On This Day in the Great War

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from the History Channel:

 

February 9, 1918

Ukraine signs peace treaty with Central Powers

 

The first peace treaty of World War I is signed when the newly declared independent state of Ukraine officially comes to terms with the Central Powers at 2 a.m. in Berlin, Germany, on this day in 1918.

 

In the treaty, the Central Powers, which included the governments of Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, Germany and Turkey, formally recognized the independence of Ukraine from Russia. The Central Powers also agreed to provide military assistance and protection from the Bolshevik forces of Russia that were occupying Ukrainian territory. In exchange, the Ukrainian National Republic would provide 100 million tons of food rations to Germany.

 

Ukraine's journey toward a period of independence, brief as it proved to be, began shortly after the collapse of the Russian monarchy in March 1917. Led by Premier Vladimir Vinnichenko and War Minister Simon Petlura, Ukrainian political leaders declared the country a republic within Russia. However, after the Bolshevik Revolution, in which the post-monarchy provisional Russian government was overthrown, Vinnichenko proclaimed the complete independence of Ukraine in January 1918.

 

Bolshevik forces were sent to regain the Ukrainian territory, but after the peace treaty between the Ukraine and the Central Powers was signed, the Russians were forced out by German troops. Within one month of the peace treaty, Russia formally recognized the independence of Ukraine as part of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk it signed with the Central Powers on March 3, 1918. In 1919, though, during the Russian Civil War, the Soviet Union regained the Ukrainian territory and Ukraine became one of the original republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

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from the History Channel:

 

February 10, 1916

U.S. Secretary of War resigns

As a result of bitter disagreements with President Woodrow Wilson over America’s national defense strategies, Lindley M. Garrison resigns his position as the United States secretary of war on this day in 1916.

 

Garrison came to Wilson’s attention while serving as vice-chancellor of New Jersey (in addition to running a legal practice) and was appointed secretary of war in January 1913 upon Wilson’s ascent to the White House. After the outbreak of war in Europe in 1914, Garrison clashed repeatedly with many in the Wilson administration, including the president himself, who regarded the secretary as notably hawkish with respect to America’s national defense.

 

The main disagreement between Garrison and the president arose from the Wilson administration’s long-term national defense plans and short-term U.S. military preparedness in light of the ongoing war in Europe. At the time, Wilson favored a policy of strict neutrality—he would be reelected later that year on a platform promising to keep America out of the war—and he objected to Garrison’s belief that a full-time reserve army should be created as a foundation for national defense and, more immediately, for support in case the U.S. entered the European war.

 

In his letter of resignation to the president, Mr. Garrison wrote, “It is evident that we hopelessly disagree upon what I conceive to be fundamental principles. This makes manifest the impropriety of my longer remaining your seeming representative with respect to those matters. I hereby tender my resignation as Secretary of War, to take effect at your convenience.” Assistant Secretary of War Henry Breckinridge also resigned his position out of loyalty to Mr. Garrison.

 

Newton D. Baker, a former mayor of Cleveland, took over as secretary of war upon Garrison’s resignation. Chosen by Wilson for his pacifist leanings—and distrusted by such hawks as Wilson’s steadfast Republican opponent, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge—Baker would nonetheless help the president reach the decision to enter the war in April 1917, submit a plan for universal military conscription to Congress and preside over the mobilization of some 4 million American soldiers.

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from the History Channel:

 

February 12, 1915

British planes raid Belgian coast

One of the biggest air raids of World War I occurs on this day in 1915, when 34 planes from 3 Squadron RNAS attack the German-occupied coastal towns of Blankenberghe, Ostend and Zeebrugge in Belgium.

 

The attacks, led by the legendary Charles Rumney Samson, targeted the railway stations in Ostend and Blankenberghe as well as railway lines across the coast that were being used by the occupying military forces from Germany. The town of Zeebrugge, which was being used by the Germans as a base of operations for their deadly submarine warfare and from which they planned a blockade of the Belgian coast, was also a major target of the attack.

 

The unprecedented raid was extraordinarily successful, causing massive damage to the occupying military force. Despite coming under heavy ground fire from German anti-aircraft guns, not a single Allied plane was shot down and no Allied lives were lost. __________________

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from the History Channel:

 

February 16, 1916

Russians capture Erzerum

After five days of intense fighting, the Russian army defeats the Third Turkish Army to capture Erzerum, a largely Armenian city in the Ottoman province of Anatolia, on this day in 1916.

 

The Central Powers considered Turkey, which entered World War I in November 1914, a valuable ally for two reasons: first, it could threaten British interests in the Middle East, and second, it could divert Russian troops from the front in Europe to the Caucasus. Unfortunately for the Turks, the success of this second objective resulted in the loss of the Turkish province of eastern Anatolia to the Russians in 1916.

 

The brilliant Russian campaign of February 1916 was commanded by General Nikolai Yudenich, one of the most successful and distinguished Russian commanders of the war. On February 11, the Russian troops began their attack on Erzerum from the south, over Kop Mountain. Once the Russian forces broke through the Turkish lines to the south and began to attack other Turkish positions, the fall of Erzerum seemed inevitable. The Third Turkish Army began abandoning their equipment and retreating from their positions as the Russians entered the city. In total, the Russians captured more than 1,000 guns and artillery and took some 10,000 Turkish prisoners.

 

With the capture of Erzerum, arguably the strongest and most important fortress in the Turkish empire, the Russians had gained the upper hand in the battle for control on the Caucasus front. With this one victory, the Russians captured or controlled all the roads leading to Mesopotamia and Tabriz and, in essence, controlled western Armenia.

 

In the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917 and the subsequent armistice between Russia and the Central Powers, Erzerum was returned to Turkish control. The transfer of power was made official under the terms of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918.

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from the History Channel:

 

February 17, 1915

Zeppelin L-4 crashes into North Sea

After encountering a severe snowstorm on the evening of February 17, 1915, the German zeppelin L-4 crash-lands in the North Sea near the Danish coastal town of Varde.

 

The zeppelin, a motor-driven rigid airship, was developed by German inventor Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin in 1900. Although a French inventor had built a power-driven airship several decades before, Zeppelin’s rigid dirigible, with its steel framework, was by far the largest airship ever constructed.

 

The L-4’s captain, Count Platen-Hallermund, and a crew of 14 men had completed a routine scouting mission off the Norwegian coast in search of Allied merchant vessels and were returning to their base in Hamburg, Germany, when the snowstorm flared up, bombarding the airship with gale-force winds.

 

Unable to control the zeppelin in the face of such strong winds, the crew steered toward the Danish coast for an emergency landing, but was unable to reach the shore before crashing into the North Sea. The Danish coast guard rescued 11 members of the crew who had abandoned ship and jumped into the sea prior to the crash; they were brought to Odense as prisoners to be interrogated. Four members of the crew were believed drowned and their bodies were never recovered.

 

One month earlier, the L-4 had taken part in the first-ever air raid on Britain in January 1915, when it and two other zeppelins dropped bombs on the towns of Great Yarmouth and King's Lynn on the eastern coast of England. Four civilians were killed in the raid, two in each town. Zeppelins would continue to wreak destruction on Germany’s enemies throughout the next several years of war--by May 1916, 550 British civilians had been killed by aerial bombs.

