transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:06] War has played a key role in the history of the United States, from the nation's founding right down to the present. War made the US independent, kept it together, increased its size, and established it as a global superpower. Understanding America's wars is essential for understanding American history. Welcome to Key Battles of American History, a podcast in which we discuss American history through the lens of the most important battles of America's wars. Here is your host, James Early.

Speaker 2:
[00:43] Hello, and welcome back to The Great War, our 10,000 foot survey of the cataclysmic conflict that changed the world forever. I'm your host, James Early, as always. And as always, I am joined by my cohost and my good buddy, Sean McIver. In our last episode, Sean and I examined Germany's final bid for victory in 1918, the massive Spring Offensives, or Kaiserschlacht, that aimed to break the allied line before American manpower could tip the balance. We traced the dramatic sequence of operations from the initial breakthrough of Operation Michael to the far-reaching assaults on the Lees, the En, and finally the Marne, showing how early German successes dissolved into exhaustion, logistical collapse, and strategic overreach. The discussion highlighted the emergence of unified allied command under Ferdinand Foch, the accelerating impact of American forces, and the shifting operational dynamics that transformed the Western Front back into a war of movement. This week, we're going to have a pretty quick episode. We're going to wrap up the war in the Caucasus, in the Balkans, in Italy, and then we're going to present a more detailed account of the last year of the war in the Middle East. So Sean, kick us off. Where are we going first?

Speaker 3:
[02:00] Well, we're going to go over to the Caucasus, and this is on the far eastern part of the combat zone. The spring of 1918, after Russia's collapse, this creates an opportunity for the Ottomans, the Turks, and so the Ottoman Third Army advanced into the Caucasus, pushing back the Armenian, Azeri, and Georgian forces that remained there, because the Imperial Russian forces do not exist, and it's not a priority for the Kerenskys for sure, or the Bolsheviks at this point. Now both the Ottomans and the Germans marched toward the oil fields of Baku, which was a critical zone in that area. Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan declared themselves to be independent states. Georgia also declared themselves a German protectorate. By mid-June, German and Ottoman forces were actually fighting each other in the Caucasus. Ottomans actually attacked the Germans because they were supporting the Georgians. By mid-June, Ottoman forces were closing in on Baku. In August, a combined local force, the Azeri militia, Armenian elements and the small British detachment under General Lionel Dusterville, held them off for a while. On September 14, the Ottomans finally captured the city of Baku. Now we're going to go a little further west. This is over the Serbia-Bulgarian front. In September, the reorganized Serb army, supported by French and German forces, broke through the Bulgarian lines at Dopropol on September 15. Bulgarian morale collapsed and thousands mutinied. Then further east, this is all from the Saliniki bridgehead that had been existed for several years. British, Greek and French troops also attacked further east, and this prevented a German-led counterattack. Air units sealed up mountain passes and bombed Bulgarian columns, which were attempting to escape, and this turned a retreat into a rout. The new commander on the Saliniki front was Louis Franchette de Espery, who was a good general who had been removed from command of his army group in France due to its performance in the spring offensives, and he was demoted via promotion to command what was considered at the time a purgatory front. However, familiarity with the local terrain he traveled there before the war, the improvements in command training and morale that was made by his successor, Adolf Guillemot, and personal energy and confidence helped Franchette de Esprit's the offensive succeed. And the front fact is the British nickname for Franchette de Esprit was Desperate Franchet, Desperate Frankie. But he was very brave, energetic, confident, he was competent, he was intelligent, he was not dissolute like Guillemot's predecessor had been, and he mobilized and energized the troops. And he put a lot of pressure and a lot of importance on the Serbians themselves. So that actually Serbians suffered as many casualties during this offensive as all the other combatants combined. But they fought hard to beat the Bulgarians because they knew they were on the way to liberating their country. In the meantime, there was a soldiers' revolt in Bulgaria and it reached Radomir, where rebel leaders proclaimed this short-lived republic. Then on September 29, the bombshell happened for the Central Powers. Bulgaria requested an armistice. The request was accepted and this ended Bulgaria's participation in the war. They were the first Central Power to drop out of the war and to request peace. And following this, they opened up their borders, allowed the Serbians and the French, the British and the Greeks as well, there was a large number of Greek troops who were participating. They allowed them to transverse Bulgarian territory and the offensive left Macedonia and entered Montenegro, Albania. Italians participated striking north in Albania and into Serbia. By the end of October, October 30th, Belgrade was liberated. So, where the war began over four years and two months earlier or three months earlier, now, the war found itself. Serbia was the first allied nation to be completely liberated.

