Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905)

Another obscure war, though it represents Japan’s entry into the big time, defeating a European power on its own terms.  Russia’s defeat almost cost Tsar Nicholas II his throne; though he eventually lost it in February 1917.   Observing China’s embarrassment in the Opium Wars in the 1840s, and with Western ships forcing entry into Japanese ports, the Japanese were on notice that modernization would be necessary to avoid the same fate as China.  The Japanese Army modeled itself on the Prussian Army, victorious in 1870-71, while the Japanese Navy emulated the powerful and successful Royal Navy.  China became the first victim of Japan’s newfound power, losing Korea in a brief war from 1894-95.  Alarmed by Japan’s growing power, yet arrogantly seeking to assert its own interests in the region, the Tsar took various actions to counter Japanese plans. Manchuria, far northeast China, became an area of mutual interest to both Japan and Russia.  Russia sent in 100,000 troops during the unrest of the Boxer Rebellion.  For their part, the British wanted an ally in the Far East to counter Russian ambitions, so Japanese overtures to England resulted in modest alliance in 1902.  The US also started playing in the Pacific: it annexed Hawaii in 1898 and took the Philippines from Spain in 1899.  But Roosevelt warned Russia, France and Germany that it would side with England and Japan against them in the Far East.  When Russia abruptly and ominously abandoned its plans to withdraw its troops from Manchuria in 1903, the Japanese realized they had a real problem.

 The war basically occurred in three stages. 

 Stage One:  Battle For Port Arthur (February to December 1904).  Unlike Vladivostok, Port Arthur remains usable year-round, making it an important port for the Russians.  The main Russian fleet was there:  seven battleships (Petropavlovsk, Sevastopol, Poltava, Peresvyet, Pobeda, Tsesarevich and Retvizan) along with six cruisers and a merchant ship. The Japanese attacked from land and blockaded the port from the sea (six battleships, 10 cruisers, 30 destroyers and 40 torpedo boats).  All attempts to break the Japanese blockade were unsuccessful.  Laying mines outside the harbor, the Japanese sunk the Russian flagship, Petropavlovsk, which went down with the charismatic and heroic Vice-Admiral Makarov – as severe a blow to Russian morale as Makarov’s arrival had been a boost.  Several attempts by the Russian fleet to break out of Port Arthur for Vladivostok were all unsuccessful.  Having successfully bottled up the Russian fleet in Port Arthur, the Japanese were free to land troops in Korea.  They crossed the Yalu River (border between Korea and China) and defeated the Russians at Nanshan, a natural bottleneck of land protecting the approach to Port Arthur.  However, staunch Russian resistance stymied initial Japanese attacks, forcing them into siege position.  The Japanese defeated the Russians at Liaoyang, cutting off Port Arthur from Mukden.  The Russian commander, Kuropatkin, had a healthy respect for the Japanese, but was hampered by junior generals and officers who lacked his informed view (the Tsar himself dismissed the Japanese as “monkeys”) and almost complete absence of any intelligence on Japanese strength or movements.   After a series of battles in which the Japanese took various hills and destroyed concentric lines of defense, the Russians were forced to surrender Port Arthur in January 1905. 

 The Japanese were remarkably lenient with the local Chinese, in radical contrast to their later atrocious mistreatment of the Chinese in the 1930s, also in contrast with arrogant Russian treatment of the locals, which meant they were more willing to report Russian movements to the Japanese, than to assist the Russians against the Japanese.  While the Japanese built bathhouses keeping the soldiers clean and healthy, the dirty Russians suffered smallpox epidemics.

 Stage Two: Japanese beat the Russians at Mukden (January to March 1905).  Proceeding northeast from Port Arthur, Japanese forces faced various Russian around Mukden.  Southeast of the city, the terrain was not really suitable for attack, so the Japanese had a smaller army make a feint on that side as a diversion.  Kuropatkin, the Russian general, fell for this, oblivious to a much larger Japanese Third Army on his right (west), under General Nogi, whose plan was to circle wide left around and behind Mukden.  Believing himself surrounded, and certainly outmaneuvered, Kupopatkin withdrew his forces northeast, basically ceding the battlefield, the battle, and Mukden, to the Japanese.   Both sides suffered heavy casualties; had the Russians had cooler heads and better reconnaissance, the Third Army attack could have been blunted, and a bloody stalemate would have exhausted the Japanese.  

