The Old Order Shatters

The Old Order Shatters ​

REPORTS OF MASSIVE TROOP MUTINIES ON WESTERN FRONT

-New York Times Headline, November 4th, 1919

STRIKES, CHAOS, ANARCHY BREAK OUT ACROSS ALL OF EUROPE

-New York Times Headline, November 7, 1919

BOLSHEVIK RISINGS OVERRUNNING FRANCE, GERMANY, VIENNA

-Chicago Tribune Headline, November 8th, 1919

BOLSHEVISM STRIKES AT HOME: TRANSPORT WORKERS, MINERS, STEELWORKERS STRIKE IN MIDWEST

-Chicago Tribune Article Title, November 8th, 1919

From Bangalore to Berlin,
From Paris to Chang Mai
From Tianjin to Detroit
…The worker strikes for freedom
Are YOU doing your part?

-Propaganda poster, London, East End, found November 15th, 1919

And so we learn the true meaning of the mass strike; not the protest of a single sector of workers, or one national section of the working class, but the universal struggle of the international proletariat, united in solidarity.

-Rosa Luxemburg

The tide of Global Bolshevism fast approaches our shores, and Japan shows little signs of coming to an accord with our friends in China. It will take a steel resolve to confront these crises. Are you certain, President Wilson, that your poor health can bear such a thing?

-Words reportedly addressed to Woodrow Wilson by Republican Speaker of the House Frederick Gillett

In light of the present situation in Europe, a new act has been introduced into Parliament to furnish this government with all the necessary means of restoring peace, tranquillity, and order. We request for all citizens to limit their time outdoors, and obey the 9:00 curfew.

-British Radio Broadcast, November 11th, 1919

Socialist Revolution? I’m afraid you have me confused for somebody else. Right now, we’re striking for bread and peace. We’ve got to make sure Mr. Wilson doesn’t send our boys to Europe to fight England’s war.

-John Lewis, head of the CIU

The workers of Russia greet their proletarian comrades with open arms! Day after day, new victories are achieved in our global worker’s offensive. Hand in hand, we shall walk together to a shared future.

-Vladimir Lenin, Addressing the Congress of Soviets on November 14th, 1919

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Twilight War ​

The atmosphere inside the Grand Quartier General could best be described as hysterical. For over two weeks, the Germans had been engaged in a seemingly endless reshuffling of their reserves. Hundreds of thousands of fresh troops arrived in the west, with thousands more streaming into position every day. The constant movement and redeployment of soldiers made it impossible to determine the direction of the offensive, which the British had warned would be one of the largest in the entire war. Surely, the high command reasoned, if this desperate last gamble of Ludendorff’s could be stymied, the war could be finally brought to an end on favorable terms. The French soldier just had to hold out against one last blow, and the long nightmare would be over…

The question was where it would fall. Each day, excitable adjutants devised a new theory, and French soldiers were shifted about. The British believed that the offensive was meant to arrive in mid-September, and yet now, on October 1st, the front was still quiet. Ludendorff had, in fact, allowed this guessing game to continue for some time, confident that he could keep the Entente High Command in a state of puzzlement.

Then, it all seemed to arrive at once. On October 2nd, 11:30, artillery barrages were unleashed on every section of the front. Clashes in southern Lorraine nearly led the French to conclude that their British partners were incorrect, and that the Germans had resolved to fight this new offensive in the south, in some ghastly recapitulation of Verdun, perhaps. By 14:20, there was still no conclusive intelligence about the main axis of the attack, creating paranoia among the weary general staff. Finally, it (seemed) to arrive: a massive assault on the Somme, from Montdidier. So Ludendorff had decided to repeat his performance from last year! Relieved, the command at once directed their reserves to the area. By 17:25, they were still holding out. Perhaps the British had been wrong about the resources that Germany could muster. Nivelle sent a telegram to Clemenceau, informing him that conditions would soon be favorable for a new peace offer…

Then, as twilight fell over the thundering battlefields, all chaos broke loose north of the Somme. Soldiers who had taken off their gas masks after being exposed to ceaseless rounds of dummy fire were now bombarded with a new, deadly strain of chlorine gas. Endless waves of armor swept over the French lines. The Entente landships could easily match their counterparts in direct battle, but the Germans had assembled an overwhelming superiority of numbers, and many of the landship and artillery commanders were not used to the speed at which these new beasts moved. Four French trench lines were breached in the space of an hour and a half, and the soldiers scattered. Disorganization among the officers and failure of communication with the troops meant that the high command only learned of this by 20:15. The darkness made it nearly impossible to track the forward thrusts of German troop movements.

