The Germans will occupy Odessa this week, and that marks the first time in 1500 years
one power has control of Europe in a stretch from the North Sea to the Black Sea.
Since the days of the Roman Empire.
Victory in the east was complete.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to the Great War.
Last week the Transcaucasian Diet was nervously awaiting the beginnings of peace negotiations
with the Ottomans at Trabzon, even as Ottoman forces were advancing in the field further
east.
Russia signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Central Powers, which marked its
official exit from the war.
Russia had been forced to make enormous and humiliating concessions in terms of land and
resources to avoid being crushed in the field by renewed German offensives.
German High Command was also planning a gigantic offensive for the Western Front, to begin
in just a matter of days.
There was German action in the field this week, though.
Well, it actually began on the last day of last week.
And it was against what you might think of as an unexpected enemy.
See, the Germans had invaded Russia and Ukraine to force the acceptance of the Brest-Litovsk
Treaty, and German troops in Ukraine were nearing Bakhmach, which was a major railway
hub.
A lot of soldiers of the Czechoslovak Legion were there at the moment.
The Legion had fought with Russia - there were other Legionnaires fighting with Italy
and France, and with Russia leaving the war, these guys wanted to head for another Allied
front to continue the fight, and were now in Ukraine planning to head eastward, since
that was the only feasible direction of exit.
Well, the Germans damn sure didn’t want them to do this, so this week saw the Battle
of Bakhmach, from the 8th to the 13th.
The Germans had two divisions of soldiers and the Legion just two regiments and an assault
battalion, and yet, after bloody battle, the Legion won and the Germans negotiated a truce
that would allow the Legion to head east for Siberia.
Germany also landed troops in Turku, Finland, and even announced a German protectorate over
Courland.
Within a couple weeks they will occupy the port of Nikolayev, seizing a Russian battleship,
three cruisers, four destroyers, three submarines, and the dockyard, sealing their eastern triumph.
But what of Germany’s allies?
Well, Britain and the Entente were still trying to split AH from Germany.
On the 9th, Jan Smuts went to Switzerland to talk to Austrian emissary, Count Skrzynski.
Skrzynski would later be foreign minister and Prime Minister of Poland in the interwar
years.
A condition for peace that he laid down to Smuts was “justice must be done to all peoples”
in the Empire.
So autonomy for the Poles, Czechs, Croats, and everyone else.
Talks continued for five days but the Austrians then broke them off.
Philip Kerr, who had been sent there as well by British PM David Lloyd-George, said that
this was because Austrian Foreign Minister Count Czernin realized, “that once he had
started negotiations, public opinion would never allow him to draw back if the Entente
terms were reasonable, and that once he started negotiations it was rather the case of a separate
peace or the breakup of Austria-Hungary.”
(Gilbert)
And of course, any Austrians interested in negotiating with the Allies had to consider
that Germany might win on the battlefield, and Austria would be a direct beneficiary
of that.
And Germany was very soon to begin a Western Front offensive hoping to gain that victory.
On March 9th, the Germans launched a series of artillery barrages.
This was a foreshadowing of the operations that would be their biggest offensive of the
entire war.
It was the Allies who had been the attackers the last couple years - the Somme, Arras,
Passchendaele, the Nivelle Offensive, these had all broken on the mighty German defenses.
Now the Germans would try to end the stalemate, and they were on the clock, for Quartermaster
General Erich Ludendorff thought they needed to secure victory before fresh American troops
could arrive en masse with the summer.
Between Ypres and St. Quentin, the bombardment that day was half a million shells of mustard
and phosgene gas, 1,000 tons of gas total.
Thing is, for many, gas led to panic, fear, malingering, and outright desertion.
The Germans even had a rule in place, since the end of 1917, whereby alleged cases of
gas poisoning who showed no definite symptoms were held for up to two days in unit medical
inspection rooms to see what developed, they were not brought to field hospitals or gas
clearing stations.
Germany’s ally the Ottoman Empire was also active this week.
