It’s been planned several times so far in the war and it’s had varying degrees of
success, though never until this week will it have this degree of success - an amphibious assault.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to the Great War.
Last week, Allied attacks in Belgium failed and failed badly.
There was anarchy throughout Russia, and Germany launched an offensive against Russia that
would take advantage of that the best it could.
Thing is, it wasn’t just taking advantage of Russia that led to that offensive.
German Quartermaster General Erich Ludendorff had been looking around for something to help
make up the September losses at Passchendaele and this offensive - Operation Albion - was
an economy of force operation that had great potential.
This was also, by number of ships, the largest naval operation of the war.
The Germans had 363 or so ships and the Russians around 150, though of course they were much
smaller than those at the Battle of Jutland last year.
This was the action this week in the Gulf of Riga.
On the 13th, the Germans continue landing on Oesel Island.
On the 14th - Tserel and Arensburg are in flames and the Russians guarding the Irbek
strait are cut off on Sõrve Peninsula.
That same day, the Germans land detachments on Runo and Abro.
The following day, they cut off any retreat from Oesel Island to Moon Island.
On the 16th, Oesel is totally in German hands.
The Russian battleship Slava is sunk that day.
By the end of the week, the Russians have evacuated Moon Island and the Russian government
prepares to move from Petrograd to Moscow in anticipation of a German drive toward Petrograd.
The Germans had conducted a combined air - land - sea operation.
Sure, they were helped a lot by the crumbling state of the Russian army, but they were now
poised for an invasion of the capital and had taken 20,000 prisoners.
It was the most successful amphibious operation we’ve seen so far, and it’s even more
impressive when you realize it was organized with a month’s notice.
And unlike many - or most - of the offensives of this war, it had its intended ending, the
Russians stopped fighting.
But the Germans still had plenty of enemies to fight on the Western Front.
At the Battle of Passchendaele, where the British successes of September had become
failures in October.
After the attacks of last week, now on the 13th, British Commander Sir Douglas Haig and
his generals agreed that a next attack should only be launched when there was the prospect
of good weather.
Now, after the war, Haig would claim that one of the reasons he kept up the attack even
till now was to keep pressure off of the French, whose army he thought was in a dangerous state.
In the British official history, it says that French General Philippe Petain made repeated
pleas, (Passchendaele) “to continue the Flanders operations in order to ensure that
the flow of German reserves should be diverted from the French front.”
Nick Lloyd points out in “Passchendaele” that most historians have, in fact, been skeptical
of Haig’s claims, and there really isn’t any hard evidence that Petain did ask for
repeated British attacks.
In fact, there are French documents that during the build up to the French Battle of La Malmaison,
a build up that is going on this week, Haig was asking for it to be brought forward to
as early as October 5th so that it could draw German units away from Flanders.
Haig’s own diary even has an entry from September about the importance of the French
attacking without delay.
Petain, for his part, wanted the British to take over more of the front, so he could concentrate
his forces on a series of limited attacks, like he did at Verdun as the summer ended.
Since Russia seemed like it may leave the war at any time and that would release loads
of German troops to fight on the Western Front, he was thinking ahead to defensive strategies
for 1918, so on October 18th, he asked Haig to relieve his 6th Army.
Haig said but that would involve suspending attacks in Flanders; Petain was like “Yeah.
So?”
But Haig still believed that he was on the verge of a breakthrough and German morale
was crumbling.
He planned for the next phase of the battle to be spearheaded by the Canadian Corps, who
had been holding the front near Lens recently.
Arthur Currie, the Corps commander, wasn’t exactly thrilled about this, and when it was
rumored his men would be placed in the 5th army under Hugh Gough, Currie told Haig that
under absolutely no circumstances would he serve under Gough.
Haig somewhat reluctantly went along with him.
By this time, the Canadian Corps had become an important part of the British Army.
It was the largest overseas contingent, with over 8,000 officers and 100,000 men in the
field, but here’s a big thing - other British divisions would be moved around the front
as necessary, but Ottawa had made clear that Canadian divisions would stay together and
they would fight together.
