Original subtitles

in November 1918 the German Army was

beaten and Germany in the grip of

Revolution less than a year earlier

though Germany and its allies controlled

most of Eastern Europe had defeated

Russia and outnumbered the British and

French in the west so why did Germany

lose the first world

war the German Empire entered the first

world war in August 1914 with the most

powerful army in the world but by

November 1918 it had been forced to sign

an Armistice on Allied terms and a

revolution had replaced the Empire with

a republic the explanation for Germany's

defeat in the last year of the war is

not as simple as a numbers game yes the

Allies had more men and more money and

the longer the War lasted the more

likely it was that the Allies could win

all things being equal but nothing in

history is inevitable and all things

were not equal Germany lost its chance

to win a quick victory in 1914 when the

French won the Battle of the mar but the

Central Powers may have had a chance to

avoid total defeat as historian hulga

alabach put

it it was impossible for Germany to win

the war after 1914 but it required very

grave mistakes to lose

it both the allies and Germans made good

and bad decisions that shaped the war's

outcome but only Germany's decisions lay

within its control and it was by far the

strongest member of the Central Powers

so that's why we'll focus on them to

explain Germany's defeat in

1918 Germany's famous War plan in 1914

the schen plan might have been its best

chance to win the war against a more

powerful enemy Alliance but as 19th

century Prussian General helmet F mul

the Elder admitted in war nothing is

certain no plan of operations extends

with certainty beyond the first

encounter with the enemy's main

strength the German High command learned

that lesson the hard way in August and

September 1914 German planners and

commanders pushed their men past their

limits expected too much from the army

they actually had neglected Logistics

and made critical operational mistakes

coupled with a desperate and effective

reaction by the French at the marn the

result ensured the war would not be over

quickly to make matters worse for the

Germans they drew Britain into the war

by violating Belgian neutrality the wild

gamble had gone wrong France was still

fighting and now Britain was too leaving

the Central Powers to face the unhappy

Prospect of a long War still the Central

Powers weren't necessarily doomed to

Total defeat even if outright victory

was unlikely some historians argue they

might have forced some sort of compromis

Peace even against stronger enemies if

it weren't for more risks and mistakes

they made from 1914 to

1917 the high command failed to

effectively reassess its strategy after

the defeats of 1914 and develop a

coherent plan to win or at least at

least four susceptable peace terms the

Army wasted precious Manpower in the

failed verun offensive and the flawed

defensive tactics on the S in 1916

planners were unable to maintain food

production to compensate for the effects

of the Allied blockade Germany failed to

properly manage its Alliance Austria

Hungary and Germany didn't always

coordinate their military operations and

kakal even tried to start peace talks

without the Germans knowing Germany's

system of governance was also

ineffective the Kaiser had an important

role in the system but was weak the

military eventually took over but didn't

know how to run the economy or politics

and interfered with those who did and

another huge gamble that blew up in

their faces was the renewal of

unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917

which failed to knock Britain out of the

war and brought the United States in now

that's not to say that Germany didn't

have some successes they with austr

Hungarian help inflicted devastating

defeats on Russia and Serbia in 1915

Romania in 1916 and Italy in 1917 they

managed with far fewer resources to

produce enormous quantities of weapons

to develop new ways of producing

fertilizer and convince the Ottomans and

bulgarians to join the Central Powers

the allies of course also made mistakes

inefficient use of their greater

resources disastrous offensives in luren

and East Prussia in 1914 galipoli and

champag in 1915 on the S in 1916 and in

Flanders and on the Shand Dam and in the

keni offensive in 1917 the difference

was that as the weaker belligerent in a

long War Germany had no margin for error

and every mistake it made brought it

closer to defeat the same was not true

of the Allies their prospects for

victory once the US joined in 1917 were

intact while the German High command

admitted in late 1916 it could not

defeat the Allies on land in the west so

Germany failed to win a quick victory in

1914 then saw its chance for avoiding

defeat further reduced by mistakes in

the following years but then the bolik

revolution in late 1917 gave Germany one

last chance for avoiding defeat and so

Germany gambled once again in December

1917 the Central Powers in Bolshevik

Russia agreed to an Armistice and

eventually signed the Treaty of bre Lov

in early 1918 with Russia out of the war

Germany now in control of vast

territories in Eastern Europe and

American troops not yet in France and

large numbers Berlin had one last chance

to influence the outcome of the war as

German divisions moved from east to west

in early 198 the high command prepared

one more great Gamble and many in the

Allied Camp feared defeat British

cabinet secretary morus hanky reported

the worries of General John

[Music]

