The Armenian Genocide.
Whether or not you believe it happened, it happened.
It was in progress 100 years ago.
It had by now reached the point where even the Ottoman Empire’s staunchest allies were
speaking out against it, and this week, one of those allies was even removed from office.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to the Great War.
Last week at the Somme saw British success at the Battles of Morval and Thiepval Ridge,
Greek volunteers were helping the Allied five-nation army in the Balkans, and German General Erich
von Falkenhayn crossed the Carpathian Mountains to engage Romania.
Here’s what followed.
There was action on the other Romanian front, in Dobrogea.
On October 2nd, the Romanians put up a pontoon bridge across the Danube at Rahova, well to
the rear of German General August von Mackensen’s lines.
They overwhelmed the surprised Bulgarian forces under Mackensen stationed there, seized all
the neighboring villages, and for the next day it looked like they’d deal Mackensen
a shocking defeat, but apparently they didn’t have the necessary forces to do it, because
they retired back across the bridge.
The Bulgarians claimed that an Austrian ship appeared on the river and began shelling the
bridge and that before the retreat had been completed a lot of the Romanians had been
captured or killed, but I can’t find out definite info on that.
The Berlin dispatches, at any rate, claim few prisoners, and the region quieted down
again for the rest of the week.
And here’s more from the German political dispatches.
On October 3rd, Paul Graf Wolff Metternich leaves his post as German ambassador to the
Ottoman Empire.
He was recalled by Germany at Ottoman Minister of War Enver Pasha’s request because Metternich
objected to the Armenian genocide.
He was quite outspoken on the subject.
Wilhelm von Radowitz becomes the interim charge d’affairs.
The next day, Radowitz reported to German Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg that of two million
Armenians that had been living in Anatolia, 1.5 million had been deported, and of those
1,175,000 were dead.
The Chronology of the Great War actually says Richard von Kühlmann was the new ambassador
from September 29th, but he wouldn’t arrive in Constantinople until November.
Kuhlman believed initially that the Armenian issues were a matter of internal politics,
but would later say, “This policy of extermination will for a long time stain the name of Turkey.”
And on October 5th, the Ottoman government confiscated all real estate held by Armenians.
Let’s look a few hundred kilometers due west from Constantinople, to the Salonika
Front, where the Allied five-nation army was on the move
On September 30th, the British cross the Struma River and take the local villages.
They beat back the Bulgarian counter attack.
On the 2nd, the Serbs report that they’ve consolidated their positions on the heights
of Kaimakcalan and had advanced and taken Kotchovie.
Meanwhile the Bulgarians are retiring toward Monastir.
On the 4th, the Allies reach Kenali, 15 km from Monastir, and the Serbs cross the Cerna
River east of Monastir.
At the end of the week the French take Jermani, on the lower shore of Little Prespa Lake.
An interesting side note here: On October 3rd, the 10th Irish Division attacked Bulgarian
positions at Yenikoy.
The town changed hands several times until a night attack by the Irish took it for good
for the time being, and the Bulgarians pulled back.
You don’t usually think of Irish fighting Bulgarians when you think of WW1, but it happened.
And yet another side note, on October 6th, Bulgarian poet Dimcho Debelyanov was killed
fighting the Irish.
His poems became very popular after his death.
One place you do think of Irish fighting, and indeed all of the British colonial armies
fighting, was at the Somme.
On October 1st, the Battle of le Transloy and the Battle of Ancre Heights began.
Now, I’ll talk more about them next week, particularly as bad weather for most of the
week prevented really big action, though there was a fair amount of action this week and
every week.
I want to talk a bit about British Commander in Chief Sir Douglas Haig.
Haig still didn’t seem to understand the kind of operations his troops could handle
with success, specifically, those limited in scope to the range of the guns covering
the infantry advance.
Every time he planned an offensive, the cavalry was assembled and distant objectives were
set.
