World War One Part 2 (100 Years Later)

  

 

The End of the War (1917-1918)


 From 1917 to 1918, massive developments existed during World War One. The British blockade in 1917 started to harm the German military. In response, the German General Staff on February 1917 convinced Chancellor Theoblad von Bethmann-Hollweg to declare unrestricted submarine warfare. The Germans wanted to starve the British out of the war. German plans estimated that unrestricted submarine warfare would cost Britain a monthly shipping loss of 600,000 tons. The General Staff said that this policy would definitely cause America to go into the conflict. Yet, they believed that the British shipping losses would increase to the point that they would be forced to have peace talks after 5 or 6 months. This would be before American intervention could make an impact. Tonnage sunk rose above 500,000 tons per month from February to July. It peaked at 860,000 tons in April. After July, the newly re-introduced convoy system was effective in reducing the U-boat threat. Britain was safe from starvation. German industrial output fell. The United States ultimately joined WWI far before than what Germany had anticipated. By May 3, 1917, during the Nivelle Offensive, the French 2nd Colonial Division (veterans of the Battle of Verdun) refused orders.

They were drunk and without their weapons. The officers didn’t have the means to punish an entire division. Harsh measures were not immediately implemented. The French Army mutinies spread to 54 French divisions and 20,000 men deserted. Yet, there were appeals to patriotism and duty. Mass arrested and trials encouraged the soldiers to return to defend their trenches. Although, the French soldiers refused to participate in further offensive action. Robert Nivelle was removed form command on May 16, 1917. He was replaced by General Philippe Petain, who suspended bloody large scale attacks.

The Central Powers had a victory at the Battle of Caporetto. The Allies went to convene the Rapallo Conference at which they created the Rapallo Conference. They formed the Supreme War Council to co-ordinate planning. Previously, the British and French armies had separate commands. On December, the Central Powers signed an armistice with Russia, thus freeing large numbers of German troops for use in the west. With German reinforcements and new American troops pouring in, the outcome was to be decided on the Western Front. The Central Powers knew that they could not win a protracted war, but they held high hopes for success based on a final quick offensive. Furthermore, both sides became increasingly fearful of social unrest and revolution in Europe. Thus, both sides urgently sought a decisive victory. In 1917, Emperor Charles I of Austria secretly wanted peace negotiations with Clemenceau through his wife’s brother Sixtus in Belgium as an intermediary. He did this without the knowledge of Germany. Italy opposed the proposals. When the negotiations failed, his attempt was revealed to Germany. This caused a diplomatic catastrophe.

The Ottoman Empire conflict during WWI ultimately ended with a massive change in the Middle East politically. The First and Second Battles of Gaza came about in March and April of 1917. German and Ottoman forces stopped the advance of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, which started in August of 1916 at the Battle of Romani. At the end of October, the Sinai and Palestine Campaign resumed. This was when General Edmund Allenby’s XXth Corps, XXI Cops, and Desert Corps won the Battle of Beersheba. Two Ottoman armies were defeated a few weeks later at the Battle of Mughar Ridge and early in December, Jerusalem was capture after another Ottoman defeat at the Battle of Jerusalem. Around this time, Friedrich Freiherr Kress von Kressenstein was relieved of his duties as the Eighth Army’s commander. He was replaced by Djevad Pasha and a few months later, the commander of the Ottoman Army in Palestine, Erich von Falkenhayn, was replaced by Otto Liman von Sanders. In early 1918, the front line was extended and the Jordan Valley was occupied. This was after the First Transjordan and the Second Transjordan attacks by British Empire forces in March and April of 1918.  In March, most of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force's British infantry and Yeomanry cavalry were sent to the Western Front as a consequence of the Spring Offensive. They were replaced by Indian Army units. During several months of reorganization and training of the summer, a number of attacks were carried out on sections of the Ottoman front line. These forces pushed the front lien north to more advantageous positions for the Entente in preparation for an attack and to acclimatize the newly arrived Indian Army Infantry. It was not until the middle of September that the integrated force was ready for large scale operations.

There was the reorganized Egyptian Expeditionary Force. It had another division. It defeated Ottoman forces at the Battle of Megiddo in September of 1918. 2 days later, the British and Indian infantry (supported by a barrage) broke the Ottoman front line. They captured the headquarters of the Eighth Ottoman Army at Tulkarm. This was a continuous trench lines at Tabsor, Arara, and the Seventh Army (Ottoman Empire) headquarters at Nablus. The Desert Mounted Corps rode in the front line created by the infantry. There were operations by  Australian Light Horse, British mounted Yeomanry, Indian Lancers, and New Zealand Mounted Rifle brigades in the Jezreel Valley, they captured Nazareth, Afulah and Beisan, Jenin, along with Haifaon the Mediterranean coast and Daraa east of the Jordan River on the Hejaz railway. Samakh and Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee were captured on the way northwards to Damascus. Meanwhile, Chaytor's Force of Australian light horse, New Zealand mounted rifles, Indian, British West Indies and Jewish infantry captured the crossings of the Jordan River, Es Salt, Amman and at Ziza most of the Fourth Army (Ottoman Empire). The Armistice of Mudros, signed at the end of October, ended hostilities with the Ottoman Empire when fighting was continuing north of Aleppo.

