Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Fall Offensive - Western Front

September-October 1915

A major offensive, planned by Joffre, is gets underway on September 25th along the French/Belgium frontier.

Second Champagne - 27 French Divisions, 900 heavy field guns and 1600 light guns are in place to start a push against 7 German divisions on the German left near Verdun.

Third Artois - On the German right, nearer the channel, seventeen French divisions face-off against 2 German.

Loos - North of the Artois line, six divisions of British forces under the command of Sir John French, face only one German.

The great lesson of this offensive is the advantage that goes to an army well experienced in defensive operations.  Elaborate trench systems had been dug and machine guns emplaced making any advance in this sector a very expensive proposition for the allies.  And political considerations work against them, also.

Lord Kirschner, hearing rumors that a supreme commander may be appointed and wanting the sinecure for himself, commits his army to an effort he doesn't believe can succeed.  The field commanders of both armies are also sceptical.  Initial success on all three fronts are soon turned back by the Germans, due to a combination of communication limitations, bad luck and experience on the part of the defenders.

At Champagne, after an intense artillery preparation, the French penetrate quickly through the first line of defense, only to have the shells intended for second line Germans fall on their heads.  The Germans enjoy defensive success against the French at Artois and Joffre secretly decides that that front is a side show, but purposefully neglects to inform his British allies operating in the same general area. 

The British make progress through both the first and second lines of Germans and a way opens into the German rear.  But, General French had placed his reserve too far away to strike quickly and precious hours are lost. Machine guns moved into the breach take a terrible toll and result in 8,000 British dead against no German losses.  The Germans, sick of the carnage, hold the field but don't contest the British retreat.

Another British casualty is General Sir John French, who is replaced by one of the most controversial generals of the war, Sir Douglas Haig.  Haig is promoted from a corps commander to commander in chief of the BEF.  This very year, the gung ho Haig says "The machine gun is a much overrated weapon."  WTF?!  Haig will be in command for the coming battles of the Somme and Passchendale.

The offensive has cost the French 190,000 casualties, the British 60,000 and the Germans 140,000.  Very little is changed on the field.


Monday, June 15, 2015

Second Artois

June, 1915

Since May, a battle has been being fought near the Belgian city of Arras.  The fight is instigated by the French and British Armies.  General Joffre has decided that waiting for a German offensive would do more to strengthen the Axis than the Allies.  Also, there is an opportunity to disrupt rail supply lines to the German army further west.  Newly appointed General Ferdinand Foch, Northern Commander proposes and in initiates a major attack on German positions.  Over the winter of 1914-15 those positions have been reorganized and strengthened.

The French are attempting to devise tactics that are appropriate to the new form of warfare.  It focuses less on unrestrained offensive action and more on carefully considered artillery preparation, better design of entrenchments and increased use of machine gun, mortar, and hand grenade.  Reality is intruding on the pre-war doctrines of the military colleges.

Nearly a million shells are dropped in 5 weeks over the 25 mile front and the allies gain a total of 16 square miles.


Friday, June 5, 2015

The Light is Dawning

June 1915

The thinking of all the top generals on the allied side has been focused on finding the one heroic master stroke battle that would turn the tide and result in general victory.  Based on his experience on the Eastern front, a rising general, named Herri-Phillippe Petain, is proposing a new paradigm for this war.  "Success will come, in the final analysis, to the side which has the last man." It is an example of a new type of war, the war of attrition.  Joffre and Kitchner are at a loss to know what this will mean to military strategy.

Monday, May 25, 2015

It Must Be Said

May, 1915

There is no specific date, but any history of WWI that didn't mention it would be incomplete.  The genocide perpetrated against the Armenians by the dying Ottoman Empire.  In a bid to return the empire to it's glorious past as a world power, it was decided that Christians were first to be taxed, then enslaved, finally murdered without mercy, sometimes by gun or sword, sometimes by overwork and exhaustion.  The world war, with Muslim Turkey on one side and Christian Russia on the other provided the perfect pretext for incredible violence against innocent bystanders caught between the two combatants. One of the greatest crimes against humanity, which has gone unpunished and is even being denied to this day, is getting underway 100 years ago today.  Let's pause to remember their horror.

