28 posts tagged with wwi by doctornemo.
Displaying 1 through 28 of 28.
Im Westen nichts Neues
A German film of _All Quiet on the Western Front_ The trailer for a new movie adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque's 1929 novel All Quiet On The Western Front appeared. [more inside]
Miracle at the Vistula
100 years ago this week, the Battle of Warsaw raged. Two years after the War to End All Wars, the just-established Soviet Union was invading Poland, hoping to stir revolution in central Europe. Polish forces were falling back and defeat looked likely, until a surprise attack yielded a stunning victory. [more inside]
“It is 11 o’clock and the war is—”
As if God had swept His omnipotent finger across the scene of world carnage and cried, ‘Enough!’ At 11 am the guns of the Western Front fell silent, all at once, for the first time in four years of continuous and brutal warfare. After a false alarm four days earlier, Allied and German delegations agreed to an armistice. Facing general defeat, mutiny, and domestic revolution, Berlin sought an exit from the war. Kaiser Wilhelm II had abdicated two days earlier; the Weimar Republic was struggling to be born. Sixteen million people had been killed. [more inside]
FOR HEAVENS SAKE STOP IT.
100 years ago today the Lost Battalion was rescued. It may have been the most famous American story of the Great War: more than 500 soldiers in the Argonne forest totally surrounded by the German Imperial Army, cut off, starving, under nearly continuous attack by artillery, gas, snipers, flamethrowers, and infantry assaults, not to mention subjected to friendly artillery fire. Commander Charles White Whittlesey refused multiple German entreaties, and six days later reunited 194 survivors with their army. [more inside]
To conquer hell
"The French have given us a hard nut to crack." One hundred years ago this week began the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, the largest (1.2 million soldiers) and most costly (110,000+ casualties) American military campaign in history. Commanded by John Pershing (previously), the United States First Army attacked in the Verdun area (previously), aiming for Sedan. The successful offensive ended with the November 11th armistice that also concluded the First World War on the western front. [more inside]
One hundred years ago the tide finally turned
The Allies started the final offensive on the Western Front. On August 8, 1918 began what history would call the Hundred Days Offensive; it would end WWI's terrible Western Front before the year was out. In front of Amiens a Canadian, Australian, British, American, and French attack used tanks and air power to drive deeply into German lines, winning surprise, causing panic, and capturing many prisoners. Shortly afterward the German command realized the war was over. [more inside]
"Retreat? Hell, we just got here!"
The battle of the "Bois de la Brigade de Marine". One hundred years ago United States Marines fought the brutal Battle of Belleau Wood. As the Allies struggled to contain the German spring offensive (previously), a Marine force and a French unit turned back a German attack, then drove them out of a dense, small forest, suffering nearly ten thousand casualties. Ever since Belleau Wood has been legendary in American military culture. [more inside]
CAPTURED THE TOWN OF CANTIGNY ON MAY 28 1918 AND HELD IT
100 years ago today the United States launched its first offensive in World War One. In the Battle of Cantigny the First Division attacked a ruined French town, then held it against a German counterattack. France provided direction, advice, air cover, and more hardware. Although a minor action, it was an American victory, so Cantigny proved to the Allies, the Central Powers, and the rest of the world that American forces could actually fight well in modern war.
Much larger and more terrible battles would lie ahead in the coming months. [more inside]
Kaiserschlacht
The beginning of the end of World War I. One hundred years ago today the German empire launched Operation Michael, a vast offensive aimed at cracking the Allied armies in France and winning the First World War.
