Subject to Change
I talk to the world's best historians and let them tell the stories. And the stories are wonderful! (And occasionally I change the subject and talk about films, philosophy or whatever!).
Subject to Change
World War I: The surprising victory of 1918
Today the thing we find mysterious is why WWI lasted as long as it did. Why continue a pointless slaughter. Comparisions with the war in Ukraine suggest an answer!
My guess is is Professor David Stevenson and for him the mystery is not why it lasted so long but why it ended when it did.
For the German public is was particularly mysterious. Just a few months before the Armistice Germany was all conquering. Russia had been driven out of the war on terms hugely favourable to Germany. And in the West her storm troopers seemed poised to deliver victory on this front too.
And while the tide had clearly turned the German army was falling back in good order. So what compelled Germany to submit to allied terms? Was it a stab in the back as many Germany came to believe, or something else?
David is brilliant at unpicking all of this. As for the answer to the riddle - well, one place to look is in Bulgaria . .
If you enjoy this episode, follow the show, share with a friend, and leave a review to help others discover it.
Hello and welcome to Subject to Change with me, Russell Hogg.
Russell:My guest today is Professor David Stevenson. David is a British historian whose main speciality is World War One. He is the author of many acclaimed books, but today we're going to talk about some of the issues he discussed in his book With Our Backs to the Wall, Victory and Defeat in 1918. And I think a lot of the time people are fascinated by what causes World War 1. But here we're going to be talking about what is in some ways an even more mysterious question, which is to say what caused the war to end when it did, having shown no signs of ending at all for so many years. Anyway, welcome David to the podcast.
David:My pleasure. Looking forward to this discussion.
Russell:I think one thing everybody knows about World War One is that at the outbreak there was a belief that it would all be over quickly, you know, the sort of the cliche is it'll all be over by Christmas. Could you maybe start us off by talking a bit about how expectations of how long the war would last changed as as time went by?
David:I think the the the first thing to say is that not everybody in 1914 thought it was going to be a short war. Though a number of people did. A good example is Lord Kitchener, who was brought into the British Cabinet as Secretary of State for War, and he was predicting something that would last for about two years. On the continent, we know that the senior generals, military figures in France, in Germany, in Austria, were all expecting a war of at least two years. They didn't necessarily disclose that to the politicians who they were advising, who may have thought it would be shorter. If people were looking back for reference points, if they look at 1870 or at 1904, the Russo-Japanese War, 1870, the Franco-Prussian War, those have both been a matter of months, and those were the kind of models that seemed to have been most influential, rather than something like the American Civil War, which of course went on for four years. Once the war began, the initial expectation and the planning on which military planning had been based on the assumption that this war would be over after the first campaigns, it would be a matter of weeks. Although in private, as I've suggested, the authors of those plans thought that that was over might well be an overoptimistic assumption. What happened is that the war was prolonged by a series of short decisions, if you like, rather than a decision to once once the opening campaigns had failed, it's not true that they said, right now we're in this for four years. What they continued to hope was that the next spring or summer offensive or the next peace initiative would bring the conflict to a close. And that applies that kind of logic through 1915-1916. We can't be precise about when it changed, because of course nobody was conducting opinion polls and quizzing people in the street about how long they thought the war would last. But we know from the documentation that there's a big change by about 1917, particularly after the Russian Revolution, uh, on the Allied side, raising the question of how on earth the Allies were now going to win this. But also on the Central Powers and Austria-Hungary were becoming more pessimistic in their leadership as well. And so by 1917, the British Cabinet, for example, is working on the assumption and having discussions of a war that would last at least until 1920, a war that had already lasted three years, in other words, was going to last another three. So there seems to be a big change after the summer of nineteen sixteen, when spring and summer of nineteen sixteen both sides staged enormous offensives on the Western Front, which were designed as win the war offensives, the Battle of Erdan on the German side, the Battle of the Somme on the Allied side. And when after those enormous efforts, with hundreds of thousands of casualties, the conflict was still bogged down in trench warfare on the Western Front. That seems to have been when there's a very significant change in the mood and an assumption that this was going to be a really long haul. Up until then it's a series of assumptions we carry on for another six months and hope but hope that that's the end of it. By 1917 onwards, then they're moving into a different phase. If I can just summarise this in a sentence, one historian has talked about a short war illusion in 1914. By 1917-18, there's something more like a long war illusion. People are expecting the war to go on for much longer. And are actually many of them, senior politicians and generals are taken by surprise when the war ends when it does in 1918.
Russell:One of the things that always perplexes me and and probably perplexes a lot of modern people looking back at it, is why after the initial short war doesn't end, you know, why don't they get together and bring it to a close? Because, you know, tens, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and the thing is bogged down, you know, why not end it?
David:Well, partly because tens and hundreds of thousands of people have been killed. In other words, it's very difficult for political leaders to go back to their electorates and say, well, okay, your sons and fathers have died in this, husbands have died in this process, and there's nothing very much to show for it if it ends in a kind of compromise outcome. This is the kind of what some historians have talked about something called the war trap. It's much easier to get into an armed major armed conflict than it is to get out again, particularly once there have been heavy casualties. If I can be a bit more precise, though, I think one thing I talk about in the books that you mentioned is the idea of a triple stalemate. World War I is a classic example of a stalemate war, which appears not to be moving very much, even though there are huge casualties. It's a kind of meat grinder, particularly in its middle years. So one explanation of this is that there's a military stalemate. This is the first level of explanation that people would think about, is trenches. This is the image, trenches, machine guns, barbed wire, artillery, infantry being thrown against the barbed wire and mown down. That in other words the military technology of the day favours the defensive on both sides. There are two other things that needed to be added to that. First of all, there's a diplomatic stalemate. In other words, that there are peace feelers, there are attempts to explore the terrain for negotiation, particularly in 1917, and these quickly run up against the obstacle that the two sides' war aims, their political objectives, are just too radically opposed for there to be grounds for a reasonable bargaining process. You might like to think of the parallels with Ukraine at the moment, which we'll probably come back to as we go on in this discussion. The third thing is there's a domestic political stalemate. Until Russia in 1917, governments hold power in the major countries on both sides, which are committed to fighting on until vic until a clear and evident victory, rather than settling it by a kind of compromise peace. So there's two things there's three things military stalemate, diplomatic stalemate, and domestic political stalemate, which reinforce each other and make it very difficult to untie the knot once people have started pulling on it.
Russell:If the war can't be ended by military breakthrough, it can't be ended by by negotiation. So what changes in late 1917 and in 1918 to sort of bring the end into sight?
