CHAPTER
SIX
SQUANDERED
CLIMACTERICS
One
must never fail to recognize that it is difficult to free oneself from a
concept once it is conceived and to throw over board an entire operations plan
once it appears that the presuppositions on which it is based are no longer
valid.
—GERMAN
GENERAL STAFF RIDE 1905/06
THE
BATTLE OF THE FRONTIERS WAS OVER BY 24 AUGUST. FOR nearly two weeks, two
million-man armies had been locked in murderous combat along a front roughly
three hundred kilometers wide. There had been planned offensives that quickly
degenerated into wild melees in Alsace-Lorraine, Belgium, the Ardennes, and the
triangle of the Sambre-Meuse rivers. There had been unexpected skirmishes and
unwanted surprises as the opposing forces ran into one another headlong in
rugged terrain. There had been severe “wastage” due to senseless massed
infantry assaults. Artillery and machine guns had proved utterly lethal. France
and Germany had each suffered roughly 260,000 casualties.
In
boxing terms, the two contenders had sparred for four rounds—at Nancy, Liège,
Namur-Charleroi, and Mons. They had landed, and absorbed, jabs and light blows.
They had inflicted black eyes, cut lips, and swollen cheeks on each other. But
there had been no massive combination punches to the body or the head, no
knockout blow. The Germans stuck to their game plan—to remain on the offensive
everywhere and to knock out their opponent by either a left hook in Lorraine or
a right hook at Paris, or both. They circled their prey waiting for an opening.
The French had come out looking to land a knockout punch in the first two
rounds—in Alsace-Lorraine and then in the Ardennes. When that approach failed,
they adopted a “rope-a-dope”[1] strategy, constantly
retreating, conserving energy, allowing the opponent to strike them repeatedly
in hopes of tiring him out, and waiting for an opportunity to counterattack.
Round
Five had the potential to be deadly—to the French. Alexander von Kluck’s First
Army was chasing the retreating British Expeditionary Force (BEF) on the right
flank. Crown Prince Rupprecht’s Sixth and Seventh armies were resting and recuperating
from a week of constant combat on the left flank, and preparing to drive past
Nancy and across the Meurthe River. Crown Prince Wilhelm of Prussia’s Fifth
Army and Duke Albrecht of Württemberg’s Fourth Army had given the French center
a terrible pounding in the Battle of the Ardennes. The war’s center of gravity
now shifted once more to Charles Lanrezac’s French Fifth Army. Pointing
northeast into the apex (Namur) of the right angle formed by the Sambre and
Meuse rivers, Lanrezac was the anchor of the French position. If he failed to
hold the line, it would spell doom not only for Sir John French and the BEF on
his left, but especially for Pierre Ruffey’s Third Army and Fernand de Langle
de Cary’s Fourth Army on his right, which had been bludgeoned and was now
pinned down in the Ardennes by German Fifth and Fourth armies. And, of course,
for Paris.
LANREZAC
HAD ALREADY CROSSED swords with Karl von Bülow at Charleroi and had come
out the loser. German Second Army had chased French Fifth Army south across the
Sambre and by 25–26 August was making a major effort to encircle it from the
northwest. But Lanrezac’s problems did not end with Bülow. For on his right
flank, another German army was driving west, and it posed the greatest
potential threat: Max von Hausen’s Third Army. It was a force to be reckoned
with: Saxon XII and XIX corps as well as XII Reserve Corps and Prussian XI
Corps, a total of 113,000 infantry, 71,000 cavalry, 602 guns, and 198 machine
guns.[2] For much of August,
Third Army had advanced through the Belgian province of Namur on the left flank
of Bülow’s Second Army—both forming the spokes that connected the hub of Fourth
and Fifth armies in the Ardennes to the outer rim of First Army in Flemish
Brabant. After ordering Hausen to surrender Otto von Plüskow’s XI Corps to
Second Army to besiege Namur, Army Supreme Command (OHL) on 20 August ordered
him to head for the line Namur-Givet with his three remaining corps. His
instructions were to support Second Army’s advance west of Namur and to
coordinate his actions with Prussia’s senior field commander. Ahead lay the
right flank of French Fifth Army.
Hausen’s
advance was fraught with both promise and danger. If he and Bülow drove home
their attacks on Fifth Army, the Prussian from the north and the Saxon from the
east, Lanrezac’s forces could be taken between two pincers and crushed.[3] But if either Bülow
or Hausen failed to press the enemy hard at all times and allowed Lanrezac
freedom of action, there was a danger that especially Hausen’s Third Army could
be driven by French Fifth Army against Langle de Cary’s Fourth Army in the
Ardennes. Expert coordination between Bülow and Hausen and their respective
staffs was essential to success. The man whose job it was to provide this,
Chief of the General Staff Helmuth von Moltke, was still at Koblenz, 280
kilometers from the front.
Hausen
took his time. It was stiflingly hot. The roads were narrow and dusty. The
local population was hostile. In town after town, from Somme-Leuze to Erezée,
and from Champlon to Hargimont, his commanders reported finding vast caches of
revolvers, ammunition, and dynamite, as well as destroyed railroad tracks,
telegraph wires, and bridges. They notified Hausen of “cowardly attacks” on the
men of Third Army by the local militia, the Garde civique. In response, Hausen
took estate owners, priests, and mayors hostage, burned manor houses and urban
dwellings, and summarily executed those caught obstructing his advance.[4]
Beginning
on 17 August, Bülow almost daily badgered Hausen and his chief of staff, Ernst
von Hoeppner, to drive their right wing across the Meuse River and thus secure
Second Army’s left flank. On 20 August, Bülow frantically cabled: “Where 3.
Army today?” Coordinated action by Second and Third armies was “urgently
desired.” But the next day, he sent a mixed signal: “2. Army will not attack
today.”[5] What was it to be,
Hausen must have wondered, a combined-armies attack or individual operations?
And where was the controlling hand of Moltke?[6]
As
Third Army approached Achêne on the road to Dinant on the afternoon of 21
August, Hausen and Hoeppner called a meeting of their corps and division
commanders. All agreed that Dinant was a formidable obstacle. There, the Meuse
flowed deep and broad and swift in a gorge that ran from south to north across
their path of advance. Its eastern shore consisted of a ridge of high, heavily
wooded hills; its western bank, of a precipitous hundred-meter-high rock cliff
topped by a massive stone citadel[7]. The city of seven
thousand inhabitants was strung out along the west bank of the river and
dominated by the onion-domed Cathedral of Notre Dame. French forces—Hausen
suspected two army corps—occupied both banks of the river. Three major roads
fed into Dinant from the east. The French could be counted on to blow up the
Meuse bridges as soon as Third Army hoved into view.
It was
further agreed at the meeting that Dinant could be taken only by way of a
frontal assault. Moltke, having received news that five French corps had begun
a concentrated attack in the Ardennes, instructed Hausen to coordinate his
assault with Bülow for 4 AM[8] on 23 August.
Accordingly, Hausen moved his headquarters up to Castle Leignon, fifteen
kilometers east of Dinant, and pushed Karl d’Elsa’s XII Corps and Maximilian von
Laffert’s XIX Corps straight toward the city. Hans von Kirchbach’s XII Reserve
Corps was to continue its advance on Third Army’s right flank in place of XI
Corps, recently dispatched to Namur.[9] Saxon field artillery
began to “soften” Dinant for the infantry assault. Engineers gathered barges
and brought up pontoon bridges to span the Meuse when the French, as expected,
blew up its bridges. The weather continued hot and dry.
At
10:30 AM on 22 August, Bülow was back with another request: “Rapid
advance 3. Army with right wing against Mettet urgently desired.”[10] In plain language,
Bülow demanded that Hausen shift the direction of his attack to the north of
Dinant against Louis Franchet d’Espèrey’s I Corps at Mettet. Hausen and
Hoeppner spent the rest of the day drafting new attack orders. Then, at
10 PM, they received startling news from Fourth Army. Erich Tülff von
Tschepe und Weidenbach, commanding VIII Corps on Duke Albrecht’s right flank,
reported to his northern neighbor, Laffert of Hausen’s XIX Corps, that the
French seemed to have only three cavalry divisions in the area west of Dinant.[11] Albrecht’s Fourth
Army had turned southward to ward off the attack by Langle de Cary’s Fourth
Army and hence could not take advantage of the opening. Tülff strongly suggested
that Hausen’s Third Army bypass Dinant to the south, cross the Meuse, and drive
a wedge between the joint of French Fifth and Fourth armies. Lanrezac’s Fifth
Army of 193 battalions and 692 guns might thus be crushed between the pincers
of Bülow’s Second Army and Hausen’s Third Army.
GERMAN
THIRD ARMY’S ASSAULT ON DINANT
What
to do? Obey the wishes of Prussia’s senior field commander? Heed the advice of
a royal prince’s corps commander? Seize the moment? Hausen prevaricated for
much of the night. Then, at 4:50 AM on 23 August, fifty-seven Saxon
artillery batteries opened fire on Dinant. It was a dreary, foggy morning.
