It was The Great War -- until a global clash of arms even more apocalyptic erupted a mere twenty years later and eclipsed the horror of 16,500,000 combat and civilian deaths by a factor of almost five. And yet despite the United States' more prominent role in the latter, borne on the broad shoulders of many of our own fathers -- aptly labeled "the greatest generation" -- I find the politics, military aspects, ramifications, and tragic folly of World War One much more fascinating.It was, as depicted in Ken Follett's one-thousand-page melodramatic account of five families -- British, Welsh, Russian, German, and American -- swept into the maelstrom, nothing less than the Fall of Giants: the demise of the Prussian monarchy; the toppling of the Romanov dynasty; the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; the collapse of Ottoman hegemony; and the unraveling of British imperialism. Were any of them ever haunted by the supreme irony of a world turned upside down or the baneful consequences of their ill-conceived motives? They went to war to preserve or augment their power and domain, and ended up punished, banished, or diminished, dragging the wasted lives of millions in their wake.
While World War One's death toll pales in comparison to its successor's, pure numbers can be deceptive. Eliminating civilian (a staggering 45 million in World War Two, 6 million in World War One) and Pacific theater (5.5 million in World War Two) deaths from the total reduces the disparity in European combat deaths to 20 million in World War Two compared to 10 million in World War One -- and most of that can be attributed to the 10 million men expended by the Soviet Union in defeating Hitler, over five times Russian losses in the earlier war. Conversely, four European countries -- the United Kingdom, France, Austria-Hungary, and Italy -- recorded higher combat deaths in the earlier war, and in the case of France and the United Kingdom by a count of 2.5 million to 600,000.
Of course, in 1940, Hitler's blitzkrieg overran France in a matter of months, while the German offensive in 1914 stalled at the gates of Paris; the Western front settled into a four-year stalemate during which each side sacrificed thousands in a series of attacks and counterattacks that yielded little territorial or strategic advantage. Nineteenth-century tactics stood helpless against twentieth-century weaponry.
"The magnitude of slaughter in the war's entire span was beyond anything in European experience: more than 35 per cent of all German men who were between the ages of 19 and 22 when the fighting broke out were killed in the next four and a half years . . . [and] one half of all Frenchmen aged 20 to 32 . . . Roughly 12 per cent of all British soldiers who took part in the war were killed." (Hochschild, p. xiv)
" 'The Great War lies like a band of scorched earth dividing that time from ours,' wrote the historian Barbara Tuchman . . . Cities and towns in the armies' path were reduced to jagged rubble, forests and farms to charred ruins." (Hochschild, p. xiv)
"More than 700 million artillery and mortar rounds were fired on the Western front between 1914 and 1918, of which an estimated 15 per cent failed to explode." Every year roving French bomb-disposal specialists collect and destroy 900 tons of unexploded munitions. (Hochschild, p. xii)
George F. Kennan called World War One "the great seminal catastrophe -- the one out of which a century of catastrophes arose." A decimated and demoralized Russian populace shook off the bonds of its Tsarist oppressors, only to usher in, with German complicity, a Bolshevik dictatorship that would turn out to be more brutal, more murderous, and more ambitious than its predecessor. In seeking to humiliate their vanquished foes and extract exorbitant recompense for their expenditure of life and treasure, the victorious allies sowed the seeds that would germinate into Nazi revenge and aggrandizement. And in carving up the Ottoman carcass into arbitrary spheres of influence, they would impose a perpetual curse on a dysfunctional and volatile Middle East.
The sparks that ignited this conflagration were two lethal point-blank bullets fired by Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip at Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife, Sophie, on the morning of June 28, 1914, as they were traveling in a motorcade through the center of Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia. Princip and his five co-conspirators -- one of whom had earlier thrown a pocket bomb at the royal procession -- were members of Young Bosnia, a radical patriotic organization linked to and supported by the Black Hand, a secret nationalist group committed to unifying all Serbs by violence. (Meyer, p. 6)
The Black Hand had provided Princip and his circle with their bombs and revolvers, trained them, and helped smuggle them across the border from independent Serbia into Bosnia. The Austrians rightfully alleged that Serbian officials had blessed the plot, and seized upon the assassination as a pretext to subdue their unruly and hostile neighbor, which had been fomenting civil unrest for a decade. Before acting, however, they needed assurance that Germany was firmly in their corner, in the likely event that Russia -- which was emotionally, ethnically, and strategically invested in the security of Serbia -- would backstop its partner with its massive army.