David:The crucial thing I think is to keep an eye on what's happening in Germany. Because the negotiations that lead to the ceasefire in autumn nineteen eighteen, they start with a German request for a ceasefire, which is directed towards the American president Woodrow Wilson. So we'll probably get into more detail as we go on with your questions, but the first thing to look at is that the Germans scale down their objectives. They're looking for damage limitation. They recognise the German High Command recognises by September 1918 that they cannot win this war, either through go going on to the attack and the offensive, or by an indefinite defensive and letting the Allies wear themselves down. Neither of these things are going to be a viable route to a quick and acceptable peace. So the first reason why it changes is because the Germans decide to ask for a ceasefire, and also they ask the American president for a peace based on the American peace programme, the so-called fourteen points. The next thing is that the Allies are willing to accept this German feeler and to and to move on to reach an agreement for a ceasefire. So both sides need to move. And what makes them move on the German side, I think, above all is the change in the military situation, and we can talk about in more detail about why that happens. In the Allied side, it's yes, things are going better for them on the battlefronts, but there's a key a key thing that makes a difference on the Allied side is America coming in. And the Americans are willing for a more a less a less intransigent position diplomatically. They're more willing to go for a kind of compromise outcome, and that uh helps as well to explain why the war ends at the time and in the circumstances when it does.
Russell:Well, okay, let's uh let's talk about Germany then, because because I thought, well, for them it must have been a complete reversal because they've only recently had fantastic success because they've actually managed to knock Russia out of the war. And presumably that's freed up vast amounts of troops which they can then bring over to the Western Front. That's right.
David:The Russians made a ceasefire with the J with the with the with the with Germany and Austria with the Central Powers in the autumn of nineteen seventeen, just after the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, what we would now be called the Communists, but the Russian Bolshevik Party, Lenin and Trotsky had seized power in so in Petrograd and and then in much of the rest of Russia in the revolution, which is called the October Revolution, though by the Western calendar it actually happened in November of 1917. So there's that change on the Russian side, and the Russian Russians within a matter of weeks negotiate their withdrawal from the war. They sign a very difficult peace treaty called the Treaty of Brestlitovsk, which is in March of 1918. The Germans and Austrians impose very severe terms on the Russians, but from the Lenin and Trotsky's perspective, they want to get out of the war in any circumstances, or they're afraid that their regime will be overthrown as that of Tsar Nicholas II had been overthrown before. So that creates a situation where the Germans have a numerical preponderance of manpower, as you are hinting, and they're able in the winter of nineteen seventeen-18 to move about forty divisions, which is about half a million men, from the Eastern Front to the Western Front, and this gives them the wherewithal they think, to end the war by a war-winning offensive in the West, though that of course doesn't quite materialize. Now the reason why it doesn't materialize, or a major part of the reason, is that the Americans come into the war. And this kind of cancels out, in some ways, the effects of the Russians withdrawing. The Americans enter the war in April of nineteen seventeen. It takes a long time for the Americans to mobilize industrially on their home front, to recruit a la a large army that can be sent across to Europe. By November of nineteen eighteen, by the end of the war, two million Americans were in France, two million American personnel, so it's a huge population movement that takes place, but this takes time. So there is a kind of gap. We would now maybe call this a window of opportunity for the Germans, where the Russians are out and the Americans are not yet fully in, and they need to seize that opportunity which they try to do, but they're unable to, they're not strong strong enough to achieve a war-winning offensive and war-winning victory in the interval, shall we say, late seventeen, early eighteen, before the Americans arrive in force.
Russell:And sort of a couple of questions. I mean, one is something I've not been quite clear about, is that the Germans they take across, as you say, forty divisions. But do they take across all the troops that they could take across? Because as I understand it, if they've imposed such harsh terms on the Russians, they've now got tons of new territories which they have to hold down and and administer.
David:Well, that's exactly right. The Germans leave about half a million troops on the Eastern Front area. And it's not only the Germans, it's also Austria-Hungary, you know, Germany's principal ally, keeps the large numbers of troops in Eastern Europe against the Russians, um which otherwise could have been used against Italy, where the the the the main war from the Austrians' point of view by nineteen eighteen is against Italy in the south, rather than in the east. But the the the essence of the Treaty of Brestovsk, which I mentioned in March nineteen eighteen, is that the Russians are expected to cede control over a huge belt of territory, running down through the Baltic States, Lithuania, etc., down through Poland and down to the Ukraine and into the Caucasus, down as far as Georgia. And the whole of this area, this is detached from the Russian Empire. It isn't annexed to Germany and Austria-Hungary, but what happens is that buffer stuffer states, if you like, puppet governments are set up in that area, which can keep going there as long as they are backed up by German and Austrian troops. So the Germans are yes, the sort of the answer to your question is that the Germans are able to move a large number of troops across from from east to west, and in particular what they tend to send across are their younger and more aggressive soldiers, leaving the older men as garrison forces for the east. But they also leave a large number of troops behind, about half a million. And that those and those troops who are left behind in the East, protecting the gains of the Treaty of Brestitovsk, could have made a very significant difference and increased the balance of support forces and benefited the Germans on the Western Front.
Russell:Yes, I suppose they could have taken their their less good troops and put them into the quieter parts of the line and and and and moved troops troops around like that.
David:Exactly. I mean that that's what they did to some extent. They could have done it much more.
Russell:So the Germans they they pulled across half a million men. I mean they've not just got a preponderance in numbers, even with the Americans arriving, presumably the Americans are pretty inexperienced and not very effective. So so this is Germany's big moment. So so what do they how do they go about trying to exploit this numerical advantage?
David:Yeah, well you're you're quite right. The the the German general staff assessments of the American troops are quite interesting. They consider that they're they're numerous, they're brave, but they are poorly led. The officers are inexperienced, and they're there's a as the Germans put it, they're they're clumsy. They're not used to fighting in Western Front conditions. But they're but they're worried about the sheer numbers of the Americans making difference, making a difference by the summer of nineteen eighteen. That's the essence of it. What gives them the confidence to act? F first of all, they feel they have to act before the Americans arrive in much larger numbers. But secondly, a number of things have given the Germans high command confidence that they have a reasonable chance of winning a decisive breakthrough in the spring of nineteen eighteen, which they haven't been able to do before. The first thing is the numbers of extra troops that have arrived from Russia, so it gives them a numerical advantage on the Western Front for the first time since nineteen fourteen, given that the British and French are very short of manpower by this stage. The second thing is that the Germans will be fighting differently. They're making different use of artillery and different infantry tactics, and they've been trying these out with considerable success in 1917 against the Russians, for example, in the Battle of Riga in September 1917, and also against the Italians, in a battle called the Battle of Caporetto, which had been in October of 1917. In both of these they'd have done new infantry tactics, which we can discuss in more detail if you want. These have great success in pushing back countries that the Germans have been fighting against for several years.
Russell:Yes. Could you just say a bit about the detail about the the tactics, the artillery tactics and the infantry tactics? So I think people will be quite interested in that.