On August 16, 1917, Pope Benedict XV wanted to show a peace proposal. He wanted no annexations, restoration of the Kingdom of Poland, freedom of the seas, no retaliatory economic conflicts, no reparations, no annexations, and other actions. It didn’t work out. During the early part of WWI, the United States wasn’t involved in the war as following a policy of non-intervention. America wanted to avoid conflict and broker a peace. When the German U-boat U-20 sank the British liner RMS Lusitania on May 7, 1915, President Woodrow Wilson said that America is too “proud to fight.” 128 Americans died by the attack. Wilson wanted an end to attacks on passenger ships. Germany complied temporarily. Wilson wouldn't get his wish to immediately end such German attacks. Wilson warned that America wouldn’t tolerate unrestricted submarine warfare in violation of international law.  Former President Theodore Roosevelt denounced German acts as "piracy.” Wilson was narrowly re-elected in 1916 after campaigning with the slogan "he kept us out of war.” By January of 1917, Germany continued with unrestricted submarine warfare. It knew that America would enter the war. The German Foreign Minister, in the Zimmermann Telegram, invited Mexico to join the war as Germany's ally against the United States. In return, the Germans would finance Mexico's war and help it recover the territories of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.

The United Kingdom intercepted the message and presented it to the US embassy in the UK. From there, it made its way to President Wilson who released the Zimmermann note to the public, and Americans saw it as casus belli. Wilson wanted anti-war people to use WWI as a cause to end all wars by winning this one. He wanted to end militarism in the globe. He wanted America to have voice in the peace conference. After the sinking of seven U.S. merchant ships by submarines and the publication of the Zimmermann telegram. Wilson called for war on Germany on April 2, 1917. The U.S. Congress declared war 4 days later. The United States never formally was a member of the Allies, but was an associated power. The United had a small army back then. So, after the passage of the Selective Service Act, it drafted 2.8 million men. By the summer of 1918, it was sending 10,000 soldiers to France every day. In 1917, the U.S. Congress granted U.S. citizenship to Puerto Ricans to allow them to be drafted to participate in World War I. This was part of the Jones-Shafroth Act. German General Staff assumed that they would be able to defeat the British and French forces before American troops reinforced them. They were proven wrong.

The United States Navy sent a battleship group to Scapa Flow to join the British Grand Fleet. They sent destroyers to Queenstown, Ireland, and submarines to help guard convoys. Many regiments of U.S. Marines were dispatched to France. The British and French wanted American units used to reinforce their troops already on the battle lines and not waste scarce shipping on bringing over supplies. General John J. Pershing, American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) commander, refused to break up American units to be used as filler material. As an exception, he did allow African-American combat regiments to be used in French divisions. The Harlem Hellfighters fought as part of the French 16th Division, and earned a unit Croix de Guerre for their actions at Château-Thierry, Belleau Wood, and Sechault.  AEF doctrine called for the use of frontal assaults, which had long since been discarded by British Empire and French commanders due to the large loss of life that resulted.

The German Spring Offensive of 1918 involved Ludendorff creating plans (codenamed Operation Michael). This offensive was on the Western Front. The Spring Offensive wanted to divide the British and French forces with a series of feints and advances. The German leadership wanted the war to end before U.S. forces came about. It started on March 21, 1918 with an attack on British forces near Saint-Quentin. German forces made an unprecedented advance of 37 miles. British and French trenches were penetrated using novel infiltration tactics, also named Hutier tactics after General Oskar von Hutier, by specially trained units called stormtroopers. Previously, attacks had been characterized by long artillery bombardments and massed assaults. In the Spring Offensive of 1918, however, Ludendorff used artillery only briefly and infiltrated small groups of infantry at weak points. They attacked command and logistics areas and bypassed points of serious resistance. More heavily armed infantry then destroyed these isolated positions. This German success relied greatly on the element of surprise. The German forces were 75 miles from Paris. Many Parisians left. It was so successful that Kaiser Wilhelm II called March 24 a national holiday. Many Germans thought victory was near. The offensive was halted. The Germany didn’t consolidate their gains without tanks or motorized artillery. The problems of re-supply were also exacerbated by increasing distances that now stretched over terrain that was shell-torn and often impassable to traffic. Americans came into the war increasingly.

The Doullens Conference on November 5, 1917 united the Allied forces more in a Supreme War Council of Allied Forces. Pershing wanted Americans forces to fight independently. Haig, Petain, and Pershing retained tactical control of their respective armies; Foch assumed a coordinating rather than a directing role, and the British, French, and US commands operated largely independently. Following Operation Michael, Germany launched Operation Georgette against the northern English Channel ports. The Allies halted the drive after limited territorial gains by Germany. The German Army to the south then conducted Operations Blücher and Yorck, pushing broadly towards Paris. Germany launched Operation Marne (Second Battle of the Marne) on July 15, in an attempt to encircle Reims. The resulting counter-attack, which started the Hundred Days Offensive, marked the first successful Allied offensive of the war. By July 20, the Germans had retreated across the Marne to their starting lines, having achieved little, and the German Army never regained the initiative. German casualties between March and April 1918 were 270,000, including many highly trained storm troopers.

