Originally published in 1964 this is a critically acclaimed classic history of the military engagements of the Somme that raged from July to November 1916. It tells of bloody battles interspersed with trench actions of dreadful intensity. In addition to the key confrontations Farrar-Hockley provides a detailed background to the Somme planning and why it failed with dreadful casualties. In its entirety, the conflict along the Somme scarred the minds of a whole generation, becoming recorded by historians as the graveyard of the 'flower of British manhood'.
Originally published in 1964 this is a critically acclaimed classic history of the military engagements of the Somme that raged from July to November 1916. It tells of bloody battles interspersed with trench actions of dreadful intensity. In addition to the key confrontations Farrar-Hockley provides a detailed background to the Somme planning and why it failed with dreadful casualties. In its entirety, the conflict along the Somme scarred the minds of a whole generation, becoming recorded by historians as the graveyard of the 'flower of British manhood'.
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Overview
Originally published in 1964 this is a critically acclaimed classic history of the military engagements of the Somme that raged from July to November 1916. It tells of bloody battles interspersed with trench actions of dreadful intensity. In addition to the key confrontations Farrar-Hockley provides a detailed background to the Somme planning and why it failed with dreadful casualties. In its entirety, the conflict along the Somme scarred the minds of a whole generation, becoming recorded by historians as the graveyard of the 'flower of British manhood'.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780750968973 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The History Press |
| Publication date: | 06/09/2016 |
| Sold by: | INDEPENDENT PUB GROUP - EPUB - EBKS |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 272 |
| File size: | 5 MB |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Somme
By A.H. Farrar-Hockley
The History Press
Copyright © 2016 A.H. Farrar-Hockley,All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7509-6897-3
CHAPTER 1
The Men and the Hour
FALKENHAYN
'ON THE EVENING of the 14th September, 1914, in Luxemburg, Lieut-General von Falkenhayn, the Minister of War, was entrusted by His Majesty the Emperor and King with the post of Chief of the General Staff of the Army in the Field, in the place of the invalided General von Moltke.'
In this long and solemn sentence Erich von Falkenhayn tells us1 how he became the director of German operations2 in the first autumn of the Great War. He assumed his new post at a time of crisis. The Army's war plan3 had failed in France almost in the moment of triumph. The German field armies in the west had thrown back the French attacks across the common frontier, whilst themselves developing, through Belgium, a huge turning movement. The unexpected appearance of four British divisions in the field on the French left flank checked but did not prevent the German march south and west. For 30 days the plan prepared in Berlin with such care over so many years seemed to be unfolding with scarcely a fault. Only in the moment of coup de grâce were the Franco-British armies found to be intact, the German manoeuvring forces in imbalance. The prospect of advance effaced, the pattern of deployment was unsuited to defence and the vast German war machine was necessarily thrown into reverse; a withdrawal began, limited in space but profound in purport. It was at this moment that Falkenhayn took charge.
Took charge. He controlled, it is true, the whole apparatus of war-making: intelligence, operations, personnel and supply policy. In the west – that is, on the new line from the Oise to the Alps – seven army commanders awaited his orders; and though they might at times protest against his instructions, his insistence would ensure their obedience. In the east, against Russia, the movement of the lone German army there depended upon his approval. Yet his master was the Emperor of Germany and King of Prussia, William II; and this capricious man might interfere as he saw fit at any moment, in any sphere. However, there is no evidence that Falkenhayn feared such intervention in September 1914. The dying Moltke had failed; William trusted Falkenhayn to put matters right.
This was more easily commanded than executed. How was he to reorientate German strategic policy when all planning, including economic planning, had reckoned on the total defeat of France in 70 days? Clearly, the battle line must be stabilised and the enemy's advance checked while the relative threat of each front – the western, in France; the eastern, in Russia – was reassessed. A redeployment of manpower would be necessary, a new effort in armaments essential. To these herculean tasks Falkenhayn applied his keen mind.
Along the battle line, local commanders mounted a series of minor counter-attacks; but they were too widely dispersed, too feebly pressed to regain more than a few tactical features. More important, the German battalions and batteries succeeded in holding the equally laboured attacks of the French and British. The fact was that both sides were temporarily spent. Shells were running short,1 equipment was scarce or worn out, dead and wounded officers and N.C.O.'s had not been replaced, the men that remained from the early battles of manœuvre needed a rest from the incessant marching and fighting. As each side sought to remedy these weaknesses a curious situation became apparent: the Channel Departments through which the outer, wheeling German armies had passed were once more empty; a huge stretch of territory remained uncontested from the Oise, where the battle line reached its northernmost point, to the Channel coast, over 100 miles distant. The Germans now saw that they might yet pass round the French flank. The French supposed that they might yet march round the Germans'.
