1916 - The Battle of the Five Empires: 15 May - 28 September 1916

By Benoît Chenu

The Battle of the Somme remains a controversial subject for the British to this day. Most accounts overlook the fact that the Somme was an Anglo-French offensive, carried out by French and British troops in almost equal numbers, led by Frenchmen. The battle was just one part of a much broader strategy, in which the Russi

• Language: English
• Publisher: Benoît Chenu, Guêche Publishing
• Release date: Dec 22, 2022
• ISBN: 9782958537784

Book preview

Prologue

National Narratives

The Great War occupies a central place in the collective memory of the countries that took part in it. It is an emotional relationship as generations born before the 1980s were able to be in contact during their childhood with a relative who had fought during that conflict. It is still perceived as a national tragedy because of the scale of the losses associated to it and the apparent futility of the causes that led to such bloodshed. The inability of the protagonists to reach a lasting peace reinforces this feeling.

For several decades, soldiers have been the dominant theme of new publications to the detriment of the events themselves, which are virtually no longer addressed. These books examine the impact of the war on men whose self-sacrifice seems incomprehensible in the light of the suffering and horrors they faced. But while this pattern is common to all countries, the way the First World War is remembered differs. Strong asymmetries exist between the five main belligerents’ perception of its military aspect. The French consider Verdun the central battle of the war. The British do not share this vision. The Battle of the Somme overshadows any other event for them. As for the Russians, their current perception of the Great War is complicated by a major event: the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.² Similarly, there is a wide discrepancy between the memory of the victors and that of the vanquished. The Germans belong to the second category. They have relegated this period to a distant past, of which they keep a strictly historical memory associated with an abstract condemnation of the horrors of war. The other great loser, the Austro-Hungarian empire, has disappeared as such. Its two main former national entities, Austria and Hungary, present a very contrasting picture. The Austrians, now citizens of a small state, are somewhat nostalgic about their past greatness. To this day, a sense of injustice prevails in this country as it is still accused of being responsible for the outbreak of the conflict. For the Hungarians, one word is at the heart of all memories of this war: Trianon! On 4 June 1920, in the salons of the Trianon next to the Palace of Versailles, a Hungarian delegation was forced to sign a treaty whose severity far exceeded those imposed on the other defeated nations. With two thirds of its territory amputated and more than half of its population lost, Hungary cannot forget: ‘Nem, Nem, Soha – No, No, No, Never!’

The fact that the different national narratives have been influenced by this powerful tropism leads to a fragmented and biased view of the events. For example, the western front – a portion of French and Belgian territory along a line that remained almost unchanged for the entire duration of the war – is wrongly described as the main theatre of operations. A majority of historians focus their attention on this near troglodyte type of war, thus overlooking fights that took place everywhere else. Yet, far from being a walk in the park, the battles fought by the Germans against the Russians until the end of 1917 proved to be deadly. More people were killed there than on the western battlefield during the same period. As for the number of their soldiers captured by the tsar’s armies, it exceeded the number of German soldiers surrendering to the Franco-British forces.

In spite of the close interaction between events that took place in different theatres of operations, most authors limit themselves to a silo approach.³ They focus on episodes that involved their home countries, relying exclusively on national archives. The rare foreign sources they use are most often limited to the memoirs or diaries of the great military and political leaders of the time translated into their own language.⁴ However, this literature contains numerous hagiographical biases that contribute to perpetuating many errors and distorting the understanding of certain major phases of the conflict.

The Military History of the Great War: An Unfinished Work

In Great Britain, and more generally in Anglo-Saxon countries, the centenary of the Great War was an opportunity to revisit the fundamentals of military history relating to it. Based on a considerable expansion of primary sources – archives, press, cartography, diaries, correspondence, government and ministerial reports – a large number of academic works, including around a hundred doctoral theses, were published.⁵ This is not surprising as, in these countries, history of war is one of the major topics of university history courses.

This was not the case in France where the commemorative aspects of this anniversary were privileged. Only a few authors have published comprehensive works devoted to military operations. Their merit is all the greater, as they had to carry out the fundamental research themselves to further their subject. In fact, the French academic world shows little interest in war stories.⁶ As far as 1914–18 is concerned, they consider that the vast bibliography on the subject – tens of thousands of monographs – constitutes a corpus that can no longer be improved. However, the majority of these works dating back to the 1920s are most often hagiographies devoid of historical value and regularly denounced by specialists.

