This Day in World War 1 History: MARCH 26, 1917 : FIRST BATTLE OF GAZA

The first of three battles fought in the Allied attempt to defeat Turkish forces in and around the Palestinian city of Gaza takes place on this day in 1917.

By January 1917, the Allies had managed to force the Turkish army completely out of the Sinai Peninsula in northeastern Egypt, leaving British forces in the region, commanded by Sir Archibald Murray, free to consider a move into Palestine. To do so, however, they would first have to confront a string of strong Turkish positions atop a series of ridges running west to east between the towns of Gaza and Beersheba and blocking the only viable passage into the heart of Palestine. These Turkish forces, commanded by the German general Friedrich Kress von Kressenstein, numbered some 18,000 troops; Murray planned to send twice that many British soldiers against them under the command of his subordinate, Sir Charles Dobell.

On the morning of March 26, 1917, Dobell and his men advanced on the ridges under the cover of dense fog; they were able to successfully cut off the east and southeast of Gaza and deploy troops to prevent the Turks from sending reinforcements or supplies to the town. The 53rd Infantry Division, at the center of the advance, received considerable assistance from a cavalry force commanded by Sir Philip Chetwode. However, near the end of that day, with a victory in Gaza in sight, Dobel and Chetwode decided to call off the attack. The decision, attributed to the failing light and mounting casualties among the infantry troops, was nonetheless controversial—other officers believed the Turks had been on the verge of capitulating.

Though the infantry resumed their attacks the next morning, the overnight delay had given Kressenstein time to reinforce the permanent garrison at Gaza with 4,000 new troops. After confronting a renewed Turkish counterattack, aided significantly by German reconnaissance aircraft from above, Dobell was forced to call off the attack. His forces suffered 4,000 casualties during the First Battle of Gaza, compared with only 2,400 on the Turkish side.

A second assault on Gaza, launched the following April 17, was similarly unsuccessful. It was not until that autumn that British forces, under the new regional command of Sir Edmund Allenby, were able to conquer the town and turn to the next challenge: securing Palestine’s capital city, Jerusalem, which fell into Allied hands on December 9, 1917.

Article Details:

March 26, 1917 : First Battle of Gaza

• Author

  History.com Staff

• Website Name

  History.com

• Year Published

  2009

• Title

  March 26, 1917 : First Battle of Gaza

• URL

  http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-battle-of-gaza

• Access Date

  March 26, 2015

• Publisher

  A+E Networks

This Day in World War 1 History: MARCH 25, 1918 : BELARUSIAN PEOPLES’ REPUBLIC ESTABLISHED

Less than three weeks after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk formally brought an end to Russia’s participation in the First World War, the former Russian province of Belarus declares itself an independent, democratic republic on this day in 1918.

Modern-day Belarus—also known as Belorussia—was formerly part of Poland, its neighbor to the west, until a series of wars in the late 18th century ended with the partition of Poland and with Belarus in Russian hands. In 1917, Belarus capitalized on Russian weakness and disorder resulting from its participation in World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution of that year and proclaimed its independence, after more than a century of occupation by the czarist empire. At the time, Belarus was occupied by the German army, according to the terms formalized at Brest-Litovsk on March 3.

On March 25, a Rada (or council) pronounced the creation of the Belarussian People’s Republic. Eight months later, however, with the defeat of the Central Powers at the hands of the Allies in World War I, Brest-Litovsk was invalidated and the German army was forced to pull out of Belarus and the former Russian territories. This left the fledgling republic vulnerable to a new Russian invasion—that of the Bolshevik Red Guard, who entered the Belarussian capital city of Minsk on January 5, 1919, and crushed the republic’s government.

With the Rada in exile, the Bolsheviks declared the establishment of the Belarussian Soviet Socialist Republic. Poland, determined to reestablish its historical dominance over the region, promptly invaded the new soviet state; the Treaty of Riga of 1921 gave Poland the western part of Belarus. The rest of it became a constituent of the new Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), founded by Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks in 1922. After Germany invaded Poland in 1939, the USSR took the opportunity to annex the part it had lost in 1921. These borders were confirmed in a treaty signed by the USSR and Poland at the end of World War II.

The Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, and Belarus became one of the founding members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), an association of 12 former republics of the USSR formed to help regulate foreign affairs, as well as military and economic policy among the member states. On March 25, 1993, the anniversary of the proclamation of Belarusian independence was openly celebrated for the first time in Minsk and other cities in the republic.

Article Details:

March 25, 1918 : Belarusian Peoples’ Republic established

• Author

  History.com Staff

• Website Name

  History.com

• Year Published

  2009

• Title

  March 25, 1918 : Belarusian Peoples’ Republic established

• URL

  http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/belarusian-peoples-republic-established

• Access Date

  March 25, 2015

• Publisher

  A+E Networks

This Day in World War 1 History: MARCH 24, 1918 : GERMAN FORCES CROSS THE SOMME RIVER

On March 24, 1918, German forces cross the Somme River, achieving their first goal of the major spring offensive begun three days earlier on the Western Front.

Operation Michael, engineered by the German chief of the general staff, Erich von Ludendorff, aimed to decisively break through the Allied lines on the Western Front and destroy the British and French forces. The offensive began on the morning of March 21, 1918, with an aggressive bombardment.

The brunt of the attack that followed was directed at the British 5th Army, commanded by General Sir Hubert Gough, stationed along the Somme River in northwestern France. This section was the most poorly defended of any spot on the British lines, due to the fact that it had been held by the French until only a few weeks before and its defensive positions were not yet fully fortified. Panic spread up and down the British lines of command, intensified by communications failures between Gough and his subordinates in the field, and German gains increased over the subsequent days of battle. On March 23, Crown Prince Rupprecht, on the German side of the line, remarked that The progress of our offensive is so quick, that one cannot follow it with a pen.

The next day, German troops stormed across the Somme, having previously captured its bridges before French troops could destroy them. Despite having resolved to concentrate on weaker points of the enemy lines, Ludendorff continued to throw his armies against the crucial villages of Amiens (a railway junction) and Arras—which the British and French were instructed to hold at all costs—hoping to break through and push on towards Paris. By that time, German troops were exhausted, and transportation and supply lines had begun to break down in the cold and bad weather. Meanwhile, Allied forces had recovered from the initial disadvantage and had begun to gain the upper hand, halting the Germans at Moreuil Wood on March 30.

On April 5, Ludendorff called off Operation Michael. It had yielded nearly 40 miles of territory, the greatest gains for either side on the Western Front since 1914. He would launch four more offensive pushes over the course of the spring and summer, throwing all of the German army’s resources into this last, desperate attempt to win the war.

Article Details:

March 24, 1918 : German forces cross the Somme River

• Author

  History.com Staff

• Website Name

  History.com

• Year Published

  2009

• Title

  March 24, 1918 : German forces cross the Somme River

• URL

  http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/german-forces-cross-the-somme-river

• Access Date

  March 24, 2015

• Publisher

  A+E Networks