Even far from the battlefields it happens now - civilian casualties of the war.
And this week it happened in a flash - 10,000 victims of the war in one instant in Nova Scotia.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to the Great War.
Last week, the Eastern Front went quiet as Russia’s new Bolshevik government began
acting on its promises to pull out of the war.
There was action in both German East Africa and Portuguese East Africa, the Germans counterattacked
at Cambrai on the Western Front, and Armando Diaz worked hard reorganizing and rebuilding
the Italian army after the disaster of the Battle of Caporetto.
And that army saw some action in the field this week, as the Austrians attacked them
on the Asiago Plateau.
On the 5th, Austrians stormed Monte Zomo and Castelgomberto, claiming 11,000 prisoners.
They captured Monte Sisemol 6th, and by the end of the week, they claim 15,000 prisoners.
This is fairly big action, but it won’t be a major offensive.
And this week, actually, a lot of people were discussing the prospect of offensives.
On the 1st, the Inter-Allied Supreme War council was inaugurated at Versailles - French PM
Clemenceau, British PM Lloyd George, Italian PM Orlando, American Colonel House, and Allied
Generals Foch, Robertson, Wilson, Cadorna, and Bliss met.
This council would, by the end of the month, satisfy David Lloyd George’s hopes by rejecting
British Commander in Chief Sir Douglas Haig’s plans for another offensive in Flanders in
1918.
In fact, they decided that there should be no great offensives anywhere in 1918.
With Russia ending hostilities, Britain and France would have to fight the Germans alone
until the Americans arrived in force, and that would take time.
The Italians were still in it, of course, but after Caporetto, there was not a whole
lot expected of them.
The Central Powers didn’t need such a council to coordinate action and organization, basically
because Germany no longer had allies that it could coordinate things with.
The Ottomans were going to get some relief in the Caucasus, but they were exhausted and
overextended, and the danger from the British in Palestine and the Arab Revolt was growing
and growing.
Bulgaria was safe for the time being, but couldn’t do much more than hold the Balkans.
That left Austria-Hungary, like Germany strangled by a blockade it couldn’t hope to break,
and suffering from malnutrition at the eve of another winter with no light or heat or
food.
There, the possibility of a rebellion against the war and those who began it was becoming
ever more real, as people watched their children starve.
This was its situation (World Undone)
“Austria-Hungary (was) now little more than an empty shell.
In 1917, Vienna conscripted into its tattered armies the 160,000 eligible men - boys, really
- born in 1900.
That left it with no remaining sources of manpower except for whatever wounded veterans
and repatriated prisoners of war could be returned to active duty...
The horses needed to move artillery were dying by the tens of thousands because there was
no fodder.
The 1917 potato harvest... would be exhausted by spring.
Monthly rifle production was plummeting from 113,000 in March 1917 to 9,000... bandages
were being made of paper because there was no cotton.
Paper underwear was being issued to the troops.”
The High Command concluded that the army was incapable of any offensive activity in 1918.
They had 44 divisions on the Russian front, now quiet, and 37 in Italy, but these were
so depleted that they now numbered as little as 5,000 troops in some of them.
“Desertion was epidemic, the troops who did not desert were displaying an increasing
inclination to revolt - this was especially true of returning prisoners of war, and in
rural areas life was reverting to a kind of Dark Ages barbarism.
Deserters formed themselves into bandit gangs and preyed on local populations.”
There was one Austro-Hungarian General who had not given up on attacking, though.
Former Chief of Staff Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf was busy making plans for an offensive out
of the Tyrolean Alps and onto the plains NW of Venice.
He would soon be trying to sell his plans to Vienna.
There was an offensive in progress on the Western Front this week, though, and it was
coming to an end - the Battle of Cambrai.
The Germans captured La Vacquerie the 3rd and now held a line that looped from near
Marcoing to Quentin Ridge.
Haig ordered a partial British retreat from the north part of the salient of the battle,
and by the end of the week, the British gains of the battle were abandoned except for part
of the Hindenburg Line around Flesquieres and Havrincourt.
“The withdrawal of British troops from Bourlon Wood was rendered necessary on account of
the poison gas, pools of stagnant water, and numbers of dead bodies.
Our men had almost to live in their gas masks and the wood was a loathsome place.
