by Robin Prior
The most prominent voice raised in support of a serious commitment to Salonika was, perhaps predictably, Lloyd George's. No doubt recalling that he had once been enthusiastic for knocking the ‘props’ from under Germany rather than attacking it directly, he set out to present ‘another side’. Would it not be an advantage, he asked, ‘to cut out Bulgaria and clear a road to Romania. This would have the effect of cutting off the Turks.’ Such a proposal, he urged, would ‘prevent the supply of ammunition to the Turks and stop Germany from getting food supplies from the east’. It would ‘open up a new road to Russia’.
Lloyd George's somewhat bizarre foray in both geography and the intentions of the opposing alliance did not carry the day. Opinion did firm around the notion that, as soon as Romania had unequivocally entered the war, British forces at Salonika would participate in an offensive there. But its object would be limited: to hold Bulgarian forces in place. If it accomplished that, Robertson asserted and no one contradicted, the British mission would be complete.10
Thereafter, Romania's decision to enter the struggle hung fire, and Robertson's attitude towards action out of Salonika grew more dismissive. (There would, he said, be no object in our taking the offensive against Bulgaria, ‘as Bulgaria was stronger than us’.) Lloyd George, nevertheless, continued to press his case. He explained Romania's tardiness as springing from well-grounded suspicions regarding Russia's intentions. Russia, he said, might ‘sell’ Romania as it had done in the past (a rather curious form of advocacy for an alternative strategy to which Russia must be the principal contributor).11
One thing needs to be stressed. Lloyd George was advocating British action on behalf of Romania. He was not arguing for the cessation of action on the Somme. This he made explicit at a War Committee meeting on 28 July. Edwin Montagu, Lloyd George's successor as Minister of Munitions, stated that output of 6-inch howitzer ammunition had risen from 70,000 to 90,000 rounds a week. He inquired whether the entire complement should go to the battle in France, as the War Office was stipulating, or whether some part of it should be sent to Russia. Lloyd George, donning his hat as War Secretary, firmly opted for the former course. The Germans, he said, had as many guns at the Somme as their opponent, and would have more if they called off their offensive against Verdun. Further, it would be dangerous to send to Russia weapons required by British forces. Already the Russians had been supplied with 4.5-inch howitzers which they had never used, ‘whereas Sir D. Haig used them very much, and was clamouring for more’:
Our people were using them, and the Russians were not using them.
Also, he added almost as an afterthought, some might be needed for an offensive at Salonika. Grey, the Foreign Minister chimed in, offering the by now axiomatic judgement that Germany could not act against Russia while its forces were being pinned down on the Somme.12
II
Evidently, whatever the pressures for some British action elsewhere, the offensive on the Somme remained at the end of its first month the main element in the War Committee's strategy. Yet this endorsement was less than wholehearted. As Robertson, in a plea to Haig to provide more information about what was happening at the front, warned the C-in-C:
The Powers that be are beginning to get a little uneasy in regard to the situation. The casualties are mounting up and they are wondering whether we are likely to get a proper return for them ... they will persist in asking me whether I think a loss of say 300,000 men will lead to really great results, because if not we ought to be content with something less than what we are now doing .... It is thought that the primary object – relief of pressure on Verdun – has to some extent been achieved.13
Moeover, from outside the government a powerful voice protested strongly against continuation of the Somme campaign.
As First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill had been a principal figure in the government at the start of the war. But in May 1915 the setback in the Dardanelles had led to his demotion to a minor cabinet post, and when in November it became evident that the Gallipoli campaign was about to be abandoned he resigned from office. After serving for some months on the Western Front, he had assumed the position of an independently minded back-bench MP. On 1August 1916 he penned a critique of the first month of the Somme campaign. The document was not made public, but it was circulated to the cabinet and War Committee.
Churchill began with a bold statement of what had, and more particularly what had not, been accomplished on the Somme. The British army on the opening day had attacked on a front of 20,000–25,000 yards. On nearly three-fifths of that front it had been repulsed. On the remainder it had advanced ‘about 2 miles’. British losses for the first two days had been ‘not less than 60,000’, of whom 40,000 constituted ‘permanent loss’. By contrast, Germany's permanent loss he calculated as 12,000. The German front against the British ‘is firmly held’.
It has been tested at many points, and the enemy has himself shown enterprise and activity at many others.
The British had been attacking with 30 divisions, whereas ‘the total German force successively or simultaneously engaged in the battle with us cannot exceed fourteen or fifteen divisions. It is probably less.’
The progress made since the opening day gave Churchill no satisfaction:
We have not conquered in a month's fighting as much ground as we were expected to gain in the first two hours.
So narrow had been the front whatever advance had been made that it was ‘quite useless for the purpose of breaking the line’.
In four weeks we have progressed less than? mile. Unless a gap of at least 20 miles can be opened, no large force could be put through....
Nor are we making for any point of strategic or political consequence ... what are Péronne and Bapaume, even if we were likely to take them? The open country towards which we are struggling by inches is capable of entrenched defence at every step, and is utterly devoid of military significance. There is no question of breaking the line, of ‘letting loose the cavalry in the open country behind’, or of inducing a general withdrawal of the German armies in the West.
