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Stephen Biddle, adjunct senior fellow for defense policy at CFR and professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University, leads the conversation on military strategy in the contemporary world. FASKIANOS: Welcome to today's session of the fall 2023 CFR Academic Webinar Series. I'm Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach here at CFR. Today's discussion is on the record, and the video and transcript will be available on our website, CFR.org/academic, if you would like to share them with your colleagues or classmates. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We're delighted to have Stephen Biddle with us to discuss military strategy in the contemporary world. Dr. Biddle is an adjunct senior fellow for defense policy at CFR and professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University. Before joining Columbia he was professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University. He regularly lectures at the U.S. Army War College and other military schools and has served on a variety of government advisory panels and analytical teams, testified before congressional committees on issues relating to the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria; force planning; conventional net assessment; and European arms control, just to name a few. And, finally, Dr. Biddle is the author of numerous scholarly publications and several books, including his most recent, Nonstate Warfare, published by Princeton University in 2021 and he just recently authored a piece in CFR's magazine Foreign Affairs in the September/October 2023 issue entitled “Back in the Trenches: Why New Technology Hasn't Revolutionized Warfare in Ukraine,” and we shared that out in the background readings for this conversation. So, Steve, thank you for being with us. I thought you could give us an overview of the changes you've seen in military operations as a result of technological innovation and say a few words about wartime military behavior especially as you've studied it over the years and what we're seeing now in Ukraine and now with the Israel-Hamas war. BIDDLE: Yeah, I'd be happy to. There's a lot going on in the world of military affairs and strategy at the moment between Gaza, Taiwan Straits, and, of course, Ukraine. Maybe as a conversation starter I'll start with Ukraine but we can go in whatever direction the group wants to go in, and the spoiler alert is in the headline of the article from Foreign Affairs that you've already assigned. There's a big debate over what Ukraine means for the future of warfare and what Ukraine means for the way the United States should organize its military, modernize its equipment, write its doctrine and so on. One of the most common interpretations of what Ukraine means for all this is that it's harboring—it's a harbinger of a revolutionary transformation. The new technology, drones, space-based surveillance, precision-guided weapons, hypersonics, networked information, artificial intelligence, this whole panoply of things in this argument is making the modern battlefield so lethal, so radically more lethal than the past is that in the present and in the future offensive maneuver will become impossible and we'll get the dawn of some new age of defense dominance in conventional warfare, which, if true, would then have all sorts of implications for how the United States should make all these kinds of defense policy decisions. As those of you who read the Foreign Affairs article know I don't buy it because I don't think the evidence is consistent with that supposition. You'll be happy to hear that I'm not planning to do a dramatic reading of the Foreign Affairs essay, entertaining as I'm sure that would be, but I did think it might be useful for me to briefly outline the argument as a way of teeing up the subsequent conversation. And the basic argument in the article is that whereas there are, indeed, all sorts of very new technologies in use in this war, when you actually look carefully at the results they're producing, at the attrition rates that they're actually causing, at the ability of the two sides to gain ground and to suffer the loss of ground, the actual results being produced by all this very new technology are surprisingly less new than is assumed and supposed in the argument that we're looking at some transformational discontinuous moment in which a new age of defense dominance is dawning. This doesn't mean that nothing's changing or that the United States military should do in the future exactly what it's done in the past. But the nature of the change that I think we're seeing is evolutionary and incremental as it has been for the last hundred years, and if you think what's going on is incremental evolutionary change rather than discontinuous transformation that then has very different implications for what the U.S. should do militarily. So just to unpack a little bit of that by way of pump priming let me just cite some of the examples of what one actually observes and the outcomes of the use of all these new technologies as we've seen in Ukraine. So let's start with casualty rates and attrition. At the heart of this argument that new technology is creating a new era of defense dominance is the argument that fires have made the battlefield so lethal now that the kind of offensive maneuver you saw in World War II or in 1967 or in 1991 is now impossible. And, yet, the actual attrition rates of, for example, tanks, right—tanks tend to be the weapon system that gets the most attention in this context—are remarkably similar to what we saw in the world wars. So in the first twelve months of the fighting in Ukraine, depending on whose estimates you look at the Russians lost somewhere between about half and about 96 percent of their prewar tank fleet in twelve months of fighting. The Ukrainians lost somewhat in excess of 50 percent of their prewar tank fleet, and intuitively that looks like a heavy loss rate, right? Fifty (percent) to 96 percent of what you opened the war with, that seems pretty—you know, pretty dangerous. But in historical context it's actually lower than it frequently was in World War II. In 1943, the German army suffered an attrition rate to the tanks it owned at the beginning of the year of 113 percent. They lost more tanks in 1943 than they owned in January 1943. Their casualty rate went up in 1944. They lost 122 percent of all the tanks they owned in January of 1944. So these attrition rates while high aren't unusually high by historical standards. What about artillery, right? Artillery is the single largest casualty inflicter on the modern battlefield defined as since the turn of the twentieth century, 1900. As far as we can tell the attrition rate from Ukrainian artillery fire of Russian forces in this war looks to be on the order of about eight casualties inflicted per hundred rounds of artillery fired and that's higher than in World War II but not discontinuously radically higher. In World War II that figure would have been about three casualties per hundred rounds fired. In World War I that figure would have been about two casualties per hundred rounds fired. If you chart that over time what you see is an essentially linear straight line incremental increase over a hundred years of about an additional .05 casualties per hundred rounds fired per year over a century of combat experience. There's no sudden discontinuous increase as a result of drones or networked information or space-based surveillance at the end of the period. What about ground gain and ground loss? The purpose of attrition on a modern battlefield is to change who controls how much territory and the whole transformation argument is that all this putatively much more lethal technology is making ground gain much, much harder than in the past, and yet the Russia offensive that opened the war, mishandled as it was in so many ways, took over 42,000 square miles of Ukraine in the first couple of months of the war. The Ukrainian Kyiv counteroffensive retook more than 19,000 square miles. Their Kharkiv counteroffensive retook 2,300 square miles. The Kharkiv counteroffensive took back more than 200 square miles. There's been plenty of defensive stalemate in the war, right? The Russian offensive on Bakhmut took ten months to take the city. Cost them probably sixty (thousand) to a hundred thousand casualties to do it. The Mariupol offensive took three months to take the city. But this war has not been a simple story of technologically determined offensive frustration. There have been offensives that have succeeded and offensives that have failed with essentially the same equipment. Drones didn't get introduced into the war in the last six months. Drones were in heavy use from the very outset of the fighting and this kind of pattern of some offensives that succeed, some offensives that don't, like the attrition rate is not particularly new. I mean, the popular imagination tends to see World War I as a trench stalemate created by the new technology of artillery and machine guns and barbed wire and World War II as a world offensive maneuver created by the new technologies of the tank, the airplane, the radio. Neither World War I nor World War II were homogeneous experiences where everything was defensive frustration of World War I and everything was offensive success in World War II. That wasn't the case in either of the two world wars. The Germans advanced almost to the doorsteps of Paris in the initial war opening offensive in 1914. In 1918, the German spring offenses broke clean through Allied lines three times in a row and produced a general advance by the Allies and the subsequent counteroffensive on a hundred-eighty-mile front. There was a lot of ground that changed hands in World War I as a result of offensives in addition to the great defensive trench stalemate of 1915 to mid-1917. In World War II some of the most famous offensive failures in military history were tank-heavy attacks in 1943 and 1944. The Battle of Kursk on the Russian front cost the German attackers more than a hundred and sixty thousand casualties and more than seven hundred lost tanks. The most tank-intensive offensive in the history of war, the British attack at Operation Goodwood in 1944, cost the British a third of all the British armor on the continent of Europe in just three days of fighting. So what we've seen in observed military experience over a hundred years of frequent observational opportunity is a mix of offensive success and defensive success with technologies that are sometimes described as defense dominant and, yet, nonetheless, see breakthroughs and technologies that are sometimes seen as offense dominant and, yet, sometimes produce defensive stalemates and what really varies is not so much driven by the equipment, it's driven by the way people use it. And the central problem in all of this is that military outcomes are not technologically determined. The effects of technology in war are powerfully mediated by how human organizations use them and there are big variations in the way human organizations use equipment. And if you just look at the equipment alone and expect that that's going to tell you what the result of combat is going to be and you don't systematically account for how the human organizations involved adapt to what the technology might do on the proving ground to reduce what it can do on the battlefield then you get radically wrong answers and I would argue that's what's going on in Ukraine. Both sides are adapting rapidly and the nature of the adaptations that we're seeing in Ukraine are very similar to the nature of the adaptations we've seen in previous great power warfare. Again, incremental lineal extensions of emphases on cover, emphases on concealment, combined arms, defensive depth, mobile reserve withholds—these are the ways that all great power militaries have responded to increasingly lethal equipment over time to reduce their exposure to the nominal proving ground lethality of weapons in actual practice. The problem is this collection of techniques—and in other work I've referred to them as the modern system, this kind of transnational epistemic community of practice and the conduct of conventional warfare—to do all these things right and minimize your exposure is technically very challenging. Some military organizations can manage this very complex way of fighting; others cannot. Some can do it on one front and not on another front, and the result is we get a lot of variance in the degree to which any given military at any given moment embraces the entirety of this doctrinal program. Where they do, defenses have been very hard to break through for a hundred years. This isn't something that came about in February of 2022 because of drones and networked information. This has been the case repeatedly for a century of actual combat. But where they don't, where defenses are shallow, where reserve withholds are too small, where combined arms aren't exploited, where cover and concealment isn't exploited, then casualty rates go way, way up. Then breakthrough becomes possible. Then attackers can gain a lot of ground with tanks or without tanks. The German offensives that broke clean through Allied defensive lines in 1918 had almost no tanks. The first of them, Operation Michael, was a one-million soldier offensive that had exactly nine tanks in support of it. So the differences that have mattered are the interaction of increasingly lethal technology with these variations and the ability of real human organizations to master the complexity needed to fight in a way that reduces exposure to this and that's the same thing we've seen in Ukraine. Where defenses have been shallow and haven't had enough reserves behind them you've gotten breakthroughs. Where they've been deep, adequately backed by reserves, as we've seen in this summer counteroffensive over the last three or four months, for example, they've not been able to break through and this isn't a new story. This is just a recapitulation of a hundred years' worth of military experience. If that's so then what difference does it make to the U.S.? So, again, as I suggested earlier, that doesn't mean don't change anything, right? A 1916 tank on a modern battlefield would not fare well. Part of the stability in these kinds of outcomes is because people change the way they do business. They change the way they fight. They update their equipment. They execute measure/countermeasure races and so we need to continue to do that. Depth is probably going to increase. Reserve withhold requirements are going to go up. Demands for cover and concealment are going to increase. There will be technological implications stemming from the particular measure/countermeasure races that are emerging now especially with respect to drones. Almost certainly the U.S. Army is going to have an incentive, for example, to deploy counter drone escort vehicles as part of the combined arms mix, moving forward. But the principle of combined arms that's behind so much of the way the U.S. Army fights is very unlikely to change very much. What's going to happen is a new element will be added to the combined arms mix, and escort jammers and anti-aircraft artillery and other air defense systems that are optimized for drones will become part of the mix of tanks and infantry and engineers and signals and air defense and all the rest, moving forward. The whole revolution argument, though, is not that, right? The reason people refer to this as a revolution, as transformation, is they're using language that's designed to tee up the idea that ordinary orthodox incremental updating business as usual isn't enough in this new era because of drones, because of hypersonics, or space-based surveillance or whatever. We need something more than that, and I think if we look closely at what's going on in Ukraine what we see is not an argument that we need to transform the way the U.S. military does business. What we see is an argument for incremental change that implies incremental adaptation is appropriate, that it's not the wrong thing to do. I think it's possible to over-innovate. I think there are ample historical examples of militaries that have gone wrong not by being resistant to innovation—there are plenty of those, too—but by doing too much innovation. In the 1950s and 1960s U.S. Air Force transformed itself around an idea that conventional warfare is a thing of the past, all wars of the future will be nuclear, and they designed airplanes for nuclear weapon delivery that were horribly ill-suited to the conventional war in Vietnam that they then found themselves in. The U.S. Army transformed its doctrine following a particular understanding of the lethality of precision-guided anti-tank weapons in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, adopted a concept called active defense that relied on static defense in a shallow disposition from fixed positions, emphasizing the ostensible new firepower of anti-tank weapons. Found that that was very innovative but very