Verdun 1916

by J E Kauffman

  Winter brought a respite from the fighting on the Eastern Front as the Russians reached the height of their success when their raiding forces reached the Carpathian passes and threatened to enter the Hungarian Plain. Russian armies also loomed over Cracow and East Prussia. The situation looked grim for the Germans whose victory at Tannenberg had been ephemeral due to poor supply lines, rough terrain and a larger than expected Russian force that had prevented them from advancing out of East Prussia in late September. In October, the Germans advanced into Russian Poland but they failed to take the fortresses of Ivangorod (Polish Dęblin) and Warsaw or to breach the Vistula. Only a renewed attack in November finally took Łódź on 6 December. Winter hindered operations, but Conrad prepared for an offensive into the Carpathians to relieve Przemyśl in January 1915. This operation was a dismal fiasco as many of his soldiers froze to death without achieving much. Both sides continued to blunder and stumble on the Eastern Front.27 The Russian troops began receiving their first shipments of barbed wire in December, which allowed them to improve their defensive positions while they waited for ammunition.

  Table 2: Major Campaigns and Battles, 1914–16

  Meanwhile, on the Western Front, after the costly Battle of the Aisne, the ‘Race to the Sea’ (the English Channel) began on 18 September. Joffre and Falkenhayn sent their forces northward trying to outflank each other. Neither side succeeded. The 26,000 railway troops who continued to restore the Belgian railways had returned less than 600km to service at that point. The Germans had to shift their armies from the left in Alsace and Lorraine to the right wing, but the railroad situation in Belgium hindered their movements. The French, on the other hand, operating on interior lines with an excellent railway system, rapidly moved divisions and corps from their right flank to their left flank.

  None of the belligerents had prepared for a long conflict. The German soldiers were ordered to conserve ammunition since stocks had begun to run low. Joffre faced a similar problem. The first artillery barrages at the onset of trench warfare consumed more ammunition than had been used during the entire duration of past wars. Thus, during the Race to the Sea, Falkenhayn ordered his 5th Army to engage the French 3rd Army in the vicinity of Verdun in order to tie down some of the French forces. As a result, the Germans succeeded in creating a bridgehead over the Meuse at St Mihiel at the end of September while some of their troops advanced in the Argonne near Varennes threatening to isolate Verdun.

  On 19 October, Falkenhayn launched the 1st Battle of Ypres, his first major offensive. He had planned to mass his forces in order to break the line in the vicinity of Ypres and drive on the Channel ports. The battle consisted of a series of encounters with costly German frontal assaults and British counter-attacks. The engagement ended in late November when winter set in. One massed charge of units consisting mostly of enthusiastic but poorly trained German youth concluded, according to the grossly exaggerated claims of propaganda, as ‘a heroic slaughter’.28 The Germans were not the only ones to suffer heavy losses. Casualties whittled down the British professional army to the point that conscripts had to replace its professionals during the next year.

  Before long, Falkenhayn realized that a breakthrough in the West would be impossible and that he needed to develop new methods. The stalemate endured while trenches were dug from the North Sea to the Swiss border. General Joffre, still convinced that he could deliver a knockout blow, decided that he must also maintain pressure on the enemy by conducting smaller offensive actions, which he called ‘nibbling’. He justified these costly attacks by saying that they kept the enemy from diverting forces to the Eastern Front. In early December 1914, Joffre launched a new campaign with the 1st Battle of Champagne. The campaign had a slow start due to winter weather and a Christmas truce, but it continued into the next year and had gathered pace by February. The French gained very little and suffered heavy casualties before it ended in March 1915.29

  The first months of the war in 1914 failed to bring the anticipated victory and a speedy end to the war. At the end of the year there was little to celebrate since losses had been staggering. The tally for the Germans and French was approximately 1 million casualties each. The Austrians lost even more men and the Russians possibly as many as 2 million. No other war since the end of the Napoleonic Wars in Europe had resulted in such massive losses, and this conflict had only just begun. In addition, all sides had underestimated the amount of ammunition their artillery would need since they had anticipated a short conflict. As a result, all the belligerents had to ramp up ammunition production so the war could continue. None of them was prepared for trench warfare, but there was no other way to protect troops from the massive artillery barrages and machine guns. The various armies proceeded to dig in within sight of each other, separated by a no-man’s-land between the opposing trenches that was only several hundred metres wide and sometimes much less. From this point on, soldiers would have to advance or defend keeping their heads close to the ground. Fighting in a standing position invited certain death but not everyone realized it until late 1916. Although General Falkenhayn was convinced that the French soldiers were more experienced in trench warfare than his own were, in actuality their pre-war training had emphasized the offensive. Trench warfare was also adopted in Russia, but, since the area to be covered was much larger, continuous lines were impractical and fortresses continued to play a more significant role.