German forces, bolstered by armies freed up from the defeat of Russia's empire in the east, fought to win as much ground as possible before American armies arrived in strength. "Paris guns" lobbed giant shells into that city from 75 miles away. It was possibly the largest military attack in human history by that point. [more inside]
For such arrangements and covenants we are willing to fight
100 years ago today, Woodrow Wilson publishes the Fourteen Points. In a speech to Congress, the president laid the groundwork for ending the First World War and establishing a new world order. The points range from secret treaties to national details to a call for what will become the League of Nations. (Yale Law, WikiSource) [more inside]
His iron-clad fleet flowed forward
One hundred years ago today began the Battle of Cambrai. On November 20th, 1917, the British army launched the first massed tank attack in history. Nearly five hundred vehicles, accompanied by air power, poison gas, and swarms of infantry, slammed into German lines before the northern French city of Cambrai. [more inside]
"that tremendous cataclysm which almost ruined Italy"
"It was a Caporetto." On this day 100 years ago, an Italian byword for disaster was born. Advancing through mist, a combined German/Austria-Hungarian attack surprised and shattered the Italian 2nd army, driving deeply into the Veneto Plain. Italian suffered almost 300,000 casualties, retreated nearly one hundred miles, and almost lost Venice. [more inside]
Those doomed, conscripted, unvictorious ones
The Battle of Passchendaele begins One hundred years ago today British imperial forces opened the Battle of Passchendaele, attacking German positions in an effort to win Channel ports and take pressure off of the mutiny-weakened French. Attacks would go on through November over sodden, hideous terrain, involving tanks, air power, artillery, and mustard gas. Fighting nearly exhausted both sides, costing hundreds of thousands of casualties for each, and yielding several miles of territory. [more inside]
He did not, after all, have the formula.
One hundred years ago the Nivelle Offensive fails. In April 1917 the Allies launched an enormous attack on German forces designed to crack enemy lines in 48 hours and send them reeling back to the Rhine. General of French forces on the Western Front Robert Nivelle, a hero for his role in Verdun the previous year (previously), deployed a mix of tanks, artillery, air power, and multiple assaults across hundreds of miles. While some gained ground, the offensive, marred by leaks, a lack of leadership support, and bad tactical decisions, failed to break the Germans. Nivelle was fired and the offensive petered out. The human costs on both sides, including French, Germans, British, and Canadians, were very high. [more inside]
Over there
100 years ago today the United States entered World War I Majorities in the House and Senate supported president Wilson's call to declare war on Germany. [more inside]
"WE have considered it right and proper to give up the Throne"
100 years ago today Russian tsar Nicholas II abdicated. The emperor, last Romanov ruler, beset by military catastrophes and social unrest, stepped down. He tried to offer the throne to his son, who was too fragile, then his brother, who demurred, paving the way for a provisional government. Within a year Russia would experience revolution and civil war, the Soviet state would be born, and Nicholas and his family all killed. [more inside]
"it's a rather astonishing message which might do the trick"
100 years ago this week, the Zimmermann telegram went public. In January 1917 the German government invited Mexico to attack the United States, and suggested Japan play a role. While Mexico demurred, Britain's signals intelligence office caught and decrypted the coded message, then gave it to American diplomats, who soon published it in newspapers. Several weeks later Arthur Zimmermann, Germany's State Secretary for Foreign Affairs, publicly confirmed the telegram's authorship and contents.
In a few months, based on the telegram and other issues, president Wilson took America into World War One. [more inside]
They did not pass.
100 years ago the battle of Verdun came to an end. On December 18/19, 1916, the German assault on Verdun is completely defeated after 300 days of some of the most horrendous fighting in World War I. French forces triumphantly led by commanders soon to become notorious (Nivelle and Pétain) regained all the land that the enemy had taken. 11,000 demoralized German soldiers surrendered. "France had won her most brilliant victory since the Marne." (Horne) [more inside]
"the sole internationalism—if it existed—had been that of deserters"
The ghouls of No Man's Land James Deutsch explores an urban legend from the First World War, and its decades-long afterlife. (SLSmithsonian)
"Russia has not yet reached the zenith of her power."
One hundred years ago today, an enormous Russian offensive begins. The attack surprised nearly everyone, including enemies and the rest of the Russian command.