The next day, the French High Command quickly recognized the nature of Ludendorff’s deception. They attempted to contact local troops in the area, who were themselves in a state of disorientation. Finally, on 10:42, they were informed of the drive on Amiens. This city, which had been defended time and again over the war, could not fall. The reserves that were directed toward Montdidier were redirected to the battered town. Then, on October 5th, the German column simply moved ahead, continuing westwards. For the 2nd time, the Entente command had acted according to Ludendorff’s plan.

After conforming to expectations twice, the generals now decided to exercise more caution. While Ludendorff’s soldiers might seem to be driving toward the sea, they concluded that he did not have enough force to encircle the soldiers in Flanders. After a heated debate, the French Command decided to only withdraw some of the soldiers north of the German thrust, and to concentrate on a defense of the Somme line. This was a prescient decision, but it did not come quickly enough: on the 7th, German advance forces crossed the Somme river west of Amiens. The British believed that a quick, concerted counterattack would loosen Ludendorff’s lines, but both sides were hesitant to launch a counteroffensive due to miserable troop morale. Instead, given the axis of advance, it was decided to simply shift troop concentrations toward the northeast. This was not a poor operational decision, but it ignored reports of a growing troop concentration in Montdidier.

On the 10th, Hans Von Seeckt’s 5th Army launched a renewed assault along the southern somme. After 4 hours of brutal fighting, all three layers of French defenses were breached. The landships struck in the junction between Amiens and Beauvais, leaving their flanks undefended. It was now clear that Ludendorff aimed to encircle Amiens. At this point, the Dammerunoffensive entered a new phase as the initial element of operational surprise wore off. Over the following five days, the pincers of the attack closed at a harrowing cost to the German soldiers, who lost over 125,000 casualties and scores of landships. 200,000 Entente soldiers were captured. Nivelle signed a desperate order for a general retreat from Flanders, toward Paris, for a defense of the city. Ludendorff felt victory within grasp.

The exhausted soldiers of the Duetsches Heer readied for one final thrust. They still had the strategic initiative. Down from Amiens they went. On the 18th, Beauvais fell. On the 19th, Rouen and Liancourt did as well. They crossed the Oise, and proceeded toward Paris. But the city was not undefended. French soldiers elsewhere had retreated to defend their beloved capital. On October 22nd, Charles De Gaulle met the advancing German thrust just north of Chambly. He had assembled a massive concentration of French and British landships to face the Germans head-on. Commanded to take Paris, Seeckt threw the fragile, Eagle AV8 machines into the maw of the French Char’s. De Gaulle’s heavily armored landships decimated the German advance force. With their spearhead blunted, desperate battles broke out all along the new sector of the front, with the German supply situation starting to quickly deteriorate. Outraged by the setback and the continued stasis outside Paris, Ludendorff ordered attacks along all sectors of the front to proceed within the coming days. These began in earnest on the 27th, and slowly, it appeared that the Entente lines were starting to buckle. The fighting continued to rage into the early hours of November…

The First Days of Revolution ​

Not far from the city of Strasbourg, around 50 miles to its west, lays a field marked with over three thousand graves. At its center is an Italianate garden, demarcated by a series of stone archways. A little into this garden, one will find a marble fountain, which sits before the flags of the present nations of Socialist Europe. Upon the fountain’s clear, almost translucent surface are the names of over 2,000 German and French soldiers. These are the men who set off the so-called “Soldier’s Revolt”.

The Alsace-Lorraine front was never one of the main sites of fighting. Those who manned the trenches here were the dregs of the army: hardened veterans who were psychologically traumatized or physically injured, newcomers who barely passed basic training, and elderly landwehr or territorial units whose performance in battle was not trusted. These soldiers played little part in the great battles of October 1919, though many engaged in heroics years ago at Verdun and Lille. As a consequence of Ludendorff’s recent order for a front-wide offensive, they were commanded to take up arms once again. The radical soldier’s councils, particularly prevalent among these infantrymen, determined that this was unacceptable. Through their intermediaries, they contacted their French brethren, requesting to parley.

