What It Was About — An Alternate Theory

What Was It About the Berlin to Baghdad Railroad?

One of things I have found most interesting in studying the First World War is in discovering how many researchers and commentators are fascinated by the Berlin to Baghdad Railway plan. Here is a broad all-encompassing theory about its importance.

The Proposed Route as of 1919
Incomplete Sections Represented by Broken Line

Germany's supreme object in the Great War was to challenge the world supremacy of the British Empire, and to achieve that purpose by turning the flank of the great sea Empire by means of a continuous railway from the German Ocean to the Persian Gulf. . .the pivot is to be found in the Near Eastern policy of Germany, and in her determination to connect Berlin not only with Constantinople, but with Baghdad and Basra. The key to the whole position was therefore in the keeping of Belgrade. To wrest the key from Serbia and to secure her line of communications, on the one hand with Constantinople, on the other with Salonika, was for Germany not merely the pretext but the reason for the war.

Europe and Beyond. . . 1870-1920, by Sir J.A.R. Marriott, 1921

Map from:  Geography of the Great War by Frank M. McMurry

Remembering a Veteran: Major Hermann Detzner, German Colonial Army

Like the two Japanese soldiers of World War II who held out in the Philippines and Indonesia until 1974,  a German soldier has the honor of being the Great War's "Refused to Surrender" honoree. It is interesting that he too was on an island in the South Pacific. He was an officer named Hermann Detzner, who managed to avoid capture until the following January. 

Major Detzner

Detzner was an engineering officer and land surveyor who was sent to present-day Papua New Guinea—then partially controlled by Germany—in January 1914 with orders to map the dense jungle. His small band of explorers was deep in the forest when World War I broke out in the summer of 1914, and Detzner was unaware there was even a conflict until after Australian troops had captured German New Guinea.

Upon learning of the war, Detzner refused to surrender and retreated into the jungle with a small force of German officers and natives. Aided by Lutheran missionaries, who gave him food and supplies, he spent the next four years hiding out in the jungle—all the while continuing to fly the Imperial German flag. During this time he made a series of abortive attempts to cross into Dutch-occupied New Guinea and in doing so became the first European to explore several parts of the island’s interior. After learning that the war had ended, Detzner finally emerged from the bush and surrendered to Australian forces in January 1919. He was decorated with the Iron Cross upon returning home and would later write a popular, partly fictionalized account of his time playing cat and mouse with enemy patrols, Four Years Among the Cannibals.

Book Cover

Sources:  History Today Website, Wikipedia

Among the Ashes — Reviewed by Dennis Linton

Among the Ashes

by Matthew James McDonald

published by CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013

At Louvain it was war upon the defenseless, war upon the churches, colleges, shops of milliners and lacemakers; war brought to the bedside and fireside; against women harvesting in the fields, against children in wooden shoes at play in the streets. At Louvain that night the Germans were like men after an orgy.

New York Tribune, 31 August 1914, reported from Louvain by Richard Harding Davis

Louvain in Ruins

The backdrop for Matthew McDonald's novel Among the Ashes is the centuries-old university city of Louvain (or Leuven), Belgium, in August 1914. What happened the night of 25 August and five harrowing days to follow is not in historical dispute. The occupying German forces sacked Louvain, including not only the 15th-century church, St Pierre, but also the contents of the culturally significant University Library. In the end, thousands of homes burned and hundreds of Louvain's residents died. The Germans deported others to serve as forced labor in the factories supplying the war effort. The occupiers terrorized by looting, summary detention, and execution, rape, and wanton destruction of property. What started the retribution is still in dispute. Whether it was sniper fire from the illusive franc-tireurs (irregulars) or paranoid German soldiers seeing the partisans in every window is just one of the historical queries of Among the Ashes.

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McDonald's novel begins as the Second Landsturm Battalion arrives in Louvain for occupation duty in mid August 1914. The train station bustles with reinforcements to bolster the German offensive against staunch Belgian opposition several miles from Louvain. We are introduced to our protagonist, the idealistic Lieutenant Erich von Zandt and his perceived foil, Major Schweder. A verbal disagreement regarding the course of the war while still on the train foreshadows the duel between these two officers as they both attempt to confront the uncertainties of war while still faithfully carrying out their duties.

As the unit occupies the city, Lt von Zandt encounters a loud confrontation between Genevieve, who keeps a chocolate shop, and a group of German soldiers. Erich quickly realizes they do not speak French and she does not speak German, causing a simple request for chocolates to escalate quickly. It is here that Erich meets Genevieve, linking their fates from this point forward.

A few days later Erich is witness to the events of the night of the 25 August and becomes wounded and distraught. After this, the action in the story moves along two entwined themes. First is Erich's idealistic view of events that comes under fire as he diverges from his peers and chain of command. Second, and more important, is an innate humane force that repeatedly compels the lieutenant to become more and more entangled with the saga of Genevieve and her family, symbolic of the fate of Louvain's citizens.

Matthew McDonald clearly did his homework on Louvain. Throughout Among the Ashes, characters and minor story lines reflect all the accounts of that fateful August in Belgium. Interestingly, I find through design or happenstance the beginning of the story is a very fast-paced read although the action is slow. As the pace quickens to almost a fury, the complexities of the plot thickens and my reading became slower and more deliberate. It was as if the author purposely manipulated how I read the story. As the book draws to its conclusion, the reader may still contemplate what really happened, and who really is the hero or antihero, or whether they are all just victims of the tragedy of war.

