Just about anything that happened in this war was enough to cause public outrage, though
many horrors eventually became almost commonplace. We’ve seen things like torpedoed ocean liners
and poison gas rouse public indignation, and this week we see another one that caused a
huge public outcry, the execution of a single civilian.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to the Great War.
Last week Bulgaria declared war on Serbia and invaded from the east, as Austro-German
forces invaded Serbia from the north. The French had landed tens of thousands of troops
at Salonika in neutral Greece and were heading up to Serbia from the south. In the west,
the Battle of Loos came to an end with huge British casualties, the Germans taking fewer
than half of their number, while the French continued their own offensive, the Second
Battle of Champagne. Here’s what came next.
Let’s start by looking at a front that’s been pretty quiet lately, the Italian front.
On October 18th, the third Battle of the Isonzo River began. The objectives were Mount Sabotino
and Mount San Michele. Yep, battle number three in the same area in just a few months.
The Second Battle had ended in early August and though Italy had thrown a quarter of a
million men against fewer than 100,000 Austro-Hungarian troops, Italian Army Chief of Staff Luigi
Cadorna had thrown his heavy manpower advantage away with his tactics: an artillery barrage
and then a frontal assault against the barbed wire protected Austrian trenches. But the
Italians didn’t have enough artillery shells, wire cutters, or even rifles to really do
the job, and so while they made some small strategic gains and secured a tactical victory,
it wasn’t nearly the kind of victory that that sort of manpower advantage could well
have produced. This time, Cadorna was going to try something different; he had figured
out the vital importance of artillery and had brought over 1200 big guns to the fight.
Actually, it was 1,250 compared to 604 for the Austrians, and the Italians attacked with
19 divisions to the Austrian 11. Perhaps this time the results would be more decisive.
The Austro-Hungarian Imperial forces saw plenty of action elsewhere this week, as their invasion
of Serbia continued.
After taking Belgrade back on the 9th, the Austro-German armies under German General
August von Mackensen continued to gain territory, but Serbia also now had to deal with the invading
Bulgarian army from the east. Bulgaria had invaded with two armies. The First Army, under
General Boyadjieff, was 200,000 strong, and was focused from Vidin to Zaribrod, threatening
the Belgrade-Sofia railway from Pirot to Nis. The Second Army, under General Todoroff, 100,000
strong, headed toward Macedonia, specifically the major railway hub Uskub, and would try
to drive a wedge into Serbia, separating the north from the south. The Serbian forces in
opposition were in three groups; in the north, with its left flank also opposing Mackensen’s
colossus was the Timok group under General Mihalo Zivkovic. South of him was three infantry
divisions and one cavalry division, a total of around 80,000 men, under Field Marshal
Stepa Stepanovic. In Macedonia, around Uskub, and stretching south toward the Greek frontier,
were 25,000 more men under the command of General Petar Bojovic.
On October 15th, the Bulgarians launched three assaults, all of which the Serbians repulsed
successfully, but throughout the week, the assaults continued and the Bulgarians advanced
both in the east and in Macedonia, where by the 21st they had driven the Serbs through
Uskub and cut the railway line which made any further advances by the French forces
coming from Greece impossible for the moment, but the Serbs retired to the Katshanik Pass
where they would make a stand and hopefully block the Bulgarian effort to cut Serbia in
two.
You can see that the allies were getting a little desperate for help in Serbia. On the
17th, the British government offered Cyprus to Greece if she’d help Serbia. Greece rejected
the offer a few days later. As for Austrian Army Chief of Staff Conrad von Hotzendorf,
the success in Serbia gave him hope that once Serbia was defeated, it might be possible
to make peace with Russia. He wrote this to Franz Josef in a memo the 22nd. I didn’t
see that coming.
There were now 12 war zones in the war. Twelve! The eastern front, the western front, Gallipoli,
Mesopotamia, the Caucasus, Serbia, the Italian Front, the Salonika Front, East Africa, Cameroon,
and Persia, though those three were sporadic, and there were 100,000 British and Dominion
soldiers in Egypt awaiting a possible attack on the Suez Canal. But here’s something
that happened away from the front.
