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Allied Commanders Henri Philippe Pétain, Douglas Haig, Ferdinand Foch, and John J. Pershing. Foch was Allied Commander in Chief, the other men commanders of the French Army, the British Expeditionary Force, and the American Expeditionary Force respectively. From The Memoirs of Marshall Foch by Marshall Foch.
Railroad and occupied territory map of western and central Europe, northern Africa, and Turkey. A German postcard map postdating the taking of Riga on the Baltic Sea on September 3, 1917 but before the German advance in February, 1918. The inset shows the Western Front and French-occupied territory in Alsace, then German Elsass.
What do you want here? Turkish and British child soldiers on the Suez Canal. After crossing the Sinai Peninsula during January, 1915, a Turkish army of approximately 12,000 soldiers reached the Suez Canal on February 2, and tried to cross after nightfall, but were driven back. On the 3rd, the British crossed the canal, and struck the Turkish left flank, driving them back. By February 10, the Turks had evacuated the Peninsula.
Postwar postcard map of the Balkans including Albania, newly-created Yugoslavia, expanded Romania, and diminished former Central Powers Bulgaria and Turkey. The first acquisitions of Greece in its war against Turkey are seen in Europe where it advanced almost to Constantinople, in the Aegean Islands from Samos to Rhodes, and on the Turkish mainland from its base in Smyrna. The Greco-Turkish war was fought from May 1919 to 1922. The positions shown held from the war's beginning to the summer of 1920 when Greece advanced eastward. Newly independent Hungary and Ukraine appear in the northwest and northeast.
German postcard map of the Western Front in Flanders, looking south and including Lille, Arras, Calais, and Ostend. In the Battle of the Yser in October, 1914, the Belgian Army held the territory south of the Yser Canal, visible between Nieuport, Dixmude, and Ypres (Ypern). Further north is Passchendaele, which British forces took at great cost in 1917.
"The usual statement on the position of the enemy was made by my Intelligence Officer (Cox). He gave reasons why we think the enemy is preparing to attack on the fronts of our Third and Fifth Armies. I emphasized the necessity for being ready as soon as possible to meet a big hostile offensive of prolonged duration. I also told Army Commanders that I was very pleased at all I had seen on the fronts of the three Armies which I had recently visited. Plans were sound and thorough, and much work had already been done. I was only afraid that the enemy would find our front so very strong that he will hesitate to commit his Army to the attack with the almost certainty of losing very heavily." ((1), more)
"This peace is no peace of understanding and agreement, but a peace which Russia, grinding its teeth, is forced to accept. This is a peace which, whilst pretending to free Russian border provinces, really transforms them into German States and deprives them of their right of self-determination. This is a peace which, whilst pretending to re-establish order, gives armed support in these regions to exploiting class warfare, putting the working class again beneath the yoke of oppression which was removed by the Russian Revolution. This is a peace which gives back the land to the land-lords and again drives the workers into the serfdom of the factory owners. . . . Under the present conditions the Soviet Government . . . is unable to withstand the armed offensive of German Imperialism and is compelled, for the save of saving Revolutionary Russia, to accept the conditions put before it. . . . We declare . . . that we are going to sign immediately the treaty presented to us as an ultimatum but at the same time we refuse to enter into any discussion of its terms." ((2), more)
"March 4 [1918] Posted to 25th R.W.F. to-day. Moved across to Yeomanry Base Camp. Another day of arid sunshine and utter blankness. This place is the absolute visible expression of time wasted at the war. The sand and the huts and the tents and the faces, all are meaningless. Just a crowd of people killing time. Time wasted in waste places. I wish I could see some meaning in it all. But it is soul-less. And it seems an intolerable burden—to everyone, as to me. People go 'up the line' almost gladly—for it means there's some purpose in life. People who remain here scheme to 'get leave'. And, having got it, go aimlessly off to Cairo, Port Said, or Ismailia, to spend their money on eating and drinking and being bored, and looking for lust." ((3), more)
"The Preliminary Peace of Buftea, as the document signed on 5 March [1918] came to be known, can be summarized in the following points.1. Romania cedes Dobrogea to the Danube to the Central Powers.2. The Central Powers will be 'concerned' to maintain for Romania a trade route to the Black Sea via Constanţa.3. Romania 'concedes in principle' the boundary rectifications demanded by Austria-Hungary.4. Romania 'concedes in principle' measures in the economic realm 'corresponding to the circumstances.'5. Romania will immediately demobilize at least eight divisions. When peace is reestablished between Russia and Romania, the remainder of the Romanian army will be demobilized insofar as is not necessary for security on the Russian—Romanian frontier.6. Romanian troops are obligated to evacuate the districts of Austria-Hungary they occupy.7. The Romanian government commits itself to support the transport of troops of the Central Powers through Moldavia and Bessarabia to Odessa.8. The Romanian government commits itself to dismiss Entente military officers serving in Romania." ((4), more)
"The floods of the Yser, prolonged to the west by those of Bergues, Watten and Calais, formed a natural entrenchment covering forty miles of coast, the possession of which was of great importance to Belgium, since it included our bastion of national territory, and also to Great Britain, since it covered the Pas de Calais. With the garrisons of Dunkirk and Calais, as well as the reinforcements which England could not fail to send us, the Belgian Army was capable of defending itself; furthermore, its lines of communication were assured. The naval mastery of the British Fleet guaranteed our supplies and in the last extremity our retreat by sea. From this point on the Sovereign's resolution began to take final form: the Army would defend its positions to the end, with no thought of retirement except to fold back its right wing along the upper Yser to conform with the floods of Bergues and Wattan.Thus prepared, he waited eagerly for the launching of operations. On the 6th March [1918] assault troops of the [German] 214th Division captured the outpost of Reigersvliet; our mounted infantry recaptured it and took 120 prisoners." ((5), more)
(1) Excerpt from the diary of General Douglas Haig, commander of British forces on the Western Front. Although the peace negotiations at Brest-Litovsk between Russia and the Central Powers had broken down, and Germany had resumed the war and its advance into Russia, the Allies expected a massive German offensive in the west bolstered by soldiers redeployed from the east.
