by Lloyd, Nick
Frank Clifton Teskey, serving with the Canadian Corps, reached Mons on Armistice day. The civilians were wild with joy. ‘They decorate us with colours and flowers but best of all the young maidens are right there with beaucoup kisses,’ he wrote. ‘We only captured the town the day before yesterday and a man told me that the civilians cannot realize that they are free once more and that all is over. In Canada you can’t imagine what it means to them to be rid of the terror of German rule and also of the danger of having their houses blown down about their ears.’ After making a formal procession, they lined up outside the city hall with ‘bands playing and colours flying’. ‘Talk about receptions,’ he wrote. ‘Thousands of people lined the streets. Old women cried as we went by.’ When they played the Belgian National Anthem – heard in Mons for the first time in over four years – a man ‘rushed out and threw his arms right around the bandmaster and kissed him. The chimes in the cathedral played all of the allied national anthems. Aeroplanes flew low throwing up coloured flares.’3
In Paris, there were unforgettable scenes as huge cheering crowds thronged the streets to celebrate the victory over Germany. Elise Bidet, the daughter to a family of wine-growers, was in the capital on Armistice day and wrote to her brother, Edmond. ‘At last it’s all over,’ she cried.
No more fighting! We can’t believe it and yet it’s true! Here in Paris we knew at eleven o’clock because of the guns and the bells; immediately everyone everywhere was let off work; immediately the streets were swarming with people. All the windows are decked out with flags. I have never seen so many flags and they are all in the colours of the Allies, the view is magnificent. Everybody has a cockade, women have red, white and blue ribbons in their hair; all the people from the workshops in groups, men and women arm in arm, flags at the front, singing as they walk up and down the boulevards and the main avenues.
The Place de la Concorde was packed with large guns, aeroplanes, tanks, ‘mountains of Kraut helmets’, even anti-aircraft balloons, while the streets were jammed with thousands of people. Children crawled on the guns and dragged them away – some even ending up as far away as Montmartre – but no one seemed to mind. French soldiers were cheered and hugged. Americans drove up and down the boulevards in lorries giving lifts to the young girls. Everybody seemed to be either kissing or singing.4
For German officers and men there was little time for celebration when the war ended at noon Berlin time. Those who were with their units had to keep moving as quickly as possible to avoid the pursuing Allied forces; limping along in bedraggled columns, eastwards, back towards the Fatherland. That day Leutnant Karl Urmacher was in Belgium with his regiment when they received orders from Hindenburg stating that a new government was now in place and that the Supreme Command wanted to speed up the ceasefire and avoid further bloodshed. They were to maintain peace and only use their weapons on civilians in an emergency. ‘So this is the revolution,’ he wrote bitterly as he was told the news of the Armistice. The slaughter may have ended, but officers and men could not relax until they crossed the Rhine and re-entered Germany. Urmacher’s unit moved off in the moonlight at 5 a.m. ‘Behind us was the crashing sound of the bridges and railways being blown up,’ he noted. By one o’clock the following morning they had reached Dendermonde, north of Brussels, where they ran into Belgian forces being repatriated. They came towards them, he remembered, ‘singing and flying flags’. One soldier, thoroughly drunk, even assaulted Urmacher’s Commanding Officer with a knife.5
Over the next month Germany’s battered armies would make their way back home, leaving the desolate battlefields of France and Belgium, and returning to a land that may have escaped the physical scars of war, but was far from untouched by it. Germany was now a country on the verge of revolution. In Berlin street-fighting had broken out between groups of socialists and communists, and bands of soldiers and nationalists still loyal to the war effort. The politician Philip Scheidemann recalled how ‘Machine-guns rattled day and night in the Wilhelmstrasse’ and ‘deputations holding hand grenades’ hammered on the doors of the Chancellery, demanding to be heard.6 The monarchy had been overthrown and a new, more representative government put in place, but Germany would suffer instability and economic ruin for years to come. The tragedy of 1918 and the extinction of her hopes of victory would haunt Germany, and German politicians, for the next two decades. The Weimar Republic, which Friedrich Ebert would found in August 1919, lasted for fourteen years until it was overthrown by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party, having never been able to shake off the original sin of parliamentary government, the collapse and armistice at the end of the Great War.