And reflect also on the evils of unbridled nationalism and religious chauvinism that the human race is so undeniably subject to.

Meanwhile, on May 25-26, the first submarine to reach the Aegean Sea torpedoes and sinks the British battleships Triumph and Majestic.  The other six British battleships are withdrawn and render impossible any further naval assault in the Dardanelles.

Sunday, May 3, 2015

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders Fields                         Canadian Lt. John McCrae

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.


We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.


Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Saturday, May 2, 2015

Remember the Lusitania

May 2, 1915

Today the Passenger ship Lusitania is sunk by a German submarine torpedo.  The British story is that the ship was an unarmed passenger liner and by international treaty, was not a legitimate target of war.  The Germans maintained that she was carrying significant war material and as such was not exempt from action.  128 Americans went to the bottom with her.

Sunday, April 26, 2015

D-Day at Gallipoli

April 25, 1915

Despite mixed success in the naval bombardment and marine mine clearing, the decision is taken to proceed with a pet project of Sir Winston Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty.

Plans were made to transfer troops from large naval vessels to rowboats,which would be towed ashore by whatever smaller ships were available.  The troops used were largely untrained and untested imports from Australia,New Zealand and the Far East.  (In a remarkable example of the survival of of the British sea-going tradition, two of the rowboats were commanded by 13-year old English boys, cadets who were already ear-marked for careers as naval officers.)  After an early morning bombardment, troops began to move ashore without benefit of accurate maps or intelligence on Turkish troop deployments.  The landing ground chosen for them is a small area surrounded on three sides by steep hillsides.

At first the location was sparsely defended, the Turks having dismissed the ground as being unfit for an invasion force.  But before the invading force could reach the heights, the Turkish Army was assembling.

Down the coast, nearer the tip of the peninsula, events were not going much better for the English troops landed there.  Barbed wire and fortified entrenchments made advance almost impossible.  Still they did advance, taking very heavy losses.  Altogether, casualties numbered around 4,000 out of and invading force of 30,000.  This carnage inflicted by something like 300 desperately dug-in defenders.  The military planners were learning hard lessons of sea-born invasion tactics in the age of the machine gun.  Eventually the British fell into the same trap as had sprung in western European theater and began to fortify shallow, hard won positions.  They would be held throughout the summer at great cost without having much effect on the war.

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Gas Attack

April 22, 1915

The Allies are getting restless for renewed battle in the West.  The Germans have been experimenting with a new idea for prosecuting war, poisonous gasses.  At first they try a tear gas formulation, that seems to have little effect.  Today, they open the first battle to use the terrible weapon based on chlorine gas near Ypres on the far west end of the battle line.  The Germans are bringing to bear their world leading chemical industry, another example of the modern concept of total war.  Due to difficulties in delivery and gas masks soon developed by the allies, gas was never an important weapon in the war, but for a few thousand French and Algerian troops, it certainly brought a cruel and painful death.

The front is held due largely to the extraordinary courage of Second Lieutenant Kestell-Cornish, who with four comrades, held off the German infantry advance planned to take place through the cloud of poison gas.

Sunday, March 22, 2015

Dardanelles and the Surrender of an Austrian Garrison

March 22,  1914

In the Dardanelles, a naval battle group led by a new superdreadnought battleship, the Queen Elizabeth, moves up the strait and begins shelling Turkish gun emplacements on shore.  While this is successful, secretly laid mines that had escaped detection result in heavy losses to the Allied force and the British commander, Admiral De Roebuck, is brought to the conclusion that a large ground force will be needed there.  Winston Churchill, with his unshakable faith in the navy, dissents, but seaborn operations come to a standstill.  German and Turkish defenders are surprised that the Allies don't follow up and force the strait. It is yet another missed opportunity for shortening the war.

