1918
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The American Army contribution in 1918
Among World War I’s vast scholarship, the US Army’s legacy has largely been overshadowed by historiography that stresses the BEF’s role in forcing the Germans to capitulate. Yet, when the war ended there was no doubt that the AEF had played a significant role in the defeat of the German Army. Over the course of 200 days of fighting the AEF had taken about 49,000 German prisoners and 1,400 guns. Over one million American soldiers in 29 divisions saw active operations, while one million more served in support roles. During the relatively brief period of combat the AEF lost over 320,000 casualties, of which 50,280 were killed and another 200,600 were wounded in action. In October, during the midst of the Meuse–Argonne battle, the Americans held over 101 miles, or 23 per cent, of the Western Front. After reorganizing, First Army’s improved staff work and coordination pushed the doughboys through the German defences. In November, as the front contracted with the German retreat, the AEF held over 80 miles or a fifth of the front line.
Such AEF achievements would not have been possible without Allied assistance. The French and British helped train and transport the American soldiers and supplied much of the artillery, and all of the tanks and aeroplanes used in battle. The French were especially cooperative. Pétain frequently intervened on behalf of Pershing and the AEF to push for an independent American army fighting in its own sector of the front. More so than any other Allied commander, Pétain seemed grateful for the AEF and the Allied cause.
The AEF also served as a training ground for the generals of World War II. Three of the most notable were operations officer and later Chief of Staff George C. Marshall, tank commander George S. Patton, who later took Third Army across Europe in 1944–45, and Douglas MacArthur, a highly decorated brigade commander in the 42nd Division, who received greater fame while leading ground forces in the Pacific Theatre in World War II. This list also includes Major Terry de la Mesa Allen, who would lead the 1st Division as a general in North Africa and Sicily, and who had commanded a battalion of the 90th Division; Lieutenant Colonel Joseph ‘Vinegar Joe’ Stillwell, the sour-faced commander of the China Burma India Theatre during World War II, who in 1918 served as IV Corps’ intelligence officer; and Captain Jonathan Wainwright, who in 1942 surrendered his command in the Philippines and served the rest of World War II in a Japanese POW camp, who in 1918 was the 82nd Division’s chief of staff.
Besides its battlefield achievements, the two-million-strong AEF aided the Allies through its mere presence. Throughout 1918, as the German Army ranks depleted, the Allied military strengthened as Americans increasingly arrived on the Western Front. Had the war continued into 1919, Pershing’s AEF would likely have made up the bulk of Allied forces since by November 1918, another two million men were ready for overseas deployment. As a commander, Pershing created the first modern American army that proved its capability to fight alongside the Allies, and against the superior German soldiers.
This was especially true during the 47-day Meuse–Argonne battle when during the first days of the attack the American soldiers showed more courage than skill. Much like the learning curve experienced by the British Tommies and French poilus earlier in the war, the doughboys and their commanders slowly learned how to fight against a well-entrenched enemy over unforgiving terrain. Through the leadership of Pershing’s senior officers, such as Hunter Liggett, American divisions showed remarkable tactical skill during the difficult fighting in October and November 1918. At the higher command levels, many of Pershing’s staff officers experienced their own learning curve and earned the respect of Allied counterparts.
CHAPTER 6
THE FORGOTTEN FRONTS IN EUROPE
Russia, Italy, and the Balkans in 1918
Professor Lothar Höbelt
In the historiography of World War I, the Western Front usually takes centre stage. There is no doubt that the Western Front is where the decisive battles took place during World War I, from 1914, when the Battle of the Marne ended German hopes of dealing a knock-out blow to France, to 1918, when the final German offensives ran out of steam and the Allies then drove the Germans back.
