The Road to World War One
Five stories. One countdown. Follow the exact chain of decisions — a colonial land grab, a gunboat, an edited telegram, an assassination, and a battle plan built on a false assumption — that turned separate crises into a single unstoppable war.
Scramble for Africa
Fourteen European nations gather to divide a continent. Not one African is invited. The borders drawn in three months of negotiation plant the seeds of colonial rivalry that will outlast the century.
The Agadir Crisis
Germany doesn't declare war over Morocco. It sends one gunboat. A calculated bluff nearly triggers a European war three years early — and hardens the alliances that will matter in 1914.
The Ems Dispatch
One edited telegram starts a war. Not a bomb. Not an assassination. Bismarck's red pen turns a polite exchange into a national insult, uniting Germany through calculated provocation.
Franz Ferdinand
The assassin had already failed once that morning. Then a wrong turn and a sandwich shop changed everything. Two shots, six weeks, and every major European power is at war.
The Battle of the Somme
A week of shelling was supposed to destroy the enemy. It didn't. Fifty-seven thousand British soldiers pay for that mistake in a single day — the human cost of the chain this path has traced.
You've reached the end of the path.
Five stories, thirty years, one war. Explore more Warfare & Strategy articles →