The Russian Twelfth Army flees, and a small German amphibious force occupies Osel and Dago islands in the Gulf of Riga. The German victory at Riga leaves Petrograd unprotected.

1917 September 8 General Lavr G. Kornilov attempts to establish a right-wing military dictatorship in Russia. He is backed by the Cadets, traditionally the party of liberal constitutionalism.

1917 September 8-14 Kerensky puts down the conservative revolt led by General Kornilov and arrests the general. Kerensky quickly releases Trotsky and dozens of other terrorists from prison. (To Kornilov, the real enemy was socialism, personified by Kerensky. To Kerensky, the conservatives represented counterrevolution. Both factions despised and underrated Lenin because of his extremism.) (Sturdza)

1917 September 20 At Ypres, a series of British assaults inch forward against determined counterattacks. The Germans, for the first time, use mustard gas, scorching and burning the British troops.

1917 September The Bolsheviks gain a majority in the Petrograd Soviet and Trotsky is elected Chairman.

1917 September Adolf Hitler receives the Cross of Merit, third class.

1917 October The Austrians and Germans attack the Italian forces at Caporetto. More than 265,000 Italians are taken as prisoners of war.

1917 October Zinoviev votes with Lev Kamenev against seizing power, earning the undying enmity of party comrades and Bolshevik historians; nevertheless, Zinoviev is given command of the Petrograd party organization.

1917 October 22 Lenin secretly returns from Finland. After giving his instructions to the Bolsheviks at a secret session of the Bolshevik Central Committee, he once again goes into hiding.

1917 October 24 German troops under Gen. Otto von Below lead a powerful attack against the weak Italian defenses at Caporetto, forcing Cadorna to withdraw along the entire front (The twelfth Battle of Isonzo).

1917 October 25 The Military Revolution Committee of the Petrograd Soviet launches an successful insurrection. Lenin's influence is decisive, but the actual organizer is Trotsky. (Lazar Kaganovich, himself of Jewish descent, later said that the percentage of Jews in the party at this time was 52%, rather high he noted, when compared to the percentage of Jews (1.8%) in the total population.) (Wolf)

1917 October 27 The first American soldier fires a shot in World War I. (Schlesinger I)

1917 October 31 Allenby attacks in the Third Battle of Gaza (Battle of Beersheba). Allenby leaves three divisions demonstrating in front of Gaza and secretly moves against Beersheba. The surprise is complete, and an all-day battle culminates in a mounted charge at dusk by an Australian cavalry brigade over the Turkish wire and trenches into Beersheba itself, capturing the vital water supply.

1917 November 2 The Balfour Declaration - Arthur James Balfour, in a letter to Lord Walter Rothschild of England, affirms Britain's commitment to the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

1917 November 3 Three American soldiers are killed in action. They are the first official American casualties in World War I. By the end of the war 49,000 will be killed in action and another 230,000 wounded. Disease will take a greater toll than bullets, claiming 57,000 men. (Schlesinger I)

1917 November 5 The Rapallo Conference, a direct result of the disaster at Caporetto, sets up the Supreme War Council, the first attempt to establish overall Allied unity of command.

1917 November 6 After more than 3 months of fighting at Ypres and a total advance of 8 km (5 miles), the British offensive comes to an end with the capture of the ridge and village of Passchendaele. More importantly, it distracts German attention, from the collapsing French armies, thus helping to prevent a German victory in 1917. The British suffer more than 300,000 casualties, the French about 9,000, and the Germans about 260,000.

1917 November 6 Allenby strikes north, launching the Desert Mounted Corps across the country toward the sea. The Turks evacuated Gaza in time to avoid the trap, but are closely pursued by Allenby.

1917 November 6 Lenin reappears to direct the revolution in Petrograd (October 24, O.S.).

1917 November 7 Just before daybreak, the Bolsheviks seize the railway station, state bank, the power stations, and telephone exchange. In the evening they arrest the cabinet members meeting in the Winter Palace.

1917 November 7 The Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets proclaims the establishment of Soviet power.

1917 November 8 By evening, Petrograd is firmly in the hands of the Bolsheviks. A new Government headed by Lenin is quickly organized. Trotsky becomes Commissar for Foreign Affairs and Stalin Commissar for Minorities. They soon take the name: Council of the People's Commissars. Fighting in Moscow will continue for several more days.

1917 November 8 The Second All Russia Congress of Soviets proposes that all combatant nations begin immediate negotiations on concluding a just, democratic peace without annexations or indemnities. (Polyakov)

1917 November 8 Kerensky escapes to Finland, and then travels on to Paris. He will eventually settle in New York City.

1917 November 9 Lenin forms the world's first Communist government and quickly asks Germany for an armistice. (Compton's)

1917 November 12 The arrival of British and French reinforcements in Italy enables Cadorna to stabilize the Italian front at the Piave River. Italy suffers over 40,000 casualties, as well as 275,000 prisoners.

1917 November 13 General Allenby, closely pursuing the Turks, strikes again, driving them back to the north. Turning then toward Jerusalem, Allenby is detained by the appearance of Turkish reserves and the arrival of General von Falkenhayn, who reestablishes a front from the sea to Jerusalem.

1917 November 20 The British unleash the first large-scale tank attack. At dawn approximately 200 tanks, followed by wave after wave of infantry, plow into the Germans positions in front of Cambrai. German defenses temporarily collapse and the assault breaks through the Hindenburg line for 5 miles along a 6-mile front.

1917 November 20 A preliminary armistice is signed between Germany and Russia (according to Russian historian Yuri Polyakov, who also stated the Allies never replied to the Soviet peace proposal of November 8)

1917 November 25 A Constituent Assembly is elected in Russia. Few of his opponents appreciate Lenin's political boldness, audacity, and commitment to shaping a Communist Russia (November 12, O.S).

1917 November 26 The Russian revolutionary government abandons the war effort after tens of thousands of Russian soldiers desert in droves, lured by promises of "land, peace, bread."

1917 November 30 In France, Germans forces counterattack in the Cambrai salient.

1917 November 30 The U.S. Rainbow Division, commanded by Colonel Douglas McArthur and representing men from every state of the Union, lands in France.

1917 December 3 General Haig orders a partial withdrawal from the Cambrai salient. Nonetheless, Cambrai marks a turning point in tactics on the Western Front on two counts: (1) successful assault without preliminary bombardment and (2) the mass use of tanks.

1917 December 3 A truce is signed between the new Russian Bolshevik government and Germany, ending hostilities on the Eastern Front, and permanently erasing Russia from the Allied ranks.

1917 December 7 The United States declares war on Austria-Hungary.

1917 December 8 Allenby assaults the Turkish and German positions, driving them from Jerusalem.

1917 December 9 Peace talks begin between Germany and Russia at Brest-Litovsk in Belorussia. (Polyakov)

1917 December 9 Jerusalem is occupied by Allenby's British cavalry.

1917 December 17 Lazar Kaganovich sets out for Petrograd where he has been appointed a delegate to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets. (Wolf)

1917 December 20 The Soviet Cheka is established as an investigative agency and quickly transforms itself into a political police force committed to the extermination of all opponents of Soviet ideology. Its founding director was the mysterious Felix Dzerzhunsky, who is quoted as saying, "The Cheka is not a court. We stand for organized terror. The Cheka is obligated to defend the revolution and conquer the enemy even if its sword by chance sometimes fall upon the heads of the innocent."

1917 December 21 Sebottendorff, who has communicated regularly with Pohl throughout 1917, attends the dedication ceremony of the reorganized Germanenorden in Berlin at Pohl's invitation. Sebottendorff offers to publish a monthly Order periodical and is formally elected Master of the Bavarian province. (BHK; Roots)

1917 December Lazar Kaganovich meets Kliment Voroshilov and Sergo Ordzhonikidze, acquaintances of his two older brothers, Mikhail and Yuri, who are now living in Arzamas. Mikhail is also a close friend of Nikolai Bulganin, whom Lenin considers one of the Bolshevik's leading theorists. (Wolf)

1917 December During the Battle of Caporetto, on the Italian Front, Austria forces the Italians to retreat, losing 600,000 prisoners and deserters (October-December).

