by John Mosier
Von Hindenburg aimed to win the war in the east outright first. Afterward he would smash the Italians, and then, able to bring an overwhelming force to bear, he would end the war once and for all by a great offensive in the west. He had absolute confidence in his soldiers, and an equal amount of confidence that he had enough time to accomplish this. At the very worst, he was convinced he could fight the war to a draw.
The first part of his plan certainly went well enough. The British had high hopes for the Romanians. Like the French, from whom they were getting most of their hard intelligence, they had bought into the notion of catastrophic German losses, of dwindling manpower reserves. Apparently the secret deliberations of the Chamber of Deputies, where a very good approximation of the truth was revealed, remained one of the few secrets of the war.
By the end of 1916, von Falkenhayn, who was directing operations in Romania, had driven their army back into the northeastern corner of the country.
Now, the point of this brief summary is this: for von Hindenburg, the Western Front would have to wait its turn. He assumed, correctly, that the Somme offensive had failed, that the German defensive line in the west was basically invulnerable. In July, the British and French had given it their best shot, and had not broken through. They had conquered some territory, but his experiences in the east had made him quite aware of how illusory such gains were. Victory in war was not a function of acquiring a few hundred square kilometers at random.
So in other words, the German army commanders in the west were basically on their own. Although the actual number of divisions available increased slightly, so that by October there were 128 of them, what was basically happening was that Berlin was moving its better units out of France, replacing them with units that were either newly formed or composed of less fit soldiers, and hence substantially less combat capable.
The French barrage began on 20 October, and for the first time was reasonably effective. Most of the German defensive positions constructed outside the existing forts and blockhouses were destroyed, and nearly a third of their guns knocked out. On the twenty-fourth, the infantry assault went in, the soldiers stumbling through a dense fog, and in and out of craters filled with rainwater.
The spearhead of the thrust was the infanterie coloniale du Maroc, which was, despite the misleading name, not a division of African troops. The colonial infantry were basically the French equivalent of the American and British marines. There were, however, African troops in the assault, mostly from Senegal.13 The spearhead drove on through the initial lines for two kilometers, and by about three in the afternoon of the twenty-fourth, the colonial infantry retook the fort. On 4 November, the Germans evacuated Vaux, which fell into French hands.
The defending Germans were already in a poor state of morale, as evinced by the number of prisoners taken (more than 6,000), and in general German resistance was feeble. But then, the best troops had been sent to the east; the ones left were not capable of the effective counterattacks that had thus far stymied the French. And that was leaving aside that for the first time at Verdun, Second Army had sufficient artillery. Moreover, it was difficult for the Germans to get worked up about hanging on to the position anchored by the forts. After the May explosion, the interior was wrecked; the forts had no firepower, and were simply infantry shelters dependent on the guns behind them and, to a great extent, the infantry in the surrounding areas.
Suitably cheered by their success, the French spent the next six weeks carefully building up the infrastructure to support two more attacks, one on the left bank and another on the right, as Nivelle aimed to recapture the left-bank positions.
The bombardment began on 9 December. Despite having assembled even more heavy weapons, the results were significantly less, as the battlefield was shrouded in snow clouds, snow was falling intermittently, and there was heavy fog. As a result, aerial observation was extremely difficult. But the defenders were seriously demoralized, as evinced by the number of prisoners: over 11,000.
Nivelle, who was no slouch when it came to self-promotion, was now the man of the hour. He had the “formula,” as he announced triumphantly to Pétain over lunch in October.14 He was the man who reconquered Verdun, had driven the Germans back to where they had started in February.
Except that he hadn’t.
First of all, the dependence on heavy artillery was not Nivelle’s idea at all. It was Pétain’s. As commander of the central group of armies, he insisted on a careful and methodical preparation. How else to explain the abrupt shift in tactics? In May and July, Nivelle had been cheerfully willing to pursue the same suicidal infantry assaults that had been employed all along.
But by late autumn, Joffre was in eclipse, and Pétain was able to exert his authority. He was, after all, Nivelle’s superior, at least for the moment. In fact, by October there was basically no one in charge at all at the higher levels of command, so the army group generals were doing as they pleased. Interestingly, it was only in October that the first detailed description of a true supreme commander’s duties and responsibilities began to circulate, the genesis being a letter from Charles Dupuis to Poincaré. After two years of war, it would be another seven months before the idea was implemented.
The one part of the GQG motor that functioned perfectly was the machine that ground out misleading or totally false news about the army’s progress. Having retaken the two forts, which now were acknowledged as the key oppositions on the right bank, the army encouraged everyone to believe that the reconquest was complete. And since the army said so, and the people saying so probably believed what they wrote, everyone subsequently took it to be true. Indeed, the idea that by the end of December the Germans were right back where they had started is both the guiding principle of the standard English account of the battle and its explicit conclusion.