ineffective and abandoned it in favor of the airline battle doctrine that's a lineal descendant of the doctrine we use now, which was much more orthodox and conventional. There are plenty of examples of militaries that have over-innovated. This language of revolution and transformation is designed to promote what I'm concerned could be over-innovation again. I think we could talk more about the particulars of what incremental adaptation should comprise but I think that's the right way forward in light of what we actually observe about what's going on in Ukraine. FASKIANOS: Fantastic. Thank you for that, Steve. That was great. Let's go now to all of you for your questions. (Gives queuing instructions.) And so don't be shy. This is your time. We have our first question from Terrence Kleven. Q: Hello. Can you hear me? FASKIANOS: We can. If you could tell us your affiliation that would be great. Q: Yes, very good. Terrence Kleven. I'm at Central College in Pella, Iowa, and I teach in a philosophy and religious studies department and I teach quite a lot of Middle Eastern studies. Thank you very much for your presentation because so much of this we don't talk about enough and we don't understand, and I appreciate the opportunity to hear what you have to say and look forward to reading your—some of your material. Just kind of a practical question, why aren't the Russians using more planes in this war or are they and we just don't have a report of that? I assume that the Russian air force is much superior to what the Ukrainians have but it doesn't seem to give them a great advantage. What's missing? What's going on? BIDDLE: Yeah. You're raising a question that has bedeviled military analysts in this war since its beginning. Part of the issue is the definition of what plane is, right? If we define a plane as something that uses aerodynamic lift to fly through the air and perform military missions the Russians are using lots of planes; they just don't have pilots. We call them drones. But a drone, to a first approximation, is just a particular inexpensive, low-performance airplane that is relatively expendable because it's inexpensive. But because it's inexpensive it's also low performance. If by airplanes one includes drones, then there's lots of airplane use going on. What you had in mind with the question, I'm sure, is the airplanes that have people in them—why aren't they more salient in the military conduct of the war, and the Russians have tried to use piloted aircraft. The trouble is the loss rates have kept them, largely, out of the sky. So this again gets back to the question of human adaptation to new technology. Air forces—and navies, by the way, but that's a different conversation—are much more exposed to more technology increases—the technology changes that produce increasing lethality than ground armies are. Ground armies have much easier access to cover and concealment. It's hard to find much cover and concealment up there in the sky, right? You're highlighted against a largely featureless background. There are things you can do as an air force to try and reduce your exposure to precision-guided anti-aircraft weapons and the U.S. Air Force, for example, practices those extensively. But the complexity of operating an air force to be effective at the mission called SEAD—suppression of enemy air defenses—is very high and it requires a lot of practice and it requires a lot of flight hours and it requires you to burn a lot of fuel in training, and the U.S. Air Force is willing to do that. The Russians historically have not. Therefore, they're not very good at it. Therefore, they're very—they have been very exposed to the lethality precision-guided Ukrainian anti-aircraft defenses and, therefore, they've mostly decided not to expose themselves to this fire. They fly mostly over friendly terrain, especially in metropolitan Russia, and they fly at low altitudes that keep them under the radar, which is a cliché that's leached into public conversation because of the actual physics of the way radar works and responds to the curvature of the earth. If the Russians operate over Russian territory at low altitude and launch cruise missiles at huge distances then their airplanes don't get shot down as much. But then the airplanes are a lot less effective and contribute a lot less and that's the tradeoff that the Russians have accepted with respect to the use of airplanes. The airplanes they use a lot are unpiloted cheap low-performance drones which they are willing to get shot down in huge numbers and they do get shot down in huge numbers. But piloted aircraft have played a limited role because the air defense environment is too lethal for an air force with skills no better than the Russians are to survive in it. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to take the next question from Mike Nelson. Q: Thanks for a very interesting overview. I work at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and also have taught at Georgetown on internet policy and the impacts of digital technologies. Seems to me that one of the big changes with this war has been the incredible transparency, more information on what's actually going on on the ground from social media, satellite photos, drone photos. I saw a tweet today about how they're able to infer how many Russian soldiers have mutinied by counting these soldiers marching back from the front, presumably under armed guard. It just seems that there's a lot more information on what's going on hour by hour. I wonder if that is causing some changes on both the Russian and the Ukrainian side and whether the insertion of disinformation to make it appear that things are going differently than it seems is also something that's getting better and better. Thank you. BIDDLE: Yeah. I mean, the information environment in Ukraine is complicated in ways that the debate often doesn't deal with very well, in my view. So starting at the superficial level, public perceptions of what the lethality of first-person view kamikaze drones has been against tanks and artillery are wildly exaggerated and the reason why the public impression is wildly exaggerated is because the medium formerly known as Twitter puts up endless videos of successful attacks. But nobody posts a video of their failed attack so we only see the subset of all drone missions that succeeded. The ones that don't are invisible. Therefore, the public gets this impression that all—that there are successful drone missions by the millions all the time and that that's—there are serious selection effects with the way the public understands drone success rates in light of that. So one point is that the apparent transparency is subject to a variety of selection biases that lead to misunderstandings of the transparency on the battlefield as a whole. Similarly, there are lots of videos of images of Russian soldiers in a trench and especially videos of Russian soldiers in a trench before a quadcopter drone drops a grenade on them and then kills them. You don't see any video feeds of a drone flying over a camouflaged position where you can't see anything because nobody's going to post that, right? It's not interesting enough. But, therefore, again, we get the selection effect. People believe that everything is visible and everything is transparent because every video feed they see, and they see a lot of them, shows a visible target. The trouble is you're not seeing the failed drone missions that didn't produce a visible target and those are the vast majority as far as we can tell from more careful analyses that try to look at the totality of drone missions rather than just the selected subset that appear on now X, formerly Twitter. Now, that leads to the general issue of how transparent is the modern battlefield and I would argue that the modern battlefield is a lot less transparent than people popularly imagine that it is. The cover and concealment available in the earth's surface to a military that's capable of exploiting it is still sufficient to keep a sizeable fraction of both militaries' targets invisible to the other side most of the time and that's why the artillery casualty rate hasn't gone up dramatically as a result of all this. It's because cover and concealment is still keeping most of the targets out of the way. So I would argue the battlefield is less transparent than we often assume that it is and in part that's because the systems that would generate information are countered by the other side so that they generate less information. Again, take drones, which have been the thing that everybody's been focusing on. There have been multiple waves of measure/countermeasure races just on the technical side, setting aside technical adaptation, with respect to drones already. When the war opened the primary drone in use, especially on the Ukrainian side, was the Bayraktar TB2, Turkish-built large, you know, capable, fairly expensive drone which was very lethal against exposed Russian armored columns. Then several things happened. One is the armored columns decided to get less exposed. Smart move on the Russians' part. The other thing is the air defense system under the Russians adapted and started shooting down Bayraktar TB2s at a huge rate to the point where the Ukrainians stopped flying them because they were so vulnerable and, instead, drones shifted from big expensive higher performance drones to smaller, cheaper, lower performance drones, which were so cheap that it didn't make sense to fire expensive guided anti-aircraft missiles at them anymore and then the air defense environment shifted to emphasize jamming, which is even cheaper than the drones, and anti-aircraft artillery firing bullets that are cheaper than drones. So the systems that would create this transparency and that would give you this information don't get a free ride. The opponent systematically attacks them and systematically changes the behavior of the target so that the surviving seekers have less to find, and in addition to cover and concealment and complementary to it is dispersion and what dispersion of ground targets does is even if you find a target it may very well not be worth the expenditure of an expensive precision munition to kill. A guided 155-millimeter artillery shell costs on the order of a hundred thousand dollars a shell. If you're shooting it at a concentrated platoon of enemy infantry that's a good expenditure. If you're shooting it at a dispersed target where they're in one- or two-soldier foxholes now even if you know where all the foxholes are—even if your drones have survived, the concealment has failed and the drone has accurately located where every single two-soldier foxhole is does it make sense to fire a $100,000 guided artillery shell at each of them or are you going to run out of guided artillery shells before they run out of foxholes, right? So the net of all of this—the technical measure/countermeasure race and the tactical adaptation is that I would argue that the battlefield is actually not as transparent as people commonly assume. If it were we'd be seeing much higher casualty rates than what we're actually seeing. There's incremental change, right? The battlefield is more transparent now, heaven knows, than it was in 1943. But the magnitude of the difference and the presence of technical measures and countermeasures is incremental rather than transformational and that's a large part of the reason why the change in results has been incremental rather than transformational. FASKIANOS: So we have a lot of questions but I do want to just ask you, Steve, to comment on Elon Musk's—you know, he shut down his Starlink satellite communications so that the Ukrainians could not do their assault on the—on Russia. I think it was the submersible—they were going to strike the Russian naval vessels off of Crimea. So that, obviously—the technology did affect how the war was—the battlefield. BIDDLE: It did, but you'll notice that Crimea has been attacked multiple times since then and metropolitan Russia has been attacked multiple times since then. So there are technical workarounds. On the technical side rather than the tactical side there are multiple ways to skin a cat. One of these has been that the U.S. has tried to make Ukraine less dependent on private satellite communication networks by providing alternatives that are less subject to the whims of a single billionaire. But tactical communications of the kind that Starlink has enabled the Ukrainians are very useful, right? No doubt about it, and that's why the U.S. government is working so hard to provide alternatives to commercial Starlink access. But even there, even if you didn't have them at all the Ukrainian military wouldn't collapse. I mean, in fact, most military formations were taught how to function in a communications-constrained environment because of the danger that modern militaries will jam their available communication systems or destroy communication nodes or attack the satellites that are providing the relays. Certainly, the U.S. military today is not prepared to assume that satellite communications are always going to be available. We train our soldiers how to operate in an environment in which those systems are denied you because they might be. So, again, I mean, tactical adaptation doesn't eliminate the effects of technological change—having Starlink, being denied Starlink, right, this Musk-owned communication satellite constellation that was the source of all the kerfuffle. It's not irrelevant whether you have it or not but it's less decisive than you might imagine if you didn't take into account the way that militaries adapt to the concern that they might be denied them or that the enemy might have them and they might not, which are serious concerns. Certainly, if the U.S. and Russia were true belligerents both the danger of anti-satellite warfare destroying significant fractions of those constellations is serious, or jamming or otherwise making them unavailable is a serious problem so militaries try to adapt to deal with it—with their absence if they have to. FASKIANOS: Great. We have a question—a written question from Monica Byrne at—a student at Bard College: Can you share thoughts and strategy for Israel and Gaza, given the conditions in Gaza? BIDDLE: Yeah. So shifting gears now from Ukraine to the Middle East, given Israel's declared war aim, right—if Israel's aim is to topple the Hamas regime and then hopefully replace it with something that's another conversation. But let's for the moment just talk about the military dynamics of realizing their stated war aim of toppling the Hamas regime. That will certainly require a ground invasion that reoccupies at least temporarily the entirety of Gaza, right? Airstrikes aren't going to accomplish that war aim. Special forces raids aren't going to accomplish that war aim. The Hamas administrative apparatus is, A, too large and, B, too easily concealed, especially underground, for those kinds of techniques to be sufficient. So if the Israelis really are going to topple Hamas a large-scale ground invasion is needed. That has obvious horrible implications for collateral damage and civilian fatalities in Gaza—urban warfare is infamously destructive of capital and of civilian human life—but also for military casualties to the Israelis. Urban warfare is a radically advantageous military environment for defenders and so Israel inevitably will take serious losses if they really expect to completely reoccupy Gaza as would be needed to depose Hamas. Now, there are ways that conventional militaries can try and reduce either the loss of innocent civilian life or casualty rates to their own forces but none of these things are perfect and the techniques militaries use to reduce civilian fatalities can be exploited by defenders who want to take advantage of them to increase Israeli military casualties and limit the Israelis' ability to limit collateral damage. You can fire only at identified targets and not at entire buildings. You can use small-caliber weapons rather than large-caliber artillery and missiles. You can warn the civilian occupants of a building either with leaflets or text messages or the Israeli technique that's called knocking on the roof where they drop a nonexplosive weapon on the ceiling to create a sound that tells the occupants they are about to be attacked so they leave. There are a variety of things like that that you can do and that the U.S. should hope that the Israelis are going to do. But the whole problem here is that the Hamas political and military infrastructure is deeply intermingled with the civilian population in Gaza, and so even if you're going to be as discriminating as modern technology and military skill potentially could make you, you're still going to kill a lot of civilians and Hamas is not going to conveniently remove the military infrastructure from the civilian population to make it easier for the Israelis to kill the fighters and not kill the civilians. They're going to keep them tightly intermingled. Now, the Israelis can reduce their losses by being slower and more deliberate and methodical in the way they enter Gaza. There's been a discussion in recent weeks about the difference between Mosul and Fallujah and the U.S. experience of urban warfare in Iraq. In Fallujah, we entered quickly with a large ground force that was fairly dependent on small arms direct fire and relatively less reliant on artillery and airstrikes. In Mosul with Iraqi allies on the ground, we did the opposite. Very slow entry. The campaign took months. Limited exposure, small-caliber weapons, heavy emphasis on airstrikes and artillery to reduce the ground—even so, thousands of civilians were killed in Mosul. Even so, our Iraqi allies took serious casualties. There's no way for the Israelis to do this Gaza offensive if they're going to realize their war aim that won't destroy Gaza, kill a lot of civilians, and suffer a lot of casualties themselves. All these things are marginal differences at the most. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to go next to Dan Caldwell. Q: Oh, Steve, thanks very much for a very interesting overview. I'd like to raise another subject that is, obviously, very broad but I would really appreciate your comments on it and that's the question of intelligence and its relationship to military operations that you've described. Broadly speaking, we can separate out tactical intelligence from strategic intelligence, and in the case of tactical intelligence the use of breaking down terrorists' cell phones' records and things like contributed to military successes in Iraq and Afghanistan. In a strategic sense, the breaking of the Japanese codes, Purple, and the Ultra Enigma secret in World War II contributed to the Allies' success, and in terms of the Middle East the strategic failures of Israeli intelligence in 1973 and, I would argue, in the recent Hamas attacks contributed to the losses that Israel has suffered. So how do you think about the relationship of intelligence to military strategy? BIDDLE: Yeah. I mean, intelligence is central to everything in security policy, right? It's central to forcible diplomacy. It's central to preparation for war. It's central to the conduct of military. So intelligence underlies everything. All good decision making requires information about the other side. The intelligence system has to provide that. The ability of the intelligence system to create transformational change is limited. Let's take the national level strategic intelligence question first and then we'll move to things like Ultra and battlefield uses. As you know, the problem of military surprise has been extensively studied, at least since the 1973 war in which Israel was famously surprised by the Egyptian attack in the Sinai. There's been an extensive scholarly focus on this problem of intelligence failure and surprise—how can this possibly happen. And the central thrust of that literature, I would argue, has been that almost always after a surprise you discover later that the surprised intelligence system had information that should have told them an attack was coming. They almost always receive indicators. They almost always get photographic intelligence. All sorts of pieces of information find their way into the owning intelligence system. And yet, they got surprised anyway. How could this happen? And the answer is that the information has to be processed by human organizations, and the organizational challenges and the cognitive biases that individuals have when they're dealing with this information combine in such a way to frequently cause indicators not to be understood and used and exploited to avoid surprise and part of the reason for that—the details, of course, are extensive and complex. But part of the reason for that is you get indicators of an attack that didn't—that then didn't happen way more often than you get the indicators of the attack that does happen. You get indicators all the time but usually there's no attack and the trick then is how do you distinguish the indicator that isn't going to become an attack from the indicator that is going to become the attack when you've always got both. And if you—especially in a country like Israel where mobilizing the reserves has huge economic consequences, if you mobilize the reserves every time you get indicators of an attack you exhaust the country and the country stops responding to the indicators anymore. It's the cry wolf problem. I mean, the first couple of times you cry wolf people take it seriously. The eighth, ninth, tenth, twelfth time they don't. So because of this the ability to change, to do away with surprise, with, for example, new technology, all right, a more transparent world in which we have a better ability to tap people's cell phones and tap undersea cables to find out what governments are saying to themselves we have better ability to collect information. But there are still organizational biases, cognitive problems, and just the basic signal-to-noise, wheat-to-chaff ratio issue of lots and lots of information, most of which is about an attack that isn't going to happen. And distinguishing that from the ones that are going to happen is an ongoing problem that I doubt is going to be solved because it isn't a technological issue. It resides in the structure of human organizations and the way the human mind operates to filter out extraneous and focus on important sensory information, and human cognitive processes aren't changing radically and human organizations aren't either. So at the strategic level I don't see transformation coming soon. Then we've got the battlefield problem of what about intercepted communications, for example, which have changed the historiography of World War II in an important way. We'll note that that didn't cause the Allies to defeat the Germans in 1944, right? I mean, the Allies cracked the German and the Japanese codes long before the war ended and, yet, the war continued, and this gets back to this question of how militaries adapt to the availability of information about them on the other side. At sea where there's not a lot of terrain for cover and concealment, right, then these kinds of communications intercepts were more important and as a result the Japanese navy was, largely, swept from the Pacific long before the war ended in 1945. But wars are ultimately usually about what goes on on land, and on land even if you intercept people's communications if they're covered, concealed, dispersed, and in depth being able to read German communications, which we could do in 1944, didn't enable us to quickly break through, rapidly drive to Berlin and end the war three months after the Normandy invasions. In spite of the fact that we could read the communications traffic we couldn't do those things because the communications traffic is only part of success and failure on the battlefield. So if that was the case in World War II where we had, you know, unusually good comment and usually good ability to break the enemy's codes and read their message traffic, again, I would argue that improvements in intelligence technology today were certainly helpful, and they're worth having and we should pursue them and use them, but it's not likely to transform combat outcomes in a theater of war any more than—to a radically greater degree than it did when we had that kind of information in 1944. FASKIANOS: So I'm going to combine the next two questions because they're about innovation from the Marine Corps University and Rutgers University: You mentioned over innovation. Can you explain what that is and how it can be detrimental? And then are you concerned that the Department of Defense R&D program could be at risk of being out of balance by over emphasizing advanced technology versus getting useful technology deployed and into the field? BIDDLE: I think that's one of the most important implications of this war is that the United States has historically chosen to get way out on the envelope of what technology makes possible for weapon acquisition, creating extremely expensive weapons that we can buy in very small numbers that we evaluate and we decide to buy because of their proving ground potential because what they can do against targets that haven't adapted to them yet. What the record of adaptation in Ukraine, I think, shows is that the actual lethality of very sophisticated weapons is not as high as it looks on a proving ground because the targets are going to be noncooperative and the real-world performance of extremely expensive sophisticated technologies is normally less than it looks, and if that's the case we are probably overspending on very sophisticated, very expensive weapons which we can only buy in very small numbers and which if they don't produce this radical lethality wouldn't be worth the expenditure that they cost. And if the adaptation of the target is going to reduce their lethality and increase their vulnerability, which is certainly what we're observing in Ukraine, then we're going to have a dickens of a time replacing them when they get lost, right, because very sophisticated high technology weapons, among other things, require a supply chain of materials that are often quite scarce—rare earths, cobalt, lithium. One of the reasons why the American Defense Industrial Base has had a hard time responding rapidly to the demands that the expenditure rate of things in Ukraine has created is because of these complicated supply chains that we can manage when we're building things in small numbers, which we think is sufficient because we're expecting that each one of them is going to be tremendously lethal. If we now realize that they're less lethal in practice than we expect them to be and therefore we need larger numbers of them, how are we going to get the materials we need to do that? And the experience in Ukraine has been that the kind of revolution in military affairs expectation for the lethality of high technology just hasn't been realized. Yes, weapons are very lethal in Ukraine, but not orders of magnitude differently than they were in 1944, right, and so I think this ought to suggest to us that the historical post-World War II U.S. strategy emphasizing very high technology at very high cost in very small numbers to compensate for small numbers with radical lethality may very well be misguided. It works well when you're fighting an opponent like the Iraqis who can't handle the complexity of cover and concealment, combined arms, and all the rest. They're exposed and the weapons have the kind of proving ground effect that you expect because the targets are not undercover. Not clear that it has been producing that kind of results in Ukraine and it's not clear that it would produce those kinds of results for the United States in a coming great power conflict. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going take the next question from Genevieve Connell at the Fordham graduate program in international political economy and development. How much does successful military strategy rely on stable domestic economic systems to fund it or is this less of an issue when one or both sides have strong geopolitical support and aid? BIDDLE: War is very expensive, as the Ukraine war is reminding us, right? This isn't news. The expenditure rates in modern industrial age warfare are massively expensive to maintain and that in turn means that the strength of the national economy is a fundamental foundational requirement for success in modern great power warfare. This, of course, leads to the set of tradeoffs that are fundamental in grand strategy, right? Grand strategy, as opposed to operational art, military strategy, or tactics, integrates military and nonmilitary means in pursuit of the ultimate security objectives of the state and one of the more important of the nonmilitary means is the economy. So you need a large GDP to support a large expensive war effort. The way you maximize GDP is with international trade. International trade makes you vulnerable to cutoff in time of war through blockade. Therefore, if we just maximize GDP in the short run we run the risk—we increase our vulnerability in time of war or blockades. We say: Oh, no, we don't want to do that. Let's reduce the amount of international trade we do, make ourselves more self-sufficient. Now GDP growth rates go down and now the size of the military you can support in steady state goes down. There's a fundamental tradeoff involving the interaction between classically guns and butter in the way you design the economy in support of the grand strategy you have in mind for how you're going to pursue your security interest in the international system at any given time. So, yeah, a productive expanding economy is essential if you plan to be able to afford the cost of modern warfare. The implications for what that means for things like international trade, though, are complicated. FASKIANOS: Great. I'll try to sneak in one last question from David Nachman. Q: Thank you. Thank you for this really interesting presentation. I teach at the Yale Law School, nothing related to the topic of today's submission and discussion. I'm just wondering, and you captured it towards the end here where you said something about wars are won and lost on land. With the advent of cyber and all the technological development that we're seeing in our armed forces is that still true as a matter, you know, and are we—is the Ukraine and even Gaza experience sort of nonrepresentative of the true strategic threats that the United States as opposed to its allies really faces at sea and in the air? BIDDLE: Yeah. Let me briefly address cyber but then extend it into the sea and the air. One of the interesting features of cyber is it's mostly been a dog that hasn't barked, at least it hasn't barked very loudly. There were widespread expectations as Russia was invading that cyberattacks would shut down the Ukrainian economy, would shut down the Ukrainian military effort, or vice versa, and neither of those things have happened. So I don't—there have been plenty of cyberattacks, right, and there have been plenty of efforts at break in and surveillance and manipulation. So far none of them have been militarily decisive and it's an interesting and I think still open question for the cyber community about why that has been so and what, if anything, does that tell us about the future of cyber threats to national military projects. But so far it hasn't radically—it hasn't produced a result that would have been different in the pre-cyber era. Now, when I say wars are won on land what I mean by that is that people live on the land, right? People don't live in the air and people don't live on the surface of the water. People live on land. Economies are on land. Populations are on land. That means that usually the stakes that people fight wars over are things having to do with the land. That doesn't mean that navies and air forces are irrelevant. We own a large one. I'm in favor of owning a large one. The Navy—my friends in the Navy would be very upset if I said otherwise. But the purpose of the Navy is to affect people who live on the land, right? In classic Mahanian naval strategy the purpose of the Navy is destroy the opposing fleet, blockade the enemy's ports, destroy the enemy's commerce, and ruin the land-based economy and it's the effect of the land-based economy that causes surrender or compromise or concession to the opponent or whatever else ends the war in ways that you hope are favorable to you. What this means then is that especially where we're dealing with large continental powers like Russia, classically—China's an interesting sub case but let's talk about Russia—the ability to influence the Russian decision-making calculus that leads to an end to a war or the beginning of a war without affecting the life of people on land is very limited. Cyber has not proven able to do that. Air attack historically has not been a good tool for doing that. Navies do that by affecting the land-based economy and I don't see that changing rapidly anytime soon. FASKIANOS: Well, Steve, thank you very much for this really insightful hour. I'm sorry to all of you we couldn't get to the questions, raised hands, so we'll just have to have you back. And thanks to all those of you who did ask questions. I commend to you, again, Steve Biddle's Foreign Affairs piece, “Back in the Trenches,” and hope you will read that. Our next Academic Webinar will be on Wednesday, November 8, at 1:00 p.m. (EST) with José Miguel Vivanco, who is an adjunct senior fellow here for human rights, to talk about human rights in Latin America. So, Steve, thank you again. BIDDLE: Thanks for having me. FASKIANOS: And I—yes. And I'd just encourage you all to learn about CFR paid internships for students and fellowships for professors at CFR.org/careers. Our tenured professor and our fellowship deadlines is at the end of October. I believe it's October 31, so there's still time. And you can follow us on X at CFR_Academic. Visit CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for research and analysis on global issues. Thank you all again for being with us today. (END)

