THE FIRST WORLD WAR

 

Part III : The Culmination of the War

 

1917: Year of Decision

·        What problems did the Allies face in 1917?

·        Why did the Germans believe that they had to break the stalemate and win the war in 1917?  What two steps did they take to achieve this?

·        Why had Germany’s peace proposals failed?

·        What were the German arguments for resuming unrestricted submarine warfare?  What were the arguments against doing this?

·        Why does historian Barbara Tuchman believe that the Germans made the decision to resume unrestricted submarine warfare?  What does she believe would have been a wiser course of action?

·        What was the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk?  What effect did it have on the war?

 

In 1917 British and French military strength reached its highest point, only to be wasted in futile offensives.  Allied commanders were hopeful that the long-planned breakthrough might be accomplished, but a large-scale French attack between Paris and Verdun in the spring was beaten back with huge losses, as the French suffered 250,000 casualties to gain less than 500 yards.  Some French regiments mutinied (refused to follow orders to fight) rather than return to the hell of “no-man’s land” between the trenches.  Two infantry regiments submitted a petition to the French National Assembly: “We want peace … we have had enough of the war and we want the deputies to know it….  We want the deputies to know about our demonstration; it is the only means we have at our disposition to make them understand that we want peace.”  As a result, General Pétain, the hero of Verdun, who was known to advocate a defensive strategy, replaced the French commander who had ordered the offensive.  The mutineers did not, however, escape punishment.  Tribunals found 3,427 guilty of various forms of mutiny.  A total of 554 were sentenced to death.  Many were pardoned, but 49 were executed.  In some units the condemned were forced to draw lots to determine who would be executed and who would be pardoned.

The British also sacrificed hundreds of thousands of men in a massive offensive at Ypres, in what became known as the Battle of Passchendaele, without any decisive result.  The opening bombardment of the offensive featured 2,330 guns and could be heard across the Channel in London, but in three months the British suffered 245,000 casualties and gained less than 6 miles.  In the Battle of Cambrai, the British mounted the first large-scale tank raid in military history, employing over 400 tanks to attack the German lines.  Despite their failure to use the tanks in their most effective manner, the British might have achieved a breakthrough but for lack of reserves.  As it was, the British drove five miles into the German lines.  German counterattacks, however, compelled the British to yield most of the newly won ground.  The diary of an Australian tank commander provides an insight into this new method of warfare:

Monday.  Out for first time.  Strange sensation.  Worse than being in a submarine.  At first unable to see anything but imagined a lot.  Bullets began to rain like hailstones on a galvanized roof at first, then like a series of hammer blows.  We passed through it all unscathed.

Suddenly we gave a terrible lurch.  I thought we were booked through. Lookout said we were astride an enemy trench.  “Give them hell!” was the order.  We gave them it.  Our guns raked and swept trenches right and left.

Got a peep at frightened Huns (Germans).  It was grimly humorous.  They tried to bolt like scared rabbits, but were shot down in bunches before getting to their burrows.  Machine guns brought forward.  Started vicious rattle on our “hide.”  Not the least impression was made.  Shells began to burst.  We moved on and overtook some more frightened Huns.  Cut their ranks to ribbons with our fire.

They ran like men possessed.  Officer tried to rally them.  They awaited our coming for a while.  As soon as our guns began to spit at them they were off once more.  Infantry rounded them up and survivors surrendered.  Very curious about us.  Stood open mouthed and wide-eyed watching, but weren’t much the wiser.[1]

In addition, the Allies launched an unsuccessful campaign against Austria from Italy.  Aided by the Germans, the Austrians smashed the Italian advance in the Battle of Caporetto and took 275,000 prisoners, an event vividly described by Ernest Hemingway in his novel A Farewell to Arms.  By December, the German and Austrian forces had advanced sixty miles into Italian territory, threatening Venice.

Despite the problems of the Allies, the Germans believed that they must make a dramatic move to win the war in 1917 or face certain defeat.  The British fleet had blockaded Germany for three winters and the effects had been devastating as the threat of starvation in Germany first appeared during the winter of 1916-17.  In addition, the German forces were stretched far further than those of her principal enemies.  Germany defended fronts totaling 1,800 kilometers compared to France’s 600 and Britain’s 250.  Germany’s allies were also tottering.  Austria-Hungary was under attack both by Russia in the east and Italy in the south.  Turkey was weakened by numerous British efforts to disrupt its empire in the Middle East.  Under General Sir Edmund Allenby, the British captured Jerusalem late in 1917.  The year also witnessed the beginning of the brilliant leadership of British Colonel T. E. Lawrence, known as Lawrence of Arabia, who encouraged the Arabs to revolt against Turkish rule.  Arab troops, led by Lawrence, took the Turkish-held port of al-Aqaba in July, and during the remainder of the year executed many attacks on the Turkish-held Hejaz railway.  The year 1917 was also marked by British successes against the Turks in Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq), most importantly, the capture of Baghdad in March.

It was in the first months of 1917 that the German Kaiser authorized two measures that he believed would enable Germany to bring the war to a successful conclusion.  The first dealt with a resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare, a policy Germany had abandoned a year earlier in the wake of American protests and out of the fear that its continuation would bring America into the war.  This decision to resume unrestricted submarine warfare was cited as an example of a colossal blunder by noted American historian Barbara Tuchman in her book The March of Folly, a study of countries acting contrary to their own best interests:

Germany’s rulers recognized that they could not win the war against the three combined Allies [Britain, France, and Russia] if they held together, but rather, as the Chief of Staff told the Chancellor, that: “It was more likely that we ourselves should become exhausted.”

Political action to gain a separate peace with Russia was required, but this failed as did numerous other feelers and overtures made to or by Germany with regard to Belgium, France and even Britain during the next two years.  All failed for the same reason, that Germany’s terms in each case were punitive, as if by a victor, providing for the other party to leave the war while yielding {land and payments of damages to Germany}.  It was always the stick, never the carrot, and none of Germany’s opponents was tempted to betray its allies on that basis.