In Brussels on October 12th, the British nurse Edith Cavell, who was the head of a large
training school for nurses in Brussels, was executed by the Germans for having helped
British and French POWs, and Belgians who wanted to serve with the allies, escape to
Holland.
Her execution led to a renewed upswing of anti-German sentiment in the USA, and this
was inflamed by a false story that made the rounds that she had fainted on the way to
the execution post and been shot by the firing squad while she was lying on the ground. There
was even a drawing of this scene in the New York Tribune, with Cavell lying on her back,
and a German officer with a spiked helmet standing over her with a huge smoking gun.
The caption read, “Gott Mit Uns”: God is with us.
The huge upswing in anti-German sentiment was not, of course, just confined to the USA
for Cavell’s execution was a big deal in Britain. In fact, “the Story of the Great
War” states: “perhaps no incident of the great world war will be more indelibly printed
on the British mind than this. Many thousands of young Englishmen that hitherto held back
rushed to join the colors. Edith Cavell recruiting meetings were held all over the United Kingdom.”
There was even a national memorial service at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London attended
by many of the nobility, statesmen, and thousands of officers and soldiers. A statue of Cavell
was put up in Trafalgar Square, but what I think is the most permanent monument to her
is in Canada, in the Rocky Mountains, where about 15 miles south of Jasper, Mount Cavell
rises to a height of 11,000 feet.
So she was executed for trying to get men to the Western Front, and there was actually
a new development right at that front this week.
On October 19th in Champagne came the newest stage in the poison gas war: the Germans used
a mixture of chlorine and phosgene gas on a ten-mile front, killing nearly 1,000 Frenchmen,
and making another 4,000 seriously ill.
I’ll round things off today with some small notes from the Eastern Front, where we’re
going to see a lot more next week.
There was heavy fighting in the northeast this week near Riga and the Dvina River, and
on the 21st, the Germans captured the Dvina bank just ten miles east of Riga. Far to the
south, on the 20th, Russian General Ivanov took 7,500 Austro-Hungarian prisoners near
Tarnopol.
And something I haven’t had time to mention yet, from still another front, the one at
Gallipoli.
Last month, British Commodore Roger Keyes, at Gallipoli, turned in a plan to again try
to force the Dardanelles with ships alone. His admiral refused him. Winston Churchill,
in 1931, would have this to say about that, “I marveled much in those days at the standard
of values and sense of proportion which prevailed among our politicians and naval and military
authorities. The generals were so confident of breaking the line in France... to sacrifice
a quarter of a million men in such an affair seemed to them the highest military wisdom.
That was the orthodox doctrine of war; even if it did not succeed, no error or breach
of the rules would have been committed. But to lose one hundredth part as many sailors
and a dozen old ships... with the possibility of gaining an inestimable prize- there was
a risk before which the boldest uniformed greyhead stood appalled. The fleet continued
idle at the Dardanelles. The armies shattered themselves against the German defense in France.”
(Gilbert pp.201-02)
And that was the week. A new offensive on the Italian Front. Two huge enemy invasions
in Serbia and even a friendly invasion of French troops there. Heavy fighting in the
northeast as the Germans try to take yet another major city, and an execution in Belgium.
Oh, and the deployment of phosgene gas in Champagne. Which affected thousands of Frenchmen.
Phosgene gas is more deadly than chlorine. You don’t cough so you inhale more of it,
and it often had a delayed reaction so seemingly healthy troops would come down with gas poisoning
a day or two after being exposed. Imagine those 48 hours. How would you feel? How scared
would you be? I mean, you’d seen what it did to others, was this how you were going
to die? To avoid being shot or shelled only to have your lungs burned out lying on a stretcher
surrounded by strangers who could do nothing to relieve your pain? What had you ever done
to deserve that? Both sides would deploy phosgene gas. Hooray for Modern War.
But it was far from the only chemical agent used in World War 1. If you want to find out
more about this horrific reality, check out our special episode on Gas Warfare right here.
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