Andrew Rogers and Damon Benning are joined by Michael Bruntz of Husker247.com to talk about executing the details for Matt Rhule and Staff Tune into Coffee & Cream from 7-10 am AM 590 ESPN Omaha each week day. You can also catch the final hour of the show in Lincoln on 101.5fm and 1280am. Hail Varsity Radio is brought to you by http://GoCurrency.com  Follow Andrew on social: Twitter: http://twitter.com/andrewrogerscc  Instagram: http://instagram.com/arog_sports  Follow Damon on twitter: http://twitter.com/damonbenning  Follow Hurrdat Sports on social: Twitter: http://twitter.com/hurrdatsports  Instagram: http://instagram.com/hurrdatsports  Tiktok: http://tiktok.com/hurrdatsports  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HurrdatSports About Coffee & Cream: Wake up with Andrew Rogers and Damon Benning on Hail Varsity Radio. Every morning from 7-10 a.m. on AM Radio Omaha on AM 590 ESPNCoffee and Cream stirs up the best news in Nebraska sports. Whether you're in the car, at the office, or on the sofa enjoying your favorite cup of joe, make sure you're listening to Coffee and Cream on Hail Varsity Radio. Hurrdat Sports is a digital production platform dedicated to the new wave of sports media. From podcasting to video interviews along with live events and entertainment, we're here to change how you consume sports. Find us online at Hurrdatsports.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