Hausen’s spirits were raised immensely at 7:35 AM when he finally
received instructions from Moltke: “Available units to be taken across Maas
south of Givet.” The news from Koblenz, Hausen recorded in the war diary,
“produced great joy at Army Supreme Command 3.”[12]It was one of those rare
moments of opportunity that make history’s great captains. At hand lay a golden
opportunity to cut off Lanrezac’s retreat from the Sambre and envelop French
Fifth Army. Within the hour, Hausen ordered Laffert’s XIX Corps to dispatch ten
infantry battalions, nine artillery batteries, and three cavalry squadrons
under Götz von Olenhusen south to Givet and on to Fumay, there to cross the
Meuse and advance against Lanrezac’s right flank.[13]
Hausen’s
bold action, of course, split his army into three groups. While Olenhusen’s
force—mainly 40th Infantry Division (ID)—marched off toward Givet, Kirchbach’s
XII Reserve Corps continued its advance north of Dinant toward Houx. That left
a third group, d’Elsa’s XII Corps, to storm the narrow medieval streets of
Dinant and to seize the heights between Haut-le-Wastia, Sommière, and Onhaye.[14]
In
daylong bitter fighting, Horst von der Planitz’s 32d ID, followed by Alexander
von Larisch’s 23d Reserve Infantry Division (RID), crossed the Meuse on barges
and pontoon bridges north of Dinant at Leffe. Karl von Lindemann’s 23d ID
advanced south of Dinant via Les Rivages. The French defense had been severely
gutted as Lanrezac, hard-pressed by Bülow south of the Sambre, had ordered
Franchet d’Espèrey’s I Corps to turn northwest to come to the aid of Gilbert
Defforges’s X Corps, heavily battered by the German Guard Corps at Arsimont. René
Boutegourd’s 51st RID and two brigades of Henri Deligny’s 2d ID were all that
stood between the Saxons and victory.
Fighting
quickly degenerated into hand-to-hand combat. At Leffe, an industrial suburb
north of Dinant, Planitz’s 32d ID was met by a withering hail of bullets from
Boutegourd’s 51st RID and—according to both Hausen and the German official
history—from the “fanatical” Belgian population, including women and children.[15] Lindemann’s 46th
Infantry Brigade (IB) managed to penetrate Dinant, where it, too, was greeted
with heavy fire from French reserves and Belgian irregulars. When attempts to
smoke out the francs-tireurs failed, Lindemann abandoned the city for an
hour—and unleashed his artillery on the inhabitants.
Boutegourd
frantically appealed to Franchet d’Espèrey for relief, informing I Corps’
commander that one of his brigades had been “crushed by artillery fire, with
heavy losses.”[16] Franchet
d’Espèrey at once realized the mortal danger to Fifth Army’s right flank.
Without consulting Lanrezac, he ordered I Corps to retrace its steps of the
night before. Along the way, he ran across a colleague from the colonial wars,
Charles Mangin, whose 8th Brigade stood in reserve. “General, the enemy has
crossed the Meuse behind our right. The [51st] Reserve Division is giving
ground. … Go immediately and take your two battalions.” Franchet d’Espèrey
promised to follow “as fast as I can with the main body of the corps.”[17] It was Mangin’s
first appearance as a major actor on the Western Front.
In one
of the few bright moments for the French in this early part of the campaign,
Mangin picked up a cavalry regiment along the way and headed for Onhaye. En
route, he encountered the shattered remains of French 33d Battalion stumbling
back from Dinant. Trooper Christian Mallet, 22d Dragoons, was “stupefied” at
seeing
terrifying
beings, livid, stumbling along, with horrible wounds. One has his lips carried
away, an officer has a crushed hand, another has his arm fractured by a shell
splinter. Their uniforms are torn, white with dust, and drip with blood.
Amongst the last comers the wounds are more villainous, in the wagons one sees
bare legs that hang limp, bloodless faces.[18]
Mangin
pushed on. Two kilometers west of Dinant, he reorganized Boutegourd’s shattered
reserve division and ordered a gallant bayonet charge that drove the enemy back
from Dinant. The situation had been thus stabilized by the time Franchet
d’Espèrey’s I Corps arrived on the scene. Still, losses had been severe.
Among
the thousand French casualties at Dinant was Lieutenant Charles de Gaulle,
serving in Colonel Henri-Philippe Pétain’s 4th IB. He later recalled the fierce
fight around the city:
Suddenly
the enemy’s fire was precise and concentrated. Second by second the hail of
bullets and the thunder of the shells grew stronger. Those who survived lay
flat on the ground, amid the screaming wounded and the humble corpses. With
affected calm, the officers let themselves be killed standing upright, some
obstinate platoons stuck their bayonets in their rifles, bugles sounded the
charge, isolated heroes made fantastic leaps, but all to no purpose. In an
instant it had become clear that not all the courage in the world could
withstand this fire.[19]
To the
south, Olenhusen’s forces—in the strength of a brigade—had fallen prey to Carl
von Clausewitz’s “friction” of war and “fog of uncertainty.” Advancing down the
eastern shore of the Meuse, Olenhusen’s troops planned to make Fumay by 23
August, and then to march southwest on Rocroi. But the troops never reached Fumay.
The sun beat mercilessly on them. The roads were narrow and twisted, the woods
dense, the slopes steep. Legs gave out. Horses collapsed. Units got lost.
Orders were misread. West of Onhaye, it was this force that had the misfortune
of running into Mangin’s fierce bayonet charges. Their advance ground to a halt
on the heights north of Bourseigne-Neuve.[20] And so, Hausen’s
opportunity to become a great captain was lost.
Late
on 23 August, d’Elsa’s XII Corps finally seized the smoking ruins of Dinant,
lustily singing “Deutschland über alles.” The Saxon 1st Jäger Regiment,
bayonets fixed, stormed the citadel. Angered by having their anticipated easy
march through neutral Belgium halted and having received reports of civilians
firing on soldiers, d’Elsa’s troops took their revenge.[21] For most, including
Major Johannes Niemann of 9th Infantry Regiment (IR), this took the form of
burning the homes of known resisters, executing suspected civilian shooters,
and “requisitioning” stocks of “marmalade, pineapples, champagne, red wine, and
other delicacies.”[22] What then followed,
in the words of historians John Horne and Alan Kramer, was “the systematic,
premeditated elimination of presumed civilian resistance.”[23] For those with
historical interest, it was a repeat of 1466, when Charles the Bold had sacked
the city and murdered its inhabitants.
Almost
one resident in ten was killed. Corporal Franz Stiebing, 3d Company, 178th IR,
noted the violence at Leffe: “We pushed on house by house, under fire from
almost every building, and we arrested the male inhabitants, who almost all
carried weapons. They were summarily executed in the street.” Groups of
suspected resisters were put up against city walls and shot; others were gunned
down in the city’s squares or in their places of work. An anonymous lieutenant
in the same 178th IR wrote home on 21 August:
The
battle now becomes a wild melee, a street brawl. These mean-spirited brothers
bring us assassin’s losses from cellar windows, from apartments, from attics,
from trees. The doors are broken down with rifle butts and hatchets, the houses
searched with bayonets fixed, the guilty arrested. They are all taken down to
the local prefecture. … The scoundrels are executed in groups in front of all
witnesses. A terrible sight.[24]
Private
Kurt Rasch informed his parents in Dresden that his battalion had been selected
to storm Dinant with but one purpose: “to level everything in sight and to make
one part [of the city] left of the Maas disappear from view.” They did their
jobs well. “Dinant has fallen, everything burned to the ground. … We shoot the
men, plunder and burn down the houses.”[25] A. Rückauer, a
noncommissioned officer with 9th Foot Artillery Regiment, wrote home in a
similar manner. Priests had led the civilian assaults on the Saxons. They were
“rounded up and gunned down. [Dinant’s] inhabitants lay about in heaps.” Cattle
and horses roamed the streets bellowing in terror. “By nightfall, Dinant
resembled only a sea of fire and a heap of rubbish.”[26] Eight villages on
the ridge above the city likewise were ablaze.
On the
Belgian side, Public Prosecutor Maurice Tschoffen recalled the manner of
execution.[27] “The
[Germans] marched in two columns down the deserted street, those on the right
aiming their rifles at the houses on the left, and inversely, all with their
fingers on the trigger and ready to fire. At each door a group stopped and
riddled the houses, especially the windows, with bullets.” Almost as if to
change the routine, other soldiers threw grenades and small bombs into the cellars
of homes.