France has at its disposal the largest collection of archives relating to this war: several tens of millions of documents from the period, patiently gathered over twenty years by the Service historique de l’armée. For decades, these invaluable sources have been neglected by French authors. As the late Elisabeth Greenhalgh remarked, they have not been used by British historians either, despite the fact that these sources would have provided them with essential material to enrich and complete the remarkable work done by their universities.

However, three factors are currently radically changing the way this military conflict is perceived. First, the French authorities have committed significant resources to the centenary and have achieved the digitisation of numerous documents relating to military operations of the time.⁷ In their digital form, these sources have become the basis for all research and they have replaced the literature used until now. This considerable progress in the collation and use of archives has in turn improved scientific rigour. Whereas handling paper documents requires prior targeting and a limitation of the resources consulted for obvious reasons of time and effort constraints, this is no longer the case in the digital world. Immediate access to multiple pieces of information makes it possible to cross-reference and triangulate data to authenticate the historical value of the material collected and to eliminate bias.⁸

The press has also facilitated this revolution. The main newspapers of the years 1914–18, be they daily or weekly and written in English or in other languages, contain essential data that is not available anywhere else. This resource has long been dismissed by historians on the legitimate grounds that access to a particular episode in the columns of a newspaper was by nature almost impossible due to the lack of cataloguing or indexing of articles. Today, the main titles are available in digital form and it is possible therefore to find any information instantly and accurately by doing a simple keyword search.

Finally, language is no longer the barrier it once was, especially for English-speaking researchers dealing with French sources. Machine Translation using artificial intelligence allows us to read any document, regardless of the language in which it is written.

As for 1916, a private collection of archives had been embargoed until the early 2000s and had therefore remained unknown to most historians, whether French or foreign. It is an important collection of personal papers of one of the greatest military leaders of this war: the General de Curières de Castelnau. In 1916, the second most important person in the French high command, he was the chief of the general staff of the armed forces. In this capacity, he was directly involved in all the events of the period. His testimony could have shed light in many cases on facts that were too complacently reported by others. These documents – numerous notes, an abundant correspondence and a chronicle kept day by day by his closest collaborator – have an undeniable historical value, as they were, for the most part, written in the moment.⁹ They contrast with the writings bequeathed by the other three main French military leaders, Joffre, Foch and Pétain or those of their entourages, which were mainly produced ex post facto during the interwar period, and are therefore documents of a hagiographic nature, often historically biased. In the notes taken by General de Curières de Castelnau, unanimously considered to be one of the best tacticians of the war, the assessment of the British armies and their leaders is generally much more favourable to them than that of historiography in general. He did not hesitate, however, to reveal the weaknesses of the French high command as well as the errors that were attributable to it, even though they had been largely obscured in the literature on this conflict.

The Battle of the Five Empires

All the conditions are now in place to re-evaluate critically some episodes of this conflict using this set of primary sources. The combination of these sources provides a new historical perspective. This is particularly the case with regard to the events that took place throughout 1916. As Michel Goya wrote: ‘The year 1916 marks a rupture, a turning point, the decisive passage from classical warfare to modern warfare.’¹⁰ However, this fundamental change is not reflected in historiography, as two events, Verdun and the Somme, saturate the editorial space. Each of these two battles is approached sui generis, disconnected from an overall context. Each of the countries involved produces its own account of the period, built on their own national memories. For the French, Verdun dominates the year 1916 while the Somme is treated as a secondary episode. The sacrifices made in the Hauts de Meuse consecrate the heroism of the French soldiers fighting the Germans alone, without the help of their allies. Military leaders such as Pétain and Mangin are honoured. The British feel very differently. For them, the Somme is the battle. But they see it as a tragedy linked to the failure of their generals, whose supposed mediocrity and insensitivity led to the needless slaughter of hundreds of thousands of combatants. Aggravating factor, these soldiers were all volunteers. They enlisted in whole villages, believing they were taking part in a beautiful patriotic adventure that turned into a nightmare. As for Verdun, while professing a certain admiration for the French resistance, the British do not feel directly involved. In German historiography, Verdun encapsulates a major strategic error. This battle designed to exhaust the French Army led to the opposite result. The losses the Germans suffered were a painful and unbearable surprise. On the contrary, their ‘vigil on the Somme’ felt like a glorious achievement. By maintaining the integrity of the front while they were greatly outnumbered, the German soldiers surpassed in value and merit the British and French troops that assailed them.

