Ypres

The First Battle 1914

Ian Beckett

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781317865339
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia del siglo XX

The battle for Ypres in October and November 1914 represented the last opportunity for open, mobile warfare on the Western Front. In the first study of First Ypres for almost 40 years, Ian Beckett draws on a wide range of sources never previously used to reappraise the conduct of the battle, its significance and its legacy.

Chapter 1

The Belgian Option and the Race to the Sea

Writing to a young woman – Venetia Stanley, with whom he was obsessed – on 2 August 1914, the British Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, set down, as much for his own benefit as hers, the respective obligations and interests underlying the British position in relation to the deteriorating diplomatic situation in Europe. In his own mind at least there was an obligation to defend Belgium but no actual obligation to France and Russia beyond the ‘long standing and intimate relationship’ with the former although, in fact, even this really dated only from 1904 and 1907 respectively. Britain’s interests, however, in preventing the elimination of France as a great power and in preventing Germany from establishing any hostile bases on the Channel coast were paramount.¹ Britain, indeed, had become a guarantor of Belgian neutrality under the Treaty of London of 1839 but this did not require Britain to act in all circumstances. Moreover, while Britain had grown closer to France, there was still considerable debate as to the appropriate role for a British expeditionary force in any European conflict. The nascent General Staff, gradually established between 1904 and 1906, generally favoured placing the BEF alongside the French army, a view firmly held by the first two Directors of Military Operations in the new structure, Major Generals Sir James Grierson and Sir John Spencer Ewart. Grierson and Ewart, indeed, were careful to maintain unofficial contacts with the French General Staff following the first brief official contacts in 1905.²

It was also an end to which the third Director of Military Operations at the War Office, the then Brigadier General Sir Henry Wilson, assiduously worked in drawing up detailed mobilisation schedules and plans between 1910 and 1914. Under these plans, which had been co-ordinated with the French, the BEF would be concentrated at Mauberge, a general assumption being that any German advance into Belgium would be confined to the area south of the Meuse. Ironically, in view of the British government’s seemingly wavering commitment to continental involvement, the French had not actually assigned the BEF any specific role once it had reached Mauberge.³ Neither the existence of Wilson’s schedules nor his machinations, however, did of themselves commit the British government to military intervention. Moreover, the French option did not go unchallenged. Even those politicians such as the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, who favoured intervention on the continent, had been made wary by the opposition among many of their own colleagues when the nature of the contacts between the British and French General Staffs had been revealed to the Cabinet in November 1911.⁴ Indeed, at a famous meeting of the Committee of Imperial Defence (CID) on 23 August 1911, no actual decision had been reached in terms of any definite commitment of the BEF for all Wilson’s skill in presenting the case for the so-called WF (‘With France’) Plan.

To some, a more attractive option appeared to be sending the BEF into Belgium, a notion that, in August 1914, had the support of the 61-year-old Commander-in-Chief of the BEF, Field Marshal Sir John French. The seeming image of the later ‘Blimp’ figure, Sir John French was certainly ‘un beau sabreur’, as James Edmonds once described him, and a man capable of inspiring great affection among ordinary soldiers. The womanising French, who liked to think himself Anglo-Irish, was no intellectual and prone to displays of emotion but, in many respects, he was more imaginative than his eventual successor, Haig. French was also perceptive enough to recognise the changing nature of battle on the Aisne in September 1914 with the onset of siege-type warfare rather than the war of manoeuvre that he had anticipated, though he was anxious to attempt to make movement possible by committing the BEF to the north. French, however, was at best mercurial in temperament and could also be vindictive and more than capable of carrying personal animosities to an extreme. Indeed, his feud with Horace Smith-Dorrien, which dated from at least 1907, was a case in point. Moreover, his apparent backing for the Liberal government at the time of the Curragh incident in March 1914 had greatly damaged his reputation among many of his subordinates. Faced with an apparent order to coerce Ulster into accepting Irish Home Rule, the then Brigadier General Hubert Gough and fellow officers of the 3^rd Cavalry Brigade had threatened to resign their commissions. The depth of support for Gough then forced the Secretary of State for War, J.E.B. Seely, together with French as CIGS and the Adjutant General, Spencer Ewart, to issue a document rejecting any possibility of coercion, the subsequent repudiation of the agreement by the Cabinet compelling all three men to resign. The divisions within the army on what might or might not constitute legitimate orders, however, had been deep, with the ramifications rumbling on well into July 1914.⁵