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from the History Channel:

 

February 19, 1915

Royal Navy bombards Dardanelles

On this day in 1915, British and French battleships launch a massive attack on Turkish positions at Cape Helles and Kum Kaleh at the entrance to the Dardanelles, the narrow strait separating Europe from Asia in northwestern Turkey and the only waterway linking the Mediterranean Sea to the Black Sea.

 

With Turkey’s entrance into World War I in November 1914 on the side of the Central Powers, the Dardanelles were controlled by Germany and its allies, thus isolating the Russian navy from the Allied naval forces and preventing cooperation between the two, as well as blocking passage of Russian wheat and British arms back and forth. An attack on the Dardanelles was thus a key objective of the Allies from the beginning of the war.

 

The British, and especially Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, became convinced that it was possible to win control of the strait by a purely naval attack, avoiding the diversion of soldiers from the battlegrounds on the Western Front. At the end of January 1915, the British War Office approved a plan to bombard the Turkish positions at the Dardanelles; the initial bombardments would make way, they hoped, for British forces to move on Constantinople, knock Turkey out of the war and open a path to Russia.

 

Churchill set the date for the attack as February 19; on that day, a combined British and French fleet commanded by Admiral Sackville Carden opened fire with long-range guns on the outer Turkish fortresses, Cape Helles and Kum Kaleh. The bombardments made little initial impact, however, as the Turks were not caught unawares: they had long known an attack on the Dardanelles was a strong possibility and had been well fortified by their German allies.

 

The largely unsuccessful Allied efforts to force their way into the Dardanelles continued over the next two months, including a disastrous attempt on March 18 in which three ships were sunk and three more badly damaged by Turkish mines before the attack had even begun. Over Churchill’s protests, the naval attack was called off and a larger land invasion involving 120,000 troops was planned.

 

On April 25, troops from Britain, Australia and New Zealand launched a ground invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula, which bordered the northern side of the strait. The Turkish defense soon pushed the Allies back to the shore, inflicting heavy casualties. Trenches were dug, and the conflict settled into a bloody stalemate for the next eight months. Some 250,000 Allied soldiers died at Gallipoli; Turkish casualty rates were roughly the same. In December, the exhausted and frustrated Allied forces began their retreat. The last Allied soldiers left Gallipoli on January 8, 1916. As a result of the disastrous campaign, Winston Churchill resigned as first lord of the Admiralty and accepted a commission to command an infantry battalion in France.

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from trenchfighter.com, bookrags.com, history.com

February 21, 1916

Opening of Battle of Verdun

For centuries Verdun had played an important role in the defence of its hinterland, due to the city's strategic location on the Meuse River. Verdun played a very important role in the defensive line that was built after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. As protection against German threats along the eastern border, a strong line of fortifications was constructed between Verdun and Toul and between Épinal and Belfort. Verdun guarded the northern entrance to the plains of Champagne and thus the approach to the French capital city of Paris. In 1914, Verdun held fast against German invasion, and the city's fortifications withstood even Big Bertha's artillery attacks. The French garrison was housed in the citadel built by Vauban in the 17th century. By the end of the 19th century, an underground complex had been built which served as a workshop, munitions dump, hospital, and quarters for the French troops.

Verdun was poorly defended because most of the artillery had been removed from the local fortifications after the stagnation of trench warfare set in, but good intelligence and a delay in the German attack due to bad weather gave the French time to rush two divisions of 30th Corps—the 72nd and 51st—to the area's defense.

After numerous bad weather delays the Battle for Verdun finally started on the 21st February 1916 when at at 7:12 a.m. German time, a shot from a German Krupp 38-centimeter long-barreled gun strikes the cathedral in Verdun, beginning a battle which would stretch on for 10 months and become the longest conflict of World War I. A nine-hour artillery bombardment with 1400 guns firing over 1,000,000 shells started along a 40 km front. Between 16:00 and 17:00 it reached its peak before the infantrymen of the 5. Armee clambered out of their bunkers, through paths cut in their wire and attacked on a front stretching 12 km from Haumont to Ornes. The Germans used flamethrowers for the first time to clear the French trenches. The initial plan was to advance carefully with fighting patrols, feeling their way forward and assessing the work of the artillery, but the VII R.K. on the right flank was overeager and attacked with its full force in the Haumont-Wald.

The neighbouring XVIII A.K. fought its way forward in the Caures-Wald while on the left Flank the III. A.K. took the French second line. By the second day the attack slowed considerably, the only tangible victory being the fall of Haumont, taken by the VII. R.K. On the third day the VII. R.K. continued forward taking Samogneux which allowed the XVIII. A.K. on its left flank to finally get its foothold in Caures-Wald while the 5. I.D. attacked the Wavrille-Wald. On the 24th Febuary the attackers made better, but still too little progress. The VII. R.K had been withdrawn but the 25. I.D. was already attacking height 378. The 21. I.D. was in the forest in front of Louvemont. The 5. I.D. had made it into the Fosses-Wald. The 6. I.D. stood in front of the Caurier-Wald and that evening the 10. R.D. took Ornes.

The Battle of Verdun popularised the battle-cry "Ils ne passeront pas" ("They shall not pass") in France. In both France and Germany it came to represent the horrors of war, similar to the significance of the Battle of the Somme to Britain and the Empire.

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from the History Channel:

 

February 22, 1917

Mussolini wounded by mortar bomb

On February 22, 1917, Sergeant Benito Mussolini is wounded by the accidental explosion of a mortar bomb on the Isonzo section of the Italian Front in World War I.

 

Born in Predappio, Italy, in 1883, the son of a blacksmith and a teacher, Mussolini was well-read, largely self-educated and had worked as a schoolteacher and a socialist journalist. He was arrested and jailed for leading demonstrations in the Forli province against the Italian war in Libya in 1911-12. The editor of Avanti!, the Socialist Party newsletter in Milan, Mussolini was one of the most effective socialist journalists in Europe. In 1912, at the age of 29, he took the reins of the Italian Socialist Party at the Congress of Reggio Emilia, preaching a strict Marxist socialism that prompted Vladimir Lenin to write in a Russian publication that “The party of the Italian socialist proletariat has taken the right path.”

 

Mussolini early on denounced the Great War, which broke out in 1914, as an “imperialist” conflict; he later reversed his position and began to advocate Italian entrance into the war on the side of the Allies. He left the Socialist Party in 1915 over its neutrality, believing that Italian participation in the Great War would boost its claims on recovered territory in Austria-Hungary after the war. Enlisting in the army, Mussolini was sent to the front at Isonzo, on the eastern end of the Italian Front near the Isonzo River, after Italy’s long-awaited entrance into the war in May 1915.

 

The mortar bomb that exploded during a training exercise on February 22, 1917, killed four of Mussolini’s fellow soldiers. He escaped alive, but spent six months in the hospital, where 44 fragments of shell were removed from his body. Discharged from the army after his release from the hospital, Mussolini headed back to Milan, where he started his own newspaper, Il Popolo d’Italia (The People of Italy), in which he published articles attacking those in Italy who voiced anti-war sentiments.

 

In the immediate post-war period, Mussolini and a group of fellow young war veterans founded the Fasci di Combattimento, a right-wing, strongly nationalistic, anti-Socialist movement named for the fasces, the ancient Roman symbol for discipline. Fascism grew rapidly in the 1920s, winning support from rich landowners, the army and the monarchy; the growing strength of Mussolini and his now notorious black-shirt militia led King Vittorio Emmanuel III to invite the charismatic leader to form a coalition government in 1922. By 1926, Benito Mussolini, now known as Il Duce, had consolidated power for himself, transforming Italy into a single-party, totalitarian state that would later, alongside Japan and Adolf Hitler’s Germany, return to the battlefield against the Allies in the Second World War.

