World War I
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Challenge yourself with our in-depth World War I trivia quiz featuring 147 free questions with answers spanning military history, political figures, and pivotal moments from 1914-1918. Whether you're a history enthusiast or preparing for an exam, this quiz covers essential WWI topics including major battles, treaties, and notable leaders. See how much you really know about The Great War!
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Q 01What event is often cited as the immediate cause of World War I?
The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand nearly failed: an earlier bomb missed, then his driver took a wrong turn in Sarajevo and stalled the car right beside Gavrilo Princip.
Q 02Which country first declared war in World War I?
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary blamed Serbia for the crisis and declared war on 28 July 1914; Russia mobilised in Serbia's defence and Germany then declared war on Russia and France.
Q 03Which alliance of Britain, France and Russia faced the Central Powers in World War I?
The Triple Entente
The Triple Entente was an informal understanding, not a war pact: it grew from deals that settled London's colonial quarrels with France in 1904 and with Russia in 1907, with no promise to fight.
Q 04What did contemporaries call the 1914–1918 conflict before a second world war renamed it?
The Great War
The Great War stayed the usual name until 1939, yet 'First World War' was already in print: Charles Repington used it as the title of his war diaries in 1920.
Q 05What was Germany's plan for a swift Western Front victory at the start of World War I called?
The Schlieffen Plan
The Schlieffen Plan aimed to beat France through neutral Belgium within the six weeks Russia was expected to need to mobilise; the march through Belgium brought the British Empire into the war.
Q 06In September 1914, Paris's military governor rushed reinforcements to the Marne front in hundreds of commandeered what?
Taxicabs
Taxicabs: General Gallieni commandeered hundreds of Paris cabs to shuttle infantry toward the Marne overnight; the drivers dutifully kept their meters running, and the French treasury paid the fares.
Q 07Which 1916 naval battle was World War I's only full-scale clash of battleships?
Jutland
Jutland cost Britain 14 ships to Germany's 11, yet the blockade held and the German battle fleet spent most of the rest of the war in port.
Q 08The Gallipoli Campaign was an Allied operation aimed at opening a new front against which power?
The Ottoman Empire
The Gallipoli campaign of 1915 aimed to force the Dardanelles, open a supply route to Russia and knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war; British, French and ANZAC troops landed on 25 April 1915.
Q 09The Western Front during World War I was primarily characterized by what type of warfare?
Trench warfare
The Western Front became synonymous with trench warfare, a brutal and stagnant form of combat where opposing armies faced each other from elaborate systems of fortified ditches.
Q 10Which August 1914 Eastern Front battle was a decisive German victory over the Russian Second Army?
Tannenberg
Tannenberg saw the German 8th Army encircle and destroy the Russian 2nd Army in late August 1914; its commander Alexander Samsonov shot himself, and the victory made Hindenburg and Ludendorff famous.
Q 11Which 300-day 1916 battle was the longest of World War I, with immense French and German casualties?
Battle of Verdun
The Battle of Verdun lasted ten months; France held on by feeding the fortress along a single road, the Voie Sacrée, where a truck passed every 14 seconds on average.
Q 12Which British fighter of 1917 was credited with shooting down more enemy aircraft than any other Allied type?
Sopwith Camel
Sopwith Camel pilots were credited with 1,294 victories, yet the fighter was notoriously hard to fly: the twitchy handling that made it agile in combat killed many novices in training.
Q 13Which Allied nation's casualties on the first day of the 1916 Battle of the Somme were most staggering?
Britain
Q 21What new weapon did Germany first use on a large scale on the Western Front at Ypres in April 1915?
Poison gas
Poison gas reached the Western Front on 22 April 1915, when Germany released chlorine from thousands of cylinders at Ypres; some defenders survived by breathing through urine-soaked cloths.
Q 22What did Parisians first assume was attacking them when shells fell from a 120 km-distant gun in March 1918?
A high-altitude Zeppelin
A high-altitude Zeppelin, or aircraft flying too high to see or hear, was the first guess; shell fragments soon proved the blasts came from a German gun about 120 km away.
Q 23What was the main wartime job of Germany's U-boat fleet in World War I?
