German sailors begin to mutiny

Year
1918
Month Day
October 28

On October 28, 1918, sailors in the German High Seas Fleet steadfastly refuse to obey an order from the German Admiralty to go to sea to launch one final attack on the mighty British navy, echoing the frustrated, despondent mood of many on the side of the Central Powers during the last days of World War I.

By the last week of October 1918, three of the Central Powers—Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire—were at least in talks with the Allies about reaching an armistice, while the fourth, Bulgaria, had already concluded one at the end of September. With the end of the war seemingly in sight, the German naval command—led by the Admiralty’s chief of staff, Reinhardt Scheer—decided to launch a last-ditch effort against the British in the North Sea in a desperate attempt to restore the German navy’s prestige. In the words of Reinhardt Scheer, chief of staff of the German Admiralty, “An honorable battle by the fleet—even if it should be a fight to the death—will sow the seed of a new German fleet of the future. There can be no future for a fleet fettered by a dishonorable peace.” Choosing not to inform the chancellor, Max von Baden, of its plans, the German Admiralty issued the order to leave port on October 28.

The sailors themselves, however, believing the attack to be a suicide mission, would have none of it. Though the order was given five times, each time they resisted. In total, 1,000 mutineers were arrested, leaving the Imperial Fleet immobilized. By October 30, the resistance had engulfed the German naval base at Kiel, where sailors and industrial workers alike took part in the rebellion; within a week, it had spread across the country, with revolts in Hamburg, Bremen and Lubeck on November 4 and 5 and in Munich two days later. This widespread discontent led Socialist members of the German Reichstag, or parliament, to declare the country a republic on November 9, followed swiftly by Kaiser Wilhelm’s abdication and finally, on November 11, by the end of the First World War.

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German command makes final plans for renewed offensive on the Western Front

Year
1918
Month Day
July 11

Even with a deadly influenza epidemic spreading among German troops, the German High Command decides to go ahead with plans for a renewed assault on the Allies on the Western Front in the summer of 1918, making their final plans on July 11.

The so-called Spanish flu, an unusually powerful strain of influenza, spread throughout North America, Europe and eventually around the world during 1918, claiming millions of lives. The First World War, with its massive movements of men in close quarters, under harsh conditions, undoubtedly acted as a factor in the epidemic. The soldiers fighting for the Central Powers, Germany and Austria-Hungary, were hit especially hard by the virus beginning in the early summer of 1918, just as the Allies prepared to counter the German spring offensive on the Western Front.

READ MORE: Why Was It Called the ‘Spanish Flu?’ 

With Austria-Hungary virtually eliminated as a military force by the third year of World War I, Vienna looked to Germany as the Dual Monarchy’s last chance for survival. People have only one more hope, the German Front, the German ambassador to Austria-Hungary reported to Berlin on July 11. Even a hope in a separate peace does not exist any more. That same day, the German army’s High Command, which had previously considered pushing back their plans for a renewed offensive due to the flu epidemic’s effect on their troops, decided instead to push ahead. The German attack on July 15, near the Marne River in the Champagne region of France, met with resounding failure. It would be the final German offensive of World War I.

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German cabinet resigns over Versailles deadlock

Year
1919
Month Day
June 20

On June 20, 1919, during the final days of the Versailles Peace Conference held in Paris, France, the German cabinet deadlocks over whether to accept the peace terms presented to its delegation by the other nations at the peace conference–most notably the Council of Four: France, Britain, the United States and Italy–and ratify the Versailles Treaty.

READ MORE: How the Treaty of Versailles and German Guilt Led to World War II

Presented with the terms of the treaty on May 7, 1919, the German delegation was given two weeks to examine the document and submit their official comments in writing. The Germans, who had put great faith in U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s notion of a so-called “peace without victory” and had pointed to his famous Fourteen Points as the basis upon which they sought peace in November 1918, were greatly angered and disillusioned by the treaty. By its terms, Germany was to lose 13 percent of its territory and 10 percent of its population; it would also have to pay reparations, a punishment justified in the treaty by the infamous Article 231, which placed the blame for the war squarely on Germany.

Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantzau, Germany’s foreign minister and leader of the German delegation at Versailles, was furious about the treaty. “This fat volume was quite unnecessary. They could have expressed the whole thing more simply in one clause–Germany renounces its existence.” The country’s military leaders were similarly against the treaty; as Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg saw it, “as a soldier I can only prefer honorable defeat to a disgraceful peace.” Some members of the coalition government that had taken power in Berlin, however, were of a different view, believing that Germany, in its weakened state, would benefit by signing the treaty in order to put the war behind it and begin rebuilding its manufacturing and commerce operations.

