by Hew Strachan
Joffre’s most important task was to revise France’s war plan. The increases to Germany’s active army of 1912 and 1913 confirmed the 3ème bureau in its belief that Germany did not intend to use its reservists from the outset of the campaign. Furthermore, France’s response, the three-year service law of 1913, helped ease its own manpower problems. A total of twenty-eight annual classes were embraced by the new law, three years of active service, eleven in the reserve, and fourteen in the territorials. In 1914 the active army had three classes in service, 1911, 1912, and 1913, and was thus stronger by 200,000 men. In addition, with the prospect of a better-trained army and a proportionately larger regular component, the army’s officers felt happier about the incorporation of reservists. In 1914, of a total of 3.6 million men mobilized, 2.9 million were reservists and territorials aged between 24 and 48. The 1913 law provided for the maximum strength of an infantry company to rise to 250 men. In addition, Joffre made arrangements for the surplus reserve manpower of one region to be made available to other regions with deficiencies. Thus, in December 1913 a total of 367,500 of the younger reserve classes was available for inclusion in the active army. Joffre’s war plans incorporated a reserve regiment in each active division for duties in the rear, and increased the number of reserve divisions to be deployed from twenty-two to twenty-five. The latter, formed into groups, were positioned so as to guard the flanks and rear of the active armies.36
Although Joffre was anxious not to forfeit quality in his pursuit of quantity, the three-year law reflected France’s bias towards a manpower-intensive solution to the problems of its security. Despite—or perhaps because of—the fact that its falling population in relation to that of Germany generated a sense of vulnerability, it sought to raise proportionately larger armies than its neighbour rather than invest in more firepower. In 1911 it conscripted 83 per cent of its available manpower compared to Germany’s 53 per cent. Certainly, equipment rose as a proportion of the Ministry of War’s expenditure between 1874 and 1913—from 3.5 per cent in 1874–84 to 4.5 per cent in 1905–13 (and 5.53 per cent between 1909 and 1913). Nonetheless, the French calculated that the Germans had spent twice as much as they had on artillery between 1898 and 1912. In 1913 the French had 4.8 field guns per thousand men to the Germans 5.76, and 4.93 field howitzers to the Germans 6.6.37
The three-year law was undoubtedly a boost to professional self-confidence, and helped convince the French army that it could also execute a tactical offensive. Nonetheless, it is only in the light of the confusion between tactics and strategy generated by Grandmaison and others that the three-year law can be blamed for the more offensive bias of France’s new plan, plan XVII.
The shape of the plan was determined primarily by strategic considerations. Its tendency to move away from the idea of defence and then counter-attack was no doubt a reflection of the prevailing mentality in the 3ème bureau. But, more importantly, it was the consequence, first of the Franco-Russian military convention and second of French uncertainties with regard to German intentions. By 1913 French pressure on Russia to begin operations against Germany as soon as possible, so as to divide the attentions of the German army, had won Russia’s agreement to do so by the fifteenth day of mobilization. It behoved France to reciprocate. Logically, given the uncertainty as to whether Germany’s main thrust would come through Belgium or through Lorraine, the case for a delay before an attack remained strong. Joffre’s plan did not dispute that: but in the interests both of protecting French territory from invasion and of disrupting the Germans’ own plan, that delay could not be long.
