In the late hours of November 17th, 1918, the southern Siberian city of Omsk was suddenly abuzz with activity.  A key junction along the Trans-Siberian Railway and the meeting point between the railway’s northern and southern branches, Omsk had seen it’s fair amount of political activity for months as the Provisional All-Russian Government, informally known as The Directory, had established the city as it’s seat of governance.  Uniting many Socialist Revolutionary members (SRs) who had held power in the original Soviets and the elected Constituent Assembly, along with former Tsarist officers, the Directory appeared as the potential precursor for a unified White Russian political movement. 

The Directory even appeared on the verge of gaining international recognition as Vice-Admiral Alexander Kolchak, recently returned to Russia from various overseas diplomatic tours, had decided to join The Directory’s Council of Ministers as the Ministers of both War and the Navy.  Kolchak had originally returned to Russia via Japan with the intention of traveling to the other side of the empire to join the former Tsarist officer-led Volunteer Army.  Instead, the Vice-Admiral had cast his lot with militarily inferior, but politically more diverse Directory.  Kolchak was held in high esteem by the Allies, and the British in particular, with British Military Attaché General Alfred Knox saying of Kolchak that he had “more grit, pluck and honest patriotism than any Russian in Siberia.”

Omsk’s commotion this evening however wasn’t more would-be politicians but Cossack soldiers.  Moving throughout the city, one by one, many of the 14 ministers of the Directory were swooped up by the Cossacks and placed under arrest.  By the following morning, the few Directory members who were left understood what had occurred in the wee hours – Kolchak and his supporters had staged a coup, arresting most of the SR-aligned ministers and executives.  By a private vote, the remaining Ministers gave their consent to elect Kolchak the “Verkhovnyi Pravitel” or “Supreme Ruler” of Russia, consolidating all political and military authority under his office.

From the Caspian to the Pacific, the newly formed “Russian Republic” held one of the largest territorial empires on the globe.  And for better and for worse, the White Russian movement now had a singular leader.

Admiral Alexander Kolchak – he would be viewed as the defacto leader of the entire White Russian resistance, but in reality Kolchak was barely in charge of his own Siberian government and held little practical influence over the rest of the White armies or leaders

The end of the war in Europe meant nothing towards ending the growing Civil War in Russia.  Despite invoking fear across the former Russian Empire and in many capitals around the world, the ruling Bolsheviks controlled precious little territory.  In the west, Ukraine, Finland and the Baltic States had split away.  In the northern port cities, the Allies held sway, occupying large swathes of land that would be directly or in-directly governed by White Russian collaborators.  The Caucasus were losing some ground back to the Bolsheviks, but chunks of the region were still led by a loose confederation of ethnic governments, leftist Menshevik politicians and thuggish Cossack warlords.  And in the East, thanks to the Czechoslovak Legion and Allied intervention, the entire country from Azerbaijan to Vladivostok had been in the hands of the newly formed Provisional All-Russian Government.  The regions that lay in the hands of the Bolsheviks’ opponents were large – well more than half of the original Russian Empire – but the industrial base of the country and large population centers were mostly under Red control.  (more…)

A heavy fog had enveloped Ville-devant-Chaumont, just north of Verdun, obscuring the view even just meters away for the American troops of the 313th Infantry Regiment of the 79th “Liberty” Division.  The regiment, called “Baltimore’s Own” due to the high number of locals from that city, was utterly exhausted having been on the front lines of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive for nearly two months.  They could hear the crackling fire of German machine guns ahead of them, but were more interested in the running footsteps to their rear.  It was a communique from their commanding officer to hold their position and to neither advance nor retreat until following orders were given.

The 313th was relieved, with one exception – 23 year-old Private Henry Gunther.  Gunther had left a fiancé and a successful early career as a banker in Baltimore when he was drafted.  The son of German immigrants, Gunther arrived in France eager to prove his patriotism yet quickly became discouraged amid the slaughter of the trenches.  Gunther wrote to a friend complaining of his life in France and encouraging his friend not to volunteer.  Army censors read the letter and demoted Gunther.  In response, the former banker began to volunteer for dangerous assignments to prove his loyalty, even being hit with shrapnel as a runner that could have sent him home.  Gunther refused; he still hadn’t regained his honor.

Injury and risky service didn’t return his rank or apparently his unit’s respect and it cost him at home.  Gunther’s fiancé wrote that she was ending the relationship, further sending Gunther into a spiral of reckless heroism.  His fellow soldiers noted that as the war seemed to be coming to an end Gunther became more and more withdrawn, perhaps knowing that his opportunities to find redemption or meaning amid the bloodshed were dwindling.  Gunther wasn’t going to obey any orders to hold his position on this day – he was going to attack.

On the other side of the line, the German machine gun nest saw a figure emerge from the fog, charging at them with a fixed bayonet.  They fired, careful to avoid hitting him, hoping that he’d stop or retreat.  Gunther jumped to the ground but quickly rose again, resuming his charge.  In broken english, the Germans yelled at Gunther, frantically waiving their arms to tell him to stop; “Baltimore’s Own” wouldn’t be discouraged.  At last, fearing for their own lives, the German machine gunners fired off a five-round burst, striking Gunther in the head, killing him instantly.

It was 10:59am on November 11th, 1918.  The last combat casualty of the Great War had fallen.

Henry Gunther’s grave site in France.  Gunther is widely acknowledged as the last combat death of the First World War before the armistice.  More would die in accidents or sporadic fighting after 11am, to say nothing of the war in the East

Four days earlier a far different sight could be seen by French soldiers in their trenches near the town of La Capelle.  Three large cars, each with the black eagle of Imperial Germany on their sides, approached the front lines with their headlights on. Two German soldiers were perched on the running boards of the lead car, one waving a white flag, the other, with a long silver bugle, blowing the call for ceasefire – a single high tone repeated in rapid succession four times, then four times again, with the last note lingering.  The German delegation to discuss an armistice had arrived.  (more…)

I have no military experience, other than a lifetime of reading military history and an obsessive’s facility for identifying World War II planes, tanks and ships.

Take everything I say with a grain – what the heck, a block – of salt.