The
killings continued into 24 August. Some houses still burned; others were
already cold, smoking shells. Public and historic buildings that had escaped
the original orgy of destruction were systematically set to the torch. The
stench of bodies decomposing under the searing sun became almost unbearable for
inhabitants and occupiers alike. When it was all over, somewhere between 640
and 674 civilians had been killed and 400 deported to Germany. Two-thirds of
the city’s houses had been torched; twelve hundred were but burned-out shells.[28]
At the
height of the orgy of fire and death, around 5:30 PM, Bülow rudely
interrupted Hausen’s operations: Another frontal assault by Karl von
Plettenberg’s Guard Corps had been stopped cold at Saint-Gérard. Relief by the
right wing of Third Army was “urgently wanted.” The demand hit Hausen like a
cold shower. Confusion and uncertainty reigned at his headquarters. What to do?
Follow Moltke’s orders to advance across the Meuse south of Dinant at Fumay?
Recall Olenhusen’s units and rush them to Houx, north of Dinant, to come to
Plettenberg’s aid? It was a cruel dilemma. Hausen resolved it as he had done
before: “giving ear to Second Army’s distress,” as Chief of Staff von Hoeppner
later put it,[29] Third
Army grudgingly recalled most of its units from the south. Chaos ensued as
Olenhusen’s weary units dutifully about-faced to retrace their steps to Dinant.
Still,
Hausen believed that all was not yet lost. Although having sustained almost
1,275 dead and 3,000 wounded at Dinant, he planned to drive his remaining
forces southwest, belatedly to cross the Meuse south of Givet and to strike
French Fifth Army in the right flank. Saxon XII Corps and XII Reserve Corps
were to march on Rocroi, XIX Corps on Fumay and Revin. But no sooner had Hausen
issued his orders than an emissary (Major von Fouqué) arrived from Bülow’s
headquarters at 3 AM on 24 August and “urgently requested” that Third
Army wheel around on a westerly course toward Mettet to take the pressure off
Second Army’s left wing. No fewer than five French corps were assaulting Second
Army.[30]
Sunrise
was less than three hours away. A decision had to be made at once. For the
second time in half a day, Bülow had directly interfered with Hausen’s command.
And for the second time in half a day, Hausen yielded. Within ninety minutes of
Fouqué’s arrival, he issued new orders for Third Army to fall into line with
Bülow’s demand. By then, the weakened vanguard of Third Army had failed in its
attempt to cross the Meuse in force at Fumay, Revin, or Monthermé. French
sappers had dynamited the bridges, and enemy infantry was entrenched on the
river’s west bank. In a bitter twist of fortune, six hours after Fouché’s
mission pleading “urgent” help from Third Army, Bülow cavalierly informed Hausen
that Second Army was no longer in danger.[31]
Max
von Hausen had failed to bring about the war’s first “climacteric,” to borrow a
phrase from Winston S. Churchill. By his actions, as the German official
history noted, Hausen “gave away the brilliant prospect of an operational
pursuit” of Lanrezac’s Fifth Army in order to “secure the tactical victory”
scored at Dinant.[32] In truth, Third
Army’s commander had squandered a magnificent opportunity to help destroy an
entire French army (or at least major parts thereof) because he could not bring
himself to make an independent decision against the will of his Prussian
superior.[33]
Artur
Baumgarten-Crusius, the historian of Third Army, shifted the blame to Moltke.
At no time had the chief of the General Staff offered Hausen the support he
needed (and deserved). Prospects had been brilliant in the triangle of the
Sambre and Meuse. While Max von Gallwitz’s Guard Reserve Corps anchored the
German front at Namur, Moltke should have ordered Hausen to deliver a “left hook”
against Lanrezac by advancing from Givet to Rocroi; concurrently, he should
have instructed First and Second armies to halt their advance southwest and
instead to march from Mons to Maubeuge and deliver a “right hook” against
Lanrezac. As well, he should have dispatched Manfred von Richthofen’s I Cavalry
Corps to Fumay, instead of wasting it on endless battles north of Binche as
part of Bülow’s Second Army.[34] French Fifth Army
escaped the German “pincers” to fight another day. At Koblenz, Moltke
incredibly informed the Saxon military plenipotentiary, Traugott Leuckart von
Weißdort, “Operations are running … according to plan.”[35]
Moltke’s
insouciance was no doubt occasioned by the flood of self-congratulatory reports
that came in from the front.[36] On 23 August, Fifth
Army’s chief of staff, Konstantin Schmidt von Knobelsdorf, informed Moltke that
the main French armies had been “reduced to rubble” (zertrümmert) and
that the rest were in full flight.[37] Within hours, Duke
Albrecht of Fourth Army was downright triumphalist in his report to Koblenz.
“Total victory achieved; thousands of prisoners, including generals; and
countless guns. Started pursuit of the beaten foe. … Troops fought valiantly;
losses in many cases are great.”[38] The next day, Bülow
also signaled victory. “Enemy right wing decisively beaten by II Army;” and on
25 August, “II Army has decisively defeated the enemy.” Hausen reported the
French in “full retreat” and in danger of encirclement.[39] At the corps level,
Max von Fabeck (XIII Corps) between 27 August and 2 September bombarded the OHL
with a steady barrage of telegrams reporting French units “thrown back” from
the front and “fleeing” the scene of battle; in short, a steady string of
“unending victories against the Belgian-English army masses.”[40]
The
OHL readily accepted the rosy news from its field commanders. Colonel Wilhelm
Groener, chief of the Field Railway Service, on 25 August crowed that the
campaign in the west had been decided in Germany’s favor. Lieutenant Colonel
Gerhard Tappen, Moltke’s chief of operations, cheerily announced: “The whole
thing will be done in six weeks.”[41] It seemed to be
1870–71 all over again. The French simply were no match for the Prussian-German
war machine. They were soft and effeminate, too much devoted to food and wine.
They bolted at the first serious “storm of steel” from the Krupp guns. They
blanched and ran at the first sign of massed waves of field-gray warriors
coming at them with bayonets fixed.
The
euphoria was contagious. Karl von Wenninger, the Bavarian military
plenipotentiary, reported to Munich that the French armies had been reduced to
“riff-raff” already on the first morning of the Battle of the Saar.[42] Fritz Nieser, his
counterpart from the Grand Duchy of Baden, informed Karlsruhe that “military circles”
considered the campaign against France already won. “What is still to follow
comes under [the heading] occupation measures.”[43]
Moltke
at last agreed with critics in the General Staff who stressed that the OHL
needed to be closer to the front—but not too close! He remained concerned that
the closer Wilhelm II was to the fighting, the more active the role he might
take in command decision making. He felt personal responsibility for the
kaiser’s safety. And he was aware that General Moriz von Lyncker, chief of the
Military Cabinet, since 9 August (!) had been interviewing candidates to
succeed him in case of a major setback. Rather than Namur or Charleroi, Moltke
settled on Luxembourg.[44]
It was
a poor choice. Whereas Alfred von Schlieffen in 1908 had envisioned a distant,
highly centralized command-and-control system, one in which the “modern
Napoleon” would conduct operations from a “comfortable chair at a broad table”
in a “house with roomy bureaus” by way of “wire and wireless telegraphy,
telephone and signal apparatus, as well as hordes of trucks and motorcycles,”[45] Moltke on 30 August
had to settle for a small, dingy girls’ schoolhouse. “We have neither gas nor
electric lights, only dim petroleum lamps,” he wrote his wife that day.[46] An officer on
Moltke’s operations staff was brutal in his assessment of the new headquarters.
“Work conditions were simply scandalous. Desks consisted of several rough
boards and trestles. There was no light at all.” Moltke worked out of a small
schoolroom and Tappen out of an adjacent closet, “where operational discussions
took place.”[47] The
“modern Napoleon’s” communications system consisted of a single radio
transmitter.
IN
TRUTH, COMMUNICATIONS REMAINED the Achilles’ heel of the German armies in
the west. One scholar has acidly noted, “The war began with an end to
communications.”[48] The
OHL’s single Morse-type telegraph transmitter had a reach of just three hundred
kilometers, which meant that by the time of the Battle of the Marne, Moltke
could reach First Army only by way of relay stations at Péronne, Noyon,
Compiègne, and Villers-Cotterêts; Second Army, only via Marle, Laon, and
Soissons.[49] Unsurprisingly,
transmission delays of up to twenty hours were not uncommon. As late as 3
September, German wire connections had been established only as far as
Esch-sur-Alzette on the Luxembourg-Lorraine border. The Field Telegraph Corps
was headed by a “total novice,” General William Balcke, who had been promoted
to the post from command of 82d IB and who neither understood nor cared about
modern electronic communications.[50] Moreover, his corps
of eight hundred officers and twenty-five thousand men was too small to handle
the daily traffic emanating from seven armies and nearly two million soldiers.
