The report was a mixture of misunderstandings and Realpolitik. France and Russia were in no state to ‘close in’ on Germany and Austria, whatever England might or might not consent to; and Russia was not England’s ancient enemy – that accolade goes to France. House was quite right when he said that a naval armaments agreement was needed, something that England had tried very hard to get but which the Kaiser and the German government would not accept. No doubt House’s worries that Germany and England might get too close was a realisation that a combination of the world’s greatest sea power and the world’s greatest land power would be unstoppable.7
In late 1916 the German High Command calculated that unrestricted submarine warfare would bring Britain to her knees in five months – far too short a time for America to intervene even if she could not be kept neutral. On 31 January 1917 Germany announced unrestricted submarine warfare to begin the following day. On 3 February the United States broke off relations with Germany in protest. American ships refused to sail, and ports became clogged with ships and cargoes that could not be moved. In mid-February Wilson introduced a bill in Congress to permit the arming of United States merchant ships; he still hoped to keep America out of the war and intended the Armed Shipping Bill as a last warning to Germany. The pacifist faction in Congress began to organise a filibuster against the bill.
And then occurred something so momentous that it is difficult to believe that any rational government – and the German government was rational – could have sanctioned it. Zimmerman, the German Foreign Secretary, sent a coded cable to the German ambassador in Washington, to be passed on to the German minister in Mexico. As the Royal Navy had long ago cut all German undersea cables, the Germans could initially communicate overseas only by wireless or through (pro-German) Swedish channels. Since 1915 Wilson had permitted the German government to use the US State Department cable for communications to and from the German embassy in Washington. This had been authorised by Wilson because the Germans had assured him that these channels would be used solely for matters pertaining to Wilson’s search for peace terms. The British had long ago cracked both the German naval and diplomatic codes, and had been monitoring American cables, but rather than protest against this flagrant breach of American neutrality they were happy to decipher enemy messages sent by this means. It is ironic that it was from the State Department cable that they intercepted and decoded the ‘Zimmerman telegram’. Translated into English it read:
Foreign Office telegram 16 January 1917: strictly secret yourself to decipher. We intend from the first February unrestricted U-boat war to begin. It will nevertheless be attempted to keep the United States neutral. In the event that this should not succeed, we offer Mexico an alliance on the following terms. Together we make war and together we make peace. Generous financial support and understanding on our part that Mexico reconquer the lost territories of Texas and Arizona. Settlement of the details to be left to Your Excellency. You will inform the President of Mexico of the foregoing in strictest secrecy. As soon as war with the US is certain it is suggested that Japan is added and that the President of Mexico should be invited to immediately negotiate between ourselves and Japan. Please point out to the President of Mexico that ruthless employment of our U-boats now points to the prospect of England being forced to make peace in a few months. Acknowledge receipt. Zimmerman.
The British naturally wished to pass on this information to the Americans, but had to do so in a way that did not expose British possession of German code books, or British ability to tap American government cable, wireless and telephone communications. Eventually they managed to lift the message again, while it was being transmitted from Washington to Mexico, thus giving the impression that they had obtained a decoded copy either in Mexico or in Washington. For the moment the message lay in the safe of the British Chief of Naval Intelligence in London.
On 5 February, after America had broken off relations with Germany, Zimmerman sent a further telegram instructing the German minister in Mexico to make the offer now, including Japanese participation, without waiting for America to enter the war. This too was intercepted and decoded by the British. On the same day Wilson finally withdrew the US army from Mexico.
It now appeared to the British that America might not enter the war after all, and there were fears in London that Wilson might even put economic pressure on Britain to make peace on disadvantageous terms. On 23 February the British gave the text of the Zimmerman telegram to the American ambassador in London, Walter Page, who sent it on to Washington on 24 February. Wilson was described as being ‘indignant’, and sat on the document until the following Monday, when he was due to address Congress on the Armed Merchant Ships Bill. Even as the President was speaking, news came in of the sinking of the Cunard Liner Laconia, with the loss of two American lives. Two days later Wilson, in order to defeat the filibuster against the bill, decided to publish the telegram. The story broke on 1 March 1917.
The initial reaction was mixed. For the pro-Allied party and the eastern press it was a godsend; to the Hearst press, the German Midwest and the pacifist faction it was a British fake. The filibuster succeeded and the Armed Ships Bill did not pass. Three-quarters of the American people were still indifferent to the war, and very few believed that the Zimmerman telegram could possibly be genuine.
Then Zimmerman did something that is still inexplicable – unless in terms of German arrogance. He publicly admitted, at a press conference in Berlin, that the telegram was authentic. This admission was the catalyst that changed American thinking about the war. On 9MarchWilson, using his executive authority, ordered the arming of American merchant ships. Goods began to move again. On 18 March three American ships were sunk without warning by U-boats. On 19 March the abdication of the Tsar of Russia removed one of Wilson’s objection to the Allies – they were now all democratic.
