Chapter 24: The Nation at War, 1900-1920 #3

Over There

• the US entered a war its new allies were in danger of losing– were mutinies

in the French army

– costly British drive in Flanders stalled

• Germany had developed a first-strike strategy– the Schlieffen

Plan – called for a quick sweep through France to knock the French out of the war• swept through

Belgium and northern France

• Mobilization– US was not prepared for war

• Wilson – named John J. “Black Jack” Pershing (leader of the Mexican campaign) to head the American Expeditionary Force (AEF)

• troops would be called doughboys by the Europeans– may have been for the white adobe dust that stuck to the

boots of soldiers during the Mexican War– could have been from Civil War times when uniform buttons

looked like flour dumplings– or from the white flour they used to keep their belts white

• armed forces had two war plans:– War Plan Orange –

for a defensive war against Japan in the Pacific

– War Plan Black – to counter a possible German attack in the Caribbean

• Wilson – had ordered military commanders not to plan, because it violated neutrality

• Wilson – turned to conscription– he believed it was

both efficient and democratic

• Selective Service Act – provided for the registration of all men between the ages of 21 and 30 (later changed to 18 and 45)– 24.2 million

registered, 2.8 million were drafted

• “selection from a nation which has volunteered in mass”

• draft included black men as well as white– 4 African American

regiments were among the first sent into action• most never saw

combat, they were used mainly for manual labor and menial tasks

– no black soldiers though were allowed to march in the victory celebrations that eventually took place in Paris

• 369th Infantry Regiment – known as the Harlem Hell Fighters– persuaded their

white officers to loan the regiment to the French, who then integrated them into the French army• entire regiment

would receive France’s highest combat medal, the Croix de Guerre

• War in the Trenches– World War I – may

have been the most terrible war of all time

– after early offensives, the European armies dug themselves into trenches• were only hundreds

of yards apart in places

• a stalemate had developed – a situation where neither side is able to gain the advantage– Germans had become concerned about the

advancing Russian army and had pulled troops from the Western front ahead of schedule• the early transfer of troops may have prevented a

German victory in the west

• holed themselves up in the trenches across an empty field referred to as “no man’s land”– neither side was able to

gain more than a few miles and then it was at an appalling human cost

• mud, rats, cold, fear, and disease took a heavy toll– was a high incidence of

shell shock• troops would go “over

the top” of the trenches in an effort to break through the enemy’s lines– but the costs were high

• in the trenches, they faced new killing machines like machine guns and rapid-fire artillery– new machine guns

could fire 450 rounds a minute

– at the Battle of the Somme the British lost some 20,000 deaths in a single day of combat

• hand grenades, artillery shells, and poison gases

• morale sank and the armies became desperate– began burning fields, killing livestock, and poisoning

wells– tunneled under no man’s land to plant bombs below

enemy trenches– German subs torpedoed any ship they believed was

carrying arms to the Allies– the British naval blockade starved the German people

• none of this brought an end to the conflict

• Bolsheviks seized power in Russia, and led by V.I. Lenin, signed a separate peace treaty with Germany– Russia’s exit from the war

freed the Germans from the two-front war they had been forced to fight

• German and Austrian forces then routed the Italian army on the southern flank, and the Allies braced for a spring 1918 offensive– the Germans broke

through the trenches and advanced deep into Allied territory

• Admiral William S. Sims – pushed through a convoy plan that used Allied destroyers to escort merchant vessels across the ocean– a group of unarmed

ships surrounded by a ring of destroyers, torpedo boats, and other armed naval vessels equipped with hydrophones to track and destroy subs• plan soon cut shipping

losses in half

• Germans had advanced to the Marne, about 50 miles from Paris– American forces

would come to the rescue• Brigadier General

James G. Harbord – “We dig no trenches to fall back on. The Marines will hold where they stand.”

• American forces blocked the Germans at the town of Château-Thierry– helped the French

save Paris, blunted the edge of the German advance, and began to turn the tide of the war

– then forced them out of Belleau Wood – a crucial stronghold

• July 15 – the Germans threw everything into a last drive for Paris, but they were halted at the Marne– in three days of battle

they were finished

• about 250,000 new American soldiers were arriving in France each month– had a new

weapon – the tank – which could cross trenches and roll through barbed wire

• the Allies began to break the German lines

• with the German drive stalled, the Allies counterattacked along the entire front– September 12 –

500,000 Americans and a small group of French drove the Germans from the St. Mihiel salient

• was the first major military effort entirely in American hands

• then attacked between in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive – began the drive to expel the Germans from France– American troops broke

through in early November, cut the line, and drove the Germans back along the whole front

• War in the Air– Americans entered

the war with only 55 planes• US quickly

manufactured hundreds of planes to match the technology used by the Allies

– World War I planes were built from wooden frames covered with cloth• the pilot, and

copilot, sat in an open-air cockpit

• aircraft were first used to scout enemy positions– flyers soon started dogfights – with pistols

and later machine guns• pilots also shot down hot-air balloons

that were used for observation and fired on individual soldiers on the ground– German zeppelins – floating airships were

also used

• bombing was not very effective at destroying targets– but frequent bombing raids frightened

and confused enemy soldiers• this would become a devastating weapon in

the future

German Bomber Gunner: A German bomber gunner, dressed for high-altitude flight and sucking on an oxygen tube mans his machine gun. The plane is a Gotha G-IV bomber. Powered by two 260 horsepower engines, it could carry between 660-1100 pounds of bombs to a maximum range of 305 miles.

German Balloons Shot Down: This February 1918 photograph shows two German observation balloons going down.

Manfred von Richthofen, known as the "Red Baron," was the most successful German fighter pilot during World War I, with 80 downed planes. He was killed at age 25 in aerial combat April 21, 1918.

• by the end of October the Central Powers collapsed:– Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire made a

separate peace– Austria-Hungary splintered as Poles,

Hungarians, Czechs, and Slovaks declared their independence from the emperor

• German commanders begged for peace– the Allies refused

• sailors in the German port of Kiel mutinied and the revolt spread to other ships and ports as well as factories and industrial cities– the Kaiser fled to

Holland

• German high command knew that the war was lost– Germany

began talks of arranging an armistice in early October• signed on

November 11, 1918 in a French railroad car

– six hours later, the guns finally fell silent

The railroad car in the Compiegne forest in which the armistice of France's surrender to Germany was signed. The ceremony took place at the same location where Germany signed its surrender at the end of the First World War.

• overall the American contribution – although small in comparison to European nations was vital– fresh, enthusiastic American

troops raised Allied morale• helped turn the tide at a crucial

point in the war