Hundred Days : The Campaign That Ended World War I (9780465074907)

by Lloyd, Nick

  33H. Sulzbach, With the German Guns. Four Years on the Western Front 1914–1918, trans. R. Thonger (London: Frederick Warne, 1981; first publ. 1973), p. 229.

  34W. Görlitz (ed.), The Kaiser and His Court. The Diaries, Note Books and Letters of Admiral Georg Alexander von Müller, Chief of the Naval Cabinet, 1914–1918 (London: Macdonald & Co., 1961; first publ. 1959), p. 399.

  35Prince Max of Baden, The Memoirs of Prince Max of Baden, trans. W. M. Calder and C. W. H. Sutton (2 vols., London: Constable, 1928), II, p. 3.

  36Ibid., pp. 7–8.

  37Ibid., pp. 15–16.

  38Görlitz (ed.), The Kaiser and His Court, pp. 399–403.

  39Prince Max, Memoirs, II, pp. 18–19.

  40‘First German Note to President Wilson’, 3 October 1918, in USAWW, X, p. 3.

  12. ‘The most desperate battle of our history’

  1MHI: WWI 456, Second-Lieutenant H. Woehl, diary, 9 October 1918.

  2W. Wilson, ‘The War to Complete the Work Begun by Washington and His Associates’, in America Joins the World. Selections from the Speeches and State Papers of President Wilson, 1914–1918 (New York: Association Press, 1919), pp. 80–84.

  3Wilson’s Fourteen Points were: ‘open covenants of peace, openly arrived at’; ‘absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas’; the establishment of ‘an equality of trade conditions among all nations’; a ‘free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims’ based upon self-determination; the ‘evacuation of all Russian territory’; the evacuation of Belgium; the evacuation of French territory, including Alsace-Lorraine; a ‘readjustment of the frontiers of Italy’ based on nationality; the ‘freest opportunity of autonomous development’ by the ‘peoples of Austria-Hungary’; the evacuation of Romania, Serbia and Montenegro; the sovereignty of the Turkish portions of the Ottoman Empire and the ‘autonomous development’ of other nationalities in the empire; an independent Polish state; and the formation of a ‘general association of nations’. See Woodrow Wilson, ‘Address to Congress Stating the Peace Terms of the United States’, in America Joins the World, pp. 70–79.

  4E. M. House, The Intimate Papers of Colonel House, ed. C. Seymour (4 vols., London: Ernest Benn, 1928), IV, pp. 78–9.

  5‘Answer to German Peace Proposal’, 8 October 1918, in US Department for the Army, Historical Division, United States Army in the World War, 1917–1919 (17 vols., Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1948 [hereafter USAWW]): A Study in Coordination, X, pp. 7–8.

  6Prince Max of Baden, The Memoirs of Prince Max of Baden, trans. W. M. Calder and C. W. H. Sutton (2 vols., London: Constable, 1928), II, pp. 65–9; E. von Ludendorff, Concise Ludendorff Memoirs 1914–1918 (London: Hutchinson, 1933), p. 316.

  7‘German Reply to President Wilson’s Note’, 12 October 1918, in USAWW, X, p. 9. It was signed by the Secretary of State for the Foreign Office, Wilhelm von Solf, because of a leaked letter Prince Max had written in January 1918 to Prince Alexander Hohenlohe and a group of pacifists in Switzerland. This had caused a domestic scandal and nearly cost Prince Max his position.

  8Prince Max, Memoirs, II, p. 75.

  9P. Scheidemann, Memoirs of a Social Democrat, trans. J. E. Michell (2 vols., London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1929), II, p. 501.

  10F. A. Holden, War Memories (Athens, Ga: Athens Book Company, 1922), pp. 145–6 and 149.

  11E. E. Mackin, Suddenly We Didn’t Want to Die. Memoirs of a World War I Marine (Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1993), pp. 182–3.

  12See R. Slotkin, Lost Battalions. The Great War and the Crisis of American Nationality (New York: Henry Holt, 2005). The term ‘lost battalion’ is somewhat misleading. The men were not in any sense ‘lost’. I Corps knew their approximate location, but could not reach them. See also H. Liggett, AEF. Ten Years Ago in France (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1928), p. 184.

  13J. J. Pershing, My Experiences in the World War (2 vols., New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1931), II, p. 322.

