Ever since his offensive at Arras in April, British Commander in Chief Sir Douglas Haig
has been champing at the bit to get his summer offensive going in Belgium, and this week,
it happens.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to the Great War.
The shift from last week to this week marks the 3rd anniversary of the outbreak of the
war, and there was a lot going in in the field.
On the Eastern Front, the Russian retreat had turned into a rout with many men flinging
down their rifles and abandoning the fight; while in Romania, Russian and Romanian forces
were themselves pushing back the Central Powers.
The Kaiser made a speech reaffirming his commitment to destroy what he called “British world
domination”, and in Flanders, the preliminary barrage for the new British offensive was
in full swing.
And that offensive, the Third Battle of Ypres, also known as Passchendaele, began this week.
The Allies could really use a period of dry weather, since the land in Flanders floods
with the summer rains.
But it had rained the 29th and the artillery barrage from 3,000 big guns had seriously
damaged the local drainage system in any case, so the land was seriously marshy.
The weather on July 31th was overcast and cloudy.
Zero Hour was set that day for 3:50 AM, so the battlefield would be in darkness, and
because of the clouds the Royal Flying Corps would be unable to really play a part.
As the moment came and the creeping barrage roared to life, the men went over the top.
Nine British and six French divisions went forward on a 25km front, though “A World
Undone” says it was 17 total.
There were 17 more in reserve.
The French under Francois Anthoine were on the left, Herbert Plumer’s second army was
on the right to hold Messines Ridge as a pivot for the main thrust, and that was ten divisions
of Hugh Gough’s 5th army in the center.
Nearly half a million men were attacking.
Opposing them were 20 divisions of the German 4th Army in four clusters; 9 near the front,
6 behind them, 2 at the rear, and 3 further behind, so pretty much anywhere the Allies
made a hole, the Germans could send up men to try and close it.
Many of the British and French attackers made good progress, taking their first objectives
with relative ease and they found that a lot of the front line German trenches had been
obliterated by artillery.
136 tanks had been deployed as support for the advance to the Black Line - about 2km
into the German positions.
Only two tanks failed to reach their deployment positions at zero hour, a big change from
last fall, those these were Mark IVs, not Mark Is, but tanks didn’t really make much
of an impact that day.
The ground was terrible for them, though the tank “Crusader” helped the Gordon Highlanders
advance to the Black Line by taking out snipers and machine gun nests, and the tank “Challenger”
patrolled the Black Line for most of the day, wreaking havoc on the Germans.
But Mark IV tanks had a top speed of around 6 km/h, and the boggy ground slowed them to
a crawl and made them major targets.
This day thus became and still is one of the worst in history for the only just established
British Tank Corps.
Of the 52 tanks advancing with Gough’s men, 22 broke down and 19 were put out of action.
The most crucial point of the British 5th Army’s attack was on the Gheluvelt Plateau,
but the ground was terrible there and the German positions were supported by artillery
on reverse slopes but still, some gains were made, though there were reports of men sinking
up to their waists in mud and falling behind the creeping barrage.
But what of the German defenders?
Well, the foremost trenches had been garrisoned pretty lightly, with the majority of the defenses
being in great depth and kind of deployed in a checkerboard pattern, as we’ve seen
before, that offered the strongpoints mutual support.
Thing is, the German units would signal for artillery help, but the flares often went
unseen because of the weather, so the front positions couldn’t really do much to stop
the assault.
Still, German field guns on elevated ground to the north and the south of the plateau,
which would have been spotted by Allied aircraft without the clouds and fog, did their deadly work.
By midday, German counterattacks had tilted the battle to their favor, but much like their
enemy, they had serious problems with deployment and communication.
A runner sent with vital information could take several hours to cross a few thousand meters.
By late afternoon casualties were heavy on both sides, the troops were exhausted, and
reserves were drying up, so the men were ordered to dig in and the battle was ended for the moment.
And it began to rain again.
Gough had actually achieved some sort of success.
Things hadn’t maybe gone so well on his right, but elsewhere the 5th Army had taken
its first two objectives on time and without overwhelming casualties.