1917 was a difficult year for the Allied high command.  With the British and the French suffering from the exertions of the Somme and Verdun, the French army was in a state of mutiny on the Chemin des Dames,  and the British were bogged down in the hell of Passchendaele.The Spring of 1918 saw the British on the defensive around the city of St Quentin, in a series of eight heavily defended strongpoints called Redoubts.  On the 21st of March, the Germans launched Operation Michael, their last great offensive of the War.  Standing in the way of their advance on St Quentin were the redoubts.The fighting was brutal and casualties were high but the defence of the redoubts around St Quentin was remarkable.  The 30th Division, unwanted by the Corps Commander General Maxse, fought with distinction, nowhere more so in their heroic defence of Manchester Hill.  Led by the inspirational Lt. Col Wilfrith Elstob DSO MC,  the Manchesters held the hill to the last man, in an action that has gone down in military history as one of the great acts of defiance in the face of insurmountable odds. Support the podcast:https://www.patreon.com/footstepsofthefallenhttps://www.buymeacoffee.com/footstepsblog

In this episode, I look at the planning for Operation Michael, the German offensive on the Somme, in the spring of 1918. I talk about the first two days of the battle, 21 and 22 March 1918, looking at the different experiences of Third Army and Fifth Army.

Es ist das Jahr 1918. Der große Krieg wütet nach wie vor in Europa. Jüngst hat sich immerhin die Lage an der Ostfront deutlich verbessert, da man hier mit Russland, dem Königreich Rumänien und auch der Ukraine einen Friedens erzwingen konnte. Dies sollte die Lage an der Westfront deutlich verbessern, da nun freigewordene Kräfte nach Frankreich verlagert werden konnten. Gerade rechtzeitig, denn zu den französischen und britischen Streitkräften gesellen sich nun auch vermehrt Amerikaner. Der neue Chef der Heeresleitung, General Erich Ludendorff, will nun mit einer neuen Strategie den Sieg über Frankreich erzwingen. Der jahrelange zermürbende Stellungskrieg bei dem beide Seiten keinen Raum gewinnen konnten, soll durch die Frühjahrsoffensiven beendet werden. Operation Michael konnte bereits einige Erfolge bringen, wenngleich auf beiden Seiten jeweils mehr als 200.000 Tote zu beklagen waren. Nun, Ende Mai 1918, stehen die kaiserlichen Truppen kurz vor der Marne und bis Paris sind es keine 100 km mehr.

In this episode, I look at the unsuccessful attempt to break the British line around Arras on 28 March, codenamed Operation Mars. The I discuss the closing stages of Operation Michael, between 29 March and 6 April, when the Germans tried in vain to get closer to Amiens.

In this episode, I explain why the German offensive across the Somme in March 1918 began to stall after a week of hard fighting. We see how Third Army's line stabilised between Arras and Albert. Meanwhile, the arrival of French reserves meant that Fifth Army would be saved in the nick of time.

In this episode, I discuss the desperate fighting Fifth Army was involved in during the German onslaught across the Somme Canal on 23, 24 and 25 March 1918. We see how time and again, General Gough's troops fought until the were in danger of being overrun, before they fell back, looking for a new defensive position. All the time hoping that French troops would help them hold their line.

In this episode, I look at Third Army's difficult retreat across the 1916 battlefield between 23 and 25 March, in an effort to break contact with the Germans. In doing so, General Byng's troops reached the old trenches between Arras and Albert, where they could make a stand while they waited for reinforcements.

In this episode, I discuss the German attacks against Fifth Army's line across the Somme on 21 and 22 March 1918. We see how the Germans penetrated General Gough's line before the reinforcements could arrive. Then we see how many men were forced to abandon good positions, as the line started to crumble, and found themselves falling back to the Somme and Crozat Canals.

In this episode, I talk about the German attacks against Third Army's line across the Somme on 21 and 22 March 1918. We see how General Byng's troops held on until the reinforcements arrived. Then we see how many men were forced to abandon good positions, as the line started to crumble, and found themselves falling back to a poor defensive line.

In this episode, I discuss why the Germans were able to assemble a huge number of troops on the Western Front. Then we see how the British Expeditionary Force tried to prepare for the onslaught, while having to reduce the size of its divisions, while taking over more trenches. I then talk about the barrage the German barrage used and the tactics the infantry used.

In the spring of 1918, a young Scottish diplomat began to put together a plot that was intended to change the entire direction of the Great War, and save the Allies from defeat. As Robert Hamilton Bruce Lockhart began making his plans, Germany’s Operation Michael was threatening to break the western front open before American … Episode 193: The Plot to Bring Down the Soviet Revolution Read More » The post Episode 193: The Plot to Bring Down the Soviet Revolution first appeared on Historically Thinking.

Operation Michael was over, but what had it accomplished? Support the podcast on http://patreon.com/historyofthegreatwar where you can get access to special supporter only episodes. For a no strings attached donation: http://buymeacoffee.com/greatwar Sources A World Undone by G.J. Meyer Ring of Steel by Alexander Watson The First World War by John Keegan The Great War Perspectives on the First World War by Robert Cowley The Kaiser's Battle by Martin Middlebrook The Evolution of Strategic Thinking in World War I: A Case Study of the Second Battle of the Marne by Michael S. Neiberg Myth and Memory: Sir Douglas Haig and the Imposition of Allied Unified Command in March 1918 by Elizabeth Greenhalgh General Ferdinand Foch and Unified Allied Command in 1918 by Elizabeth Greenhalgh With Our Backs to the Wall: Victory and Defeat in 1918 by David Stevenson To The Last Man: Spring 1918 by Lyn MacDonald A World Remade by G.J. Meyer Pyrrhic Victory: French Strategy and Operations in the Great War by Robert A. Doughty Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As the rest of their alliance crumbled around them, Germany kicked off 1918 with Operation Michael-the first in a series of huge offensives designed to win the war. Desperate times call for desperate measures, but in the end exhaustion and futility ruled the day. The offensives backfired and resulted in a decisive military victory for the Allies. World War I was finally over.  Support the podcast: https://www.patreon.com/reflectinghistory Reflecting History on Twitter: @reflectinghist If you like the podcast and have 30 seconds to spare, consider leaving a review on iTunes/Apple Podcasts...It helps!

The fifth omnibus of Season 13, A Woman's Place, set in Folkestone, in the week, in 1918, when the Operation Michael came to an end. Written by Katie Hims Story-led by Sarah Daniels Directed by Jessica Dromgoole Sound: Martha Littlehailes Composer: Matthew Strachan Consultant Historian: Maggie Andrews.

