On This Day in the Great War

S

shredward

Guest
from the History Channel:

February 3, 1917
U.S. breaks diplomatic relations with Germany
On this day in 1917, President Woodrow Wilson speaks for two hours before a historic session of Congress to announce that the United States is breaking diplomatic relations with Germany.

Due to the reintroduction of the German navy’s policy of unlimited submarine warfare, announced two days earlier by Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollwegg, Wilson announced that his government had no choice but to cut all diplomatic ties with Germany in order to uphold the honor and dignity of the United States. Though he maintained that “We do not desire any hostile conflict with the German government,” Wilson nevertheless cautioned that war would follow if Germany followed through on its threat to sink American ships without warning.

Later that day, Count von Bernstorff, the German ambassador to the U.S., received a note written by Secretary of State Robert Lansing stating that “The President has…directed me to announce to your Excellency that all diplomatic relations between the United States and the German empire are severed, and that the American Ambassador at Berlin will be immediately withdrawn, and in accordance with such announcement to deliver to your Excellency your passports.” Bernstorff was guaranteed safe passage out of the country, but was ordered to leave Washington immediately. Also in the wake of Wilson’s speech, all German cruisers docked in the United States were seized and the government formally demanded that all American prisoners being held in Germany be released at once.

On the same day, a German U-boat sunk the American cargo ship Housatonic off the Scilly Islands, just southwest of Britain. A British ship rescued the ship’s crew, but its entire cargo of grain was lost.

In Berlin that night, before learning of the president’s speech, German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann told U.S. Ambassador James J. Gerard that “Everything will be alright. America will do nothing, for President Wilson is for peace and nothing else. Everything will go on as before.” He was proved wrong the following morning, as news arrived of the break in relations between America and Germany, a decisive step towards U.S. entry into the First World War.
 
from the History Channel:

February 4, 1915
Germany declares war zone around British Isles
A full two years before Germany’s aggressive naval policy would draw the United States into the war against them, Kaiser Wilhelm announces an important step in the development of that policy, proclaiming the North Sea a war zone, in which all merchant ships, including those from neutral countries, were liable to be sunk without warning.

In widening the boundaries of naval warfare, Germany was retaliating against the Allies for the British-imposed blockade of Germany in the North Sea, an important part of Britain’s war strategy aimed at strangling its enemy economically. By war’s end—according to official British counts—the so-called “hunger blockade” would take some 770,000 German lives.

The German navy, despite its attempts to build itself up in the pre-war years, was far inferior in strength to the peerless British Royal Navy. After resounding defeats of its battle cruisers, such as that suffered in the Falkland Islands in December 1914, Germany began to look to its dangerous U-boat submarines as its best hope at sea. Hermann Bauer, the leader of the German submarine service, had suggested in October 1914 that the U-boats could be used to attack commerce ships and raid their cargoes, thus scaring off imports to Britain, including those from neutral countries. Early the following month, Britain declared the North Sea a military area, warning neutral countries that areas would be mined and that all ships must first put into British ports, where they would be searched for possible supplies bound for Germany, stripped of these, and escorted through the British minefields. With this intensification of the blockade, Bauer’s idea gained greater support within Germany as the only appropriate response to Britain’s actions.

Though German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg and the German Foreign Ministry worried about angering neutral countries, pressure from naval leaders and anger in the German press about the British blockade convinced them to go through with the declaration. On February 4, 1915, Kaiser Wilhelm announced Germany’s intention to sink any and all ships sailing under the flags of Britain, Russia or France found within British waters. The Kaiser warned neutral countries that neither crews nor passengers were safe while traveling within the designated war zone around the British Isles. If neutral ships chose to enter British waters after February 18, when the policy went into effect, they would be doing so at their own risk.

The U.S. government immediately and strongly protested the war-zone designation, warning Germany that it would take “any steps it might be necessary to take” in order to protect American lives and property. Subsequently, a rift opened between Germany’s politicians—who didn’t want to provoke America’s anger—and its navy, which was determined to use its deadly U-boats to the greatest possible advantage.

