Verdun

by John Mosier

  3The key word is modern. All subsequent tanks in every nation followed the basic design of the Renault tank, with its rotating turret. In the last years of the war it was in mass production, with more than 3,000 produced, and was “a staple of French arms exports after the war. It also saw more combat use in the inter-war years than any other tank.” Quote and data from Steven Zaloga, The Renault Light Tank (London: Osprey Publishing, 1988), 33. Although in the Anglosphere the notion of the tank is usually credited entirely to a British initiative, the French, working independently, were developing a tank at basically the same time.

  4The Gallipoli disaster has been written about extensively, largely because most of the resources committed there were from the Commonwealth, the Greek and Italian fiascos considerably less so. For Italy see Mark Thompson, The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915–1919 (New York: Basic Books, 2009). The view from the other side of the Alps is Gunther E. Rothenburg’s uniformly excellent The Army of Francis-Joseph (West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 1976). For Greece, see George Abbott, Greece and the Allies, 1914–1922 (London: Methuen, 1922). Both Abbott and Thompson write scathing critiques of the events they describe. Interestingly, however, when these campaigns are analyzed, their net impact on the main theater of the war is in various ways minimized.

  5The New York Times Current History, The European War (New York, 1917), 1:246.

  64:1042–43 (comments by the British correspondent Beach Thomas); 5:255 (an analysis by the American general Greene); 5:321 (an analysis by Edgar Crammond); 6:924 (summarizing an article in The Economist); 6:45 (an analysis by J. W. B. Gardiner); 7:705 (summary of an article by E. J. Dillon in The Fortnightly Review); 9:450 (summary of a study by the War Study Society of Copenhagen).

  7Charles á Court Repington [colonel], The First World War, 1914–1918, Personal Experiences of Colonel Reppington (London: Constable, 1920), 1:112.

  8Fayolle, Carnets secrets de la grande guerre, edited Henry Contamine (Paris: Plon, 1964), entry of 26 June 1915, 117.

  9David Lloyd George, War Memoirs (London: Odhams, 1938), 1:545.

  10Data here and in the paragraphs immediately following taken from the exhaustive tables compiled by General Edmond Buat, L’armée allemande pendant la guerre de 1914–18 (Paris: Chapelot, 1920). For 1914, see 30–34; for 1915, 113.

  11Joffre, Memoirs, 352.

  12J. F. C. Fuller, Tanks in the Great War (London: John Murray, 1920), 309; with numerous examples on the following pages.

  13Even though the importance of the one Allied innovation, the tank, was endlessly proclaimed, both by theorists like Fuller and numerous historians coming along afterward. In The Myth of the Great War (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), I examined the development of the tank and its effect on the battlefields, explaining how little was actually accomplished (229–32; 297–99). The point here is that although on the one hand the Allies were boasting about one technological innovation, they simply ignored all the other ones—probably because they were German. As a fine example, see the treatment of German aviation in William Lockwood March, A History of Aeronautics (London: Collins, 1921), where, in his discussion of aviation during the war, significant German innovations—e.g., the synchronization of the machine gun with the propeller—are systematically ignored (chapters 19 and 20). Some of this cherry-picking comes from genuine technical ignorance, as is probably the case with the recoil revolution, but to a great extent it is part and parcel of a determination to see the war through a distorting nationalism and Germanophobia.

  14The New York Times Current History, The European War (New York, 1917), 4:1043.

  15The impact of these fantastic notions on our understanding of the war is discussed in the conclusion to this book.

  16Abel Ferry, Carnets secrets, 1914–1918 (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1957), 52 (the note is in annex 6, page 248). Interestingly enough, this data is omitted in the recent edition edited by Nicolas Offenstadt (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 2005), 248.

  17Joffre, The Personal Memoirs of Joffre, Field Marshal of the French Army, translated by T. Bentley Mott (New York: Harper, 1932), 2.599.

  18As quoted by A. J. P. Taylor, Illustrated History of the First World War (New York: Penguin, 1966), 104.

  19Taylor (First World War, 120–21). A wonderfully sarcastic and succinct passage. One is reminded of Phillip Guedalla’s remark about the famous British historian Thomas Babington Macaulay: “The comment recalls the writing of Macaulay alike by its eloquence and by its inaccuracy.” Phillip Guedalla, Supers and Supermen (Garden City, New York: Garden City Publishing, 1924), 88.

