Explore the real-world places that appear in The First World War by John Keegan. Each location on the map shows what happens there in the novel, the real history of the place, and what's there today. Featured locations include Sarajevo — Franz Ferdinand Assassination Site, Verdun Battlefield, The Somme — Thiepval and Beaumont-Hamel, Gallipoli Peninsula, Tannenberg Battlefield and 9 more.
Latin Bridge, Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina — The spark of the war
Keegan opens his account by examining the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914, as the pivotal act that triggered the cascade of diplomatic failures leading to war. He traces how Gavrilo Princip's shots on the Appel Quay set in motion the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum to Serbia, the activation of entangling alliances, and the mobilization of millions. Keegan emphasizes that this bilateral dispute, rooted in Balkan nationalism, metastasized into a continental catastrophe through astonishing failures of diplomacy and communication among Europe's crowned heads.
Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, was shot along with his wife Sophie on June 28, 1914, by Bosnian Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip near the Latin Bridge. The assassination was orchestrated by the Black Hand secret society and exploited long-standing tensions between Austria-Hungary and Serbia over the fate of South Slavic peoples in the Balkans.
The Latin Bridge and the site of the assassination are preserved as a historic landmark in Sarajevo. The Museum of Sarajevo 1878–1918, formerly called the Museum of Young Bosnia, stands at the corner where Princip fired the fatal shots and features exhibits on the assassination and its aftermath.
Visit: Museum of Sarajevo 1878–1918 (museum)
Verdun-sur-Meuse, Meuse, France — The longest battle of the war
Keegan devotes sustained attention to the Battle of Verdun (February–December 1916), which he presents as the supreme example of industrialized attrition warfare. German Chief of Staff Erich von Falkenhayn designed the offensive to 'bleed France white' around its most sacred fortress city. French commanders Pétain and later Nivelle organized the voie sacrée supply route to sustain French resistance. Nearly 700,000 casualties resulted from months of fighting around Fort Douaumont and Fort Vaux, with the landscape permanently scarred by shells and poison gas. Keegan uses Verdun to illustrate the horrifying logic of a war that consumed entire armies for negligible territorial gains.
The Battle of Verdun began on February 21, 1916, when Germany launched a massive artillery bombardment. It became the longest battle of World War I, lasting ten months. Fort Douaumont fell to the Germans in February and was retaken by France in October. The battle became a defining symbol of French national sacrifice and military endurance.
The Verdun battlefield is a preserved memorial landscape and major heritage site. The Mémorial de Verdun museum, the Ossuary of Douaumont containing the remains of 130,000 unidentified soldiers, and the preserved trenches of Fort Douaumont are all open to visitors. The cratered, forested terrain remains largely uninhabited due to unexploded ordnance.
Visit: Mémorial de Verdun (museum)
Somme Department, Picardy, France — July 1, 1916
Keegan gives the Battle of the Somme one of his most devastating analyses, focusing on July 1, 1916 — the bloodiest single day in British military history, with nearly 60,000 British casualties. He examines Field Marshal Douglas Haig's optimistic assumptions about the effect of the preliminary artillery bombardment, which failed to destroy German deep dugouts. The Newfoundland Regiment was virtually annihilated at Beaumont-Hamel within minutes of going over the top. Keegan is withering about Haig's strategic rigidity, though he also acknowledges the enormous structural pressures that shaped his decisions. The Somme becomes for Keegan the emblem of the anonymous millions sacrificed in the mud.
The Battle of the Somme lasted from July 1 to November 18, 1916, resulting in over one million combined casualties. It was intended to relieve pressure on Verdun and break through German lines on the Western Front. The first day remains the worst in British Army history. The battle also saw the first use of the tank in warfare.
The Somme is home to numerous war cemeteries, memorials, and museums. The Thiepval Memorial to the Missing bears the names of 72,000 British and South African soldiers with no known grave. The Newfoundland Memorial Park at Beaumont-Hamel preserves original trenches. The Historial de la Grande Guerre at Péronne is a major museum of the conflict.
Visit: Thiepval Memorial and Visitor Centre (monument)
Çanakkale Province, Turkey — The Allied amphibious disaster
Keegan examines the Gallipoli campaign (April 1915 – January 1916) as a strategic gamble championed by Winston Churchill to knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war by seizing the Dardanelles and opening a supply route to Russia. He follows the catastrophic landings at Cape Helles and ANZAC Cove, where Australian and New Zealand troops became pinned down on cliffs defended by Ottoman forces under Mustafa Kemal. Keegan details how logistical failures, poor intelligence, and determined Ottoman resistance turned the campaign into another attritional slog. The evacuation in January 1916 was the only well-executed phase of the entire operation, and the defeat helped end Churchill's tenure as First Lord of the Admiralty.