This binary segmentation is completely artificial. Verdun and the Somme are intrinsically linked. But focusing only on the western front is ignoring decisive events that occurred at the same time in Central and Eastern Europe. On 4 June 1916, Russian General Brusilov ordered four large armies to attack the Austrian lines, which collapsed in a few weeks as the Germans were not able to come to the rescue of their ally. The scale of this battle is not reflected in the few paragraphs historiography allocates to it.¹¹ Yet, it surpassed Verdun or the Somme both in terms of the number of troops involved and the geographical extent of the field of operations.¹² As for the losses incurred, they are double and triple those suffered by the belligerents at Verdun and the Somme. The number of Austro-Hungarian prisoners captured by the Russians, nearly half a million, is enough to give an idea of the extent of the losses.

Very few historians have addressed this offensive. It must be acknowledged that Russian sources on it are more than incomplete. Until the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Soviet power systematically instrumentalised the narrative of this imperialist war by reducing it to the simple role of the catalyst of the popular uprising that led to the revolution. The Russian national memory focuses on the Second World War only, which it has turned into an epic. As for the very rare works published in other countries, they do not situate the battles waged by Brusilov’s armies in the summer of 1916 in the context of those taking place at the same time in other theatres of operations.

It might seem that, despite their importance, these events did not succeed in altering the balance of power that prevailed at the beginning of 1916. This impression owes much to the fragmentary and nationalistic approaches followed by historians. In reality, they occlude the extreme oscillations that took place on the different battlefields between May and October 1916. They eventually neutralised each other when they could have led either side to victory. To understand this, it is necessary to include in the analysis of these events two components generally neglected by historiography: diplomacy and public opinion. The five main belligerents – England, France and Russia, on the one hand; Germany and Austria on the other – were not countries in the sense we understand that notion nowadays. They were empires. Colonial in nature as far as France was concerned; a hybrid in the case of Great Britain, which combined dominions and colonies; and a community of peoples in the case of the other three. But whatever their essence, these five empires, which were called ‘great powers’, implemented foreign policies based on a global vision. While diplomatic aspects played little part in the military issues on the western front, they dominated the other theatres of operations. The Polish question in the East; the Romanian, Greek and Bulgarian issues; as well as Constantinople in the Balkans, all interacted to influence the strategies of the two coalitions.

The impact of public opinion was also a key factor during this period. The hardships endured by people in Germany and the Austro-Hungarian empire reached a critical point in 1916, resulting in a strong desire for peace. In France, the human losses accumulated since the beginning of hostilities, weighed up according to its demography, were much higher than those of the other belligerents. This imbalance gave rise to fears of a crisis of the local public opinion. Conversely, in Great Britain, the stance of a government inclined to wait and see contrasted with the opinion of the majority of the British people, who was in favour of a total commitment until the final victory.

Finally, far from being the unlikely result of the sum of separate events, the battles that took place during five months in the spring and summer of 1916, from Picardy to Italy via the Carpathians, constitute a single battle. It was an operation that had been carefully thought out and prepared by the British, French and Russian military leaders who had met in Chantilly in December 1915. It was a response to the terribly effective strategy General von Falkenhayn, the German chief of the general staff, had been relying on for several months. The reality was that the Central Powers had the upper hand and were preparing to make a final push to win this war. Only a massive and closely coordinated course of actions by the armies of the Entente could change this plan and modify the course of events. It was the decisive offensive, the one that should bring victory to the Allies in this war. It was the Battle of the Five Empires.

Part I

Die Zerstörungsmaschine

Horatii and Curiatii

The events that took place between 15 May and 28 September 1916 were the result of the two very different strategies the opposing coalitions had developed. It took the belligerents more than a year of confused and incredibly deadly struggle to conceive them. They were a manifestation of the strengths and weaknesses of each side.

