100 Years Ago: Rotogravure Helps America Visualize the War

During the World War I-era leading newspapers took advantage of a new printing process that dramatically altered their ability to reproduce images. Rotogravure printing, which produced richly detailed, high-quality illustrations, even on inexpensive newsprint paper, was used to create vivid new pictorial sections. Publishers that could afford to invest in the new technology saw sharp increases both in readership and advertising revenue. The images in this collection track American sentiment about the war in Europe, week by week, before and after the United States became involved. Events of the war are detailed alongside society news and advertisements touting products of the day, creating a pictorial record of both the war effort and life at home. The collection includes an illustrated history of World War I selected from newspaper rotogravure sections that graphically documents the people, places, and events important to the war.

From the 10 January 1915 New York Times

This page of the supplement featured Australian reservists arriving in Britain, the burial on the nation's home soil of the first British soldier killed  and the removal of German seamen from the disabled SMS Emden.

Throughout the war, the first few pages of the Sunday New York Times rotogravure section were filled with photographs from the battlefront, training camps, and war effort at home. For instance, in the weeks following the 7 May 1915 sinking of RMS Luistania many photos of victims of the disaster were run, including a two-page spread in the May 16 edition titled "Prominent Americans Who Lost Their Lives on the S. S. Lusitania". Another two-page spread in the May 30 edition carried the banner "Burying the Lusitania's Dead—And Succoring Her Survivors". The images on these spreads reflect a panorama of responses to the disaster—sorrow, heroism, ambivalence, consolation, and anger.

The Library of Congress has a full collection of the New York Times rotogravures from the war on line at:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/rotogravures/

Gas and Flame Firsts in Early 1915

As the war dragged on all the combatants looked for ways to get an edge on the battlefield. Two significant innovations took place in the first two months of 1915. Both were from the Germans, and both involved sophisticated chemistry in which Germany was the world's industrial leader.

1.  First Significant Use of Poison Gas, 31 January,  the Battle of Bolimov

1915 Gas Attack on the Eastern Front

In October 1914 the Germans placed some small tear gas canisters in shells that were fired at Neuve Chapelle, France, but Allied troops were not exposed. In January 1915 the Germans fired shells loaded with xylyl bromide, a more lethal gas, at Russian troops at Bolimov on the Eastern Front. The Battle of Bolimov was an inconclusive battle of World War I fought on 31 Januar 1915 between Germany and Russia and considere preliminary to the Second Battle of the Masurian Lakes. Because of the wintry cold, most of the gas froze, but the Russians nonetheless reported more than 1,000 killed as a result of the new weapon. (History Channel)

2.   First Use of Flamethrowers, 26 February, Malancourt (West of Verdun)

Early German Flamethrower Team, 1915

The flamethrower was invented in 1901 by German engineer Richard Fiedler. He tested these devices in the 1908 Engineer Test Company and equipped two special German Army battalions of former Leipzig firefighter Capt. Hermann Redemann in late 1914. They were first used in combat against the French trenches at Malancourt northwest of Verdun on 26 February 1915. Due to the success of this engagement, a Third Guard Pioneer Battalion was created, commanded by Redemann, enlarged to 800 men and equipped with improved models from the Fiedler Flamethrower Works in Berlin. This unit used the flamethrowers at Ypres on 30 July 1915. Flamethrower assault squads of six men were added to the stormtrooper battalions commanded by Captain Willy Rohr after 8 August 1915. The Allied armies adopted the flamethrower by 1916. (WWI on the Web)

Cleveland, Ohio, and the Great War

At the 2014 World War I annual symposium held at the National WWI Museum one of the speakers suggested that commemorations, like our Great War Centennial, are most effective at the personal and local levels. I believe this is absolutely the case, so at Roads to the Great War we will continue to remember those individuals who served and make a better effort at looking back at what happened at the state level, as we did with our recent Georgia series, and at the community level. Naturally, there is a lot of good material available, such as the article from the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History: 

WORLD WAR I

by Judith G. Cetina, Cuyahoga County Archives and J. E. Vacha, Cleveland Public Schools

With a population of 560,665 on the eve of World War I, Cleveland stood as the sixth-largest city in the U.S. It thrived economically on the manufacture of iron and steel, paints and varnishes, foundry and machine-shop products, and electrical machinery and supplies. Although recently surpassed by Detroit in automobile production, it still excelled in the making of auto accessories. Proof of the city's financial importance was offered late in 1914, when Cleveland was selected as headquarters for the 4th Federal Reserve District. The years of U.S. neutrality were bonanza ones for Cleveland's industries, as its workers satisfied contracts for uniforms, weapons, automobiles and trucks, and chemicals for explosives. By the fall of 1918, it was estimated that the city had produced $750 million worth of munitions in the four years since the war had begun. The issues of the war itself were primarily of interest to the 35 percent of the city's population (1910 census) of foreign birth. War touched the city more directly with the sinking of the Lusitania on 8 May 1915, as seven Clevelanders were listed among the 114 Americans killed on the torpedoed British liner. By the time Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare in March1917, Clevelanders were packing war meetings in Grays Armory and aiding the U.S. Naval Reserve in the formation of Lake Erie's "mosquito fleet" of 500 ships.