Flamboyant, erratic, blustering, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Emperor of Germany, was inclined to belligerence; even moreso were the men around him. Bound to Austria-Hungary by a thirty-five-year-old military alliance, encircled by the tightening noose of the three powers knotted against them, fearful of losing the expensive naval and land arms race they had been contesting since the turn of the century, they were willing to risk a continental war at what they considered the opportune moment. Meeting with an Austrian emissary on July 5 just prior to departing on a Baltic cruise, Wilhelm was emphatic that Austria-Hungary must "march into Serbia" with German backing even if it meant war with Russia; the famous "blank check" was reaffirmed the next day in writing by German chancellor Theobold von Bethmann Hollweg. (Stevenson, p. 13)
On July 23, the emboldened Austrians presented an ultimatum to Serbia. Although at least half of its demands were reasonable, the most objectionable called for direct Austrian involvement in Serbia's investigation of the assassination and related internal affairs, the acceptance of which would compromise Serbia's sovereignty. Two days later, it was duly rejected, although in the most conciliatory language.
By now Tsar Nicholas II and his Foreign Minister Sergei Sazonov were convinced that Austria-Hungary was acting not independently but as a tool of Germany, that Germany was on the brink of launching a preventive war, and that Russia could protect itself only by acting forcefully and quickly. (Meyer, p. 53) Taking a momentous -- and disastrous -- step, they promulgated a Period Preparatory to War, or pre-mobilization, which entailed canceling leave, clearing frontier railway lines, and mustering 1.1 million troops in the four districts closest to Austria-Hungary. (Meyer, p. 54)
As tension mounted, British Foreign Secretary Edward Grey proposed a four-power conference of Britain, France, Germany, and Italy to defuse the crisis; it fell on deaf ears as Germany and Austria were adamant that Serbia not escape its crimes unscathed.
On July 28, Kaiser Wilhelm returned from his cruise, read Serbia's gentle response to the ultimatum, trumpeted it as a "capitulation of the most humiliating kind," and urged his ally to moderate its intransigent attitude. But it was too late. Only hours later Austria-Hungary initiated partial mobilization in the Balkans, declared war on Serbia, and began shelling the capital, Belgrade, from Bosnia.
The next day the momentum toward war seemed to hang in suspended animation. The two cousins, the Kaiser and the Tsar, exchanged telegrams, each appealing to the other to restrain himself and his advisers. If Russia would refrain from full mobilization and Austria would confine its occupation to Belgrade, just across the border, perhaps the firestorm could be averted.
The warriors would not be denied. All through the 30th, at the behest of the Russian general staff, Foreign Minister Sazonov implored the Tsar to authorize full mobilization, asserting that the Germans were similarly arming themselves, a brazen falsehood. Conscious of the magnitude of his decision, the Tsar protested: "Think of the responsibility you are asking me to take. Think of the thousands and thousands of men who will be sent to their death!" (Meyer, p. 76) But in the end he gave the fateful order -- even though, tragically, "in no real sense had the security of Russia, with the biggest army in the world, been threatened." (Meyer, p. 78)
Germany now dispatched its own ultimatums, giving Russia twelve hours "to suspend any war measures against Austria-Hungary and ourselves," and France eighteen to promise neutrality, demanding as hostages the great fortresses of Verdun and Toul, too high a price to be considered seriously.
In an eleventh-hour flurry of telegrams, Kaiser Wilhelm reiterated the terms of his ultimatum. The Tsar replied, "So long as the negotiations with Austria on Serbia's account are taking place, my troops shall not take any provocative action." He said that he understood Russian mobilization might require Germany to mobilize as well, but it need not mean war. He asked Wilhelm "for the same guarantee from you as I gave you . . . [and to] continue negotiating for the benefit of our countries and the universal peace dear to all our hearts." (Meyer, pp. 84-85)
But an open-ended postponement of hostilities would give Russia and France an advantage that would grow as time passed. Only Russia could prevent war, Wilhelm's generals insisted, and only by terminating mobilization.
At midday on Saturday, August 1, the deadline for the double ultimatum passed without an answer from either Russia or France. The Berlin government informed St. Petersburg that its continued mobilization constituted a state of war between the two countries.
