The Great War
Published on 6 Aug 2018After 4 years of global war, there are signs that the war of attrition is over and the situation is shifting in favor of the Allies.
August 7, 2018
The Tide Is Turning I THE GREAT WAR Summary Part 14
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August 6, 2018
1918 Flu Pandemic – Leviathan – Extra History – #5
Extra Credits
Published on 4 Aug 2018This is a global pandemic. The flu jumps ship, literally, onto the docks of American Samoa, of South Africa, of Alaska, of India. The 1918 flu infects every human continent.
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The Battle of Amiens
At Samizdata, Patrick Crozier explains why the Battle of Amiens should be far better known than it is:
On 8 August 1918 in Northern France, a mainly British force attacked on a 15 mile front and advanced to a depth of 7 miles.
In so doing it inflicted 70,000 casualties on the Germans capturing 500 guns while suffering 44,000 casualties of its own. The Battle of Amiens as it became known, was the first clearly-successful, large-scale, Allied offensive operation on the Western Front. Ludendorff, the German commander, famously called it the “Black day of the German army”. But then again he was always a bit of a flibbertygibbet.
Although no one knew it at the time the Battle of Amiens heralded the beginning of the Hundred Days Offensive in which Allied success followed Allied success. By November the Germans realised that the game was up and sued for peace.
Amiens did not take place in a vacuum. At the Second Battle of the Marne which took place a few weeks earlier the Germans had attacked and the French and Americans had successfully counter-attacked. This brought to an end German hopes of a quick victory.
[…]
So why have so few heard of Amiens? Why doesn’t it occupy a similar position to Agincourt, Waterloo and El Alamein? Quite simply because it doesn’t fit the narrative. The lazy story we’ve all heard a million times tells us that the Western Front was all about incompetent generals and stalemate. Amiens and the Hundred Days Offensive show this to be nonsense.
A more accurate narrative might be that winning on the Western Front was never going to be easy but they got there in the end.
The battle also saw the Australian Corps and the Canadian Corps reprising their roles as “shock troops” of the British army (including an elaborate scheme to hide the presence of the Canadians from the German commanders):
Purists will be offended by Terraine’s failure to explain the role of the French army at Amiens (which extended the attack to the south), but more intriguing is the sidelining of Sir Arthur Currie’s Canadian Corps. Indeed, Terraine’s focus on generals Rawlinson and Monash (although not incorrect in itself) seems to miss how important the Canadians were to the battle; it would be true to say that they made the Battle of Amiens. Their four divisions in line, deployed in the centre along the Amiens-Roye Road, formed the spearhead of the assault. At the end of the day they had driven eight miles into the position of the German Second Army.
Notwithstanding these quibbles, Terraine’s article, with its focus on training and planning and the coordination of firepower and manoeuvre, prefigures much of the debates that would take place in the 1990s and beyond about the nature of change and development in the British Expeditionary Force (the ‘learning curve’). While the military effort of the ‘white dominions’ – Australia, New Zealand and Canada – has been widely praised (with Canadians being justifiably proud of their tag as the ‘shock army of the British Empire’), the humble British Tommy has often been left behind. Since Terraine wrote his article, however, much work has been done to rectify this imbalance.
August 5, 2018
Rockets – Blinded Soldiers I OUT OF THE TRENCHES
The Great War
Published on 4 Aug 2018Chair of Wisdom Time! Indy talks about rocket usage in WW1 and how blinded soldiers were rehabilitated.
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August 3, 2018
Four Years of War I THE GREAT WAR Week 210
The Great War
Published on 2 Aug 2018As the war turns 4 years old, there is still no end in sight. From the Western Front to the Caucasus and the Middle East; in every theater the war is still raging on.
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The obscure, almost-forgotten campaign that ended the First World War
It’s often called the “Hundred Days”, but even for people who stayed awake in their high school history classes, that’s often taken to refer to the last hurrah of Napoleon between his escape from Elba and his ultimate defeat at Waterloo. The WW1’s Hundred Days began with the Allied victory at the battle of Amiens and ended with the Armistice on 11 November, 1918. On Twitter, Engaging Strategy shared a series of tweets about this campaign and how little is generally remembered about it:
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August 2, 2018
1918 Flu Pandemic – Fighting the Ghost – Extra History – #4
Extra Credits
Published on 28 Jul 2018Philadelphia gets hit the hardest. New York fares somewhat better, but everyone is trying to keep hush-hush about a pandemic that still found its way into a children’s rhyme: influenza.