Speaker 2:
[06:27] Yay, Serbia, free Serbia, free Serbia.

Speaker 3:
[06:31] The Austrians are not doing well because the Germans are reeling, but the Austrians are certainly reeling. So within the month, September 29 to October 29, there's going to be massive changes happening. Little further west, or west, over on the Italian front, remember, last October, October 21st, 1917, the Italians and the Germans, I mean, the Austrians and Germans had broken the Italian lines and pushed them way back to the Piav River at the infamous Battle of Caporetto. Well, in the interim, there had been dissolute fighting on those fronts. The British and the French had reinforced the Italians to keep them in the fight. On June 15th, 1918, the Austrians made another attempt to attack the Italians at the Piav River. This is tied in with thinking French and British will be focused on the offenses in France, not able to support the Italians. Now, the Italians had British gas masks, and the Italians and their allies had control of the air. Despite this, the Austrians made some initial gains, but the Italians drove them back, so they counterattacked. On the 20th of June, the Austrians retreated. The day before, Emperor Karl had attempted to federalize the empire. It had been a dream of his for a long time, to have a federalized country instead of an empire, and he ordered autonomy to be granted to the different ethnic groups in an effort to save his monarchy, to save the empire, he was going to try to make it federalized. But it ultimately failed as it was too late to matter. On October 24th, the Italian and other allied forces attacked the Austrians at the Piave River. This actually included some American troops, an American regiment that was attached to them. Some British, Italian, French, who are mostly Italian, but British, French, and American troops attacked the Piave River, and this began the Battle of Vittorio Veneto, which is a city that was sort of in the middle of their target cell where they were driving towards. Now, the Austrians did fight hard for three days, but almost immediately, they began to beat mutinies, mass desertions. This weakened the Austrians. They began to retreat and disarray in some places, losing a large number of prisoners. Then on the 28th, after days of hard fighting, the Allies finally broke through fully, broke the Italian lines on the Piav. The next day on October 28th, Czech, Slovene and Croat nationalist groups declared independence, and the Hungarian Parliament dissolved the union with Austria. The Austrian High Command ordered a general retreat in the Allied troops, including the Americans pursued on the 30th of October, the same day as Belgrade fell. Austria-Hungary sent an officer with a white flag and requested a ceasefire to seek an armistice. They took three days, but they agreed to the armistice on November 3rd and hostilities ceased the next day, November 4th. And the empire was already falling apart. Austria was out of the war.

Speaker 2:
[09:41] They're out. Yeah, I feel a song coming on, Sean.

Speaker 3:
[09:46] Well, they started it. They started it.

Speaker 2:
[09:49] That's true. I was thinking, ba-da-dum, bum, bum. Another one bites the dust, ba-da-dum. I'm sorry, I couldn't resist, listener. Please don't turn us off just yet. Yeah, so that's two Central Powers down. Wouldn't it be great for the Allies if they could somehow knock the Ottomans out of the war as well? Hmm. Well, as we've seen in previous episodes, the Ottoman Empire was already crumbling. And we saw in episode 14 that in 1916, the Arab revolt had broken out. Led by Hussein bin Ali, the Sharif of Mecca, the revolt soon spread northward, thanks in part to the leadership of Hussein's son, Emir Faisal, and British officer TE. Lawrence, aka Lawrence of Arabia. Lawrence and a force of Bedouin tribesmen captured the key port of Aqaba in July 1917. And as we mentioned last time, Aqaba is on the northern tip of the Gulf of Aqaba, which empties into the Red Sea. Controlling Aqaba allowed the British to easily supply Faisal's forces. Aqaba became a base for the Arab revolt. And over the next year and a half, Lawrence and his 3,000 Arabian irregulars tied down as many as 50,000 Turkish troops, preventing them from opposing the main British offensives in the Middle East. They also disrupted key Ottoman rail lines. British General Edmund Allenby launched a sequence of victories beginning with Beersheba, which was taken on October 31, 1917, followed by the Third Battle of Gaza from November 1 through 7 of that same year, 1917, and then the capture of Jerusalem, December 9, 1917. All of that is review. We talked about that before. But if you're like me, you forget things, so it's good to repeat sometimes. Well, after a pause of several weeks due to weather and the need to restore communication lines, Allenby and his army continued the campaign, capturing Jericho on February 21, 1918. After the Germans began the spring 1918 offenses, offensives rather, which we talked about last episode, Allenby was ordered to send about 60,000 men to the Western Front, which sure he was not happy about that, but orders are orders. From March through May, Allenby then made two attacks across the Jordan River, establishing two bridgeheads north of the Dead Sea. So the British are just marching right along, aren't they?

