Tagged: WWI
America Enters the First World War
The transatlantic telegraph and steam powered ocean transit made the world quite a bit smaller, and brought about the first period of true globalization. For the first time the events across the globe could be read at the breakfast table by ordinary Americans in great detail and relatively soon after they happened. The Zimmerman Telegram and Unrestricted Submarine Warfare by Germany meant that actions by other nations directly affected ordinary Americans. In 1914, the majority of Americans wanted to stay neutral in the latest iteration of the four hundred years long Franco-German struggle for dominance of continental Europe. Less than three years later, the majority of Americans were for intervention.
On 2 April 1917, President Woodrow Wilson broke his campaign promise to “Keep us out of the war” and asked Congress to declare war on Imperial Germany in order to go to “war to end war” and, “The world must be safe for democracy”. On 4 April the Senate voted to declare war and at 3 am on 6 April 1917, the House of Representatives followed suit. That day, President Wilson announced that America had entered the Great War.
The United States was woefully unprepared. The US Army, to include the entire National Guard, was only 208,000 strong. They had just 10,265 men in the US Marine Corps. More Frenchmen and British had been killed (much less wounded) at Verdun and the Somme just the year before than existed in the entire US military. The American army had little experience with units over the size of a regiment since the US Civil War, fifty years before. The War Department had no experience, infrastructure, staff, or plans for the millions of Americans that would need to be drafted in order to stabilize the Western Front.
Nonetheless, the first Americans headed “Over there” in less two months.
The Spanish American War might have introduced us to the World Stage, but now we were starring on it, and would continue to so for the next century. But at the time, we didn’t even know our lines.
The February Revolution and the Return of Lenin
In the autumn and winter of 1916, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia faced a series of problems, most of which he was aware of, but like most autocrats, did not believe his advisors or thought they were exaggerating. In late 1915, the Tsar took control of the army and moved to Mogilev (in modern day Belarus) where he established his Imperial headquarters. He left the day to day administration of the Russian Empire to his wife the Tsarina Alexandra. Alexandra was despised by her Russian subjects, because she was German and increasingly under the influence of her most hated advisor, Grigori Rasputin, who seemed to be the only one who could comfort the sickly heir to the Imperial throne, Alexei. The Russian government was so inept in this period that most ministers changed hands three and four times, resulting in a complete abdication by the government of its responsibilities. In any case she didn’t have (or didn’t want) the power to make the sweeping changes demanded by the Duma (the powerless Russian parliament), and in several instances, Nicholas disbanded the Duma when it got too close to taking the situation into their own hands, only to reform it when he needed their support.
Additionally, Russia’s domestic situation during the First World War was grim from the beginning. The Ottoman entry into the war in 1914 cut off the last trade routes for exports from the greatly expanding Russian economy that was finally moving to a modern industrial economy after the long and painful transition post freeing the serfs in the 1860s. Inflation soared and soon the farmers supplying the cities with food began to have their shipments confiscated, so they in turn hoarded their crops and moved to subsistence farming. By March 1917, food protests began to spring up in Petrograd (the former “St. Petersburg” sounded too German). On 8 March (23 February in the old Julian calendar, which the Russians still used. You would have thought they would have learned after showing up late to the 1908 Olympics), thousands of women in Petrograd, many widows of the six million Russian dead so far in the war, took to the streets because of the shortage of bread and necessary household goods, and the impending rationing. In the afternoon hundreds went to get their husbands working in the Putilov factory that made rolling stock and artillery for the Tsar. By the end of the day 50,000 were protesting in the streets.
The next day, the crowds swelled to 150,000 and 250,000. The Tsarist police and Petrograd garrison could not stop them, despite frequent clashes throughout the day. From Mogilev, Tsar Nicholas II ordered the commander of the garrison to fire on the protesters, but most units refused. By 11 March the tone of the protests was no longer about food, but about the removal of the Tsar and his autocratic government, especially after it was found that the Tsar ordered the troops to fire on the people. Unfortunately the Duma, which was on recess (for lack of a better word) and could not return to their duties without permission of the Tsar, refused to take a leadership position in what was now clearly a revolution.