Meanwhile, Germany was falling apart at home. Anti-war marches became frequent and morale in the army fell. Industrial output was half the 1913 levels. In the late spring of 1918 new nations formed in the South Caucasus. They were the First Republic of Armenia, the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, and the Democratic Republic of Georgia, which declared their independence from the Russian Empire. Two other minor entities were established, the Centrocaspian Dictatorship and South West Caucasian Republic (the former was liquidated by Azerbaijan in the autumn of 1918 and the latter by a joint Armenian-British task force in early 1919). With the withdrawal of the Russian armies from the Caucasus front in the winter of 1917–18, the three major republics braced for an imminent Ottoman advance, which commenced in the early months of 1918. Solidarity was briefly maintained when the Transcaucasian Federative Republic was created in the spring of 1918, but this collapsed in May, when the Georgians asked for and received protection from Germany and the Azerbaijanis concluded a treaty with the Ottoman Empire that was more akin to a military alliance. Armenia was left to fend for itself and struggled for five months against the threat of a full-fledged occupation by the Ottoman Turks before defeating them at the Battle of Sardarabad.

The Allied Victory

The Allied victory started with the Hundred Days Offensive (which was a counteroffensive). It started on August 9, 1918 with the Battle of Amiens. It involved over 400 tanks and 120,000 British, Dominion, and French troops. By the end of the first day, a gap of 24 km or 15 miles long was created in the German lines. The defenders displayed a lowering of morale. It caused Ludendorff to call the day as the “Black Day of the Germany army.” They or the Allied forces advanced as far as 14 miles afterwards.  Then, German resistance stiffened and the battle ended on August 12, 1918. The Allies moved their attention elsewhere. Allied leaders realized that to continue to attack after resistance wasted lives. They wanted to turn a line than to try to roll over it. They started to use attacks in quick order to take advantage of successful advances on the flanks, then broke them off when each attack lost its initial impetus. The next phase of the campaign was the Battle of Albert on August 21, 1918. It involved British, Dominion, and French forces. The assault was widened by French and then further British forces in the following days. During the last week of August the Allied pressure along a 110-kilometre (68 mi) front against the enemy was heavy and unrelenting. From German accounts, "Each day was spent in bloody fighting against an ever and again on-storming enemy, and nights passed without sleep in retirements to new lines.” These new advances on September 2 caused the German Supreme Army Command to issue orders to withdraw to the Hindenburg Line in the south. This ceded without a fight the salient seized the previous April.  According to Ludendorff, "We had to admit the necessity ... to withdraw the entire front from the Scarpe to the Vesle."

The time of September saw the Allies advance to the Hindenburg Line in the north and center. The Germans continued to fight strong rear guard actions. They launched many counterattacks on lost positions, but only a few succeeded. Towns, villages, heights, and trenches in the screening positions plus outposts of the Hindenburg Line continued to fall to the Allies. The BEF alone took 30,441 prisoners in the last week of September 1918. By September 24, 1918, there was an assault made by both the British and French that came within 2 miles of St. Quentin. The Germans had now retreated to positions along or behind the Hindenburg Line. After four weeks of fighting starting on August 8, 1918, over 100,000 German prisoners were taken. As of “The Black Day of the German Army,” the German High Command knew that the war was lost. He made attempts to reach a satisfactory end. The day after that battle, Ludendorff said, "We cannot win the war any more, but we must not lose it either." On August 11, 1918, he offered his resignation to the Kaiser, who refused it, replying, "I see that we must strike a balance. We have nearly reached the limit of our powers of resistance. The war must be ended." On August 13, at Spa, Hindenburg, Ludendorff, the Chancellor, and Foreign Minister Hintz agreed that the war could not be ended militarily and, on the following day, the German Crown Council decided that victory in the field was now most improbable. Austria and Hungary warned that they could only continue the war until December, and Ludendorff recommended immediate peace negotiations. Prince Rupprecht warned Prince Max of Baden: "Our military situation has deteriorated so rapidly that I no longer believe we can hold out over the winter; it is even possible that a catastrophe will come earlier." On September 10, 1918, Hindenburg urged peace moves to Emperor Charles of Austria, and Germany appealed to the Netherlands for mediation. On September 14, Austria sent a note to all belligerents and neutrals suggesting a meeting for peace talks on neutral soil, and on September 15, 1918, Germany made a peace offer to Belgium. Both peace offers were rejected, and on September 24, 1918, Supreme Army Command informed the leaders in Berlin that armistice talks were inevitable.

The final assault on the Hindenburg Line started with the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. This took place on September 26, 1918. It was launched by French and American troops. Next week, co-operating French and American troops broke through in Champagne at the Battle of Blanc Mont Ridge. This forced the Germans off the commanding heights. The Allied forces closed towards the Belgian frontier. By October 8, the line was pieced again by British and Dominion troops at the Battle of Cambrai. The German army had to shorten its front. It used the Dutch frontier as an anchor to fight rear-guard actions as it fell back towards Germany. Bulgaria signed a separate armistice on September 29, 1918. Ludendorff had stress and suffered a nervous breakdown. Germany couldn’t create a successful defense. News of the German impending military defeat spread across the German armed forces. Threats of mutiny existed. That is why Admiral Reinhard Scheer and Ludendorff wanted to make one last attempt to restore the “valour” of the German Navy. Ludendorff didn’t inform the government of Prince Maximilian of Baden since he would veto such of an action. Word of the impending assault reached sailors at Kiel. Many refused to be part of the naval offensive. They believed that such a course was suicidal. They rebelled and were arrested. Ludendorff took the blame. The Kaiser dismissed him on October 26, 1918.

