Millions of men are at war.
You’re trying to win, but you’re the leader of just a few hundred disorganized tribesmen.
What can you do for the war effort?
Well, you can try sabotage.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to the Great War.
Last week the British had yet another success at the Battle of Passchendaele, as well a
success on the Euphrates.
The other fronts were relatively quiet, though, of course, the day to day fighting continued
most everywhere unabated.
And we saw some of that day to day fighting this week in the Middle East.
Lawrence of Arabia, an Algerian French officer named Rosario Pisani, and around 100 Bedouin
tribesmen set off to sabotage the Hejaz Railway, armed with an electric mine and a pressure
mine.
That railway was of major importance to the Ottomans for transporting troops and supplies
around the region.
On the 3rd, Lawrence buried the pressure mine south of Shedia station.
No trains appeared for two days, but a water train passing on the 5th did not set off the
mine.
So at midday, when he assumed the railway guards were taking a siesta, Lawrence crept
forward and laid the electric mine by the pressure one.
This was under one of the three bridges there.
At 8 AM on the 6th, a train arrived from the north and the mines were detonated when the
locomotive was crossing the bridge.
The explosion was enormous and the locomotive was destroyed.
20 passengers in the first carriage were killed and the carriages themselves were decoupled
and began to roll back down the hill.
The Turkish guards came out of their blockhouses and Lawrence and company got out of there.
As a result of this, the locomotive drivers went on strike, and for passengers that still
wished to ride the railway in spite of the numerous sabotage incidents; seats at the
rear of the train could be bought at premium prices.
The sabotage was working.
And there was other news from the Middle East this week.
In Palestine (Gilbert) the Ottoman secret police had broken up the Jewish spy ring that
worked for the British and arrested Sarah Aaronsohn, one of its leaders.
She was tortured for four days, but gave no information.
She killed herself October 5th.
The British government had, by this time, began to consider the idea of replacing Turkish
rule in Palestine with a Zionist state under British control.
On the 2nd, they learned of a meeting in Berlin where the Germans and Ottomans made plans
to offer European Jews a German sponsored national home in Palestine.
But the machinations behind the lines took a back seat to the ones in the field.
At Passchendaele, British Commander in Chief Sir Douglas Haig thought they were about to
breakthrough the German lines and the cavalry could finally come in.
His Generals Herbert Plumer and Hugh Gough weren’t so certain and expressed themselves
to him about this.
They thought the high ground needed to be secured before any big advances could happen
and this would take a few more bite and hold grabs of 1-2 km each.
This was a new tactic Plumer had come up with - which we saw the past two weeks - to counter
the deep German elastic defense system.
After each grab, though, you had to build roads and all to bring up the artillery, which
took time.
Haig sat the generals down on October 2nd and told them they were wrong, the breakthrough
was soon to come.
I wanna quote Nick Lloyd here from “Passchendaele” about Gough and Plumer, “They had seen this
before; a limited success that had been based on exhaustive preparation and phenomenal firepower
causing Haig to find new faith in dramatic breakthrough operations.
As they already knew, it was best to nod in agreement and get on with the job at hand.”
The Germans, for their part, resorted to old tactics to try and beat Plumer, since the
new ones didn’t work, loading the forward positions so that attackers couldn’t make
even little land grabs.
It was drizzling rain, at 6 AM on October 4th when Plumer’s Second Army launched the
Battle of Broodseinde, with I and II ANZAC Corps making the main assault against Broodseinde
Ridge.
The whole frontage was around 1km wide.
This turned out to be even more of a disaster for the Germans than September 20 and 26 had
been.
The men in the front positions were annihilated by the artillery barrage, which came with
such intensity that it truly was a wall of fire; in addition, the German reserves had
been placed too far forward and were also hard hit.
The battle was, for all intents and purposes, over by the early afternoon.
The British had advanced 700m (over one km according to Lloyd) and then - once again
- stopped and dug in.