Speaker 3:
[12:20] Yes, they are. Well, in the summer of 1918, the Turkish Yildirim or Lightning Army Group underwent command changes. Falkenhayn, who had previously been its commander, he'd gone from Romania to Turkey. He was reassigned in late 1917. In the spring in 1918, Lyman von Sanders assumed overall command of the Ottoman forces in Palestine. Von Sanders had previously been an advisor to the Turkish army had been participated in Gallipoli. He ordered his army to dig in and not yield any further ground to the British. Meanwhile, the British army was brought back to full strength with soldiers from Mesopotamia and the Western Front. Many of the new troops were also from India and from South Africa. Allenby spent most of the summer organizing and training his army. Total allied strength was nearly 75,000 with 12,000 cavalry and the rest infantry. Other than a few minor skirmishes, there was not really any fighting that occurred in the summer. Meanwhile, the 5,000 man strong Arab Northern Army under the command of Faisal Allen with field command, mostly for TE. Lawrence, they were operating east of the Jordan River. And Lawrence's men were raiding throughout the region, the Transjordan region.

Speaker 2:
[13:35] Yes, they were a constant thorn in the side of the Turks.

Speaker 3:
[13:38] In classic smart, small unit raiding.

Speaker 2:
[13:42] Yes. Well, General Allenby wanted to break through the western end of the battle line. That's the Mediterranean coast. Remember the British are coming up from the south. So of their left is the west on the coast, as I said. There, the terrain would favor Calvary, because the closer you are to the sea, the in general, the flatter things are. At the same time, the Arab Army would attack the Hejaz-Damascus rail line at Daraa, isolating the Turkish force there. That's a very important rail line. Other British units would attack in the Judean hills and along the coast. Before the attack, the British used secrecy and deception to disguise their intentions and listeners, you know, I love this kind of stuff. This is one of my favorite things to talk about in battles. So what did the British do? They purposely moved troops in the opposite direction of the planned attack by day, and then they moved them back by truck at night. So this made it look like an attack would thrust east across the Jordan towards Amman. They raised dust clouds and they scattered papers and beef tins to simulate troop movements. And they even established dummy camps and a fake headquarters. Well, General Sanders fell for the ruse thinking the main attack was coming in the east, not near the coast. And helping their case was the fact that the British enjoyed overwhelming air superiority. So helping the British cause, of course, they had lots and lots of planes and Turks, not so much. The Turks had about 41,000 soldiers. And because they did not have any idea what the Allied Army's plan was, at least not the real plan, they had to deploy their forces evenly over the front. They were also demoralized by desertion, sickness and shortage of supplies. So they, similar to the Germans, on the western front, they are suffering low morale as well as they're hungry. They're hungry and a lot of them are getting sick. So again, it's not the strong army that you had, fairly strong army that they had back at the beginning of the war. James here, and now a brief word from our sponsors.

