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11/11/18 My views as to why we won WWI & the European myth of why we didn’t

Lobato1

Mayor
Dedicated to my Wife & friend that had the patience in following me on all those field trips through so many WWI & WWII battle sites through all those years, with kids in stow in my pursuit of my hobby.
Lobato1

St Mihiel
a1.bp.blogspot.com__NGkGYhAk7MU_Svx5heelssI_AAAAAAAAABY_209Dc6HvAcE_s1600_WWI_St_Mihiel_PC.jpg

History to the Prelude of the Battle of the Argonne Forest.


In General George C. Marshall's memoirs of WWI, he cited the surprise Pershing's staff had upon arriving in France with our American Expeditionary Forces ("AEF") in June 1917. We learned that our Allies’ armies’ were a ghost. There was not one single Division that had more than 5 thousand men & of these, 33% were literally existent only on paper because they had less than 1,000 men (from what were supposedly 15,000 men Divisions versus our Divisions of 29,000 men). Then it got much worse, when the British Expeditionary Force ("BEF") bungled it’s way into nonexistence in the spring offensive of July 1917, in the Passchendaele cataclysm the Brits called Third Ypres.

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The Imperial Austria PART 1
(Ref. #8 is used unless otherwise specified):


Essay:

The Germans were dragged into WWI by an unfortunate alliance with the Austrians & their Austro-Hungarian Imperial designs for the Balkans. With Big Brother’s protection, the sky was the limit for their Imperial ambitions. At a given moment after the Archduke’s assassination in June 1914, the Austrians gave Serbia an ultimatum with intolerable conditions & were unpleasantly surprised when Serbia accepted (page 24). The Austrian decided they were going to war anyway & WWI begun on July 28, 1914.

Then the Austrians became everybody’s whipping boys, forcing the Germans to continuously come to this 3rd front to rescue Little Warmongering Brother when everybody; Russians, Romanians & even the Italians whipped them (page 64 & let’s not forget Hitler’s Austrian origins). Other reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Archduke_Franz_Ferdinand

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The Germans PART 2

(Ref. #2 is used unless otherwise specified):

A brief summary of events & consequent German strategy:

The war carried out by Germany in the western front was made in two distinctive phases;

The 1st phase:
Was one of exceptional mobility lasting only five weeks, to September 5, 1914, when the French stopped the German impetus at the Battle of the Marne.

The 2nd phase:
Was one of a solid static in depth defense inside France. After the Battle of the Marne the Germans withdrew to the higher ground that enabled them to conduct a defensive miles wide in dept war strategy. This line became an impregnable wall for the following four years up to September 1918 when the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), broke through this wall in a quick successive, one, two blows.

Essay:

In spite of the WWI propaganda of Prussian intolerable discipline, the German troops were by far & away, the best led & considered.

Due to geopolitical realities, the Germans devised a rigid military plan called the, "Schlieffen Plan XVII," that consisted of outflanking France by attacking Belgium through the Ardennes forest. The inflexibility of this plan is highlighted by letters written between the Cousins: the Kaiser, King & Tsar, in desperate efforts to stop the headlong rush to war where they signed their childhood nicknames of Willy, Nicky. My Reference: http://search.yahoo.com/search?_adv_prop=web&x=op&ei=UTF-8&fr=fp-top&va=Willy+Nicky+Correspondence+Kaiser+Tsar+King+George&va_vt=any&vp_vt=any&vo_vt=any&ve_vt=any&vd=all&vst=0&vf=all&vm=i&fl=0&n=20/t_blank#Clickhere.

General von Moltke was thunderstruck when the Kaiser told him at a given moment, "War with the Brits (& French), could be avoided." Moltke later said to an aide he had burst into tears at the Kaiser’s naiveté admitting, "Something within me broke & I was never the same afterwards." (Ref. #4, page 36 & Ref. #5, page 15), The Kaiser, was only able to have his Imperial Staff kill their original plan of outflanking Belgium’s defenses through Holland, since Holland’s Monarchy was also family related to the Kaiser (so much for the Autocrat label).

When war started, the Germans used Austrian mobile 305 mm Skoda howitzers & the giant 420-mm Krupp "Big Berthas" to smash their way though the Belgium defenses. Then they exploited the lack of coordination between the Allied attacks in counterattacks all the way to the Seine east of Paris at the Battle of the Marne. The Battle of the Marne was of strategies rather than one battle. General von Kluke’s plan was to cross the Seine west of Paris but his counterattacks kept breaking out towards the east & when General von Kluke crossed the Marne, he exposed his flank to the French Paris garrison that rushed out in mass to exploit this weakness in what the French called "The battle of the Taxis of the Marne".

The Germans then proved their expertise in warfare;
Instead of slugging it out at the Marne to retain what they had vanquished, they yielded vast areas & retreated from the Marne to north of Reims, some 100 Km.

The Germans selected terrain from where they could see all the enemies’ concentrations & operations.

The Germans then developed a, "Five miles wide", in dept line of defense with buried reinforced concrete bunkers where the front line was only a trip wire littered with an intricate maze of self-supporting machinegun pillbox emplacements that could withstand direct hits from the Allies’ 75 mm guns.

In the following four years, the Germans strengthened this impregnability by adding additional tiers each successive year (Reference #8, page206).

In addition, they built railroads running parallel to the entire length of this defense line, from Switzerland to the sea in Belgium.

It was up against this impregnable wall that the Allies committed suicidal attacks for the next 4 years. After days of artillery barrages signaling the initiation of an attack (informing the Germans to bring in troops by train & quartering them safely away in the reinforced concrete bunkers).

Allied sappers would then blow up a huge gorge several kilometers long on the German front lines (& heard all the way to London & Paris), knocking out dozens of pillboxes. This would be followed immediately by a massive bayonet charge (with unloaded weapons), of 10s of thousands of troops rushing into the gorge that they then couldn’t climb out of & where they were then slaughtered by German troops pouring out of their bunkers.

Once the Allies had thrown in all they had, the Germans would then launch a counter-offense operation designed to mop-up the remnants while allowing their engineers to repair the damages to their defenses. Then they returned to the safety of their restored impregnable defenses.


A 2nd an urgent reason for German troops to limit their stay occupying allied trenches was for health reasons.
Western Europe has an overabundance of rain & for the Germans having occupied the high ground it was a simple matter of every so many meters, shoving a drainage pipe from the floor of the trench to the outside slop to maintain their trenches high & dry. This meant that the allied trenches below the German positions were forever mired in filthy contaminated muddy water & "Trench Foot" was rampant though-out all the allied armies.