By the end of 1916 both sides were approaching exhaustion in resources as well as military ideas, spending literally millions of lives at Verdun and the Somme for gains or losses measured in yards.  Germany was living on a diet of potatoes and conscripting (drafting) fifteen-year-olds for the Army.  The Allies were holding on meagerly with no means of victory in sight unless the great fresh untapped strength of America were added to their side.

During these two years, while Kiel’s shipyards were furiously turning out submarines toward a goal of 200, the Supreme High Command battled in high-level conferences over renewal of the torpedo campaign against the strongly negative advice of civilian ministers.  To resume unrestricted sinkings, the civilians insisted, would, in the words of Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg, “inevitably cause America to join our enemies.”  The High Command did not deny but discounted this possibility.  Because it was plain that Germany could not win the war on land alone, their object had become to defeat Britain, already staggering under shortages, by cutting off her supplies by sea before the United States could mobilize, train, and transport troops to Europe in any number sufficient to affect the outcome.  They claimed this could be accomplished within three or four months.  Admirals unrolled charts and graphs proving how many tons the U-boats could send to the bottom in a given time until they should have Britain “gasping in the reeds like a fish.”

The contrary voices, beginning with the Chancellor’s, countered that American {entrance in the war} would give the Allies enormous financial aid and a lift in morale encouraging them to hold out until aid in troops should arrive, besides giving them use of all the German {ships held} in American ports and very likely bringing in other neutrals as well.  Vice-Chancellor Karl Helfferich believed that releasing the U-boats would “lead to ruin.”  Foreign Office officials directly concerned with American affairs were equally opposed.  Two leading bankers returned from a mission to the United States to warn against underestimating the potential energies of the American people, who, they said, if aroused and convinced of a good cause, could mobilize forces and resources on an unimagined scale.

Of all the dissuaders, the most urgent was the German Ambassador to Washington, Count von Bernstorff, whose non-Prussian birth and upbringing spared him many of the {mistaken thinking} of his peers.  Well acquainted with America, Bernstorff repeatedly warned his government that American belligerency (entrance in the war) was certain to follow the U-boats and would lose Germany the war.  As the military’s insistence grew intense, he was straining in every message home to swerve his country from the course he believed would be fatal.  He had become convinced that the only way to avert (avoid) that outcome would be to stop the war itself through mediation for a compromise peace, which President Wilson was preparing to offer.  Bethmann too was anxious for it on the theory that if the Allies rejected such a peace, as expected, while Germany accepted, she could then be justified in resuming unrestricted submarine warfare without provoking American belligerency….

Wilson’s offer of December 1916 to bring together the belligerents for negotiation of a “peace without victory” was rejected by both sides.  Neither was prepared to accept a settlement without some gain to justify its suffering and sacrifice in lives, and to pay for the war.  Germany was not fighting for the status quo but for German hegemony (control) of Europe and a greater empire overseas.  She wanted not a mediated but a dictated peace and had no wish, as the Foreign Minister, Arthur Zimmermann, wrote to Bernstorff, “to risk being cheated of what we hope to gain from the war” by a neutral mediator.  Any settlement requiring {the surrender of occupied territory and damage payments} by Germany, the only settlement the Allies would accept, would mean the end of the Hohenzollerns and the governing class.  They also had to make someone pay for the war or go bankrupt.  A peace without victory would not only terminate dreams of mastery but require enormous taxes to pay for years of fighting that had grown profitless.  It would mean revolution.  To the throne, the military caste, the landowners, industrialists and barons of business, only a war of gain offered any hope of their survival in power.

The decision was taken at a conference of the Kaiser and Chancellor and Supreme Command on 9 January 1917.  Admiral von Holtzendorff, Naval Chief of Staff, presented a 200-page compilation of statistics on tonnage entering British ports, freight rates, cargo space, rationing systems, food prices, comparisons with last year’s harvest and everything down to the calorie content of the British breakfast, and swore that his U-boats could sink 600,000 tons a month, forcing England to capitulate before the next harvest.  He said this was Germany’s last opportunity and he could see no other way to win the war “so as to guarantee our future as a world power.”  Bethmann spoke for an hour in reply, marshaling all the arguments of the advisers who warned that American belligerency would mean Germany’s defeat.  Frowns and restless mutterings around the table confronted him.  He knew that the Navy, deciding for itself, had already dispatched the submarines.  Slowly he knuckled under.  True, the increased number of U-boats offered a better chance of success than before.  Yes, the last harvest had been poor for the Allies.  On the other hand, America…  Field Marshal von Hindenburg interrupted to affirm that the Army could “take care of America,” while von Holtzendorff offered his “guarantee” that “no American will set foot on the Continent!”  The melancholy (depressed) Chancellor gave way….

Nine months earlier, in a previous crisis over the U-boats, Kurt Riezler, Bethmann’s assistant assigned to the General Staff, had reached a similar verdict when he wrote in his diary for 24 April 1916, “Germany is like a person staggering along abyss (dark, bottom-less pit), wishing for nothing more fervently than to throw himself into it.,  So it proved.  Although the sinkings took a terrible toll of Allied shipping before the convoy system took effect, the British, upheld by the American declaration of war, did not capitulate (surrender).  Despite von Holtzendorff’s guarantee, two million American troops eventually reached Europe and within eight months of the first major American offensive, the surrender that came was Germany’s.

Was there an alternative?  Given insistence on victory and refusal to admit reality, probably not.  But a better outcome could have been won by accepting Wilson’s proposal, knowing it would be a dead end, thus preventing or certainly postponing the addition of American strength to the enemy.  Without America, the Allies could not have held out for victory, and as victory was probably beyond Germany’s power too, both sides would have slogged to an exhausted but more or less equal peace.  For the world the consequences of that unused alternative would have changed history; no victory, no reparations (payments for war damages), no war guilt, no Hitler, possibly no Second World War. 