They met on the morning of November 1st, and agreed that there would be no fighting along their portion of the front. At the end of the meeting, they were discovered by a group of officers; the mutinous soldiers detained these men, and the French troops headed back to their side of the front. At 12:22, more officers arrived, along with a battalion of soldiers. When they were instructed to arrest the mutinying soldiers, the battalion mutinied in response.

Within three hours, news of the revolt had spread across the entirety of Alsace, and hundreds of German officers had been arrested or detained. The next day, the German offensive began dissipating as fighting broke out between loyal and insurrectionary elements. An order for a French counteroffensive was soon met with a similar mutiny. Attempts to use British soldiers to discipline their French comrades ended in disaster when they refused to fire on their fellow troops.

By the 4th, fighting between the two rival factions had ceased entirely as soldiers took up arms against their loyalist conationals and officers. French, German, and British soldiers now joined together to eliminate the “traitors” from their midst. In response, draconian orders were issued permitting the summary execution of soldiers who failed to obey their officers.

The censors could not stop news of the universal breakdown of order from reaching the homefront. At 9:45, November 5th, Catholic metalworkers in the Rhineland struck in protest. They were soon joined by their social-democratic brethren in Westphalia. The strike spread outward with irresistible force. By 16:40, over 60% of workers in Berlin had joined the strike. Massive, concerted labor actions began simultaneously in Paris, Lyon, Saxony, and occupied Amsterdam. Strikers demanded an end to the war and new, socialist governments.

On November 6th, 1919, the First Revolutionary Era began with a global general strike. What started in Germany and France now swept across the entire world with the crushing weight of historical inevitability. From Bangalore to Berlin, from Chicago to Shanghai, from Manchester to Manchuria, workers downed their tools and demanded an end to war and imperialism. From Brittany to Sofia, railway workers occupied train stations and locomotives, halting the vital transport networks that are the lifeblood of the capitalist economy. From Sicily to Stockholm, telegraph workers seized control of their offices and sent congratulatory messages to their comrades across the globe. From the coal fields of Rhone to the iron mines of Duluth, workers deserted their posts, paralyzing the ability of governments to procure essential raw materials and bringing industrial production to a halt. Munitions factories erupted in flames as skilled laborers vowed to end the war. Global trade screeched to a halt, the lights of the big cities burned out, and an unprecedented panic spread across the leadership of the capitalist world. Lenin, speaking before the Congress of Soviets, triumphantly declared that the World Revolution had arrived, and that the new government of the Soviet Union would act to assist all workers who struggled for liberation. Luxemburg, Mehring, Zetkin, Wels, Lebedour, and Haase were sent on - what else? - a sealed train to Germany. History, it turns out, has a kind of poetry to it, too.

Blow after blow was struck in the first days of the global proletarian offensive. On November 7th, Clemenceau’s government fled Paris for Toulouse, and the capital was seized by working-class radicals and revolutionaries. Jean Jaures was released from prison, and escorted to the Palais Bourbon ; now a de facto prisoner of the insurrectionary workers, he was instructed to declare the formation of a new, socialist government. To a massive crowd of 15,000 mostly female workers, he proclaimed the foundation of a French socialist republic, invoking the Republican “right to revolution” to justify the putsch.

Italy fell into civil war as armed workers expelled the Carabinieri from the great industrial cities of the north, while in the center of the country, anarchists fought for control of the railway lines with loyal army units. Efforts by the government to mobilize the more conservative south for assistance were stymied by another eruption of rural unrest. The Italian Army was paralyzed by mutinies and revolt, and most divisions were unable to come to the assistance of the beleagured government. At long last, the anarchist unions and socialist parties came to an agreement, and in Milan on November 13th, an “Italian Workers and Peasants Republic” was announced by Antonio Gramsci, Amadeo Bordiga, Costantino Lazzari, Errico Malatesta, Armando Borghi, and Giuseppe de Vittorio.

