The Tragic Final Hours on the American Fighting Front in WWI were Needlessly Brutal

Khalid Elhassan - December 14, 2018

By late September of 1918, it had become clear to German military commanders that they had lost World War I. Germany had suffered nearly two million soldiers killed – the final figure would top 2,037,000 – and millions more wounded. The country was financially ruined, with defeat staring at its soldiers on the battlefront, and starvation stalking its civilian population at home. Accordingly, the Germans approached American president Woodrow Wilson in early October to negotiate terms, which eventually led to the Armistice of November 11th, 1918.

However, you know how there is always that one guy at the office who does not get that memo about important developments? American front line soldiers seem to have not gotten the memo in the closing hours of WWI that the conflict was about to end. As a result, thousands of Americans ended up killed and wounded during the last few hours of the war, launching needless assaults against German trenches and heavily fortified positions. Trenches and positions that the Germans, who by then had already thrown in the towel, would have abandoned within a few hours.

By War’s End, the Americans Were the Only Forces Still Eager For Combat

Germany’s decision to call it a day was a good thing for all involved, because by then Britain and France, who had been engaged with the Kaiser’s troops in a four year uninterrupted death grapple on the Western Front, were themselves nearing the end of their tether. British and Dominion troops had suffered about a million deaths and millions more injured, while Britain herself was on the verge of financial ruin, having mortgaged itself to the hilt to pay for the war. France was even worse off, having suffered more casualties from a smaller population base, and a dispirited French Army had engaged in widespread mutinies a year earlier, after one too many harebrained assaults produced nothing but staggering casualties.

Indeed, had it not been for the arrival of fresh American troops, it could well have been the Entente Powers chucking it in and throwing the towel in 1918. Luckily for the Entente, and unfortunately for the Germans, America’s entry into the conflict decisively tilted the balance of power in favor of the former and against the latter. In line with just how exhausting and close run a thing the war had been, those engaged in it since the beginning in 1914 were ready to wait for the clock to run once it became clear that the Germans were about to give up. Except for the Americans, that is.

America had declared war against Germany on April 6th, 1917, but it took over a year before American forces arrived in France in significant numbers. Between the need to create a mass army from scratch – the US Army had numbered only 100,000 men as late as 1916 – then organize, train, equip, and ship it overseas, it was not until the spring of 1918 that American forces began landing in France in large numbers. The American buildup steadily gathered pace, and by the summer of 1918, US forces were landing in France at a rate of 10,000 soldiers a day, at a time when the Germans were unable to replace their losses.

The British and French welcomed the new arrivals, who got there just in time to help beat back the Germans’ Spring Offensive of March to July, 1918 – a last gasp effort by the Kaiser’s men to win the war before America made her weight felt and made the war unwinnable for Germany. The newly arrived troops, brimming with typical American optimism, were fresh and full of fight, eager to come to grips with the Germans and show them what’s what.

Inexperienced American commanders were even more eager than their men, whom they repeatedly launched against the Germans in full frontal attacks, utilizing flawed tactics that had been abandoned by the French and British years earlier. The results were often high American casualties, not commensurate with the gains achieved. However, the American soldiers’ elan often made up for what their commanders lacked in tactical savvy. It was against that backdrop of American eagerness to take the fight to the enemy, coupled with a barely concealed element of “we just got here” line of thinking, that the final Armistice was negotiated.

NEXT >>

American Attacks Were Ordered On the Last Day of the War

Weeks of pre-negotiations followed the German feelers to President Wilson in October of 1918, seeking terms, with the main hurdle being Germany’s need to comply with the American president’s precondition that Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicate. As Wilson put it: “If the Government of the United States must deal with the military masters and the monarchical autocrats of Germany now, or if it is likely to have to deal with them later in regard to the international obligations of the German Empire, it must demand not peace negotiations but surrender“.

With the German situation continuing to deteriorate, on both the military and home fronts, the Kaiser was forced to abdicate on November 9th, fleeing into exile in Holland just steps ahead of a domestic uprising. A day earlier, a German delegation had crossed into Entente lines to work out an armistice. After three days of negotiations, its terms were hammered out and signed around 5AM on the morning of November 11th, to take effect six hours later, at 11AM. Pending the signing of a formal peace treaty, the Germans were to evacuate all occupied territories, withdraw their forces across the Rhine, and effectively demilitarize. It brought an end to the fighting, but did not amount to a full surrender of the German army.

