Verdun 1916

by J E Kauffman

  Reply to this last question must be here before four o’clock on Saturday afternoon.

  (signed) Bethmann Hollweg

  The French had until 1.00 pm on Saturday, 1 August to reply and confirm that they would not join with Russia. In the unlikely event that the French opted for neutrality, von Schoen’s instructions directed him to present them with the demand that they evacuate the fortified sites of Toul and Verdun, and giving them three hours to comply (by 4.00 pm on Saturday). The time limit and the stipulation made it apparent that the Germans did not anticipate or even want the French to comply. No one could expect the French to accept the humiliation of handing over their strongest fortress, Verdun, and opening the road to Paris. The Germans had war-gamed their Schlieffen Plan for years and counted on this becoming a knockout blow against France. The plan prevented the army from getting bogged down in the heavy French fortifications between Verdun and Toul by launching a surprise assault on neutral Belgium to outflank French fortifications.2

  The French mobilized and the German onslaught against Belgium that quickly followed did not come as a total surprise. General Joffre, commander of the French armies, wanted to advance into Belgium before the Germans did, but he was ordered to keep his troops well away from the frontier. Soldiers in field grey (feld grau) and spiked leather helmets (the pickelhaube) swarmed into Belgium on 4 August and isolated the forts of Liège that barred the main line of communications.3 Heavy artillery, including Austrian manned Skoda 305mm and German 420mm weapons pounded the forts into submission after infantry assaults failed to take them. Shortly afterwards Namur suffered a similar fate, but this time the Germans let the big guns do most of the work instead of sacrificing their infantry.

  Thus, after the war broke out in the summer of 1914, two factors arose that would eventually affect General Erich von Falkenhayn’s strategy in 1916.4 The first was Great Britain’s involvement in the war, which caused Falkenhayn to turn his efforts to forcing the British out of the war in order to assure ultimate victory for Germany. An offensive against Verdun combined with a campaign of unrestricted U-boat warfare, he believed, would achieve this objective. In 1916, however, the German leadership denied his request for a submarine campaign, partially because this type of warfare had failed in 1915 and had already had a negative impact on the USA as a result of the sinking of the British liner Lusitania. The second factor that influenced Falkenhayn was Verdun, which occupied a salient created in the course of German advances in 1914, but to which, the general believed, the French would cling at all costs. An important factor that did not influence the general’s planning was that Joffre, under the mistaken impression that the French forts were as weak as the Belgian forts and would be as easily smashed with big guns, had disarmed its forts. The process, initiated by General Joffre in the late summer of 1915, consisted of stripping the forts of artillery and ammunition to fill shortages in the French field army. Thus weakened, Verdun became the target of the 1916 German offensive even though it was only a shell of its former self.

  Alfred von Schlieffen had clearly identified France as the primary enemy and claimed that there was no guarantee that the Russians would actually join France in the next war. Regardless of Russia’s decision, Germany had to concentrate its military resources against one enemy and pull off a quick and decisive victory. By the end of the first decade of the century, neither Schlieffen nor his successor, Moltke the Younger, realized that Russia was no longer the crippled bear of the Russo-Japanese War. It was generally assumed that France would participate in any European conflict involving Germany. Schlieffen had little enthusiasm for building additional fortifications, preferring instead to expand the railroad system. His aim was to avoid getting the German army bogged down in the new line of French fortresses and to deal France a crushing blow by outflanking its armies. The Franco-German frontier with its strong belt of fortifications stretching from Verdun to Belfort presented little room for manoeuvre. To create the needed space, he proposed invading the Low Countries.5 The three Belgian fortresses of Liège, Namur and Antwerp were something of a conundrum. The first two lie on the main line of advance and logistical support for an assault on France through Belgium. The answer was to produce heavy artillery able to reduce the forts. Since the French had not defended its frontier with Belgium as heavily as the one with Germany, a rapid advance would allow the Germans to manoeuvre around its main fortifications. Although the occupation of Luxembourg was part of the plan, invading that Duchy alone would merely serve to open an additional railway line to the front since its border with France was very short and did not offer any strategic advantage. The Ardennes of southern Belgium offered the manoeuvre room the Germans needed, but lacked the rail and road routes found in the part of Belgium north of the Meuse (Maas) that were necessary to maintain the large forces required to outflank the French.6 One German pre-war exercise consisted of advancing through Belgium and then attempting to turn the French fortified line at Verdun, which was the linchpin. Whether the Germans penetrated behind it or took it outright, theoretically, the move would compromise the entire French fortified line, leaving the road to Paris open. Once Germany eliminated France, supposedly by day forty, the bulk of the German army would be able to shift to the East theoretically before Russia could become a threat.