1917 Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli becomes Papal Nuncio in Germany (to 1929).

1917 The Allies station 15,000 British and Americans at Archangel. 8,000 more Americans occupy Siberia. These forces will remain in Russia even after the close of the war and will not leave until 1919.

1917 Chaim Weizmann becomes head of the World Zionist Organization.He will hold this office from 1917 to 1931 and again from 1935 to 1946.

1917 In his fourth publication of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion Sergei Nilus attributes them for the first time to Theodor Herzl. (Segel/Levy)

1917 Edward R. Stettinius, Sr., is appointed as surveyor-general of all purchases for the U.S. government.

1918 January 1 Corneliu Codreanu and his followers in Romania resist attacks by bands of mutinous Russian soldiers looting and pillaging their countryside.

1918 January 8 President Wilson in an address to Congress lays out his famous Fourteen Points for peace, calling for, among other things, open diplomacy, armament reduction, national self-determination, and the formation of a League of Nations.

1918 January 28 The Bolsheviks found the Red Army.

1918 January Journalist Kurt Eisner plays a prominent role in anti-war strikes in Munich and is quickly jailed. (Roots)

1918 January The Bolsheviks sign an armistice with Germany at Brest-Litovsk. The Bolsheviks take Russia out of the war, freeing tens of thousands of German troops to fight the Allies in the West.

1918 January Sebottendorff publishes the first issue of Runen in association with the Germanenorden. He also assumes financial responsibility for the Allegemeine Ordens-Nachrichten newsletter, for members only. (BHK; Roots)

1918 February 9 German Foreign Secretary von Kuhlmann issues an ultimatum at Brest-Litovsk, which the Russians consider as annexationist. This causes division within the Soviet leadership. (Polyakov)

1918 February 10 Bukharin leads the so-called Left Communist opposition to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which he says is a betrayal of the quest for international socialist revolution. He will later accepts Lenin's policies.

1918 February 11 President Wilson publicly announces his Fourteen Point Plan for an armistice, promising that there will be "no annexations, no contributions, no punitive damages." (Nicholson)

1918 February 18 The German command launches an offensive along the entire Russian front after the Soviets refuse Germany's terms for peace. 700,000 Austro-German troops are thrown against the newly formed Red Army and begin closing in on Petrograd, Moscow and Kiev. (Polyakov)

1918 February 23 In memory of the Red Army's first battles, this day is hereafter celebrated as Soviet Armed Forces Day.

1918 March After a long convalescence, Rudolf Hess volunteers for service as a fighter pilot. (Missing Years)

1918 March A Germanenorden newsletter states that the articles of the Order had been formulated after discussions with Karl August Hellwig of the Armanenschaft. The ritual is also ascribed to Armanenschaft ceremony, but the suggestion that brothers of the higher grades in the Germanenorden be called Armanen was said to have been vetoed by the Armanenschaft. (Roots)

1918 March 3 The Bolsheviks sign a separate treaty of peace with the Germans at Brest-Litovsk. Under its terms, Russia recognizes the independence of the Ukraine, Finland, and Georgia; gives up control of Poland, the Baltic states, and a portion of Belorussia; and cedes Kars, Ardahan, and Batumi to Turkey. The treaty will be nullifieded by the defeat of Germany in November 1918.

(Note: Trotsky unsuccessfully opposed the treaty, as annexationist, but retains Lenin's confidence.)

1918 March 9 The warship Glory brings the first 200 British soldiers to Murmansk, beginning an armed invasion of Soviet Russia by the Allies. These troops are soon followed by even larger detachments of British, French and American forces. The whole of the Murmansk region is soon occupied and the Allies move on to Archangel. (Polyakov)

1918 March The Ukraine, which remains occupied by Germany throughout 1918, provides much of the grain that saves the German people from starvation.

1918 Leon Trotsky becomes commissar of war (to 1925). From the demoralized remnants of the Czar's armed forces he manages to organize the Red Army, a remarkable achievement, but his brusque style, his impatience with criticism and incompetence, and his decision to rely on "military specialists" won him few friends. Rank-and-file party comrades saw him as aloof and remote.

1918 Edward R. Stettinius is appointed U.S. assistant Secretary of War and is sent on a mission to France.

1918 March 21 At dawn, the German army launches another "great offensive" in the Second Battle of the Somme. After a 5-hour bombardment, specially trained German shock troops roll through a heavy fog, striking the right flank of the British sector between Arras and La Fere. The stunned British fall back, allowing the German Eighteenth Army to pass the Somme.

1918 March 23 A huge, long-range German cannon begins a sporadic bombardment of Paris from a position 65 miles away. This remarkable weapon seriously damages Parisian morale and eventually inflicts 876 casualties, yet with little effect on the war.

1918 April 3 The Allied Supreme War Council, in a meeting at Beauvais, appoints Ferdinand Foch as supreme commander of Allied forces, including the Americans. Foch Immediately sends reserves to aid the British at the Somme.

1918 April 5 Japanese troops landed from Japanese battleships anchored off Vladivostok overrun the city. They are soon followed by British troops. (Polyakov)

1918 April 9 During the Battle of Lys, German troops again strike the British sector, this time in Flanders, threatening the important rail junction of Hazebrouck and the Channel ports.

1918 April 9 The British are forced to withdraw from Ypres to Armentieres.

1918 April 12 General Haig, after announcing, "Our backs are to the wall," forbids further retreat and galvanizes British resistance at Lys.

1918 April 14 General Foch and Pershing soon make a joint plea to President Wilson to get more U.S. troops to Europe as soon as possible, even if untrained. The Allied situation is deperate.

1918 April 17 The German drive at Lys is halted after gaining only 10 miles including the Messines Ridge. Ludendorff achieves tactical success, but a strategical failure. There is no breakthrough, and the Channel ports are safe.

1918 April 21 German ace Manfred von Richthofen, known as the Red Baron, is shot down and killed.

1918 May Walter Riehl is elected chairman of the Austrian DAP (German Workers Party) and moves to Vienna.

1918 May 18 The French Ambassador to Russia informs the commander of a Czechoslovak corps, which had been formed in Russia from prisoners of war that the Allies desire them to remain in Russia to form the nucleus of an Allied army against the Bolsheviks. (Polyakov)

1918 May 50,000 well-equipped troops from the Czechoslak Corps deploy along the Trans-Siberian railway, and soon seize several key cities on the Volga and in Siberia. (Polyakov)

1918 May 27 Ludendorff attacks in great force along the Chemin des Dames as a diversion against the French, preparatory to a planned attack against the British in Flanders. German troops, preceded by tanks, route 12 French divisions (3 of them British), and by noon are crossing the Aisne. By evening they cross the Vesle, west of Fismes.

1918 May 28 General Pershing directs the first independent American offensive of the war at Cantigny, 50 miles northwest of the Marne. Although only a local operation, its success against veteran troops of Hutier's Eighteenth Army boosts Allied morale.

1918 May 29 The Soviet government passes a resolution on the introduction of mobilization for the Red Army. (Polyakov)

1918 May 30 Ludendorff's forces reach the Marne.

1918 May 30 The American Third Division holds the bridges at Chateau-Thierry, 44 miles from Paris, then counter attacks with the assistance of the rallying French troops, driving the Germans back across the Marne. The American Second Division checks the German attacks west of Chateau-Thierry.

1918 June 4 Ludendorff calls off the offensive after heavy losses. The American Second Division then counterattacks, spearheaded by its Marine Brigade.

1918 June 5 The U.S. Second Division begins a drive to uprooted the Germans from positions at Vaux, Bouresches, and Belleau Wood.

1918 June 9 A German advance begins on Compiegne.

1918 June 12 The German advance on Compiegne is halted by French and American troops.

1918 June 25 The Marine Brigade of the U.S. Second Division captures Bouresche and Belleau Wood. The Marines suffer 9,500 casualties, almost 55 percent.

