1918 — The Last Gamble

In early 1918 the war reached a strange moment of imbalance. Russia was out. The Eastern Front, which had consumed German divisions for years, had vanished. German leaders believed they finally had what they had been missing since 1914: a temporary window—just a few months—when they could concentrate force in the west before the United States could fully arrive. It was not optimism. It was calculation. A final throw of the dice.

The treaty that sealed Russia’s exit, Brest-Litovsk, had freed German troops, but it had not freed Germany from hunger. The British blockade still strangled supplies. Coal was short. Food was rationed brutally. Civilians were malnourished. Soldiers at the front were exhausted. The leadership knew that time itself was now a weapon pointed at Germany. American manpower and industry were m ...