But I’m going to indulge in a little pointless speculation about the war in Ukraine.

When discussing a war where both sides are experts at propaganda and warping public perception, trying to comment on anything in “the news” with any certitude is a fool’s errand.

Noted. I am that fool, and for right now it is my errand.

He Who Forgets: The thought of being able to win an easy – or at least easier – victory by taking out a key objective – the enemty’s leadership, capitol, or a key defense – is one of those things that keeps millitary planners busy dreaming.

In some cases – the US drives to Baghdad in 2003, or the German airborne assault on Fort Eben Emaël, in Belgium in June of 1940 – it works.

But not always.

In April, 1940, as part of Germany’s invasion of Norway, a Navy task force raced up Oslo Fjord; it’s mission was to land an invasion force on the Oslo waterfront to seize the. Storting (Parliament) and capture King Håkon and his administration, giving him a choice of capitulation and serving as a puppet (as his cousin, Christian X of Denmark, in effect did) or something much less pleasant.

On the final approach to Oslo, 15-20 miles south of the capital, in one old coastal fort (Oscarsborg, armed with three antique 1890s cannon (only two of them manned, and even those with rookie draftee crews) and a couple of equally ancient torpedoes launched from a James Bond via Rube Goldberg-style secret underwater cave, the commander, Colonel Birger Eriksen, disobeyed a “Stand Down” order, and opened fire at the leading German ship (reportedly telling the gun crew “Damn right we’re firing live ammunition” as he gave the order to fire), the heavy cruiser Blücher, blowing off a turret and sinking it in the channel, blocking the rest of the invasion (I told the story here, 12 years ago), and allowing Håkon to escape Oslo, and eventually get to the UK to continue the war.

The German attempt to “decapitate” Norway, with all its elaborate planning, failed because of one guy disobeying orders.

Similarly, the German airborne attempt to decapitate the Dutch military command, two months later, ended up a nearly Pyrrhic victory, as the paratroopers ran into a prepared defense, and were gunned down in droves by alerted and angry Dutch defenders.

Not Nearly Far Enough: Similarly, in September, Field Marshal Montgomery hatched a plan to end the war by Christmas; launch a lightning (by 1944 standards) strike to vault across the Rhine River (and a few lesser rivers and canals on the way), which was Germany’s only real natural defense from invasion from the west, across terrain that isn’t a whole lot more naturally defensible than the road from Fargo to Winnipeg.

To do it, airborne forces would simultaneously capture bridges across the Maas, Waal and lower Rhein rivers, as well as three canals. Once over the Rhein, there was literally nothing but German towns and troops blocking the road to Berlin.

The crossings of the Maas, and two fo the three canals were captured smoothly. The Waal, at Nijjmegen? Not smoothly at all. And the final crossing of the Rhine at Arnhem failed completely. Only one of the 12 British and Polish airborne battalions reached the bridge; all were mauled, and the Germans held the crossing.

Because of that bloody scrap along the banks of the Rhein, Germany retained its barrier until the bridge at Remagen fell, nearly six bloody months later.

Like The TSA Line, Only With Live Ammo: Again – we don’t know yet how to separate truth from fiction in Ukraine – and forces on both sides, and no side, are doing their darnedest to obscure whatever truth does leak out.

But assuming some of the news is accurate?

As this is written the hot war in Ukraine is five years old; Russian forces are on the northern outskirts of an alerted, angry, heavily armed Kiev.

But around the end of the first day, reporters filtered out that a Russian Airborne assault on two of Kiev’s airports had stalled, and then failed; both airfields remained, apparently, in Ukrainian hands.

Speculation – possibly informed, possibly not – held that the assault was an attempt to get Russian troops into Kiev fast and on the relative cheap, taking the airfields and suppressing the air defenses in order to fly troops in from Russia, debouching them almost directly into the Ukrainian capitol – a move that Russian Airborne has speculated about doing for nearly fifty years, since well back in Soviet times.

Did the Ukrainians read the same operations manual (a rhetorical question – the Ukrainian and Russian Armies both have roots in the Soviet army)? Were the Russians counting on their airborne/air transport assault to knock Ukrainian leadership so off-kilter that they’d have a much harder time resisting the conventional, armored ground attack, which woujld then have an easier time getting into Kiev?

We won’t know until the fall of Putin’s Russia opens up all the secrets that have gotten covered over since the fall of the USSR, of course.

But it’s interesting, if armchair, speculation.

(NOTE: If your response to this post is “the war in Ukraine doesn’t affect us, so I don’t care” – that’s fine, duly noted, and save it for a different thread. Thanks.

If citizens can’t defend their freedom, then they are not citizens. They are subjects.

The Canadian truckers have shown us that if they don’t have the ability to defend their personal finances from government opporession, they are not citizens. They are subjects.

And against even more drastic threats?

The Peasant Revolt of 1381 – in which peasants in what would now be the eastern suburbs of London rebelled against onerous taxation and government overreach (figuratively and literally) may or may not have been an impetus for the Second Amendment – but it certainly should instruct any study of the issue of popular power versus government authority.

This video explains the event; if you ignore the presenter’s obvious left-wing bias (trying to connect Margaret Thatcher and King Richard II is the kind of thing that plays better in a faculty lounge than in reality), the lesson is fairly clear:

And for people with ears to hear, the lesson remains clear: Ukraine, responding to a Russian invasion, has “granted” their citizens a right that can not be legitimately taken away in the first place.

Preparing for the possibility of a large-scale Russian invasion, the Ukrainian government has moved to declare a 30-day state of emergency, grant citizens the right to bear arms, and conscript military reservists between the ages of 18 and 60, adding nearly 200,000 troops to the country’s defense as Russian troops continue to enter the Donbas region.

Of course, the Ukrainians are implementing under duress what the Estonians have made a part of their national culture (although not, alas, in the sense of being an inalienable right, but more a matter of duty to state and people). Defending their freedom from Russia is an actual national hobby even in whatever passes for “normal times” on the Russian border (I’ve written about the article linked above in the past; it may be even more worth reading today).