  A War of Resources

  During the First World War, the belligerents and the neutral nations depended for the most part on imports of certain products ranging from foodstuffs to minerals to maintain their economy and military strength. Any long-lived conflict placed demands on production and often required substitutes, a problem that had not faced the most industrialized nations during the wars of the nineteenth century. The loss of Alsace and much of Lorraine after the Franco-Prussian War denied the French access to many mineral resources in Lorraine.30 Since the large iron deposits, especially in the Briey Basin, were not discovered until late in the nineteenth century, the French military had not made plans to defend the part of this region that remained in their own territory. Apparently, there was no concern about the economic impact of the loss of this region until it happened.

  In a 1916 French senator Henri Bérenger wrote, ‘There is no reason to be astonished that Germany, from the very beginning of the war, has sought … possession of the Basin of Briey, which represented 90% of our iron ore production’.* He added that this was the key to the war since the area lay at an equal distance between the French fortress of Verdun and the German fortress of Metz. Before 1914, Germany’s annual production of iron had been 28 million tons, 21 million of which came from their section of the Briey Basin. France’s production amounted to 22 million tons, 15 million of which came from their own part of the Briey Basin. After August 1914, France was forced to import iron from Great Britain and the USA, while Germany’s production was supplemented by 15 million tons from the French part of Briey and 6 million from the Luxembourg Basin increasing its annual production from 28 million to 49 million tons. Bérenger quoted a memorandum sent to the German chancellor Bethmann Hollweg, which stated that the Briey Basin furnished 60–80 per cent of all appliances made of iron and steel at that time.

  Senator Bérenger was convinced that the Germans launched the offensive against Verdun in 1916 to secure ownership of this region before they sat at the peace table. ‘Once masters of Verdun the Germans will be able to believe themselves masters of the indefinite continuation of the war’, he wrote in the article ‘The Iron Key to War and Peace’. However, General von Falkenhayn never mentioned iron production as one of his reasons for the Verdun Offensive. Bérenger, nonetheless, was not the only one to see iron and steel as key factors in the war. In an article published at the end of 1916, George Weiss opined:

  Germany’s remarkable resistance to the combined assaults of England, France, Russia and later on Italy, Serbia, and Roumania, these six powers possessing numerical as well as fi
nancial superiority, lies in its resources of iron and steel. Krupps, the armorer of Germany, and Skoda works of Austria, have been the backbone of the powerful Teutonic military strength. The long days of preparation on the part of the Allies, the stalling for time when they would take the offensive, was due to their unpreparedness in the matter of steel.*

  As can be expected, French production of heavy artillery and other military equipment – even helmets – slowed and was delayed by the iron shortages. Surprisingly though, despite acquiring additional resources, Germany suffered from a similar problem in part because the mobilization took many men out of industry and the economy. According to Weiss, the Germans had planned even before the war to reduce France’s ability to produce steel. However, this strategy does not appear in Schlieffen’s plans, which seemed to focus on winning a quick war rather than acquiring iron deposits. The impact of these resources was largely ignored until it started to affect the economy in 1915.

  The conquest of Belgium and the Briey Basin also augmented Germany’s supply of coal, a commodity in high demand by the iron and steel industry as well as the civilian population. After the loss of the Briey Basin, France had to rely on Great Britain and the USA to make up the shortfall. For the Germans, a major consideration for dropping the Netherlands from the Schlieffen Plan was to keep them as a trade outlet in case the war did not turn out to be as brief as planned. The need for resources did not become a serious consideration until shortages were felt.

  Even if the resources were available, all sides would have had problems with the delivery of the war materiel because the heavy traffic of troop trains and supply trains caused delays. During the offensives, trains carrying ammunition often had to take precedence over those transporting foodstuffs for the troops. The First World War had suddenly become an economic war for which neither side had adequately prepared. Even in the early months of the war many nations began to experience a shortage of ammunition partially because pre-war estimates for ammunition stockpiles were barely adequate for a short war and the ability to produce sufficient quantities was limited by the natural resources, manpower and the time needed to expand the industrial sites.

  * Henri Bérenger, ‘The Iron Key to War and Peace’, Current History, No. 4 (July 1916).

  * George Weiss, ‘What the War has Done for Steel’, The FORUM, Vol. LVII (January 1917–June 1917), New York: Forum Publishing Co., 1917.

  The table on p. 12 details the major actions on the Western Front from 1914–16 and a few of the other significant encounters in Europe. There is some confusion with the numbering and naming of battles, so this list attempts to match the text. The dates vary according to the sources used.

  The Road to Verdun, 1915

  At the close of 1914, the Austro-Hungarian army had suffered approximately 1 million casualties and struggled to hold on while over 100,000 of its troops remained encircled at Przemyśl. Austrian General Oskar Potiorek, who had been defeated twice in Serbia, finally took Belgrade on 1 December 1914 and was hailed a hero until he lost the city on 15 December.31

  After a failed offensive in the 1st Battle of Ypres in late November 1914, the German troops completed a continuous trench line in the West. General Falkenhayn, who believed that the best way to end the war was to force the enemy to the negotiating table, ordered his subordinates not to give up any ground thus eliminating any flexibility and ability to manoeuvre. He also scraped together new reserves for operations in the West, but his proposals met with a great deal of resistance, including from Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg who embraced the view that victory was essential and achievable. The opposition, led by the Hindenburg/Ludendorff team, demanded priority in the East and plotted to bring down the new and young chief-of-staff. The Kaiser, Falkenhayn’s main supporter, asked him to give priority to the Eastern Front. An important factor in this decision was the need to prop up the Austrians, who still had over 100,000 men under siege at Przemyśl. The Austrian dilemma may well have been the deciding factor in Germany’s war policies.