The belligerent nations grouped under the umbrella term ‘Central Powers’ – Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, and, later on, Bulgaria – were the first to get the measure of a conflict that has no equivalent in the two-thousand-year history of our world. They owe it to the fact that Germany occupied a central place in this coalition on every level. In Germany, traditionally, anything relating to land military operations was the responsibility of a highly centralised organisation, the Oberste Heeresleitung (OHL), headed in theory by the Kaiser and in practice at first by the chief of the general staff, General von Moltke, and later on by Erich von Falkenhayn. This system allowed for an undivided control over the conduct of the war and facilitated rapid decision-making as well as the implementation of ambitious plans. By the end of 1914, Falkenhayn realised that, contrary to the lessons of past wars, this conflict was going to last. In this context, the Central Powers were in a critical position as they faced a coalition that outclassed them in terms of finance, industry and demography. The only greater resource available to the Kaiser and Falkenhayn was the German Army. In terms of strength, tactics and armaments, it dominated each of its adversaries taken individually. It was a veritable Zerstörungsmaschine – a ‘machine for victory’. On the contrary, the Austrian and Turkish armies were unable to gain the upper hand over the forces they had to face. Therefore, Germany had only one option: to replicate the battle of the Horatii and Curiatii. It had to defeat the Entente nations one by one before its own partners were defeated.

Chapter 1: Clausewitz in Check

The German Plan

Since its victory in 1871, the German empire knew that the dominant position in continental Europe it created for itself by wresting Alsace-Lorraine from France exposed it to the hostility of three great powers. France, driven by an imprescriptible desire for revenge, signed an alliance with Russia in 1892, giving rise to a coalition that Great Britain eventually joined de facto in 1904 and then de jure in 1907.

Germany had no choice then but to base its defence policy on two intangible principles: having an army superior to each of its potential enemies’ armies and deploying a railway network designed to meet the strategic imperative of being able to move troops quickly from one end of its territory to the other. Indeed, in the event of war, it would fight on two fronts. From the onset of hostilities, one of its enemies should be knocked down within a few weeks before Germany could turn all its forces against the other.

In 1905, a decision was made. Germany’s first opponent would be the French Army, probably reinforced by a British contingent. Six weeks. This was the minimum time the Russians needed to mobilise and deploy their troops. This evaluation of the German high command set how long it had to defeat its opponent on the western front. It seems a tall order, given how narrow that window was. Its success would rely on a powerful strategic and tactical combination: a manoeuvre of unsuspected magnitude across Belgium led by armies unquestionably outperforming those of the adversary. In 1905, General Alfred von Schlieffen devised a plan whose main points took all these elements into considerations, a plan his successor, General Helmuth von Moltke, took up. The manoeuvre in Belgium allowed to achieve two objectives: a greater strategic efficacy and a surprise effect since the violation of Belgian neutrality would be an unexpected move. It would result in the instantaneous entry of England into the war alongside France.

The French General Staff could not imagine that Germany would take such a risk.

In the East, the defence of German territory against the Russians rested on a simple curtain of troops. Moltke counted on the presence of several Austrian armies in Galicia to carry out an attack that would attract the first contingents that Russia had time to deploy.

Germany’s entire strategy was based on the excellence of its army and the speed of execution of that very ambitious plan. As it presumed a short war, Germany did not consider any alternative scenario. However, nothing was going to happen as planned.

As the Germans assumed, their entry into Belgium, accompanied by large-scale acts of war against the army and the local population, mechanically led to a British intervention alongside France and Russia. However, this eventuality was not seen as a factor likely to call into question the balance of the strategic plan Germany was carrying out. The symbolic participation of a few British divisions did not in any way alter the balance of forces.

The plan prepared by Moltke benefited from an event he had considered to be certain: a French offensive in Lorraine, as soon as hostilities began. The first battles exceeded his expectations. The French had gathered large forces between Nancy and the Vosges. In a few days, they would come to miss in the west when the German manoeuvre through Belgium became known. The French attacked on 20 August. They were defeated by the formidable German defensive system.¹³ But, far from limiting itself to an offensive in Lorraine, the French high command attacked everywhere, following an improvised operation plan at the last minute.¹⁴ Between 22 and 24 August, the three other French armies and the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) suffered the same fate. They were defeated.