Speaker 3:
[15:54] Yes, that is true. One of the things that is noted is a couple of books I've read said that the British really became very effective at this counterintelligence type of activity, and a lot of them, that was carried on, obviously, into the Second World War. So this is one of the good examples of that. Well, on September 16th, an Arab force, the Marauding Arabs under TE. Lawrence, destroyed rail lines around Daraa, cutting communications and the Turkish supply line. They were soon joined by other Arab tribes. These are local tribes, and they opportunistically realized, oh, the British and Faisal are going to win. So they joined up and they participated in the conflict. Sanders lost contact with Damascus and with Constantinople. Over the next two days, other British forces attacked in the hills above the Jordan River, pushing the Turks back. The RAF aircraft bombed headquarters, roads and communication centers, cutting off communication between Sanders and the main Ottoman force for two days. On the 17th of September, an Indian sergeant from the British Army deserted to the Ottoman side, and he warned them that a big attack was coming on the west side of the lines, exactly when and exactly where Allenby was planning on attacking. Sanders didn't believe it. He thought that he had been set with misinformation for him to cause and to move his troops away from the East. Now, early on the 19th, the British opened a massive barrage. British infantry and Indian infantry charged up the coast and routed the Turks, whose commander, Shavat Pasa, fled the scenes. Other British units attacked in the East, and they were threatening to envelop the Ottomans.

Speaker 2:
[17:41] On the 20th, very next day, the Allies took Nazareth, the hometown, or at least the town where Jesus grew up. Three days later, they took Haifa. And in the face of the oncoming Allied onslaught, the Turkish Seventh Army Commander Mustafa Kemal, remember him, Lister? He's still got a big future ahead of him. Mustafa Kemal ordered a retreat northward. As the Turkish Army retreated, they were cut to pieces by the RAF. They were just being strafed and bombed, and it was not pretty for the Ottomans.

Speaker 3:
[18:15] Yeah, similar to what happened. Yeah, similar to what happened to the Bulgarians, or what was happening around the same time to the Bulgarians, for sure.

Speaker 2:
[18:22] Yeah, that air superiority really tips the balance in the British favor.

Speaker 3:
[18:28] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[18:28] Many Ottoman soldiers were killed, the survivors were scattered and leaderless. Over the next four days, the 4th Cavalry Division and the Australian Mounted Division rounded up large numbers of demoralized and disorganized Ottoman troops in the Jezreel Valley. And one author wrote, quote, Allenby's plan for the Battle of Maguette was as brilliant an execution as it had been in conception. It had no parallel in France or on any other front, but rather look forward in principle and even in detail to the Blitzkrieg of 1939. End quote. And that's the name of the battle we've been talking about, Maguette. It's funny because there's several Battles of Maguette, and they're way far apart in the number of years. If you just Google, I remember when I first started researching this, if you Google Battle of Maguette, you get one from, I think, BC, but thousands of years ago, and I think there's another one in between that one and this one, but I'm drawing a blank right now. But of course, there's also a Battle of Maguette mentioned in the biblical Book of Revelation. That's where the phrase Armageddon comes from, Har Maguette, which means the Plane of Maguette. So anyway, all kinds of, it's a very significant place over many centuries, many millennia. Okay. So more allied conquests by the 21st, the Allies had captured Nablus, and on the 25th, they captured Amman, where many Turkish troops surrendered. So going back to that quote I had, this is a war of rapid movement. This is very different from the war in the Western Front, the trench warfare where everything was static, for at least for a long time. It started opening up in 1918, and it was open somewhat. There was a war of movement in 1914, but from late 1914 through early 1918, there wasn't hardly any movement at all as we've seen over the last several episodes. But here in Arabia, we have Palestine that's moving. It's moving very rapidly now.

