The Widening War

CHAPTER 4 · 1915 · The Great War, 1914–1918

With the west locked, 1915 is the year everyone looks for a way around — and the war metastasizes. At Ypres in April, Germany opens a cylinder valve and the age of chemical warfare begins (the memorial marker stands at Langemarck). In May, Italy — bought by the Treaty of London’s promises of Austrian land — joins the Entente and attacks up the one corridor available: the Isonzo river, a limestone trap it will assault eleven times. And at the Dardanelles, Churchill’s great idea — force the straits, take Constantinople, open the warm-water road to Russia and knock the Ottomans out with one blow

The turn: Gorlice–Tarnów, 2 May 1915.

This chapter is one scene of an interactive atlas: the map repaints as the dates advance, campaigns draw themselves, and every chapter argues its causes and consequences — then a field exam asks you to prove it on the map.