Engines of War

by Christian Wolmar

  Towards the end of the century, an added source of tension was the rush by the major powers – and minor ones, too, such as Belgium and Italy – to establish colonial empires. Railways became the means through which colonial powers could consolidate their dominance over a country. In addition to opening up markets and ensuring sources of supply of minerals and agricultural produce, railways unified political territories4 and made the job of policing an area far easier. Railways, it was recognized, were both the economic lifeline of remote regions and the physical demonstration of military domination by the colonial power. The Russo-Japanese War had grown precisely out of a struggle between competing powers and in Africa the efforts by Rhodes to build a Cape to Cairo railway had almost resulted in a war with the French over their rival plans in the immediate sub-Saharan area. As a historian of the Middle East in the pre-war period suggests, ‘railways having become so important, it was soon merely sufficient for one nation to announce the preliminary plans for a new railway to engender suspicion, hostility and jealousy in other powers’.5

  The collapse of the Ottoman Empire offered a country such as Germany, which had come rather too late to establish direct control of huge swathes of land, the opportunity to carve out an area where it could exert economic domination. Railways were seen as the instrument through which Germany could establish its dominance with the nicely alliterative Berlin-Baghdad railway as the centrepiece. The railway was conceived by the Germans as a way of giving them access to a port on the Persian Gulf – the plan was for the railway eventually to reach Basra – and allowing them to trade with the Far East without having to go through the British-controlled Suez Canal. This was a direct threat to long-standing British interests. The British had been a powerful force in the Gulf since the early nineteenth century and had agreed with Russia spheres of interest in Persia while all the coastal sheikhdoms had treaty relationships with India. The Germans had already financed the Anatolian Railway from the coast through to Ankara, which would be part of a Berlin-Baghdad railway. Significantly, rather than taking the easiest route along the sea, the railway had been built inland, despite the extra cost, since it required the construction of a five-mile-long tunnel in order to shield the line from the guns of the British navy, which patrolled the Mediterranean. While the German involvement in the Anatolian Railway attracted little interest, let alone opposition, from the other Great Powers, once the crumbling Ottoman administration sought to get a concession to extend the line to Baghdad, Britain, France and Russia all put in proposals to build the railway. The Turks eventually chose an Ottoman corporation which was actually a front for German interests which had a majority holding and were funded by the Deutsche Bank. The labour force was to be Turkish and, oddly, it was set out in the contract that all would be required to wear a fez, while the managers would be German, as would all the construction materials, which were to be imported duty-free. Initially, even though the concession effectively precluded the construction of any other lines, the British appeared relaxed about the idea and there was even a lengthy article in The Times lauding the proposal.

  However, as the implications for control of the region and the supply of oil, which was quickly assuming great importance, became apparent, the British, French and Russians all started to object and make interventions to block the construction of the railway. While the Anatolian Railway had been a modest effort, the scope and potential of a Constantinople-Baghdad and Basra line, which would be 1,500 miles long, were clearly on a different scale, comparable to the construction of the Trans-Siberian, which, as we have seen, already had one war to its name. The British, in particular, were obstructive, which was hardly surprising given that the railway threatened their efforts to establish dominance in the Persian Gulf and gave Germany direct access to India and the Far East. Worse, there was a more direct threat to British interests. The concession for the railway allowed the establishment of a German naval base in the Persian Gulf and navigation rights through the Shatt el Arab waterway fed by the railway, which was likened in the press to a 42cm gun pointed at the heart of India. If nothing else, the agreement to build the railway showed the level of German intent in its colonial ambitions: ‘The railway was a manifestation of a dramatic and alarming growth of German economic power. It played a role in the British-German trade rivalry, in their strategic manoeuvrings, and in the German-English press controversies. The railway helped unite the Entente powers against Germany… The railway involved a major conflict of national interests; failure to estimate the sources of this conflict correctly on both German and Entente sides definitely helped bring on World War 1.’6

  The British effectively ensured that the project would be stalled when in 1911 they prevailed upon the cash-strapped Ottoman government not to raise tariffs to finance the railway. Although several sections had been completed, construction was stalled by this manoeuvre, as well as by engineering difficulties, and the line was nowhere near completion in 1914. While superficially the differences over the railway appear to have been resolved following much diplomatic negotiation before the outbreak of the war, there is no doubt that the planned railway contributed to the growing hostility between Britain and Germany. As the historian F. Lee Benns suggests: ‘Although before the outbreak of the war in 1914, understandings were eventually reached regarding the Baghdad railway by Germany, Russia, France and Great Britain, the project had already done much to poison the international atmosphere. Germany had come to believe that the opposition of the entente powers was only part of their general policy of encirclement.’7 Indeed, another author, Morris Jastrow, writing before the end of the war, went further, suggesting that the railway was the major cause of the instability in Europe and consequently the war: ‘No step [apart from the concession to build the railway] ever taken by any European power anywhere has caused so much trouble, given rise to so many complications and has been such a constant menace to the peace of the world… the Baghdad railway will be found to be the largest single contributing factor in bringing on the war because through it more than through any other cause, the mutual distrust among European powers has been nurtured… A railway which as a medium of exchange of merchandise and of ideas ordinarily fulfils the function of binding nations together, in this instance has been the primary cause of pulling them apart.’8

