The western front, p.38
The Western Front, page 38
This was followed by ‘Directive No. 3’, published on 4 July. Gone was the naïve reliance upon the offensive spirit and raw courage that had characterized the French Army of earlier years; instead the Army was to be rebuilt in a methodical manner, beholden to the gods of technology and firepower. The immediate aim was to allow for a period of rest and instruction, waiting until such time as the Army was re-equipped and readied to undertake a series of limited offensives. With French industry now concentrating on producing bigger, more powerful artillery, a heavy-artillery reserve was created and each corps was equipped with two groups of 105 mm howitzers and two groups of 155 mm Schneiders (each group containing twelve guns). Divisions would also be bolstered by two groups of short-barrelled 155 mm howitzers – a significant improvement on what had been prescribed in 1914 (when French divisions had gone into battle with just one regiment, or three groups, of 75 mm field guns).21
Not content with increasing the artillery’s firepower, Pétain placed extensive orders for new tanks. The Schneider CAIs had been unsuccessful on 16 April, but the French High Command had not lost faith in them and signed off on an ambitious programme of vehicle production, including pushing forward the prototype of a light vehicle (what would become the Renault FT-17). Pétain was also convinced of the need to secure absolute control of the air in future operations and wanted aircraft capable of bombing German positions on the battlefield as well as conducting missions deep into the enemy rear against the industrial areas of Lorraine and the Saar. He was now confident the tide had turned: ‘Here the weapons are being fully manufactured, the armies of our allies are continuously increasing, the life of the nation will finally be organized, the experience of war gained through great difficulty is beginning to be understood by all. France may await with reasonable confidence the victorious peace it needs and has earned through such great sacrifices. Patience and tenacity!’22
Sir Douglas Haig was not minded to wait until either the French or the Americans were ready. He wanted to strike quickly and had been lobbying London for weeks about mounting his so-called ‘northern operation’ now that Nivelle’s attack had self-evidently failed. At 3.10 on the morning of 7 June, General Sir Herbert Plumer’s Second Army launched its assault on the Messines–Wytschaete Ridge, the attack heralded by the blowing of nineteen mines under the German line. The idea for a mine attack had originated with a former engineering contractor, Major John Norton Griffiths, who had suggested that it would be possible to undermine the German lines by tunnelling through a layer of blue clay that lay between sixty and ninety feet under the surface. These galleries could then be packed with explosives and detonated at the right moment. Coordinating the excavation of so many tunnels (twenty-four were eventually built) and keeping them secret was challenging, as the efforts of small teams of miners, sweating their way through hundreds of feet of damp earth, were combined with razor-sharp staff work to move the spoil out at night and ensure that little was suspected.23
When the mines were detonated, a tremendous shockwave was created, carrying away most of the garrison and leaving the front line an unrecognizable series of smoking shell craters and collapsed dugouts. One German witness was horrified by what looked like ‘nineteen gigantic roses with carmine petals, or . . . enormous mushrooms, which rose up slowly and majestically out of the ground and then split into pieces with a mighty roar, sending up multi-coloured columns of flame mixed with a mass of earth and splinters high into the sky’.24 As the debris began to rain down, the infantry launched their attack. ‘The sky was lit up by continuous flashes from the massed artillery barrage all along the length of the ridge’, recalled one British soldier.25 As was becoming standard practice in the BEF, the advance was split into a series of short bounds all covered by a precisely engineered creeping barrage that flared out in front of the assaulting waves. Behind it came long lines of British and Dominion soldiers, spread out in artillery formation, bayonets fixed. In places the clanking sound of heavy armour could also be heard as seventy-two Mark IVs, the latest version of the British tank, moved forward. With better armour and improved transmission, the Mark IVs were more resilient on the battlefield, rolling over no-man’s-land like ships in a heavy swell. As an oily-grey dawn broke, the air thick with dust, small groups of stumbling Germans came in from their lines, wild-eyed with horror. Seven thousand prisoners were taken that day; and the ridge – long seen as impregnable – was in British hands.
