The Great War
Origins
The causes
- Nationalism - By the
early 20th century the prevailing attitude among the masses was, "My
country, right or wrong."
- Militarism and The
Arms Race - A natural son of nationalism. War was still a glorious and acceptable
solution to international disputes.
It had been a century since Napoleon and people simply forgot the
horrors of war. In a frantic search
for security, more and more money was devoted to armaments. This was a self-perpetuating cycle that
spiraled out of control and created fears and mistrust.
- Interlocking Alliances
- The Concert of Europe
that provided stability to the continent after Napoleon was replaced by an
alliance system that divided Europe into two
hostile camps. Because every
country depended on their allies for security, this virtually guaranteed
if one country was involved in a shooting war, the whole continent would
become engulfed.
- Germany's
latent hegemony - Germany
was simply too strong. The French
worried because "there were too many damn Germans." The British
worried because Germany
threatened her industrial leadership and her markets and had built a large
navy. German pretensions towards
having a "place in the sun" didn't help matters.
- Unstable Monarchies.
- Austria-Hungary
was plagued by internal unrest by nationalist minorities.
- Russia
- Same as Austria-Hungary,
but probably worse. Russia
was humiliated by losing a war with Japan
in 1905.
- Mutual hostility
between
- Austria
and Russia
- Austria
and Serbia
- France
and Germany
– especially after France
lost the Franco-Prussian war in 1871.
- The Germans feared Russia. The Russians were modernizing their
army and would be finished by 1917.
A
Europe Divided
The
Central Powers
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Note: Italy
proclaimed neutrality when war broke out and joined the allies in 1915
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Nation
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Advantages
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Disadvantages
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Germany
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Best Army.
Industrial economy and high tech industries second to
none.
Superior interior lines of communication.
Large Population.
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Portrayed as "the Hun."
Geography: somewhat vulnerable to blockade, had two fronts.
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Austria-Hungary
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Lots of people
Bordered Germany
(thus it could be rescued from the Russians)
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Empire cracking under strains of internal divisions.
Army - lacked modern weaponry.
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Italy
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Decent population.
Had status of Great Power.
Respectable national income.
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Divided between prosperous north and backward south.
Really wasn't a Great Power: weak industrial capacity and poor
army
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The
Triple Entente
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Russia
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Huge manpower base.
Rapidly growing economy and industrial base.
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Population virtually all uneducated peasants - poor
soldier material.
Economy feeble and backwards compared to Western
Europe.
The army lacked everything - many Russians went into
battle with no rifle.
Tsarist regime on verge of revolution.
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France
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Geography: Faced only one enemy (Germany)
and could receive aid from its ports.
Wealth.
Modern infrastructure.
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Enmity between Officer Corps and government.
Slow industrial growth compared to Germany.
General Staff felt bayonet would conquer machine gun.
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Great Britain
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Could blockade Germany
Huge empire to draw resources from.
Capital of financial world.
Solid industrial base, but went from "Workshop of the
world" to 3rd place behind USA
and Germany.
Ideal position for long war.
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Standing army 1/10th the size of Germany's.
No national experience in large land wars.
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The Explosion
Keep the above factors in mind. Without
knowing them, this account will make little sense. Four things that are important during the
"July Crisis" are:
1.
Germany's
isolation. Germany's
sole remaining reliable ally is a disintegrating Austria-Hungary. Italy
is weak and a fencesitter.
2.
A treaty guaranteeing Belgium's
neutrality signed by all major powers. In
truth, an overrated aspect (Britain
was going to fight anyway).
3.
Russia. Threatened by domestic revolt, the Tsar felt
to back down again was to lose status as a great power. Also,
4.
German fears of the Russian rearmament program
meant war was best fought sooner than later.
The July Crisis
By all accounts, it was the most wonderful summer Europe
had seen in decades. On 28 June 1914, this tranquility was
shattered when a Bosnian nationalist Gavirilo
Princip assassinated the Austrian Archduke
Francis Ferdinand. Even though the
Austrians did not even like Ferdinand Austrians felt that Serbia
had to be punished. This would reassert Austria's
dominance over the minorities in her empire and her international prestige -
both sorely lacking at this point.
The fundamental problem was that Russia
felt the same way. Neither felt it could
afford to back down. The Germans felt
they could not allow Austria
to wither away and gave assurances they would back her. French security was tied to Russia,
so she did little to restrain the Tsar. Events
moved faster than the diplomat’s ability to control them. What should have been a local war between Austria
and Serbia
consumed the entire continent in the matter of days. Twice in the previous decade, the Russians
had backed down to Austrio-German challenges.
They would not do so again. Tsar Nicholas
II made the fateful decision to mobilize which prompted the Germans to wage a
"defensive" war and set their Schlieffen Plan in motion. The British Foreign Minister Sir Edward Grey
stated, "The lamps are going out all
over Europe and we shall not see them lit again in our
lifetime."
1914: From high hopes to the
desolate trenches
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An Italian Recruitment
Poster.
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The Schlieffen plan was Germany's
answer to the nightmare of fighting a two front war. Because Russia
was a slow mobilizer, the Germans could send its whole army to crush the French
before the Russians could attack. After Paris
sued for peace, the Germans would then send their armies eastward to meet the
Russians.
One problem was Belgium
was in the way. In truth, the violation
of Belgian neutrality is an overrated issue concerning the start of WWI. Britain
had made military commitments to France
and would *never* allow a single hostile power to dominate Berlin,
Antwerp and Paris. Britain
was intervening anyway.
What would determine whether or not the Schlieffen Plan was a good gamble was not any Belgian issues, but whether or not the Germans
would seize Paris before the
Russians could mobilize (about six weeks).
In Paris, Berlin, and St. Petersburg,
thousands attended patriotic rallies and enlisted to fight in what was to be a
glorious war. It would all be over by
Christmas, the enemy would be vanquished, and the righteous would come home as
heroes.
Napoleon had once said "Audacity, always audacity." He would have
been proud of the Germans. Schlieffen
planned on sending millions of Germans through hostile territory in an enveloping
maneuver and flank the French armies that were sure to charge into
Alsace-Lorraine. A simple enough idea,
but the only way it would work is if everything went according to plan and the
Germans had the nerve to see it to the end.
Unfortunately for Berlin,
the dauntless Schlieffen died before the war and was replaced by Helmuth Von
Moltke who wilted under pressure. Additionally,
the Germans had to seize the Belgian rails before they were blown up.
The French had to attack Alsace-Lorraine.
The French also could not find out what the German troops were up to and
redeploy. The German flanking armies
were terribly exposed and vulnerable to counterattack. The Germans also had to keep these millions
of bellies and rifles well fed. Therein
lay the biggest problem. The channeling
of all these troops and their
baggage caravans and supplying
them all through hostile territory was a logistical nightmare. The German advance started to sputter, Von
Moltke panicked and the French under the cool leadership of "Papa"
Joffre defeated the exhausted Germans on the outskirts of Paris
at the Battle of the Marne.
