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Defining Moments I and the Age of

Kevin Hillstrom

155 W. Congress, Suite 200 Detroit, MI 48226 Chapter Five The Joins the Allies and Russia Backs Out 5

Perhaps it will not be long before we will read each day long lists of American boys killed or wounded in the trenches of France. There will be boys in those lists that you know, boys that I know. And as our eyes film over with tears it will be at least some comfort to us to be able to say, “I am helping too. I am saving food for the boys who are fighting.”

—Herbert Hoover, director of the I-era U.S. Food Administration

ith each passing month of 1917, the Great War continued to devour the lives of hundreds of thousands of European soldiers and civilians. WThis slaughter—and the apparent and political stalemate that was driving it—was a source of great and mounting despair to the peoples of both the Central Powers and the Allies. In reality, however, the war underwent momentous shifts during these grim months of bloodshed and heartache. Rus- sia withdrew from the war after long-threatened political convulsions finally swept Tsar Nicholas II from power in March 1917. Russia’s decision to end the war via a separate peace treaty with might, under ordinary circum- stances, have been a death blow to the Allied cause. But Britain and France and their partners were able to absorb this shock thanks to the Americans, who in April 1917 finally cast aside their neutrality and took up arms against Germany.

America’s Early Stance of Neutrality When had exploded across the European continent in 1914, the United States had resolutely adopted a policy of neutrality. The adminis-

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tration of President Woodrow Wilson (see biography, p. 153) maintained this stance throughout 1915 and 1916. It did so despite calls for U.S. military intervention from former president Theodore Roosevelt and other observers who saw Germany’s of Luxembourg, , and France as evil acts—and the ’ quest to dominate as a potential long-term threat to Amer- ica’s economic interests. Some Americans, in fact, became so upset by U.S. neutrality in the war that they traveled to Europe at their own expense to aid the Allied cause. “A mixed and eccentric collection joined the French Foreign Legion,” noted historians Meirion and Susie Harries. “Among them Bob Scanlon, a black New York boxer; big-game U.S. president Woodrow Wilson won re-election in 1916 in part because “He hunter René Phélizot of Chicago; Algernon kept us out of war.” Satoris, grandson of General Ulysses S. Grant; retired butcher Eugene Jacobs of Pawtucket; Frederick Capdeville, son of a West Point fencing master; and Alan Seeger, a poet.” 1 Americans also fought in the trenches as part of British or Canadian mil- itary units, while other men and women bravely served in war zones as nurs- es, doctors, and ambulance drivers. “Despite the picture painted by the most famous of the drivers, [author] Ernest Hemingway, who was serving in , the ambulance services were not playing at war or indulging in heroics. Their task was to evacuate the wounded from the front over ruined roads, from shell holes, through mud and gas clouds, almost always under fire.” 2 Americans who were involved in the early years of the war—as many as 15,000 by some estimates—were the exception, though. Most of their fellow Americans remained staunchly “isolationist”—opposed to U.S. involvement in the affairs of other nations—and news reports in 1915 and 1916 about the spi- raling slaughter on the Western and Eastern fronts actually deepened their anti- war feelings. They felt that sacrificing their own men to the war raging across the ocean made no sense. In 1916, in fact, Wilson’s successful presidential re- election campaign over Republican presidential nominee Charles Evans Hugh- es was based in large part on the slogan, “He Kept Us Out of War.”

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During these same years, however, the United States’ sympathy for the Allied cause—and its growing disgust with Germany—became more and more evident. Many Americans identified closely with British people who spoke the same language and shared many of their cultural traditions, and they felt badly for Belgian and French families whose peaceful existence had been obliterat- ed by Germany’s invading military machine. The war also developed in ways that gave the United States significant eco- nomic incentives to side with the Allies over Germany and the other Central Powers. When British naval forces imposed a that shut down all - ping into and out of German ports, the Allies became the only available transat- lantic buyers of American crops and military supplies. These arrangements became an important source of revenue for American farmers, manufacturers, and other businesses. Finally, American lawmakers, officials, and bankers knew that the governments in London and Paris were using credit to pay for aircraft, rifles, trucks, shells, blankets, wheat, oil, and other materials they needed to supply their troops and keep their cities running in wartime. If Ger- many won the Great War, those debts incurred by the British and French—more than $2 billion, by some estimates—would probably never be paid.