After a German U-boat sank the British passenger ship Lusitania on May 7, 1915, killing over 1,000 people, including 128 Americans, pressure from the U.S. prompted the German government to greatly constrain the operation of submarines; U-boat warfare was completely suspended that September. Unrestricted submarine warfare was resumed on February 1, 1917, prompting the U.S., two days later, to break diplomatic relations with Germany.
 
from the History Channel:

February 5, 1918
U.S. Troopship Tuscania is torpedoed and sinks
On February 5, 1918, the Anchor line steamship Tuscania, traveling as part of a British convoy and transporting over 2,000 American soldiers bound for Europe, is torpedoed by the German submarine U-77 and sinks off the coast of Ireland.

For the first three years of the war, the British Admiralty had resisted calls for a convoy system to protect merchant ships coming to Britain from the United States, Canada and other countries, on the grounds that such a system would divert ships and sailors from the defense of Britain’s own coastline or confrontation of the German enemy at sea. A stream of successful attacks by German submarines, however, finally forced the British to set up a system under which all merchant ships sailing across the Atlantic would travel in groups and would be given heavy protection by the British navy. A typical convoy could consist of 10 to 50 merchant ships, possibly including a troopship, escorted by a cruiser, six destroyers, 11 armed trawlers and two torpedo boats, each equipped with an aerial balloon from which submarines and torpedo tracks could be observed from above.

The convoy system, introduced on May 24, 1917, became especially important after the U.S. entry into the war in April 1917, when large numbers of American soldiers headed across the Atlantic. Convoy gathering points were soon established along the North American coastline. The Tuscania, captained by Peter McLean, embarked on its final journey from Hoboken, New Jersey, on January 23, 1918, carrying 2,397 American servicemen bound for the front in Europe toward Le Havre, France, as part of the British convoy HX-20.

The German submarine U-77, with its crew of 34 men under the command of Lieutenant Commander Wilhelm Meyer, spotted the Tuscania and its convoy on the evening of February 5, just eight miles off the Irish coast. After moving into position, Meyer fired two torpedoes at the Tuscania. The first torpedo missed, but the second torpedo scored a direct hit on the starboard side, causing a terrific explosion. The 14,384-ton steamer immediately took a great list and crewmembers were plunged into darkness as they began lowering lifeboats into the sea. Of the 2,397 American servicemen on the Tuscania, the convoy was able to rescue 2,187, along with the majority of the ship’s British crew.

On the whole, the British convoy system was highly successful. In the last two years of the Great War, it drastically reduced the number of ships, men and supplies lost to the Germans at sea. Above all, it played a crucial role in protecting U.S. troops crossing the Atlantic to aid the Allies: of the 1.1 million American troops transported in convoy to Europe between May 1917 and November 1918, only 637 were drowned as a result of U-boat attacks.
__________________
 
from the History Channel:

February 6, 1917
German sub sinks U.S. passenger ship California
Just three days after U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s speech of February 3, 1917—in which he broke diplomatic relations with Germany and warned that war would follow if American interests at sea were again assaulted—a German submarine torpedoes and sinks the Anchor Line passenger steamer California off the Irish coast.

The SS California departed New York on January 29 bound for Glasgow, Scotland, with 205 passengers and crewmembers on board. Eight days later, some 38 miles off the coast of Fastnet Island, Ireland, the ship’s captain, John Henderson, spotted a submarine off his ship’s port side at a little after 9 a.m. and ordered the gunner at the stern of the ship to fire in defense if necessary. Moments later and without warning, the submarine fired two torpedoes at the ship. One of the torpedoes missed, but the second torpedo exploded into the port side of the steamer, killing five people instantly. The explosion of the torpedo was so violent and devastating that the 470-foot, 9,000-ton steamer sank just nine minutes after the attack. Despite desperate S.O.S. calls sent by the crew to ensure the arrival of rescue ships, 38 people drowned after the initial explosion, for a total of 43 dead.

