West Front
Summary
Late in the summer of 1914, train stations all over
Europe echoed with the sound of leather boots and the clattering of weapons as
millions of enthusiastic young soldiers mobilized for the most glorious
conflict since the Napoleonic Wars. In the eyes of many men, pride and honor
glowed in competition with the excitement of a wonderful adventure and the
knowledge of righting some insult against their nation. Within weeks however,
the excitement and glory gave way to the horrors of war, boosted by dangerous
new machines that siezed the old fields of honor and turned them into corpse
choked moonscapes. This new great war, called World War One, began as a local
disturbance in southern Europe but eventually spread into a worldwide struggle
which produced two of the greatest bloodlettings in history. The western
portion of this conflict took place mostly in Belgium and France, and started
as a war of grand maneuvers as had been theorized before the war. But when more
troops were poured into an increasingly confined area, there came a time when
the opposing forces could no longer maneuver against each other in any
operational sense. When this happened, both sides quickly entrenched in the
face of more and more lethal concentrations of firepower, and the war of the
machines and trenches had begun.
These conditions triggered a complex and difficult to trace
series of evolutions in both battlefield tactics and technology. The Germans
responded by creating what amounted to modern combined arms infantry tactics,
something their French and British opponents initially brushed off as
infiltration tactics. After a long period of grim failure, the British managed
the mass deployment of a new weapon called the tank, which also changed the
nature of warfare and helped break the deadlock of position warfare. The French
adopted both of these methods and weapons, applying them is a combined form
that appealed to the French leadership. It was however, Germany which finally
succumbed to the drain of economic warfare and by October of 1918 their field
commanders declared the war militarily lost. From that point on, it was only a
matter of time and the end came on November 11, 1918. The Great War ended,
having caused millions of deaths on the Western Front alone. Europe and the
world would never be the same.
"When day dawned we were astonished to see, by
degrees, what a sight surrounded us. The sunken road now appeared as nothing
but a series of enormous shell-holes filled with pieces of uniform, weapons,
and dead bodies. The ground all round, as far as the eye could see, was
ploughed by shells. You could search in vain for one wretched blade of grass.
This churned-up battlefield was ghastly. Among the living lay the dead. As we
dug ourselves in we found them in layers stacked one upon the top of another.
One company after another had been shoved into the drum-fire and steadily
annihilated. "
Ernst Junger, after a night march to the front line at
Guillemont.
| Animated map of 1914 offensive |
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Militarily the war in the west began on August 4, 1914,
when German troops from seven Armies swept into Luxembourg and Belgium as part
of the Schleiffen Plan, which required a sweeping move through neutral
Belgium and down to Paris from the North. Fortunately for the Allies, the plan
did not work as expected, due both to its own limitations and German High
Command's weakening of the crucial right attack wing. The result was a partial
German success which failed in its ultimate goal of knocking the French army
out of the war early. The German Armies swept into Belgium as planned, but the
Belgian Army did not oblige by quickly losing. They instead put up a stiff
fight, which delayed the rigid German campaign schedule. After overcoming the
Belgians, the northern German armies marched into northern France, where they
were again stiffly rebuffed in several places, both by the newly arrived
British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and the French Third and Fourth Armies in the
Ardennes region. The Fifth Army under French General Lanrezac, was caught
outnumbered and nearly outflanked, thanks to French high command's refusal to
acknowledge a German thrust from the north. Only at the last moment did
Lanrezac receive permission to reposition part of his army to face the oncoming
juggernaut. His freshly repositioned troops were hit with the full force of the
German Second Army, and sent reeling back to the south. Soon after, as the BEF
also withdrew south after their own travails, the entire front broke open as
troops on both sides raced southward to the Marne and the prize that beyond it:
Paris.
The German offensive was only blunted when German General Karl
von Bulow's Second Army did not keep pace with General Alexander von Kluck's
First Army, which in turn re-faced in order to turn the flank of the now
exhausted French Fifth Army. French General Joseph Gallieni pushed forward the
newly formed Sixth Army out of Paris and assaulted Kluck's exposed flank in
conjunction with Fifth Army. In the process of defending himself, Kluck
redirected his corps westward, allowing yet another dangerous gap to open
between him and von Bulow. These errors – which were sanctioned by General
Headquarters – cost the Germans any further progress and they withdrew
back to safe positions north of the Marne River where they resisted attempts by
the French to dislodge them. The fault lay not only with Kluck, but with the
German Commander-in-Chief Count Helmut von Molkte and probably with the (by
then much modified) Schleiffen plan, which failed to account for the
limitations of infantry formations operating at such rapid tempos.
| Animated map of 1915 battles |
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For months after the failure of the German offensive,
both sides made various local attempts at achieving breakthroughs. Most of
these attempts failed in the face of the unexpected effects of modern weapons.
