This Day in World War 1 History: October 30, 1918 : Ottoman Empire signs treaty with Allies

On October 30, 1918, aboard the British battleship Agamemnon, anchored in the port of Mudros on the Aegean island of Lemnos, representatives of Great Britain and the Ottoman Empire sign an armistice treaty marking the end of Ottoman participation in the First World War.

Though the Ottoman Empire—in a period of relative decline since the late 16th century—had initially aimed to stay neutral in World War I, it soon concluded an alliance with Germany and entered the war on the side of the Central Powers in October 1914. The Turks fought fiercely and successfully defended the Gallipoli Peninsula against a massive Allied invasion in 1915-1916, but by 1918 defeat by invading British and Russian forces and an Arab revolt had combined to destroy the Ottoman economy and devastate its land, leaving some six million people dead and millions more starving.

As early as the first week of October 1918, both the Ottoman government and several individual Turkish leaders contacted the Allies to feel out peace possibilities. Britain, whose forces then occupied much of the Ottoman territories, was loath to step aside for its allies, particularly France, which according to an agreement concluded in 1916 would take control of the Syrian coast and much of modern-day Lebanon. In a move that enraged his French counterpart, Georges Clemenceau, Prime Minister David Lloyd George and his cabinet authorized Admiral Arthur Calthorpe, Britain’s naval commander in the Aegean Sea, to negotiate an immediate armistice with Turkey without consulting France. Though Britain alone would engineer the Ottoman exit from the war, the two powerful Allies would continue to grapple over control in the region at the Paris Peace Conference, and for years beyond.

Negotiations between Calthorpe’s team and the delegation from Constantinople, led by the Ottoman Minister of Marine Affairs Rauf Bey, began at 9:30 on the morning of October 30, 1918, aboard the Agamemnon. The Treaty of Mudros, signed that evening, stated that hostilities would end at noon the following day. By its terms, Turkey had to open the Dardanelle and Bosporus straits to Allied warships and its forts to military occupation; it was also to demobilize its army, release all prisoners of war and evacuate its Arab provinces, the majority of which were already under Allied control. Bey and his fellow delegates refused to paint the treaty as an act of surrender for Turkey—later causing disillusionment and anger in Constantinople—but in fact that is what it was. The Treaty of Mudros ended Ottoman participation in World War I and effectively—if not legally—marked the dissolution of a once mighty empire. From its ruins, the victors of the First World War attempted to use the post-war peace negotiations to create a new, more unpredictable entity: the modern Middle East

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October 30, 1918 : Ottoman Empire signs treaty with Allies

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  History.com Staff

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  History.com

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  2009

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  October 30, 1918 : Ottoman Empire signs treaty with Allies

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  http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ottoman-empire-signs-treaty-with-allies

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  October 30, 2015

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  A+E Networks

This Day in World War 1 History: OCTOBER 28, 1918 : GERMAN SAILORS BEGIN TO MUTINY

On this day in 1918, sailors in the German High Seas Fleet steadfastly refuse to obey an order from the German Admiralty to go to sea to launch one final attack on the mighty British navy, echoing the frustrated, despondent mood of many on the side of the Central Powers during the last days of World War I.

By the last week of October 1918, three of the Central Powers—Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire—were at least in talks with the Allies about reaching an armistice, while the fourth, Bulgaria, had already concluded one at the end of September. With the end of the war seemingly in sight, the German naval command—led by the Admiralty’s chief of staff, Reinhardt Scheer—decided to launch a last-ditch effort against the British in the North Sea in a desperate attempt to restore the German navy’s prestige. In the words of Reinhardt Scheer, chief of staff of the German Admiralty, “An honorable battle by the fleet—even if it should be a fight to the death—will sow the seed of a new German fleet of the future. There can be no future for a fleet fettered by a dishonorable peace.” Choosing not to inform the chancellor, Max von Baden, of its plans, the German Admiralty issued the order to leave port on October 28.

The sailors themselves, however, believing the attack to be a suicide mission, would have none of it. Though the order was given five times, each time they resisted. In total, 1,000 mutineers were arrested, leaving the Imperial Fleet immobilized. By October 30, the resistance had engulfed the German naval base at Kiel, where sailors and industrial workers alike took part in the rebellion; within a week, it had spread across the country, with revolts in Hamburg, Bremen and Lubeck on November 4 and 5 and in Munich two days later. This widespread discontent led Socialist members of the German Reichstag, or parliament, to declare the country a republic on November 9, followed swiftly by Kaiser Wilhelm’s abdication and finally, on November 11, by the end of the First World War.

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October 28, 1918 : German sailors begin to mutiny

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  History.com Staff

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  History.com

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  2009

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  October 28, 1918 : German sailors begin to mutiny

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  http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/german-sailors-begin-to-mutiny

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  October 28, 2015

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This Day in World War 1 History: OCTOBER 27, 1918 : GERMAN GENERAL ERICH LUDENDORFF RESIGNS

Under pressure from the government of Chancellor Max von Baden, Erich Ludendorff, the quartermaster general of the German army, resigns on October 27, 1918, just days before Germany calls for an armistice, bringing World War I to an end after four long years.