This type of blatant German defiance of Wilson’s warning about the consequences of unrestricted submarine warfare, combined with the subsequent discovery and release of the Zimmermann telegram—an overture made by Germany’s foreign minister to the Mexican government involving a possible Mexican-German alliance in the event of a war between Germany and the U.S.—drove Wilson and the United States to take the final steps towards war. On April 2, Wilson went before Congress to deliver his war message; the formal declaration of U.S. entrance into the First World War came four days later.
 
from the History Channel:

February 7, 1915
Winter Battle of the Masurian Lakes begins
On this day in 1915, in a blinding snowstorm, General Fritz von Below and Germany’s Eighth Army launch a surprise attack against the Russian lines just north of the Masurian Lakes on the Eastern Front, beginning the Winter Battle of the Masurian Lakes (also known as the Second Battle of the Masurian Lakes).

A previous battle in the Masurian Lakes region, located near the villages of Frogenau and Tannenberg in East Prussia, had taken place in September 1914 and ended in the second major defeat of the Russians by Erich Ludendorff’s German forces (the first had come at Tannenberg the previous month). The second battle marked the beginning of an aggressive strategy against Russia conceived by the German commander Paul von Hindenburg, who reasoned that if the Central Powers could manage a string of decisive victories on the Eastern Front, it could knock Russia out of the war and concentrate on the real challenge: confronting Britain and France in the west.

Hindenburg’s strategy called for two armies—the Eighth and Tenth—to be deployed in East Prussia against Russia’s Tenth Army, commanded by General Thadeus von Sievers, which consisted of four corps positioned north of the Masurian Lakes. On February 7, 1915, Below’s Eighth Army attacked the Russian left flank in the driving snow and quickly overwhelmed the Russian lines, easily advancing against the enemy position from the south.

On the second day of the battle, General Hermann von Eichorn and Germany’s Tenth Army came at the Russians from the north, severely outnumbering and nearly surrounding Sievers’ army, which had retreated into the Augustow forest. Faced with tremendous opposition, the Russian XX Corps managed to hold off the German advance for more than two weeks—long enough for the three remaining Russian corps to escape—before finally surrendering to the Germans on February 21, 1915.

All told, the Russians suffered 56,000 casualties in the Winter Battle of the Masurian Lakes; an estimated 100,000 more had been taken prisoner. German losses were comparatively small, though many German troops suffered from exposure due to the extreme cold.

General Fritz von Below was awarded Germany’s highest military medal, the Pour le Merite, for his service as commander of the Eighth Army during the Winter Battle of the Masurian Lakes. The Germans had managed to advance a full 70 miles during the first week of the battle. Further German progress eastward was halted, however, when the Russian Twelfth Army attacked the German right flank on February 22, and the victory at the Masurian Lakes ended up having little strategic impact on the Eastern Front.
 
from murphsmaps and Alex Revell

February 7, 1916
First Single-seater Fighter Squadron
On February 7, 1916, 24 Squadron RFC, led by Major Lanoe G Hawker, left Hounslow, 12 strong, for St Omer in France.It was equipped with the D.H.2, the first complete squadron in the RFC , or any other flying service, entirely equipped with single seat fighters . The D.H.2 ultimately equipped six fighter squadrons. The little pusher quickly proved itself more than a match for the Fokker Eindecker, and was heavily engaged during the Battle of the Somme, 24 Squadron alone engaging in 774 combats and destroying 44 enemy machines.
The D.H.2 had sensitive controls and at a time when service training for pilots in the RFC was very poor it terrified some pilots, who nicknamed it the "Spinning Incinerator", but as familiarity with the type increased, it was recognized as very maneuverable and relatively easy to fly. Soon after their arrival, 24 Sqn suffered two casualties when pilots spun into the ground. Hawker took immediate action, taking a DH2 up to 8000' and coming down in a succession of left and right hand spins. After landing Hawker explained the procedure for recovery from a spin. The other pilots soon followed suit and thereafter had more confidence in their machines.
Hawker was a brilliant exponent of the DH2 - he mastered and made full use of it's aerobatic capabilities. On November 23 he fought one of the longest and most famous duels of the war, a duel he was ultimately to lose. Hawker was pitted against Manfred von Richtofen in one of the new Albatros DIIs. Finally, short of fuel and battling a head wind, Hawker was forced to try and flee for home, and was killed seconds from the lines and safety.