The war would not be over by Christmas.
The Germans retreated to Northern France secure
their gains and began to dig, dig, dig. 
The German offensive was the only one that bore any fruit in 1914.
Predictably the French charged right into German machine guns into
Alsace-Lorraine and achieved nothing except horrifying losses, about 600,000. The ill-prepared Russian offensive against Germany
was cut to pieces at Tannenberg, where they lost 250,000 men to only 37,000
Germans. The Russians fared better
against the Austrians, inflicting heavy casualties against an uninspired
Austrian attack and took Galacia. During
the winter 0f 1914- 1915, this paradigm between the Russian, German, and Austria
armies was once again repeated. The
Austrians armies were retreating in the Carpathian Mountains
from advancing Russians. Then the
Germans launched an assault in the Lodz
area of Poland
and capture large numbers of Russians in the process. The Russians then had to break off the
pressure on the Austrians and only stopped the Germans because they were at the
end of their supply lines. Such was the
war in the East. In the Balkans, the
Austrian attack into Serbia
produced nothing but casualty reports. The
war was supposed to be over before 1914 ended, and for more than a million men,
it was. The survivors lived like
animals, digging holes into the earth and facing death at every moment.
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The pattern established here would continue for the rest
of the war. The Austrians would lose
many men to the Russians, who would in turn get cut to pieces by the Germans. The Austrians would never fully recover
from these heavy losses. Russia
could replace its losses more readily, but the myth of the "Russian
Steamroller" died in the forests of East Prussia.
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Didn't anyone see this coming?
Well, a railroad magnate named Ivan Bloch wrote a book called The Future
of War in its Economical and Political Relations: Is War Now Impossible? Bloch said it was because the price in dollars
and lives would be impossible to maintain.
Few people listened to him. Bloch
was correct in that the soldier's spade would become as important as his rifle
and that lots of soldiers would die, but his thesis was wrong. Nations proved they were willing to spill
their blood, float loans, and pour far more resources into WWI than Bloch
thought conceivable. Generals have a
tendency to be overly-optimistic in evaluating their armies and ignorant of new
developments, so it is easy to use hindsight and think
how stupid they were. That's the
problem, it is too easy. The
generals knew their attacks would produce high casualties, but once the
breakout occurred, the war was all but over.
In 1914, everybody -- the grunts, statesman, diplomats,
bankers, workers, etc. -- felt
the same way. Why shouldn't they? New weapons like the machine gun and quick
firing artillery had increased the lethality of the battlefield, and sure, fire
kills, but it does not discriminate between attacker and defender. In fact, the wars of late 19th century Europe
had been won by organized mobilization and quick offensives. The Russo-Japanese war and the Boer War at
the turn of the century had seen trenches and strong defenses, but these were
overcome by determined attackers. The US
Civil War was long and bloody because America
had no experience mobilizing a huge army and was fighting with antiquated
weapons so it was believed. Besides,
when was the last time a great war was won by staying on the defensive? While
it is true that technology had shifted the advantage to the defense, it was not
an insurmountable edge, nor the reason why "trench warfare" evolved. Offensives with 1914 technology could still
be potentially decisive.
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A dead Russian
soldier
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The difficulties that plagued the generals was not
so much machine guns and barbed wire, but numbers and allies. The horrors associated with stalemate warfare
and "no man's land" manifested themselves because the sides were so
evenly matched. A military axiom states
that an offensive needs a 3:1 advantage to succeed. Because the French, British and Germans each
had millions of men facing each other on a small 300 mile front, such a local
superiority was difficult to achieve. It
became impossible when the attacker telegraphed his attack with an artillery
bombardment lasting for weeks. In the
East, where there was such a thing as empty space and distances were indeed a
factor, the bloodbath of trench warfare never materialized. The battlefield was still deadly, but there
was room for armies to maneuver and perhaps a German avenue for victory after
the failure of the Schlieffen plan.
Still, perhaps the very thing that engulfed the continent into war, the
alliance system, guaranteed that the war would last for as long as it did. The plight of Austria-Hungary
best epitomizes this. It fired the first
shots in the war and soon its armies were retreating from the Russians. Time and time again, the Germans had to
intervene to save their ally from collapse.
Of course, a big reason why the Austrians were in trouble was because
they had to launch ill-fated attacks on Berlin's
timetable, not Vienna's. Because the survival of the Hapsburg Empire
became increasingly dependent on Germany's
military and economic assistance, the most august and ancient dynasty in Europe
had soon become relegated to a satellite of Berlin. Austria
would have never lasted to 1918 had the Germans not kept bailing them out of
trouble. By 1917 Austria
and Russia were
racing each other to collapse, but their stronger allies would not let them die. As long as Germany
kept her allies afloat, thousands of allied troops withered in Salonika,
Gallipoli, the Insonzo or some other God forsaken place. Similarly, as long as Russia
remained in the war, France
survived by diverting German troops away from Paris.
Stalemate Warfare: A Numerical
Explanation
The size of an army in sheer numbers has always been a dubious measure of a
country's power. This is especially true
after the Industrial Revolution where industrial productivity and technological
prowess were vital components of power. In
1914 armies required modern equipment, such radios, artillery, and precision
components that required precision machine tools to produce. Additionally, to be effective, an army needed
an infrastructure that could not only produce hundreds of thousands of rifles,
millions of artillery shells and other supplies, but also have a modern rail
system to get these goods to the front line.
Additionally, educated soldiers are superior to their illiterate
counterparts. Engineering,
communications, logistics, and other skills are all necessary for industrial
armies to function at peak efficiency. Plus
if soldiers can read and write, it tends to make directing them a lot easier! This is why the Russians fared so poorly and
lost against smaller but the logistically and tactically superior German army.
These 4 tables provide the best power indices at the time. These economic indicators reflect a nation's
military potential, whether or
not a power translated this into military strength depended on internal
cohesion, a modern infrastructure, efficient administrators, etc.
I have included the United States
to stress the importance of its entry into the War in April of 1917; the war
was over provided the Allies
could hang on until the US
turned this potential into military might.
They also show why Italy's
defection to the Allied side was as decisive as the Allied diplomats hoped for.
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Although of some importance, population totals can be
misleading. Russia
stands out, but 90% of these people were peasants that served as cannon
fodder against the Germans. Also, the
British had additional manpower pools available via her Empire. However, a prosperous country with lots of
people (i.e. Germany)
was a potential superpower. One can
see why the French thought there were "too many damn Germans."
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Probably the best indicator of a modern economy at that
time. Most striking is how much Germany
dwarfed her European counterparts; indeed she produced more steel than the entire
Triple Entente. It also explains why
the Untied States became known as the "Arsenal of Democracy." Even
though she was neutral for three years, Britain
and France
had almost exclusive access to these stores as customers in WWI because of their
naval dominance.
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These economic graphs bring the Russian population colossus
down to perspective. These graphs
illustrate why Russia
never rolled through Germany
in WWI. In fact, these graphs
foreshadow what actually happened in the war, German tactical superiority
overcame and eventual exhausted the Russians.
