A History of the First World War in 100 moments: After 1,560 days, at the eleventh hour, the guns fall silent – but for how long? A A A The conclusion of the ‘war to end all wars’ was greeted with understandable jubilation. But, writes Boyd Tonkin, new storm clouds were already gathering Crowds in London celebrate the end of hostilities in 1918 By BOYD TONKIN Wednesday 23 July 2014 Five times decorated for bravery, the corporal of the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry learnt about Germany’s defeat while convalescing in a military hospital at Pasewalk in Pomerania. A month beforehand, the British had gassed his regiment at Ypres. One doctor at least thought that the intermittent blindness his patient suffered had a hysterical origin. The mettle of this soldier was beyond dispute. He had received his Iron Cross, First Class (most uncommon for an NCO) from another rare bird: First Lieutenant Hugo Guttmann, a Jewish officer. But the casualty appeared slovenly, truculent, highly strung – an artist of some kind. After he heard the news, after swirling rumours of rebellion and what he called “something indefinite but repulsive in the air”, he wept into his private darkness. “I had not cried since the day I stood at my mother’s grave,” Gefreiter Adolf Hitler would later write. “Now I could not help it.” By 11 November 1918, most combatants and civilians had for three or four days rehearsed and anticipated the end of the Great War. As early as 5 October, the German High Command sent a note to Woodrow Wilson suing for peace on the basis of the US President’s “Fourteen Points”. On 4 November, the Kiel naval mutiny demonstrated to the Allies that the German forces would no longer obey the Kaiser and his generals. Red revolution spread across the Reich. On 9 November, Wilhelm II abdicated at Spa – or, to be exact, he was abdicated. Impatient of the emperor’s last-ditch vacillations, Germany’s new liberal Chancellor, Prince Max of Baden, on his own initiative issued the most momentous pre-emptive press release in history, via the Wolff agency, announcing – though he had not yet done so – that the Kaiser had stepped down as both Emperor of Germany and King of Prussia. “It’s a shameless betrayal,” stormed the ex-Kaiser, a picture of impotence. Premature jubilations had already broken out in Britain, France and the US on 7 November, when the French intelligence service somehow took the initiation of negotiations at Compiègne as proof of their conclusion, and sent out a gun-jumping message. In pictures: A history of the First World War in 100 moments At 11am on 11 November 1918, it really would be all over. “Hostilities will cease on the whole front,” Marshal Foch’s signal told his forces. “The Allied troops will not, until further order, go beyond the line reached on that date and at that hour.” In theory, the armistice would hold for 36 days and could be rescinded if its terms were violated. Between 2.10am and 5.12am on the 1,560th day of conflict, a final bleary-eyed session in Foch’s dining-car had settled the terms of the armistice and of the German capitulation. Centre Party leader Matthias Erzberger, who led the German delegation, had managed to wring a couple of minor concessions from the victorious Allies – such as an acceptance that the vanquished Reich could not actually surrender 2,000 aircraft since it not possess 2,000 aircraft. Erzberger put on the bravest face he could, proclaiming that “a nation of 70 million people suffers, but it does not die”. By around 5.45am, most field commanders had learned of the terms and the timetable. However, this most vicious of all wars kept a savage sting in reserve for the tip of its tail. The final six hours of fighting on the Western Front present a spectacle of futile bloodshed and pointless aggression that somehow sums up the whole show. Orders born of unfathomable malice or (more likely) benumbed habit insisted that assaults and advances must continue up to the eleventh hour. US General
Posted on: Thu, 14 Aug 2014 20:05:57 +0000
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