Cheers,
shredward
 
Thanks, Ted, I've been enjoying these daily history accountings. :applause:
 
February 8, 1918

Naval 9 Returns to England

9 (Naval) Squadron is returned to England, on 8 February 1918, to be rested at Dover.

It was formed at St Pol on 1 February 1917 from a nucleus of Naval 8, equipped with various Nieuports, Pups, and Strutters. It then acquired some Sopwith Triplanes, was seconded to the RFC, and moved down to the Somme in mid-June. It then went to Izel-les-Hameaux where it re-equipped with Camels in late July, before returning to the Channel Coast and Naval control in late September.

After being rested, it returned to Bray Dunes on the Channel Coast on 19 March, just before the start of the Kaiserschlacht. Now equipped with Bentley Camels, it was again attached to the RFC, and moved to Bailleul Asylum aerodrome on 27 March. It moved down to Bertangles, on the Somme, on 7 April, where it frequently tangled with JG1, most famously on April 21.

By EoW, Naval 9 had claimed 168 victories, as well as a place in history for it's role in the death of Manfred von Richtofen.

Cheers,
shredward
 
from the History Channel:

February 9, 1918
Ukraine signs peace treaty with Central Powers

The first peace treaty of World War I is signed when the newly declared independent state of Ukraine officially comes to terms with the Central Powers at 2 a.m. in Berlin, Germany, on this day in 1918.

In the treaty, the Central Powers, which included the governments of Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, Germany and Turkey, formally recognized the independence of Ukraine from Russia. The Central Powers also agreed to provide military assistance and protection from the Bolshevik forces of Russia that were occupying Ukrainian territory. In exchange, the Ukrainian National Republic would provide 100 million tons of food rations to Germany.

Ukraine's journey toward a period of independence, brief as it proved to be, began shortly after the collapse of the Russian monarchy in March 1917. Led by Premier Vladimir Vinnichenko and War Minister Simon Petlura, Ukrainian political leaders declared the country a republic within Russia. However, after the Bolshevik Revolution, in which the post-monarchy provisional Russian government was overthrown, Vinnichenko proclaimed the complete independence of Ukraine in January 1918.

Bolshevik forces were sent to regain the Ukrainian territory, but after the peace treaty between the Ukraine and the Central Powers was signed, the Russians were forced out by German troops. Within one month of the peace treaty, Russia formally recognized the independence of Ukraine as part of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk it signed with the Central Powers on March 3, 1918. In 1919, though, during the Russian Civil War, the Soviet Union regained the Ukrainian territory and Ukraine became one of the original republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
 
from the History Channel:

February 10, 1916
U.S. Secretary of War resigns
As a result of bitter disagreements with President Woodrow Wilson over America’s national defense strategies, Lindley M. Garrison resigns his position as the United States secretary of war on this day in 1916.

Garrison came to Wilson’s attention while serving as vice-chancellor of New Jersey (in addition to running a legal practice) and was appointed secretary of war in January 1913 upon Wilson’s ascent to the White House. After the outbreak of war in Europe in 1914, Garrison clashed repeatedly with many in the Wilson administration, including the president himself, who regarded the secretary as notably hawkish with respect to America’s national defense.

The main disagreement between Garrison and the president arose from the Wilson administration’s long-term national defense plans and short-term U.S. military preparedness in light of the ongoing war in Europe. At the time, Wilson favored a policy of strict neutrality—he would be reelected later that year on a platform promising to keep America out of the war—and he objected to Garrison’s belief that a full-time reserve army should be created as a foundation for national defense and, more immediately, for support in case the U.S. entered the European war.