  In 1915, Falkenhayn sent his reserve of four new corps to the East. Hindenburg received a little over half of Germany’s divisions to pursue offensives intended to knock Russia out of the war. Falkenhayn, nonetheless, remained convinced that a quick victory in the East would remain as unattainable as in the West because his troops would be sucked into Russia’s vastness. Austria’s failures had depleted Conrad’s armies forcing Falkenhayn to rely on reservists and new recruits. Despite the fact that he despised Conrad, Falkenhayn had to prop him up to give Germany a bargaining position in peace negotiations. Falkenhayn also realized that the Italians were wavering in their neutrality and that there was a distinct possibility that Rumania would take advantage of the Russian victories to seize Transylvania from Austria. To prevent these two nations from joining the war, he urged the Hapsburg Empire to cede some territory in the Trento region to Italy and parts of Transylvania to Rumania. However, the Austrian emperor refused to cooperate, leaving Falkenhayn with additional problems in the East.

  Hindenburg opened his 1915 campaign on 7 February with the 2nd Battle of the Masurian Lakes after ordering Mackensen to launch a diversionary assault towards Warsaw during a snowstorm on 4 February 1915. Hindenburg’s victory, according to the Germans, eliminated an additional 100,000 Russians. The Austrians, on the other hand, had not been able to resupply Przemyśl after October 1914 and the force that had relieved them during that month used some of their dwindling supplies. The Austrian army continued to lose Slavic troops (Czechs, Poles and others) who persistently surrendered or simply joined the Russians. Even the Slavic population of Galicia could not be trusted. Conrad’s attempted relief of the fortress during the winter had failed as many of his ill-equipped soldiers froze to death in the Carpathians. In March 1915, when the fortress of Przemyśl surrendered, the Austrians lost over 100,000 men. Hindenburg had to shift German forces towards Galicia to keep his Austrian ally from collapsing. On 2 May, Mackensen, at the head of the German 11th Army, which had moved into position east of Cracow, and several Austrian armies in support, opened the Gorlice-Tarnów Offensive. Falkenhayn did not inform Conrad and the other Austrian generals of the plans for the operation until shortly before it began. This was the turning point campaign on the Eastern Front.

  On the Western Front, before his offensive in Champagne in December 1914, when the Germans were within 65 miles of Paris, Joseph Joffre wrote:

  The best and largest portion of the German army was on our soil, with its line of battle jutting out a mere five days’ march from the heart of France. This situation made it clear to every Frenchman that our task consisted of defeating this enemy, and driving him out of our country.

  My views, on this matter remained unchanged during the whole time I was directing operations.*

  Joffre’s goal was to eliminate the Noyon Salient by launching major offensives in Champagne and Artois to create a double envelopment. The offensive began on 22 December 1914 and lasted until 17 March 1915 with French forces concentrated for a breakthrough in Champagne just east of where they had been defeated in the 1st Battle of the Aisne. The attack in the vicinity of the Suippes River cost Joffre at least 90,000 men – as many as 146,000 according to some sources – but gained only a few hundred metres of territory. In mid-March 1915, the British attacked north of the Noyon Salient, taking the village of Neuve Chapelle before grinding to a halt. After a short but massive artillery barrage, they advanced all of 2km, but despite their initial success they failed to take the Aubers Ridge.32 They lost 13,000 men to enemy counter-attacks while the Germans lost 14,000. Joffre’s strategy was good, but the tactics employed in trench warfare that year made it impossible to succeed.

  Falkenhayn launched the 2nd Battle of Ypres on 22 April, but the month-long contest ended in another German defeat. The Germans opened the action with the release of chlorine gas from canisters.33 The French colonial troops, who lacked gas protection, panicked and broke. The Canadians on their flank held and closed the gap left b
y their ally before the Germans could take advantage of the situation. Falkenhayn did not have enough troops to exploit the gap because the battle was merely a diversion to cover the withdrawal of several divisions headed for the East. The Germans’ modest gains failed to eliminate the Allied salient at Ypres. The battle cost the Allies 60,000 men, many in the British counter-attacks, and the Germans 35,000.

  During May and June, Joffre continued to nibble away at the Germans by launching attacks in Artois. In September, the British had some success again at Loos. Joffre’s final major offensives in 1915 were the battles of 3rd Artois and 2nd Champagne during the months of September and October which resulted in additional heavy casualties for the French. The Allies achieved little with their tactics beyond wearing down their own armies. General Pétain, among others, concluded that this was becoming a war of attrition.