dukkan Duan envisages the possibility of

the French army being smashed and cut

off from us the enemy demanding as a

condition of Peace the handing over of

all the ports from Ruan and a to dunker

and in the event of a refusal the

remorseless hammering of our army by the

whole German Army he considers that if

we wanted to go on with the war we

should have to face the prospect of a

million prisoners in

France some Germans had questioned what

the coming offensives could achieve like

Social Democrat politician Philip

shida suppose we were to take Cal and

Paris suppose such a breakthrough were

completely successful would that mean

peace we've overrun entire States we've

chased hostile governments from the land

and yet we still have no

peace most Germans though held out hope

that victory was still Within Reach on

March 21st 1918 the German Army launched

the so-called kaisa battle or operation

Michael against the British Fifth Army

more than 70 divisions supported by

6,500 guns

sliced into 34 British divisions in an

attempt to split the two Allied armies

German forces pushed back the British

took 75,000 prisoners and achieved

unheard of advances in the west since

1914 ludendorf explained that he would

set objectives as the attacks

progressed in Russia we always merely

set an intermediate objective and then

discovered where to go

next but by April 5th the German Drive

had run out of steam and the British

with French help managed to stabilize

the situation the German High command

then Unleashed a series of follow-up

offensives against both British and

French sectors operations Jette in April

BL York in May Gau in June and freden in

July in the end these last ditch attacks

all made serious dense and Allied lines

but they did not result in the capture

of any significant strategic objectives

and they didn't force the British and

French to ask for peace terms the

Western Front was not Russia and the

Allies managed to pull their reserves to

stabilize the front with General

ferdinan fos taking overall command the

French then launched a major counter

offensive in July which began to turn

the tide for good the British followed

with their own attack on August 8th a

day ludendorf called the black day of

the German Army from then on the Allies

Advanced without stopping during the

so-called 100 offensive and while the

German Army still fought back it was a

beaten Force the Allies also achieved

crushing victories over the automans

bulgarians and austr hungarians in the

closing phase of the war meaning that

even if Germany could somehow hold out

for longer in the west it was completely

unable to defend itself in the South and

Southeast in October ludendorf told

Berlin to ask for an Armistice since the

war was lost and the fighting came to an

end November 11th 1918

so what happened in that critical period

that resulted not in the German Victory

General Dukan and others feared but in a

clear military defeat the German

offensives from March to July broke

their own Army without gaining a

decisive victory in March and April

alone they lost 280,000 casualties by

the end of July the figure was

977 th000 and the killed and wounded

were disproportionately from Germany's

best units including the famous

Stormtroopers German Soldier Frederick

misel described the heavy

losses French shells began to hit to the

right and the left of us leaving human

forms writhing in agony our Advance came

to a stop and soon the French Drum Fire

engulfed us the air was filled with gas

and flying pieces of Steel I reached for

my gas mask pulled it out of its

container then noticed to my horror that

a splinter had gone through it leaving a

large hole

I felt like an animal cornered by

hunters I leapt at a man whose wound I

had just bound and in the next moment

had ripped his gas mask from his face

the last thing I saw before putting on

the mask were his pleading

eyes Germany needed 200,000 Replacements

every month but each month only saw

7,000 recovered wounded and an average

of 25,000 new recruits these losses

caused overall German strength to fall

from 5.1 million men in March to Just 4

million men 6 months later meanwhile the

Allies were growing stronger even

without Russia the British released

reserves they'd held in Britain and by

the end of the year nearly 2 million

Americans were in France even if the

Americans played a lesser role in combat

their presence was important German

rifle strength had outnumbered the

Allies by 1.57 million to 1.35 million

in April but by November remember there

were just 866 th000 German Riflemen

facing 1.49 million Allied German

commanders also kept shifting priorities

once each Drive ran out of momentum if

the Germans had taken rail hubs like

Aman or asuk they could have seriously

threatened Allied Logistics major vham

Fon was critical of the army High

command or

OHL OHL has changed Direction it has

made its decisions according to the size

of territorial gain rather than

operational

goals the Germans had effective

Stormtrooper infantry tactics and

innovated artillery tactics thanks to

artillery officer gor biller but they

couldn't turn them into a campaign

winning strategy the Allies on the other

hand adapted and collaborated when the

German offensive threatened Allied

positions the British government