In his letter of resignation to the president, Mr. Garrison wrote, “It is evident that we hopelessly disagree upon what I conceive to be fundamental principles. This makes manifest the impropriety of my longer remaining your seeming representative with respect to those matters. I hereby tender my resignation as Secretary of War, to take effect at your convenience.” Assistant Secretary of War Henry Breckinridge also resigned his position out of loyalty to Mr. Garrison.

Newton D. Baker, a former mayor of Cleveland, took over as secretary of war upon Garrison’s resignation. Chosen by Wilson for his pacifist leanings—and distrusted by such hawks as Wilson’s steadfast Republican opponent, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge—Baker would nonetheless help the president reach the decision to enter the war in April 1917, submit a plan for universal military conscription to Congress and preside over the mobilization of some 4 million American soldiers.
 
from the History Channel:

February 12, 1915
British planes raid Belgian coast
One of the biggest air raids of World War I occurs on this day in 1915, when 34 planes from 3 Squadron RNAS attack the German-occupied coastal towns of Blankenberghe, Ostend and Zeebrugge in Belgium.

The attacks, led by the legendary Charles Rumney Samson, targeted the railway stations in Ostend and Blankenberghe as well as railway lines across the coast that were being used by the occupying military forces from Germany. The town of Zeebrugge, which was being used by the Germans as a base of operations for their deadly submarine warfare and from which they planned a blockade of the Belgian coast, was also a major target of the attack.

The unprecedented raid was extraordinarily successful, causing massive damage to the occupying military force. Despite coming under heavy ground fire from German anti-aircraft guns, not a single Allied plane was shot down and no Allied lives were lost.
 
from the History Channel:

February 16, 1916
Russians capture Erzerum
After five days of intense fighting, the Russian army defeats the Third Turkish Army to capture Erzerum, a largely Armenian city in the Ottoman province of Anatolia, on this day in 1916.

The Central Powers considered Turkey, which entered World War I in November 1914, a valuable ally for two reasons: first, it could threaten British interests in the Middle East, and second, it could divert Russian troops from the front in Europe to the Caucasus. Unfortunately for the Turks, the success of this second objective resulted in the loss of the Turkish province of eastern Anatolia to the Russians in 1916.

The brilliant Russian campaign of February 1916 was commanded by General Nikolai Yudenich, one of the most successful and distinguished Russian commanders of the war. On February 11, the Russian troops began their attack on Erzerum from the south, over Kop Mountain. Once the Russian forces broke through the Turkish lines to the south and began to attack other Turkish positions, the fall of Erzerum seemed inevitable. The Third Turkish Army began abandoning their equipment and retreating from their positions as the Russians entered the city. In total, the Russians captured more than 1,000 guns and artillery and took some 10,000 Turkish prisoners.

With the capture of Erzerum, arguably the strongest and most important fortress in the Turkish empire, the Russians had gained the upper hand in the battle for control on the Caucasus front. With this one victory, the Russians captured or controlled all the roads leading to Mesopotamia and Tabriz and, in essence, controlled western Armenia.

In the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917 and the subsequent armistice between Russia and the Central Powers, Erzerum was returned to Turkish control. The transfer of power was made official under the terms of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918.
 
from the History Channel:

February 17, 1915
Zeppelin L-4 crashes into North Sea
After encountering a severe snowstorm on the evening of February 17, 1915, the German zeppelin L-4 crash-lands in the North Sea near the Danish coastal town of Varde.

The zeppelin, a motor-driven rigid airship, was developed by German inventor Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin in 1900. Although a French inventor had built a power-driven airship several decades before, Zeppelin’s rigid dirigible, with its steel framework, was by far the largest airship ever constructed.

The L-4’s captain, Count Platen-Hallermund, and a crew of 14 men had completed a routine scouting mission off the Norwegian coast in search of Allied merchant vessels and were returning to their base in Hamburg, Germany, when the snowstorm flared up, bombarding the airship with gale-force winds.