They had inflicted 30,000 casualties on the Germans, though they’d taken 25,000 themselves,
even after destroying the forward German positions- there was still another 500m of killing zone
to tackle.
This was pretty painful for the British, but totally unsustainable for the Germans.
What would they do?
German Quartermaster General Erich Ludendorff searched for some way to launch an offensive
that would draw British troops away from the region, but came up with nothing.
Ludendorff ordered his men to switch back to the flexible defense, which at least would
keep most of them out of range of British artillery.
He was seriously worried at this point, “I myself was put to a terrible strain.
The state of affairs in the West appeared to prevent the execution of our plans elsewhere.
Our wastage had been so high as to cause grave misgivings, and had exceeded all expectations.”
He even wondered how much ground could be given up without endangering the U-boat bases
on the Belgian coast.
So, as distant as they may have once seemed, Haig’s objectives were now an actual possibility.
The Battle of Broodseinde was even called “the greatest victory of the war” in some
British press, but there are different opinions as to the scale of success.
The autumn rains hadn’t come down yet, almost miraculously, but they would, and the ground
now in front of the British was low lying and would flood in any rainfall and become
tough to cross.
This had been an issue last year at the Battle of the Somme, when the British had given up
high ground to advance onto and be forced to defend lower ground.
Still, it was undeniable that Plumer’s forces had made headway, and they had seriously rattled
the opposition.
The German official history would call this a big British success and would note the drop
in German morale once they realized that they couldn’t hold their ground against overwhelming
British artillery.
Haig called for the next attack to come October 8th, two days earlier than planned.
He was determined to take Passchendaele.
General John Charteris, Haig’s Chief of Intelligence, looked at the enormous casualties
of the past few weeks, though, and wrote on the 5th that they should stop for the winter.
Plans however, were finally drawn up for THREE new assaults, to take place the 9th, 12th,
and 14th.
British Prime Minister David Lloyd George and others felt that it was this week that
Haig lost all sympathy.
The Battle of Passchendaele was two months old, gains had been made, sure, but they were
modest and the losses were high, winter was coming early, and Haig was ordering further
attacks.
And it looked like the Germans would be making some further attacks of their own, but far
to the northeast.
On October 2nd, the Russian fleet refused to obey the Russian Provisional Government,
so the Germans could execute plans to land on the islands in the Gulf of Riga.
Operation Albion would take the islands in the Estonian Archipelago, which the Germans
believed would allow them to outflank the Russian army and move on Petrograd, the Russian
capital.
At the moment, they were trying to subdue the coastal batteries and clear the extensive
network of mines.
If successful, a land invasion would follow.
And here are a few notes to end the week.
On the 29th and 30th, Italian attacks on the Bainsizza Plateau, take 2,000 Austrian prisoners.
On the 30th, Sun Yat Sen was arrested at Canton for organizing revolution.
That same day a Congress at Kiev demands independence for all Russian nationalities.
On October 1st, British naval airplanes bombed Beirut harbor.
And on October 2nd, HMS Drake was torpedoed off the Irish coast, 19 men were killed.
The Drake was an armored cruiser that had a checkered career, including time serving
as flagship of the Australia Station.
And the week ends, with yet another Allied success at Passchendaele, skirmishing in Italy,
a Russian mutiny in the Baltic, and sabotage in the Middle East.
But would the British successes continue in Belgium?
The Germans were certainly worried by now, as they were slowly being forced from their
vaunted defenses.
But winter had come early, and the weather had turned bad, and that ground easily flooded.
Perhaps success had gone to Haig’s head, but perhaps his dreams of breakthrough were
really just about to come true in the three battles scheduled for next week.
And remember, the thing about Haig’s dreams of breakthrough - he only had to be right
once.
If you want to learn more about the German defences at Passchendaele, you can watch our
special episode about that right here.
Our Patreon supporter of the week is Psych!
Is that his legal name?
We live in marvelous times.
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