one of the best plastic pieces ever done mokarex

british officers in the first world war

THE SHATTERED RANKS OF SHAKEN SURVIVORS

THE SHATTERED RANKS OF SHAKEN SURVIVORS

The armistice between the Allies and Germany was an agreement that ended the fighting in the First World War. It was signed in a railway carriage in Compiègne Forest on 11 November 1918 and marked a victory for the Allies and a complete defeat for Germany, although not technically a surrender. The Germans were responding to the policies proposed by American President Woodrow Wilson in his Fourteen Points.
The actual terms, largely written by French Marshal Ferdinand Foch, included the cessation of hostilities, the withdrawal of German troops to behind their own borders, the preservation of infrastructure, the exchange of prisoners, a promise of reparations, the disposition of German warships and submarines, and conditions for prolonging or terminating the armistice.On 29 September 1918 the German Supreme Command informed Kaiser Wilhelm II and the Imperial Chancellor Count Georg von Hertling at army headquarters in Spa, Belgium, that the military situation facing Germany was hopeless. Generalquartiermeister Erich Ludendorff, probably fearing a breakthrough, claimed that he could not guarantee that the front would hold for another 24 hours and demanded a request be given to the Entente for an immediate ceasefire. In addition, he recommended the acceptance of the main demands of US President Woodrow Wilson (the Fourteen Points) and put the Imperial Government on a democratic footing, hoping for more favourable peace terms. This enabled him to save the face of the Imperial Army and put the responsibility for the capitulation and its consequences squarely into the hands of the democratic parties and the parliament. As he said to officers of his staff on 1 October: "They now must lie on the bed that they've made us." Thus was born the "Stab-in-the-back" notion that the army had not failed, only the civilians.




Armistice day is on the 11th November each year. On 3 October liberal Prince Maximilian of Baden was appointed Chancellor of Germany instead of Georg von Hertling in order to negotiate an armistice.

On 5 October 1918 Germany asked Wilson to negotiate terms. In the subsequent two exchanges, Wilson's allusions "failed to convey the idea that the Kaiser's abdication was an essential condition for peace. The leading statesmen of the Reich were not yet ready to contemplate such a monstrous possibility." As a precondition for negotiations Wilson demanded the retreat of Germany from all occupied territories, the cessation of submarine activities and the Kaiser's abdication, writing on 23 October: "If the Government of the United States must deal with the military masters and the monarchical autocrats of Germany now, or if it is likely to have to deal with them later in regard to the international obligations of the German Empire, it must demand not peace negotiations but surrender."



Ludendorff, in a sudden change of mind, declared the conditions of the Allies unacceptable. He now demanded to resume the war which he himself had declared lost only one month earlier. However the German soldiers were pressing to get home. It was scarcely possible to arouse their readiness for battle anew, and desertions were on the increase. The Imperial Government stayed on course and replaced Ludendorff with General Wilhelm Groener. On 5 November the Allies agreed to take up negotiations for a truce, now demanding reparation payments.



A much bigger obstacle, which contributed to the five-week delay in the signing of the armistice and to the resulting social deterioration in Europe, was the fact that the Entente Powers had no desire to accept the Fourteen Points and Wilson's subsequent promises. As Czernin points out:



The Allied statesmen were faced with a problem: so far they had considered the 'fourteen commandments' as a piece of clever and effective American propaganda, designed primarily to undermine the fighting spirit of the Central Powers, and to bolster the morale of the lesser Allies. Now, suddenly, the whole peace structure was supposed to be built up on that set of 'vague principles,' most of which seemed to them thoroughly unrealistic, and some of which, if they were to be seriously applied, were simply unacceptable.






The exuberance with which people greeted the armistice quickly succumbed to feelings of exhaustion, relief, sorrow, and a sense of absurdity

Soldier of the week. Maginot line fortress soldier

repairs

Russian infantry Tannenburg. My collection

80mm bought in prague . I gave him a new bayonet.

arras in the mud my collection

artillery in the 1st world war

bought in prague in the 80's.my collection

no idea as to its regiment but its in 80mm and I think russian regiment. i gave it a new metal bayonet

marne 2

 above is 75mm bought in prague in the 80's in my collection. below is machine gunner by collectingtoysoldiersblog read it.
The battle began on 15 July, when 23 German divisions of the First and Third stormtrooperarmies—led by Bruno von Mudra and Karl von Einem—assaulted the French Fourth Army under Henri Gouraud east of Reims (the Fourth Battle of Champagne (French: 4e Bataille de Champagne)). The U.S. 42nd Division was attached to the French Fourth Army and commanded by Gouraud at the time. Meanwhile, 17 divisions of the German Seventh Army, under Max von Boehn, aided by the Ninth Army under Eben, attacked the French Sixth Army led by Jean Degoutte to the west of Reims (theBattle of the Mountain of Reims (French: Bataille de la Montagne de Reims)). Ludendorff hoped to split the French in two."