All across the industrial heartlands of Germany, reaction was in sharp retreat. It took only three days for the red militias to clear out the last organized resistance in Berlin and Saxony. In the Rhineland and Ruhr, police were engaged in a slow but inevitable retreat. To the west, the Dutch SDP and SDAP had won power in a bloodless coup, seizing the great commercial arteries along the Rhine as the German occupation force wearily retreated. Mutinying sailors soon brought the German and Dutch fleets over to the revolutionaries.

On November 11th, Luxemburg, Haase, Wels, Lebedour, Zetkin, and Mehring arrived in Berlin, where they were acclaimed by cheering workers. Speaking jointly with representatives of the worker councils, they addressed a crowd of over 100,000 Germans at Alexanderplatz Square, where they declared the dissolution of the German Empire and the formation of the German Socialist Republic. Worker councils, trade unions, and municipalities across Germany sent messages pledging allegiance to the new government. Ludendorff, meanwhile, had fled to the conservative bastion of Thuringia, where in the city of Weimar he declared a national salvation government, the so-called “Weimar Dictatorship”. Loyalist soldiers began to flock to the city. In Munich, a “Bavarian Soviet Republic” was formed with support of both workers and the catholic petite-bourgeousie, which announced its intention to be incorporated as a “federal state” in the new, socialist German republic. To secure his rear, Ludendorff advanced south with his loyal freekorps, aiming to strangle the nascent worker’s state in the crib.

Across the Balkans, civil order broke down as the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed and the occupation forces of the Central Powers retreated. The Austrian assault on Hungary had exceeded the expectations of Franz Ferdinand, and had reached the gates of Budapest at the end of October. But they had been unable to cross the Danube and take the city. With the fall of Vienna to red forces on November 8th, the Army’s supply situation became untenable, and they began to fall back toward Austria and Croatia. Meanwhile, the Romanian government began to silently remobilize its army as they contemplated an invasion of Hungary; the Serbian government did the same, eyeing the lands of the Kingdom of Croatia. Further south, the Czechoslovak Legion left Greece, beginning the long trek across the deserted mountains of Albania and toward Czechia, where right-wing nationalists gangs battled the workers of Pilsen and Prague. In Bulgaria, the government had been forced to flee Sofia to the coastal town of Varna, and readied themselves for a long civil war.

In Sweden and Denmark, governments responded to the insurrectionary strikes and factory occupations by appointing social-democratic prime ministers, who proceeded to use their newfound power to reshape labor law and entrench themselves in power. To the east, strikes broke out in Southern Finland, and the Soviet Union, looking to play its own part in the global revolution, declared war on Finland after Mannerheim’s white militias brutally suppressed the workers. In Poland, Karl Radek arrived in Warsaw to coordinate an uprising of the city’s workers, while the nationalist militant Jozef Pilsudski overthrew the pro-german Polish authorities in a bloodless coup.

India was in open revolt. Propelled by the force of events, the INC’s Motilal Nehru declared independence on November 11th, and informed Britain that a state of war would be declared within a week if there was not “meaningful progress toward the evacuation of British soldiers from the Indian nation”. Churchill denounced the “Anarchy descending upon India”, and declared war on Nehru’s rival government the following day. Within a week, armed Indian workers, revolting peasants, and mutinying infantrymen expelled the British from Calcutta and Punjab, and the loyalist colonial soldiers began their long retreat to the southern princely states. In Manchuria and Beijing, Japan struggled to contain surging labor and peasant unrest, as did France in Indochina and Senegal. Meanwhile, the Indian soldiers on the western front, who had remained neutral throughout much of the internecine conflict, now threatened to go over to the side of the revolutionaries if they were not provided “safe transport to India”. This was a politically impossible request for Britain to fulfill, and on November 13th, the newly-christened 1st Indian Legion under the command of Gobind Singh offered its services to the Socialist Republic of Germany in exchange for a commitment to repatriation.

The Great Crash of 1919 ​

In America a full-blown financial crisis had broken out, which began to affect all the economies in its extensive orbit. The New York Stock Exchange had been showing signs of trepidation for some time: the entry of the Netherlands into the war was met with a 6% drop of the Dow Jones Average, though the market rallied in a few days. More concerning for the market was the embargo on Britain, which briefly sent the entire NYSE tumbling a full 9%; it recovered, slowly but surely, as Bryan negotiated a detente with Britain, and continued to rise as munitions sales to China boomed. The beginning of the Ludendorff offensive halted the gains of the bullish market, as investors worried about the repayment of Entente loans in the event of a German victory.

