Introduction

The year 1917 was one of great changes in some areas and the same old depressing features in others. The Asquith administration had fallen at the end of 1916 and David Lloyd George now led a coalition government. General Joffre had now been replaced as military adviser to the French government in December 1916 and his replacement was Robert Nivelle. On 6 April the United States of America entered the war as a result of American casualties from the new unrestricted submarine warfare by Germany and the interception of the Zimmerman note suggesting that Germany would support a Mexican invasion of the southern USA. If the Allies gained a new power during the course of the year they lost an old one when the Russian government and monarchy fell in November and peace was signed with Germany on the 15th of that month. Overall the loss of Russia, with its primitive armies led by largely incompetent generals, was more than made up for by the promise of the arrival of millions of Americans, unblooded but keen to play their part. They would not enter combat until 1918 but their impending arrival would shape German strategy by the year's end. A further change in 1917 was that, during March and April, Germany actually gave up ground in France, largely as a result of the hammer blows received on the Somme. The German Army retired on a front from Arras to Soissons to the defences of the Hindenburg Line.

During 1917 Britain would come close to defeat as the German U-Boats strangled its supply lines across the Atlantic. This led to panic measures, such as ploughing up large areas of ancient meadow and pasture for arable use. However, the crisis was averted, not on the farm but in the Admiralty, when the convoy system, long advocated by some, was introduced and the number of sinkings of British ships decreased markedly.

Another crisis struck France when wholesale mutiny ran through the army as a result of bloody and unsuccessful attacks and dreadful living conditions in and out of the line. This problem was eventually stemmed but forced Great Britain and her Empire into a protracted slog in Flanders to take pressure off its crumbling ally further south.