Unable to control the zeppelin in the face of such strong winds, the crew steered toward the Danish coast for an emergency landing, but was unable to reach the shore before crashing into the North Sea. The Danish coast guard rescued 11 members of the crew who had abandoned ship and jumped into the sea prior to the crash; they were brought to Odense as prisoners to be interrogated. Four members of the crew were believed drowned and their bodies were never recovered.

One month earlier, the L-4 had taken part in the first-ever air raid on Britain in January 1915, when it and two other zeppelins dropped bombs on the towns of Great Yarmouth and King's Lynn on the eastern coast of England. Four civilians were killed in the raid, two in each town. Zeppelins would continue to wreak destruction on Germany’s enemies throughout the next several years of war--by May 1916, 550 British civilians had been killed by aerial bombs.
 
from the History Channel:

February 19, 1915
Royal Navy bombards Dardanelles
On this day in 1915, British and French battleships launch a massive attack on Turkish positions at Cape Helles and Kum Kaleh at the entrance to the Dardanelles, the narrow strait separating Europe from Asia in northwestern Turkey and the only waterway linking the Mediterranean Sea to the Black Sea.

With Turkey’s entrance into World War I in November 1914 on the side of the Central Powers, the Dardanelles were controlled by Germany and its allies, thus isolating the Russian navy from the Allied naval forces and preventing cooperation between the two, as well as blocking passage of Russian wheat and British arms back and forth. An attack on the Dardanelles was thus a key objective of the Allies from the beginning of the war.

The British, and especially Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, became convinced that it was possible to win control of the strait by a purely naval attack, avoiding the diversion of soldiers from the battlegrounds on the Western Front. At the end of January 1915, the British War Office approved a plan to bombard the Turkish positions at the Dardanelles; the initial bombardments would make way, they hoped, for British forces to move on Constantinople, knock Turkey out of the war and open a path to Russia.

Churchill set the date for the attack as February 19; on that day, a combined British and French fleet commanded by Admiral Sackville Carden opened fire with long-range guns on the outer Turkish fortresses, Cape Helles and Kum Kaleh. The bombardments made little initial impact, however, as the Turks were not caught unawares: they had long known an attack on the Dardanelles was a strong possibility and had been well fortified by their German allies.

The largely unsuccessful Allied efforts to force their way into the Dardanelles continued over the next two months, including a disastrous attempt on March 18 in which three ships were sunk and three more badly damaged by Turkish mines before the attack had even begun. Over Churchill’s protests, the naval attack was called off and a larger land invasion involving 120,000 troops was planned.

On April 25, troops from Britain, Australia and New Zealand launched a ground invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula, which bordered the northern side of the strait. The Turkish defense soon pushed the Allies back to the shore, inflicting heavy casualties. Trenches were dug, and the conflict settled into a bloody stalemate for the next eight months. Some 250,000 Allied soldiers died at Gallipoli; Turkish casualty rates were roughly the same. In December, the exhausted and frustrated Allied forces began their retreat. The last Allied soldiers left Gallipoli on January 8, 1916. As a result of the disastrous campaign, Winston Churchill resigned as first lord of the Admiralty and accepted a commission to command an infantry battalion in France.
 
