The Ending of World War I: The Road to 11 November

what I thought I would do is look really at the background to the events of 11th of November 1918 and try to give some explanation to something that in many ways is even more mysterious I think how how the war ended is more puzzling and strange set of events really than than its beginning which is already complex and difficult and enigmatic enough so I want to get behind the story of the Armistice and one thing to bear in mind is that it was a surprise and a mystery in many ways to people at the time we talk about 1914 the war beginning in the first place because of a so-called short war delusion that governments and the public in July and August 1914 when crucial decisions were taking we're expecting a war that would last perhaps a matter of months certainly not a war that would last four and a half years by the time we get to 1918 the fourth year fifth year of the war we're looking much more to a long war illusion British cabinets as late as November 1917 is discussing the need to build battleships and battle cruisers that will become available for a war continuing into 1920 Sarah Eric Geddes who had taken over as First Lord of the Admiralty tells the House of Commons in the autumn of 1917 that the country must prepare itself for quote a long war you know that's in November 1917 so the expectation was that it was going to go on for a very much longer period of time than in fact it turned out to do now I want to look I suppose I'll start with a flashbulb moments we don't have many pictures of the Armistice but here is the celebrated scene this is often reproduced from the railway carriage wagon - for 190 from the company international company avec only it was a sleeper carriage built shortly before the war the Armistice as you probably know the signature took place with the German delegation in one railway carriage and the ally delegation in the other drawing up on parallel clearings in the forest of ritand in northeastern France clearing from which the German heavy artillery had pounded the Allied lines and behind them while the war was going on so this is the seeing then and it was a Monday morning the 11th of November 1918 the Armistice was signed at 5:00 it was raining the leaves are falling so it was a mood moody atmospheric kind of event and what the picture shows you of the French led by Marshall Foss well had more to say about and the British led my Admiral Vince who was the First Sea Lord so the top official of the Admiralty so this is an anglo-french event the Germans are not in the picture but interesting you may ask where are the Italians where are the Americans more particularly who also played a major part on the Western Front in the last months of 1918 well I'll try to explain a bit about that mystery about why there are people who are not in this picture as well as there are people who are but that's my starting point then this is the Armistice the ceasefire agreement for the Western Front signed at 5:00 a.m. on the 11th of November taking effect immediately as far as the naval war was concerned but it would take longer to reach the armies so the time when the Armistice actually took effect was of course 11:00 a.m. the eleventh day of the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918 up until 11:00 a.m. so during those six hours the fighting continued and hundreds more soldiers lost their lives now asking why the war ended when it did in some ways is putting the question the wrong way around the real puzzle of course is why the First World War continued for so long as it did even when it turned out to be something wholly different if you like in many ways far far worse going beyond the worst nightmares of those who have begun it four and a half years before and the conventional answer to this is that it became a stalemate which is which is true but I think we need to dig a bit deeper behind this impression of the First World War as being a classic stalemated war it's actually a stalemate in three distinct and overlapping forms first of all it's a military stalemate and this is immediately I guess what most people think about that it's a trench warfare particularly on the Western Front they're actually less so by 1918 it's a situation where defenders are backed up by railways by enormous industrial bases in their home countries by armies millions strong and protected by machine guns barbed wire field guns the panoply of weapons which make it very difficult not impossible for defenders to break through without completely unacceptable cost this being true not only on the Western Front but on many of the other fighting fronts so the first thing if you like then for a variety of reasons of which technology is one and a major part of it it is not possible for either side to achieve a decisive military breakthrough but secondly governments that organize and maintain this war effort are supported by a high degree of consensus at home even so less by 1917-1918 but still fundamentally except in Russia which I will mention the consensus in favor of fighting on stays in place so there is a domestic political stalemate the war can't be ended by military break through but nor can it be ended by revolution at least in the big powers Britain France Germany austria-hungary Italy later on the United States Russia is the exception and thirdly it's a diplomatic stalemate this in some ways is the most puzzling thing of all why is it not possible for governments and their representatives simply to organize a conference in Switzerland meet round a table and say this is stupid none of us expected this we need to liquidate this war and the short answer to that is that the two sides are politically too far apart and the more they go on with the war in many ways the deeper they get into it the deeper the divisions between them become and the greater the sense of insecurity and distrust which had already been growing up of course for a decade or more before 1914 but it comes far far greater once both sides have suffered enormous casualties and there is a kind of trap which closes on the European belligerence by 1917 by 1916-17 by the middle years of the war they have had such heavy casualties that in many ways it becomes much easier to sacrifice the next 50,000 lives and a second when you've already sacrificed fifty a hundred thousand half a million and on the assumption all the time the other