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from the History Channel:

 

February 23, 1917

Germans begin withdrawal to Hindenburg Line

On this day in 1917, German troops begin a well-planned withdrawal—ordered several weeks previously by Kaiser Wilhelm—to strong positions on the Hindenburg Line, solidifying their defense and digging in for a continued struggle on the Western Front in World War I.

 

One month after Paul von Hindenburg succeeded Erich von Falkenhayn as chief of the German army's general staff in August 1916, he ordered the construction of a heavily fortified zone running several miles behind the active front between the north coast of France and Verdun, near the border between France and Belgium. Its aim would be to hold the last line of German defense and brutally crush any Allied breakthrough before it could reach the Belgian or German frontier. The British referred to it as the Hindenburg Line, for its mastermind; it was known to the Germans as the Siegfried Line.

 

In the wake of exhausting and bloody battles at Verdun and the Somme, and with the U.S edging ever closer to entering the war, Germany's leaders looked to improve their defensive positions on the Western Front. The withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line meant that German troops were removed to a more uniform line of trenches, reducing the length of the line they had to defend by 25 miles and freeing up 13 army divisions to serve as reserve troops. On their way, German forces systematically destroyed the land they passed through, burning farmhouses, poisoning wells, mining abandoned buildings and demolishing roads.

 

The German command correctly estimated that the move would gain them eight weeks of respite before the Allies could begin their attacks again; it also threw a wrench into the Allied strategy by removing their army from the very positions that British and French joint command had planned to strike next. After the withdrawal, which was completed May 5, 1917, the Hindenburg Line, considered impregnable by many on both sides of the conflict, became the German army's stronghold. Allied armies did not break it until October 1918, one month before the armistice.

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from the History Channel:

 

 

February 24, 1917

British troops recapture Kut in Mesopotamia

The Allied war against Turkish forces gains momentum (and ground) in Mesopotamia as British and Indian troops move along the Tigris River in early 1917, recapturing the city of Kut-al-Amara and taking 1,730 Turkish prisoners on February 24.

 

Ten months after nearly 12,000 British and Indian troops had been captured there—considered by many the most humiliating surrender in the history of the British army—Kut fell into the hands of a British corps commanded by Sir Frederick Maude. After being appointed commander of the Tigris Corps in Mesopotamia in July 1916 and of the entire Mesopotamian front a month later, Maude had immediately begun to reorganize and re-supply the troops in the region in preparation for a renewed offensive against Kut.

 

In early January, Maude's 150,000 troops launched their attacks on Khadairi Bend, a heavily fortified town on the Tigris north of Kut. It fell on January 29, and the British troops continued onward to the main offensive, the Second Battle of Kut, which began with attacks on both Turkish flanks on February 17.

 

Overwhelmed, Turkish forces under commander Karabekir Bey retreated from Kut on February 24. They were pursued by a flotilla of British naval gunboats, including the Mantis, Moth and Tarantula. Outrunning their counterparts on the ground, the crew of the British ships found themselves under fire from four Turkish vessels some 30 kilometers north of Kut at Nahr-al-Kalek. In the gun battle that followed, the British soundly defeated the Turks, destroying three of the Turkish ships and capturing the fourth, the former British monitor ship Firefly.

 

Encouraged by their victory at Kut, Maude's forces pushed on towards Baghdad, which would fall on March 11.

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from Robert E. Duchesneau, the History Channel:

 

February 25, 1916

Fort Douaumont falls

On February 25, 1916, German troops seize Fort Douaumont, the most formidable of the forts guarding the walled city of Verdun, France, four days after launching their initial attack. The Battle of Verdun will become the longest and bloodiest conflict of World War I, lasting 10 months and resulting in over 700,000 total casualties.

 

Fort Douaumont was originally formidably armed. Near the east end was the largest weapon in the fort, a single 155mm gun in a retractable turret. The gun was hinged at the front end and completely enclosed in the turret, leaving no vulnerable protruding barrel. The turret could be lowered into the fort for complete protection. It was counterweighted so two men could perform this operation. This, like the rest of the fort, proved all but invulnerable to the heaviest artillery used in the Great War. In the center of the fort was a twin 75mm retractable turret, basically a smaller version of the 155mm system. Also on the roof were two or three pop-up machine-gun cupolas, and several thick observation domes, with narrow vision slits so the enemy could be targeted.

 

At the rear corners of the pentagon, facing forward and outward, were the "casemates de Bourges". These held three 75mm guns each in a staggered arrangement, for flank protection. Down in the ditch, at each corner, were the counterscarp casemates. These were large pillboxes built into the outer wall of the ditch, holding 37mm revolver-cannon and machine guns to defeat any enemy therein. The casemates were accessed by tunnels which descended under the ditch. Branching off of these tunnels were listening tunnels, used to detect enemy attempts to undermine the fort.

 

By 1916 the forts of Verdun were in a sorry state to meet an attack. It had been assumed by the French high command that the era of fixed defenses was over, and the forts had been treated accordingly. They had been stripped of all armament save the turret guns, whose unique construction precluded their use in other roles. No machine guns, no revolver-cannon remained. Their garrisons were mostly middle-aged reservists, under the command of the city's military governor and not the field army. Although Fort Douaumont had only about 40 men in it, a few weeks prior to the battle the fort's commander had refused reinforcement from the regulars.

 

On February 25th, the Germans attacked towards Fort Douaumont. The garrison adopted a turtle-like approach to the onslaught. Even though giant 420mm "Big Bertha" shells were crashing into the roof, they seem to have assumed they would not be attacked due to the fort's formidable reputation. Only the 155mm turret was manned, firing perfunctorily on previously computed targets that had probably moved on. None of the observation domes was manned, so the enemy's approach could not be detected. The bulk of the garrison was attending a training lecture.

 

Advance elements of the German 24th Brandenburg Division approached, among them a squad of about 10 pioneers (combat engineers) led by Pioneer-Sergeant Kunze. He noticed the general lack of activity around the fort, and the ill-directed nature of its firing, and decided to investigate. Peering over the edge of the fort's ditch, he saw no opposition, and proceeded to have his squad drop down into it. Once in the ditch, Kunze and about four others were able to enter the fort through an empty revolver-cannon port by standing on the shoulders of the other men. The Germans proceeded up the communicating tunnel into the main part of the fort. Soon they encountered and captured a group of four Frenchmen who had been belatedly sent to man the twin 75mm turret. They proceeded to the 155mm turret, capturing its crew as well. Leaving the others to guard the prisoners, Kunze proceeded alone towards the fort's rear exit. He came upon the lecture room with most of the garrison in it. Reacting quickly, he slammed and bolted the room's steel door. Kunze had all but single-handedly captured Verdun's most powerful and strategically located fortress! On the way to rejoin his pioneers, Kunze came upon the fort's well-stocked pantry, and a cook. He then recalled that he hadn't had a decent meal in quite some time, and may well have missed his meager soldier's breakfast that day. Covering the cook with a pistol, Kunze sat down and ate his fill!

