Allied Supreme War Council
The Allied Supreme War Council ( French Conseil supérieur de guerre interallié , English (Allied) Supreme War Council , Italian Consiglio supremo di guerra alleato ) was a body founded in 1917 at the suggestion of David Lloyd George and based in Versailles , in which the common strategy of the Allies was discussed of the First World War was advised. It was decided in November 1917 at the Rapallo Conference in response to the Italian defeat in the Twelfth Battle of Isonzo and formed the basis for the council of the League of Nations founded in 1920 .
history
Lloyd George, who had long had an unfriendly relationship with his most important generals, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), William Robertson , and the Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force , Douglas Haig , was last in because of the huge losses on the Western Front the Third Battle of Flanders , got into trouble domestically. He saw the Italian defeat at Caporetto as an opportunity to curtail the influence of the generals through a central allied high command. At the Rapallo Conference from November 5 to 7, 1917, it was decided to convene a Supreme War Council of the representatives of France , Great Britain and Italy , in which each of the main allies should be represented by the head of government and one other member of the government, as well as one permanent military representative who acted on behalf of the respective government and advised it. While Lloyd George benefited domestically from the initiative, it came too late for French Prime Minister Paul Painlevé , he was defeated a week later in a vote of confidence and was replaced by Georges Clemenceau .
Great Britain sent Henry Hughes Wilson as permanent military representative , France Ferdinand Foch and Italy Luigi Cadorna . Foch was replaced almost immediately (after the Clemenceau government took office) by his close collaborator Maxime Weygand , as Clemenceau wanted to keep him on the post of chief of staff. The USA , which attached importance to its status as merely "associated power", had sent Edward M. House ("Colonel House") as an observer to Rapallo. Its military representative was Tasker H. Bliss , House represented President Woodrow Wilson on political issues. The most urgent task after the founding of the council was the stabilization of the Italian front by Allied troops. Foch and Wilson also agreed that a central reserve should be formed from Allied troops. Since Haig and the French commander-in-chief Philippe Pétain resisted, the reserve ultimately only existed on paper.
By March 1919, 18 meetings of the Supreme War Council had taken place. In order to facilitate the extensive work of the council of war, a large number of inter-allied committees were convened, which were made up of members of the advisory staff involved. Her tasks included, among other things, dealing with questions of transport and supplies, recruiting workers, enemy propaganda and influencing the morale of one's own troops and the public mood on the home front, medical questions and attitudes towards neutral states. Their work was supervised by a secretariat, similar to later with the League of Nations.
Robertson had to vacate his post as CIGS in February 1918 due to the dispute over the control of the reserves and Wilson was his successor. The post of permanent military representative was given to Henry Rawlinson (later replaced by Charles Sackville-West ).
Due to the German spring offensive that began in March 1918 , the British and French decided at their conference in Doullens to commission Marshal Foch with the strategic coordination of the actions of the British and French armies on the Western Front; Joseph Joffre took his place in the Supreme War Council . A week after Doullens' decision, the US troops in France were included in this arrangement at the Beauvais conference , and later the Italians on the Western Front as well.
The Supreme War Council continued to exist after the Compiègne armistice of November 1918 and prepared the Paris Peace Conference at which all victorious powers were represented by delegates. However, the main victorious powers had a special position as the so-called “Council of Ten” (including Japan , later “ Council of Four ”). On February 8, 1919, the Supreme War Council established the Supreme Economic Council . The Allied Blockade Council ( Superior Blockade Council ) was entrusted with questions of the further blockade against the Central Powers and Soviet Russia .
See also
literature
- David F. Trask: The United States in the Supreme War Council: American war aims and inter-Allied strategy, 1917-1918. Wesleyan University Press, 1961.
- Kurt Egon von Turegg: The main allied and associated powers: legal form of a failed world order. Research by the German Institute for International Studies: Europe and the World System of States Volume 1. Junker & Dünnhaupt, Berlin 1942.
- Jehuda Lothar Wallach: Uneasy Coalition: The Entente Experience in World War I. Greenwood Publishing, 1993. ISBN 0-313-28879-8 .
- David R. Woodward: Lloyd George and the Generals. Psychology Press, 2004. ISBN 0-7146-5507-4 .
- Ders .: Trial by Friendship: Anglo-American Relations, 1917-1918. University Press of Kentucky, 2003. ISBN 0-8131-9084-3 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Clive Archer: International Organizations. Routledge, 2012. ISBN 0-415-24689-X . P. 17 ff.
- ^ Michael S. Neiberg: Fighting the Great War: A Global History. Harvard University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-674-02251-3 . P. 287.
- ^ Wallach, p. 93.
- ^ Wallach, p. 97.