In Paris, Marshall Joseph Joffre exhorted the French Cabinet: "Every delay of twenty-four hours in calling up reservists means . . . a retardation of the concentration forces, that is, the initial abandonment of ten to twelve miles of territory for every day of delay." When the German ambassador asked the French premier for a response to the ultimatum, he was simply told, "France will act in accordance with her interests." At 4:00 PM France announced mobilization of its armed forces, followed by Germany thirty minutes later. (Marshall, p. 43)
Britain's motives for entering the fray went deeper than its mutual defense covenant with France. It could not ignore Germany's impending violation of Belgian neutrality, which it had pledged to defend. "But more than national honor was at stake. British strategy could not tolerate [the threat] of a strident and overarmed Germany solidly positioned on the Channel coast and master of its greatest port, Antwerp, and its largest industrial complex." (Marshall, p. 50) When Germany failed to comply with Britain's ultimatum to respect Belgium's independence and integrity, it presented the Cabinet a righteous cause and a smoking gun.
Foreign Secretary Grey made one last futile try for peace. On August 1, he passed word to the Kaiser through his ambassador in London that "if Germany would hold off, he would promise to keep France neutral." Clutching hard at the straw, the Kaiser directed his Chief of Staff, General Helmuth von Moltke, to "march the whole army east." (Marshall, p. 50) Not only was it too late; it was impossible, irrational, and irresponsible, Moltke calmly explained -- to stop the momentum of this enormous force, "to call off the great wheeling movement that was the whole and only point of German mobilization and almost certainly Germany's sole hope of victory . . . to turn its back on sixty-two French divisions ready for action and equipped with their own carefully developed plans." (Meyer, p. 97)
On Sunday, August 2, an advance contingent of German cavalry rode into Luxembourg to seize its network of railways. That evening Germany demanded unobstructed passage for its troops through Belgium. King Albert refused, harboring the vain hope that Germany would reconsider rather than risk international condemnation. When two days later the defiant Germans resumed their march, the British, in the words of Grey, could not "not stand by and witness the direst crime that ever stained the pages of history," and declared war. Later he added a mordant postscript: "The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime." (Marshall, (pp. 52-53)
The Belgians made a valiant defense at Liege, holding off the marauders for ten days before they overwhelmed the twelve forts surrounding the city. The Germans crossed the Meuse River and swept west and south in a massive flanking wave spearheaded on the far right by Alexander von Kluck's First Army followed in line by Karl von Bulow's Second Army.
Marshall Joffre was certain the Germans were advancing with a relatively small army. "His intelligence bureau had estimated that they would begin the war with sixty-eight combat-ready divisions in the west -- not seventy-eight infantry divisions, ten cavalry divisions, and fourteen brigades of territorial militia, as was actually the case." And it had incorrectly assumed that no newly-mobilized reservists would be fed into combat. (Meyer, pp. 140-141) The result of Joffre's overconfidence -- a series of attacks by his five armies from Upper Alsace on his right through the Ardennes Plateau in his center to the town of Chaerleroi on his left -- was a multiple disaster known thereafter as the Battle of Frontiers.
"In grotesque encounters the French were everywhere beaten," their generals throwing their infantry against the Germans whatever the circumstances and no matter how grisly the outcome. 'They did not try to advance in short rushes or to wiggle forward or to make a stealthy use of the ground in their approaches . . . They charged straight in, expecting by audacity [and their unconquerable spirit] to stampede the enemy." (Marshall, p. 73) But as a young captain named Charles de Gaulle would later write, "In a moment it is clear that all the courage in the world cannot prevail against gunfire."
By the end of the month, the French had suffered 260,000 casualties, including 75,000 killed (27,000 of whom died on one day, August 22), compared to 18,000 German deaths, a disparity that can be explained by a difference in tactics. (Meyer, p. 142) The Germans would wait below ground or behind barriers, mow down their attackers with deadly machine-gun fire, punish them in retreat with artillery, and then emerge from their holes in vigorous pursuit. (Meyer, p. 162)
They were not, however, immune from blunders of their own.
Kluck, irascible, rough-hewn, aggressive, and relentless, wanted to circle his First Army far right around not only the French but also the forward elements of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien's First Corps, taking both in the flank and possibly destroying them. But for coordination purposes he had been placed under the command of the more cautious and conventional Bulow, who favored a direct approach.
