A Blog of the Great War Comes to a Close

Many Thanks to Loyal Readers and Listeners Alike

(July 1919) This is an appropriate moment to bring our blog on World War One to a close.

We have been tracing the Great War and its aftermath week-by-week, since it broke out in July 1914.

Our goal has been to revive memory of World War One, to understand just how significant it was to the history of the 20^th century.

Five years, five terrible years of devastating warfare. Millions of soldiers and civilians killed, millions more wounded or missing.

It is often said that this was the war to end all wars.

As it turned out, that was not true.

It is far more accurate to call it, as historian Margaret Macmillan does, the war that ended peace.

There was no peace in Europe, or in the wider world for that matter. Soon an even more destructive war came to Europe and to Asia. And just as the first World War eventually dragged the United States into the war in Europe, so did it drag the United States into another war a mere twenty years later.

But that’s another story – or perhaps more accurately, another chapter in the terrible bloodletting of the Twentieth Century.

Thousands of readers and listeners have followed my blog regularly, and to them I send out heartfelt thanks. It has been a fascinating journey, for myself and for those who followed my blog these many years.

There may be occasions in the months ahead to revive the blog, or to write an occasional analysis of how history has had an impact on today’s events. Excerpts from the blog could certainly be turned into a book.

But for now I will sign off. And thank you again for your interest and support.

EXTRA, EXTRA! THE GERMANS CAPITULATE

by Mike Shuster

Reluctantly They Sign the Treaty

Paris Celebrates.

In Berlin, The Terrible Cold of Abandonment.

(28 June) In Germany by these days a century ago, the political situation is chaotic.

So reports historian Margaret Macmillan.

“The coalition government was deeply divided over whether to sign the treaty. Political leaders in the west along the Allied invasion route were for peace at all costs, as were the premiers of most of the German states, who saw themselves having to make separate treaties with the victors.”

“The nationalists talked bravely of defiance without making any useful suggestions about how to put it into practice.”

“Among the military, wild schemes circulated,” she reports, “to set up a new state in the east, which would be a fortress against the Allies; to have a mass revolt against the government or to assassinate the leading advocate of signing.”

There are strong possibilities on all sides. “Plunder and murder will be the order of the day,” Macmillan reports, “and Germany will break up into a crazy patchwork quilt of states, some under Bolshevik rule, others under right wing dictatorships.”

The Germans at the peace negotiations

The sentiment is strong: Germany must sign.

But others resist signing because they believe – without evidence – that the Allies are bluffing.

The logic is compelling. The Allies don’t want to occupy Germany. That costs too much. Therefore, they are bound to make concessions, if only Germany stands firm.

German military and political leaders respond. The German cabinet is deadlocked and resigns. Germany now has no government and no spokesman. The deadline drifts ever closer.

by Mike Shuster

Stab in the Back.

‘There Will Be Intense Bitterness, Hate, and Desperation’

Down to the Last Three Days. Are the Allies Bluffing?

Special to The Great War Project

(1 June) The Germans get their version of the peace treaty in May a century ago, and they are shocked.

Here are just a few of the terms. The borders of Germany are redrawn. It loses thirteen percent of its territory, ten percent of its population.

Germany alone is made to disarm.

Feeding Germany the treaty.

The reaction in Germany is shock. “After all,” historian Margaret Macmillan writes of the German response, “had Germany lost the war?”

“Since the armistice, the military and its sympathizers had been busy laying the foundations of the stab-in-the-back theory…

…that Germany had been defeated not on the battlefield but by treachery at home.”

“Why should Germany alone be made to disarm? Why should Germany be the only country to take responsibility for the Great War?”

“Most Germans still viewed the outbreak of hostilities in 1914 as a necessary defense against the threat from the barbaric Slavs to the east.”

Said the German chancellor, “The treaty is completely unacceptable.”

Germany alone is made to pay.

The Germans lay responsibility for this terrible circumstance on Woodrow Wilson personally. “What had happened to Wilson’s promises?” they ask.

“Well, I’ll give you some open diplomacy,” said the German defense minister to an American journalist. “You Americans go back home and bury yourself with your Wilson.”

“Where Wilson had been seen as Germany’s savior, he overnight became the wicked hypocrite.”