American commanders, especially general John J. Pershing, who headed the American Expeditionary Force, were less than thrilled by the Armistice and its conditions. Pershing in particular thought that the terms were too lenient on the Germans, whom he believed should be severely defeated militarily in order to “teach them a lesson“. He also believed that “There can be no conclusion to this war until Germany is brought to her knees“. Considering that Germany was back on the warpath a bare two decades later, Pershing might have had something there.

For purposes of the 1918 Armistice, however, it meant that Pershing supported aggressive American commanders who wanted to keep fighting until the last minute. That was the case even after he knew that negotiations for an armistice had commenced. It remained the case even after he became aware that the Armistice had been signed on the morning of November 11th, and that it was due to take effect within a few hours. Chief among Pershing’s aggressive commanders who wanted to go after the Germans right up to the end was major general Charles Pelot Summerall, commander of his V Corps, then on the Meuse-Argonne front.

<< Previous

NEXT >>

Intense Fighting on the American Front Continued Until the Last Minute

On the night of November 10-11, 1918, the American V Corps, commanded by major general Charles Summerall, secured crossings of the Meuse River, and continued to aggressively attack German positions along its front on the morning of the 11th. V Corps’ attacks continued even after senior American commanders learned that a final Armistice had been signed at 5AM that day, and that it was due to take effect a few hours later, and thus bring an end to the fighting, at 11AM.

Pershing informed his subordinate commanders, but said nothing about what they should do until 11AM. The more prudent amongst them decided against sending men to their deaths in order to seize ground they could occupy in safety in a few hours, while the ambitious careerists saw a fast-fading chance for glory and advancement. Unfortunately, there was no shortage of ambitious careerists among the ranks of American officers, and that translated into tragic results for their men.

While news of the impending armistice had reached senior American commanders early on the morning of the 11th, that information had not made its way down to the ranks of the soldiers assaulting the German trenches and strong points along the front. News of the armistice, however, had swiftly reached the Entente Powers’ home fronts, making its way to their capitals and main cities by 5:40AM. Thus, American civilians celebrated the end of the conflict in New York City and elsewhere, even as American Doughboys, unaware that the war was all but over, were still dying on the front lines, attacking enemy positions and suffering casualties by the hundreds.

The aggressiveness of Summerall and other American commanders would have been admirable at any other time, but its wisdom was questionable, to say the least, just hours before the end of hostilities. The only result was to produce thousands of needless casualties, both American and German, but mostly American since they were the ones attacking heavily fortified enemy positions. The US 89th Division, for example, was ordered to attack the German held town of Stenay on the morning of November 11th, and successfully took it – the last town forcibly captured on the Western Front. However, that achievement came at the cost of more than 300 American casualties. The American V Corps alone suffered over eleven hundred casualties in the war’s final hours, including over three hundred killed.

Those casualties neither advanced the Entente cause, nor otherwise had any appreciable impact on a war whose end had already been negotiated hours earlier. They only served to gratuitously add to the war’s already long ledger of death, suffering, and grief. All in all, because Pershing ordered or allowed his commanders to continue fighting even after the Armistice had been signed, over 3500 American casualties were suffered on the last day of the war. In November of 2018, in the run-up to the centenary of WWI’s end, Britain’s Imperial War Museum released a recording, documenting the final moments on the American front. Until the last minute, or literally the last second, the guns kept up a ferocious fire, then abruptly ceased at 11AM, their horrific din replaced by an eerie silence, broken only by the chirping of birds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTA10n1Ztqo

_________________

Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

History – The Last Official Death of WWI Was a Man Who Sought Redemption

History Net – World War I: Wasted Lives on Armistice Day

Lad Bible – Eerie Recording Documents the Moment the First World War Ended

Marshall III, Jackson R., Tar Heel Junior Historian, Spring, 1993 – WWI: Last Days of the War

Smithsonian Magazine, November 9th, 2018 – Listen to the Moment the Guns Fell Silent, Ending World War I

Wikipedia – Armistice of 11 November, 1918

<< Previous