When the Western Front became a stalemate in 1914 the Allies began looking for new places
further and further afield to try and breakthrough.
From Gallipoli to Palestine to the Tigris River they’d had high hopes, but to no avail.
And more high hopes come crashing down this week as Russian, French, British, Italian,
and Serbian forces - the five nation army - fail in Macedonia.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to the Great War.
Last week, French army Chief of Staff Robert Nivelle was fired because of French disasters
in the field, and replaced by Philippe Petain.
The British ended the week with a huge disaster of their own in the field, but prepared for
more attacks.
The Russians, their army crippled by desertion and mutinous behavior, still vow to continue
the war.
Indeed, the war continued everywhere and one such place was the Macedonian Front.
The Allied plan this week against the Bulgarians and Germans was for the Italians and French,
with a Russian infantry brigade, to attack at Crna Bend, the Serbs would attack in their
sector, and the British would attack east of the Vardar.
In fact, General Maurice Sarrail planned a frontal assault on the whole length of the
enemy lines by the French and Italians, which his commanders were pretty skeptical about.
I mean, we’ve seen before how daunting the Bulgarian defensive system was, possibly the
best on any front, and they had the heights, with dozens of searchlights blazing down on
the Allies in battle.
They were also backed by German heavy artillery and Austrian howitzers.
Still, on the 5th, 91 French and Italian artillery batteries opened up on the enemy.
The bombardment lasted for four days but did not significantly damage the enemy’s defenses.
At 6:30 AM on May 9th, the French, Italian, and Russian infantry attacked.
It was a failure.
During the assault the Bulgarians took just under 700 casualties.
Add the 1,000 or so they’d taken in the barrage and that’s 1,700ish.
I don’t know the German figures, but they may be a bit higher since they were in the
thick of the fighting, but the Allies took 5,450 casualties and gained absolutely nothing.
Sarrail was not deterred by this and tried another attack the 11th.
It too was a failure.
The Second Serbian army went into action the 9th, and that attack stalled after taking
its first few objectives, but then the Serbs were stuck under a withering counter artillery
attack.
French and British big guns helped out a bit, but they couldn’t get much further.
As for the British attack, that was the renewal of the Battle of Doiran, which began a couple
weeks ago.
The British launched an artillery barrage and then an assault on the evening of the
8th, but by the following day they were forced to abandon the attacks because of heavy casualties.
Fog and smoke caused confusion, telephone lines were cut by shellfire, their infantry
were hit by their own artillery, it was a mess of confusion.
Since the battle began in April, they had lost over 12,000 men killed, wounded, or captured
while Vladimir Vazov’s Bulgarians had lost just a 6th of that, and half of those from
disease, not battle.
As for the First Serbian Army, Sarrail asked for action and got delay.
They said that until the heights had fallen to the Second Army, the first was too vulnerable.
Then the Serbs asked Sarrail to stop the whole campaign.
All of these defeats and lack of progress, combined with the French failure to advance
at Monastir, meant that for the course of the whole Spring Offensive the Allies had
lost tens of thousands of men in total and had taken basically nothing.
There would be another attack next week on the Struma River and the Irish division there
would take its objectives after barely firing a shot, but Sarrail would call off the entire
offensive, having achieved nothing except turning living men into dead ones.
Of course, this was overshadowed by the recent colossal French failure at the Chemin des
Dames, so he didn’t have to worry about his job at this point.
The French were actually attacking there again this week.
The attack that began the night of the 4th, continued on the 5th AND managed to take Craonne
and the edge of the Californie Plateau, but could not cross the Alette River.
Another attack a few days later took Vauclair and Laffaux Mill.
Actually, on the 5th, the attacks were in cooperation with the British, and they took
the crest of the Craonne Ridge and 6,000 prisoners.
And further north the British were trying again at Bullecourt, as they had last week.
First, they held off a German counter attack on the 6th, then mounted their own attack
on the 7th, gaining a foothold in the ruins of the village.
