It was a savage irony that a war fought in large part to anaesthetize the great problems of the day, social conflict and nationalism, should send them spiralling out of control. Once war was declared, German war aims developed ambitiously. Whereas, before the war, socialist pressure for domestic social spending had been deflected by means of militaristic propaganda, in war there emerged a plan for the permanent resolution of the problem. To put it crudely, socialist demands for a redistribution of national wealth would be rendered obsolete by the plunder of other nations’ wealth. The plan was essentially directed at the annexation of the industrialized parts of northern France and Belgium and of Luxembourg, the creation of a central European customs union (Mitteleuropa), colonization of the food-producing areas of eastern Europe after the removal of unwanted local populations, and all this as the basis for seizures of British colonies elsewhere. It was to gamble the very survival of the German establishment on victory in war. Had victory been secured, the Junker system would have been consolidated on a basis of world mastery.
It quickly became apparent that such triumph would be elusive. There would be none of the swift victories anticipated by General Alfred von Schlieffen. The early defensive victories achieved at the Marne by the French and at Ypres by the British Expeditionary Force ensured a long slogging war. In the first five months of the war, nearly 2 million men were either killed or wounded. Thereafter, there would be little significant movement of the front despite bloody offensives. After initial disasters, the Germans fared better on the eastern front where General Paul von Hindenburg and his chief-of-staff General Erich von Luden-dorff masterminded the defeat of the Russians at Tannenberg. Nevertheless, on the western front, railways allowed huge armies to be transported to long defensive fronts. Thereafter, the lack of light armoured transport condemned further advance to the walking pace of the infantry. Alerted to offensive threats by air reconnaissance and radio, reinforcements could always be brought up faster than attackers could break through enemy lines.
It was a war that would be won in the last resort by industrial might, population resources, access to raw materials, and geographical position. The Central Powers had the advantage that troops could be moved from the eastern to the western front as tactics dictated while the western Allies could help Russia only with the greatest difficulty. On the other hand, British command of the sea permitted the blockade of Germany and enabled Britain and France to go on importing food and strategic raw materials from their colonies and from the United States. None the less, given the poor quality of Allied leadership, it is likely that Germany would have won had she not gone to war with the United States in 1917.
From 1915, there developed a war of attrition in which suicidal British and French offensives were broken, at enormous costs on both sides, by the well-dug-in German defensive forces. This was the story at Neuve Chappelle and Loos, in Artois and Champagne. In that one year, the French lost 1,500,000 dead and wounded, the British 300,000, and the Germans 875,000. The Allied methods remained rigidly conservative while the Germans were constantly making barbaric innovations. In April 1915, it was the use of chlorine gas at Ypres. In 1916, the pattern of Allied offensives was reversed with the German assault on Verdun in February. Despite further technical innovations such as flame-throwers, phosgene gas shells, and the use of aircraft, the Germans were held at Verdun, at the cost of nearly
340.000 casualties against the French 380,000. The pattern was reasserted on 1 July 1916 with Haig’s ill-fated offensive on the Somme which, in five months, advanced six miles at the cost of
419.000 British casualties, 200,000 French, and 500,000 German. Eventually, and fatefully, the Germans were to pin their hopes on destroying British trade by submarine warfare on merchant shipping on a sink-on-sight basis. The sinking of the British liner the SS Lusitania in May 1915 with more than one thousand fatalities including 128 Americans undermined President Wilson’s isolationism and brought the United States nearer to war. In January 1917, the German High Command decided to launch unrestricted submarine warfare against all shipping in waters around Britain. This coincided with the interception of the so-called Zimmermann telegram in which Germany offered Mexico the chance to recover Texas and other territories in the south-west of the United States. On 2 April 1917, the United States declared war on Germany.
The scale of the German blunder was compounded by the fact that it brought the United States into the war just as Russia was effectively dropping out and Britain and France were seriously weakened. Strikes, food riots, and a deluge of returning wounded and deserting conscripts swamped the Russian system. The Tsarist system fell, to be replaced by a provisional government of liberals, Mensheviks, and Socialist Revolutionaries. Under Alexander Kerensky, the provisional government committed Russia to fight on in the world war. This played into the hands of Lenin’s Bolsheviks and their appealing slogan of ‘bread, peace and land’. It was a slogan which had little to do with the Bolsheviks’ long-term revolutionary goals but it so captured the mood and needs of the peasantry and the peasant conscripts that it gave them a surge of popularity somewhat at odds with their real objectives. In August, General Kornilov tried to use his troops to restore order and put back the clock. He was defeated by working-class resistance and his action fatally wounded Kerensky who was perceived as his accomplice. In November, the Bolsheviks launched their own successful insurrectionary attempt and their revolution was to be the most spectacular example of how the war had fatally weakened the very system whose survival it was meant to strengthen.
With Russian troops deserting on a massive scale, the Germans were now advancing virtually unopposed. Lenin had hoped that the Russian revolutionary example would be emulated in Germany and elsewhere. When it was not, Lenin made a separate peace at Brest-Litovsk. By its terms, Germany achieved its eastern war aims, Russia losing 25 per cent of her European territory including the Ukraine and Finland, 30 per cent of her population, 50 per cent of her coal and iron resources, and 30 per cent of her industry. Victorious in the East, Germany was now in a strong position, as U-boat war had seriously depleted British food supplies and the French offensive of April 1917 had broken on the rock of German defensive arrangements. In response, Haig could produce only another senseless massacre with his third Ypres offensive.
However, the British blockade was taking its toll of German domestic morale and the American presence was now to be decisive in the war. Before American aid could play its full role, the Germans might have been able to tempt the western Allies with a compromise peace suggestion for a withdrawal in the West in return for keeping their eastern conquests. This would have left them in an immensely powerful position for the future but the High Command rejected the possibility. Ludendorff gambled everything on a last offensive in the West. In doing so, he was backed by a fanatically nationalist political party called the Vaterlandspartei which advocated war to the death with the Anglo-Saxon enemy. A series of three attacks in the first half of 1918 drove back the British and French and reversed the heavily bought victories of 1917. However, despite horrendous casualties, the British and French held back the offensive until the arrival of the Americans gradually began to push back the Germans whose troops were beginning to desert.
World History
