World War I - The Definitive Visual History

["THE STRAINS OF WAR AFTER discontent had already found a political situation in which both The \ufb01rst state to collapse under tsarist regime, which they had feared, had been expression in anti-German riots in liberals and the urban and rural 1915. Tsar Nicholas\u2019s wife, Tsarina working populations were aligned the strain of war was Russia, but there overthrown. In 1917, Germany\u2019s new USPD Alexandra, was of German origin and against the regime. some of the tsar\u2019s ministers had was also unrest in France. (Independent Social Democratic Party) Germanic names. Sharing the pain campaigned to end Changing the name of the capital Britain, France, and Italy suffered less from the Germanic St. Petersburg to severe shortages than other countries. RUSSIAN TURMOIL the war. the Russian Petrograd was not enough But their governments had dif\ufb01culty to stem rumors that a pro-German persuading people that sacri\ufb01ces were The overthrow of clique around Alexandra was being fairly shared. Pro\ufb01teering by subverting the war effort and businessmen running war industries the tsar 210\u201311 \u276f\u276f in FRENCH MUTINIES deliberately starving the people. aroused anger. In France, disillusion The mysterious Rasputin, a powerful was widespread when Henri Barbusse\u2019s March 1917 was followed In France, the failure of the in\ufb02uence on the tsarina, was viewed antiwar novel Le Feu (Under Fire) was as a sinister force at court. His published in 1916. by the Bolshevik Nivelle Offensive assassination in December 1916 did nothing to halt the deterioration of In Britain, in spite of the increasing seizure of power 224\u201325 \u276f\u276f led to army frequency of workers\u2019 strikes, a large Female labor measure of political and social 252\u201353 \u276f\u276f in October mutinies in spring 1917. Women haul clay to a brick-making plant in Wales. solidarity was maintained. First Herbert Although female workers won better pay and status Asquith and then David Lloyd George 1917. The upheaval in Industrial strikes in during the war, many of the jobs they performed led coalition governments supported involved exhausting and monotonous physical labor. by the Conservative, Liberal, and Russia offered France also suggested that Labour parties. inspiration to would-be the continuation of the war revolutionaries in other might be in doubt. Instead, countries. In the appointment of Germany, many Georges Clemenceau as socialists saw no prime minister in November reason to continue CLEMENCEAU DRAGGING FRANCE INTO 1917 brought a reassertion the war once the THE FIRES OF BATTLE of France\u2019s will to \ufb01ght.","YEAR OF BATTLES 1916 BRITISH PRIME MINISTER Born 1863 Died 1945 200 David Lloyd George \u201cThe predominant task\u2026 is the vigorous prosecution of the war to a triumphant conclusion.\u201d DAVID LLOYD GEORGE, SPEECH, DECEMBER 1916 A lthough he was not raised in poverty, David Lloyd George was considered to be a man of the people. Born in Manchester, he grew up in rural Wales with his mother and her brother, shoemaker and Baptist minister Richard Lloyd. His father had died when Lloyd George was a year old, so he adopted his uncle\u2019s surname of Lloyd along with his own, George. Through talent, hard work, and ambition, he became \ufb01rst a successful lawyer and then, in 1890, at the age of 27, the youngest member of the House of Commons at the time. He soon earned a reputation as a \ufb01ery radical, denouncing the hereditary privileges of the aristocracy and the militarism of the British Empire. As a leading member of Liberal governments from 1906 he was at the forefront of social and political reform and known for the emotional eloquence of his speeches. On a personal level, Lloyd George was no stranger to scandal. His secretary, Frances Stevenson, was his mistress, and in 1913 he was caught up in allegations of insider share trading in Marconi\u2019s Wireless Telegraph Company. As prime minister, he sold honors and peerages for cash. Britain\u2019s war leader As prime minister from December 1916, David Lloyd George provided decisive leadership for wartime Britain. His lowly origins and radical credentials helped him win vital popular backing for the war effort.","DAVID LLOYD GEORGE Lloyd George was instinctively aligned Master orator has been blamed for withholding TIMELINE with the antiwar tradition of the Lloyd George addresses a crowd at troops from the Western Front in Liberal Party. However, during the the unveiling of a war memorial in early 1918, as part of his private \u25a0 January 1863 David George is born of Welsh Agadir Crisis of 1911, when a visit by London in October 1927. He was a war with Haig, leaving the British parents in Manchester, England. the German Kaiser to the Moroccan powerful orator, described by many Army vulnerable to the German port was perceived as provocative by as exercising an almost hypnotic grip Spring Offensive. \u25a0 1884 Becomes a lawyer. Marries Margaret France and Britain, Lloyd George made upon his audience. Owen, a farmer\u2019s daughter, four years later. a prominent speech advocating war if Postwar career it was necessary to preserve Britain\u2019s he was able to win \u25a0 1890 Enters parliament as Liberal Member vital interests and prestige. acceptance from trade Lloyd George won the postwar of Parliament for Carnarvon in North Wales. unions for \u201cdilution\u201d\u2014the general election of 1918 partly by Driving force use of unskilled workers promising to make Germany pay \u25a0 1899\u20131902 Is a critic of British involvement and women to do jobs reparations and to prosecute German in the Boer War in South Africa. The German invasion of Belgium in previously restricted to war criminals, including the Kaiser. August 1914 overcame any hesitations skilled male workers. At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, \u25a0 1906 Enters government for the first time Lloyd George had about supporting the however, he tried to steer a course as president of the Board of Trade. declaration of war. He established Unlike old-fashioned between French Prime Minister himself as the leading \ufb01gure in a drive Liberals such as Prime Georges Clemenceau\u2019s desire to \u25a0 1908 Becomes Chancellor of the Exchequer, to mobilize the economy and, in May Minister Herbert Asquith, permanently disable Germany a post he holds until 1915. He introduces old- 1915, was the natural choice to head a Lloyd George had no scruples about and the idealism of U.S. president age pensions and unemployment insurance. new Ministry of Munitions. He bullied government interference in business Woodrow Wilson. and bribed businessmen into turning or violation of individual freedoms. \u25a0 August 1914 Supports a British declaration of factories over to war production, In December 1916, he won the support In domestic affairs he aspired to war in support of Belgium, preventing a major achieving an impressive increase of of the Conservative and Labour parties continue his prewar radical reforms\u2014 split in the cabinet. output. As an acknowledged radical, to replace Asquith as prime minister, he had set up a Ministry for splitting the Liberal Party. Reconstruction as early as 1917\u2014 \u25a0 May 1915 Appointed Minister of Munitions He set about establishing a small war but as the leader of a predominantly after the \u201cshell scandal\u201d and achieves a rapid cabinet and expanded government Conservative coalition had little scope expansion of war production. control of national life in order to for action. He returned to leadership of boost the war effort. Many areas of the Liberal Party in 1924, but that once \u25a0 June 1916 On the death of Lord Kitchener, the economy, such as coal mining Lloyd George becomes Minister for War. and merchant shipping, were taken Commemorative jug over by the state for the duration of An earthenware jug celebrating Lloyd George\u2019s \u25a0 December 1916 Becomes prime minister the war. New ministries were created wartime premiership bears text in Welsh as well as at the head of a coalition government, to direct food production and labor. English. Lloyd George is the only Welshman to have establishing a five-man war cabinet. held the post of British prime minister. Relations with the generals \u25a0 April 1917 Backs the adoption of a convoy system to counter German U-boats. Lloyd George was not always so successful in imposing his will on \u25a0 July 1917 Reluctantly acquiesces in General the generals conducting the war. Douglas Haig\u2019s offensive at Passchendaele. Instinctively antimilitarist, he distrusted generals, while they \u25a0 January 1918 Makes a firm statement of regarded him as militarily ignorant. Britain\u2019s commitment to democracy and He sought an alternative to the national self-determination as war aims. slaughter on the Western Front, advocating a diversion of resources \u25a0 December 1918 Wins a landslide victory to Salonika or Italy. This was opposed in a general election at the end of the war. by General Sir William Robertson, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, \u25a0 1919 Represents Britain at the Paris and Field Marshal Douglas Haig Peace Conference. commanding British forces in France. Lloyd George tried to undermine the \u25a0 1922 His coalition with the Conservatives generals, eventually ridding himself collapses and he falls from power. of Robertson in February 1918, but Haig proved immovable. \u25a0 1936 Visits Germany and meets with Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. In his war memoirs, published in 1933, Lloyd George presents himself \u25a0 1940 Refuses the offer of a place in Winston as consistently humane and right Churchill\u2019s wartime government. while the military leaders were brutal and foolish. But some of his \u25a0 1943 A widower from 1941, he marries claims\u2014for example, to have been Frances Stevenson, his mistress since 1913. solely responsible for the introduction of the convoy system at sea in April \u25a0 1945 Dies shortly after being elevated to the 1917\u2014are now widely contested. He peerage as Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor. great movement never recovered from the split he had engineered in 1916. In the years before World War II, Lloyd George admired Hitler\u2019s forceful leadership and favored seeking peace in 1940. As a result, he had become an isolated \ufb01gure in British public life by the time he died in 1945. Juggling his allies \u201c I never believed in costly frontal LLOYD GEORGE AND FRANCES A wartime caricature presents Lloyd George as a circus attacks either in war or politics, STEVENSON AT THEIR WEDDING, 1943 strongman juggling his French, Russian, and Italian if there were a way round.\u201d allies. His skill at diplomacy was never equal to his grasp of domestic policy issues. DAVID LLOYD GEORGE, WAR MEMOIRS, 1934 201","YEAR OF BATTLES 1916 Germany\u2019s New Order From August 1916, the German war effort came under the control of the Third Supreme Command, spearheaded by Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and General Erich Ludendorff. Together, they began laying the foundations for a German-dominated Europe. C hief of the General Staff Paul von Chancellor, who headed the civilian were not controlled and manufacturers Hindenburg and Quartermaster- government, depended on the approval connected with the military regime General Erich Ludendorff of the Supreme Command. German made fortunes. exercised joint power over Germany\u2019s military and business leaders worked Third Supreme Command (Hindenburg closely together, pursuing the same Inevitably, priority lay with meeting being the third German Chief of the nationalist and expansionist agenda. the immediate needs of the war effort. General Staff to lead the war). They Conquered territories were plundered controlled German military strategy The war machine of food and raw materials. and also dictated economic and diplomatic policies. Kaiser Wilhelm II The policies of the Third Supreme Employing the labor of conquered was barely consulted on policy, and the Command grew partly out of an peoples was also seen as essential, with immediate need to cope with the war the German workforce depleted by the Forced labor demand for soldiers. From 1914, the Supreme commanders Russian soldiers captured by the Germans work situation, including shortages of labor, work of prisoners of war, chie\ufb02y German Chief of the General Staff Hindenburg is under armed guard. The labor of millions of such raw materials, and food. To maximize Russians, was invaluable to the followed by his Quartermaster-General Ludendorff. prisoners of war was essential to the war economies war production, the Third Supreme German war effort. The Third Supreme As joint leaders of the Third Supreme Command they of the Central Powers. Command sought total state direction Commander pressed to maximize the installed a virtual military dictatorship in Germany. of the German economy, controlling supply of workers from conquered BEFORE the allocation of raw materials and territories. Thousands of Poles were Some areas were to be emptied of their taking powers to order workers into deported to Germany and put to work. existing population and colonized by Germany entered World War I without war industries. One of the ways in When the policy was applied in German settlers; others were to be clear war aims, but its leaders were which it raised money for the war occupied Belgium in the autumn of placed under puppet governments and soon tempted by the idea of creating effort was to invite people to pin 1916, protests organized by trade economically exploited. This vision was a German-dominated Europe. money and pledges to invest in war unions and by the in\ufb02uential Belgian endorsed by Austria\u2019s German rulers\u2014 bonds on wooden statues of spokesman Cardinal Mercier led to the who intended to take control of the Hindenburg erected in deportations being halted in 1917. Balkan Slavs and northern Italy\u2014as German towns and cities. well as by Germany itself, whose main German nationalism interests lay in Poland, Ukraine, and Substantial increases in the Baltic states. The Hungarians would production were achieved, The Supreme Command also re\ufb02ected exercise control over Croatian Slavs. although organization of the a broader vision of the future of war economy fell short of the Europe, and Germany\u2019s place within it, Conquered territories level of ef\ufb01ciency to which it articulated by German nationalists. aspired. For example, in They argued that Slavs were inherently Attempts were made to implement 1917 output of ri\ufb02es and inferior to Germans and that Germany aspects of the \u201cMitteleuropa plan.\u201d machine guns hugely had a historic \u201ccivilizing mission\u201d in the In 1914\u201315, for example, victories exceeded the army\u2019s east. In his in\ufb02uential book Mitteleuropa requirements but production (Central Europe), published in 1915, of steel, a vital war material, the politician Friedrich Naumann fell. Pro\ufb01ts for business envisioned Germany permanently dominating a swathe of Europe from Krupp arms factory the Baltic to the Black Sea. Most German artillery was manufactured EXPANSIONIST PLANS by the steel manufacturer Krupp. The owners of such businesses worked in In September 1914, the German Chancellor close collaboration with the military leadership to maximize production. drafted a plan for the annexation of Belgium, the Netherlands, and northern France, and the economic exploitation of states in Central Europe. Though not of\ufb01cially adopted, this program represented government thinking. The battles of 1914\u201316 left Germany and Austria-Hungary in temporary control BELGIAN of parts of France, MILITARY Belgium, the Balkans, PIN and Eastern Europe. 202","\u201c The naked truth is\u2026 every deported worker GERMANY\u2019S NEW ORDER is another soldier for the German army.\u201d AFTER CARDINAL MERCIER, PROTESTING AGAINST DEPORTATIONS FROM BELGIUM, NOVEMBER 7, 1916 In 1918, Germany ful\ufb01lled some of its ambitions in the east and came close to victory on the Western Front. POISED TO WIN Revolutions and military collapse in Russia opened the way for Germany to impose the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty 276\u201377 \u276f\u276f on the Russians in March 1918. The treaty gave Germany control of nominally independent countries from Ukraine in the south to the Baltic states in the north. In May 1918, Romania was also forced to sign a treaty giving Germany ownership of its oil wells. German offensives on the Western Front in spring 1918 282\u201383 \u276f\u276f, however, failed to achieve victory before the arrival of American troops in large numbers. GERMAN LUGER PISTOL on the Eastern Front brought large areas around the Baltic under the administration of \u201cOber Ost\u201d\u2014German Supreme Command in the East\u2014which was then headed by Hindenburg and Ludendorff. One of Ludendorff\u2019s initiatives was a program of Germanization, sending German teachers into local schools, in preparation for the future mass arrival of German colonists. General Hans von Beseler, the Governor-General of German-occupied Poland from 1915, promoted a scheme to shift two million Poles and Jews out of a broad strip of Polish territory bordering Germany and replace them with German settlers\u2014a program that had become of\ufb01cial German policy by March 1918. In addition to the Mitteleuropa plan for the east, the long-term ambitions of Germany\u2019s military leadership included the annexation of much of Belgium and part of northern France. The Legacy This New Order long predated the more familiar National Socialist New Order of the 1930s. Hitler tried to reconstruct a larger and more deadly version of the area controlled by Austria-Hungary and Germany by 1917\u201318. His Third Reich also practiced the economic exploitation and ethnic cleansing envisioned by Hindenburg and Ludendorff. Financing the U-boat campaign A poster encourages Germans to invest in war bonds. It explains that the money will be used to build U-boats, which will relieve the pressure on German soldiers by sinking Allied ships. 203","","5 REVOLUTION AND DISILLUSION 1917 Swept by revolution, Russia became the first major combatant to leave the war. Though weakened by years of conflict, and uncertain of victory, the other powers continued the struggle. The United States, provoked by German submarine warfare, finally joined the side of the Allies.","REVOLUTION AND DISILLUSION 1917 REVOLUTION AND DISILLUSION Opposition to war and the Kaiser Wilhelm II studies desire for peace, expressed by maps with Germany\u2019s military these British demonstrators in leaders Field Marshal Paul von May 1917, strengthens as the Hindenburg and General Erich conflict drags on. Governments in Ludendorff. The German most combatant countries, leadership ignores a however, maintain sufficient popular support to keep the pro-peace vote in Germany\u2019s parliament, the Reichstag. war effort going. EUROPE BRITAIN GERMANY AT L A N T I C FRANCE AUSTRIA- SOVIET RUSSIA HUNGARY NETH. G E R M A N Y OCEAN I TA LY Black Sea Caspian Sea BEL. LUX. PORTUGAL S PA I N TUNISIA OTTOMAN N SPANISH MOROCCO EMPIRE P E R S I A AFGHANISTA TIBET MOROCCO CYPRUS (autonomous) ALGERIA LIBYA KUWAIT BAHRAIN NEPAL RIO DE ORO EGYPT QATAR INDIA HEJAZ NEJD TRUCIAL ANGLO- (Saudi) OMAN EGYPTIAN OMAN FRENCH WEST AFRICA SUDAN HADHRAMAUT NCE AUSTRIA GAMBIA TOGO FRENCH (British mandate) ADEN PROTECTORATE HUNGAR SWITZ. PORTUGUESE GUINEA EQUATORIAL ERITREA FRENCH SOMALILAND CEYLON SIERRA LEONE NIGERIA AFRICA ABYSSINIA BRITISH German U-boats step up LIBERIA GOLD CAMEROON SOMALILAND COAST BRITISH EAST ITALIAN SOMALILAND their assaults on Allied merchant RIO MUNI FRENCH BELGIAN AFRICA shipping, but disaster for Britain (Spain) CONGO is averted by its introduction of CONGO GERMAN EAST AFRICA INDIAN convoys in April 1917. ANGOLA OCEAN NORTHERN SERBIA RHODESIA MADAGASCAR IT SOUTHERN RHODESIA GERMAN SOUTH WEST BECHUANA- PORTUGUESE AL MONT. AFRICA LAND EAST AFRICA UNION OF In East Africa in SOUTH AFRICA October 1917, German general Paul von The Third Battle of Ypres, Lettow-Vorbeck\u2019s a British-led offensive in guerrilla campaign against British forces Flanders in September 1917, achieves a notable victory is hampered by appalling over South African\u2013led troops at Mahiwa. weather conditions and mud. The battle came to be known by the name of its final objective, Passchendaele. T he pattern of the war underwent fundamental changes in war effort as a patriotic struggle in defense of new-won freedoms. 