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The Central Powers biggest weakness lies here. Although Germany
had the second best income and a respectable per capita measure, it could do
little to assist its allies with money. The
feeble per capita figures do much to explain why the Austrian and Russian
armies performed so poorly during the war.
Rich countries will generally have a more modern and effective
infrastructure to support its armies with modern weapons, skilled personnel,
and properly supply them. Poor countries
will tend to have disorganized masses of inadequately equipped and trained
peasants. Capital is needed to maintain
the war effort. No money = no way to
replace losses and no domestic stability.
Again it becomes obvious why the United
States entry effectively ends the war.
Because the Central Powers and the Allies were so evenly matched, the war
was going to be a drawn out affair where these long term indices would
eventually decide the issue. The Allies
were on the whole marginally better and had a geographical advantage, yet the
quality of the German Army tilted the balance ever so slightly in the Central
Powers favor. When Russia
effectively dropped out in 1917, the Allies were in trouble. They now were on the short end of these
long-term power indicators and probably would have lost the war had the United
States not come to their rescue. This of course begs the question:
The United States
is by FAR the strongest power in the world on those graphs -- a literal
superpower. What took so long to defeat Germany
once she entered the war and why on Earth did the Germans provoke her?
Because these charts reflect military potential. The United
States entered WWI with a standing army of
less than 110,000 men whereas the Germans had over 5,300,000. Plus, the US Army was utterly deficient in
all the weapons and materiel of modern warfare and its staff had no experience
in using them even if these weapons were available. In essence the US
had to build a huge land army from scratch and transport it 3,000 miles across
the Atlantic Ocean and train them before fighting the
Germans.
The United States
ranked in-between Chile
and Denmark
according to the German General Staff when ranking the world's armies. Aside from Bismarck,
the Germans have never been know for their diplomatic
brilliance. She generally preferred to
bully and badger to get what could be had by simply asking. Yet in this case, I am not sure Germany
is to blame entirely for bringing the USA
into the war. The official reason for
the US entry
had to do with German unrestricted submarine warfare.
What President Woodrow Wilson was stating was that Americans
had the right to travel freely on belligerent ships through war zones without
getting shot at.
So what's the real reason?
The United States
had an enormous financial stake in the Allies winning. If Britain
and France
lost, there would be no way they could ever repay the American financiers that
the Allies became increasingly dependent on to finance their war as the
conflict dragged on. By October 1916,
40% of British war expenditures came from US Bonds. With so much money invested in the Allies, it
was not easy for America
to be neutral in "thought as well as deed." Then there is President
Woodrow Wilson and his determination to stamp his self-righteous principles in
some utopian order. Add into the mix
some German diplomatic stupidity, the Zimmermann
Telegram (which promised Mexico
the parts of the Western USA if it attacked) being the
most outstanding example, and you get the US
entry on 6 April 1917. But
the war should have never lasted that long
1915: France's
Year
At the beginning of 1915, even the most optimistic of German generals
realized they could not win the war quickly.
She had to divide her formidable army in half to fight the Russians and
the French. The main problem on both
fronts was distance. In the West, there
simply was not enough room for armies to maneuver and get a breakout, let alone
exploit one. In the East lay the
opposite problem. Although the Russian
army was relatively easy pickings, only empty space lay behind them. Still, there was at least the potential for
gains in the East and the Austrians had proved unable to hold the Russians at
bay so the Germans concentrated their offensive efforts here. They may not win quickly, but keeping the
Austrians in the game and weakening Russia
was its best prospect. The British would
take another year before she had an army large enough for major offensive
action. If the war was to be won in
1915, it was France who would win it. She
very nearly did...for Germany.
The French were not in an enviable position.
The Hun was on her sacred soil. The
Hun just had to sit there in his hole. In
order to win the war, Le Grande' Nation had to attack and evict the Hun.
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Otto Dix: Assault Under
Gas
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I do not think it is possible for a nation to ask more from flesh and blood
than what the French army put forth in 1915.
Time and time again, the French affixed bayonets and charged into the
German machine gun emplacements. Champagne,
Artois, Vimy Ridge always the
same story: the French suffered catastrophic losses to reached
the first objective. The second
objective might as well been on the moon.
The British tried to help. They
were victims of the first gas attack during the Second Battle of Ypres, which
for just a spoiling attack was an impressive showing for the Germans.
The British responded in kind, employing gas at Loos. Gas is more fickle than effective. It does incapacitate the unsuspecting enemy,
but it has a habit of blowing back at you when the wind changes direction. It does nothing to the barbed wire and little
to the masked machine gunner. The Old
British Army died in the "corpsefield of Loos." France's
year had come and gone with her in the same position she found herself at the
end of 1914 -- minus the 1,300,000 casualties lost in the ceaseless attacks.
In the East, the Germans held the initiative because the Russians were still
reeling from Tannenberg. Austria
was still threatened in the south, so it was decided to strike the Russians
here. It was a case of beating the weak
Russians before they could beat the weaker Austrians. The Germans opened their Gorlice-Tarnow
offensive, achieving a breakthrough and annihilating a Russian Army in the
process. Austria
was saved, for now.
Not content with this, the Germans launched a pincer attack in northern Poland
in an attempt to trap the entire Russian army.
She might have succeeded had it not been for the Grand Duke Nicholas who
gave up Poland
and withdrew most of his units in a timely manner. Tsar Nicholas II then promptly sacked the
Grand Duke for saving his army.
The Germans dilemma was similar to all those who invade Russia,
the country was vast and the front too long to achieve a meaningful strategic
victory regardless of how badly the Russian army was defeated. Still, the Tsarist regime was not
inexhaustible. It was beginning to show
signs of cracking under the pressure of industrialized warfare. Rifles were in short supply. The artillery had few shells -- a far worse
ammunition crisis than the West was experiencing. The inadequate transport system could not
keep up with the few supplies there were to deliver. The inefficient ruling bureaucracy was too
archaic to cope with the demands of modern warfare. Corruption was rampant. It was only a matter of time before Russia
sunk if she continued on this course. Despite
consistently beating the tar out of the Austrians, she could do nothing to the
slashing German war machine.
If the Germans were patient, she could outlast Russia
and then transfer the whole army westwards to deal with the French.
The war widens
But the war had to be won now. Since
the Central Powers and Allies were evenly matched, the path to a quick victory
was to suck other countries into the vortex.
An extra ally might be enough to tip the balance. Like mercenaries, these nations sold their
services and the lives of their youth to the highest bidder. The Ottoman Empire was
the first to go, she joined up with the Germans. The Turks had fought the Russians for the
past 300 years, what was one more time? The time looked especially good because
the whole Russian army lay in Eastern Europe.
The Turks were supposed to attack the Russians in the Caucuses, but seemed
to spend more time massacring Armenians.
When they finally got around to fighting the Russians they were promptly
defeated.
