The Great War Explained

Philip Stevens

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781473821217
• eBook ISBN: 9781781599068
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

This is much more than just another book to add to the thousands on The Great War. It sets out to fill a gap. Written for the layman by a layman (who is also an articulate and experienced battlefield guide) it summarizes the key events and contributions of key individuals, some well, others unknown but with a story to tell.To get a true picture of this monumental event in history, it is necessary to grasp the fundamentals, be they military, political, social or simply human. The slaughters at Verdun, Somme and Passchendaele are no more than statistics without the stories of those that fought, drowned and died there.It is designed to capture the imagination and feed the mind of that ever increasing number of people who seek a better understanding of The Great War.

1

Why Was There a War?

After a fight in the playground, Teacher wants to know ‘Who Started It?’ After a fight on the scale of this war, the question takes some answering. However it can be argued that it all starts with one man.

Bismarck

Otto, Prince von Bismarck, the most obvious playground bully, had been dead for sixteen years before the war started. He became Chancellor of the Kingdom of Prussia in 1862 in dangerous times. The previous twenty years had been unsettled in Europe. In England the Corn Laws were increasingly seen as a food tax, a bar to foreign trade and a cause of price instability. Rising levels of national unrest forced final repeal in 1846. Eighteen forty-eight was ‘The Year of Revolutions’, with anti-monarchical uprisings and revolutions across Europe caused by a variety of economic and social grievances. France and England then fought Russia in the Crimea, with no real reason beyond suspicion of Russian ambitions in the Balkans. In Africa, India and beyond, the maritime powers continued to develop existing colonies and stake out new ones. In the 1860s America was to be busy with its own Civil War, where the Gatling gun introduced industrialised killing for the first time and the railway facilitated the first genuinely mobile war of citizen armies.

Bismarck strode into the European playground at an opportune moment. By character and ability he was the outstanding politician of the day, and his political philosophy appealed to the King of Prussia and his army. In simple terms Bismarck wanted a strong and united Germany, with Prussia as its main constituent state and himself as the dominant political personality. In the decade after becoming Chancellor, he fought Denmark for possession of territories, then Austria in 1866 to establish leadership of the Germanic nations. He rounded off the territorial expansion by humiliating France in the Franco-Prussian War, taking Alsace and Lorraine as the spoils of war. In 1871 he completed the programme with the creation of a united German federation, with the King of Prussia as Kaiser, and himself as Chancellor of the Empire.

From 1857 onwards the Prussian army was the iron tool wielded by Bismarck, The Iron Chancellor. After the unification of Germany, the Kaiser was Commander-in-Chief, but in reality General Count Helmuth von Moltke led the army. He was a profound thinker about military affairs in every aspect and created many modern concepts of military management, such as a general staff and staff training. He was also a considerable fighting general during Bismarck’s local wars of expansion.

The new Germany was a latecomer to the world of overseas territories and colonies. All the major powers had long-established empires. The King of Belgium was effectively the private owner of the Belgian Congo, and Disraeli had flattered Queen Victoria by arranging for her to be crowned Empress of India. In German thinking, the new and largest nation in Europe should also have colonies, and it was wrong that all the best places had already been taken. A restless desire to develop a proper empire, with colonies and possessions, became a fixed point in German political ambitions.

Kaiser William II was a particularly unfortunate successor to the throne created by Bismarck. William was the not-quite-absolute monarch of the largest nation in Europe, the nearly-absolute Commander-in-Chief of the largest, most professional army on the continent, and in both roles his powers outran his abilities. His grandfather, the first Kaiser, had been the nominally absolute monarch for seventeen years, but always under Bismarck’s tutelage. The old Kaiser William I died in 1888. His son Frederick was fifty-seven and Frederick’s only son William was less than thirty. Frederick the Third of Prussia, but the First of Germany, came to the throne a sick man and died of throat cancer in that same year.

The new Kaiser William II, still only aged twenty-nine when he came to the throne, was very aware of his standing as Queen Victoria’s oldest grandchild and pre-eminent monarch amongst her descendants. He considered that the Queen’s oldest son, his uncle Edward Prince of Wales, was an idle pleasure-seeker. It irritated him greatly that this elderly, fat roué was generally seen as the first gentleman and prince of Europe. By the time Queen Victoria died William had been Kaiser for twelve years, and although he had actually been the grandson holding her in his arms as she died he knew that King Edward VII would usurp his pretensions to primacy in the world of royal courts. Even the Kaiser of Germany could not hide the reality that the King-Emperor, the old Queen’s eldest son and his senior by eighteen years, was a person of greater significance than the Kaiser of the still-new German Empire that still lacked anything reasonably to be called imperial possessions.

