![]() ![]() President Woodrow Wilson a request to negotiate peace with the Allies. On October 4, the German Chancellor telegraphed U.S. ![]() At the end of September, Germany’s military leaders advised the Kaiser that the war was lost and Germany should seek an armistice. On November 3, Austro-Hungarian forces signed a truce near Padua, Italy. The Central Powers began to surrender, beginning with Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire, in September and October 1918, respectively. In August, however, Allied forces, now reinforced with two million American troops, halted the German offensive and began steadily pushing back the German lines in what would become known as the "Hundred Days' Offensive." By late July 1918, they had advanced to within 50 miles of Paris, leading Kaiser (Emperor) Wilhelm II to assure the German people that victory was in their grasp. The Treaty of Brest Litovsk freed Germany to concentrate its forces on the western front. In the resulting peace treaty, signed at Brest-Litovsk on March 6, 1918, the new Soviet Union relinquished its claims to Ukraine, Finland, and Russia’s former territories in Poland and the Baltic. The immediate effect of the Russian Revolution on the European stage was a brutal and enduring civil war in formerly Russian-ruled lands (1917–1922) and the decision of the new Bolshevik leadership to make a separate peace with the Central Powers. These events are referred to collectively as the Russian Revolution. The second brought the Bolsheviks to power. The first overthrew the imperial government. In 1917, Russia, one of the Allies’ principal powers, was rocked by two revolutions. This newly gained edge for the Allies was initially counter-balanced by events taking place on the war's eastern front. Pershing, combined with an ever-tightening blockade of German ports, helped to shift the balance of the war effort eventually to the advantage of the Allies. Fresh troops and materiel from the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) under the leadership of General John J. Citing Germany's policy of unrestricted submarine warfare and its attempt to ally with Mexico, the United States declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917. Impact of US Entry into the War and the Russian RevolutionĪ decisive change in the hostilities came in April 1917. Combat also took place in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and the Pacific Islands, at sea and, for the first time, in the air. Heavy fighting also occurred elsewhere in Europe: in Northern Italy, the Balkans, Greece, and Ottoman Turkey. The scale of the conflict was still equal to that on the western front. ![]() On the other hand, the vast expanse of the eastern front prevented large-scale trench warfare. For most North American and western European combatants, their experience of the war was trench warfare. It spread roughly from the North Sea to the Swiss border. The system of trenches and fortifications in western Europe extended at its longest some 475 miles. It became a stalemate of costly battles and trench warfare, particularly on the European western front. This enthusiasm faded as the war bogged down. Initially there was enthusiasm on all sides and confidence in a quick and decisive victory. ![]()
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