What happens this week?
Well, Austria-Hungary signs an armistice with the Allies, leaving Germany alone in the fight.
If you think that was bad enough for Germany, this week also sees... revolution in Germany!
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to the Great War.
Last week the Ottoman Empire signed an armistice and for them the active war was over.
The Italian offensive against Austria-Hungary continues taking chunks of ground and tens
of thousands of prisoners, even as that empire dissolves into new nations.
Emperor Karl has asked for an armistice but has yet to get one.
But he finally does this week.
On the 3rd, the Allies advance on the whole Italian front before signing an armistice.
Hostilities end at noon on the 4th.
The Italians tried to take as much land as possible before the this happened, including
Trento on the 1st and Trieste on the 3rd, the latter taken by amphibious assault.
By the time the armistice was signed some 300,000 troops from AH lands became POWs.
The Italian army was also advancing in Albania, and the armistice demanded Austrian demobilization,
so southern Germany was now completely exposed.
Stevenson, “The Central powers unity collapsed with disconcerting speed...
Bulgaria’s surrender deprived the Central Powers of 14 combat divisions, enabling the
Allies to liberate Serbia and advance to the Danube...
Severing the Danube shipping route and cutting overland communications prevented Germany
from supplying Turkey, and as the best Turkish units were in the Caucasus, Constantinople
lay exposed.
Romanian oil was also vulnerable; the more so as Romania had never fully disarmed and
now was poised to rejoin the Allies.
The Hungarian portion of the Habsburg Monarchy faced invasion from both this direction and
from Serbia, and in late October the Budapest government announced the withdrawal of its
forces from the Italian front.
For the Central Powers, the implications of Bulgaria’s surrender were all bad.”
Looking back it seems that Hindenburg and Ludendorff were right when they said the war
was lost when the Macedonian front was broken.
And this is not so much saying that the Allies should have focused on the smaller fronts,
the breakthrough on that front had such impact because it came during Foch’s huge offensive
and after two solid months of German defeats and setbacks.
“Indeed, the Bavarian plenipotentiary at the OHL suspected the German High Command
of using Bulgaria as a pretext for conceding defeat.”
Maybe so, but those attacks were still coming in the west.
At the beginning of the week, the Canadians occupy Valenciennes.
There is also an American attack on the Meuse the 1st.
This was a bit different from their earlier attacks.
They’d made three artillery batteries from 14-inch battleship guns.
Now railway mounted and firing from 40 km away, their shells- over 600 kilos each- were
insanely powerful.
The Americans also used mustard gas for the first time, raining 41 tons of gas shells
down on the Germans.
Between these two, the German artillery nearest them was almost completely destroyed.
Low flying planes machine gunned the defenders as the American infantry advanced, while high
flying bombers hit communications, stores, and rallying points behind the lines.
For the first time, the Americans completely broke through the German lines and the enemy
fled.
There was no possibility of the Germans even regrouping let alone a counterattack.
On the 4th, a Great Anglo-French Offensive on a 50 km front begins, from east of Scheidt
at Valenciennes to Guise on Oise, reaching to east of Le Quesnoy, halfway through Mormal
Forest, past Landrecies on Sambre and across the Sambre-Oise Canal.
10k prisoners are taken and 200 guns.
That same day the British attack on the Sambre Canal.
Here the poet Wilfred Owen, whom I’ve quoted several times, meets his fate.
Also on the 4th the Allies plan new attacks for next week.
The French will attack into Lorraine on the 14th.
The Americans will join them.
On the 5ththe British take Le Quesnoy and Mormal Forest.
The French cross the Ardennes Canal and from the 5th, and for the first time of the war,
the Germans were in a general retreat (Stevenson)
The next day, the Americans reach the Meuse River bank opposite Sedan.
In the confusion of the advance Douglas MacArthur is taken prisoner by his own side (Gilbert),
brought in by American sentries who thought he was a German officer.
You may laugh, but this was a real day of confusion because of the rapidity of the advance
with conflicting orders, units marching into one another, and a rapidly growing and chronic
shortage of supplies.
I read in Martin Gilbert that in one division horses were so scarce that men were harnessed
to wagons to pull them to the front.
But for all of that, there was no denying the huge scale of the victory.
Also, the American fighting this week showed they’d really learned some hard lessons.
Their own internal appraisals had been seriously critical up to this point, but now wrote that
infantry operations were vastly improved, as well as response speed and effectiveness,
and - also importantly - speed of supply.
On the 7th, the French and Americans threaten Charleville and Mezieres, and that day when
the Americans occupy the heights opposite Sedan, they deny the Sedan-Mezieres railway
to the Germans, this was the American 1st Army’s chief mission from the beginning,
severing the Germans’ last lateral railway.
But I have to point out here that though things were going great for the Allies in the field,
they were still dying by the scores as well.
133,000 French troops were killed, wounded, or missing in just October (Undone).