from trenchfighter.com, bookrags.com, history.com
February 21, 1916
Opening of Battle of Verdun
For centuries Verdun had played an important role in the defence of its hinterland, due to the city's strategic location on the Meuse River. Verdun played a very important role in the defensive line that was built after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. As protection against German threats along the eastern border, a strong line of fortifications was constructed between Verdun and Toul and between Épinal and Belfort. Verdun guarded the northern entrance to the plains of Champagne and thus the approach to the French capital city of Paris. In 1914, Verdun held fast against German invasion, and the city's fortifications withstood even Big Bertha's artillery attacks. The French garrison was housed in the citadel built by Vauban in the 17th century. By the end of the 19th century, an underground complex had been built which served as a workshop, munitions dump, hospital, and quarters for the French troops.
Verdun was poorly defended because most of the artillery had been removed from the local fortifications after the stagnation of trench warfare set in, but good intelligence and a delay in the German attack due to bad weather gave the French time to rush two divisions of 30th Corps—the 72nd and 51st—to the area's defense.
After numerous bad weather delays the Battle for Verdun finally started on the 21st February 1916 when at at 7:12 a.m. German time, a shot from a German Krupp 38-centimeter long-barreled gun strikes the cathedral in Verdun, beginning a battle which would stretch on for 10 months and become the longest conflict of World War I. A nine-hour artillery bombardment with 1400 guns firing over 1,000,000 shells started along a 40 km front. Between 16:00 and 17:00 it reached its peak before the infantrymen of the 5. Armee clambered out of their bunkers, through paths cut in their wire and attacked on a front stretching 12 km from Haumont to Ornes. The Germans used flamethrowers for the first time to clear the French trenches. The initial plan was to advance carefully with fighting patrols, feeling their way forward and assessing the work of the artillery, but the VII R.K. on the right flank was overeager and attacked with its full force in the Haumont-Wald.
The neighbouring XVIII A.K. fought its way forward in the Caures-Wald while on the left Flank the III. A.K. took the French second line. By the second day the attack slowed considerably, the only tangible victory being the fall of Haumont, taken by the VII. R.K. On the third day the VII. R.K. continued forward taking Samogneux which allowed the XVIII. A.K. on its left flank to finally get its foothold in Caures-Wald while the 5. I.D. attacked the Wavrille-Wald. On the 24th Febuary the attackers made better, but still too little progress. The VII. R.K had been withdrawn but the 25. I.D. was already attacking height 378. The 21. I.D. was in the forest in front of Louvemont. The 5. I.D. had made it into the Fosses-Wald. The 6. I.D. stood in front of the Caurier-Wald and that evening the 10. R.D. took Ornes.
The Battle of Verdun popularised the battle-cry "Ils ne passeront pas" ("They shall not pass") in France. In both France and Germany it came to represent the horrors of war, similar to the significance of the Battle of the Somme to Britain and the Empire.
 
Shred- A bit over due thanks for this thread. As a history buff, I should have looked in on this very enlightening thread sooner! :ernae:

Regards,
Royce
 
from the History Channel:

February 22, 1917
Mussolini wounded by mortar bomb
On February 22, 1917, Sergeant Benito Mussolini is wounded by the accidental explosion of a mortar bomb on the Isonzo section of the Italian Front in World War I.

Born in Predappio, Italy, in 1883, the son of a blacksmith and a teacher, Mussolini was well-read, largely self-educated and had worked as a schoolteacher and a socialist journalist. He was arrested and jailed for leading demonstrations in the Forli province against the Italian war in Libya in 1911-12. The editor of Avanti!, the Socialist Party newsletter in Milan, Mussolini was one of the most effective socialist journalists in Europe. In 1912, at the age of 29, he took the reins of the Italian Socialist Party at the Congress of Reggio Emilia, preaching a strict Marxist socialism that prompted Vladimir Lenin to write in a Russian publication that “The party of the Italian socialist proletariat has taken the right path.”

Mussolini early on denounced the Great War, which broke out in 1914, as an “imperialist” conflict; he later reversed his position and began to advocate Italian entrance into the war on the side of the Allies. He left the Socialist Party in 1915 over its neutrality, believing that Italian participation in the Great War would boost its claims on recovered territory in Austria-Hungary after the war. Enlisting in the army, Mussolini was sent to the front at Isonzo, on the eastern end of the Italian Front near the Isonzo River, after Italy’s long-awaited entrance into the war in May 1915.

The mortar bomb that exploded during a training exercise on February 22, 1917, killed four of Mussolini’s fellow soldiers. He escaped alive, but spent six months in the hospital, where 44 fragments of shell were removed from his body. Discharged from the army after his release from the hospital, Mussolini headed back to Milan, where he started his own newspaper, Il Popolo d’Italia (The People of Italy), in which he published articles attacking those in Italy who voiced anti-war sentiments.

