March 21, 2018

On March 21, 1918, 100 years ago today, the German army launched a massive spring offensive against Allied troops during World War I (1914-1918). The German Spring Offensive was actually a series of assaults on Allied positions from March 21 through July 18, 1918, along the Western Front, the battlefront that stretched through Belgium and northern France. The German assaults broke the Allied lines and ended the stalemate of trench warfare (fighting from fortified ditches). The offensive gained much territory, but it failed to achieve German victory. It also exhausted the German army, setting the stage for Allied counterattacks and an ultimate Allied victory in World War I.

German soldiers advance in northern France during the German Spring Offensive of 1918. Credit: © Everett Historical/Shutterstock

For most of World War I, the strength of the German military was split. Fighting against the British and French (and later, the American Expeditionary Forces as well) on the Western Front required millions of German troops. At the same time, German forces were needed to battle Russian, and later Romanian, forces on the Eastern Front. The Eastern Front would eventually stretch from Estonia to Romania.

By December 1917, both Russia and Romania were defeated and nearing surrender. The end of fighting on the Eastern Front then allowed Germany to concentrate its military on the West. For the first time, German forces would outnumber the Allies on the Western Front.

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Allied troops eventually stopped the German Spring Offensive. United States troops played key roles in the fighting at Château-Thierry, Cantigny, and Belleau Wood. Credit: WORLD BOOK map

The Germans needed to take advantage of their numbers in early 1918. By that time, the United States had entered the war on the Allied side, but the majority of U.S. forces had not yet reached Europe. The Germans planned a huge offensive that sought to force an Allied surrender before U.S. troops could arrive in strength.

Beginning on March 21, German assaults took place along the Somme and Aisne rivers in northern France, and in Flanders, on France’s border with Belgium. The Germans hoped to destroy the British army and force France to negotiate a peace. The German assaults gained much ground, and some German troops reached the Marne River northeast of Paris, the French capital. However, heavy casualties (people killed, wounded, captured, or missing), failing supplies, and Allied counterattacks ground the last of the assaults to a halt in July.

The offensive took a heavy toll on the German army, with more than 500,000 casualties. Having used up its reserves from the Eastern Front, Germany could no longer replace such huge numbers of troops. The casualties and lack of overall success badly damaged German morale. Allied casualties also reached 500,000. However, by the offensive’s end, more than 1 million U.S. troops were in France and continuing to pour into the country at a rate of more than 250,000 each month. Massive Allied assaults began in August 1918 and continued until Germany signed an armistice (agreement to stop fighting) in November. The agreement ended World War I.

August 1, 2017

Yesterday, July 31, marked the 100^th anniversary of the start of the Third Battle of Ypres, a bloody fight mainly conducted by British and Commonwealth troops against German forces during World War I (1914-1918). As the name implies, the battle—often simply called “Third Ypres” or “Passchendaele” after a village at the center of the fight—was the third battle of the war fought in and around the Belgian city of Ypres <<EE pruh>> (also spelled Ieper <<EE puhr>>). Many thousands of people died in the first two battles, but it was the Third Battle of Ypres that became notorious for its misery and great slaughter. The battle began on July 31, 1917, and lasted more than three months.

Australian soldiers follow a duckboard track through the shattered and flooded battlefield near Passchendaele, Belgium, during the Third Battle of Ypres on Oct. 29, 1917. Credit: Frank Hurley, Australian War Memorial

Two nights ago, on Sunday, July 30, ceremonies of remembrance took place at Ypres’ market square and at the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing. Menin Gate lists the names of more than 54,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers who died in and around Ypres during World War I but have no known graves. The horrific nature of the fighting around Ypres accounted for an unusually high number of missing soldiers. On Monday, the British and Belgian royal families attended ceremonies at Tyne Cot Cemetery—where many of the unidentified British and Commonwealth dead are buried in graves marked simply, “A Soldier of the Great War.” Other events in the Ypres area opened new memorials and exhibitions and honored family members of the fallen, while still other ceremonies in other places remembered the dead of other nations.

