1918 The Last Act

by Barrie Pitt

  12. The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guarantees.

  13. An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence should be guaranteed by international covenant. 14. A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.

  If these terms do credit to President Wilson’s heart, they do not reflect a sound historical sense, or even a very profound knowledge of human nature. At least four of the clauses relied for their interpretation upon opinion as to what constituted the limits within which each clause should operate: and although President Wilson might have been clear in his own mind as to the limits he intended, others might read into them an entirely different significance. There was also implicit in every line of Wilson’s propositions, the pure ideal of freedom which they were obviously intended to breathe through the world like a healing zephyr. Unfortunately, as perhaps the statesmen of the older nations realized more clearly, human nature is so constituted that the only freedom it seems to value is that to enforce its will upon others.

  In view of the position to which Wilson had risen, it is unlikely that he was entirely free from this trait himself, and as the clauses of his Fourteen Points would all have to be agreed and put into operation by men who had themselves risen to the leadership of nations by the exercise of similar qualities, it can be seen that a fruitful source of misunderstanding – some sincere and some deliberate – would exist in a peace based upon them.

  One clause, however, permitted a minimum of misunderstanding and Britain categorically rejected it. This was the second clause, guaranteeing freedom of the seas in peace and in war, and it is a measure of Wilson’s diplomatic impracticability that he had failed to appreciate that American troops fought on European soil simply because Britain had kept the Imperial German Navy from the seas. The war itself was being won by the Allies largely as a result of the weapon of Blockade, which Wilson now proposed that Britain should deny herself in future times of national danger. There would have been no point in Lloyd George agreeing to such a limitation of his country’s power of self-protection – even for the sake of finishing the war – as he would inevitably have been toppled from office by the War Cabinet, and another Prime Minister installed who would immediately repudiate the point.

  Not that Lloyd George had any intention of agreeing. Later in the month, he crisply informed President Wilson’s representative that if as a result of their disagreement upon the matter. America chose to make a separate peace with Germany, Britain would regret it: but in order to protect their future, the British Nation would be forced to continue the war themselves. As Clemenceau for France and Sonnino for Italy both ranged themselves unhesitatingly alongside Lloyd George, the point was brought home to both the representative and to President Wilson that there were factors in European politics of which they were unaware, and that consultation with allies upon their requirements for peace instead of a bland assumption that one’s own were the best for everyone, might secure more satisfactory results. It was about this time that Clemenceau began referring to President Wilson as ‘Jupiter’.

  But for the moment there were to be no consultations – and in the absence of any word from Wilson, the Allies in France had no choice but to continue the war.

  In this they were aided by events. Either through lack of control or as a result of a not untypical insensitivity to political atmosphere, the retirement of the German armies immediately after the dispatch of the appeal for peace, was accompanied by havoc and destruction of property far exceeding anything that military expediency could warrant. Houses were wrecked, villages mined, even gardens despoiled and fruit trees ringed; and as, slowly, the Allied armies began to creep forward again, the anger and hatred which had been swamped by feelings of relief when first news of the peace move had been circulated, renewed themselves at such useless and wanton destruction, and rose indeed to greater heights. In the centre, the British First, Third and Fourth Armies gathered their strength, picked up their arms and began again to drive forward with a grim determination which astonished all observers, and reminded one of them of the warning uttered by Bugeaud after he had had time to appreciate the lessons of Waterloo: ‘The British infantry, sire, are the finest in the world. Fortunately there are not many of them.’

  There were enough of them now, however, and what they lacked in physical height, breadth of shoulder or depth of chest, they made up for in cunning, whilst nerves stretched beyond recovery by years of danger received at least a temporary revival from anger and a fierce resolve to finish for ever with an opponent capable of such brutal vandalism. On October 8th, Cambrai was taken, the Germans opposite forced back behind the river Selle, and the front cleared from the Sensée in the north to a point east of St. Quentin in the south. Since September 26th, the British had taken nearly fifty thousand prisoners and captured a thousand guns.

  Prisoners were being captured farther south, too, as the Americans gradually sorted out the chaos behind their front and began inexorably to press forward through the Argonne towards Mézières and Sedan.

  On October 8th, a patrol of twenty men under a sergeant were probing forward to find and eliminate some machine-gun posts holding up the general advance, when they came to a dell containing some seventy-five German troops. Either through immediate shock of surprise or recent disintegration of morale, the Germans promptly surrendered, but the Americans were now observed by the machine-gunners they had been sent out to find: these swung their guns around and with their customary efficiency, shot down the members of the patrol until there were only eight Americans left.

