Download THE END OF THE GREAT WAR

THE END OF THE GREAT WAR
THE LAST TWO YEARS, 1917­1918
Four dramatic events changed the course of the war in 1918.
1. THE ENTRY OF THE USA IN APRIL 1917 (2.4) ­ fresh troops and equipement on the western front.
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1. WHY DID USA JOIN THE ENTENTE POWERS IN THE WAR?
In 1916 US President W. Wilson had been re elected while he had
promise to keep his country out of the war. The public opinion was
against an intervention. The attitude switched due to some events;
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­While Germany was afraid that USA would join the war due to the German Submarine campaigns(on civil targets) the country started preparing itself on a war against USA. In Jan. 1917 the German foreign minister, Zimmerman, dispatched a telegram in code to the German minister in Mexico City in which he described his plans for stimulating a Mexican invasion across the Rio Grande in the event of the US entering the war. This message was intercepted by the British, decoded, and after being passed on to Washington, actually appeared in the American press.(Which proves that the US government also wanted to swing the attitudes of the anti­interventionists).
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The Zimmerman wire
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­From february 1917 Germany embarked upon a unrestricted submarine campaign. Any ship going in to a enemy port was regarded as enemy targets. This German campaign swung the American opinion around.(Lusitania)
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(­One has to remember the fact that Germany had no direct contact with USA from the very start of the war due to the fact that Britain did cut off the German cables over the Atlantic. USA got their picture of the European war mainly by Britain.)
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2. TREATY OF BREST­LITOVSK IN MARCH 1918 ­ The Bolshevistic
Russia pulled out of the War and the Central Powers had a complete
victory on the eastern front.
The Russians lost more than 300,000 square miles of territory and in excess of 50 million people. Of greater significance, however, was the loss of huge sources of iron and coal in the ceded areas. From the Allied perspective, the treaty was a disaster in that it allowed the Germans to transfer soldiers to the Western Front, where they immediately gained numerical superiority. 7
­After the Russian revolution in February the new temporary government promised to pull Russia out of the war (this was one of the main reasons to the spontaneous revolution). BUT KERENSKIJ’S GOVERNMENT DIDN'T KEEP THIS PROMISE TO THEIR PEOPLE AND MADE A SECRET AGREEMENT WITH BRITAIN AND FRANCE TO CONTINUE THE WAR (Russia was promised vast land areas). This decision and the continuing misery resulted in the OCTOBER REVOLUTION during which Lenin and the Bolsheviks managed to seize the power. The communists rising popularity could be explained by their promises to the people ­ PEACE, BREAD AND LAND. After difficult negotiations with the Germans (and a division between different Bolshevik leaders) the peace between the Central Powers and Russia was signed on 3 MARCH 1918. A very favourable peace for Germany which the Russians didn't forget.
The Allied representatives, inquired what possibilities there were of keeping Russia in the war. But as they wanted to get rid of the Bolsheviks this came to nothing. Besides, the British and the French had no troops to send. All they could offer was Japanese assistance in the Far East which only alarmed the Bolsheviks, while they knew that the Japanese were only interested to grab Russian territory for themselves.
With the peace treaty Russia lost all the conquests that the Tsars had made during the last two hundred years. THE BALTIC STATES, POLAND, EVEN THE UKRAINE, BECAME THEORETICALLY INDEPENDENT. In practice, they were added to the German Empire.
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3. FROM MARCH 1918 GERMANY COULD SWING ALL HER FORCES INTO A GREAT WESTERN OFFENSIVE.
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3. When the war on the eastern front ceased Germany could switch a vast number of troops to the western front for an ALL­OUT OFFENSIVE BEFORE THE ALLIES HAD BEEN TO STRONGLY REINFORCED BY THE NEW AMERICAN CONTINGENTS. But one has to remember that the Germans distrusted the Russians and German divisions remained on the eastern front ­ some to extract grain from the peasants, the rest as a precaution against the imaginary Red Army.
Actually although America's entry brought limitless resources to the Allied side this didn't take place at once but only in a comparatively distant future. The US had a great navy but virtually no army. Millions of men had to be conscripted and trained. There were few munitions factories. Tanks, Guns and even rifles had to be supplied by the British and the French, not the other way around. The Americans’ needed all their recourses for themselves. Thus, America's entry into the war brought at first handicaps, not immediate aid. And this was something the Germans knew as well.
Time was working against the Germans. The Allied blockade was causing grave shortages, more of industrial raw materials than of food. American troops were arriving in France in growing number. Austria­Hungary was creaking in at the joints.