Churchill accepted that the British offensive had obliged the enemy, at least for the present, to suspend ‘his costly attacks on Verdun’. (‘This is the solitary advantage in the West.’) But he denied that the action on the Somme had contributed to Russia's successes in the east, successes ‘gained largely by surprise before we had begun’. And he believed that, with division after division of British forces being used up on the Somme, ‘the enemy's anxiety is relieved, and he recovers his freedom of movement. This is the danger into which we are now drifting.’
Churchill's summing up of the first month of Somme campaign was devastating:
In personnel the results of the operation have been disastrous; in terrain they have been absolutely barren .... From every point of view, therefore, the British offensive per se has been a great failure. With twenty times the shell, and five times the guns, and more than double the losses, the gains have but little exceeded those of Loos. And how was Loos viewed in retrospect?
Given that the Loos battle had been followed by the dismissal of Sir John French, the then British commander-in-chief, the question required no answer.
This document by Winston Churchill was marked by a high level of cogency and command of events. It appeared to constitute a powerful case for calling a halt to the Somme offensive. But it contained one glaring omission. At this stage of the war, no one appeared to doubt that Britain's great new army must be fiercely active somewhere, if its allies were not to lose heart and its enemies to take comfort. Churchill nowhere hinted in what other region that army ought to be engaged.14
III
Churchill's memorandum – ‘a damnable paper’, in the judgement of Robertson – demanded a reply.15 The nation's military spokesmen provided it.
On 1 August Robertson presented to the War Committee a survey of the military situation. On the Somme front, he said, the Germans now had 32 divisions, formed into two co
rps which constituted the German Second Army. The Allies had secured a copy of an order by von Below, commander of this Second Army, stating that the decisive outcome of the war depended on the victory of his forces there.
Robertson then presented an appreciation of the previous weeks of battle. Haig, he said (if with less than compelling precision), was doing all he could, he could not do more and he could not do less. British casualties had been heavy, but they included 56,000 sustained on the first day, whereas during the last week they had amounted to 18,000. He calculated (on what basis it is difficult to imagine) that German losses were at least 1.25 million, ‘of which 600,000 were a dead loss’, as against total losses ‘on our side’ of 160,000.16 Joffre had spoken highly of the British contribution, saying that ‘we had killed more Germans than the French’. (Four days later, Robertson provided supposed figures of total German losses since the beginning of the war. The figure was 3.575 million, including one million killed.)17
On the matter of what all these actual British and supposed German casualties had accomplished, Robertson offered the following: ‘We had started operations to relieve Verdun, and to prevent the move of troops to Russia.’ Since the opening of the campaign, ‘there had been no large attacks against Verdun’. As for the Eastern Front, as a consequence of Russia's offensive the Austro-Hungarians ‘were now in a bad way’, whereas ‘if we had not been fighting’ on the Somme the Habsburg forces would have received great assistance from their German allies.18
A large issue was being neglected here. The War Committee had now before it a bewildering set of contradictory casualty statistics. Yet no one on the political side pointed to the discrepancies between the casualty balances given by Robertson and Churchill. Nor did they question whether Robertson's fantastical total of 1.25 million German casualties had been incurred against the British alone, or against the British and the French, or whether it applied to the entire Western Front. If the War Committee was to audit the battle with care it was desperately necessary that these discrepancies be resolved. Instead nothing happened. The meeting ended and the politicians dispersed.
On 5 August it met again, only to receive from Robertson a further counter to Churchill's memorandum in the form of a communication from Haig. This was designed to neutralise the views of the former minister. Its subject was ‘the results of the offensive on the Somme’.
First:
The pressure on Verdun had been relieved, and the situation was no longer regarded as serious by the French authorities.
Second:
The Russian front would certainly have been reinforced [by the Germans] and Russia would not have got on as she had.
Third:
There was a general good moral[e] effect. The moral[e] and material results had brought the Allies forward on the way to victory. The Germans regarded the Somme operations as very serious.19
What followed from these sometimes hypothetical accomplishments was less enumeration than exploration. Haig wrote:
Under no circumstances must we relax our effort, and we must retain the offensive. Our loss had been 120,000 in the last month more than if we had not attacked which could not be considered unduly heavy. Our troops were in excellent heart. We should maintain a vigorous offensive well into the autumn, and prepare for a further campaign next year.20
There was much here that seemed to require devoted probing. The extent of achievement after a month's severe endeavour, according to the nation's chief military spokesmen, appeared to be only that of holding the enemy in place. No significant advance, with all the disruption of enemy arrangements which that might generate, appeared either to have been accomplished or to be in sight. And the claim that the Allies were ‘forward on the way to victory’ accorded ill with the admitted need for ‘a vigorous offensive well into the autumn’ followed by ‘a further campaign next year’.
