Over the past few weeks we’ve seen smaller nations fighting exceptionally well, like
Canada and Australia, and this week is another good week for often overlooked countries from
the war; this week, Bulgaria holds the line.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to the Great War.
Last week, the Nivelle Offensive under French Commander Robert Nivelle began, and it proved
to be a complete disaster for the French, who suffered nearly 100,000 casualties in
just five days.
The British finished their own battle to the north, while other British were busy losing
the Second Battle of Gaza to the Ottomans on the Palestine Front.
One front we haven’t heard much from this year so far is the Macedonian Front, but it
flared to life this week.
Both the British and the Bulgarians had beefed up their armies in the region over the past
couple of months.
The British now had over 40,000 men there and the Bulgarian 9th Pleven Division under
Vladimir Vazov had 30,000 behind a formidable system of defense, as we saw in early February.
New action began with a days long British artillery barrage of over 100,000 shells.
The Bulgarian artillery responded with a fierce hour-long counter barrage of over 10,000 shells.
The British infantry then assaulted the Bulgarian positions.
The plan was to drive the Bulgarians out of their first trench lines, bring up the artillery,
and force them back to the second.
Twice the British reached the Bulgarian trenches and twice they were beaten back.
One place where they made their advance was Jumeaux Ravine.
But here they were fired on by German naval guns being used on land, and the force of
the explosions would kill the men by slamming them against the rock walls of the ravine.
But by dawn of the 25th, some British units had succeeded in taking the first Bulgarian
trench lines and held them against four counter attacks.
Thing is, a French attack near Monastir was supposed to take place at the same time to
tie down the enemy, but bad weather postponed it, and on the evening of the 26th at Jumeaux
Ridge when the attack was resumed, a British brigade went forward too soon and over 5,000
of the men were killed or wounded by their own artillery.
By the 27th, the British had been forced to withdraw to their original positions and the
battle was suspended.
The British were also attacking on the Western Front as well this week.
They were still expected to keep up pressure on the Germans at Arras so that the French
would be able to succeed further south on the Aisne, so with barely any planning the
Second Battle of the Scarpe began on a 14km front on April 23rd.
Compared to the attacks of the 9th, it was way under resourced but it also faced a new
hurdle; the Germans had learned some lessons.
Like if they were only playing defense they could place their artillery far to the rear.
That way it could still fire on no mans land but would be out of range of the British artillery.
The Germans had also brought up fresh divisions.
The fighting was bitter and the British made a very painful sacrifice diverting German
troops from their Allies.
The fighting most often degenerated into small engagements, even at platoon and company levels,
and though the British made some progress, it was slow and came at great cost.
But British Commander in Chief Sir Douglas Haig believed that the Germans were weakening
and that constant pressure would break them.
Haig most often believed this, as we saw at the Somme last year.
The German defenses were no longer the classic thick front line and open rear style, but
were flexible and deep, and penetration simply meant being surrounded.
As the British advanced into well-fortified villages or bunkers far behind the original
lines, German resistance actually increased, just as British supply problems grew.
So by the end of this week, the optimistic first day result of the Battle of Arras, a
mere two weeks ago, was largely forgotten, for British casualties were over 100,000 since
then and there was no sign of a breakthrough.
The generals began preparing for another offensive to take place on May 3rd.
And what of the French offensive?
Well, it had been halted for the time being on the 20th, but the French command had fresh
worries.
On the 21st, African troops of the elite units that often led General Charles Mangin’s
armies’ assaults began shouting “Peace!
Down with war!
Death to those responsible!”
Other French units were getting drunk by the thousands and refusing to go to the front.
On the 25th, French President Raymond Poincaré ordered Nivelle to officially end the attack.
Nivelle then blamed Mangin for the failures and dismissed him from command of the 6th
Army.
He tried to blame General Joseph Micheler as well.
Micheler had opposed the offensive from the very start to the point of insubordination,
writing Nivelle letters saying, “it’s a bad idea”, and even going so far as telling
the French President and the Prime Minister his fears of disaster.
