The First World War

by Hew Strachan

The so-called ‘bi-blocs’ helped overcome France’s shell shortage, but their weaknesses generated shortages in other areas: over 600 French guns were destroyed - and their crews killed or injured - by premature explosions in 1915. Germany likewise used turning lathes to produce what it called ’auxiliary ammunition’ from cast iron: in 1915 it lost 2,300 field guns and 900 light howitzers to premature explosions, as many as were disabled by enemy action. The difficulties were not just those of materials and plant. Expansion had overtaken the procedures for quality control. In January 1915 one German observer reckoned that half the shells fired by the French were duds. Some failures were the result of incompetence and haste, but others were the fruit of profiteering and fraud. At the battle of the Somme in July 1916 25 per cent of British guns were put out of action as a result of design faults and inferior materials, and 30 per cent of shells failed to explode.

Much of the manufacturing effort in the first half of the war therefore failed to reap any reward on the battlefield until the second half. French and German holdings of field guns

were essentially static, as new guns replaced those that had been lost, and plant was devoted to the repair of those that were damaged. Germany had 5,096 field guns on mobilisation and 5,300 at the end of 1915. Increased output only met increased wear and tear. Factories which had not been in the arms business before the war could not acqui...

Here the reintroduction of the mortar stands as the supreme example. A portable tube which fired bombs and mines at high angles over short ranges, it was ideally suited to the tactical conditions of trench warfare. But, just as importantly, it and its projectiles were sufficiently simple to enable firms without weapons expertise to make them. In August 1914 the German army possessed 180 Minen-werfern of all calibres; by January 1918 it had taken receipt of 16,127. The British adopted the Stokes mortar in 1915, and 11,421 were manufactured in the war.

Douglas Haig, reflecting on the lessons of Aubers Ridge two days after, on 11 May 1915, made clear why:

1. The defences in our front are so carefully and so strongly made, and mutual support with machine-guns is so complete, that in order to demolish them a long methodical bombardment will be necessary by heavy artillery (guns and howitzers) before Infantry are sent forward to attack. 2. To destroy the enemy’s ‘material’ 60 p[ounde]r. guns will be tried, as well as the 15-in[ch], 9.2 and 6-in[ch] siege how[itzer]s. Accurate observations of each shot will be arranged so as to make sure of flattening out the enemy’s ’strong points’ of support, before the Infantry is launched.14

In 1915 the British did not have enough heavy artillery to do what he wanted. During the course of the entire year they took delivery of just 134 60-pounders. In August they adopted a programme which aimed to produce 2,825 heavy guns by December 1916. Only the existing arms manufacturers, like Vickers and Armstrong, had the capability to undertake this work. Consequently the pressure on them to produce other armaments was reduced. While Germany and France grappled with maintaining their existing numbers of field guns, the British Ministry of Munitions cut back on the output of lighter guns by 28 per cent, while increasing that of medium calibres by 380 per cent and of heavy artillery by 1,200 per cent.

From the very outset, British generals, even cavalrymen like Haig and French, were dedicated to using weight of material and sophisticated technology in the pursuit of breakthrough.

The western front was an intensely competitive environment, where the innovation of one side was emulated, improved upon or negated by the other.

But at its conclusion the armies of both sides were equipped, organised and fought in very different ways from those of 1914.

But in 1915 neither the British nor the French had enough guns or shells, let alone heavy artillery, to be able to attack on a broad front. By concentrating on a narrow front, the available guns might reach into the depth of the enemy positions, but the attackers were then liable to enfilade from the flanks. Furthermore, the concentration of artillery and its preliminary, and increasingly extended, bombardment forfeited the element of surprise.

The static nature of the front line enabled the armies to lay down light railways to transport shells and other supplies to the front lines. But horses were still basic to their transport systems Britain sent more oats and hay (by weight) to France than ammunition.

Haig’s belief that offensives should be fought on broad, not narrow, fronts, and be preceded by long, not short, bombardments was born at the battle of Neuve Chapelle, the first of the British spring offensives in 1915. But Neuve Chapelle also highlighted the intractabilities of communication, and the consequent difficulty of knowing when and where to commit reserves.

