The Price of Glory

by Alistair Horne

  The reason the war continued at all, Falkenhayn deduced, was simply because of ‘the enormous hold which England still has on her allies’. And here he singled out the arch-enemy — Britain. ‘The history of the English wars against the Netherlands, Spain, France and Napoleon is being repeated. Germany can expect no mercy….’ Nor could she afford to maintain her defensive posture against Britain:

  Our enemies, thanks to their superiority in men and material, are increasing their resources much more than we are. If that process continues a moment must come when the balance of numbers itself will deprive Germany of all remaining hope.

  But how to strike at this deadly foe? The British homeland itself was beyond the reach of German troops. Victories in Mesopotamia, or even on the Suez Canal, would not prove mortal; while defeats might be disastrous to German prestige among her allies. On the Continent, Falkenhayn ruled out one after another the alternatives for decisive offensive; Flanders, because of ‘the state of the ground’; south of Flanders, because it would require about thirty divisions, which — he claimed — would drain all other fronts of reserves ‘to the last man’. Therefore there was nowhere a crippling blow could be struck directly at Britain. It was ‘certainly distressing’.

  But, argued Falkenhayn with some ingenuity, ‘it can be endured if we realise that for England the campaign on the Continent of Europe with her own troops is at bottom a side-show. Her real weapons here are the French, Russian and Italian Armies.’ If these could be knocked out, Falkenhayn felt this might spell the end of Britain’s ‘lust for destruction’; but, before suggesting how, he first touched on the one weapon that could strike directly at Britain. ‘The definite promises of the naval authorities, that the unrestricted submarine war must force England to yield in the course of the year 1916’ should be pursued to the limit. Even if this should bring the United States into the war, it would be too late.

  Discussing, then, how to deal with ‘England’s tools on the Continent’, Falkenhayn began by contemptuously dismissing Italy, whom his brother-in-arms, Austria-Hungary’s Conrad von Hötzendorf, was itching to dispatch once and for all. Besides, Austrian troops were too badly needed on the Russian front. Turning to Russia, he estimated that ‘even if we cannot perhaps expect a revolution in the grand style, we are entitled to believe that Russia’s internal troubles will compel her to give in within a relatively short period.’ With a good sense that might have benefited Hitler, Falkenhayn commented: ‘an advance on Moscow takes us nowhere.’ The Ukraine was the only worthwhile Russian objective, and this acquisition might bring Rumania in on the Allied side. Then, said the cautious general, communications towards the Ukraine were inadequate, and anyway there were not enough reserves for either operation. Russia would have to be left to stew in her own revolutionary juice.

  Here one meets with the most controversial of all the arguments on German World War strategy. As in Britain, Germany had her ‘Westerners’ and her ‘Easterners’, equally ardent for their respective causes. By the end of 1915, Falkenhayn had become a ‘Westerner’; whereas Hindenburg and Ludendorff and their supporters, backed by the disciples of Schlieffen who believed that to win Germany must concentrate overwhelmingly on one front at a time, saw Russia as the most promising place to exert the superiority with which Germany would enter 1916. After the war the ‘Easterners’ received vindication from Allied strategists ranging from Liddell Hart to Winston Churchill; in the words of the latter, ‘one-half the effort, one-quarter the sacrifice, lavished vainly in the attack on Verdun would have overcome the difficulty of the defective communications in “the rich lands of the Ukraine”.’ Russia might have been knocked out of the war a year earlier; even if she staggered on, with the wheat and raw materials of the Ukraine tucked beneath their belt, the Central Powers could have prolonged the fight undismayed by the Royal Navy’s blockade. But, fortunately for the Allies, it was Falkenhayn, not Ludendorff, who held the reins in 1916.

  Falkenhayn’s lengthy memorandum comes at last to the point:

  There remains only France.… If we succeeded in opening the eyes of her people to the fact that in a military sense they have nothing more to hope for, that breaking point would be reached and England’s best sword knocked out of her hand. To achieve that object the uncertain method of a mass break-through, in any case beyond our means, is unnecessary. We can probably do enough for our purposes with limited resources. Within our reach behind the French sector of the Western front there are objectives for the retention of which the French General Staff would be compelled to throw in every man they have. If they do so the forces of France will bleed to death1 — as there can be no question of a voluntary withdrawal — whether we reach our goal or not. If they do not do so, and we reach our objectives, the moral effect on France will be enormous. For an operation limited to a narrow front, Germany will not be compelled to spend herself so completely….