 

Soon, other groups of Brandenburgers noticed that the fort had stopped firing. By this time, a "Big Bertha" shell had knocked down part of the ditch wall, making it easier to enter. Two other groups entered and occupied Fort Douaumont in short order. A lieutenant leading one of these groups wrote up a very self-serving after-action report, and for a time was hailed as the "Hero of Douaumont". Kunze initially concealed his involvement, because he feared being disciplined for taking time out for his meal.

 

The German capture of Fort Douaumont greatly assisted their further prosecution of the battle. It gave them an invulnerable shelter for men, ammunition, and supplies, just behind the front line. Normally, French artillery fire would have prevented the concentration of reinforcements and supplies so near the fighting. But even repeated direct hits by the heaviest French artillery (340mm battleship-type guns and 370mm mortars) made little impression on the fort. The Germans came to refer to the place as "Old Uncle Douaumont".

 

The battle stretched on and on, with devastating casualties on both sides. As German resources were diverted to fight the British at the Somme and the Russians on the Eastern Front, French forces gradually regained much of the ground they had lost. Fort Douaumont was recaptured on October 24, 1916; Fort Vaux on November 2. Barely six weeks later, on December 18, German commander Paul von Hindenburg (who had replaced Falkenhayn in July) finally called a halt to the German attacks, ending the Battle of Verdun after 10 months and a total of over 200,000 lives lost.

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from the History Channel:

 

February 26, 1917

President Wilson learns of Zimmermann Telegram

In a crucial step toward U.S. entry into World War I, President Woodrow Wilson learns of the so-called Zimmermann Telegram, a message from German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann to the German ambassador to Mexico proposing a Mexican-German alliance in the event of a war between the U.S. and Germany.

 

On February 24, 1917, British authorities gave Walter Hines Page, the U.S. ambassador to Britain, a copy of the Zimmermann Telegram, a coded message from Zimmermann to Count Johann von Bernstorff, the German ambassador to Mexico. In the telegram, intercepted and deciphered by British intelligence in late January, Zimmermann instructed his ambassador, in the event of a German war with the United States, to offer significant financial aid to Mexico if it agreed to enter the conflict as a German ally. Germany also promised to restore to Mexico the lost territories of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.

 

The State Department promptly sent a copy of the Zimmermann Telegram to President Wilson, who was shocked by the note’s content and the next day proposed to Congress that the U.S. should start arming its ships against possible German attacks. Wilson also authorized the State Department to publish the telegram; it appeared on the front pages of American newspapers on March 1. Many Americans were horrified and declared the note a forgery; two days later, however, Zimmermann himself announced that it was genuine.

 

The Zimmermann Telegram helped turn the U.S. public, already angered by repeated German attacks on U.S. ships, firmly against Germany. On April 2, President Wilson, who had initially sought a peaceful resolution to World War I, urged immediate U.S. entrance into the war. Four days later, Congress formally declared war against Germany.

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from the History Channel:

 

February 29, 1916

Alcantara and Grief sink in North Sea battle

On the afternoon of February 29, 1916, both the British armed merchant ship Alcantara and the German raider Grief sink after engaging each other in a close-range battle on the North Sea.

 

The German raider Grief was in disguise, flying under the Norwegian flag and with Norwegian colors displayed on its sides, when it attempted to run a British blockade. The Alcantara, still under the impression that the Grief was a Norwegian shipping vessel, was sent to investigate. The Grief did not respond to repeated attempts at communication from Captain Thomas E. Wardle of the Alcantara and continued heading northeast. When Captain Wardle ordered the ship to stop in order to be inspected, the crew of the Grief quickly lowered the Norwegian colors and raised the German flag before it opened fire on the surprised crew of the Alcantara, who quickly returned fire.

 

The battle raged for 12 agonizing minutes at close range. The Alcantara lost 74 men in the battle; the Grief lost nearly 200. By the time a second British armed merchant ship, the Andes, arrived on the scene, both ships had been badly damaged. On fire and sinking quickly, the desperate Grief fired one final torpedo, striking the Alcantara. Both ships eventually sank. The crew of the Andes picked up the survivors of both ships, taking more than 120 German prisoners.

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from the History Channel:

 

March 1, 1917

Zimmermann Telegram published in United States

On this day in 1917, the text of the so-called Zimmermann Telegram, a message from the German foreign secretary, Arthur Zimmermann, to the German ambassador to Mexico proposing a Mexican-German alliance in the case of war between the United States and Germany, is published on the front pages of newspapers across America.

 

In the telegram, intercepted and deciphered by British intelligence in January 1917, Zimmermann instructed the ambassador, Count Johann von Bernstorff, to offer significant financial aid to Mexico if it agreed to enter any future U.S-German conflict as a German ally. If victorious in the conflict, Germany also promised to restore to Mexico the lost territories of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.

 

U.S. President Woodrow Wilson learned of the telegram's contents on February 26; the next day he proposed to Congress that the U.S. should start arming its ships against possible German attacks. He also authorized the State Department to make public the Zimmermann Telegram. On March 1, the news broke. Germany had already aroused Wilson's ire—and that of the American public—with its policy of unrestricted submarine warfare and its continued attacks against American ships. Some of those in the United States who still held out for neutrality at first claimed the telegram was a fake. This notion was dispelled two days later, when Zimmermann himself confirmed its authenticity.

 

Public opinion in the United States now swung firmly toward American entrance into World War I. On April 2, Wilson went before Congress to deliver a message of war. The United States formally entered the conflict four days later.

 

 

from Daily Third Reich History:

 

March 2, 1917

Tsar Abdicates

Nicholas II, the Tsar of Russia, abdicates. His family had ruled Russia for nearly three hundred years. A provisional government under Georgy Lvov is formed. Tsar Nicholas II's Abdication Proclamation: "In the days of the great struggle against the foreign enemies, who for nearly three years have tried to enslave our fatherland, the Lord God has been pleased to send down on Russia a new heavy trial. Internal popular disturbances threaten to have a disastrous effect on the future conduct of this persistent war. The destiny of Russia, the honour of our heroic army, the welfare of the people and the whole future of our dear fatherland demand that the war should be brought to a victorious conclusion whatever the cost. The cruel enemy is making his last efforts, and already the hour approaches when our glorious army together with our gallant allies will crush him. In these decisive days in the life of Russia, We thought it Our duty of conscience to facilitate for Our people the closest union possible and a consolidation of all national forces for the speedy attainment of victory. In agreement with the Imperial Duma We have thought it well to renounce the Throne of the Russian Empire and to lay down the supreme power. As We do not wish to part from Our beloved son, We transmit the succession to Our brother, the Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich, and give Him Our blessing to mount the Throne of the Russian Empire. We direct Our brother to conduct the affairs of state in full and inviolable union with the representatives of the people in the legislative bodies on those principles which will be established by them, and on which He will take an inviolable oath. In the name of Our dearly beloved homeland, We call on Our faithful sons of the fatherland to fulfil their sacred duty to the fatherland, to obey the Tsar in the heavy moment of national trials, and to help Him, together with the representatives of the people, to guide the Russian Empire on the road to victory, welfare, and glory. May the Lord God help Russia!"