Neuve Chapelle confirmed that the biggest constraint on the conduct of land war was the lack of real-time communications. Infantry in fixed positions could bury telephone wire from the front line back to their supporting artillery and higher commands. However, as they went forward to attack they lost contact. They could unroll wire as they advanced but it was frequently cut by shellfire. Wirelesses were still too heavy to be man-portable; they were the preserve of higher commands and navies. Pigeons could do the job if the wind and weather conditions were right, but they were reluctant to fly on the damp, still days which tended to prevail on the western front. Drizzle or mist prevented other forms of observation - the firing of rockets or flares, or the waving of flags in order to indicate progress.

Germans used dogs to carry messages, but the usual method of communicating progress or of calling for support was human. Runners had to renegotiate the open ground they had just crossed in the attack. Even if they survived, their information was old by the time it was in the hands of those for whom it was destined.

The German response to the problem was to delegate command forward, confining instructions to general directives and avoiding detailed orders. British officers were used to smaller forces and more hands-on command in colonial campaigns.

The retreat of the Russian armies in the summer of 1915 and the defeat at Gallipoli confirmed that Kitchener’s notion of choice was as illusory as McKenna’s.

Their worst nightmares embraced a government under Joseph Caillaux and the possibility that he might seek an accommodation with Germany. Kitchener reversed his views of Britain’s role on the western front: on 19 August 1915 he told Haig that ‘we must act with all our energy, and do our utmost to help the French, even though by so doing, we suffer very heavy losses indeed’.

Thus, as the Central Powers began to pull apart, those of the Entente converged. On 29 June 1915 Joffre warned of the dangers of allowing the Germans to pick off one power at a time:

On a front of 35 km, the French had 900 heavy guns, over 1,000 field guns, and thirty-seven divisions: at the point of attack the Germans could match nineteen divisions

with five.

The British attack was part of a second and simultaneous allied offensive, in Artois, and running from the slag-heaps of Loos in the north to the dominating ground of Vimy Ridge in the south. Joffre later calculated that fifty-four French divisions and thirteen British were engaged on a total front of 90 km. But Falkenhayn’s and von Einem’s sang froid was justified: the Germans had constructed a second position, five to six miles behind the front line, beyond the range of the French artillery, and on a reverse slope so that it was out of direct observation.

Total Entente losses reached a quarter of a million for minimal gain. Foiled in

his attempt at breakthrough, Joffre fell back on another rationale for his attack: ‘We shall kill more of the enemy than he can kill of us’.22 It was to become a familiar justification for the failure to break ...

Traditional notions of generalship dictated that the reserve should be in the hands of the supreme commander, who would decide when to commit it in the light of the overall situation. But the delays in communication and in getting forward over a shelled and fractured battlefield in muddy weather argued that control of the reserves - and therefore command authority - should be delegated.

used to exercising personal command in small formations, he did not know how best to lead a mass army or how to get the best from his

staff.

Under Kitchener, the army’s general staff, newly formed just before the war, had been allowed to wither. Haig wanted Sir William Robertson, whose career had blossomed thanks to the opportunities staff-work afforded, appointed as its chief.

The King not only backed Robertson’s appointment but also agreed that he should be responsible not to the secretary of state for war but to the War Council, the committee of the cabinet responsible for the formulation of strategy. Thus in early December 1915, six months before he was drowned when en route to visit Russia on board HMS Hampshire, Kitchener was being bypassed in the formulation of policy.

His message on 8 November 1915 was one of realism: the defeat of the Central Powers ‘can only be attained by the defeat or exhaustion of the predominant partner in the Central Alliance - Germany’.

Attacks should aim to take a ‘bite’ out of the enemy line, and then hold it; that would force the enemy to counterattack and so confer the tactical advantages of the defender on the attacker.

First, it passed the initiative to the enemy: he might decide he did not need to regain the lost ground, and so call the attacker’s bluff. Rawlinson could guarantee only that this would not occur where it was important for the enemy to regain the ground he had lost. Vimy Ridge, with its commanding height, was an example, as was the ring of hills to the east of Ypres: the town screened the Channel ports and the pivot of the British Expeditionary Force’s supply system, and the high ground guarded the Roulers railway junction and the hub of Germany’s transport network behind the western front.

As a result attritional battles tended to occur at locations where breakthrough battles also were likely to occur. And that was the second imponderable implicit in ‘bite and hold’. It was only a method, a means to exhaust the enemy; the point would come when that had been accomplished and an allied attack would be able to break through.

If the Central Powers were attacked simultaneously in the west and in the east, and also in Italy, the Germans would not be able to shuttle their reserves along the chords to the circumference.