Kaiser William III was impatient, jealous and extremely conscious of his status. His left arm was withered and all but useless, a humiliating handicap for the Kaiser of Prussia and all Germany. He overcompensated for this handicap in his militarism, constant need for ever more elaborate uniforms and decorations, and demand for physical excellence in those around his court.

Players, Alliances and Plans

Austria-Hungary was crumbling as an ageing empire, but as a client state of Germany was anxious to preserve Germanic leadership, not least in the troubled regions of Germany’s and her own homelands. Austria-Hungary’s Hapsburg Emperors would have difficulty containing developing independence movements in parts of their empire without Germany’s support, especially among the minority population linked by language, history and culture to a meddlesome Serbia next door.

Further towards Asia, the Ottoman Empire had lasted for 500 years of prosperity, but by the beginning of the twentieth century had been declining for over a hundred years, a crumbling and corrupt regime with little but force to hold it together and little enough force to ensure that aim. The empire supported the German and Austro-Hungarian axis, not least because these powers shared the same apprehensions about military and political threats from Russia.

Russia itself was another empire in decline, ill at ease with itself and its neighbours. War was an occasional hazard, especially with the Ottoman Empire, and for over fifty years Russia had been subject to attempted revolution at home. Concessions were given but led only to more demands. Church and State held an uneasy arbitrary grip on the mass of an agricultural peasant population, bound to the concept of Mother Russia and the Czar as Father of The People.

France, in particular, had defined her European ambitions. Above all other aims stood the national ambition to get back the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, taken by Germany as the spoils of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71.

Great Britain was the perpetual stumbling block in the way of any European nation with international ambition. Britain controlled the largest empire the world had ever known and had the military strength, mostly naval strength as befitted a maritime empire, to protect its possessions. British naval policy was simple: the British merchant marine represented 60 per cent of the global shipping fleet, and the British Empire about half of the civilised world. The Royal Navy should therefore be similarly dominant. As a rule of thumb, the tonnage of the Royal Navy should be twice that of the next largest navy. Germany set out to challenge this doctrine, driven by the Kaiser and his jealous guardianship of his own heritage. This dual policy committed Germany to land armies on the continental scale as well as naval forces on the global one.

Within the British Empire, the Dominions of Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand and at least part of South Africa would be counted into British plans.

In the Far East another empire was in the ascendant. Japan was emerging from medieval isolation, had beaten Russia decisively in the naval war of 1906. The defining battle was the naval Battle of Tsushima, in which Japan captured or destroyed thirty-four of Russia’s thirty-eight ships, killing or capturing over 10,000 Russian sailors for the loss of three small torpedo boats and 116 dead. Japan was an important customer of Tyneside ship-builders, especially for fighting ships, and this was thought to give a pro-British advantage to Japanese inclinations in the event of a European war. In the event, Japan would play little or no part in the war when it did come.

To the west the United States of America wanted to be left alone to heal the still-open wounds of the Civil War and continue the process of turning a group of states into a single nation, whilst developing an industrial base to compete with the world. There was little appetite for military power, beyond that needed to cope with a quarrelsome border relationship with Mexico.

Thus five Western empires, a number of European nations and the USA had more or less set out their positions for the war that many thought must come.

Formal alliances became the fashionable tools of international diplomacy. Germany and Austria-Hungary naturally allied themselves as the Central Powers; France and Russia allied themselves in a mutual defence pact to take effect in the event that the Central Powers might attack one or the other. Simultaneously, Russia appointed itself as the protector of the small Baltic Slavic states and declared its interest in their freedom from external pressure. The Ottoman Empire, in its death throes, dithered between the two main blocs, before eventually coming down on the side of the Central Powers. Italy was expected to join the German – Austrian alliance in the event of a European war. Belgium was neutral, her neutrality respected by all, and guaranteed by the Treaty of London of 1839. Most of the smaller countries around the edge of Europe were also neutral and of little significance in the political posturing of the Great Powers. Great Britain alone held herself aloof, pursuing the historic role of supporting the weak against the strong, preferring a balance of power rather than any single dominant power in Europe.