Was the German Army defeated in November 1918? Could the war have continued? Should the Allies have pressed on and taken the war into Germany? These questions, alongside many others, continue to reverberate down the years, demanding to be answered; echoing through history like the aftershocks of a great earthquake. Many Germans, particularly fervent nationalists and ardent patriots, were left reeling by the resignation of the Kaiser on 9 November and the coming of the Armistice two days later. News of what was really going on at the front had been hidden from the vast majority of Germans so the sudden collapse was deeply shocking. Therefore, it was probably unsurprising that within months a ‘stab in the back’ myth had been created that proved remarkably successful and enduring. The Fatherland was blamed for betraying an army still fighting bravely on foreign soil. Socialists and Bolsheviks, Jews and Slavs, were really responsible for the fate of the Imperial German Army that returned home, so it was said, ‘undefeated in the field’.7 For many, the idea of a ‘stab in the back’ was almost comforting, confirming to them what they had always known: that the German Army had not really been defeated, only succumbed to treachery at home. If Germany was ever to rise again, the nationalists now claimed, she would have to be cleansed of undesirables and those who could pose a threat in any future war, and during the rise of Nazism this narrative of cloaked, murderous betrayal was never far from the surface. Adolf Hitler would later call what happened ‘the greatest villainy of the century’ and dedicate his life to righting the ‘betrayal’ of 1918.8
The ‘stab in the back’ legend was only part of a wider misunderstanding about what happened in the last phase of the Great War. The myth of German military infallibility, which was enshrined after their stunning victory in 1940, meant that many writers were loath to give more than grudging acceptance to the Allied achievement of 1918. It has sometimes been claimed that the German Army defeated itself; that the cream of its manpower was squandered in the great offensives of March, April and May, thus leaving the rest of the Army weakened and without enough experienced soldiers to hold on. Because it had been so worn down by previous operations, or decimated by flu, the Allied victory was not only inevitable, but in some ways not a real victory at all. It is certainly true that the German Army of late 1918 was not the great, cohesive and professional force it had been in earlier years, particularly after the murderous attrition of the Kaiser’s offensives, but this should not detract from what the Allies managed to do. If the German Army was no longer what it had been, then the same, equally, could be said for both the British and French. The French were, quite literally, a pale, gaunt shadow of their former selves and only capable of very limited operations, while the BEF had been fighting continuously since the spring of 1917 and by the following year was composed mainly of youthful conscripts – the ‘men of 18 in 1918’ – some of whom, according to contemporary accounts, could barely lift their rifles.9 Yet it was these men, assisted by their inexperienced but brave American counterparts, who stormed some of the toughest defensive positions ever constructed and forced their opponents back time after time.
The Armistice of 1918 was not a total victory for the Allies, only a partial one; a reflection of the precarious balance of power at the front. But it could only happen because the German war effort was collapsing. The remaining elements of her military power were no more, including the Kaiser’s ‘lux
ury’ High Seas Fleet, which was interned on 11 November after the largest surrender at sea in naval history. Her army may not have been completely annihilated, but it was rapidly getting to that point. Officers and men were either deserting, simply heading home, or dodging military police in railway stations in increasing numbers – numbers that, had the war gone on much longer, would have become insupportable. It is true that elements continued to resist with considerable skill and determination, but these were the exception rather than the rule. Indeed, the decision to ask for an armistice during those frantic, final months was one of the most sensible decisions ever made by the German Supreme Command because – finally – it explicitly recognized the hopelessness of their situation and tried to make the best of it, in the full knowledge that with each passing day things got inexorably worse.