Like many alternatives, however, it was psychologically impossible.  Character is fate, as the Greeks believed.  Germans were schooled in winning objectives by force, unschooled in adjustment.  They could not bring themselves to forgo aggrandizement (glorification as heroes) even at the risk of defeat.

Riezier’s abyss summoned them.[2]

Germany’s second gamble dealt with Russia.  Although Russia was no longer a major military threat, the continued war in the east forced the Germans to commit key men and supplies that could have spelled the difference on the Western Front.  Since the devastating defeats of 1914, the Russian Army had been in tatters.  When Tsar Nicholas II assumed command of the army in 1915, he left his wife, Alexandra, in charge of the government.  The German-born Tsarina had fallen under the influence of a monk, Rasputin, who had seemingly been able to cure her hemophiliac son of his bleeding spells.  The unpopular Tsarina was accused of being controlled by Rasputin until noblemen murdered him late in 1916.  Finally, in March of 1917, the Russian people, hungry and demoralized by their horrific casualties in the war, rioted in the Russian capital of St. Petersburg and forced the Tsar to abdicate (give up his throne).

The new Provisional (temporary) Government of Russia pledged to continue the war.  Its leaders openly admired the democratic countries that Russia was allied with and hoped to win their support by remaining in the war.  As the new Russian government prepared to launch an offensive against German and Austrian troops, Germany allowed the Russian Bolshevik (Communist) leader Vladimir Lenin to travel across Germany to return to Russia from Switzerland where he and the Bolshevik leaders had been in exile since before the war. [3]  Lenin promised to overthrow the Provisional Government and end the war.  In bargaining with the Bolsheviks, the Kaiser was also taking a huge risk.  The overthrow of the Tsar had demonstrated that a people driven to the brink of exhaustion by war and hunger could rise up and overthrow their government.  In July 1916, the German Reichstag (parliament) had passed a resolution urging a peace without any annexation of Allied territory.  Although the Reichstag lacked the power to enforce its will and was quickly brushed aside by the Kaiser and his generals, political radicals in Germany, eager to overthrow the Kaiser and end the war, would only be encouraged by a Bolshevik takeover in Russia.

Lenin’s return to Russia in April eventually doomed the Provisional Government, and with it hopes for a democratic Russia.  In October Lenin and his followers seized power and announced plans to withdraw Russia from the war.  In March 1918, the Bolsheviks signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany fulfilling Lenin’s pledge.  Peace came at a huge cost to Russia as Germany seized all of Poland and the Ukraine, acquiring 1,300,000 square miles of territory and 55 million people (34% of its prewar population).  The harsh terms of Brest-Litovsk clearly illustrated to the other Allies what a German victory in the war would bring them as well.

Germany’s gamble in transporting Lenin back to Russia had paid off as eighty divisions could now be transferred to the Western Front.[4]  In the beginning, the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare was also a success.  In three months, 470 British ships fell victim to German torpedoes.  Britain had no more than six weeks’ supply of food on hand, and the supply situation became critical for the Allies.  In April 1917, U-boats sank 875,000 tons of British shipping.  Because the Germans had calculated that the destruction of 600,000 tons monthly for 6 consecutive months would be sufficient to force Great Britain to capitulate (surrender), they were doubly certain of victory after April.  Great Britain, however, roused itself to unprecedented efforts to fight the submarine menace.  As the summer advanced, Britain rendered the German submarine campaign less and less effective.  By the adoption of a system of convoying fleets of merchant vessels with warships, especially destroyers and submarine chasers, and by the use of hydroplanes for spotting submarines and depth bombs or charges for destroying them, the British navy severely curtailed the effectiveness of the U-boats.  By the fall, although large numbers of Allied ships were still being sunk, the Germans were sustaining heavy losses in submarines.  At the same time the Allied nations were rapidly building new shipping.  As it turned out, the very weapon that seemed to doom their cause, the submarine, was the source of the Allies’ salvation.  As predicted, Germany’s decision to use unrestricted submarine warfare soon brought the United States openly into the war and gave the Allied countries the hope that, with American troops and supplies, they could hold out longer than the Germans.

The United States Enters the War

·        Name three factors that led most Americans to favor the Allies in the war prior to 1917.

·        What two acts led the United States to declare war on Germany in April of 1917?

 

The Americans had declared their neutrality in 1914 when President Woodrow Wilson announced that the American people “must be impartial in thought as well as in action.”  The events of the next two years showed that this would not be the case.  American sentiment was overwhelmingly with the Allies from the beginning of the conflict.  France’s help to the colonies in the American Revolution was warmly recalled, and language, literature, and democratic institutions closely tied Britain and America.  Another factor swaying the United States to the Allied cause was Germany’s violation of international law in the invasion of Belgium.  Because Britain cut off communications between Germany and the United States, British propaganda and management of the war news dominated public opinion and the British depicted Germany as a savage beast that had committed innumerable atrocities and was bent on conquering the world.[5]

Anti-German attitudes were reinforced by the fact that the United States had made a substantial investment in the Allied war effort.  As the war progressed, it became apparent that the British blockade would permit American trade to be carried on only with the Allies.  Before long American factories and farmers were producing weapons and food solely for Great Britain and France.  Industry expanded and began to enjoy a prosperity dependent on continued Allied purchases.  Between 1914 and 1916, American exports to the Allies quadrupled.  Allied bonds totaling about $1.5 billion were sold in the United States in 1915 and 1916.  From an economic standpoint, it was quite apparent to the Germans that there was little neutrality in the United States.