Writes one observer, when the Germans see the treaty’s terms in cold print, “there will be intense bitterness, hate, and desperation.”

by Mike Shuster

It’s a Noble Duty,

Not a Chance.

Meanwhile, Mood Worsens in Paris.

Special to The Great War Project.

(1 June) In mid-March a century ago, President Wilson’s closest adviser, Colonel House, assures the other Allied leaders that the United States “would undoubtedly take a mandate.”

Privately the belief takes hold that the Americans are seriously thinking it would be Armenia.

Fighters of the Armenian Legion

British PM Lloyd George is delighted, according to historian Margaret Macmillan, at the prospect of the Americans taking on “the noble duty.”

But House as he so often does, is exaggerating. Wilson warns the Supreme Council at the peace talks that…

“he could think of nothing the people of the United States would be less inclined to accept than military responsibility in Asia.”

Macmillan concludes: “It is perhaps a measure of how far Wilson’s judgment had deteriorated that when Armenia comes up at the Council of Four at Versailles, he agrees to accept a mandate, subject he adds, to the consent of the American Senate.”

Map of the proposed mandates.

The French are enraged. This mandate would effectively take territories from the eastern shore of the Black Sea to the Mediterranean in the west, earlier promised to the French.

French leaders complain: “They must be drunk the way they are surrendering a total capitulation, a mess, an unimaginable shamble.”

“Many other schemes for the Ottoman empire were floating around the conference rooms and dinner tables in Paris. What was left out was the inability of the powers to enforce their will.”

WELCOME HOME

by Mike Shuster

The Great War Project welcomes letters, photos, and other memorabilia that you or your family members may have.

Here’s one, a poignant homecoming.

Los Angeles resident Gina Barker Young provided this family photo of her great great grandfather William Thomas Patterson welcoming his sons Lawrence and Thomas home from the war, Los Angeles,1918

Veterans Day, formerly Armistice Day…

by Mike Shuster

For Veterans Day…

To My Peoples

by Barrett Golding

The Europeana museum, the Austrian National Library, and Google collaborated on the online presentation, “To My Peoples!” The First World War 1914 – 1918, a collection of “untold stories & official histories of WW1.”

We created a new virtual exhibition to commemorate the First World War. The exhibition guides you through the Emperor Franz Joseph’s manifestos, from announcements for mobilisation, to administering shortages, to dealing with prisoners of war and refugees. The big influence of the First World War on children is presented in remarkable drawings and letters by students in the chapter “My dear Pupils”. The exhibitions ends with a selection of photographs from the front, the hinterland and life in the field.

by Barrett Golding

Painting from The War Illustrated of a battle in 1914 Belgium

“The Story Of The Great European War Told By Camera, Pen And Pencil” was the subtitle of The War Illustrated, a magazine published in London publication by William Berry (later owner of The Daily Telegraph). The first issue date was August 22, 1914, eighteen days after the United Kingdom declared war on Germany. The magazine continued until 1919, with a peak circulation of 750,000 (and was revived in 1939 during the Second World War).

The issues were later packaged into books (all online at the Internet Archive: see list below). “Volume I. The First Phase” featured articles Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (“How the Boer War Prepared Us for the Great War”) and H. G. Wells:

The cause of a war and the object of a war are not necessarily the same. The cause of this war is the invasion of Luxemburg and Belgium. We declared war because we were bound by treaty to declare war. We have been pledged to protect the integrity of Belgium since the kingdom of Belgium has existed. If the Germans had not broken the guarantees they shared with us to respect the neutrality of these little States we should certainly not be at war at the present time.
—H. G. Wells, “Why Britain Went to War”, The War Illustrated: Volume I

by Barrett Golding

The New York Times Lab new tool called NYT Chronicle lets you graph the frequency of specific language was used in their newspaper over time; for instance, “World War I” vs. “Great War”:

by Barrett Golding

The BBC applied their modern news reporting techniques to “live” blogging the century-old assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, with on-the-scene videos and minute-by-minute updates.

BBC News is used to reporting breaking news around the world. It’s what we do, part of the reason for our very existence. So if there were to be an assassination of a prominent European leader today, we would want to be there, reporting live. And audiences expect to consume breaking news in a live blog environment which is why we wanted to experiment with revealing history in this way.