Consequently, on August 23, in the town of Mons, Kluck encountered British forces head-on, where they were strongest instead of weakest; his troops were repeatedly "shot to pieces in a field of fire so devastating that many of them thought they were facing an army of machine guns." Two days later Smith-Dorrien held his ground at Le Cateau, a bigger, bloodier fight than the one at Mons, with 55,000 British holding off 140,000 Germans and narrowly escaping envelopment. By this time Joffre had already reported to his war minister that his "cult of the offensive" had failed and that his armies were turning south to establish fortified defensive positions. (Meyer, pp. 161-163)
"When the Allies began their Great Retreat, the Germans appeared closer to victory than they would ever be again." But their advance was taking a heavy toll. Kluck's men were now beyond their frontier railheads and were marching twenty miles a day in the sweltering heat, burdened by 10-lb. rifles and 60 lbs. of gear. They could sustain themselves with forage but not their horses, exacerbating their supply problems. The lack of a telegraph system and a dearth of wireless sets impaired critical communications. Their ranks were depleted and could not be replenished, as soldiers dropped from exhaustion or were killed or wounded. (Stevenson, p. 45)
Then Chief of Staff Moltke made several fateful -- if not catastrophic -- decisions. Goaded by subordinates proclaiming the war in the west was virtually won, he sent two corps to Antwerp, one to the French stronghold at Mauberge, and two to East Prussia, a severe reduction of 275,000 men. Meanwhile, Joffre was doing the opposite -- using his interior rail lines to transfer troops from his right to his left, bolstering his newly-formed Sixth Army for the defense of Paris, and bringing the number of divisions facing the German right wing to forty-one, up from seventen.
The great German lightning strike force that had obsessed the general who had conceived it, Alfred von Schlieffen, now found itself not only bone tired, short of supplies, and increasingly without food but also outnumbered. (Meyer, p. 193)
Moltke now flinched, and proceeded to compound his errors. Having received sketchy reports of strong resistance by forces swarming near Paris, on August 27 he advised Bulow and Kluck "that it may be necessary to abandon the southwestern direction of the advance and wheel south." The next day Kluck was ordered to stay not in line with Bulow but slightly behind him -- an adjustment which would require him to suspend his progress for a day or more, or even turn around. Kluck decided that by shifting to the southeast, away from Paris, he could comply with his instructions yet continue to press forward.
"With Moltke's concurrence, the whole concept was changed, and the plan the Germans had followed since Liege fell by the wayside . . . Herewith was abandoned the main idea of crossing the Seine west of Paris and taking that city, the hub of all communications arteries, the citadel of French resistance. Instead, the now partly-fortified capital, and its garrison, would be left to threaten the flank of Bulow's armies." (Marshall, pp. 79-80)
Suddenly, a veil was lifted as French intelligence -- intercepted radio messages, papers found on a German officer, aircraft reconnaissance -- revealed the inexplicable opportunity at hand. "Kluck's army was 'in the air,' its communications exposed. The gap between it and Bulow's yawned wide; it would not stay open long." (Marshall, pp. 85-86)
It took the fiery colonial veteran, General Joseph Gallieni, who had been coaxed out of retirement to organize the defense of Paris, to convince Joffre it was time to act. On September 6, he ordered General Michel Maunoury to move his Sixth Army against Kluck's dangling left wing. But events had outrun him. Twenty-four hours earlier Kluck had sent General Wilhelm von Gronau's Fourth Reserve Corps west to the River Ourcq to protect his flank; surprised by the Sixth Army advancing eastward, he inflicted heavy damage before calling for help and retiring six miles.Kluck now realized that he was facing a serious threat from the west; overnight he marched his entire army back across the Marne to the Ourcq, but left himself dangerously off balance, with his weak wing too far forward, when the Sixth Army renewed its attack. "For the next two days, the two beasts locked horns in a death struggle. Giving and taking great blows, the raw, unorganized French began to bend against Kluck's hardened veterans." When Maunoury tried to get around Kluck's right and was met head-on by two German corps, Gallieni commandeered 1200 Paris taxicabs and rushed reinforcements to the front. (Marshall, pp. 89-90)
"Men battled over worthless ground, ignoring great prizes close at hand. Artillery was fired, often wastefully, because shells were available though reliable target information was not. Generals advanced their troops who might better have spared them, fearing to miss their moment of glory." (Marshal, pp. 87-88)
As the madness rose to a climax, the outcome hung "on whether any of the German armies in the east could crack the French line or, alternatively, whether the German First Army or the French Sixth Army could destroy its opponents. The Battle of the Marne became a series of crises following one after another until finally something broke down." (Meyer, p. 207)
Kluck remained confident of victory. Having withstood all the French could throw at him, on the 8th, he ordered an encircling attack from the north led by an infantry corps under General Ferdinand von Quast. That night, however, the French secured an important bridgehead that ended all possibility of closing the gap between his army and Bulow's, completely demoralizing the latter.