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July 31, 2018
German Asia Corps In The Ottoman Empire During WW1 I THE GREAT WAR Special
The Great War
Published on 30 Jul 2018German-Ottoman military cooperation predated World War 1 by a few decades. But their alliance during the First World War meant that German (and Austrian) troops would actually fight in and with the Ottoman Empire.
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July 30, 2018
Pour Le Merite – Persia – Polish Legions I OUT OF THE TRENCHES
The Great War
Published on 28 Jul 2018Chair of Wisdom Time!
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July 27, 2018
Ludendorff’s Last Swing I THE GREAT WAR Week 209
The Great War
Published on 26 Jul 2018All of Germany’s recent offensives have been building up to Operation Hagen: An offensive in Flanders that was to divide the Allies and drive the British off the continent. But this week German High Command realizes that they don’t have the manpower left to even start the offensive.
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July 26, 2018
Forgotten History: The Capture of Fort Douaumont
Forgotten Weapons
Published on 26 Jun 2018http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
Welcome to out first episode of Forgotten History! This will be an occasional series looking at interesting events and places in military history. We will begin with the capture of Fort Douaumont on February 25, 1916…
This video was made possible by Military History Tours, and it is the first of a bunch you will be seeing from their Spring 2018 tour of American WW1 battlefields in France. If you are interested in seeing places like this (or WW2, or Korea, or many others) firsthand yourself with a guided tour, check them out:
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July 25, 2018
Forgotten History: The Underground Hell of Fort Vaux
Forgotten Weapons
Published on 24 Jul 2018http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
With the surprise capture of Fort Douaumont in February 1916, the French reinforced all the remaining forts around the city of Verdun, and would hold them all successfully for many months. In fact, the only other fort in the area to fall would be Fort Vaux, in June of 1916.
In the chaos of the early battle, orders had actually gone out to evacuate Vaux and destroy it, but these were countermanded, and the fort remained a major lynchpin of French defenses in the sector. Critically, before they could be removed, demolition charges set in the fort’s main gun turret were detonated by a massive German shell, destroying the weapon.
In May, German advances seriously threatened the fort, and a new commander was assigned – Major Sylvain Eugene Raynal. Upon arrival, he found the fort in a terrible condition – heavily damaged by German bombardments and hugely overcrowded with as many as 500 soldiers, most of them wounded and sheltering in the fort (it had been designed to garrison 150 men). Shelling had broken through the fort’s walls in several places, and unbeknownst to Raynal or his men, the water cistern had been damaged and was nearly empty despite its gauge reading substantial levels of water.
The climactic German assault began on June 1st 1916, and by the end of the day only 71 French soldiers remained in unwounded inside. On June 2nd, the cistern damage was discovered – at that point it held just 8 gallons of putrid dregs. Intense fighting would continue for nearly another week, without any relief forces or supplies able to reach the fort. On the 5th, a bit of water was collected from rain, but not much. A relief force attempted to reinforce the fort, but was virtually obliterated, with only 37 men reaching its walls.
The Germans would storm the fort on June 5th, and the most horrific of combat would rage for two days inside its tunnels and galleries. Raynal ordered barricades erected inside the fort, and the French forces fought from one to the next, with only a few dozen men remaining. The battle would include machine gun and hand grenades in these tight passageways, and eventually a German attempt to burn out the defenders with flamethrowers.
Finally on the morning of June 7th, the combination of casualties and a complete lack of water meant the end of the resistance. Raynal and his surviving men surrendered, and Germans soldiers finally occupied the fort they had spent months attempting to conquer. In recognition of his valiant defense, Raynal’s sword was returned to him by German Crown Prince Wilhelm.
The German occupation of the fort would last only a few months – by late October it was abandoned quietly, and a French scouting force would find it empty and retake it on November 2nd, 1916.
If you enjoy Forgotten Weapons, check out its sister channel, InRangeTV! http://www.youtube.com/InRangeTVShow
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July 24, 2018
A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway I WHO DID WHAT IN WW1?
The Great War
Published on 23 Jul 2018He is regarded as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, but before that, he was an ambulance driver on the Italian Front in the Great War and also took part in the Spanish Civil War and World War Two.
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July 23, 2018
1918 Flu Pandemic – Order More Coffins – Extra History – #3
Extra Credits
Published on 21 Jul 2018Dr. Welch, Dr. Avery, Dr. Park, and Dr. Williams are on the hunt now to correctly identify this new pathogen and make a vaccine. But public officials are in denial. In Philadelphia, the mayor and his health officials are telling the press that the outbreak is nearly over. They continue doing so, day after day, as the death toll mounts and hospital wards fill.
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July 22, 2018
Austro-Hungarian Artillery – Choctaw Code Talkers I OUT OF THE TRENCHES
The Great War
Published on 21 Jul 2018
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