With that organisational facility for which the Germans are justly famous, Falkenhayn began to assemble a force for this purpose by diverting formations in transit. He hastened to send them north of the Oise.
So, too, the French commander-in-chief, General Joffre, reshuffled his order of battle and packed troops northward by train. Piecemeal, French and German divisions – sometimes brigades – reached the flank, ready to march, only to find that the enemy had appeared simultaneously with a force of roughly equal numbers. There would be a clash, each side would dig in. Thus neither was able to achieve an outflanking movement; each had to be content with a gradual extension northward of the battle line along hastily made entrenchments or behind raised sandbag walls. In this fashion, the line reached at last to the sea: the French had held the Pas de Calais, the Belgians a fragment of territory west of the river Yser, the British had secure Channel ports to cover their lines to England, the Germans had gained the industrial complex, including the coalfields, of Belgium and northern France.
Meanwhile, Falkenhayn had had the opportunity to assess the threat on either front. The premise on which the German war plan had been founded was that a dual offensive – one east, one west – was beyond their means. Notwithstanding the enormous potential of Russia, they had decided to strike first at France because the latter was expected to mobilise and deploy more swiftly. France crushed, the whole German field army would turn upon Russia. Now, in October, though expectations in France had not been realised, the Russians had been beaten in their first major encounter at Tannenberg and the onset of winter in the east reduced the likelihood of a Russian counter-offensive in 1914. A critical situation was unlikely to develop there for some time.
The same might not be said of the western front. The French Army remained resilient; the British were expanding their numbers in France. It seemed clear that all available reserves must be committed to the west in an attempt to break through the Allies' front and break up, thereafter, their remaining battle formations.
In appreciating the area in which he should mount this attack, Falkenhayn was attracted to the Channel flank by the weight of his own forces in Flanders and the comparative disorganisation of the Allied defences there. He struck first at the Belgians and the French on the Yser and, shortly after, met the British in a major encounter immediately east of the ancient cloth city of Ypres. Through October into November the summer veterans and young reserves from the homeland struggled to break through. At last the Belgians earned a respite by flooding their front. Round Ypres, the old professional British Army fought its final battle as an entity, resisting into November every effort to breach its positions. At times, the issue was decided by the committal of a single company. On 11 November Falkenhayn discontinued the battle. He saw no prospect of its success. Indeed, it is likely that this shrewd man discerned that the prospect of victory, as such, had already passed beyond German attainment.
While the battles were being fought upon the Yser and the Flemish plain against Belgians, French and British, the German army in the east was pressing in upon the Russians. Hindenburg, nominal victor of Tannenberg with his chief-of-staff, Ludendorff, advanced his force into Poland. Though temporarily checked here, he believed that the Tsar's armies were vulnerable to a crippling blow, and he repeated an earlier demand for reinforcements. When Falkenhayn refused, Hindenburg attacked with his army1 as it stood.
On 11 November, the day of the final attack at Ypres, he began to advance across the steppe. A sharp frost had hardened the ground but there was no sign of heavy snow. The Russians continued to oblige their enemy by broadcasting uncoded their orders by wireless. Their intelligence of German movements was correspondingly tardy. These factors, combined with the skill and method of the Germans, sped Hindenburg's armies1 forward and brought him to the edge of a spectacular victory in Poland. But a skilful stroke by the Grand Duke Nicholas2 and a short run of luck in his favour permitted a Russian withdrawal. By the time reinforcements were available to Hindenburg from the western front, the bitter winter had set in. The Russians, suffering difficulties from lack of munitions and ordnance, were saved for a breathing space. The German commanders whom they had eluded were left to remark that Falkenhayn's retention of men in the west had availed nothing there; and denied victory in the east.
