Germany had an advantage in the early stages of the war, but the Allies had not yet gained a strategic advantage. Although Lin Wei was very hopeful that Germany could win the war, as the war continued, Germany's domestic resource problems became more and more prominent day by day. .
When the time came in 1917, France, Britain, Italy and many other countries stood in a united front against Germany. After the Battle of Verdun and the Battle of the Somme, the German army mobilized troops from the Western Front to attack Russia on the Eastern Front. Russia was suffering from domestic and foreign troubles, and the bourgeois revolution broke out in March of that year. A provisional government representing the interests of the landowning and bourgeoisie came to power. In order to consolidate its rule and cooperate with the British and French coalition forces on the Western Front, the provisional government decided to launch a large-scale attack on the German and Austrian coalition forces in June. The intention is: to use the Southwest Front Army (administering the 11th, 7th and 8th Group Armies, a total of 60 infantry and cavalry divisions, 1114 artillery pieces, commanded by AE Gutor) to launch a major assault in the direction of Lviv; to use the Northern Front Army , the Western Front and the Romanian Front carried out auxiliary assaults. In the main direction of attack, the Russian infantry and artillery were three times and twice that of the German and Austrian forces respectively. On June 29, the Southwest Front launched an artillery bombardment against the German-Austrian Allied Forces and launched an attack on July 1. The 11th and 7th armies launched an assault on Lviv from the Berezhane area east of Pomorzhany, wedged into the defense line of the German Army South, and were soon blocked.
On July 6, the 8th Army attacked from the Galich and Stanislav areas in the direction of Kalush and Bolehov. On the 11th, it captured Galich and Kalush, and on the 13th it reached Kropivnik, Lomnitsa River area; was forced to suspend the attack due to lack of support from the 11th and 7th Group Armies and lack of reserves and ammunition. The German high command immediately transferred troops from the western front to strengthen the eastern front.
On the 19th, the German-Austrian Allied Forces launched a counterattack along the Lviv-Ternopil Railway towards the junction of the Russian 11th and 7th Group Armies; on the 25th, they captured Ternopil, and on the 28th, they forced the Russian Southwest Front to withdraw to their original departure point. The land is bounded by the Brod, Zbarazh and Zbruch rivers in the east. From the 22nd to the 23rd, the Western Front and the Northern Front successively launched attacks in the direction of Wilno and Kovno, but failed.
On the 20th, the Russian and Romanian armies of the Romanian Front launched an assault on Fokshani and Dobroga. It went smoothly and crushed the German-Austrian counterattack. However, due to losses on other fronts, they were forced to stop the attack on the 26th. After the German and Austrian allied forces counterattacked, they retreated to the border. In early August, the German and Austrian forces stopped their pursuit and the battle ended.
The Bolsheviks within Russia advocated negotiations. On November 7, 1917 (October 25 in the Russian calendar), under the leadership of Lenin, Trotsky and others, the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) led workers and soldiers to launch an armed uprising and established the Soviet regime. This was a proletarian party. led the first successful socialist revolution. The revolution overthrew the Russian bourgeois Provisional Government led by Kerensky. After the victory of the October Revolution, a series of revolutionary decrees were promulgated. Then Soviet Russia withdrew from World War I.
At this time, Americans were restless. Seeing that the Allies were about to fail, U.S. President Wilson wrote a bill into law on May 18, requiring all men in the United States between the ages of 21 and 30 to register in the United States if possible. Serving in the military. The well-known new law, the Selective Service Draft, planned to conscript 500,000 soldiers to participate in the war against Germany. The bill passed parliament this month, but not without opposition. A handful of dissenting lawmakers argued that military recruitment should be voluntary
carry. It is estimated that around 10 million men will register. Their names will be written on a rotating list of emergency personnel, from which the first 500,000 people will be selected to participate in the battle.
The German army quickly mobilized troops from the Eastern Front to the Western Front in an effort to defeat the Allies before the main force of the US military reached Europe.
In the summer of 1918, Britain and France were defeated, ending the war. In March 1918, the German army launched five consecutive large-scale attacks on the Western Front. The first attack lasted for half a month. The goal was to capture Amiens, cut off the communication between the British and French armies, drive the British army to the seaside, and push the French army towards Paris. However, after the German army broke through the opponent's two lines of defense, it was blocked by British and French reinforcements, and the battle attempt went bankrupt. In April, the German army attacked along the Marne River. Although it advanced 15?/FONT>20 kilometers, it lost 140,000 troops. By this time, American troops had arrived in Europe, strengthening the Allied powers. At the end of May, the German army launched its third offensive, breaking through the French defense line, occupying Soissons, and pushing it to the Marne River, only 37 kilometers away from Paris. However, it still failed to annihilate the main force of the British and French forces, and the Germans lost 130,000 people. The fourth German offensive lasted for five days from June 9 to 13. The battle attempted to connect the German defense lines in two prominent areas of Amiens and the Marne River to shorten the front and concentrate forces to threaten Paris, but it was still unsuccessful. On July 15, the last offensive launched by the German army failed due to a joint counterattack by Britain and France. 15 German divisions were wiped out, their strength was exhausted, and they were forced to withdraw to the Hindenburg Line. They never recovered.