Joffre’s own inclination, as Schlieffen had expected, was to consider the possibility of attacking Germany through Belgium. The difficulties of operating in the Ardennes and in Lorraine contrasted with the suitability of Belgium’s terrain. In addition, operations in this quarter would capitalize on British support because of their proximity to the Channel ports. But such a plan assumed that France, not Germany, would be the first to breach Belgian neutrality. Belgium itself, having looked more sympathetically on the Entente in the winter of 1911–12, then rebuffed efforts by the British and the French to involve it more closely in their military operations. In February 1912 Poincaré, anxious not to compromise the chances of a British commitment, forbade further consideration of the Belgian option. On 30 July 1914 he was to underline the point by ordering French troops to withdraw 10 kilometres from the Belgian border. France was obliged to stay on the defensive in the north. Therefore, Joffre’s offensive intentions had no option but to focus on the two passages left clear on the eastern frontier—either north of the line Verdun-Metz and into the Ardennes, or between Toul and the Vosges mountains into Lorraine.38
MAP 5. BRUSSELS TO THE RHINE
But plan XVII was not primarily a plan to launch offensive operations. It was a plan for the mobilization, concentration, and deployment of the French armies. France’s mobilization in 1870 had been chaotic. By January 1912 the French general staff reckoned that its army could be mobilized as quickly as that of Germany. Partly this was because France was not constricted, as Germany was, by the bottleneck of the Rhine bridges; but it was also a reflection of railway building, which had turned a German advantage in strategic lines of nine to four in 1870 to a French lead of sixteen to thirteen. France’s failure to maximize the potential of technology as a force multiplier at the tactical level was therefore not reproduced at the strategic. The same troops could be used successively in different locations. The railways gave the French army an operational flexibility which exploited the doctrinal emphasis on security, advance guards, and the encounter battle: Joffre could plan to deploy to east or north, leaving the final decision until the axis of the German advance was manifest.39 Schlieffen, at least in retirement, had tried to plot the course of Germany’s advance right through to its victorious denouement; Joffre was more realistic. He did not know whether the main German weight would come in Belgium or Lorraine: the indications were that there would be significant troop concentrations in both. By 1914 the 2eme bureau was predicting that Germany would use its reserves from the outset of the war. Joffre’s neglect of this conclusion, and his consequent acceptance of the 3eme bureau’s assessment that the Germans would come south of the Meuse and the Sambre, was only in part a consequence of the deep division between the two departments. The 2eme bureau itself reckoned that the Germans would allocate up to twenty-two divisions to their eastern frontier, when in the event—for all their fears of Russia—they sent only nine: therefore French intelligence underestimated the number of German divisions in the west, despite its inclusion of reservists in the reckoning. Joffre’s views on German intentions were also a consequence of his calculations about Liege. If the Germans were determined to avoid the fortifications of Lorraine, why should they take on those of Liege and Namur, both recently modernized and likely to delay the German advance? If they passed north and south of the Belgian forts they would divide their armies. The French had gained possession of a map exercise conducted by the German general staff early in 1905: in it the German right wing had not extended north of Namur, and so the French could construe German plans to besiege the Belgian forts as a means to contain the Belgian army rather than to extend the depth of the envelopment.40 Joffre concluded that the probability was that the Germans would breach Belgian neutrality but would do so south of Namur, in the direction of Mézières. They would also attack in Lorraine, possibly with Verdun, Nancy, and St Dié as objectives.
Further fortification was one possible response to this scenario. Although out of fashion, it was not an option which Joffre dismissed. He was, after all, an engineer, and while director of his service between 1904 and 1906 had exploited the first Moroccan crisis and the example of the siege of Port Arthur to secure further funds for upgrading the defences of Lorraine. After 1911 Joffre planned field fortifications for all the points of vulnerability which the general staff’s operational calculations revealed—the Trouée de Charmes north of Épinal, the Grand Cour
onné de Nancy, the heights of the Meuse screening Toul and Verdun, and the possible bridgeheads of Sedan and Mézières. But finance and politics, as much as doctrine, militated against the adoption of the defensive as operational method. The 1914 army law included provision for 231.3 million francs to be spent over seven years on fortification, but it was not approved until 15 July, and only the works at the Grand Couronné de Nancy had been taken in hand by the outbreak of war. As significant was the continuing focus in these plans on France’s eastern frontier. To the north, the obsolescence of the works at Maubeuge and Lille meant that the intention in 1914 was to declassify the former and abandon the latter. France’s inability to plan for its northern defences imposed a requirement for flexibility and manoeuvrability.