On 20 March Wilson met with his cabinet and the decision was taken to enter the war. On 2 April the President announced the decision to Congress, and on 6 April 1917 America declared war on Germany (she did not declare war on Austria-Hungary until December). By this time British losses due to U-boat attacks had soared to 875,000 tons and Admiral Beatty calculated that Britain would run out of foodstuffs and essential supplies by July. In May the convoy system was instituted and the results were spectacular. British, and increasingly American, escort vessels were able to ensure the safe passage of more than enough supplies, and to sink more U-boats, which were now deprived of easy victims. Although shipping losses were over eight million tons by the end of the year, Allied shipbuilding more than replaced them.
In the spring of 1917 America was in no state to go to war. The American army, along with that of Argentina, ranked seventeenth in the world and was but 70,000 strong. It had 400 obsolete artillery pieces, 1,500 machine guns of four different and non-interchangeable calibres, and while there were 285,000 Springfield rifles in store, there was only enough ammunition for one regimental (three-battalion) attack. Although America had invented powered flight it was regarded as little more than a circus attraction, and the Aviation Section of the Army Signal Corps had only fifty-five obsolete aircraft and thirty-five pilots to fly them. The United States now had to raise an army. The enormous expansion required was achieved by conscription, although many Americans volunteered before they were called up. Despite American law’s forbidding enlistment in foreign armies, Americans had crossed the border into Canada and joined the Canadian army; some had even joined the British army. There were American volunteer ambulance units on the Western Front and there was even a combat group of American flyers fighting with the French – the Escadrille Lafayette – but this was but a handful compared to what would be needed.8 Having learned from their own experiences in the Civil War and the British experience of the present conflict, the American army eschewed territorial recruitment, and while the spearhead of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) would be the few regular divisions and the United States Marine Corps, they would be foll
owed by the National Guard (the equivalent of the British Territorial Force but recruited state-wide) and conscript divisions deliberately formed from men from all over the Union (known as National Army divisions).
Promotion in the tiny pre-war American army was painfully slow, and as promotion was in the hands of Congress, which wished to save money, there were only seven major generals in the whole army in 1917. The junior major general was John J. Pershing, selected to command the expeditionary force partly because of his record, but also owing to political contacts – his father-in-law was Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. When telephoned and asked if he could speak French, Pershing saw what was in the wind and claimed to be fluent. America is a genuinely egalitarian society, and it loves a poor boy made good. Pershing was often referred to as the ‘Missouri Ploughboy’, and while he may have done some ploughing on his father’s land, he was in fact well educated and his family, which originated from Alsace, had good political connections. Born in 1860 he was for a while a teacher, then decided to read for the bar until he received a nomination to West Point where he graduated in 1886. He was commissioned into the cavalry and took part in the Indian Wars, during which he was Chief of Scouts in the suppression of the North Dakota Sioux. He was still a second lieutenant at the age of thirty-two; he served as Captain of Cadets at Nebraska University, where he also took a law degree, and as a captain served in Cuba and the Philippines.9 His nickname of ‘Black Jack’ may date from his command of a troop of Negro cavalry in Cuba (the US army was segregated until the early 1950s). Pershing so impressed Theodore Roosevelt, who fought as a volunteer in Cuba and was later President of the United States, that he was promoted from captain to brigadier general over the heads of 882 others, which must have enhanced his popularity. He spent most of 1915 and 1916 on operations on the Mexican border, during which his wife (a senator’s daughter) and three daughters were burned to death in a fire at their married quarters (a son survived).
Pershing and his staff arrived in France in June 1917 to a tumultuous welcome from the French, who immediately whisked him off to visit the tomb of Lafayette.10 Pershing never said, ‘Lafayette, nous sommes voici’ – the words were uttered by Colonel C. E. Stanton, an officer on Pershing’s staff – but Pershing was widely credited with them, and they were a shrewd comment that went down very well with the French. The French were very anxious to take the Americans under their wing. After all, they frequently proclaimed, it was France that had given America liberty, freedom and democracy. That neither Bourbon, Revolutionary nor Napoleonic France had been liberal, free or democratic was conveniently ignored.
The Allies, and Pershing, were well aware that it would take time for the American army to build up and be trained for warfare on the Western Front. The French suggested that building up a separate army was really not necessary – manpower was what was needed, and American soldiers could be incorporated into the French army. The British, who had the advantage of a common language, were equally in favour of having American units in the BEF; but when it swiftly became apparent that this was unacceptable, they came up with a better suggestion. To begin with, offered the British generals, there could be American battalions in British brigades. Once experience had been gained, American brigades could be put into British divisions (with American divisional commanders to avoid offence to American pride), and then American divisions into British corps, and American corps into British armies, until a separate American army could be formed. This made sound military sense and would have worked, but that it was proposed at all was to fail to understand the American psyche. The British had a long history of sending their tiny land forces to serve as members of a coalition, often under allied commanders. America was very reluctant ever to have her soldiers serve under a foreign flag, and she still is.11 Pershing saw the state of the French army in 1917, riven with discontent and mutiny, and to place his men under command of the British would be seen by the American public as a reversion to the colonial status that they had broken away from. Most Americans would have heard stories about the War of 1812, a forgotten campaign to the British, to whom the fight against Napoleon was what mattered, but important to the United States as their first foreign war; the President’s official residence was a constant reminder of the episode, not having been the White House until after the British set fire to it.