The reality on the ground was rather different. On the right bank, the Germans were still firmly in possession of the Woëvre, as well as all the territory that lay between Douaumont and their original lines in January 1916. Given that advances on the Western Front tended to be measured in kilometers, and sometimes in meters, the nearly 8,000 of them that lay between the battered hulk of the great fort and the remains of Driant’s command post were hardly trivial. Just getting back to where Driant’s chasseurs had been deployed would be a considerable feat.
Because although Douaumont afforded a great view of the sloping terrain ahead of it, the fighting behind the fort had made the terrain virtually impassable. Infantry could work their way through, had indeed done so in the October assault. But bringing heavy artillery close enough to the fort to be able to shell the German lines was basically impossible. The fact that Nivelle had switched the second offensive to the left bank is basically an admission of that.
Now, given what Abel Ferry had sarcastically referred to as war waged for the communiqué, it is difficult to escape the idea that these two French offensives were mostly designed to support the army’s claim that they had won the battle, the idea being that once they recaptured the two forts, everyone would think they had ejected the Germans completely from Verdun.
If Nivelle had stopped there, had remained as commander of the Second Army, one would be inclined to be more charitable about his accomplishments, see him as a competent general who had taken Pétain’s tactics to heart and applied them, although the nagging doubt would still remain about a general so indifferent or insensitive to the condition of the terrain and the effect of bad weather on planning.
Unfortunately for France, the government was desperate to get rid of Joffre, had been frustrated since June and furious since July; was blocked only because they couldn’t find anyone they would agree to appoint to the job. The obvious choice was Pétain. But just as before 1914, the politicians in the war ministry had basically said “over my dead body” to his promotion, and the same intensely partisan strain gripped the government, egged on by scurrilous gossip from Joffre’s staff
about his defeatism, his pessimism. Plus—and this was true—Pétain, like most older French generals, not only did not speak English, but he had very little use for the British. The derisive German expression that characterized the British army, “Lions led by jackasses,” was one he would have wholeheartedly endorsed; indeed, it pretty much expressed his views of the high command of his own army, and of the politicians of the Third Republic.
So the cabinet pinned its hopes on Nivelle. He was younger, he was full of self-confidence, he had the “formula,” and he spoke English. What could go wrong? What could go wrong indeed—Nivelle promptly led the army to a disaster in Champagne that dwarfed all the previous disasters of French offensive operations there. The results of the attack on the ridge of the Chemin des Dames in April 1917 was so awful that his generals went over his head, demanded his replacement, and thus the infamous mutiny began. The army had endured years of senseless and costly attacks. Enough was enough.15
So von Falkenhayn’s idea thus came true, although in a twisted and curious way. Despite all the claims made about the significance of Verdun, despite its real military value, its most lasting contribution to France was that it catapulted Nivelle to power, and then, in the resultant disaster, established Pétain as the man who saved France. For the second time, his command at Verdun being the first. The staff gossips could say what they wanted, the average soldier wasn’t fooled: This was the man who saved France, and in May 1917, he saved the country again.
Unfortunately, June 1940, when he was called to the helm for the third time, would not prove so felicitous, either for the aging marshal, or for France. Jean Dutourd famously remarked that “the choice is always between Verdun or Dachau,” but it would be more correct to say that the former led directly to the latter.16
REVANCHE: THE LEFT-BANK OFFENSIVE OF 1917
Although it is often said, or anyway hinted, that after May 1917 the French army was incapable of carrying on the war—a convenient excuse for Haig’s gradual destruction of his command—the idea, no matter how expressed, is absolutely untrue.
Over the summer, Pétain carefully reorganized the army, arranging for better logistical support for the infantry at every level, and preparing for a great assault on the left bank, where Nivelle’s attack had been frustrated. French reconnaissance revealed that the Germans had not been entirely idle. After the last attacks in December, they had begun a series of three tunnels into the reverse slopes of their forward positions behind the Mort Homme. The idea was that their infantry would take shelter there during any bombardment, then emerge to massacre the attackers as they struggled to reach them.
Now for reasons obvious to the more cynical reader, Pétain’s offensive of August 1917, like numerous other French engagements, has been generally passed over in silence, since it doesn’t fit the narrative that at the end of 1916 the Germans had been thrown back to where they started.17
However, not only was there an offensive, but the scale of it was enormous. Pétain deployed no less than four complete army corps: two on the left bank and two on the right. But this by no means inconsiderable force of infantry was dwarfed by the guns. There were 2,200 artillery pieces taking part in the offensive, which set a record of sorts. In some areas, gunners outnumbered the assault troops by over two to one.
If the French preparations were far different, so were the Germans, who reacted energetically. By now (late summer 1917), von Hindenburg was slowly beginning to shift focus away from the east, given the state of the Russian army and the chaos inside the short-lived provisional republic (the czar having abdicated in February). So three divisions were added to the left bank, while on the right, in addition to the four divisions now holding the front, there were two more in reserve. Along with the infantry came more artillery, so the German commanders had reason to be confident.