The Italians were next. Because what
she wanted was occupied by Austria,
the Allies successfully wooed Rome. The Italians were simply not ready for war
and sensibly declared neutrality in 1914.
But the opportunity to take Trentino and Trieste
was to good to pass up and Italy
declared war on Austria
on May 1915. The only possible place to
attack was along the Insonzo River. Unfortunately for the Italians, the Austrians
were well aware of this. Through 1915,
the Italians launched the First, Second, Third, and Forth Battles of the
Insonzo. Every time the same result:
lots of Austrians and even more Italians were killed for gains that were
measured in yards.
Gallipoli
More promising was the British attempt to force the Dardanelles
and knock Turkey
out of the war. It made perfect sense
for the British Admiralty. The Kaiser
did not allow the German High Seas fleet to sail so the Navy had nothing to do. The head on attacks against the Germany
army in France
were pointless. The appearance of the
Royal Navy outside would send the Turks into a panic. They had to get there first. The Dardanelle straits are barely a mile wide
in some spots, laden with mines by the Turks and protected by forts on both
sides. The Navy set about sweeping the
mines and blasting the forts, or at least they tried. Three battleships blew up and sank after
hitting mines. They failed to silence
most of the Turkish forts because of poor fire-control. The army then got their chance. Amphibious assaults are extremely difficult
to pull off for experienced marines who train for it. In 1915, amphibious warfare did not yet exist
and the British tried to wing it at Gallipoli.
Despite outnumbering the Turks by a 5:1 ratio, the British never made it
off the beaches. For months the British
tried to wrestle Gallipoli from the Turks, but the whole campaigned bogged down
into yet another stalemate situation with trenches, barbed wire, and bloody
frontal assaults.
1916: Germany
throws the game away
1915 was a good year for the Central Powers, well at least for those not
rotting away in the trenches. On every
front the Allied attacks were repulsed and suffered enormous casualties. The Russians were reeling and had abandoned Poland. Serbia
was overrun. But for the German High
Commander, Erich Von Falkenhayn, the decisive victory remained frustratingly
out of reach. Falkenhayn reasoned only
victory against the French and the English would successfully conclude the war. Since the French army represented England’s
"continental sword," she became the target. The trench lines had made a
enveloping attack impossible, the only way to defeat the French was to attack
her straight up. No fancy feints, no
finesse, just a slugfest where the French would have to stand their ground and
fight back. Verdun seemed
as good a place as any.
At this point, the question "Weren't the French bleeding themselves
white in their suicidal assaults against the German trenches?" begs to be
asked. Yes, they were...and they were
doing a fine job of it too. Von Falkenheyn
concluded the best way to kill Frenchmen was to resort to the same kinds of
moronic attacks.
Not to be outdone in the belief that the elusive decisive victory lay one attack away were the British. Lord Kitchener had finally built up the
British Army from thousands of men to millions.
A breakout from the front at the Somme
River intrigued the British overall
commander, Sir Douglas Haig.
Haig's offensive on the Somme at least had some
planning to it unlike the Germans at Verdun. A tremendous artillery barrage, lasting for
over a week, would hopefully pulverize the Germans and then the British
infantryman would simply walk over and mop up the German survivors.
The Germans attacked Verdun on 22 February 1916. Because the local German commanders might not
take to kindly to his plan, Von Falkenheyn did not
tell them of his grand scheme and any sense of cohesion was lost. Units were simply ordered to make all out
assaults everywhere there were French troops; officers had no knowledge of the
larger plan and were just told to stop at nothing.
The Germans pushed mercilessly against the French, trying to destroy the
French armies. They used a great deal of
gas and despite suffering heavy casualties succeeded in destroying enough French
units that the German papers hailed Verdun
as the beginning of the end. The French
sent in their defensive specialist, General Henri Petain, to restore life to
the weary French. Petain accepted
Falkenheyn's view of what this battle was, a street brawl ending only when the
other drops. In February, March, April,
and May Everywhere around Verdun,
in such places as Le Mort Homme and Dead Man Hill, the Germans pressed and the
French resisted with machine gun, rifle butt, and bayonet. The Germans made some modest gains, but the
grounds became littered with the dead from both sides. One would be tempted to ask who was bleeding
whom? The French main lines held and their motto "They shall not
pass" symbolized France's
finest hour. By June the Germans had had
enough and were ready to quit. Unfortunately
for them, the French were still full of fight.
In the Fall, Petain launched a massive
counterattack aimed at recapturing the useless ground the Germans had taken in
the Spring simply because it was theirs and the Germans had trumpeted when they
took it.
Petain was probably the only French general who understood the apparently
absurd notion that firepower was more important then offensive spirit. His attacks had modest aims and he stopped
them whenever resistance thickened or casualties got to high. Petain succeeded in retaking much of the
modest gains around Verdun that the
Germans held and he had won a clear moral victory for France. As usual they were on the wrong side of the
casualty totals, 550,000 French to 440,000 Germans, but it wasn't nearly as bad
as the ratios in 1915 and the French had foiled Falkenheyn's concept of the Verdun
plan. As events in 1917 were to show,
the Germans came close to bleeding the French white. However, close was not the plan. Von Falkenheyn was relieved of his duties in
August.
Haig, like most generals, viewed artillery as they key to their attacks. Artillery is a frightful weapon, it accounted
for more than half of all casualties sustained in WWI. Who it doesn't kill, it sends cowering away. The trick was to keep the attacking troops
just behind a "rolling barrage" that would protect them because it
was either killing the bad guys or at least keeping their heads down.
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A German
"Big Bertha" gun
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The British had made elaborate time tables where their troops and barrage
was supposed to be at a particular time.
The British barrage at the Somme was supposed to
paralyze the Germans and flatten their barbed wire. It did neither. Artillery massacres troops in the open field,
but requires special shells and precision fire to kill troops that are
protected in underground bunkers. Impressive
as the guns were and even though the firing could be heard all the way to
London, when the British troops went "over the top" of their trenches
on 29 June they found that the German wire had not been cut and the machine
gunners had survived in their deep dugouts.
The British would have to cut the wire under fire while watching their
protecting barrage roll off into the distance.
Another problem facing the infantry was that the artillery turned the
whole battlefield into a quagmire slowing the progress of the attackers.
Though the situation was clearly impossible, the British charged forward
into the barbed wire and the machine guns.
Whole regiments were destroyed. On
the first day alone, the British suffered 57,470 casualties more than eight times the number lost at Waterloo. "The
worst day in the history of the British Army."
After inflicting horrible losses on the British the Germans should have allowed
them to hold their 2 mile gain and simply set up another killing zone for Haig
to deliver his forces into. Instead the Germans
put their own troops through the same slaughter the British just went through?
Both sides suffered terribly; the British continued to press against the
Germans and the Germans stood tall taking a beating from the British artillery. It was Verdun
all over again. The British launched
several major attacks, including one in September using tanks for the first
time, but didn't make any appreciable gains.
The November rains soon came and the carnage ended from mutual
exhaustion. For a gain of about 6 miles
in 6 months, it cost the British 425,000 men and the French an additional
200,000. The Germans lost 450,000 men.