All would have been for the best for Moltke, if General de Curières de Castelnau had not inflicted a surprising and large defeat on the Bavarian Kronprinz in the Trouée de Charmes on 25 August 1914. Described as an ‘enormous attack’ by the future Marshal Haig in his diary,¹⁵ this unexpected French reaction compromised the German plan.¹⁶ It forced Moltke to keep a considerable number of men in Lorraine when he wanted to send them to the Russian front as reinforcements. The two army corps he did send east had to be taken from his armies in the West, which weakened them all the more. Joffre did the opposite. Reassured by Castelnau’s victory, he reduced his right wing to create two additional armies on the left wing.¹⁷ These opposite movements of troops led to an unexpected situation. On 6 September, with the addition of six divisions from the BEF which were joined by four corps from Lorraine, the French found themselves in a position of numerical superiority.¹⁸ This enabled them to achieve a spectacular recovery on the Marne. Against all odds, it dealt a fatal blow to the German strategy. Six weeks had passed since the declaration of war and victory was not forthcoming. The Russian mobilisation was about to be completed while the bulk of the German forces were still in France and Belgium. The new generalissimo, General von Falkenhayn – on 14 September he had replaced Moltke following his failure on the Marne – was facing a critical situation. It might even have been catastrophic if the fighting on the eastern front had not suddenly turned in his favour.

Panic in Vienna

In East Prussia, on 30 August in Tannenberg and a few days later in the Masurian Lakes region, German troops routed two Russian armies. A spectacular reversal of the situation. Indeed, since the beginning of hostilities, events had been getting out of control for the German in East Prussia and Poland. Nothing was going according to their plans. The fact that the hypotheses formulated by the OHL rested upon a great deal of approximation has been acknowledged. Moltke entrusted his Austro-Hungarian ally with the heavy task of holding, virtually alone, the major part of the eastern front. Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, the Austrian chief of staff, accepted this in principle.¹⁹ Based on Moltke’s assurance of a rapid return of the German armies upon their victory in the western theatre of operations, he planned to go on the offensive. But even before he had time to concentrate his forces, the Russians attacked in East Prussia. They had committed to do so in the name of their alliance with the French. This offensive took the Germans by surprise. The intrusion of the tsar’s armies provoked the flight of several hundred thousands of civilians, followed by the Cossack cavalry. Panicked, General von Prittwitz, who commanded German Eighth Army, talked of withdrawing beyond the Vistula.

Moltke’s plan for the eastern front had failed entirely. But another turnaround took place. Indeed, no sooner had he replaced Prittwitz, sacked because of his poor performance, that General Paul von Hindenburg saw an exceptional strategic opportunity. The two large Russian armies that threatened to trap him in a pincer movement in reality operated without any coordination. With no reconnaissance aircraft, they advanced blindly. Masking his movements behind a simple curtain of cavalry, Hindenburg went on the offensive. On 30 August, he began by crushing and destroying General Samsonov’s Second Army. A few days later, it was the turn of General von Rennenkampf’s First Army to suffer a large defeat near the Masurian Lakes.

These two victories did not significantly alter the balance of power. But while they protected the Germans from a Russian counter-attack, they encouraged the tsar’s armies to focus on the Austro-Hungarian troops that seemed an easier prey to them. Falkenhayn was aware of this. However, he had no choice but to ask his ally to try to contain the Russians over the following six weeks. This was the extra time he gave himself to achieve a definitive victory in the western theatre of operations. He believed he would then have enough time to rescue Conrad before the Russians cross the Carpathians and head toward Budapest.

Immediately, this assumption proved too optimistic. Less than three weeks after the declaration of war, the Russians succeeded in deploying four armies along the 450 kilometres of borders which extend between the Pinsk Marshes and Romania.²⁰ The Austrians only had three.²¹ This imbalance was largely due to mistakes made by their chief of the staff. The announcement of hostilities with Russia took him by surprise when the majority of his troops were preparing to cross the Danube to invade Serbia. He had to make seven of his army corps cross the entire empire in a rush to try to counter the advance of the Russian armies, whose speed of mobilisation had exceeded all his forecasts. Their convoy over more than 1,000 kilometres turned into a railway scramble because of a nonsensical transport plan or Kriegsfahrordnung.²² Operations began on 23 August. After an initial deceptive success at Krasnik in the Lublin region of Galicia in south-eastern Poland, Conrad suffered a series of defeats. The fighting took place on the immense plain of Galicia. Unable to hold on to the banks of the two rivers that cross it, the San and the Dniester, the Austrians were overwhelmed. In under two weeks of fighting, they had already lost half of their officers and a third of their soldiers. They abandoned more than one hundred thousand prisoners to the Russians. The stronghold of Lemberg (Lviv) was evacuated. In the surrounded fortress of Przemyśl, one hundred and fifty thousand men were trapped.²³