Three months before the Armistice, Crown Prince Rupprecht, one of the more realistic and responsible of the German Army Group commanders, wrote to the future Imperial Chancellor, Prince Max, and explained his thoughts on the war. ‘What we must therefore do,’ he wrote, ‘if we are to avoid a military catastrophe which will destroy our whole future as a nation, is to make haste and approach our enemies, and especially England, with peace offers, and peace offers which both can be accepted and in view of the temper of the English people must be accepted.’ Rupprecht knew the war was lost. The only question was whether they could save enough of the Army for the greater battle that they could see looming: the fight against the Spartacists and Bolsheviks at home, and the struggle for the German soul. If the Army was destroyed and the Allies marched into the Fatherland, then more than a war would have been lost. There was an urgent need to ward off something that was – in the words of Rupprecht – ‘far worse’.10 Had the German Army continued to fight after 11 November, it would have done more damage to the Allies, but it would, in all probability, have collapsed at some point, perhaps during the spring. That was why Germany agreed to the Armistice in November 1918: the Army could do no more at the front, but it might be able to tip the balance at home against the revolution. There was, as Rupprecht could see, something left to save.
Could the Allies have continued to fight? Many commanders, including Pershing and Hunter Liggett, were convinced that the Armistice was premature, and had the Allies kept up the pressure – perhaps only for another month – then it would have resulted in the complete collapse of German resistance across the Western Front. This was all well and good, but the British and French Armies were approaching total exhaustion (not to mention logistical overstretch) by early November. The spearhead of the BEF, Rawlinson’s Fourth Army, was over fifty miles from its railheads by the Armistice and was only kept supplied via a handful of narrow, thinly cobbled roads.11 Many units were lacking reinforcements, increasingly unhappy at being asked to keep going, and, perhaps most importantly, approaching the limit of their physical capability. There can be no definitive answer to what would have happened had the war gone on, but a complete collapse of German resistance in 1918 is unlikely. Large sections of the Army would probably have escaped their pursuers and slipped across the Rhine (even if many units could not), particularly given the difficulty the Allies were having in keeping up, which became harder with every mile they covered, every village they liberated, and every river they crossed. More than likely, a new offensive in early spring would have been necessary to finish off the Germans, which might have been militarily possible, but would have put both the British and French governments under intense domestic pressure to stop the war.
In the end, for both sides, it came down to a question of whether it was worth it; whether the German Army should continue to fight what was now an unwinnable and fruitless war, with the promise only of defeat in detail and yet more casualties in the near future. In any case, the Army was needed for the fight at home, in the struggle against the Bolsheviks and the need to rescue the Fatherland from chaos and destitution. For the Allies, there was also a choice: whether they should maintain their offensive in the hope of better terms or with the goal of completely annihilating the enemy. As it was, they got most of what they wanted: the liberation of their territory, the occupation of the left bank of the Rhine, a great deal of war materiel, and the promise of reparations. As Foch had told Colonel House in late October, once they had secured what they wanted, no one had a right to shed another drop of blood. Clearly there was a desire for total victory, for the complete destruction of Germany’s armies, the occupation of her soil, the kind of Endkampf that had vanquished Napoleon at Waterloo, but given the slaughter of the previous four years, it is difficult to be too critical of the men who said, finally, that enough was enough.
For years what happened at the end of 1918 has been forgotten, overshadowed by the great trench battles of 1916–17 and the controversies that still swirl around Germany’s treatment at the Treaty of Versailles in the summer of 1919. The Armistice has thus been seen as the last pointless and ultimately futile act of an apparently pointless and futile war. Yet it should be considered afresh. Few were predicting an early end to the war in the summer of 1918, yet between July and November the Allied armies were able to make remarkable gains, having finally mastered a tactical and operational system that could achieve victory on the battlefield. With hindsight, however, Pershing and Hunter Liggett were probably right. The Allies should not have signed an armistice, but carried on, fought the war into 1919 and occupied large parts of Germany. Only through the systematic breaking up of the Fatherland and the reversal of the unification of 1871 could France’s long-term security be assured. Yet the partial victory of 1918, which left Germany weakened and constrained, but not crushed, meant there was always a possibility that she would rise again. Regrettably, the leaders of Britain and her Empire, France and America shied away from taking such drastic measures. War weariness, combined with Woodrow Wilson’s opposition to too much interference in Germany, meant that there would be no radical reshaping of the Fatherland and no military occupation (except for the Rhineland). Thus began the long and sad progress of two decades of missed opportunities and appeasement, when the Allies collectively let slip the priceless advantage they had gained after the Second Battle of the Marne in July 1918.
