the Great War [II]

The bloodletting of 1915 paled in comparison to that of 1916. On the Western Front, the Germans set their sights on the French fortress of Verdun straddling a hollow on the Meuse River. "In 1916 Verdun was largely useless, a salient in the general trench line, but one that had been consistently downgraded since the heavy fighting around it in 1914. Before the war it had been a great ring of concentric forts, but the rapid fall of such places as Liege and Maubeuge had led the French to dismantle most of the works, on the idea that they were not worth keeping up. Verdun had become a backwater of the Western front." (141) Germany hoped that by taking Verdun, beloved in the eyes of the French, they would break French morale. The Allies' goal was simpler: they wanted to kill as many Germans as possible, and they planned to do this at a dinky stream known as the Somme. The Germans launched their attack on Verdun first; the Battle of Verdun lasted from February 21st of 1916 to the 20th of December the same year, and exacted about a million casualties. Here the Germans used phosgene gas for the first time. The Allies didn't launch their Somme offensive until the first of July, and the Battle of the Somme lasted until the 18th of November, taking another million casualties. Whereas the Germans experimented with poison gas at Verdun, the Allies experimented with "landships" at the Somme; since the phrase "landship" or "armored fighting vehicle" gave the secret away, the Allies gave these lumbering machines a code-name: the tank. "The tanks were slow, seriously underpowered, and mechanically unreliable. Of forty-seven, only about a dozen survived the approach march and actually got into battle." (156) The tanks surprised the Germans, but none of them survived the battle. 

As the Allies and Central Powers slugged it out at Verdun and the Somme, the Italians threw themselves against the Austrians at Isonzo again and again, hoping to accomplish in 1916 what they failed to accomplish the previous year. The 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th battles of Isonzo raged throughout the year at a cost of around 250,000 casualties; the Austrians broke the pattern with the Battle of Asiago between the 15th of May and the 10th of June; both sides suffered a total of around 240,000 casualties. As the Italians bled and struggled at Isonzo, the Russians launched a campaign against the Austrians; named "Brusilov's Offensive," the battle raged from June 4th to September 20th at a cost of two million casualties. Rumania entered the war and was occupied by the Central Powers by January 17th of 1917; the fall of Rumania cost 500,000 casualties. "[Brusilov's Offensive] was the last great attempt of Tsarist Russia to master its fate, and it was a failure. With more than a million men gone, the Russian armies were reeling. Morale was down, desertions up. Discontent was epidemic, treason openly muttered in the ranks, despair the order of the day at home. The Tsar did not know what to do, Alexandra, ever more firmly under the spell of Rasputin, counseled only the wrong things. As the cold winter settled over the Eastern Front, the cold of death infected the limbs of the Romanov dynasty. By late 1916, the shadows were palpably gathering." (167)

On the High Seas, the German fleet remained at anchor, refusing to come out and face the British. The Kaiser didn’t want to risk his priceless ships, and he knew that if he sallied forth, he’d be pinched between two British fleets in the North Sea. The Germans had relied on their U-Boats to prowl the North Atlantic hunting British warships, but in 1916, in lieu of blockade at sea and stalemate on land, the Kaiser loosened his restrictions on naval operations. Because of the “Sussex Pledge,” where the Kaiser agreed to stop its U-boat merchant warfare, the U-boats became part of the German battle fleet. The fleet sailed out and met the British on the North Sea. The following Battle of Jutland has been called the greatest battleship encounter in world history. It took 8500 lives and wounded another thousand; the British lost three battle cruisers, three armored cruisers, and eight destroyers. The Germans lost one predreadnought, one battle cruiser, four light cruisers, and five destroyers. The naval battle that ran from May 31st to June 1st of 1916 “was the end of an era. Lepanto in 1571 had finished galley warfare; Trafalgar in 1805 was the last great fleet action under sail. Jutland was the last and greatest naval action fought on the open sea between surface vessels alone; none of the available submarines, airships, or seaplanes had intervened in the battle. By the next time battle fleets met at sea, war would have become three-dimensional.” (179)