Because the Germans were busy banging their heads against the wall at Verdun,
the Russians were given the initiative on the East in 1916. Materiel was in short supply and only one
commander, General Alexei Brusilov, stepped forward and volunteered to attack. Brusilov had perhaps the three qualities that
separate great soldiers from the mediocrity: he was a fighter, he was not
afraid to take risks, and most important, he didn't complain about what he did
not have. Brusilov had few of the
precious shells that Haig and all his other peers viewed as so decisive, but he
improvised.
Artillery is a killer, but when indiscriminately fired for days at the enemy,
it did more harm than good. First thing
it did was alert the enemy to where your next big attack was coming so he could
reinforce the area. The second thing it
did was destroy and tear up the ground your troops had to cross to get to the
enemy. Even if there was a weak point to
exploit, it was impossible to get your reserves there to maneuver past it. Finally, few shells landed where they
actually did any good because the objective was saturation and not precision.
Brusilov used what few shells he did have against specific targets acquired
through careful reconnaissance and scouting.
Because the Russians were not going to make a mess out of the
battlefield with artillery, they could approach their attacks with more finesse. Instead of relying on the mass attacks of
human waves that were targets for enemy machine guns, specially trained troops were
slated to knock out key targets. Strongpoints
were isolated and bypassed. This would
open holes for the reserves to rush through and exploit. The Russians would also have the element of
surprise since they didn't take months hauling in troops and guns or days
firing their howitzers. The Austrians
were an easier mark than the Germans, so Brusilov set to hit them. He had to attack earlier than he wished
because of frantic pleas from the French and Italians to help.
After a short and intense bombardment, the Russians jumped out of the
trenches and achieved complete surprise.
The Austrians had not seen any of the tell tale signs of a large attack
and did not take the Russian assault seriously at first. The Austrian lines were torn apart by
infiltration teams and everywhere the front collapsed. The Russians reached 25 miles in just 1 week
capturing hordes of Austrians in the process.
The Austrians were in deep trouble and the Germans raged at what they
thought was betrayal over Brusilov's spectacular
initial success -- he had captured 300,000 Austrians.
The "real" Austrians accused the Czechs of surrendering in droves
to their fellow Russian Slavs. The
Austrians were panicking and the Germans rushed in everything they could to
stabilize the front. At the height of
the Hapsburg crisis, forces beyond Brusilov worked against him. The two million or so other
Russian soldiers on the front did nothing to support Brusilov. The Germans had no reserves left, everything they had was at Verdun,
the Somme, or in the Carpathians holding off Brusilov. From cowardice or intraservice rivalry,
whatever the reason, a golden opportunity was missed by the Russians. St. Petersburg
urged Brusilov to continue his attack even though his offensive had already
reached its crescendo. The troops were
disorganized and his supply train worked over a poor network as opposed to the
Germans working over a good one. Brusilov
obeyed and launched another assault that lacked the eloquence and methodical
preparation of his first one. Careful
calculation had given way to a blunt thrust against an alert enemy. Predictably, the Russians sustained heavy
losses and achieved little success.
The Brusilov offensive would be Tsarist Russia's last gasp. It had lost more than a million men, despair
was endemic at the front and at home and treason was openly muttered in the
ranks.
German strategy for 1916 was clearly flawed.
Its pointless offensive at Verdun
and obstinacy at the Somme had destroyed far too many of
her best troops. Continuation of the
1915 defensive posture would have killed just as many French and British
without suffering the losses of so many of their front line troops.
The only remaining ace left for Berlin
to play was unrestricted submarine
warfare. The Germans did not have
the patience to beat Russia
and geography foiled her attempts to defeat the French. The U-boat could defeat the British, but a
"neutral" power 3,000 miles away with the army the size of Chile's
had objected. Berlin
decided to play their remaining ace and damn the consequences. If they won before the United
States transferred her latent military power
into military assets then it wouldn't matter what Washington
thought about the U-boats.
1917: The issue is in doubt
Had the Germans continued their 1915 strategy, they would have at least
looked as if they were winning. Still,
in the beginning of 1917 it was hard to say they weren't winning. Romania
and Serbia had
been knocked out. The Russians were
reeling. The French, English, and
Italians offensives did nothing but kill lots of soldiers on both sides. Thus, when American President Woodrow Wilson
tried to mediate a peace accord between the belligerents in early 1917, he was
met with a cold shoulder and unreasonable terms by both sides. There could be no compromise peace. Too many national sons have died on both
sides to accept anything less than undisputed victory. 1917 was in many respects a changing of the
guard.
By this time, most of the politicians from 1914 had fallen out of favor and
had disappeared from the scene. In Britain,
the obnoxious conservative David Lloyd
George was elevated to head a coalition government. In France,
Georges Clemenceau, became increasingly more
influential. The Kaiser had by this time
been reduced to a mouthpiece by the Army.
Historians aren't sure who ruled Berlin
in 1914, but by 1916, it was clearly the army that dictated policy. Hindenburg and Ludendoff, famous for their
victories in the East, had succeeded Von Falkenheyn and virtually ran the
country. While Nicholas II was away at
the front trying to play war hero, the erratic Tsarina and a strange character
named Rasputin headed the Tsarist Regime that was falling apart. Neither of these three individuals, nor the
Regime, would survive the war.
The Collapse of the Russian Empire
Russia was
simply not in a position to wage a protracted industrial war. She was an agrarian society. 85% of its population labored in the medieval
agriculture barely out of serfdom. The
urban workers were not much better off. The
cities grew too fast for the archaic bureaucracy to keep up. There was no sewerage, appalling living
conditions, and a borderline criminal distribution of wealth between the haves
and the have-nots. Even if Nicholas II
was a strong Tsar, he still would have had great difficulty leading Russia
during the war.
The Duma (Russia's
parliament) was just a symbolic body...it had no power over the Nicholas II. This medieval system was clearly rotting. The mounting casualties proved too much for
the Romanov Dynasty. Russia
simply literally could not afford the war.
Food was scarce, whole regiments of the Russian Army deserted. The Duma responded by declaring a Provision
Government along the lines of the Western Democracies. The Tsar abdicated on 15 March.
The Duma
The decision to continue the war sealed the fate of the new government. Russia
could not defeat the Germans and the soldiers knew this. Orders from the Provisional Government were
either altered or ignored. The Russians
launched another offensive in June. The
Germans quickly counterattacked. Many soldiers "voted
with their feet" and simply went home.
The Germans wished to finish off the rotting carcass that was Russia
so they transported one Vladimir Ilyich
Ulyanov, who called himself Lenin, into Petrograd.
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Lenin rallies
the workers
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The Germans in essence injected Lenin like a bacteria to deliver the coup d'
grace. Lenin controlled a left-winged
radical group of hardcore Marxists that believed in uncompromising dedication,
violence, action, violence and radical revolution that called themselves Bolsheviks.