In fact, in the first two days of the battle, they advanced more than the British had on
any previous western front offensive, in one sector four km and in another, three.
Gough decided that his men were to try and push the Germans to the Green Line - the third
objective, and another kilometer or so toward Polygon Wood - by August 4th, but the rain
fell for the remainder of the week, preventing real large-scale operations.
British casualties for the 5th and 2nd armies from July 31-August 3rd were 31,850, including
23,000 the first day.
Now that’s a lot, but it’s a lot fewer than from the first day of the Battle of the
Somme last summer, just a bit more than half of that.
Thing is, Gough’s planning had proven to be pretty flawed.
He hadn’t driven into the German defenses nearly as far as he’d imagined he would,
and there was really no chance that infantry could move as fast and as far as he wanted
through the layered German positions.
He certainly hadn’t come near to taking Roulers, which was what was supposed to happen
before the planned amphibious landing could take place, so that amphibious force just
remained idle.
Also, the continuing German hold of the Gheluvelt Plateau negated any chance of a breakthrough.
Germany though, going back to the artillery barrage of the 21st, had taken 30,000 casualties
itself, including 9,000 missing, which isn’t surprising since the barrage was the heaviest
ever and a lot of those missing Germans had simply been buried alive by it, and more than
5,000 Germans were taken prisoner between July 31 and August 2nd.
A side note here - German 4th Army estimated that on just July 31st its batteries fired
off the equivalent of 27 ammunition TRAINS, four times what was seen as heavy consumption
at the Somme.
And the Germans also had other things to worry about.
On the 2nd, from the battleship Prinzregent Luitpold at Wilhelmshaven, a stoker named
Albin Köbis led a mutiny of around 400 sailors into town with cries of “down with the war!”
The men were persuaded to return to the ship and there was no violence, but several hundred
sailors that had “attitude problems” were sent to shore and 75 were put in prison.
Köbis was sentenced to death and was executed by a firing squad in Cologne.
Another sailor who’d led a similar sort of action aboard the Friedrich der Grosse
was also executed.
But there was now a spirit of mutiny among soldiers of both sides.
In the Russian army and its now two week long retreat, many men were just refusing to fight.
On the 1st, Russian Prime Minister and Minister of War Alexander Kerensky replaced General
Alexei Brusilov as Army Commander in Chief with General Lavr Kornilov.
Kornilov had become a hero for the nation just a few weeks ago when the Russian offensive
was making great strides, and Kerensky hoped this would not only raise morale in the army,
but somehow stop its collapse.
And at the end of the week, Czernowitz fell to the Central Powers’ forces.
But things weren’t going well for them elsewhere.
The Battle of Marasti came to an end this week on August 1st, with a ringing Russian
and Romanian victory over the Central Powers.
In the ten days of the battle, they had breached the enemy lines along a 35 km front to a depth
to a depth of 28 kilometers and had liberated some 30 villages.
However, because of the Russian defeats in Galicia, much of the Russian forces were planned
to soon be withdrawn to fight on their own territory, and German Field Marshal August
von Mackensen planned an offensive of his own.
And that was the week - an Allied victory in Romania, a continuing Russian retreat and
a new Russian army commander, a mutiny in the German navy, and a major new Allied offensive
in the west.
With half a million men attacking.
Just a spoiler - the total forces involved in the Battle of Passchendaele would be nearly
four million men.
Four million men fighting each other and killing each other.
That’s more than the urban population of Berlin, of Madrid, of Buenos Aires.
Heck, if you just count the city proper it’s more people than Los Angeles.
And they were all soldiers, and they were all fighting each other, day after day after
Just think about that for a minute.
I mentioned the book “A World Undone” by G.J. Meyer earlier, it is a fantastic book
One of my favourite books about the war and a great source for our show.
Of course you can get in our amazon store by clicking the link below.
If you want to learn more about the man behind the Third Battle of Ypres, you can click right
here for our bio episode about Sir Douglas Haig.
Our Patreon supporter of the week is Robert "Jeff the Hobo" Cartwright. That is an awesome name.
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we could not do this show without it. See you next time.