“Troops, individual units and private parties” all vied with headquarters for
time on the radio-telegraph. The two critical “strike” armies on the German
right wing were without radio connection to each other, much less to their
individual corps. First Army established electronic connections to its corps
headquarters only after the Battle of Mons. Second Army likewise failed to
connect to its corps headquarters before the Battle of Saint-Quentin. Neither
the four higher cavalry commanders nor any of the army’s ninety-two infantry
divisions possessed a telegraph section. To compound this neglect, what little
existed in the way of communications was designed to function “from the bottom
to the top, rather than the other way around,” for the simple reason that army
commanders wanted to be free of direct “interference” from General Staff
headquarters. Finally, the Germans in the west, like the Russians in the east,
sent most of their messages in clear because ciphers were cumbersome to use and
speedy transmission was required.[51]
IN
TERMS OF FUTURE operations, Moltke and Tappen on 27 August issued a new
General Directive to their field commanders.49 They
assumed that the Belgian army was in a “complete state of disintegration,” that
the British would not be able to raise new armies “before from four to six
months,” and that the French center and northern armies were “in full retreat
in a westerly or southwesterly direction, that is, on Paris.” Thus, on the
critical right wing, First Army was to advance to the lower Seine River,
driving west of the Oise River; Second Army on Paris via La Fère and Laon; and
Third Army on Château-Thierry by way of Neufchâtel-sur-Aisne. In the center,
Fourth Army was to seize Reims on its way to Épernay, and Fifth Army to pass
Châlons-sur-Marne and head for French army headquarters at Vitry-le-François.
Sixth and Seventh armies were to secure the front in Lorraine—and, in case of a
French withdrawal, to pursue the enemy across the Moselle River in the
direction of Neufchâteau. Each army was to press the attack vigorously while simultaneously
securing the flank of its neighbor(s). If the much anticipated French stand
first along the Aisne and later along the Marne developed, “a turn by
the armies from a southwesterly to a southerly direction can be required.”[52]
Three
conclusions are warranted. First, Moltke, Stein, and Tappen had basically
abandoned Moltke’s modified Schlieffen Plan. By 27 August, that concept had
degenerated into individual operations by the various army commanders in the
west, each designed to achieve local successes in a separate theater. Second,
Moltke, Stein, and Tappen had also abandoned the concept of a vast envelopment
of Paris from the north and the west. The right wing was now no longer pursuing
an envelopment strategy, but simply one of flank protection. Third, the entire
German advance had slid off in a general southeasterly direction, away from
Paris. Moltke was “advancing on all points,” but no longer southwest; rather,
south and even southeast. This meant that if each army advanced as instructed
by Moltke, securing the flank of its neighbor, “the overall alignment would be
set by the left and by the centre, and not by the right.”[53] The chief of the
General Staff’s instructions of 27 August—with their advance warning that the
armies might be “required” to change course “from a southwesterly to a
southerly direction”—were a vote of confidence for Bülow’s concept of a purely
tactical victory over Kluck’s design of a strategic envelopment of the enemy.
The nagging question at the OHL was whether the right wing—depleted by 265,000
casualties, by Hans von Beseler’s III Corps detached to invest Antwerp, by Hans
von Zwehl’s VII Reserve Corps sent to seal off Maubeuge, and by XI Corps and
Guard Reserve Corps dispatched to East Prussia—remained sufficiently strong to
crush Allied forces still in the field.
JOSEPH
JOFFRE HAD LOST the Battle of the Frontiers. At the Grand quartier général
(GQG), his acolytes of the all-out offensive (l’offensive à outrance) were
in a state of sudden and unexpected depression. Would the generalissimo be
willing to recognize the full measure of the defeat? Would he be able to
conjure up what Carl von Clausewitz called the “new and favorable factors”
required of a great captain to avoid “outright defeat, perhaps even absolute
destruction”?[54] Joffre’s
reputation, indeed his career, depended on his willingness and his ability to
do so.
Reassessment
began on the morning of 24 August. Joffre first laid out his future strategy in
a candid letter to War Minister Adolphe Messimy.[55] “We are condemned to
a defensive supported by fortified places and large-terrain obstacles.” The
immediate task was to surrender “the least possible” amount of terrain to the
enemy; the longer-range aim was “to last as long as possible, while striving to
attrit the enemy;” and the ultimate goal was “to resume the offensive when the
[proper] moment arrives.” Gone were the sweeping Napoleonic brushstrokes of
vast offensives, and in their place came sensible and effective movements of
men and machines as if on a vast chessboard. Messimy provided governmental
support. “Take swift means, brutally, energetically, and decisively. … The sole
law of France at this moment is: conquer or die.”[56]
Joffre’s
first move was to pull forces on the French left wing back to the line
Maubeuge-Mézières-Verdun.[57] This was followed by
an accelerated shift of combat units from the right to the left—that is, from
Alsace-Lorraine to the threatened region around Paris. Paul Pau’s Army of
Alsace was further cannibalized for troops. Railroads and bridges in Lorraine
that could be of use to the Germans were destroyed. For much of the week after
24 August, Joffre took advantage of his interior lines and used his superb
Directorate of Railways to move units north to face the menacing German right
wing sweeping down on the capital. On 1 September, Victor Boëlle’s IV Corps
left Sainte-Menehould for Greater Paris in 109 trains; the next day, Pierre
Dubois’s IX Corps embarked at Nancy bound for Troyes in 52 trains; and
Émile-Edmond Legrand-Girarde’s XXI Corps departed Épinal for Gondrecourt in 74
trains.[58]
But
what strategy to employ once the new formations were in place? Two alternatives
dominated the discussions at GQG.[59] Deputy Chief of
Staff Henri Berthelot suggested that any new army being organized behind the
Allied left wing could best be used to attack German forces immediately
threatening Paris—in particular, the inner, or eastern, wing of Bülow’s Second
Army. Joffre rejected Berthelot’s scheme since it was based on the ability of
Fifth Army and the BEF to keep the German right wing in check while a new army
was being stood up. He had little faith left in either Charles Lanrezac or Sir
John French. Thus, he opted for a much bolder design: to form a new army well
to the west of German First Army and then to drive it eastward into Kluck’s
exposed outer right flank.
By
10 PM on 25 August, Joffre’s staff had formalized his new plans in
General Instruction No. 2.[60] After a cursory
admission that it had been “unable” to carry out the “offensive maneuver
originally planned,” GQG defined the new strategy as being one
to
reconstruct on our left a force capable of resuming the offensive by a
combination of the Fourth and Fifth Armies, the British Army and new forces
drawn from the east, while the other armies hold the enemy in check for such
time as may be necessary.
More
sacred French soil—another hundred kilometers—would have to be abandoned as the
planned withdrawal was extended farther into the interior to the line
Amiens-Reims-Verdun. Rear guards of Third, Fourth, and Fifth armies were to
cover the retreat by conducting “short and violent counterattacks” in which
artillery was to be “the principal element employed.” Belatedly, Joffre
demanded a more “intimate combination of infantry and artillery.” A new “group
of forces,” composed of at least one and perhaps even two army corps and four
reserve divisions from Alsace-Lorraine and Paris, was to be assembled “before
Amiens” or “behind the Somme.” This was to be Joffre’s “army of maneuver”
(later designated Sixth Army), which was to envelop the German right wing.
There, in a nutshell, was the genesis of the strategic plan for the Battle of
the Marne.
But it
would take time—perhaps too much time—and it was predicated on the entire
Allied line holding fast. Joffre had two great fears. First, a gap had
developed between Fourth and Fifth armies stumbling out of the Ardennes and
back from the Sambre, respectively. The Germans, moving south on Hirson, on the
Oise River, might discover this and attempt to break through. Thus, Joffre formed
a Special Army Detachment under Ferdinand Foch—the future Ninth Army—out of two
corps from Langle de Cary’s Fourth Army and two divisions from Lanrezac’s Fifth
Army. Foch, recalled from the Grand Couronné de Nancy on 27 August, immediately
moved to close the gap in the line. He would soon learn that both his only son,
Cadet Germain, and his son-in-law, Captain Charles Bécourt, had been killed on
22 August as the Germans swept into Belgium.
Joffre’s
greatest fear, as always, was the British. Sir John French seemed bent on
retreating from the Germans faster than they could pursue. Somehow, Joffre had
to sell the field marshal on his General Instruction No. 2. In typical fashion,
and in sharp contrast with the sedentary Moltke, on 26 August, Joffre raced off
to British General Headquarters (GHQ) at Saint-Quentin. Lanrezac of Fifth Army,
on the British right, and Albert d’Amade, commanding a group of territorial
divisions on the British left, were also summoned. The meeting took place in a
neo-Pompeian house with closed shutters and dimly lit rooms. Sir John French
and Henry Wilson, representing Chief of Staff Archibald Murray, who was away at
Le Cateau and ill, arrived late. Lanrezac, his pince-nez hanging over his ears
“like a pair of cherries,” was less than enthused about having to deal with the
British at all. He found Joffre silent and dull, seemingly “wrapped in a cloak
of enveloping dumbness.”[61]
Predictably,
the meeting became another disaster.[62] Sir John rattled off
a long list of French failures, beginning with Joffre’s refusal to accept the
fact that the Germans had crossed the Meuse in force and ending with Lanrezac’s
failure to inform him of Fifth Army’s sudden retreat from the Sambre. These
French “blunders” had increased the burden on the BEF and decreased the field
marshal’s confidence in French decision making. Moreover, his army was
exhausted and desperately needed a day of rest. He proposed falling back to
Compiègne. A painful silence ensued. Lanrezac, bored by the British diatribe,
merely shrugged. He cagily declined to inform the group that he had already
ordered Fifth Army to “break contact with the enemy” and to continue its
retreat twenty kilometers toward Laon prior to any counterattack he might
mount.[63]
It was
up to Joffre to save the day. He was in an unenviable position. His
concentration plan, XVII, had been shattered by the Germans at great loss.