It was not Pershing alone, however, who refused to integrate American troops into Allied formations. Wilson had been quite clear as to America’s role in Europe. She was not an ‘Ally’ of France and Britain, but an ‘Associated Power’ – hair-splitting to some, but in fact a genuine indication that Wilson did not see French and British war aims as necessarily coinciding with his own. His instructions to Pershing were categorical: there was to be no American involvement in the fighting until there was an American force ready to take the field, with its own sector of front and operating as an army in its own right, and not under the command or direction of anybody else. This, of course, infuriated the French and the British, but from the American viewpoint it was reasonable and right. American soldiers were not in Europe to act as anybody’s poodles, or to win the war for the French and the British. They were there to strike a blow in their own right, and to end the war in accordance with Wilson’s principles of a just and lasting peace. Pershing did not necessarily agree with his commander-in-chief – indeed he said later that the inclusion of half a million Americans in the Third Battle of Ypres could have ended the war in 191712 – but he could not flagrantly disobey him, although he did bend the rules on a number of occasions by allowing American troops to help out.
America had no great difficulty in finding men for the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) but, like the British in 1914, they had a small regular army, and finding officers and NCOs was not easy. Nor was finding senior officers to command regiments, brigades and divisions. The final arbiter of promotions and appointments for the AEF was the Secretary of War, Newton D. Baker, who generally accepted Pershing’s advice; but in the early days all sorts of highly unsuitable people who had seniority or political connections on their side were sent out. In a letter to the Secretary of War dated 4 October 1917, Pershing said: ‘...we have some general officers who have neither the experience, the energy, nor the aggressive spirit to prepare their units or to handle them under battle conditions...’13 Pershing had to be hard, and he made few friends in the AEF by insisting that only the best was good enough. He irritated the doctors when he inspected a medical unit and found them under the impression that they were still civilian practitioners translated abroad. They were left in no doubt by Pershing that, doctors or no, they would wear uniform, stand to attention and salute – and be inspected again the next day. Brigade and divisional commanders were refused commands for being too old, too fat, or deficient in combat experience.
The Germans did not believe that American forces could ever reach Europe in sufficient strength and in time to make a difference, but a combination of the Royal Navy (which transported fifty-one per cent of US troops bound for France), American shipping and confiscated German ships stranded in American harbours delivered them in increasing numbers. The first American division (1 Division, the Big Red One), an amalgam of regular army units, arrived on 28 June 1917 and thereafter the build-up of the AEF is shown below:14
By way of comparison, the strength of the BEF on 31 October 1918 was 1,859,246 (plus a further 84,000 in Italy).
It was, however, one thing to get the men across to Europe – a considerable organisational feat – and quite another to equip them and prepare them for all-out war. Although the factories of America were turning out all manner of weapons and equipment for the Allies, there was little capacity left over for their own army. It might be asked why American industry did not simply stop supplying the British and the French, and turn their capacity over to their own army instead. The answer is that, apart from the contractual implications, a shipload of ammunition delivered to the British would be fired at the Germans now, whe
reas if it were turned over to the Americans it would only be used when they were ready to fire it – which would not be for some time yet. Eventually the AEF used French artillery pieces, British rifles rebored to take American ammunition, British helmets, mainly French aircraft, British trench mortars and grenades, French Chauchat light machine guns (the American-designed Lewis, a better gun and in service with the BEF, had been rejected by the pre-war American military when offered to them) and French Hotchkiss medium machine guns. There was a shortage of boots, and many of the troops arriving in the early days could only be issued with shoes. There were insufficient horses, largely because available shipping concentrated on men and equipment, and because the United States had hoped to buy horses from Spain. The Spanish, in reprisal for American refusal to export cotton to them (which would then have found its way to Germany), refused to sell the many; British artillery gun teams had to be reduced from six horses to four so that the Americans could have at least some horses until enough could be obtained from other suppliers. The American army had a system of campaign medals, but no bravery awards except for the Congressional Medal of Honour (dating from 1862) and merit certificates. The Distinguished Service Cross and Distinguished Service Medal were therefore authorised by Congress, and the law was changed to permit American soldiers to accept French and British decorations. Promotions were a problem, as the Secretary of War and the Chief of Army Staff in America naturally wished to follow the normal promotion system, which was largely by seniority. Thus, when Pershing wanted to promote a deserving brigade commander to command a division, he was often thwarted by the despatch of an officer from the United States. Congress was, in any case, reluctant to sanction many substantive promotions: when the army eventually contracted to its peacetime establishment there would be no jobs for most of those promoted, but they would still have to be paid the salary or pension of their rank. This meant that officers commanding American formations were often several ranks below their French or British counterparts, even when granted acting rank for the duration.
Mud, Blood and Poppycock: Britain and the Great War (Cassel Military) Page 43