1918 June 28 Lenin signs a decree of the Council of People's Commissars universally nationalizing large-scale industry, banks and transportation. (Polyakov)

1918 Summer Russian Constituent Assembly delegates begin fleeing to western Siberia and form their own "All-Russian" government, which is soon suppressed by a reactionary "White" dictatorship under Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak. Army officers in southern Russia organize a "Volunteer Army" under the leadership of Generals Lavr Kornilov and Anton Denikin and gain support from Britain and France. Both in the Volga region and the eastern Ukraine, peasants begin to organize against Bolshevik requisitioning and mobilization. Soon anarchist "Greens" are fighting the "Reds" (Bolsheviks) and Whites alike in guerrilla-type warfare. Even in Moscow and Petrograd, leftist Socialist Revolutionaries take up arms against the Bolsheviks, whom they accuse of betraying revolutionary ideals.

1918 July The Fifth All-Russian Congress of Soviets mobilizes the Red Army. (Polyakov)

1918 July President Wilson's Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, is introduced to Winston S. Churchill (then-Minister of Air and War) in London.

1918 July Some 313,000 U.S. troops arrive in France during July.

1918 July Baron Sebottendorff leases five large club rooms, accommodating 300 guests, at Munich's fashionable Four Seasons Hotel (Hotel Vierjahreszeiten). Meetings until this time had been held at his apartment on Zweigstrasse. (Roots)

1918 July 10 The first Soviet Constitution is adopted by the Fifth All-Russia Congress of Soviets. (Polyakov)

1918 July 14-15 Germany launches the Second Battle of the Marne. The Allies, warned of the attack by deserters, aerial reconnaissance, and prisoners, batters the advancing Germans with artillery. East of Reims the attack is halted within a few hours by the French. West of Reims 14 divisions of the German Seventh Army cross the Marne, but American forces rebuffed the attack.

1918 July 16-17 Czar Nicholas II, his wife, their five children, their doctor and servants are murdered by the Bolsheviks near Ekaterinburg in Siberia. On the window sill of the Czarina's room is found a swasika believed to have been carved by the Cazrina herself.

1918 July 17 In the Marne, Allied aircraft and artillery destroy all German controlled bridges, disrupt supply and force the attack to halt. In the space of 5 months the Germans had suffered half a million casualties. Allied losses were somewhat greater, but American troops are now arriving at a rate of 300,000 a month.

1918 July 18 As Ludendorff prepares to pull back, Foch orders a counteroffensive at Soissons. The French, using light tanks and aided by U.S. and British divisions, assault the Marne from left to right, reaching the Vesle River and recapturing Soissons. Ludendorff calls off the proposed drive in Flanders.

(Note: Later the German Chncellor would write, "On the 18th even the most optimistic among us knew that all was lost. The history of the world was played out in three days.") (Schlesinger I)

1918 July Sebottendorff buys the Beobachter, a minor weekly newspaper in the Munich suburbs, for 5,000 marks from the estate of Franz Eher who had died in June. He soon renames it the "Munchener Beobachter" and publishes it, until May 1919, at the Germanenorden (Thule) offices in the Four Seasons Hotel. (Roots)

1918 August The Austrian DAP, led by Walter Riehl, changes its name to the German National Socialist Worker's Party (DNSAP) at a meeting in Vienna. (Forgotten Nazis)

1918 August British troops cross the Soviet-Persian (Iran) border near Artyk station and soon occupy Ashkhabad and several other cities in the Trans-Caspian region (Soviet Turkmenia). (Polyakov)

1918 August 1 Allied warships approach the mouth of the North Dvina River and attack Soviet coastal defense batteries as Allied aircraft fly over Archangel. (Polyakov)

1918 August 2 The Soviet city of Archangel is occupied by the Allies.

1918 August 4 Hitler receives the Iron Cross, first class. The actual details surrounding its award remain uncertain.

1918 August 8 British troops open a drive along the Somme near Amiens. The Germans, caught off guard by the well-mounted assault, begin a panicky withdrawal, which quickly turns into a full scale retreat. The Allies take 100,000 prisoners and Ludendorff bitterly declares August 8 as the "Black Day of the German Army." He later added: "The war must be ended!"

1918 August 10 General Pershing is permitted by the Allies to establish an independent American Army. He soon appoints Colonel George C. Marshall as his operations officer.

1918 August 18 A formal dedication of the Germanenorden rooms at the Four Seasons Hotel in Munich is attended by Hermann Pohl, G.W. Freese and a number of other Germanenorden Walvater brothers from Berlin and Leipzig. (Roots)

1918 August 21 The British and French begin the second phase of the Battle of the Amiens. Ludendorff orders a general withdrawal from the Lys and Amiens areas.

1918 August 25 A large investiture of novices to the Germanenorden takes place at the Four Seasons Hotel. Pohl gives a lecture on the "Sun Castles" of Bad Abling, which he believes possess esoteric national significance.

1918 August 30 The Anzacs penetrate across the Somme, disrupting Ludendorff's plan for an orderly withdrawal. The German situation rapidly deteriorates, necessitating a retreat to the final position -- the Hindenburg line.

1918 August 30 Lenin is seriously wounded in an assassination attempt by Fannie Kaplan, a female Social-Revolutionary. He will never completely recover. Kaplan is quickly executed without trial. (Polyakov)

1918 August 30 General Pershing, having won his fight for a separate and distinct U.S. army operating on its own assigned front, moves toward the Saint-Mihiel salient. The Americans are supported by an Allied air force of about 1,400 planes -- American, French, Italian, and Portuguese -- under U.S. Colonel Billy Mitchell.

1918 September 1 Another Germanenorden meeting is held at the Four Seasons Hotel. Johannes Hering's diary records frequent meetings after this date and the lodge is convoked at least once a week for investitures, lectures and excursions. Since its ritual activities are supplemented by overt right-wing meetings, the term Thule Society has been adopted as a cover-name to spare it the unwelcome attention of socialists and pro-Republican elements. The rooms are decorated with the Thule emblem showing a long dagger superimposed over a shining swastika sunwheel. (Roots)

1918 September 2 The All-Russian Central Executive Committee recommends the introduction of a Red terror campaign in retaliation for the attack on Lenin. (Polyakov)

1918 September 5 The Council of Peoples Commissars proclaims the introduction of the Red terror campaign. "To secure our rear by means of terror is a direct necessity. It is necessary to secure the Soviet Republic against its class enemies by isolating them in concentration camps... All persons involved in White Guard organizations, plots and revolts are subject to execution by shooting..." (Polyakov)

1918 September 12 Pershing's U.S. First Army attacks both faces of the strategic Saint-Mihiel salient.

1918 September 14 Pershing's American forces begin taking the Saint-Mihiel salient.

1918 September 15 Baku is taken by Turkish troops and Azerbaijanian nationalists. 30,000 civilians are massacred.

1918 September 16 Pershing's assault on the Saint-Mihiel salient is completely successful, and the salient is entirely cleared.

1918 September 19 General Allenby begins the Jordan Valley offensive, and by dawn on September 20, the Turkish Eighth Army has ceased to exist. Allenby's decisive victory at Megiddo, which guarded the main pass through the Carmel Mountains, is one of the most brilliant operations in the history of the British army. During the next 38 days, Allenby's troops advance more than 360 miles, taking 76,000 prisoners (4,000 of them German and Austrian).

1918 September 21 British cavalry sweeps through Nazareth and turns east to reach the Jordan just south of the Sea of Galilee.

1918 September 22 British and Arabian troops under General Allenby defeat the Turkish forces in the Battle of Samaria.

1918 September 26 In the final major battle of the war, the Allies plan an offensive from Ypres to Verdun. Some 896,000 American troops join with 135,000 French soldiers in an attack on a sector between the Argonne Forest and the Meuse River. It is the largest battle fought up to this time, casualties will mount to 120,000. (Schlesinger I)

1918 September 26 The Americans sweep through Vauquois and Mont-faucon, but their drive slows down as the Germans rush in fresh reinforcements.