For Falkenhayn, this avalanche of bad news came at the worst possible time. His armies engaged in a merciless struggle on the western front seemed to be gaining the upper hand. The French outflanking movement in Picardy had failed – it would go down in history as a ‘race to the sea’. The fighting now took place in Flanders on the edge of the North Sea. In this region, Falkenhayn was preparing a final offensive. He sent the last of the recently mobilised Germans to the front.²⁴ The Austrians would have to make do with the meagre resources the Germans had on the eastern front. Fortunately, the Russians were sluggish. The fighting in October and November 1914 was extremely confused. Troops moved without much coordination or strategic aims across vast expanses. In the centre, the Germans approached Warsaw but then had to fall back, while in the south, the Austrians began to retreat once again. They were saved by the Carpathians Mountains, to which they eventually clung. A final and very bloody confrontation between Germans and Russians took place in Poland during the month of December. Known to posterity as the ‘Battle of the Four Rivers’, these operations were very deadly without either side gaining the upper hand. For example, German Ninth Army alone lost one hundred thousand men before withdrawing to its initial base. Their cumulative losses since the beginning of hostilities were a serious source of concern to the Austrians too: more than seven hundred thousand men were out of action, including one hundred twenty-six thousand killed and six hundred thousand wounded, not counting the nearly three hundred thousand soldiers taken prisoner.²⁵ In the west, the war was going underground and the front was coming to a standstill. The year ended with a status quo. For Falkenhayn, it was the worst-case scenario.

‘When Britain, First at Heaven’s Command’

Falkenhayn’s serious concerns about the situation on the eastern front were compounded by the fact that Britain, the other member of the Entente, had become involved in the conflict. A few sibylline-looking words were enough: ‘His Majesty’s government has decreed that a state of war exists between Britain and Germany from 11 p.m. on 4 August.’ This message received by the Berlin Embassy in London was not exactly a surprise. However, until the last minute, the Germans hoped they would not have to face this adversary.

Some authors have indicated that the British government would have been hesitant to enter the war. It would only have done so reluctantly on 4 August after London had ascertained that Germany had violated Belgian neutrality. According to the same authors, this decision was the result of the application of an immemorial principle of British policy: any intrusion by a great power of any kind into an area comprising Holland, Belgium and northern France would ipso facto lead to its intervention.

The existence of such a concept in 1914 is doubtful. The decision to intervene was taken on the 2nd during a Cabinet meeting that agreed by a narrow margin to provide naval support to France. As such, Belgium’s situation was irrelevant since this promise was made before the German ultimatum to this country.²⁶ Moreover, if past British policy had always been to prevent the emergence of a dominant nation on the Continent, one hundred years have passed since Waterloo. The identification of Germany as a major danger to the European equilibrium seems to be the real reason for the decision made by London. It would have been unthinkable to let Germany defeat France once again. The consequences would have been immeasurable, if only because of the French colonial empire and its mineral wealth at home, particularly that of the Briey Basin discovered from 1882 onward. It should be noted that the British never recognised the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, which they considered to be a serious attack on the principles of a European power balance established at the Congress of Vienna.

In August 1914, the British contribution appeared very limited.

The outbreak of this war caught Great Britain off guard. It did not have a military organisation suited to the participation to a European land conflict. As the leading maritime and commercial power, London had always favoured the naval component of its defence system. Since the beginning of the century, under the influence of the strategist Sir Julian Stafford Corbett,²⁷ the Royal Navy had focused on controlling the lines of communication linking the British Isles with the rest of the empire. This requirement was reinforced by the transformation of the war fleet, which was in the process of replacing coal-powered ships by oil-powered ones. It became even more vital for the empire to ensure the safe transportation of this fuel, which came from overseas oil fields. During the first two years of the war, several decisions made by London would result from this strategic constraint.

