by Nick Lloyd
The only thing that could have justified Lloyd George’s actions at Calais would have been the complete and runaway success of Nivelle’s main attack. Its lamentable failure, however, left him exposed and weakened, and both Robertson and Haig never forgot Lloyd George’s perfidy. ‘Sir Douglas Haig had come out on top in this fight between the two chiefs’, wrote the Prime Minister’s secretary, Frances Stevenson, ‘and I fear David will have to be very careful in future as to his backings of the French against the English.’17 Even more galling for the Prime Minister were the plaudits that Haig was now receiving for his supporting operation at Arras, which had begun in spectacular fashion on 9 April. That morning the Canadian Corps stormed Vimy Ridge, pushing through sleet and hail to capture one of the toughest defensive positions on the Western Front. Elsewhere, General Sir Edmund Allenby’s Third Army had also succeeded in driving the enemy from its positions east of Arras, delivering a smashing blow to the German Sixth Army and causing a mini-crisis at the German High Command.
Arras may have been a promising beginning, but the collapse of General Nivelle’s main offensive left the Allies at a strategic dead-end, full of gloom; and only partially lightened by the US declaration of war on Germany on 6 April. If anything the situation seemed bleaker than it had been in the winter; at least then Allied hearts had been warmed by the flickering hope that Nivelle had something magical up his sleeve. Now, with the French commander exposed as a charlatan, a growing sense of war-weariness and despair began to take hold in the Allied capitals. In London, Lloyd George sensed a turning point had arrived. Since August 1914, Britain’s strategy to defeat the Central Powers had been based upon four pillars: the strength of the Russian Army; the effectiveness of the French Army; British naval superiority; and her position as a financial powerhouse. By the spring of 1917, one by one, these pillars were crumbling. Russia’s armed forces had been crippled by horrific casualties, high rates of desertion, and endemic indiscipline for months, while unrest in St Petersburg had finally forced the abdication of the Tsar, Emperor Nicholas II, on 8 March.18 Although it was hoped that the new provisional government would rule more effectively, it only marked another stage in the progressive decline of Russia’s war effort. Elsewhere, Britain’s credit was running out and, most worrying of all, the Royal Navy was struggling to contain a new offensive by Germany’s U-boats that threatened to cut her shipping lifelines.19
On 1 May, Lloyd George chaired a meeting of the Imperial War Cabinet and the Minister for Defence, the former Boer commander, General Jan Smuts, delivered a report on ‘the general and military situation’. While having ‘no confidence’ that a breakthrough on the Western Front could be achieved ‘on any large scale’ in the near future, Smuts nevertheless felt that something must be done. If the French adopted Pétain’s policy of ‘active defence’, then Britain’s forces should be concentrated in the north for a thrust towards Zeebrugge and Ostend. ‘I see more advantages in an offensive intended to recover the Belgian coast and deprive the enemy of two advanced submarine bases, than in the present offensive’, he noted. Although this would undoubtedly present a number of difficulties, it was preferable to operations designed simply to liberate more French territory. Whatever decision was taken, Smuts noted, the time had surely come for a thorough review of Britain’s strategic situation, military and naval, in order to give her commanders the best chance of achieving victory.20
Robertson also circulated his own document at the meeting, which commented upon some of the points Smuts had raised. The CIGS was convinced there was only one course to follow: ‘continuing the battle we and the French have started’. He recognized that their allies might be unwilling to pursue heavy attacks for the time being, but warned the Cabinet of the dangers of inaction: namely that there was a possibility Germany would use any breathing space to crush either Russia or Italy. In any case, was it certain ‘that our own shipping will hold out for another year, and that the French and British peoples will stand the strain of a year of inactivity while they have to endure continually increasing privations?’ Robertson’s opinion was that doing nothing was too risky. Therefore, they must bring as much pressure as possible to bear on the French to keep going, but, if not, they should insist on them taking over more of the front and then dusting off preparations for an attack in Belgium. To go on to the defensive would, in Robertson’s cold words, ‘look very much like our defeat’.21