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from Daily Third Reich History:

 

March 3, 1917

 

Tsar Abdicates

 

With the Russian Tsar, Nicholas II, having abdicated on the previous day in favor of Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich, the latter publishes his own manifesto: "A heavy burden has been laid on me by my brother's will in transferring to me the imperial throne of All Russia at a time of unprecedented war and unrest among the people. Inspired by the thought common to the whole nation, that the well-being of our homeland comes above all, I have taken the hard decision to accept supreme power only in the event that it shall be the will of our great people, who in nationwide voting must elect their representatives to a Constituent Assembly, establish a new form of government and new fundamental laws for the Russian State. Therefore, calling on God's blessing, I ask all citizens of the Russian State to obey the provisional government which has been formed and been invested with complete power on the initiative of the State Duma, until a Constituent Assembly, to be convened in the shortest possible time on the basis of general, direct, equal, secret ballot, expresses the will of the people in its decision on a form of government."

 

 

from the History Channel:

 

March 3, 1918

Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

On March 3, 1918, in the city of Brest-Litovsk, located in modern-day Belarus near the Polish border, Russia signs a treaty with the Central Powers ending its participation in World War I.

 

Russia's involvement in World War I alongside its allies, France and Britain, had resulted in a number of heavy losses against Germany, offset only partially by consistent victories against Austria-Hungary. Defeat on the battlefield fed the growing discontent among the bulk of Russia's population, especially the poverty-stricken workers and peasants, and its hostility towards the imperial regime, led by the ineffectual Czar Nicholas II. This discontent strengthened the cause of the Bolsheviks, a radical socialist group led by Vladimir Lenin that was working to harness opposition to the czar and turn it into a sweeping revolution that would begin in Russia and later, he hoped, spread to the rest of the world.

 

The February Revolution broke out in early March 1917 (or February, according to the Julian calendar, which the Russians used at the time); Nicholas abdicated later that month. After Lenin's return from exile (aided by the Germans) in mid-April, he and his fellow Bolsheviks worked quickly to seize power from the provisional government, led by Alexander Kerensky, Russia's minister of war. On November 6, aided by the Russian military, they were successful. One of Lenin's first actions as leader was to call a halt to Russian participation in the war.

 

An armistice was reached in early December 1917 and a formal cease-fire was declared December 15, but determining the terms of peace between Russia and the Central Powers proved to be far more complicated. Negotiations began at Brest-Litovsk on December 22. Leading their respective delegations were Foreign Ministers Leon Trotsky of Russia, Baron Richard von Kuhlmann of Germany and Count Ottokar Czernin of Austria.

 

In mid-February, the talks broke down when an angry Trotsky deemed the Central Powers' terms too harsh and their demands for territory unacceptable. Fighting resumed briefly on the Eastern Front, but the German armies advanced quickly, and both Lenin and Trotsky soon realized that Russia, in its weakened state, would be forced to give in to the enemy terms. Negotiations resumed later that month and the final treaty was signed on March 3.

 

By the terms of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Russia recognized the independence of Ukraine, Georgia and Finland; gave up Poland and the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to Germany and Austria-Hungary; and ceded Kars, Ardahan and Batum to Turkey. The total losses constituted 1 million square miles of Russia's former territory; a third of its population or 55 million people; a majority of its coal, oil and iron stores; and much of its industry. Lenin, who bitterly called the settlement "that abyss of defeat, dismemberment, enslavement and humiliation," was forced to hope that the spread of world revolution—his greatest dream—would eventually right the wrongs done at Brest-Litovsk.

 

 

 

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from the History Channel:

 

March 6, 1916

New German attacks at Verdun: Battle of the Flanks

During a punishing snowstorm, the German army launches a new attack against French forces on the high ground of Mort-Homme, on the left bank of the Meuse River, near the fortress city of Verdun, France, on this day in 1916. The Battle of Verdun began February 21, 1916, with a German bombardment on the symbolic city of Verdun, the last French stronghold to fall during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. Though the Germans had advanced speedily since the start of their advance, capturing Verdun's major protective fort, Fort Douaumont, on February 25, the French were by no means ready to give way, and the battle soon settled into a stalemate, with heavy casualties on both sides. On the night of Douaumont's capture, General Philippe Petain took over the French command of the Verdun sector, vowing to hold the fort at all costs and inflict the maximum number of German casualties in the process. The German objective was similar: in the words of General Erich von Falkenhayn, chief of the general staff, they aimed to "bleed the French white." Knowing the Allies planned to launch a major offensive at the Somme River that July, the German high command was determined to keep French troops and resources devoted to the defense of Verdun throughout the spring. To do this, Falkenhayn determined that he needed to change the focus of the German attacks, shifting them from Verdun and the inner ring of forts that protected it—the core of Petain's defensive strategy—to the flanks of the French lines surrounding the city.

 

To that end, on March 6, after receiving fresh artillery supplies, the Germans attacked along the west bank of the Meuse, beginning the so-called "Battle of the Flanks" with a preliminary artillery bombardment every bit as intense as the one of February 21. Although under heavy fire from French artillery positions, the Germans managed to cross the river at Brabant and Champneuville to step up their assault on Mort-Homme, which held, though 1,200 French soldiers were captured over the course of two days' fighting. The Germans made good progress in the area in general, however, capturing nearby positions before the French began their aggressive counterattacks. The struggle for Mort-Homme itself went on for more than a month, with thousands dying on both sides of the line, but the Germans never captured the position.

 

Fighting at Verdun would continue for 10 months, making it the longest battle of World War I. Paul von Hindenburg—who replaced Falkenhayn that summer—finally called a halt to the German attacks on December 18, after more than a million total casualties had been suffered by German and French troops.

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from the History Channel:

 

March 7, 1918

 

Finland Signs Treaty with Germany

 

 

Four days after Russia signs a humiliating peace treaty with the Central Powers at Brest-Litovsk, the newly declared independent state of Finland reaches a formal peace settlement with Germany.

 

Though Finland—a former Swedish duchy ceded to Russian control in 1809, when Russia's Czar Alexander I attacked and occupied it—did not participate directly in the First World War, Russian troops were garrisoned in the country from the beginning of the conflict. For Finland, the war provided the ultimate opportunity for an emerging nation: independence.

 

In 1917, with Russia struggling on the battlefield against Germany and in the throes of internal revolution, Finland saw its chance. On November 15, 1917, a newly elected Finnish parliament announced it was assuming "all powers formerly held by the Czar-Grand Duke"—Nicholas II, who had abdicated the previous March. On December 6, barely a month after Vladimir Lenin's Bolsheviks seized power in Petrograd (later St. Petersburg), the parliament voted to make Finland an independent republic.

 

Almost immediately, however, conflict broke out within the nascent nation between the radical socialists—supporters of the Bolsheviks in Russia—and non-socialists. With government forces working to disarm and expel the remaining Russian troops stationed in Finland, the radical socialist Red Guard rebelled in late January 1918, terrorizing and killing civilians in their attempt to spark a Bolshevik-style revolution. The clash between the Reds and the Whites, as Finnish government troops were known, ended in victory by the government, due in part to the assistance of German troops sent by the kaiser to southern Finland.

 

On March 3, 1918, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was concluded, depriving Lenin's new Soviet state of no less than 1 million square miles of territory that had been part of imperial Russia, including Finland, which was recognized in the treaty by both Russia and the Central Powers as an independent republic. As stated in the treaty, "Finland…will immediately be cleared of Russian troops and the Russian Red Guard, and the Finnish ports of the Russian fleet and of the Russian naval forces….Russia is to put an end to all agitation or propaganda against the Government or the public institutions of Finland." Four days later, the Finnish government signed a separate treaty with Germany, confirming its independence but also solidifying a close relationship and promising German support for Finland to help the new state preserve order.