Gray's Armory

Upon America's entry into the war on 6 April 1917, a county draft board consisting of Daniel E. Morgan†, Starr Cadwallader†, and Dr. Walter B. Laffer was named to supervise the local application of the new Selective Service System. By the year's end 25,000 draftees had joined 8,000 volunteers in the area's total of men under arms. By war's end, almost 41,000 Clevelanders had joined the services; and 1,023 of them were killed in the conflict. Led by Maj. George W. Crile†, Base Hospital Unit No. 4 from Lakeside Hospital had been among the first Americans to reach France, as early as May 1917. On the home front Cleveland factories continued to supply the war effort with arms and equipment. The White Motor Corporation alone produced a total of 18,000 trucks for the use of the U.S. and its allies. As men stepped into the trenches and assembly lines, women were called upon to fill the breach. The Cleveland Public Schools dropped an old ruling that forced female teachers to resign upon marriage. Gertrude Nader greeted Cedar-Fairmount line commuters in 1918 as Cleveland's first streetcar "conductorette," although the female conductors would later lose their jobs as the result of a postwar strike.

Distinguished Cleveland Surgeon George W. Crile
Headed the Professional Staff of the Lakeside Hospital

To coordinate the city's war activities, Mayor Harry L. Davis appointed the Mayor's Advisory War Committee, to be financed from money from the Red Cross drive. Supervised under the umbrella of the Mayor's Committee were such activities as the war gardens campaign, the "Four-Minute Men" speakers bureau, and local efforts in the Treasury Dept.'s Liberty Loan drives. Clevelanders oversubscribed the first two Liberty Loan campaigns by $70 million. Nothing was deemed too excessive in the city's desire to flaunt its patriotism. The Board of Education honored one of America's allies by naming a new elementary school after Lafayette. A 1918 Flag Day Pageant in Wade Park, witnessed by 150,000 Clevelanders, featured a Spirit of '76 tableau personally directed by Archibald M. Willard. On the negative side, a local branch of the American Protective League was organized to aid the Dept. of Justice in locating draft "slackers," investigating food hoarding, and suppressing alien disturbances. Some violators of the city's first "gasless Sunday" in September 1918 returned to their cars to find the tires slashed.

Despite the outward appearance of 100 percent Americanism, there were those who objected to the U.S. entry into the war. Members of the city's German and Hungarian communities had hoped for continued neutrality, as did many Irish, who saw any assistance to the Allies as helping their traditional enemy, the English. Radical political groups, including some socialists, also advocated neutrality. Socialist Eugene Debs's criticism of the war resulted in his arrest in Cleveland and subsequent imprisonment in 1918. Cleveland's ethnic communities —"hyphenated Americans" in the parlance of the day — came in for their share of patriotic pressure. An Americanization Board was established by the Mayor's Advisory Committee, and naturalization classes were inaugurated under the direction of Dr. Raymond Moley. With the cooperation of the Cleveland Board of Education, free language classes were advertised in 24 different locations. Some ethnic newspapers began printing editorials in English to circumvent a law requiring the filing of translations of war-related copy with the local postmaster.

A World War I Liberty Loan Drive on Public Square, July 1918

A particularly intense trial was reserved for the city's 132,000 residents of German extraction. The German language was dropped from the curriculum of the public elementary schools, although its study was retained on grounds of "military necessity" in the high schools. Local members of the American Protective League, in fact, campaigned to outlaw even the public use of the "enemy" language. Directors of the German American Savings Bank wisely voted to conduct future business under the less provocative nomenclature of the American Savings Bank. So many obstacles were raised for Cleveland's German newspaper Waechter und Anzeiger that one scholar found it surprising that the paper survived the war at all. Not so lucky was the German-American president of BAaldwin-Wallace College, Arthur Louis Breslich, who aroused the patriotic indignation of his students and faculty at the 1917 Christmas service by attempting to lead them in the singing of the German-language version of "Silent Night." Following protests, petitions, and parades against the president's "passive" patriotism, Dr. Breslich was permanently suspended from his duties by the Baldwin-Wallace trustees. While the war could not end too soon for the city's German-Americans, its hysteria lingered months beyond Armistice Day for most Clevelanders. Thanks to a premature story appearing in the Cleveland press, Cleveland celebrated the famous "false armistice" on 7 November, as well as the real one four days later. More than half a million people still flocked to the Allied War Exposition on the lakefront the following week, where they witnessed a simulated battle and toured three miles of trenches. Even Cleveland's May Day Riots of 1919 can be attributed at least partly to the smoldering embers of World War I patriotism.

Although Cleveland joined in the nation's desire to return to "normalcy," the war had left it changed in at least one major respect. It effectively blocked the flow of immigration from Europe to the nation's urban centers, a change that would be institutionalized in the restrictive immigration legislation of the 1920s. To fill the resultant labor shortages in the country's war industries, employers turned to the disaffected African-American population of the South. Partly as a result of active recruitment and partly from word-of-mouth advertisement, Cleveland's black population grew by 308 percent (from 8,448 to 34,451) in the decade ending in 1920. One of the local black newspapers, the Cleveland Advocate, began a special "Industrial Page" to assist in their adjustment. Unlike their predecessors, who had tended to come from the border states and live in close proximity with other groups, the new arrivals were more likely to come from the Deep South and settle in areas of dense black concentration. "In the midst of a city that had once been proud of its integrationist tradition," observed historian Kenneth L. Kusmer, "a black ghetto was taking shape." World War I thus marked the end of Cleveland's second demographic era, which saw the original New England stock leavened by the influx of the New Immigration. It ushered in a period of transition in which the European immigrants were to be assimilated and succeeded by a third wave of newcomers from the American South.