The immediate cause of the U.S. entry into the war on the Allied side was the German submarine campaign.  The Lusitania tragedy of 1915 aroused strong anti-German opinion in the United States, but the war fever died down after the subsequent Sussex Pledge.  In the fall of 1916 Wilson, campaigning with the slogan “he kept us out of war” was narrowly reelected to the presidency.  The German decision in January 1917 to resume unrestricted submarine warfare may have made America’s entrance into the war inevitable, but another German blunder angered the U.S. even more than the violation of neutral shipping rights.  Convinced that the announcement of the new submarine campaign would lead the United States to declare war, German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann sent a telegram to the Mexican government proposing that, in the event of an American declaration of war on Germany, Mexico declare war on the United States.  The Zimmermann Telegram suggested that, if Mexico kept the United States occupied in North America and Germany won the war, Mexico would be rewarded with the land it had lost to the United States in the Mexican War (Arizona, New Mexico, California, and parts of Texas and Utah) as a result of a postwar peace treaty to be dictated by the Germans.  Zimmermann did not realize that early in the war Britain had broken the German code.  In order to keep this fact secret, the British had not acted on the intercepted information during the war.  Zimmermann’s message, however, was the break the British government had been waiting for and they promptly turned it over to the United States government.  The release of the telegram, and the German announcement of the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare ten days later, proved to be the last straw.  After three American ships were sunk without warning on March 18, President Wilson was determined to ask Congress to declare war against Germany, and on April 6, 1917, America officially entered the war.[6]

Once in the conflict, Wilson was intent on making the American sacrifice one “to make the world safe for democracy.”  Wilson’s lofty principles caused a great surge of idealism among Americans who believed that their sacrifice in Europe would lead to the development of postwar democracies throughout the world.  Americans often called the war “the war to end all wars.”  Composer George M. Cohan in his song “Over There” captured this spirit of confidence and adventure:

Over there, over there,

Send the word, send the word, over there,

That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming,

The drums rum-tumming everywhere.

So prepare, say a pray’r.

Send the word, send the word to beware,

We’ll be over, we’re coming over,

And we won’t be back till its over over there.

After the U.S. entered the war, it moved rapidly to raise and transport overseas a strong military force, known as the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), under the command of General John J. Pershing.  On arriving in France, Pershing laid a wreath on the tomb of the Marquis de Lafayette, who had aided the United States in the Revolutionary War.  Another American officer, Captain Charles Stanton, proclaimed, “Lafayette We Are Here.”  By the late summer of 1917 more than 175,000 American troops were training in France, and one division was actually in the lines.  More important than any military contribution the Americans would make was the hope that the fresh troops gave to their beleaguered British and French allies.  For them, the future looked brighter, while for the equally exhausted Germans, things could only get worse.  A July 1917 account described the feeling of optimism in Paris:

Paris was overwhelmed with joy this morning at the first published announcements that all of the first contingent of United States troops had landed safely in France.  It was not long, either, until the city got a sight of American sailors, marines and even a few regulars - soldiers assigned to duty with various officers who have come immediately to Paris from the port of landing.

Already the French are stirred to exultation and a realization of the victory which they feel sure to come, now that America has its fighting men so near the front....

The French press has extended an enthusiastic greeting to the American troops.  The Temps dwells upon their youth, vigor, and military aspect, and the completeness of their equipment.

The Journal des Debats says: “The grand democracy of the New World does nothing by halves.  It entered this vast conflict in full consciousness of the ends to be attained and with full resolution to neglect nothing in attaining those ends.  What we witness today in the arrival of the Americans on French soil is magnificent proof of this fact.  Two months and a half after the Americans entered the war their hardy troops arrive in solid lines upon the European front, and it is not a modest advance guard.... The material they bring is on the same abundant scale as their troops.  Those who have been doubtful whether the American concourse would come in time have failed to estimate at its just value the tremendous moral and material American power that German brutality has mobilized against itself.  And what we see today is only the commencement.  Each day henceforth will increase the weight of that formidable sword thrown into the balance by the great Republic of America.  Who can, even in Germany, be blind to the inevitable consequences of the events we are now witnessing?”[7]

The U.S. entry in the war could not have come at a better time for the Allies.  The fruitless offensives of 1917 had bled the British army white, and the French had barely recovered from their mutinies.  In October, Lenin led the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, deposed the pro-Allied Provisional Government, and announced that he would end Russia’s participation in the war.  Without American intervention, the Allied armies might well have collapsed.

1918: Bloody Finale

·        Describe the German offensives of 1918.

·        What contributions did the Americans make to the Allied war effort?

 

Freed from the necessity of fighting in the east, the Germans unleashed a series of major offensives (known as the Kaiserschlacht or Emperor’s battle) against the west in the spring of 1918.  The first of these offensives, planned by General Ludendorff, began against the British at the Somme on March 21.  Ludendorff had chosen over fifty elite divisions, many of them veterans of victories against Russia, to lead the attack.  The badly outnumbered British were overwhelmed.  In two weeks the German armies had driven to a depth of forty miles, occupying 1,200 square miles of territory, more than the Allies had gained since the beginning of the war.  During the fighting, 164,000 casualties had been inflicted on the British and 70,000 on the French.  Ludendorff exclaimed, “What the English and the French had not succeeded in doing we had accomplished, and that in the fourth year of the war.”[8]

The German victory, however, failed to cause an Allied collapse.  In the midst of the fighting, and with American prompting, the Allied generals finally agreed to a policy that they had resisted for four years, the appointment of an overall military commander, French General Ferdinand Foch.  The coordinated Allied forces were able to stop the German advance with the aid of torrential downpours that turned the battlefields into quagmires, as the best German troops (known as storm troops) were killed in the fighting. 

Later in April, Ludendorff mounted his second offensive, also against the British, near the Lys River.  Although the British commander, Field Marshall Haig, announced that the British had their “backs to the wall,” the Allied lines held as the Germans made minimal gains and were unable to achieve a major breakthrough.

