<THREAD> Look, Trump is obviously a moron. There was no 1917 pandemic. The influenza pandemic lasted from 1918-1920. And it didn’t end WWII, which ended in 1945.

BUT the Great Influenza DID play a role in the endgame of World War I. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/08/10/trump-1918-spanish-flu-probably-ended-wwii-which-happened-two-decades-apart/3340770001/ 1/16

Beginning in March 1918, Germany’s First Quartermaster-General Erich Von Ludendorff launched a series of all-out offensives along the Western Front. After years of attrition, Ludendorff hoped to take advantage of Russia’s withdrawal from the war, 2/16

Germany shifted more than 40 divisions—some one million men and 3,000 guns—from the east to the west. By the spring, Germany outnumbered Allied divisions 191 to 178. 3/16

This was a risky gamble. But Ludendorff saw it as Germany’s best shot to deal a decisive blow against exhausted British and French troops before the United States (which had entered the war in 1917) could fully deploy its forces in the field. 4/16

The offensives initially made significant progress. In a war often measured in feet, the Germans gained dozens of miles as they pushed west against British and French forces. At one point they came within long-range artillery range, and a three-days march, of Paris. 5/16

But, by June, the German offensives had stalled. Then, a final make-or-break German push in July failed. Although the fighting would continue until November, July was the moment when the once-formidable German Army cracked, and the tide of the war irrevocably turned. 6/16

In his memoir of the war, Ludendorff pointed to the influenza pandemic as a major factor. “It was grievous business having to listen every morning to the chiefs of staffs’ recital of the numbers of influenza cases, and their complaints about the weakness of their troops.” 7/16

It would be easy to dismiss these claims as simply an excuse for Ludendorff’s own considerable failures. Moreover, since the pandemic affected all sides, even some historians that take the flu seriously have downplayed its importance in shaping the final outcome of the war. 8/16

But a close look at the available evidence reveals that influenza did not affect all the combatants equally or at the same time. The German Army suffered more and, crucially, bore the brunt of the contagion *earlier*. 9/16

In June, the influenza pandemic, which initially spread among Allied forces affecting tens of thousands of troops, hit the German Army *much* harder because of the inferior German diet and their strained medical system. 10/16

In June and July 1918, at least a half a million German soldiers—approximately a third of the total fighting force the Germans had at the beginning of the spring offensive—were affected by influenza. 11/16

Given how overstretched German forces were across the Western Front at this critical juncture, the army couldn’t afford that level of sickness in its ranks. All told, estimates suggest that between 700,000 and 1.75 million German soldiers were affected by influenza in 1918. 12/16

Influenza also devastated German civilians, especially during the second wave of the virus in the fall of 1918. The population had been primed for a public health disaster by the Allied blockade of foodstuffs. 13/16

As a consequence, during the especially deadly second wave of the pandemic in October and November, Germany experienced its highest levels of civilian mortality of the entire war. 14/16

Incalculable misery combined with the defeat of the army to spark mutinies and mass unrest, leaving the Kaiser’s abdication and the transition to a republic as the only means of restoring political stability. 15/16

If you are interested in more on this story, and what it might say about possible geopolitical consequences of COVID-19, be on the lookout for my forthcoming book with @thomaswright08, AFTERSHOCKS: PANDEMIC POLITICS AND THE END OF THE OLD INTERNATIONAL ORDER. 16/16