thing to bear in mind about all of this is that people did not know at the time how long the war was going to go on so for much of it until about the last year or so there's a series of decisions to carry on for six months a series of incremental decisions to carry on and see see what would happen so these are the underlying factors which make for the stalemate military domestic political and diplomatic the war not be ended by military breakthrough it cannot be ended by revolution it cannot be ended by negotiated compromise so why does it ever end at the end of 1917 that question is still very much pertinent and I've already mentioned the British government's assumptions at the end of that year that it was still in for a very long haul a long haul is made possible of course by America coming into the war in April 1917 and I'll say more about the Americans as I go along because I would say that fundamentally without American entry the best that the Allied side could have extracted from this war would have been a compromise and a compromise that was probably unfavorable so the fact that the Allies achieve a victory even if it's a limited victory in 1918 American contribution is vital to that but the American contribution is very slow to take full effect and during 1917 America's entry into the war is counteracted by a series of other things Russian Revolution mutiny in the French army Britain near to bankruptcy and many of these submarine warfare devastating allies supplies of shipping now all of these things would have happened anyways if you want to run a counterfactual as some historians do I think the most plausible scenario if the Americans had not come into the war would it be offended with some kind of compromise towards the end of 1917 and one that was deeply unfavorable to the Allied side the military stalemate and this is why I've shown you the Passchendaele battlefield probably of October 1917 this taken less as a Canadian picture was of course the Canadians who captured the village of Passchendaele but this shows you the nature of the Western Front fighting at the end of 1917 and at that stage it was still no longer no not apparent at all how the Allies were ever going to break beyond that battle of third Battle of Ypres Tushar army fighting it in 1917 with much heavier weapons more sophisticated tactics and previously but these are matched by the German defensive tactics since the result is much the same the British Army ends up by advancing about six miles so what was reminded here of Churchill's comment in May 1940 after the Battle of Dunkirk and retreat from the continent Churchill saying there to the House of Commons looking back to the first world war the question they asked after three years of disaster and disappointment as he puts it was how were we going to win how are we going to win without a totally unacceptable sacrifice that were destroyed Britain as a great power and that question at the end of 1917 just a year before the armistice had still not been answered now I need to mention Eastern Europe remember I've said the triple stalemate a military political diplomatic drunked keep that as a thread running through the presentation in the east of course that the element in the stalemate that breaks is the political stalemate November 1917 or October by the old Russian calendar Lenin Trotsky and the Bolsheviks seized power in Petrograd here they are in Red Square I think I think it's Red Square she doesn't look very like Red Square but anyway this is a scene ISM haranguing the crowds or Lenin harangue the crowds and Trotsky looking suspicious as well he might you know but this is this is I think of a shot from 1918 now the point here is that a regime has seized power in a key country at the end of 1917 for which the priority is to end the war really at any cost to begin with what they hope was that the revolution would spread westwards when it doesn't then they're unable to turn the civil international political war into internet international civil war between proletariat and bourgeoisie so they'd have to settle for Plan B which is a separate piece the Russians break away from Britain and America and France and sign a separate treaty with the Germans and Austrians and it's worth remembering it is Treaty of brest-litovsk March 1918 and this is what the territorial transfers look like worth remembering this actually when we look at the map of Eastern Europe today yeah but the whole of the orange area here which have been under Czarist sovereignty in 1914 Russia loses control of that doesn't mean its annexed by Germany and austria-hungary but it is turned into central power into buffer States under the Central Powers control including Ukraine where there is a nominally autonomous government by 19:18 that doesn't actually end the hostilities in east that's the other thing to say about it yeah you see the blue line here this is as far as the Germans and Austrians advance by the summer of 1918 so even after the peace supposed peace have hundreds of thousands of Central Powers troops are kept in the East not their best troops but troops that could well have been used elsewhere so this is an one of the reasons for saying that one of the ways were explanations for why the war ends at the time and in the way it does is the mistakes of the Central Powers as well as the strengths of the Allies so there's the brest-litovsk treaty and remembering my triple stalemate it's the political element in the stalemate that fails first in the East once the Bolshevik comes to government comes to power much of the Russian army deserts and goes home and the Russian government therefore cannot put up further military resistance and is obliged to accept the Central Powers term so once you break the political stalemate then the breach in the military stalemate and the diplomatic stalemate follows there is an attempt to prevent this from happening and the attempt is the first thing on the timeline here the president American president here he is addressing Congress on the 8th of January 1918 and unveiling his 14 points George Tomaso the cynical French premier said that the good Lord had only had 10 points to make but President Wilson has 14 the 14th of which is the League of Nations and that gives you an indication that this is meant to be an idealistic peace program idealistic and relatively moderate it's meant to stand out in deliberate distinction