Lenin seized power on 6 November
1917. The Bolshevik seizure
of power eliminated the Russians from the war.
The Germans took three months in presenting their terms to Lenin. They received everything: land, pro-German
satellite States, rolling stock, guns, wheat, oil and then some, but the price
cost the Germans two things she could not afford - time and manpower. Americans were coming across the ocean in
droves and these 3 months she could never have back. To guard and gather all this loot, the German
"garrison" in the East numbered about 1,000,000 soldiers that were
desperately needed for the drive on Paris.
Peripheral Fronts
While the Germans were finishing off Russia
and the Western Allies launching yet more ill-advised attacks in France, the
Italians and the Austrians waged a separate war along the Insonzo. And once again the Germans were forced to
come to the aid of the Austrians. The
Germans launched their attack at Carporetto on 24 October 1917. The
Italians were taken completely by surprise and their lines quickly shattered. In the rout, the Germans advanced 70 miles
and captured a quarter of a million prisoners.
The Italians finally pulled their armies together at the outskirts of Venice. With Russia
out and Italy
on the verge of collapse, it is not too difficult to see why they felt like
they were winning in 1917.
The problem was the Germans could not win fast enough in the West. France
lay protected behind trenches, but what about Britain?
She lay behind the ocean, but hadn't Germany
built a grand navy? The German High Seas fleet was impressive, the second
largest navy in the world. The problem
was the British had the largest. In
perhaps the largest waste of tax dollars in human history, Admiral Tirpitz's
High Seas Fleet rotted away in the safety of German harbors the first two years
of the war. The Kaiser was
overprotective of his toys and refused to allow the fleet to sortie against the
British. Although the Royal Navy itched
to fight the Germans, if they would not come out and fight, it played into
their hands. The British controlled the
seas and thus all ocean commerce. The
Germans were blockaded and the Allies enjoyed almost exclusive privileges at
the Bank of America. Because Germany
became increasingly under the dominion of the military men, it began to neglect
such consumer industries as agriculture.
By 1916, turnips were considered a delicacy and it would not matter how
badly the German army routed the Allies if the country starved; the clock was ticking.
The War at Sea
The Germans countered by declaring the seas around the British Isles to be a
war zone and warning that such ships in this zone were legitimate targets for
submarines. Commerce raiding was an
accepted aspect of warfare that was centuries old, what was different about the
submarines is they attacked without warning and merchantmen died. Submarines are deadly, but at the same time
highly vulnerable. In order to provide
the safeguards for the crews of the merchant ships, it had to expose itself to
enemy fire. For awhile the Germans went
along with this, but soon the British starting not only arming their merchant
ships, but concealing the guns as well. As
the U-boats approached these Q-Ships, the crews dropped the canopies hiding
their guns and opened fire. In 1915,
enough U-boats were sunk in this manner to for them to stop the practice of
warning the merchantmen and simply fired torpedoes from beneath the waves. As Americans ignored the German warnings and
stated getting themselves killed in war zones, Wilson
responded forcefully. It reached a
crescendo when the Lusitania was
sunk on 7 May 1915.
The Lusitania was built and
claimed to be a passenger liner by the British, but in fact she was registered
as an auxiliary cruiser with twelve 6 inch guns as well being a blockade runner
since she carried stores of ammunition and other war materiel. Probably the only reason why she blew up and
sank was because this volatile cargo ignited after getting hit by a single
torpedo. All 124 Americans that perished
received warnings posted by the German government that they were indeed sailing
into a war zone. Only 1 American heeded
the warning and cancelled his trip. Then
there is the matter of Admiralty’s questionable handling of such an important
ship, it was almost as if they wanted her to run into a U-boat. Wilson
was well aware that the Germans had sunk an armed cruiser, but chose to remain
officially ignorant in his vehement protests to the German government. His Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan,
resigned rather than go along with the charade.
Under pressure from the US
the Germans scaled down their U-boat operations but did not stop them. In August, the Arabic was torpedoed
and three Americans drowned. Wilson
once again protested in a huff and this time the Germans backed off. They sent their U-boats either into the Mediterranean
where Americans could not get in the way or promised to adhere to the passenger
safeguards for merchantmen in the future.
This policy worked in that Americans didn't get killed and the U-boats
were still able to send some British shipping to the bottom, but British
Q-ships had sunk or damaged enough U-boats for Germans commanders to stop
risking their lives for the sake of saving British sailors. In resuming unrestricted submarine warfare,
sinkings rose and once again Americans got in the way. In March 1916, a U-boat sank the Sussex
and this time Americans threatened to sever diplomatic relations. The Germans backed off again, adopting the
"Sussex Pledge" which promised to observe all the pre-war rules of
engagements. Such a pledge made them
useless as commerce raiders. With the
U-boats handcuffed, the Kaiser reluctantly agreed to allow the High Seas Fleet
a crack at the British blockade. The result
was the Battle of Jutland, where the
vanguards of the German and British Fleets engaged in the only major surface
engagement of the war. The German
commander, Scheer, did not know the British code breakers knew his intentions
and that he was steaming into a trap. On
31 May 1916, upon seeing
Jellicoe's (his English opposite) battleline perfectly "cross the T",
Scheer knew he was in trouble. Outnumbered
by nearly 2:1, Scheer knew that if he did not escape into the darkness, the
High Seas Fleet would not live to see 1
June 1916.
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The Royal Navy
at Jutland
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Fierce salvoes were exchanged and soon the North Sea
became dotted with burning and sinking ships.
Although outnumbered, the Germans were ahead on points by the time
darkness set in. With some fancy maneuvering,
Scheer managed to pull himself out of the British trap and elude Jellicoe long
enough to escape. When the sun rose on 1
June, the British saw nothing but the North Sea. Who won? Well, the German papers printed that
they had sunk more ships despite being outnumbered. The British pointed out that had the Germans not
been too busy retreating, they would have realized the Royal Navy was in
strategic control of the North Sea. Still, because the British expected nothing
less than the total annihilation of the High Seas Fleet, Jellicoe lost his job
and they had to resign themselves to continue blockading the Germans while the
High Seas Fleet thumbed their noses at them from the safety of their own ports.
By the beginning of 1917, it looked as though Germany
would starve before its armies defeated all comers. The U-boat appeared to be the ace the Germans
needed to break the deadlock. The Army
leaders would be damned if the threat of the feeble American standing military
was going to cause them to lose the war.
On 1 February 1917,
the German government notified the United States
that it would resume unrestricted submarine warfare. Sinkings of ships bound for Britain
immediately doubled. The submarine came
close to defeating Britain,
but they had a trump card - the convoy
system. The Admiralty was reluctant
to convoy because escorts were in short supply and the complexities of
organizing such a intricate system would bottleneck
the economy. But when sinkings rose to
an alarming 866,000 tons in April 1917 an adamant Lloyd George demanded the
convoy system be organized. The escorts
were further enhanced by advances in anti-submarine devices such as the depth
charge and hydrophones. At first, there
weren't enough escorts available, but the convoys had an immediate benefit. Sinkings fell to a manageable levels where
the British weren't weeks away from surrender.