The artillery barrage began on August 13, and went on intermittently for a week. It should be understood that this did not mean the guns were firing continuously. It took time for aerial reconnaissance to survey the damage and select new targets. But for the first time the system worked for the French, and quite well. When the infantry assault started on the twentieth, the left-bank assault, spearheaded by the Legion and the colonial infantry, quickly overran the entrances to the tunnels before the German infantry could emerge, and in a few hours, the main defensive position had been taken, with only Hill 304 remaining in German hands. In the advance positions, the infantry found mostly nothing but corpses. An attack on the twenty-fourth delivered the hill back into French hands.
On the right bank, the French had a more difficult time of it, probably owing to the condition of the terrain, but early on they occupied the woods of Beaumont and des Fosses. On the twenty-sixth the French cleared out the woods of the Chaume (not that there were any trees left; the terms had become simply memories of what once had been). A final attack, on 6 September, delivered Bois des Caurières.
The August offensive was a considerable success. By any reasonable measure, it was the first unequivocal and unambiguous French victory of the war. There were 10,000 prisoners, the infantry took all of its objectives, and losses were very light.
The two humps on the left bank were the equivalent of the two forts on the right, but had considerably more tactical value: Reconquering them was a serious achievement. On the right bank, getting back the Côte du Talou was probably more significant than possession of the forts.
The success of the offensive, immediately followed by another in Champagne, the site of Nivelle’s disaster, did wonders to restore the morale of the army, and it’s a pity that the GQG, having lied in December 1916 about Verdun, was thus unable to publicize a real as opposed to a fictional victory. People had begun to catch on: They couldn’t very well say they had gotten Verdun back, when they had already claimed that eight months earlier.
But does the August victory mean that finally the French had reconquered what they had lost in spring 1916? Colonel Chaligne puts it this way: “We had almost returned to our positions of 21 February 1916,” and he concludes his account by invoking a French verb, degager, whose primary meaning is “to liberate,” as in delivering the wounded from captivity.18
A polite way of saying no, not quite: Pétain had removed the threat posed to the French positions; he had not attempted to restore the original positions. The technical distinction is subtle but important. The best way to explain it is in this fashion: If, in July 1917, von Hindenburg had decided to mount a massive offensive on both banks, his forward positions—the positions identified above—would have given him a significant, perhaps even an overwhelming advantage. So Verdun was now freed from that menace.
On the other hand, if, for whatever reason, the Germans had decided to attack there in force a second time, say February 1918, they would have been in a considerably better situation than in February 1916. The lines were closer together, and the positions, particularly on the right bank, would enable excellent staging areas for infantry assaults.
In an oft-quoted passage in his memoirs, the German crown prince terms Verdun a postern gate. Pétain disagreed completely. But then, he despised military theorists, and the Fifth Army’s commander was speaking theoretically. In that sense he was quite right. The shortest route into Germany proper was a diagonal going from the right bank to the northeast. Given the German lines from 1914 on, a breakthrough in that direction would be a catastrophe.
Not only were the distances immensely shorter than from the British lines or from Artois, but an army that started out on the right bank would not be faced with the obstacle of the Meuse. The British belief that the war could be won by beating the Germans back through Belgium was a conceit concocted by men whose experiences did not include studying the terrain, who relied entirely on flat maps, who thought contour lines were there just for decoration. This was hardly a uniquely British failing: the same sort of error had dogged the French staffers all through the war, Nivelle’s blithe un
concern with the December weather being only the latest in a whole series of similar miscalculations.
However, regardless of who made it, it was a major error. Belgium was not the Argonne, an area small enough that gnawing your way through it was feasible, especially if the cost was minimal. But a thrust up out of the right bank could cut the German position in two, force a general retreat, since the attacking force would be behind the greater part of the German army.
So the crown prince was actually correct. The reason Pétain disagreed was simple: He knew the impossibility of the French putting together the force required. His succinct analysis of the distribution of their forces on the front is a revelation. By the end of 1915, losses had been so high that such a massive offensive was simply not possible. Even Joffre had figured that one out, which was why he had pinned his hopes on the Somme. It was the only place where a joint offensive against the same sector of the front could occur, and it was only with the assistance of the British forces that the attacking armies would be big enough.
That the offensive on the Somme failed does not mean that Joffre’s idea was wrong, any more than the failure at Verdun means that von Falkenhayn’s idea was. Similarly, the notion of a sally port or postern gate that the crown prince advanced was theoretically correct, exactly the sort of problem that should be worried about. Or, to put it another way, he paid the French the compliment of believing them competent strategists. Pétain knew better.
11
The Last Battles: September–October 1918
Major Griesel, chief of the war press bureau in Berlin, keeps three American shells on his desk by way of welcoming American correspondents, and then to make them feel at home he adds he was wounded by one of them.