David:Well, the artillery tactics, one of the one of the key things is better liaison between aerial overflights and the German artillery. Both sides do this, by the way, but the the Germans have pioneered it. If German aircraft are flying over the Allied positions, they can identify in considerable detail in considerable precision where the Allied artillery are located. So the Germans can begin before their infantry move, their artillery can be directed against the Allied artillery in order to try to destroy the Allies' ability to hit the German troops as they advance across the front line, across the across the trench area at No Man's Land. The second thing is the Germans have better liaison between the infantry and the field artillery, this is the lighter guns. These lay down a kind of barrage before the German infantry move into position, to stop the Allied machine guns, infantry with machine guns and Allied field guns, as I should have mentioned something else, which the Germans use gas shells enormously as a means of silencing the Allied heavy artillery as well. To the Germans to devise better methods for coordinating the infantry assault with the preceding artillery preparation, both by heavy artillery, which is against the Allied guns, and also by German field guns, which are protecting the infantry against Allied infantry in position in the machine gun nests, if that makes sense.
Russell:And then I can't remember they they they have some is it is it the stormtroopers they have? I can't remember, but but I can't know if anything a stormtrooper, you know, he'll be shot just as easily as the next man. So what is the big change in the tactics?
David:The stormtroopers are young and fit men who are selected out from the mass of the infantry, given extra training, taken out of the front line for several weeks and given extra training, equipped with portable machine guns, light machine guns, and with hand grenades. You can see it like a film where Go All Quiet on the Western Front, we'll show you how this works. And these are intended to be more aggressive and rapidly moving. They're preceded by, and as I mentioned, by an artillery bombardment, and their instructions in a when a starting a battle is to move forward as fast as they can, not to stop and deal with Allied positions that have haven't been neutralized by the artillery, but just to keep moving, and a second wave of troops, which are older and less aggressive men, will do the job of silencing the Allied islands, if you like, of Allied resistance that are left. That that's the principle. It works very well in the opening stages of the German offenses in 1918. In the longer run, it's a m it's a it's a mechanism for destroying the the fittest and most aggressive troops in the German army. So the whole army suffers uh casualties suffered by by its most aggressive elements.
Russell:And uh if I picked up something right from your book, one of the problems was is that is that the Germans have been suffering uh a terrible blockade from from the Allies. And so they're they're terribly short of food, and when they manage to break through into uh into f you know into f untouched territory, if there's any amount of you know, wine and meat and whatever.
David:This is a factor when they're attacking in in Champagne against the French in sort of the sums May and June of 1918. There is a supply problem, which is that the German railway system is getting worn down by 1918. The locomotives haven't been properly maintained, they haven't been burning high quality fuel, they've been turning burning wood instead of coal, things like this. They lack they lack lubricating oil. So the German railway system is running down. It's it's it's good enough to get men from Eastern Europe to Western Europe and to get some supplies to Western Europe. But the problem is once the stormtroopers have gone forward and advanced, say, five miles beyond the original front line, it's very difficult to get supplies to them. Once you get beyond the railheads, the logistical system is very dependent on horses. for which there are not nearly enough. So horses have not been properly looked after, there isn't enough material to equipment to inoculate them against things like man like mange, for example. Also the horses just don't have enough food. You need a lot more fodder to keep a horse active than you need food to keep a man active. Repeatedly in the after battle analyses that the German general staff regularly does, they give supply problems as a major reason why their offensives run out of imp run out of impetus.
Russell:But from the British and from the French point of view, how are they looking at these offensives? Because as I understand it your the title of your book with our backs to the wall is is a is a message that Hague gives to his men saying this is it. You know this is this is the last ditch. You know we you know we can't go back any further.
David:Well this is I mean the with our backs to the wall is a phrase from a order of the day that Haig sends out to his troops in April of nineteen eighteen. This is the second of the five German offensives, five German hammer blows as they call them, but German attacks between March of nineteen eighteen and July of nineteen eighteen. The second one in April is an attack mainly against the British and it's in Flanders. It's in Belgium and it's driving the British back towards the Channel ports. The British lose the channel ports and that will be simply disastrous for Allied communications between the British and French and for the British supply system supplying their troops which are mainly in Belgium and in northern France. And th there is an opening phase in this German offensive in April 1918 when it advances about forty miles, which is a lot by World War I standards. They're facing a unit of Portuguese troops. Portugal is on the Allied side and Portuguese troops have been stationed in a crucial part of the British line that's another story behind that. But they they they break really when the Germans attack them they they simply run for their their lives and push back fall back to the rear. And it's at this in this circumstance when it looks as if an a crucial part of the British line has faltered that Hague issues this this with our backs to the wall order. Now your other question was whether the Allies what are the Allies's assessment of the German potential. The Allies expected the Germans to attack in the spring of nineteen eighteen. They could see that the preparations were being made all along the line their aerial overflights were indicating that, and they knew that the Germans were moving troops from east to west. So they were expecting a formidable German attack and the Allies had made considerable preparations to deal with that, with both the British and the French, including one of the most important things which is each would help the other if attacked so French reinforcements are one of the crucial reasons why the Germans don't actually break through and they do get stopped in their first two attacks. Later on it's the British coming to help the French.
Russell:And another thing I was a little bit unclear about reading your book, or I say unclear, I was a little bit surprised by, was it seemed like the German offensives were sort of strategically a little bit uncertain as to what they were trying to achieve.
David:Well they they are this is borne out by the German documents so we we can you know Ludendorff we will probably talk more about later on, but there's the chief strategist really on the German side but he holds a series of conferences with his army commanders while making the preparations for the for the big offensive in the spring of nineteen eighteen and what's interesting is his his failure to identify particular targets. We know we we want this particular railway junction for example and what Ludendorff says is that the important thing this relates to the storm troop tactics which we were talking about before the important thing is to break through get through the Allied lines. This is where we've always stuck both sides have been stuck up until now and between 1914 and 1918 in the middle phase of the war neither side can get more than a sort of four miles beyond their jumping off points. This is true of the Battle of the Somme for example or Passchendale. But Ludendorff says that the important thing to do is what we did in Russia, find gaps in the Allied line and break through and push through as far as far and as fast as we can. Find a hole where there's a puncher and then just drive in it. This is the way we did things in Russia. We actually have a quote of Ludendorff saying that so that means they're kind of open minded about what the targets will be. The aim is to attack in a in an area that's where the where the Allies seem weak and hopefully achieve punt punch a hole and and and establish a liberated area from which the Allies can be pushed further and further back as they go on.
Russell:But you would have thought they would be aiming for critical railway junctions or for as you said the channel ports you would have thought that would be the number one, two and three priorities.
