You’re a politician and your nation is at war, and the endless bloodshed appalls you.
So when you lose faith in your army’s commander, what do you do?
You try and remove his claws.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to the Great War.
Last week an assassination attempt was made on Lenin in Russia.
The Bolsheviks dissolved the constituent assembly, extinguishing representative government there.
Romania redeployed its forces, the British were bombing Germans on the Western Front,
and trouble was brewing in Finland.
Well, that trouble continued brewing.
On the last day of the week, the order for the Finnish White Army to engage the Reds
was issued.
The Red Order of Revolution will be issued the 26th, and the Finnish Civil War begins.
One war was officially ending though.
On the 21st, Germany announced an agreement with Ukraine that their state of war is at
an end, troops on both sides would be withdrawn, and commerce and diplomacy would begin anew.
That might sound good, but Ukraine had a whole lot of other issues.
The All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets in Kiev had, after the Bolshevik delegation had left,
declared its support last month of the Ukrainian government and rejected Russian ultimatums.
The Kiev Bolsheviks had denounced that congress and scheduled a new one in Kharkov.
That Kharkov congress announced the formation of the Ukrainian People’s Republic of Soviets
and called the Rada - Ukrainian Parliament - an enemy of the people, and declared war
on it back on January 2nd.
Now on the 22nd, the Rada broke all ties with Petrograd and the Ukrainian War of Independence
began.
Also, all this time Bolshevik troops had been invading from Russia, capturing Kharkov and
Alexandrovsk and converging in Bakhmach before heading to try and take Kiev.
There was naval action this week on the other side of the Black Sea as well.
On the 20th, at the entrance to Dardanelles.
The Goeben and the Breslau, well, now technically known as the Yaviz and Midilli, and Turkish
destroyers attacked the British near Imbros.
His Majesty’s Monitor “Raglan” and the smaller monitor M28 were sunk.
Breslau was then forced into a minefield and sunk.
Goeben struck a mine and was beached, and then bombarded all week by the British from
the air.
That same day, two German destroyers were sunk by British mines in the North Sea, and
a German sub sank the British armed steamer Louwain, killing 224.
This week also saw the first meeting of the Allied Naval Council in London, as well as
machinations from London in France.
Let me explain.
The British High Command was pretty well aware of the window of opportunity the Germans had
the next few months with Russia out of the war and the Americans not yet arrived in force.
British Chief of Staff Wully Robertson warned PM David Lloyd George that they had to match
German troop concentration on the western front or they might well lose.
Thing is, Lloyd George wasn’t heeding those warnings.
He still thought there was a way to win through Italy or the Balkans, without the British
having to take on the Germans on the Western Front, with all the carnage that would entail.
The big offensives of the Somme and Passchendaele had horrified him and he had - as we’ve
said several times - no confidence in Commander Sir Douglas Haig.
Lloyd George also was, as I’ve also said, keeping hundreds of thousands of able-bodied
soldiers in Britain and not sending them to the Western Front.
In fact, War Office returns for January 1st show 38,225 officers and 607,403 men in Britain
fit for duty, and just 150,000 of them would’ve brought Haig’s divisions up to full strength
(German Spring Offensives).
I’ll talk a bit more about that now.
The thing that held Lloyd George back from just dismissing Haig was the political necessity
of working together with the conservatives, part of the coalition government since 1915.
They supported Haig, and if Lloyd George tried to dismiss him it would certainly create a
political crisis that might even bring down the whole administration.
So to prevent Haig from launching any more of those huge bloody offensives, he reduced
the number of men available.
First, he agreed to the French request that Britain take over more of the front line.
This seems fair at first glance since France did have 3.5 times as much front as Britain,
but on the other hand a large part of France’s sector was inactive and held with a minimal
number of troops.
The British line had hot spots like Ypres, Arras, and the Somme.
This month, thanks to Lloyd George, Haig was forced to take over more territory south of
the Somme; so now half the German divisions on the Western Front were facing British ones.
