The Great War is over.
Armistices have been signed and the peace process has begun.
But how do you end a war to everyone’s satisfaction?
Already there are those on both sides who are dissatisfied with the agreements signed,
very dissatisfied.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to an epilogue series special to the Great War.
As for the idea of the world now being at peace...
(Undone) “Whatever it was that followed the armistice of November 11th, 1918, it was
not peace.
Something on the order of 9.5 million men were dead...
Germany had lost 55 men for every hour, 1,330 for every day of the 52 months of the war.
One in every 50 citizens of the Habsburg Empire had been killed.
These numbers do not include the more than 15 million men wounded, or the nearly 9 million
who had become prisoners of war.
Nor do they include the numberless millions of civilians who had died in every imaginable
way.
Whatever else it did, the armistice did not end the killing.
Life in Europe had become too deranged, too many things remained unsettled, and too many
young men who knew nothing but war found that there was nothing for them to go home to...”
The armistice terms themselves, which I mentioned a few days ago, were not generally controversial
to agree on, at least not to the creators.
For the armistice between the Allies and Germany, American Edward “Colonel” House deferred
to the military over technicalities, which helped, and French PM Georges Clemenceau promised
the Americans that French occupation of the Rhineland would not be permanent, which really
helped.
It was the stuff about navies that was somewhat more controversial.
There was worry that the British navy would become way too strong if they got all the
German warships.
The British did take the lead in drafting naval terms in the armistice, as the French
had in land terms, and they did compromise here.
All the German submarines and most of the surface fleet would be interned in a neutral
port under Allied supervision instead of just surrendered.
Just to jump ahead, talks with Spain would not work out and the German navy will end
up at the British base at Scapa Flow by default.
But there were plenty of people not involved in drafting the armistice that had problems
with it.
French General Charles Mangin said (Undone), “No no no!
We must go right into the heart of Germany.
The armistice should be signed there.
The Germans will not admit that they are beaten.
You do not finish wars like this... it is a fatal error and France will pay for it.”
American Commander John Pershing was also angry that they had not continued until the
Germans had thrown down their arms in the field.
(Gilbert) “What I dread is that Germany doesn’t know she was licked.
Had they given us another week, we’d have taught them.”
Still, under the armistice terms Germany will have no offensive capability by land, sea,
or air, and the Allies would keep the German colonies.
And the naval blockade of Germany would continue until an actual peace treaty could be signed,
and with Allied control of the Baltic, the blockade would be even more effective, so
the hunger in Germany and Austria would kind of continue.
(Stevenson), “The victors would gain most of the practical advantages of a German surrender
and would be strong enough to impose their wishes at the peace conference.
The difference between all this and unconditional surrender was one of symbolism and psychology
rather than substance...”
You might think that the armistice with Germany that ended the war in the west was a result
of Allied Commander Ferdinand Foch’s cleverly converging offensives, and German Quartermaster
General Erich Ludendorff’s errors in not pulling back and re-consolidating his forces
before it was too late, and that is certainly true to an extent, but in the bigger picture
- the German army simply ran out of men.
Peter Hart has this to say, “War was not a straightforward progression toward success...
In truth, the Allies eventually won on the battlefields because of a massive superiority
in numbers and resources.
It cannot be denied that the performance of the German army was incredible.”
To paraphrase David Stevenson; the armistices resulted from a string of successes against
all four Central Powers.
On the Western Front, this year the Allies could overrun the Somme or Passchendaele,
that had been impassable before.
They could break through any German defense line.
The Austrian defenses in Italy and the Bulgarian ones in Macedonia, which had been virtually
impregnable, now collapsed in just days.
In every theater of the war the Allies had the material advantage, and by now they’d
learned hard and valuable lessons from the years of fighting.
They had greater numbers too...
Finally, they had the major advantage in morale, and this was of prime importance in every
theater of battle.
The Bulgarians and the Austrians just gave up and refused to fight toward the end.
The fighting ability of the Central Powers literally disintegrated, and a big part of
the blame for that is the German and Austrian offensives over the summer.
The Allied application of technology, the quantity- and the quality- of their manpower,
the sea lanes that brought them together from all around the world, the economics and the
colossal feats of production that sustained the armies, and political leadership and political
and military cohesion brought these advantages to fruition.
Could the Central Powers have countered all of this?
Well, that’s speculation and we don’t generally do that, but it was theoretically
possible.
Not attacking at Verdun in 1916 and instead renewing the Eastern Front rampage of 1915
against Russia could have maybe caused a ceasefire there before Russia’s own Brusilov offensive
and well before the US joined the war.
Definitely not reinstating unrestricted submarine warfare, which very quickly brought the US
into the war, may have changed the game.
Though American sentiment toward joining the war was growing before that time, there’s
every reason to believe the US would’ve stayed out of the war otherwise, and then
the Allies would still have been hit by the Russian Revolution, the Nivelle disaster,
the French mutinies and Passchendaele, which could have ended up in a political and geographical
compromise in the west and total German hegemony in the east.
But that didn’t happen.
And the continental empires of Europe were no more.
And think of what lay ahead for the losers.
There was revolution from the left and militarism on the right, economies that had been totally
destroyed, growing war guilt, and of course, a search for scapegoats.
It wasn’t a bed of roses for the victors either.
Would there be a better life as promised for the soldiers, airmen, and sailors returning
home?
After all they’d seen and done?
Would the pain of the war fade?
Could it fade?
General Freyberg wrote to a friend in Britain when he and his men marched through Belgium
on the way to the German border (Gilbert), “I don’t know if I am glad or sorry to
be alive; I only know that it wasn’t my fault that I am alive.”
And this week as they were marching, just post November 11th, Karl, the last Austro-Hungarian
Emperor, officially abdicated and the Republic of German-Austria was proclaimed in Vienna.
The Italians occupy Fiume, and the Allied fleet passes through the Dardanelles and reaches
Constantinople.
But there are still those fighting the war after it has ended.
On the 21st in Albania, Austrian General Karl von Pflanzer-Baltin salutes the troops, unaware
that the war is over and the Habsburg Monarchy is no more.
On the 23rd, German General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck finally surrenders to the British at Abercorn
in Northern Rhodesia after four years of guerrilla fighting.
It will be on December 1st that the first British troops cross the border into Germany.
British Commander Sir Douglas Haig will write in his final dispatch that it is a day forever
memorable because it is a culmination of four years of effort and hope, but still, just
like often during the war the supply lines failed - this time the men had gone forward
too quickly and too far for the food trains to reach them.
They have to stop and wait for three days.
The Americans also arrived December 1st after marching for two weeks mostly in the rain.
They were stunned to see the contrast between the blasted and ruined villages and landscape
of the war zone in France and the cultivated peaceful fields of Germany.
They now marched through Rhineland villages they had not experienced the war first hand
and who didn’t really look too kindly on the arrival of a “conqueror”, especially
since the feeling was already growing that that conqueror had not really defeated them
in battle, but had only got an armistice because their leaders failed them in the face of revolution
and democracy.
And over the winter that feeling would continue to grow, while leaders on the other side continued
to believe that they had not gone far enough in defeating Germany and should’ve fought
until the Germans lay down their arms in the field.
So this is the background - a background of dissatisfaction - that will color the peace
treaty process, and indeed for many years will color the perceptions of victor and vanquished
alike.
If you want to learn more about Woodrow Wilson who had a great influence on the post war
order, you can click right here for our bio episode about him.
Don’t forget to subscribe, see you next time.