The German attack on the east of Reims was stopped on the first day, but west of Reims the offensive fared better. The defenders of the south bank of the Marne could not escape the three-hour fury of the German guns. Under cover of gunfire,stormtroopers swarmed across the river in every sort of transport—30-man canvasboats or rafts. They began to erect skeleton bridges at 12 points under fire from those Allied survivors who had not beensuppressed by gas or artillery fire American M1917 Brodie steel helmet of the US 3rd Division of the American Expeditionary Forces (A.E.F.) in World War I (Dagnas et. al., Casques Vol I., p. 232-3). This is the US-made version of the British type 'B' version of the helmet, with a crimped metal rim and rough finish on a matte surface, and the standard leather and canvas web liner and leather chin-strap, with rubber cushioning on the sides but no rubber 'donut' cushion on the top of the liner (as on a British-made helmet). This helmet bears the emblem of the Third (Marne) Division, painted on a sanded-off patch of the helmet front. This division fought in Chateau Thierry, Argonne, at the Meuse, and at the Rhine in France. . Some Allied units, particularly the 3rd U.S. Infantry Division "Rock of the Marne", held fast or even counterattacked, but by the evening, the Germans had captured a bridgehead either side of Dormans 4 mi (6.4 km) deep and 9 mi (14 km) wide, despite the intervention of 225 French bombers, which dropped 44 short tons (40 t) of bombs on the makeshift bridges.The British XXII Corps and 85,000 American troops joined the French for the battle, and stalled the advance on 17 July.

last man last round ww1

WHEN Claude Choules released his autobiography, The Last of the Last, in 2009, he was jumping the gun on the world stage, although technically correct in terms of Australia. But his death yesterday at a nursing home in Perth, aged 110, closed a remarkable chapter in history.

Choules was not only the last known serviceman to have been involved in combat duties - on the high seas - during World War I, but the last surviving Anglo-Australian to have served in both world wars.

An American, Frank Buckles, who had driven an ambulance on the Western Front, had been the oldest survivor until he died, also aged 110, in February.

The oldest living non-combatant in the Great War is believed to be Britain's Florence Green, who worked as a waitress with the RAF. She, too, is 110.

A self-effacing man who was deeply affected by war, Choules never marched in an Anzac Day march unless ordered to. He eschewed celebrity in his last decade, saying people were only interested in him ''because everyone else has died''.

Choules's list of ''achievements'' included being the last surviving sailor from World War I: he served in both the Royal Navy and the Royal Australian Navy and was, in fact, only two days younger than the RAN, which was established on March 1, 1901.

Early in his career, he witnessed two historic events at the end of World War I. The first was the surrender of the Imperial German Navy off Scotland's east coast on November 21, 1918, 10 days after the armistice; and he was present at Scarpa Flow in the Orkney Islands on June 21, 1919, when German admiral Ludwig von Reuter ordered his interned fleet to be scuttled.

Choules, who was born at Wyre Piddle, Pershore, in Worcestershire, held dual British and Australian nationality.

He dropped out of school at 14, joined the RN in 1915, and served in the North Sea and Mediterranean Sea before being sent on loan to the RAN as an instructor at Flinders Naval Depot on the Mornington Peninsula in 1926.

His two brothers had already relocated to Australia, so he asked for and was granted a permanent transfer to the RAN.

During World War II, he was the RAN's senior demolition expert in Western Australia. He disposed of the first German mine to wash up on Australia's shores, near Esperance, and in 1942 began setting explosive charges to blow up oil tanks as the threat of a Japanese invasion loomed.

He placed depth charges in ships unable to leave Fremantle harbour, and would have had to ride a bicycle about 500 kilometres south to Albany to blow up harbour facilities there if the Japanese forces had arrived.