David:Yeah yeah yeah and the th the the the first German attack is against the French primarily this is down in in Champagne. What they should have been doing most people commenting in retrospect have said is go for Amiens that was the key railway junction in that part of the line and if they'd had concentrated all of their manpower and made a concerted drive on Amiens they might have got it. But in fact they don't they they they they stop short I think about ten miles short of Amiens so they're sort of in a position where their long range artillery can just about hit Amiens but their main ground troops can't and that means that the Allies are able to maintain their logistical support in that in that sector of the line. Rather similar again in April of nineteen eighteen this second German attack which we've already been discussing here the the the comparable railway junction is at Arsen and again the Germans don't get it. There's not a clear direction coming from Ludendorff and the High Command as to what the designated targets are. There's a kind of uncertainty about the strategic purpose. The aim is just to push the Allies back and hopefully see what see what happens I think.
Russell:I'm always a bit uh suspicious of trying to second guess the generals or the people who are on the ground at the time but but but do you think that the Germans have a chance to to bring the war to a conclusion more on their terms if they would have changed their strategy somewhat yes though I think that the key mistakes are made earlier on.
David:Mistake number one is to start the war in the first place because it was, you know the Germans did start it and they've been starting on an they're embarking on something that was beyond their strength really right from the beginning. But they could have done they could have extricated themselves on much more favourable terms if they if America had not come in. And America comes in at the time it does because directly responding to a German decision which is the German decision for what's called unrestricted submarine warfare. That the particularly ruthless form of submarine campaigning against Allied and American shipping, merchant shipping that's the key thing that brings America into the war at the time when it comes in in April of nineteen seventeen. If the Americans had not come into the war, I think that the best you can see coming from the Allied side is a is a sort of an unfavorable compromise is the best the British and French would have been able to get to because among other things they'd have run out of foreign exchange. They wouldn't have been able to continue financing their imports from the USA which are becoming extremely important for their war effort by this by the final stages of the conflict.
Russell:That's very interesting because I know a lot of people well Europeans in particular like to say oh the Americans you know they came along late it was very nice but but they weren't uh they weren't war winning but but your view is is different that the Americans were absolutely crucial.
David:The Americans were absolutely crucial and um this is particularly looking at areas like economic aid to the Allies huge amounts of equipment and food, oil being made available to the Allies on oh yes there were there were American loans to the Allies but unfavorable unfavourable interest rates and this this created of course a huge debt for the Allies to pay off which is a big issue in the 1920s and 30s. They're important for that they're also very important for morale that the without the Americans coming into war then there really is a question mark as to how on earth the Allies are going to win it. And that was a question to which really British cabinet and French government don't have an answer.
Russell:So you mentioned submarine warfare so should we just switch a little bit because um I mean one thing you know I talked about that it'll all be over by Christmas but another sort of cliche of the war is that the generals are fantastically blinkered. You know they lack any imagination and they're forever launching pointless attacks. But partly that was as a result of of the weapons and tactics that they had at their disposal at the start. So how how do things change as the war goes on in terms of you know the the innovations and tactics and weapons? I mean one obvious example is is tanks for example.
David:General Douglas Haig who is the British commander in chief on the Western Front for most of the war has had a very bad press but one of the things that even his critics concede is that he wasn't blind to the need for technical technological innovation and he was supportive of things like need having a lot of air power, having a lot of aircraft and also having tanks, as well as new uses of artillery.
Russell:So your question again is Well I've got two things I want Well I'm actually quite interested I mean what do you think about Hague as a general? Is the criticism basically justified or is it basically unfair?
David:Well I think he's he's if if you focus on the last year of the war, he appears in his best light, I guess. He's he's better as a defensive general and he make he makes quite sensible preparations for dealing with the German offenses which he was expecting in the spring of nineteen eighteen. You can there are many grounds for saying that he was overoptimistic and clumsy if you like in his preparations for the attacks on the Somme in 16 and for the Battle of Passchendale third battle of Ypres in 1917. So in other words Mann says it's kind of mixed. There are things that he was quite interested in and good at and took seriously like logistical problems and technology and he should be credited for that as well as for the things that were not good, you know, then the planning of the offensives in the middle period of the war and there is there's plenty of ground for justified criticism of that. So but this is the sorry in the right this is in relation to the question of technology and tanks.
Russell:Well I well I was just interested to know how how technology sort of changed what was possible. And I guess you talked a little bit about air power and how that allowed to spot the enemy artillery and then to blanket it with gas shells. So that that was interesting. And something I'm not clear about is to what extent who were the winners of the air war? Were both able to use air power equally or did one side eventually come to dominate?
David:The Allies have the numerical advantage in the air war. They have more fighter aircraft in other words and they have more balloons and things. Remember how the the air war begins with balloons observing the enemy artillery. The key thing is always to observe what the enemy artillery are doing. Balloons do this to begin with once you have plenty of fighter aircraft they can shoot down the balloons so it becomes more a question of fighter aircraft with probably with two men in in each one and one of them with a camera. Both sides taking thousands of pictures of their enemy positions by nineteen seventeen nineteen eighteen but this is part of what I think the thing you need to keep your eye on is combined arm tactics. You need to bring the artillery and infantry and air power into conjunction with each other to maximize your effectiveness. And I think the Allies are better at this than the Germans are by 1918. They developed these combined arm tactics which become influential in future wars as well not just in 1918. The other thing that's yes okay while we're on this the the point about the tanks or one of the points about the tanks the Germans don't have them. They're a low priority for the high command in Germany partly because they thought the Allies were using them in ways that were not particularly effective. The Third Battle of Ypres a good example in 1917 and notoriously a mud-clogged battlefield in which the tanks simply can't move on the Allied side. So the Germans are not persuaded that tanks are important. The Allied commanders are much more persuaded the tanks are important and the Allies get equip themselves, all the Allied armies with hundreds of tanks, only a British and French manufacture and the Americans take over British and French tanks when they then they when they arrive. And the the the tanks of are a very useful addition to the Allied ability to attack without taking huge infantry casualties. If the tanks move forward then you can dispense with some of the preliminary Allied bombardment and artillery bombardment and it's much easier to achieve surprise and to keep down the infantry casualties. This is an important reason why the Allies are more successful than the Germans in 1918. After July 1918 the Allies are on the offensive and they push the Germans back a hundred miles, much more successful than the Germans have been in the first half of the year. The tanks are a considerable part of that difference is because of the tanks.
Russell:And the other I guess the other big technological change well one other big technological change is the submarine because the German submarines get better and better but their effectiveness seems to go worse and worse.