1917. The German resumption of unrestricted submarine Instead, the Russian army disintegrated after a final summer offensive. warfare in February provoked the United States to declare war on The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, seized power in November Germany in April. German leaders had anticipated this but gambled and sought an armistice with the Central Powers. that they could win the war before American manpower could be brought to bear. Meanwhile, in Russia, a revolution overthrew Tsar On the Western Front, the Germans stood on the defensive Nicholas II. A provisional government sought to revive the Russian throughout the year. In April, after the failure of an offensive commanded by General Robert Nivelle, much of the French 206","REVOLUTION AND DISILLUSION 1017 1917 Russia\u2019s Provisional Government, taking power The Canadian Corps capture CANADA NEWFOUNDLAND after the fall of the tsar in March 1917, calls for Vimy Ridge from the Germans in Russia to continue the war \u201cuntil victory.\u201d By the UNITED STATES The United States enters year\u2019s end, the Bolsheviks have seized power and a famous assault in the Battle OF AMERICA the war after President Wilson concluded an armistice. of Arras in April 1917. Overall, gains approval from Congress. however, the Battle of Arras was America formally declares war on Germany on April 6, 1917. a failure for the Allies. CHINA JAPANESE EMPIRE BRITISH HONDURAS MEXICO CUBA DOMINICAN REPUBLIC AT L A N T I C HAITI VIRGIN ISLANDS Mariana Hawaiian LEEWARD ISLANDS Islands Islands WINDWARD ISLANDS SIAM FRENCH PHILIPPINE PACIFIC HONDURAS OCEAN INDOCHINA ISLANDS GUAM Marshall OCEAN GUATEMALA NICARAGUA BARBADOS Islands EL SALVADOR BRITISH French Polynesia TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO NORTH BORNEO COSTA RICA GERMAN PACIFIC TERRITORIES VENEZUELA BRITISH GUIANA BRUNEI CANAL ZONE PANAMA DUTCH GUIANA Caroline SARAWAK Islands Christmas COLOMBIA FRENCH GUIANA Island Gilbert MALAYA Bismarck Nauru Islands ECUADOR Archipelago KAISER Ellice Cook Islands Islands DUTCH EAST INDIES WILHELMSLAND Solomon BRAZIL PAPUA Islands UAY PORTUGUESE New German Samoa PERU TIMOR Hebrides (Western) Fiji Tonga BOLIVIA PARAG AUSTRALIA New Caledonia CHILE NEW ZEALAND URUGUAY THE WORLD IN ARGENTINA DECEMBER 1917 French colonial troops employed in the war include these Tirailleurs Annamites, infantry from French Indochina. The FALKLAND The Central Powers ISLANDS colonies are an important source of manpower for Britain and Central Powers conquests France. Germany has no comparable resource. to Dec 1917 Allied states Allied conquests to Dec 1917 Neutral states Frontiers, Jul 1914 army mutinied. Discipline was restored by a new commander-in-chief, Overall, outside Russia, commitment to continuing the war held firm. General Philippe P\u00e9tain, and the appointment of Georges Clemenceau In Italy, the shock of a major defeat at Caporetto strengthened rather as prime minister curtailed defeatism among French civilians. The than weakened national solidarity. On both sides, however, voices British army took over the main burden on the Western Front. were raised in favor of reaching a compromise peace, notably in a Operations such as the capture of Vimy Ridge in April and Messines resolution passed by the German Reichstag in July. But the collapse Ridge in June showed a fresh tactical sophistication, but British troops of Russia only confirmed the German military leadership in its suffered disillusion in the terrible fighting at Passchendaele in the fall. unswerving pursuit of victory. 207","REVOLUTION AND DISILLUSION 1917 TIMELINE 1917 Unrestricted submarine warfare \u25a0 Revolution in Russia \u25a0 The United States enters the war \u25a0 French army mutinies \u25a0 Slaughter at Passchendaele \u25a0 Italian defeat at Caporetto \u25a0 British take Jerusalem \u25a0 Armistice on the Eastern Front JANUARY FEBRUARY MARCH APRIL MAY JUNE JANUARY 9 MARCH 1 APRIL 3 French 1893 Lebel rifle JUNE 4 German military and The Zimmermann Bolshevik leader General Brusilov is political leaders agree telegram is publicized Vladimir Ilyich Lenin appointed Russian army to resume unrestricted in the American returns to Russia. commander-in-chief. submarine warfare. press, outraging JUNE 7 public opinion. APRIL 6 At Ypres, the British The United States blow up German declares war positions on Messines on Germany. Ridge, as a prelude to a successful offensive. Lenin in Petrograd JUNE 11 King Constantine JANUARY 16 German submariner\u2019s badge MARCH 8 of Greece abdicates German Foreign Revolution begins in under pressure from Secretary Arthur FEBRUARY 1 Russia as protesters the Allies. Zimmermann sends a Germany resumes take to the streets JUNE 13 telegram promising unrestricted submarine of Petrograd. German Gotha bombers Mexico U.S. territory in warfare, causing the raid London in daylight, return for an alliance. United States to break MARCH 11 killing 162 people. It is intercepted by off diplomatic relations. British forces capture the British. Baghdad. Detonator German antiwar propaganda MARCH 15 JUNE 25 Tsar Nicholas II First troops of the FEBRUARY 21 abdicates as revolution MAY 15 American Expeditionary On the Western Front, grips Russia. A P\u00e9tain replaces Nivelle Force arrive in Europe. the Germans begin Provisional Government as French commander- JUNE 29 Operation Alberich, takes power. in-chief. He ends Greece declares war on a tactical withdrawal mutinies in the the Central Powers. to the Hindenburg French army. Line defenses. Canadian soldiers at Vimy Ridge FEBRUARY 24 British forces retake Kut in Mesopotamia. FEBRUARY 26 MARCH 26 APRIL 9 MAY 16 President Wilson asks British Empire forces fail British launch offensive Battle of Arras ends Congress for to break through Turkish at Arras. Canadians take with small gains for permission to arm defenses in the First Battle Vimy Ridge. the British. U.S. merchant ships. of Gaza in Palestine. APRIL 16 MAY 19 MARCH 31 Start of the Nivelle Offensive. General Pershing is German U-boats sink Its failure leads to mutinies in appointed to command almost a million tons the French army. the American of merchant shipping Expeditionary Force. in two months. JANUARY 20 The Romanian front stabilizes at the Sereth River. JANUARY 22 U.S. president Wilson makes a speech calling for peace without victors or vanquished. 208","TIMELINE 1917 \u201cEnormous masses of ammunition, such as the human mind had never imagined\u2026 were hurled on the bodies of men scattered in mud-\ufb01lled shell holes.\u201d GERMAN GENERAL ERICH LUDENDORFF, DESCRIBING PASSCHENDAELE, AUTUMN 1917 JULY AUGUST SEPTEMBER OCTOBER NOVEMBER DECEMBER JULY 1 AUGUST 1 SEPTEMBER 3 NOVEMBER 6 DECEMBER 4 The Kerensky Offensive, General Kornilov takes over Germans commanded Turkish forces abandon Battle of Cambrai ends the last Russian from Brusilov as Russian by General Hutier Gaza, allowing the British with most of the early offensive of the war, commander-in-chief. capture Riga from the to advance into Palestine. British gains lost. begins. It ends in Russians in an attack disastrous failure. AUGUST 6 that uses new NOVEMBER 7 DECEMBER 7 Central Powers launch \u201cinfiltration tactics.\u201d The Bolsheviks seize power The United States successful offensive against in Petrograd, setting up a declares war on Romanians in Moldavia. government of people\u2019s Austria-Hungary. commissars. SEPTEMBER 9 NOVEMBER 9 Appealing for tank crews General Kornilov is Italian chief of staff accused of attempting General Luigi Cadorna a coup and dismissed as is replaced by General Russian commander-in- Diaz. The Allies form a chief. Kerensky arms Supreme War Council workers\u2019 militias, creating to coordinate strategy. the Red Guard. Austro-Hungarian troops AUGUST 10 SEPTEMBER 16 Mata Hari NOVEMBER 10 British Ypres offensive Colonel T.E. Lawrence The third Battle JULY 6 is renewed toward the leads an Arab attack OCTOBER 12 of Ypres ends with Arab irregulars Gheluvelt plateau, but on the Hejaz Railway At Ypres, Australian Passchendaele in capture the Red Sea little progress is made. in Arabia. troops lead a failed British hands. port of Aqaba from A further attack on attempt to take NOVEMBER 15 the Turks. August 16 also fails. SEPTEMBER 20 Passchendaele Ridge. Georges At Ypres, British, Clemenceau is JULY 16\u201319 AUGUST 14 Australian, and New OCTOBER 15 appointed French Popular disturbances China declares war Zealand forces attack In France, exotic dancer prime minister. in Petrograd, the July on the Central Powers. with some success at Mata Hari is shot as a Days, are suppressed. the Menin Road. German spy. General Luigi Cadorna Lenin flees to Finland DECEMBER 8 to avoid arrest. SEPTEMBER 26 OCTOBER 24 NOVEMBER 20 French and British British Ypres offensive An Austro-German A British offensive at troops arrive in Italy JULY 17 continues with a breakthrough at Cambrai using massed to help stabilize a British royal family successful attack Caporetto drives tanks achieves a defensive line at the changes its name from at Polygon Wood. the Italian army into short-lived breakthrough. Piave River. Saxe-Coburg and chaotic retreat. NOVEMBER 26 Gotha to Windsor. The Russian Bolshevik DECEMBER 9 OCTOBER 26 government asks for Romania signs an JULY 19 Canadian troops an armistice. armistice with the German Reichstag spearhead the Central Powers. votes for a Peace final assault on Resolution. Passchendaele Ridge. DECEMBER 11 General Allenby leads JULY 31 OCTOBER 30 the formal entry of The British launch a Vittorio Orlando British forces into the major offensive in becomes Italian holy city of Jerusalem. Flanders, beginning the prime minister. Third Battle of Ypres. DECEMBER 15 OCTOBER 31 Bolshevik Russia The British attack and Germany sign Turkish defenses at an armistice at Gaza and Beersheba Brest-Litovsk. in Palestine. U.S. recruitment office 209","REVOLUTION AND DISILLUSION 1917 BEFORE The Tsar Overthrown At the start of the war, Russia\u2019s social In March 1917, Russia\u2019s tsarist regime was toppled\u2014partly for its failure to cope with the and political problems were brie\ufb02y demands of modern warfare. The Provisional Government that took its place struggled to forgotten, but divisions reopened as reinvigorate the Russian war effort while also holding off pressure for more radical change. military disasters and economic hardship unfolded. B y early 1917, popular hostility were joined on the streets of the capital March 15, on the advice of his senior toward the tsarist regime was by striking factory workers. Protests generals and ministers, he abdicated in STRING OF DEFEATS widespread. In the army and focused on the shortage of bread. favor of his brother, Grand Duke Russia suffered a series of military setbacks navy, morale was poor and there were Michael. The Grand Duke, however, from its defeat at Tannenberg \u276e\u276e 64\u201365 several mutinies. In the factories, By March 11, the city\u2019s factories declined to take the throne until a new in August 1914 to the Great Retreat from workers staged strikes as wages fell were at a standstill and Poland \u276e\u276e 70\u201371 in summer 1915. Although behind the rapidly rising prices. In the demonstrators numbered constitution was established. the Brusilov Offensive \u276e\u276e 174\u201375 in countryside, peasants hoarded food hundreds of thousands. When In effect, Russia\u2019s monarchy was summer 1916 was initially a major victory, and coveted the estates of landowners. soldiers garrisoning Petrograd it did not bring an end to the war any closer. were ordered to suppress the at an end. Nicholas sought exile Educated Russians also resented the protests, most refused and in Britain, but King George V was ROLE OF RASPUTIN regime. Middle-class politicians in joined the revolt. Distrust of Russia\u2019s rulers centered on alleged the Duma (the Russian parliament) advised that the former tsar\u2019s treachery at court. With Tsar Nicholas II despaired of the incompetence of the Tsar Nicholas II, who presence might provoke unrest away at the front commanding the tsarist administration, which made had left Petrograd among the British working Russian army, suspicions fell on his German- \ufb01ghting an effective war impossible. for military class, and so refused to born wife, Alexandra, and her associate, headquarters receive him. Nicholas thus the mystic Rasputin. In December 1916, The people revolt just before remained under house Rasputin was murdered by noblemen trying the uprising, arrest, with his family, at to restore the reputation of the monarchy. The Russian capital, Petrograd attempted the Alexander Palace at (St. Petersburg), was especially hard to return to Tsarskoe Selo. CARTOON OF NICHOLAS II, RASPUTIN, hit by shortages of food and fuel. Its the capital. In the absence of a AND ALEXANDRA population had expanded rapidly But on tsar, a group of during the war and keeping the urban politicians from masses supplied was beyond the capacity of the railroad system, which was crippled by a lack of coal. On March 8, 1917 (February 23, according to the Julian calendar, then in use in Russia), demonstrators celebrating International Women\u2019s Day Revolution in Petrograd Russian workers and soldiers demonstrate in front of St. Isaac\u2019s Cathedral in Petrograd (St. Petersburg). The popular uprising led to the downfall of the tsarist regime in March 1917.","THE TSAR OVERTHROWN Imprisoned at the palace with the tsarist regime because of its mutiny and desertion. Instead of being The arrival of Lenin Tsar Nicholas II is held under guard at the royal palace failure to pursue the war effort with \ufb01red with a fresh determination to This romanticized painting by V. Lyubimov portrays in Tsarskoe Selo after his abdication in March 1917. proper vigor. \ufb01ght in defense of the revolution, Lenin returning from exile in April 1917. Lenin\u2019s Under the Provisional Government, the imperial family soldiers succumbed to war weariness. followers were surprised by his determination to was well treated. This changed under the Bolsheviks. The Petrograd Soviet voted in favor Insubordination and even attacks on press for an immediate socialist revolution. of a \u201cjust peace\u201d and sought links with of\ufb01cers were common, and the rate of the Duma, led by Prince Giorgi Lvov, German socialists, but was also opposed desertion rose sharply. shocked even his extremist formed the Provisional Government to to German militarism. Joseph Stalin, followers by declaring the imminent restore order and prepare democratic a member of the extreme socialist At \ufb01rst, the fall of the tsar was transformation of the \u201cimperialist war\u201d elections to a Constituent Assembly. Bolshevik Party, wrote that welcomed by Russia\u2019s allies in the war. into a \u201cworldwide socialist revolution.\u201d At the same time\u2014and in the same \u201crevolutionary soldiers and of\ufb01cers It removed the political embarrassment For the moment, Lenin was isolated, building, the Tauride Palace\u2014a Soviet who have overthrown the yoke of of being tied to an illiberal regime and but the failure of the Provisional (council) of Workers\u2019 and Soldiers\u2019 tsarism\u201d would not leave their trenches potentially promised a reinvigoration Government to carry out political and Deputies, elected in Petrograd\u2019s while German soldiers were \u201cstill of the Russian war effort. For the land reforms or end food shortages and factories and barracks, was established obeying their emperor.\u201d Central Powers, it increased the in\ufb02ation left it dangerously short of as a rival center of authority to the dif\ufb01culty of maintaining support for popular support. new government. Initially, soldiers serving at the front were not involved in the revolution. 5.5 MILLION The number of AFTER Impact on the war But reverberations of the political Russian soldiers killed, upheaval inevitably reached the missing, or taken prisoner by The Provisional Government was trenches. The Petrograd Soviet\u2019s \ufb01rst October 1916. dominated by conservatives and act was to circulate an order on liberals, the Soviet by socialists. Neither military discipline. Order No. 1 called intended to abandon the war. In fact, on soldiers to elect committees to the members of the Provisional represent their units and attacked Government had become disillusioned Russian military practice, such as the requirement to address senior of\ufb01cers as \u201cyour excellency.\u201d The order was intended just for Petrograd and explicitly upheld of\ufb01cers\u2019 authority at the front. But that authority was called into question as soldiers\u2019 committees asserted their right to be consulted. In a well-meaning gesture of liberalism, the Provisional Government abolished the death penalty, removing an important deterrent to the war. Liberals and socialists in Further military losses brought a Germany and Austria-Hungary had Bolshevik government to power in backed the war chie\ufb02y because of their Russia. By the end of 1917, it had fear of tsarist Russia. Now they saw no agreed to an armistice with Germany. reason for the con\ufb02ict to continue. KERENSKY OFFENSIVE The return of Lenin Alexander Kerensky dominated Russia\u2019s Provisional Government from May 1917, but Germany\u2019s military leaders responded cautiously to the developments the Kerensky Offensive in Russia. They held back from 234\u201335 \u276f\u276f, launched in launching offensives on the July, was a disaster. The Eastern Front, where an Russian army unof\ufb01cial truce mostly prevailed disintegrated and in through spring 1917, and November the sought a political victory Bolsheviks seized through encouraging Russian power 252\u201353 \u276f\u276f. antiwar sentiment. ARMISTICE As part of this policy, the The Bolsheviks agreed Germans provided a train to to an armistice in carry antiwar Russian December 1917 and signed revolutionary socialists living in the Brest-Litovsk Peace exile in Switzerland back to CHEKA BADGE Treaty 276\u201377 \u276f\u276f in Petrograd. They also gave them money. March 1918. Russia was Among those transported across then devastated by a civil war. The tsar and Germany in the \u201csealed train\u201d\u2014a train his family were executed 300\u201301 \u276f\u276f by the not subject to passport or customs Bolshevik secret police, Cheka, in July 1918. controls\u2014was exiled Bolshevik Party leader Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Arriving 211 in Petrograd on April 16, Lenin","Wilson calls for war On April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war on Germany. He argued that the world had to be \u201cmade safe for democracy.\u201d","AMERICA ENTERS THE WAR America Enters the War On April 6, 1917, the United States formally declared war on Germany. This was in resonse to Germany\u2018s resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare and other provocations, including a plot to promote a Mexican invasion of the U.S. O n November 7, 1916, President have been the work of anti-British Irish think it a fake, but Woodrow Wilson was reelected or Indian nationalists, but it was blamed when Zimmermann for a second term as \u201dthe man on the Germans. was confronted with the story, he who kept [America] out of the war.