by Peter Hart
The preparations were commendably thorough: the troops sapped forward to narrow No Man’s Land, while underneath the surface the tunnellers once again laid their mines deep under the German lines. This time when the mines exploded under Hawthorn Ridge a powerful creeping barrage chaperoned the troops of the 51st Division as they swept forward to capture Beaumont Hamel. During the fighting that followed Beaucourt fell and the British also made ground on Redan Ridge. The German tactical position was rapidly deteriorating but it was too late in the year for the British to exploit this. By the time their last attack was made on 18 November it was on a freezing ice-bound battlefield and little was achieved as both sides had fought themselves to a standstill. Haig accepted that no further progress was possible and the offensive was formally closed down, although for the men on the ground the aftershocks reverberated on with ‘line straightening’ operations still draining away lives on both sides.
FOR MANY PEOPLE THE Somme and the equally ugly Verdun have come to symbolise the Great War: futile battles fought with other people’s lives by incompetent and uncaring generals. In particular, for the British, the disaster of 1 July, on the Somme, has become the sole prism through which the conduct of the whole of the Great War has been viewed. There is no light and shade here; just a dark despair at the numbing horror of the teeming casualties. Explanations of what went wrong and why are thrust aside; indeed in the past, subdued references to a ‘learning curve’ for the generals have been seen as an insult to the dead. There remains a widespread belief that ‘there must have been a better way’; something else could, or should, have been done; someone must be blamed. Much of this opprobrium has fallen on the head of Douglas Haig, who has at times been reviled as a mass murderer. Yet this was the inevitable price of engaging in continental warfare on the main field of battle against the primary enemy. France was well accustomed to the pain of continental warfare, but for Britain it was a new experience. Germany had no exposed flanks, just the imposing fortifications of the Western Front defending their 1914 gains wrested from France and Belgium. Unfortunately, for all their tactical improvements and technical innovations, the British were simply not yet able to breach those defences or kill sufficient Germans, even in concert with the French at Verdun, to bring Germany to its knees. British losses on the Somme totalled 419,654 (131,000 dead), while the French lost 204,253. The German figures have been endlessly debated, but they probably totalled between 450,000 and 600,000. Ludendorff was all too aware of the implications of the situation.
GHQ had to bear in mind that the enemy’s great superiority in men and material would be even more painfully felt in 1917 than in 1916. They had to face the danger that ‘Somme fighting’ would soon break out at various points on our fronts, and that even our troops would not be able to withstand such attacks indefinitely, especially if the enemy gave us no time for rest and for the accumulation of material. Our position was uncommonly difficult and a way out hard to find. We could not contemplate an offensive ourselves, having to keep our reserves available for defence. There was no hope of a collapse of any of the Entente Powers. If the war lasted our defeat seemed inevitable. Economically we were in a highly unfavourable position for a war of exhaustion. At home our strength was badly shaken. Questions of the supply of foodstuffs caused great anxiety, and so, too, did questions of morale. We were not undermining the spirits of the enemy populations with starvation blockades and propaganda. The future looked dark.35
General Erich Ludendorff, General Headquarters
By the end of 1916 it was the very nature of war that had changed. Success in battle was not necessarily measured in terms of ground gained, unless it included objectives of supreme tactical significance or threatened a genuine breakthrough of prepared fortifications. Perversely, such success only provoked a wild intensification of counter-attacks. By the end of 1916 combatant states had strained every sinew to mobilise all their resources to the cause. Young men had become a national resource to be measured in millions. But millions at arms meant millions of casualties. Germany was a mighty industrial state, its army second to none, and it was not done yet. Verdun and the Somme had raised the threshold of horror but there was far worse to come. For the men caught up in Armegeddon there was little to look forward to.
I do not think we are any nearer the finish than a year or so ago, except for the fact that many hundreds of thousands more are dead on both sides. I am convinced that the end can only come that way and that at the end there will be nothing but an enormous barrage of enormous shells on both sides and that whichever side has the last few infantry to face it will win. That is if both sides don’t get nerve shattered to death before and give in from pure exhaustion and hatred of it all.36
Captain Philip Pilditch, C Battery, 235th Brigade, Royal Field Artillery
This was the authentic voice of despair; Captain Pilditch was not alone.
10
THE EASTERN FRONT, 1916
‘All we know is that, sometimes, in our battles with the Russians, we had to remove the mounds of enemy corpses from before our trenches, in order to get a clear field of fire against fresh assaulting waves.’1
Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, Headquarters, Eastern Front
IN 1916 THE RUSSIANS WOULD DEMONSTRATE their amazing powers of recovery. Yet the underlying problems faced by the Russian Empire had not gone away. The fact that the weak and indecisive Tsar Nicholas II was nominally Commander in Chief could have stood as a metaphor for the undeveloped and primitive state of the country, in thrall to an inefficient and despotic system of government. Yet at the same time the Tsar’s symbolic accession to that position also underlined the continuing determination of the Russians to fight on regardless of losses. And the losses had indeed been grievous in 1915. The Russians had plenty more men; indeed, they still mobilised a far smaller percentage of their teeming population than many other nations – as the French did not fail to remind them. But how much longer would the morale of the ordinary Russian soldier hold steady?