Moltke, encamped a hundred and seventy miles to the north in Luxembourg, was getting almost no reports from Kluck or Bulow, and was in fact on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He sent his chief of intelligence, Lieutenant Colonel Richard Hentsch, a man equally ridden by fear and doubt, to the front, empowering him "to issue such orders as were necessary" to save the German army. (Marshall, p. 92)
Arriving at First Army headquarters, Hentsch told Kluck's Chief of Staff that the BEF was now north of the Marne, that the gap between Kluck and Bulow had widened to thirty miles, that Bulow was planning to withdraw, and that Kluck had no alternative but to retire as well. When Kluck returned and learned of Hentsch's visit and Bulow's impending retreat, he reluctantly acquiesced. He had been monitoring the progress of Quast's corps, which had smashed through the disintegrating French defenses. Nothing lay between it and Paris but thirty miles of open ground -- which Quast was now ordered to turn his back on. It was the final melancholy chapter in the gruesome tragedy of how Moltke and the Germans had repeatedly snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. (Meyer, p. 212)
While the tide ebbed and flowed along the Marne, one thousand miles to the east the Germans stumbled into "the most dramatic and complete victory achieved by either side in more than four years of bloody struggle." (Meyer, p. 177)
The German Eighth Army -- undermanned at 135,000 men and deficient in heavy artillery, medical service, and field telephones -- had already been badly mauled by Pavel Rennankampf's First Russian Army at Stalluponen on August 17 and at Gumbinnen on August 20 when Commander Max von Prittwitz learned that the Second Russian Army under Alexander Samsonov was entering East Prussia from the south, bringing the total forces arrayed against him to 650,000. Fearing envelopment, Prittwitz called Moltke and told him he was now compelled to abandon East Prussia and withdraw behind the north-south line of the Vistula River.
Prittwitz's Chief of Staff was Lieutenant Colonel Max Hoffmann, one of the war's foremost tacticians. Using a map and compass, Hoffmann showed his superior that Samsonov's army was already closer to the Vistula River than the Germans and that a clear escape was not possible. Together the two conceived a plan to attack the divided Russian armies separately, although Prittwitz overruled Hoffman in identifying Samsonov to the south as the optimal first target.
Meanwhile Moltke -- whom Prittwitz had failed to inform of his new strategy -- was having second thoughts about vacating East Prussia without a fight; he decided that a change in command was required. The choice was inspired: Erich Ludendorff, the hero of Liege, whom he ordered to join the Eighth army as Chief of Staff. Too young, too junior, too much the commoner to be designated commander -- that position was accorded the sixty-seven-year-old Paul von Hindenberg, called out of retirement because of his reputation for steadiness and knowledge of the terrain. (Meyer, p. 168)
When Ludendorff proposed attacking the two Russian armies before they could unite, Moltke approved. It was Hoffmann's plan exactly, and it was already in motion by the time Ludendorff arrived on the scene.
The great battle turned on two minor incidents -- which solved the German dilemma of how to leave its northern flank undefended against Rennankampf's army. On the body of a Russian officer the Germans discovered intelligence indicating that Samsonov -- having detected a minor tactical adjustment by a German infantry corps, which he misinterpreted as a retreat -- was moving west and north, further away from Rennankampf. The Germans also intercepted a radio message disclosing "exactly what direction Samsonov intended to take and what timetable he intended to follow. It stated also, not surprisingly, that he wanted Rennankampf to come forward to join him." (Meyer, p.170)
Hoffmann was an expert on the Russian army and knew that Rennankampf and Samsonov belonged to rival factions, disliked each other intensely, and would do little to assist one another. Risking all, the Germans posted only a single division of cavalry opposite Rennankampf and moved the rest of the Eighth Army west and south. Nine divisions were maneuvered into a wide arc sixty miles across with the center left intentionally weak.
