It’s a Holy City for three religions, and really is one of the most important cities
in our world history.
As such, it is a big prize during this world war, and this week, Jerusalem surrenders to the British.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to the Great War.
Last week the largest manmade explosion to this point in history rocked Halifax, Nova
Scotia, when a munitions ship and a relief ship collided.
The Allied Supreme War Council met for the first time to discuss plans for 1918.
The Battle of Cambrai came to an end on the Western Front, the Austrians took thousands
of Italian prisoners in Italy, and in the Middle East the advancing British took Hebron.
And what they were advancing toward was Jerusalem, which they reached this week.
In fact, Jerusalem surrendered the 9th.
That morning, two British cooks saw a group coming toward them with a white flag.
It was the city’s dignitaries, the mayor, priests, rabbis, imams, with the keys to the
city.
The Ottoman army had left, north to Nablus, and east to Jericho and the river Jordan.
British Commander Edmund Allenby did not enter the city until the 11th, and he did so as
specifically ordered by London, on foot and with no allied flags flown over the city.
With a guard of fewer than 150 troops, he passed through the Mount Zion part of the
city.
At the base of the Tower of David his proclamation was read, assuring the people that the sanctity
of the Holy Places will be respected.
It was in English, French, Arabic, Russian, Hebrew, and Greek.
The British offensive over on the western front may have ended last week, but British
minds were still very much focused there.
Sir Auckland Geddes, Minister of National Service, now warns the War Cabinet in London
that with Russia pulling out of the war the Germans will be able to transfer 900,000 men
to the Western Front, giving them a superiority there of 11 divisions.
And when they move their artillery, they will have an advantage over the Anglo-French forces
of 2,000, with 4,000 in field guns and howitzers.
The 12 American divisions coming into the line in 1918 would reverse this and give the
Allies a slight advantage, but Geddes was adamant that a million new soldiers must come
from Britain for any offensives to be successful.
Men would have to come from the munitions factories and shipyards, and be replaced by
women or men who could not serve.
And to make things a bit fairer for those who went to war, the tax levied on those who
made profits in business or industry as a result of the war would be raised from 40
to 80 percent.
Now, post revolutionary Russia had stopped fighting in the war last week, and soon negotiations
were going to begin for a peace treaty between Russia and the Central Powers.
Let’s talk about such a treaty for a minute.
Obviously, the decision of the Bolsheviks to pursue peace is a huge concern to the Allies.
There were some people that thought this justified intervention against the new Russian government,
but the Allied governments didn’t really share this view.
The Bolshevik position on the war might be diametrically opposed to theirs, but there
were good reasons to engage the new regime rather than simply oppose it.
First off, the Allied nations had a bunch of commercial links already during Tsarist
Russia, and there were good economic reasons for not taking action that might provoke retaliation
against those interests.
There were also large numbers of Allied citizens in Russia whose safety may be at risk if the
Allies openly opposed the Bolsheviks.
Of course, the opposition- the White Russians- had already begun to coalesce by now, and
they and the sheer size of Russia meant that the Bolsheviks were not and would not be any
time soon in control of the whole country.
To some Allied politicians it made sense to try to not alienate the Bolsheviks, on the
chance that the Eastern Front might again become active, while at the same time giving
aid to their opposition within Russia.
There was also the Czech Legion, who were now trapped in Russia but wanted to continue
the war.
Intervention could certainly help them to leave so they could eventually be deployed
on the Western Front.
And the Allies were sympathetic toward the Baltic States and the Poles, who all wanted
independence, but would have to overcome the fact that much of their possible homelands
were under Russian control, so how do you intervene to help that work out?
The situation was far from cut and dried.
But the Soviet government by this week controlled 28 provincial capitals as well as all the
industrial centers.
They introduced the 8-hour day for railway workers and created the Commissariat of Public
Education, which ended the monopoly on such education formerly held by the Russian Orthodox
Church.
Also, now on the 11th, they banned the Constitutional Democratic Party- the Cadet Party- and ordered
its leaders arrested as enemies of the people.
They also postponed the meeting of the Constituent Assembly until January, citing technical difficulties.
Elections had been held near the end of November for the assembly, and more than 60% of the
people with the right to vote had voted, but sorting the results out was a tricky thing.
The size of the country, the world war, the beginnings of a civil war, a failing communications
system, these all made it really hard to figure out.
Still, by this time, it was becoming clear that the Bolsheviks were not only not going
to have a majority, they weren’t going to be close to the largest party.
As it would turn out, they got between 20 and 25% of the vote, and the Socialist Revolutionaries
got around 40.
The Bolsheviks were big winners in the cities and among the soldiers in the west, but the
peasantry made up 80% of the Russian population and did not go their way.
This did not sit well with Lenin and company.
Two weeks from now, Lenin’s “Thesis on the Constituent Assembly” will be anonymously
published in Pravda, and states that the Soviet republic is a higher form of democracy than
the usual bourgeois republic with its constituent assembly.
Lenin argues that “the interests of this revolution stand higher than the formal rights
of the constituent assembly”, and “attempt(s) to consider the question of the constituent
assembly... within the framework of ordinary bourgeois democracy... would be a betrayal
of the proletariat’s cause and the adoption of the bourgeois standpoint.”
So the elections did not really represent the will of the workers, according to him.
In a way, he does have a point.
The Socialist Revolutionaries were by now split into anti-Bolshevik right and pro-Bolshevik
left, and the election results had not reflected that split but had just counted their votes
in total.
The rights were in a big majority, but still, if, say, a quarter of their votes were actually
for the pro-Bolshevik left then the Bolsheviks would maybe have won a majority.
He proposed new elections and for the Soviet government to run things until then.
Many people saw this as a prelude to suppressing the assembly.
I guess we’ll just have to wait and find out what happens in January.
As a footnote here - ONE source, the Chronology of the Great War, which is a fairly reliable
source, but still only one, says that on December 11th the assembly did meet in Petrograd, but
was dispersed the 13th by Bolsheviks troops.
I’m inclined to disbelieve this, since that would have been a huge deal and big enough
for other sources to write about, but I thought I’d mention it.
That section of the Chronology was originally published back in 1919, in case you wondered.
Anyhow, war in general was not over for the Bolsheviks.
In fact, they declared war on the Cossacks in the south on the 9th.
The 12th saw fighting between Cossacks and Bolsheviks on the River Don at Rostov, and
the 14th, the Bolsheviks occupied Rostov.
Also this week, they defeated General Lavr Kornilov twice north of Kharkov.
And the week ends with two more notes; Romania signed an armistice the 12th, and that same
day, Joseph Caillaux, former French Prime Minister, was arrested for treason.
He favored a negotiated peace with Germany.
Jerusalem surrendered to the allies, Russia may soon have official peace from the world
war, but now there is no peace between the Bolsheviks and the Cossacks.
Well, let’s be honest, there was no peace anywhere.
Taking Jerusalem provoked the ringing of bells in Rome, but it wasn’t peace.
There were millions of men fighting on the western front alone, and the British war Cabinet
says it will need at least a million more to fight an offensive that maybe would bring
peace.
Lenin wants peace from the world war because he’s already fighting internal wars and
they’re obviously going to only get worse.
Looking at it all, it really seemed that even if by some miracle the world war did end,
war wasn’t going to.
The fighting would go on and on everywhere.
That’s what the future of the modern world looked like 100 years ago this week.
If you want to learn more about Russia before the revolutions of 1917, you can click right
here for our special episode.
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