As each side attempted to outflank the other, the front expanded. Troops
spontaneously began to dig in for better protection, and within a few months a
solid front stretched from the Swiss border to the English Channel. In November
of 1914, the Kaiser personally ordered the commitment of the Imperial Foot
Guards in order to guarantee a breakthrough. They attacked at Ypres and
conducted a close-order frontal assault on new British trenches, losing
hundreds of men and officers without securing an inch of ground. The failure of
the Guards at the First Battle of Ypres marked the beginning of a major
reassessment of battlefield tactics by the Germans. Despite this however, they
began another series of offensives in February of 1915 in the Soissons region
north of Paris (marked 1 in the animated map), which secured little
ground. The British then attacked in the Artois region (marked 2) and
broke through at Neuve Chapelle, but were unable to exploit their fleeting
advantage. The Germans quickly closed the gap and in April successfully used
gas for the first time on the Western Front at Ypres (marked 3). This
gas attack was not accompanied by any major breakthrough attempt, so its
element of surprise was partially wasted. It did however, disrupt the plans for
the second Allied campaign at Artois, which was a joint British/French
operation (marked 4). These assaults also failed at a cost of 300,000
Allied casualties. The French made one more attempt against the German lines in
the Champagne region (marked 5), preceded by a lengthy artillery
bombardment and a simultaneous British attack at Artois. After 250,000
casualties, the French commander Joffre called off the assaults. In one year of
fighting, the lines changed very little, and neither side was yet learning how
to fight in this new, dangerous environment.
| Animated map of 1916 and 1917 battles |
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By early 1916, German units in the field had
accumulated enough experience with position warfare to allow a few aggressive
young officers to begin asserting their new ideas. This was accomplished
because of the German policy of directive control, by which officers
were given broad instructions which they executed according to their own
discretion. While this freedom of action resulted in a lack of standardized
training, it also allowed men in the field to experiment with tactics in ways
not allowed by their allied counterparts. By the time the German offensive at
Verdun was begun, many units in the field had spontaneously formed assault
units which specialized in squad-level operations. The early proponents of
these nascent combined arms tactics eventually ran a series of training centers
immediately behind the lines. These centers assured that draftees arriving from
Germany were trained in the methods of real war instead of the methods still
being taught by commanders in Germany who had a shallow grasp of changes
occurring at the front.
The German Commander-in-Chief, Erich von Falkenhayn, now
put into action his plan to "bleed white" the French Army. He intended to
isolate a section of the front-line which the French would not allow to fall,
and then assure that the area was ringed by the heaviest artillery coverage
available. His target was the ancient French fortress of Verdun, which his
troops first assaulted on February 21 after the most concentrated bombardment
of the war (marked 1). Falkenhayn however, correctly divined that his
subordinates would not likely agree with such a bleeding white plan and so he
did not share with them his intent to purposefully avoid capturing Verdun
itself. He thought that he could control the pace of the German advance, and
hence the advance on Verdun itself, by withholding the vital reserves upon
which his subordinates relied. Because of this appalling policy of calculated
ignorance, attacking German field commanders launched wave upon wave of
stop-at-nothing assaults against the Verdun fortresses without knowing that
their attacks would not be followed up. The campaign carried on for five
terrible months, during which 300,000 Germans and 460,000 French became
casualties. This series of battles, one of the greatest slaughters in history
until that time, did not achieve Falkenhayn's goals, because his men, who had
been trained to attack, continued attacking against all odds in the mistaken
belief that their efforts would be followed up. The French were indeed bled
white, but not as severely as hoped and the Germans ultimately lost many of
their best troops.
On July 1, 1916, the British and French launched the Somme
Offensive (marked 2). This offensive, which put an end to any German
thoughts of continuing the Verdun Offensive, was launched against some of the
heaviest German fortifications on the entire Western Front. The British
commander, Field-Marshal Douglas Haig, protested the idea, but the French
commander Joffre won the debate and the campaign was begun. This campaign saw
the first use of tanks, and was preceded by the war's greatest artillery
barrage. Despite these advantages, the general slaughter of allied troops which
occurred is famous, with the British suffering 65,000 casualties on the first
day alone. When the October rains finally put an end to the prolonged carnage,
400,000 British, 200,000 French and 450,000 Germans had become casualties! The
Allies only captured a few miles of ground, and the Germans soon withdrew to
their new Hindenburg Line in early 1917 (marked 3).
The general retreat which the Germans carried out between
February and April of 1917 did not prevent the Allies from renewing a series of
attacks that summer. The British commander Haig thought he had the formula for
achieving a breakthrough: more artillery! The ensuing attack at Arras on April
9 (marked 4), cost 84,000 casualties and achieved no breakthrough.
Before this battle had ended, the new French Commander, Marshal Robert-George
Nivelle, launched his own ill-advised offensive (also marked 4) from
Soissons to Reims. This attack ground to a halt on its first day, and by the
time the assault was called off one month later, 220,000 more casualties had
been added to the already overlong list of French losses for the war.
This last failure helped to finally trigger long brewing
discontent into open mutinies. This was not the first time during the war that
such things had occurred. As the failure at Verdun became apparent, whole
German units had also surrendered or mutinied. Nivelle was dismissed and the
hero of Verdun, Marshal Petain, assumed command of the French Army. Slowly
control was restored, but resentment continued to run high among combat troops
headed for the front lines. Some units had developed the macabre habit of
bleating like sheep when senior officers passed their road columns. This and
other similar troop behavior continued to put commanders on notice that
tolerance for their lavish expenditure of human life was running thin.
