Skip to main content
The beginning of the end of World War One
JOHN ELLISON remembers the momentous February of 1918 and the dramatic issues on the political agenda of the day
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk – officers from the staff of Field Marshall von Hindenburg meet the delegation of Soviet Russia, Lev Kamenev (centre)

As February 1918 opened its doors, the heart-warming effect of the case for peace and socialism advanced by the Bolshevik revolution and delivered in person by ambassador Maxim Litvinov — to rapturous applause at late January’s Nottingham Labour conference — was much felt in labour movement circles.

The Herald declared, moreover, that the conference had killed “jingoism” and that “no-one talked of crushing Germany,” but the war went on.

“Post rushing, trench raiding and patrol conflicts remain the limited items of infantry activity these times,” declared the Liberal Daily News on February 6, but deaths, wounds and other usual front-line sufferings were plentiful and there was a justified general expectation that a major German offensive was coming soon.   

If either of the two camps has ever fought this war in self-defence, this has long ceased to be true. This is a struggle for the partitioning of the world.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
DRANG NACH OSTEN: Bundeswehr armoured infantrymen during an exercise with the training device known as the duel simulator. Photo: Bundeswehr/S.Wilke/CC
Features / 13 December 2025
13 December 2025

The federal government’s plans to finance the war in Ukraine with Russian assets, and a possible deployment of German troops, put the population in Germany in the highest danger, argues SEVIM DAGDELEN

President Donald Trump meet with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office at the White House, August 18, 2025, in Washington
Features / 22 August 2025
22 August 2025

Washington plays innocent bystander while pouring weapons and intelligence into Ukraine, just as it enables the Gaza genocide — but every US escalation leaves Ukraine weaker than the neutrality deal rejected in 2022, argue MEDEA BENJAMIN and NICOLAS JS DAVIES

The ruins of Guernica after it was bombed by the Nazis on April 26, 1937
Science and Society / 2 July 2025
2 July 2025

While politicians condemned fascist bombing of Spanish civilians in 1937, they ignored identical RAF tactics across the colonies. Today’s aerial warfare continues this pattern of applying different moral standards based on geography and race, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT