Dedicated to the millions who tried to be "home by Christmas."
At the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month in the year of our Lord, Nineteen hundred and eighteen, the guns fell silent along the Western Front. World War One was over.
World War I was a major war centered in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918. It involved all the world's great powers, which were assembled in two opposing alliances: the Allies (centered around the Triple Entente) and the Central Powers (originally centered around the Triple Alliance). More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilized in one of the largest wars in history. More than 9 million combatants were killed, largely because of great technological advances in firepower without corresponding advances in mobility, strategy or tactics. It was the sixth deadliest conflict in world history.
Military tactics before World War I had failed to keep pace with advances in technology. These advances allowed for impressive defense systems, which out-of-date military tactics could not break through for most of the war. Barbed wire was a significant hindrance to massed infantry advances. Artillery, vastly more lethal than in the 1870s, coupled with machine guns, made crossing open ground extremely difficult. The Germans introduced poison gas; it soon became used by both sides, though it never proved decisive in winning a battle. Its effects were brutal, causing slow and painful death, and poison gas became one of the most-feared and best-remembered horrors of the war. Commanders on both sides failed to develop tactics for breaching entrenched positions without heavy casualties.
In time, however, technology began to produce new offensive weapons, such as the tank. Britain and France were its primary users; the Germans employed captured Allied tanks and small numbers of their own design. After the First Battle of the Marne, both Entente and German forces began a series of outflanking maneuver, in the so-called "Race to the Sea". Britain and France soon found themselves facing entrenched German forces from Lorraine to Belgium's coast. Britain and France sought to take the offensive, while Germany defended the occupied territories; consequently, German trenches were much better constructed than those of their enemy. Anglo-French trenches were only intended to be "temporary" before their forces broke through German defenses. Both sides tried to break the stalemate using scientific and technological advances. On 22 April 1915 at the Second Battle of Ypres, the Germans (violating the Hague Convention) used chlorine gas for the first time on the Western Front. Algerian troops retreated when gassed and a six-kilometer (four-mile) hole opened in the Allied lines that the Germans quickly exploited, taking Kitchener's Wood. Canadian soldiers closed the breach at the Second Battle of Ypres. At the Third Battle of Ypres, Canadian and ANZAC troops took the village of Passchendaele.
On 1 July 1916, the British Army endured the bloodiest day in its history, suffering 57,470 casualties, including 19,240 dead, on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. Most of the casualties occurred in the first hour of the attack. The entire Somme offensive cost the British Army almost half a million men.
Neither side proved able to deliver a decisive blow for the next two years, though protracted German action at Verdun throughout 1916, combined with the bloodletting at the Somme, brought the exhausted French army to the brink of collapse. Futile attempts at frontal assault came at a high price for both the British and the French poilu (infantry) and led to widespread mutinies, especially during the Nivelle Offensive.
The Allied attack on the Hindenburg Line began on 26 September including U.S. soldiers. The still-green American troops suffered problems coping with supply trains for large units on a difficult landscape. The following week cooperating French and American units broke through in Champagne at the Battle of Blanc Mont Ridge, forcing the Germans off the commanding heights, and closing towards the Belgian frontier. During the final hours of the First World War, Canadian troops entered the town of Amiens, which was the scene of the first battle between the British forces and the German forces. The last British soldier to die in WWI is buried very close to the first British soldier to die during the war.
When Bulgaria signed a separate armistice on 29 September, the Allies gained control of Serbia
and Greece. Ludendorff, having been under great stress for months, suffered something similar to a breakdown. It was evident that Germany could no longer mount a successful defense.
The collapse of the Central Powers came swiftly. Bulgaria was the first to sign an armistice on 29
September 1918 at Saloniki. On 30 October, the Ottoman Empire capitulated.
On 24 October, the Italians began a push which rapidly recovered territory lost after the Battle of Caporetto. This culminated in the Battle of Vittorio Veneto, which marked the end of the Austro-Hungarian Army as an effective fighting force. The offensive also triggered the disintegration of Austro-Hungarian Empire. During the last week of October declarations of independence were made in Budapest, Prague and Zagreb. On 29 October, the imperial authorities asked Italy for an armistice. But the Italians continued advancing, reaching Trento, Udine and Trieste. On 3 November Austria Hungary sent a flag of truce to ask for an Armistice. The terms, arranged by telegraph with the Allied Authorities in Paris, were communicated to the Austrian Commander and accepted. The Armistice with Austria was signed in the Villa Giusti, near Padua, on 3 November. Austria and Hungary signed separate armistices following the overthrow of the Habsburg Monarchy.
Following the outbreak of the German Revolution of 1918 1919, a republic was proclaimed on 9 November. The Kaiser fled to the Netherlands. On 11 November an armistice with Germany was signed in a railroad carriage at CompiŠgne. At 11 a.m. on 11 November 1918; "the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month"; a cease-fire came into effect.
By the war's end, four major imperial powers the German, Russian, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires had been militarily and politically defeated and ceased to exist. The successor states of the former two lost a great amount of territory, while the latter two were dismantled entirely. The map of central Europe was redrawn into several smaller states. The League of Nations was formed in the hope of preventing another such conflict. The European nationalism spawned by the war and the breakup of empires, the repercussions of Germany's defeat and problems with the Treaty of Versailles are generally agreed to be factors in the beginning of World War II.
For the 90th Anniversary of the signing of the Armistice, Keenan Powell produced a film Over There: Remembering World War One using footage shot by the USA Army Signal Corp and film provided by the other Allied and Associated Powers.
This year, the 93rd anniversary of the signing of the Armistice, Tramp Studios and Skyline Broadcasting will be presenting both Keenan's film and the documentary The Guns Of August, based on the book by Barbara W. Tuchman and Robert K. Massie. The Guns Of August will be presented at 7:00 P.M. Eastern, 6:00 P.M. Central, 4:00 P.M. Pacific. Over There will begin at 9:00 P.M. Eastern, 8:00 P.M. Central, 6:00 P.M. Pacific at
Come and remember all the millions who struggled to be "home by Christmas."