Lloyd George took up his customary position and argued against any more offensives on the Western Front for the time being. He felt that Pétain’s outlook–of a strategic defensive and biding their time until the Americans arrived–should not be dismissed out of hand. Furthermore, if the British attacked alone, they would be faced with the ‘great bulk’ of the German reserves and might exhaust their own manpower without achieving anything substantial. In any case, the problems with shipping, and the urgent need to float more tonnage, meant that the Prime Minister was seriously considering withdrawing men from the Army to support the shipbuilding industry, which was ‘our weakest flank’. Yet, much to Lloyd George’s frustration, the Cabinet agreed with their military advisers that inactivity was unacceptable. Should the French authorities not be moved by their appeal to continue the offensive, then the British ‘should insist on our entire freedom of action and on the French Army reoccupying the trenches recently taken over by the British forces’. What would happen after that remained unclear. The BEF would attack, but where and how remained an open question.22
When Lloyd George travelled to Paris for a meeting of alliance leaders three days later, he ran into the same strategic impasse. Robertson pressed for a continuation of the offensive on the Western Front, albeit aimed at ‘wearing down and exhausting the enemy’s resistance’ rather than trying to break through the line. The French Premier, Alexandre Ribot, concurred with Robertson’s views and stated that the French Army would maintain its offensive with its full power. Nevertheless, these operations would not be undertaken as part of a ‘strategy of the rupture’, but would be ‘limited’ and intended to produce ‘the minimum of loss’, while conserving her resources.23 Nivelle did attend the conference, but he was overshadowed by the presence of Pétain, whose strategic realism would now come to define the French war effort. The breakthrough, if it was ever possible, had now been confined to history.
In Lloyd George’s mind then, the situation was wholly unsatisfactory. His legendary persuasive skills, his much-touted Welsh charm, no longer seemed to work. Steering his commanders and Cabinet colleagues away from France had proved far more difficult than he had anticipated and, once again, they had shown themselves irresistibly drawn to the Western Front. Much to his chagrin, his ‘Italian venture’ never got off the ground; even the Italians were lukewarm towards Lloyd George’s overtures. They feared attacking on their own–and hence attracting German reserves–and knew that any loan of heavy guns (which were regularly offered) would only be a temporary measure.24 At Paris, therefore, Lloyd George had little choice but to execute a tactical retreat. It was agreed to continue attacking ‘relentlessly’ on the Western Front, but with ‘limited objectives, while making the fullest use of our artillery’. The ‘time and place’ for these operations ‘must be left to the responsible Generals’–a resolution that the Prime Minister would later come to regret. Haig, for his part, was delighted. ‘Mr Lloyd George made two excellent speeches in which he stated that he had no pretensions to be a strategist, that he left that to his military advisers, that I as C-in-C of the British Forces in France, had full power to attack where and when I thought best.’25 For now it seemed undeniable: the Welsh ‘wizard’ had run out of spells.
Three days before Lloyd George had become Prime Minister, the Romanian capital of Bucharest fell to troops of the German Ninth Army. At the Supreme Command in Pless in Silesia, the Chief of the General Staff, Paul von Hindenburg, heard the news with undisguised delight. That evening he finished his report on the military situation with the words, ‘A splendid day.’ He step
ped outside into the winter snow to hear church bells pealing out news of the great victory. ‘For a long time I had been thinking of nothing else but the wonderful achievements of our brave army and hoping that these feats would bring us nearer to the conclusion of the terrible struggle and its great sacrifices’, he wrote. In less than four months, Romania, which had declared war on Germany and her allies in August 1916, had been overrun. When an aide informed him that the remnants of the Romanian Army were now fleeing northwards towards Russia, an old rhyme came to mind: ‘If anyone wants a disastrous war, then let him pick a quarrel with the Germans.’26
Hindenburg could be forgiven for his hubris on that winter night, as news came in of yet another triumph for the Central Powers. Everywhere their arms were undefeated. The invasion of northern France may not have reached Paris, but everywhere else, in the east and in the Balkans, Germany’s military might had delivered successive blows against their enemies: Russia, Romania, Serbia and Italy; carving out a vast new empire in the process. The following evening OHL hosted a victory celebration in honour of Field Marshal August von Mackensen, the Army Group commander who had led the campaign. Kaiser Wilhelm II drank his health and toasted the victorious Army in Romania, whispering to an aide that ‘since Mackensen already possessed every honour a military man could be awarded, the next battle cruiser should be named after him’.27 That night, after all that had passed, it seemed possible to think that victory was only months away.
Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, the 69-year-old Chief of the General Staff of the German Field Army, had been appointed after the downfall of his predecessor, Erich von Falkenhayn, in August 1916. He was assisted by his close friend and ally, Erich Ludendorff, who took the title of First Quartermaster-General (although he was in reality more a Chief of Staff). The relationship between Hindenburg and his chief lieutenant was a kind of ‘military marriage’, with both men bringing separate, but essential, qualities to their roles. As the Kaiser’s son, Crown Prince Wilhelm, once remarked, ‘Never have I seen any other two men of such different character furnish the exact complement of one another so as to form one single entity as did these two.’ Hindenburg was the unflappable military giant, while Ludendorff was his younger foil, a uniquely gifted and energetic soldier who, it was said, had been Alfred von Schlieffen’s favourite pupil at the Berlin Kriegsakademie before the war. For the Crown Prince, Ludendorff was the personification ‘of steely energy and keenly sharpened intellect… a Prussian leader of the traditional glorious type in the best sense of the term’.28 It was up to these men to ensure that Germany was able, not just to continue the war, but to win it.
Despite the euphoria that swept the German High Command in the aftermath of the fall of Romania, this latest battlefield triumph could not mask the growing strain the war was placing on Germany and her allies, particularly the Dual Monarchy of Austria–Hungary, whose quarrel with Serbia had plunged Europe into war in 1914. War-weariness and growing sectarian antagonism were now threatening the survival of the empire. The Emperor Franz Joseph–the man who had led his country to war–passed away on 21 November 1916, bringing his grandnephew, the 29-year-old Karl, to the throne. Karl had seen for himself Austria’s declining military power and lacked the fight of the old emperor. He was convinced that if the war continued it would mean the final and irrevocable destruction of the House of Hapsburg. He tried his best to detach the empire from the suffocating German embrace, sending intermediaries to President Poincaré of France in the spring of 1917, but this only made the German grip tighter than ever.29 Increasingly Austria–Hungary would find itself, not an equal and valued ally of Imperial Germany, but a vassal state with a gun pointed straight at its head.
The alliance’s centre of gravity remained the German Army. It was the powerhouse of the Central Powers; the ultimate guarantor of victory and of Austria–Hungary’s continuance in the war. Yet the field army, which had fought so tenaciously throughout the brutal summer of 1916, at Verdun and the Somme, was exhausted. According to the German Official History, there were ‘clear signs of reduced resistance’ on the Western Front in the closing months of the year. ‘The deterioration of the Army–that the enemy was clearly aiming at–had reached a not unperilous degree’, which it blamed on the ‘quite extraordinarily increased force’ of the Allies, particularly the impact of their artillery.30 Heavy losses had bitten deep into the strength of many divisions, and morale had been battered by the effect of ceaseless, draining combat in the west. The Somme alone had cost the Army up to 500,000 casualties.31 At the end of September 1916, Army Group Crown Prince Rupprecht issued a situation report warning of the deterioration that ‘Somme fighting’ was having on the Army. ‘It cannot be denied that our infantry is not the same as earlier’, it reported. ‘After heavy losses, the fought-out divisions are barely refreshed. They are forced to redeploy to another sector immediately without a day of rest.’32
In spite of their best instincts, by the winter of 1916–17 both Hindenburg and Ludendorff recognized that during the coming year the German Army in France, the Westheer, would be obliged to stand on the defensive. Such a decision was not taken lightly–Hindenburg called it a ‘dreadful disappointment’–but nevertheless both commanders felt it was absolutely necessary to adopt a kind of ‘strategic stand-to’ on the Western Front, while rebuilding their reserves and stockpiling shells and guns through an intensified programme of industrial rearmament.33 Yet withdrawing from exposed positions and ‘combing out’ more men from industry could only ever be a temporary solution. While the German Army in the west would stand on the defensive in 1917, it had not given up hope of final victory. At a Crown Council meeting at OHL on 9 January 1917, the German Naval Staff declared that if Germany were to adopt unrestricted submarine warfare, then England could be defeated within 4–6 months. When the Kaiser received a telegram from his attaché in Washington, warning that America would declare war on Germany if she persisted in the sinkings, he was unimpressed, scrawling, ‘I do not care!’ in the margins.34
