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13. "THE GREAT WAR" (WORLD WAR ONE)

1918

CONTENTS

Russia drops out of the war

Wilson's Fourteen Points

America is fully mobilized

Germany's spring offensive – "Operation
        Michael" – March - June 1918

The Germans begin to fall back –
        summer of 1918

Russia collapses into civil war

The Germans are forced into deep
        retreat – September - November 1918

The air war

Armistice

The textual material on page below is drawn directly from my work A Moral History of Western Society © 2024, Volume Two, pages 93-96.

RUSSIA DROPS OUT OF THE WAR

Lenin began almost immediately after taking control of the Russian capital to look for the best way out of the war with Germany.  He sent Trotsky to negotiate with the Germans at Brest-Litovsk.  In December both sides agreed to an armistice and an opening of  peace negotiations.  A war of nerves then ensued as the Germans demanded harsh terms from Russia in the form of territory to be given up and expensive reparations payments to be made to Germany.  But the Germans were also in a hurry to get something agreed on.  At one point negotiations broke down ... and the Germans made ready to march towards Petrograd (the Russians at this point barely had an army to defend themselves by).  Thus the Russians gave in first. 

In early March the announcement was made to the world that a formal peace had been agreed on by the two parties.  It would constitute a very huge loss for Russia.  But it did give Lenin the peace he needed to pursue his revolution in Russia.  And it gave the Germans the clearance they needed to vacate the Eastern Front and reposition their army in the West.  

The Russo-German Armistice - December 15, 1917

Russian and German troops fraternizing upon the news of an Armistice worked out by Trotsky with the Germans

The Brest-Litovsk Treaty  of March 3, 1918

 

Trotsky arriving at Brest - January 1918

Trotsky at Brest-Litovsk - January 1918
Imperial War Museum, London

The signing of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty - March 3, 1918

The signing of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty
The treaty took away a third of Russia's population, half of her industry and nine-tenths of her coal mines.  But it enabled the Communists to focus their full efforts at securing their rule over what remained of the former Russian Empire.   A huge and extremely bloody civil war was about to begin. 


Wikipedia - "Treaty of Brest-Litovsk"

WILSON'S FOURTEEN POINTS

Meanwhile, American President Wilson was working hard to make the American war effort a moral crusade rather than just a crude power play.  The cynical nature of the war thus far had been amply revealed when the Bolsheviks published copies of the secret treaties that had been exchanged among the Allies, offering the bribes of land and payments in exchange for various forms of wartime support.  Also, Lenin himself had, as an immediate follow-up to the Bolshevik seizing of control of Petrograd, delivered a speech promising Russian support for a new peace of equity and justice for the toiling classes of the world, one involving immediate peace without annexations (which he subsequently himself was unable to secure from the Germans). So pressure was mounting to get Wilson's own moral ideals in place as the higher light that would bring peace to the world.
 
On January 8, 1918 Wilson delivered a speech to Congress in which he clearly outlined similar but much more specific war goals of America in the form of Fourteen Points.  He called for open rather than secret diplomacy, freedom of navigation and trade, reduction in armaments, the restoration of territories lost in the war by all parties, the restoration of Poland, and finally (Fourteenth Point) the creation of a general association of nations (the future League of Nations)
for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.
The speech had been prepared without any prior consultation with America’s allies, who had, as part of their empires, numbers of great and small states (or provincial possessions).  They clearly had no intentions whatsoever of setting these territories free as independent democracies, such as Wilson expected to happen as a result of America's involvement in this supposed moral battle for global democracy.
 
Nonetheless, despite Wilson’s political presumptuousness, his declaration was well received by his allies.  It helped give moral cover to what was otherwise a completely immoral war.

AMERICA IS FULLY MOBILIZED

Actor-celebrity Douglas Fairbanks encourages deeper financial support for the War - New York, Wall Street - 1918

American War Posters

 


"Liberty Loan Choir sings on the steps of City Hall, New York City during third Liberty Loan campaign. Bishop William Wilkinson leads the choir"
By Paul Thompson, April 1918
National Archives

Women welders at the Hog Island shipyard near Philadelphia
National Archives

Women workers in ordnance shops, Midval Steel and Ordnance Co., Nicetown, Pa. Hand chipping with pneumatic hammers - 1918 - photo by Lt. Lubbe
National Archives

American women operating farming machinery
National Archives

GERMANY'S SPRING OFFENSIVE
"OPERATION MICHAEL" – MARCH - JUNE 1918

The Germans of course at that moment had other ideas than Wilson's.  On March 21 the Germans began their assault on three points on the Western Front; at the Somme (March 21-April 5), the Lys (April 9-29) and the Aisne (May 27-June 4).  Although these drove deep wedges into the Allied lines (especially at the Somme) they failed to break through French and British lines. By early June the Germans were exhausted.