\u201d admitted its truth. Nonetheless, Wilson was well aware Presidential Peace Note The publication of the Zimmermann telegram in the U.S. press caused that the United States might easily be Wilson favored the role of peaceful widespread outrage. Even those Black Tom Island explosion Americans who had tended to favor the In July 1916, an explosion devastated Black Tom sucked into the European con\ufb02ict. He mediator. A month after his return to Central Powers\u2014German and Swedish Island, a munitions depot in New Jersey, destroying immigrants, and Irish Americans hostile military equipment destined for Britain and France. had made it clear to Germany that of\ufb01ce, he circulated a Peace Note to the to Britain\u2014could not tolerate a foreign German agents were blamed for this act of sabotage. conspiracy to seize U.S. territory. America would regard a resumption European combatants, inviting them America intended to \ufb01ght not to The overthrow of the tsarist regime ensure the victory of one group of of unrestricted to state their war in Russia removed another block to European countries over another, but America\u2019s entry into the war, as it meant to ensure the triumph of moral and submarine attacks UNRESTRICTED SUBMARINE WARFARE aims as a prelude that the con\ufb02ict could be presented as a political principles that would solve struggle between liberal democracies on Europe\u2019s problems once and for all. on U.S. shipping as The sinking of merchant ships by to entering into one side and authoritarian militarist empires on the other. AFTER a cause for war. submarines without warning and negotiations. The number of merchant ships sunk It took over a year to convert Wilson was also without allowing the crews to However, this by German U-boats mounted through America\u2019s declaration of war in February and March 1917. On April 2, April 1917 into substantial practical angry about the disembark first. gesture was action in Europe. activities of German overtaken by ASSEMBLING AN ARMY The U.S. government immediately decided to agents operating in the United States, events. In January 1917, Germany send an American Expeditionary Force (AEF) to Europe under General Jack including suspected sabotage attacks announced its decision to resume an Pershing. A small number of U.S. troops began arriving in Europe in summer 1917, but against factories involved in the supply unrestricted submarine campaign a mass conscript army 216\u201317 \u276f\u276f had to be recruited and trained from scratch. of war material to Allied countries. The against merchant shipping. American soldiers did not enter the fighting in France until spring 1918. Black Tom Island explosion in Jersey In response, on February 4, the TRICKED BY BRITAIN City in July 1916, for example\u2014which United States broke off diplomatic There was little opposition in the United States to the damaged the Statue of Liberty\u2014may relations with Germany. Wilson still decision to go to war. The small minority who did BEFORE \u201c It is a fearful thing to lead this great oppose it faced punishment peaceful people into war\u2026 But the under the Espionage America\u2019s initial reaction to the right is more precious than peace\u2026\u201d Act of June 1917. After outbreak of war in Europe was to the war, however, maintain neutrality. Over time, an PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON, ADDRESS TO CONGRESS, APRIL 2, 1917 opinions changed, with anti-German bias developed. many Americans feeling hoped to avoid full-scale war, asking Wilson addressed both houses of they had been tricked PROVOCATIVE PROPAGANDA Congress to authorize the arming of Congress, laying out his case for war. He into taking part by A number of German actions allowed Allied merchant ships for self-defense. asserted that Germany had already in British propaganda. propagandists to portray the Germans as effect opened hostilities against the uncivilized militarists. These included The Zimmermann telegram United States through submarine attacks U.S. SOLDIERS\u2019 massacres in Belgium \u276e\u276e 42\u201343 on its shipping. In addition to MANUAL in 1914, the \ufb01rst use of poison gas An earlier event now also threatened invoking self-defense, he \u276e\u276e 102\u201303, the bombing of civilians by to draw America into war. On declared a moral crusade to airships \u276e\u276e 132\u201333, and the execution January 16, 1917, German foreign cleanse the world of autocracy. of British nurse Edith Cavell \u276e\u276e 166\u201367. secretary Arthur Zimmermann had American arms were to sent a coded cable to the German guarantee future peace. U-BOAT ATTACKS embassy in Mexico. The ambassador American public opinion was in\ufb02uenced by was instructed to offer Mexico a Associate Power the German U-boat campaign in May military alliance in the event of war 1915, especially the sinking of the liner between Germany and the United War was of\ufb01cially declared RMS Lusitania \u276e\u276e 126\u201327, in which States. The Mexicans would be four days later, on April 6, 128 Americans died. Further protests after rewarded with Texas, New Mexico, after being approved by the U-boat attack on the British passenger and Arizona. This cable was Congress. The United States ferry SS Sussex in March 1916 forced the intercepted by British naval entered the war not as one of Germans to limit U-boat warfare. The United intelligence and decrypted by the the Allies but as an Associate States remained neutral, but its banks and Admiralty\u2019s Room 40 code breakers. Power, maintaining a distance factories supported the Allied war effort. that was meant to protect it In February, the British leaked the against the corrupting effects telegram to the U.S. government. At of European entanglements. \ufb01rst, the Americans were inclined to 213","REVOLUTION AND DISILLUSION 1917 U.S. PRESIDENT Born 1856 Died 1924 Woodrow Wilson \u201c The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon\u2026 political liberty.\u201d PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON, ADDRESS TO CONGRESS, APRIL 2, 1917 I t is ironic that Woodrow Wilson the liner RMS Lusitania was sunk by Principled statesman was the president to lead the United a German submarine in May 1915, An academic from a Presbyterian States into a world war. Brought up with the loss of 128 American lives, background, President Woodrow Wilson took in the South during and after the Civil he realized that U.S. involvement in a high-principled approach to foreign policy. War (1861\u201365), he was acutely aware the war was only a matter of time. He rejected the idea of war as the pursuit of the devastation that armed con\ufb02ict of national interest or territorial gain. brings. His sober nature, Presbyterian This perception gave urgency to his upbringing, and academic studies in efforts to promote a peace settlement law, made him opposed to the through his envoy Colonel Edward settlement of disputes by force. He House, who was \ufb01rst sent to Europe in rejected contemporary theories that 1915. At the same time, Wilson issued saw victory in war as an invigorating stern warnings to Germany about its use of submarine warfare. Speaking to the common man Attempt at mediation President Woodrow Wilson addresses a crowd in 1914. When Wilson was inspired by a cause, he believed in During Wilson\u2019s reelection campaign touring the country to explain it in person. in 1916, his publicists used the slogan \u201cThe man who kept [America] out instance of the \u201csurvival of the \ufb01ttest.\u201d of the war.\u201d However, Wilson Wilson could only bring himself to was well aware that his role lead the United States into war by might suddenly reverse. proclaiming the American war effort a crusade for the principle of democracy After reelection, in and a \ufb01ght for a just and lasting peace. December 1916, he made a \ufb01nal gesture of mediation with a Peace Note sent to the combatant governments on both sides. Addressing the Senate, on January 22, 1917, he spoke in favor of \u201cpeace without victory.\u201d But the German resumption Nonintervention A late entrant into politics after an academic career, Wilson was at the midpoint of his \ufb01rst term as president when the European war erupted in August 1914. Relatively uninterested in foreign affairs, and with his attention focused on domestic social and economic reforms, he declared American neutrality on August 19. But Wilson was not a paci\ufb01st. Once 214","WOODROW WILSON of unrestricted submarine warfare Stars and Stripes Forever TIMELINE that month, in which merchant ships A poster dating from the peak were sunk without warning, forced period of Wilson\u2019s popularity \u25a0 December 1856 Born in Staunton, Virginia, his hand. during the war depicts him the son of a minister in the Presbyterian as the natural successor of Church. His family moves to Augusta, Georgia, Marching into Europe America\u2019s greatest presidents, the following year. George Washington and Although Wilson was initially reluctant Abraham Lincoln. \u25a0 1879 Graduates from Princeton University, to enter the war, he was thorough New Jersey. and absolute in its pursuit once the in January 1918. decision was taken. His speech to \u25a0 1883 Studies for a doctorate in history and Congress on April 2, 1917, requesting Widely publicized political science at Johns Hopkins University, approval for a declaration of war, Maryland, earning his PhD in 1886. represented his intention to \ufb01ght for by American the purest motives. America was going \u25a0 1885 Marries Ellen Louise Axson, daughter to march into Europe and remake the propagandists, of a Presbyterian minister. continent in accordance with principles of democracy and justice Wilson\u2019s principles, \u25a0 1890 Becomes professor of jurisprudence and that would end war forever. Justi\ufb01ed political science at Princeton. by such ends, he introduced stressing justice for compulsory military service, and \u25a0 1902 Appointed president of Princeton, a post all, including minorities, gave hope that he holds until 1910. banned criticism of the war. Wilson never agreed to a to millions of people worldwide who with the interests of the other \u25a0 November 1910 Elected Democratic governor joint policy with the Allies. of New Jersey with a reformist agenda. The United States would were desperate for peace and freedom. victors at the Paris Peace Conference, \ufb01ght its own war for \u25a0 November 1912 Elected 28th president of the aims that the Wilson\u2019s idealism and evenhanded he settled for establishing the League United States with 41.8 percent of the popular president expressed vote, aided by a split in the Republican vote. in the Fourteen tone concealed his commitment to of Nations as a future mechanism for Points that he \u25a0 August 1914 His wife dies the same week as declared in front overthrowing German militarism, maintaining peace. Returning to the the outbreak of war in Europe. Declares the of Congress United States strictly neutral. which he blamed for causing the United States, he toured the country \u25a0 May 1915 Protests strongly to Germany over war. His apparent delivering speeches the U-boat sinking of the liner RMS Lusitania. \u201c \u2026 unlessfairness encouraged to sell the idea of \u25a0 December 1915 Marries his second wife, Edith the League. Bolling Galt. Expands U.S. armed forces the German through the National Defense Act. leadership to believe justice be At that crucial \u25a0 April 1916 Threatens to break off diplomatic they might be able moment, Wilson\u2019s relations with Germany after the U-boat sinking of the British passenger ferry SS Sussex. to avoid punitive done to others health collapsed. peace terms in their Crippled by a stroke, \u25a0 November 1916 Wins a second term of office in a close-fought presidential election. negotiations with it will not be he struggled to Wilson in October complete his term \u25a0 December 1916 Sends a Peace Note to the combatants in Europe, inviting them to state 1917. But when the done to us.\u201d of of\ufb01ce. Whether their war aims. Germans asked him as a healthy man \u25a0 April 2, 1917 Asks Congress for approval for an armistice WOODROW WILSON, FOURTEEN POINTS he could have of a declaration of war on Germany. based on the SPEECH, JANUARY 8, 1918 persuaded Congress \u25a0 January 1918 Issues the Fourteen Points, Fourteen Points, to sign up for the intended as a program for a just peace. Wilson instead joined forces with the League of Nations and the peace \u25a0 October 1918 Refuses German peace advances based on acceptance of continued British and French in imposing treaty will never be known, but rule of the Kaiser and military leadership. crushing armistice terms on Germany. as it turned out, it accepted neither. \u25a0 December 1918 Visits France and Britain after the Armistice, receiving a hero\u2019s welcome. Hero\u2019s welcome Wilson\u2019s health never recovered and he died in 1924. \u25a0 June 1919 Attends the Paris Peace Conference, in which his principles are When Wilson visited Europe in compromised by European political realities. December 1918, he was cheered, Visit to France \u25a0 September\u2013October 1919 Campaigns in the United States for acceptance of the League of adored, and idolized. A great weight of Wilson\u2019s motorcade passes through the streets of Nations, but his health breaks down and he suffers a stroke. expectation lay upon him, but he was Paris on his first visit to Europe in December 1918. \u25a0 December 1920 Awarded the Nobel Peace not in any position to dictate his own He was greeted as a savior by the populations of the Prize for 1919. peace terms. Forced to compromise victorious Allied countries. \u25a0 1924 Dies on February 3, at his townhouse in Washington, D.C. WILSON\u2019S IMAGE ON THE $100,000 BILL 215","REVOLUTION AND DISILLUSION 1917 Organizing America for War When the United States entered the war on April 6, 1917, it was unprepared for a major conflict. To create a mass army and organize resources for the war effort, radical measures were needed, involving an unprecedented expansion of government and the sacrifice of basic freedoms. BEFORE T he immediate task of the U.S. government after its decision to The United States remained neutral at go to war was to create a new the start of World War I, but pressure national army. Its existing regular force to enter the war built through 1915. was inadequate for the demands of a NATIONAL DEFENSE ACT major European war. From 1915, President Woodrow Wilson came under pressure from the Preparedness President Woodrow Wilson had Movement \u276e\u276e 130\u201331, which wanted publicly stated his opposition to conscription introduced. Wilson conscription as late as February 1917, compromised with the National Defense and he remained brie\ufb02y committed to Act of June 1916, which expanded the U.S. the volunteer principle even after war Army and the National Guard, a military was declared. Many of his Democratic reserve force, on a voluntary basis. supporters in the southern and western However, by April 1917 there were only states regarded compulsory military 120,000 Americans in the army and 180,000 service as an unacceptable offense National Guardsmen. This compared with against the liberty of the individual. European armies that numbered millions. Introducing the draft Once inducted, draftees were fed into Building ships for the war Industry was already geared up for a training program for which new A poster publicizes the vital role of shipbuilding in the war, ful\ufb01lling orders for armaments from the Volunteers were slow to come army camps were established across the American war effort. Under the U.S. Shipping Board\u2019s British and French. These orders were \ufb01nanced forward\u2014just 97,000 had enlisted by United States. Volunteers continued to Emergency Fleet Corporation, American shipyards vastly by loans from American banks. the end of April 1917\u2014and so Wilson join the regular army, as well as expanded output during the course of the war. soon succumbed to the argument that supplying sailors for the navy. 216 conscription, in addition to being fairer, The Committee on Public Information, would make it easier to balance the Racial segregation a government propaganda body headed demands of the military against by popular journalist George Creel, was industry\u2019s need for skilled workers. Black Americans were drafted in entrusted with selling the war to the disproportionately high numbers. American people. Creel enlisted the The Selective Service Act, passed on All the American armed services were help of the media and sent public May 18, 1917, required strictly segregated. Plans to \ufb01eld 16 speakers across the nation to rouse all male American black infantry combat divisions were patriotic sentiment. He also \ufb02ooded citizens aged 21 to 31 to scaled back after riots involving black the country with provocative register for the draft by soldiers in Houston, Texas, in August propaganda posters. June 5 (the age range 1917, provoked racist fears about the later became 18 to 45). consequences of arming African Silencing dissent Local boards then had Americans. The majority of black to decide who should draftees were assigned to supply units, Only a small number of Americans be drafted. Federal or involved in delivering and maintaining actively opposed the war or the draft, state of\ufb01cials and equipment, and limited to performing but the government took harsh workers in designated menial jobs as cooks or laborers. measures against this minority. The industries were However, two black infantry divisions Espionage Act of June 1917, reinforced exempted, as were eventually saw combat in France. by the Sedition Act in May 1918, gave men whose family circumstances were \u201c Lead this people into war deemed to require and they\u2019ll forget there ever their presence at was such a thing as tolerance. home. Only members To \ufb01ght you must be brutal of recognized paci\ufb01st and ruthless\u2026\u201d religious group such as Quakers were PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON, PRIVATE CONVERSATION, APRIL 1, 1917 exempted from the draft on grounds of conscience. Liberty bonds Investing in government bonds to raise money for the war was presented as the patriotic duty of all U.S. citizens. This poster, with its diverse list of names, urges all ethnic groups to support the war.","the authorities sweeping powers Bernard Baruch drove the Joining the army AFTER to suppress dissent. The production of munitions Drafted men line up to be issued their uniforms at Socialist Party of through cooperation with big Camp Travis in San Antonio, Texas. Almost 3 million The U.S. troops that served in Europe America and the business. Railroads were Americans were drafted in World War I. Equipping were known as the American Industrial Workers of taken under federal control and training this mass army was a formidable task. Expeditionary Force (AEF). The \ufb01rst the World movement and so were shipyards. formation to arrive in France was the (popularly known as Federal boards were set up The government found it politically U.S. First Division in June 1917. the \u201cWobblies\u201d) were to oversee production, impossible to raise money for the war targeted for harsh and the consumption of effort through extra taxes. Instead, it READY FOR BATTLE punishments. The food and fuel. Not all depended on patriotic appeals to invest Through 1917, the First Division was joined by Socialist Party\u2019s war industries developed in \u201cliberty bonds.