Louvain Library Today

Reviewer's note: Richard Davis's story in the New York Tribune and other eyewitness accounts ensured the tragedy of Louvain did not go unnoticed and forgotten. The outcry for investigation and war crimes was global and immediate. The Germans conducted an investigation; however, propaganda and contradictory evidence obscured the results. The burning of the historic University library became a rallying cry against an attack destroying culture which remained an inflammatory event throughout the Great War. John Foster Dulles, future U.S. secretary of state, personally added the final edits in Article 247 of the Treaty Versailles, calling for Germany to donate 14 million marks in books for the University Library. American architect William Warren designed the new library as a gift from the American people. Books flowed from all over the world, and Germany met her book donations annually. By 1939 there were over 900,000 books in the rebuilt library. At the onset of World War II, Germany once again invaded neutral Belgium and again destroyed the library and her contents by fire. In history, as in our story, such are the tragedies of war.

Dennis Linton

Photos from Tony Langley's Collection

It Was a WORLD War

It is. . . important to remember this was a true world war: it was fought not only on the fields of Flanders and the Somme. But how many in Britain have ever heard of the battle of Gorlice-Tarnów in 1915, in which German and Austrian-Hungarian troops broke through the Russian front line and occupied most of Galicia and the Polish salient? Who knows that in 1918 the Central Powers occupied vast areas in the east that almost equaled the territory occupied in the Second World War? Who has ever heard of the Carpathian winter campaign of 1914–1915, in which Habsburg forces fought in vain to rescue 130,000 Austro-Hungarian soldiers trapped by Russian troops in the fortress Przemyśl and which resulted in 600,000 casualties? 

Memorial to Indian Fallen Near Loos, Western Front

Who knows that the British forces were the junior partner on the Western Front pretty much throughout the war — they never held more than a quarter of the front. One-and-a-half million volunteers from the Indian subcontinent served in the "great war", and 850,000 of these went overseas.

Matthias Strohn, July 2013 Guardian Interview

6 April 1917: The United States Declares War — What Next?

With Congress's approval of the war resolution, American strategy underwent a profound and sudden change. Freedom of the sea lanes and stability in the American republics could be achieved not by hemispheric defense but only by the deployment of an expeditionary force large enough to remove the hostile regime. The quick and complete defeat of Imperial Germany, heretofore believed to be of no interest to the United States, was now recognized as essential to American security. Such thinking did not immediately catch on. At one point in April 1917, for example, a U.S. senator buttoned holed an officer of the General Staff and asked with incredulity, “Good Lord! You’re not going to send soldiers over there, are you?”

It Would Be a Long Time Before American Troops
Arrived in Europe in Great Numbers

Army and Navy planners adapted no better than the Senate. While there were aspects of Plan BLACK [the plan for a naval war with Germany that did not include dealing with U-boats] which were implemented (for example, Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels recounts that the seizure of German and Austrian ships interred in American ports was a provision of BLACK), existing plans were of little value for the dispatch of American forces to Europe. Under immense pressures of time, the War Department prepared estimates for the new contingency. These envisioned invading Bulgaria through Greece, and of a landing in the rear of the German armies in France through an alliance with the Netherlands.

None of these concepts was, of course, fit for anything other than the trash, and the time wasted on them actually contributed to the delay of American intervention. No realistic planning was undertaken until the designated commander of the American Expeditionary Force, General Pershing, arrived in Europe to survey the requirement. As Pershing bitterly noted:

When the Acting Chief of Staff (Gen. Tasker Bliss) went to look in the secret files where the plans to meet the situation that confronted us should have been found, the pigeon hole was empty. In other words, the War Department was face to face with the question of sending an army to Europe, and the General Staff had never considered such a thing.

American Port at Nantes, France
A Stupendous Logistical System Would Be Needed to Support the Expeditionary Force

A later comment of Pershing’s indicates the strain on Army-Navy relations the requirements of the Western Front would cause. Pershing’s estimate that the AEF would number at least 2,000,000 men and would consume over 50,000 tons of freight per day was regarded by Admiral William Sims, the commander of U.S. Naval forces in Europe, as “very much an exaggeration or else as just an army joke.”

Once planning got under way in Pershing’s headquarters, it assumed the broad outlines of the modern American deliberate planning process, that is, with the theater commander-in-chief outlining requirements, the Army Chief of Staff making provision to provide the forces required, and the Chief of Naval Operations conducting the strategic deployment of those forces. 

Source: Joint U.S. Army-Navy War Planning on the Eve of the First World War: Its Origins and Its Legacy, Colonel Adolf Carlson, 1998

Eparges: Soldiers Burying Their Comrades in the Moonlight, April 1915 By Georges Paul LEROUX

Artist:  Georges Paul Leroux, Musée National du Château de Versailles

Western Front Virtual Tour — Stop 14: Siege of Maubeuge

As the German advance moved south into France, a series of actions ensued known as the Battles of the Frontiers. Except for the fighting in the east in the Ardennes, where the French initiated the attack and suffered a nearly catastrophic defeat, these battles were setbacks for the Allies, but succeeded somewhat in slowing the execution of the Schlieffen Plan. Just as helpful to the Allies were two sieges that drew off substantial numbers of German troops who, otherwise, would have been available for the titanic Battle of the Marne coming in September 1914. The first of the important sieges was in Antwerp, which we covered in our 28 February 2014 entry. The second of these was at Maubeuge in France.

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Next Week: Battle of the Sambre, August 1914

The Kinmel Park Incident of 1919

Contributed by Sidney Clark

The mutiny and riots that occurred in 1919 involving Canadian soldiers in the army camp known as Kinmel Park at Bodelwyddan, North Wales, Flintshire, has been explained in many books. The facts as far as I understand them are that five Canadian soldiers died during the incident from gunshot and bayonet wounds. My understanding is that these five men were never judged or found guilty of any crime. Their deaths did occur when what is commonly referred to as the "The Mutiny at Kinmel Park" was taking place on 5 March 1919. There was, however, never any question of the loyalty or patriotism of any of the men stationed at the camp. They just wanted to go home, and the continued delays built up a frustration that manifested itself in a riot. 

