Six weeks ago, the Central Powers looked to be in okay shape, even though Germany was
taking a pounding on the Western Front, but when things changed, they changed fast.
Bulgaria has left the war and this week, another central power follows suit.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to the Great War.
Last week the Allied military leaders tried to hash out armistice terms for the western
front.
Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm tries to quell growing civil unrest at home by freeing political
prisoners, and in the field, one battle ends in the West, even as the Italians launch a
major offensive on their front.
Also, by the end of last week on the Palestine Front the Arab forces under Sharif Hussein
had reached the outskirts of Aleppo.
British General Edmund Allenby’s army was also pretty near.
Mustafa Kemal was the city’s defender.
On the 25th, the Arabs in the city rose in revolt, wanting to welcome their hopeful liberators
as free men.
Kemal urged his troops to fight street by street.
The commander of his opposition was Nuri es-Said who, like Kemal was a graduate of the Constantinople
Staff College, and will far in the future be Prime Minister of Iraq.
Anyhow, eventually Kemal realized that there’s not much he could do to hold the city and
ordered his Ottoman forces to pull out, knowing that any further advance would lead into Anatolia-
the Turkish heartland.
Five miles from town he turned at Haritan and his Turkish and German troops stopped
Allenby’s advance, but on the 26th, the British occupy Aleppo.
The Ottoman were being threatened all over.
On the 28th, British troops reach Dedegatch with the intention of invading the Empire
from Europe and attacking Constantinople.
By the end of the week, two British and 2 French divisions (Stevenson) reach the Maritsa
River, the border with Bulgaria.
To the east on the Tigris River, on the 30th, an Ottoman army surrenders to the British.
“It was apparent to London that the Turkish War would soon end and there was belatedly
great interest in the seizure of Mosul, with its oil resources...
General Marshall was “put on notice” to gain as much ground as possible in the event
of an armistice with Turkey.
[Turkish commander] Hakki Bey was... in no mood to either fight or attempt to break out.
He, therefore, decided to surrender his force...
The British cavalry brigade made for the now totally undefended city of Mosul and occupied
it on November 1, 1918” (“Ordered to Die”)
On October 26th, three Ottoman negotiators reach the island of Mudros in the Aegean to
begin armistice talks with the Allies.
General Charles Townshend is with them.
He has been a captive since the British defeat at Kut and the Ottomans asked for his help
with the armistice.
Talks take place aboard the Battleship Agamemnon and on November 30th, an armistice is signed,
and for the Ottoman Empire this war is now over.
Hostilities officially end at noon on the 31st.
Under the armistice terms, the Ottomans must open the Dardanelles and Bosporus to allied
warships, allow military occupation of the forts there, demobilize their forces, release
all POWs, and evacuate the Arab provinces- most of which were already under Allied control.
The newspaper the Times would later point out that there were a couple of weaknesses;
it did not drive home to people living in Anatolia how complete the Allied victory was,
and it didn’t address the security of the Armenians.
I would like to now point out that the British occupation of Mosul on the 1st is a violation
of the armistice.
But the Ottomans aren’t the only ones asking for an armistice this week, though they are
the only ones getting one.
Lemme backtrack.
On the 27th, in the fighting on the Italian Front, British and Italian troops managed
to cross the Piave River.
Now that the weather had improved and the waters subsided, the Gordon Highlanders made
the first breakthrough, wading from Papadopoli Island to the east bank under a creeping barrage.
The crossing was so unexpected that it caused chaos and even terror in the defenders.
Bridgeheads were established and by the 29th they had pierced the Austrian 2nd line and
taken 11,000 prisoners.
It was the 29th that the Austrian official history wrote was the crisis day.
Until then they had mostly held at the Piave and Monte Grappa had held.
In fact, at Monte Grappa, by the end of the month, the Italian 4th army had taken over
20,000 casualties in a real bloodbath.
Thing is, the Allies were attacking an army as it disintegrated.
Hungarian troops had been allowed to go home at the end of last week, those that remained
often refused to go into the lines.
This example spread to Czech and Slav units, and then the German and Austrian units refused
to fight since they felt like they were just replacing the Hungarians who went home.
Every day was thus easier for the Allies.
From the 29th on it was a general Austrian retreat, and that day, 600 Italian, French,
and British aircraft bomb and machine-gun the retreating columns of men with no cover
or protection..
It was a massacre, much like the attack on Ottoman forces leaving the River Jordan last
month.
By the 30th the number of POWs taken was growing by the tens of thousands.
Vittorio Veneto fell at the end of the month and the Austrians abandoned their now outflanked
positions on Monte Grappa.
(Gilbert) Emperor Karl telegraphed to the Kaiser in Germany, “My people are neither
capable nor willing to continue the war.
I have made the unalterable decision to ask for a separate peace and an immediate armistice.”
Well, the Austrians ask for an armistice, but they don’t get it yet.
