CHECKMATE IN THE BALTICS
By the fall of 1917 the tide of World War I had turned against Germany. Kaiser Wilhelm II’s empire faced a crippling British naval blockade and combat on multiple fronts against a powerful coalition of enemies. Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and General Erich Ludendorff, the kaiser’s dynamic duo, knew time was running out. The United States, which had declared war that April, would have enough troops in France by the middle of 1918 to decisively tip the scales in the Allies’ favor. Germany had to win the war or peace before American numbers made the outcome inevitable.
To achieve military victory, the Germans would have to defeat the British and French on the Western Front. But such a war-winning offensive would require a massive boost to German strength in the West—and the necessary troops could only come from the Eastern Front. After three years of war tsarist Russia was tottering and wracked by revolution. If Germany could force Russia to sue for peace, the German General Staff could transfer enough troops to the Western Front for an offensive that could potentially win the war by early 1918, before the Americans arrived in force. In that atmosphere of desperation Operation Albion was conceived.
to war in the summer of 1914, the kaiser assured them they would be home “before the leaves fall.” All such hopes were dashed when the French and British checked the German advance at the Marne River that September. Participants on either side of that savage six-day battle were equally shocked by the