to the imperialist war aims that the Allied powers had developed between 1914 and 1917 and which the Bolshevik government had just published a huge propaganda disaster for the Allies even if the German war aims were in practice just as imperialist as the Treaty of brest-litovsk demonstrated now the story of 1918 at one level one thread running through it is the president announces the 14 points these fail to keep the Bolsheviks in the war because they signed the separate peace in march they are also unacceptable to the Germans in the spring but at the end of the year when Germany asks for a ceasefire it appeals to the American president and asks for a piece based on the American program so at the beginning of the year the Germans reject this moderate and idealistic American program at the end of the year they accepted and it becomes the basis on which everybody signs up to the ceasefire they were very conflicting views about what the significance of the 14 points is so what happens between these two dates yeah it's really a tremendously important series of military events and very very dramatic first of all there is a series of German and Austrian offensives between March and July and secondly there is a series of Allied counter-offensives which is probably easiest to show by looking at a map but they're basically the pick the pattern is the Germans and Austrians are on the attack I'll show you the map later on between March and July and from July to November the Allies of counter-attacking so the situation by the autumn in 19th of slide 17 is the Germans have tried an all-out offensive that has failed but they have also lost the ability to stop the Allies advancing defensively and that's the real novelty by comparison with the middle years of the First World War now I'm going to say a bit about Germany in Germany is in a way where we have to concentrate this story just as in the story of 1914 it's the Germans who are making the running but it is crucial to understand that for the war to end both sides need to be willing to stop it just as for the war to start both sides needed to be willing to fight rather than back down in 1918 you need to look at the decisions both on the German side and also on the Allied and American side the two go together the kind of symbiotic relationship between them if you're trying to explain what happens but it is the Germans who take the initiative in 1914 and in 1918 who do we mean by the Germans as always a key question in looking at the First World War one of the questions as the Austrian foreign minister put it in 1914 is who rules in Berlin and the people surrounding Germany found that difficult to answer it's a confused system of government a dominant role is played by 1918 by the military which does not mean that Germany is a military dictatorship it's not a totalitarian stage like the Third Reich in the Second World War but these two men here do have a veto power the key decisions on foreign policy that's Palvin DuPont Hindenburg on the left ooh his chief of the General Staff and Erich Ludendorff on the right to his first quartermaster general who is the dynamic element really the intelligence and the willpower in this combination though Hindenburg is not to be underestimated he's not just a cipher these people have been brought to power to deal with the military emergency in the summer of 1916 they have enormous prior prestige because they defeated or been thought to have played a major part in defeating a Russian invasion of Germany in 1914 fill home the second is afraid of them they have greater popular prestige and heha than he has this shows you I feel like a picture of vilhelm with his generals in 1918 this is not the characteristic picture of vilhelm this is Vil him on the left here then looking older by 1918 he's losing energy losing day-to-day involvement in government which had never been very strong on anyway not a details man a man who's rather remote from governmental processes but if it comes to a confrontation between the military and the civilians in Berlin Vilhelm will knock back the civilians civilians will be forced to resign as key members of the government had been rather than Vilhelm accepting an aggrieved to hindenburg and ludendorff resigning and stepping down so in other words to cut a long story short for a major foreign policy initiative to happen such as requesting a cease-fire hindenburg and ludendorff the OHL the army High Command have to be behind it and have to agree with it which means our starting point for this story is really Saturday 28th the September 1918 and this is the day on which Erich Ludendorff has a nervous breakdown now there is a personal tragedy lying behind this Hindenburg Ludendorff had been under growing strain since the summer since the campaign had been going wrong his a psychologist had been brought in dr. ho Chi Minh I was like this bit Horkheimer recommended that he wouldn't offer should have roses in his study it should go for evening walks in the woods the headquarters of spar in his Beltran he should in the evening after finishing work he should sing hearty German folk songs with his staff officers all of which things he did but none of them really helped very much and he was a science of personality deterioration and Ludendorff was a complex difficult personality moody anyway taken to the drink quarreling with into the Berg so that the personal story is part of it but there are of course much more fundamental reasons why the decision to seek ceasefire is taken and I'm quit if you might like to think of it as in layers there's an issue in the Balkans there's an issue on the Western Front there's a deeper problem of the condition of the German army and of course the condition the domestic situation within Germany just look at them in turn this is a bit could be from the Crimean War almost except for the red cross mark are probably as an aircraft landing strip but this is a member there were British forces fighting in Salonika they landed in Salonika in northern Greece and Garrison the area Macedonia really if I show you a map this may make it to be clear where we're talking about the Salonika front lies across this area here and allied troops have been there since 1915 including British ones there'd been heavy fighting the British war artist and poet Standish and poet Stanley Spencer serves in the sphere but in many ways it's forgotten front