The Balkans collapsed and Germany was about to lose its main supplies of oil and food. Reserves were used up. Even U.S. troops kept arriving at the rate of 10,000 per day. The Americans supplied more than 80% of Allied oil during the war and there was no shortage. Germany’s military was in decline. Kaiser lost confidence of his people. Germany moved towards surrender. Prince Maximilian of Baden took charge of a new government as Chancellor of Germany to negotiate with the Allies. Negotiations with President Wilson began immediately. Germany hoped that Wilson would offer better terms than the British or the French. Wilson wanted a constitutional monarchy and parliamentary control over the German military. There was no resistance when the Social Democrat Philipp Scheidemann on November 9, 1918 declared Germany to be a republic. The Kaiser, kings and other hereditary rulers all were removed from power and Wilhelm fled to exile in the Netherlands. Imperial Germany was dead; a new Germany had been born as the Weimar Republic.

The collapse of the Central Powers existed quickly. Bulgaria was the first to sign an armistice on September 29, 1918 at Saloniki. By October 30, 1918, The Ottoman Empire capitulated and signed the Armistice of Mudros. On October 24, the Italians began a push that rapidly recovered territory lost after the Battle of Caporetto. This culminated in the Battle of Vittorio Veneto, which marked the end of the Austro-Hungarian Army as an effective fighting force. The offensive also triggered the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. During the last week of October, declarations of independence were made in Budapest, Prague, and Zagreb. On October 29, 1918, the imperial authorities asked Italy for an armistice, but the Italians continued advancing, reaching Trento, Udine, and Trieste. On November 3, Austria-Hungary sent a flag of truce to ask for an armistice (Armistice of Villa Giusti). The terms, arranged by telegraph with the Allied Authorities in Paris, were communicated to the Austrian commander and accepted. The Armistice with Austria was signed in the Villa Giusti near Padua on November 3, 1918. Austria and Hungary signed separate armistices following the overthrow of the Habsburg Monarchy. In the following days the Italian Army occupied Innsbruck and all Tyrol with 20,000 to 22,000 soldiers.

By November 11, 1918, at 5:00 am, an armistice with Germany was signed in a railroad carriage at Compiègne. At 11 am on 11 November 1918—"the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month"—a ceasefire came into effect. During the six hours between the signing of the armistice and its taking effect, opposing armies on the Western Front began to withdraw from their positions, but fighting continued along many areas of the front, as commanders wanted to capture territory before the war ended. The occupation of the Rhineland took place following the Armistice. The occupying armies consisted of American, Belgian, British and French forces. By November 1918, the Allied had many supplies of people and materiel to invade Germany. At the time of the armistice, no Allied force had crossed into the German frontier. The Western Front was still 450 miles from Berlin. The Kaiser’s armies retreated from the battlefield in good order. These factors caused Hindenburg and other senior German leaders to spread the story that their armies had not really been defeated. This resulted in the stab-in-the-back legend, which attributed Germany's defeat not to its inability to continue fighting (even though up to a million soldiers were suffering from the 1918 flu pandemic and unfit to fight), but to the public's failure to respond to its "patriotic calling" and the supposed intentional sabotage of the war effort, particularly by  the Jewish people, Socialists, and Bolsheviks. This was a lie of course and anti-Semitism is always evil and wrong. The Allies had much more potential wealth they could spend on the war. One estimate (using 1913 US dollars) is that the Allies spent $58 billion on the war and the Central Powers only $25 billion. Among the Allies, the UK spent $21 billion and the US $17 billion; among the Central Powers Germany spent $20 billion. World War One finally ends.

The Aftermath

After World War I was over, new changes occurred in the world. Four empires ended. Their names were the German, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and Russian empires. Many nations maintained their independence. New nations were established. Many dynasties fell like the Romanovs, the Hohenzollerns, the Habsburgs, and the Ottomans. Socialist revolutionary spirit flourished in the world like the red flag of social revolution flying in Glasgow, Scotland. Worker councils existed in the cities of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. Belgium and Serbia was damaged. About 1.4 French soldiers were killed alone. Germany and Russia suffered huge casualties too. The formal end of World War One came on the date of June 28, 1919 when both sides signed the Treaty of Versailles in Germany. The U.S. Senate didn’t ratify the treaty although there was public support for it. America formally ended its involvement in World War until July 2, 1921 via the Knox-Porter Resolution. It was signed by President Warren G. Harding. The British ended involved in the war via the Termination of the Present War Act of 1918.   After the Treaty of Versailles, treaties with Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire were signed. However, the negotiation of the latter treaty with the Ottoman Empire was followed by strife, and a final peace treaty between the Allied Powers and the country that would shortly become the Republic of Turkey was not signed until July 24, 1923, at Lausanne. Under the final Treaty of Lausanne, the Allied forces left Constantinople on August 23, 1923.