 Stage Three: Japan defeats Russian fleet at Tsushima (May 27-28, 1905).  The Tsar sent another fleet from St. Petersburg all the way to the Far East to defeat the Japanese.  Seven and half months later they reached China.

 Japanese Fleet: Admiral Togo (First Division) battleships Mikasa (flagship), Shikishima, Fuji, Asahi, cruisers Kasuga, Nisshin; Admiral Kamimura (Second Division) cruisers Izumo (flagship), Azuma, Tokiwa, Yogumo, Iwate, and Asama

 Russian Fleet: Admiral Rozhestvensky (First Division) battleships Knyaz Suvorov (flagship), Imperator Aleksandr III, Borodino, Orel; Admiral Felkerzam (Second Division), battleships Oslyabya (flagship), Sisay Veliki, Navarin, cruiser Adm Nakhimov; Admiral Nebogatov (Third Division), battleship Imperator Nikolai I (flagship), coast defense monitors Gen-Adm Apraksin, Adm Senyavin, Adm Ushakov

            The Japanese Navy was modern and British built; the sailors were literate and often former fishermen.  The Russian ships were a mismash, many obsolete, staffed by arrogant, drunken officers and illiterate peasants who received little training in the six months of twelve they actually served on their ships.  The Russian fleet was no match for the Japanese; at this crucial naval battle, the Russians were defeated: the Oslyabya, Suvorov, Aleksandr III, and Borodino were sunk; the Asama was damaged.  With this strategic defeat, further fighting by the Russians was pointless.

 Theodore Roosevelt brokered the peace between Japan and Russia, resulting in the Treaty of Portsmouth in September 1905, though hostilities had ended in June with Japan’s invasion of Sakhalin Island.  As noted before, this was Europe’s wake-up call that an Asian nation, Japan, was rising and militarily competitive.  Granted, the Russians were the weakest European nation, and had largely been defeated due to their incompetence and complacency.  A true test would have to wait until World War II.  Although the Japanese had easily defeated German forces in World War I, these forces had essentially been stranded far away from Germany and could not be supported, whereas Japan was operating in her own back yard, so to speak.  Both the Japanese and British had realized that maintaining an empire spread across several thousand miles of ocean requires substantial naval power, a power which Germany lacked – despite the Kaiser’s best efforts to compete.  Ironically, it’s quite possible that Japan’s defeat of Russia in this war, and Germany in the next, may have lulled her into her own complacency, a misplaced belief in her own superiority over Western nations which had grown fat and lazy over centuries of dominance – and which would have been confirmed by the early successes against the English in Burma and Malaysia and the US in the Philippines and Pearl Harbor.  Of course, the US was certainly knocked down by the Japanese, but quickly got its bearings and fought back, successfully.  The fat and lazy Americans drove the point home at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  

Poland vs. Russia 1920

I had briefly – and incorrectly – touched upon this in my Russian Civil War blog.  Warsaw 1920: Lenin’s Failed Conquest of Europe, by Adam Zamoyski, set me straight.  In April 1920, Polish leader, General Pilsudski, decided to take advantage of the chaos in the Ukraine as a result of the civil war to invade, mostly to maximize the amount of territory Poland would keep once its borders were established.  They made it as far as – and captured – Kiev, before being thrown back into Poland. 

             Now it was the Poles’ turn to sweat, as the Reds invaded Poland and besieged Warsaw.  Whereas Pilsudski’s plans and scope were limited to Polish interests, Lenin took a wider view.  Poland was the gateway to Germany, which was stewing in its own post-war revolutionary chaos.  If the Reds could reach Germany, they could kickstart the German revolution and possibly engulf Western Europe in Bolshevism.