German U-Boat Attacks Push America Toward War Despite the Americans’ gradual drift into a posture that was sympathetic to the Allies, however, the United States might have remained on the sidelines were it not for a series of German actions and strategies that horrified Ameri- cans. Over the course of the war’s opening weeks, German military forces had rolled over Belgium in brutal fashion, turning historic cathedrals, museums, and neighborhoods into rubble and ashes. And within a year of the war’s opening , German troops on the Western Front had unleashed flamethrowers, poi- son gas, and other frightening new of destruction. This behavior elicited angry newspaper editorials in American cities and outraged speeches in Congress, but calls to enter the war did not noticeably increase until German U-boats began terrorizing cargo and passenger lin- ers in the Atlantic. These submarines particularly targeted enemy ships and armed merchant carriers, but they also sank hundreds of unarmed merchant ships—often without warning. This “unrestricted ” took thousands of innocent lives and elicited angry condemnations from the Wilson White House.

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The U-boat attack on the Lusitania, in particular, triggered a turning point in American public opinion about getting directly involved in World War I. The HMS Lusitania was torpedoed by the German submarine U20 off the coast of southern while en route from New York City to Liverpool, England on May 7, 1915. The ship sank with shocking speed, disappearing beneath the waves within twenty minutes. The death toll from the surprise attack was 1,201 pas- sengers and crew, including 128 Americans. Germany initially claimed that the passenger liner was a legitimate target because it was armed and carried enemy troops from . Both of these claims were false; the only items on board that were of a military nature were several thousand cases of rifle cartridges. Wilson sent a series of stinging rebukes to the German government after the sinking of the Lusitania (see “The United States Protests the Sinking of the Lusitania,” p. 163) , and Kaiser Wilhem II and his top generals recognized that the incident had stirred up a hornet’s nest across the sea. Frantic to keep the United States and its manufacturing and military assets from formally joining forces with the Allies, Germany agreed in the fall of 1915 to implement mea- sures to ensure that U-boats only targeted military warships, troop transports, and supply ships. U-boat attacks continued to claim the lives of innocent civilians, though. When a German U-boat sank the French passenger ferry Sus- sex on March 24, 1916, sending 50 passengers to their deaths, the outcry from both Allies and Americans was severe. Germany subsequently issued the so- called Sussex Pledge, which further committed German submarine comman- ders to use vessel searches and other techniques to make sure they were sink- ing legitimate targets. The Sussex Pledge also included a promise that innocent passengers and crew would be safely removed from any ship that was going to be torpedoed to the bottom of the ocean. Germany honored this pledge for several months, but in late 1916 the nation’s most powerful generals and admirals were calling for a return to unre- stricted submarine warfare. “There can be no justification … for refusing any further to employ what promises to be our most effective ” to cripple the Allied war effort, insisted German admiral Alfred von Tirpitz. “We should ruthlessly employ every weapon that is suitable for striking against England on her home ground.” 3 This attitude reflected the increasingly bleak situation faced by Germany. Neighboring -’s military capacity had weakened so dramatically that its positions on the Eastern Front required heavy German support. Things were also grim for Germany’s army, which was being stretched to the breaking point by the two-front war. “By the end of 1916, the year of Ver-

