Major General Sir Henry Wilson, commander of Britain’s IV Corps in France, confidently wrote in his diary that his forces would be in Germany in three weeks—an astonishing statement in retrospect, but no less detached from military reality than Santa Anna’s rash prediction that he would lead Mexican armies into Washington, D.C., during the Mexican War. Horrific initial losses hardly changed opinions: as late as January 1915, General Douglas Haig said the Allies could “walk through the German line at several places” as soon as they got sufficient artillery ammunition.27
To be sure, there were voices of caution, men who knew combat up close and had tasted the murderous fire of modern guns. Germany’s corpselike Field Marshal Helmut von Moltke (the elder) had predicted in 1890 that a future war could last for years. His thinking wore off on his nephew, von Moltke the younger—cited for bravery as a grenadier, but by 1906 the German chief of staff—who instructed the Kaiser that the next war “will be a national war which will not be settled by a decisive battle but by a long wearisome struggle…which will utterly exhaust our own people, even if we are victorious.”28 Britain’s Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchener, appointed as secretary of state for war in August 1914, also knew the lethality of modern weapons all too well. He had seen rapid-fire guns up close in the Franco-Prussian War where, at age twenty, he fought with the French army as a volunteer, then witnessed his own Maxim guns and artillery shred the Mahdi army at Omdurman, and experienced heavy losses at the Battle of Paardeberg at the hands of the Boers. Suddenly placed in charge of the British military effort, Kitchener stunned the Imperial Staff when he told them to “be prepared to put armies of millions into the field and maintain them for several years.”29 Britain originally had planned to send six infantry and one cavalry division, scarcely 150,000 men, to support the French but cut that almost immediately to an anemic four infantry divisions out of concern that Britain herself might be invaded. Now Kitchener was instructing the government that victory would require a British army of seventy divisions, and mobilization could not attain those levels for three years, “implying,” as historian Barbara Tuchman noted, “the staggering corollary that the war would last that long.”30 Kitchener’s views were often ridiculed in the high command, most notably by Sir Henry Wilson, who labeled Lord Kitchener “mad” and “as much an enemy of England as Moltke.”31
Even when confronted with intelligence about the size of German forces, both British and French generals dismissed the information. On August 11, when Sir John French met with the chief of British intelligence, French’s deputy director of operations was dumbstruck at the German numbers being suggested. “He kept on producing fresh batches of Reserve Divisions and Extra-Reserve Divisions,” French sputtered, “like a conjurer producing glassfuls of goldfish out of his pocket.”32 France’s intelligence officers were relating similar information, yet General Joseph Joffre refused to believe it. Only Kitchener had no trouble envisioning a million Germans sweeping through Belgium and into northern France. When Germany, having declared war on Russia on August 1, and unsuccessfully cajoled and threatened the Belgians to allow their troops free passage through Belgian territory, sent military columns to plow through Belgium two days later, the twentieth century greeted its first mass war.
The German High Command believed Belgium would permit millions of German soldiers to march across their territory without resistance, and were therefore shocked at the tenacity and hatred they encountered once the invasion started. After all, God was on the side of Germany (the German belt buckles said so with Gott mit uns or “God is with us”), and Germany needed transit through Belgium to eliminate the threat to its national existence. The natural invasion route in Europe was across the North German Plain, a flat expanse broken only by man-made obstacles and rivers from Flanders to Russia. In German eyes, the Flemish were essentially German, and German soldiers had come to the aid of Belgium many times in history against the French. A small nation of seven million did not have the right to deny passage to a major power, which would, after all, recompense the Belgians for any and all damage. Going the extra mile, the German High Command considered a neutral’s defense of its own territory against German troops passing through illegal. The German military manual, The Usages of War on Land, issued in 1902, stated that “if a neutral did not stop one belligerent from marching through, that belligerent’s opponent was free to do battle on neutral territory, and a neutral that disregarded its duties had to give satisfaction or compensation.”33
Since the German General Staff assumed the French would or already had moved into Belgium with the declaration of war by France on Germany, the German Army was free, indeed obligated, to defend itself against the Belgians. In the German view, Belgium had constructed forts on its eastern border facing Germany, but none facing France (at least no major ones), so rather than being neutral, Belgium was actually a belligerent allied with France and England. In the event, it seemed the whole world except for Belgium knew the Germans would attack across Belgium—the French assumed it and the British planned on it.
