World War One: A Short History by Norman Stone

Author:Norman Stone
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: World War I, General, 1914-1918, Military, World War, History
ISBN: 9780465019182
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2010-04-26T22:00:00+00:00

FIVE • 1917

preceding pages: Russian troops in eastern Galicia running past a church during an unidentified battle, 1917

Great wars develop a momentum of their own. As German historians have pointed out, the statesmen in 1914 had thought in terms of a ‘cabinet war’, that is, one that could be turned on and off at the will of a few leaders. But with mass conscription, and the enormous loss of life and limb, sheer hatred of the enemy, and the emergence of a monster of public opinion that no politician could ignore, the war could not simply be ended with some recognition that it had all been a gigantic mistake. The Austrian emperor would have liked to do this; so would the Pope; so would President Wilson. They were waved aside, and at the turn of 1916 and 1917, radical leaders emerged, offering one or other version of Lloyd George’s ‘knock-out blow’. And a further twist in the tragedy was that, on each side, such a blow seemed entirely possible. The new leaders in Germany, Ludendorff especially, might recognize that in the West there was stalemate. But submarines, to starve the British out – why not? A few people on the Left did break with the Social Democrats, but there was no other serious opposition at this moment. On the contrary, the country became more militarized than ever before: a ‘Hindenburg Programme’ made every male from sixteen to sixty liable for war work, and output was expected to double (it did). In France, in parallel, the energetic new general, Robert Nivelle, who had made his reputation at Verdun, promised the great victory that had eluded old Joffre, who was now made Marshal of France and sidelined. There had been a miracle of improvisation as regards the war economy, despite the loss of the industrial Nord, and Nivelle promised confidently that he could win the war by mathematical methods, combining new infantry methods and carefully managed ‘creeping barrages’.

But it was the Germans who first translated the new jusqu’au boutiste (‘to the very end’) mood into practice. They proclaimed unrestricted submarine warfare. This was a revolutionary business, because it brought the risk that the USA would enter the war on the Allied side. American trade with the British had vastly risen, and much of the economy depended upon it. The British had been by far the greatest foreign investors in the USA, and now these investments were being sold off to pay for the imports. What would happen if American trade were stopped by submarine sinkings, with the attendant drownings of civilians? The Americans did not, generally, have any desire at all to intervene, and their president, Woodrow Wilson, had called for compromise peace. U-Boats might change that.

However, the new High Command in Germany were clear that there could be no victory in the west as matters stood, and they looked to the navy. The naval authorities, as a matter of professional pride, resented the inactivity of their great ships, but they had

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