Prior to his resignation, French had held the post of CIGS since 1912 and had been a permanent member of the CID since 1905. French’s strategic ideas did not always display consistency but, having begun his career in the Royal Navy as a naval cadet at Dartmouth at the age of 14, French was more open than some to the notion of amphibious operations. Indeed, Admiral Sir John Fisher once suggested that French was ‘almost solitary amongst all the Generals, who all want to play at the German Army’.⁶ French had taken part in the deliberations of the CID subcommittee on strategic choices that had examined the Belgian option in 1905 and that had also actually initiated the first staff conversations with the French. Though he had kept in touch with Grierson, however, French did not take part in the subsequent discussions that led to the General Staff concluding the French option preferable due to the Belgians rebuffing British approaches for fear of it compromising their neutrality. The difficulty with the ‘Belgian option’, indeed, lay in the general uncertainty as to Belgian intentions, the Belgians again rebuffing British approaches in 1912. Moreover, the preliminary planning that was undertaken suggested that the BEF would still need to disembark at French ports whatever the final destination and there were serious doubts as to the efficiency of the Belgian army.⁷

Before the war, Sir John had invariably appeared sufficiently friendly in contacts with French officers observing British manoeuvres for them to assume his general support for close co-operation. In many respects, however, Sir John was motivated rather more by the wish to maintain independence from the French High Command, since Britain would clearly be the junior partner in a wartime alliance. Indeed, he had expressed just such a belief during the deliberations of another CID subcommittee in January 1909, at which point he also favoured holding the BEF in reserve, perhaps at Amiens or even Reims, so that it might be available for operations in Belgium. French, like Churchill, had also questioned Wilson closely at the celebrated meeting in August 1911 and also appears to have convinced Asquith of the merits of the Belgian option. It was French, who as CIGS, initiated the second approach to the Belgians. In short, though French was a continentalist, he was also a nationalist intent on using the BEF in British rather than French interests.⁸

Irrespective of whether Britain was or was not propelled into war primarily by the treaty obligation to Belgium, it certainly let Asquith off the hook with regard to opposition among the Liberals to a continental involvement, and in terms of establishing general popular support for war.⁹ It did not resolve the strategic debate, however, and 5 August 1914 saw an extraordinary meeting of a so-called War Council. A variety of prominent military and naval officers – eighteen persons were present – were summoned to meet with Asquith, Churchill and the acting Secretary of State for War, Haldane, and debate the options afresh, notwithstanding the fact that all mobilisation plans were geared to a concentration at Mauberge. To the dismay of Wilson, who characterised the assembly as ‘an historic meeting of men, mostly entirely ignorant of their subject’, French was able to resurrect the Belgian option by arguing for landing the BEF at, or marching it to, Antwerp although he also suggested that it might be concentrated in a reserve deployment at Amiens in order to see how matters developed. Haig, too, suggested delaying the dispatch of the BEF albeit on the grounds that it would be beneficial to await the arrival of British and imperial forces from overseas. Though Wilson admitted that some thought had now been given by the General Staff to a concentration at Amiens, Antwerp was deemed impossible both on logistic grounds and also through naval fears of operating in confined waters. It was tentatively agreed to send the BEF to France but to leave any decision as to its line of operations until after the French had been consulted. A second meeting of the council on 6 August endorsed an earlier Cabinet decision that day to dispatch only four of the six infantry divisions of the BEF in case the Germans attempted an invasion before the defence of Britain had been properly secured. French as well as Field Marshal Lord Kitchener, who was appointed Secretary of State for War on 5 August, continued to press for concentration at Amiens. On 12 August, however, Wilson and a French delegation finally persuaded Sir John and Kitchener to concentrate at Mauberge as originally intended.¹⁰ Arguably, therefore, British strategic interests were sacrificed to wider alliance considerations, but French was invested by Kitchener with instructions that made clear that his command was an independent one and that he had direct recourse of appeal to the British government in the event of difficulties. The episode, however, demonstrated Sir John French’s continuing commitment to the idea of operating on the allied left flank, a concept revived with the movement of the BEF to Belgium in September 1914 amid the German operations to seize Antwerp.