In late May, the third German attack commenced, this time in the south against exhausted French troops.  The Germans drove a twenty-five mile wide salient (pointed bulge) almost twelve miles into the Allied lines near Chateau Thierry.  Again the Germans seemed to be advancing toward Paris.  A German Lieutenant wrote in his diary that morale was as high as it had been in August 1914.  “It’s wonderful to see the present look on the faces of our valiant regiments as they advance in an assault; they are almost laughing for joy, and all they can see is victory.”[9]  It was during this third German offensive that the American troops made their first real military contribution.  At Cantigny, on the Somme, 4,000 Americans pushed the German advance back on May 28.  Forty-five miles from Paris, 27,000 Marines drove the Germans out of a thickly wooded area known as Belleau Wood on June 26, beginning a counterattack that finally blunted the German advance.

Ludendorff mounted his final offensive in July.  Attacking French and American forces in the south, some German forces successfully crossed the Marne.  There they simply ran out of reinforcements and the offensive ground to a halt.  A German private wrote: “We lay there exhausted and dispirited.  They had been asking us for more than we could give—we had given all we could, our strength, our eagerness, our courage.  For us the end had come.”[10]  Although badly mauled, the Allied armies had held.

At home in Germany the decline was becoming obvious even to civilians.  Princess Evelyn Blücher, Englishwoman living in Berlin who was married to a German noble, wrote: “People here may well look grave; the meaning of America is coming home to them at last.  They comprehend now that it means an increase of the French reserves at the rate of 300,000 fresh, well-equipped men per month, whilst Germany can bring up no fresh reserves.”[11]  As civilian leaders were becoming convinced that the cause was hopeless, the Kaiser and military leaders still refused to discuss peace terms that did not include territorial gains for Germany.  Similarly, British and French leaders had resisted peace terms that did not severely penalize Germany, including the return of Alsace Lorraine to France.

In addition to relieving the weary British and French troops in the trenches, the Americans gave the Allies superiority in the air war.  By November 1918, the U.S. had 45 squadrons in France comprising nearly 800 planes and more than 1,200 officers.  The total personnel of the American air service increased from about 1,200 at the outbreak of the war to nearly 200,000 at the end.  Among the noted aces was Eddie Rickenbacker, a former racecar driver, who downed 26 German planes. 

The Allied counterattack began at Chateau Thierry on July 18, spearheaded by American forces.  A Canadian pilot, Lieutenant Colonel Harold Hartney, in the U.S. Air Service observed the battle from overhead: “No man ever saw a more magnificent or rather, a more significant sight.  Here was the tide of a world war involving twenty million men actually turning before my very eyes.”[12]  The German Chancellor, Georg von Hertling, realized that the tide had taken a final, devastating turn: “Even the most optimistic among us knew that all was lost.  The history of the world was played out in three days.”[13]  A fresh British counteroffensive at the Somme began on August 8.  The official German daily report called it “the greatest defeat which the German Army had suffered since the beginning of the war.”  The German Army, for the first time in the war badly outnumbered, began to crumble.  Two days later Ludendorff told the Kaiser that he could no longer guarantee a military victory.  The Kaiser responded: “We are at the end of our ability to do anything.  The war must be ended.”[14]

In September, the Americans launched their first major coordinated offensive at St. Miheiel.  German troops surrendered in droves.  The Americans took 16,000 prisoners and 443 guns, proving their ability to fight as an army.  Finally on September 27 the British smashed through the last German defenses, called the Hindenburg Line, near Cambrai and reached open territory.  A British soldier noted in his diary: “The evil of the old trench warfare was a thing of the past and a new phase had begun.”  On the same day, the German foreign minister ordered his staff to begin work on a peace appeal to President Wilson.

The Armistice

·        What were the Fourteen Points?  What effect did their announcement have on the war?

·        What were the major provisions of the Fourteen Points?

·        How did the Allies disagree in regard to peace terms?

·        What factors led Germany to seek an armistice in November, 1918?  When did the war end?

 

A major factor in the German desire to seek peace was the publication of President Wilson’s peace proposals in January 1918.  Known as the Fourteen Points, the plan was designed to establish the basis for a just and lasting peace following the victory of the Allies in World War I.  In summary, the Fourteen Points were as follows:

1)        Abolition of secret diplomacy

2)        Freedom of the seas in peace and war

3)        Removal of international trade barriers

4)        Reduction of armaments

5)        Adjustment of colonial disputes consistent with the interests of both the controlling government and the colonial population

6)        German evacuation of Russian territory

7)        Evacuation and restoration of Belgium

8)        Evacuation and restoration of French territory, including Alsace-Lorraine

9)        Readjustment of Italian frontiers along clearly recognizable lines of nationality

10)    Independence for the peoples of Austria-Hungary

11)    Evacuation and restoration of territory to Serbia, Montenegro, and Romania

12)    Self-determination for non-Turkish peoples under Turkish control and internationalization of the Dardanelles

13)    An independent Poland, with access to the sea

14)    Creation of a general association of nations to preserve the peace.

The lenient terms of the Fourteen Points differed from the proposals of the British and French which demanded that Germany surrender additional territory, dismantle its military, and pay reparations for the cost of the war.  Wilson’s proposal encouraged the Central Powers to seek an armistice because they seemed to assure that the victors would not treat Germany and its allies harshly.

While Germany was staggering under the continual pounding of Foch’s armies during the early fall of 1918, her allies were suffering even greater misfortunes.  Bulgaria surrendered on September 30 and Turkey a month later.  Austria stopped its fighting with Italy on November 3.  Nine days later the Habsburg Empire of Austria collapsed when Emperor Charles I (Franz Josef had died in 1916) fled Vienna to seek sanctuary in Switzerland.

Even more importantly than the defeats on the Western Front and the collapse of her allies, Germany was starving.  The British blockade was now in its fifth year and Germany’s people did not want to experience another winter of hunger and cold.  On October 4 Prince Max of Baden, who was known to favor a peace settlement, became chancellor.  On his first day in office he was faced with a message from von Hindenburg stating that the army could not hold another 48 hours and urging that the government “make every effort to have the [peace] proposal issued in the quickest possible manner.”  Two days later the German government sent a message to President Wilson stating that Germany was willing to negotiate on the basis of the Fourteen Points and asking for an immediate armistice.