Then, as revolutionary violence consumed Europe, the market experienced its largest crash in history. On November 5th, news of the scale of the mutinies began to reach New York, and the NYSE fell 8%. It was only able to recover around half of its losses the next day. On November 7th, “Black Friday” arrived as the full extent of the world’s first general strike became clear: the Dow Jones industrial average crashed by a full 15%, causing a run on the banks over the weekend.

The federal government simply did not have the liquidity necessary to infuse funds into the system, and dozens of regional banks looked to be on the verge of declaring bankruptcy. When the stock market opened, the dow jones index fell another 12% over the next two days, erasing most of the wartime gains and prompting the Wilson administration to issue an executive order closing the stock exchange. The banking crisis, meanwhile, continued apace. Congress quickly began drafting a bill to create a federal reserve system, but in the meantime, some method had to be found to prop up the banks. Most of the big financiers already felt that they were over-leveraged, and were hesitant about extending more credit unless they received assurances that Churchill would not pursue further inflationary monetary policies. Ironically, despite the apparent disintegration of the British Empire, Britain seemed to be in a healthier fiscal state than America; its decision to move off the gold standard now appeared prescient as the government’s central bank simply propped up the firms most at-risk from the cataclysm in New York.

When British currency started to deflate of its own accord in response to declining domestic purchasing power caused by the strike wave, investors in New York reluctantly agreed to infuse some liquidity into the financial system. This prevented the failure of the largest banks, though Wilson refused to open back up the markets, which set off another round of panic which emptied around half of the nation’s gold reserves.

The British Response ​

The British soldiery, which had remained the most loyal of any throughout the war, now stood at risk of dissolution. The soldiers could not be reliably commanded to fight their former comrades; about 1 in every 7 had defected to the revolutionaries in the first week of the mutiny. With the revolt of the colonial troops, their position became truly untenable. On November 14th, Churchill signed the infamous “evacuation order”, which committed the British Navy to bringing all troops on the western front back to Britain. They were to be inspected at the ports for disease, and given ideological screenings to ensure their loyalty. Concerned about the spread of soldier’s councils, Churchill also decided to green-light a proposal to systematically re-assign troops to new platoons and battalions.

What remained of the British Western Army - which had lost a little over a third of its manpower from the Ludendorff offensive and revolutionary mutinies - made it to the ports of Dunkirk and Dieppe, where they were ferried back home by the English Navy. The troops were badly needed, with Ireland and India in revolt, the dominions demanding their soldiers back, and Northern England teetering on the brink of open insurrection. Turkey, which had surrendered after a successful spring offensive that captured Ankara, decided to use the opportunity to violate the 10-year nonaggression pact and declared war on Britain and Greece.

Britain sincerely hoped for American assistance in its effort to stabilize the Empire. Yet that did not seem fast in coming. The price of such aid would likely be heavy - at the very least, an abandonment of the Japanese alliance. The larger problem was that America was paralyzed, with its economy in freefall, an ailing, unpopular president at its helm, and labor unrest sweeping through the nation’s industrial core. Domestically, Churchill also faced challenges: after a groundswell of support came for his government to take “emergency measures”, conservative parliamentarians began to sour on him following the Indian mutiny and withdrawal order. On the 17th, Churchill gave a speech before Parliament, attempting to placate skeptical tory backbenchers by laying out a strategy for the trying times ahead:

_”…There is a frightful spectre which casts a pall over this nation, the spectre of Bolshevism. Let me assure this body that I grasp the nature of this threat as much as any man, and that I will not permit our cherished, English liberties to fall victim to the tyrannizing of an abject mob. Yet we must, more than ever, retain a sense of balance and proportion; the order given days ago, to evacuate British soldiers from the European continent, arises not from a capitulation to Bolshevism but from an honest assessment of our situation, and a steadfast desire to redress it.

