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This is a List of military engagements of World War I which encompasses land, naval, and air engagements as well as campaigns, operations, defensive lines and sieges. Campaigns generally refer to broader strategic operations conducted over a large bit of territory and over a long period of time. Battles generally refer to short periods of intense combat localised to a specific area and over a specific period of time. However, use of the terms in naming such events is not consistent. For example, the First Battle of the Atlantic was more or less an entire theatre of war, and the so-called battle lasted for the duration of the entire war.〔 == Western Front == The Western Front comprised the frictinous borders between France, Germany, and the neighboring countries. It was infamous for the nature of the fight that developed there; after almost a full year of inconclusive fighting, the front had become a giant trench line stretching from one end of Europe to the other.〔Cowley and Parker, pp. 521–526〕 1914 * Battle of Liège The Battle of Liège was the first battle of the war, and could be considered a moral victory for the allies, as the heavily outnumbered Belgians held out against the German Army for 12 days. From 5–16 August 1914, the Belgians successfully resisted the numerically superior Germans, and inflicted surprisingly heavy losses on their aggressors. The German Second Army, comprising 320,000 men, crossed into neutral Belgium in keeping to the Schlieffen Plan, with the ultimate goal of attacking France from the north. Liège was key strategically as it held a position at the head of a pass through the Ardennes, which made it the best possible route into the heart of Belgium itself. The city was surrounded by a ring of 12 heavily armed forts, garrisoned by 70,000 men under the command of Gérard Leman. A night attack on 5 August was repulsed with heavy losses to the Germans, to the extreme surprise of the supremely confident German army. The next day, rather than confront the forts in battle, the German commander Erich Ludendorff attacked the city through the back, through a break in the line of fortresses that the Belgians had intended to fortify, but never did so. Although they succeeded in capturing the city, the Germans knew that they could not continue advancing troops into Belgium without first breaking down the forts. Aided by 17-inch Howitzers, the Germans finally succeeded in bringing down the forts on 16 August. The unprecedented Belgian resistance seriously prolonged the opening German assault at the outbreak of World War I, allowing France and Britain time to organize themselves and a defense of Paris. In addition, it was an important moral victory for the Allies. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「List of military engagements of World War I」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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