1917 has come to an end. It was a year of almost unimaginable events to people just
a couple years ago. Not one, but two TWO Russian revolutions. The war to end all wars growing
even larger as the United States joined the fray. Battles on unheard of scales like Passchendaele
and Arras. A mutiny in the French army. Stormtroop tactics at Caporetto. Hundreds of tanks taking
the field in France. Ever more and ever better planes taking to the skies. It went on and
on, hundreds of thousands of the dead month after month and now... it’s 1918.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to the Great War.
Last week was Christmas, and the British celebrated it in newly taken Jerusalem. The Austrians
were unable to take Venice before heavy winter snows arrived. Russia and the Central Powers
began peace negotiations, Russia having left the war several weeks ago. But Russia itself
was far from at peace, as fighting broke out with the Ukrainians, and Russian territories
declared independence. A bloody civil war loomed ahead.
Okay, that was a little dramatic, and not entirely true, for that civil war had already
begun in the south.
On New Year’s Eve, the Soviet Red Army occupied Kharkov. Many former officers in the Russian
army have now joined General Alexei Kaledin, the leader of the Don Cossacks, to fight the
Red Army. Anti-Bolshevik forces were also being formed by Lavr Kornilov in the Kuban
region and Mikhail Alexeev at Novocherkassk.
The Bolsheviks were still consolidating Russia and sorting out who, when, and where they
would have to fight to retain control. On the 29th they seized the banks, while on January
4th they recognized Finnish independence. As for the peace negotiations between the
Bolsheviks and the Central Powers, this week the Germans announced that their occupation
of Poland, Courland, Lithuania, and Estonia were indispensable parts of any of peace.
On January 2nd, the Soviet Central Committee met and denounced those terms.
And in the west, Russia’s withdrawal from the war certainly posed new dangers for the
Allies, but one thing it did not really affect was the USA’s cautious policy.
On New Year’s Day, America’s General John J. Pershing opposed - successfully - an urgent
request from British Prime Minister David Lloyd George for any and all surplus troops
to be sent over immediately to Europe to be incorporated with the French and British armies.
The request was because Lloyd George feared the possibility that Germans were soon to
launch a knockout punch before a trained American army could get to the lines. As we saw last
week, this was in fact the Germans’ plan.
As for their own plans, the Allied Supreme War Council had decided there would be no
major offensives of theirs in 1918, and Winston Churchill wrote this week (Gilbert), “Thank
God our offensives are at an end. Let them traipse across the crater fields. Let them
rejoice in the occasional capture of placeless names and sterile ridges.”
But how was the situation at home for, say, France and Britain?
Well, things may have been less terrible there than in Germany or Austria-Hungary since they
had access to American supplies and all, but even though there was no desperate deprivation,
there was weariness with the war and the endless heartbreak it brought. The governments suppressed
this harshly, but there was weariness with them too, and everyday life grew darker and
darker. In many ways, they were no longer even really democracies - I mean, citizens
not in favor of the war did not have a whole lot of liberty to air their views, and basically
all information available to the public was propaganda.
French losses had passed three million by now and in 1917 they were taking some 40,000
casualties per month (World Undone), and how could they replace them? Philippe Petain estimated
that he would need 1.02 million new troops on the Western Front in 1918. As it turned
out he would never get three quarters of that. His army had mostly recovered from the mutinies
early in the year, had fought off countless German attacks over the summer, and had itself
been successful at Malmaison and Verdun, but new Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau and
Ferdinand Foch, his advisor, had little regard for Petain and his cautious approach.
There’s a good section about Britain in “A World Undone”. “With its larger population,
its global empire from which to draw manpower, and “only” two million casualties since
the start of the war, Britain should have been in a better position than France. But
in fact it was not, at least in the view of its commanders. The problem was not, strictly
speaking, a shortage of soldiers... Some 450,000 fit and ready combat troops were being held
at home at Lloyd George’s insistence, and only labor units that were neither armed nor
trained for battle were allowed to cross the channel. (Commander Sir Douglas) Haig was
so short of replacements that he reduced the number of battalions per brigade from four
to three to avoid having to dissolve whole divisions.”