The Germans had no new weapons with which to mount an offensive. Nor had Ludendorff much superiority in men, even after the Germans brought over 52 divisions from the east front.
The reinforced German army was quite successful but although the allies suffered very numerous casualties so did the Germans. The allied lines were pushed back but they held. The last German offensive came on 15 July. (During the spring the first shells fell in Paris from an enormous German gun, Big Bertha, 71 miles away. The Royal Air Force came into existence on 1 April 1918.)
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4. WHEN THE GERMAN OFFENSIVE HAD SPENT ITSELF BY THE MIDDLE OF THE SUMMER THE REINFORCED ALLIED ARMIES BEGAN DRIVE THE GERMANS BACK IN A RETREAT WHICH ENDED IN AN ARMISTICE IN NOV. 1918.
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4. Germany couldn't take this, at the end not very successful, offensive. The fighting spirit vanished while that decisive victory, so often promised, didn't arrive. ﴾The Allied armies, on the other hand gained new confidence from each blow that was beaten off﴿ There existed a growing discontent in Germany; widespread strikes and a mutiny among bored sailors at Kiel. The 8 August the Allies launched their very successful counterattack and from this time on the Germans were constantly on retreat ﴾by now the Americans had joined as well﴿. This shattered the faith in victory among the Germans. Now they only wanted to end the war.
The 11 August Wilhelm II concluded that Germany was going towards defeat and the war had to be ended.
By the end of September Bulgaria had surrendered, Turkey was under very heavy pressure and the Italian army had broken through the Austrian frontlines. On 29 September Ludendorff insisted that there must be an immediate armistice. He feared that the Allies would break through. This was due to the fact that Bulgaria had pulled out of the war the same day.
Ludendorff imagined that an armistice would permit the German armies to withdraw and then to stand on a more formidable defensive position in their own country.
When the civilian ministers in the German government objected that the Allies would impose harsh terms on a 'militaristic' Germany, Ludendorff at once produced an solution; there must be an revolution from above. The German people learnt, much to their surprise that Germany had become a democratic country by order of the High Command ﴾This way responsibility was passed on to the civilians as well, but fewe thought about this﴿.
Prince MAX VON BADEN, a prince with a liberal reputation, was appointed chancellor. Social Democrats joined the government. Ludendorff and the other generals regarded this as window­dressing to deceive the Allies. But it didn't stop there. The Press was freed and the left­wing opponents of the war couldn't be silenced no longer.
Meanwhile negotiations with Germany had begun.
THE ARMISTICE WAS SIGNED 11.11.1918 AT 11 O'CLOCK.
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AUSTRIA­HUNGARY
The situation in Austria had been very bad since 1917 when the country tried to start peace negotiations, which failed.
To break the Austrian resistance in 1918 the Allies appealed to the different nationals, except the Germans and the Hungarians.
THE CZECHS ASKED TO BE RECOGNIZED AS AN ALLIED NATION.
Czech prisoners of war in Russia had been assembled in order to return home across Siberia and the Pacific. In the general confusion they organized their own legion, their own movement along the Trans­Siberian railway. At first the Bolsheviks regarded them with an friendly eye, then came to believe that they were secret agents for counter­revolution or Allied intervention. On May 14 Czechs and Hungarians quarrelled at the Siberian station of Chelyabinsk. The Czech legion won control. The Bolshevik Government, in alarm, ordered that the legion should be disarmed. Instead the Czech legion seized the entire railway from Samara to Irkutsk.
With this the Czechs became heroes in the Allied eyes; representatives of a great democratic principle, yet also the spearhead of intervention against the Bolsheviks.
Allied intervention in Russia could be presented as a move to rescue the Czechs and the Allies agreed on a Japanese intervention in Siberia.
In this way the Allies got an other war on their hands before they had finished the first. The Czechs received their rewards. They were recognized as a people struggling to be free and a people who had established their right to their own state. This spelled doom to the Empire of the Habsburgs. It could survive loss of territory in the outposts, to Serbians or Rumanians but an independent Czechoslovakia cut out its heart.
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Wilsons' 14 point programme
THE IMPACT OF THE UNITED STATES
To Wilson, the outbreak of the war was tangible proof of the failure of traditional European diplomacy, based on balances of power, armed alliances and secret negotiations. What Wilson sought to construct was a more just and equitable system of international relations, based on clear principles of international law and centred on a universal association of nations working through agreed procedures to maintain world order. Wilson believed that the United States should take the lead in the creation of such a system ­ the extension of democracy throughout the World.