The Gallipoli campaign was the Allied attempt to control the Dardanelles strait and open a sea route to Russia. British, French, Australian, New Zealand, and Indian troops landed on the peninsula in April 1915. Ottoman forces, led in part by Colonel Mustafa Kemal (later Atatürk), mounted fierce resistance. Over 250,000 Allied and an estimated 250,000 Ottoman casualties resulted from the eight-month campaign.
Gallipoli is a major pilgrimage site for Australians, New Zealanders, and Turks. The Gallipoli Peninsula Historical National Park encompasses ANZAC Cove, Lone Pine Cemetery, Chunuk Bair, and the Turkish memorial at Çanakkale. An ANZAC Day commemoration is held every April 25 at dawn at ANZAC Cove, attended by thousands.
Visit: Gallipoli Peninsula Historical National Park (historic site)
Near Olsztynek, Warmia-Masuria, Poland — The great German victory in the East
Keegan analyzes the Battle of Tannenberg (August 26–30, 1914) as one of the most decisive engagements of the war, in which German generals Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff encircled and virtually destroyed the Russian Second Army under General Samsonov. Keegan shows how German signals intelligence intercepted Russian radio communications sent in clear text, enabling a devastating envelopment. Over 90,000 Russians were taken prisoner and Samsonov shot himself in the forest rather than face capture. The victory made Hindenburg a national hero in Germany and established Ludendorff as the dominant operational mind on the Eastern Front, a pairing that would eventually direct German strategy for the rest of the war.
The Battle of Tannenberg was fought in East Prussia and resulted in the near-total destruction of the Russian Second Army. The German Eighth Army, under Hindenburg with Ludendorff as his chief of staff, executed a classic double envelopment. The battle was named Tannenberg by Hindenburg to avenge a German defeat at the same location in 1410.
The battlefield is located in present-day northeastern Poland near Olsztynek. The original massive German Tannenberg Memorial, built in 1927 and later used as Hindenburg's tomb, was demolished by retreating Germans in 1945. A small monument marks the site today, and the nearby town of Stębark (formerly Tannenberg) has local historical signage.
Ypres (Ieper), West Flanders, Belgium — The most contested city of the Western Front
Keegan returns repeatedly to Ypres, the Belgian city that anchored the northern end of the Allied line and became the site of three major battles — First Ypres (1914), Second Ypres (1915, where Germany first used chlorine gas), and Third Ypres or Passchendaele (1917). He describes the Ypres Salient — the bulging Allied line around the city — as a killing ground of extraordinary intensity, where British and Dominion troops endured constant shellfire on three sides. The medieval Cloth Hall was reduced to rubble by German artillery. Keegan uses Ypres to embody the theme that industrial warfare erased not just lives but entire cultural landscapes.
Ypres was a prosperous medieval cloth-trading city whose 13th-century Cloth Hall was one of the finest Gothic civic buildings in Europe. The city was fought over continuously from October 1914 to the Armistice. It was so thoroughly destroyed that after the war there was serious debate about whether to leave it in ruins as a permanent memorial. King Albert I of Belgium insisted it be rebuilt.
Ypres (Ieper) was meticulously rebuilt after the war as a near-exact replica of its medieval layout. The reconstructed Cloth Hall now houses the In Flanders Fields Museum, one of the finest WWI museums in the world. Every evening at 8 p.m., the Last Post ceremony is held at the Menin Gate memorial, which bears the names of 54,896 missing British and Commonwealth soldiers.
Visit: In Flanders Fields Museum (museum)
Passendale, West Flanders, Belgium — Third Battle of Ypres, 1917
Keegan examines Passchendaele — the Third Battle of Ypres (July–November 1917) — as perhaps the most harrowing episode of the Western Front. Haig's offensive aimed to break through to the Belgian coast and destroy German U-boat bases. Instead, the artillery preparation destroyed the Flemish drainage system, turning the battlefield into a swamp in which men and horses drowned. Keegan quotes soldiers describing the mud as a living enemy. Over 250,000 British casualties were sustained for a gain of a few miles of cratered wasteland. The village of Passchendaele, captured at last in November, gave the battle its byword for futile suffering.
The Passchendaele offensive was launched on July 31, 1917, after weeks of preparatory bombardment had pulverized the Flemish clay and blocked the drainage ditches. Unprecedented rainfall compounded the destruction. The village of Passchendaele, two miles from the start line, was finally captured by Canadian troops on November 10, 1917. The ridge was abandoned months later during the German Spring Offensive of 1918.
The Tyne Cot Cemetery near Passendale is the largest Commonwealth war cemetery in the world, with 11,954 graves and a memorial wall bearing 34,957 names of the missing. The village of Passendale has been rebuilt and has a small local museum. The landscape is now peaceful farmland, though farmers still unearth shells and human remains regularly.