Russian resolve would be tested at an early stage of 1916. When Falkenhayn launched his devastating attack at Verdun on the Western Front on 21 February 1916, the French were soon vehemently demanding that the Russians should launch an offensive on the Eastern Front in order to relieve some of the pressure. Nicholas II simply passed on the responsibility to his subordinates on the North and West Fronts. It was decided to attack the Germans in the Belarus area, in what would become known as the Battle of Lake Naroch, with an ambitious pincer movement deploying some 350,000 troops and over 1,000 guns. After a barrage which would commence on 18 March 1916, the Russian infantry would attack in massed waves, while there was also an attempt further north to clear the Germans back from the vital port of Riga. But, as the British were to discover on the Somme on 1 July, an effective barrage requires more than just a large number of guns; in particular, a detailed programme of specifically targeted – and accurately aimed – fire. But the Russian gunners had none of the skills required to draw up a complex gun programme, spot the fall of shot or communicate the necessary corrections to their batteries. Counter-battery work was also weak; they proved unable to target German strongpoints, machine guns or headquarters to any great effect. The result was that some 100,000 Russian casualties were suffered over the two attacks, for minimal gain, while inflicting only 20,000 German losses. All in all, the attacks failed in their primary aim to reduce the pressure on the French.
The Russians were still required to launch a June 1916 offensive, in accordance with promises made at the Chantilly conference of December 1915. But it soon became evident that, after the failure at Lake Naroch, there was a general unwillingness among the senior commanders to risk their reputations further. Indeed, the only general willing to step up to the mark was General Alexei Brusilov, who had recently been appointed commander of the South West Front. When he discovered that eight German divisions had been withdrawn by Falkenhayn and despatched to the Western Front – he was more than willing to us
e his four armies (the Eighth, Eleventh, Seventh and Ninth Armies) to attack the Austro-Hungarians south of the Pripyat Marshes, with the intention of pushing them back through Galicia. This was none the less an ambitious undertaking, as the Austrian lines by this time were generally well-constructed trench systems equipped with plentiful deep dugouts and covered by copious barbed wire entanglements. However, Brusilov had already established a reputation as by far the most competent and aggressive of the Russian generals. He had also demonstrated a mastery of the new techniques of warfare through a combination of practical experience and diligent study. By 1916 he had managed to produce a blueprint for success, some of which predated the tactical methodology being established on the Western Front. In this he was greatly assisted by his specially selected and highly trained staff officers, who were the men who would have to convert his intentions into action on the ground. He was also assisted by a better supply of shells and guns as the Russian munitions industry slowly improved. Even the supply of rifles had at long last began to approach the number of soldiers serving the Tsar.
Like Joffre and Haig, Brusilov had deduced that an offensive must be carried out on a broad front to reduce the possibility of deadly flanking fire and also to allow for multiple breakthroughs which could further confuse the opposition. He was also convinced that surprise was crucial to success and so he used an advanced deception campaign involving fake wireless messages, the diversionary movement of troops and guns, and the very late deployment of the guns intended to support the ultimate attack. There would be no long bombardment, which would reveal his intentions, but instead his infantry would attack after a relatively short, but tightly focussed, artillery barrage, launching their assault from trenches sapped as far forward as possible in order to reduce the amount of time they spent exposed in No Man’s Land. One of Brusilov’s important innovations was to hold his reserves close to the front, ready to add immediate weight to faltering attacks, or indeed to respond to any breakthrough opportunities, without the dreadful delays inherent in mass troop movements of any distance on the diabolical Russian railway system. These reserve troops were sheltered out of sight in a series of specially prepared earthworks and dugouts. Brusilov recognised the importance of diligently training his gunners in all aspects of gunnery and then to assign each battery to a specific task, while the Russian Air Service was properly harnessed to provide photographic reconnaissance. Finally, he also recognised the need to improve the training of his infantry prior to the attack; he wanted them to be more than massed cannon fodder. His men had to have a grasp of the basic soldierly skills and were given proper briefings in order to ensure that they knew what was required of them when the moment came. His staff even constructed scale models of the Austrian trenches to allow troops to rehearse their movements. This evinced a considerable degree of tactical innovation, with four distinct waves envisioned: the men in the first wave would carry large numbers of hand grenades and would capture the Austrian first line; the second wave, similarly armed, would push straight on for the second line, which Brusilov believed to be the centre of Austrian resistance; after which the third and fourth waves would drag forward the machine guns for consolidation, while at the same time looking for opportunities to expand the breakthrough. Altogether, Brusilov’s innovations marked a new level of military best practice for 1916. As such they would be closely studied by the armies of all the major combatants.
The Austrians noticed some of the preparations in front of their lines, but refused to believe that the Russians were capable of launching anything other than crude mass attacks reliant on the press of numbers alone. Indeed, Conrad was considerably more preoccupied with supervising the offensive he had launched (against German advice) on the Italian front on 4 May than with what Brusilov might be planning on the South-West Front.
