He had been the rock of calm in 1914 as the Germans approached Paris, but as 1916 and
the Battles of the Somme and Verdun had continued on and on with ever more French lives lost,
confidence in General Joseph Joffre’s leadership of the French army had flagged, and this week,
Joffre is replaced.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to the Great War.
Last week, Bucharest, the capital of Romania, fell to the Central Powers, and the Romanian
army retreated eastward after burning the oil fields.
There were massacres of civilians by rival factions in Athens as Greece tried to remain
neutral, though the British had declared a blockade and occupied Greek islands.
There was political turmoil in Russia, Lloyd George became Britain’s new Prime Minister,
and in the Balkans, the city of Monastir was being shelled by the Bulgarians.
There had been raids and counter-raids around Monastir for the past few weeks, actually,
since the Allies had taken the city, but by the this week, winter had really arrived and
operations were mostly suspended.
Now, the casualties on the Macedonian front, when compared to those of, say, the Western
or Eastern fronts, might seem trivial to some, but we’re still talking about tens of thousands
of human beings.
Since August the Serbs had taken 27,551 casualties, the French 13,786, the Russians 1,701, and
the Italians 342.
The British had taken 5,048 casualties there, but had also suffered nearly 30,000 cases
of malaria, and of those over 20,000 had been evacuated.
For the Central powers, the Bulgarians had casualties of around 52,000 men, and the Germans
around 8,000 (Evans - Forgotten Battlefronts)
So that front went quiet, but another front we haven’t heard much from lately flared
into action.
The Mesopotamian Front, which had been quiet all summer and fall.
Well, quiet in terms of action.
The Indian Labor Corps had been brought in to basically fix the Tigris River to make
it ready for British action.
They reclaimed land, dug navigation channels, and deepened harbors.
Camps for troop reinforcements were built, as well as military hospitals and warehouses.
They even built a special new steamboat specifically for Tigris conditions, with a shallow draught
and capable of handling strong currents.
These P-50 steamers had been arriving for weeks now and would prove invaluable.
Railway lines were laid down where possible, and a metalled road with bridges over the
hundreds of creeks was built from Basra up to the front.
A repeat of the failure to relieve the army that had been forced to surrender at Kut-al-Amara
in the spring would not happen again.
And military supplies were pouring in, howitzers, machine guns, scouting aircraft, and ammunition
by the ton.
The four divisions of the Mesopotamia Expeditionary Force numbered 160,000 men.
Lieutenant-General Sir Stanley Maude was now in charge, but he had been given specific
instructions by Chief of the British Imperial General Staff William Robertson to secure
the oilfields, the pipelines, and the Basra region.
Taking Baghdad was only mentioned with a stern warning that advances were not to be made
unless sanctioned, but Maude wanted nothing less than total victory over the Ottomans
in Mesopotamia.
His first move came December 13, 1916.
He wasn’t using any strategy much different from his predecessors on the Tigris, but this
time he wasn’t limited by floods, and he was under no time constraints.
He made a diversionary bombardment on Sanniyat and a night march so his men were able to
cross the Shatt-el-hai that fed into the Tigris on the west bank opposite Kut.
Bombing missions on the Turkish steamer that set up pontoon bridges caused it to release
its tows and scatter pontoons all over the Tigris, so now the Ottomans could no longer
rapidly cross the river.
Things were looking up for the British, but bad weather caused a suspension of activities
for the rest of the month.
But there was no suspension of activities in the political shakeups that had been going
on for a couple of weeks.
In Britain this week, Lord Grey resigned as Foreign Secretary and Lord Derby became the
new Secretary of State for War, in Austria Ernest von Koerber resigned as Premier after
under two months on the job, and in France there was even bigger news.
General Robert Nivelle became the new commander in chief of the French army, replacing General
Joseph Joffre.
Nivelle had organized the successful French creeping barrage and communications for the
big counter offensive at Verdun in October and he was the new man of the hour, and the
logical successor to Joffre - Generals de Castelnau and Foch were passed over for the
new hero.
Even Nivelle’s immediate superior, Philippe Petain was passed over.
