The Great War, 1914-1917
Chapter I – The western front
In August of 1914, despite the misgivings of General von Moltke and the OHL, Germany began an all-out offensive against Russia, employing six sevenths of her Army, while standing on the defensive in Alsace-Lorraine with the remainder. The plan had been dutifully prepared at the OHL at the insistence of Kaiser Wilhelm II, who above all things did not want his hands tied. A great deal of risk was accepted in its execution; it was for example assumed that Belgium would maintain its neutrality and not join the Entente. Next to no forces were deployed along that border. Britain, seeing its protégée Belgium safe from the Germans, saw no reason to intervene, especially after a personal letter from the Kaiser to his cousin King George V assuring that Germany was fighting only defensively against France and would demand no territorial concessions in return for peace. Russia, the traditional counterpart to the British Empire in the “Great Game” of the previous century, commanded little sympathy in Britain and neutrality seemed an attractive and viable option.
The German forces in the west dug in, and dug in deep; soon a system of trenches - double, triple, even quadruple in places - covered by machine guns and cleverly positioned artillery batteries (including most of the available heavy artillery, which was considered too cumbersome for the war of manoeuvre expected in the east) extended from the Belgian to the Swiss border. Within a year the trenches would also be complemented by a sprinkling of reinforced concrete bunkers.
The French immediately and furiously attacked in support of their Russian allies, but the narrowness of the front prevented them from exploiting their great numerical advantage. The French Army paid a terrible price for learning the basics of trench warfare – the advancing infantry was mowed down in their tens of thousands by machine gun fire and pre-planned artillery barrages. Gained ground could be counted in metres, rather than kilometres.
The initial French offensive made little progress against German trenches
Severely shaken, the “poilus” settled in to dig trenches of their own. These helped to dramatically lessen casualties from German artillery, but were otherwise of no great use, since the Germans refused to go over the top. The western front ossified. For the reminder of the war, long periods of relative peace, with only some sniping and trench raiding going on, were broken by French offensives of increasing strength. The first real crisis came in 1915.
The French, employing fantastic amounts of artillery, pulverized a five km sector of the German trench lines in front of Metz in a month-long saturation bombardment. When the smoke cleared and the French launched their massive spring offensive, little but the concrete bunkers and strong-points remained of the German lines. Casualties were otherwise next to total. These machine-gun emplacements exacted a heavy toll from the attackers and delayed their advance for a few hours before being overrun. As the jubilant French finally broke through, they soon found that while their artillery preparation was going on a new trench line, flimsy compared to the original but still impervious to unsupported infantry assault, had been built cordoning off the bombarded sector. Once more, the French columns were raked with machine-gun fire and artillery. Concentrated in the salient, they suffered horribly and could do nothing but dig in. They had advanced a total of six kilometres on a five kilometre front. Metz was never in danger.
French artillery efficiently paved the way for the 1915 offensive against Metz
Next year, the French opted for a new weapon to break the stalemate – tracks. To prevent the enemy from cordoning off a breakthrough like previous year, the 1916 offensive was launched on a broad front, including most of German Lorraine. Again, the target was Metz. The ship-like 23 ton “Char d’Assaut St Chamond” (based on the American Holt agricultural tractor) had been rushed into service and built in great numbers – 400 units would take part in the 1916 offensive.
The Char d’Assaut St Chamond was the first track to see any action
Armed with a 75mm field piece and four machine guns, they allowed the French to overrun the first German trench line with ease, but most of the armoured beasts would go no further. Many had been knocked out by German field artillery firing over open sights, but the vast majority simply floundered as they tried to negotiate the cratered and muddy ground. Once mired, there was no easy way to get the St Chamonds going again, since no tracked recovery vehicle had been designed and the combat tracks themselves had insufficient engine power to tow a disabled comrade.