It is conceivable that the Germans also got rid of human waste through these same drainage pipes, how else could it be explain the countless photos of soldier’s black gangrenous legs & feet with missing toes taken prior to amputating the entire limb? The History channel in their documentary titled "Digging the trenches in Flanders" cited a staggering 5% amputation rate, for trench foot infections.

The Numbers Game;
Once the Germans returned to the safety of their impregnable wall, the Allies claimed the Huns had "Retreated in defeat" & a victory for his particular assault. In addition, that the monthly casualty numbers published in Berlin (multiplied by two, "at least," while citing ridiculous low casualties of his own), were those he had inflicted on the wicked Huns.

It took a civilian, The French Premier, Georges Clemenceau, "Le Tigre" to bring France to it’s senses in 1917. Clemenceau’s genius started by accepting the casualties published in Berlin.
Allied numbers literally summed up to one sixth of the entire German population.

E.g. the Brits claimed they had inflicted 600,000 casualties on the Huns in their Third Ypres & Cambrai offensives. The German medical services published, "121,622 killed in the Western front for all of 1917 & 591,000 from the beginning of the war to July, 31, 1918 for the same Western front" (Ref. #2, page 284). This in effect signified the Allies had lost the war & that their only recourse was to wait for their new American Allies.
.

The Brits never learned (In spite of Third Ypres & Cambray). As their Commanding Officer, Gen. Haig said in 1926 on a book review, when he exposed his views on tanks & airplanes being accessories to the well-bred horse, "As it had done in the past." Ergo, Haig the Butcher continued to be obsessed with an all encompassing Final triumphant cavalry charge of a bygone era & that he pursued in WWI leading to the Final Demise of the BEF in the spring of 1918 Click here http://search.yahoo.com/search?_adv_prop=web&x=op&ei=UTF-8&fr=fp-top&va=haig&va_vt=any&vp=I+believe+that+the+value+of+the+horse&vp_vt=any&vo_vt=any&ve_vt=any&vd=all&vst=0&vf=all&vm=i&fl=0&n=10# Click here.

German achievements from Aug. 1914 to Sep. 1918:
Belgium fell to the Germans in 1914.

Serbia fell in November 1915.

Romania defeated once Bucharest fell in Dec. 6, 1916.

Italy sued for peace in 1917.

Russia sued for peace in 1917.

Killed the remnants of Britain’s Expeditionary Force (BEF) in the spring of 1918

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German Defeated Brits in the1918 Spring Offensive Part 3
(Ref. #3 is used unless otherwise specified):

A brief summary of events leading to the Demise of Britain’s Expeditionary Force (BEF);
In my view, it is important to understand why Prime Minister, Lloyd George mercifully refused to send additional troops to the BEF after the military catastrophe of 3rd Ypres at the end of 1917. This decision then led to the tragedy of having the BEF armies (15 divisions per army), with only 27,000 men instead of 225,000 allowing the Germans to easily capture two entire BEF armies, during the German 1918 spring offensive & the consequent cataclysm of the death of the BEF.

Essay:

The BEF’s fate was one of gallantry & self sacrifice doomed to failure by two incredibly inept Cavalry Butchers, that were a product of a Colonial era chosen by personal friendships & birthright. At the start of WWI, the Brits fielded approximately 110,000 professional troops in 6 divisions plus one cavalry division, led by Gen. John French, a peevish misfit in a perilous Command who hated his French Allies more than his enemy.

The French lost the battle of Guise on Aug. 29, 1914, because their entire left flank was exposed when Gen. French ordered the BEF Corps I Commander Gen. Haig to stand down after he found out that Gen. Haig had collaborated with the French Gen. Lanrezac for the battle plans & mutual assistance (page 25).

Gen. French’s petty jealousies extended to the BEF’s best military mind, the 2nd Corps Commander Gen. Horace Smith-Dorrien. The BEF’s defeat at Mons on Aug 23, 1914 was immediately followed by the catastrophe at Le Cateau on Aug. 27 that caused the BEF’s 1st demise. Gen. Smith-Dorrien didn’t listen to Gen. French’s order to retreat because it would have exposed the 1st Corpse’s left flank when they were fighting off a brutal frontal assault. Except for Gen. French, Gen. Smith-Dorrien’s decision to stay & slug it out was loudly applauded by everyone else, including King George (page 27).

Gen. French then sacked Gen. Smith-Dorrien for lack of fighting spirit on April 22,1915 when after a German gas attack at Ypres, Gen. Smith-Dorrien found himself with both flanks exposed & he suggested a withdrawal of his 2nd Army. Afterwards, Gen. French ordered Gen. Smith-Dorrien’s replacement, Gen. Herbert Plumer to withdraw immediately from the Ypres salient (page 30).

After the tragedy of Le Cateau, Gen. French panicked & withdrew to the safety of the Seine (after having lost 80% of the professional BEF), where he demanded from London to have his remnants of the BEF, repatriated ("History of the British Army" Young & Lawford, page 213). There was no one left then to train the, "New BEF Army of Recruits," London would send to France.

The Battle of Corpse Field of Loos:
("der leichenfeld von Loos," as the Germans called this butchery) on Sept. 1915. Other References: http://search.yahoo.com/search?_adv_prop=web&x=op&ei=UTF-8&fr=fp-top&va=battle&va_vt=any&vp=corpse+field+of+loos&vp_vt=any&vo_vt=any&ve_vt=any&vd=all&vst=0&vf=all&vm=i&fl=0&n=10/t_blank#Clickhere :

This was an exact duplicate of the tragic battle of Neuve Chapelle on March 1915, but surpassed several times fold in the scale of vast carnage. The difference was that at Neuve Chappelle, the Brits opened up with a half hour artillery barrage followed by a quick assault & in Loos, gas was used to initiate the assault (The gas was used under changing wind conditions that ultimately turned against the Brits). Both assaults swept quickly over the German trip wire of the front lines & then got lost into a sea of barbed wire of the German’s miles wide in depth defenses.

In Loos, the Brits swept over the German front lines then ran over a hill & down into a false gully covered in a sea of barbed wire where the troops became hopelessly entangled with nothing but bare-hands to try to dislodged themselves since very few wire-cutters had been issued. Each succeeding assault wave’s impetus of rushing downhill into the ravine, just made matters worse to the extreme that the German commander later said:
"My machine gunners were so filled with nausea at the Corpse Field of Loos that they refused to fire another shot."