Allow me to be clear: The British Army has seen much and endured much, but we cannot ask it to engage in a campaign of European reconquest when its homeland is still under threat from the red menace. We must set our own house in order. This government will gladly enlist and employ all patriotic men of this island in this task. We shall quiet the treason in our rear, secure and safekeep our dominions and colonies, and guard those strategic waterways which vouchsafes this Empire its freedom on the seas. Not until these tasks are completed shall we contemplate sending our soldiers once more into the European morass, though we will do all in our power to assist the legitimate governments of Europe. Earlier today, in fact, I exchanged a telegram with certain members of the German High Command; I believe that given the scope of the present crisis, it may be necessary to put aside certain of our differences for the time being…”_

Unmentioned by Churchill was a series of secret fleet operations that were occurring at that very moment. With revolutions sweeping over Europe, Churchill and his naval commanders worried about the potential of a pan-european, “Bolshevik Armada” threatening English coasts. They devised a plan to launch a series of coordinated strikes on the potential constituents of this red armada while they were in port. Normally, this would have been considered a suicide operation, but most continental docks were in a state of turmoil and disarray, with their formidable coastal batteries deserted. The targets of Wilhelmshaven, Marseille, and Taranto were chosen. Before the operation began, Churchill contacted the governments of France and Italy, seeking assurances that the ships had not fallen to red forces, and requesting that they be interned in Britain until stability had returned to the continent. In truth, this was intended primarily to provide diplomatic cover; Churchill was already informed by British intelligence that significant portions of enemy fleets had fallen into the hands of red sailors, and intended to go through with the operation regardless of the answer he received. Needless to say, the governments of his allies were not eager to turn their ships over to Churchill, even had they exercised control over them.

Two separate battle groups were detached from the British High Fleet. One headed for Wilhelmshaven; the following battle, if it can be called that, was the most one-sided since the Japanese rout at the Tsushima Straits. Revolutionaries sailors had already seized the city, but most of them had taken leave of the ships and naval guns to participate in bacchanalian festivities around the town square, which included heavy drinking. Over forty-five ships of the high seas fleet were stationed in the ports, mostly unmanned. The first fifteen minutes of British broadsides received almost no response from the coastal batteries. Several of them were taken out by lucky hits within the first few rounds of fire. When the inebriated revolutionary sailors finally manned the guns, three dreadnoughts, seven cruisers, and twelve destroyers had already suffered heavy damage. A further ten ships received additional hits over the next fifteen minutes of back-and-forth fire. Finally, the British Fleet began retreating as they took additional hits, though none of their own ships were sunk in the melee.

The fate of the other task force was not so sanguine. Several cruisers and one battleship had to reverse course as the nature of the mission became clear; many British sailors, and even some junior officers, felt that it would be dishonorable to fire on the fleets of their former allies. The weakened force sailed first for Marseilles. Here, battles still continued for control of the city, and the French ships in port, only twenty or so, were devastated by the initial British fire. But the sailors managed to return to the coastal artillery fairly quickly, and two British cruisers were sunk and a battleship forced to list home at under 15 knots in the ensuing exchange of fire.

The rest of the group decided to continue to Taranto. The town was currently divided between revolutionaries and loyalists, with most of the sailors having declared allegiance to the anarcho-socialist Italian Worker and Peasant’s Republic. Low-scale violence plagued the area, with most of the naval officers having holed up with the town’s loyalist garrison. Just hours before the arrival of the British fleet, word came of the attack on Marseilles. This message had been passed along the so-called worker’s networks, and, 30 minutes in advance of the coming bombardment, representatives of the sailors met with the officers, who agreed to cooperate in the event of a British attack. This came shortly thereafter; by now, the coastal guns had been manned, and the British ships were allowed to approach and even fire a single broadside, after which they were greeted with a hail of withering artillery fire. The decision to fire additional broadsides proved ruinous; the Italian artillerymen targeted the lightly-armored battlecruisers, sinking four of them over the course of fifteen minutes. Only a single Italian ship was lightly damaged, and wisely, the British commander now chose to retreat before further damage could be inflicted to the battered fleet.

Unsurprisingly, the besieged Italian and French governments excoriated the British “betrayal”. In a fit of rage, Clemenceau expelled around half the remaining British diplomats from France, though the foreign minister quickly sent a telegram apologizing for this “drastic” measure, and assured Churchill that the rest of the cabinet still hoped for cooperation with England. The fragile Italian government, meanwhile, took no further diplomatic action; still dependent on British coal and now hoping for British arms to fight off the revolutionaries, it had little reason to alienate its former ally, even if many of the ministers were privately furious.