Visit: Tyne Cot Cemetery and Memorial (historic site)
Orkney Islands, Scotland — Home of the British Grand Fleet
Keegan addresses the naval dimension of the war, centering on the British Grand Fleet's base at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands. He discusses the mutual deterrence between the German High Seas Fleet and the British Grand Fleet — what he describes as both sides' reluctance to risk destruction in a decisive engagement, since both understood that a single catastrophic naval defeat could cost the war. This standoff shaped the broader conflict, enabling Britain to maintain its naval blockade of Germany, which Keegan identifies as one of the decisive strategic factors starving the German economy and population by 1917–18.
Scapa Flow is a large natural harbor in the Orkneys used as Britain's main naval anchorage in both world wars. It was chosen for its remoteness from German attack and its deep, sheltered waters. After the Armistice, the interned German High Seas Fleet was scuttled there by its crews in June 1919 — the largest deliberate sinking of ships in history.
Scapa Flow is a renowned scuba diving destination, as several of the scuttled German warships remain on the seabed and are accessible to divers. The Scapa Flow Visitor Centre and Museum in Lyness on Hoy tells the full story of the base. The natural harbor remains in use by oil tankers serving the nearby Flotta oil terminal.
Visit: Scapa Flow Visitor Centre and Museum (museum)
North Sea, off Jutland, Denmark — The great naval clash
Keegan analyzes the Battle of Jutland (May 31 – June 1, 1916) as the only major fleet engagement of the war — the clash between Admiral Jellicoe's British Grand Fleet and Vice Admiral Scheer's German High Seas Fleet. He examines Beatty's battle cruiser squadron racing south into Scheer's guns, losing HMS Indefatigable and HMS Queen Mary in catastrophic magazine explosions, prompting Beatty's famous remark that 'there seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today.' Keegan credits Jellicoe's tactical skill in crossing the T on the German fleet twice, yet notes that Scheer escaped in darkness. Both sides claimed victory; Keegan concludes Germany won tactically but Britain retained strategic dominance of the seas.
The Battle of Jutland involved 250 ships and 100,000 men. Britain lost 14 ships and 6,094 men; Germany lost 11 ships and 2,551 men. It was the only full-scale clash of battleships in WWI. The German High Seas Fleet never again seriously challenged British naval supremacy, effectively conceding control of the North Sea for the rest of the war.
The battle site lies in international waters in the North Sea approximately 100 miles west of the Danish coast. Several wrecks remain on the seabed. A memorial has been established off the Danish coast near Blåvand, and the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen holds artifacts from the battle. There are no publicly visitable installations at the site itself.
Palace Square, St. Petersburg, Russia — The seat of the failing tsarist order
Keegan profiles Tsar Nicholas II as the embodiment of the hapless autocratic leadership that dragged Russia into catastrophe. He describes Nicholas's decision to personally assume command of Russian forces in 1915 as fatal — linking the Tsar directly to every subsequent military defeat and making his removal from power more imaginable. The progressive collapse of Russian military capacity, the staggering losses of the Brusilov Offensive and earlier campaigns, and the disintegration of social order at home are traced by Keegan to the dysfunction emanating from the autocracy centered in Petrograd. The February Revolution of 1917, which swept Nicholas from the throne, marked the beginning of Russia's exit from the war.
The Winter Palace was the official residence of the Russian tsars from 1732 until 1917. Nicholas II and his family lived primarily at Tsarskoye Selo outside Petrograd but the Winter Palace remained the symbolic center of imperial power. In October 1917 the Bolsheviks stormed it, overthrowing the Provisional Government in the event that became the defining symbol of the Russian Revolution.
The Winter Palace is now the centerpiece of the State Hermitage Museum, one of the largest and most visited art museums in the world. The State Rooms and the history of the Romanov dynasty are central to the museum's exhibits. The palace and its famous green-and-white façade on the Neva embankment are iconic landmarks of St. Petersburg.
Visit: State Hermitage Museum (museum)
Eastern Galicia, present-day western Ukraine — The most successful Allied offensive of the war
Keegan discusses General Alexei Brusilov's 1916 summer offensive as the most tactically innovative operation on any front in the entire war. Brusilov abandoned the practice of massing forces at a single point and instead launched simultaneous assaults across a 300-mile front in Galicia, preventing the Austro-Hungarian defenders from concentrating reserves. He achieved a breakthrough of staggering scale — capturing over 400,000 prisoners and driving deep into Austrian-held territory. Keegan credits Brusilov with anticipating the infiltration tactics that Germany would later use in 1918. The offensive so strained Austria-Hungary that it fatally weakened the empire; it also accelerated Russian manpower exhaustion, contributing to the revolutionary crisis of 1917.