Over the years a myth has arisen that many of the Canadians buried in this churchyard were mutineers, when the facts are that all but these five died from natural causes and rampant influenza. However, the main reason that led up to those actions taken up by Canadian soldiers barracked there after returning from the dreadful conditions of the First World War was the canceling of the ships scheduled to take them home. This was the spark that ignited the indiscipline.

Aftermath of the Mutiny

During the mutiny there was an instance of one soldier who was shot and killed. Who fired that shot has never been fully explained. The official documents were sealed for 100 years.

Village Church

In Saint Margaret's village churchyard lie the Canadian soldiers who died at this camp, the majority from the flu epidemic. Included are the graves of four American citizens who served with the Canadian Army and a memorial to a nursing sister, age 26, who served with the Canadian Medical Corps. The memorial in the little cemetery reads:

To the Memory of Canadian Soldiers who died at Kinmel Park Camp during the Great War. This memorial was erected by their comrades. 

Their Names Live Forevermore

Please Take a Second Look!

Yesterday, as some of our readers have pointed out, I bungled the book review of Robert Doughty's Pyrrhic Victory written by our regular reviewer Clark Shilling.  Using the previous review as a template, I managed to merge the two reviews somewhat. My apologies to all.  Usually, I hear about such problems almost immediately, but I didn't catch up to this one until 10:30 last night.

Anyway, it's been corrected, and I hope you will give Clark's review down below a good read. Pyrrhic Victory is an important work worthy of your attention.

Mike Hanlon, Editor/Publisher 

2 April 1917: President Wilson's War Message

2 April 1917:  President Wilson Asks Congress for War

Gentlemen of the Congress:

I have called the Congress into extraordinary session because there are serious, very serious, choices of policy to be made, and made immediately, which it was neither right nor constitutionally permissible that I should assume the responsibility of making. 

On the 3d of February last I officially laid before you the extraordinary announcement of the Imperial German Government that on and after the 1st day of February it was its purpose to put aside all restraints of law or of humanity and use its submarines to sink every vessel that sought to approach either the ports of Great Britain and Ireland or the western coasts of Europe or any of the ports controlled by the enemies of Germany within the Mediterranean. That had seemed to be the object of the German submarine warfare earlier in the war, but since April of last year the Imperial Government had somewhat restrained the commanders of its undersea craft in conformity with its promise then given to us that passenger boats should not be sunk and that due warning would be given to all other vessels which its submarines might seek to destroy, when no resistance was offered or escape attempted, and care taken that their crews were given at least a fair chance to save their lives in their open boats. The precautions taken were meagre and haphazard enough, as was proved in distressing instance after instance in the progress of the cruel and unmanly business, but a certain degree of restraint was observed The new policy has swept every restriction aside. Vessels of every kind, whatever their flag, their character, their cargo, their destination, their errand, have been ruthlessly sent to the bottom without warning and without thought of help or mercy for those on board, the vessels of friendly neutrals along with those of belligerents. Even hospital ships and ships carrying relief to the sorely bereaved and stricken people of Belgium, though the latter were provided with safe-conduct through the proscribed areas by the German Government itself and were distinguished by unmistakable marks of identity, have been sunk with the same reckless lack of compassion or of principle. 

I was for a little while unable to believe that such things would in fact be done by any government that had hitherto subscribed to the humane practices of civilized nations. International law had its origin in the at tempt to set up some law which would be respected and observed upon the seas, where no nation had right of dominion and where lay the free highways of the world. By painful stage after stage has that law been built up, with meagre enough results, indeed, after all was accomplished that could be accomplished, but always with a clear view, at least, of what the heart and conscience of mankind demanded. This minimum of right the German Government has swept aside under the plea of retaliation and necessity and because it had no weapons which it could use at sea except these which it is impossible to employ as it is employing them without throwing to the winds all scruples of humanity or of respect for the understandings that were supposed to underlie the intercourse of the world. I am not now thinking of the loss of property involved, immense and serious as that is, but only of the wanton and wholesale destruction of the lives of noncombatants, men, women, and children, engaged in pursuits which have always, even in the darkest periods of modern history, been deemed innocent and legitimate. Property can be paid for; the lives of peaceful and innocent people can not be. The present German submarine warfare against commerce is a warfare against mankind. 

It is a war against all nations. American ships have been sunk, American lives taken, in ways which it has stirred us very deeply to learn of, but the ships and people of other neutral and friendly nations have been sunk and overwhelmed in the waters in the same way. There has been no discrimination. The challenge is to all mankind. Each nation must decide for itself how it will meet it. The choice we make for ourselves must be made with a moderation of counsel and a temperateness of judgment befitting our character and our motives as a nation. We must put excited feeling away. Our motive will not be revenge or the victorious assertion of the physical might of the nation, but only the vindication of right, of human right, of which we are only a single champion. 

When I addressed the Congress on the 26th of February last, I thought that it would suffice to assert our neutral rights with arms, our right to use the seas against unlawful interference, our right to keep our people safe against unlawful violence. But armed neutrality, it now appears, is impracticable. Because submarines are in effect outlaws when used as the German submarines have been used against merchant shipping, it is impossible to defend ships against their attacks as the law of nations has assumed that merchantmen would defend themselves against privateers or cruisers, visible craft giving chase upon the open sea. It is common prudence in such circumstances, grim necessity indeed, to endeavour to destroy them before they have shown their own intention. They must be dealt with upon sight, if dealt with at all. The German Government denies the right of neutrals to use arms at all within the areas of the sea which it has proscribed, even in the defense of rights which no modern publicist has ever before questioned their right to defend. The intimation is conveyed that the armed guards which we have placed on our merchant ships will be treated as beyond the pale of law and subject to be dealt with as pirates would be. Armed neutrality is ineffectual enough at best; in such circumstances and in the face of such pretensions it is worse than ineffectual; it is likely only to produce what it was meant to prevent; it is practically certain to draw us into the war without either the rights or the effectiveness of belligerents. There is one choice we can not make, we are incapable of making: we will not choose the path of submission and suffer the most sacred rights of our nation and our people to be ignored or violated. The wrongs against which we now array ourselves are no common wrongs; they cut to the very roots of human life. 