1918 September 27 Haig's British army group flings itself against the Hindenburg line; but the drive soon slows down, in the face of a skillful German defense.

1918 September 27 On Allenby's desert flank to the east, T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) and King Faisal cut the railway line at Deraa, while Allenby continues to press on toward Damascus.

1918 September 28 General Ludendorff in a meeting with Hindenburg demands an armistice "at once." (Duffy)

1918 September 29 General Ludendorff declares that a true democratic constitutional monarchy is to be setup -- "overnight."

1918 September 29 Bulgaria asks for and receives an armistice.

1918 September 30 Prince Max von Baden is named head of the new German government.

1918 Autumn Thule (Germanenorden) Grand Master Rudolf Sebottendorff entrusts Karl Harrer, a Munich reporter, with the task of forming a worker's organization affiliated with the Thule Society. (BHK)

1918 Autumn The Battles of the Argonne and Ypres (September-October) panic the German leadership. (CRL)

1918 October Rudolf Hess reaches his new operational unit, the 35th Fighter Staffel. (Missing Years)

1918 October The Politische Arbeiter-Zirkel (the Political Worker's Circle) is founded in Munich. Its members include Karl Harrer as chairman, Anton Drexler, the most active member, and Michael Lotter as secretary. This tiny group with only three to seven members in regular attendance, meets weekly throughout the winter. Harrer lectures on subjects such as the causes of military defeat, the Jewish enemy and anti-English sentiments. (Bundesarchiv, Koblenz)

1918 October 1 General Allenby takes Damascus.

1918 October 2 General Allenby takes Beirut.

1918 October 2 Field Marshal von Hindenburg at a meeting of the Crown Council, presided over by Kaiser Wilhelm II, repeats Ludendorff's September 28 demand for an immediate armistice. Hindenburg tells the Kaiser that the German army cannot hold out for another 48 hours. (Duffy)

1918 October 3 Germany forms a parliamentary government with Prince Max von Baden as its head.

1918 October 3 Austria sues for peace. Food shortages in Vienna have become so severe that thousands are starving to death.

1918 October 4 General Pershing replaces a number of his assault divisions with rested troops from the Saint-Mihiel operation and renews the Argonne offensive. The U.S. First Army batters its way slowly forward in a series of costly frontal attacks, but the Argonne Forest is finally cleared. The French Fourth Army, on the left, advances to the Aisne River.

1918 October 4 The Germans ask the Allies for an armistice.

1918 October 6 The new German Chancellor, Prince Max von Baden, sends a message to President Wilson, requesting an armistice on the basis of Wilson's Fourteen Points.

1918 October The crews of two German battleships mutiny.

1918 October 13 Hitler is blinded in a gas attack near Werwick and is taken to an army hospital at Pasewalk near Berlin. After several weeks, his eyesight slowly returns. One of his doctors, Dr. Edmund Forster, is thought to have been the first psychiatrist to treat Hitler.

1918 October Kurt Eisner, one of the leaders of the Munich anti-war strikes of January 1918, is released from jail.

1918 October 16 Allenby's Desert Mounted Corps, spearheading the advance, reaches Homs.

1918 October 17 The British break through the German defenses on the Selle River. At the same time the Belgians and British under Belgian king Albert began to move again in Flanders.

1918 October 18 American pressure in the Meuse-Argonne causes a German retreat all along the line. The German army begins to crack.

1918 October 23 President Wilson insists that the United States and the Allies not negotiate an armistice with the existing military dictatorship of Germany.

1918 October 23 In Mesopotamia, a British force under Lt. Gen. A. S. Cobbe pushes northward from Baghdad to secure the Mosul oil fields before the Turkish collapse.

1918 October 24 Italian forces attack Austrian positions in Italy at the Battle of Vittorio Veneto, but are quickly halted on the Piave River line.

1918 October 25 Allenby's troops takes Aleppo.

1918 October 26 General Ludendorff resigns his command, immediately before formal dismissal, to permit the desperate German government to comply with Wilson's demand. Hindenburg retains his post as German field commander, with Gen. Wilhelm Groener replacing Ludendorff as chief of staff.

1918 October 28 British and French troops gain a large bridgehead on the Piave River in Italy, splitting the front.

1918 October 29 Sailors of the German High Seas Fleet mutiny, seizing control of their ships to prevent a final desperate battle with the British Grand Fleet.

1918 October 29 Cobbe's cavalry engages the Turks at Sharqat.

1918 October 30 British and French advances against the Austrians reach Sacile, Italy.

1918 October 30 Turkey signs an armistice with the British at Mudros, ending the war in the Middle East.

1918 October 31 Pershing's First Army punches through most of the third and final German line in France.

1918 October 31 Italian reinforcements exploit the ever-widening gap at Sacile and Austrian resistance collapses.

1918 Autumn Sebottendorff claims to have increased the Bavarian membership in the Germanenroden to more than 1,500, with 250 members in Munich alone. (BHK)

1918 Autumn Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels leaves vienna and immigrates to Hungary. (Roots)

1918 November Sebottendorff and the Thule Society begin stockpiling weapons for Julius Lehmann's Pan-Germans.

1918 November Seventy Jews are killed in a pogrom in Lvov, Poland.

1918 November 1 The U.S. First Army advances, smashing through the last German positions northeast and west of Buzancy, thus enabling the French Fourth Army to cross the Aisne.

1918 November 1 Cobbe's British cavalry reaches Mosul in Mesopotamia. Despite provisions of the October 30 armistice, Cobbe is ordered to take the city. After some initial squabbling, the Turkish garrison of Halil Pasha marches out and the British remain.

1918 November 2 American spearheads, now in the open, race up the Meuse Valley.

1918 November 3 The German naval base at Kiel revolts.

1918 November 3 Trieste is seized by an Allied naval expedition in the Gulf of Venice.

1918 November 4 Austria-Hungary surrenders and hostilities come to an end.

1918 November 6 American spearheads reach the Meuse River before Sedan and sever the Mezieres-Montmedy rail line, a vital supply artery for the entire German front.

1918 November Poland is formally reconstituted, and a new republic is proclaimed with Marshal Josef Pilsudski as Chief of State and the commander of the Polish army.

1918 November 7 Kurt Eisner proclaims a republic in Bavaria. Eisner, a Bohemian Jewish journalist and the leader of the Independent ('minority') Social Democrats in Munich has just been released from jail in October. (Roots)

1918 November 8 Hundreds of thousands of Berliners surge into the streets and charge the center of town shouting revolutionary slogans under red banners. The mob murders scores of army officers and occupies the Ministry of War and nearly all the important governmental buildings. Karl Liebknecht proclaims a Soviet republic from the balcony of the Berlin Palace.

1918 November 8 Philipp Scheidemann, a Social Democrat and cabinet member, hastily proclaims a republic in order to prevent a Communist takeover, he says, by Karl Liebknecht and his extreme Spartacus League. Frederich Ebert, another Social Democrat, reportedly is outraged. A constitutional monarchy had already been agreed upon, not a republic.

1918 November 9 The Second Reich collapses and Chancellor Prince Max von Baden turns over the German government to Frederich Ebert, who shortly thereafter officially proclaims the new German socialist republic.

1918 November 9 Upon hearing this news, Hitler suffers a relapse and his blindness suddenly returns. He then claims to experience a supernatural vision, and recovers, he says, only after vowing to God that he will dedicate his life to politics. (Toland)

1918 November 9 In the evening, Thule Grandmaster Sebottendorff, delivers an oration to the Thule Society in Munich, stating: " Yesterday we experienced the collapse of everything which was familiar, dear and valuable to us. In the place of our princes of Germanic blood rules our deadly enemy: Judah. What will come of this chaos, we do not know yet. But we can guess. A time will come of struggle, the most bitter need, a time of danger... As long as I hold the iron hammer (a reference to his Master's hammer), I am determined to pledge the Thule to this struggle. Our Order is a Germanic Order, loyalty is also Germanic. Our god is Walvater, his rune is the Ar-rune. And the trinity: Wotan, Wili, We is the unity of the trinity. The Ar-rune signifies "Aryan," primal fire, the sun and the eagle. And the eagle is the symbol of the "Aryans." In order to depict the eagle 's capacity for self immolation by fire, it is colored red. From today on our new symbol is the red eagle, which warns us that we must die in order to live." Sebottendorff continues by exhorting the Thule members to fight "until the swastika rises victoriously out of the icy darkness" and closes his speech with a racist-theosophical poem by Philipp Stauff. (Roots)

1918 November 10 German Kaiser Wilhelm II flees to the Holland.

1918 November 10 The military High Command and the new German republic strike a deal. The generals promise to protect the republic if Ebert in return promises to prevent a socialist revolution. Ebert agrees.