Samsonov marched straight for the vise. On August 26, a jittery Ludendorff ordered his normally aggressive First Corps commander, Herman von Francois to attack, but Francois protested that his artillery, his ammunition, and many of his men had not yet arrived on the battlefield. Oddly enough, his failure to strike lured Samsonov further into the trap.Feeling pressure on his left flank, Samsonov sped a staff officer to his North-West Front commander, General Yakov Zhilinski, suggesting he should perhaps veer westward to confront this worrisome enemy force. "I will not allow General Samsonov to play the coward," Zhilinski imperiously replied. "I insist that he continue the offensive." (Meyer, p. 174)
Zhilinski was fulfilling a promise he had made to the French two years earlier as chief of the Russian general staff; he had rushed his troops to the field in fifteen days -- without adequate food, weaponry, equipment, medical care, or communications. From his headquarters one-hundred-sixty miles to the rear, he thought he was masterminding a historic victory. (Meyer, p. 173)
On the 26th, two German corps with superior artillery collided with Samsonov's naked right flank and drove it back in confusion. The next morning Francois opened an artillery barrage that devastated Samsonov's left wing, and then sent his infantry forward into unexpectedly stiff resistance. Samsonov, incredibly, resumed the advance of his center, so aggressively, in fact, that Ludendorff was about to recall Francois's corps until Hindenburg calmly overruled him. (Meyer, p. 175)
At dawn on the 28th, Francois attacked again and discovered that the Russian left had evaporated; its troops had had enough and had fled en masse into the nearby woods. Francois swung around to the south and sealed off any hope for escape. "When a corps that had been stationed to the northeast in case Rennankampf showed up, reversed course, and marched toward Samsonov, the trap was complete." (Meyer, p. 175)
The net ensnared 90,000 Russian prisoners; another 150,000 were killed or wounded, compared to 37,000 German casualties. "Samsonov, saying he had failed the Tsar and could not go home, walked off alone into the woods and shot himself." (Meyer, p. 175)
Attempting to exploit his spectacular triumph, Ludendorff turned north to engage the malingering Rennankampf. In the Battle of the Masurian Lakes, fought September 5-13, Francois again penetrated the Russian left and worked way to the rear, but Rennankamp's center held, and he was able to retreat in good order. His pursuers encountered the usual problems of invading armies: exhaustion and outrunning their supplies. On September 25, the Russians counterattacked, ultimately driving the Germans back twenty-five miles to the Angerrap River, where they had commenced their campaign one month earlier.
On the same day that Samsonov's left collapsed, General Franz Conrad von Hotzendorf's Austro-Hungarian armies were suffering an even greater disaster -- on the killing fields of Galicia three hundred miles south. Even with an army of 500,000, the Austrians were outnumbered by their Russian opponents three to two. For two weeks they advanced in blazing heat across featureless plains with little effective cavalry reconnaissance on either side, blundering into superior Russian artillery in suicidal frontal attacks. When the bloodshed was over, they had lost 100,000 killed, 200,000 wounded, and 100,000 captured (compared to 250,000 Russian casualties), the cream of their competent junior military leaders, and two hundred miles of territory. (Stevenson, p.58)
Austria-Hungary would no longer be able to fight the Russians without German help.
On the Western Front, the year would culminate in a hellish nightmare that would haunt the landscape until the Armistice -- the month of slaughter known as the first Battle of Ypres. When the great armies converged on this quiet Belgian center of religion and cloth manufacturing, the Allies determined that it could not be defended from trenches. The higher ground to the east became the battlement, a pregnant bulge soon christened the Ypres salient. "Within this narrow compass through four years, more than one million human beings were to suffer death and wounds," at triple the rate of other sectors. (Marshall, p. 134)
Replacing the embattled Moltke, General Erich von Falkenhayn was determined to regain the offensive. He decided to extend the German front west along the Somme River all the way to the Atlantic, which would give him control of northern France and the key Channel ports of Calais and Boulogne; Ypres was the last obstacle in his path.