This is the lesson: today, as in 1381 and 1776 and 1939, and in Ottawa today, your freedom is only as secure as your ability to defend it; legally, in courts via the Marquis of Queensbury rules of the legal system…

…or otherwise.

Norwegian government honors Wilton Rasmussen, a 100 year old Minnesotan who spent the best years of his life blowing up Germans in the middle of Norway, as part of the organization that became the CIA:

The 100-year-old Fridley veteran recalled stories from his daring service Sunday when the ambassador of Norway paid him a special visit to award him two medals of honor — a recognition Rasmusson never expected.

When he was drafted in 1942, a military official came to him with a request that would define the course of his life: “Do you want to volunteer for a dangerous overseas mission?”

“I said, ‘yeah,’ ” Rasmusson said in a thick Norwegian accent.

He was part of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), predecessor to the CIA, in a Norwegian operational unit known at NORSO II. Rasmusson’s fluency in the language was an obvious benefit for the mission that would take him from his hometown of Sunburg, Minn., for 3½ years to England, Scotland and Norway.

The whole story is worth a read. And my biggest regret is not finding the opportunity to interview a lot more of the Greatest Generation on the air while I had the chance.

77 years ago last month, World War II went into a brief run of extra innings, as German troops launched a surprise attack, trying to drive a wedge between the US and British armies and take the port of Antwerp, robbing the Allies of their main logistics hub on the continent. We know it as the “Battle of the Bulge”.

In a strategic sense, the attack was doomed before it started. It may have cost the Germans more than it ganed them, burning through their last supplies of fuel, ammunition and fresh vehicles, to no gain that they were able to hold for more than a month.

But that was little comfort to the GIs on the ground – many new to the front in brand-new divisions, many more exhausted after six months of constant battle and resting in the “quiet sector” of the Ardennes, and the corner of Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany.

The GIs fought on – some of them famously surrounded, others who just happened to be at the wrong place at the right time, still more who rushed to the scene to hold lines in the snow that could not be passed.

They fought an enemy that was exhausted and morally shaped by five years of total war, including troops – the Waffen SS, who had made war crimes part of their “mystique” since the fall of 1939. One SS battlegroup had left a trail of war crimes, including the massacre of a group of combat engineers at Malmédy, Belgiuim, and a smaller and more obscure but perhaps even more gruesome slaughter of African-American troops at Wereth – two of a number of real shootings of American POWs, and dozens more rumored mass killings.

It’s no secret to those who read military history; at times, after hearing news about the GIs gunned down at Malmédy in particular, that GIs – cold, often cut off from higher authority, thousands of miles from home, fighting for people they largely didn’t understand, in a war none of them asked for – took rough revenge. The history of “The Good War” is not void of stories of American troops gunning down Germans, and especially Japanese, without worrying too hard about the rules of war. Americans and Brits were less likely to throw the rules of war under the treads of the passing tank than the Russians or French – all of whom took “take no prisoners” pretty literally – but war, being famously “hell”, brings the worst out of everyone at times.

Suffice to say – while the typical 18 year old American draftee was on balance, as Stephen Ambrose called him, “the. best thing that could have happened to a conquered Germany or liberated France, Luixembourg and Belgium”, some of them, sometimes, had their breaking points. It wasn’t taught in high school history class – which, when I was in school, was still being taught by some of the men who’d been there – but you don’t have to dig too far into history to find honest portrayals by GIs who, as the years rolled on, talked it out (including at least one infamous episode from Band of Brothers itself).

It’s not news, suffice to say.

If you read your history.

But this is 2022. And most Americans, including most of today’s generation of “news” reporters, never read history, or at least nothing before 1960.

“The Reveal” is an NPR ‘Investigative journalism’ program, hosted by Al Letson. This past Sunday’s episode focused on the groundbreaking investigation of a massacre of 80 German POWs in Belgium by members of the 11th Armored Division.

I listened so you don’t have to – but here it is, anyway:

So what’s. the purpose of this “investigation?”

To prove that World War II a reductionist battle between good-hearted, white-hatted GIs and cartoony black-hearted Nazis, and that some Americans did some horrible things?

Again – it’s not news.

To bring out a story that has been hidden by history?

As the story itself points out, the episode was common knowledge among people who follow the war.

That George Patton and other Army brass, at the time and during the telling of the story of the war, found it expedient to either “not publicize” or “cover up” the details of the massacre, to a people who were becoming weary of war and who were shocked by the late-campaign bloodshed? Leaving aside the whole “what the hell do they expect?” angle – who do they expect to hold accountable? 95% of the GIs are gone; all the senior officers who set the policy had passed on forty years ago.

To undercut and sandbag a key part of the American self-image? To throw crap on the notion that America has had, and acted upon, and sacrificed mightilly, for noble ideals that didn’t strictly benefit us? To liberate people we had no moral obligation to sacrifice for?

I think I’m getting warm.

A former teacher, who has drifted far to the left since I was a student, once said “the Walt Disney version of history doesn’t tell the whole story” – to which I replied “either does the Ingmar Bergman version (I suppose I could have said NIkole Hannah-Jones, as well).

Either way – when it comes to piddling on any shred of American exceptionaism, to say nothing of nobility, there is no statute of limitations.

Think about the evolution of military equipment over the past 100 years.

In 1920, the infantryman carried a bolt-action rifle. The tanker drove a rattle-trap armored against rifle fire that could clank along at 3-4 miles an hour. Many of the navy’s ships were powered by coal, and the big cannon was the sine qua non of naval warfare. Pilots flew in planes made of wood and doped canvas – basically box kites with motors, armed with machine guns and glorified grenades.

Thirty years later, the infantry carried cyclic-fire weapons, tanks could shake off light artillery (usually) the Navy’s sunday punch was powered by oil, and planes were the piston-engine equivalent of todays’ Formula 1 cars and the first jets were duking it out in the skies, armed with cannon and the first crude guided missiles.

Thirty years after that, tanks could hit the speed limit, see in the dark and shake off big, powerful artillery. The pride of the Navy was nuclear-powered. The first “stealth” aircraft were just starting to take shape at the Skunk works, and the front-line planes were armed with radar and infrared missiles that could reach out, in some cases, 100 miles.

And forty years hence? Drones are in the field, ships are stealthy, aircraft can shoot down aircraft that have no idea they’re there.

But through each of those eras, there’s been one thing in common – the M2 (HB)

Which was, as it happens, adopted by the US Army (in this case ,the long-disbanded Coast Artillery branc) for the first time 100 years ago this year. I’m gonna throw it out today, since I have no idea what the actual date of adoption was.

Here’s a quick history and tear-down guide…:

…from a channel that’s probably the most essential source of firearms trivia on the Internet.

I’ve said it in the past; I’ve always found the practice of thanking veterans for their service to be a little…off.

Nothing against those that do say it – but it’s always felt a little strange to me.

“Thanks for taking a couple years out of your life, in many cases going around the world and undergoing a lot of unimaginable stress, danger and horror. Thanks so much!”.

So for my part – to all you veterans out there: I’m glad you made it home.

Let’s make this nation worth your time, and the sacrifice of those who didn’t come back.

…when I would have looked at an event like today’s 83rd anniversary of Kristallnacht and nodded and thought “good thing our society is smarter than that these days”.

Because November 9 is the anniversary of the largest pogrom in ihistory:

In a statement to representatives of the foreign press, Goebbels responded to the outrage at Germany’ assault on its half-million Jewish citizens by challenging the Western democracies: “If there is any country that believes it has not enough Jews, I shall gladly turn over to it all our Jews.” But not one country said they would take the Jews of Germany.

After this last couple of years, I’m really not so sure.

Antisemitism is back on the rise…:

It’s incredible how little has changed in eighty-three years. Children’s textbooks are filled with anti-Jewish hatred in the Palestinian territories while others call Abbas and his underlings “moderates. “Islamic Clerics throughout the world call for the death of Jews, and a recent AJC study reported that Antisemitism runs rampant in France.

And given our crippling tribalism, and the dehumanization of other ‘tribes” that runs rampant in tribalist societies (Rwanda, Bosnia, Burma and India for some modern examples), I’m not exactly sanguine about everyone else either.

With only a couple of exceptions since the Battle of Jutland in the summer of 1916, the German High Seas Fleet had sat mostly at anchor at the Schillig roadstead off of the main German naval base in Wilhelmshaven.  Days of inactivity had turned to weeks, which turned into months, which transformed the expensive, mighty battleships of the Kaiserliche Marine into rusting hulks crewed by aggravated, bored sailors.  The attitude around Wilhelmshaven had only become worse in recent days as the U-boat fleet had been ordered to return to port as the new government of Max von Baden ended Germany’s unrestricted U-boat campaign as an American-requested prerequisite to armistice negotiations. 

But there was an air of excitement at Wilhelmshaven on October 24th, 1918.  Orders had come down from the Chief of the German Admiralty, Reinhard Scheer – the High Sea Fleet would prepare to launch it’s entire armada out into the North Sea.  18 Dreadnoughts, 5 battlecruisers, 14 light cruisers, 60 destroyers and torpedo boats and nearly 30 submarines would sail for the Thames Estuary to engage a numerically superior British Navy in the thick of their home waters.  The likely endgame was clear to German officers.  The Chief of Staff to the High Sea Fleet’s admiral wrote in his diary that the coming offensive was “a battle for the honour of the fleet in this war, even if it were a death battle,” yet was necessary as “it would be the foundation for a new German fleet.”  

Acting clearly against the wishes of the civilian German government, and even the Kaiser, the Kaiserliche Marine had put into the motion the first pieces of what on paper would be the largest naval battle in human history – twice the size of the forces at Jutland if all ships became engaged.  It would end with their nation in defeat and engulfed in revolution.

German sailors – and a variety of civilian supporters – march in the major naval base in Kiel.  The “Kiel Mutiny” would become the first acts in the German Revolution that ended World War I

The condition of the German Navy had seemingly been both a source of concern and a blind eye for the Oberste Heeresleitung or German High Command.  

The sailors of the High Seas Fleet returning from Jutland on June 1st, 1916 were exuberant, having won a tactical victory and believing the congratulations sent to them by their Kaiser that they had “started a new chapter in world history” by defeating the vaunted British Royal Navy.  But the cost of Jutland – 11 ships – had precluded another significant campaign in the minds of the German command, and the High Seas Fleet had only left Wilhelmshaven three times since June of 1916, and only once since the fall of that same year.  Scheer, the commander of the High Seas Fleet until August of 1918, had in part led that charge, arguing that unrestricted submarine attacks were the only hope Germany had for winning the war on the seas.  As a result, outside of the U-boats, the Kaiserliche Marine had nothing to do but wait.  (more…)

It was night on October 23rd, 1918 as a series of rowboats silently dipped their oars in the waters of the Piave river in Italy.  The Piave had remained as quiet as the rowboats’ occupants since the Italian defensive victory that summer, halting and then repelling an Austro-Hungarian offensive launched with hopes of knocking Rome out of the war.  But the men aboard these boats were neither Italian or Austro-Hungarian, but British, members of the Honourable Artillery Company (an infantry battalion, despite the name) and the Royal Welch Fusiliers.  While neither company could be viewed as “special forces,” they were most certainly elite forces of the Crown as the HAC had it’s lineage back to 1087 and it’s Captain-General was officially listed as the King George V.    

Their assignment was to secure the series of islands on the Piave river that now constituted no-mans-land, starting with the largest island, Grave di Papadopoli.  The HAC and Fusiliers landed with bayonets fixed, sneaking and stabbing their away across the island before the soldiers of the Dual Monarchy were finally able to sound the alarm.  In a brief, but tough fight, with Italian diversionary troops even being defeated on the southern part of the island, Grave di Papadopoli was captured by Allied forces.  The stage was set for the following morning, the one year anniversary of the Italian army’s humiliating defeat at Caporetto, as 1.4 million Allied troops would throw themselves at 1.8 million Austro-Hungarians.  The result would be the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the end of the 600+ year Habsburg Monarchy.