  14G. von der Marwitz, Weltkriegsbriefe, ed. E. von Tschischwitz (Berlin: Steiniger-Verlage, 1940), p. 326.

  15‘The Austro-Hungarian Note of October 7’, in USAWW, X, pp. 14–15.

  16BA-MA: RH61/1035, ‘Feldpost Postüberwachung beim AOK 5’, 28 September 1918.

  17Group of Armies Gallwitz, 4 October 1918, in USAWW, IX, p. 536.

  18MHI: WWI 456, Second-Lieutenant H. Woehl, diary, 11 October 1918.

  19MHI: WWI 561, ‘Experiences of Joseph D. Lawrence in the American Expeditionary Forces in Europe 1918–19’, p. 96.

  20J. J. Pershing, Final Report of Gen. John J. Pershing (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1919), p. 48.

  21IWM: 81/21/1, Account of A. J. Turner, p. 47.

  22Field Marshal Sir D. Haig, diary, 6 October 1918, in D. Haig, War Diaries and Letters 1914–1918, eds. G. Sheffield and J. Bourne (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005), p. 470.

  23Wilfred Owen to Susan Owen, 10, 11 and 15 October 1918, in W. Owen, Selected Letters, ed. J. Bell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 354–6.

  24LAC: MG30 E100, Sir Arthur Currie Papers, Vol. 43, File 1914, diary, 9 October 1918.

  25LAC: MG30 E32, Corporal A. C. West, diary, 10 October 1918.

  26C. Mangin, Lettres de guerre 1914–1918, ed. L. Eugène (Paris: Fayard, 1950), pp. 305–6.

  27IWM: 78/29/1, ‘A Field Artillery Officer, 1914–1919’ by Colonel F. J. Rice, pp. 140–41.

  28CLIP: Memoirs of C. H. Savage.

  29JMO: 26 N 20/1, ‘Journal de Marche de la 1ère Armée à partir du 1er janvier 1918 au 31 octobre 1918’, pp. 513, 520, 523, 529 and 530.

  30J. P. Guéno and Y. Laplume (eds.), Paroles de poilus: Lettres et carnets du front 1914–1918 (Paris: Radio France, 1998), pp. 529 and 532–3.

  31BA-MA: MSG2/5548, ‘Josef’, letters, 9 and 10 October 1918.

  32R. Stark, Wings of War. A German Airman’s Diary of the Last Year of the Great War, trans. C. W. Sykes (London: Greenhill Books, 1988), pp. 185–7.

  33MHI: WWI 2832, ‘Morgen Rot’, by E. Kielmayer, diary, 5 and 15 October 1918.

  34The incident is discussed in T. Weber, Hitler’s First War. Adolf Hitler, the Men of the List Regiment, and the First World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 220–21. See A. Hitler, Mein Kampf, trans. R. Manheim (London: Hutchinson, 1989; first publ. 1925), p. 183.

  35Crown Prince Wilhelm, The Memoirs of the Crown Prince of Germany (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1922), p. 214.

  36TNA: WO 157/166, Third Army Summary of Information, 2 October 1918.

  37Group of Armies Crown Prince Rupprecht to Fourth, Sixth and Seventeenth Armies, 14 September 1918, in USAWW, VI, p. 466.

  38Group of Armies German Crown Prince to Eighteenth Army, 13 October 1918, in USAWW, VII, p. 900.

  13. ‘A last struggle of despair’

  1‘Memorandum for the Commanding General, First Army’, 17 October 1918, in US Department for the Army, Historical Division, United States Army in the World War, 1917–1919 (17 vols., Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1948 [hereafter USAWW]), X, p. 12.

  2E. M. House, The Intimate Papers of Colonel House, ed. C. Seymour (4 vols., London: Ernest Benn, 1928), IV, p. 83.

  3‘Armistice Terms’, 7 October 1918, in USAWW, X, pp. 4–5.

  4‘President Wilson’s Reply to the German Note of October 12, 1918’, 14 October 1918, in USAWW, X, pp. 10–11. Wilson’s reference to the sinking of passenger ships was probably prompted by the recent loss of two vessels, the steamer Hirano Maru and the Irish mail boat Leinster. Both were sunk (without warning) off the Irish coast between 4 and 10 October. Over 800 people were killed.