until 1918 and then on the 15th of September French and Serbian troops attack here in the area that's now really possible this is a rather blurred map but it shows dab it better and they advance within a couple of weeks they push the Bulgarians back that far and the thing that immediately precipitates student or snake nervous breakdown is a decision by the Bulgarian government to sue for a ceasefire so the track that leads to the end of the war as the track that led to the beginning of the war actually begins in the Balkans Bulgaria is the weakest of the four central powers but it nonetheless matters it matters because when the Bulgarians signed the ceasefire they allow the Allied the right to occupy the whole of the country this means that a wedge is driven between austria-hungary and here and Ottoman Turkey here the Central Powers potentially will be split apart not only that but the Central Powers had occupied southern Romania in 1916 including the oil fields here in blue St if the Allies are able to move up from through Bulgaria and to liberate southern Romania then the Central Powers will be deprived of the main source of oil and Ludendorff's advice to the German government is that within two months much of the German u-boat fleet many of its tanks its lorries will be as a standstill so Bulgaria matters as its for its geographical position and for its connection to Balkan mineral resources nonetheless it past events as in 1916 the Elat the Germans have been able to move troops from the Western Front down to the Balkans to do kind of firefighting in 1918 they can't do that or at least they can't do it quickly enough because they're simultaneously a crisis on the western front so layer one is the Balkans layer two is the Western Front this was just to remind you of how the Western Front is much more mobile in 1918 than it had been between 1915 and 1917 in the middle years of the war the British troops describe the Western Front as the sausage machine yeah in other words it generates hundreds of thousands of casualties but stays stubbornly in place that's more or less the line that were to occupy between 1915 and 1917 in between March and July 1918 the Germans who by the way do not have tanks are very few are able to advance twice more than 50 miles towards the channel ports and towards Paris so these are the so-called Ludendorff offensives of March to July 1918 and these are the Allied counter-offensive so beginning from July this is the dotted line here from July the 18th the Allied forces are driving backwards this is this is where they are at the end of September and at the end of September a concerted series of attacks is launched the Americans starting in the south the British in the middle the Belgians and French from British in the north that's beginning on the 26th of September so the crisis in the Balkans happens at the same time as the biggest battle ever fought on the Western Front is in progress and the Germans being driven back remember what I said before the Germans are in a situation where they are still occupying French and Belgian and Russian territory their present situation isn't hopeless but their future situation is they cannot win the war by an all-out offensive and nor can they win the war by holding the Allies back because between July and November this shows to the November armistice line the Allies advance about a hundred miles and the advance unlike the German one in the spring the Allied advance is sustained and even accelerating as the war approaches its conclusion it's not dramatic by World War two standards but by World War one standards it is that gives you some of the key benchmark dates in the series of allied attacks between the fifth between the 18th of July which is when it starts and the Armistice on the 11th of November this shows you the Battle of amia which was there was a substantial commemoration for this on the 8th of August of this year rather a Manta sized picture from the Australian War Memorial but it shows you Australian infantry moving forward with their artillery behind tanks and I'll come back to tanks in a moment this shows you allied troops after breaking the Hindenburg Line which was done by troops from stoke-on-trent actually from North Midland division on the 29th of September the strongest German prepared defensive position is smashed through by British troops if they can take that they can break through any German position now what's the reason for this shift in the military balance in the Allies favor partly technology this shows you a mark for British tank there are a number of things to say about it of course it protects you if you're an infantryman walking behind it towards machine-gun posts it's reassuring it saves infantry lives the Allies have hundreds of them the Germans only have a few dozen most many of the German tanks are actually captured from the Allies and have iron crosses painted on them but this moves at walking pace moves at about two-and-a-half miles an hour it is a terrible thing for the strewing crew inside to try to steer it is a sitting target for the German artillery on the first day of the battle of amnion a ball the smaller than 400 British tanks go into action by the third day less than a quarter of them are still operational very vulnerable to mechanical breakdown very vulnerable to enemy artillery fire it's a useful supplement it's not a war winning weapon this is much more important heavy artillery by which we mean guns of six-inch caliber or war this is a British MC heavy a heavy gun in action I think the picture is from 1918 by 1918 there were far more of these the British and French and Lee and even the Americans have very much larger numbers of heavy artillery than previously they have huge numbers of shells before the British break through the Hindenburg Line they fire 750,000 shells in 24 hours against the German defenses and they have skilled crews who are able to operate these things and too far them accurately unlike before the Battle of the Somme also unlike before the Battle of the Somme what they're firing is not just high explosive but also gas I shown you this extraordinary picture of German troops and dogs and gas masks just to remind you the war on the Western Front by 1918 is a chemical war on a massive scale nothing like this to be seen again until the 1980s in the iran-iraq conflict both sides firing shells phosgene which is much