The famous musical O What a Lovely War has Douglas Haig praying, ‘God grant me victory before the Americans arrive’, but actually that was a line that might have been stolen from Ludendorff’s prayer book. That was what the German campaign of 1918 was all about. Graf Ottokar Czernin, the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Secretary, realized that the Central Powers could never defeat Britain and the US but he reckoned that once the Germans had taken Paris – or Calais – the Entente might start talking about a reasonable peace settlement in earnest.1 Yet, short-term fears about a massive German breakthrough in the West and a fight ‘with our backs to the wall’, were one thing; long-term anxieties about Germany dominating not just continental Europe, but most of Eurasia after the Russian collapse, were another. The Bolsheviks were widely regarded as German puppets. After all, Lenin had been repatriated in the famous sealed train in April 1917 courtesy of the Prussian General Staff. French Général de Division Henri Berthelot, the advisor to the Romanian Army, summed it up: ‘The Bolsheviks are nothing but agents of the Boches.’ Before 1914, Britain had been apprehensive about the growing power of Russia. Little wonder it was worried about the impact of a Russo-German combination. As the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Sir Henry Wilson, put it: ‘It was a question of pulling Siberia out of the wreck, in order to save India.’2
This situation had the makings of an obvious dilemma for German planners. Short-term considerations, the necessity of making the best possible use of their window of opportunity, argued for a concentration of forces in the West. Long-term geopolitics for securing the Empire demanded an emphasis in the East. Ludendorff was the first to realize the supreme importance of the great push in the West; yet even he was tempted by the prizes to be won in the East where much could be gained in return for fairly minor investments. Some authors have criticized the frittering away of scarce resources in imperialist ventures in the East. More than 30 German divisions remained tied down on the Russian front, even after that front had officially ceased to exist.3 However, a closer look at the composition of these forces detracts from the gravity of these charges. Heavy artillery and well-trained stormtroops moved West; what remained in the East was cavalry and lightly armed occupation forces that were of little use in the sort of warfare to be expected on the Western Front. ‘What remained in the East was “fourth grade” material.’4 Austria-Hungary had an even bigger proportion of its army engaged in the Ukraine, starting with something like ten or 11 out of 70 divisions. But, once again, few of the howitzers needed on the Piave front against Italy were deployed in the Steppe. In fact, half a dozen Austro-Hungarian batteries of heavy guns (12-inch mortars) took part in the German offensive in the West.5
The Russian Revolution and the ‘Bread Peace’
On 7 November, Lenin had organized his coup d’état in Petrograd, the event that we now know as the ‘October Revolution’. On 26 November, he proposed an armistice. Lenin’s priority was peace at almost any price to consolidate his hold on Russia. Peace and land for the peasants were the two slogans that promised to win the hearts of the majority of Russians. While communism soon made a mockery of the second pledge, Lenin was determined to deliver on the first. In his mind, Russian territorial losses did not matter at all, as the imperialist order of things would soon be overtaken by world revolution anyway. According to the Marxist calendar, if revolution was possible in a backward country like Russia, it could hardly be far behind in heavily industrialized states like Germany or Britain. In turn, none of the capitalist regimes whose downfall Lenin confidently predicted expected the Bolshevik government to last long. That is why Czernin argued the Central Powers should jump at the chance to make peace with Lenin. He agreed that his regime would not last but argued that no Russian government that succeeded him would dare to reverse that decision and re-enter the war.