             But the Poles kept their cool, regrouped, and took advantage of bad planning and coordination between the Red commanders to strike back.  This threw the Reds back into the Ukraine, almost wiping out the armies they had sent in.  Certainly it was game over for Lenin’s plans to conquer Poland and Germany.  Lenin quickly signed peace terms with Pilsudski, which freed up his remaining forces from this debacle to handle his White enemies in the Ukraine.  For its part, Poland was left alone until 1939.  Pilsudski himself took power in Poland by a coup in 1926, and acted as dictator until his death in 1935.

Russian Civil War

Anyone who has endured the endless (zzz) epic, “Dr. Zhivago”, should have some idea of what this was.  Not to be confused with the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), US Civil War (1861-65), or English Civil War (1641-51).  This occurred immediately after World War I (1917), which the Soviets refer to as “The Imperialist War”, as opposed to WWII which they call “The Great Patriotic War”. 

 November 1917.  The Bolsheviks (aka “Bolo” or “Reds”) had just taken power in Petrograd (St. Petersburg).  Antonov-Ovseenko simply walked into the HQ room at the Winter Palace and took over: total casualties, 6.  World War I was still going on, and Germans were still in Poland and the Ukraine.  In January 1918, Trotsky negotiated the treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which took the Russians out of WWI.  Not everyone – in Russia or abroad - was thrilled with the Bolsheviks, so simply having taken Petrograd and Moscow did not settle the matter.  A civil war broke out that lasted the next two years – with more fighting at the periphery continuing well into the 30s.

 Red Army.  The Red Army of Peasants and Workers was formed by Trotsky from the Red Guards, mostly workers from Petrograd and Moscow.  For most, if not all, of the war, the Reds had the advantage in numbers.  Their top, elite unit was the Latvian Rifle Division – crucial in the first year of the war.  Moreover, none of the White attacks on Petrograd (Udenich) or Moscow were successful, so the Reds managed to hold on to these centers of population and industry, fighting in the Ukraine, north up near Estonia, east over by the Urals, and south near Tsaritsyn (better known as Stalingrad, now known as Volgograd), eventually defeating each enemy in turn. 

            The defining characteristic of the Red uniform was the budenovka, the pointy hat with earflaps, usually with a cloth red star on the front (see Stalin, above left).  The gymnasterka, peasant blouse, was worn by both sides.  The top Red leaders were Trotsky – who was a genius at military organization despite no military experience, Frunze (who they named their military academy after), Budenny (cavalry commander, source of the name “budenovka”), Voroshilov, Tukachevsky, and Chapeav.

  Before the hammer & sickle, there was the hammer & plough - considerably more complicated and equally less aesthetically pleasing.  The sickle replaced the plough around 1922.

 Cheka. In addition to the Red Army itself, the Reds used Cheka, the first form of its secret police, although at this point it was very much in the open.  Its agents wore leather jackets, a mark of distinction and authority which continued with its successor, the NKVD.  Cheka hired criminals, murderers, all sorts of violent scum - with colorful names and personalities: “Johnson”, Maslova, “The Remover" - and set up prisons and camps.  It engaged in torture, murder, scalping, impaling, all sorts of nasty atrocities that horrified even the Reds themselves.  The terror had already begun. 

 War Communism.  In a related vein, the Reds took over any and all businesses within their sphere of influence, killing any managers or owners who were late in escaping abroad.  Industrial productivity, as can be imagined, fell to a fraction of pre-war capacity.  They also requisitioned all surplus grain of the peasants AND forcibly conscripted them into the Red Army.  Needless to say, these policies were not popular.  Peasant revolts (e.g. the Antonov uprising) were a constant issue for the Reds well into the 20s.  Actual famines certainly didn’t help any. 