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I. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.
II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of international covenants.
III. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance.
IV. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.
V. A free, open­minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined.
VI. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest cooperation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own political development and national policy and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions of her own choosing; and, more than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that she may need and may herself desire. The treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations in the months to come will be the acid test of their good will, of their comprehension of her needs as distinguished from their own interests, and of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy.
VII. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and restored, without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other free nations. No other single act will serve as this will serve to restore confidence among the nations in the laws which they have themselves set and determined for the government of their relations with one another. Without this healing act the whole structure and validity of international law is forever impaired.
VIII. All French territory should be freed and the invaded portions restored, and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace­Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years, should be righted, in order that peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all.
IX. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality.
X. The peoples of Austria­Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity to autonomous development.
XI. Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied territories restored; Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea; and the relations of the several Balkan states to one another determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines of allegiance and nationality; and international guarantees of the political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan states should be entered into.
XII. The Turkish portion 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.
XIII. 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 and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant.
XIV. 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.
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When the 14 points were first outlined, German newspapers were scratching, denouncing them as hypocritical but as defeat loomed nearer the German tune changed. Wilson's peace programme and general attitude appeared to promise some protection for Germany against punitive French and British demands. The Allies, on the other hand were far from happy with the 14­point programme. Lloyd George objecting in particular to point 2, which would rule out future naval blokades by Britain, and Clemenceau insisting that Germany's agreement to pay compensation ' for all the damages done to the civilian population of the Allies and their property' be written in.
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The USA made it clear however that unless the allies toed the line, she would conclude a separate peace with Germany.
Wilson informed the Germans of the allied acceptance of his peace programme with the addition of the two reservations.
The armistice terms were severe on Germany but not very harsh. Fear that Germany might be provoked to fight on, or that she might be left to weak to cope with Bolshevik­
inspired uprisings saw to that. The blockade of Germany was to continue until peace terms had been settled and accepted.
Even before the armistice had been signed, however, Wilson's position at the forthcoming peace congress as the spokesman for American aims had been dealt a savage blow. The Republicans were victorious in the mid­term elections (nov. 1918) and won majority in both Houses of Congress. Since any peace treaty to which the United states was a party would require approval by 2/3 majority in the Senate (now Republican­
controlled), the President's chances of gaining acceptance at home of any settlement he might negotiate on the basis of his 'Fourteen points' were seriously imperilled. Wilson no longer spoke authoritavely for his country.
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MAKING THE PEACE
The French government urged that major issues should be trashed out privately between the 5 leading powers at sessions of the Supreme War Council. Wilson managed to ensure that, in the early stages of the conference, the smaller powers participated in a wide range of general discussions. However, as soon as the discussions switched to more contentious issues like the disposition of ex­German colonies and the territorial claims in Europe of allies such as Serbia, Greece, Czechoslovakia, Belgium and Denmark, the leading powers increasingly settled them by mutual negotiations and agreement, without reference to plenary sessions of the conference. Disputed points were referred back to the Council of Ten or its successor, The Council of Four 'THE (Britain, USA, France and Italy). 18
THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS
At the insistence of President Wilson, this was the first issue dealt with at the peace conference. A commission was set up to draft a constitution for the new international organization. French attempts to fashion the League as a military alliance which could automatically be directed against potential aggressors failed completely.
To work towards the establishment of a more peaceful international order, member states agreed to respect and preserve the 'territorial integrity and existing political independence of all Members of the League'. Wilson successfully pressed for inclusion in the League covenant of extra clauses, 1) reaffirming the validity of international engagements or 'regional understandings like the Monroe Doctrine., 2) member states could leave the League if they so wished after giving two years' notice, 3) stipulating that if disputes arose from domestic sources they could not be considered by the League.
Wilson's Trip to Save the League
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MILITARY AND NAVAL TERMS
Disputes also arose over the naval and military terms of the peace settlement. Concerning the German Fleet the Germans solved the problem themselves by sinking their Fleet on 21.6.1919, when it had become clear that, whatever was decided, the ships would not be allowed to return to Germany. Germany was forbidden to possess submarines or naval aircraft in the future. The Navy was cut down to a minimum (max. 1500 officers).
As the navy the army was also to be strictly limited and to be forbidden the use of tanks, military aircraft or heavy artillery. 100.000 in size and on a volunteer basis (no conscriptions).
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