And thinking about the big breakthrough distracted from reality based things like artillery concentration
(The Somme).
So battles kept resulting in heavy casualties for the British attackers.
And while optimism is certainly a good thing, Haig’s persistent belief before each new
offensive that German morale was just about to collapse was not only a fantasy, but resulted
in exhausted soldiers being asked for additional efforts because the enemy was “teetering
on the edge of collapse” (my quotes).
There was also this- now that they had taken most of the Thiepval-Morval Ridge, future
advances would be into a valley and the Germans would have the observation advantage.
Also, the autumn rains usually turned up in October at the Somme, which would make advancing
difficult in general.
Another also, three German trench lines had been captured, true, but they had built a
4th, 5th, and a 6th line, and though they weren’t as strong or as complex as the first
three, reaching them required a 7 km advance, which is pretty much how far the allies had
advanced in the past three months total, and even if things went a bit quicker now, this
would mean extending the campaign into winter.
(from the Somme), “Would Haig be so reckless as to take the risk?
There was never a chance that he would do anything else.”
Haig ordered his forces to take the rest of Thiepval Ridge and the outer defenses of the
Transloy Line.
But this was only the first step in Haig’s ever-expanding designs.
He was- once again- looking at distant places as the real goal for his armies.
On September 30th, he met with Charles Kavanagh, the leader of the Cavalry Corps, and told
him to check out the area north of the River Ancre for a possible surprise attack.
Okay, reasonable enough, but he continued by talking about an enemy collapse and how
the cavalry would pursue them when that happened.
There would be a three-army strike.
Henry Rawlinson’s men attacking the Transloy Line and advancing to Beaumetz and then encircling
Cambrai from the southeast, Hubert Gough and his reserves operating on Rawlinson’s left,
and Edmund Allenby’s troops being the northern pincer, attacking south of Arras and cutting
off the enemy from the north.
Now, you have to realize what this would entail.
For Rawlinson to advance to Beaumetz and then to Cambrai would be a 40 kilometer advance,
six times the distance his men had covered since July 1st.
For Gough it was about the same distance, while Allenby had the “luxury” of only
around 35 kilometers.
Does anyone think there was any chance whatsoever that this could happen at this point?
For this to work, the German army would have to completely collapse.
And if just a few machine guns were still active, the cavalry, which Haig still saw
as the major player in the breakthrough, would be slaughtered.
The Somme, by Robin Pryor and Trevor Wilson, says this, “...was not an example of prescient
forward planning.
It bore the characteristics of something concocted at the Mad Hatter’s tea party.”
One could, I suppose, argue that this was in fact just imagination and a best-case contingency
plan, and Haig was just theorizing, but Haig did meet with all those generals and lay out
how the separate locations would be attacked.
Okay, spoiler alert: not one single part of this grand plan was ever enacted, but it does
show how Haig was still thinking.
Even just before winter, after three months of grinding creeping battle, he was still
looking at the Somme in terms of a single decisive Napoleonic battle that would break
the Germans.
And that battle, to Haig, would come after infantry and artillery broke into the German
lines and the cavalry would then breakthrough, but cavalry had no place on a western front
entrenched battlefield.
Haig didn’t see this.
Even as October rolled in.
And the first week of October 1916 ends.
With new battles and new daydreams at the Somme, the Romanians hitting the Bulgarians
from behind, the five-nation army advancing in the Balkans, and a German Ambassador losing
his post.
Because of his outspoken critique of the Armenian Genocide.
And this week the German Government, the Ottoman Empire’s strongest ally, is informed that
over half of the Armenian population in Anatolia is now dead.
Two months ago I mentioned that the three biggest battles in the history of the world
so far were being fought simultaneously- Verdun, the Somme, and the Brusilov Offensive.
You know what?
None of those battles had over 50% of the soldiers die, but that’s what happened to
the Armenians in the Empire.
And Graf Metternich was removed from office for speaking out against it.
Maybe he was
on to something.