Report from the (Now Quiet) Fronts #53: A Legacy of Autocracy

Jan26

(The major post-war political arrangements would not be confirmed until the Versailles Treaty of June 1919 and the Treaty of Trianon of June 1920, but most were in the air before that.)

The Great War dramatically changed the map and political culture of Europe. Three large empires had collapsed: Romanov Russia, Hapsburg Austria and Ottoman Turkey. The result was the emergence of independent states in Eastern Europe, new French and British provinces in the Middle East and Africa and the general disappearance of autocratic monarchy in favor of dictatorships.

Europe 1923

Yugoslavia, composed of the Slavic provinces of the Austrian Empire, appeared, along with Austria, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, while the emasculation of Germany and the chaos in Russia allowed the formation of an independent Poland for the first time since the Third Partition of Poland in 1795. While the Russian Civil War raged through 1918 and 1919, Belarus, the Ukraine and several pocket states in the Caucasus asserted their independence, only to be reabsorbed into the new Russian Empire with the triumph of the Bolsheviks and establishment of the USSR. And Turkey was reduced to Anatolia and a toehold in Europe in the area surrounding Istanbul.

Partitions of Poland

The new Polish Republic

The dismemberment of the Austrian Empire

The German Empire was a special case. Though possessing minorities of Danes, French and especially Poles on its western and eastern frontiers, it was overwhelmingly ethnic Germans and could not “collapse” as its neighbors did. Like the former provinces of the Austrian and Russian Empires, Germany would have its frontiers redrawn along ethnic lines, according to the mandate of President Wilson. Consequently, Germany lost the northern part of Schleswig-Holstein to Denmark and Posen to Poland, which was given access to the Baltic Sea by creating a “corridor” along the Vistula River to the now “free” city of Danzig (Gdańsk). This of course separated East Prussia from the rest of Germany, a perfect recipe for future trouble.

Post-war Germany

Pre-war Germany

But Germany had another problem: France. 87% of the population of Alsace-Lorraine was German-speaking (it was conquered by Louis XIV), but even President Wilson could see that the French would never accept anything less than a full restoration of the province to France. This was a question of honor, and the territory was returned to France, despite the wishes of many of the inhabitants; some French politicians even demanded the incorporation of the Rhineland into France. Altogether, Germany lost 25,000 square miles of territory and 7 million people.

French, British and Italian territorial demands apart, restructuring Eastern Europe along ethnic lines was not at all easy, given the intermingling of ethnic populations and historic claims to territory. The biggest loser was Hungary, whose frontiers were settled by the Treaty of Trianon, dictated by the Allies in 1920. The new Hungarian Republic lost 72% of the territory and 64% of the population of antebellum Kingdom of Hungary, mostly to Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia. Granted, the Kingdom had a huge non-Hungarian population, but the Treaty left 3.3 million (31%) ethnic Hungarians outside the Republic. Romania, on the other hand, was a big winner, gaining Transylvania, Bessarabia and Bukovina and thus doubling the size of the Romanian state.

Hungarian losses

Romanian gains

Under the influence of the Allies, especially America, all these new political entities, including Germany, began their post-war existence with parliamentary governments, either as republics or limited monarchies. Like America attempting to create a democratic government in Afghanistan, this was wishful thinking on a grand scale. None of these polities had any real experience with democracy, and they were ill-equipped to deal with the turbulent 1920s. Despite the attempt to draw boundaries according to ethnic lines, there was immediately dissatisfaction with the new frontiers; old territorial claims could not so easily be discarded. A number of local wars promptly broke out, confronting the new civil governments with serious strain and threats, especially from successful military leaders.

The Versailles Treaty established an international body for Europe, the League of Nations, but such an organization was before its time and lacked the powers necessary to enforce its decisions. Even President Wilson, the major supporter of the League, could not convince an isolationist Congress to join the organization. If France and Britain were reluctant to challenge Hitler in the late 1930s, they certainly had no interest in going to war in the 1920s because of border conflicts in Eastern Europe.

There was also the looming presence of the new Soviet Empire, eager to regain czarist provinces lost during the defeat and following Civil War and ready to support communist movements throughout Europe. Unsurprisingly, the typical response was official and unofficial repression of these political groups (and ethnic minorities), leading inevitably to attacks on other political opponents and more authoritarian governments. These trends were then exacerbated by the worldwide Depression, which caused economic hardship and further destabilized society, creating more support for strong leaders who could solve problems that seemed beyond elected parliaments. And of course, a suffering population was more than ready to blame the ethnic and religious “others” in their midst.

As the leader of the defeated Central Powers and occupier of eastern France and Belgium (and for the French as the victor of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71), Germany was a special case. Much more than the other Allies, France wanted revenge, crippling reparations and the emasculation of Germany for all time to come, an approach to peace that almost guaranteed the failure of the new democratic republic. French demands could only strengthen the German far right, which was already gaining popular support in its increasingly violent struggle against the communists.

They also fanned the flames of resurgent German nationalism and the growing myth of the Dolchschoẞ (“stab in the back”), the idea that the German military did not lose the war but was betrayed by the civilian government that succeeded the Kaiser. The men who signed the Armistice and the later Treaty of Versailles were the “November criminals,” who had stabbed Germany in the back, and the anti-democratic forces, especially Hitler’s National Socialists, seized upon this nonsense to attack the Weimar government.

Philip Scheidemann, November criminal

Matthias Erzberger, November criminal

A Jew delivering the stab in the back

Scheidemann and Erzberger administering the stab in the back

As a result of all these pressures, aided by the emergence of the fascist Third Reich, by the middle 1930s only two states in Central and Eastern Europe possessed functioning democratic governments: Finland and Czechoslovakia (despite its multi-ethnic population). Germany, Austria, Italy, Romania, Yugoslavia, Albania, Greece, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Russia all had authoritarian governments. And Europe was again on the brink of war.