When word of the German offer was made public, it was met with a storm of opposition within the Allies.  Congressional Republicans like Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts and former President Theodore Roosevelt both criticized the leniency of the Fourteen Points and called for “unconditional surrender.”  The New York Times wrote that, prior to peace, Germany must be forced to dispose of the “irresponsible, braggart Kaiser and speak by a government of her own people.”  Parisian newspapers talked of the “trickery of peace.”  British and French military leaders saw the fruits of victory being snatched away by the idealistic American president.  British Chief of Staff General Henry Wilson referred to President as a “vain, ignorant, weak, ASS.”[15]  This condemnation of any leniency led Wilson to demand the removal of the Kaiser as a precondition to any negotiations.  On October 22, he replied to further requests by the German government by stating that if the U.S. was required to negotiate with, “the military masters and monarchical aristocrats of Germany… it must demand, not peace negotiations, but surrender.”

The question of the Kaiser caused the negotiations for an armistice to stall, but events within Germany soon forced the hand of the government.  The Kaiser’s Germany was in its death throes and it was obvious to its citizenry.  Princess Blücher in Berlin, wrote:

It is a pitiful sight to watch the death-throes of a great nation.  It reminds me of a great ship slowly sinking before one’s eyes, and being swallowed up by storm-driven waves.  I feel intensely for Germany and her brave long-suffering people, who have made such terrific sacrifices and gone through so much woe, only to see their idols shattered and to realize that their sufferings have all been caused by the blundering mistakes and overweening ambition of a class of “supermen.”[16]

On November 3, German sailors in the port of Kiel refused to obey orders to go out to sea.  The next day, 20,000 sailors rallied in Kiel and set up a Workers’ and Sailors’ Soviet.  On November 5, the rebels seized weapons and took over all of Kiel.  Revolts began to spread to other cities the following day as it seemed that the events of 1917 in Russia were being replicated a year later in Germany. 

As the disorder spread, the government dispatched Matthias Erzberger, a leader in the Reichstag, to negotiate the terms of an armistice with Marshall Foch.  General von Hindenburg told Erzberger before he left the German military headquarters in Belgium, “God go with you and try to get the best you can for our country.”  When Erzberger met with the Allied generals on November 8, they demanded the evacuation of all occupied territory including Alsace-Lorraine, surrender of all naval vessels, renouncement of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and reparations for all war damages.

As the negotiations commenced in France, Munich, Germany’s second largest city, exploded in revolution.  100,000 protesters led by Kurt Eisner, who was described as “the living cartoon of a bomb-throwing Red,” seized a military barracks and proclaimed a Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviet.[17]  Red Flags now flew over Munich.  King Ludwig III of Bavaria fled to Hungary as virtually no one stood up to defend the old regime, thus bringing an inglorious end to 736 years of rule by the House of Wittlesbach.  The revolts in Kiel and Munich were quickly followed by similar uprisings in the cities of Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, and Leipzig.

The German government now faced both a military collapse and a Bolshevik-style revolution.  On November 9 Prince Max, unwilling to wait any longer, announced the Kaiser’s abdication as a fait accompli (something that is done and cannot be changed) although Wilhelm had steadfastly refused all pleas to do so.  Prince Max then resigned, turning over power to the leader of the Social Democrats, the largest party in the Reichstag, Friedrich Ebert.  A former saddlemaker and trade union leader, Ebert, now replaced the 500-year rule of the Hohenzollerns.  To preempt a plan by communist leader Karl Liebknecht to proclaim a “Socialist Republic of Germany” in Berlin, another Social Democrat leader, Philipp Scheidemann, interrupted his lunch and proclaimed the German Republic from a balcony of the Reichstag.  The following day, the Kaiser fled to Holland where he was granted asylum (a place of safety). [18]

In the forest of Compiègne outside of Paris, Erzberger continued to negotiate with Foch.  He repeatedly cited the threat of a Bolshevik Germany as cause for leniency toward the newly proclaimed German Republic led by Ebert.  Foch ignored his pleas: “You are suffering from a loser’s malady.  I am not afraid of it.”  He was similarly resistant to Erzberger’s pleas for a lifting of the naval blockade that had brought Germany to the brink of starvation.  The Allies were determined to maintain the blockade until final terms could be forced upon the Germans.  Just as Erzberger had no negotiating power with German troops in retreat and its cities in revolt, German negotiators at a peace conference would have little leverage to demand more lenient terms from their conquerors.  Erzberger wired von Hindenburg for instructions.  He was told to dispute the continuation of the blockade and the occupation of the Rhineland, but if protest was unsuccessful to sign anyway.[19]

At five o’clock on the morning of November 11, 1918, in a dining car in the Compiègne Forest, the German delegates reluctantly signed the peace terms presented by Marshal Foch.  At eleven o’clock the same day hostilities were halted.  The world was once more at peace, confronted now with the task of binding up its wounds and creating a lasting peace.  Delegates from the Allied nations were soon to meet in Paris, where the peace conference was to be held.

The War in Africa And Asia

·        What effect did the war have on Africa and Asia?

·        What benefits did Japan derive from the war?

·        What conflicting promises did Britain make in the Middle East?

 

Although World War I was fought primarily in Europe, it was truly a global conflict involving countries in all six inhabited continents.  Minor skirmishes in the war were fought around the German colonies in Africa, but the major African involvement came in the use by Britain and France of many African troops in their armies in Europe.  Experience in fighting a European war proved to be important for the Africans and Asians, increasing their awareness of the inconsistency between fierce nationalist pride in Europe and the subjection (domination) of their own peoples.  It was no accident that the first Pan-African Nationalist Congress occurred in 1919 as emerging African leaders pursued nationalist goals similar to those they had seen in Europe.

Large numbers of troops from India also fought for the British in Europe.  Indian nationalists backed the war effort, hoping that a British victory would promote India’s freedom.  Allied wartime declarations about national liberation inspired hope in India as in Africa and elsewhere, again promoting new issues for the future.

