World War I

F

2

Conflict at Sea

The most spectacular naval event of 1916 was the first venture of the German High Seas Fleet into open water to challenge the British Grand Fleet. The Battle of Jutland, on May 31, was the only time in World War I that the main battleship forces of the two navies engaged in direct combat. After inflicting heavier losses on the British than his units sustained, German admiral Reinhard Scheer returned to his base under cover of darkness, convinced that he would risk total defeat if he tried to gain a clear victory. The British admiral Sir John Jellicoe was afterward accused of missing a golden opportunity to destroy the retreating German fleet. From a strategic viewpoint, Jutland was a British victory, because the German fleet had not ended Allied domination of the world's sea-lanes.

However, German submarine attacks challenged Allied maritime supremacy and began to play a large role in the war. In June a German mine in the icy waters northwest of Scotland sank the cruiser Hampshire, killing British war secretary Lord Kitchener, who was on his way to Russia at the personal request of the tsar.

VIII

Phase Three: The Tide Turns

In the last two years of the war, the stalemate that had existed since the end of 1914 was broken by a number of actions taken by both sides. At the beginning of 1917, Germany made a desperate bid to starve Britain into submission by reverting to the policy of unrestricted submarine warfare that it had used until September 1915. In response, the United States entered the war on the Allied side in the spring of 1917, a move that threatened to tip the balance against the Central Powers. Then the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in October 1917 effectively ended Russia’s role as a fighting force. When Russia formally withdrew from the war in March 1918, Germany gained access to the vast economic resources of the western part of the Russian Empire and was able to concentrate its military forces in the west against the Allies.

A

German Submarine Campaign

In 1917 German submarine operations reached their climax, leading to serious consequences that affected the course of the war. On January 31 Germany announced that it would resume unrestricted submarine warfare the next day. United States president Woodrow Wilson immediately broke off diplomatic relations with Germany and warned of the consequences if more American ships were sunk. Despite this warning, Allied shipping losses, including American ships, rose steeply, exceeding 500,000 tons in March and 850,000 gross tons in April.

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If such a rate of loss continued for long, Britain would face defeat because it depended on the food, supplies, and war materials that the ships brought. The crisis caused the British Admiralty to reconsider using the convoy system. This system, in which merchant ships sailed together escorted by warships, compelled enemy raiders to expose themselves to counterattack. Despite urges since 1915 to adopt the convoy system, the British Admiralty had resisted for a variety of reasons. It feared the convoy system could cause delays in shipping and congestion in ports. Also some in the Admiralty believed that a group of ships was easier to find than just one and that the system would create bigger targets.

By the spring of 1917 the convoy system was already in use for Scandinavian trade to British east coast ports and for coal shipments across the English Channel to France. In both cases, losses of ships were far lower than average.

In May the British tried the convoy system in the Atlantic Ocean with a large convoy from Gibraltar. The convoy reached its destination without losing a single ship. Tonnage losses in May dropped to about 550,000 tons. American destroyers began to arrive in British waters to help provide additional escorts, and the convoy system became established practice. In the last six months of 1917, shipping losses showed an irregular but steady monthly decline. In addition, the Allies destroyed more and more submarines. The Germans were no longer able to build submarines faster than they lost them, and they were no longer able to sink merchant ships faster than the Allies and the United States could build new ones. Although the submarine campaign continued at a diminishing rate during 1918, it was no longer a deadly threat.

B

United States Enters the War

Prior to 1917, the United States had stayed out of the war because many Americans felt that the war was too remote from U.S. affairs to affect the United States (see isolationism). In addition, the people of the United States were divided in their loyalties—many Americans were of British ancestry but many were of German origin, while many Irish Americans were opposed to U.S. support for Britain because of it refused to grant home rule to Ireland. However, when Germany insisted upon using unrestricted submarine warfare, it brought its relations with the United States to a breaking point. On April 2, 1917, President Wilson read his war message to the Congress of the United States. Congress voted on April 6 for the United States to go to war against the Central Powers.

When the United States entered the war, President Wilson insisted that it be referred to as an Associated Power rather than an Allied Power. Wilson stressed that the United States had entered the war for its own reasons and entertained war aims that did not necessarily coincide with those of its Europeans Allies. The United States was the only Associated Power during the war.

Beginning in June, the first troops of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), under General John J. Pershing, arrived in France. However, U.S. intervention in World War I did not have an immediate impact on the fighting in Europe. When Congress declared war, the United States had a small volunteer army that had no experience in the kind of warfare that was being waged on the western front. In May 1917 Congress enacted conscription through the Selective Service Act to draft men into the armed forces. Within a few months over 10 million American men had registered for military duty.

But the United States had to mobilize, train, and transport this new collection of conscripts before they could contribute to the Allied war effort in France. That process took over a year, during which Russia withdrew from the war. Only four American divisions reached France in 1917, and none saw any serious action in that year. It was not until the summer of 1918 that the AEF began to play a significant role in the Allied war effort.

In the meantime, however, the United States contributed to its European allies in the form of massive economic assistance. After Congress declared war, the U.S. Treasury began selling so-called liberty bonds to its citizens in order to finance Allied government purchases in the United States. The British, French, and Italian governments used the proceeds from these bond sales to pay for products and raw materials that they desperately needed to conduct the war. The federal government also generated revenue for the war by increasing income and excise taxes.

C

Western Front, 1917

On April 16, 1917, General Nivelle of France began an offensive on the Aisne River. The Allies had to change the area of the offensive because the Germans had pulled back along a section of the western front to a new defensive line to shorten and strengthen their front line. The Hindenburg Line, as the German position was called, stretched from Arras south to near Soissons.

When the offensive ended in early May in bloody disaster, it caused the ranks of the French army to mutiny. Whole regiments refused orders to advance or to head for the front. On May 15 the French government dismissed Nivelle and replaced him with Pétain, who set about to restore discipline. France suppressed details about the mutiny at the time, but later estimates suggest that 49 soldiers convicted of mutiny were executed. In personal visits to more than 100 French divisions, Pétain calmly assured the troops that there would be no more offensives like the one Nivelle had launched. Although the incident could have been disastrous for the French, the German intelligence service gained no reliable information about the mutinies until after Pétain had restored order.

In April the British troops had local successes at Arras in France, and in June they captured Messines Ridge near Ypres in Belgium. However, the Third Battle of Ypres, which opened on July 31 and continued intermittently until the capture of Passchendaele (Passendale) Ridge in November, degenerated into a disheartening struggle in the mud of Belgium. The Allies achieved a brief advance at the Battle of Cambrai in France on November 20. General Julian Byng's Third Army, having been allotted more than 300 tanks of an improved design, launched a dawn surprise attack with no advance bombing. The large initial British gains were so unexpected that Allied reserves were not available for the follow-through, and German counterattacks recovered most of the lost ground.

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