Report from the Fronts #39: January 1918

Jan1

The new year brought no particular hope for the Allies. The disaster of Caporetto and the exit of the Russians in fact boded ill, and the Allied command was looking to 1919 for a victory. The Central Powers had eliminated Russia from the war and could bring more troops west, but they were on the verge of starvation because of the Allied blockade and would need to take some action soon.

January saw no major fighting – the winter in France and Flanders was exceptionally cold – and most of the action was diplomatic. At Brest-Litovsk the Russians were discovering just how much a peace was going to cost them, and on 5 January ceased negotiations, demanding they be conducted at Stockholm. Three days later they resumed the talks, only to withdraw again on the 23^rd and then reengage on the 30^th. Dissension was growing among the Bolshevik leadership, and some wanted to wait until the expected worker revolutions broke out in Europe.

On 6 January a delegation from the Ukraine, which was seeking a separate peace with the Central Powers, arrived. In the wake of the February Revolution in March 1917 the Ukrainians had begun organizing their own state, and while this development was tolerated by the Provisional Government, the new Bolshevik regime was definitely unenthusiastic, despite its proclamation of self-determination in the former empire. As is still clear in the 21^st century, the Ukraine occupied a special place in the Russian heart: though possessing a different culture and language, it was considered “south Russia” and the birthplace of Russia itself – Kievan Rus’. And Lenin desperately needed Ukrainian grain. Two decades of nightmare were about to begin for the Ukrainian people.

The Ukrainian delegation at Brest-Litovsk

Others were leaving the one-time Greater Romanov Co-Prosperity Sphere. After the abdication of Czar Nicholas in March 1917 Finland declared itself autonomous, inasmuch as the personal union between Finland and Russia was based on the monarchy. When the Bolsheviks announced self-determination on 15 November, the Finish Parliament declared complete sovereignty and on 6 December passed a Declaration of Independence, which the Soviet government accepted on 4 January. Poland was occupied by the Germans, and Belarus and the Baltic and Caucasian states would soon be departing.

Signatures on the Finish Declaration of Independence

Incidentally, the Bolshevik leadership demonstrated in January that it was also unconcerned about self-determination in Russia. On the 18^th a supportive crowd marched on the Tauride Palace in St. Petersburg, where the Constituent Assembly, elected in November, was to meet. They were shot at by government soldiers, but the Assembly convened anyway, surrounded by troops, who finally forced the meeting to adjourn around 4 AM. The next day the Assembly was dissolved by the Bolshevik government, which had no need for a freely elected parliament.

The Tauride Palace

The meeting place in the Palace

Finally, in a speech to Congress on 8 January President Wilson outlined his Fourteen Points for a just settlement of the war. The first point called for “open covenants, openly arrived at,” a provision that the Allies, with all their secret treaties, were not amused by, though Lenin, who had revealed all the Russian treaties, thought the document enlightened. The French Prime Minister, Georges Clemenceau, who was less interested in Wilson’s idealism than squeezing every last pfennig out of Germany, responded to the Fourteen Points with Le bon Dieu n’en avait que dix ! (“The good Lord had only ten!”). Nevertheless, the Points would serve as a basis for negotiating the peace treaty at Versailles after the war.

Clemenceau

Wilson

Germany faces the Fourteen Points

Report from the Fronts #38: December 1917

Dec13

The battle of Cambrai came to an end on 7 December, and the Western Front was then otherwise “quiet.” On the same day the US Battleship Division 9, commanded by Rear Admiral Hugh Rodman, reached the Grand Fleet anchorage at Scapa Flow, adding four American dreadnaughts to the fleet. America at first resisted dividing its fleet, but First Sea Lord Jellicoe (who would resign on the 26^th) convinced the American admirals by revealing in April the massive losses in merchant shipping in 1917 – 600,000 tons per month – which would lead to starvation in Britain by the end of the year. The British requested older coal burning ships because of the shortages of oil, and the Americans sent the Delaware, Florida, New York and Wyoming.

USS Wyoming

USS New York

USS Delaware

USS Florida

Rear Admiral Hugh Rodman

Off in the east Russia was making its peace with the Central Powers. On 5 December a Russian delegation signed a general truce with the Central Powers at the fortress of Brest-Litovsk (the rest of city was in ruins) in Belarus and began negotiations for an armistice. The Soviet team was a motley crew, inasmuch as it involved representatives of all the social groups supporting the Revolution (soldiers, sailors, workers, etc. – a peasant was recruited off the street at the last minute), but two Bolshevik luminaries were present: Leon Trotsky (assassinated in August 1940) and Lev Kamenev (shot in August 1936).