The British, who enjoyed more freedom of action after
Nivelle's dismissal, opened yet another assault at Ypres with a series of great
mine explosions which totally disrupted the German lines. For once, the British
inflicted more casualties than they received and pushed forward (marked
5). But Haig's previous bloody commitments had made others wary of him and
he was no longer given the great numbers of troops he had enjoyed previously.
By the time he convinced his superiors that a breakthrough really had occurred,
the Germans had patched up the lines and so yet another round of bloody
fighting resumed. By the time Haig received his extra troops, the time for
exploiting the breakthrough was long past but the third battle of Ypres was
launched anyway, causing one of the greatest slaughters of the war. The Germans
used a new chemical called mustard gas to hold off the British, whose losses
approached 400,000.
In November a truly new method of attack was used against
the German lines. The British launched an assault toward Cambrai (marked
6) using hundreds of tanks, new machines of war which held great
promise. All three lines of the Hindenburg Line complex were penetrated, yet
even this success did not last. The conservative high command had not been
convinced of the tank's prospects, so reserves had not been allocated for the
attack. Within days, German counterattacks drove the British back to their
starting positions.
So 1917 ended with little change in the bloody stalemate.
The Allies had spent the year bludgeoning themselves on the German defenses
with little to show for it. The Germans spent the winter of 1917/1918
retraining their Army in what was now widely accepted as the best new way to
conduct positional warfare. The small assault groups needed early in the war
spurred a complete reevaluation of unit behavior. The basic battlefield unit
was no longer to be the company or battalion, but the squad. Each squad was no
longer just a group of riflemen, but a combined arms formation of machine
gunners, grenadiers and flamethrower troops supported by a few riflemen. This
new way of thinking was only vaguely recognized by the Allies, who had also
equipped their troops with more automatic weapons, but who did not re-train
their men in a way which extracted the greatest advantage from these new
weapons. The Allied failure to understand the functional changes behind the
German reorganization was to curse them for the rest of the war.
| Animated map of 1918 campaigns |
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The last great German offensive was launched on March
21, 1918, with Operation Michel (marked 1 on the animated map).
It was opened with an unprecedented 6,000 gun barrage which delivered a lethal
gas attack deep into Allied lines. At one point, the Germans advanced 14 miles
in one day, more than at any other time during the fighting in the West. During
the first six weeks of fighting, the Allies lost 350,000 casualties, but more
troops were rushed in from across the channel, and American units began
arriving for the first time. The attack was quickly followed by a second
offensive (marked 2) at Ypres, but this was halted after a brief threat
against the channel ports. Another German blow to Allied lines fell with the
twin operations Blucher and Yorck, whose combined might drove
south toward Paris, occupying Soissons and nearly cutting off Reims (marked
3). The spearhead of their advance penetrated as far as Chateau-Thierry,
only 56 miles from Paris. This operation however, suffered from the same flaw
as many which had preceded it. Ludendorf had not planned for this offensive to
succeed. It had been intended as a feint in order to draw French troops away
from the main offensive to the north, and so the astounding achievements were
not exploited because inadequate reserves were available. Still, the Allied
situation was very grim, and they were forced to issue a "backs to the wall"
order.
The German troops however, were quickly tiring from the
prolonged effort, as well as giving in to periods of looting. The economic
blockade of Germany had cut off many vital supplies and back home, many people
were literally starving. Many German troops were chronically undernourished,
and whenever they encountered Allied food stocks, much time was lost as these
desperately famished troops gorged themselves. So the last German offensive, an
attempted pincer operation around Rheims (marked 4), was finally stopped
with concentrated artillery and aircraft attacks. By late June, German strength
on the Western Front fell below that of the Allies, and the final Allied
assault was not long in coming.
The first attacks were, amazingly, made in July by the
French west of Rheims (marked 5). This was followed by a British
offensive at the Amiens Bulge (marked 6) and a general offensive toward
the Hindenburg Line. The Americans under General John Pershing attacked the St.
Mihiel Salient south of Verdun (marked 7) and then attacked through the
Argonne west of Verdun as part of a general advance (marked 8). The
Germans were now steadily pulling back, and even though the Allies continued to
suffer tremendous losses (The Americans lost 100,000 casualties just fighting
through the Argonne region), they were now inspired by the continued German
retreat. The final position of the yellow line shows the approximate front at
the time the Armistice was signed on November 11. The only German to keep
fighting after this was Field Marshal Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck in East Africa,
who was beginning his tiny invasion of Rhodesia. He surrendered on November 23,
immediately upon hearing of the surrender.
Instead of supplying lists of losses which are difficult to
fathom, another way to place Western Front casualties in perspective is to
consider the percentage of each country's population directly afflicted. During
the course of World War One, eleven percent of France's entire population were
killed or wounded! Eight percent of Great Britain's population were killed or
wounded, and nine percent of Germany's pre-war population were killed or
wounded. The United States, which did not enter the land war in strength until
1918, suffered one-third of one percent of its population killed or
wounded. |