After World War One, the Paris Peace Conference existed from January 18, 1919 to 1920. It was controlled by America, England, France, Italy, and Japan. They consisted of Allied heads of state, diplomats, military personnel, and policy experts. These nations feared the growth of the communist movement in Russia. Many angry citizens also wanted revenge on the Central Powers. It organized peace treaties on the Central Powers officially ending the war. The conference was built upon Wilson’s 14 points agenda. President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points was a peace proposal that desire a truce which was based on open diplomacy, freedom, and the right of self-determination of peoples. The problem was that the leaders of the Paris Peace Conference refused to give true self-determination among Middle Eastern and African including Asian peoples globally. The Paris Peace Conference made the Peace of Paris. This policy made the Central Powers, especially Germany, to accept responsibility for the war. It forced Germany to pay huge reparations. Austria-Hungary was partitioned into nations like Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia.  Yugoslavia had ethnic divisions. Transylvania was shifted from Hungary to Greater Romania.  The details were contained in the Treaty of Saint-Germain and the Treaty of Trianon. As a result of the Treaty of Trianon, 3.3 million Hungarians came under foreign rule. Although the Hungarians made up 54% of the population of the pre-war Kingdom of Hungary, only 32% of its territory was left to Hungary. Between 1920 and 1924, 354,000 Hungarians fled former Hungarian territories attached to Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. The Peace of Paris also forced Germany to give up its colonies, decrease its army, stop manufacturing offensive weapons, and give a large amount of free coal each year to both Belgium and France. France recovered Alsace and Lorraine. Germany soon experienced a massive recession as a result of the economic burdens from the Treaty of Versailles. The Treaty of Versailles was one key part of the Peace of Paris.

The Russian Empire was over. So, after the war, new nations of Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland were created. The Ottoman Empire ended. Turkey evolved into a Republic. The Treaty of Sevres of 1920 ended in failure. So, the Turkish nationalists used their war of independence to form the modern Turkish nation along with the event of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne taking place too. Poland was a new nation after WWI in more than a century. Serbians, Croats, and Slovenes lived in Yugoslavia. The British Empire experienced more people calling for independence. Nationalism spread. Australia and New Zealand had soldiers who fought in the Battle of Gallipoli. They expressed themselves as Australians and New Zealanders not as subjects to the Crown. Anzac Day, commemorating the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, celebrates this defining moment. The war increased a lot of Canadians promoting their sense of independence too. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa were individual signatories of the Treaty of Versailles. The Conclusion of World War I saw the beginnings of the roots of the Israel-Palestinian conflict and the roots of the establishment of the modern state of Israel too. The Middle East had many power dynamics. The Ottoman Empire stabilized the region for a time.

The Ottoman Empire was soon gone and conflicting people debated nationhood. European powers and Arabic monarchs divided areas of the region heavily. Chaim Weizmann lobbied to support the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which promoted the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. A total of more than 1,172,000 Jewish soldiers served in the Allied and Central Power forces in World War I, including 275,000 in Austria-Hungary and 450,000 in Tsarist Russia. The Russian Revolution was bloody and Western forces wanted to end it and restore a puppet state in contrary to the Communist movement. So, a Russian Civil War started. More than 2,000 pogroms existed in Ukraine alone. Almost 200,000 Jewish civilians were murdered. Mustafa Kemal led Turkish nationalists. Greece fought against the Turkish nationalists after World War I. Thousands of Greek people died during this period as a product of the evil Greek genocide. The League of Nations was an organization created after WWI whose purpose was to maintain peace via negotiation or collective security. It was part of Wilson's vision to disarm, to solve problems, and to monitor labor conditions internationally. Germany and Russia were banned from joining the League of Nations because Germany was punished after WWI (and Russia embraced Soviet Communism).

The Ottoman Empire and Germany relinquished their colonies in the forms of mandates. Mandates were precisely colonialism in a different form. Many peoples of color were angry at this and continued to fight for independence. Pan-African activists continued to fight against colonialism and racism as well. Chinese nationalists (like Sun Yatsen using his party of Guomindang to mobilize change. Later, he passed away in 1925 and Chicang Kai-Shek took over the nationalist movement. He led troops to take over cities, but his followers murdered Communists which was one cause of ultimately the Chinese civil war. As a result of that war, China would be Communist) and people of Ireland fought for independence. Ireland became a free state by 1921. Ireland would ultimately have independence by 1949 officially as the Republic of Ireland.

Fights against the evils of colonialism existed in Africa (where Igbo women fought via a tax protest against Britain in 1929. These heroic black women fought for their human rights), India (where British forces shot into crowds of protesters at Amirstar in 1919), Indonesia (where political leaders were jailed by the Dutch), Vietnam, etc. Many people suffered health problems as a result of the war too. Many people were injured and disabled. Famine, disease, and starvation would spread across Europe. Millions died in the Russian famine of 1921.  In 1914 alone, louse-borne epidemic typhus killed 200,000 human beings in Serbia. From 1918 to 1922, Russia had about 25 million infections and 3 million deaths from epidemic typhus. In 1923, 13 million Russians contracted malaria, a sharp increase from the pre-war years. In addition, a major influenza epidemic spread around the world. Overall, the 1918 flu pandemic killed at least 50 million people.