This, then, was the task of plan XVII, which became effective in May 1914. It represented a bigger shift to counteracting any threat from Belgium than had plan XVI. However, like plan XVI it remained incremental rather than revisionist, and thus still failed to appreciate the extent of the German manoeuvre. In the circumstances, given the conflicting intelligence and the available manpower, Joffre distributed France’s forces as sensibly as was possible. Ten corps (the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd armies) were posted on the frontier of Alsace-Lorraine, between Épinal and Verdun. Five corps (the 5th army) covered the Belgian frontier from Montmedy through Sedan to Mézières. Six corps (the 4th army) were concentrated behind Verdun, ready to go east or north as circumstances demanded. Joffre reckoned that if he attacked from this quarter, in a direction between Thionville and Metz, he could threaten the southern flank (and the lines of communication) of a German attack in Belgium or the northern flank of a German attack in Lorraine. The extent of the front, especially assuming the Germans did not use their reservists at the outset, meant that they had to be weak somewhere.
MAP 6. THE VOSGES
Formally speaking, plan XVII—like its predecessors—made no provision for the deployment of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). In practice, links between the two armies and their staffs became increasingly close in the three or four years immediately preceding the outbreak of war. Russia’s formal commitment produced annual but remarkably limited talks;41 Britain’s lack of commitment did not inhibit intimate links and detailed planning. Joffre was open with the British. He hoped that their professional force of up to six divisions could be added to the French left, opposite the Belgian frontier in the area of Maubeuge. This was what the French had been told they could expect in the middle of the second Moroccan crisis by Britain’s director of military operations Henry Wilson. But Wilson’s personal Francophilia, forged by his contacts with Foch when both commanded their respective staff colleges, led him into statements unjustified not only in political terms but even by the state of the army’s own planning. For all Wilson’s own views, and for all that they were in fact fulfilled, British strategy in the event of war remained more open than its creeping continentalism suggested. On 2 August 1914 most of Asquith’s cabinet still believed that Britain was embarking on a naval war.
In part this was a reflection of the power of continuity. Russia had been a major threat to Britain for far longer than Germany, and Russia could not easily be hit by major land operations. The army’s task in the event of war with Russia would be defensive. Central Asia remained the BEF’s most likely deployment area until 1911, despite the Anglo-Russian convention of 1907. The scheme adopted in the latter year, and unrevised thereafter, was to send 100,000 men to defend India. Offensive options in war with Russia would be exercised through naval and financial pressure. This became Britain’s continental strategy: what was appropriate for Russia would be appropriate for war with any European power.42
Henry Wilson clearly believed that the meeting of the Committee of Imperial Defence on 23 August 1911 had broken this continuity. Apparently it had endorsed the belief of the army’s general staff that war in Europe would require it to put troops onto the continent. But that was not a unanimous conclusion. The committee’s secretary Maurice Hankey, a Royal Marine and a navalist, wrote the next day to Fisher to say that: ‘The great point is that no decision was arrived at—this means, in my opinion, defeat of our opponents.’ The committee may have been impressed by Henry Wilson’s exposition, but it did not follow that it endorsed his underlying premiss.43
What Wilson did get out of the 1911 meeting was a firm rejection of amphibious warfare. The idea that Germany could be attacked through raids on its colonies, scouted in 1902, had gone by 1905–6. Fisher’s navy was not interested in devoting its energies to servicing the army in far-flung corners of the world. But it was keen on schemes for landings on the Baltic coast, on Heligoland, and at the estuaries of the Ems and Elbe rivers. The army’s opposition to such proposals was already clear by 1908–9, but they still figured in the navy’s strategy on 23 August 1911. The general staff argued—persuasively—that operations against the German coastline would bring pressure to bear too late and too slowly to be of much influence in the event of a German invasion of France.44
What the navy’s ill-developed Baltic schemes highlighted for the Committee of Imperial Defence was the poverty of the navy’s argument when compared with that of the army. Hence, the principal conclusion on 23 August 1911 was the need to establish a naval war staff. Pending the latter’s evolution, the Committee of Imperial Defence itself partly filled the gap. Between 1911 and 1914—largely through Hankey’s efforts—it became the focus for thinking on economic warfare and blockade. Its strategy by 1914 was that these were the long-term means to ultimate victory in the event of war in Europe.