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Artist’s rendering of the Lusitania as it was struck by torpedoes from a German submarine. dun and the Somme, Germany had begun the final slide to exhaustion, drained of men, money, and ,” wrote Harries and Harries. “The futile slaughter on the Western Front, the growing waves of strikes and protests, rampant infla- tion, profiteering, and an iniquitous black market were destroying Germans’ morale and feeding the fires of revolution.”4 This atmosphere of crisis infected Kaiser Wilhelm II, who came to recog- nize that his regime’s survival depended not only on victory, but on making “the resulting peace profitable enough to compensate for the vast sacrifices his peo- ple had already made. The people wanted the land their armies now held: Bel- gium, northern France, some of the eastern territories.” 5 The kaiser subse- quently gave free rein to General Erich Ludendorff and his nominal superior, General Paul von Hindenburg, to carry out whatever they wanted, as long as it ended in victory. It did not take long for Ludendorff and Hindenburg to decide that unleashing the fearsome destructive potential of Ger- many’s U-boats was a key to victory. They gambled that German submarines could starve England of desperately needed food and military supplies—and

77 Defining Moments: World War I and the Age of Modern Warfare thus topple the entire Allied war effort—before the Americans ever roused themselves to join the fight. On January 31, 1917, the German ambassador to the United States in Washington, D.C., informed the Wilson administration that Germany intend- ed to resume its policy of unrestricted submarine warfare against any and all vessels approaching Great Britain. This development angered Wilson, who had been fruitlessly trying to negotiate some sort of peace settlement among the war- ring parties. On February 3, the United States formally broke off all diplomat- ic relations with Germany. Over the next two months several U.S. merchant ships were sunk by the German U-boat fleet, which by this time numbered well over 100 submarines. But even these attacks might not have been enough to push America into the war, were it not for the discovery of a telegram—the con- tents of which were as explosive as any .

The Zimmermann Telegram In late February 1917 British intelligence agents revealed to the United States that they had intercepted and decoded a secret telegram that had been sent to the government of Mexico one month earlier. The telegram, written by German foreign secretary Arthur Zimmermann, proposed a secret military alliance between Mexico and Germany. It stated that if the United States decid- ed to enter World War I on the side of the Allies, the would help the Mexican army reclaim the lost territories of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona from America (see “The Zimmermann Telegram,” p. 187). On March 1, 1917, one week after Wilson learned of the Zimmermann telegram, U.S. newspapers were informed of the message. Editorials and news stories about the telegram brought anti-German sentiment to a fever pitch across the United States. For his part, Wilson and his advisors regarded the telegram as the final straw. They felt that they now had no choice but to join with the Allies in the fight against Germany and the lesser Central Powers. On April 2, 1917, Wilson appeared before a special session of Congress to ask for a formal (see “Wilson Urges Congress to Declare War against Germany,” p. 188). The president declared that the United States had a solemn obligation to confront Germany and “make the world safe for democ- racy.” The resolution was approved in the U.S. House of Representatives by an overwhelming 373-50 margin and in the Senate by a similarly lopsided 82-6 vote. But while the “no” voters were badly outnumbered, they did not go down

78 Chapter Five: The United States Joins the Allies and Russia Backs Out without a fight. Antiwar senator George W. Norris of Nebraska, for example, insisted that the war would enrich American industrialists while putting the lives of millions of young Americans at risk. “We are committing a sin against humanity and against our countrymen,” Norris declared. “I would like to say to this war god: You shall not coin into gold the lifeblood of my brethren.… I feel that we are about to put the dollar sign upon the American flag.” 6