more lethal than they'd used the beginning of the war in 1915 and mace mainly delivered in the form of artillery shells and very effective in silencing enemy artillery if you could identify where the artillery was which you need air superiority Sopwith Camel the most famous British fighter of the war aircraft don't do much ground attack though they do more by 1918 than previously but what they are vital for is aerial reconnaissance and taking tens of thousands of pictures of enemy trenches and disclosing where the enemy gun positions are so that the Allied guns can open fire without ranging shots so this is a key thing which enables both sides to regain surprise this is one of the reasons why the war becomes more mobile another reason is logistics which is often underestimated in the story of 1918 why is the Western Front where it is the German it's the Germans of course designed the Western Front when they dug in in 1914 and they did so with the trunk railway shown in green here lying behind them the Allies also have a trunk railway system running down from the Channel ports to Paris and then out to Eastern France and Lorraine so the Western Front battles take place between two massive railway thoroughfares by 1918 the Allies are using lorries as well as railways on a very intensive scale the Germans can't they lack Goong they lack enough oil they lack enough petrol they have a much smaller lorry fleet they are much more dependent on their railway system and on the 28th the certain weather day of the arms disappear the German railway system here seizes up they are being attacked at so many points simultaneously that they're unable to move the rail with the reinforcements quickly enough along the railway system behind the lines that's a deliberate strategy and the strategist who saw the importance of railways is the Allied commander in chief on the Western Front the French marshal Ferdinand 4 who all say more about in a moment so underlying factors then that the Allied triumph is partly technological part is strategic behind it lies of course tremendous by 1918 tremendous industrial power primarily in Britain and in France here is a shell production of course there are many pictures of the Venetians effort those 750,000 shells that were fired at the Hindenburg Line were replaced quite quickly British Army is not short of shells nor is the French one of the reasons for this production miracle is that Britain and France particularly are more successful in the Germans in incorporating very large numbers of women probably about 2 million in the British case in the ministries workforce this means that more men can be left at the front whereas the German army is releasing hundreds of thousands of men from its army in 1917 18 to go and serve in the munitions factories German army for that reason doesn't run out of shells in 1918 it runs out of men another reason for the munitions miracle in the back behind the scenes the underlying reasons for the Allied triumphs of course is the war at sea which is often neglected but this shows you have to pay it's a war painting of a British convoy in the North Sea in 1918 by which stage you can see the ships zigzagging as is normal to protect themselves against u-boat attack there over flood they have a destroyer escort and they also hand KACE have actually airships over flying them this combination of things makes convoys virtually invulnerable to German submarine attack and shipping losses in convoy or about 1% been far far higher before convoy was introduced it's not the only reason for the Allied victory at sea but it's a crucial reason and control of the Seas means of course that supplies can be funneled across from North America and so can troops here we have a rare picture of an American troop convoy coming in to abreast in western France in 1918 and these are the people they were bringing now I said that the American war effort is slow the the doughboys as they were called at the time the American infantry was slow to arrive March of 1918 they're about quarter of a million of them in France but by November 1918 there are two million they're coming across the Atlantic at the rate of 250,000 a month in the summer of 1918 and not a single outgoing troop ship American troop ship is sunk so is a tremendous expansion in Ally numbers at the same time as the German army is enormous ly diminishing in numbers and I want to stress before I come to the Germans of course don't forget the French though note the contrast if you like between the appearance of these American troops you know wearing British steel helmets of course and by the way most of their equipment came from France machine guns they're there an aircraft their artillery came from France but here the French koala often written out of the picture after the mutinous of 1917 but the French arm is still very much there and it's still playing a major part in the fighting so one thing I want to stress actually is that this victory that the Allies win on the Western Front and it is a victory it's a victory to which the British and Americans and the French all make indispensable contributions and therefore all have a claim to having key influence on the terms on which the war comes to an end that's very important to remember now the corollary of this is in the German army disintegrates it's that numbered it loses about a million men in the Ludendorff offensives a million casualties between March and July almost another million between July and October it cannot replenish those losses and from 8 August of 1980 very large numbers of German troops are beginning to surrender here they are surrendering at the Battle of ano here's a shot I think taken in the last weeks of the war and here is a celebrated chart put together in neon Ferguson's provocative book but important book called the pity of war which shows the numbers of Germans surrendering each month to the British on the Western Front and you can see her in nineteen seventeen eighteen the numbers are low but from August 1918 onwards they're very high the German army is not just outnumbered and outclassed in equipment its morale is going and Hindenburg and Ludendorff know that and this is another key reason why they feel it's necessary to bring the war to an end yeah as Ludendorff puts it their troops can no longer be relied on if the consequence of defeat is revolutionary unrest within Germany the troops may