  5Prince Max of Baden, The Memoirs of Prince Max of Baden, trans. W. M. Calder and C. W. H. Sutton (2 vols., London: Constable, 1928), II, p. 89.

  6P. Scheidemann, Memoirs of a Social Democrat, trans. J. E. Michell (2 vols., London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1929), II, p. 511.

  7Crown Prince Wilhelm, The Memoirs of the Crown Prince of Germany (London: Thornton Butterwor
th, 1922), p. 219.

  8Prince Max, Memoirs, II, pp. 102–34.

  9BA-MA: MSG2/5792, ‘Alfred’, letter, 20 October 1918.

  10BA-MA: RH61/1035, ‘Feldpost Postüberwachung beim AOK 5’, 17 October 1918.

  11R. Stark, Wings of War. A German Airman’s Diary of the Last Year of the Great War, trans. C. W. Sykes (London: Greenhill Books, 1988), pp. 198 and 201.

  12A. Hitler, Mein Kampf, trans. R. Manheim (London: Hutchinson, 1989; first publ. 1925), p. 184.

  13BA-MA: MSG2/10347, Leutnant K. Urmacher, letter, 17 October 1918.

  14BA-MA: MSG2/13746, Leutnant H. Mahler, diary, 8 and 29 October 1918.

  15Crown Prince Wilhelm, Memoirs, p. 216.

  16MHI: WWI 2832, ‘Morgen Rot’, by E. Kielmayer, diary, 18 October 1918.

  17‘The German Reply to President Wilson’s Note of October 14, 1918’, 21 October 1918, in USAWW, X, pp. 15–16.

  18Scheidemann, Memoirs, II, pp. 516–18.

  19‘President Wilson’s Reply to the German Note of October 21, 1918’, 24 October 1918, in USAWW, X, pp. 17–18.

  20Scheidemann, Memoirs, II, p. 522.

  21Crown Prince Rupprecht, Mein Kriegstagebuch (3 vols., Berlin: E. S. Mittler und Sohn, 1929), II, p. 465.

  22Supreme Headquarters to Group of Armies Gallwitz, 24 October 1918, in USAWW, X, p. 19.

  23E. von Ludendorff, Concise Ludendorff Memoirs 1914–1918 (London: Hutchinson, 1933), p. 327.

  24Scheidemann, Memoirs, II, p. 525.

  25D. Lloyd George, War Memoirs of David Lloyd George (2 vols., London: Odhams Press, 1933–6), II, p. 1959.

  26‘Notes on Conference Held at Senlis, October 25 1918’, in USAWW, X, pp. 19–23.

  27J. J. Pershing, My Experiences in the World War (2 vols., New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1931), II, pp. 361–2.

  28F. Foch, The Memoirs of Marshal Foch, trans. T. Bentley Mott (London: William Heinemann, 1931), pp. 539–41. The points were: the immediate evacuation of invaded territory; the surrender of 5,000 artillery pieces and 30,000 machine-guns; the evacuation of the left bank of the Rhine; the cessation of any destruction and devastation to evacuated land; the delivery of 5,000 locomotives and 150,000 railway trucks in good condition; the delivery of 150 submarines; and the withdrawal of the surface fleet to the Baltic ports. Foch recommended that the naval blockade should stay in force until these conditions were met.

  29IWM: 92/36/1, ‘The Wheels of Darkness’, by Lieutenant R. G. Dixon, p. 83.

  30J. P. Guéno and Y. Laplume (eds.), Paroles de poilus: Lettres et carnets du front 1914–1918 (Paris: Radio France, 1998), p. 501.

  31MHI: WWI 456, Second-Lieutenant H. Woehl, diary, 20 and 22 October 1918.

  32LAC: MG30 E100, Sir Arthur Currie Papers, Vol. 43, File 1914, diary, 20 October 1918.

  33IWM: 92/36/1, ‘The Wheels of Darkness’, pp. 133–4.

  34IWM: 06/30/1, Account of T. H. Holmes.

  35IWM: 99/13/1, ‘Recollections of the Machine Gun Corps’ by T. Brookbank, pp. 31 and 32.

  36LAC: RG41, Vol. 10, Testimony of R. H. Camp.