Speaker 3:
[20:37] Yeah, and Allenby was the right commander for the action. And he'd already shown that, he'd taken Gaza earlier by attacking Beersheba, which is where their water supply came from. So basically he flanked Gaza and took Gaza from behind, really. And he had been a commander on the Western Front, but he was a cavalry officer. And he'd sort of initially sat there, you know, he fought in the main battles in 1914 in the retreat. But then he'd been an infantry commander, a court commander during the big fights, the attritional fights. And he didn't like it. He had different ideas about how to do things. He was also very stubborn and he was very hot tempered, but he was also very intellectual in that he would gather all of his officers around. One of them was Archibald Wavell. We gathered them around at dinner or at a meeting, staff meetings and would just rapid fire, ask them questions and ask their opinions and take everyone's opinion and he would sort of absorb it all and make his decisions. And he even timed his battles correctly. There was a quick anecdote. I was reading where he was at the intelligence section looking at some charts on the wall and one was a chart of malarial rates at the different parts of Israel. And he specifically was looking at the plane of Sharon, which is the coastal plane where Tel Aviv is today. It's that small part that's between the West Bank and the Mediterranean Sea. That was really where the attack was going to happen. And he said, well, what is this? And it said, well, the heaviest malarial rates are July and August during that time. And he said, well, if you think back, Richard III of the Lionheart failed to capture Jerusalem. It wasn't because of the Saracens. It was because of disease. He had a sick army that he was trying to take Israel with. So he was a student of history. He understood in a lot of ways, and he understood politically and spiritually and socially the importance of places like Israel, and like Nazareth, and like Megiddo, where the battle really wasn't fought near Megiddo. Megiddo was way behind the Alliance, but there was a reason why they called the battle because there was specific societal and cultural significance to that action. He was practical in his dealing with the Arabs, but at the same time understanding that he wasn't going to give the Arabs everything that they wanted because he had marching orders from his superiors. So he was a very forward-thinking general. I think I consider Allenby maybe to be the most modern commander on the Allies' side during the war. And as he said, this battle looks like a battle that would have happened in World War II, not in the first, not what we picture as the first World War. Well, at any rate, the Allies are going to fight northward towards Damascus, and this surrendered on October 1st. As many as 75,000 Ottoman soldiers were surrendered. It was initially taken by the Australian cavalry. This is the Australian mounted force that was charging up to the north and the northeast, and ahead of the main army. And it was surrendered by an Arab garrison commander who had no love for the Turks. So he saw the writing on the wall and just surrendered the city. Then Lawrence and his Arab force took over the city after the Australians left. And we can see this event vividly depicted in the movie Lawrence of Arabia. Lyman I Sanders withdrew north towards Aleppo, leaving the remaining Ottoman forces disorganized. Aleppo fell to the Allies on October 26th, and this effectively ended organized Ottoman resistance in Syria. The British suffered 5,343 casualties, 782 killed, 382 missing, and 4,179 wounded, which is a drop in the bucket compared to the big battles on the Western Front. But I mean, Allenby had fewer men, but still much lower loss rate. Now the Ottomans lost all of their force except for 6,000 who escaped, which is pretty shocking. The armistice negotiations between Ottoman and British leaders, they began. And this led to the signing of the Armistice of Meduro on October 30th, 1918, which ended Ottoman participation in the war. So this, they're actually the second central power to drop out. And as we saw on November 4th, five days later, the Austrians who dropped out as well. So now Germany is the only central power that remains in the war. Now, November 1st, the British took the city of Mosul. And this is a move that was later criticized as contrary to the spirit of the Armistice.

Speaker 2:
[25:15] Yeah. And the Ottomans said, wait a minute, I thought we weren't going to do any more fighting and you just grabbed one of our cities.

Speaker 3:
[25:24] And around the same time, I believe the French landed in the Lebanon and took, they were pretty close to this time frame as well.