Vittorio Veneto – a major Italian victory that in historical hindsight looks more like a case of Austrian collapse than anything else

By late October of 1918, it could be questioned whether or not a battle even needed to take place to bring about the end of Austria-Hungary’s participation in the Great War.  The same day as the Germans learned that President Woodrow Wilson wouldn’t mediate an armistice based on his Fourteen Points, at least not without strenuous pre-conditions, the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister Baron István Burián von Rajecz asked for similar terms from the Allies.  As Rajecz made his request, the Allies formally accepted Czechoslovakia into their alliance.  Trying to curry favor with the various ethnic groups now striving to break away from the Empire, Emperor Charles I issued an imperial manifesto that days later that would fundamentally changed the Austrian half of the government, giving autonomy to most ethnic states.  It wasn’t enough.  The literal next day, the Hungarian parliament passed a resolution ending the Austro-Hungarian partnership, despite having just renewed it for two years, and declared independence.  The Dual Monarchy was now a singular one (although the formal cancellation of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 wouldn’t happen until the end of the month).  What remained was rapidly falling apart.  (more…)

Prince Maximilian von Baden, the newly appointed Chancellor of Germany, was likely as anxious as any member of the German government to hear that Berlin had finally received a response from American President Woodrow Wilson on October 14th, 1918.  Ten days earlier, Max, a relatively unknown liberal member of the Prussian nobility and former military staff officer, had publicly declared Germany’s willingness to engage in an armistice based around Wilson’s Fourteen Points.  The Prince of Baden had initially resisted the post when offered to him by Kaiser Wilhelm II, knowing full well that even the most generous possible terms of a future armistice would likely cost Germany dearly and Max was not interested in going down in history as the Chancellor who offered up Germany’s de facto surrender.

But following a crown council meeting on September 29th, 1918, both Hindenburg and Ludendorff had advised the Kaiser that nothing short of an armistice could save Germany as neither general could ensure the Empire’s ability to hold together what remained of the Western Front.  While there was debate as to what Germany expected from any armistice request – Ludendorff vacillated between viewing an armistice as defeat or as simply a delaying tactic that would allow the German army to regroup – Baden had been tasked with making the offer.  The prior Chancellor and government had resigned in protest to news that the Kaiser and his two top generals alone had decided to seek peace, believing that in Berlin’s parliamentary democracy only the Reichstag retained the right to matters of war and peace.  Although Baden’s appointment would appease the growing liberal sectors of the Reichstag, the Prince of Baden knew he would be viewed with suspicion by all factors of the parliament – a toady to the conservative Kaiser or as a weak-willed liberal seeking peace.

Baden and others hoped that an armistice based upon Wilson’s Fourteen Points would be temperate in it’s punishments.  The message they received on October 14th, 1918 crushed those hopes.  Wilson would not lead any armistice negotiations.  Indeed, there would be no negotiations and no armistice with the current construction of the German government.  If the Kaiser abdicated the throne and Germany stopped their “illegal and inhumane practices” of submarine warfare and scorched earth tactics as they retreated in France, only then could the fighting cease.  And any final terms would be dictate by the Allies as a whole, not with America as a mediator.

There would be no easy peace for Germany.  And the nation would wrestle with how much they were willing to pay to end the bloodshed.

Max von Baden – center, with mustache.  He would resign on the eve of the Armistice, as Germany was plunged into revolution

If there was one issue that the various heads of state and military leaders of the warring powers could agree upon by the fall of 1918 (with perhaps the prominent exception of Erich Ludendorff), it was that an armistice was not only necessary, but desired.  But what any armistice would look like or how it would come about were open questions with constantly changing answers.  (more…)

Lieutenant Paul Jürgen Vollmer of the 120th Württemberg Landwehr Regiment’s 1st Battalion was hoping that his approaching adjutant was bringing good news that early morning of October 8th, 1918.  Most of the reports he had been given had been to retreat as American and French forces slowly but surely carved their way through the Argonne forest, albeit at great cost.  The news was indeed good – the Prussian 210th Reserve Infantry Regiment had arrived at the front, perhaps allowing Vollmer to counterattack.  The veteran German commander rushed 200 yards to the front to see his reinforcements.

What he saw was only 70 new men sprinkled among his own regiment, all with their weapons on the ground and eating instead.  Vollmer vainly attempted to get the men marching; they said they wouldn’t move until they had breakfast.  Only the sounds of gunfire and retreating Germans past a nearby hill rallied the 210th to set down their utensils.  One of the fleeing Germans shouted “Die Amerikaner Kommen!” as he ran past, prompting a handful of the 210th to throw up their hands in surrender.  Vollmer immediately grabbed his pistol and forced a few of them to pick up their weapons.  As he did, a few Americans ran at the German position, one of them shooting his M1911 semi-automatic pistol.  Vollmer and the rest of his men were sure this had to be the advance scouts of a larger American unit and after Vollmer had emptied his pistol without hitting the lead American – and seeing the American shoot several more of his men – he offered to surrender.

A large American with a red mustache, broad features and a freckled face approached Vollmer and accepted the surrender of the men under Vollmer’s direct command.  It was only then that the German realized no American reinforcements were coming.  132 Germans had surrendered to (then) Corporal Alvin York and six other soldiers.  The Americans were beginning to learn how to fight and win in the trenches.

Alvin York – he would become one of the most famous individual soldiers in American history, but his post-WWII politics (he was in favor of attacking the Soviet Union) had him fall from public view

The Americans had been served their first real taste of defeat in the opening days of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, as the German counterattack badly bloodied the 35th Division to the point of nearly destroying it.  Among the many casualties had been Lt. Col. George S. Patton who was personally leading from his 304th Tank Brigade.  Patton had been frustrated with the inability of his tanks to advance and rounded up some men in a nearby trench to dig out his stuck tanks.  One of the soldiers questioned the wisdom of exposing themselves to German artillery for Patton’s tanks – Patton replied by striking the soldier in the head with a shovel.  Even Patton remarked in his diary that he may have killed the man, who did not get up after being struck.  Patton’s willingness to expose himself and others to dangerous conditions would catch up with him that very same day, as Patton would be hit in the leg with a machine gun bullet that tore a wound the size of a silver dollar through his buttocks.  If not for the courage of his orderly, Private Joe Angelo, Patton would have bled to death near the town of Cheppy in the forests of the Argonne.  (more…)

Sunrise was still many hours away when the densely packed forest of the Argonne on the Western Front lit up with the whistles and cracks of fired and exploding artillery on September 26th, 1918 (the same day as the Saint-Quentin Canal offensive).  The mountainous and wild woodlands of the Argonne had been scarred by the war, but plenty of trees remained standing.  The thick forests became shrapnel as the Allied artillery groped to find and destroy the Hindenburg Line trenches that protected the southern flank of the critical Sedan rail junction along the Meuse river.  As the Germans huddled in their positions, awaiting the inevitable infantry attack, they at least felt confident knowing the Allies would have to make their way across large sections of open terrain; perfect targets for machine guns and artillery.