  37F. E. Noakes, The Distant Drum. A Memoir of a Guardsman in the Great War (Barnsley: Frontline Books, 2010), p. 181.

  38CWM: 58A 1154-4, K. C. MacGowan to his mother, 10 October 1918.

  39IWM: 81/21/1, Account of A. J. Turner, pp. 47–9 and 53.

  14. ‘Cowards die many times’

  1MHI: WWI 2832, ‘Morgen Rot’, by E. Kielmayer, diary, 1 November 1918.

  2A. Niemann, Revolution von oben – Umsturz von untern (Berlin: Verlag für Kulturpolitik, 1928), pp. 184–5; P. von Hindenburg, Out of My Life, trans. F. A. Holt (London: Cassell & Company, 1920), p. 433.

  3M. Ludendorff, My Married Life with Ludendorff, trans. R. Somerset (London: Hutchinson, 1930), pp. 172–3.

  4W. Görlitz (ed.), The Kaiser and His Court. The Diaries, Note Books and Letters of Admiral Georg Alexander von Müller, Chief of the Naval Cabinet, 1914–1918 (London: Macdonald & Co., 1961; first publ. 1959), p. 415.

  5One soldier from Württemberg simply wrote ‘Ludendorff goes.’ See BA-MA: MSG2/13746, Leutnant H. Mahler, diary, 27 October 1918.

  6BA-MA: MSG2/10347, Leutnant K. Urmacher, letter, 28 October 1918.

  7F. von Lossberg, Meine Tätigkeit im Weltkrieg 1914–1918 (Berlin: E. S. Mittler und Sohn, 1939), p. 359.

  8Crown Prince Wilhelm, The Memoirs of the Crown Prince of Germany (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1922), p. 224.

  9W. Groener, Lebenserinnerungen. Jugend. Generalstab. Weltkrieg (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1957), pp. 440–42 and 444–5.

  10P. Scheidemann, Memoirs of a Social Democrat, trans. J. E. Michell (2 vols., London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1929), II, p. 526.

  11Görlitz (ed.), The Kaiser and His Court, pp. 416–17.

  12M. Balfour, The Kaiser and His Times (London: The Cresset Press, 1964), p. 403.

  13Kaiser Wilhelm cited in ibid., p. 402.

  14Prince Max of Baden, The Memoirs of Prince Max of Baden, trans. W. M. Calder and C. W. H. Sutton (2 vols., London: Constable, 1928), II, p. 255.

  15E. E. Mackin, Suddenly We Didn’t Want to Die. Memoirs of a World War I Marine (Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1993), p. 221.

  16IWM: 81/21/1, Account of A. J. Turner, p. 54.

  17Sir J. Edmonds and R. Maxwell-Hyslop (eds.), Military Operations France and Belgium 1918, V, 26th September–11th November. The Advance to Victory (London: HMSO, 1947), p. 584.

  18Field Marshal Sir D. Haig, diary, 19 October 1918, in D. Haig, War Diaries and Letters 1914–1918, eds. G. Sheffield and J. Bourne (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005), p. 475.

  19H. Liggett, AEF. Ten Years Ago in France (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1928), p. 207.

  20G. S. Viereck (ed.), As They Saw Us. Foch, Ludendorff and Other Leaders Write Our War History (Cranbury, NJ: Scholar’s Bookshelf, 2005; first publ. 1929), pp. 274–5.

  21G. von der Marwitz, Weltkriegsbriefe, ed. E. von Tschischwitz (Berlin: Steiniger-Verlage, 1940), p. 340.

  22MHI: WWI 8188 (Folder 8), ‘A Private Saw It. My Memoirs of the First Division World War I’, by H. L. McHenry, p. 79.

  23Liggett, AEF, p. 221.

  24CWM: 58A 1 20.3, General E. W. B. Morrison papers, ‘Artillery Report on Mont Houy’.

  25T. Cook, Shock Troops. Canadians Fighting the Great War 1917–1918 (Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2008), p. 559.

  26A. G. L. McNaughton, ‘The Capture of Valenciennes: A Study in Coordination’, Canadian Defence Quarterly, Vol. 10, No. 3 (April 1933), p. 292.

  27R. Stark, Wings of War. A German Airman’s Diary of the Last Year of the Great War, trans. C. W. Sykes (London: Greenhill Books, 1988), p. 203.