Yet no one in the War Committee pressed these matters. Asquith considered Haig's missive ‘very satisfactory’. And Curzon judged it ‘the real rejoinder to Mr W. Churchill's letter’. So, at the Prime Minister's instigation, Robertson was instructed to send Haig a message ‘assuring him that he might count on full support from home’ – a message which, Robertson hastened to assure Haig, ‘was not inserted by my suggestion, but was spontaneous on the part of the Committee after I had read your paper and explained things’.21
IV
Yet in the weeks that followed, these expressions of satisfaction lost at least some of their substance. Misgivings expressed themselves in two ways. Some mildly probing questions, and some hints of disheartenment, appeared in references to the Somme battles. And proposals implying that the time was approaching to look elsewhere for substantial achievements received an airing.
Lloyd George figured in these matters. Certainly he did not espouse Churchill's judgement on the Somme campaign, but he was attracted to devising schemes for big victories elsewhere, although without diverting British forces from the main theatre. As ever, the situation in the Balkans attracted his attention. He pondered a scheme for persuading Bulgaria to pull out of the war in the near future, both by threatening serious military action and by offering territorial inducements (at the expense of Serbia). The additional forces required to accomplish this would, primarily, be provided by Russia.
The Tsar's forces, Lloyd George observed, were awaiting from their Western allies large numbers of heavy guns. Owing to the ice-bound condition of Russia's ports, these would not reach their destination before mid-1917. Lloyd George proposed holding out the bait to the Russians of delivering these weapons by the end of 1916. To gain this, Russia should agree to send an army of 150,000 men across the territory of its potential new ally, Romania, to the border between Romania and Bulgaria. Coupled with a simultaneous offensive out of Salonika by French and British forces, this action by Russia would confront Bulgaria with attack from two sides, north and south, and with hostile forces of 350,000. In these circumstances Bulgaria might withdraw from the war without a fight, especially if it was allowed to retain areas of Macedonia which it had recently annexed from Serbia – areas to which, in the opinon of many in the West, Serbia had no entitlement.22 (Asquith had observed, in the course of a meeting of the War Committee, that of all the Balkan states Serbia had behaved the worst of the lot.)
On 10 August the War Committee – of course noting that the main operations would befall Russian, not British or French, troops – gave its endorsement to this scheme. Differences, nevertheless, underlay this appearance of agreement. Devotees of the Western strategy wanted to confine British participation to a holding action against the Bulgarians. (As long as the Bulgarians remained within their lines, Robertson argued, ‘we should play about, as our guns were not there’.) By contrast Lloyd George, along with Curzon, wanted British forces to make a substantial effort and be prepared to exploit any breakthrough: in short, to do a good deal more than ‘play about’.23
Events on the Somme, meanwhile, provided little ground for optimism. On 18 August, reference was made to ‘the temporary standstill’ there. And when Balfour pressed in the War Committee for good news from the Somme, Robertson had little to offer. Asked by Balfour whether he was satisfied by the level of German wastage, Robertson could only reply that he ‘did not really know what it was’.
It was his impression that [the Germans] were losing as many and more than we were. Our losses amounted to about 6000 or 7000 a week.24
Given that, very recently, Robertson had been suggesting that German casualties vastly exceeded those of the British, this admission was hardly reassuring.
Balfour, still seeking after hopeful developments, noted how many German divisions were now facing the British on the Somme, and ‘suggested the possibility of our striking elsewhere at a thinner line’. Again, Robertson offered no comfort. He opined ‘that it could not be done. With more guns they could do it.’ Grey came up with an intervention that was hardly more comforting. He observed that the French were in good spirits at the moment ‘because
they cherished the great expectation of a big advance’, but that should October arrive with no advance accomplished, ‘there would be a reaction’.
The French would not like the idea of another winter without a definite advance to our credit.25
Robertson's response was a stark demonstration of how expectations were being reined in to conform with the realities of the Somme battle: ‘we should’, he enjoined, ‘be doing very well if we only held the Germans there, and let Russia get on’.
An Anglo-French offensive in the West, whose sole raison d'être had now become not its own forward progress but to allow for the accomplishments of the Tsar's forces, was clearly proceeding under a cloud. The Russian advance against the Austrians was slowing down, and against the Germans continued a non-event. Robertson tried to place the best construction on this, but it was less than reassuring:
things were steady for the moment, but the Russians were getting on. Colonel Knox [British military attaché with the Russian army] did not send a very good report, but he was generally pessimistic.26
Events in the second half of August provided grounds for both hope and pessimism. Action on the Somme on 18 August seemed promising, but by the end of the month Joffre was again reported as complaining about the absence of progress. On 27 August, the much-delayed intervention of Romania on the Allied side, with their reported four armies of 600,000 men and their trained forces numbering one million, raised large hopes among Britain's leaders. But Lloyd George's scheme for a great movement of Russian and Romanian forces against Bulgaria, with promised weaponry from Britain, was turned down flat by the Russian command. And the War Committee was painfully oppressed at the end of the month by changes in the German high command. Falkenhayn, whose predilection had all along been for action on the Western Front, had been dismissed. His successors, Hindenburg and Ludendorff, were recognised as having a different orientation, at least for the present: the elimination of Russia and the closure of the Eastern Front, accompanied only by defensive action in the west.27