1918 November 11 A German delegation, headed by a civilian, Matthias Erzberger, negotiates armistice terms with General Ferdinand Foch in his railway-coach headquarters on a siding at Compiegne, France. Agreement is finally reached at 5:00 AM. The terms specify that the German army must immediately evacuate all occupied territory and Alsace-Lorraine; immediately surrender great quantities of war materiel; surrender all submarines; and intern all other surface warships as directed by the Allies. In addition the Germans are to evacuate German territory west of the Rhine, and three bridges over the Rhine are to be occupied by the Allies. The armistice becomes effective immediately. Hostilities cease at 11:00 AM, November 11.

1918 November 12 An Allied fleet steams through the Dardanelles, and arrives off Constantinople (Istanbul) the next day, dramatizing the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

1918 November 14 German General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, after 4 years of continuous hide and seek, ends hostilities in Africa.

1918 November 16 British and French warships enter the Black Sea. They are followed through the Dardenelles and the Bosporus by troop ships. French and Greek troops land in Odessa under the cover of battleships.

1918 Autumn Sevastapol and several other Black Sea ports are seized by the Allies. Baku, Tbilisi and Batumi in Transcausasia are soon occupied. The French hold sway in the Ukraine, the British in Transcaucasia. Allied forces in the north and the Far East are reinforced. (Polyakov)

1918 November 17 Under the terms of the armistice, Allied troops begin reoccupying those portions of France and Belgium held by the Germans since 1914.

1918 November 21 The German High Seas Fleet sails into the Firth of Forth, between the lines of the British Grand Fleet. It later is shifted to Scapa Flow.

1918 November 23 General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck surrenders his command in Africa.

1918 November -December Hitler, still in the army, returns to Munich for duty with the 2nd Infantry Regiment. In a letter written three years later, Hitler wrote that he had returned to Munich on December 18, but may have confused this date with the date of his transfer to Traunstein. (See December 18, 1918 and Hitler letter: November 29, 1921)

(Note: Several months after Hitler became Chancellor in1933, Baron Rudolf Sebottendorff, Grand Master of the Thule Society in Munich, published a book entitled Before Hitler Came: The early years of the Nazi Party. It states: " Thule members were the people to whom Hitler first turned, and who first allied themselves with Hitler. The armament of the coming Fuehrer consisted of--besides the Thule Society itself --the Deutscher Arbeiterverein, founded in the Thule by Brother Karl Harrer at Munich, and the Deutsch-Sozialistche Partei, headed there by Hans Georg Grassinger, whose organ was the "Munchener Beobachter," later to be renamed the "Völkischer Beobachter." From these three sources Hitler created the Nationalsozialistische Arbeiterpartei." (BHK; Roots)

1918 Winter Admiral Kolchak is proclaimed "Supreme Governor" of Russia by the White Guard and the remote city of Omsk in Siberia is declared to be Russia's "capital." Allied governments begin supplying arms, ammunittion and equipment to the Whites on a large scale.

1918 December Anton Drexler begins urging the other members of the Political Worker's Circle to found their own political party. (Bundesarchiv, Koblenz)

1918 December 4 President Wilson with a large contingent of historians, geographers, political scientists and economists sail for Europe. He is also accompanied by Secretary of State Lansing, General of the Army Bliss and his friend Colonel House. He does not take anyone from the now largely Republican Congress. (Schlesinger I)

1918 December 9 Allied troops cross the Rhine taking bridgeheads as agreed upon in the armistice. The British at Cologne, the Americans at Koblenz, and the French at Mainz.

1918 December 18 Hitler is ordered to Traunstein for guard duty at prisoner of war camp.

1918 December Baron Sebottendorff plans to kidnap Kurt Eisner at a rally in Bad Abling. (Roots)

1918 December Mutinous sailors occupy the Berlin Palace grounds and hold the city commander hostage, eleven sailors are killed during his rescue.

1918 December 27 Eberhard von Brockhusen writes a letter to General Heimerdinger asking to be relieved of his office as Grand Master of the loyalist Germanenorden. (Bundesarchiv, Koblenz; Roots)

1918 December 30 Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxenburg change the name of the Spartacus League to the Communist Party of Germany (KPD).

1918 An estimated 85,000 Jews are killed in the Ukraine between 1918 and 1920. (Atlas)

1918 American poet Ezra Pound becomes acquainted with British Major C.H. Douglas while in London and later becomes obsessed with his economic theories. Douglas believes the quest for foreign markets puts nations on a collision course and therefore wars are inevitable. The primary villains, he said, are international bankers, many of whom are Jews.

1918 Oswald Spengler publishes the first volume of his The Decline of the West. Spengler held that history follows definite laws of growth and decay that are observable in the careers of all cultures. Tracing the unfolding of these laws in his own era, he predicted that Western culture, already well into its twilight, would experience further decline as a future of rationalism, mass manipulation, and material expression succeeded the profound art, religion, and philosophy of the past. In later nationalistic political tracts Spengler contended that Germany, with its Prussian authoritarian tradition, could dominate this future.

1918 The Habsburg monarchy in Austria collapses forcing Emperor Karl von Habsburg and family into exile.

1918 Austria, Poland and Czechoslovakia become republics in the aftermath of World War I.

1918 Achille Ratti, the future Pope Pius XI, becomes Pope Benedict XV's representative (the Papal Nuncio) to Poland. His proximity to the Polish-Soviet War will reinforce his horror of Communism.

1918 General Ludendorff flees to Sweden.

1918 Alfred Brunner, Heinrich Kraeger and others found the Deutsch-Sozialistische Partei.

1918 An influenza pandemic (Spanish flu) begins and kills more than 21 million people, worldwide, during the next 2 years.

1918 Civil war breaks out between the Red and White armies in Russia.

1918 More than 500 Jews are killed in Poland between 1918 and 1919. (Atlas)

1919 January Typescript copies of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion are distributed by anti-Bolshevik White Russians at the Versailles Peace Conference.They are also given to members of the U.S. Cabinet, judiciary, and intelligence agencies of the army and navy. (Segel/Levy)

1919 January 1 Karl Maria Wiligut (Weisthor) is discharged with the rank of colonel from the Austrian army, after serving almost 40 years. (Roots)

1919 January 5 The German Worker's Party (DAP) party is formally founded in Munich at the Furstenfelder Hof tavern by Anton Drexler and others. Drexler's constitution is accepted by 24 men, mostly from the locomotive works where Drexler is employed, and he elected chairman. Drexler is also an active member of the Thule Society (Germanenorden). (Drexler, 12 March, 1935; Michael Lotter, 19 October, 1935; Roots)

1919 January 6 Theodore Roosevelt dies at Sagamore Hill, his Oyster Bay, N.Y., home.

1919 January 7- 14 William H. Buckler, U.S. Embassy counselor in London, is sent by President Wilson to confer with Maxim Litvinov and other Soviet (Bolshevik) emissaries in Stockholm.

1919 January 15 Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht are murdered by German troops after an abortive Spartacus uprising in Berlin. Liebknecht is shot in the back while in custody, and Luxemburg's body is later found in the Landwehr Canal.