On the 12th, the garrison mutinied, including the Cossack units that the Tsar relied on for times such as these, and their officers were shot. The rioters and revolutionaries killed anyone that “looked wealthy”, and most of the city was looted. Tens of thousands of rifles fell into their possession. Any symbol of the Tsar’s authority was burned to the ground. The Duma decided to take action, but not before the worker’s councils, or “soviets” coalesced into the Petrograd Soviet, which took control of the revolutionaries. The Duma formed the Provisional Committee to restore law and order in the city, and on the 13th declared itself the ruling body of Russia. The Tsar attempted to return after being reluctantly convinced of the situation’s severity but never made it, as the revolutionaries controlled the railroads.
On the 14th, Nicholas II, coming to terms with inevitable, abdicated the throne. He tried to leave it, not to his young son, but to his brother Michael. The Grand Duke Michael declined. The Russian Provisional Government would be the legitimate governing body of Russia, but they would have to share power with the Petrograd Soviet, which controlled most of the armed revolutionaries in the city. The rest of the country soon followed suit.
The Petrograd Soviet made immediate demands on the Provincial Government to include elections for a proper governing body (ironically the soviets were elected but the Provisional government was not). The Provisional government was very reform minded and laid the groundwork for a new Russian government, but in its weakness left the mutinous units and workers’ militias of the Petrograd Soviets armed, which was not conducive to their rule.
In late March, the Provinional Govt decreed the release of all political prisoners, including those Bolsheviks whom had been in exile in Siberia (Stalin), New York (Trotsky) or Switzerland (Lenin). Additionally, the Russian Provisional Government still wanted to pursue the war with Germany, so Germany decided to hasten the return of these far Left radicals back to Russia, in order to sow chaos in their advesary’s home front. (They succeeded). Soon thereafter, the leader of the Russian Social Democratic Party, Vladimir Lenin, was allowed to leave Switzerland via Germany for Russia. In a speech to Parliament in 1919, Winston Churchill said of the transit,
“Lenin was sent into Russia by the Germans in the same way that you might send a phial containing a culture of typhoid or cholera to be poured into the water supply of a great city, and it worked with amazing accuracy.”
Vladimir Lenin would arrive in Petrograd on 3 April 1917.
The “Dual Power” between the Russian Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet would last until Oktober.
The Zimmerman Telegram
Imperial Germany knew that Unrestricted Submarine Warfare would eventually bring the United States into World War One on the side of the Allies. Their economic ties to Britain and public outcry over the sinking of the Lusitania and the Housatonic virtually guaranteed it. But it was hoped that it wouldn’t immediately bring America into war, and that Britain would be well on her way to starving into surrender before the Americans turned the tide in Europe.
The Founding Fathers’ caution of overseas, particularly European, entanglements, had done America well in the 19th Century. Many Americans didn’t feel Europe was worth spending American blood and treasure on, and that what happened in Europe did not affect America. Moreover, the German and Irish American immigrant communities, the two largest in the country at the time, were vehemently anti-British. In late February 1917, America was making threatening gestures and had broken off formal diplomatic relations with Germany over Unrestricted Submarine Warfare but the population wasn’t quite ready to declare war yet.
Britain knew that America had to enter the war soon, or the Allies would lose: both Russia and France were having serious internal issues in the winter of 1916/17 and Britain could not fight Germany alone. To make matters even more frustrating, Britain was sitting on a key piece of information that was sure to infuriate America against Germany. But they couldn’t release it without embarrassing themselves, and more importantly, revealing that they were reading America’s mail.