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The Third Battle of Ypres began 100 years ago this week on July 31, 1917. After three months of fighting, the Allies advanced less than 6 miles (10 kilomters). Credit: WORLD BOOK map

The first two battles of Ypres took place in 1914 and 1915. By the summer of 1917, fighting in the area had destroyed the landscape as well as the city of Ypres itself. The third battle began with a British bombardment and assault on German positions on July 31. German resistance was tough, and downpours of rain turned the shattered battlefield into a mucky swamp. Thousands of men on both sides died as the armies fought continuously for small scraps of barren, muddy ground. Fighting continued under horrible conditions for more than three months, during which time the British advanced less than 6 miles (10 kilometers). The battle ended in a British “victory” with the taking of Passchendaele ridge on November 6. About 250,000 British soldiers were killed, wounded, or captured at Third Ypres, while German casualties also surpassed 200,000. The troops who fought and died at Ypres came from Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, India, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom.

To this day, the village name Passchendaele (pronounced in English like Passion-dale or Passion-dell) evokes the accumulative horrors of World War I. The poem “Memorial Tablet” by British writer Siegfried Sassoon—who fought at Ypres and other battlefields during the war—is told in the voice of a dead soldier. The poem includes the line: “I died in Hell. They called it Passchendaele.”

March 23, 2016

Belgian police and emergency personnel secure the area near the Maelbeek subway station following an explosion on March 22, 2016. Credit: © Vincent Kessler, Reuters

Three explosions in the Belgian capital of Brussels yesterday, March 22, killed more than 30 people and injured more than 200 others. Two explosions occurred at the check-in area of the city’s Zaventem airport, killing 11 people. About 30 minutes later, an explosion hit the Maelbeek metro (subway) station, killing 20 people. The Islamic State terrorist group claimed responsibility for the ghastly attacks.

A huge manhunt was on yesterday, and by last evening, police had identified some of the attackers. Two brothers, Khalid and Brahim el-Bakraoui, both Belgian nationals, are thought to have been the bombers in the airport. The men were caught on closed-circuit television footage. Each brother wore a glove on only one hand, causing experts to believe the gloves hid detonating devices for bombs hidden in the suitcases they were seen with. A third man shown with the el-Bakraouis in the footage is thought to have left a bomb at the airport that did not detonate. A taxi driver who saw the airport footage remembered transporting the three men to the airport and gave police the address where he had picked them up. When police raided the address, they found a nail bomb, chemicals, and an Islamic State flag there. In the subway attack, less is known about the bomber, but it is known that a bomb was detonated in the middle car of a three-car long train.

An attack such as this would have required planning, but experts still wondered if it was linked to the arrest of the terrorist Salah Abdesalam in Brussels last Friday (March 18). Abdesalam is a French national who was born in Belgium but is of Moroccan descent. He is one of the few surviving participants from the Paris terrorist attacks of November 2015. He was in Paris at the time of the attacks, but he also helped organize the attacks. Belgian police had been hunting Abdesalam since last November. It has only been 5 days since Abdesalam’s capture, so today’s attack was likely planned before then and unrelated. Some experts wondered, however, if today’s attack had been scheduled for a later date but moved up in response to the arrest.

Zavantem Airport is closed until Friday, March 25. Eurostar, high-speed trains between such major European cities and Paris and London, reopened in Brussels this morning. Some subway stations have reopened, but public transportation in Belgium’s capital was still limited today.

Brussels is the unofficial capital of the European Union (EU), and so a strike at Brussels is, in some ways, a strike at the heart of Europe. In addition, Belgium has a large immigrant population that has not been well-integrated into the fabric of the small nation, so religious extremism has been a problem in certain areas.

Belgium declared three official days of mourning for the Brussels victims and Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel stated “To those who have chosen to be barbarous enemies of freedom, democracy and fundamental values … we remain united as one.”

Other World Book articles

• Terror Returns to Paris (November 16, 2015) 
• Terror Attack Mastermind Dies in Paris Police Raid (November 19, 2015)

June 18, 2015

A detail on the Arc de Triomphe (Arch of Triumph) in Paris shows the symbolic crowning of Napoleon I as emperor of France. Napoleon commissioned the arch, one of the city’s most famous landmarks, in 1806 as a memorial to his imperial armies. © Shutterstock

Today is the 200th anniversary of one of history’s most important and decisive—and bloody—events, the Battle of Waterloo. The 1815 battle, fought in Belgium just south of Brussels, changed Europe and ended the adventurous career of French Emperor Napoleon I. British, Dutch, and Prussian troops defeated Napoleon and his Grande Armée (Great Army) at Waterloo, and all sides sent representatives to a commemorative ceremony this week.