Bülow’s Second Army had advanced south from the Sambre and was about to cross
the Oise. If it did so, and in the process routed French Fifth Army, the
campaign in the west would be lost. He desperately needed to hold the line of
the Oise River, and for that he desperately needed the BEF. Joffre pulled
himself together. He patiently explained the gist of his Instruction général
No. 2: After the planned withdrawal to the line Amiens-Reims-Verdun, he would
form French Fourth and Fifth armies as well as the BEF as a “mass of manoeuvre”
on the French left “capable of resuming the offensive;” all he asked of Sir
John was that the BEF keep its place in the line and “conform” to the movements
of French Fifth Army and d’Amade’s Territorials. But he could not simply issue
the field marshal a direct order: Sir John outranked him, and there existed no
machinery to coordinate the actions of the British and French armies. As
General Wilson translated Joffre’s presentation, Lanrezac, shoulders stooped
slightly, gave the impression that he was bored. The atmosphere was funereal.
Sir
John French sprang into action. He was flummoxed. “I know nothing of this Order,”
he petulantly barked out. He turned to Henry Wilson. The latter allowed that he
had received Joffre’s instruction during the night, but had not studied it,
much less translated it for Sir John. Joffre was livid, but he maintained his
customary calm. The atmosphere had turned from ice cold to hostile. Another
pained silence followed. Junior officers dared not speak. French and Lanrezac
refused to speak to each other directly. When Sir John invited the group to
lunch, Lanrezac declined.[64]
Charles
Huguet, chief of the French Military Mission at GHQ, summarized the conference
as having been conducted with “extreme coolness” and “lack of cordiality.” It
had “achieved no military result.”[65] Later that night,
Huguet informed Joffre, back at Vitry-le-François, that the BEF had not only
lost a battle, but “all cohesion.” It would require “serious protection” from
the French army before it could reorganize.[66] Joffre moved with
alacrity.[67] He
enacted General Instruction No. 2, standing up French Sixth Army under Michel-Joseph
Maunoury out of VII Corps and four reserve divisions around Amiens. He formally
abolished Pau’s Army of Alsace since most of its units had already been sent to
Sixth Army. And with another stroke of the pen, he crossed off the hapless Army
of Lorraine, sending its infantry divisions to Third Army and its staff to
Sixth Army. It was Joffre at his best: decisive, resolute, unflappable.
Colonel
Huguet’s reference to a “battle lost” concerned Le Cateau. While the French and
British held their desultory discussions at Saint-Quentin, advance guards of
Kluck’s First Army had, at dusk on 25 August, attacked the Coldstream Guards of
Sir Douglas Haig’s I Corps, withdrawing on the east side of the Forest of
Mormal. In fact, Haig had callously disobeyed Field Marshal French’s order to
assist British II Corps. He instead prepared to shelter for a few hours in
deserted army barracks at Landecries. There occurred several street fights with
Kluck’s advance guard that night. This minor, accidental encounter set off near
panic at corps headquarters—where Haig’s staff prepared to destroy the unit’s
records—and at Saint-Quentin—where French’s chief of staff, Sir Archibald
Murray, “completely broken down,” could scarcely be sustained by “morphia or
some drug” before “promptly” slipping into a “fainting fit.”[68] Landecries was not
Haig’s finest hour. It was one of the rare occasions on which the normally
steady Haig became “rattled,” possibly the aftereffects of a severe bout of
diarrhea from the night before. Standing on a doorstep, revolver in hand, he
cried out to John Charteris, his chief of intelligence, “If we are caught, by
God, we’ll sell our lives dearly.”[69] He was spared the
sale. The I Corps continued its retreat toward the Aisne River the next
morning.
Yet
again, the greater danger faced Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien’s II Corps, falling
back on the west side of the Forest of Mormal. Delayed by the passage of
Jean-François Sordet’s cavalry corps across its line of retreat, II Corps was
itself harassed by more of Kluck’s advance guards. It just managed to reach
Solesmes, where it found cover under the guns of Sir Thomas Snow’s newly
arrived 4th ID. But late that night, Sir Edmund Allenby’s cavalry division (CD)
reported that Kluck was closing in on the BEF. Smith-Dorrien decided that his
best chance lay in preparing his defenses and then “giving the enemy a smashing
blow.”[70] Twice he
communicated his decision to GHQ. At 3:30 AM, he ordered his units to
stand their ground on a low ridge running west of Le Cateau.
The
Battle of Le Cateau coincidentally fell on the 568th anniversary of the Battle
of Crécy, where Edward III of England had defeated the far superior army of
Philip VI of France. But in 1914, fate favored the stronger battalions. At
6 AM, the guns of Kluck’s First Army, sited on the heights above the town,
unleashed a deadly barrage. At first, Smith-Dorrien’s center managed to hold
its own against the infantry assaults of Friedrich Sixt von Arnim’s IV Corps.
But on the right flank, left unprotected by Haig’s retreat from Landecries,
Ewald von Lochow’s III Corps drove forward to envelop British II Corps. Furious
counterattacks failed to repel the Germans, and 19th IB as well as 5th ID
seemed threatened with destruction. On the left flank, too, the situation grew
precarious as Georg von der Marwitz’s II Cavalry Corps and two infantry
divisions of Hans von Gronau’s IV Reserve Corps attacked “Snowball” Snow’s 4th
ID. British II Corps was saved from possible annihilation by a timely sortie by
Sordet’s cavalry corps against Gronau’s IV Reserve Corps and by an almost
suicidal attack by Henri de Ferron’s 84th Territorial Division against
Alexander von Linsingen’s II Corps moving up to join Gronau’s units.
BATTLE
OF LE CATEAU
In
contrast with the brutal offensive infantry assaults supported by massive
artillery barrages at Charleroi, in the Ardennes, and in Lorraine, Le Cateau
was a battle waged on open and largely treeless fields, in which British
riflemen fought from prone positions and rarely had the luxury of digging rifle
pits. It in many ways was more like a battle out of the U.S. Civil War or the
Franco-Prussian War than the fighting one normally associates with World War I.
Still, the British suffered 7,812 casualties at Le Cateau, their greatest
battle (and losses) since Waterloo. The next day, gray and gloomy with heavy
down-pours, the commanders of two exhausted battalions surrendered rather than
offering battle near Saint-Quentin.[71]
BATTLE
OF GUISE
By 28
August, intensely hot again, the BEF had put the Oise River between itself and
the pursuing Germans. Even the ever-optimistic Henry Wilson was seen at the new
headquarters in Noyon mumbling, “To the sea, to the sea, to the sea.”[72] French
communications at Belfort intercepted Wilhelm II’s ebullient radio message to the
troops: “In its triumphant march, First Army today approaches the heart of
France.”[73] Still,
Le Cateau was a bitter pill for Kluck to swallow. For a second time (after
Mons), he had inflicted a tactical defeat on the British, but at great
(unspecified) cost to his own forces and delay in the great sweep through
northeastern France. And for a second time, due to poor intelligence and
reconnaissance, he had failed to “achieve the desired annihilation.”[74]
LE
CATEAU STIRRED JOFFRE to still more feverish activity. Around
6 AM on 27 August, he dispatched an urgent appeal to Lanrezac,
reminding the commander of Fifth Army to launch the counterattack against the
Germans that Joffre seemingly had promised French at the conference in
Saint-Quentin the day before.[75] The situation had
grown more critical since then, given that Hausen’s Third Army had crossed the
Meuse at Dinant. Joffre called for an immediate strike northwest from the
region of the Oise River between Hirson and Guise. Yet again, Lanrezac
prevaricated. He preferred to withdraw another twenty kilometers south, there
to regroup, and then to attack from around Laon. All the while, Huguet
bombarded Vitry-le-François with ever more dire reports concerning the British
army.[76] By early afternoon
on the twenty-seventh, it had evacuated Saint-Quentin, exposing Lanrezac’s left
flank. At 5:45 PM, Huguet reported that the BEF’s situation was “extremely
grave” and that its retreat threatened to turn into a “rout.” In a final
communiqué later that evening, he informed Joffre that after Le Cateau, two
British infantry divisions were “nothing more than disorganized bands incapable
of offering the least resistance,” and that the entire BEF was “beaten,
incapable of a serious effort.” At 8:10 PM, Joffre gave Lanrezac a direct
order to attack toward Saint-Quentin.