Forgotten Event: The German Occupation of Kiev

To keep pressure on the Bolsheviks at Brest-Litovsk on 18–19 February 1918, the German Army resumed their advance in the east with 50 divisions. One of their early prizes was Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, which was occupied on 1 March. Two days later, Lenin agreed to terms. The German advances continued in the Caucasus, Crimea, and Finland through the end of April. Archduke Wilhelm of Austria established a headquarters at Kiev in hopes of becoming its crowned ruler. 

German Troops on Parade in Kiev

The Armistice of November 1918 triggered the rapid withdrawal of German troops from the city. During the German stay the city had remained calm but was occupied by Bolshevik forces 3 January 1919 and would soon become of center for some of the most tumultuous events of the Russian Civil War.

German Depiction of the Occupation

The Somme: The Darkest Hour on the Western Front Reviewed by Ron Drees

The Somme: The Darkest Hour on the Western Front

by Peter Hart

Published by Pegasus, 2010

The Somme contains hundreds of personal accounts of the battle (which lasted from 1 July through November 1916), each connected by analysis and commentary. All ranks contributed to these accounts, from privates through General Haig and Winston Churchill. Since the battle was a continuously frustrating charnel house, the vivid descriptions become repetitive, bordering on the redundant, as one seems to be reading about the same battle over and over and cannot separate one part of the slaughter from another.

The British used the same tactics continuously, never really learning, even when they did something different that worked. After several hundred pages, the accounts lengthen the text, decreasing interest, and making the reading tend toward the tedious. Fewer accounts would have moved the narrative along at a better pace and those accounts would have had a greater impact.

Interestingly, in his preface Hart seems to make excuses for the generals yet castigates them in the text. Haig had realized that battles could be more effectively directed and put out a memo to that effect but did not follow up with personal visits. It is not hindsight to believe that Haig and Rawlinson should have learned faster and reacted more effectively. While slogging through 1 July 1916, Hart hammers home the extent of the disaster by listing the casualties of the major units, yet he never discusses the German casualties.

Past the midpoint, the narrative changes when Hart describes the medical treatment received by British soldiers as surgeons fight dirt, disease, and the lack of time in a frequently futile effort to save lives. Then it's back to another continuing set of hard-fought but pointless small attacks. What finally ended the battle was winter, with its rain, sleet, and snow. While Haig thought he had driven the Germans to the breaking point, he had actually pushed his own army into the same situation. The backbone of the 4th Army — officers, NCOs and specialists — were dead. Haig needed time to rebuild.

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The Somme has many maps including one showing the start and finish of the British battle lines. After 624,000 British and French casualties, the front line had moved east one to nine miles, depending upon the location. The Germans had lost about 525,000 casualties.

Hart does a thorough job of presenting the battle from the viewpoints of the British infantryman, artillery gunner, and pilot while also explaining the thinking of the high command, greatly influenced by the political situation. After reading this book, the reader will feel like he had been there. Knowing what the German soldier was thinking would have really made this book insightful. At the end of the narrative, Hart reminds us that Arras, Ypres, and Passchendaele Ridge were yet to come.

Note that this is a book about English soldiers written by an English author in English, not American. Be prepared for new words or new meanings of familiar words.

Ron Drees

The Causes and Treatment of Trench Mouth

By Donna G. Wagner, R.D.H.

Trench mouth, a noncontagious disease also known as Vincent's angina and Vincent's stomatitis, flourished in the trenches during during World War I. It was brought on by exhaustion, emotional stress, and poor health conditions, such as deficient diets, tobacco use, insufficient rest, and poor oral hygiene. All these conditions conspired to cause two microorganisms of the mouth to invade its susceptible tissues. If untreated, this caused extreme pain as the bacteria attacked the gum tissue, causing a gray membrane composed of the bacteria and dead or necrotic tissue to appear which would slough off when touched, leaving raw bloody tissue underneath.

Left: Acute Case Affecting Gums & Hard Palate; Right: Less Severe but Painful Case

Often the first sign was that the soldier's breath would become extremely foul. Ulcerations on the papilla, or points between the teeth would cause them to become blunted and gaps would show between the teeth at the roots. Swallowing became painful as lymph nodes in the throat would swell. Eventually, supporting bone would deteriorate.

Treatment during World War I would have consisted of warm saltwater rinses, hydrogen peroxide application or rinses, and, if possible, better food and removal of the patient from the stressful trench area. Today the disease is treated in the same manner, but with the addition of antibiotics such as tetracycline or amoxicillin. The disease is mainly seen today in people with extremely depressed immune systems. Mild forms are found in college students at exam time, people with high stress levels, or heavy tobacco users. Formally, it is called Acute Necrotizing Ulcerative Gingivitis, or ANUG.

Why Russia Failed in the Great War: A Russian Interpretation

The First World War, which began 100 years ago, really did decide the fate of the world. However, as ironic as it may sound, the war’s results show that “military history” made only a very minimal contribution to the changes in fate, and sometimes it was only a necessary tragic backdrop to the metamorphoses taking place. Under Germany’s Schlieffen Plan, which was drawn up on the basis of a two-front war, Germany, in joining the war, was to secure victory in two stages. First, in unmanning the Eastern Front, Germany would attack through Belgium to defeat France, after which it would throw all its forces against Russia. In this way, the German command planned to end the war victoriously before autumn by completely defeating the enemy both in the west and east.

Russian Field Cemetery

As we know, for a number of reasons, the Germans were unable to carry through with this plan. The French Army was thrown back to the walls of Paris, although it did escape encirclement and defeat. Subsequent attacks in the east also ended with only tactical success for the Germans. Nevertheless, for France in 1914 and for Russia in 1915 the Germans delivered very sensitive and painful blows on vast territories, including the important industrial areas, where the armies suffered considerable human and material losses.