David:Well this is because there are various reasons for this one is that the the the German U-boat crews they take very heavy casualties in 1917-1918 and a lot of the submarine sink sinkings of Allied shipping was done by a n a small number of very aggressive submarine captains, many of whom are dead by 1918. But also the Allies devise effective countermeasures and the most important of this is the c of these is the convoy system that is adopted by the Allies from the summer of 1917 onwards, principally by the British on the North Atlantic route. The effect of that is partly it's very simple, it just empties the seas. But before that the system is that the North Atlantic is strewn with merchant ships making their way towards British home ports. Very easy for submarines, German submarines to find them and to sink them. Well the convoy system means that they're concentrated into small units of up to forty ships can be in a convoy merchant ships protected by Royal Navy destroyers and frigates which are equipped with depth chargers by nineteen eighteen. So it actually become it's actually quite dangerous for a submarine a U-boat to attack an Allied convoy and they take take heavy casualties in doing that.
Russell:And you mentioned a little bit about logistics and I always think of the Germans as being the most efficient nation on earth when it comes to logistics and so on. But actually the Allies master logistics better, I think, in all sorts of ways but one of the ways is that they put the civilian population to better use and in particular they put women to work far more is that did I get that right?
David:There's there's a couple of issues here one one is about logistics and the organization of supply. At a macro scale it's getting getting American steel and oil and wheat across the North Atlantic which we were just talking about. And then at a sort of more small scale there's the battlefield logistics which again we've talked about a bit as well that the Allies are able to keep their armies on the Western Front better supplied than the Germans are able to do. I think the issue is is not that the Germans are poor organizers, but that their their railway system is under tremendous strain. Everybody's railway system is under strain by the end of the war but the the Germans particularly so and the Austrians actually as well the Germans main ally and a lot of this is because of remember the Germans are are fighting a major effort on two fronts hundreds of miles apart in France on the one hand and against the Russians in the east and even after we've seen already even even after the Russians drop out of the war the Germans are still having to support half a million troops in Eastern Europe. Those people needed to be fed and they needed to be given ammunition and the the German railway system is really running out of running out of steam. Well that's that's right, I nearly deliberately did say that. But but yes, exact exactly they're running out of lubricating oil. They're running out of skilled personnel. They don't have the s the same size maintenance crews and things that they had at the beginning of the war. The track as you know is is falling out of is falling into disrepair. So there's a a lot of problems on the German railway system. Once you get beyond the German railway system as I mentioned before the Germans are short of lorries. Yeah? So for short short range supply of their troops at the front they need to rely on horses and they don't have the horses in large numbers. They know that actually when Ludendorff authorizes the Ludendorff offensives he knows that there is a problem with the short short distance logistics supply of logistical support to the to the armies at the front.
Russell:But I mentioned women so what about what about women at uh and the war effort?
David:Well I think the Germans do use women um there are big increases in the number of women working with Krupp for example you know which is a major armments firm um the number of women employees in Krupp goes up by about I think it's about ten times during the war and much of German manufacturing industry is doing that but they don't do it on the same scale as happens in Britain and France particularly and to a lesser extent in the USA. I think it is true to say that the Allies make more intensive use of the female labour force than the Germans do, which is one of the reasons why the German army in 1918 basically runs out of men. The British and French have been able to release men for the armed services because they bring more women into the into the factories at home. The Germans do this to some extent but not to the same extent. Now there's not one single reason why this happens but one of the things that's striking if you look at the records on the two sides there was much greater reluctance on the part of German employers to accept women workers in a place for skilled male workers in things like shell production. And this is something which worries the German high command a lot. They're constantly afraid that they're going to run out of munitions because of the if you like of the the this the the diminishing size of the labor force and the labour force changed its composition of course so that it's by the end of the war about a third of the labour force oh if we take an Allied example about the third of the labour force in Paris in French war factories is is is female. And it's it's lower than that in Germany.
Russell:Interesting so the the offensives take place that they aren't ultimately successful. We've sort of indicated that so I understand that that Ludendorff eventually has some kind of a breakdown. And is that does that dishearten the Germans or is he one of the Germans who has become disheartened if I can put it like that?
David:I don't think it was public knowledge that he'd had the breakdown. It was known to his advis it is known to the the circle of officers, staff officers who work with him of course they they they saw the change. What caused it first first of all just Ludendorff's personality. He was driven he was not like Hundemberg he was a much steadier man. Ludendorff is always given to fits of temper and high tension. By nineteen eighteen he's uh feels under a great deal of strain because of his constant responsibilities going on for year after year. He's starting to take to drink a lot. He quarrels with Hindenburg so there are lots of signs of stress. A psychologist, a doctor psychologist Dr Hochheimer is called in to advise him and recommends him to take walks in the woods and to sing to sing hearty German folk songs with his staff officers which he does but these things don't help very much from what we he he appears to have a nervous breakdown at the end of September 1918. And the the descriptions we have of this support that view. He'd been under mounting strain for many months. He'd known, of course, that the offensives of spring nineteen eighteen had thought of them at the time as a kind of last chance gamble before the Americans arrived in force. Well by the end of nineteen eighteen that gamble has been tried and has failed, and not only that, but a kind of fallback position that he'd hoped for after the summer of nineteen eighteen was if he couldn't win the war by offensive, at least he could his troops would hold or stop the Allies advancing and inflict heavy casualties on the Allies as they'd always done previously, so that you might still be able to get a favorable outcome of the war through standing on the defensive inflicting the casualties on the enemy. In fact, the Allied offences in the spring and summer of nineteen eighteen are much more successful than previously and drive the Germans up to a hundred miles back, which is unprecedented by World War I standards. So they can't win the war by attacking, and they can't win the war by standing on the defensive, and that's the, I think, is the predicament closing on Ludendorff, which leads to him eventually breaking down. Though the actual trigger for his breakdown is the news that Bulgaria has signed a ceasefire with the Allies. Bulgaria is is a German ally. It's relatively small, of course, in location in comparison to Germany and Austria-Hungary, but it occupies a strategic position in the Balkans.
Russell:So let's talk about Bulgaria then. What what I'm trying to trying to figure out in my mind where it is in relation to Germany and why it's such a strategic part of the uh part of the picture.
David:Well, remember there are four German there are four countries on the Central Power side, there's Germany, Austro-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire. If we just look at a map, Bulgaria is a kind of bridge between Germany and Austria-Hungary on the one hand and Turkey on the other. So if Bulgaria drops out of the war, and furthermore, the ceasefire agreement with Bulgaria allows the Allies to occupy positions within Bulgaria, what effectively this does is to split the Central Powers in two, that Germany and Austria-Hungary can no longer give assistance to the Turks, who are under a great deal of pressure anyway, and need or need a lot of support by the summer and autumn of 1918. The second thing, which is probably even more important, is that if the Allies can get into Bulgaria, then they're also on the fringes of Romania. Romania had entered the war in 1916 on the Allied side, had been overrun by the Central Powers. Romania is a major source of oil. In addition to some oil in Poland, it's probably the most important source of oil on the Central Powers side. The German general staff estimate is that if they lose all access to Romanian oil, then about half of the Air Force will have to be grounded very quickly. There'll be no money for there'll be no oil for the German tanks, they'll run out of oil for the German lorries and things as well. So their logistical position will become even worse. So Bulgaria, if you like, is the weakest of the four central powers, but its loss is pot is potentially very dangerous.