  Fortunately, one of these was a Corporal York, a large man from Tennessee, who had passed his formative years shooting for the pot in countryside not dissimilar from that in which he now found himself. From a kneeling position, he shot the machine-gunners – all of them – and when a German infantry lieutenant led a charge of half a platoon along the edge of the dell towards him, York continued to pick them off one by one until his rifle ammunition was gone, whereupon he drew his .45 automatic and continued a deliberate and accurate fire until the survivors of the charge threw down their arms and joined their compatriots already lying flat in order to avoid the stray bullets.

  Action now ceased, and York marched his prisoners back towards American lines where, after a certain unavoidable misunderstanding over identity, he handed them over to a lieutenant who asked how many there were.

  ‘Jesus, Lieutenant,’ said York in one of the classic replies of military legend, ‘I ain’t had time to count them yet!’

  He must have been an excellent soldier, possessing not only a remarkable degree of markmanship, but also a lot of luck. Had he endeavoured to execute his feat of arms at any previous time during the war, all the world would ever have known of Alvin York would have been his name on a cross.

  Upon the same day that York won his Congressional Medal, Wilson at last dispatched his reply to Germany’s peace move – still without consulting his allies. Possibly this lack of contact is justifiable on the grounds that upon two matters Wilson was asking for clarification of the original German Note: he asked if Germany herself fully accepted all of the Fourteen Points, and also – pointedly, and with true democratic fervour – whether the Chancellor was speaking ‘merely for the constituted authorities of the Empire who have so far conducted the War’?

  But he also stated categorically that he would not feel at liberty to app
roach his allies on Germany’s behalf whilst troops of the Central Powers still stood upon the soil of France, Belgium, Italy or Luxembourg. This on the face of it appeared much to the point but in the slippery world of European diplomacy, it could well have been adroitly interpreted by Germany as a pledge that once behind their own frontiers, their armies would be given the armistice they required – and thus the time needed – for reorganization and defiance in the face of further Allied demands.

  Something very like this did, in fact, occur. The Germans replied on October 12th to the effect that they accepted the Fourteen Points, they took it that America’s allies accepted them as well, and they were ready to evacuate occupied territory as a condition of an armistice. They also assured Wilson that the offer was made by the German Government representing the views of the majority of the Reichstag, and as such speaking for the German people.

  Unfortunately for the German leaders – and by now the Supreme Command was back in control – the smoothness of this reply was marred by the news that on October 10th a passenger steamer had been torpedoed off the Irish coast with a loss of nearly three hundred of her passengers’ lives, followed shortly by the sinking of the Irish Mail Boat Leinster – torpedoed a second time as she was going down – with a reported loss of five hundred and twenty passengers, mostly women and children. In addition, more and more instances of wanton destruction and a barbaric disregard of human life by the German troops were reported as the Allied armies advanced.

  By this time, too, Wilson had received a number of telegrams from Lloyd George and Clemenceau suggesting that there were one or two matters of policy which should be cleared up between them, before he committed them all to terms with which they might not be in full agreement. As a result of these and the public outcry caused by the sinkings, Wilson dispatched a second Note to the German Government on October 14th, phrased rather more tersely than the almost courtly wording of the first. He stated flatly that for armistice conditions the Germans would have to deal solely with the Allied military authorities – who in any case would insist upon conditions ensuring the maintenance of present Allied supremacy in the field – that none of the Allied Governments, including his own, would wish to treat with one whose armed forces continued in the illegal and inhuman practices still followed by those of Germany, and that the continuance of these practices seemed to indicate – despite the assurances received – that the same powers which had ruled Germany in the past, ruled them now.

  In this, Wilson was quite correct, for Ludendorff had recovered his nerve.

  Perhaps the physical collapse on September 28th, followed the next day by the confessions to the politicians and the Kaiser that the military position was far more serious than he had previously allowed them to realize, had acted as a psychological catharsis upon Ludendorff, during which he sloughed off his despondency. The brisk and victorious argument with Prince Max regarding the dispatch of the peace offer would then have acted as an emotional – although highly irrational – tonic to a convalescent nervous system, after which Ludendorff could turn his mind to the military situation and find that it was far better than he had imagined.

  Something like this must have occurred, for by October 7th Ludendorff’s authority had been miraculously reasserted at headquarters, the armies nearest to him felt again the firm grip of control, and although they continued to retreat they made the British fight every step of the way, while the previously haphazard destruction and havoc wracked by the troops became a systematic devastation of the countryside second only to the one they had perpetrated during the 1917 retreat to the Hindenburg Line. When the first of President Wilson’s Notes arrived on October 8th, Ludendorff immediately appreciated the advantages to be reaped by Germany from it: his armies, if unmolested by the enemy under armistice terms, could cause such a devastation of the occupied territory as they retreated, that it would take the Allies six months to follow them across it to the German frontier, during which time he could carry out a complete reorganization. His front would be reduced from four hundred kilometres to one of two hundred and forty-five, seventy divisions could be broken up to rebuild the remainder, and in their new defensive positions the German armies would be fed entirely by domestic lines of communication. Here they would surely prove invincible, and it was unlikely that the Allies would even attempt to prove otherwise, preferring instead to conclude the war with a negotiated peace.