Opposing them would not be the usual assortment of weary British soldiers or beleaguered French troops.  15 divisions of American “doughboys” would lead the charge, with 31 French divisions fighting alongside – 1.2 million Allied soldiers in all.  The American divisions were twice as large as any European counterpart, but for many of the young men in the trench, this would be their first significant action in the Great War.  Over the next 47 days, the United States would get it’s first – and last – taste of the horrors of the trench system of the Western Front.  Reputations would be won and lost, including multiple Medals of Honor for the battle.  And the Meuse-Argonne Offensive would claim more American lives than any battle in the nation’s history*.

American troops ready to march on the Argonne

For the better part of a year after their declaration of war, the United States’ participation in Europe’s death struggle had matched the dismissive evaluation of former German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg who declared that American support of the Allies would only result in the “delivery of food supplies to England, financial support, delivery of airplanes and the dispatching of corps of volunteers.”  And for the part better of 1917, America struggled to even match that analysis. (more…)

,,,you most likely think about the deep South or the Appalachians, of stills talked way back into mountain haulers and people driving boxes of plain white whiskey to sell out of the backs of their cars behind bars and in dusty back allways.

I’m just here to say that my rural North Dakota homies, 90 years ago next summer,pretty much showed the world how it was done.

The Canal de Saint-Quentin, the waterway that connected the River Oise and the Somme, had been one of the great engineering marvels of the 19th Century.  At first a sleepy little spillway during the 1700s, the Napoleonic Era saw the canal widened and given more depth, with a series of locks and tunnels that turned the route into the busiest man-made waterway by freight in France until the 1960s.

By the fall of 1918, the Canal de Saint-Quentin found itself a part of another major engineering marvel, this time of the 20th Century – the Hindenburg Line.  Indeed, the canal was viewed by both the Allies and the Germans as the most impenetrable section of the entire line, as between the canal’s rushing waters and the Hindenburg Line’s mixture of barbed wire, trenches and massive, reinforced concrete defenses, the ability to cross the Line was for all intends and purposes impossible.  Any attacker would have to wade through the canal under fire, limiting the ability to get tanks and heavy equipment across while going through an additional a no-man’s-land covered by machine guns and artillery.  Given the Great War’s track record of amphibious operations and plans, an offensive against Saint-Quentin seemed borderline suicidal.

As September 26th, 1918 was about to become September 27th, 1,044 British field guns and howitzers and 593 medium and heavy guns lashed out at Saint-Quentin, along with 30,000 poison gas shells in the largest British bombardment of the war.  The barrage was to open the way for the first wave of 30 British/Australian divisions and 2 American divisions, with the inexperienced Americans tasked to charge in first.  The attack had been hotly contested at the highest levels of the Allied governments and even mid-level British officers thought the offensive was nothing more than a “sacrificial stunt” to vainly attempt to keep Germany on the ropes as they retreated from their Spring Offensive gains.  

For the first time, the fearsome Hindenburg Line would be fully engaged by the Allies.  The momentum of the war rested upon the outcome.

The remains of the one of the Hindenburg Line’s bunkers

One hardly had to be clairvoyant in late September of 1918 to see that the Great War was finally, mercifully, coming to a head.  Since their “Black Day” in Amiens in early August, the German army had been in a headlong retreat back to the Hindenburg Line, surrendering tens of thousands of prisoners as well as miles of ground that had cost them a million men earlier in the year.  The Austro-Hungarian attempts at forcing a conclusion in Italy had been stymied, the Ottomans were being driven out of the Middle East with horrific casualties and the Bulgarians were in the process of surrendering.  The Central Powers were no longer on the verge of collapse – they were actively collapsing. (more…)

So, just how wrapped up was the American Revolution and the founding of the American Republic wrapped around slavery?

Not.

Quite the opposite: while all of the 13 colonies had originally allowed slavery, it had been abolished in most of the states by the revolution…

…and was recognized by most of the founding fathers as explicitly contrary to all of the Revolution’s interests except self-preservation (dividing in the face of the British would have been national suicide)…

…and abolition was a driving force behind the framing of the Constitution.

Just in case you need some ammo for your next spar with your next “progressive” relative.

The transformations of four years of war were readily apparent at 1am in the skies above Al-Afuleh in Palestine on September 19th, 1918.  One British Handley Page 0/400 bomber flew over the city, the headquarters of the Ottoman/German command for Palestine in the Jezreel Valley, dropping it’s payload of sixteen 112-pound bombs.  Four years earlier, the first “heavy” bomber in aerial history, the French Voisin III, could carry one 132-pound bomb, dropping it indiscriminately with little to no accuracy.  Aerial operations in 1914 were reconnaissance-focus; by 1918, both sides were using planes in intra-service coordination to attack and overwhelm their enemy’s lines.  With a singular strike, the Handley Page bomber destroyed the telephone exchange and main railway station, serving communications between the Ottoman/German High Command and their soldiers.

A few hours later, the British army roared to life, with 385 field guns lashing out at the Ottoman line.  A massive coordinated campaign of artillery, cavalry, infantry and Arabian guerillas would destabilize what remained of the Central Powers’ position in Palestine, destroying two Ottoman armies and reducing the Ottoman morale to dust.  As had happened to the Germans and the Bulgarians, now the Turks would face a killing stroke that would set in motion the end of their Empire.  It would be a fitting conclusion to a battle chosen by the British because of the proximity to the ancient city of Megiddo – or as it was known in Hebrew, Armageddon.