“Belgium’s Misery”
After briefly assaulting the fortresses around Liège in costly frontal attacks, the Germans hauled up monster cannons, including the Austrian-built Skoda 305s, which, transported in three pieces, could move only twenty miles a day. German iron and steel giant Friedrich Krupp AG had fabricated an even more imposing weapon, the 420, of which only five were in existence when the shooting started. Even slower and more cumbersome than the Skoda guns, the 420s reached the front a week after Germans first entered Belgium; the “overfed slugs” stupefied everyone when they fired their first rounds on August 12. The shells took a full minute to travel to their targets, and the compression and shock of firing was so severe that the guns were triggered from three hundred yards away. Loaders and other members of the 285-man crew remaining close to the gun had ear padding, plugs, eye protection, and lay prone during firing for further safety. Suddenly, Belgian forts that had resisted wave after wave of crack German infantry now surrendered after forty massive explosions.
But the Belgian fortresses bought precious time, adding days to von Moltke’s delicate schedule, made flesh by the workaholic general Erich Ludendorff, deputy chief of staff for the German 2nd Army. Described as “friendless and forbidding,” Ludendorff had gained a place on the General Staff at age thirty, and directing the bombardment of Liège now reassured everyone that Count von Schlieffen had it right, and that flee or fight, Belgium would be only an annoyance.34 Part of that confidence emanated from the massive artillery, ponderous though it was. Part of it came from his personal experience. Ludendorff may have been a caricature of the monocled German militarist, but he was also absolutely fearless. Sensing that the bombardment of Liège was taking too long, he found a brigade whose commander had been killed and led it forward into the city. He ordered his adjutant to drive him to the Citadel. Somehow they made it through swarms of Belgian soldiers in the city to the Citadel’s gates, which he pounded on with the pommel of his sword. They opened, and Ludendorff found himself facing a mob of Belgian soldiers. He demanded they surrender, and the Citadel fell to the two German officers.35
Most of Ludendorff’s faith in the Schlieffen Plan, however, derived from the meticulous logistical planning of the German General Staff, all dependent on railroads and essentially stopping at the Belgian border. Germany moved 550 trains a day across the Rhine, including one every ten minutes crossing the Hohenzollern Bridge at Cologne. France’s rail network responded, shifting around three million troops in seven thousand trains. Germany’s rail mobilization plan dwarfed that of the Russians, who had one fourth as many railroads, and who had deliberately built rail gauges wider than the Germans’ so as to impede invasions. But once the battle reached Germany, it meant the Russians would have to stop and switch trains at the border. But the implications of this, while unforeseen, scarcely figured into von Schlieffen’s calculations, as he intended to have already forced a French surrender by the time Mother Ru
ssia slothfully mobilized, which, according to his timeline, would take forty days.
Von Schlieffen never planned on the near-suicidal Belgian resistance. Nor did any of the German High Command expect efforts by Belgian civilians, few as they were, to slow down, tie up, and harass German columns. Already inflated by the morality and justness of their cause, the German soldiers were shocked and outraged that the Belgians did not welcome them as friends but as invaders. Shortly following the first incidents of sniping, property destruction, and simple insubordination, German commanders began posting stark warnings about brutal punishment for anyone remotely interfering with their “visit.” The extreme overreaction by Germans at all levels was rooted in their experience during the Franco-Prussian War, when French franc-tireurs (free shooters) or civilian snipers took a heavy toll of German soldiers after the French were defeated. The actions by these guerrillas did not affect the outcome of the war, but substantially raised German casualties and caused the Germans to consider all such citizen actions dishonorable and unlawful.