Militarily, the magnitude of the defeat for France and Russia was quite comparable. The results were quite disparate, however. France continued to fight until 1918 and brought the war to a victorious end. In Russia, however, the unsuccessful campaign of 1915 created a chain of events that eventually led to the collapse of Russian statehood and plunged the country into several years of chaotic and fratricidal war.

Why did the First World War bring such disastrous consequences for Russia in particular? Why wasn’t it able to achieve the same that France did? There is, of course, no single answer to this question, and there cannot be one insofar as events of this magnitude cannot be reduced to one or even several reasons. Therefore, we will name just those which, in our opinion, are the most important.

Often the main cause of the catastrophe is attributed to Russia’s unpreparedness as a country for a war of such magnitude. Entering the war, the country did not have sufficient war reserves, and its military industry was weak and dependent on foreign capital. Furthermore, its railway network definitely did not conform to the requirements of wartime. Funds allotted for defense went largely unspent by the military. All of this backfired less than one year after the outbreak of hostilities. Despite the boasting by War Minister Sukhomlinov before the war that the Russian Army was “prepared to the last button on the last soldier,” the front was without shells already in 1915. By that time chaos was reigning on the country's railways. As a result, the Russian Army was forced to retreat, causing enormous losses.

We should not forget, however, that after the removal of Sukhomlinov the dearth of ammunition was overcome due to the joint efforts of the government and the military and industrial committees. Already by 1916 the army was able to fight without having to economize on ammunition. The primary cause of the disaster that struck the country, therefore, should not be attributed to mistakes made by the military.

If we are going to talk about France, then we should first of all remember that it went to war in pursuit of a clear and specific goal — to take revenge for the defeat at Sedan and to secure the return of Alsace and Lorraine, which had been lost as a result of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871. This objective was very clear and understandable to every French soldier. And what was the Russian Army fighting for? For Serbia, which most soldiers had never heard of? For the no less abstract “Straits"? As we wrote earlier, in the Russo-Japanese War, the army, which had no clue why it was fighting, was able to last for a year. Russia’s participation lasted three times longer in the First World War, and the war itself demanded a much greater effort.

In addition, the First World War was a war not only of armies but also of people – to win in the exhausting confrontation required the unity of all forces, both in the front and the rear. The French understood this and therefore a national unity government was formed in the first weeks of the war. A similar decision was made in England, where Prime Minister Asquith formed a government that included liberals and conservatives. In Russia, on the contrary, unity could not be achieved. At the beginning of the war, however, all the parties in the Duma expressed their full support for the government and the deputies sent unanimous cries to the tsar: “Lead us, Prince!” After the unsuccessful campaign in 1915, this unity began to crack, and a proposal by several ministers to make several concessions for the sake of cooperation with the progressive opposition bloc was turned back by the tsar. As a result, the country again saw conflict between the government and the Duma opposition. Against the backdrop of military setbacks and economic difficulties, the public’s sympathies were more often inclined to the latter.

Tsar Nicholas in Command at Army Headquarters

As for the government — in order to succeed in the difficult war years it needed competent and popular leaders who could lead the country. Tsar Nicholas himself clearly did not have these qualities (in fact, he had a strong reputation as a failed tsar). Among those who were subordinate such qualities were also lacking. Worse yet, Russia entered the war with the deeply conservative and elderly prime minister Goremykin, who himself said that his appointment reminded him of an “old raccoon coat that has long been placed in the trunk and filled with camphor balls.” He was genuinely perplexed when he was suddenly needed again. Replacing him was Boris Stürme, who even the monarchist Shulgin referred to as a “miserable, paltry man.” The situation with the ministers was no better, and this included the war ministers. For example, the last one, Belaev, was remembered by Korenev, an investigator on the extraordinary commission of inquiry, as “weak...with a fearful gait, all shrunken, confused...jumps at every issue. Grabbed by the arm and whispered, 'Thank you, I would have just as soon resigned and gotten a pension...just to have a pension.’”

However, even the worst of the ministers could not tarnish the authorities more than Rasputin, with whom the tsar was extremely unwilling to part. The extent to which Rasputin influenced the appointment of ministers can be debated forever, as well as whether there was an intimate relationship with the empress, among other things. One thing is certain, though — his closeness to the throne discredited Nicholas even in the eyes of the regime’s most loyal supporters, not to mention in the eyes of the broad masses. As Shulgin remembered, even in the movie theaters they had to ban the showing of the documentary on Nicholas’s visit to the front.

Thus, the natural military and economic difficulties were superimposed on the domestic political crisis, the lack of national unity, the unpopular and incompetent leadership and the lack of a solid understanding among the soldiers as to why they had to climb before enemy machine guns and rot in the trenches while their loved ones suffered deprivations at home. In this situation, a miracle would have been needed to halt the collapse of the state.

Miracles, as we know from history, happen all too rarely.

Evgeny Levin, Mir Foundation, 2013

Remembering a Veteran: Charles d'Olive: America's Last Fighter Ace of WWI

Contributed by Steve Miller

Charles d'Olive downed five enemy aircraft in WWI, but his final victory — elevating him to the coveted status of "ace" — was not approved until a records correction in the 1960s; hence my subject title. The son of Rudolph and Lela Whisenhunt d'Olive, Charles Rudolph d'Olive entered the United States Signal Corps, Aviation Section, at Memphis, Tennessee on 28 April 1917. Following flight training in the United States and at Issoudun, France, he was assigned to the 93rd Aero Squadron at Vaucouleurs on 22 August 1918. 