  While Jastrow may be exaggerating the railway’s importance, there is no doubt that it played a significant role in cementing relations between Germany and the Ottoman Empire. Indeed, the immediate signing of an accord between the two nations as soon as war broke out, followed by Turkey joining the war in 1915, gives credibility to the notion that the Germans were buying military support through their investment in the railway. The line itself had only reached the current Turkish-Syrian border by the outbreak of war and was actually not completed until 1940, when the first train ran between Istanbul and Baghdad using British locomotives. The line, however, was to play a significant part in the Middle East theatre of the Second World War. By contrast, the Hejaz Railway from Damascus to Medina was completed and proved much more successful, mainly because a railway to assist the hajj made it deeply attractive to devout Muslims, and, as we shall see in Chapter Eight, was the focus of a guerrilla campaign during the First World War by Arabs at the instigation of T. E. Lawrence.

  Back in Europe the railways were becoming the centrepiece of plans to mobilize for war. Much effort was expended by all sides – except, for the most part, the British – on schemes to use the railways to the best effect in the early stages of a conflict. Indeed, the railways, and specifically the rigidity of railway timetables, have been blamed for the timing – and by some for the very fact – of the outbreak of war, but, as we shall see below, this is based on flimsy evidence. The truth is more complex and perhaps more mundane. The railways were essential to the way the war was waged and were an integral part of preparations. In Germany, the Chancellor, Bismarck, expended considerable energy after the 1870-71 war in trying to gain state control of the railways as h
e was convinced that only nationalization would enable the military to control them in the event of war. The constitution of the new Kaiserreich created as a result of the war gave the state power over the railways ‘in the interest of national defence and general transportation’ and a central government railway organization was created. The problem for Bismarck was that the structure of the new Germany as a federal country meant that much power remained with the states, and they were reluctant to bow to Prussian pressure over anything very much, let alone their precious railways. In the decade following unification, Bismarck tried desperately to use this clause in the constitution to impose the rule of central government – essentially Prussia – over the railways of the other states. However, as Allan Mitchell concludes in his book on French and German railways of the period, ‘throughout the 1870s, Bismarck actively sought to create a uniform national railway system for the new Reich – and he failed’.9

  Eventually, at the end of the decade, Bismarck managed to push through legislation in the Prussian parliament to empower the state to purchase private rail companies throughout northern Germany, effectively bringing much of the system under state control. That gave him the ability to direct investment to a large section of the railways in the north and the mileage of Prussia’s railways consequently increased by 50 per cent between 1870 and 1885, but in the south he still had to rely on the goodwill of individual states to provide the capacity which would be needed for military purposes. In the 1890s, officers from the central railway administration in Berlin began covertly to inspect railway installations in the states to assess their military readiness, a measure of the Prussians’ fear that their war mobilization would be disrupted by the unwillingness of the states’ railways to accept control from Berlin. While Bismarck’s central railway administration managed to ensure that the states applied national standards to the operation of their railways, such as the rule that the stationmaster should blow two long blasts of his whistle to indicate the train could depart, and more importantly that technical requirements for signalling and braking systems were unified throughout Germany, he had great difficulty persuading them to double the tracks on single lines where there was no obvious commercial imperative. The southern states, Bavaria, Baden and Württemberg, understandably felt that if Berlin wanted these extra tracks for military purposes, the federal government should pay. Eventually a compromise was reached whereby most of the cost of the investment – ranging from 75 per cent in Bavaria to 95 per cent in the vicinity of the French border – fell on the Reich. However, the development of a strategy of invading Belgium on the way to France reduced the need to rely on these railways.

  This was not a trivial matter. It is difficult to overstate the importance of the railways in the Bismarckian view of Germany’s place in the world. Germany saw itself as the powerful peacemaker of Europe, maintaining that its superiority was necessary to prevent the outbreak of wars. That required being able to resist attacks from either side, and, as Mitchell puts it, ‘only the railways could render German aspirations possible. Only they could connect the two fronts and bring the weight of the Reich’s military machine victoriously to bear.’10 Interestingly, while generally France was dismissed as a competing power by Germany’s rulers, who suggested it was in decline both militarily and demographically, the military would simultaneously use the spectre of French strength and resilience as an argument to pour ever-increasing resources into strengthening railway lines leading to France.