After Brockdorff-Rantzau’s delegation passed a unanimous recommendation to reject the treaty, the German cabinet, which had previously been leaning towards signing, deadlocked in its vote on June 20 and subsequently resigned en masse. Brockdorff-Rantzau followed suit, leaving Paris, and politics, altogether. Friedrich Ebert, the German president since late 1918, was persuaded to stay on, however, and as the Allied deadline of June 23 approached, he managed to assemble another cabinet to put the issue to a vote. After a last-minute flurry of activity, the German National Assembly voted to sign the treaty and its answer was delivered to the Council of Four at 5:40 p.m. on June 23. The Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919, in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, five years to the day after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife at Sarajevo.

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German airship hits central London

Year
1915
Month Day
September 08

On September 8, 1915, a German Zeppelin commanded by Heinrich Mathy, one of the great airship commanders of World War I, hits Aldersgate in central London, killing 22 people and causing £500,000 worth of damage.

The Zeppelin, a motor-driven rigid airship, was developed by German inventor Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin in 1900. Although a French inventor had built a power-driven airship several decades before, the von Zeppelin-designed rigid dirigible, with its steel framework, was by far the largest airship ever constructed. However, in the case of the zeppelin, size was exchanged for safety, as the heavy steel-framed airships were vulnerable to explosion because they had to be lifted by highly flammable hydrogen gas instead of non-flammable helium gas.

The Germans enjoyed great success with the Zeppelin over the course of 1915 and 1916, terrorizing the skies over the British Isles. The first Zeppelin attack on London came on May 31, 1915; it killed 28 people and wounded 60 more. By May 1916, the Germans had killed a total of 550 Britons with aerial bombing.

One of the best-known Zeppelin pilots was Heinrich Mathy, born in 1883 in Mannheim, Germany. Flying his famed airship L13 on September 8, 1915, Mathy dropped his bombs on the Aldersgate area of central London, causing great damage by fire and killing 22 people.

The following summer, Mathy piloted a new Zeppelin, the L31 in more attacks on London on the night of August 24-25, 1916. His ship was damaged upon landing; while he was waiting for repairs to be made, Mathy received word that the British had managed for the first time to shoot down a Zeppelin, using incendiary bullets. Shortly after that, Mathy wrote pessimistically: “It is only a question of time before we join the rest. Everyone admits that they feel it. Our nerves are ruined by mistreatment. If anyone should say that he was not haunted by visions of burning airships, then he would be a braggart.” True to his prediction, Mathy’s L31 was shot down during a raid on London on the night of October 1-2, 1916. He is buried in Staffordshire, in a cemetery constructed for the burial of Germans killed on British soil during both World Wars.

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Formal commission is established on the League of Nations


Year
1919
Month Day
January 25

On January 25, 1919, in Paris, delegates to the peace conference formally approve the establishment of a commission on the League of Nations.

U.S. President Woodrow Wilson insisted on chairing the commission—for him, the establishment of the League lay squarely at the center of the peace negotiations. He was supported by British Prime Minister David Lloyd George. Though France’s Georges Clemenceau was more skeptical, believing the peace with Germany to be the more important goal, he went along with his American and British colleagues, refusing to let France be seen as an obstacle to the League’s formation. The commission was originally made up of two representatives from each of the Big Five nations—France, the British empire, Italy, Japan and the United States. Later, after smaller nations such as Belgium protested, they were granted the right to nominate additional representatives, first five and eventually nine.

The first meeting of the commission was held on February 3. Tensions arose almost immediately over French attempts to make the League more capable of strong enforcement of its principles. They pushed for the strict disarmament of all nations, with broad powers of inspection given to the League, and the establishment of an international military force comprised of League members. The British and the American delegations suspected this was just another way for the French to achieve their goal of a permanent armed coalition against their most hated enemy, Germany. Politically, as well, the French program was an impossible alternative, as neither the British Parliament nor the U.S. Congress was prepared to give up the authority to decide when and where their country’s armed forced would be deployed. At one point, rumors flew that Wilson was set to abandon negotiations altogether. Still, the commission persevered, and a comprehensive draft was ready by February 14.

This draft outlined all aspects of the League, including its administration: a general assembly, a secretariat and an executive council. There would be, contrary to French demands, no League army and no mandate for disarmament. To prevent the smaller nations from banding together to outvote the bigger ones, there was a provision that the majority of League decisions had to be unanimous, a requirement that was later pointed to as an important cause of the organization’s ineffectiveness.

Finally, Germany would not be invited to join the League right away; France was strict on this point and its allies gave way without much of a struggle. This would put Germany in the frustrating position, later on, of agreeing in the Treaty of Versailles to the formation of an organization that it could not join.

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First stage of German spring offensive ends

Year
1918
Month Day
April 05

On April 5, 1918, General Erich Ludendorff formally ends “Operation Michael,” the first stage of the final major German offensive of World War I.