With a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical character of the step I am taking and of the grave responsibilities which it involves, but in unhesitating obedience to what I deem my constitutional duty, I advise that the Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial German Government to be in fact nothing less than war against the Government and people of the United States; that it formally accept the status of belligerent which has thus been thrust upon it, and that it take immediate steps not only to put the country in a more thorough state of defense but also to exert all its power and employ all its resources to bring the Government of the German Empire to terms and end the war. 

What this will involve is clear. It will involve the utmost practicable cooperation in counsel and action with the governments now at war with Germany, and, as incident to that, the extension to those governments of the most liberal financial credits, in order that our resources may so far as possible be added to theirs. It will involve the organization and mobilization of all the material resources of the country to supply the materials of war and serve the incidental needs of the nation in the most abundant and yet the most economical and efficient way possible. It will involve the immediate full equipment of the Navy in all respects but particularly in supplying it with the best means of dealing with the enemy's submarines. It will involve the immediate addition to the armed forces of the United States already provided for by law in case of war at least 500,000 men, who should, in my opinion, be chosen upon the principle of universal liability to service, and also the authorization of subsequent additional increments of equal force so soon as they may be needed and can be handled in training. It will involve also, of course, the granting of adequate credits to the Government, sustained, I hope, so far as they can equitably be sustained by the present generation, by well conceived taxation.... 

While we do these things, these deeply momentous things, let us be very clear, and make very clear to all the world what our motives and our objects are. My own thought has not been driven from its habitual and normal course by the unhappy events of the last two months, and I do not believe that the thought of the nation has been altered or clouded by them I have exactly the same things in mind now that I had in mind when I addressed the Senate on the 22d of January last; the same that I had in mind when I addressed the Congress on the 3d of February and on the 26th of February. Our object now, as then, is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic power and to set up amongst the really free and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and of action as will henceforth ensure the observance of those principles. Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable where the peace of the world is involved and the freedom of its peoples, and the menace to that peace and freedom lies in the existence of autocratic governments backed by organized force which is controlled wholly by their will, not by the will of their people. We have seen the last of neutrality in such circumstances. We are at the beginning of an age in which it will be insisted that the same standards of conduct and of responsibility for wrong done shall be observed among nations and their governments that are observed among the individual citizens of civilized states. 

Wilson in Paris with Advisers, 1919, Ready to Lead the World

We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling towards them but one of sympathy and friendship. It was not upon their impulse that their Government acted in entering this war. It was not with their previous knowledge or approval. It was a war determined upon as wars used to be determined upon in the old, unhappy days when peoples were nowhere consulted by their rulers and wars were provoked and waged in the interest of dynasties or of little groups of ambitious men who were accustomed to use their fellow men as pawns and tools. Self-governed nations do not fill their neighbour states with spies or set the course of intrigue to bring about some critical posture of affairs which will give them an opportunity to strike and make conquest. Such designs can be successfully worked out only under cover and where no one has the right to ask questions. Cunningly contrived plans of deception or aggression, carried, it may be, from generation to generation, can be worked out and kept from the light only within the privacy of courts or behind the carefully guarded confidences of a narrow and privileged class. They are happily impossible where public opinion commands and insists upon full information concerning all the nation's affairs. 

A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations. No autocratic government could be trusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants. It must be a league of honour, a partnership of opinion. Intrigue would eat its vitals away; the plottings of inner circles who could plan what they would and render account to no one would be a corruption seated at its very heart. Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honour steady to a common end and prefer the interests of mankind to any narrow interest of their own. 

Does not every American feel that assurance has been added to our hope for the future peace of the world by the wonderful and heartening things that have been happening within the last few weeks in Russia? Russia was known by those who knew it best to have been always in fact democratic at heart, in all the vital habits of her thought, in all the intimate relationships of her people that spoke their natural instinct, their habitual attitude towards life. The autocracy that crowned the summit of her political structure, long as it had stood and terrible as was the reality of its power, was not in fact Russian in origin, character, or purpose; and now it has been shaken off and the great, generous Russian people have been added in all their naive majesty and might to the forces that are fighting for freedom in the world, for justice, and for peace. Here is a fit partner for a league of honour. 

One of the things that has served to convince us that the Prussian autocracy was not and could never be our friend is that from the very outset of the present war it has filled our unsuspecting communities and even our offices of government with spies and set criminal intrigues everywhere afoot against our national unity of counsel, our peace within and without our industries and our commerce. Indeed it is now evident that its spies were here even before the war began; and it is unhappily not a matter of conjecture but a fact proved in our courts of justice that the intrigues which have more than once come perilously near to disturbing the peace and dislocating the industries of the country have been carried on at the instigation, with the support, and even under the personal direction of official agents of the Imperial Government accredited to the Government of the United States. Even in checking these things and trying to extirpate them we have sought to put the most generous interpretation possible upon them because we knew that their source lay, not in any hostile feeling or purpose of the German people towards us (who were, no doubt, as ignorant of them as we ourselves were), but only in the selfish designs of a Government that did what it pleased and told its people nothing. But they have played their part in serving to convince us at last that that Government entertains no real friendship for us and means to act against our peace and security at its convenience. That it means to stir up enemies against us at our very doors the intercepted [<a href="zimmerman.html">Zimmermann</a>] note to the German Minister at Mexico City is eloquent evidence. 