World War I had even wider effects in the Middle East.  The war caused the collapse of the already feeble Turkish Ottoman Empire.  The British sponsored Arab nationalists against their Ottoman rulers, winning important allies along the eastern Mediterranean.  Largely to win the support of American Jewish leaders, they also promised support to Jewish settlers in Palestine in the Balfour Declaration of 1917.  Allied actions set in motion various forces hostile to Ottoman rule and eager for some kind of independence, but they also made contradictory promises to Arabs and Jews that would result in conflict for the remainder of the century.

The war also spread to East Asia where it fit into a new pattern of conflict.  Japan had embarked on a program of expansion marked by its defeat of Russia in the Russo-Japanese War earlier in the century and quickly entered the war on the side of Britain and France.  The main Japanese purpose was to seize Germany’s Far Eastern colonies (Pacific islands and holdings in China) to advance its imperialist role and strengthen itself in relation to China.  Australia and New Zealand seized German Samoa to forestall Japanese advances to the south.  China declared war on Germany in 1917, hoping not to be ignored by the European powers, but Japan was the big gainer in the region, moving into German holdings in China and presenting additional demands for Chinese territory.  World War I in the Far East advanced already aggressive Japanese policies, setting the stage for further conflict.

Overall, the war constituted a substantial lessening of Europe’s position in the world.  Two new players, the United States and Japan, gained ground, winning new prestige or new territory.  Europe’s need for colonial support and the war’s nationalist passions encouraged many other people in India, Africa, and the Middle East to a higher level of awareness of their own national rights and merits.

The Treaty of Versailles

·        Why did Germany expect a lenient peace settlement?

·        Describe the differing goals that each of the four main Allied powers had for the peace conference.

·        What was the purpose of the League of Nations?  What price did President Wilson pay for its inclusion in the treaty?

·        What was the “war guilt” clause of the treaty?  What other penalties did Germany suffer?  What two major areas did Germany lose in the settlement?

·        What two protections did France receive against future German aggression?

·        What was the mandate system?

·        Why did Germany sign the Treaty of Versailles?

·        What penalties did Germany’s allies suffer as a result of the war?

 

In November 1918 the Allies stood triumphant after the costliest war in history, but the Germans could also feel hopeful that the victors would grant a lenient peace.  They had fought well, avoided being overrun, and escaped being occupied by the Allies.  They had to acknowledge that they had lost the war, but could take hope from the statements of U.S. President Wilson.  In February 1918, Wilson had stated that “there shall be no annexations, no contributions, no punitive damages,” and on July 4 he affirmed that every question must be settled “upon the basis of the free acceptance of that settlement by the people immediately concerned.”  As events transpired, however, the peace conference paralleled the harsh terms of the armistice as dictated by Marshall Foch rather than the Fourteen Points.  The losers were refused seats at the peace conference and were the recipients of a dictated settlement over which they had no control.

The length, cost, and destructive nature of World War I made a lenient peace settlement impossible.  The war had been fought on a winner-take-all basis, and now, in the view of Britain and France, it was time for the Central Powers to pay.  The peace conference was symbolically held at the Palace of Versailles outside of Paris, the same site where Bismarck had proclaimed the formation of the German Empire in 1871.  The Allied leaders dominated the conference.  The French representative was the aged Premier Georges Clemenceau, representing Britain was Prime Minister David Lloyd George, and the U.S. representative was President Wilson.[20]  The Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando, who attended to make sure his country gained the compensation that had been promised by the Allies when they entered the war in 1915, joined the three.  Although these four men made most of the key decisions, most of the interested nations and factions in the world were represented in Paris, except for the Soviet Union and the defeated Central Powers.

The Europeans had paid for the war with the blood of their young and their material wealth.  Britain, France and Italy wanted no part of Wilson’s idealism and were determined to gain as much as possible from their sacrifices.  Clemenceau wanted to ensure French security in the future by destroying Germany both militarily and economically.  Lloyd George had been reelected in December on a program of “squeezing the German lemon until the pips are squeaked.”  He wanted to destroy Berlin’s naval, commercial, and colonial position and to ensure his own political future at home.  Wilson, on the other hand, wanted to break the world out of its tradition of armed conflict and establish a framework for peace that would favor America’s traditions of democracy and trade.

Wilson insisted that the first work of the conference must be to provide for an international peacekeeping organization as part of the peace treaty.  As a result, when the diplomats began their first full meetings the first issue was the formation of the League of Nations.  After much negotiation, the covenant (agreement) for the League was approved by the full conference in April 1919.  The League of Nations was the first systematic and thorough attempt to create an organization designed to prevent war and promote peace.  The Covenant of the League specified its aims “to guarantee international cooperation and to achieve international peace and security.”  To achieve this goal Article X, the key section of the document, provided that:

The Members of the League undertake to respect and preserve against external aggression the territorial integrity and existing political independence of all Members of the League.  In case of any such aggression or in case of any threat or danger of such aggression, the Council shall advise upon the means by which this obligation shall be fulfilled.

In order to gain support for the League, however, Wilson had to compromise on other matters. The rest of his Fourteen Points were partially discarded, but he believed that an imperfect treaty incorporating the League was better than a perfect one without it.

As the rest of the Treaty of Versailles took shape, the central concept was that Germany had been solely responsible for the war.  Article 231 of the treaty stated explicitly:

The Allied and Associated Governments affirm and Germany accepts the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her Allies.

Britain and France demanded that Germany pay the total cost of the war.  These payments, called reparations (implying repair), were exacted on the grounds that Germany was responsible for the war.  Although the Allies agreed that Germany should pay reparations, they could not agree on how much should be paid.  Some demands ran as high as $200 billion.  Finally, it was decided that a future committee should fix the amount; in the meantime Germany was to begin making payments.  By the time the committee report appeared in May 1921, the payments totaled nearly $2 billion.  The final bill came to $32.5 billion, not to be completely paid off by Germany until 1963.  The Allies also required Germany to hand over most of its merchant fleet, construct one million tons of new shipping for the Allies, and deliver vast amounts of coal, equipment, and machinery to them.  The treaty also permitted Germany only a miniscule standing army of 100,000 men, a greatly reduced navy, and no military aircraft.