British troops advance with air cover – the modern ability of airpower to attack ground forces would set a historic precedent at Megiddo

The capture of Jerusalem in late 1917 had been a welcome victory for an Allied war effort that appeared to be falling apart.  In a few sharp battles, British General Edmund Allenby had driven the Turks out of southern Palestine with thousands of casualties to few losses of his own.  Where the British had been stymied in the Sinai and Gaza for years, racking up losses of tens of thousands of men, in six months Allenby had gutted the Ottoman line, destroyed entire armies and all for the loss of perhaps just over 3,000 men.  Accuracy, speed and guile had been Allenby’s tools and they had worked wonders against veteran Turkish soldiers and accomplished German commanders like Erich von Falkenhayn and Friedrich Freiherr Kress von Kressenstein.  But the victories hadn’t meant the end of the Palestinian campaign and Allenby would now face his greatest opponent – the British War Office.  (more…)

The guns that roared to life across the Bulgarian/Greek lines in Northern Macedonia on September 14th, 1918 had been expected for some time.  What had been a relatively quiet front for the better part of three years since the Allied landings at Salonika had come to life since late May of 1918 as the “Allied Army of the Orient”, a cosmopolitan assortment of divisions cobbled together from Britain, France, Italy, Serbia and finally Greece, slowly began to advance.  Opposing them had once been an equally mixed grand alliance of Central Powers divisions, which had slowly melted away into just two depleted Bulgarian armies.

800 Allied artillery pieces struck the Bulgarian trenches at Dobro Pole (“Good Field”) and Allied aircraft bombed the supply chain behind the line.  The barrage would continue into the next day, doing little direct damage to the Bulgarian line but carving up the barbed wire defenses and clearing paths through no man’s land.  In many ways, the Allied offensive looked the same as literally dozens of others over the past four years on battlefields across Europe and the Middle East.  But as Allied soldiers finally hit the Bulgarian trenches, suffering tough casualties, the outcome was profoundly different.  The Bulgarians broke.  Like the Germans in Amiens just a month earlier, the average Bulgarian soldier no longer wanted anything to do with the Great War.  

What had been hoped to be a minor Allied offensive to regain ground lost to the Bulgarians earlier in the war turned into a rout.  And the first of the Central Powers would fall.

Bulgarian trenches – Bulgaria had managed to hold off a massive Allied army largely by themselves for nearly years

In many ways, the Salonika Front had been frozen in place since late 1916 as first the Central Powers, and then the Allies, had tried in vain to quickly end what had become yet another tertiary front sapping men and materials badly needed elsewhere.  The Germans had coordinated with Greek King Constantine to allow German and Bulgarian troops to invade Northern Macedonia in an attempt to expel the Allied encampment at Salonika.  The move prompted the overthrow of the Greek monarchy and an Allied counteroffensive that regained some of the lost Macedonian territory but otherwise locked the two sides into the same positions they’d share until the summer of 1918.  Forces for both sides would come and go as needs on other fronts dictated, with the Russians leaving Greece with the fall of the Tsar and the Turks leaving as their Arabian and Mesopotamian Empires collapsed.  But the battles were few and far between, with the Allies referring to the front as “Muckydonia” due to it’s mud and boredom and the Germans mockingly calling Salonika “their largest POW camp.”  (more…)

There was little visibility in either side’s trenches in Amiens at 4:20am on August 8th, 1918.  Between the last of the night sky and a thick fog that rolled into the battlefield in northern France, spotting any movement was at a premium.  Despite the distance between the trenches being larger than usual at nearly 500 yards (usually trenches were only 50 to 250 yards apart), the Germans felt they had a good understanding of the disposition of the British forces across from them.  While elsewhere on the newly established lines of the Western Front the Germans were either fortifying or retreating to more defensible positions following their Spring Offensive, at Amiens German troops sat largely in place.  Other than increased aerial bombing in the area, the Germans believed their intelligence that the Allies would counterattack elsewhere.  They had even held a raid that penetrated 800 yards into the Allied trenches just days earlier and had seen no evidence of an Allied build-up.

The crashing weight of 32 divisions of British, Canadian, Australian, French and American troops utterly broke the German line that morning.  Erich Ludendorff would call August 8th, 1918 “the black day of the German Army” and the Allies would eventually know the attack as the start of the “100 Days Offensive” – the last 100 days of the Great War.

British soldiers ride a tank at Amiens.  The battle saw the successful deployment of hundreds of tanks

As July of 1918 began to wind down, the positions of both the German and Allied armies were becoming clear.

German numerical superiority had vanished, with the Germans holding 207 divisions in France and Belgium and the Allies having 203 divisions to meet them.  Worse for Germany, an increasing number of these Allied divisions were Americans, meaning those divisions were typically twice as large as in any European army.  In terms of pure manpower, Germany was probably now in the minority in the West.  The German High Command estimated that they’d need at least 200,000 new soldiers a month just to make good on the rate of loss they were experiencing in France.  The next annual class of 18 year-old draftees was only 300,000 in total, and perhaps only 70,000 wounded German soldiers would be physically able to return to duty.  Germany was literally bleeding to death.  (more…)

“The Moth Radio Hour” – a public radio production featuring the modern version of “storytelling” – is an often-insufferable bit of radio, featuring stories by people who are just not especially compelling. And yes, I”m stereotyping very broadly here, but prove me wrong.

No – I’ll prove myself wrong. This story – by one Victor Levenstein, who was 94 when he was recorded for the program – told the story of his arrest and interrogation by the KGB in 1944, before a New York audience…

…which, one must imagine, is largely composed of people who unironically think The Right is the “side” in modern politics who’d bring that sort of thing back.