The Italians are stalling for time to take as much territory as they can.
But Karl’s people are mostly no longer his people.
On the 29th, a Czech national council takes over in Prague.
The Austrian troops in the castle lay down their arms.
The next day, the Croatian parliament at Agram declares that Croatia and Dalmatia are now
part of a national state of Slovenes , Croats, and Serbs.
The German name Agram is changed to the Slav name Zagreb.
In the Slovene city of Laibach a similar declaration is made and the name similarly changed to
Ljubljana.
Within hours, Sarajevo declares it too has joined.
On the 30th, Karl asks Hungarian leader Michael Karolyi to form a new Hungarian government;
the link between Austria and Hungary is formally severed.
Also that day, Karl gives the Austrian fleet to the Southern Slavs and the Danube Flotilla
to Hungary.
That night his armistice delegation arrives in Italy.
On the 31st while he’s away, there is revolution in Vienna, while in Budapest Former Hungarian
PM Count Istvan Tisza is assassinated in his home.
And in the port of Pola the 31st, the Southern Slavs took over the fleet and then watched
with horror as an Italian torpedo boat, which either didn’t know or didn’t care that
those ships were no longer imperial, sank the battleship Viribus Unitis at anchor, killing
several hundred sailors.
At the end of the week, Serbian soldiers take the heights above Belgrade and open fire on
the Hungarian monitors patrolling the Danube.
This war actively began four years ago with the Austrians shelling Serbian positions on
these very heights.
As for the Kaiser, the 30th he went to Spa while German politicians discussed his abdication
in favor of his son, with Germany ruled by a Council of Regency.
Most in the Reichstag favored this.
Many of them felt that he should sacrifice himself so his dynasty could survive.
When the Kaiser got wind of this, he was pissed off; he declined, with Army Chief of Staff
Paul von Hindenburg’s support.
Quartermaster General Wilhelm Groener had a different proposal - that the Kaiser should
go to the front and look for death.
Meaning he should head for an active war zone and find a trench or something and get himself
killed fighting.
Even if he were just badly wounded, this would really rally the people to him and his dynasty.
Martin Gilbert writes, “Hindenburg thought this a bad idea.
The Kaiser’s views are not recorded.”
As for the German naval order I mentioned last week that fleet commander Franz von Hipper
put together, for a huge all out final attack by the whole High Seas Fleet on the British
Grand Fleet: It is approved by Naval Chief of Staff Reinhard Scheer the 27th and issued
on the 29th.
The fleet assembled that afternoon in preparation for setting off the next day.
A raid on the Thames and the Flanders coast would take place at dawn the 31st while later
that day they would take on the British Fleet.
However, by the evening of the 29th, the men were in a state of sedition, many convinced
that their commanders would sacrifice them to sabotage armistice negotiations.
Many refused to return from shore leave, and there were mutinous demonstrations aboard
several ships.
In fact, aboard two battleships there was outright mutiny.
The mutineers gave up when torpedo boats pointed their guns at the ships, but von Hipper cancelled
the order and told the fleet to disperse as he felt he could no longer count on the navy’s
loyalty.
Ships of the 3rd Battle Squadron arrive in Kiel at the end of the week.
An armistice that was in those sailors’ thoughts was on other minds too.
American Commander John Pershing still worried about the Germans re-starting things in the
spring.
On the 30th, he says the advance should continue until the German army unconditionally surrenders.
“An armistice would revivify the low spirits of the German army and enable it to reorganize
and resist later on.”
British and French PMs David Lloyd George and George Clemenceau did not agree; they
were confident of setting crippling armistice terms on the Germans, even if they did not
actually lay down their arms.
Supreme Allied Commander Ferdinand Foch too, he said he did not make war for the sake of
making war, and if he could get the conditions he wants with an armistice, then so be it.
There were those who mistakenly thought peace was already here.
On the 27th an American artillery battery under Captain Harry Truman, future President,
was moving from one zone to another when his men got the French edition of the New York
Times.
Its bold headline proclaimed the armistice was on.
Just then German shells exploded on both sides of the road.
A Sergeant said to Truman, “Captain, those god damn Germans haven’t seen the paper.”
And the week comes to an end with a beginning - a new American offensive on the River Meuse,
which I’ll talk about next week.
This week saw the Austrians retreat from the Allies in Italy, even as their army and empire
collapsed into burgeoning nations.
It also saw the Ottoman Empire leave the war.
I would say “and then there were two”, but that’s not true.
Austria can no longer fight, so there really only is one.
Germany.
Last man standing.
Ludendorff said a month ago, “We cannot fight the whole world.”
Well, he won’t have to, he’s gone from power, but the soldiers?
How long can they?
If you want to learn more about the Ottoman Empire in World War 1, our friend Can actually
launched a YouTube channel about exactly that.
You can click right here for their “Prelude to War” video.
Our Patreon supporter of the week is LT Marshall Faulds.
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made it even better along the way.
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