GREEK INVOLVEMENT
IN THE WAR
Greek’s policy towards the war was clearly undefined, as
King Constantine I and General Stood were in favor of neutrality whereas Eleutherious
the leader of the liberal party was in favor of joining the Allies.
In 1910 during the
Dardanelles campaign, Eleutherious Venizelos who at this time was Prime
Minister wanted Greek forces to be involved in the campaign but was overruled
by the General Staff. This did not stop the Allies from occupying Limnos and
Lesbos.
Meanwhile, the King had dismissed Venizelos twice from
government in 1915 in spite of the fact that the Prime Minister commanded the
majority in parliament. The Bulgarians took advantage of Greek disunity to
occupy Greek Macedonia in the summer of 1916. The former Prime Minister
Venizelos then, of his own initiative decided to leave Athens for Crete where
he formed a parallel government which he eventually transferred to Salonika in
October 1916.
Eleutherios Venizelos
In June 1917 Eleutherios
Venizelos became prime minister of Greece. Under Venizelos, Greece declared war
against Germany and Bulgaria and began actively participating in the Allied war
effort.
Library of
Congress/Corbis
Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All
rights reserved.
In November of the same year, his government declared war
on Germany and Bulgaria. Finally on June 11th, the Allies deposed
King Constantine II. Venizelos then returned to Athens to head a unitary
government which eventually declared war on the Central Powers on June 27th
1917.
CAPORETTO AND THE
ITALIAN FRONT
On the Italian front, Cadorna’s 10th battle of
the Isonzo in May and June of 1917 won very little ground, but his 11th
offensive from
August 17th to September 12 during which
General Luigi Capelo’s 2nd Army captured much of the Bainsizza
Plateau north of Gorizia strained Austrian resistance capabilities very
severely.
To avoid an
Austrian collapse, German General Ludendorff decided that an Austrian offensive
against Italy must be launched; and that he could lend the Austrians six
divisions for this purpose.
With German adroitness and efficiency, the offensive was
planned and launched. It was an audacious exercise involving two Austrian
armies under General Svetozor Borojevic von Bojna attacking the Italians from
the eastern end of the Italians Venetian salient on the Bainsizza Plateau and
on the low ground near the Adriatic shore.
On the other hand,
the German 14th army comprising six German Divisions and nine
Austrian Divisions under Otto von Below on October 24th, 1917 began
to attack over the barrier of the Julian Alps towards Caporetto at the
northeastern corner of the Venetian salient.
The Italians reacted to this double envelopment with
shock and confusion and retreated in a disorganized manner to a defensive line
behind the Piave River north of Venice by November 9. Bellows’ successful
offensive however was not as well capitalized as could have been and the
Italians were able to salvage 300,000 men from the onslaught while losing
250,000 as prisoners and sustaining over 500,000 casualties.
Subsequent attacks on the Italian line from direct
assaults and a flanking movement from Trentino were repulsed with the help of
British and French reinforcements rushed into Italy to save the Italian
position. The Allies subsequently met on this issue in Rapallo in 1917 and
talks of a united command ensued and this led to the setting up of the joint
supreme war council at Versailles.
MESOPOTAMIA,
SUMMER OF 1916-WINTER 1917
The British forces that had suffered neglect after the
debacle of Al-kut received more attention from the government in the second
half of 1916; and with the appointment of Sir Frederick Stanley Maude, the
morale of the troops greatly improved. By December, the British were ready to
attempt the recapture of Al-kut as a first step towards capturing Baghdad.
In a series of deft moves, the British re-opened their
offensive against the Turks in Palestine and Arabia and began to advance along
the banks of the Tigris River forcing the Turks to go on the defensive.
On February 22 1917, British forces made a frontal
assault on Al-kut and simultaneously sought to encircle the Turks by crossing
the Tigris from the west bank behind the town. When Al-kut fell two days later,
the Turks were barely able to escape from the enveloping moves of the British.