The sector lacked the roads and railways of Flanders but its chalky, undulating terrain was less likely to become waterlogged, particularly given the preferred start date of around 1 July.

On 21 February, one week after Haig’s meeting with Joffre, at 7.12 a.m., a German 38cm long-barrelled gun signalled the opening of a bombardment by 1,220 guns on a 20-km front straddling the two sides of the River Meuse north of Verdun. In the Bois de Ville, at the apex of the French front line, forty heavy shells fell every minute.

On the afternoon of 22 February six divisions attacked on the east bank of the Meuse only, on a front almost half that on which the artillery had opened up. Again patrols preceded the main assault formations, establishing where the artillery had not done its work and where it had. The latter points were hit by groups of storm-troopers, selected infantrymen, equipped with grenades and flamethrowers, and trained to re-establish the links between fire and movement which trench warfare had sundered. The principles had been developed in the front line by Captain Willy Rohr in 1915 and were disseminated throughout the army on Falkenhayn’s instructions:

Behind the storm-troopers came reserve sections carrying the equipment to consolidate the ground won. By 25 February, the French 51st and 72nd Divisions, holding the line from Herbebois west to the banks of the Meuse, had suffered over 60 per cent casualties.

Lack of artillery support was undermining the morale of the infantry: 150 km of wire were needed for telephone repairs on 2...

failures prevented both the infantry from calling up fire support and the gunners from demanding more shells. At 3.30 pm on the 25th, Fort Douaumont, the heart of the Verdun defensive system, fell without a ...

The sector was the best suited of any on the western front for an attempted breakthrough by the German army. Because of their commitments on the eastern front, the Germans lacked the reserves to be able to mount an attack on a broad front. The Verdun salient, forming a bulge in the line and executing a right-angle turn close to German territory, could be deemed a narrow one.

The main railway line from Paris to the town lay behind German

lines, so that the Germans could feed the battle more effectively than the French. Troops and shells were brought up by night and hidden in underground galleries. Overhead the Germans concentrated 168 aeroplanes to establish aerial supremacy, and French reconnaissance was further impeded by the bad weather and short days of January, so enhancing the Germans’ chances of maintaining secrecy and achieving surprise.

Throughout 1915 Falkenhayn had seen the western front as the decisive theatre of the war. He now assumed that the Austrians would guard his back against a severely weakened Russia, while he concentrated Germany’s efforts against France. The fact that he did so in the very month when his relationship with Conrad von Hötzendorff reached its nadir meant that his decision was not coordinated with his principal ally. Conrad overran Montenegro and then readied his army for an operation much more to Austrian liking, an attack on Italy in the Trentino. The pressure on Russia eased. Falkenhayn also miscalculated with regard to Britain. He saw it as the hub of the Entente, but hoped that, while the German army defeated its principal European ally, the navy would engage its economic might with submarine warfare. It did not.

It was not seeking limited objectives and aiming to maximise French losses while minimising German. Instead, it advanced as far and as fast as it could, and as a result by 25 February it had suffered almost as many casualties as the French.

By the time it closed down in December German losses had mounted to 337,000, of whom 143,000 died, to France’s 377,231, including 162,440 dead.

In 1915 he had concluded, as Rawlinson had done, that it was impossible ‘to carry in one bound the successive positions of the enemy’.

Only after the enemy had been exhausted could a series of breakthrough operations be launched and manoeuvre warfare restored. His defence of Verdun was the corollary of such conclusions. Permanent fortifications built of reinforced concrete had been downgraded in the minds of field commanders by the fall of the Belgian forts in 1914, but Pétain made the inner ring of forts at Verdun the spine of his tactical scheme.

By 27 February thirteen heavy batteries were assembled on the west bank to deliver ‘bursts of concentrated fire which really constituted independent operations’,34 striking the Germans in the flank as they advanced along the east bank. On 6 March Falkenhayn was forced to attack on the west bank of the Meuse as well, so confirming the effectiveness of the French guns.

With the infantry holding shell holes and craters rather than trench lines, the guns frequently hit their own men. To improve observation, the French regained the initiative in the air by grouping fighter aircraft in squadrons and so overwhelming German reconnaissance efforts. On the ground shell supply was maintained by a light railway, constructed during the battle, and by lorry. By June 12,000 vehicles, one every fourteen seconds, were passing up the road from Bar-le-Duc, ‘la voie sacrée’, as it was dubbed by Maurice Barrès in April.