The Great War also altered the cultural landscape of Europe, essentially eliminating courts and royalty as well as the last continental empires. The sense of European peace and security that had existed since the fall of Napoleon evaporated, replaced by a growing nervousness as Europe left centuries of tradition behind. The shock that the Great War delivered to European civilization can hardly be overestimated; as F. Scott Fitzgerald would later say in Tender Is the Night, “All my lovely beautiful safe world blew itself up.” Coincidentally, the emergence in the early years of the twentieth century of relativity and quantum physics shattered the well understood and orderly universe of classical physics, dragging science itself into the brave new world of confusion and uncertainty created by the Great War.

The roots of the Second World War are clearly found in the Great War and its immediate aftermath. The Treaty of Versailles, especially the financial demands, almost guaranteed that the Weimar Republic would not survive, at least not as a democratic entity. The Bolshevik Revolution and emergence of the Soviet Union threatened Eastern Europe and helped fuel the rearmament of Germany, which under Hitler was increasingly focused on the east. And when the crisis approached in the late 1930s, the horrific losses of the Great War certainly contributed to the inclination towards appeasement rather than early and robust action against Hitler. The First and Second World Wars might be viewed as a single war with a twenty year pause, a European civil war that ended with two non-European powers, the USSR and the USA dominating the continent.

Incidentally, on 3 October 2010 Germany paid off the last of the Great War reparations.

Report from the (Now Quiet) Fronts #52: A Legacy of Death

Nov27

The most important legacy of the Great War was establishing the shape of twentieth century Europe and the Near East through the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman Empires. But the most immediately apparent legacy was the extinction and ruin of millions of lives, virtually all of whom had nothing to do with the outbreak of the war or its final settlement. World War II, born to a great extent out of the First, would produce far more casualties, but the losses of the Great War seem more poignant inasmuch as they were suffered in an utterly pointless conflict waged, at least in France and Italy, in a frequently pointless manner.

The world had never seen such a mobilization of men. On the Allied side: Russian Empire 12,000,000, British Empire 8,841,541, France 8,660,000, Italy 5,615,140, United States 4,743,826, Romania 1,234,000, Japan 800,00, Serbia 707,343, Belgium 380,000, Greece 250,000, Portugal 80,000 and Montenegro 50,000; a total of 42,959,850 men. The Central Powers: Germany 13,250,000, Austro-Hungarian Empire 7,800,000, Ottoman Empire 2,998,321 and Bulgaria 1,200,000; a total of 25,248,321 men. In the course of four years 75,208,171 men were under arms.

An entire generation of young men were obliterated or maimed. (These figures vary a great deal.) The Allied losses totaled 5,520,000 killed in action and 12,831,500 wounded in action, a total of 18,356,500 casualties; the Central Powers saw 4,386,000 killed and 8,388,000 wounded, a total of 12,774,000 casualties. The big losers: Germany with 2,050,897 dead, Russian Empire 1,811,000, France 1,397,000, Austro-Hungarian Empire 1,200,000, British Empire 1,114,914; actually, as percentage of population the biggest losers were the Serbians at an astounding 17-28%, the Turks at 13-15% and the Romanians at 8-9%. Add to all this 4,000,000 civilian deaths on the Allied side and 3,700,000 on the side of the Central Powers (including perhaps 1,500,000 Armenians). In all, about 17,593,000 died in the Great War; millions more would die in the Russian Civil War and resulting famine in the Ukraine (not to mention a natural cause – the influenza pandemic).

More than 21,000,000 were wounded in the Great War, and Europe was now filled with men missing limbs, jaws and eyes, men with corrupted lungs and men with damaged minds. In fact, British army surgeons, led by Harold Gillies, undertook more than 11,000 reconstructive operations, mostly for facial damage, and Gillies was later recognized as the father of plastic surgery.

Retraining injured men

Repaired soldiers

Harold Gillies

For the common soldiery the Great War meant lost years, wounds, death and perhaps a medal, but for the upper echelon of officers it meant in many cases career advancement and sundry honors. Joseph Joffre and Ferdinand Foch, for example, were made Marshals of France, and Douglas Haig received, among other honors, the thanks of Parliament, an earldom, and a grant of £100,000. I expect the poilus and Tommies were delighted by such awards to their noble commanders.

Infantrymen

Infantryman

Infantrymen

Field Marshal Joffre

Field Marshal Foch

Field Marshal Haig

Report from the Fronts #42: March 1918

Feb28

The big news for March 1918 was the German Spring Offensive, but first there was a flurry of peace treaties. On 1 March Bolshevik Russia signed a peace treaty with the Finnish Socialist Workers’ Republic, which had emerged in the industrialized south of Finland in January. Unfortunately for Lenin, the Workers’ Republic was not at all popular among most Finns, and the result was a civil war in which the “reds” were supported by Moscow and the “whites” by Berlin, which signed a treaty of peace with Finland on 7 March. In terms of barbarity the Finish Civil War quickly became a small-scale forerunner of the far greater horror that was the Russian Civil War.

Murdered Whites

Executing Reds

Red Guards

White Guards

The Finnish Civil War during March

On 5 March Romania agreed –what choice did she have? – to a preliminary peace with the Central Powers, Bulgaria and Turkey and four days later signed a peace with Russia, a far easier proposition. Bolshevik Russia, meanwhile, finally bowed to the inevitable on 3 March (the day after the Germans captured Kiev), and Grigori Sokolnikov (killed in prison in 1939) signed the draconian Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Russia lost the Baltic states, Belarus and the Ukraine (as personal possessions of the Czar, Poland and Finland were already gone), which meant that a quarter of the former Empire’s population and industry now belonged to the Germans.

Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

Slivers of the Russian Empire for Turkey

The Treaty itself

Grigori Solkonikov

This might have been a great deal for the Germans had there not been a Western Front. Brest-Litovsk did free up several hundred thousand troops needed for the planned Spring Offensive – Germany’s last shot before being overwhelmed by the Americans – but the desire to secure this eastern empire and its resources left a million men scattered from Poland through the Ukraine. Inasmuch as the attempt to establish a Ukrainian puppet state would fail and the expected resources never appear because of constant revolts against the occupying troops, Ludendorff would have better served his country by evacuating everything east of Poland.