The decision to go for broke at sea had not been an easy one. Indeed, nothing seemed to divide the Kaiser’s military and civilian advisers more than the submarine question. The Imperial Chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, remained the main sceptic of unrestricted sinkings, arguing consistently that such a policy was too risky and was ‘the last card’ Germany could play.35 The Kaiser, as befitted his notoriously fragile personality, was torn: fearful of the ignominy that would fall on his house should his navy sink dozens of passenger liners, yet aware that he must be seen to do whatever was necessary to win the war. When, in the glowing aftermath of the fall of Bucharest, Hindenburg demanded that the question of unrestricted submarine warfare be reopened, the Kaiser agreed. To mollify Bethmann Hollweg, he sanctioned one more effort to make peace (or at least to present Germany’s case to the world) and on 12 December the Chancellor issued a note to ‘all hostile powers’ calling upon them to enter peace negotiations. Recent events have given proof, it stated, of the ‘indestructible strength’ of Germany and her allies, which also demonstrated ‘that a continuation of the war can not break their resisting power’. They did not seek to ‘crush or annihilate their enemies’, but ‘conscious of their military and economic strength’ and desirous ‘to stem the flood of blood and to bring the horrors of war to an end’, the four powers–Germany, Austria–Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey–now wanted negotiations.36
The Allied reaction to these developments was, as might have been expected, resolutely unimpressed. The French President, Aristide Briand, poured cold water on the German note in a speech to the Chamber of Deputies on 13 December. ‘It is after proclaiming her victory on every front that Germany, feeling that she can not win, throws out to us certain phrases about which I can not refrain from making a few remarks.’ No proposals had yet been made, and while he could not give an official response until her allies had been fully consulted, he wished to warn the chamber ‘against this possible poisoning of our country’.37 While t
he Allies were careful not to reject Bethmann Hollweg’s note out of hand–particularly after President Woodrow Wilson had called on all sides to make their peace terms public–their response (issued on 29 December) was dismissive of the German note. It ‘appears less as an offer of peace than as a manoeuvre of war’ and there could be no peace until ‘the reparation of violated rights and liberties, the acknowledgement of the principle of nationalities and of the free existence of small States’ was assured. With that the German note fizzled out.38
The failure of the Chancellor’s efforts left the way clear for the renewed U-boat campaign, which began on 1 February. Hopes were high that it would fulfil the extravagant aims of the German High Command and coerce Britain into ending the war. Over 570,000 tons of British, Allied and neutral shipping were sunk in March, leaving the Admiralty in London to issue a stark warning that things would probably get worse, particularly as intelligence predicted ‘the certainty of an increase, month by month, in the number of hostile submarines’.39 The mood at OHL briefly soared at the apparent triumph of the U-boats. Ludendorff was convinced that they only had to keep up the pressure to yield potentially decisive results. Coming at a time when the Central Powers were virtually unopposed in the east, as Russia began her descent into revolution and, eventually, Bolshevism, the spring of 1917 seemed ripe with possibilities. When the Kaiser visited General Headquarters on 30 April, he was, according to an aide, in ‘a jubilant mood’. ‘He insists that if the English now came forward with peace proposals he would reject them out of hand. They must be made to grovel.’40