released reserves from the home front

the Americans who had insisted until now

on keeping their army together agreed to

lend out some of their divisions to the

French and British the French

transferred forces to the British to

stop Michael in March as well British

commander Douglas heg who'd until now

opposed being under French command

agreed to serve under French general

ferdinan f who took over as supreme

commander of Allied Forces and the

Allies were better at the most modern

form of warfare combined arms War using

the latest industrial weapons on a mass

scale Germany had invented all sorts of

new weapons technology from poison gas

to flamethrowers but the Allies beat the

Germans at their own game they had 800

tanks in the field while the Germans had

about 20 had 4,500 aircraft to the

Germans 3700 18,000 guns to Germany's

14,000 and 100,000 Motor Vehicles to

move supplies of which the Germans only

had about 30,000 France alone produced

about 50% more planes than Germany in

1918 they caught up to the Germans in

turn terms of the quality of heavy

artillery and surpassed Germany in

artillery pulled by tractors and

available shells per battery historian

David Stevenson summed up the

shift the Allies won the technological

race and overtook their enemies not only

in numbers but also in fighting Power in

the process they pioneered the

characteristic forms of later 20th

century

Warfare although the German Army was

beaten it was still fighting in Fall

1918 and Allied planners fully expected

to fight on to complete victory in 1919

instead Germany suffered a devastating

collapse in morale that ended the War

sooner even before the spring offensives

began many German troops had lost hope

and this only got stronger as 1918 went

on up to 180,000 German troops deserted

on route to France or well on leave in

198 when they advanced in the field some

infamously stopped to plunder Allied

supplies but they also began attacking

their own Supply trains for food British

Military Intelligence also noticed the

change based on prisoner

interrogations the belief is prevalent

among officers and men that Germany

cannot now win the

war after the offensives failed

surrenders became common including

groups or even whole units this wave of

surrenders accelerated until the

November 11th Armistice as the Army

continued to slowly disintegrate in just

the last 3 months of the war nearly

400,000 German troops surrendered by

some counts almost as many French troops

had surrendered in the entire War many

within the rank and file became

convinced that fighting no longer served

Germany's interests just those of the

high command the monarchy and War

profiteers the so-called

schwindler the main thing is that the

schwindel and the killing stop doesn't

matter to us if we end up German or

French

others were more likely to surrender

because they felt disoriented as units

suffered such heavy losses that they

lost cohesion and group loyalty overall

the Army suffered a nominal loss rate of

140% in just over 8 months so if a unit

had 1,000 men in January 1918 by October

including all the new recruits and

Replacements who joined in that time a

total of 1,400 men were wounded and

commanders often threw the remnants of

depleted units together instead of BU

building them back up with Replacements

unit cohesion suffered even more because

the military regime shuttled hundreds of

thousands of men between the field Army

and Industry as short-term priorities

changed at the same time soldiers

Sailors and civilians inside Germany had

had enough as well workers suffering

from malnutrition and War weariness went

on strike and Navy sailors mutinied

rather than Sail Out for a final Suicide

Mission Against the more powerful Royal

Navy public anger turned against the

Kaiser and the military who led them

into the war and a full-fledged

revolution in early November forced vhem

to abdicate and flee to the Netherlands

meanwhile the Allies renewed their

propaganda efforts on the home front

better manage relations with labor

unions and took advantage of the morale

Boost from American troop ships arriving

in France to make sure that even fragile

States like Italy held on of course

millions of Germans military and

civilian wanted to keep fighting but

Millions did not and that tipped the

balance as the crisis deepened Germany's

top generals at first insisted victory

was just around the corner in the late

summer they panicked and admitted defeat

a cycle they repeated more than once in

the second half of the year in mid

August ludor and Hindenburg informed the

Kaiser and Chancellor gor F herling that

Germany could not win the war ludendorf

then changed his mind on this question

but after the collapse of Bulgaria in

late September he announced on October

3rd that Berlin had to seek an Armistice

since the war was irretrievably lost he

also told Hindenburg that he had no

confidence in the troops since in his

view they'd been infected by socialism

the German High command had led the Army

into disastrous offensives and now

undermined what was left of morale by

admitting defeat so suddenly historian

David Stevenson summed up the

impact the German Army for all its

virtuosity was let down by a failure of

generalship

so 1918 saw the German Army defeated in