British ground forces were the first victims of these choices. Since each British colony had a local military organisation, the mission of units based in Great Britain was limited to supporting law enforcement operations during exceptional events within the empire. The Boer War in South Africa had been one of those events.

In 1914, the Crown Army, composed of professional soldiers, was built around a modern, well-trained force of six infantry divisions and one cavalry division that could be deployed as an expeditionary force. The country also had a territorial component equivalent to fourteen divisions, or two hundred and seventy-five thousand men. In other words, Great Britain would not be able to weigh in on the Continent land operations for many months to come.

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DIFFERENT ASPECTS OF THE BRITISH CONTRIBUTION TO THE CONFLICT

However, the whole country entered the war without much hesitation. So did the rest of the empire. Engaged in the conflict without prior consultation, the British Dominions showed an unquestionable loyalty that translated into a massive participation in terms of military, material and financial contributions²⁸.

Ireland and India, even though they had to contend with independence movements, played an important part in the war. The king himself got involved immediately.²⁹

Another element of surprise for Germany was the speed of the British reaction. Although the hypothesis of participation to land operations on the Continent was not officially part of its defence doctrine, Great Britain sent an expeditionary force and immediately engaged it in combat.

Until the last minute, however, there appeared to be strong differences of opinion within the British political class and at the level of the high command as to the advisability of landing troops on the Continent and the nature of their intervention.

Yet, this engagement of the BEF was immediate and strictly in accordance with the assumptions established ten years earlier.³⁰ To this first paradox could be added a second. Many historians have glossed over the secret instruction given by the Secretary of State for War, Lord Kitchener, to Marshal John French, the commander of the BEF. He enjoined him to never consider himself subject to the authority of the French generalissimo. This injunction is interpreted by some authors as irrefutable proof of a hidden British agenda from which important differences between the two allies during the conflict would arise. This thesis seems highly debatable.

The idea of acting independently in land operations on the Continent has never seriously crossed the minds of British leaders. As early as 1906, they set out a formula according to which their army would conduct itself as ‘an independent corps under the general direction of the French Commander-in-Chief’.³¹ Although ambiguous on the surface, the semantics of this phrase was clear. If it is ever proved that this instruction was indeed given to him, Commander-in-Chief of the BEF Marshal French, could in no way follow it. He learned it at once and at his own expense. Late in the evening of 31 August 1914, he sent a telegram to Kitchener announcing that he was thinking of retreating when the French asked him to attack with them on the Marne. He did not believe in this counter-offensive. Kitchener was appalled. If Marshal French let the French down, the Germans would win this war. He immediately notified the Cabinet and left immediately for France. Arriving in Paris at 3 p.m. the next day, he met with the French leaders to inform them that from that moment on, British troops would act together with Joffre’s troops. The intentions of the French generalissimo would be as good as orders. French was summoned and was instructed to comply.³² This principle would also be imposed to his successor in 1916, General Douglas Haig. He, however, accepted it with much more readily.³³

The British reaction was also immediate in the naval field. The day after the declaration of war, the Royal Navy laid down the law. It sent the Königin Luise, surprised as it laid mines near the mouth of the Thames to the bottom. On 28 August, the Grand Fleet won a real naval battle opposite the island of Heligoland. The losses suffered by the Kaiserliche Marine definitively undermined the confidence of Emperor Wilhelm II. Disillusioned, he advised that in the future the ‘fleet should withdraw and avoid actions that lead to superb defeats.’ The other effect of this demonstration of the absolute supremacy of the British navy was the brutal halt of all German commercial maritime traffic. The economic blockade imposed on the Central Powers became a reality with very serious consequences.

Falkenhayn, Where Were Your Legions?

For Falkenhayn, the year 1914 ended badly. Although his troops occupied most of Belgium as well as a portion of French territory, and although in the East he thought he had stabilised the situation, he had in fact lost the initiative in both theatres of operations. It was imperative that he prevent the Entente Allies from seizing this opportunity to launch offensives that would give them the upper hand. On the western front, this danger seemed unlikely. Better than their opponents, the German troops adapted to this new form of warfare. From the Swiss border to the North Sea, they built a veritable fortress. But, despite the tactical superiority he enjoyed, Falkenhayn ran up against one requirement: he had to assign eighty divisions to this theatre of operations that stretched over 600 kilometres. This figure was irreducible. Any area where the guard might be weaker would give the Allies an opportunity to break thought that could have dramatic consequences.