The British assault made it difficult for the Turkish
forces to hold a new line on the Diyala River, and the Turks under the command
of Kazim Karabekir evacuated Baghdad and the British entered the city on March
11 1917. In September of that same year, the British strengthened their hold on
Baghdad by capturing Al-Ramadi a town on the Euphrates about 60 miles to the
west.
By early November, the British had established themselves
in Mesopotamia by holding the Turks midway between Baghdad and Mosul. Maude
unfortunately, after his strings of victories died on November 18th 1917.
His successor was Sir William Marshall. In the autumn of 1917, General Allenby
assumed command of British forces in Egypt and moved his headquarters from
Cairo to Palestine where he was planning a major offensive against the Turks.
The Turks were
assisted by the former German Chief of Staff Falkenhayn who was at the time,
commander of the forces of the Central Powers at Aleppo in the Middle East. His
aim was to drive into the peninsula by autumn but he was outwitted in this by
an earlier British move.
The Turkish front in southern Palestine extended from
Gaza by the Sea, southward to Abu Hureira (now known as Tel Haror) and from
there to the strong point at Beersheba. Allenby began his offensive with a
heavy shelling of the Turkish positions from October 20th, 1917.
He soon achieved a breakthrough with the capture of
Beersheba on October 31 and simultaneously struck at Gaza drawing the Turkish
reserves to that sector while diverting his main attack to Abu Hureira where
the weakened Turkish defense soon collapsed and from there, he broke into the
plain of Philistine.
The German General
Falkenhyans’ attempt to counter-attack at Beersheba was frustrated by the
collapse of the Turks in their central position. The resulting retreat, split
the Turkish forces into two and the British took parts of Haifa and made a
flanking movement right- ward that brought their forces directly on the road to
Jerusalem.
The Turks chose to leave Jerusalem an open city and moved
their forces down the coast. On December 9, British forces entered Jerusalem.
THE WESTERN FRONT
JUNE-DECEMBER 1917
British General John Haig took the initiative to go on
the offensive after the French commander General Henri Petain chose to remain
on the defensive on the western front after the failure of Neville’s
offensives. He chose the Flanders province of Belgium as his theatre of
operation.
Haig opened his attack on the Messines ridge north of
Armentieres on the southern flank of his Ypres salient. The attack was led by
General Sir Herbert Plummer’s 2nd army. The attack was a huge
success. Haig was excited by this success, and decided to throw caution to the
wind in his next phase of attack by going for an all-out breakthrough at a time
everyone knew that the Flanders would soon be beset by rain and mud.
The openness of the terrain belied any attempt at
concealment, more so, as the preliminary barrage involved more than 3,000 guns
firing over 4.5 million shells over a fortnight which unfortunately did not
destroy all the German pill boxes.
When the third
battle of Ypres finally took off on July 31st, 1917, the British had
success only on the left wing while the advance on the right wing was checked; notwithstanding
the fact that this was the crucial flank.
Four days into the attack, the rain and mud swept in,
grounding operations. With the clearing of the weather in middle August, Haig
re-launched his offensive but with little progress. He was committed to the
attack however, and further pressure was piled from September 20th-October
4th with little progress to show for the effort.
His persistent efforts however paid off when on November
6 his troops took the abandoned ruins of Paschendael, an advance of five miles
from the starting point of the offensive. He had incurred over 325,000
casualties without any significant change in the strategic equation.
The French obviously more cautious than the British
launched an offensive in Verdun under the direction of General M.L.A Guillemot
leading the French 2nd army who won back all the positions lost to
the Germans in the long running battle of Verdun.
General P.A.M
Maistre’s 10th army also attacked and won the ridge of the Chemin
Des Dames north of the Aisne to the east of Scissions where the front in Champagne
was linked to the front in Picardy south of the River Somme.
The British ended the year with an operation in Cambria
front where a wide expanse of hills and rolling lands gave the British the
opportunity to concentrate their now increased tank forces against the German
trenches.