At first, only suspected guerrillas were arrested or shot; then hostages were taken—the city council, mayor, or other important local persons; then randomly one of every ten men were held and then both men and women were shot in reprisal; then finally substantial groups of civilians were shot and their villages put to the torch. At Namur, 2nd Army commander Colonel General Karl von Bülow took ten hostages per street, all to be shot if any German was fired upon by a local. At nearby Andenne during the Battle of Charleroi, following an incident in which Germans claimed townspeople had shot at them, between one hundred and two hundred civilians were executed.
Dozens of small towns were looted, others burned, including Louvain in late August 1914, with its magnificent library of more than 250,000 volumes and 750 medieval manuscripts. Hugh Gibson, then with the American legation, went with officials from other nations to investigate the reports on August 28, only to find the Germans boasting of their destruction. Troops moved from house to house, stealing valuables and setting fires, as the officer in charge ranted to the international observers, “We shall wipe it out, not one stone will stand on top of another…. We will teach them to respect Germany.”36
Some of the most brutal pillaging occurred at Dinant, two days before Louvain was burned, when troops under General Max von Hausen accused Belgians of “perfidious” activity, including interference with bridge rebuilding, and arrested hundreds of civilians. Forcing them into the town square, the grenadiers ordered the men to one side, women to the other, then firing squads—shooting in opposite directions—mowed down the townspeople. As at Louvain, troops then looted what remained of the town. The resistance by the small Belgian army and the unreasonable German fear of civilian guerrillas helped doom the German right wing attack as the Germans had to siphon off excessive numbers of troops to maintain their lines of communication. Without question, the Germans reacted harshly and, in some instances, hysterically to the reports of franc-tireurs.
German troops and officers claimed to see violent resistance at every turn, ignoring evidence that the resistance either broke out spontaneously or was nonexistent (in some cases nervous German troops fired on other Germans), and in no way was directed by the government. Invoking “international law,” the Germans unsuccessfully attempted to claim the moral high ground for their barbarism. Most of the world rejected their rationalizations. “Brave Little Belgium” became an international symbol of courage and hope in British propaganda while Germans were increasingly portrayed in posters, cartoons, and newspapers as “Huns,” replete with bearskin capes and blood-drenched fangs.
Although atrocities had been regularly visited on civilian populations throughout history before 1914—and indeed were simply viewed as ordinary side effects of war—Germany had signed the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 that attempted to establish rules of law to govern warfare between civilized nations. It was recognized that rebellions, civil wars, and conflicts with backward countries such as those encountered in colonial conquests were often extremely brutal by necessity and therefore exempt from such rules. America’s Civil War demonstrated that guerrilla atrocities were normal for such conflicts; Britain had responded to Boer resistance with civilian “concentration camps” during the Boer War; and all the European nations had horrific records of incivility in their colonial conflicts. But 1914 was different—this was a civilized nation, perhaps the most civilized in Europe—systematically inflicting atrocities on a small, helpless country of other Europeans. Historian Jeff Lipkes has effectively proven that the execution of Belgian civilians was part of an intentional policy of brutally subduing the Belgians by the German army and German occupation authorities.37 Ultimately, however, Progressive governments had not expected this and later refused to learn from the example, creating further treaties to curb excesses in war that were notable mainly for their failure to have any positive effect. While burnings of homes and buildings in the Great War would later be considered almost inconsequential in comparison with those of World War II, the number of civilian deaths raised an immediate outcry because it was so visible to the press and because it was one “civilized” state abusing another. Approximately 5,521 Belgian civilians (and 906 French) were executed by the Germans.38 But in a larger sense, the “Rape of Belgium” continued throughout the entire war. Belgians were forced to work on German entrenchments, and large numbers were deported to Germany for work in German industries. Food supplies were cut, and all Belgians in German-occupied territory suffered greatly. The Belgian economy was wrecked, all productivity was subordinate to German direction, and Belgium even paid large indemnities to Germany during the war, setting the table for the Allies to demand reparations from Germany in 1919.
