The Polar Bear Expedition was a unique event in American and Russian history as well. It stands as the only time that Allied forces including Americans invaded Russia. It began in 1918 when Great Britain and France requested that the US join the Allied Intervention in North Russia. The primary objective of the Intervention was to prevent Allied war material stockpiles in Archangelsk from falling into German hands.
On July 14th, 1918, the Army’s 85th Division set out from their training camp in Michigan to France. Within three days, Woodrow Wilson had agreed to the intervention as long as American forces where only used for guarding the Allied war material stockpiles. The 85th was immediately rerouted through Great Britain and equipped with winter gear and Russian arms. When they arrived in Arkhangelsk on September 4th, 1918, they were placed under British command.
When the British initially arrived in Arkhangelsk ahead of the Americans, they had discovered that the stockpiles had already been moved up the Dvina River by Bolshevik forces. Because of this, the Americans were first used in an offensive rescue of the Czech Legion.
Over time, the offensive gains slowly decreased as the front line was stretched taut. The thin line was difficult to logistically resupply and therefore forced the Allies to adopt a more defensive posture. During the coming winter, Bolshevik forces began an offensive near the Dvina River where they inflicted several casualties and forced the Allies to retreat a considerable distance.
The final withdrawal of Americans came long after the Armistice in November of 1918. Friends and relatives of the 85th division began writing letters and petitioning for the return of the American soldiers. The local newspapers in turn editorialized the petitions and managed to get the issue raised in Congress. Regardless, it was impossible to extract the Americans because the Arctic ocean was frozen over near Archangelsk. The morale of the American soldiers plummeted as they came to grips with their situation. Forced to fight to survive with no easy way out, the Americans trudged on.
The Americans weathered the winter and in February, President Wilson began drawing up plans for the withdrawal of the Americans in Archangelsk. By early June, most of the Americans were on boats heading back home via the port of New York City.
While naval battles were nothing new to warfare, the technological advances experienced in the 19th and 20th centuries were dramatic. Obviously, boats were no longer propelled with wind and sail, but instead relied on diesel and gasoline engines that drove props. This made maneuverability a key factor in naval warfare. Also worth noting was the emergence of sub-naval warfare, commonly referred to as submarine warfare.
At the onset of the war, Germany made it very clear that they would use their navy to attack civilian ships in an attempt to cripple the infrastructure of the Allies. Most famously, they employed unrestricted submarine warfare with great success. Submarines allowed the Germans to get close and fire upon a ship without being spotted even once. This advantage was huge. To counteract the threat, many merchant ships started traveling in convoys with destroyers. With the destroyers present, it was difficult for the U-Boats, or submarines, to escape unharmed. The destroyers would almost always come out on top.
Almost immediately, the British used their navies to blockade the Germans with great success. They also mined the waters surrounding Germany, even damaging neutral ships in the process.
In 1916, the Battle of Jutland was the only major naval battles of the war. It took course over two days in May and June near the waters around Jutland. While the Germans managed dole out more damage to the British ships than they received, they were still forced out of the area in an obvious strategic win for the British.
The use of U-Boats declined once blimps and other aircraft could effectively spot them as they could not yet dive deep enough to evade an eye in the sky.
The first world war was a time of swift development in war technology. Chemical warfare, air warfare, naval and sub-naval warfare, wireless communication, and armored tanks and cars among others.
The Germans most infamously used chemical warfare in the Western Front, although the both sides used tear gas regularly during the war. Xylyl bromide (tear gas), chlorine gas, phosgene gas and mustard gas were all chemical agents used during the first world war. Mustard Gas is arguably the most well known chemical agent from the first world war. Mustard gas is an extremely apt vesicant, or blister causing agent. Although the exposed experienced no immediate effects, within hours the exposure developed into deep, swelling blisters. If inhaled in high enough quantities, it can cause extreme bleeding and blistering in the lungs and respiratory system. Needless to say, if you don’t die from the gas, you’ll likely wish you would, and rather quickly too, I might add. Mustard Gas certainly wasn’t the only new advance in war technology, the first world war also gave us the predecessor to the modern tank and air warfare.
Air Warfare was a very peculiar thing in the first world war. Though they started off with crudely reinforced props that allowed the forward firing machine guns’ bullets to deflect, they eventually devised advanced mechanisms to allow for the firing of weapons through the prop. Air Strikes were similarly crudely improvised, they equipped a pilot with several hand grenades to chuck out the cockpit. However, the most common and popular use of aircraft during the first world war was for reconnaissance and spotting for artillery bombardments.
The first world war also led to the first widespread use of sub-naval, or submarine, forces. The Germans were especially fond of using their forces in unrestricted submarine warfare. Unrestricted submarine warfare is the use of submarines for attacking enemy ships, regardless of their civilian or military status, in an attempt to cripple infrastructure.
Wireless communications were in their infancy when they were utilized for military purposes in the first world war. The primary use of wireless was for the instant communication through codes which helped relay vital information quickly. The use of wireless was much more common in later wars after decades of maturation.
The development of tanks during the first world war was kindled by the allure of a possible solution to the stalemate in the Western Front. Although the first tanks were refered to as “land ships” by the British, their reliability was far from perfect. Many a tank became a death trap as they broke down or became stuck in the “no-man’s land”. A close cousin to the early tank is the Armored Personal Carrier and the self-propelled gun (the more commen view of the tanks is that of a self-propelled gun). The subsequent development of tanks rendered trench warfare quite obsolute after world war one.