This claim was widely discussed and popularly supported in military circles in the German homeland. The Emperor, looking anxiously for victory wherever he might find it, began to show that partiality for Hindenburg and his chief-of-staff which was subsequently to influence the course of the war. When Falkenhayn again denied reinforcements to the east in the new year of 1915, William reversed the decision. Of the six corps husbanded as a general reserve for a spring offensive in the west, four were sent to Hindenburg. As if to underline the correctness of this decision, a winter battle was fought against the Grand Duke in Masuria, hard marching in the blizzards producing almost 100,000 prisoners and an advance of 30 miles. It was impossible for Falkenhayn to convince his sovereign that this success against Russia was, in relation to the war effort, wasted.
As the year continued, the struggle between east and west was intensified. Falkenhayn's operational policy remained unchanged; his arguments in favour of a decisive campaign against France and Britain were strengthened by the naval supremacy of these two, and the expansion of the British imperial war effort. There were few arguments to attract him eastward. The spaciousness of European Russia alone defied conquest. Austria-Hungary, Germany's principal ally along the borders of south-eastern Russia, had proved incapable of sustained operations against the Tsar's armies. Turkey was too distant, lacked too much in expertise and equipment to be more than vexatious in the mountain passes of the Caucasus. But even if the former had been moderately sound, it is doubtful whether Falkenhayn would have been persuaded to change his views. A decisive victory in Russia – if attainable at all – would be expensive in time and effort. It was the west with all its potential that threatened. The longer the Franco-British allies had to develop this threat, the greater their strength; the greater the danger to Germany, inferior in numbers and cut off from overseas supply.
Robbed of two-thirds of his reserve by Hindenburg in January, Falkenhayn withdrew three battalions from each division in France, reinforced these with men from regimental depots, and built-up by April a striking force of fourteen divisions. With a new weapon, poison gas, and a substantial increment of artillery ammunition obtained by industrial rationalisation, he was able once more to consider a spring offensive.
Just then, the position of Austria-Hungary became desperate. Wisely refraining from tackling the Germans the Grand Duke had opened his 1915 offensive against the weaker ally. At great cost in men he began to force his way through the Carpathian passes in February and it now seemed that the Austrians would be unable to contain him. Once the Russians reached the southern exits, the entire Hungarian plain would be open to them; and if the Austro-Hungarian forces were unable to hold the Russians in the Carpathian mountains, they were hardly likely to do so in this open country. A major defeat here would mean a separate peace between Vienna and Moscow. With this in view, Italy and the neutrals of eastern Europe would join the Allies 'courir au secours du vainqueur'.
However reluctant he was to abandon an offensive in the west, Falkenhayn saw that circumstances demanded it. By mid-April Emperor and Cabinet were agreed; all aid must go to save Austria-Hungary. The whole of the reserve and certain other elements from France were transported east and south by rail against Russia. In this way the Western Allies gained that time for military expansion which Falkenhayn sought to deny them.
JOFFRE
Unlike Falkenhayn, General Joseph Jacques Césaire Joffre had been appointed the professional chief of his nation's Army before the outbreak of the war. He thus bore the responsibility for the disastrous plan which led to France's defeat on her frontiers in August 1914, though it follows that he must be given credit for the subsequent withdrawal, intact, of his armies to the Marne and their actions upon it which forced the Germans back. At this point Joffre, the impassive, bourgeois, engineer officer, had to reshape strategy after initial failure on his own part; while Falkenhayn, the former commanding officer of a guard regiment, the newly promoted senior member of the Great General Staff, had to begin anew from the failure of his predecessor. Falkenhayn was then 53; Joffre, 62.
Like Falkenhayn, Joffre never doubted that the issue of the war must be decided on the western front. 'The best and largest portion of the German Army is on our soil, with its line of battle jutting out a mere five days' march from the heart of France. This situation made it clear to every Frenchman that our task consisted of defeating this enemy, and driving him out of our country. My views, on this matter, remained unchanged during the whole time I was directing operations. While far from denying that the other theatres had their interest and value, I consistently refused to attribute to them the importance with which some people sought to invest them ... .'