1919 January 18 The peace conference at Versailles (the Paris Peace Conference) officially opens, attended by 70 delegates, representing 27 victorious Allied powers. Neither Germany nor the new Russian Soviet republic are represented. The principal participants are the leaders of the four great powers: Woodrow Wilson of the United States, Georges Clemenceau of France, David Lloyd George of Britain, and Vittorio Orlando of Italy.

(Note: Germany is prepared to negotiate on the basis of Wilson's Fourteen Points, but since its representatives are not allowed to attend the conference, it matters little. The Germans are at the mercy of the armistice which will be renewed each month for the next six months. The blockade (including foodstuffs) remains in place during that time and conditions deteriorate severely in Germany, creating a residue of bitterness which will begin to raise havoc only a decade later.) (Schlesinger I)

1919 January 21 Wilson submits Buckler's report of his meeting with Litvinov to the Big Five in Paris. Buckler wrote that "agreement with Russia can take place at once, obviating conquest and policing and reviving normal conditions as disinfectant against Bolshevism."

1919 January 25 The Versailles conference unanimously adopts a resolution to establish the League of Nations. After a committee is appointed to draft the League's Covenant, peace terms are hammered out by the Supreme Council, consisting of the heads of government and foreign ministers of the five principal Allied powers: the U.S., Britain, France, Italy, and Japan.

1919 January-February Hitler returns to Munich from Traunstein and is again quartered in the List Regiment barracks.

1919 Edward R. Stettinius Sr. resigns from government service and rejoins J.P. Morgan and Company as a full partner, He remains in Europe and continues to coordinate massive purchases. Stettinius and Henry P. Davison, another Morgan partner in New York, establish the Foreign Commerce Corporation to engage in financing trade to rebuild Europe after the war.

1919 February The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission admits executing 5, 496 "political criminals," including 800 persons convicted of nonpolitical offenses, although the number was probably much higher. (Polyakov)

1919 February General Ludendorff returns from Sweden.

1919 February Rudolf Hess returns to Munich, depressed and embittered at the "treason" of the government in Berlin, and soon begins running errands for Baron Rudolf von Sebottendorff's secretive anti-Marxist, antisemitic Thule Society. (Missing Years)

1919 February 6 A new National Assembly meets at Weimar and begins drawing up a new constitution; hence the name Weimar Republic.

1919 February 12 Karl Radak, a member of the German Bolshevik delegation is arrested in the Bolshevik propaganda office in Berlin. Police discover an outline plan for a general Communist offensive to take place in the spring. According to this plan, The Red Army was to march through Poland into Germany to join up with a simultaneous German Communist insurrection. (Topitsch)

1919 February 13 The chairman of the Catholic Center Party deputation in the National Assembly declares that the party can not approve of the revolutionary upheaval that has overthrown the monarchy. In time the Center party will become one of the mainstays of the Weimar Republic.

1919 February 15 1700 Jews are killed in a pogrom at Proskurov in the western Ukraine. (Atlas)

1919 February 21 Kurt Eisner, the Socialist Prime Minister of Bavaria, is assassinated by Count Anton Arco-Vally, a young man of alleged Jewish descent, who was resentful at his exclusion from membership in the Thule Society. It was said that he shot Eisner as a demonstration of his nationalist commitment. (Roots)

1919 February 22 Bavarian Cardinal Michael Faulhaber refuses to order the ringing of bells and the showing of flags of mourning after the assassination of Eisner by Count Arco-Vally, a Catholic. (Lewy)

1919 February 22 U.S. Ambassador William C. Bullit and the radical journalist Lincoln Steffens, leave Paris for a meeting in Russia with the Bolsheviks.

1919 February 28 Eberhard von Brockhusen writes another letter to General Heimerdinger of the Germanenorden, again asking to be relieved of his office as Grand Master of the loyalist branch. (Roots)

1919 March 2 Philipp Stauff (alias Dietwart) writes to Brockhusen saying that the latter's resignation as Grand Master of the loyalist Germanenorden had been accepted. This does not seem to be the case as Brockhusen continues in office for quite some time. (Bundesarchiv, Koblenz; Roots)

1919 March 10 U.S. Ambassador Bullit arrives in Petrograd and is accompanied to Moscow by Grigori Chicherin and Maxim Litvinov.

1919 March 14 Lenin presents Ambassador Bullit with a Soviet peace plan drafted by Maxim Litvinov.

1919 March 23 Mussolini and other Italian war veterans in Milan found a revolutionary, nationalistic group called the Fasci di Combattimento, named for the ancient symbol of Roman power, the Fasces. The Fascist movement soon develops into a powerful "radicalism of the right," gaining the support of many landowners in the lower Po Valley, industrialists, and army officers. Fascist blackshirt squads carried on a local civil war against Socialists, Communists, Catholics, and Liberals.

1919 March 30 British Prime Minister Lloyd George informs Lord Riddell, "The truth is we have got our way... the German navy has been handed over, German merchant shipping has been handed over, and the German colonies given up. One of our chief trade competitors has been crippled and our Allies are about to become her biggest creditors. This is no small achievement." (Versailles Twenty Years After)

1919 Easter Lanz von Liebenfels, now living in Budapest, is almost executed on Easter Sunday by a Communist firing-squad during the Hungarian revolution. It seems significant that his linking of antisemitism and anti-Bolshevism date from this period. (Roots)

1919 April A coalition government established by Social Democrats led by Johannes Hoffman is forced to flee from Munich for Bamberg.

1919 April Eighty Jews are killed in a pogrom at Vilna in Poland.

1919 April 4 Max Hofweber, a comrade of Rudolf Hess at the training airfield at Lechfeld, introduces him to Dr. Karl Haushofer, beginning a long and intimate friendship. (Missing Years)

1919 April 4 TheJewish Chronicle in London states, " The conceptions of Bolshevism are in harmony in most points with the ideas of Judaism." (Soon afterward, Victor Marsden the London Morning Post's reporter in Russia wrote that 477 of the leading 545 Bolshevik officials were Jews. Once again, conservatives and antisemities used these words to stir up anti-Jewish sentiments.)

1919 April 6 A group of anarchist intellectuals in Munich, inspired by the example of Bela Kun in Hungary, proclaims what it calls the Bavarian Soviet Republic.

1919 April 13 After a right-wing uprising is crushed, a more serious band of Communists seizes power in Munich. Leadership is taken over by the Russian emigres Eugen Levine-Nissen, Tobias Axelrod, and Max Levien. All three are of Jewish descent and had been bloodied in the 1905 Russian revolution. During the reign of terror that follows, schools, banks and newspapers are closed due to looting and violence. (Roots)

1919 April 15 Hoffmann and his Social Democrats, who had failed to build a counter-revolutionary army at Bamberg, request the aid of Von Epp and several other Free Corps groups. Their anti-Republican sentiments had already led to their being banned in Bavaria.

1919 April 26 As Free Corps troops surround Munich, the Communists break into the Thule Society offices and arrest its secretary, Countess Heila von Westarp. Later that day, Thule members Walter Nauhaus, Prince Gustav von Thurn und Taxis, Baron Teuchert, Walter Deicke, Friedrich Wilhelm von Seydlitz, and Anton Daumelang are also captured. Rudolf Hess narrowly escapes capture by turning up late for a meeting, and watches helplessly as his friends are taken away. (Missing Years)

1919 April 29 The German delegation headed by Graf Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantzau, the German foreign minister, arrives at Versailles.

1919 April 30 Seven hostages from the Thule Society are taken to the cellar of the Luitpold Gymnasium, a Red Army post since mid-April, and executed, supposedly in reprisal for the killing of Red prisoners by Whites at Starnberg.