Falkenhayn’s thirty-six divisions were not enough to meet the needs of the eastern front. In fact, it was very short of what was needed. At the end of the winter truce which currently prohibited large-scale actions in Central Europe, everything indicated that the Russians would try to finish what they had almost achieved before the winter cold had stopped them: crossing the Carpathians. In spite of the Tannenberg disaster, an isolated event of reduced magnitude, they still had the upper hand. However, Austria’s strategic position was worsening. With nearly a million men out of combat, more than Germany itself – which had three times as many men – the Austro-Hungarian empire could no longer compensate for the gaps created in its units. As soon as the snows melt, the tsar’s armies would start pushing again in Galicia. Falkenhayn must intervene without delay in the Carpathians to reinforce the Austrians who had just lost the strategic pass of Kukla. A German corps known as ‘Beskids Corps’, commanded by General von der Marwitz, was incorporated into Austrian Third Army.

It was a matter of urgency; the view of the Hungarian plain stretching to Budapest stimulated the Russians’ zeal for battle. A German Eleventh Army also was in preparation. It awaited units coming from France to which would be added divisions already in training at the time. But Falkenhayn had provided as much support as he could. He no longer had any reserves. A real race against time was underway. In addition to the fifteen additional divisions created since the beginning of the war from existing depots, the Germans had to quickly form another more to be able to face this Russian threat. This meant drawing on regiments of reservists with little experience and accelerating the enlistment of young people with no military training. This type of recruit needed several months of training. There was every indication that the Russians would not give Falkenhayn the time to do all this.

The British, French and Russians also had economic, financial, industrial and demographic resources far superior to those of the Central Powers. Italy and Romania, aware of this situation, were even considering aligning themselves to the Entente. The British were the first to see the opportunity that an offensive in the Balkans could offer. Castelnau mentioned it in his correspondence: ‘Our ally would nearly send a large fraction of the new army that will be ready in March to join the Serbs. They would already establish a powerful base in Salonika already.’³⁴ The landing of a Franco-British expeditionary force would be enough to assuage the fears of these future belligerents. In such a context, the Austro-Hungarian armies, already greatly weakened by their multiple defeats in Galicia and Serbia, would be incapable of facing the Romanians in Transylvania and the Italians in Trentino. Within a few weeks, Vienna would have to surrender.

Chapter 2: Imbroglio in the Balkans

An Unknown Theatre of Operations

During the first months of 1915, Falkenhayn had an eye toward the Balkans. Any events in this region might have a devastating domino effect. Fortunately for him, the military leaders of the Entente, starting with French Generalissimo Joseph Joffre, did not show the same perspicacity. From the beginning of the war to its end, the strategy of the Entente vis-à-vis the Balkans would result in a succession of failures which would fully benefit Germany. Twice during the war, the French, British and Russians proved incapable of exploiting the opportunities offered to them. In contrast, Germany turned them to its advantage, even when they were very touch-and-go. Only during the very last weeks of the conflict would the Allies finally create the conditions for a success at the cost of tremendous efforts.

For many historians, Central and Eastern Europe was a very secondary geostrategic theatre of the Great War. This region and the events that took place there occupy only a marginal place in historiography. This is due to the fact that military and political leaders, whether French or British, were not inclined to comment on the major mistakes they made there. Yet the operations conducted by the belligerents in Central and Eastern Europe have constantly played an important part in the progress of the war. Similarly, the victory of the Entente armies in the Balkans in October 1918 would be the trigger for the outcome of this war that no one was expecting until 1919.³⁵

Great Powers Interference

The whole of the Balkans had been colonised by the Ottoman Turks between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. Serbs and Greeks were the first to be recognised as independent in the early nineteenth century. The creation of these two small states marked the beginning of the interest in the region by the three empires – Austro-Hungarian, Russian and German. They wanted to carve themselves areas of influence there and their geostrategic stakes were considerable.

The Austrians were primarily involved because of several thousand kilometres of common borders. However, the main focus of their attention was the Adriatic seafront. Control of the Otranto Canal, which separates the south-eastern Italian coast from Albania, was absolutely vital for the Habsburg Monarchy. Such was the price of its naval power and the security of its supply routes. Four of