The British Generals, seeing the battle from afar of the German front lines being swept away by the 1st assault waves & then going easily over the hill & disappearing out of sight issued victory statements as they ordered new assault waves into action & into oblivion.

After the Loos’ carnage the butchers started blaming each other. Gen. Haig had the advantage due to his chummy status with King George V (Haig’s wife was Lady-in-Waiting to the Queen). Haig backed stabbed Gen. French left & right in a private meeting with the King on Oct. 24, 1915 (page 36). Gen. Douglas Haig then replaced Gen. John French on Dec. 19, 1915, & the New BEF would know a cataclysm that would make the 9 month Gallipoli fiasco & 45,000 casualties seem like a kindergarten children spat in comparison.

The Somme;
The disaster of the 5 month battle of the Somme started on July 1916. The battle opened up with an 8 day artillery barrage by 1,500 guns followed by a monstrous explosion that was heard in London that was set of by British sappers along several miles of the German front lines taking out dozens of machinegun pillboxes. The Germans then surged from the safety of their underground reinforced concrete bunkers & stopped cold, the Brit’s massive assault wave inflicting 25,000 casualties the 1st couple of hours (You can see German film documentaries of the era of masses of British troops running & being mowed down by machinegun crossfire on what appears to be some 4 or 5 football field lengths away from the German positions). Non-Brit sources estimate the Brit’s losses upwards of 400,000 casualties at the Somme. The Brits as usual declared victory, less than 200,000 casualties & that the Germans had suffered several fold higher casualties.

3rd Ypres & Cambrai;
Then came the Mother of all war travesties, the 5-month battle of Passchendaele called 3rd Ypres by the Brits. In sharp contrast to the French waiting for our American participation, the presumptuous Gen. Haig went in for his last hurrah to demonstrate his mastery of the battlefield. For this glorious task & thinking he knew all there was to be known, Haig gathered 2,260 canons including 760 huge artillery pieces to blast the German bunkers all the way to paradise & undermined 3 miles of the German front lines with 1 million pounds of explosives in 21 mines. After 16 days of pouring 3.5 million shells, the mines were activated in a gigantic blast heard all the way to Dublin 500 miles away.

The problem with Haig’s perfect battle plan was that it was done in the worst & inconceivable war topography that anybody could have chosen.

That part of Flanders is below sea level needing uninterrupted drainage & the water-table is at a depth of 3 to 4 ft., hence an ocean of mud capable of swallowing a tank, was created by the explosives. It was into this quagmire, hundreds of thousands of Brits rushed in human assault waves on June 7, 1917.

In the following five months, the Brits drove a wedge 5 miles deep from where they could not disengage themselves while being cut to pieces from 3 sides. The Brits build 2 wooden roads to supply & relieve their troops that could only be traveled at night with the help of guides & even then, there are personal witness accounts of troops walking into the mud from where some could not be extricated.

In this interim, a diversionary plan was conceived on a raid on Cambrai by a considerable tank force of 400 tanks that could not be used in the ocean of mud in Passchendaele. The problem was that no reserves were planned for this raid & when the tank attack took place in November 1917, their success of smashing through the entire German’s in dept defenses went beyond all the Brit’s expectations. But then the tanks were left there exposed & inside a wedge where the Germans then regrouped & slaughtered them thanks to the Brit’s unnatural ability of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

The entire tragic charade was terminated on November 1917, with Haig’s victorious statements of expressing his personal satisfaction for the achievements & with the usual cutting short of the BEF’s casualties to 250,000 (that non-Brit sources estimate at 600,000 for both battles Ref. #2, pages 284 & 299), & that the Huns had suffered far more casualties (German medical services published, 121,622 killed in the Western front for "all of 1917" Ref. #2, page 284).

The Prime Minister, Lloyd George then responded to Haig’s victory statement by mercifully cutting all further supplies of recruits from Britain to the BEF. This was the only authority the Prime Minister had over the BEF, because King George V, had lavished honors, decorations & royal condition on Field Marshal & Earl; Sir Douglas Haig just like the King had previously bestowed on Field Marshal Lord John French.

Walking through the corridors of parliament, Lloyd George commented publicly, "He was brilliant up to here," pointing at Haig’s cavalry boots on a painting in heroic proportions of Haig (page 162).

The Death of the BEF;
The Germans then showed their overall good health in the spring of 1918, disproving Haig’s contentions of having mortally wounded the Hun.

The Germans launched their counter-offense operation to mop-up the remnants & allow their engineers to repair the damages to their defenses on March 21, 1918, "BUT" in a matter of 48 hours, they swallowed two entire British Armies, the 5th Army & the 3rd Army, effectively annihilating the BEF (Ref. #2, page 315).

Once the Germans returned to their repaired, impregnable defense lines, the Brits claimed that the Huns had "Retreated in Defeat" & that the 3rd was intact (The reserve Division enabled the 3rd Army’s Commanding General to elude being captured). In addition, they avowed having inflicted massive casualties on the humiliated Huns beyond all credibility, specifically, of more than 300,000 (Ref. #5, page 203).

The carnage inflicted upon the BEF troops by these butchers can be understood if one considers the incredible amount of exemplary executions carried out against troops for cowardliness after each failed offensive in order to exculpate their bungling. During WW I, over 300 British & Commonwealth soldiers were shot for cowardice to impose discipline by fear on the BEF soldier. Ergo, eliminating soldier self-initiatives for fear of being accused of insubordination. Ergo, you do what you are ordered to do & period (Ref. #2, page 277, other references: http://search.yahoo.com/search?n=10&ei=utf-8&va_vt=any&vo_vt=any&ve_vt=any&vp_vt=any&vd=all&vst=0&vf=all&vm=p&fl=0&p=WW1+Canadians+Commonwealth+soldiers+executed+firing+squad# Click here ).

This contrast sharply to the German war tactics that evolved into infiltration tactics of the, "Sturmtruppen" Click here https://www.google.com/search?q=Sturmtruppen+WWI&hl=en&biw=1366&bih=643&num=10&lr=&ft=i&cr=&safe=off, based on a section (we call a squad), of a corporal leading 2 groups (we call fire-teams) of 4 riflemen each, supported by the fire-base of the machinegun.