It was
a bold plan. Bülow’s Second Army was moving in a southwesterly direction—Karl
von Einem’s VII Corps and Guenther von Kirchbach’s X Reserve Corps were
approaching the British near Saint-Quentin—and thus offered an inviting flank
for a counterattack. Of course, Joffre also knew that the plan was risky
because he was asking much of a battered and exhausted army that had just
marched almost three hundred kilometers first up to and then back from the
Sambre. Fifth Army would have to execute a ninety-degree turn from northwest to
west—while facing major enemy forces. Hence, Joffre dispatched one of his staff
officers, Lieutenant Colonel Alexandre, to Lanrezac’s headquarters at Marle to
monitor the attack. Unsurprisingly, neither the professor from Saint-Cyr nor
his chief of staff, Alexis Hély d’Oissel, was amused by being lectured by a
junior officer. Lanrezac sent Alexandre back to Vitry-le-François with a brutal
peroration: “Before trying to teach me my business, sir, go back and tell your
little strategists to learn their own.”[77]
Joffre’s
new deployment plan must have reminded Lanrezac of his recent trials and
tribulations in the Battle of Charleroi. There, Fifth Army had been boxed into
the triangle formed by the Sambre and Meuse. Now he was being asked to fight in
a similar triangle around Guise, where the Oise River, after flowing east to
west, turns sharply southwest. More, he would have to divide his forces: While
Émile Hache’s III Corps and Jacques de Mas-Latrie’s XVIII Corps would drive
west against Bülow’s formations harassing the British around Saint-Quentin, a
single corps, Gilbert Defforges’s X, would have to secure the northern front
toward Guise as well as to cover Fifth Army’s right flank and rear. That would
leave only Franchet d’Espèrey’s I Corps in reserve.[78]
At
9 AM on 28 August, Lanrezac had a not-unexpected visitor: Joseph
Joffre. The chief of staff was “shocked” by his commander’s physical
appearance: “marked by fatigue, yellow complexion, bloodshot eyes.”[79] In what both
officers later admitted was a “tense and heated” meeting, they exchanged views.
Lanrezac, without informing Joffre of the dispositions he had made during the
night to realign his corps according to GQG’s new design, launched a biting attack
on Joffre’s overall strategic plan and reminded him of the great fatigue of
Fifth Army and the overwrought “nerves” of some of its commanders. Joffre,
fully aware that he could not afford either militarily or politically to have
the BEF crushed on French soil, lost his customary calm. He exploded. “His rage
was terrific,” Lieutenant Edward Spears, British liaison officer with French
Fifth Army, recorded. “He threatened to deprive Lanrezac of his command and
told him that he must obey without discussion, that he must attack without his
eternal procrastination and apprehensiveness.”[80] When Lanrezac coldly
countered that he possessed no written orders, Joffre sat down, seized paper
and pen, and provided same. “As soon as possible, the Fifth Army will attack the
German forces that were engaged yesterday against the British Army.”[81]
By the
time the story of the stormy meeting made the rounds in the seething political
cauldron of Paris, President Raymond Poincaré noted in his diary that Joffre
had threatened to have Lanrezac “shot” if he “disobeyed” this direct order.[82] A request that the
BEF join Fifth Army’s attack was readily accepted by Haig—but immediately
rejected by Sir John French, who “regretfully” informed Huguet that his
“excessively fatigued” troops needed 29 August to rest.[83] Huguet was shocked
to learn that the field marshal was planning a “definite and prolonged retreat”
south of Paris.[84] Lanrezac
was incensed. “C’est une félonie!” reportedly was his kindest
comment on Sir John and the British.[85]
Lanrezac
counterattacked out of the triangle of the Oise around Guise in a thick mist at
6 AM on 29 August.[86] Yet again, he
squared off against Bülow. Yet again, the weary soldiers of French Fifth Army
and German Second Army were asked for another Herculean effort. Yet again, the
terrain was miserable: woods and brush, ravines and streams. Yet again, Paris
was the prize. And yet again, both sides had a different name for the battle:
Guise to the French and Saint-Quentin to the Germans.
Lanrezac
caught Bülow’s Second Army off guard. As the sun slowly began to burn through
the morning mist, it became readily evident that once more, what was intended
to be a single, bold, decisive French counterattack had degenerated into a
series of distinct localized battles. Hache’s III Corps and de Mas-Latrie’s
XVIII Corps advanced about four kilometers west and northwest, respectively,
before each was met by a withering storm of artillery, followed by massed
infantry charges. By noon, their drive had stalled. French X Corps in the
center of the line attacking north fared even worse. By 11 AM, General
Defforges was pleading with Lanrezac to send him reinforcements. “I am very
violently attacked on my whole front. They are getting around my right flank. I
will hold at all costs. Get me support as soon as possible on my right and on
my left.”[87]
Lanrezac countered that it was too early in the day to commit
Franchet d’Espèrey’s precious I Corps.
North
of the Oise, Bülow was about to enter Saint-Quentin with his staff when the
thunder of heavy guns erupted to the southeast. He drove toward the sound of
the guns. Not only had Kirchbach’s X Reserve Corps been heavily attacked east
of Guise, but Emmich’s X Corps and Plettenberg’s Guard Corps were in a serious
firefight around Audigny, south of Guise. Bülow and his chief of staff, Otto
von Lauenstein, quickly appreciated that Second Army was conducting two major
but separate battles: one at Guise in a southeasterly direction against the
line of the Oise between Bernot and La Fère, and the other across the Oise from
Guise to Vervins. By noon, a fifteen-kilometer-wide gap had formed between the
two groups.[88]
A
lieutenant (Dr. Trierenberg) with 2d Guard Regiment wrote home about the horror
of battle around Le Sourd. Approaching the village through ripe orchards, the
Guard was met by a withering hail of fire from houses and hedges and pinned
down for two hours. When it finally resumed the advance, “the streets of Le
Sourd offered a horrible picture. The dead and the wounded lay about in heaps. Pleading
cries for help were directed toward us.” Beyond Le Sourd, the fields had been
set on fire by the artillery and were littered with abandoned machine guns and
their dead crews. Not even a small wood offered protection, as it was
repeatedly raked by French 75mm fire. “Bloody corpses rolled around on the
ground.” The heat was unbearable. Whenever the men spied even a dirty puddle of
water in the clay soil, “they fell over it like a pack of wild animals.” The
wounded ran about in delirium, “wild eyed and foaming at the mouth.” At the end
of the day, 2d Guard Regiment was down to eight hundred men.[89]
The
situation was critical. The French were tenaciously attacking Bülow’s entire
front. On the left flank, the Guard Corps was battling Defforges’s X Corps east
of Audigny. Unsurprisingly, Bülow hurriedly contacted Hausen’s Third Army and
requested that it attack the French “in the direction of Vervins” to relieve
the pressure on Plettenberg’s Guard Corps. Uncharacteristically, there was no
ready reply from Hausen. In fact, Third Army was being hard-pressed by Dubois’s
IX Corps near Rethel. Moreover, the distance to Vervins was too great for Third
Army to cover in a day. As well, Hausen allowed, his men were “extraordinarily
impaired by the great heat on the waterless plateau of Château-Porcien.”[90] There was nothing
for Bülow and Lauenstein to do but call in the last reserves: Kurt von dem
Borne’s 13th ID and Paul Fleck’s 14th ID. Piecemeal, they fed their reserves
into wherever the French threatened to break Second Army’s front—at Audigny, at
Le Mesnil, at Mont-d’Origny, at Sains-Richaumont.
By
midafternoon, the crisis on Second Army’s left flank had further intensified.
Just after 1 PM Joffre, who had spent the morning with Lanrezac at
Marle, released Fifth Army’s iron reserve to be “engaged as circumstances best
require in liaison with the 3rd and 10th Army Corps.”[91] Finally unleashed,
Franchet d’Espèrey did not disappoint. Believing both Hache and Defforges to
have been beaten morally rather than physically, he pushed his forces in
between III and X corps. What followed was grand theater. Mounted on a chestnut
charger in the light of the setting sun, Franchet d’Espèrey ordered Alexandre
Gallet’s 1st ID, its bayonets fixed, colors unfurled, and bands playing “La Marseillaise,”
to sweep down the slope from Le Hérie against the German line. Obviously
stirred by the sight, the men of III and X corps joined the attack. Only the
onset of darkness prevented a systematic attempt to exploit the charge. Joffre
had found a potential new army commander: “a man of energy and willpower.”[92]
The
western French front facing Saint-Quentin was dramatically less successful.
