Meuse Argonne: The U.S. Army's largest and deadliest battle [6:54]

YouTube ^ | April 26, 2017 | The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

[SunkenCiv]

The History Guy remembers the battle of the Meuse Argonne, the largest and deadliest battle in the history of the United States army. 

The episode discusses events and shows photographs depicting a period of war, which some viewers may find disturbing. 

The History Guy uses images that are in the Public Domain. As photographs of actual events are often not available, I will sometimes use photographs of similar events or objects for illustration. 

The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered (formerly "Five Minutes of History") is the place to find short snippets of forgotten history from five to fifteen minutes long. If you like history too, this is the channel for you. 

Meuse Argonne: The U.S. Army's largest and deadliest battle | 6:54 
The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered | 1.64M subscribers | 382,677 views | April 26, 2017

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TOPICS: History; Science; Travel
KEYWORDS: godsgravesglyphs; lancegeiger; meuseargonne; thegreatwar

[SunkenCiv]

YouTube transcript reformatted at textformatter.ai *may* follow.

[SunkenCiv]

[SunkenCiv]

Transcript

Intro

Hi, I’m the History Guy. I have a degree in history and I love history, and if you love history too, this is the channel for you.

History

Between the first and third of July 1863, more than 23,000 soldiers of the Union Army would be killed in the Battle of Gettysburg. It was the deadliest battle for the American Army during the U.S. Civil War and yet not the deadliest battle in the history of the American Army. Between December 16, 1944, and January 25th, 1945, more than 600 thousand U.S. troops would be engaged in the Battle of the Bulge. That made it the largest battle for the American Army in the Second World War, and yet it was not the largest battle in the history of the United States Army. No, the largest and deadliest battle in the history of the United States Army occurred between September 26th and November 11th, 1918, in the Battle of the Meuse Argonne. As the world commemorates the 100th anniversary of the Great War, I find that many Americans don’t know much about the war or the American contribution to the war. And that is too bad because the largest and deadliest battle in the history of the United States Army deserves to be remembered.

When the U.S. declared war in April of 1917, our allies were already on the brink. A credit crisis that year demonstrated that France and Britain were reaching the end of their ability to continue to borrow money to support the war, and so when we joined the war effort, we knew that we had to fairly quickly be able to provide enough troops to break the stalemate and end the war quickly or there would be no allies to support. But the problem is we had done nothing to prepare for war and we were not in a good position to do that. The entirety of our ground forces, including our Army National Guard and Marines, accounted for just around 250 thousand troops, or enough for about nine divisions. And to put that into perspective, the Germans were fielding 136 divisions just on the Western Front, and after the Bolshevik rebellion in Russia ended the war in the east, they were able to up that to 185 divisions. And not only that, but the army that we did have was simply not a modern army; we hadn’t invested in things like tanks and aircraft and heavy artillery, and our training and tactics did not incorporate the important lessons that our allies had learned fighting on the Western Front.

One of the reasons that Germany thought they could get away with things like sinking the Lusitania is that they figured even if America came into the war, that we were so woefully unprepared that it would take us years to mobilize, and they thought by then they could have defeated Britain and France. And yet in 1918, just one year after declaring war, we had more than a million troops in France; it was an amazing mobilization. But the dirty little secret that that hid was that the way that we had done that was by so abbreviating the process that the army that we sent to France was simply not prepared for the war that they were being asked to fight.

The Allied High Command decided that in the fall of 1918, they were going to launch a grand offensive that was going to take all of the Allied armies and attack the entire length of the Western Front with the goal of driving Germany out of the war by the end of the year. But it was such a broad offensive that they had to include the million men of the American Expeditionary Force even though most of them had never seen combat before, and many had not even completed their training. And to make matters worse, the A.E.F. was assigned some of the very worst ground of the offensive, the area called the Meuse Argonne. The Meuse Argonne was an area of steep hills and ravines, nearly impassable terrain that had ample cover for things like snipers and machine gun nests and pillboxes. And it was all spied by a fortified height that allowed the Germans to accurately drop artillery on anyone who would attack the fortifications. The Germans had taken the ground in 1914, and despite all their best efforts, the French had never been able to take it back because it was described as “Perfect Defensive Ground,” which means the worst place to try to launch an attack. And yet if we could break through those defensive works, we could take the railway junctions that the Germans needed to supply their army in France.

The American losses were obscene, made worse by the fact that so many of them were avoidable. They simply had antiquated training; their tactics were more applicable to the Civil War than the First World War. They attacked machine guns head-on. Many of the untested commanders proved to be completely unfit for command, and the higher command was simply not prepared for the logistical challenges of an offensive this size. We didn’t have adequate medical support; we weren’t able to move supplies forward to even feed the troops, and we couldn’t get the artillery moving forward fast enough to be able to support continuing the attack.

You have to understand the sheer size of this attack. In the first three-hour bombardment to start the assault, the Allies fired more ordinance than had been fired in the entirety of the United States Civil War, by both sides! In the end, America involved 1.2 million troops, by far the largest operation in the history of the United States Army. And the 26,000 dead made it the deadliest battle in the history of the American Army.