America Mobilizes for War When the United States entered the Great War, the entire world knew that it had the power and resources to greatly influence the war’s outcome. All across England and France, people rejoiced when they heard about America’s decla- ration of war against Germany. “The advent of the United States into this war gives the final stamp and seal to the character of the conflict as a struggle against military autocracy throughout the world,” declared British prime minister David Lloyd George. “The fact that the United States of America has made up its mind finally makes it abundantly clear to the world that this is … a great fight for human liberty.” 7 In many significant respects, though, America was unprepared for the con- flict. When it declared war against Germany in April 1917, the entire U.S. Army had only about 100,000 troops (and fewer than 300,000 even if all National Guard units were included). The U.S. military’s supply of war materials was also limited, and it did not have much infrastructure in place to train large numbers of new officers and soldiers at one time. Still, the nation had enormous resources of wealth, manpower, natural resources, and industrial capacity from which to draw. It also had a citizenry that after years of resisting involvement in the Great War, was caught up in patriotic enthusiasm and fervor. Finally, the United States was led by a presi- dent and Congress that used all of their powers and influence to put the coun- try on a war footing—even if it meant trampling on some of the country’s most treasured civil liberties. As spring gave way to summer, the U.S. government passed a variety of laws designed to sharpen the nation’s fighting abilities. Law- makers passed the Selective Service Act of 1917, a military draft measure that registered 24 million American men for by the end of 1918 (about four million Americans actually served in the Great War). Another 15,000 women signed up for overseas nursing and clerical duties with vol- unteer organizations such as the Red Cross or the American Expeditionary

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Once the United States declared war on Germany, the federal government initiated a wide range of bond programs to raise money for the war effort.

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Force (AEF), which was the official name of the U.S. armed forces being pre- pared for deployment in Europe. The federal government also passed legislation to take control of the country’s railroads and communications networks, its fuel and food supplies, its domestic labor force, and its trade and consumer pricing policies. Another priority was to get a war bond program up and running. These government bond-purchasing programs, versions of which had earlier been implemented by Germany, Austria-Hungary, Canada, and England, helped governments gener- ate revenue for the war effort at the same time that they gave private citizens a way to show their patriotism and support for the troops. Wilson and Congress also passed laws such as the 1917 Espionage Act, which made it illegal for people to interfere with military operations or recruit- ment, and the 1918 Sedition Act, which made it a criminal offense to express “dis- loyal” opinions that cast the wartime government or the war effort in a negative light. This law, which clearly trampled on Americans’ constitutional guarantee of , was used to silence and imprison opponents of the war. Hun- dreds of Americans were prosecuted and jailed under these laws. The most famous prosecution involved Eugene Debs, the nation’s best-known labor orga- nizer and Socialist leader. Debs was stripped of his U.S. citizenship and sentenced to ten years in prison for an antiwar speech he delivered in Ohio in June 1918 (he gained his release from prison on December 25, 1921, when his sentence was commuted by President Warren G. Harding). The first American troops landed in France in July 1917 under the com- mand of General John J. “Black Jack” Pershing (see biography, p. 146), Wilson’s choice to lead the AEF. In October these American troops, known as “Yanks” or “doughboys” to the Allied units they were joining, entered the trenches of the Western Front. The American military presence in Europe steadily grew over the winter, and by March 1918, 318,000 American soldiers were fighting in France. The Americans initially fought in small units attached to larger British and French divisions, but by the spring of 1918 they were fighting solely under Pershing and his American commanders.

Mutiny in the French Ranks The AEF’s independence from other Allied military authorities chafed at some of the top British and French commanders and government officials, but rank-and-file soldiers along the blood-soaked Western Front were just glad to