A WWI vet, proudly walked the corridors of power of WW II dressed with his German Corporal’s uniform & the Iron Cross he was awarded in combat that many a German officer & general would have given an arm & a leg. The Corporal’s name was Adolph Hitler.

In "My" opinion, American Historians have it wrong asserting that the demise of the BEF in 1918 was due to the Brits having all their divisions in the front line. Then when the Germans outflanked this front line with their "Sturmtruppen" squad tactics, they were minced meat for the mop-up crews. In "My" opinion, the problem was in the "Numbers Game" (Ref. #5, page 9) the Brits & French practiced after the 1914 disaster. In 1914, the BEF had 15,000 men Divisions. Then after the 1914 calamity, in 1915, they went down to 12,000 men divisions. After Loos & before the Somme 1916 offensive started, they were down to 8,000 men divisions (800 men per battalion). After the Somme & before the 3rd Ypres offensive started, they were down to 5,000 men divisions (679 men per battalion).

This coincides with Gen. George C. Marshall's memoir’s as a starting point. By the authors own admission of my Ref. #5, page 9, he states:
"It must be stressed that the foregoing figures represent "Established" rather than "Actual strength."​

We must now take into consideration Gen. Marshall’s observation that one third of the divisions were only on paper with less than 1,000 men. Hence assuming one division at full strength of 5,000 & a 2nd of half strength at 3,000 & the 3rd at 1,000 we have the "Actual average strength," of 3,000 men per division (3 divisions to a corps & 5 corps to an army).


Then at the 3rd Ypres cataclysm, the Brits suffered a "40% attrition" (Ref #5, page 201), when mercifully, Lloyd George stop sending recruits as canon fodder for the butchers leaving the BEF division at 1,800 men. Hence an entire BEF army (15 divisions), had "27,000 men per army unit" instead of 225,000 men (an American Expeditionary Force division had 29,000 men or some "435,000 per army unit"). Then to make matters worse, instead of each army having each, a reserve division, after 3rd Ypres, one single ghost division was assigned to every two armies. Thus "My" contention with historians;

It wasn’t a wrong tactic of the Brits having "ALL" their divisions in the front line, that led to the demise of the BEF in the German offensive of 1918. The real problem was that the "Numbers game" the Allies had played with ghost divisions, they just didn’t have the number of troops needed for an army unit of only 27,000 men to hold any line, no matter what tactic they had used.​

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French Realize America Is Way To Victory Part 4
(Ref. #4 is used unless otherwise specified);

A brief summary of events:
There is no point in trying to 2nd guess how WWI would have developed "IF" the inter-allied frictions with the BEF hadn’t existed & that allowed for the tragic German break through in the opening phases of WWI. What is certain is that France with a population of 40 million in relation to a post-Bismarck Germany that went from Prussia in Eastern Europe to & including the lost provinces of Alsace-Lorraine & a population of 65 million (page 16), France needed the British for her survival as a nation.

Essay:

From 1914 to 1917, France like the Brits, threw her youth with wild abandonment in a futile hell hole called Verdun, where the Germans had skillfully occupied the three surrounding heights with the prominence of the St. Mihiel" salient from where to lay waste to the defending troops. Fortresses like Douaumont, were designed to be manned by 2,000 men, but trench warfare had exhausted French resources to the fatality of manning these forts with only 95 men.

Tragically the French captain had called a general meeting without realizing NCOs had called all their respective subordinates to the meeting, this error left the entire fortress unguarded. Unfortunately a German scouting party led by Sergeant Kunze appeared & nobody fired at their squad of ten men, they entered the fort unopposed & swiftly descended the various levels of the fort until Sergeant Kunze found the meeting room & slammed the steel door shut capturing the entire 95 men garrison. Outside independent historical sources have estimated that the fall of Douaumont cost the French more than 200,000 casualties Click here https://www.google.com/search?as_q=Douaumont+Sergeant&num=10&hl=en&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=&as_oq=Kunze+koontz&as_eq=lieutenant&lr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=&as_rights=&safe=images/t_blank

Chemin des Dames:
Then the French had their own 3rd Ypres at the battle of the ridge of Chemin des Dames. The disgraced Marshal Joseph Joffre had been replaced by the victor of recapturing Fort Douaumont, General Robert Nivelle.. Gen. Nivelle, was the son of an English mother, spoke flawless & idiomatic English & quickly became seen as a new messiah by Brits & French alike. Gen. Nivelle came up with an ingenious new battle plan of attacking the German’s salient of the Aisne river in a, "Pincers stratagem," with Brits attacking from the north & the French from the south to enable them to break though the German in depth defense lines. Once outflanked, they could then maneuver freely, having bypassed the German impregnable wall. France had now trained an entire new army with tactics copied from the Germans & each battalion practiced their assigned mission until they knew it by heart.

Operation Alberich:
The problem with this plan was that the Germans didn’t cooperate, proving once again their mastery of the battlefield. On Feb 9, 1917 (page 159), they launched operation Alberich which consisted in blowing up railheads, reservoirs, bridges & their own reinforced concrete bunkers & razing entire villages behind them while German engineers constructed much better defenses, running in a straight line from Arras to a ridge known as Chemin des Dames.

All these German activities were observed by the Brits & French alike, e.g. the flames from the villages being razed could clearly be observed at night from the Allied trenches.

Then on March 15 to the 19, the Germans withdrew in a brilliant swift maneuver, leaving behind light rear guard machine-gunners to keep a furious rate of fire before retreating themselves & the salient was gone.

All these German counter-maneuvers didn’t matter to the butchers, on April 16, at 6 am, the whistle blew at Chemin des Dames & the French headed towards their own 3rd Ypres (page 171).
The French Army Mutinied Apr. 29, 1917.
A word sums it up, "Cafard." (Ref. #7).

On July 22, Georges Clemenceau delivered his speech entitled, "Anti-patriotism" exposing the Bonnet Rouge treason from the Senate. Poincaré appointed Clemenceau Premier on Nov. 14, 1917 & in March 1918 he delivered an unrivaled ministerial declaration to Churchill’s blood & tears speech 21 years later;

Georges Clemenceau "Le Tigre," had stated from day one:
"La guerre, c'est une chose trop grave pour la confier á des militaires (War is too serious to entrust to military men)." He accordingly disregarded the general’s victorious accomplishments accepting the casualties published in Berlin. E.g. German medical services published, "121,622 killed in the Western front for all of 1917 & one year later, published 591,000 from the beginning of the war to July, 31, 1918 for the same Western front" (Ref. #2, page 284).