Hindenburg the figurehead and Ludendorff the ruler

The aforementioned Spring Offensive (or Ludendorff Offensive or Kaiserschlacht) began on 21 March. Ludendorff had collected 74 divisions (out of 192 in the West) and 10,000 guns and mortars, spread along the 43 mile front from Arras south to La Fère on the Oise River. The German Seventeenth Army, under Otto von Below, the Second Army, under Georg von der Marwitz, and the Eighteenth Army, under Oskar von Hutier, faced the right wing of Julian Byng’s Third Army and Hubert Gough’s Fifth Army. The strategic aim was to move northwest from the breakthrough and cut the British off from the English Channel and the French to the south, forcing negotiations.

General Julian Byng 3rd Army

General Hubert Gough 5th Army

Spring Offensive

General Oskar von Hutier

General Otto von Below 17th Army

General Georg von der Marwitz 2nd Army

The initial phase of the offensive, Operation Michael, would throw 44 divisions, many just specially trained for rapid advance, at the line from Arras to south of St. Quentin. The northern elements of the advance would take Arras and head northwest, while the southern units would move to the Somme and hold it against counterattacks. Ludendorff ordered a massive but relatively short initial bombardment in order to preserve some element of surprise, but a week before the launch the British knew from reconnaissance, prisoners and deserters a big push was coming and shelled German assembly areas.

Operation Michael

In the early hours of 21 March the shells began raining done over a 40 mile front, 3,500,000 in five hours, the largest bombardment of the war. The British front lines were severely disrupted by gas and smoke and the rear areas and supply lines pounded by heavy artillery, and more important, communications between headquarters and the fronts were severed. Further, a thick fog came with the dawn, allowing the German troops to sneak by defensive positions and infiltrate the rear.

Operation Michael would last until 5 April, proceeding through six named battles: the Battle of St. Quentin (21-23 March), the First Battle of Bapaume (24-25 March), the Battle of Rosières (26-27 March), the First Battle of Arras (28 March), the Battle of the Avre (4 April) and the Battle of the Ancre (5 April). One can see from the names that much of this ground would be fought over again. (That was a spoiler, I suppose.)

The offensive got off to a great start, and within days the British were engaged in fighting withdrawals in order to protect exposed flanks and compelled to call in French troops to stem the German tide at the southern part of the front. Not only were the British dramatically outnumbered in divisions, but many were seriously exhausted and understrength. But it was certainly not a rout, as British and Commonwealth losses demonstrate.

British 6 inch gun in action

Retreating British

German AV7 tank near the Somme

For all the initial success, however, the offensive ran up against the usual barrier: the difficulty of resupply and consolidation in the wake of a rapid advance. Making it even more difficult in this case was the fact that much of the terrain had been fought over two years earlier during the Somme Offensive and was a lunar landscape virtually impassable for wheeled vehicles. Further, when the Germans withdrew to the Hindenburg Line in 1917, they had destroyed everything that might be of use to the Allies and now had themselves to deal with the devastated infrastructure and poisoned wells.

Advancing over the Somme battlefield

Dragging artillery forward

German supply column

Superficially Michael looked a success. The Germans had penetrated 40 miles (light years in Great War terms) in the center of the offensive and collected 75,000 prisoners and about 1200 square miles of French turf. But they had not taken Arras and were stopped short of Amiens, and more important, they had suffered some quarter million casualties, particularly among the elite Stormtroopers (Stoẞtruppen). The Allies had lost about the same number, but huge American reinforcements were beginning to arrive and Allied war production could easily replace the lost materiel. The Germans could not. The Spring Offensive would continue for another three months, but many in the military were already deciding the war was over for Germany.

(For an excellent account of Operation Michael from the point of view of a German infantryman I recommend the personal memoir of Ernst Jünger, Storm of Steel (Stahlgewittern). Jünger was present at the Somme, Cambrai and the Spring Offensive, where he was seriously wounded and concluded that Germany could not win. He survived the war (and the next as well) and was the rare enlisted man to be awarded the Pour le Mérite.)

Ernst Jünger

Ernst Jünger at 100

Operation Michael underlined the problems of coordination between the British and French high commands, and on 26 March General Ferdinand Foch was chosen to coordinate Allied activities. In April he would be named Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies, a long delayed development.

Ferdinand Foch

In other news, on 21 March the Commonwealth troops in Palestine began crossing the Jordan River, heading for the key Turkish position in Amman, which controlled the all-important Hejaz Railway. By the 27^th they had occupied the Moab hills and assaulted Amman itself (The First Battle of Amman 27 – 31 March), but Turkish/German counterattacks forced them back to the west bank of the Jordan by 2 April.

Turkish prisoners

Amman

The Jordan Valley and Amman

Bridge across the Jordan

Crossing the Jordan

More interesting, on the same day the Jordan was crossed the Germans began shelling Paris – from 75 miles away. Near Coucy-le-Château-Auffrique, behind their lines, the Germans had emplaced the largest artillery piece (in terms of barrel length – 112 feet) of the war, the 256 ton Paris Gun (Paris-Geschütz), also known as the Emperor William Gun (Kaiser Wilhelm Geschütz). The gun fired yard long 234 pound shells, which traveled 25 miles up into the atmosphere, the first manmade objects to enter the stratosphere, and the range was so great that the rotation of the earth needed to be taken into account in aiming the weapon.

The Paris gun

Emplacing the Paris gun

Paris gun mount

The guns – there were three of them – were designed by Krupp engineer Fritz Rausenberger and marvels of engineering for the time, but as an effective weapon they had serious drawbacks. Inasmuch as the shell had to be sturdy enough to withstand the pressures of firing, it could only carry 15 pounds of explosive, a trivial amount when the smallest target you could expect to hit was a city. (A proposal to employ a sabot-mounted shell, which would increase the explosive payload was inexplicably rejected.) Further, each shot wore down the barrel enough that the next shell had to be slightly bigger, and after 65 had been fired the barrel was sent back to Krupp to be restored. An average of 20 shells a day were fired, amounting to only 300 pounds of explosive delivered in small packets.