  20Arthur Conan Doyle, A Visit to Three Fronts, June 1916 (New York: George Doran, 1916), 66. An enormous part of Abel Ferry’s work with the secret committee directing the war (actually, trying to get direction of the war) consists of a rather lucid exposition on how densely the British were packed into their section of the front, and how much of it they could actually take over.

  21The reader who finds this remark to be an unwarranted generalization should consider the numerous examples given in Ernest R. May (editor), Knowing One’s Enemies: Intelligence Assessment Before the Two World Wars (Princeton: University Press, 1984).

  22The army was not anxious to advertise the extent to which it had no modern gun in service in quantity except for the 75. General Daille sums it up neatly enough. Of the “3,538 heavy weapons in service, modern matériel was represented by one 105-millimeter howitzer, of which the armies possessed no more than 78 examples” in June 1915. Quote taken from General Maurice Daille, Histoire de la guerre mondiale: Joffre et la guerre d’usure, 1915–1916 (Paris: Payot, 1936), 2:179. See also the accounting on 2:41. These figures agree with the ones Joffre himself proffers in the French edition of his memoirs. See Marshal [Joseph Jacques Césaire] Joffre, Mémoires du maréchal Joffre (Paris: Plon, 1932), 71.

  23See the technical discussion in General [Firmin Émile] Gascouin, L’evolution de l’Artillerie pendant la Guerre (Paris: Flammarion, 1920), 38. However, Gascouin goes to great lengths to demonstrate the gross inferiority of French weaponry.

  24Gascouin is a difficult writer, explaining a very technical subject. The sentences quoted are an attempt to render the gist of two pages of explanation. See Gascouin (Artillerie, 115–16).

  25Entry of January 22, 1919, as recorded by General Émile Fayolle, Carnets secrets de la grande guerre, edited by Henry Contamine (Paris: Plon, 1964), 323.

  26Arthur Conan Doyle, A Visit to Three Fronts: June 1916 (New York: George Doran, 1916), 36. Doyle’s account is the classic instance of what a thoughful and educated observer can see. He was careful not to draw any negative conclusions from his observations, which is why they passed through the censorship. But the details are significant—in the best Sherlock Holmes sense.

  27Those numbers were given to the cabinet by Millerand on February 4, 1915, as recorded by Abel Ferry, Carnets secrets (Paris: Grasset, 1956), 52. Note: The date was omitted from more recent editions published by Grasset.

  28The data taken from a report Ferry made to the government on November 1, 1916, as part of an attempt to compare the losses of the combatants. See the table in Abel Ferry, La Guerre vue d’en bas et d’en haut (Paris: Grasset, 1920), 120. These figures are very close to the ones compiled and published after the war.

  29The cemeteries containing the dead from the 1914 battles around Verdun are revealing in this regard. See, among the many: Lironville (one kilometer south of Limey-Remenauville, which is 15 kilometers west of Pont-à-Mousson); Les Islettes (on N3 between Clermont en Argonne and Sainte Menéhould); Buzy-Darmont (one kilometer north of the village on D167—the town is on N3, between Étain and Conflans). Markers with only a surname, or a few letters of the name, are not atypical of French cemeteries, particularly if they were contemporaneous with the action. Similarly with the enormous numbers of unknown dead whose remains are in the communal gra
ves. For example, in the cemetery at Esnes en Argonnes, there are 3,587 graves and two common graves, each with 1,500 remains. There are several graves with two or three sets of remains. Although French grave markers in theory have the name and unit of the deceased, and the date of death, in this cemetery there are numerous markers with no date, or even the unit.. The relatively few dated identifications run from 1914 through 1918. There are unknown soldiers with individual markers, plus unknowns buried with identified remains (two or three to a marker). These cemeteries suggest—correctly—a dysfunctional army.

  30Allied casualty data for 1914 and after comes from the following sources. For the United Kingdom, War Office [United Kingdom], Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire During the Great War, 1914–1920 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1922), as subsequently corrected by Arthur Graham Butler, The Australian Army Medical Services in the War of 1914–1918 (Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 1940). Both are official government sources. For France we have both Ferry’s 1916 data in La Guerre vue d’en bas et d’en haut (Paris: Grasset, 1920) and the final figures in Michel Huber, La population de la France pendant la guerre (New Haven: Yale, 1931). Both are derived from the army’s records and are universally accepted by French historians. For Belgium the situation is more complicated, but the information in Henri Bernard, L’an 14 et la campagne des illusions (Bruxelles: la Renaissance du livre, 1983), seems as close to an official accounting as it is possible to get. Bernard was a professor in the Belgian military academy, and his father was a battalion commander in August 1914 who later became a general.