When the line became fully extended and stabilised, Joffre had to face the fact that open warfare was past and a decisive manœuvre out of the question until a major breaching operation had destroyed a wide portion of the enemy's defences. In order to make this breach and to exploit it he would require a substantial force. By now his reserve in men and munitions had dwindled dangerously; the numbers ready in depots fell far short of his needs. The principal source of any new striking force must come, therefore, from the men in the battle line. Where his men held positions of tactical superiority, thinning out would be possible; elsewhere, a strengthening of defence works would permit him to relieve high grade units by older men or those with a large proportion of recruits. There was, too, the prospect of handing over a greater sector of the line to the British, whose present responsibility was, man for man, much less than the French. Like the majority of his brother officers Joffre regarded the British Expeditionary Force as a collection of amateurs, not without courage but largely without skill. 'Sir John French's forces had been considerably increased, and he now held a front of thirty miles with four army corps, whilst many of our corps occupied as much as ten and a half miles. I, therefore, instructed General Foch to request him to relieve the French Eighth Army, which was interposed between the British and the Belgians. The Field Marshal offered no objections to the principle involved, but the execution of the relief began only in January [1915].'
Joffre was unwilling to wait upon the British. By December he was partially convinced by his operations staff that certain sectors of the German line were undermanned and vulnerable to a breaching operation. It is probable, too, that he wished on his own account to test his enemy's defences, having in mind an offensive in the spring. Two major and four minor attacks were mounted; all failed, some totally. Apart from losing a few minor villages, the German lines were never at any time placed in the slightest danger, and their reaction to this renewed activity was swift and effective. On all but one of the corps fronts they counter-attacked at once and retook much or all of the paltry prizes of the French. In addition, between Christmas 1914 and 14 January 1915, they attacked locally both in the Argonne and from the Aisne heights, restricting their activities to features of immediate tactical importance and calling off the battle as soon as these were won. 'It was evident', Joffre wrote subsequently, 'that we should have to make stupendous efforts if we were to succeed in uprooting the Germans from our soil.'
For a little while, it was hoped that the popular support in Germany for the campaign against Russia would have the effect of drawing off forces in that direction. The Second Bureau in Joffre's Headquarters searched for signs of withdrawal of divisions from the line. In January the Secret Service reported a flow of reinforcements in both directions – the Emperor's support for Hindenburg was taking effect simultaneously with Falkenhayn's redeployment – and this apparent abundance of manpower impressed Joffre that the hour was not suited for optimism, still less for delay. He had chosen for his principal attack that point between Rheims and Verdun where the lateral railway in German hands ran within five miles of the front. Even if the assault failed to open a breach for exploitation, surely the ardour of his soldiers would carry them forward to cut the railway line. Further to the south and east he ordered First Army to eliminate the enemy's bridgehead on the left bank of the Meuse at Saint Mihiel. He now urged through political channels that the British should contribute by relieving his Eighth Army in Flanders.
The weather was seasonable – the air cold, the ground hard with frost; sleet and snowstorms were frequent. A German local attack disrupted the preparations of de Langle's Fourth Army in the Champagne. These unsettling events and a heavy fall of snow delayed the main attack until 16 February when, amidst the support of an immense bombardment by artillery, the French infantry went forward. For more than a month the fighting continued as the assault forces attempted to push forward up the bare slopes of the rolling hills. When it ended on 18 March, they had advanced on a front of 12 miles to a depth of about 800 yards. It had cost Joffre 240,000 men.
At Saint Mihiel, too, the attack was a failure.
The British now followed suit. Before the period of these disasters, plans had been completed for a joint enterprise round Arras, a movement forward which was lined strategically with the Champagne offensive. When it was clear by the beginning of March that all hope of a break-in by de Langle's Fourth Army must be abandoned, the French contribution was cancelled. Surprisingly, the British commander-in-chief, Sir John French, decided to persist in his own part to capture the Aubers Ridge with the aim of threatening Lille beyond.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Somme by A.H. Farrar-Hockley. Copyright © 2016 A.H. Farrar-Hockley,. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
TITLE,ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS,
FOREWORD: A Family Perspective,
INTRODUCTION,
PREFACE,
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS,
MAPS,
1 The Men and the Hour,
Falkenhayn,
Joffre,
Haig,
Verdun,
2 Gestation,
The River,
From the General to the Particular,
Cannon Fodder and Cannon,
The Other Side of the Wire,
Overture and Beginners,
3 First Strike,
Zero,
Diversion at Gommecourt,
Beaumont Hamel,
The Battle for the Ridge,
Above the Somme,
Below the Somme,
4 The Long Agony,
The Higher Commands,
The Second Line,
'At All Costs',
The New Brooms,
Mother's Children,
Third Time ...,
5 Judgement,
Finale,
Consequences,
The Casualties,
BIBLIOGRAPHY,
PLATES,
COPYRIGHT,