Ludendorf – by the beginning of 1918, the virtual dictator of Germany – planning to break through the Allied lines before the Americans can get fully in position


Marshall, p. 269.

General Ferdinand Foche, Commanding General of the Allied Armies

British troops blinded by tear gas. They await treatment at an Advanced Dressing Station near Bethune during the Battle of Estaires, 10 April 1918, part of the German offensive in Flanders.
Imperial War Museum

AMERICA IS FULLY ENGAGED AT THE FRONT ... AND THE GERMANS BEGIN TO FALL BACK – SUMMER 1918

The British and French merely assumed that the American one and a half million troops would be blended into their own ranks as reserves.  But the American commander Pershing insisted that Americans fight as an integral unit at various points along the front.  Finally the allies relented and American troops took their positions along the line.  The newly arrived troops were eager to go, and gave a fresh spirit to the allies as they pushed the Germans back at Belleau Wood at the center of the front (June-July) and at St. Mihiel (September) and the Argonne Forest in the Verdun region (September-October). 


Marshall, p. 293 

US troops being transported to the trenches – 1918

Pershing address U.S. Marines – June 1918

American Signal Corpsmen donning gas masks

Marine receiving first aid before sent to hospital in rear of trenches. Toulon Sector, France. March 22, 1918. Sgt. Leon H. Caverly, USMC.
National Archives

"Negro troops in France. Picture shows a part of the 15th Regt. Inf. N.Y.N.G. organized by Col. Haywood, which has been under fire." ca. 1918. IFS.
National Archives

US troops resting up after the bitter fighting at Belleau Wood - June 1918

Foch and Pershing in one of their few pleasant moments together - June 1918
National Archives

Destruction in Northern France - August 1918
National Archives of Canada

Americans advance against the Germans' St. Mihiel salient

American troops moving forward into the St.-Mihiel salient - September
National Archives

A 75-mm. American gun crew targeting the St.-Mihiel salient
National Archives

American charge against the St.-Mihiel salient
(one doughboy has just taken a hit from German fire)
National Archives

A French couple in Brieulles-sur-Bar greeting American soldiers who have just delivered them
from four years of German occupation
United States Army

They then move into the Argonne Forest – where fighting proves to be vastly more difficult

Because of their victory at St-Mihiel, American troops head into the Argonne Forest with spirits running high
National Archives

American troops going forward to the battle line in the Forest of Argonne in Renault FT-17 tanks. September 26, 1918.
National Archives

But the Argonne Forest affords only a very painful inch-by-inch advance for men of the 23rd Infantry
USSC, National Archives

Machine gunners of the German Fifth Army in the Argonne
National Archives

A makeshift-hospital in a bombed-out French church
treats American wounded from the first day's action (September 26)
National Archives

American soldiers advancing on a bunker

October
Fierce fighting accompanies the American advance through the villages of the Meuse valley (a dead German lies next to the tank)
National Archives

Young Brigadier General Douglas MacArthur (38) in a French manor
National Archives

LENIN'S COMMUNISTS BEGIN THE CONSOLIDATION OF THEIR POWER IN RUSSIA ... AND THE COUNTRY COLLAPSES INTO CIVIL WAR

Lenin addressing a crowd gathered for May-Day ceremonies in Moscow - 1918

The basement in a house in the Ural Mountains
where Communists executed the Czar and his family - July 16, 1918
Time Inc.

Western intervention in the Russian Civil War

Western allies do not consider either Lenin's "Armistice" with Germany or his claim to rule Russia as a "done deal" and intervene directly in Russian affairs to give support to the "Whites" (an uneasy combination of Kerensky's Democrats and the Tsarists) who are involved in a bitter resistance campaign (or civil war) with Lenin and Trotsky's "Reds."

"Soldiers and sailors from many countries are lined up in front of the Allies Headquarters Building.
The United States is represented."  Vladivostok, Russia - September 1918
National Archives

THE GERMANS NOW ARE FORCED INTO A DEEP RETREAT – SEPTEMBER - NOVEMBER 1918

The big push

Meanwhile the British, led into battle by their huge tanks, advanced strongly at the Somme (September) ... and the French, along lines just below the British, combined with the British to push the exhausted Germans back to the point that by the beginning of November the Germans were nearly out of France and much of Western Belgium.  The German lines were collapsing rapidly.  

