1918
Most black Americans and black newspapers support the U.S. War effort. More than 365,000 blacks are drafted into military service and comprise 11% of troops sent overseas.
1918
Black Americans are in the forefront of combat in Europe from 1917 until the defeat of Germany. Two black infantry battalions are awarded the Croix de Guerre and two black officers win the French Legion of Honor.
1918
Leon Trotsky becomes commissar of war (to 1925). From the
demoralized remnants of the Czar's armed forces he manages to organize the Red
Army, a remarkable achievement, but his brusque style, his impatience with
criticism and incompetence, and his decision to rely on "military
specialists" won him few friends. Rank-and-file party comrades saw him as
aloof and remote.
1918
Edward R. Stettinius is appointed U.S. assistant Secretary of
War and is sent on a mission to France.
1918
An estimated 85,000 Jews are killed in the Ukraine between 1918 and 1920. (Atlas)
1918
American poet Ezra Pound becomes acquainted with British Major C.H. Douglas while in London and later becomes obsessed with his economic theories. Douglas believes the quest for foreign markets puts nations on a collision course and therefore wars are inevitable. The primary villains, he said, are international bankers, many of whom are Jews.
1918
Oswald Spengler publishes the first volume of his The Decline of the West. Spengler held that history follows definite laws of growth and decay that are observable in the careers of all cultures. Tracing the unfolding of these laws in his own era, he predicted that Western culture, already well into its twilight, would experience further decline as a future of rationalism, mass manipulation, and material expression succeeded the profound art, religion, and philosophy of the past. In later nationalistic political tracts Spengler contended that Germany, with its Prussian authoritarian tradition, could dominate this future.
1918
The Habsburg monarchy in Austria collapses forcing Emperor Karl
von Habsburg and family into exile.
1918
Austria, Poland and Czechoslovakia become republics in the
aftermath of World War I.
1918
Achille Ratti, the future Pope Pius XI, becomes Pope Benedict XV's representative (the Papal Nuncio) to Poland. His proximity to the Polish-Soviet War will reinforce his horror of Communism.
1918
Alfred Brunner, Heinrich Kraeger and others found the Deutsch-Sozialistische
Partei.
1918
An influenza pandemic (Spanish flu) begins and kills more than 21 million people, worldwide, during the next 2 years.
1918
Civil war breaks out between the Red and White armies in Russia.
1918
More than 500 Jews are killed in Poland between 1918 and 1919. (Atlas)
1918 January
Journalist Kurt Eisner plays a prominent role in anti-war strikes in Munich and is quickly jailed. (Roots)
1918 January
The Bolsheviks sign an armistice with Germany at Brest-Litovsk. The Bolsheviks take Russia out of the war, freeing tens of thousands of German troops to fight the Allies in the West.
1918 January
Sebottendorff publishes the first issue of Runen in association with the Germanenorden. He also assumes financial responsibility for the Allegemeine Ordens-Nachrichten newsletter, for members only. (BHK; Roots)
1918 January 1
Corneliu Codreanu and his followers in Romania resist attacks by bands of mutinous Russian soldiers looting and pillaging their countryside.
1918 January 8
President Wilson in an address to Congress lays out his famous Fourteen Points for peace, calling for, among other things, open diplomacy, armament reduction, national self-determination, and the formation of
a League of Nations.
1918 February 9
German Foreign Secretary von Kuhlmann issues an ultimatum at Brest-Litovsk, which the Russians consider as annexationist. This causes division within the Soviet leadership. (Polyakov)
1918 February 10
Bukharin leads the so-called Left Communist
opposition to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which he says is a betrayal of the
quest for international socialist revolution. He will later accepts Lenin's
policies.
1918 February 11
President Wilson publicly announces his Fourteen Point Plan for an armistice, promising that there will be "no annexations, no contributions, no punitive damages." (Nicholson)
1918 February 18
The German command launches an offensive along the
entire Russian front after the Soviets refuse Germany's terms for peace. 700,000
Austro-German troops are thrown against the newly formed Red Army and begin
closing in on Petrograd, Moscow and Kiev. (Polyakov)