  31The official German data is to be found in Heeressanitätsinspektion des Reichsministeriums, Sanitätsbericht über das deutsche Heer in Weltkrieg 1914/18 (Berlin: Reichsministerium, 1935), 3: tables 8 and 55. When Churchill wrote his account for the war he sent research assistants to Berlin to confer with the men who were working up the data, which he then used to make his point about the relative superiority of the Germans in combat. See the discussion in Robin Prior, Churchill’s World Crisis as History (London: Croom Helm, 1983), 212–13.

  32Sven Anders Hedin, With the German Armies in the West, translated by H. G. de Walterstorff (London: J. Lane, 1915), 41. See his description of German wounded: “As a rule it is the left forearm and especially the hand that has been pierced by a bullet, the arm being carried in a sling. Here and there a man had an unimportant flesh wound in the shoulders, or his head had been grazed by a bullet . . .” (87–88).

  33The exceedingly complicated tables for mobilization are all displayed by Huber, but without any real explanation (Population, 96–105). But the conclusion is obvious, and made by several French historians: The French were running out of manpower.

  34Troop strengths from Sanitätsberich (3: table 55). The totals agree broadly with those given by von Falkenhayn in his memoirs: Die Oberste Heeresleitung, 1914–1916 (Berlin: Mittler, 1920), 247–48.

  35His source was the former Dutch minister of war, the date of the entry 25 January 1916. See Charles á Court Repington, The First World War, 1914–1918, Personal Experiences of Colonel Repington (London: Constable, 1920), 1.112.

  36Fayolle, Carnets secrets de la grande guerre, edited by Henry Contamine (Paris: Plon, 1964), entry of January 1, 1915: 72.

  37The complete discourse as he gave it to the committee is in Abel Ferry, La Guerre vue d’en bas et d’en haut (Paris: Grasset, 1920), 35. In his secret diary, he records the response: Basically it fell flat. At that point no one believed him. It was only in July that their attitude changed. See Abel Ferry, Carnets secrets, 1914–1918, edited by Nicolas Offenstadt (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 2005), 99–103.

  38The complete text of the letter is reprinted in Gaston Jolivet, Le colonel Driant (Paris: Librairie Delagrave, 1918), 179. Jolivet reproduces almost all of Driant’s letters during the war, and bits and pieces are usually quoted by French historians. As for the impact of the August letter, see the discussion in Jacques-Henri Lefebvre, Verdun, 10th edition (Verdun: Éditions du Mémorial, [1993]), who, rather troublingly, quotes Liddell Hart at length (22–26). The standard discussion in English is in Alistair Horne, The Price of Glory: Verdun, 1916 (New York: St. Martin, 1963), 61–62, who, like Liddell Hart (whom he quotes), uses a somewhat scrambled translation of Driant’s letter.

  39[General] Joseph-Simon Gallieni, Les carnets de Gallieni, publiés par son Fils Gaëtan Gallieni, notes by P. B. Gheusi (Paris: Albin Michel, 1932), 220.

  40The successive quotes are in Gallieni (Carnets, 217, 220).

  41Marshal [Joseph Jacques Césaire] Joffre, Mémoires du maréchal Joffre (Paris: Plon, 1932), 421.

  42Fernand Foch, De principes de la guerre (Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1921), 321.

  43As recorded by Jean Galtier-Boissière, Histoire de la grande guerre (Paris, Crapouillot, 1932), 240. As Galtier-Boissière points out, Joffre admitted that the name was decided upon because the battles fought all in some general way were fought in the Marne valley. Galtier-Boissière thoroughly debunks the myths of the battle in a chapter titled “The Truth about the Marne” (240–46).

  44This account is in Raymond Recouly, Joffre (Paris: Éditions des portiques, 1931), 165. Notably, Recouly is one of Joffre’s more sympathetic biographers, and he had access to numerous eyewitnesses.

  45The relevant portions both of this letter and Joffre’s answer (directly below) are to be found in Lefebvre (Verdun, 23) and in Blond (La Marne, Verdun, 273–74).