The return of the major series tracking the development of the First World War, presented by Dan Snow. After 40 episodes looking at the war through interviews in the sound archives of the IWM and the BBC with those who experienced it, this week's five programmes explore the beginning of the end: the first months of 1918. The year didn't begin well for the British. After a few months of relative quiet over the winter, British soldiers experienced the massive onslaught of the first German Spring Offensive in March 1918. In the first programme, in interviews recorded by the BBC in 1964 and the Imperial War Museums in the 1980s, men recall their devastating experiences of shelling, retreat, serious injury and imprisonment in the wastelands of the Somme during Operation Michael. Programme 2 captures airmen's recollections of the loss of the last of the great flying aces at this point in the war. In April 1918 the Red Baron, Manfred von Richthofen, was shot down, and there's a tone of respect, of fair play even, which runs through the British officers' testimonies. The third programme looks at the state of British morale at this point in the war, and it's on issues like this that oral history reveals quite a different picture to contemporary accounts. The men talk openly and honestly about how they felt about their reluctance to serve as new drafts, or to return to the front if they'd been wounded: they now knew what they were up against. Programme 4 explores the impact of Spanish Flu through the recollections of both soldiers and the nurses that tended to them, and in the final programme, 'Enter America', Dan looks at the varied reactions to the long-awaited arrival of US troops in large numbers in the summer - from the French women throwing flowers at the men on parade, to the war-weary and unimpressed British soldiers. For German soldiers who talked to the BBC in 1964, it could mean only one thing: the end was coming.