In North Central Europe, with the failure of the Austrian offensive at the end of 1914 and attempts to relieve them in January, the Austrian base of operations in in Przemysl is behind enemy lines and surrenders.  120,000 Austrians fall into Russian hands.

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Spring Offensives

March 10, 1915

The war is heating up on two fronts today.  In the Dardanelles, Kitchner of the British command orders the 29th division, one of the last remaining unengaged forces to the Dardanelles, thus angering Sir John French who is preparing for opening spring offensives at the western end of the European line.  He orders an artillery attack near Neuve Chapelle to be followed by a mass infantry attack, with or without help from the French  He is motivated by the diversion of the 29th as well as moves that seem to make the BEF into an auxilary of the French Army.

The attack is an unbounded success.  The infantry pours into German held territory and doesn't find any opposition.  Because of inadequate communications and deficient leadership, the attack achieved little of lasting benefit to the Allies.  Only the destroyed town of Neuve Chapelle remained in their hands a few days later when the Germans had had time to react.

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

The Dardanelles

February 19, 1915

The 29th Infantry Division was the only division left to the British Army to deploy and the command had been looking around for a likely place to deploy it.  Sir John French took it for granted that it would be added to the BEF in Belgium but the war was also heating up in the middle east, where many British shipping interests (like the Suez Canal) were located.  At first it was imagined that the 29th would be sent there in support of a combined land and sea effort to maintain control of the eastern Mediterranean.  Such a fuss is kicked up by French that the 29th is held back in England and untrained provincial troops from Australia and New Zealand are sent to a base on a Greek island instead.

Simultaneously, a large combined fleet is engaged in clearing the water passage between the Mediterranean Sea and Constantinople on the Black Sea, known as the Dardanelles.  Turkey, and ally of Germany had been salting those waters with mines to disrupt British shipping and close a key supply line to the Russians.  Today, that fleet begins shelling forts on both sides of the Dardanelles.  By the 25th, allied shock troops are being unloaded and the land forts have been neutralized .  But Turkish mines remain a problem for the British Navy to deal with.

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Winter Against Russia

February 18, 1915

Some tactical success has been achieved by Hindenburg in the north.  In the battle of Augustow an entire Russian corp is forced to surrender en mass. Russia, of course, has a relatively inexhaustible supply of men. On the other hand, almost nothing comes from the campaign in the south by Conrad.  And the German Army is forced to admit that their winter campaign against the vast Russian Empire is a strategic failure.  The southern push has resulted in 800,000 Austrian casualties, which she can ill afford.

Friday, January 23, 2015

Dissention in the German Army

January 23, 1914

Trouble has been brewing between the upstart and successful team of Hindenburg and Ludendorf, who had achieved important successes in Prussia and the German Commander in Chief, Falkenkayn.  The latest bone of contention concerned whether to send an army to the Austrian Conrad to push the successful Russian Army back across the frontier of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  Falkenhayn, in order to dissolve the team, has ordered Ludendorf south away from Prussia ad Hindenburg and is refusing to commit an army to the assistance of Austria.  After a political power struggle with the over matched Kaiser at its center, Falkenhayn is left in charge but is ordered to support Conrad's move against Russia.  Ludendorf, after a decent interval, is to be returned to his mentor Hindenburg to help coordinate a northern push.  The ill-conceived and ill-led Austrian expedition immediately meets with problems common to winter campaigns.

Sunday, January 4, 2015

Sinking of the Formidable

January 1, 1914

A German U-boat sends a torpedo toward a British battleship, called the HMS Formidable and sends her to the bottom of the English Channel with 546 seamen.  It sounds the wake up call that the British Navy may not be counted on to rule the waves indefinitely.

Christmas Truce

December, 25, 1914

The common soldiers in the trenches of Flanders demonstrate a better understanding of war than their commanders when they send Christmas carols in their respective languages across no-mans-land and cautiously begin to show themselves above the tops of the trenches. Soon a gathering of soldiers occurs and soccer games and spontaneous gift exchanges break out.  When the indignant generals get wind of this scandalous behavior, they take steps to ensure that it never happens again.