The Brusilov Offensive ran from June to September 1916 and is considered one of the most lethal offensives in history. Austrian-Hungarian forces suffered approximately 1.5 million casualties including prisoners. The offensive compelled Germany to divert forces from Verdun and the Somme. It is named for General Alexei Brusilov, one of the most capable commanders of World War I.
The front lines of the Brusilov Offensive crossed what is now western Ukraine, centered on the city of Lviv (then Lemberg). Lviv has a rich Austro-Hungarian architectural heritage from the era. Various smaller local museums in Galicia document the Eastern Front campaigns, though large-scale WWI memorialization is less developed here than on the Western Front.
Aisne Department, France — The mutinies of 1917
Keegan examines the Nivelle Offensive of April–May 1917 along the Chemin des Dames ridge as the catastrophe that broke the French Army's will to conduct offensive operations. General Robert Nivelle had promised a decisive breakthrough within 48 hours; instead, the attacking French troops were slaughtered by German machine guns on the exposed ridge. The subsequent mutinies — affecting 54 French divisions — are treated by Keegan as the moment when the ordinary soldier's rational refusal to participate in pointless slaughter nearly cost the Allies the war. Pétain restored order through a combination of executions, reforms, and the promise of no more mass offensives, leaving the British to bear the brunt of offensive operations through 1917.
The Chemin des Dames (Ladies' Road) ridge was named for a road built for the daughters of Louis XV. It was the scene of heavy fighting in 1914 and again during the catastrophic Nivelle Offensive of April 1917. French mutinies following the offensive's failure affected nearly half the French Army. Pétain replaced Nivelle and carried out a policy of selective but exemplary punishment: approximately 3,400 soldiers were sentenced, of whom 554 were condemned to death and 49 actually executed.
The Chemin des Dames ridge in the Aisne department is preserved as a memorial landscape with walking trails and panoramic viewpoints. The Caverne du Dragon, a vast underground cavern that was used by both German and French troops, is now a museum open to visitors. The area contains numerous small cemeteries from both the 1917 fighting and the German Spring Offensive of 1918.
Visit: Caverne du Dragon (museum)
Place d'Armes, Versailles, France — Where the war began and ended symbolically
Keegan frames his history with bookends of enormous symbolic weight. In 1871, the German Empire was proclaimed in the Hall of Mirrors after the Franco-Prussian War, humiliating France on its own soil. This act seeded the Franco-German antagonism that Keegan identifies as one of the structural causes of 1914. After the Great War, the Treaty of Versailles was signed in the same Hall of Mirrors on June 28, 1919 — five years to the day after the Sarajevo assassination. Keegan is measured but clear about how the punitive peace terms, particularly the war-guilt clause (Article 231) demanding German reparations, planted the seeds of the next catastrophe.
The Palace of Versailles was the seat of French royal power from 1682 to 1789. The Hall of Mirrors was built by Louis XIV between 1678 and 1684. The German Empire was proclaimed there on January 18, 1871. The Treaty of Versailles, ending World War I, was signed in the Hall of Mirrors on June 28, 1919, with German representatives compelled to accept responsibility for the war.
The Palace of Versailles is one of the most visited tourist sites in the world, receiving over ten million visitors annually. The Hall of Mirrors has been meticulously restored. The room where the peace treaty was signed is preserved and labeled, and the palace offers guided tours of the state apartments, gardens, and royal chapel.
Visit: Palace of Versailles (historic site)
Amiens, Somme, France — The beginning of the end
Keegan closes his military narrative with the Battle of Amiens on August 8, 1918, which Ludendorff called 'the black day of the German Army.' General Rawlinson's British Fourth Army, spearheaded by over 500 tanks and supported by Australian and Canadian Corps, achieved a breakthrough of devastating completeness, advancing up to eight miles on the first day — unprecedented on the Western Front. Keegan shows how the German Army, depleted by the failed Spring Offensives and demoralized by starvation at home caused by the British naval blockade, simply began to disintegrate. The Hundred Days Offensive that followed swept German forces back to the borders of Germany itself, making the Armistice of November 11 inevitable.
The Battle of Amiens opened the Hundred Days Offensive, the final Allied campaign of WWI. Canadian and Australian troops led the assault with massed tanks and aircraft in what is considered the birth of modern combined-arms warfare. The German collapse in the following weeks was rapid: Ludendorff advised the Kaiser to seek an armistice, and the war ended on November 11, 1918.
Amiens is a thriving French city with a magnificent Gothic cathedral — the largest in France — that served as a military headquarters during the battle. The Historial de la Grande Guerre in nearby Péronne covers the entire Somme campaign including 1918. Several Australian and Canadian memorials in the surrounding countryside mark the advance of the Hundred Days.
Visit: Amiens Cathedral (Cathédrale Notre-Dame d'Amiens) (landmark)
More by John Keegan: All John Keegan books
Other nearby maps: The Long Ships by Frans G. Bengtsson locations map