  French Casualties in 1915

  Most histories of the First World War ignore operations on the Western Front in 1915 since they did not break the stalemate. Most of the attention focuses on Gallipoli, U-boat warfare, Italy’s entry into war and secondary activities outside Europe. In some respects, 1915 was as important year on all fronts. The Gorlice-Tarnów Offensive not only inflicted huge losses on the Russians, but it also drove them a few hundred kilometres back from their borders. Both sides experimented with new weapons and methods in the West. Joffre launched his costly ‘nibbling’ operations which enabled the French army to learn how to fight a trench war, but at a tremendous cost in lives.

  The British opened an attack at Neuve Chapelle with a short bombardment from which they drew the wrong conclusions when the incorrect type of shells failed to breach enemy obstacles. As a result, the Allies adopted bombardments of long duration that tore up the battlefield and alerted the Germans to an impending infantry attack. This method led to unproductive offensives which resulted in massive numbers of casualties. There are significant discrepancies regarding the number of casualties, and these can vary by up to 100,000 men or more, but 1915 may have been the bloodiest year for France.

  Table 1: War Casualties, 1914–18

  French casualties totalled 5,630,000, not including prisoners, or just over 67 per cent of the men mobilized during the war (73 per cent when including prisoners). Robert Doughty, a specialist in French military history, estimates that France suffered over 50 per cent of its casualties of the entire war during the first fifteen months of the conflict.* The next year, 1916, losses dropped to 20 per cent of its wartime casualties. In 1914, French losses numbered about 400,000 and in 1915, they rose to 500,000 on the Western Front or almost a million men lost in the major battles (The Frontier, the Marne, etc.). Doughty’s numbers include losses in typical trench fighting as well as smaller engagements during the Race to the Sea, engagements in Alsace and Lorraine, along the Meuse, at the St Mihiel Salient, in the Argonne and others that brought the total number of losses closer to 3 million if one includes prisoners. In 1915, Joffre’s largely unsuccessful secondary efforts in the Argonne and the St Mihiel Salient alone cost the French another 65,000 men. The French lost another 550,000 men in 1916 before the numbers dropped until 1918. On the Western Front, 1915 passed in almost constant fighting even when neither side was attacking or counter-attacking and even though most advances amounted to a few hundred metres at most.

  * Robert Doughty, Pyrrhic Victory: French Strategy and Operations in the Great War (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2005).

  The French strategists were not to be outdone by the Germans. In 1913, General Joffre formulated Plan XVII.
7 Even though they knew of German plans to invade Belgium, French military intelligence officers incorrectly assumed that the Germans would remain south of the Meuse and advance through the Ardennes. Joffre’s plan placed the concentration area of the 5th Army as far on his left as Mézières where it could meet a German advance through southern (eastern) Belgium. He seemed unconcerned, however, about a German advance north of the Meuse apparently believing that the Belgians could handle the situation. Plan XVII called for an advance into central Germany through Lorraine. Considering the fact that there was a fortified German belt between Thionville and Metz, the plan was faulty because the French relied heavily on their light 75mm guns and had a paucity of heavy and modern siege artillery that would have made it possible to eliminate the German fortresses. In addition, the French soldiers, dressed in uniforms more suited for a parade ground than a battlefield, were expected to carry the day by charging against machine guns bolstered solely by elan and the will to win.

  Field Marshal Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, reputed to be Austria’s ‘master strategist’, planned on a two-front war. His mobilization scheme called for putting armies on the Serbian and the Russian border with a large reserve ready to move to the aid of either. He failed to consider, however, that the Austrian railways were incapable of handling such a movement without disrupting the nation’s infrastructure. He also had a plan for mobilizing on the Italian border since he did not trust Italy to honour its alliance and considered launching a pre-emptive war prior to 1914. Germany had to support its ally’s operations in the East and Austria’s failures soon became a major drain on German military resources.