Neither Hache nor de Mas-Latrie was cut from the same cloth as Franchet
d’Espèrey. The more Hache clamored for reinforcements, the less inclined de
Mas-Latrie was to press the attack against Saint-Quentin on the left flank of
III Corps. And when German X Reserve Corps, commanded by Richard von Süsskind
after Kirchbach had been wounded in a firefight, drove down the Oise against
Justinien Lefèvre’s 18th ID, de Mas-Latrie ordered a retreat. On his left
flank, Einem’s VII Corps at the same time crossed the Oise and chased Pierre
Abonneau’s 4th Reserve Division Group out of its positions between Choigny and
Moy. Jules Champin, a soldier with French 36th IR, recalled the horror of the
attack:
German
bullets whiz around my ears without stopping and shells fall on all sides, a
bullet hits the ground just in front of me but doesn’t touch me. … I noticed
that I didn’t have any more cartridges. When I asked my comrades who were 4–5
meters away, they didn’t answer my calls. They were all dead.[93]
The
assault on Saint-Quentin, the cornerstone of Joffre’s grand design, had ended
in failure.
As
bloody 29 August came to a close, a depressed Bülow took stock of the
situation. His center had held—but just barely. His right flank had chased
Lanrezac’s XVIII Corps and 4th Reserve Division Group from the field. But his
left flank southeast of Guise gave cause for concern. A liaison officer from
General von Plettenberg’s headquarters reported around 8 PM that the
Guard Corps had been stopped dead in its tracks by Defforges’s X Corps and
Franchet d’Espèrey’s dramatic sunset charge; that its front was overextended to
a width of eighteen kilometers; that it most likely would not be able to resume
the attack the next day; and that in case of another French attack, it would
have to fall back behind the river. Not prepared to have the kaiser’s Guard
Corps “totally bled to death” on the banks of the Oise, Bülow gave Plettenberg
freedom of action, including the option of a full withdrawal.[94]
Bülow
then turned his attention to a gift from the gods: That night at Mont-d’Origny,
several precious documents had been taken from Colonel Gédéon Geismar, the captured
chief of staff of III Corps—among them, Lanrezac’s attack orders to his corps
commanders. Bülow and Lauenstein were now fully informed. Whereas they had
suspected that “at most 5 corps” had attacked Second Army that day, in truth
the French had thrown thirteen divisions into the battle—against just six and
one-half German divisions. More, the captured papers showed that Saint-Quentin
was the main object of the French drive, and thus Plettenberg and the Guard
Corps were not in danger of a renewed attack the next morning.[95]
In
fact, the next day, 30 August, was anticlimactic. Bülow renewed the offensive
into the triangle of the Oise. From Second Army headquarters at Homblières, he
drove X Corps, Guard Corps, and X Reserve Corps forward with exhortations to
“advance soon and energetically.” By noon, Chief of Staff von Lauenstein was
sure of victory. The Battle of Saint-Quentin, he wrote his wife, had taken a
sudden and surprising turn in the last twelve hours. “I was certain of the
issue around 12 o’clock noon.” Bülow concurred. “Now the matter has been
decided.” He hailed his advancing troops, “Great victory! French totally
defeated!” The “moral capacity to resist” of the French army, Lauenstein
crowed, “apparently” had been “broken.” German fliers reported large columns of
French soldiers falling back on Crécy-sur-Serre and Laon. Lauenstein rose to
giddy heights. “Our offensive surpasses even Napoleonic dimensions. If only
Schlieffen could have witnessed this.”[96] At 3:45 PM,
Bülow issued his Order of the Day: “The enemy has been defeated along the
entire front in the three-day [sic] Battle of Saint-Quentin.”[97]
Lanrezac,
fearing that German Third and First armies might join the battle in a pincer
move against Fifth Army’s flanks, at 5 PM on 31 August ordered his
“fatigued” corps commanders to retreat south behind the Aisne River.[98] Three hours later,
Joffre approved Lanrezac’s request to break contact (lest his army be
“captured,” as Lanrezac put it to GQG) and to withdraw forty kilometers to a
new line running from Compiègne to Soissons to Reims.[99]
Guise/Saint-Quentin
had turned into another German tactical victory, albeit another bloody one.
Lanrezac had failed to take advantage of Fifth Army’s numerical superiority
over German Second Army. He had held back Franchet d’Espèrey’s I Corps for much
of the day and had engaged it only after Hache’s III and Defforges’s X corps
had been driven to the point of defeat. He had left Abonneau’s cavalry and
Boutegourd’s 51st RID (up from Dinant) virtually idle on his right wing. Above
all, he had failed to detect and then to exploit the fifty-kilometer gap that
had developed between Bülow’s left and Hausen’s right—that is, to press home a
devastating attack on the left wing of Plettenberg’s battered Guard Corps on
the morning of 30 August.[100] Historians who
speak of Lanrezac’s “unwilling victory” are off the mark.[101]
As
great as Lanrezac’s failings were, they paled compared with those of Bülow. For
a second time (since Charleroi), he had blunted an attack by French Fifth Army.
For a second time, he had driven that force back with heavy losses. And for a
second time, he had an opportunity to pursue and perhaps finish off Fifth Army.
As commander of both First and Second armies and with Third Army at his beck
and call, he was well positioned to close the vise on Lanrezac: Kluck to drive
against Fifth Army’s left flank from the west, Hausen against its right flank
from the east, and his Second Army against its rear from the north.
Bülow
did nothing of the kind. Instead, he spent the afternoon of 30 August spreading
the news of his victory. Kluck was first on the list. “Today 2 Army has
decisively defeated the enemy. Large formations fell back on La Fère.” Moltke
was next: “Today, the second day of the Battle of St. Quentin, complete victory.
French [forces] comprising four army corps and three divisions in full
retreat.” Hausen was last: “Major French forces decisively defeated in two-day
Battle of St. Quentin and hurled back on La Fère and east [of there].”[102] More, instead of
immediately ordering a potentially fatal pursuit of the “decisively defeated”
French Fifth Army, Bülow let his troops rest the next day, 31 August, as well.
Field kitchens arrived to serve the half-starved troops from steaming vats of
soup with meat, potatoes, cabbage or beans, and roots or rice. Nearly six
thousand soldiers needed medical attention or burial. Almost as an
afterthought, Bülow nonchalantly suggested that First Army change direction and
advance along the line La Fère–Laon and “fully exploit” Second Army’s tactical
victory. The Germans’ second potential “climacteric” of the war had been
squandered.
[1] A term famously coined
by Muhammad Ali for the “Rumble in the Jungle” against George Foreman in
October 1974 at Kinshasa, Zaire.
[2] Roland Kleinhenz, “La
percée saxonne sur le front du centre,” Les batailles de la Marne de
l’Ourc à Verdun (1914 et 1918) (Soteca: Éditions, 2004), 147.
[3]
Undated letter from Hausen’s chief of staff, Ernst von Hoeppner. SHStA, 12693
Personennachlaß Max Klemens Lothar Freiherr von Hausen 43b.
[4] Max
von Hausen, Erinnerungen an den Marnefeldzug 1914 (Leipzig: K.
F. Koehler, 1920), 108, 117.
[5] “Meine Erlebnisse u.
Erfahrungen als Oberbefehlshabers der 3. Armee im Bewegungskrieg 1914,” SHStA,
12693 Personalnachlaß Max Klemens Lothar Freiherr von Hausen (1846–1922) 43a,
39, 41, 46. This is Hausen’s unexpurgated handwritten memoir of July 1918, and
will be used in place of the “cleansed” published version cited in note 3.
[6] Ibid., 42.
[7] Interestingly, in 1934
King Albert of Belgium died near Dinant while rock climbing.
[8] French (GMT) time.
German records are in German General Time (one hour later).
[9] WK,
1:371.
[10] Hausen, “Meine
Erlebnisse,” SHStA 12693, 54.
[11] WK, 1:372.
[12]
Hausen, “Meine Erlebnisse,” SHStA 12693, 56.
[13] Ibid. The best account
of Hausen at Dinant is by Artur Baumgarten-Crusius, Die Marneschlacht
insbesondere auf der Front der deutschen dritten Armee (Leipzig: R. M.
Lippold, 1919), 28ff.
[14] WK, 1:373–74.
[15]
Ibid., 1:379.
[16] Sewell Tyng, The
Campaign of the Marne, 1914 (New York and Toronto: Longmans, Green,
1935), 115.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Christian
Mallet, Impressions and Experiences of a French Trooper, 1914–1915 (London:
Constable, 1916), 33.
[19] Cited
in Paul-Marie de la Gorce, The French Army: A Military-Political
History (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1963), 102.
[20] WK, 1:381–82.
[21] The terror of Dinant
is detailed in Jeff Lipkes, Rehearsals: The German Army in Belgium,
August 1914 (Leuven: University of Leuven Press, 2007), 257–377.
[22] Johannes
Niemann, Das 9. Königlich Sächsische Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 133 im
Weltkrieg 1914–18 (Hamburg-Grossflottbek: Selbstverlag, 1969), 10.
[23] John Horne and Alan
Kramer, German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial (New
Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2001), 43–53.