The Western powers were
invited to join the peace conference that was supposed to start in Brest-Litovsk on 22 December 1917. They turned that offer down. They were not going to start negotiating in the wake of Russian defeat – and before the United States had made its weight felt in Europe. To counter Russian slogans of a peace without annexations and contributions, Wilson published a programme of his own, the celebrated Fourteen Points, on 8 January 1918. The Fourteen Points had not been discussed with his allies. At least one of them could be interpreted as a swipe at the Royal Navy’s command of the high seas (‘absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas’); others hinted vaguely at a kind of self-determination for the subject nations of both the Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman empires (‘freest opportunity to autonomous development’). The only nation that was promised independence in unequivocal terms was Poland. But Polish independence, of course, came largely at the expense of Russia. Germany and Austria-Hungary had already declared their commitment to an independent Poland more than a year before, in November 1916. Czernin did not reject Wilson’s Fourteen Points but cautiously welcomed them as a starting point, at least.6
The Russian delegation to Brest-Litovsk, led by Leon Trotsky, tried to make best possible use of the Central Powers’ dilemma. The Germans were in a hurry, the Russians were not. Trotsky’s way of putting pressure on the Germans was to delay matters as far as possible. In a reference to Wilson’s mistrust of secret diplomacy, negotiations were supposed to be held in public. The result was grandstanding on a grand scale. Trotsky and his two opposite numbers, Czernin and German Foreign Secretary Richard Von Kühlmann, engaged in brilliant rhetoric, swinging between learned discourse and flights of fancy. Russia was willing to sign a peace based on the principle of uti possidetis (‘as you possess’, i.e. at the end of a conflict the territory remains with the possessor or occupying force); in other words, the eastern borders of Russia should roughly follow the current front line. Thus, Trotsky was resigned to the loss of Poland, Lithuania, and Courland. The Central Powers in turn were quite willing to pay lip-service to the idea of self-determination. None of these countries would be annexed outright, but they would be turned into satellites and client-states. Poland would be linked to Austria-Hungary in a personal union; on 28 January 1918, the Polish Council of Regency decided to offer the crown to the Austrian Kaiser Karl I. In turn, Lithuania and Courland would be run by princes from the cadet lines of German ruling dynasties.
Poland belonged to the so-called historic nations, with a history of statehood and a long tradition of rebellions against the partitioning powers. The Ukraine did not. The fertile lands of the black earth, famous for their roaming bands of Cossacks, had long served as a buffer zone between Ottomans, Poles, and Muscovy before being integrated into the Tsarist Empire during the 18th century. The idea of the Ukrainians as a nation of their own had first flourished in Austria-Hungary. It was an invention of Viennese bureaucrats, their neighbours scoffed. Yet, in 1918, with revolution engulfing Russia, an independent Ukraine also suddenly seemed an attractive prospect, from the point of view of Russian Ukrainians. Thus, a junta (rada) of Kiev politicians declared their independence from Russia towards the end of December. With something like 30 million potential inhabitants, the Ukraine was a prize well worth fighting for. Whether the Kiev rada – or anybody else – was entitled to speak for all of them, was another matter.
Strangely enough, the new state was welcomed by almost everyone – except, of course, the Russian government (of whatever hue). The Entente was disposed to look upon the Ukraine with kindly eyes because it was opposed to the awful German puppet regime in Petrograd and might yet provide the Entente with a foothold in the East. Prussian generals were disposed to support the Ukrainians because they could serve as a counterweight to the Poles they distrusted (with or without Habsburg monarchs). The Ukraine could also provide the Germans with a steppingstone to the Black Sea. The Russian Black Sea Fleet, including two fairly modern dreadnoughts, left Sevastopol before the Germans arrived. Foreshadowing events in Scapa Flow in 1919, most of the fleet was scuttled in July, following secret orders from Moscow. Only the one surviving dreadnought ended up in German hands in October.7 Austrians were disposed to heap favours upon the new state because the Ukraine was famous as the breadbasket of Europe – and Austrians had been going hungry because of the British blockade (exacerbated by their own counterproductive policies). None of these friends proved to be stalwart supporters in the long run. They were at loggerheads with each other. They all harboured mental reservations. But right now they all helped to ease the entrée of the new state on the international scene.8
On 9 February 1918, the Central Powers signed the first peace treaty of World War I – strangely enough with a state they had never fought at all: the Ukraine. The treaty was immediately styled the ‘Bread Peace’ by the mayor of Vienna. Indeed, in one of its clauses the Ukrainian government pledged to send no less than a million tons of grain to the Central Powers within six months. In return, the Ukraine was not just recognized as a player on the international scene but promised the province of Cholm (hitherto reserved for Poland); a secret clause also bound the Vienna government to create an autonomous province for Ukrainians in Galicia. However, all these promises were null and void if the Ukraine did not succeed in delivering the stipulated million tons of grain. Doubts whether the Kiev rada would be able to do so were given a new lease of life when it became known they had lost their capital to a Bolshevik attack the day before they signed the treaty.9
Trotsky had been willing to sign away Poland and part of the Baltic. He drew a line at the Ukraine. The day after the signing of the Bread Peace, 10 February 1918, he left Brest-Litovsk. No peace treaty had been concluded. Trotsky simply declared the war to be over, unilaterally. German and Austrian diplomats were willing to be content with that result because it gave them a free hand to do whatever they wanted in their respective zones of occupation. But the German High Command’s appetite had been whetted. It chose to interpret Trotsky’s move as an infringement of the armistice. This time, the generals were supported by the Kaiser and his Chancellor, Bavarian Graf Hertling. The Kaiser dearly wanted to take the Baltic Barons in Livonia and Estonia under his protection, too; maybe even do away with his unsavoury Bolshevik allies at the same time. Thus, on 18 February, the German Army resumed its advance in the East. Within a few days, the Germans reached Reval (modern-day Tallinn) and Minsk. In Austria-Hungary, Karl I did not want to encourage any expansionism by his German allies but had to acquiesce when the Ukraine issued a call for help against the Bolsheviks. In fact, both armies vied with each other over who had been first to reach Odessa.
