Some of our long term fans out there may have forgotten what’s happened over the course
of the war, and some of you newer fans may wish to catch up.
So we do a recap special every three months so you can get up to speed and this is one
of them.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to a Great War Recap special covering the months February,
March, and April 1918.
As February began, the shakeups and machinations in the British Army High Command continued.
Much of this resulted from PM David Lloyd-George wanting to get rid of his Commander Sir Douglas
Haig, but being unable to just fire him, so he was trying get rid of everyone around him.
Several men had been removed in January, but the big fish would be Chief of Staff Wully
Robertson.
He was finally maneuvered out and resigned in mid February, and Sir Henry Wilson would
be the new Chief of Staff.
If you dig into that situation it may seem a bit a bit of a mess, but nothing compared
to the mess that was the Russian peace negotiations with the Central Powers at Brest-Litovsk.
Leon Trotsky was now leading the Russian delegation and was trying to drag them out.
The Germans were losing patience, however, and had by now proposed a new border that
would deprive Russia of Lithuania, most of Poland, and Western Latvia.
The Austrians were also antsy, but mostly because FM Count Czernin really wanted to
get it all over with and bring in as much Ukrainian grain as he could for his near starving
nation from a separate peace with Ukraine.
Trotsky was dragging things out because he and other Russian Bolshevik leaders thought
a revolution in German and Austria was imminent, but though there were mutinies and uprisings,
revolution just wasn’t going to happen.
In the peace with Ukraine, the Cholm region of Poland was given to them, and this caused
the Poles in AH to blow up and they were now opposed to Emperor Karl, and had been one
of his last pillars of support.
This sabotaged things with the Bolsheviks, who had their own designs on Ukraine, and
Trotsky walked out of Brest-Litovsk declaring, “no war no peace”, and that Russia would
accept no annexationist peace terms.
So on the 18th, the Eastern Front came to life as the German army marched on Russia
and Ukraine.
There was pretty much no one around to stop them, since the Russian army had mostly gone
home, so Lenin and Trotsky said they’d accept the peace offer.
This was too late, though, and the Germans demanded hundreds of thousands of square km
of land and industry.
They also refused to stop advancing on Moscow and Petrograd until the new terms were accepted
and were still on the move as the month ended.
That wasn’t the only February action in the field, though.
The Transcaucasian Federation, made up of what is now Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan,
would spend the winter negotiating a peace treaty and new borders with the Ottoman Empire,
but even while that was going on, the Ottomans were advancing toward the Caucasus, and occupying
Erzincan and Trabzon by the end of the month.
But though there had been no big action on the Western Front in February, that doesn’t
mean it wasn’t being planned.
German Quartermaster General Erich Ludendorff was planning the largest offensive of the
war, beginning with Operation Michael, which would begin in late March.
By then Germany would have 191 divisions on the Western Front, giving them numerical superiority
there for the first time since 1914.
He would also be using the tried and true Hutier assault tactics and Bruchmuller artillery
tactics to try and break the front wide open.
He was doing all this now to try and win the war before the Americans could arrive in force
with the summer.
As March arrived, the desperate Russians signed the peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk to stop
the advancing Germans, and its humiliating terms crippled the new Bolshevik nation, depriving
it of much of its resources, population, and land.
Germany now controlled territory from the North Sea to the Black Sea; no one had done
that since the Romans.
They would have to pacify the occupied territory though, which would take a great many troops,
and fight not only Bolsheviks, but also groups like the Czechoslovak Legion, who beat the
Germans at Bakhmach in March, before heading east for Siberia.
The Ottomans continued occupying territory that month too, taking and burning Erzurum.
They also managed to stop a British advance on Amman and Es Salt in Palestine, and the
British retreated behind the River Jordan.
The gigantic German offensive kicked off March 21st, along a huge chunk of the Western Front.
It literally smashed through the British lines and within days had taken dozens of kilometers
of land and inflicted tens of thousands of casualties.
The war in the west was a war of motion for the first time since 1914.
However, the advance was so quick that it was soon outrunning its supply lines and artillery,
and the land taken was land bereft of strategic value.
Also, French and British reserves were finally pouring in.
Still, by the end of the month as the Paris Gun, the largest artillery ever made, began
to rain shells down on Paris from 100km away, Germany threatened to drive a wedge between
the British and French forces.
They crossed the Somme and the Crozat Canal, and the Allies pleaded with the Americans
to put all available troops into the line to stem the tide.
President Wilson said okay, but Commander John Pershing adamantly refused to do so,
preferring to wait until they had the strength to fight as an American army.
And April rolled in.
Operation Michael began to run out of steam, and Ludendorff had failed to take the vital
allied rail center of Amiens.
And the German army didn’t have the cavalry or tanks necessary to exploit breakthroughs.
There were also many scenes of discipline breaking down, as advancing Germans came across
supplies and provisions that had been scarce for four years.
They had taken nearly 100,000 prisoners, in addition to causing over 200,000 casualties,
and 1,200 square miles of land, but had left their vaunted defense lines and lengthened
their overall line to do so.
But as Michael came to an end, Ludendorff was already trying again with Operation Georgette,
the Battle of La Lys, up in Flanders.
This too had instant success, breaking the Portuguese and British front lines, but over
the following couple weeks it would unfold much as Michael did; large rapid advances,
but still unable to take its primary targets, in this case Hazebrouck rail junction and
then the Flanders Hills.
There was a fear for a while among the British that they would be driven back to the Channel
ports and even off the continent, but by the end of the month it was apparent that that
wasn’t going to happen.
Ludendorff tried further attacks toward Amiens, which resulted in the first ever tank versus
tank battle April 24th at Villers Bretonneux, but April ended without the massive German
battles taking any major prizes.
They also took over 300,000 casualties total by this time, which was fewer than the Allies,
but still a tenth of their overall strength on the whole Western Front.
But as May began, the attacks continued.
In order to finally consolidate their forces better, the Allies chose Ferdinand Foch as
Supreme Commander of All Allied Forces this month.
Some of those forces would mount an amphibious operation against Ostend and Zeebrugge, hoping
to block the canal entrances there and sabotage German submarine traffic, but the operation
was unsuccessful.
In Palestine, Lawrence of Arabia and the Arab Revolt tried and failed to take Maan, but
occupied close to 100km of the Hejaz railway, which was a big coup for that railway was
a major supply line for the Ottomans.
Further north, the Ottomans took Batum and Kars and continued their march toward the
Caucasus.
And in other news from April, Britain formed the Royal Air Force, the world’s first independent
air force.
Also in the skies, the great Red Baron met his fate, shot down over the Somme, and Austrian
Emperor Karl faced a political crisis when it was discovered he had plotted to perhaps
abandon his German ally and seek a separate peace.
His authority and the cohesion of his empire were now eroding monthly.
And here we are on May 1st, the international workers day.
And what was happening to them?
Well, in Ukraine they were abruptly about to be deprived of the fruits of their labor,
as Germany declared a military dictatorship in order to gather the Ukrainian harvest for
its own.
And that sucks for those workers, but by comparison they had it good for the moment, for what
were the rest of the workers of Europe doing?
They were fighting, and bleeding, and dying for their nations on the battlefields, month
after month, and wondering what sort of world they would come home to if the war ever ever
ended.