“While historians have catalogued the conflict’s causes and effects for a century now, the pandemic has largely fallen into history’s dustbin. Yet its effects were just as consequential and far reaching as the war itself.

By Kenneth C. Davis

THE SPRING OF 1918 was a dark time.

The war in Europe had been raging for nearly four years and there was no end in sight. The Bolshevik Revolution had knocked Russia out of the war. Germany unleashed an offensive that threatened annihilate the exhausted British and French armies on the Western Front. And Paris was under bombardment from a new German super gun with a range of 70 miles.

Then the Yanks arrived “Over There.” By May, a million U.S. troops were in France and more on the way.

During that fateful spring 100 years ago, the Americans helped turn the tide in Europe. But they also spread one of history’s most devastating outbreaks of disease, the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918.

The Spanish flu and the Great War were inseparably linked. While historians have catalogued the conflict’s causes and effects for a century now, the pandemic has largely fallen into history’s dustbin. Yet its effects were just as consequential and far reaching as the war itself.

Here’s what you need to know about a germ that destroyed far more lives than guns and steel.

Only the Black Death killed more people

The Spanish flu’s death toll boggles the mind. It’s believed to have killed as many as 100 million people worldwide. In fact, the pandemic ranks behind only the bubonic plague outbreak of the 14^th Century in terms of lives lost. Experts estimate that up to five percent of the world’s population in 1918 died from Influenza. And where the Black Death took years to ravage Europe and Asia, the Spanish flu did its damage in a little more than a year’s time, leaving doctors baffled and victims literally dropping dead in the streets.

The Spanish flu was deadlier than World War One

As many as 20 million soldiers and civilians were slaughtered in Europe, Eurasia and the Middle East during the First World War. Many more were crippled, debilitated by gas or emotionally shattered by what today we’d call PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). Yet, the Spanish flu ended five times as many lives as the war, and left hundreds of thousands of orphans and broken families in its wake worldwide. In the United States alone, 675,000 died from the illness. That’s more than the combined combat losses of both World Wars, the Korean conflict and Vietnam.

The “Spanish flu” wasn’t really Spanish

The pandemic’s widely known nickname “Spanish flu” was a curious byproduct of the war. Since it was officially neutral, Spain didn’t censor its press. So when Madrid was hit by the Influenza and even the Spanish king Alphonso XIII fell ill, reports of the outbreak spread around the world, and Spain took the hit. Although warring nations like the U.S., Britain, France and Germany were struggling with mounting death tolls, news of the outbreak was kept under tight wraps by governments eager to prevent panic and avoid looking vulnerable before the enemy.

It traveled with the troops

Science has since determined that the virus was a form of the Influenza A H1N1 avian flu, yet its exact origins remain a mystery. Although there were instances of a nasty strain of the “grippe” reported in Kansas, a Detroit auto factory and San Quentin prison early in 1918, the first recorded mass outbreak of the flu came at Camp Funston in Kansas, where more than 50,000 recruits and draftees were stationed for basic training. In March 1918, a cook at the base reported to the infirmary with a high-fever and pneumonia-like symptoms. Other soldiers were soon also admitted. Within days, the base’s cots were filling with more patients. And this was no ordinary virus; doctors noted that those stricken were drowning in their own body fluids. Blood streamed from patients’ noses and eyes. Struggling for breath, many victims turned blue – the reason the illness was also called “Purple Death.” The March outbreak in Kansas was followed by similar epidemics on dozens of other army bases across the U.S. But with the demands for fresh troops mounting, thousands of soldiers, many of them carrying the pathogen, were soon packed onto crowded transports and shipped to France.

Wartime conditions spread the virus

Historically, war provides the ideal conditions for the spread of disease. Overcrowded army camps speed the transmission of germs, while the physical strain of training and campaigning weakens soldiers’ resistance to bacteria and viruses. That’s why for centuries, far more combatants died from sickness than perished in battle. During the First World War, millions upon millions of men – cold, undernourished, and ill-equipped – found themselves packed into unsanitary trenches or living in extremely close quarters where germs could easily propagate. Behind the lines, refugee-choked cities and overflowing hospitals became breeding grounds for Influenza. In 1918, North American and European supply ships plying the world’s waters carried infected crews. The vessels docked in ports in Africa, India and the Far East and their sailors carried the germs ashore. No corner of the Earth was safe.