Marshall, p. 340

The British advance against the Germans further north along the front lines at Amiens

British Tanks at Amiens - 1918
Imperial War Museum, London

German artillery unit taking a direct hit

And the number of German prisoners now grows astronomically

A long line of German prisoners near Amiens escorted by a handful of Australian guards
Imperial War Museum, London


 
German POWs in French Prison Camp

A British soldier sharing a smoke with a German prisoner
Imperial War Museum, London

Young German prisoners seeming relieved that the action is all over
Imperial War Museum, London

A young German soldier

Very dis-spirited German soldiers

German prisoners carry a wounded comrade to an American aid station
National Archives

Wounded American soldiers watch German prisoners file by
National Archives

THE AIR WAR

"Capt. Edward Rickenbacker, America's premier "Ace" offically credited with 22 enemy planes and the proud wearer of the French War Cross as he appeared upon his arrival on board the Adriatic"
National Archives

Eddie Rickenbacker - American flying ace
   National Archives

Eddie Rickenbacker (27), former race driver – by war's end an American air ace
National Archives

Baron Manfred von Richthofen (26) - Germany's "Red Baron" air ace for 20 months. 80 confirmed kills ... before being shot down near Amiens on April 21, 1918

Baron Manfred von Richthofen and his Jasta 11 squadron

Serbian peasants watching an observation plane

Bulgarian troops aiming at incoming planes

ARMISTICE (NOVEMBER 11, 1918)

Now Wilson’s Fourteen Points looked very attractive to the Germans.  They were running out of military supplies and food (the urban population back in Germany was struggling to survive near-famine conditions).  Thus in early October Wilson received a message from Germany requesting an armistice and peace negotiations along the lines of Wilson’s Fourteen Points.  But Wilson was probing to see exactly on whose part the request was made: the German imperial government ... or the German people.
 
Meanwhile U-boat attacks on American shipping continued ... and Wilson hardened his terms for an armistice:  he would deal only with a post-imperial government.  German hopes were dashed ... and protests began to rise from the German left calling for Wilhelm’s abdication and  the creation of a German republic.  Rebellion in the streets now spread rapidly and Bavaria became the first German state to proclaim itself a republic.  Berlin then came under control by revolutionaries.  It was time for Wilhelm to make his escape.  But the military would not promise their protection ... and finally on November 9, Wilhelm made his way into exile in the Netherlands.

Seeing the imminent collapse of Germany Pershing wanted to push the war all the way into Germany to make it clear to the Germans that a new international status quo was now in force.  But British commander Haig and French commanders Foche and Pétain felt that it was time to bring the war to an end ... just where things presently stood. 

Nonetheless on November 8 the Allied commander presented the German commanders in their discussions at Compiègne a number of very strong concessions imposed on Germany as terms required for a cease fire.  The Germans were given until November 11 to respond.  Finally in the early hours of the 11th the Germans agreed to the terms and a general armistice was announced to go into effect at 11:00 later that same morning.  Tragically however the shelling and slaughter continued right up to the very last minute of the war.  But at 11:00 it was finally over. 

The trains which brought the two sides together at Compiègne for Armistice negotiations
November 1918

Officers in the forest of Compiègne after reaching an agreement for the armistice that ended World War I.  This railcar was given to Ferdinand Foch for military use by the manufacturer, Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits.  Foch is second from the right.

President Wilson reading the Armistice terms to Congress. November 11, 1918.
photo by Sgt Vincent J. Palumbo.
National Archives

Armistice celebrations in the trenches

Jubilant Harlem Hellfighters (369th Infantry) - on return from Europe after serious combat against the Germans (they were the first to reach the Rhine River) (3/4s of the 200,000 "Colored" troops served as menials during the war)
National Archives

US soldiers excited to be leaving training camp at Camp Dix, New Jersey - late 1918

(122,500 soldiers were killed or missing, 237,135 wounded during the war)
National Archives

Medal of Honor and Croix de Guerre winner Alvin York and his mother back in Tennessee (in the 1918 Meuse-Argonne offensive he charged a German machine-gun nest by himself, killed 25 Germans and captured 132 others in two separate forays)

Armistice celebrations in Paris

Londoners celebrating the Armistice

Londoners celebrating the Armistice


Go on to the next section:  Recovery

  Miles H. Hodges