It did not command our positions, though when in our possession it was inconvenient to the
enemy, and then therefore made every effort to gain it”.
(Chronology)
Total casualties for the Battle were over 40,000 for each side.
Around 9,000 British and 11,000 German prisoners were taken.
While the initial British success showed that combining new methods of attack and equipment
could overcome just about any defenses, the German counterattacks showed the devastating
effect of their combo of stormtroop tactics, artillery, gas, and trench mortars.
Germany would soon have another half million men on that front, as they were transferred
from the Russian front.
Now, on Dec 3rd, the former Russian army general staff, having surrendered to the Bolsheviks
at Mohilev station, were attacked by a mob of soldiers and sailors.
Former Commander in Chief Nikolai Dukhonin was murdered after having been beaten bloody;
General Lavr Kornilov escaped.
Thomas Masaryk, Czech leader, was in the area at the time organizing Czech POWs into military
formations.
It was Dukhonin (Gilbert) that had approved allowing the Czechs to form an army to fight
with the Russians, but now Russia was leaving the fight, and the Czechs couldn’t go home
- they would be traitors in Austria-Hungary, and they couldn’t stay.
The Czech Legion would have to get out of Russia any way it could, and right now that
meant heading east, taking the 8,000 km route across Siberia to Vladivostok, the only port
from which they might escape.
On December 2nd, Russian and German peace delegations were welcomed at Brest-Litovsk
by Prince Leopold of Bavaria, and on the 5th, a preliminary suspension of hostilities was
signed, though armistice negotiations would continue.
The two top Bolshevik negotiators were Lev Kamenev, Trotsky’s brother-in-law, and Adolf
Joffe.
(Gilbert) “For the sake of revolutionary propriety, a worker, a peasant, and a soldier
had also been included in the delegation; the peasant had only been found at the last
moment, during the railway journey, at a wayside station.
These symbols of the revolution were given no part in the negotiations.”
On the 6th, Romania was also obliged to suspend hostilities.
They were kind of forced to - their only ally that was in physical contact with them had
just ended the fight.
And like Estonia last week, Finland now declared independence from Russia December 6th, another
result of Russia’s revolution, like Russia leaving the war.
But Russia leaving the war wasn’t the only explosive news at the moment.
On the 6th, The French munitions ship Mont Blanc exploded in the narrows of Halifax harbor,
Nova Scotia, after colliding with the Norwegian relief ship Imo.
Mont Blanc was carrying 200 tons of TNT, 35 tons of high-octane gasoline, and 2,300 tons
of picric acid.
The ships collided at 0845 and the picric acid caught fire, which was helped by 10 tons
of gun cotton also aboard the Mont Blanc.
The crew abandoned the burning ship, and the Halifax Fire Department was just about to
begin fighting the blaze when the Mont Blanc exploded.
Millions of dollars of damage was done to property and 25,000 people were made homeless.
The total casualties were over 10,000, which included hundreds permanently blinded by the
flash.
Five British steamships were damaged; 2/3 of their crews were lost.
The shock wave shattered windows as far as 80km away from the harbor.
This blast was the largest man made explosion before the development of nuclear weapons.
Pretty much everything in an 800m radius was obliterated, which included almost the whole
neighborhood of Richmond.
There were huge rescue efforts immediately underway from Canada and the US, but they
had problems getting in because of a blizzard.
As you can imagine, the local hospitals were overwhelmed.
Just to give you an idea of its impact, this explosion was, for many years, the standard
by which other explosions were measured.
After the bombing of Hiroshima, Time Magazine wrote that the power of the Little Boy bomb
was seven times that of Halifax.
And as the week ended, the British captured Hebron in Palestine, and the US declared war
on Austria-Hungary.
And the Battle of Cambrai concluded, there was action in Italy, the Allied Supreme War
Council met for the first time, and the Russians and Germans were negotiating peace.
And an explosion rocked Nova Scotia.
The largest man made one in history at the time, though it was an accident.
But make no mistake, those deaths, those wounded, and those blinded were casualties of the war,
even 5,000 kilometers from the battlefields of Europe.
That’s how it happens now; you’re not safe from harm anywhere anymore.
This is modern war.
If you want to know more about Canada in World War 1, check out our episode about them right
here.
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See you next time.