As the third highest scoring ace in the 93rd Aero, d'Olive scored the squadron's first victory on the morning of 12 September 1918, shooting down a Fokker D.VII near Vieville-en-Haye. After scoring four more victories, he was reassigned to the 141st Aero Squadron as a flight commander on 28 October 1918. Discharged from the service in February 1919, he married in 1939, had two children and became a corporate executive in Iowa. d'Olive was a member of the U.S. Fighter Aces Association. He died of cancer in 1974. He is buried in Cincinnati, Ohio, at the Vine St. Hill Cemetery. His grave marker is another example of a very plain commemoration for one of those very brave men who flew flimsy airplanes in combat without a parachute.

The Great War's Losers

In OVER THE TOP, the subscription magazine for Worldwar1.com, we have tried to provide in-depth studies of the key personalities of the war. They say that history is written by the winners, which often means the losers are neglected. We have tried to correct that in our publications and I've decided to make this work available (for a modest fee of $4.50/issue) to the readers of Roads to the Great War. (Be sure to mention you saw this on Roads and send your email address with the order.)

Here are four full issues we have produced with the help of various noted scholars on the Losers of the Great War —

1. Kaiser Wilhelm II by Annika Mombauer, The Open University
2. Franz Graf Conrad von Hötzendorf by Lawrence Sondhaus, University of Indianapolis 
3. Alexander Kerensky by Xiuyuan Li, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
4. Erich Ludendorff by Jay Lockenour, Temple University

What to Expect in 2015 from Worldwar1.com

Here's what you can look for in the coming year from all our publications at Worldwar1.com, including Roads to the Great War, the St. Mihiel Trip-Wire, Over the Top magazine, and our upgraded and expanded Doughboy Center.

Parallel the Centennial Events from 1915

From the Top: HMS Queen Elizabeth prepares for the assault on the Dardanelles; a Zeppelin downed over Essex;  the "Brooding Canadian Soldier" commemorates the first gas attack on the Western Front north of Ypres; Austrian mountain troops in the Italian Alps; a World's Fair in San Francisco in the midst of a world war

Follow America's Inexorable March to the Battlefields

Newly arrived American troops march through St. Laurent, France

Battlefield Imagery from Today

The "Trench of Death," Diksmuide, West Flanders

from Contributor Steve Miller's Collection

 Illustrations and Photographs from the Period

German Prisoner Column
from Editor Tony Langley's Collection

Reviews of Classic and New, Cutting-Edge Books

presented by Editor David Beer and Our Gang of Reviewers

Remembering Those Who Served

Joint French-British Cemetery, Thiepval Ridge, Somme Battlefield

MCMXIV — Never such innocence again

I thought a fitting way to end the first year of the Centennial commemoration of the war would be to post a Great War poem that published in the year of its 50th Anniversary.  MH

MCMXIV, by Philip Larkin

Party at a Thames Resort Just before the War

Those long uneven lines
Standing as patiently
As if they were stretched outside
The Oval or Villa Park,
The crowns of hats, the sun
On mustached archaic faces
Grinning as if it were all
An August Bank Holiday lark;

And the shut shops, the bleached
Established names on the sunblinds,
The farthings and sovereigns,
And dark-clothed children at play
Called after kings and queens,
The tin advertisements
For cocoa and twist, and the pubs
Wide open all day;

And the countryside not caring:
The place-names all hazed over
With flowering grasses, and fields
Shadowing Domesday lines
Under wheat's restless silence;
The differently-dressed servants
With tiny rooms in huge houses,
The dust behind limousines;

Never such innocence,
Never before or since,
As changed itself to past
Without a word - the men
Leaving the gardens tidy,
The thousands of marriages
Lasting a little while longer:
Never such innocence again.

The Deluge. The Great War and the Remaking of Global Order, 1916–1931 Reviewed by Jane Mattisson Ekstam

The Deluge. The Great War and the Remaking of Global Order,
1916–1931

by Adam Tooze

Published by Oxford and London, Penguin, 2014

President and Mrs. Wilson at a Preparedness Rally Before the Nation's Entry into the War

The Deluge offers a panoramic view of the struggle for global mastery that was initiated in World War One and continued to the Great Depression of the 1930s. Adam Tooze argues that America used its position of privileged detachment and the dependence on it by the other world powers to frame a major transformation in world affairs after the war. This was in some respects a liberal and progressive project, but "in its view of America itself, in its conception of what might be asked of America, the project was profoundly conservative."

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America was the one nation that emerged basically unscathed from the war, raising the all-important question that had been largely erased from the history of Europe in the 17th century: had America become the powerful, world-encompassing empire similar to that which the Catholic Hapsburgs had threatened to establish? She had emerged as a kind of super state, with the power to veto the financial and security concerns of the other major world powers.

The Deluge tells the story of change after the war. The death and destruction had left the survivors wondering what to make of the catastrophe. Some saw it as a sign of the impossibility of progress. Others felt that there had been progress but that it was more violent and complex than anyone had expected, and that the path to future progress would be more uneven than any could have expected before the war. Tooze takes the view that developments after World War One were products of an interconnected and dynamic system that is only comprehensible if we view the system in its entirety and retrace its movements over time. It is a story in which the key role is played by America, a new power whose fraught relationship with a world that had changed beyond all recognition by 1918 was both unpredictable and elusive.