\u201d Some $21 billion other formations, including the 42nd leader, Eugene Debs, smoothly\u2014aircraft was raised in this way. \u201cRainbow\u201d Division of National Guardsmen. for example, was production failed to But it was not until spring 1918 that General sentenced to ten develop\u2014but output Inevitably, the war had an impact on Jack Pershing 310\u201311 \u276f\u276f, commander of years in prison in was mostly impressive. everyday life. There was little formal the AEF, felt he had suf\ufb01cient troops to enter 1918 for making The tonnage of ships rationing, but patriotic Americans were battle. By the war\u2019s end, some 2.8 million speeches criticizing completed multiplied urged to observe \u201cmeatless,\u201d \u201cgasless\u201d American soldiers had been sent to the draft. \ufb01vefold between 1916 and \u201dwheatless\u201d days. Labor shortages France. About 116,000 died on military and 1918. drew more women into factory work service, half of them killed by the in\ufb02uenza Economic factors and opened new job opportunities for epidemic of 1918\u201319. The Espionage Act was U.S. Navy uniform for women African Americans, some 400,000 of a permanent legacy of the war, remaining in Organizing the war In 1917, the U.S. Navy started enlisting whom migrated from the rural South force in the United States into the 21st century. effort also involved to northern cities such as Chicago and unprecedented federal women to perform support New York between 1916 and 1918. 217 intervention in the duties. Previously, the only For Americans of German origin, the economy. The War women in the military war brought suspicion and occasional Industries Board under services were nurses. incidents of persecution.","REVOLUTION AND DISILLUSION 1917 Peace Initiatives and War Aims By 1917, the destructiveness of the war and the lack of any prospect of military victory had led to war weariness. Combatant states were under pressure to end the slaughter, and those determined to continue had to clarify their goals if they were to maintain popular support. BEFORE I n July 1917, British Army Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in Pope Benedict XV lieutenant Siegfried Sassoon issued Germany, saw the war as a capitalist In 1916 and 1917, the pope launched a series of peace Few people in the combatant a statement protesting against the swindle imposed on the international initiatives, arguing for an agreement placing \u201cthe moral countries had openly opposed the war war. He claimed it was \u201cbeing working class. force of right\u201d above \u201cthe material force of arms.\u201d His in the early years of the con\ufb02ict. deliberately prolonged by those who initiatives were scorned by both sides. FORCES FOR PEACE have the power to end it\u201d and that the Moderate socialists and liberals, in In Germany, revolutionary socialists con\ufb02ict had changed from \u201ca war of contrast, were prepared to support the annexation of Belgium and control of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were defence and liberation\u201d into \u201ca war of war as long as it was fought for Poland. The Allies had demands that imprisoned for antiwar agitation in summer aggression and conquest.\u201d Sassoon\u2019s national defense or idealistic goals, but went beyond evicting German troops 1916. In Britain, notable paci\ufb01sts included personal protest\u2014which had no not if it was for conquest. For many from territory occupied during the Scottish socialist Keir Hardie and practical effect\u2014expressed an Germans, the overthrow of the tsarist war\u2014France, for example, required the philosopher Bertrand Russell. Antiwar increasingly common feeling in all regime in Russia in March 1917 ended return of Alsace-Lorraine, annexed by feminists met at an International Congress the countries involved in the con\ufb02ict. the main threat to Germany and thus Germany in the Franco-Prussian War. of Women at the Hague in the Netherlands in took away the justi\ufb01cation for the war. 1915. At the government level, Germany Evidence of mounting disaffection In July 1917, Social Democrats and Emperor Charles of Austria, however, offered peace negotiations in December was widespread, from mutinies in the center parties in the Reichstag, was interested in peace. He viewed the 1916, but these were tantamount to the Allies French army in May 1917 to industrial Germany\u2019s parliament, passed a war as a disaster that threatened the accepting a German victory. strikes in all combatant countries. resolution calling for \u201ca peace of survival of his country. But his secret understanding and\u2026 reconciliation.\u201d approach to the French government in 218 Antiwar forces March 1917 was fruitless, as he was In the same month, an attempt by incapable of a foreign policy Opposition to the war had two main socialists to hold an international peace independent of his German allies. strands. Revolutionary socialists, conference in Stockholm, Sweden, was such as the Russian Bolsheviks sabotaged by the refusal of combatant AFTER and the Spartacists, led by Rosa countries, including France and Britain, to issue passports to delegates. The \ufb01rst peace negotiations of the war were held between Russia and The seizure of power by revolutionary the Central Powers at Brest-Litovsk, Bolsheviks in Russia in November 1917 in December 1917. Their outcome was gave the Bolshevik leader, Vladimir a brutal, imposed agreement. Ilyich Lenin, a platform for expounding the Bolsheviks\u2019 views on the war. He BREST-LITOVSK TREATY urged combatant countries to pursue In March 1918, Russia, under duress, signed the a \u201cjust and democratic peace\u201d without Brest-Litovsk Treaty 276\u201377 \u276f\u276f, in which annexations or indemnities. it lost territory containing about 30 percent of its population. Germany also imposed a harsh Peace broker peace on Romania in May. Exploitative and annexationist, these treaties were taken by the It was partly in order to seize back the Allies as an example of the terms they could moral high ground from Lenin that expect if they were defeated. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson launched his Fourteen Points peace THE TABLES TURN program in January 1918, in which he In October 1918, facing defeat, Germany envisaged a postwar world based sought an armistice on the basis of on the principles of democracy and President Woodrow Wilson\u2019s Fourteen national self-determination. Points 322\u201333 \u276f\u276f. By then, antiwar feeling was rampant in Austria-Hungary and Germany. The British, French, and Italians had In Allied countries on the verge of victory, reservations about some of Wilson\u2019s support for the war revived. points, but broadly endorsed the American aims. This did not, however, make peace negotiations any more likely. Ignoring the Reichstag, the German military leadership intended to dominate Europe, with virtual British conscientious objectors In May 1917, Britain\u2019s Independent Labour Party (ILP) mounted a demonstration in support of conscientious objectors held in Dartmoor prison. While the Labour Party backed the war, the minority ILP opposed it.","The dead vote for peace An image from a 1917 German Social Democrat satirical magazine, Der Wahre Jacob, is captioned \u201cThose in favor of a negotiated peace, raise your hands.\u201d The scale of the deaths made it hard to accept that the war might have been fought in vain.","REVOLUTION AND DISILLUSION 1917 The U-boat Onslaught A campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare launched against Allied merchant shipping from to begin the campaign in February February 1917 almost won the war for Germany. The adoption of a convoy system by the Royal 1917. The initial results were horrifyingly impressive. Holtzendorff Navy cut Allied shipping losses, but the submarine menace was never overcome. had calculated that sinking 600,000 BEFORE O n December 22, 1916, Admiral the British could be starved into tons of merchant shipping a month Henning von Holtzendorff, submission in six months. At a meeting would force Britain to its knees. the German navy\u2019s Chief of on January 8, 1917, the proposal for Operating as lone hunters, the U-boats spread out across crowded shipping Staff, sent a memorandum to Kaiser unrestricted submarine warfare was lanes and picked off any vessels that The German submarine campaign Wilhelm II arguing for unrestricted adopted by the German military came into view. The most successful against Allied merchant shipping in submarine warfare. The U-boat leadership, although they knew it commanders were sinking several February 1915 was in response to the campaign had been a subject of intense would almost certainly lead to war ships a day. British naval blockade of Germany. debate among Germany\u2019s political and with the United States. The British Admiralty\u2019s response, military leaders since early in the war, under First Sea Lord Admiral John U-BOAT ATTACKS its negative impact on relations with Forcing Britain to its knees Jellicoe, was to order the Royal Navy Initially, Germany had only 20 U-boats, but neutral countries such as the United Germany had greatly expanded its to hunt down the U-boats and destroy they achieved considerable success. In May States balanced against its effectiveness submarine \ufb02eet since the start of the them. But this was impossible. The 1915, the submarine U-20 sank the liner as a weapon against Allied trade. war and had 148 U-boats available navy had developed hydrophones to RMS Lusitania \u276e\u276e 126\u201327, causing the In late 1916, German U-boats were 600 deaths of 1,198 passengers and crew and sinking a considerable number of Shipping loss British merchant (in thousands of tons) provoking a protest from the U.S. government. In merchant ships, but their operations 450 shipping losses to May 1916, after American objections to an attack were hampered by restrictions such as U-boats in 1917 on the British passenger ferry SS Sussex, allowing crews to disembark \ufb01rst, to 300 German unrestricted Germany suspended submarine warfare, but it appease neutral states. Holtzendorff submarine warfare increased resumed restricted operations in October. argued that such restrictions should be 150 attacks on merchant ships lifted and U-boats permitted to sink from February to April. The any ship bound for British ports 0 adoption of a convoy system without any warning. Since Britain Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec in May reduced sinkings was utterly dependent on food imports, Months to a sustainable level. SINKING OF THE LUSITANIA \u201cSubmarine warfare is\u2026 the right way to end this war victoriously\u2026\u201d ADMIRAL HENNING VON HOLTZENDORFF, MEMORANDUM, DECEMBER 22, 1916","THE U-BOAT ONSLAUGHT Barrel listen for submarines underwater, and convoy. It Gunsight depth charges to destroy them once proved successful, they were found, but submerged with 16 merchant ships Breech U-boats could rarely be located reaching port without loss. accurately enough to provide any Introduction of the convoy system Dover Straits and between Scotland Gunner\u2019s chance for a kill. Only nine U-boats was slow\u2014about half of all merchant and Norway. Consisting of underwater seat were sunk from February through ships were traveling in convoys by nets and mines, these barriers April 1917\u2014paltry losses that German the end of 1917\u2014but it saved Britain presented an obstacle to U-boats, but German U-boat gun shipyards could easily make up. from defeat. U-boats found convoys with patience they could pass through U-boats were typically armed with one or two deck more dif\ufb01cult to locate than the same safely. Increasing British use of air guns for use on the surface. These guns, such as the The convoy solution number of vessels scattered across the patrols, mostly with blimps (nonrigid 4.1 in (10.5 cm) model shown here, were very effective sea and far more dangerous to airships), also made life more dif\ufb01cult with high rates of fire. While bizarre solutions such as training approach and attack. for the German submarines, forcing circus sea lions to detect U-boats were them to submerge, which they could AFTER explored with enthusiasm, Jellicoe By the second half of 1917, monthly do for only short periods. and the Admiralty staff resisted the merchant shipping losses had fallen to The U-boat campaign had many introduction of a convoy system\u2014 an average of 400,000 tons and U-boat Yet in summer 1918, the U-boat consequences. In addition to drawing merchant ships sailing losses had risen to between \ufb01ve and campaign was still in full swing. America into the war, it was a major together, protected by In a notorious incident in preoccupation for Allied strategists. the Royal Navy\u2014on ten a month. Use June, a Canadian hospital ship, the grounds that of convoys HMHS Llandovery Castle, was ALLIED RESPONSE warships could not be increased through sunk by U-86 and the survivors The desire to attack U-boat bases on the spared as escorts. 1918 as the were \ufb01red on in their lifeboats. coast of Flanders was a major motive for the number of escort Long-range U-boats were deployed British-led offensive at Passchendaele In late April, with vessels rose, across the Atlantic, sinking ships (Third Ypres) 240\u201343 \u276f\u276f from July to Britain facing including American in U.S. coastal waters. As late as November 1917. The U-boat bases were also disaster, Jellicoe destroyers. October 10, 1918, with the end of the targeted unsuccessfully from the sea by the approved a trial war in sight, the mail boat RMS Leinster Royal Navy in the Zeebrugge Raid Nets and mines was torpedoed outside Dublin Bay, 292\u201393 \u276f\u276f in April 1918. The U-boat German U-boat heroes killing over 500 people. campaign had an impact on British food An illustration in a German The Allies never supplies, causing in\ufb02ation to rise and some wartime magazine presents overcame the In all, 5,000 Allied merchant ships rationing in spring 1918, but there were never a dramatic image of a German U-boat were sunk by German U-boats during serious food shortages in Britain. heroic U-boat crew in menace. Large-scale the war, set against 178 U-boats action. Casualties were resources were destroyed in combat. heavy, with half of all devoted to creating German submarines lost and patrolling Underwater raider in the course of the war. antisubmarine A German U-boat rises to the surface during a barriers across the patrol. The range of submarines increased during the course of the war\u2014by 1918, they could cross the Atlantic to operate in American coastal waters. SUBMARINE BAN After the war, Germany was banned from possessing submarines under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles 338\u201339 \u276f\u276f. Over time, the Germans circumvented this restriction and Britain accepted the existence of a U-boat \ufb02eet in the 1935 Anglo-German Naval Agreement.","REVOLUTION AND DISILLUSION 1917 GERMAN GENERAL Born 1865 Died 1937 Erich Ludendorff \u201c Basically, this war comes down simply to killing one another.\u201d GENERAL ERICH LUDENDORFF, APRIL 1917 T he son of an undistinguished military spending were crippling the Prussian landowner\u2014lowly German army, he conspired with origins by the standards of nationalist politicians to press for the German of\ufb01cer corps\u2014Erich a change in policy. His outspoken Ludendorff led a brilliant career criticisms outraged his superiors and in the peacetime army through hard he was \ufb01red from the General Staff. work and intelligence. He was appointed to a position on the General Man of action Staff, where he became an expert on war planning and mobilization. When war broke out, Ludendorff was in command of an infantry brigade, a Considered abrasive and arrogant relatively lowly position. But his by his fellow of\ufb01cers, he made no experience on the General Staff meant effort to ingratiate himself. He showed that he was also a leading expert on his indifference to conventional the Schlieffen Plan, Germany\u2019s opinion by marrying a divorcee with initial war strategy. As such, he four children. Although a consummate was immediately switched to a military professional, he also lacked role on the staff of the Second the traditional soldier\u2019s respect for Army, spearheading the hierarchical authority. Shortly before invasion of Belgium. Entering the war, convinced that limits on combat for the \ufb01rst time at Tough leader Energetic and arrogant, General Ludendorff never bothered to make himself liked. He antagonized army colleagues and the Kaiser, but he was clear-sighted and determined. Ludendorff Donation Fund A postcard publicizes a charitable fund for servicemen disabled in the war. Set up in spring 1918, the fund borrowed Ludendorff\u2019s name for credibility, though he made little effort himself to aid crippled soldiers. 222","ERICH LUDENDORFF Li\u00e8ge, he led a bold push into the city TIMELINE and demanded the surrender of its citadel by hammering on the door. \u25a0 April 1865 Born the son of a modest landowner near Posen, then in Prussia, German Chief of the General Staff now in Poland. Helmuth von Moltke then chose Ludendorff to defend Germany from a \u25a0 1885 Commissioned as an infantry lieutenant Russian invasion. He was sent to East in the German army. Prussia to take over as Chief of Staff of the Eighth Army, meeting his new \u25a0 1894 As a staff officer, he earns a reputation army commander, Field Marshal Paul for ability and drive. von Hindenburg, on the train. \u25a0 1905 Joins the General Staff in Berlin, in Victory at Tannenberg made charge of developing the Schlieffen Plan. Hindenburg and Ludendorff national heroes. They remained inseparably \u25a0 1909 Marries divorced mother-of-four linked until the last weeks of the war. Margarethe Pernet. Battle with Falkenhayn \u25a0 1913 After pushing for an expansion of the German army, he is dismissed from the General Ludendorff remained on the Eastern Staff and returned to regimental duties. Front until August 1916, proving outstanding as a staff of\ufb01cer, especially By mid-1917, Ludendorff was close Joint war leaders \u25a0 August 1914 Appointed Deputy Chief of Staff in his use of railroads for rapid troop to acting as a military dictator. He Ludendorff is portrayed at a planning session with Field to the Second German Army, he is celebrated movements. However, his effectiveness subordinated the civilian government Marshal Paul von Hindenburg in a painting by H. Vogel. for his role in the capture of Li\u00e8ge. Transferred was limited by his hostile relationship to the military and ignored both the Ludendorff and Hindenburg were men of contrasting to East Prussia as Chief of Staff to Field with Moltke\u2019s successor, Erich von Reichstag (German government) and character, but they shared broadly similar attitudes. Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, he participates Falkenhayn. Given the right resources, the Kaiser. His policy was to wage total in the defeat of the Russians at Tannenberg. Ludendorff believed he could destroy war for total victory, and he sought to spring 1917, which sacri\ufb01ced territory the Russian armies and force Russia to mobilize the entire resources of the to make the German position on the \u25a0 September 1914 His reputation is enhanced make peace. But Falkenhayn did not German nation and its conquered Western Front more defensible. But his by success in the Battle of the Masurian Lakes. agree. In January 1915, Ludendorff territories for the war effort. overall strategy was a gamble. Both the tried to have Falkenhayn dismissed, adoption of unrestricted submarine \u25a0 September 1915 Commands the offensive but Kaiser Wilhelm, who disliked A believer in Germany\u2019s \u201ccivilizing warfare in January 1917 and the that captures Vilnius in Lithuania. Ludendorff, kept Falkenhayn in place. mission\u201d in the east, his plans for massive Spring Offensive on the Poland and other Slav areas included Western Front in 1918 were high-risk \u25a0 August 1916 As Quartermaster-General Falkenhayn relegated Ludendorff to ruthless economic exploitation and the throws of the dice that failed. in the Third Supreme Command, he becomes the command of subsidiary operations. deportation of populations to make joint leader of the German war effort Ludendorff plotted against him, way for German settlers. Such thinking The \ufb01nal stage of the war showed with Hindenburg. cultivating the support of nationalist lay behind the peace terms imposed on Ludendorff at his worst. Convinced politicians and industrialists unhappy Russia and Romania in spring 1918. from August 1918 that victory was no \u25a0 January 1917 Supports the resumption of with the progress of the war. In August longer possible, he became increasingly unrestricted submarine warfare as part of 1916, Falkenhayn lost the struggle Wild gambles erratic in his behavior. At the end of a strategy aimed at achieving total victory. and the Kaiser reluctantly appointed September, he insisted that the civilian Hindenburg as head of the Third Ludendorff brought clarity to German government seek an armistice, but a \u25a0 July 1917 Engineers the fall of German Supreme Command, with Ludendorff military thinking, notably in the month later advocated a \ufb01ght to the Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg. choosing his own designation as withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line in \ufb01nish. When he issued orders to the Quartermaster-General. army that ran counter to of\ufb01cial policy, \u25a0 March 1918 Directs the German Spring the Kaiser forced him to resign. Offensives designed to win the war on the Western Front. As soon as the war was over, Ludendorff began constructing the \u25a0 September 29, 1918 Urges an armistice in myth that the German army had been response to the imminent collapse of Germany undermined by socialists and Jews. He and its allies. became active in nationalist extremist \u201c [He] changed the defensive politics, backing attempts to overthrow \u25a0 October 26, 1918 war into a war of conquest.\u201d the Weimar Republic, including Adolf After trying to Hitler\u2019s failed putsch in 1923. reverse the pursuit Ludendorff was never a popular \ufb01gure, of an armistice, he however. He was marginalized while is forced to resign. Hindenburg rose to be German HANS DELBR\u00dcCK, MILITARY HISTORIAN, ADDRESSING A REICHSTAG COMMITTEE, president. By the 1930s, Ludendorff \u25a0 November 1918 NOVEMBER 1919 had no time for Hitler or for any Flees into exile and political \ufb01gure, instead pursuing his writes his memoirs, own campaign against Jews and blaming German Christians, especially Jesuits, whom defeat on a \u201cstab he blamed for the ills of Germany in the back\u201d by and the world. socialists and Jews. Allying with Hitler \u25a0 1920 Returning ERICH AND MATHILDE Ludendorff poses with Adolf Hitler and other to Germany, he LUDENDORFF participants in the failed Beer Hall Putsch in Munich in 1923. Ludendorff\u2019s support of the Nazi Party was only supports the failed temporary, but it gave Hitler credibility in Germany. Kapp Putsch, an attempted coup to overthrow the democratic government. \u25a0 1923 Participates in the failed Beer Hall Putsch in Munich led by Adolf Hitler. \u25a0 1925 Stands for election as German president, and attracts 1.1 percent of the vote. \u25a0 1926 Divorces his first wife and marries Mathilde von Kemnitz, with whom he founds the esoteric Society for the Knowledge of God. \u25a0 December 1937 Dies at age 72. Hitler attends his state funeral. 223","REVOLUTION AND DISILLUSION 1917 BEFORE The Nivelle Offensive Through 1915 and 1916, \ufb01ghting on In spring 1917, a new French commander-in-chief, General Robert Nivelle, promised that the Western Front had degenerated the Allies could win the war with a swift and decisive breakthrough on the Western Front. into a war of attrition in which the When his offensive failed, the French army was paralyzed by widespread mutinies. French army suffered particularly heavy losses. G eneral Robert Nivelle won within 48 hours. A creeping barrage Somme to the newly built forti\ufb01cations political support for his of artillery \ufb01re\u2014advancing in tandem of the Hindenburg Line. The Germans FRENCH DECISION offensive in April 1917 by with the infantry assault\u2014would clear laid waste to the French territory they The Battle of Verdun \u276e\u276e 154\u201355, fought telling French leaders what they a path through the German defenses. were abandoning, ruining farms and in 1916, resulted in 380,000 French casualties. wanted to hear: that victory on the Infantry and cavalry would then pour villages, destroying railroads and In its later stages, however, a number of Western Front could be achieved through the gap. bridges, and leaving booby-trap German-held positions were captured in quickly and without heavy loss of life. devices to maim or kill the unwary. attacks mounted by General Robert He planned an offensive at the Aisne The Hindenburg Line Nivelle \u276e\u276e 160\u201361. In December 1916, River between Soissons and Reims, In the face of this German defensive Nivelle replaced General Joseph Joffre centering on the Chemin des Dames In March, French preparations move, the French needed time to as the French commander-in-chief and Ridge. He envisaged a breakthrough were thrown into confusion by the reconsider their strategy. But Nivelle persuaded the French and British prime withdrawal of German forces from the insisted the offensive should go ahead. ministers, Aristide Briand and David Lloyd George, to back his plans for a major offensive. The British commander-in-chief, Douglas Haig, reluctantly agreed to mount a diversionary attack at Arras 226\u201327 \u276f\u276f. Scorched earth In April 1917, French troops advanced across country devastated by the Germans during their withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line. The French gained more ground from the voluntary German withdrawal than from the Nivelle Offensive.","THE NIVELLE OFFENSIVE FRENCH GENERAL (1856\u20131924) BRITAIN hannel Calais Ostend Bruges Nieuport ROBERT NIVELLE The Western Front, January BELGIUM to May 1917 Dunkerque French General Robert Nivelle was an The German withdrawal to the FLANDERS eld artillery of\ufb01cer who rose from colonel to fortifications of the Hindenburg army commander in the \ufb01rst two years Line changed the shape of the Yser of the war. Brought in by General Western Front. The British attack Joseph Joffre to replace General at Arras and the French Nivelle Ypres Philippe P\u00e9tain at Verdun in May 1916, Offensive on the Aisne made Saint-Omer Nivelle achieved notable successes only limited gains. English Brussels through the intelligent use of artillery in C support of infantry assaults. Charming, KEY con\ufb01dent, and persuasive, he was British army Sch appointed French commander-in-chief French army t in December 1916, promising to repeat German army Boulogne-sur-Mer these victories on a much larger scale. Western Front, early 1917 At the Aisne River in April 1917, his Hindenburg Line, April 5 Lys Hazebrouck Lille costly offensive failed to ful\ufb01ll the high German withdrawal to Hindenburg expectations he had raised. Dismissed in Line, March 15\u2013 April 5 Neuve Chapelle May 1917, he was sent to spend the British Arras Offensive rest of the war in Africa. He retired from French Nivelle Offensive Festubert Mons the military in 1922 and died in 1924. Major railroad 1 Apr 9 1ST ARMY 6TH ARMY 0 50 km Canadians of the 3RD ARMY 0 50 miles 3rd Army capture Vimy Sambre Arras Vimy Ridge. 2 Apr 9 5TH ARMY Bullecourt Cambrai British subsidiary attack Bapaume Le Cateau commences in Arras area. 1ST ARMY Offensive temporarily halted on Apr 15. Somme Amiens Chaulnes St. Quentin 2ND ARMY Vervins FRANCE Montdidier Aillette 7TH ARMY 3RD ARMY Noyon Laon Compi\u00e8gne Craonne Soissons Reims Vesle 6TH ARMY 5TH ARMY Chantilly 3 Apr 16 French attack in Chemin des Dames M a rne area (Nivelle Offensive). The offensive ends on May 9 after heavy Epernay French losses and limited gains. Meaux PARIS AFTER defenses to French mutinies By the end of the Nivelle Offensive, about one million French soldiers had meet it. French After the offensive, morale crumbled been killed in the war. Yet French commitment to the con\ufb02ict survived. Schneider CA1 tanks, among the French troops. By the end CLEMENCEAU CRACKS DOWN used for the \ufb01rst time, became of May 1917, widespread mutinies had The army mutinies of May 1917 were linked to an upsurge of \u201cdefeatism\u201d in France. stuck or broke down and were reduced swept the army. Thousands of troops Antiwar French socialists tried to attend a peace conference in Stockholm, but were French Lebel rifle to burning wrecks by German artillery. quit frontline duties. Nine infantry refused passports. There were widespread The standard French infantry gun throughout the war strikes in industry. After a period of political was the 1893 bolt-action Lebel rifle, firing an 8 mm As the advance stalled, troops coming divisions were almost completely out in\ufb01ghting, Georges Clemenceau was round. However, many French soldiers preferred the appointed prime minister in November 1917. less common 1915 Berthier rifle. forward to exploit the breakthrough of action, with another 45 considerably Unswervingly committed to the war, he cracked down on those who disagreed with it. Battle commences were caught in a vast traf\ufb01c jam affected. Soldiers made it clear they BRITAIN TAKES THE LEAD After a 10-day preliminary barrage, behind the front. would continue In the wake of the mutinies, the French army the infantry went \u201cover the top\u201d on refrained from major offensives. Although it April 16. Their progress was slow. The The Nivelle 500 The approximate to defend France, carried out an effective limited offensive on creeping barrage, meant to advance Offensive was number of death but they rejected the Aisne in October 1917, the British took just ahead of the infantry, instead over the leading Allied role on the Western pushed far beyond them. not an outright sentences handed down to the any further futile Front, notably at Passchendaele (Third Battle of Ypres) 240\u201343 \u276f\u276f. Without artillery support, French military disaster for ringleaders of the French army offensives and called soldiers suffered heavy losses to 225 machine gun \ufb01re and German artillery the French. They took mutinies. Fewer than 50 for improvements bombardment. Lapses in French security had enabled the Germans 28,000 German executions were carried out. in conditions. to acquire detailed knowledge of the planned offensive, and they had prisoners, captured General Philippe strengthened the depth of their some German guns, and gained around P\u00e9tain replaced Nivelle as commander- 600 yd (500 m) of territory. But by the in-chief. P\u00e9tain made personal visits to time the operation was abandoned army divisions to assure them there on May 9, the French army had would be no more rash offensives. suffered another 120,000 casualties While the ringleaders of the mutinies and the anticipated breakthrough were court-martialed, measures were had not been achieved. The cost of introduced to improve the rations and the offensive outweighed the gains, leave. By July, a fragile order had been and Nivelle was dismissed. restored to the French army.","The Battle of Arras Fragmentation grenade Elevation scale Launched in April 1917, the British offensive at Arras is best remembered for the outstanding achievement of Canadian troops in taking Vimy Ridge. Overall, however, it was a failure, despite the improved performance by British infantry and artillery. BEFORE T he British Army had learned enemy on high ground. Saps (short many lessons in the nine months trenches) were dug into no man\u2019s land The Battle of Arras was undertaken since the disastrous \ufb01rst day of to provide jumping-off points from by the British to support a French offensive on the Aisne River. the Somme. The attack at Arras was which to rush the enemy trenches. Baseplate ANGLO-FRENCH COLLABORATION still preceded by a \ufb01ve-day artillery German grenade launcher In early 1917, French commander-in-chief Designed specifically for trench warfare, the launcher Robert Nivelle claimed he could achieve bombardment, which sacri\ufb01ced the Dawn attack could hurl grenades into an enemy trench from the a breakthrough at the Aisne River other side of no man\u2019s land. Grenades had become \u276e\u276e 224\u201325. British commander Field Marshal element of surprise, but it was far The offensive was launched at dawn vital infantry weapons by 1917. Douglas Haig agreed to support Nivelle by making diversionary attacks at Arras and Vimy more effective than at the Somme. The on April 9, a bitterly cold Easter Once through the German front line, Ridge. Canadian troops 230\u201331 \u276f\u276f were British infantry advanced in places to chosen to lead the assault on Vimy Ridge. They British gunners could identify the exact Monday, amid sleet and \ufb02urries of a depth of over 3 miles (5 km), using had already participated in the Battle of \ufb02exible small-unit tactics to surround Neuve Chapelle, the Second Battle of positions of German batteries by using snow. Through good coordination with and overcome forti\ufb01ed strongpoints Ypres, and the Somme. and machine gun nests. About 9,000 sound-ranging techniques, which the artillery, the infantry were able to German prisoners were taken on the THE HINDENBURG LINE \ufb01rst day and many guns were captured. Meanwhile, in March 1917, the Germans analyzed the sounds of the guns, and advance as close as 50 yd (50 m) behind withdrew to the Hindenburg Line, a series The Germans were partly undone by of forti\ufb01cations they had built in northeastern \u201c\ufb02ash-spotting\u201d\u2014observing the \ufb02ashes the creeping barrage laid down by the their own tactics. The German army France, and abandoned the area between had adopted the principle of \u201cdefense Arras and the Aisne \u276e\u276e 224\u201325. when enemy guns gunners, who mixed in depth.\u201d This meant that frontline positions were to be relatively lightly 226 were discharged. 4,070 The average gas shells with high held, with counterattack forces rushing The British also forward from the rear to retake number of British explosives for ground once the enemy attack lost momentum. But at Arras the had shells with and Commonwealth troops killed maximum effect. counterattacking reserves were held new \u201cgraze\u201d fuses each day during the 38 days of Four divisions of that exploded on the Battle of Arras. the Canadian Corps touching barbed were tasked with wire, enabling the artillery seizing Vimy Ridge, an obstacle that bombardment to clear the wire in front had resisted all previous attacks. Well of enemy trenches more effectively. trained and led, the Canadians had Meanwhile, engineers excavated taken the crest of the ridge by late tunnels leading to the British front line, afternoon and were looking down on linking up existing caves and quarries retreating Germans on the plain into an underground system, so that beyond. There were further advances thousands of soldiers could assemble in by the British Third Army on the forward positions unobserved by the Canadians\u2019 right.","too far back, leaving outnumbered, \u201cNo one could have foreseen Advance at Vimy unsupported German frontline troops that the\u2026 offensive would Canadian soldiers cross captured ground at Vimy Ridge. to suffer grievous losses. gain ground so quickly.\u201d One man (second left, foreground) is carrying a Lewis gun, a light machine gun that was a useful addition False hope CROWN PRINCE RUPPRECHT, GERMAN COMMANDER, DIARY ENTRY, APRIL 10, 1917 to infantry firepower. The appearance of a major British AFTER victory soon proved ill-founded. General Edmund Allenby, commanding By that time, however, German Hugh Trenchard, was The Battle of Arras and the French the Third Army, was slow to seize the reserves were arriving and progress relentlessly active in support Nivelle Offensive marked a shift in opportunity to press on with the stalled. At the southern end of the line, of the army, carrying out advance, then overoptimistic when it Australian troops sent to attack at photoreconnaissance, acting the balance between was too late. On April 11, he told his Bullecourt on April 10\u201311 were caught as aerial observers for the British and French forces men they were pursuing a defeated artillery, and attacking enemy and brought forward the up in a confused ground targets. German on the Western Front. cavalry to exploit the breakthrough. slaughter that recalled antiaircraft \ufb01re and \ufb01ghter the Somme. Artillery aircraft, including Baron was inadequate, barbed Manfred von Richthofen\u2019s BRITAIN STEPS UP wire was uncut, and squadron, took a heavy toll tanks arrived too late on the inferior British aircraft. The British Army had to forge a path for the Heavy losses of aircrew led to Anzac infantry. The novice British pilots being acted as a junior attack failed and the thrown into combat with little Australians suffered chance of survival. partner in the alliance their heaviest single- day losses of the war. Lost cause with the French since 1914. Meanwhile, a savage British commander-in-chief Field However, after the failure of air battle raged Marshal Douglas Haig insisted on overhead. The British continuing the Arras operation into the Nivelle Offensive Royal Flying Corps, May as a gesture of support for the commanded by General French, who were heavily engaged in BRITISH WATER \u276e\u276e 224\u201325 and the the Nivelle Offensive to the south. subsequent mutinies Bloody April British casualties mounted sharply for BOTTLE Britain\u2019s Royal Flying Corps lost insigni\ufb01cant gains. By the time the 245 aircraft in the battle for air operation was halted on May 16, the in the French army, superiority fought over Arras in British Army had suffered more than April 1917. Outclassed by 150,000 casualties, including 11,000 Britain took lead responsibility for offensive German planes and by pilots such Canadians. German losses probably as Manfred von Richthofen, the numbered around 130,000. operations. After a success at Messines in June British called it \u201cBloody April.\u201d 1917, Haig launched a large-scale offensive at the Ypres salient at the end of July. Continuing until November, the notorious bloodbath that followed became known as the Battle of Passchendaele 240\u201343 \u276f\u276f. GERMANY IMPROVES DEFENSE The Germans re\ufb02ected hard upon their initial setbacks at Arras and Vimy Ridge, refining their strategy of defense in depth to improve its effectiveness. 227","","Field of shells A soldier stands amid spent shell cases in France. Vast quantities of shells were fired in the preliminary bombardments of major offensives, including some 2.7 million shells at the Battle of Arras in April 1917.","REVOLUTION AND DISILLUSION 1917 Canadians in the War \u201c Whenever the Germans found the Canadian Corps coming into the line, they prepared for the worst.