Speaker 2:
[25:31] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[25:32] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[25:32] So remember Lester earlier when I said, wouldn't it be great if we could knock the Ottomans out of the war? Well, at the time that Austria dropped out, the Ottomans already had dropped out. So now three are gone. James here. And now a brief word from our sponsors. So the Battle of Megado and the actions immediately after it were a disaster for the Ottomans. They now had permanently lost control over their Middle Eastern possessions. Historian Edward Erickson writes, quote, the battle ranks with Ludendorff's Black Days of the German Army and the effect that it had on the consciousness of the Turkish general staff. It was now apparent to all, but the most diehard nationalists that the Turks were finished in the war. In spite of the great victories in Armenia and in Azerbaijan, which we talked about earlier, that was the Caucasus campaign, Turkey was now in an indefensible condition, which could not be remedied with the resources on hand. It was also apparent that the disintegration of the Bulgarian Army at Salonika and the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Army spelled disaster and defeat for the Central Powers. From now until the Armistice, the focus of the Turkish strategy would be to retain as much Ottoman territory as possible. They're just holding on, trying not to completely lose everything. Peter Hart has a great quote on this, which kind of sums it up. He says, quote, As with Gallipoli, Mesopotamia and Salonica, Palestine proved to be a waste of resources. The strategic objectives, control of the Dardanelles at Gallipoli, oil in Mesopotamia, the survival of the Serbian army at Salonica, and the security of the Suez Canal in Egypt, could all have been secured with a far smaller investment of precious resources. The Easterners had believed that they, by the way, I'm going to break in his quote, Easterners are, that was a faction of the British government and army that focused on the East, like Churchill was one of them. They were the ones that were big proponents of the Salonica campaign, as well as the Gallipoli campaign and the Middle Eastern campaign. All right, back to the quote. The Easterners had believed that they had another way to win the war, one that could avoid the necessity of facing the German army on the Western front. But there was no easy way to victory. And as a direct result of the proliferation of sideshows, the BEF would be left starved of troops when it needed them on the Western front during the great German offenses of 1918. So what Peter Hart is saying in short is that the British shouldn't have even messed with Gallipoli. They shouldn't have messed with Salonica. They shouldn't have done that attack up the Tigris River and ended up in Coute. And or they shouldn't have wasted so much effort and resources in Palestine and Arabia. So I guess Hart is a Westerner. The opposite of an Easterner. He just thought they should have stuck to the Western front. I'll let you make that decision, listener, whether Hart is correct or not. But just to conclude, and then I'll hand you the mic, metaphorically speaking, Sean, but with the Bulgarians, the Turks, and the Austrians signing separate armistice agreements with the Allies, Germany was now the only central power still in the war. How long will that be the case? Well, we'll find out in our next episode. But Sean, as always, I'll give you the final word. Any final thoughts, reflections, anything?

Speaker 3:
[29:04] I agree with Hart to an extent, but I disagree with them also. They shouldn't have messed around with the frittering around the edges of these secondary fronts, doing so badly. They should have done it the right way. When they finally got around to doing it the right way, they won. And that's the difference, is that Sloaniky and the Middle Eastern, for the two Middle Eastern fronts, Mesopotamia and Palestine, they didn't have very much resources. They had limited resources. Allenby asked for a huge number of troops and he was told no. So it may do with what he had. And they utilized troops from India, which were not as heavily utilized at that point on the Western front as they had been in 1914. But, and they used South African troops that were now freed up from other areas of Africa. But the point is, is that when Turkey fell, when Bulgaria fell, it sent shockwaves through all the Central Powers. When Turkey fell and Austria fell within days of each other, Germany was impacted by that. Right? Germany now was truly surrounded. There was a direct avenue into Germany from Austria, if the Austrians put down their arms. There was a direct avenue to Germany through Romania and through Poland. And so they were surrounded. Ultimately, it was doing these side campaigns, doing them correctly, doing them well, executing them correctly. That was what made the difference. And stressing the Germans and not, the Germans were not able to be everywhere at once. And so that was really made, that made a significant difference. It did make an impact at war. All four Central Powers basically collapsed within a one month period, or two month period really, from the beginning of September to the end of October, and the first week in November. They all were out of the war. And now all of a sudden, there's Germany. And these dates are important because we all know what date this war is going to end.

Speaker 2:
[31:04] Well, maybe not everybody does, Sean. You may have just given away the surprise ending.

Speaker 3:
[31:09] Oh, there's a surprise ending. Sorry.