The gun

The shell and propellant

Hello, stratosphere

Clearly the gun was not intended to level Paris, but to undermine morale in the capital. But when the firing stopped in August (the Allies were approaching the site), only 250 Parisians had been killed and 620 wounded, and after initial confusion regarding the source of the shelling Paris shrugged off the threat. The psychological offensive had failed. On the other hand, Germany had reached the stratosphere.

On a lighter note, the first confirmation of a new strain of influenza came on 11 March. It was found coursing the bloodstream of Private Albert Gitchell at Fort Riley, Kansas, though the ultimate origin of the disease is still in dispute. This was the “Spanish Flu” of 1918-1919, so named because more cases were reported in neutral Spain, where there was no military censorship. It would kill 3% to 6% of the human race.

The influenza hospital at Fort Riley

Report from the Fronts #25: January 1917

Jan19

Because of the weather there was little action in the west in January, though planning for the spring offensive was underway. On the first day of the year Douglas Haig, the “Butcher of the Somme,” was promoted to Field Marshal, the highest rank in the British Army, but this was certainly no reflection of his military talents. Nicholas II had been made a British Field Marshal exactly one year earlier, and Wilhelm II and Franz Joseph had been honored with the title in 1901 and 1903.

Field Marshal Wilhelm

Field Marshal Franz Joseph

Field Marshal Haig

Field Marshal Nicholas

Far and away the most important missive of January was the so-called Zimmermann telegram. On 16 January the German Foreign Minister, Arthur Zimmermann, sent a coded telegram to the German ambassador in Mexico, Heinrich von Eckhardt, routing it through the hands of the ambassador in Washington, who forwarded it to Eckhardt on 19 January. Unfortunately for the Germans (and unknown to the Americans; some things never change), all the cable traffic passing through the relay station at Land’s End in Britain (the German transatlantic cables had been cut at the beginning of the war) was being monitored, and a copy was passed to the Admiralty intelligence section, quaintly named Room 40, for decoding.

Heinrich von Eckardt

Arthur Zimmermann

The decrypted message was a bombshell:

“We intend to begin on the first of February unrestricted submarine warfare. We shall endeavor in spite of this to keep the United States of America neutral. In the event of this not succeeding, we make Mexico a proposal of alliance on the following basis: make war together, make peace together, generous financial support and an understanding on our part that Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. The settlement in detail is left to you. You will inform the President of the above most secretly as soon as the outbreak of war with the United States of America is certain and add the suggestion that he should, on his own initiative, invite Japan to immediate adherence and at the same time mediate between Japan and ourselves. Please call the President’s attention to the fact that the ruthless employment of our submarines now offers the prospect of compelling England in a few months to make peace.”

British translation

Coded telegram

Partially decoded telegram

The Germans had decided to resume unrestricted submarine warfare, suspended in September 1915, regardless of the danger of drawing America into the war. While the Central Powers were being slowly strangled by the British blockade, the Entente had access to armaments and more important, food from the United States. Ludendorff uncritically accepted the contention of the Navy, which strongly advocated the resumption of unrestricted warfare, that there were no effective countermeasures to submarine warfare and concluded that the time was ripe to strike. Ironically, it was the Kaiser who raised doubts, advised by a close friend who was familiar with America and understood the potential power of the country. He was ignored by Ludendorff.

The Russian military was rapidly collapsing and Romania had been virtually eliminated, freeing large numbers of troops for transfer to the west. Further, the United States was in the midst of an undeclared conflict with Mexico, which it had invaded in 1914, and there were currently American troops still in the country. Ludendorff believed that unlimited submarine warfare in the Atlantic could bring Britain to its knees before the Americans could mobilize sufficiently to have an impact on the war, especially if Mexico could be persuaded to attack them. This would prove to be a disastrous miscalculation and would doom Germany to defeat.

On 31 January Germany announced that the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare would begin the next day. Washington was of course not amused, but was, however, still unaware of the Zimmermann telegram and would not receive it from the British until 19 February.

Meanwhile, in the east Romanian towns were still falling to the Germans, and on 6 January the last Romanian and Russian troops were driven out of the Dobruja. I have not been tracking Russian ministers, but January presents an excellent example of the chaos descending on St. Petersburg: in that single month the Prime Minister, Alexander Trepov, the War Minister, Dmitry Shuvalev, and the Foreign Minister, Nikolai Pokrovsky, resigned or were sacked. In the period from September 1915 to February 1917 – the “Czarina’s Rule” – Russia had four Prime Ministers, three Foreign Ministers, three War Ministers, five Interior Ministers, two Transport Ministers, and four Agricultural Ministers. This was no way to run a country during wartime.

Nikolai Pokrovsky

Alexander Trepov

Dmitry Shuvalev

The British were doing better. The Sinai military railroad reached El Arish on 4 January (the all-important water pipeline would arrive on 5 February), making possible an assault on Rafa, the last major Turkish garrison in Sinai (there were still a handful of Turks and armed Bedouins at Nekhl and Bir el Hassana). It was seized on 9 January, making way for an invasion of Palestine. Meanwhile, Commonwealth and Turkish aircraft spent the month merrily bombing each other; horses were a favorite and easy target.

Turkish POWs on the road to El Arish

British firing line at Rafa

Northern Sinai

Sinai-Palestine frontier – boundary pillars

Battle of Rafa

Finally, the Arab revolt was picking up steam and becoming a serious annoyance to the Turks. T.E. Lawrence had convinced the leaders of the revolt in the Hejaz, two of Hussein’s sons, Faisal (future king of Iraq) and Abdullah (future king of Jordan) to coordinate with the British and to attack the Hejaz railway instead of Medina. Not only was Medina a tough nut to crack, but defending and repairing the rail line, utterly vital to the Turkish position in the Hejaz, would tie up far more Ottoman troops. Arab guerilla and Allied air attacks were already having an impact, forcing the Hejaz commander, Fakhri Pasha, to abandon his attempt to reach Mecca and return to Medina on 18 January.