Kamenev arrives

Kamenev

Trotsky

Trotsky arrives

Brest-Litovsk conference

The delegation was led by Adolph Joffe (committed suicide in November 1927 after being refused permission to travel abroad for medical treatment), an ally of Trotsky, and his position was soon improved by sending home many of the social group representatives, such as the sailors. On 15 December an armistice was signed, and on the 22^nd negotiations for a peace treaty began, a much harder row to hoe for the Russians. They wanted no “annexations or indemnities,” but the Central Powers had territorial ambitions galore and non-Russian provinces were already opting out of the prostrate Russian Empire. Courland, Poland and Lithuania, already occupied by the Germans and Austrians, wanted independence, which Finland declared on 6 December; the Moldavian Democratic Republic (Bessarabia) was declared on the 15^th. And proclaiming the principle of self-determination made it difficult for the Bolsheviks to argue against these developments.

Adolph Joffre

Meanwhile, it was becoming clearer where the new Russian republic was heading. Back in July the Provisional Government had accepted the idea of Constituent Assembly, but Kerensky wanted to wait until the war, which he wished to continue, was over. The October Revolution (in November) changed that, inasmuch as the Bolsheviks demanded immediate peace, and elections were held in November. Unfortunately for Lenin, a split among his allies, the Social Revolutionaries, meant the Bolsheviks could be a minority in the Assembly, and it would not be convened until January.

To the south the British outside Jerusalem were fending off Turkish counterattacks at the beginning of December, and on the evening of 8 December the Ottoman Seventh Army moved north, evacuating Jerusalem but for a small force on the Mount of Olives. The next day British units entered the city, which surrendered, and the Turks on the Mount were defeated. On 11 December Allenby entered the city through the Jaffa Gate, on foot in order to show respect for the holy places. From the 26^th to the 30^th the Turks, reinforced by units from further east (which would make Baghdad easier to capture), attacked the British positions but were repulsed.

British guard at the Jaffa Gate

Allenby at the Jaffa Gate

The British enter Bethlehem

The surrender of Jerusalem

Allenby enters Jerusalem

On 17 December London gave assurances to Hussein bin Ali, the self-proclaimed King of Hejaz, concerning the independence of the Arabs following the war. This assurance was, however, in direct contradiction to the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916, which handed the areas outside the Arabian Peninsula to the British and the French, and on 23 November the Bolsheviks had published the text of Sykes-Picot and other secret treaties (pretty much the only cool thing they would ever do). Ah, perfidious Albion.

Hussein bin Ali

The Hejaz

The odds and ends of December: on 7 December the American Congress, possibly in response to Caporetto, declared war on Austria-Hungary, followed by Panama on the 10^th, which surely convinced the Austrians that they were doomed. And on 1 December the last German troops were squeezed out of German East Africa, but Lettow-Vorbeck would carry on the war in Portuguese Mozambique.

The socialist Meyer London, the only man to vote against war with Austria-Hungary

And still the war went on.

A World War I Christmas from the Winter War

Jan1

For those of you who might be into such things: this is a Model 1910 Maxim heavy machine gun used by the Russian Imperial Army and subsequently by the Red Army until it was replaced in 1943. The gun is water cooled (hence the metal tube surrounding the barrel), takes the 7.62x54mmR rifle cartridge used in the Imperial/Soviet Mosin-Nagant service rifle and is affixed to a wheeled Sokolov mount. The weapon generally also has a shield mounted between the barrel and the receiver, but I have been unable to get the damned thing on. This example was probably manufactured in the twenties or thirties and was captured by the Finns during either the Winter War (1939-1940) or the Continuation War (1941-1944). The Continuation War was of course the Finnish participation in the German invasion of the USSR in 1941; the Winter War is more obscure.

In 1939 the Soviets demanded territory from Finland, most importantly, the Karelian Peninsula and the eastern part of South Karelia, which they felt threatened Leningrad. The Finns, who would lose their border defenses and a substantial chunk of their economy, refused, and in November 1939 the Red Army invaded, expecting an easy victory. That was not to be. The Red Army had been devastated by Stalin’s purge of the officer corps, and the Finns knew the terrain and fighting conditions. I suspect the origins of the Olympic Biathelon are found in the winter War: ski through the woods, shoot a Russian, ski through the woods, shoot another Russian. The Soviets suffered huge casualties (convincing Hitler the Red Army was weaker than it actually was), but in the end overwhelmed the Finns with their superior manpower and got what they had demanded. The costly resistance of Finland probably contributed to Stalin’s decision not to attempt to incorporate the country into the USSR after the defeat of Germany.

The Finns captured large amounts of Soviet equipment, including the Maxim pictured above, and thus this weapon has traveled from the snows of Karelia to the sands of New Mexico.