  28Lossberg, Meine Tätigkeit im Weltkrieg, p. 358.

  29Between 18 July and 11 November the BEF captured 188,700 prisoners and 2,840 guns; as many as the French Army (139,000 prisoners and 1,880 guns) and the AEF (43,400 prisoners and 1,421 guns) combined. The Belgian Army captured 14,500 prisoners and 474 guns. Edmonds and Maxwell-Hyslop (eds.), Military Operations France and Belgium 1918, V, p. 557. See also W. Deist, ‘The Military Collapse of the German Empire: The Reality behind the Stab-in-the-Back Myth’, War in History, Vol. 3, No. 2 (April 1996), pp. 186–207 (p. 203).

  30D. von Kuhl, Entstehung, Durchführung und Zusammenbruch der Offensive von 1918 (Berlin: M.B.H., 1927), pp. 210–11.

  31TNA: WO 157/167, ‘Appreciation of the Situation on the Third Army Front on the 2nd November, 1918’.

  32A. Hitler, Mein Kampf, trans. R. Manheim (London: Hutchinson, 1989; first publ. 1925), p. 182.

  33TNA: WO 157/199, Fourth Army Summary of Information, 27 October 1918.

  34A. Mahncke, For Kaiser and Hitler. The Memoirs of General Alfred Mahncke 1910–1945 (Pulborough: Tattered Flag, 2011), pp. 68–9.

  35Lossberg, Meine Tätigkeit im Weltkrieg, pp. 359–60.

  36Edmonds and Maxwell-Hyslop (eds.), Military Operations France and Belgium 1918, V, p. 463.

  373rd Westphalian Regimental History cited in H. D. Du Pree
, The 38th (Welsh) Division in the Last Five Weeks of the Great War (London: Royal Artillery Journal, 1933), p. 192.

  38Wilfred Owen to Susan Owen, 31 October 1918, in W. Owen, Selected Letters, ed. J. Bell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 361–2.

  39Details of attack taken from D. Hibberd, Wilfred Owen. A New Biography (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2002), pp. 364–6.

  40BA-MA: MSG2/1291, ‘Die Letzte Schlacht, 4 November 1918’, p. 5.

  41G. Gliddon, VCs of the First World War. The Final Days: 1918 (Stroud: Sutton, 2000), p. 176.

  42Edmonds and Maxwell-Hyslop (eds.), Military Operations France and Belgium 1918, V, p. 476.

  43JMO: 26 N 20/2, ‘Journal de Marche de la 1ère Armée du 1er novembre 1918 au 31 décembre 1918’, p. 532. First Army also secured 4,000 prisoners.

  44BA-MA: MSG2/1291, ‘Die Letzte Schlacht, 4 November 1918’, pp. 9–13.

  15. Armistice at Compiègne

  1Cited in G. Ritter, The Sword and the Sceptre. The Problem of Militarism in Germany (4 vols., London: Allen Lane, 1973), IV, p. 376.

  2M. Weygand, Mémoires. Idéal vécu (Paris: Flammarion, 1953), p. 639.

  3Department of State to General Headquarters AEF, 6 November 1918, in US Department for the Army, Historical Division, United States Army in the World War, 1917–1919 (17 vols., Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1948, X, pp. 32–3.

  4These were Captain Ernst Vaneslow of the German Navy (chosen because he was a personal friend of Erzberger); Staff Captain Geyer; and a cavalry officer, Captain von Helldorf. B. Lowry, Armistice 1918 (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1996), p. 157.

  5Weygand, Mémoires. Idéal vécu, p. 639.

  6F. Foch, The Memoirs of Marshal Foch, trans. T. Bentley Mott (London: William Heinemann, 1931), pp. 545–55.

  7P. Scheidemann, Memoirs of a Social Democrat, trans. J. E. Michell (2 vols., London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1929), II, p. 557.

  8Prince Max of Baden, The Memoirs of Prince Max of Baden, trans. W. M. Calder and C. W. H. Sutton (2 vols., London: Constable, 1928), II, pp. 331 and 340–42.

  9Scheidemann, Memoirs, II, p. 562, 565 and 569.

  10Crown Prince Wilhelm, The Memoirs of the Crown Prince of Germany (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1922), pp. 232–3 and 239–40.