This was the idea behind 1914 Live as the BBC’s First World War season reaches the first significant anniversary. We would use all the techniques of breaking news in 2014 to report on events from Sarajevo 100 years ago, particularly the BBC’s Live format.
—BBC, “1914 Live: History retold as breaking news”

“We will remember.”

by Mike Shuster

ANZAC Day in New Zealand

By John Felton

PAIHIA, NEW ZEALAND — It was still pitch black at 5:30 this morning when more than 500 people gathered at the waterfront of this small town in northern New Zealand for the annual sunrise service commemorating Anzac Day — April 25.

On this day in 1915, the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) landed on the Gallipoli peninsula, at the southwestern edge of the-then Ottoman Empire, as part of a plan to force the Turks to quit their alliance with Germany and the Austro-Hungarian empire.

New Zealand troops dig in on Gallipoli, 1915.

The first day of the campaign was a complete failure: Of the 3,100 New Zealand troops who landed, some 650 were killed or wounded. The second day’s results were similar — and so it went for nearly eight bloody months until the British commanders finally recognized the futility of transforming a narrow foothold on the Dardanelles into a major strategic victory that might hasten the end of World War I.

For New Zealand, still a part of the British Empire, Gallipoli was a rude introduction to its emerging role as an independent nation. Nearly 3,000 New Zealanders would die in what turned out to be an entirely failed campaign. About five times that many died in the main theater of the war: the Western Front.

Service personnel march at the conclusion of the Anzac Day ceremony in Paihia, New Zealand.

This morning’s speaker at the service here in Paihia reminded his audience that nearly one-half of all households in New Zealand suffered casualties during the war: men killed or wounded far away from the country’s peaceful shores. But those losses, painful as they were at the time and still remain today, were necessary, he insisted: “We cannot defend our country from our goal line.”

These days, New Zealand’s military commitments are primarily in the realm of peacekeeping. The country has contributed military and police forces to some 40 UN-led missions since the late 1940s, including in several places where the United States has refused to get involved. New Zealand also sent troops and police to Afghanistan and Iraq — for both Gulf wars, as this morning’s audience here in Paihia was reminded.

Despite the passing of a century, Gallipoli has come to represent a major turning point for New Zealand as a new nation, one anxious at times to take its place on the world stage despite its small size and remote location.

Signs tell of the planting of 18,166 trees at the World War I Memorial Forest on New Zealand’s Coromandel Peninsula

Reminders of Gallipoli are common, from the red poppies worn today to the various tributes that can be seen around the countryside to the men and women who served in the war. An extraordinarily popular exhibition at Te Papa, the national museum in Wellington, tells the history of the Gallipoli campaign in graphic detail, using the stories of soldiers who survived and those who did not. A more long-lived tribute is the planting of 18,166 trees in a World War I Memorial Forest on the ruggedly beautiful Coromandel Peninsula, which juts out into the Pacific Ocean east of Auckland: one tree for each serviceman who died in the war.

As this morning’s speaker told his audience: “We will remember.”

WAR IN THE MIDDLE EAST

by Mike Shuster

Nasiriya Falls to British; Eye al-Kut Next

Ottoman Forces Retreat in Face of British Juggernaut

Special to The Great War Project

(23-25 July) The British offensive in southern Mesopotamia (now Iraq) gains another victory with the fall of Nasiriya.

British and Indian troops take control of the city on this date a century ago.

A British boat bridge at Nasiriya on the Euphrates, summer 1915.

The success of the British offensive in Mesopotamia – and the weakness of Turkish resistance — encourage the British Expeditionary Force to probe deeper into the desert territory, despite the severe heat, disease, and the logistical challenge as supply lines lengthen to the breaking point.

The next target is the town of Kut.

The British offensive gains support from the indigenous Arab population of southern Mesopotamia. All spring and into the summer of 1915…,

Arab civilians rise up in open revolt against the occupying Ottoman forces.

The Turks are facing a myriad of battlefield challenges. “The Ottomans had fielded ill-trained and poorly supplied troops to face the Anglo-Indian juggernaut,” writes historian Eugene Rogan. “High rates of desertion among Iraqi recruits exacerbated losses through heavy battlefield casualties, leaving Ottoman forces severely under-strength.”