Messages of congratulation were soon flooding into GHQ. ‘Tell General Plumer and the Second Army how proud we are of this achievement by which, in a few hours, the enemy was driven out of strongly entrenched position held by him for two-and-a-half years’ was how His Majesty King George V described it in a letter to Haig on 9 June. Haig responded warmly, issuing an Order of the Day that hailed Plumer’s victory: ‘Following on the great successes already gained it affords final and conclusive proof that neither strength of position nor knowledge of and timely preparation to meet impending assault can save the enemy from complete defeat, and that, brave and tenacious as the German troops are, it is only a question of how much longer they can endure the repetition of such blows.’26 Even the French – normally critical observers of the British – were impressed. A liaison officer attached to GHQ reported on the ‘great success’ of the attack in which the first objective had been carried within just two hours. ‘The British troops have lost few men; their morale is very high and it is important that we show how our troops have been very much motivated by the affection that all, from the generals to soldiers, have for General Sir Herbert Plumer, and how much they admire his character.’27
A tubby, overweight figure with white hair and a thick moustache, Plumer had taken charge of Second Army after Smith-Dorrien had been sent home in May 1915 and prided himself on doing everything possible to safeguard the lives of his men. ‘Nothing whatever was left to chance’, remembered his Chief of Staff, Charles Harington. ‘He kept his finger on every pulse and the whole army knew it.’28 The attack plans were put together with supreme care. In the weeks before the attack, a large-scale model of the ridge was constructed behind the lines (‘about the size of two croquet lawns’) and officers from every battalion were ushered in to help familiarize themselves with the ground. Second Army also benefited from the growing power of British artillery, which Plumer wielded with great skill. The attack was supported by over 2,000 guns, which hurled 3.5 million shells at the German line, blasting away the belts of barbed wire and collapsing dugouts and trenches with terrific effect. Moreover, a full third of all British guns were allotted to counter-battery fire, which prevented German artillery from being able to interfere with the attacking waves when they went over the top.29
Messines was certainly impressive, but, away from the front, the situation facing Britain and her empire was less certain. The economy was now suffering from labour shortages and rising inflation, while a decline in imports was the inevitable result of a steady loss of merchant shipping. The Government responded to the U-boat campaign with a series of new measures: reducing non-essential imports; ordering a comprehensive programme of shipbuilding; and adopting a convoy system that would ensure merchant ships could be brought across the Atlantic more safely. Although the Admiralty dragged its feet and continued to express concerns that convoying might not work, the tonnage lost to the U-boats began to decline steadily throughout the second half of the year – from a peak in April down to 268,813 tons in October, by which time convoying had been more widely adopted.30
On 8 June the Prime Minister formed the War Policy Committee, a body composed of himself, Milner, Curzon and Jan Smuts (the former Boer commander who had come to London as part of the South African delegation), which was tasked with reporting to the War Cabinet on the ‘naval, military and political situation’.31 The CIGS, Sir William Robertson (who was pointedly not on the new committee), could only watch from afar, languishing behind his desk, frustrated that his advice was no longer sought. ‘There is trouble in the land just now’, he wrote to Haig on 13 June. ‘The War Cabinet, under the influence of L.G., have started, quite amongst themselves plus Smuts, to review the whole policy and strategy of the war and to “get at facts.” They are interviewing different people singly, and sending out to Departments various specific questions to be answered. All this instead of first settling on the policy and then telling me and Jellicoe to carry it out, if we can.’ With Haig due in London the following week, Robertson warned the Field Marshal to be careful in how he set out his plans. ‘Don’t argue that you can finish the war this year, or that the German is already beaten. Argue that your plan is the best plan – as it is – that no other would even be safe let alone decisive, and then leave them to reject your advice and mine. They dare not do that.’32
Haig appeared before the War Policy Committee on Tuesday, 19 June – his fifty-sixth birthday. They ‘asked me numerous questions’, he remembered, ‘all tending to show that each of them was more pessimistic than the other’. Haig presented his ‘Appreciation of the Military Situation’, which warned against any ‘relaxation of pressure’ on the Western Front. ‘Waning hope in Germany would be revived, and time would be gained to replenish food, ammunition and other requirements. In fact, many of the advantages already gained by us would be lost and this would certainly be realised by, and would have a depressing effect on our armies in the field, which have made such great efforts to gain them.’ Therefore he wanted to concentrate all British resources in France for an attack that would bring ‘great results this summer – results which will make final victory more assured and which may even bring it within reach this year’. He was, therefore, hoping to clear the Belgian coast over the coming months, winning a series of battles against the enemy, which ‘might quite possibly lead to their collapse’.33
Haig was playing for high stakes, making a great pitch for his offensive that flew in the face of Robertson’s caution. For Lloyd George, who listened to Haig with obvious discomfort, another major commitment on the Western Front was not what he wanted and he was not slow in challenging the thinking behind the new attack. Haig’s memorandum was ‘a very powerful statement’ and his plans were certainly ‘a splendid conception’, but were they ‘practicable’? The United States ‘had not yet developed their resources’ and might only have 150,000 or 160,000 men in France by the end of the year, which meant that the United Kingdom was still ‘sustaining the whole burden of the war’. Therefore, the committee had a duty ‘not to break the country’ with an offensive that would put an enormous strain on their manpower reserves. ‘We were now reduced to the point where we had to scrape up men where we could’, he added. ‘He wanted the country to be able to last.’34
A further meeting was held on 21 June, but the distance between Lloyd George and his generals remained unbridgeable. The Prime Minister pointed out that they had to advance fifteen miles before they would really begin to clear the Belgian coast; that for an advance on such a scale they needed an ‘overwhelming force of men and guns’ and a diversionary attack which would draw off enemy reserves; and that ‘the enemy’s moral should be so broken that he could no longer put up a fight’. Yet he did not believe that any of these conditions were close to being fulfilled. The numerical superiority of the Allies was barely 15 per cent, and this included 25,000 Portuguese, 18,000 Russians (brigaded with the French) and 131,000 Belgians, ‘who were not first-class troops’. Moreover, he reminded the committee that ‘he had never known an offensive to be undertaken without sure predictions of success’. He had always been told that by applying the lessons of the past, each new attack would succeed – an experience that ‘had not unnaturally made him feel sceptical’. Why should they ‘anticipate a greater measure of success on this occasion than in the Battle of the Somme where we had only succeeded in making a dent of five or six miles?’35
The showdown in London seemed not to have settled anything. Haig was permitted to continue preparations for his attack, with the final decision still remaining with the War Cabinet, which waited on events. There was no doubt that clearing the Belgian coast was a worthy prize, fitting neatly into British strategic thinking and now given greater urgency by the presence of U-boats and destroyers operating out of Zeebrugge and Ostend. If these bases could be seized, or even just shelled by heavy artillery, then it would push German ships further away and make it more difficult for them to interfere with British cross-Channel traffic. During the meetings in London, Admiral Jellicoe, the First Sea Lord, had struck a depressed note, warning that it might not be possible to continue the war into 1918 ‘for lack of shipping’. Moreover, if peace were to come before the Germans had been pushed out of the Belgian ports, they would never surrender them. When Lloyd George heard what Jellicoe was saying, he immediately shot back that if this was true, ‘then we should have far more important decisions to consider than our plans of operations for this year, namely, the best method of making tracks for peace’.36 But Lloyd George was not ready for peace – at least, not yet.