no longer be able to be dependent on for oppression you need to keep the army intact for domestic political reasons now this leads us into the domestic political route and I said that there are four layers to the German decision to seek an armistice first of all the Balkans secondly the Western Front thirdly the German army is disintegrating fourth of the conditions at home now it's not true that Germany faces at a revolutionary situation in November 1918 though a revolution does in fact break out after the approach is made for an armistice and one thing I do want to stress it's that way round it is not as Hitler and the Nazis later alleged a stab in the back to treason on the home front that causes the defeat the revolution does happen at home but the revolution happens after it has become quite clear that Germany has lost the war because it has appealed for a ceasefire and the High Command have taken the initiative in asking for a ceasefire so why do the High Command do this yeah the situation at home is yes food is short but Germany has faced worse food crises burner in the warned particularly in the winter of 1916 seventeen and it's not an imminent danger of revolution to the left and the progressive forces in Germany are becoming more active what hindenburg and ludendorff intend is a kind of damage limitation strategy to get out of the war before it becomes a complete and utter disaster and the German army is turned into what Ludendorff fears will be a militia and the leads are made so the plan is put together by the Foreign Minister Admiral von hint sir who you can see on the right here an essential part of the plan is to remove the existing Chancellor and the font heartily who you can see on the left and a place in by a liberal max of Barden who will head a government that represents the socialists the Catholics and the progressives and the majority parties of the century on the left in the Reichstag part of the intention behind this is to saddle the left with responsibility for the defeat as Ludendorff puts it the socialists will now sup the broth that they have cooked up for us but it is also meant to appeal to the American president if you carry through a kind of modest regime change within Germany what in circles a revolution from above you will head off the danger of revolution from below if you begin to democratize the government this is important because there's another part of the strategy is to appeal to and the American President Woodrow Wilson when the Germans asked for a ceasefire they send a message via Switzerland not to the Allies in general but to the American president asking him to arrange a ceasefire and to arrange beyond that a peace based on the 14 points and Wilson's subsequent speeches so the Germans see in other words the Americans is the weak link in the enemy chain they can do a deal with Washington then they can get to see safar on favourable terms and perhaps even a breathing space after which they'll renew hostilities again that's the initial German thinking what happens from then on of course is that the German plan goes wrong now I've talked a lot about the German side because the Germans do take the initiative and if the Germans hadn't taken the initiative the war would not have ended when it did but it is also vital the British and Americans and Italians and French grant an armistice and in a way this is the real puzzle why do they do this at a point when at last after months and years of terrible desert disappointment and casualties the war is at last turning in their favor well the key answer to that is you have to go behind the military situation to the politics again and to the fact that the German Americans and the European allies distrust each other almost as much as they distrust the Germans in the first instance Woodrow Wilson of course is the person the American president is the person who the Germans approached Wilson had always harbored the desire that America should have a key role at the peace conference table that's one of the reasons why he taken America into the war in April 1917 they're not the only one that's a key factor for him and he saw America's role as being a kind of arbiter that can distance itself from the British and French as well as from the Germans he distrusts all of these European countries as imperialists all of them were responsible for what he viewed as an evil balance of power arms race military system that had produced the war in the first place he wants to go beyond all of that so he's attractive to him when the Germans approached him and as long as the terms are right he's actually surprisingly willing to end the war in November of 1918 part of the reason for this is money William McAdoo who is the American Treasury secretary and Wilson son-in-law has warned Wilson that even for the United States if the war carries on for much longer it become prohibitively expensive Congress is not raising taxes enough doesn't this sound familiar therefore the government is having to borrow and the war is costing four or five times as much per month as what had originally been expected and there's now a huge American army in France which has to be paid for in French francs under d-dip span sterling because for the ones who are in the UK so it's a drain on the American balance of payments so Finance is a factor and this is discussed in the American deliberations but more important is politics Wilson is worried about the extreme xenophobia and patriotism in the United States which is moving towards nationalists more enthusiasm as the British and French are becoming war weary Wilson tells his advisor Colonel house that did not realized how war mad our people have become if the war goes on into 1919 he fears that his Republican opponents will gain control of Congress in the November midterm elections ya know yes as I sort of sound familiar November yeah this is a midterm election year and the Republicans did in fact get control of course of Congress in November 1918 that II will rightly fears will undermine his ability to broker a moderate peace abroad still more if Germany is so badly beaten that Britain and France are no longer dependent on American help so all of these factors if you like point in Wilson's view in favor of settling the war now rather than going on for much longer if the terms are right and if everybody is willing to accept his peace program the fourteen points so