The war in the trenches really began in the fall of 1914, after the race to the sea. For
nearly 3.5 years since then, the western front has been in stalemate, despite a death toll
in the millions, but this week that finally changes. This week, the Germans break through.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to the Great War.
Last week two new offensive began, a minor British one in Palestine, and the mother of
all offensives by the Germans on the Western Front, which broke through the British lines.
Both attacks continued this week.
The British took es Salt on the 25th and advanced on Amman, but it was a fiasco.
The camels could not make the climb to Salt, and when the attack on Amman began the 27th,
the men were exhausted and the week ended without any successes.
But someone was still seeing success over on the Western Front.
A side note from that front first. Back on the 21st, shells began to fall on Paris. These
came from one of the “Paris Guns”, specially made by Krupp for the Germans, to fire on
that city from a distance of over 100km. The shells took four minutes to arrive and were
the first manmade objects to reach the stratosphere. When aiming the guns, the curvature of the
earth must even be considered. The worst Paris Gun incident happened the 29th, when a shell
collapsed the roof of a church during Good Friday services. 91 died and 68 were wounded.
As for the rest of the German attack.
They crossed the River Somme and the Crozat Canal since the British hadn’t been able
to blow the bridges, and General Hugh Gough and the British 5th army continued their hasty
retreat. The Kaiser declared, “the battle won, the English utterly defeated.” And,
as you may imagine, the Allies were seriously worried at the speed of the German advance.
The amazing progress so far had mostly been by Oskar Hutier and the German 18th army,
but by the 23rd, even Georg von Marwitz’s forward troops were over 20km past their starting
points in the British center. Philippe Petain and the French had by now sent 13 divisions
to help stop the disintegration of Gough’s army, but as they began to arrive they too
were pushed back. By the 24th, the entire British line was pulling back.
British PM David Lloyd-George asked the British ambassador to Washington, Lord Reading, to
explain the situation of the British manpower to President Wilson (Gilbert), “You should
appeal to the President to drop all questions of interpretation of past agreements and send
over infantry as fast as possible without transport or other encumbrances. The situation
is undoubtedly critical, and if America delays now, she may be too late!”
Wilson received Reading at the White House, acknowledged the severity of the situation
and asked what to do. Reading told him to send a direct order to Commander John Pershing
that the American troops in France should be put in brigades with French and British
troops, without waiting until they had sufficient numbers to make their own brigades. Wilson
said that under the US Constitution he had the power to decide without consulting his
cabinet, and he would give the order.
Pershing had been planning to make war in 1919, but Operation Michael - the code name
for the breakthrough part of the German offensive - had changed his mind too. At the end of
the week, he will invite the Allies to use American troops however they see fit, and
the Americans will finally really be part of the fight.
The Germans by now threatened to drive a wedge between the British and French armies.
Over 40,000 Allied prisoners had been taken. The British line east of Amiens was in danger
of being overrun, and if Amiens - a vital communications hub - fell, the British army
would be cut off from the ports of Rouen and Le Havre, not to mention being separated from
the French. A special force of 3,000 men was assembled to help hold the line. This force
included 500 American railway engineers, thrown in out of desperation.
German Quartermaster General Erich Ludendorff, did not, however, send his armies against
that major prize just then. Instead, he sent them in three directions. Von Below was now
given reserves and told to head north. Marwitz was to head west on a line to between Arras
and Amiens. Hutier was to head southward toward Noyon and Paris.
In “A World Undone”, G. J. Meyer thinks the only explanation for this is that Ludendorff
thought he could beat both his enemies at once with separating and enveloping movements.
This was beyond German capability, though, “It brings to mind the campaigns of Conrad
von Hötzendorf, who had wrecked the Austro-Hungarian armies with theoretically brilliant but unrealistic
lunges at instant glory.”
On March 25th, the Germans broke through between the British and French armies, and took Noyon
and Bapaume. That day, the decision was made in the Allied High Commands to give French
Marshal Ferdinand Foch overall command of the forces. There’s some detail behind this.
British Commandeer Douglas Haig had learned to his dismay that if the Germans continued
to advance, the French would fall back to the south, and the two allies would be truly
split. This was not Petain’s choice - he had been ordered by the French cabinet to
defend Paris at all costs and as sole priority. Haig also knew, though, that if there was
a Supreme Commander of the Entente forces, Foch would likely get the job, and he would
be much more willing to advance north instead of retiring south, so he was all for it. On
the 26th, Foch was given responsibility for the Western Front.
The first thing he did was order the French army holding St. Mihiel to head to Amiens.
Petain suggested a line 30km back and not in front of the town, Foch said, “We must
fight in front of Amiens. We must stop where we are now. As we have not been able to stop
the Germans on the Somme, we must not retire a single centimeter!”
Ludendorff finally realized how major Amiens was. He ordered Marwitz to link his left with
Hutier’s right and take it.
But the Germans were also hitting the French hard at the Aisne. In fact, they drove the
French back across it and forced them back toward the Marne. It was September 1914 again.
On the 27th, they pushed the French from Montdidier, just 80km from Paris. However...
That day, near Noyon, the French stopped the Germans. Also that day, the British took 800
German prisoners on the Somme. Okay, the gap between the British and French was still over
15km wide, but still. At the end of last week, the Germans launched operation Mars on both
sides of the Scarpe River, but this was a failure and was shut down immediately.
On the 28th, Gough was removed from command of the 5th Army and left the front the 29th.
In the House of Commons a couple weeks from now, Lloyd-George will skewer Gough and the
5th army for their “failure”. The lack of manpower, the nature of the attack, and
the fierce resistance of the defenders will go unmentioned. Gotta admit, for all of his
shortcomings in earlier offensives that I’ve repeatedly talked about, I think this was
very unfair to Gough. I doubt there was a general on earth who could have held the line
with what he had against what he had to face.
Ludendorff, for all of the gains, was seeing the real weakness of his attack force by the
middle of the week. He wasn’t able to pursue and run down the defeated British. The German
cavalry was still in the east with the big open spaces. He didn’t have tanks or enough
armored cars to do anything quickly. Germany had no access to rubber, and the steel wheels
of the cars he did have destroyed the roads they used. Hutier’s men could only go as
fast as they could walk, and they’d been walking - and fighting - for a week now.
Still, on the 26th and 27th, they advanced 30 km total and toward the end of the week,
the Allied retreat continued everywhere except Amiens, where the French and British reserves
were pouring in, and the Germans were waiting for their heavy guns to catch up. As the week
ended, all the focus, and the entire meaning, the entire value of Operation Michael, was
on Amiens. The world was watching.
One of the British soldiers killed during the fighting on the 24th, was Lieutenant R.B.
Marriott-Watson, son of the novelist H.B. He wrote the short poem, “Kismet”, which
I’ll close with here.
Opel fires in the western sky, For that which is written must ever be,
And a bullet comes droning, whining by, To the heart of a sentry close to me.
For some go early, some go late A dying scream on the evening air
And who is there that believes in fate As a soul goes out in the sunset flare?
If you want to learn more about the Race to the Sea in 1914, you can check out our weekly
episode about that right here.
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