            Soon after the war, when the situation cooled down somewhat, Lenin instituted a crash course in capitalism, the New Economic Policy (NEP), recognizing that the proletarian revolution had occurred in a country – Russia – which had barely emerged from feudalism (serfs only emancipated in 1863) and had not developed full and true capitalism.  The prevailing wisdom among the socialists at the turn of the century was that the US and Western Europe were the countries ripe for socialist revolution, not backwards countries like Russia.  In Spain during the Spanish Civil War, it was the “communist” party line that Spain had to go through capitalism before arriving at socialism, so the idea was to back up and support a bourgeois capitalist regime and oppose not only the reactionary Fascists but also the anarchists who wanted “true communism” too soon.  In Russia, “war communism” became the name for the horrendously unpopular and draconian policies undertaken during the civil war, justified as being wartime expedients – even though many of these policies would be reinstated after the NEP was over, with no civil war to justify them at that time. 

 White Army.   These were mainly anti-Bolshevik, but they could not agree on what they wanted to replace the Reds with – especially since the Romanovs were murdered in July 1918 in Sverdlovsk.  They typically wore Russian WWI uniforms and carried icons into battle.  Some units were composed entirely of officers.  Kappel’s unit (part of Kolchak’s forces) had the impressive skull and crossbones and black uniforms.

            The top White leaders: Kornilov – his Shock Division was one of the best units in the White Army, and came closest to taking Moscow, he looked like Tim Allen with a mustache; Alexeyev: charismatic and popular general; Denikin: a very charismatic and popular General who won medals in the Russo-Japanese War and WWI; Kolchak:  An admiral, he set up a republic in the east, supported by the British and based at Omsk, but never succeeded at hooking up with any forces to the west – Graves had lots of nasty things to say about Semonov and Kalmikov, Kolchak’s ruthless local commanders in Siberia; Wrangel: he took over from Denikin, and was the last white commander – his forces tried to evacuate at the Black Sea in late 1920; Yudenich: he fought up north, an unsuccessful attempt to capture Petrograd; as well as Kutepov and Markov.

 Black Army.  Entire anarchist (!) armies raised by Nestor Makhno (above right).  They wore long hair and carried lots of guns.  The anarchists had a bad habit of attacking everyone.  After being used by the Reds to beat the Whites, they were wiped out in turn by the Reds.

 Ukrainians.  They wanted their independence from Russia, but the various factions fought the Reds, Whites, and each other and were defeated in turn.  The Ukraine was one of the most contested areas of the war: Kiev changed hands 19 times.

 Cossacks.  These are the famous cavalry of Russia.  There were various different “tribes”, some of whom joined the Whites, others joined the Reds.  As cavalry played a major role in the war, the Cossacks were in big demand by both sides.  There were even horse-drawn machine gun carts.

 Germans.  After Brest-Litovsk in January 1918, the Germans were able to pull out substantial forces from the East and transfer them to the West, in an attempt to defeat the Allies before US troops could arrive.  Germans didn’t play an active role in the war as a military force, although they did supply some factions with weapons, uniforms and helmets.  Some individual Germans of pro-Marxist persuasion did join the Red Army.  On November 11, 1918, the Germans called it quits, so their forces withdrew, ending whatever role or involvement they had.

 Austrians & Hungarians.  In the course of WWI, the Russians captured Austrians and Hungarians (whose armies rivalled the Russians’ for incompetence).  Many of these POWs had Marxist persuasion and joined the Red Army.  There were some Hungarian units, and an Austrian cavalry squadron.

 Czechs.  They had a whole legion stranded in Russia.  They wound up in Siberia (see my blog “Doughboys in Russia”).  They were mildly anti-Bolshevik but, like many other factions in the war, looking out for their own best interests.  Their uniforms were pretty much Russian Tsarist WWI with some minor Czech insignia.

 Polish.  Taking advantage of the chaos in Russia, the Poles invaded, arriving at Kiev.  The Reds threw them back into Poland, besieging Warsaw.  The Poles broke the siege, threw the Reds back into the Ukraine, and both sides called it even.  This  allowed the Poles to finally keep their country (at least until 1939…).

 Green Armies.  Not environmental, but rather bandit armies with no loyalties or allegiances, either mobs of demobilized soldiers, nationalists, or Social Revolutionaries – pretty much a catch-all to cover any forces which can’t be labeled Red, White, Black, Ukrainian, etc.    

