Well, I’ve only got one volume on WWI in my library (“The First World War, A Complete History” by Martin Gilbert), but it gave me a different impression:
“The omens for Germany were good. Following the signature of the Treatey of Brest-Litovsk on March 3, Russia was out of the war… The German railway system, perfected during the previous two years, was enabling the German divisions hitherto tied to the Eastern Front to be moved rapidly and efficiently westward” (p 406)
On 23 March 1918: “Lloyd George told Reading: ‘You should appeal to President to drop all questions of interpretation of past agreements and send over infantry as fast as possible without transport or other encumbrances. This situation is undoubtedly critical and if America delays now she may be too late.’” (p 408)
“As the American troops drew closer to the front they found whole villages that had been looted by the retreating French troops…French were still falling back, some of the soldiers calling out to the Americans as they passed them on, June 1, that the war was over: ‘La guerre finie.’” (p 428)
I was wrong in that I thought the major mutinies in the French Army were in 1918 rather than 1917, but nevertheless they occurred at the same time as American entry: “The arrival of the first American troops coincided with a dramatic change on the French sector of the Western Front…At the Front itself…as many as 30,000 soldiers had left their trenches and reserve billets and fallen to the rear.” (p 333)
What I take from all this is that it was a potentially close thing at times even with American entry. If there are no American troops in the spring of 1918, maybe the Germans win the war with their offensive. If there’s no American entry in 1917, maybe the mutinies spread faster and farther. Again I’m not saying it’s inevitable, but I think as late as 1918 it wasn’t quite a sure thing.
My understanding, based on several WWI histories, is that the incredible casualties and hardship caused by the war made it seem imperative to Germany that it retain at least some of the territory it had won. It was also perceived by the Emperor that he was likely to be deposed without a significant victory. On the other side, it was unlikely that the Allies would have settled for anything less than complete German withdrawal and payment of substantial reparations.
Woodrow Wilson made a number of peace overtures which generally were taken contemptuously by the warring factions, since neither would have gotten anything like a victory under his proposals. In fact, he kept pissing everyone off right through the Versailles Conference.
What always gets me about the war is that the Allies kept hurling troops against the trenches in doomed offensives, instead of recognizing the futility of these plans and concentrating on economic strangulation of Germany. They could have learned valuable lessons from the U.S. Civil War, but didn’t.
These are good points and precisely these issues have been wrangled over by film historians.
The Great War, as recommended by yojimbo, is excellent, largely because it manages to contain most of the interesting surviving footage. What it demostrates is that there’s a lot of newsreel stuff that’s survived from the period and the programmes are interesting just as a chance to see samples of these.
Where the controversy gets complicated is over the question of combat footage. This is much more restricted and there’s undoubtedly a tendency for documentary makers to resort to the same few feet again and again. Furthermore, certain key - and popular - sequences were certainly faked. The official British newsreels from the Western Front were produced by Topical Budget and the important ones are described on this BFI page. As an example of how many other sequences were faked, see this article.
Overall, I suspect there are perhaps a couple of hours worth of “authentic” WWI battle sequences. Nontrivial, but a tiny fraction of what was shot during WWII.
It’s hard to learn the lessons when you’re safely dozens of miles behind the front lines and haven’t ever actually seen the terrain you’re ordering your men to charge through.
There’s a quote from a General after the war who said something along the lines of, “I had no idea we were ordering men to attack across that. It was obviously suicide.”
At least in the Civil War a whole lot of the men were led by their senior officers. And I do mean “led”.
Interesting because just before WWII, the rise of Hitler came also because the extreme left was gaining in the elections, disturbing to find that for Germany war became the “solution” for their civil unrests. Regarding this, it is also notorious that one of the reasons for Russia for entering the war, was also to counteract their civilian unrest. Russia, like Germany, was expecting a short and decisive war to elevate the prestige of the crown and to discredit the extreme opposition.
[sub]Must… resist… comparisons to current events….
Damn, failed.[/sub]
On the subject of footage, yes, there is less than from WW2, but that site is just recently posting many clips of 1914, more from other years will be posted soon.