(Stevenson) Britain took 100,000 casualties that month.
There’s something else at play here by now - the British and French want to end the war
ASAP out of the fear that, if it continues, the Americans will be so dominant with all
the men still flooding in, that they will dictate peace terms.
This isn’t entirely without merit; when US President Woodrow Wilson had been communicating
with the Germans he had not even consulted the Entente and they had serious divisions
on certain issues.
How would trade work postwar?
What about freedom of the seas?
What would happen to the German colonies?
That Allied generals had not, as it turned out, really read Wilson’s 14 points.
Still, the peace, or at least armistice process, is proceeding.
On the 6th, German armistice delegates leave Berlin for the Western Front.
Allied Supreme Commander Ferdinand Foch receives them on the 7th at Rethondes, 6 km from Compiegne
forest, and refuses a request for a provisional armistice, terms of armistice are to be accepted
or refused by 1100 on the 11th.
Now, just to explain, you can’t just cross the front lines and take a train to Foch.
The delegates crossed the lines near Cambrai by car and were taken on a long roundabout
journey of the region.
They did not know where they were going.
The atmosphere was decidedly less than cordial.
The German delegates are State Secretary and Center Party leader Matthias Erzberger, Count
Alfred von Oberndorff, ex Foreign Minister to Sofia, Detlev von Winterfeld, Naval Captain
Ernst Vanselow, and a certain General von Gündell.
Erzberger very reluctantly leads the delegation.
So reluctantly that people were afraid he would not cross into the French lines, that’s
why von Gundell is there, to replace him just in case.
They are told that the negotiations will take place in the forest of Compiegne.
News of the arrival of German delegates on French soil sparked rumors that the war was
already over.
An American journalist telegraphed home from Brest this rumor and that afternoon the San
Diego Sun ran the headline, “Peace.
Fightnig Ends.”
Yep, in their haste they misspelled fighting.
Celebrations began all over the states, and the great Enrico Caruso sang the Star Spangled
Banner from the window of his hotel in New York.
The news was in fact reported all over the world the 7th, from Argentina to Australia,
and crowds converged on the White House, calling for President Wilson to address them.
He knew, of course, that this news could not be true, so he didn’t come out.
There were also those who knew that the war was not over, but were refusing to fight it.
The German Third Naval Squadron had arrived in Kiel after naval sedition and mutiny caused
Admiral Franz von Hipper’s to rescind his order for all out battle with the British
last week.
Commander Hugo Kraft now ordered naval maneuvers in Heligoland Bight, and when they went off
without a hitch, he assumed he was master of his ship and had 47 sailors, who he thought
the ringleaders of last week’s insubordination, arrested.
Sailors then got together and asked for their release, but they were ignored.
That might not have been so wise.
On the 3rd, 3,000 sailors from the squadron mutiny and raise the red banner and the slogan
“Frieden und Brot” (peace and bread).
When authorities try to suppress this, several mutineers are killed and over two dozen injured,
but it continues and even spreads - 20,000 garrison troops join the mutineers.
On the 5th, sailors in Lubeck and Travemünde join the revolution, and those in Hamburg,
Bremen, and Wilhelmshaven join the following day.
The Kaiser considers sending army to retake Kiel, but he’s talked out of it.
Lenin comments, “Germany has caught fire and Austria is burning out of control!”
German social-democrat leader Friedrich Ebert calls for the Kaiser’s immediate abdication.
Quartermaster General Wilhelm Groener returns from the front and says an armistice must
be signed the latest by the 9th.
(Gilbert) “His survey of the situation, based on his personal experiences of the past
few days, was a grim one: the fleet was in mutiny, revolution was imminent, and the government’s
authority had fallen so low that troops would refuse to fire on revolutionaries.”
The King of Bavaria flees and a Bavarian Soviet Republic is declared at Munich by Kurt Eisner.
German Chancellor Max von Baden issues a proclamation to Germans living abroad that Germany has
been beaten.
Late that evening, the 8th, Admiral von Hintze reached Spa to personally tell Kaiser Wilhelm
that his navy, his beloved navy and the symbol of his pride, would no longer obey his orders.
Germany has fallen apart.
And here is one final note to round out the week: in the November 5th American Senatorial
elections, a Republican majority is returned.
It is slim - just two seats - but the senate is now in a position to deny or sabotage Democratic
President Wilson’s postwar negotiations, should it choose to do so.
And what a week it was, Austria signing an armistice, which does lead to an end to the
fighting, but also an end to Habsburg rule, pretty much.
A general German retreat and Allied advances in the west, now the only active front.
Revolution sweeping across Germany, and Germans at the table for armistice.
Two weeks ago I quoted Lenin, saying that three months ago people would’ve laughed
at the idea of revolution in Germany.
Well, the revolution is here, but trust me - no one is laughing.
If you want to learn more about Austria in the war and how revolutionary sentiment grew
throughout the war there, you can click right here for our episode about that.
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