Last week's update has been incredibly well received. Today, the series on the opening of the war and how the Western Front developed continues, with a look at the actions that occurred between the rivers Marne and Aisne in mid September 1914. As these essays are meant to be educational in tone, I certainly appreciate any feedback the reader may have in either comments, questions or suggestions. You can follow "If Ye Break Faith" on social feeds, including Twitter and Facebook.
The reversal at the Battle of the Marne “was
not decided by a single brilliant master-stroke or decisive breakthrough: ultimately
the will of the commanders was no less important than that of the exhausted
young men who actually did the fighting”[3]
There is a sport, very little known,
which sees competitors alternate between playing a game of chess and rounds of
boxing. Both on their own are analogous
to warfare; together they sum up the combination of intellectual and physical
components of war quite well. For, if a
competitor gets trounced in the ring, he may not fare too well in making sound
movements on the board. Likewise, if he’s
concentrating too much on his piece moves when on the canvas, he’s likely to
have a loose guard. Such is what faced
the Germans and the allies in the West in early September 1914. Both armies were showing the strain that
modern war would place upon body and mind.
Several things of both natures were to contribute to events unfolding as
they did, and all taken together show how the war, begun with grand schemes of
movement and manoeuvre would grind down to a nearly unbreakable halt and years
of static warfare.
First, “it is necessary, however, to
take account of the situation on other parts of the battlefront for unless the
Germans intentions elsewhere had been frustrated, Joffre’s victory would have
been impossible and defeat probable.”[4] In the south, the French
army’s major effort into Alsace Lorraine as dictated by the stratagem known as
Plan XVII had met their opposition, the blocking force covering the sweeping
flank of the Schlieffen Plan. Fairly
evenly matched, both forces made gains and losses at terrible cost, but no
advantage to either side. For the
Germans, this was less critical as their battle was meant to be won by the
Armies further north falling upon Paris.
Ideally they were to have reduced the French, but at minimum they merely
needed to hold them in place.
Conversely, the French could not yield too much, in fact to win the war
on their terms; the Germans along the frontier must be eliminated. Concurrently, with the failure to check the
German right and the retreat towards the capitol, French units in this centre
would have to stand fast in order to prevent the whole front from
collapsing. The terrain and border
fortifications, such as those at Verdun proved sufficient to slow German
progress here, where the south-eastern apex of Germany’s advance of the entire
war was reached.[5]
Even though the German strategy had been
hugely successful, things were beginning to go wrong. The strong right wing of the Schlieffen Plan
consisted of four Armies, notwithstanding having been reduced at the outset to
reinforce the centre made up of the remaining three Armies. All these Armies totalled nearly three
million men and were controlled centrally by the Chief of the General Staff,
Helmut von Moltke, whose headquarters was in Luxembourg, one hundred seventy
miles away from the front line.[6] Despite the vaunted expertise
the German Imperial Staff was noted for, it was not foreseen that such numbers
required a level of command and control (Army Group) in between that of Army and
General Headquarters. An Army Group
would have bound two or more Armies together and have an operational headquarters
much closer to the front. Without this,
the four Armies outside Paris began to develop gaps between each other as their
commanders fought their battles, with no ability to coordinate between flanking
units. Worse, Generalobersst Alexander von Kluck, commanding 1st Army
ignored an order from Moltke to halt as an effort to maintain cohesion. He was too eager for the notoriety of
capturing Paris.
Kluck’s indolence would cost
dearly. The hastily reinforced French 6th
Army collided with Kluck’s, effectively stopping his victorious advance. The French organisation was missing the same
penultimate level of command as the Germans, but their good fortune in being
pushed back so far was that the 5th, 9th and 4th
Armies opposite the Germans near Paris were more consolidated, and were within
reasonable distance of Joffre’s headquarters (Grand Quartier Général-GQG),
which had been at Vitry-le-François on the River Marne and had moved back as
the Armies had withdrawn.
In deciding to face west to meet the
French 6th Army, Kluck’s forces became further estranged from von Bülow’s
2nd Army, creating a thirty mile gap[7] that Joffre chose to
exploit. If he could move quickly, the
entire tactical situation may be reversed.
Joffre would need every asset he could spare. His problem was that most of his Armies were
engaged elsewhere along the line and he couldn’t rely on the British
Expeditionary Force to help. Field
Marshall Sir John French was operating within the mandate given to him by his
superiors, which read in part “It must be recognised from the outset that the
numerical strength of the British force and its contingent reinforcement is
strictly limited.”[8]
After holding actions at Mons and Le Cateau, he had adduced his losses as
critical and brought the BEF out of the line.
Secretary of State for War Lord
Kitchener had come to Paris to meet with the BEF’s commander. It is not known what transpired in that
encounter, but a subsequent appeal to French’s honour as a British gentleman by
Joffre secured the Field Marshall’s cooperation.
French’s prevarications had caused a
delay in the proposed counter attack, usually a flaw in offensive
operations. In this case, it proved an
advantage. In the interim, Kluck had
shifted his lines to meet 6th Army, where he supposed the real
threat to be, in turn widening the gap he had created a further five miles.[9] The BEF and the French 5th
Army were able to push successful attacks on the exposed German flanks at the
edge of this empty space, driving a wedge between the two German Armies.
The clock had run out for Moltke. A plan anticipated to have Paris in hand
within forty days had failed. With his
armies spaced too thin and out of touch with each other, pursuing the advance
was dangerous. The longer they remained
forward, the more disparate these units might become. Supply and reinforcement along extended lines
would become difficult. If the BEF and
the French fully exploited the gap between 1st and 2nd
Armies, these lines of communication might be cut altogether. Moltke found he had little choice but to
collapse his line and consolidate all his armies. On the 10th of September,
contradicting his former orders to maintain the offensive and despite some
successful counter attacks near Verdun, Moltke ordered a general retreat.
As had the French, just days before, the
Germans now gave ground in an attempt to gain strength and buy time. The Germans still had a particular
advantage. While morale might suffer
through the act of withdrawing across recently captured land so dearly paid
for, the choice was theirs to pick the ground on which they would make their
stand. Along the banks of the Aisne
river, with low hills and great fields of observation German units began to dig
in and wait for the allies pursuing them to come within range. The first spades-full of earth of the
fortification of the Western Front were being turned.
In the first forty days of the war, for
a cost of more than 660 000 casualties[10] the war in the west had failed
to be won or lost with the decisive plans of either side, and was slowly
descending into stalemate.
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