Conclusion

As we approach the 100th year anniversary of the end of World War One, we witness new information and great insights of that very violent conflict. World War I or the Great War impacted the world society in a myriad of ways. Advanced technologies like tanks and complex airplanes plus machine guns were utilized in a huge fashion. It first involved the European continent since European powers desired to gather as much power of the world as possible via imperialism including colonialism. This came after the Boxer Rebellion where Boxers from China were defeated by Western Powers by 1901. Also, WWI existed in the midst of nationalist movements including the Communist Russian Revolution of 1917 too. 70 million military personnel were mobilized. The war started in many situations. First, England and France wanted to contain the expansion of Germany (with the growth of its army and navy). Also, the Ottoman Empire was weakening. The Serbian nationalist Princip assassinated Archduke Ferdinand in a means to gain Serbian independence. Princip was allied with the Secret society called the Black Hand. Alliances among France and England plus the alliance of Germany and Austria-Hungary were in full display. So, war existed as a result of competing alliances fighting for control of geopolitical power. World War One transpired globally too with battles in Asia, Africa, and in other locations. Supporters and opponents of the war were abundant during that time period.

The Armenian genocide, the Greek genocide, and the Assyrian genocide all occurred during World War I. Chemical warfare was committed by both sides during the war (which was a war crime) too. The majority of the war existed in a stalemate among the Allies and the Central Powers in part because of trench warfare (which caused both sides to fight and being slaughtered from across the battlefield especially in places like Verdun). American involvement, the weakening of the Ottoman Empire, and various military tactics contributed to the Allied victory. The war ended in 1918, but the issues of autonomy and nationhood wouldn’t be resolved so readily. The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 (headed by Britain, France, the United States, and Italy or the Big Four) involved the Allied forces to place sanctions on Germany. It refused to give people of color (especially black people and Asian people) true national independence. Ho Chi Minh back then wanted Vietnam to have independence from France, but the Paris Peace Conference refused to do so. The subsequent League of Nations couldn’t enforce treaties, it lacked great strength, and it was rejected by the U.S. Congress. Soon, economic depression, international tensions, anger, and the growth of fascism contributed to the beginning of World War II. World War One was an international war that saw the modernization of how we live in the Earth. It was a war that saw monarchies fall and new national realities develop. It was an important epoch of world history indeed.

Appendix A: African Americans and World War I

African Americans have had a huge role to play during the events of World War One. It was a time of great changes in the African American community. It was a very dangerous time where violence and massive lynchings harmed the lives of black people. This war saw the beginning of the First Great Migration (from 1916 to 1930), which was about the huge travel of about 1.6 African Americans from the South into the North and Midwest, especially in the large urban centers like New York City, Chicago, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Boston, Cleveland, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Detroit, etc. Black cultural traditions traveled nationwide. African Americans came up to went into the North for many reasons. Many black people wanted to escape Jim Crow tyranny where innocent black men, women, and children were abused, lynched, murdered, raped, and tortured. Some were sharecroppers and wanted greater economic opportunities in the North and the Midwest. Some wanted to see adventure and escape massive poverty or economic exploitation. Yet, the more things change, the more that they stay the same. In the North and the Midwest, segregation was heavily banned. Yet, black Americans still experienced de facto segregation (or segregation by an unwritten, discriminatory policy not by law), poverty, economic exploitation, racial tensions including white racism, and substandard housing.

Black people continued to fight back though. Black people formed organizations, worked in civil rights groups, and used networks to help black people in America too. The Chicago Defender and other African American newspapers told the truth and inspired change. The NAACP was in existence. Black people always fought for jobs, housing, and other resources. The Harlem Renaissance, which was a superb cultural movement, was filled with excellent forms of music, literature, and art. That is why the Harlem Renaissance was established in part by the Great Migration. WWI was claimed by some to promote “democracy.” Yet, the truth is that democracy and justice wasn’t completely shown to African Americans back then or even today.

During the start of WWI, most black people and most Americans in general opposed the war. Some felt that it wasn’t their problem. Many black people back then felt that the war was contradictory to claim to advance democracy but America denied black people basic human rights at home. It is not a secret that President Woodrow Wilson (who was a stone cold racist) back then didn’t want true equality and justice for humanity regardless of skin color. The American government passed the anti-liberty laws of the June 1917 Espionage Act and the May 1918 Sedition Act that curtailed dissent in American society. The socialist Eugene Debs was heavily persecuted because of his anti-war views. People have every right to dissent and to express intellectual diversity. Some African Americans opposed the war because of being against war in general out of moral reasons (when anti-war activism and pacifism were common back then). One person said the following quotation and it's from Arthur Shaw of New York: “…If America truly understands the functions of democracy and justice; she must now that she must begin to promote democracy and justice at home first of all.” A. Philip Randolph and Chandler were editors of the socialist newspaper called, “The Messenger.” Both of them publicly encouraged African Americans to resist military service because of the massive racial oppression harming black people. They were monitored by federal intelligence agencies too. Over one million African Americans followed draft calls. By the time of the armistice with Germany in November 1918, over 350,000 African Americans had served with the American Expeditionary Force on the Western Front. Charles Broadnax was in the service too as a black man from Virginia. The NAACP created “Soldiers Troubles” to document the experiences of black soldiers during World War One and to confront racial injustice.

