Over the past few months we’ve seen political shakeups and changes in the High Commands
of pretty much all of the warring nations.
Hirings, firings, and devious machinations.
And another big one came this week, when the French tried to take control of the British Army.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to the Great War.
Last week the British attacked Ottoman positions on the Tigris River, forcing the Ottomans
to withdraw from both Kut and Sanniyat.
The Toplice Rebellion, by Serbs in Bulgarian controlled territory in the Balkans, began.
British troops advanced on the western front to surprisingly little German resistance,
and a telegram emerged that showed Germany was trying to manipulate Mexico into war with
the US, though it was not made public.
It was made public this week, though, and a lot of people denounced it as a forgery
since they couldn’t believe it to be true.
But German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmermann - who had sent the telegram - soon announced
that it was genuine and Germany was indeed offering loads of cash and Texas, New Mexico,
and Arizona if Mexico would go to war with the US.
There was a big outcry in the states, as you may imagine, and the US and Germany were one
step closer to war.
The Japanese government denied receiving a similar proposal.
But things had gone from bad to worse between the US and Germany all month, since the resumption
of unrestricted submarine warfare, and the U-boats were in action this week.
On the 24th, the Athos was torpedoed in the Mediterranean; 543 Chinese laborers heading
for the Western Front drowned.
On the 25th, the Cunard liner Laconia went down.
4 Americans were among the drowned.
The next day, President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress to establish armed neutrality and
arm merchant shipping.
This was passed at the end of the week, though it was filibustered for the time being in
the Senate.
It wasn’t just the states that had an issue with German conduct of the war, though.
Austro-Hungarian Emperor Karl I, who had been on the throne since November, was dismayed
that his empire was so bound up in German conduct of the war and he felt that a day
might come when his army would be the last stabilizing factor on the home front, so he
wanted a stronger role in army leadership and to re-design the high command to make
it more of a personal instrument for him.
He had by now the Prime Minister he wanted, and the Foreign Minister he wanted, what he
did not have was a malleable Chief of Staff.
He had Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, who had no liking for Karl whom Conrad thought was
useless militarily.
Conrad’s supporters also just happened to be either retiring or dying this winter.
At the end of February, Karl asked Conrad to take over command on the Tyrol front and,
after being convinced of the glory that a new punishment offensive against the Italians
with German aid would bring, Conrad accepted and the man who had been Austrian Chief of
Staff since the beginning of the war, during which time ally Germany had gone through Moltke,
Falkenhayn, and Hindenburg, relinquished his post.
The new Imperial Chief of Staff would be General Arthur Arz von Straussenburg.
The Allies were also having problems with their High Commands.
On February 26th was an Anglo-French conference at Calais and
some major stuff came to a head there.
Now, since General Robert Nivelle had become French commander in chief in December, he
had been making plans for a big spring offensive.
He had shared his ideas with British Prime Minister David Lloyd George and had won him
over.
(Generals on western front), “Here was a general he (Lloyd George) could work with,
here was a general who understood the problem, here was a general who promised victory and
had already demonstrated that he could deliver on that promise.
So far as the British Prime Minister was concerned, whatever Nivelle wanted he could have, and
when Lloyd George grasped that what Nivelle really wanted was complete control over Field
Marshal Haig and the British armies in France, that seemed a solution to both their problems.”
So this week’s conference, which was supposed to resolve problems with railways allocations,
turned into an ambush for Haig and William Robertson, the Chief of the British General
Staff.
Lloyd George asked Nivelle to write down his ideas for a “system of command”.
Those ideas blew a few minds.
From March 1st, Nivelle would have authority over the British armies in France for everything
having to do with operations, plans and their execution, allocation of supplies and reinforcements,
and the strength and boundaries of the armies.
The five British armies would come under Nivelle’s direct control, though the British would retain
control of personnel and disciplinary matters.
This would leave Haig with no armies to command and Robertson with literally nothing to do.
Haig and Robertson were stunned and Robertson said he would resign rather than agree to
this.
Lloyd George said perhaps Nivelle had gone too far.