A column of 324 tanks leading six British divisions were
launched successfully on November 20th. The offensive was without the
normal heavy bombardment that usually gave away any element of surprise. At any
rate, the Germans were caught unawares and the tanks made remarkable progress,
far more than in any previous British offensive and at less costs.
The offensive
could have made a significant dent in the lines of the Germans, if tank
reserves had been brought to bear. When the Germans finally halted the main
offensive, there were no reserves to push on with the attack and as such the
advance was halted just short of Cambria.
Wounded Soldiers in
France
Wounded soldiers are
treated in a bombed-out church in France in 1918. During World War I more than
10 million men were killed, and more than 20 million were wounded.
Corbis
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Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
A German counter attack against the British broke through
on the southern front and could have threatened the whole of Sir Juan Byng’s
third army if not for a further counter offensive by the Guards division, the
bringing in of fresh tanks and nightfall which brought the Germans to a halt.
At the end the
Germans regained three quarters of the ground lost in the initial attack. Cambria
had however shown the potential of massed tanks on the offensive as a means of
breaching the trench barrier.
ALLIED NAVAL
OPERATIONS AGAINST GERMANY 1917-1918
The entry of the United States into the war in April 1917
freed the German Navy from any inhibitions in its policy of unrestricted submarine
warfare. U-boat sinking consequently rose from 181 ships in January, to 259 in
February to 325 in March and 430 in April. The April sinking represented 852,000
tons of shipping far exceeding the 600,000 monthly tonnages of losses the
Germans calculated would be enough to force Britain out of the war.
The situation of Britain was grim. As at May 1917 only
600,000 tons of shipping was available to carry food to the Island. In the same
April however, the Allies obtained reprieve when they finally adopted the
convoying system which had been an American idea that had previously been
strenuously opposed by the leading British Admirals.
It took the intervention of the Prime Minister Lloyd
George to force the British Navy to adopt the system of ships moving in convoys
protected by warships and enjoying a protective screen of anti-u boat destroyers.
The convoy system met with great success as the tonnage of ships sunk
dramatically reduced from 852,000 in April to 500,000 in May, 300,200 in
September and only 200,000 in November.
The Germans came
to realize that the British had quickly grasped the principles of
anti-submarine warfare as they developed better depth charges, hydrophones and
extended the mine fields. In fact the whole English Channel was mined and
covered with such powerful searchlights that U-boats using the channels could
not resurface to avoid hitting sea mines in view of the powerful searchlights.
The German U-boats therefore abandoned the English
Channel for the North Sea as its point of entry into the Atlantic. Even here,
the US navy laid such an extensive belt of mines over 60,000 that submarines
were greatly impeded in their bid to reach the open sea from their bases in
North Germany.
April 1917 was the
turning point in the submarine warfare as the Allies themselves began to sink
more submarines, build ships faster than they were sunk and generally
discountenance the submarines as a weapon of choice for the German Navy.
Air warfare at this time was still in its infancy as most
aircraft were used for reconnaissance and surveillance. However, a few dog
fights had begun amongst individual pilots, and masses of aircraft often times
bombed major cities with a view to disrupting production and destruction of
strategic targets leading to the creation of the air force as an independent
fighting entity.
AIR WARFARE IN
EUROPE
At the beginning of the war, the aircraft was used only
for reconnaissance and surveillance purposes both by the belligerent armies and
their navies. Individual dog fights by pilots involved the use of firearms
until the fighter plane equipped with machine guns began to surface in 1915.
Tactical bombing of enemy positions also became common.
Close support missions of infantry forces became a reality in 1916. Strategic
bombing though in its infancy, began when British aircraft from Dunkirk bombed
Cologne, Dusseldorf and Friedrichshafen in the autumn of 1914 in search of the
German Zeppelins bases or dirigibles.
The Germans on the other hand, started bombing, using
seaplanes and eventually the huge Zeppelins or balloon planes that were
deployed against London en masse between January 1915 and September 1916. London was first
bombed in the night of May 31-June 1915.
In October 1916, the British began a more systematic
campaign from Eastern France against industrial targets in South West Germany.