The early summer of 1917 was ripe with possibilities for Germany, and she seemed closer to victory than at any point since September 1914. In Russia, a Provisional Government had been formed in March, comprising moderate deputies with support from workers’ councils across Petrograd, which was authorized to rule until a constituent assembly could be elected later in the year. Although the Entente hoped that this would produce a renewed determination on behalf of the Russian people to continue the struggle, Russia was crippled by mounting strikes and disaffection, growing violence in the countryside, and loud demands for land reform and peace. The War Minister, Alexander Kerensky, managed to launch another offensive in July, striking against Austrian positions in Galicia, but it rapidly ran out of steam, and within days German counter-attacks had restored the situation and caused another galling retreat, which provoked further unrest in the capital.
On the Western Front, reports from the French Army indicated that Germany’s most formidable opponent was teetering on the brink of collapse. On 8 June, the day after the attack on Messines Ridge, Major Witte, an intelligence officer with the Crown Prince’s army group, reported on the mood of the French Army, which he believed was ‘unrecognizable’ since the failure of the attacks on the Aisne:
No doubt the statements by prisoners, which are taking place under the effects of enormous emotional shock and also with a view to appeasing their captors, should be accepted with caution, but the interrogations of the last week showed uniformly consistent details about certain instances of loss of discipline, mutiny etc., such that the moral fighting power of the French Army can, without exaggeration, be viewed as severely shaken. It consistently shows: 1. War weariness and a reluctance to fight. 2. A lack of trust in higher leadership and even more in political leadership. 3. The conviction that a decisive victory against the Germans will never be achieved. 4. Hatred and anger towards England.37
The possibility that France, like Russia, would fall to revolution was eagerly discussed at OHL, with every scrap of intelligence being pored over for evidence that the end was near. Ludendorff’s mood had been radiant since word had been received about the abdication of the Tsar, and even the news about America’s entry into the war did little to dampen his belief that the situation had now fundamentally changed in Germany’s favour. Ludendorff was confident that the arrival of a US Army on the Western Front, large and fully equipped, was simply not possible before 1918. He estimated that the transfer of half a million men would require 3–4 million tons of shipping space, with yet more needed to keep them supplied. ‘America’s involvement in the war changes little’, he thought. With a gradual decrease in the shipping tonnage available to the Allies, Ludendorff predicted a slow but inevitable strangulation. ‘The entire wartime economy of our enemies will drop to such an extent that a decision against us can no longer be forced. In addition to this, there is an increased risk for England that, with such a reduced tonnage, her peacetime economy could not function. This means the collapse of naval prestige, which relies upon a strong merchant navy.’ Therefore the ‘prerequisite for victory is merely that we remain united and keep our nerve’.38
Hindenburg agreed. ‘In a military sense our position is secure and will remain so’, he wrote to the Chancellor on 19 June.39 The main danger came from the threat of revolution at home, or at least a growth of feeling against the war, which became increasingly apparent during the summer. In a letter to the Kaiser, Hindenburg warned that the popular mood had to be lifted, ‘otherwise we will lose the war’.40 In Berlin, where shortages of food and basic supplies were now impossible to hide, the German Parliament was becoming increasingly restive. Matthias Erzberger, a prominent member of the Catholic Centre Party, was the first to break ranks, speaking on 6 July about the urgent need for ‘far-reaching reforms’ in Germany and a peace ‘without annexations or indemnities’. The effectiveness of the submarine war, he suggested, had been over-exaggerated and there was no doubt that the sounds of ‘something creaking, cracking, collapsing’ could now be heard in Germany. Erzberger’s speech was electrifying, bringing together a majority in the Reichstag (when the Catholic Centre Party voted with the Social Democrats) to pass a ‘Peace Resolution’ on 19 July calling for ‘mutual understanding and lasting reconciliation among the nations’ without ‘forced acquisitions of territory’ and based upon ‘international political organizations’.41