Operation Michael, which marked the first sizable German offensive against Allied positions on the Western Front in more than a year, began on March 21, 1918, with a five-hour-long bombardment of Allied positions near the Somme River from more than 9,000 pieces of German artillery, in the face of which the poorly prepared British 5th Army was rapidly overwhelmed and forced into retreat. For a week, the Germans pushed toward Paris, shelling the city from a distance of 80 miles with their “Big Bertha” cannons; by March 25, they had crossed the Somme and broken through the Allied lines. 

Hampered by a lack of supplies and cavalry, as well as hardening Allied defenses, German troops became exhausted, and by the end of March the Allies had halted their advance. On April 2, U.S. General John J. Pershing sent several thousand fresh American troops down into the trenches to fight alongside the British and French. It was the first major deployment of U.S. troops in World War I.

By April 5, when Ludendorff shut down the attacks, Operation Michael had produced the biggest gains of territory on the Western Front by either side since 1914. The Germans had advanced almost 40 miles, inflicted some 200,000 casualties and captured 70,000 prisoners and more than 1,000 Allied guns. The costs of battle were high, however: Germans suffered nearly as many casualties as their enemies and lacked the fresh reserves and supplies the Allies enjoyed following the American entrance into the war. Still, Ludendorff would launch four more similar operations that spring of 1918, as the Germans staked everything on a last, desperate offensive on the Western Front.

READ MORE: Life in the Trenches of World War I

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First issue of “The New Republic” published

Year
1914
Month Day
November 07

While World War I rages in Europe, the first issue of a new magazine, The New Republic, is published in the United States.

The New Republic’s editorial board was presided over by the journalist Herbert Croly, author of the influential 1909 book The Promise of American Life. Impressed by Croly’s arguments for greater economic planning, increased spending on education and the need for a society based on the “brotherhood of mankind”—ideas that were said to have influenced both Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson—the heiress Dorothy Payne Whitney and her husband, the banker and diplomat Williard Straight, approached Croly and asked him to join them in launching a new liberal journal that would provide an intelligent, opinionated examination of politics, foreign affairs and culture. 

After recruiting his friend and fellow journalist Walter Lippmann, Croly saw the first issue of the new magazine hit the stands on November 7, 1914.Though its first issue sold only 875 copies, after a year the circulation of The New Republic reached 15,000. Strong supporters of Theodore Roosevelt and his newly formed Progressive Party, the magazine’s editors were wary of the administration of Woodrow Wilson, although they did support Wilson’s proclaimed neutrality at the beginning of World War I. In May 1915, however, a German submarine sank the British passenger ship Lusitania, killing 1,201 passengers and crew members, including 128 Americans. The New Republic began to switch its anti-war position, eventually throwing all its support behind President Wilson’s decision to take the nation to war in April 1917. 

Walter Lippmann especially grew close to the administration during wartime, working as an assistant to Newton Baker, the president’s secretary of war, and with Colonel Edward House, Wilson’s closest adviser.In the aftermath of the war and the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, both Croly and Lippmann became critical of Wilson and the viability of the Versailles peace treaty and the League of Nations. Croly went so far as to call the treaty a “peace of annihilation” in its harsh treatment of Germany and to claim that the League would “perpetuate rather than correct the evils of the treaty.” Meanwhile, sales of The New Republic declined from a wartime high of 43,000 and the journal soon was operating at a loss. Lippmann left the magazine in 1920, and in 1930 Croly was replaced as editor. 

Today the magazine—headquartered in Washington, D.C. and New York City—still publishes regularly.

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First cases reported in deadly Spanish flu pandemic


Year
1918
Month Day
March 11

Just before breakfast on the morning of March 11, Private Albert Gitchell of the U.S. Army reports to the hospital at Fort Riley, Kansas, complaining of the cold-like symptoms of sore throat, fever and headache. By noon, over 100 of his fellow soldiers had reported similar symptoms, marking what are believed to be the first cases in the historic influenza pandemic of 1918, later known as Spanish flu. The flu would eventually kill 675,000 Americans and an estimated 20 million to 50 million people around the world, proving to be a far deadlier force than even the First World War.

READ MORE: Why October 1918 Was America’s Deadliest Year

The initial outbreak of the disease, reported at Fort Riley in March, was followed by similar outbreaks in army camps and prisons in various regions of the country. The disease soon traveled to Europe with the American soldiers heading to aid the Allies on the battlefields of France. (In March 1918 alone, 84,000 American soldiers headed across the Atlantic; another 118,000 followed them the next month.) Once it arrived on a second continent, the flu showed no signs of abating: 31,000 cases were reported in June in Great Britain. The disease was soon dubbed the Spanish flu due to the shockingly high number of deaths in Spain (some 8 million, it was reported) after the initial outbreak there in May 1918.