  46Blond adds an important detail to the exchange of letters: that Joffre “threatened the bearer of the news” (La Marne, Verdun, 274).

  47President Poincaré related this to his liaison, Colonel Herbillon, on 15 February 1915: Colonel [Émile Emmanuel] Herbillon, Souvenirs d’un officier de liason pendant le Guerre Mondial (Paris: Tallandier, 1930), 1:116.

  48As we have seen from these brief snippets, Herbillon appears to be a reasonably cautious and prudent fellow, and although this is his diary, much of which is not verifiable, it hardly seems that he would have recorded how wildly off he was about the offensive when he was reassuring the president how events would play out unless it was the truth. Witnesses don’t generally testify to information that makes them look bad unless it happens to be the truth, and this interchange (Souvenirs, 1.243) certainly does that.

  7. The German Gamble

  1As recorded by Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne, Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, edited by R. W. Phipps (1891), 2.13

  2H. G. Wells, War and the Future: Italy, France, and Britain at War (London: Cassell, 1917), 16.

  3Philip Guedalla, Supers and Supermen (Garden City, New York: Garden City Publishing, 1924), 132.

  4W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1919), 14.

  5“It appears as though the effects of modern artillery were passed over in silence. . . . They reason as though German artillery did not exist” is how General Gascouin put it in L’evolution de artillerie pendant la guerre (Paris: Flammarion, 1920), 18–21. See as well the analysis in Pierre Waline, Les crapouillots, 1914–1918: naissance, vie et mort d’une arme. (Paris, Charles-Lavauzelle, 1965), 23, which also cites other references to the notion.

  6Raymond Recouly, Joffre (Paris: Éditions des portiques, 1931), 235.

  7See in particular the account of Gunther E. Rothenburg, The Army of Francis-Joseph (West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 1976), 185–86; and Norman Stone, The Eastern Front, 1914–1917 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1975), 122–33. The authors of the two standard works on the subject both are in agreement that the plan for the May offensive was von Falkenhayn’s and Conrad von Hötzendorf’s, and most emphatically not von Hindenburg’s.

  8Ferry transcribed the Italian ambassador’s remark in his diary for a meeting of April 27, 1915 (Carnet secret, 105). For an analysis of just how bad the situation was for the Italians, see Mark Thompson, The White War
: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915–1919 (New York: Basic Books, 2010), the best and basically the only account in English of this part of the war. Like the studies by Norman Stone and Gunter Rothenburg referenced above, Thompson provides a valuable corrective to the received wisdom about the war in the east, in Italy, and in the Balkans.

  9As quoted by Herbert Rosinski, The German Army (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1940), 146, in support of his own argument that “the 15th [of September 1914], the morning on which Falkenhayn decided against a return to the mobile strategy of the first weeks, that must be considered to be the real turning point of the war” (148: italics in the original).

  10In the discussion of von Falkenhayn that follows I am relying on Pierre Conard, Trois figures de chefs; Falkenhayn—Hindenburg—Ludendorff (Paris, E. Flammarion, 1923); Lothar Wilfried Hilbert, Falkenhayn: l’homme et sa conception de l’offensive de Verdun (Verdun: Actes du Colloque international sur la bataille de Verdun, 1976); D von Wienskowski, Falkenhayn (Berlin: Siegismund, 1937). The conclusions, however, are my own. I cite these works simply as a counter to the very superficial and uninformed comments in the standard English-language accounts.

  11Gabriele Bichet, Le role des forts dans la bataille de Verdun (Nancy: Imprimerie Georges Thomas, 1969), 26.

  12Enthusiasts have been mapping and photographing the site for some time. See, for example, www.ww1battlefields.co.uk/verdun/marguerre.html. Although the road to the site off the highway is marked, it is quite a drive through the forest, and, except during the late fall and winter, the trees and brush obscure the numerous structures almost completely. Standing in the parking area, one finds it difficult to believe there is anything man-made around, as the buildings are completely invisible.

  13The site is still there, and can be accessed by a narrow road that leads through the tiny hamlet of Duzy, off of Departmental Road 105. The dates of this installation are clearly displayed on signs at the site. This gun is not the one described by T. Ehret in Trancheée, 11 (November 2012), 50–57. That weapon, also of 38 centimeters, was emplaced in the forest outside of Muzeray, slightly south of Duzy.