A remarkable diplomatic achievement served to increase German fears of encirclement by land and sea. The British and French governments had been moving closer together since the Crimean War of 1853-56, when they had fought on the same side against Russia in the fight for spoils and influence in areas where the Ottoman Empire was no longer able to maintain its imperial control. Since then, Britain and France had also fought side by side in the Second Opium War against China in 1856-60. A new treaty, The Entente Cordiale, was signed in 1904. It was not a military agreement and was little more than an expression of hope of friendship and cooperation. The public of both nations believed the Entente to be the work of the new king, Edward VII, whose gallant manners, roving eye and status as Queen Victoria’s son made him as popular in smart French society as they made him awe-inspiring in British. His ability to speak easily to all politicians probably did help bring the Entente into the world but he was by no means the only, nor the most significant, midwife at its birth.

The Entente certainly made no formal military commitment to France. However, senior British military figures agreed that the small British army was destined to fight alongside the French when the inevitable European war would occur. Military planning was effectively centred on the deployment and employment of a British Expeditionary Force (BEF), in the event that France would go to war with Germany. Naturally the officers responsible to the Imperial General Staff, the leadership of the army, for this planning were very conscious of the need for secrecy. Indeed they saw no need to tell their pacifically inclined Liberal political masters that they were undertaking no other preparation for a European war.

The new century unfolded: tensions arose within and across borders, and all countries were naturally writing war plans. Great Britain and France might have no sure idea about whether, how or where the BEF would be employed when they got to France, but Ferdinand Foch had no doubt about how the French Army would be employed. As pre-war Commandant of the École Supérieure de Guerre (ESG), the French Staff College for training future senior officers, he had exercised a very considerable influence over thinking in the higher reaches of the army. In the event of war, France would advance immediately and with unstoppable courage into the lost provinces and re-take them. La Revanche, Revenge, was the doctrine and L’Attaque á l’Outrance was the instrument, literally the extravagant application of force to achieve the objective. Foch’s disciple Colonel Grandmaison was chief instructor of G3, a special third year of study at ESG for a few selected high flyers marked out for accelerated promotion to the higher levels of command. He advocated the heroic concept, the courage of the French private soldier, the poilu, who would advance with panache, his courage defending his breast against the German machine gun. Yes, he really did write and speak like that, and in the years immediately before the war delivered a series of lectures with such oratorical brilliance that those who heard them accepted his doctrines with almost religious fervour. Grandmaison suffered for his own military beliefs by dying on the battlefield in 1915.

Meanwhile, over the years since 1911 the French planning staff had been led by the army Chief of Staff, Joseph Joffre, in constantly refining and elaborating on the execution of La Revanche. Each major refinement was written as a new model plan for the conduct of the inevitable war, and by 1914 the numbering system had taken the process to Plan XVII. For the benefit of anyone who doubted the new French philosophy of war, the opening sentence of Plan XVII made the position clear – ‘Whatever the circumstances, the Commander-in-Chief intends to advance, all forces united, to attack the German armies.’ By August 1914 Joffre was ready to put his theories, and Colonel Grandmaison’s interpretation of them, to the test. The French First and Second Armies would advance headlong into the occupied provinces in a series of actions that would later be known collectively as The Battles of The Frontiers.

Foch little knew that as a Corps Commander (1913), then Army Commander (August 1914) then Commander of the Northern Group of Armies (October 1914) he was to play a significant role in the unfolding of Plan XVII.

Germany knew that they could not win decisively a war fought simultaneously on two fronts, against Russia in the east and France in the west. From the mid-1890s onwards General Count Alfred von Schlieffen, Chief of the German Great General Staff, directed his planning staff to solving this problem. As successor to Helmuth von Moltke he had at his disposal the largest, most professional army in Western Europe, and was confident in their ability to win a European war. In essence, he planned that a small force in the east would hold that frontier for a few weeks, against a slow and ponderous Russian mobilisation and advance, whilst an overwhelming force, gathered in Western Germany, would strike a blow to knock France out of the war in six weeks. The German attack would not go across the Franco-German border; the French Army would be there in strength, indeed it suited Schlieffen’s plan that the French would actually advance into the lost provinces and meet powerful German home defence at some distance from French supply lines. The German Army would march to the sound of a greater drum, to conquer countries not provinces.

