This Day in World War 1 History: Feb 23, 1917: Germans begin withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line

On this day in 1917, German troops begin a well-planned withdrawal—ordered several weeks previously by Kaiser Wilhelm—to strong positions on the Hindenburg Line, solidifying their defense and digging in for a continued struggle on the Western Front in World War I.

One month after Paul von Hindenburg succeeded Erich von Falkenhayn as chief of the German army's general staff in August 1916, he ordered the construction of a heavily fortified zone running several miles behind the active front between the north coast of France and Verdun, near the border between France and Belgium. Its aim would be to hold the last line of German defense and brutally crush any Allied breakthrough before it could reach the Belgian or German frontier. The British referred to it as the Hindenburg Line, for its mastermind; it was known to the Germans as the Siegfried Line.

In the wake of exhausting and bloody battles at Verdun and the Somme, and with the U.S edging ever closer to entering the war, Germany's leaders looked to improve their defensive positions on the Western Front. The withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line meant that German troops were removed to a more uniform line of trenches, reducing the length of the line they had to defend by 25 miles and freeing up 13 army divisions to serve as reserve troops. On their way, German forces systematically destroyed the land they passed through, burning farmhouses, poisoning wells, mining abandoned buildings and demolishing roads.

The German command correctly estimated that the move would gain them eight weeks of respite before the Allies could begin their attacks again; it also threw a wrench into the Allied strategy by removing their army from the very positions that British and French joint command had planned to strike next.

After the withdrawal, which was completed May 5, 1917, the Hindenburg Line, considered impregnable by many on both sides of the conflict, became the German army's stronghold. Allied armies did not break it until October 1918, one month before the armistice.

Taken from: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/germans-begin-withdrawal-to-the-hindenburg-line [23.02.2015]

This Day in World War 1 History: Feb 20, 1919: Amir of Afghanistan is assassinated

Habibullah Khan, the leader of Afghanistan who struggled to keep his country neutral in World War I in the face of strong internal support for Turkey and the Central Powers, is shot and killed while on a hunting trip on this day in 1919.

Habibullah had succeeded his father, Abd-ar-Rahman, as amir in 1901 and immediately began to bring much-needed reforms and modernization to his country, including electricity, automobiles and medicine. Located between British-held India and Russia, Afghanistan had in the past clashed repeatedly with its neighbors, including two Afghan Wars against Anglo-Indian forces in 1838—42 and 1878-79. Many within Afghanistan saw these conflicts as part of the fundamental and necessary defense of Muslims against the encroachments of Christians. Though the British and Russian governments signed a convention in 1907 pledging respect for the territorial integrity of Afghanistan, many Afghans—including Habibullah—felt insecure between such powerful neighbors and resented the lack of Afghan representation at the creation of the convention and the effective control Britain still exercised over the country's foreign affairs due to its active involvement in the region.

Convinced, however, that the continued improvement and modernization of Afghanistan depended on economic assistance from powerful Western countries like Britain, Habibullah maintained his country's neutrality after the outbreak of World War I, despite pressure from Turkish and other Islamic leaders urging Afghanistan to enter the war against the Allies. By maintaining his country's neutrality and Afghanistan's anti-war policy, Habibullah enraged many of his young anti-British countrymen who viewed World War I as a holy war. Many Afghans felt particularly strongly that Habibullah failed to capitalize on the weakness of Russia, which was overtaken by the Bolsheviks in November 1917, by uniting the Muslim peoples of Central Asia and liberating them from non-Muslim rule.

Barely a year after Turkey's defeat at the hands of the Allies and the end of the war in November 1918, Habibullah's opponents, angry at what they saw as his betrayal of Muslim interests in favor of pandering to Britain, plotted and carried out his assassination.

Habibullah had not declared a successor and after his death, his brother, Nasrullah Khan, held the throne for six days before being deposed by the Afghan nobility in favor of Habibullah's third son, Amanullah Khan. Determined to extract Afghanistan completely from Britain's influence, Amanullah declared war on Great Britain in May 1919, beginning what became known as the Third Afghan War. The British, preoccupied by India's burgeoning independence movement, negotiated a peace treaty with Afghanistan the following August at Rawalpindi, recognizing Afghanistan's status as a sovereign and independent state.

Taken from: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/amir-of-afghanistan-is-assassinated [20.02.2015]

This Day in World War 1 History: Feb 19, 1915: British navy bombards Dardanelles

On this day in 1915, British and French battleships launch a massive attack on Turkish positions at Cape Helles and Kum Kaleh at the entrance to the Dardanelles, the narrow strait separating Europe from Asia in northwestern Turkey and the only waterway linking the Mediterranean Sea to the Black Sea.

With Turkey's entrance into World War I in November 1914 on the side of the Central Powers, the Dardanelles were controlled by Germany and its allies, thus isolating the Russian navy from the Allied naval forces and preventing cooperation between the two, as well as blocking passage of Russian wheat and British arms back and forth. An attack on the Dardanelles was thus a key objective of the Allies from the beginning of the war.

The British, and especially Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, became convinced that it was possible to win control of the strait by a purely naval attack, avoiding the diversion of soldiers from the battlegrounds on the Western Front. At the end of January 1915, the British War Office approved a plan to bombard the Turkish positions at the Dardanelles; the initial bombardments would make way, they hoped, for British forces to move on Constantinople, knock Turkey out of the war and open a path to Russia.

Churchill set the date for the attack as February 19; on that day, a combined British and French fleet commanded by Admiral Sackville Carden opened fire with long-range guns on the outer Turkish fortresses, Cape Helles and Kum Kaleh. The bombardments made little initial impact, however, as the Turks were not caught unawares: they had long known an attack on the Dardanelles was a strong possibility and had been well fortified by their German allies.

The largely unsuccessful Allied efforts to force their way into the Dardanelles continued over the next two months, including a disastrous attempt on March 18 in which three ships were sunk and three more badly damaged by Turkish mines before the attack had even begun. Over Churchill's protests, the naval attack was called off and a larger land invasion involving 120,000 troops was planned.

On April 25, troops from Britain, Australia and New Zealand launched a ground invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula, which bordered the northern side of the strait. The Turkish defense soon pushed the Allies back to the shore, inflicting heavy casualties. Trenches were dug, and the conflict settled into a bloody stalemate for the next eight months. Some 250,000 Allied soldiers died at Gallipoli; Turkish casualty rates were roughly the same. In December, the exhausted and frustrated Allied forces began their retreat. The last Allied soldiers left Gallipoli on January 8, 1916. As a result of the disastrous campaign, Winston Churchill resigned as first lord of the Admiralty and accepted a commission to command an infantry battalion in France.

Taken from: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/british-navy-bombards-dardanelles [19.02.2015]