The flu disrupted the war effort

The Spanish flu played a significant role in the war’s final months. In May 1918, the British fleet was unable to sail because so many sailors were on the sick list. Meanwhile in Germany, General Erich von Ludendorff complained that his Spring Offensive had stalled because half a million German soldiers were down with what he called “Flanders flu.” Back in Germany, already reeling under an economic quarantine, the virus further weakened the nation’s flagging resolve.

Patriotic wartime parades were deadly

After a brief summertime lull, the Spanish flu returned with a vengeance in the fall of 1918. Two hot zones were Boston and Philadelphia, both major wartime ports with nearby military installations. In each city, thousands of residents flocked to “Liberty Loan” parades meant to encourage the purchase of war bonds. Within days of the events, Spanish flu exploded with devastating results. The autumn wave of Spanish flu was more violent and virulent, striking large cities and small towns across all of America and even Alaska.

Leaders fought the war instead of the flu

One of the epicenters of the autumn outbreak was Camp Devens near Boston, another major stateside training base. Army doctors there treated long lines of sick and dying young men. Soon, even the medical staff began to fall ill. One physician called it “a new Plague” and another echoed a common Spanish flu refrain: “Bodies are stacked like cordwood.” Faced with this crisis, a military official cancelled conscription for October. But with the Germans in retreat, General Pershing, the commander of the AEF (American Expeditionary Forces), and President Wilson called for more troops. Even with the quarantine, potentially infected soldiers were packed onto more transports and shipped out to France, further spreading the contagion.

Propaganda and “fake news” worsened the crisis

The American news media had long depicted in the Germans as barbarians and baby killers, even at a time when the United States was committed to neutrality. And with the U.S. entry into the war in 1917, the propaganda only increased. When news of the Spanish flu outbreak was finally made public, many speculated that Germany was somehow responsible. Across the country, false reports spread that U-boats had poisoned the water or even that the German firm Bayer had tampered with its wonder drug, aspirin. This rumour was so persistent that the U.S. office for the firm was forced to run ads reassuring consumers that its products were safe and made in the United States by Americans.

The flu affected the peace too

The Spanish flu continued to wreak havoc around the world even after the Nov. 11 Armistice. During the post-war negotiations at Versailles in 1919, President Wilson became so sick with the illness that some suspected he had been poisoned. Historians wonder if president’s bout may have affected his judgment, mental faculties and even his will at this crucial moment, leading him to abandon some of his ambitious demands, many of which might have ensured a just and lasting peace. Of course, the Versailles Treaty –with its punitive measures aimed at Germany – has been blamed for creating many of the conditions that led to Europe’s next war, just 20 years later.

How else did Spanish flu change history?

Combined with the war’s butcher’s bill, the Spanish flu transformed America. War weary and devastated by the pandemic, America turned inwards in the years after 1918. Immigration laws were toughened. A general fear of foreigners, many of whom might be carriers of disease, prompted a nationwide resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan.

But all of those women who took work in wartime factories or had gone off to become Red Cross nurses or Salvation Army “Sallies” at the front, were unwilling to go back to life as it had been. The war and the flu had radically reshaped women’s role in America and it is no coincidence that the 19^th Amendment, giving women the vote, was passed by Congress in June 1919 and ratified on April 18, 1920.

With all of the death that had been wrought, it is also worth noting some of those who survived the Spanish flu. One Chicago teenager who joined the Red Cross Ambulance Corps during the war later nearly died of the flu. His name was Walt Disney.

General Pershing fell ill as well, but survived.

One U.S. Under Secretary of the Navy nearly succumbed to the Spanish flu too. But Franklin D. Roosevelt was nursed back to health and was later elected president in 1932, leading America through the Great Depression and the next World War.

 

Kenneth C. Davis is the author of the New York Times bestsellers, Don’t Know Much About® History and America’s Hidden History, as well as In the Shadow Liberty: The Hidden History of Slavery, Four Presidents, and Five Black Lives. His most recent book — More Deadly Than War: The Hidden History of the Spanish Flu and the First World War (Holt)—is scheduled for release on May 15, 2018.  His website is www.dontknowmuch.com and he can be found on Twitter @kennethcdavis

© 2018 Kenneth C. Davis All rights reserved