 

That close relationship was confirmed the following October, when conservative forces in Finland decided to establish monarchal rule in the country, giving the throne to Frederick, a German prince. One month later, however, when the war ended in the defeat of the Central Powers, it no longer seemed a viable choice: Germany itself was no longer a monarchy, Kaiser Wilhelm having abdicated on November 9, and it was certain that the victorious Allies would not look kindly upon a German prince on the Finnish throne. Frederick abdicated on December 14. The Treaty of Versailles, signed in June 1919, recognized Finland's hard-won independence; that July, the Finnish parliament adopted a new republican constitution and Kaarlo J. Stahlberg, a liberal, was elected as the country's first president.

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from the History Channel:

 

March 8, 1917

 

Revolution in Russia

 

 

 

In Russia, the February Revolution (known as such because of Russia's use of the Julian calendar) begins on this day in 1917, when riots and strikes over the scarcity of food erupt in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg).

By 1917, most Russians had lost faith in the leadership ability of the czarist regime. Government corruption was rampant, the Russian economy remained backward and Czar Nicholas II had repeatedly dissolved the Dumas, the Russian parliamentary groups established to placate the masses after the Revolution of 1905, each time they opposed his will. But the immediate cause of the February Revolution—the first phase of the more sweeping Russian Revolution of 1917—was Russia's disastrous involvement in World War I. Militarily, imperial Russia was no match for industrialized Germany. Russian troops were shockingly ill-equipped for fighting, and Russian casualties were greater than those sustained by any nation in any previous war. Meanwhile, the Russian economy was hopelessly disrupted by the costly war effort, and moderates joined Russian radical elements in calling for the overthrow of the czar.

 

On March 8, 1917, demonstrators clamoring for bread took to the streets of the Russian capital of Petrograd. Supported by 90,000 men and women on strike, the protesters clashed with police, refusing to leave the streets. On March 10, the strike spread among Petrograd's workers, and irate mobs of workers destroyed police stations. Several factories elected deputies to the Petrograd Soviet ("council") of workers, following the model devised during the Revolution of 1905.

 

On March 11, the troops of the Petrograd army garrison were called out to quell the uprising. In some encounters, regiments opened fire, killing demonstrators, but the protesters kept to the streets, and the troops began to waver. That day, Nicholas again dissolved the Dumas. When the frustrated Russian army at Petrograd unexpectedly switched their support to the demonstrators, the imperial government was forced to resign and a provisional government was established. Three days later, Nicholas formally abdicated his throne, effectively ending nearly four centuries of czarist rule in Russia.

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from the History Channel:

 

March 9, 1916

Germany Declares War on Portugal

 

On this day in 1916, Germany declares war on Portugal, who earlier that year honored its alliance with Great Britain by seizing German ships anchored in Lisbon's harbor. Portugal became a republic in 1910 after a revolution led by the country's military toppled King Manuel II (his father, King Carlos, and elder brother had been assassinated two years earlier). A liberal constitution was enacted in 1911, and Manuel JosÉ de Arriaga was elected as the republic's first president.

 

With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Portugal became increasingly anxious about the security of its colonial holdings in Angola and Mozambique. In order to secure international support for its authority in Africa, Portugal entered the war on the side of Britain and the Allies. Its participation was at first limited to naval support. In February 1917, however, Portugal sent its first troops—an expeditionary force of 50,000 men—to the Western Front. They saw action for the first time in Belgium on June 17 of that year.

 

One notable battle in which Portuguese forces took part was the Battle of Lys, near the Lys River in the Flanders region of Belgium, in April 1918. It was part of the major German offensive—the last of the war—launched that spring on the Western Front. During that battle, one Portuguese division of troops was struck hard by four German divisions; the preliminary shelling alone was so heavy that one Portuguese battalion refused to push forward into the trenches. All told, the victorious Germans took more than 6,000 prisoners in that conflict and were able to push through enemy lines along a three-and-a-half mile stretch. By the time World War I ended, a total of 7,000 Portuguese soldiers had died in combat.

 

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from the History Channel:

 

March 10, 1917

Turkish Troops Evacuate Baghdad

 

Less than two weeks after their victorious recapture of the strategically placed city of Kut-al-Amara on the Tigris River in Mesopotamia, British troops under the regional command of Sir Frederick Stanley Maude bear down on Baghdad, causing their Turkish opponents to begin a full-scale evacuation of the city on the evening of March 10, 1917. Shortly after receiving control of regional operations in Mesopotamia in the summer of 1916, Maude began to reorganize and re-supply his troops in preparation for a renewed offensive. The central target of the operation would be the city of Kut, which had been captured by the Turks in April 1916 along with 10,000 British and Indian soldiers under the command of Sir Charles Townshend, a devastating defeat for Allied operations in the region. In January 1917, Maude's 150,000 troops set out from the regional command headquarters at Basra, located south of Kut near the junction of the Tigris with the Euphrates River, launching the offensive that would culminate in the recapture of Kut on February 24.

 

In the wake of their success at Kut, Maude's forces paused briefly while waiting for confirmation from headquarters in London to continue their offensive. Operations were not renewed until March 5—a pause that gave Turkish commander in chief Khalil Pasha some time to consider his options for mounting a defense of Baghdad, the capital of the Ottoman Empire's southern region. In the end, Pasha was indecisive—after first beginning preparations for an offensively minded forward assault on approaching Allied forces, he decided instead to fall back and concentrate his troops near Baghdad itself. He therefore stationed the Turkish Sixth Army some 35 miles to the south of the city, near the junction of the Tigris with the Diyala River.

 

In the absence of significant reserves, the Turks were vastly outnumbered, with only 9,500 soldiers facing 45,000 British and Indian troops. Maude's troops reached the Diyala on March 8, mounting their first assault on the Turkish positions the next morning, which Pasha and his men successfully repelled. After struggling to cross the fast-moving Diyala, Maude decided to shift his troops and cross the river at a more northern point. Alerted to enemy movements by German reconnaissance aircraft, Pasha mirrored his movements, sending the bulk of his forces to meet the Allied soldiers. He left a single regiment to hold the original defensive position at the Diyala, which was quickly and decisively crushed by British and Indian forces with a sudden attack on March 10. Stunned, Pasha ordered his troops to retreat. By the end of the day, the evacuation of Baghdad was underway.

 

After marching more than 100 miles in 15 days, Maude's troops entered Baghdad on March 11 without a struggle, taking 9,000 prisoners from the retreating Ottoman army amid cheers from the city's 140,000 occupants. The Allied victory in Baghdad marked only the beginning of the struggle over who would control the oil-rich region of Mesopotamia (the area between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, now Iraq and eastern Syria). The British government had earlier promised a number of Arab leaders that their people would receive their independence if they rebelled against Turkish rule; a subsequent uprising in June 1916 was led by Faisal Husein and partially engineered by the British, including Colonel T.E. Lawrence (later known as "Lawrence of Arabia").

 

After World War I ended in November 1918, however, the Treaty of Versailles and the newly created League of Nations gave Britain a mandate to govern in Mesopotamia, and the British and French governments issued a joint declaration stating their intention to work towards establishing independent Arab governments in the former Ottoman states. This was not enough, however, for the Arabs in Mesopotamia, who began an armed uprising in 1920 against British occupation forces in Baghdad and other areas. After subduing the revolt at great expense—£40 million—the British government decided to give up its mandate, drawing up a provisional government for Iraq that included a council of Arab ministers under the supervision of a British high commissioner. In August 1921, Faisal Husein won 96 percent of the votes and was elected king of the new Iraqi nation.