We are accepting this challenge of hostile purpose because we know that in such a government, following such methods, we can never have a friend; and that in the presence of its organized power, always lying in wait to accomplish we know not what purpose, there can be no assured security for the democratic governments of the world. We are now about to accept gage of battle with this natural foe to liberty and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of the nation to check and nullify its pretensions and its power. We are glad, now that we see the facts with no veil of false pretence about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German peoples included: for the rights of nations great and small and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience. The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them. 

Just because we fight without rancour and without selfish object, seeking nothing for ourselves but what we shall wish to share with all free peoples, we shall, I feel confident, conduct our operations as belligerents without passion and ourselves observe with proud punctilio the principles of right and of fair play we profess to be fighting for. 

I have said nothing of the governments allied with the Imperial Government of Germany because they have not made war upon us or challenged us to defend our right and our honour. The Austro-Hungarian Government has, indeed, avowed its unqualified endorsement and acceptance of the reckless and lawless submarine warfare adopted now without disguise by the Imperial German Government, and it has therefore not been possible for this Government to receive Count Tarnowski, the Ambassador recently accredited to this Government by the Imperial and Royal Government of Austria-Hungary; but that Government has not actually engaged in warfare against citizens of the United States on the seas, and I take the liberty, for the present at least, of postponing a discussion of our relations with the authorities at Vienna. We enter this war only where we are clearly forced into it because there are no other means of defending our rights.

Wilson After Versailles, World Statesman

It will be all the easier for us to conduct ourselves as belligerents in a high spirit of right and fairness because we act without animus, not in enmity towards a people or with the desire to bring any injury or disadvantage upon them, but only in armed opposition to an irresponsible government which has thrown aside all considerations of humanity and of right and is running amuck. We are, let me say again, the sincere friends of the German people, and shall desire nothing so much as the early reestablishment of intimate relations of mutual advantage between us -- however hard it may be for them, for the time being, to believe that this is spoken from our hearts. We have borne with their present government through all these bitter months because of that friendship -- exercising a patience and forbearance which would otherwise have been impossible. We shall, happily, still have an opportunity to prove that friendship in our daily attitude and actions towards the millions of men and women of German birth and native sympathy, who live amongst us and share our life, and we shall be proud to prove it towards all who are in fact loyal to their neighbours and to the Government in the hour of test. They are, most of them, as true and loyal Americans as if they had never known any other fealty or allegiance. They will be prompt to stand with us in rebuking and restraining the few who may be of a different mind and purpose. If there should be disloyalty, it will be dealt with with a firm hand of stern repression; but, if it lifts its head at all, it will lift it only here and there and without countenance except from a lawless and malignant few. 

It is a distressing and oppressive duty, gentlemen of the Congress, which I have performed in thus addressing you. There are, it may be, many months of fiery trial and sacrifice ahead of us. It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts -- for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free. To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other.

Source:  World War I Document Archive

Pyrrhic Victory, French Strategy and Operations in the Great War — Reviewed by Clark Shilling

Pyrrhic Victory, French Strategy and Operations in the Great War

by Robert A. Doughty

Published by The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2005

Brigadier General (Ret) Robert A Doughty served as  head of the Department of History at the United States Military Academy from 1985 to 2005. His book, Pyrrhic Victory, was published to wide scale acclaim in 2005. This work was the 2006 winner of the Norman B. Tomlinson Prize, awarded by the U.S. Branch of the Western Front Association for the best work of history in English on the World War I era. When considering France's role in the Great War, we usually recall the disastrous opening moves of Plan XVII, the boiling cauldron of Verdun, and the eventual mutiny of French soldiers in the spring of 1917. Often the French war effort has been portrayed as a number of very brave, but often impulsive and irrational, campaigns ending in costly failure

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General Doughty presents quite a different picture in Pyrrhic Victory. He contends that the French carried out a logical strategy of forcing a multi-front war on Germany and her allies, and that the French military carried out coordinated and carefully considered operations to support that strategy. He concedes that in many cases these operations ended in costly failure, but he correctly adds that costly failures were not exclusively limited to the French. General Doughty would have us remember that on the Western Front the French fought heroically, raising the largest Allied army, manning the greatest part of the front, and suffering the most Allied casualties during the four years of the war.

The author points out that a succession of French generals, starting with Joffre and ending with Foch directed the activities of the Allied armies in the West and attempted to coordinate their efforts with the Russians, Italians, and Serbs.

This work does not present detailed accounts of French campaigns in the Great War, but rather concentrates on the development and implementation of French and Allied strategy. A key feature of the book is its focus on three relationships: first, that between the French government and French military leaders; second, that of French generals and their allies; and finally, the relationship between the leading French generals themselves.

After the War:  France's Three Most Influential Generals —
Joffre, Foch, Pétain

Pyrrhic Victory is an excellent book, providing a much-needed English language evaluation of French strategy and diplomacy in the Great War.

Clark Shilling

The Alpini Bridge of Bassano del Grappa

The Alpini Bridge from the South

The Alpini Bridge on Italy's Brenta River, symbol of the town of  Bassano del Grapp, was originally built in 1569 by Andrea Palladio although a wooden bridge has existed there since at least 1209. During the Great War it became famous as the Alpini Bridge after the elite mountain troops who marched over it on their way to Mte Grappa, last bastion of the post-Caporetto Italian defenses. While crossing the bridge they sang the sentimental song Sul Ponte di Bassano — "On the Bridge of Bassano" — about kissing a pretty girl and squeezing her hand as they parted. Destroyed several times, the current wooden bridge was rebuilt after its destruction in WWII by the Alpini, Italy's mountain brigade. At the entrance are two 16th-century arches. The views of town from the bridge are breathtaking. Across the bridge (left side in the photo) are the Museum of the Alpini and the historic Nardini Tavern overlooking the river.