In these circumstances, the dispatch of the BEF to the continent could not constitute the adoption of what would later be described as a continental strategy. The immediate job of the army was to provide aid to France, to stave off the possibility of the latter’s defeat before economic warfare could take its toll of Germany. This was the strategy endorsed on 23 August 1911, as Henry Wilson himself was very well aware. Privately he was not optimistic that the French and British forces would fare well against the Germans in their opening encounters. ‘But’, he wrote, ‘the longer the war lasted the greater the strain would be on Germany.’ Britain’s job was to prevent a quick German victory, for ‘if we once allow Germany to defeat France an expeditionary force would be valueless and the duration of our naval predominance could be measured in years’.45 Wilson’s strategy was an integrated strategy. So too, by 1 August 1914, was that of the naval war staff, which, for all the rivalry between the two services, endorsed the dispatch of the BEF to the continent.46
If Wilson’s relative success had genuinely been the triumph of full-fledged continentalism, its logical immediate outcome would have been, not the creation of a naval war staff, but the restructuring of the British army on lines adapted to European war. This did not happen.
The overall size of the BEF, six divisions and a cavalry division, reflected the largest force that could be created from those troops left at home: half the infantry of the regular army was overseas. The French and German armies were organized in corps, a corps having in peacetime a geographical location, and being made up of two divisions, each of two brigades. The British in 1906 decided to organize their army not around the corps (although corps commands were created on mobilization in 1914) but around a division of three brigades, rather than two. Total divisional strengths were comparable, as the European brigade consisted of six battalions, the British of four. One argument for carrying more divisional and brigade commands was that, although the army was small, it had the staff to enable a modest expansion. But the determining factor in 1906 was the need to have a form similar to that of the Indian army so that the organizations would be compatible in the field.47
Mobilization in France and Germany resulted in the creation of mass armies for European war. Britain also expanded its army on mobilization: the expeditionary force incorporated about 60 per cent reservists in its total strength, which in proportional terms bore comparison with the growth in the a
rmies of Europe. But it started from a much lower base-point. What had driven Britain’s arrangements for expansion and replacement was its experience of colonial warfare, and specifically the Boer War, not its expectations of European conflict. When, by 1913, it had confronted the latter possibility, it had also calculated—on the basis of the Russo-Japanese War—that it would suffer 75 per-cent losses in the first six months of fighting. Moreover, if the entire BEF went to Europe immediately on the outbreak of war, it would leave behind no cadres as the basis for subsequent expansion, no forces for home defence, and no contingency in the event of crisis in the empire. The army’s roles had outstripped its size. The British general staff had entered on a continental commitment without a continental army.48
Henry Wilson recognized this point, privately reckoning that six divisions were probably ‘fifty too few’.49 Wilson was therefore an ardent conscriptionist. But, although conscription had its supporters, both within the army and without, they were not united on its strategic justification. Wilson’s view, that conscription was required to create a sufficiently large army for Britain to implement a continental strategy, was not the rationale for conscription that the National Service League embraced. It argued for conscription for the purposes of national defence; and that, after all, was the basis for conscription in the rest of Europe. Haldane, however, reckoned that the Territorial Force, part-time volunteers whose reorganization he had carried through in 1908, would be sufficient for that task. In the event, doubts about the Territorials’ efficiency and their failure to recruit to establishment, combined with the reactivation in 1913 of the fear of German invasion, led to pressure for two out of the BEF’s six divisions to be retained in Britain for home defence. Pragmatism meant that if the general staff wanted to send its full complement of six divisions to France, it had to endorse the Territorial Force. Thus, not only was the maximum size of the BEF paltry by European standards, but by 1914 it was still not clear that its full complement would be dispatched overseas. Each time the possibility of invasion had been seriously studied it had been discounted; indeed, it was this that had allowed the army to embrace continentalism at all. And yet conscriptionists within the army, although in many cases at heart continentalists also, needed the invasion fear to popularize their advocacy of national service.