The diplomats soon got down to the business of redrawing the boundaries of Europe.  France quickly reclaimed Alsace-Lorraine.  The French also wanted to build a buffer state between France and Germany made up of former German territory.  The Americans and the British proposed a compromise to Clemenceau that he finally accepted.  Germany west of the Rhine River (an area known as the Rhineland) would be occupied by Allied troops for a period of from five to fifteen years and permanently demilitarized.  Finally, Wilson and Lloyd George agreed that the United States and Great Britain would guarantee to aid France against any future German aggression.

To the east, the conference recreated the state of Poland.  Most of Poland’s territory was created from the area Germany had seized from Russia in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.  The creation of Poland prevented the Soviet Union from gaining as a result of Germany’s loss.  In order to give Poland access to the sea, a Polish Corridor was created with the former German city of Danzig at the top of the corridor declared an international city.  The creation of the corridor raised grave problems, as it included territory in which there were large numbers of Germans in what was now Polish territory.  It also separated German East Prussia from the rest of Germany.  In addition, Germany lost small areas to Belgium, Czechoslovakia, and Denmark.  All in all, Germany surrendered 25,000 square miles inhabited by 6 million people or slightly more than 13% of its prewar territory.

A curious mixture of idealism and revenge determined the allocation of the German colonies and certain territories belonging to Turkey.  Because outright annexation would look too much like obvious imperialism, it was suggested that the colonies be turned over to the League of Nations who in turn would allocate them to certain members to administer.  Britain received Germany’s former colony of Tanzania and split the Middle Eastern empire of Turkey with France.  In Africa, France received most of the Cameroons, South Africa was awarded the former German South-West Africa, and Belgium received Rwanda.  The colonies were to be known as mandates, and some precautions were taken to ensure that they would be administered for the well being and development of the inhabitants.  The mandate system was a step forward in colonial administration, but Germany nevertheless was deprived of all colonies, with the excuse that it could not rule them justly or efficiently.

Before coming to Paris in April 1919 to receive the terms of the treaty, the German delegation was given no official information about its terms.  Even though the German foreign minister denied “Germany and its people ... were alone guilty,” he had no alternative but to sign.  The continued blockade created great hardships in Germany, and the Allies threatened an invasion if the Germans did not accept the terms of the treaty.[21]  The Treaty of Versailles was finally signed on June 28, the fifth anniversary of the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles.  As one American wrote, “The affair was elaborately staged and made as humiliating to the enemy as it well could be.”

The Allies imposed equally harsh treaties on Germany’s allies.  The Treaty of St. Germain (1919) with Austria recognized the nationalist movements of the Czechs, Poles, and South Slavs.  These groups had already formed the states of Czechoslovakia, Poland and Yugoslavia (incorporating Serbia).  This reduced the remnants of the former Dual Monarchy into the separate states of Austria and Hungary.  Austria became a landlocked country of 32,000 square miles and six million people, forbidden to seek Anschluss—union with Germany.  Italy acquired sections of Austria containing 250,000 Austrian Germans.

By the Treaty of Sevres (1920), the Ottoman Empire of Turkey was divided among Greece, Britain, and France.  Hungary (Treaty of Trianon, 1920) and Bulgaria (Treaty of Neuilly, 1919), the remaining Central Powers, were forced to sign similar treaties.  The Hungarians lost territory to Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Romania.  Bulgaria, who lost access to the Aegean Sea and territory populated by nearly one million people, had to pay huge reparations, and underwent demilitarization.

The Cost of the War

·        What economic effects did the war have on Europe?

·        What major unresolved problems remained after the Treaty of Versailles?

 

World War I devastated Europe’s economy and society.  More than ten million people died, meaning that almost every European family had a death to mourn.  Never before had a war approached this level of devastation.  Countries such as France and Serbia, who were particularly hard hit, lost over one-tenth of their total populations.  Truly, this war was in the words of one historian, “the blood red dawn of the 20th century.”  The massive destruction of industrial property and agricultural land temporarily devastated many economies.  After the war, in many countries inflation soared, leading to a period of postwar instability that ended only in 1923.  Although some groups could profit from rapidly rising prices, many people with fixed savings were nearly wiped out, while others, such as many farmers, were encouraged to borrow unwisely, which would later leave them strapped for funds and wondering how to solve their economic problems.

Perhaps more importantly, the end of the war and the subsequent treaties created many problems that sowed the seeds for a second world war.  The Treaty of Versailles left Germany bitter and economically crippled.  This created a fertile environment for political extremism, which climaxed in the Nazi seizure of power just fourteen years after the signing of the treaty.  The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, very much a product of the war, caused international tensions until the fall of communism in the late 1980s.  Nationalism, perhaps the most important cause of the war, remained a significant problem.  The Treaty of Versailles created sizable German minorities in Poland and Czechoslovakia that had no loyalty toward their new states.  Similarly, Austria and Yugoslavia contained significant Italian minorities that Italy coveted.  In the new country of Yugoslavia, Croats and Moslems resented Serbian domination.  In addition to European nationalism, other areas had had nationalist feelings aroused by the war.  This presented a significant problem for Britain as India, Ireland, and numerous areas in Africa strove to win their independence from British domination.

In total, the horrible bloodletting of 1914-1918 accomplished very little.  President Wilson’s dream of a “war to end all wars” was doomed by a vindictive peace.  Just as the generation born in the 1890s was fated to fight a world war, so was the generation born twenty years later.[22]

 

Jeffrey T. Stroebel, The Sycamore School, 1995.  Revised 2001.