Over the next few days, they were shelled continuously and attacked with flamethrowers,
and though the battle wouldn’t officially end until next week, it was for all intents
and purposes over.
The British had taken tens of thousands of casualties for a minute portion of the Hindenburg
Line.
By this time General Edmund Allenby commanding the 3rd Army was warning Commander in Chief
Sir Douglas Haig that the reserves now being sent into battle were “semi-trained troops,
unable to use their rifles properly”.
Also at this point, twice as many British as Germans were being killed in the offensives
- the British were up to 4,000 casualties per day - so on the 10th in the House of Commons,
Winston Churchill, pointing out American troops wouldn’t be ready until next year, said,
“Is it not obvious that we ought not to squander the remaining armies of France and
Britain in precipitate offensives before the American power begins to be felt on the battlefield?”
He received no answer; there would be more offensives.
Prime Minister David Lloyd George, unlike the military, saw no reason to attempt offensives
before the Americans arrived; and he pushed for a new Italian offensive.
He was really putting a lot of faith in the importance of the American army.
I mean, when the US declared war, for a while it wasn’t even certain if they would send
any men, and would only send supplies and money.
Congress did pass last week a bill to raise 500,000 men, but the US army didn’t even
have divisions; its biggest unit was the regiment.
So the US began putting together a First Division to dispatch to France, even though it hadn’t
been trained for combat and was too small to make a difference.
It and the rest of the American Expeditionary Force would, from May 10th, be under the command
of General John J. Pershing.
Seeing as how I’ve mentioned the Italian front, I’ll look there for a minute.
It’s been quiet for pretty much the past six months, but that’s about to change.
Now, both sides had really built up their forces over the winter.
The Italian forces had nearly doubled and their artillery was up to 2,200 big guns including
British and French heavy pieces.
On the other side, Austro-Hungarian commander Svetozar Borojevic von Bojna was still way
outnumbered, but he too beefed up his numbers and now had 1,400 big guns.
As usual, his engineers had been busy rebuilding fortifications and protecting machine gun
posts, fortifying trenches and shelters, and building additional defensive lines.
The Italians would soon attack and the plan was straightforward; the 10th Battle of the
Isonzo would be on two flanks.
First, the army of Gorizia would attack on the northern flank, trying to break through
to the Bainsizza Plateau.
Italian army Chief of Staff Luigi Cadorna hoped that this would lead Borojevic to move
men to the north, and then the Italian Third Army would attack to the south, across the
Carso Plateau toward Trieste.
Borojevic’s problem was that he didn’t know when the Italians would attack, since
they were now much better at camouflage and hiding their movements.
The attack was set for the beginning of May, but heavy rains delayed it again and again.
It would happen soon.
And something interesting happened in early May at sea.
A convoy of merchant ships guarded by destroyers sailed from Gibraltar to Britain without a
single loss to a German submarine.
The convoy system had been dismissed earlier as useless, but after this the British admiralty
began looking into it seriously.
They had to do something, having lost nearly 900,000 tons in April alone - 50% more than
what Germany believed was needed monthly to drive Britain out of the war.
And that’s the end of the week.
The Allies unable to break through in Macedonia, the Allies unable to break through in the
west, and the Allies planning for a breakthrough in northern Italy.
Well, at least they’re still planning for one somewhere.
It’s hard to know just what they generals in the west were thinking about the Macedonian
front, but I know that it was a side note or a footnote to many of them.
Couldn’t be that hard, I mean - the Bulgarians?
Can they fight the five nation army?
How many times do we see this?
The smaller or “lesser” nations that are supposed to be easy pickings, and NEVER are.
Remember when the Germans were joking about just sending the police to arrest the British
army back in 1914?
Yeah, they don’t do that any more.
See, it turns out that every nation can learn to be great at modern war.
If you want to learn more about the excellent Bulgarian defenses, check out our weekly episode
from February right here.
Our Patreon supporter of the week is April Joy Greibrok.
Help us out on Patreon to make this show better and better.
And don’t forget to subscribe, see you next week.