Two major combat divisions for African Americans were the 92nd Division (which was made up of draftees and officers) and the 93rd Division (which was made up of mostly National Guard units from New York City, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, and Massachusetts). Many black people were discriminated against in service and restricted from serving in high ranking positions. Black women served as Red Cross members, nurses, and other jobs. There was the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) which held rallies and gave support to the black troops. Black women also worked in America while many men went into the battlefields of Europe. Black women in Mobile, Alabama heroically walked off the job in fighting for better working conditions and rights. Emmett Scott (or the former secretary to Booker T. Washington) was a special assistant to the Secretary of War in charge of matters related to African Americans during the war. WEB DuBois ironically supported WWI, because he believed that it could cause black people to experience democracy and justice at home as a catalyst. The 93rd Division’s 369th Infantry Regiment was a famous fighting unit (made up of mostly African Americans and some Puerto Rican Americans) from New York. They were nicknamed the “Harlem Hellfighters.” They were the first African American regiment to serve with the American Expeditionary Forces during World War I. Before them, any African American had to enlist in French or Canadian armies to fight in WWI.

 

The 369th were powerful and courageous in combat. Henry Johnson and Needham Roberts were the first American soldiers to receive the French Croix de Guerre (War Cross). Henry Johnson was a former Albany, New York rail station porter. The regiment served for 191 days (in the trenches) and ceded no ground to German forces. They worked with the French Army by April 8, 1918. In France, the 369th was treated as if they were no different from any other French unit. The French did not show hatred towards them and did not racially segregate the 369th. The 369th finally felt what it was like to be treated equally. The French accepted the all-black 369th Regiment with open arms and welcomed them to their country. The French were less concerned with race than the Americans, due to manpower shortages. They fought in the Second Battle of the Marne. The 369th was the first American regiment to reach the Rhine River in Germany following the armistice and returned to the United States national heroes. The 92nd Division suffered racist treatment. Many of them were court-martialed on bogus charges. Many African American troops interacted with North and West African soldiers who served in the French military. This expanded black African Diasporic belonging. Black Americans came into France to escape Jim Crow. France didn’t have Jim Crow and many black people were treated better in France, but France still had racism and colonialism. WEB DuBois and his friend William Monroe Trotter of the Equal Rights League wanted to fight European colonialism while they were in the Versailles peace conferences.

The leader of those conferences refused to give equal rights to people of color. From May 1918 to November 1918, the 371st and 372nd African American Regiments were integrated under the 157th Red Hand Division commanded by the French General Mariano Goybet. They earned glory in the decisive final offensive in the Champagne region of France. The two Regiments were decorated by the French Croix de Guerre for their gallantry in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. Corporal Freddie Stowers of the 371st Infantry Regiment was posthumously awarded a Medal of Honor as the only African American to be so honored for his actions in World War I. Stowers died in helping his men fight the Germans in battle. African American regiments in World War I were usually accompanied by bands. The most famous was the band of the 369th Infantry, led by James Reese Europe, a prominent musician whose syncopated style animated the dancing of Vernon and Irene Castle, creating a craze for social dancing. 171 African Americans were awarded the French Legion of Honor. In response to protests of discrimination and mistreatment from the black community, several hundred African American men received officers' training in Des Moines, Iowa.

By October 1917, over six hundred African Americans were commissioned as captains and first and second lieutenants. The NAACP also fought against voter suppression. Many people in America used to permit grandfather clauses to deprive black people the right to vote. The grandfather clause meant that a man could only vote if his grandfather had voted. This harmed many black people since many black citizens' grandfathers were slaves and slaves couldn't vote during the 19th century. Poll taxes, literacy tests, violence, voting fraud, and intimidation were used by racists to harm voting rights. The NAACP successfully fought against this in court to an extent. By 1915, the Supreme Court ruled that grandfather clauses in Maryland and Oklahoma constitutions were null and void (since they violated the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution). The case was Guinn v. United States. Mary Church Terrell, Ida B. Wells, and other leaders fought against lynching too.

On February 17, 1919, the 369th Infantry Regiment marched up Fifth Avenue and into Harlem before 250,000 people. They were at Fifth Avenue at 23rd Street to 145th and Lenox (in NYC). Pvt. Henry Johnson was so moved by the outpouring that he stood up waving the bouquet of flowers that he was handed during the February parade. It would take another 77 years for Henry Johnson (who knew hand to hand combat) to receive an official Purple Heart from his own government. Eugene Bullard was one of the greatest black soldiers of World War I. He was the first African American military pilot. He flew for France. He was born in Columbus, Georgia and his ancestors came from Haiti from the days of the Haitian Revolution. Aileen Cole Stewart was a famous black nurse during WWI too. The aftermath of World War I saw an increase of anti-black race riots or pogroms, the growth of the Black Nationalist Garvey movement, and the growth of jazz. Racial discrimination didn’t end after World War I. During the summer and fall of 1919, anti-black race riots erupted in twenty-six cities across America. The lynching of blacks also increased from fifty-eight in 1918 to seventy-seven in 1919. At least ten of those victims were war veterans, and some were lynched while in uniform. Yet, more black Americans continued in the fight for black liberation and social justice. Civil rights group grew and black people organized more in economic institutions, religious groups, and other positive groups for social change. We honor the heroic black people who stood up for our freedom that we are still fighting for today in 2018.

The the person on the right is the evil Interior Minister Talaat Pasha, who was involved in the oppression of the Armenian people. 