\u201d Infantryman\u2019s cap The badge on this soldier\u2019s service cap identifies the BRITISH PRIME MINISTER DAVID LLOYD GEORGE, WAR MEMOIRS wearer as Canadian. This headgear would have been worn in combat until 1916, when steel Brodie helmets were adopted by British and Commonwealth troops. A British dominion with a the daughter of the Duke of In February 1915, the troops crossed to population of 7.2 million, Connaught and Strathearn, the France. After very limited experience Canada entered the war in Governor General of Canada. It of the trenches, in April they found solidarity with Britain in August 1914. recruited men with previous military themselves in the path of a German This was unsurprising\u2014the English- experience. The Newfoundland offensive at Ypres in which chlorine speaking majority had a strong sense Regiment was another separate gas was used for the of British identity and the attitude of formation, as the British colony of \ufb01rst time. The the Canadian prime minister, Robert Newfoundland was not at that time Canadians displayed Borden, was pro-British. part of Canada. immense courage under gas attack Canada had a tiny regular army of Arriving in Europe and then in a around 3,000 men, backed up by a series of brutal larger part-time militia. Borden A large troop convoy carried the ordered the formation of a volunteer Canadians across the Atlantic to Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF), Britain, where they were sent with an initial strength of one division, to a training camp on to serve with the British Army. By Salisbury Plain and October 1914, 32,000 volunteers had placed under the enrolled, many of them British-born command of a immigrants. There was also a privately British of\ufb01cer, raised regiment, Princess Patricia\u2019s General Edwin Canadian Light Infantry, named after Alderson. Battle of the Somme Canadian infantry climb out of a trench during the fighting at the Somme in October 1916. More than 400,000 Canadians served in Europe in World War I. 230","CANADIANS IN THE WAR engagements that kept Canadian war bonds TIMELINE Ypres out of German A wartime poster appeals for hands. Their system of citizens of the \u201cland of the \u25a0 August 1914 The Canadian government sets command, however, was beaver\u201d to help the war effort. out to raise a volunteer expeditionary force. considered poor, as was their equipment. Their Flying Corps. But \u25a0 October 1914 The Canadian Expeditionary Canadian-made Ross the war was not Force (CEF) is shipped to Britain. ri\ufb02es were inferior to the uncontentious. Prime British Lee-En\ufb01elds. Minister Borden\u2019s \u25a0 January 1915 Princess Patricia\u2019s Light Infantry decision to introduce is the first Canadian regiment to be deployed Fresh volunteers conscription revealed in France. continued to arrive from the lack of support for Canada, allowing the the war among French \u25a0 March 1915 Troops of the CEF\u2019s First Division formation of a Canadian Canadians, who take up position at the front line on the Corps in September 1915, responded with rioting Western Front. into which Princess in spring 1918. In Patricia\u2019s infantry were practice, the CEF \u25a0 April 1915 At the Second Battle of Ypres, soon integrated. But this remained almost entirely Canadians are among the first troops to be expansion was a volunteer force to the exposed to a poison gas attack. accompanied by bitter war\u2019s end. disputes between the \u25a0 September 1915 The Canadian Corps is Canadian government Return to Canada formed, initially with two divisions. and General Alderson, who was determined to There was a regrettable \u25a0 December 1915 A Third Canadian Division is ditch the Ross ri\ufb02e and postscript to Canada\u2018s formed. (A fourth is added in August 1916.) \ufb01re some incompetent involvement in World Canadian of\ufb01cers. In War I. The slow speed and \u25a0 June 1916 The Canadians fight a fierce 1916, the Lee-En\ufb01eld perceived unfairness of defensive battle to hold Mont Sorrel on ri\ufb02e superseded the demobilization\u2014priority the Ypres salient against a German attack. Ross, while Alderson might depend on a was replaced by soldier\u2019s marital status, \u25a0 July 1, 1916 The Newfoundland Regiment another British of\ufb01cer, length of service, or is decimated on the first day of the Battle General Julian Byng. peacetime job\u2014led to of the Somme. serious disturbances at Canadian army camps in \u25a0 September\u2013November 1916 The Canadian Britain in 1919. In one incident, \ufb01ve Corps fights at the Battle of the Somme, soldiers were killed as order was including at Flers-Courcelette, Thiepval, and restored. Yet when they did \ufb01nally the Ancre Heights. return home, as the of\ufb01cial history Battle triumphs of the Canadian Expeditionary Force \u25a0 April 9, 1917 At the Battle of Arras, the four says, the soldiers \u201cbrought back with divisions of the Canadian Corps take Vimy them a pride of nationhood that they Ridge from the Germans. had not known before.\u201d Byng was a popular and effective unconvinced that the achievement \u25a0 June 1917 Canadian General Currie is given command of the Canadian Corps. commander. With the aid of rapidly was worth the heavy casualties it cost. promoted Canadian General Arthur Again in August 1918, the Canadians \u25a0 August 1917 A new Military Service Act introduces conscription for all Canadian Currie, who commanded the First were switched from Flanders to men aged 20\u201345. Division, he made the Canadians into Amiens in France to spearhead a an elite formation. The Corps was decisive offensive, the move disguised \u25a0 August 15\u201325, 1917 The Canadian Corps takes Hill 70, overlooking the French city of Lens. permeated from top to bottom by an from the Germans who had learned to attitude of 60,661 The number see the presence of \u25a0 October 26\u2013November 10, 1917 The self-improvement. of Canadian Canadians are given the leading role in the final Their performance Canadian troops stage of the Battle of Passchendaele. in every action as a sign of an soldiers who died in World War I. imminent attack. \u25a0 March\u2013April 1918 At least five people are was subjected to 172,000 The number An unbroken killed in anticonscription riots among French detailed analysis, of Canadian sequence of Canadian Canadians in Quebec. with lessons soldiers who were injured. successes continued \u25a0 August 8, 1918 Together with the Australians, the Canadians inflict a heavy defeat on the learned and through the Hundred Germans at Amiens. necessary changes applied. During the Days Offensives that ended the war, Battle of the Somme, the Canadians from Amiens to the crossing of the \u25a0 September 2, 1918 Canadians break through the Drocourt-Qu\u00e9ant Line, part of the German became openly critical of some senior Canal du Nord and the \ufb01nal capture of Hindenburg Line defensive system. British generals, whom they regarded Mons in Belgium. A Canadian private, as too wasteful of men\u2019s lives. George Price, is traditionally regarded \u25a0 September 27, 1918 Canadian In April 1917, entrusted with the as the last British and Commonwealth troops cross the Canal du Nord, task of assaulting the previously soldier to be killed in the war. He died also part of the Hindenburg Line. impregnable Vimy Ridge in the Battle just two minutes before the Armistice of Arras, the Canadian Corps showed came into effect. outstanding preparation and execution Canadians at home were proud of the of a set-piece attack. It earned Byng a performance of their troops. They also \u25a0 November 11, 1918 Canadians liberate promotion to command of an army, found a hero in the air, Billy Bishop Mons in Belgium. Canadian soldier leaving Currie to take over leadership from Ontario, one of the war\u2019s most George Price is killed two minutes before of the Canadian Corps. famous ace pilots in the British Royal the Armistice. In October 1917, British commander- in-chief Field Marshal Douglas Haig Canadian hero chose the Canadian Corps to take A bankrupt businessman and part-time militia GRAVE OF GEORGE PRICE Passchendaele in the Third Battle officer at the start of the war, Arthur Currie of Ypres. The Canadians did not let developed into a skilful and humane general, Haig down, although Currie was leading his troops to many of their finest victories. 231","REVOLUTION AND DISILLUSION 1917 The German Bomber Offensive From spring 1917, Germany launched bombing raids against British cities. While attacks were countered by fighter aircraft and antiaircraft guns, harassed citizens learned to live with blackouts and air-raid warnings. BEFORE B ritain was the primary target the streets to see the aircraft rather Gotha heavy bomber for German strategic bombing. than taking cover. Among the 162 Flown by a three-man crew, German Gotha bombers Until 1915, the limitations of aircraft Germany\u2019s leaders believed people killed were 18 children in a had a wingspan of around 78 ft (24 m) and carried up meant that only airships could carry to ten 110 lb (50 kg) bombs. They were the mainstay of out long-range bombing missions. that an effective bombing campaign, school classroom. the German bombing offensive. BIRTH OF BOMBER AIRCRAFT especially against London, might The British government responded Belgium, but nine failed to reach the German airships launched the first English coast and only 19 penetrated strategic bombing campaign undermine civilian morale and lead to popular anger by diverting \ufb01ghter London\u2019s outer defenses. The raid \u276e\u276e 132\u201333 against British and nonetheless caused substantial damage, French cities in 1915. By 1917, to popular pressure on the British aircraft from the Western Front to killing 49 people and injuring 177. German airship losses had Germany then abandoned strategic become unsustainable in the face government to make peace. By spring home defense. But when \ufb02ying bombing to dedicate its aircraft to the of \ufb01ghter aircraft armed with support of the German army in France. explosive darts and incendiary rounds. 1917, Germany had assembled a \ufb02eet in formation, Gothas could defend Meanwhile, the \ufb01rst large bomber Effect on Britain aircraft, the Russian Ilya Muromets of Gotha G.IV bombers at air\ufb01elds in themselves quite well against attack and Italian Caproni Ca1, had The scale of the German bomber entered service in 1915. By 1917, the occupied Belgium. 52 The number of by \ufb01ghter aircraft offensive was very limited, causing Germans had developed their own With two Mercedes attacks on Britain by using interlocking civilian deaths in the hundreds rather multiengine bombers, the Gotha engines, the Gotha by German Gotha machine gun \ufb01re than thousands, but countering it tied and the Zeppelin-Staaken \u201cGiant.\u201d was able to carry and \u201cGiant\u201d so that their arcs down British aircraft and guns. British a 1,100 lb (500 kg) of \ufb01re overlapped. morale was shaken by the failure of the ANTI-ZEPPELIN DART government to protect civilians from bomb load. bombers between May 1917 Nevertheless, after attack. South African statesman Jan TECHNOLOGY Smuts, a member of the British War On May 25, and May 1918. They killed 857 nimble Sopwith Cabinet, headed an inquiry into air ANTIAIRCRAFT GUNS defense in summer 1917. His report 21 Gothas attacked people and injured 2,508. Camel \ufb01ghters recommended amalgamating the During World War I, quick-\ufb01ring guns were separate army and navy air corps into developed for an antiaircraft role. They the English Channel were added to an independent Royal Air Force. This mostly \ufb01red shrapnel shells, but high- was done in April 1918. explosive and incendiary rounds were also port of Folkestone and a nearby army the British defenses in the summer used. Hitting an aircraft \ufb02ying at around AFTER 80 mph (130 kmh) was dif\ufb01cult. Techniques camp in broad daylight, killing 95 of 1917, the Germans were forced were devised for estimating the altitude of In the course of 1918, the Allies an aircraft, so that shells could be people and injuring another 260. At to operate by night. stepped up their efforts to bomb set to explode at the right industrial cities in Germany. height. Methods also had noon on June 13, the Gothas struck to be found to compute STRATEGIC BOMBING an aircraft\u2019s speed and London. Fourteen aircraft appeared Enter the Giants In June 1918, Britain\u2019s newly created Royal course. In the absence of Air Force set up the Independent Air accuracy, dense \ufb01re from over the city without warning, From September 1917, the German Force, a \ufb02eet of bomber aircraft based at massed gun batteries Nancy in France. Commanded by General Hugh was most effective. dropping bombs around Liverpool Gothas were joined by a smaller Trenchard, it was tasked with mounting a From summer strategic bombing campaign against Street Station. The population was so number of Zeppelin-Staaken \u201cGiants.\u201d German industrial cities 294\u201395 \u276f\u276f, GERMAN 77 MM BALLONKANONE although it mainly performed tactical ill-prepared that people ran out into These extraordinary aircraft had four bombing in support of the army, striking targets such as air\ufb01elds and munitions dumps. engines and a wingspan of 138 ft Before the war ended, both British and French bombers carried out night raids on cities (42 m)\u2014larger than most World such as Cologne, Frankfurt, and Mannheim. War II bombers. The Gothas and Giants carried out night raids through to May 1918, with London, Paris, and the 1917, German planes sent to bomb Channel ports being regular targets. London had to penetrate a ring of In response to the raids, the Allies antiaircraft batteries and searchlights. established an aircraft observation system so that \ufb01ghter aircraft could intercept the bombers, and civilians could be given time to seek shelter. In January 1918, a bomb penetrated a basement shelter in central London, killing 38 people inside. Hit and miss Flying Gothas and Giants to a target city with a blackout in force was dif\ufb01cult, though by emitting radio signals the pilots could pinpoint their position from radio stations on the ground. Many missions were aborted because of bad weather, and mechanical failures accounted for many losses. In the last major raid on London on May 19, 1918, 43 German bombers took off from 232","Manning a Giant Airmen on a Zeppelin-Staaken \u201cGiant\u201d bomber had to climb around the outside of the craft while it was in flight to man the machine guns and monitor the engines. The crew of seven included two mechanics.","REVOLUTION AND DISILLUSION 1917 The Kerensky Offensive The Provisional Government that replaced Russia\u2019s tsarist regime in March 1917 was eager to step up the country\u2019s war effort. But its attempt to revive popular support for the war failed and the defeat of an ambitious offensive led to the disintegration of the Russian army. T he Russian decision to launch a rife. The Provisional Government, to form Women\u2019s Battalions of Death, War for the revolution major offensive in summer 1917 in contrast, was fully committed to combat units that were meant to A poster issued by the Russian Provisional Government was a huge gamble. In the ranks playing its part in the Allied war effort. shame men into continuing the \ufb01ght. in 1917 urges the Russian people to continue the war. of the army, morale and discipline were It was receiving substantial funding It cautions against allowing the freedom won in the close to collapse. Soldiers\u2019 committees, from Britain and France, in return for Tired of war revolution to be crushed by German militarism. set up in the wake of the revolution, which the Russian army was expected contested the authority of unpopular to undertake major military operations. The notion that Russian soldiers might Brusilov focused the offensive in of\ufb01cers. In the capital, Petrograd \ufb01ght with greater enthusiasm for the Galicia, the scene of his great success (St. Petersburg), antiwar feeling was In May 1917, the Provisional revolution than they had for the tsar the previous year, with subsidiary Government shifted to the left, with was wildly overoptimistic. Disaffection attacks in the center and north of the BEFORE more representatives of socialist among ordinary soldiers was deep- Russian front. The scale of the parties. Alexander Kerensky, until rooted. On many sectors of the front, operation was smaller than in 1916 In summer 1916, the Russian army then the only socialist member mutinies and desertion were common. because many units were not in usable achieved its greatest success of the of the government, became minister Bolshevik Party propaganda advocating shape. Launched on July 1, after a war in the Brusilov Offensive, but for war. One of his \ufb01rst acts was to immediate peace found a ready two-day preliminary bombardment, then political upheaval ensued. appoint General Alexei Brusilov as audience in the trenches. Most soldiers army commander-in-chief. Not only were tired of a war that seemed RUSSIAN TURMOIL had Brusilov commanded Russia\u2019s most pointless. Mainly peasants, they General Alexei Brusilov in\ufb02icted a heavy successful offensive of the war the wanted to go back to their villages to defeat upon the Austro-Hungarian previous year, but he was also broadly farm the plots of land promised to army in Galicia in June 1916 \u276e\u276e 174\u201375, but in sympathy with the revolution, them by the new government. \ufb01ghting continued into the autumn, by which seeking to work with soldiers\u2019 time Russian losses were severe. The defeat committees rather than against them. of Romania by Germany in August\u2013 December 1916 \u276e\u276e 194\u201395 further weakened Planned offensive Russia\u2019s military position. The hardships endured by Russian soldiers and civilians, and Kerensky and Brusilov agreed to distrust of the tsarist regime, led to an mount an offensive that could be uprising in Petrograd (St. Petersburg) in presented as a liberation struggle, March 1917 and the abdication of Tsar turning the revolutionary energies of Nicholas II \u276e\u276e 210\u201311. A Provisional the Russian people against German Government took over the Russian war imperialism. It would, they hoped, effort, but its authority was contested by the restore army morale and unite the Petrograd Soviet (council), representing people behind the government. revolutionary soldiers, sailors, and workers. Kerensky toured the trenches, making stirring speeches that celebrated the Russian army as the freest military force in the world. The Russian middle classes, enthused by patriotism, formed volunteer units and also headed for the front. Female volunteers were allowed RUSSIAN POLITICIAN (1881\u20131970) ALEXANDER KERENSKY After the revolution of March 1917, Russian socialist politician Alexander Kerensky was a prominent member both of the Petrograd Soviet and the Provisional Government. Russian minister for war from May, he mounted a failed summer offensive that broke the Russian army. He became the Russian prime minister in July 1917 and army commander-in-chief in August, but he could not control the disintegrating political situation. His attempt to claim leadership of the revolution failed and the Bolsheviks overthrew him in November. Kerensky spent the rest of his life in exile in France and the United States. 