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American troops parade in Paris, July 4, 1918.
The disparity in the number of nations arrayed against the Central Powers was a common motif, and was updated as the numbers on each side increased. Italy's entry into the war on May 23, 1915 changed the numbers again.Central Powers (top) Sultan Mohammed V of Turkey, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, Kaiser Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary. Allies (center and bottom rows) Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, King George V of the United Kingdom, President Raymond Poincaré of France, King Nikola of Montenegro, King Peter of Serbia, King Victor Emmanuel of Italy, King Albert I of Belgium, Emperor Taishō of Japan.In the center, a poem: Drei gegen Acht, Three against Eight.
Advertising postcard map of European Russia, with inset images of a mounted Cossack lancer, a troika, and St. Petersburg.
War or early post-war photograph of the Belleau Wood American Cemetery. The American assault by U.S Marines and Army infantry to take Belleau Wood began on June 6, 1918 against well-entrenched German defenders. The battle continued for three weeks. The Marine casualties were 113 officers and 5,598 men killed, wounded and missing; the Army 9th and 23rd Infantry lost 65 officers and 3,496 men.
1917 photograph of Austro-Hungarian soldiers posing on the ruins of a destroyed plane, likely a pusher with the engine facing the rear of the plane.
"On July 4, [1918,] American Independence Day, as the culmination of a nation-wide shipbuilding 'crusade' to build transport ships for the needs of the Western Front, ninety-five ships were launched in American shipyards, seventeen of them in San Francisco. That day, President Wilson declared in a speech at Mount Vernon that the Allies had four main aims: the 'destruction of arbitrary power', national self-determination, national morality to be like individual morality, and the establishment of a peace organisation to prevent war.American troops were in action [on] the Somme on July 4, alongside the Australians, when more than a mile of ground was gained, the village of Hamel was captured, and 1,472 German soldiers were taken prisoner. It was during this attack that the first airborne supply to troops in battle took place, when British aircraft dropped 100,000 rounds of ammunition to the Australian machine gunners." ((1), more)
"At the beginning of July [1918] a new assault was expected in Champagne. But the situation had lost its critical aspect. The British Army was able to fill its gaps, the American Army totalled more than twenty divisions and its effectives were increasing rapidly. The Franco-British disposed of an incontestable superiority in tanks and aviation. In fact, for the first time under the far-sighted impulse of General Pétain the French Army was to practise a reasonable defence tactic similar to that adopted by the Belgians on the day of Merckem.No serious danger seemed to threaten the Belgian sector, and the King and Queen could accept an invitation which both gladdened and flattered them: a visit to the British Fleet which was cruising in Scottish waters.On the 5th July Their Majesties flew over the Pas de Calais in a Belgian military seaplane." ((2), more)
"The spring and summer of 1918 were unusually hard. All the aftermath of the war was then just beginning to make itself felt. At times, it seemed as if everything were slipping and crumbling, as if there were nothing to hold to, nothing to lean upon. One wondered if a country so despairing, so economically exhausted, so devastated, had enough sap left in it to support a new régime and preserve its independence. There was no food. There was no army. The railroads were completely disorganized. The machinery of state was just beginning to take shape. Conspiracies were being hatched everywhere." ((3), more)
"The individual soldiers are very good. They are healthy, vigorous, and physically well developed men of ages ranging from 18 to 28, who at present lack only necessary training to make them redoubtable opponents. The troops are fresh and full of straightforward confidence. A remark of one of the prisoners is indicative of their spirit: 'We kill or get killed.' . . .Only a few of the troops are of pure American origin; the majority is of German, Dutch, and Italian parentage, but these semi-Americans, almost all of whom were born in America and have never been in Europe, fully feel themselves to be true-born sons of their country." ((4), more)
"In Germany and Austria the early days of July were a time of scarcity, of explosions of pacifist sentiment in the Reichstag, and of open defiance of edicts of the Imperial Government. The Brest-Litovsk peace and resulting measures taken to include the old dominions of the Czar in the Mittel-Europa trading complex only resulted in spreading the Bolshevik contagion through the kingdoms, dukedoms and city states of the central empires. The imperial confederation that Bismarck cemented was shaking apart. Even Prussia, the cornerstone was cracking.The Kaiser had assured his subjects that Ludendorff's spring offensives would bring peace with victory, but all the German workingpeople could see was an immense new butcher's bill, and hunger and stringency. It was the turn of the Germans to get tired of being killed. They were beginning to listen to Bolshevik agitators whispering that peace lay in defeat." ((5), more)
(1) After four German offensives in 1918, the last ending on June 16, the Allies were anticipating a fifth. It would come on July 15. The Somme River sector had seen the Battle of the Somme in 1916 and Operation Michael, the first of the 1918 German offensives.
The First World War, a Complete History by Martin Gilbert, page 437, copyright © 1994 by Martin Gilbert, publisher: Henry Holt and Company, publication date: 1994
(2) 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' for Albert's entries. Germany had already mounted four offensives on the Western Front in 1918, the last ending on June 14. French General Henri Philippe Pétain had rebuilt the French Army after the mutinies of 1917, both men and materiel. In April 1917, the Belgians repulsed a German attack at Merckem.
The War Diaries of Albert I King of the Belgians by Albert I, page 216, copyright © 1954, publisher: William Kimber
(3) Leon Trotsky writing of Russia in the spring and summer 1918. The Russian Bolshevik Revolution of November 1917, the armistice that quickly followed in December, and the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk signed between Russia and the Central Powers in March all occurred as ethnic groups within Russia and Europe's remaining empires increasingly called for independence. Trotsky continues: 'In the West, the Germans occupied Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, White Russia and a large section of Great Russia.' Ukraine had declared independence, French and British troops were in Murmansk and Archangel, the Czech Legion — former Austro-Hungarian prisoners of war — had crossed Russia and taken Vladivostok on the Pacific, and anti-revolutionary leaders were battling Russia's new government.
My Life: an Attempt at an Autobiography by Leon Trotsky, page 395, publisher: Dover Publications, Inc., publication date: 2007
(4) Excerpt from an official German report on American prisoners of the Second US Infantry Division (5th, 6th, 9th, and 23rd Regiments) captured in the Bouresches sector between June 5 and 14, 1918.
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. VI, 1918, pp. 207–208, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
(5) German Commander Erich Ludendorff mounted four offensives on the Western Front between March 21 and June 14, 1918. They bent but did not break that Allies, and did not end the war with a German victory. There would be one more beginning in mid-July. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed between Russia and the Central Powers in March, 1918 following Russia's Bolshevik Revolution in November 1917.
Mr. Wilson's War by John Dos Passos, page 347, copyright © 1962, 2013 by John Dos Passos, publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
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