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• 31st:Germany announces that it will pursue a policy of unrestricted warfare on neutral shipping.
Canadian troops and trench bombs 1917
• 3rd: diplomatic relations between the US and Germany are severed as a result of Germany's policy on shipping.
• 4th-23rd: Germany makes a preliminary withdrawal of troops between Arras and Soissons.
• For the first time British merchant ships are organised to sail in convoys.
• 11th: British troops capture Baghdad.
• 16th: Tsar Nicholas II abdicates and Prince Lvov forms a provisional government.
• 17-18th: British troops take Bapaume and Péronne.
• 26th-8th April: first Battle of Gaza; British forces advance on the Turkish forces holding Gaza, but the town is not taken.
• 9th-21st: the Battle of Arras and Vimy Ridge. Canadian troops capture the ridge and the German line is pushed back by up to four miles.
• 16-20th: second Battle of the Aisne (the Nivelle Offensive); the much vaunted French attack achieves tiny gains but results in huge casualties. French tanks are used in battle for the first time. The huge casualties and lack of success provoke widespread mutinies in the French army.
•18-19th: second Battle of Gaza; the British are forced to retreat.
• 20th: Baron von Richthofen, the German flying ace known as the Red Baron, claims his eightieth victim. He is killed in combat the following day.
• 29th: Henri Pétain is appointed French chief of staff.
• 15th: Pétain becomes the French Commander-in Chief on the Western Front (replacing Nivelle) and Ferdinand Foch becomes chief of staff.
• 16th:in Russia the Women's Battalion is formed by Maria Bochkareva.
• 19th: John Pershing is given command of the American Expeditionary Force.
• 10th: nationalist riots break out in Dublin.
• 16th: in Russia the first congress of Soviets is held.
• 19th: George V changes the name of the British royal family to Windsor.
• 19th: an amnesty for the prisoners of the 1916 Irish rebellion is announced.
• 24th: Sebastopol; the Russian Black Sea fleet mutinies.
• 25th: American forces arrive in France.
• 26th: a Russian offensive is launched.
• 29th: Greece declares war on the Central Powers.
•16-18th: July Days; a Bolshevik inspired revolution fails in Petrograd.
• 19th: the German parliament, the Reichstag votes for peace.
• 19th-2nd Aug: mutinies break out in the German fleet.
• 20th: Prince Lvov resigns as head of the provisional government in Russia and is succeeded by Alexander Karensky (22nd).
• 31st: Passchendaele (third Battle of Ypres) begins with a British offensive.
•14th: China declares war on Germany and Austria.
• 20-15th Dec: second Battle of Verdun; the French make gains.
• 15th: Karensky proclaims a Russian Republic.
• 29th: German planes bomb London.
The British front in Flanders 1917
• 22nd: the Soviet Congress calls for an armistice.
• 23rd: French gains forces a German retreat to the Oise-Aisne canal.
• 24th: Italian forces are comprehensively defeated by the Austrians and Germans at Caporetto. Italy in WWI
• 31st-7Nov: third Battle of Gaza; British forces under General Allenby take Gaza.
• 2nd: Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary, declares in favour of the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.
• 6th: Canadian and British troops capture Passchendaele Ridge.
• 7th (25th Oct on old style calendar): October Revolution in Petrograd;Lenin leads the overthrow of the Karensky government and becomes chief of commissars.
• 12th: Karensky's counter-revolution fails.
• 16th: Georges Clemenceau forms a government in France.
• 20th: Battle of Cambrai; the Allies launch a massed attack of tanks which initially pushes the Germans back up to 5 miles.
• 20th: a republic is proclaimed in the Ukraine.
• 21st: the Bolsheviks disband the Woman's Battalion.
• 6th: a republic is declared in Finland.
• 7th: after a German counter offensive the Battle of Cambrai ends with positions almost as they were before it started.
• 9th: Turkey surrenders Jerusalem to Edmund Allenby.
• 21st: Edward Carson resigns as First Lord of the Admiralty after criticism of his administrative skills.
• 24th: Germany and Austria reject peace proposals from Britain and the US.
• 28th: Bolsheviks occupy Helsinki.
• 18th: Germany attacks on her Eastern front.
• 3rd: Treaty of Brest-Litovsk; peace is agreed between Russia and the Central Powers.
• 21st: Second Battle of the Somme; Germany launches a Spring Offensive.
• 23rd: German shells are fired on Paris from 75 miles away.
• 29th: Foch is appointed Allied Co-ordinator in France.
• 24th: British forces are victorious at Villers-Bretonneux.
• 9-29th: Battle of the Lys; German forces to the south of the Ypres Salient try, unsuccessfully, to break British lines and drive to the coast.
• 29th: the German offensive in the west ends.
• 27th:the 3rd Battle of the Aisne begins.
• 15th-4th Aug: the 2nd Battle of the Marne.
• 16th: Tsar Nicholas II and his family are executed.
• 20th: the Germans retreat from the Marne.
• 20th: a British offensive on the western Front is launched.
• 22nd: Turkish resistance in Palestine ends.
• 28th: Britain launches the Fourth Battle of Ypres.
• 29th: Bulgaria concludes an armistice with the Allies.
• 29th: Hindenberg and Ludendorff go to Kaiser Wilhelm and tell him that the war must end. The Kaiser agrees that parliamentary democracy will be introduced.
• 30th: Hertling, the German Chancellor, resigns.
• 11th: Germany begins to withdraw from the Western Front.
• 13th: French troops take Laon; the British capture Lille.
• 19th: the republic of Yugoslavia is created.
• 20th: Germany suspends her U-boat campaign against allied shipping.
• 30th: Turkey and the Allies conclude an armistice.
• 30th: the republic of Czechoslovakia is declared.
• 31st: the Hungarian premier, Count Tisza, is assassinated.
• 4th: an armistice with Austria-Hungary comes into effect.
• 4th: Wilfred Owen, soldier and war poet, is killed while serving at the front.
• 4th: the Allied conference at Versailles agrees the terms for peace with Germany.
• 6th: a Polish republic is declared.
• 9th: following a revolution in Berlin Prince Max, the German Chancellor, resigns and Kaiser William II abdicates.
• 11th: an armistice is concluded between the Allies and Germany.
• 12th: Charles I of Austria abdicates. Austria declares a union with Germany.
• 13th: the Soviet government annuls the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
• 14th-21st: the German fleet surrenders.
• 18th: Belgian troops return to Brussels and Antwerp.
• 6th: the Allies occupy Cologne.
• 14th: the Lloyd George/Bonar Law coalition wins the general election.
• 5th: the National Socialist party (Nazi) is established in Germany.
• 18th: the Peace conference at Versailles (above) is convened with French premier Georges Clemenceau in the chair.
• 23rd: the German socialists win in the general elections.
• 25th: at Versailles the principle of a League of Nations is accepted.
• 28th: the Treaty of Versailles (Peace Treaty) is signed.
• 31st: the Weimar Constitution is ratified in Germany.
• Modigliani, Crouching Female Nude
• de Stijl magazine is started in Holland by Piet Mondrian.
• W. F. Cody (‘Buffalo Bill’) dies aged 71.
• History, the journal of the Historical Association is founded.
• 16th: food riots break out in Berlin.
• In Britain, women over 30 gain the vote.
• Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic
• Edward Elgar, Cello Concerto
• Rupert Brooke, Collected Poems
• Lytton Strachey, Emminent Victorians
• Women over 20 are given the vote in Germany.
• The helicopter makes its first flight.
• Walter Gropius establishes the Bauhaus design school at Weimar.
• Andre Gide, La Symphonie Pastorale
Jan 1917