The British eventually turned their attention to the U-Boats and their bases
while the Germans maintained their assaults against British towns and cities.
The mass bombing of London by 14 German bombers dropping
118 high explosive bombs on London and subsequent raids by the German Gotha
bombers made the British began to think of setting up an independent Air force
separate from the army and Navy. This was accomplished with the birth of the
Royal Air force between October 1917 and June 1918.
PEACE MOVES, MARCH
1917-SEPTEMBER 1918
The need to the end the war and make peace initially was
initiated by individuals and small groups, but as the war went on relentlessly,
and casualty figures and widespread destruction and starvation began to mount,
many began to question the wisdom behind prolonging the war.
With the death of the old Austrian Emperor Francis Joseph
on November 21st, 1916 and the ascension to power of Charles I as
the new Emperor, Austria began to make peace overtures through its foreign
minister Graff Ottokav Czerny in the spring of 1917.
The efforts however were not bold and concerted, and in
the course of the summer the negotiations with the Allies had died out. The
fact was that Germany held the key to ending the war with the Central Powers.
In Germany, a Roman Catholic member of the Reichstag
acting apparently in consonance with Rome had proposed a peace based on
renunciation of annexations and a return to the status quo. In the course of
the ensuing debates, Bethman Hollweg resigned his office as Chancellor.
Emperor William II appointed George Michaelis as
Chancellor without consulting with the Reichstag, and the resulting annoyance
caused the Deputies to pass the peace resolution without including promises of
renunciation of territorial claims and conquests. The resolution passed
unnoticed by the Allies.
A stronger message came from Pope Benedict XV who sent a
note to the belligerents demanding peace on terms of German withdrawal from
Belgium and France, Allied restoration of the German colonies and the
restoration of Serbia, Montenegro, Romania and Poland to independence.
France and Germany
refrained from any response while awaiting Germany’s response on the proposed
withdrawal from Belgium and France. The Germans similarly made no commitment. An
unofficial peace move was made in London on November 29, 1917 in a publication
by the Daily Telegraph of a suggestion by Lord Lansdowne suggesting negotiation
on the basis of the status quo antebellum. Prime Minister Lloyd George rejected
the proposals on December 14th 1917.
The most prominent peace move however came from the
United States President Woodrow Wilson on his 14 points agenda for peace which
included;
1. Open covenants of peace and renunciation of secret
diplomacy.
2. Freedom of navigation on the high seas in times of war
and peace
3. Freedom of trade
4. Reduction of
armaments
5. A colonial settlement involving not only the colonizer,
but the colonies.
6. Evacuation of all Russian territory and respect for
Russia’s right to self determination
7. Complete restoration of Belgium
8. Complete German withdrawal from France and settlement
of the issue of Alsace-Lorraine.
9. Readjustment of Italy’s borders on an ethic basis.
10. Open prospect of autonomy for the peoples of Austro-Hungary
11. The restoration of Romania, Serbia and Montenegro
with access to the sea for Serbia and international guarantees of the Balkan’s
state’s independence and integrity.
12. The prospect of autonomy for non-Turkish peoples of
the Ottoman Empire and the unrestricted opening of the straits, but secure
sovereignty for the Turks in their own areas.
13. An independent Poland with access to the sea and
under international guarantee.
14. A general association of nations to guarantee the
independence and integrity of all states, small and great.
Wilson’s peace campaign came to form a strong basis for
Germany’s willingness to yield to an armistice in October 1918. The 14 points
indeed formed the main points of discussion between the Germans and Wilson
until the other Allies came on board.
The final armistice when signed on November 11th,
1918 was based on the 14 points with some reservations by the British and
French on the covenants relating to the freedom of the seas and reparations.
This process began America’s ultimate role as the peace
maker and enforcer in Europe, while also laying the ground for the formation of
the League of Nations and eventually the United Nations to ensure that the
lofty aspirations of Wilson’s 14 points became standard international
convention for peace and prosperity for the rest of the twentieth century.
THE BALKANS
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