As war ravaged the continents, the various countries involved were hungry to gobble up spoils. The French were tied up on the Western Front, but the British could afford to seek out imperial ambitions. Britain’s aims were two-fold: to seize Germany’s overseas empire and to dissolve the Ottoman Empire. The German-occupied port of Tsingtao in China was hit first in a joint operation by the British and Japanese. Here the Japanese showed marvelous ingenuity, bombing the fortress from the air. The subsequent German surrender paved the way for Japan to gobble up Germany’s Pacific outposts in the North Pacific, the Marshalls, the Marianas, and Carolines. Now occupied by the Japanese, these places would become legendary in the next Great War. In Africa, the Germans occupied four areas: Togoland, the Cameroons, German Southwest Africa, and German East Africa. The British wrestled these from the British one-by-one, though the African campaign would last until the end of the war. As the British fought the Germans in Africa, Turkey and Russia slugged it out: in this awful war of attrition, the opposing armies, great in number but weak in supplies and armament, acted like armies straight out of the 19th century. By 1916, the Ottomon Empire reeled under Russia’s fist; but Russia began to corrode, the disintegration weakening the Russian forces facing the Turks, and the Turks couldn’t help but cheer. The Russians may be dropping out, but the British still stood against Turkey. The British eyed the Persian Gulf, coveting the oil, and launched on a Mesopotamian Campaign that neared the gates of Baghdad; the Turks repulsed the over-extended British, laying siege to them at Kut. On April 29th, 1916, the British surrendered to the Turks. “It was up to that time the largest surrender of British troops on the field of battle; by contrast, Cornwallis at Yorktown had surrendered about 8000 men, and [the British prisoners, numbering around 10,000] were exceeded in numbers only by the surrender of the British at Singapore in 1942.” (190) The Turks may have secured a wild victory at Kut, but they were facing revolts from the desert tribes; these tribes were assisted by T.E. Lawrence, a.k.a. “Lawrence of Arabia,” who was deemed a madman by most of his fellow Englishmen. Meanwhile, the British fought in Egypt, their eyes on the imperial lifeline known as the Suez Canal; they pushed their forces up into Palestine and got as far as Gaza before being unable to take the city.

Turmoil in the colonies echoed turmoil at home. Severe food shortages dubbed the winter of 1916-1917 “the turnip winter”, since people were reduced to eating turnips to survive. Russia was undergoing what would be her last dying throes. “There was talk of regicide, not only among the radical and extremist underground but also among members of the aristocracy itself. The army was in disarray, desertions were mounting, shortages were felt everywhere, the communications network was near collapse, the cities torn by strikes and riots. Successive call-ups of soldiers had left essential industries and services undermanned, and there was a general sense of the country collapsing under the strain.” (199) Seething discontent focused on Rasputin, who had become one of the Tsar’s most trusted advisor, and whose policies and suggestions had been disastrous for Russia. On the cusp of the new year, “the drunkard” was assassinated. “The conspirators [poisoned Rasputin] with cakes and wine, and watched in horror as he happily stuffed himself and asked for more. Finally, in near terror, they pulled out revolvers and shot him repeatedly. Still refusing to die, he began to crawl out of the palace, while they beat him with revolver butts and hacked at him with their sabers. At last they stuffed him under the ice of the Neva River. Later when the Tsarina had his corpse recovered, the doctors found he had died of drowning.” (200) Tsarina was haunted by one of Rasputin’s prophecies: “If I die or you desert me, your son and your throne will not last six months.” Germany, though pleased at Russia’s internal instability, faced an instability of its own: the Reichstag, or German Parliament, disagreed with the ongoing bloodshed and wanted peace; after all, Germany had already secured what was tantamount to victory: they held large portions of France of Russia, and virtually all of Belgium, Rumania, and Serbia. The Germans sued for peace talks, but the Allies ignored them; with the Reichstag in chaos, Germany played the card it’d been keeping up its sleeve: the submarine. The time had come to recommence unrestricted submarine warfare, and with a vengeance; many feared (rightly) that this would prompt the United States to enter the war. The Admiralty promised that they could sink 600,000 tons of Allied shipping a month and knock Britain out of the war within six; the United States’ greatest ally was Britain, and if Britain were no longer a factor, the United States would probably stay out.