Highlights Spring Offensive Spring offensive in the media | @01:50 Operation Michael Overview - Mike Shuster | @10:10 3rd Division, 6th Engineers grab a gun and go - Dr. Edward Lengel | @14:05 ‘Women’s Voices In Letters” exhibit - Lynn Heidelbaugh | @20:10 US Army Women’s Museum - Dr. Francoise Bonnell | @25:30 Book “Paws of Courage” - Nancy Furstinger | @31:45 Journey’s end director - Saul Dibb | @38:00 NC State 100C/100M project - Thomas Skolnicki, Benny Suggs and Commissioner Jerry Hester | @44:30 Centennial in Social Media - Katherine Akey | @53:20----more---- Opening Welcome to World War 1 centennial News - episode #64 - It’s about WW1 THEN - what was happening 100 years ago this week  - and it’s about WW1 NOW - news and updates about the centennial and the commemoration. Today is March 23rd, 2018 and our guests for this week include: Mike Shuster, from the great war project blog giving an overview of the big German Spring Offensive - Operation Michael Dr. Edward Lengel with a story of US Combat Engineers joining in the fight Lynn Heidelbaugh introducing the new women’s exhibit at the Smithsonian’s  National Postal Museum Dr. Francoise Bonnell discussing the history of women and the US Army Nancy Furstinger talking about man’s best friends in WWI -- and other critters... Saul Dibb the director of the feature film Journey’s End  talks about being in the trenches to make the film Thomas Skolnicki, Benny Suggs and US WWI Centennial Commissioner Jerry Hester, sharing the 100 Cities/100 Memorials project at NC State University Katherine Akey with the WW1 commemoration in social media A great lineup of guest for WW1 Centennial News -- a weekly podcast brought to you by the U.S. World War I Centennial Commission, the Pritzker Military Museum and Library and the Starr foundation. I’m Theo Mayer - the Chief Technologist for the Commission and your host. Welcome to the show. Link: https://open.spotify.com/show/4xrhXYSHPEtG1CqMXEJj67 [MUSIC] Preface Every week as we prepare the podcast, we pour through the publications that came out that week 100 years ago and look for themes, trends and what is being talked about. This week, we were struck with what WASN’T being talked about - especially in government related media like the Official Bulletin - the government’s daily war gazette - published for the President by George Creel’s Committee on Public Information or the American Expeditionary Forces’ weekly Stars and Stripes newspaper. This is the week, on March 21st, that the Germans slammed down their hammer with the first phase of their spring offensive.   With that as a setup, let’s jump into our Centennial Time Machine and roll back 100 years to the week that launched the definitive 6 months of DO or DIE -  in the War that Changed the World! World War One THEN 100 Year Ago This Week It’s the third week of March, 1918 And to review the situation once again, Even before the Brest-Litovsk Treaty earlier this month, which successfully wraps up the war on Eastern Front for the Germans - the front collapsing has been freeing up massive resources of men, arms and munitions which are now being re-deployed to the Western Front. Germany's General Erich Ludendorff plans a massive spring offensive designed to separate the British and French armies and force a surrender which the Germans feel pressure to do -  before the American troops can affect the outcome. The offensive is code named Operation Michael, and unbeknownst to the allies is scheduled for March 21st., 1918. Though the Allies could have   been more prepared, they surely were not surprised. Most historians agree that the only surprise is the specific day and the specific location for the offensive’s launch. In fact,  by mid-February 1918, the buildup of both men and heavy artillery on the German side had become too large to dismiss any doubt of a coming attack. In a letter from Sir Douglas Haig, Commander in Chief of the British Armies, written after the fact, he describes aerial operations revealing expanded ammunition and supply dumps all along the Western Front, but with a clear buildup in the Arras sector, leading Haig to believe that this is the most probable place for a German offensive to take place. By some accounts, the actual date of Operation Michael is uncovered by British intelligence a few days before the fact. Unfortunately, defenses are still being prepared on March 21st. Even more unfortunately, General Haig has decided to strengthen his left wing at the expense of his right, and his right wing is exactly where the full force of the German hammer comes down.   According to historian Robert Doughty, French intelligence also discovers a high probability of a German attack at Arras, but the lack of a overarching structure connecting the two armies hampers collaboration. Meanwhile the US Government seems to be focusing its public with misdirection. SOUND EFFECT: Dateline Monday March 18, 1918 As the offensive encroaches - Here is a sampling of headlines in the Official Bulletin: More than 12 Billion Dollars now in War risk insurance…. Woman on Sub teaches men how to cook under water Norway protests to german people over convoy sinking Bakers must bake VICTORY bread or close shop after March 20 The next day the war department briefs the press causing the NY TImes to print an article doubting the offensive is imminent. [SOUND EFFECT] Dateline Tuesday March 19, 1918 A headline in the NY times reads: Offensive in west foe’s last Resort? Washington believes it won’t be delivered unless strategy compels it. Massing of more enemy troops is impracticable. And the article reads: Doubt that the German military leaders will launch their offensive in the west unless compelled by the strategy of the situation to do so,  is expressed in the weekly statement issued by the war Department today, reviewing military operations of the last week. Meanwhile, the next day In the Official Bulletin we find headlines that include: No icing on this year’s Hot Cross Buns for good Friday National Conference called to discuss plans for Americanization of Aliens Live day-old chicks may be sent by mail on 72-hour journeys Export of Oleomargarine to be licensed to Canada And still nothing about the impending offensive! But that is not true for the public press! In contrast to the government media, the NY Times is all over the start of the German spring offensive! Dateline March 21, 1918 The headline in the NY times reads Concentrated assault made to pinch British out of their front line intense struggle ensues The battle spreads north and south and is still continuing with great fury Shell storm over lines Wide area back of British front is swept by German missiles And the story reads: The Germans this afternoon launched a heavy attack against British lines over a wide front in and near the Cambrai sector, and the assault bears all the earmarks of being the beginning of the enemy’s much heralded grand offensive. The attack was preceded by a heavy bombardment from guns of all calibers and the duel between the opposing heavy batteries has been rocking the countryside for hours. [ Sound Effect ] Another Headline Reads Washington still doubtful on drive. American officers wait for full scope of German move to develop. However, the next day on March 22nd, a reporter name Philip Gibbs files a cable report to the NY TIMES that is, in retrospect, the most accurate description in this dynamic moment. Dateline March 22, 1918 The headline in the New York Times reads Germans vast superiority in Guns is backed by 50 divisions of men One cannon for every 12 yards of front One British division fought six near St.  Quentin The enemy flung the full weight of his great army against the British yesterday. Nearly 40 divisions are identified and it is certain that as many as 50 must be engaged. In proportion of men, the British are much outnumbered, therefore the obstinacy of the resistance of the troops is to be admired. Nine German divisions were hurled against three British at one part of the line, and eight against two at another. All the storm troops, including the guards, were in brand-new uniforms. They advanced in dense masses and never faltered until shattered by machine gun fire. As far as I can find, the enemy introduced no new frightfullness, no tanks, and no specially invented gas, but instead, relied on the power of his artillery and the weight of his infantry assault. The supporting waves advanced over the bodies of the dead and wounded. The German commanders were ruthless in the sacrifice of life, in the hope of overwhelming the defense by the sheer weight of numbers. And that is how the media ran - this week 100 years ago - when the German Spring Offensive launches -  in the war the changed the world We have put the links to some of our research in the podcast notes for you to explore. Links:https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1918/03/19/102677903.pdf https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1918/03/20/102678449.pdf https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1918/03/22/102679611.pdf https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1918/03/22/102679611.pdf https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1918/03/22/102679618.pdf https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1918/03/22/102679621.pdf https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1918/03/23/102680289.pdf https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1918/03/23/102680281.pdf https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1918/03/23/102680343.pdf https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1918/03/24/121603161.pdf https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1918/03/24/121603157.pdf https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1918/03/24/121603160.pdf https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1918/03/24/121603155.pdf https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1918/03/24/121603154.pdf https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1918/03/24/121603152.pdf https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1918/03/24/121603188.pdf https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1918/03/24/121603187.pdf https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1918/03/24/121603659.pdfhttps://www.britannica.com/biography/Erich-Ludendorff http://www.remembrancetrails-northernfrance.com/history/battles/kaiserschlacht-the-german-spring-offensive-of-1918.html https://www.warmuseum.ca/firstworldwar/history/people/generals/sir-arthur-currie/ https://search-proquest-com.proxygw.wrlc.org/docview/304508344/23D471EBD41649A9PQ/8?accountid=11243 http://www.longlongtrail.co.uk/battles/british-field-commanders-despatches/sir-douglas-haigs-sixth-despatch-german-spring-offensives-1918/ https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-first-world-war-a-very-short-introduction-9780199205592?cc=us&lang=en& https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/gwu/reader.action?docID=3300066&ppg=420 [SOUND EFFECT] Great War Project That brings us to Great War project with Mike Shuster - former NPR correspondent and curator for the Great War project Blog…. Mike: We have been looking at this moment through the lens of press reports - and your post this week offers a great congealing overview of the first days of the spring offensive. What your headline Mike? [MIKE POST] Mike Shuster from the Great War Project blog. LINK: http://greatwarproject.org/2018/03/18/last-chance-for-both-sides-as-germany-attacks/ America Emerges: Military Stories from WW1 No w for this  week’s segment of America Emerges: Military Stories from WWI with Dr. Edward Lengel. Ed: Your story this week is about a 3rd division regimen of engineers. When I read it, it really struck me as a great example of what the Americans brought to the bone tired, desperate and war weary allies. It was more than bodies and equipment - it was also a very special, almost naive but very recognizable spirit.   [ED LENGEL] [MUSIC TRANSITION] [Ed, what will you be telling us about next week?] Dr. Edward Lengel is an American military historian, author, and our segment host for America Emerges: Military Stories from WWI. There are links in the podcast notes to Ed’s post - and I recommend that you take a look at it. The pictures Ed included are memorable.   Links:http://www.edwardlengel.com/easter-sunday-1918-american-engineers-combat/ https://www.facebook.com/EdwardLengelAuthor/ http://www.edwardlengel.com/about/ [SOUND EFFECT] The Great War Channel If you’d like to see videos about WWI, we suggest our friends at the Great War Channel on Youtube. This week’s new episodes include:   Allied Unified Command on the Horizon King George V in WW1 Inside the German A7V WW1 Tank See their videos by searching for “the great war” on youtube or following the link in the podcast notes! Link:https://www.youtube.com/user/TheGreatWar World War One NOW It is time to fast forward into the present with WW1 Centennial News NOW - [SOUND EFFECT] This part of the podcast isn’t about the past - it is about NOW and there is a lot going on to commemorate the centennial of the War that changed the world! Remembering Veterans Women’s Voices in Letters Lynn Heidelbaugh This week for remembering veterans and for Women’s History Month - we are highlighting a special exhibit:  In Her Words: Women's Duty and Service in World War I Which is on view at the Smithsonian’s     National Postal Museum. We’re joined by Lynn Heidelbaugh, the Curator for the exhibit.   Lynn - Nice to have you back to the Podcast! [greetings] [With families being separated and with more and more men sent to training camps and abroad-- is there an estimation of how much mail was being sent during WW1?] [An on-going subject on the show is new roles and jobs women were taking on during the war-- did the postal service also see women joining its ranks at that time? ] [Lynn - let’s talk a bit about the exhibit-- what inspired it, and how does it differ from your other WW1 letters exhibit, My Fellow Soldiers ] [Is there one particular or special women’s letter that you’d like to highlight ?] [goodbyes] Lynn Heidelbaugh is a Curator at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum. Learn more about their WW1 exhibits by following the links in the podcast notes. Link: https://postalmuseum.si.edu/In-Her-Words/index.html https://postalmuseum.si.edu/MyFellowSoldiers/index.html US Army Women's Museum Now Sticking with museums and continuing our focus on Women’s History Month we are joined by Dr. Francoise Bonnell, the director of the U.S. Army Women's Museum at Fort Lee, Virginia. She is an author and a recognized authority in women’s military history. Dr. Bonnell! Welcome, [greetings] [Dr. Bonnell, I’d like to start by asking you about the U.S. Army Women’s Museum. can you give us a quick overview?] [I know we need to get to WWI but I was struck by something I read on your website. It states that the museum covers the service of Army women from 1775 to the present -  well 1775 is when the colonies kicked off the Revolutionary war against England’s King George - That is pre-United States --- so what was the role of women in our colonial 1775 army?] [OK - on to WWI - Dr. Bonnell - How did women affect the army in WWI and how did their service affect womanhood?] [Is there a continuing legacy of WW1 for women in the army today?] [Does the museum have any WWI centennial commemoration plans?] Dr. Francoise Bonnell is the director of the U.S. Army Women's Museum at Fort Lee, Virginia. Learn more about the museum and the legacy of women’s service in the Army by visiting the link in the podcast notes. Links: http://www.awm.lee.army.mil/about/more_than_a_museum/ Paws of Courage Men served in WWI and as we have been exploring this month - Women served in WWI, but in addition to people - over 16 million animals were mobilized for the war effort. We’ve covered these stories in the past - horses, mules, pigeons, the lion cubs Whiskey and Soda, the elephants of the Berlin Zoo and last weeks the trench rats of the Chemin de Dames…  Today we’re joined by Nancy Furstinger (FUR-stinger), an animal author -- whose book “Paws of Courage” highlights the tales of our heroic canines. Welcome, Nancy! [greetings] [Nancy, to start -- can you give us an overview of the various roles Dogs played in the Armed Forces during WW1?] [Everyone’s been talking about Sgt. Stubby -- and of course, next week he premieres as the star of an animated feature film! What other famous wartime canines are there from WWI?] [Your book covers dogs in service -- and as we mentioned in the opening, there were a lot of different animals that served in WWI. from your research - what strikes you as the most interesting?] [goodbyes/thanks] Nancy Furstinger is the author of over 100 books - and many about her life’s passion - animals. Learn more about Nancy, her writings and the service of animals by following the links in the podcast notes. Links:http://www.nancyfurstinger.com/ http://www.worldwar1centennial.org/index.php/brookeusa-home-page.html http://www.worldwar1centennial.org/index.php/communicate/press-media/wwi-centennial-news/3917-the-animals-that-helped-win-world-war-i.html http://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/how-did-animals-even-slugs-serve-world-war-i https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/15-animals-that-went-to-war Spotlight in the Media Journey’s End Last week in Spotlight on the media we introduced you to a WWI feature film that premiered over the weekend in both New York and Los Angeles. Journey’s End is a powerful film about a group of British soldiers that rotated into the front line trenches - just about exactly 100 years ago this week, at the cusp of the anticipated great German offensive. I had a chance to catch up with the film’s Director, Saul Dibb in a call to London. Welcome, Saul! [Saul - Journey's end is a very intimate film - about a very intimate subject - men, mortality and fear - Can you give us a quick overview of the story? ] [Journey's End was a stage play, in fact a very good stage play,  before you made it into a film - so it was conceptualized to happen on the confines of a stage - with a story that plays out largely in the confines of a trench system - how did that affect your approach?] [The art direction, cinematography, performance and obviously the script are all amazing - as the director - what your biggest challenge in bringing this all together.] [Saul - You've made several period films - so authenticity is always a key element - how did you go about "getting it right" for Journey's end?]   Saul Dibb is the director of the feature film Journey’s End, now in limited release in us theaters across the country. We put links in the podcast notes for both the trailer and the theater show listing - or Google Journey’s End - I you are interested in what this first week of spring was like for the Tommies in the trenches in 1918  - This fine film will take you there. links:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLpyaLNfudY http://www.journeysendthefilm.com/watch/movies/journeys-end-622437?gwiCampaign=official+site_official+site_2018-01-11_7876&gwi_campaign=Official+Site&lead_partner_id=360&partner_asset_id=7876&version=2#theater-list 100 Cities 100 Memorials Moving on to our 100 Cities / 100 Memorials segment about the $200,000 matching grant challenge to rescue and focus on our local WWI memorials. This week we are profiling the Memorial Bell Tower project at NC State University in raleigh, North Carolina. With us tell us about their project are Thomas Skolnicki [SKOAL-nick-ee], A veteran and the Landscape Architect for the University -- retired US navy Rear Admiral  -- Benny Suggs, the director of NC State's Alumni Association and US Air Force Veteran, World War One Centennial Commissioner Jerry Hester, and all three men are alumni of the school! Welcome gentlemen! [greetings] [Let me start with a courtesy - Commissioner Hester - We have not had the pleasure of your presence on the Podcast before - I just want to welcome you to the show.] [My first questions is to you Tom - The North Carolina State University Bell Tower is a very unusual building with an interesting history. It started out as a low 16 foot ww1 memorial - a cornerstone monument known as the shrine room but, like a tree it started to grow! For decades! Up to 115 feet tall. Can you tell us the story?] [Commissioner Hester - you are an alumni of the University - did you encourage them to participate in the 100 Cities / 100 Memorials Project - or did you learn about their participation after?] [Benny - this is our first “Spring of 2018” episode and appropriately, for your restoration project is adding a poppy beds to the tower. Can you tell us about that and the dedication plans?] [Commissioner - You have been promoting poppy plantings all over the state - even along the highways - I understand it was pretty spectacular last year.] Thomas Skolnicki is the University Landscape Architect at NC State University, Benny Suggs is the director of NC State's Alumni Association, and Jerry Hester is a World War One Centennial Commissioner. Learn more about the 100 Cities/100 Memorials program at the link in the podcast notes or by going to ww1cc.org/100Memorials Link: www.ww1cc.org/100cities [SOUND EFFECT] The Buzz And that brings us to the buzz - the centennial of WW1 this week in social media with Katherine Akey - Katherine, what do you have for us this week? St. Patrick’s Day and Literacy Hi Theo -- we celebrated St Patrick’s Day this past weekend, and in honor of that I wanted to share two quick articles about the Irish and Irish Americans of WW1 that we shared on Facebook this past week. The first comes from NPR and tells the story of a torpedoed Irish ship and the cargo aboard that saved its sailors lives. The ship was making its way across the Irish Sea, a favored hunting ground for German uboats, when it was struck by a torpedo and split in two. As the ship began to sank, sucking the sailors down into the water with it, the cargo floated up to the surface -- barrels and barrels of the iconic Irish stout, Guinness. Holding on to the Guinness, the sailors drifted in the sea and were rescued a few hours later. Read the full story at the link in the notes. To wrap up St Patrick’s Day, head to Saratogian News where they recently published an article about the experience of an Irish American regiment, a part of the 42nd Rainbow Division, during the St Patrick’s Day of 1918. They celebrated the holiday just after having experienced some heavy losses at the hand of the German’s and their artillery. Read about their valiant efforts under intense German fire, and their celebration of the holiday, at the link in the podcast notes. Finally for the week, head over to Mental Floss to take a WW1 era literacy test. With a rapidly growing armed forces, drawn from all corners of the country and all segments of the population, officials and army leaders saw indications of life in the early 20th century: nutrition and literacy in this cross-section of America were not at the levels they had expected. Though reading and writing might are not necessarily the most important requirement for trench warfare -- and indeed several combatants, including Russia, Italy and Turkey had shockingly low rates of literacy in their ranks-- the U.S. Army became increasingly concerned with whether or not its soldiers were literate as the war picked up pace. Thousands of American soldiers couldn't read printed directions on basic military tasks -- posing a potentially dangerous problem for the fledgling force. The Army didn't implement its first major literacy program until the 1940s, but it did use a battery of yes or no questions to test literacy as new recruits came in. Some of the questions are quite simple, like “is coal white?” but they escalate in complexity to ones like “Are members of the family usually regarded as guests” and “Are loquacious and voluble opposite in meaning?” You can take the test yourself, and read more about the pitfalls of this first literacy battery, by visiting the link in the notes. That’s it for this week in the Buzz. Link:https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/03/17/594440438/for-st-patricks-day-a-true-tale-of-8-sailors-saved-by-guinness?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20180317 http://www.saratogian.com/article/ST/20180317/NEWS/180319837 http://mentalfloss.com/article/535841/would-you-be-able-pass-world-war-i-military-literary-test Outro And that is also it for this week’s episode of WW1 Centennial News. Thank you for listening. We also want to thank our guests... Dr. Edward Lengel, Military historian and author Mike Shuster, Curator for the great war project blog Lynn Heidelbaugh, curator at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum Dr. Francoise Bonnell, Director of the U.S. Army Women's Museum at Fort Lee, Virginia Nancy Furstinger, animal lover, and author about animals Saul Dibb. director of the feature film Journey’s End Thomas Skolnicki, Benny Suggs and WW1 Centennial Commissioner Jerry Hester, from the 100 Cities/100 Memorials project at NC State University Katherine Akey, the commission’s social media director and line producer for the podcast A shout out to Eric Maar as well as our intern John Morreale for their great research assistance. And I am Theo Mayer - your host. The US World War One Centennial Commission was created by Congress to honor, commemorate and educate about WW1. Our programs are to-- inspire a national conversation and awareness about WW1; Including this podcast! We are bringing the lessons of the 100 years ago into today's classrooms; We are helping to restore WW1 memorials in communities of all sizes across our country; and of course we are building America’s National WW1 Memorial in Washington DC. We want to thank commission’s founding sponsor the Pritzker Military Museum and Library as well as the Starr foundation for their support. The podcast can be found on our website at ww1cc.org/cn   on  iTunes, Google Play, TuneIn, Podbean, Stitcher - Radio on Demand --- or using your smart speaker.. Just say “Play W W One Centennial News Podcast” and we are excited to announce - as of this week - you can listen to us on Spotify. Search ww1 Centennial News. Our twitter and instagram handles are both @ww1cc and we are on facebook @ww1centennial. Thank you for joining us. And don’t forget to share the stories you are hearing here today about the war that changed the world! [music] So long! Next week: 1418 now join us for an interview 100c/100m in Appleton WI Women's Overseas Service League Idaho WW1 Commission