My 2011 Tour Group on the Bridge

100 Years Ago: Quotes from March 1914

The war against the powers of the Triple Alliance has become necessary. . .
General Schtcherbetchew, Director St. Petersbury Military Academy, March 1914

At present the Volunteer Aid Detachments are wasted organisations. In time of war, mobilisation would be next to impossible. There should be some… official equivalent to the German Imperial Commissioner, who with a staff should devote the whole of his time to the matter of voluntary aid.

First Aid Journal of the British Red Cross, March 1914

It is my firm conviction that Germany's two neighbors [Russia and France] are carefully proceeding with military preparations, but will not start the war so long as they have not attained a grouping of the Balkan states against us that confronts the monarchy with an attack from three sides and pins down the majority of our forces on our eastern and southern front.

Hungarian Premier István Tisza to Emperor Franz Josef, March 1914

I hear an army charging upon the land,
And the thunder of horses plunging, foam about their knees:
Arrogant, in black armour, behind them stand,
Disdaining the reins, with fluttering whips, the charioteers.

They cry unto the night their battle-name:
I moan in sleep when I hear afar their whirling laughter.
They cleave the gloom of dreams, a blinding flame,
Clanging, clanging upon the heart as upon an anvil.

They come shaking in triumph their long, green hair:
They come out of the sea and run shouting by the shore.
My heart, have you no wisdom thus to despair?
My love, my love, my love, why have you left me alone? 
James Joyce, Published in Des Imagistes, 2 March

The Russian Scare
Mobilization of German Interests
Demand for a Firm Policy
The Times Berlin Correspondent, 9 March

We do not want sentence of death with a stay of execution for six years.
Edward Carson, Speech in Commons, re: Ulster counties being allowed out of Home Rule for six years, 9 March

I should say that the future lies with Ibn Sa'ud.  If it is true — as we hear — that he has driven the Turks out of the Hasa, he is a formidable adversary.

Gertrude Bell, Diary, 17 March

General Henry Wilson
Behind the Scenes Instigator of Curragh

OFFICER COMMANDING 5TH LANCERS STATES THAT ALL OFFICERS, EXCEPT TWO AND ONE DOUBTFUL, ARE RESIGNING THEIR COMMISSIONS TODAY. I MUCH FEAR SAME CONDITIONS IN THE 16TH LANCERS. FEAR MEN WILL REFUSE TO MOVE. REGRET TO REPORT BRIGADIER-GENERAL GOUGH AND FIFTY-SEVEN OFFICERS 3RD CAVALRY BRIGADE PREFER TO ACCEPT DISMISSAL IF ORDERED NORTH.

 Sir Arthur Paget, Commander-in-Chief in Ireland, Reporting Curragh Mutiny, 20 March

The Tsarist Russian Officer's Code of Honor

By Alexander Ryazantsev

• If you are abrupt and haughty, you will be despised by all. 
• Be polite and modest in your dealings with all people.
• Do not promise if you are not certain of your ability to follow through.
• Carry yourself simply, with dignity, but without exquisiteness.
• Be concise, accurate and tactful always, with all and everywhere.
• Be considerate and attentive but not intrusive and adulatory. Know how to leave in a timely manner and not be unwanted. 
• It is necessary to remember the boundary where dignified politeness ends and where sycophancy begins.
• Do not carouse, as this will not prove one brave but rather likely compromise you.
• Do be in a hurry to get familiar with someone you do not know well.
• Avoid keeping financial tabs for friends. Money always spoils relations.
• If you can, help out your comrade with money, but personally avoid accepting money, as it will demean you.
• If you cannot say anything nice about someone, also refrain from saying anything bad if you happen to know of such.

• Do not dismiss the advice of others – hear it out. You will always have the option to deciding whether to heed it.
• Knowing how to use the good advice of others is an art no less useful than being able to provide good advice yourself.
• Honor fortifies the heart and ennobles bravery. 
• Safeguard the reputation of any woman who has confided in you, regardless of who she is.
• There are times in life when one must forget the heart and heed reason.
• Be guided by instinct, a sense of fairness and duty to decency.
• Always be on guard and never slack off.
• May your words be soft but arguments be strong. Try to convince rather than annoy one’s opponent.
• When speaking avoid gesticulation and raising one’s voice.
• There is nothing worse than indecisiveness. A bad decision is better than hesitancy and inaction.
• A moment lost can never be returned. 
• The person who is not afraid is more powerful than the person whom everyone fears.
• When two people quarrel, they are always both wrong.
• The greatest delusions are those which go unquestioned.
• There is wisdom in keeping silent. 
• Modesty is not about being indifferent to praise so much as it is being attentive to reprimands.

Source:  Russian Mir Foundation
 

Western Front Virtual Tour — Stop 13: Retreat from Mons, Part II

By 27 August, parts of the retreating BEF were coming unraveled. However, a great deed of personal leadership would overcome a crisis, and eventually General French's two corps would reunite and proceed to cross the River Marne. There they would regroup and eventually return to play a key role in the rapidly approaching crisis along the Marne.

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Next Week: Maubeuge

Remembering a Veteran: Albert Marshall, Last Surviving Cavalryman of the Great War

Trooper Albert Marshall

Albert (“Smiler”) Marshall, the last cavalryman of the First World War, died on 16 May 2005, aged 108.

When Albert Marshall was asked about the First World War, he sometimes thought it odd that so much was made of the Somme. For him the worst moment came the next year, in 1917. He was 20,and serving with the Essex Yeomanry in his third year at the front. A new regiment, the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, had just come out from England to join up with his. The men were mustard-keen, in fresh-pressed uniforms that had not yet seen a shell hole or a trench.