  In 1914, the mobilized forces were the largest ever to take the field up to that point in history, however, command and control remained mired in the past. The telegraph and telephone linked almost all forts, but their use was limited for the field armies, especially during an advance. Some generals still preferred to use written communication delivered by couriers instead of field telephones and radios. Considering the size of the forces, it was no longer possible for generals to lead from the front or take up a key position overlooking the battlefield from where they could issue orders since the battlefields spanned great distances. Joffre, Moltke and Conrad commanded from far behind the lines and were, in fact, armchair generals who moved armies into battle from their headquarters knowing little of the conditions at the front. The army corps, generally consisting of two or more divisions with some smaller support units, provided their commanders with effective control because the new large armies had too many division-size forces for one general and his headquarters staff to direct and manage. The division, the largest combat formation, had become necessary to group numerous regiments. By 1915, as each side massed several armies on most fronts, the immense forces required a more complex command system between the combat elements and the commander-in-chief. These higher level commands took the titles of army group, group of armies or something equivalent. The enormous national armies also required massive logistical support, which Schlieffen seemed to have overlooked. When the war began, railroads and horsepower were the prime movers of logistics. In many cases, troops had to march a hundred or more miles from the railhead to the front. By 1916, however, motorization became an increasingly significant factor.8

  Tactical doctrine played a significant role in the opening battles. Infantry was still considered the key factor not only by the French, but also by the Germans and the Austrians. In some of the first engagements of the war, French, German, Austrian as well as Russian infantrymen charged, bayonets fixed, in large, closely packed groups to the tune of marches played by military bands. Until 1915, the only difference between the various factions was that the French presented the easiest targets in their bright-red trousers and blue jackets. Before long, the belligerents learned that this type of assault was no longer practical. The French, convinced that the Germans outnumbered them significantly, continued to count on elan to win. The Germans, on the other hand, firmly believed that their own superiority would overwhelm the enemy.9 Some generals did not come to terms with the idea that the infantry would play second fiddle to the artillery until the Battle of Verdun. After the first inconclusive battles of 1914 and the bloody but fruitless engagements of 1915 in the West, the belligerents were forced to come up with new types of strategy and tactics.10

  Elusive Victory

  The French, Germans, Russians and Austrians were convinced that they had go quickly on the offensive in order to win the war in spite of the fact that a few of their prominent military leaders had predicted that the next conflict would be a long one. As the Germans raced through Belgium to outflank and crush the French armies, French divisions launched an assault into Lorraine and Alsace.11 Alas, elan was not enough to carry the day for the brightly clad French troops charging into German machine-gun fire. Meanwhile, Belgian soldiers delayed the Germans storming through their country by destroying railroads. The forts of Liège, located at a key choke point, resisted longer than anticipated.12 Although Moltke planned logistical support better than Schlieffen, his efforts fell short of the needs of a massive force committed to such an ambitious strategy.13 In September 1914, the French checked the German offensive at the Marne forcing them to pull back and take up defensive positions along the Aisne. The Germans dug in taking advantage of the 150m-high ridge of Chemin des Dames, which rose above the river.14 Here, both sides had their first taste of trench warfare as the Germans created a defensive position with two to three lines of trenches, which, however, were neither as deep nor as extensive as those dug later in the war. General Erich von Falkenhayn replaced Moltke at this time.

  Opening moves and failure of forts.

  German defeat and retreat from the Marne.

  The French launched a surprise attack across the Aisne in mid-September, bombarding and taking a large section of the heavily defended first line of trenches. Both sides suffered heavy losses. At the end of October, the Germans launched a counter-attack to drive the French from the lost trench line. Their howitzers were effective in a barrage against trenches. By contrast, the French artillery, which consisted mostly of the famous ‘75’ direct-fire cannons and lacked howitzers, inflicted little damage on entrenched troops. In a second assault in January, the Germans recaptured the remainder of the line on the Aisne. Both sides soon learned the ineffectiveness of frontal assaults in trench warfare.