It was Micheler who commanded the reserves who were to be ready to exploit a breakthrough,
and he who now responded to Nivelle with contempt, “What, you try to make me responsible for
the mistake, when I never ceased to warn you?
Do you know what such an action is called?
It is called cowardice.”
The battle wasn’t actually entirely over, as we’ll see in fits and starts over the
next month, but by the end France would take between 180 and 270,000 casualties, depending
on which source you believe.
German casualties are estimated at 163,000 (World Undone).
Neither side could afford that kind of loss at this point.
Nivelle was destroyed, not really so much by failure, but mainly because he had promised
so much, and the week ends with his career in jeopardy.
As a side note here, in the middle of this disaster were actually Russian soldiers from
the Russian Expeditionary Force.
They reflected an accurate, or possibly exaggerated version of the army back home, electing Soldiers
Councils which the officers were unable to prevent.
This “revolutionary” atmosphere couldn’t help but affect the French troops that fought
beside them.
It was actually worse back home in Russia.
British military attaché Colonel Knox was told by Russian Assistant Minister of War
Colonel Yakubovich that of 1,000 men strong drafts, only a couple of hundred men reached
the front.
Technicians were being expelled from munitions factories.
On the 23rd, the Bolshevik Party’s newspaper Pravda asked the Russian soldiers, “Are
you willing to fight for this?
That the English capitalists should rob Mesopotamia and Palestine?”
To compound worries for the future, Vladimir Lenin had arrived in Russia last week to a
chaotic post-February revolution society.
The Provisional government, which had been officially recognized by the Allies although
in reality it vied for power with the Petrograd Soviet, was increasingly unable to keep the
armies intact or the home front under control, despite big financing from Britain and France.
German Quartermaster General Erich Ludendorff, hoping for more popular dissent in Russia,
had approved Lenin’s journey from exile in Switzerland, through Frankfurt, Berlin,
Stockholm, and Helsinki to Petrograd.
When he arrived he began organizing his supporters into an antiwar stance that would tap into
the public discontent.
The Russian army had promised a May 1st attack to support the Nivelle offensive and had put
together a massive force for it, but by now it was obvious that it was impossible to carry
out; not only because a lot of the troops were uncontrollable, but there wasn’t even
enough coal to run the necessary trains.
And as if there weren’t already headaches enough for the Provisionary Government, on
the 24th, Ukraine demanded autonomy.
And at the end of the week, Lenin took the chair at the Petrograd Bolshevik Conference.
But far to the south other attacks were taking place that were putting the Allies in a better
position.
Since taking Baghdad in mid March, the British had been advancing up the Tigris River in
the Samarrah Offensive.
It’s objectives included taking the rail yard at Samarrah to prevent the Ottomans from
building up or linking up their troops, and the securing of the dams around Baghdad to
prevent the enemy from flooding them out.
Final success was achieved this week.
The British were victorious in the Battle of Istabulat the 21st and 22nd, and the Ottomans
surrendered the rail yard and nearly 1,000 prisoners the 24th.
This pretty much ended any Ottoman hopes of regaining a strategic stronghold in the region,
but the British paid a lot for the victory; they had lost around 18,000 men in the offensive
and a further 38,000 to illness.
And that was the week- the rumblings of discontent in France and Russia, and the British losing
in the Balkans and winning in the Middle East.
Just look at all that happened this week and you can see that this war is really degenerating
into chaos, often, bloody chaos.
What are they doing?
The British and French have just lost hundreds of thousands of men in what can kindly be
described as “really stupid offensives” so by now the French troops don’t even want
to fight.
The British were humiliated last week at Gaza, and though they won this week on the Tigris,
that whole mission was originally just to secure the oil fields, now they’re deep
in hostile territory with crappy supply lines losing tens of thousands of men to illness...
for what?
In Russia, there are so many agendas being pursued that God alone knows what’s going
on.
In the Balkans, the Allies are doing... what?
Absolutely nothing in this war makes any sense any more, and nobody at all seems to know
what they’re doing.
If you want to know more about someone not knowing what they are doing, click here for
our bio episode about Conrad von Hötzendorf.
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