Fakhri Pasha

Faisal

Abdullah

Since July 1916 the Arabs had controlled the port of Yenbo, west of Medina, but needed a base further north. The choice was Wejh, halfway up the coast from Yenbo to Aqaba, and on 3 January Faisal began moving up the coast with a force of 5300 foot and 5100 camel cavalry, supplied by the royal Navy. They turned out to be unnecessary. 400 Arabs and 200 Royal Navy personnel were landed north of Wejh and surprising the Ottoman garrison, easily took the town on 24 January.

The Arabs were ready for serious business. They now had 70,000 men in the field, though many were still poorly armed; Faisal was based at Wejh, Abdullah at Wadi Ais north of Medina and Ali, the third brother, near Medina. The Regular Arab Army, formed in 1916, were full-time conventional troops and wore uniforms (British style of course, which is why the present day armies of the Middle East look British), while the more familiar (because of the movie) and romantic Bedouin raiders were essential guerilla forces. They were difficult to command and fought when it suited them, but a raiding party on camels could cover a thousand miles with no support and suddenly appear from out of nowhere, which is to say, the desert. Colonel Lawrence (among others) knew how to use these forces, especially against the railway.

The Hejaz railway

Bedouin raiders – Lawrence on the dark camel

The Regular Arab Army

Ali

The Hejaz campaign a century later

More remains

Take that,Turks!

Report from the Fronts #24: December 1916

Jan6

December 1916 began with Greece, the reluctant non-ally, on the verge of civil war. Despite the presence of Allied forces in the Piraeus, on 1 December the government in Athens refused to accede to the Allied demands to expel ministers of the Central Powers and turn over war material (19 November). A fire fight broke out between the French troops and the Greeks, including an exchange between Greek artillery and Allied warships, and outnumbered and short of supplies, the Allied troops were withdrawn the same day. Five days later there was a massacre of Venizelos supporters in Athens. On 8 December Allied naval elements began a blockade of Greece, at least those parts still controlled by Athens.

The French battleship Mirabeau bombarding Athens

French troops at Athens

More French in Athens

French vice-admiral Louis Dartige du Fournet,commander of the Athens expeditiion

French vice-admiral Louis Dartige du Fournet,commander of the Athens expedition

On 11 December the Allies, once again with no legal basis, demanded that Greece demobilize and three days later that Greek military units loyal to Athens be withdrawn from Thessaly, the area to the southwest of Salonika. The next day Athens accepted the ultimatum but two days later issued an arrest warrant for Venizelos on grounds of high treason, an understandable move. Britain responded on 19 December by recognizing the Venizelos opposition government, and there was little Athens could do about it. As Thucydides said: the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

But peace was in the air, at least among the Central Powers, who were apparently starting to feel the effects of the British blockade and the huge losses in France and Italy. On 12 December the governments of Germany, Austria, Bulgaria and Turkey handed notes to their respective American ambassadors that they were prepared to open negotiations with the Allies. On the 18^th President Wilson responded by sending notes to the Allies proposing peace negotiations, which the Central Powers accepted and the Entente declared they would consider. Consider it they did, and on 30 December they rejected the proposal, condemning Europe to two more years of war.

On the British front the Liberal/Conservative coalition government of Herbert Asquith fell on 4 December, a victim of military disappointments and casualties, sundry domestic crises and Parliamentary politics. Two days later his War Minister and fellow Liberal, the colorful Welshman David Lloyd George, became Prime Minister, where he would remain until the end of the war. Many now consider Asquith the most important Prime Minister of the 20^th century, insofar as he was able to implement national mobilization and take a united Britain into the war. He was the last Liberal Prime Minister to govern, at least initially, without a coalition; the Liberal Party was giving way to Labor as the party of left and was dissolved in 1988 after a 129 year run.

David Lloyd George

Herbert Asquith

On 13 December operations began for as second assault on Kut in Mesopotamia, and 48 hours later Britain restyled the Sharif of Mecca as “King of the Hejaz” in place of “King of the Arabs.” Ah, perfidious Albion. On 21 December Commonwealth forces occupied El Arish, about 30 miles from Gaza, and the door was now open for the invasion of Palestine.

El Arish

In miscellaneous news on 6 December Bucharest was captured by the Germans, completing the virtual ruin of Romania. There was no actual capitulation, but more than two-thirds of the county was now occupied by the enemy and the army had almost vanished. The Romanian government had clearly made a dreadful mistake in going to war and in less than four months had lost their country and suffered 300,000 to 400,000 military casualties to the Germans’ 60,000. On the other hand, if the Allies won the war, Romania could expect territorial additions.

In France Robert Nivelle, fresh from his successes at Verdun, replaced Joffre on 12 December as Commander-in-Chief, just in time to face the mutinies of 1917. Joffre was made “General-in-Chief,” an office he soon discovered provided him with little real power. On the 26^th he was made a Marshal of France, which may have taken some of the sting out of being demoted.

General Robert Nivelle

Papa Joffre

Finally, Russia. On 2 December the government announced that the Allies had confirmed Russia’s right to Constantinople and the Straights, and about a week later the Murmansk railroad was completed, making it much easier for the Allies to supply the under-industrialized country. None of this mattered, though, since the Russian armies were crumbling, and the smell of revolution was definitely in the air.

Nor did the most famous event of December 1916 matter: the assassination of Grigori Rasputin. In the course of 1916 the grip of the alleged monk on the Czar and Czarina had been steadily growing, fueling popular dissent against the incompetent Nicholas, who was believed to be controlled by his wife (he was), who in turn was controlled by Rasputin (she was). The fact that Alexandra was German (a daughter of Grand Duke Louis IV of Hesse and Princess Alice, daughter of Queen Victoria) certainly did not help.