Tooze's study is comprehensive and thorough. Divided into five sections — The Eurasian Crisis, Winning a Democratic Victory, The Unfinished Peace, The Search for a New order and Conclusion,— The Deluge takes a transnational approach to the war that is in line with many contemporary historians such as Jay Winter and Christopher Clark's (see my review of the "Perspectives on the Great War" conference in London, published in Roads on 10 August 2014). The birth of a new global order, argues Tooze, can be traced back to 1916/1917, when America was placed at the center of world affairs. How this took place and with what consequences is the chief concern of The Deluge.

 President and Mrs. Wilson Lay a Wreath at the American Suresnes Cemetery Outside Paris
Memorial Day 1919

While the approach of Tooze's study is academic, the language is accessible to all. The volume contains a number of interesting photographs and useful figures and tables, and the comprehensive index greatly facilitates navigation within the study. While the copious endnotes are primarily of a bibliographical nature, they also provide useful additional information to the more general reader. The Deluge repays careful reading and is an excellent reference book —particularly for those wishing to trace the effect of the war on America.

Jane Mattisson Ekstam

100 Years Ago: 29 December — Sarikamiş, Opening Moves in the Caucasus

Sarikamiş, Opening Moves in the Caucasus, December 1914 

(Excerpted from Strategy and Tactics, Issue #290)

By Michael Kihntopf

The Ottoman Empire’s entry into World War I in October 1914 when Enver Paşa, the minister of war, ordered the Breslau and the Goeben, newly acquired battle cruisers manned by German and Turkish crews, to shell the south Russian ports of Odessa, Novorossijsk, and Theodosia.  The Russian military commander of the Caucasus took almost immediate action in retribution for the naval attack by marching his ill-prepared army across the border with an objective of capturing the Turkish fortress at Erzerum.  Initially the Russians advanced without making contract until they reached the Arras River on 4 November. The Russians managed to push the Ottoman soldiers back, capturing Köprüköy on 7 November, but their victory was short-lived. On 11 November, Hasan İzzet Paşa, the Turkish commander of the 3rd Army, attacked along both banks of the Arras River with devastating results. By 14 November, the Ottoman divisions threatened encirclement by nearly cutting the Russians off from their Kars-Erzurum retreat route. Only the arrival of the 4th Turkistan Rifle Brigade by rail saved the day. Unsure of how strong the Russians were, the Turkish commander broke off combat, allowing the Russians to retain a 40km-deep salient into Turkish territory. İzzet chose not to press any further action with winter so close.

Turkish Troops in the Caucasus 

Enver did not think in such terms. He envisioned winter as the best time to strike because the Russians would not expect such an attack. Furthermore, intelligence showed him that the Russians had centered their forces along the road leading from Erzurum to Kars with an insecure flank on the north. In that disposition Enver saw an opportunity to recreate the Battle of Tannenberg, where the Germans had so decisively defeated a superior Russian force.

Enver’s plan called for two corps to move around the Russian force’s northern flank while one corps on the Arras River kept the Russians' attention in a diversion. The two encircling corps would capture Sarikamiş, cutting the rail and road routes to Kars, thus isolating those forces on the frontier and destroying them. Enver’s corps would then sweep on to capture Kars and the Caucasian capital at Tiflis. He took this plan to Liman von Sanders, who was the Chief of Staff for the Ottoman Empire’s military.    

Able Russian Commander Nikolai Yudenich Planning an Operation

Sanders saw the plan as too ambitious considering the theater and time of year. The Caucasus in winter was a virtual frozen desert. Snow fell in meters and the mountain slopes the army would negotiate were swept by gale force winds that packed ice crystals. Temperatures dropped to nearly polar levels. Sanders reasoned that soldiers would have to endure some of the worst conditions imaginable. In addition, he said that the timing of the whole operation was too constraining. Enver expected two corps to cover the distance of 60 kilometers in five days at elevations reaching 2000 meters on roads that would be barely discernible because of heavy snows. Enver dismissed Sanders criticism and preferred to listen to other German officers who approved of the plan in order to gain favor. Buoyed by dubious but sincere encouragement, Enver decided to go ahead with the plan. 

Enver’s first act in starting his plan was to relieve the prudent and highly experienced commander of the 3rd Army with himself. He based this decision on the general’s criticism of his plan. Although İzzet saw the plan as doable, he cautioned that the soldiers needed training and practical equipment, a process that would take at least six months.  Enver saw the Russians as vulnerable at that moment and not half a year later. The change in leadership led to the resignation and the forced retirement of the three corps commanders. Nevertheless, 3rd Army began concentrating in early December 1914. Its objective was the Bardiz Pass through Id. From the pass, the corps would move on Sarikamiş. The soldiers would move along primitive roads that reached altitudes of between 1500 and 2000 meters. The way would have been relatively easily passed if it were not that it was subject to ice and snowstorms and driving gale force winds.

Movement began on 20 December. The corps had five days to reach Sarikamiş. The two corps were soon strung out along the roads reaching Sarikamiş in pieces, which allowed the Russians to concentrate their forces for a counterattack that annihilated the Ottoman divisions.

Captured Ottoman Soldiers Under Russian Guard

Turkish forces had begun the campaign with 95,000 soldiers against the Russian 65,000. By the end of the operation on 3 January 1915, the Turks had suffered 75,000 casualties. Out of the 20,000 survivors, 18,000 were part of the XI Corps that had provided a diversion along the Arras River. For the Russians, casualties were just as devastating. They too suffered from the effects of the elements. There were 16,000 killed and wounded with an additional 12,000 victims lost to disease and frostbite. In one unit alone, the Turkistan Rifles Regiment, 700 men out of 2500 were still effectual. As for the leadership, Enver Paşa never again commanded a military operation.