1919 April Dietrich Eckart and Rudolf Gorsleben are arrested by the Communists. Only Eckart's quick-witted answers during interrogation prevent their execution along with the other Thule hostages. (Roots)

1919 May Sebottendorff moves the "Munchener Beobachter" offices from the Four Seasons Hotel to the premises occupied by H.G. Grassinger's local branch of the Deutsch-Sozialistische Partei (DSP), another antisemitic nationalist group founded in 1918. Henceforth Grassinger is the newspaper's production manager and the paper becomes his party's official organ. (Roots)

1919 Spring Guido von List and his wife leave Austria and travel to Germany, intending to stay with Eberhard von Brockhusen at Langen in Bradenburg. Brockhusen is a devoted List Society member and Grand Master of the loyalist Germanenorden. (Roots)

1919 May 1 Free Corps troops enter Munich and take it from the Communists after two days of heavy fighting. The famous Erhardt Brigade arrives at the city singing their marching song, which began with the words: "Hooked cross (swastika) on steel helmets..."

1919 May 1 Rudolf Hess is wounded for a fourth time, this time in the leg, while manning a howitzer during street battles fought by General Franz von Epp's ragtag army to liberate Munich. (Missing Years)

1919 May 4 Slovak General Milan R. Stefanik dies in a mysterious plane crash over Bratislavia. Stefanik is soon succeeded by Edouard Benes, a Czech.

1919 May 6 The Treaty of Versailles is finally ready to be presented to Germany, after three and a half months of argument and comprise. Except for the return of Alsace-Lorraine to France, which is unanimously agreed upon, all of the important treaty provisions regarding German territory are compromises:

(1) Allied occupation of the Rhineland is to continue for at least 15 years, and possibly even longer, and the region is to remain perpetually demilitarized, as is a strip of territory 30 miles deep along the right bank of the Rhine. Three smaller frontier regions near Eupen and Malmedy are to be ceded to Belgium. Parts of the German provinces of Posen and West Prussia are to be given to Poland to provide that revived nation with access to the Baltic Sea. The Baltic seaport of Gdansk (Danzig) is to become a free state, linked economically to Poland. This leaves East Prussia completely separated from the rest of Germany by what is called the "Polish Corridor" to the Baltic.

(2) All of Germany's overseas possessions are to be occupied by the Allies but are to be organized as "mandates," subject to the supervision and control of the League of Nations. Britain and France divide most of Germany's African colonies, and Japan takes over its extensive island possessions in the South Pacific.

(3) The treaty also requires Germany to accept sole responsibility and guilt for causing the war. Kaiser Wilhelm and other unspecified German war leaders are to be tried as war criminals. (This provision will never be enforced.)

(4) Several ther military and economic provisions are designed not only to punish Germany for its alleged war guilt, but also to insure France and the rest of the world against any future German aggression: The German army is limited to 100,000 men and is not allowed to possess any heavy artillery, the general staff is abolished, the navy is to be reduced. No air force will be permitted, and the production of all military planes is forbidden.

(5) Germany is to payfor all civilian damages caused during the war. This burden, combined with payment of Reparations to the Allies of great quantities of industrial goods, merchant shipping, and raw materials, is expected to prevent Germany from being able to finance any major military effort even if it is inclined to evade the military limitations.

1919 May 7 Rudolf Hess officially joins a volunteer unit of General von Epp's Freikorps. (Missing Years)

1919 May 7 Members of the German delegation are summoned to the Trianon Palace at Versailles to learn the new Allied treaty terms. After carefully reading the new treaty, Brockdorff-Rantzau denounces it, reminding them that President Wilson's Fourteen Points had clearly provided the basis for the armistice negotiations, and are as binding on the Allies as on Germany. He also insists that the economic provisions of the treaty will be impossible to fulfill.

(Note: In many respects the Treaty of Versailles was indeed unfair to Germany, which technically was not a defeated nation. She was a signatory to an armistice, not a surrender. Even some of those who had fought against Germany were disturbed by the severity of the treaty.) (Duffy)

1919 May 8 Provisional President Friedrich Ebert and the German government publicly brand the terms of the Versailles Treaty as "unrealizable and unbearable."

1919 May 8-15 After refusing to sign the treaty, the German delegation take it with them back to Berlin for further government consideration. Chancellor Philipp Scheidemann also denounces the treaty. The Allies, however, continue to maintain their naval blockade of Germany, and thousands of German civilians continue starving to death.

(Note: It soon became obvious that Germany has no choice but to sign. The suffering and misery the German people were forced to endure creates a hatred so deep and instinctual that it will haunt the German national psyche for decades to come.) (See June 28)

1919 May 17 Guido von List dies of a lung inflammation in a Berlin guest house before he can reach Brockhusen's home. He is later cremated in Leipzig and his ashes are placed in an urn at the Vienna Central Cemetery. (Roots)

1919 May 24 Philipp Stauff writes an obituary of Guido von List for the "Munchener Beobachter," a völkisch newspaper edited by Rudolf von Sebottendorff. This publication will soon become the official party newspaper of the Nazi party and will remain so until May 1945.

1919 May 30 Dietrich Eckart gives a lecture to the Thule Society at the Four Seasons Hotel. The Thule rooms were a haven for many völkish activists from November 1918 to May 1919. Thule guests included Gottfried Feder, Alfred Rosenberg, and Rudolf Hess, all to achieve prominence in the Nazi Party. (Hering, typescript 21 June 1939, Bundesarchiv, Koblenz. A list of Thule members is included in Sebottendorff, BHK)

1919 May 30 Colonel Edward Mandel House, President Wilson's chief advisor, meets in Paris with a group of American and British industrialists to discuss the founding of an institute for International affairs.

1919 May Friedrich Krohn, a member of the DAP, the Thule Society, and the Germanenorden since 1913, writes a memorandum entitled "Is the Swastika Suitable as the Symbol of the National Socialist Party?," which proposes the left-handed swastika (i.e. clockwise in common with those used by the Theosophists and Germanenorden) as the symbol of the German DAP. Krohn evidently preferred the sign in this direction because of its Buddhist interpretation as a talisman of good fortune and health, while its right-handed (anti-clockwise) counterpart symbolized decline and death (most of Guido von List's swastikas, as well as the Thule Society's, were right-handed). Hitler, who was not yet a member of the DAP, later chose the right-handed version (May 20, 1920). (Roots)

(Even more interesting is Krohn's use of the term National Socialist in the title of his memorandum. At that time, only the Austrian Nazis (DNSAP) were known to have been using this name.) (see August 1918 and December 1919)

1919 Summer Sebottendorff, now living in Constance, Switzerland, summons his sister, Dora Kunze, and his mistress, Kathe Bierbaumer. Soon afterward he converts the "Munchener Beobachter" into a limited liability company, the Franz Eher Verlag Nachf. Bierbaumer was given 110,000 of the 120,000 marks of capital stock issued and Kunze the remaining 10,000. (Roots)

1919 Summer General Heimerdinger abdicates the Chancellorship of the loyalist Germanenorden in favor of the Grand Duke Johann Albrecht of Mecklenburg. Mecklenburg used the alias "Irmin." (Irminism was the religion professed years later by Karl Maria Wiligut (alias K.M. Weisthor of Himmler's SS staff.) (Roots)

1919 June 21 German Chancellor Scheidemann and Prime Minister Brockdorff-Rantzau resign.

1919 June 21 The German High Seas Fleet, interned by the Allies at Scapa Flow, the British naval base in the Orkney Islands, stages a dramatic protest. German sailors scuttle all 50 of their warships in the harbor.

1919 June 22 Sebottendorff attends his last Thule Society meeting. Many members hold him negligently responsible for the loss of the Thule membership lists to the Communists who killed the Thule Society hostages in April. (Roots)

1919 June 28 The new German chancellor, Gustav Bauer, sends another delegation to Versailles. After informing the Allies that Germany is accepting the treaty now, only because of the need to alleviate the hardships on its people caused by the "inhuman" blockade, the Germans sign.

(Note: If Germany had refused to sign, Allied Commander-in-Chief Marshal Foch had instructions to occupy all of Germany. Article 23 of the treaty, the so-called "War Guilt Clause," was the suggestion of John Foster Dulles, later Secretary of State under President Dwight Eisenhower.)

