You plan a huge offensive. You have tried-and-true battle plans that were wonderfully effective six months ago.
But what you don't take into account is that your enemy has had time to come up with countermeasures.
So what happens when you attack?
Disaster of extraordinary magnitude!
♪ ['The Great War' intro theme] ♪
I'm Indy Neidell. Welcome to 'The Great War'.
Last week the 'Battle of Arras' kicked off on the Western Front.
And while the British and especially the Canadians had early successes, by the end of the week the offensive had stalled.
The other battle fronts had been relatively quiet for once.
But even though the Battle of Arras had stalled, it wasn't over.
And at the beginning of the week it featured scenes like this:
On the 14th, the men of the Newfoundland Regiment—losing 485 comrades killed or badly wounded—
held Monchy-le-Preux for five hours against an entire German division until they could be reinforced.
But three British generals did something pretty unprecedented, and complained directly
to British Commander-in-Chief Sir Douglas Haig about the mounting casualties.
Edmund Allenby further complained that his men had fought trench warfare for so long, they didn't know how to fight over open ground anymore.
On the 15th, Haig called off the offensive. The British had dented the German lines nearly six kilometers.
At Vimy Ridge, the Canadians had gained five kilometers of the German lines, and had taken four thousand prisoners,
though they had lost over 3,500 men killed and over 7,000 wounded.
There's a cemetery in the suburbs of Arras where a British national memorial gives the names
of the 35,298 soldiers killed in the battle, but who have no known grave.
There are also 2,395 named graves there.
The British air losses in the battle were 131 planes and 316 airmen,
which was a third of the whole Royal Flying Corps strength in France.
This month in the skies was 'Bloody April', indeed.
At Vimy Ridge, there are 250 acres of land given by France to Canada.
They are planted with Canadian trees, and there is a huge war memorial with the names of 11,500 soldiers
who were killed there but never identified for burial.
Actually, 67 military cemeteries of varying sizes follow the course of the battle.
That battle was to be a prelude to the French part of the offensive, and that was launched April 16th, as the 'Second Battle of the Aisne'.
It is also known as the 'Nivelle Offensive'.
This attack was a disaster in every way, in spite of being the first time the French used tanks.
French general Robert Nivelle had planned an advance of 10 kilometers this day.
He got a little more than half of one.
On April 16th alone, the French suffered 40,000 casualties.
The Germans had held and fortified their positions since 1914,
and even though they had sent reserves to fight the British at Arras, they knew the attack was coming.
Nivelle finally called off the attack for the time being on the 20th,
an attack that he had promised repeatedly to call off within 48 hours if it wasn't a success.
But the French casualties were staggering.
This was not the outcome the French politicians had expected when they had dismissed Joseph Joffre in favor of Nivelle in December.
Nivelle had eagerly anticipated this offensive all year and he was completely confident
that the tactics he had used successfully at Verdun would work here on a large scale.
There, he had attacked on narrow fronts where the artillery had created a corridor for the infantry to push through,
but here he believed he had enough long-range heavy guns to do that on a wide front, and let the Fifth and Sixth Armies burst through.
The artillery would be rushed forward to continue the corridor.
The infantry would have to be moving quickly the entire time, bypassing and isolating German strongpoints that would be mopped up afterward.
That infantry was not especially keen on this, though.
In fact, the mood in general in the French Army was deteriorating rapidly.
Louis Barthas wrote of April 16th in his diary book 'Poilu' …
One thing that was supposed to be important was the element of surprise.
But thanks to Nivelle's lack of discretion, German general Max von Boehn had a pretty clear idea of what was happening.
So when at 6 a.m. on the 16th, the French attacked supported by over 5,000 big guns
on a front from Soissons to Reims, his men were ready.
As I said, the French were using tanks for the first time— 128 Schneider CA tanks to be specific.
Thing is, they hadn't been integrated Into French tactics, and they had a big flaw:
the gas tanks were not heavily armored, and were at the front of the machine.
So a direct hit caused huge fires and sprays of burning gasoline.
And new German tactics said that every artillery battery was to direct fire on a tank as soon as it appeared.
52 tanks were blown to pieces the first day, and 28 broke down.
The rest got stuck in the mud or fell into huge ditches dug by the Germans.
For the five days of the battle, the French suffered 96,000 casualties.
They totally have the manpower advantage— 53 divisions, numbering at least 1.2 million men, total.
27 of those divisions were held in reserve as the massive maneuver to exploit a breakthrough.
The Germans had 21 divisions on or near the Chemin Des Dames, with 27 in reserve as a counterattack force.
And they were all commanded by Crown Prince Wilhelm who was well aware of the Nivelle Offensive at Verdun,
and had had the whole winter to come up with how to fight it.
The whole thing was a recipe for disaster, from start to finish.
In many places, the French had to first cross the Aisne River, then climb a steep hillside,
then came a network of ravines, and the German barbed wire.
The Germans had the heights and the whole hillside was dotted with machine gun nests
behind steel and concrete that had survived the barrage.
Also, the German front line was on a reverse slope so the barrage had mostly passed over it harmlessly.
And if a Frenchman reached the crest of the hill, he was silhouetted against the sky—an easy target.
By midday of Day One, the Germans were moving in their light artillery and the reserves.
The French massive maneuver never had a chance to go into action.
It was the Somme all over again, and when Nivelle called it off, he didn't really have a choice.
The men at the front were breaking down, their morale and ammo dangerously low.
But the French weren't the only ones taking a beating this week.
The British were too, over on the Palestine Front.
The First Battle of Gaza had been fought a few weeks ago, and had resulted in a British defeat.
But afterwards, Sir Archibald Murray, in command, had greatly exaggerated the Ottoman casualties in his … overly optimistic dispatches.
So British Prime Minister David Lloyd George had sanctioned another attack, and it came this week.
The Second Battle of Gaza, ending the 19th, was also a disaster.
Sir Charles Dobell, commanding in the field, had huge water difficulties, and water was always a major factor in battles in this region.
He opted against a flanking attack and ordered a head-on assault on the city.
The Ottomans had been caught by surprise there once already, and were not going to let that happen again.
They had been busy, and had dug a system of redoubts and concealed trenches, which was going to be tricky to beat.
The British did have eight Mark I tanks which were hoped to be of use here, in spite of their propensity to break down, and the stifling heat for their crews.
Dobell's men actually outnumbered their enemy 2:1,
but completely failed any penetration of the Ottoman defenses,
failed to reach any of their tactical objectives,
and suffered over 6,000 casualties.
The tanks turned out to be magnets for the Ottoman artillery.
And here are a few notes to end the week:
On the 15th, tens of thousands of Russians came out of their trenches
to join their German and Austrian adversaries in impromptu Easter celebrations,
though Easter had actually been last week.
On the 16th, Vladimir Lenin arrived in Russia, back from exile in Switzerland.
And on the 17th, the Japanese Flotilla joins the Allies in the Mediterranean.
And that's the week. The British and French both ending offensives, of which the French one was catastrophic,
and the Turks handing the British a resounding defeat in the Middle East.
A Canadian soldier, Private Gordon Little, explained about the Canadian attack last week at Vimy Ridge.
Giving credit where credit was due, he said that the creeping barrage of artillery was so well-executed,
that the infantry encountered only a few of the enemy. …
Well spoken, Private Little.
If you want to know more about one of the Canadian commanders who was anything but what Private Little described, check out our episode about Arthur Currie.
Our Patreon supporter of the week is Paris Filbert.
If you want more maps, more animations, more cool stuff, please support us on Patreon. See you next time!