Eighty years later, Mr Marshall found it hard to remember whether the Ox and Bucks was sent “over the top” in the morning or the evening. What he never forgot was going into no-man's-land a few hours later, following an officer with a white flag, to bury their bodies. There were hundreds of them; all but a handful had been killed immediately. The mud was too compacted to dig down far. As his unit marched back, he trod under his boots the corpses of the men with whom, that morning, he had eaten breakfast.

Very few men—perhaps a dozen now in Britain—survive from the conflict that marked modern history, and seared the modern conscience, more than any other. Mr Marshall was the last representative of perhaps the most quixotic part of that doomed enterprise, the cavalry units of the Western Front. Once he had joined up, enthusiastically lying that he was older than 17, he had his picture taken in uniform, proudly astride his horse. He had ridden since he was five, starting on a goat for a tuppenny dare, and was a natural in the saddle. In 1915, no boy looked happier to have left the Wivenhoe shipyards for adventure in the fields of Flanders.

Some commanding generals, Haig among them, believed in 1914 that cavalry would win the war. A mounted charge, with swords or lances, was swift and flexible and had shock value. Even in later years, as the war on the Western Front bogged down in mud and barbed wire, horses seemed to hold the key to making it mobile again. A quick cavalry break through entrenched infantry lines could shatter the stalemate, take the fighting on to new ground, and move it forward.

Just once or twice, Mr Marshall lived that dream. At Cambrai in 1917 he met German infantry advancing: “We drew our swords and cut them down. It was cut and thrust at the gallop. They stood no chance.” For a moment then, his blade gleaming, he was in a direct line that went back to the squadrons of Xenophon. A few days after the burying expedition, when German foot-soldiers surprised the Essex as they saddled up, he watched in amazement as the Bengal Lancers leapt on to their horses bareback, plucked their lances out of the ground and routed the enemy. It was “a colossal sight”.

For much of the time, however, horses did not help in close engagements. High-explosive shells terrified them, and chlorine gas blinded them as it blinded men. (Mr Marshall fought at Loos, where 140 tons of gas, released by the British over the battlefield, blew back into their own trenches.) Horses also made large targets, especially when corralled in numbers behind the lines, and soon weakened when they could not be cared for. Of 800,000 horses used on the Western Front, mostly for transport and pulling artillery, only about half survived.

In winter, when fighting eased, the cavalry's job was to hold the front line: “three lines of trenches, mud and devastation”, as Mr Marshall remembered it. On one spell of duty, out in the middle of no-man's-land, an exploding shrapnel shell half-buried him in mud and smothered two of his friends. Unable to move, he sang hymns to them until he was pulled out. They were past rescuing.

A Shared Cigarette

When Mr. Marshall turned 100, historians and documentary makers began to show up at his farm cottage in Surrey—where he had lived since 1940, working as a handyman on a nearby estate—to ask him for his memories. He had never spoken about the war before or revisited the battlefields. Remembrance was sharp enough.

Under questioning, he revealed a slyly insubordinate streak. He used to trade cigarettes for other men's rum rations and, when the orderly officer's back was turned, quickly whip off puttee, boot, and sock to rub the rum between his toes. As a result, while other men's feet were slowly rotting from trench foot or gangrene, “[mine] were as good as anything." He recalled, too, offering a drag on a cigarette to a soldier who had been tied to the wheel of a cart, without food or water, for some misdemeanor. Years later they met by chance in Oxford Street and shared memories of how good that smoke had been.

Albert Marshall at 108

His nickname, “Smiler," stemmed from an incident, soon after joining up, when he had thrown a snowball at a drill sergeant. (“Hey, Smiler, I'm talking to you!” the sergeant roared.) He sang on the boat that took him to France, sang as he returned, and sang when he was there: “If the sergeant's pinched your rum, never mind," and “Nearer my God to Thee." His smile was one of the last of that crowd of sunny recruits who look out of their fading photographs in blithe and cocky ignorance of the horror they were to see. No faces are more haunting.

Source:  the Economist, 26 May 2005

26 March 1918: Ferdinand Foch Named Allied Generalissimo

Stained Glass Window at Doullens Town Hall

Commemorating Foch's Designation as Generalissimo

26 March 1918

The action of 26 March was formalized at a later meeting in Beauvais on 3 April with this document:

Gen. Foch is charged by the British, French, and American Governments with the coordination of the action of the Allied Armies on the western front; to this end there is conferred on him all the powers necessary for its effective realization.  To the same end, the British, French, and American Governments confide in Gen. Foch the strategic direction of military operations.

The Commander-in-Chief of the British, French, and American Armies will exercise to the fullest extent the tactical direction of their armies.  Each Commander-in-Chief will have the right to appeal to his Government, if in his opinion his Army is placed in danger by the instructions received from Gen. Foch.

(Signed)

G. CLEMENCEAU.

PÉTAIN.

F. FOCH.

LLOYD GEORGE.

D. HAIG, F. M.

HENRY WILSON, General, 3.4.18.

TASKER H. BLISS, General and Chief of Staff.

JOHN J. PERSHING, General, U. S. A.

Source: Source Records of the Great War, Vol. VI, ed. Charles F. Horne, National Alumni 1923

The Long Shadow: The Great War and the Twentieth Century — Reviewed by Jane Mattisson Ekstam

The Long Shadow: The Great War and the Twentieth Century

by David Reynolds

Published by Simon & Schuster, 2013

The Long Shadow challenges two accepted views of the Great War and its aftermath, namely that most of postwar Europe was frozen in perpetual mourning and the 1920s and 1930s were predominantly morbid. Indeed, argues Reynolds, some of the changes brought about by the Great War were positive in a transformative sense, especially for Britain.

One of the aims of The Long Shadow is to demonstrate why and in what ways Britain's experience of the conflict was unique. She was not, for example, bombed seriously; neither was she engulfed in revolution or wracked by civil war or paramilitary violence as in so many other European countries. And both politically and economically, Britain was more stable than her Continental neighbors.