[24] Wir Kämpfer im
Weltkrieg. Selbstzeugnisse deutscher Frontsoldaten, ed. Wolfgang Foer-ster
and Helmuth Greiner (Berlin: F. W. Peters, 1937), 39.
[25]
Letters dated 22 and 25 August 1914. SHStA, 11372 Militärgeschichtliche
Sammlung Nr. 105.
[26]
Letter dated 6 September 1914. Ibid.
[27] Cited in Horne and
Kramer, German Atrocities, 48.
[28] See
the initial compilation by Édouard Gérard, Tod Dinants. Geschichte
eines Verbrechens (Brussels: Brian Hill, 1919), 39–40. Lipkes, Rehearsals,
gives figures of 685 civilians killed and eleven hundred homes and buildings
burned.
[29] Hoeppner to Hausen,
undated (1918?). SHStA, 12693 Personennachlaß Hausen 43b.
[30] Hausen, “Meine
Erlebnisse,” SHStA 12693, 67–68. Also, war diary dated 24 August 1914. SHStA,
11356 Generalkommando des XII. Reservekorps 139.
[31]
Hoeppner to Hausen, 30 March 1918. SHStA, 12693 Personennachlaß Hausen 43b.
[32] WK, 1:384–85.
[33] This was also the
verdict of Hausen’s successor as commander of Third Army: Karl v. Einem, Ein
Armeeführer erlebt den Weltkrieg. Persönliche Aufzeichnungen (Leipzig:
v. Hase & Koehler, 1938), 58.
[34]
Baumgarten-Crusius, Die Marneschlacht, 40–42.
[35] Dated 24 August 1914.
SHStA, 11250 Sächsischer Militärbevollmächtigter in Berlin 71. Geheimakten A:
Verschiedenes.
[36] WK,
1:402–03.
[37] Ibid., 1:566.
[38] Ibid., 1:337.
[39] Ibid., 1:438–39.
[40] Reports, 27 and 31 August,
2 September 1914. HStA, M 33/2 General Kommando XIII. Armee Korps 1914–1918,
vol. 9, Operationsakten, Meldungen vom 26.8–7.9.1914.
[41] Diary
entry dated 24–25 August 1914. BA-MA, RH 61/83, Vorgänge im Großen
Hauptquartier des Generalstabes 1914–1915.
[42] Letter to his father
dated 20 August 1914. Bernd Schulte, “Neue Dokumente zu Kriegsausbruch und
Kriegsverlauf 1914,” Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 25
(1979): 153.
[43] Dated 31 August 1914.
GLA, 233 Politische Berichte des Großherzogl. Gesandten in Berlin und München
über den Kriegsausbruch 34816.
[44] War
diary, General Hans von Plessen, 24 and 29 August 1914. Cited in Holger
Afflerbach, ed., Kaiser Wilhelm II. als Oberster Kriegsherr im Ersten
Weltkrieg: Quellen aus der militärischen Umgebung des Kaisers
1914–1918 (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 2005), 647, 651.
[45] BA-MA, Nachlass
Schlieffen, N 43/101, “Der Krieg in der Gegenwart.” Later published in Deutsche
Revue 34 (January 1909): 13–24.
[46] Tappen to General
Staff, 13 July 1919. BA-MA, RH 61/51060 Die OHL und die Marneschlacht vom
4.–9.9.1919; WK, 3:190.
[47] See
Hans Georg Kampe, Nachrichtentruppe des Heeres und Deutsche Reichspost.
Militärisches und staatliches Nachrichtenwesen in Deutschland 1830 bis 1945 (Waldesruh:
Dr. Erwin Meißler, 1999), 172.
[48] From “Die
Nachrichtenverbindungen zwischen den Moltke, 382.Kommandobehörden während des
Bewegungskrieges 1914,” General Schniewindt 1928. HStA, M 738 Sammlung zur
Militärgeschichte 36.
[49] Kampe, Nachrichtentruppe,
170, 172.
[50] John
Ferris, ed., The British Army and Signals Intelligence During the First
World War (Phoenix Mill, UK: Alan Sutton, 1992), 4–5, suggests that
British and French intelligence intercepted at least fifty radio messages in
plain language from German armies, corps, and divisions between September and
November 1914.
[51] WK, 3:8–9.
[52] Ibid.
My italics.
[53] Hew Strachan, The
First World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 1:245.
[54] Carl von
Clausewitz, On War, eds. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), 271.
[55]
Letter dated 24 August 1914. AFGG, 2-1:124–25. Joffre’s reassessment has been
laid out by Robert A. Doughty, Pyrrhic Victory: French Strategy and
Operations in the Great War (Cambridge, MA, and London: The Belknap
Press of Harvard University Press, 2005), 76–78.
[56] Joffre, 1:303–04.
[57] Ibid., 1:300.
[58] See
the compilation in AFGG, 3-4:846.
[59] Joffre, 1:310.
[60] Instruction général
No. 2, 25 August 1914. AFGG, 2-1:278–80.
[61]
Robert B. Asprey, The First Battle of the Marne (Philadelphia:
Lippincott, 1962), 72.
[62] Joffre, 1:317–20.
[63] AFGG, 2:121, 466;
Doughty, Pyrrhic Victory, 78.
[64]
Edward Spears, Liaison 1914: A Narrative of the Great Retreat (London:
Eyre & Spot-tiswoode, 1930), 228–31.
[65] Charles J.
Huguet, Britain and the War: A French Indictment (London:
Cassell, 1928), 67.
[66]
Huguet to GQG, 16 August 1914. AFGG, 2-1:429.
[67] Order dated the night
of 25–26 August 1914. AFGG, 1-1:999; and 2:115–16.
[68] Keith
Jeffrey, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson: A Political Soldier (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2006), 135.
[69] John Charteris, At
G.H.Q. (London: Cassell, 1931), 17.
[70] Cited in Field-Marshal
Sir Henry Wilson: His Life and Diaries, ed. C. E. Callwell (London:
Cassell, 1927), 1:169.
[71] Strachan, First World War, 1:223
[72] Field-Marshal Sir
Henry Wilson, 1:170.
[73] Sent
“afternoon” of 28 August 1914. AFGG, 2-1:659.
[74] Hermann von
Kuhl, Der Marnefeldzug 1914 (Berlin: E. S. Mittler, 1921), 82.
[75] AFGG, 2:53–54; and
2-1:547. Also Joffre, 1:322–23.
[76] Huguet to Joffre, 27
August 1914, SHD, 1 K 268; AFGG, 2-1:550–52; Joffre, 1:328–29; Doughty, Pyrrhic
Victory, 78–79.
[77] Cited
in Tyng, Campaign of the Marne, 150.
[78] Lanrezac’s General
Order of 27 August 1914. AFGG, 2-1:592–93.
[79] Joffre, 1:332.
[80] Spears, Liaison
1914, 252.
[81]
Joffre’s order to Fifth Army, 9 AM, 28 August 1914. AFGG, 2-1:663; Joffre,
1:332.
[82] Raymond
Poincaré, Au service de la France (Paris: Plon, 1928), 5:206.
[83]
Huguet to GQG, 28 August 1914. AFGG, 2-1:671–72.
[84] Huguet, Britain
and the War, 72.
[85] Barbara Tuchman, The
Guns of August (New York: Ballantine Books, 1962), 448.
[86] Lanrezac’s orders of
28 August, AFGG, 2-1:706–07; attack in AFGG, 2:68ff.
[87] Defforges to Lanrezac,
10 AM, 29 August 1914. AFGG, 2-1:866.
[88] WK, 3:154–55.
[89]
Letter dated 29 August 1914. Wir Kämpfer im Weltkrieg, 57–61.
[90] War
diary dated 30 August 1914. SHStA, 11356 Generalkommando des XII. Reservekorps
139; Hausen, “Meine Erlebnisse,” 108.
[91] Particular Order to I,
III, and X corps. AFGG, 2-1:827.
[92] Joffre, 1:339.
[93] Cited
in Leonard V. Smith, Between Mutiny and Obedience: The Case of the
French Fifth Infantry Division During World War I (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1994), 55–56.
[94] WK, 3:168.
[95] Ibid., 3:168–69.
[96]
Lauenstein’s letters dated 31 August and 3 September 1914. BA-MA, RH 61/948 Der
Krieg im Westen 1914–1916.
[97] WK, 3:175.
[98] Lanrezac’s General
Order, 6 PM, 31 August 1914. AFGG 2-2:196–98.
[99] Berthelot to Lanrezac,
31 August 1914. AFGG, 2-2:160.
[100]
Tyng, Campaign of the Marne, 160.
[101] John Terraine, The
Western Front, 1914–1918 (London: Hutchinson, 1964), 131. A tactical
victory belongs to the commander who gains and then holds the battlefield, not
to the one who abandons it without plan or purpose. Moreover, Bülow’s appeal
for help was not the determining factor in Kluck’s turn to the southeast.
[102] WK, 3:177, 179, 186.
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