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from the History Channel:

 

March 11, 1918

First Cases Reported in Deadly Flu Epidemic

Just before breakfast on the morning of March 11, Private Albert Gitchell of the U.S. Army reports to the hospital at Fort Riley, Kansas, complaining of the cold-like symptoms of sore throat, fever and headache. By noon, over 100 of his fellow soldiers had reported similar symptoms, marking what are believed to be the first cases in the historic influenza epidemic of 1918. The flu would eventually kill 675,000 Americans and more than 20 million people (some believe the total may be closer to 40 million) around the world, proving to be a far deadlier force than even the First World War. The initial outbreak of the disease, reported at Fort Riley in March, was followed by similar outbreaks in army camps and prisons in various regions of the country. The disease soon traveled to Europe with the American soldiers heading to aid the Allies on the battlefields of France. (In March 1918 alone, 84,000 American soldiers headed across the Atlantic; another 118,000 followed them the next month.) Once it arrived on a second continent, the flu showed no signs of abating: 31,000 cases were reported in June in Great Britain. The disease was soon dubbed the "Spanish flu" due to the shockingly high number of deaths in Spain (some 8 million, it was reported) after the initial outbreak there in May 1918.

 

The flu showed no mercy for combatants on either side of the trenches. Over the summer, the first wave of the epidemic hit German forces on the Western Front, where they were waging a final, no-holds-barred offensive that would determine the outcome of the war. It had a significant effect on the already weakening morale of the troops--as German army commander Crown Prince Rupprecht wrote on August 3: "poor provisions, heavy losses, and the deepening influenza have deeply depressed the spirits of men in the III Infantry Division." Meanwhile, the flu was spreading fast beyond the borders of Western Europe, due to its exceptionally high rate of virulence and the massive transport of men on land and aboard ship due to the war effort. By the end of the summer, numerous cases had been reported in Russia, North Africa and India; China, Japan, the Philippines and even New Zealand would eventually fall victim as well.

 

The Great War ended on November 11, but influenza continued to wreak international havoc, flaring again in the U.S. in an even more vicious wave with the return of soldiers from the war and eventually infecting an estimated 28 percent of the country's population before it finally petered out. In its December 28, 1918, issue, the American Medical Association acknowledged the end of one momentous conflict and urged the acceptance of a new challenge, stating that "Medical science for four and one-half years devoted itself to putting men on the firing line and keeping them there. Now it must turn with its whole might to combating the greatest enemy of all—infectious disease."

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from the History Channel:

 

March 12, 1918

Russian Army Lends Support to February Revolution

 

After being called out to quell workers’ demonstrations on the streets of Petrograd (now St. Petersburg), regiment after regiment of soldiers in the city’s army garrison defect to join the rebels on March 12, forcing the resignation of the imperial government and heralding the triumph of the February Revolution in Russia. The most immediate cause of discontent among the Russian people was the country’s disastrous participation in the First World War. Despite enjoying success against Austria-Hungary in the first years of the war, the czar’s armies had suffered repeated crushing defeats at the hands of the German army on the Eastern Front. When combined with Russia’s backward economy, its repressive government and its huge population of hungry and frustrated peasants, defeat on the battlefield pushed the country into full-scale revolution in 1917.

 

Demonstrators took to the streets of Petrograd, the Russian capital, on March 8, 1917, clashing with police but refusing to leave the streets. By March 10, all of Petrograd’s workers were on strike; the next day, the troops of the Petrograd army garrison were called out to quell the uprising.

 

In some initial encounters, the regiments opened fire, killing some workers; the total number killed reached about 1,500. Though the demonstrators fled after being fired upon, they refused to abandon the streets altogether and returned to confront the soldiers again. Soon, many troops began to waver when given the order to fire on the demonstrators, even allowing some to pass through their lines. On March 12, regiment after regiment defected to join the demonstrators. Within 24 hours, the entire Petrograd garrison—some 150,000 men—had joined the February Revolution, ensuring its triumph.

 

Three days later, Czar Nicholas II abdicated the throne in favor of his brother Michael, who refused the crown, ending the czarist regime and leaving Russia in the hands of a new provisional government, led by Russia’s minister of war, Alexander Kerensky, and tolerated by the Petrograd Soviet, the worker’s council formed by the February rebels. Kerensky hoped to salvage the Russian war effort while ending the food shortage and many other domestic crises. It would prove a daunting task: in April, Vladimir Lenin, founder of the radical socialist group known as the Bolsheviks, returned to Russia from exile to lead the October (or Bolshevik) Revolution and take over power of the country.

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from the History Channel, 1914-1918.net:

 

March 13, 1915

Battle of Neuve Chappelle Ends

 

On this day in 1915, British forces end their three-day assault on the German trenches near the village of Neuve Chapelle in northern France, the first offensive launched by the British in the spring of 1915.

 

Neuve Chapelle was the first large scale organised attack undertaken by the British army during the war. It followed the miserable winter operations of 1914-15. More Divisions had now arrived in France and the BEF was now split into two Armies. Neuve Chapelle was undertaken by Sir Douglas Haig's First Army, while subsequenet actions were fought by Sir Herbert Smith-Dorrien's Second Army.

 

French Commander-in-Chief General Joffre considered it vital that the Allied forces should take every advantage of their growing numbers and strength on the Western Front, both to relieve German pressure on Russia and if possible break through in France. British commander Sir John French agreed and pressed the BEF to adopt an offensive posture after the months of defence in sodden trenches. Joffre planned to reduce the great bulge into France punched by the German advance in 1914, by attacking at the extreme points in Artois and the Champagne. In particular, if the lateral railways in the plain of Douai could be recaptured, the Germans would be forced to evacuate large areas of the ground they had gained. This belief formed the plan that created most of the 1915 actions in the British sector. The attack at Neuve Chapelle was an entirely British affair - the French saying that until extra British divisions could relieve them at Ypres, they had insufficient troops in the area to either extend of support the action.

 

The village of Neuve Chapelle lies on the road between Béthune, Fleurbaix and Armentières, near its junction with the Estaires - La Bassee road. The front lines ran parallel with the Béthune-Armentières road, a little way to the east of the village. Behind the German line is the Bois de Biez. The ground here is flat and cut by many small drainage ditches. A mile ahead of the British was a long ridge - Aubers Ridge - barely 20 feet higher than the surrounding area but giving an observation advantage. Some 25km to the south, this flat area is overlooked by the heights at Vimy Ridge. The German lines in the immediate vicinity were very lightly defended. The night before the attack was wet, with light snow, which turned to damp mist on 10 March.

The Battle of Neuve Chapelle began on March 10, 1915, at 8:05 a.m., when British forces attempted to break through the German trenches at Neuve Chapelle and capture the village of Aubers, less than a mile to the east. In the opening assault, 342 guns barraged the trenches for 35 minutes, partially directed by 85 reconnaissance aircraft flying overhead. The total number of shells fired during this barrage exceeded the number fired in the whole of the Boer War (a conflict fought in South Africa between British forces and South African revolutionaries in 1899-1902)—a frightening testament to how much the nature of war had changed in less than 15 years.