  The objectives of which I am speaking now are Belfort and Verdun. The considerations urged above apply to both, yet the preference must be given to Verdun.

  Falkenhayn terminated by giving a rather unconvincing explanation for this ‘preference’, in that a potential French offensive out of Verdun could constitute a grave menace to the whole German front; although not even the most half-witted planner at G.Q.G. had ever envisaged concentrating for an attack in a three-quarters encircled salient, where every inch could be raked by German gunfire.

  Falkenhayn’s memorandum made military history. Never through the ages had any great commander or strategist proposed to vanquish an enemy by gradually bleeding him to death. The macabreness, the unpleasantness of its very imagery could only have emerged from, and was symptomatic of, that Great War, where, in their callousness, leaders could regard human lives as mere corpuscles. Whether this unique strategy was right is for events to show.

  Somewhere between December 15th and 22nd, Falkenhayn, accompanied by the faithful Tappen, was received by the Kaiser at Potsdam. The lack of precision about the date of one of the most significant decisions of the war is typical of the mystery surrounding Falkenhayn. In the Kaiser’s memoirs, there is a curious absence of any mention of either Falkenhayn or Verdun, and Tappen remained as uncommunicative as his master, but it is probable the interview took place on the 20th. As to its course, one can only surmise. After the retreat from the Marne, the Supreme Warlord — to the surprise, and probable satisfaction, of his General Staff — had interfered less and less in the conduct of the war. Murmuring (so it was alleged) as the holocaust spread, ‘I never wanted this,’ he had retreated into a dream-world of optimistic illusion, busying himself with irrelevancies. When at his Western operational HQ at Charleville-Mézières, his day was leisurely, consisting of chatting with, and decorating, heroes from the front, and taking frequent walks around nearby Sedan, where he liked to ruminate over the simpler glories of the past. In the evenings, at dinner, members of his staff were detailed off to feed him with the ‘trench anecdotes’ he so delighted in. Highly coloured, these anecdotes had to glorify feats of Teutonic heroism and demonstrate the ridiculousness of the enemy. To the more, proximate realities of war the Kaiser closed his mind, and even the favourite, Falkenhayn, was not safe from reproof when he attempted to dissipate those rosy Hohenzollern illusions that had been the despair of poor Moltke. Increasingly Tappen and he became accustomed to doling out only selected titbits.

  At the Potsdam meeting, one can visualise Falkenhayn, to break the ice, relating the latest ‘trench anecdote’ (though privately he despised them); the Supreme Warlord, astride the saddle-stool that gave him a much-needed sense of command even at his desk, his eyes glowing with approbation as Falkenhayn enlarged upon the memorandum. For Falkenhayn was not court favourite for nothing; experience had shown him just how to wrap up his parcel in paper pleasing to the Kaiser’s eye. The long preamble about ‘England, the arch-enemy’ was highly, and deliberately, exaggerated; in 1915-16, Britain’s relative power in the coalition was in fact obviously far less than in 1939-4
0. France was still very much the dominant partner. But Falkenhayn knew his Kaiser; knew of his antipathy to his English mother, of how he blamed the English ‘quack’ for the death of his adored father, of the real or imaginary slights suffered from debonair Uncle Edward, of how the Royal Navy had seemed to thwart his peacetime plans at every turn. By making it seem that he would be striking a blow against Britain, Falkenhayn was sure of a sympathetic hearing. Furthermore, by selecting Verdun instead of Belfort, his project was sure of assent for reasons near and dear to the Kaiser. For the army that would lead the victorious assault must inevitably be that of his own son, the Crown Prince, who had been battering against the walls of Verdun ever since September 1914. That very month the first signs of hardship and war-weariness had manifest themselves in Germany. None of it was yet very serious; nevertheless, the Social Democrats were growing increasingly troublesome, and domestic reasons alone made it attractive to win a dynastic triumph — especially if, as his Chief of the General Staff promised, it would be such a cheap one.