(Note: The final treaty does not follow closely Wilson's Fourteen Points, upon which Germany had agreed to negotiate peace. Hitler will ater will distort this fact to claim that Germany had been betrayed, not defeated.) (Schlesinger I)

1919 Jean Monnet, an acquaintance of Colonel Edward Mandell House, is appointed as Deputy Secretary of the new League of Nations. After WWII Monnet will become known as the "Father of Europe."

1919 July Sebottendorff leaves Munich and resigns as Grand master of the Thule Society.

1919 July 6 Brockhusen writes Bernhard Koerner pleading for a constitutional reform of the loyalist Germanenorden. (Bundesarchiv; Roots)

1919 July 14 With the signing of the peace treaty, the embargo of trade with Germany is lifted and the U.S. resumes business relations. (Schlesinger I)

1919 July 26 Brockhusen writes to Koerner, accusing Stauff of slandering him. (Bundesarchiv; Roots)

1919 August Hitler is assigned to conducts political indoctrination classes at Lechfeld.

1919 August 4 Romanian troops occupy Budapest, contrary to the wishes of the government, and after two weeks of fighting, defeat Bela Kun's Hungarian Communists.

1919 August 11 The Weimar Constitution is announced. (Eyes)

1919 Autumn The Protocols of the Elders of Zion begin circulating in Germany, Europe and America. (Segel/Levy)

1919 September Walter Riehl sends copies of the Austrian Nazi program to Anton Drexler, chairman of the German DAP. Riehl suggests that Drexler change the name of his German organization to coincide with that of Riehl's Austrian Nazi party (DNSAP). (Forgotten Nazis)

1919 September 3 President Wilson, instead of negotiating the Versailles Treaty and the League of Nations Covenant with the Senate, departs on a tour of the country to rouse public support in favor of the project. He is already quite ill and proceeds against the warnings of his doctors.

1919 September 10 Representatives of the now tiny republic of Austria sign the Treaty of Saint-Germain, just outside Paris. The once great Habsburg empire had completely disintegrated in October and November 1918. Austria recognizes the independence of Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, and Hungary; it also recognizes the award of Galicia to Poland, and of the Trentino, South Tyrol, Trieste, and Istria to Italy. Austria is forbidden to unite with Germany, as many in both countries had envisioned.

1919 September 12 Adolf Hitler attends his first meeting of the German Worker's Party (DAP). Hitler had been ordered by Captain Karl Mayr, his immediate superior, to attend as a spy for the army. (Mayr, autobiography)

1919 September 15 Brockhusen writes another letter to Heimerdinger revealing a deep dismay at postwar conditions and a hatred for the Poles. Brockhausen it seems had kept his office as Grand Master of the loyalist Germanenorden. (Bundesarchiv; Roots)

1919 September 16 Hitler's first known, political writing on the "Jewish Problem," a letter addressed to Adolf Gemlich (identity unknown) shows that Hitler's belief in a worldwide Jewish-Marxist conspiracy was already well developed.

1919 September 20 Hitler is ordered by his superior, Captain Mayr, to join the German Worker's Party (DAP), even though he is still in the army and such an act is technically illegal. Captain Mayr later wrote that it was General Ludendorff himself who had come to him and personally suggested that Hitler should be allowed to join the party and build it up. (Mayr, autobiography) (See September 12)

(Note: Other sources state that Hitler joined the DAP on September 16, 1919. There seems to be some confusion on the actual date. (See Hitler's first party membership cards)

1919 September 25 President Wilson suffers a stroke in Colorado. For five weeks, he is delicately balanced between life and death. Outside his family, only his doctor, his secretary Joseph Tumulty, and infrequently, Bernard Baruch are permitted to see him. (Schlesinger I)

1919 October 10 The Allied Supreme Council, which had imposed a blockade on Soviet Russia, tells neutral countries how to bring economic pressure on "Bolshevik" Russia and to ensure strict observance of such a policy. British and French ships continue "to alter the course" of all ships heading for Soviet ports and citizens of Entente countries are not only forbidden to visit Russia, but even to communicate by letter, telegram or radiogram. (Polyakov)

1919 October 15 Rudolf Hess resigns from General von Epp's Freikorps. (Missing Years)

1919 October 16 A speech by Hitler at the Hofbrauhauskeller in Munich marks the beginning of his political career.

1919 November George Herbert Walker, the grandfather of former U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush, organizes the W.A. Harriman & Co. private bank and becomes its president and chief executive officer.

1919 November 1 President Wilson is again in control of his faculties, although he never fully recovers. There is no provision in the law for declaring a president unable "to discharge the powers and duties of the said office."

1919 November 18 Field Marshal Hindenburg, possibly seeking to conceal his role in the armistice, publicly mentions the "stab in the back" while testifying before the Committee of Inquiry of the German National Assembly. Hindenburg claims that the army had been close to victory, but had been betrayed by civilian authorities and socialists in the government.

1919 November 19 The U.S. Senate rejects the act required to ratify the Versailles Treaty (55 to 39), including the provisions for the League of nations. President Wilson's hopes for a world governing organization are crushed.

1919 November 27 Bulgaria signs a treaty with the Allies at Neuilly, a suburb of Paris. Bulgaria recognizes the independence of Yugoslavia, and agrees to cede territory to Yugoslavia, Romania, and Greece.

1919 December The Interstate National Socialist Bureau of the German Language Territory is founded at a meeting in Vienna. Representatives come from Germany, the Sudetenland and Polish Silesia. Dr. Walter Riehl is named Chairman. (Forgotten Nazis)

1919 December Hitler drafts new regulations for the DAP committee, giving it full authority and preventing any "side government" by a "circle or lodge." This was obviously aimed at Karl Harrer, the Thule Society and other groups such as the Germanenorden. (Roots)

1919 French and British scientists seek to exclude German scientists from international meetings. Albert Einstein -- a Jew traveling with a Swiss passport -- remains an acceptable German envoy. His political views as a pacifist and a Zionist pitted him against conservatives in Germany, who had branded him a traitor and a defeatist. The public success accorded his theories of relativity evoked savage attacks during the 1920s by anti-Semitic physicists such as Johannes Stark and Philipp Lenard.

1919 General Edmund Allenby is promoted to field marshal and is made a peer. He takes the title of Viscount Allenby of Megiddo and Felixstowe. Megiddo is the old battlefield of Armageddon in Palestine. (See September 19, 1918)

1919 Ignace Paderewski, the famous pianist and patriot, becomes the first Premier of Poland.

1919 Polish armed forces capture much of Lithuania and the Ukraine. Polish leader Jozef Pilsudski aims to establish a Polish-Lithuanian-Belorussian federation allied with an independent Ukraine. It will soon lead to the Polish-Soviet War of April-October 1920.

1919 Violent antisemitic attacks in Hungary kill 300 Jews.

1919 Lady Astor, an American originally named Nancy Witcher Langhorne, wins her husband's seat and becomes the first woman member of the British House of Commons. She will continue to serve until 1945.

1919 The 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution establishes a national prohibition on the sale and possession of alcoholic beverages.

1919 Grigory Zinoviev, head of the Petrograd party organization, is appointed head of the Communist International (Comintern).

1919 British troops massacre demonstrators at Amritsar in India.

1919 Johannes Baum's New Thought publishing house moves to Pfullingen. (Spirits in Rebellion; Roots)

1919 Dietrich Eckart begins publishing the nationalist weekly "Auf Gut Deutsch," which attacks the Versaille treaty, Jewish war profiteers, Bolshevism, and Social Democracy. Among its earliest contributors are Gottfried Feder and Alfred Rosenberg. (Wistrich I)

1919 English aviators Alcock and Brown make the first nonstop transatlantic flight.

1919 The majority of Allied troops leave Russia. Several factors force them to leave: soldiers that refuse to fight against Soviet Russia and demand to be sent home, a mutiny in the French Black Sea squadron, the growing might of the Red Army, and the failure to achieve a quick victory. Yet another factor is the "Hands Off Soviet Russia" movement in the West. (Polyakov)

1919 Russian-American anarchist Emma Goldman is deported to the Soviet Union.

Copyright © 1997 R.H. Perez de Cruet
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