For a detailed description of the Battle for Sarikamiş please refer to the magazine Strategy and Tactics, #290, which is on sale now.

The Case of the Missing Doughboy Portrait

Where Have You Seen This Painting?

Corporal Jack Marqusee, Headquarters Troop, 27th Division

Roads to the Great War has been contacted by the family of the Doughboy portrayed above, Corporal Jack Marqusee, who served with the headquarters detachment of the 27th New York National Guard Division. The image is a from a family-held photo of the original painting.  The story that has been passed on over the generations is that Jack's portrait was painted by none other than James Montgomery Flagg and is now hanging in a museum somewhere, possibly in Europe.

We are not art experts at Roads, so we consulted some we know. They have reservations that it is Flagg's work.  Some think it is more like the war paintings of John Singer Sargent, who had some contact with the 27th Division.

In any case, we are trying to help Jack's family locate his portrait.  If you have seen it, or have any clues or ideas about its location, please send a message to: greatwar@earthlink.net.

By the way, Jack distinguished himself as one of the division's 53 recipient's of the British Military Medal. (The 27th Division was assigned to the British Fourth Army during their service in France.)

Citation 

During the operations east of Ronssoy, September 29th-30th and October 1st, while serving as a mounted messenger, Corporal Marqusee carried messages between divisional and brigade headquarters under a heavy shell and machine-gun fire and through a valley which had been heavily gassed. He also assisted in rounding up stragglers and returning them to their proper commands under heavy shell and machine-gun fire.

U.S. Army World War I Official Artists

From:  Art of the American Soldier by Renée Klish

Download the full version of Art of the American Soldier from the U.S. Army Center of Military History:

http://www.history.army.mil/html/books/epubs/art_of_the_american_soldier/army_of_am_soldier.pdf

Western Front Virtual Tour — Stop 49: American Meuse-Argonne Cemetery

Argonne Forest, Argonne Forest, Soon thou willt be a quiet cemetery.

In thy cool earth rests much gallant soldiers' blood. 

wrote an unknown German war poet long before America joined the war

From the American Battle Monuments Commission

Within the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery and Memorial in France, which covers 130.5 acres, rest the largest number of America's military dead in Europe, a total of 14,246. Most of those buried here lost their lives during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive of World War I. The immense array of headstones rises in long regular rows upward beyond a wide central pool to the chapel that crowns the ridge. A beautiful bronze screen separates the chapel foyer from the interior, which is decorated with stained glass windows portraying American unit insignia; behind the altar are flags of the principal Allied nations.

On either side of the chapel are memorial loggias. One panel of the west loggia contains a map of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. Inscribed on the remaining panels of both loggias are Tablets of the Missing with 954 names, including those from the U.S. expedition to northern Russia in 1918–1919. Rosettes mark the names of those since recovered and identified.

This entry completes our Western Front Virtual Tour for the year. We will be  pausing this series in 2015, as we take a look at some of the other battlefields of the Great War. Our examination of the Western Front will resume in 2016 with the battlefields around Verdun when we will continue our reconnaissance of its battlefields. 

100 Years Ago: — The Christmas Truce of 1914

December 1914: The Christmas Truce The Truce Depicted in a Recent British TV Commercial (View) A complete Boche figure suddenly appeared on the parapet and looked about. This complaint became infectious. It didn't take "Our Bert" long to be up on the skyline. This was a signal for more Boche anatomy to be disclosed, and this was replied to by all our Alfs and Bills, until, in less time than it takes to tell, half a dozen or so of each of the belligerents were outside the trenches, and were advancing towards each other in no-man's land. A strange sight, truly! So writes Bruce Bairnsfather about the Christmas Truce of 1914. This event was an outbreak of spontaneous fraternization between troops concentrated almost entirely in the British sector on the south edge of the Ypres salient. Contact occurred in degrees varying from exchanging smokes and chatting or playing football in No Mans Land to sharing meals and dinner gossip in the opponents' trenches. It occurred less frequently where one or both of the opposing formations were elite or hard-edged types. The Christmas Truce has long been looked upon as a symbol of a humanity not yet submerged by the mechanical forces of industrial-age warfare. With its ability to inspire and hold the imagination of later generations, the Legend of the Christmas Truce might be looked upon as a rare positive outcome of the Great War. Those present, however, like Bairnsfather, premier cartoonist of the First World War and creator of "Old Bill," were decidedly less sentimental about it. His account above of the unauthorized truce is widely quoted, but no one ever adds what he wrote a few paragraphs later: There was not an atom of hate that day and yet, on our side, not for a moment was the will to war and the will to beat them relaxed. It was just like the interval between rounds in a friendly boxing match. Clear on the Point of View The account of a lieutenant in the 2nd Battalion, Scots Guards, shows how some of the participants took a practical approach: They [the Germans] took me for a corporal, a thing I did not discourage, as I had an eye to going as near their lines as possible! I... then escorted them back as far as their barbed wire, having a jolly good look round all the time and picking up various little bits of information, which I had not had an opportunity of doing under fire! I went straight to HQ to report. The crucial thing to note is that distrust was a feature of this and other truces occurring throughout the war. The English respected a brave and resourceful enemy but there was no love or liking. If there was no hostility, neither was there a relaxation of the will to win; if not that, then at least there was no relaxation of suspicion. And it proved, above all, to be an excellent opportunity for a safe reconnaissance. There is no evidence that the truce extended to the French front, which is understandable since they had started a major counterattack in the Champagne on 20 December. The Germans were the invaders and were on French soil. The memories of defeat in 1871 and the loss of Alsace-Lorraine was too vivid in French memory to allow any rapprochement with the hated Boche. Frank Richards, one of the very few "other ranks" to write a book about the war after beating odds on the order of thousands to one by surviving all four years, reports that the French people "were saying all manner of nasty things about the British Army" when they ". . . had heard how we spent Christmas Day." Photo of the Actual Truce — Compare to Image Above Finally, if the Christmas Truce had any effect on the participants or the eventual course of the war, it was negligible. At the time, it made the various staffs apprehensive, but this was soon put in order. Guy Chapman tells us that a year later "the staff, perhaps threatened by fire-eaters in London, had forbidden all fraternization, and to ensure their orders being carried out, commanded slow bombardment all during December 25th." Author Denis Winter reports post-1914 fraternization including meetings in No Mans Land, joint prayer sessions by chaplains and some gestures of civility at later Christmas times. But, as the war dragged on to no apparent conclusion, nothing on the same scale as the 1914 Christmas truce ever happened again on the western front. Source: Legends and Traditions of the Great War