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have help. “To the battered armies that had attacked and defended throughout 1914 to 1917, the appearance of the doughboys … brought nothing but renewed hope,” wrote historian John Keegan. “Their personal popularity was everywhere noted. The Americans were light-hearted, cheerful, enthusiastic, dis- missive of difficulties. ‘We’ll soon settle this,’ was the doughboy attitude.” 8 America’s entrance into the war was a particularly important salve to the battered French army, which was wracked by a series of mutinies or strikes by ordinary soldiers from April to June 1917. These mutinies flared up after a failed April at Chamin des Dames that gained only a few hundred yards of land at the cost of as many as 250,000 French casualties. The incidents were unusual in that they were not accompanied by violence against officers or calls to overthrow the government. The French troops simply refused to obey orders to attack from commanders and a government in which they had lost faith. “A strange mutual respect characterised relations between private soldiers and the commissioned [officer] ranks during the ‘mutinies,’ as if both sides recognised themselves to be mutual victims of a terrible ordeal, which was simply no longer bearable by those at the bottom of the heap,” observed Keegan. “The general mood of those involved—and they comprised soldiers in fifty-four divisions, almost half the army—was one of reluctance, if not refusal, to take part in fresh attacks but also of patriotic willingness to hold the lines against attacks by the enemy.” 9 The French government moved carefully to address the soldiers’ complaints. Robert Niv- elle, the general who had ordered the Chamin des Dames offensive, was relieved of command and replaced by General Philippe Pétain. The new commander ended the crisis by taking steps to improve the soldiers’ food, increase their time on leave, and assure the rank and file that he would order no more large-scale offen- sives until American reinforcements arrived at the front. Many of the soldiers learned of these reforms during visits that the general person- ally made to their units. Sensitive to the need John “Black Jack” Pershing was selected to restore morale, Pétain decided not to levy to lead U.S. military forces in Europe. punishment against the vast majority of strik-

82 Chapter Five: The United States Joins the Allies and Russia Backs Out ing soldiers. Nonetheless, some soldiers paid a steep price for their role in the strikes. Several dozen were court-martialed, convicted, and executed by firing squad for their actions. All of these actions to restore the confidence and morale of the French army were taken under a shroud of secrecy that somehow held up until mid- summer, by which time the crisis had passed and American forces were start- ing to arrive at the front. Pétain had concealed the entire mess from the Ger- mans, who might well have launched a major offensive if they had known about the dispirited state of the French forces.

Mixed Battlefield Results for the British With the French army in disarray and the Americans still getting them- selves organized, the British felt pressure to shoulder a greater share of the Allied war burden for much of 1917. In the , aggressive British military operations wrested control of two strategically and symbolically important cities, Baghdad and Jerusalem, from the Turks and their Arab allies by year’s end. On the Western Front, however, an ambitious plan to punch through German lines outside the city of Ypres, in the northern region of Belgium known as Flan- ders, devolved into yet another of the war’s appallingly bloody stalemates. The so-called Third of Ypres (also known as the Battle of Passchendaele, after an unfortunate Belgian village that was at the heart of much of the fighting) was a military offen- sive devised by British general Sir Douglas Haig (see biography, p. 129). Convinced that a deci- sive blow could break the German army once and for all, Haig orchestrated a big push at Ypres designed to force the enemy off the Bel- gian coast altogether. Haig’s first hammer blow came on June 7, 1917, when Allied units det- onated a series of giant mines that had been secretly planted under the German front lines around the city of Ypres. These explosions, combined with intensive artillery attacks, French general Philippe Pétain instituted shredded the enemy lines and forced German several reforms in 1917 to quell unrest in forces to retreat. But Haig delayed in pressing the ranks of his army.

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Soldiers pass through the ruined city of Ypres during the five-month Battle of Passchandaele.

his advantage. By the time his soldiers resumed their advance, rainy weather, troop movements, and artillery from both sides had trans- formed the terrain into a quicksand-like mud. “The ground is churned up to a depth of ten feet and is the consistency of porridge,” wrote one British artillery officer. “The middle of the shell craters are so soft that one might sink out of sight.… There must be hundreds of German dead buried here and now their own shells are reploughing the area and turning them up.” 10 Haig’s grand offensive soon degenerated into a series of inconclusive attacks and counterattacks, all taking place in a setting that became more hell- ish by the day. “The great Passchendaele Campaign [was] a three-month cam- paign,” stated scholar Trevor Wilson, “and two months of it [were] fought in pouring rain. The airplanes can’t go up, so your artillery can’t hit the enemy guns. Your shells land in the mud, so they don’t explode effectively. Your