While the focus of The Long Shadow is primarily on Britain, Reynolds also contrasts Britain's role in the war with that of the United States, which was both geographically and emotionally more distant; the Great War in America was something that happened "over there," 3000 miles from home. Nonetheless, as Reynolds demonstrates, both Britain and America shared a growing disillusion with what the conflict achieved.

Order Now

For two decades, the Great War in Britain was overshadowed by the Second World War but was to be rediscovered in the 1960s, around the time of the 50th anniversary. At this point, it became the war of trenches and poets. Reynolds asks why the British have such a problem with the war. The answer, he believes, is to be found in the Armistice and the Peace of Versailles and not, as has often been assumed, in the causes of the war. Reynolds argues that the massive losses during the Great War might eventually have been seen as justifiable by the British if the war had, as was promised, proved to be the war to end wars. Ultimately, explains Reynolds, the meaning of the war would depend not on the events themselves but on the persistence of the peace.

British conceptions of the war established after the 50th anniversary have remained largely unchallenged — it is still regarded as a human tragedy, trenches were the symbol of suffering, and literature is the natural form of expression for what the war meant and still means to the British. Through the writing of Paul Fussell, Pat Barker, and Sebastian Faulks, Americans have come to share in this image. It is time, argues Reynolds, to take a wider view that gives greater space, for example, to the first few weeks of the war, or to when the German Army nearly captured Paris, when America entered the war and helped push back the exhausted German Army, to medical advances, and last but certainly not least, the important contributions of the home front in the form of the manufacturing industry, food production, the use of woman power in factories, transport, farming, and clerical work.

It is Reynolds's hope that as we approach the centenary, the British will start to "lift their eyes beyond the Western Front" to encompass the broader story of the Great War. He makes the valid point that the Tommies of 1914–18 are now as far away as Wellington's redcoats of 1815 were from them. Our memorials remain, but what memories will they trigger? How will we read the established stories of the war, and how will we write new ones?

Cenotaph, Whitehall, London
Remembrance Day 2010

The Long Shadow is a scholarly work by one of Britain's foremost experts on the two world wars. It is a thorough and convincing examination of what has formed the British view of the Great War and why this needs to be re-thought. By focusing on such themes as democracy and empire, nationalism and capitalism, art and poetry, and by comparing the differing impacts of the war on Britain, Ireland and America, Britain's perception of the war will change; she can no longer be seen in splendid isolation.

Scholarly and extensive (The Long Shadow is over 500 pages long) but also highly readable, Reynolds's study clarifies why Britain has seen her role in the war as so different from all other nations. Drawing on a wide range of sources — historical, artistic, and literary, copiously annotated, and featuring black and white as well as color illustrations from a variety of countries both during and after the war, The Long Shadow is an important work not only for historians but also for Great War enthusiasts and literary specialists. Surprisingly inexpensive, at $23.35, it is superb value. The final statement in the inside flap is no exaggeration: "stunningly broad in its historical perspective, The Long Shadow is a magisterial reinterpretation of the place of the Great War in modern history."

Jane Mattisson Ekstam

Dining with Rasputin

Should time travel ever be invented and you're contemplating inviting some interesting historical figures over for dinner,  you might want to think twice about extending an offer to Rasputin. Here is the report of Mr. Joseph Vecchi, restauranteur, who operated the French restaurant at the Astoria Hotel in St. Petersburg in the days of the last tsar. He served a party of society ladies celebrating the birthday of an unnamed princess one evening.

Throughout the evening the behavior of Rasputin was intolerable. Remember that he was an adventurer, possessed of undoubted powers of personal magnetism, a skilled psychologist, and was the secret power behind the Russian Court. Many of the ladies present had favors to beg from the Court which Rasputin was in a position to influence. Though his supporters vowed that he was a man of ascetic life, he was, nevertheless, a man entirely without principle. . . and he was surrounded by some of the loveliest and youngest women in Russia, only too anxious to court his favors. Such a compliment might go to any man's head, and it certainly went to Rasputin's. Strive as I will I can find no words to mitigate of excuse his disgusting behavior.When he ate it was like a beast using his long talon-like fingers in lieu of knife and fork, grabbling amongst the food on his plate and stuffing himself in a very vulgar way with no regard of the feelings of the cultured ladies who sat at table with him.  

Rasputin at His Most Photogenic and Sober

HE drank freely, but it didn't get the better of him. Rasputin was not a drunkard. No one could intimidate him. He used the most vulgar language in the presence of his hostess and ladies (and rumor said that he used it even at Court in the presence of the Czar), and none of them dared to utter a rebuke, or betray by as much as a hostile look or averted eyes how shocked they were. Yes, the party was gay, but I was disgusted, and felt sympathy in every nerve for the lovely women present who were dining with such a beast (though nobody could have told from their expressions and demeanor what they might have been thinking). They seemed to be enjoying the party thoroughly, and the feeblest joke on the part of Rasputin would send them off into peals of laughter. . . and the most vulgar ones did not bring a blush to their cheeks, . . or if they did, it went unnoticed.

Rasputin made a habit of leaving every party he attended before any of the other guests did. It was a favorable affectation of his, and no doubt copied from better men. This particular party was no exception to the rule;  but it wasn't until about 3:30 a.m. that he made his departure, quietly slipping away up the little staircase and unnoticed out of the hotel to his waiting carriage. After that the party lost its coherence, the ladies leaving in twos and threes, in an inconspicuous manner so that  they would not be observed, although it was unlikely that such a notability as Rasputin could be in the hotel and rumors and conjecture not fly about.

Source:  The full account of the evening can be found at the excellent Alexander Palace website, "The Home of the Last Tsar." (Link)