After ten days of round-the-clock shelling, Antwerp fell to the Germans on October 6, although 60,000 Belgian troops under Prince Albert managed to escape. They hurried west until they were almost in France and arranged themselves in a defensive line north of Ypres behind the barrier formed by the Yser River as it flows to the sea. There they awaited the arrival of the French Second Army -- now commanded by Ferdinand Foch -- racing to the sea from the south and Sir John French's British Expeditionary Force, whose goal, thrusting eastward, was Brussels.
Once again the Germans subjected the Belgians to murderous shellfire, killing or wounding over one-third of them. At Foch's suggestion, Albert ordered the sluice gates in the dikes holding back the sea opened. A belt of water two miles wide and shoulder high flooded the Germans crossing the Yser and saved the Belgian army. (Marshall, p. 133)
"The next German drive opened October 20, raged ten days, and would not spend its fury until October 31, just as the British neared the breaking point." (Marshall, p. 135) "Along this part of the line there were no dikes to be opened, so that the opposing forces could be separated and their misery brought to an end. The fighting continued day and night, the two sides taking turns on the offensive, and as the casualties mounted companies were reduced to the size of platoons and the tattered remnants of units were mixed together helter-skelter." (Meyer, p. 228)"Flanders was disaster after disaster for both sides and horror after horror." The Germans persisted in attacking in mass, charging straight into bunched machine guns and volleying rifles. "Losses were no less shocking on the other side. When Scotland's Second Highland Light Infantry Battalion was taken out of action, only about thirty men remained of the thousand-plus who had come to France at the start of the war." (Meyer, p. 229)
"Somehow, the Germans and British launched simultaneous attacks on October 30, and again they ran head-on into each other in a struggle in which the losses were almost unsupportable on both sides." Two hundred fifty men of the Second Worchester Regiment, with nothing between them and Ypres but open countryside, fixed bayonets and drove off twelve hundred confused German soldiers who thought they were the vanguard of a powerful force. (Meyer, p. 230)
"That night Falkenhayn called a halt. He had no idea that the BEF was on the brink of defeat -- out of reserves, nearly out of ammunition, at the limits of endurance. He still thought that a breakthrough was possible, but he wanted to gather more trained and experienced troops before trying again." (Meyer, p. 230)
"What he got was not victory but another series of inconclusive battles all along the ridges outside Ypres." The town of Lombartzyde changed hands seven times. As the Germans managed to inch forward and tighten their grip on the salient, Foch repeatedly had to rebuff French and British generals who suggested that a retreat might be in order. (Meyer, pp. 232-233)
"All that saved the British hold on Ypres, beyond mortal valor, was the extraordinary defensive strength of the salient, a maze of wood plots, dikes, ditches, canals," houses, and walls, which could be stormed by the enemy only at a heavy cost. (Marshall, p. 137)
The German offensive crested on November 11. Their most elite regiment, the First Guards led by the Kaiser's son, uncovered a clear path to Ypres, but it too was spooked -- this time by a ragtag assortment of cooks, clerks, engineers, and staff officers. (Meyer, p. 233)
The fighting finally ended on November 22, when the incessant rain turned to snow, the mud froze, and the impossibility of achieving anything became too obvious to be ignored. The British had taken 58,000 casualties, the French 50,000, the Belgians 20,000, and the Germans 130,000. Even the old lion, British War Minister Lord Kitchener, was horrified. 'This isn't war," he said. (Marshall, p. 138)
By whatever name, the unprecedented carnage collaborated with the coming of winter to drive the contending forces to ground. Soon opposing trench systems, fitted with deep artillery-proof dugouts where soldiers existed like rodents, extended from the Alps to the North Sea. Intermittently, over the next four years, they would emerge from their warrens in supreme efforts to break the deadlock -- with little to show for thousands of lives sacrificed on the altars of national honor, stubborn generalship, and political self-righteousness.
REFERENCES
Hochschild, Adam. To End All Wars: A Story of Love and Rebellion 1914-1918. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011.
Marshall, S. L. A. World War I. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1964.
Meyer, G. J. A World Undone: The Story of the Great War 1914 t0 1918. New York: Delacorte Press, 2006.
Stevenson, David. Cataclysm: The First World War as Political Tragedy. New York: Basic Books, 2004.