This in effect signified the Allies had lost the war & that their only recourse was to wait for their new American Allies.

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Russia PART 5


Essay:

On page 341 of my Reference #2, two numbers cited from the German Medical casualties are significant to understand the Russian contribution in the Eastern front;

The 1st is 1,202,000 total casualties for all fronts up to July 31, 1918.

The 2nd is 591,000 German casualties in the western front for the same period.

Ergo, the Germans lost 611,000 in the two eastern fronts.

It’s a demerit to the Russians not to dwell further on their contributions but my essay is not on WWI per se, but to explain why, in my view, our AEF won WWI in relation to the European myth, notably British, denying it.

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Our American AEF Part 6.
(Ref. #2 is used unless otherwise specified);

A brief summary of events leading to the Battle of the Argonne Forest:
This is my 2nd contention I have with European & American historians, & this in relation to General Foch, France’s greatest WWI military mind, specifically:
European historians totally disregard the consequence of the Battle of the Argonne Forest ordered by General Foch to triumphantly attribute the WWI victory to the Brits & French armies’ defense lines having (supposedly) "Held Up" the Hun for four long years causing him to bleed to death (While forgetting the fighting was in France not in Germany, meaning the allies had to attack & the Germans defend).

This same stance was intoned by part of the French military after the war & led to the calamity of the disgraced, Gen Joffre’s proposal of the "Maginot Line" strategy Click here: https://www.google.com/search?q=-Clemenceau+joffre+proposed+%22De+Gaulle%22+OR+Reynaud+Petain+%22maginot+line%22+-Bush+-Irag&hl=en&biw=1366&bih=643&num=10&lr=&ft=i&cr=&safe=off winning over Gen. Foch, a staunch enemy of a static defense strategy.

On the other hand, American historians have spun Machiavellian schemes of Gen. Foch wanting to destroy our AEF because of the "Two simultaneous" offenses he ordered Gen. Pershing to undertake.
The French had tried many separate attacks at St. Mihiel & the Argonne, at a horrendous cost of casualties from 1915 through 1917 (See page 330)

The reality was that after the battle of the Marne, the entire German WWI strategy relied exclusively on an impregnable five-mile wide, "In-dept" defense & to which they kept adding in-dept tiers (Reference #8, page206).

General Foch ordered the AEF to undertake two consecutive attacks at this line in rapid one, two blows;
The 1st at St. Mihiel, crashed right through the line all the way to the, then German border, at the Moselle river (see results on the map of page 283 Ref #8).

This 1st attack, drew German reserves to the Moselle area when the more vital AEF "2nd attack" took place at the Argonne Forrest. This 2nd attack also succeeded in outflanking the German "In-dept" defenses. Once the German lines were outflanked, the Germans had no other alternative but to initiate a total withdrawal & simultaneously try to sue for an armistice, only "Nine Days" after the start of the Battle of the Argonne Forest.

It is incomprehensible that the French Government would subsequently listen to the disgraced, Gen Joffre’s proposals of the "Maginot Line," strategy due to a defense line’s vulnerability to outflanking maneuvers as the Germans were the 1st to find out in WWI on September 1918.

Essay:

The first of the planned 2 million AEF arrived in France in June1917 & they had the benefit of the French throwing in the best they had to train those troops in WWI tactics they had learned from the Germans.

Specifically having learned of the futility of the bayonet assault, the French instructors were specialist in artillery, hand grenades & the "Sturmtruppen" squad tactics.

This contrasts sharply in the disparity of the State side training our troops received from the British Officers that were sent here & were specialist in bayonet assaults & "riflery" (page 309). This fallacy was demonstrated in the 2st phase of the battle of Belleau Wood by our Marine Corps.
Another good fortune for our troops, was that in 1914, our Country was a debtor Nation & by 1917 we had then become a creditor nation as the Allies’ farms & mines were deserted & we exported massive amounts of food & raw materials. France owed us 5 billion & Gen. Pershing had the intelligence in buying massive amounts of the best from a French Country, only too willing to sell it to us for their survival.

The best of all was that due to the death of the BEF, Gen. Pershing didn’t have to contend with an egotistical Field Marshal & Earl, Sir Douglas Haig (as Gen. Eisenhower had the misfortune to suffer from a petulant Field Marshal & 1st Viscount of Alamein, Sir Bernard Law Montgomery).

Belleau Wood
Operation Blücher & Yorck, May 28, 1918
After killing the BEF, the Germans followed up two months later with a 2nd offensive at the French, Gen. Pétain informed Clemenceau, "1st they beat the British & they’ll beat us" (page 320 or Click here: http://www.answers.com/topic/henri-p-tain# Click here). This last German offensive was stopped cold by the AEF in Belleau Wood & would serve as testimony to the Germans later on in the Argonne, that the AEF would slug it out Click here http://search.yahoo.com/search?_adv_prop=web&x=op&ei=UTF-8&fr=slv1-adbe&va=marine+corps+wwi+1918&va_vt=any&vp=Battle+of+Belleau&vp_vt=any&vo_vt=any&ve=uss&ve_vt=any&vd=all&vst=0&vf=all&vm=i&fl=0&n=10# Click here.

In May 28, 1918 the German’s launched Operation Blücher & Yorck where the German 1st Army under General Bruno von Mudra broke through the French Army in the north & at the same time, 17 divisions of General Von Böhn's 7th Army, aided by the 9th Army under General Von Eben, attacked & overwhelmed the French 6th Army, commanded by General Degoutte to the west of Reims. My Reference https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&as_q=June+1918+Bl%C3%BCcher+Yorck&as_epq=Belleau+Wood&as_oq=operation+offensive&as_eq=&num=10&lr=&as_filetype=&ft=i&as_sitesearch=&as_qdr=all&as_rights=&as_occt=any&cr=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&safe=images:

The Battle of Belleau Wood on June 1918 can be defined in three distinct phases:

The 1st phase was of defense from June 1 to June 4.
The 2nd Marine Division troops were rushed into the fray & ordered to dig a defensive line north of the village of Lucy-le-Bocage. Marine Corps Captain Lloyd Williams was then ordered by a French 5th Army Staff officer to withdraw in view of the rapidly deteriorating conditions & replied "Retreat, Hell! We just got here!" (Capt. Williams would not survive the ensuing battle). Determined attacks across the open fields by the German vanguards were successfully turned back by machinegun crossfire effectively ending the German Blücher & Yorck offense the French would later call the 2nd battle of the Marne.