When more escorts rolled off from American shipyard in the Fall of 1917, shipping loses were actually lower than they
were prior to the German decision to resume unrestricted submarine warfare. The U-boat had brought the United
States into the war and proved unable to
stop them from crossing the Atlantic. Every day that passed the Germans got a
little weaker and the Allies stronger. If
the Italians and French could just hang on, American economic might would bury
the Germans.
The West
The French had stopped the Germans at Verdun,
but paid a terrible price in blood. Not
content with destroying the youth of their generation, the French general staff
looked to finish off the next one as well.
Joffre had not produced the war winning offensive so he was replaced
with the smooth talking Robert Nivelle. Nivelle
would have made a great used-car salesman.
Mingling with the politicians, he made grandiose plans to attack with a
nearly broken army. Asked how, he
replied, "With violence, brutality, and rapidity." Stretched to its
limits holding Verdun, Nivelle
asked the impossible when he opened the Second Battle of the Aisne. Violence and brutality were in abundance, but
the only rapidity that was evident were in the French
casualties. After a month of mindless
attacks, Nivelle was relieved of his duties and replaced with Petain, the Hero
of Verdun. When Petain took over the
infantry had enough. After nearly three
years of wanton slaughter, they simply would not attack. Many regiments displayed the red flag. In light of the millions dead and maimed, one
would think the French Army would make morale a priority. Living in the squalid trenches was miserable
enough, but the French army did nothing to look after the welfare of their
soldiers. Discipline was draconian. Basic "luxuries" such as tobacco were
almost nonexistent. Leaves were few and
far between. Payment was on par with the
poverty level, the government held the attitude that it was a privilege to
serve the state. History books refer it
to as "the French Army Mutiny of 1917" but it was more of a protest
against suicidal attacks than a real mutiny.
The soldiers did not desert their posts for the most part, they simply
refused to go over the top and assault the German trenches with bayonets. In the rear areas drunken soldiers attacked
staff officers. The government blamed
German sympathizers, but Petain knew better.
He convinced Clemenceau that the troops had to be treated as human
beings and not cattle. Grievances were
addressed and some basic amenities issued.
Order was slowly restored through the combination of court martials and Petain being attuned with his soldiers. The "mutiny" had destroyed the
offensive capability of the French for the rest of the year. It would be up to the British to defeat the
Germans in 1917.
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Leroux: Hell
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Haig still harbored visions of a great breakthrough in Flanders
and tried to achieve through the tried and untrue measures of artillery and
human wave attacks at Passchendaele. The
bombardment and heavy rains had destroyed the drainage system and turned the
countryside into a mass of mud. Many a
soldier either slipped off or were shot off the paths and drowned. A British staff officer came from London
to survey the front and lamented, "Good God, did we really send men to
fight in that?"
Out of desperation, the British launched a tank attack at Cambrai as
fighting at Passchendaele dissolved in the mud.
As the tanks rumbled towards the German lines, many troops simply turned
tail and ran. 300 primitive machines had
done in hours what the BEF, with its bombardments lasting for weeks and human
wave assaults, could not do - flatten German wire and rout the defenders. Unfortunately, Haig did not expect much and their were no reserves to exploit the tanks' success. The German lines stabilized and they were
able to close assault and destroy the tanks because the British supporting
infantry became separated from the tanks.
Still, church bells rang in London. Cambrai foreshadowed what was to come. The Germans broke the stalemate in the East
and Italy
through tactical brilliance, the Allies were to
achieve the same result through technological innovation. 1918 would be the litmus test.
1918: Everybody loses
By 1918, all the participants were straining under the weight of four years
of total war. Russia
was out. Austria,
Turkey, and Italy
were not far behind. The French Army mutiny
showed how close France
was to collapse. Britain
was close to bankruptcy. The German
economy was practically ruined; the Army leaders grossly neglected civilian
industry and agriculture.
Into the fray stepped the United States. Lundendoff remarked, "The United States
does not bother me in the least; I look upon the declaration of war by the
Untied States with indifference!" Lundendorff and the German military
could not appreciate the economic weight brought against them that would
eventually bury them. Yes, the American
army was not trained and would not make their presence felt until the very last
months of the war, but they were fresh, eager, and coming into France
at the rate of 250,000 a month. What had
an immediate effect on the Allies was unlocking American credit to the
exhausted Allies. Money poured into
English, French, and Italian banks, food and ammunition piled into their supply
dumps and excited Americans filed from troops ships. By contrast, public morale and internal
divisions had bottomed out in Germany. If the Germans didn't win by the summer they
never would.
The Germans threw everything into an gamble of epic
proportions in all out offensive codenamed "Michael." As the troops arrived
from Russia,
the Germans enjoyed superiority in manpower for the fist time in years. Using the new Huntier tactics, storm troopers
would punch through the Allied lines and.
On March 21, after short intense bombardment, the German Stormtroopers
went over the top and broke through the British
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The "Red
Baron", like so many others, would not survive the war
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defenses at the Somme. The Germans attacked at the point where the British
and French trenches linked and by breaking through them threatened to unravel
the coalition between the two allies.
The Germans achieved remarkable tactical success -- they advanced 40 miles
in some places.
Their very success cause the Allies to finally
establish a supreme command to better coordinate their armies. Reinforcements were called in and the
Germans, already at the end of a precarious supply line, were stopped. Blunted here, Lundendorff then attacked the
British in the North near Ypres. It was the same story. The German stormtroopers put a big dent into
the British lines, but didn't have enough manpower to turn this into a
breakthrough. Twice the Germans attacked
the British and twice the French sent troops to rescue them so the Germans
thought. Naturally, the Germans attacked
the French next. Storming the same
ground where the Schlieffen plan died four years ago, the German storm troopers
once again made remarkable progress in terms of capturing land. But in the end, the German advance simply ran
out of steam.
They ran into what they called "Fresh Americans." They didn't
think much of their soldiery, but the way the Americans fought, it seemed as if
they relished taking heavy casualties as they kept coming back for more. At Cantigny and Belleau
Wood, the Americans took heavy casualties in assaulting these
positions, but were determined to take it because the Germans had it. In the end they did.
The Germans tried one more offensive against the French and
Americans in the Reims vicinity. Poor preparation and a steady stream of
deserters -- a dangerous sign -- gave away the plan. The Allies were waiting for the German attack
and stopped it cold. The Germans had
lost over a million men in the great Spring offenses,
but had destroyed itself in the process.
Morale plummeted and when the Allies counterattacked in July and August,
they advanced against a collapsing army.