this so what happens is that Wilson does public negotiation with the Germans while the war is still going on between the German Armistice Appeal and the actual signing of the cease fires about another half a million casualties so the fighting is going on at full pace during October and November of 1918 so the problem for the European allies is whether they're going to sign up to a peace based on the fourteen points given that it becomes clear that Wilson the Germans both are they've never been consulted about this program there's a lot of behind the scenes a lot of them muttering as you can well imagine in the British Cabinet in the French among the French and Italian leaders about the fourteen points because the fourteen points are much more moderate if you like than the scale of ambitions that the European allies have Italy's often neglected there's the Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando while the Allies are attacking in the Western Front Italy is attacking in the Alps this is the Battle of Vittorio Veneto when they essentially destroy the austro-hungarian army and four hundred thousand a Habsburg troops of surrender so it's not just in France where the Allies are gaining decisive victories is also in Italy and indeed in the Middle East but the Italian government I think would have preferred to carry on into 1919 but it won't do it if the British and French decide to stop the war now and the British and French do Georges Clemenceau French Prime Minister here since November 1917 the tiger as he's known in France the key thing for the French is that the seats the military terms of the ceasefire give them control of the territories that they want the armistice emerges from a deal the deal on the political as the Allies accept the American 14 points as the political basis of the program with various reservations but basically they accept 12 and a half of the 14 points but the military and technical terms are decided by the Allies and Wilson deliberately leaves that to them so the British Admiralty decides the naval terms Germany will give up all its u-boats and hand over control of his most modern battleships the French marshal Fache who picked his picture I showed you earlier on in conjunction with premier Tim also decides the land terms of the armistice which is that the Germans have to pull back very quickly to the River Rhine so the whole of this area here comes under Allied occupation Alsace Lorraine which of course the French provinces lost in 1870 come under French occupation the Allies gain bridgeheads east of the river the Germans also have to pull back out of Russia and out of Belgium Belgium is a key concern for the British the Rhineland and eastern France is a key concern for the French Russia is a key concern for the Allies as a whole the Germans have to pull back so fast that they have to leave behind much of their heavy equipment and in fact the German army is no longer under the terms of the armistice in a position to renew hostilities so the political terms of the Armistice point in one direction and moderate direction but the military and technical and naval terms point at different direction there is something here to satisfy the European allies as well as the Americans especially from the viewpoint of the European allies its right to stop the war now because if it goes on into 1919 the Americans will dominate it this is Marshall this is general Smuts who's South African Defense Minister and British Cabinet who says in the British cabinet that if the war goes on into 1917 as he puts it the Americans will dictate to the world by 1919 the Americans may have four million troops in France they will dwarf the British and French armies so for different reasons Wilson from one perspective the British and French and the other come to the view that actually politically it makes sense to stop the war now they have conflicting expectations how this will all pan out of course will depend on what happens at the Peace Conference in 1919 now the final question before I stop is why the Germans end up by accepting a much tougher set of terms than initially expected and member hindenburg and ludendorff had started the ball rolling in late September early October thinking they could extricate Germany from the war on pretty favorable and moderate terms we're going to Woodrow Wilson what they are actually presented with on the 4th of November is a much tougher set of conditions which nonetheless they basically accept and this is because German is bargaining position collapses early November and this is where the German revolution does become important though it's not the only thing that comes into play Ludendorff himself is sacked rather cunningly Doong actually by vilhelm wilhelm ii asserts himself and sacks Ludendorff but orders Hindenburg to stay Hindenburg is a good pressure general accepts the order they walk out after they leave the room Ludendorff and Hindenburg never speak to each other again so the link between the two is broken Wilhelm Groener is brought in as Ludendorff's replacement as you can see just looking at the pictures this is a different kind of man this is a realist he knows about logistics he knows that the German Army's is near the point of collapse for lack of supply and his advice very soon to the German government is that it must make peace makes them stop the war at all costs as soon as possible on any terms available so the military veto of a foreign policy is lifted secondly the collapse of German is a lies I could show you many pictures but the key thing here is the breakup of austria-hungary Germany's main ally in the war here's the revolution in Prague but in late October early November there are revolutions also in in the South Slav lands in Poland the Romanians break away the Italians were occupied by Italy all of the subject nationalities of the Austrian and Hungarian halves of the empire break away leaving austria-hungary with under separate governments so austria-hungary essentially disintegrates also at the end of October Ottoman Turkey the remaining central power also signs a ceasefire in many ways that's the direct consequence of the Bulgarian ceasefire which makes it possible for the Allies to attack Istanbul through the Balkans so if Germany fights dawn now it will fight alone and it's at this point that the German revolution comes into play here's the scene on the 9th of in front