1918 by Nicholas Carter

Author:Nicholas Carter
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472829344
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2018-09-09T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 6

THE FORGOTTEN FRONTS IN EUROPE

Russia, Italy, and the Balkans in 1918

Professor Lothar Höbelt

In the historiography of World War I, the Western Front usually takes centre stage. There is no doubt that the Western Front is where the decisive battles took place during World War I, from 1914, when the Battle of the Marne ended German hopes of dealing a knock-out blow to France, to 1918, when the final German offensives ran out of steam and the Allies then drove the Germans back.

The famous musical O What a Lovely War has Douglas Haig praying, ‘God grant me victory before the Americans arrive’, but actually that was a line that might have been stolen from Ludendorff’s prayer book. That was what the German campaign of 1918 was all about. Graf Ottokar Czernin, the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Secretary, realized that the Central Powers could never defeat Britain and the US but he reckoned that once the Germans had taken Paris – or Calais – the Entente might start talking about a reasonable peace settlement in earnest.1 Yet, short-term fears about a massive German breakthrough in the West and a fight ‘with our backs to the wall’, were one thing; long-term anxieties about Germany dominating not just continental Europe, but most of Eurasia after the Russian collapse, were another. The Bolsheviks were widely regarded as German puppets. After all, Lenin had been repatriated in the famous sealed train in April 1917 courtesy of the Prussian General Staff. French Général de Division Henri Berthelot, the advisor to the Romanian Army, summed it up: ‘The Bolsheviks are nothing but agents of the Boches.’ Before 1914, Britain had been apprehensive about the growing power of Russia. Little wonder it was worried about the impact of a Russo-German combination. As the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Sir Henry Wilson, put it: ‘It was a question of pulling Siberia out of the wreck, in order to save India.’2

This situation had the makings of an obvious dilemma for German planners. Short-term considerations, the necessity of making the best possible use of their window of opportunity, argued for a concentration of forces in the West. Long-term geopolitics for securing the Empire demanded an emphasis in the East. Ludendorff was the first to realize the supreme importance of the great push in the West; yet even he was tempted by the prizes to be won in the East where much could be gained in return for fairly minor investments. Some authors have criticized the frittering away of scarce resources in imperialist ventures in the East. More than 30 German divisions remained tied down on the Russian front, even after that front had officially ceased to exist.3 However, a closer look at the composition of these forces detracts from the gravity of these charges. Heavy artillery and well-trained stormtroops moved West; what remained in the East was cavalry and lightly armed occupation forces that were of little use in the sort of warfare to be expected on the Western Front. ‘What remained in the East was “fourth grade” material.

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