Brusilov finally launched his offensive at 04.00 on 4 June 1916. The bombardment worked spectacularly, with the field guns clearing the barbed wire while the heavier guns targeted the Austrian batteries, machine gun posts and command centres. After three hours the guns abruptly stopped, then just as mysteriously resumed again; a pattern that would be repeated several times, successfully confusing the Austrians as to what was happening. Over the next two days, at varying times, the Russian infantry emerged to charge across the narrow No Man’s Land, often catching the Austrians unawares deep in their dugouts. In many places whole units surrendered to the Russians, especially those made up of men of minority nationalities, who were no longer willing to sacrifice their lives for the sake of an empire that seemed foreign to them, too. Overall, Austro-Hungarian desertions reached epidemic proportions. Under the coruscating pressure the front collapsed, while multiple breakthroughs triggered further forced withdrawals by the units on the flanks in order to avoid being cut off. Soon the Austrians were falling back all along a 250-mile front stretching from the Pripyat Marshes right down to the Carpathian Mountains. This left only one realistic option for Conrad: appeal for help from the Germans once more.
On 8 June Conrad travelled to Berlin, cap metaphorically in hand, for an audience with the unprepossessing figure of Falkenhayn. It did not go well. An incensed Falkenhayn not only brusquely rejected all thoughts of suspending his Verdun Offensive in order to divert large numbers of German divisions back to the Eastern Front, but he demanded the peremptory suspension of Conrad’s precious Italian Offensive. Finally, Falkenhayn revealed his true price for sending German reinforcements: all Austrian units in Galicia would henceforth operate under direct German control. Conrad was furious, but had no choice but to accept this humiliation.
Just as the Germans were flexing their power over the Austrians, the Russians were demonstrating that there was a complete absence of unified direction within the Russian Army itself. While Brusilov had paused to rest his troops he had fully expected that in mid-June General Alexei Evert, in command of the neighbouring West Front, would launch the next phase of the attack designed to maintain the momentum and further stretch the Austrians. Instead, Evert produced a variety of excuses to justify delaying his attacks. So it was that the Brusilov Offensive stalled at the very moment when the man himself was no longer in command of its destiny. While Evert prevaricated, the Germans moved up their reserves, with three divisions grudgingly despatched from the Western Front, where by this time the imminent Anglo-French assault on the Somme was further adding to Falkenhayn’s woes. More divisions and numerous artillery batteries were also sent from the accumulated German reserves held on the Eastern Front, while Conrad himself was forced to despatch several divisions from the Italian front. It was the combination of the arrival of these massed reserves and Evert’s obtuse inactivity that gave the Central Powers the chance to stabilise the line.
By the time Evert was ready to attack, on 2 July, Brusilov’s armies had already returned to the fray, although any visions he might have had of knocking Austria-Hungary out of the war were fast fading. The relative lack of tactical sophistication of Evert’s West Front armies when they did belatedly attack was also starkly apparent and their casualties were correspondingly high. Still, Brusilov’s South-West Front armies continued to make progress, hurling back the Austrian Fourth, First and Second Armies. Now, though, the Austrians’ resolve began to stiffen as German divisions filtered into the line, forming solid blocks to further Russian advances. There was also a deliberate programme of Germanification of the Austrian armies, whereby German officers would take control right down to battalion and even company level.
The late summer of 1916 saw a concerted move by Hindenburg to re-establish his pre-eminent position. He had been nominally in charge of the German Army in the east, but had hitherto been adroitly sidestepped by Falkenhayn, who had appointed first General August von Mackensen and then Prince Leopold of Bavaria to command independent groups of armies in both the central and southern sectors of the front, leaving Hindenburg with direct control only of the northern armies. However, Falkenhayn’s position was fast deteriorating, due to the perceived f
ailure of his Western Front strategy. Hindenburg saw his chance and demanded the appointment of a unified Commander in Chief on the Eastern Front. Naturally, he had only one person in mind for the task – himself. By this time all Falkenhayn’s political capital had been expended and he was obliged, at least theoretically, to accept the need for a unified command. Conrad had even more reason to object, but he was just a pauper at the German table and could be safely ignored. Thus it was that at the end of July 1916, Hindenburg was confirmed as Commander in Chief of all the armies of the Central Powers on the Eastern Front. Falkenhayn’s fall was imminent and he was finally replaced as the German Chief of General Staff by his old adversary Hindenburg on 29 August 1916.
The Russian troops now surged across Galicia, advancing towards the foothills of the Carpathians, although they were still nowhere near as far advanced as they had been in 1915. The offensive would continue deep into September, but the rate of Russian casualties was rising steeply. Perhaps even more disturbing, the incidence of desertions from the Russian armies began to escalate under the twin impacts of war weariness and excessive casualties suffered to little or no avail. Even to Brusilov it had become apparent that ultimate victory was dependent on defeating Germany, which seemed as unlikely as ever. Failing to capitalise on their numerical advantage, the Russian attacks were either incompetently handled or, where successful, unsupported through the chaos endemic in the Russian High Command.