The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and the end of the war on the Eastern front freed up large numbers of German soldiers for use elsewhere.
Hindenburg and Ludendorff chose to redeploy those soldiers to the Western Front in a final effort to end the war with a German victory.
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Fanfare
Opening War Theme
Fantasie from Siegfried
Composed in 1876 by Richard Wagner. Public domain.
Performed by the United States Marine Band. Public domain recording. Source.
Closing War Theme
Except when otherwise indicated, the contents of this podcast are © and ℗ 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 by Mark Painter, all rights reserved. Some music and sound effects used by arrangement with Pond 5.
I’m disappointed you haven’t mentioned the shells of the Paris Guns may have been the first manmade objects to reach space. It depends, of course, upon your definition of where space begin, but the shells would go as far up as 40km, which is even higher than most high-altitude weather balloons. The modern designation of “outer space” begins at the Karman Line 100km above sea level, but that’s an arbitrary number. At 40km above sea level, you would have 99.9% of earth’s atmosphere below you, which is very apparent if you look at photographs taken from that altitude (it sure does LOOK like outer space up there!)
The next manmade object to surpass those altitudes (and indeed cross the Karman Line) would be V-2 rockets anyway, so you can’t say that would be stealing the honor from Germany 😉