Rasputin preparing to entertain (everyone is still sober and dressed)

Rasputin with Alexandra and the children

Empress Alexandra

The future Alexandra (lower right) with her siblings and grandmother Victoria

Grigori Rasputin

A conspiracy led by Prince Felix Yusupov, nephew-in-law of the Czar, was formed to eliminate Rasputin; other prominent members were Vladimir Purishkevich, a popular right-wing politician, and Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich. Cultivated for weeks by the Prince, Rasputin was invited to a midnight gathering in a furnished basement room in the Yusupov Palace in St. Petersburg, lured on by the promise of women, especially Yusupov’s wife, who in fact was in the Crimea.

Grand Duke Pavlovich (1930s)

Prince Yusupov

Vladimir Purishkevich

Basement room at Yusupov Palace

Since the murder immediately moved into the realm of legend, the story confused by conflicting accounts by the participants, it is impossible to know exactly what happened the night of 29/30 December (16/17 by the Russian calendar). Once there Rasputin was supposedly fed pastries loaded with potassium cyanide, since shots might have been heard, but there are problems with this story, the main ones being that Rasputin did not die and the autopsy found no cyanide (the autopsy report is missing). It has been suggested that the poison may have been ineffective because the monk’s stomach acidity was not high enough to alter the potassium cyanide into its deadly form, hydrogen cyanide, but in fact Rasputin seems to have been troubled by stomach acidity.

In any case, poison or no poison, Yusupov shot Rasputin in the chest and he fell to the floor, only to open his eyes a while later and run up the stairs and into a courtyard. There he was shot in the back by Purishkevich and fell into the snow, and one of the two then put a bullet in his forehead. They wrapped the body in a cloth, drove to the Malaya Nevka River and threw the corpse off the Bolshoy Petrovsky bridge into a hole in the ice. According to the lost autopsy report, he was already dead from the bullet to the head. Because of clues left behind (the assassins were hardly professionals), the body was found two days later, and early in January Yusupov and Pavlovich were sent into exile without investigation or trial; no others were punished.

…into the morgue

Off the bridge…

…out of the water…

The corrupt monk was gone; Alexandra and Nicholas would soon follow.

Report from the Fronts #23: November 1916

Dec1

The big news of November, certainly for British troops, was the end of the Somme Offensive. On 11 November the Battle of Ancre Heights, begun on 1 October, came to end, and two days later the Battle of Ancre began, supposedly to take advantage of German exhaustion from the previous fight. In fact Haig also wanted a success to counter criticism of the whole campaign and to improve the British position at an upcoming Allied conference. He was also under pressure to prevent German troops from being sent east, though it is hard to see how this small scale operation (12 British against 4 German divisions) could make any difference to the Russians and Romanians.

German prisoners at Ancre

British cavalry at Ancre

Battle of the Somme

The Battle of Ancre came to an end on 18 November. Five days of fighting had left the British with about 20,000 casualties and the Germans with some 45,000 (for the period 1-18 November), which was considered by some officers to be a victory. The troops involved in the fighting were apparently not polled on this question. With the winter snows beginning Ancre became the last push of the Somme Offensive, which in four and a half months of combat had moved the front eastward some four miles..

The cost for these gains was staggering. Figures are still being disputed a century later, but Commonwealth casualties were about 420,000, French around 200,000 and German losses anywhere from 450,000 to 550,000. The traditional view has been that the Somme was an unmitigated disaster – German officer Friedrich Steinbrecher: “Somme, the whole history of the world cannot contain a more ghastly word” – but some argue that the Allies had no other strategic option in 1916 and needed to do something to relieve pressure on the Russians. There is indeed evidence that the German army was seriously weakened and demoralized by the Somme, but it nevertheless still took another two years to collapse.

Meanwhile, the Italian version of the Somme went on. On 1 November General Cadorna launched the Ninth Battle of the Isonzo, attempting again to enlarge the Gorizia bridgehead with his exhausted troops. It ended on 4 November with minimal gains and 39,000 Italian and 33,000 Austrian casualties. The Italians were suffering, but Austrian manpower problems were even greater, and German units were desperately needed. For the moment, however, the front shut down for the winter, to the delight of troops on both sides of the line, I expect.

Over the top at Isonzo Nine

Isonzo front

On the Macedonian Front the Allies were more successful. In response to the Bulgarian offensive into eastern Macedonia in August the Allies counterattacked in September and by November were into Serbia, capturing Monastir on the 19^th. On the same day the Allies demanded that the Royalist government in Athens expel ministers of the Central Powers and turn over all war material. Athens refused, and on 23 November the Venizelos government in Salonika declared war on Germany and Bulgaria. On 30 November Allied troops landed at the Piraeus, the port of Athens. Greece was on the edge of civil war.

King Constantine

Eleftherios Venizelos

French troops at Athens

Romania, meanwhile, was in serious trouble. On 1 November the German Ninth Army under former Chief of Staff Erich von Falkenhayn moved southeast out of the southern Carpathians. The exhausted Romanians could not resist the 80,000 troops and 30,000 horses, and German cavalry was in Craiova on 21 November, pushing the Romanians east towards Bucharest. Another part of Falkenhayn’s army assaulted the Vulcan Pass on 10 November, and by the 26^th they were in the Romanian plain. (An up and coming young officer participating in the Battle of Vulcan Pass was Erwin Rommel.) On 23 November Mackensen, having essentially finished with the Dobruja, sent troops north across the Danube towards Bucharest. It did not look good for Romania.

King Ferdinand and his troops

Romanian artillery

Romanian front

In miscellaneous news, on 4 November Sharif Hussein of Mecca was crowned King of the Arabs (the Saudis would have something to say about that), and on the 15^th the British finally began moving across Sinai. Germany and Austria proclaimed on 5 November the establishment of an independent Polish state, which I expect most Poles greeted with skepticism, and Woodrow Wilson was reelected President of the United States. And Beatty replaced Jellicoe as the Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet on 29 November.

Woodrow Wilson

Hussein ibn Ali
King of the Arabs

A more momentous event was the death from pneumonia on 21 November of Franz Joseph I, Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary and Croatia, King of Bohemia. Politically and militarily the death of the 86 year old ruler meant little, especially inasmuch as the Austrian war effort was increasingly controlled by the Germans. But Franz Joseph was nevertheless a monumental figure; he had ascended the throne in 1848 and at 68 years was the third longest reigning monarch in European history (Louis XIV of France 72 years; Johann II of Liechtenstein 71 years). More than his fellow monarchs he symbolized the old Europe that, like his Empire, was being destroyed by the Great War.

Franz Joseph I
1851

Franz Joseph’s tomb in the Vienna crypts

Franz Joseph I
1910

Report from the Fronts #21: October 1916

Oct7

October kicked off with two new offensives on the Somme. The Battle of the Transloy Ridges (off the center part of the British area of operations) began on 1 October and proceeded intermittently until the 17^th, when lack of progress and foul weather caused Haig to move to far more limited assaults. The offensive would drag on into November, gaining a couple of miles of turf. As would the separate offensive begun by Haig on 1 October in the northern area of the British sector, the Battle of the Ancre Heights, which sought to pick up where Thiepval Ridge left off and ultimately gain control the Péronne- Baupame road. The autumn rains, incidentally, produced what was considered the worst mud of the Western Front, a vile yellow mix that stuck to everything; men and animals actually drowned in mud-filled shell craters.

Fighting General Mud

Mud everywhere

Battle of the Somme

To the south the French at Verdun had more success, partly because the Germans had been compelled to withdraw troops to shore up the Somme sector. On 24 October Nivelle launched the “First Offensive Battle of Verdun,” employing creeping artillery barrages designed to keep the enemy’s heads down, though in the six day traditional preparatory bombardment over 800,000 shells were fired. Fleury (finally) and Fort Douaumont, which the Germans had mostly evacuated, were captured on the first day; Fort Vaux, which the Germans abandoned, fell on 2 November, and by the 5^th the French had reached the original line of 24 February. But it was not over yet.

French mud

German mud

The “First Offensive Battle of Verdun”

Of course down in Italy General Cadorna was not to be outdone by the Somme and Verdun. On 10 October the Eighth Battle of the Isonzo got rolling, or better, staggering. The operation was a continuation of the Seventh Battle, as Cadorna attempted again to enlarge the Gorizia bridgehead, and again he failed. The assault ended after only two days because of heavy losses, 25,000 casualties on both sides. At least there was no mud.

A bit to the east the uneven struggle between the Entente and the Greek government was coming to a head. At the end of August revolting troops in northern Greece (with the support of the Allies) had formed the National Defense Committee in opposition to King Constantine and the government in Athens, and on 9 October Eleftherios Venizelos showed up in Salonika and agreed to form a provisional government.

The Triumvirate: Admiral Kountouriotis, Eleftherios Venizelos, and General Danglis

The new government was generally accepted in northern Greece, the Aegean islands and Crete, areas that had been recovered during the Balkan Wars and where Venizelos was very popular. On 10 October the Allies demanded that Athens surrender the Greek fleet, and faced with the French and British Mediterranean squadrons, the Athenian government complied on the following day. There was still no declaration of war against the Central Powers, but Greek troops would soon be fighting on the Macedonian front.

The armored cruiser HS Georgios Averof, flagship of the Hellenic Navy in 1916

Greek troops reviewed by the Triumvirate

October was definitely not a good month for the Romanians, who were under growing pressure from the Central Powers. Despite desperate resistance in the Carpathian passes by 25 October they had been driven out of Transylvania and back to their starting positions. Meanwhile, in the Dobruja Field Marshall Mackensen and his Bulgarian counterpart, General Stefan Toshev, launched another offensive and on 25 October occupied Constanta, driving out the Romanians and pushing the increasingly demoralized Russians into the Danube Delta marshes. Next step: crossing the Danube.

Stefan Toshev

August von Mackensen

Red Tower pass in the Carpathians

Counterattack against Romania

To the south the Arab Revolt was picking up. On 29 October the Sharif of Mecca, Hussein Ibn Ali, was declared King of the Arabs, an illusion based on British promises of a pan-Arab state made up of the Ottoman provinces. Of more concrete – and certainly more romantic – importance was the arrival in Jiddah (Hejaz) on 16 October of 28 year old Lieutenant T.E. Lawrence.

Lawrence had been in the Middle East since before the war, involved in cartography and archaeological work, especially at Hittite Carchemish in Syria with Leonard Woolley, later known for his excavation of Sumerian Ur. In January 1914 he and Woolley were enlisted by British intelligence because off their knowledge of the Arab world and language, but he did not join the Army until October, when he was promptly given a commission and no training. He was sent to Cairo in December, and except for a failed mission in 1915 to lift the Siege of Kut by bribery he spent most of time his time at a desk.

Woolley and Lawrence at Carchemish 1913

That changed in 1916 when he wrangled a place on a mission to the Hejaz led by another Arabist, Ronald Storrs, who needed to meet with the Hashemite princes to discuss the leadership of the Revolt and other matters. Of the four sons of the old Sharif in Mecca Lawrence was completely taken by the young Prince Faisal, whom he recommended as successor to Hussein and with whom he would spend the next two years.

Prince Faisal

Sir Ronald Storrs

T.E.Lawrence

Lawrence had no permanent official status in the Hejaz – Storrs was a civilian – so on 1 November he took ship from Jiddah to Port Sudan and the railway to Khartoum to meet Sir Reginald Wingate, Governor-General of the Sudan. Wingate would be delighted by Lawrence and begin him on his adventure in Arabia. Other westerners were already operating with the Arabs, but Lawrence’s role with the Bedouins, his writing ability and the fact that Lowell Thomas would cover his exploits (and later the 1962 movie) would make him an almost legendary figure.