It was barely after midnight on July 17, 1918 when the former royal family of Russia had been disturbed from their sleep.  Tsar Nicholas II, his wife, children, and a handful of members of the royal entourage had made their home in Yekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains just a couple of months earlier, all under the intense and abusive watch of Bolshevik guards.  After the abdication in February of 1917, Nicholas II had lived in relative comfort as the Provisional Government allowed them a standard of living comparable to their former reign, even attempting to negotiate the Tsar’s relocation to Britain.  But with the rise of the Bolsheviks, Nicholas II and his family were now prisoners of the State; their fates a topic of debate at the highest levels of the Soviet government.

In Yekaterinburg, the Romanovs lived in rooms with sealed and painted over windows, and were given two half-hour periods outside the house where they sat in a tiny garden surrounded by 14-foot walls.  “Luxuries” like butter and coffee had been cut out of their meals.  No visitors or newspapers were allowed, nor was any conversation allowed with the 300 guards assigned to watch them, all under the threat of being shot and other verbal abuse.  Surviving diary entries from the family show a slow realization towards their eventual fate.

As the family and their remaining servants gathered in the basement of home, ostensibly to be evacuated due to the advancing Czechoslovak Legion, the head guard read from a letter:

“Nikolai Alexandrovich, in view of the fact that your relatives are continuing their attack on Soviet Russia, the Ural Executive Committee has decided to execute you.”

Before the family could react beyond Nicholas II asking “What?”, the guards opened fire.  The tiny basement quickly filled with smoke, ricochets and screams.  When the gunshots stopped, the guards realized how poor their aim had been – outside of the Tsar and his wife, most of the family and others were still alive.  Over the next 20 minutes, the guards shot and stabbed the children and servants, mutilating and sexually abusing the bodies.  The remains were stripped, covered in Sulphuric acid, lye, then burned and buried.  Such was the level of concern over giving the advancing Czechoslovaks and the burgeoning White Army any standard bearer upon which to rally – even a royal corpse.

The last act of the House of Romanov was among the first acts of the Russian Civil War.

White Cossacks charge – the Cossacks were the initial backbone of the White Army

The historic descriptor of the loose confederacy of activists, politicians and generals that opposed the Bolsheviks as the “White” Russian movement could be seen as truly apt.  If “white” as a color is often seen as formless, bland, lacking contours and definition, so to was the nature of the “White” Russian resistance to the “Red” Bolsheviks that took power in the fall of 1917.  While later definitions of the Whites would oversimplify them as a conservative, reactionary force, the White movement constituted political leaders ranging from Mensheviks, to Social Democrats, Monarchists, and ultra-nationalist militias.  The Whites were a movement without philosophical grounding or even consistent political leadership, with most efforts to organize failing and leading to dictatorial control from former Tsarist generals and local warlords.  At their core, to be a “White” often simply meant to stand in opposition to the Bolsheviks. (more…)

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

I hate these tests. 

Joe Doakes

I put nothing past Captcha.

Background.

It was a typically sweltering summer day in Canton, Ohio on June 16th, 1918, but it hadn’t stopped an estimated 1,200 locals, bolstered by a healthy contingent of press, from gathering in a city park.  Nor had it stopped the day’s speaker, former 4-time Socialist candidate for President Eugene Debs, from wearing a heavy tweed jacket and buttoned vest, sweating profusely as he spoke.  At 62 years of age, Debs had barely recovered from an illness in time for his midwestern anti-war speaking tour and looked worse for the wear.  His audience was a Socialist convention picnic and federal agents wandered through the crowded, randomly demanding draft cards.  

Debs, always the political firebrand, heaped praise on the Bolshevik Revolution and defended three local Socialists who had been recently imprisoned for speaking out against the war.  “They have come to realize,” he intoned, “that it is extremely dangerous to exercise the constitutional right of free speech in a country fighting to make democracy safe in the world.”

Two weeks later, Debs would find himself arrested under the same charges and become the most well-known defendant against the recently-passed Sedition Act.  

Uncle Sam picks up a variety of individuals – an IWW supporter, a Sinn Fein activist and a “traitor”

While the Sedition Act of 1918 – and it’s precursor, the Espionage Act of 1917 – most assuredly had their roots in America’s involvement in the Great War, President Woodrow Wilson’s interest in far-reaching legal authority related to the domestic end of national security pre-dated the American declaration of war.  In late 1915, as Europe’s war raged on, Wilson delivered his State of the Union, declaring:

“There are citizens of the United States, I blush to admit, born under other flags but welcomed under our generous naturalization laws to the full freedom and opportunity of America, who have poured the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life; who have sought to bring the authority and good name of our Government into contempt …  Such creatures of passion, disloyalty, and anarchy must be crushed out.”

(more…)

The anxiousness in the Austro-Hungarian trenches along the Piave river in Italy was obvious at 2:30am on June 15th, 1918.  In 30 minutes, hundreds of thousands of men, supported by nearly 7,000 pieces of heavy artillery, would launch themselves at the Italian line as part of a massive, nearly one-million man offensive designed to finally push Italy out of the war.  Despite the rapidly increasing political disintegration of the Habsburg Empire, if Italy could be dealt one more major blow like they had received the preceding fall at Caporetto, the Dual Monarchy’s last major remaining front would close, perhaps meaning that the Empire could successfully negotiate their way out of the war.  Coupled with Germany’s gains in France as part of their Spring Offensive, a glimmer of hope that the war could be conventionally won, despite all evidence to the contrary, was seen.  The Empire had staked everything on this offensive – either it would be one of the greatest moments in the Dual Monarchy’s history, or it would be a failed gamble that would hasten the polyglot Empire’s end.

At 2:30am, the Piave roared to life with the crashing sounds of artillery.  The offensive wasn’t suppose to begin for another half-hour.  It was Italian artillery.  Rome knew exactly what was about to occur – and was throwing their own million-man army into the attack.

A Bridge Too Far – crossing the Piave would become the major hurdle in the offensive

The disaster of Caporetto had shaken the Italian army – and society – to its core.  305,000 casualties, essentially one whole Italian army group, had been destroyed and the Austro-Hungarians sat on the doorstep of the Italian plane.  Only the Piave river blocked any further advance and if Vienna could cross it, there would be no natural boundaries to prevent them from driving deep into northern Italy and capturing most of the Italian industrial base.  Such a strike would almost guarantee that Italy would be forced to sue for peace. (more…)