84 Chapter Five: The United States Joins the Allies and Russia Backs Out troops that are supposed to be moving forward, behind the creeping , are caught in the mud, and so, can’t keep up with it.” 11 As the bloody campaign continued for week after week, both sides became grimly familiar with stories of wounded soldiers and horses that drowned in craters and trenches that slow- ly filled with watery mud. In early November British and Canadian troops finally captured Pass- chandaele—or what remained of it after months of shelling. The village lay only five miles east of where Haig had begun his offensive. Nonetheless, he took its capture as an opportunity to call off the campaign and claim success. This “suc- cess,” though, came at a shocking cost. Total casualties incurred during the Third Battle of Ypres remain unknown, but historians have estimated losses in the British Expeditionary Force (including Canadian and Australian units) in the range of 250,000-350,0000 men. Estimates of German losses in that muddy wasteland have ranged from 240,000 to more than 400,000 troops. Elsewhere in Europe in 1917, the Allies suffered a major defeat along the Austrian-Italian borderlands. In late October and early November, Austrian forces backed by German reinforcements delivered a crushing blow to the Ital- ian army at the Battle of Caporetto (also known as the Twelfth Battle of the Ison- zo). The entire Italian front crumbled before the Austrian-German onslaught, sending whole Italian divisions fleeing down out of the Kolovrat mountain range. By the time the battle was over, more than 250,000 Italian troops had sur- rendered and the Italians had lost large swaths of territory that they had gained over the previous two years. The defeat was so complete and decisive that British and French units were taken off the Western Front and sent to Italy to keep the situation from deteriorating any further.

The Russian Revolution and Its Impact on the War Looming over all of these battlefield events was Russia, which was wracked by economic and political convulsions throughout the year. These events, which unfolded swiftly and unpredictably, took a heavy toll on the hungry and demoralized Russian troops who had been fighting Germans and Austrians on the Eastern Front. By the end of the year, in fact, Russia’s government had undergone such violent upheaval that Germany was able to suspend military operations in the East and turn all its attention to the Western Front. The collapse of Imperial Russia can be traced back to numerous factors that pre-dated the Great War, including a humiliating 1905 military defeat to Japan

85 Defining Moments: World War I and the Age of Modern Warfare over disputed territories and the longstanding resentments of poor workers who wanted more political freedoms and economic reforms. Another factor was the deep unpopularity of the emperor’s imperious wife, Alexandra, and public agi- tation about the perceived influence of an advisor to the monarchy named Grig- ori Rasputin. Intimidating and mysterious, Rasputin had emerged from the wilds of Siberia to become a confidant, healer, prophet, and spiritual counselor to Tsar Nicholas II and his royal family. Rasputin’s reputed success in “curing” young Prince Alexis of hemophilia won him the particular favor of Alexandra— but this triumph also increased public wariness of Rasputin, about whom many unsavory rumors swirled. The tsar’s shaky grip on power steadily weakened once the war started. Worsening shortages of food and fuel created unrest among the Russian peo- ple, as did the growing sense that millions of Russia’s sons were being sent to their deaths without any benefit to “Mother Russia.” Domestic tensions were further deepened by Nicholas II’s decision in late 1915 to go to the front and oversee army operations personally. When the army continued to flounder after his arrival there, Russia’s military failures increasingly were blamed on the tsar rather than his generals. Back in the capital of Petrograd (modern Saint Peters- burg), Nicholas II had left Alexandra to manage the country’s domestic affairs. This decision further eroded his support, as the Russian people became con- vinced that his wife was being directed by the shadowy Rasputin. Baseless rumors even flew that Alexandra and Rasputin were German spies. In late December 1916 Rasputin was assassinated by agents of Imperial Russia’s increasingly anxious aristocracy. In early 1917, the food shortages and political turmoil finally exploded into open revolt. When troops called in to put down the revolt instead decided to join the riot, Nicholas II’s rule was doomed. He was forced to abdicate the throne on March 15, 1917, under pressure from Russia’s military leaders. A provisional government led by Aleksandr Kerensky replaced the monarchy, but communist revolutionaries known as Bolsheviks also wielded a great deal of power. It was the Bolsheviks, in fact, who exiled Nicholas II and his entire family to Siberia— and later executed them on the night of July 16, 1918. Kerensky and his liberal government decided to continue the war against Germany, but a summer offensive organized by Russia’s generals fell apart when Russia’s demoralized troops—almost all of whom had been forcibly con- scripted into military service—refused to fight. When Germany counterat-