Peasant Armies.  Lenin had no use for workers or peasants in his government.  Moreover, not all the peasants were poor, or particularly disposed to favor the Bolsheviks (see “war communism” above).  In 1920-21, an entire army – with units, ranks, hierarchy – was raised by Antonov, and opposed by the Reds’ best generals…and defeated.

Allied Intervention.  I already mentioned the US forces sent to Siberia and North Russia.  The French sent troops to Odessa, and the British came in at Baku – their main angle was protecting their oil interests in that sector.  The Brits sent lots of supplies to the Whites and equipped a fair amount of white armies.  They also sent numbers of Mark IV and V tanks.  They set up a training area in Novorossisk – tanks, planes, etc.  The major problem the British and French had was that they had just finished WWI and no one really wanted to pour substantial forces into a brand new war. 

Tanks, Armored Cars, and Trains.  Tanks didn’t have much of a role.  The British provided some Mark IV and V tanks, some of which fought up on the Petrograd front.  Armored cars (equipped with machine guns) and armored trains, with machine guns and artillery, played a much more substantial role in the war.

The major years were 1918, 1919, and 1920.  By November 1920, Wrangel was evacuating the Crimea, ending the last major White operations.   The Antonov (peasant) rebellion was crushed in 1921.  Further east, various isolated groups held out, each to be dealt with in turn.  By 1922 the Reds had conquered the East, and the whole situation stabilized sufficiently that the country could be formed: the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). 

World War I

I’ve never been in the military, or any war, but I’m fascinated by them anyway, particularly the US Civil War, World War I, and World War II.  I’m not aware that I have any relatives who fought in the Civil War, as ¾ of my family came from Poland around the turn of the century, and my uncle tells me that our ancestor in Brooklyn was in the fire dept (FDNY – protecting the city from the scourge of Confederate terrorists!) and exempt from service.  I’m also not aware of any relatives who fought in Vietnam.  I have several uncles who fought in WWII (my father was too young) and Korea.  And my mom’s dad did fight in World War I, in the US Army.  We have a picture of him in the “campaign hat” which was replaced in the trenches by the flat helmet we shared with the British.

 This is one of the strangest wars – far stranger than WWII.  Artillery blowing men into bits.  Puttees.  Biplanes, poison gas, and bizarre shaped, primitive tanks.  Of course any original footage of the war is in grainy black & white (while there is plenty of color footage of WWII) and the herky-jerky timing with everyone walking way too fast.  There had been wars between the Civil War and WWI: the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71), the Spanish-American War (1898), the Boer War (1900-03), the Russo-Japanese War (1905), two Balkans Wars (1912-13).  But this was a twisted mix of primitive and modern war.  The major weapons which were perfected in WWII – planes & tanks – were invented and introduced, in crude form, in this war.

 Background.  In 1914, Europe was spoiling for a fight.  France wanted Alsace-Lorraine back from the Germans, and had their Plan XVII (what happened to Plans I-XVI?) to retake that territory lost during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71), complete with lots of maps of Germany and no maps of France.  Germany wanted to take out France with a large swing around west of Paris, and come back and smash the French in Alsace-Lorraine, then dash off to the east to fend off the Russians – the so-called “Schlieffen Plan”, which assumed that the Belgians, whose country was inconveniently in between Germany and France, would simply step aside and let the Germans pass through (“you don’t mind, do you?” “No, of course, go right ahead.”). 

            As we well know, the whole thing was triggered, so to speak, when a Serbian, Gavrilo Princip, assassinated the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand (no relation to the band) in Sarajevo in June 1914.  After this, a chain reaction of ultimatums and mobilizations pulled Austria-Hungary, Germany, Russia, and France into war together, with England sitting it out initially until Belgium’s neutrality was violated.  Italy also declined to get involved with her allies Germany and Austria-Hungary, instead entering the war on the Allied side in 1915.  Remarkably, Princip was not executed for his crime, as he was under 18 when it occurred and Austria-Hungary had a law against executing minors, and they didn’t make an exception for his case.  Amazing: he killed the heir to the throne, and he’s simply locked up in jail.  He lived to see the war escalate, and died in jail of tuberculosis in 1918. 