As a result, the second trench line was pierced in places were French tracks were present, but as they too became stuck, the offensive petered out. Still, the 1916 offensive had been a great success compared to those of 1914 and 1915. The French had advanced 3-4 km on a broad front, taking almost the totality of the original German trench system in Lorraine. And while losses had been extremely heavy, the Germans had suffered too. The OHL was shaken, and transferred ten divisions from the Eastern Front. For this meagre result, the French had lost a million men since the outbreak of the war, and morale began to show cracks. Total German casualties were half of that, but at least they had bought great victories in the east. The French Army had little to show for its appalling losses.
During the second half of 1915, scout planes had started to come under attack by dedicated fighter planes. The Germans pioneered this development, but the French soon responded in kind. By late 1916, one Ace pilot outshone all competition on both sides of the Western Front – Manfred von Richthofen, known as the “Red Baron” because of his partially red-painted Albatross biplane (a challenge to the French pilots). On New Years Eve of 1916, he shot down his 40th opponent and was awarded with the “Pour la mérite” medal. The other pilots of his unit, Jagdstaffel 2, started to imitate their leader, painting portions of their planes bright red, and this in turn prompted von Richthofen to paint his all-red in order to continue to stand out. Although this colourful aerial war had marginal effect on ground operations, it captured the imagination of the world. The names of von Richthofen, Immelman and Guynemer became household words even in neutral countries like Britain and the USA.
The final year of the war saw the French High Command prepare with growing desperation for their final attempt to force the issue on the western front. Russia was collapsing like a house of cards, and there could be little doubt that the German armies in action on the Eastern Front would soon be transferred west. Before that happened, the French would try one last time. They had learnt from the failure of the St Chamond tracks and had replaced them with the new light track Renault FT-16, which had much better cross country ability and lower weight - only 6,6 ton. Where the St Chamond had had a nine man crew, the FT-16 had two. It carried only one MG or a short 37mm gun, but the weapon was mounted in a 360 degree traversing turret, allowing it a better field of fire than the heavily armed St Chamond. Being smaller and lighter, it was also cheaper, and more than a thousand were in place for the 1917 spring offensive.
The light FT-16 had excellent cross country capability and was by far the best track of the Great War
This time, the attackers made good progress in their three pronged advance against Metz, Strassburg and Mülhouse. The Germans had developed special anti-track ammunition for their light field pieces, and these knocked out many FT-16, but the great number of French tracks allowed them to push past the German trenches, inflicting heavy losses on the enemy. The Germans counterattacked furiously, and after a month of savage battle fought the French to a standstill at the very gates of Strassburg. Having suffered another half a million casualties in their latest offensive alone, French morale plummeted. Now, with their enemies exhausted, disheartened and weakly entrenched, the Germans struck back. Even before the final surrender of Russia in June, Crown Prince Wilhelm’s Army group, one third of the forces present in the East, was transferred to the Western front, where it went into strategic reserve. In late July, as the French were still settling in in their new positions, these rested and experienced troops spearheaded the first German offensive on the Western Front. They were armed with the German answer to the St Chamond track, some 500 Sturmpanzerwagen A7V. This boxy 34-ton monstrosity was even bigger and more cumbersome than the St Chamond, with a crew of 18 and an armament of a 57mm cannon and six machine guns.
Two A7V Sturmpanzerwagen advance through a French village during the final days of the Great War
Like the enemy track that inspired its construction, most Sturmpanzers did not get far past the French trenches – but in this case, that was enough. Already demoralized, the French units began to waver under the powerful German blows. Not even their secret weapon, the tracks, were enough to turn the tide of battle, since the Germans had tracks of their own. The Germans reached the main French line, from where the 1917 attack had begun, but their foes had given up – as the line was crossed with minimal casualties and the Germans crossed into French territory for the first time of the war, the French retreat turned into a rout. Guynemer, the French Ace of Aces was shot down and killed (probably by Lothar von Richthofen, Manfred’s younger brother) as he was strafing an advancing German column west of Reims. The Germans seemed unstoppable, and at the urging of London, the French asked for terms.
Even as the French Government was discussing an armistice, Crown Prince Wilhelm’s luck ran out. He was killed by a stray artillery shell, probably fired by a German gun, in August of 1917. The war had begun three years earlier on the day, and had only a week left to go.