of the Reichstag this is the day when Phil held the second fleet into exile in the Netherlands and a new provisional government of moderate socialists is formed to govern Germany which soon carry strapped the reforms that establish what becomes the Verma Republic in the 1920s and 30s and the Revolution I could peps talk more in questions about the exact origins of the revolution but it is triggered by the German Navy planning a suicidal action naval action against London and the Thames Estuary the sailors mutiny rather than go along with that as well they might do when they come ashore they joined forces with arms with munitions workers in Kiel set of a Soviet and the red revolution spreads across northern Germany though this is a moderate revolution and a largely bloodless revolution it's not like the revolution the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia more like the earlier Russian Revolution when tsar nicholas ii had been overthrown anyway the combination of all of this then is the german government has to sign the cease-fire now to finish some snapshots brainerd is in minnesota this is the viewpoint from the heartland of america i always put like to put newspapers up just to remind you they know this is not stuff that historians make up this really happened people were reading about this on their breakfast tables in Minnesota and in London and in New York and in Berlin London Paris Armistice signed Germany surrenders Kaiser bill flees to Holland President Wilson says America gains all she fought for perhaps almost from the beginning there were doubts on the Allied side about whether the Armistice have not been premature the person who most eloquently expresses this during the Armistice negotiations as the American commander in chief John Pershing who remembered how the American Civil War had ended in 1865 and the influence of the American Civil War on the conduct of their first world war effort is very important Woodrow Wilson himself remembered the General Sherman's march into Georgia in 1864 and the disruption in the southern states but Pershing who was also from the south and actually also a Republican writes memorandum in late October where he argues that victors or the lesson of histories that victors always underestimate the extent of their triumph and Pershing was not persuaded that the ally should suspicion was the ally should have gone further and demonstrated a more complete success move deeper into Germany or at least insisted on much heart returns quite soon after the Armistice when the Allies realized that the stent of the German Revolution many political leaders such as Lord Milner in this country agree with him but that was not the view taken by the armed allies when they actually took the decision much more influential was for sure I show again here who argues that a war his he puts it of what you fight a war for its results when it's given you the political advantage you need then it's time to stop carrying on into March 1919 spring 1919 he said yes we can win we will defeat the Germans but it will mean another fifty thousand French lives being lost for political purposes that are extras extremely obscure and nebulous and that's the first few which in a largely actually and perhaps surprisingly echoed by Sir Douglas Haig British commander in chief who was also pessimistic about the prospects of a quick and easy victory over the Germans thought they still had considerable fighting power so essentially the French and British take the view that if the terms are right and the Armistice does seem to be offer them the right terms and off of them enough then it's time to bring the war to an end and once they no longer see a political purpose in continuing they all start to talk about casualties it's interesting I've just quoted for sure Ludendorff says how in the war he'd lost two stepsons who he dearly loved once they no longer see a political purpose in continuing then at last they think about the human cost which had been an remained enormous now basically I think that Fache was right in that argument there is enough in the Armistice to make Germany helpless and to enable the Allies to impose the peace treaty on Germany in June 1919 that was a harsh priest treaty but the one thing that can be said in its favor is that if the treaty had been kept enforced it would have been impossible for Germany to start another major war in Europe let's look at the disarmament clauses yeah reducing the German army to a hundred thousand men no air force no poison gas no tanks no submarines no General Staff the problem with the Treaty of Versailles and the way in which the war ended of course is that it looks as if it's a kind of fake it's kind of bogus and this encourages German nationalists among them the Nazis they're not only the Nazis to propagate the myth that the German army had not really been defeated that in fact the heroes of the front have been stabbed in the back by Jews and by communists at home this is the origin of the stab-in-the-back legend the Dahl cross legenda which is highlighted in this German picture of 1924 so I leave you with a picture of London on Armistice Day 1919 this is Whitehall on the 11th of November 1919 an enormous and hushed crowd British government wasn't sure how to commemorate the sinter did the first anniversary of the Armistice but there was a British government decision that there would be a two-minute silence observed throughout the country and the British government the leaders are stunned by the extent of the popular response and what quickly emerges in the early 1920s is a complex of rituals which are still with us today on the 11th of November 1920 the burial of the Unknown Warrior the unveiling of the Cenotaph on November the 11th 1921 the beginning where the British Legion the sale of poppies but always at the heart of that was asylums [Applause] you [Applause] you

Channel: Gresham College

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Keywords: Gresham, Gresham College, Education, Lecture, Public, London, Debate, Academia, Knowledge, gresham college, gresham, gresham lecture, free lecture, free public lecture, public lecture, lecture, education, war, world war 1, armistice day, november 11, allies, Wagon 2419D, military, diplomacy, passchendaele, 1917, 14-18, 1914

Id: kqJsKRtiBOQ

Length: 49min 41sec (2981 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 21 2018