Speaker 2:
[31:12] Yeah. So you didn't even issue a spoiler alert. All right. Well, now we don't even need to do the rest of the series. No, I'm just kidding. No, we are going to do the rest of the series. And we're going to actually next episode will be the last one where they're still fighting going on. But of course, we're going to have a few more where we break down the long term consequences when we talk about the major players and all that. As always, as you know, so join us next time. Our 21st episode when we talk about the Allied 100 Days Offenses and then the end of the war there. Okay, I blew it too, Sean. Anyway, thank you for listening. Thank you for putting up with my goofball humor listeners. And we'll see you next time. Until then, take care. Thank you for listening to today's episode. Key Battles of American History is a proud member of the Parthenon Podcast Network, which includes several other podcasts, including History Unplugged by Scott Rank, History of the Papacy and Beyond the Big Screen by Steve Guerra, This American President by Richard Lim, Eyewitness History by Josh Cohen, and The History of North America and Historical Jesus by Mark Bunnett. If you haven't already, I strongly encourage you to check out these great podcasts. If you would like to support this podcast and help it to grow, there are four things you can do. First, you can subscribe to the podcast and leave a review on the podcast player of your choice. This helps other people to find the podcast. Ratings and reviews on Apple podcasts are especially helpful. Second, join our Facebook group, American History Fanatics, where we discuss the episodes of this podcast as well as other topics related to American History. Third, tell as many friends as you can about the show. Consider sharing links to episodes on social media. Fourth, you can join the elite unit called Early's Raiders by going to patreon.com and searching for Key Battles of American History. There are five different levels of support to choose from. Each level allows you to have early access to ad-free episodes. Higher levels bring additional benefits including bonus episodes and even the ability to commission episodes on topics of your choosing. Before I close, I would like to give a shout out to the current members of Early's Raiders. Thanks to Generals Clifford Bowers and Stephen Jewell, Colonels Carl Archer, Lee Beaumont, Daniel Fisher, Ben Goeding, Bob McCullough, Doug Pergram, Jay Robinson, Matt Schaper, Josh Simpson and Jake Wallach. Majors Chris Baldoff, Mitchell Bass, Mark Bearden, Joan Belford, David Biddix, Chris C, Eric Chester, Chilly Gator, Anna Concepcion Castro, Randy Hardin, Nicholas Monheimer, Melissa Mueller, Hunter Phillips, Mark Porter, Michael Reed, Michael Severino, Alicia Smith Arthur, Carter Yu, Wes Van de Hoiville, and Mark Wolfe. Captains Dan Adame, Dakota Albergo, Jared Anderson, Lee Barkelau, Rob Birchmeyer, Douglas Bowe, Alex Calabrese, Ronald Cohen, Alex Coombs, Christopher Craddock, Reid Darby, Terry Davis, Robbie Edwards, Kyle Foster, Richard Foster, Brian Goble, Richard Goldblatt, Greg Gongoleski, Gary Guzy, Paul Houshan, Grant Holmstrom, Casey Inouye, Stephen James, Scott Krueger, Carl Lawson, Gary Lenz, Michael Lang, Mike Leslie, Jose Martinez, Robert McAteer, Melody, Joanne Mikonski, Tom Miller, Monk, Jeff Muggler, Navy Captain Retired, Nicholas Panagakos, Chris Pfeiffer, Ryan Ramones, William Randall, Evan Robinson, Russ Ryan, David Santee, Scott Saunders, Dan Seeger, Daniel Schumer, Jim Steele, Jacob Thomas, and Jacob Turner, Larry Elk, Ryan Van Dyke, Clark Wallace, Kyle Watson, and Bruce Zanin. And lieutenants, Logan Bell, Matthew Christensen, Mike Corbin, David Fabro, Ian Doran, EW4L, Flechtarn2, Scott Hendricks, Anthony Holder, Who's Your Daddy, Dean Jay, Griff Johnson, Lieutenant Don, Jordan Martin, Todd Mendenhall, Patrick Moctezuma, Francis O'Connor, Rick, Tom Schech-Snyder, Shusei, David Shoebridge, Tracy Stamp, Ryan Starr, The Ape, Scott Taylor, Mark Weinhold, Evan Westerfield, Ian Woods and Tom Wu. I greatly appreciate your support. Thank you.

Speaker 1:
[35:16] Thank you for listening to Key Battles of American History. If you liked this episode, please subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcast catcher. And please be sure and spread the word about the show. If you can spare a few minutes, rate and review the show at Apple Podcasts. This greatly helps us to reach more listeners. And for show notes, maps and further discussion, visit our website at www.keybattlesofamericanhistory.com. Thank you, and we look forward to joining you again in the next episode of Key Battles of American History.