Category: Anti-Empire Project Podcast

Counting the costs and losses of World War I. 8.5 million killed on the battlefield, 21 million wounded. 10 million civilian deaths, then a flu epidemic that killed tens of millions more. The global economy transformed beyond recognition. The beginning of the end of the colonial empires. And various measures that are inevitably going to lead to another, bigger world war.

Ludendorff’s final gamble has failed, fizzling out like every mass offensive of this war. The war is now unwinnable for Germany. But the Germans won’t admit it, and can’t find anyone to sign an armistice. Eventually someone is found, and the myth of the “stab in the back” begins to be written, a myth that will set us up for the next World War. But for now, the final military episode of World War Civ: Germany Collapses, 1918.

With peace in the East, Germany can finally try to win the war against France in the West, and the clock is ticking before America’s troops make the war unwinnable. In addition to assembling a gigantic army and the largest artillery barrage in history, Ludendorff introduces Storm Troopers and a new tactic of “infiltration” past the defensive strong points to roll up later. But the British manage to retreat instead of breaking, and the final German offensive runs out of steam in August. The tide has turned against Germany. The stalemate is over. It’s the beginning of the end of the Great War.

The Bolsheviks had made their revolution promising Peace, Land, and Bread. But peace meant a deal with Germany, which could bring British and French subversion of their nascent revolution. How could Lenin get out of this impossible dilemma? By sending Trotsky to lead the negotiations with Imperial Germany. Did Trotsky go rogue? Was he following Lenin’s directives? Was he playing 5D chess? We conclude: he probably was.

It’s 1917. The French are suffering mutinies and the Entente is desperate for a breakthrough anywhere. It’s not to be. Arras, Vimy Ridge, Passchendaele, Cambrai, and Caporetto – hundreds of thousands of men killed and no breakthrough. At the end of the year, the Germans have reason to believe they could win the whole war in the West if they could conclude a peace with the newly Bolshevik Russia…

When Russia withdrew from the war, Britain and France were in the lurch, but America saved the day. Why? Successful war propaganda, propinquity, or making good on investments and seizing a chance for world domination?

The scientific principles of war propaganda that we’re all suffering from today were laid down by Anglo-American writers amazed by their own performance in World War 1. What are these principles? Why did Anglo-American propaganda work better than German?