  Throughout the period between the 1870 and 1914 wars, the German military asked repeatedly for more money to pay for new railway bridges and tracks. Apart from the construction of battleships, investing in the railways, particularly the construction of more bridges over the Rhine, took precedence in military thinking over all other spending and the military ensured that the investment was carried out in line with their needs. For example, large junctions were laid out to take extra traffic and through-stations replaced termini where trains had to reverse out to facilitate the flow of supplies. Stations close to the border were, as the French secret service had noticed, expanded with huge sidings and extended platforms, far in excess of any conceivable need in peacetime, and operating methods were slowly standardized so that the whole railway system could be put on a war footing at short notice. Military, rather than commercial, imperatives were even allowed to intrude on operating policies such as electrification. By the turn of the century, electric railways were already becoming recognized as more efficient and faster, but the German military was adamantly opposed to the introduction of electrification. Apart from the cost – installing electric equipment is expensive, though it saves money in the long run as the trains are cheaper to run – the military was worried about the difficulty of co-ordinating electric and steam operations in wartime on a partly electrified network and, in particular, they feared that the system would be far more vulnerable since an attack on the electricity supply could result in all trains on the line being stopped. Therefore any lines that were electrified had to be capable of reverting to steam use in the event of war. Another military requirement was for the Prussian railways to build their locomotives with a demountable top section that could be removed when the engine ran on French tracks. This was the result of a series of embarrassing and damaging episodes during the Franco-Prussian War (see Chapter Four), when the chimneys of Prussian locomotives venturing onto French tracks for the first time smashed into bridges on French railways because they were lower than their Prussian counterparts, which the military authorities did not want repeated. Rather suspiciously, this adaptation continued to be a requirement of German locomotive design long after the end of the war.

  On the personnel level, the German military also ensured that in wartime they would establish direct control over the railways. Peacetime railway administration was in the hands of regional directorates to which were attached military officers (Bevollmächtigten) who would take over in case of war. However, whether these officers would assume command during the preparations for war or only when it was officially declared was not made clear.

  The railways, incidentally, had another side effect on military strategy: they also rebalanced the equation between the importance of navies and land forces. Since the invention of the ocean-going ship in the middle of the fifteenth century, seaways had become much more flexible carriers of trade and projectors of military power than their land-based competitors. But the coming of the railways changed this fundamentally, as demonstrated by the Russo-Japanese War conducted at the end of a long railway line and supplied from distant parts, demonstrating that far-off armies were no longer dependent on the vagaries of sea transport by the navy. Armies, therefore, assumed greater importance than the senior service, and this was reflected in military planning, with the massive increase in the size of the fighting forces. This, in turn, placed yet more burden on the railways.

  As the new century dawned, Germany’s military plans became more and more sophisticated and at their core was the notion of a rapid mobilization through the railways. German military intentions had first been set out by Alfred von Schlieffen, the chief of staff, in 1899 and were revised annually in a lengthy process involving both the military and the railway authorities. The key idea was to prepare a scheme whereby Germany could win a war waged on two fronts – against France in the west and Russia in the east. It was assumed that since Russia would take a long time to mobilize, and did not have sufficient railways to deliver large numbers of troops to its western border quickly enough, France had to be overcome before the Russians were in a position to attack. The idea was that once victory had been achieved in the west, troops could be transferred quickly to the Russian front.

  Schlieffen was obsessed by the strategy of Hannibal at the battle of Cannae, where he defeated the Roman army by launching an attack in 216 BC around the enemy’s flanks and annihilating them from the rear. Unfortunately for Schlieffen, he knew that he would not be able to muster sufficient forces to envelop the French from b
oth sides – and in any case the common border with Lorraine was well protected by fortresses and hills. Therefore he envisaged an attack around the northern flank through Belgium at the cost of perhaps ceding some territory, temporarily, to the French in the south as he anticipated that they would concentrate forces there in their anxiety to reclaim Lorraine. This would suck their resources into an area which was easier for the Germans to defend with relatively few troops because of the hilly topography. The fact that the plan violated Belgian neutrality, which was protected by treaties with, amongst others, Britain, was completely ignored by Schlieffen. He calculated, wrongly as it turned out, that the treaty was merely a piece of paper which the British would happily quietly forget about. The plan became grander with every annual iteration and by the start of 1906, when Schlieffen was replaced by the younger Moltke (the nephew of the elder Moltke and rather burdened by his uncle’s reputation), it envisaged a huge enveloping right-wing sweep from Liège to Brussels, before turning southward to march through Flanders and Paris. Liège was the key as it was a major railway junction for the lines stretching into France. It was crucial to the success of the plan, therefore, that it was taken quickly before the Belgians could mount sufficient resistance to protect it for any length of time. After Liège, the whole of northern Belgium would open up so that the German lines would stretch so far to the right that the last man would, Schlieffen suggested, ‘brush the Channel with his sleeve’.11 Moltke scrapped the idea of invading the equally neutral Netherlands as well as Belgium and reduced the size of the sweep, recognizing that those on the right would have to march a far longer distance than the troops further south, but otherwise the Schlieffen Plan remained at the core of German military strategy for the early stages of the war, even though Schlieffen himself died the year before it started.