That was partly because the politicians knew of Petain’s contempt for them; he had once
said of French President Raymond Poincaré, “Nobody was better placed than the President
himself to be aware that France was neither led nor governed.”
Nivelle, on the other hand, had a great ability to charm the elected politicians.
Straight away, during what would prove to be the coldest winter of the war, Nivelle
launched another heavy attack at Verdun north of Douaumont at the end of the week.
The frontline there is now back almost to where it was 9 months ago.
French premier Aristide Briand was also in the news this week.
On the 12th, notes were passed by the four central powers to American ambassadors to
tell Entente governments that they are ready to negotiate for peace; the next day Briand
summed up the German peace note as “Heads I win, tails you lose”.
But Germany had been quite successful in the field recently, in Romania.
The armies on both sides, however, were reaching their limits, many units having seen continuous
combat for weeks.
Rain had caused rivers to overflow and highways to become mud baths.
German General Erich von Falkenhayn’s supply base was hundreds of kilometers away and his
men had outrun their supplies, so he ordered a day of rest on the 8th.
The loss of their capital city had demoralized the Romanian army as it now headed east, and
King Ferdinand knew that more Russian help was crucial, but this came with a quid pro
quo.
Now, the Russians currently had 12 divisions in Romania, mostly in Moldavia, and they proposed
to create an army group with them in charge of any Romanian units fit to fight.
This was rejected, but King Ferdinand was put in charge of the “Romanian front”
with a Romanian and a Russian general in charge of their respective forces, but in reality
the Russian general had control.
And that general was Vladimir Sakharov, who we saw a lot of last summer in the Brusilov
Offensive.
Romanian army Chief of staff Dumitru Iliescu became the scapegoat for losing the capital
and the richest province of the country after only around 100 days of fighting, and lost
his job, and Constantin Prezan - against his will - became the new chief of staff.
And Falkenhayn was on the move again the 9th.
He catalogued what his men had done since beginning the crossing of Wallachia, which
included taking 70,000 prisoners, 125 artillery pieces, 145 machine guns, and the capital
city.
The total number of prisoners was now in the hundreds of thousands.
By the the end of the week, Falkenhayn’s men entered Buzau, August von Mackensen’s
Danube army was over the Jalomita River, northeast of Bucharest, and all Wallachia was cleared
of allied troops south of the Bucharest-Cerna Voda line, but the Germans were having serious
problems.
The roads were in such poor shape they were nearly impassable; many were littered with
horses’ corpses and broken wagons.
The drinking water gave most of the soldiers diarrhea.
Discipline seriously eroded and looting took place.
Falkenhayn knew the situation called for hard pursuit, but he kinda saw that his army didn’t
have the strength for it.
So that was the guys advancing on the plains of Wallachia.
In the foothills to the north, the Romanian defenses were more effective and the Germans
had to fight for every kilometer as they approached Buzau.
And in Northern Dobrogea, between the Danube and the Black Sea, the Bulgarian 3rd army
was driving north.
And we come to the end of the week.
The Macedonian front goes quiet as the Mesopotamian comes to life after months of preparations.
The Central Powers continue to advance in Romania, despite their exhaustion, and political
shakeups dot the map of Europe.
So General Nivelle was now in charge of the French army.
Joffre had been surpassed, all Petain had organized and achieved at Verdun was overlooked,
and the brash and fiery Nivelle would have his day.
Nivelle spoke fluent English, which was good, and as I said he was very popular with politicians,
both French and British, and there’s no question that his organization of the creeping
barrage in October was brilliant, but even over last summer, even just after he took
command at Verdun, he was already being accused of wasting French lives.
Perhaps all generals are accused of this occasionally, but even though Nivelle was the public darling,
those accusing voices had grown louder and louder as the year went on, and they would
grow to a ringing crescendo in 1917.
If you are curious about what Pétain actually achieved at Verdun, you can click right here
to check out our special episode about him.
Our Patreon supporter of the week is Jan Mart.
Help us out on Patreon, make this show better and better and get cool perks in return.
You can also like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to stay up to date with all
the announcements regarding our show.