  No one could then say that the German Army had been beaten, the gains in the east would be secure, and – who knows – in time they might be able so to threaten the Belgian coast again as to retrieve some margin of profit in the west.

  President Wilson’s second and terser Note was therefore received on October 15th with some scorn at Supreme Headquarters, and the reply which Prince Max first drafted was rejected as too abject in tone. The one finally dispatched to Wilson on October 20th denied the charge of inhumanity although it agreed that the practice of torpedoing passenger ships should cease; it accepted that armistice conditions should be agreed between military leaders but pointed out that if the Allies wanted guarantees that their military supremacy would be maintained, Germany was entitled to guarantees that it would not be increased, and that President Wilson should approve no demand ‘that would be irreconcilable with the honour of the German people and with paving the way to a peace of justice.’ In conclusion, it asserted that the new Government involved a fundamental change in the German constitution – which would take time – and that a Bill had to be passed to make the decision on war or peace subject to approval by the Reichstag.

  All this, of course, was little more than an astute move to gain time in which to rebuild strength, and would have been much to the point if military morale had been all that mattered – but if Ludendorff was now again in touch with his armies, he was utterly devoid of contact with the atmosphere at home.

  The news which von Hintze had taken back with him to Berlin on September 29th had served completely to destroy all confidence in Ludendorff and in the entire German High Command. To members of the Cabinet, of the Reichstag and to the whole German Nation, the revelation of the military situation as seen by Ludendorff on that fatal day had come as an overwhelming shock, and in the same degree as the High Command had previously enjoyed trust and confidence, now, with disillusion, it was the object of abuse and condemnation. ‘We have been betrayed’ echoed through the corridors of the Reichstag and across Germany: and everywhere the forces of revolution gathered strength and attempted to take control of the German Nation, ‘suddenly blinded’, as Liddell Hart was to write, ‘by too much light after too long a darkness.’ The fact that the light had not the pure clarity of complete truth did not affect its strength, and while the armies in the field began again to believe in their invincibility, those at home were assuming that the defeat and ruin of the Nation was imminent.

  Like all peoples throughout history in such a situation, they turned to rend their leaders – a condition of mind which was nursed by revolutionaries and received an enormous impetus from the hint contained in the concluding passage of Wilson’s second Note.

  When Wilson’s third Note arrived – in crushing reply to the bravado of the German communication of October 20th – then the fate of the Kaiser and his military advisers was practically sealed in the eyes of the German people at home, for it concluded with the statement that if the United States had to deal ‘with the military masters and the monarchial autocrats of Germany now, or if it is likely to have to deal with them later in regard to the international obligations of the German Empire, it must demand, not peace negotiations but surrender.’

  This Note – received in Berlin on October 23rd – announced also that the only armistice terms which Germany would be offered were those which would leave her virtually defenceless, and so brought the whole situation to a climax. Ludendorff’s confidence was by now so restored that he called upon the nation to reject the terms and the Army to continue the war; but if the Army still believed itself capable
of doing so, the nation did not, as only three weeks before Ludendorff had insisted to von Hintze and the Chancellor that the Army was almost broken. Riots broke out all over Germany, instigated by revolutionaries and augmented by deserters from both eastern and western fronts, and tension increased as hours and then days went by with no sign whatever of either dismissal of the key figures of the Supreme Command, or abdication of the Kaiser, both of which conditions were obviously required by Wilson.

  But as it happened, the Kaiser was in Germany at this time, not at the front, and his somewhat malleable personality was thus more influenced by the Chancellor than by his First Quartermaster-General. With the excuse that Ludendorff’s appeal for the continuance of the war was a breach of privilege, Prince Max announced that there was no longer room at the head of the German Nation for both Ludendorff and himself: and with the unfeeling ingratitude of the essentially shallow personality, the Kaiser sent for Ludendorff on October 26th and curtly indicated that his resignation would be acceptable.

  Thus after a lifetime of service to the German Nation, Ludendorff was dismissed, and it is doubtful whether he ever realized that the cruelty of his own fate was overshadowed by that of his country – for which he was himself largely responsible. That Germany would have been beaten militarily in the end there is little doubt, for her armies were by now greatly outnumbered – but even had they been pressed right back behind their own frontiers, Germany might still have secured relatively satisfactory peace terms, as four at least of the Allies were very tired. But when the Nation behind the Army disintegrated, then all was lost and Germany’s enemies could impose what terms they liked. This was a direct result of Ludendorff’s collapse on September 28th. Germany’s complete ruin was brought about because, at a crucial moment, Ludendorff thought that her armies were beaten; and by the time he had discovered his mistake, it was too late.