Period.
This may have made them a bit harder to deploy, but it was excellent for morale, and developing
a cohesive tactical doctrine.
German morale was not, in fact, crumbling as Haig supposed, but they had serious issues
too.
You might think that the terrible swampy terrain benefited the defenders the most, but this
wasn’t always the case.
The ground water here was just below the surface - well, that part of the surface that remained
unflooded, so the German troops couldn’t really dig trenches or dugouts and were pretty
exposed.
They did still have concrete bunkers, sure, but these were magnets for British artillery.
General Hermann von Kuhl described the situation like this (Passchendaele), “The defenders
cowered in their water - filled craters without protection from the weather, hungry and freezing,
continually exposed to the overwhelming enemy artillery fire.
Even the staffs of the forward units had no cover, except perhaps a thick, corrugated
iron roof over their shell hole... men and horses sank into the slime; rifles and machine
guns, coated with mud, refused to function.
Only rarely was it possible to supply the defenders with a hot meal... telephone and
line communication had been shot to pieces.”
A German 4th army report from the 21st - next week - says that the situation in Flanders
exceeded the horror of anything the men had yet experienced, and the German soldiers who
had served at Verdun and the Somme thought Passchendaele was worse.
But how bad was it by numbers?
Well, in response to a request by the British War Cabinet, this week on the 17th, Sir Frederick
Barton Maurice, the director of military operations for the British General Staff, came up with
estimates of the comparative losses by Britain and Germany so far during the battle.
From July 31st to October 5th, he estimated British casualties as a bit less than 150,000,
while the Germans were over 250,000.
Secretary of State for War Lord Derby added that British losses in the first half of October
were 41,000.
But the War Cabinet did not say anything about ending the battle.
In fact, I found in “Passchendaele” that Australian Commander John Monash wrote to
his wife this week, “Our men are being put into the hottest fighting and are being sacrificed
in hare - brained ventures, like Bullecourt and Passchendaele, and there is no one in
the war cabinet to lift a voice in protest.”
There was one form of offense the British were unable to use in Flanders because of
the mud - machine warfare.
Their tank corps had been continually built up over the course of the year, and was still,
of course intact.
Brigadier General Hugh Elles, its commander, knew where to use it and had gotten the interest
of Sir Julian Byng, who commanded the British Third Army.
Byng’s front, unlike in Flanders, ran across dry, chalky ground where tanks would not get
stuck.
Meanwhile, one of Byng’s artillery generals, H.H. Tudor, of the 9th Scottish Division,
had been devising a plan to support tanks with a surprise artillery bombardment, so
the enemy would not be forewarned of a tank attack.
Byng had approved these two plans in August, but this week on the 13th, Haig’s headquarters
approved them, though with Passchendaele in progress, it would be some weeks before any
such attack happened.
Still, it foreshadows yet another doctrinal step forward of the war.
And here’s another note dealing with technology.
On the 19th, a German zeppelin raid goes wrong.
11 of them attack London and one drops its bombs, but four are blown off course by sudden
strong winds and end up over the Western Front - one was shot down by the French, one crash
landed, one the French took intact, and one vanished over the Mediterranean never to be
seen again.
And we come to the end of the 170th week of the war, with the Germans making progress
in the east, and hundreds of thousands of casualties in Belgium.
And one notable casualty also this week: on October 15th, Mata Hari was executed outside
Paris for spying.
But everybody needed spies.
Certainly to try and keep up with the new technology.
Soon we’d see a new form of tank warfare, right now we’re seeing a successful amphibious
operation, new stuff was happening all the time.
And it made people optimistic.
And that optimism seemed to forget the numbers.
Right now, just one ten - week battle on one front has produced nearly half a million casualties.
And this is the 170th week of the war.
And there’ve been, what, 14 fronts so far?
The numbers truly boggle the mind.
If you want to learn more about the legendary Mata Hari, you can click right here for our
bio episode about her.
Our Patreon supporter of the week is Justin Wheeler - thank you for your ongoing support,
we could not make this show without you.
Don’t forget to subscribe and see you next time.