The British skillfully used tanks and aircraft to support
their infantry as they overran the Germans units in the North. On 8 August, the "black day for the
German Army," Germans surrendered in droves to the British -- 16,000 of
them on this day alone. All along front,
the British, French, and Americans advanced in a methodical fashion. By September, the Allies had 220 divisions
and a preponderance of tanks and aircraft pressing against 50 combat worthy
German divisions. It was all but
over. The German Home Front, neglected
in the best German military tradition, was torn apart by famine and strikes. Bulgaria
and Turkey
signed armistices with the Allied Powers in September. The Austrian front in Italy
collapsed. By the end of October, Austria-Hungary
ceased to exist as a state. His country
on the verge of full scale revolution, the Kaiser reluctantly abdicated and
fled to Holland.
On 11 November
1918, a German delegation signed the armistice that ended the war. Professor Northedge pointed out, "with no considerable assistance from her allies,
Germany had held the rest of the world at bay, had
beaten Russia, had driven France to the end of her tether, and in 1917, had
come within an ace of starving Britain into surrender."
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Paying respects to a fallen
comrade
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Versailles:
The twenty year truce
Germany had
agreed to the armistice on the basis on President
Wilson's 14 Points, a program that called for a "Peace between equals." He
descended into Versailles to mold
their world according to his model, just like Britain's
Lloyd George and France's
Clemenceau. About the only thing they
could agree on was to not allow Germany
and certainly not the Bolsheviks were to attend. As the Bolsheviks were immerged in Civil War,
their absence was understandable. But
the exclusion of Germany
was a grave mistake. The government that
surrendered was not the same as the Imperial one that started the war. Signing a harsh peace they were not even
allowed to participate in discredited democracy from the very beginning and
gave people like Hitler willing audiences.
But placating Germany
was the last thing on anybody's mind. Millions
had died fighting the Hun and their sacrifices must not be in vain.
Each leader had his own agenda:
- Clemenceau (France)
- Wanted to make it so Germany
could never wage war again. Either
turn the whole country into an immense farm or divide the country up. He eventually accepted the idea that Germany
should pay large reparations.
- Lloyd George (Britain)
- He had just won an election where he promised to extract every ounce of
flesh from the German carcass. Privately
he realized that because Germany
was Britain's
largest prewar customer, keeping Germany
viable was necessary for a revival of British prosperity.
- Wilson
(USA) - Adamant
that his brain child, the League
of Nations, would be established. He became so obsessed with its creation
that he refused to compromise on any matters that concerned the League.
- Orlando
(Italy) - Italy
entered the war in mercenary fashion and came to Versailles
for payment. She did not get it.
There was agreement with respects to redrawing Europe's
boundaries on the principle of national
self-determination. The Eastern
Empire's were dissolved and new European states such as Poland,
Czechoslovakia,
Yugoslavia, and
the Baltic States were created. Germany
was stripped of Alsace-Lorraine and some of her eastern provinces which Hitler
would gripe about for the next 20 years.
Germany
was only allowed to have an army of only 100,000 rifleman
with no modern weapons such as planes, tanks, or submarines.
The Sticking Points
- Reparations - It was
customary for the loser of a war to pay for it. The problem was this war was so terrible
the costs were incalculable. After
months of arguing, the Treaty was signed without an agreement; they merely
stated that Germany
was to pay a sum to be determined later.
The leading economist at the time, John Maynard Keynes, warned the
Allies that a huge indemnity would disrupt the world economy and place the
world in financial crisis. The
delegates did not listen. They not
only assessed Germany
an absurd amount they could not possibly pay, but also took away a large
portion of their coalmines which ran the German trains and factories. Keynes was right; in ten years the
market plummeted into the Great Depression.
- The German Question - Germany
had never existed as a unified state until 1871 because king and diplomat
alike realized that if the Germanic peoples were ever united into a single
kingdom, by virtue of their size and wealth it would be the strongest
power in Europe.
Germany
after Versailles was still an
immensely strong Great Power. She
still had highly educated and efficient population. Her steel capacity still dwarfed France. Its Chemical
and electrical plants stood intact as were its excellent internal
communications.
- The League
of Nations - This was to be a body where nations could
come together and air grievances much like what the Untied Nations does
today. Wilson
refused to compromise on what he felt was the perfect instrument to
resolve world's problems. Not only
did he not compromise with the other delegates, he rejected any input from
his own Senate. Wilson
got his League, but it was a hollow body with no muscle and the Senate
refused to ratify the Treaty. An
utter failure, it was discredited by the mid 1930s. The United
States returned to its isolationist
past.
In sum, the treaty was unduly harsh towards Germany. The Germans had agreed to the Armistice with
the understanding that Wilson's
moderate 14 Points would be the basis of the peace. They were not invited to take part in the
process, only called in to place their signature on the document. The had to of
course, the Allied troops were stationed in Germany
and they still continued the blockade
which caused thousands of children and elderly to starve to death.
Particularly galling was Article 231 which unequivocally
blamed German for the 4 years of slaughter.
The Germans called Versailles
the "slave treaty" and would spend the next 25 years trying to undue
what they perceived as a great injustice.
Their claim certainly had some validity, but they conveniently forgot
the extortion they pulled on a beaten Russia
or their laughable demands that called for huge German annexations in Europe
and Africa as programs for peace during the war. Sometimes the victors don't write the history
books. On 28 June 1919, the Versailles
treaty was signed; 20 years and 3 months later, France
and Great Britain
would be fighting Hitler's Nazi Germany.
Winning and losing
The Allies had won the war, but they sacrificed the flower of their
generation to achieve this military victory.
By the end of 1916, there was no possible way to recoup the losses in
men, materiel, and money already exhaustive and every power would have been
better off surrendering unconditionally to the enemy. The 4 great monarchies that felt a quick war
would rally the people behind king and country -- Germany,
Russia, Austria-Hungary,
and The Ottoman -- were all swept away. The
numbers that died, although staggering, do not accurately portray what each
nation lost. Every 20 year old that died
in the trenches was one that could never farm, build, teach, or contribute in
anyway to rebuilding the ruins. Neither
would his children as they would never be born.
Many that did come back from the front were crippled. The few that came back physically healthy
were often psychologically detached from those that never experienced the
"the trenches."
Because civilians had to work harder and had less services
available to them, they were more vulnerable to natural killers like disease,
starvation, and privation. The old and
very young starved to death. The total deaths from the war amount to 9 million soldiers and
depending on who is counting, anywhere from 5 to 13 million civilians.
This is excluding the Spanish Influenza pandemic that killed 25-40
million people worldwide in 1918-1919. Nobody
is certain how and where this deadly pathogen originated, but everybody agrees
the squalid conditions in war torn Europe and the vulnerable
civilian populations made this already potent strain the deadliest outbreak in
viral history.
So much death and destruction had an enormous psychological impact. Gone was the optimistic belief in mans progress
and reason. Most believed the war
shattered the illusion of human goodness and progress.
Final question: Is WWII a continuation of WWI?
Let's see.
WWI was a German led bloc vs. France,
Britain, Russia,
and eventually the USA.
WWII was a German led bloc vs France,
Britain, Russia,
and eventually the USA.
WWI ended with a harsh treaty and bitter resentment towards Germany.
Hitler came into power harping about a harsh treaty and
bitter resentment towards Germany.