The flu showed no mercy for combatants on either side of the trenches. Over the summer, the first wave of the epidemic hit German forces on the Western Front, where they were waging a final, no-holds-barred offensive that would determine the outcome of the war. It had a significant effect on the already weakening morale of the troops—as German army commander Crown Prince Rupprecht wrote on August 3: poor provisions, heavy losses, and the deepening influenza have deeply depressed the spirits of men in the III Infantry Division. Meanwhile, the flu was spreading fast beyond the borders of Western Europe, due to its exceptionally high rate of virulence and the massive transport of men on land and aboard ship due to the war effort. By the end of the summer, numerous cases had been reported in Russia, North Africa and India; China, Japan, the Philippines and even New Zealand would eventually fall victim as well.

READ MORE: How America Struggled to Bury the Dead During the 1918 Flu Pandemic

The Great War ended on November 11, but influenza continued to wreak international havoc, flaring again in the U.S. in an even more vicious wave with the return of soldiers from the war and eventually infecting an estimated 28 percent of the country’s population before it finally petered out. In its December 28, 1918, issue, the American Medical Association acknowledged the end of one momentous conflict and urged the acceptance of a new challenge: fighting infectious disease.

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First Battle of Ypres

Year
1914
Month Day
October 19

On October 19, 1914, near the Belgian city of Ypres, Allied and German forces begin the first of what would be three battles to control the city and its advantageous positions on the north coast of Belgium during the First World War.

After the German advance through Belgium and eastern France was curtailed by a decisive Allied victory in the Battle of the Marne in late September 1914, the so-called “Race to the Sea” began, as each army attempted to outflank the other on their way northwards, hastily constructing trench fortifications as they went. The race ended in mid-October at Ypres, the ancient Flemish city with its fortifications guarding the ports of the English Channel and access to the North Sea beyond.

After the Germans captured the Belgian city of Antwerp early in October, Antwerp’s remaining Belgian forces along with troops of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), commanded by Sir John French, withdrew to Ypres, arriving at the city between October 8 and 19 to reinforce the Belgian and French defenses there. Meanwhile, the Germans prepared to launch the first phase of an offensive aimed at breaking the Allied lines and capturing Ypres and other channel ports, thus controlling the outlets to the North Sea.

On October 19, a protracted period of fierce combat began, as the Germans opened their Flanders offensive and the Allies steadfastly resisted, while seeking their own chances to go on the attack wherever possible. Fighting continued, with heavy losses on both sides, until November 22, when the arrival of winter weather forced the battle to a halt. The area between the positions established by both sides during this period—from Ypres on the British side to Menin and Roulers on the German side—became known as the Ypres Salient, a region that over the course of the next several years would see some of the war’s bitterest and most brutal struggles.

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Author Erich Maria Remarque born

Year
1898
Month Day
June 22

On June 22, 1898, Erich Maria Remarque, the author of the great World War I novel All Quiet on the Western Front, is born in Osnabruck, Germany.

A student at the University of Munster, Remarque was drafted into the German army at the age of 18. He fought on the Western Front during World War I and was wounded no fewer than five times, the last time seriously. After the war, he worked various jobs—teacher, stonecutter, race-car driver, sports journalist—while working to complete the novel he had had in mind since the war. Published in Germany in 1929 as Im Westen Nichts Neues, it sold 1.2 million copies within a year; the English translation, All Quiet on the Western Front, published the same year, went on to similar success. It was subsequently translated into 12 languages, and made into a celebrated Hollywood film in 1930.

The smashing success of All Quiet on the Western Front was due in large part to its reflection of a widespread disillusionment with the war that took hold of many during the 1920s. Praised as a novel of unyielding realism, All Quiet on the Western Front described in stark detail the physical trauma of war. Remarque also articulated the numbing frustration and anger of the conscript soldier, sent into battle by government and military leaders for reasons of politics and power that he struggled to understand. In the words of his protagonist, Paul Baumer: I see how peoples are set against one another and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one anotherI see that the keenest brains of the world invent weapons and words to make it yet more refined and enduring.

The celebrated American journalist H. L. Mencken called All Quiet on the Western Front “unquestionably the best story of the World War.” Both the book and the 1930 film version were banned by the Nazis after their rise to power in Germany in 1933 as prejudicial to German national prestige. Remarque went on to write nine more novels, all dealing with the horror and futility of war and the struggle to understand its purpose; his last novel, The Night in Lisbon, was unsparing in its condemnation of World War II as Adolf Hitler’s attempt to perpetrate the extermination of Jews and other nonpeople on behalf of the master race.

Though he became a naturalized American citizen and was during the 1930s a frequent participant in New York City nightlife and a companion for several years in Hollywood of the actress Marlene Dietrich, Remarque lived for most of his later life at Porto Ronco, on the shore of Lake Maggiore in Switzerland. He died at Locarno in 1970 with his wife, the actress Paulette Goddard, at his side.

READ MORE: Life in the Trenches of World War I

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