And since Lloyd George was preventing troops from coming over from Britain, Haig had to
reduce the number of battalions in a division from 12 to 9 to operate.
The “spare” battalions were used to re-stock depleted ranks of others.
And this, according to Peter Hart, “...demanded an enormous shakeup of the BEF: relationships
hammered out in the forge of war between regimental officers and brigade staff officers; established
methods of working in a crisis, units with a proud battalion history - all were torn
asunder.
And all this while the Germans were preparing their great assault on the Western Front...
meanwhile hundreds of thousands of British soldiers were still engaged in the futile
campaigns in Palestine, Mesopotamia, and Salonika.”
Strong words.
Lloyd George also saw in the recently formed Allied Supreme War Council another way to
bypass Haig.
This council was made up of the Allied Prime Ministers and one military representative
from each nation.
Now Lloyd George proposed, and received French support for, the idea of forming an Allied
General Staff, without the involvement of the national Chiefs of Staff.
This would bypass Haig and Robertson, and Lloyd George’s choice for the British advisor
was Lieutenant General Sir Henry Wilson, and on the 23rd, he became British Chief of Staff
of the Allied General Staff in France.
But even in the field, Haig was now facing his most serious organizational crisis.
He didn’t have enough men to have strong defense everywhere, and he didn’t know where
the German offensive was going to hit.
Or when.
He had also switched to a defense-in-depth system that sort of mimicked the German ones
of last year, but that had huge manpower implications.
The forward zone was still based on the old lines, but now with machine guns and barbed
wire to cover the gaps between outposts.
Behind this was the battle zone, which was also in lines, but had strong redoubts to
break up enemy assaults.
Then there was the rear zone, 6-10 km back, which was to be more of the same, but was
really only a theoretical construct at this point.
And he had his work cut out for him thinking of where attacks might come.
His priority was in the north, because the channel ports and the vital railway junction
at Hazebrouck were only a few kilometers behind the lines.
General Sir Herbert Plumer, who would return from the Italian Front, and his Second Army
would have basically zero maneuver room here and would quite simply have to hold if attacked.
To their right, Henry Horne’s First Army had the heights of Vimy Ridge and Lorette
Ridge.
Next was Julian Byng’s Third Army at Arras, and lastly General Sir Hugh Gough’s Fifth
Army at the Somme area.
In that last sector, there weren’t really any strategic or tactical objectives within
dozens of kilometers of the front lines, so Haig ignored Gough’s requests for reinforcements.
If the attack came there, he would have to fall back to an emergency line on the Somme
River.
(SEGUE 4) As for that attack, German Quartermaster General
Erich Ludendorff had been considering options up and down the Western Front for weeks now,
and this week on the 21st at the Aresens Conference he announced his final decision.
He ruled out operation GEORG, which centered on Hazebrouck, as too dependent on the weather
- a late spring could delay the attack until May, which was too late.
He thought MARS, which centered on Arras, just plain too difficult, and both CASTOR
and POLLUX near Verdun he had never really seriously considered at all.
This left operation MICHAEL, on both sides of St. Quentin.
“Here the attack would strike the enemy’s weakest point, the ground offered no difficulties,
and it was feasible for all seasons.”
He extended Michael’s northern wing to the Scarpe River.
He planned to have 85-90 divisions in reserve in the west by the end of March.
Thing is, the plan didn’t have a definite limit.
It did have the strategic goal of splitting the British and French, but his generals all
asked for specific ground objectives, to which he replied, “In Russia, we always merely
set an intermediate objective, and then discovered where to go next.”
And that, boys and girls, is the end of the week.
Chaos in Finland and Ukraine, action at sea, British political moves, and German battle
plans coming together.
You can understand Lloyd George.
I mean, after watching this channel, who would not be shocked by the staggering loss of life
at Arras, the Somme, and Passchendaele?
But depriving your defenses of men and maneuvering generals like chess pieces?
Assuming I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future, one thought leaps out
at me - this is not gonna end well.
If you want to learn more about Douglas Haig and why his reputation with Lloyd-George was
not ideal, you can click right here for our episode about him.
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