So, the German Army planned that on the outbreak of war they would indeed advance not southward directly into France, but westward, into neighbouring neutral Belgium. The Belgians might grant free passage, but if they would not then the pitifully small Belgian forces would be swept aside. The great fortress cities like Liege would be by-passed and later captured, but speed of advance would be the key to success. After advancing westwards almost to the North Sea, the Germans would turn south, sweep down the gap between Paris and the sea, swing round south-eastwards below Paris and then turn north to take the French Army from behind. With her capital surrounded once again, as in 1870-71, and with her army crushed between the German home defences and the German Army behind, France would surrender within six weeks and free the German Army to transfer east in time to deal with Russia.

For fifteen years von Schlieffen and his successor, Helmuth von Moltke ‘The Younger’, nephew of the great architect of the Prussian army, refined the plan and prepared its implementation. The Schlieffen Plan, the Great Memorandum, as it was officially know, was never a completed work, always a work in progress. All major civil engineering projects were planned with a thought for their potential contribution to the greater work. As one example, railway building was considered as part of the plan to move an army west to fight France and then east to fight Russia. Four-track railways ran east to west across Germany, ending always just within the borders, at stations with sidings and platforms built to handle armies on the move. Military warehouses were built and filled with the necessary stores. The male population underwent national service, in a system that ensured that all men could serve usefully, in the front line, in reserve, as troops guarding communications or as home defence forces, until past their fortieth birthdays.

Throughout Europe war was seen as inevitable. The tensions between the Central Powers and the Triple Entente were ever-present and varied only in their degrees of intensity from time to time. But there was no obvious sign of any probable event that would actually set the whole series of war plans in motion. When the event came it was so small in international terms that it scarcely registered on the politicians’ antennae.

The Black Hand Movement

The Serb people were a divided race. The independent nation of Serbia adjoined the eastern edges of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, between Albania on the Adriatic and Bulgaria on the Black Sea. A sizable Serbian population lived across the border within Austria-Hungary as reluctant subjects of the empire. The wilder fringes of the desire to liberate Serbian peoples from the Austrian yoke had formed the Black Hand Movement, a secret body dedicated to ending Austrian rule by any possible means. The Serbian government probably knew of the movement and rather agreed with its objectives, tolerating the movement’s existence even if only to the extent of ignoring it.

In June 1914 the Austrian heir presumptive was the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. He was unhappy, charmless and despised at court, and only became heir to his uncle, 84-year-old Emperor Franz Josef, through the suicide of the Emperor’s own son Crown Prince Rudolph at Mayerling. (Franz Ferdinand’s father, the Emperor’s younger brother, renounced his claim to the succession.)

Franz Ferdinand was happily married to Countess Sophia von Chotkowa und Wognin, but resented strongly the ruling of his uncle the Emperor that she was not sufficiently noble to be permitted royal honours or titles. Her husband might indeed be about to become Emperor, but she could never be his Empress, and her own birth placed her in the lower ranks of the rigid court hierarchy. However, outside the imperial court Franz Ferdinand was Inspector General of the Forces, the senior military figure of the empire, and in that role at least his wife would be accorded the respect that he wanted for her. Their wedding anniversary was on 28 June, and he ensured that on that date he would be away from Vienna with the army in Sarajevo, who could be relied upon to provide the ceremonies and recognition that the date deserved. With processions, High Mass in the cathedral and a reception for the leading local dignitaries his wife would have no cause for complaint about her treatment on this day.

The Black Hand saw this visit as an ideal opportunity to achieve a blow for freedom. At least four, and perhaps as many as seven separate assassination plans were prepared, and if one might fail another must succeed. Each assassin was to place himself at a different point on the route that would take the official visitors from the railway station to the civic hall. The first assassination attempt was made, a homemade bomb thrown at the car carrying the Inspector General and his wife. It missed and failed to kill the intended victims but seriously wounded members of the party in the car behind. After being driven at speed to the civic hall, Franz-Ferdinand decided to visit the wounded in hospital, and Sop...

Table of contents

• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Foreword
• Timeline of the War
• 1 - Why Was There a War?
• 2 - 1914 – The War Begins
• 3 - 1915 – The Year of Trial
• 4 - 1916 – The End of the Beginning
• 5 - 1917 – The Year of Waiting
• 6 - 1918 – The End in Sight
• APPENDIX I - The Cast
• APPENDIX II - Composition of an Army
• APPENDIX III - Other Arms
• APPENDIX IV - Weapons
• APPENDIX V - Hints for Visitors
• APPENDIX VI - Visiting the Western Front
• APPENDIX VII - Casualties
• APPENDIX VIII - The War Poets
• INDEX