The Lion's Pride Lion's Pride Volume 12 (Spring 2019) | Page 35

The German expectation circa the United States declaration of war is
that the introduction of the AEF could turn the tide against them. The
German high command began racing to knock Great Britain and France
out of the war before the Americans arrived. To do this, the Germans
were in the fortuitous positions to demand favorable terms from the
Russian revolutionaries after the collapse of the Russian Empire, which,
after the signing of the Peace of Brest-Litovsk, was able to theoretically
transfer German soldiers from the Eastern Front to shore up the West.
By early 1918, General Ludendorff was taking the arrival of the AEF
very seriously. As quoted in With Our Backs to the Wall: Victory and
Defeat in 1918, by D. Stevenson: “only action brings
success…Therefore we will and must not wait until the Entente with
American help feels strong enough to attack us…” (p. 34).
The head of the AEF, General Pershing, emphasized the necessity to
refuse the demands of the Entente to merge American units with theirs.
He also expected the presence of the “doughboys” to raise French
morale at home. However, the AEF soldiers required months of training
before finally entering the trenches (Grotelueschen, p. 17). Still
discouraged, General Petain remarked dourly to French Prime Minister
Clemenceau in March 1918, “The Germans will defeat the British in
open country; after that, they will defeat us, too” (p. 17). The Americans
underwent a “trial by fire,” as they had no experience in trench warfare.
But Pershing’s optimism proved correct; as an unnamed French officer