In the immediate post-war period, Mussolini and a group of fellow young war veterans founded the Fasci di Combattimento, a right-wing, strongly nationalistic, anti-Socialist movement named for the fasces, the ancient Roman symbol for discipline. Fascism grew rapidly in the 1920s, winning support from rich landowners, the army and the monarchy; the growing strength of Mussolini and his now notorious black-shirt militia led King Vittorio Emmanuel III to invite the charismatic leader to form a coalition government in 1922. By 1926, Benito Mussolini, now known as Il Duce, had consolidated power for himself, transforming Italy into a single-party, totalitarian state that would later, alongside Japan and Adolf Hitler’s Germany, return to the battlefield against the Allies in the Second World War.
 
from the History Channel:

February 23, 1917
Germans begin withdrawal to Hindenburg Line
On this day in 1917, German troops begin a well-planned withdrawal—ordered several weeks previously by Kaiser Wilhelm—to strong positions on the Hindenburg Line, solidifying their defense and digging in for a continued struggle on the Western Front in World War I.

One month after Paul von Hindenburg succeeded Erich von Falkenhayn as chief of the German army’s general staff in August 1916, he ordered the construction of a heavily fortified zone running several miles behind the active front between the north coast of France and Verdun, near the border between France and Belgium. Its aim would be to hold the last line of German defense and brutally crush any Allied breakthrough before it could reach the Belgian or German frontier. The British referred to it as the Hindenburg Line, for its mastermind; it was known to the Germans as the Siegfried Line.

In the wake of exhausting and bloody battles at Verdun and the Somme, and with the U.S edging ever closer to entering the war, Germany’s leaders looked to improve their defensive positions on the Western Front. The withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line meant that German troops were removed to a more uniform line of trenches, reducing the length of the line they had to defend by 25 miles and freeing up 13 army divisions to serve as reserve troops. On their way, German forces systematically destroyed the land they passed through, burning farmhouses, poisoning wells, mining abandoned buildings and demolishing roads.

The German command correctly estimated that the move would gain them eight weeks of respite before the Allies could begin their attacks again; it also threw a wrench into the Allied strategy by removing their army from the very positions that British and French joint command had planned to strike next. After the withdrawal, which was completed May 5, 1917, the Hindenburg Line, considered impregnable by many on both sides of the conflict, became the German army’s stronghold. Allied armies did not break it until October 1918, one month before the armistice.
 
from the History Channel:


February 24, 1917
British troops recapture Kut in Mesopotamia
The Allied war against Turkish forces gains momentum (and ground) in Mesopotamia as British and Indian troops move along the Tigris River in early 1917, recapturing the city of Kut-al-Amara and taking 1,730 Turkish prisoners on February 24.

Ten months after nearly 12,000 British and Indian troops had been captured there—considered by many the most humiliating surrender in the history of the British army—Kut fell into the hands of a British corps commanded by Sir Frederick Maude. After being appointed commander of the Tigris Corps in Mesopotamia in July 1916 and of the entire Mesopotamian front a month later, Maude had immediately begun to reorganize and re-supply the troops in the region in preparation for a renewed offensive against Kut.

In early January, Maude’s 150,000 troops launched their attacks on Khadairi Bend, a heavily fortified town on the Tigris north of Kut. It fell on January 29, and the British troops continued onward to the main offensive, the Second Battle of Kut, which began with attacks on both Turkish flanks on February 17.

Overwhelmed, Turkish forces under commander Karabekir Bey retreated from Kut on February 24. They were pursued by a flotilla of British naval gunboats, including the Mantis, Moth and Tarantula. Outrunning their counterparts on the ground, the crew of the British ships found themselves under fire from four Turkish vessels some 30 kilometers north of Kut at Nahr-al-Kalek. In the gun battle that followed, the British soundly defeated the Turks, destroying three of the Turkish ships and capturing the fourth, the former British monitor ship Firefly.

Encouraged by their victory at Kut, Maude’s forces pushed on towards Baghdad, which would fall on March 11.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top