The massive assault on Austro-Hungarian forces was intended to aid already or soon-to-be hard-pressed Russian allies France, Italy, and Britain, while also hoping to knock an enemy empire out of the war.
[more inside]
The massive assault on Austro-Hungarian forces was intended to aid already or soon-to-be hard-pressed Russian allies France, Italy, and Britain, while also hoping to knock an enemy empire out of the war.
[more inside]
100 years ago today, the beginning of the end on WWI's eastern front
"It was an affair that summed up all that was most wrong with the [Russian] army." Largely forgotten by the west, the Battle of Lake Naroch (March-April 1916; Wikipedia) broke the Russian army's will to fight Germans. Eager to help their western allies being slaughtered at Verdun, the tsar's forces attacked a weak spot in the German lines in Belarus. Although the Russian army began with massively greater troop superiority, the offense was a spectacular failure, due to gross strategic and tactical incompetence. The results: awful casualties and no terrain gained. [more inside]
They shall not pass.
One hundred years ago today began the terrible battle of Verdun. The German strategy called not so much for territorial conquest as for simply killing as many Frenchmen as possible, to "bleed France white". The name of the plan was Operation Gericht, as in judgement or, grimmer still, the place of execution. Up to nearly one million casualties resulted.
The battle was the most bloody and destructive of World War One up until that point. It would last for the rest of 1916, continuous fighting lasting for more than 300 days. [more inside]
The battle was the most bloody and destructive of World War One up until that point. It would last for the rest of 1916, continuous fighting lasting for more than 300 days. [more inside]
The operation's greatest success was the evacuation.
One hundred years ago, the last Allied day at Gallipoli. "The evacuation had been carried out brilliantly, of that there can be no doubt." (Peter Hart) After months of agonized fighting between forces from multiple nations, the Allies withdrew from Gallipoli, ending one of WWI's most remembered and discussed campaigns. One hundred years ago today the last British soldiers left the peninsula, leaving behind booby traps, animals dead and alive, material destroyed and as booty, and the victorious Turks. [more inside]
"Patriotism is not enough."
On this day one hundred years ago, the German army executed Edith Cavell. She was a British nurse who had worked in Belgium before the First World War, and then helped Belgian, French, and British men escape the country during the German occupation. A military court found her guilty of actively aiding the enemy in wartime, and ordered her execution. [more inside]
One hundred years ago on the Eastern Front, doom in a forgotten battle
"She was outclassed in everything except bravery" In April 1915 the Russian empire was on the verge of entering Hungary, having taken the great fortress of Przemyśl. But in May a German-led surprise offensive cracked Russian lines, shattering entire armies and causing a 300-mile retreat in what was probably "the greatest victory of World War I by the Central Powers". Nearly one million prisoners were taken. Moscow lost the ruins of Przemyśl and all of Poland. For the next two years Russia will struggle but ultimately lose, tsardom falling to revolutions and the rise of the Soviet state. [more inside]
The Gallipoli campaign began 100 years ago today.
"The new dawn lights the eastern sky; Night shades are lifted from the sea": British and French ships entered the Dardanelles and opened their attack on Turkish forces, one hundred years ago today. This bold naval assault, planned by Winston Churchill, will falter, leading to the brutal Gallipoli campaign, an Allied defeat and Turkish triumph. [more inside]
When Martian war machines hit the Western Front
This may be the best War of the Worlds movie ever made, and it's barely three minutes long. And it's not exactly doing HG Wells per se. It's a trailer for or clip from The Great Martian War 1913-17, which concerns "the catastrophic events and unimaginable horrors of 1913-17, when Humankind was pitted against a savage Alien invasion."
The video seems to use a mix of reenactors, period film, and f/x.
(SLVimeo) [more inside]
The shots heard round the world.
One hundred years ago today, an age came to an end and a terrible war was spawned. On June 28, 1914, 20-year-old Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Ferdinand and his wife, Duchess of Hohenberg Sophie, in the city of Sarajevo. This triggered a diplomatic crisis which metastasized into the first World War.
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