Russell:And so how has this come about? Why did the why did the Allies not have a pop at Bulgaria earlier if it's such a uh such a key to unlocking the position?
David:Okay. Bulgaria drops out because there's an Allied offensive against Bulgaria, which begins on the 15th of September 1918. It's an amazing thing. The Bulgarians had got their artillery 8,000 feet up on mountains in the Balkan peninsula. They're driven out both mainly by the French and by the Serbs. Remember, Serbia had come into the Allied side in 1914, and um Serb mountain troops fight on the Balkan front alongside French and British contingents. The the short answer to a question is but the Balkan Front had always been a kind of second best. The Allied priorities had been the Western Front and then later on to an extent the Russian front and helping the Russians. They hadn't done any offenses in the Balkans since 1915, really, when the Germans had overrun that part of the world and had knocked Serbia out of the war. There was always a lot of debate, okay, this is another thing. There's a lot of debate, particularly in Britain, between so-called Westerners and so-called Easterners. Westerners saying that the important thing is to concentrate on the battlefronts in France and Belgium, and that's the only place where the war can be decided. The Easterners saying that you could achieve success by concentrating on knocking out the weaker German partners, i.e. Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire. Their arguments were not very persuasive, and that's one of the reasons why more resources, which are scarce anyway, that more resources are not committed to the Balkans. But there are the logistical reasons for n for thinking that you're uh you know Bulgaria's a long way from Germany and indeed from Vienna, and the Allies underestimated the shock effect that its surrender would have when it came.
Russell:I suppose the uh the disaster of Gallipoli uh means that the uh the Easterners are you know they're kind of on the back foot.
David:That's right. And what had happened with Romania coming in in 1916, it had been overwhelmed by the Germans and Austrians very quickly.
Russell:It's clear from what you said that the uh that the Americans are absolutely critical for Allied success, and you have President Wilson, who the Germans, I think you say he's the man they go to to sort of look to get peace. Um so what is Wilson's view of the war? You know, you c I keep hearing about Wilson's fourteen points, but I'm never quite sure what that was all about.
David:Okay, so for for an armistice to happen, first of all the Germans need to ask one, which they did. And the the person they approached was the American president. They didn't approach the Allies to collectively, they went to America. And that's partly because they saw the Americans as a kind of soft touch, the weakest link in the Allied chain, the most moderate. So what happens is that after Ludendorff has his nervous breakdown and the German politicians discuss the situation with him, the German Chancellor sends out a note to Wilson expressing a willingness to accept peace on the base of the American programme, the 14 points, and asking for Wilson to take that in hand and to also arrange for a preliminary ceasefire. So that's the first thing is that the Germans approach the Americans, so the Americans are going to be central to this negotiation. The second thing is that is that the Allies need to say yes. And when we say the Allies, it means that the British and French and Italians need to say yes to a ceasefire as well as the Americans. So the Americans really have a kind of pivotal role between the two warring camps, and you might like to think of the situation that President Trump finds himself in at the moment between the Ukrainians and the Russians. There are some parallels there. Wilson had issued the 14 points in January 1918, and this is a public declaration of what Wilson's he goes to Concords before Congress. Public declaration with full of fanfare saying what the American peace program is. I was reminded of Georges Clemalso's comment, the uh French Prime Minister that the good lord had only ten points. Wilson has fourteen. The fourteen points, so they begin with five general points, and then there are more specific points. The five points, which are sort of basically the conditions of what should make for a good peace. Well, among the the sort of broad broad ones, there's an economic condition, there should be open open markets and freedom of trade. There's arms limitation, not disarmament, but arms reduction to the lowest level consistent with national safety. There's colonial claims that there should be, quote, an impartial adjustment of colonial claims. And when you read these things, you think the language, first of all, is quite woolly, but secondly it seems to be quite even handed between the Americans and between the Germans and the Allied, the European Allies. The later parts of the fourteen points is more specific about the particular Allied program, and what happens is that Wilson is willing to support what he knows to be Allied war aims and objectives, but not fully. Not a hundred percent. For example, he says he's willing to support Belgium being restored to independence. Germans have to get out. That's a key British concern. We know Belgium has always been strategically important from the British perspective. But with the French, the French of course want back Alsace-Lorraine, the area they'd lost in 1871 after the Franco-Prussian War. What Wilson says is that the wrong done to France in the matter of Alsace Lorraine should be righted, which isn't exactly saying give the whole lot of Alsace Lorraine back to the French. Italy, Italy is has territorial claims in the northeast against Austria-Hungary. What Wilson says he's willing to support the parts of the Italian claim that can be justified on self-determination grounds. In other words, areas inhabited by Italian speakers could be returned to Italy, but he knows perfectly well that the Italians want a lot more than that. They want areas inhabited by Croats and Slovenes, for example, as well as by Italian speakers. So he supports the Allied objectives, but to a limited extent. The Allied governments have never been consulted over the fourteen points in the American Peace Programme. And Lloyd George, for example, the British Prime Minister, says from the beginning he sees the danger that the Americans will kind of railroad through a deal with the Germans, which will leave the European Allies forced to stop the war, having achieved much less than their objectives.
Russell:So why do the British and the French and the Italians stop? Because they are winning, as I I mean, we haven't talked about it, but but on the Western Front the Germans are being beaten again and again, and for the first time you're seeing mass surrenders of tens of thousands, or I don't know, maybe even more, tens of thousands of German soldiers, which is unheard of. And so, you know, why not just push on march to Berlin and say thank you very much, uh President uh Trump. I mean, I beg your pardon, President Woodrow, you know, we'll see you in Berlin.
David:Well, I think that the first of all, they're dependent on American help to do a war-winning offence of that kind. They they they'll need oil from the Americans, they will need f American wheat to feed their populations if they're going to keep the war going for another at least another year. They don't know how long it would take to do that, because up until then the the German army had been very resistant and successfully resistant to Allied attacks. It's it's it's pushing it's falling back faster by 1918, but it's still a very formidable fighting force, and thousands of Allied soldiers have been killed every day. Ferdinand Foch, who is the Allied commander-in-chief on the Western Front, says that carrying on the war into 1919 will mean fifty thousand or a hundred thousand Frenchmen being killed, and for reasons and for objectives which are un which he says are unfathomable. The other point, more precisely, this is that the Allies are aware that Wilson regards them with suspicion, and they're right to, because from Wilson's point of view, the Allied side and the German side are both imperialists, they're both responsible for the pre-1914 balance of power system that in his view had caused the war in the first place. And that's an evil system which he wants to break away with, of course, and set up something like the League of Nations to replace it. So Wilson is suspicious of the Allied side. The Allies know that he's suspicious of the Allied side. And if the war goes on into 1919, the more the longer it goes on, the more the Allies will become dependent on the Americans, and the Americans will have the deciding voice in the peace settlement. That's the key point, and that argument is put pretty much in those terms in the British War Cabinet by Smuts, who was the South African politician who was brought into the British War Cabinet as a kind of voice for the Dominions. So I think that's that's the key thing. If the war is prolonged into 1919, the Americans will dominate every sphere of it. Haig talks in these terms as well. But it will no longer be a British and French peace, it'll be an American peace. And they know from the fourteen points that the Americans are only half-heartedly committed to Allied objectives.