 

Following the opening barrage, British and Indian infantry forces immediately moved in to attack the German trench line along a 4,000-yard-long front. Though the troops in the center moved swiftly and successfully forward, taking the front line within 10 minutes and capturing the village of Neuve Chapelle itself before 9 a.m., the artillery had been less effective on the left, and nearly 1,000 advancing soldiers, not knowing the enemy trenches had been left undamaged, had been immediately mowed down by German guns. Lead units on the right were told to halt and await further instructions, as they faced being isolated if they moved forward. Meanwhile, the Allied command, receiving news of the early gains in the center, ordered a general advance. The slowness and inaccuracy of communication between the front lines and the corps headquarters—the army had no wireless technology, and telephone lines at the front were usually cut or destroyed by enemy fire during battle—caused Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Rawlinson, the corps commander, to order a fresh advance when support troops were unprepared. In the confusion, some artillery even opened fire on friendly infantry. By the late afternoon, forward units were attacking without adequate artillery support or effective coordination, in failing light, against a hardening German defense.

 

On March 13, the third and final day of the Battle of Neuve Chapelle, British troops repelled a German attack and launched another of their own. They were forced to call a halt after less than two hours, however, as many units had been decimated. By the time the attacks were called off later that day, Allied forces had captured a small salient 2,000 yards wide and 1,200 yards deep, along with 1,200 German prisoners, at the cost of 7,000 British and 4,200 Indian casualties.

 

The Battle of Neuve Chapelle highlighted the primitive state of communications on the battlefield during World War I, which made it incredibly difficult for commanders on both sides to know where and when to effectively deploy their reserve troops. General John Charteris, director of military intelligence under British commander Alexander Haig, took another sobering lesson from the battle, writing that "England will have to accustom herself to far greater losses than those of Neuve Chapelle before we finally crush the German army."

 

Neuve Chapelle was the first planned British offensive of the war. It demonstrated that it was quite possible to break into the enemy positions - but also showed that this kind of success was not easily turned into breaking through them. The main lessons of Neuve Chapelle were that the artillery bombardment was too light to suppress the enemy defences; there were too few good artillery observation points; the reserves were too few to follow up success quickly; command communications took too long and the means of communicating were too vulnerable. One important lesson was perhaps not fully understood: the sheer weight of bombardment was a telling factor. Similar efforts in 1915 and 1916 would fall far short of its destructive power.

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from the History Channel:

 

March 14, 1918

German Cruiser Dresden Sinks

 

On this day in 1915, the British ships Kent and Glasgow corner the German light cruiser Dresden in Cumberland Bay, off the coast of Chile. After raising the white flag, the Dresden's crew abandoned and scuttled the ship, which sank with its German ensign flying. Dresden, a 3,600-ton light cruiser, was one of the fastest ships in the German Imperial Navy, capable of traveling at speeds of up to 24.5 knots. The sister ship of the Emden, it was one of the first German ships to be built with modern steam-turbine engines. The British navy possessed faster ships, but luckily for Dresden, it had never had to face one. In continuous service since its introduction in 1909, Dresden traveled over 21,000 miles between August 1, 1914 and March 1915, more than any other German cruiser in action during the early months of World War I.

 

When war broke out in the summer of 1914, Dresden was patrolling the Caribbean Sea, safeguarding German investments and German citizens living abroad in the region. On July 20, during a bitter civil war in Mexico, Dresden gave safe passage to the fleeing Mexican president, Victoriano Huerta, transporting him and his family to Jamaica, where they received asylum from the British government. Shortly thereafter, news from Europe arrived of Austria's ultimatum to Serbia and the imminent possibility of war, and the German Admiralty put its fleet on alert.

 

By the first week of August, the great nations of Europe were at war. The Dresden was ordered to head to South America to attack British shipping interests there; it sunk several merchant ships on its way to Cape Horn, at the southern tip of Chile, and eluded pursuit by the British naval squadron in the region, commanded by Rear Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock. In October, the ship joined Admiral Maximilian von Spee's German East Asia Squadron at Easter Island in the South Pacific. On November 1, Spee's squadron, including Dresden, scored a crushing victory over the British in the Battle of Coronel, sinking two cruisers with all hands aboard—including Cradock, who went down with his flagship, Good Hope.

 

Five weeks later, the speedy Dresden was the only German ship to escape destruction at the Battle of the Falkland Islands on November 8, when the British light cruisers Inflexible and Invincible, commanded by Sir Doveton Sturdee, sank four of Spee's ships, including Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Leipzig and Nurnberg. As a crew member of Dresden wrote later of watching one of the other ships sink: "Each one of us knew he would never see his comrades again—no one on board the cruiser can have had any illusions about his fate." Dresden escaped under cover of bad weather south of the Falkland Islands.

 

For the next several months, Dresden consistently avoided capture by the British navy, sinking a number of cargo ships and seeking refuge in the network of channels and bays in southern Chile. On March 8, the ship put into an island off the Chilean coast, in Cumberland Bay; its captain, Fritz Emil von Luedecke, had decided the ship needed serious repairs in the wake of such heavy and extended use. Six days later, after picking up one of the many pleas for fuel sent by Luedecke in the hopes of reaching any passing coal ships in the area, Kent and Glasgow found Dresden. When Kent opened fire, Dresden sent a few shots back, but soon raised the white flag of surrender. After a German representative negotiated a truce with the British sailors to stall for time, Luedecke ordered his crew to abandon the ship and scuttle it. Dresden sank slowly at first, then sharply listed to the side. Amid cheers from both the British on board their two ships and the German sailors that had escaped onto land, Dresden disappeared beneath the water, its German ensign flag flying, thus ending the five-year and 21,000-mile career of one of Germany's most famous World War I commerce-raiding ships.

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from the History Channel:

 

March 15, 1917

Tsar Abdicates

 

During the February Revolution, Czar Nicholas II, ruler of Russia since 1894, is forced to abdicate the throne on this day in 1917, after strikes and general revolts break out in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg).

Crowned on May 26, 1894, Nicholas was a relatively weak and ineffectual leader, which did not help the autocracy he sought to preserve over a people desperate for change. Russia's disastrous loss to the Japanese in the Russo-Japanese War exacerbated discontent among the Russian population and led to the Russian Revolution of 1905, which the czar calmed only after signing a manifesto promising reform, representative government—in the form of Dumas, or assemblies—and basic civil liberties in Russia. Nicholas soon retracted most of these concessions, however, repeatedly dissolving the Dumas when they opposed him, and radical forces within Russia, most notably the Bolsheviks, a revolutionary-minded socialist group founded by Vladimir Lenin, begin to gain widespread support. In 1914, Nicholas led his country into another costly war—World War I—and discontent in Russia grew as food became scarce, ill-equipped soldiers became war-weary and devastating defeats on the Eastern Front demonstrated the czar's incompetent leadership.

After the outbreak of the so-called February Revolution in early March 1917 (Russia used the Julian calendar at the time), the army garrison at Petrograd joined striking workers in demanding socialist reforms, and Czar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate. Nicholas and his family were first held at the Czarskoye Selo Palace, then in the Yekaterinburg Palace near Tobolsk, where they remained during the rise to power of Lenin's Bolsheviks and Russia's exit from World War I. In July 1918, the advance of counterrevolutionary forces during the Russian Civil War caused the soviet, or Bolshevik council, in power in Yekaterinburg to fear that Nicholas might be rescued. After a secret meeting, the soviet passed a death sentence on the imperial family, and, on July 16, 1918, Nicholas, his wife Alexandra, their children and their remaining servants were shot to death.