The battlefields of the Hundred Days are seldom visited. Some pilgrims may make their way to lay a rose on the grave of Wilfred Owen in the little village of Ors, close to where the poet was killed, but the Battles of Amiens and Montdidier, the Scarpe, the Third Battle of Picardy, the Meuse–Argonne, the Sambre, and others, remain forgotten and unrecognized. Perhaps it is understandable why the trench offensives of earlier years, at the Somme, Verdun or Ypres, have so captured the imagination (or nightmares) of generations of Europeans, but the fighting at the end of the Great War deserves to be remembered and commemorated too. In one of Wilfred Owen’s last letters, written to his mother on 4 or 5 October 1918, he talked about coming back out to France ‘in order to help these boys – directly by leading them as well as an officer can; indirectly, by watching their sufferings that I may speak of them as well as a pleader can’.12 For too long their tale has been overlooked. What happened in those final Hundred Days is an incredible story of shot and shell, of battles on a scale unimaginable to modern generations used to wars of almost surgical precision. We should never forget those poilus, those Frontschwein, those doughboys, those Tommies, who fought in the last days of the Great War, and who fell within sight of the finishing line; those who died when you could almost hear the bells of the Armistice ringing out over the towns and villages of Europe, signalling the end of the greatest tragedy in European history, and the beginning of a new world, utterly changed.
Acknowledgements
This book would not have been possible without the help of a number of family members, friends and colleagues who have graciously assisted me in my research. Firstly, thanks to my agent, Peter Robinson, and my editor at Penguin, Eleo Gordon, for taking me on and for overseeing this project with their customary expertise, goodwill and trust.
/> During the course of writing and researching Hundred Days, I have been fortunate to visit Canada and the United States. In Ottawa, Dr Nathan Greenfield and his wife, Micheline, hosted me and made my time in the senior dominion most enjoyable and comfortable. While in the US, Dr Richard Sommers and the staff at the Military History Institute, US Army War College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, were extremely helpful and very friendly. Financial support was provided by King’s College London (for German translations and a trip to the National Archives and Records Administration in Maryland) and the US Army War College (which awarded me a General and Mrs Matthew B. Ridgway research grant). In the UK I would like to record the generosity and assistance of Mrs Delia Bettaney (for various French translations); Mr Philip Cotterill (for showing me Tom Cotterill’s surviving papers); Dr Tim Gale (for kindly sharing with me his extensive knowledge of the French Army and French language sources); Andrew Polkey (for material relating to 46th (North Midland) Division); Professor Peter Simkins (for his great support and unrivalled knowledge of the BEF); and Alan Tucker (for allowing me to quote from the diary of Captain Arthur Impey). Thanks also to Dr Tim Cook, Dr Gregor Dallas, Dr Oliver Haller, Dr Ben Jones and Dr William Philpott. At Shrivenham, I would like to salute my colleagues in the Defence Studies Department for their support and friendship, particularly Dr David Hall, Dr Mark Hilborne, Dr Saul Kelly and Dr Kate Utting.
My gratitude is due to the staff at the following libraries: the Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv, Freiburg; the Canadian War Museum, Ottawa; the Imperial War Museum, London; the Joint Services Command and Staff College, Shrivenham; Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa; the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King’s College London; the Maughan Library, London; the Military History Institute, US Army War College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania; the National Archives of the UK, Kew; and the National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland. As always, my family have been greatly supportive of the project and helped me out too many times to mention. My wife, Louise, deserves special thanks for accompanying me to America and enduring the frustration when the airline managed to lose our luggage on both legs of the journey! Hundred Days is dedicated to my great-uncle, Tom Cotterill, who was killed six weeks before the end of the war. Like most other families in Britain, the memory of loved ones lost in that awful conflict remains a source of pride and interest as well as sadness. It is unfortunate that my grandmother, Gladys, did not live to see the fruition of this project. She kept alive the memory of her late brother all her life, and I am sure she would be happy to know that in some small way, he has not been forgotten.