            Of course, nothing ever goes according to plan.  First the Belgians decided to resist after all (as hopeless as it may have been – “resistance is futile!”).  Then the Russians mobilized a little too fast, forcing the Germans to switch forces east, leaving them not enough to go west of Paris, so von Moltke, the German commander, adlibbed Schlieffen’s plan (he had died in 1905) and passed by to the east of Paris.  For their part, the French couldn’t seem to break through the German lines defending Alsace-Lorraine, but a few of their more “think outside the Plan XVII” officers were noting large German formations going westwards through Belgium and wondering if maybe someone should start paying attention there – and were told to SHUT UP because…it wasn’t part of the Plan!  Ultimately, though, Gallieni mobilized the taxi cabs of Paris to ferry forces to the front, smashing into the German flank at the Marne, and they fell back to the Aisne.  Then both sides raced to the sea, setting up trenches from Switzerland to the English Channel.  And the slaughter really began.

 Trenches.  These were mainly on the Western Front, which was the major theater of the war.  Common ingredients: firebays, traverses, zigzags, communication trenches, dugouts, latrines, firesteps, lice, rats, trench raids, half-buried rotting corpses, lots of mud, etc.  French trenches were often designed a little shabbier than British, while the Germans tended to overengineer theirs (the BMW Trench! New 1916 Model!).  The cratered, barbed-wire infested, corpse ridden killing zone in between the two lines, where machine guns consistently mowed down both side’s armies in droves, was No Man’s Land.

 Puttees.  For some reason, these were prevalent in this war, and almost nonexistent before and after.  Hardly anything else epitomizes the typical WWI uniform than puttees.  These are the spiral leggings from the ankle up to below the knee.  Not only British and French, but also American forces traded their canvas leggings in for these.  Even the Germans, known for their jackboots, used them.  I never figured out what the deal was with these.

 Helmets.  In 1914, every nation went to war with some form of cloth hat for head protection.  The Germans had their unique pickelhaubes (spiked helmets – but of leather, not steel)(bottom right), the French had kepis, and the Brits, Japanese, and Russians had peaked caps (see “Legends of the Fall” for the early British uniform).  Someone figured out that these things weren’t the best to keep shell fragments and bullets from shredding the human head, so by 1916 most of the nations had introduced steel helmets.  The Germans had a larger, goofier version of the helmet they used in WWII, with two large lugs like Frankenstein (bottom left); the British and Americans used a flat helmet (see “Braveheart”)(top and middle rows, second from right) of medieval origin, and the French came out with the “Adrian” helmet, which I can’t stand.  Also, the French went from navy blue greatcoats with bright red pants (which dates back to 1867) (middle row, far left), to “horizon blue” uniforms which were much more practical – though aesthetically, I prefer the 1914 uniform.

 Machine Guns.  Whether it be the German Spandaus, the British Vickers and Lewis guns (which the Germans liked so much, they converted captured models to fire the 8mm Mauser round), or the French Hotchkiss models, these proved to be more than capable of reducing human waves of attacking forces into little more than another class of corpses.  See also, Artillery.

 Artillery.  Excellent for turning the countryside into a desolate moonscape, and blowing men of any nationality into oblivion.  The barrages would drive men crazy with despair, those it didn’t obliterate.  But ironically, despite week long artillery attacks, after which it was assumed no one from the other side would be left alive, somehow enough forces had either pulled back, or successfully sought shelter in dugouts (often reinforced with concrete and immune to even direct hits) that more than enough survivors could come out of the ground, man the machine guns, and turn the oncoming attack into yet another wave of dead bodies.  By the end of the war, armies were experimenting with “creeping barrages” which screened in front of the attacking forces, forcing the defenders – in theory – to keep their heads down.  But even these didn’t work too well.

 Poison Gas.  Chlorine, phosgene, and mustard gas were the main ones used, not only by the Germans, who started this mess, but also the Allies.  Of course, the reaction to gas – the gas masks – were equally bizarre.  The German masks look like what we think of as gas masks, with eye pieces and a canister (e.g. the animated denizens from “Pink Floyd the Wall”), whereas the French M2 mask, surprisingly effective, was simply a bag with two eye pieces and a small mouthpiece, again evoking piglike children from “Pink Floyd The Wall”; (see middle row, second from right, being used by US troops).  Although gas has been used since WWI, no war is as closely associated with it as this one.