Russia didn’t have any cards to play: the national instability could only steamroll. Russia’s archaic state organization couldn’t keep up with the demands of this western-styled modern war; the Russian Tsars had had difficulties in the wake of the Crimean War, a revolutionary near-miss in the Russo-Japanese War, and in 1917 the tide was just too great. It all began on March 8th of that year: a food riot in Petrograd (a.k.a. St. Petersburg) blossomed out-of-control, strengthened by a demonstration to celebrate International Women’s Day. Petrograd (and Russia) were the economic heartbeats of the Russian machine, and thus it was in these places that Russians felt the most discontent: slum housing, poor and unequal distribution of food and services, and long hours took their toll and riots ensued. On March 10, the military garrison of Petrograd, instead of squashing the rights, joined them; even the Cossacks, a brutal government instrument of crowd control, turned their guns on the police and shooting erupted in the streets. By March 12, the armed forces were falling apart as regiment after regiment in Petrograd went over to the mob. The garrisons turned on their own officers, deserted, or set up new leaders; these social counsels were also known as “soviets.” The Duma, a governmental institution of council assemblies formed during the reign of Tsar Nicholas II, moved to establish a Provisional Government; another political movement, the Council of Workers and Soldiers Representative (or the Petrograd Soviet) moved to form their own type of government. Tsar Nicholas II abdicated on the 15th of March, handing power to his brother, the Grand Duke Michael. Michael abdicated on the 16th, giving authority to the Provisional Government.

The Provisional Government styled itself as a western democracy, proclaiming a variety of civil liberties and the abolishment of social, racial, and religious discrimination. They gave Finland independence within the Russian federation, and they gave total independence to Poland; but Finland was breaking away on its own anyways, and Poland was occupied by Germany, so this didn’t mean much. The fatal flaw in the Provisional Government’s policies was their refusal to stop the war against Germany: they would continue with their obligations and loyalty to the Allies. The activity of the political group called the Soviets thwarted the Provisional Government’s plans by destroying the armies: the Soviets “democratized” the army, destroying the rank hierarchy and eliminating officers’ authority and privileges. Desertions run rampant, units marched where they wanted, and officers either deserted, went along with their men, or were killed. The army dissolved even as Russia launched its last campaign (manned mostly by Finns and Poles) against the Russians; this July Offensive made good progress but was checked and repulsed by the Germans. The bloody defeat gave room for the Bolsheviks to seize power.

Vladimir Lenin stepped onto the world stage. He’d been a student of Karl Marx and a committed revolutionary for a long while; after being imprisoned for three years in Siberia, he left Russia and settled in Switzerland. By 1900, he was the leader of the minority wing of the Russian Communist party, known as “Bolsheviks.” The Bolsheviks argued that the installment of a true Marxist state could only come by violence; that is all that could really destroy the class system. The Mensheviks disagreed, believing that a Marxist state could come about gradually, without undue violence, by infecting parliamentary government. At the outbreak of war, Lenin and his small band of followers managed a fragile existence writing tracts, smuggling funds in and out of Russia, and toiling away as they waited for the right time. In April of 1917, the Germans decided to use Lenin as a pawn: they would support him so that he could overthrow the Russian regime and knock Russia out of the war. They shipped him to Petrograd where he led a coup that fizzled out in two days; he went into temporary exile in Finland. Russia was falling apart at the seams: the Finns announced their complete independence, the Ukraine was on the brink of rebellion, and the Cossacks were establishing their own regime. General Kornilov, a displaced Russian general, led a rebellion of turncoat armed forces against Petrograd; but his army dissolved. The whole affair opened the jail house doors for Leon Trotsky, who toiled with the Bolsheviks to overthrow the Russian regime. In October the Bolsheviks became the majority party in the Petrograd Soviet, and Trotsky was elected chairman. On November 6, the Bolsheviks seized power; this would be known as the October Revolution, since November 6th in the Russian calendar was October 24.

Lenin’s overthrow of the government took place in tandem with a German thrust into Russia, overrunning Latvia and the Baltic islands. The Germans were dangerously close to Petrograd, and Lenin offered them an armistice, hoping to keep them at bay: the Germans had no reason not to try and bite off large chunks of Russian territory, and Lenin wanted Russia for himself. On December 3, representatives of the Central Powers and of the Bolsheviks met at Brest-Litovsk in Poland to talk peace. Neither side agreed to each other’s conditions, and an exasperated Trotsky declared on February 10 that the war was simply over for the Russians. The Germans showed him that it wasn’t, furthering their advance into Russia. The Russians flocked back to the drawing table; desperate to salvage something, they agreed to anything. The Germans demanded Russian locomotives and rolling stock, machine guns, rifles, and ammunition, artillery pieces, wheat and oil, economic concessions, and territorial bits. On March 3, 1918, five days from the one-year anniversary of the food riots that started it all, Germany and Russia were at peace.

Russia was out of the war.
Germany could now focus on the western theater.
 They had ambitious aims for the Western Theater.
(but their unrestricted submarine use would come to haunt them)