Russell:So how do we move from the negotiations between, I guess, the Germans and the Americans? How do we move to the to the armistice? It seems like from what you're saying is that the Allies think, right, we better we better be involved in the process. We you know we we can't do the offensive, let's get involved. So how how do they negotiate the armistice?
David:Well the armistice take takes about six weeks to produce. You know, Ludendorff's breakdown is on the twenty-ninth of September. The armistice, of course, goes into effect on the eleventh of November. To begin with, the Germans appeal to the Americans on the fourth of October, and there's about two weeks of German for American dialogue, public exchanges of notes between Washington and Berlin, the Allies not being consulted about this, so this is an extraordinary thing to be happening really in the mid after in the middle of a war of this kind. And what happens is that Wilson tries to beat the Germans down to get to clear written confirmation from them that they accept the fourteen points, which is not what they'd given at the beginning. The original German note is much vaguer than that. The Germans they'd left plenty of wiggle room. So he wants he wants clear assurances the Germans accept the fourteen points, and also that there is a democratic government in Germany, that democratization will take place and the, as he puts it, the military masters of Germany will lose the power they've held over the civilians. He doesn't actually call for the Kaiser to abdicate, but his implication is there should be regime change in Germany, as we would now say. And the Germans in the end give those assurances, they say they do accept the fourteen points, and there is also a government change in Germany, there's a democratisation. Ludendorff is sacked, of course, and Hindenburg resigns as well, and a new government is formed which has the support of the majority parties in the Reichstag, particularly the support of the Catholic Party and the German and the Socialists, the SPD. So that like the centre-left government replaces a right wing government in Germany, and this is a government which has support from the majority of the Reichstag, the lower house of the German legislature. Once Wilson's got all that, then he opens it up to bring in the British, French and Italians, and an inter-allied conference is held with the American representative Colonel House, who's coming across from coming across the Atlantic from Wilson, and at the end of October and in early November they thrash out a commoner position for the Allies and the Americans on which they will be willing to proceed to a ceasefire. Now, one of the key elements of that position, the Allies also accept in principle the fourteen points. So that's the like the political side of it, the Americans, the Germans, and the European Allies all accept the fourteen points will be the basis of the peace settlement. But secondly, the military terms and naval terms will be decided by the Allied military and naval chiefs. That Wilson insists on that, and the Germans agree, which means that there's a kind of tension between the political side of the armistice and the military side.
Russell:And when the armistice is signed, that that is when the fighting stops, right? And yet the fighting has been going on. I mean, I suppose it's a bit like Ukraine, although it's a bit different because we don't know we have no sense in the Ukraine whether or not it's going to end or not, uh, you know, any time soon, uh even although you know we keep talking about peace. But my sense is that once they're exchanging the notes, it's pretty clear the war is going to end. And yet people are fighting and dying in large numbers. It's just incomprehensible to me.
David:Aaron Powell Well, about half a million casualties on the two sides between the German note, German request for an armistice and the armistice actually being signed, so it's it's about a month. Half a million casualties in a month. That gives you a sense of how intense the fighting is.
Russell:Who is responsible for that intensity of fighting? Is it is it is it the likes of Hague? I I just don't quite understand what's the strategic objective.
David:Are they just trying to keep the Germans on the back foot or the strategic objective is to get push the Germans out of France and Belgium, to get into a favorable bargaining position if there is going to be a peace conference. That's that's part of it. And that there are similarities, I think, there with what's happening in the Ukraine now. But the strategic objective is to push the Allies back, and the the the initiative for this is coming from the Allied commanders. Ferdinand Foch, who was the Allied commander-in-chief on the Western Front, had decided what the overall plan of attack was going to be. From July 1918 onwards it's the Allies who are on the offensive, and this is following a game plan which has basically been designed by Foch, though Foch has the agreement of Hague and um the Belgians and so on on the Western Front to agree to it as well. On the specific November 11th, the armistice is signed at five o'clock in the morning, goes into effect at eleven o'clock, and up until then, for those six hours, fighting continues even after the armistice documentation has been signed. The main reason for that, I I understand, is that it's they expect it to take time before they can contact all the units concerned on the Western Front. Are they allowing six hours for radio messages to go out and say, right, at eleven o'clock we're gonna stop?
Russell:Yeah, I suppose we don't you know we can't just send an email or a text message to the to the troops.
David:I mean There well there was a bit of shooting still after eleven after eleven AM, but not not very much.
Russell:But again, it's j I mean I mean the gap between five and eleven is just horrendous, you know, the thought that people are dying utterly pointlessly. But even you know, in the weeks l leading up to that, there's something almost immoral about sending people in to attack in a war that you know is over. And I'm amazed that the civilian governments would countenance, you know, the you know, the murder of their well would countenance the you know the deaths of their of their populations, who in a sense are civilians in uniform.
David:Well I think as far as the Allied conside is concerned, it's not actually clear to them, to the British, French, and Americans, that their war is going to end quickly. They're not sure about that because there are very intractable issues separating the Germans and indeed the the Americans from the European allies. Those are settled, but it it needs a negotiation and it doesn't and it isn't all agreed until early November. Okay, that means that they're nego they're thrashing out the armistice terms over a period of about five weeks with slower communications than today. The more difficult question might be why the Germans keep fighting. A lot of that is they need to reach a decision in Germany that they're going to accept the fourteen points. And the German government doesn't reach that position until the 17th of October. Just about two weeks before the actual formalities and the signing in the railway carriage takes place. They have an all-day cabinet meeting. The new German government, as a result of the revolution, a new German government member has been set up which is left, letter sent socialists and Catholics, and they have a showdown with Ludendorff really on the 17th of October.
Russell:Hang on. Um I'm getting a bit confused now. You mentioned a revolution. Um can we just what there is a revolution in Germany.
David:It happens really in the first week of Nov of November. So by the time the revolution breaks out, it is clear that the war is going to that the Germans have lost. The Germans have publicly appealed for a ceasefire, though an argument is still going on about what the terms of the ceasefire will be. Now, what triggers the revolution is a decision by the German Navy to try to sabotage that, and the German High Naval High Command make a plan for the German fleet to sail out of its ports and to into the English Channel and to attack London.