 Tanks.  The Brits started with their own, bizarre rhomboid tanks with the treads going all the way around (Marks I-V), introduced at the Battle of the Somme in 1916 (see above, far right corner).  The French Renault model was smaller and had a turret (the US used these), whereas Germany’s only tank, the A7V, was a monster box monstrosity (middle row, far right – with the skull & crossbones, it looks like the Delta Tau Chi float from “Animal House”).  The Germans also captured substantial numbers of British tanks, trained on them, and turned them around to make up the majority of their own tank force, such as it was.  All the tanks were slow and lumbering, frequently breaking down.  Only by the end did the Allies have enough to make a difference, but even there, tank tactics left much to be desired – as Liddell-Hart and Guderian soon decided.

 Biplanes.  It’s not WWI without the knights of the air, including Germany’s Red Baron and their colorful Flying Circus (from which Monty Python got their name).  Black? Red? Green? Purple?  Great colors for planes.  And I love the Maltese crosses on the planes.  The Brits had their Sopwith Camel (w/o Snoopy), the French had Spads & Nieuports, but I love the German Albatros the most.

 Major Battles.  Tannenberg was the major German victory on the Eastern Front, with Brusilov’s offensive the only victory for the Russians there.  On the Western Front, the battles of Verdun and the Somme, both in 1916, were the most important. 

            Verdun was a fortress town in Eastern France, the pride of France, site of forts Douamont and Vaux.  Douamont, the largest, was captured by a German sergeant who found it mostly empty, as the garrison had been severely depleted to go fighting outside.  Vaux was captured after its garrison was reduced to drinking its own urine out of severe thirst.  But the German plan to bleed France white defending the area backfired, as the Germans ended up losing almost as many troops themselves in the process.

            The Somme battle was England’s attempt to take the heat off the French at Verdun by distracting the Germans, and their chance to debut their new tanks, wasted away piecemeal fashion.  Moreover, the weeklong artillery barrage not only didn’t wipe out the Germans, sufficient Germans survived to mow down 60,000 British soldiers, and 20,000 on the first day alone – the bloodiest day in British military history.  Both battles simply killed thousands of soldiers yet provided no strategic benefit to anyone. 

 In The Navy.  Despite competing with the Royal Navy in the years leading up the war, the German surface fleet really didn’t do much, fighting one inconclusive sea battle at Jutland in 1916, then retreating into its own ports for the remainder of the war.  The German U-Boat fleet, however, began making its historic record, in an almost (emphasis on “almost”) successful attempt to starve out Britain from much-needed supplies. Yet sinking the Lusitania in 1915 backfired, pushing much public opinion in otherwise neutral America against the Germans.  For its part, the Royal Navy’s blockade of Germany was far more effective.

 Eastern Front.  This was much more fluid due to the more open spaces in Poland and Ukraine.  The Austrians didn’t do much except compete with the Russians for incompetence.  The Germans were led by the killer twin team of Ludendorff & Hindenburg, whereas the Russians only had Brusilov of any value – Rennenkampf and Samsonov hated each other, and their dispute allowed L&H to defeat them at Tannenberg.  When Brusilov actually spanked the Germans in 1916 – the only victory of the Russians – the Romanians hopped in the war on the Allied side, only to be thoroughly spanked in turn by the Germans, who then walked into Bucharest.  In February 1917, Kerenksy took over in Russia, but continued the war [note: Kerensky survived not only the later revolution, but outlived Trostky, Lenin, and Stalin, and died in 1970!].  The Germans helpfully smuggled Lenin into St Petersburg, where he bumped Russia into its second – Bolshevik – revolution in late 1917.  Lenin signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and Germany actually WON the Eastern Front war in World War I.  This allowed them to move forces west in 1918 for a spring offensive…just in time to meet the Americans.