On Christmas Eve They Still Stand Guard for Us

On this joyous night try to remember those who have served and sacrificed, and those who are protecting us now,

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The Reckoning reviewed by David Beer

The Reckoning

by Rennie Airth

Published by Basic Books, 2014

So comes a reckoning when the banquet's o'er,
The dreadful reckoning, and men smile no more ~ Alexander Pope

The historical fiction genre has been a popular one since the time of Sir Walter Scott, and those of us interested in both the novel and the First World War seem to have an increasing number of fine reads to enjoy. One current trend is the mystery "series" novel — a series of novels by one author which follow the adventures of a main character, usually a detective, who is faced with one or more crimes which turn out to be somehow connected to the Great War.

In this genre we find the excellent novels of Jacqueline Winspear, author of a series of award-winning books based on the aftermath of the war and featuring the incomparable female detective Maisie Dobbs. Recently Winspear also published The Care and Management of Lies, not in the Maisie Dobbs series but firmly set in the great conflict. Charles Todd is another popular name in this genre. Actually it's the pen name of a mother-and-son team who write books featuring Inspector Ian Rutledge, a haunted and shell-shocked veteran of the war who is trying to pick up the pieces of his career as an investigator.

Anne Perry, another popular author (who, intriguingly, is also a condemned murderer herself) includes in her prolific works a World War I series of crime mysteries. Andrew Martin, who has written seven novels featuring the railway detective Jim Stringer, uses the Somme as the backdrop for his murder mystery The Somme Stations. And there are others, such as Edward Marston, whose Home Front Detective Series includes Instrument of Slaughter, which was reviewed on this blog on 25 November 2014.

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Thus it's not surprising to find writer Rennie Airth as the author of a critically acclaimed murder mystery series based on World War I. Airth's novels feature Detective Inspector John Madden of Scotland Yard and take place in England between 1921 and 1947. Madden has been through the war and still bears the marks of his experience. In The Reckoning, which takes place in 1947, the Second World War still looms heavily over society but is leap-frogged as far as the roots of the crime are concerned.

In The Reckoning Madden is enjoying retirement but is quickly brought back to assist when an unfinished letter by a murder victim is found to mention his name. He assists Scotland Yard's Detective Inspector Billy Styles and local detective Vic Chivers in their investigations. The plot quickly intensifies when a distant report of a murdered Scottish doctor reveals an identical method of execution. Soon it becomes apparent that someone is using the same method to kill again.

The mystery then focuses on the question of why someone would kill individuals in exactly the same way when these victims appear to have no connections with each other in any way. The detective work takes on an air of intensity when it is clear the murderer is going to strike again. Meanwhile we are treated to a highly detailed insight into the nature of police procedures and detective work before the mystery is solved in a highly surprising and climactic way. I know I came to appreciate more than ever before what detective work consists of — summed up thus by the words of Detective Styles to his superintendent: "You know as well as I do, sir, in a case like this you collect all sorts of facts, but only a few really matter. . ." The gradual winnowing down of a multitude of apparent clues is one of the features of this novel that keeps the reader interested and involved.

Volunteer Munition Workers at Old Scotland Yard, 1916

The author of a historical novel is always faced with the challenge of making time and place authentic. Rennie Airth has a double task in this book in that the crimes occur in the past, just after World War II, but the events that provoke the murders took place in the more distant World War I. The fact that the author effectively creates the appropriate atmospheres adds to the novel's credibility. Ration cards, identity cards, bombed-out buildings, the urgent search for a telephone box (no cell phones here!) all contribute to showing us where we are as the search goes on. There is no doubt, however, that the dreadful event that inspires the murders (or are they really executions of murderers?) takes place in the hell of the earlier conflict. It's not hard to find one's sympathies with the killer rather than the victims. I know that's where mine were. If crime novels based on World War I are of interest to you, you will greatly enjoy this one. But don't take my word alone for it. Jacqueline Winspear, the creator of Maisie Dobbs, has this to say on the cover of The Reckoning:

I have been a huge fan of Rennie Airth's novels featuring John Madden since first reading River of Darkness and had been eagerly awaiting The Reckoning — it does not disappoint. Airth is at the top of his game, engaging the reader with dense plotting, page-turning narrative, and expert characterization. I absolutely could not put it down!

David Beer