the field and a general German collapse

in morale but it also saw the failure of

German wartime politics from 1916 the

German military established an informal

dictatorship and they turned out to be

pretty bad at governing different

interest groups among the German

civilian and Military Elites struggled

to give the war a coherent meaning and

none of them really succeeded the Army

High command generally saw no political

solution to the war and so insisted on

and mistakenly believed in their own

military superiority until it was too

late to avoid defeat the Kaiser and high

command stuck to maximalist war aims at

the cost of a potentially more effective

strategy they still insisted on annexing

Belgium Luxembourg and parts of France

until summer 1918 ludendorf and

Hindenburg even forced foreign minister

rard Von kulman to resign when he said

that the war could not be decided by

military means alone these rigid

objectives were at odds with Germany's

allies like Austria Hungary who wanted

peace as soon as possible starting in

1916 the Allies coordinated far better

aligning their positions on alzas luren

the breakup of Austria Hungary and the

League of Nations even though of course

some of this consensus would break down

after the war and although Germany won

in the east in 1918 the high command

kept hundreds of thousands of German

troops tied up occupying the territory

St they' forced Russia to give them

leaving fewer resources for the campaign

in the West in the turmoil of the former

Russian imperial territories the German

authorities weren't even able to extract

the food that they needed from the lands

that they'd conquered even after the

so-called bread pieace with the new

Ukrainian State these policies were at

odds with the desire of most regular

Germans for peace like this soldier in

Fall

1918 why didn't we dispatch a peace note

when our offense had their greatest

success no now when we're taking it on

the chin they want to make peace again

just like in December of

1916 on the home front the military

leadership consistently turned to

coercion as a tool of governance against

Strikers and other unhappy citizens when

Chancellor Fon hatling told ludendorf

about the Brewing unrest in September

the quartermaster General simply replied

that more repression was required

Austria Hungary did the same

constantly seeking to root out disloyal

Slavs executing thousands of its own

Ukrainian citizens on suspicion of

having Russian sympathies and moving

seven divisions to the interior to keep

order against raming deserters Germany

also failed to react to crisis and

support its allies in 1918 Austria

Hungary was suffering from extreme

hunger in the Austrian half of the

Empire but what little food the Central

Powers did get from Ukraine went mostly

to Germany ludendorf famously had a

breakdown when the Bulgarian front

collapsed since by gambling everything

on the west and leaving large occupation

forces in the East Germany had nothing

left to support the austrians in Italy

or the bulgarians in the Balkans the

Allies on the other hand had leaders who

were flawed but more legitimate and more

representative of the men in the front

lines and the people in the Factories at

home President Wilson's message that the

war was a crusade of democracy was more

effective as a result they also used

their command of the sea and good

relations with neutrals like the us

until 1917 and Argentina to help feed

and fund the war effort and for example

support Italy and France in their worst

moments of Economic and Military

crisis the German Empire waged a war of

risks from 1914 to 1918 a war that ended

in bitter defeat Berlin took these risks

because it was the weaker side but none

of them could Stave off total defeat the

final gamble in spring 1918 also

ultimately failed the high command had

no strategic goals the Army was beaten

in the field by a superior enemy the

generals admitted defeat and the other

Central Powers collapsed the home front

collapse did indeed help end the war but

given the Army was beaten in Retreat and

disintegrating due to poor morale there

was no stab in the back as ludendorf and

the Nazis later claimed that myth

however would help convince many Germans

they'd never lost

with deadly consequences for the next

World

War in 1945 however the Allies didn't

stop before the German borders to avoid

the mistakes of 1918 in early 1945 the

Allies set their eyes on the Rind in

Western Germany and the Red Army was

gearing up for their Berlin operation

the battle of the reinland would be the

last setpiece battle in the west and the

Battle of Berlin the last one in the

East millions of Allied soldiers stood

at the ready to bring the Third Reich to

its knees and the last German reserves

would have to defend it if you're

curious about these two often overlooked

battles of World War II we produced two

documentary series that together run for

more than 8 hours in reinland 45 we

cover the battle for the lower R from

the r filed at the Dutch German border

until the Allied crossing of the Rind

that involved the biggest single day

power Trooper Landing of the entire war

in 16 days in Berlin we document the

entire two-e Battle of Berlin day by day

both documentary series were filmed on

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