Russell:It's a bit late now. You might want to have done it earlier.
David:The only the only conceivable purpose for it could be to sabotage the peace negotiations. Because what it's going to mean is that yes indeed, that the the German battleship crews will be sailing out to their deaths most likely because the British Navy is much stronger than they are, certainly by that stage in the war. And they rebel, particularly the battleships where the where the mutiny is centered. You know, they arrest their officers, and they go ashore. They go ashore at Kiel in North Germany, which is a um a town, it's a naval port, of course. It's full of munitions factories, and the the workers in the factories, um, many of them support socialists. Basically, there's a revolution in Kiel, bloodless revolution, but they they take over. With the sort of local buildings and um establish a Soviet on the on the on the Russian model. And this spreads across North Germany and spreads into the Rhineland of reaches the Ruhr and then down towards South Germany where there's more violence, particularly in Bavaria. It's socialists, independent socialists, the USPD are the main beneficiaries, if you like, of the revolution. By the 9th of November it's reached a point where the high German High Command no longer has confidence in its ability to use the army to crush the rebellion, crush the revolt. It's spread across more and more regions of Germany, and on the 9th of November there's a showdown in Berlin, and essentially the uh leader of the Socialists, Friedrich Ebert, goes out onto the uh onto the balcony, I think, of the Reichstag building and announces a republic, and Wilhelm II takes his takes the prompt to go into exile in the Netherlands.
Russell:So I'm just a little bit unclear. Are we saying that the revolution is successful or are we saying that it fails? It's successful.
David:It's not like the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. If you like, it's the moderate left rather than the hard left who are seizing power. So they're not they're not like Lenin and Trotsky. They set a provisional government. That's what the Socialists do. Eber Ebert is in charge of it. That's the government which actually signs the armistice, approves the armistice on the 11th of November.
Russell:So it's days after It's days.
David:Yeah. The revolution ninth of November is the day when the Kaiser flees into exile and his government effectively is overthrown. And a new Chancellor comes to power, Friedrich Ebert, who replaces Max von Max of Baden, who had been the um chancellor during for most of the October 1918.
Russell:But is there any reason to suppose that the German government, if it hadn't been overthrown, would it have signed the armistice at roughly the same sort of timetable and on the same terms, or or or does this make a difference?
David:That's a good question. I think the previous government, the German government, that the the the pre-revolutionary German government had decided on the 17th of October that it was going to sign the armistice terms. Doesn't yet know exactly what the terms will be, but it decides that the war can go and go can cannot be continued. By that stage, I mean Ludendorff and Hindenburg are not going to be there for very much longer because they're going to be sacked. Their view by now is that the war has just got to be stopped. At the beginning of November, of October, sorry, the German High Command's position had been, well, we'll see what terms we can get from the Americans. Maybe there's an opportunity here which is worth exploring for damage limitation. That's, I think, is their how Ludendurg and Ludendorff see it to begin with when they approve the ceasefire request. By the end of October, I think their position is that the war must be stopped as soon as possible for fear that the army gets infected by the revolution. That's their nightmare. Is that they will lose control over the men, over the so over the ordinary soldiers. That'd have been one of the main reasons, which I haven't mentioned earlier. But one another of the reasons for Ludendorff's nervous breakdown is that his his nightmare scenario is that is that they they the army troops will no longer obey them.
Russell:But they are still obeying, aren't they?
David:They are they there is still a functioning military system at the end of October.
Russell:I mean I guess one of the questions I have is is well I I think you've sort of answered it, but you know, the big thing well one of the things that Adolf Hitler says is that, you know, there was a stab in the back, you know, we were betrayed. But I think what you're saying is that whether the revolution had taken place or had not taken place, it was clear they were going to have to they were going to have to come to terms and on whatever terms they could get.
David:That's right. That's right. I think it was. Yeah.
Russell:And so why is the um I mean if it's clear because you've got mass surrenders, you've got the allies are pushing through, why is why is the story of a stab in the back remotely credible to the German people later? Is that just are they just telling themselves stories or or or do they have some reason?
David:If they hadn't been privy to the German archival documents, as we have and this this this discussion, they would have had to read the censored German press. And what they would have seen in the censored German press at the beginning of 1918, the German and the German army seemed to be very successful, and the Germans' allies seemed to have been very successful. The the Italians have been pushed back, the Russians had dropped out, the British and French had attacked repeatedly on the Western Front and failed. Um so it looks as if the military record is still quite good from the German public's perception of the situation on the at the battlefront. And then a situation arises where quite quickly the Germans are driven into accepting peace conditions and armistice conditions which are very unfavourable. For example, I haven't mentioned this, but the actual details of the armistice terms include a requirement that the Germans should evacuate the Rhineland, and Allied troops will come in and occupy it. That's a really major shift in the military balance between the Germans and their opponents. And the Germans will have to surrender a large number hu oh it's thousand thousands of machine guns and artillery pieces, and their six of their battleships will all have to be handed over. So the conditions in the armistice are actually quite severe, deliberately meant to make it impossible for the Germans to start the war again. So the thing is how have you moved in a matter of months from a situation where the German armies seem to be all conquering and successful in every part of Europe, to a situation where these very unfavourable ceasefire terms have been accepted. And that creates the ground where uh it's it's possible to sort for people on the far right to start the agitation saying that this is this is this is phony. This is this wasn't a real military defeat. And the socialists themselves contribute to this. Friedrich Ebert, who I've mentioned as the socialist leader, when the German troops come back and march through Berlin, he says this is an undefeated army, it's coming back. Yeah? And the German high the German Fatherland Party, which is an ultra-right party set up at the later stages of the war, makes a deliberate decision to pin the blame for the defeat on the socialists and on the Jews.
Russell:So in other words, treacherous forces working behind the scenes.
David:Yeah, that the German army hasn't been defeated. What's happened is it's been stabbed in the back by the left and by the Jews at home. And that that that first appears, that what's called the Germans call it the Dolkstoss legenda, the German the um stab in the back legend. This first appears in a Swiss newspaper, actually, in December seven six December eighteen, was very quickly picked up by the um German right wing, and by Hindenburg himself, who in 1919, when testifying to the Reichstag or inquiry into the cause of the defeat, Hindenburg adds his authority to this version of events.
Russell:So Hindenburg isn't just responsible I don't know whether he was responsible in any way for the start of the war, but he's certainly responsible for one of the most damaging uh outcomes of it.
David:Yeah, he he wasn't responsible for the start of the war, no.
Russell:Oh well, he's got that in his favour at least.
David:He was in semi-retirement, I think, in 1914.
Russell:Gosh. Okay, well look, that's been fantastic, uh David. Thank you, uh thank you very much.
David:My pleasure. Enjoy talking to you.