  On the return journey from Berlin, Falkenhayn’s train was boarded at Montmedy (about an hour’s distance from General Headquarters at Mézières) by a General Schmidt von Knobelsdorf. While the Crown Prince was the nominal commander of the Fifth Army, it was Knobelsdorf, his Chief of Staff, who (in the German Army way of things) made the decisions. It was also Knobelsdorf who, it appears, had originally put the idea of an attack on Verdun in Falkenhayn’s mind, but now for the first time he learned that it was to comprise Germany’s main effort for 1916. When he passed on the news to the Crown Prince, the latter was ecstatic — but with qualifications (though one is entitled to wonder to what extent these emerged ex post facto in his memoirs):

  My long-suppressed eagerness to lead my tried and trusted troops once more to battle against the enemy was now to be gratified. I was filled with happy anticipations; yet I could not regard the future with a confidence altogether serene. I was disquieted by the constantly repeated expression used by the Chief of the General Staff that the French Army must be ‘bled white’ at Verdun, and by a doubt as to whether the fortress could, after all, be taken by such means.

  On the day after Falkenhayn’s return, Christmas Eve, a flood of telegrams began, disguised under the foreboding code name of ‘Gericht’; meaning a tribunal, or judgment, or — more rarely — an execution place. Compared with Allied preparations for the Somme, things moved with astonishing speed. The first of the new army corps earmarked for the attack was transported in greatest secrecy from Valenciennes, and its commander, General von Zwehl, had arrived in his new headquarters by December 27th. By January 27th (the date was selected for auspicious reasons, it being the Kaiser’s birthday), the final orders were published, and the attack scheduled to go in on February 12th.

  In discussions that took place between Falkenhayn and the Fifth Army from December 24th to January 27th, two vital points of discord emerge. Firstly, Knobelsdorf and the Crown Prince wanted to attack simultaneously on both banks of the Meuse. But Falkenhayn insisted that he did not have the forces to spare; repeating again and again that at least one-third of the total available German reserves must be kept in hand to meet the relief counter-offensives the Allies were certain to launch on other parts of the line. The attack would have to be limited to the Right, or Eastern, Bank, and involve a modest enough outlay of only nine divisions. The cautious Falkenhayn’s fears of Allied counter-attacks were by no means shared by other German leaders, perhaps in a better position to judge. On January 7th, General von Kuhl, the Chief of Staff of the Sixth Army which faced Haig, was summoned to Berlin, told of the forthcoming offensive, and warned of the certainty of an impromptu British riposte north of Arras. Falkenhayn added, generously, that after the repulse of this attack, a counter-offensive could be made in mid-February for which eight divisions would be available. Von Kuhl replied in almost so many words that Falkenhayn’s appreciation was nonsense, pointing (correctly) to the complete unpreparedness of the new Kitchener armies. On February 11th, the day before the curtain was due to go up at Verdun, Falkenhayn saw von Kuhl again and repeated that he hoped the expected Allied ripostes, when repulsed, would ‘bring movement into the war once again’. When this was relayed to the Commander of the Sixth Army, Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, he commented that ‘General von Falkenhayn was himself not clear as to what he really wanted, and was waiting for a stroke of luck that would lead to a favourable solution.’ Such was the confusion Falkenhayn created about his own intentions.

  The second point of discord in the German plan, perhaps its most curious feature of all, was what the shrewdest German critic on Verdun, Hermann Wendt, describes as its ‘two conflicting components’. In his directives to the Fifth Army, Falkenhayn spoke only of ‘an offensive in the Meuse area in the direction of Verdun’. But the Crown Prince in his Army Orders set forth the objective as being ‘to capture the fortress of Verdun by precipitate methods’. When questioned by Herr Wendt years later as to whether Falkenhayn really intended to take Verdun in February 1916, Tappen replied emphatically that ‘the seizure of Verdun was never represented as the real aim of the offensive, but it was the destruction of the French forces that we had to find there. If in the process Verdun fell into our hands, so much the better.’ And this tallied completely with the famous memorandum — while the Fifth Army’s design for a Blitzkrieg victory at Verdun ran quite contrary to any gradual, ‘bleeding-white’ process. Once France had lost Verdun, the carrot to lure the French Army into the abattoir would have been removed; the deadly salient itself where the actual bleeding was to take place would have been excised by the Fifth Army’s advance.