The German advance became known as the Eisenbahnvormarsch (advance by rail). There was no organized resistance. The Germans simply took the train to the nearest towns in the Russian hinterland. A more sinister explanation sometimes added was: the faulty logistics of the remnant of the German Army in the East did not leave them with any other choice. After all, one of the crucial shortcomings of the German Army in 1918 turned out to be a lack of horses that could keep the army on the move in time-honoured fashion. Anyway, the Eisenbahnvormarsch turned out to be a brief affair. Less than a week after it had started, Lenin gathered his Politburo for a crisis meeting on 23 February. Lenin stood his ground in no longer relying on guns. In a line-up that maybe foreshadowed future conflicts, Trotsky opposed accepting the German ultimatum, while Stalin supported it. Lenin stated he would sign the treaty without even reading it – and had no intention at all of keeping any of its clauses longer than strictly necessary. What he wanted was simply a breathing-space that would enable the Soviet regime to survive ‘until the Western revolution matures’. In the meantime, appeasement of the Germans was crucial as they were potentially a far bigger danger to the Soviet regime than the Western powers.10
Brest-Litovsk has often been characterized as a manifestation of German hubris, an imperialist venture that justified the equally drastic peace of Versailles. While moralists might argue endles
sly over the merits of both treaties, none of the territories the Soviets were forced to cede in 1918 were ethnically Russian. In the West, Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour even wondered whether Germany would be content with an ‘unacknowledged protectorate’ over the Baltic provinces.11 What Britain was really worried about was not the fate of the Russian borderlands but the prospect of the whole of Russia becoming a giant satellite of Imperial Germany, with all its possible effects on the balance of power – not just in Europe, but also in Asia. From that perspective, the exact delimitation of the respective spheres of influence between the Germans and their Russian collaborators did not matter all that much.
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed in a hurry on 3 March 1918. Soviet troops promised to leave not just the Ukraine but also Finland, which had also declared its independence in December 1917. Bolshevik sympathizers who continued to fight in either the Ukraine or Finland could no longer rely on the conventions of war but were regarded as rebels liable to be shot at sight. The Finns, under their Swedish-speaking ex-Russian General Mannerheim, managed to defeat the Reds with a little German help in April 1918; in October they invited a brother-in-law of the Kaiser, Friedrich Karl von Hessen, to serve as their monarch. Livonia and Estonia remained part of Russia for the time being but were occupied by German troops who did their best to encourage secessionist movements. In late August Lenin finally left them to their devices.12 Except for Belorussia (and the Viborg district), the Russian borders of 1918 resembled the current ones. German and Austro-Hungarian POWs – no less than a million and a half of the latter – were going to be repatriated. At first sight, statistically speaking, this mass release should have given a huge boost to the war effort of the Central Powers. In practice, Austria-Hungary did not derive any great benefit from the return of her prodigal sons. Army administration suspected them of having picked up dangerous Bolshevik ideas in Russia. The way they were debriefed after their return to the fatherland did little to encourage their patriotism. In fact, most of them arrived too late to take part in the last stages of World War I.13