Second in command to Chief of Staff Paul von Hindenburg for most of the war effort, Ludendorff had masterminded the final, massive German offensive during the spring of 1918. Beginning that summer, however, the Allies—spearheaded by British, French and American troops—made a great resurgence, reversing many of Germany’s gains and turning the tide decisively toward an Allied victory. By the end of September, the Germans had been forced to retreat to the so-called Hindenburg Line, the last line of their defenses in eastern France and western Belgium; on September 29, that formidable line was breached.

That same day, at a meeting of Kaiser Wilhelm’s crown council at the resort town of Spa, Ludendorff demanded that Germany seek an immediate armistice on the terms set forth by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson in his famous Fourteen Points address the previous January. A week later, the newly appointed chancellor, von Baden, contacted Washington to open peace negotiations. Fighting continued, however, as Wilson and the other Allies refused to negotiate with an undemocratic Germany governed, in effect, by the army’s Supreme Command. A defiant Ludendorff and Hindenburg resolved to fight on, issuing a letter to all army group commanders calling the Allied demands that Germany submit to its armistice terms unreasonable and “nothing for us soldiers but a challenge to continue our resistance with all our strength.”

This telegraphed “fight to the finish” order was withdrawn after an army commander protested—its message was largely impossible for the demoralized and broken German army to carry out. It was leaked to the newspapers, however, and published on October 25 to the great outrage of the German government. Von Baden went to Kaiser Wilhelm to demand Ludendorff’s resignation; for his part, Ludendorff traveled to Berlin to convince the kaiser to reject the latest note from President Wilson. He blamed defeat on the battlefield to discontent on the home front, stating that if the German people would support their troops, “the war can be maintained for some months.” Although backed by Hindenburg and the chief of the German navy, Admiral Reinhardt Scheer, Ludendorff had angered the kaiser, and was forced to tender his resignation. Hindenburg tried to resign as well, but was refused by Wilhelm, and he remained as a mere figurehead for a great German war-making machine that had lost its driving force. Less than two weeks later, the kaiser himself abdicated, and World War I was over.

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October 27, 1918 : German general Erich Ludendorff resigns

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  History.com Staff

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  History.com

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  2009

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  October 27, 1918 : German general Erich Ludendorff resigns

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  http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/german-general-erich-ludendorff-resigns

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  October 27, 2015

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This Day in World War 1 History: OCTOBER 26, 1917 : BRAZIL DECLARES WAR ON GERMANY

On October 26, 1917, Brazil declares its decision to enter the First World War on the side of the Allied powers.

As a major player in the Atlantic trading market, Brazil—an immense country occupying nearly one-half of the entire South American continent—had been increasingly threatened by Germany’s policy of unrestricted submarine warfare over the course of the first two years of World War I. In February 1917, when Germany resumed that policy after temporarily suspending it due to pressure from neutral nations such as the United States, President Woodrow Wilson responded by immediately breaking diplomatic relations with Germany; the U.S. formally entered the war alongside the Allied powers on April 6, 1917.

One day before the U.S. declaration of war, a German U-boat sank the Brazilian merchant ship Parana as it sailed off the coast of France. On June 4, Dominico da Gama, the Brazilian ambassador to the U.S., wrote to Secretary of State Robert Lansing declaring that Brazil was revoking its previous neutrality and severing its own diplomatic relations with Germany. “Brazil ever was and is now free from warlike ambitions,” da Gama stated, “and, while it always refrained from showing any partiality in the European conflict, it could no longer stand unconcerned when the struggle involved the United States, actuated by no interest whatever but solely for the sake of international judicial order, and when Germany included us and the other neutral powers in the most violent acts of war.”

Over the next few months, Brazil’s government actively sought to amend its constitution to enable it to declare war. This having been accomplished, the declaration was made on October 26, 1917. In an open letter sent to the Vatican but clearly intended to be read in countries around the world, the Brazilian foreign minister, Dr. Nilo Pecanha, justified his country’s decision to enter the epic struggle of World War I on the side of the Allies by pointing to Germany’s attacks on international trade and invoking the higher purpose of creating a more peaceful, democratic post-war world: “Through the sufferings and the disillusions to which the war has given rise a new and better world will be born, as it were, of liberty, and in this way a lasting peace may be established without political or economic restrictions, and all countries be allowed a place in the sun with equal rights and an interchange of ideas and values in merchandise on an ample basis of justice and equity.”

Though Brazil’s actual contribution to the Allied war effort was limited to one medical unit and some airmen, its participation was rewarded with a seat at the post-war bargaining table. The fact that Brazil—according to the size of its population—had three official delegates at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 angered Portugal, who had sent 60,000 soldiers to the Western Front and yet had only one delegate. Britain supported Portugal in the disagreement, while the U.S. backed Brazil; no change was made. This conflict illustrated how important it was considered for the nations of the world to have representation in Versailles, as it was there that the boundaries of the new, post-World War I world would be determined. On June 28, 1919, Brazil was one of 27 nations to sign the 200-page Versailles Treaty, alongside a number of other Latin American nations who had also declared their support for the Allies, including Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru and Uruguay.

Article Details:

October 26, 1917 : Brazil declares war on Germany

• Author

  History.com Staff

• Website Name

  History.com

• Year Published

  2009

• Title

  October 26, 1917 : Brazil declares war on Germany

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  http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/brazil-declares-war-on-germany

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  October 26, 2015

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  A+E Networks