Highlights Feb. ‘18 overview - Ed Lengel, Katherine Akey, Theo Mayer | @01:40 War In The Sky 1918 preview - RG Head | @11:20 Fighting in Russia - Mike Shuster | @18:20 Harlem’s Rattlers - Dr. Jeffrey Sammons | @22:40 A Century in the Making - The maquette arrives in DC | @30:00 Speaking WWI - Attaboy! | @35:40 Nurse Josephine Heffernan - Dr. Marjorie DesRosier | @37:30 100C/100M Beaverton Michigan - Ed Rachwitz & Scott Govitz | @43:25 WWI War Tech - Gas Masks | @47:55 Articles & Posts - Dazzle Camo & S.S. Tuscania sinks | @49:45 The Buzz - WWI Social Media - Katherine Akey | @51:55----more---- Opening Welcome to World War 1 centennial News - episode #57 - It’s about WW1 THEN - what was happening 100 years ago this week  - and it’s about WW1 NOW - news and updates about the centennial and the commemoration. Today is February 2nd, 2018 and our guests for this week include: Dr. Edward Lengel, in our February 1918 overview RG Head, with a full year look at the War in the Sky Mike Shuster, from the great war project blog looking at the chaotic situation in Russia Dr. Jeffrey Sammons speaking about the Harlem Rattlers and the African American soldiers’ experience in WWI Dr. Marjorie DesRosier telling us about nurse Josephine Heffernan Ed Rachwitz and Scott Govitz, from the 100 Cities/100 Memorials project in Beaverton, Michigan Katherine Akey, with some selections from the centennial of WWI in social media All that and more --- this week -- on WW1 Centennial News -- which is brought to you by the U.S. World War I Centennial Commission, the Pritzker Military Museum and Library and the Starr foundation. I’m Theo Mayer - the Chief Technologist for the Commission and your host. Welcome to the show. [MUSIC] NEW - Monthly Preview Roundtable Overview Chat with Ed, Katherine and Theo THEO Before we jump into our wayback machine and look at 100 years ago this week, we are going to try something new. You know we have editorial meetings twice a week where we define the content for each week’s show. For the history section - which is one of the most popular parts of the podcast - we get into these great conversations about “what was really going on 100 years ago this week”. We look at the politics, the Official bulletin, the NY times, history book references and of course we have our own little band of experts and researchers - It occurs to us that having a short version of one of these conversations -- in front of YOU at the top of each month…  might be a great way to provide context and overview. In other words  - from an overview perspective and of course with 20/20 hindsight - what is the next month all about in the War the changed the world? - and what are the themes we are going to hear about this coming month… So the other day, Dr. Ed Lengel, Katherine Akey and I sat down (virtually of course - Ed was in Dublin, Katherine in DC and I am in LA) --- and we talked about February 1918 - Here is how it went…. [MUSIC TRANSITION] Ed… it seems like the big theme in February is all about troop movements and preparation - The Americans to Europe and prepping for engaging the enemy - the Germans from the eastern front - leaving Russia for the western front and prepping for a knock-out spring offensive… so what are some of the specifics? ED [ED Lay out the basic outlines and punctuate with the “topic headers” of some specifics - -America sending ever larger numbers of troops over - New rounds of training as arriving divisions get embedded with British and French troops -Loss of the tuscania -German armistice and peace with Russia withdraw from the Eastern front, leave Russia and red/white armies to their internal divisions - While Germans can concentrate forces to counter American support -Germans want to “school” fresh US troops, and want US Media to report on it; Germans being very strategic with their aggression [KATHERINE] -month dramatic climax with the German COUNTER Gas attack on 1st division Ansauville near Metz/Nancy Feb 26/27th THEO TRANSITION Katherine you came up with some great references and article that illustrate Ed’s points - can you give us some of the datelines, headlines and gist of some of these? NOTE: Katherine - based on the articles you are picking - If I know what they are - we might break up ed section with references rather than having them all at the end. -French and British (publically) very optimistic about outlook, skeptical of the strength of German attack on west Links:https://history.army.mil/documents/wwi/ansau/ansac.htm https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1918/01/23/102660120.pdf https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1918/01/23/102660119.pdf https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1918/01/30/102662967.pdf https://www.facebook.com/EdwardLengelAuthor/ http://www.edwardlengel.com/about/ War in the Sky For our War In The Sky segment, we are joined today by RG Head, retired Air Force Brigadier General, former fighter pilot, military historian, and author Welcome RG [greet one another] [RG - thank for joining us again. I wanted to bring you on to help us with an overview of the War in The Sky for 1918. Of course it has to be in context of the other key events of the year, but what should we expect for 1918 in the the War in the Sky?] RG MAJOR AIR EVENTS OF WORLD WAR I IN 1918 1918 opened gloomily for the Allies. The aerial war in 1917 had introduced massed fighter tactics, close air support of ground forces and some strategic bombing. For the Allies, their many concentrated 1917 offensives failed and resulted in high losses on the ground and in the air. The Allies were on the defensive. On the other hand, Germany instituted "The Amerika Plan," which featured five major offensives in an attempt to win the war before the Americans can make a meaningful contribution. Part of this plan was for the German Air Force to double its size in eight months in the hope of winning back air superiority, which it lost in the months after "Bloody April" 1917. In February, the German Air Service forms two more Fighter Wings based on the success of Manfred von Richthofen's Jagdgeschwader I. In late February, the German Army launches Operation Michael against the British, the first of the major offensives in the West, advancing 30 miles in eight days. The Germans mass 750 aircraft against the English 580, including 38 ground attack squadrons. The air battle is one-sided: the British lost 478 aircraft in 10 days, and by April 29 had lost 1,302. Britain was only saved by their high production rate of aircraft and pilots. On March 3, The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk certified the Russian surrender, and the Germans initiate a massive transfer of hundreds of thousands of soldiers and aircraft from the Eastern to the Western Front. On the first of April, Britain forms the Royal Air Force, the first independent air arm of any nation. The RAF also includes an Independent Air Force performing the first strategic bombing missions on a large scale. The same day in April, German Sergeant Weimar is the first combat pilot to escape his aircraft using a parachute. The British would not issue parachutes to its aviators until September 1918. In the Spring, the major achievement in air operations must be the organization, training and combat performance of the US Air Service. From its status in April 1917 of only 65 officers and 1,100 men, the Air Service grew to 7,700 officers, 51,000 men, with over 75 percent of them deployed to France, supporting 45 fighting squadrons. In June and July, the Germans launch two offensives for the Marne River, the last of their five 1918 desperate attacks. The American Expeditionary Force (AEF) contributes to the Allied victory at Chateau-Thierry in preventing the Germany Army from crossing the river. September is the costliest month of the war for the Allied Air Forces as they lose 580 aircraft to the Germans 107 (over a 5:1 ratio). The US Air Service makes its first big contribution. The German Air Force, led by 80 fighter squadrons, is the only force that significantly impacts the Allies, making the month forever known as "Black September." On the 12th of September the Americans take the offensive in the Battle of St-Mihiel, a distinctly US operation involving seven Army divisions and 665,000 men. Brigadier General Billy Mitchell assembles a force of over 1,400 Allied aircraft, the largest air operation in history, and the Americans are victorious. On the 26th of September, Americans began their most important battle of the war, the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. With over 1,200,000 men we break through the Hindenberg Line, supported by the US Army Air Service.    Finally, the Armistice comes on the 11th of November. [thanks/goodbyes] Thank you RG RG Head, Retired Air Force brigadier general, fighter pilot, military historian and author. His latest book is a biography of Oswald Boelcke, often referred to as the father of combat aviation. RG Head is also the curator a comprehensive - nearly day-by-day “War in the Sky” timeline on the Commission website at ww1cc.org/warinthesky - all lower case - one word. We have links to the book, timeline and RG’s facebook page in the podcast notes Link: https://www.facebook.com/rg.head/ www.ww1cc.org/warinthesky https://www.amazon.com/RG-Head/e/B01M59UA64 [SOUND EFFECT] Great War Project Now on to the Great War project with Mike Shuster - former NPR correspondent and curator for the Great War project Blog…. Mike: So the Russians stopped fighting the German - but the Russians now  sure seem to be fighting each other! Or the Germans are still fighting them - or something - What’s the story Mike? [MIKE POST] Mike Shuster from the Great War Project blog. LINK: http://greatwarproject.org/2018/01/28/lenin-declares-establishment-of-soviet-union/ [SOUND EFFECT] The Great War Channel Here are this week’s new videos our friends at  “The Great War Channel” on Youtube. One is about Russia’s internal wars - Civil War in Finland and Ukraine And - Trenches at 10,000 feet - Fighting on Mount Lagazuoi And Finally  British Special Forces Follow the link in the podcast notes or search for “the great war” on youtube. Link: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheGreatWar World War One NOW It is time to fast forward into the present with WW1 Centennial News NOW - [SOUND EFFECT] this section is not about history, but rather - it explores what is happening NOW to commemorate the centennial of the War that changed the world! Remembering Veterans DONE February is African American History month - so over the next few weeks we will be bringing you a series of guests and stories that highlight the African American experience in WWI. It is an important, complex and sometimes horrific story of brave patriots fighting not only a war, but also a very racist culture. Interview with Dr. Sammons We will start this week in our Remembering Veterans section with Dr. Jeffrey Sammons, historian, professor of history at NYU, member of the commission’s history advisory board and co-author of the book Harlem's Rattlers and the Great War: The Undaunted 369th Regiment and the African American Quest for Equality. Welcome, [Dr. Sammons] [greetings] [Dr.  Sammons - The Harlem rattlers - also known widely as the Harlem Hellfighters are famous as a unit and a regimental band, but who they actually were and what they did is much less known  - Can you give us an overview?] [Dr. Sammons - as we noted at the top of the show - Pershing insisted, for the most part, on troop deployment under American command - but the 369th was under French command operationally until July 1918. Tell us about that please…] [So when they fighting stopped “over there”, there was another big struggle as these men came home. What kind of situation did the African American soldiers and heroes of WW1 come home to?] [goodbyes] Dr. Jeffrey Sammons is a historian, professor, author and Historical Advisor to the WW1 Centennial Commission. Link:https://www.pritzkermilitary.org/whats_on/pritzker-military-presents/jeffrey-sammons-harlems-rattlers-and-great-war/ http://www.worldwar1centennial.org/index.php/about/the-commission/advisory-boards/historical-advisory-board.html A century in the making - The Maquette Arrives Now for: A century in the making - the story of America’s WW1 Memorial in Washington DC. In this segment we take you on an insider’s journey that explores this grand undertaking, and the people behind it. This week the Maquette arrived in Washington DC. Sabin Howard, the project’s sculptor, has spent month in New Zealand working with the WETA Workshop to create this first 9 foot long realization of the planned ginormous bronze… late last week he packed it up and shipped it to Washington! (sound from sabin footage) This past Wednesday on January 31st, it arrived on the commission’s doorstep! (more sound) And the team got a first look!!! Including US WWI Centennial Commission Chair Terry Hamby... (first reactions) around the middle of the month - The machete will be presented to and reviewed by Washington’s Commission of Fine Arts - - they one of the governing and approval bodies for any project in Washington DC… After their review, the Maquette will be introduced to the nation on a national television show to be announced shortly. Though we can’t show it to you yet, this is a podcast so we have been able to give you a sneak listen to the maquette arriving in Washington DC! We are going to continue to bring you an insider’s view with stories about the epic undertaking to create America’s WWI memorial in our nation’s capital. Learn more at ww1cc.org/memorial Link: www.ww1cc.org/memorial [SOUND EFFECT] Speaking WW1 And now for our feature “Speaking World War 1” - Where we explore the words & phrases that are rooted in the war  --- We have told you part of this story before - On the morning of July 4th in 1917, the mounted band of the French Republican Guard arrived with a large crowd before the residence in Paris of the recently arrived Gen. John J. Pershing. He came to the window when he heard the “Star Spangled Banner,” and the crowd respectfully removed their hats for the American general. That morning - Gen Pershing and the men of the 16th infantry marched down the streets of Paris, celebrating the renewed Franco-American allegiance. Well - turns out that a French newspaper L’Intransigent reported that, A cry was heard to-day by Parisians who acclaimed Gen. Pershing and his men. It was "Atta boy! atta boy! The phrase is a simple popular contraction for 'That's the boy!' which means 'Here is the man for the situation!" and on our fighting front it soon became a war cry for the American troops. 'Atta boy !' So Soon the phrase became synonymous with the American Troops. In fact, in 1918, according to the Baltimore Evening Sun , the British took a real liking to the phrase after overhearing it being shouted by American soldiers during a baseball game. The paper reported that - “All the London papers have taken it up, with the result that in London, at least, the Americans are now almost unanimously called "Attaboys." But ultimately - Doughboys won out! Attaboy - this week’s phrase for speaking WWI - See the podcast notes to learn more! link: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc2.ark:/13960/t9t156s17 [SOUND EFFECT] Spotlight in the Media For our Spotlight in the Media this week- We have a story about an episode from a French documentary television program called “13h15”. The episode is about an American Immigrant nurse named Josephine Heffernan, who served in France during WW1. We’re pleased to be joined by Dr. Marjorie DesRosier, who did much of the research on nurse Josephine. Dr. DesRosier is an international nurse historian and independent scholar specializing in the early history of American Red Cross nursing and nursing challenges of the Great War era in the U.S. and Europe. She, herself is also a Registered Nurse and former clinical professor from the University of Washington School of Nursing, in Seattle. Welcome, Dr. DesRosier [greetings] [DesRosier, can you start by telling us a bit about Josephine? Who was she, and how did she end up in France as a nurse?] [Would you tell us the story about the bracelet?] [Are there other stories like Josephine’s-- where you have been able to connect with descendents of the nurses who served in the war?] [Are you working on any other project about WWI nurses?] [Thank you so much for being here!] [goodbyes] Dr. DesRosier is an international nurse historian, independent scholar and registered nurse  - Follow the link in the podcast notes to learn more about nurse Josephine Heffernan. Link:https://www.francetvinfo.fr/replay-magazine/france-2/13h15/13h15-du-dimanche-7-janvier-2018_2539393.html https://www.rte.ie/news/2017/1101/916742-bracelet/ [SOUND EFFECT] 100 Cities/100 Memorials Moving on to our 100 Cities / 100 Memorials segment about the $200,000 matching grant challenge to rescue and focus on our local WWI memorials. This week we are profiling The Survivor' WWI War Monument in Beaverton, Michigan  -- a 100 Cities/100 Memorials round 1 awardee. With us tell us about the project are Ed Rachwitz, member of the Gladwin County American Legion Post 171, and  Scott Govitz, former Beaverton Mayor and current Chair of the Beaverton Downtown Development Authority. Both serve on the Beaverton WW1 Memorial Committee. Welcome gentlemen [The WWI memorial in Beaverton is really striking - as you might guess, I have seen literally hundreds of WWI memorials - and this one is truly unique… it is a really beautiful stone bas-relief sculpture - and it shows both a proud doughboy and the war’s devastation - Since this is an audio program - Can you describe it for our listening audience.] [The artist was a prewar german immigrant named Helmut von Zengen - tells us a bit about him please!] [So apparently some years ago, in a well intentioned but misguided attempt to repair the memorial,  the repair actually caused some damage. That’s an important story to share. Can you tell us about that?] [What are your rededication plans?] Thank you for coming in today.. If you are anywhere near or traveling near Beaverton - take a stop at this memorial. It is unique, it is dramatic and it is worth seeing. [goodbyes] Ed Rachwitz and Scott Govitz serve on the Beaverton. michigan WW1 Memorial Committee. Learn more about the 100 Cities/100 Memorials program by visiting the link at the podcast notes. Link: www.ww1cc.org/100cities WW1 War Tech This week for, WW1 War Tech we are looking at gas masks As we mentioned at the top of the show, gas was one of the most horrific parts of the WW1 arsenal. It was terrifying-- both physically, and psychologically devastating. Developing a means of protecting soldiers from gas’s devastation was critical. In 1915, the allied forces were caught off guard by the first chlorine gas attack at the Battle of Ypres; many suffocated -- and the Soldiers found a quick battlefield remedy: holding a urine soaked cloth to their face to counteract the chlorine. John Scott Haldane, a scottish medical researcher, immediately undertook the task of developing a gas mask for the allies. Haldane had worked on similar problems before for the mining industry -- in fact - you know his work already - he was the man who came up with the idea of using canaries and other small animals in coal mines to detect odorless, deadly gases. His first invention, called the Black Veil respirator, was simply pads of cotton wrapped in gauze and soaked in a chemical solution. This was a start, but with the increasing density and frequency of gas attacks the technology needed to adapt. And so the box respirator was developed. This turned into an arms race over the course of the war. New and different gases were constantly developed and each demanded new and different kind of protective masks. We’ll explore this subject further in the coming months, but right now - you can learn more about Haldane and his development of the first gas mask by following the link in the podcast notes. Link: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/man-who-invented-first-gas-mask-180963073/ https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/REL31825.002 Articles and Posts The Process Behind Dazzle Ships For articles and posts-- from our rapidly growing website at ww1cc.org - in the news section this week, there is an article about the painstaking process of transforming ordinary ships into those decked out with dazzle camouflage. The idea behind dazzle camo, was for ships to be seen, but seen incorrectly. If paint could be used to distort a ship’s angles, the thinking went, that would make it difficult for the ship to be targeted efficiently. Targeting systems at the time were, of course, the human eye and brain, which easily fall prey to being fooled. But how do you test a given scheme for a given ship? The answer: tiny models. Read more about how the U.S. Navy created a vast library of dazzle-painted miniature ships to protect their real counterparts from torpedoes-- by following the link in the podcast notes. BTW - We just heard that there is a Dazzle cammo painted ship scheduled to visit New York Harbor this summer. We’ll let you know more as those plans firm up! Meanwhile we invite you to follow the link in the podcast notes to read the article. Link: http://www.worldwar1centennial.org/index.php/communicate/press-media/wwi-centennial-news/3987-the-painstaking-process-behind-those-wild-wwi-dazzle-naval-paint-jobs.html www.ww1cc.org/news S.S. Tuscania Also another new article posted in the news section of the site this week -- volunteer Caitlin Hamon wrote up the story of the S.S. Tuscania, which encountered some serious trouble 100 years ago this week. On February 5, 1918-- the sun was setting as the Tuscania and her accompanying  British convoy made their way toward the cliffs of Scotland. Shortly before 6 p.m. a huge shock sent a tremor through the entire ship; all the lights went out at once, followed by the explosive sound of shattering glass. There was no question as to what had occurred: the Tuscania had been hit by a torpedo-- and over 2,000 American troops were on board. Read the entire story of the dramatic rescues that followed-- and how the local Scottish communities remember the event and those who were lost-- just   following the link in the podcast notes. link:http://www.worldwar1centennial.org/index.php/communicate/press-media/wwi-centennial-news/3988-ss-tuscania-sinking-by-u-boat-in-1918-kills-200-americans.html The Buzz - WW1 in Social Media Posts And that brings us to the buzz - the centennial of WW1 this week in social media with Katherine Akey - Katherine, what do you have for us this week? Hi Theo! Embarkation The Center for Military History has a wonderful website about the WW1 Era. This week, we shared a unique page from that website all about embarkation from the US and what awaited troops once they arrived in Europe. It’s a very thorough page filled with maps, lists of materiel being shipped alongside the troops, and photos of the embarkation camps. Troops were continually being shipped out from the states all through 1918, and you can follow their journey from the harbors of the east coast to the training camps in France by visiting the link in the podcast notes. link:https://history.army.mil/html/bookshelves/resmat/wwi/pt02/ch12/pt02-ch12-sec01.html How did Gavrilo Princip feel? Lastly for the week, we shared a post from the “AskHistorians” subreddit. The question being posed: How did Gavrilo Pincip feel about the war he helped start? Princip lived to see most of the war, but not the end of it, dying of Tuberculosis in April 1918. As utter carnage and destruction swept through Europe, the middle east and Africa, it is a great question to ask; he couldn’t have meant to put into motion the death of millions when he pulled the trigger, could he? As the top response on the question says, “In a word, both Princip, and his conspirators, were unapologetic.” The answer pulls from the notes of a psychologist that conducted interviews with Princip while he was incarcerated, and from Paul Jackson’s book "' Union or Death!': Gavrilo Princip, Young Bosnia, and the Role of 'Sacred Time' in the Dynamics of Nationalist Terrorism". It’s a long but very interesting post, investigating the mind and position of the young man who is often pointed to as the spark that lit the fire of war. Read it at the link in the notes. That’s it this week for the Buzz! link:https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7sme6f/how_did_gavrilo_princip_feel_about_the_war_he/?st=JCTMMGCK&sh=f75baa10 Outro Thank you all for listening to another episode of WW1 Centennial News. We want to thank our guests... Dr. Edward Lengel, Military historian and author Mike Shuster, Curator of  the great war project blog RG Head, Retired Air Force brigadier general, fighter pilot, and author Dr. Jeffrey Sammons historian, educator and author Dr. Marjorie DesRosier expert on the history of nursing and author Ed Rachwitz and Scott Govitz, from the 100 Cities/100 Memorials project in Beaverton, Michigan Katherine Akey, the commission’s social media director and line producer for the podcast Special thanks to Eric Marr for his research assistance And I am Theo Mayer - your host. The US World War One Centennial Commission was created by Congress to honor, commemorate and educate about WW1. Our programs are to-- inspire a national conversation and awareness about WW1; this podcast is a part of that…. Thank you! We are bringing the lessons of the 100 years ago into today's classrooms; We are helping to restore WW1 memorials in communities of all sizes across our country; and of course we are building America’s National WW1 Memorial in Washington DC. We want to thank commission’s founding sponsor the Pritzker Military Museum and Library and the Starr foundation for their support. The podcast can be found on our website at ww1cc.org/cn   on  iTunes and google play at ww1 Centennial News, and on Amazon Echo or other Alexa enabled devices. Just say: Alexa: Play W W One Centennial News Podcast. Our twitter and instagram handles are both @ww1cc and we are on facebook @ww1centennial. Thank you for joining us. And don’t forget to share the stories you are hearing here today about the war that changed the world! [music] Attaboy - you doughboy! So long!