The 2nd phase from June 6 to June 23
This phase is arguably the most catastrophic event in the Marine Corps history up to WWII when they went into the offense capturing the strategic Hill 142, the village of Bouresces, the train station & ultimately the ill fated 1st attack on Belleau Woods. In all these battles the platoons that were sent across open fields were entirely wiped out to the last man & only those advancing through the flanks succeeded in taking their objectives. At Belleau Woods, the frontal bayonet night assault across open fields was slaughtered outright & the flank assault from the west did manage to fight their way into the woods but in the night confusion became disorientated & when they came out on the east erroneously thought they had taken the woods.

The 3rd phase from June 24 to June 26,
The French were asked to reduce the woods to ashes with their artillery & after a major 14-hour bombardment, the Marine Corps & US Army conducted a ground assault after which Marine Major Maurice Shearer sent the message, "Woods now entirely -- US Marine Corps."

In hindsight it can be stated that the Germans had gambled & lost because when they had realized they were fighting American troops, the German 28th Division commander General von Böhm convinced Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria of the psychological importance of dealing the immature American troops a resounding defeat. As it was, the tables were turned in the 2nd phase when Berlin newspapers then begun screaming that American troops were, "Devil Dogs" that did not obey the rules of war since our troops took no prisoners.
This fact seems to be corroborated by the many memoires written by the survivors of that 2nd phase stating that in the fog of war they could not remember anyone taking German prisoners.

A grateful France would honor our Marine Corps four days later on June 30, 1918 by General Degoutte of the French 5th Army sending a message to the 4th Marine Brigade stating Belleau Woods had been renamed to what is now known as:



The Miracle of the Argonne Forest in "Nine Days."


The 1st Blow: St. Mihiel.
This was an exhibition to the Germans of the military power from the new AEF & their decision to use it. The St. Mihiel salient had been the scene of successive French military disasters from day one that they had attempted in vain to remove this thorn in their defense of Verdun. To this effort, Gen. Pershing fielded 550,000 troops, 3,000 artillery pieces, 400 French Renault tanks & 1,500 airplanes of which half were flown by Americans & the other half by the French along with 100,000 French troops. The assault was of lightning speed proportions, it begun Sept. 12, 1918, & ended "Four days later" on Sept. 16 with the successful capture of the entire salient & surroundings right up to the then German border at the Moselle. The AEF captured 16,000 German soldiers & 260 guns at a cost of 7,000 American casualties. More importantly, it opened the road to an attack on Metz (then considered German) Click here http://www.militaryedu.com/Detailed/906.html/t_blank#Clickhere.

Standing on the beautiful American military monument at St. Mihiel, one can look down into a gentle undulating plain, northeast towards Metz some 30 miles away (see map for the results on page 283 Ref #8). It’s for these reasons that the MacArthurs’ & Pattons’ argued in hindsight, that this offense should have continued on to Metz using the French 520 mm Schneider monsters to level the Metz’s fortifications, thus depriving the WWI German avengers (e.g., the Hitlers’), of the excuse that:
"Germany didn’t lose the war but had been betrayed, since not one enemy soldier had stepped upon German sacred soil during the entire war."

The Argonne Forest;

The 2nd Blow: Going for the German jugular & the demise of Imperial Germany.

The Argonne forest is the French continuation of the Ardennes Forest where the Germans had outflanked the French defenses. Consequently, every time the Allies tried to duplicate this maneuver in the Argonne Forest to outflank the German defense lines, the Germans would then come out in fury to defend their jugular with calamitous results for the Allies.

For this reason, American historians have spun Machiavellian schemes on Gen. Foch wanting to destroy our AEF because of the "Two simultaneous" offensives he ordered Gen. Pershing to undertake. The French had futilely attempted for years at St. Mihiel & the Argonne, separately from 1915 through 1917 at a horrendous cost of casualties (page 330).

In my opinion; this is simplistic & catering to the "Numbers Game" by not taking into account the ghost divisions of the Allies.
If one sees Gen. Foch’s outlook in the summer of 1918, he now had the AEF’s fully manned divisions & fighting spirit at his disposal (this opinion on the AEF, was then held by the Germans after Belleau Wood). As explained previously, after the Allied military disaster of 1914, to assign 30,000 troops to a given combat mission, the Brits & French had to field out over fifteen ghost divisions, with the corresponding number of generals to coordinate military actions in the middle of a battle. Now after being up against the ropes, General Foch could field-out one single AEF division with one field commander & in addition, the AEF had previously proven it’s military combat mettle at Belleau Wood. In my opinion, the St. Mihiel & Meuse-Argonne offensive in quick successive one-two blows, proved Gen. Foch was right.

The Meuse-Argonne offensive begun on Sept. 26th, the AEF’s 1st Army jumped crashing through German defenses while the French held their flanks. The Germans then started rushing in reserve divisions in desperate attempts to turn the tide. But contrary to the previous battles, all the Germans were accomplishing was to slow down the AEF’s offense instead of turning it back. To the German High Commander, Gen. Erich Ludendorff, the situation had turned from bad to catastrophic, he had not been able to plug the 1st hole from the St. Mihiel offense & now he had a far more cataclysmic 2nd hole that he couldn’t plug.

It was under this dire conditions that the German troops started an orderly withdrawal to avoid an entrapment with the AEF’s outflanking maneuver now behind their once impregnable defensive wall & the German Imperial Navy was ordered to make preparations to set sail to stop American reinforcements in the Atlantic. With these series of events, the remnants of the Brit’s BEF then found themselves advancing dozens of miles in one day following the wake of the German general withdrawal, as Gen. Haig was later to admit:
"Germany is not broken in the military sense, during the last weeks it’s armies have withdrawn fighting very bravely & in excellent order. (Ref. #3, page 152)."

This was also the point of view of the German WWI Hitler avengers, "Disregarding the Argonne events."


From then on, it was all downhill for the Germans & her allies. "Seven days," after the start of the Argonne offensive, on the night of 3 to 4 Oct. 1918, both Germany & the Ottoman empires send secret notes to President Wilson requesting for armistice negotiations. One problem with the peace initiative from the Ottoman Empire was that we were not at war with them (Ref. #1, page 364).