The Armenians at Ilica had been outflanked by the advancing and converging Ottoman columns.
On the 11th, Armenian General Antranik gave the order to evacuate Erzurum.
The Ottomans occupied it the following day and burned it (Chronology).
Hinis had also been evacuated, with the volunteers there withdrawing into the Eleskirt Valley.
The Trabzon Peace Conference finally opened the 14th, but by then the retreating Armenian
troops were already at the old Russian border at Karaurgan.
The Ottoman forces pursuing them were under Vehip Pasha, and the first item on the agenda
at the conference was his telegram insisting on the immediate evacuation of the regions
ceded by Russia in Brest-Litovsk.
The Transcaucasian delegates protested this since they did not recognize Brest-Litovsk
and were not bound by it.
Discussions of this nature continued.
And other such machinations were going on far to the west.
Since German subs were sinking all shipping, including neutrals, the Allies were trying
to use neutral shipping in addition to their own, right?
So back in January, the Dutch government agreed that the Allies could charter Dutch shipping,
provided there was enough left for their essentials, and that the ships would not be required to
enter the “danger zone”.
So a system was running whereby Dutch ships were chartered to ship American supplies destined
for Belgium and Switzerland, and for every such ship that reached a Dutch port, another
was allowed to leave from Holland.
However, now the Germans said they would use force to prevent ships from leaving Holland
in exchange for arrivals from the states, so the Dutch were backing out of the agreement.
So the allies had to make new arrangements and could no longer guarantee that the ships
chartered would not enter the danger zone.
Then - last week - they demanded unconditional use of Dutch ships in their ports.
The Dutch said okay, as long as the ships aren’t carrying any war materiel.
This would make them useless so the allies ended negotiations and just requisitioned
Dutch shipping.
They did, though, promise to replace all vessels sunk and send the Dutch 100,000 tons of American
wheat.
The Allies were actually making all sorts of decisions at the moment.
Their Supreme War Council met in London March 14-15.
The meeting began with Lloyd George saying that he was taking British Army Commander
Sir Douglas Haig’s advice and not messing with Haig’s and French General Philippe
Petain’s reserves.
French PM Georges Clemenceau agreed with him.
Lemme backtrack.
We saw weeks ago that the Allies had created an executive War Board to control a general
reserve among their armies, with Ferdinand Foch as its leader.
In early February, the board had decided to form a reserve of 30 divisions from the British,
French, and Italian armies.
Petain and Haig resisted this and created their own reserves and arranged between themselves
for reciprocal support in the west.
The French could see sending as many as 20 divisions to aid the British and Haig anticipated
maybe sending 8 to the French sector.
They coordinated the regions where they would back each other up.
So now at the council, the general reserve idea was suddenly dismantled.
It would still be a handful of divisions, but all but one would be on the Italian front.
They did expect more divisions to join the reserve when the Americans really began arriving,
though.
Foch, of course, complained that they had just deprived the War board of executive power.
(Pyrrhic victory) “Clemenceau eventually grew impatient with Foch’s objections and
told him, “shut up!”
With a German attack imminent, the allies had taken two steps toward establishing unity
of command, but had then taken one step back.”
And that was the week, the Germans still advancing but losing to the Czechs and Slovaks, the
Ottomans advancing, and the Austrians, the Dutch, and the Allies all making move after
move toward victory, or mere survival.
Germany may have pulled off an amazing feat by taking such an unprecedented amount of
territory, but for nations like AH, it really was down to survival by now.
But it does sound noble to speak of conditions like future autonomy for all peoples of the
empire.
And then you realize that at the same time, their ally is dumping 500,000 shells of poison
gas on the people they’re negotiating with.
500,000 tons... of poison gas.
But that’s just business as usual by now.
That’s just modern war.
If you want to learn more about the man behind the German chemical warfare program in World
War 1, you can click right here to watch our episode about Fritz Haber.
Can’t believe we filmed that almost three years ago.
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