The German withdrawal from the Marne had begun on 9 September, the army consolidating on the Aisne. The Chief of the German General Staff, Helmuth von Moltke, however, was even prepared to withdraw further if necessary. On 14 September the Prussian minister of war, Erich von Falkenhayn, succeeded Moltke as Chief of Staff though the appointment was not formally announced until 3 November. Falkenhayn remained minister of war.¹¹ Noticed by the Kaiser for his service in China during the Boxer Rebellion, Falkenhayn had then held a number of staff positions before obtaining the command of the 4^th Foot Guards in 1911. Two years later, the 51-year-old became a surprising choice as minister of war. Falkenhayn was undoubtedly clever but also possessed an arrogant and aloof nature that did not endear him to many within the German army.

Assisted by Colonel Gerhard von Tappen, who remained head of the General Staff’s Operations Section, Falkenhayn considered the available options on the night of 14–15 September, particularly in the light of the available railway capacity. He then met the Chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, and the Secretary of State from the Foreign Office, Gottlieb von Jagow, on the following day to pronounce his judgement on the situation. It was clear that there was a crisis in the West while there was equal uncertainty on the Eastern Front, notwithstanding the German success at Tannenberg between 27 and 30 August and at the Masurian lakes between 9 and 10 September because the Austro-Hungarian army had been checked in Galicia. Both Bethmann-Hollweg and Jagow were insistent that there had to be a swift resolution of the situation in the West in view of the increasing difficulties in the East but neither were optimistic. Falkenhayn, however, still had absolute confidence in the ability of the army to win through, as suggested by the tone of his first order of the day to the army on 15 September.

The key seemed to be moving the Sixth Army from the already deadlocked front in Alsace-Lorraine to the north of the First Army, whose flank lay largely open between Compiègne and the forces investing Antwerp. Some had favoured using the Sixth Army around Verdun, but Falkenhayn opted to commit it to a new quasi-Schlieffenesque envelopment of the allied left. Accordingly, while intending the First, Second and Seventh Armies to consolidate by a partial withdrawal, Falkenhayn ordered a series of local attacks by the Third, Fourth and Fifth Armies to keep the French occupied so that they did not have the opportunity to pull forces out of the line to be sent to the open flank to the north. The General Staff’s railway specialist, Wilhelm Groener, wanted to shift even more corps from the south. However, Lieutenant General Hermann von Kuhl later claimed that, with the exception of General Karl von Bülow of the Second Army, the German army commanders were extremely reluctant to release any formations from their own fronts for operations further north.

Falkenhayn’s faith in the superiority of the German soldier over his British, French and Belgian opponents was absolute, despite the obvious advantage of the allies in terms of being able to send their own forces north by rail rapidly. Indeed, von Bülow was supported by Tappen, who visited both First and Second Armies on 15 September, in arguing that the French could always shift troops north faster than the Germans given the north-south alignment of most of the railway lines and that some caution should be exercised. Consequently, while agreeing that troops should be shifted north, von Bülow and Tappen wanted to use the men released for a new effort between Soissons and Reims, especially as rail transport would not be available to begin moving German units north until at least 18 September. Belgian and French lines in German occupied areas had not yet been sufficiently repaired to be of any real use and, in effect, the Germans had only one operational line to carry and supply troops operating in the north. Von Bülow and Tappen also argued that the partial withdrawal Falkenhayn was contemplating would send the wrong signals to Germany’s potential allies, Italy and Romania. Faced by these arguments, Falkenhayn momentarily wavered in his resolve and allowed von Bülow to launch an offensive in the Soisson...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Maps
• Illustrations
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. The Belgian option and the race to the sea
• 2. Four armies in Flanders Fields
• 3. Advance to contact
• 4. Kindermord
• 5. The South
• 6. Army Group Fabeck
• 7. Nonnebosschen
• Conclusion: The immortal salient
• Appendix: Orders of battle
• Bibliography
• Index