Interesting that Lloyd George is requesting American troops at the same time he’s holding
his own back. We’ve mentioned before the deep issues between Haig and Lloyd George.
Lloyd George wanted to dismiss Haig, but was stuck with him, but he could try to control
him by getting rid of his supporters. The first of these to go was Brigadier General
John Charteris, Haig’s Chief of Intelligence. He was not trained in military intel and is
sometimes blamed for Haig’s errors, and he certainly made those of his own; three
days before the big German counterattack at Cambrai a month ago he told Haig that the
Germans were very thin on that front. Anyhow, he was let go on December 14th. Haig’s Quartermaster
General R. C. Maxwell was gone two days later. Now, on New Year’s Day, Lord Derby, the
Minister for War, told Haig that Lloyd George wanted to get rid of Army Chief of Staff Wully
Robertson and replace him with Henry Wilson. Derby did say that he opposed this, but he
himself wanted to get rid of Launcelot Kiggell - awesome name - as Haig’s Chief of Staff.
Haig would reluctantly agree to this and Kiggell would be gone January 12th. So you can see
that there are some serious divisions within the British High Command and they had no unity.
But the one thing they did have was stuff. Endless stuff. The American cornucopia of
stuff was vomiting forth across the Atlantic, but even British arms production itself was
growing. By now a quarter million tons of shells were being shipped across the channel
every month, and that was less than a third of all the stuff arriving at the BEF bases
in Northern France. The longer Germany waited to deliver its “knock out blow”, the tougher
the job was going to be.
There was fighting in the field this week, though, on the Italian Front.
At the end of last week, the Austrian bridges on the Zenson bend of the Piave River were
destroyed, and now, on New Year’s Eve, the Austrians were forced to abandon their bridgehead.
On New Year’s Day, they were forced out of the entire region. They did bomb such cities
this week as Treviso, Veneto, and Padua.
In the Middle East, the British continued their advance from Jerusalem, and here’s
an odd side note I haven’t really had anywhere else to throw in. It’s from Martin Gilbert’s
“The First World War”. On that front, General Edmund Allenby, the British Commander,
got a fighting spider whose jaws could sever a scorpion’s tail - he named it Hindenburg.
And the first week of the year ends. The British in the Middle East and the Italians in Italy
advancing; the Bolsheviks consolidating power as their enemies consolidate their forces,
and political machinations in the British High Command. And peace talks and proposals
between Russia and the Central Powers.
You know, though at least people were meeting to talk about a sort of peace, in reality,
1917 came to an end absolutely without the prospect of peace in Europe. The ceasefire
on the Eastern Front turned out to be the prelude to an immediate and bloody civil war.
And the Bolsheviks weren’t happy with the emerging peace terms at Brest-Litovsk. Behind
the lines, those nations whose food imports were hurt by blockade had it worse and worse.
In Constantinople alone, some 10,000 people had starved to death in 1917; in Germany a
quarter of a million people had died from hunger related causes that year, directly
attributable to the naval blockade; there were food strikes and riots in the Habsburg
Empire in Vienna and Budapest that reached the point where seven army divisions were
recalled from the front to keep the peace, and were now there permanently to prevent
street violence.
The Europe that had settled in for the winter looked like a dying civilization. Before the
war, Russia had seemed to many like it had the brightest future of the great empires.
Now it lay in ruins and the Tsar and his family were prisoners. A potential democratic government
was gone and Lenin and the Bolsheviks were consolidating the wreckage. The people had
no security, no stability, and life was worth basically nothing. That’s what faced the
people of Russia as the New Year rolled in. Happy New Year.
If you want to learn more about the Turnip Winter in Germany, you can click right here
for our episodes about that.
Our Patreon supporter of the year is Dean Bibby - thank you Dean, you helped us making
this show what it is today. Don’t forget to subscribe, see you next time.