From Belgian Coast to Greek Islands, The End for Germany?

Pershing Demands Surrender Over Armistice.

Fears Return to War When Germany Is Rested.

Special to The Great War Project.

(5 November) In late October a century ago, Germany and Austria are making deep withdrawals now from territories they occupied for years.

Reports historian Martin Gilbert: “Germany’s war-making powers were almost over. The last German troops have left Bulgaria. A day later, the last German troops are leaving Mesopotamia in the Middle East.

And a day after that Germany orders all of its submarines to return to their bases.

“The last torpedo was fired by a German submarine,” reports Gilbert, “on October 21^st when a small British merchant ship was sunk in the Irish Sea.”

Writes Gilbert: …

“The whole of the Belgian coast was now in Allied hands.”

All eyes are now fixed on U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. His position was one of considerable strength. Observes historian Martin Gilbert, “The American army’s possible future role on the battlefield was alarming the Germans considerably.”

One German newspaper reports that 10,000 “fresh, well-fed, well-equipped American troops were reaching Europe every day. The paper asks, do the German people wish to continue the war under these circumstances?”

“To sacrifice the lives of many hundred thousand men, thereby destroying the remainder of the nation’s manhood and imperiling their future?”

Allied leaders are now meeting in northern France to decide what their armistice demands would be.

In Germany there is much confusion. “Realizing that there was now no way that the war could be continued,” writes historian Gilbert, “the top German general, Erich Ludendorff, resigns.” The Kaiser himself has become a figure head.

“The war making nation had lost its warlord,” Gilbert reports. Germany had lost its ability to continue the war.

Much movement of political and military leaders not only in France and Belgium, but in Mesopotamia and Turkey as well as in the Greek islands.

But the opening of talks was not paralleled by any halt to the fighting. Fighting and talking were continuing in tandem on all fronts.”

On October 28^th Austria asks the Allies for an armistice. Fighting with the Italians is ferocious but not what Austria can sustain. In Prague the Austrian request for an armistice leads to a final upsurge in Czech national activity. Czech nationalists proclaim the founding of the independent Czech state. That night the Austrian troops lay down their rifles.

Back on the Western Front, General Pershing is still fretting about the possibility that the Allies could negotiate an armistice now but could resume hostilities in the spring of 1919, well rested.

On October 30^th of 1918, Pershing concludes that the “Allied advance should continue,” writes Gilbert, “until the German army surrenders.”

His plea for unconditional surrender was dismissed by the other Allied leaders, including British prime minister David Lloyd George, and the French prime minister Georges Clemenceau.

They express confidence they can impose “strong virtually crippling terms on Germany, even if its army does not lay down its arms on the field of battle. The French Marshall Foch also does not worry about the condition of Germany once the armistice is established.

It is November 1^st 1918 and the war goes on.