On 1 July 1916 the British suffered 57,470 casualties, 19,240 of them killed, against about 1,590 for the French Sixth Army alongside them.
Q 14Germany's last great 1918 Western Front gamble, launched before American strength arrived, is known as what?
The Spring Offensive
The Spring Offensive, also called the Kaiserschlacht or Ludendorff offensive, ran out of steam by July 1918, when arriving American troops restored the Allies' numerical edge.
Q 15Who was the President of the United States during World War I?
Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson, the 28th president, won re-election in 1916 on the slogan 'He kept us out of war', won the 1919 Nobel Peace Prize, yet saw the Senate refuse to ratify the Treaty of Versailles he brought home.
Q 16Who was the German Emperor (Kaiser) during World War I?
Wilhelm II
Wilhelm II was Queen Victoria's eldest grandchild, so the war set him against his first cousin, King George V; his abdication was announced two days before the fighting stopped.
Q 17Who commanded the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) on the Western Front during World War I?
John J. Pershing
John J. Pershing insisted the AEF fight as an independent American army rather than being fed piecemeal into French and British units.
Q 18Which British Prime Minister led the wartime coalition from December 1916 to the armistice?
David Lloyd George
David Lloyd George, the only prime minister whose first language was Welsh, took over in December 1916 after forcing out H. H. Asquith, his own party's leader, over the running of the war.
Q 19Manfred von Richthofen, World War I's top-scoring fighter ace with 80 victories, was better known by what nickname?
The Red Baron
The Red Baron owed the name to the bright red paint he put on his fighter in 1917; when he was shot down in April 1918, the Allied troops he had fought buried him with full military honours.
Q 20Which French general was named Allied supreme commander on the Western Front in 1918?
Ferdinand Foch
Ferdinand Foch was given authority to coordinate the Allied armies at the Doullens conference on 26 March 1918; until then the British and French armies on the Western Front had no single commander.
Sinking Allied merchant ships
Sinking Allied merchant ships was the U-boats' job: the first attacks came in October 1914, and unrestricted warfare from 1917 aimed to starve Britain out.
Q 24How did the 1915 Fokker Eindecker fire a machine gun straight ahead without shooting off its own propeller?
Synchronization gear
Synchronization gear: Fokker's Stangensteuerung timed the machine gun to fire between the propeller blades, giving the Eindecker the 'Fokker Scourge' of 1915–16 and starting a race that ended with the hydraulic Constantinesco gear of 1917.
Q 25Alfred Leete's 1914 recruitment image showed which pointing British figure declaring he 'wants you'?
Lord Kitchener
Lord Kitchener, Secretary of State for War, was the pointing figure; Leete's image first ran on the cover of London Opinion on 5 September 1914 and later inspired James Montgomery Flagg's pointing Uncle Sam.
Q 26What nickname did British women who filled shells with TNT earn from the colour it turned their skin?
Canary Girls
Canary Girls: the TNT they handled stained munitions workers' skin and hair yellow; hundreds of thousands of British women worked in munitions by 1918, and toxic jaundice from TNT killed some of them.
Q 27Which British nurse was shot by a German firing squad in 1915 for helping Allied soldiers escape occupied Belgium?
Edith Cavell
Edith Cavell had treated wounded men from both sides without discrimination and helped some 200 Allied soldiers escape; the Church of England commemorates her on 12 October, the day of her execution.
Q 28On what date did the armistice, ending hostilities in World War I, come into effect?
November 11, 1918
November 11, 1918: the ceasefire took effect at 11 a.m., six hours after the signing, and attacks went on until then; Henry Gunther, counted as the last soldier killed, fell at 10:59.
Q 29Which of these was a major provision of the Treaty of Versailles?
Germany had to pay war reparations
Germany had to pay war reparations, set in 1921 at 132 billion gold marks; the last instalment on the bonds issued to cover them was paid off only on 3 October 2010.
Q 30Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles is commonly known by what name?
The War Guilt Clause
Article 231 is the War Guilt Clause: it made Germany accept responsibility for the loss and damage caused by the war and opened the reparations section, though historian Sally Marks notes it never uses the words 'war guilt'.