234","THE KERENSKY OFFENSIVE Captured Russian weapons AFTER The Germans survey a collection of machine guns seized from the Russians at the Battle of Riga in The failure of the Kerensky Offensive September 1917. This was the last military engagement helped send Russia into a political and before the final disintegration of the Russian army. social meltdown. the offensive made some initial protests, and their leader, Vladimir launched an offensive at Riga, on the PRESSURE ON KERENSKY gains, with several miles of ground Ilyich Lenin, \ufb02ed to Finland to avoid Baltic, using new in\ufb01ltration tactics. After the Russian defeat at Riga, Kerensky taken. The Germans, however, had imprisonment. Tightening his grip on The German forces easily defeated the dismissed General Kornilov, who was already transferred divisions from the power, Kerensky became prime demoralized Russians, taking Riga in alleged to have been planning a military coup. Western Front to meet the well- minister, while Brusilov, paying the just two days. To defend himself, Kerensky relied on the publicized attack. price for the failed offensive, was armed support of revolutionary workers and replaced as commander-in-chief by The battle at Riga was the last serious soldiers in Petrograd. He released Bolshevik The Russian advance stalled after two General Lavr Kornilov. \ufb01ghting on the Eastern Front. Hutier\u2019s leaders from prison, including Leon Trotsky. days. In many places, reserves refused forces began advancing on Petrograd, orders to relieve the frontline troops. Kornilov took command of Russia\u2019s but quickly realized it was pointless. THE ROAD TO CIVIL WAR As the German and Austro-Hungarian disintegrating army. On September 1, The Russian state and its army were In November, the Bolsheviks ousted counterattack got under way, Russian the German General Oskar von Hutier falling apart. Kerensky and set up a revolutionary troops \ufb02ed in a chaotic retreat that government. They degenerated into mass desertion. sought an armistice with Germany and accepted a Spiraling crisis punitive peace treaty at Brest-Litovsk Military disaster at the front 252\u201353 \u276f\u276f in March was accompanied by political 1918. Civil war then disturbances in Petrograd, known broke out between the as the July Days. Demonstrators anti-Bolshevik White and calling for the overthrow of the the Bolshevik Red armies. BOLSHEVIK BANNER Provisional Government were suppressed by Kerensky with the aid of loyal military units. The Bolsheviks were blamed for the Advance in Galicia Russian soldiers run past a church in the Galicia region, the main site of the Kerensky Offensive in July 1917. The Russian attacks quickly ran out of momentum and were repulsed by German and Austro-Hungarian troops.","","EYEWITNESS July 1917 The Revolutionary Army When the Kerensky Offensive began to fail, Russian morale plummeted and the army started to disintegrate. Some troops refused to fight and soldiers\u2019 committees questioned whether officers should be obeyed. \u201cSince you could not fight bravely and beat the enemy for the old regime, under the threat of being shot, surely you will not now hesitate\u2026 to defend our freedom and exalt our great Revolution. We will be ready then to sacrifice ourselves, to defend at whatever cost that which we have won, and, where it may be necessary, to hurl ourselves upon the enemy and crush him. Then all hail to Mother Russia, and long may she live. And hail to our Provisional Government, and our War Minister, Kerensky, whose hope is in us. And I, comrade soldiers and officers, vouch for it to them that we will honorably, faithfully, and gallantly \u201dfulfill our duty. COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF ALEXEI BRUSILOV\u2019S ADDRESS TO THE RUSSIAN ARMY BEFORE THE OPENING OF THE KERENSKY OFFENSIVE, JULY 1, 1917 \u201cAt 10 o\u2019clock, July 19th, the 607th Mlynoff Regiment\u2026 left their trenches voluntarily and retired, with the result that the neighboring units had to retire also. This gave the enemy the opportunity for developing his success. Our failure is explained to a considerable degree by the fact that under the influence of the extremists (Bolsheviks) several detachments, having received the command to support the attacked detachments, held meetings and discussed the advisability of obeying the order, whereupon some of the regiments refused to obey the military command. The efforts of the commanders and committees to arouse the men to the \u201dfulfillment of the commands were fruitless. BRUSILOV\u2019S OFFICIAL REPORT, JULY 21, 1917 Russian army disintegrates A Russian soldier attacks a retreating comrade near Ternopil, Ukraine, in July 1917. In the face of the German counteroffensive, the Russian army began a rapid and chaotic retreat. Ternopil fell on July 26, and Riga, in the north, was captured in early September. 237","REVOLUTION AND DISILLUSION 1917 Messines Ridge The Battle of Messines Ridge in June 1917 is chiefly remembered for the massive explosions that destroyed German positions at the start of the British attack. It was an outstanding offensive success for the British Army, and a rare instance of German defenders suffering the heavier losses. BEFORE I n early May 1917, British Second Mining at Messines task was made more dif\ufb01cult by Army commander General Herbert Tunnelers at work under the German countermeasures to locate and The First and Second battles of Ypres Plumer, commander in the Ypres Ypres salient. Excavation was blow up the British tunnels. The British in 1914 and 1915 left the British salient since 1915, was ordered to hard and dangerous, and often also listened for the Germans and holding a salient, facing German prepare an operation to take the low done by candlelight in a slurry mounted counterattacks, digging troops entrenched on higher ground. German-held ridge stretching from of mud. The tunnelers made tunnels at lesser depth to intercept the Messines to Wystchaete and a position as little noise as possible for German tunnelers. Occasionally, ALLIED FAILURES known as Hill 60, 3 miles (5 km) fear of betraying their location miners would break into an enemy From early 1916, British commander-in-chief southeast of Ypres. This would to the enemy. tunnel, and hand-to-hand combat Field Marshal Douglas Haig \u276e\u276e 178\u201379 strengthen the British position south ensued. In August 1916, the German favored an offensive at the Ypres salient, of Ypres as the prelude to a larger Through 1916, tunnelers had a major success in this but the need to cooperate with the French led Flanders offensive farther north. around 30,000 underground war, when they broke to operations at the Somme \u276e\u276e 180\u201383 and Plumer had proposed an attack on British, Australian, Canadian, and New into a British chamber and destroyed it. Arras \u276e\u276e 226\u201327. The failure of the French Messines as early as January 1916. Zealand soldiers\u2014a combination of Nivelle Offensive \u276e\u276e 224\u201325 in spring military engineers and infantrymen More than 20 British tunnels 1917 and subsequent mutinies in the French The underground war who were miners in civilian life\u2014had remained undetected. The chambers army left the British to pursue their own plans. dug tunnels forward from their lines were packed with explosives, much of Haig envisaged a major offensive at Ypres, in By 1917, preparations were well and under the German-held ridge. At it sealed in metal containers to protect preparation for which the British Second Army advanced for destroying the German the end of each tunnel they hollowed against the wet conditions. Because would seize Messines Ridge. defenses with buried explosives. The out a chamber to hold explosives. waterlogged ground in Flanders was on the whole unsuitable for tunneling, The work of tunneling was arduous, but at Messines British Royal Engineers despite the availability of portable had found a usable layer of blue clay oxygen tanks, electric light, and at a depth of 80\u2013100 ft (25\u201330 m). eventually mechanical diggers. The 26,000 The estimated length in feet (8,000 m) of the tunnels dug under Messines Ridge by British and Commonwealth engineers. tunneling activity subsided toward the end of 1916, the Germans on Messines Ridge became complacent. By spring 1917, they had stopped worrying about mines. Supply lines General Plumer was a methodical commander with a reputation for being careful with his soldiers\u2019 lives. He had new light railroads constructed behind the British lines to bring up ammunition and other supplies. Because thirst was a constant problem for troops in battle, pipelines were laid On Messines Ridge Gunner F.J. Mears, who served with the British artillery in France during the war, painted this picture of soldiers on Messines Ridge. The trees lining the road have been stripped bare by shell fire. 238","MESSINES RIDGE AFTER to ensure a supply of water at the von Laffert. He chose to maintain The success of the Battle of THE IRISH PEACE TOWER AT MESSINES front. An impressive concentration of unusually large numbers of troops Messines boosted British morale and artillery was assembled along a 10 mile in his front two lines, a decision the encouraged Field Marshal Haig\u2019s plans (16 km) front, with 2,200 guns to Germans came to regret. for a full-scale offensive in Flanders. support an infantry assault. On May 21, the British guns began PASSCHENDAELE Defenses organized in depth a devastatingly effective preliminary Haig launched the Third Battle of Ypres bombardment that lasted for 17 days. 240\u201345 \u276f\u276f, known as the Battle of The German defenses presented a Passchendaele, on July 31, 1917. Continuing formidable challenge. By 1917, the Plunger to through to November, this turned into a vast German army had greatly re\ufb01ned activate attritional struggle without decisive result. its defensive tactics. Instead of facing a line of trenches, Allied Explosives detonator POSTWAR MESSINES soldiers were met with defenses Most of the equipment used for At least two of the buried mines at Messines organized in depth. At Messines, digging mines and setting off remained unexploded after the end of the this meant four systems of explosive charges was identical war. One of them erupted in 1955, fortunately trenches, machine gun emplacements, to that employed by civilian killing only a cow. Since 1998, Messines has and concrete pillboxes, backed by miners and engineers. Nineteen been the site of the Irish Peace Tower, further positions. The Germans charges were detonated almost commemorating Catholic and Protestant Irish accepted that an attack would break simultaneously at Messines. soldiers who died in World War I. into these defenses, but counterattack forces held at the rear were to come Explosive Precisely targeted with the assistance \ufb01re over their heads. The soldiers forward once the enemy onslaught lost box of reconnaissance aircraft, British engaged in the assault were chie\ufb02y momentum and drive the attackers \ufb01repower destroyed a large part of Australians and New Zealanders back with heavy losses. the German artillery. German infantry of the Anzac Corps, who captured positions were laid to waste. Frontline Messines village, and Irish soldiers of Messines Ridge was held by a troops could not be relieved or supplied the 16th Irish and 36th Ulster divisions. corps of the German Fourth Army and ran short of food and water. Formed in 1914 around the Catholic commanded by General Maximilian National Volunteers and the Protestant Walls of \ufb01re Ulster Volunteer Force respectively, Electrical militias that had been close to \ufb01ghting contact The British attack was launched on one another in a civil war, the Irish June 7. At 3:10am, just before dawn, forces advanced side by side, taking the the mines in 19 of the chambers under village of Wystchaete. Messines Ridge were exploded by the engineers. The mines ranged from Reserves were fed forward in the 17,000 lb (7,700 kg) to over 95,000 lb afternoon to capture further objectives (43,000 kg) of explosives. Eyewitnesses and consolidate the gains. German \u201c Out of the dark ridges of Messines and Wystchaete\u2026 gushed out and up\u2026 volumes of scarlet \ufb02ame.\u201d PHILIP GIBBS, WAR CORRESPONDENT, DESCRIBING THE EXPLOSIONS ON JUNE 7, 1917 Leather strap described sheets of \ufb02ame, clouds of counterattacks were slow to materialize smoke, and the ground shaking like and were mishandled, with British an earthquake. The sound of the artillery \ufb01re making it hard for the explosions was heard in London, over German troops to get forward. 100 miles (160 km) away. Plumer\u2019s plan had been to seize and As many as 10,000 German soldiers hold limited objectives, rather than may have been killed in the eruption. achieve a total breakthrough. Fighting Dazed survivors wandered toward the continued until June 14, by which time British lines to surrender. British troops the British were in possession of the advanced almost unopposed to occupy ground they had sought to gain, the German forward positions and dominating the Gheluvelt plateau. prepared to assault the second line. The Germans had lost an estimated At 7am, after a considerable delay, 25,000 men, including 7,000 taken the second stage of the assault opened. prisoner, compared with British losses Troops advanced close behind a of 17,000\u2014a rare instance of the creeping artillery barrage, with massed attritional balance favoring the side machine guns providing supporting on the offensive. 239","REVOLUTION AND DISILLUSION 1917 Third Ypres The Third Battle of Ypres, often known as Passchendaele, was a British-led offensive that became notorious for the suffering endured by the troops. Begun in pursuit of valid objectives, it degenerated into an attritional struggle fought by soldiers floundering in mud. BEFORE B ritish plans for an offensive at the second part of the plan, arguing the Ypres salient in summer that an offensive at Ypres alone might 1917 were bold and strategically crack the morale of the German army. coherent. The declared aim was to Haig believed German resources were British commander-in-chief Field capture ports in occupied Belgium strained to the breaking point, due to Marshal Douglas Haig had long wanted to mount a major offensive in that were being used as bases for its commitments on other fronts. Flanders. In summer 1917, he decided the time to attack had arrived. German U-boat attacks on British British Prime Minister David Lloyd merchant shipping. George tried to oppose plans for an Supported by the French, the British offensive at Ypres, but his suggestions intended to break through the German for alternative uses of military PRESSURE MOUNTS defenses in front of resources, such The First and Second Ypres, and then join 4.25 MILLION The number as transferring troops up with other British battles of Ypres of shells fired by to Italy, carried little \u276e\u276e 60\u201361, 102\u201303 troops to make an British artillery in the two-week weight. Backed in 1914 and 1915 had amphibious landing preliminary bombardment by the Chief of left the British dug on the Belgian coast at Third Ypres. the Imperial General into a salient around behind the German Staff, General the ruined Belgian town. lines. From the outset, however, British William Robertson, Haig was allowed BADGE MARKING After the failure of commander-in-chief Field Marshal to go ahead, although Lloyd George ALLIED COOPERATION the French Nivelle Douglas Haig evaded commitment to only grudgingly withdrew his veto. Offensive \u276e\u276e 224\u201325 in spring 1917, Haig began 2 Aug 10 3 Aug 22 After a two-week break in the \ufb01ghting because of heavy rain, On the right, British 5th Army planning a major operation at Ypres that the British launch an attack against the Langemarck-Gheluvelt makes little progress and is halted line. Langemarck is taken. on the Menin Road. would relieve pressure on the French and support offensives by Britain\u2019s Italian and Russian allies. RECENT VICTORY Passchendaele The success of new British tactics at the Battle of Messines Ridge Houthulst Forest Haanb e e k Zonnebeke Menin Road Wervicq \u276e\u276e 238\u201339 in June 1917 encouraged Polygon Wood Gheluvelt Comines Haig\u2019s offensive plans. Poelcappelle Broenbeek Langemarck St Julien 4TH ARMY Steenbeek Shrewsbury Forest 5TH ARMY Aug 15 Sanctuary Pilkem Wood 1 3:50am, July 31 Bixschoote Jul 31 5TH ARMY Zillebeke Yser Canal Offensive is launched at dawn. Gains are made Yser Canal Ypres Zillebeke Messines on Bixschoote, Pilkem, 5 km Lake and St. Julien ridges to 3 miles 2ND ARMY north of Ypres. 1ST ARMY 0 Wytschaete 0 N 6 Oct 12 7 Nov 6 2 Sept 26 4 Oct 4 3 Sept 26 The first phase An assault is launched on Canadians launch a \ufb01nal 5th Army 2nd Army launches An attack Launched on July 31, 1917, the Allied Passchendaele. It is unsuccessful, offensive against Passchendaele advances toward attack at Broodseinde secures half of offensive, led by the British Fifth Army, as is a second assault on the 26th. and capture it the same day. Zonnebeke. and captures ridge. Polygon Wood. made initial gains but lost momentum. A renewed attack in mid-August led The second phase Nov 8 to the capture of Langemarck. By The offensive is resumed on September 20. August 26, the operation had stalled. Despite more heavy rain, attacks continued through October at Broodseinde Ridge, Haan beek Passchendaele 4TH ARMY 1 Sept 20 Poelcappelle, and Passchendaele, which was Renewed offensive taken on November 6. Houthulst Forest Broodseinde launched against KEY Gheluvelt plateau British army Poelcappelle Zonnebeke Gheluvelt Road on the Menin Road. French army Menin German army 5TH ARMY Polygon Wood Messines British advance French advance Sept 20 British front line 5TH ARMY French front line Broenbeek Langemarck St Julien Shrewsbury Road Steenbeek Sanctuary Forest Wood 5 Oct 9 Bixschoote Pilkem Zillebeke 2ND ARMY An attack in the Poelcappelle region is 1ST ARMY Yser Canal Ypres Zillebeke hampered by rain and Lake mud. It results in virtually no gains. Wytschaete Railroad 240","Battling the mud \u201cIt looked as though some appalling British troops haul a gun through mud during the Third earthquake had torn the earth apart\u2026 Battle of Ypres in September 1917. The appalling In the midst of this men just had to hang on.\u201d conditions under which men had to fight\u2014the result of heavy rain and shelling\u2014were the worst in the war. LIEUTENANT COLONEL S\u00dcSSENBERGER, COMMANDING AN INFANTRY COMPANY AT THIRD YPRES At the Ypres salient, the Germans held climax in the early hours of July 31. of \u201c\ufb02exible defense,\u201d the Germans maximum advance in some sectors was the higher ground and had spent just 500 yd (500 m). Haig reported to almost three years organizing their German General Hermann von had held back their main strength for the British War Cabinet that the defenses in depth. Haig assigned the operation had so far been \u201chighly lead role in attacking this position to Kuhl described the bombardment as counterattacks, which soon began to satisfactory\u201d and losses had been the British Fifth Army commanded \u201cslight\u201d\u2014in fact, there were around by General Hubert Gough, a thrusting \u201ca hurricane of \ufb01re\u201d in which \u201cthe have an impact on exhausted Allied 35,000 Allied casualties in four days. cavalry of\ufb01cer. Gough planned to advance 6,000 yd (6,000 m) on the whole earth of Flanders rocked.\u201d troops. It also started to rain. Ground Crown Prince Rupprecht, the German \ufb01rst day, to reach the third line of Army Group commander at Ypres, also German defenses. Advancing churned up by described himself as \u201cvery satis\ufb01ed\u201d with the results of the \ufb01ghting, despite Hurricane of \ufb01re behind a creeping 7,800 The number of British massed artillery similar losses on the German side. barrage of artillery, Fifth Army soldiers \ufb01re turned to deep In preparation for the assault, some Renewed attack 3,000 guns bombarded the German the Allied infantry killed during the opening of the mud punctuated by positions for a fortnight, \ufb01ring four After a two-week pause, the British times the number of shells expended in went \u201cover the offensive at Third Ypres, between water-\ufb01lled shell resumed their offensive with attacks at preparation for the Somme Offensive Langemarck and the Gheluvelt plateau. the previous year. The damage in\ufb02icted top\u201d at dawn. They July 31 and August 3, 1917. craters. Wounded To the south, the Canadian Corps assaulted a position known as Hill 70 on German positions made considerable men from both outside the town of Lens. Their was considerable. The aim was to stop the Germans bombardment rose to a gains in places, with the British Guards sides crawled into these craters for from transferring troops to Ypres. Division, for example, progressing shelter. As the water rose, the most some 4,000 yd (4,000 m). Tanks aided seriously injured drowned. the infantry, lumbering forward By August 3, the initial over reasonably dry ground. But offensive had petered out far in accordance with their doctrine short of its objectives. The Fore sight Barrel Pan magazine Lewis gun Cocking handle The British Army\u2019s standard light machine gun, the Lewis gun was issued to every infantry section by 1917. In action, the barrel was enclosed in an aluminum tube for air-cooling. 