Appendix B: Genocides


Many war crimes existed during World War One. On August 19, 1915, the German submarine U-27 was sunk by the British Q-ship HMS Baralong. All German survivors were summarily executed by Baralong’s crew on the orders of Lieutenant Godfrey Herbert or the captain of the ship. The shooting was reported to the media by American citizens. These American citizens were on the board the Nicosia. That ship was a British freighter loaded with war supplies, which was stopped by U-27 just minutes before the incident. On September 24, 1915, Baralong destroyed U-41, which was in the process of sinking the cargo ship Urbino. According to Karl Goetz, the submarine’s commander, Baralong continued to fly the U.S. flag after firing on U-41 and then rammed the lifeboat (carrying the German survivors) sinking it. The German submarine SM U-86 destroyed the Canadian hospital ship HMHS Llandovery Castle on June 27, 1918 in violation of international law. Only 24 of the 258 medical personnel, patients, and crew survived. The U-boat captain Helmut Patzig was charged with war crimes in Germany. This happened in 1919. He escaped prosecution by going to the Free City of Danzig beyond the jurisdiction of German courts. One chemical weapon usage occurred during the Second Battle of Ypres (from April 22, 1915 to May 25, 1915). Gas was soon used by all major belligerents in the war. Both sides used chemical weapons causing 1.3 million casualties. For example, the British had over 180,000 chemical weapons casualties during the war, and up to one-third of American casualties were caused by them.

The Russian Army reportedly suffered roughly 500,000 chemical weapon casualties in World War I. These actions are in violation of the 1899 Hague Declaration Concerning Asphyxiating Gases and the 1907 Hague Convention on Land Warfare that prohibited their use. Some poison gas came into cities. From 100,000-260,000 civilian casualties came about by chemical weapons during WWI. Many people had skin and lung damage as a product of chemical warfare. British Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig wrote in his diary, "My officers and I were aware that such weapons would cause harm to women and children living in nearby towns, as strong winds were common in the battlefront. However, because the weapon was to be directed against the enemy, none of us were overly concerned at all." That is really an evil comment. During WWI, there was the genocide of the Ottoman Empire’s Armenian population. Many Armenians were murdered, deported, mass executed, or walked to death by force in the final years of the Ottoman Empire. The people who carried out the Armenian genocide were Ottoman Turks. The Ottomans did this evil and exploited Armenian resistance to evil as a justification of further extermination.

In early 1915, a number of Armenians volunteered to join the Russian forces and the Ottoman government used this as a pretext to issue the Tehcir Law (or Law on Deportation), which authorized the deportation of Armenians from the Empire's eastern provinces to Syria between 1915 and 1918. The Armenians were intentionally marched to death and a number were attacked by Ottoman brigands. While an exact number of deaths is unknown, the International Association of Genocide Scholars estimates 1.5 million human beings. The Turkey government today denied the genocide, but most historians acknowledge the existence of the Armenian genocide. Other ethnic groups were similarly attacked by the Ottoman Empire during this period, including Assyrians and Greeks. Some scholars consider those events to be part of the same policy of extermination. Many pogroms accompanied the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the ensuing Russian Civil War. 60,000–200,000 civilian Jewish people were killed in the atrocities throughout the former Russian Empire (mostly within the Pale of Settlement in present-day Ukraine). Many German invaders murdered French and Belgium civilians. The German army executed over 6,500 French and Belgian civilians between August and November 1914, usually in near-random large-scale shootings of civilians ordered by junior German officers. The German Army destroyed 15,000–20,000 buildings—most famously the university library at Louvain—and generated a wave of refugees of over a million people. Over half of the German regiments in Belgium were involved in major incidents. 8 million men surrendered and were held in POW camps throughout the war. The Ottoman Empire often treated POWs badly. Many prisoners were starved to death in Russia. The International Red Cross tried to help POWs.

Appendix C: New Technologies


One large legacy of World War One is its advanced weapons and technological devices. Some 19th century tactics clashed with 20th century technology. The modernization of the telephone, wireless communication, armored cars, tanks, and aircraft flourished. From cannons in 1914 to machines guns in 1917, technology evolved. Field telephones and aircraft were used in the war. Germany was far ahead of the Allies in using heavy indirect fire. The German Army employed 150 mm (6 in) and 210 mm (8 in) howitzers in 1914, when typical French and British guns were only 75 mm (3 in) and 105 mm (4 in). The British had a 6-inch (152 mm) howitzer, but it was so heavy it had to be hauled to the field in pieces and assembled. The Germans also fielded Austrian 305 mm (12 in) and 420 mm (17 in) guns and, even at the beginning of the war, had inventories of various calibres of Minenwerfer, which were ideally suited for trench warfare. Gas masks were used to protect themselves from chemical attacks. WWI also saw the introduction of light automatic weapons and submarine guns, like the Lewis Gun, the Browning automatic rifle, and the Bergmann MP18. The German army used the new weapon of the flamethrower. German U-boats, blimps, and other water naval vehicles were commonplace. Fixed wing aircraft were first used militarily by the Italians in Libya on October 23, 1911 during the Italo-Turkish War for reconnaissance, soon followed by the dropping of grenades and aerial photography the next year. Balloons were used for reconnaissance. To shoot down enemy planes, anti-aircraft guns and fighter aircraft were developed. Strategic bombers were created, principally by the Germans and British, though the former used Zeppelins as well. Towards the end of the conflict, aircraft carriers were used for the first time, with HMS Furious launching Sopwith Camels in a raid to destroy the Zeppelin hangars at Tondern in 1918.



By Timothy