There’s a big debate on how much credit America can take for ending the war, and it’s a fair debate; our allies have a fair complaint there. We didn’t enter the war until 1917, and we couldn’t appreciate the sacrifice of armies that had been fighting there since 1914. And yet in the Meuse Argonne offensive, American troops took positions that the allies had not been able to take in four years of trying. And the American position in the Grand Offensive that ended the war was irreplaceable; our allies did not have the troops to do what they were doing in the offensive, and to replace what was done by the million men of the American Expeditionary Force. And so in the end, we did what we came to do; we shifted the balance, we broke the stalemate that allowed us to win the war. And because of that, despite the fact that our casualties were only two percent of the entire conflict, the largest battle and deadliest battle in the history of the American Army deserves to be remembered, on both sides of the Atlantic.

Outro

I’m the History Guy. I hope you enjoyed this edition of my series, five minutes of history, short snippets of forgotten history five to ten minutes long. If you did enjoy it, then please go ahead and click that thumbs up button that’s there on your left. If you have any questions or comments, then feel free to write them in the comments section and I will be happy to respond. And if you’d like five minutes more forgotten history, all you need to do is click the subscribe button that’s there on your right.

[jmacusa]

My grandfather barely survived this battle.

He was a sergeant in the US Army's First Gas And Flame Regiment. This was a unit that dealt with poison gas and what he went through was absolute hell. After getting a taste of the front line horrors he volunteered for what he thought was an ''engineering detail. It turned out to be a unit working with that God awful stuff and it damn near killed him.

[Mariner]

The US had 26,000 KIA with 120,000 total casualties.

In a 53 day campaign.

[Jim Noble]

The US had 26,000 KIA with 120,000 total casualties. In a 53 day campaign

And for what?

[PGR88]

My great uncle was in the 306th Infantry division during this battle. He had a lingering injury from being close to a mustard gas attack.

When Pearl Harbor happened, he told my father (who was 15 at the time) - if this war is still going on when you are 18, do not get drafted into the Army. Join the Navy

And that’s what Dad did.

[KitJ]

Thank you, as always. This is a great post and video.

For Europe, this was the ‘14-’18 War. For us it was ‘17-’18.

I retain two helmets and a uniform from a great grandfather that fought there. And paperwork.

The first helmet is the one he actually wore. Greasy, chipped, the M1917 Brodie style.

The second is a brand new looking one that the Army handed him for the homecoming parade. Hah. Gotta make the boys look good when they get off the ship.

The paperwork is his discharge portfolio. Leather bound and stamped by Gen (Blackjack) Pershing.

[mass55th]

"My grandfather barely survived this battle."

My great-uncle was with the Canadian Expeditionary Forces. He was hit by German machine gun fire on September 2, 1918 while crossing Arras–Cambrai road, during the Battle of Drocourt-Quéant Line (part of the 100 days offensive), and died on the 11th. He's buried in a British military cemetery near Boulogne, France.

[mass55th]

"And for what?"

So we could go back and do it all over again.

[KitJ]

"do not get drafted into the Army. Join the Navy"

That's kinda funny. Not bad advice. Though in WWII the Navy and Merchant Marines were almost as dangerous as being in the Army.

[KitJ]

"He's buried in a British military cemetery near Boulogne, France."

Respect.

[Axenolith]

Making sure JPM et.al. Didn’t get their loans defaulted on...

[Jim Noble]

My great-uncle was on Pershing’s staff after being promoted to captain for the Mexican Punitive Expedition. Spent the war in Paris. May have never heard a gunshot.

Acclaimed as a great war hero in NY high society when he came home. Parlayed that into NY real estate, then banking.

Only had one child, a daughter. She died of an ectopic pregnancy (JUST before penicillin). He had two penthouses, a huge home in the Hamptons, and what we called “the mansion” in Central Brooklyn.

He fell out with my grandpa early, who I guess was kind of a Mama’s boy - and Mama, born under a Hanoverian King, didn’t care for her boys going off to kill Germans.

My great-uncle co-authored the first proposal for what became the World Trade Center. He died alone in the late 60s. I never knew what happened to all the money.

Neither did my parents, who always cited him as an example of “you can’t take it with you”.

[Jim Noble]

"Making sure JPM didn't get their loans defaulted on..."

Read my #14.

[RitchieAprile]

“Gas And Flame Regiment “ sounds bad assed.

[HenpeckedCon]

That’s kinda funny. Not bad advice. Though in WWII the Navy and Merchant Marines were almost as dangerous as being in the Army.
_____________________________________________________________
The Merchant Marines suffered great loses, especially early in the war. The Navy was far safer than the Army. The Army Air Corps alone suffered more casualties in the war than the Marines and Navy combined.

[jmacusa]

It was a kinda slap dash operation at first. He did his training at a base called Fort Washington and then shipped out. He never really talked about any of what he saw ''over there'' but he was not impressed with the French.

[mass55th]

Thanks!!

[KitJ]

"The Merchant Marines suffered great loses, especially early in the war. The Navy was far safer than the Army."

For sure. My step dad was denied by the Navy because he was too young to enlist. He signed on as Merchant Marine at 15 yo lying about his age. Pacific duty during WWII.