241","REVOLUTION AND DISILLUSION 1917 German road sign In these appalling conditions, renewed This road sign, \u201cToward attacks at Poelcappelle on October 9 Passchendaele,\u201d was and toward Passchendaele Ridge erected by the German three days later were a failure. The army. The village was the Australians and New Zealanders objective of the British suffered particularly heavy casualties. offensive during the final Their artillery support was inadequate stages of Third Ypres. because guns could not be maneuvered into position. Many shells were simply The Canadian operation went Polygon Wood on September 26 and The Germans absorbed into the deep mud without well. Hill 70 was taken and then Broodseinde Ridge on October 4. Each suffered notably exploding. Floundering troops were held against large-scale German attack was carried out in a limited heavy losses at cut down by \ufb02anking machine gun counterattacks. Gough\u2019s attacks, by sector with massive artillery support\u2014 Broodseinde, \ufb01re from German concrete pillboxes. contrast, were inadequate in planning guns \ufb01ring both high-explosive and gas where German and execution, achieving small gains shells. The infantry had plentiful Lewis troops massed in the front line in For the New Zealand forces, for high losses. At the end of August, guns and ri\ufb02e grenades among its preparation for an attack of their own October 9 was the costliest day of Haig sidelined Gough and his Fifth armory. The ground was \ufb01rm enough were bombarded by British artillery. the entire war, with 2,700 casualties Army, and handed chief responsibility for tanks to move forward. Large numbers of Germans were taken trapped in front of uncut barbed for the Ypres offensive to General prisoner, reinforcing Haig\u2019s belief that wire at Poelcappelle. The Australian Hubert Plumer and the Second Army, The advance was halted before German morale was approaching the Third Division, under General John the victors at Messines Ridge in June. the infantry outran their artillery breaking point. Monash, experienced even heavier Plumer had a clear strategy for the support, so that German attempts at losses attacking at Passchendaele battle. There would be a series of Waist-deep in mud on October 12. rigorously prepared attacks, each counterattacks designed to take a limited objective ran into After October 4, however, the weather The \ufb01rst attack on Passchendaele that would then be held against a curtain changed. A return to heavy rain was a costly debacle for British and counterattacks. The strategy was called of shell \ufb01re. made the ground a sea of mud. Commonwealth forces. Meanwhile, \u201cbite and hold.\u201d Overhead, Allied Troops struggled to move forward the Germans were under almost Plumer relaunched the offensive at aircraft, defying along duckboards\u2014wooden paths laid intolerable pressure. Crown the Menin Road on September 20 and German antiaircraft by engineers over the muddy morass. Prince Rupprecht was seriously followed up with successful attacks on guns, spotted targets for Where the duckboards ended, men considering a full-scale withdrawal the artillery and machine- could \ufb01nd themselves waist-deep in from positions in front of Ypres. gunned German positions. mud. Artillery could only be brought In reality, however, the British up along narrow plank offensive had worn itself out. roads, and engineers had to Germans reinforcements were build platforms for the guns arriving from the Eastern to stop them from sinking. Front, where the Russian army had ceased to be a The wasteland After the conclusion of the fighting at Passchendaele in November 1917, the landscape was a wasteland of mud and water-filled shell craters. For many people, Passchendaele symbolized the futility of war.","THIRD YPRES serious threat. The Identity tag assault on November 10 cleared the AFTER Germans also had General John Monash was ridge of its remaining German presence increasing supplies of considered an outstanding and brought Third Ypres to a close. By the end of Third Ypres, the course mustard gas shells. Australian commander. He of the war was being altered by Above all, the terrible led a division at Third Ypres The \ufb01nal count events elsewhere. mud made a decisive and later commanded Allied breakthrough all Australian forces on There is no certainty about the casualty MIXED FORTUNES unthinkable. the Western Front. \ufb01gures on either side in the battle, but On the Western Front, the British achieved it is probable that, between July 31 and a shortlived breakthrough at Cambrai The last push to justify any advantage November 10, about 70,000 British and 248\u201349 \u276f\u276f in November, ending Allied it might bring, Currie \ufb01nally Commonwealth soldiers died at Third offensive operations for the winter. In March Although the British Ypres, with another 200,000 wounded 1918, the German army launched the \ufb01rst of had abandoned plans succumbed to pressure or taken prisoner. German losses are a series of offensives that, among other gains, for an amphibious landing from Haig and accepted even harder to establish, but they retook Passchendaele. behind German lines, Haig the task, with the promise may have been broadly similar to would not give up on his of extra artillery. Allied casualties. DEVELOPMENTS IN ITALY AND RUSSIA offensive. The morale of The Canadian-led On the Italian front, German and Austrian many units of the British assault on Passchendaele The battle in the mud was severely forces achieved a breakthrough at Army had been badly proceeded methodically demoralizing for soldiers on both sides, Caporetto 246\u201347 \u276f\u276f in the last week shaken, so Haig turned to in three phases. On but perhaps especially for the British, of October 1917. Haig was forced to transfer the Canadian Corps. He many of whom learned a bitter troops from the Western Front to Italy. In bullied and pleaded with its October 26, a limited advance distrust of their high command. The Russia, the Bolsheviks 252\u201353 \u276f\u276f under commander, General Arthur Currie, to broke through key German distinguished military historian John Vladimir Ilyich Lenin seized power during the lead a \ufb01nal push to take Passchendaele. defensive positions; further advances Keegan wrote: \u201cOn the Somme [Haig] last days of Third Ypres. Lenin sought an were made on October 30; and on had sent the \ufb02ower of British youth to armistice with the Central Powers. Despite expressing coherent November 6 the ruins of Passchendaele death or mutilation; at Passchendaele objections to the proposed operation, fell to the Canadians. It cost 16,000 he had tipped the survivors into the which he believed would be too costly casualties to take the village. A \ufb01nal slough of despond.\u201d \u201c The British army lost its spirit of optimism, and there was a sense of deadly depression among the of\ufb01cers and men\u2026\u201d PHILIP GIBBS, WAR CORRESPONDENT, ON THE AFTERMATH OF THIRD YPRES ITALIAN FARINA HELMET","Recording Third Ypres This image in chalk of action on the Ypres salient, entitled Shellburst, Zillebeke, was made by official British war artist Paul Nash in 1917. Nash recorded the bleak conditions in which the men had to fight.","","REVOLUTION AND DISILLUSION 1917 BEFORE Italian Disaster at Caporetto After Italy entered the war on the Allied side in May 1915, Italian and The overwhelming victory of German and Austro-Hungarian forces at the Battle of Caporetto Austro-Hungarian forces were locked in October 1917 brought a sudden and spectacular end to more than two years of stalemate in a prolonged stalemate. and attrition on the Italian front. It failed, however, to knock Italy out of the war. ALPINE WARFARE T he \ufb01ghting on the Italian front forces on the Isonzo were close to the sending German troops to the Italian The \ufb01ghting took place in the area between was often conducted in terrible breaking point and would not survive front and created a new combined Italy and Austria-Hungary, with active sectors conditions. The Isonzo sector, on another defensive battle. German and Austro-Hungarian army, in Trentino province to the north and at the the modern border between Italy and under German command. Isonzo River to the east. Except for an Slovenia, consisted of barren limestone In line with the military thinking Austro-Hungarian attack at Asiago in cliffs where soldiers survived in caves of the time, the Austro-Hungarians German buildup Trentino in May 1916, the Italians took or makeshift shelters. decided that the best solution was to the offensive. Repeated Italian assaults in the take the offensive. The emperor asked The Austro-German Fourteenth Isonzo sector achieved no decisive result. Repeated Italian offensives had the Germans to take over from Army, commanded by General Otto In January 1917, after the Ninth Battle brought high losses for both sides. Austro-Hungarian troops on the von Below, was concentrated in a of the Isonzo, the Italians requested The Eleventh Battle of the Isonzo, from Eastern Front so that his forces could sector of the Isonzo Front opposite support from British and French forces, but August to September 1917, resulted in mount an attack on Italy. However, the town of Caporetto (now Kobarid, none could be spared. Offensives continued almost 150,000 Italian casualties and German military leaders doubted the Slovenia), where Italian positions through 1917, with the Eleventh Battle more than 100,000 Austro-Hungarian competence of the Austro-Hungarian were lightly held. German mountain of the Isonzo in August. losses. Austrian Emperor Charles I and army and were eager to extend their troops were brought in, including the his senior commanders believed their own in\ufb02uence. They insisted on elite Bavarian Alpenkorps in which RELIEF FOR GERMANY Meanwhile, the collapse of the Russian army after the Kerensky Offensive \u276e\u276e 234\u2013235 reduced the number of German troops required on the Eastern Front. \u201c The farther we penetrated into the hostile Army in retreat zone of defense\u2026 the easier the \ufb01ghting.\u201d Demoralized Italian soldiers withdraw toward the Piave River after the breakthrough of German and LIEUTENANT ERWIN ROMMEL, GERMAN COMPANY COMMANDER AT CAPORETTO Austro-Hungarian forces at Caporetto. In some places, the Italian retreat degenerated into a disorderly rout.","ITALIAN DISASTER AT CAPORETTO The Caporetto Offensive Isarco The breakthrough by the Central Powers at Caporetto forced the Italians into a general Bressanone 10TH ARMY retreat. A defensive line was stabilized at the Piave River. Carnic Alps KEY AUSTRIA-HUNGARY Austro-Hungarian army ites Austro-German army Bolzano Dolom ITALY 2 7am, Oct 24 Italian army Austro-German 14th Army Italian front line, Oct 24 Pieve advances, and the Italian Italian front line, Nov 1 front quickly collapses. Italian front line, Nov 12 Movements of Austro-Hungarian forces 3 Nov Maggio Movements of Austro-German forces Austrian forces in Date of capture of town by Central Powers Trentino join attack. 4 Nov 4 Plezzo 14TH ARMY Rapid advance of Austro-German forces Tarcento OCT 24 1 2am, Oct 24 continues, causing NOV 2 TRENTINO 4TH ARMY Cadorna to order Cornino Caporetto Central Powers open retreat to Piave River. 11TH ARMY 2ND ARMY Tolmino hostilities with a Aviano sustained bombardment NOV 10 OCT 27 Belluno Tagliamento Cividale udrio and gas attack. Isonzo Strigno Val Sugana OCT 29 J Bainsizza Borgo Plateau Udine Mt. Santo Trento Feltre Mt. San Gabriele OCT 28 NOV 7 Sacile Gorizia Vittorio Veneto Major railroad Rovereto NOV 9 3RD ARMY Asiago Conegliano 5TH ARMY Mt. Pasubio Arsiero Mestre C a r s o Venice Montefalcone future tank commander Erwin Posina (Karst) Rommel, known as the Desert Fox Portogruaro in World War II, was a junior of\ufb01cer. Livenza Trieste Other German soldiers and artillery Piave were transferred by rail from Riga 6 Nov 12 on the Baltic, where \ufb01ghting had Vicenza Minor \ufb01ghting continues for several weeks along Piave River. French and ended in early September. The Italian British reinforcements begin to arrive. commander, General Luigi Cadorna, Padua 5 Nov 9 Gulf of 0 100 km was vaguely aware of the arrival Germans continue pursuit, Venice 0 crossing the Livenza. 100 miles of German troops, but con\ufb01dent of the strength of his own forces. The bulk of Italian troops were kept in vulnerable forward positions. As the Fourteenth Army Steel helmet AFTER Italian collapse advanced, Italian morale and Regimental In the aftermath of Caporetto, Italy\u2019s discipline collapsed. Hundreds badge weak position was matched by that of Austria-Hungary. Moving at night, the Austro-German of thousands of Italian soldiers CONTINUING THE WAR forces reached their attack positions simply \ufb02ed toward the rear. An immediate consequence of Caporetto was the creation of an Allied Supreme War undetected. In the early hours of Others surrendered en masse. Council to coordinate strategy. It also led the United States to declare war on October 24, they unleashed a furious Cadorna struggled to turn this Austria-Hungary in December 1917, bombardment, \ufb01rst with gas shells rout into an orderly retreat to seven months after it had done so against Germany. The new Italian commander-in- and then high explosives. At 7am, the the Tagliamento River. Fleeing chief, General Armando Diaz, restored morale by improving his troops\u2019 living infantry assault began. The Germans Italian soldiers were shot by conditions and refraining from costly offensives. At home, the Orlando government used newly adopted \u201cin\ufb01ltration of\ufb01cers attempting to restore cracked down on antiwar elements in Italy. German troops were soon withdrawn tactics,\u201d penetrating in depth without order. The pursuit by from the Italian front in preparation for offensives on the Western Front in halting to secure their \ufb02anks or take Austro-German forces spring 1918 278\u201379 \u276f\u276f. out Italian strong points. slowed as problems with ITALIAN VICTORY Both Italy and Austria-Hungary were transportation mounted. reluctant to resume offensive action. In June 1918, Austro-Hungarian forces They crossed the attacked across the Piave River and in Trentino, but the operation failed. The Italians did not Tagliamento in early return to the offensive until October 1918, when Austria-Hungary was on the verge November, forcing Cadorna of collapse. Italy\u2019s Vittorio Veneto Offensive 318\u201319 \u276f\u276f regained much of the to order a further withdrawal ground lost a year earlier. to the Piave River. Italian commander Aftermath Elite Italian uniform General Luigi Cadorna, the Italian commander-in-chief This uniform, with its turtleneck sweater, was issued to from the outset of the war, was considered an Beyond the Piave, a Italy\u2019s elite Arditi assault troops. Most Italian troops unimaginative tactician. He was dismissed from his formidable obstacle, the wore varieties of gray-green uniforms and a version position in the wake of the disaster at Caporetto. Italians held a defensive line. of the French Adrian helmet. The Central Powers had advanced some 80 miles (130 km) in less than support, and British and French two weeks. About 250,000 Italian divisions were soon arriving in Italy. soldiers were taken prisoner, and Cadorna paid the price of defeat. He 30,000 were killed or wounded. was dismissed on November 8 and the cautious General Armando Diaz Instead of causing Italy to fall apart, became the new commander-in-chief. the defeat succeeded in overcoming political and social divisions, as the country rallied to defend itself. A new Italian government came to power under Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando in late October. Orlando successfully appealed to his allies for military 247","REVOLUTION AND DISILLUSION 1917 False Dawn at Cambrai In November 1917, the British launched an offensive against the German Hindenburg Line in front of Cambrai in northern France. Led by tanks and making innovative use of artillery, the operation achieved a shortlived breakthrough. T he proposal for an operation Army from July 1917, Byng was Transporting tanks had evolved into an ambitious attempt at Cambrai originated with responsible for the Cambrai sector. At British tanks await movement at a breakthrough, with two cavalry the British Tank Corps. Its the same time, he was approached by a by rail to Cambrai. Each tank divisions on hand to ride into the open commander, Brigadier-General Hugh divisional artillery commander, General carries fascines\u2014bundles of country beyond the German lines. The Elles, and his Chief of Staff Colonel Hugh Tudor, who wanted to try some brushwood to bridge trenches German defenses in front of Cambrai John Fuller were eager to show what new tactics involving artillery. British and ditches. formed part of the Siegfriedstellung, a tanks could achieve if deployed as a gunners had been working on ways to sector of the Hindenburg Line to which mass shock force rather than scattered achieve accurate \u201cpredicted \ufb01re.\u201d A ready to go forward. Dispensing with German troops had withdrawn from among infantry. As tanks easily became variety of factors had previously made a prolonged preliminary bombardment the Somme in spring 1917. bogged down in soft ground, they it impossible to hit distant targets also avoided churning up the ground identi\ufb01ed Cambrai, where the land reliably without \ufb01ring many ahead of the tanks. was \ufb01rm, dry, and chalky, as a suitable preliminary ranging shots, which location for an attack. inevitably put the enemy on alert. Attempt at a breakthrough Tudor believed it was now possible Elles presented the proposal for a for guns to hit their targets without British commander-in-chief Field tank raid to General Julian Byng, who this \u201cpreregistration\u201d and to gain Marshal Douglas Haig approved the had commanded the Canadian Corps in surprise by delaying opening \ufb01re operation on October 13. The Cambrai the taking of Vimy Ridge in April 1917. until the tanks and infantry were attack had been conceived as a \u201craid,\u201d As commander of the British Third because the Tank Corps commanders knew their \u201c Surprise and rapidity\u2026 are machines were too of the utmost importance.\u201d mechanically unreliable for a sustained offensive. BRITISH THIRD ARMY ORDERS FOR THE BATTLE OF CAMBRAI, NOVEMBER 13, 1917 By November, however, it BEFORE The second half of 1917 was a time of Track tensioner setbacks for the Allies on most fronts, but British generals remained Metal crawler committed to the offensive. track plate GAINS AND LOSSES The British Mark IV tank On the Eastern Front, the failure of the Introduced in 1917, the Mark IV existed in two Kerensky Offensive \u276e\u276e 234\u201335 in the versions. The \u201cmale,\u201d shown here, had six-pounder summer of 1917 was followed by the collapse guns in sponsons (gun turrets) on its flanks, while the of the Russian army and the Bolshevik \u201cfemale\u201d was armed exclusively with machine guns. seizure of power \u276e\u276e 252\u201353. In Italy, the Austro-German breakthrough at Caporetto \u276e\u276e 246\u201347 in late October put the Italian army to \ufb02ight. On the Western Front, the British achieved success with an offensive at Messines \u276e\u276e 238\u201339 in June. A British-led offensive at Ypres \u276e\u276e 240\u201345, at the end of July, resulted in high casualties and small gains, ending with the Allies capturing Passchendaele Ridge in early November. THE TANK CORPS The British were the \ufb01rst to use tanks, during the Battle of the Somme \u276e\u276e 180\u201385 in September 1916. In July 1917, a Tank Corps was formed. Used to support infantry, tanks had proved useful but not decisive. At Third Ypres (Passchendaele), they were often unable to operate on the soft, muddy terrain. 248"]