The Allied forces launched an offensive campaign against the German army east of Amiens, France in August 1918. The Allied forces planned to launch an offensive in the area east of Amiens to eliminate the Amiens salient formed by the German spring offensive, remove the German threat to Amiens and the Amiens-Paris railway, and create conditions for a general offensive. The British 4th Army and the 31st Army of the French 1st Army (a total of 17 infantry divisions, 3 cavalry divisions, about 600 tanks, 2000 artillery pieces and 800 aircraft) were implemented on a front of about 30 kilometers from Moleuil to Albert. For the main assault, the remaining troops of the French 1st Army and the French 3rd Army (a total of 10 divisions and 1,100 aircraft) carried out auxiliary assaults in the southeast direction of the protrusion, under the unified command of the British commander Marshal D. Haig. The defenders in front of them were the German 2nd and 18th armies (20 damaged infantry divisions, nearly 400 aircraft), and their defenses were very weak. In order to achieve the surprise of the battle, the Allied artillery and tank troops used the darkness to enter the position and adopted strict camouflage measures. The British army also conducted feints in the Ypres area to confuse the Germans. At 4:20 on August 8, the Allied artillery launched a violent bombardment of the German positions. The British infantry and tanks cooperated to launch a fierce assault on the German positions under the cover of Xu Jin's barrage fire and thick fog. The German army was caught off guard, and seven front-line division headquarters were occupied by the British army. At 5:05, the French 31st Army launched an attack. On that day, the Allied forces advanced 11 kilometers deep into the enemy, annihilating 27,000 enemy soldiers, destroying 400 enemy artillery pieces and 62 aircraft. On the 9th and 10th, the Allied forces launched an offensive along the entire line from Albert to the Oise River. The French 1st and 3rd armies were all involved in the battle to capture Montdidier. The German artillery changed its deployment in time, destroyed a large number of Allied tanks, and delayed the Allied attack. On the 11th and 12th, the Allied forces launched a partial offensive and reached the line west of Albert, Chaune, and Roix. On the 13th, the Allied forces stopped attacking after achieving the expected objectives of the campaign. Within 5 days, the Allied forces advanced 10 to 18 kilometers on a 75-kilometer front. In this battle, the German army lost 48,000 people and the Allied forces lost about 60,000 people.
The Allies' attack on the Hindenburg Line left the German army on the verge of collapse. When the Germans had withdrawn from almost all of France and part of Belgium, the fighting turned into a fierce rearguard action. German manpower was declining - approximately 37 percent of the Allied strength. At the end of October, only one new division was in reserve, congested railways brought military transportation to a crawl, more than half a million soldiers were far from the front lines, and many troops simply deserted. Since the "dark days" when the Allies leveled the Amiens Salient in August, in addition to casualties, about 300,000 German troops have been captured. In view of the extreme lack of manpower, the German High Command had to write off 32 soldiers from the army roster. A teacher.
Meanwhile, Germany's allies collapsed. The Allied advance on the Western Front gave renewed hope to the Greeks, Italians, Romanians and Serbs, who, convinced that the Austrian army could no longer count on reinforcements, attacked on different fronts of their own. General Allenby's successive victories in Mesopotamia, Palestine, and Syria brought an end to the Ottoman Empire.
Both Germany and Austria now fought alone. The Italian army, reinforced by Allied forces, attacked the Piave River and forced the Austrian army to withdraw from Italy. Discontent spread throughout the Hapsburg Empire, and some of its subject states declared independence. Austria, in revolutionary turmoil, surrendered on November 3.
The situation in Germany was becoming more critical every day. Semi-starvation afflicted Berlin and other large cities. The spread of influenza claimed thousands of victims, while scarcity of coal, gas, and other fuels heralded worsening hardships. When the domestic front saw military defeats, confidence began to evaporate. The Kaiser was no longer revered as supreme. "Down with the Kaiser" became a common thought among rich and poor alike. William was now seen as a major obstacle to peace.
At this time, Germany had begun to collapse, and the people were very unstable.
On November 3, sailors took to the streets of Kiel to demonstrate against the naval authorities and demand the release of those arrested. The demonstration then developed into an armed uprising. The sailors disarmed the officers, quickly occupied strategic locations, and took control of the entire city. Workers also responded with armed uprisings and established Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. By the evening of the 4th, Kiel and nearby suburbs were occupied by insurgents. On the 5th, Kiel held a general strike to support the sailors' uprising. The sailors' uprising in the port of Kiel became the signal for the outbreak of the November Revolution in Germany, and the revolution spread rapidly across the country.
On the occasion of a formal meeting at the Kaiser's headquarters in Spa, Belgium, on November 9, Hindenburg warned his monarch that the German army was now unable to protect him, saying, "I must advise His Majesty to abdicate and go to Holland.
After the news of Germany's defeat came, people throughout Germany felt at a loss. When the Kiel sailors revolted and established Soviet power, people everywhere followed suit, and even soldiers who had just returned from the front joined the revolutionary ranks.