Then, "Only nine days later, after the start of the Argonne offensive," on Oct. 5, 1918, as the unstoppable AEF slugged it’s way through the Argonne Forest, Gen. Erich Ludendorff, officially reported to the Kaiser that it was now all lost & to sue for peace. The new chancellor, Prince Maximilian of Baden then informed the Reichstag that an immediate armistice was necessary (page 334).

Gen. Erich Ludendorff then suffered a stroke (page 334) & resigned on Oct. 29, 1918 (Ref. #3, page 159).

But then the haggling over the terms of the armistice were prolonged over all of October, because the Brits & French, while paying lip service to President Wilson’s Fourteen Points Peace, had their own mile long list from the "Belfour" copies sent to Washington of their secret treaties. We in turn, objected to the Belfour papers, as a breeding place for a future war but neither the Brits nor the French would renounce to the claims they had staked out (Ref. #1, page 257).

On Oct. 20, 1918, Prince Maximilian of Baden accepted President Wilson’s conditions. But things kept changing in the inter-allied feuding & in desperation, on Oct. 29, 1918, the Germans ordered their fleet to set sail for the Atlantic & reminiscent of the Russian Navy, St. Petersburg incidents the previous year;
The German Imperial Navy, mutinied
(Ref. #5, page 208).

The Mutiny in the Imperial German fleet, was the incident the conspiracy of the German Communist 5th columnist were waiting for to incite the industrial workers into a Communist led so called "Socialist Revolution." This armed "Workers" rebellion spread to every industrial city overnight Click here http://www.alibris.com/search/books/isbn/1870958039 .

Consequently, Austria & the Ottoman Empire accepted the armistice on Nov. 3, 1918. On Nov. 9, 1918, Germany was declared a Republic & the following day, on Nov. 10, 1918 the Kaiser abdicated & went into exile in Holland.

Then on the 11th Month, of the 11th Day at the 11th Hour in 1918, & after Germany had signed the armistice the guns of the killing fields of the western front went silent after a nightmarish final three months & eleven days for the Germans.

The German Medical Services had given 1,202,000 German dead for "All Fronts" up to July 31, 1918, then with only the western front left, this number took a quantum jump to 1,621,000 German dead to Dec. 31, 1918, representing a staggering leap of 419,000 dead.

For our Country, no other single battle in our entire history has taken such a staggering toll, the Meuse-Argonne offensive cost us; 120,000 casualties, in 47 days of uninterrupted combat (page 341).

------------------------------*------------------------------*----

European Myth; America didn’t win WWI Part 6
(Ref. #1 through #6 used as indicated);

The Spoils of War belong to the Victor
WWI brought the British Empire to it’s zenith occupying one fifth of the earth’s land surface (Ref #1, page 383).

In Dec. 1, 1918 a grateful Clemenceau met Lloyd George in London prior to the peace conference in Paris.

Clemenceau asked Lloyd George what part of the French claims in the Middle East Britain desired & Lloyd George replied, "Monsul." Clemenceau said, "You shall have it." Anything else? Lloyd George replied, "Palestine." Clemenceau again said, "You shall have it." (Ref #1, page 375). A couple of months later, the unabashed Imperialist Lloyd George decided he wanted more & started playing America against the French saying Britain didn’t want Syria & they were acting on behalf of the future King Feisal that didn’t want the French (Ref #1, page 378) & so it went.

But later when our Congress refused Wilson’s agreements for us to accept Armenia as a protectorate along with the rest of the paraphernalia, Lloyd George declared America had betrayed him & had to go back to playing the French card. (Ref #1, page 389).

With these Empire credentials in hand, Lloyd George then called for immediate elections to be held on Dec. 14, 1918. Then the man responsible for the killing of the BEF in the German 1918 offense by mercifully cutting the supply of recruits from London for the butcher’s canon fodder, campaigned for those elections as (Ref. #1, page 383):

"THE MAN WHO WON THE WAR."

For these reasons, the conviction of American feat of arms having done nothing in WWI has impregnated European thought, school text & literature. Accordingly European historians come out with a series of, "Leap of Faith Affirmations":

From the outright petulant affirmation:
With the German tide stemmed (by the dead BEF, in 1918), Pershing pressed for a major role & after much wrangling & many insults, the French "& Brits" agreed to, "Allow Americans to have a sure victory." A sure target was found – the salient of St. Mihiel ...... Since the enemy was actually in the process of evacuating the salient, it is not too far off the mark to state that the Americans "Relieved the Germans." (Ref. #3, page 149).

To the contradictory, "Did we or didn’t we?":
"The Americans didn’t win the war" though their impressive & rapidly increasing strength, "Convinced the Germans that they could no longer hold out." (Ref. #3, page 170).

To the outright ridiculous, "Wasn’t it a long walk from Salonika?":
Bulgaria asked for an armistice on Sept. 26, 1918 & the French Gen. Louis-Félix-François Franchet d’Esperey, who after having bungled-up his command in the tragic Chemin des Dames battle was sent to languish in the hitherto-neglected Salonika in Greece, negotiated an immediate armistice he arranged himself before Bulgaria changed her mind. On Sept. 30, 1918 Bulgaria agreed to abandon the Greek & Serbian territories Bulgaria had occupied. The Eastern strategy that Lloyd George had been advocating in vain since the war begun, was right & the Bulgarian armistice, made (ergo; "Scared") Ludendorff into asking for a German armistice." (Ref. #1, page 363).
------------------------------*------------------------------*---
References:

Reference #1. A Piece to End All Peace, David Fromkin author, Avon Books publishers.

Reference #2. Myth of the Great War, John Mosier author, Harper Collins publishers.

Reference #3. British Butchers & Bunglers of WWI, John Laffin author, Sutton publishing.

Reference #4. Dare Call it Treason, Richard M. Watt author, Dorset Press publishers.

Reference #5. Stalemate, J. H. Johnson author, Cassell publishers.

Reference #6. Out of the Night, Jan Valtin author, Click here.

Reference #7. Over There, Thomas Fleming author, Harper Collins publishers.

Reference #8. World War I, H.P, Willmott, Convent Garden Books.

Best Regards

Lobato1
 

EatTheRich

President
Of course Americans turned the tide in the hitherto British-led war, not so much by dint of strategy or courage as numbers. And by meanwhile coming through the war with relatively little loss of life or treasure, the U.S. emerged from the war as the most powerful country on earth (replacing Britain).

In a sense, though, the U.S. lost the war just as much as Germany did. The most important effect of the war was the Russian revolution, the worst defeat imperialism--including U.S. imperialism--ever suffered.
 