 Middle East.  I covered this in the “Al Aurens” blog entry about T.E. Lawrence, aka “Lawrence of Arabia”. 

 Africa.  The Germans had Cameroon, south-west Africa (now known as Namibia), and Tanzania.  The first two were easily captured by Allied forces, but in the latter, a brilliant German general, Von Lettow-Vorbeck (above in slouch hat), waged a guerilla war against the Brits and remained undefeated until the Armistice.  In “The Young Indiana Jones”, the young Indiana Jones bumps up against him several times.  (Yes, it’s just a TV show.)

 Asia.  Oddly, in WWI the Japanese were on the Allied side, and fought against Germany.  Basically this consisted of the Japanese divesting the Germans of their colonies in China (e.g. Tsingtao, as in the beer – the artillery attack is shown above in the bottom row, second from left) and the Bismarck Islands.  The Germans had their hands full in Europe and weren’t really in a position to defend these farflung possessions.

 US.  The US entered in 1917, but troops didn’t end up fighting until 1918.  Unlike WWII, where the Americans came fully equipped and ended up supplying practically everyone else on the Allied side – including the Russians – with weapons and equipment, and completely equipping the Free French Army, in WWI the Americans were “hey, can I bum this off you?” with helmets from the British, machine guns, tanks, and artillery from the French, and pretty much simply provided warm bodies and aggressive soldiers who weren’t worn out by years of fighting and were eager to tear the Huns a new asshole.  In the movie “The Lost Battalion”, a German junior officer complains to his captain, “these Americans don’t retreat when they’re supposed to!”, to which the jaded German captain simply replies, “how inconsiderate of them.”  The Springfield rifle, with its action copied from Mauser, was less common than the Enfield.  The Chauchat machine gun, borrowed from the French, turned out to be incorrectly adapted to the .30-06 cartridge, and was more reliable in its original 8mm Lebel caliber.  The Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) made its debut late in the war.  US troops traded their campaign hats for British style helmets, and their canvas leggings for puttees.  US soldiers stationed next to British troops used Lee-Enfield rifles.  Black US soldiers were often issued Adrian helmets and French rifles and equipment, and fought under white officers.  US forces also fought in Italy.  The North Russian Expeditionary Force, sent to make sure Allied material didn’t fall into the hands of the Bolsheviks, used Mosin-Nagant rifles and Vickers machine guns. 

 Books.  My favorite, of course, is All Quiet on the Western Front, though translated into English from Am Westen Nichts Neues.  The war also inspired tons of poetry -  and Lord of the Rings, by Tolkien, who served as an infantry officer in the British Army during the war.  The Guns of August, by Barbara Tuchman, is an excellent review of the opening chapter of the war, before the Race to the Sea and trench warfare began.

 Movies.  By far the best WWI movie is “All Quiet on the Western Front”, the 1931 B&W version.   For some reason, color movies of WWI, e.g. “The Lost Battalion” or the 1970s version of AQotWF, don’t seem to really fit the war that well.  Although it’s in black & white, I can’t recommend the Sgt. York movie with Gary Cooper in the lead role, as 80% of the movie is his background in the US and only the last tail end of the movie actually takes place in the military, or even over in France.  “The Fighting 69^th” has James Cagney.  “Wings” was probably the best WWI biplane film, though I did like “Flyboys.”  I already reviewed “Joyeux Noel”, the movie which covered the Christmas Truce of WWI.

 Perhaps the idea sum up here is to pull back into a reference from the Python blog two weeks ago: “12 Monkeys”.  There was a brief scene in the movie where Bruce Willis’ character, who is traveling through time in an effort to save humanity from a virus which wiped out the majority of the population, accidentally winds up in a French trench during the middle of a battle during WWI.  The French are wearing gas masks and all hell is breaking loose, and WHOOSH, Bruce Willis comes from out of nowhere, freaked out and disoriented, and for his part freaking out the French as well (“who is this guy?? Where did he come from?  Is he German??”) and finally he’s whisked out, only to find out later he has a German Mauser bullet lodged in him somewhere.  WHOA….