1918, the Last Act by Barrie Pitt, page 57, copyright © 1962 by Barrie Pitt, publisher: Ballantine Books, Inc., publication date: 1963
(2) Gregory Sokolnikov speaking on March 3, 1918 at the Brest-Litovsk peace conference between Russia and the Central Powers. Negotiations broke down over the status of Russia's occupied territories, the right of self-determination of those who lived there, and the refusal of Germany to evacuate territory it occupied. Leon Trotsky, then head of the Russian delegation, left the negotiations on February 10, saying Russia would not sign Germany's proposed peace treaty, but would withdraw from the war. Germany resumed the war against a Russia incapable of resisting. On the night of February 23–24 Vladimir Lenin persuaded the Petrograd Soviet and the Central Executive Committee of the Congress of Soviets to approve the treaty, arguing that the country had no means to resist, that Germany would otherwise continue its advance, and that the conqueror's future terms would be even harsher.
Brest-Litovsk: The Forgotten Peace; March 1918 by John W. Wheeler-Bennett by John W. Wheeler-Bennett, pp. 268–269, publisher: The Norton Library, publication date: 1971, first published 193
(3) Excerpt from the diary of Siegfried Sassoon, a British poet, author, Second Lieutenant in the Royal Welch Fusiliers (R.W.F.), and recipient of the Military Cross for gallantry in action. During February, 1918 Sassoon traveled from Limerick, Ireland to Southhampton, England, across the English Channel to Cherbourg, France, continuing across France through Lyon by train to and across Italy's Adriatic coast, following it south to Taranto before crossing the Mediterranean Sea to Alexandria, Egypt. Egypt was the base of operations for British operations in Palestine. Sassoon had been wounded in April, 1917, and by mid-June had concluded that the war begun 'as a war of defence and liberation, [had] become a war of aggression and conquest.' In October he was at Craiglockhart, a psychiatric facility in Scotland, and under the care of W. H. R. Rivers. There he met the poet Wilfred Owen and edited some of his poems, a relationship at the heart of Regeneration, the first book of Pat Barker's WWI trilogy of the same name.
Siegfried Sassoon Diaries 1915-1918 by Siegfried Sassoon, page 219, copyright © George Sassoon, 1983; Introduction and Notes Rupert Hart-Davis, 1983, publisher: Faber and Faber, publication date: 1983
(4) Romania entered the war on the side of the Entente Allies on August 27, 1916, and was overrun by Central Power forces by the end of the year, driven out of Wallachia and Dobruja and back to Moldavia where the Russians held the Allied line. After rebuilding with support, training, and weapons from France, the Romanian army returned to battle in July, 1917, in joint Russian-Romanian offensives. After the Bolshevik Revolution in November, 1917, Romania's position became increasingly untenable even as it laid claim to Bessarabia, a Russian region east of Moldavia with a large ethnic Romanian population. With the March 3, 1918 signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk between Russia and the Central Powers, with German troops on the Black Sea, surrounded by hostile forces, Romania was forced to capitulate.
The Romanian Battlefront in World War I by Glenn E. Torrey, pp. 291–292, copyright © 2011 by the University Press of Kansas, publisher: University Press of Kansas, publication date: 2011
(5) The War Diaries of Albert, King of the Belgians were assembled by General R. Van Overstraeten from the monarch's diary and other sources. This selection is from what Van Overstraeten refers to as his 'general succinct framework' and describes Belgian preparations for the great German offensive the Allies expected in early 1918. In the 1914 Battle of the Yser, the Belgians had inundated the flat coastal land to stop the German offensive. They maintained the tidal flooding for the remainder of the war.
The War Diaries of Albert I King of the Belgians by Albert I, pp. 201–202, copyright © 1954, publisher: William Kimber
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