Sir Reginald Wingate

Meanwhile, far to the west, off the eastern coast of America a strange encounter took place. On 7 October SM U-53 under Captain Hans Rose pulled into Newport, Rhode Island, to refuel. Courtesy visits were exchanged with local naval commanders, but Rose sailed in two hours, fearing his vessel would be interned. On the following day U-53 began stopping and searching merchant ships, including American, in international waters, sinking those that carried contraband. American destroyers showed up, but as neutrals they could only watch and rescue survivors.

The crew of U-53 at Newport

U-53 at Newport

Captain Hans Rose

No American vessels were sunk and no life was lost – Rose was extremely scrupulous about helping the crews of sunken ships – but the event raised official concern that German submarines had such range and capabilities. U-53, incidentally, survived the war, and Rose ended up sinking 79 ships and surviving until 1969, having seen it all insofar as Germany is concerned.

Report from the Fronts #19: August 1916

Aug23

August 1916 marked two years of war and was little different from the month before or the one to follow. On the Somme front the Battles of Delville Wood and Poziéres continued, piling up casualties for little gain and emulating the ongoing action to the south at Verdun. There on 1 August the Germans launched a surprise assault on Fort Souville and were duly counterattacked by the French, who on 18 August recaptured Fleury – or what was left of it.

Fort Souville

Poilus attacking Fleury

Fort Souville today

On 29 August Verdun claimed a major German casualty when Falkenhayn was sacked as Chief of Staff and replaced by Hindenburg. The apparent failure of the Verdun campaign and the beginning of the Somme and Brusilov Offensives played into the hands of Hindenburg and Ludendorff, who had been conspiring against Falkenhayn. Ludendorff became First Quartermaster-General, but he was in fact the real power, rapidly assuming control of the entire military and ultimately the Reich itself.

Falkenhayn

Hindenburg and Ludendorff

To the south the Isonzo Follies started up again as General Cadorna sought to take advantage of an Austrian line weakened by the removal of troops for the Trentino Offensive. The Sixth Battle of the Isonzo (or Battle of Gorizia) kicked off on 6 August with a two pronged assault against the long-sought prize of Gorizia, which the Austrians abandoned on 8 August. Gorizia was the gateway to Trieste and Ljubljana, but the poorly equipped Italian troops could make no further headway and Cadorna ended the offensive on 17 August.

Gorizia

General Luigi Cadorna

Isonzo front

This was Cadorna’s first success, and Italian morale skyrocketed with the capture of the city they had wanted since 1914. But they wanted Gorizia in order to seize Trieste and invade Slovenia, and in fact that would never happen, leaving Cadorna with only a wrecked city and more dead: 21,000 (not counting the missing) to the Austrian’s 8000. Throwing 22 divisions against 9 Austrian allowed the (limited) breakthrough to Gorizia, but Cadorna’s frontal assaults were extremely costly.

Exhausted Italian troops

Battle of Doberdo (beginning of Isonzo Six)

Gorizia after capture

Not costly enough, however, to prevent Rome from sending troops to join the growing international camp at Salonika on 12 August, presumably to back up Italian claims in the western Balkans. On 28 August Italy declared war on Germany, apparently under pressure from the Allies, since the two countries were not in direct conflict (German troops would not appear on the Italian front until 1917) and actually benefited from non-belligerence.

Meanwhile, Greece tottered toward open participation in the war. National pride and the Bulgarians in Macedonia spurred the Venizelist (pro-Entente, anti-Royalist) forces clustered in Salonika, and on 29-30 August Venizelist officers, supported by the Allies, launched a successful coup against the loyalists. Troops across northern Greece joined the revolt, and the seed of a government in opposition to Athens, the “National Defense Committee,” was formed. Loyalist officers fled south.

Greek troops in Salonika

Admiral Kountouriotis, Eleftherios Venizelos, and General Danglis.

To the south the Turks, who had been steadily creeping across Sinai during July, took what would be a final shot at the Suez Canal on 3 August, advancing towards Romani, about 20 miles from the Canal. The British had been busy, however, building a rail line east out of Kantara and could now send out more substantial forces. The result was the Battle of Romani on 3-5 August, during which the Turkish army was decisively defeated, suffering 9200 casualties to the Allied 1130. But the Ottoman commander, Friedrich Kress von Kressenstein, had prepared fortified positions during his advance, and his surviving forces were able to execute an orderly retreat. Nevertheless, by 12 August the Turks had been driven all the way back across Sinai to El Arish. The Battle of Sinai had ended and the Battle for Palestine could begin.

Australian 8th Light Horse at Romani

Kress von Kressenstein

Turkish advance and retreat in Sinai

Building the railroad across Sinai

Kressenstein with a smoke

The big news of August 1916 was the entrance of Romania into the war. King Carol I, a Hohenzollern like the Kaiser, had signed a defensive alliance with the Central Powers, but in 1914 the Romanian people favored the Allies and Romania remained neutral. King Ferdinand I, who succeeded Carol in October 1914, was more inclined towards the Entente and wanted Transylvania, an Austrian province with a Romanian population, but was wary of the Russians and being left in the lurch by the French and British. Only after the Allies agreed to stringent terms (most of which were subsequently ignored) did he make his move.

British propaganda

Romanian invasion of Transylvania

Romanians (black) in 1914

Romania in 1914

King Ferdinand I

An alliance was made with the Entente on 17 August, and on the 27th Romania declared war on Austria-Hungary and began mobilization. The next day a Romanian army invaded Transylvania, prompting Germany to declare war; Turkey followed on 30 (?) August and Bulgaria on 1 September. September would not be a good month for the Romanians.

Oh, the South Africans and Belgians continued capturing towns in East Africa, but Lettow-Vorbeck continued to lead them on a merry chase.

qqduckus

A professional historian and wise ass considers the contemporary world and the past

Category Archives: Romania