  In August and early September, before the Battle of the Marne, the Germans eliminated the French border forts from Fortress Maubeuge to Fort Manonviller during the so-called Battle of the Frontiers.15 In late September 1914, as they retreated from the Marne and created a defensive position, the Germans pulled their heavy artillery back into Belgium to reduce Fortress Antwerp and its potential threat to its right flank.

  In the East, the Russians mobilized and went on the offensive sooner than anticipated. Two Russian armies, part of the Northwest Front (army group), launched an attack into East Prussia. On 23 August, Paul von Hindenburg, recalled from retirement, and Erich von Ludendorff, the victor of Liège, took command in the East.16 They formed the best command team of the German army during the war. In late August, they handed the Russians a major defeat at a place they called Tannenberg. This symbolic gesture was meant to restore German pride and avenge the crushing fifteenth-century defeat of the Teutonic Knights near a location of the same name.17

  After a painfully slow mobilization, General Conrad was anxious to get the Austro-Hungarian forces involved on the Galician Front. He realized that the Germans were committed to winning a decisive victory in the West while staying on the defensive in the East. Like most of his contemporary military leaders, he believed that a successful offensive would lead to a quick victory. As a result, he was eager to engage the Russians before they could attack. Encouraged by faulty intelligence regarding the size and deployment of the Russian forces and expecting the Germans in East Prussia to form a northern pincer, he directed a northward assault out of Galicia towards Lublin. Mean
while, Conrad’s invasion of Serbia floundered. Despite superior armaments, the Austrians suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Serbs. The Austrians struggled with a railway system not up to German standards, causing many delays in bringing up reinforcements and supplies. On 19 August, more than one week before the German victory of Tannenberg, Conrad ordered his 1st and 4th armies to attack north towards Lublin and the 3rd Army to conduct an ‘active’ defence on the Gniła Lipa River.18 At the end of the month, General Nikolai Ivanov’s Russian Southwest Front had a two-to-one advantage as it went on the offensive. Conrad had won a few minor victories, but the Russians defeated his overextended forces on 28 August at the Złota Lipa initiating a retreat that by 11 September had turned into a rout with three Austrian armies smashed by mid-September.19 The crushing Austrian defeat was worse than what the Russians suffered at Tannenberg days earlier. Instead of stopping at the San River, the Austrians fled to the Dunajec River, a tributary of the Vistula. Conrad, unable to halt the advancing Russians, pleaded for the Germans to help. Hindenburg, who had just won a victory over the Russian 2nd Army at Tannenberg, was still engaged with the Russian 1st Army during the second week of September. As the Austrians reformed along the Dunajec on 26 September, the new German 9th Army under Hindenburg formed up north of Cracow.20 A large Austrian garrison remained at the fortress of Przemyśl to prepare for a siege, but all of Galicia was lost to the Russians who also advanced to the Carpathian mountain passes.

  Finally, the victorious Russian armies sputtered to a halt along the muddy roads of Galicia as they too outran their logistical support. However, they had eliminated 300,000 Austro-Hungarian troops and tied up another 100,000 in the siege of Przemyśl. The Austrian army had already lost 100,000 men in the attack on Serbia. To bolster the Austrian Front, Hindenburg created the 9th Army and put the Austrian forces under direct German command because he had no confidence in their senior officers.21 Hindenburg’s October offensive fizzled out as his troops trudged along the muddy roads and the soggy fields of Poland before engaging the Russians who had already withdrawn to the Vistula in preparation for their own offensive.22 An Austrian relief force reached Przemyśl on 9 October, breaking the siege that had begun on 25 September during the Austrian rout.23 Meanwhile, Conrad, ignoring German advice, the weather conditions and the state of his own troops, launched another assault and lost 40,000 additional men. Despite the fact that his army had returned to its starting line on 24 October after suffering 100,000 casualties, Hindenburg was undeterred. On 2 November, General August von Mackensen took command of the 9th Army, which moved northward and launched a new attack in the vicinity of Łódź on 11 November.24 Meanwhile, the Russian forces once again pushed the Austrians back and put the Przemyśl fortress under siege on 8 November.25 The armies in the East continued to manoeuvre and clash instead of getting mired in stalemates or trench warfare like those on the Western Front.26