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Bolshevik leaders Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, and Leon Trotsky (from left to right) in March 1919, at a Congress of the Russian Communist Party. tacked, the Russian lines dissolved and German forces moved unmolested into Russia. This disaster led to a failed attempt at a military coup by conser- vative generals in the Russian Army. Kerensky’s government was unable to survive these setbacks, all of which indicated that the country was spinning out of control. A communist revolu- tionary leader named Vladimir Lenin seized on the continued political and eco- nomic unrest. Lenin harnessed the rising power of the Bolshevik movement, uniting various factions and communist leaders such as Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky under his direction. Lenin and his supporters took control of Russia’s government in November 1917. As Kerensky fled into exile, Lenin vowed to provide bread, land, and peace for the long-suffering Russian people, who eager- ly grasped at his words of hope and relief. Lenin’s top priority was to end Russian involvement in the Great War. He immediately approached Germany with a call for an armistice, and on Decem- ber 2 a formal ceasefire between Russia and all the Central Powers was declared. Three months later, on March 3, 1918, representatives of the Russian and Ger- man governments signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. This agreement gave Lenin the peace he had sought so that he could devote his energies to creating

87 Defining Moments: World War I and the Age of Modern Warfare a socialist utopia in Russia. The peace came at a high cost, however. Russia was forced to relinquish huge swaths of its western lands—including Poland, Fin- land, and the Baltic states—to the Germans. These territories included a third of Russia’s farmland, many of its factories, and roughly 50 million people. Allied strategists recognized that Russia’s exit from the war was a severe blow to their cause. The people and soldiers of Germany, meanwhile, rejoiced at this development. With the departure of Russia’s vast army from the battle- field, Germany’s still-formidable army would now be able to concentrate all of its fearsome firepower on the Western Front. Mere weeks after the signing of Brest-Litovsk, German commanders ordered a major offensive designed to smash the British and French armies once and for all. “The mood [in Germany] is one of jubilation,” reported a top police official in Berlin. “People are fol- lowing the victorious advance on French and Belgian territory with the great- est and most confident expectations. The final bloody reckoning with the English is seen here as the order of the day.” 12

Notes

1 Harries, Meirion, and Susie Harries. The Last Days of Innocence: America at War, 1917-1918. New York: Random House, 1997, p. 41. 2 Harries and Harries, p. 44. 3 Quoted in Meyer, G. J. A World Undone: The Story of the Great War 1918 to 1918. New York: Dela- corte Press, 2006, p. 367. 4 Harries and Harries, pp. 61-62. 5 Ibid. 6 Quoted in Harries and Harries, p. 72. 7 “David Lloyd George on America’s Entry into the War, 12 April 1917.” Firstworldwar.com. Reprint from Source Records of the Great War, Vol. V. Edited by Charles F. Horne, 1923. 8 Keegan, John. The War. New York: Random House, 2003, p. 374. 9 Keegan, p. 330. 10 Quoted in Keegan, p. 361. 11 Wilson, Trevor. “The Battle of Passchendaele.” The Great War and the Shaping of the Twentieth Cen- tury. PBS. 1996. Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/greatwar/historian/hist_wilson_06_passchendaele .html. 12 Quoted in Stibbe, Matthew. German Anglophobia and the Great War, 1914-1918. New York: Cam- bridge University Press, 2001, p. 190.

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