Britain had cut Germany’s transatlantic telegraph cables at the outbreak of war, but Germany asked to use America’s for diplomatic traffic. President Woodrow Wilson agreed, if only to keep a line of communication opened for peace negotiations. The Germans would deliver their messages to America’s embassy in Denmark where it would be transmitted via stations controlled by America and neutral Sweden to Washington DC. To make the long jump across the Atlantic, the message had to go through a signal boosting station at the westernmost point on the British Isles at Land’s End. Unknown to the Americans, every transmission that went through that station Britain was reading.
On 19 January 1917, the German Foreign Minister, Arthur Zimmerman, sent a coded telegram to the German embassy in Mexico via America’s diplomatic cables, which the British intercepted. The telegram was an offer for Mexico to ally itself with Germany, for which it would receive financial and economic compensation, and Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas would be ceded to Mexico after the war. (Mexico thought about it for a week. However, war would severely strain relations with Argentina, Brazil and Chile who needed a peaceful Mexico to trade with the US. Mexico, fractured by its own civil war, couldn’t defeat America if it wanted to, and even if it could, would never be able to occupy a large swath of territory populated by a people that were better armed than the Mexican Army. They politely declined.) Zimmerman’s Telegram was sure to sway American public opinion against Germany, if it could be released, and once released, believed to be genuine.
British agents investigated the route that the message would have traveled from Washington DC to Mexico City, and found that it had not gone directly to the German embassy, but to a Mexican telegraph office down the street. The British concocted a story that an agent “Mr. H” acquired a copy from that office. This was enough cover for their operation at Land’s End (which would continue for another 25 years), and furthermore, force the Germans to suspect a spy in their embassy. Convincing the Americans it was genuine would be trickier: to do that they would have to acknowledge they broke Germany’s code. Fortunately, Germany came to the rescue, and changed their codes on 1 February with the beginning of Unrestricted Submarine Warfare. Britain was now free to release the telegram, the cover story, and the older code for verification to America.
On 19 February 1917, the British released the Zimmerman Telegram to the American embassy in London, and on the 25th it was given to President Wilson. Wilson was furious, and on the 28th leaked it to the press.
The American people were predictably outraged, but anti British sentiment called it a forgery, or pushed that outrage against Mexico. Blackjack Pershing was already chasing Pancho Villa, and the Carranza government in Mexico didn’t want any more American troops on its soil. On 3 March, in one of those ironic and unintended consequences on which history seems to turn on occasion, Zimmerman was forced to verify the authenticity of the Telegram in order to maintain Mexico’s neutrality with Germany. This all but silenced the anti-British sentiment in America. It was one thing to avoid getting entangled in Europe’s affairs, but quite another when Europe tries to entangle itself in American affairs first. Germany “needed to be punished”.
It wouldn’t be long before Wilson would break his campaign promise to keep America out of the war.
The SS Housatonic and Unrestricted Submarine Warfare
Although the Royal Navy’s Grand Fleet lost more tonnage than the Imperial High Seas Fleet at the Battle of Jutland, the Germans never sortied from port again. In response, they prepared for a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare to begin on 1 February 1917. If the Royal Navy couldn’t be beaten at sea then the country would be starved into surrendering. The sinking of the ocean liner RMS Lusitania in 1915 had almost brought the United States into the war on the Allied side; unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917 surely would. If the plan worked Britain would sue for peace before the US presence could make itself felt on the Western Front.
On 3 February 1917, the first victim of the new policy was spotted. U-53 stopped and boarded the cargo ship SS Housatonic off the southwestern tip of England. The Housatonic was sailing with a hull full of wheat from Galveston to Liverpool. The polite U boat captain ordered the ship abandoned then sank her with a single torpedo. He then towed the life boats toward shore and subsequently snuck away.
The Housatonic was the first of many ships sunk under unrestricted submarine warfare. The homely old steam freighter caused an uproar in the US Congress and inside the the Wilson Administration. President Wilson had just narrowly won the recent election on a platform of non intervention in the the war in Europe, even though he privately expressed his doubts that America could stay out of the war.
Great Britain knew it too, and was just waiting for the right time to inform America of a recent intelligence development. The sinking of the SS Housatronic provided the perfect opportunity.
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