To mark the anniversary, Prince Charles of the United Kingdom dedicated a new memorial at Hougoumont farm, scene of a bloody British stand against French forces during the battle. And, despite strident French objections (France did lose the battle and their empire), Belgium issued a 2.50-euro commemorative coin. Why €2.50? Well, because Belgium—which caved to French demands earlier in 2015 not to issue a €2 anniversary coin—found a European Union loophole allowing “odd denomination” coins to be minted despite other EU members’ objections. The coins can only be spent within Belgium. (Not that the towns of northern France would accept them anyway. Well, maybe they would, but grudgingly. Read on for the quick history lesson.)

Napoleon came to power in France as first consul in 1799 on the heels of the French Revolution. Republican France—having decapitated its royalty—made the rest of Europe’s ruling elite quite nervous. The military prowess of Napoleon’s Grande Armée made them downright scared. The kings of Europe’s other great powers—namely Austria, Great Britain, Prussia, Russia, and Sweden—got together to squash this “scourge” of the Continent.

Napoleon I posed in his study for French painter Jacques-Louis David in 1812, above. David served as the court painter to the French emperor. (Samuel H. Kress Collection, (c) 1997 Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)

In response, the French defeated Austria in 1801 and made peace with the newly formed United Kingdom in 1802. Egos and the lust for commerce quickly killed the calm, however, and Napoleon (now an emperor) returned to the battlefield. Beginning in 1805, he repeatedly and soundly thrashed the Austrian, Prussian, and Russian armies thrust against him. France gradually overextended its own armies, however, and, after a disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812, the European powers found the Grande Armée suddenly vulnerable. A terrible defeat at Leipzig, Germany, in 1813 led to Napoleon’s downfall and abdication in the spring of 1814. He returned, of course, and—having scraped together one last army—narrowly missed victory at Waterloo in 1815. The legendary leader then went into exile on the South Atlantic island of St. Helena, where he died of stomach cancer in 1821.

What will €2.50 buy you at Waterloo? A bag of frites (pronounced freet—French fries) with mayo, or a coffee at the Wellington Café. Your choice.

Other World Book articles:

• Louis XVI

• Marie Antoinette

August 4, 2014

Some 50 heads of state and various royals—including King Philippe of Belgium and Prince William and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge of the United Kingdom—gathered in Liege, Belgium, today to mark the 100th anniversary of the German invasion of Belgium in World War I (1914-1918). In Glasgow, Scotland, Prince Charles and British Prime Minister David Cameron attended a ceremony observing the United Kingdom’s entry in the war. In London, 888,246 ceramic poppies have been placed in the dry moat at the Tower of London, one for each soldier who died fighting for the United Kingdom in the war. The total includes soldiers from the then British Empire, including Australia, Canada, India, and New Zealand.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary, far right, was shot to death on June 28, 1914, shortly after this photo was taken. His assassination triggered the outbreak of World War I (UPI/Bettman Newsphotos).

The war was triggered by the assassination—by a Serbian nationalist—of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary and his wife, Sophie, in Sarajevo, Serbia, on June 28, 1914. World War I officially began on August 3, 1914, when Germany declared war on France. The “war to end all wars” failed to live up to that promise but did, quite literally, reshape the modern political world: it destroyed the Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and Ottoman empires; brought down Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany; left much of Europe prostrate; and made the United States recognized as a world power.  About 9 million soldiers and 7 million civilians died in the war. (A 1918-1919 flu epidemic, directly related to the war, left many more millions dead.) Just 21 years later, Germany invaded Poland, setting off World War II (1939-1945).

Additional World Book articles:

• Influenza: A New Threat from an Old Foe (a special report)
• A Mirror on the Turn of the Century (a special report)
• Albert Schweitzer Speaks Out (a historic special report by the famous philosopher, physician, missionary, and writer on theology)