Significantly, attempts to criminalize wartime actions and bring Germans accused of atrocities to account through trials after the war largely came to naught. Previous treaties ending wars amnestied those committing possible criminal behavior, and Germany successfully arranged for war crimes trials to be held in Leipzig under German law. Those few individuals who stood trial were either found not guilty or given light sentences. The British lost interest in prosecuting war crimes by 1921 and the French by 1925.39 Nonetheless, the principles leading to Nuremberg and the four new Geneva Conventions starting in 1949 had been established (more or less) for warfare between “civilized” nations, and the historical significance of Belgium’s misery reached far beyond the four years of German occupation in World War I. Neither France nor Britain launched any serious operation to rescue “Brave Little Belgium,” since Belgium was of little value to the Allies militarily. After all, the Belgian army consisted of only six divisions—a pair of bloated Prussian corps, or about 117,000 men—ill trained and dispersed through the fortress system. Aside from the forts, there was no Belgian artillery, and the Germans had twice as many machine guns per soldier. According to prewar plans, Britain took up positions near Mons and Dinant to block the German right wheel, assuming defensive positions. Earlier bluster about sending five French infantry divisions was quickly dismissed. Instead, three divisions of French cavalry scouts rode 110 miles in three days, passing gallantly through Belgian villages, their cuirasses shining and their black horse-hair plumes streaming. Sobbing townspeople and bands playing the “Marseillaise” greeted them, assuming the Allies had come to the rescue. But the French brushed within miles of Liège without even dismounting, then turned to explore the Ardennes, their reconnaissance complete.
These realities raised three important points about the new nature of the war. First, heavy automatic firepower brought to an end the era of cavalry—and the end of infantry attacks in line or column as well. The age of massed formations, brightly colored uniforms, and decisive battles had vanished with the saber. Bloch’s black vision had become flesh. While hand-to-hand combat still constituted a necessary reality of warfare, the range at which death was dealt had expanded by an order of magnitude or more from just a century earlier.
The s
econd reality of the new war was that the mobility of armies stretched beyond the area where traditional communications technologies were effective—tanks, for example, still relied on flags for orders, and there was insufficient wire communication to allow officers to stay in contact with forward troops. World War I was the only conflict in human history wherein commanders lacked real links to the battlefield. It has been suggested that this accounted for more loss of life than even the presence of automatic weapons. Previous eras had seen units directed by voice, bugle, drum, or flag. While imprecise and unreliable, those forms of communication nevertheless fit the speed of combat. Massed formations of troops firing muskets could discern whether they were advancing or retreating based on the movement of the flag and the call of the bugle. While generals of armies, such as Marshal Ney at Waterloo, Ulysses S. Grant at Shiloh, or Lord Raglan at Balaclava, attempting to see the big picture from an elevated position, could find themselves dangerously misinformed or might dispatch ill-written orders via runner or rider, the battlefield of 1914 had expanded beyond the capabilities of any person to visually comprehend it. That opened the way for radio—except in 1914, radio communication (especially on the field of combat) was ludicrously unreliable, uneven, and cumbersome. A few grasped the importance of electronic communication: when U.S. general John “Black Jack” Pershing arrived in France in 1917, he immediately ordered the Army Signal Corps to string twenty-two thousand miles of telephone lines to his Chaumont headquarters, leasing an additional twelve thousand miles of line from the French. Pershing also requested four hundred American telephone operators fluent in French to facilitate communication and cooperation between the armies.40 Boasting that the female telephone operators “will do as much to win the war as the men in khaki,” Pershing also understood that the preexisting familiarity with telephone technology made training and the facility with phone communication vastly easier. In America, there were 14 telephones per one hundred people as opposed to only 1.5 telephones per hundred persons in France, meaning that frequently American men or women arrived on the scene with telephone skills.41 However, for most of the war, the men in the trenches were rarely in direct contact with headquarters, and even less so when they left the trenches to attack.
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