In 1915, the war in the west was mainly a struggle to maintain fortifications against repeated small-scale attacks. Both the German forces and the French and British forces launched attacks during the winter of 1914–1915. The first major offensive came on March 10, 1915, as British troops attacked Neuve Chapelle, with an eye toward taking Aubers Ridge. The members of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), which included soldiers from Canada and India, made considerable progress but were ultimately unable to take the ridge, through the combination of poor communication and supply and a well-timed German counterattack.

In April 1915, the German Army targeted Ypres, the site of an inconclusive battle in late 1914. The milestone of this, the Second Battle of Ypres, was the first use on the Western Front of poison gas, by German troops, on April 22. Despite this, the German attacks on Ypres were eventually unsuccessful, even after a month of varied strategies.

A month later, the British forces again targeted Aubers Ridge, while French forces concentrated on seizing Vimy Ridge, in actions collectively called the Second Battle of Artois. Both were very well defended. As before, the British attacks were unsuccessful. The French forces had control of the ridge for a time, but a fierce counterattack put it back in German hands.

Summer reinforcements and troop buildups led to a renewed Allied offensive in September, again in Artois. British troops hammered at Loos, and French troops hit Souchez. Losses of life numbered in the tens of thousands; gained by the efforts was a two-mile-wide stretch of land.

In the same vein, further south, French forces hammered at Champagne, in late September. Nearly six weeks later, the Allied forces gained two miles of territory; the number of casualties (killed or wounded) was nearly 150,000.

Maritime conflicts: 1914–1915
Fears of being dominated at sea by the United Kingdom's Royal Navy had driven Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II to order a bulked up navy. When the war began, both countries looked to rule the high seas. On Aug. 28, 1914, U.K. ships attacked a fleet of German ships in the Heligoland Bight, in the southeastern part of the North Sea. The U.K. force was far superior in numbers and firepower and claimed victory after killing more than 700 sailors, injuring more than 500, taking 300 prisoners, and sinking six ships. The defeat forced the German Navy to bide its time and protect its coastlines.

As well, U.K. forces defeated Germany again at sea in January 1915, in the Battle of Dogger Bank, in the middle of the North Sea.

The situation elsewhere in the world was different. A naval battle in November off the coast of Chile resulted in a smart victory for German Vice-Admiral Maximilian von Spee, as the German fleet destroyed two U.K. armored cruisers, killing more than 1,600 sailors. In response, the Royal Navy sent a large force to hunt down Spee and his fleet. The result was a Royal Navy victory off the Falkland Islands, on December 8. Spee and two of his sons died, as did more than 1,800 German sailors. The German East Asia Squadron lay decimated.

Meanwhile, the Royal Navy was blockading any trade to Germany. To combat this, the German Navy employed a large number of submarines known as U-boats to target not only U.K. warships but also commercial ships. At first, U-boat commanders warned their intended targets; that soon changed, and U-boats were attacking without warning any ships they could find. The German Chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, and others had warned that such an escalation could alter the professed neutrality of such nations as the United States. On May 7, 1915, a U-boat torpedoed a passenger ship, the Lusitania, killing nearly 1,200 people, all civilians. International outrage resulted, especially in the U.S., for more than 120 Americans were among the dead. A few months later, Germany curtailed its submarine warfare strategy.

In the East
After the smashing victory at Tannenberg in August, German forces had concentrated on aiding their ally Austria-Hungary, engaged in a desperate battle in Galicia. Germany claimed two marginal victories near the end of the year, but the main action happened in 1915, as the German high command pulled more and more of its forces eastward, to confront Russia. In the area of Poland, Germans and Russians clashed near the city of Prasnysch; heavy losses on both sides resulted in Russia's retaining control of the city. The Second Battle of the Masurian Lakes, in February, was a joint Austrian-German attack on the Russian lines in the Augustow Forest. Russian losses were very heavy, and a number of Russian divisions surrendered. However, a late reinforcement and counterattack forced the battle to a halt without a complete surrender, allowing the Russians to regroup further east. The lasting result in the East in 1915, however, was the success of the Austrian-German Gorlice-Tarnow offensive, sending Russian troops reeling and forcing them to surrender Warsaw, in August.

After initial U.K. success in Mesopotamia, the Ottoman fight-back included a rollback of Russian troops at Manzikert, in mid-1915. Again, Russia had to divert its attention, away from fighting Germany further north.

France and the Middle East weren't the only battlegrounds in World War I. The Ottoman Empire's entry into the war prompted British forces to also concentrate on Turkey. In February 1915, British forces bombed Turkish forts in the Dardanelles. Two months later, on April 25, Allied troops, mainly Australians and New Zealanders (ANZACs), landed at Gallipoli, in an attempt to seize the strategic peninsula. The result was a decisive victory for the Ottoman Empire. British troops (along with the ANZACs) eventually evacuated the area entirely.

Also in the southern European front, Italy joined the war, in 1915, on the side of the Allies, spurning the Triple Alliance entirely. As was the case with the Western Front, Italian troops attacked Austria-Hungary in many waves but gained little ground. Romania also entered the war on the side of the Allies, and fighting took place in some areas that had been hotspots during the Crimean War 60 years before.

Aerial conflicts
Both sides had used airplanes for reconnaissance in the first year of the war. Late in 1914, planes served as combat vehicles in both East and West. A confrontation between an Austrian plane and a Russian plane resulted in the deaths of both pilots. In October, a French pilot, Louis Quenault, became the first to fire from a machine gun mounted on his plane. The following year, however, Germany took control of the skies, as the Fokker planes kept Allied recon planes from flying over enemy territory (and even their own).

That German dominance of the skies lasted for quite some time before French and U.K. weapons builders manufactured planes that could challenge the vaunted Fokkers. Many planes had guns onboard, and many flying aces fought one another in pitched battles among the clouds; however, aerial attacks also accompanied land-based attacks in the West.

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