But you know, all national loyalty aside, some kind of unified command was pretty clearly
needed on the Western Front, as we’ve seen from lack of coordination and co-operation
many times since 1914, but this wasn’t a unified command like in WW2 under Eisenhower.
Nivelle was proposing to put the British armies directly under French control, increasing
his armies by 1.5 million men.
Nobody bothered to ask what the British soldiers would feel about this, let alone what the
Canadian, Newfoundland, Australian, South African, Indian, or New Zealand governments
would think about their men being under French command.
Well, this was scaled down to where Haig was only bound to obey Nivelle for the coming
offensive.
The British War Cabinet and the King were against all of this, which they had no prior
knowledge of, and Haig wrote in his diary, “It is too sad at this critical time to
have to fight with one’s allies and the Home Government in addition to the enemy in
the field.”
The real long-term result of this conference was to destroy any trust between Haig and
Lloyd George, and if you think it’s a problem when the commander in chief can’t deal with
his political boss, then you’re right.
Earlier in the war British Field Marshals French and Haig had in fact deferred to French
General Joseph Joffre when directed to do so, since the British were fighting on French
soil and the French army was so much larger than the British.
But now Joffre was gone, the British army was much larger, better equipped, and more
experienced than ever and the French performance over the past two years had not impressed
the British, to say the least.
Handing over control of five armies to the French was unthinkable.
And Nivelle’s and Haig’s offensive plans were going to have to change anyhow.
The past couple of weeks the British have been pressing the Germans on the Western Front
with surprising success and this week they found out why.
Early in the month the order had gone out for the German army to secretly pull back
to what they called the Siegfriedstellung and the Allies would call the Hindenburg Line.
This was the brilliant defensive brainchild of Quartermaster General Erich Ludendorff.
It shortened the front line by 40 kilometers and released 13 German divisions to fight
elsewhere.
It had also been built to create an enormous killing zone in which to trap the Allies.
The Germans had given up a lot of hard won territory, yes, but this they devastated,
leaving nothing for the allies but a blasted ruined landscape.
The German hope for the deep new defenses was that the allies would suffer such terrible
casualties that no attack could succeed, and no attack could even take place anyhow until
they had built roads, water supplies, communications points, and the support lines necessary over
the ruined land.
This week the withdrawal was in full swing from the River Ancre as the British advanced.
The British were also advancing in Mesopotamia.
On the 24th on the Tigris River, the British took Kut-al-Amara, and 1,730 Ottoman prisoners.
Ottoman losses in Mesopotamia since mid December are 20,000 men.
Load of supplies and arms were also captured or destroyed, but should British General Sir
Stanley Maude carry on to Baghdad?
Could his four divisions handle the Turks?
He didn’t want a repeat of last year when the British had outpaced their supplies and
reinforcements and were forced to surrender, but he had faith, and the pursuit to Baghdad
began.
And we reach the end of the week, the British advancing on the Western Front and in Mesopotamia.
The Serbian Toplica Rebellion taking Kurshumlija, Lebane, and Prokuplje in the Balkans.
Nivelle trying to take the British army, some major U-Boat action, and the US and Germany
sliding closer to war.
And Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf lost his job.
Which with just a short break he had held since 1906.
That’s a long time, as we’ve seen, for a Chief of Staff.
To our regular viewers and fans, Conrad is- maybe together with August von Mackensen-
the most popular wartime character on this channel, and we’ve played up his failings
quite a bit.
He was, in many ways, a ridiculous character, but never forget that it was Conrad who, in
the months leading up to the war, petitioned the Emperor two dozen times to make war on
Serbia, Conrad who dreamed of an empire that stretched across the whole Balkans and possibly
the Middle East, and Conrad who was undoubtedly one of the major architects of this war with
its casualties in the tens of millions.
The construction and following retreat to the Hindenburg Line was a bolt and unprecedented
move by the German Army.
You can learn all about the elaborate defense system right here.
Our Patreon supporter of the week is Omer Grigg - help us out on Patreon to get even
cooler animations than that of the Hindenburg Line.
See you next time.