  Neither the Crown Prince nor Knobelsdorf had actually seen the original memorandum, yet, one asks at once, why did Falkenhayn approve the Fifth Army’s plans which differed so much from his own? The answer, it seems, was: MORALE. The cold mind of Falkenhayn apparently calculated that troops would fight better if they went in believing that their objective was to seize France’s strongest fortress, rather than knowing that they were only embarking on another long-drawn-out battle of attrition. (Even von Knobelsdorf later asserted that had he originally known what Falkenhayn’s true intentions were, he would never have supported them.) Meanwhile, to make quite certain the Fifth Army did conform to his will, Falkenhayn, while promising the Crown Prince that adequate reserves would be available, ensured that in fact they remained firmly under his control and not under the Fifth Army’s. Two divisions, allegedly because of accommodation shortage, were kept two days’ march away, and a further two in Belgium; none would be close enough to intervene in the battle at the crucial moment. Thus, as Wendt remarks, the supply of these vital reserves was used by Falkenhayn as a ‘lever’, the manipulation of which, and with what fateful consequences, will shortly be seen.

  Seldom in the history of war can the commander of a great army have been so cynically deceived as was the German Crown Prince by Falkenhayn.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  OPERATION GERICHT

  The highest form of generalship is to baulk the enemy’s plans; the next best is to prevent the junction of the enemy’s forces; the next in order is to attack the enemy’s army in the field; the worst policy of all is to besiege walled cities.… In war, the way to avoid what is strong is to strike at what is weak. — SUN TZU (500 BC), The Art of War

  THE German national genius for organisation had never shown itself to better advantage. To supplement the roads across the boggy Woevre that the French, in a rare piece of pre-war foresight, had left as poor as possible, the Fifth Army now built ten new railway lines and some two dozen new stations. Seven spur lines were established in the Forest of Spincourt alone, to provision the heavy guns that would be concealed there. Whole train-loads of steamrollers and road-building equipment were shipped in. Day and night the little petrol locomotives chugged forward on the sixty-centimetre railways to the front, pulling long trains loaded with supplies for the pioneers. For one corps alone, the quartermaster’s lis
t included 6,000 wire-cutters, 17,000 spades, 125,000 hand grenades, a million sandbags, 265,000 kilogrammes of barbed wire, etc., etc. Entire villages behind the front were evacuated to make room for the 140,000 men assembling for the attack. The few remaining French inhabitants watched in helpless horror at the endless lines of men and material, at the great guns bringing death towards their own people. Occasionally they found comfort in sallies of Gallic humour as the stubby-barrelled mortars passed by; whispering ‘ours are longer’.

  It was the artillery that absorbed the maximum German effort. The whole German plan was based on the thesis that their heavy guns would literally blast a deep hole in the French lines, which the infantry would then occupy; with only slight casualties, it was hoped. As successive French reinforcements moved into the Verdun salient to stem the attack, they in their turn would be ground to pieces by the devastating barrages. The concentration of guns and ammunition represented the peak of the German arms’ programme launched in 1914; nothing like it had ever been seen in war before. Falkenhayn’s lavishness in this respect certainly went far towards banishing any doubts lingering in the Crown Prince’s mind as to whether he meant business or not. The area of attack itself would receive the attention of 306 field pieces and 542 heavies, supported by some 152 powerful minethrowers. Additional artillery massed on the flanks brought the grand total to over 1,220; and all for an assault frontage of barely eight miles.

  Day and night the great cannon flowed in, from as far away as Russia and the Balkans. In order of size, there were the mighty 420-millimetre mortars, the ‘Big Berthas’ or ‘Gamma Guns’ — thirteen of them — evil instruments, looking like monstrous Guinness bottles. With a calibre of seventeen inches, and firing a shell standing nearly as high as a man and weighing over a ton, they were the biggest guns ever used in the First War. In order to transport them, the ‘Big Berthas’ broke down into 172 pieces, requiring twelve wagons, and took twenty hours to get into action. When they were fired, the concussion broke the windows of houses for two miles around. They were Herr Krupp’s first great contribution to the war effort, and had been Germany’s ‘secret weapon’ of 1914. With a roaring descent as noisy, prolonged and demoralising as a Stuka, the huge shells had shattered the allegedly impregnable forts at Liège, and the Germans hoped they would do the same at Verdun.