My Uncle Kinney was in that war. He was old when I was young and he's been gone for many years now, but he was probably the smartest man I ever knew.

View attachment 4358

Oh for Gods sake, both my Grandfathers were in that needless blood bath. What is there to be proud of in being cannon fodder for the Ruling Class ? Killing off the best of us ............... always the best of and in us.

This glorifying of War only takes us to more War ...
 

Lobato1

Mayor
Oh for Gods sake, both my Grandfathers were in that needless blood bath. What is there to be proud of in being cannon fodder for the Ruling Class ? Killing off the best of us ............... always the best of and in us.

This glorifying of War only takes us to more War ...
War should never be glorified since it is the epitome of horror as anyone that has served can tell you & for that very same reason we should never forget the history that led up to that war least we do those very same mistakes again.

Best Regards
Lobato1
 
War should never be glorified since it is the epitome of horror as anyone that has served can tell you & for that very same reason we should never forget the history that led up to that war least we do those very same mistakes again.

Best Regards
Lobato1
Mad men/women, Fools and Idiots lead us to War, Politicians ....................
 

Lobato1

Mayor
A very well written piece, Lab - perhaps just a touch of patriotism?

This article might interest you: http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/firstworldwar/index-1918.html
Hi Wulk, how is the winter up there at your latitude in Scotland? Or have you decided to head south?


New Subject:
BTW:
The reference you have provided are exactly what my essay’s contentions were about, specifically & to the point & in your reference words not mine & I quote verbatim:

April 9-29, 1918
- The second offensive in Germany's victory gamble, the Georgette Offensive, begins as 46 divisions from the German 6th Army attack the British 2nd Army around Ypres. The Germans push the British back three miles to the outskirts of Ypres, even taking back the hard-won Passchendaele Ridge. However, the arrival of British, French and Australian reinforcements from the south breaks the German momentum and the offensive halts. Georgette, similar to Michael, is only a partial success. General Ludendorff's goal of first separating the British and French armies via Michael and then destroying the British via Michael and Georgette is not achieved. Additionally, the Germans suffer 330,000 casualties in the two offensives and lack sufficient reserve troops.

BTW:
I cited in my essay that the Brits had falsely claimed >>300,000.

But then a couple of paragraphs later, your reference turns around & contradicting their previous contentions of the Germans having suffered massive catastrophic loses & cite the Germans far more massive May 27-June 3, 1918 - The Blücher-Yorck Offensive.


Putting it another way, the Brits’ 330,000 numbers in 1918, would represent that the Germans would have lost:
“66 European Divisions, fully manned at 100% strength..
Ergo:
Close to “5 Armies, fully manned at 100% strength..


It escapes no ones attention that had the Germans with their demonstrated military expertise in those 4 years had they even lost, one twentieth of those incredible 330,000 numbers, equivalent to about “4 European Divisions, fully manned at 100% strength., the Germans would have gone into the Defensive mode to preserve their military strength behind their impregnable defenses.


Best Regards
Lobato1
 
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Wulk

Mayor
I'm still in the frozen north, Lab. Although it isn't so frozen at the moment. Every side lies during a war. What effects did the US introduced "Spanish Flu" have on the outcome of WW I. Would there have been a settlement if the US hadn't joined in? Would there have been a WW II if the US hadn't joined in?

According to the Australians, they were the first to begin breaking up the German lines once they were unified under an Australian commander.

The first unified Australian attack was supposed to be a joint attack with the US. The US command pulled the US forces out, at almost the last minute. The US GI Joes were highly pissed off at this, allegedly, borrowed Aussi uniforms and joined in anyway.

Still, Lab, that is a well written, well researched post, and a pleasure to read, thanks.
 

Lobato1

Mayor
I'm still in the frozen north, Lab. Although it isn't so frozen at the moment. Every side lies during a war. What effects did the US introduced "Spanish Flu" have on the outcome of WW I. Would there have been a settlement if the US hadn't joined in? Would there have been a WW II if the US hadn't joined in?

According to the Australians, they were the first to begin breaking up the German lines once they were unified under an Australian commander.

The first unified Australian attack was supposed to be a joint attack with the US. The US command pulled the US forces out, at almost the last minute. The US GI Joes were highly pissed off at this, allegedly, borrowed Aussi uniforms and joined in anyway.

Still, Lab, that is a well written, well researched post, and a pleasure to read, thanks.

I guess your opinion is as good as mine as to what or where the Spanish flu originated depending on the source we use.
Here is one wild hypothesis from my family’s lore:
My Grandfather was a physician & having lost their 2nd & last child to the Spanish flu, my Grandmother forever blamed Europeans for having allowed a bug to escape from a lab since Europeans were actively engaged in chemical & biological warfare in WWI (In the 13 hundreds, the Mongols catapulted bodies infected with the Black Death into Crimean cities) & it’s for this reason I’ve always been interested in this subject.

What seems certain is that the Spanish flu did not originate in Spain where it acquired the name when the Spanish press 1st started reporting this tragedy & immediately afterwards, our press went into the panic mode when it reached our East coast & subsequently the German press also reported being infected by the Spanish Flu.

But guess what? Britain & France seemed to be immune to the Spanish flu when everyone else around them was dying by the thousands& it was not until the Spanish flu had reached worldwide endemic proportions that the Brits & French grudgingly admitted having some Spanish flu deaths.
As for your contentions that the Australians were the 1st to assault the German defenses:
That was exactly the Bottom Line of my essay in that once the Germans started an orderly withdrawal, anybody & everybody still standing that occupied those abandoned defenses, Australians, Brits, Canadians, French, you name it, they & only they were responsible for defeating the Germans & to this efforts, butchers like Field Marshal & Earl Sir Douglas Haig & Marshal Joseph Joffre were lionized.

By the time the Versailles Peace Conference took place the following year in 1919, the conviction was that our Country had nothing to do with defeating Germany because it was the Brits & French that had held up the Germans for those four years causing the Huns to bleed to death (Forgetting that the Germans were in France not in Germany & it was the Allies that had to attack & the Germans defend).

Consequently we were literally thrown out with no voice as to the punitive actions taken against Germany (& that led to the death of the German’s Weimar Republic & the birth of Nazi Germany) & as a result, our Country’s disillusion with Europe & withdrawal from the international scene & the rebirth of the Monroe doctrine of America for America & Europe for Europe.

Best Regards
Lobato1
 
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