Strategy and Command: The Anglo-French Coalition on the Western Front, 1914

Strategy and Command #1

by Roy A. Prete

In the first of three projected volumes, Prete crafts a behind-the-scenes look at Anglo-French command relations during World War I, from the start of the conflict until 1915, when trench warfare drastically altered the situation. Drawing on extensive archival research, Prete argues that the British government's primary interest lay in the defence of the empire; the small expeditionary force sent to France was progressively enlarged because the French, especially Commander-in-Chief Joseph Joffre, dragged their British ally into a progressively greater involvement. New information gleaned from French public and private archives - including private diaries - enlarge our understanding of key players in the allied relationship. Prete shows that suspicion and distrust on the part of both sides of the alliance continued to inform relations well after the circumstances creating them had changed. Strategy and Command clearly establishes the fundamental strategic differences between the allies at the start of the war, setting the stage for the next two volumes.

280 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Roy A. Prete is emeritus professor of history at the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario. He obtained his MA from Brigham Young University and his PhD from the University of Alberta.

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

As challenging as it is for a nation to fight a war, it is even more demanding to do so with an ally. For evidence of this, one needs to look no further than the awkward and often tense partnership between Great Britain and France during the First World War. As their soldiers fought shoulder-to-shoulder against the armies of the Central Powers, the generals and politicians of both countries spent innumerable hours battling their opposite numbers over matters of strategy, resources, and their respective obligations to their alliance. At times their arguments were so contentious that it may have seemed to some of them that the greater enemy was across the table than on the other side of no man’s land.

Given the centrality of this relationship to the Entente’s strategy and operations, several historians have written books examining it from a variety of perspectives. Yet none offer the granular detail of its formation and early operation at the command level as does Roy A. Prete. In this volume, the first of three projected ones, he describes the relationship between the respective British and French command structures on the Western Front from the outlines laid down by the Entente cordiale to the end of the first battle of Ypres. It is at that level, he argues, that the contrasting political and strategic imperatives of the two sides came most directly into conflict, with their resolution unavoidable if they were to conduct combined operations on a shared front against their common foe.

Prete begins his examination by describing the differing strategies the two sides brought to their collaboration. For the French, the foremost priority remained unchanged since the end of the Franco-Prussian War: retaking the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine that had been annexed by the German Empire in 1871. The subordination of all other goals to this one was key to the elimination of contentious issues between France and Britain at the start of the 20th century, as France was more than willing to set aside their imperial ambitions in return for winning British assistance to reclaim French soil. Yet continental intervention did not become Britain’s highest strategic priority even after the Entente’s formation in 1904, a fact of which France’s military leadership was well aware, and which shaped their initial attitudes towards their presumed ally.

French caution was understandable, as it was not until Germany’s violation of Belgian neutrality on 4 August that Britain’s participation was assured. Their involvement represented a success for French policy, even if the scope of their involvement remained unclear. Here Prete highlights the differences that emerged between the French desire for an immediate commitment in order to achieve a quick victory, and the plans of Britain’s newly-installed Secretary of State for War, Lord Kitchener, for a long conflict. Kitchener’s prescience in this regard was only evident in hindsight; in 1914, to French commanders such as Joseph Joffre, it appeared as though Britain was committing to fight to the last poliu. This contributed as well the French perception of British generals as lacking in offensive spirit and reluctant to engage with the Germans, which prompted efforts to press for greater action on the part of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF).

From this point in the book onward Prete focuses predominantly on the leaders of the two armies on the Western Front, covering their relationship in considerable detail. Joffre emerges in these pages as an effective military diplomat, replacing subordinates who were hostile to the British with more Anglophilic ones who were better able to work with their opposite numbers. By contrast, his counterpart in the BEF, Sir John French, is portrayed as swaying erratically between the influence of his director of operations, the Francophilic schemer Henry Wilson, and his more cautious and Francophobic chief of staff, Archibald Murray. Such were Joffre’s frustration with the perceived lack of British commitment that he pressured the British politically to replace Sir John with Wilson, and he positioned British forces on the Western Front so as to make their independent withdrawal prohibitively difficult.

With the end of the “War of Movement” in 1914, the British and French started adapting to the demands of the long war. Prete sees the re-evaluation of strategies at the command level as the most significant consequence of this shift. Politicians on both sides also began reclaiming prerogatives that had been willingly surrendered at the start of the fighting in expectation of a short conflict, ensuring that decision making would no longer be left exclusively to the generals. Prete leaves these developments to his next volume, having described in this one the foundations of the conditions in which these decisions would be formed. This he does thanks to considerable labors in both French and British archives, as well as private holdings of important French sources. Though the book occasionally betrays its origins as Prete’s doctoral dissertation, which was originally completed in 1979, he has remained current with the ongoing literature on his subject and incorporated its findings into his text. Not only is the book itself necessary reading for anyone seeking to understand Anglo-French command relations in the first months of the war, but with its successor volumes (the second of which, Strategy and Command: The Anglo-French Coalition on the Western Front, 1915, was published in 2021) it will be an important contribution to the study of the war on the Western Front more generally.

[Jerome Otte · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great history of the western front in 1914, mainly from the French point of view (contrary to what the title implies) The volume is the first of a planned trilogy (the other volumes will focus on the Dardanelles and the Somme)

Prete emphasizes the mutual suspicions and distrust between the French and the British as well as their differences regarding strategy (which he argues were more important than personality clashes). Prete emphasizes the “coalition” aspect, arguing that understanding the strategy of the powers means recognizing that the belligerents were coalitions, meaning they share a common enemy but not necessarily a common agenda, in turn meaning that compromise is, of course, necessary.

Prete relates how much of the planning revolved around the BEF getting to France as soon as possible in case of a war with Germany, and that the planning tended to overlook the questions of exactly how the command structure would work and exactly how Belgium would be defended (the French often suspected that the BEF would be sent directly there rather than to France). The British were intent on defending Belgium’s coast, while the French were intent on disrupting the German advance. To complicate things, the Belgians refused to even enter into talks regarding tis defense (in order to maintain the appearance of its neutrality) Another problem the French had was the slow pace of British mobilization. And of course, Kitchener’s famous instructions to John French amounted to little more than moral support, infuriating for Joffre since he was so eager to avoid relying entirely on the French army. Prete then covers Joffre’s steps to obtain the maximum support from the British: negotiating with John French, dismissing French commanders who were unwilling to cooperate with the British (and attempting to force out British commanders unwilling to cooperate with him), and finally appealing to both London and Paris (resulting in Kitchener’s famous visit to French and reversal of his orders and the eventual attempt to sack French)

An excellent work on an interesting subject.

[Colin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This a very clear account of the way in which the British and French military commands worked alongside each other in the preparations for and early months of the First World War. Given its extensive use of French primary sources, the arguments are skewed to the French perspective. But the explanation of the different views and motivations of the key players is well argued. This book is recommended particularly for the scholar of command planning.